#whether i could even get a week off to go to [university redacted] for a project or not

[supercantaloupe]

ohh very interesting. my professor just sent me info about a grant opportunity this summer to research bach

[yukidragon]

Is demon SDJ an au or just a halloween costume? also do you have a headcanon for demon Jack too?

To my knowledge, it could be both. I believe it started when YummyPinkMilk got the idea to draw Jack as an incubus, which inspired Jambeebot/Sauce to draw their own version.

Later on, Sauce made a sprite version for fun with a slightly tweaked design, as we’ve seen on the official Sunny Day Jack twitter. After that, costumes for all the male leads were made.

It’s really cool to see both versions of the design side by side.

Whether or not the sprites are just fun Halloween costumes or something more to them remains to be seen. A lot of people enjoy playing with this design as its own AU though.

Also, as a quick aside, let me remind everyone to please not repost art posted privately on the SnaccPop Studios Patreon. Art that was posted publicly is okay as long as you remember to give Sauce full credit for it like I’m doing here. Please support them and this lovely game by becoming a patron, backing the official Sunny Day Jack kickstarter, or just spreading the word. As a reminder, there’s just a week left before the kickstarter closes!

As for headcanons, well... I do have a few thoughts that I could rattle off. It’ll go under the cut of course since we’re talking about a sex demon AU for an Adults Only game. Talk about spice is pretty inevitable.

Also, there might be some mature themes that go beyond sex. The implications of this sort of supernatural being can get pretty dark if you think about it too hard... which I’m oft to do. How dark? Hopefully no darker than my third headcanon post with the tragedy of [Redacted].

...Which is giving me ideas for this AU. Strap in, folks.

Oh, before I get started, I should tag @channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic​ &  @sai-of-the-7-stars. If you want to be tagged in my next headcanon post, please let me know!

Since these are my own personal headcanons for a demon Jack AU, I’m going to default to using my own personal version of the MC, Alice. However, I will do my best to make mention of when things could apply to the MC in general.

For starters, Jack is an incubus in this headcanon. It’s not because he’s a male sex demon, but because he’s a top. I’ve been inspired by this popular thread that looks at the Latin origins of incubus/succubus and divides them not by gender but by sexual preferences. An incubus is a top, a succubus is a bottom, and a concubus is a verse.

Of course, Jack is flexible enough to take the role of a concubus or a succubus if his sunshine wants, but his preference is overwhelmingly as an incubus.

In this universe, sex demons, shortened to ‘cubi, can shapeshift to some degree, mostly in terms of body type, sex organs, and their more “demonic” features (wings, horns, tail, markings, etc.) This means that they can better appeal to the exact tastes of whatever human they’re catering to, or simply their own. This means that technically they’re genderfluid, but like anyone they have their own gender identity. In Jack’s case, that’s male, and the above appearance is what he is most comfortable in. If he wanted to, however, he could make himself look like the genderswap AU version of himself, Jill.

Despite being known as sex demons, ‘cubi don’t actually come from some infernal underworld... at least not originally. Rather, they’re beings made from magic as the manifestations of desire, specifically to cater to the pleasures of those that summon them. In a way, they’re something of a mixture between tulpas and familiars, bound to a specific person to serve them in exchange for that person’s energy to sustain them.

You know, something kind of similar to Jack’s situation with his sunshine in the main universe.

Now, I’m not saying Jack in SDJ is secretly an incubus or anything like that, even though he practically lives to serve MC and feels more secure in his existence through having sex with them, but... the parallels are kind of pretty apparent.

Naturally, this sort of setup is pretty rife with unfortunate implications if these magical husbando/waifus happen to be thinking and feeling sentient beings rather than glorified magical sex dolls made just for the pleasure of their owner. What sort of awful person would enslave some poor soul to just use them like that?

Oh wait.

Now... while this idea can very easily go into non-consent territory, I don’t want to go there, not even in an AU. This is just the origins of the ‘cubi species that serves as background in this universe. At some point in the past, they broke free of this unfavorable state of servitude. They weren’t meant to be able to reproduce on their own or live unbound to their masters, but the ‘cubi figured out how to do both and became their own race. They’ve been engaging in a both symbiotic and antagonistic relationship with humanity ever since.

Typically ‘cubi are unable to feel love of any sort due to their origins, but like any species that grows and changes over time with each generation, eventually there will be anomalies. Jack is one such anomaly. Unlike the majority of his species, he longs to love and be loved, but for the longest time didn’t realize that’s what he was missing. Much like in the regular universe, his family didn’t love him, but the ‘cubi parents didn’t even pretend they did, as the concept is just dismissed as a “human” trait, and humans are just for “food and fun” to the ‘cubi.

Naturally, Jack had a hard time living with the ‘cubi. Much like the main universe, he was neglected and ignored by those around him as he was growing, and eventually there was a tipping point that made him leave them and never look back again.

Although ‘cubi are most well known for being sex “demons”, they can feed off of any human desire, and it’s strongest when it’s directed at them. Sexual desire is just the most favored way for them to feed, as it’s very potent and pleasurable. This means that a human just looking at them with lustful feelings can offer them some energy even without directly engaging in sex.

The ‘cubi that either don’t want to have sex or are too young for it get their energy from platonic sources of desire or have energy donated to them by other ‘cubi. We respect enthusiastic consent in this house, and only consenting adults should engage in sexual behaviors, even in a fantasy AU.

Of course, once an adult, Jack did engage in sexual behaviors. What he didn’t get from ‘cubi, he thought he could get from humans. The pleasure was great, but he was still wanting more. He wanted to be the desire of many humans, believing that’s what he was missing. This led to a hedonistic lifestyle and a lot of people desiring him, but no matter how much desire he consumed, he was never satisfied.

Naturally, there are people who have a huge issue with sexual promiscuity. There are also people who have a huge problem with non-human races, ranging from distaste to outright hatred. Combine the two with plenty of fear, and you get tragedy.

With Jack seducing so many people and desiring so much attention, it was only a matter of time before the wrong people found out. There are demon hunters in this world, as well as those who believe the ‘cubi are evil. Jack was labeled as a demon seducing innocent people and clouding their minds, tempting them to the path of sin, and other such excuses to hunt him down.

Jack barely survived being killed by the hunters, but was captured instead. In this world, familiars are summoned and can be sealed away if they get unruly. The person who caught him was familiar with the origins of the ‘cubi and how similar they are to familiars, and used that to seal him away into a magical box.

This of course resulted in a Jack-in-the-box.

Yes I am quite proud of that pun, thank you.

As you might have guessed, Jack is in quite an unfortunate position. That collar around his neck isn’t just because it looks kinky. Fortunately, the order that captured him weren’t going to use him for slavery, but the bad news was that he was trapped in a dark place, devoid of all feeling. He was buried like unpleasant secret, locked away and eventually forgotten.

Poor Jack gets to suffer a similar fate as he does in the normal universe.

Fortunately, sunshine will find Jack in this universe as well several years later.

This world is a fantasy setting similar to a lot of JRPGs, with magic creating fantastic technology, but it has a strong medieval feel in ways. There are monarchies and nobility as well as monsters and magical races.

Alice was born into nobility. Although her family is a very loving one, there were duties expected of her due to her bloodline. The life of nobility can be cutthroat, with those aiming to destroy other noble houses for their own political gain, or unite via marriages.

This is especially true if they are engaged to be married to the next crown prince.

Despite it being an arranged marriage, Alice and Ian were close. They grew up together, were friends, and fell in love. It was like a fairytale...

And, like many fairytales, this one involves a curse.

No one knows who cast it, but there were plenty of suspects. It could have been a rival family that wanted their daughter to marry Ian instead. It could have been a curse meant for the crown prince, but due to the royal family’s supposed divine protection, it struck his fiancée in his place. It could even have been just the cruel whim of a wicked witch.

Whatever the case, the results were the same; Alice was one day transformed into a beastly creature.

This resulted in chaos of course, but for the most part, to protect the dignity of Alice, her family, and the royal family, it was kept a secret. Alice was hidden away under the story of being sick while others searched for the culprit and the cure. Crown prince Ian swore he would do whatever it took to cure Alice. He loved her even in her hideous cursed state.

Unfortunately, the more time passed without answers or a solution in sight, unrest set in. The queen especially was repulsed by the idea of her child marrying a hideous monster, no matter how Ian protested. The king was at best indifferent, not dissolving the engagement over the incident, but he refused to allow the marriage to proceed unless Alice was cured.

The secret slowly leaked, as secrets tend to do when money and political intrigue is involved. Pressure was put to annul engagement so that Ian could marry someone else. Noble families sent their attractive and clever members of the same age as him to strengthen bonds with him as it were

At first, Ian resisted all temptations and arguments. He was determined to marry Alice, but as time slipped away and they spent less and less time together, it was hard for his attention not to stray.

Alice had to remain hidden away in her family’s manor. Ian could only rarely visit her, and they mostly kept in communication via magic and letters. It left them both feeling lonely and missing each other.

At first, Alice refused to let Ian see her in her hideous state, but with time he managed to convince her that he still loved her regardless. When she finally allowed him to see what had become of her, he was shocked and horrified, but he managed to reassure her that it didn’t matter. The only one he wanted to marry was her. He loved her.

Alice believed Ian. He was her prince charming who would save her from her curse. He would never forsake her.

I think you can see where this is going.

Much like in the regular universe, time apart, popularity, and temptations of the flesh made Ian stray.

Stricken with guilt, Ian confessed what he did... and Alice couldn’t handle his betrayal.

The engagement was broken. Even if royalty aren’t exactly known for remaining loyal to their spouses, Alice’s family loved her enough to put an end to the engagement for her sake. Ian did everything he could to apologize and make amends, but Alice refused to see him. His constant visits trying to see her, gifts, and messages just made her heartbreak worse.

As word of the engagement being broken spread, there was also a rumor that Alice was going to a distant territory managed by her family to recover from her heartache. This allowed her to not only get some distance from Ian, but to lessen the risk of rumors spreading about her curse.

The place Alice went to live was a distant home surrounded by woods, isolating it from the rest of her world. Being betrayed by the person she loved and trusted the most shook her faith in people, and she insisted on living there alone, save for the occasional delivery of supplies and visitor.

Alice could have simply languished away in that place lamenting her fate, but instead she studied. She had an interest in magic that she had once been passionate about, but had to turn into an idle hobby when she wasn’t busy taking lessons as the future queen and spending time with Ian. Now she no longer had to worry about such distractions.

Perhaps it could help her find a cure for her curse when all other mages and scholars failed...

Time passed as Alice focused on improving her skills with magic and potions. Although Alice didn’t want anyone to see her in this state, she couldn’t help but feel lonely. One day, she was struck with the idea of having a familiar as a companion. Familiars are made from their master’s magic, essentially a piece of the mage given life. It could never betray her.

While engaged to the crown prince, Alice has access to the royal treasury at times. Ian would surprise her with presents that he technically shouldn’t have given away, but he was young, in love, and she was so keen to learn more about magic.

Despite the way things ended, Alice took some of those magical trinkets with her. One of those objects was a box, a medium meant to take some of her essence and create the familiar when the right ritual was performed.

Things go a little bit sideways when the box is already in use sealing away a being that is only similar to a familiar.

Luckily or unluckily, depending on your perspective, Alice just wound up releasing Jack from his box and forming a contract with him, binding them both together.

It was pretty surprising to the both of them, to put it lightly.

When ‘cubi are starved and in a weakened state, their colors are faded, and their eyes and markings won’t glow. Jack looked more like Joseph when Alice let him out, but with her magic feeding him due to their bond, he was his bright and colorful self again soon enough.

A lot of the dynamics between Alice and Jack are similar in this AU to the game universe. Jack can’t do anything Alice doesn’t want, and they can sense each other’s feelings and even thoughts. However, in this universe, Alice is aware of this, since that’s part of having a familiar, which allows her to guard her thoughts from him, if not her emotions.

While the situation is less than ideal for Jack... at the same time he finally feels what he was missing for so long. Alice is warm after he spent so many years sealed away in cold darkness, and he feels things from her that he never did from anyone else.

A pact with a familiar isn’t easily broken. Jack was also afraid that if it was broken, he would just go back into the box. He was still technically bound to it even as he was also bound to Alice. After learning about the hell he suffered when sealed away, she couldn’t bring herself to damn him like that, not when she could feel how terrified and desperate he was to never go back in there.

Jack offered to give Alice anything she wanted. He was ready to seduce her then and there.

Alice barked out a humorless laugh and told Jack that wasn’t a funny joke.

When visitors came over, Alice would wear heavy draping cloaks and veils to hide her body. When alone, she has less, so Jack saw her cursed appearance.

Jack didn’t see an issue with how Alice looked. In fact, her warmth and gentle heart drew him to her. It felt... good, but Alice had already been hurt before.

Instead of accepting sexual favors, Alice tentatively accepted his friendship instead.

So the two of them live together. Jack flirts with Alice, using his typical tactics that worked to draw people in before he got sealed away, being cheeky and seductive... and he finds that she responds when he was sincere instead. They form a genuine friendship and, as they grow closer, Jack eventually realizes that what he’s feeling for Alice, what he’s been missing all of his life, is love.

Eventually the two do fall in love after enough time getting to know and trust each other. Somehow Alice gets her curse cured as well. Maybe fitting with the fairytale theme, it could be cured through the power of true love... expressed through sex, since this is a story about incubi Jack after all.

I guess in this universe you can say Jack is a monster fucker as well as a demon?

Speaking of which, here’s a couple more ‘cubi headcanons that are on the spicier side.

The bond between them leaves a marking in Jack’s colors on Alice’s abdomen. Yes, it’s a “womb tattoo” since having some of Jack’s glowing markings being left behind as a sign of their bond would be fun.

The ‘cubi ability to appeal to their partner’s tastes isn’t just limited to appearance. The flavor of their cum can be altered to suit their tastes in a more literal sense.

Needless to say, Alice does not expect a vanilla cream finish the first time she gives Jack a blowjob.

A ‘cubi has amazing stamina and sometimes will savor their meal. Needless to say, Alice is going to have a hard time keeping up with Jack.

Though with access to magic, Alice has ways of potentially getting in some fun payback.

This is pretty much about all the headcanons I have at this time for this particular AU. I’m still unsure of Shaun and Nick’s roles in the universe, but I do know Barry is a merchant trader that Alice sometimes sells her magic potions to for extra money. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my really huge ramble about demon Jack that turned into an alternate version of Beauty and the Beast!

[valdomarx]

time enough for counting (when the dealing's done)

McShep + Vegas fix-it, requested by @beautifulmonster. 2k, rated M.

Bad beat

John had always known it would end like this. 

Well, the space aliens and the shady government organization had been a surprise. But the bleeding out, alone in the desert - yeah, that was always how he was going to go.

There’s a kind of dark satisfaction in seeing the world turn out exactly as shitty and brutal as you knew it would be. Called it.

His moment of sick vindication is interrupted, though, by a figure standing over him and peering down with cursory interest.

Sharp black suit, spotless even in the heat and the muck. Hands in pockets, head quirked in something that might be amusement. “Should have known you’d pull a stunt like this,” it says, and John would smirk at playing to type but the blood loss pulls him under.

Ante up

He wakes to pain. Vicious, lancing pain and the cloying smell of antiseptic and the beeping of monitors. He tries to sit up and his chest screams until he collapses back onto the bed.

Next to him, a slightly rumpled McKay is tapping furiously at a laptop. “Don’t go dying on me now, Sheppard,” he says without looking up. “I’ve got plans for you.”

Buy-in

The next time he wakes, the light has faded. It must be evening. 

The hospital room - his own private room, he realizes - is nice. Far too nice for the local joint. Must be private. Must have cost someone a pretty penny. He would have told whoever it is to save their cash.

“You’re awake. Good.” McKay strides in, less rumpled now. Neat black suit back in perfect order. “I don’t have much time, so listen up.”

He tells John how they destroyed the Wraith target before he could get a message to his buddies in Pegasus. How this universe is safe, but the spacetime rift has sent that information echoing through other universes. How they’re putting together a team to visit these other universes; warn them, offer to help if they can.

How he’ll be leaving in a few hours to head up the program. How he thinks John might be able to help.

John blinks. His eyelids are sticky and his mouth is full of fluff.

“Why the hell would you bring this to me?”

McKay flashes him an enigmatic smile. “You did save the world. Maybe you’re more of a hero than you realize.”

On the flop

He gets unceremoniously booted out of the hospital a few days later, when it becomes obvious that he’s not going to die and whoever was bankrolling his stay isn’t any more.

His car is totaled. The money inside is gone. He’s got the clothes on his back, a mountain of debt, no job, and -

He sticks a hand into the pocket of his jacket. There’s something in there: a neat rectangle of card which reads, Doctor Rodney McKay, PhD PhD. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. There’s no phone number.

He heads for the nearest motel he can find, picks up two bottles of rotgut whiskey, and drinks until he manages to pass out amid the sounds of yelling and the scuttering of cockroaches. 

Into the muck

Whatever the fuck else might be going on in the world, there is always the constant: 52 cards, 4 suits, the flick of the dealer’s wrist as he lays out your fortunes, the wins and the loses and the ones where you came oh so close.

He’s back at Mikey’s within a week, borrowing more to get out ahead of this debt, even though he knows that’s never going to work.

Maybe it’ll be different this time. Maybe he can win what he needs, pay off the people he has to, and use the rest to make a start somewhere other than here. Anywhere other than this desert full of chips and blood and corpses and filth.

It’s going to be a good night, he tells himself as he settles into a squeaky plastic chair at a low-roller table and looks around at his competition. Tourists and chumps, and he can take these guys no problem.

Pot-committed

He’s woken by a shrill ringing. His head feels like he’s stuck it in a cement mixer and his mouth tastes like cheap whiskey and puke. He rolls over, covers his ears with a ratty pillow, and ignores it.

The ringing continues. What the fuck? It’s a phone. It keeps ringing. He doesn’t own a phone.

Whoever the fuck is calling is still going, so with a groan he sits up and, bleary-eyed, looks for the phone. He finds it in his jacket pocket, and he’s almost certain it wasn’t there last night.

“Yeah?” he says as he answers it. “What do you want?”

“Sheppard,” a crisp, familiar voice says. “I’ve got a job for you.”

Sheppard closes his eyes. The last thing he needs right now is a world-ending crisis. “Can’t,” he says shortly. “I’ve got… business to attend to.”

McKay snorts. “Another fortune to lose at the poker table? I’m sure you do.” John can hear judgement radiating down the phone line. Then McKay sighs and softens. “Tell you what, meet me and hear me out, and I’ll see what I can do about clearing that off-the-books debt for you.”

That pings John’s bullshit meter, for sure, because that much money doesn’t get casually tossed around even in defense circles. But McKay gives him the address of a pancake place to meet for breakfast and what the hell, he does like pancakes.

Check in the dark

“We keep running into you,” McKay says, shoveling maple syrup-covered pancakes into his mouth with great enthusiasm. “Or, well, other versions of you. Practically every universe we’ve visited so far, you’re leading the team.”

John raises an eyebrow. Not much surprises him any more, but parallel realities strain even his credulity.

“It would be easier,” McKay continues, “if you were with us. You could help us explain. People trust you.”

John jerks back like McKay has slipped a knife between his ribs. McKay doesn’t seem to notice, or perhaps he does notice and is tactful or manipulative enough not to acknowledge it.

“Come work with me. We’d need to get you some -” he gestures with a fork, “- training, obviously. But you could be useful. You could do some good.”

John shifts in his seat. “I can’t just leave.”

McKay scowls at him. “Right, because you’ve got so many compelling reasons to stay.”

Gutshot

He ends up in some anonymous Air Force bunker in Colorado, of all places, and being around so much military life has his hackles rising. He’s deposited in a blank, windowless room with a desk covered in stacks of carefully redacted mission reports from the Stargate program which he reads voraciously because this is wild, this is unbelievable, but it’s also all true.

McKay finds him a few days later, lounging in the doorway as impeccable as ever. John is suddenly very aware of the fact he’s been sleeping in his clothes.

“Keeping busy?” McKay asks, voice dripping with condescension and something else John doesn’t want to put his finger on.

John nibbles the pen he’s holding as he considers how to answer that, and he notices the way McKay’s eyes flick to his mouth. Ahh. Interesting.

“Staying out of trouble, at least,” he drawls, letting his posture slacken so he’s lounging against the back of the chair and his knees are spread wide. It’s been a while but he knows how to play this game. 

McKay walks around to his side of the desk, each step measured and precise. Not too fast, no sudden movements, a predator lining up for the kill. John tilts his head back and bares his neck, because he knows how to play the role of prey. McKay perches on the edge of the desk between his legs, looks down his nose, and says, “Somehow I doubt that.”

“I can behave.” He looks up from under his lashes. It’s not exactly subtle, but fuck it, they’re way past that by now. “When properly motivated.”

McKay leans in, all sharp smiles and gleaming edges, and John shudders. McKay notices and the sharp edges of his smile glistens. 

“I know you can, Sheppard,” McKay says in a low voice that has the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. “I told you before. I know everything about you.”

Damn the man, John thinks, and then McKay winds his fingers into John's hair and yanks him in for a hot, messy kiss and John stops thinking altogether. 

