#unrelated but i also want to try and pick up spanish

[museeeuuuum]

Banjo update:

I don't think anyone cares, but I have been practicing my banjo! Not for hours on end or anything, but I'm trying to get into the habit of picking it up every time I have the slightest inclination to mess around with it. I'm trying to get addicted. I wanna be a banjo junkie who can't function without first picking out a little tune. I see the strings glint out of the corner of my eye, and I've just gotta play it to get my fix.

Am I good at it yet? Absolutely not. I can't get my fingers to stay on individual strings because I've got thick labourers' hands that are great for chopping wood or punching things. I'm following a 30 day banjo lesson and I've spent at least a week on each single day video because I want to be confident in what I'm doing before I move on the next steps. I haven't played an instrument since middle school and my teacher was awful so I'm taking it slow and just trying to have fun with it. Sometimes an hour goes by while I'm practicing and I don't realize it. It's a skill that I'm so glad I'm trying to pick up and I wonder what my level will be at in a year

[strawbeelemonade]

Imagine: Being Miles Morales’ best friend but also your a bit insane

•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_

🕷- Miles used to be so scared of you

🕷 - Even before you started a mutual friendship you sorta just…. kept appearing.

🕷 - He wasn’t sure when he became desensitised to you. but he likes to think his new double life of being a crime fighting upstart has given him a bit of a tolorence.

🕷 - Miles will now watch you eat an apple from the top down, core, stem and all, and literally not say anything.

🕷 - Your so consistently insane in such a harmless way, it’s kinda nice.

🕷 - He wishes you would stop picking up wild animals, though.

🕷 - Seriously stop. at least one of them will have a fatal disease.

🕷 - You keep venturing into the underground subway to play with the New York rats. Nothing bad has happened yet but that doesn’t mean nothing will.

🕷 - Don’t get me wrong. Miles isn’t overprotective or anything, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still worry. Your one of his closest friends.

🕷 - He’s not sure what he’d do without you.

🕷 - So please take the rat out of your jacket pocket. Please.

🕷 - Oh but it’s so cute!!

🕷 - You are Cinderella actually.

🕷 - Miles stumbles across you as his spider-sona surprisingly often.

🕷 - Not always when your doing something illegal, so he kinda forms this double friendship with you.

🕷 - It’s hard because he forgets your not supposed to know who he is!!

🕷 - He keeps forgetting to deepen his voice and act macho. You just make him relax so easily.

🕷 - I like to think His powers are particularly in tune with body language, even if he doesn’t mean or want to. And it can become so incredibly exhausting. all the extra information and interference is unrelenting unless he’s completely alone or has his headphones on.

🕷 - But you’re different. You let Everything rest on the surface. You say what you think, and miles found after a couple of months of knowing you that you’re actually more deep thinking then you like to let anyone realise.

🕷 - Your completely willing to sit in total silence with him. It’s so relaxing.

🕷 - The closer you both get the more he starts to see that you are actually a total sweetheart.

🕷 - You remember little things about him, your willing to go through great lengths for him. He knows that no matter where the both of you are or what your doing, you are ready to drop anything and everything to come to him if he needs you.

🕷 - He doesn’t demand it from you, but…

🕷 - You show up outside his dorm window at 3am all on your own ok?!

🕷 - He just mentioned he was having trouble sleeping!!! It’s not his fault!!! … but he’s not complaining either.

🕷 - So yeah, you put him at ease.

🕷 - Which is why it comes to no one’s surprise except miles when you bust him within the first two weeks.

🕷 - It scared the shit out of him. The next time you saw him as spider man you were like “Yo, Miles”.

🕷 - Y/N PLEASE.

🕷 - He asks you how you found him out, And you laugh and claim his mask made him look like he’s bad at Spanish. He socks you in the shoulder and you laugh harder.

🕷 - He then timidly asks if you’ve said anything to anyone.

🕷 - You tell him you don’t have deep enough conversations with anyone else TO tell.

🕷 - He understands what your trying to say.

🕷 - It’s actually a lovely little moment.

🕷 - As Spider-Man, he’s gotten to know an even crazier side to you. The fact that that was possible scared him a bit.

🕷 - Miles always wondered what you would get up to when he wasn’t around. You would disappear for hours, even days at a time. But you’d always come back.

🕷 - You were like an outdoor cat lmao.

🕷 - Turns out your a bit of an adrenaline junky.

🕷 - “Y/n this is a 7 story building and there’s no stairs how are you up here.”

🕷 - You liked feeding the pigeons… which was… yeah. Ok, fine.

🕷 - Miles wasn’t sure how his parents would react to you. He wasn’t ASHAMED but… Was he worried? Definetely.

🕷 - His dad is a COP.

🕷 - When He gets home from a couple hours of patrolling New York after school he has a heart attack when he sees you sitting on the couch nursing a drink while chatting to his mom.

🕷 - Your not fake, your still you. but you make a conscious decision not to pull out the rat in your pocket until you both head to his room to hang out.

🕷 - He’s much more emotional then he likes to make himself out to be. He’s still trying to figure himself out, He’s still only 14 after all.

🕷 - So hearing you drop deep emotional wisdom at 2 in the morning is a fucking EXPERIENCE.

🕷 - The deep conversations you have (and, now that he’s thinking about it the meaningless ones as well) feel like precious moments. They leave a lasting affect on him, your presence makes him feel safe.

🕷 - He’s not sure how to say all that out loud though.

🕷 - He doesn’t have to. you already know.

🕷 - His parents are happy to know that he’s made you as a friend. No matter how much or little they really know about you, anyone with eyes and two working ears can tell that your a good kid.

🕷 - You probably end up in the hospital a lot.

🕷 - Like a lot a lot. You are in so many wrong places at so many wrong times…

🕷 - An arm in a cast is considered a small case when it comes to you.

🕷 - Miles wonders how your still even alive this point!

🕷 - foreshadowing

🕷 - After you become more acquainted with miles’ family, you start getting visits from them!

🕷 - Especially If you don’t have any stable adult figures in your life.

🕷 - You get in a lot of accidents and fights. And it starts getting worrying. You don’t go looking for any trouble but you don’t let the criminal population of New York stop you from venturing out at night, either.

🕷 - In the waiting room Your all smiles and laughs. Nothing fazes you it seems, even under extreme amounts of pain. so it makes them relax a bit.

🕷 - But they are MUCH more willing to let you practically walk in and out of their house whenever you need a Homebase to fall back on.

🕷 - Mr. Davis does NOT enjoy getting called out late at night over a complaint of a homeless person loitering on a bench and it’s literally just you.

🕷 - What are you doing out here young lady/man/ster.

🕷 - Sorry sir I missed my bus

🕷 - But why were you sleeping outside!

🕷 - Eepy.

🕷 - Let them help you please you don’t have to do things on your own.

🕷 - You’ve only gotten lucky enough to be attacked a handful of times.

🕷 - But when the opportunity arises you are so ready.

🕷 - Remember how I said you were crazy in a harmless way? Forget I said that.

🕷 - Miles has literally watched you rip an old (albeit loose) stop sign out of the ground and beat a mugger over the head with it.

🕷 - He was not ready.

🕷 - You don’t even have any powers that he knows of. No super strength or healing. No heightened senses to protect you.

🕷 - Miles is in awe of you sometimes.

🕷 - he’s saved you from trouble a

Handful of times.

🕷 - you’ve literally got Spiderman looking out for you.

🕷 - If anything happens to you

He will freak the hell out.

🕷 - you might end up being room

-mates at his new school

🕷 - No matter how low he’s feeling he knows that you’ll find a way to make him smile.

🕷 - You find the craziest things to do, there’s no where you’re not willing to venture and there’s nothing your not willing to play with.

🕷 - Unfortunately Miles suffers from the terrible ailment of being a teenager 💔 (and also occasionally having terrible bouts of anxiety)

🕷 - often times he just feels so painfully uncool. He catches himself asking if he’s really cut out for this life. Not just about being the next Spider-Man, but also in the the-American-dream-is-not-real-and-I-don’t-have-a-future kind of way. He worries if he’s failing underneath the weight of his burdens. That he’s a loser.

🕷 - But you don’t let him feel that way when your around.

🕷 - You make him feel like he’s cool. You make him feel like he’s funny. like he’s the most interesting person in the world, your so unshakably and enthusiastically invested in him and his successes!

🕷 - You celebrate with him when he wins small fights. When he saves people. When he gets higher grades on exams.

🕷 - He doesn’t feel insecure standing next to you, even when your personality is as chaotic as it is.

🕷 - Miles isn’t sure sure how he got so lucky to have met you. He doesn’t realise you feel the same about him.

_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•

[esperata]

20 Questions for Writers!

Tagged by @arcanemoody Thank you!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

419

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

currently 1,537,289 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

A lot of DC media (comics, movies, cartoons, games). Occasional Super Mario or Marvel franchises. Used to be a whole lot of Star Trek, which I still love.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

That's Amore (MCU) 1124 kudos Plans and Propositions (MCU) 663 kudos Five Times + 1 (Star Trek TOS) 519 kudos Wait... Was That A Date?! (MCU) 508 kudos Only You (MCU) 449 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes. I always try to respond within a day or two and with as lengthy a reply as the comment.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

From Bad To Worse (Star Trek TOS). I did eventually write a follow up fic to give McCoy some healing but yeah, this fic was left with an angsty ending.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of my fics have happy endings but I'm going to pick A Plague On Both Your Houses (Gotham) because its based on a tragedy which makes the ending here all the happier.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No, generally not. I have had a troll on ff.net and some people who didn't apparently read my fic before commenting 🙄 but people are generally nice.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes. Hard to answer this. I aim for emotional, or sensual usually. Its some part of the relationship whether thats frustrated sex or tender love.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Not often. I did start one last year during riddlebird week, Gay Attorney (Gotham/Ace Attorney), but I lost enthusiasm (unrelated to it being a crossover)

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge although who knows with the AI scrapers nowadays.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Several of my spones drabbles got translated into Spanish here and Olduvai (Star Trek AOS) got translated into Russian here.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes. I used to work closely with StellarLibraryLady and we co-wrote a series of Star Trek fics and drabbles called Plant Life. I have assisted and been assisted with various other fics such as The Dating Game (Batman media) with LordRobotnik and Far From Over (Batman movies 89-97) with TheDreammweaver.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Riddlebird holds the number one spot for having so many variations I can play with. Spones and hattercrow are also favourites.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you will?

Probably one called Gotham Gossip which has been in my notes folder for years. I have the template all done but can't muster any interest in writing it. The Gotham version of riddlebird is not my preferred fandom.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'd say characterisation and plots with heart. My stories revolve around the relationships so I focus on that.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

World building and visual descriptions. The first isn't needed in fanfic and I don't have the required visualisation for the second.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Nothing wrong with this as long as care is taken to try and get it right. Translations should be provided either as a footnote or with proper hover features enabled.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Knightmare, a British kids TV show from the 80s - 90s. I typed this on an old style word processor and still have it saved to floppy disc.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Tough question. Right now I'm going to pick Do You Mind? (Batman the animated series). I enjoyed weving the story with canon events and know it worked well.

Tagging, if they want, @thedreammweaver , @ramenflavoredchaos , @nerdcore-gf , and @gottaread2

[sistrrrenchantress]

6 Questions Tag Game

Thanks @dwellerinroots for the tag! I haven’t actually ever done one of these so here goes nothing.

1. Last Song?

Ughgh I think Malibu by Hole. I last listened to a podcast and I only use Spotify so I’m like 98% it was Malibu. Anyways I love that song. It’s hopeful and sad and when I was in high school I really wanted someone to whisk me away and we’d go live somewhere by the beach in like a van. You know like those kinda romantic, hazy dreams of van-life before you realize that it’s not realistic.

2. Last Show?

I was gonna say The Last of Us, but actually I watched Modern Family last night. TBH my partner likes TLoU a lot more than I do, but it’s got some scenes that melt my heart a bit. Anyways Modern Family always acts like a personal pick-me-up since it’s kinda nostalgic. Plus sometimes I wish my family was more like them. It also kinda helped me realize what wasn’t healthy about my own personal relationships and know that life goes on even if your family sucks sometimes so even if it’s a mess it kinda has helped me? Idk why I’m trying to explain myself here lmao. I had a class where everyone said it was problematic and I don’t want people thinking I agree with everything in the show or whatever.

3. Currently Watching?

I just finished watching Wakanda Forever so I think it counts since I started this before it ended lmao. Anyways I thought it was okay. Not good, but not terrible. But I also think it was closer to terrible than good. It just felt confused, like it didn’t know what message or arc Shuri was supposed to have so idk idk. I’m not a movie critic so… yeah

4. Currently Reading?

I’m still reading Hyperion. I know it’s been a month, but in my defense the blues have hit me like a truck and I’ve solely been focusing on keeping my GPA. I have one more short story left, which is the Consol’s. Also, I should’ve mentioned but it’s a collection of sci-fi short stories (Canterbury Tales style) taking place eons into the future after Earth has literally imploded. It follows a group of people brought together on a pilgrimage to travel to the mysterious Time Temple on the planet of Hyperion. There’s more but I really don’t wanna spoil anything for anyone who might want to read or was already planning. Anyways the priest’s tale is my absolute favorite, because I like it’s spooky vibe and other spoiler-filled reasons. However they’re all written really well and I would recommend this to just about everyone since I think it’s just a really fun read.

5. Current Obsession?

Oof I don’t really have one because I’ve been feeling down. However Cyberpunk 2077 was it for a while, then TES again, and I’m just floating now. Anyways I’m always interested in TES, the Witcher, Dragon Age, etc. It’s just not as intense as other people though. I feel kinda boring now. Well, at least I’ve been getting back into art and blender and messing around with trying to learn my father’s language again. And I love writing and creating generally so that’s really that.

6. Unrelated Stuff I’ve Been Doing?

I already talked about this a little I guess. I’m learning Polish again and watching more shows with the dub in Spanish so I don’t lose it since I just don’t talk to my family much anymore. I’ve been messing with blender and unreal engine. I re-started this art-schedule-thing that I got from a yt video. I really want to improve my digital art. I also have like 10 billion tabs open with videos on blender and unreal so maybe I’ll post what I’m working on one day. I kinda gave up on my NaNoWriMo because I’m too moody and I don’t know what’s wrong with my executive function but we haven’t been on the same page recently. However, listening to podcasts (like Unresolved Textual Tension or You’re Wrong About and Rotten Mango) has kinda helped my mood a little. But if I’m being real here, real life kinda takes up most of my time. So school (gotta love deciding for a dual degree really late in my undergrad) and all the volunteer/internship things I have to do kinda just take up most of my life. That’s a little depressing lmao, but it is what it is.

Anyways, thanks for the tag! I don’t feel like I’m active enough to tag anyone and I’m shy so anyone who sees and wants to do it, feel free.

[seewetter]

Yeah, but as a lifelong hobbyist worldbuilder, let me tell you:

I remember a time when I tried worldbuilding with the help of a Worldbuilding Checklist by Patricia Wrede. (At the time, I knew not of her weird comments that sparked conversations about racism)

It was a disaster.

The checklist has 100s (feels like 1000s, maybe it is) of questions could all have dozens of answers.

I always liked lists and I can be a perfectionist, so I would try to go through culture by culture and answer the questions. But it was overwhelming and in practice, I felt like I was just answering lots of unrelated questions without a good answer in mind.

Blue dye is a good example. Imagine slowly going through a checklist of things so your blue dye is sufficiently complex and interesting...

...only to find that it starts to feel like a chore and did you actually like blue dye that much to begin with to basically try to "flesh out" your blue dye?

It's not even the idea of adding cool detail to your world: I've seen worldbuilders create a "history of buttons" that explains when and where buttons on clothes where first invented. Those people had a blast!

No, what causes a headache is the lack of a sense of direction and even sometimes lack of a sense of accomplishment. In some cases, when you worldbuild for an audience online, a lack of appreciation from those people will also be bad.

The breakthrough for me came when I realized that really what I need to do is pick topics that interest me (at the time, the Spanish Inquisition) and then flesh my fictional inquisition out to make it unique and interesting. The most interesting things about my new faction of people are of course "what do they want?" (what are they up to?), "how powerful are they?" (how much impact do they have? how much impact could they have if things change slightly?) and "what are their relations to other groups or things in the world?". Connecting things in worldbuilding together (like giving the Inquisition allies or enemies or something more complicated than that or giving them artefacts they love or hate or giving them powers that rely on another faction) makes the world dynamic.

Worldbuilding and writing both benefit from fiddly details unrelated to the events of the world or story. Fiddly details show you put in effort. Fiddly details show sides of a project that surprise people. But in order to enjoy creating fiddly details in the long term, you kind of need the skeleton of your project to exist first.

I would always recommend Rebecca McClanahan's book "word painting". It's about how to write descriptively. But it trains that muscle, even for worldbuilders: how to connect the descriptive detail to the larger project ideas.

And if you have doubts, you can look up Patricia Wrede's checklist and torment yourself with endless questions about your world or story. Try coming up with a totally original faction by just answering a 100 questions from the checklist about it before deciding on any archetype. I promise that you will either understand where this post is coming from or embrace your destiny as the Chosen One, the worldbuilder that fleshed out all details about blue dye for a month, lived to tell the tale and then moved on to grey dye...and so on.

i think one of the reasons i get mildly annoyed about worldbuilding threads that are 200 tweets of why you should care about where blue dye comes from in your world before saying someone is wearing blue is that so few of them go up to the second level of "and that should impact your characters somehow" - i don't care that blue dye comes from pressing berries that only grow in one kingdom a thousand miles away if people are casually wearing blue

[goblinmatriarch]

Flufftober Day 13

Fandom: A League of Their Own

“All I’m saying, Shaw, is if you’re going to keep trying to bribe people with pies–”

“Which is a terrible idea, by the way,” Jo interrupted.

Maybelle nodded agreement as she flounced past en route to the kitchen. “It is, it really is, thank you, Josephine. But if you’re gonna insist, you gotta learn how to do it properly. No one ever caught a greased pig with low-grade slop, you know?”

“I…don’t,” Carson admitted, trailing behind her. Then she shook herself. “I mean, I do. I guess. I guess I can…figure it out. But also” – she put one hand on her hip and waved the other through the air – “I do know the proper way to make pies.”

Jess let out a loud laugh from where she was playing cards at the kitchen table. Esti looked at her inquisitively, and Lupe smirked and leaned over to whisper something in Spanish. Esti threw her head back and laughed brightly, and Carson narrowed her eyes before deciding it was an unrelated joke.

“I’m gonna teach you the same way I taught my oldest,” Maybelle said, pulling boxes out of the pantry and giving the milk a sniff. “Test all your ingredients, really put your tits behind it, and don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Oh!” She perked up and added, “And you can’t go wrong with a pinch of nutmeg. That’s it, that’s the secret family recipe.”

When she was elbow-deep in flour, Carson found the courage to say, “Can I ask you a question?” 

“I don’t know how else you’ll learn, sugar.”

“No, it’s not about, um.” Carson’s forehead itched, so she scratched it with the back of her wrist. “Where are your kids? Like, right now, where…are they?”

Maybelle paused in her peeling for a moment, her face softening, then she recommenced with vigour. “I’ve got three kids. The youngest was only just off the tit when I left,” she said. “Martha, she is, she’s nearly three now. My oldest, Stilwell, he’s nine.” She tossed the last apple into the pot and turned to face Carson. “They’ve been my whole life since the day I fell pregnant the first time.”

She sounded almost angry, and Carson stammered, “Yeah, I mean. Of course. I assumed. Yeah.”

To her relief, Maybelle continued. “Jimmy, that’s…that was my guy? He was never good for much, really. Well.” She smirked and picked up a spoon to prod the stewing apples. “He was good for one thing, and he was really good for that. But otherwise.” She sighed. “He’s not a bad guy, really, just not very dependable.”

There was a long enough silence that Carson felt she’d better say something. “How long have you two been married?”

Maybelle’s cheek, all rosy from the steam coming off the cooking apples, dimpled. “Well. We’re not.”

Carson was shocked enough to stop crimping the crust. “Maybelle,” she gasped, looking at her admiringly. 

Maybelle laughed her bubbly laugh. “Well, who was gonna stop me? I earned my own money at my daddy’s farm, and he certainly didn’t want me marrying Jimmy, or anyone else around town, either. The preacher sure as shootin’ didn’t like it, but that didn’t stop him trying to cop a feel at confession, did it? So as far as I can see, it’s between me and God, and God always did seem the forgiving sort.”

Carson shook her head and turned back to the pie crust. “Wow.”

“I told him, I said, ‘Jimmy, I’ve taken care of your children for nine years. You can handle them for three or four months.’”

“And that worked?”

“Who knows?” Maybelle stirred the apples lazily. “But I left them with my daddy just in case. Either Jimmy’ll step up, or he’ll skedaddle. Either one works for me.”

The two of them worked in silence until the filling was ready. Maybelle gently elbowed Carson out of the way so she could pour it in, then Carson carefully put the pie in the oven.

“People don’t give you enough credit, May,” Carson said, as they squatted to peer at the pie beginning to bake.

“I know, honey,” Maybelle said. She swatted Carson with a tea towel and sauntered out of the kitchen. “That’s how I’m able to fleece ‘em for all they’re worth.”

[ptergwen]

4 times peter loved you and 1 time he said it

warnings: angst, swearing, and flash being a dickwad (love him tho)

a/n: i wasn’t sure if i would ever finish this bc i started in march? and gave up but i really like the concept so i made myself get back into it and AHH i’m really happy with how it turned out! fingers crossed y’all like too ahaha. also this is unrelated but send me requests!

-

to say you and peter were each other’s missing halves would be an absolute understatement. there wasn’t a secret you didn’t share, an inside joke you didn’t have, a text or call left unanswered, or a second you weren’t on the other’s mind.

it had been like that since your first day of freshman year. you took the seat next to peter in first period spanish, and the rest was history.

peter knew you better than you knew yourself. as cheesy as it sounded, it was true. he could guess what you were going to order at a restaurant before you picked up the menu. if you had a bad day, he’d come over to your place with tissues and hugs, without you having to ask. he knew all the little things.

you? you were a peter parker encyclopedia. you watched all his favorite movies so he could rant to you about them, and you’d actually understand what he was saying. whenever he felt overwhelmed by his chaotic life, you found a way to calm him.

you two were soulmates in best friend form.

best friends, nothing more.

♡ 1.

you had an arm around peter’s neck as you picked at some fruit on his lunch tray. his head was resting comfortably against your cheek, whole body leaning on you. impromtu cuddle sessions weren’t unusual for the two of you. they worked in both of your favors. peter was your own personal heater, and you were just really comfortable to nap on, in his opinion.

