#with every new information about this goddamn company i get less and less excited for new stuff

[yooboobies]

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[leiawritesstories]

A New Partnership

Rowaelin Month, Day 12: Delayed Love Confession. Ballet AU :) Sort of played with the whole “love confession” thing.....

Word count: 1167

Warnings: Language, innuendo

After such a long and grueling day, all Aelin wanted to do was go back to the apartment she shared with two of her fellow soloists and crash. Fridays suck, she had decided. First company class at eight-thirty, then in-studio rehearsals until nearly one o’clock, followed by a break barely long enough to swallow some food and water, and then studio or stage rehearsals until seven. 

And because it was a Friday, there was a performance at eight-fifteen. Thank all the gods she wasn’t in this cast, but she was an understudy, so she had to be in the wings. 

She tugged off her rehearsal tutu and plopped it onto the rack, then dropped down onto the floor by her overflowing bag and untied her pointes, sighing in pure bliss as her feet were freed. And since her right shoe bent nearly in half when she pushed on it, the shoes were good and dead. Aelin riffled through the contents of her bag and located a new pair, sewn and ready for wear if she needed them. Good. One less thing to worry about on the off chance she had to perform. But gods, she hoped she didn’t need to. 

Because Don Quixote rehearsals that day had been hell.

When she first saw she’d been cast as one of the Kitris, Aelin had nearly passed out from shock. Then Dorian Havilliard, British soloist and a great friend of hers, had practically tackled her in the hallway, he was so excited to be cast as her Basilio, and the joy of a major soloist role set in. During the first rehearsals, the solos, that joy wore off real fast, replaced by an endless string of shit, that’s a lot of choreography, goddamn character skirts, that’s a sissone arabesque, not attitude, SPOT YOUR TURNS!, and stress. 

By the time pas de deux rehearsals started, she’d finally got most of her solo work down, but was nervous for the Act III grand pas de deux, given the lifts it entailed and how perfectly precise the timing had to be. She and Dorian had been partners before, so he knew how she adjusted to lifts, but fish dives were another beast. They worked at that particular pas for a solid week before learning the rest, and even spent some early mornings in the upstairs studio going over the lift sequences. 

Last week, Peter and Delaney, the pas de deux rehearsal coaches, had asked Aelin and Dorian to rehearse with Rowan Whitethorn and Nesta Archeron, the principals who were Basilio and Kitri in first cast. Peter and Delaney were notorious for asking partnered pairs to switch partners for a rehearsal, so Aelin braced herself for the potential that she could very well be stuck with Whitethorn for an hour and a half. 

Not that she’d mind being stuck to that piece.

But she was used to Dorian’s partnering. So, when the coaches announced a partner swap, Aelin’s usual rehearsal calm gave way to nerves, which she tried to squash down before dancing. Rowan, damn him, noticed her trying to steady her breathing, and whispered something to the effect of “I promise not to drop you.” She half-grinned, her nerves easing. 

“You do that and I’ll battement you with my pointes, Whitethorn.” He gulped. 

To everyone’s shock, Aelin and Rowan’s pairing had more natural chemistry that Aelin and Dorian, Nesta and Rowan, and Nesta and Dorian. The coaches held a quick whispered conference after watching the two run the grand pas, and then informed them that they would be making this swap a casting change. Aelin distinctly heard Dorian try to muffle his exclamation of “Bloody fucking hell!” 

So began her remarkably quick transition to a completely different partner. Rowan was twenty-three and had joined The Orynth Ballet last season, transferring in as a principal from Doranelle National Ballet. He and Aelin shared company class and little else, save a few rehearsals where she was understudying his cast partner. It was a shock to both of them how easily they clicked, both as dancers and in their roles. Aelin loved Kitri, loved the fiery, sassy Spanish personality she got to become, and she absolutely loved throwing a little bit of extra flirtation into her Kitri’s interactions with Rowan’s Basilio. 

After all, she wasn’t about to just admit she liked him.

So she threw the day’s dead pointes into her bag, pulled on sweats and a wrap, and made herself get up and walk back to the dressing rooms to change into performance tights and put on some makeup. As an understudy, she didn’t need to do full stage makeup, but some foundation and lipstick and false lashes would be good enough if she had to suddenly run onstage. Dressed and made up, Aelin made her way down to the stage entrance, smothering a groan before entering. She set her bag down in the back of the stage right wing and slid down onto the floor, stretching her tired legs. 

“Feeling the effects of the day, are we now?” drawled a low male voice from her left. 

“Shut the hell up, Whitethorn,” she grumbled, “but yes.”

He settled down alongside her. “Who’re you here for?”

“Technically, Alanna, but Brian had me learn all the corps parts so I can step in for anyone. Because he’s lazy.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

Rowan shook his head. “He really is a dick sometimes.”

Aelin snorted. “Sometimes, says the star transfer. Welcome to the company.”

They fell into silence for a while, just watching their company mates onstage. During an interlude corps waltz, one of the other soloists came over to talk to Aelin and made extra sure to cast a few appreciative glances Rowan’s way. He saw Aelin snicker and wiggle her eyebrows at one of her friend’s comments, and poked her arm once her friend left. 

“Care to share what, exactly, you found so entertaining?”

She smirked. “I won’t repeat her exact words, but let’s just say Cora wouldn’t mind a piece of your Spandexed ass.”

“She won’t get any of it,” he said dryly.

“Oh? And who would?”

“I’m looking at her.”

Aelin’s jaw dropped. “Rowan--I--You’ve literally been here for less than six months!”

“And head over heels for you for five, at least.” She just stared at him, eyes wide. “Shit, Ae, I didn’t mean to scare you or--”

“I’m not scared, Whitethorn, just...shit. I didn’t think you’d grow the cojones to admit it. Thought I’d have to tell you how I get myself off with fantasies of you before you’d ever say anything.”

Rowan choked on whatever he was about to say. When he finally stopped coughing into his arm, he gasped, “Gods, I love talking to you. Every time. Every time, you manage to shock me with something like...that.”

She grinned. “You do?”

“I do. Hell yes I do. Will you go to dinner with me after this show?”

“Only if you buy me chocolate hazelnut cake.”

“Deal.”

[andguesswhat]

The fool on the hill - Chapter 8

This is a thankless chapter but it still had to be written. So here we go...

I’m fine

*

And then everything was overshadowed by a ominous virus. 

It was on the news and in their minds. 

They talked about it, discussed it, tried to evaluate it with each new piece of information they got, tried to classify it, they weighed all scenarios, they talked about every goddamn disaster movie that came to their minds. 

They were worried. About their families, their friends, themselves.

And finally it was certain they had to stop fliming and take a break. 

The crew was sent home. 

Owen went back to Santa Monica. And Tom could understand. Owen wanted to be there for his kids and needed to see his brothers. 

Tom himself decided to stay in Atlanta. He liked being here and somehow he felt safer than being in busy, overcrowded London. 

Well, like almost everybody else he thought that yes, this virus was horrible but it would only take a few weeks and then they could go back to working.  

So Tom went for jogs, went for walks with Bobby, he read, he talked to friends and his family on the phone, he watched movies, he cooked and he read some more… 

But the virus was still there.

And like almost everybody else Tom somehow got used to it. So his worrying thoughts about this pandemic got less and made room for more conventional thoughts… or at least thoughts about Owen.   

Yes, Owen… of course, about Owen. 

Their contact had been more or less non-existing. 

Sure, Tom had texted Owen and asked him if he was alright. But Owen more or less had just replied with “Yeah I’m fine. How are you?” 

Okay, he did write a bit more but still… It wasn’t enough for Tom. He felt demoted to being a colleague, an acquaintance like others, whereas his longing for Owen had gotten even worse. 

He missed him. He missed him sooo sooo much. 

Missed talking to him, laughing with him… and just being near him. 

And far too often his thoughts went to their encounter on that hill. 

He on top of Owen, their hard-ons pressed together, Owen grabbing his ass, pulling up his leg… 

Sometimes Tom even got a hard-on just thinking about that and he would grab a cushion to groan his frustration into. He didn’t want to be the one getting desperate.  

So when he jerked off under the shower he tried to think about 1000 different hot guys but not Owen. Because thinking about Owen was just too pathetic. 

And it hurt so much when Tom slowly had to realize that they apparently weren’t on the same level. 

Because when they were… Owen would call him, right?

He knew Owen wasn’t the guy to text long messages. 

But he could have called, right?

They could flirt on the phone, send each other naughty pics… 

Okay, Tom hadn’t called him either. He didn’t dare because he was afraid to interrupt something. Maybe Owen was with his kids. 

At some point Tom got worried if Owen was really okay, if his mood got worse and he didn’t want to tell Tom, so he wrote him again. But again everything he got was “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for caring. I hope, you are fine, too.” I was just damn frustrating. 

The weeks went by and Tom got more and more moody. 

He always thought of himself as a guy that had no problems being alone. He actually liked being alone. Having his space, not having to make arrangements with anyone, not having to take anyone into consideration. He always could do what he wanted, when he wanted. 

But now in this pandemic with almost zero contact to others… while others were with their families…. it buggered him badly. (And maybe, just maybe, he had gotten a little too comfortable having Owen around.)

When he ran, he wished Owen would run by his side. When he finished a book, he wanted to tell Owen about it and ask what he had been reading, when he cooked he wanted to cook for two. 

But who was he to complain?

The world was in turmoil…

But he was healthy.

He had Bobby to keep him company.

He was fine. 

*

And then.. 

… he wasn’t fine anymore. 

“He… fucking... grabbed… my ass!” he growled into the phone.

Zawe laughed. “Yeah, you already told me…”

“Yeah… I’m sorry... But why, why isn’t he calling? … Or texting?” Anything actually!

For a couple of days now Zawe had to listen to his whining about fucking mean Owen that wouldn’t call him, wouldn’t send him flirty messages (or dirty pics, but he didn’t say that to Zawe, he had to maintain at least a little dignity). 

“And how is this supposed to work anyway? Am I supposed to make him unhappy so we can be together?” He was really upset. 

“You know that it doesn’t work like this,“ Zawe tried to calm him down. “He just has to get used to liking you. And you know that.”

Tom sighed. “Yeah…” Yes, he knew. 

Still…! 

He was so … frustrated.  “I think he is getting used to forgetting about me.” He didn’t even care that he sounded like a pouting teenager in love. 

“Maybe you just have to tell him, you were Rear of the Year. Maybe this gets his attention… ” Zawe burst out laughing. 

Tom just groaned. 

He knew Zawe just wanted to cheer him up. But it didn’t work.  

“I can’t remember telling you that!” he growled. “Who told you?”

Zawe apparently didn’t want to expose the traitor right away so she said, “Who said that I don’t follow this award?” But Tom wasn’t even close to comment on that. 

“Okay,” Zawe capitulated. “It was Josie…”

“I’ll keep that in mind…” Tom tried to answer mockingly but it sounded all wrong. 

“I wonder… Did you get a trophy for that?” Zawe’s voice was still way too cheerful. He wished he could joke with her but he just wasn’t in the mood for it. 

“Don’t make it more ridiculous than it is,” he said with a sigh. There were things in his past he didn’t want to be reminded of. 

At least Zawe apparently gave up trying to lighten his mood.  

“How about I come and visit you?” she asked after a pause. Her voice sounded kind of worried so Tom had the urge to refute that. 

“I’m fine. You don’t have to come.”

“Yeah, I still want to. I want to see you, want to talk to you, face to face... I’ll book a flight for this weekend.”

Tom loved the idea of having Zawe here with him but this was still… “You don’t have to do this. It’s a long flight… There is still a risk you get infected… I’m fine-“

“Thomas William Hiddleston,” Zawe interrupted him firmly, “if you want a baby with me, you have to respect my decisions. And that is one of them. I’m coming to Atlanta this weekend.”

And Tom had to admit Zawe’s decision was worth gold. 

The minute she arrived everything was way easier to handle. 

She stayed for a couple of weeks and they had a wonderful time. It was so relaxed and comfortable that on their last evening together, as they lay on the couch watching a movie, after another day full of relaxed conversations and good cooking, Tom wondered why the hell they couldn’t be in love with each other. Everything would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? 

But love was never easy. It always hurt. Before and after and sometimes in between. 

*

Somehow time passed and in September they were finally able to continue filming. 

Owen called him a few days before and Tom didn’t know what to feel. On the one hand he was tremendously excited and his heart wanted to beat faster. But on the other hand, he was disillusioned and sad that Owen apparently didn’t have as much feelings for him as Tom had for him.  

But Owen probably didn’t realize any of that anyway, because he was constantly talking. He had big news to tell: Luke would also be shooting in Atlanta and they already got a place where they both could stay. Tom was happy for Owen but he was afraid that this would change too much between them. He doubted that they would still spend so much time together when Luke was around.

“Man, it’s so good to hear your voice! I’ve missed it,” he heard Owen drawl on the other side of the phone, all cheerful. 

Tom rolled his eyes and tried not to sound too reproachful when he said, “You could have had that earlier if you had called me.” …once.

“I knooow, I’m sorry,” Owen replied and his tone hadn’t lost a milligram of his cheerfulness. “But we see each other on Monday, right?! Can’t wait to see you!” 

Tom sighed. It felt so good to hear Owen. He didn't want to, but he knew he couldn’t stay mad at him for long. 

And for what anyway?

Either you love someone or you don’t. He couldn’t make Owen fall in love with him if he wasn’t. Even if he wished he could.

So for the next days Tom tried to push his longing aside and was just happy that he was going to see Owen again.  And he didn’t even had to wait until Monday. On Sunday Owen called again to invite Tom over to their place to have dinner. 

Their embrace was long and warm, and it felt good. And even though Tom was sad deep down, his smile was genuine. He loved seeing Owen, seeing him laugh, hearing his drawl… he had missed him so much.

He was surprised that actually everything felt like there hadn’t been horrible six months in between, everything felt like it used to be. Well, before their incident on the hill that was.

But it was a really nice evening; Tom could not say it otherwise. Luke was lovely. And Owen seemed proud of his brother being here and that Tom could finally meet him.

They talked, they laughed and Tom tried to ignore the occasional twinge in his heart whenever he would look at Owen for a second too long. Wishing secretly he would lie with him on the sofa, counting his eyelashes.

“He was so proud that I finally got to meet you,” Luke winked at him, when Owen went into the kitchen to get some drinks. “He has so much respect for you.”

Tom tried to smile.

It was nice to hear that and to know that it was the other way around then he had thought… that it was important to Owen to introduce him to Luke.

But deep down, it hurt.

Because it seemed that sometimes everything wasn’t enough to make someone fall in love with you.

When they hugged to say goodbye for the night, Owen looked at Tom attentively …

“Everything okay with you?”

Tom pressed his lips together before he answered.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

“Oh wait! I forgot…” Owen jumped back in and came back with a slightly tattered book in his hand that he handed to Tom.

“This is the one book I was talking to you about. The other one is apparently on Maui.” He grinned. “So you have to come and visit me there to get it.”

And even if Tom didn’t want to, he grinned back. “Thanks.”

He was moved that Owen had remembered.

“Sure… Good to see you, man” Owen’s smile was soft now and Tom hated himself for falling for him so easily again. He wished he wouldn’t get his hopes up again but he was afraid it was already too late for that.

“Glad you’re back…” he finally managed to say. “See you tomorrow on set.”

And with that he turned and disappeared into the night.

Yeah, he was fine.

At least he would be, somehow.

*

[c-is-for-circinate]

The last three months of this decade...

October

--I am absolutely out of all meds, and also Medicaid has officially dropped me, precisely one month after they finally admit I qualify in the first place.

--I finally quit my truly shitty part-time job, resigning myself to making rent entirely on my slightly less shitty part-time tutoring job and figuring more shit out in two weeks once I have more time.

--I have a birthday.  The next morning, my paternal grandmother dies after a long illness, sending my father’s enormous, overly-political family into a tailspin of public grief and private combat on every single front.

--I start tutoring three new students in approximately five new subjects, and am now working every single day of the week.

--I successfully DM four times

--I listen to nearly the entire first season of that podcast I don’t listen to or talk about any more, giving me nightmares and a persistent fear off the dark for the next month.

November

--I wake up on November 1 to an email from my landlord informing me that my rent is going up by $350 on the first of next month.

--I recruit my mother to help me apartment-hunt, which leads to two straight weeks of all SORTS of exciting bullshit of all the most predictably terrible kinds.  Also, it’s clearly her fault that my sister and I are terrible with money, and she’s going to pray for forgiveness for failing us like that very soon.

--I take on three more tutoring students, retake the SAT for the first time in fifteen years, and at least start making enough money that I can mostly hopefully make rent on the upcoming new apartment, not that any proposed landlords believe me.

--I successfully DM at least twice, probably, who even knows any more.  Our bard moves halfway across the country on precisely one and a half weeks’ notice.  I recruit us a brand new cleric, handle all of his character creation in between scheduling moving trucks, and make goddamn chicken and dumplings for game night to clear the stockpiled meat out of my freezer.

--The day before Thanksgiving, my mother begs off couch shopping for the new place I’ve finally signed a lease for because, sigh, dad’s weirdly dizzy, she guesses she’ll take him to the walk-in clinic, maybe she’ll meet me at the furniture store later.  Six hours later it becomes clear he’s had a major stroke and will be in the hospital for the forseeable future.

December

--I pack.  I move.  This is at least five bullet points.

--I get an excellent damn six-month tutoring review from every single tutoring student, barring the one that decided to quit tutoring six hours before a lesson via email and stopped answering emails from me or the company after that, and also the one that cancelled a scheduled lesson by moving and not telling me their new address until I showed up at their old front door.  I tutor every single kid so good.  I answer last-minute calculus panicking questions via text at 9:45 PM on a Tuesday night.

--I continue to successfully DM, god damnit, so help me god.  My players do not successfully manage to provide a working electric drill to hang my spice rack.

--I spend three entire days at my parents’ house for Christmas.  We spend most of those days hanging out in a hospital room attempting to pretend not to notice when my dad starts crying multiple times an hour.  He is, at least, engaging with a negative emotion other than anger, so that’s probably a positive, right?

--I come home to the new, still-not-unpacked apartment, go to bed, and wake up the morning after Christmas with the flu.

I am ending 2019 with the flu.   I don’t even have the energy to comment on the appropriateness of that fact.  I am so done with literally everything.

2020 is going to be great and I cannot fucking wait to put this entire bullshit decade behind me

[indigosandviolets]

Zim-Zam, Goddamn, We’re Easy Company

Pairing : Joseph Liebgott x OC x George Luz

Summary : Andrew Marin knew that Airborne school would be hell, and he knew that he wouldn’t fit in, but there just happens to be two men there to make it a little more tolerable.

Word Count : 1990

Special thanks to @whatwouldidowithoutgeorgeluz for the script of Currahee! I wouldn’t have been able to get this part on if it wasn’t for that script.

Part One if We Happy Few

Camp Toccoa

The sweat dripped down into Andrew’s eyes as he stood under the sun, in line with the rest of the men of Easy Company. He stood at attention as Lieutenant Sobel found anything he could on the men to get their Weekend Passes revoked. A Weekend Pass could mean anything to an enlistee, and Sobel was intent on ripping it away to “teach them a thing or two”. Like it earned Sobel the respect of his men. Andrew wouldn’t be the first to tell you that this tactic didn’t work.

It came to be Andrew’s turn for berating, and he was not excited.

“Name.”

“Andrew Marin, sir.”

“Private Marin.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why are your boots covered in mud?”

“No excuse, sir.”

“Are you not ordered to keep everything clean?”

Andrew’s boots weren’t the only thing keeping him from godliness, but he wasn’t going to be the one to tell Sobel that. “I was, sir.”

“So why aren’t they clean, Private?”

“No excuse, sir.”

“You disobeyed direct orders, Private. I��d ought to write you up. Weekend Pass revoked.”

Sobel moved onto the next soldier and Andrew let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Andrew wasn’t too upset about losing his Weekend Pass. He didn’t have anywhere he wanted to go. His friends had already had theirs revoked, and those who hadn’t would inevitably lose them before the hour was out.

Some of the infractions the men had on them were absolutely ridiculous. They were singled out for having something that wasn’t contraband or because they grabbed the wrong canteen or something that wasn’t up to Sobel’s personal standards. If Sobel didn’t like it, you clearly weren’t fit to be a soldier.

“Name.”

“Liebgott, Joseph D., sir.”

Sobel reaches for Liebgott’s bayonet and examines it. “Rusty bayonet, Liebgott. You wanna kill Germans?”

Sobel knew that answer. Everyone wanted to kill the Germans. “Yes, sir.”

Sobel hits Liebgott over the head with his bayonet. “Not with this.”

Instead of returning the bayonet to Liebgott, Sobel held it up over his head to show the company. “I wouldn’t take this rusty piece of shit to war, and I will not take you to war I your condition. Now thanks to these men and their infractions, every man in the company who had a weekend pass has lost it. Change into your PT gear, we’re running Currahee.”

Currahee. Fucking Curahee. If there was ever a way to make a Company hate their CO, it was Currahee. Run up the three miles, run back down in the allotted time. You go over, you do it again, and again, and again until Sobel decides you’ve either had enough or he’s too disappointed in you to go on.

Andrew had to run Currahee twice in one night. He had tripped on the way up and screwed up his time, so Sobel had him run double. Worst night of Airborne School so far. His chest hurt like hell for days after that night, but he never let it show. He couldn’t. Not now.

“Marin!” a voice shouted from behind Andrew. He turned to see George Luz, a good friend and one of the best parts of Easy Company.

“Hey, Luz,” Andrew says with a grin and he pulls his shirt over his chest.

“Still have to wear that posture stuff?”

“Yeah.” Posture stuff. What an excellent lie.

Luz looked down at Andrew’s boots. “Muddy boots make a muddy soldier, Marin!” He said in the most Sobel-like voice he could manage. Luz was always a fan of impressions. “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

“Tell that to the dirt on your M-1.”

The walk to Currahee was a humiliating one. The men of the other companies would almost taunt Easy as they walked up to the mountain. Andrew happened to be by Liebgott on this occasion.

“Oh, Easy Company. ‘Ey while you’re runnin’, don’t worry, we’ll take your dames to the movies for ya.”

Dog Company. Classic.

“Yeah, good, they need some female company,” Liebgott says. Andrew laughs at it.

“Pretty sure there’s only two of us that have really got any women,” Andrew tells Liebgott.

“Yeah? Wouldn’t doubt it.”

Sobel was unrelenting on Currahee. When Muck tripped Sobel shouted for him to not be helped. Of course, Malarkey and Gordon helped anyway, because that’s what you do when you’re at the very least a decent human being.

Andrew suspects he got up the mountain in 20 minutes. His lungs burned and the sweat in his eyes stung to high heaven but he kept going. He had to.

~

The hour upon Currahee became days on that godforsaken mountain. Those days became weeks. Soon enough, Andrew found himself in the mess hall across from Luz with a plate of spaghetti in front of him. Well, what looked like spaghetti.