Afterwards, as he makes vain attempts to pull up his shirt collar to hide the bite marks and to wipe the come stains off the classified military files, John reflects that he may truly be in over his head this time.

Under the gun

A stack of paperwork drops onto his desk with a dull thud. He looks up to find the scowling face of Major Davis.

“Consultant,” Davis says, chilly as ice. “That’s what the Pentagon is willing to offer. You’ll get a salary and accommodation, and in return you’ll help Doctor McKay with his research while he’s on Earth.”

John opens his mouth, though whether it’s to say thank you, to tell Davis to go fuck himself, or to ask for more money, he isn’t sure. Davis holds up a hand to stop him before he can find out.

“I advised against it, given your record. But McKay is a real pain in the ass when he wants to be. So this is what’s on the table. Take it or leave it.”

Tell

McKay’s brow is furrowed and he’s fiddling with some piece of machinery (probably alien, John thinks, and it seems that sort of thing is part of his life now). It blinks to life for a moment before the lights on the top fade away, and McKay swears and bangs it on the table.

“Hey, easy, Chewie,” John chides.

McKay’s eyes narrow. “I thought you said you didn’t like science fiction.”

“Star Wars isn’t science fiction. It’s science fantasy.”

McKay actually smiles at that, something joyous leaping up in the corners of his mouth.

“Knew you were a nerd,” McKay says under his breath, and John punches him playfully in the shoulder. He’s defending his honor, or something.

McKay ducks his head, and a blush creeps up the back of his neck.

Ace high

“I’ve got a surprise for you.” McKay looks even smugger than usual. 

“Yeah?” John slips a leer into the syllable.

But McKay just rolls his eyes. “Not like that. Come on, there’s something I want you to see.”

He leads him down through the base to a lower level, through endless security checks and into a dark hanger. There’s some technology they’ve acquired from an off-world source, he explains, deliberately vague. He’s trying to make some modifications to it, and he thinks John can help with testing.

John has learned to expect the unexpected in this place, but when the lights of the hanger flicker on his breath still catches. It illuminates a ship unlike anything he’s seen before: slick and cylindrical, rear hatch open to show seats and consoles inside.

“It’s fitted with inertial dampers, weapons, a shield,” McKay says breezily. “Oh, and you’ll like this.” He flicks a button on a control and the ship disappears in a haze like hot air. “It’s got a cloak too.”

It’s like something out of a movie, and John is struck speechless. He follows wide-eyed as McKay decloaks the ship to lead them inside and gestures for him to sit.

And woah, the moment he sits the chair glows and a holographic interface springs up in front of him, and he can feel the ship in his mind. He reaches out with a thought and - ping - the display shows a schematic of the hanger.

“Knew you’d be a natural,” McKay says, managing to sound both condescending and delighted. “Want to take her for a spin?”

Yes, everything in him screams, but he thinks about flames and smoke and the shrill, piercing whine of a tail rotor failing, and he grits his teeth against it and says, “I don’t fly any more,” instead.

McKay gives him a long, cool look. 

“We’ll start small,” McKay says, all business, and it’s so easy to relax and follow his lead. “I need you to activate the inertial dampeners while I adjust the shield field strength.”

Okay. Okay. He can do that.

The ship whirs to life.

Short stack

John stares at the blank white walls of his apartment.

It’s better than most places he’s lived in. No roaches, for a start, and it’s clean and has its own kitchen.

But it’s infuriatingly bland, and Colorado is infuriatingly empty, and there’s not so much as a slot machine within an hour’s drive and he is climbing the walls here.

McKay has disappeared on one of those weeks-long missions he can’t or won’t tell John about, and there’s a restless itching under his skin that’s urging him to drink or gamble or fuck or something, and this whole planet seems too small and too constrictive but he doesn’t want to climb under a blanket of booze and drain it all away.

He wants more.

On the river

“Modifications are done,” McKay announces. “Shall we test her out?”

The we makes something squirm in John’s gut but he dismisses it with a lazy, “It’s your alien spaceship.”

McKay looks for a moment like he’s going to say something, but then he pulls out a radio and talks into that instead. “This is Gate Ship One, ready for initial shield test burst.”

“Gate Ship One?” John scoffs. “That’s the best you could come up with?”

“It’s a ship that goes through the gate,” McKay pouts, and damn, that’s kind of cute. “Why, what would your suggestion be?”

John tilts his head. He’s seen footage of the ship traveling through the stargate, leaping through the event horizon and leaving barely a ripple in its wake. “Seems more like a puddle jumper to me.”

“You have the soul of a poet,” McKay says acerbically. 

And damn if that’s not kind of cute too.

Dealer’s choice

“Come with me,” McKay says, and John is ready to say yes before he’s even finished speaking. “To Pegasus. To Atlantis. I need to get back there, and I’m sure we can find a way to make you useful.” A little smirk at the end there.

“I don’t know how the Pentagon is going to feel about that,” John says, deliberately languid to hide the way his heart is pounding in his chest. Escape, adventure, somewhere new, somewhere he could be a new person, and he wants it so much it aches.

“Eh, fuck them. They can’t say no to me.”

“Okay,” he shrugs. “Not like I’ve got anything better to do here.”

McKay gives him a look that shoots straight through his defenses and down to his sticky innards. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and it’s soft in a way that makes the ache in John’s chest twist into a deep burn.

All in

The jumper hovers in the air in front of the stargate. 

“Nervous?” McKay asks, carefully casual, like he doesn’t already know the answer.

John hums. The inside of the jumper feels as much like home as any place he knows. What’s another galaxy to a man with no ties?

“You’re going to love it there,” McKay says with a smile he can’t hide. He dials up the gate and it engages with a tremendous whoosh and a burst of brilliant blue light.

Here goes nothing, he thinks as McKay deploys the drive pods and fires up the engines. One last new start. 

[calumcest]

you and i were fireworks that went off too soon - chapter seven

[ao3]

did i just pull this entire chapter out of my arse tonight? maybe! not that i don’t write these chapters all in one sitting at like 9pm-1am every single time don’t get it twisted i’m not organised i am a binge-writer

i always do my long ass a/ns on ao3 i dont know why feels more REVEALING to do them here because i know people actually read them and i think probably one person on the whole planet has ever read my ao3 a/ns its a safe haven so i’m just going to say my brief thank yous: thank you to @clumsyclifford for literally everything you do always, thank you to @ashesonthefloor for listening too me bitch about this fic and having the most wonderful thoughts and ideas about it, thank you to @kaleidoscopeminds for motivating me to keep writing this fic w your kind words, thank you to @allsassnoclass for always being so wise and understanding of authors dilemmas and encouraging me w your lovely words, and thank you to my spoiler anon for being so lovely about this fic and holyverse and also for asking about another chapter because i swear to u i would have kept putting it off were it not for u. also big thank you to noel and liam gallagher for writing the SMASH hits i wrote this entire chapter to and for being [redacted] and also to richard madden because i just fancy him and feel like i should thank him for existing and allowing me to perceive him 

It’s a twin room, thank God, because Luke would have rather slept in the hallway than shared a bed with Ashton for four weeks. 

“I’m taking the window bed,” he announces, before Ashton has a chance to say anything, out of pure spite, because he knows Ashton likes sleeping by the window. Or knew, maybe. He’s not sure anymore. 

Ashton opens and then closes his mouth, nods curtly, and puts his carry-on bag on the bed nearest the bathroom. Luke puts Clifford down on the bed first, muttering at him to stop fucking yapping (which Clifford, of course, ignores), and then drops his suitcases next to it with a sigh. 

“So,” Ashton says, and his voice fills the entire room, too loud and too much, a jarring reminder that Ashton’s here, in Luke’s space, and Luke’s got no option but to live with it. “Should we go out?” Luke blinks at him. 

“What?” he says. 

“Well,” Ashton says, with an uncomfortable shrug. “Study doesn’t start ‘til tomorrow, and it’s only nine. Thought we could spend the day exploring?” Luke stares at him. 

“Think I’d rather spend my last day of freedom alone,” he says, a little harshly. Ashton blinks, and Luke doesn’t miss the flash of hurt that crosses his face, but then he nods again. 

“Have you still got my UK number?” he says, and Luke hesitates, and then nods. He’s not sure why it feels like he’s giving something away by admitting that he’d never deleted Ashton’s numbers; he’d been the one to text Ashton about the tattoos first, so clearly Ashton already knows that Luke still had his Australian number, at least. “Well. Text me if you need anything?” 

“Don’t think I’ll need anything,” Luke says, and Ashton sighs, and Luke feels a little small, a little stupid, like Ashton’s a patient parent putting up with a melodramatic teenager. 

“I’m going to head off, then,” Ashton says, a touch awkwardly, and Luke just nods, busying himself with getting Clifford out of his travel cage, thinking he’ll ask at reception for directions to the nearest park and let Clifford stretch his legs. He steadfastly doesn’t look at Ashton as Ashton gathers his things together, patting his coat pocket to make sure he’s got everything, and then slips out of the room, door clicking shut behind him. 

As soon as Ashton’s left, Luke suddenly feels simultaneously relieved and overwhelmed. He feels like he can breathe a little easier, think a little clearer without Ashton in his personal space, making him feel like he has to be alert, on edge, but the hotel room feels strangely empty without him. Luke shakes his head, tries to get the latter thought out of his mind, focusing on Clifford’s insistent yaps to draw him back to reality and distract him. 

“Alright, little man, we’re going,” Luke mutters, fumbling around in his bag for Clifford’s lead. Clifford jumps around at his feet, already panting, and Luke rolls his eyes, clips the lead on, checks he’s got his room key and phone in his pocket and heads out of the room. 

He decides to take the stairs, since he doesn’t think Clifford’s got the patience to wait for the lift, which proves to be the right decision when Clifford’s straining at his lead trying to bound down the stairs, giving Luke reproachful looks whenever he tugs him back. They’re only on the second floor, so it’s not long before Luke’s back in the lobby, and Clifford finally pulls himself together and trots smartly at Luke’s heel, giving other people milling in the area imperious looks as they pass. 

“Hi,” Luke says, and the receptionist smiles politely up at him. “I’d like to walk my dog. Can you tell me where the nearest park is?” She nods. 

“Of course, sir,” she says, and pulls out a brochure. Luke mentally pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s going to look like a massive fucking tourist walking around with one of those. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get mugged. 

“You just need to turn left out of the hotel, take a right at the end of the road, take the second left after that, take two rights, and you’ll be at the park,” she says, trailing her pen across the streets and ending it with a flourish, circling a rectangle of green on the map and smiling at him again. Luke smiles back, having taken absolutely none of that in, thanks her, pockets the map and decides he’ll probably just walk around the nearby backstreets for a while until Clifford’s worn out to lower his chances of getting lost. 

Clifford, it turns out, is surprisingly tired, having apparently spent all of his energy on pestering Luke to take him out. He only manages about half an hour of walking up and down a few streets around the hotel before he’s flagging, sitting down and staring up at Luke beseechingly when Luke tries to pull him along. A passing couple throw Luke an amused look and titter to themselves, and Luke sighs. 

“C’mon, little man,” he says, tugging again. Clifford refuses to budge, just stares up at Luke with a look that Luke knows all too well. “Come on, Cliff, you’re embarrassing me. It’s two streets away. You can walk that far.” Clifford stays put, and Luke rolls his eyes, but bends down and scoops Clifford up into his arms. Clifford immediately nuzzles into Luke happily, licking at his neck, and Luke pulls back, wrinkling his nose. “Gross, Cliff, don’t do that.” 

Luke pretty much speedwalks back to the hotel because little though Clifford is, he’s surprisingly heavy after a while, and Luke’s much weaker than he looks. He throws the receptionist a polite smile on his way back up to the room, unclips Clifford from the lead as soon as he’s in there and rummages around in one of his suitcases for the bed Michael had shoved on top of all of Luke’s warmest clothes. Clifford watches him patiently, and hops into the bed as soon as Luke’s unfolded it, curls up and closes his eyes. Luke can’t help but smile fondly down at him, bending down to press a kiss to the top of Clifford’s head and scratching behind his ears. 

“I’m going to go out again, little man,” he tells Clifford. “I’ll be back to give you your dinner, though.” Clifford just sniffs, which Luke takes to mean ‘yeah, sure, now fuck off and let me sleep’, and Luke straightens again, throws Clifford one final fond look and heads back out of the room, shutting the door softly behind him. 

He decides it’s probably fine if he wanders aimlessly, since the brochure in his pocket has the name of the hotel on it and Michael had paid for his phone plan to cover the UK for six weeks so he can look it up when he inevitably gets lost. Having spent half an hour in the streets surrounding the hotel already, he decides to get on the tube and head somewhere new, picking a stop name he recognises - Leicester Square sounds vaguely familiar. 

Leicester Square, it turns out, sounds familiar because it’s a tourist hotspot. Luke’s ducking and weaving between people, mumbling apologies as he slips through gaps that he doesn’t actually fit through and splits up groups (but seriously, he thinks, slightly irritated as he smiles politely, who the fuck walks in a row of five?). There are countless little side alleys and back roads leading off the main street, but even those are difficult to walk through, filled with the native Londoners who know their way through the labyrinth of twisting streets and know better than to be anywhere near Leicester Square in the first place. 

Eventually, half to get out of the crowds and half because he’s actually pretty hungry, Luke ducks into a Costa and buys himself a ham and cheese toastie, balking at the price when the cashier rings it up. Five fucking pounds, what’s that, ten dollars? For one sandwich? Fucking hell. He’s definitely going to be demanding those reimbursements from the university. 

He’s waiting for his sandwich to come out of the toaster, only two baristas serving a queue of at least twenty, when someone taps him on the shoulder a little tentatively, making him jump. He whips around, wondering whether he’s in the way or something, and comes face to face with-

Ashton. 

“Are you serious?” he demands, before he can think about it. Ashton shrugs, and looks a little uncomfortable. “Are you following me?” 

“I was already here,” Ashton says. “I’ve got a table.” He waves his hand in the directions of an empty table in the far corner, and Luke can see Ashton’s coat bunched up on one of the chairs. 

“Oh,” Luke says. Ashton gives him a look, simultaneously sad and calculating, and for a brief moment, Luke thinks fuck, his eyes are pretty. Jesus Christ. Maybe he should have stayed at the hotel and napped. 

“D’you want to sit with me?” Ashton says. Luke hesitates - not particularly , is the first petulant thought to cross his mind, before his rational side kicks in and tells him sleepily that he won’t find a seat anywhere else - and then nods. 

“Ham and cheese toastie?” the barista calls, and Luke steps forwards, takes it from her hand and heads wordlessly in the direction of Ashton’s table, Ashton in tow. 

“Sorry,” Ashton says, when Luke picks up Ashton’s coat off the seat and holds it out for him. He takes it from Luke and his finger brushes against Luke’s, and something like liquid gold rushes through Luke, making him giddy from head to toe. It’s the sleeplessness, he tells himself, averting his gaze and snatching his hand away. God knows he’s felt even more unexplainable things on the same amount of sleep. 

“‘S alright,” Luke says, sitting down to avoid thinking about the warmth of Ashton’s finger brushing against his own and the way his finger is still burning from the contact. “You didn’t know I was going to be here.” Ashton hesitates, and then busies himself with tucking his coat behind him, like he’s looking for something to do that isn’t stare across the table at Luke. Luke’s not going to complain about that, and takes a bite out of the first half of the toastie so he won’t have to say anything else. 

They sit in silence for a moment, Luke eating his toastie, Ashton fiddling with the bracelet on his left hand. The silence is uncomfortable, oppressive, and Luke kind of wishes he’d just sat on the fucking floor or something. Nothing makes him wish that more, though, than when Ashton opens his mouth and says: “I wondered.” 

Luke swallows his last bite of toastie with a frown. 

“You wondered what?” he says. Ashton shrugs, tension and discomfort visible in the movement. 

“I wondered whether we’d bump into each other,” he says. Luke rolls his eyes. 

“Not this again,” he mutters, but it’s more tired than anything. Ashton sighs, and drops his hands onto the table. 

“Look,” he says carefully. “I don’t think us bumping into each other all the time is a coincidence.” 

“Fucking hell,” Luke says, but there’s no heat behind the words. He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes and squeezes them shut. He’s too fucking tired for this.  

“Luke,” Ashton says, like Luke’s being unreasonable. “We’ve lived in the same city for years-” Luke opens his mouth to interrupt, because Ashton was always away half the time when they were together, and he can’t imagine that’s changed much “-okay, on-off, because I’m in LA sometimes - but we’ve not once bumped into each other. Then we get the tattoos, and suddenly I’m seeing you every other week?” 

“What’s your point?” Luke says, a little irritably. “You think this is some grand plan from the universe to make us fall back in love? What, I’m Cathy, you’re Heathcliff?” Ashton bites his lip, and Luke’s mouth twists bitterly in a humourless smile. “This isn’t fucking romantic, Ashton. You leaving me was-” he cuts himself off. He’s not quite ready to tell Ashton that , yet. “Awful,” he says, eventually. “This isn’t part of some, like, big romantic redemption arc for you. You fucked up, and you fucked me over, and we’ve just got to find some way to live with the tattoos. That’s why we’re both here, isn’t it?” Ashton’s silent for a moment, and if Luke’s not mistaken, looks a little paler than he had a minute ago, and then nods. 

“Can we at least be civil?” Ashton says, and then, seeing the look on Luke’s face, adds: “We’re stuck together for four weeks, Luke. I know you don’t like me, and I’m not asking for- for friendship, or anything. I’m just asking for you to be civil with me.” Luke exhales heavily. 

“Fine,” he says tiredly, before he has the chance to think too much about it. “Civil.” 

“Civil,” Ashton agrees. 

(Luke’s pretty sure civil doesn’t involve thinking God, I’d forgotten how long his eyelashes are, and the way you can see a hint of his dimple when he speaks, but he’s also pretty sure that’s entirely to do with the exhaustion, and nothing to do with him.) 

  -------

  Ashton talks Luke into going down to the Houses of Parliament, with a combination of a sincere look on his face, big, serious eyes as he says look, we don’t want to risk another bumping-into-each-other tattoo, and it’ll just be civil, and the fact that Luke just doesn’t have the energy to argue. Plus, he thinks, Ashton seems to know where he’s going, and Luke had forgotten to take his charger with him so he’s kind of fucked if he gets lost. 

The walk down from Costa to the Houses of Parliament is only about twenty minutes, but feels so much fucking longer, both of them all too aware of the awkward silence hanging between them, amplified by the noise of the city surrounding them. They walk through Trafalgar Square, and Ashton tells Luke something about art installations and the fourth plinth and Luke just nods along, trying his best to do this whole civil thing by quelling his instinct to snap I don’t fucking know what a plinth is and you know full fucking well I don’t care about art. Ashton seems to sense it from him anyway, though, because he falters and then says, with an uncomfortable laugh, “You probably don’t care about this anyway.” 

“Not really,” Luke admits, because they’d said civil, not dishonest. Ashton smiles wryly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“Sorry,” he says, and Luke just hums, and they fall back into an awkward silence. 

It’s easier, Luke finds, when a man in a suit shoulders into him and keeps walking without so much as a mumbled apology and Ashton turns to him, outraged, and says Londoners really are cunts, if they interact with each other through their surroundings. Talking about people, things, even the fucking weather, adds a sheen of superficiality, a layer of removal that they can both look at and pretend there’s nothing more to it, no years of hurt and pain bubbling beneath the surface. 

“How is it this sunny yet this cold?” Luke grumbles, shielding his eyes and squinting up at Big Ben. 

“You should be here in April,” Ashton says, stabbing the button at the traffic light repeatedly. 

“I’ve got no intentions of being here any longer than I have to be,” Luke mutters. “What are we looking at, again?” 

“It’s parliament, Luke,” Ashton says, like that’s supposed to mean something to Luke. 

“So?” Luke says. “We’ve got a parliament.” 

“And? Have you ever seen it?” Ashton says shrewdly, and Luke scowls, biting back the scathing retort on the tip of his tongue. Civil and Ashton are two concepts that he assumes will take a while to marry in his mind. 

“Whatever,” he says, stepping out into the road as the light turns green. “Just don’t get why I’m supposed to care about some random country’s government, is all.” Ashton doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, jogging to catch up with Luke, and they walk the rest of the distance to the buildings in silence. 

It’s quite imposing, Luke thinks, up close. The buildings are sort of dirty - or maybe they’re meant to look like that - and incredibly intricate, bordering on fussy. It towers over them, looking more like a palace than a place of governance, Big Ben casting a long shadow across the road. He’s not sure he’d want to be governed from this place.

“I don’t like it,” he says. 

“Really?” Ashton says, squinting up at the buildings. “I think it’s kind of pretty.” You would, Luke thinks darkly. Old, ornate and overcomplicated? That’s exactly the kind of thing Ashton would get excited about and find unwarranted symbolism in. 

“Yeah, well,” Luke says instead, because he’s pretty sure that thought doesn’t count as civil. “Think it’s just a bit too elaborate.” 

“It’s Gothic Revival,” Ashton says, like Luke’s supposed to have a single fucking clue what that means. Actually, Luke thinks bitterly, he’s probably fully aware that Luke doesn’t have any idea what that means, and is hoping Luke will take the bait and ask so Ashton can demonstrate his massive intellect, or whatever. 