“are you gonna eat all my grapes? i was looking forward to those,” peter whined, taking one out of your hand. “are you gonna keep using me as a pillow?” you challenged. he responded by moving his head to your shoulder and chewing. “then, yes. i am gonna eat all your grapes.”

“you know what two people who share food are?” ned chimed in from across the cafeteria table. already knowing what he was implying, you sighed. “what, ned?” he cupped his hand over his mouth like he was about to spill the world’s biggest secret. “a couple.”

it wouldn’t be a regular day without ned trying to play matchmaker for you and peter. the idea made peter scoff. “leave us alone, man. that doesn’t even make sense.” “yes it does!” ned nudged mj for backup. she only raised her hands in defense. it was always a hard pass from her on getting involved in these types of things, unless she found a reason to.

“really? how?” you grabbed peter’s milk and took a sip just for the hell of it. he chuckled at that, forgetting he was supposed to be annoyed with you. a bit of milk dripped down your chin in the process. “oops,” you grimaced at yourself and licked it away.

something about the whole thing made peter’s heart clench. it was so... you were so... cute. cute was definitely the word he was looking for. wait, what? that was new. peter had always thought you were pretty and all, but he’d never found himself endeared like this over such a little thing you did. or had he? no. nope. it was ned’s stupid theory messing with him. that was all.

“y/n, dude, everyone knows it’s a thing. like, why else would someone give up their whole lunch? it’s flirting,” ned interrupted peter’s sudden thoughts about your cuteness. the smug look on his face made you want to throw the tray at him.

before you even joined their friend group, ned was on a mission to set the two of you up. peter described you to him and mj as “the actual sweetest girl ever. she makes me laugh a lot. you guys gotta meet her.” mj obviously ‘tsked’ at him, but a light bulb went off in ned’s head. peter was crushing. he just didn’t know it yet.

part of how you and peter got so close was that ned and mj used to back out of group plans. you’d end up hanging out alone most of the time. of course, it was ned’s idea. a successful idea, yes, but neither of you understood the obsession. apparently it was a guy in the chair’s duty to be a good wingman, and you should leave it to him. whatever that meant.

“if i remember correctly, you and your mom went halfsies on a piece of cake at your birthday party last year. what are you trying to tell us, leeds?” mj asked with a smirk. you and peter looked at each other and burst into laughter, ned’s mouth hanging open. the girl could really get someone when she wanted to.

“shut up, you guys! that’s different!” “so is y/n stealing my food and you calling it sharing,” peter made a point of saying more to you than ned. despite his words, he pushed the tray over to you. it was basically yours, anyway.

you thanked him with a pat on his cheek and popped more grapes into your mouth. in that moment, peter decided he’d get you all the grapes in the world if he could. jeez, he seriously needed to reel it in.

ned was only going to keep going now. “see that? peter’s such a sweet boyfriend. isn’t he, y/n?” he cooed and clasped his hands under his chin. you didn’t have the chance to change the topic before flash appeared at your table. he’d probably overheard your conversation. “penis parker is somebody’s boyfriend? good one.”

feeling peter tense up next to you, you put a hand on his shoulder to let him know you were there. you’d been in too many of these situations. the way flash talked to peter pissed you off in ways you didn’t think were possible. he was fine with everybody else, so why did he choose to pick on him? peter was the least deserving person of having to put up with it from anyone.

“just ignore him, okay? he’ll get bored and leave. works every time,” you reminded peter. too uneasy to say anything, he reached back and put his hand on top of yours. he tried to focus on how nice your touch felt instead of the fact that he was about to be humiliated by flash yet again.

“peter could totally get a girlfriend! he has, like, tons of girls after him,” ned attempted to back peter up, pleased with himself. groaning, peter put his head down on the table. he couldn’t bare to watch his friend destroy what was left of his social life. “you’re really pushing this now. stop talking,” mj warned in a whisper yell to ned. that didn’t stop flash from hearing her.

“she’s right. even parker agrees! look at him,” he snickered at peter’s embarrassed state. you’d had more than enough of him at that point. screw the silence. it wasn’t going to cut it for this one. while wingman ned was still making up stories, you tapped peter’s shoulder to find out how he was doing. his head remained down.

“you okay? want me to say something?” “i’m used to it, and no. i don’t wanna make you deal with him.” peter hated putting his issues on other people, but you couldn’t stand another second of listening to the things flash was saying. you cut into an argument between him and ned about peter’s body count. like his was any higher.

“fuck off, flash!” he stopped in the middle of his sentence. “huh?” “i said fuck off. anyone would be so lucky to date peter. you’re probably salty at him all the time because it’ll never be you,” you finally snapped. his tough guy persona faltered for a few seconds at your words, ned and mj taking the opportunity to high five you for telling him off.

peter was glad his head was still down because his cheeks were pinker than he’d like to admit. did you really mean that? would you be lucky to date him, too?

“what are you, president of the parker protection squad? or are you two a thing?” flash quickly recovered. there he went trying to get the last word in. the embarrassment for peter if you denied it was exactly what he wanted, but you weren’t letting him have it.

“ask me again some other time.” you plastered on a shit-eating grin and waved goodbye. unsatisfied with your answer, flash huffed his way back to his own table. after he was gone, peter looked up at you with something you’d never seen before twinkling in his eyes.

“thank you, y/n. you really didn’t have to say all of that.” “oh, no. don’t thank me. i‘d do it for you anytime. i am president of the parker protection squad, after all.” your fake smile turned into a genuine one for him. peter couldn’t help but mirror it.

his was heart doing that thing again. he guessed it was because he loved you so much, but this love felt different somehow. it wasn’t the friend kind of love he’d had for you all those years.

it was the kind of love he saw in the rom coms you made him watch when you got to pick for movie night. cupid’s love was the official name for it. when he put two and two together, the realization smacked him straight in the face. ned was right.

peter was starting to fall in love with you, and there was no way he could stop.

♡ 2.

peter was a workaholic. patrolaholic to be exact, especially when he had a reason. he’d sometimes find himself in a cycle of getting home late and going out early for days on end. he’d gotten used to the sleep deprivation. his grumbling stomach from missing meals wasn’t too big of a deal either. not when he had a city to save.

it was also a good distraction from everything else going on in his life. man, did he need a distraction. after peter came to terms with the fact that he loved loved his best friend, he narrowed it down to two options; telling you about his feelings or taking them to his grave. since the city was so busy, he was thankful he could throw himself into patrolling and not decide just yet.

may would usually only allow peter to patrol on weekends. school existed, and he had to take breaks. peter really wanted to help out more, so he proposed an idea that could potentially let him up it to the full seven days. he had to make it home in one piece every night for a trial week. that would prove to may he could handle it.

ignoring his black eye on tuesday and limp on thursday, it worked out. peter was positive he could finish off the week just fine. may didn’t have the same optimism. she decided that so much as a scratch on friday and it was strike three. friday came, and peter had impressively managed to end the day, like he thought, just fine.

he did one last swing around the neighborhood he was in, then started heading back to queens to gloat to may. on his way, he remembered he had to text you goodnight. he was bound by a pinky swear to you that he would do it every time he finished patrolling.

peter being spider-man was something you figured out only a few months after he got his powers. he technically exposed himself, and you pieced everything together. it all happened when spider-man offered to walk you home from school one day.

the way he rubbed the back of his neck while asking was a nervous habit that was oddly familiar, and urged you to say yes. you also thought it was strange how even though he didn’t ask for your address, he somehow knew where he was taking you. then again, he was spider-man. it was his job to know new york city and the people living in it.

you came to the conclusion you were making things up until he was about to leave. he walked you to the door of your apartment building and said, “stay safe, squirt.” nobody called you that besides peter. he came up with it because he had recently grown a few inches taller and could finally give you hell for being the short one.

needless to say, peter didn’t take off like he was intending to. he realized his slip up as soon as the nickname came out of his mouth. you brought him upstairs and had a long afternoon of questioning, explanations, and making promises.

peter typed out a message telling you he was fine and to go to sleep. as he was about to hit send, he swung too low and smacked his head right into a traffic light. that was what he got for texting while swinging. he could imagine mj giving him one of her famous safety lectures already, but that wasn’t first on his list of worries. he had a throbbing head and may’s third strike to deal with.

crap, may couldn’t know about this. she’d ban him from patrolling probably forever. going home was out of the question, but peter was in desperate need of an ice pack. there was already a bump forming from where the light hit him. his next choice would be to go to happy, only he couldn’t do that because he‘d tell may.

peter’s hands worked faster than his brain, and he started swinging over to your apartment. the overthinking began soon after. nobody wants to deal with a surprise appearance from their possibly concussed friend at 2 a.m. besides, what would he say? he’d barely seen you all week. it wasn’t fair to you, but it was too late to turn back.

peter landed on the sidewalk with an “oof” and crawled up the wall of your building. when he reached your window, he knocked in the same rhythm that he always did. no answer. he knocked louder. no answer again.

seeing as he had no other option, peter had to let himself in. he pushed on your window to see if it was unlocked. thank god it slid up then, but he made a mental note to remind you about keeping it locked another time. he climbed through the window with as little noise as possible so your family wouldn’t hear.

after navigating in the dark, peter pulled off his mask by the side of your bed. he instantly melted at the sight of you. your face was squished into your pillow, hair sprawled everywhere. you’d must have fallen asleep waiting for his text because you were holding your phone. peter was sure he’d never seen something so adorable.

he let himself stand there and watch the peaceful rise and fall of your chest. the bump on his head was no longer a priority. peter was utterly and completely entranced with you. god, why was he acting like this? oh, right. he was secretly in love with you.

before peter could help himself, he brushed some hair that had fallen into your eyes away with his fingers. you squirmed in your sleep, peter pulling his hand back. he was such an idiot sometimes. your eyes fluttered open and landed on him.

“peter? ‘s that you?” you squinted to see in the darkness of your room. he moved closer. your legs dangled over the bed as you slowly sat up. “yeah, it’s me. sorry to wake you.” he went to scratch his head out of nerves, but stopped when he remembered it really freaking hurt right there.

“‘s okay. i was hoping you’d come over soon. missed you all week.” you frowned at the red and blue clad boy in front of you. except for school, you hadn’t seen peter the past few days. “lots of crime to fight lately?” “missed you more, and yeah. been kicking lots of asses.” the awkwardness peter was imaging faded away when he plopped down next to you on your bed.

“how’s your eye doing? and the limp?” you turned his head towards you by his chin. he exhaled in relief. “getting better, i think. now that we’re talking about injuries...” the sleepiness was knocked out of you. you all but leapt to your feet and turned on the lamp by your bed. peter had a feeling you’d slightly freak.

“we’ve been making small talk and you’re hurt? what happened, peter?” “i-i sort of, um, i was texting you and swung into a traffic light.” “oh my god, where?” he pointed at his forehead with a weak smile. surely enough, there was a big bump. you gasped. “please don’t be mad at me.” “i’m not mad at you. just feel bad it was kinda my fault. do you think you have a concussion?”

you weren’t sure what to do beyond the mostly useless first aid videos they played in gym class. being an avenger, peter had had his share of experience with wounds. whenever he came to you hurt, he talked you through how to help him. the most you’d ever dealt with was a few particularly deep cuts. this was not the same.

“i‘m not sure. you could try that finger thing?” he suggested. you crouched down in front of him. “good idea. let’s do that.” as you waved your index finger back and forth and peter’s eyes followed it seemingly well, his mind was elsewhere. he was thinking about crawling into bed with you and sleeping in your arms.

“well, you passed or whatever they say. i’m pretty sure you don’t have a concussion. you’ll heal fast because of... you know.” you stood up and mimicked the way he shoots his webs. peter chuckled quietly. your thumb ran lightly over his bump, making him wince. “how bad does it feel?” “on a scale from one to ten it’s, like, a five and a half.”

although not what you wanted to hear, it was manageable. you hoped so, at least. “i’m gonna go get some stuff. change into comfortable clothes.” “yes, doctor y/n.” peter saluted you. you were happy to see he still felt up to joking around. biting your lip to hold back a smile, you made your way to the kitchen.

peter searched through the spare clothes he’d left here over the years. there were so many, you had to give him a drawer. he changed into pajama pants and a t-shirt, then sat back down criss cross on your bed.

you came in shortly after with a water bottle, two advil, and an ice pack wrapped in a towel. “i was kidding about the whole doctor thing, you know.” “too bad.” you handed him the advil and water. “take these. they’ll help until your magic healing powers kick in.” peter took the pills while you pressed the ice pack to his bump. he took it from you when he was finished.

“is that any better?” “much better. i’m all good. i should probably go soon.” he mumbled, not meaning it but also not wanting to overstay his welcome. you’d already done so much for him. you stopped him from getting up by putting a hand on his chest.

“what? you already changed, and i’m not sending you home to get killed by may. just stay.” “are you sure? i don’t wanna bother you anymore. it was annoying for me to come here so late in the first place.”

a frown set on your face. “peter, don’t you remember my promise?” there was a beat of silence while he thought about it. “that you’d help out with spidey stuff?” “however and whenever i can. i don’t know what made you think differently just now, but nothing’s gonna change that. doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the night or early in the morning. i’m always here.”

only you could reassure him just like that. peter was really lucky to have you. really, really lucky.

“right. you’re right. sorry for... whatever that was.” “you apologize too much.” you poked his chest to punctuate your statement and switched the light off. “sorry for that, too,” he teased, wanting a reaction from you. “peter benjamin parker, just get in the bed.” “yes, ma’am.” that was enough before you changed your mind and threw him out.

you rolled to lay on the other side of peter. still pressing the ice pack to his head, he laid down next to you. it didn’t take long for both of you to be settled under the covers. “try not to bang into the wall or something,” you joked and pulled your comforter up to your chin.

peter puffed some air out of his cheeks, tugging more of it back. “you can’t be mean and hog the blanket.” “it’s my bed, so i actually can. i’ll hog everything.”

to prove your point, you moved over to peter until there was no room between you. both of you knew it was an excuse to cuddle. he wasn’t mad about it at all. peter opened an arm for you. you curled into his side, letting him hold you close. his whole body relaxed as you hugged him against you. “goodnight, spidey.” “night, squirt.”

♡ 3.

“what does that cloud look like to you?” you pointed up at the sky. peter’s eyes darted around as he tried to find exactly which one you were talking about. there were a lot of them, in his defense. you made a big circle with your finger around the cloud in question.

“the really curvy one. right there.” “kinda looks like a tiger. can we keep walking now?” peter tugged your arm linked in his in an attempt to move you from the spot you’d randomly stopped in. he made a whiny noise when you didn’t budge.

“i think it looks more like a horse, and no. why are you in such a rush?” furrowing your brows at him, you tightened your grip on his arm. “because some people don’t like cloud watching, grandma.” “i only asked you about one! i’m just... trying to get the most out of today.”

with college around the corner, you and peter both had a lot to do and a little bit of time to get it done. your only hangouts had become some shared extracurriculars and weekly study group with your other friends. trying to binge watch your shows together on facetime hadn’t been easy, for one thing. you fumbled to keep your phone up more than you payed attention.

on a more serious note, being apart sucked majorly. it was going to be this times a million when you would inevitably have to split up in a few months. thinking about it for too long usually made you cry.

peter was struggling in other ways. his more than a friend feelings for you were only getting stronger. having all that love and not being able to give it to you was hurting like hell, and he had to just pack everything up and act normal during the rare moments you were together. you were both going through it.

this was the first sunday in what felt like forever that you and peter were both free. you decided that the nice weather called for a meetup at central park. so, there you were, arm in arm on your afternoon stroll.

“don’t say it like that, y/n. you’re making me sad.” peter let out a breath as you rested your head on his shoulder. “that was the point.” you started walking again, peter following next to you. he kicked at pebbles while you smiled up at him. that made him smile at his feet. you were getting really good at making him flustered.

“so, did you finish that pre calc packet?” peter asked to distract himself. you lifted your head off his shoulder with a groan. “peter, we’re not talking about school for once. let’s talk about literally anything else.” “like what?” you were about to make a suggestion, but something caught your attention.

you raced over to a swingset, dragging peter along with you before he could realize where you were taking him. you stopped in front of it and threw your hands up to present it to him. he let out a breathy laugh. “when was the last time you went on one of these?” you asked, taking peter’s arm again. peter shook his head. “way too long ago.”

with a smile, you walked him over and took a seat on one of the swings. peter sat on the one next to you. you spun around in a circle to see how much you could twist the chains, peter laughing. “y/n, what are you doing?” “having fun. you should try it sometime.” he backed up to get himself started and grabbed his own chains. “i do have fun. it’s just not in the ways you think.”

you untwisted yourself to watch peter. “so, how?” “well,” he started going higher, “i like learning about stuff, even the things we have to in school.” “everybody knows that. that’s the first thing i thought of.” you did know everything possible about him.

everything except his new feelings for you, but this wasn’t the time for him to blurt that out. he was still figuring out when or if he should.

“guess i’m not gonna say i like movies, either.” “singing?” you were swinging next to him, turning it into an unspoken competiton for who could get the highest. peter slowed down a bit since he’d had a head start. “i suck. the only person who’s allowed to hear me is you.”

“it’s possible to suck at something and still enjoy it.” the breeze blew your hair around, peter seeing it from the corner of his eye. he’d always loved how carefree you were around him. it rubbed off.

“remind me to force you to do karaoke one day.” “you’re so annoying.” that motivated you to kick off harder on the ground. peter huffed and tried to catch up to you. “don’t be mean to your only source of fun.” if that wasn’t true, he would’ve came up with a comeback.

the only time peter remembered to relax was when he was with you. it was usually because you reminded him. he skidded to a stop on the swing and looked up at you.

“why’d you let me win? was that too mean?” you looked over your shoulder. “nah, i just got tired.” “oh. we can do something else now. catch me?” “sure,” peter chuckled and got off the swing. he stood in front of you on the grass and waited for you to get lower. you clenched your teeth into a nervous smile.

“ready?” “ready.” swinging towards him, you jumped off and expected to land in his arms. you ended up completely on top of him instead.

the wind was knocked out of both of you, but peter had it worse because he broke your fall. your hands were on his shoulders and one of his was around your lower back. neither of you realized the position you were in. you were too busy trying to breathe again.

“god, that hurt.” “my bad,” peter mumbled. in any other circumstance, he wouldn’t be complaining about this. “i should’ve warned you or something,” you dismissed him.

you were still hovering over peter, your lips dangerously close to his. he could’ve sworn they almost touched. that was when you got off of him. he only forced out a laugh. nothing ever went his way. you offered him a hand, oblivious to his inner conflict. peter took it and pulled himself up, falling into step next to you as you headed to another path.

that could’ve been a chance to make some sort of move, and he blew it.

♡ 4.

it hadn’t been easy for peter to move on from that day. his mind kept replaying the split second you almost kissed on an endless loop, and all he could do was come up with what he should’ve done in the moment.

things were getting to a point where he had no clue how to act around you. being your friend was hard, but becoming your boyfriend would be that much harder. his stupid feelings put him in an awkward place, and he was afraid you were starting to realize. he couldn’t lose you altogether.

you asked peter to meet you for coffee after school. it was this small place in between your apartments you’d both been to once before. they had really good cookies and an overall cozy feeling you liked. peter wasn’t sure what this was all about.

were you going to confront him? did ned say something? maybe it was a mistake to confide in his most gossipy friend about how he felt.

with a headache from stress and a heavy backpack hanging off his shoulders, peter walked into the café. he spotted you at a table near the window. you’d already taken the liberty of ordering, two drinks and a chocolate chip cookie waiting there. you looked up from your phone when peter pulled a chair out.

“hi.” you gave him a small smile and put your phone down. “i already got everything.” peter shrugged off his backpack with a grin. he sat down facing you. “thanks. sorry i’m kinda late. i had to stop at my locker.” you usually met him there. come to think of it, why hadn’t you today? you pushed peter’s drink over to him. “you’re fine. i came here early to get us a table, anyway.” phew.

peter bent the straw to his iced macchiato and took a sip. it made him feel grown up, casually drinking coffee with you over a boring conversation. adult life must’ve sucked. “so, how was the rest of your day?” he asked to fill the silence. you only had two classes without him after lunch, so that was a dumb question. he’d never had so much trouble talking to you.

“eh. betty fell asleep on me during this cold war documentary we had to watch.” “didn’t she say american history is her favorite?” you broke off a piece of the cookie with a laugh. “not after that. what about your day?” the light from the window was shining directly on you, blocking out everything else from peter’s view. he wanted to tell you how beautiful you were so bad, but that would be creepy.

you took a bite of your cookie and raised an eyebrow. he was staring. “uh, nothing interesting. i’m gonna patrol a little bit later.” peter sipped his drink again. you clicked your tongue and let out a breath. “that’s all you do these days.” he knew you were catching on to how off he’d been. what was he supposed to say? it would’ve helped if he’d prepared a few excuses.

“just trying to help out while i’m still here.” that was a half truth. “yeah, but you should still take some time for yourself.” you ripped open your straw wrapper and blew it at peter. he caught it just before it hit his face. rolling your eyes, you put the straw into your drink. “i hate your reflexes sometimes.” he shrugged one of his shoulders casually. “jealousy is a disease.”

neither of you said anything for a few minutes. you stared out the window while peter finished the rest of the cookie. he could tell something was on your mind. whenever you were deep in your thoughts, you sort of zoned out like this.

he was too nervous to ask you what was wrong because of the conversation you just had. it sounded like you had already considered he was being distant before today. his feelings aside, he needed to reassure you. that was more important.

“y/n?” you turned your head to look at him. “yeah?” peter’s gaze shifted from you to his thumbs twiddling in his lap. “i know we’ve both been really... busy lately, but i’m still here. don’t forget that.” a hint of a smile played on your lips. you would’ve hugged him if you could reach. “thank you, peter. i kinda needed to hear that.” he nudged your leg under the table. “of course. hey, you wanna come with me tonight?”

a couple of hours later, you were in peter’s arms on a rooftop that was much higher up than it looked. he insisted on taking you for a swing so you could get the full experience. he’d been trying to get you to do this for the longest time, so he wondered what made you agree today. you wanted to find out what was so enjoyable about it.

“i trust you, but you’re not gonna drop me, right?” your legs were around his waist, and he had one hand supporting you by your back. that wasn’t terrifying at all. you grabbed peter’s shoulders, the idea of it making you nervous. he wrapped his arm tighter around you.

“oh my god, no. i can always web you back up.” “peter! that’s not funny.” even behind the mask, you could tell he was smirking. “you’re always safe with me, squirt. don’t worry.” you brought your arms up to loop around his neck.

