#vick does art

[cuyberpunk]

have u ever fallen in love w ur own drawing??

-vick

[onebizarrekai]

basement gang activity…

[vickling27]

Fanart for @wr-n her baby slayer:3

[thank you @/nova2cosmos for the help with the coloring]

[angelhummel]

was the glee x orphan black crossover a popular fanon thing at the time or was that something my sister and i made up

[gremlinmodetweeker]

König Rarely Gets Sick, But When He Does...

Inspired by this ask that I was given earlier.

Okay so let's be clear, König grew up in a great home, as mentioned before in this post. He also hated school. So König grew up to absolutely master the art of pretending to be sick. He did the whole 'making fake vomit with oatmeal and orange juice' trick at 5am just to place it around his bed for his mother to find when she woke him up the next morning. I just want to point this out, as one kid with anxiety to another, if you could get out of school as a kid you did (or at least I did because I was a wuss). So, if König just didn't feel up to school on that particular day, he'd pretend to be sick and spend the day being doted upon by his sweet, oblivious and ever-loving mother. He was such a little shit as a kid.

But when König is actually sick, it's a mess. Oh my lord is it ever a mess. He's disgusting. He's a snot and/or vomit factory (almost always both). He refuses to shower or bathe so he gets sweaty and gross and he'll lay in one spot all day, and when you peel him out of it, he leaves a damp patch behind as an unpleasant reminder of his sickness. He's genuinely terrible.

But he's your terrible mess and you need to care for him.

Read below the cut for a more detailed explanation of what König is like when sick.

The worst part of dealing with König is that he can't pretend he's not sick. He used to pretend to be sick, now he tries to pretend he's not and it fails miserably. When König actually gets sick there's no hiding it.

See, König doesn't get the common cold. What he gets are fevers. Bad fevers. There's been a few times that he's had to go to hospital to get his temperatures in check. He's gotten dangerously close to getting seizures because he was so determined to not take care of himself. Thankfully, this only happens at most once a year (two or three if you have kids in preschool) but other than that, he's healthy as a horse.

The thing is, while he's being gross and smelly and awful, he's a big suck for you. He's no longer a man when he gets a fever, he becomes little more than a big wet cat. Absolutely, genuinely terrible. He will flop all over the place like a wet fish and moan terribly. He gets grumpy and angry over nothing, but instead of being in his right mind and having the sense to properly communicate himself, he'll just make bitter comments and curse under his breath as though he never left the barracks. Not at you, mostly at himself. He gets incredibly upset about falling ill and needing the support of others. You'll have to work to keep up his self esteem when he gets sick.

He's a belligerent little bug all the way through. He'll avoid moving like the plague because he knows if he tries to stand that the room will start spinning. He also knows that he can't ask you for everything, so he'll sulk miserably for hours before asking for your help to get up. He is absolutely horrible about asking for your help. At this rate, you'll need to frequently check in on him or else he'll be writhing under the covers when you next check on him. He really doesn't want to overwhelm you, but he takes this to an extreme. He just wants to make things easier for you. He hates being a burden, or at the very least, he hates being weak.

He appreciates the frequent check-ins because he always has something he wants. Maybe a glass of water, maybe a new bucket, maybe even a new book to read. He's a needy man sometimes. Out in the field he has to do everything himself, so having someone there to look after him means the world to him. He'll never be able to thank you enough for what you do for him.

He's a big fan of Vick's Vaporub and slathers himself in Tiger Balm like he's trying to slide through a straw (and yes it's that disgustingly awful). He will often ask for you to apply these balms to him if you can. He also will often put a bit of vaporub under his nose to help keep his nose from chaffing. He absolutely hates how he needs so many tissues. You'll find him sniveling in the middle of the night, covered by a mountain of crumpled tissues piled over empty boxes.

König often ends up making a nest wherever he plops down. If he needs to go somewhere, he's draped in a blanket, carrying his sick bucket, hauling a box of tissues under one arm along with a book, his phone, and anything else he thinks he might possibly need. He leaves a bit of a snail trail of discarded tissues and dropped items wherever he goes. He is a little bit of a pig, really. But you can't be mad at him. If he bends over, the vertigo might make him fall over. He does try to stay neat, but when he's this sick it's hard to be clean.

In the end, the main thing that helps König is you being there. If you're there to keep him clean, change his sheets, feed him broth soups and light meals, he'll be happy. Dote on him with kisses on his forehead and tuck him in when he sleeps. If he's really sick, maybe you can read that history book he's reading for him. If you can do his chores for a few days, he'll pay you back when he can. He cannot possibly express how much he appreciates all you do for him.

He'll give you space if you want it. If you get disgusted by being around sick people, he won't force you to care for him or do something you can't manage, but if you're willing to hold him he'll be elated. He loves being close to you. He loves being pampered by you, and he'll remember these moments fondly. The last time someone treated him so well was when he was sick as a little boy. Having you here and caring for him makes him feel safe in a way he hasn't felt in decades.

[philtstone]

24. Showing up injured at their friend/mentor’s house: for shawn? :)

[emerges from writing this fic bloody and beaten and on the verge of collapse] ill explore karen vicks character in an overly complicated post-episode missing scene fic or die trying! set immediately post "right turn or left for dead". i genuinely dont know if im happy with this but i also cant figure out how to fix it. actually, it would have probably been easier to write if i was willing to rewatch the episodes its based on. which i am not, because i am a sensitive little soul. so i winged it. i think there are like 10 different ideas that crop up and theyre all equally fascinating as character threads but i have no idea if i tied them together in an even remotely coherent way. also, WOULD she say that??? i had to call my brother twice to ask. this is what yall get for sending me actually interesting prompts, huh

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Henry’s voice said on the phone. “I’ll send Shawn over with them on his way out. He's going in your direction, anyway.”

In her short tenure as the junior detective to Henry Spencer’s lieutenant, Karen Vick observed two things:

First, that he was a far more clever strategist than most people gave him credit for. Despite the ongoing wreckage of his impending divorce and a kid who was slipping through his fingers as everyone looked on, Karen didn’t agree with the other junior detectives’ impression of him as a smash-the-door-down old school hard ass with thinning hair and a worst attitude. The man played four dimensional chess right out of a bonafide Star Trek episode. When he really wanted something done, Henry Spencer could bullshit and bluff and battle plan with the pros, and half the time you’d get too caught up in the blustering misdirect to realize his game was intricately thought out three steps in advance.

It was how they caught the Shorttown Killer, and also how they got that idiot Trembley at the mayor’s office to finally replace their coffee maker. Karen went home to her then-boyfriend, now-husband, and, right before bed, pulled out an old school workbook and took notes.

The second thing was that Henry Spencer loved his son. 

Not a lot has changed since then, Karen thinks, staring down the weirdness that she now faces through her open front door.

“… Oh — Mr. Spencer,” Karen says, because it’s rude not to greet your employees when they show up at your home outside of work hours, and are also your old friend-slash-colleague’s kid. “Hello. Thanks for — bringing these over.”

“Dad said it was urgent,” Shawn says.

Urgent isn’t quite how Karen would describe it, but hearing through the grapevine that your department might be facing an audit sometime in the next quarter does light a fire under the proverbial ass. Karen would rather bend a few rules and make sure the last year’s i’s and t’s are dotted and crossed right than leave her detectives vulnerable to the whims of a mayoral stooge. 

In general, Karen prides herself on caring about the people under her command just enough that it inspires genuine friendship and loyalty. The just is important. Care needs tempering – it’s important to pull back, press pause, keep certain lines uncrossed. It’s especially important if you want to be successful as a woman in an authority position where lives are often on the line. 

What she’s saying is that she tries to make it none of her business what her employees get up to in their spare time. She really genuinely does. She’s shut O’Hara down gently midway through the twelfth sweetly-frazzled attempt to overshare about her dating life (or her efforts to befriend her next-door neighbor, or the endearing personality quirks of her last cat – rest in peace, Triscuit, you will be missed –) enough times to be well-versed in the art of I Won’t Ask, You Won’t Tell, But You’ll Probably Know I Care Anyway.

An invaluable rapport to maintain. In any situation, Karen thinks, but especially when you’re a person who regularly hires and works alongside Shawn Spencer.

She’s not sure whether what she’s looking at right now makes her want to second guess or double down on her usual policy. 

“Special delivery,” Shawn adds, like everything is super normal.

Karen narrows her eyes. She glances behind them into the quiet residential street.

“Shawn,” she says.

“Yes, Chief?”