“What do ya think, Luz?” Andrew asks. “Fine Italian cooking if I’ve ever seen it.”

Luz put on a big grin. “Perfecto!” He says in a silly Italian accent. “

“Not too loud!” Andrew laughs at him. “You don’t want Guanere to kill you.”

Before Luz can reply, Sobel’s familiar whistle blows and the man himself marches up into the mess hall.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Andrew hears Liebgott mutter. It’s almost funny. Almost.

“All lectures are canceled! Easy Company is running up Currahee! Move! Move! Move!”

Andrew almost threw up. He really didn’t think he would make it to the top of that mountain without hunching over and vomiting himself inside out.

It was worse when Sobel started yelling, right in his face.

“Marin, your chest hurt? You look pale, Private! You’re gonna be sick! Sick men do not make Paratroopers! Get your ass off this mountain and go home!”

It was almost an incentive to get up the mountain. To do it out of spite. To show Sobel that Andrew really did have it, to show that unlike Sobel, he wasn’t scared. He had seen fear in Sobel’s eyes once, a fear that his men would be better than him, Andrew knew that. He just had to show that they all were.

Then, from beside him, Luz pipes up. “We pull upon the risers…”

Just like that, the men of Easy Company began their chant.

“We fall upon the grass,

We never land upon our feet, we always hit our ass,

Highty tighty, Christ Almighty, who the hell are we?

Zim-Zam goddamn we’re the Airborne Infantry!

We pull upon the risers,

We fall upon the grass,

We never end upon our feet, we always hit our ass

Highty tighty, Christ Almighty, who the hell are we?

Zim-Zam goddamn we’re the Airborne Infantry!”

~

The showers that night were surprisingly empty for Andrew. He stripped down for the first time in what felt like forever. Without the “posture stuff”, as Luz had so affectionately called it, it was like Andrew could breathe again. His muscles ached as he slipped under the hot water, relaxing as he felt he could be totally alone.

The soap going over his body was a treat for Andrew, getting the caked dirt off his hands and the strange spaghetti sauce that someone had coughed up off of his back and the dried salt from his sweat off of his arms was a blessing.

Spaghetti. Andrew wondered if he could ever eat it again without wanting to vomit. He wondered if he could eat any food from the mess hall without thinking about that goddamned mess of spaghetti.

A few minutes under the spray of water was enough for Andrew to lose himself in the moment, to actually think about himself for once. He hadn’t written a letter to his parents except for the first week he was there, informing them of where he was and what he’d be doing. They weren’t too keen on the idea of him being in the military, jumping out of planes no less, but Andrew didn’t let that stop him. He’d gotten one letter from his brother, Albert, out in Chicago. It wasn’t all good news, as it was mainly about what was going on with him and his wife. The general outlook wasn’t great. His wife had cheated on him and he only found out when their daughter didn’t look like him at all. It was funny, but this was his Al, who was always insecure about everything, so it wasn’t supposed to be funny.

Al found out because him and his wife are very dark-haired. The baby was a ginger.

Andrew thought about how his plan didn’t really line up with his brother’s. Al was a real stand-up guy, who always knew what to say and what he wanted to do. Despite his insecurities, he fit in, he blended with the crowd. He moved out to Chicago, started a business, married a girl and got everything he wanted until very recently.

Andrew stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone seemed to know there was something off about him back home. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He didn’t think he would make it that far. All he knew is that he didn’t want to be stuck with his parents forever. So, when the war started, he knew what he needed to do. It’s good pay, it’s respectable, he’s fighting for something he believes in. It’s good and he somehow manages to fit in with the guys, something he’s never been able to do.

Andrew gets out of the shower before anyone would’ve even realized he was there. He slipped his clothes back on, tied up his boots, but stopped in front of the mirror as he passed it. He almost couldn’t recognize himself. He’s not really sure if he wanted to.

His hair had become lighter from the sun and the freckles on his face began to become more prominent. He was still scrawny but he didn’t look like the wind could push him over anymore. His hands were now scuffed and his fingers became calloused, like the rest of the men’s. He hadn’t realized how hardened he had become. He supposed that all the men have become like this. Some of them were already hard, like Guanere and Martin. Others had hardened, like Winters. But there were some who Andrew couldn’t picture like that.

Like Luz. Luz wasn’t soft. Luz wasn’t hard. He was silly. He did impressions. He didn’t let Sobel get under his skin. He made fun of the Lieutenant. He was determined to get past Sobel and do what he wanted. He made jokes with Andrew.

Or Liebgott. Liebgott was more sarcastic but he had a perfect sense of humor. He was hard, but he had a real sense of humanity. He was always genuine, but always sassy. Liebgott, like Andrew, kind of stuck out. With his being Jewish and Andrew being Andrew, it made sense that two of them were good friends.

Luz and Liebgott. Liebgott and Luz. Andrew chuckled to himself. The two men he couldn’t really define in Easy Company and they both had ‘L’ names. Andrew stopped where he was. Luz and Liebgott. Thinking of the two made Andrew feel different. It wasn’t like that fun feeling around Muck and Penkala or that brotherly feeling around Bull and Martin. It was different. Safe. Comforting. It was nice.

Andrew knew it wouldn’t be good for him, but at least it was nice.

The barracks were quiet that night. All of the men were sore and didn’t want to deal with more than they had to. When Andrew had gotten back, Luz was fast asleep and most of the men were going in the same direction. Andrew found himself in his bed before long, a book in one hand and the other tucked up under his head. He wasn’t sure what time he fell asleep that night, but he knows that he didn’t get very far into chapter three.

~

tag list: @alienoresimagines

if you’d like to be added, let me know!

[hermannsthumb]

I need more secret husband fics where it's not really a secret, newt and herms just don't tell anyone. Who finds out? People in the loccent? Students on the uni? I don't care, i just need them to be secret husbands. Maybe hermann is drunk and tells someone? It's up to you, i just really like drunk hermann! Please maria juan you're my only hope

CANT TURN DOWN A REQUEST LIKE THAT. inspiration pulled from an actual event i had on campus tuesday lmfao though it wasn’t anywhere near as exciting as this. warning for alcohol i suppose

Hermann isn’t difficult by nature when he’s drunk, per say--he isn’t an angry drunk, or a weepy drunk, or the kind that falls asleep sitting up wherever he is to leave Newt to drag him off to bed like a frumpy toddler--but he gets so goddamn affectionate with Newt that he sure as hell becomes an distraction. The instant Hermann has a single drink every single carefully constructed layer of professionalism--and deep-rooted repression--comes flying off. Alongside most of his layers.

He’s even unbuttoned his collar tonight, the hussy.

But drunk Hermann is needy Hermann. Lovesick Hermann. A Hermann who will clutch Newt’s hands to his chest and inform him, very earnestly, with his big brown doe-eyes shining, that he wants to marry Newt, and who will nearly break into overjoyed tears when Newt informs him they’ve been married for a decade already, thanks, no need to go at it again, first time was expensive enough, and then try to kiss him but faceplant against his shoulder instead.

Drunk Hermann is also the kind of Hermann who never shuts up about Newt to anyone who will listen. It’s flattering, of course, Newt loves when Hermann dotes praise on him, but--tonight’s a little embarrassing an occasion for it. End of the school year party for the physics faculty and some students, Newt as Hermann’s plus one of choice, doesn’t exactly scream a rip-roaring good time. Even if there is free wine. Hermann’s colleagues are a little...stuffy. Physicists, you know. No where near as cool as biologists.

Hermann lets loose after one glass of prosecco.

“It’s certainly warm in here,” he says first, which is when the collar comes undone. He eyes up Newt, next--his bright purple tie, his tight jeans--and tucks himself in, noticeably closer, to Newt’s side, his cane continuously jostling at Newt’s ankles. “How long have you had those?” he says, not looking up from the jeans, and Newt has to remind him they’re the pair he wears every day. Another half-glass. A palm sliding down into Newt’s back pocket. A gentle squeeze. (Newt squeaks.) “They fit you very well,” low in his ear, followed by a little nip of teeth.

This is when Newt forces Hermann into a seat.

He very nearly wrestles the wine glass away from Hermann, too, but one of Hermann’s colleagues decides it’s the perfect moment to sit at their table and make small talk, and--at risk of creating a scene--Newt goes along with it. Talks about how they like their new positions and shit like that, even as he watches, with a low thrum of anxiety in his stomach, Hermann finish off his glass out of the corner of his eye. 

Then Hermann starts to grope his thigh under the table. Hermann after one drink is affectionate; Hermann after two drinks is all hands. “Newton,” he says, and the other professor shuts his mouth abruptly. “My dear boy. My dear Newton.” Fingers stroking up through Newt’s hair, down past the curve of his neck.

“Easy, honey,” Newt says, and laughs, a bit awkwardly, as he places Hermann’s hand back onto the table. Hermann’s colleague is staring pointedly at the ceiling. Newt lowers his voice. “Discreet, okay?” More for Hermann’s sake than his own. Hermann is normally very embarrassed about PDA, or admitting to people who aren’t Newt that he has emotions. If Newt keeps him in check now it’ll be less for him to fuss over tomorrow morning.

“Discreet,” Hermann agrees. He gives Newt a large, sappy smile, and then immediately starts stroking his hair again. (The other professor slips away.) “Mm. Your eyes are gorgeous.”

“Hermann,” Newt mumbles.

“And your lovely mouth,” Hermann says, distinctly less...innocent, and Newt flushes. “I want to--”

Newt clears his throat very, very loudly. “Alright,” he says, just as loudly. “Let’s get you some water. Okay?” Hermann nods; Newt pats his hand and wriggles out of his touch. “Be back in five. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

He makes a beeline for the drinks table and grabs no less than three water bottles, but Hermann’s already managed to find himself new company by the time he gets back. Two of his students, it looks like--graduating seniors, each in semi-formal wear, each holding a small class of wine and staring at Hermann with polite bewilderment. Newt squeezes back in next to Hermann and fixes a grin on his face. “I know,” he says to the students. “It’s weird to see him like this. Like watching your grandma get drunk or something.”

“Newton!” Hermann says, a bit delayed. “We were.” He blinks. “Ah. Talking about their postgraduate plans. Hello.”

“Here’s your water,” Newt says, and nudges his arm with a bottle. “Drink up, okay? You’re gonna be pissed at me tomorrow if you don’t.”

Hermann bats his eyelashes and obeys him, though it takes him a few seconds to unscrew the lid off the bottle and Newt has to help. Newt nods at the kids while Hermann spills most of it down his front. “Hi,” he says. Then, to the shorter one, “Did I have you in my class?”

“I think,” the kid says.

“Cool,” Newt says.

Hermann drops the empty water bottle to the table. He flings his arm around Newt’s shoulder. Oh boy, Newt thinks. “Have you met my husband?” Hermann says.

“Hi,” Newt says, for what feels like the third time in a few seconds.

Both of the kids swivel to stare at him again. Hermann stares at him, too, though in a distinctly different way. “My lovely Newton,” he sighs. 

“You’re married to him?” one kid blurts out, though he has the decency to look mortified a second later.

“Yes,” Hermann says. He smiles, a bit dazed. “Certainly I’ve mentioned it before.”

“Uh, no.”

Newt can understand the confusion. Aside from Hermann’s complete refusal to talk about his personal life in any capacity (he won’t even tell his students when his birthday is), Newt and Hermann argue most of the time when they’re together on campus. They argue when Newt drops by Hermann’s classes. They argue in the halls. They argue over their lunches. They argue in their offices. It would be weird, really, if they didn’t--they work better this way, anyway. Bad habits picked up at the lab all those years ago. By all accounts, and to all bystanders, they probably look like they hate each other.

At home, though, when it’s just them-- “Yep,” Newt says, swelling with pride. “I’m his husband. Hermann’s my husband.” Hermann sways forward and presses a kiss to his cheek. Goddamn, Newt loves him. “We should probably get you home soon, though, okay, babe?”

[icecubelotr44]

Where the Lovelight Gleams (1/1)

Summary: Set a few years after the events of The Darling Affair (ao3/ffn).  It's Christmas morning (that might be debatable) and Emma has just been woken up by her daughter.  What has Santa Claus left them under the tree and how did that present get there?

Rated:  K+ (I’ve been informed by @gusenitsaa that this is almost ‘cutesy’... for me anyway)

Word count:  ~ 4,300 words

Posted on AO3 and FFN

“Mama, Mama, wake up! Sanna Claus came!  Sanna Claus came!”

Emma woke with a start when Alice started yelling in her ear, then groaned audibly.  Which was absolutely a mistake.  It proved to the rambunctious three-year old nearly bouncing with energy that Emma was, in fact, alive and awake.

Well, awake may have been a stretch.

“MAMA! Come on! Sanna was here!”

God, her daughter was so damn excited and happy and full of way too much energy for…

Four AM.

Okay, there were numbers after the four that told her it was closer to five, but still. Four something in the morning was dead to the world, sleep for many more hours time.  Not waking up time.

But Alice was excited and happy and energetic and it was Christmas morning.  She was wearing Killian’s JR Solutions t-shirt as a nightgown over her Rudolph Christmas pajama pants and had found a Santa Claus hat to jam over her stuffed bunny’s ears.  And Emma?

Emma was sad.

Not because it was four something in the morning and not because she'd only gotten to bed two hours before, up that late wrapping presents and on the phone with Liam to make sure he was still doing his job even at the late hour (she knew he was, she knew he'd always do this job, but she still needed the reassurance that he was doing everything he could) and not because there wasn't any coffee in the house so she could possibly function this morning.

Well… not entirely.  It was four in the morning after all.

But no, Emma Swan was sad because this was the very first Christmas that Alice was old enough to get herself out of bed and wake her parents up at some ungodly hour on Christmas morning and the side of the bed her husband had long ago claimed as his own was cold and empty.  Had been for nearly four months.

Alice Jones was experiencing her first full Christmas and Killian wasn't there to witness it.

Sure, Emma had pictures of Killian reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas to Alice on Christmas Eve when she was wearing her “Baby's First Christmas” onesie.  And there was a video of Killian climbing into a huge box - next to all the presents Santa had brought their daughter - with Alice's pajama-clad behind just visible next to him, wiggling with delight as they played last year.

But those Christmas memories were different.

Killian was missing this and there was nothing anyone could do to change it. (Despite all the yelling, cajoling, pleading, and outright begging Emma had thrown at Liam to just find him, damnit, I don't care if he's MIA!)

“Mama!” Alice was not going to be ignored any longer. She was already pulling herself up on the side of the bed and Emma knew there would be knees and elbows coming dangerously close to her stomach in minutes if she didn't get up.

Emma rolled over carefully and smiled.  Alice’s hair was wild from a night of flopping around her bed - they almost always found her and her stuffed rabbit buried in the covers at the foot of the bed when they woke her up in the morning.  Her eyes were bright in the moonlight - damnit, it’s still night time, you little minx - and she was grinning Killian’s smirk.

“All right, little love,” she conceded, using Killian’s pet name for her and ignoring the sharp twinge in her heart, “Mama’s awake.”

Alice stopped abruptly, one leg splayed out across the mattress and both fists clutching the quilt.  Her eyes darted back and forth between Emma and the door, clearly contemplating if she should stop climbing.

Emma snagged her under the armpits and hoisted her into bed, covering them both with the quilt and snuggling her daughter close - silently begging for a few more minutes (hours) in bed.

“No, Mama!  Sanna!”

So much for that.

Emma let Alice go and whined as she wormed her way out of the covers, making Alice giggle and comically clap her hands over her ears.  Clearly, if she couldn’t hear her mother moaning about the time, it didn’t count.

Emma smiled at Alice and ignored the way her heart was breaking with every step without Killian at her side.  He should be here.  It was Killian who had always loved the holiday; Emma was the Grinch in their relationship, her memories of Christmas were disappointment and loneliness until the Jones brothers had come into her life.

But Killian had been overseas on a mission and the Skype calls with his girls had started to become less and less frequent until they stopped altogether just over a month ago.  Emma had stomped into JR Solutions and past Will ‘bloody’ Scarlet (no, she hadn’t been listening to Killian complain for years about the man with half-hidden thanks for what he did for Liam on a daily basis, thank you very much) without so much as an, “I need to see Liam,” before slamming open the door to the elder Jones’s office and demanding that he get his idiot little brother on the line.

“Your niece wants to show her father the drawing she made for him and you’re bloody well going to make it happen, Liam Jones,” she all but demanded (definitely demanded) with her arms crossed over her chest and a glare that had sent most of her teenaged cases scurrying to answer her questions.

Liam wasn’t immune to the look in his sister-in-law’s eyes, nor the pout he knew was on his niece’s face at home.

But, it turned out that Liam Jones wasn’t all-powerful, nor could he will his wayward brother to answer the repeated calls to his cell, his sat phone, his laptop, nor his tablet.  Emma had seen the flicker of worry on Liam’s face before it was carefully masked behind the logistics she knew that he would rely on to bring Killian home to her.

Emma should have started to worry then, but she didn’t.  Liam would bring Killian home; it was what he did.

Always.

But hours turned into days turned into weeks and now it was Christmas morning (Christmas Eve, still, they really needed to teach Alice how to tell time) and Killian was still missing.  He’d missed Thanksgiving already, Alice’s little voice telling the mismatched version of their family (the Jones-Darling-Nolan-Henry family) sitting around the table that she was thankful for ‘Unca Liam’ bringing her Papa home soon.

And now Killian was missing Christmas.

“You gotta see what Sanna brought us, Mama!” Alice cried from the top of the steps, one hand on the railing as she looked back towards Emma.  

Emma thought of the carefully wrapped presents under the tree, the neat handwriting that she’d forced Liam to write out on the gift tags:

 ‘To: Alice From: Santa Claus’

 Just in case her smart little girl had started to recognize the similarities between Emma’s writing and ‘Santa’s’.

Emma simply wasn’t as good at writing with her left hand to disguise her penmanship as Killian was - he’d done it last year with a half-hidden roll of his eyes and an indulgent smile.

There were a few presents under the tree for Emma, as well.  Presents that Liam had helped Alice buy, presents that Henry and Mary Margaret and David (and Baby Nolan) had brought by to try and make their Christmas merry.  Presents that Michael had handed Emma with a succinct, “Wendy says Merry Christmas,” before he hurried back to her car.

Emma didn’t want to open presents.  She wanted… she just wanted-

“Mama, come on!  You gotta see!”  Alice was whispering now, a rarity in their household.  It intrigued Emma, waking her up just a little more as she ambled down the hall and took Alice’s outstretched hand.

“All right, pumpkin, let’s go see what Santa Claus brought you.”  Emma’s eyes kept closing; she managed the stairs by instinct rather than sight as Alice bounced beside her.

“Brought us, Mama.  Sanna brought us both presents.”

That opened Emma’s eyes with a start.  “He did, did he?  Did you peek already?”

There was a charming, trying-too-hard-to-be innocent smile on Alice’s face that Emma knew Killian had taught her.  It was the same one he used when he wanted to butter her up.  The same one he used when he came home with a new toy for Alice when Emma repeatedly told him he was spoiling their daughter.

It would only get worse once he got home and learned-

If he came home.

Emma bit back those thoughts.  They had no place here.  When.  When Killian got home.  Liam would bring him home or exhaust all of the company’s resources trying.  He wouldn’t fail at this.  

And Killian.  

Killian would move mountains and pull the goddamned moon from the sky if that was what he had to do to get home to them.  Emma just had to be patient.

Screw that, she thought hotly, hearing her pulse beat in her ears.  She wanted him home now.

“Look, Mama,” Alice whispered at the bottom of the stairs, one hand tangling in Emma’s pocket as she pulled herself close to her mother’s thigh, the other outstretched, pointing into the living room.  Pointing at the tree and all the presents, pointing at-

Killian.  Pointing at Killian.

Killian was asleep on the sofa, the world’s gaudiest bow stuck to his forehead.

Emma started to shake, her hand covering her mouth to hold in the sobs that threatened to erupt.  Sobs she knew would frighten Alice.

Alice didn’t understand tears of joy yet.

“Can I wake him up, Mama?” Alice asked hesitantly, her voiced still pitched at a whisper - a blessing in disguise.  Emma ran her fingers through Alice’s hair, trying to understand, trying to figure out how…

“Please?”  Alice was wiggling now and hopping from foot to foot, her earlier hush quickly being replaced with energy.

Emma grinned shakily, earlier wishes that Killian would have the joy of being woken up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning by their daughter ringing in her thoughts.

“Yeah, baby, you can wake him up.”

Alice spared half a moment to smile her thanks up at Emma, then a mischievous smirk crossed her features and she was off like a shot.

“Papa!  PAPA, it’s Christmas!”

Killian didn’t stir as his daughter bolted across the living room, past the tree and the mountain of presents Emma had carefully wrapped.  She only paused a moment when she heard Emma whisper, “Gentle.”

Alice Jones apparently did not know the meaning of the word gentle.

Killian woke with a start, his arms wrapping instinctively around the little ball of energy who had launched herself from the floor to his chest, her shriek of laughter echoing through the room as Emma cringed.

She could see what Alice didn’t.

The stitches carefully woven into the skin just under his hairline, the slightly glazed look in his eyes that Emma had come to understand was the effect of too many painkillers and too little sleep, the cast covering his left arm from elbow to fingers hidden under the long sleeve henley that Emma had given to Liam last Christmas.

The fact that Killian was on the couch and hadn’t made it up the stairs to either her room or Alice’s.

Killian was hurt.  He was injured and should probably still be in the hospital.

She didn’t care.  For once in her life, she didn’t care that Killian’s sense of self-preservation couldn’t have filled a teaspoon.  He was here.

He was here, and he was alive and he was awake and it was goddamned Christmas.

But Emma was frozen at the foot of the stairs, watching Killian bury his nose in Alice’s hair and breathe in the scent that Emma knew was her baby shampoo.  She was terrified that this was another dream.  Another dream to taunt her with Killian’s safety only to wake up to cold sheets and a dark bedroom with no one there to hold her close.

Emma wanted, but she was just so afraid to believe she could have.

It was just too perfect.

Well, the stitches weren’t perfect.  And the cast wasn’t ideal.  But Emma knew her husband all too well, and her subconscious wouldn’t have conjured him whole for her.

“Emma, luv?”

She watched, her hand still over her mouth to stifle the soft sobs she couldn’t hold back.  Killian swung his legs off the couch, pulling Alice safely into his arms before shoving himself to his feet.  Emma watched, transfixed, as he swayed a bit, his arms tightening around their daughter to keep her safe.

Alice clung to him like a koala.

Emma wanted to do the same.  But her feet wouldn’t move, the hand she’d thrown out to grip the bannister and keep her standing wouldn’t let go.  She should go to him, shouldn’t make him walk across the room, not knowing what injuries were hidden beneath Liam’s clothes that hung, too large, off Killian’s lankier frame.

She watched with bated breath as he crossed the room to her anyway, limping only slightly.  Even Alice was silent.  Her arms were wrapped around Killian’s neck but her eyes watched Emma carefully.