“i feel better now.” “good. i’m gonna jump when we get to the edge, okay?“ your whole body stiffened up. peter could sense it. as excited as he was to share this with you, he didn’t want to make you feel pressured. “or we don’t have to do it.” his voice was quiet. you tried to relax in his hold. “i’m just gonna close my eyes. i think that’ll help.” “we’re about to find out.”

peter started walking towards the edge of the building with you holding on even tighter to him, your eyes squeezed shut. he kept finding himself in situations where he was close to you in the ways he’d been wishing for, but never for the same reasons. it was bittersweet.

he bit down on his lip and aimed his free hand at a building. you squealed when he leaned back. “i’m jumping now,” he prepared you, and before you could respond, you were in the air. you hid your face in peter’s chest the second you felt yourself pretty much flying.

“what the fuck, you like this?” you had to yell so he could hear you. peter shot another web to keep swinging. “it’s really not that bad! try looking up!” he shouted back, clearly amused.

grip tightening around his neck, you slowly pulled your face away from him. he kept you close as he swung. you somehow convinced yourself you weren’t going to die by looking at something besides peter. your eyes landed on the sky behind his head.

the sun was almost completely set, deep pink and orange merging together against the glowing lights of the city. you were finally understanding why he liked this so much. it was beautiful.

peter peeked at you for a second to check on you. he swore his heart was going to explode out of his chest. the look of adoration on your face, it was even better than the view. it was the view. the little moments where peter got to see you this way made him realize how in love with you he really was.

“this is... wow. i get it now,” you laughed in disbelief, watching as the city whirled past you. peter smiled so big it hurt. “pretty awesome, huh?” one of your hands slid back down to his shoulder. “take me with you more often.”

♡ 5.

peter licked his lips out of habit as he held the door open for may, who was following behind him with a look of pride. he was about to graduate high school. the ceremony was being held in a really nice stadium-like place. trying to find it added minutes on to the parker tradition of being late to everything important.

peter wasn’t as concerned with his tardiness as he was with finding you.

while he tossed and turned in bed the night before, he went over his whole school year in his head. that meant little things and big things. he was starting to drift off until he remembered a conversation with ned a few weeks back. they decided on a deadline for peter to tell you about his feelings, and it was before graduation.

they chose it because if peter got rejected, he’d be over it by the time college started. that was the goal.

it wasn’t that peter had changed his mind. it was that he completely forgot. he didn’t have a solid plan for what he should do. these things needed to be decided way in advance. he ended up pulling something together last minute because it was you. plus, this extra pressure gave him the push to go through with it. somewhere between steps seven and eight, he passed out.

may rushed him to get ready because he’d slept past his alarm. the whole morning was a mess, and he had at most fifteen minutes to confess his love to you by the time he got there.

“you should go make sure you’re marked here. i’ll see you after. love you.” may pressed a kiss to his cheek and half-jogged to the auditorium for a seat. he squeezed her arm and headed off to check in. your whole grade was already lined up along the walls for what looked like miles. the deal was to tell you before graduation. he still had about ten minutes.

peter walked past hundreds of students with his heartbeat thumping in his ears. everyone was in alphabetical order, so it didn’t take too long to find you. relief washed over you when you saw peter. you were worried he wouldn’t show up at all. his cap was in his hand, hair getting tangled from running his fingers through it. he looked at you with pleading eyes.

“finally, i’ve been trying to call you all morning. where were you?” your tone was dripping with concern. “i overslept. there’s something i gotta tell you, y/n.” he gulped. you smiled in a way that was kind of pitying. “we’re about to start going inside. i- you have to wait, pete. go get lined up.”

this wasn’t how it was going to end. not again.

he looked around to see who was watching, then he grabbed your wrist. “peter, what are you-“ “just come with me really quick.” despite yourself, you let him lead you down the hallway. you dodged a couple of teachers having a conversation and went into a bathroom that was vacant by some chance. he let go of you after the door shut. you stood behind it while he walked over to a sink.

it was making you anxious to not be out there. you could be late. peter was the same way when it came to school, so you knew this had to be pretty serious. you gave up the battle with yourself and made your way over to him. he was looking at himself in the mirror, trying to get a stray curl back in place.

“let me help.” you stood next to him. he turned to face you, that same look of urgency still in his eyes. you used two fingers to brush through his hair. there was so much gel that it was wet enough to mess with. you smiled a bit and took your hand out of his hair. his hand was gripping the sink.

“you look good, pete. you smell good, too.” “so do you.” his voice was lower than usual. you flattened out the material of your blue gown. “thanks. so, talk to me. what’s up?”

the question was so simple, but way too many answers were running through peter’s brain. he wasn’t even sure he’d have enough time to explain everything now. this was why he needed a written out and carefully crafted plan.

but, like he said to himself last night, this was you. his best friend in the entire world and any other that might exist. the person who’s been there for his most embarrassing moments, and who’s been responsible for some of his best ones. if he couldn’t finally say the three words he’d said to you so many times before, what was the point?

his fingers drummed a steady rhythm while he mustered up the last remaining bit of courage in him. you watched him expectantly, waiting for him to say something. “just, um...” he was stalling. he pulled his hand off the sink. “i... love you.” peter only glanced at you for a second, too afraid to see your reaction. “i love you, too. is everything okay?” his heart sank. you thought he meant it in the friend way.

that was what he got for being so terrible with words.

“no, y/n. not like that.” he blurted. you were lost. peter pressed his back against the wall and sat down. confused and equally worried, you sat next to him on the floor. “then what do you mean? you’re scaring me.” he checked the watch may made him wear to see how much time was left before graduation. four minutes. he really should’ve woken up on time.

“we have to get back in line soon. i don’t wanna miss-“ “i love you, y/n. i’m in love with you.” a weight that had been on peter’s chest for months was lifted just by saying it. you squinted your eyes at him, but said nothing.

“i’ve been trying to tell you for a while, and it’s okay if you don’t feel the same. i just had to say it.” “fuck, are you serious?” you sounded what peter could only describe as disappointed. yeah, it was unrequited. here came a summer of crying. “i was gonna tell you first.”

peter’s breath hitched in his throat, and he swore you could hear it. he was so sleep deprived that it felt like he was hallucinating. you shook your head as heat came to your cheeks.

“how long have you...” peter trailed off, an eye crinkling smile interrupting him. “that day we went for coffee. something clicked, so i thought for a while and figured it out. i think i’ve loved you for a really long time.”

you inched closer to peter, just barely resting your head on his shoulder. for once, you felt like the shy one. he put his hand on top of yours. his thumb traced over each of your fingers. “i’d ask you out, but you know. we don’t really have time.”

“peter, it won’t take that long.” you giggled. he squeezed your hand in his. “hm. y/n, would you wanna go out with me after this?” you thought about teasing him for it, but he was right. you had to go. that was the friend still in you. “i’d love to go out with you, peter.”

with that, you both jumped to your feet and ran out of the bathroom. you were still holding hands, and a few classmates made faces when you rushed past them to get to your spots. you exchanged one last smile with peter before lining up.

the person in front of you said everybody was looking for you two. honestly, you didn’t care all that much. you were too excited for your date later. peter already knew he’d be checking his watch throughout the whole ceremony.

it was a best friend and soulmate thing.

[joshslater]

Beached

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It's really amazing how the beaches can be so empty when the weather is this good. It's technically winter or spring or whatever, but that just means you can spend all day on the beach without getting heatstroke or sunburn. No one else appears to agree with me though. Someone is walking a dog in the distance in one direction, and some surfers are ignoring the warnings of big waves in the distance in the other direction. Like that would be bad thing in their minds, though just right now it isn't as windy as in the morning. Volatile weather is another drawback of spring weather.

I don't think it is the weather that is keeping people away though. This whole plague thing is really messing with people. The hotel was almost deserted and the room dirt cheap. Flight was cheap too. The plan was to go here with Will, but he chickened out at the last moment. Probably the positivity rates of their "second wave" or whatever. The tickets were refundable, only way they can sell anything these days, but I had already made up my mind to go here. Spring in Rio is better than summer at home, and the summer is decidedly over now, where you are never sure in the morning if you need jeans and hoodie. Here it is shorts and T-shirt every day, and the water is really nice when the waves aren't fatal. I really thought it would be colder the way the ocean looks.

As I walk along the beach in solitude I spot a gaudy, cheap beach chair also alone in the sand. I look up towards the road that goes along the beach. Sometimes there is a bunch of chairs or stuff chained together, waiting for busy days when the owner can charge a coin for a tourist to sit on it, but I don't see anything up there. I take a seat and look out over the crashing waves. There is a zen-like quality sitting on a lone chair on a vast beach, alone in a different country, watching the waves while the warm spring sun smiles down on you. No birds or animals around either, so you just have the white noise of the ocean keeping you at peace. I had fernet and coke in the lobby bar last night and evening has been going slow even before this, but somehow I felt I deserved a break from doing nothing.

I lost track of how long I was sitting there. I have all week after all. I'm taken out of my trance by someone behind me talking agitated in Spanish. No, Portuguese probably, as that's what they speak here. I turn my head and a stereotypical Brazilian beach greaser steps into my view. He wears a loose, pink tank top with Copacabana printed on the front. It reaches almost far enough to hide his green speedos that peeks out every step he takes. Brazilian tan, white teeth, black, slick hair, and a swagger that comes equally from acting macho and years of bodybuilding that prioritized looks over range of motion. "What?" I ask him, mostly just to tell him to speak English.

"This is your chair?" he asks. "Yeah," I say tentatively. At least I'm using it right now. It really was calming to look at the ocean like this. "No. No, it is not your chair," he says in an accusing tone, visibly upset. "You want to sit?" I don't need any trouble. It's soon time for lunch anyway. I start to raise myself from the chair. "No, you sit! You sit!" he almost screams at me, and I fall back into the chair.

I'm confused. Did I sit down again, or did something push me down? He steps towards me, and I again try to get out of the chair, but I'm somehow not strong enough to lift myself. He grabs the front neck of my T-shirt and pulls it up over my head. My arms do nothing to stop him. He then grabs hold of the legs of my shorts and pulls them sharply forward. Again, I can't do anything to stop him. I can move my body, sort of, but it's sapped of all strength.

If things were weird up until now, it just turned impossible. Instead of my Hanes underwear I wear black speedos with yellow print "ca-rio-ca" in front. How the fuck did they end up on me. He doesn't waste any time, but just bunches my clothes together in his hand and angrily marches off towards the road behind me. "Hey! HEY! I don't want this fucking chair." I shout at him while making another failed effort to get out of the chair as he disappears out of view. It's like being stuck with your ass in a big bean bag. I just can't get up somehow. I try to rock sideways to knock the chair on its side so I can roll out of it, but again with no success. Exhausted I fall back into the chair.

It's a cheap-looking foldable beach chair. Some green tubes as a frame with some blue and yellow nylon fabric as a seat, suspended between the tubes. I could see how someone would pick it out for its "Brazilian" colors, but all the shades were totally off compared to the flag. It couldn't be more than $10, probably much less down here. Why would anyone make such a fuss over it? I touch my magically appearing speedos. They appear completely normal. Some type of high tech stretchy fabric with yellow print on top. As I touch the print on the front of the speedos there is like a shock wave through me, like I rubbed the exposed head of my dick. I quickly move my hand back to the dainty armrests, but the damage is already done, at least for now. I can feel the blood inflating my dick, at least partially.

I look back at the ocean, trying to distract myself. I still see the surfers way off in the distance to one side, but I don't see anyone in the other. I'm a bit limited in my field of view though, reclined in the beach chair. Dammit, and I was about to have lunch. Fuck! My wallet is in the shorts. My phone, my credit cards, my cash, my hotel room key, all in the hands of some dude made of muscles and STDs. If he doesn't come back I'd have to walk back to the hotel, wearing only speedos like a fucking douche, tell the lobby staff to get my passport from the room to identify me, and issue a new key card. Then I have to take the laptop and block the credit cards and the phone SIM. I hope you can do that online. If nothing else you can call 800 numbers from Skype, I think. But first I need to get out of this fucking chair.

I make another failed attempt to get up. How can this be happening? Did he poison me somehow? Perhaps I just need to relax for a bit and regain my strength. That doesn't explain how my underwear was swapped out. Perhaps I'm making this more complicated than it has to be. These could be two unrelated events. Perhaps the speedos were somehow in my room, and somehow I put them on this morning without thinking about it. I think I've seen something similar in a store back home. "CA" could just as well mean California. This pair could have been forgotten by someone and then mixed into my laundry somehow, packed in my travel bag by mistake, and then ended up on me without me thinking about it because of the fernet. No, that doesn't make a lot of sense either. If you remove all impossible explanations, the remaining one, however improbable is the right one. It's just so very fucking improbable.

I want to drop it. Thinking about it more won't solve anything, and my current problems notwithstanding the day is still very nice. The slow burn of the spring sun, the smell of sand and salt, the soothing white noise of the ocean, and the wide visuals to go with it all. If I just let go of my predicament it was easy to relax again. That's what I needed to do, right? Just look out and feel the sun rejuvenate me. Despite it being essentially just indoor temperature, I've managed to get a tan. I trace the skin from my knees and up with my eyes. No, this is wrong. I should have tan lines where the shorts and T-shirt ended. I've only been sitting here topless for ten minutes, twenty at the most. There's nothing to tell time. The surfers are gone.

And I really shouldn't look this good sitting down. I don't sit down with a flat belly. I can't remember that I ever did, not that I really paid a lot of attention to how I looked. I try to stand up to have a better look, but only manage to lift a few inches before falling back. "Merda!" I say out loud. Not only did I fall back into the chair, but I managed to pull something. There's a cramp in the abdominal muscles that hurts like hell. I squirm in the unyielding chair and arch my back to make it stop, which results in both my legs cramping at the same time. I let go and fall back into the chair, and raise my legs up and try to shake them. I tense and relax the muscles over and over to make the feeling go away.

When it finally goes away I feel exhausted. I certainly don't want to feel that again. It's like a cosmic force doing everything to keep me in place, docile, and watching the ocean. While I want this to all be over I don't feel like I want to put up a fight. I scratch an itch on my face and feel my beard. I know I shaved less than... I know I shaved this morning, whenever that was. I've done that every morning from when I started to grow facial hair. I know nothing that looks worse. Nothing that looks more like you are taking a shortcut, or don't care. Yet I could clearly feel strands of hair all around my mouth and up the sides of my face. Not just stubble either, but fingertip length beard. The kind that doesn't look like a planned and neatly maintained beard either, but an accidental one. I didn't think I could freak out more when my hand touched the hair behind my ear, and I frantically felt the rest of my head. It was clearly a curly mess, and not just wavy but a tight curl. My hair is straight.

"Olá!" one of the two young surfers greet me. I'd been too preoccupied and had completely missed them walking across the beach towards me. They looked very similar, same height, same short cropped pitch-black hair, handsome white smiles, black and blue Mormaii wetsuit. My startled mind feels blank. I have no idea what to say to them. Somehow, inappropriately I can feel my dick stirring again. "Você quer foder?" I shout back at them. I have no idea what it means. They just keep walking, shaking their heads and ignoring me. What the fuck is going on? Can't I control myself anymore? I haven't since I sat down, I realize. This fucking chair is ruining everything.

I'm angry with it. I start hitting it. At first I'm just feebly pounding the armrests, but then work myself up to start hitting anything I can find. I'm banging the tubes, I'm pulling the synthetic fabric of the seat, I'm trying to pry the joints free. I'm only hurting myself of course, though not bad enough for any visible bruises. After some minutes someone has had enough of my tantrums and I feel a searing pain across my chest, back, and right ribs. I cry out in pain. My noise is met by the constant noise of the ocean. When it stops, just as suddenly as it started I look to either side and all I see is empty beach in both directions.

I'm almost afraid to look, and it is difficult to see well, but the skin has discolored where I felt the pain. On the right side of me is a sentence tattooed in cursive. I can't tell what it says. On my front chest is another large tattoo saying something almost as difficult to read upside down, just below my chin, also in cursive.  "Live fast, die young" I think. I can only imagine what platitudes are on my back. "Carpe Diem?"

My legs are hairy. They've been that for years, but now they are black pubes kind of hairy. Did that happen just now as well? What's with the slow walking? Just do all the things to me and be over with. Arms are hairy too. I'm not even going to be upset anymore. I'll just sit here until it ends, whatever that means. Listen to the ocean and let the sun do its thing. Holy shit, that isn't suntan. I have a different skin color for sure. No. Not upset, just listen to nature and come what may. Let the sun sparkle in the water.

I can also see a sparkle from my right nipple. I feel drained, dazed, and dumb. Did the nipple piercing come with the tattoos and I had just missed it, or did it sneak up on me somehow? I don't really care. I slowly reach for it with my left hand. It feel an explosion of sensations as soon as the vibrations of my touch reverberate into the nipple. It shoots right into my balls, into my spine, into my brain, into my dick. Not quite an orgasm, but definitely not not an orgasm. I can feel the cramp again. The muscles on my front all contracts, but this time it isn't really painful. It's more like when you exert yourself during sports.

As before I arch my back to flex the chest and abs differently to make it go away, but the cramps just spreads. I can feel it in my back as well, and my arms, then finally in my legs. It's like those youtube videos where you can see the muscles moving under the skin all on its own. I just turned to the side and rolled in the sand, unable to control anything. It wasn't pain, but definitely not not pain.

When it finally stops I'm on my back in the spring warm sand, exhausted, panting, looking into the blue sky, hearing the waves crash down at the edge of the beach. I somehow know before I see it. My arms are almost twice as muscular as this morning, my chest and abs chiseled, and my legs are massive.

The sun is getting low. It is probably getting close to dinner time, though it sets early. I sit up in the sand, looking in both directions down the beach. There's nothing but sand. I know how to walk back to the hotel, though I can't remember the name of it, and I think I know what my name is, but I'm pretty sure nothing on that passport will match me. I don't feel like going there though. I really, really need to find someone to fuck. Or be fucked by. I don't care.

[juminly]

A Losing Game

Summary: A bet was made between Arthur & Theodorus: the mystery writer was not allowed to flirt with you for an entire month. Arthur is not one to back down from a challenge. However, he had no idea what was at stake.  Matchup story written for @dandellien​. 💙

Nobody ever said anything about the exhaustion you would feel when travelling through time. Whatever happened when you went through that door, it clearly drained all of the energy from your body. You were hungry, thirsty, had a huge headache and were craving sleep. Comte had seen the look on your face when you had arrived, apparitions of dark circles forming around your eyes, more than enough proof that you did need to rest and be cared for.

While the pureblood accompanied you to your room, giving you but a glimpse of what you would face in the 19th century, being in a mansion filled with unknown men, you were evidently soothed by his graceful and eloquent demeanor, putting you at ease even though he had insinuated that the residents were not normal men. Not normal was a light way to put it because they were far from normal in more ways that you expected.

Historical figures that you knew quite well, seen them in history books, math, physics or even science books. You were already familiar with vampires, the myth and the fantasy of these creatures warped around multitude of novels, movies and various forms of art. Surprised, yes you were. Scared, not necessarily. You would have to wait and see things with your own eyes before judging and assessing the matter. How true could it be? You were beginning to wonder why did you even end up in such a place? Were you struck by some goddess of Fortune or was this a curse that you were damned to survive somehow?

Sebastian had already set up a light yet scrumptious supper for you and had drawn a nice warm bath for you to relax your body before actually realizing where you were and what kind of situation you were in, once you came face first with the reality of the matter. Theory was so much easier to take than reality. Anyone might have thought that they were simply trying to woo you into staying and keeping your mouth shut about what you’ve seen but they were clearly good people, no malicious intent detected in either Sebastian or Comte. But what about the others? After your bath, Sebastian was kind enough to sit by you and answer any questions you may have since he was the only human in the vampire-filled mansion and he graciously answered all the questions you had, especially about the other residents.

Were you prepared for what was to come? You probably didn’t have an answer but a tiny little messenger came to your rescue. At the crack of dawn, you could hear barking at your door. Sebastian didn’t tell you anything about dogs, let alone pets being around so this was an interesting way to start your day. Opening the door, you found the cutest little dog looking up at you with big brown eyes that you simply couldn’t resist. Picking him up in your arms and scratching his chin (earning you quite a few licks), you had already gotten enough sleep so you took it as an opportunity to roam around and discover more about the mansion before the other residents woke up.

You obviously had no idea who the little cutie in your arms belonged to so it was fair enough to say that you were not really snooping around the mansion but actually trying to find the dog’s owner, if anyone were to stop you in your tracks and question why you were walking around in the middle of the night. As you passed by the different hallways and peeked into different rooms, you came across the different rooms and areas of the mansion, jotting down the different pieces of information in the back of your head for future reference: you came across the library and found a tall man slouched on a pile of books, sleeping soundly with the sweet scent wafting through the air; a slender man with an eyepatch who greeted you meekly in the hallway before scurrying away, another man playing the piano with beautiful silver hair, the sharpest amethyst eyes and a glare that demanded he be left alone, without using any words. Going back to the conversation you had with Sebastian, those were Leonardo, Jean and Mozart. One thing they all had in common: they were all very handsome. Extremely so.

After exploring almost every part of the mansion, you already found out where the kitchen, the pantry, the thermae, the dining room were including other rooms where the other residents used. You found yourself standing in front of, what most probably was, the main door of the mansion. Your small new friend began barking and whining, seemingly telling you in his own language that he wanted to go out but you couldn’t possibly do that. You didn’t have the owner’s permission nor did you have a leash. A resounding playful voice came from behind you with an unmistakable lilting British accent, his words echoing through the mansion’s entrance with each click of his oxfords on the grand stairs, closing the distance between you.

“Oh dear! It seems that Vic’s brimming excitement couldn’t be held back at the scent of our new beautiful guest. If I may be so bold, I should admit that I raise Vic to be quite a fine little champ. He certainly does have an eye for beauty.” Turning around, your eyes were locked on this man’s handsome features, his tousled midnight blue hair, striking blue eyes and the beauty mark so delicately positioned by his lips, you couldn’t help but take in his appearance as he had gotten much closer, now standing before you. The smirk on his lips was also very telling, he had been assessing you in the same manner. Little did you know,  He heard you talking to yourself in spanish while walking through the corridors, doing your own exploring of the mansion and he came to you like a moth to a windowpane. How could he even miss the sight, the smell and the voice of a fair maiden such as yourself walking in her lonesome in this mansion full of mongrels? They were not but he would’ve loved to take advantage of sweeping a cute poppet like you off her feet. Your hair was that of iridescent flames, cascades of lava that drew him in, dark eyes of coffee. “Comte was ever so gracious to inform me that we had a guest in our midst but he had made the grave mistake of omitting the fact that you were such a resplendent poppet. Allow me to introduce myself, love.”