“You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“Ha,” he says, half rolling his eyes to accompany a weird aborted grin. “No. Even I don’t think riding a motorcycle with a concussion is a good idea. What if someone who wasn’t me got hurt? That’s — that would be no good, then you’d have to arrest me. Wouldn’t that be a huge bummer for the whole team, Chief? Gus would cry. And my dad wouldn’t let me take his truck.”

Karen stares at him. Shawn stares at the ground.

“I got a cab,” he says.

“And you are … taking another cab – home?”

Shawn looks quite suddenly like he’s going to be sick.

“Sure,” he says. 

Shawn looks terrible. Bruised face, bags under his eyes, and a weird frenetic energy twitching in his limbs that doesn’t pair well with his general air of exhaustion. He’s holding his shoulders stiffly and can barely meet her eye. His t-shirt and sweatpants are rumpled, like he slept in them, even though it’s too early in the evening for Henry to have woken him up to send him here, and when he thrusts the promised files out into the air toward her, abrupt and, admittedly, Shawn-like, he only just hides the awkward wince that immediately overtakes his left side.

The last couple days have been a bit of a whirlwind, so Karen can’t say she necessarily blames herself for not looking more closely. 

Even so.

Slowly, Karen reaches forward and divests him of the case files. They slip a little bit, because Karen can’t seem to stop peering shrewdly at Shawn’s face while she does it, and on instinct he reaches forward to stop the stack from toppling. 

It does help, but the autopilot he moves on makes it harder to mask what is to Karen’s eyes a very obvious flinch. 

“Alright,” is all he says. “Well, good to see you. Time to head back to the old hay stack.”

Like a needle in a haystack and time to hit the hay, Karen supplies needlessly in her own head. Aloud, she says, in many ways against her better judgment, 

“Mr. Spencer, are you okay?”

Shawn sways on the spot for a second, one fist clenched, mouth half open. For a strange moment, Karen gets the impression that he’s trying really hard not to say the wrong thing.

“... As rain,” he finally manages, then nods to himself like he achieved some great feat. “Okay. Well –”

“Did something happen to your shoulder?” 

“What? No!” Shawn’s eyes flutter closed and he shakes his head, “I’m – fine, Chief. It’s not – I mean, I’m – normal, fine. Fine in a normal way.”

“That’s not something an individual who’s fine in a normal way would say,” Karen says. 

“Uh, is it not! It is. I would know, because I am that individual. It’s – I was – there’s just mild – pfft … stab wound – or something, who would even …”

Is Shawn broken? is the unhelpful thought that pops into Karen’s head. She’s never heard an attempt to bullshit collapse so quickly into pathetic nothingness before – certainly not from Shawn.

Perhaps even more than his father, the kid’s a pro.

And then the rest of the sentence catches up with her.

“A mild stab wound?”

Oh boy. She watches Shawn’s eyes widen with the panic that proceeds an unquestionable blunder.

“Chief –” 

“In.”

“Chief, I really, really don’t think –”

“Inside my house. Now.”

He’s certainly uncoordinated enough that he doesn’t put up much of a fight. Karen herds him  through the door as firmly as possible and leads them in a beeline past Richard’s office toward the bathroom, ignoring the reedy stream of consciousness that spills out of Shawn’s mouth as they go.

“Oh, hey, woah, it’s been like forever since I was in here. Did you redecorate? I swear that lamp wasn’t there the last time we visited. It could be the tacos I had earlier, but I’m sensing a distinct neo-modern Chinese aesthetic going on here, Chief, which calls to mind the merits of cultural appreciation in suburban home decor – hey, is that your husband’s office? Can I meet him? Is he home? That man is a true enigma to us, Chief, and it’s leading me to believe that he must possess all the facial and personality qualities of the pop superstar Mr. Pitbull Worldwide –”

Richard is home, actually, and Karen needs to alert him to the fact that they have an unexpected house guest, so, ignoring Shawn completely, she calls out,

“Honey? Shawn Spencer’s here for a couple minutes about a work thing! I’ll go up to put Iris to bed in a second!” in the finely-honed There Are Many Layers Of Complicated To This secret married tone that Richard should probably be able to catch through the closed office door. 

“Alright,” floats out her husband’s pleasant voice. “Tell him hi from me.”

Perfect. There’s about a ninety-three percent chance he understood.

They make it to the bathroom, only stumbling slightly. Shawn says,

“-- or The Rock. Does your husband look like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson? I really think that would make so many things about the Chief Vick family make sense –”

Karen closes the bathroom door with a snap and crosses her arms.

“Sit,” she says, in a voice that even he knows brooks no argument.

Shawn does. He looks – well, beyond uncomfortable, and more than a little bit miserable, and probably closer to completely dissociating than either of them are prepared for. Karen wonders belatedly if he's gotten any sleep at all in the last forty-eight hours.

“I’m assuming you have not been to the hospital.”

He gives her a baleful look, like he really expected better of her. She only just stops herself from rolling her eyes in response. And there’s that huge goose egg on his forehead, too. What, exactly, he got up to in between Carlton’s wedding reception and oh-eight-hundred hours this morning Karen has no idea, but he looks like someone’s run him through the world’s most aggressive industrial tumble dry cycle and spat him mercilessly back out. 

Or maybe over with a truck.

Sending a silent prayer to the universe that Iris never hit puberty and remains a sweet-tempered six-year-old forever, Karen gets to business.

“Well, I had to at least ask. Shawn. Does it need stitches?” He mumbles the answer the first time, and then looks beyond startled when she grabs him under the chin so he’ll look her in the eye. “Listen. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But you’re going to tell me the truth. Got it?”

Shawn grimaces so hard at her words it’s almost a flinch. 

“No,” he says finally, clearly enough that she hears him. Karen raises an eyebrow. “No, I don’t think it needs stitches,” he articulates, but doesn’t meet her eye.

“Hm. Alright. I have gauze and tape in the medicine cabinet. Can I … is it alright if I pull up the sleeve of your t-shirt?”

Released from her hold, he groans and presses his face into one palm. “Chief –”

“I don’t really know what you expected, coming here! It’s not like I’m any less of a hardass than your father.”

“Yeah, but I can bitch back at my dad,” Shawn says, sounding like he’s finally realizing the magnitude of his mistake. Karen smiles grimly.

“Tough. Now pull your shirt up while I get the first aid kit.”

While Shawn proceeds to wrestle awkwardly with his t-shirt in a muted shuffle against the toilet seat, Karen rummages efficiently through the cabinet and eyes him through the bathroom mirror. He seems oddly reluctant to expose himself. In fact, in a stark contrast to his usual insistence on making his presence and contributions as obtrusively obvious as possible, Shawn seems intent on shrinking into the aforementioned Asian-flavored floral wallpaper (which does need an update, unfortunately) with all the equanimity of an anxious chameleon. Karen feels her eyebrows crease. Taking the first aid kit in hand, she brings it over and deposits it into his arms, ignoring his small startle.

“How about you hold that,” Karen says. Shawn does, against his chest, like a pillow. She walks around him and surveys the damage, antiseptic gauze in hand.

He wasn’t lying about the severity, at least. It’s a shallow thing, already mostly congealed, and has only stained his shirt in a small smattering spot of crusty brown blood.

Karen swabs at it with the alcohol using light careful fingers.

“Ow, ow ow ah –”

“Don’t be such a baby. It’s hardly a life-threatening injury.”

“Super insightful, Chief,” Shawn snaps, as genuinely sarcastic as he’s probably ever been with her, “never thought of that myself. Totally the reason why I just had to go to the hospital.”

He doesn’t pull away, but she can feel the tension radiating through his back. She blinks, one eyebrow crawling up her forehead. 

Alright then. So that’s how it’s going to be. 

“I’m assuming your father doesn’t know about this,” she says.

Shawn grunts, noncommittal. Huh. Maybe he does know, then, and has just been disallowed from doing anything about it right now.

She tosses the first used antiseptic wipe into the trash.

Goddamn four dimensional chess.

She supposes she’s never been bad at the game. She may as well work her way backwards through the moves: Guster, the most obvious node in Shawn’s turn-to-in-a-crisis-system, would never voluntarily abandon his friend in a time of need, so Karen assumes that whatever this is has either already included his support or not been made known to Gus at all yet. Henry’s likely exhausted his own usefulness in the situation, and Detective O’Hara is …

Karen has to work very hard for her hands not to pause in a way that gives away her hard-earned mental sleuthing. A bad feeling wholly unrelated to her ill-advised hangover of the day before begins to bloom at the back of her gut.

“You have really small hands, Chief.”

Shawn’s voice is notably more subdued than before.

“Do I?” 

“They’re like … little kangaroo hands. Like the mom kangaroo from Whinnie the Pooh.”

