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tripleaxeldiaz · 4 years ago

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maybe one day i’ll fly next to you

chapter 3/8

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start from the beginning

The two weeks before Skate America breeze by, every hour filled with skating or conditioning or trying not to creep on message boards to see what people are predicting for the season. Buck feels good, the best he’s ever felt this early on. He tries to reign it in, that voice in his head reminding him that he could still lose it all at any moment, but it’s muffled and quiet and easy to ignore.

He’s also been seeing more of Eddie, now that he knows he’s not the douchebag he always assumed he was. They condition together, watch each other's jumping passes and offer tips, even take their lunch break together, talking about everything skating and some non skating things too. It’s easy and nice and the best parts of Buck’s days, if he’s honest. He maybe always thinks about talking to Eddie, picking his brain for his thoughts on various skaters’ programs, watching him laugh with his whole body at some snarky comment Buck makes about someone’s horrible choice in costume. Buck likes the way he laughs, likes the way he feels a little warmer when he makes him laugh.

He should have known this brief bubble of happiness would be popped sooner rather than later.

The day before they leave, he and Maddie get an email — an email — from their mother, inviting them to dinner while they’re in town for the competition. To say Buck’s surprised would be an understatement.

“How’d they even find out it’s in Reading this year? Did you tell them?”

Maddie rolls her eyes, stabbing her salad with a little more force than necessary. “I haven’t spoken to them in longer than you have, so no. They’ve probably seen ads or something.”

“We could lie, tell them Bobby’s really strict about non-skating things during competitions?”

“Sure, but then they might just call Bobby on their own and blow our whole cover.”

“We could tell them we’re sick? Food poisoning? Then miraculously get better?”

“If that didn’t work when you tried to get out of taking your SAT, I don’t think it’ll work this time, either.”

“I wasn’t even planning on going to college, why did I—” Buck huffs as Maddie shakes her head at him sympathetically.

There’s really no way for them to get out of this.

The thing is, their parents aren’t bad people — a doctor and a PR manager who are on every non-profit board in the county, volunteer at the local animal shelter, and donate plenty of money to plenty of charities. As parents, though, they somehow manage an interesting balance of using their children’s successes for their own bragging rights and making them feel like they’re always just shy of good enough. They supported them growing up, sure, paid their way through lessons and competitions before endorsements started coming in, but it always felt like it was serving their own clout more than helping Buck and Maddie follow their dreams. When they moved out to LA, it was easy to distance themselves, rescheduling calls indefinitely until their parents eventually just stopped trying.

The last time Buck talked to them was right after his leg surgery — they called under the guise of “checking in on him”, but spent most of the call figuring out the quickest way to get him back to practice, offering to pay for extra surgeries and PT to speed up the process. He’s sure they thought they were helping, but it felt more like they were eager for him to get back to winning medals so they could tell their friends about it.

As much as he loves to win, it’s not the same when someone else is pushing you more than you’re pushing yourself.

He sighs again, slumping down in his chair. He hadn’t been nervous at all about Skate America, but now the itch of self doubt has made a home right under his skin, and it wasn’t even for a skating reason. Maddie reaches across the table to grab his wrist, squeezing lightly.

“It’ll be two hours max, then we’ll make an excuse about early practice and leave. It won’t be that bad.”

Buck nods, turning back to his lunch, suddenly not hungry as his stomach continues to churn.

~~~~~~~~~~

He didn’t expect to get this nostalgic, but the familiar drive toward Reading and the Sovereign Center (Santander Arena now, because capitalism is a prison) fills him with jittery excitement and a weird sense of calm, just like it did when he was a kid competing in the regional circuit. The arena was a palace compared to their rink in Hershey, and it always made him want to skate well enough to be worthy of the ice there. It’s where he won his first medal ever, his first gold, his first trip to Nationals, and would hopefully now serve as a stepping stone once again, this time leading him towards Beijing.

Eddie’s lounging on his bed, shirtless and flipping channels, when Buck gets to their room. It wasn’t a surprise this time — they’d requested to room together anyway — but seeing Eddie like this, soft and relaxed and somehow at home in a hotel room, makes Buck’s heart flip a little bit.

Buck’s heart has been flipping a lot around Eddie, and making him think about stupid things like kissing him and how his abs would feel under his fingertips and how he’d prefer his eggs in the morning. It’s taking up a lot of real estate in his brain, and it’s going to get even worse now that they’re sleeping 10 feet away from each other, he’s sure.

That doesn’t stop him from sneaking glances at Eddie while he unpacks. Just to get it out of his system so he can focus.

It’s fine.

He can totally handle this.

~~~~~~~~~~

Skata America is a much bigger deal than ACI — more cameras, more interviews, more people watching in the stands and on TV. That should mean it’s all more intimidating, too, but Buck is thriving under the lights and camera lenses. This will be the first real chance to show people — not just skating people, but everyone — what he can do, and the anticipation of how it will be received buzzes through him constantly. That buzz practically dictates his every move through practices and his short, finally ceasing as he hits his final pose. It’s quickly replaced by elation — he knows he nailed everything, he knows the resounding applause is deserved.

He knows he’s in first place before they even announce his score.

When they do, he’s right, and he’s thrilled, but there’s also a pang of disappointment, because the margin is tight — only three points between him and Eddie in second. Bobby hands him his protocols in the green room, and his stomach clenches when he sees that his step sequence and his sit spin were downgraded to level threes. His brain starts spinning, mentally combing through every revolution and edge to figure out where the hell he fucked up, when he feels a warm, solid hand on his shoulder. He looks up and sees Eddie, but instead of pity like he expected (or gloating like he feared), he just sees understanding in his eyes, maybe even a hint of the same irritation he’s feeling.

“They screwed me over too, my camel should have had a plus three GOE at least.” Eddie says, squeezing Buck’s shoulder. Somehow, he’s already feeling better.

“I bet it was the French judge, he’s always been a conniving bastard.”

“We could take him out, we have time before tomorrow.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Buck says, as Eddie offers his hand and pulls him up to stand. He tries not to miss the warmth when he lets go.

“For what it’s worth,” Eddie says quietly as they make their way around skaters and coaches in the hallway toward the press room, “I think you should be at least 10 points ahead, if not more. You were something else out there.”

Buck can’t make his brain come up with a proper response by the time they take their seats on the makeshift stage in front of the reports, so all he can do is smile and hope it comes across as totally chill and not as dopey as it feels.

Eddie smiles back, and Buck thinks he’s beautiful.

The presser goes just as expected — a few questions lobbed at the Candian skater currently in third, more for Buck since he’s in first, but the most still go to Eddie. Being the favorite for Olympic gold doesn’t go away after half a competition, and the reporters are rabid as ever. Buck’s seen Eddie’s press routine — the humble charm and gracious smiles, cracking jokes like he’s talking to friends and not a bunch of strangers with tape recorders. He’d spent years mentally rolling his eyes at what he thought was the fakeness of it all, but after getting closer to Eddie, he knows that’s just how Eddie is. Kind and patient, actively listening to what people are saying, taking his time to form thoughtful answers.

But whatever’s happening now is not the Eddie he knows — his laughs are forced and almost too loud, his smile is tight and boarding on a grimace. He keeps fidgeting with his credentials and the sleeve of his Team USA zip-up, eyes darting around like he’s charting his path to get out of the room as fast as possible once they’re done.

He’s nervous. Buck doesn’t think he’s ever seen him nervous, at least not like this, and it’s honestly a little unsettling. So much so that all Buck wants to do is fix it, bring the light back to Eddie’s eyes, bleed the tension out of his shoulders.

There’s probably not an easy way to do that while answering questions about his performance.

He waits until he sees the “wrap it up” signal from the event worker off to the side, the next reporter giving one last question to the Canadian skater. He doesn’t think about it too hard, just stretches his leg a little to the right, slowly, until he and Eddie are ankle to ankle. It’s not much, but Eddie still looks over at him, first confused and then grateful, a small, real smile on his face, his shoulders falling away from his ears.

Eddie’s quiet on the ride back to the hotel, but he looks calmer, listening to everyone else talk about their events and what could happen tomorrow during free skates. He’s still jittery though, leg bouncing as he sits next to Buck on the bus. Whatever was bothering him during interviews is clearly still lingering, and Buck has to fight the urge to reach out and calm his shaking with a hand on his knee.

They make it back to their room, door barely clicking in place behind them, before Buck breaks.

“Are you okay?” he asks. Eddie freezes in front of him, half turned around like he was about to ask Buck something before he steamrolled over him. “You seemed stressed during the presser and on the ride back, and I just...wanted to make sure you’re good.”

Eddie looks stunned for a second before letting out a breath, hand rubbing over his face. “I knew this would happen, you know? The extra attention. It happened after Pyeongchang and the bronze medal, but it died down eventually. I thought I’d have more time to mentally prepare for it again, I guess.” He shakes his head, hand falling to his side as he shrugs his shoulders helplessly. “Today was just a lot.”

Buck nods, patting Eddie’s arm in understanding because he gets it. Most of the time he basks in any form of attention, but some days the lights are too hot and the voices are too loud and faking a smile through it is impossible. The one Buck sees now is real though, he knows it, and he’s happy to see Eddie relaxing now that they’re away from the vultures.

“Well, lucky for you, I’ll be out of your hair tonight, so you’ll have plenty of time to yourself,” Buck says, crossing the room to his bed, digging through his bag for his dinner clothes.

“Where are you going?” Eddie asks, and when Buck looks back at him as he heads to the bathroom to change, he swears he looks disappointed, briefly, before it shifts to confusion. “We don’t have any team stuff tonight, right?”

“Nah, Maddie and I got suckered into dinner with our parents.”

“Are Buckley family dinners always black tie affairs?” he asks when Buck comes back in slacks and a white button down, struggling to knot his tie.

“No, but they told us to dress nicely, so we’re probably going to some fancy restaurant downtown. Knowing them, we’ll also be dragged to some party one of their friends is having that’s conveniently close by.”

He groans in frustration when his tie comes out crooked again, and Eddie laughs, taking pity on him and coming to do it himself. Buck tries to keep cool, willing his cheeks not to turn red, but it’s hard when he can feel Eddie’s breath on his chin, feel his fingers run across his collarbones, and he’s so close, if he just leaned in—

“Sounds like it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Buck sighs through his nose. “I love my parents, they’re just...better from a distance.”

Eddie winces in what looks like sympathy, smoothing Buck’s tie and the front of his shirt as he finishes. Buck misses the motion as soon as it’s gone.

“Maybe they’ll prove you wrong this time,” Eddie says.

Buck rolls his eyes at that, but can’t help a small part of him desperately hoping that Eddie will be right.

~~~~~~~~~~

Eddie is so wrong.

Not only is there a party, it’s a party at their parent’s house, which is in full swing by the time Buck and Maddie pull up in their Lyft. Their mother opens the door, hair up, dress immaculate, lipstick-stained wine glass perched precariously in her hand.

“Evan! Maddie! Come in, so glad you could join us!” She kisses both their cheeks and hugs them quickly before taking their hands and dragging them deeper into the house. There are people everywhere, some faces Buck remembers and some new ones. There are waiters milling around too, passing bacon wrapped figs and mini bruschetta, and Buck feels his stomach rumble.

“So I guess we’re not doing dinner, huh Mom?” Buck asks, trying to keep the sarcasm to a minimum. Judging by the look Maddie gives him, he’s not doing a great job.

Their mother, of course, doesn’t bat an eye. “Sorry, sweetheart. We didn’t realize we were double booked, and we’d already moved this party once. There’s plenty of food in the kitchen though, you can eat after I’ve introduced you to some people. Everyone’s so excited to hear about how you’re doing. Philip, there you are!” Buck spots his father too, a head above the crowd, tie loose and cheeks flushed. He shakes Buck’s hand firmly, kisses Maddie on the top of her head, and is gone in an instant when someone beckons him towards the bar set up on the back wall of the living room.

“Nice to see you, too. We’re doing fine, thanks for asking!” Buck says under his breath before their mother is whisking them away again.

They spend the next hour flitting between couples — the Whiteheads, the Culls, the Carters, and a bunch of others he can’t differentiate — getting whiplash from their mother’s flipping between actual praise and backhanded compliments.

“Evan’s one of the top skaters in the country, though not as highly ranked as he was before his accident. We’re hoping he’ll be back up there by the time the Olympics roll around so he’ll make the team.”

“Maddie’s been with her partner for about three years now, right darling? They don’t have as many golds as she had with Doug, but they do skate well together.”

“Yes, that skater from Japan is very good Rebecca, you’re right! Evan, do you know him? Maybe he can give you some pointers about your edges going into your spins? I know you struggle with those.”

On and on and on, Buck and Maddie barely able to get a word in. They see their father only a few times, and each time he’s gone as quickly as he comes, pulled away by colleagues or board members or whoever it is they’re entertaining tonight. Buck is exhausted, and not just because it’s been a long day already, but from having to keep up the good natured laughs and graciousness when he doesn’t even feel like a person. He feels more like a trophy, being shuttled from room to room to be admired for a while before being shoved into a closet where no one can see you. Because that’s exactly what’s going to happen — their parents will tout them around for the night, send them back to the hotel, and not speak to them again until they need something.

Buck really forgot just how small this big house can make him feel.

Eventually, he breaks away, making an excuse about needing the restroom before quietly sneaking up the back staircase to the second floor. Maddie finds him 15 minutes later, sliding down to sit next to him in the guest room closet.

“Old habits die hard, I guess,” she says, and Buck smiles weakly. He hid in here a lot when he was a kid, sometimes with Maddie and sometimes alone. When it was all too much — the pressure from their parents or his coach or himself — this is where he came to quiet his brain. The darkness and the smell of the cedar chest full of their mother’s old sweaters was comforting, and it wrapped around him like a blanket until he could breathe again.

“None of their habits have died, that’s for sure,” he says. “Is it sad that I thought they would?”

“It’s not sad to hope for better. It’s just hard when all that hope is for nothing.”

Buck sighs, head thumping against the wall. Maddie threads her arm through his and rests her head on his shoulder. They sit like that for a while, quiet, both in their own heads, though he’s sure Maddie is thinking about and wishing for the same things he is.

He shifts eventually, head resting on top of hers. “Can we go yet? We could probably sneak out the back door. If they haven’t come looking for us yet, they definitely won’t notice.”

“Should we just go back to the hotel? It’s only 8:30.”

“What else are we gonna do?”

Maddie types furiously on her phone for a minute. “Chim, Hen, and May are down to hang out. And WhirlyDome is open until midnight.”

“That place is still around?”

“Apparently, and they have half price appetizers after 9.”

The thought of mozzarella sticks and onion rings makes his stomach growl loudly again. “Alright, let’s do it. But I’m inviting Eddie too.”

Maddie just smirks at him, getting up and out of the closet before he has a chance to ask what the look was for.

It would just be rude not to invite him.

And maybe part of Buck wishes he had stayed in with Eddie tonight from the start.

[to: Eddie] tonight sucked. we’re going to play whirlyball and eat fried food. u in?

[from: Eddie] ????? What the hell is whirlyball?

[to: Eddie] omg now u HAVE to come. meet us here in half an hour

He sends the address and does not smile like an idiot when Eddie says he’ll see him soon.

~~~~~~~~~~

“So it’s...bumper cars?”

“Bumper cars plus lacrosse plus basketball, kind of. It’s super fun and only a little dangerous.”

“Can I watch for a bit first?”

“Sorry Eds, first timers have to play. You’ll be fine, I promise.”

Eddie still looks skeptical as they get ready for the next game, carefully sitting in the car and picking up his scoop.

A bell rings and the cars come to life, rumbling around the room as everyone starts scrambling for the ball. It takes about 30 seconds for Eddie to get the hang of steering, and by the end of the first game, no one would ever guess he’d never played before. He leads their team to three victories in a row, laughing and cheering loudly along with everyone else, like he hadn’t been overwhelmed with anxiety just a few hours earlier. Something warms in Buck at the thought that he helped with that smile, and it’s a feeling he thinks he could get used to, a job he wouldn’t mind having if it meant Eddie was this happy more often than not.

Despite it all — despite good friends and good food and the feeling of Eddie’s shoulder pressed against his, Buck still feels the tendrils of doubt and panic floating around him. They’re bad enough during competitions normally, but pair them with what happened at his parents’ house — being reminded of how he’ll never live up to their lofty image of him, even if he does make it to Beijing — and everything just feels dark and cold, and he doesn’t think his lungs are working properly. He leaves the table, says he’s going to the bathroom, but ends up outside instead. WhirlyDome is in the older half of a shopping center in downtown Hershey, and the outside has been renovated since he was last here, now featuring an elaborate fountain surrounded by benches and newly paved pathways to the other stores. He sinks down on the nearest bench, the cool October air grounding him, making it easier to think, easier to try and smash down all these swirling emotions he’s trying not to feel.

Eddie finds him there, sits down next to him on the bench without saying anything. They stay in companionable silence, watching the fountain dance and the people bustle back and forth across the plaza, getting last minute shopping in before the stores close.

“I’m sorry dinner sucked,” Eddie says eventually, quiet and sincere.

Buck shrugs. “I knew it would. Just got my hopes up too high that things would be different.”

Eddie nods, eyes drifting back to the fountain. Now that they’re alone and the excitement from the games is gone, he can see the slightly weary lines of Eddie’s shoulders, see how he’s still curling in on himself, like he’s trying to escape into his own body.

“How are you?” Buck asks, knocking his knee against Eddie’s gently. “I know this isn’t exactly a quiet night in.”

“I’m alright. Better than I would be, thanks to you.”

“What did I do?”

Eddie’s staring at the ground, but his cheeks are flushing pink, and Buck wants to reach out and feel the heat of them under his fingertips.

“You were there,” he says. “I’m usually alone when I start feeling like that, and nothing makes it better. But I wasn’t alone this time.”

I don’t want you to be alone, Buck thinks, and these thoughts he’s been having — about Eddie, about being with Eddie — are getting louder and louder and harder to ignore. Especially now, when it’s just the two of them, and Eddie’s eyes are sparkling like gems under the street lights.

It’s almost hilarious that barely six weeks ago, and for 10 very long years, he could hardly stand the sight of him.

Eddie finally looks up from the ground, facing Buck, and they’re so much closer than he thought they were. He can count every eyelash, smell his cologne, watch his eyes trace over Buck’s face, from his eye to his lips and back again.

Buck doesn’t even realize he’s leaning in until his vision starts to blur, and he stops short. He tries to move back slowly, casually, but then firm hands are cupping his jaw, pulling him forward until soft lips meet his own. There’s no fireworks, no angels singing, just warm molasses in his veins, spreading to every part of him until he’s so warm he’s certain he must be glowing. His hands twist into Eddie’s jacket, pulling him as close as possible until he’s practically in his lap. They move to his shirt, feeling the abs he’s been thinking about for weeks now, and he almost melts right to the ground at the sound Eddie sighs into his mouth.

He’s not sure how long they kiss, but it doesn’t feel like long enough by the time they come up for air. He doesn’t go far, still close enough to feel Eddie’s breath fan across his lips, but he’s not sure what to do now. He wants to know what this means (if it means anything at all), he wants to know what Eddie’s thinking, he wants to memorize the way Eddie tastes and feel his abs for real.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, making them both jump. It’s a text from Maddie, telling him they’re car is here and asking where the hell they went. He looks back at Eddie, still so close, and swallows down the urge to kiss him again and tell his friends to leave them here.

“We should— we have to go,” he says, gesturing toward the parking lot. Eddie’s eyes are flitting over his face again, unreadable but still bright. He nods finally, standing up and offering his hand to Buck. He can’t fight the smile or the blush that he feels, so he doesn’t, taking Eddie’s hand to help him stand. They stay put for a minute, until Eddie squeezes his hand and drops it, smiling that soft smile again as he turns away.

Buck smiles himself, still full of warmth and lips still tingling, before following Eddie to the car.

~~~~~~~~~~

The ride back is quiet, everyone tired and settling back into the competition mindset they were able to let go of for a few hours. Buck feels it too, already running step sequences in his head again, but he keeps getting distracted. Eddie’s sitting next to him in the back seat of the Lyft, head tipped back and eyes closed, looking at peace for the first time all day. Buck tries to stop, tries to keep his focus, but his eyes keep drifting back to Eddie’s jaw, the cut of his cheekbones, the stubble shadowing his cheeks. It’s hard to remember what edges he’s supposed to hit tomorrow when he keeps thinking about how that stubble felt under his lips.

They silently make their way back to their room, and Buck knows they need to talk. He’s trying to figure out where the hell to start as he turns on the light in the small entryway, illuminating everything in a light that feels too harsh for whatever is currently simmering between them. Eddie’s right behind him when he turns around, looking just as unsure as Buck feels. It’s comforting, them being on the same page, but Buck hates that he’s responsible for making Eddie feel like this.

He can’t figure out where to start, mouth opening and closing like a fish as he tries to figure out what to say. Eddie takes pity on him eventually, reaching for his hand again.

“Let’s talk tomorrow?” he asks. “After free skates.”

It’s an out that Buck is more than willing to take. Not that he doesn’t want to talk, he just...can’t. Not right now. So he nods, squeezing Eddie’s hand in thanks. He goes to pull away, but Eddie’s grip stays firm.

“It wasn’t nothing to me,” he says, tilting his head until Buck meets his eye. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing or what it meant for you, but it was something for me.”

Buck’s doesn’t know what to do with that, either. He wants to kiss Eddie again and he wants to run far away from him and he wants to skate, but he can’t until the morning. So he just nods again, and it seems to be enough. Eddie nods back, finally dropping his hand as he heads into the bathroom and shuts the door.

Buck doesn’t bother waiting for his turn, just strips out of his dress clothes and crawls into bed. He falls asleep fast, dreams of brown eyes and triple axels — taking off, rising, and falling, falling, falling…

~~~~~~~~~~

He knows he’s falling before his ass hits the ice.

It was inevitably, really — he felt like he was fighting himself through the entire program, trying to keep it from completely unraveling. He knows that to anyone else, any casual fan and even some analysts, he looked good, strong, put together right until the end. But he knows that this isn’t his best. And this fall is definitely going to cost him.

He recovers quickly, finishing the rest of the program as close to perfectly as he can manage. He smiles and bows, waves to his friends in the stands, tries to pretend like he’s okay with knowing that he’s definitely not winning this gold.

It’s his own fault. He’d let his parents worm their way into his brain again, amplifying the self doubt that was already lingering, making him second guess every move, even the things he knows are good. Pair that with the fact that he can’t stop thinking about Eddie — not just the kiss, but his smile as he took the ice, his effortless jumps — and it was a miracle he only fell once.

He takes silver, four points behind Eddie’s gold. The fact that it was that fall that did him in stings worse than anything.

At the medal ceremony, he catches Eddie’s eye for the first time all day on the podium, and surprises himself with the genuine smile he gives him. It’s certainly not Eddie’s fault, what happened today — he didn’t ask to take up most of Buck’s thoughts, Buck let that happen. And if he keeps letting it happen, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to skate clean again.

He knows they still need to talk, and he knows exactly what he needs to say, but he really doesn’t want to say it.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to say anything right away. Eddie disappears after the presser and doesn’t join him and May in the stands for the free dance. Buck tries to ignore the empty seat next to him, but it’s harder than usual.

They have a late flight back to LA, and Eddie’s already packed but the time Buck makes it back to the room. They stand across from each other in the entryway, just like last night, but the tension in the air feels wary under Buck’s skin instead of hopeful.

“You were amazing today,” Buck blurts out, not at all how he wanted to start this conversation. It’s worth it, though, for the smile and blush he gets from Eddie.

“Thanks,” he says, eyes on the floor. “So were you.”

Jesus, just tell him, Buck thinks, and he squares his shoulders like he’s preparing for a fight.

“It was something for me, too,” he says softly. “Yesterday, it— it definitely wasn’t nothing.”

Eddie looks at him, waiting, and Buck hesitates.

He really, really doesn’t want to say it.

“But?” Eddie prompts, because of course he knows there’s more.

“But,” Buck sighs. “But I can’t— We should wait. Until after the Olympics. I don’t think either of us want to be too distracted before then, and I don’t know if you know this, but you are very...very distracting.” Eddie snorts and rolls his eyes, and Buck lets his gaze rake over Eddie from top to bottom, distracting himself for just a little bit longer.