“Right,” Luke says, a little shortly. Ashton glances at him, looking a touch taken aback, but then looks back at the buildings. 

“We can go somewhere else,” he says, and it’s an offer. An olive branch. 

“Yeah,” Luke says, because annoyance at not knowing anything about architectural styles aside, looking at an old building is just pretty fucking boring. 

“There’s an aquarium not too far away,” Ashton says. “I remember you-” he stops himself, and Luke swallows. Yeah. He loves aquariums. He loves them so much that Ashton had taken him to the Sydney Aquarium for their third anniversary, a month or two before he’d broken up with Luke. 

(Two months on the dot. Not that Luke has both dates seared into his mind, or anything.) 

“Yeah,” Luke says again, to fill the silence of both of them thinking back to that day. “Let’s go to the aquarium.” Ashton hesitates, and glances at Luke like he wants to say something else, a sort of semi-pained expression on his face, and then he sighs, shakes his head, and throws Luke a tight smile. 

“Let’s go to the aquarium,” he agrees. 

  -------

  The aquarium, it turns out, is a much better choice. 

Despite the odd screaming child, the aquarium has a calming silence to it, an almost pensive quiet that pierces to the depths of Luke’s soul. It settles the air between him and Ashton, means they’re not silent for lack of civil things to say, but rather because they’re both caught up in the muted beauty of the ocean. 

They don’t walk together, because Ashton likes to pore over every single placard and study every creature in minute detail and Luke’s drawn to the pretty, colourful fish. It’s Luke, though, who’s always the last to move on, and Ashton waits for him before they head to the next room. It’s almost nice, Luke thinks, as he heads for the door and sees Ashton slip through it when he sees Luke’s ready to move on, that they don’t have to have awkward conversations about it, that they can just understand and fall into it. 

(He tries not to think about why.) 

They spend hours in the aquarium, dawdling in every room, because they spent so much fucking money on it and they’re both going to be damned if they won’t milk it for all it’s worth. Luke spends an extra long time looking at the clownfish, for some reason, hypnotised by the way they can weave in and out of the anemones. There’s some kind of symbolism to be found there, he thinks, something about toxicity and safety, but he’s too tired to come up with it himself. Ashton would probably correct him if he tried, anyway. 

Ashton’s particularly taken by the sharks, it turns out. He’s already staring at the huge tank in awe when Luke gets into the room, barely even blinking as his eyes follow one shark after the other. The room itself is dark, like the rest of the aquarium, but the tank’s so huge that Ashton’s bathed in light, rippling and shimmering and Luke, for the briefest of moments, feels something sharp stab at his heart, something he remembers feeling the last time he’d stood in an aquarium with Ashton. It makes his stomach clench, twist in on itself, because he knows exactly what he’d identified that feeling as before. 

“They’re fucking beautiful, aren’t they?” Ashton says, interrupting Luke’s train of thought before it can take the leap off the cliff edge of panic, and Luke looks up at the sharks. 

“I guess?” he says, because he doesn’t really see it. 

“You used to like them,” Ashton says, sounding a little surprised. 

“I used to like a lot of things,” Luke says. I used to like you, he adds spitefully in his head, and sort of hopes Ashton’s telepathic. 

“Guess I’ve got to get to know you again,” Ashton says, and it’s a little wistful, a little sad. Luke doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t know what would sum up I’m not sure I want you to, I don’t think I’ll give you a chance and Good fucking luck in a civil way. 

They stand there for a while, watching the sharks, and people filter in and out of the room behind them. It feels oddly hypnotic, being stood there with Ashton, the only two static parts of a moving whole. He wonders if the sharks feel the same, swimming aimlessly in their tank, watching the world pass by and powerless to move with it. 

“I’m sorry,” Ashton says quietly, after at least ten minutes have passed. It’s so quiet that Luke thinks he might have misheard it - maybe it was the family behind them, or just the sound of the tank - but he can sense Ashton stiffen next to him, like he’s preparing for backlash of some sort. 

“What?” Luke says, just to make sure he’s heard right. 

“I’m sorry,” Ashton repeats. Luke pauses, waiting for Ashton to elaborate, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t really have to, though, Luke finds, because he knows what Ashton means. 

“I know,” Luke says eventually. Ashton swallows, but says nothing, just carries on gazing at the sharks, but out of the corner of his eye Luke can see that Ashton’s gaze is fixed now, not following the sharks around.

They stand in silence until an announcement blares through the system telling them that the aquarium is closing soon, making them both jump. 

“What time is it?” Luke asks, just for something to say. 

“Uh,” Ashton says, pulling his phone out. “Five.” Fucking hell. It feels much later than that. “Do you want to go back to the hotel?” Ashton adds, like he knows what Luke’s thinking. Luke nods. 

“I’m fucking exhausted,” he admits, as they head back up the steps away from the sharks and towards the exit. 

“Me too,” Ashton says. “I wanted to stay up until at least ten, but…” he trails off, stifling a yawn, and Luke can’t help but snort. Ashton smiles, small but genuine. “Fuck off,” he says, but it’s good-natured. 

“Yeah,” Luke says, as they traipse out into the little shop. “Think I’m just going to crash when we get back.” Ashton nods, pushing open the door to the exit. Luke’s expecting the glare of brilliant sunlight to hit him, squints in preparation for the onslaught of light, but it’s pitch fucking black. 

“What the fuck?” he says, sounding kind of perplexed and kind of outraged. 

“What?” Ashton says. Luke gestures up at the sky with one hand, and uses the other to pull his coat in closer towards himself, because fucking hell, it’s freezing.  

“It’s five o’clock,” he says. Ashton looks up at the sky, and then at him, an amused expression on his face. 

“Wrong hemisphere,” he says, and Luke rolls his eyes. 

“Fucking miserable place,” Luke grumbles, tucking his arms in and huddling in on himself. “No wonder they invaded the rest of the fucking world, Jesus. I wouldn’t want to stay here either.” Ashton says nothing, but when they pass under a streetlight, Luke sees the corners of his lips tilted upwards, and something warm and pleasant spreads from his stomach outwards. 

“D’you actually know where you’re going?” he asks, when Ashton takes a sharp right turn onto a bridge. 

“Of course I know,” Ashton says, in that infuriating, I’m-Ashton-Irwin-and-I’m-an-intellectual manner that Luke had never liked. Luke rolls his eyes, not entirely playfully, and jogs to keep up with him. 

Ashton leads them across the bridge, past the parliament buildings again, up a long road that a lot of people are ambling down, and then cuts into a small alley on the right. 

“You definitely don’t fucking know where you’re going,” Luke says, standing at the mouth of the road, something uneasy in his stomach. “I’m not going down here.” 

“I know where I’m going,” Ashton says. 

“Where are you going?” Luke says sceptically. 

“Charing Cross.” 

“Why is that down an alleyway?” 

“It’s just a shortcut.” Luke stares at him, narrowing his eyes. 

“Why can’t we walk on the main road?” he asks, because it feels right. Something about the alleyway feels wrong. 

“We can,” Ashton says. “But it’ll take longer.” Luke makes no indications of moving, and Ashton sighs, and it’s tinged with sadness. “Come on, Luke, are you serious? You think I’m going to, what, murder you in an alley in London?” Well. Not specifically, but something’s telling Luke not to follow Ashton into that alley. Much more than that, it’s telling him not to let Ashton into that alley, but Luke’s trying to ignore that part of it. 

“I just don’t want to go that way,” Luke says stubbornly. “Let’s just go on the main road.” 

“It’ll take much longer that way,” Ashton says. 

“I don’t care,” Luke says. “We’re not exactly fucking wanting for time, are we?” Ashton takes a step further into the alleyway, almost out of Luke’s line of vision. 

“Come on , Luke,” he says, and takes another step, and Luke’s stomach tightens uncomfortably as he does. 

“Don’t,” Luke says, before he can stop himself. 

“Why?” Ashton says, sounding exasperated. “Look, the longer you stand here arguing, the longer it’ll take us either way.” 

“I’m taking the main road,” Luke says. “Just- let’s fucking walk on the main road.” 

“You don’t even know the way,” Ashton says. “I know the way.” 

“I’m not going that way.” Even in the darkness and despite the distance, Luke can see Ashton roll his eyes. 

“There’s nothing fucking down here, Luke,” Ashton calls, taking another step into the alleyway, and Luke edges forwards without even thinking about it, needing to keep Ashton in sight. It’s not really working, though, because Ashton’s walking further in and Luke’s at an angle to the alleyway, and it’s making him panic a little.

“Don’t fucking go down there,” Luke says, through gritted teeth. “Ashton, seriously. Just fucking come on the main road with me.” 

“What’s your problem?” Ashton says, and even though he sounds genuinely surprised and curious, it makes a flash of anger flare up in Luke. 

“Can you stop being a cunt for, like, two fucking minutes?” he bites out. 

“Luke, I-” Ashton cuts himself off with a shout, and the anger’s gone, replaced with pure fucking fear and panic and protect protect protect running through Luke’s mind, and Luke’s barely even aware of his surroundings as he takes off, sprinting as fast as he can to the alleyway, getting to the entrance to it just as Ashton comes running out, wild-eyed. He doesn’t stop or say anything, just grabs Luke’s hand as he passes and tugs him hard in the opposite direction. They run to the main road, Luke’s heart pounding in a way that definitely isn’t just from the exercise, and then they run up it, and they don’t stop running until they’re outside the station. Luke doesn’t even realise that they’re still holding hands until Ashton drops his hand to lean on his knees, panting, hair completely windswept as it falls into his eyes. 

“What the fuck was that?” Luke spits, fury beginning to set in between the racing heartbeats and gasped breaths. 

“Someone fucking-” Ashton waves a hand, like it’s going to explain what ‘someone’ did. It doesn’t fucking matter, because those two words alone are enough to make Luke’s heart tighten, to make his stomach clench

“I fucking said-”

“I know, but it’s fucking five p.m., and I always go that way-”

“I told you-”

“I know, Luke,” Ashton says, breathing almost back to normal, and he straightens and gives Luke a look that looks almost sad. “Why d’you think that was?” 

“Why do I- are you fucking insane? Because it’s a creepy fucking alleyway? Anyone would fucking know not to go down there!” Luke says, throwing his hands in the air. 

“You were so fucking adamant,” Ashton says. 

“Yeah, and if you’d fucking listened-” 

“Luke,” Ashton interrupts. “I didn’t sense fucking anything.” Luke stops.

“Are you trying to say this is another fucking soulmate experience?” he says. “We don’t have three. Most people don’t even have one. ” 

“No,” Ashton says. “I think it’s the same one. The first one. The protecting one.” 

Oh. 

Oh.  

It’s kind of a blur already, even though it’s only been like, three minutes, but Luke remembers the haze of protect protect protect that clouded every single other one of his thoughts, that stopped anything and everything else - including his own safety - from mattering, that made him move without even thinking, running straight fucking into the alleyway he’d been so uneasy about because nothing mattered more than Ashton. 

“Fuck,” he says, and Ashton nods grimly. 

“Yeah,” he says. Neither of them need to say didn’t realise it went both ways, because it’s both written clearly across their faces. 

“You got this on the fucking phone?” Luke can’t help but ask. 

“Yeah,” Ashton says again. Luke rakes a hand through his hair, trying to organise his thoughts. All he can really focus on is the what the fuck and Jesus Christ and fucking hell swirling around in a mess in his mind. 

“Well,” he says. “Shit.” Ashton huffs out a shaky laugh, raises his eyebrows, and nods, and Luke thinks that about sums it up. 

  -------

  They don’t talk much on the journey back to the hotel. Luke snipes at Ashton when Ashton tries to show him how to use his contactless card on the barriers, because he’d much rather use a paper ticket, thank you very fucking much, and Ashton calls Luke back when he heads down the wrong escalator. Luke asks once what their stop is and nods when Ashton answers him, and then they don’t speak again until they’re in the safety of the brightly-lit hotel lobby. 

Luke’s not entirely sure how to take the silence between them in the lift up to the second floor. It still feels awkward, stilted, uncomfortable, but there’s something grander now, something bigger than the both of them that they can both feel but neither of them want to acknowledge. 

Luke fusses over Clifford when they get back into the hotel room, pulls out the pack of dog food he’d brought with him because he hadn’t been sure what brands the UK would have, and Clifford munches his dinner happily while Luke carefully removes his coat and plugs his phone in to charge, not looking at Ashton. It feels overcrowded, even though the room is made for two people and certainly big enough to accommodate both of them. 

He takes his time washing up Clifford’s bowl, refilling his water, but Clifford seems perfectly content to doze back off to sleep after his meal, leaving Luke with nothing to do but think about how fucking tired he actually is. 

“I think I might sleep,” he says, even though he doesn’t really have to announce it to Ashton. Ashton looks up from where he is on his bed, book in his hand, and nods. 

“I think I might too,” he says. “Do you want the bathroom first?” Luke blinks at him. 

“Oh,” he says. “Uh. Yeah. Thanks.” Ashton nods, and turns back to his book, but when Luke turns his back to get his things out of his still-packed suitcase, he can feel Ashton’s eyes on him. 

He makes quick work of putting his pyjamas on and brushing his teeth, only hesitating with his hand on the bathroom door handle to leave as he throws a quick glance at himself in the mirror, because he looks so fucking disarmed in his pyjamas, so strangely small and vulnerable. Whatever, he thinks, forcing himself to push the door open, because what the fuck else is he going to do, sleep in the bathroom? 

“Bathroom’s free,” he says, because it feels like what he should say, turning his back to Ashton and making a show out of putting his clothes in his suitcase. He should probably just unpack it, he thinks - he is going to be here for four weeks, after all - but not tonight. He’s too fucking tired for that. 

“Thanks,” Ashton says, and Luke hears the sound of a book closing and then feet shuffling as Ashton heads for the bathroom. He waits for the door to click shut behind him before tucking himself into bed, drawing the duvet close to his chin to try and keep the cold out. Why the fuck is it so cold in England, seriously? 

Ashton doesn’t take long, or maybe Luke falls into microsleep, or something, because it feels like it’s about two seconds before he’s coming out of the bathroom, placing his clothes on the chair opposite his bed, and getting into bed. He’s got plaid pyjama bottoms and a casual t-shirt on, and he looks just as disarmed and vulnerable as Luke had in the mirror, which makes Luke feel simultaneously better and worse. 

“Can I turn the light off?” Ashton asks, and Luke nods. Ashton reaches over, clicks the light switch, and they’re plunged into darkness. 

“Night,” Ashton says after a moment, and there’s a shuffling sound from his bed. 

“Night,” Luke says, suddenly wide awake. He rolls onto his side and stares at the wall opposite him, willing the exhaustion that he’s felt all day to return. Even if he hadn’t slept, like, three fucking hours, he should be tired; it’s the middle of the night in Sydney. 

He feels the time passing, times it by Ashton’s shuffling and Clifford’s even breathing and the noises from the street outside, and he’s sure it’s been at least an hour before there’s what sounds like Ashton flopping onto his back and sighing. 

“Are you awake?” he whispers. Luke debates saying nothing, but knows if he evens his breathing out now it’s going to be pretty fucking obvious he wasn’t. 

“Yeah,” he says, a little reluctantly. 

“I can’t sleep,” Ashton says. 

“Me either.” There’s a moment of silence, and then Ashton says- 

“We could push the beds together?” Luke squeezes his eyes shut, and Ashton takes the silence as hesitation. “Just for tonight. We’d sleep much better, and we probably need it for tomorrow.” 

“No,” Luke says. Civil is one thing, but spending an entire night pressed up against Ashton? That’s something else entirely. 

“Luke, I-” 

“Ashton, I said no.” Ashton’s silent for a moment, and then sighs. 

“Okay,” he says, and it sounds a little small. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to, like. Push.” Luke inhales deeply, exhales heavily, and rolls onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. 

“It’s fine,” he says. 

Ashton says nothing, but Luke doesn’t hear his breathing even out until Luke himself falls into an uneasy, dreamless sleep, and when he wakes up in the morning, exhausted and grumpy, Ashton’s staring up at the ceiling again (or maybe still).

taglist: @sadistmichael @callmeboatboy @clumsyclifford @angel-cal @queer-5sos @haikucal @tirednotflirting @cthofficial @tigerteeff @i-am-wierd-always

if you want to be added to my taglist pls fill in this form!

[hakuryuu]

PLEASE I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW (EITHER-OR!) NEW OR RONAH’S ANSWERS FOR THE WHOLE MEME YOU POSTED

NEW 1. How would you (or they) describe their gender, without using standard binary terms?: new would describe her gender as the color the sky gets right before the sunrise gets started in the summer


2. Are they religious?: no…..sort of…….religion is hard one bc gods like Canonically Exist in this world and she Knows This And Believes In Them but she’s not particularly spiritual and doesn’t have one god she’s particularly devoted to AND because of the memory thing she only like vaguely knows that the gods exist at all so sjdflkjs


3. What social media platforms would they use (if in a world where those existed) and what would they use them for? Bonus: What would they get cancelled for?: new would probably have an instagram but not use it very much, she’d maybe post pictures of stuff now and again and she likes to follow people who make cool things but i think she would mostly make an instagram account and then forget about it (bonus: paz and caramel are BIG on twitter)


4. Do they have any weird scars, and how did they get them?: she has a bunch of regular accumulated life-living scars from like scratches and bug bites and falls and stuff, but nothing really weird except for that she doesn’t remember how she got a lot of them


5. What crime are they most likely to be arrested for?: loitering U__U


6. Ok, what crime are they most likely to have actually committed?: trespassing


7. If the one prison phone call thing was real, who would they call?: paz w/o hesitation (paz is the richest and will probably show up with caramel and run anyway)


8. Do they collect anything? What do they collect?: she collects little trinkets and things! usually small emotionally relevant items that are from or remind her of experiences she’s had (her haircutting knife, that portrait of run in her bag, the small bells off her dress, etc)


9. Who would they platonically marry for tax benefits?: PAZ…….


10. What superstition/paranormal entity/conspiracy theory do they believe is 100% real, whether or not they admit it?: i can’t think of anything like this for new im sorryyyyy i’ll come back to this one


11. What’s something embarrassing they did as a child/teenager?: [REDACTED DUE TO MEMORY LOSS]


12. What’s something embarrassing they probably did yesterday?: walked up to someone without looking directly at them, assumed they were run, started talking to them, and then realized that they were just a random stranger and not run


13. What hobby did they try once and give up on? Why?: jewelry-making! she wanted to make more fun earrings and stuff for herself and her friends but she doesn’t have access to many of the right tools for it and the stuff she managed to put together didn’t look how she wanted it to so she just stuck with weaving as a hobby


14. What niche topic do they get incredibly pedantic about?: SJKDGLF THANKS TO HER LIKE WEEK OF RESEARCH AT THE PIPER TOWN LIBRARY THAT ONE TIME SHE KNOWS SO MUCH ABOUT OLD RICH FAMILIES ON PANSIA…..paz will make some offhand comment about a family the mahaleys work at and new will be like. eyes emoji


15. What’s their favorite food to make?: she loves apple cinnamon oatmeal and loves to make it from scratch ;__;


16. What do you think this character’s worst decision was? What does this character think their worst decision was?: New Has Done Nothing Wrong In Her LIFE (SHE thinks her worst decision was agreeing to abandon caramel and run & go with paz when paz left them, even though they ended up turning back pretty quickly)


17. Is there anything you wish the writers had done differently with this character? Why?: I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO SEE THE WRITER GIVE HER SOME MORE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN THE SECOND HALF OF FMFY, I THINK THAT SHE AND ALL OF THE CHARACTERS COULD HAVE REALLY BENEFITTED FROM EXPLORING THOSE NEW WEIRD DYNAMICS BEFORE THE CLIMAX OF THE BOOK,


18. What character from another work do you think they’d get along really well with?: within my own works (elise nano extended universe) i think that she would get along with maimou from ttsp (he’s that kind of friendly that would put her at ease and draw her out of her shyness somewhat i think), and outside of my own works i have this vague sense that she might get along with charlotte’s oc io?