“Didn’t you know?” Karen says, not unkindly. “They’re given out at the hospital when all first-time moms leave with their baby.”

He lets out a tired little laugh, more boyish than he probably means it to be, and in spite of herself Karen feels her heart clench. She isn’t blind. In all her last seven years as the leader of their chaotic little precinct, she has never seen Juliet O’Hara look as ill as she did yesterday morning. The usually sweet-faced young woman had all the pallor of a Victorian ghost, and stood so far away from Shawn in any given room that to an unassuming observer he might have had the plague.

There are only a handful of things, Karen thinks, that could have invited that particular evolution in their dynamic. She rips the surgical tape from its canister a little bit more harshly than is strictly necessary and fights the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

“So,” she says conversationally, laying the tape down in neat, gentle little strips, trying not to pinch the wound too tightly. “Any fun plans for the evening?”

Shawn sniffs. She can see him gripping his hands together over his knee from where she stands above him.

“Um, yeah, uh –” he clears his throat, “you know me, Chief. We’re working our way through a Robert Guillame marathon, which means some good old fashioned Benson, running commentary on the quality of that child acting, naturally.”

“Naturally.” 

“Then Gus and I were gonna hit up the new, the new chili cheese joint up by Hermosa, you know – they’re doing sliders –”

“Chili cheese sliders?” Karen hums, contemplative.

“Buy ‘em by the pound,” Shawn agrees. “Then I was thinking of getting a tattoo, maybe a belly button piercing, I’ve been really – really needing a change – would you let Iris get one, if she asked?”

“A tattoo?” Karen clarifies, cutting off the next piece of tape. The skin around the cut is warm to her touch but Shawn’s arms have goosepimpled. The hair at the back of his head sticks up unstyled, like he slept weirdly and couldn’t be bothered to fix it come morning.

“Of a marmoset. That’s what I’m thinking. With distinctly effeminate vibes.”

“Well, Dick hates marmosets. So I’d probably encourage her toward something else. Perhaps a sea lion.”

“Like Shabby.” The nervous note has bled into his legs again, and his earlier subdued tone has gone back to sounding strained. “Yeah, that’ll – that could be it.”

“All in one night, huh?” Karen says.

“I –” Shawn doesn’t even hiss when she presses down with a cotton gauze to cover the last of the thickened blood. His legs are properly jittering again. “I was – yeah, y-you know me, Chief, total night owl.”

“Shawn?”

“Yeah?”

“What about going home?”

Silence. Shawn doesn’t answer for a moment long and pregnant enough that Karen wonders if her question will be ignored entirely. 

Then,

“Chief,” he says finally, in an awful, tiny little voice, “I really, really fucked up.”

Finally, her hands do falter in their ministrations; as emotionally exuberant as Shawn often is, she doesn’t think she’s ever actually heard him close to tears. For a horrible moment she wonders if Shawn Spencer will suddenly start crying atop her toilet seat for reasons neither of them are capable of discussing honestly. Then she wonders if her horror makes her a terrible boss.

Boss – mother – person.

Oh, dear.

She sets down the surgical tape and lays a ginger palm over the newly-bandaged gouge in his shoulder. It’ll probably scar, but not at all badly. She doesn’t like to think about the far more obvious one just below, puckering in a violent yet unassuming divot. Another narrow miss for Henry’s boy. 

At this point there are so many of them to count, Karen has to question the statistical likelihood of the whole thing. Becoming a mathematical anomaly is, Karen can attest with confidence, not exactly the future the Lieutenant Spencer she knew dreamed of for his increasingly unmanageable teenager. 

Doing what he loved, on the other hand – absolutely. Being with a person he loved, even more so. Karen grits her teeth at the irritating web she’s spent the last six years constructing around herself and wonders if this evening right here is some kind of cosmic karma for leaving Iris in the care of nannies for the first three years of her life.

That sounds like the kind of thing those horrible parenting magazines and Karen’s mother-in-law would claim, anyway.

“Shawn,” she says slowly, because she has to at least knock this possibility off the list before risking her career in an attempt to mediate her detectives’ love lives, “did you … you weren’t – unfaithful, were you?”

“What?!” 

Shawn yanks his shoulder away and whirls around to face her with such a look of horrified betrayal on his face that it’s almost comical. 

“No!” 

Thank fucking God, Karen thinks. Aloud, she says,

“Well, I’m sorry, I had to at least ask!”

“No! No! What the hell, Chief!”

“Oh would you be quiet! I’m gathering my evidence here!”

“How could I – I would never – you’d even think that I could –”

“I know! Shawn, for God’s sake –” He’s scrambled to his feet in the cramped bathroom space, glaring, and has probably messed up all that surgical tape in the process. The half open first aid kit and his crumpled shirt press lopsided against his front and her garbage can is now full of oxidizing bits of cotton. Karen officially gives in to the urge to press her palms against her forehead. “I had to ask!” she repeats finally. “You and I both know you’re not gonna give me much else to work with, and you sounded so – so sad!” 

Shawn barks out a hysterical little laugh. Karen almost growls in frustration. 

“I am not going to risk all the very hard-earned rules I have in place without knowing for sure that my instincts aren’t wrong. Is that so hard to appreciate?”

Does it count as sound police work when the framework for your investigation is an unacknowledged lie? Karen doesn’t really know. Probably there’s another math metaphor to be made in there (you screwed your proof from the very beginning, maybe, Richard the professor would definitely have thoughts), or just a straight up joke. How to solve a case that’s cold before it ever has the chance to go live; a cover-up if she ever saw one. Unlikely that O’Hara will peep a word, and things will be a true mess for a few weeks, if she can’t make an educated guess about it. And no one will be explaining anything to Carlton, either …

Right before their goddamn audit, Karen thinks, aggrieved. She wonders if Henry considered this in his calculus. Send Shawn over, have her deal with him. Offer a huge unspoken you’re gonna be walking into a shitstorm tomorrow canary for her perennially chaotic mess of a coal mine. 

She can’t help but feel begrudgingly grateful, but that doesn’t mean she and he won’t be having words about this later.   

“Jesus, Karen,” Shawn mutters, pressing his face back into his free hand. Karen shakes her head and squares her shoulders.

“Well then! Back to the issue. You fucked up.”

“You know what? I can’t talk about this with you.”

“Oh, Mr. Spencer, I assure you I am more than well aware.”

Shawn blinks at her between his fingers, looking genuinely confused for the first time since he showed up at her door. 

Karen does not bother to clear up his confusion; it’s better this way, anyhow.

“Will you be sleeping at Gus’s place or your father’s?” she asks, crossing her arms.

“I’m – I don’t –” Shawn doesn’t meet her eye. The earlier thread of anxiety is back. “I wasn’t …”

So, neither. 

“Put your shirt back on,” she says. “We’re relocating to the living room.”

“Chief –”

“That was an order, Mr. Spencer.”

The living room is as quiet and mundane as it was an hour ago. It’s past Iris’s bedtime – she’ll have to go up, and soon at that. Karen seats her guest, retrieves a mug and a bag of chamomile from the kitchen, and removes the fluffy throw blanket from the basket behind the couch on her way back in. He’s deflated completely by the time the tea and blanket are set in front of him. Small and exhausted. Caught. It’s a horrible way to think about it. But she can’t avoid the hundred yard stare – Karen has seen it one too many times in people only just realizing they’re about to go away for life.

“Shawn,” she says, firm as she can make it. “Drink the tea. You’re dehydrated.”

“I’m … what?”

“Your lips are dry. You shouldn’t be dehydrated with a concussion.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Karen suddenly wonders if he’s going to get up and leave. She has experience with these things – she knows a runner when she sees one.

“I might as well have,” Shawn finally whispers.

She doesn’t catch it the first time. “What?”

“I – I might as well ha – Chief, I …” Deep shuddering breaths. He’s finally shutting down, she realizes. She can’t send him back out like this; Henry would give her the stink eye for a month.

Goddamn Spencers and their goddamn irritating overcomplicated lives.

Karen pushes the tea directly into his hands and tilts her chin so she can meet Shawn’s eye. He’s still lucid enough that she doesn’t think he’ll start hyperventilating, but now that the outrage and adrenaline has worn off, the symptoms of shock are pretty hard to miss. “Shawn,” she says again, and wills for him to understand.

“What if she – what if I never –” He can’t get the full sentence out. He looks at her, eyes wide and terrified.

Life sentence, Karen thinks again. The messy stack of files Shawn brought over sits almost unimportantly on the coffee table between them and a memory comes to her, unbidden, of words penned carefully in the corner of a modified police report that she pulled the minute the door closed on the McCallum case seven years ago. 