“Swan?” he whispered when he was a hair's breadth away from her, falling back on the old nickname with ease.

Emma’s breath caught, stilling the sobs, stilling everything around them.

Her eyes shut as he reached out, the pads of his fingers carefully wiping the tears from her cheeks.  The scratchiness of the cast scraped her skin, her own soft gasp louder than his silent apology.

“Killian?” her voice cracked as she broke the silence around them.

“Happy Christmas, my love.”

And then she was wrapped around him like a koala, her face buried in his neck and her fingers tangled in his hair.  Emma heard the bitten back grunt of pain, felt the way he tensed before melting into her embrace, smelled the disinfectant that reminded her of too many nights spent watching over him in the hospital in the past.

Killian was hurt, but he was here and it was Christmas and it was real and Emma didn’t care about anything else.

“Merry Christmas, Papa!” Alice shouted, making them both jump and groan as their ears rang.

Killian laughed then, a full body laugh that shook him and made Emma grin.  “Aye, little luv, Merry Christmas.”

Alice leaned back, forcing Emma to put a hand on her back to keep her from toppling out of Killian’s grasp.  Their little girl poked her fingers at the bow on Killian’s forehead, giggling.

“Sanna made you into a present, Papa,” she said, pulling on the bow.

Killian inhaled sharply, his eyes looking upwards and nearly making him cross-eyed.

“What the bloody-”

Emma’s hand clapped over his mouth, even as she bit back a laugh of her own.

The bow stayed stuck firmly to his skin.

Killian’s eyes closed, a small huff of frustration escaping him before Alice’s giggle brought a smile to his face.  “You like this, do you, my sweet Alice?  You think Papa being dressed up like a present is funny?”

Alice’s head bobbed up and down and she pulled on the bow again.  “Sanna Claus is funny.”

“Aye, he’s something all right,” Killian mumbled quietly, just a touch of annoyance in his voice.  “Let’s see what else he brought you, shall we?”

Alice nearly pitched herself out of his arms, just barely getting her feet on the floor before she was sprinting to the tree, the lights reflecting in her wide, excited eyes.

Emma wrapped herself fully around Killian now, tears starting up again when both his arms tugged her into his chest and he kissed the shell of her ear.

“I’ll be home, for Christmas,” he sang softly, his arm running up and down her back soothingly.  “You can plan on me.”

“I didn’t hang any mistletoe,” Emma whispered back, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him anyway, smiling against his lips when he laughed, “but there’s snow outside and presents under the tree.”

Emma turned slightly in his arms, tucking her head under Killian’s chin and watching as Alice emptied her huge, carefully knitted stocking across the floor.  His arm wrapped around her shoulders, the cast on his other hand dropping down until he brushed across her stomach.  She felt, more than heard, the stilted gasp as he spread his hand across the small, still nearly imperceptible bump she’d been hiding under his sweatshirts and her carefully draped clothes.

“Emma?” he breathed out hesitantly, a little bit shakily.

Her hand came up over his, pushing just a little bit more firmly into her skin.  “Granny’s going to have to knit another stocking for our mantel next Christmas.”

“You’re…” Killian was grinning now, the lights from the tree twinkling in his eyes and making the moment seem that much more… magical.

Emma was becoming a sap.

She nodded, a smile of her own spreading across her face.  “I… I found out before you went miss… I didn’t want to tell you until you were home.”

“No one knows?” the way he said it told Emma it wasn’t a question.

She shook her head anyway.  “You’re the first.”

“I lo-”

“Papa!  Come see!” Alice shouted, holding up the present that she’d insisted on wrapping  herself for him, that she’d insisted on putting under the tree.

Killian laughed, dragging Emma with him as he limped back into the living room, nearly collapsing onto the couch but pulling her into his lap anyway as Alice stood at his knee, holding his present out to him.

“And what do we have here, little luv?”

Emma zoned out a little then, her eyes closing in deference to the early hour, listening to Killian talking with their daughter for the first time in far too long without the benefit of a computer screen and spotty internet.  She settled into his grasp, relaxing in her family’s presence.

He was home.

The crinkling of paper at her back startled Emma, and she hastily reached behind her to snag it before Alice could see.  She thought she’d been careful to clean up all of the evidence of “Santa’s” wrapping, and didn’t want to risk her daughter seeing what was left.

It wasn’t wrapping paper.

It was a piece of cardstock, a carefully applied sticker of holly and bells in the corner above the writing.

 ‘To: Alice and Emma From: Santa Claus’

 Written out in flowing script.  Liam’s handwriting.

Liam.

“Where is he?” Emma asked quietly, showing Killian the card and understanding, finally, why the bow on her husband’s head was stuck so well.

His older brother must have used superglue.

“Hmm?” Killian tore his attention from Alice tearing apart the wrapping paper on the gifts he’d pointed out were for her, her name shining in big letters on gifts Emma hadn’t seen before.

Killian must have gotten Liam to purchase and wrap them for her, back before he’d gone missing.

He looked down at the writing, recognizing Liam’s scrawl right away.  “I’m not rightly sure,” he admitted.

Emma’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“It’s all a little fuzzy.  The last thing I remember is Whale griping about my arm.  Then Alice was shouting in my ear and doing her best to knock the wind out of me.”

Emma closed her eyes in resignation.  She knew her husband all too well.  “Ambulance, hospital, or home?”

“Home, but with an agreed-upon stop by Whale’s house first,” he answered readily.  “Bloody git apparently has sedatives at his disposal now.”

She huffed out a laugh under her breath.  “Can you blame him?”

Killian grumbled under his breath but didn’t answer.  “I think those are yours too, princess,” he pointed out the stack of gifts Emma and Santa had left for her.

“I’ll be right back,” Emma kissed Killian’s cheek before extracting herself from his embrace.  She leaned down to kiss Alice’s forehead before heading to the kitchen.

Liam was sitting at the table, playing what appeared to be the video footage of Alice waking her father up a few minutes ago on his phone.

“You can come in now, Santa Claus,” she whispered, grinning like the cat who got the canary when Liam nearly leapt from his seat.

“Emma!” he hissed, his hand at his hip.

She crossed the room, ignoring the implied threat despite the lack of a weapon at his side and tugging him up and into a tight hug.  “Thank you,” she breathed, nearly crying again.

It wasn’t nearly enough to convey what this meant to her, but Emma had a feeling Liam knew that already.

“You don’t ever have to thank me for this, Emma,” Liam whispered back, hugging her fiercely.  “Not ever.”

She nodded.  She knew that, too.

Emma stayed wrapped in his hug for a few more moments, the tears soaking into Liam’s hoodie before she could stop them.

“Sorry,” she apologized when she stepped back, wiping her eyes hastily.  “Hormones, you know?”

Liam gaped.  “Hor… hor… hormones?  Does Killian know?”

“He does now,” she smiled, biting her lip when Liam whooped loudly in response.

Liam lifted her off her feet, spinning her in a circle before putting her back down with a soft kiss to her forehead.  “Happy Christmas, lass,” he crowed loudly.

“Merry Christmas, Li-”

“Unca Liam!” Alice’s voice carried through the house, the patter of her pajama-clad feet slapping the linoleum before she launched herself into her uncle’s waiting arms.  “Did Sanna bring you, too?”

Liam laughed.  “He did, indeed, little lass.  I got to ride in his helicopter and everything.”

Alice’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open.  “Sanna has a helicopper?!”

Emma rolled her eyes, easing back into Killian’s arms when he finally joined them.  “More like one of Santa’s elves, Gadget, has a ‘modified’ helicopter,” he mumbled too quietly for their daughter to hear, smiling against Emma’s cheek when she huffed out a laugh.

Liam nodded at his niece, his eyes nearly twinkling with the glee that Alice brought out in all of them so often.  “He does for special presents.  We had a special mission together just to bring your papa home on time.”

Alice wriggled in Liam’s arms, turning to find her mother.  “Mama!  Did you hear that?”

“I heard, pumpkin.  Santa Claus is pretty great, isn’t he?”  Emma met Liam’s gaze, making sure he heard what she was implying.

Alice nodded, laying her head on Liam’s shoulder and starting to play with the ties of his hoodie.  “I love Sanna Claus,” she mumbled, the excitement of the morning starting to get to her.

“Santa Claus loves you, too,” Liam whispered back before kissing her forehead and breathing in the baby scent of her in the same way his brother had.  “He’ll always bring your papa home to you if he can.”

Killian left Emma’s side then, crossing the kitchen and reaching out for his daughter.  Alice held her arms out before toppling herself out of Liam’s hold and letting her papa catch her.

Killian would always catch her.

Emma smiled, taking in the sight of her family all in one place.  This.  This was what mattered, more than the wrapping paper and the lights and the tree and the goddamned mistletoe that she wanted to hang everywhere now that Killian was back and safe within the fold of their home.  She caught the gleam in Liam’s eye as he watched his little brother gently rock the sleepy little girl back and forth - and knew that he understood it, too.

Christmas was family, and their family had withstood yet another attempt to crumble it only to come out stronger on the other side.

It took her only a moment longer to watch Killian and Alice, their daughter’s eyes drooping and blinking owlishly as she listened to her father’s soft voice.  Emma followed his footsteps, tucking herself into his side and rubbing her hand up and down Alice’s back.  Her other arm wrapped tightly around Killian’s waist, fingers clutching the shirt at his back, drinking in the sight of him watching their daughter.

“I love you,” she whispered when he paused to take a breath.

Killian leaned down, careful to keep Alice steady against his chest, and brushed his lips against Emma’s.  It was a soft, chaste thing, their audience far too close to do anything more, but it was enough.  The rough dig of his cast in her side as he tried to wrap her close enough in his embrace to lay his hand over her stomach was a comfort rather than a hindrance, and Emma dropped her head to his chest, her forehead just brushing their daughter’s arm.

Killian hummed in Alice’s ear as she fell asleep on his shoulder.  “But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight: Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

tagging: @nothingimpossibleonlyimprobable, @gusenitsaa, @xhookswenchx, @pirate-owl, @killianmesmalls, @killian-whump, @lenfaz, @bleebug, @kiwistreetswan, @katie-dub, @snowbellewells, @delightfully-difficult-pirate, @cocohook38, @shady-swan-jones

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and Have a great Winter season!

[bluraaven]

Smoke and Mirrors

Chapter 3

"What a shithole."

Reynauld put down the bag that contained their collected 'evidence' and followed Guyot's gaze.  He wasn't sure if his friend was referring to the condition of the room before or after they'd been through it, or to the motel as a whole.  Somehow it was impossible to imagine that it had ever seen better times.  It was a shabby place, where electric outings were the norm, and where the rooms were in worse shape than most of the prison cells he had seen.  

Through the grimy windows and broken shutters only a little light managed to find its way to illuminate the sad pile that were their meagre findings.

On the upside, the prosecution had sanctioned the raid almost as soon as they could pinpoint a location.  On the downside, it was only a partial success.  They had some of Dismas' belongings now, but they did not have the man himself.  The Chief had wanted a bust, and now all they had to show for it was a duffel bag full of clothes and a few toiletries.

"What do we have here?" Despite her being hidden behind the sofa, there was no mistaking the excitement in Lin's voice.   She laughed, then held up a flat object, waving it around triumphantly.

"What's that?"  Guyot asked, his eyes narrowing in an attempt to make out what it was their colleague had found.

"A notebook." Lin said, climbing back to her feet with a huge grin.

"Good work!" Reynauld praised with a smile of his own.  This had to be the best find yet.  Trust the sniper to find something good.  "Is that everything?"

"Yes," Lin confirmed.  "I was hoping to find a data stick too, or a CD, but no.  Only the laptop, and of course it would be hidden in the last place left," she huffed.  "So what do we do now?"

So far they had checked under the rug for hidey holes, they'd moved all the furnishings to check the spaces behind them; and finally they had taken apart some of the furniture.  There wasn't an inch left that had not had at least two police officers check it for something that might help their case.

"Bag it," Reynauld decided with a nod at the notebook, "And let's wrap this up."

"On it," Lin answered.  "I'll tell the others we're all done."  She pulled out her radio and disappeared through the doorway.  Reynauld nodded absent-mindedly, taking one last look at the room.  There was no telling that there had been a squad digging through it.  Everything was back in its place, and the room looked exactly as it had when they had arrived – minus any trace of its former occupant.

"Think he'll come back?" Guyot asked quietly.

"He would be stupid if he did," Reynauld responded, not at all alarmed by Guyot's mind-reading abilities.  After being friends for as many years as they had been, he had learned to live with Guyot's occasional bouts of clairvoyance.  "And we have been told he's anything but."

There was no point in waiting around.  Reynauld closed the door, and made for the staircase.  They would discreetly station a few police officers here, but Dismas had proven himself to be good enough at evading the authorities that there was not much hope of him returning to this place after their less-than-subtle approach.

"I guess the Chief makes mistakes too," Guyot dared to speak up when they were halfway down to the lobby.

"It wouldn't have hurt him to listen to me," Reynauld growled.  He refrained from hitting the rail, because it might actually come undone and kill someone on the ground floor.  Which would mean even more work for him.  "We could have had Paixdecoeur behind bars by now!  Why put me in charge if he was going to- ," he paused and made a vague motion in the air with his hand, "fuck it all up anyway."  Reynauld's shoulders slumped, most of the anger gone now.

He had opposed the raid from the start.  If he'd had a choice, Reynauld would have dealt with the matter the exact same way they did most undercover work.  Take the time to prepare and to verify their target was here.  And then strike before they guy knew what hit him.

"Hey," Guyot said, giving Reynauld's shoulder a pat.  "We'll get him.  He can't run forever."

Unless he had another hideout somewhere.  The one thing they had not found was money.  That meant that Dismas was not only smart enough not to trust the cleaning staff, it also meant he may have prepared for this very case.  If he packed up and left the country, they had no chance of picking up the trail.

"Meanwhile," Guyot lifted the bag that contained the notebook Lin had found, "What do you think we'll find?" he asked with a grin and a waggle of his eyebrows.

"I'll let you find out," Reynauld sighed.  

Back at the station, Dismas' clothing was searched for weapons or illegal substances, of which neither was found.  It was merely old and worn, but not making him guilty of any crime other than a bad sense of fashion.   Forensics identified Dismas' toiletries as soap and toothpaste – the latter being Wintry Spearmint by Dentacare, as one of Paracelsus' lab assistants was happy to inform Reynauld before asking if he wanted a spit sample (they'd already ran an unauthorized DNA test for reasons unbeknownst to any mortal).

Reynauld thanked him, declined the kind offer, and then backed out of the office without dropping eye contact until he was safe behind the doorsill.

From there on it was back to his office via a detour by the coffee machine, and then on to where Guyot was sitting bent over the notebook.  An old, scratched animal rights sticker that Reynauld had not noticed before indicated that the computer may not always have belonged to Dismas.

"What have you found so far?" he asked, leaning against the desk.

Guyot cast him a dark look, and Reynauld found his spirits lifting marginally.  There was nothing quite as good at improving one's mood as putting someone else in a bad one.

"A lot of steamy guy on guy action," Guyot replied, "and I have to look through every goddamn file, just in case there's something hidden there."

Reynauld hummed and took a sip of his coffee.  "Have fun."

"Ain't that more up your alley?" Guyot snapped, so Reynauld flipped him off, and left him to his work.  

It was a couple of hours later when Reynauld decided to make another round to see what progress had been made.  The sun was rising, streaking the black sky with ribbons of orange and pink, but except for those who had been on the raid or worked the night shift the bureau was still mostly deserted.

That excluded forensics and IT of course, but the current belief was those guys never slept anyway.

Lin, Ros and Stanley handed in their reports, and this time, instead of giving his attitude, Guyot looked at Reynauld with the woeful eyes of a suffering puppy.  So Reynauld took pity and grabbed an empty seat, deciding to keep his friend some company.

"Anything new?"

"Who even names their porn folder 'PORN'?" Guyot complained, but apparently he had found nothing incriminating.

Reynauld shrugged and looked at the screen where two guys were having a quick tumble in the shower.  And by quick he meant quick, because the video was playing at triple speed, which made it rather amusing to watch.  

Guyot told him about his plans to move together with Lucy, his girlfriend of two years, and Reynauld listened, making the appropriate noises at the appropriate time, and stealing a discreet look at the screen every now and then.

Secretly – because he would die if that thought was ever spoken aloud – he had to admit that Dismas didn't have the worst taste in erotica.  At least all the couples seemed to be genuinely enjoying what they were doing.

Eventually, Guyot sighed and rubbed his temples, and then hit the pause button.  He snorted at the frozen image of one of the actor's private area and slapped the laptop shut.

Reynauld just hoped that sometime before he had made sure that it was not password protected, or they'd have to take it to IT.

They decided to grab a coffee, even though it was a terrible idea because night shift was almost over, and Reynauld rather looked forward to going home and falling into bed face-first.

As it turned out, they were not the first ones to arrive at the kitchen.

"Hey, Lin," Guyot said, waiting until she ha d refilled the coffee machine before brewing a cup for Reynauld and for himself.  "What's up, Para?"

Paracelsus worked in forensics, and was officially forbidden to come within thirty feet of the kitchen without a police officer accompanying her.  There had been one too many cases of someone taking a spontaneous nap after having a cup of coffee, and it had taken the entire PD and a restraint order to convince her to keep her experiments to the inmates.

The doctor with her white lab coat always looked a bit out of place.  She had a slight hunch and large eyes, amplified by her glasses which gave her the appearance of a giant bird.

Reynauld was happy to sit down on the worn but comfy couch and to sip his coffee.  It tasted burned.  He waved off Para's offer of yellow and blue pills ("harmless stimulants, I swear!") and zoned out, letting Guyot and Lin do most of the talking.

"Hey doc, that girlfriend of yours isn't she – " Lin asked suddenly, and Reynauld realized he had long since stopped following the conversation.

"A critically acclaimed archaeology professor?" Para interrupted, wringing her hands.  "Yes!  Yes, she is."

"Is that a mugshot?"  Guyot asked, stretching to see something Paracelsus was holding, and while doing so he jostled Reynauld, who only narrowly avoided spilling his coffee into his lap.  It had grown cold, and he put the practically full mug away.

"No!" Para squealed, pulling away her precious photograph from curious hands and prying eyes.  "It's a driver's licence picture."

"Okay," Guyot laughed.  "Easy there, doc.  Ain't my business whom you date."

"What time is it?" Lin yawned.

"Two minutes past five," Para answered, after checking a silver wristwatch. Reynauld had never seen her wear one before, but then maybe it had been hidden by the floppy lab coat.

"One more hour," Guyot moaned.  "Someone shoot me please.  No thanks, Para."

"It's just something to induce a harmless coma-like state that is perfectly revertible with a shot of –," Paracelsus broke off as no one was listening to her anyway and pocketed the tiny and innocent-looking pink pill with obvious disappointment.

Most the hour passed in a stupor that ended abruptly when they received a paged message from downstairs that the first officers of the day shift had arrived, Mallory amongst them.  That gave them roughly a minute and a half to clear out the area, remove the evidence of any coffee breaks, and to return to their desks.

Guyot fell into his chair with a groan, and opened Dismas' notebook with an expression of intense pain upon his face.  It had just booted, when–

"Special agent Reynauld," A voice from behind them called out.  Reynauld and Guyot both turned to see Mallory approach – at least until she stopped dead in her tracks.  "... is that a penis!?" Mallory's voice rose high enough that even Ros and Marci stuck their heads out of their cubicles, a curious look on their faces.

"It's part of the investigation," Reynauld managed to force out, while next to him Guyot turned a shade that made his freckles indistinguishable from his skin.  At least the sound was off.

Mallory shook her head, and left, muttering something under her breath.

"Sometimes I hate my life," Guyot mumbled.  He still looked like he wanted to melt into the floor.  Reynauld snorted and leaned back, kicking up his feet to rest on the corner of the desk.  He checked the watch.  Twenty more minutes.

But then all thoughts of going home were driven from his mind when next to him Guyot shot upright.

"I found something!" Guyot shouted and tapped the screen.  "There's a text file in here, I knew it!"

Reynauld too sat more upright, feeling awake all of a sudden.  Would they really find something?  Contacts, numbers, maybe a location?  Something to link Paixdecoeur to the Grave Robber, or something to prove he had worked for the Wolf?  Information on El Abuelo, even?

The file took an insultingly long amount of time to load.  Guyot was drumming his fingers on the table, but stopped when a white document opened.  Black on white, in a neat cursive script, there appeared four lines of text:  

Roses are red,  

Violets are blue,  

Feds are pigs–  

Joke's on you.  

Reynauld had one look at Guyot's flabbergast face, and he managed to hold on to his composure for all of three seconds before he burst out laughing.

"Charming," Guyot said flatly and threw a pen at Reynauld that harmlessly bounced off his chest.  "This isn't funny, you know?"  But, as if to belie his words, he too was cracking up.  "What an arsehole," he hiccupped, "what a complete and utter dickbiscuit."

"Do you want to report your findings to the Chief?" Reynauld asked once the first fit had subsided, triggering another salve of laughter.  

"You do realize we have zero proof of... anything," Guyot asked a moment later, putting a dampener on their newfound good mood.

"But we do know Paixdecoeur is a wanted man in the North," Reynauld reasoned.  "Even if we don't find anything else, there are arrest warrants for him in five City-States, and that's only the ones we know about because they are cooperating with us."

"Then this was utterly pointless anyway," Guyot decided, stood up and stretched.  He worked the kinks out of his back, muttering, "I'm sending this in.   Maybe there's hidden files or what the fuck ever.  I hope they're full of dicks too."

Reynauld had to grin at the temper tantrum.  "They're IT, they've seen weirder shit."

Guyot hmphed. His finger was already hovering over the notebook's on-off button, when the machine made a plopping sound and a little blinking window alerted them they had just received a new message.

Guyot looked at Reynauld with his best 'what did I just do?' face.

Reynauld raised a brow.  "Aren't you going to check that?"

"Looks like a certain 'Sweetheart' has cancelled his or her appointment with our guy," Guyot said a moment later and turned the laptop so that Reynauld could see for himself.

Hey... so something came up and I'm afraid I can't make it to Jubie's tonight.  Pls don't be mad?  

Love ya, xoxo  

"Tonight," Reynauld said, giving Guyot a pointed look.

"Come on, you don't mean to – " his friend began, then shook his head.  "Of course you do.  Does 'Jubie's' even ring a bell?"

"Yeah," Reynauld replied, surprising himself and Guyot, both.  He shrugged, but the name did sound familiar.  "Open the chat log," he commanded.  

Guyot pulled up the log for the past couple of years and once it had loaded, he scrolled up a bit.  They found a blurry but recent picture that looked like it had been taken on a phone, by a very drunk person.   Despite its poor quality, it was unmistakably their guy in the parking lot of what Reynauld guessed to be a bar.  Unfortunately, the neon lights in the back were too unfocused to make out what they said.

Reynauld suddenly felt wide awake.  "Go through everything," he instructed his friend, tapping the laptop with his index finger.  "I will tell the others to get searching, now."