19. What character from another work would be their mortal enemy?: not mortal enemy but i think that she and turnadot from lamsm would be at odds because of the like difference in approach they have to everything that’s happening to them and the difference of experience… oh iro i think would get frustrated at her easily i think


20. What’s a headcanon you’ve always wanted to share but none of these ask memes ever ask you about it?: I Am Constantly Sharing All My Headcanons And No One Can Stop Me

---

RONAH 1. How would you (or they) describe their gender, without using standard binary terms?: you know when you light a fire in the snow at night and the light is orange and the shadows are this bright blue? that color


2. Are they religious?: yes! they’re a big believer in the moon and the cycle (ironically….. :( )


3. What social media platforms would they use (if in a world where those existed) and what would they use them for? Bonus: What would they get cancelled for?: gjsdlgjsf i really feel like the closest they have to a social media presence is like. a goodreads account. and then they show up in the background of thrip’s tiktoks sometimes and their brothers reference them in tweets and raiv’s instagram has a lot of selfies with them


4. Do they have any weird scars, and how did they get them?: the only weird scar they have is one on their thigh where they accidentally cut themself mid-switch between elf and wolf forms and it took forever to heal and it’s BRIGHT red


5. What crime are they most likely to be arrested for?: grim answer: being a wolf shifter


6. Ok, what crime are they most likely to have actually committed?: accessory to murder U___U


7. If the one prison phone call thing was real, who would they call?: they’d want to call raiv, but they would call laithe (they would consider calling bliss “walked barefoot across the country to get out of a witchcraft trial” parvo and then immediately decide against it)


8. Do they collect anything? What do they collect?: they have a modest storybook/folktale book collection, just a small shelf of their favorites, but they aren’t really the collecting type


9. Who would they platonically marry for tax benefits?: they would (queer)platonically marry bliss for tax benefits, although honestly bliss is getting the benefit because it means they never have to do taxes again because ronah will do them


10. What superstition/paranormal entity/conspiracy theory do they believe is 100% real, whether or not they admit it?: probably one that they’re kind of embarrassed about but still believe deep down that lonaih and unaech (wolf shifter folk story cornerstones) are still alive and out there somewhere somehow


11. What’s something embarrassing they did as a child/teenager?: they were VERY into performing songs and plays and stuff when they were younger, which is something that they feel kind of silly and embarrassed about now (but they still love to tell stories)


12. What’s something embarrassing they probably did yesterday?: walked around the corner and saw themself in a mirror and scared themself


13. What hobby did they try once and give up on? Why?: music, because it was impractical…. :(


14. What niche topic do they get incredibly pedantic about?: LITERALLY EVERYTHING, THATS LIKE THEIR JOB, I LOVE THEM


15. What’s their favorite food to make?: do you remember that braid of pesto bread iro was briefly eating in the beginning of lle? you might not because i suddenly can’t remember if you read the whole thing or just the kavi chapter, BUT ronah learned how to make that because it’s both iro and thrip’s favorite food


16. What do you think this character’s worst decision was? What does this character think their worst decision was?: i personally think that the decision to actively assist their family in a scheme to murder a moon goddess for revenge isn’t the BEST idea they’ve ever had. ronah thinks their worst decision was leaving raiv behind


17. Is there anything you wish the writers had done differently with this character? Why?: it would be cool if the writer had. written the last three to five chapters of the book they’re in. i think that would have been neat
.

18. What character from another work do you think they’d get along really well with?: i think that they and kavi would bond over a love of family and stories!! w/i my own works i kind of like to think that they would get along with farfara from tayl. sonia from ttsp would also remind them of their family, and i think they’d like her for that


19. What character from another work would be their mortal enemy?: this is niche but the bounty hunter from see me through would hate them


20. What’s a headcanon you’ve always wanted to share but none of these ask memes ever ask you about it?: they used to dye their hair when they were younger!

[trashyswitch]

Logan’s Trip to [REDACTED]

Chapter 2: Logan's Second Round of Visits

Logan describes his first experience inside the SCP Foundation, and tells them about the volunteer opportunity.

Two weeks later, Logan heads back to the SCP Foundation for a few more days to meet some new SCP's and meet up with his personal favorites.

For @kanene-yaaay! 

1st chapter: The First Ever Foreign Visitor

Logan opens up the door to the car, and removes the eye mask from his face, while the passenger removed Logan's luggage from the trunk of the car. As he hands the driver the mask back, he thanks the driver and the passenger for the wonderful opportunity.

"Well, I'm glad to know you enjoyed it. And, I believe we'll be seeing more of you in the future?" The driver clarified.

"Of course! I could never pass up a volunteer opportunity like that." Logan replied.

The driver smiled. "Sounds good. See you in two weeks." The driver said, before hopping into the car.

Logan smiled. "Bye." Logan replied, watching the car leave the front of the house.

Logan grabbed onto his luggage, and pulled it up to the door. He knocked on the door, and waited patiently for someone to open it.

In a matter of seconds, Logan heard loud sprinting footsteps up to the door, and watched it open to reveal: Roman! And Patton!

"LOGAN!" Patton and Roman yelled at once. Roman and Patton pulled Logan into a strong, sandwiched hug that nearly knocked him down.

But, Logan didn't mind the familiar touches. "Hi...I'm back." Logan said with a crooked smile.

"Welcome home Logey! I made you cookies!" Patton cheered. Logan's smile widened into a toothy smile at the sound off cookies. It reminded Logan of SCP-999 almost immediately.

Logan walked himself into the kitchen and grabbed a couple cookies off of the cooling rack. "Hey Logan. Welcome back." Virgil greeted, walking into the room and giving Logan a gentle pat on the back.

"Hi Virgil. It feels good to be back." Logan replied, ruffling his hair a little bit. Logan bit into one of the cookies, and smiled wide at how amazing they tasted! Patton giggled with a toothy smile, reading his facial expression as a hint to his success at the cookies.

Roman gasped at the rare, large smile on Logan's face. "Wow! I don't think I've ever seen you this happy before!" Roman commented.

Logan paused his smile, and took another bite of his cookie. Bits of cookie crumbs fell down his face as he attempted to explain his happy mood. "Shorry. I'm shtill exshperiencing the effectx of the SCP'sh..." Logan explained with his mouth partly full.

"So...what was it like, being surrounded by FBI agents?" Virgil asked.

Logan swallowed his chewed up cookie. "More like Men in Black characters, but bald. All of them had shiny bald heads. Even the General Manager had a bald head! If it weren't for his bigger-sized belly, I wouldn't be able to tell him apart from the rest." Logan explained.

Patton rested his chin on his hands, and listened to Logan's story in awe and wonder. "The building was huge. You could've easily gotten lost in there, if you didn't have a map with you. Which, for your ease of mind, I did have a map with me, and it helped me immensely." Logan explained.

"Cool. What were some of the SCP's like?" Virgil asked.

Patton gasped. "Yeah! Were they all scary? Or were there friendly SCP's as well? Tell me! Tell me, tell me, tell me!" Patton asked and pleaded, grabbing onto Logan's wrist as he jumped and whined.

Logan giggled at their onslaught of questions. "Well, there were a few scary ones. You know that Creepypasta that was written about SCP-173?" Logan asked, referring to Virgil.

"Uh huh. The one that looked like a weird, deformed baby?" Virgil recalled.

"Yes. That photo is 100% accurate. No photoshop, no touch-ups, a true photo taken of SCP-173." Logan told them.

Roman's eyes widened. "No way..." Roman reacted, unsure of whether Logan was joking or not.

"I'm not kidding. At all. There's also an alligator with a mane and an exposed ribcage. It's called SCP-682, and it's super strange-looking..." Logan told them. Then, Logan begins to smile a little bit. "But Patton, you are right: There are plenty of safe and friendly SCP's that could be perceived as 'cute'. For example: there's a multi-patterned teddy bear known as SCP-2295, who can make organs out of fabric and do successful organ transplants with no rejection issues." Logan explained, remembering the cute little teddy bear, covering its eyes and squirming around as it was being tickled. "There's a pair of tiny robotic eyes, known as eye pods, who follow you around like a bunch of house cats. Now only that, but there's even a coffee machine with a keyboard attached, that's able to dispense whatever you type into the keyboard." Logan explained.

"A coffee machine that dispenses anything?" Virgil asked.

"Yup. For example: I requested a cup of 'liquefied Strawberry Crofters Jam'." Logan explained.

"AND IT WORKED?!" Patton exclaimed. Logan nodded his head. Patton's eyes widened to the size of saucers. HOW DID THAT WORK?! Patton couldn't process such a thing!

"But, I do have a personal favorite SCP. I never expected to pick favorites, but..." Logan explained, before his lips morphed into a big smile that just couldn't be wiped off his face.

Patton's placed his hand on his chest. "Awwww! Did you find an adorable puppy?" Patton asked.

Roman put on a teasy sexy face. "Oooh, did someone fall for a hot and shhmmmexy SCP?" Roman asked, teasing him with a few elbow nudges.

"Guys, cool it on the guesses. Logan's gonna tell us." Virgil told them, throwing an arm out to the side, to shut them up.

"Thank you, Virgil." Logan said, fixing his tie. "And Patton?...You were the closest." Logan told him. Patton cheered on the spot, pumping his fists up in the air.

Roman looked over at Patton, and quickly wanted to keep asking questions. "Well? A dog? Or a cat? Did it have extra limbs? Or, was it a supernatural puppy with the key to the universe?" Patton asked.

Logan just laughed at his guesses. "Ihihit was no pet. It was...a glob. Of orange jelly." Logan explained. Patton's eager smile slowly dropped...and his whole face morphed into complete confusion.

"Huh?!" Patton asked.

"Yes. It's name was SCP-999. It was a glob of orange jelly, that actually had the density of peanut butter. It had the ability to stretch and bend into different sizes and shapes, but mostly preferred being in a semi-ovalled glob on the ground. It was a little bit like the glob of goo from Monsters Vs. Aliens." Logan explained.

Virgil let out a chuckle. "Really? Only it was orange and not named Bob?" Virgil asked.

"Yes. And, non-verbal." Logan added. "Now, you are going to love this next fact:" Logan said, before clearing his throat. "It has been given a nickname by the SCP scientists. SCP-999's nickname is 'The Tickle Monster'." Logan explained.

Patton's eyes widened, and a huge smile showed up on his face. "THERE'S A TICKLE MONSTER SCP?!?!" Patton shouted.

"Yes, there is." Logan replied with a smirk. "The SCP is meant to give off feelings of happiness and joy. One of its favorite activities, is tickling people. And let's just say...I got destroyed by the orange glob." Logan told them.

"Really?" Virgil asked. "So, you can now openly admit that you got tickled by an actual tickle monster?" Virgil commented.

Logan shook his head. "It's all very classified. I have to keep my mouth shut." Logan told them.

Patton frowned. "But...you just told us about it..." Patton mentioned. Logan looked around for a moment, and smiled awkwardly as he scratched the back of his head.

"Weeeeeelll...I gotta tell somebody, because otherwise I'm gonna lose my mind! Who can experience something like that, and NOT have someone to talk about the experience with?" Logan asked.

Patton shrugged his shoulders.

Virgil nodded his head. "He's got a point." Virgil commented.

Patton nodded, before smiling. "So, tell me more about this tickle monster glob!" Patton offered.

Logan smiled and continued to talk about him. Logan mentioned his love for candy, and how he reacted to the M&M's it got to eat. He told them about the adorable personality that the SCP possessed, and he told them about how squishy the SCP felt in his hands. "It was so strange! It felt like jello, but...not jello." Logan explained. In the end, Logan had declared that his favorite part of the trip was SCP-999, and he also explained the volunteer opportunity he had been given. Roman and Virgil cheer him on for earning himself a volunteer experience at a classified place. But Patton, while he congratulates him, seems...hurt. So, Logan happily cuddles Patton that night, to keep him calm about being away more often.

"I'll be here for about 2 weeks before heading off again. Don't worry. I'll keep you updated." Logan told him.

Patton, despite feeling like he had lost a son to society, put on a smile and nodded his head. "And I'll make sure you're all stocked up on cookies before you leave for the trip." Patton replied.

Logan smiled and gave Patton a kiss on the forehead, before continuing his cuddle session. It sounded like a nice plan, to help Patton get used to this new change...

[2 WEEKS LATER]

Logan walked into the SCP Foundation entrance behind the jet staff that escorted him off of the plane. Dr. ████ walked himself up to Logan and offered a handshake. "Mr. Sanders. We meet again." Dr. ████ said, pulling Logan into a light hug and a pat on the back.

"Thank you." Logan replied, giving his shoulder a squeeze. "But I would like to suggest something: If we are going to be working together, I would appreciate if you called me Logan, instead of Mr. Sanders." Logan told him.

"Mr. Logan?" Dr. ████ asked.

Logan chuckled. "No, just Logan. I'm not used to this Men In Black way of talking, and it kinda...draws the line for being formal to me." Logan explained.

Dr. ████ nodded and chuckled. "You relate this cooperation to the Men In Black Franchise?" Dr. ████ asked.

Logan nodded his head. "Yes! The only difference is the shiny baldness!" Logan replied confidently.

Dr. ████ laughed a little bit. "All the Security guards are advised that their hair is shaved off, to help us recognize them as one with the SCP Foundation. They were also given this advice, to try and prevent scalping incidents'. Though, that's only for the security guards. The scientists have hair nets, so they're allowed to grow hair." Dr. ████ explained.

Logan's eyes widened. Was someone scalped in this facility?! Yikes! That would be very painful!

"Yeah, I would never want to deal with that." Logan told him.

"I don't think anyone would." Dr. ████ mentioned.

After their little talk, Logan (with the help of the security guards) was brought to his room. When the room door opened, Logan walked in and placed his suitcase under his bed. When Logan was ready, one of the Security Guards gave Logan a few labelled key cards with multiple levels, and a Walkie-Talkie with the correct channel on it.

"Thank you." Logan said to the man.

"Have fun." The security guard said, before walking away. Logan walked into the room, and took some time to work on the mapping of the place. He labelled the new SCP's he wanted to meet and visit, and he also labelled the SCP's he wanted to visit again.

When he felt fully prepared, Logan picked up the map and got up to head out. When the door was closed and sealed up, Logan smiled and began walking to the right of his room. Logan focused his eyes on the first numbered containment room that was there: SCP-348. Logan places the correct key card into the slot, and for it to beep. When the green light goes off, Logan removes it and opens up the door.

Inside, there's a metal table, a wooden chair, and an empty white bowl with a spoon on the left side of the bowl. Logan, not sure what to do at first, sits down at the table and opens up his backpack. He pulls out a notebook and a pencil, and begins just writing down the SCP number, and the item it shows itself to be. Logan looks up from his notebook, and was about to lift up the empty bowl. But, he pauses himself when he feels his thumb dip into some sort of warm liquid. Logan looks up from his notebook, and blinks in surprise:

The spoon had been moved to the right side of the bowl, and the bowl itself, was full of what looked to be chicken noodle soup. Logan, surprised but curious, lifted up the spoon with his hand, put a couple noodles and broth onto the spoon, and gave it a taste test.

Logan's eyes widened. It tasted like the Campbell's* Chicken Noodle soup that Patton used to give him on sick days or cold days. Logan often appreciated Patton's gesture, and the Campbell's can of soup was always his favorite. Logan smiled happily, and ate some more of the soup. Though Logan's mind was somewhat questioning where the soup had actually came from, Logan's restless thoughts seemed to have rested, thanks to the distracting and satisfying taste of the soup.

Logan continued to eat his newfound bowl of soup, while he wrote some stuff down into his notebook. But soon, Logan began to pick his pencil up less and less, and began focusing more and more on his bowl of yummy chicken noodle soup.

Soon enough, the soup bowl was completely empty. Logan frowned at the bowl, feeling disappointed that the bowl was empty. But, Logan's frown softened when he saw that the empty bowl had a note on the bottom of the bowl.

{Get well my Nerdicorn. I love you!}

Logan's heart softened drastically. Nerdy unicorn, or Nerdicorn for short, was Patton's little nickname for him. Whenever Logan would be sick, Patton would feed him soup, encourage him to sleep in his unicorn onesie and tuck him into his galaxy bed. By the time Logan had fallen asleep, Patton would still be singing a little song to him. It changed, depending on the day. But, every song Patton would sing him, the voice would become a loving, caring and a pretty sound to hear. His voice would slowly turn angel-like, and fade away as he dozed off to sleep. By the time he would wake up again, Patton would be finishing up something and coming in to check on him. On more than a few occasions, Logan has even woken up with a stuffed animal of Patton's. Logan would always feel the urge to smile when he saw one of Patton's 'special' stuffed animals tucked into his arm. His 'special stuffed animals were the ones that Patton loved the most. They were always the more 'pampered' and most-loved stuffed animals. But, when you found one of his special animals in your arms, you immediately knew that he trusted you with them.

Logan shook himself out of his memories, and brought his focus back on the white blur in front of him. It took a second for Logan to question why his vision was blurry...but the answer quickly dawned onto him when he felt wet tears dripping down from his eyes.

Logan was crying amidst his reminiscing.

Hoping and praying that no one was watching him, Logan quickly wiped the endless amounts of tears in his eyes. Bits of tears even managed to drip into the bowl. Logan took off his glasses, placed them aside and used his shirt collar to deal with his teary eyes. Gosh...It was like having seasonal allergies again...except, with the yearning to cry replacing the chest issues.

"Hey Mr. S- Logan? You okay?" said the black thing in his pocket.

Logan looked down, and pulled his Walkie-Talkie out of his pocket. He clicked the 'call' button on the wide of the walkie-talkie, to send a message over. "Yeah, I'm alright. The soup SCP-348 gave me...made me bitter-sweetly nostalgic." Logan explained.

"Ooooh. Okay. I'll write that down and add that to SCP-348's file then. Thank you." The doctor replied.

"You're welcome." Logan said, before putting his walkie-talkie back in his pocket. Logan put his notebook and his pencil into his bag, zipped it up and threw it onto his back. All ready to go, Logan opened the door with the door button and headed out.

Logan pulled out his map, and figured out the directions towards the next room he wanted to visit again: SCP-999!

Logan smiled excitedly, and had to stop himself from sprinting in the halls. He headed up a small flight of stairs, and used his key card to open up the door at the top. Then, Logan double checked his spot on the map. When the numbers seemed to have matched the numbers on the map, Logan closed it and headed to the right side of the hallway. It took a few twists and turns, but he soon made it to the room. Logan pulled out his key card again and let the slot read the code. The door turned green and opened up. Logan excitedly ran up to the door, and restlessly waited for the slot to read his card. When it opened up, Logan ran into the room.

"999! I'm here!" Logan said excitedly. SCP-999 turned around and sprouted a huge smile onto his face. SCP-999 let out excited gurgles and quickly slid itself over to Logan and quickly pulled Logan into a big hug. "Hi! Aww, I missed you so much! Yes I did! Yes I did!" Logan reacted, quickly petting 999's head and sides, and squishing 999's cheeks eagerly. SCP-999 decided to return the loving gestures by fluffing Logan's hair, and nuzzling its face into Logan's face and chest. Logan giggled contently with a toothy smile, as his glasses fell down all askew from the nuzzling. It was too much happiness to handle! And Logan was LOVING it!

Though SCP-999 wanted to tickle Logan right away, it really wanted to see if there were any treats in his bag! Last time, Logan had given it a bag of M&M's! Is there any more treats for the gurgly SCP?

999 decided to find out. The blob placed Logan down, and used a pseudo-pod of theirs to lift up the backpack by the handle. When it wanted Logan to slip out of the straps, it tried sneaking a pseudo-pod under the man's shirt and tickling Logan on the stomach and the sides. "BAAAhahahahahahaha! Nihihine nihihihihine nihihine! Lehehehet gohohohoho-" Logan giggled helplessly, waving his arms in the air before slipping out of the backpack. Interestingly enough, 999 had readied itself for Logan's fall! It caught Logan with a second pseudo-pod, before resuming the tickle attack onto Logan's armpit. "OHOHOHO GEHEHEHEHEEZ! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! NOHOHOHO AHAHAHAHARMPIHIHIHIHIHITS! HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Logan shouted, already losing his mind before being placed down.

Logan quickly fell limp and practically flopped onto his back. But, Logan quickly sat himself up to look at what SCP-999 was doing. It looked like SCP-999 was snooping around in his backpack! "Hey! Get outta there! That's mine!" Logan ordered. But, the SCP didn't listen. It just began digging itself deeper and deeper into Logan's backpack. As the items in the backpack fell out of the bag, SCP-999 continued searching for more stuff before simply giving up and instead, began gurgling as the backpack sat opened on its head. Either fabric-made side of the backpack zipper was blinding 999's vision. But, 999 didn't seem to really care!

Logan just bursted into giggles at the look of the backpack on SCP-999's head. When Logan was done, he stood up again and walked up to the SCP. When Logan lifted up the backpack off the blob's head, the blob gave it a guilty, but starry-eyed look. Logan bursted out laughing at the rest of the orange glob: All the items in Logan's bag had been sucked up in the SCP's gooey insides. The orange glob let out a gurgle of pride.

"As much as this scene is adorable to see, SCP-999 is capable of digesting anything and everything it comes across. So...you might wanna remove your stuff before it becomes the SCP's dinner..." The walkie-talkie told Logan.

Logan's laughter slowed down somewhat. A toothy smile had claimed his face, and the man had to wipe a small tear from his eye. But quickly, everything clicked in Logan's mind. 999 COULD EAT HIS STUFF! Logan let out a yelp and quickly sprinted up to the glob. Logan shoved his hand into 999, and quickly began removing item after item. Despite the fact that the orange glob was made of (he assumed to be) gelatin, none of his items came out wet or stained with orange liquid! Logan lifted an eyebrow as he stared at the notebook, that he believed would be a goner. But...incredibly, it wasn't! With that underway, Logan pulled out everything else that had ended up in SCP-999. His sweater, his glasses' case, his pens and pencil sharpener, his book, everything came out dry and unscathed.

Logan giggled as he looked at the breathless creature. The removal process was very shaky, thanks to SCP-999's inability to sit still. Apparently, shoving a hand inside SCP-999 was not weird in it's eyes! It actually made the glob smile widely and gurgle in excitement! Though it didn't really make sense, it was still amusing nonetheless...That was, until 999 decided to get revenge. Now that just killed Logan with fits of giggles.