Date: May 4th, 1995. Reporting Officer, Spencer, Lt. H. Perpetrator a caucasian male, brown hair, five foot nine, insists on wearing those stupid earrings just to spite me. What the hell do you want me to write here, Chief? Spent two hours in the fucking principal’s office convincing them not to expel him one month off from graduation. All that effort, and I still booked the kid. It’s gonna follow him for life, and it’s gonna be me that did it to him. For life. You think he’ll ever forgive me? He’s the greatest thing in my pathetic little world and he keeps breaking my heart, and I can’t even properly accept that it’s my fault. 

How’s that for a fucking crime.

She needs to go put her daughter to bed. It’s the thought that keeps running through her head, oddly enough, like a strange antidote to the impotent anger and heartbreak and frustration she’s feeling for the people under her care.

With all the notes she took in that little workbook, she still let herself become complicit in the painstaking, convoluted resolution of Henry’s mistakes without accounting for all the variables.  

Richard’s footsteps sound muffled in the next room; he’s made his way upstairs in Karen’s absence. She needs to go. She wants to hear the soft and sleepy love you Mama that with her unpredictable hours and regular long nights isn’t nearly routine enough.

“Shawn,” she says evenly. “Do you love her?”

It’s hard to reconcile the smarmy kid who tried to barter with her for twelve hundred a day with the devastated young man sitting on the couch in front of her.

“Chief …” he starts, barely above a whisper.

“Good. Then she’ll see that. Detective O’Hara is a smart and observant woman. What she chooses to do next is her decision, but … you might be – well, comforted by the fact that she’ll know that – truth.”

Shawn stares at her. The tea steams in front of him, cooling in increments. She takes a deep breath and gets to her feet, patting his uninjured shoulder brusquely. 

“I have to go check on Iris. When I come back down, I can drive you to the Psych office.”

Iris is fast asleep when she gets there. A library book lays open face down over her stomach, and her soft brown hair fans out against the pillow, silhouetted by the soft glow of the unicorn nightlight in the wall above her. Karen turns off the bedside lamp, tucks her daughter in, and kisses her forehead. Just before she leaves, she hears it: murmured, half-awake.

“Love you, Mama.”

“I love you too, baby.”

Karen goes back to her living room, car keys in hand. She’s planned her next move in the driver’s seat enough times throughout her career that it shouldn’t be too hard. 

[gawa-ng-gabi]

OKAY OKAY RAMBLES OF HEADCANONS ABOUT MIGUEL X A FILIPINO S/O

Okay, I'm a Filipino and I just have to get this out of my system. Might make some art about it in the future.

FIRST OF ALL THE FRIGGING LANGUAGE.

For those of you who don't know, the Philippines was colonized by Spain for 300+ years before the Americans and the Japanese got to us so until now, we have some Spanish words in our language.

So imagine taking Miguel home to meet your family and Miguel being a bit nervous he won't understand when you start speaking in Filipino (plus yannow, first impressions) then the first thing your relatives say when you introduce him:

Uy, ang guwapo naman ng jowa mo.

And suddenly, he's a bit comforted because he understood only one word in that sentence and he knows he has a good impression already.

Also cursing in Filipino when he's around!!! Istg cursing in Filipino hits harder than any "fuck you" you can throw around. If you and Miguel get into an argument and you let out a malutong na "tangina naman, oh" , he knows how serious shit is.

Also, I highkey believe that Miguel loves it (dare I say gets turned on) when he catches you speaking to yourself in Filipino and just being in your element when you're concentrating on something.

NEXT THE FOOD

MY GOD THE FOOD. HOW MUCH I WOULD LOVE TO COOK FOR THIS MAN.

Cooking champorado for him on rainy days (there's actually a fic for this written by Luciel49 in Ao3 A MUST READ!!!). Tuyong adobo with egg and steaming rice. Beef mechado during New Year. Miswa when any one of you is sick. Pancit canton, Lumpia, and Leche Flan for the S/O's birthday. Taking him around the Philippines to try street food like Kwek-Kwek, Betamax, or Dynamite. Sisig Nachos while staying in and drinking with him??? I COULD GO ON AND ON ABOUT COOKING FOR THIS MAN. I WANT TO MAKE HIM SMILE FROM THE FOOD I MADE FOR HIM!!!

TAKING CARE OF HIM WHEN HE'S SICK

(or idk how his spider altered genes work but let's say he does get coughs and colds). You make him salabat with lemon when he's got coughs. If he's got the flu, you make him arroz caldo or maybe lugaw with tokwa't baboy (making the baboy extra special by making it the lechong kawali version). Before sleeping, rubbing Vicks on his back and chest while wrapping him up in a blanket.

(I'll add on to the list as I think of more. Suddenly want to make an OC for my headcannons, now.)

[dustedmagazine]

Stephen Becker — Middle Child Syndrome (Record Euphoria)

Photo by Chris Weiss

Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Stephen Becker creates artful, knowing pop music in which all the elements in the mix, well, pop. Bright and airy, these ten songs benefit from Becker’s approach to production, which always feels punchy but spacious, each instrument given a chance to shine. However, the artistry also comes from how expectations are turned on their head, and what seems simple and digestible on the surface turns out to have a sting in the tail. Take the chorus of “The Answer,” for example. Becker harmonizes sweetly with guest vocalist Taylor Vick, but the line doesn’t sound like a happy outcome: “I gave you the answer that you wanted” — at what cost?

Middle Child Syndrome holds a similar appeal to 2022’s A Calm That Shifts — which I praised for “how subtly it insinuates its way into your consciousness” — but this one feels more elusive, fidgety, and uncertain. “Pause and Reason” opens the album with a sharp intake of breath, the sound of a record button being pressed, and a count-in. But rather than launching straight in, there’s a twinkling cloud of hesitant synthesizer tones. When the song does kick off with its forcefully strummed acoustic and fuzz guitars, there’s already uncertainty behind the bravado.

The tellingly titled “Waste Away” is a brisk, cut-time country strut with an existential crisis woven into the words. Likewise, though “Spray Paint” has an undeniably jaunty bounce to the music, on the chorus Becker sings, “I’m not sure if anyone is listening / Does it even count if no one’s there to be a witness?” At the end of side A, “Range” gives Becker a more sparse and pensive musical environment to reflect upon his anxieties, with some lovely vocal harmonies from Alena Spranger: “I’m not lost, I’m just outside my range / I’m not lost, I’m just a little spaced.” It’s a welcome change of pace, punctuated by some surprising production details, such as string swells and whirring effects.

On side B, “I Held An Echo” see-saws delicately between lonely minor-key verses and heartening major-key choruses backed by Katie Von Schleicher. “Picturing Cosmos” feels like a country cousin of “Waste Away,” but more down-tempo and lo-fi, with aching cries of pedal steel to counterbalance the rhythm section’s reluctant trudge. “Signal” strips things right back to guitar and voice, the vocal melody tightly following the guitar as the edges of the mix are troubled by percussive details, piano stabs, and atmospheric rumbling. The song builds, trying to break out of its entropy, only to fall back into its original form, followed by a curious vaporwave outro. “Ought” echoes the fuzzy, driving sway of “Pause and Reason,” with more self-doubt and personal dissection in the chorus: “I’m thinking I’m not who I ought to be.”

The closing track, “Fury,” offers a neat summation of the album’s themes and charms. Lonely descending electric guitar lines and Becker’s voice are buoyed along by melancholy woodwinds, but only for so long. “It’s OK you didn’t graduate,” Becker coos, “You just had other plans.” A final relieved outbreath, and it’s over. For 37 minutes Becker has a captive listener. Sounds like he could use one.

Tim Clarke

[totalswap-official]

Creator: @deimosbreakfrost

_______________________________________________

"they're here because they don't wanna be just like YOU!"

-Hey, Hey!!!

Thank You for Chiming in and opening the GODDAMN door!!/unnecessary ref

Anyways, I'm Deimo (sometimes Jimmy might be here too:P) and Welcome to the OFFICIAL TSI BLOG!!!

_______________________________________________

-Quick explanation of what total swap island is:

-Total Swap Island is a Total Drama based fan project. As far I could think, it will be a YouTube series.

-In total Swap island, there will be 24 participants that will get into dangerous perfectly safe Challenges for 1 million dollars!

-In every challenge a team will obviously win and a team will obviously lose. And when a team loses, they ALL will have a encounter in The execution cerimony where they will Eliminate one of their team Mates! (The name is just for exaggeration, they'll just vote off a team mate. Not kill them.)

-After A LOT of eliminations and challenges, all the remaining participants will be merged in just ONE team where it will be One against one.