It may be by accident, but they were on to something.  He could feel it.

"Everything?" Guyot repeated with audible reluctance.

Reynauld nodded, and left him to gather the rest of the team for a briefing.  A while later Guyot found him in his office, pacing.

"Rey.  Marci's got something.  Jubert's Taphouse."

Of course there was a chance that it wasn't the right place, or that the message was a code for something else, but it was their only solid lead.  They had to follow it.

"What about the notebook? Reynauld wanted to know, recalling that his friend had a task to perform.

"I gave it to Ros," Guyot replied, waving the matter away.

"Excellent."  Reynauld grabbed the keys to his locker out of his desk drawer.  "Let's go."

"You want to go there?"  Guyot asked.  "Now?"  He looked at the clock.  "It's seven.  My shift's been over for an hour."

Reynauld gave him a pat on the back, which they both agreed was better than a boot in the arse, and they jogged downstairs to change into their normal day clothes.  This morning's trouble meant that they did not have to borrow an unmarked car, they could just take Reynauld's.

Jubert's taphouse was not easy to find.  It was a squat one-story pub sitting between much larger and more modern buildings.  Fifth Square was just one street in the labyrinth that was the old industrial district.   Except for some breweries and the one or other atelier most of the factories had shut down.  Now expensive loft apartments could be encountered right next to brick and glass warehouses which had been turned into clubs.

Barques were dropping people off at the nearby pier, and restaurants were popping up left and right.  Everywhere advertisements reminded you that the huge empty halls could be rented for a party.

Amidst all that, Jubert's taphouse seemed to be stuck in the last century – if one could look past the electric lighting.  Reynauld looked over at the passenger seat, where Guyot was watching the establishment with his chin propped up in his hand.

"Shall we?"

Behind the counter, a bored looking woman with too much eye makeup barely made the effort of lifting her painted eyelids when they entered.

"Where's the – ?"  Reynauld did not get any further before she pointed down the corridor.  He nodded and followed in the direction her neon orange nail pointed.  The pretext of having to use the restroom gave him the opportunity to get somewhat familiar with the layout of the bar.  The kitchen area was closed off, as was a back entrance into a high-walled courtyard.  If he had to guess, Reynauld would say it hid an illegal fighting ring.  But that wasn't why they were here.

He only had a few minutes before he had to make his way back.  The waitress was nowhere to be seen, and Guyot was waiting for him back at the car.  He remembered why the name of the bar was familiar.  Not a year ago they had taken down a drug ring just two streets further.

"Here," Guyot handed Reynauld the pack of cigs he had apparently just purchased and effectively ripped him out of his thoughts.

Reynauld stared at the small package that landed in his lap.  "I quit."

"Yeah, well."  Guyot shrugged.  "I never started, so keep them."  A moment of silence, then, "You're thinking."

"Hm?"

"You got your thinkin' face on," Guyot remarked snickered, and then added, "and nothing good's ever come of that."

"Thanks," Reynauld replied drily, but decided to share his thoughts with his best friend and partner.  "You won't like it," he decided.  

"The last time you said that we were in a stolen tank in Tipolis."

"Heh." Reynauld had to chuckle.  He might grow old and forget where he lived or what his name was, but he knew Guyot would never let him forget that.  "It wasn't so bad."

"They were firing mortars at us!"  Guyot recalled.

"Look," Reynauld interrupted the tirade that he knew was coming.  "We don't know much about Paixdecoeur, but we've seen enough to be sure of one thing: he likes men, and uniforms.  And... I still got some of my old army stuff."

"You're right," Guyot replied.  "I don't like this."  A pause, then, "Has it occurred to you that he might have downloaded this stuff just to mess with us?  That poem was no coincidence."

"No, I am utterly naive and it's never crossed my mind," Reynauld retorted.  He thought it was highly unlikely their guy had gone through all the bother of actually picking thematically matching videos just to potentially prank some law enforcement officer.

"But... why?" Guyot asked.  "Why not just... stick to the plan?"

"We don't have a plan," Reynauld reminded him.

"If that Dismas guy is there, we can arrest him straightaway," Guyot suggested.

"I don't want to find out how many of those patrons own illegal weapons," Reynauld countered, "Do you?"

He knew by the defeated sigh that he had just won the argument.  "If I can get him out without raising suspicion, I will do that.  If it doesn't work, we do it the hard way."

"So, what?  You just walk up to the guy and chat him up?"

Reynauld shrugged.  "That's usually how it goes, yeah."

"Fine!"  Guyot threw up his arms in surrender.  "Just tell me this; how do you plan to convince the Chief?"

"I... don't," Reynauld answered after a moment's consideration.  "I'll ask Mallory"

"Good fucking luck."

"Thank you," Reynauld said.  And just because it seemed necessary to point it out, "You're coming with me."

Guyot's contribution to that conversation that happened twenty minutes later, was to furiously wave his arms every time Reynauld had said 'we', whilst pointing his thumb at Reynauld, who could actually see his every move out of the corner of his eyes.

"Did I understand you correctly," Mallory clarified after Reynauld had finished describing their plan.   "That you are asking me for permission to seduce your target?"

AN: you cann find the whole story here

[mrsslrss]

2017

I rang in 2017 drunk and crying. I left a New Year’s Eve Party where all my friends and I drank down the clock and M and I went home, and I had been obsessed with “Love More” for a few weeks so as soon as we got back to the house I put it on over the stereo. Anyway about ten seconds in I started sobbing and I couldn’t, for the life of me, explain why. (I wasn’t even sad! It’s just such a beautiful song!) M just put his arm around me and kind of half-laughed and told me it was going to be okay in a quizzical but very convincing way and eventually I stopped crying and the song played itself out. I think that about sums it up.

Anyway I think we can all agree that 2017 was a weird year in a grand sense, which I don’t feel compelled or equipped to speak to. But it was weird in a personal sense, too. The year started in that mass of feelings for me; I dyed my hair pink; I lost someone I cared about deeply, which hurt in a place I didn’t expect or understand. The other side of that month was the Women’s March: housing twenty friends from Boston and Brooklyn and elsewhere in a spirit of earnest and viable and real solidarity that nearly broke my heart.

In the spring I worked a lot, and eventually got to travel across the country and fall in love with a couple different cities: New York (Life After Youth, celebrating my 25th); Seattle (Bois Naufrage, fancy coffee, riding the bus); Austin (freeways, rental car, KUTX, wildflowers). In the summer, Keeper put out a tape – bittersweet timing, just before Sam moved back to Texas – and I got a few days on the Cape with the crew. I worked weekends and drank green juice and read novels. In the fall I got really into that Fever Ray song and memorized the opening passage of The Argonauts and finally made it to DIA: Beacon.

Overall, I think, it’s been a head-above-water kind of year for me, where I mainly got caught in a cycle of exist-process-react-exist without creating much. I spent a lot of time thinking about my feelings but still can’t exactly mark the growth. Sometimes stillness is a sign of change, though; maybe I’ll count that one as a win. So here’s a list of 10 things (big and small!) that I saw, heard, watched, made, felt and loved in 2017, that helped me get through the year.

The Heart Season: “No”

Before this year became the kind of dumpster fire in which you hear everyday about new ways that powerful, prominent men treat the women around them terribly, The Heart was talking about consent in a genuinely nuanced, genuinely feminist way. The “No” season was four episodes long, during which host Kaitlin Prest stared down specific instances in her own life where consent’s gray area reared its fucked-up face, and explored where the experiences left her – how they influenced her sense of self, how they shaped and informed her future sexual (and non-sexual!) encounters. And then she broadened the scope, ignoring the easier narratives – “yes means yes,” “no means no,” “consent is sexy!!!!”, rhetorical devices so exhausted and exhausting – and instead asked harder, realer questions about the intersections of desire, fear, gender, pleasure, and autonomy. It gave me language I didn’t know I needed and set a model for a kind of audio storytelling I didn’t know was possible. I wish they played this at every college orientation across the country.

Turning The Tables

What if we appreciated women’s art apart from maleness entirely? What would it look like to tell the story of popular music through only women’s greatness? That was, crudely put, the mission of the list of the 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women that NPR Music published this year. Being part of this project was huge: it meant absorbing massive amounts of history, rethinking canon, getting to be an editor(!), working with some of my biggest professional idols. Mostly, though, it meant devoting much of my working life to the intersection of radical feminism and rock and roll. What a dream.

Drag

I was drawn to art that felt genuinely subversive this year, but it mainly played out in moments of surprise: disappointment from expectations I didn’t realize I held being left unmet; utter radiant joy when this need I didn’t know I had was fulfilled. Maybe the most memorable time it happened was in June, at GAY/BASH, a monthly experimental drag show in D.C. It was the first time I saw drag IRL, which would maybe have felt subversive no matter what – but probably few things would have matched watching a drag queen in a red white & blue housewife dress penetrate the eyeholes of a Trump mask with a strap-on. Incredible! Tell me you can watch that and feel unmoved. My friends and I went back to GAY/BASH every month after that. The music was always perfect: The Knife and Paramore and No Doubt and Cher, etc. But mostly what felt so powerful was the company: being in explicitly gay spaces full of gay and queer people, where abject expressions of sexuality and of gender trouble felt neither like threats nor invitations to violence.

There was also, of course, Sasha Velour, the cerebral art-queen who was crowned this year’s winner of Rupaul’s Drag Race. I saw her on tour with other season 9 queens this summer; her lip-sync of “Praying” by Kesha was perhaps, no lie, the most moving musical performance I saw in 2017. She embodied and embraced the reality so many of us face as women and queer people: victims and victors, agents and acted-on, mired in both hope and fear on a near-constant basis. It was transcendent. 

Ramen

On a less serious note, D.C. is, like many cities, in the midst of a ramen craze right now, and if I’m honest I spent an inordinate amount of the year benefiting from it! And from the fact that a few places will even deliver ramen right to your house if you have the right app! (Also, there’s a lot to be said about cultural appropriation, the devaluing of non-Western food traditions, etc. in these contexts; I am trying to keep learning and will leave the explanations to folks smarter than I.)

Tank And The Bangas

I called this band the “best band in America” all year and I meant it. Their Tiny Desk concert was both an exhale (after the stress of running the Contest itself) and an inhale (before an unrelenting and enthralling month of tour with them). I saw Tank and the Bangas perform eight times in 2017; their positivity never got stale, their exuberance never felt forced, their passion never wavered. They sound like no one else I know. Goddamn, I love this band. The best band in America!

Therapy

I went back to therapy this year after not really going since childhood but thinking about finding someone to talk to and being jealous of friends’ casual off-hand remarks about their therapists for years. I went mostly because of this thing that happened last December involving some brutal unkindness from a loved one that was so vicious yet unexpected it left me feeling startled and knocked off course, like having been shoved from a great height and, after shaking off the dust, finding myself very alone. I thought it was a minor disturbance but it actually burrowed pretty deep into me and I wound up freaked out about a bunch of stuff, so long story short: I finally found someone to talk to.

I will save my breath about how mental health care should be accessible and de-stigmatized. I will say that therapy made my year better in a lot of ways; mostly, in that I had a dedicated time and place to work, patiently, on some things that felt really paralyzing. (It also taught me some useful concepts, like the idea of psychological safety and the Buddhist teaching of the “second arrow,” which I then snuck into some of my favorite writing I did this year. Win-win.) Nothing is fixed, obviously; therapy has felt mostly like a drawn-out emotional root canal all year, which is to say, I still nurse the same ache that sent me. But I’m grateful and I am learning and it’s starting to feel less self-indulgent to want to address my bullshit. I recommend therapy to everyone! If you’re interested in talking to someone, here are some affordable resources.

Iced Americanos 

There are precious few things that get M out of bed early: the promise of imminent skiing; a genuine emergency; and coffee. I’ve relied heavily on the third one this year to squeeze in a half-hour of quality time with him before I go to the office. Listen I know this is cheesy as h*ck but it truly improves the overall quality of my day! Anyway the iced coffee at our corner coffee shop is not for me but the baristas take great care with their espresso shots so I started getting iced americanos instead and now I have been converted to an iced americano grrrl, even in winter (true to my New England roots). And a morning-coffee-with-your-boyfriend grrrl. Gross! I can’t help it.

Creative collaboration

Madeline Zappala is both a dear friend of mine and a total badass artistic inspiration to me. I was so glad she asked me to help edit her magazine, Reflections on the Burden of Men – and that she (and her co-creator, Laura) accepted a short piece I wrote about being disgusted by sexuality, or maybe more so by the insistence that women perform it for patriarchy, feeling isolated from my body, wanting to not want what I want. Editing the writing in the magazine was a dream! And watching it come together was so instructive. Go get a copy! (Or just pick up some unsolicited dick pic stickers, a real thing they made.)

2017 was a pretty exciting year for Keeper, too. Between January and August – when Sam moved back to Texas and Keeper became a project with a less coherent identity – we played amazing shows and put out a tape and met a lot of really lovely people. I learned a lot.

Female solidarity

I never got the appeal of using the phrase “work wife” to describe a lady BFF in your office before this year (too close to “girl crush,” which, I maintain, is basically homophobic; plus, who wants to replicate the capitalist heteropatriarchy of the marriage-industrial complex in your office friendships, of all places?!) but now I have two and I totally get it. There’s really something special about working alongside women like me, and having them be people who are willing to take a lunch break or walk to Starbucks (lol) so we can encourage each other through weird career stuff, or vent about male incompetence, or gush about new music, or interrogate what it means to care about feminism or justice or epistemology or whatever in 2017, which is mostly what we did. Some of the most enriching and important conversations I had this year were these; we often joked about the positions of authority we’d have, the raises we’d get, the articles we’d be assigned if only the People In Charge heard the conversations we had around cafeteria lunch tables!

Of course, there was also the mere fact of having lived with three other women throughout this year, creating a home that was a constant space for frank discussions about shared oppression; there were days of 8+ hours of GChat sessions that formed a virtual safe space; there were the year’s albums that spoke to the bizarre, incredible realities of womanhood. And all of this happening in the context of women coming forward about sexual assault, women journalists reporting on it, all of us whispering #MeToo on the internet. It was a year that, for me, fostered a consistent and palpable sense of solidarity among us. I needed it.

The “Thief” music video:  

Lastly: this is, maybe, the most wonderfully terrible music video I have ever seen. I first heard about this on the now-defunct podcast This Week Had Me Like, which I sorely miss, and now it’s rare that my housemates and I go more than a month without watching it communally. It’s histrionic in the best way, nonsensical, totally delightful. Thank you, Ansel Elgort.

[aces-drew]

Fan fic/hc idea. Peter has nightmares about Michelle dying

hey anon!

i hope you are having a wonderful day and i also hope you have more wonderful days coming your way. thank you so much for the fic idea, i really enjoyed writing this and because i enjoyed it so much, it ended up being longer than i expected (i hope you don’t mind and it’s worth your time).

if you liked it, feel free to send me more fic/hc ideas, i’d love to get back into writing.

hope you enjoy it xx

SPIDYCHELLE FANFICTION

author : michellejonessparker (previously: onesolilquy)

word count : 2,385 words

tags : angst, fluff

warnings : none

MJ waited for her best friend to come back to their shared apartment; she was on the couch watching an old documentary as she always did, her hand tracing over the number buttons of the local news channel she was convincing herself not to enter into the screen.

There’s a sense of urgency in her, one that unsettles her every single night. She was never one to care about friends to be very honest, she kept to herself and mostly overwhelmed herself with objective interests like music and her education. But she found herself stunned at how much she’d grown over the past few years.

Not only did she have friends, but now, at twenty-one, she found herself seeking their company because one thing that Ned and Peter had been since high school, was loyal. They were always there when she needed them; on a good day, when she was really excited to share some resources she found on making information easier to grasp for the academic decathlon, or on a not so good day, when she had really bad cramps because of her period and aunt may passed along some chicken noodle soup through two spluttering, awkward boys that didn’t really know what to say or do when they knew their best friend was bleeding through her genitals. They were such dorks she had realised, but, very dependable dorks.

She had figured out who Peter was way before he told her (because she was definitely smarter than Ned and Peter’s shit excuses), but when he did tell her, probably about eight months into his ‘stark internship’, she ignored her heart stuttering at the trust he had in her and just took it as a very blatant opportunity to shun him for thinking she didn’t know. And she continued to ignore her heart stutter when Peter was being Peter for the proceeding years; she ignored it when he hugged her after winning their second decathlon, ignored it when he kissed her cheek at graduation, and ignored it even when they got into the same uni, hugged her for a moment too long and offered his apartment for sharing because she still hadn’t found a place to live. Basically, she was ignoring the way she felt about him, but that wasn’t the point.

The clock that was placed just above their tv read half past midnight, and she couldn’t do it anymore. She sipped on her tea as she switched channels, and the news droned on about spiderman successfully stopping a bank robbery and apprehending the convicts with minimal damage. She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

The location was twenty minutes from their apartment, so she gave it ten minutes before he came back. However, it was only forty five minutes later that Peter came knocking on the door, deathly pale and incredibly bruised.

“What the hell Parker, the reports said that there was minimal damage during the intervention!”

“Yeah, minimal damage to the goddamned bank.”

She beat herself up for the amount of concern she was showing, but she couldn’t help it because she wasn’t sure if he was dying or not. She went beside him to lend some support to the poor boy, he could barely stand.

“I’m not dying MJ, just help me clean my wounds and it’ll be fine. Don’t overthink this please; they’re only a few bruises.”

She hated him for that, how the hell did he know what she was thinking?

MJ had always commended herself for being difficult to read, but this boy was so good at it, and is was incredibly infuriating. Alas, she gave in to that she was told; to be honest, she was just really glad he was okay. After cleaning up his wounds and helping him make tea; because he insisted he could make his own when the dork could barely stand, they headed to her bedroom. It was a ritual of sorts; save the day, clean the wounds together, drink tea, chat, peter leaves to sleep.

Today however, something felt different. She tried to ignore it as she carefully placed herself at the corner of her bed facing the wall. Peter usually took the couch next to her bed, but today he sat opposite her. It wasn’t as intimate as it felt to her; the boy was just sitting in front of her.

“Okay, question.” he said to her, not really looking at her.

“Shoot loser, it’s not like we have all night.” She hurriedly exclaimed while she tried to calm her heart pounding with a foreign intensity.

“Uhmm, well, umm, I was just, umm-”

“Yes?” She tried to sound as confident as she could… as un-desperate as she could.

“Can I sleep with you today?” he spluttered.

Michelle was stunned at the question; it was the first of its kind. Sure she had been on a bed, with a boy before, ten years ago at math camp, but she was confident that this was a little bit more intimate.

“What?”

“Um well, I’m just super tired, and um, I was just wondering, because honestly walking up to my room right now, um, I was just thinking maybe, um-”

“Yeah okay, sure.”

“What?”

“Yeah okay Parker, how many times do I have to say it?”

She found herself surprised at saying yes; she had fantasised about this for god knows how long, but the reality of it was… confusing? Unexpected? Weird?

She didn’t really know.

So yeah, that’s what happened, after MJ got Peter his blanket from his room, she slept next to the wall, and Peter slept next to her.

MJ heard whimpers at first.

It wasn’t disconcerting specifically, but it sure as hell annoyed her, because if Michelle Jones loved anything (other than Peter Parker of course, but that’s again besides the point), she loved her sleep. So naturally, she was bothered by weird sounds waking her up.

She then felt a slight tremor next to her.

Now that disconcerted her, and it also successfully forced her awake enough for her to realise that it was Peter. She realised that her fantasies were far better than the actual thing because one, she didn’t have a lot of space to sleep with him practically invading her bed, and two, Peter was sure as hell a loud sleeper.

At her annoyance, she nudged him.

She did it again.

And again.

But it literally did nothing.

“Honestly Parker, what the hell?” MJ uttered sitting up.

When she turned to kick him awake, she saw something she really didn’t want to. Peter’s blanket was strewn on the floor, and he was hugging himself almost too hard, eyes shut tightly and shivering abnormally. She touched his forehead checking for sweat, evidently there, and realised that he was having a night terror. And from what she could tell, it was a really bad one.

She felt really stupid then; of course his responsibilities had lasting psychological effects on him, how could they not? The boy was turned superhuman when he was a teenager and fought way too many battles completely irrelevant to him. Peter Parker was unrelenting, compassionate, empathetic and someone who went out of his goddamn way for other people, no wonder his brain was trying to find an out.

She was at a loss for thoughts because she had never really expected to see her best friend so emotionally vulnerable, so unexpectedly. Sure, somedays he came home severely hurt, unable to move or walk or even stand; but never had she encountered Peter in an attitude that wasn’t witty and optimistic. Thus, looking at how Peter was shrivelling into himself right now, she was terrified.  

“MJ…” Peter seemed to stutter her name.

She let out a relieved sigh, he woke up. But before she could call out to him in response, asking him to hoist himself up to sit straight, he continued talking.

“Michelle no-”

He was still asleep. And now, MJ was more confused and more terrified than she had been before. She knew she shouldn’t wake him up, and she wasn’t sure she could but she was now full-out panicking and she really couldn’t think of anything else to do.

“Peter you have to wake up! Peter, wake up.” She kept muttering it over and over, shaking his shoulder but it wasn’t working. She didn’t want to listen to him being this terrified, she didn’t want to listen to him being terrified of her. She didn’t want to cause him this much pain, even if were in his sleep. It just kept going though, he didn’t stop.

“Michelle… I told you not to come… MJ no… he’s going to take you… he’s going to kill you, MJ… mj, mJ, MJ NOOOOOOO”

He was awake now. But he was screaming. He was thrashing on the bed, crying, and all she could do was hug him, and that’s all she did, she hugged him as hard as she possibly could, praying he calmed down, praying he was in less pain.

“PETER! PETER! PETER, IM HERE, IM HERE!”

She repeated  it like a mantra, through her tears, through his screaming, she just repeated it until he gradually calmed down, repeating it with a decreasing volume, hugging him as tight as she could. She just kept repeating it, over and over and over and over again.

When all she heard were stifled sobs, from both herself and Peter, she worked up the courage to say something, never letting go of him, she realised that she was scared to do so.

“We’ll talk about it in the morning don’t worry, for now, we just need sleep.”

His muscles had eased and he wasn’t shivering anymore. But her heart was heavier than before, and she was more exhausted than she had ever been. After a faint nod from him under the lamplight above them, he intertwined one of his hands with hers and hugged her with the other, this time, the oblivion was kinder to him.

When she woke up the next morning, with the sunlight invading her room through the tiny crevices of her blinders, she felt a rush of panic, Peter wasn’t next to her anymore. She gathered herself and walk-ran out of her room.

Again, she let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. He was at the counter making coffee, an anomaly because they preferred tea, but nothing about today was like the other days; the air usually of whole comfort was replaced with heaviness and a normally flowing conversation was replaced with a sense of awkwardness hanging above them like a burden.

“I made you some coffee, I know that’s weird for us, because we prefer tea, but I don’t think tea can keep us grounded with the conversation we’re gonna have.”