He was absolutely beguiled by you, even more so when you began to speak, addressing him in a firm tone, interrupting his introduction in the mere pause as he took a break. “Arthur Conan Doyle, I know who you are. Sebastian told me all about you.” He seemed pleased to know that you already heard of him but still wished that he could be the one to make his first impression on his own, without having others establish them for him. You were not taken aback by his direct approach, yet his flirtiness did not click too well with you since he had yet to know you before even trying to seemingly romance you in the way he did with all the women he had clearly done the same with. You definitely said what was on your mind, stating it clearly before making your way back to your room since Vic was now with his owner. “If you’re trying to flirt with me, then I’m sorry but you’re mistaken if you think that you can do anything of the sort. If you may excuse me now, I must go ready myself before breakfast.”

It would be safe to say that Arthur was admittedly smitten with you. The way you smoothly yet respectfully talked back to him with that accent of yours was undoubtedly a beautiful sound that he would love to hear more and more of.

During breakfast, you had finally met all the residents at once and the Comte had obviously taken it upon him to introduce you to them all before the conversation on the dining table naturally flowed from unrelated conversation between a couple of the residents, where the rest simply listened in and back to questions about you, where you came from, your background and most importantly, your time. When the amount of questions seemed to get a bit too overwhelming, Leonardo was the one who spoke up, telling the rest of the vampires that they had plenty of time to ask you all the questions they wanted over the course of the month that you had to spend with them.

As you and Sebastian busied yourselves in clearing the dishes from the table, you could hear a booming brouhaha coming from the room where you had left the rest of the vampires. Looking at the stoic butler, he simply shrugged and you busied yourself by helping the man. On the other side of the man, the residents were all focused on a discussion that happened between the infamous partners in crime: Theodorus van Gogh and Arthur Conan Doyle. Theo noticed how uncharacteristically silent Arthur was during breakfast, sipping on his glass of Blanc while his eyes never left you for a moment, as you bit into your pancakes and drank your coffee/tea, a small smile cracking on your face here and then, noticing the little things that you did. With a wolfish grin, Theo made a bet with Arthur. If the writer is able to spend an entire month without flirting with you, the sadistic entrepreneur would pay for their tab at their go-to tavern/bar for an entire year. Arthur knew what his friend was trying to do, clearly testing him and seeing if he had an ounce of self-control in him. The game was on.

He would clearly prove him wrong. Or that’s what he thought. Two years instead of one and the deal was made.

It wasn’t hard for you to find what to do in that time. The wealth of knowledge that was surrounding you, it was more than enough to fill your days with activities and studying the things that you loved the most. Leonardo and Vincent were more than happy to give you tips on drawing, giving you tips on how to sketch the human body, understanding the intricacies behind different body types in a way that allowed you also to work on fashion, different styles, looks which is something you really loved.

Spending time on your own was not a hard task! There were so many corners in the mansion where you can just spend time alone with no one bothering you. You would often find Leonardo sleeping or reading in the library, stumbling across him or he’s just napping away wherever you find yourself but that didn’t really bother you. You would grab your notebook to write or draw or grab a book that one of the residents had recommended to you and just clear your mind and wind down, finding some much needed peace in the midst of this new lifestyle that you were thrown into.

Arthur though… the man couldn’t really stay away from you. Not that he did want to, on the contrary, he absolutely loved being in the presence of an enlightened woman such as yourself but he had to take extra care not to be flirty with you. One thing that Arthur didn’t do was lose. Unfortunately yet luckily for him, Vic took a liking to you and made it easier for you to get to know each other better when you would both take him on walks, daily and multiple days in a day. He was a spoiled boy and his Master was definitely the type to spoil him rotten. It was quite refreshing just seeing a different type of playful side to him. Pure, genuine and truly affectionate. Even… boyish.

[The famous skirt chaser wasn’t doing any chasing. Whenever he wasn’t around, he was trying to get enough writing done so he could spend time with the beautiful new guest who only had a month to spend with him… everyone AND him.]

You are usually so reserved around the residents, more of an observer than a talker, at least for the first few days in the mansion. Your frequent walks with Vic and Arthur did help you loosen up:  getting to know more about Paris as you roamed around aimlessly, taken away by the depth of your conversations, the ways of the 19th century, all the little tidbits about the residents and also, see more of Arthur, besides the renown flirty playboy side, a label that everyone seems to be pinning on the handsome man. When you get deep into discussions with him, the way you get animated makes him melt. He doesn’t blatantly point it out but there is this glint of amusement and fondness in his eyes and the slightest twist in the corner of his lips, one of absolute admiration and infatuation when you do.

There is never a dull moment with Arthur: his mind is like the most intriguing, bewildering and mysterious place to be. He would try to tell you about how he comes up with the premise of his stories, would talk to you about the ideas of his books and how he gets inspired by things from his past and from his present, take you out on “dates” where you would go detective-solving… cause what better way to discover Paris and know everything there was to know about it.

He was very fond of your objectivity and honesty which definitely compliments the analytical side of your personality which he has come to see and know the more he spoke with you and from what he’s heard from Leonardo. He secretly loves your honesty also when you call him out on his shit: on why he even hates his own creations, knowing that there is hidden meanings behind whatever bogus response he gives you YET you don’t push him for more. You just let him know that he can talk to you.

In those moments, the fierceness in your eyes…he knew that it would be his demise.

He likes to pick your brain and keeps bombarding you with so many “what ifs”, possibilities and probabilities in deflecting and divergent plotlines in his stories until you end up digressing and not even discussing important elements that are crucial and necessary about his manuscripts. You always made things interesting which made him spend even more time with you, always attempting to monopolize your time in any way he can. Especially when you told him that something like MBTI personalities existed in your time, he was very interested in knowing so much more about it. You and also Sebastian jumped in to tell him all about it and his eyes lit up like firecrackers, already thinking of which characters would have which personality. He couldn’t help but feel closer to you, wanting to know you even more...intimately yet he denied himself from doing so. Yet, he couldn’t stop the kindling of affection within his heart, no matter how much he tried to push it away.

The fact that you had even more hidden talents made you even more attractive in his eyes. You knew how to play multiple instruments and didn’t care to tell him until… 2 weeks had passed since you arrived at the mansion. Arthur immediately worked his magic on Mozart somehow, getting him to teach you how to play the piano if you wanted to and had Leonardo prepare a little something special for you: a hand-crafted guitar that you could take with you when you decide to go back to the future (and the thought of you leaving saddened him so much but he didn’t dare say it, yet, the expression on his face said it all). If there is anything Arthur would be good at, and after keeping the resident devil company, persuading, convincing or bribing was an art that he had perfected. Quick-witted charmer that he was.

The sound of his boyish laughter was something that you couldn’t get enough of and that wide smile that stretched from ear to ear was absolutely the most beautiful expression that you’ve seen on him, complimenting his features in a way that suited him even more than that flirtatious mask he hides behind. He loves the look on your face when he can read your mind and knows exactly what you’re going to say before you even say it, when he teases you and especially when he’s able to draw a smile on your face: be it when he thanks you for helping brainstorm or solve a case, or when he buys you a yummy treat that he knows you’d love and enjoy (after forcing Sebastian to tell him the things you actually do enjoy eating since he had information (notes) about every single living being in than mansion. He was a goldmine, source of intel and Arthur wasn’t going to miss out on taking advantage of that fact).

Something exciting did happen, which you also didn’t expect! A trip to Madrid in Spain? It is one of the cities that is most known for it’s art and Theodorus was in need of a translator to accompany him so he can find his way around the city much easier than if he was alone (and you were also not bad company so he wouldn’t mind you tagging along, since he knows that you would appreciate the art as well, being an artist yourself.) BUT, Arthur was not having any of it. How was a young lady supposed to travel with another (very single and very handsome) man on her own? He decided to be the chaperone of your trip under the guise of exploring new avenues for an upcoming book of his that will possibly have events set in Spain (or maybe not, it didn’t even matter). Theo reminded his best friend about their bet/challenge and… well, the entrepreneur knew and told the klootzak right to his face that he’s weasling his way into this because… Well, Arthur shushed him before he could say any more than that but they both knew what he was going to say. The mystery writer wanted to wait until you left the 19th century before even thinking of admitting to others and to himself too.

After a long train ride from Paris to Madrid, Arthur made sure to book the room next to yours in case you needed anything. When you woke up in the morning, he would already be leaning next to your door with that wide boyish smile of his and his lilting “Good morning sunshine~” that evidently did things to your heart, escorting you to have breakfast together. Theo would show up to breakfast with his own bottle of syrup (Don’t even mention it. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t find the kind of syrup he liked in Spain so he got his own with him). The man was completely baffled to always find you there before him and also annoyed to see how sickeningly sweet Arthur was, doting on you a little more than he ever saw him do with any of the other skirts he’s ever pursued. This is not the normal kind of attention he gave a woman and as his best friend, this proved how deep Arthur had already fallen for you. He did throw in a few comments such as: “ Why are you treating her like a small pup? She can take care of herself. Unless she asked you to put her on a leash…”

If you thought you had fun in Paris, it was even more fun in Madrid! You went to multiple museums, galleries and countless restaurants, indulging both in the savoury and sweet of the city, getting the best taste of the city. It was hilarious seeing Arthur trying to communicate with the locals with that British accent of his and try to use whatever Spanish he caught from your brief discussions with Leonardo (where he thought he managed to catch a few words but he was horribly mistaken). You also somehow managed to get lost while going shopping, which made your time out and about together even longer. Not that either of you was complaining. You both had the time of your life and you both had smiles to match and confirm that statement.

Besides the fact that Arthur wouldn’t let go of your hand at any given moment when you were wandering the city, claiming that he wouldn’t find his way back to the hotel without you and that you were the only one that could keep him from getting lost. He also didn’t like how lots of men’s eyes lingered on you whenever they spoke to you (and the fact that he didn’t even understand what they were telling you didn’t bear well with him, he wasn’t having it at all) or just simply when you passed by and turned heads. This man was definitely not jealous (sarcasm) but he was not blind and he had eyes of his own to see just how beautiful you were, inside and out. He was just glad to be the one holding your hand, even though he held on to it “just as your friend”. Whenever Theo looked disgruntled and rolled his eyes at you two, Arthur always teased him and offered to hold his hand too if he didn’t want to feel left out, making the dutch man obviously grumble and walk away from you.

He should’ve known… He should’ve known and he beat himself over it, cursing his gloves as you were on the train, on the way back to France. While Arthur had excused himself to the restroom and decided to go get the three of you some coffee and treats, he comes back to find that you had fallen asleep… with your head on Theodorus’ shoulder. He was definitely not happy about the sight and his best friend could definitely see that, muttering a “Stop glaring at me like a rabid dog, klootzak. I don’t like this either.” Arthur stopped in his tracks, noticing how flushed your cheeks were and how your breathing was a little quicker than normal for someone who was asleep. Removing one of his gloves, he presses his palm against your forehead and your neck. You had a fever.

Arthur immediately gets into anxious doctor mode and tends to you however he can until you reach Paris, where he would be able to take care of you even better. Theo knew that this was not just some act. Arthur’s concern for you was real but it was way more than just a doctor’s oath to take care of his patients. Come on, Arthur. Who do you think you’re deceiving? He basically carried you to the carriage and also inside the mansion, giving out orders as nicely and calmly to Sebastian the moment he set foot in the mansion. He was composed, or at least, tried to be but he was also worried. A fever from exhaustion should not be taken lightly as it can turn into something worse if you didn’t get all the rest that you truly needed.

When you woke up…

Opening your eyes slowly, you blinked only to find Arthur leaning on the side of your bed. “Why are you here? It looks like you haven’t slept for ages, Arthur.” You reached out and threaded yours fingers through his tousled hair. “I know you’re worried about me, Arthur. I promise you I’ll be just fine. I know you’ve been taking good care of me and you know…  It’s just exhaustion, right? There’s nothing for you to worry about it. I already feel much better thanks to you.”

The expression on his face was so soft and tender, a “wistful” smile drawn on his usually smirked lips. He held your hand, rubbing his leather-clad thumb smoothly over it before he kissed your knuckles gently. “Rest well, my love. I refuse to leave your side.” He bit the tip of his index, pulling out his glove from his other hand and leaned and reached to check your temperature, before leaning forward to press his lips against your forehead, sighing. “You’re still a tad warm but you are indeed better. I should’ve taken your word for it.”

“And should I take your word that you kissed me just because you wanted to check my temperature?”

With that irresistible boyish smile drawn on his handsome face, he chuckled like a schoolboy that has just been caught doing something wrong. That’s how he truly was deep down and it was refreshing just seeing him like that. “Guilty as charged.”  His striking blue eyes locked on yours before faltering a little too long on your lips as he licked his own and whispered softly - “I may have ulterior motives but I assure you, my intentions are as pure as they come.” - before capturing your lips in a much awaited kiss, so sweet and tender, pouring all the affection he ached to show you before, all the pent-up emotions he strained himself not to show you in his quest in being a good friend to you.

Arthur didn’t come out of that challenge a loser, but a winner. Getting the greatest prize… no, the most priceless thing he could ever ask for: you and your love. Although it cost him a bill of 2 years worth of alcohol expenses at the bar, he was more than happy to pay it.

This man will shower you with words of affection all day long, tell you he loves you, kiss you whenever he gets the chance, in public or in private, this man is absolutely taken by you and he doesn’t even mind it. He will call you: love, darling, my lovely poppet, my sunshine and even try to throw in a few Spanish pet names: cariña, mi amor and even mi sol. You always wondered why he always referred to you as his sun or sunshine but he told you that you brightened up his life, with your honesty, your intelligence and most importantly, the joy you brought into his life.

You were surprised to discover that Arthur was BIG on cuddling. There isn’t a night that goes by (or even a nap) without cuddling. It is not for naughty reasons, as opposed to what everyone else in the mansion might think, but more for reassurance that you will always stay by his side and leave. His worst nightmare is waking up and not finding you there, the day you realize that he’s not good enough of a man for you yet he will spend his every waking moment trying to be better for you, prove that he is more than what his reputation paints him to be. He is the man that loves you, cherished you and values you even more than his own writing.

Arthur does get quite jealous sometimes. He just can’t help it. For example: he gets jealous when you sometimes get all dreamy when you listen to Mozart composing. He’s one of the biggest figures in music history so it would only be natural for you to be in awe whenever you came across him. His music does help you with your writing especially when he plays very calm tunes. It’s nothing like anything you’ve experienced before and it’s so inspiring. Arthur would frown, pout and even sulk sometimes whenever he sees that another man has captured your attention in a way that he never could (and he looks absolutely adorable when he does, like a lost whiny puppy). He would wrap his arms around you and nuzzle you when you’re writing or simply rub his hand softly on your waist while he rests his head on yours or on your shoulder. He scrambles for ways to get part of your attention or get some reassurance from you without getting in your way or becoming an inconvenience.

Kisses of affection: your knuckles, your hand and your forehead.

Warning: NSFW ahead

His kinks: everything in the book. Anything you can imagine, he’s willing to do with you. If you don’t like it, he’s up to trying the next thing with you. But a few favourites of his are: cockwarming, roleplay, edging, overstimulation, edging, BDSM and body worship. Rest assured that he will ALWAYS keep things interesting between you.

Favourite place to bite you: your thighs.

He can be whatever you want him to be in bed, he is a switch after all. He’ll worship you endlessly when he’s in command and will whine and beg for you whenever you take the reins. All he wants is to be with you, it doesn’t matter how.

You are definitely the luckiest person in the mansion, ending up with the most versatile and open lover of them. He’s willing to do everything with you, and driven by his lust and love for you, he will dirty talk until you’re soaking wet and clenching around nothing in anticipation for him and sweet talk you to tears, overwhelming you with the sweetness of love.

[mazzy-moon]

A Lone Butterfly - Chapter 1

Title: Chapter 1 ~ Captive

Word Count: 1650

Warnings: Mentions of kidnapping and brief descriptions of violence. Allusions to rape. Overall this story has some pretty heavy subject matter. 

Pairing: Javier Peña (Narcos) x Isabel Cotrille (OFC)

Summary: Isabel is captured by the cartel and seeks to find a way out.

Notes: This chapter is not explicit, but things may get spicy in later chapters. Go to my blog for more chapters. I will post chapters every few days as I finish writing them. If you take the time to read this, thank you so much! Would love feedback if you are so inclined.

I wake up to my hands tied above my head. The thin cord of rope gnaws against the tender skin of my wrist, immobilizing me. A numbing ache runs through my head as I tilt my eyes back to find the binding. The skin of my wrists are rubbed practically raw and every tiny movement of my hand is torture. I force movement anyway, pushing through the pain. My numb arms start to wake up also, and with it comes stinging soreness. I've been trapped like this for quite a while. I start to panic. Where am I? How will I get out of here? I have to get out. I have to. I wriggle my wrists against the binding desperately, immediately regretting it. The pain travels down from arms into my shoulders. I groan, not being able to keep quiet. I wish for the oblivion of sleep to relieve me once again.

Through tears, I look down at my scantily clad body. Bruises. I'm covered in them. A canvas of blueish purple splotches appear on my chest, and my upper thighs. One larger area, darker than the others covers the skin underneath my breasts. I take a sharp breath in and muffle a scream at the pain. I'd broken a rib, at least one anyway. I do my best to shove the pain away to a place at the far reach of my mind. I can't let it distract me. I have to get out of here. For a few minutes I just sit, taking soft breaths, willing myself to be strong. My memory slowly but surely comes back into focus.

I remember fighting. Kicking, screaming, punching until I was completely devoid of the energy to do anything at all.  I remember rough hands shoving me onto the threadbare mattress, pinning my arms down. The same mattress I am on now in this dark, cement walled room. I try to remember the time before this black hole of a room. How the hell did I get here? Pieces of my memory come to me as images flash through my head like a scrapbook.

I'm driving along an empty country road. Where was I going? Two men in workers uniforms stand before me. A rusted vehicle. An accident. Did they hit me or did I hit them? Squirming between two sets of iron hands forcing me in the back of the van. Pushing. Shoving. Both from me and him. Hands. Hands on me while I'm in a half daze. Waking up in a room similar to this one, only there's no mattress just a cold concrete floor. I can still feel it chilling my exposed skin. A man is there above me. Forcing myself to stand, to fight. Blinding pain as he throws me back on the ground. A punch to the temple. Darkness.

I will myself to focus on something else, anything else. I can't force the unrelenting memories away, but if I don't forget them for now I won't be able to figure out how to get out of this nightmare that has become my reality. I survey the small space as my eyes start to adjust to the dim lighting. A small wooden desk placed near the pallet I'm on holds a lamp. There's concrete floors here, too. No windows though, and I realize the faint light illuminating the room comes from a crack beneath the door.

I freeze. Noises come from somewhere outside. I make out a hoarse male voice, speaking harshly in Spanish to someone. I try to decipher what's being said but my Spanish is limited to a few a phrases. A few seconds pass and loud grunting noises intensify as I realize what must be taking place somewhere not far from me. Is a there a room beside me? Is there another girl here? How long before someone comes in my room?  I'm terrified to find out. I hear feminine cries and lose some of my hope.

What if I die here? I will never see my mother again. She can't lose me and my father. I won't let it happen. She must be worried sick. How long has it been that she hasn't known where I am? With no siblings, and no other family left we are all each other has. I left my apartment in the states after my father was killed to stay with her here in Columbia. Now she will be all alone.

I continue to breathe slowly in and out to keep from trembling.

"Focus, Isabel," I whisper to myself.

I attempt to inch up into a sitting position. It's tortuous. Everything hurts. It seems as if every muscle in my body has been pulled, and I catch an achy feeling between my legs that I choose to ignore. My shoulders introduce me to a new kind of agony as I shift them and the rest of my torso upright. My sense of time is nonexistent, but from the suffocating ache spreading from my shoulders, down my arms, and through my back I realize I must have been contorted like this for many hours. Once my rear is almost flush with the wall, I allow myself a break. Tears cascade down my face at the pain from my ribs. Determined, I peer over at my bound wrists. They're tied to a metal rod protruding from the wall on my right side. Immediately, I start rubbing my hands back and forth against the rod, hoping the friction will disintegrate the cord. I keep at it for what seems like an eternity, but must have only been around five minutes. The rope doesn't budge.

I search for an alternative solution. My eyes hunt for something  sharp enough to cut through the ties. That's when I spot something purple lying on the ground. Flung a few feet from the desk is a pair of underwear I recognize as my own. A wave of nausea cascades through me, and I almost throw up. The realization of what's been done to me sinks me into a fury of grief and anger. A silent sob escapes me and I can't breathe. My throat threatens to close up, and the air in the room feels sticky against my skin. I brace myself for some violent memory, but it doesn't come. Maybe I was knocked into unconsciousness. Maybe that's why I can't remember. I suddenly feel the urge to escape my body, to be somewhere else. I want to scrub layers off of my skin until I'm clean again. I float off for a second and force myself back into reality. I have to stop. There's no time to process what I'm feeling right now, and I have to get out of here. The new wave of anger makes me even more determined and I take advantage of it. There's nothing sharp that I can tell, nothing to cut through the rope that is nearly cutting off my circulation. I'll have to be more creative. I glance at the desk lamp to my right. There's no lampshade, just an exposed bulb. My right wrist is within inches from it. I lift my feet from the mattress and onto the cold floor. I stand up, hands still bound to the wall.

I mutter a curse as my ribs scream at me again from the movement. I position my arm in order to attempt to use the force of my elbow to crack the glass bulb against the brick wall. It doesn't work. I try again, and again, and again. The fourth time I gather strength from a place I can't comprehend, and manage to crush the glass bulb. Now there's nothing protecting the exposed filament from it's surroundings. I hunch myself over so that the base of the lamp is between my shoulder and the side of my face. The position of my body is awkward and painful, but I'm able to angle the lamp so that the lit filament comes in contact with the rope. It's working. The rope is turning to ash against the heat. I cry in relief as the scorching wire sizzles at my skin and the rope breaks free.

The victory gives me a rush of adrenaline, but I still have to figure out how to get out of this hell hole. I look down and see that I'm still in the outfit from the day the van hit me. My pale orange sundress is filthy and ripped nearly to my hip. I remember having my denim jacket on that day, but it is nowhere to be found. I look around for shoes to cover my bare feet, those are missing also. Okay, so I was going to have to do this barefoot and barely clothed.

Male voices approach outside my door and I scoot to the small space behind the door. There's no place to hide in here, and I don't know what I'll do if one of them comes in.