-There will be 1 or 2 months for one of the participants win.

-It might happen everything in this reality show. People starting dating, exes finding eachother, weird ships, odd friendships, dark truths being discovered, insanity, unnecessary acts of violence, erm, a-and more!

Just right here, right now, on TOTAL SWAP ISLAND!

(The show happens in the 2000's, but in this season it happens 2003)

-If you want to know more about my project, please click in read More.

_______________________________________________

-They'll eventually be linked with the post where their bios are on it

_______________________________________________

-Hosts.. and pseudo-hosts:

1. Britney Lindermann McGillis (Swap of: Chris and Brainely) 

2. Jason Hodder Myers - (Swap of: Chef and Chris)

3. Saint Jimmy/ Scott Von Benjamin - (original character)

4. Deimo/ Dan Vázquez - (original character)

_______________________________________________

Participants and teams;

 -Be Gay Do Crimes:

1. Nipper Mccorp Silva - (Swap of: Ripper and Owen)

2. Alfonso Novacain Weakarm (Swap of: Raj and Lorenzo)

3. Michael Novacain Weakarm - (Swap of: Wayne and Chet)

4. Ashly Lee - (Swap of: Axel and Eva)

5. Zeck/Zacarias Spencer Kennedy - (Swap of: Harold and Sam)

6. Fubuki Shinrai - (Swap of: Duncan and Trent)

7. William Domenic Ross - (Swap of: Dave and Cody)

8. Ronnie Von Benjamin - (Swap of: Trent and Duncan)

9. Ayesha Letícia Lima - (Swap of: Izzy and Scary Girl)

10. Jane Stephen Way - (Swap of: Gwen and Millie)

11. Sarah Doe Miller - (Swap of: Topher and Sierra)

12. James "J.K" Kurt - (Swap of: MK and Ezekiel)

_______________________________________________

 •Virtual Disastorlogy:

13. Marilyn Der Versage - (Swap of: Heather and Julia)

14. Gerald Der Versage - (Swap of: Noah and Chase)

15. Bobby Vick Janisse - (Swap of: B and Geoff)

16. Alex Mark Chapmen - (Swap of: Tyler and Bowie)

17. Christian Marquéz Lopez  - (Swap of: Alejandro and Zee)

18. Nathalie Beverly Williams - (Swap of: Emma and Beth)

19. Duke Brobeck Smith - (Swap of: Damien and DJ)

20. Nicky Angellis Torchio - (Swap of: Leshawna and Anne Maria)

21. Damiano Joseph Spears - (Swap of: Justin and Caleb)

22. Helena Gordon Ahlberg - (Swap of: Bridgett and Scarlett)

23. Mia Weaving Ortega - (Swap of: Nichelle and Lindsay)

24. Clarissa Jon Sawyer - (Swap of: Courtney and Priya)

_______________________________________________

-Things that'll have in this blog !!

1. Asks to the characters: want to send an ask to your favorite character or a character that called your attention? Send them a ask!! If you want to; just get into the inbox, type "undear *character name*", type what you want to tell them and after a while (unterminable time, actually) they'll answer (even if they're forced to do so.)

2. Posting/Rebloguing art: I mean.. it'll be hard to even gain the 5 minutes of fame that TSI had in the start of this year but whatever happens, we'll try to have a fanbase and Carry it on with it. So, if you want to us to (stalk and hunt you down.) find your art, don't forget to use the #TSI fanart tag so we can reblog it here !! Talking about art, we'll have our own art that will be posted in here! Of course, not all of them will be something to be seem as canon.. just sketching and drawing for fun, y'know? So mostly of them will have the #not canon tag

3. Yes. We do support fandom activities: I mean, we'll not go completely unnoticed during all this time, right? So of course we'll support our fandom (unless they're being problematic, fucked up, retarded or disgusting.) so we'll not mind you giving headcannons, other designs, ships and more cool stuff to them! (Again. UNLESS the headcannons are problematic and the ships are Proships.)

_______________________________________________

-Some things that I (creator) want to say:

-TSI is NOT. FOR. KIDS. it'll probably be for people on 14+ or 16+. (Kids will still find it and consume it? Yeah, sure and whatever. It's better them to like TSI than cough cough, be a theri- cough cough)

-Why that? It'll have acid/dark humor (basically the humor that the internet had in the 2000's), mentions of suggestive topics, cursing and mention/use of drugs

-The Series will have A LOT of references to internet culture, horror media and overall rererences to musics/albums/band/artists (especially the 2000's ones)

That's it for now, welcome to the Shitshow

_______________________________________________

All of this boys and all of this girls, losing their souls to the material World..

[cuyberpunk]

ive been drawing a ton lately, just wanted to post one that i'm rly proud of

<3

luv ya!

-vick

[isame-allen]

Alt au where the meme squad and their siblings aren't wanted criminals and has jobs(I think Victoria and ellie already has jobs but I forgot)(this is my take on what jobs they would have)

Nm is a famous violinist, miles probably something related to astronomy, astrology, or science, and Pluto is a streamer? Idk what Pluto would be

Cross is a streamer, Slash a butcher? Or a streamer too?

Error works for JR, byte is probably working for JR too

Ohhh I love these type of questions

I totally agree with nightmare because I do think that a violinist does fit him and because I can’t think of anything else

For miles, I feel like he’d be an aerospace engineering technician or an ecologist in the JR. I’m leaning towards ecologist more because I feel like miles would want to help the scientists study different aus with different environments and because he wants to go to different aus just cuz

For pluto, he’d be a forensic scientist and a part time lecturer in criminology. Because I feel like he would be very good in identifying how victims are killed and because he likes teaching others this

Slash would be a weapon engineer in the JR. She’d create the most badass looking weapon and it would actually be beneficial in battles

I honestly do not know if vick has a canon job but let’s just change it cuz why not

Vick would work as a trainer in Chinese martial arts, specifically in defense like tai chi or wing chun. She took after cross’s classes when he retired from training martial arts

I feel like cross would work as an attendant at a skateboard, rollerblade, and roller skate (all in one place) park where he is one of those helpers with people who are new to the sport and he’d host classes for people who wants to learn more about said sport. He can still be a streamer tho just not a very active one, he would post about gaming and probably would drop a bafaquan technique here and there

Going for a computer science/machinery stream for the quintons

Error would probably work as a database administrator for the JR. I don’t think knitting as a job would be entertaining for error and would make him dislike it if he does knitting for a job

For byte, I feel like she’d be a quality assurance engineer and an IT specialist. She probably doesn’t want to work a lot like mentally especially since she’s only very experienced in IT, so byte chose quality engineering and IT as it really isn’t that needed in the JR I don’t think so

[zimithrus]

Tag 9 people you want to get to know better!

I always get nervous about tagging people cause I always feel like I’ll bother them, but if I had to pick some people I’ll go ahead and tag @secluded-delusions @up-sideand-down @thatrandomartistyoufound and @kazeshxni​ I know it’s not 9 but still 😅 And no pressure to participate guys! Also thank you for the tags @prismaticpichu and @aerislei !!

Three Ships:

Cloud/Zack - FFVII: I remember when I first started shipping this about 10 or so odd years ago, even still have the first art I ever drew of the ship lol! But I’ve loved it for such a long time, there was just something about two best friends through thick and thin, with their cute little x arm handshake thing, Zack inviting Cloud to lunch (even though Cloud is currently suffering from motion sickness lmao bad timing there Zack XD) and that he cared for Cloud for like 4 fucking years in his comatose state, he never left him behind, literally died for him when he could have just abandoned him, but he didn’t. And of course in Advent Children when Zack shows up and asks if he needs a hand with Sephiroth, reminds him what he is. I love it so much 💚 It will always be my favorite ship of all time 💗

Zagreus/Thanatos - Hades: I love their dynamic. Like, they used to be close before Zagreus started his attempts to leave the underworld, but then when he started, a distance grew between them. And the first time you encounter him in the game you can tell there’s some animosity between them ‘no escaping from death?’ ‘I left when I had to’ ‘If you won’t say it then I will - goodbye Zagreus’ and then the more you encounter him and gift him ambrosia the closer you become again, mending that once broken trust and friendship, eventually ending up together. ‘I’m right here, aren’t I?’ I love it 🥰

Galo/Lio - Promare: Literally Happy goofy sunshine boy meets grumpy grump boy. Their relationship begins so rocky, as enemies; firefighter against burnish. And the more that time passes, Galo realizes the Burnish don’t burn for no reason, that they are humans just like them, and how could he not realize the truth of what’s happening. Eventually needing to work together to save the earth they call their home. Galo even bringing Lio back to life when he’s about to crumble to ash. I loved their dynamic a ton and how their personalities clashed before they found a way to get along and work together. It’s very good!