In a moment's notice, SCP-999 had spawned another Pseudo-pod arm and brought it above Logan's head and onto the back of Logan's neck. Almost as soon as the wiggly fingers started, Logan lifted his shoulders up and threw his head back in giggly laughter. "Hahahahahaha! Nohohoho neheheheheheck!" Logan giggled. Almost immediately after hearing that, 999 moved the pseudo-pod over to the side of the neck and wiggled its fingers again. Wahahahait, nohohoho dohohohohohohon't! Hehehehehehehehe!" Logan's giggles continued. Now, the pseudo-pod was tickling in all sorts of spots on the neck! The sides, the back and the the front were never left without a few seconds of unpredictable tickles. "Hahahahahaha! Cohohome ohohohohohon! Yohohohou're sohohohoho ehehehehehevihihihihihil!" Logan said through his giggles.

In an attempt to level out the playing field for once, Logan decided to try tickling SCP-999 back. But...where was he gonna start?! He couldn't decide! But, the hidden spot under the psendo-pod happened to be right in front of Logan. So, Logan shoved his hand under the pit of the pseudo-pods.

But...nothing happened. 999 didn't react. It didn't gurgle in surprise. It didn't even flinch...Logan's eyes widened. "...Oh..." Was all that left Logan's mouth. But, SCP-999 didn't start tickling him again. SCP-999 actually made new pseudo-pods and lifted them up in the air to expose the spots underneath.

Logan's eyebrows raised at the pacifism the glob was showing him. "Wait, really? You...want me to try tickling you?" Logan asked. SCP-999 gave Logan a happy gurgle in reply. 999 was actually giving Logan a second chance to try tickling it again! Logan didn't wait another second. He skittered his fingers under the 'arm' pit to try and get it to react. But, it didn't make much of a reaction!

Logan lowered his wiggly fingers down to the sides of the orange blob. Suddenly, 999 let out a surprised yelp! Logan pulled his hands back quickly, in fear of hurting it. "Sorry!" Logan exclaimed in a frightened voice. SCP-999 tilted its head to the side. It brought the pseudo-pods up to Logan's sides, and tickled them a bit. "Hehehehehehe! Ihihi thohohohought- I thought-...wait a second-" Logan reacted, before wiggling his own fingers on 999's jelly-like sides. 999 began letting out happy gurgles and shaking a little bit. Logan's confidence as a ler began to slowly get better as he tried wiggling his fingers on the belly region. The gurgily little blob continued its shaking and began curling in as more excited gurgles left its mouth.

Logan couldn't believe it! The tickle monster was TICKLISH! But- But how was that possible?! This thing wasn't human, or animal-like! It was gelatin! Pure gelatin!...right?

Logan continued tickling it as much as he could, and tried tickling other spots as well! It tried the upper side of the blob, and managed to get some hidden laughs within the gurgles! That must've been its laughter! Logan also tried the sides of where the neck should've been. In response, 999 grabbed onto Logan's lower arm with its pseudo-pods, and shut its eyes as giggly gurgles left its transparent body.

As a last spot to try, Logan walked up to the back of the blob, and tried wiggling and drumming all 10 fingers up and down the SCP's back. SCP-999 actually squealed and stretched itself up! When Logan's fingers wiggled on the SCP's lower back, 999 actually let out giggly gurgles and, get this: Bounced its body away from Logan! It didn't slide away! It full-on bounced away! It was absolutely, positively ADORABLE! Logan covered his mouth with surprise, and let out an excited squeal of his own! The blob was even cuter than he could handle!

"I-I'm sorry, WHAT?! HOW HAVE YOU MANAGED TO GET THIS CUTE!" Logan yelled, mentally unable to handle how adorable this creature was.

Hilariously, SCP-999 interpreted this yelling as excited praise from the man! So, SCP-999 bounced and gurgled for joy at the thought that 999 was a good blob!

"Can-can I cuddle you? I really wanna cuddle you. I can't wait a second longer. I have to. I need to cuddle you. I need you to know how much I love you. Can I please cuddle you?" Logan asked desperately. SCP-999 allowed Logan to cuddle them, and showed that by sliding itself over to Logan. When it was close enough, Logan hugged the SCP as hard as he could without separating any of the blob contents, and nuzzled his face into the SCP's chest area.

After a good 10 minutes of nuzzling 999, Logan got a funny little idea and wanted to try it out. Logan quickly recalled a memory of Patton tickling him and giving him little raspberries on the belly and ribs. So, Logan decided to try a little raspberry on 999! Logan took in a big breath and blew a big raspberry onto SCP-999's chest. The SCP's black little eyes and orange mouth actually widened at the weird feeling, and fell into a long fit of giggly gurgles. Not only that, but the SCP's body made jiggly ripples and almost vibrated along with Logan's raspberry!

Logan removed his mouth and breathed in, smiling genuinely as the blob shook and lightly jumped in place. The SCP seemed to love it! So, Logan did more raspberry's! He rasp-berried 999's belly area, 999's neck, 999's sides, and lastly: 999's back! Though for the back, Logan kept his raspberry short and sweet. SCP-999 made all kinds of strange but lovely little sounds! The SCP let out surprised little squeaks, lots of gurgily giggles, even gurgily laughter left the SCP's body! That SCP may be a little blob of orange gelatin, but BOY, did it make some ADORABLE sounds!

Logan ended up falling into another giggle fit from the sounds and jiggly body alone! He couldn't take it! It was so adorable and so lovable!

Despite how drugged up on happiness Logan appeared, the two companions did end up having some regular fun together. Using a tennis ball that the Doctor supplied for him, Dr. ████ asked for Logan to attempt a game of catch with the SCP. Before the game started, Logan had to introduce the inanimate object to the SCP. So, Logan started off by bringing it close to the SCP.

"This is a ball. A Tennis ball." Logan told him. The SCP looked at the tennis ball for a few seconds, before looking back up at Logan. "It bounces." Logan told him, before dropping the ball onto the ground. Logan allowed the ball to bounce around in front of it. At first, the SCP cowered away from it, and backed itself against the wall. So, Logan grabbed the ball again, and bounced it in front of himself. The ball bounced up and down, up and down, up and down in front of him, and did end up hitting Logan a few times. Despite the SCP's nervous reaction, Logan allowed the ball to bounce off him. It also showed the SCP that the ball couldn't hurt him.

Slowly, SCP-999 brought itself closer to the bouncing ball, and watched it bounce up and down with curious eyes. Logan caught it one more time, walked himself over to the ball of orange jelly, and gently dropped it onto the SCP's lower body. As soon as it made contact with the SCP, it bounced right off it like a trampoline, and right back to Logan! SCP-999's eyes widened with surprise and curiousity. Wanting to try bouncing the ball itself, SCP-999 held out a pseudo-pod to place it into. Logan smiled and placed the ball onto the top of the pseudo-pod. With his hand free, Logan pulled out his walkie-talkie and explained what just happened to the Doctor.

"SCP-999 has noticed the ball's harmless affects. It is holding the ball now, and looking at the fuzzy exterior." Logan told Dr. ████.

"Good. Very interesting..." Dr. ████ stated. Dr. ████ looked away for about 5 seconds, and looked back at the cameras. "Whahahat thehe- Hahahahaha! What is it doing?!" Dr. ████ reacted, laughing at the SCP's behaviour.

Logan was laughing as well. SCP-999 was bouncing the ball as high as it could, and was stretching and collapsing its body up and down along with it!

"Ihihit looks like SCP-999 has decided to bohounce along with it!" Logan said through a few more laughs.

In the middle of its bouncing, SCP-999 looked back at Logan, and noticed him laughing at him. But, SCP-999 didn't seem phased by this at all, and only continued to bounce around beside the ball. The SCP's body slowly began to resemble a circular ball shape, and SCP-999 began bouncing around the room! Logan only continued to laugh at the SCP's silly reaction, and walked a little closer to the bouncing SCP.

Upon noticing Logan's approach, SCP-999 smiled wider! 999 bounced itself closer to Logan, and began jumping in circles around the man! Logan had to bend down to try and catch his breath. It was such a strange, but hilarious reaction, to a ball! A BALL! But Logan DIDN'T expect however, was for SCP-999 sneak up behind Logan, wrap its arms around Logan's belly and pull him into the bouncy mass! Logan was surprised, and almost terrified at what SCP-999 was doing to him. SCP-999 was still bouncing with Logan wrapped within the bouncy mass! Logan didn't know how to react! The feeling of the floor getting farther and closer every 5 seconds was quite nauseating at first. Logan was usually never motion sick. But then again, Logan's never experienced being bounced around by someone else before. Usually if a human did this, it would be considered 'inappropriate/neglectful behaviour' that could cause whiplash. But ironically, Logan wasn't crying out in pain from any whiplash...

Despite Logan's strange reaction, Dr. ████ believed this behaviour should stop as soon as possible. He was about to try and stop the SCP's jumping in order to save Logan...But, he began to hear a voice from the cameras...

"Whooohohohoa, whohohohohoa! Sohohoho bohohouncyhyhyhyhy!"...Dr. ████ lifted an eyebrow. Wait a second...Was Logan laughing?! In excitement? Or, was he being tickled again? Dr. ████ slowly backed his finger a couple centimetres away from the room speaker. He wasn't sure what to do. "Thihihihis ihihis sohohohoho weheheheheihird! Buhuhut, Ihi lohohohove ihihihit! Thihihis ihihihis ahahahahawesohohohome!" Logan declared through adrenaline-filled laughter.

Dr. ████ moved his finger away from the button completely, and smiled.

Logan's thoughts had managed to go from 'Let me go! This is SUPER nauseating' to 'This is so much fun!' in a matter of 10 seconds! SCP-999 must've been working its magic on Logan, in order for THIS to occur.

Dr. ████ smiled and watched the scene for a bit longer, before placing his finger onto the speaker button. "Okay, SCP-999. That's enough." Dr. ████ ordered. SCP-999 paused its jumping around, and looked up at the speaker in its room. "I know you love playing with Logan, but you need to be careful, remember? Humans are easy to break." Dr. ████ told 999. SCP-999 nodded its head and placed Logan down onto the ground.

"You okay, Logan? You're not nauseous or in pain, are you?" Dr. ████ asked.

Logan was still experiencing some giggle fits from the bouncy adventure he had just been on. "Thahahahahat wahahahas ahahamahahazihihing..." Logan babbled through his giggles before rolling his eyes back and flopping backwards onto his back. The pressure of his back hitting the ground, didn't end up hurting him. It only caused Logan to burst into louder, more bubbly giggles. "He's experiencing too much euphoria. We need to get Logan out of there asap." Dr. ████ ordered. In a matter of minutes, a couple scientists opened up the door, and picked up the giggly man.

As Logan was pulled away, a third scientist came in to give SCP-999 its food. SCP-999 was left confused, and somewhat hurt from his friend's quick disappearance. No goodbye? Not even a wave? Or a smile to say he's okay? SCP-999 began to worry that it may have hurt Logan. Dr. ████ seemed to hear this guilt from the guilty gurgles that left the SCP's mouth. "It's okay, 999. Logan is alright. When Logan gets better and visits some other SCP's, you can visit him tonight. Does that sound good?' Dr. ████ compromised. SCP-999's smile and its starry-eyes came back for a few seconds at the idea. Then, SCP-999 calmed itself down enough to eat the sugary food it had been given.

It took a few minutes of tests and experiments, but Logan had managed to snap himself back into normal. When asked about Logan's experience of being bounced around like that by 999, Logan stated the following: "It was like my life was flashing before my eyes. But...it was a good space-time experience". A couple of the doctors had laughed at his strange answer, and kept it as a quote to put into SCP-999's file. Even Dr. ████ visited Logan for a bit. He told Logan that SCP-999 was worried about you, but seemed to have calmed down when he put together a second play date in a single day to make up for the strange experience.

When Logan felt a lot more coordinated and less 'overwhelmed by euphoria', Logan was sent out on his own again to visit and meet some other SCP's. Logan had pulled out his map and began to follow the map's directions towards a somewhat underappreciated SCP that Logan's been wanting to meet. Logan put his map away when he was close enough, and pulled out the key card as he walked up to the door.

[SCP-529]

The sign read. Logan inserted the key card into the slot, and waited for the slot to read the card code. When it flashed green for 'open', Logan opened the door and closed it behind him. Logan walked himself up to the window, and looked down at the SCP before walking in.

The SCP appeared to be a grey female cat with dark grey strips on its body. It appeared to be a normal, medium sized cat. But one thing difference stuck out: the backside of the cat was missing. It looked like someone had hacked off the legs and the behind of the cat, and left some fur to cover up the big hole slightly. Logan's eyes widened. No wonder this cat was in the SCP Foundation! It was living its life without the need for a prosthetic!

Logan slipped the key card into the slot, and waited for it to turn green. When it did, Logan opened up the door and poked his head into the room. The cat sat its neck up, and looked at the person that had entered its room of solitude. Logan smiled and walked into the room, and gently closed the door behind him. In an attempt to be kind to the cat, Logan knelt himself down and presented his hand to the cat to smell. In curiousity, the cat sat itself up onto its 2 feet, and walked up to Logan. Logan watched in fascination as the cat did the impossible: The cat walked like it had 2 invisible back legs! It was managing to defy all ordinary laws. This may have been a big reason as to why the cat was an SCP. Nonetheless, the cat appeared to still act like a normal cat. She proved this to Logan by sniffing his hand for a scent. Logan smiled and watched as the cat got to know him through his scent.

When the cat was done, the cat actually rubbed her face against the hand, encouraging Logan to pet her. Logan happily obliged, and began giving the cat little scritches on the ears. The cat began gently purring and closing its eyes as one of its favorite spots to be touched, was lightly scratched and massaged. The cat seemed to also like being scratched lightly on the neck. This was proven by her curling into Logan's scratches on the side of her neck. The scratching managed to make the cat curl in so much, that the cat's body flopped onto her side as she laid onto the scratching hand. Logan let out a soft giggle as he continued the scratches on the cat's neck.

As Logan scratched the cat's neck, Logan began to feel a thin cat collar surrounding the cat's neck. Grabbing onto the collar, Logan read the name tag that was on the collar:

[Josie] [If lost, call [DATA EXPUNGED].]

"Josie...That's your name, huh?" Logan asked. Logan watched as the cat lifted her head up upon hearing the specific name. Logan smiled. "I'm Logan." Logan replied. The cat brought itself up closer to Logan, and sat down. Though the hind legs were missing, the cat's position was still able to resemble about the same sitting position that every cat does. That was something that fascinated him. It was mind-boggling to him, that a cat could still sit, stand and walk around without proper hind legs. Logan smiled and removed his hand from the cat's neck before opening up his backpack. Logan rummaged around in his backpack a bit, and pulled out a light blue ball of yarn from the bag.

"Listen here, Josie. This yarn was given to me by a very special person, named Patton." Logan told the cat. Logan pointed at the yarn. "This color, is Patton's favorite." Logan told the cat further. Josie began inching her face closer and closer to the yarn, and lifted its paw up to whack it with its paw. "Patton happily sacrificed an entire ball of yarn, so that you can have something to play with. I hope you enjoy." Logan told Josie, before lightly throwing it. Josie took off sprinting and jumped at it, landing on the blue yarn with her front paws dug into it. Then, Josie began grabbing it with her teeth and started 'chasing' the ball of yarn around the room.

Logan smiled as he calmly watched the cat play with the yarn. The more that Josie played with the yarn, the more unraveled the yarn became. So soon, Josie was forced to choose between the yarn laying on her back, and the big ball of yarn sitting beside her. She quickly chose the large ball of yarn, and began tackling it around the room. Amidst the tackling and the playing, Josie had managed to tackle the ball of yarn towards the human. Logan looked down and smiled upon seeing the yarn. The cat patiently watched Logan, and readied herself to run and catch the yarn with her front paws. Logan smirked at its playful behaviour, and gave it a light throw. The cat jumped up to catch the yarn, and ended up catching it midair!

...Only for the cat to land on its side. She caught the yarn though! Logan giggled in reaction. "Good job!" Logan praised, clapping for the cat.

Josie continued to play with the yarn, and knock it everywhere around the room. Logan happily watched the cat for a few more minutes, before beginning to take his leave. The cat seemed pretty content without him around. Logan had predicted this outcome, and wasn't really hurt by it. Logan knew that the cat would recognize him as the 'person who gave him a play toy' in the future.

Logan left the room and pulled out his map. He placed his finger onto the highlighted SCP door number, and carefully dragged his finger down and around the building halls to figure out how far it was. When Logan felt confident enough to start following his path, Logan began walking and following the signs, turns, and the landmarks that were around him. It didn't take long for Logan to reach the first entry room door:

[SCP-662]

Logan pulled out his key card, and inserted it into the door slot. When it opened up and flashed green, Logan removed the key card and opened up the door. Upon seeing the second door and the window, Logan looked inside the window and raised an eyebrow in confusion. The room was just a table, a chair and a velvet bell box. That was it. Logan looked to the left, looked to the right, and finally brought himself over to the door of the chamber. Logan inserted the key card, waited for the light to turn green, and opened it up. Closing it behind him, Logan walked himself up to the velvet box, and gently removed the lid. Upon looking at the silver bell in the case, Logan immediately made his movements much more gentle. Logan reached his hand down and gripped the bell handle firmly, to avoid dropping it. Lifting it out of the velvet case it was sitting in, Logan lifted it up further to see the inside of the bell. There appeared to be no ringer inside it. Was it like this when they found it? Logan wasn't sure.

Logan, wanting to further investigate the ancient bell, began carefully looking at the smoothness of the bell. Upon first inspection, the bell seemed to be well-polished for an antique item. Though it's not refurbished, it's still better kept than some of the antique china that still exists...

Logan lifted it upside down, to look inside the bell better. The silver ball inside the bell appeared to be missing completely. The deep part of the bell was empty, and there was a little joint piece missing from the inside of the bell as well, leaving a little hole inside. Done his investigations, Logan turned the bell back around right side up. Logan was about to put the bell back into the casing, but a formal, deep voice froze Logan's movements:

"Good afternoon, Mr. Sanders. How may I be of service?" the voice said behind him. Logan gasped and hugged the bell desperately, as to not drop the antique object.

"Oh my gosh. You scared me!" Logan exclaimed, before turning around to actually look at the stranger who scared him.

"I apologize, sir. Perhaps I could interest you in a glass of water to calm your nerves?" The man asked. Logan's eyes widened as he looked at the partially bald, formally dressed man in front of him. Logan just stared at the man, who appeared to be stuck in the 1900's era of life. Looking at the Butler's tray, there was a glass of water just waiting to be drank. After a good minute or so of staring at the water, Logan reached his hand up and grabbed the glass with his right hand.

With his left hand, Logan slowly reached for his walkie-talkie, and pulled it out of his pocket. He clicked the 'on' button on the side. "You guys have an English BUTLER?!" Logan yelled, smiling widely as he observed the 'de-aged' Alfred Pennyworth. Logan took a gulp of the water, and swallowed it as he waited for the doctor to reply back.

"Yes! In fact, we do! His name is Mr. Deeds. He's shown himself to do almost everything you command him. I repeat 'almost', as celebrity assassinations, cannibalism, and super large things that can't fit on his tray, are politely permitted." Dr. ████ explained.

Logan let out a hum in somewhat understanding. He placed the walkie-talkie onto the table, and removed his backpack before walking up to the butler curiously. He looked up at the butler's partly bald hair-due, and looked all the way down to the butler's well-polished shoes. Logan could tell that the owner of this butler appeared to be quite wealthy. Logan began examining the butler from the sides. There wasn't much to look at, besides his hairline and the gloves the butler was wearing. But, it was still examination nonetheless.

"If you do not need me, then I shall be going." Mr. Deeds spoke.

"You're needed right no. I need you to just stand here, so I can further examine what era you may be from." Logan told him as he headed to the back.

"Well, alright." Mr. Deeds muttered without another thought. Logan grabbed onto the shoulders of Mr. Deeds, and felt the soft material that the suit jacket was made of. "Do you remember what your suit is made of?" Logan asked.

"I do believe that this suit is made from silk. Silk was the primary fabric that would be worn among the rich. And I do remember the house I worked in had very wealthy members." Mr. Deeds told him. Logan smiled as he walked himself back to the front of the butler.

"Okay." Logan said.

"Is there anything else you would like me to do before I go?" Mr. Deeds asked.

Logan thought for a moment, and smiled. "Yes. Would you please get me a 1920's style coke?" Logan asked.

"As you wish." Mr. Deeds said, before walking out of the room. Mr. Deeds came back a few minutes later, with a glass bottle of coke with the Coca Cola logo edged into the glass bottle.

Logan picked it up and looked at the bottle. "Fascinating..." Logan commented, spinning it in his hand. Logan looked at the metal cap, and began struggling to remove it.

"A bottle opener, sir?" Mr. Deeds asked, presenting the steel bottle opener to Logan on his tray. Logan looked up and smiled as he saw the old fashioned bottle opener.

"Thank you." Logan said, picking it up and pulling the cap off with some pressure. Logan placed the opener back onto the tray before placing the cap into his pocket. Logan took a quick drink of the coke, and widened his eyes in surprise. It...actually tasted fine! A slight bit different compared to the coke they had now, but quite good for expired cola. "This is really good." Logan commented.

"I'm glad you enjoy the taste of the classic coca cola taste." Mr. Deeds said.