The footsteps grow louder and then fainter as they pass by my room. I wait until I can't hear them anymore, then let go of a nervous breath. Carefully, I try at the door knob. It twists underneath my hand. The idiots actually left it unlocked. I let go of the knob and scan the room once more, this time looking for some kind of protection to take with me. I know my options are limited, but I can't go out there with nothing. Who knows who or what I'll run into. I run over to the desk and quickly open the small drawer. Nothing. I swallow hard. My eyes fall to the ground and settle on the shattered glass from the lightbulb. One jagged piece is larger than the others. I pick it up and head back to the door. I listen for voices or footsteps once more. Nothing. I ease the door open and step outside.

[kiarcheo]

A Whole New World    2/10

Jane and Kat find out there is more to each other…and to the new world they have found themselves in.

Read on Ao3 too

AN: I have seen Anne’s date of birth ranging from 1501 to 1507, and Jane’s between 1504 and 1509. For the sake of this story I consider Anne born in 1501 and consequently dying at 35, and Jane being born in 1508 and dying at 28.

Kat came back at 18 and Jane at 22, Anna, Cathy and Anne in their late twenties, and Catalina in her early thirties.

                               ——————————————–

It becomes a regular thing. Sometimes it’s a museum Kat has already visited, sometimes a new one on the list she keeps of places she wants to see. They often make a day of it, treating themselves to lunch (usually at Jane’s initiative, since Kat tends to forego eating in favour of whatever has caught her interest), exploring parts of the city unknown to them.

One evening, close to dusk, they are walking through an empty park when Kat stops. ‘Have you ever wanted to try them out?’

‘Try what?’ Jane follows the direction of Kat’s gaze. ‘That?’

‘They look like fun.’

‘They are for children.’

‘Who said that? Besides, there are no children around...’  Kat trails off, eyebrow raised waiting for a response.

‘You know what? Why not?’

Kat lets out a small squeal before grabbing Jane’s hand and dragging her towards the playground.

‘Remember when you said “who said that they are just for children”?’ Jane asks as they are sitting on the platform, feet dangling down, recovering their breath and cooling down.

‘You mean, like, half an hour ago?’

‘Smartass.’ Jane gives her a look, before pointing to a sign. ‘Children’s Play Area. Only children under the age of 12 may use this play area.’

‘Well, technically we haven’t been back for that long?’

Jane shakes her head amused. Kat is so cheeky and she would have never guessed before spending so much time with her.

‘So what was your favourite part?’ she asks after a bout of silence. That is another thing that changed. Before, silent moments were much more common and awkward, now their quiet spells are rarer and yet infinitely more comfortable.

‘You falling off those.’ Kat motions with her head towards the monkey bars, getting a glare in response. ‘What about yours?’

‘The slides, I’d say.’

‘Yeah, they are nice. But too short, don’t you think?’

‘I know, right? By the time you pick up speed, you’re already at the end,’ Jane agrees. ‘They should make them longer. Adult-sized.’

‘Wait!’ Kat whips out her phone. ‘Let me...’

And Jane lets her. She has learnt that Kat's curiosity is insatiable. If she stumbles upon something she doesn’t know or doesn’t understand…she has to look it up. So many times, when their fellow queens mention (usually complain, actually) that Kat is always glued to her phone, Jane has been tempted to tell them that most of the time she is learning something new...but if Kat had not told them – not even if she would probably spare herself their scolding – then it’s not her place to tell them.

‘They exist!’ Kat exclaims angling the screen towards Jane. ‘Look! They even have playgrounds for adults!’

They look together at the photos for a while before Kat taps on a Wikipedia link, her first port of call every time. ‘Amusement parks,’ she starts to read the entry aloud before being interrupted by a text notification popping up on the screen.

Kat groans as she reads it.

‘What?’

‘Curfew,’ Kat sighs. ‘Apparently it’s late and they are wondering why I’m not home yet.’ She knows it’s because they care but... ‘Did you get one too?’

Jane checks her phone. ‘No.’

Kat sighs again. ‘One dies young once and she is forever treated like a baby.’ She notices the look Jane is sending her. ‘Please don’t start.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘I can't make a joke that everyone freaks out thinking I’m depressed or having a breakdown or a flashback or something.’

Jane remembers clearly one of those occasions. They had been discussing nightmares and how everyone seemed to have them except Kat, who had commented that perhaps losing her head had meant losing everything that had been inside that too. She also remembers very clearly thinking that the reactions had been a bit disproportionate compared to Kat’s offhand tone and casual demeanour.

‘Sometimes a girl just wants to be self-deprecating. Or joke about her own death without being psychoanalysed and having people wanting to talk about your trauma.’

‘I get it. I said once that I had no time with Edward. I was just...stating a fact. I was not looking for pity or anything. But they tripped over themselves to reassure me that I was still his mother – which of course! – and that I’m still a mother now. And honestly. One has a child once and she is forever just a mother in everyone’s eyes. Don’t get me wrong. I wish I could have seen Edward grow up. Wish I could have been his mother. Properly. But I wasn’t. And out of all of us, I’m the one who had less time with children. Besides you, I was the youngest one to die. So I have no idea why everyone thinks of me as this motherly figure?’

Aware that she has been ranting, Jane chances a look at Kat, who has a peculiar expression on her face.

‘What?’ she asks, feeling self-conscious.

‘I’m just thinking how happy I am that you joined me that day at the museum.’

That had been the true start of their relationship, despite having lived together for many months prior to that.

‘You mean you're happy I caught you sneaking out?’

Jane knows what she means, though. They would have never thought, and even less found, they had so many things in common. Or that they could get along so well and have so much fun together.

‘I was not sneaking out.’

Jane merely looks at her.

‘I thought nobody was home. It was just out of habit.’

‘So all the other times you sneaked out.’

Kat doesn’t reply, knowing Jane is doing it just to annoy her. They had a similar talk the second time they went to a museum together, Jane asking why they were sort of hiding their trip. It was not that Kat thought they would stop her if they knew she was going out. But she just didn’t want to deal with their questions. About where she was going, why, why she was going alone, when she was coming back...Just easier to leave without them knowing and then simply tell them she had been out if they asked having noticed she had not been home. In their defence, they knew better than to pry and as long as she was home safely, they would let it go despite being curious.

/

‘I know you’re the one in charge of our museum days,’ Jane starts, ‘but I wanted to run an idea by you.’

‘Of course we can go to a museum of your choice. You don’t need to ask permission or whatever.’

‘Wait before agreeing.’

‘Is it the Tower?’ Kat winces with a grimace, trying to think of places still standing that Jane might be wary of asking her to visit.

Jane stops rummaging in her bag, her head shooting up. ‘What the fuck, Katherine??’

The younger girl is so lost in unpleasant memories that she doesn't even react to Jane’s swearing nor her full naming her. ‘Hampton Court?’

‘Why would I ever do something like that?’ Jane recoils. ‘God, no! The Clink.’

‘As-’

‘The prison! Not the-’

‘Brothels?’ Kat completes, eyebrow raised in amusement. Then she nods, almost to herself. The area had been known for two main things…the prison and for allowing usually forbidden activities.

‘Yes. I mean, they made a prison museum. You know I like true crime and–’

Yes. That had been a surprise. When Kat had asked if there was something she particularly enjoyed reading and learning about, like she loved history, that had definitely not been the answer she had expected. Jane must have known that, considering how much she hummed and hawed before caving after Kat had called bullshit – literally – on her non-committal answer.

‘–I think I’d like to– but I don’t want to, like, trigger you?’

‘What’s inside, exactly?’

Jane finally finds what she has been looking for in her bag and hands her a leaflet.

‘You know what?’ Kat takes a look at it. ‘We can go and you can...scout it out?’ She doesn’t see anything upsetting in the pictures, but there will be so much more in the museum that they can show in a single leaflet. ‘You can take a look before me and if you think there is something that might…disturb me, you tell me and I’ll skip that room?’

‘Really?’

‘I mean, you know I'm not too fussed about death and stuff like that as long as it’s not too bloody. Or neck-related.’

She is not too keen on watching documentaries with Jane, but she doesn’t mind listening to her talking about them. Or about whatever serial killer or unsolved crime she is currently reading about.

‘Thank you.’ Jane squeezes her arm, hoping Kat knows it’s not about agreeing to her request, but for her trust. ‘On an unrelated note...food?’

Jane’s constant preoccupation with food is another thing put down to her supposedly maternal instinct, a desire to make sure everyone is well-fed. The truth is…Jane loves eating. Being able to enjoy doing so without the ever-present worry of looking unladylike. Discovering new foods. She doesn’t eat a lot, but she needs to eat often, or she becomes…hangry, it’s what Kat called it. And it is only polite to ask if the others are feeling peckish too and want to join her. Moreover, she knows it’s one thing she can’t rely on Kat for, seeing as she is prone to skip meals if there is anything else she deems more important or interesting.  

‘Do you think Catalina would consider this as traditional local food or...?’ Jane wonders aloud as she dips the churro in the plastic pot holding the chocolate sauce.

‘Possibly? Even if they were not invented by Spanish shepherds but brought by the Portuguese from China like some say, I think everyone agrees that by the 16th century they existed in Spain. And look, Romans had fried pastry, so, if not exactly that, something similar. And naturally cacao came to Europe after the Spanish invaded the Americas, so it arrived in Spain first, although if it was just after Cortés, Catalina would have been already in England…so she might have never tried churros with chocolate? Not sure when they started to combine the two, to be honest…’ Kat trails off. ‘What?’

‘Next person who says you’re stupid, I’ll deck them.’

Kat chuckles, bumping her hip into hers. ‘I appreciate the offer.’

‘It’s not an offer, it’s a promise.’

.

‘Ever thought about getting a car?’ Jane asks after they have been walking for a while.

‘Why? Tired? But not really. Honestly just the idea of getting into one and driving it myself is kind of terrifying.’

Jane nods. It sounds a bit like airplanes for her. It still boggles her mind that humans can fly. And she knows they are mostly safe and all, but it doesn’t mean she is keen on trying them out for herself.

‘I thought about getting a bicycle and learning how to ride,’ Kat continues.

‘Why don’t you?’

‘Yeah, and where would I hide it?’

‘Why would you need to hide it?’ Jane is puzzled enough to ignore Kat’s tone verging on the sarcastic rhetorical question inflection that usually implies someone had just asked a very stupid question.

‘With the potential of me getting hurt? Straying away, getting lost, or whatever? I don’t know if you have noticed, but the others tend to be a bit overprotective.’

And a bit is a euphemism. Don’t get her wrong. It is nice to have people caring and worrying about her. But she spent a lifetime fending for herself. And yes, she had her struggles, and the end might have been inglorious, but Anne wound up the same way and yet nobody questions her…or her capabilities. And okay, that might have something to do with age, but nobody cared about that before, and she had been a bloody queen (and quite a successful one, if she says so herself, at least before her past caught up with her)! Still, she doesn’t want to think how worse it would be if she had come back younger than she had been at the time of her death like the others did.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Jane asks, realising she is miles away, lost in thoughts.

‘How weird it would be if we had come back the same age we died. Well, besides me, obviously.’ She hopes she’ll be there to see it in person, but she can’t really think about Catalina as a 50-years-old woman or Anna in her forties. ‘And about how there is a fine line between heart-warming care and overbearing concern.’

Because, back to the point, she might have been more or less successful, but she is used to rely just on herself and getting by, not to have four other women, Jane to a lesser extent, being overly concerned about her. For certain matters, at least. Because for other things they seem perfectly happy to…perhaps not ignore her, but surely leave her to her own devices, without trying to get her involved. And she is often more than content with it, she will admit that…except that often it also leads to remarks about how she spends all her time at home, always in front a screen, and perhaps she should go out more? And then instead of standing up all night on her phone, she would tire herself out and sleep?

‘So you don’t want to check this out?’

Kat had not even realised they were walking past a sporting goods store.

‘Look! You could easily hide that.’ Jane points out to a small, colourful, tricycle, clearly meant for children.

‘Ah ah. Very funny.’ Sarcasm is heavy in Kat’s voice, but she follows her in.

‘What about this?’

‘A unicycle? Really? Have you ever seen one of those around, in public?’

Jane takes a moment to think about it. ‘Don’t think so.’

‘Exactly. Because they belong in the circus.’

‘One might say our house is a circus.’ They certainly have some chaotic days.

‘And you a clown.’

Jane gasps in mock offence. ‘I miss the days when you were afraid of me.’

‘I was never afraid of you. I was indifferent. And thought you were a stuck-up bore. Also, I know you don’t miss it.’

‘True,’ Jane admits easily. ‘Joking aside. We could put them in the shed?’

She had said once that she didn’t mind taking care of the garden and suddenly she had been left in charge of it, gardening apparently a passion of hers she didn’t even know she had. She supposes that it was deemed an appropriate hobby for boring old plain Jane (and yes, the fact that it is her actual name and not just a phrase in her case does not escape her), just like embroidery. She enjoys both of them, sure, but she is fairly confident the others think that’s all she does, no other interests – oh wait, there is cooking, or at least making sure that everyone is eating too! – which is something she tries not to dwell on too much because that’s frankly a bit (or a lot, depending on how she feels on the day) insulting.

‘We? Them?’ Kat raises an eyebrow. ‘But yes, we could store them there, but not really hide them if anyone happens to look inside. And certainly not two of them.’

Still, they continue to peruse the store.

‘What about these?’ Jane calls Kat’s attention, holding a pair of rollerblades up. ‘I’ve seen kids with them, can’t be that hard, can it?’ she continues once the girl comes over, looking interested.

‘Shoes on wheels? We’re so gonna die.’

Jane starts to put them back, slightly dejected, but Kat snatches them up. ‘Let’s do this.’

‘Yeah?’ She looks at her, tentative grin on her face.

Kat nods with gleeful smile. ‘Absolutely.’

[number-1-kuaidul-fanboy]

Punch Out Mansion AU

Thought I’d elaborate a little bit on my Punch Out AU where all the WVBA boxers live in a mansion together by giving some background on the characters, like their cliques and lives outside of boxing and other random tidbits I felt like adding. This was all just for fun and is admittedly biased toward/against certain characters, so take it with a grain of salt.

Glass Joe

-Along with boxing, Joe is a photographer.

-Only tried boxing out on a dare and was horrible at it. But he kept trying, insisting he could get at least a few wins. The WVBA liked him so much that when he did get his one win, he was given a place in the minor circuit and is essentially a rite of passage for new challengers.

-No one can really bring themselves to be mean to Joe.

-Sandman learns French from Joe so he can shit talk Little Mac in front of him. Joe also learns English from Sandman and can speak it decently, though he has a noticeable accent.

-His closest friends are Von Kaiser, Sandman, and Little Mac.

-Favourite food is baguettes. (I think that was a little obvious)

-Dog person, pretty social and outgoing.

-Dang good at cooking and baking. Always makes food for the others.

Von Kaiser

-Boxing was Kaiser’s main gig for a while but he’s now out of his prime. He used to be a great boxer in his thirties and was even the champion of the major circuit for a while. However, old age and increased cowardice made him lose more and more until he was only able to defeat Glass Joe to keep his position in the minor circuit.

-Everyone calls him “sir,” some mockingly and others sincerely.

-His english is passable, but he gets certain phrases/words wrong sometimes. Everyone tries to be polite about correcting him.

-Cat person.

-He and Joe are best friends, meaning Kaiser also hangs around Sandman and Mac.

-Plays video games just because the ‘kids’ wanted him to do it. His favourite is NES Mario.

-A bit of a dad to the group, being the oldest.

Disco Kid

-Also started boxing because someone dared him and stuck with it because he wanted the exposure for his disco dancing career. Out of all of them, he is the newest to boxing. (Apart from Little Mac, of course)

-Often wears leotards.

-Dances around the house with headphones on a lazy day.

-He and Don Flamenco are best friends and often play Just Dance (their favourite game) competitively.

-They both also hang out with Great Tiger. (Cuz they’re divas)

-Disco Kid is also a famous TikToker.

-He and Don worked together to make:  “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.” Where they basically make fun of King Hippo.

-Dog Person

-Can’t cook at all.

King Hippo

-Nobody knows his real name so they just call him “Hippo.”

-Favourite food is all.

-Doc Louis shares some chocolate bars with him.

-King Hippo’s son, Prince Potamus took over the throne “temporarily” when King Hippo left for boxing. Now that it’s been a year, people are questioning whether he will ever return to his home island.

-He can’t hold a controller, much less play video games. However, he does wreck everyone at Swordplay in Wii Sports Resort. Nobody can figure out how, but they can’t manage to beat him.

-Just eats everything raw without preparing it.

Piston Hondo

-Does martial arts professionally like Karate and Boxing and shit. He is also new to boxing, and was offered directly by a WVBA person after they saw one of his martial arts demonstrations. Hondo accepted and did some training before starting his boxing career. He fights anyone who challenges him, which is why he hasn’t passed his position, he hasn’t had a chance to challenge anyone himself.

-He speaks very slowly in English in order to get all the words right. It is slow, but proper.

-Pretty much everyone from Major Circuit and onward arm wrestle with Little Mac. Hondo tries to regulate the arm wrestles the best he can. (It needs to be a fair fight!)

-Favourite food is sushi. (I think this is kinda canon, but whatever)

-Piston Hondo and Little Mac train together. Their morning jog is outrunning the bullet train.

-Hondo and Doc Louis are the “dads” of the group and are the most responsible.

-Everyone kind of respects him, even the higher ranks.

-He’s not really a gamer, but he likes Ace Attorney.

-Almost exclusively cooks food from his home country, going off of recipes from his childhood.

Bear Hugger

-Apart from boxing, he is a lumberjack.

-He challenged everyone in the minor circuit and won, but couldn’t defeat Hippo. So he just decided to challenge the first major circuit person, who at the time wasn’t Hondo because Hondo only has one loss.

-Loves camping but none of the others ever want to go. (Aran Ryan might go to prank him.)

-He keeps his squirrel as a pet. One of the others has to take care of it while he’s out. (Hondo or Doc usually offer)

-Favourite food is maple syrup. (Also kinda canon)

-He’s pretty chill with everyone and content to go with the flow most of the time.

-Mobile gamer. He’s really dedicated to PvZ in particular.

-Probably arm wrestles Mac from time to time.

-The only one to really get along with Bald Bull all that well.

-Wakes up early to make pancakes for everyone.

Great Tiger

-He is a street magician, probably. Maybe a professional magician with like a show. I don’t know how this stuff works.

-Probably seduced the ref to get so many decision wins.

-He beat everyone up to Don and was literally about to challenge him for the championship when Little Mac came along. (We can all agree that Great Tiger is much more difficult than Don Flamenco, right?)

-Either didn’t beat King Hippo and did the same thing Bear Hugger did or did beat him and didn’t take the belt because it was “beneath him.”

-Total douche with his clones. He’ll do things like tickle Little Mac to win an arm wrestle. (Hondo and Doc try to stop him but can’t)

-Total prankster.

-Uses magic literally all the time even when he doesn’t need to.

-He surprisingly knows a good amount of English. He still forgets words/phrases and enunciates certain things oddly but he can carry a solid conversation in English.

-Switches to Hindi to trash talk the others, particularly Little Mac. (Even if he’s grown to secretly respect the persistent kid)

-Hangs out around Don and Disco and will help them prank people for TikToks. They will also game together.

-Favourite food is pakora. (It’s an indian dessert. If you’ve never tried it, it’s delicious)

-Same as Hondo, in which he just knows how to cook foods from his country. Uses his clones to do every little task in order to cook. (Ex: Will have one stirring something, one at the rice maker, and another at the stove)

-Eats insanely spicy foods. (Will sometimes eat chili powder right out of the shaker)

Don Flamenco

-His full name is Juan Eduardo Flamenco Ramirez. He was nicknamed “Don” by his friends growing up and stuck with it for his boxing name. He used “Flamenco” as the second half of his name because it was pretty.

-He is canonically a bullfighter and boxer. That’s all you really need.

-Don climbed the ranks like Mac did. He originally kept the minor circuit belt for a while but decided he wanted something more impressive. He challenged Von Kaiser for the major circuit belt and won.

-Also probably seduced the ref if we’re being honest.

-Loves dancing and expensive dates.

-His best friends are Disco Kid and Great Tiger. He nicknamed Disco Kid “Niño de Disco” and Great Tiger “Gran Tigre.”

-He is pretty much bilingual, and has little trouble switching between English and Spanish. He will switch to spanish to tease Little Mac, though it’s pretty harmless in comparison to some of the others.

-He’s only emo in the ring and sometimes around Little Mac. “It’s not a phase, Mac.”

-Dog person.

-Favourite food is churros. (A spanish dessert. Also delicious.)

-He’s really not a gamer and will only play Just Dance with Disco Kid.

-He punched Bald Bull through the roof for a TikTok. Completely unrelated to that, there is a “natural skylight” in Don’s room.

-Challenges Little Mac to arm wrestles whenever he’s bored. Apart from Hondo, he’s probably the least “cheaty” out of them.

-An excellent cook. Because he loves to impress the ladies.

Aran Ryan

-Actually used his real name for boxing. The absolute madman.

-Apart from Boxing, Aran is a telemarketer. He also scams people on the streets as a side hustle.

-He started on the World circuit, the absolute madman, and Soda Pop was the first boxer he met. Aran Ryan can’t manage to beat him or any of the others though and picked on the lower ranks to work up a record. His “number 5” rank is technically unofficial.

-Wastes a lot of money on alcohol.

-Eats nothing but potatoes.

-He and Soda Popinski are best friends. I could see him and Great Tiger either being friends or rivals.

-Doesn’t get along with many of the others. Bald Bull especially is his enemy.

-Learned Russian to communicate with Soda. Likewise, Soda learned more English to communicate with Aran.

-Tries to use two hands while arm wrestling Mac. Doc or Hondo try to get him to knock that shit off.

-Dog person

-He loves gaming and will hack literally any game he can get his hands on. Newer Super Mario Bros Wii is his favourite game.

-Is banned from the kitchen.

Soda Popinski

-Works at a bar selling drinks.

-He’s been boxing for a long time. Held one of the circuit championships at some point but lost it. His other loss was against Sadman.

-He and Aran Ryan are drinking buddies. (Yeah sure it’s soda. It’s spiked with vodka or steroids. You can’t fool me.)

-He’s not much of a gamer, but often gets pulled into playing Aran Ryan’s hacked games with him.

-Always drinks the entire supply of soda. If anyone else wants soda, they have to hide it in one of their rooms.

-Chugs an entire can of steroid soda before arm wrestling Mac.

-“Favourite food? Uh, soda! That is a food, right?” -him at some point

-Understands English well, but has trouble speaking it himself.

-Mostly keeps to himself oddly enough.

-Doesn’t cook. Pretends to not know english when someone asks him to.

Bald Bull

-Apart from boxing, he’s a professional bodybuilder.

-Just kinda challenged people randomly and somehow won most of the time. His losses (pre Mac) were against Macho Man, Sandman, and twice against Doc Louis.