First Ship: Inuyasha and Kagome - Inuyasha. I started shipping these 2 when I was 11 after my brother get me into the series, starting with the Castle in the Looking Glass movie. Then I went and watched all the anime and read a ton of the manga books. It’s the earliest ship I can remember, and one of the first fanfics I ever wrote 😆

Last Song: Everglow by Starset (I really really love this band and I’ve been on a Starset kick for months now)

Last Movie: uhhh... shit I’m trying to remember the last movie I watched 😂 I think it was Free Guy

Currently Reading: I have not been reading much actually, aside from some fanfics which the last one I read was one of mine before bed 😂

Currently watching: Sonic Prime. Just started watching it last night and it has a very interesting premise! I love how Tails has 9 tails and goes by 9, I thought that was really cool ngl 😊

Currently consuming: Does Vicks Cough and Congestion medicine count? That’s the last thing I downed 😆 (Yeah, still sick as hell 👍)

Currently craving: Nothing in terms of food, I have 0 appetite 😭 I am craving no longer being sick and playing Crisis Core again! 😆 I’ve been ill since Wednesday like plzzz XD

[e-m-p-error]

3 and 5! And 12 for Andrealphus, Val, and Vick.

canon questionare.

What’s the best thing about the show/series/books/comics/etc.?

Oh man, I'd have to say that I just really love the premise itself? The subject matter and the art direction are all things that really draw me because they're all things that I was interested in before I got into the show. I have been told I have a similar art/design style to Vivzie and it has actually improved my confidence in my art. This is a ramble, though.

What’s the best thing about the fandom?

The creativity of the people in it. I've seen people take running leaps with Vivzie's concepts and create things so beautifully unique that I can't begin to fathom it. It's so much fun to see what everyone does with it!

What would you say is the most unique trait about your character?

Andrealphus is very genuine. He doesn't make it a habit to lie, though he will bend the truth. If he likes you, he will show it. If he dislikes you, he will show it. If he is neutral towards you, he will show it. He does not see the point in hiding things, even if he will sometimes mask the intensity of his feelings.

Valentino is very, very dramatic. He will find a way to make every situation about him, and he will make it as close to a telenovella's level of melodrama as possible. He is very easily offended and takes all of the sleights against him as disrespect, no matter how playfully they are presented.

Vick is incredibly compassionate. In life, he was not treated very well for things that he could not help. He was nearly killed for these things, and he saw the suffering of people around him deemed as horrendous for things they couldn't help. He spent his life being a victim of a circumstance there would never be any changing, and he spent his afterlife before Valentino took him from his dimension continuing the cycle. The whole dimension-traveling thing is probably unique, too.

[philtstone]

Shawn/Juliet, "holding hands under the table"

i cant actually find which number it is from this list of prompts but that could just be my brain being fried from the week. also, everyone can feel free to send me more prompts lol. strike while the iron is hot, etc. this might be the most sedate tone i've ever hit with a psych fic. set immediately after the s5 finale -- like, hours after -- and hopefully the characters are all at the right place, emotionally. theres definitely a bit of a grey zone there in s5-6 where a lot is left unsaid but kind of known but also kind of not known. oh, jules.

She asks Lassiter to give her a ride because she probably shouldn’t be driving with a recent head injury. EMTs said no concussion, which is a good thing, but Juliet feels shaken enough that she’s going to do the intelligent, grown up woman thing and ask a friend for a favor.

She can’t help but wonder if maybe she does have a concussion after all, because Carlton behaves extremely fucking weirdly for pretty much the entirety of the drive.

Considering it’s Carlton, that’s really saying something.

“Vick gave me Shawn and Gus’s check,” she says as smoothly as she can, as they get in the car. It’s not entirely a lie, but it does feel oddly duplicitous in a way that holding hands with Shawn under the briefing table earlier didn’t. “Can you drop me off at the house?”

“House?” says her usually gruff partner, high-pitched. She’d caught him at the last second and kind of serendipitously, right as he was making his way out of the station, looking spooked, his jacket only half-on. At the time Juliet felt relieved, but now she’s wondering if maybe he’d needed some time to decompress before being made responsible for another person’s safety again. “What house? Spencer’s house? Doesn’t he live in a laundromat?”

“Henry’s house,” Juliet says, giving him a weird look while he turns the car on. His right eye is twitching. It’s possible that the evening’s events shook him more than he’s willing to admit; wouldn’t be the first time. “Gus told me they headed over there for the night. Carlton, are you alright?”

“I’m just spiffy,” he says through oddly gritted teeth, and sounds the opposite of. “One drop off, coming right up.”

Juliet decides she’ll figure it out in the morning. Her head kind of hurts, as does her elbow, and the catharsis she’d hoped to achieve through finally putting her signature down on that paper has left her a little bit shaky.

It feels good, though. She’ll probably have a good cry in the shower later on.

We did it, says Shawn’s voice in her head, so firm and final and confident. Her stomach and chest and general person are suddenly overcome with a slamming wave of affection she definitely was not prepared for. Swallowing, Juliet tucks her phone between her legs and shoots him a quick text. Wrapped up at the station.

Incoming text from SHAWN SPENCER:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BABE WITH THE POWER!!!!!!

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

u gonna go home & rest?

Shawn’s texts were exuberant before they started dating, too, but the million heart emojis are a recent development. Something about their introduction makes Juliet want to clench her hands together, melt into the ground, and laugh hysterically at the same time. Shawn turns being a walking contradiction into an art form sometimes. So terrified of facing all the love he’s got to give head-on, but so reckless and sloppy about leaving a trail of it around.

Maybe that’s why she’s fallen so hard for him, Juliet thinks; it matches her inexplicable combination of extreme trust and extreme caution.

Okay. Woah. Too much. Chill out, Juliet; now’s not really the time.

Not with Carlton showing all the signs of working through a hernia in the driver’s seat beside her, mere hours after Serial Killer Takedown.

Yeah, Juliet replies to her boyfriend, then lays her head against the cool car window, closing her eyes before she can notice Carlton’s alarmed glances at her phone.

When they pull up, half the house lights are on. Clearly no one is sleeping, despite the horribly late hour. Juliet glances down at her phone again and realizes it’s pushing three in the morning. She winces. 

“Are you going to be okay driving home?” she asks, one hand on the door handle. Carlton’s staring directly out of the windshield at the house, looking aggrieved in that way that gives him the general look and demeanor of a wet cat. She really hopes he’s okay.

“Fine,” he says. Juliet holds her phone against her lap and sighs. 

“Alright.”

“O’Hara –” he begins, pained, as she opens the door.

“Yeah?”

“I …” A beat. “Nothing. I’m – you get some rest tonight. And – and stay safe.”

“I will,” Juliet replies, surprised by how sincerely the words come out.

Given everything that’s happened, she didn’t expect her own confidence on the subject to be so strong.

Juliet steps out onto the front lawn and watches her partner drive away. Behind her the house silhouettes itself in its own lit glow and the quiet sounds and salty smell of the ocean close by begin to properly filter into her consciousness. She stands still for a few long moments in the dark, which is less threatening now than it was a few hours ago. The humidity thickens her hair and her breath fogs in front of her. When she got Shawn’s text that he and Gus were crashing at his dad’s house instead of the Psych office, call if u need anything jules, she’d been yearning for a shower a bit too much to really think about it. Once her paperwork was out of the way, though, a shower became less important than – whatever feeling brought her here.

Shawn would say it was the idea of pancakes. She likes to think she’s capable of marginally more emotional vulnerability than he is.

She bites her lip, then presses send on the text.

Home.

The response is an immediate string of emojis, mainly the heart bubbles but with the addition of a few inexplicable inanimate objects too. She’s not sure what the megaphone or candelabra or pineapple are supposed to represent, but she’s smiling when she knocks on the kitchen door, which is meaning enough for her.

Henry opens it. He looks — exhausted, about the same as Juliet feels, despite the lack of head injury or general bodily trauma. The lines in his face immediately soften at the sight of her. Juliet refuses point blank to allow her eyes to well up.

“In you come,” Henry sighs, making way. Dr. Spencer — Maddie, Juliet supposes — is at the kitchen table nursing a cup of tea. Muffled sounds of a television come from the next room. Juliet vaguely recognizes them as Phineas and Ferb.

At her entrance, Madeline raises an interested eyebrow and glances at Henry, but beyond that moment of silent communication says nothing.

“Do you want some tea?” she asks simply.

“Please.”