There was a lack of expression in the both of them, they were scared; Peter had never seen an uncool MJ before, and Michelle had never in her life experienced a Peter Parker like the one from last night.

“Thank you.”

He nodded. Everything was calculated it seemed, they took their ends of the couch; Peter took a sip of his coffee and began talking.

“They started a few weeks ago, I keep seeing Thanos in my mind, it’s horrible. He’s just as controlling and manipulative,�� he let out a chuckle then, “I don’t think my brain has actually processed the fact the he’s not a problem now… Anyways, umm, the war that happened, even if it was a while ago, it got me thinking of what really mattered to me, and it’s become a PTSD thing, every single person that is in my life right now, the people I care about, the people I love.” he avoided her eyes. “They’ve been showing up in my dreams… well, nightmares technically, and I just see it every night, he has you, aunt May and Ned in the palm of his hands, and he just… kills you, all of you. Every dream is the same, but it’s a different person every night, it revolves around the three of you. And I just…. I can’t afford to lose more people Michelle, I just…. I can’t… I can’t afford to lose you.”

MJ’s heart sank at the way he stuttered the last sentence, he was crying again, and that was the worst thing because she noticed that Peter crying made her cry, and that was just not okay.

“Ugh loser, you’re making me cry stop.”

And finally, a breakthrough; it felt like they could breathe again, they both let out a chuckle. And something she realised, had changed.

Michelle Jones realised that she was wholly in love with Peter Parker and it was not something that she should be ashamed of; he was the most caring, loving, compassionate and giving soul. She knew then, that anyone in her position would have accepted that a long time ago, she knew that he was worth it, that he was the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

And at the same time, Peter Parker realised that he was tired of sleeping in a different bed from the girl he had literally been in love with for god know how long, tired of not being able to kiss her, or hold her, or comfort her; tired of not having her all of these nights to calm his night terrors as skilfully as she did the night before. He was incredibly tired of it, and in that moment, his tiredness (ironically) fuelled his courage.

“Michelle Jones, I think this a good a time as any to tell you that you’re the love of my life, although I doubt you didn’t already know that.”

And just like that, the truth was out; it was an exhilarating feeling for the both of them. His palms were sweaty and he was staring at her all intense, and MJ’s heart was literally, all cliches intended, beating out of her chest. She still managed to keep it cool though (as far as she believes anyway).

“I think this is a given now Parker, don’t you think?”

“What’s a given Jones?” he asks, a tad bit confused. She smirks.

“I think you’re going to be sleeping with me from now on.”

[houseofvans]

ART SCHOOL | JONNY ALEXANDER (Detroit, MI)

Inspired by his love of the outdoors, artist and Head Screen Printer Jonny Alexander’s work incorporates Nature, landscapes, and its objects/processes, creating large open landscapes to cross sectional terrestrial islands sometimes floating in space, surrounded by oceans, or inhabiting surreal terrains.  Devoid of humans and human interactions, his visual narratives do, however, reflect his own “existential quandaries” or spotlight the human consequences to the environment as in a 2016 mural he created with the Pangeaseed: SeaWalls Murals in New Zealand.  We’re super excited to chat with Jonny about his art school experiences, his love of the outdoors, as well as his work ethic and tenacious attitude, all in this session of Art School. 

Photographs courtesy of the artist

Introduce yourself. Jonny Alexander / Currently in Detroit, Lived all previous years in California. I’m a painter, muralist, printmaker and Head Screen Printer for 1XRUN in Detroit

If you weren’t a painter, what do you think you would have ended up doing professionally?

Well, I kind of am doing something else professionally besides / as well as painting. I work full time as the Master Printer for the publishing company and gallery 1XRUN / Inner State in Detroit. I am also a full time painter… so I guess that means two full time jobs haha.  The Screen Printing is consistent and structured employment and the painting is sporadic in payment but constant in development.

We’re glad you’re a painter and an artist though, can you tell us about your journey? What was art school like for you? What were some of the best things you took away from that experience? What were you glad to get away from, once you graduated?  How was life after school for you at the time?

I’ll do a quick rundown of pre-college art. 9-13 years old I got introduced and started writing graffiti with neighborhood skateboarding friends. With high school friends we also skated, we weren’t doing graffiti but drawing weird shit in sketchbooks and starting to screen print t-shirts in the garage. Cut to college I moved from San Diego to Northern California and went to CSU, Chico, which is about 3 hours northeast of San Francisco. I went into college thinking I didn’t want to study art cause it might kill the enjoyment of making it, but I was wrong about that. I took courses regardless though and was introduced to the world of Printmaking. I only knew screen printing, but I took an intro course that had me doing etching, woodblock printing, screen printing, monotypes etc. I was pretty intrigued with the process. I realized that being in other classes was just taking time away from working on art. So I went full on into a Bachelor or Fine Arts with an emphasis in printmaking.I recognized from going through school studying art that the experience is honestly what you make of it. No one is going to teach you style, no one is going to teach you really how or what to paint or draw or make. But they will give you the fundamentals and above all the time and deadlines to produce as much art as you can. That was really what I got most from it. It gave me a really strong work ethic; it pushed me to form a strong studio practice and to produce work. It also, if you are lucky, gives you a strong community of peers to bounce ideas off of and pushes you with healthy competition to get better. What I did like getting away from was some of the real intense academic push to defend everything you make. I don’t want that to come off the wrong way. I genuinely cherish conceptual art and having meaning and depth to what you make, understanding what and why you are doing something and the context in which it lies in the grand narrative or art history. But I found myself chasing ideas into weird places that didn’t even feel like art to me. I would think myself out of a painting or print because I couldn’t conceptualize it, instead of just making it and moving on. I enjoyed the freedom when I finished school of just making a painting to make it. If only for its aesthetic, color or composition without heavy weighted conceptual arguments attached. It helped me to work faster and really push forward in developing my style.

Life after school was fruitful and painful. Lots of uncertainty with the newfound freedom, lack of structure and lack of employment but also a lot of fun. My girlfriend of 4 years broke up with me shortly after we finished school. Shortly after that I quite my crap job at a pizza place, took all the left over house paint I had and went into the rural hills of Northern California and started practicing painting murals. I painted 4 murals in 4 weeks on abandon structures. I was heartbroken the whole time but working my ass off, using my tears to wash my brushes after a long day painting. Haha But really that was the bootcamp I put myself through to break ground on painting murals. Less than a year later I was an assistant to my friend Tavar Zawacki who is a longtime artist who goes by the name ABOVE. He took me out to Detroit to help him with a Solo Exhibition with Inner State Gallery / 1XRUN. About 8 months after that I was moving from California to Detroit to be 1XRUNS Head Screen Printer. It has been almost two years now that I have been here. Side note: The girlfriend of 4 years that broke up with me after school, we got back together a little later on….Hey Bertha I love you

Having acquired a degree in printmaking, what aspects of that particular skill set proved to be super helpful or maybe gave you a different approach to painting as an art form? Or how have you used your printmaking skills to inform what you do as a painter?

One thing that was helpful, as I had kind of mentioned earlier is that it led me into the job I hold with 1XRUN today. It is a pretty useful trade to have and I see myself being a print maker and screen printer for years to come. But in terms of my art practice printmaking definitely helped develop my drawing style. Printmaking also broke down layers for me as well. To make a screen print you have to lay down colors in a specific order. It is a pretty methodic and regimented order of operations. This method of a layering process has come into my painting practice and really into my mural practice. It has helped me to think about how colors “stack” if you think of them as layers. I think it helped me to be able to translate my smaller more time consuming paintings into larger murals by way of simplifying the approach.

In terms of your paintings the landscapes, the natural environments, and the colors of nature – are heightened in a way. As if the viewer is often experiencing a different type of hyper landscape. Could you tells us a little more about these “psychedelic landscapes” and how these visuals came about?

Psychedelic Landscapes was a joke between my friend Ian Roffe and myself in school. Haha I think the real root of it is from my upbringing as a child. Growing up in San Diego my parents could have taken us to Disneyland or something like that but instead we spent all of our family road trips going up to the Eastern Sierras. Going to National Parks or almost every other weekend spent up in the local mountains in San Diego fishing, hiking and camping. I was always picking up rocks and sticks and looking at the patterns in them, collecting them, doing some “organic hoarding” that I still do to this day. I also grew up surfing by myself. None of my close friends picked up surfing so again I spent a lot of time roaming the cliffs and rock formations of some of San Diego’s coastline. I think all that naturally filtered into my paintings. I was really into some of the surrealist painters like Dali and Max Ernst in my younger years so that love of large open landscapes was really appealing. I think it has been a common thread throughout my art making and has just evolved and transformed over the years.

Your paintings often depict geological layers / structures and other aspects of the natural world. What natural structures or landscapes have influenced you the most and what about them most captivated you and percolated into your works?

Rocks man….goddamn rocks. They are so cool. There is so much variation in them. In the texture, the color the way they crack and fold. The way that erosion goes to work on them over years, it’s just some very beautiful patterning. There is also good metaphor for me in rocks and mountains. Rocks are really old material compressed together over vast amounts of time and buried deep in the earth. They have some wisdom to them for that reason. I titled a piece a number of years ago, “The Wisdom Rocks of Old are the Souls of the Past” which kind of sums up that thought. Mountains also though, they are the pushing up of these old chunks of earth and we can climb up them to see beyond what we could from the ground level maybe to get clarity or furthered vision. I think there is metaphor to see in all nature if you are looking for it. I think that is why I have continued to use it in my paintings over the years. Most of my paintings don’t have people in them so I rely on nature and objects to create narratives referring to existential quandaries I have. I read this quote years ago, which I think is pretty nice and applicable. “The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time”. - Henry David Thoreau

Who are some of your top 5 favorite contemporary artists? 5 favorites of all time? I would have to say… Interesni Kazki Aaron Glasson & Celeste Byers (good friends) Michael Reeder Saner Pat Perry James Turrell Salvador Dali Caravaggio Andy Goldsworthy Radiohead

What are your top 5 materials? Is there a medium you haven’t yet tried, but are looking to learn? Acrylic Gouache Micron and Radiographs Waterbased Screen Printed Gradients Wood Panels built by my friend Craig (For real if you want to buy heavy really nicely made wood panels DM this guy @chejka ) I have painted with oils a couple times but would like to start making some oil paintings and getting some real nice smooth gradients

We gotta find out - What are your favorite Vans?

Love me some Sk8-Hi’s, always been a sucker for high tops, cause they feel good on my feet and look cool with pants and can also make you look like a goofy shit when you wear them with some short shortz.

Being a lover of the outdoors, where’s a place you’d love to go for artistic inspiration and why?

That’s a tough one. There is a ton of places…so lets go for a list? Right? Never been to Zion or Bryce Canyon, plan on going there in the next year. Andes in Peru South Island of New Zealand Iceland (including small plane flights over all the crazy land formations) Yellowstone (Not in peak season maybe go in late fall) The bottom of the Grand Canyon Patagonia, Argentina Um… Probably a lot more places But mainly I’d like to go to most of those places to see some intense and awe inspiring natural beauty.

What’s a question you’d like to answer that you’ve never get asked in terms of art? How do you formulate ideas and what is their lifecycle? (It would be a really long and disjointed answer, but fun to talk about.

I read that you often love painting outside at the beach or just outdoors. What about painting in the outdoors do you enjoy? And when you can’t paint outdoors, what is your studio like? (What do you put in it for inspiration?)

I think I have to change that previous statement about liking to paint outdoors. I think I may have talked about that before I ever really had a proper studio. For most of my life my “studio” has been whatever bedroom I lived in at the time. That was very cramped and limiting. So I used to just go out somewhere and set up and work on stuff, which was really fun. But now that I have been living in my loft in Detroit for 2 years, I really love having a nice open space to work. I have a nice big table, I have panels to paint lying around, I paint upright on the wall, which is nice for my back as apposed to sitting in the sand at the beach. I love having space to sit all day and paint, cause I find I need at least 4-8 hours to really sit and have a successful session painting. My studio does have quite a few plants around, some weird organic hoarding trinkets and always music or a podcast floating through the air. I do still carry a sketchbook with me wherever I go and like to do some drawing outdoors, but I find I am usually too preoccupied with what is going on around me to just look into my book.

You’ve been doing a lot of large scale paintings and murals in the last few years. What was the your favorite large scale work, and what were the challenges (if any) and how did you overcome them? What’s the best advice you’d give to someone working large scale?

I had a lot of fun about a year ago (March 2016) with the Pangeaseed: SeaWalls Murals for Oceans project in Napier, New Zealand. The challenge as it is with murals is the weather. It rained 3 out of the 5 days we were supposed to paint. Which, when using brushes, is a big problem. You can get away with spray paint in some light rain, but liquid house paint with a brush just won’t stick. Besides that it was a really fun piece to work on, it had a definite message to it about sea level rise and the causality of it coming from us humans consumption habits. I also got a lot more comfortable using spray paint on this mural. Previously I had barely every used it, I worked mainly with brushes, but I was able to practice and get much more comfortable with cans. Advice I would give to someone is to have a plan of attack. As I had said before about thinking of it in simplified layers, that really helps. Day 1 for me is usually getting the sketch on the wall nice and proportioned how I want it. Day 2 I fill in all the large flat area of colors and then all the rest days it just tightening things up and doing all the detail and line work.

What advice if any, would you give upcoming artists or folks who want to become artists?

Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you. You’ve got to be very tenacious and dedicated to it and you have to sustain that momentum for a very long time. I have been at it for years now and I still have so much I need and want to do. Also be wise about splitting up time between creating the work and getting the work out to the world. A bunch of painting stuffed under the bed should see the light of day. You kind of have to be the artist, manager, content editor, prompter etc. I think that’s all I’ve got. Well maybe just be genuine and don’t rip off other people work or chase trends, try to be authentic and people can appreciate that. And network! Go meet people in your artist community!!

Finally, what projects or shows do you have that you’re excited about coming up? I just had a piece in the “Paint It Forward” Exhibition at Cass Contemporary in Tampa last month. I will be showing at Inner State Gallery’s LAX/DTW show curated by Thinkspace in the summer. I have some fun things coming up in my studio working with a friend who does Neon here in Detroit. I am supposed to be painting a mural in Kiev, Ukraine at some point this spring or summer with a project called Art United Us, which will be my largest mural to date. I am also looking for any murals projects the world has to throw at me! Thank you for your time!

Follow Jonny Website: http://jonnyalexander.com Instagram: @jonnyalexander 

[theredherb]

Is the Nintendo Switch Launching Too Early?

Breaking Down the Info from the Hybrid Console’s Big Presser

When Nintendo finally revealed the Switch back in late October, I was left more excited about the company’s future in hardware than I have been in years. Granted, that initial trailer was the idealized vision of the console: it was direct in its messaging while shrewdly omitting any hype-strangling details like battery life, resolution, and, most importantly, price. What we were left with was the exciting prospect of console quality games (like the newest Zelda opus) on a handheld hybrid that features modular controllers; a machine that cobbles together what Nintendo is best at -- forward thinking portability and first-party games so good they stand head and shoulders with the best this industry has to give.

On Thursday, Nintendo began filling in the blanks, setting about to answer (at least some) of the questions fans have had circling in their heads since the system’s unveiling. You can watch the entire conference here but, coming from someone that sat through a livestream of the proceeding -- awaiting something, anything, that signaled Nintendo’s return to form -- I’d recommend just reading up on the cliff notes.

Though the affair was poised in the same fashion as one of Sony’s knockout E3 conferences, Nintendo couldn’t land the same blows. I began the show with more enthusiasm than Nintendo let me leave with. After the abject failure of the Wii U (a console that only managed to push slightly north of 13 million units -- the worst sales in Nintendo’s hardware history barring the Virtual Boy) the Switch needed to be touted as a reckoning. It was Nintendo’s chance to convince the fence-sitters to choose their side of the picket. We didn’t get that Thursday night.

Nintendo has always floundered in the stage show department, though. You’re asking the same company that thought this shit was a good idea to try and wow us in an hour and a half. Nintendo’s like that shy kid at the back of the class: he tests well and always turns in his homework, but the second you ask him to walk up to the board and present, he becomes a mumbling, incoherent mess. Of course they shit the bed. This is Nintendo we’re talking about. Credit to that first Switch video, though. I fell for it, too! I wrongly assumed Nintendo was trying to demonstrate they’ve turned a new leaf (no pun intended, Animal Crossing fans). At the presentation, however, it seems Nintendo isn’t just making its same old mistakes but brand new ones.

But I think it’s important to remember that a poor showcase isn’t enough reason to condemn the hardware itself. The tech, despite Nintendo’s aloof messaging, still looks cool. So let’s try to unpack what we learned at the showcase (and the info we gleaned in the days following) without having to suffer through awkward squid doctors and a translator whose probably looking for a new job right about now:

The Nintendo Switch launches March 3rd and costs $299.

I had it in my mind that if NIntendo wanted to blow some toadstools, the price would have been $249. However, this gives them some wiggle room if they wanted to make a $50 cut closer toward the holidays (or if it performs, shall we say, shittily?). Still, $300 is in bounds of reason. Base model PlayStation 4’s and Xbox One’s start at that price. While enthusiasts understand, and could potentially be irked by, the fact that they’re paying the same price for a console that has less horsepower than its contemporaries, we should look to the casual consumer’s mentality instead.

The casual consumer is likely to see this new system from trusty Nintendo --a brand so storied that there was once a time in my childhood where my parents referred to any video game console I had as “a Nintendo” -- see the similar pricing, and lump the Switch’s capability in the same bracket. Any cheaper and a casual consumer may begin to think of the Switch as a handheld: a complementary device that can’t do what a home console does. The very perception Nintendo doesn’t want, evidenced by their reminding us that it is a home console every chance they get.

If you don’t think that’s a genuine concern, keep in mind that the mainstream audience who made the Wii a massive success didn’t  know the Wii U was a separate console. Sometimes, even retailers didn’t know what the hell it was.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a launch title. Mario isn’t.

Nintendo ended its ten-mile-jog-through-glass of a presentation with one of the only franchises in this industry that hasn’t been poisoned by cynicism. And goodness gracious does it look breathtaking (sorry, another dollar for the pun jar). Nintendo is well aware that a new Zelda game can pry wallets open -- especially the rare Zelda game that releases at a system’s launch. Unfortunately, Breath of the Wild seems to be the only compelling reason to snag a Switch on Day One.

Super Mario Odyssey, a brand new adventure that sees the Italian reptile stomper leap between dimensions (including an analog for NYC called “New Donk City”... let that settle inside you for a moment), won’t hit the launch window. It’s tentatively set for Holiday 2017. I’m not trying to gloss over the power or draw of a new Zelda title but… that’s coming out on Wii U as well. If you wanted a surefire system seller that tickles the fancies of the mainstream and hardcore, young and old alike, then you sell it alongside a Mario title. So why not wait until your flagship game was ready?

One gander at the launch lineup only underlines this point: there’s only three other games releasing on day one besides Zelda. You have the gimmicky 1-2-Switch that relies on the motion sensors within your Joy-Con controllers to play party games (you can see shades of Nintendo’s belief that the Wii wasn’t a hugely successful fluke in this game); then there’s two third-party offerings from Ubisoft and Activision -- Just Dance 2017 and Skylanders Imaginators, respectively. That’s a paltry showing, even taking into account launches tend to be historically thin.

Beyond that, our confirmed launch window games are either ports of games that have been out for years already (like Skyrim, I Am Setsuna, and Lego City Undercover) or updates to existing Wii U games (like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2… don’t let the 2 fool you, this sequel feels incremental rather than substantial). There’s some standouts, though. Super Bomberman R looks good, as does Arms which is said to be a surprisingly engaging fighter despite its stupid, stupid name and Nintendo’s obvious attempt to make it A Thing.

The accessories cost an arm and a leg and the other leg too.

This one truly boggles the mind. It’s like Nintendo is trying to offset the money they lost on the Wii U by taxing the shit out of us. Here’s the breakdown:

-Left & Right Joy-Con Controllers: $49.99 for one/$79.99 for both. Okay, I get that there’s all sorts of fancy tech shoved into these little guys. They feature “HD Rumble” which offers impressive feedback, letting you feel like you’re rattling a real cup full of ice or fondling a cow. Then there’s the IR sensor capable of spatial detection so precise, it can detect your very hand gestures. Awesome. Except… will that make a difference when you’re playing a traditional single-player game like Breath of the Wild? Motion controls and playing virtual rock, paper, scissors are decidedly not why I’m excited about a console/handheld hybrid.

-Pro Controller: $69.99. Now you’re off your fucking rocker, Nintendo. The way in which traditionalists and hardcore gamers will undoubtedly favor to play is more expensive than a PS4 or Xbox One controller. Granted, they couldn’t resist tossing in that “HD Rumble” and amiibo functionality. I’m sure that drove up the cost. But goddamn. Imagine wanting to play Zelda with a Pro Controller at launch. You’re out $430 and you only own one game.

-Joy-Con Charging Grip: $29.99. If you’re skipping out on the Pro Controller but still wish to play on your TV, you’ll have to snap off your Joy-Cons to go wireless. Ah, but the charge on those babies drains. Enter the Charging Grip, a peripheral that serves as its own controller while it juices up your Joy-Cons. Ostensibly the only other reasonably priced accessory besides the $14.99 set of Joy-Con Wheels.

-Nintendo Switch Dock Set: $89.99. And we’re back into the clutches of greedy insanity. Now, this bundle -- which includes the dock, AC adapter, and an HDMI cord -- is paired with every Switch out of the box. But, say, your toddler decides to feed your dock some peanut butter or subjects it to a water level in your bathtub, this is one pricey replacement. It looks like a hunk of plastic (and very well could be) but the fact games run at a higher resolution when the Switch is docked could point to more intricate internal components. Still, a $90 price gouge dashes most gamers’ dreams of buying a dock for every TV in the house for convenience's sake (don’t act like you didn’t think about it; deep down, we’re all that lazy).

There’s going to be a paid subscription service for online play, and it already sounds bad.

It’s astounding Nintendo hasn’t figured out an online ecosystem. Nintendo struggles with requisite features companies like Microsoft figured out fourteen years ago. I don’t even mind that they’re charging for the service. Feels like an inevitability in the console space -- though I will argue they have a serious uphill battle ahead to prove the service is worth the coin. What bothers me is that there has been no information on the continuity of service when it comes to transferring Virtual Console games over from the Wii U. There’s also been no word if we’ll finally see a system-wide Achievement feature -- another failing of the Wii U that fans have been pleading to see.

What we do know is that the online service will be free to Nintendo Account holders until the Fall -- when the feature is launched in proper.  They’re also offering a free NES or SNES download every month. That’s cute, and they’re incorporating online play to these retro titles, too, but the sour little caveat is that these games are free and playable only for the month you get them. Nintendo, buddy, you’ve already allowed yourself to get meat-checked by the competition, and your system isn’t out yet.