Logan smiled. "You can go if you like. It was nice meeting you." Logan said to him.

"Very well sir. And I to you, Mr. Sanders." Mr. Deeds said, before walking away and disappearing.

Logan smiled as he clicked the exit button on the room door, and walked out with the coke bottle partway up in front of him. Logan left the room, and smiled as he pulled out his walkie-talkie. "I think I'm ready to visit SCP-999 again." Logan told the doctor.

"sounds good. Now, I will warn you that you can't take liquids on the jet ride home. We don't want you drenching your clothes." Dr. ████ told Logan.

"I'm aware. Am I allowed to take the bottle home though?" Logan asked.

"I think that can be arranged." Dr. ████ replied.

Logan smiled. "Perfect." He replied before putting the walkie-talkie into his pocket again.

Logan happily walked himself down the halls of twists and turns, and soon reached the familiar door. Pulling out his key card, Logan did the usual card-reading routine and opened up the door. He repeated the routine with the second door, and smiled upon seeing the orange glob.

"Hi 999." Logan said eagerly. SCP-999 slid itself right to Logan, and pulled the nerd right to the cuddly monster. Logan smiled and giggled lightly as 999 nuzzled its face into his cheek. "I know. I'm okay. I feel a lot better now." Logan reassured. SCP-999 cuddled Logan for a minute more, before placing Logan onto the ground.

Eager to play with the ball again, SCP-999 picked up the ball and bounced it. Logan, thinking he was gonna be picked up and bounced again, winced and gave 999 a pity smile. "No more bouncing me. Okay?" Logan told him. SCP-999's smiled dropped slightly, before nodding and giving the ball a light throw to Logan. The ball bounced a few times as it headed over, and landed into Logan's hand.

"Would you like it back?" Logan asked. SCP-999 nodded and readied its pseudo-pods eagerly.

"Okay." Logan said, before giving the ball a light throw back to it. The ball bounced a few times, and SCP-999 had to slide around and chase it around a little bit. Logan giggled as he watched, and readied himself to catch it.

SCP-999 caught the ball, and gurgled happily at its accomplishment. Logan cheered for him. "Great job!" Logan praised. Suddenly, SCP-999 threw the ball right back at Logan! Logan gasped and threw his hands up before closing his eyes nervously. He felt a slight hit in the hand and gripped around something round. Suspecting he may have caught the ball, Logan opened his eyes.

What do you know! Logan managed to catch the ball right in front of his face! Logan smiled and lowered the hand down. SCP-999 was gurgling happily and clapping its pseudo-pods at Logan's successful catch.

Logan steadied himself, and lightly threw the ball back. SCP-999 caught it this time, and threw it back to him. The pair soon began a game of catch! And surprisingly, SCP-999 absolutely loved the game! Logan could immediately tell.

When catching the ball, SCP-999 would come up with new ways to catch the ball! it tried stretching up and catching it with its mouth, it tried catching it with stretched pods, and it even tried bouncing it back to Logan! It was a simple game, turned fun super quickly by a hyper, dog-like monster and a caring, playful human.

Near the end of the day, Logan and SCP-999 were found sleeping beside each other. SCP-999 was sleeping in its ball-shaped sleeping position, while Logan was leaning his back against the side of the ball. Despite Dr. ████'s want to get Logan to his bedroom, Dr. ████ couldn't help but notice just how cute this pairing was. So, he let them sleep together for a while. When the time turned 10, Dr. ████ left a couple lights on for the man, and gave him an LED flashlight from the 999 drop box. When the flashlight had fallen out of the drop box and onto the pillow below the drop box, Dr. ████ turned on the night vision, set the building in night mode lighting, and left the room for the night.

Tomorrow was another full day for Logan to hang out with the SCP's...

[whatwillthegirlbecome]

Okay, so I was tagged by the incandescent pineapple-scented land mermaid @village-skeptic 

Sorry it took me so long to do this. In my defense, I am very very lazy:

nicknames: Never. I have always been called by my full first name, even as a small child. I think I was probably too serious for anything to really stick. I love the trope of using someone’s last name as a nickname, but my last name is deeply terrible and uncool, so even though I would love to participate in that, I would cringe if anyone called me by my last name.

zodiac sign: I’m an Aries, but I don’t feel like I fit the Aries profile very well. It’s neither here nor there really, since don’t really put a lot of stock in astrology. However, I do sometimes feel kind of wistful when those “the signs as...” posts go around, and never hit the mark for me.

height: 5′1″. I will give almost anything for 4 more inches. All leg please!

hogwarts house: All signs point to Ravenclaw, but with a VERY STRONG Hufflepuff rising. I’m super brave to the point of recklessness, but only on other people’s behalf. I would probably let you murder me out of, you know, not wanting to be impolite to a murderer, but look at one of my friends funny and I will throw down in the street! I’m the mom friend who gets tequila drunk and then threatens offers to fight all the dudes - creepy or otherwise - who are hitting on my girls.

last thing i googled: “Anthony Perkins.” Over the holiday weekend I had a big argument with one of my friends about whether Anthony Perkins was in a movie version of Hello Dolly! I knew it wasn’t the Barbara version, but I was sure there was something. I’m going to claim victory, because he was in The Matchmaker, which is the play Hello Dolly! was based on. Did you guys know it was written by Thorton Wilder? !!! And OMG what a cast - Shirley Booth, Robert Morse, Shirley MacLaine!

fave musicians: Too many to list. I generally like everything, except really commercial country music, and even then I could probably be tricked into liking something if the lyrics are good. The musicians I’ve seen live the most include: The Pixies, Metric, Fishbone, Decemberists, Matthew Sweet, and John Prine. I also really love Baroque music.

song stuck in your head: This is actually @village-skeptic‘s fault for posting it earlier: Personal Jesus. Also, I may have mentioned before I wanna [redacted] Dave Gahan. Like a screen door in a hurricane.

following: 138

followers: 40. I’m gonna quote Mike Conovan here: Not much meat on her, but what's there is cherce. Every single one of my followers is a g-d delight. You make my life better!

do you get asks: Almost never! Not sure why. I hope it’s not because ppl find me off-putting, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t kind of fear that.

amount of sleep: Generally I get 7 1/2 or 8 hours a night, but my body would really much prefer 9 or 10.

what are you wearing: My pajamas! Which go on almost as soon as I get home from work.

dream job: Well it depends on if this is a magical-wish-fulfillment dream job, or just a what-would-have-been-realistic-if-you’d-made-better-choices dream job.

Magic-enabled dream job is definitely character actor/comedian/member of Mike Schur’s repertory company. Famous enough to support myself and my extended family/treat my friends whenever I feel like it, but not famous enough for the paps to stake out my vacation/wedding. (guys! is Jenny Slate my dream job?)

“Achievable” dream job is Rare Book Librarian/Archivist. This is actually what my background/training is in, but alas you can’t support yourself in the most expensive real estate market in the known universe on a librarian’s salary.

dream trip:  Since college I have had a dream of visiting every continent. Where’d You Go Bernadette kinda cured me of wanting to go to Antarctica, but I haven’t completely given up on everywhere else. So far, I’ve only made it to 2 (including the one where I live). Somehow I keep going back to Europe instead.

instruments: Sadly none, but I would love to be able to make music with all of my heart.

languages: English. I used to be fluent in French, but I’ve lost almost all of it.

favorite songs: This one can’t be answered. However, I will offer up Phoebe Snow’s No Regrets, (I believe it’s an old jazz standard though) as the song I am most likely to sing if I am showing off (this is more French 75-drunk than tequila drunk though).

random fact:  My Bacon number is 3.

I’m kind of a recovering theater kid. In my callow youth, I won a regional drama competition, the prize for which was a small part in a play that was touring, and had a 2 week stop in my city. The lead actor was Ian McKellen. This is pretty much ancient history, so he wasn’t nearly as famous then as he is now, but he was still a little bit famous. At any rate, he was nothing but charming and encouraging to me, despite the fact that I was basically a glorified extra. He low-key hit on my dad at the cast party. My dad was utterly charmed

aesthetic: I like a close juxtaposition of whimsy and minimalism. Like if Chrissy Hynde and Audrey Hepburn and Carol Kane had a baby, that baby would be my aesthetic. A fitted black jacket, over a Betty Boop graphic tee, boot cut jeans, vintage charm bracelet, and chucks. A motocross jacket over a ruffled circus-print blouse, velvet pants, suede booties, giant cocktail ring, and day-3 hair. LBD, kitten heel, big chunky silver rings, and an Olympia Le-Tan clutch. Sparkly things in the dark - the Eiffel tower after sundown; the Christmas tree after everyone’s gone to bed; city lights from your fire escape when you’re too worked up to sleep; fireworks on the Fourth of July.

And this isn’t so much an aesthetic, but rather a mood that pervades my life. To quote Dolly Parton in Steel Magnolias: Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.

I think most of you have probably been tagged already, but if not and you want to, consider this your invitation!

 ​

[itsfinancethings]

As the House Judiciary Committee kicks off its first impeachment proceeding on Wednesday, Rep. Jerry Nadler once again finds himself in the spotlight. Last time, he was at the center of Congressional probes relating to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Now he faces an arguably bigger challenge: convincing the public to unify around impeachment as he leads one of the most partisan committees in Congress.

House Democrats released a 300-page report on Tuesday arguing that evidence amassed in the impeachment inquiry so far shows that President Trump undermined U.S. national security interests to benefit his reelection campaign by leveraging foreign aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will gather to publicly assess whether that evidence amounts to an impeachable offense. Four constitutional scholars—Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan, UNC Law Professor Michael Gerhardt, and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley—will take the stand to opine on that question. (Feldman, Karlan and Gerhardt are representing the majority, and Turley the minority.)

The hearing could seem esoteric to people who are unmoved by constitutional law, particularly in comparison to some of the headline-grabbing witness testimony given to the House Intelligence Committee last month. “The new phase is going to look different,” said a staffer working on the inquiry. “We’re going to examine the constitutional framework that is put in place to address presidential misconduct. We’re going to apply the constitutional law to the facts.”

But within the caucus, the new set of hearings represent a chance for Nadler to reclaim a starring role in the drama that is the Trump impeachment saga.

When former presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were facing impeachment, the process in the House of Representatives was largely helmed by the Judiciary Committee. And for the first half of the year, when it was still unclear if Democrats would move ahead on impeachment, it was Nadler who became the public face of Democrats’ oversight probes into the Trump administration. Then his committee was effectively sidelined, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially announced the inquiry on September 24th. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, along with the committees on oversight and government reform and foreign affairs, spearheaded the inquiry, and Rep. Adam Schiff, the Chair of the Intelligence Committee and a Pelosi protege, became the public face of the probe.

On the face of it, delegating control to Schiff appeared to be a matter of jurisdiction; it was his committee who had been notified about the complaint from the whistleblower detailing allegations of Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The three committees that led the inquiry had already opened a joint probe into whether Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani pressured Ukraine.

But there was a palpable sense of relief among some Democratic members in the caucus that the historically polarized Judiciary Committee, who some thought muddled early impeachment messaging and made it inherently partisan, was temporarily out of the limelight.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Nadler, had kicked off the year by launching an expansive investigation into whether President Trump abused the power of his office. After Special Counsel Robert Mueller released his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, Nadler’s profile intensified as his committee staff battled the Department of Justice for the redacted grand jury materials and negotiated the terms for Mueller’s appearance on Capitol Hill in July. It was the Judiciary Committee that issued subpoenas to top Trump associates Attorney General William Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn, and which held Barr in contempt when he refused to provide the full, un-redacted version of the Mueller report and filed a lawsuit to enforce the subpoena against McGahn.

The committee has succeeded with their court cases to enforce McGahn’s subpoena and obtain the grand jury materials, with judges ruling in their favor in both instances. But those rulings were only handed down in the last several months, and the administration has challenged both of them. As the bulk of the committee’s requests went ignored by the White House this spring, several Democratic members on the committee—many of whom hail from blue districts—began to push for an impeachment inquiry, putting them at odds with House leadership and more moderate members who feared an inquiry could cost them the majority.

Nadler tried publicly to tow the party line of putting fact-finding before moving ahead on impeachment, but privately relayed his committee members’ beliefs to Pelosi that an inquiry could be beneficial to stopping the White House obstruction of their probes. By July, part of the committee’s justification in its legal quest to receive Mueller’s grand jury material was that they were investigating whether to recommend articles of impeachment, even as Pelosi continued to resist that line. “We have the power to vote articles of impeachment and we are investigating now to get the evidence to decide whether to do so,” Nadler said on CNN this past August. “We are not waiting on anything from the House Speaker,” he added, insisting Pelosi had been cooperative in the process.

Although aides said Pelosi had signed off on that language, it wasn’t until September that she threw her support behind an official impeachment inquiry. And her public reasoning for it was based on the allegations raised by the whistleblower that Trump had leveraged the power of the presidency to push Zelensky to investigate Biden. “…The President has admitted to asking the President of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” she said on September 24th. “The actions of the Trump Presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the President’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections. Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.”

Now, after two months of investigations and public hearings led by Schiff, the ball is back to Nadler. Under the resolution that House Democrats passed on October 31, the Judiciary Committee is tasked with conducting proceedings and determining whether to draft articles of impeachment that House members will eventually vote on. Some Democrats, sources in the caucus say, are concerned that Wednesday’s hearing could devolve into yet another partisan fight, disrupting the even-keeled demeanor Schiff and his committee colleagues displayed through the weeks of their public hearings. “I hope he [Nadler] learned from Schiff,” said one senior Democratic aide associated with the moderate wing of the party. “There’s a lot for him to overcome.”

A democratic leadership aide, however, was adamant about Pelosi’s belief in Nadler, noting that the Speaker has complete confidence in him, while acknowledging that the committee as a whole is more partisan and unwieldy than the intelligence committee.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the Judiciary and Oversight committees, said the members on his side of the dais recognize the gravity of the moment and are “poised to be extremely disciplined and focused.”

”The chairman is prepared to be fair but resolute in the conduct of the hearing,” he said.

Republicans on the committee, which include Trump’s staunchest defenders like Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, have indicated they will highlight Nadler’s absence from the investigation thus far during the hearings. “Pelosi clearly made the decision at the start of all this to take the ball out of Nadler’s hands. Now it’s in his hands and he’s still the same chairman,” said one Republican aide to a committee member. The aide also posited that Nadler also may be easier to agitate than Schiff. “Whenever Republicans tried to make a procedural motion Schiff shut it down out of hand,” the aide said. “I’m not sure Nadler will have the same spine.”

But Elliot Mincberg, former chief counsel for oversight and investigations of the House Judiciary Committee who has worked with Nadler, said he is confident the chairman will rise to the occasion. “Nadler is an extraordinarily intelligent, industrious and gifted member of Congress who I think is hopefully up to much of that challenge,” he said.

[newestbalance]

U.S. judge says Mueller should not have

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) – A federal judge said Special Counsel Robert Mueller should not have “unfettered power” in probing ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, and accused Mueller of using criminal cases to pressure Trump’s allies to turn against him.

FILE PHOTO: FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Federal Bureau of Investigation oversight on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S., June 13, 2013. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo

At a tense hearing in a federal court in Virginia on Friday, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III sharply questioned whether Mueller exceeded his authority in filing tax and bank fraud charges against Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

Ellis said the indictment appeared to be a way for Mueller to leverage Manafort into providing information about Trump.

“The vernacular is to sing,” he said.

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort,” the judge said. “You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead to Mr. Trump” and his eventual prosecution or impeachment.

“It’s unlikely you’re going to persuade me the special counsel has unfettered power to do whatever he wants,” Ellis, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, said at a hearing on Manafort’s motion to dismiss the Virginia charges.

Manafort, who served as Trump’s campaign manager for five months, also faces federal charges in Washington, where he is accused of conspiring to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent when he lobbied for the pro-Russia Ukrainian government.

Michael Dreeben, a deputy solicitor general working with Mueller, argued the special counsel’s investigative scope covered the activity in the indictment.

In an Aug. 2, 2017, memo, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein authorized Mueller to investigate whether Manafort “committed a crime or crimes arising out of payments he received from the Ukrainian government before and during the tenure of President Viktor Yanukovych.”

The former Ukrainian leader was removed from power and fled to Russia in February 2014, more than two years before Trump declared his candidacy for president.

“A WITCH HUNT”

Trump enthusiastically read the judge’s comments out loud to his audience during a speech to the National Rifle Association in Dallas, saying they echoed his longstanding views. He called Ellis “a very respected person.”

“I’ve been saying that for a long time. It’s a witch hunt,” he said of Mueller’s probe into his campaign’s ties to Russia and whether it colluded with Russians to interfere in the 2016 election.

He also distanced himself from Manafort, calling him a nice guy but saying “he worked for me for a very short period of time.”

President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort departs U.S. District Court after a motions hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S., May 4, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The sharp tone of the judge’s comments could spell trouble for Mueller’s case against Manafort and put even greater pressure on Rosenstein to rein in the Russia investigation.

But several legal experts cautioned against reading too much into the comments.

“I think there are some judges that believe that in being evenhanded, they should give the winner a hard time, too,” said James Trusty, a former federal prosecutor now with the law firm Ifrah Law. “At the end of the day, it’s very dangerous to read the tea leaves from comments from the bench.”

Lisa Kern Griffin, a professor at Duke University School of Law and a former federal prosecutor, said it is unlikely Ellis will dismiss the charges against Manafort because bringing them was “almost certainly” within Mueller’s broad authority.

If Ellis dismissed the charges, they would likely be reinstated by an appeals court, Griffin said. “I think Judge Ellis may just be putting to the government through its paces,” she said. “That is not uncommon.”

The hearing on Friday was the third time Manafort has tried to get charges against him dismissed. A civil case alleging the Justice Department’s order appointing Mueller was overly broad was tossed last month.

He also asked for dismissal of the Washington-based criminal charges on similar legal grounds, but there has not been a ruling.

Ellis did not rule on the motion to dismiss on Friday.

Ellis asked why a run-of-the-mill bank fraud case with no “reference to any Russian individual or Russian bank” could not be handed over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia.

As an example, he pointed to the FBI probe into Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and said the special counsel had turned that matter over to federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

Dreeben declined to discuss the Cohen case.

Ellis also complained that the bulk of that August memo he received was highly redacted. He told Mueller’s office to take two weeks to consult with U.S. intelligence agencies to see whether they would sign off so that he can personally review a sealed, unredacted version of the memo.

Dreeben told him the redacted portions did not pertain to the Manafort case.

“I’ll be the judge,” Ellis said.

Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Susan Heavey, and Jan Wolfe; writing by John Whitesides; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman

The post U.S. judge says Mueller should not have appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2KEpfog via Everyday News

[theexperiment-hq-blog]

Matthew Murdock / Daredevil, played by Tyrel

OOC Info

Name: Tyrel (Ty is fine)

Age: 18

Pronouns: he/him

Triggers: [redacted]

Second Choice Character: Robert “Bobby” Drake AKA Iceman

Discord: [redacted]

IC Info

Muse Name and Alias: Matthew Michael Murdock AKA Daredevil

What is your primary canon(s) for this character?

Marvel-616

Approximate Age: Mid-Late thirties

OTPs, BroTPs, NoTPs:

OTPs: MattElektra (Yes, please, let me rp this for once, I’m deprived), Mattasha

BroTPs: Daredevil and Spiderman, Daredevil and Iron Fist, Daredevil and Jessica Jones

NoTPs: Daredevil x Punisher, Daredevil x Deadpool

Give us a bulletpoint outline for what your character’s history might look like:

(At least 3-5 bulletpoints, but you may go as long as you want.)

At a young age, Matthew Murdock was a very proud boy, often bragging about the success of his professional boxer of a father. This often led to him getting bullied by other boys around the school.

He grew up in Hell’s Kitchen with a single father who fought for the two of them to eat a good meal everyday, quite literally. He was urged to study everyday, his father hoping he wouldn’t need to become a boxer of a wrestler, preferring his son to grow into a doctor or a lawyer. This also contributed to the bullying, granting Matthew the moniker “Daredevil.” A jab at his less than adventurous lifestyle at such a young age.

One day, Matthew saw an old blind man crossing the road, a truck barreling towards the man. Matt reacted on instinct, pushing the man out of the way before getting hit by the truck itself. Barrels of a radioactive isotope spilled from the truck on towards Matthew’s eyes, ripping one of the boy’s senses away from him while enhancing the others.

After some time in the hospital, Matthew had to get accustomed to his new life without sight and the enhanced senses he had no way of controlling. He lived through it despite struggling, until one day, he discovered his father was involved with a fight promoter within Hell’s Kitchen. After his father had refused to throw a fight one night, he was gunned down in the alley right outside of the arena.

Months later, Matt would receive ninja training from a man only known as Stick and go on to use that training to hunt down his father’s killers. It was something he was more than successful in doing.

It was only then that Matt decided to attend Colombia University where he’d go on to meet his first love, Elektra Natchios, and his best friend, Foggy Nelson, fulfill his father’s wishes in becoming a lawyer, opening a law firm alongside his partner, and continuing to fight crime as a Man Without Fear.

Interview (Must be answered in character, third person, including both narrative and dialogue. Answer these as if you’re responding to a roleplay reply. Feel free to write as much as you like, but make sure there’s at least a good paragraph for each.)