-Is laid back unless the paparazzi come around or someone does something to piss him off. Then he goes beserk. Like the time Don used him to make a “natural skylight” for a TikTok.

-Probably started the arm wrestling tradition against Little Mac, but no one is really sure.

-He and Doc Louis insult each other constantly. Aran and him are also bitter enemies.

-Talks shit about everyone in Turkish.

-Speaks in very broken english and usually hides out in his room.

-He is most chill around Bear Hugger, his closest friend.

-The others normally don’t let him touch a video game controller. However, he did beat King Hippo at Swordplay, shocking everyone.

-Can probably cook just fine but was preemptively banned from the kitchen so no one is really sure.

SMM

-His real name is Chadrick, like the asshole he is.

-A Hollywood actor for sure.

-Was the champion for a while until Sandman kicked his ass. He didn’t take any of the other belts because it was “beneath him.”

-Buys all the skins and battle passes in Fortnite. Also buys a ton of other useless rich person shit.

-Doesn’t live in the mansion but will visit every now and then during parties and shit.

-Eats nothing but In-n-Out. (Thanks Tumblr, for conflating these two in my mind)

-Is totally lying about his age.

Mr. Sandman

-His real name is Michael. People often make the comparison between him and Mike Tyson.

-He looked up to Mike Tyson as a kid.

-He is 100% devoted to boxing. Before boxing however, he worked in retail, which would explain his utter rage with the world.

-Didn’t take the minor or major belts because it was beneath him.

-Extremely competitive with Little Mac.

-“LITTLE MAC YOU ATE MY FUCKING LEFTOVERS THIS CALLS FOR A REMATCH!” -Sandman, all the time

-Also arm wrestles him a lot and challenges him at Minecraft, the favourite game of the two of them. He has a Minecraft world that he’s used for six years on Survival with all these crazy builds.

-Fairly chill when not boxing or competing with Mac.

-Good friends with Glass Joe and admires the persistent little guy despite his lack of skill in boxing.

Doc Louis

-Was the champion before Macho Man. Climbed the ranks like Mac did, and gave up his belts after retiring. Sandman was probably the final straw.

-Fought Bald Bull back in the day, and often won. They’re still rivals now.

-Favourite food is chocolate. (Literally canon, but whatever)

-The ultimate dad of the group.

-Gives them all advice, but clearly picks his favourites (Little Mac).

-All the older fighters get a little nervous when they see him eating chocolate. (You know what I mean if you’ve played Doc Louis’s Punch Out)

-Plays games with the others when they need an extra player.

-Loves cooking and does it all the time, often for some of the others too.

-He’s retired so he doesn’t “officially” live at the mansion. However, the couch has become his designated spot and the table beside it is where he puts his bag of chocolate bars.

[ralafferty]

85. Among the Hairy Earthmen

A mescalanza is, in Spanish, a “medley” or a “potpourri” or a “miscellany.” In Italian (as mescolanza), it’s any sort of mixture, often a mix of people or of ideas. Either way, it’s a collection of disparate elements that combine to form something greater than the individual parts could ever have been alone; often, the combination brings out aspects in the originals that no one could have predicted.

The earliest extant drafts of “Among the Hairy Earthmen”—which for a good while went by the name “The Long Afternoon,” though others were considered—imply that the story was developed as just such a mescolanza, in much the same way as the later “Nor Limestone Islands” would be a lapidary work, or the later still “In Deepest Glass” would be a cathedral window. (Or further, in the way that almost every Lafferty work contains some sort of image of its own processes of inscription.)

Certainly this draft seems to be the first short story that really piled on the epigraphs—a fixture of Lafferty’s novel writing from the first, and very present just then from his work on Archipelago, but which he had been more reticent to deploy in shorter stories. What’s more, it may well be the first mention of “The Back Door of History,” that compendium of shadow historiography that provides excerpts for many a Lafferty tale—and it’s the author of this work who introduces the word mescolanza, though in this early stage the pseudonymous author is listed as Arpad Dotch, not Arutinov. The narrator of the story cites four epigraphs in all, alternating Lafferty inventions from “The Lighter Side of Geology”—by one A.E.C. Copps, who does not recur—and “The Back Door of History” with two actual quotations from John Addington Symonds’ magisterial history The Italian Renaissance and Frederick Rolfe / Baron Corvo’s History of the Borgias. (These two British eccentrics were quite different in most ways save one: they were both about as openly queer as it was possible to be in the societies of their time.)

There’s indications that a Chesterton quote may also have been part of the miscellany—something I think he would appreciate—but none of these quotes made it to the final draft; they were all removed amid extensive rewrites trying to get the story to the point that Fred Pohl would buy it. In a letter from February 1964—after Lafferty had already rewritten the story multiple times, including earlier in the month—Pohl notes that “you have something interesting, entertaining and stimulating to say, but because you say it in a jackdaw’s-nest of unrelated bits of scenes and snippets of history you make it hard to read. … my quarrel with THE LONG AFTERNOON is that it is an easy story which you have written in a hard way.” It would seem that the number of quotations has only grown since the first draft, and Pohl admits himself bewildered: “But do you really need the quotations? From the first you only take the words ‘from Byzantium’; and take them only to deny them—but you have thrown twenty-odd data at the reader; since he does not know which are important, he tries to hold them all in his head, and when he finds out that by-God none of them are, he grows to dislike your story.”

Pohl made a further suggestion—“Suppose you rewrite the story, without quotes, in some consecutive form—perhaps as a narration”—which Lafferty carried out, which is why we have the story in the form we do. The “easy story” Pohl wanted to highlight is still complicated, a synthesis of readings across a huge number of historical subjects in the 13th to 15th centuries, but at root it is a story of alien visitation, of the subvariety where the aliens accelerate human development at a particular place in time; Lafferty’s innovation is to place this in medieval Europe rather than in Pharaonic Egypt or Attic Greece or for that matter the future. The story zeroes quickly in on the children at their arrival and follows their activities over the two-hundred-odd years which saw the Renaissance kindle and burst into life, up until they leave on the heels of a disciplinary thrashing from a mysterious human pilgrim. There still isn’t really a plot, but there is a “continuity” to proceedings—or enough to satisfy Pohl, at least. And some parts of it are vastly improved between the first draft and published versions.

And yet I still wonder about the version that could have been: the hard-way story, the jackdaw’s nest, the mescolanza. It would’ve been yet another work of Lafferty’s that embodied the formal experimentation of the New Wave, years before editors like Moorcock and Knight and Carr and Goldsmith—and Pohl himself!—commissioned and championed them. What “The Long Afternoon” lacked in continuity, it could have made up in innovation, inviting the reader into a wholly different role than just the receptor of a narrative: by throwing all these selections at the reader, making them distinguish between the real ones and the invented ones (see, always see, Don Webb on this technique), Lafferty press-gangs his audience, turning them all into fellow researchers, sifting through textual evidence. And if the reader ends up uncertain which data are or aren’t important, or uncertain of the entire enterprise generally, then Lafferty has already succeeded by muddying the epistemological waters sufficiently that the “aliens spearheaded the Renaissance” theory no longer seems fanciful—or, at least, no more fanciful than the idea that humans just up and did all those things on their own.

It’s not as if “Among the Hairy Earthmen” is a bad story. There’s a lot to investigate within it, and quite a few interesting questions to ask—maybe if I can ever get an actual medievalist to read the tale, I can get more and better answers than my own scanty reading on that period allows, but at the very least: What do we make of the story’s implication that humanity may be better off without such periods of frantic activity? (Note the ultimate sterility of the rapid society in “Slow Tuesday Night”; though also contrast the rich fecundity of the sped-up science types in “Brain Fever Season.”) Who is that final Pilgrim, and how did he come to the knowledge of the children’s interventions? Are those same children, as implied, back for another long afternoon; and if so, what dubious gifts are they giving us now? And yet, it’s undeniable that the effect of such questions is different when they are handed directly to you by the narration, rather than when they emerge from your navigation of Lafferty’s peculiar bricolage. (On this, see Gregorio Montejo, in Feast of Laughter 4).

The archive does not record whether Lafferty genuinely thought the story better in Pohl’s preferred format, or if he just went along with it because it was the only way it was likely to see print. If the latter, then it doesn’t seem to have affected his other stories much; the following years would see Lafferty send out many more formal experiments, including “What’s the Name of That Town” and “Primary Education of the Camiroi,” both composed during these same months that he was rewriting “Among the Hairy Earthmen” (and both, moreover, bought by Pohl). But I have to wonder if the ordeal didn’t at least color his view of Pohl, perhaps even mark an early stage of the process whereby the editor who, in Lafferty’s own words, “picked me up out of the scrap pile” became the editor who “was never right, but sometimes he was pretty insistent.”

Completed December 1961. Rewritten March 1963, December 1963, January 1964, and twice in February 1964. Published in Galaxy, ed. Frederik Pohl, August 1966. Collected in Ringing Changes. New York: Ace Books, 1984.

Next entry: "Crocodile," a dystopian tale about printing that had to go to press twice because they forgot a page

[anxiouslynumbme]

Carmuel Missing Scenes/Moments

Warning: (Mild Sexual Situations. Strong Language, Drug Use.)

3x05

________________________________________________________

Samuel couldn't sleep next to Rebe. Knowing he'd ruined her life, his guilt was always looming over his head. But it wasn't just about what he'd done to her mother.

He was using her to soothe his own pain and heartache, and he was currently experiencing a new level of self-loathing. He didn't know why he hadn't stopped her when she'd kissed him for the first time.

Not that it was an excuse, but Carla had just broken his heart for the hundredth time, and it felt like he couldn't breathe. He was sad, angry, and confused. But then Rebe'd kissed him, and he jumped into it, without thinking about how it would affect her. And then the police contacted him and everything went even farther downhill. He didn't know how to tell her, how could he just sit her down and tell her, he was responsible for her mother's imprisonment. Oh, and on top of all that, he couldn’t keep seeing her, ‘cause he cared about her as a friend, and it was unfair and selfish of him to lead her on. He couldn't tell Rebe all of that, all at once, it was a lot for anyone to take in.

He was being a coward, he didn't want - what felt like - his only friend to hate him.

He sighed loudly, opening the fridge to grab himself a bottle of water, before walking back to the living room, and slumping down the couch.

Carla.

Closing his eyes, he let her invade his mind. He'd been trying so hard to keep her out all day, and now that he was alone, he finally let go of all pretenses and allowed thoughts of her to fire up his insides.

He was in love with her.

He knew that what he felt for Carla was something he had never experienced before, not with Marina, or anyone else.

But what was daunting, was the fact that he was sure he'd never feel that kind of love for anyone else. Well, not in the same all-encompassing way he had with her.

She was consuming from the start, everything with her had felt intoxicating, feverish, crazed. But it’d also felt grounded, peaceful, and real. So real, it was terrifying. It hadn't been his plan to kiss her that day in the club, but he couldn't stop himself, her burning proximity had caused wild abandonment to take over. And even though, he knew she had done it to play him, it was still mind boggling that she'd actually kissed him back, and then she'd proceeded to fuck him into an explosive, confusing, and overwhelming emotional tornado. He'd never forget what it had been like to touch her for the first time, to kiss her for the first time, the reviving shock that rushed through his system, the second his skin had come in contact with hers. His whole body had ignited with a need he didn't think he was capable of feeling. He never stood a chance.

It was almost laughable, to think about how he'd thought he wouldn't fall for her. That he could've had finished his quest, without his heart getting crushed in the process.

And he kept going back for more. Talk about fucking masochism.

His phone vibrated beside him, frowning, he grasped it with a huff. Who was calling so late?

Carla.

He jolted up so fast, almost dropping his phone, his heart beating in his throat.

Was she really calling? Or did he actually think about her so much that he was hallucinating it?

He took in a shaky breath, tapping his thumb on the screen to accept the call.

"Hello?"

Nothing.

"Carla?" he could hear her breathing, and his, immediately picked up.

"Carla, please answer."

"Hey."  his eyes slid shut at her voice.

"Hey - did you mean to call me?"

"Yes."

She didn't lie. He smiled, but then he remembered the time, his brows knitted with worry. "Are you okay? It's almost three in the morning."

"I'm fine."

And she was back to lying, he should really get used to the disappointment. "No, you're not."

She exhaled softly through the phone, and his stomach instantly fluttered, wishing she were next to him. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I called, I was just sitting here and I couldn't - I, I - I don't - "

"Hey, hey, it's okay, you don't need to explain. Call me anytime."

She didn't respond for so long, he thought she'd hung up. But then he heard a muffled, gasping cry, and his heart stopped.

"Carla, what's going on?"

"Can you just talk?" her voice was so small.

"What?"

"Just talk. Say anything."

"I don't understand." his concern was still gripping him.

"Please, Samuel, just talk to me. Tell me something."

"Uh - " his throat closed up when realization dawned on him. She needed the distraction. "Okay, erm. . .I've never seen Titanic."

There was a moment before she let out a light giggle. "That's so weird."

"Hey! It's not that weird."

"No, it's weird, 'cause I've never seen it either."

"Really?"

"Hmm. People always make me feel like shit for it too."

"I know, as if we're uncultured or something."

"I swear, I haven't watched it yet, just to spite them."

He chuckled. "Agreed. People can be so annoying about that film."

"So, what other popular movies haven't you watched?"

He could feel his smile stretch even wider, all his worries calming down, as they started an impromptu discussion about overrated and underrated movies, Spanish or otherwise.

"It's been so long since I've just sat down and watched a movie," she said quietly.

"Oh yeah? How long?"

She didn't answer right away. "Since that dumb one you made me watch."

His heart constricted in his chest, he remembered that night so vividly, it was one of his favorite memories with her. She had come over one night, without even calling as usual, and while she'd had other plans in mind, plans he'd very much wanted as well, but at that point he was too far gone for her. He had just wanted to spend time with her, an itch in his skin that had needed to know her, to sit with her, so he could just watch her and listen to her speak. So he'd convinced her to watch a film with him first, though, they had only managed to watch half of it, before they both got sidetracked.

"We've established this, Carla. Spider-man is not dumb."

"Yes it is, the whole concept is ridiculous. And they should really stop making them already."

"One day, I'll make you love superheroes."

Oh, shit Fuck, he probably shouldn't have said that.

"I doubt it," she replied with ease. Thank god, he didn't spook her.

"I don't. You'll be wearing full-on geek t-shirts in no time."

She laughed, the sound heating his gut. "Keep dreaming, Samuel."

Dreaming about her was all he did anyway.

As though she could hear his thoughts, it got quiet between them, but it wasn't awkward. He wanted so badly to ask her what was wrong, but it was pointless, she was determined to keep him in the dark, and as much as he hated it, he knew it would only push her away if he tried interfering again. And he was so happy she called, he didn't want to risk her hanging up.

A crazy idea abruptly appeared in the forefront of his mind. Maybe if he trusted her with one of his secrets, maybe she'd know he trusted her. Maybe then she she'd know she could trust him too. But he was scared of what she was going to say. Even if a part of him knew, she was the only one who could ever understand. He still didn't want to risk how she saw him, what she thought of him.

"It was - it was me," he stammered, running a nervous hand through his hair. "I told the police about Rebe's mother. Well, I agreed to help them."

"What?" she asked, voice filled with shock.

Then he told her the whole story, and why he had done it. She remained silent for a brief moment, and he could've sworn he stopped breathing during it.

"I get it." three simple words and he could breathe again.

He knew she would.

"I mean, you're certainly no boyfriend of the year, but I get it." she said.

He snorted at her comment, a weird feeling taking over him at her use of the word boyfriend, his body rejecting it. Fuck, he was such an asshole. He needed to break up with Rebe as soon as possible, if he had any chance of ever salvaging their friendship.

"I don't know what to do," he admitted quietly.

"Maybe someday, she'll understand. Her mother is guilty."

He couldn’t help but notice the few similarities. He knew Carla was still mad that he’d manipulated her feelings into confessing, and it had been the hardest thing he ever had to do, knowing the price was losing her. But a part of her had to understand, because Polo was guilty.

"I know, but I was being selfish, all I could think about was helping my family. Myself. And now her life is all messed up."

"Wait, why aren't they back yet?"

He gritted his teeth. "They told me it takes time."

"You think they're lying?"

"They better not be."

"You'll get them back, Samuel. Don't worry."

He smiled sadly to himself, her reassurance meant more to him than she could possibly know. And suddenly the pain of losing her came back full force, the unrelenting thoughts, that he couldn't have her, to comfort him, kiss him, and simply be with him.

Would he ever get her back?

Knowing better than to voice his thoughts, he simply settled on. "I hope so."

"Like they say, the things we do for family, right?" he said slowly, after a pause of silence.

"Yeah," she said, "at least yours deserve it."

His brows furrowed, her broken voice filling him with the need to hug her. Before he could utter a word, he heard a male voice in the background. It didn't belong to her father.

"Carla? You're still up?"

Yeray. She was with him. His fists clenched, was he at her house? Was she at his? The painful contraction of his heart wouldn't stop. His mind instantly imagining them in various sexual scenarios. He vehemently shook his head to himself. Fuck, no. He didn't even care to stop and think about his hypocrisy in that moment, his hurt and jealousy taking control.

"You're with him?" the bitter question slipped before he could stop it.

"I'll be right there, Yeray. " she paused, taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry. Good night."

And then she hung up. The loss of her voice in his ear making him feel even more suffocated.

_________________________________________________________

The raging party around him did nothing but put him more on edge. His anxiety rising by the minute, Rebe was sure that the guy they were waiting for was going to lead her to the culprit. To him.

Rebe was talking to him, but he wasn't really listening, he was preparing himself for what was to come, he couldn't get rid of the pit in his stomach. He took a large swig of his drink, eyes roaming around the room, and that was when he saw her. Saw what she was doing.

"I'll be right back," he told Rebe, not caring if she heard him, but he could feel her stare on his back.

His feet were moving instinctively, advancing quickly in her direction, his heart thudding with confusion and fear. Once he reached her, he blindly went for her hand just as she was about to take another hit, slapping it away from her.

She gasped, looking at him, her eyes a little unfocused. "What the hell, Samuel?"

"What the hell?" he repeated lowly. "seriously, what the fuck are you doing, Carla?"

"Having fun. Go away." she beamed mockingly, turning around to leave, his palm instantly reached for her wrist, wheeling her back around.

"No, you're doing drugs," he bit out, his words sounding foreign to him. His disbelief at the sight in front of him still present in his belly.

"How observant." she rolled her eyes, before they widened and she smiled at something behind him. "Yeray! Over here!"

His jaw clenched at the sound of the name falling from her lips with such excitement, a second later, Yeray appeared next to her.

"Let's dance!" she grabbed Yeray's hand, dragging him behind her.

Samuel was rooted in place, staring at her as she danced, his shock drumming in his chest. What the fuck was going on with her? The contrast of what he was sure he knew of her, and what he was seeing was incredibly jarring.

The fact that she kept touching and doting on Yeray didn't help his spiraling emotions, he tried drawing in calming breaths, but the combination of witnessing her using drugs and then kissing Yeray was too much. He slammed his drink on the table behind him, his mind on one thing, as he strode towards her steadfastly.

"I need to talk to you," he said, reaching the spot in front of her, completely ignoring who she was dancing with.

"What the..?" Yeray said, confused.

"I'm busy, Samuel," she said, not even sparing him a glance. And he fucking hated it.

"Carla, it's important. We need to talk. Now."

"Nope."

"Carla - "

"Hey, she said she doesn't want to. Just leave," Yeray spoke from behind him.

"I'm clearly not talking to you."

"Well, clearly, she doesn't want to speak with you."

He ignored him, eyes on Carla as she swayed carelessly. "Carla, I have to talk to you alone."

"Seriously? Leave us alone, man."

He closed his eyes, trying to keep his anger in check. "Stay out of this."

"I don't think so." Yeray jabbed him lightly on the shoulder.

Wrong move, rich boy.

He pushed him back roughly. "I told you to stay out of this, you - "

"Ugh!" Carla interrupted impatiently. "Enough of this."

"I'll talk to you, happy?" she grinned sarcastically at him, before directing her gaze to Yeray with a warm smile. "I'll be right back, love."

His body lurched with disgust, hearing her call Yeray, love.

Without providing any further information, she started sauntering away, and he immediately followed. When they found an empty backroom, they both walked inside. Closing the door behind them, he turned around to look at her, his fuming heart halting for a second at the sight that greeted him.

She was leaning heavily against the wall, her whole demeanor from before entirely changed, as she regarded him with openly lustful eyes, a seductive smirk on her sinful lips, her slender fingers catching the hem of her dress, hiking it up tantalizingly slow.

Fuck.

"What do you want, Samuel?" her husky voice sent shivers straight down his spine, and right to his rapidly aching member.

She was too beautiful, too alluring. Everything about her was devastatingly unfair.

He inhaled sharply, trying to cool down his anatomy. "Don't try to distract me. You know it won't work."

Her giggle was sultry and airy. "It used to, though. Remember?"

Recalling their past trysts. Dangerous fucking territory.

"We're not leaving here until you tell me, what the hell was that out there?"

She was slowly making her way towards him, looking at him passionately. "You mean, dancing with my boyfriend?"

He blanched outwardly, and from the grin that spread over her face, it was the exact reaction she wanted, she finally reached him, just an inch away, and he prayed silently to have the strength to resist whatever she was about to do.

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Oh, right, the drugs," she said nonchalantly.

The second she said it, it hit him as hard as it did when he'd seen her just moments ago. He took a step closer this time.

"This is serious, Carla. Why would you do that? How did you even get it?"

It was too easy to get drugs, he knew that firsthand. Valerio and Rebe crossed his mind. But they were smarter than to actually sell to Carla. No, there was no way it was them.

"So many questions." she groaned, "do you ever just live, Samuel?"

She was evading again. "What is going on with you?"

"Nothing is going on. You just like to ruin my fun."

He rubbed an agitated hand over his face, she was obviously influenced from the drugs, and this was going no where. "We'll talk about this tomorrow. Right now, I need to take you home."

"Fuck off. I'm not going anywhere." she scoffed, twisting around him, hitting his shoulder harshly as she started making her way towards the door. Once again, he had to catch her by the arm to twirl her back to him.

"Carla, you have to go home. I can't just let you go out there - "

"Let me?" she snarled, shoving him back, eyes shooting daggers. "Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Carla, calm down, I only meant you need - "

"The only thing I need is to be rid of you. Which I can't seem to do, no matter how hard I try."

Her words never failed to hurt him, it didn't matter that he knew she was doing it on purpose, it didn't matter how many times she did it, her hold on him was stronger than even he could fathom sometimes. The way she could unravel him so easily, whether it was with desire, longing, doubt, or anger. She could break him so quickly, and the most pathetic part was, he didn't care.