“You’re right,” Eddie says quietly. “Let’s wait. And I’ll try and be less distracting, so I can keep kicking your ass fair and square.”

“Oh really?” Buck laughs, and Eddie’s laughing too, and it feels good and normal and Buck doesn’t want it to stop. But it has to. Because as much as Buck wants to dive deeper into this...whatever this is with Eddie, he wants to win more. Not much more (which is a thought he never expected to have about anyone), but definitely more.

And if anyone in the world understands that feeling, it’s Eddie.

There’s a knock on the door, Bobby giving them a 15 minute warning before they’re supposed to head to the airport. Buck moves to head toward his things so he can pack, but Eddie grabs his arm before he can go too far. His eyes look soft and sad and hopeful and a million other things Buck is feeling too, and he just wants to drown in them, in this moment, before he has to go back out into the world, alone.

Eddie leans forward, softly kissing Buck’s cheek, lingering in his space before he heads out of the room, door quietly shutting behind him.

#buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #911 fox #buddie fic #911 fic #9-1-1 #fs au #ficcery #the self indulgence really popped out on this one because i lOVE whirlyball sm #also they continue to be idiots but that's not totally my fault #they're just Like That

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needsmoresleepwrites · 3 years ago

Text

Gift for Daiyanerd: Miyuki Kazuya. Always cool and collected. Has a great side profile. Good at baseball. Well, no, great is the correct word. (sofa’21)

Moratorium

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ONE

Miyuki Kazuya

Always cool and collected. Has a great side profile. Good at baseball. Well, no, great is the correct word. Even when he sometimes messes up some of the smaller plays. Reliable. Daring. Funny. Charming. Has probably had a dozen girlfriends, or maybe not. Nobody has been able to get any concrete answer on that one question, but he's definitely a lady's man, his fan club primarily consisting of girls and women that claim they would leave their current lives just to marry him if he so much as hinted interest. Or at least that's what many of the magazines, both sports and gossip ones say about him

Not to be too full of himself, but Kazuya thinks that much of what they say has some foundation. Yeah, people like Yoichi and Jun know better but he has to agree that his catching skills are unparalleled. He might also really like sending magazine covers with blown up images of his smiling (smirking) face to Yoichi just to get a scathing reply or an angry call. His only response is his lady killer (annoying) laugh

He knows he's always being watched by someone, but it completely slips his mind that anything could go wrong on that day

The headlines are brutal and he's gotten many messages and calls from his friends. He hasn't really answered because, well, he hasn't been able to. But he knows what they're saying. He's laying at the hospital with bandages covering most of his torso. He has a sense of deja vu, having been in a similar position when he'd been in high school, but this is much, much worse. Something happened and everyone is scrambling to find out what

Everyone except Rei, who has been detained. The tabloids are lapping this up like it's the sip of water they've finally been allowed after being stuck in a desert for months. Except that they're ruining the lives of the people Kazuya loves the most

He sees different news channels trying to get interviews from the few people that make up his friends. They want to know about Rei from high school. They've dug up her whole life's story and put it on full blast. They want to know about Kazuya, as if they haven't already told all there is to say, invented and created his whole career. They talk about how Rei pretty much scouted him from a very young age. The same women that claim they would do anything for Kazuya have turned razer sharp, claiming that "they knew it all along" and that Rei "had it coming"

They all twist the information for entertainment and Kazuya closes his eyes, disgusted at what they say about her.

There had been an accident. His car had been hit and he knows he needed surgery. Later they found out it was all a setup and he went from being one of the richest people and baseball players in Japan to having nothing. His career may as well be over. It will take too long for him to recover. Games won't wait.

Kazuya throws the remote in his hand and wants to tell them all its lies. He knows Rei would never do something like this. She's smart. It doesn't make sense. As much as Rei will follow a gut instinct, especially if it's about recruiting potential, it's always based on logic. There is no logic here.

His name flashes on multiple headlines and all he wants to scream is no, I didn't she say she stole my money!

The machines connected to his body have been beeping for a while now and finally, nurses and doctors run in. They try to get him to calm down but all he can do is repeat It wasn't her! It wasn't her! Rei would never! Tell them to stop!

Soon he feels drowsy and he realizes he's been sedated.

Before he closes his eyes he sees a picture of Rei next to the news anchor. Her hair is down, her eyes look haunted, but her posture is proud. She's not in her usual suit. Instead, she's wearing that dreaded green top, almost drowning her, making her pale skin paler. She doesn't look right. It's not the Rei he knows. The Rei he owes everything to.

He feels the tears burn his eyes.

----

TWO.

It takes a little over a year for things to "settle" down, but once the storm is over, everything is ruined.

Kazuya still manages to get his face blown up on magazine covers, but this time it's for a different reason. He's now considered a victim and he hates the images of him being wheeled out of the hospital. Of the tabloids somehow getting a shot of his bloodshot eyes, his pale skin, and his hunched shoulders. He wishes his attorney had allowed Kazuya to do something, but everything was too precarious, we have to be careful. Careful of what? He can no longer play baseball. He was already pushing the age of acceptability, only being allowed to continue contracts because he was so good, was still quick, was dedicated in mind, body, and soul to the game. But now he was injured, would be in rehab, and nobody knew if he'd still be able to move as great as before. Nobody would take that risk

Rei is finally released, but her life is ruined too. Hers is worse than Kazuya's will ever be. Not just because she's the supposed mastermind of the accident and subsequent disappearance of his capital, but because she's a woman. It's made him sick how she's been torn apart and left behind. She had already been forcefully (through great results) making her own space at the table. This was just the excuse to make her disappear. Nobody wanted a criminal as their associate. The label was tarnished and it would take time to rebuild their name. "Apologies" had been passed around, but nobody would take the risk of allowing her space again

Nobody thought to ask her side of the story, to reach out and help. She was alone. Nobody could legally take what she's rightfully earned, but they can pile fines upon fines. She is "free to go" but they have severely limited what she can do.

It only makes sense that she finally retires. Kazuya goes to see her with the Seidou team. He breaks when he finally sees what they've done to her, all in "his name", to "protect him". Rei is strong, logical, smart, but she can't help but allow herself to show a bit of emotion at that moment. She wipes away at Kazuya's face, "There's nothing left for me here and there's no use crying. The only way to go now is forward."

Chris recommends that Kazuya go to the same rehab facility he went to in America.

Kazuya doesn't want to leave. It feels like admitting defeat, like running away, like he's abandoning his friends.

Yoichi grits his teeth, tells Kazuya he wants to punch him for being so stupid, "But hitting an injured person isn't my style, even though it's YOU."

There is little progress on his health, both physical and mental, and then Yoichi, who has been singlehandedly taking care of him whenever he has a moment to spare, nearly begs him, "Kazuya, please. Go. Don't let this defeat you. I don't want to admit it but I miss seeing that stupidly smug look on your face. Remember what Rei said. You have to keep moving forward!"

He can't help but laugh one night when he can't sleep, Yoichi's words and his concerned face plaguing his mind. He can't believe he almost let this defeat him. He can't believe he was down enough to force his best friend to make such a face, to make him cry for his sake. He feels like he's let everyone down, especially Rei.

He calls Chris a few days later.

Before leaving, he logs into his Twitter account, which, like any other media source, he's been avoiding for the past year. Someone has obviously logged in and cleared his notifications and as his last stand, no first, because even now "they have to be careful", Kazuya quote RTs an article he hasn't even read, but he doesn't need to. He chooses it because it has one of those headlines. He presses send and logs out.

I NEVER said she stole my money.

----

THREE.

It's two years when he finally comes back to Japan. His rehab had ended months ago but there was a part of him that had been afraid to come back. He's sure Yoichi had sensed it, which is why he'd pretty much dragged him back.

He remembers the conversation they had. It had been really late in Japan, he's sure that Yoichi was on the verge of passing out, could hear every yawn he tried to hide, but he wouldn't let Kazuya hang up, "I'm not hanging up until you agree."

Kazuya sighs, "There's nothing for me to do out there anyway. Here, I've been helping at the hospital."

"But you don't even like that kind of stuff! I bet you're bored out of your mind," Yoichi countered, and Kazuya has to admit that he's not exactly wrong. He misses the excitement from the diamond, feeling the burn on his thighs as he squats behind the batter, signaling different plays to his catchers, the feel of the ball as it lands perfectly in his gloved palm, the roar of the crowd as they once more strikeout another enemy batter. But he can't have any of that. This year Kazuya turns 30 and he has become stiff. He can't move as dexterously as before.

He hears some shuffling on the other end, as if Yoichi is changing positions on his bed, "Look. Not many people know this but...this is actually my last year playing."

Kazuya freezes at that. He knows Yoichi is still keeping up with his own records, has won his team countless matches for his boldness, knows they would never want to let him go. He briefly fears that maybe an injury is involved but shakes his head. No, Yoichi would tell him if that's the case, so then, "Why?"

"That's why I called and I need you to come back," there's another pause, not long, "I'm getting married."

Kazuya blanks out for a moment and then stops what he's doing altogether (he turns off the stove, he'd been making breakfast but this is more important. Besides, he had almost been done), "Married? Did you kidnap some poor girl? I haven't even heard of you dating."

"KAZUYA," he hears Yoichi yell, "I didn't kidnap anyone! And that's because my PR team has been making sure to keep things tightly sealed, and I guess we also haven't been able to see each other much too." That last part is mumbled but Kazuya catches it anyway.

Kazuya hums, still disbelieving, but only slightly. He knows Yoichi wouldn't kid about something like this so if he says he's getting married, he's getting married, "Congratulations then. Not sure how someone found you husband material, but they do say there's a type for everyone. How'd you meet her?"

"You are such a dick," Yoichi hisses, "How are we still even friends?"

Kazuya sometimes wonders the same thing. Yoichi has been with him at his best and worst and has never given up on him. He laughs, "My great personality?"

Yoichi snorts right before laughing, "Yeah right. Anyway, so I met this guy-"

"A husband?" Kazuya cuts him off, genuinely curious, but also can't help but tease, "You hid it so well with all those magazines. I'm sure nobody suspected. No wonder your team is doing such a great job at hiding this."

Yoichi yells into the phone, "Let me finish asshole! No! It's not a guy, her name is Wakana! And she's the childhood friend of this guy I met!"

Kazuya makes a tsk noise, "Yoichi, did you steal her from this guy? Are you a homewrecker?"

Instead of getting mad, Yoichi snorts, "As if. Can you believe Wakana was actually in love with Sawamoron for years and he didn't realize."

Kazuya adds, "So you seduced her?" before Yoichi can continue with the story.

"No? I mean, I'm not sure," but they both know that Yoichi probably couldn't seduce anyone even if he tried. Charmed, yes, but outright seduce? And a girl he liked? Very unlikely, "But she'd been tired of waiting and so I met her after she'd confessed and he rejected her."

"Hmm," Kazuya interrupts again, "So you took advantage when she was down. That makes more sense. She was probably so down about being rejected she would have said yes to anyone. Sadly that someone was you."

Yoichi is flabbergasted, "Take advantage?! MIYUKI, that's not- I'd never - just let me finish!"

Kazuya laughs, "Ok, ok. So how did you meet her? I won't interrupt again."

Just like that, Yoichi calms down and Kazuya notes the happiness in his voice as he laughs, not at Kazuya, but at something, the memory perhaps, and Kazuya is slightly jealous. He's not sure at what or who.

"So this kid, Sawamura, we were going to meet up at the park. He had something to tell me, but then I see him running after this girl, yelling about money or something. So I cut her off-"

Kazuya can't help but laugh, "Y-Yoichi, did you, did you attack the poor girl?"

"Didn't you say you weren't going to interrupt?!" Yoichi screeches, but he starts laughing a bit too, "And no, I didn't attack her but, well..."

There's a groan on the other end and Kazuya can imagine his best friend blushing to the tips of his ears, "I pulled her by the arm and she was surprised, but then she did something and next thing I know I'm on the ground, looking up at her and Sawamura is laughing like he's seen the most hilarious thing ever!"

He wonders if that kid was laughing as hard as he is now. He feels the tears tickling his eyes, his cheeks hurt, and he feels the force of his laugh pulling on his stomach, "I already like the girl. What happened next?"

Yoichi lets him laugh but his voice is annoyed, not at him he notes, but at what happens next, "So Sawamoron comes up finally and he knows the girl and I'm confused and just got thrown to the ground by a girl that doesn't even reach my chin, and I ask him why he was yelling about a thief, because that's what he was doing."

More shifting on Yoichi's end, "And you know what he said to me?"

"What?"

"He goes "I never said she stole my money!" so I knock him over the head because yeah, he's right, he was YELLING IT. Everyone in the goddamn park heard it! Made him buy me dinner and everything."

Kazuya feels a lump in his throat but pushes it aside, he turns the stove on again to finish preparing his breakfast, "I guess for Wakana I can go back. When's the wedding? And will I be your best man?"

----

FOUR.

Kazuya hasn't even been home a month when Yoichi walks into his apartment with their old Seidou team. Everyone seems to be there, even the first years like Ryo's little brother and Furuya. There really isn't anything Kazuya can do but move aside so that everyone can come inside. At the end of the group, right after the first years enter, he spots someone he doesn't know. A kid with unruly brown hair, brown eyes, and tanned skin who looks slightly nervous. His posture is too stiff but he's also looking around curiously.

Yoichi notices Kazuya looking at him and comes over for introductions. He pulls the kid into a side hug, "Kazuya, this is Sawamura, Wakana's friend."

Kazuya looks him over. He's heard a few things about him from Yoichi, "So this is Sawamoron?" he teases. He can't help the lift of his lips as the kid splutters in indignation.

A high pitched, "Kuramochi-senpai! You can't call me that anymore, we're practically family now!"

Yoichi howls, slapping the kid on the back, "You're always going to be a moron Sawamura, hyahaha!"

Sawamura grits his teeth for a second before standing up straight, stretching out his hand towards Kazuya, "Good afternoon, It's a pleasure to meet you! My name is Sawamura Eijun! Thank you for inviting me!!"

Kazuya looks at the outstretched hand for a moment before he doubles over laughing. Sawamura let's out another unidentified sound before yelling, "That's so rude Miyuki Kazuya!!" but he hasn't dropped his arm.

Kazuya takes a breath, isn't surprised he knows his name (briefly wonders if he knows who he is), right before taking that tanned hand into his own. Sawamura's hold is firm, if a bit sweaty, nerves probably, "Well, as you so clearly let my neighbors know, my name is Miyuki Kazuya." He pauses, "And I didn't invite you."

Sawamura pales slightly, looks over to Yoichi who just makes a rude noise, "Really Kazuya? You have to be a dick right off the bat?"

Kazuya only smiles brightly, finally letting go of the kid's hand, looks around his house, and says, "Actually, I didn't invite any of you over. Why are you all here?"

The others have already settled into his kitchen and, he peers through the doorway, there are bottles of coke and beer and the smell of oily pizza in the air. Jun has already made himself at home on his couch, a paper plate with a pizza on it. He's halfway into that slice and Kazuya doesn't know why Jun didn't just take an extra slice or two with him before settling down. Ryo and Haruichi are putting things in his fridge. He realizes now how empty his fridge must have been. He had been meaning to go grocery shopping but he supposes he hadn't had the energy to go. Kanemaru is clearing up some of the boxes he had yet to unbox, reading the labels Chris had helped him write, and arranging them accordingly.

He knows that many of these guys are still part of the leagues, wonders how they managed to take a moment to raid his home (notices a few faces are missing, like Yuki but he would have been REALLY surprised if they'd managed to get him to come over). He remembers how they'd made it a routine to visit him when they were at Seidou, knowing he could get lost in strategizing and numbers quickly. He feels a penetrating gaze and turns to see the new kid watching him intently. Kazuya can't help the grin that grows on his face and it's finally starting to feel like home.

He motions the two in, "Well, you may as well come in. Everyone is already inside. Feel free to raid my fridge and make a mess in my new kitchen."

Yoichi laughs, pulling Sawamura inside with him. The kid still looks slightly off-balance, but he sits next to the first years like he belongs and he wonders why this picture looks so right.

Yoichi dives in for the last slice of pepperoni pizza just as Sawamura is about to reach for it and then loudly exclaims, "Hey Kazuya, wanna hear something funny?"

Kazuya has already grabbed his own plate and he wonders how he missed all of these pizza boxes when they first came inside. He grabs one with sausage and mushroom, "Hm?"

"So while we were getting the pizza, we sent Sawamura to go get the drinks, right?"

Sawamura, who had just taken a drink from his can of soda, instantly spits it out and Kazuya is both intrigued and disgusted as he sees the drink mixed with spit cover his table, "Kuramochi-senpai, don't!"

He sees Kanemaru chuckling and Jun roars from the living room. Apparently, there were many witnesses to this apparently funny story. Haruichi pats Sawamura's back softly while the kid's face glows red. Kazuya is momentarily worried he might faint but then curiosity wins out, "Oh?"

Yoichi and he share a look, "Get this, we all gave him our share, right? So he goes in and comes back all mad, saying we didn't give him the right amount, but then, but then," It seems the rest of it is too funny for Yoichi to continue because he starts laughing and he notices Sawamura cover his face. He mumbles something but Kazuya doesn't catch it.

Ryo helps him out. He's also amused, a smirk on his face, "The girl stole his change."

Sawamura uncovers his face and yells, "I never said she stole my money!"

There's a moment of silence before...

Jun. He'd come back into the kitchen to get more pizza, "Who else could it have been? Had to be the girl at the counter, or did you just give up your money?"

Kuramochi, "Easy prey, how you're even a teacher is beyond me."

Kanemaru, "Wait. So it wasn't the cashier?"

Even Kazuya can't help but ask, laughter tickling his words, "Emphasis on "she"?"

Sawamura seems to realize his error and covers his face again. He's mumbling again but instead of being annoyed by the bad habit, Kazuya thinks it's almost cute.

"Haruichi?" Ryo questions and Sawamura uncovers his face to yell, "Onii-san! That's not fair! Haruichi you can't tell, you promised!"

Haruichi is looking back and forth between them, "Well..."

Then Furuya explains all, "He was flirting with the delivery guy."

It somehow gets even louder inside his house and Kazuya can't believe he thought of not returning. It's true that his baseball career is over, but this is where his family is at. This is where his life is truly at. He laughs until the tears in his eyes fall.

They spend hours getting him up to speed on gossip.

----

FIVE.

Even though he's only known Sawamura for a few days, maybe weeks, he's the one that keeps Kazuya company the most. And there's a big reason for that named Kuramochi Yoichi. Even though, or perhaps because, it's nearing the end of his contract, Yoichi gets busier. There are some rumors as to why he's finally leaving baseball, but just like he'd told Kazuya, everything is still under wraps. There are no incriminating photos and no face to put to those rumors jealous girls spread online. Kazuya wonders how things will turn out once Yoichi fesses up but until then, Sawamura becomes his shadow

One, he's not bound to such a strenuous schedule (Yoichi told him Sawamura is the grade school teacher at one of the local schools not far from Kazuya's new place. His new house is conveniently placed so close because it will soon be Kazuya's new workplace and they just happen to be on break now), and second...well, Kazuya's not sure. Yoichi didn't want to tell him. Not exactly

He remembers the last time he actually met up with his best friend.

Yoichi had invited him over for dinner and Sawamura had come up somehow (Kazuya comes to realize that Sawamura comes up in their lives very often). Yoichi had been contemplative. They'd just finished watching a movie and were just sitting there in the dark, the credits rolling.

"You know. If Sawamura had actually been interested in Wakana...I don't think I'd have ever had a chance with her. There's just something about him...he's so..." Yoichi makes vague hand movements, "you know?"

Kazuya laughs and wonders if this is what best men have to deal with with their to-be grooms. Jitters, he's heard them called, but he was sure this feeling was supposed to happen days before the wedding, not so far ahead when there wasn't even a date finalized, "Already second-guessing the married life?"

Yoichi doesn't even take the bait. He just sighs and leans back on the couch, "No, I'm serious. There's just something about Sawamura, he's so honest and hardworking. I can see why Wakana liked him."

"Careful, or I might start to think you actually want to marry Sawamura instead."

Yoichi kicks him halfheartedly, "Dumbass."

Their feet are still touching and Yoichi nudges him, "He's a good kid you know."

Kazuya leans out to grab his drink from the low table, takes a sip, "He does seem like it. Although he's a bit..." He tries to find the right word. Dense? Airheaded? No..."innocent?"

Yoichi laughs, "Yes! The stories I could tell you."

It gets quiet and Kazuya enjoys it. It's been years since the two of them have done something like this.

Yoichi breaks the silence again, "You know...Rei actually tried scouting him."

Kazuya takes another swig of his drink, deep, and tries to wash away the feelings of guilt. He hasn't spoken to Rei since the incident. Hasn't really asked about her although he knows she's ok, thanks to Chris

But he's curious now. If Rei had been interested in him then he was undoubtedly good talent, "What happened?"

Yoichi scoffs, "The idiot turned her down! Said he didn't need any fancy schools to play baseball."

Kazuya can't help the snort he lets out into his drink. He hasn't known Sawamura long but he can somehow imagine the face he'd make, how loud he would yell that statement with conviction, "Too bad." He's sure Sawamura could have been someone if he'd come to Seidou and he somehow feels cheated of something

"What position?"

"Pitcher, a southpaw, nasty throw," Yoichi grips his cup tightly. He looks over at him, "He's not a professional but he does still play."

It's a subtle nudge that Kazuya ignores.

Which is probably why he finds Sawamura so often on his doorstep.

Today he's managed to wrangle Kazuya out of his house, but only because it's work-related. The summer heat isn't terrible today so the two decide to walk and even though it's not that far, Kazuya finds himself lightly perspiring. Perhaps he's let himself go more than he thought, and he begins planning a timetable to get his fitness in a better state. Meanwhile, Sawamura is all smiles

"Hurry up Miyuki Kazuya!" He's already at the side door, opening it with his staff key, and Kazuya wonders if they should even be here. There are hardly any cars parked outside and the school is obviously void of children. Classes don't start until next week

"You don't have to call me by my full name," Kazuya tells him as he enters the building. Sawamura slides past him after closing the door, making sure it locks properly, "You can call me Miyuki-senpai."

"What?!" Sawamura's voice echoes in the hallway, "Why should I call you that?!"

"Because you're younger," he pats Sawamura's head and grins, "And smaller."

He slaps his hand away, a blush on his face, "I'm not small! And you're not even that much taller!!"

He stands closer to Kazuya and points at the few centimeters difference between them. Kazuya pushes him back, "Miyuki-senpai."

Sawamura just rolls his eyes and continues walking, "You really do have a terrible personality Miyuki Kazuya!"

Kazuya just laughs, "Thanks!"

"Not a compliment!" Sawamura yells and then points to the rooms in the hall they're in, "I'm usually here with the kids. Since the school isn't that big you'll probably get kids as young as eight and as old as thirteen in your class too, since you're the only gym teacher until Kuramochi-senpai gets married."

Kazuya nods, "Ok, Sawamura...sensei."

Kazuya notes how easy it is to rile up Sawamura. How his face will quickly turn red and his lips will form pouts or grimaces, his body reacting so honestly so quickly. Now he brings up his hands to cover his ears as he yells, "Don't call me that!!"

"Then stop calling me by my full name, it's weird."

"MIYUKI KA-"

Kazuya somehow manages to raise his voice enough to speak over Sawamura, "So Sawamura-sensei, where do the kids go out to play? Sensei?"

Sawamura looks like he's about to burst and goes off yelling. Miyuki follows him, laughing, their voices echoing in tandem

They end up outside behind the school somewhere. Even though it's small, Kazuya is impressed by how well maintained it is. There is a small playground to the side, which has been recently repainted, signs marking the walls and tape clearly discouraging anyone from touching. The mats at the bottom look worn but not in bad shape. Then there is a track that circles what looks like enough field to be a neighborhood. Most of it is empty and Sawamura's talking about how sometimes the kids will go out there and play soccer or volleyball or really whatever sports they need that requires a lot of space. The only place that looks like it truly has a defined purpose is the baseball field.

He feels excited and scared at the same time, wants to run to home plate, to feel the dirt path against his feet, crouch, and take in the view. But he also thinks this is a bad idea. Maybe he shouldn't have come here, shouldn't have accepted the job. He knows why they want him, why they're willing to wait a year for Yoichi to come and teach. He's not sure if he can take the pressure

"Miyuki-senpai," he turns to Sawamura, who is pouting.