It gets better. They’re attempting to launch a “dedicated smart device app” that “will connect to Nintendo Switch and let you invite friends to play online, set play appointments, and chat with friends during online matches in compatible games -- all from your smart device.”

Are you seriously telling me the console that you’re launching in 2017 doesn’t have native voice chat? That I have to use an external device to play with friends? Nintendo’s been vague when it comes to online-play. Hell, Nintendo’s vague in general, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt until they clarify the matter… Otherwise, I’d have to call them out for being hopelessly fucking antiquated and warn them that their clownish decision making is a self-paved death march out of the hardware business.

Listen, I want to eat crow. I hope Nintendo makes me choke on my own words. I hope, as I always do when they release new gadgets, that Nintendo succeeds. The company is how I first broke into gaming, and those early days with the Super Nintendo are some of my fondest. Of course I want to see Nintendo score another win. In a year’s time, I want to feel like the Switch is an integral, oft used part of my gaming life. The device is interesting and the most appealing piece of machinery Nintendo has shown us in years. But a system is only as good as its games, and this March, there’s only really one title I can hang my hat on. I sincerely hope that changes and that 2017 isn’t as dry as looks right now.

Something stinks about this launch lineup. It stinks of Sega Saturn. The Saturn launched before developers were ready for it, having very little in the way of games prepared for the new console, and Sega suffered the consequences. Again, I’m behind the concept of the Switch 100%. But, from this outlook, it makes little sense for Nintendo to launch in two months. It doesn’t feel ready.

Sure, Nintendo has survived abysmal launches before. The 3DS launched with a nigh empty catalog and that little bastard has been kicking for five years now (managing to smother the Vita along the way). But for as much pull as our favorite Hyrulian has, Mario’s your bigger draw. And what happened to that Pokemon game supposedly in development for the Switch? If Nintendo waited until the Fall and launched with the holy triumvirate of Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, and a new Pokemon, the Switch would sell like gangbusters.

Even the company’s shareholders are having a tough time believing the Switch can reach a wide audience. Just a day after the big conference, Nintendo’s stocks dropped 5.75 percent. It feels just as dismal on the game dev side. The Game Developers Conference released the results of a poll where 50 percent of developers think the Switch can outsell the Wii U. I know, predictions don’t necessarily dictate reality. No, what has me distressed is that, of those who were polled, only 3 percent were actively working on a Switch game.

I’m… trying to remain optimistic. Consoles can make turnarounds. The PS3 famously pulled away from the faulty, downright arrogant decision making that plagued its early years and fought to close the gap Microsoft had forged with the Xbox 360. It’s just that I’d hate to have to wait four years for the Switch to really find its step -- in the same amount of time, the Wii U expended its entire life cycle.

[subcorax]

Fic: Aubade (ch. 5)

Rating: Teen

Pairing(s): Kageyama Ritsu/Suzuki Shou, Background Teru/Mob Characters: Ritsu, Shou, Teru, Mob Tags: Future fic, college setting, fluff, slow burn Chapter Word Count: 4703 Total Word Count: 21341

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Summary: Ritsu and Shou have been orbiting around each other ever since they were thirteen years old. Really, something like this was inevitable. (Based off of a prompt!)

Read on Ao3

There were six trains leaving Seasoning Station on the day they set off: two in the morning, and four in the afternoon.

Ritsu had immediately and vehemently vetoed the 6 AM train, whereas Shou had objected to taking another night train, on the grounds that he couldn’t sleep on trains at all, and he needed Ritsu awake to keep him company, so that had ruled out the two trains leaving after 6 PM. They’d both been kind of iffy about the early-afternoonish trains, knowing they were the most likely to have families and tourists and the like.

So, their little group had ended up huddled together on the platform, waiting sleepily for the 9 AM train to pull in.

Ritsu’s parents had said their goodbyes the night before at the house, so it’s just Mob, Teru, and Reigen who’ve shown up to send them off at the station. As usual, their group is receiving some odd looks from the sparse groups of people scattered around the station, although every employee they’ve met has recognized Reigen and Mob on sight.

Shou is, Ritsu thinks, not actually awake. Oh, sure, he’s standing, and he’d showered and gotten dressed and dragged luggage behind him on the walk, but he hasn’t actually formed a coherent sentence yet, and he’s been leaning on Ritsu more and more heavily for about the past five minutes. He has no less than three times flipped off Teru, who actually had the nerve to jog ahead of them to the station, is wearing neon pink running shorts, and is drinking something that looks like shit and smells like the ghost of bananas past.

Reigen, for what feels like the thousandth time, starts to drill Ritsu. “You have your phone? Your wallet?” “Yes, of course.” “Your chargers?” “Yeah, we-- wait.” It’s always worth double-checking the chargers. He leans down and partially unzips one of the pockets of the suitcase at his feet, and finding a horrifically tangled ball of two phone chargers and two laptop chargers exactly where they’d been when he’d last checked three minutes ago, nods. “Got the chargers.” Reigen still looks dissatisfied. Between his supply checks and Mob’s constant drifting back and forth from where the train schedule is posted, Ritsu thinks that the two of them are going to worrywart each other into a full blown panic. “Do you have your passport?” Ritsu blinks in confusion. “My passpo– Dad, we’re not fleeing the country!”

“Not yet!” Reigen replies, waving his arms frantically as if this is a legitimate possibility that Ritsu should’ve prepared for. He snorts and doesn’t reply, instead opting to mull over what’s more likely to get someone from his family deported from the country: Reigen’s scam business, or Teru’s fashion choices. While, sure, aspects of Reigen’s business are technically illegal, Teru’s outfits are simply in bad taste.

They hear the train before they see it, a distant chugging that breaks through the annoying bird noises and the vague chatter of the other people at the station. Around them, Ritsu sees most of the other people waiting on the platform straighten up, readjust their backpacks and jackets, start shifting around in anticipation. Surprisingly, Shou’s the same, pulling himself away from Ritsu’s side and blinking around them, looking fully awake for the first time that morning. Ritsu pushes down the handle on his little wheely case and hefts it onto his back, reaching out to take the larger suitcase from Mob. He’s not sure how he ended up carrying the most stuff, considering that out of the three bags they’ve brought, most of the stuff inside of them belongs to Shou. While Ritsu had only grabbed the bare necessities and a few jackets and shirts from his room, packing up Shou’s belongings had been a goddamn ordeal, including doing three loads of laundry from his already packed suitcase, and a two-hour long argument about whether or not it was appropriate to bring an entire desk lamp on a new move.

(“It’s my oldest friend!” Shou had argued, trying to wrestle it from Ritsu’s hands. “Six years I have known you, Suzuki, and never once has there been a working bulb in this lamp.”) Ritsu is eternally grateful that he doesn’t have a family that sobs as they send him off somewhere. The sadness he’s feeling is familiar, a pre-emptive homesickness that sinks into his stomach, makes him want to look around and take everything in so that he’ll remember the exact details of Seasoning City forever, makes him want to call the whole thing off and just stay home. Mob is smiling though, just a little, when he pulls him in for a hug, and all he feels from the aura that envelops him is warmth. “Be safe,” he murmurs into Ritsu’s shoulder. “Text me when you get there.” He receives quick but back-breaking hugs from Teru and Reigen that leave him gasping for air, but he finds that Shou got the short end of the Farewell Stick, because he looks over to see Mob giving him a hug that has him flailing with his feet a good few inches off the ground.

Reigen ushers them onto the train before they can be idiots and miss it, and Shou half climbs over Ritsu in the seats to wave out of the windows as the train starts to move. A quick jolt sends Shou sprawling, and it’s only bracing himself between the table and Ritsu’s shoulder that stops him from whacking his head on the window. Ritsu’s laughing even as he pushes Shou out of his lap, trying to get him to sit in his own goddamn seat for, oh, two minutes? Admittedly, there’s been an odd feeling of dread tinging his excitement, keeping him subdued over the past few days as they planned. It was the lingering worry that even though their plans, their situation, was becoming more and more concrete, that it wouldn’t actually happen. That some intangible, nonexistent problem would suddenly pop up and stop everything. He feels it settle, dissipate. He watches Shou move into the seats on the other side of the table, settling with his back against the window and his legs stretched out in front of him, and thinks, We’re actually doing this. It sounds almost stupidly awed to his own mind, and it’s threatening to put a giddy sort of smile on his face, and he manages to tamp down on it only because he knows that if Shou notices, he’ll ask about it, which will eventually lead to Ritsu being forced to admit that he’s feeling things, which, well, no.

Shou, for his part, manages to stay quiet and relatively still for all of three minutes before he starts fidgeting. He pulls out his phone, but seems to think better of it, because he puts it down in favour of looking over at Ritsu. “Can I borrow your phone?” On autopilot, he reaches into his pocket to hand it over, but stops himself. “Why…?” He asks, squinting, knowing he probably doesn’t want to know the answer. Shou leans over the table, making grabby hands at the phone, pouting when Ritsu moves his hand so that it’s just out of his reach. “Please? It’ll be funnier if I do it on yours!” On one hand, Shou’s desperation is kind of hilarious, and Ritsu isn’t sure he wants to know exactly what he’s planning. On the other hand, he’s got another ten hours on this train, and if he doesn’t give in now, Shou will literally carry on at him the entire time until he does. With a resigned sigh, he hands his phone over, and then groans when Shou immediately points it at him, obviously taking pictures. Instinctively, he flips Shou off, sending him a death glare, before looking at the camera and throwing up a peace sign with dead eyes. He relaxes when Shou finally puts the phone down and starts tapping away at the screen, and contents himself with staring out the window until Shou breaks the silence. “What the fuck is a Shigeo?” He asks, incredulous. Ritsu reaches out to try and snatch the phone back from Shou. “It’s my brother, you fuck, what are you sending to him?” Shou holds the phone out of his reach, contorting himself so that he can keep typing with it held above his head. Finally, he finishes and hands it back to Ritsu with a self-satisfied grin. Like the cat that got the cream, he thinks, and then two moments later, Oh god, what did he do. He taps in his passcode and finds his messaging app already open. TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) [Picture Attached] [Picture Attached] we r. on the fuckin train.

FROM: DAD Language.

FROM: SHIGEO Be safe!!! <33

FROM: TERUKI Don’t look up anything inappropriate on his phone or he might kill you ;p

TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) wow r00d TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) I have my phone back. ignore him entirely.

FROM: YOUR FAVOURITE ;) WOW R00D

Shou, when he’s jetlagged at least, is a little like a windup toy.

He’ll run around at the speed of sound for a while, and talk your ear off given half the chance, but after a while he starts to grow noticeably… slower. Of course, he’ll protest the fact, still make a decent imitation of a hyperactive kitten, but all in all, it grows more sluggish until finally, inevitably, he keels over.

On the train? He doesn’t even last an hour. It’s easy to get drawn into a conversation with Shou, even easier to let him jump from topic to topic as something new strikes his fancy, and so Ritsu learns about Shou’s year overseas in a patchwork of unrelated information, one minute hearing about the godawful coffee served by this one particular Korean hotel, and the next about some strange western kids’ cartoon he’d seen at some ungodly hour of the morning. It’s always a fun little game with this, trying to piece together the snippets of information like puzzle pieces, except he’s working with about three different puzzles, and he can’t find any edge pieces. In this state, waving his arms around wildly to emphasize his points and cutting himself off every other sentence, Ritsu thinks it’s basically impossible to get a coherent story out of Shou. The probability goes even further down when Shou pauses mid-sentence to yawn. Ritsu finds himself yawning in response, but he manages to ask around it, “You tired?” Shou snorts. “Pff, nah. I’m great. I slept for like, seven hours yesterday.” Now, Ritsu, because he actually wanted to be awake in time to, oh, catch the train, had gone to bed at a half-decent time the previous night. He had, however, woken up for the bathroom at some point, and he knows for a fact that Shou is rather generously rounding up from not much more than three. While Shou looks awake, it’s a bad sort of awake, an ‘I really should be sleeping now oh god’ sort of awake, an ‘I am awake out of sheer determination not to be asleep’ sort of awake, the type of slow-blinking, faux-happy sort of awake that Ritsu forces after he’s just pulled an all-nighter for an essay. God, at least he’s usually had coffee or cereal or something. Shou, with a bad tendency to get nauseous in the mornings, hadn’t so much as been able to touch the water Ritsu had offered, let alone the leftover smoothie Teru had tried to shove in his face.

He tugs a jacket out of his bag and hands it over wordlessly. Shou eyes it for a moment, like a deer liable to be spooked, before reaching out and snatching it from him. There are a few moments of adjustments before he settles, arms folded on the table and the hoodie bundled on top of it as a pillow. Ritsu sees him blink heavily for a little before his eyes fall closed, and then he’s out like a light. He’s vaguely disturbed by how quickly Shou manages to fall asleep, especially in a weird position like that. Sure, he’d managed it back in high school, when his only options for quick naps had been to rest his head on the desk or risk it falling out of his cupped hands when he nodded off. Still, it had always left him stiff and vaguely sick, his stomach protesting being bent over in the single laziest yoga position in existence for any length of time. So, he doesn’t really understand why it’s Shou’s first choice, when there’s a perfectly good window right there. For his part, Ritsu isn’t quite drowsy enough to sleep, so he messes around on his phone for a while, switching from app to app until it buzzes with an email. FROM: gcuhousing@gcustaff.org TO: r-kageyama@gcustudent.org

Mr. Kageyama,

This email is to inform you that we have received your notification of residence change.

You will be required to vacate your dormitory at least one (1) week prior to the beginning of the new academic year, on June 30th. You must notify the University’s department of Student Housing within three (3) days of your vacating your dormitory. The department of Student Housing can be reached at +81-429-884915 .

Ritsu leans back and pulls one knee to his chest, sighing.

This was what it came down to, really, actually finding a place to live. Somewhere within walking distance of the university, with four walls, a roof, and a floor, two bedrooms, working plumbing, and included appliances. It seemed impossible. This, he had thought, this is where it will all come crashing down. And yet. They’d spent most of yesterday looking at online listings, emailing and calling landlords, setting up viewings. The less time spent in Ritsu’s dorm, the better, after all. They’d actually had to narrow down their choices, from ten to seven to about four or five places that they both agreed looked promising. He decides he might as well get something productive done while he’s here, and starts to tap out an email. FROM: kageyamaritsu@hotmail.com TO: nishigori-k77@yahoo.com

Mr. Nishigori, My name is Kageyama Ritsu; we spoke a few days ago on the phone, about a possible tour of your apartment on Rye Street. My friend and I will be in town later tonight, and were hoping to set up a time as soon as possible. We would greatly appreciate if you could give us a set of times that work for your schedule over the next couple of days. Thank you for your time,

Kageyama Ritsu +81-9064625949

He sends a couple more emails along those lines, even gets a couple of replies, before it suddenly hits him again, this light, giddy feeling, like his heart is filled with helium and it’s trying to float into his throat. We’re actually doing this, he thinks, and stifles a vaguely hysterical giggle.

On instinct, he gives a cursory sweep of the train to make sure that nobody actually noticed the weirdo laughing to himself. Thankfully, the only other people in the compartment with them are a small family that seem to be occupying themselves with some travel game, the kind of “what can you see out of the window” tactic that his parents employed on him and Mob when they were kids in the car, and then a few more people scattered around in individual seats, either occupied by their own phones or fast asleep.

He’d shrugged on a thin hoodie this morning, to face the early morning chill as they walked to the station, but now that the sun has properly risen he finds himself uncomfortably warm and vaguely sweaty. He pulls it off, leaving it bunched at his back, and notes with absent interest that they’re driving through a forest of some sort. For the most part, the sun only manages to break through the foliage in bits and pieces, painting the compartment in shadowed, dappled greens. Occasionally though, there’ll be a gap in the trees allowing the sun to hit him. Right in the eyes. Inevitably, they chug past the forest, and Ritsu is left completely defenseless against the ball of burning hellfire in the sky. He tries holding his hand in the exact position needed to block it out, but, well, his arm gets tired pretty quickly. He tries draping his hoodie over his head, but the cavern of black fabric gets too hot to breathe in pretty quickly, and Ritsu has little-to-no interest in becoming a baked potato. He’s pretty sure this is a decent argument as to why they should’ve taken the night train, but whatever, he can’t really be bothered to wake Shou up to make a point.

Heaving a greatly put-upon sigh, he stands, steadying himself on the table. He grabs Shou’s backpack from the spare seat and chucks it unceremoniously across to where he was just sitting, and plops down beside Shou. Now that the sun isn’t making a concerted effort at blinding him, he can see the light glinting off of Shou’s hair, lighting it up like some sort of precious metal. There are a lot of dust motes floating around his head.

Shou only wakes up once in the next six or so hours, and then only briefly. By the three and a half hour mark, Ritsu has done everything he can think of to keep himself occupied, including looking for shapes in the clouds, doing terrible little stick figure doodles in his notebook, doing what little he can without wifi on his laptop (about fifty seven games of solitare, not that he’s keeping track,) and a short-lived and incredibly uncomfortable nap. He feels like he should be able to sleep, given the easy, lazy warmth of the train, given how easily Shou has been able to slip into it, the soft lines of his shoulders in his white shirt rising and falling as he breathes, blending seamlessly with the almost ethereal summer light.

He’d managed to entertain himself with his phone, for a little while, but once it had hit less than half battery he’d decided to turn it off and definitely not think about it at all, in case he needed to use it for something actually important.

So, he half jumps out of his skin when it starts vibrating like mad in his back pocket. He fumbles with it until he can see that Matsuo is calling him.

“Hey! Kageyama! My bro! Rumor around here is that you’re ditching us, bro!” Ritsu forces himself to bite back ‘I’m not your bro, bro,’ instead deciding on a polite, “Hello, Matsuo. Yes, I’m moving out.” “Ha, dude, nice! Did you score with some chick? Are you actually moving in with your girl? You always seemed like a player, bro!” Ritsu squints. How in the fuck would I strike anyone as a player? A movement to his left draws his attention, and he looks over to see Shou stirring, propping himself up on one elbow to blink blearily at Ritsu. There are red lines in the pattern of the hoodie fabric all over his cheek, and Ritsu has to hold back a laugh at the knockoff Two-Face vibes. He waves dismissively at Shou’s questioning look, a sort of ‘tell you in a minute’ kind of gesture that he hopes Shou understands. “Yeah, about that,” he starts, unsure how to breach the topic. “I’m actually moving in with a friend of mine, but he just got back from overseas, so neither of us actually have a place yet. Is it cool if he sleeps on the couch for the next couple of days, until we’re good?”

“Ha, I can do you one better, bro! Daichi’s still chillin’ with his girlfriend until the end of break, so your dude can just crash in his bed instead!” A pause, and then, “...Yo, Kageyama, is this buddy of yours the one that drank five Red Bulls when you were skyping him, like, to prove that he could?” Ritsu sighs. Naturally, Matsuo has his priorities straight. “Yes. Yes it is.” “Tell him I said hi, yo. He’s hardcore.” A hardcore dumbass, Ritsu thinks, but what manages to come out of his mouth is, “Will do. Thanks, Matsuo.” “Anytime, bro!” As soon as he hangs up he turns to Shou, who’s back at it with the questioning eyes in full force. He’s not quite upright anymore, having slipped downwards so that his head is half-pillowed between the crook of his elbow and the hoodie. Ritsu shakes his head, summarizing. “Just my roommate. He wanted to know if I was actually leaving. Also, Daichi’s gone, so you can take his bed until we get a place.” Shou nods, which is an action really more to the effect of rubbing his face against the jacket, but Ritsu gets the general idea.

“Daichi’s the one you sleep with, right?” He murmurs. “Again, phrasing, but yeah, he’s in my room. I emailed a few of the landlords for the places we were looking at, so hopefully we can decide within a couple days what we’re–” He interrupts himself, in favour of asking the real questions. “Are you… alright? Shou has buried his face entirely in the hoodie. Ritsu isn’t sure exactly how he can be breathing. After a few moments of complete silence, Shou turns his head back to face him. “Not to be creepy, but this jacket smells like your house. It’s. It’s good.”

Ritsu blinks, raises one eyebrow. He feels like he maybe should find that creepy, but it’s not the weirdest thing Shou has ever said to him, and in this state, delirious and actually nuzzling his jacket, it’s almost… is cute the right word for it? Flattering, maybe. Endearing. Something like that, some word he can’t name for the fond exasperation colouring his smile and his voice as he says, “Oh? And what does my house smell like?” “Hmmmmmmmmmn.” Shou makes a long noise of consideration, burrowing his nose into the fabric again. “Smells like you.”

He’s asleep again before Ritsu can even try to think of a response to that one.

He’d had to physically drag Shou away from Matsuo, who had a six pack of some godawful energy drink and some very, very bad ideas which were right up Shou’s avenue.

It feels oddly intimate, having Shou sitting across from him in a pair of faded Sonic boxer shorts on his tiny, creaky bed in his tiny, creaky dorm room. He’s cross-legged, coveting a pile of snacks he’d pillaged from the communal pantry in his lap, but he doesn’t complain when Ritsu snatches a chip from his hand every now and again. Ritsu’s been trying to keep them on-topic, but it’s difficult, when Shou’s been wound up again, and he’s bouncing off the walls. He chews thoughtfully for a moment, then asks, “Do you guys have any soda?” Ritsu sighs. “The last thing you need is more sugar.”

At that, Shou perks up, and then he’s gone, bouncing off of the bed and running to the other side of the room with a force that Ritsu thinks must’ve woken up everyone in the next three floors below them. Somehow, his pile of snacks is still on the bed, looking relatively undisturbed. He rummages around in the pockets of his backpack, dumped on top of his suitcase at the foot of Daichi’s bed, until he eventually comes up with– “Shou, no.”

Shou jumps back onto the bed, and this time, a granola bar goes flying. Shou doesn’t seem to notice, because all of his attention is on the bag of melted chocolate and broken dreams that used to be his mother’s cookies. “No, nonononono no,” Ritsu says as Shou starts to open the bag, and leans back so that he can dig his heels into Shou’s back and forcefully push him to the floor. Shou goes willingly, rolling onto his back with the cookies curled close to his chest, and giggling like a maniac. It makes him laugh in return, despite himself. “No. You eat that on Daichi’s bed, you little shit, or you get nothing.”