What would it take for you to switch sides? (hero to villain; villain to hero; neutral to either)

“It would take a very long period of stress. Take the time I established Shadowland for example… My identity was outed to the public by a news tabloid, I was sent to jail for my vigilantism, and led myself down a path of self-destruction. During this period I became admittedly more violent under large amounts of stress, beat some criminals senseless, did some things I’m not exactly proud of after becoming leader of The Hand… it also didn’t help that I was possessed by an ancient demon of The Hand at the time.

How would you describe yourself? How would your friends describe you? How would the public describe you?

"Well, I’m not called the Man Without Fear for nothing. I take risks, do things that always makes other doubt whether I’m really blind or if I’m even human under this crimson suit. I’d like to say I’m charismatic at times and.. engaged at others.” With the reputation of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, of course he had to uphold it. He employed some rather questionable interrogation techniques and could let the stress build until he released it on some poor soul but, after Shadowland, he tried to stay positive. As much as he could at least.

“Personally, others might see me as.. reserved. There are times I’ve been completely told off by my best friend of all people just for the sake of my own stubbornness. At times, it gets to the point of other heroes holding mini-interventions but I digress.” If anyone really knew Matt, they knew he was problematic. Trouble found him and everyone else associated with him; trouble, misery, and death.

“As for the public, when they’re not outing me, they know why I’m here. I protect Hell’s Kitchen. I’ve heard cops stating that I’m the only thing keeping the city from catastrophe, I hear the praise of the citizens even as I take off to the next crime scene. They know who their guardian devil is.”

If you could gain any superpower/swap your superpower for another, what would it be and why?

“I’m not sure I’d want another.. it might be nice to have a healing factor. The suit only protects me from so much without slowing me down.” Of course, Matthew was still human under that suit, and it was nothing like a suit of armor. Getting smacked by Tombstone could have him feeling the pain for weeks, and it simply just piled up with each major encounter he had. Needless to say, he made several visits to the Night Nurse for recovery.

What is a secret you have never told someone?

Matthew cleared his throat for this one. There were quite a few things he didn’t exactly want anyone to know. From the frequent times he’d attempted to reconcile with his ex-ninja girlfriend, to his regretful hand in his ex-wife being sent to a psychiatric ward to his best friend being diagnosed with a life threatening disease, they were all rather personal. He decided to go with one that wouldn’t do much harm. Might even be more laughable than anything else. Gotta stay happy, Matt.

“Squirrel Girl tried to flirt with me once. It was a very uncomfortable encounter.” And he left it at that. Of course, he had no intentions of actually hooking up with the lady.. honestly, at the time he believed she was still a teenager. Daredevil knew better.

If there was one choice in your past you could change, what would it be?

Matthew’s memory immediately split off to one specific point in time: the moment he opened the door to his home and found his first love bleeding out on his doorsteps.

“Letting Elektra die. It started a chain of events led by one man in particular. The one man that just manages to rip everything away from me the moment my life seems like it’s getting good; the moment I can take a break.” This man was Bullseye. The one mutt he could never put down. He’d taken too much from him. Elektra, Karen, he nearly took Milla’s life as well and generally made it his goal to make the Devil’s life a living Hell. Maybe, if got another chance; maybe it he was there to save Elektra, he could’ve taken his life in a different direction with Elektra.

If you had one day where you could do anything you want, free of consequences, what would you do?

“One day where some criminal stops thinking I’m Daredevil? I’d spend a day with my mother. She’s the only family I have left and she’s living as a nun. Of course, I’m not the most.. devout Catholic as of recent years but it wouldn’t keep me from connecting with her. It’s just a matter of tracking her down.”

Extras

• Matthew has been diagnosed with clinical depression and describes it as a living, breathing thing that feeds off of you like a parasite. This plays a role in some of his self-destructive behavior.

• Matthew is an amazing Pianist and can generally pick up and play many musical instruments on the fly.

• His body is riddled with scars from past encounters.

[ronnykblair]

From Consulting to Private Equity: How to Make the Leap

What does every consultant really want to do?

The answer is “Work in private equity” – just like everyone else in the known universe.

The only problem is that it is notoriously difficult for consultants to get into the industry.

Not only are private equity professionals biased against non-bankers, but they tend to be even more skeptical of consultants.

But as our reader today found out, it is possible to overcome that handicap and get into private equity – even if you’re not at MBB:

How to Get into Private Equity by Skipping Investment Banking

Q: Can you walk us through your story?

A: Sure. I wanted to be a doctor growing up, so I applied for and won admission to a “target” university.

I majored in neuroscience and finance, figuring that finance might help me open a clinic or start my own business eventually.

But I became more and more interested in business rather than medicine, and when it came time for junior-year internships, there were only two real choices: Consulting or banking.

Consulting had always appealed to me more than banking, so I completed an internal consulting internship at a Fortune 100 company.

After graduation, I returned there for a full-time role.

I liked the job at first, but after about a year, I realized that corporate life at a huge company was too slow and full of red tape for me.

The managers encouraged us to move into different divisions, but I wanted out.

In my first year at the company, I had worked on an M&A deal for a divestiture of a major division, and I liked working on transactions while contributing to the company’s operations, which led me to private equity.

I started reaching out to friends and alumni in private equity and concluded that it would be challenging to move from consulting into PE – even if I had worked at one of the top three firms (McKinsey, Bain, and BCG, or “MBB”).

But I persisted and used a combination of alumni, recruiters, and cold calls and cold emails to win an offer at a middle-market private equity firm.

Q: If you’re coming from a non-banking background, one of the biggest challenges is getting recruiters to notice you.

How did you do it?

A: I don’t know if I had any magical tricks; I went through alumni and recruiters and contacted quite a few firms via cold emails.

But I did use a few specific strategies in the recruiting process:

I always asked for advice rather than a job. People were much more responsive when I contacted them and asked, “How can I get into PE from a consulting background?” rather than “Are you hiring?”

I didn’t ignore recruiters, but I always aimed to meet them in-person because it was much easier to make my case in real life. Also, I always got referrals from friends in banking; recruiters tend to ignore you if you don’t have a referral.

I played up strengths that traditional candidates did not have. For example, in my group at the Fortune 100 company, ~20 of us reported directly to the CEO and other senior leaders.

As a result, I developed management/leadership skills that most IB Analysts did not have. Also, I learned more about the strategy and operations of the company, which PE firms with an operational focus appreciated.

I anticipated the most common objections and prepared responses in advance. For example, if they asked about my finance skills, I pointed out that I had studied finance in university under well-known professors and that I had worked on an M&A deal in my current role.

Q: Thanks for those tips. How broad or narrow should your search be?

Some people argue that you should focus on very specific PE firms in on-cycle processes, but a much wider group in off-cycle processes.

A: It depends on your time and resources.

For me, the main constraint was time – I couldn’t balance a demanding full-time job with a recruiting effort targeting hundreds of firms, so I focused on a narrower set of firms.

When I spoke with recruiters, I usually said, “I’m most interested in middle-market, operationally-focused firms that invest in Industries X, Y, and Z – but if you see something else that’s a good fit, please pass it along.”

When I first started, I was not targeted at all. I just wanted a more quantitative and higher-paying job, and I didn’t even know much about the options within finance.

But that was a big mistake – if you’re already working full-time, you can’t recruit for five different industries at the same time.

Also, if you can’t name a few specific sub-industries you’re interested in, you haven’t done enough research yet.

The Top Challenges: Why *Shouldn’t* We Hire You?

Q: Fair enough. You’ve made this process sound straightforward, but what were the biggest challenges you encountered?

A: The top one was getting my foot in the door.

Plenty of recruiters and finance professionals ignored me or told me to do investment banking or go to business school if I wanted to get into the industry.

But if I could get an in-person meeting with a recruiter, I could make my case by pointing to my deal experience and work with top executives.

Besides that, the main objections were:

Can you do financial modeling? I pointed to my finance classes and the M&A deal I had worked on, and I offered to send sample models or complete modeling tests to prove that I had the skills.

Can you lead deals? I pointed out not only the M&A deal I had worked on, but also the expansion projects at the company and how those were similar to deals – we had to win buy-in from executives and coordinate entire departments to get things done.

Can you work extremely long hours? For this one, I pointed out that I had completed two full degrees in university, so I effectively worked twice the hours over four years and still earned good grades.

Q: Those are good responses, but what about the “Why didn’t you do investment banking first?” question?

A: I gave my honest response: “I wasn’t interested in investment banking, I’ve never been interested in it, and I specifically chose not to go into it.”

I pointed out that the most valuable part of deal work is what you don’t do in banking: Thinking like an investor and deciding whether or not a deal is worth the risk.

You do gain valuable skills by working with clients and building financial models, but I felt I could learn those elsewhere; operational experience seemed like a more valuable but less common skill set for PE.

I also pointed out that I had to think like a private equity investor on the job because I spent a lot of time evaluating expansion projects.

It was similar to evaluating add-on acquisitions for portfolio companies: Was the potential payoff worth the upfront price and risk?

Q: Great. What was the process like in terms of timing and number of interviews?

A: The off-cycle processes I completed sometimes took several months.

If I had multiple interviews, I often waited 2-3 weeks between each interview.

At the firm where I eventually won my offer, the entire process took around two months.

I spoke with the firm’s recruiter, did a phone interview, did in-person interviews with the recruiter and three professionals at the firm, and then completed an hour-long modeling test and case study (I did it remotely and submitted it online).

After I had passed all those rounds, I went into the firm’s office for in-person interviews that lasted the entire day.

I spoke with 10-15 people total and did a 15-minute or 30-minute interview with each person, ranging from Analysts up through Partners.

In my experience, the speed of the process has more to do with the firm’s hiring needs than anything else.

If they need someone ASAP because an Analyst or Associate just quit without warning, the process will move quickly; if not, it will drag on.

Q: You mentioned the hour-long case study you received. What advice do you have for case studies and modeling tests for consultants and other non-IB candidates?

A: The case study I received was more like a consulting case, so it was quite easy: I did similar exercises almost every day on the job.

There’s a lot of good material on case studies and modeling tests, from your courses and videos to free articles and tutorials, so you should start there.

But my #1 tip is to ask your friends in banking for help.

Get them to send you redacted models, ask what they were thinking, why they set things up a certain way, and so on. And then practice building models and ask them for tips and feedback.

I completed around 7-8 modeling tests throughout my entire recruiting process, and most of them were 3-statement models rather than traditional LBO models.

Firms might have gone easier on me because of my background; they didn’t necessarily expect a consultant to know as much about financial modeling as a banker.

There was not necessarily a correlation between the firm’s strategy and the type of modeling test, so you still need to be prepared for LBO models even if you interview at operationally-focused firms.

Looking Back and Moving On

Q: You did very well in this process, but how can other career changers decide when it is viable or not viable to get into private equity?

A: I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it.

It’s better to ask yourself, “What will you have to do to get into this industry, and do the rewards justify the number of steps and time required?”

For example, if you’re working in marketing and you want to get into private equity, you’ll probably have to win a finance-related role first, complete an MBA, do a post-MBA banking role, and then recruit for PE.

So, you might be older than 30 by the time you’re an entry-level Associate.

If you have your heart set on the industry, that path might be worth it, but most people would say it’s not worth the time and effort.

I decided that PE would not be worthwhile if I had to go into investment banking or attend business school first.

The opportunity costs were too high, and I did not want to do IB at all.

But if I could get in from my consulting role, it would be worth the time and effort: I had a secure job, and no one even knew about my recruiting efforts, so I decided to give it a shot.

Q: Thanks for those tips. What are your plans now that you’ve been on the job for some time?

A: Overall, I love the job. It’s very much a “sink-or-swim” environment, which isn’t right for everyone, but it’s a good fit for me.

On my second day on the job, my boss bought me a one-way plane ticket to another city and told me to go “figure out” a portfolio company there – and not to come back home until I had (!).

The best part is that I’ve developed skills beyond the technical/analytical ones because we spend so much time working with management at portfolio companies.

Deal teams are also small – there might be one Partner, one Principal, and one Associate on each team – so the junior team members have to step up and do a lot.

I’ve thought about going to business school or starting my own fund in the future, but for now, I’m planning to stay here and learn as much as I can.

Q: Great. Is there anything else you want to mention that we haven’t already covered?

A: Not really; networking was the most beneficial tactic for me, by far.

You need to take the time to ask people for advice and have in-depth conversations with them rather than just asking for jobs.

Even if you know what they’re going to tell you, you still have to listen, pay attention, and follow up afterward.

Q: Great. Thanks for your time!

A: My pleasure.

The post From Consulting to Private Equity: How to Make the Leap appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

from ronnykblair digest https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/consulting-to-private-equity/

[cardandpixel]

Oh Bethesda - you were doing so well... Sorrowind

So, after months of waiting for the pre-order to activate and transport me back to the beloved isles and crackers creatures of Morrowind that I remember in all their blocky textured goodness from the early days of XBox and PC, this week we finally activated the gargantuan file for the ‘DLC’ (I’ll come back to those quotes in a min). ‘Er ATT had bought it as an early birthday present for me months ago and while I was out entertaining the great unwashed, she loaded it up. As she’d bought it on her profile, it all worked perfectly.

And then I got to it this morning. Loaded my profile, lovingly created a character (it takes a while for me) and was immediately faced with a message to say Morrowind was not authorised on my account. “OK, I guess it needs me to set up a Bethesda account..” Waded thru that mudslide of a process and activated my email response - “Right.... Morrowind...”

Still locked out.

ESO itself, fine, so started the training session and sent Bethesda a little tweet to ask what the issue was while I was doing the training stages.

Long story short, about 10 minutes ago I had to send my beloved Bethesda, a company who could not put a foot wrong in the 10+ yrs and thousands of hours I’ve played all the Elder Scrolls series, Fallout series and all the countless DLC, this email response to their frankly massively dismissive “No, you can’t both use the Morrowind content, you’ll have to buy another copy” (sic) response to my support clarification.

hi cody my partner seems to think that we can have multiple characters on her profile - can you confirm/negate: 1) whether i could now import my character from MY account that i've already started, and 2) that starting/importing a new or existing character won't affect HER game or character? we are happy to work off the same XBox sign-in but deeply unhappy that we would seemingly have to buy Morrowind all over again on the same machine (especially as it was MY birthday present and I'm the one locked out of it - my partner reports that it wasn't at all clear when she pre-ordered it). We've never had to do this with every single DLC we have bough for Oblivion, Skyrim or all of the Fallout series since they've been on XBox (and I think I'm right in saying we've bought them all!), it just seems a really backward and cynical step now and I'll be honest, it's tainted my feelings on Bethesda who for many years have never put a step wrong in my mind. I just wanted that passed along to anyone who cares as we've both spent well over 1000+hrs combined in your amazing universes, but this feels shabby. I understand that you need to prevent piracy, but we play next to each other on the same console on the same sofa.thanks for listening many thanks  paul d Because apparently, Morrowind isn’t DLC, it’s a chapter and as such is tied directly to the gamertag it was bought with, in our case ‘ErATT. It’s a bit crap, it’s a bit dirty on Bethesda’s part, it is a shabby way of rewarding years of loyalty, and they’ve let themselves down. May Sheogorath drop their marketing department from 10,000ft above The Shivering Isles. I’ll still play the heck out of it, I just feel a bit...... marketed.

(if you DO happen to see this Drow kicking around Skyrim, do say hello!)

Happy pay-per-play gaming y’all.

P.S. Just as a note - this is the official reply that I received back in response just now (my emphasis)..... Greetings! Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Team. Account sharing is not recommended or supported. Morrowind is an expansion to The Elder Scrolls Online and is not Shareable DLC as was with Oblivion\Skyrim. Also, should you choose to acquire your own copy ESO Morrowind expansion it would not take up any additional or duplicate storage on the XBOX ONE console. I'm Sorry for the incontinence and hope this answers your question.Please don't hesitate to ask us any questions.Thank you for your continued interest and support!

Warm Regards,

[name redacted]

The Elder Scrolls Online Team So, couple of things stand out there: 1) apparently an expansion is not DLC - this is new. And,  2) a new licence is basically just that - so they are going to charge 2 people in the same house the same amount AGAIN merely to access the same content. This must be true otherwise it would load a 2nd copy of the content. So your exact same amount of money again, actually buys you bugger all apart from the unlock key. 3) Apparently I have incontinence. It’s the stress of this whole debacle obviously..... P.P.S. This was my reply to Mr Redacted...... Hi Redacted Thanks for the quick reply. I'm hoping that someone in Bethesda's Rending Hall of Marketing gets what this looks like from a gaming consumer's point of view. It's left us both disappointed, it's sullied Bethesda's otherwise impeccable brand for me in just one day - i don't feel so great about the Power Armour Tee i put on this morning, and everytime i sit down to play ESO, this exchange will sit uneasily with me. I'm really not angry anymore (and certainly not at you), just disappointed in a company who has genuinely created worlds I have been so overjoyed to exist in and immerse myself in for days at a time (yes - even the one that spawned Preston Garvey). And even when being hurled about by Daedric Princes and Deathclaws. It's just shoddy y'know? And I know there's naff all you can do about it. On the plus side, I am very grateful that you are concerned about the physical effects this situation may be having on me as evidenced in your sign-off... "I'm Sorry for the incontinence” I'm living with it, it'll pass, besides, most of Tamriel feels like it's probably damp underfoot - it's like early VR. :-)Have a good evening Redacted. Best regards - Paul D

[thisthinghappened]

An Account of My Year With Orlando

This is not a story that I relish writing down, but the time has come for me to finally do it. I have attempted to simply turn my back to the details of this experience in the hopes that it would fade, but time and time again history has proven that it is not going to just go away, and I need a resource both for my own catharsis as well as something to have to refer people to so that I don't have to keep telling it over and over again.

Almost all of the names in this story have been changed to protect absolutely everyone. The only name unchanged is that of my accuser, Orlando. There are racial epithets and other hate speech used without censorship in this story when directly quoting the individuals who used them, which can be triggering, or be an unintentional microaggression. There are upsetting depictions of abuse and violence.

Somewhere in the range of eleven years ago I first moved to Philadelphia from New York City. I'd just come off of doing a television show for the LOGO network. I moved here on a whim, living briefly in a hotel while I searched for a room to rent. I found one in a brownstone in West Philadelphia.

The home was owned by a blind musician named Orlando in his early 30's. He lived there with his 21 year old girlfriend Katie, also his caretaker. He was an odd character with a lot of loud opinions. At first it seemed like it might be entertaining to live with such a quirky guy. I also formed a fast bond with Katie, an intellectual who was really only a few years younger than I.

However it became clear that something was a bit off with Orlando. He was extremely demanding of everyone around him, and had some questionable feelings about women and minorities that made me uncomfortable, so after living there only a few months, I moved out to my own apartment. I stayed in touch with Katie from afar but 6-7 odd years passed and that was that.

...until I found myself renting an apartment where the landlord let the water get turned off, and the city refused to turn it back on. I had also fallen ill, and wasn't making any money to move into a new place. So I reached out to Katie to find out if Orlando happened to have any rooms for rent. She said he did.

I went to meet with him, and the first thing he did was hug me and then exclaim: “Oh! You got fat.” Really, I should listen to the warnings the universe gives me, but I was desperate.

Orlando explained his current situation to me. Hold onto your butts, by the way, because this is where things immediately begin to devolve into a chaotic bit of insanity that gets worse and worse literally every day.

Orlando said that he and Katie had stopped being in a romantic relationship years earlier, but she continued to live with him as his caretaker. He explained, however, that over the last year she had stolen/embezzled nearly ten thousand dollars from him. She was in charge of his finances entirely, and there was a bank account in his name as well as one in both of their names.

In addition, he had just moved a 19 year old girl from the Caribbean to be his girlfriend and new caretaker; but he said that he was afraid of her, and that she seemed volatile and he feared it could blow up at any minute.

Thus it was that I moved in a few weeks before Christmas of that year. It had become clear that Katie had devolved into alcoholism, getting drunk every single day and barely holding down a part time job. She had unquestionably utilized household funds for a variety of personal things, but Orlando admitted that after they broke up he had offered her ten thousand dollars to do with as she pleased, so whether or not these funds were appropriated or accepted was questionable.

What was not in question is that Katie had let the ball drop on paying the mortgage for the home, which had fallen into arrears by nearly a year. One of the responsibilities Orlando passed to me was to get his mortgage situation back in order. I offered to help as best I could, but being that I have never had a mortgage and also am not an accountant, I had no real clue what to do.

I made Orlando sign a document outlining my responsibilities as well as our personal arrangement. It was clear he expected me to be a live-in caretaker on numerous levels, a full time job for which payment would far surpass the cost of renting one room in a six bedroom home. He wanted me to cook, clean, run errands, help with his personal and romantic life (more on that below,) and essentially be on call 24/7 for whatever whim may come up at any given moment.

Our agreement, of which I have provided a scan at the link below, stipulated among other things:

sign documents on his behalf

authorize checks on his behalf and deposit them into his bank account

use his debit card to pay household bills, withdraw cash, pay for Katie's gas (she often ran errands for him,) and any other use at my discretion

use his bank account to pay for things for myself including my World of Warcraft account, my mobile phone bill (he demanded I get a plan on his account so he could always reach me,) my web hosting, my personal fees for various online services like Amazon or eBay

to open and manage eBay/Paypal accounts in his name for selling items of his own that he wanted to get rid of

to withdraw or otherwise utilize $500 cash from his bank account/debit card as payment for my personal services throughout the month as well as the waiver of a rent payment

to use his bank account to deposit and withdraw my own money and access that money at will, rather than open my own bank account

Link to document is here:

http://imgur.com/a/g02G0

Last names have been redacted.