He's not sure why he feels himself calm down, perhaps it's because he'll take any distraction, even if it's loud Sawamura, or maybe it's because Sawamura looks ridiculous with his cheeks puffed out and his eyebrows scrunched up between his eyes. Kazuya smiles. It hurts a bit to do so, "Is this all just for the little gremlins? Lucky them, I didn't have something so big at my disposal when I was at school."

Sawamura suddenly inflates as he grins, "Yeah me neither! I'm from the countryside from a school even smaller than this! Wakana and I had to go to the other side of town with our friends if we wanted to play baseball. That's sort of what it's like here too. We share with some of the other schools and really anyone is welcome to come here as long as the kids aren't out playing."

"Wakana, huh," Kazuya notes. He hasn't actually met the bride-to-be yet, "Is she in the habit of taking people's money?"

Sawamura looks confused and perhaps a bit upset, "What?"

Kazuya only smirks, "I heard how Yoichi met her."

Understanding fills his eyes and he groans, "I keep telling Kuramochi-senpai not to tell that story! It's all lies! Lies! Come on, let's go to the gym, your to-be base."

They head back inside and Kazuya feels the smile that spreads on his face is lighter, amused. It's relaxing being with Sawamura, "So what, she wasn't stealing your money?"

"No!" Sawamura defends, "I never said she stole my money! It was all a misunderstanding!!"

"So what? She was just borrowing it?" Kazuya pushes and can't help but laugh as Sawamura goes red.

"I-It, my, NO! She just grabbed my wallet!! But she wasn't stealing it!"

----

SIX.

Kazuya hasn't been teaching for long when it's time to prepare for Sports Day and he forgets how tiring it can be. Sawamura is ecstatic the whole week leading up to the moment all the kids are let loose to run and play, and he's not sure how the flow of energy works, who feeds off who, but everyone seems to be ready to burst with enthusiasm by then. Kazuya feels like he's the only one who is burnt out. He's not usually used to so much happening, at least not like this

The school asks him to give an encouraging speech before the event begins, which Sawamura jealously admits had been his job the last two years, but he grins all the same. He encourages him to do his best, just like he does to the children and Kazuya isn't sure if he should be offended or glad when he feels the flat of Sawamura's palm on his back.

By then, Yoichi has finally wrapped things up with his team. He still has a few more interviews scheduled, but he's essentially removed himself (as much as he can) from the public eye. He's announced he's going to get married and has been asked many times about his to-be wife, but just like Kazuya, everyone is kept in the dark. On the few nights Yoichi manages to call him, to check up on him, Kazuya teases that maybe this is the most elaborate plan he's ever seen, that maybe this Wakana girl doesn't even exist

Yoichi just laughs, "What? Is The Great Miyuki Kazuya actually curious?"

Kazuya scoffs, "Of course not, and don't call me that. I can't get Sawamura to stop, I don't want you doing the same. It's so weird."

They talk until they're both ready to pass out but Yoichi tells him he'll be there and that he'll bring Wakana too. There's something strange with the way he says this but it's late, they've both been up for too long, and Kazuya doesn't remember the unease the next day

He doesn't remember until Sports Day, right before it happens.

It's usually a big event with parents and friends and the neighborhood coming by to see all their children perform at their best. This school is slightly different because of its size. It isn't just their kids (as Sawamura likes to say and Kazuya, reluctantly, has started to call his students), but a few students from two or three of the neighboring smaller schools. He's never seen the field so packed with kids. There are also a lot of cameras and flashing and suddenly Kazuya feels uncomfortably warm. This year it's not only locals that are here. He can see various news channels documenting the event and there are probably other labels walking around, trying to figure out what the next scoop will be. Or perhaps they've already been hinting at it but Kazuya has been avoiding all the gossip. He briefly wonders if they're here for him and while this might be slightly true, he's sure they're more likely to be here to catch a glimpse of Yoichi and Wakana

He decides to stick with Sawamura for most of the day.

Sawamura seems to be oblivious to all the attention, focusing on the kids, high-fiving everyone who is going to race, yelling encouragements as they pass him by, and yelling out happily as the kids make the baskets and reach the finish lines. Kazuya tries to show his support as well and Sawamura drags him from one event to the next. The parents love him as much as the children do. He briefly wonders if Sawamura will have any voice left for the next day

It's around the time the kids finally get their break for lunch (and that Sawamura pulls him over to an empty patch of grass so that they can finally rest as well, how Kazuya was able to crouch for hours on end before is almost a mystery to him now, he really HAS let himself go) that he starts to hear them

"I didn't say she stole MY money. Did you really not know?" "Is she REALLY here? "The NERVE of her." "We should tell the principal to kick her out. Where is she?"

Everything starts to go quiet as Kazuya looks around. There are too many people around, but he manages to find her by the fence behind the diamond. She's looking right at him and Kazuya feels himself stop breathing for a moment. He isn't sure what he was expecting but she looks exactly like she did three years ago, except somehow better. Her hair is up in her typical bun, she's wearing a pink button-up with her trademark pencil skirt. There's a small coat hanging off her arm, which is the only sign he has that she plans to stay for the whole of the day's events.

He gets up, ignores Sawamura's confused, "Miyuki-senpai?" and goes to meet her.

He remembers how Yoichi had sounded over the phone the other day and realizes that when he said her, he hadn't meant Wakana, he had meant Rei. She's smiling at him and once they're close enough, she says, "Miyuki Kazuya, it's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Rei," he all but whispers and he notices people are looking, the cameras are pointing in their direction and he smiles. He's so happy and relieved to see her. He wonders why he hadn't tried contacting her before, where the guilt and fear have gone. He thanks Yoichi, will thank him later as well, for always doing things like this for him, I'm the worst friend, aren't I? He can already see Yoichi's annoyed face as he threatens to punch him if he says anything so stupid again. He laughs, "It's been way too long. I'm sorry."

He finally has the chance to really apologize for everything, to offer his support, to ask how she's been doing, and he marvels at how Seidou is truly a family. His old teammates haven't just been trying to get him to move forward, they have also been helping Rei regain a semblance of her old life.

When they part, it turns into a game. They both know how things will go so they are bold, they grin, and take each other's hands in a firm shake.

"I'm sure I'll be seeing you on the field in the future." It's not a question.

"Of course." It's a promise.

At the end of the day, Sawamura and he are the last to leave the school since Sawamura offered to stay and clean up (and with him Kazuya). The sun is already on the verge of setting and Kazuya can't wait to take a bath and then crawl into bed. He doesn't want to wake up until a week from now.

As they're walking home (or really walking to his house because even now, he's never really asked where Sawamura lives, he imagines not far), Kazuya notices how quiet Sawamura is. He bumps his side with his shoulder, "Lost your voice with all that yelling?"

Sawamura looks over at him and shakes his head. Kazuya is momentarily mesmerized by this side of Sawamura. Quiet, almost shy. He's not pouting or angry, his features calm, slightly sharp on his handsome face. The remaining rays of the sun make his eyes look slightly gold and Kazuya wonders why he's suddenly noticing these things, "What's wrong then?"

The temperature had dropped enough that they were now comfortably wearing jerseys. Sawamura mumbles into the collar of his jersey and Kazuya is annoyed, but only slightly. It's that bad habit of Sawamura's and he wonders if he could tease those mumbled words out of him, is about to do that when Sawamura stops walking, closes his eyes, and yells out, "Do you like Miss Rei?!"

Kazuya is left speechless. At least that answers his other teasing question. Sawamura is as loud as always, "What?"

Sawamura opens his eyes, he's blushing and he can't seem to look him in the eye, "Well, there were those rumors...and then today...I mean, she's really pretty and just..." He goes quiet.

There's a lot here he wants to clear up, but he figures he should start with Sawamura's question, "No. At least, not really."

There's a question in those golden-brown eyes and Kazuya continues to explain, "I'm sure everyone on the baseball team liked her at one point. We were all teenagers and she's a really attractive woman, but that's it. Rei...she scouted me, believed that I could go far, pushed me, pretty much built my whole career. She's not really like my mom, not really an older sister...but yeah, like family."

They're both surprised by how honest he's been, which leads him to his own question, "Rumors? So you knew who I was. Is that why you called me by my full name?"

Sawamura looks embarrassed, "Yeah. I, I was curious about Seidou. I bet Kuramochi-senpai already told you about Rei and her coming to scout me?"

Kazuya nods.

They start walking again, "Well, I started seeing your name come up a lot. I always had trouble with my own catchers, I wasn't very good, sometimes my throws would go wild. I guess. I mean, they felt right, but Wakana, she was my main catcher, it was hard for her to catch them. Anyway, I started following your career. And just, well, then that happened and the rumors..."

They're quiet for a moment. Kazuya thinking back to how Yoichi had called Sawamura's pitch a nasty throw, the way Rei had pointed out Sawamura's staring while they talked and how Kazuya should catch for him, "When I saw him pitch, I knew you two would make a great battery. I knew you would be what could push him to greater heights, and that he would influence you too. All of Seidou. He has the heart of an Ace."

He's curious.

"Do you regret it?"

It's been a few minutes but Sawamura follows his question, turns to him, conviction in his burning eyes, "Never!"

----

SEVEN.

Kazuya finally gets to meet Wakana on his birthday. Yoichi tells him they're going out to celebrate at a fancy restaurant and he's not allowed to say no. Since he is the best man at their future wedding, he supposes it would be rude to not meet the bride-to-be so he pulls out one of his old suits, is relieved it still fits, and decides that's enough effort needed on his part. He also decides to forgo the tie and leaves the first two buttons undone. It's classy.

He's not surprised to see Sawamura also at the restaurant, and he's also not surprised to see him sporting a loud outfit. He's also wearing a suit but his shirt is a bright blue with baseball patterns, he's pulled up the suit jacket sleeves to his elbows (which, might he add, does not match his pants, but it somehow works), and he's actually wearing a tie. There's a girl trying to tame his hair but she soon gives up when Sawamura spots him and calls out, "Miyuki Kazu-mmyaa."

"Eijun!" the girl chides him, "We told you to be quiet!"

She's covering his mouth and let's go once he settles down. He rubs his hand through the back of his hair, ruining whatever work the girl must have done, "Sorry."

The girl shakes her head and turns to him, "So you're the famous Miyuki Kazuya, in the flesh."

Kazuya smiles, "And you must be the infamous money stealing Wakana."

They shake hands and Wakana laughs, "The one and only."

Yoichi comes up behind him, "Good, you're here. I thought I was going to have to send someone to drag you out of bed."

They're escorted to the back where they can dine in private. Yoichi walks in the back with him and Kazuya watches the way Sawamura's body faces Wakana even when they're walking. The way she pushes and holds his arm, laughs at what he says. The way that Sawamura lets her choose where she wants to sit and then makes space so that the table decorations aren't in her way. He sits across from her.

Yoichi whispers at him, "See what I mean?"

Kazuya doesn't need to see them interact to know why Wakana once liked Sawamura, but it definitely solidifies their closeness.

Wakana is very pretty. She has short hair that is slightly tinged with red, natural, she mentions when she sees him looking at her, "I get asked a lot." Apparently, it's a color she inherited from her great grandmother

She's as small as Yoichi claimed her to be, which makes her look tiny with her current company. She's wearing a simple and modest blue dress that matches perfectly with the ties Sawamura and Yoichi are wearing. She's just as honest as Sawamura is, and Kazuya wonders if all the people in his life are like that. It's refreshing. He instantly likes her and knows that Yoichi will be happy. It makes him happy too.

They're waiting on their food when Sawamura tells Yoichi that "Miyuki Kazuya" called Wakana a thief. Yoichi puts down his glass of wine, sending his best friend a glare, "I should have known you wouldn't behave!"

Sawamura is quick to respond, "It's all your fault Kuramochi-senpai! You keep telling that stupid story!!"

"The only thing stupid about that story is YOU Bakamura!!"

They look like children snapping at each other across the table and Wakana is just laughing. She turns to Kazuya, "Did he tell you what actually happened?"

Kazuya nods, "Sort of. Something about borrowing a wallet."

Wakana smiles, "Something like that, yes."

"See! I told you I never said she stole my money!!" Sawamura gets up suddenly but nobody notices the waiter coming with trays until the sound of plates falling to the ground and shattering are heard. But the worst part is probably the cake that Sawamura tries to save. Part of it lands on his hands, some of it on the table, but a big portion of it (thanks to Sawamura's interference), is now all over Wakana's dress. Everyone holds their breath, the waiter looks horrified.

Kazuya knows he shouldn't but he snickers and that seems to bring everything back to life. Wakana laughs and tells the waiter it's ok, she pats his hand reassuringly, "But can we get another cake? We'll pay for both of course."

The man is so relieved, he smiles and nods, and says he'll be right back to clean up, that he can also ask someone to help her out. Sawamura looks constipated and ridiculous standing there with chunks of cake in his hands.

"This is so coming out of your wallet Sawamoron!!" Yoichi cries out as he grabs chunks of cake from Wakana's lap and throws it on the table, "And YOU, I can't believe you did that!"

Kazuya only smirks, looks over at Wakana, and says, "Welcome to the family."

It seems like Wakana isn't just depleting Sawamura's accounts, but also stealing hearts.

----

OMAKE (months later)

It's the wedding night when Sawamura decides to crash at Kazuya's house. They're both exhausted and since they're both going to the same place the next morning, Kazuya doesn't make a fuss. When they make it home, they fight about who will take a shower first and Kazuya wins because, ultimately, this is his house so of course he has dibs. Sawamura pouts as he heads to the living room, ok, ok, just go you evil tanuki bastard.

When Kazuya comes out in a white t-shirt and boxers, he finds Sawamura already passed out on the couch, his arm and leg fallen off the side. He notices that he at least had the sense to take off his suit jacket and shirt. He's only wearing his undershirt and his pants have risen up his shins. Everything else is thrown against the back of the couch and his keys, cellphone, camera, and wallet, are all on the table. He's snoring lightly, his breath coming out more like little sighs, and there's a bit of drool where gravity has decided to do its job.

He's about to wake up Sawamura when he remembers something Wakana told him the first time they met. Right before they left the restaurant, she had pulled him aside, telling the other two NOT to come closer, Next time you get the chance, look inside his wallet. I promise it'll be worth it, and don't worry, he won't mind. He yells a lot but that's all there is.

The wallet is right there and Kazuya wishes it had landed the other way. At least like that, it wouldn't feel like he was snooping. No, he wouldn't. He doesn't really understand why Wakana wants him to look inside, but it's not really any of his business. He shakes his head and walks towards the couch. Before he can even reach forward, Sawamura shifts and mumbles a sleepy, "Kazuya."

Kazuya freezes at the stupid smile on Sawamura's face. He feels his face heat up and he's not sure why. He briefly glances at the wallet again, then moves to shake Sawamura's shoulders.

It takes a moment, a testament to how tired Sawamura is, before his brown eyes open and he sleepily mumbles, "Miyuki Kazuya?"

Kazuya hesitates for a moment. He doesn't have extra bedding and he knows sleeping on the couch is uncomfortable. They were going to share the bed, just like he always does whenever Yoichi visits, but suddenly he wonders if maybe this isn't a good idea. He tells Sawamura it's his turn to shower and nearly drags him to the bathroom. He stands outside just to make sure he doesn't pass out inside and somehow Sawamura looks even more drowsy than before. His skin is red from the heat of the water and they head to the bedroom.

Sawamura is out before his head hits the pillow. Kazuya arranges him on the bed properly and covers him with the blanket.

He finds it hard to sleep, the sound of his name coming from Sawamura's sleepy lips echoing in his head.

---

A/N:

I scoured Reddit for some inspiration and found this interesting prompt: "I never said she stole my money has 7 different meanings based on which word is emphasized." I sort of followed the prompt? LOL

things to note: 1. I just googled "prisoner clothes in japan" and green outfits came up, hence why Rei is dressed in a "green top" 2. I don't actually know how legal proceedings go in japan, if it would take longer or less (but this is fanfic so let's not question it) 3. Again, I don't know how long rehabs take but I'm not aiming for accuracy 4. If it wasn't obvious, Sawamura wasn't in the original Seidou team in this fic (lol) 5. Sports day apparently apparently happens around October (and again, Idk much about it)

I don't think I've ever written anything "complete" for this fandom but I hope you all enjoyed, especially you daiyanerd ^^

p.s. This got out of hand omg it's so long and hardly anything happens i hope you guys don't mind Orz Also, I kind of want to write more for this, maybe Sawamura's side of some of the events, maybe just a continuation, idk....

#misawa #daiya #daiya no ace #ace of diamond #future fic #modern day au #angst and healing #sawamura is best medicine #friendship #kazuya and kuramochi #humor #I write ff #gifts and exchanges #sofatropefestbingo2021 #seasons of anime trope fest bingo 2021 #seasons of anime gift exchange 2021 #fanfiction #First Meetings

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fortheheavenssake · 5 years ago

Text

PG MM Anon Interpretation Collection- 11

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU DEAR MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

71: Sept. 30

MM Anon

MM ANON …… PR gestapo returns … the converted are turning …… never a Dull atonement …… “So quick bright things come to confusion”… 🎼 “A spoonful of sugar”🎼 …… a hostage to her fortune … the grey accountants …… “ death and taxes “…… a Scottish invitation accepted …… “Back home old thing, shame!!!”…… old habits…… new evidence has leaked…… a basket full of eggs.

PR gestapo returns

The PR team returns to London to continue their ‘dark arts’ of deception on madams behalf. They are preaching to the wrong crowd. There is no amount of PR that could change things. It’s far too late, even if she got on her knees(go away filthy ideas), in Trafalgar Square and pleaded forgiveness, there would be none, ITS TOO LATE! Leave her to Heaven, by the way that’s a fantastic film and fits perfectly about narcissism. Jeanne Craine and the gorgeous Gene Tierney who plays the narc so amazingly well! I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS FILM!!! Or is this JS hired by PA to do his PR? Likely not because it says returns!

the converted are turning

Many people who were chuffed and liked madam are seeing abs turnings their opinions as they are realizing who and what she really is. That’s the baffling thing about HRC and MO chiming in supporting her. They have no business doing that or do they? Backers??

never a Dull atonement

Atonement,is a reparation for a wrong or injury, (in religious contexts) reparation or expiation for sin. The statement is never a dull moment but MM ANON has changed it and capitalized Dull. We know she has done fake conversion to several religions through first two marriages, now baptized allegedly into the COE prior to marriage . Atonement has never been on her radar. So what of it, is she going to go whiz bang to Balmoral fall on her sword and beg mercy from the Crown? Is that what this means? I highly doubt it. I am struggling with the capital D in Dull, is the opposite of Dull meant? She will never atone, but she’s never dull either, dim yes but dull no.

“So quick bright things come to confusion”

This is why l love the riddles, teachable moments and MM ANON never fails to deliver. Alas we return to our beloved Shakespeare, this theme A Midsummer Nights Dream . Their relationship, to call it that, began at Soho as a hookup, and progressed to now. It was never ever love for either! However, the public, who so badly want Harry happy believed the story, most of them. As time went on certain people like our 💜🐼💜, and others began to ask questions because they saw cracks and inconsistencies. Fast forward to today, madam is hated, loathed, despised in the U.K. and many other places in the Commonwealth and beyond! I have no idea how she can ever do an appearance in public after the final slap of hiding amw and then showing off live baby in SA, final massive F*** YOU to HMTQ, the U.K. and the Commonwealth! The bloom is off the rose big time, just thorns left. Thank you MM ANON for using Shakespeare, l am wondering how many more riddles there will be, l am sensing a real tipping point.

🎼 “A spoonful of sugar”🎼

Julie Andrews at her finest in Mary Poppins, such a shame a surgeon botched surgery and she can no longer sing, makes me angry actually the world deprived of her voice, speaking selfishly. I saw her interviewed, she was so classy talking about how that changed her life. But l digress, the line is a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, in the most delightful way, l can hear her singing it as I type and sing along! So here’s the rub of it, what is the medicine that needs sweetening, is it actually medicine for madam, that’s way too obvious for MM ANON. I think there is something on offer that madam will tolerate return to,London and trip to Balmoral , what is that? It’s the availability of hobby items, that’s the one thing she needs! Like physically neeeds!

a hostage to her fortune

Ha ha this is funny! Having a fortune, speaking money here, and being hostage or tethered to it. Most of it is ill gotten gains allegedly, of course l know nothing, one would owe home country amazing amount of taxes and if unlawfully obtained money, it’s Literally your fortune as in future. If ill gotten gains, the lawmen come a calling. So the use of the word fortune was very clever as usual MM ANON! Fortune as in financials and fortune as in tell my fortune, the future things to come!

the grey accountants

The brilliant men in grey, behind the scenes doing HMTQ work. Intel, surveillance, interviews, AND keeping track of every single coin$$$££££€€€ earned. I can only imagine the total by now. Given the reception President DT received and the intel that he brought, l am certain the US/IRS is working in tandem with the loyal men in grey forever unknown but giving their all to serve the Crown and HMTQ! God bless them!

“ death and taxes “

Two old phrases l love, the only things certain in life are death and taxes. The other one is, you can’t fight city hall. So, if l read this correctly madam has a massive tax bill due from the American tax man. Can you hear his adding machine(those of you of my vintage will know exactwhat l mean🤣🤣) can you hear it Rachel? Can you hear the footsteps of the taxman comets? Can you Rachel? It’s like Poe’s Telltale Heart. Have you even heard of Poe or the story Rachel? Likely not, but the taxman wants his due!!

a Scottish invitation accepted

So, at long last, they will deign to attend HMTQ and give Her the honour of their company at beloved Balmoral, her safe place. . Isn’t that grand and kind of them? I am sure HMTQ is squealing with delight at this visit, NOT!

“Back home old thing, shame!!!”

LG to HMTQ, upon the return of the Sussexes or, since its October, this is the month her respite/vacation to Balmoral ends and she returns to the hectic pace of London life. Although, between BOJO, PA and The Sussexes, l can’t imagine this has been much of a respite.

old habits

Oh old habits die hard! Old hobbies do as well, sniff sniff, snort, snort, swallow, swallow, yes return to London will bring ample time and availability of hobbies and hobby time. I said London, because we ALL know, no one is living at Frogmore except Kermit 🐸. Keep at it, the nose will completely collapse, no amount of plastic surgery can ever truly repair it.

new evidence has leaked…

Is this regarding BOJO ? And his continuing issues of women? I am not aware of any other leaks, but l haven’t read the blog or papers yet. I am still 💤💤💤💤😴😴😴 resting a lot .

a basket full of eggs.

My, my, my, my a basket of eggs is so fragile isn’t it? One wrong move and they crack. The older the eggs are, they are more fragile and they can go off. Now we are definitely not talking chicken 🐓 🥚 eggs here. A woman of her age , those eggs, harvested, must be very near or past their sell by date. When the extraction was done, viable leftovers would have been cryofrozen. Have the 🥚 eggs in the 🧺, cracked, not viable, not healthy? Oh God please intervene make it thus, so no more innocents are created to be used and abused.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you dear PG! I get lost in your words….like a great turn pager….I want more…more …….more! Thank you, sounding good! I love taxmen talk! 🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜

💜💜addition:

PR Gestapo returns

The SS was the Nazi feared from wiki

The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as Sig runes thin.png with Armanen runes; German pronunciation: [ˈʃʊtsˌʃtafl̩] (About this soundlisten); literally “Protection Squadron”) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II

SS IS SUNSHINE SACHS!! These things stock in my head and bug me, a light came on, l had to come back to add this.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Ask Skippy submission

—————-

72: Oct. 1

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU SO MUCH MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON … 🎼” back to black”🎼…… uncomfortably reunion …… “ AND THE CROWDS WENT…… home”… “blend in with the POC”🤣🤣🤣🤣…… Pressed for time. …… PR with blinkers… don’t Sue the messenger …… Harry on camping…… background colour …… “ bloody African Queen ‘ don’t think so”…… “ returning after their triumphant tour “…… OMG’ it’s definitely her

🎼” back to black”🎼

Amy Winehouse, what a tragic loss, she was working so hard to get clean. So many talented people, artists, musicians, writers, throughout the ages have struggled with mental illness and addiction of varying types. This song is about lots of sex, relationship where her man comes and goes to other women and her dying inside, the couple using drugs together, extremely dysfunctional relationship. MM ANON , are you equating the current ones in discussion to the type of relationship in this heartbreaking song? I miss Amy Winehouse, they tried to make me go to rehab but l said no no no! RIP AMY🙏🏻

uncomfortably reunion

Return to London and interacting with the press was going to be tough back home. But now, l have no clue what’s going to happen. Reunions with the BRF, l have no words. HMTQ , PP LG everyone must be FURIOUS! I can imagine a lot of cocktails, late nights and foul words. This is all so unnecessary, look how our dear Autumn, she married Peter Philips, she’s Canadian, she has seamlessly adjusted. Hasn’t put a foot wrong. This is all down to one thing , evil, manifesting itself in heavy narcissism!