Henry squeezes her shoulder, gently enough that she realizes he somehow noticed and filed away all her injuries earlier. Henry Spencer the detective still surprises her sometimes. “Boys are in the living room,” he says, and goes back to the table while his ex-wife putters around the kitchen more comfortably than is probably wise.

Juliet chews on her lip again. An amused smile fights its way to the surface, coupled with an odd twang of yearning that doesn’t really make much sense. Poor Shawn, she thinks, and it's almost a laugh in the same way she’s almost about to cry. But that’s been true all evening. Henry pulls out another old photograph from the box they seemed to be sorting through before her arrival and peers over the top of his reading glasses.

“Oh God, can you believe I used to wear this stuff in public? You hated this thing.”

“If by this thing you mean that horrible yellow suit …”

“See, it wasn’t the yellow that was the problem. The cut did nothing to flatter my physique.”

Madeline is laughing when Juliet slips out, chamomile tea in hand, to the living room.

At the entrance she stops and takes her heels off. Phineas and Ferb is playing, and loudly at that. As promised, Shawn and Gus are huddled on the couch nursing their empty pancake containers, smelling like sugar and more or less dressed in PJs; she spots what’s surely one of Henry’s old fishing t-shirts, cartoonish in the logo and slightly too baggy on Shawn. She knows any old clothes he keeps in the closet here probably don’t fit him anymore. Juliet wonders if Gus went home to change or if he, too, borrowed clothes. Shawn’s hair has flattened a bit where he must have yanked his shirt down over his head, floofy the way it can be in the mornings sometimes. He’s holding a pillow against his chest. Gus’s sock has a hole in the big toe. Every so often one or both of them will giggle at the TV. 

Her eyes do well up, then. 

Of course Shawn picks that exact second to notice her.

He notices a lot of things, Juliet has come to observe, few of which fit congruously with the many things he forgets or overlooks or can’t be bothered over. She wonders if that’s just an extension of how the spirits work, and if he’d explain it to her if she asked him. There’s a resigned part of her that doesn’t think he will, and a practical part of her that guesses at an attention deficit diagnosis that probably gave him some grief growing up and doesn’t really pair well with psychic visions or an enduring fear of being too vulnerable.

Three in the morning is too late to be mulling any of this stuff over, Juliet thinks. Besides which, most of it becomes suddenly irrelevant as she’s hit with the expression that takes over his face at the sight of her.  

Three in the morning, she reminds herself. Near death experience. Don’t read into it.

Shawn doesn’t say anything, only looks at her with all that throat-closing tenderness Juliet has ignored so many times before. I think you’re swell, he’d said. In some ways, she’s always been able to see right through him without even trying. 

Gus is wedged right beside him, hogging the blankets. There’s enough room on the couch for Juliet to fit on the other side of them. 

She walks over, hands Shawn her tea, and climbs into his lap. Her knees bend over his right leg, her shoulder sinks into his chest and her head settles against his neck. Shawn still doesn’t say anything. He just sets the mug down carefully on the floor, takes a deep, relieving breath, and wraps his arms around her. She hadn’t really worried that Gus might complain, but when he reaches over unprompted and squeezes Juliet’s unhurt elbow, the last little knot in her chest dissolves fully. She gropes her hand over the upholstery and squeezes his arm back.

“... latest in my brilliant line of ‘Inators, I call it the Unlikely-Inator! She pairs beautifully with the Likeli-Inator 2000. Together, Perry the Platypus, I shall use them to somehow take over the Tri-State area, and then the world!”

“You wanna change?” Shawn murmurs into her hair after a moment. 

“Later,” Juliet says.

“Mmmkay.”

The old t-shirt is soft against the skin of her cheek and smells like laundry detergent. The rest of the house smells like a family lives in it, even though Juliet knows that’s not really true, and it also smells like Shawn, a little bit. Shawn smells like Shawn, too. His chest rumbles beneath her with every soft laugh the cartoon pulls out of him. 

“Oh – oh, remember this, this next bit is really funny,” Gus says. His voice is just as soft as Shawn’s.

“Man, you know I have this whole show memorized.”

“I’ve never really seen it,” Juliet says quietly. They watch as the little platypus karate kicks Dr. Doofenshmirtz in the head.

“I know,” says Shawn. “But that’s being rectified. Ha! Gus, we should turn the Psych office into a funhouse next week. Just to see if we can.”

He pats her thigh and Juliet feels a small smile turn up the corners of her mouth against Shawn’s neck.

“Shawn, I am not stepping foot in another amusement park since that crazy-ass chick and her boyfriend tried murdering everyone last month. We can try turning it into a bunny sanctuary instead.”

“I like the way you think, hermano. Wait wait, here comes the explosion. Classic!”

She falls asleep slowly, lulled by the comfortable heat of Shawn’s body and the muted, silly sounds from the television. 

When Juliet wakes up, her cheek is pressed against an actual pillow, she’s horizontal, and she has no idea what day it is. She blinks against the grit in her eyes and the fact that her whole body is sore before realizing she slept on a couch. Someone put a pillow under her head and a blanket over her body and took the time to change her out of her gross work clothes. She looks down, only mildly discombobulated. She’s wearing the old fishing t-shirt Shawn had on last night and what must be a pair of Madeline’s pajama pants. They’re a pretty purple color and silky against her legs. She definitely still has her underwear on. A soft snore comes from the ground below her and Juliet realizes she’s still in the living room at Shawn’s dad’s house; Shawn himself is burritoed in an ancient sleeping bag on the ground directly beneath her and Gus is sprawled on a camp bed that’s a bit too small for him on the other side of the coffee table. They’re both still fast asleep. The light coming from the window is light enough that it’s properly morning, but the rest of the house is still dead quiet. A soft blue light appears suddenly on the coffee table; her phone is vibrating, which she realizes must have been the thing that woke her up in the first place.

She reaches carefully over Shawn to grab it. The home screen shows a text from Carlton, received minutes ago.

Got home alright?

She could say that Gus gave her a ride; it would be another easy lie, and he’d happily corroborate it. She hates the idea, though. She looks down at Shawn’s sleeping form, the unruly tuft of hair poking out from beneath the blankets and the drool on his pillow. Telling Carlton would be a bad idea, she knows.

Juliet types, for a second time trying not to think too hard about it, Yes, home. Safe and sound.

She sinks back into the surprisingly comfortable couch cushions, instinctively curling into herself, full of feeling she can’t quite articulate. After a moment of staring silently at the wall, Juliet turns onto her back and reaches one quiet arm down. The tips of her fingers meet the soft warm skin of Shawn’s ear, and when he doesn’t wake up, she keeps her knuckles there, barely moving, only rubbing her thumb up and down every so often. 

Everything else can be a problem for tomorrow. Slowly, she falls asleep again. 

[thebranchesofshe]

Abe Kisro

"I just go walkin' sometimes when I sleep. I see people long gone. My mama had it too, and I hope she ain't still walkin' now that she's gone. By the way, Miz Liz, that paintin' of a horse in your son's room is the most heartbreakin' beautiful thing I ever seen."

Three words: observant, unorthodox, empathetic.

Name: Aberham Kisro

Date of birth: April 9, 1948.

Age as of Chapter I: 22.

Height: 6'2"

Gender: Gender? I hardly know her! (He's such a boy.)

Orientation: yes.

Occupation: nothing at the moment but there's a vacancy at Vick's Diner.

Where's his middle mame?: don't have one.

Is his name really spelled like that?: yes and it's gotten him out of a few jams when someone was looking for an "Abraham" Kisro.

Favorite book: he doesn't read so well. His brain gets a little cloudy.

Favorite film: he doesn't really go to pictures either.

Favorite treat: the boy has a soft spot for chocolate cake.

Background: he was born in east Texas and lived there all his life until just now. His mother was a sex worker and his father was a circus clown who quite literally came and went. Abe was mostly deafened by a shotgun blast when he was 12, which is around the time he dropped out of school. Not because he was deaf, but because he figured he could read, write, and do math, the basic tools anyone needs. That, and he needed money. He tended to horses since he was small. By 13 he was driving farm trucks. By 17 his mother had died and he went into boxing after discovering after one too many fistfights that he could get hit a lot and not fall down. He's a 6'2" welterweight.

Why is he in Tennessee?: he killed a guy.

How?: guy starved and dehydrated to make the weight class and died during the bout.

Sounds like an accident: yeah, and it is, but Abe was traumatized by it and swore off of boxing and violence in general. He also started having photosensitive seizures after too many hits to the dome. He had no real ties or roots anywhere so he started drifting from town to town in his truck. Tennessee is a pretty nice place to be, he heard.

What's with the walkin' thing?: he astral projects when he goes to sleep. Make no mistake, he knows exactly what that is.