"Listen," he began softly, "you're on drugs, Carla. And I'm just worried, so please, you have to be some place safe where you can sleep it off, okay?"

"And you think that place is my house?"

It wasn't the first time she’d made a similar comment, and she never elaborated. And if he asked her to, he knew he wouldn't be getting any answers, all he wanted was to get her somewhere, where he knew she would be okay till morning.

"Where do you wanna go then?"

Please don't say Yeray's. Just please don't.

"I want to. . ." she sang slowly, spinning in place, "stay out all night!"

"That's not gonna happen."

She laughed humorlessly. "You don't get a say in what I do, handsome."

He huffed. "Carla, I'm calling a car, you can wait here. And we're definitely discussing all of this later."

He took his phone out of his back pocket, but before his fingers could move an inch, it was snatched away from him.

"Right." she held the phone up in front of him. "no, thank you."

And then she flung it across the room at the wall behind him, he heard its impact, the phone clattering against the wall loudly before falling to the floor.

A low rumbling sound of anger left him, as he stepped towards her, pushing her back against the wall. "What is wrong with you?"

She simply smirked. "Oh, don't be mad, I'll buy you a new one."

He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. "Carla,"

"Actually, I take that back. I like it when you're mad," she whispered, her hands making their way up his chest, he immediately caught them, his skin already tingling.

"Carla, listen to me. Please go home."

"No."

"You have to."

She grumbled, "Why won't you just leave me the fuck alone?"

He sighed, feeling a twinge in his chest. "I told you. I can't."

She pouted mockingly. "Ah, poor Samuel. Look at you, so tortured. Just a walking cliche, aren't you?"

"I - "

"Your ex-girlfriend is dead," she interjected, and his stomach dropped at her words.

"And your brother is accused of killing her," she continued sardonically, "but we all know he didn't do it. I mean, he was fucking her, oh so lovingly, behind your back."

"Stop," he said through shallow breathing.

"You tried to reveal the truth, but you failed miserably. So your brother left, and your mother followed." she breathed in, looking him in the eye. "Then I left you too."

"And now." she snickered, "you're still chasing after me, while being with someone else. Marina would be so proud."

He shrank back, the cruel words pressing on his nerves, that was the last straw, he backed her further into the wall. "Whatever you think you're doing, is not going to work. And I'm not cheating."

"Oh, you are. Cheating is more than just the physical stuff. But hey, we can fix that if you want."

He flinched at the truth, which only made him angrier as he spat his next words. "I'm only trying to help you, because no one else seems to care."

Her eyes lowered, and for a split second he could see the effect his words had on her, but then she smiled, her arms circling his shoulders.

"Only helping, huh? So if I kissed you, you wouldn't kiss me back?"

He tried to answer, opening his mouth to tell her no, he wouldn't kiss her. But nothing came out, his gut, heart, and body, knew exactly what he would do if she touched him.

She leaned in closer, and his lungs momentarily stopped calling for oxygen. She softly brushed his lips, once, twice; feeding that ever growing flame, she had planted deep inside him the first time he'd kissed her.

"Please do - "

And then her lips parted his ardently, effectively shutting him up. The need for her, that he was constantly trying so hard to keep at bay, flared up with a vengeance as her taste hit his tongue. They both moaned, their mouths molding together in such a familiar, intense dance, that made his whole body ache with want.

Her hand traveled down his chest leisurely, until she reached his hardening length, palming him softly. He groaned, his fingers clutching her neck, driving his tongue deeper, as he devoured her mouth.

"Samuel." she gasped against his hungry lips.

That single, captivating utterance of his name, crashed into his foggy mind and alerted him to his surroundings.

"Stop," he rasped, wrenching his mouth away, when she went for him again, her hands trying to grasp his face, he seized both her wrists.

"Carla, stop!" he needed to control himself, "you're not in the right state of mind to be doing this. Or anything else. Go home now."

She blinked slowly.

"Get the fuck off then!" she then said sternly, struggling in his grip, before elbowing him away.

"You know what, Samuel? I will go home right now. With Yeray, that is," she told him, wheeling around and opening the door.

"Carla,"

"No need to worry, he'll take really good care of me." she sent him a wink, before storming out, an unbalanced sway in her steps.

He stood frozen for a second, his veins pulsing, palms sweating. His legs and brain finally caught up, as he marched forward.

"Carla!" There were too many bodies around, and he couldn't see for shit. Fuck, he kept bumping into people.

A few minutes later, he found her, and he wished he hadn't. His eyes fell on her and Yeray, locked in a heated embrace. His muscles tightened, his cheeks flushing with quiet fury. He watched as she drew back, grabbing Yeray's hand with a grin and pulling him towards the exit. They both climbed the stairs and right before she disappeared from his sight, she turned around, sensing his imploring gaze, and smiled.  

_______________________________________________________                  

"Samu, do you love me?"

It was a while after Carla had left, and while he'd been trying hard to pay attention to Rebe, it didn't work. He was thankful when she’d left for the bathroom, giving him time to breathe, and get rid of her bag. But ever since she came back from the restroom, she'd been acting weird.

He didn't mind her question, it was easy to answer, not so easy to vocalize. Because he did love her, just not in the way she thought he did. It was his opportunity to tell her, she just gave him an opening, and he needed to tough it out.

"Of course I do." he took a deep breath, getting ready for what he had to say next.

"I just had to make sure," she said before he could speak, grabbing both his hands and holding them up, he looked at his strange colored palms in confusion.

So she explained to him her whole plan. Guilt enveloped him tightly, his mind scrambling for something to say, but she didn't let him, talking over him, before quickly punching him and walking away.

"Rebe, wait."

She whirled around to face him again, scowling. "Who am I kidding? That wasn't the reason you got close to me. No, no, it was her. You hooked up with me to get over your fucking marchioness."

"Rebe, - "

"Don't you dare humiliate me more than you already have. Not after what I just found out. Be honest with me, you never saw me that way. I was nothing but a distraction to ease your heartbreak. Just admit it."

"I - I'm so sorry." he hung his head in shame.

She nodded in resignation. "I guess it's a little on me too. I wanted you so much, I chose to ignore what is so glaringly obvious."

She took a small step forward. "But snitching on my mother, I didn't see that coming. I thought you were my friend."

"I am. I'm sorry, but just let me explain,"

"Save it!" she snapped, briskly leaving him.

He was still reeling from what had happened with Carla, and that did not help.

He had lost Carla, his family, and now his friend. And during all of his turmoil, it was his bad luck, that his eyes landed on Polo, as he danced with Valerio and Cayetana. They were kissing, laughing, happy. He watched with an icy glare, letting his hatred and rage surge through him freely.

[stevemoffett]

A Hard Nap, The Fall of Math, The Star Wars Holiday Special, Disco Point, and There You Are

In January last year, I noticed a sign in myself of the same cancer my dad had back in 2008. Unlike the usual symptoms that set off my paranoia, it wasn’t some vague feeling, it wasn’t an intermittent pain, and it wasn’t a general ill feeling—it was clear and unambiguous, out of the ordinary and one of those symptoms that, if you google it, is under the list of “call your doctor if you experience any of the following.”

It was also nonspecific: this symptom could mean cancer, but it could also mean about five other cancer-unrelated conditions. I called for an appointment that morning with my general practitioner, who said that the earliest available date was about two weeks later.

I knew that the only way my fear would be effectively relieved was with the one sure-fire diagnostic tool for this type of cancer, one that’s recommended for everyone, but not until about age 50: a colonoscopy.

For the two weeks before my GP appointment, I mentally prepared for death. For the record, I do this every time I interpret my body’s signals as cancerous, but the mental preparation usually stops after a few days when the symptom either goes away or when a clear alternative cause presents itself. This time, I didn’t get that kind of relief and, in fact, the symptom repeated more than once between setting the appointment and going to it. Each time, it was like an intrusive thought come to life: you’re going to die. You’re going to go through surgery and chemotherapy like Dad and you’re either going to die early, or find out like he did that the cure is worse than the disease, or maybe you’ll hang on just long enough to experience both.

Winter mornings in Texas can sometimes be surprisingly cold. While stepping out the door on a midsummer morning is like walking into someone’s hot exhale, as you might expect, a 33-degree morning is more like a slap in the face. When I packed everything I figured I’d need to move here a couple of years ago, I threw away my winter coat, thinking, I won’t be needing this anymore. (The coat was also about ten years old at that point.)

My first winter in Texas, I layered a bunch of shirts underneath a light jacket and wore a scarf on freezing days. The second winter, I decided that I’d had enough of being cold. After all, I rationalized, here in Texas it was monetarily possible to never have to feel cold again if you really don’t want to. So I bought the warmest coat I could find, an unstylish, bulky parka made by Caterpillar, the company that makes construction vehicles. No more layering, no more checking the weather before leaving in the morning. I could just put this coat on and not worry about it.

But now, under the shadow of a cancer scare these January mornings, wearing the big coat made me feel less like I was smarter than the weather and more like I was trying to smuggle a terminal disease wherever I went. Under my coat, tie, button-down shirt, undershirt, skin, fat, and muscle, something was growing silently in the dark. While maybe it had slipped up and showed some of its handiwork to me, it was already too late to do much about it now.

Since it has affected my life several times before, and since it is such an exquisite mixture of dread and uncertainty, cancer is one of my mind’s biggest bogeymen. I feel personally insulted by the idea of it. I treat you so well, body—why would you betray me? Was I not nice enough? Is this poetic justice for my vanity? Is it, as the old anecdotal saying goes, due to my worrying?

Not only did I feel like I was smuggling cancer under the big coat, I was also warming it up by drinking my coffee. I was feeding it directly when I ate something too sugary. And I was probably even giving it an evil sense of satisfaction when I got stressed out about it. If I was able to keep my mind off it by working in the lab, mixing and pipetting, using kits, and doing arithmetic in my head, it would come crashing back into focus when I was pulling my gloves off to wash my hands.

I pulled up incognito mode on my phone’s browser during my breaks, googling “5-year survival rate colon cancer age 35.” “Cancer staging colon prognosis.” “Colon cancer smoking.” “Colon cancer smoke one pack in college.” “Colon cancer smoke one pack 18 years ago.” “Colon cancer smoke one pack after seeing Luke Wilson smoking in The Royal Tenenbaums.”

At home, I suddenly started noticing the expiration dates on my nonperishables. What will last longer, I thought, the freshness of this baking soda, or me.

I knew I wasn’t going to be comforted by the first GP visit. After all, they’re usually the first stop to a specialist, unless you have a PPO insurance plan, which I don’t. The doctor listened to my symptoms and family history. “Well,” he said, “Given your history, it’s a good idea to refer you to a GI. But, you seem like you lead a healthy lifestyle otherwise, with none of the other risk factors, so we’ll see what he says.”

I made the GI appointment and had to wait two more weeks for it, with the same circular worrying and googling. At the GI appointment, I sat in the waiting room, the youngest patient there by a few decades, and I felt a little bit ridiculous. On the other hand, I’d also just read a harrowing story about a woman in her late 20s who had colon cancer and died from it. That was a real person, I thought, who at the first phase of it probably went through all the same feelings I was now, the I’m-being-ridiculous and is-this-worth-the-time-and-vacation-days, all the way up until her diagnosis. Not just because I was scared, I felt a pang of sympathy. A disease of the old picking a victim from the young is terrible luck.

And I figured, if it could be her, it could be anyone. But most of all, it could be me.

That last bit, I think, is one of—one of—my greatest flaws, the vanity of always thinking that the worst things will happen to you, in spite of the odds. It’s a way of making yourself feel special, but it has no upside. You don’t feel confidence with this type of special-feeling. In fact, you’re more likely to be timid and self-centered, and you just come across as weird to the outside observer. They might think, There’s only a few steps between that guy and Howard Hughes. Somewhere, deep in your mind, they think: Wires are crossed.

Shortly before I went in, another patient arrived, a man around my age or maybe younger who, despite a dozen or so free seats, declined to sit down. My name was called, and I passed a sign on the way to the back that said, “If you have recently traveled to China and have a fever you must let our staff know.”

This doctor’s exam rooms had floor-to-ceiling windows, the kind you’d see in a movie, instead of the usual dull and bulby, off-white plastic exam room interior. A Spanish medical student came in to give a pre-appointment questionnaire and to take my vitals. He asked, in much better English than I could have mustered in Spanish, “So. There is some blood in they crep?”

When he came in, the GI repeated what my GP had said, and since he was also the person who would be performing a colonoscopy, he said I should set an appointment for one with him. I managed to get a date three weeks later.

From other people’s stories, I knew two things about colonoscopies: they are no fun, especially the night before, but the general anesthesia on the day of the procedure, on the other hand, is fun. I was nervous enough on the day before that I actually asked someone at the pharmacy for help finding the items I was looking for: Polyethylene Glycol (or PEG, which we use all the time for lab experiments, and which I was going to have to drink 2 liters of), Gatorade, and laxative pills. I had to take about 800% of their recommended dosages, each.

The bodily effect of those chemicals was dramatic, and I will spare the details. The worst parts of it, I found, were the generally exhausting physical toll it took, and the feeling by the end that I had some kind of dangerous sodium imbalance: I was sweating between my fingers, for example, but the rest of me felt as dry as paper. At 10PM, I was too tired to do anything, but too nervous to sleep for more than a few hours.

One smaller worry that I felt the next morning, as I took a selfie in my hospital gown to send to a friend back home, making a backward peace sign to show off the IV sticking into my hand and also how brave I was being, was that I might just die right there on the table from the general anesthesia. Part of my grad school research was on Propofol, the most-used general anesthesia nowadays (which, incidentally, also killed Michael Jackson). This was the same drug I was to be given.

I’d never been fully put under anesthesia before. It was astronomically improbable that I’d have an adverse reaction to it and die (and by the way, Michael Jackson abused it, using it far outside of medical praxis—if you’re afraid to get a colonoscopy yourself, don’t be, it could save your life), but keep in mind what I said about my vanity.

“Hey, I’m really scared,” I told the anesthesiologist. He said something, muffled by his mask, that sounded like, “It’ll be all right.” Then he busied himself with a syringe, connecting it to my IV. He depressed it about a third of the way. “This should help you,” he said.

The last thing I said was, “Whoa…I feel it.”

After what felt like a hard, late-afternoon nap, I said, “Hello?”

My head was wrapped with something. When I touched my face, I could feel that there were cotton pads underneath the wrapping, holding my eyes shut. I guess that at some point either mid-procedure or after, my eyes had opened, unseeing, and they’d done this to keep them from drying out. “Hang on, sir,” I heard a nurse say, and my head was unwrapped.

“It’s over?” I asked.

“You’re all done,” he said.

“Gimme a minute, please,” I said, my South Jersey accent peeking out. “I feel a little weird.”

Eventually, I sat up. Two of the nurses helped me stand, and I pumped my arms like I was lifting light, invisible dumbbells. As I put my glasses on and looked around, I thought that they all seemed like they were fighting to not smirk. What did I say while I was blacked out? I wondered, with a twinge of panic, before deciding that it would be worthless to speculate. It could have been anything. There are literally millions of possibilities. Again—it would be worthless to speculate, I told myself, firmly.

An Uber driver, I had been told by hospital staff during a consultation, was not a legally strong enough party to take responsibility for me at discharge. Someone I knew would have to escort me to my apartment. Also, they said, they really would do that thing where you’re back in your own clothes, and they push you to the exit in a wheelchair when you’re all finished. After my procedure, my co-worker stood waiting in the discharge zone with his car as an orderly wheeled me out of the hospital exit. I stood up from the wheelchair and got into the passenger seat of his car, for some reason more aware than usual of the heat coming from the vent and the smell of the car’s leather upholstery. “I still feel weird from the anesthesia,” I said to my friend.

“I’ll bet you do,” he replied.

It was about lunch time, and I had taken the rest of the day off from work. When I got home, I ordered a pizza and lay on my bed. I ate the pizza and watched Star Wars. I had not felt any euphoria when I woke up, I thought hollowly. And my first solid meal in almost forty hours tasted unremarkable. I was still groggy, but not in a pleasant way. I felt cheated.

The hospital staff had put a manilla envelope into my hands as I left. It contained sheets of images the doctor had taken during the procedure. Once lucid, I leafed through them and compared the thumbnail-sized images on printer paper with googled images of cancerous tumors viewed through a colonoscope, trying to diagnose myself.

A couple of the images on the papers had shapes that looked weird, with what seemed like variations in the texture or color of my colon wall that to me, at least, appeared one hundred percent fatal. It was another two weeks before I had a follow-up appointment to go over them with the surgeon.

“See this?” The GI said, two weeks later, pointing to one of the images that had seemed completely normal to me, unlike other ones I had thought were much more scary and unusual-looking. “That’s a low-risk polyp. Of course, now it’s a no-risk polyp, ‘cause it’s gone.”

This medical episode ended only three or so weeks before the whole world changed, but I was all the more grateful for that. If I’d waited to be checked out, then I would have been weighing whether it was worth getting tested against the possibility of being infected with COVID.

The doctor recommended that I get a colonoscopy every five years from now on, but added, “If you want, you can go earlier than that.” I told him thanks, but once every five years sounded fine.

*

I wrote about the first seven weeks of the pandemic in my last entry. After that, May and June passed in the same way as March and April had. I went back to work in mid-June for two weeks before the first summer COVID spike closed things back up. I continued to play Quake, and I continued to fret about my family.

I had a job interview for a position in northern Maryland in April. I didn’t get it, but I had a good idea why I’d been turned down: the position wanted people with proven math skills. Which makes sense—for the last few years I’d said repeatedly that I wanted to have a job that involves less lab work and more data analysis. This was one of those jobs.

My graduate program gave me a degree in “Computational and Integrative Biology.” Sometimes I shorten it to “Integrative Biology,” or “Computational Biology,” but I always feel sort of dishonest when I tell people my degree. (Apparently this feeling is common among grad students). My own reason for feeling dishonest was because, in any other college, the work I was doing would probably just fall under normal old “Biology.” While it was true I had done course work that reflected “Computational and Integrative” Biology, they were courses taught in a remedial way.

When I say remedial, I mean that they were courses designed to get biologists up to speed on how to do higher-level data analyses with their experiments. For instance, in my “Biomath” course, we went over ordinary differential equations and graph theory. Those are both intermediate-level math types, ones you’d encounter in the later part of an undergraduate math degree program. Throughout that course, there was a lot of handwaving whenever I asked questions.

“Eh…,” the professor might have responded to something I had asked, “that requires a lot of background explanation we don’t need right now to handle the problem here. Just take it as a given for what we’re working on.”

In grad school, it’s common to be well-versed in only your narrow little research tunnel that leads outward to the edge of “known” biology. But a few times each month, several of us students would head to the bar down at the city’s waterfront after work to talk about our research. It usually began with a complaint—“This is the third time this kit wouldn’t work this week and it takes twelve fucking hours to run it each time,”—but to give us a more context for their problem, whoever was griping would have to go back and start at the beginning, recounting all the steps leading to their experiment’s failure.

This was a useful exercise, since a pair of new eyes on your work meant that at least you could get feedback on how to better relate the subject matter when you talked to a non-science audience, and at most, you might get a real solution for the problem you were bumping up against.

But I would sometimes get privately upset, as I sipped my beer and glanced out the window at the river, when a math-centered Computational and Integrative Biology student would start talking about their research. As someone who feels an unpleasant, TV static-like anxiety in my chest the moment I see letters in italics, or one of those big, orphan sorority sigmas following an equal sign during a math seminar, this upset feeling was directed at myself. Because, as a result of my insecurity, I would start listening to the beginning of the math student’s explanation of their research, trip over the first unfamiliar term I heard, lose the thread of what they were talking about, give up, and zone out. The math students, overall, just seemed light years ahead of me.

A critical vocabulary word that I began to mentally tie to the situation—slumming, these math types were slumming when talking to us biologists—was the grain of sand to my insecurity’s oyster. By the time I got my diploma a few years later, it had developed into a little pearl; now I had the feeling that I was, relative to those who’d come from a math background, a fake computational biologist.

Unhelpfully, the people in charge of hiring for the jobs I want nowadays seemed to agree. All the job listings I was interested in applying for made me feel the same panic that advanced math symbols on powerpoint slides did. The subjects they wanted their applicants to have experience in—machine learning, deep learning, regression analyses—were all frightening, impregnable terms, reminding me either of some kind of giant machine made up of endless tubes and valves, all spitting dangerously hot steam, or of a highly secure, underground bomb shelter that requires fingerprints or eyeball scans to get into. I knew from my previous learning experiences that if I didn’t understand the fundamentals and learned only the higher-level, applied stuff, it was just going to make me feel unworthy, and I’d forget it at once.

But summer had come—it was midsummer now, in fact. The pandemic wasn’t going anywhere, so what was I going to do if I didn’t start learning something? I ended up registering for three classes at a community college back home, which offered their fall semester online. For two thousand dollars, including textbooks, I got a spot in Introductory Statistics, Linear Algebra, and Calculus III.

Calculus III was a risk. I’d taken Calc I and II in undergrad, now about seventeen years ago, and I had earned Bs back then. I didn’t remember much of the material from either class. I’d tried watching Khan Academy videos at various points in the meantime, but could never stick with it. I’d watch several videos in a row, feel like I understood things, try a practice problem, get it wrong, and forget about it after a day or two. But now, I had put actual money into it and, in a few months, a grade would be spit back out, so this time I had real skin in the game.

But I had misgivings that I was too old to learn new stuff, or that I would be one of those students I remember when I was in undergrad, the older students who would grind class to a halt with their endless questions. Or maybe I would get worse grades than I had in undergrad, despite taking things more seriously now.

Two of the classes were taught asynchronously, meaning each lecture was a video that you could pause or replay at your leisure, and all tests were take-home, but the other class, Statistics, was done over Zoom. You might think a Zoom class could be a better way to learn—clarifying questions can be asked immediately, for instance—but for me, at least, it was not. Instead of focusing on the material being taught, the whole time I’d be thinking, “They can see me. Everyone here can see me. I can see me, and I have a dumbass expression on my face. Can they tell that I have a bedsheet instead of a curtain over my window blinds?”

My mind wandered during class just as much as it had while sitting in a lecture hall when I was eighteen, but now, these classes were held later at night, after I’d been working all day and had eaten dinner. As a result of this, and the fact that I find Statistics to be boring when it’s taught as a series of don’t-worry-about-how-we-derived-it formulas to plug numbers into, I did the worst in Statistics.