“ AND THE CROWDS WENT…… home”

We have had this line before. The ‘crowds’ yesterday at Victoria Yards , what l saw photos of two people, one on each side not standing too close and than two photographers. Others had children running up to her, she hugged them, Today, at uni, she has become patron of the ACU, Association of Commonwealth Universities. The comment in the paper said they ‘hailed her partially because she was black”. No huge crowds, the people didn’t linger long or wait hours and hours.

“blend in with the POC”🤣🤣🤣

She has been doing her own thing, likely all prearranged by PR, right down to someone from the embassy ordering bespoke 👖 jeans for her. She did the shopping walk about at Victoria Yards, buying things here and there. She personally went to puck up her jeans, the designer/maker was so excited, he had made a little pair for amw, they were so cute. So she was at the uni today, blending in, as per the comment l wrote .

Pressed for time.

Busy schedule for both of them during this holiday. I was hoping Harry could get into talks with Angolan government officials regarding becoming a Commonwealth member, that was the goal, his first attempt at a diplomatic mission. Pressed, ironing, l know this isn’t it, but gracious both of their clothes have been a mess. Wrinkled, ratty, those brown suede lace ups, Harry please toss them, please! They all need pressing/ironing. I know, MM ANON, that is not what you meant but it fits well. The press had their flight from London delayed about ten hours l think, they were not permitted at amw and DT meeting, it was all privately hired and now owned by the Sussex team. Now with what’s happened today, my mind is whirling in many directions for this clue.

PR with blinkers

Sirens for emergency, police, fire, ambulance. PR blinkers LLOK HERE something great happening. Or don’t look there, nothing to see at all carry on. I keep reading PR firms use the ‘dark arts’. The paper said that about Jason Stein, PA new PR guy, as well. Just what are these dark arts? PR is going off the charts upon return to the U.K. In fact, blinkers/sirens/looky here have just happened today with the letter from Harry and lawsuit filed against the DM for something they did months and months ago. Why now? Is it a last money grab? It’s nearing the end, Winter is coming, winter is coming.

don’t Sue the messenger

Well normally it’s don’t shoot the messenger, but here we finally have it today, lawsuit filed against the DM and it’s parent company. The stony silent press have been sitting on a dossier of lurid information,a stand-off, so to speak is over. The British Press have kept schtum on a dossier so raunchy, l cannot fathom. Today, shots fired off the bow, and battle has begun. I said it last night in my riddle interpretation, we are near a tipping point, well that was last night, today, NOW , the tipping point has arrived. War has been declared, and it’s going to get very very VERY NASTY!

Harry on camping…

Harry was part of National Geographic and was laying on the ground in Malawi, taking the most amazing uplook photos near and of a Baobab tree. He looked in his element, out in nature, enjoying its beauty and taking photographs for his contributions to a joint project with Nat Geo.

background colour

She has always, professionally and socially identified as Caucasian, this has been her background. Seemingly, when convenient, things change, bronzer goes deeper, she calls herself sister to Africans. Interesting, beyond my comprehension how someone can continue and continue to use others, without any regard, none at all. You’re convenient, if l need something from you, l will take it, when you’re not of use bye bye.

“ bloody African Queen ‘ don’t think so”

Great film with Bogart and Hepburn, the African Queen is. But l digress, these are PP, words of disgust as her self perception of being a sister and POC , and thus more relatable and the Queen of Africa. I think she has the same skin tone as before, before the bronzer face overload. You look at today’s photos her arms and legs are pink, it’s especially noticeable when she is standing next to a local person of a different culture. I am boiling at this point. The powder keg has been lit. We wait for response from HMTQ!

“ returning after their triumphant tour “

Yes, like the Prodigal son returns after doing whatever he wanted and was welcomed with open arms! Ah no, that will DEFINITELY NOT BE THE WELCOME, ESPECIALLY AFTER TODAYS EXPLOSIVES LOBBED AT THE BRITISH MEDIA! They have sat silent on what they know for over two years! Taking to court, something called discovery in the U.S., both sides have to share their data. The welcome home was going to be explosive because of madams behaviour and ESPECIALLY because amw was paraded around like an Olympic medal!

OMG’ it’s definitely her”

Allegedly, can’t recall, ?last week, the alleged sex tape salad tape was sold. Is this meaning it’s in good lawful hands and they are convinced it’s madam??

Is this what people said when they saw her just out shopping yesterday, enjoying the buskers performance, surprising the designer and picking up her order? I honestly was happy for him, because he was so excited and he had been so thoughtful to make a pair for amw. He said he was so shocked to see her there in person. Again l am so happy for him. I hope his business increases through this media coverage!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you dear PG! This looks great! Good things coming! Greatly appreciate the effort you put in on doing the riddles for us! 🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

——————

73: Oct. 2

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF BIRTHDAY MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

🥳🥳🥳🥳🎂🎂🎂🎂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻WISHES FOR THE HAPPIEST BIRTHDAY, JUST SORRY I AM SO LATE AT IT🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳💜💜💜💜💜

MM Anon… Happy Birthday to you!

MM ANON …… A TM visit?…… a pitiful cry for help …… “tears of a Crown”…… “ Philip’ stop swearing!!”…… ink block carnage … a scathing edi-TORY-al……”A Sunday surprise “…… “well,well,well’ fe-MAIL- empowerment”…… Fleet St. circling the wagons …… 🎼 “ Homeward bound, I guess ………” 🎼j…… … ace card archificial …… “SA’ well that was a dud Megs”…… leap-Frog to Calipornia 🤫🤫🤫

A TM visit?

Oh my golly!! Is gramma Tom, Thomas MArkle, going to be visiting?😮😮😮😮 Will this be like when Samantha came to KP, in her wheelchair, that’s was so sad to see, they wouldn’t let her through security. Will TM just show up? I doubt he has that confidence. Ha ha speaking of confidence, did you know that was the original name for con, confidence game, you’d gain someone’s confidence or trust and then use then every which way you can. Anyhow again l digress, back to TM, are they arranging some sort of visit garnering public sentiment? Don’t bother Rachel, the public has developed sentiment and more than a plenty of it, it its far from good! After yesterday, nothing is left, of what little there was. But her MO, HRC AND EDGENERATE LOVE YOU! That makes a perfect life, with the one thing, they’re AMERICAN! Again my American friends, l love you, not bashing you, just a select few. Last time l checked, the titles you bear are British and Commonwealth titles.

a pitiful cry for help

I saw Harry today, in the still photos it was evident, but in the video, l KNOW WHAT HES FEELING BECAUSE I HAVE LIVED IT FOR 12 YEARS, AND LAST WEEK YOU ALL KNOW WHAT L WAS SUFFERING! Something has happened, he has either worked out his anger physically to such a point he’s torn a muscle or he has a slipped disc. The pain, as he stepped up to the podium, this time, him holding onto her, and his involuntary wincing, and trying to cover it up, L KNOW THAT PAIN. Please, PLEASE GET HIM HOME, BETWEEN, his mood, his wasting away, and now this, for goodness sake he needs being seen urgently, an MRI, and REST!! I am certain he has either been given an injectable for pain along with oral meds. Oh Harry, we are slowly watching you falling apart in every way. My heart aches beyond measure, when l saw the pain he is in, the physical pain, l know that, l live it!! Imagine his humiliation having to learn on madam, oh makes me sick.

“tears of a Crown”…

There is an old song, Tears of a Clown, think this is play on that. However, Crown, capitalized, is like the Royal We, it refers specifically to the reigning Monarch. Imagine HMTQ tears, yesterday especially, and today seeing him in pain. She has ruled for decades and decades. Nearing the end of her reign, when life should be treating her kind for her service, it has dealt her a well planned, well financed attack, involving use of her beloved grandson. I feel for her pain, yet l cannot fathom how deep it goes and how it must anger some and pain others in the family. The rage at this attack and the rubble it has left since it began spread far and wide across the U.K. , the Commonwealth and the world. Please let’s once again remember to pray for HMTQ.

“ Philip’ stop swearing!!”

As l speculated yesterday, in the riddle, there would likely be lots of cocktails, lots of foul language and lots of sleeplessness. This clue affirms one, HMTQ begging her husband to cease and desist the language. PP is an Alpha male, strong, Navy man, soldier, stalwart, ever present at HMTQ side. Now in his twilight years, just imagine his anger and feelings of helplessness, he too, is in need of our prayers. How l worry about both of them and their health. All of this woe and strife has to be having a marked detrimental effect on both and all around them.

ink block carnage

Ink blocks can be carved of stone or wood and are used for new beginners or more skilled calligraphers. Now madam has for quite some time put calligraphy on her CV(resumé). This has riled up actual skilled calligraphers who have said what she does, is not true calligraphy, it is flouncy fluffy writing, as girls do in junior high school. This letter, that she dated, signed and sent to daddy has come back to haunt , yet again . The carnage, the use of the media in the U.S. ie p e o p l e magazine, and in the U.K. Funny, it’s ok, for her pals to chatter on in a magazine but the person who the letter was given, to hence his property, cannot. Double standard yet again. The carnage continues. Lawsuit filed, letter supposedly written by a furious PH, accompanied it, all without consulting or informing HMTQ or the Palace. Don’t you worry, not a White happens without LG knowing! Again l remind you of that special wedding ring Harry wears. I will leave it there!

a scathing edi-TORY-al

Piers Morgan, editor of The Daily Mail and host of Good Morning Britain, formally identified as a Tory or Conservative, we call them Tories also, back in 1994. He today, had an editorial ready positive regarding the SA trip. He wrote the editorial but had to add to it. It did include positives, but then turn into a scathing public reprimand of yesterday’s occurrences. I would encourage you all to read it. I won’t repeat it all, but he pointed out the unmitigated gall of madam and the Princess Diana comparison, the usage of the media when on her own terms, madam, l mean. I cannot do it justice, just please read it. It is scathing to put it mildly, he pulls no punches, his cards are all laid out on the table 100%!

”A Sunday surprise “…

Will it ACTUALLY HAPPEN? Finally headlines printing of all the information in the million dollar dossier that the papers have been sitting on for two plus years now! Oh how dee doodee how l hope so! PLEASE PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE WITH SUGAR AND A CHERRY 🍒 ON TOP!!!

“well,well,well’ fe-MAIL- empowerment”

Femail is a subset on the Daily Mail website, fluff meant for women, hence the cute usage and spelling. Madam features heavily there. She spoke about female empowerment and female access to education during her visit to the University of Johannesburg yesterday. Again she raised the idea of paying for university, she said she attended but did not, that l read, mention graduating or a degree. She mentioned families helping to finance the cost. She also announced four new scholarships. Earlier in the week she held a private breakfast for female activists.

Fleet St. circling the wagons

Fleet St(Street), is like the Royal we, it’s the term for British Media.Going back to 1500’s this was the street of printing and newspapers appeared several centuries now. It’s the term understood to represent British or London journalists and journalism. Circling the wagons again goes back hundreds of years, when the first settles arrived and moved out west. They were encroaching on native lands and often were attacked. They literally circled their wagons for shelter and protection. Now the tutorial done l can move on. Fleet st circling their wagons oh me , oh my!! Get ready kittens!!! The previews are almost over the main film, no pun intended, ACTUALLY MAJOR PUN INTENDED 🤣🤣😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣! The main film is about to begin, it’s all ready to roll and l for one am waiting with bated breath!!

🎼 “ Homeward bound, I guess

Again we have S&G(Simon and Garfunkel) homeward bound, sitting at the railway station……. not to Cali. Oh no no no, this is HOME, LONDON, tee here, no delays. The inevitable must happen, play time over and back to the real world. The usage of ‘lguess’, is hesitancy for her because it’s not her home, for him, because l can’t imagine his feelings and what he anticipates his reception will be!

” 🎼j…… … ace card archificial

You’ve got to have an ace in the hole by George Strait. MM ANON, l highly doubt this is the song you meant but it fits beautifully! It’s all about life, secrets, gambling etc etc. The ace card is from wiki. An ace is a playing card, die or domino with a single pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the case of the ace of spades. This embellishment on the ace of spades started when King James VI of Scotland and I of Englandrequired an insignia of the printing house to be printed on the ace of spades. This insignia was necessary for identifying the printing house and stamping it as having paid the new stamp tax.[1] Although this requirement was abolished in 1960, the tradition has been kept by many card makers.[2] In other countries the stamp and embellishments are usually found on ace cards; clubs in France, diamonds in Russia, and hearts in Genoa because they have the most blank space.

The BRF have archficial as their ace, she thinks she does🤣🤣🤣😂😂

The whole fauxmegnancy, EVERYTHING that went along with it, finally seeing a real breathing baby in SA, many many ramifications. It’s not Harry’s child, DEFINITELY not of the body, may be her egg but surrogate carried alllegedly baby. The whole doll, thing, l have no idea how all this information will be leaked/shared with public.

“SA’ well that was a dud Megs”…

Dud, funny word, not used much these days but to a certain vintage,🤣🤣😂😂😂 like me , commonplace. It is a thing that fails to work properly, another word is lemon, again my vintage. Something that is worthless. However, when my mum used to say get your duds on, it meant hurry up get dressed, put your coats on. For church or elsewhere fancy, it was said you put your finest duds on. Memories anyone?😊. Here MM ANON certainly means the former, not the latter, although some of the duds, a lot of them have been very wrinkled and on madams part buttoned low at the bust and unbuttoned very high at the thigh. Well for the most part, her machinations aside, they were well received. What occurred yesterday by way of lawsuit announce was most bizarre timing. They just can’t seem to stop getting in their own way. The letter that is identified as being from Harry, has many many Americanisms. Taken only on paper, one could say, despite it being attributed as his words, one can say full stop this was written by an American, no offence. The wordage, sentence structure and the glaring use of the word democracy, when the U.K. has been a Monarchy, albeit with Parliament now, it most certainly is never ever defined as being a democracy. How do they let these things slip? These billion dollar PR firms? I know, we only need look who their client is. Full stop.

leap-Frog to Calipornia 🤫🤫🤫

Frogmore is the official residence, we all know they have never lived there. The locals told and continued to say the only time there were lights, vehicles, signs of life were when the builders were there. Interesting MM ANON Cali PORNIA. Good gracious, is this her plan, to hop across the pond back to Cali and earn $$$$££££€€€€ making porn? That just might be the job a madam is most deft at and qualified for.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you dear PG! I love your wit! You make reading your interpretations such fun, I get lost in them! Thank you so very much! This is sounding sooooooo good! Love you!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜

Oct 2nd,

——————

74: Oct. 3

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻😊😊THANK YOU MM ANON! I HOPE YOUR BIRTHDAY WAS DELIGHTFUL 😊😊🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON …… rogue withdrawal …… a petulant rattle slays fleet st. …… royal analysis paralysis ……… “ settlement now!!!! ……TM lawyers up…… tabloid utopia …… “ This is a bloody tape diversion old thing “…………“A spitting Halloween 🎃 “……… “ remember ‘remember, the 5th of Nov.” …… “ Philip ‘ this year you give the Queen speech”…… 🎆🎇😱🇬🇧💩⚖️⚖️⚖️…… GBTQ.

rogue withdrawal

They say Harry has gone rogue by marrying against advice. They say Harry went rogue releasing the statement in November 2016 when madam told him she felt unsafe and race was an issue. I never knew she was not Caucasian until this came out. They say Harry has again gone rogue not so much with the lawsuit, which by the way HE IS NOT SUING!! It is in her name the lawsuit has been filed. Back to they say he has again gone rogue by that blistering angry letter on their website that also listed the lawsuit information. So withdrawal, to remove or take something away from a place or position. It can also mean to leave or cause to leave a place or situation. So , this clue is basically meaning, he/ they have left SA on a very angry tone , things will be interesting as they settle back in London. Just wondering are we back to a doll now? Was the baby SA? Or American? Or who, what, where, when, how and why. These are the tenets of being a good interviewer, getting those basics down. Don’t you just hate it when people use the word basically all the time? I do apologize for that!🤣🤣😂😂😂

a petulant rattle slays fleet st.

Well this is basically saying a moody grumpy baby threw his rattle out of his pram and slayed Fleet Street. I explained Fleet Street in yesterday’s riddle, it’s the street in London for centuries where the newspapers are printed. It’s now synonymous with British/London journalists and journalism. There have been a number of editorials penned, PM being the most scathingly critical of PH. They are describing their assessment of his behaviour as entitled, spoilt, selfish, immature, et al, hence the way this clue is worded. To put things short and simple they see him as a spoilt child whose had a bad temper tantrum, for no logical reason, right after he has been given ten days worth’s of gifts ie positive PR. You decide for yourself, l am just explaining this clue.

royal analysis paralysis

Are they really paralyzed? Unable to take any action? The public has been clamouring for months, for HMTQ to DO SOMETHING! Read the comments in the DM, any media, in pubs, in workplaces everywhere, people are wondering why nothing , in their eyes, is being or has been done to rein her in and by virtue of his proximity to her and what’s happened this week, rein him in also. We know very well she called LG back for help. The things like separating of offices, separating the Cambridges and the Sussexes, the Heads together has happened awhile ago. Their office was moved to BP. PC cut off their funds a few weeks ago. I am 100% certain there have been so many things going on internationally in the background, most of which will remain classified we will never know. International security is at play. Then we have PA and JE with GM. So l would encourage people just to have a think before determining their paralysis analysis is correct.

“ settlement now!!!!

Is Harry demanding settlement? He cannot take anymore? Or is this any number of family, PC, PW, PP, who see him wasting away , want this settled and over? This has gone way past a quick settlement and life goes on as before. The whole plan in its evil agenda, still exists. People are demanding rid of her, take their titles away, ship them off to California and live as private citizen celebrities.

TM lawyers up

TM, Thomas Markle, madams father or daddy as she calls him, has lawyered up? I read all the papers about six this morning, l didn’t read that. A family of grifters, sounds like a country music song. There have been those who have had their doubts about the provenance of madam and whose who in this group of individuals. There have been people who believe they are all working together in this alleged project. I have no clue. If he has lawyered up, it is a very wise thing. This thing just is festering and festering for two years now, how much more can it fester before the boil needs lancing or it explodes on its own? I wonder who his lawyer is and who is paying his legal bills. 🤔🤔🤔

tabloid utopia

Let’s define these words so we all know what the basics are. A tabloid is a newspaper having pages half the size of those of a standard newspaper, typically popular in style and dominated by headlines, photographs, and sensational stories.lets be clear tabloid social media is much more common these days. Utopia is defined an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect. So madams PR for , since November 2016 has been thus. Fake relationship kept going through PR, Vanity Fair article. Twitter accounts multiple. All the thousands of PR articles have depicted a perfect marvellous life. Perfect husband, perfect love, marriage, shortly after wedding of perfection followed by pregnancy, fauxmegnancy, that lasted a year, resulting in many a cat and mouse game, born, not born, where, boy? Girl? Name? Photos not photos. It’s craziness. Everyone is fatigued, imagine how Harry feels! He is wasting away and breaking apart right before our eyes. Whether you think him complicit or not, there is no denying, hair loss, weight loss, looks like he hasn’t slept, ratty shoes wrinkled clothes and now the obvious back pain. A caring spouse would not have stood there smugly grinning like a Cheshire Cat next to him while he was giving a speech on obviously agonizing pain.

“ This is a bloody tape diversion old thing “

LG speaking with HMTQ. He is giving her his well educated opinion based upon his knowledge of the intel.This lawsuit is a massive look 👀 here, don’t look 👀 there, nothing interesting to see over there , LOOK HERE ARMS WAVING LOOK 👀 HERE!! This lawsuit is a massive distraction, or diversion to use LG’s words from tape that is now safely secured by LG and in possession of ‘the grey men’. Reassuring her, helping her process all of this stuff happening that is so hard to process. The average person in a lifetime will never encounter a narcissist on this scale.

“A spitting Halloween 🎃 “

Oh my goodness!!!! We heard a week or two back the British satirical puppet television show Spitting Image, was returning. Check old episodes out on YouTube it’s brutally hilarious!Is this telling us Hallowe’en is the first episode? It spares satirizing no one, royals, politicians, celebrities etc etc. Oh my how fabulous this would be🤣😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣. Just IMAGINE the costumes each character would wear🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂Oh the wig, the eye lash glue🤣😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣. Oh l hope the CBC airs it!! Please share it please!

“ remember ‘remember, the 5th of Nov.”

from Wikipedia, to save my hands, typing more challenging today.

Festivities in Windsor Castle by Paul Sandby, c. 1776

Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in the United Kingdom. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605 O.S., when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London; and months later, the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Actenforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure.End of Wikipedia.

Ha ha! Guy Fawkes, BONFIRE NIGHT IN 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 SCOTLAND, This has come up before, l have explained it. In case you didn’t see that, this goes back centuries. This day is still commemorated each year, and in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, it’s fabulous fun. Everyone setting off fireworks 💥 hence the term bonfire night, drinks all around and just a really fun night. One time, the house down the road, l don’t think he planned it well, too close to the house and a rocket crashed into the roof 🤣🤣😂😂😂😂. No major damage, likely too much drink involved 🤣🤣😂😂.

“ Philip ‘ this year you give the Queen speech”

HMTQ, speaking to her beloved likely half jokingly and half seriously. The Queen, speaks in the third person, which means she doesn’t say l or me, she says we would like tea or you may leave us now, l hope that makes sense. So with this sentence structure, the way it’s worded, reads to me as if they are having a one on one conversation about the Annual Christmas message. However, it may also be, but l don’t think so, since the word Annual is used,the Reigning Monarch speaks at the official opening of parliament. Since the Courts ruled the proroguing of Parliament was not valid, they can just resume Parliament. I think this is referring to HMTQ Annual Christmas message. I am attempting as l do the riddles, to help the worldwide readership here understand with background information we may take for granted that everyone knows. Each year on Christmas Day, at noontime, we stop and watch HMTQ Annual Christmas message on the tv. It’s a major part of Christmas Day as l was growing up and still watch to this day. It’s about ten or fifteen minutes or so. She reviews the major things that have happened, along with family milestones, weddings, babies etc. She always looks fabulous, but when does she not? She’s amazing! Sounds like things are just hitting her tolerance level and she is leaning on her husband who has been at her side all these years she has reigned.

🎆🎇😱🇬🇧💩⚖️⚖️⚖️

Fireworks times two, Britain will be shocked and mortified at the shi* that will be exposed in this lawsuit! She made a very very very bad move in the game she has been playing, let me rephrase that, her backers instructed her to make a very very bad move. One wonders , the letter from ‘Harry’ says this has been many months in the making. HRC tweet occurred, just before the U.S.Open. Madam jumped a flight to NYC less than 48 hours later. Methinks that was the genesis of this lawsuit.she played nice, sort of, because her nice is still not nice!!! in SA so the press were manipulated so she could say they were sometimes nice sometimes unbearable. My sentence structure is horrid but l hope my points are coming across! So not months in the making but weeks. One needs public sentiments, in a good way in any PR war, and this is war that has moved to the Courts. Remember we heard months ago, rather obtusely that a nephew was encouraged by his uncle to consult his grandfathers mate, regarding the higher courts? I believe it was in a riddle. I wonder if Harry was anticipating this day and action might come and wanted to prepare himself by getting knowledge from a trusted, well advised court. I cannot recall the title of this person, but he is an old mate of PP. This decision is going to turn out the be the final blow-out battle that has been coming for two years. The Mail on Sunday will not back down, and they have their dossier, she has way more to lose than they do. The public will NOT stand for any more impingement on their freedom of speech. For example, just look what happens in the DM comments when comments don’t appear or are removed, sometimes people banned or doxxed. Online, in social media things of a similar nature have happened, to our dear 🐼also. People will resist, they will not stand for it. There has been such outrage over money wasted, privilege, disrespect towards HMTQ and the citizen of the U.K. and Commonwealth.