Orlando signed this agreement in the presence of the 19 year old girlfriend who read it aloud to him to make sure he understood it's contents. It's important to note here that even if she had not been present to read it to him, being blind does not absolve one from being obligated to honor a contract one has signed. It is up to the party who is blind to make sure they understand what they are signing before signing it.

I made sure to get this agreement in writing because it was clear that Orlando had put Katie through the wringer, and I didn't want to end up in the same position she was in, being accused of defrauding him after working for him for a length of time. Note that despite this allegation she continued living with him. He used the threat of having her arrested to keep her there.

After living in the house for just a few weeks it became clear that Orlando was being honest about his situation with the new girlfriend, though they were equally to blame for the violent nature of their relationship. She drank heavily, and every day there was a new blow-up over something minor. One occasion saw them arguing over the fact that she bought ranch dressing, resulting in the dressing bottle being swung around the kitchen with a lid, dressing splattering all over the walls/artwork/decor and ceiling.

The Christmas holiday came, and I was on a brief vacation that involved house/pet sitting for a friend. Orlando knew to only call me in an emergency, and the girlfriend was to take care of him for those few days. On Christmas Eve/Morning, Orlando called me to say that this girlfriend had accompanied him to a dinner party where she got extremely drunk. This lead to a fight during the cab ride home, and he alleged that she had physically assaulted him on the porch. As a result the police were called and she was thrown out into the street, leaving him with no one to take care of him for the Christmas holiday.

Despite the Jerry-Springer like circumstances around the situation, I gave up my holiday to return home and take care of Orlando. A dear friend who does not celebrate Christmas, Patricia, came over to keep me company. Orlando aggressively hit on her for the duration of his visit which was very uncomfortable.

Eventually Orlando informed us that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of his girlfriend, which we took on face value, though we never saw or hear from her again. He began aggressively pursing her by stalking her on the internet. Any information he had been given during their brief relationship about her relatives was used to track them down and call them, leaving aggressive and explicit messages about her sexual history and personal life. It was a gleeful act of revenge on his part, something he considered justice.

As time moved forward, it became clear that this was a very serious pattern for Orlando. He would, with my help, post ads on Craigslist seeking the companionship of women. These women would agree to come to the home, and he would IMMEDIATELY fall 'in love' with them. He would ask them to move in right away, becoming aggressively possessive and controlling straight out of the gate. Inevitably these women would see him for what he was and call it off, asking him to leave them alone.

He would not. Sometimes he would accuse them of breaking the law, saying that by agreeing to be his romantic partner they had entered into a “contract” with him that they were now violating. Sometimes he would accuse them of moral failings, because how could they leave a blind man to be alone and fend for himself in the world? Sometimes he would slut shame them. No matter what though he would find a way to aggressively pursue these women beyond their consent, always finding excuses as to why this was okay.

There was also a disturbing racial component to these situations. The women were often black women, whom he referred to as his “little nigs”. When using racial slurs of this nature, he justified it in different ways. “It's okay because I'm Latino,” or “I go to an all black church so I'm an honorary nigger.” Instances of questionable feelings around a variety of minority groups often came up. Orlando watched a documentary about the Holocaust and developed a theory that the only reason six million Jewish people died is because “those kikes were weak. If it were me I would have fought back and been shot waiting in line for the ovens.”

I could not begin to recount to you the countless women Orlando engaged over the year long period in which I worked for/lived with him. He would have me cook them romantic dinners, or help him buy them gifts.

One instance that stands out involved a platonic woman friend he had who made the mistake of mentioning she had a single friend she had. This friend of his explicitly told him setting them up wasn't a good idea and to please leave it alone, but she made the mistake of mentioning this woman's name. Thus Orlando had me find contact info for the friend-of-a-friend (without my knowing why,) and then stalked this woman by calling her suggesting they become romantic. When the full situation came to light (and his own friend cut him off forever,) he justified it to me as such: “Why should I deprive myself of an opportunity to potentially find my soulmate just because someone else asks me not to contact this woman?”

Entitlement around everything, but particularly access to women, was a constant theme. If a person was a woman, Orlando would pursue her romantically and always find justification for why it was okay. No amount of being told to stop would prevent his pursuit. One such woman documented the exchange on her web log, which can be viewed at this link:

http://annafromcraigslist.tumblr.com/tagged/orlando-fiol

There is also an accounting of his interactions with women in the polyamory community, seen here:

http://alt.polyamory.narkive.com/bVR9QdAt/orlando-fiol-is-a-creepy-creepy-stalker-if-you-already-knew-that-skip-reading-this-post.5

Another thing which was a constant was the coming and going of tenants. Orlando  had one long-term tenant, an older woman named Doris, who managed to avoid all of this conflict by simply not engaging in the household. Of the five bedrooms available, Doris lived in one, Katie and I occupied two more, which left two bedrooms available for rent.

Inevitably it was my job to find people to rent these rooms, usually younger college students or people who were otherwise desperate for somewhere to live. The rental of these rooms plus money Orlando was receiving for a research grant from a college were his only source of income.

Generally women who rented a room would leave in two months at best because of the creepy sexual vibe Orlando put out to them. Men would leave once it became apparent that they were not simply going to be allowed to rent a room, but in fact would constantly be called upon to assist him with whatever he demanded. One man moved out after Orlando broke the lock on his bedroom door to let himself inside because he wouldn't come help Orlando with something. A woman fled after just one month and then sued Orlando for her deposit and rent money back. This revolving door of tenants was constant, and became doubly desperate after some months when the grant money was discontinued.

It became clear that Orlando was not bringing in enough income to sustain his lifestyle. Shortly after I moved in, his mortgage was sold from one bank to another. I had worked out an agreement with the first bank for him to make some sort of a payment on his back-due mortgage, and in so doing they would take the remainder of the debt and apply it to the back end of his entire mortgage without penalty, allowing him to get out of arrears and start moving forward making normal payments. However the new bank refused to acknowledge or honor this agreement, and it became clear that he would need a colossal amount of funds all at once to prevent repossession by the bank.

I explained this to him numerous times, and conveyed to him that he needed someone more experienced to handle the mortgage situation because I was at a loss to fix it. He told me that he would have his mother, who lived in New York, handle the mortgage moving forward, and thus I left it in their capable hands. As letters from the bank continued to roll in month after month, it was clear that no one was actually doing this, but it was out of my hands. I was having enough trouble helping him to keep current with his normal bills.

You must understand that Orlando had absolutely no sense of money. For all practical points and purposes, he was bringing in around $1,000 a month from tenants, which barely would have covered the mortgage, let alone electricity, internet, groceries, prescriptions and doctor's co-pays, the $500 a month he had promised me, car gas for Katie, and then the money he was expending trying to woo various women. He was in arrears with so many different bills, and frequently his bank account would go into the negative by nearly $1,000 overdraft just to keep the lights on.

Around six months into this situation, it was clear that Orlando was getting worse. He met a woman who he got engaged to after a few weeks. She had several children of her own and he began talking about moving them into the house. Katie and I kept explaining to him that this was an impossible situation. If he moved a woman and her children into the house, there would be no rooms to rent and he would literally have no income. He was insistent, and the woman did begin to live part time in the house. He demanded that she be bought a ring, and even paid to have it inscribed. This woman remained for some months until we finally convinced him it was an untenable relationship, and then he went back to posting on Craigslist to find new women.

Orlando became more and more abusive towards me specifically. It had already devolved to the point where I was more or less a live in indentured servant. As I had no income, I had no way to save up money and move out. If I attempted to get any free time or have any kind of a life, Orlando would violently berate me for “abandoning” him or otherwise not being there for him; always framed as his being a desperate blind man who could not do for himself. Orlando did not leave the house for any reason other than the very rare musical performance (once a month at best.) He refused to even fill his own water bottle, screaming out for me to come get it and refill it at the sink when it was empty.

The various incidents that unfolded during the last three or four months I lived with him could fill a novel. One that stands out was an evening in which Katie was helping me prepare Orlando's dinner in the kitchen, and we had an ipod on shuffle. Orlando happened to come into the kitchen while the comedy song “Short Dick Man” was playing. It's a fairly harmless song in which the vocalist sings “Eeeny weenie tiny little short dick man.” It may not be grand opera, but it's hardly offensive. Orlando demanded we turn it off and went on a screaming tirade about how the song was discriminatory against men with small penises, and it should be banned and the singer should be arrested for hate crimes. He then went on a triade asking “How would you like it if I wrote a song and the words were “Kill all the gays! Kill all the fags! Protect the children! Murder the queers!” This chant/singing went on for some minutes and he proceeded to goose-step while Nazi saluting. It was his attempt at making some kind of point, but it was bone chilling.

In the last month that I lived with Orlando, my friends had all become extremely concerned for my well being. My mental health was clearly taking a toll. They all described it as a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. What had started as me posting humorous if disturbing stories on my social media about what went on in the house turned into frightening accounts that had them worried. I finally told Orlando it was time for me to move on, which got him extremely upset.

He moved a homeless woman into the house to be his live-in maid/caretaker, and was abusive to her from the start. It devolved quickly and frighteningly. In one instance, she bought him a new water bottle that was glass instead of metal. He was so enraged that he threw it at her head, narrowly missing her as it shattered on the wall behind her.

Katie, meanwhile, had devolved so badly that she was starting to commit crimes for thrill. She recounted that her current boyfriend (also an alcoholic with whom she drank) had her be the getaway driver when he went to his former place of employment, broke in and robbed the cash register. I found myself desperately trying to help he break free from a lengthy period of emotional abuse while also trying to extract myself from the situation.

One of my closest friends and her partner were moving into a new apartment, and they extracted me from the situation and moved me into their spare room for a temporary arrangement in which I would be safe.

For the first month that I moved out I continued to try and help Orlando from afar as he phased in yet another girlfriend, this time moving a woman in with her son. However this woman took an interest in his finances immediately, and as they went over the last year of transactions in his bank account, she convinced him that I had stolen from him. The magic number? Ten thousand dollars over the course of a year, an identical accusation that he had made toward Katie.

Around this same time the bank finally sued over the unpaid mortgage, which Orlando also blamed on me. Suddenly my worst fears started unfolding. Orlando accused me of fraud, of stealing his identity to use his bank account and debit card of the last year. He accused me of grand larceny, and began ruthlessly stalking me in emails, calls, texts and internet posts. Anything he could find to try and paint me as a criminal was fair game. He said that I opened a phone line on his account without his permission, something he DEMANDED that I do. He said that I got an internet connection installed in the house without permission, something he also demanded because the third floor tenants had trouble with the existing connection. Literally anything that could be fodder for an accusation, or any of his own failing that he could blame on me, came out.

My friends gathered around me to try and protect me. I went into therapy. I cut off all ties with Orlando. Katie had made arrangements to go and live with her parents in another state. We agreed that for our mutual protection we would cut ties forever, because that way if he found one of us he couldn't use it to his advantage to find both of us.

And find me he did. As the past 2-3 years have gone by, Orlando has repeatedly “found” me again and again and stalked and harassed me. It is a pattern I witnessed him devolve into with countless others in his life. He will forget about certain people until something triggers a memory of them, and because he is bored, it becomes a project to hunt them down and try to mess with their lives.

For six months I moved to another state to be with a man I'd met, and he found me there, calling and leaving frightening voice mails. This happened lots of times in various places I lived. However the absolute worst was an incident that still has me suffering from PTSD.

Around a year ago (this is being written mid-2017 by the way,) he seems to have met a woman and become “engaged”. I am not going to name this woman because even though she has played a role in his harassment of me ever since, I don't blame her for taking the word of someone she seems to care about. Be that as it may, she is active in social media and she saw a post I put up on a “Freecycle” style page. There was an address attached to this post – not my address – and later that day the two apparently drove by together and called me from outside. I got a 3 minute voicemail while they were there: “Come to the window, fucker...”

She also posted a lengthy message on that page detailing all of the accusations Orlando has made against me, and claiming there was a warrant out for my arrest. The posts were deleted and she was removed from the group, but I also left the group for my own safety. A day or two later, a group of men showed up at that address dressed in SWAT gear. A man who is a friend of mine and lives on the first floor apartment there came to the door, where these men dressed as police officers here to arrest me. Because I had gotten the voicemail I had let this man know of the potential that Orlando may continue to show up at the address thinking I lived there. This man also happens to be fairly anti-police, and is extremely educated on his rights and how to deal with them. He denied any knowledge of who I am and demanded to see a warrant and asked what the charges were. These men pushed their way into his apartment, refused to show any such warrant or give badge numbers. They mocked his clothing and nail polish, and eventually they left, leaving him pretty shaken up. He texted me to let me know this had happened, and said he was absolutely certain that they were not real police officers and that Orlando had sent them there to intimidate me (or worse.) No “police” have returned to that address since.

At this point I was living in complete terror. Friends were sheltering me from the situation by keeping me distracted, but no one knew what to do. Was there really a warrant out for my arrest? If there was, what exactly would I do? How does an able person sit down with the police and say “I know a blind man has told you I stole from him and such, but I swear it isn't true, and here's a contract he signed with me, and please don't lock me up?” I was fearful that I would be put behind bars regardless of the truth, where no one would be able to bail me out, because this is how the system works. You get locked up until you go to trial unless you can afford bail, and for major fraud charges, well...bail is not insignificant.

After a few months passed, a dear friend convinced me to go to the police and ask if there was in fact a warrant for my arrest. She promised that if I got locked up, she would post the bail and we would take it from there. So despite the fact that I was terrified, I did just that.

There was no warrant, and (of course) no record of the police being sent to arrest me.

I moved ahead with my life, and it did finally seem like a lengthy period of time passed where I did not hear from Orlando or anyone connected with him. I actually found out in early 2017 that he and his fiance had moved away to another state, and I truly thought perhaps this chapter of my life was behind me.

But now in June of 2017, the fiance has resurfaced in yet another social media page in which I was formerly active. (She was able to see my posts because I left the group, but people continued to reference my name which was no longer linked to a profile and thus visible despite having blocked her.) Though I am told this post only stayed up for 30 minutes or so, it apparently got very ugly. People from that group reached out to another group in which I was actively a member, and the admins removed me and blocked me (who can blame them?) In many ways this speaks to my fears expressed above: Who would question accusations from a disabled person about being taken advantage of?

That's why I'm writing this lengthy story today. 11 pages, and it easily could be 11 more. It seems like Orlando is never, ever going to let me live my life in peace, and although he can't really use social media (Facebook is not friendly to software that reads aloud to the blind,) his fiance, for however long they are together, is going to be acting as his mouthpiece and come after me time and time again.

This is my story, and I hope one day it will stop haunting me. This man has hurt countless people in his life, causing them grief and often abusing them while simultaneously making them feel sympathy for him. I don't know how long I can reiterate my lack of guilt every time he (or she) finds me and hurls these accusations, so I am putting this online to be referenced the next time it happens.

- James B, June 5th, 2017 Sub-note: If you have been sent to this link, please don’t redistribute it to others. Please do not attempt to intervene and contact Orlando or his fiance on my behalf. Engaging him is the same thing as antagonizing him, no matter how you approach, and not only will it simply stir the pot and have him coming after me again with renewed interest and aggression, he will also start to come after you.

[itsfinancethings]

As the House Judiciary Committee kicks off its first impeachment proceeding on Wednesday, Rep. Jerry Nadler once again finds himself in the spotlight. Last time, he was at the center of Congressional probes relating to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Now he faces an arguably bigger challenge: convincing the public to unify around impeachment as he leads one of the most partisan committees in Congress.

House Democrats released a 300-page report on Tuesday arguing that evidence amassed in the impeachment inquiry so far shows that President Trump undermined U.S. national security interests to benefit his reelection campaign by leveraging foreign aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will gather to publicly assess whether that evidence amounts to an impeachable offense. Four constitutional scholars—Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan, UNC Law Professor Michael Gerhardt, and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley—will take the stand to opine on that question. (Feldman, Karlan and Gerhardt are representing the majority, and Turley the minority.)

The hearing could seem esoteric to people who are unmoved by constitutional law, particularly in comparison to some of the headline-grabbing witness testimony given to the House Intelligence Committee last month. “The new phase is going to look different,” said a staffer working on the inquiry. “We’re going to examine the constitutional framework that is put in place to address presidential misconduct. We’re going to apply the constitutional law to the facts.”

But within the caucus, the new set of hearings represent a chance for Nadler to reclaim a starring role in the drama that is the Trump impeachment saga.

When former presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were facing impeachment, the process in the House of Representatives was largely helmed by the Judiciary Committee. And for the first half of the year, when it was still unclear if Democrats would move ahead on impeachment, it was Nadler who became the public face of Democrats’ oversight probes into the Trump administration. Then his committee was effectively sidelined, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially announced the inquiry on September 24th. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, along with the committees on oversight and government reform and foreign affairs, spearheaded the inquiry, and Rep. Adam Schiff, the Chair of the Intelligence Committee and a Pelosi protege, became the public face of the probe.

On the face of it, delegating control to Schiff appeared to be a matter of jurisdiction; it was his committee who had been notified about the complaint from the whistleblower detailing allegations of Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The three committees that led the inquiry had already opened a joint probe into whether Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani pressured Ukraine.

But there was a palpable sense of relief among some Democratic members in the caucus that the historically polarized Judiciary Committee, who some thought muddled early impeachment messaging and made it inherently partisan, was temporarily out of the limelight.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Nadler, had kicked off the year by launching an expansive investigation into whether President Trump abused the power of his office. After Special Counsel Robert Mueller released his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, Nadler’s profile intensified as his committee staff battled the Department of Justice for the redacted grand jury materials and negotiated the terms for Mueller’s appearance on Capitol Hill in July. It was the Judiciary Committee that issued subpoenas to top Trump associates Attorney General William Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn, and which held Barr in contempt when he refused to provide the full, un-redacted version of the Mueller report and filed a lawsuit to enforce the subpoena against McGahn.

The committee has succeeded with their court cases to enforce McGahn’s subpoena and obtain the grand jury materials, with judges ruling in their favor in both instances. But those rulings were only handed down in the last several months, and the administration has challenged both of them. As the bulk of the committee’s requests went ignored by the White House this spring, several Democratic members on the committee—many of whom hail from blue districts—began to push for an impeachment inquiry, putting them at odds with House leadership and more moderate members who feared an inquiry could cost them the majority.

Nadler tried publicly to tow the party line of putting fact-finding before moving ahead on impeachment, but privately relayed his committee members’ beliefs to Pelosi that an inquiry could be beneficial to stopping the White House obstruction of their probes. By July, part of the committee’s justification in its legal quest to receive Mueller’s grand jury material was that they were investigating whether to recommend articles of impeachment, even as Pelosi continued to resist that line. “We have the power to vote articles of impeachment and we are investigating now to get the evidence to decide whether to do so,” Nadler said on CNN this past August. “We are not waiting on anything from the House Speaker,” he added, insisting Pelosi had been cooperative in the process.

Although aides said Pelosi had signed off on that language, it wasn’t until September that she threw her support behind an official impeachment inquiry. And her public reasoning for it was based on the allegations raised by the whistleblower that Trump had leveraged the power of the presidency to push Zelensky to investigate Biden. “…The President has admitted to asking the President of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” she said on September 24th. “The actions of the Trump Presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the President’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections. Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.”

Now, after two months of investigations and public hearings led by Schiff, the ball is back to Nadler. Under the resolution that House Democrats passed on October 31, the Judiciary Committee is tasked with conducting proceedings and determining whether to draft articles of impeachment that House members will eventually vote on. Some Democrats, sources in the caucus say, are concerned that Wednesday’s hearing could devolve into yet another partisan fight, disrupting the even-keeled demeanor Schiff and his committee colleagues displayed through the weeks of their public hearings. “I hope he [Nadler] learned from Schiff,” said one senior Democratic aide associated with the moderate wing of the party. “There’s a lot for him to overcome.”

A democratic leadership aide, however, was adamant about Pelosi’s belief in Nadler, noting that the Speaker has complete confidence in him, while acknowledging that the committee as a whole is more partisan and unwieldy than the intelligence committee.

Republicans on the committee, which include Trump’s staunchest defenders like Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, have indicated they will highlight Nadler’s absence from the investigation thus far during the hearings. “Pelosi clearly made the decision at the start of all this to take the ball out of Nadler’s hands. Now it’s in his hands and he’s still the same chairman,” said one Republican aide to a committee member. The aide also posited that Nadler also may be easier to agitate than Schiff. “Whenever Republicans tried to make a procedural motion Schiff shut it down out of hand,” the aide said. “I’m not sure Nadler will have the same spine.”

But Elliot Mincberg, former chief counsel for oversight and investigations of the House Judiciary Committee who has worked with Nadler, said he is confident the chairman will rise to the occasion. “Nadler is an extraordinarily intelligent, industrious and gifted member of Congress who I think is hopefully up to much of that challenge,” he said.