Shou already somehow covered in melted chocolate, scurries over to Daichi’s bed and hops on with an evil sort of grin that almost makes Ritsu feel sorry for Daichi, the poor ass. Ritsu dumps the rest of the snacks onto the floor and stretches out on his newly free bed. “As I was saying,” he begins, as if it hadn’t been twenty minutes since he’d last been derailed, “We’re looking at three apartments tomorrow, so we’ll need to leave here kind of early. I know a place we can get lunch. Most of the ones we’re looking at are pretty much fully furnished, so if we do decide on a place tomorrow, we might be able to talk the landlord into letting us sleep there tomorrow night. Especially if we can wave some money around, or whatever. If we can’t…” he sighs. “I can’t say I want to spend much more time here, but it won’t be the end of the world.” He turns his head to look at Shou. “Sound alright?” The look on Shou’s face is something Ritsu doesn’t get to see much out of him: awe. He’s staring, wide eyed and blank for a few beats before he seems to shake himself. “Yeah,” he says, firmly, and then, “Yeah, that’s…” this time, much less so. The silence hangs in the air, pensive and waiting to be filled, so Ritsu waits. Eventually, Shou rolls onto his back, staring resolutely at the ceiling. He starts. “You’re so… on top of this.” Ritsu bites back his immediate retort of ‘well, one of us has to be.’ It’s a joke, but from the vulnerable, almost reticent tone of Shou’s voice, he has the feeling it might hit a little too close to home. At a lack of response, Shou keeps going. “I guess I thought… I, I don’t know what I thought! I didn’t think I’d get this far, I didn’t think you’d agree to this in the first place! It was just some… some dumb idea I had that seemed fun in my head and you’re…” he waves his hands around in some gesture that could mean anything, that sends panic deep into Ritsu’s mind, because he’s sure that Shou is about to finish that sentence with “You’re actually taking this seriously.” What he says instead, is “...You’re actually making this work!” And then he puts voice to what Ritsu’s been thinking for almost a week now, spoken softly, like if one of them finally says it aloud, then, then is when it becomes real. “We’re really doing this.”

Ritsu breathes, “Yeah, we are.” It’s a stupid worry, really, but he can’t help but pray that this isn’t the moment Shou decides he regrets it.

“Thank you,” he says, and it’s almost painfully earnest. “I seriously don’t know how any of this stuff works, and I was just sort of going to, I don’t know, wing it? When I thought I was doing this on my own. But you’re just sort of… doing it. We’re actually looking at apartments tomorrow. And I’m…” And this time, Ritsu can’t resist the jab. “Lying on my roommate’s bed covered in chocolate?” Luckily, neither can Shou. “At least I’ll always bring the sex appeal to our duo,” he says, glancing quickly over at him with a barely veiled grin. “Hm. Debatable.” “Hey!” Ritsu makes himself turn towards Shou, after a while, propping himself up on his elbow. “It’s fine, you know. That you’re not really doing the organizing stuff.” Before he can tell himself not to, he more or less blurts, “I wouldn’t want to do it half as much if it were anyone other than you.” Shou hasn’t moved, hasn’t looked away from the ceiling above him, and Ritsu doesn’t think Shou knows he’s watching him, because the smile that spreads across his face, slowly, and then like a flashbang, like a grenade, God, it could’ve outshone the sun. Shou laughs, a small, shaky thing. “Well, someone has to provide the comic relief.”

[fostersffff]

It’s nearly the end of the year, and barring me entering some kind of wild hyper-focused fugue state, I don’t believe I’ll be finishing any more games by the 31st. So with that said, instead of doing a strictly best/worst thing, here’s a list of awards- both positive and negative- I made up to assign to games that I felt were worth talking about in some way.

The Exceeded Expectations Award

A tight race between Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Devil May Cry 5. I really don’t think anyone was expecting Three Houses to be the smash hit it would become, but the surprising and exciting E3 timeskip trailer was followed by a steady steam of promising information about the gameplay and story that wound up coalescing into fantastic experience. Ultimately, DMC5 wins out for Hideaki Itsuno making the unbelievably bold claim that the game would “exceed fans’ expectations” to an audience with the second highest expectations in the history of the industry, behind only Final Fantasy VII Remake, and then actually delivering on that claim with one of the finest action game experiences I’ve had in recent memory.

The Most Clearly Sent Out To Die Award

Daemon X Machina. It didn’t stand a chance in it’s release window and was cannibalized by its own publisher putting out like three other high profile games both before and after it. As such, this game will most likely be remembered by people thinking back to E3 2018 and going “whatever happened to that really cool mech combat game?”, and by people who did play it for the weird crossover DLC like Code Geass and The Witcher 3.

The Most Overrated Game of the Year Award

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition. Yuri Vesperia is every bit as good a character as people said he was, but if this is the peak of the “Tales” series, it’s decidedly not for me. It was honestly kind of upsetting to see that this game occupied one of my “most-played” slots on Nintendo’s "Year in Review” page instead of Valkyria Chronicles 4.

The Least Overrated Game of the Year Award

A Hat in Time. A lot of the praise I saw for this game came from people who were disappointed with Super Mario Odyssey back in 2017, and as someone who gleefully played Odyssey like five times in a row, I figured it wouldn’t resonate with me in the same way, but it’s every bit as good as people said it was. The base game was perfectly satisfying on its own, but it was an absolute treat to see how well both the Seal the Deal and Nyakuza Metro DLC turned out and how much better Gears for Breakfast got with every aspect of the game over time. The only genuine problem I have with it are the technical issues present in the Switch port, the most severe of which have been patched out at this point, and while it’s still not the optimal way to play, the issues with Hat’s Switch port didn’t really impede my enjoyment at all. Speaking of which...

The Be Careful What You Wish For Award

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. I really love the Switch both in concept and execution, and up until August of this year I was adamant that all but the most technically demanding games should try to put out a Switch port. That’s changed thanks to the Switch port of Bloodstained: it was goddamn near unplayable at launch, and even with the multiple-month-delayed SUPER PATCH, I still encountered an unacceptable number of crashes and atrocious visual glitches while dealing with a compromised-under-the-best-possible-circumstances version of the game. It was so bad I genuinely considered stopping near the end to restart on the PC version, but I soldiered on. It’s a shame too, because in terms of actual content, Bloodstained is a success story on par with A Hat in Time or Shovel Knight, but it’s gonna be a while before I give a better optimized version of the game a whirl.

The Returning Champion Award

Capcom. The four-hit combo of RE2make, Devil May Cry 5, Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, and the announcement of RE3make to close out the year following the kickoff of the Mega Man Apology Tour in 2018 firmly cements Capcom as being back after what felt like a full decade of mediocrity and disappointment across the board. Square-Enix gave them a run for their money here between Kingdom Hearts III, Dragon Quest Builders 2, Dragon Quest XI S, and Collection of Mana, but barring THE BLUNDER OF THE DECADE I think they’ve got this particular award in the bag for 2020.

The Dropped Ball Award

Super Mario Maker 2. I actually didn’t care all that much about no local multiplayer, but between that and the online multiplayer being offensively broken in terms of how awful the lag was, it seems like Nintendo let what should’ve been an evergreen Switch title flop to the ground and start gasping for air. Either that, or the original Super Mario Maker only succeeded because there was so little else to do with a Wii U. Granted, the recent Zelda update is super neat, but coming a full six months after launch with almost no fanfare when other Switch games like Splatoon 2, Mario Tennis Aces, and even Arms had more consistent post-launch support is such a strange and bad look.

The Stuck Landing Award

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. After six and a half years, Shovel Knight has delivered on all of its Kickstarter campaign promises, and while the original game and the Plague of Shadows campaign were excellent, Specter of Torment, King of Cards, and Shovel Knight Showdown all went far above and beyond what people were expecting of Yacht Club Games by creating new stages with remixed music, wildly divergent gameplay mechanics, a fully fleshed out card game, and a Smash Bros.-tier multiplayer game. It’s the only game I can think of in my entire history of playing video games where the price has gone up over time and I’ve found myself nodding in agreement.

The Still Good One Year Later After The Hype Has Faded Award

Mega Man 11. Still excellent!

The Achievements In Localization Award

Another tight race, this time between Collection of Mana in recognition of Square-Enix deciding to localize a 23 year old game from scratch when a total remake is coming out in less than a year’s time, Judgment for having two separate scripts for the English dub and the Japanese dub’s subtitles, and Trails of Cold Steel III for NISA doing a genuinely terrific job that had no obvious cut corners in a game with this much text that was consistent with the naming conventions established by an entirely different localization company, even hiring back like 99% of the other company’s voice cast. Despite all of that praise for NISA, this one goes to Judgment for what I hope will become a standard in the industry.

The Worst Ending and Voice Acting Award

While I appreciate how committed to the joke WayForward was, the ending of River City Girls gets worse the further away I get from it, especially since they could’ve actually alleviated so many problems with one extra line of dialogue from Hasebe and/or Mami about how they were the ones who “abducted” Kunio and Riki (by sending them to the spa) and that they also sent the text that kicks of the plot just to fuck with Misako and Kyoko. Also: in general, don’t hire e-celebs to do voicework for your project if they are not actual voice actors, either by trade or by aspiration. At least most of them were kept to shopkeeper cameos, but I’ll never understand the decision to cast Big Capital-“Oi” Irish Brogue Jacksepticeye as recurring character Godai other than “CLOUT PLEASE”.

The Best Ending and Voice Acting Award

Dragon Quest XI S. This game should be front and center when conversations come up about having to earn a happy ending, because the ending you get when the credits roll is perfectly satisfactory... but you can do better. And not only can you do better, you can get what is effectively the most perfect ending that can be in the entire history of Dragon Quest as a gaming franchise, which sounds like a dramatic overstatement until you see it. And, to contrast the previous award, I really appreciate how DQXI’s voice cast didn’t include anyone I was familiar with and thus I never had the experience of “oh shit it’s x from y”, but this award exists in particular for Serena’s voice actress, Jessica Clark, and her reading of the line “I hate to ask, but would you mind awfully not going anywhere for a little while? I think I’m going to cry...”

The Most Wrong I Ever Was About A Story Award

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered. For years, I thoughtlessly regurgitated the opinion that “parts of FF8 are good, but it’s definitely a bad game with a lame romance and Squall is a terrible protagonist” based on the memory of playing the demo as a child and enjoying it, but seeing the internet at large bash it without mercy. I was wrong, because not only is it not bad, the central romance is totally compelling and Squall has become my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist, in the very same year that I finally also played Final Fantasy VII and came to terms with the fact that Cloud has been good all along, actually.

The 2019 Was A Ridiculously Good Year For Games In General Because I Didn’t Actually Play It That Much Despite The First Game Being My GOTY 2016 And This Game Is An Improvement In Every Single Possible Way Award

Dragon Quest Builders 2. I cannot believe how little of DQB2 I’ve played! And it’s so good!

[avecorviidae]

Fic: Aubade - Chapter Five

Fandom: Mob Psycho 100 Rating: M Relationship(s): Kageyama Ritsu/Suzuki Shou Word Count: 4703

Ao3 Link

There were six trains leaving Seasoning Station on the day they set off: two in the morning, and four in the afternoon.

Ritsu had immediately and vehemently vetoed the 6 AM train, whereas Shou had objected to taking another night train, on the grounds that he couldn’t sleep on trains at all, and he needed Ritsu awake to keep him company, so that had ruled out the two trains leaving after 6 PM. They’d both been kind of iffy about the early-afternoonish trains, knowing they were the most likely to have families and tourists and the like.

So, their little group had ended up huddled together on the platform, waiting sleepily for the 9 AM train to pull in.

Ritsu’s parents had said their goodbyes the night before at the house, so it’s just Mob, Teru, and Reigen who’ve shown up to send them off at the station. As usual, their group is receiving some odd looks from the sparse groups of people scattered around the station, although every employee they’ve met has recognized Reigen and Mob on sight.

Shou is, Ritsu thinks, not actually awake. Oh, sure, he’s standing, and he’d showered and gotten dressed and dragged luggage behind him on the walk, but he hasn’t actually formed a coherent sentence yet, and he’s been leaning on Ritsu more and more heavily for about the past five minutes. He has no less than three times flipped off Teru, who actually had the nerve to jog ahead of them to the station, is wearing neon pink running shorts, and is drinking something that looks like shit and smells like the ghost of bananas past.

Reigen, for what feels like the thousandth time, starts to drill Ritsu. “You have your phone? Your wallet?” “Yes, of course.” “Your chargers?” “Yeah, we-- wait.” It’s always worth double-checking the chargers. He leans down and partially unzips one of the pockets of the suitcase at his feet, and finding a horrifically tangled ball of two phone chargers and two laptop chargers exactly where they’d been when he’d last checked three minutes ago, nods. “Got the chargers.” Reigen still looks dissatisfied. Between his supply checks and Mob’s constant drifting back and forth from where the train schedule is posted, Ritsu thinks that the two of them are going to worrywart each other into a full blown panic. “Do you have your passport?” Ritsu blinks in confusion. “My passpo– Dad, we’re not fleeing the country!”

“Not yet!” Reigen replies, waving his arms frantically as if this is a legitimate possibility that Ritsu should’ve prepared for. He snorts and doesn’t reply, instead opting to mull over what’s more likely to get someone from his family deported from the country: Reigen’s scam business, or Teru’s fashion choices. While, sure, aspects of Reigen’s business are technically illegal, Teru’s outfits are simply in bad taste.

They hear the train before they see it, a distant chugging that breaks through the annoying bird noises and the vague chatter of the other people at the station. Around them, Ritsu sees most of the other people waiting on the platform straighten up, readjust their backpacks and jackets, start shifting around in anticipation. Surprisingly, Shou’s the same, pulling himself away from Ritsu’s side and blinking around them, looking fully awake for the first time that morning. Ritsu pushes down the handle on his little wheely case and hefts it onto his back, reaching out to take the larger suitcase from Mob. He’s not sure how he ended up carrying the most stuff, considering that out of the three bags they’ve brought, most of the stuff inside of them belongs to Shou. While Ritsu had only grabbed the bare necessities and a few jackets and shirts from his room, packing up Shou’s belongings had been a goddamn ordeal, including doing three loads of laundry from his already packed suitcase, and a two-hour long argument about whether or not it was appropriate to bring an entire desk lamp on a new move.

(“It’s my oldest friend!” Shou had argued, trying to wrestle it from Ritsu’s hands. “Six years I have known you, Suzuki, and never once has there been a working bulb in this lamp.”) Ritsu is eternally grateful that he doesn’t have a family that sobs as they send him off somewhere. The sadness he’s feeling is familiar, a pre-emptive homesickness that sinks into his stomach, makes him want to look around and take everything in so that he’ll remember the exact details of Seasoning City forever, makes him want to call the whole thing off and just stay home. Mob is smiling though, just a little, when he pulls him in for a hug, and all he feels from the aura that envelops him is warmth. “Be safe,” he murmurs into Ritsu’s shoulder. “Text me when you get there.” He receives quick but back-breaking hugs from Teru and Reigen that leave him gasping for air, but he finds that Shou got the short end of the Farewell Stick, because he looks over to see Mob giving him a hug that has him flailing with his feet a good few inches off the ground.

Reigen ushers them onto the train before they can be idiots and miss it, and Shou half climbs over Ritsu in the seats to wave out of the windows as the train starts to move. A quick jolt sends Shou sprawling, and it’s only bracing himself between the table and Ritsu’s shoulder that stops him from whacking his head on the window. Ritsu’s laughing even as he pushes Shou out of his lap, trying to get him to sit in his own goddamn seat for, oh, two minutes? Admittedly, there’s been an odd feeling of dread tinging his excitement, keeping him subdued over the past few days as they planned. It was the lingering worry that even though their plans, their situation, was becoming more and more concrete, that it wouldn’t actually happen. That some intangible, nonexistent problem would suddenly pop up and stop everything. He feels it settle, dissipate. He watches Shou move into the seats on the other side of the table, settling with his back against the window and his legs stretched out in front of him, and thinks, We’re actually doing this. It sounds almost stupidly awed to his own mind, and it’s threatening to put a giddy sort of smile on his face, and he manages to tamp down on it only because he knows that if Shou notices, he’ll ask about it, which will eventually lead to Ritsu being forced to admit that he’s feeling things, which, well, no.

Shou, for his part, manages to stay quiet and relatively still for all of three minutes before he starts fidgeting. He pulls out his phone, but seems to think better of it, because he puts it down in favour of looking over at Ritsu. “Can I borrow your phone?” On autopilot, he reaches into his pocket to hand it over, but stops himself. “Why…?” He asks, squinting, knowing he probably doesn’t want to know the answer. Shou leans over the table, making grabby hands at the phone, pouting when Ritsu moves his hand so that it’s just out of his reach. “Please? It’ll be funnier if I do it on yours!” On one hand, Shou’s desperation is kind of hilarious, and Ritsu isn’t sure he wants to know exactly what he’s planning. On the other hand, he’s got another ten hours on this train, and if he doesn’t give in now, Shou will literally carry on at him the entire time until he does. With a resigned sigh, he hands his phone over, and then groans when Shou immediately points it at him, obviously taking pictures. Instinctively, he flips Shou off, sending him a death glare, before looking at the camera and throwing up a peace sign with dead eyes. He relaxes when Shou finally puts the phone down and starts tapping away at the screen, and contents himself with staring out the window until Shou breaks the silence. “What the fuck is a Shigeo?” He asks, incredulous. Ritsu reaches out to try and snatch the phone back from Shou. “It’s my brother, you fuck, what are you sending to him?” Shou holds the phone out of his reach, contorting himself so that he can keep typing with it held above his head. Finally, he finishes and hands it back to Ritsu with a self-satisfied grin. Like the cat that got the cream, he thinks, and then two moments later, Oh god, what did he do. He taps in his passcode and finds his messaging app already open. TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) [Picture Attached] [Picture Attached] we r. on the fuckin train.

FROM: DAD Language.

FROM: SHIGEO Be safe!!! <33

FROM: TERUKI Don’t look up anything inappropriate on his phone or he might kill you ;p

TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) wow r00d TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) I have my phone back. ignore him entirely.

FROM: YOUR FAVOURITE ;) WOW R00D

-

Shou, when he’s jetlagged at least, is a little like a windup toy.

He’ll run around at the speed of sound for a while, and talk your ear off given half the chance, but after a while he starts to grow noticeably… slower. Of course, he’ll protest the fact, still make a decent imitation of a hyperactive kitten, but all in all, it grows more sluggish until finally, inevitably, he keels over.

On the train? He doesn’t even last an hour. It’s easy to get drawn into a conversation with Shou, even easier to let him jump from topic to topic as something new strikes his fancy, and so Ritsu learns about Shou’s year overseas in a patchwork of unrelated information, one minute hearing about the godawful coffee served by this one particular Korean hotel, and the next about some strange western kids’ cartoon he’d seen at some ungodly hour of the morning. It’s always a fun little game with this, trying to piece together the snippets of information like puzzle pieces, except he’s working with about three different puzzles, and he can’t find any edge pieces. In this state, waving his arms around wildly to emphasize his points and cutting himself off every other sentence, Ritsu thinks it’s basically impossible to get a coherent story out of Shou. The probability goes even further down when Shou pauses mid-sentence to yawn. Ritsu finds himself yawning in response, but he manages to ask around it, “You tired?” Shou snorts. “Pff, nah. I’m great. I slept for like, seven hours yesterday.” Now, Ritsu, because he actually wanted to be awake in time to, oh, catch the train, had gone to bed at a half-decent time the previous night. He had, however, woken up for the bathroom at some point, and he knows for a fact that Shou is rather generously rounding up from not much more than three. While Shou looks awake, it’s a bad sort of awake, an ‘I really should be sleeping now oh god’ sort of awake, an ‘I am awake out of sheer determination not to be asleep’ sort of awake, the type of slow-blinking, faux-happy sort of awake that Ritsu forces after he’s just pulled an all-nighter for an essay. God, at least he’s usually had coffee or cereal or something. Shou, with a bad tendency to get nauseous in the mornings, hadn’t so much as been able to touch the water Ritsu had offered, let alone the leftover smoothie Teru had tried to shove in his face.

He tugs a jacket out of his bag and hands it over wordlessly. Shou eyes it for a moment, like a deer liable to be spooked, before reaching out and snatching it from him. There are a few moments of adjustments before he settles, arms folded on the table and the hoodie bundled on top of it as a pillow. Ritsu sees him blink heavily for a little before his eyes fall closed, and then he’s out like a light. He’s vaguely disturbed by how quickly Shou manages to fall asleep, especially in a weird position like that. Sure, he’d managed it back in high school, when his only options for quick naps had been to rest his head on the desk or risk it falling out of his cupped hands when he nodded off. Still, it had always left him stiff and vaguely sick, his stomach protesting being bent over in the single laziest yoga position in existence for any length of time. So, he doesn’t really understand why it’s Shou’s first choice, when there’s a perfectly good window right there. For his part, Ritsu isn’t quite drowsy enough to sleep, so he messes around on his phone for a while, switching from app to app until it buzzes with an email. FROM: gcuhousing@gcustaff.org TO: r-kageyama@gcustudent.org

Mr. Kageyama,

This email is to inform you that we have received your notification of residence change.

You will be required to vacate your dormitory at least one (1) week prior to the beginning of the new academic year, on June 30th. You must notify the University’s department of Student Housing within three (3) days of your vacating your dormitory. The department of Student Housing can be reached at +81-429-884915 .

Ritsu leans back and pulls one knee to his chest, sighing.

This was what it came down to, really, actually finding a place to live. Somewhere within walking distance of the university, with four walls, a roof, and a floor, two bedrooms, working plumbing, and included appliances. It seemed impossible. This, he had thought, this is where it will all come crashing down. And yet. They’d spent most of yesterday looking at online listings, emailing and calling landlords, setting up viewings. The less time spent in Ritsu’s dorm, the better, after all. They’d actually had to narrow down their choices, from ten to seven to about four or five places that they both agreed looked promising. He decides he might as well get something productive done while he’s here, and starts to tap out an email. FROM: kageyamaritsu@hotmail.com TO: nishigori-k77@yahoo.com

Mr. Nishigori, My name is Kageyama Ritsu; we spoke a few days ago on the phone, about a possible tour of your apartment on Amaranth Street. My friend and I will be in town later tonight, and were hoping to set up a time as soon as possible. We would greatly appreciate if you could give us a set of times that work for your schedule over the next couple of days. Thank you for your time,

Kageyama Ritsu +81-9064625949

He sends a couple more emails along those lines, even gets a couple of replies, before it suddenly hits him again, this light, giddy feeling, like his heart is filled with helium and it’s trying to float into his throat. We’re actually doing this, he thinks, and stifles a vaguely hysterical giggle.

On instinct, he gives a cursory sweep of the train to make sure that nobody actually noticed the weirdo laughing to himself. Thankfully, the only other people in the compartment with them are a small family that seem to be occupying themselves with some travel game, the kind of “what can you see out of the window” tactic that his parents employed on him and Mob when they were kids in the car, and then a few more people scattered around in individual seats, either occupied by their own phones or fast asleep.

He’d shrugged on a thin hoodie this morning, to face the early morning chill as they walked to the station, but now that the sun has properly risen he finds himself uncomfortably warm and vaguely sweaty. He pulls it off, leaving it bunched at his back, and notes with absent interest that they’re driving through a forest of some sort. For the most part, the sun only manages to break through the foliage in bits and pieces, painting the compartment in shadowed, dappled greens. Occasionally though, there’ll be a gap in the trees allowing the sun to hit him. Right in the eyes. Inevitably, they chug past the forest, and Ritsu is left completely defenseless against the ball of burning hellfire in the sky. He tries holding his hand in the exact position needed to block it out, but, well, his arm gets tired pretty quickly. He tries draping his hoodie over his head, but the cavern of black fabric gets too hot to breathe in pretty quickly, and Ritsu has little-to-no interest in becoming a baked potato. He’s pretty sure this is a decent argument as to why they should’ve taken the night train, but whatever, he can’t really be bothered to wake Shou up to make a point.