GBTQ.

GOD BLESS. THE QUEEN!! INDEED!!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you dear PG! How you can do these riddles is beyond me! Wow! Love it! They get more and more interesting all the time! Thank you, I know today is not a great day, so the effort you put into this for us all. Is so appreciated! You are the best! Thank you!🙏🏻💜💜💜

Skippy

Oct 3rd, 2019

——————

75:

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜WISHING YOU A GRAND WEEKEND 💜😊💜

MM Anon

MM ANON …… Meanwhile at CH…… A Family meeting’ o dear!!…… “ One is apoplectic with disappointment “… (two red faces)…… “ this isn’t a game of happy f%#@k families!!!”…… an atmospheric cut…… legs and tails …… They Aga successful …… in the brown Windsor soup……a green beret chum…… nutmeg begs…… happy Harry …… SS documentary’s doom

1255 hrs CST

Meanwhile at CH

CH is Clarence House, the former home of the Queen mum. Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall now reside there and their offices are based there also. The clue reminds me of the saying, when life gets very hectic, meanwhile back at the ranch, meaning change of topic to get your mind off it, or in a movie it’s a complete change of scene. I hope that makes sense. I am desperately trying to make terms, words, phrases, for those who aren’t familiar, I WANT EVERYONE 😊😊😊😊WHO TAKES THE TIME TO READ MY INTERPRETATIONS TO BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND! That’s extremely important to me. So interpretation, what’s going on at CH? Imagine the scurrying, the SA tour, amw on display like a medal 🎖 won at the Olympics, but not to his home country, a foreign one. Add to that madams lawsuit, and now Harry filing suit, it must be mayhem. Phone hacking must bring back memories of PC and Camilla whose naught naught private conversations were recorded and made public. They were mortified.They are balancing a dozen glass plates in the air , which one first?? Interesting Harry’s suit was filed last Friday but we are only learning of it now.

A Family meeting’ o dear!!

HMTQ has summoned everyone, this must be discussed and dealt with, l am speaking of madam, her lawsuit, but more pressing is the massive security breach allowing their phones to be hacked. I think a massive security overhaul and everyones mobiles, computers etc etc will need securing.I think decisions have been made in how to proceed, it may be explaining what will happen next. Some may say it’s an intervention, for Harry. An intervention, in the way l am meaning, happens when an addict is confronted by loved ones, usually with a therapist, often a surprise to the individual to be blunt in how they have been affected by the addicts behaviour, give them ultimatum, or choice, go to rehab or we severe or cut off all ties with you. I don’t think that way, l am still 100% behind Harry, he shrunken, depressed, in pain, and massively loyal to his granny HMTQ! I will not be dissuaded from my belief.

“ One is apoplectic with disappointment “

Let us review what apoplectic means, it is to be overcome with anger or extremely indignant, feeling or showing anger or being very annoyed at what is perceived as unfair treatment. Here we have the third person usage of the word One, that means it is HMTQ speaking. She is angry and very disappointed by something. I am certain this phone hacking, which was filed last Friday and made public today brings back memories of this happening before. She must be furious! Again many will say it’s about Harry. I am certain she has these feelings about where his initial poor choices and thinking he could manage madam on his own, and where this has led to.

(two red faces)

Harry and Rachel, is it possible those hacked phones and messages were of a very very VERY personal nature not with each other but others and that would be tres embarrassing. Your face reddens or blushes when embarrassed. I can only begin to imagine what they got on her from her phone. Harry, also, where was their security teams. Those phones should be firewalled up the wazoo. Did they learn NOTHING from the squidgy tapes with Diana or PC with Camilla wanting to be her you know the word!

“ this isn’t a game of happy f%#@k families!!!”

PP speaking, nothing is a game, to madam it’s a game , getting $$$££££€€£, using people, smug look when Harry was obviously so much in pain. This is the most serious game, by the way, have you ever read the story,The Most Dangerous Game ? It was mandatory read in my school curriculum, l can’t recall which grade.THATS A STORY! I can only, l have said this with almost every time l write about PP, imagine his rile, anger, fury even, at the goings on. A man’s man as we used to say, rugged, professional naval veteran, lifelong royal veteran, watching this all unfold. I am certain he has had his advice sought, especially from HMTQ, but he’s retired, he is unable to act, to do anything to stop this. I pray for them both.🙏🏻

an atmospheric cut

Atmosphere is defined as the envelope of gases surrounding the earth or another planet or , the one l think applies best here is the pervading tone or mood of a place or situation. I imagine the atmosphere at BP and with the royals, especially the Senior royals you could cut the tension with a knife. That’s a common saying , things get to intense people are almost frozen, cut it with a knife, literally not metaphorically yes.

legs and tails

Heads or tails are the usual when you flip a coin, here MM ANON has given us legs and tails. Well everyone since day one has had comment after comment about madams legs. Tails, well it does have a raunchy meaning, you either know or you don’t, this l am no sharing!

They Aga successful

William and Catherine met with the Aga Khan yesterday at the Aga Khan Centre in King’s Cross. This was to connect before their trip to Pakistan October 14 - 18,2019. The royal visit has been organized in co-operation with the High Commission of Pakistan. William and Kate met community leaders and business figures as well as musicians, chefs and artists from the Pakistani diaspora. Aga Khan is a title given to the Imam (leader) who serves as the spiritual leader of the Ismaili branch of Shiite Islam The current Aga Khan is 83-year-old Prince Shah Karim al-Husseini, the 49th Imam. The Imam role acts much like a royal dynasty, as the same family has passed down the title for the past 1,300 years. I recall reading in the paper his bloodline goes back to the Prophet Mohammed. He is a very revered and respected worldwide. Our PM and his family vacationed with him. They have known him since they were young when their father Pierre was our PM, Justin Trudeau now serves as his father did. This is all planning so that their visit builds on the success of Princess Diana’s trip years ago, in relationship building. This was a very important meeting and one that went exceedingly well. As usual, Catherine dressed completely appropriately, as she does! So this was a very successful prelude to the upcoming Royal tour to Pakistan 🇵🇰.

in the brown Windsor soup

What’s brown Windsor soup, lots of you are asking. It goes back to the Victorian era. Simply put, is a British meat soup that is said by when food was more scarce. Warm and hearty as it could be, warmed an empty belly. We might call it a sort of comfort food. The term brown Windsor soup became shorthand for horrible food and was used as a prop by comics in the post-war years. So if you’re in the soup, your rations are running low. Is madam broke? Or very nearly?

a green beret chum

What is a green beret some ask, was the official headdress of the British Commandos during WWII. It is still worn by members of the Royal Marines after passing the Commando Course and personnel from other units of the Royal Navy, Army and RAF who serve within Third Commando Brigade. and who have passed the All Arms Commando Course. The Duke of Sussex attended the revered has presented them with their green berets at Bickleigh the 42 Commando Royal course. Is Harry spending time with veteran chum to help him with his PTSD and the huge stress and strain he has been under? Only a veteran can truly understand the horrors and be entrusted to be there. I sincerely hope that is what this clue is, because Harry needs help in every facet of his being.l prayed 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 so long for him last night.

nutmeg begs

What is she begging for l wonder?🧐🤔🤔 Is she begging to rescind the lawsuit with the blow-up. Is she begging please please not to share the information obtained from her mobiles, l am sure she has several, after all how many twitter accounts does she have☺️☺️🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂. Fearing the blowback of the MOS revealing what all they have kept schtum on all this time. I don’t think she thought through the ramifications of what she has done by filing suit. But, then again, thinking has never been her forté nor her job, her backers did and continue to do all the thinking, planning and ordering her actions.

happy Harry

This is a crazy clue because the only time l saw Harry happy, like for real happy, in the last two plus years, was the day he attended the Anzac Day service with Catherine. Now, within the last hour, word has been announced that he has filed lawsuits against The Sun and The Mirror and the owners for hacking his phone. This is way more serious that madams issue. There would, if in fact this happened, would have required very skilled intelligence people because of his status l a certain his mobile is very very secured OR IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN!! I cannot fathom what would make him happy, unless her begging is for a divorce and leaving , or just plain leaving. The only rabbit l can pull out of this hat, is that his mission is complete now that the SA and other African country visits are complete. He can now heal and resume some semblance of a life! I hope and pray l am correct!

SS documentary’s doom.

A whole lot of bang for your buck or should l say the backers buck eh Rachel?? One might even think they had two clients, the one that paid more wanted them to pretend to be her PR the while working against!, Dont cry for me Argentina, song from Evita! the play/film 🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂 make that don’t cry for me Rachelina 🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂Since SS has come on board things have gone from worst to unimaginable worse🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂. They’re not long for this world, likely they have already been sacked.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

1430 hrs CST Oct 4

Thank you PG! This looks interesting….fun times coming! Much appreciated

Oct 4th,

—————

76: Oct. 5

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON …… chocolate sundae …… don’t give up your day job …… single exit west …… a SMALL diversion … “ is he mine?” …… home alone ………… “ I fear for them Philip” …… Duty calls …… 🎼” you wore out your welcome with random precision “🎼……… “ we must talk Harry”……… jack and Jill went up the hill ……… “ it’s all on This memory stick.

October 5,2019 2030 hrs

chocolate sundae

What’s better than a chocolate sundae? Hmmmmm maybe a chocolate MOS(Mail on Sunday) 😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁 MM ANON are you cleverly telling us that there will be oh so sweet tidbits of final exposure in the MOS and or other media? Chocolate may be colour, or maybe chocolate sauce was used in lieu of salad dressing in the tossed salads! My mind never knew these things before, madam has affected or infected all of us in filthy ways!

don’t give up your day job

This is an expression used when someone is doing something very very poorly like singing at the karaoke, or something like that. I am surmising here that madams performance in the video that allegedly exists is not Oscar worthy🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂. What’s the difference, none of her others have been, especially the penultimate role as DOS,!!! I wish they had a spitting emoji!

single exit west

Is this suggesting that madam will do an exit stage left, as they used to say in the cartoons, and leave by herself and head west across the pond? Please go, we will all pitch in for the one way ticket, just go away!! Is she going to take archficial?? Who will care for him??🤣🤣😂

a SMALL diversion

Diversion, is a distraction, SMALL in all caps, that’s done to elevate that word. So what is the diversion and who is using and needing it? All roads lead to Rome , but in this case all roads lead to madam. She thought her lawsuit was the cats meow, she must have been thunderstruck, sorry AC/DC reference..see l am learning from MM ANON😁! But she must have been thunderstruck to learn Harry had filed suit a week ago bit more now, against hacking. Her proverbial goose is really cooked, as l have no doubt hacking was used to gather intel on him, William Catherine any of them, this plot has been in the planning for years! Her searching for Harry’s mobile so furiously, l am SOOOOOOO glad whoever sought that on film!!

“ is he mine?”

References back to Morocco when Harry made the comment “is it mine” Everyone in the room laughed except madam, l am sure she was seething with rage! So here we have is HE mine? So one wonders at what this means, is this a typo, or did l get it wrong? Nevertheless, the meaning and interpretation is the same.Those who were already sceptical took this as a major clue from Harry. The bulk of people thought he was just being silly. The line he said before that was something like Oh, you’re pregnant?? So we know it’s not Harry’s child, they were never intimate post wedding, grounds for annulment! MM ANON clue is telling us that we are going to shortly find this out, ok shortly is my wish but it’s all going to come out. If madam does a runner to the U.S. won’t that be interesting. She has no idea what her backers are really capable of, she should be afraid very afraid of who she’s tethered to and how much information she knows!

home alone

Poor archficial, all alone, outlived his usefulness. But madam is home alone or not depending whose sofa she’s sleeping on or staying with. Harry is back to Not Cot with his dog, l am sure his dog will give him a royal welcoming. Those of you who have dogs know how therapeutic they can be.

“ I fear for them Philip”

HMTQ sharing concerns for Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as they take on this high risk Royal tour of Pakistan. There are many, including sugars who would delight with glee if something untoward would occur. Security will be very very very tight, the outlay of the tour states it will be their most complex tour yet. The itinerary will be kept close at the best as to where they are visiting specifically etc etc, it will be a pure military and RPO nightmare to keep them safe. They , on the other hand will represent HMTQ with aplomb, they will be relaxed or appear so and l foresee thus being a hugely successful Royal tour. We must pray for all involved!🙏🏻

Duty calls. Harry has several appearances , as Prince Harry on October 10,2019 international Mental Health Day. Back to duty he goes, he , you can never dissuade me , is 100% loyal to HMTQ. He will resume his duties. I hope in the interim there has been time to debrief, talk about what happened in the field upon return to home base . I have led many debriefings, they take place in many firms, people of crimes, military after a tour of duty, firemen or police officers after a bad scene or officer involved shooting, healthcare staff after assault or violent incident etc etc you get it. 🎼” you wore out your welcome with random precision “🎼

MM ANON returns to Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Song someone wanting it all willing to do anything, end up dark and exposed by the light. This is a marvellous lyric to describe the situation that is now happening? HOW DO YOU DO THIS MM ANON? YOU’RE BEYOND BRILLIANT! I THINK WRITING THESE RIDDLES FAR JARDER THAN SOLVING, I TAKE MY HAT OFF TO YOU! I AM WRITING UPPERCASE BECAUSE I WANT TO RESPECT HER AND HAVE HER TAKE NOTICE.

we must talk Harry”

HMTQ, His attorney, PC, PW or all talk about what is really going on, make a plan and figure out what the next step should be. I think the most important thing is, talk about how he is appearing, depressed, thin, stressed and in agony with his back. I am certain they are all worried sick at the toll this has taken on him in every way as are many of us.

jack and Jill went up the hill

Old child’s nursery rhyme it goes Jack and Jill ran up the hill to fetch a pail of water , Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.

Isn’t this a perfect description of where our Harry is at with a lot of people? He paired up with this Jill, sorry to all the Jill’s that read this, nothing personal, and since then it’s been one long for lack of better word sh** show of lack of respect for HMTQ, merch fest, etc etc. Harry’s crown or reputation is in tatters and now the media are furious by his statement, his altercation with Rhiannon Mills of Sky news and on and on. The ultimate fall, for her, is coming. She will tumble lower than low once the dossier on her is in the public realm and the alleged video!! I am waiting with bated breath for the MOS tomorrow!!

“ it’s all on This memory stick.

Yep everything about her, what she’s done, the backers, her calls back and forth with them, emails, videos, her yachting history, the lost years, the ‘Markle family’ everything is on this memory stick and LG has and it will be put to use. They have her, she got cocky in SA and invaded her own privasy☺️🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂🤣🤣. All laughs aside this has been a deadly serious plot to bring down the entire BRF! Justice is coming, the people of the U.K. and Commonwealth who aren’t taking the time to look beneath and take PR as truth will be shocked into disbelief. The process of truth telling will be a measured approach to be sure.

I am in awe of you two ladies! Wow! You speak the same “language”…..this again is amazing, and very informative…things are coming…fantastic! So appreciated! Thank you, dear PG and MM Anon!💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

gstqaobc

Thank you dearest MM ANON for the absolute honour and privilege of interpreting or at least attempting to, your riddles. 💜🐼💜🙏🏻☺️🐼☺️ Thank you for doing me the continued honour of allowing me to do my interpretations of MM ANON’s brilliant riddles and for posting my work! This has been so good for my brain 🧠 and exercising my. Rita al thinking skills! Let this be my small contribution to your blog and to being aTruth Seeker as Christ calls me to be. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

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hanzi83 · 5 years ago

Text

Suspended from Twitter Again from Organized Harassment

The thought of catching up scares me and it keeps me going back to check what happens on reddit etc and then I fucking just don’t want to write even though I am acting irrational on twitter more than usual. I then start commenting on twitter more than focus on my personal journal and I am prompted with people trying to trigger me because they sense vulnerability in me, and I feel these people are employed to do this kind of behavior, as you can tell from my plethora of videos, blogs, tweets, instagram posts etc. I have angered so many people in this world, where there is a team dedicated to fucking with me and tarnishing my image, and instilling paranoia in me, and since the Stern Show, I feel is responsible, even though I cannot confirm 100 percent, they have dedicated an obscure subreddit dedicated to me claiming they are working to get me banned from twitter, and other social media outlets, hinting my family and friends are in connection with government agents, because I am technically on a watch list, or at least that is how I see it, and they have limited my movements and since I have angered people in my life with jabs because I feel a lot of them are in connection with people behind the scenes. I know it sounds crazy that this type or organization is going on for an individual, but there are teams dedicated to doing this to others. People in the system, mostly public figures, have been targeted, and some of them behind the scenes are organizing teams for employed fandom to take over the internet, depending if that person is supposed to be popping.

I have been pointing out this for the last several years how this is going down or at least putting theories, that have not been officially backed up specifically, but there are plenty of articles in prominent news and media outlets that have shown you what the capabilities are based off what has happened in the past, and because I am not partaking in sports tribalism, and people knowing it might bother me because this type of pretentiousness bothers me when people make these sporting events seem like some great moment for history, as we are currently becoming America light, and since a lot of this is predetermined and is supposed to propel this city into the upper echelon, I feel like people are blinded by this, and not focusing on the political shit involved with all of this. I am glad Toronto is in the championship, it is cool, despite me being irrational and wanting to hate it because people who love it have contributed into hurting me behind the scenes and stumping my growth, and have stolen everything from me.

I am not allowed to even express any of my irrational behavior to help me to cope because by letting me speak out, people see me as a threat because I bring transparency into the system, and even though the people in charge, hypothetically, have tarnished my image from being credible, and being seen as someone in his mom’s basement who spews out conspiracies and is obsessed with pro wrestling, and he doesn’t want to get laid because he feels he is not mentally capable to satisfy women, and also believing some of them could be agents, but they will label me an incel, when the people they work for in the upper echelon are the ones who treat women horribly and basically bribe them to give them good PR and then when they are allowed to disclose a horrible scenario involving one of those men, then they are seen as crazy. These people have been entitled, and hell they don’t put men or women on a big stage unless they had to compromise themselves physically and mentally. I point that out and I am seen as the bad guy, and now that people are still tuning into seeing me, even by suppressing the views, so people can watch it by other means, in a group setting, because a lot of people online are a part of groups that gossip how to fuck with people, because they are given incentive, the system has bribed these people with perks and access and makes their lives a lot more comfortable, when they can’t suppress my views they will actively cut short some of my periscope sessions. I will do 20 plus minutes and these people will somehow make it 4 minutes or something.

More Whack Packers are dying and the ones alive are dealing with harassment are prompted to kill themselves and being harassed with the worst type of shit imaginable, and threats of doxing and instilling fear that Howard is going to kill me or that Vince McMahon will kill me, because I speak out on horrible things they may be accountable for even though they will never take accountability and they are protected, and so are the people who are attached to them, and now I feel they have constantly being fucked with me because they want me to be put in a hospital or they want me to attempt suicide, and the movements and transparency in my life seems people who are supposed to be close to me help in that regard, and it is much more important to be connected to what everyone else is doing that is popular, and stick by the official narratives, they would do it at the expense as someone who is supposed to be their friend. Social Justice Warriors, who claim to stand up for injustice, and some of them put their money where their mouth is, but others are just there for the limited narrative and they act outraged when they are told to, so it looks like they are speaking out against racism, when they ignore the larger chunk that is going on systemically. I spoken out how other Whack Packers could be sacrificed for their fame or what they contributed to the system, and Tan Mom and Marfan Mike are hospitalized, and people capitalize on that conspiracy and hint that I am the next Whack Packer who will die.

I have one asshole who is clearly obsessed with every move and speech I make and talks about it nonstop and misrepresents it and if I don’t give this dude and his group of people the entertainment, and for me to take the barrage of harassment about where I am in my life and how everything I am saying is delusion, but then I analyze them and this person in particular about what his life must be like, because he has made grand announcements he was done watching anything I do on periscope, but then constantly does it and then hints that people are after me, and it is clear this person is bought off because I can’t imagine anyone being this obsessed with me for fun. He is obviously protected and he makes claims that people in my life had people look into him for harassing me, just to make it seem like he is dealing with some harassment to take the fact off that I am dealing with the real deal.

No one with a platform is allowed to speak, and even anything that I write, this particular agent just takes everything I say and misrepresents it as delusion grandeur when I am not the only one going through this and the ones that are, are too afraid to address it because it makes them look crazy and I am a bigger target because I was on of the biggest radio shows in the history of radio. I got active mob bosses in this system trying to silence me, and they know by suspending my social media, I will implode, and I know people in my life are probably hoping for that too since everyone fucking hates me.

I know when I write this blog, barely anyone will care because people are only invested when I am mentally breaking down and not being able to fucking handle any of the backlash and it becomes great entertainment for them to get to interact with a whack packer from the Stern Show because they are more invested in harassing me or harassing Wendy because it does not have to focus on their shitty lives so they attack people within the system, even wrestlers go through this targeted shit, but I don’t know if they realize they system they are emboldened to, are probably the ones organizing it since the people in charge exploit anything while pretending they care about these social issues and mental issues, while helping perpetuate the harassment, and when people like me speak out, and even as irrelevant I seem to be, I still anger a good chunk of them and they are constantly coming for me. and they will not stop until I am completely self destructive and kill myself, and the fact that people in my life could be helping with that just so they can have access to these institutions and all the industry sex workers they could ask for because they are that easily compromised, but they are doing it at my expense, when me being a public joke for the Stern Universe and the Wrestling Universe to get a hold of, they have profited off of it behind the scenes more than anyone and will never admit anything.

They will never stop and it is fine if 10 people read this, I hope that some people who do read this actually know what is going on and please let it be known that this is happening as no media outlet will fucking care about this, because they are told when they can start going after stories, even as truthful some of the leftist ones are, they have to be compromised a little bit, even with the conspiracies, you would think someone on the Stern Show would attract these people to see what I am thinking right, but even they are limited. Only when some vindication occurs, or if I implode and something horrible happens, then after the fact they will care, they will not see my growth and exposing the way the system has manipulated us into hating each other and being more racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and presented it as the cool thing to do because I bought into it for a good portion of my life, but these people who have the chance to do it, don’t because they would limit their discussion and not have nuance and pretend they are speaking out on something big and powerful, when it is merely just calling out one person in the system who said something racist, and people behind the scenes don’t care, it is meant for a limited narrative and because I am sick of the status quo, and have constantly spoken out on shit that I have to say are theories, because I can’t prove a lot of it, they still see me as a threat and will continue.

Normally I write down my thoughts privately but even that is not 100 percent private, it is constantly hacked and people move my cursor around when I spew some venom just to get it off my chest and since I have not written down anything it is getting difficult to know what is in my fucking mind. They will keep fucking with my mental health and it will never stop. I am clearly not high on anyone’s list to help out, even though I have taken on big wigs like Stern. I don’t care how irrelevant he seems to be to the culture, he has pull behind the scenes, even the negative he still controls I think, he can easily have it seen as the people who hate him are the republican Trump supporters, while also being a secret Trump supporting, but somehow on this endearment tour he is going out on, he has convinced people he has secret information about Trump not wanting to be the president, which would beg the question, why did he not say anything before the election? He is in bed with Trump, and he is protected as long as Trump is in power, but no one can see this and the ones who can, are not allowed to say anything. They have managed to censor me during the Raptors game, because it hurts people locally to know that I point out that this is all predetermined, and maybe it is my irrationality and insecurity that I did not connect with my city, and someone who has sold their souls have more respect in this city than someone like me, who did not want to partake in rituals that compromised another life, and then later on have a rabid fan base attack those people and make them seem crazy. Maybe with all my flaws, I still have a fucking soul and actually don’t want people to be discriminated against or oppressed.

People will sacrifice their own loved ones to be part of the upper echelon and it makes me not want to be part of this world, because as far as I am concerned I was never loved, all through my life they have made it known how they treat me, even back in high school or now because Stern has allowed them to be trolls in the system who can put me down because they resent me for being someone who blew up and I can see what their intention is, and when they got what they needed, they sold me out and exclude me from anything that does not benefit them because they secretly hate me. So why don’t you just end me, you won’t though, because I have been told I am needed here, I need to be mentally tortured and limited, as long as pretentious people in the system and in my life prosper and can control me. I don’t want any part of it. Let me die. Come on Howard, sacrifice me, like you supposedly sacrifice other Whack Packers, and then your sick fan base can claim “HE GAVE THEM FAME AND WITHOUT STERN THEY WOULDN’T BE KNOWN” while allowing a sick fan base to treat us like shit and then you make all the fucking profits. Fuck you.