What does he want?: he wants connection, community, roots... to help people, do good. He doesn't quite know how, but he wants to try. He's been looking for a place to put down roots for a long time.

Can he see the man with the blurry face?: and how!

Does he like books? Movies?: he can't make much sense of fiction, but he likes art books and nonfiction stuff, and movies are too visually unpredictable, but he likes that they're loud. Mostly he just likes watching public access television. It's kind of fascinating to him. He likes music, folk, country, prog rock, but he can't listen to it often because he needs it loud.

What else?: he's constantly drawing. All the time. Keeps notepads on him. Draws surreal little doodles of people he sees.

What would he change about himself if he could?: he would like to not have seizures. Why do you ask?

There's someone coming to Decaelo who might be able to take them away: Lyle? Lyle Everett Love? The faith healer? That guy's a phony.

Does he know any sign language?: not much, but he has some stolen library books about it and he sometimes practices in front of a mirror. He wishes he had someone to talk to.

Does he have any friends?: he hopes he will soon.

Any enemies?: it's hard to have beef with a dadaist noodle.

What does he look like?: tall slender pale dude with very straight black hair that's always a little greasy and a little too long to do much with, so he brushes it back. Pale blue eyes, tall forehead, little upturned nose. He wears sunglasses all the time and has a scar on his cheek.

Bro you're just describing like... a strung out 70's Nick Cave: shut up no I'm not.

I lied, bitch!

[decorworks]

Mid-century modern design "embraced a more human aesthetic"

More than 70 years after its birth, the popularity of mid-century modern design and architecture shows no signs of abating. This overview by Penny Sparke kicks off our series about the movement. Mid-century modern design is hard to pin down. As soon as you think you have grasped it, it re-invents itself. Unlike the late 19th- and early 20th-century architecture and design movements – arts and crafts, art nouveau, art deco, and Bauhaus – which are all linked to specific time periods, places, and visual styles, the definition of what constitutes mid-century modern is in constant flux. Also, while all the earlier movements have been revived from the 1970s onwards, they have tended to come and go. Mid-century modern's rebirth, however, has been in place since the 1990s and, three decades later, is still going strong.

Mid-century modern design, like the Eames House, is still popular. Photo by Leslie Schwartz and Joshua White, courtesy of Eames OfficeAntique shops and auction houses are full of boomerang-shaped coffee tables with spindly metal legs and lightly decorated ceramic and glass items – the prices of which continue to soar – while popular home magazines across the globe show us easy-to-live-in interiors filled with elegant Danish chairs, sculptural room dividers, patterned textiles, modern paintings, and sprawling houseplants. Mid-century modern design usually associated with the home If we can say anything definite about mid-century modern design, it's that it is usually associated with the home rather than the workplace, and that it manifests itself as architecture, furniture, textiles, and as decorative ceramic, glass, and metal items. While they can all be looked at in isolation, they are better understood as ensembles. Moving beyond the austere modernism of the 1920s and 1930s, mid-century modern design embraced a more human aesthetic while remaining aggressively forward-looking. The adulation of the machine was replaced by an affection for the organic forms of the natural world.

'High' mid-century modern design in Scandinavia included Josef Frank's print designs, seen here on a curtain. Photo courtesy of Svenskt TennAlways optimistic, the style emerged to offset the austerity of the post-war years and symbolised the importance of economic and cultural reconstruction. By the late 1950s, many countries in the developed world had developed their own versions of it. While its roots were in Europe and the USA, as a popular domestic style it quickly spread further afield. Many questions remain, however. When did it start and finish? Where did it originate? What does it look like? Who are its designer heroes? Scandinavian mid-century modernism "reached its full potential" post-war In many ways, the Scandinavian countries can be seen as the home of what we might call "high" mid-century modern design, as opposed to its later, more popular manifestations. There were early signs – in the form of Iittala's lightly engraved glassware of the 1920s, designed by Simon Gate and Edward Hald, and the work of the Swedish-based architect-designer, Josef Frank, described as bringing in a new "sanity in design" – that Scandinavia wanted to humanise the stark, tubular steel designs emerging from Germany.

Hans J Wegner's Wishbone chairs are among many Scandinavian design icons. Photo by Tom RossScandinavian mid-century modern design reached its full potential in the post-war years. In the form of sleek items of Danish furniture designed by the likes of Hans J Wegner and architect-designer, Arne Jacobsen; elegant ceramics and glass pieces, designed in Sweden by Gustavsberg's Wilhelm Kåge and Orrefors' Vicke Lindstrand; airy textiles created by Sweden's Astrid Sampe; and the dramatic forms of Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala's glass sculptures, the concept of Scandinavian Modern was celebrated worldwide. Many of the designs have become iconic: Wegner's Wishbone bentwood-and-rope chair of 1949, for instance, still graces many a fashionable dining area, while, with its three slim steel legs, Jacobsen's moulded plywood Ant chair looks as modern today as it did back in 1952 when it was first produced. Italian designers rejected the past While Scandinavian mid-century modern design was about everyday family life and democracy, Italy's version was all about high style. The furniture, lighting, and decorative items created by Gio Ponti, Franco Albini, Marco Zanuso, Gino Sarfatti, Piero Fornasetti and others inhabited chic interior spaces.

Gio Ponti's Superleggera chair (top back) represented optimism. Photo by Luc BoeglyNone of them represented the optimism that was in the air at that time more than Ponti's little Superleggera chair, produced by Cassina in 1957. Its light, tapering legs and woven cane seat rejected the weight of the past and looked enthusiastically to the future. The mid-century modern lifestyle dominated in the US Across the Atlantic, American designers Charles and Ray Eames, Finland-born Eero Saarinen, George Nelson, and Harry Bertoia also embraced the new, unencumbered lifestyle. On the West Coast, the Eameses created a home for themselves – Case Study House 8 – which epitomised a new life that was lived as much outside as inside, and which was as comfortable as it was modern.

Harry Bertoia's Diamond chair "was as much about sculpture as it was about sitting". Photo courtesy of KnollTheir leather and moulded rosewood lounge chair and ottoman, originally designed for filmmaker Billy Wilder, epitomised that attractive combination. However, Bertoia's gridded metal chair, with its leather cushion, of 1950-1, was as much about sculpture as it was about sitting. Britain's Contemporary Style attracted manufacturers and retailers Great Britain quickly followed. Lucienne and Robin Day, Ernest Race, and John and Sylvia Reid were among the protagonists of what the British called the Contemporary Style. Manufacturers, such as Ercol, and retailers, such as Heals, joined their ranks, while the producers of decorative glass and ceramics items employed designers to create new, exciting wares for them. With its lightly decorated surfaces depicting abstract organic forms inspired by the natural world, Jessie Tait's Primavera dinner service for Midwinter, for example, evoked a new world miles away from the traditional dinnerware that filled so many people's cupboards. The revival of mid-century modern design While the mid-century modern design movement owes its origins and meanings to the pioneering designers working in Scandinavia, Italy, the USA and the UK in the 1940s and 1950s, from the perspective of the early 21st century the term embraces a much wider, ever-evolving, range of designs.

Robin Day's Forum seating design represents Britain's Contemporary Style. Photo courtesy of Case FurnitureIn today's vintage furniture stores, pieces by Jacobsen and Eames sit alongside Italian plastic chairs by Vico Magistretti and Joe Colombo from the 1960s and chunky German ceramics from the 1970s. While different in style, for today's consumers, the designs from the 1960s and 1970s embrace the same spirit of modernity and optimism as the earlier pieces. That spirit died, arguably, when, from the 1970s onwards, the cycle of retro styles – from arts and crafts to art nouveau to art deco to Bauhaus – came into being and optimism was replaced by nostalgia for past models of modernity. By the 1990s, it was mid-century modern's turn to be revived. Seemingly, however, it managed to buck the trend of ever-changing fashionable retro styles as, in the mid-2020s, the power of that historical design movement remains as strong as ever. The optimism of its early protagonists still speaks to many people who seek to remain upbeat in the face of countless contemporary challenges – from the climate crisis to economic inequality, to migration, to the threat of global war. There are no signs as yet that that power is beginning to fade. Top illustration is by Jack Bedford.

Illustration by Jack BedfordMid-century modern This article is part of Dezeen's mid-century modern design series, which looks at the enduring presence of mid-century modern design, profiles its most iconic architects and designers, and explores how the style is developing in the 21st century. This series was created in partnership with Made – a UK furniture retailer that aims to bring aspirational design at affordable prices, with a goal to make every home as original as the people inside it. Elevate the everyday with collections that are made to last, available to shop now at made.com. Read the full article