Heaving a greatly put-upon sigh, he stands, steadying himself on the table. He grabs Shou’s backpack from the spare seat and chucks it unceremoniously across to where he was just sitting, and plops down beside Shou. Now that the sun isn’t making a concerted effort at blinding him, he can see the light glinting off of Shou’s hair, lighting it up like some sort of precious metal. There are a lot of dust motes floating around his head.

-

Shou only wakes up once in the next six or so hours, and then only briefly. By the three and a half hour mark, Ritsu has done everything he can think of to keep himself occupied, including looking for shapes in the clouds, doing terrible little stick figure doodles in his notebook, doing what little he can without wifi on his laptop (about fifty seven games of solitare, not that he’s keeping track,) and a short-lived and incredibly uncomfortable nap. He feels like he should be able to sleep, given the easy, lazy warmth of the train, given how easily Shou has been able to slip into it, the soft lines of his shoulders in his white shirt rising and falling as he breathes, blending seamlessly with the almost ethereal summer light.

He’d managed to entertain himself with his phone, for a little while, but once it had hit less than half battery he’d decided to turn it off and definitely not think about it at all, in case he needed to use it for something actually important.

So, he half jumps out of his skin when it starts vibrating like mad in his back pocket. He fumbles with it until he can see that Matsuo is calling him.

“Hey! Kageyama! My bro! Rumor around here is that you’re ditching us, bro!” Ritsu forces himself to bite back ‘I’m not your bro, bro,’ instead deciding on a polite, “Hello, Matsuo. Yes, I’m moving out.” “Ha, dude, nice! Did you score with some chick? Are you actually moving in with your girl? You always seemed like a player, bro!” Ritsu squints. How in the fuck would I strike anyone as a player? A movement to his left draws his attention, and he looks over to see Shou stirring, propping himself up on one elbow to blink blearily at Ritsu. There are red lines in the pattern of the hoodie fabric all over his cheek, and Ritsu has to hold back a laugh at the knockoff Two-Face vibes. He waves dismissively at Shou’s questioning look, a sort of ‘tell you in a minute’ kind of gesture that he hopes Shou understands. “Yeah, about that,” he starts, unsure how to breach the topic. “I’m actually moving in with a friend of mine, but he just got back from overseas, so neither of us actually have a place yet. Is it cool if he sleeps on the couch for the next couple of days, until we’re good?”

“Ha, I can do you one better, bro! Daichi’s still chillin’ with his girlfriend until the end of break, so your dude can just crash in his bed instead!” A pause, and then, “...Yo, Kageyama, is this buddy of yours the one that drank five Red Bulls when you were skyping him, like, to prove that he could?” Ritsu sighs. Naturally, Matsuo has his priorities straight. “Yes. Yes it is.” “Tell him I said hi, yo. He’s hardcore.” A hardcore dumbass, Ritsu thinks, but what manages to come out of his mouth is, “Will do. Thanks, Matsuo.” “Anytime, bro!” As soon as he hangs up he turns to Shou, who’s back at it with the questioning eyes in full force. He’s not quite upright anymore, having slipped downwards so that his head is half-pillowed between the crook of his elbow and the hoodie. Ritsu shakes his head, summarizing. “Just my roommate. He wanted to know if I was actually leaving. Also, Daichi’s gone, so you can take his bed until we get a place.” Shou nods, which is an action really more to the effect of rubbing his face against the jacket, but Ritsu gets the general idea.

“Daichi’s the one you sleep with, right?” He murmurs. “Again, phrasing, but yeah, he’s in my room. I emailed a few of the landlords for the places we were looking at, so hopefully we can decide within a couple days what we’re–” He interrupts himself, in favour of asking the real questions. “Are you… alright? Shou has buried his face entirely in the hoodie. Ritsu isn’t sure exactly how he can be breathing. After a few moments of complete silence, Shou turns his head back to face him. “Not to be creepy, but this jacket smells like your house. It’s. It’s good.”

Ritsu blinks, raises one eyebrow. He feels like he maybe should find that creepy, but it’s not the weirdest thing Shou has ever said to him, and in this state, delirious and actually nuzzling his jacket, it’s almost… is cute the right word for it? Flattering, maybe. Endearing. Something like that, some word he can’t name for the fond exasperation colouring his smile and his voice as he says, “Oh? And what does my house smell like?” “Hmmmmmmmmmn.” Shou makes a long noise of consideration, burrowing his nose into the fabric again. “Smells like you.”

He’s asleep again before Ritsu can even try to think of a response to that one.

-

He’d had to physically drag Shou away from Matsuo, who had a six pack of some godawful energy drink and some very, very bad ideas which were right up Shou’s avenue.

It feels oddly intimate, having Shou sitting across from him in a pair of faded Sonic boxer shorts on his tiny, creaky bed in his tiny, creaky dorm room. He’s cross-legged, coveting a pile of snacks he’d pillaged from the communal pantry in his lap, but he doesn’t complain when Ritsu snatches a chip from his hand every now and again. Ritsu’s been trying to keep them on-topic, but it’s difficult, when Shou’s been wound up again, and he’s bouncing off the walls. He chews thoughtfully for a moment, then asks, “Do you guys have any soda?” Ritsu sighs. “The last thing you need is more sugar.”

At that, Shou perks up, and then he’s gone, bouncing off of the bed and running to the other side of the room with a force that Ritsu thinks must’ve woken up everyone in the next three floors below them. Somehow, his pile of snacks is still on the bed, looking relatively undisturbed. He rummages around in the pockets of his backpack, dumped on top of his suitcase at the foot of Daichi’s bed, until he eventually comes up with– “Shou, no.”

Shou jumps back onto the bed, and this time, a granola bar goes flying. Shou doesn’t seem to notice, because all of his attention is on the bag of melted chocolate and broken dreams that used to be his mother’s cookies. “No, nonononono no,” Ritsu says as Shou starts to open the bag, and leans back so that he can dig his heels into Shou’s back and forcefully push him to the floor. Shou goes willingly, rolling onto his back with the cookies curled close to his chest, and giggling like a maniac. It makes him laugh in return, despite himself. “No. You eat that on Daichi’s bed, you little shit, or you get nothing.”

Shou already somehow covered in melted chocolate, scurries over to Daichi’s bed and hops on with an evil sort of grin that almost makes Ritsu feel sorry for Daichi, the poor ass. Ritsu dumps the rest of the snacks onto the floor and stretches out on his newly free bed.

“As I was saying,” he begins, as if it hadn’t been twenty minutes since he’d last been derailed, “We’re looking at three apartments tomorrow, so we’ll need to leave here kind of early. I know a place we can get lunch. Most of the ones we’re looking at are pretty much fully furnished, so if we do decide on a place tomorrow, we might be able to talk the landlord into letting us sleep there tomorrow night. Especially if we can wave some money around, or whatever. If we can’t…” he sighs. “I can’t say I want to spend much more time here, but it won’t be the end of the world.” He turns his head to look at Shou. “Sound alright?” The look on Shou’s face is something Ritsu doesn’t get to see much out of him: awe. He’s staring, wide eyed and blank for a few beats before he seems to shake himself. “Yeah,” he says, firmly, and then, “Yeah, that’s…” this time, much less so. The silence hangs in the air, pensive and waiting to be filled, so Ritsu waits. Eventually, Shou rolls onto his back, staring resolutely at the ceiling. He starts. “You’re so… on top of this.” Ritsu bites back his immediate retort of ‘well, one of us has to be.’ It’s a joke, but from the vulnerable, almost reticent tone of Shou’s voice, he has the feeling it might hit a little too close to home. At a lack of response, Shou keeps going. “I guess I thought… I, I don’t know what I thought! I didn’t think I’d get this far, I didn’t think you’d agree to this in the first place! It was just some… some dumb idea I had that seemed fun in my head and you’re…” he waves his hands around in some gesture that could mean anything, that sends panic deep into Ritsu’s mind, because he’s sure that Shou is about to finish that sentence with “You’re actually taking this seriously.” What he says instead, is “...You’re actually making this work!” And then he puts voice to what Ritsu’s been thinking for almost a week now, spoken softly, like if one of them finally says it aloud, then, then is when it becomes real. “We’re really doing this.”

Ritsu breathes, “Yeah, we are.” It’s a stupid worry, really, but he can’t help but pray that this isn’t the moment Shou decides he regrets it.

“Thank you,” he says, and it’s almost painfully earnest. “I seriously don’t know how any of this stuff works, and I was just sort of going to, I don’t know, wing it? When I thought I was doing this on my own. But you’re just sort of… doing it. We’re actually looking at apartments tomorrow. And I’m…” And this time, Ritsu can’t resist the jab. “Lying on my roommate’s bed covered in chocolate?” Luckily, neither can Shou. “At least I’ll always bring the sex appeal to our duo,” he says, glancing quickly over at him with a barely veiled grin. “Hm. Debatable.” “Hey!” Ritsu makes himself turn towards Shou, after a while, propping himself up on his elbow. “It’s fine, you know. That you’re not really doing the organizing stuff.” Before he can tell himself not to, he more or less blurts, “I wouldn’t want to do it half as much if it were anyone other than you.” Shou hasn’t moved, hasn’t looked away from the ceiling above him, and Ritsu doesn’t think Shou knows he’s watching him, because the smile that spreads across his face, slowly, and then like a flashbang, like a grenade, God, it could’ve outshone the sun. Shou laughs, a small, shaky thing. “Well, someone has to provide the comic relief.”

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5 Theories That Make Famously Bad Movies Awesome

Bad movies are everywhere — in theaters, on TV, and we’re reasonably sure that terrible script ideas constantly hover around Michael Bay like cartoon stink lines. But while it’s easy to shit all over these films, let’s take an affirmative approach for a change. If you use a heaping helping of positive thinking, some cinematic turds can become cinematic gold. Or, at the very least, semi-watchable. For example …

5

Aliens Aren’t The Real Bad Guys In The Alien Movies — It’s AI

Alien: Covenant, which came out this past summer, isn’t good. Even after audiences laughed at Prometheus for having a team of scientists act like Camp Crystal Lake counselors, Covenant somehow made its characters even stupider. People willingly shove their faces into slimy monster eggs and have steamy shower sex despite the fact that all their friends have been murdered. And remember how people criticized the Prometheus guys for recklessly taking off their space helmets on an uncharted planet? The Covenant crew throw on nothing but some windbreakers and floppy hats, as if their expedition is sponsored by J. Crew.

20th Century FoxWhich explains why they’d risk everything to find the source of a fucking John Denver song.

What’s interesting about the movie, though, is that it’s establishing an elaborate creation mythology for the Alien series. It’s basically a Bible story with vagina dentata monsters. Our first clue that things are about to get Biblical is that the ship is named Covenant, as in a pact with God, and it has an Ark-like load of couples to populate a new world. Also in the not-so-subtle Biblical allusions camp, James Franco is seemingly Space Jesus.

20th Century FoxWe regret to inform you that a Sony executive read that joke and greenlit Space Jesus, featuring James Franco.

The movie was originally subtitled Paradise Lost, a reference to John Milton’s epic poem about Satan and the Fall of Man. Despite the name change, a lot of that’s still in the movie. The android David rebelled against his human creators in Prometheus. By the time of Covenant, he’s killed all the Engineers, aka the alien species that genetically manufactured the human race. So yeah, David has killed “God” two times over, and has cobbled together an entire army of gross-out monsters, as Satan generally requires an army of high-grade slobs.

But more interesting than simply dabbling in familiar theological themes is the way this movie, in a sense, becomes a sacred text for the original Alien. If you think back, the villain of that film wasn’t even really the alien — it was Ash the android, and to a lesser extent Mother, the ship’s computer which was presumably from Apple’s “Uncomfortably Oedipal” line of future operating systems.

20th Century Fox

20th Century FoxYou know Ash was made by Apple too, because his innards are a bunch of needlessly confusing proprietary cables.

With Covenant, we get to see the crazy ancestry behind that conflict. Ash is likely a descendant of David, who genetically engineered that black Flubber stuff into the alien in the first place.

20th Century FoxSo yeah, the movies are less Alien, more Handsome Robot Space Satan.

So the events of Alien aren’t merely an incredible screw-up on the part of a space mining company; they’re another example of AI trying to eradicate humanity with the alien, which we now see is a decades-old conflict. Also, if we view Alien as the primary story, and Prometheus and Covenant as religious texts, their crazy, nonsensical tone makes a little more sense. Which is why robot Michael Fassbender made out with another robot Fassbender. Exactly like in the Bible.

4

The Star Wars Prequels Are Far Better When You Realize The Jedi Are Supposed To Suck

We’ve certainly said some harsh things about the Star Wars prequel trilogy in the past, most of which involved the words “steaming” and “pile.” But you know what? Let’s go in a different direction for a moment and *takes a moment to regain composure* … defend the prequels.

We all know the trilogy’s flaws — the movies feel like a high school drama class was inexplicably green-screened into Narnia. Part of the reason we all may have bristled at Episode I is that the Jedi we were so excited to finally see in action were kind of awful. They were dull, judgy douchebags, pretty much the intergalactic equivalent of the Shark Tank investors.

Lucasfilm“A Padawan without even one ponytail? Get this filth out of our sight.”

But the story makes a little more sense when you realize that the Jedi are supposed to be flawed. It’s an organization about to topple for a good reason. As Professor Joshua Sikora points out in a documentary all about defending the prequels, the biggest character arcs in the trilogy belong to Yoda and Obi-Wan, and you might not have even noticed it.

In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon whisks Anakin away from his home in Tatooine and his single mom, who has to stay behind and remain a slave. Quite messed up stuff for a series that was once about partying with teddy bears.

Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm“Sorry, your mom can’t come to our massive Jedi temple with us. We already have a cleaning person, you see.”

At first, it seems like some crazy anomaly, as if Qui-Gon is the black sheep of the Jedi who keeps luring small children away from their homes … until we realize that this is what the Jedi do. Yanking kids away from families is business as usual for them. That way, they can train the little tykes free of the distractions of love or home-cooked meals or rage-fueled political conversations.

LucasfilmEveryone who knew this was going on and didn’t call Coruscant CPS is a monster.

In case you didn’t notice, this doesn’t go well. The Jedi’s sloppy methods end up creating Space Hitler, and most of them get murdered. Here’s the pivotal moment: At the end of Revenge Of The Sith, Luke and Leia are born. They’re the twin offspring of the Galaxy’s most midichlorian-filled individual. If anyone could be trained, it’s these two. But Yoda and Obi-Wan realize they totally fucked up. So in the end, to balance things out and make things right, they do the opposite of what they did in Episode I: They return a child to Tatooine.

Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm“Watch over him you must, without leaving his side. Unless a spinoff prequel otherwise requires.”

The final shots of the movie show us that the best place for a child is with a loving family … as opposed to, you know, space wizard cults. George Lucas himself has adopted three kids, so the message of prequels is ultimately a personal one. Of course, the twin who ended up at a desolate dirt farm instead of a goddamn royal palace kind of got the short end of the stick.

Lucasfilm

LucasfilmDon’t worry, all the parental figures ended up dead, so it evens out.

3

Showgirls Is Filled With Mind-Boggling Symbolism

One of the most maligned movies of all time, the erotic drama Showgirls stars Elizabeth Berkley from Saved By The Bell and co-stars the death of every Saved By The Bell fan’s childhood innocence.

United ArtistsThe song she strips to was originally “I’m So Excited.”

But did Showgirls get an unfairly bad rap? At least one person thinks so. Critic Adam Nayman wrote a whole book about how underrated Showgirls is, and he makes some damn good points. For one thing, the sex-filled movie is also full of thematically consistent references to mirrors and doubles, as if Alfred Hitchcock got a gig at Cinemax.

When we first meet our protagonist Nomi, we immediately see that she aspires to become the lead dancer, Cristal, played by Gina Gershon. Nomi’s quest to become a different person is played out in the movie’s mirroring theme. When she first sees Cristal dance, she imitates her movements from the audience.

United Artists

United Artists

The movie is also full of literal mirrors. Whole conversations occur during which people are looking at each other’s reflections:

United Artists

United Artists

United ArtistsLooking at themselves in the mirror was a little more challenging, though.

The movie is also a mirror of itself, opening with Nomi hitchhiking into Vegas and ending with her leaving. She even gets picked up by the same guy:

United Artists

United Artists

United Artists

United ArtistsHe left town because he didn’t find the lost buttons to his shirt.

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5 Painfully Stupid Movie Reboot Ideas The World Nearly Got

The character’s names also feed into this theme. “Cristal” refers to crystal, which obviously is a reflective surface, and “Nomi” should clue us into the existential dilemma of our hero, because her name sounds like “no me.” Yeah, and we’re only getting started. The movie also gets surprisingly meta. We all went into this thinking it was contrived to arouse straight men in the age of 56kb/s internet modems, but what happens in the third act? There’s not only a horrifying rape scene, but Nomi is also forced to go full Charles Bronson, avenging her friend and roundhouse-kicking the shit out of the rapist.

United Artists

United Artists“This is for flaking on the Bayside Math Olympics! Wait, what movie am I in?”

Nomi is rejecting the toxic masculinity that we all thought was part and parcel of, well, Showgirls. She finds herself by breaking the confines of a two-dimensional character, and in the end, essentially decides to leave her own damn movie. Metaphorically, that’s represented by her leaving Las Vegas, but to make it even clearer, the final shot is of her on a billboard that looks suspiciously like a movie advertisement:

United ArtistsThat’s right, Showgirls is the story of a Showgirls character realizing she doesn’t want to be in Showgirls.

2

The Happening Is About The Societal Pressures Around Starting A Family

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening told the terrifying story of an epidemic of suicides, made all the more terrifying by the fact that the person in charge of untangling this killer problem is the founder of Wahlburgers. It’s a stupid-as-hell thriller that almost killed the director’s career. But what if it was supposed to be dumb? And what if, even in its dumbness, The Happening was all an elaborate allegory for the pressure to form a conventional family unit? Like American Beauty, but with more people being run over by lawnmowers.

Mark Wahlberg plays a high school science teacher, the kind whose lectures sound like a confused frat boy trying to quote Bill Nye. More to the point, he plays the part with the kind of annoying “Oh jeez” optimism you’d expect from a 1950s matinee idol … which seems intentional. Why else dress the star of Boogie Nights in one of Urkel’s sweater vests?

20th Century FoxYou can tell which students have seen his rap videos because they can’t make eye contact.

As the B-movie plot progresses, so does the camp value. In one hilarious moment, a woman busts out an iPhone to show Wahlberg footage of a lion tamer feeding himself to the lion as if it’s a YouTube cat video. Which it technically sort of is.

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

20th Century FoxThen they watch a dubstep remix of the same thing.

To truly appreciate The Happening, we need to pull apart its two metaphorical layers. The first is the more obvious environmental one. It turns out that the trees and plants are responding to humanity’s decimation of the Earth by releasing a toxin that kills us off, specifically in areas with nuclear facilities. This in itself is a throwback to the B-movies of the ’50s and ’60s, which took fears of atomic power and turned them into genre terrors.

20th Century FoxToday, instead of nuclear plants, the all-killing menace would be “Millennials.”

And it doesn’t get any more ridiculous than the fact that the movie’s villain is a slight breeze — less the stuff of Hollywood wide releases, and more like if a group of teenagers tried to make a horror movie using stock footage from a nature documentary.

20th Century Fox

20th Century FoxAnd not that good Planet Earth shit.

Then there’s a secondary theme: that of the pressures of marriage and family. We learn that Wahlberg and his wife, played by Zooey Deschanel, have been fighting over whether or not to have a baby. When the “happening” happens, they’re forced to go through the paces of the life of a “traditional” married couple. What’s their first move? Get out of the city and head to the suburbs. And then they have a kid! They take care their friend’s daughter after he dies.

20th Century Fox“And by ‘us,’ I mean specifically the white people.”

Then they go house-hunting, a theme underscored by the fact that the first place where they seek shelter is a model home for sale.

20th Century FoxThey tragically bypass the DeLorean stashed behind the sign.

They end up having to go live with a crazy old lady — which seems out of nowhere in the plot of the movie, but in terms of this metaphor, she is a surrogate senile parent they have to tend to later in life.

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox“We’ll just send you away so we don’t have to watch you slowly die!”

And how do they eventually win? They stop giving a shit about the toxic air, and instead of separating (the working theory on how to avoid the toxin), the couple come together and the deaths magically stop. It’s as if the ’50s-era horror story was pushing these two into embracing ’50s-era values. In the final scene, we see that they’ve decided to embrace their marriage, have a baby, and presumably spend their remaining Saturdays bickering with each other at Costco. Otherwise the world’s plants will murder them.

1

Batman v. Superman Is All About King Arthur

Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice is a crazy mess of a movie, from its depiction of the Dark Knight branding criminals like a cattle rancher to a Superman who broods like a 13-year-old whose parents won’t let him go see My Chemical Romance. But you can kind of appreciate it more when you understand where Zack Snyder is coming from. Specifically, Camelot.

Apparently, one of Snyder’s favorite movies of all time is the 1980s King Arthur flick Excalibur — aka that movie in which Helen Mirren is a dry-ice-filled sorceress. In fact, Batman v. Superman signals that the epic sword-and-sorcery movie is going to be an influence right off the bat (pun not intended) by showing Excalibur in the very first scene, on the marquee at AMC’s less-popular Crime Alley location.

Warner Bros. Pictures“Half-price on matinee shows! DISCLAIMER: You’ll definitely get murdered.”

Knowing that Excalibur, a film full of villainous plotting and insane dream sequences, is the touchstone here really helps you acclimatize to the movie’s tone. Not only does the movie’s broad, melodramatic story and multitude of prophetic dreams start to make a little more sense, but the references get even more explicit. In the end, Batman becomes a literal knight in armor:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. PicturesWay to drop the ball by not including Bat-Horse, Snyder.

And Batman pulling a glowy green sword out of some stone also comes straight out of Excalibur.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. PicturesTheory: Everyone who couldn’t pull it out is a distant Kryptonian descendant.

Lois Lane has to later retrieve the Kryptonite spear, because she’s a stand-in for the Lady in the Lake. (And hey, they even have the same initials, more or less.)

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. PicturesThis also probably explains why the movie feels the need to show us Lois in a bathtub at one point.

As discussed on Entertainment Weekly‘s podcast, Excalibur (the sword) is ultimately used to slay the true enemy, with the hero impaling themselves to get to the bad guy, which is almost exactly what happens at the end of Batman v. Superman:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. PicturesIf Arthur had been tussling with a hulking CGI Ninja Turtle on meth, the comparison would have been perfect.

You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter, or check out the podcast Rewatchability.

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Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_25135_5-theories-that-make-famously-bad-movies-awesome.html

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