Anything I have said I don’t have factual proof. I will never have it, and if I did they would certainly fucking kill me, and until then they are hoping they fucking I fucking kill myself because it would fit into their narrative better, maybe pat themselves on their back for feeling bad for this torture while they helped create it. They torture everyone in the fucking whack pack and no one cares. We are all lower than filth to these pretentious snobs. Fuck each and every one of you that have allowed this to happen. I hope you catch and become riddled with herpes from all the orgies you sold your souls for. I hope everything around you crumbles, and even if I will never become vindicated from any of this and continuously be mocked by an obsessive troll who is showing off the harassment he can do under the guise of “calling me out on my bullshit” since I did not embrace him, because these sick people want to be producers of mine for a podcast or be a co host, and I don’t want to be with anyone, because I think you are all government agents. Fuck each and every one of you for doing this to me. It makes no difference because you will be coddled within your group chats, where you sick fucks are taking bets on which whack packer is going to die next. Fuck you all.

#Hanzi Stern Howard Show Sternshow Zionist Illuminati WWE Vince McMahon trolls paid subservient shills racism sexism harassment misogyny #secrecy transparency assholes NBA raptors toronto tribalism irrational hatred associates friends loved ones #media outlets mainstream leftist right wing power limited narrative

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harryandmolly · 6 years ago

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The Long Way Home -3-

Summary: His world is a little rocked when Shawn is joined on his 2019 world tour by Emma, a former child star with a chip on her shoulder and a voice that haunts him.

Warnings: Language, alcohol and drug use, soft yearning eyes

Word count: 4.7k ish

Once the set-skipping gauntlet was thrown, Emma couldn’t take it back.

She knew what it meant to skip the headliner’s first set of the tour. She knew it made her look worse than she probably already does in his eyes, but she couldn’t stand it. She knew if she had to be there, to watch him light up the crowd doing what he loved, singing his soul, she’d have a meltdown. And she doesn’t have time for a meltdown.

The first show in Amsterdam was fine, technically speaking. She got through it as expected with precision and very little style. She should’ve been expecting Shawn and his friends there sidestage but it slipped her mind and she wasn’t mentally prepared. To see him beaming at her like he was a proud older brother after the garbage she just spewed for the masses, it was too much. He was too nice. She didn’t deserve it. She was ashamed.

So she bolted.

She hurried in and out of her dressing room, opting to shower on the bus. She remembers physically feeling the wail of thousands of women as she was exiting the back door of the venue just as he was going on stage. She gritted her teeth against the tears -- tears of embarrassment, exhaustion and heart-wrenching jealousy. She shut herself up in the bus with Tammy and Patsy on her Amazon Echo, staying up too late writing songs she’ll never sing.

It set the tone for the tour. She didn’t mean for it to. She went in to this arrangement knowing keeping her distance was best – it always was, professionally speaking. She didn’t want to become his best friend or his mentee. But she also didn’t want him to think she’s a brat. She’s not a brat.

Ok, she’s definitely a brat, but she’s a hardworking woman who has scraped and fought for all she has. Even if it’s not what she wants.

She hasn’t actively sought out Shawn’s company but she knows she’s not welcome. She glides past his open dressing room door. The rest of the tour crew, plus a few members of her own team, are welcome any time. It’s a big ol’ party. But when she hustles past like she’s got somewhere to be, which she always does, there’s no call of, “hey, Emma! Come join us!”

Fine, it’s easier that way, she reasons. No distractions. She gets her business done – back-to-back radio interviews, weird, invasive Buzzfeed videos that, unfortunately, don’t include puppies like some of the ones she’s seen, and recording her album.

She doesn’t know who started this trend of the mobile recording studio but she hates him or her. Or them, if it’s One Direction like she suspects. Her team wants to capitalize on the success her single hasn’t even had yet by following it up with an album as closely as possible. This means she spends hours locked in a roving recording studio singing the liquid bubblegum-flavored tunes and hearing terms like “mass appeal” and “girl power” so many times they lose all meaning.

But they’re about to find out what kind of girl power she’s really got. It’s single release day. They’re in Oslo for a show and she’s up with the dawn for a live interview with BBC Radio 1 followed by a few more across the U.S. as “Fireheart” is released in a new time zone every hour. She’s finishing her final call with a radio station in Phoenix, she thinks, as she’s sprinting up the stage steps, late for soundcheck. They’ve been rehearsing the song so she can play it on the day of the release. The choreo is kicking her ass. What she really needs is to rest for a few minutes before the show but they do another thorough run-through of the set and she has a “creative call” with the mom-and-Margaret-chosen director of her video. It’s a misnomer – there’s nothing creative about it at all on her end.

She’s not sure she’s stopped talking for more than five minutes all day when Steven finally insists that she sit down with her face in the humidifier in silence. Again, the urge to kiss him rears hard in her shaky chest. She’s staring blankly at her phone with her nose bumping up against the plastic ridge on her personal humidifier, flipping through Instagram when she gets a text from an unknown number.

Unknown Number: hey it’s shawn. just heard the new song, you sound great. issa bop!

She snorts in shock and looks around her even though she’s in the green room alone in her underwear. She lets herself blush and, just for a minute, she fucking loves “Fireheart.”

Her fingers scan fast over the keys.

Thanks :)

It’s all she gives and she suspects it’s all he wants to get.

Shawn’s lying if he says he wasn’t waiting around for midnight in Oslo for “Fireheart” to drop. This is her first non-Disney release and he’s curious to see what she’ll do with it, what he can glean from her personal style.

The song is, at best, generic. It doesn’t even really sound like her, they edited it so heavily. It’s a fucking crime, really, because her voice is beautiful. In the few tracks on her soundtracks where they let her shine, she really shines. He wants to see more of that. But maybe this is what she wanted.

He figures the polite thing to do is text her. She’s still his tour mate even if they haven’t exchanged more than a passing glance or a flat smile in two weeks. It’s what he would want from her, he reasons. Actually, he’d want a whole lot more. And he’s still not wholly sure why.

Her response is quick like she was at her phone fielding a thousand similar messages, which he’s sure she was. It doesn’t invite more conversation which he’s at once grateful for and annoyed by. He drops his phone and walks away for a few minutes, stepping outside the bus.

He’s sitting on the curb in the empty parking lot where the buses are housed when a big white Escalade with tinted windows and the shiniest rims he’s ever seen pulls up. A frazzled assistant-type stumbles out of the passenger side and opens the door for the longest pair of legs he’s ever seen. His eyebrows lift.

The woman attached to the legs is Emma’s mother, there’s no question. The resemblance is uncanny. From the dainty pointed nose to the expensive highlights in her hair to the shape of her lips, it’s Emma in 25 years. Shawn swallows hard.

Emma’s mother steps out of the car like she’s had a lot of practice navigating with those skyscraper legs, something he’s still not good at. She’s staring down at her phone typing a thousand words a minute and muttering something to the assistant who’s so keyed up she looks like she needs a pee. Emma’s mom strides up to the bus with the same long, quick steps Shawn’s used to seeing Emma utilize. She walks in without knocking and that’s the last he sees of her.

There’s something about the way she carries herself that makes him understand Emma a little better now. His mother doesn’t walk like that. His mother doesn’t talk to people that way. His mother definitely doesn’t dress like a 30-year-old Paris Hilton cast-off. If that’s who raised Emma, maybe it’s no wonder.

A couple weeks later, Andrew snags Shawn after his gym session and before breakfast, which is a dangerous time to corner him so Shawn knows it’s important.

He sits at the small picnic table outside the venue in Lisbon and eyes Andrew warily, trying not to pout about the French toast he wants to go hunt down.

“So Margaret and I sat down this morning—”

Shawn’s eyes go wide. This cannot be good.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Andrew pleads before continuing, “We sat down this morning because we’ve been getting calls from the label about… about why you and Emma never seem to interact.”

Shawn sighs and rakes a hand through his sweaty curls. He sits back, remembers there’s nothing to lean against on a picnic bench and slumps forward onto his elbows.

“Yeah,” Shawn prompts.

“So they want you and Emma to be friendly. Not too friendly, just big-brother, little-sister type stuff, just to look like you can stand to be in the same room. A few Snapchats and Insta Stories should do it. It’s a fine line, because they don’t want you to look like you’re dating. We can discuss the details later. Are you… I mean, can you handle this?”

Shawn growls under his breath. “Yeah, I can fucking handle it. I just—” He stops himself. Andrew raises his eyebrows.

“I don’t get why it matters. Why do we have to interact? We’re on tour, we’re not friends. I’m pretty sure she hates me.”

The last sentence sounded a little more vulnerable than Shawn wanted to be, but fuck it. He’s kind of upset. And Andrew won’t judge him.

“It matters for PR. It matters that the label’s artists don’t look like they hate each other. And, if it helps, I don’t think she cares enough about you to hate you.” He snorts the last few words like a joke but they sting Shawn where it counts. He’s gotten good enough at all this to keep it from showing on his face.

“Fine, ok. Whatever.”

Andrew goes to stand but Shawn stops him.

“Does she know about this yet? What did she say?”

Andrew purses his lips. “Emma, ever expressive, said ‘fine’ and walked away.”

Shawn thinks he hears a “to tune up her wicked witch broomstick” under Andrew’s breath as he strolls off to another task but he can’t be sure.

Abject horror is what Emma felt when the order came down from on high that she and Shawn are to interact on social media. Flat disinterest is what showed up on her face.

It was only back in her bedroom that she let herself fist her hands in her hair and squirm about it, so uncomfortable with the idea of spending any more time with him than she has to. At the moment, that’s pretty much limited to bumping into each other in hotel hallways when they’re staying overnight and passing his dressing room if he happens to look up at her while she walks by. The idea of actually staging cute, friendly Snapchats makes her stomach turn with nerves.

He texts her and invites her down to the lobby for coffee at their hotel in Manchester. She’s admittedly grateful that he makes the first move, but she’s still a little miserable at the idea of this weird assignment. But what label wants, label gets. (It’s becoming Margaret’s catchphrase)

He’s standing beside the counter on his phone with a hoodie up over his head to keep a low profile. Joke’s on him, though, because he’s outrageously tall and she can still see those boyish curls peeking out from under the hood. In another life, she could see herself walking up behind him and tucking her arms around his waist to stick her hands in his hoodie pocket.

In this life, she walks fast and loud in her heeled booties to make her presence known. He looks up when he hears her, eyes wide and a little panicked. Her heart clenches. She offers him the flattest smile she can manage.

“Hey,” he says, sliding his phone in the pocket of his tight jeans. She wants to go with it. She clears her throat.

“Hey. Did you order?”

He shakes his head. They walk up to the counter. She crosses her arms over her chest and stares at the chalkboard menu above their heads hopelessly, knowing her order like the back of her hand.

The cashier asks for their orders. Shawn looks to Emma. “Green tea,” she croaks.

Shawn orders a black coffee and hands the woman cash. Emma nods at him in the only thanks she can manage. She can feel her insides vibrating around him and she hasn’t even had any caffeine yet.

“So… we have an assignment,” Shawn tries to joke. His voice is humorless.

She lifts her eyebrows briefly and bobs her head. “Yeah.”

“Should… I mean, should we just take a selfie with our drinks?” he offers. She’s silent. It’s so painful.

“Yeah, ok,” she finally answers, chewing on her lower lip. He watches it disappear under her teeth briefly and reappear a little softer, a little pinker. He almost doesn’t notice their orders come up.

He thanks the barista with a smile and follows Emma to a table. He’s grateful there aren’t many people around to witness this awkward interaction. No one seems to have clocked them at all despite the fact that Emma came downstairs in full make-up and an outfit fit for a Vogue photoshoot. Not that he noticed.

They sit at a tiny round table. Emma crosses her outrageous legs and Shawn fiddles with the settings on his Instagram camera.

“Do you mind if I take it?”

He blinks and looks over at her. Her voice is quiet and a little shy – it’s not the monotone drawl he’s used to. He just nods and puts his phone down.

She swipes into her camera like a pro and holds up her drink next to him. Her hand finds the angle she likes and she makes the happiest face he’s seen on her for the Boomerang she films. He can’t help but smile, too, widening his eyes like he’s never been more excited about anything than drinking coffee with Emma Kingston.

Her expression falls when she drops her hand and moves away from him. She studies the Boomerang, tilts her head and nods. It’s acceptable. She posts it, tagging him with the caption, “caffeine time with the best @shawnmendes!”

She places her phone face down on the table and cups her tea in both hands. He watches the black sequins float, suspended in liquid on the back of her phone case. He looks back at her.

She looks tired even under all the make-up. Her fingers are twitchy against the cardboard cup. Is he making her nervous, he wonders? He slouches against his chair and sips his coffee.

“We’re going out tonight. Me and my band and a few others. Do you want to come?”

The words shock her as much as they shock him when they leave his mouth. They both stare at each other for too long a moment, amazed at what they heard. She sips her tea for something to occupy her mouth.

“Yeah, cool.”

That was not the answer she expected to give. She exhales slowly and stands. “See you later.”

She’s gone in several long strides and he’s alone in the café wondering what the fuck he just did.

The plan for the evening was communicated to her through Margaret, who heard it from Andrew, who got it from Geoff, who was told by Shawn. After the show at Manchester Arena, they’re taking cars first to Gorilla, then to Sound Control, then the Mint Lounge if they’re up for it.

Emma hopes they’re up for it. She hasn’t had a proper night out since before tour, since Ashley gave her her first E and held her hair when she threw it up in the back of an Uber on the 405.

She’s dressed not to kill, but to fucking assassinate. Mabel lets her get a little buckwild on club nights in exchange for not bitching too much when she has to wear designers she doesn’t like for Instagram ads. Tonight, the choice is very Manchester: a sort of shredded black sleeveless tank dress with dark stockings (with more tears) and thigh high black patent leather military boots. It’s so grunge, she thinks to herself, turning to admire her perky ass in the mirror, Courtney Love is shaking in her boots.

With the addition of round black 90s shades and a swipe of gloss, she steps off the bus.

Shawn’s used to conversation stopping whenever Emma walks into a space. She’s an unignorable presence. He wonders if it hurts her feelings most of the time but, on nights like this, when she’s making an entrance, he can see a flush creep up her chest and knows she likes it.

She looks… outrageous. He has to focus on clenching his jaw to keep it from dropping. Fuck.

But her face is cold under layers of highlighter and contour and he can see she’s not all in there, like usual. He’s becoming familiar with the ache in his chest that he gets when he tries to find her in her eyes and comes up empty and confused.

She produces a game-for-it smile and nods at the fleet of vehicles waiting to take them out as if giving them permission to escort her. Shawn slides into the car behind hers and watches as she sits next to Brian. He wonders if Brian can smell her perfume or the shampoo she uses. He blinks hard and stares out the window, grinning at the city as they infiltrate it.

Emma isn’t intimately familiar with the Manchester club scene the way she is with, say, Los Angeles or Ibiza, but one of Shawn’s guitar techs and one of her dancers grew up here so they know where to find what they’re looking for. She decides to trust them when they pull up outside a building that does not resemble any club she’s ever been in but it is called Gorilla and she’s trying to be cool so she says nothing, determined to remain open-minded.

Shawn never feels more like a celebrity when he’s storming a club with a team of his friends and tour mates and they’re getting let through the velvet ropes ahead of everyone in line with nods and handshakes. He doesn’t embrace this privilege that often because it still feels a little weird but on tour, he likes getting to treat his friends. Everyone works so hard; doing the rockstar thing boosts morale.

As he’s looking around at the crowd gathered at the bar, morale is clearly boosted. Everyone’s got a drink in their hand, everyone’s laughing and screaming and dancing and it’s actually a little early, he thinks, for things to have gotten so wild but it’s their first night out of the tour and Jess and Lexi are both in their hometown and invited some friends. He’s scanning everyone’s faces and planning out how he can manage to fit them all in one Insta story when he finds one missing.

Through the slight fog of several beers and post-show exhaustion, he glances around searching for Emma’s signature butter-blonde waves. He feels a hint of panic rise in his chest when it takes him longer than he wants it to. He does finally spot her, though, leaning against a wall with one leg bent under her and her head tilted as she listens to some short red-headed guy chatting her up. Her lips are curled like she’s flirting which he hasn’t seen her do with anyone yet, including the few brave souls from the crew who have tried and failed to crack through her walls. Suddenly, she erupts with laughter and he flinches, shocked at the sight. She actually looks really interested and engaged. Shawn tries not to visibly seethe. He waves down another beer from the bartender to help with that.

Shawn actively tries not to look for her again for the next half hour but it’s hard because something in the back of his head wants to protect her in case the guy’s a creep but he’s distracted enough by the company and the booze. It’s as they’re gathering up to hit the next club that he looks for her to make sure she’s included. She’s wrapped under that guy’s arm now and apparently he’s coming with them and Shawn feels his jaw tense up a little but he knows he can’t let anyone see it especially since it doesn’t make any fucking sense for him to be feeling this way.

Once again, the caravan of cars takes them to Sound Control – a gargantuan three-floor venue with a club in the basement. But this time, Shawn’s in the very back of the Escalade with Emma and her arm candy and he’s never felt so uncomfortable in his life. The redheaded Weasley-looking bloke is nice enough, honestly, introducing himself to everyone and trading quips in thick Mancunian accents with Jess and Lexi. But he’s squashed in between Emma and Shawn in a seat not designed for Shawn’s 6’2” frame and despite the fact that Shawn is definitely drunk, he’s still not drunk enough for this.

Emma’s choice of entertainment for the evening does not resemble Shawn in the slightest – it’s almost a wonder that they could be considered the same species. This isn’t entirely an accident, Emma admits to herself through a hazy brain fog of gin and the joint she and Roger (that’s the redhead’s name, of course it is) shared in the bathroom after a snog.

She has to remind herself somehow that Shawn Mendes isn’t the only good-looking guy on this god-forsaken island. If she can do that while listening to a cute, if rough and tumble, English accent, she’ll jump at the chance. The look on Shawn’s face when Roger teases the hem of her skirt as they’re walking through the doors to the second stop of the night is a delicious bonus.

Shawn loses Emma and Roger almost the second they get inside. The cocktail of emotions (way less fun than the cocktail he wants right now) he’s experiencing is dampening his party-ready exterior and becoming noticeable. Geoff smacks at his arm as Shawn nurses his… eighth beer? He really can’t be sure now.

“You good, man?” Geoff yells over the din. Shawn just nods and looks away. Geoff decides not to push it. Not the environment for a heart-to-heart, anyway.

Shawn doesn’t dance much sober but drunk Shawn? He gets down. He’s jumping around, crashing into people who don’t seem to mind, giddy from hops and thumping house music. He feels a little invincible. Something triggers the memory of the crowd tonight, his crowd. They were spectacular – the U.K. gigs always are. He thinks about the way they screamed on command for him, how they sang his songs louder than he could’ve ever dreamed they would.

He thinks about the opener, too, though. He doesn’t let her see him watch her set because his pride is still smarting from when she skipped his opening night. He doesn’t think she’s deigned to stay for any show since either. But he can’t help it. He’s got it clocked now so he can miss the first few songs and sneak up behind a rafter somewhere to watch her belt “How I’ve Been” barefoot and beautiful. He’s fucking mesmerized and he hates himself a little for it.

He finds himself looking for her again now in the low-ceilinged smoky club. The only lights in the space are an eerie red, mixing with fog and weed and cigs and hot, sticky breath. He swallows, feeling his head spin as he turns too fast. He grabs a support pillar nearby and clings to it as he continues his search.

He wishes he didn’t when he finds her, though. Every inch of the back of her body is pressed against the front of… well, not Roger’s. This new guy is taller. He’s a lot taller. He’s more built in the upper body from what Shawn can see. He’s got dark curly hair and wandering hands. If Shawn were just a little drunker, he’d wonder if somehow it’s him, if he’s having an out of body experience.

They’re grinding hard, bodies pounding rhythmically against each other, against their tightly-enclosed neighbors. This guy’s hands are everywhere – her hips, her thighs, reaching up her skirt a little, grabbing at her breasts through her thin dress. Shawn’s stomach roils. He’s sure he’s gonna throw up. He grabs the column a little harder.

Somehow, impossibly, through the throngs of people, their eyes lock. Her cloud-like lips are parted with the effort of her panting breaths. Her hands are both tangled in this bastard’s hair while he works on a mark on her neck.

Emma’s staring at Shawn and Shawn’s staring at Emma, both waiting for each other to crack and react. He’s impressively stoic, given his state of intoxication. He only flinches when the Shawn look-a-like’s hand is edging up the hem of her dress again.

She smiles like she’s won, which she kind of has. Her grin is nothing like he’s seen on her before, nor on any woman. It’s almost inhuman somehow. Shawn whimpers, watching her turn her head to coax the lips off her neck and back to hers. The second he sees her tongue peek out to explore his mouth, Shawn shuts down.

He turns away and walks (stumble-runs) to the bar, leaning against it and almost begging the bartender for water. He leans against a wall in silence until his friends notice his rather conspicuous absence and dig him out of his hole.

They round up again – no Ruby Lounge tonight. They’re spent. It’s past 3am, anyway. Shawn instinctively starts counting heads again.

“Where’s Emma?” he chokes. He knows the answer. He has to hear it out loud anyway.

Lexi simpers almost proudly. “Not coming. Left with some French guy half an hour ago. Took him back to the hotel.”

Shawn blinks the green haze in his eyes before he can nod. “Cool. Let’s hit the road.”

She was a woman possessed, Emma decides when she wakes up the next morning with a warm body next to her. He doesn’t look nearly as much like Shawn in the cold light of dawn. She pokes him in the back and nods when he rolls over and grimaces at her.

He’s gone in five minutes. She’s good at that, getting rid of guys in the morning. If nothing else, her cold stare helps her achieve that. But it scares away everyone else by design, too. You can’t be two people, she reminds herself over a mug of hotel room green tea. She doesn’t have the energy to brave the lobby for Caffe Nero. Anyone could be down there. Plus, the longer she can convince her team she’s asleep, the longer she can stay here in this place between sleep and Emma Kingston, a place without Pilaticardio or “Fireheart” or an Anastasia brow palette.

Emma’s tired. Physically, bone tired, sure, but that’s not new. She’s tired of walking up with someone and still feeling alone. She’s tired of walking past a room of people with inside jokes knowing she hasn’t made herself welcome. She’s so fucking tired.

She’s been thinking lately about implementing a new… strategy. Maybe she doesn’t have to be cold and detached all the time. Maybe she can be cold, detached and funny. Like, she can jump into conversations with a sharp quip and make everyone laugh in surprise. Then at least they’d like her enough to nod at her and say hi sometimes when she walks past the door. She doesn’t need an invite inside. She doesn’t want one. She just needs… something.

Emma stands. Her joints creak louder than usual. She wonders why for a moment then remembers the dancing, and the shoes. She shoots a harsh glance at her discarded boots. The dancing makes her think of the touching and the touching makes her think of Shawn.

She wasn’t just drunk on Gordon’s, she was drunk on power, too. When Shawn looks at her the way he does when he either thinks she doesn’t see him (like when he’d hiding and watching the end of her set) or when he’s drunk and can’t help it, it’s the closest feeling she gets to independence. Pilaticardio doesn’t come close.

Now, this morning, the thrill is gone. Sobriety has set in and has brought with it the consequences of her rather ridiculous decisions. She remembers the way she smiled at him. She remembers the look of horror on his face. She already felt sick. Now she feels sicker.

On her way to the shower, she catches a glimpse of Emma Kingston looking like she got hit by a truck. The reality, of course, is not as exciting – too much gin, weed and bad sex.

Must be Wednesday.

Taglist: @the-claire-bitch-project @smallerinfinities @crapri @stillinskislydia@carlaimberlain @heavenly—holland @abigfatmess @rosecolouredtimes

#shawn mendes #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes angst

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chriswoodfandom · 6 years ago

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Let me bitch a bit about Chris Wood’s agent/manager/PR team - does he even still have one? After the upset in the TV Guide Chris-mas poll, you would expect any team managing an artist whose fanbase had pulled something like that off to at least TRY to capitalize on it. Yet in the case of Chris Wood - nada, nothing, zilch...