But Calc and Linear Algebra were more interesting. When I watched the class videos, I got familiar with the disembodied voices of the teachers, who each seemed to be trying to do an impression of Khan Academy videos. My Calc teacher, with his strong Vietnamese accent, would punctuate every few lines of derivation or proof with, “So what does that mean then?” Every time—new topic, new chapter, new problem, exactly the same tone of voice: “So what does that mean then?”

Eventually, in my head, his cadence merged with the tones of Woody Woodpecker’s laugh, and I began saying it to myself as I did chores around my apartment. “So what does that mean, then?” I’d half-sing at my garbage can liner as I cinched it shut. “So what does that mean, then?” I’d say to a wrinkled button-down shirt, enjoying the pepper shaker-y smell of my iron when it’s turned up to its hottest setting. “So what does that mean, then?” I’d say to the window blinds, when considering whether I should replace the bedsheet I’d hung there with an actual curtain, before answering myself that No, this apartment is too temporary for something as tony as curtains.

Sometimes I’d say it three times in a row, like Woody Woodpecker himself:

“So what does that mean, then?”

“So what does that mean, then?”

“So what does that mean, then?”

I kept a Google Sheet of how much time I spent doing work for each class, and found that I averaged about 20 hours a week total. That broke down to approximately an hour and a half each weekday, and on Saturday and Sunday I would go for about six or seven hours each. I’d get up at 7:30 those weekend mornings and brew a pot of coffee, then sit taking notes and working through every part of each assigned homework, not moving on from a problem until I understood everything about it.

I think that those Saturday and Sunday mornings may have been the happiest I felt during the year 2020. In the middle of a difficult Calc problem, not having the answer yet but certain I was on the right track, while also buzzing on caffeine, as a beam of early horizontal sunlight hit my kitchen backsplash and filled the apartment with more brightness than all my lightbulbs put together, I for once did not feel worried. I was unworried about my parents, my sisters, my brother, my sister-in-law, my niece and nephew, and all the pets. Unworried about COVID, or cancer, or the work stresses of the week. Unworried about getting older, about being alone still, or about enjoying being alone too much; unworried about letting all of this time go by and still feeling like real life hasn’t started; unworried about my dad having another stroke, or about my mom just suddenly up and dying out of nowhere, or cancer, or whether my hairline is changing, or the fact that my heart has been skipping a beat sometimes lately, or whether my friends who I speak to on the phone were getting sick of me, or whether I am too graphic when I describe symptoms I am afraid mean I might have cancer, or whether my apartment neighbors will keep me up with their noise again tonight, or whether the tooth sensitivity I feel drinking cold water lately means I need to risk a dentist visit during a pandemic, or whether I will be able to have healthier boundaries with my parents whenever I return to the northeast, or whether I’ll ever feel truly satisfied and content, or whether I’ll ever feel actual joy some day, or whether my hang-ups, and anxieties, and fears, and regrets about my personal and professional choices will end up all ganging up on me at once, or, of course, whether at any given moment, I might have cancer.

My attitude going into the classes was that I would disregard whatever grades I got and simply aim for as much comprehension as possible. But about halfway through the semester, I lost my nerve and began to think of my grades as a direct indicator of my level of understanding. So I started fretting about my grades, and on days of Calc III exams during the second half of the semester, I took vacation time so I could spend the whole day working on them.

It got a little crazy toward the end, but finally, it was over, and I managed to get all As. That made me happy, even if I knew that that kind of satisfaction is a bit immature. But I felt like I was making up for some of the sins I had committed as a college student, my laziness and my previous lack of appreciation for education finally, in a small way, absolved.

*

I spent Christmas here in Texas. When I think back on Christmases from previous years I find that I can remember the past two years very well because I flew home and packed a lot of family and friend time into a few short days. Before 2018, though, I can’t remember any specific Christmas well enough to recount anything that happened on the day.

But when I was a little kid, I remembered each Christmas perfectly, mainly due to the gifts I got and the room where we put the Christmas tree—where “Christmas happened”: in 1990, it was in the back room and we got a magic set, and also my brother pretended to faint when he saw he’d gotten Reebok Pumps. In 1991, it was in the family room, and my brother and I got the Nintendo game “Base Wars.” In 1992, it was in the living room and we got a Sega Genesis along with the game “Sonic 2.” In 1993, it was in the family room again, and I got a Hot Wheels Key Force car, and my brother got the Genesis game “Hard Ball 3 With Al Michaels.”

In 1994, my grandfather died a few weeks before Christmas, and we got a Sega CD. That was the year I became aware that the Christmas spirit was vulnerable to external forces, one’s first experience with death being the most offensive of those forces, and after a few months I also became aware that a hot new gaming console like the Sega CD could “fail,” slipping into obscurity with a small and unremarkable library of games. As a result, the indestructible-seeming sheen of Christmas fell away, leaving behind a better idea of what Christmas really is: a bare, thin-glassed lightbulb plugged into the middle of the year’s darkest period. After 1994, I can’t really remember what happened each Christmas.

This past Christmas will always be memorable, though, because I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day pretty much doing one of three things: playing Quake (yes, that hobby still refuses to die), watching something Star Wars-related, or video chatting with my family. At any time when I wasn’t speaking to family, I had Christmas music playing in the background, including while Star Wars was on. I turned the heat up in my apartment to 75 degrees and enjoyed how money-wastingly hot it was getting, until my nose started to bleed from the dry air.

I want to take this opportunity to say that I much prefer Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is generally all anticipation and guest arrivals, buoying the mood long into the falling night. From the viewpoint of Christmas Eve, any miracle might happen the following morning. But then after a late, over-buttered breakfast on Christmas Day, there’s nothing much else to do except think about cleaning up and regret how much you’ve eaten. The “anything could happen” feeling is now all gone, collapsed from a dazzling infinity’s worth of possibilities down to one homely outcome.

I hadn’t put up any decorations for my apartment, unless the Christmas music can be considered a decoration. This ended up being a good thing, though, since I didn’t have to take anything down once the holiday was over.

*

I started taking walks pretty early in the pandemic, my first walk happening after about one week of lockdown. That day there was a surprisingly large amount of people also walking. We all stayed far away from one another, since none of us were wearing masks—the width of even a modest suburban Texas street is still impressively wide, so there was no safety issue. I always took the initiative to be the one who crossed the street if I saw someone, exaggeratedly swinging my arms as I crossed so the person walking toward me could see my intentions even from far away. I did this because I figured it would be harder for the dog-walkers to wrangle their dog across the street and get out of my way, and the people without dogs were either old or were walking in a group.

In the beginning I was walking maybe twice a week, which then became three times, which became five. It held at five times a week during the fall semester because I’d have to be on Zoom from 6:30-8:30 PM Tuesdays and Thursdays, which took up the whole span of time in which I would usually walk. Nowadays, no longer taking classes, I walk every night.

For a while, I tried to get home before sunset, because I’m afraid of being hit by a car in the dark. After the clocks shifted back, I had to choose between walking earlier, during rush hour when everyone was arriving back at their houses from work, or waiting to walk until after the sun has set. I ended up buying one of those reflective construction worker’s vests for $8 on Amazon and waiting for nighttime. I feel like a dork when I wear the vest, but most of the people walking at night who I see are also wearing reflective clothes. Theirs are more chic than my vest, though, looking like they were ordered through an expensive fitness-wear catalogue. I’d buy the same type, but to me, walking is a meditative, solitary act, and I don’t want to feel that I’m catering to externalities like looking stylish while I’m trying to feel solitary. It also acts as a tacit acknowledgement that I’m not a criminal: “I’m making myself as visible as possible! I’m not casing your houses to break into them later on!”

Even though the focus of COVID is on the transmission of disease through shared, respired air, I still pay a lot of attention to contaminated surfaces. When I go out anywhere, I have a routine: first, I put on my going-out clothes (newly clean), then my shoes, which are possibly dirty, since I have to re-tie them sometimes with unwashed hands, so before I touch anything else after tying my shoes, I wash my hands. Then, I put on a mask, turn off all the lights except the one at the front door, pick up my keys with my right hand, slip my phone into my left pocket, and walk to the door. I put my keys in my right pocket (my wallet is already there), open the door with my right hand, turn out the light, step out the door, and take the keys out of my pocket to lock the door with, again, only my right hand.

I use my right hand pretty much everywhere outside—to push or pull open doors, to open my car to retrieve something from it, to open my mailbox and carry my mail in—because I know that if I use my left hand, my phone-operating hand, I’m going to have to put the phone into a little UV light phone-sterilizing box that I bought when I get home. And for some reason, I feel like it’s a small moral failure to have to use that UV box, so I try to keep my left hand from touching anything except for the phone. But I know that if I drive anywhere, all bets are off—both my hands touch the steering wheel, my left hand touches the car door handle while getting out, and I push open doors with both hands whenever I get somewhere. I’m sure that my left hand ends up touching something that may have SARS-CoV-2 on it as I carry out an errand, and therefore into the UV box my phone must go when I get home. But, when I go out to walk, there’s a good chance that I won’t need to touch anything with my left hand between leaving the apartment and coming back. If that’s the case, I can use my phone freely while walking if I want to, but when I get home, I can still just take it from my pocket and place it on my desk, no ultraviolet sterilizing waves needed. But of course then I still have to wash my right hand.

The walk is the same route every night now. It’s a vaguely circular, level 2.7 miles, starting northbound, bearing west, south, then east. It takes about forty minutes for me to walk the whole thing, plus or minus four minutes, depending on how warmed up I get while walking. My heart rate generally goes up to about 115 beats per minute for most of the walk, according to my watch, then spikes to 135 as I climb the stairs to my fourth floor apartment at the end.

Insulated by the sound of music or an audiobook on my headphones, and with my hands stuck in my pockets, actually holding onto the cloth pocket linings themselves, I feel less like a person on a walk and more like someone steering a large, inertia-filled thing—a sailboat that I have to tack against an unfavorable wind, or a bobsled whose blades I have to turn out of deep ruts on the ice. But despite feeling bodily awkward, I find suburbia to be a soothing place to move through. I really don’t understand how some people think of the suburbs as some kind of dystopia, to be honest. My neighborhood has wide streets, as I mentioned, and the houses are almost all ranch-style. The trees, like the houses, are shorter than they are in the northeast. Some of the trees look more like very tall shrubbery. As for the ground, the blades of grass are wider, and the soil is just a bit sandier. Sometimes, I see two-inch-long cockroaches, what people back home would call “water bugs,” creeping across the sidewalks.

I can’t remember the names of the streets on the walk, except for Forrest Street, which I noticed once when I saw the street sign while I was running and it made me think of “Run, Forrest, run!” and Kenilworth Street, which has the same name as a street back at home. Other than those, I only know points along the route by the informal names I’ve assigned to them. There’s a road where it changes direction from heading north to heading east, and it looks over a little park. The lack of houses there gives an unobstructed view of the western horizon. For that reason, I call that part of the route “Sunset Bend.” At another point on the route there is a house where, in the beginning of lockdown last spring, a family was always outside, the parents sitting motionless in Adirondack chairs while their kids all went nuts on the front lawn, playing with the sprinkler, or doing hopscotch, or sitting at one of those tiny plastic picnic tables, playing some board game. That part of the walk I called “Kidville.”

There were other houses that were always so inactive, so abandoned-seeming—the blinds were always closed and there wasn’t a car in the driveway—that I started to wonder if anyone lived there at all, and whether maybe the neighborhood association was mowing its lawn to stave off the shabbiness. But after the switch from walking in daylight to nighttime, I saw that some of those houses, while still shut up and silent, had lights on inside in rooms not facing the street. Looking at those houses is like staring into the vents of a space heater in a dark room.

Eventually I started thinking about how the walk is exactly 2.7 miles. Then, idly, I realized that if you multiply 2.7 by 30, you get 81. That number of years, eighty-one, seems like a decent amount of years to hope to live—it’s not greedy, you’re not asking for a hundred years, for example—but also, maybe when I get closer to 81, there will be better medical treatments and 81 will seem younger. Assuming that doesn’t happen, though, I think of 81 years as more or less “a complete life.” It is very sad, but not exactly a tragedy, to die at 81.

With this in mind, I started translating the distance along my walk to human ages. For instance, 1.0 miles into the walk, times 30, would equal 30 years. And 1.2 miles times 30 would equal 36 years, which is how old I am now. Since by the time I’d discovered this “conversion formula,” the walk was already so familiar to me that I had a very good perspective on how far into the walk any given point felt—the precise moment when I sense that I’m transitioning from the middle to the end phase of the walk, for example. So when I came up with the multiply-by-30 conversion formula, I was interested to see exactly what part of the walk 1.2 miles, or 36 years old, corresponded to.

The answer is that it was later in the walk than I’d hoped. The moment I reach 1.2 miles is long past the most scenic parts of the route; it’s just after a left turn that puts me on a long straightaway of modest houses leading to an arterial road, known to me as the hook-around part of the circuit where in past walks, I had thought, “Now I’m on my way back home.”

Over the next few evenings, I noted other points, ones that had come before the 1.2 mile marker, and compared them to parts of my already-lived life: I graduated high school at 0.6 miles into the walk, which was the beginning of Sunset Bend. I got my master’s degree in a spot where, at nighttime, a streetlight shines through the leaves on a tree, giving the street a dance hall, disco-ball kind of lighting (hence, “Disco Point”). That friendly, lighted patch of street, with a jaunty-looking house standing next to it, makes it my favorite part of the walk. As for points I have not yet reached: still ahead of my current age distance, at around 1.5 miles, is Kidville, but I haven’t seen anyone in the front yard there in months now.

Toward the end, almost back home, there’s a large school property. I’ve never seen anyone on the grounds, except for the occasional person who sneaks onto the running track to jog it. Along one of the fences that borders the school, in springtime last year, someone started zip-tying laminated sheets of paper with jokes written on them to the chain links. The jokes are all clean, and pretty lame—these days it seems like almost all kid-friendly jokes are just puns, like “How did the farmer find his wife? He tractor down!”

One time, I saw a kid about ten years old on his bike, riding along the sidewalk and stopping to read each joke. The fence ends at a small park for toddlers. There’s a big plastic sign at the entrance of the park, faded but still legible, that has a boy’s name displayed on it. Below his name is written a tragically short span of years, and below that, a message: “This park is dedicated to the memory of (the boy’s name), and to all of the little tykes of (the neighborhood).” Whoever it was putting up jokes on the schoolyard fence stopped replacing them with new ones some time during the fall, and I walk too late to ever see anyone playing at the playground. Well, that’s not quite true: very rarely, around 9 PM on warm nights, I might see what appears to be a young mother scrutinizing her phone as her kid swings in the dark.

*

I haven’t been to the gym to lift any weights since lockdown started. I’ve been able to do cardio in my apartment, but the result of all the cardio and all the walking is that I’ve lost a decent amount of lifting strength, as well as about ten pounds. This is consistent with how life in general has evolved: I have also reduced the list of spaces I travel to, leaving my apartment only to go to work, to pick up groceries, and to walk through my neighborhood. My body, and the edges of my life, have gone through a great miniaturization, but my perspective has adapted with it—each feature within this smaller space seems more detailed, and the day’s moments are of a finer grain. Inside my apartment, I have realized how much the lighting affects the atmosphere, and as a result the mood, so I can change which lights are on when to reflect the mood of each time of day. When I walk at night, sometimes I have the same feeling I did the week before I moved here from New Jersey, a sort of farewell feeling. That feeling started in the fall as a dessert-like flipside to my happy mornings spent doing math homework. Those evenings, I also felt like I was saying goodbye, to a more insecure, more ignorant version of myself, I guess. Nowadays, I get the feeling that I’m saying goodbye to the person who had, until now, always feared that he was missing out on things.

There will be a time, closer to now than now is to the beginning of the pandemic, when I will leave Texas. I will be happy and relieved to return home, whenever that is. But at the same time, there’s a new feeling that is starting to take root, and it’s a weird one: for all the hardship that the pandemic has presented to me, the anxiety for my family and the limitations it’s put on my mobility, social life, and career, for more than ten months now, its most memorable effect, unless I’m affected by the illness itself, will be that it made me love my neighborhood. I have walked more than 500 miles of it over the months, and scores of miles remain to be walked before I move away. I’ve walked during steaming afternoons, during cloudy sunsets, in pre-dawn twilight on cool mornings, and during soft, breezy evenings. It’s always picturesque, pleasant, very green. The houses look inviting, and the dog-walkers wave to me. I listen to music that suits my mood and do the geographical equivalent of palm reading. That’s all, really.

Can a person love a place? Feel gratitude toward landscaping, houses, parked cars, and people viewed only from a distance? Can someone feel affinity to a fox seen in a churchyard and streetlights shining through leaves in the night? Affection for lawn mower exhaust, for the noise of an approaching SUV slowly carving out a bend? Love for landmarks that correspond to moments in one’s past, or to moments that one might encounter in the future?

There will be a time, I hope, when my years in Texas are far in the past. But some day, I will hear a song, or see a house with a certain architecture, or smell a variety of grass, and Texas will return to me. At the same time, I also hope that it isn’t too overwhelming. I’ve found that I can never tell how potent a memory of a particular time or place will be until there’s a lot of distance between me and it. Sometimes, a memory will come gently, settling on me like a haze, ready to be indulged, even laughed at. In such cases I turn up the music that brought the memory, or take a luxuriating whiff of the scent, and I think back on the time, feeling only a little bit sad.

But other memories swoop down like some kind of predatory bird, and in those cases, the nostalgia feels more like the punch of the bird’s talons in the back of my neck. The sense of missing is so strong that it feels less like nostalgia and more like a distilled, portable homesickness. Ridiculously, I’ll even want to return to the memory’s time and place, despite knowing that in reality it had been fraught with pain or unease. Which makes the sneaking feeling growing during this time, at this place, all the more uncanny. I mean, all that this span of time has been, is me, and some terrain, and the wind, and the light of the sun or the moon. No one else. My nostalgia for anything before this was always about times and places with other people. So who will I be missing?

Someone once said, Wherever you go, there you are. But now, I wonder: is that really true?

[jeannereames]

Hello, this might seem like an odd or unrelated question but, in these uncertain times, do you have any tips for new writers of aspiring historians? I've been feeling awfully discoursged with my writing and the fact that I missed a whole semester of school over the virus.

Let me divide my advice into that for students and for writers.

First, writers, the advice I have now is the same as at any other juncture. Write. Even if you don’t feel like it. Don’t worry if it’s any good. Just write.

One of the earliest lessons I was taught by successful writers, and have only had confirmed in the years since (including by my own experience) is, “Write every day. Even if it’s just 2 pages. Write everyday.” (Or almost every day.)

Writing, like exercise, is a habit. At first, most of what you write on demand may be utter shite. But the more you practice, the better you’ll get at turning out moderately readable prose on demand. There will be times you’re more inspired, or less, but practice really does improve skill.

Find a writing group. Listen to their critique. Don’t get defensive. Unless you’re spectacularly talented, you probably are that bad. LOL. (I was.) There are tricks to good prose. Learn them. Read your stuff out loud, to hear how it falls on the ear. Read A LOT. I mean A LOT. Good stuff. Study what they’re doing. My teachers were Iris Murduch, Toni Morrison, Graham Greene, John Irving, Flannery O’Connor…. Find a writer whose work picks you up and throws you down again, a little bit broken and a little bit more whole. Figure out how she or he did that.

But don’t neglect the nuts-and-bolts, stuff like, “Passive voice is a Bad Thing,” “Said-bookisms suck,” “Don’t over-choreograph,” and “Just use the character’s name, not eleventy-two synonyms.” And especially “’Emerald orbs’ should never be used to describe someone’s eyes,” or the offending writer should be taken out and shot. ;)

I’m not a big fan of books on the writing craft, but I do recommend Dwight V. Swain’s Tricks and Techniques of the Selling Writer, rev. ed. Some of it is quite dated, but most of it isn’t. Scene and Sequel is still A Thing. It works.

Not everyone can be Carson McCullers to pen classics at 22/23/24 (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Reflections in a Golden Eye). But she really only wrote about 4 major novels (in part due to very poor health).

There are writers out there who can count published novels in double-digits. What’s the difference? They sit down and write. It’s not always a classic. In fact, it’s rarely a classic. But it can still be a perfectly good yarn that takes someone out of herself for a little while.

Long ago, I met author Lawrence Dorr, and when introduced, rather shyly said, “I’m not a real writer, but I want to be someday.” Meaning I wasn’t published yet. (I was about 19 at the time.) Dorr just looked at me and asked, “Do you write?” “Yes.” “Then you’re a writer. A writer writes. A writer can’t not write.”

As you can see, I never forgot that exchange.

Dorr was positive inspiration. Harry Crews was negative. That SOB would make me so mad, I once chucked a typewriter out the sliding glass door of a second-story apartment. Broke the door and typewriter both, and I had to pay the apartment complex for it. The upside was I bought an Atari with a word processor. And I got better. Unfortunately it was usually after Crews had posted our grades. But I did learn a few things from the misogynistic bastard–including the trick that there is no muse and writer’s block is just an excuse. “Write, godfuckingdammit,” he’d say. “Two pages a day. Write two fucking pages a day.” (He was my professor before he sobered up so he was still a roaring pain the arse.)

He also insisted that when we want to tie up things neatly, throw a monkey-wrench in it. And to write our demons. Nobody wants to read a story in which nobody bleeds (even if figuratively).

I realize all that probably gives away my age, Ha. My first attempt at a novel was written in longhand, then the second was typed on this sucker, and yes I still have it (typewriter, not the novel, thank god; it was terrible):

Second, students, I am so sorry that you’ve got to worry about losing your job, and maybe your place to live and your car, and still be expected to do homework and attend lectures online that’s only half an education, if that Will we still be doing this come fall? I don’t know. I hope not, but I fear Covid19 will come roaring back, like the Spanish Flu.

But the world is also a lot different place with much greater understandings of viruses, which is why historians (unlike political scientists and sociologists) rarely try prognostication. History never repeats, even if it sometimes rhymes. If there is any good news in looking back at the Spanish Flu, it’s that after the second wave hit, the US (at least) recovered relatively quickly, especially compared to the ‘29 stock market crash a decade later that set off the Great Depression. The good news out of the Depression was FDR’s ability to shove through the New Deal, which resulted in social safety nets like social security, unemployment benefits, the FDIC, and prepaid hospital insurance (the precursor to the eventual Medicare/Medicaid of the ‘60s).

The unhappy news is that US has a bad habit of not fixing its problems till things break spectacularly…like the Civil War (and the trashfire that Reconstruction became), or the Great Depression, or the violence of the Civil Rights Movement.

Also, don’t forget–historians need records. So write what you see around you. What’s it like to be living right now, at this juncture in history? What does it feel like to be young and looking out at a world on fire?

There you combine both writing with history. Maybe you’ll write your own The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.