I respect that Chris wants to stay off social media and he is in no way obligated to respond to fans. His team - that is another story. They are obligated. They are paid - and paid well - to help further his career. And publicity is hard currency in Hollywood. Even if their instructions from Chris is that he wants to keep a low profile, they should be able to find a way to work with this to help further his career and/or his causes.

Even if Chris is committed to totally focusing on being a filmmaker, aka writer/director/producer, and not planning to return to acting for a while. They could have focused on the fact that he is multitalented and that “The Stew” is going to be shown at festivals plus talk about his work with #IDONTMIND. I would have expected that the Chris-mas upset would merit at least an interview/photo shoot in a magazine talking about his fans, his current plans and #IDONTMIND.

Chris and Melissa still seem happy and going strong. They have done red carpets and attended weddings together. Chris has spent the past two summers supporting Melissa - first filming Waco and then performing on Broadway. I absolutely love the fact that he is such a great supporting partner. I also think it is great that they worked together on “The Stew”, even though Melissa’s previous joint project with a significant other was so problematic in the end for her.

So why has Chris all but disappeared these past 6 months? Has he been hard at work on a screenplay? A good team knows that out of sight is often out of mind in Hollywood. When a gift like the Chris-mas upset lands in your lap you have to strike while the iron is hot. The seeming rift with Arrowverse/CW that resulted in him leaving Supergirl last spring cannot have been too bad (or at least the worst of it has blown over), as he is still often on set and even performed in the Berlanti produced reading at the Geffen Playhouse.

It is possible that Chris himself simply wanted a break this year, to focus on his writing as Melissa called him “a writer” (makes me think of Adam Weaver every time). Chris also became an uncle in 2018 and we know that family is very important to him. It is also possible that his team really are doing a great job behind the scenes - talking Chris up to those who really matter and getting him the jobs and opportunities that he really wants. If in the next 2 months I hear of a great new role or another opportunity for Chris such as selling a screenplay, I will happily join in the accolades for a job well done by his team.

At the moment though, to me, it seems like his team has dropped the ball and are not doing their very best to help further his career. And Chris deserves the very best...

#chris wood #his team #what are they doing #chris deserves the very best

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stetervault · 7 years ago

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2017 Steter Fic Recs

this is the view from the other side by Green

Peter agrees to teach Stiles to defend himself and in return, gets the one thing he really needs - Pack.

He's selfish but he's not greedy. He's determined not to push for more.

Wedding Crash by Green

He agreed to the marriage and that was that. It was for the good of their ragtag pack, and Stiles knew it. Scott knew it, too, though he continued to tell Stiles he could change his mind up until the last time Stiles talked to him the day before. Stiles is a little mad that if Scott sees he's gone, he might think he did change his mind.

(Stiles is kidnapped the night before his wedding to Peter.)

I Reach Out From The Inside by Green

Stiles is a Delta. All he has to do is flash his eyes at this Alpha, and he's pretty sure he could bring him to heel.

Bone Deep by ShippersList

A body in the woods, a mate, and a long-awaited revenge.

Peter had no idea how his life would change when he followed the strange pull in his chest.

All Hale the Alpha by Bunnywest

A submissive Omega, who writhes and moans for satisfaction, and only lives to serve? A week long sex marathon once every three months? Who wouldn’t want that?

The Child of Frost and Flame by rightsidethru

For better or for worse, Peter becomes intrigued by his new transfer student from America.

Bang Bang (There Goes Your Heart) by rightsidethru

Stiles has always been pragmatic and paranoid to Scott's friendly openness, and--to his frustration--suspicions about the newest arrivals to Beacon Hills go ignored and overlooked.

That's fine, though.

He's always been a fan of the saying 'If you want something done right, do it yourself.'

Yachting and Other Criminal Endeavors by pprfaith

In which our favorite misfits are criminals, there is a thing to be stolen, Stiles Tarzans across a room and Deucalion is, as ever, an asshole.

(I have no idea how any of this happened, to be honest.)

Escalating Beyond All Reason by Mysenia

Sometimes all one needs is a little nudge to see beyond past hurts, or faith in an Alpha who defies all odds.

Peter finds his soulmate long after he stopped looking - stopped hoping in a dream that seemed all too unrealistic - but he's bitter and inured to disappointment. Will Stiles, a goofy and young Alpha, be able to make him see that sometimes fate gets it right?

Littlered and Alpha5 by Triangulum (i feel like i should apologize for reccing so many of your fics lol)

Stiles could say that he's a grower not a shower, but that would be a lie. On a good day, fully erect, he's three inches long. Okay, two-and-a-half. Whatever, it works for him. It's what got him into camming in the first place. There's a very specific clientele out there that's looking for exactly what Stiles has. The lithe, gay guy with a small dick is a very niche market and Stiles has managed to carve out his own place in it. The fact that he's a virgin only helps.

Stiles is a camboy and Peter is his best client.

Unseen Feet and Dead Ideas by Triangulum

Peter has never put any stock into ghost stories. Sure, when he was a kid and his parents told scary stories by the campfire, he'd jump and his heart would beat a little bit faster, but that's it. So when his nieces and nephews start whispering about the pack house being haunted, he doesn't really pay any attention.

The Hale house is haunted, and Stiles is Deaton's strange colleague who's called in to help.

Fame is a Vapor by Triangulum

Most people wouldn't assume Peter likes baseball. There are a lot of stereotypes that come with being a bisexual man in fashion, and one of them is that he must hate sports and typical 'manly' things. Such blind assumptions and gender roles are, of course, ridiculous, but he's not above using them to sneak off when his PR team gets a little too gung ho on his speaking events.

He's wanted at various fashion schools and charity events, and he has the Project Runway team pestering him to guest judge again, as if he doesn't have his hands full with running Hale Fashion. It's taken years of hard work and maybe a little bit of blackmail, but he's the head of his own company, and he thinks he deserves an afternoon off.

Peter, rich and famous fashion mogul, accidentally spills his beer on Stiles at a baseball game. Stiles has no clue who he is. That makes their first date so much better.

His Ink On My Skin by Sahiba_KT

There were words yet to be said, emotions yet to unfold, promises and secrets yet to be shared, but inked on skin, he weaved magic on him, and Peter could only guess as to how or why he even chose him.

St. Valentine Totally Died For This by SushiOwl

Tumblr Prompt

"i suggest Steter, Valentine's Day, and the sentence I got was: He was at a crossroads and whichever path he chose would ruin someone’s life"

The Right Kind of Closeted by SushiOwl

Tumblr Prompt:

redm81 asked: Hmm...I have a jealous/possessive kink so, how about a jealous Peter, losing it when he sees Stiles talking with another Alpha? Knotting him just to show everyone that he belongs to him! Smell like him!

Tubal Litigation by Twisted_Mind

He licks his lips. He knows this is the moment of truth, so he doesn’t mince words. “I want to challenge the court for the right to make decisions regarding my reproductive health without an alpha’s permission. Tubal ligation, specifically.”

At that, Peter’s eyes widen, and he sits up in his chair. “I take it your alpha doesn’t approve?”

He can feel his eyes narrowing into a glare, but he doesn’t give a shit. “I don’t have an alpha.”

Peter does a double-take, looking him up and down. “You’re an omega, correct?” Stiles nods. “Then—are you mated to a beta?”

He tips his chin up. It’s really not Peter’s business, but he’d expected this walking in. “I’m not mated, Mr. Hale.”

Peter rests his forearms on his desk, hands folded and eyes intent on Stiles’s face. “You have my attention, Mr. Stilinski.”

He Got a Soul as Sweet as Blood-Red Jam by petershorcrux

They both indulge each other rotten, is the thing.

perhaps he loves you now by WindyRein

There's a boy with fire for eyes and a fox pelt on his shoulders and Peter will have him.

Borrowers and Lenders by RebaK1tten

"We need a silver chalice that’s been blessed and used for a sacrament."

Peter and Stiles rob a church, but it's for a good cause, I promise.

I See Dead People by CinnamonLily

Peter was just trying to enjoy his cinnamon latte in peace when a stranger interrupts his moment. The fact that the young man is gorgeous helps. Even if he's probably crazy. Messages from the dead? Yeah, right.

Material Objects and Deep Abiding Love by TriDom

Stiles doesn't judge people at all for having daddy kinks. Whatever floats their boats is fine with him. He just kind of judges them for not being smart enough to capitalize on having a kink for older men and going for rich guys. But even those people with sugar daddies he kinda judges, because they're logical, but the creativity is lacking.

Why just have a sugar daddy when he can have a werewolf sugar daddy?

It's a tall order, but Peter Hale checks all the boxes.

Show Me by Twisted_Mind

Peter smirks, and yep, yes, that is in fact an eyebrow piercing, which not only increases the sass—which should not be possible, that’s gotta break at least three laws of physics—but is also outrageously hot. “Nothing important.”

And then Peter turns to head into the study, where they’ve been translating the bestiary, and he catches sight of the bar running through the cartilage of Peter’s right ear. His dick twitches and begins to fill, because hello, heretofore-unknown kink.

Peter, of course, notices. And says something, because he’s rude like that. “Why, Stiles,” he purrs, turning around. “See something you like?”

Teamwork by AlreadyBoss

Hazards of having a werewolf boyfriend: sometimes your clothes don't survive the sex, bruises you can't possibly hope to hide, and judgmental roommates who like to tell you your relationship isn't healthy.

Benefits of having a werewolf boyfriend: they're always willing to help you troll the hell out of said roommate. Oh, and the sex.

#teen wolf #steter #stiles stilinski #peter hale #fanfic rec #2017

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craigrcannon · 4 years ago

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Employee #1: Coinbase

A conversation with Olaf Carlson-Wee, Coinbase’s first employee.

Employee #1 is a series of interviews focused on sharing the often untold stories of early employees at tech companies.

Olaf Carlson-Wee was the first employee at Coinbase. He currently runs Polychain Capital, a hedge fund which invests in a portfolio of blockchain-based assets. He is also an angel investor and filmmaker, based in San Francisco.

Discussed: The Early Days of Bitcoin, Interviewing at Coinbase, Finding Employees on R/Bitcoin, Scaling Support at Coinbase, Spotting Fraud, Vetting Founders in a New Field, Launching Polychain Capital.

You can subscribe to The Macro newsletter to receive future conversations.

Craig : What are you currently working on?

Olaf : I actually launched a company yesterday.

Craig : [Laughter] Whoa, congrats.

Olaf : Yeah, thank you. I don’t feel like celebrating quite yet because it’s just the beginning but it’s called Polychain Capital, “chain” here referring to the blockchain. It’s a hedge fund that invests in a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies.

Craig : Man, that’s wild. Is it a big team at this point? Is it just you?

Olaf : Just me.

Craig : And how are you picking the currencies?

Olaf : So I’m looking at things like novel uses of cryptography in the protocol. Or is the protocol attempting something that a blockchain has never done before. I’m also looking at core developer team quality, the developer ecosystem, and asking questions like are there a lot of apps being built on this, with GitHub forks, GitHub stars, and then looking at the community ecosystem. What’s the size of the forum? How often do people post relative to other forums? Is it an active community? Stuff like that. So part is core analysis of protocol, and part is quantitative metrics surrounding the use of the protocol.

I’ve launched with five million under management so mostly right now I’m focused on operationally executing the portfolio perfectly. And then making sure that I’m tracking the space and developments at the protocol level. Keep in mind, my last day at Coinbase was eight weeks ago.

Craig : Wow. Did you raise the five in that eight weeks?

Olaf : Yeah, I’ve been on the phone a lot. I have this stupid headset that I wear all the time. [Laughter]

Craig : [Laughter] You’re one of those guys?

Olaf : Yeah. It’s really embarrassing.

Craig : We’ll let it slide. Ok, so let’s talk about Coinbase. How did you find out about them?

Olaf : So I wrote my undergraduate thesis about Bitcoin and the larger implications of open source finance in 2011. I was Coinbase’s 30th user and now we have four million. I literally cold emailed jobs@coinbase and said, “I love bitcoin. Here’s my thesis. I’ll do any job.”

Craig : So you cold emailed these guys a document that was like 60 pages long?

Olaf : Yeah, like 90 pages long. [Laughter] But, to be fair, I clipped the 30 page chapter that was specifically on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. But yeah, I did. I emailed an annoyingly long and annoyingly academic document.

Craig : And they responded?

Olaf : Fred [Ehrsam] replied in five minutes and said, “Hey, can you hop on Skype?” That’s when I started learning how things work in Silicon Valley. The pace of things.

We got on Skype and talked for 20 minutes. Then I got an email from him that said, “Okay, we wanna do an in-person interview. You’re going to come to the office tomorrow. I want you to have two finished presentations, 15 minutes each. The first should explain something complicated you know very well. The second should outline your vision for Coinbase.”

So I got to work. At the time I was on a road trip and actually was crashing on a friend’s couch in Oakland so the scheduling worked out well.

Craig : Did you study CS in school?

Olaf : I majored in sociology so I’m self-taught on computer science. Though I’m not a great coder. If I’m a building a website, I’m not very good at that. But I do know cryptography pretty well and, in particular, I know game theory well, which is really important in cryptocurrency.

Craig : Gotcha. So what were your presentations?

Olaf : Okay. So the first one was on the pharmacological induction of lucid dreams. It is complicated, but it’s a mechanism to induce lucidity in your dreams. You can control your dream by waking up in the middle of the night and taking an over-the-counter supplement called galantamine, which increases levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the synapse. Fun fact is that I’ve been writing down my dreams for 11 years.

The second presentation was on Coinbase and my high level strategy for the company. Coinbase had a lot of problems at that time. When I was applying, there were really bad bugs. Actually, on the first day of my work trial, there was a top Hacker News post that said, “My balance is wrong. I lost all this money.” Everything was broken.

My strategy was to clean up PR problems but focus 100% on security. Bad customer experiences will eventually be forgotten but a security incident will not be forgotten. I basically was saying, “Listen, people want us to move faster than we can.” I mean, Brian [Armstrong] was literally building everything. I was saying to Brian, “We cannot hack something together that ends up leading to a security incident. Even though everything is on fire, let’s do this very carefully.” And I think that resonated with them.

But Coinbase, especially in its early days, had a lot of hard tradeoffs between moving really quickly like a traditional startup and operating as a financial institution. Even then we were storing tens of millions of dollars of people’s money. And of course there were security incidents. Fraud was a big problem. People trying to buy bitcoin with stolen identities. We wanted to give good customers high limits and we we wanted to give scammers low or no limits. There are a lot of hard tradeoffs. I basically took the perspective that we need to be a security juggernaut and any bad customer experiences will long-term be forgotten.

On the other hand, if you get hacked or you have a massive fraud incident and lose all your money, it’s catastrophic. The main thing is avoid the catastrophic events. And what’s funny is looking back, that’s really what Coinbase has done. A big way that Coinbase is the leader in the space is just that we didn’t get hacked, honestly. We did many things right. But that is honestly the number one thing.

Craig : Ok, so you do the presentations. Is this to both of them?

Olaf : This is just to Fred. Fred and I probably talked for 45 minutes–a long time. Then Fred gave me a really brutal mathematics problem and said, “Okay, why don’t you figure that out while I go talk to Brian?”

So I knew I had at least on some level passed the first part. I knew he’d walk me out without meeting Brian if it definitely wasn’t working out.

Do you want to know the problem?

Craig : Yeah, absolutely.

Olaf : Okay. So there are 100 lockers in a row. They’re all closed, okay? A kid goes by. He opens every single locker. A second kid goes by. Now he closes every other locker, every second locker. Third kid comes by, every third locker. If it’s open, he closes it. If it closed, he opens it. Then the fourth kid goes by. Every fourth locker, he changes the state. And now 100 kids go by. What is the state of the lockers after 100 kids go by?

Craig : Oh man, I’d definitely need some time for that.

Olaf : Yeah, so don’t try to figure it out because it may take a while. So I’m sitting there and thinking like, “Okay, focus Olaf. If Brian comes down and the first thing you have is the answer to this problem, this is gonna seal the deal.” At least in my head I thought that. In retrospect, that was getting ahead of things a bit much.

To be honest, I don’t know what happened but I had this crazy flash of insight and had the answer. And when Brian came back, we started talking through it and I just figured it out way faster than I reasonably should have.

Craig : Whoa. So what’s the answer?

Olaf : The answer is perfect squares are open. The reason being, they’re the only numbers that have an odd number of factors. So the number of factors determines whether a locker is open or closed because that’s the number of kids that interacted with it. And so the odd number of factors means it’s open and even number of factors means it’s closed. And the only numbers that have an odd number of factors are perfect squares like 16, 25, 36.

Craig : How long were you given to solve that?

Olaf : Oh, probably like three minutes.

Craig : Holy shit, okay.

Olaf : Yeah. It was probably three minutes. I don’t believe in divine intervention or anything. But that was a time in my life when I had an uncanny flash of insight that I would never pretend I could recreate. But anyway, then Brian grilled me for another hour.

Craig : [Laughter]

Olaf : Brian’s questions were really intense. “What do you wanna do with your life?” “What drives you as a person?” “What’s a belief you have that is extremely unpopular?” He wanted to really know me.

I think Fred had gone up to Brian and said, “Listen, Olaf’s at least sort of qualified for this. I talked to him. I think he could do the job. Now we need to figure out do we want to actually work with him.” And Brian went super deep on a lot of really intense questions about my life, what drove me, what mattered to me, why I wanted to do this, all that stuff. And we had a very intense conversation about what it meant to want to do things, what it meant to be a human trying to go about the world.

Craig : Did you feel prepared to answer those questions?

Olaf : I definitely had to think about each question but I tend to have a pretty crystallized ideology about the way I think about the world. It changes, but at any given moment, I know what it is. So yeah, I think it was pretty reasonable for me to say, “Here’s why I wanna do this.”

Craig : Okay, and then how does it wrap up?

Olaf : They say, “Okay, great. We’ll let you know.” And then they walk me out. I heard back, I wanna say, four days later. They said, “You should come in for work trial.” And that was a two week paid trial. I worked really hard because I knew this was the final test. At the end of those two weeks they said, “Okay. You have a formal job offer.”

Craig : What was the actual job?

Olaf : Customer support. Like I said, I came in and was willing to do anything. I did customer support by myself until we had 250,000 users.

It was a marathon. It was like 12-hour days of fast replying. And, to be clear, we did not have good support during that time. I’ll say that as the person who was doing it. You would get an email. It wouldn’t necessarily come right away. It wouldn’t necessarily perfectly answer your question. But we were replying. [Laughter]

Craig : [Laughter] Okay. So then did you become involved in hiring future people?

Olaf : Yes. So basically what happened was we were trying to hire more customer support people, because it was not scaling with just me. We did four work trials for our customer support people to join me in San Francisco. We rejected all of them. Meanwhile the problem is getting worse and worse and worse, right?

The delay in replies and the quality of replies is just going down in a bad way. I think at the peak, the average time to reply was five days. And this is a financial institution. It’s really inappropriate.

So I got really desperate and I posted a Bitcoin SAT on Reddit. What this was was a test, a Bitcoin aptitude test so to speak. And it had questions like, “What is the hash of the genesis block?” That was the first question. And the idea there was if you’re asking yourself, “What does that mean?” this isn’t the job for you. If you have no idea what that is then get out of here.

It was a bunch of Bitcoin-style brainteaser-y questions and I just posted it on Reddit’s /r/bitcoin and Bitcoin Talk and I said, “If you get a perfect score, you get an interview for remote customer support.”

And we got like 250 people to take this test. Skip ahead maybe four months. I have 43 people reporting to me in a distributed team.

Craig : Whoa.

Olaf : This team covers merchant integrations, API support, anti-fraud investigations, compliance investigations, and did customer support. We now have all of these teams at Coinbase. They mostly came from this one Bitcoin SAT. It was so successful that I posted it a second time at some point and got a new round of candidates.

It was a globally distributed team. The first person I hired was in New Caledonia. It’s weird how these things work. Skip ahead two years, he works at Coinbase in San Francisco and is the director of customer support. He’s an amazing guy. He started remote and I remember thinking when we had our first talk – he had a master’s in computer science from George Washington University – and I was like, “Why do you wanna do customer support?”

And he said, “I’m in New Caledonia. This is the best job I could hope for and I love Bitcoin.” And I was like, “Well, you’re hired.”

And that was when I realized that the remote structure was actually going to work really well. There were hard things about it, but I now feel very confident running remote teams. This was when we were using HipChat–before Slack. Then Slack came out and that helped a lot. And then we had Google Hangouts. Basically the tooling was good enough. Like Google Docs where we can all edit something. The tooling really was good enough, just at that moment. I think if were to try to do this distributed team two or three years before, it would’ve fallen on its face.

Craig : So you were managing support but then you eventually ran risk, right? How does that happen?

Olaf : Yup. So I was kind of managing what was really like the whole operational part of the company and it was really burning me out. This was a year and half of 12-hour days without any vacations. I took Sundays off. We scaled to probably 30 or 40 people in San Francisco before I hired a Director of Support and became the Head of Risk.

So as Head of Risk the main things I focused on were account security and fraud prevention. It wasn’t like infrastructure security around preventing hackers. It’s user-facing, like they enter their password on a phishing site.

Basically with security there are two angles: We can get your coins stolen or you can get your coins stolen.

Craig : [Laughter] Right.

Olaf : [Laughter] So yeah, I was responsible for the latter and anti-fraud, i.e. people buying bitcoin with stolen identities. While I was running support I had a huge part in handling all that stuff. And when fraud had gotten bad in early 2013, I designed the Risk Queue that would review people that we thought were stolen identities. At one point I would review every single buy on the website–one by one.

Craig : Whoa.

Olaf : These are things that absolutely don’t scale, but you can build it in one day and start working on it that day. So Brian built it and I would review every single buy. As a result I started to get an incredible eye for stolen identities. Like I had a sixth sense for whether an account was a stolen identity or not.

Craig : Can you explain that a little bit? What are you looking for?

Olaf : Ok, so there are a couple tiers of scammer. Let’s pretend you’re a unsophisticated scammer. You sign up. The email you use is [email protected] and the name you use is Laura Johnson. Then the bank account you use is Alexander Smith. Obviously something’s going on there. So big name mismatches are the easiest to spot.

Then there are patterns. So, for example, scammers would buy dumps–some guy will a hack a site, he’ll get a bunch of bank account numbers and then he’ll use them all. And those dumps will often share certain traits. For example, I’d suddenly see like 20 SunTrust bank accounts get added in 20 minutes and they all share certain formatting rules or the email domain is the same, or something like that. So again, it’s basically pattern recognition.

But then it gets way more complicated because for sophisticated scammers, their entire job hinges on me looking at something and saying, “that’s legit.”

And it can mean massive payouts for them. Our limits at that time were 50 bitcoin a day. So, if you could sneak past me, you could buy 50 bitcoin every day until the real account holder called their bank and said, “I’m seeing all these crazy charges.”

But yeah, I learned a lot very quickly. I learned a lot about traditional payment mechanisms. Before I knew a lot about bitcoin. Now I know a lot about credit cards. And ACH. And bank wires. And all that stuff.

Craig : Yeah, it sounds like you’ve dug in. I assume not everyone who works at Coinbase now has the same degree of knowledge. How do you scale understanding at a company that is based around something inherently technical?

Olaf : In the early days, everyone was a cryptocurrency fanatic. The first two engineering hires were these absolutely brilliant people who basically came to Coinbase because they wanted to work on cryptocurrency. And what’s interesting is a lot of our anti-fraud people are also super into Bitcoin. They’re not people who worked anti-fraud at Stripe. They’re Bitcoin people first.

So yeah, we’d sort of filter for smart people that were passionate about Bitcoin. It’s my opinion that if you’re smart you can learn a new skill and all the details. But passion and innate interest cannot really be learned. We tended to hire people who said, “I love this company. I don’t quite have the experience.” Versus people that said, “I have the experience, but I’m looking at four other places and maybe I’ll pick Coinbase.”

My belief is that the inexperienced, interested person will outperform the experienced, uninterested person over time.

That said, when we started scaling we did have to start trading between interest in Bitcoin and domain experience. The person who runs Compliance, for example, can’t just be winging it.

Craig : What was it that made you want to join Coinbase?

Olaf : Before I was gonna apply, I read all about the founders. There were a bunch of competitors at the time. The massive market share was MtGox, which ended in tragedy, as you may know. And then like there were bunch of other companies that were bigger. BitInstant, Tradehill, these are all defunct. Every single one of them is dead now. But at the time, Coinbase was like the new little company.

Craig : Okay, so the underlying question is how do you vet founders in a new field?

Olaf : Yeah. I have pretty strong feelings on that. I’d say meet them and make sure 100% that you like them, that you could work for them, and that you will run the whole marathon with them. Running a company and scaling a startup is so much stress, so much work. And they’re gonna be sitting next to you the whole time

If you don’t feel like they’re in it 110% and that you can work with them and be friends with them, it’s not gonna work. Especially in a very micro team. I mean, once a company is 40 people, that’s still like a startup but the founder matters for you personally a little less. It does for the company’s success but not for you personally. But if you’re joining like a sub-10-person startup you really need to make sure that the founder is gonna drive this all the way. This needs be a grand slam.

So much of it is about personality and drive. Even if you’re technically brilliant, there are these dark times. And dark like bad things are happening. There’s always gonna be bad events.

You have to ask, are they gonna focus in and just move forward, or are they gonna give up? And it doesn’t matter if they’re technically competent if they’re in the latter category. They could be the best person in the world at this but if at the end of the day they don’t have the drive and spirit to make this happen, it doesn’t matter. So to me the technical competency of course is vital. But if you met someone and said, “Wow, that guy is the number one expert in the world at this,” but you felt like he’s kind of flakey. Pass. Always pass.

With Brian and Fred, they’re two of the smartest, most focused and driven people I have ever met. And I knew that after the interview. I was like, “These guys are really not fucking around.” Seriously, it really made me wanna work there.

Craig : So to your point of the bad things always happening, what were the bad things that happened?

Olaf : Oh, man. I think in 2013 our user base increased 100x. And the price of bitcoin went up 100x. Our volumes went up I think even more than 100x. You know when people talk about like rapid aggressive scaling? That’s exactly what it was and a tiny number of us were scaling all of it. At the beginning of that year it was two people. At the end of that year, just eight.

Craig : Wow.

Olaf : Brian and Fred are very careful about hiring. They only hire people that they truly think are superstars. At Coinbase one thing that gets said a lot is, “On a candidate if you’re not a ‘hell yes’, you’re a ‘no’.” If you’re like, “I like them. I think they’re smart. I think they’re great.” That’s a “no.”

You really have to fight to keep that up. You have to feel like if this person does not get hired, we’re crazy. That’s how you have to feel for someone to get hired at Coinbase.

And that early team was really unique individuals. Like, it was the perfect puzzle pieces. But anyway, the scaling during that time was brutal. It was absolutely brutal. And we had bugs that were really bad.

Here’s the thing, it’s not like having bugs on Twitter where maybe something gets retweeted wrong. When you have a bug on Coinbase, balances are incorrect in what are essentially bank accounts. And transactions that are time sensitive aren’t getting sent out. The stakes are way higher yet you’re still just five people in a room making the whole thing.

One time the ACH file we use with banks got duplicated. That’s means that if you bought $100 of Bitcoin we duplicated the transaction so you’re buying $200 of Bitcoin. When something like that happened I would get a thousand emails in 20 minutes because these are bank accounts and people definitely notice that stuff.

The one thing that’s so lucky is we never had an incident where someone gained access to our infrastructure and pulled out Bitcoin from the hot wallet. That was just the blessing. I think even Brian would probably tell you that there were times in Coinbase’s history that were sort of coin flips. But we survived them. Other companies had incidents like that and had to shut down. We caught things fast enough.

Craig : That’s funny. It’s exactly the same thing Aston said about Dropbox. Basically, “Shit went wrong all the time but the one thing we never did was lose a ton of files.”

Olaf : Exactly. This is exactly Coinbase’s story. In those early days everything went wrong except the one thing that couldn’t go wrong.

Craig : [Laughter] Exactly. So at what point were you like, “Okay. I’m ready to do something else?”

Olaf : Yeah. So I basically saw what, for me, has been the biggest trend in the space I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in this heads down for five years. People are doing this new behavior where they’re actually raising capital and issuing what is essentially network ownership of their network on the blockchain. So these are like bits of equity in peer-to-peer networks that are built on the blockchain.

A crude example here is imagine if an early user of Facebook gets a thousand shares of Facebook. Now, instead of just normal network effects, there’s also monetary incentive network effects built into this protocol. And these new types of protocols are built on new blockchains or as subtokens of existing blockchains. The opportunity for me was too big to pass up. The trend was too strong. Plus I needed a new adventure. So I left to start Polychain.

And it’s only been eight weeks but Polychain has seen a lot of interest because this trend is really strong. I think that over the next year, there’s gonna be amazing opportunities here. The alternative thing that I could’ve started is a venture fund that invests in companies built on the protocols.

But in this new model, there’s really no place for traditional VCs because the protocol tokens themselves are the issuance of ownership. Not shares on a piece of paper. And as the company wants to raise their Series A, their Series B, their Series C, all that is them holding say 5%, 10% of the protocol tokens and those going up in value as their network becomes more valuable. And then they can sell tokens and become diluted to get liquid cash. It works very well. It’s a lot of similar mechanics to venture capital fundraising, but they can do it all with this native protocol units and crowdfunding, and there’s just no place for paper shares or VCs.

So, instead of betting in companies built on protocol, I’m actually buying units of the protocol. I’m buying scarce blockchain tokens and creating a portfolio of those tokens. I’m basically buying ownership in all of these new 2.0 peer-to-peer protocols.

Craig : That’s wild.

Olaf : Yeah, that’s why Polychain is a hedge fund instead of a venture fund. Because I’m holding solely protocol tokens. To a normal person what I’m doing is extremely esoteric.

Craig : [Laughter] Uh, yes.

Olaf : It absolutely is. That said a lot of smart people in Silicon Valley think it’s on that edge where this is going to grow substantially over the next five years.

Craig : You’re definitely in the right place. Ok, random question. Aside from the Bitcoin readings you recommended, what books do you recommend?

Olaf : I have a couple that come to mind. So I love David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest is probably my favorite book. His short stories are also amazing.

Another book that comes to mind is House of Leaves. The premise is crazy. So the actual book is a manuscript written by an old man. With annotations by a narrator who has found and reconstructed this book. With annotations by an omnipotent editor. Who is finding the annotations of the person who reconstructed this old man’s book.

Craig : Oh my god.

Olaf : And now this is where it gets even crazier. The old man’s book is a analysis of a movie that doesn’t exist.

Craig : [Laughter]

Olaf : And the narrator who’s annotating and reconstructing this old man’s book is being driven crazy because there’s so much detail and he can’t find this movie. And it like actually doesn’t appear to exist. And the old man, all his sources are fake articles and things. It gets really weird but it’s much more of a page turner than David Foster Wallace.

Anyway, I’d recommend both because they’re super long and once you get into them, they completely consume your brain. They’re my favorite kind of books.

Craig : Right on. Ok, let’s end there. Thanks for your time.

Olaf : Sure thing.

Olaf’s Suggested Reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy – Probably my other favorite book along with Infinite Jest. Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer by Dr. John Lilly Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

Here are three posts that explain the Polychain thesis well: • App Coins and the dawn of the Decentralized Business Model • The Golden Age Of Open Protocols • Crypto Tokens and the Coming Age of Protocol Innovation

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4colorrebellion · 7 years ago

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First Impressions - Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception

Utawarerumono.

Well, that was a mouthful.

As much as I like Japanese games, I had never heard of this series until recently - when Atlus announced that they were localizing the two most recent games - Mask of Deception and Mask of Truth. In fact, my entire knowledge of the series going into Mask of Deception was: (a) The Utawarerumono games are visual novels with strategy RPG mechanics, and (b) The games have a decently-sized fanbase.

As the first part - admittedly vague description notwithstanding - fits right up my alley, and given that the series has some cult pedigree, I decided that I might as well give the first game a try.

Read on for my impressions of the first five hours.

Mask of Deception is, indeed, a visual novel in the vein of the Zero Escape series or Steins;Gate. This means that most of your time will be spent reading through text - workin your way through a story told through dialogue between characters and the internal thoughts of the protagonist, set against a mix of 2D and 3D backgrounds.

The basic setup is that our protagonist, an amnesiac man, wakes up in a snowy forest. He has been rescued by Kuon - a super-strong girl with a tail and animal ears. Worried, Kuon decides to bring the protagonist - who she names “Haku” - along until he can survive on his own. Together, Haku and Kuon start to make their way towards the capital of the medieval kingdom of Yamato. Haku - as our “stranger in a strange land” - has to figure out his place in a world that he doesn’t quite fit into.

As about 80% of your interaction with the game is related to bringing up the next line of text, it’s important that the story is able to pull you in. So far, that is definitely the case. Mask of Deception won’t win literary awards, but the writing (and localization) are quite good. The characters are great, and I’m really enjoying how their relationships are growing as the story progresses. The world itself is intriguing, and I want to see where it goes. Honestly, what I like most so far is the sense of fun. The story is not overwhelmingly dramatic, or deadly serious. It’s just fun. I don’t know what directions the storyline will take later on - I am about a tenth of the way through - but I hope that it retains that general vibe.

The story segments are broken up by battle scenes akin to something like Fire Emblem or Tactics Ogre. In these turn-based battles, characters can move around on a grid, interacting with monsters and other characters. However, rather than simply selecting an attack and watching it play out, timed button presses determine the strength of an attack. This adds a welcome bit of additional interactivity to the affair - you need to either press a button at the right moment, or hold and release the button.

Another welcome feature of combat is the ability to rewind battles. If you make a mistake, you can walk back to that point and choose another move. Although I haven’t had much need for the feature yet, I like that it allows you to try out a plan and rethink it if you screw up.

The usual SRPG tropes are also present here. You need to build a team of a set size out of the full cast in your wheelhouse, and each character has their own skills and weaknesses. Enemies have elemental affinities and weaknesses, and you need to plan around these when building a team.

The art direction of Utawarerumono is excellent. The character designs are memorable, and the hand-drawn art is gorgeous. I love how colorful the game is - it really looks great on the Vita’s OLED screen. The 3D elements - primarily used for battles - are nothing special, but are serviceable.

As I mentioned earlier, I am only about five hours into Mask of Deception. However, I’m hooked, and can’t wait to see where the story goes. The game is relatively long - Atlus PR claims 45-50 hours - so there is quite a bit of story to work through. I’ve been playing on the PlayStation Vita, but the game is also available on PS4. My recommendation would be to play it on Vita. The game runs well, looks great on the Vita’s screen, and - in my opinion - portable is the way to go for this type of game.

If you have enjoyed other visual novels or strategy RPGs, I highly recommend Utawarerumono - even if the name is a bit of a mouthful. The game releases in North America on May 23rd.

#video games #videogame #PS Vita #utawarerumono #atlus #greg4cr

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allofbeercom · 7 years ago

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From Manchester City to Oklahoma: how a rejected footballer kept the dream alive

Laurie Bell became one of the most expensive 12-year-olds in British football history when Manchester City signed him from Stockport County, but he had to wait a decade and move 4,000 miles away to make his professional debut

In the dressing room of a baseball stadium in the American South, I fiddled with orange shinpad tape, yanked my heels to my buttocks to stretch already-limber quadricep muscles, and tap-danced impatiently on plastic studded football boots. Ten more debutants in creaseless kits waited in line. A dipping Oklahoma sun peeked inside the tunnel, beckoning. When the referees eventually signalled that it was time, we marched out. First on red clay, then green grass, then across the straight white lines of a freshly painted football pitch. In the stands, 8,000 soccer rookies rose to their feet, waved homemade flags, and glugged half-price cans of Modelo beer. Up in the posh seats, the clubs hierarchy were given a first tangible taste of a team that had been two years in the making.

It was a momentous walk for all of us: the first action on the first night in Tulsa Roughnecks history. For me, it proved the last, improbable leg of a 14-year journey that had transported me 4,000 miles from my English home. At 22 years old, after a sequence of rejection and lateral footballing progress, my professional debut had finally arrived.

Men in military uniforms trumpeted out a national anthem. For a moment, a reverential hush cloaked the excitement for soccer pulsing through this old oil city. Stood by the halfway line where short stops might field on baseball-playing days I considered how we all arrived here. How had this brand new team leapt into existence? What did this crowd expect? Was our flung-together squad any good? Whats that centre-backs name again? And, of all the football clubs in all the world, how the hell had I ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma?

This wasnt English football. This hadnt been the plan.

Tulsa Roughnecks players sign autographs for their fans. Photograph: Lori Scholl

Statistically speaking, the first match in the Roughnecks record books ended in a 1-1 draw. But as sunburned schoolteachers and hoarse local lawyers joined kids clamouring for autographs at the perimeter of the field, that balmy night in March 2015 felt decidedly like a victory. Shirts sold, fireworks crackled and fans fell in love. Giddily unpracticed, I signed programs, iPhone cases and exposed forearms. Opening night was a win for the Roughnecks and for football in the city.

There was immediate evidence of both a passion and market for soccer in Tulsa, like there is in increasing numbers of cities across North America. In the past two seasons across the top three leagues covering the US and Canada the MLS, NASL and USL 24 new professional soccer clubs have founded. Tulsa Roughnecks is one part of professional soccers recent proliferation in the US. This is one players insight into life at a brand new club.

Describing Tulsa Roughnecks FC as brand new is only partly true. In 1983 a professional outdoor team from Tulsa named the Roughnecks was crowned king of the North American Soccer League. They beat the Toronto Blizzard in Soccer Bowl 83 in front of 53,000 fans.

The glitzy NASL attracted footballing greats such as Johan Cruyff, George Best, Pel and Franz Beckenbaur. Their presence helped draw impressive attendances at stadiums nationwide, with thousands more fans tuning in on TV. Even without a bona fide superstar, the Roughnecks enjoyed a strong local following and considerable onfield success. But when the league folded and soccers grip on the imaginations of the American people loosened, the team followed suit.

Having been founded in 1978, the Roughnecks disbanded six years later, the season after they won the championship. A few upstarts tried to bring the sport back to the city but they were unsuccessful and Tulsa was largely soccer-less for the next three decades until 2013, when Mike Melega, General Manager of the Tulsa Drillers baseball franchise, picked up his newspaper.

I saw in the paper one day that Oklahoma City was getting professional soccer, said Melega, the picture of an American sports executive: khaki trousers below a club-crested polo shirt and dark brown hair cropped neatly around the back and sides. At the time time, Melegas only title was GM of the Drillers, a feeder club affiliated with a Major League Baseball team, but his staff was also tasked with managing the Drillers under-utilised ONEOK Field, a three-year-old, $40m stadium in the heart of downtown Tulsa.

Youre always keeping your eyes open for trends and opportunities, continued Melega. Professional soccer in America is growing and I thought our city needs to be at the forefront of that.

Tulsa and the state capital, Oklahoma City, are 100 miles apart: neighbours by American standards. Melega discovered that the same ownership group had already purchased expansion rights for soccer teams in both cities. An attractive new sports franchise and a lonely stadium: the GM foresaw a marriage. Melega, along with Brian Carroll, vice president of media and PR, convinced the Drillers owners brothers Jeff and Dale Hubbard to fund a wedding.

Dale Hubbard is a former professional baseball player who had never watched a game of soccer. But Melega is persuasive and, trusting his judgment, the Hubbards purchased a majority share in their citys expansion rights. A crazy, crazy year and a half of preparations followed. But on 18 December 2013, addressing a room of reporters and early self-declared supporters, Melega held a scarf above his head and announced that soccer was returning to Tulsa. In 2015, the team would compete in the United Soccer League, the third tier of US soccer.

Laurie Bell playing for Tulsa Roughnecks. Photograph: Lori Scholl

That same afternoon in Milwaukee, Wisconsin I completed a Media Law exam. I was 21 and two-and-a-half years into a university soccer scholarship. Five days earlier I had been named in college soccers team of the year (making this Mancunian an All-American), having enjoyed my finest season as a footballer. From central midfield I scored 13 goals, captaining my Division One team to league success, record home crowds and a coveted spot in the NCAA national tournament.

I finished the exam then packed a suitcase to return to my parents home in England for Christmas. On the flight, early visions of playing professionally in the US pushed law out of my mind. At the time, I couldnt point to Oklahoma on a map.

Every time I touch down at Manchester Airport, Im struck by the abundance of white rectangles painted on to patchwork grass fields below. There are football pitches everywhere. While the game gains popularity in the soccer-hungry landscape of 2016 America, there remains just one other professional team within 250 miles of Tulsa. By contrast, within 25 miles of the Manchester runway sit nine professional clubs, with almost double that number at semi-pro level. Before my 18th birthday, I had represented three of them.

I was scouted by Stockport Countys School of Excellence as an eight-year-old and excelled in their navy colours for the next four seasons, building up a reputation in the region. So when Manchester City offered me a spot in their world-renowned academy, a tribunal ruled that hefty compensation was to be paid to County, making me one of the most expensive 12-year-olds in British football history.

A lifelong City fan, I gladly committed my teenage years to the academys Platt Lane training complex, where prodigies progress and dreams come true. Every Tuesday and Wednesday I was excused from school and reported to the same fields and the same coaches that reared my City heroes: Shaun Wright-Phillips, Stephen Ireland, Micah Richards and Joey Barton. On Saturdays after my own matches I ball-boyed at the stadium. From pitch level, I watched Daniel Sturridge and Michael Johnson make Premier League debuts, convinced that one day Id be out there too.

But the fantasy of playing professionally for my boyhood club ended when I was 16, graduated from high school and deemed not fast enough to mix it with the latest crop of demi-stars scouted from across the globe.

Two years later, a second door to dreamland shut firmly in my face. I had completed a two-season youth team apprenticeship at Rochdale AFC, a club 108 years older than the current Roughnecks. Desperate to land contracts, my team-mates and I fought to impress The Gaffer by whatever means necessary. On the pitch, we scrapped to a Youth Alliance league title. Off it, we completed chores: filling wheelie-bin ice baths with freezing water, packing training equipment into The Gaffers Nissan Navara and obediently scrubbing the first teamers boots we wished to fill.

I regularly trained with the professionals, played alongside them in the reserves, and appeared in a first-team pre-season match. When I was named the clubs Youth Player of the Year in 2011, I became quietly confident about my chances. But money wasnt flowing through the grey, north Manchester town. And the first-team was stacked with experienced central midfielders. I just dont see you replacing them next season, rang The Gaffers crushing message in May 2011.

On the drive home I pulled into a Chadderton layby to call Dad. As the call connected, I turned off the wipers and watched raindrops slide slowly down the windscreen. How much of my cracking voice he made out Im not sure. But he got the message.

We knew this was a possibility, so just keep your head up, mate, he reassured me. Were going to find you a club. This is not the end. Another, maybe even a better, opportunity is going to come along for you.

It would do, not that I could see it then. I was 18 and after a decade on the English academy track thought I was finally nearing destination professional football. As it turned out, I was just setting sail on the scenic way around.

Team-mates found non-league teams and workaday employment. School friends packed for universities. My academics, which I had managed to successfully attain alongside football, earned offers from a number of prestigious British schools. But none interested me. I needed football. If not, adventure.

When the tears dried, I impressed at a showcase match in front of scouts from across the globe and was presented with an opportunity that ticked both boxes: Soccer! In America!

I agreed to play on a four-year football scholarship at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that would cover tuition fees and provide help towards rent and textbooks.

My flight to Americas Midwest region connected at JFK. On approach to landing I looked down: baseball fields everywhere. I sneered, silently judging a sport I didnt understand, never imagining a few years later I would be playing on top of a matching red clay diamond.

By late 2014, Tulsas new club had fans, a crest and a name. A competition carried in Tulsa World, the local newspaper, allowed readers to decide what the franchise would be called. Future fans voted for a Roughnecks resurrection. The club assembled a supporters group The Roustabouts from the most enthusiastic responders to the newspaper poll and drew up diagrams of how to squeeze a football pitch on to a baseball field.

Mike Melegas vision was taking shape. The Drillers had erected a soccer club from nothing. All that remained missing was an entire squad of players and a head coach to scout then train them. But as the baseball staff believed: if you build it, they will come.

The Roustabouts show their support. Photograph: Lori Scholl

David Irving already knew Tulsa well when Melega first made contact. The 63-year-old Englishman had played for the NASL incarnation of the Roughnecks for a season in 1980, following a career scoring goals in the UK for Workington, Oldham Athletic and Everton. He also knew the USL, having coached in the league for 16 years. He led Wilmington Hammerheads to a title in 2003 and set Glenn Murray on a course to the Premier League in the process.

Irving was appointed in November 2014 and handed keys to a renovated locker room full of empty seats. The search for a squad took him and Tom Taylor, his assistant coach, across half the northern hemisphere.

For the first two months I was just travelling, trying to recruit players and set up combines and look for players, said Irving, Cumbrian tones still heavy despite a quarter-century living in America. That was my priority and everything else would just kind of fall into place. I started during Thanksgiving. I went to combines in Chicago, to Fort Lauderdale, San Diego, LA, Vegas, Orlando, all over. Tom was in Ireland, I couldnt make that one. So we went all over. Its a process, and it was challenging putting a team together for February of 2015 when we started pre-season.

On their travels, the pair realised they were recruiting for a much different USL than the league they had worked in before.

In 2015, 13 newly founded expansion teams competed in the USL. The inflated league rebranded and restructured into two conferences an east and a west instead of one. Another five clubs began USL play in 2016, making the new-look league 29 teams strong, with yet more committed to join in 2017.

The influx is a product of two factors: the demand for professional soccer in more cities across America and the leagues alliance with Major League Soccer in 2014. Twenty-one of the current 29 USL teams have MLS affiliations. The relationship allows players to be loaned between teams, imitating the Spanish model, in which La Liga clubs field second rosters in divisions below.

At its core then, this evolving league is a developmental one. Evidence is in the young squads the average age of the Roughnecks 2015 team was 23 and the five substitutes a coach can field per match. Players generally sign modest contracts (with housing usually included) lasting the duration of the seven-month season, after which theyre on their own financially. According to Irving, change is good for US soccer.

Obviously its great to have the MLS teams entering the league, he said. It brings the whole thing up to a new level. I think every team has a different philosophy, whether theyre going to use the USL for development or for senior players to get time, or a combination of both or for academy players. Whichever, the league is getting better.

Laurie Bell playing for the Tulsa Roughnecks. Photograph: Lori Scholl

Bigger and better: the USL is growing in a very American way. And with professional soccer proliferating across the nation, more opportunities are opening up for players. However, spots for non-US citizens remain limited to seven per team, driving competition high between foreigners chasing their American dreams. Last year, I realised mine in Oklahoma.

The week before Irvings official appointment, my college soccer career ended in a 1-0 loss on a bitter winter night at Cleveland State University. Rooted inside the frosty centre-circle, I looked out into the Ohio abyss and wondered where football might take me next.

My sights were set on Major League Soccer and weeks later I was invited to the MLS combine, an annual three-day showcase attended by head coaches from each team in the top US league. I spent the winter preparing: first, alone on frozen Wisconsin astroturf pitches as I finished my university semester, then in England with Blackburn Rovers first team. But while with Blackburn, I suffered a cruel recurrence of the patella tendonitis that had haunted me as a teenager. In January 2015, I arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with a suitcase full of painkillers and doomed hopes for a miraculous recovery.

As a foreigner, I was already vying for one of a limited number of international MLS spots. That season, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, David Villa and Andrea Pirlo would claim four of them. To land a contract, I needed to at least outshine my college-age competition. Instead, in front of American soccer royalty, I winced through three forgettable 45-minute appearances. On draft day, the MLS commissioner called 84 names. Laurie Bell wasnt one of them. Rejection stung afresh.

I returned to Milwaukee questioning. Why had no club ever taken a chance on me? Was something fundamental holding me back? How long could I continue failing at chasing a dream? And was there anywhere left to try?

Some of these USL expansion teams still need players for this season, offered my college coach Kris Kelderman. Theyre putting together whole rosters from nothing. What do you think?

Not knowing what to think, I landed in Tulsa in late February and reported for a pre-season trial. A pair of tornadoes during the week did little to reassure me I was in the right place.

If I had hesitations about the wilderness of this new USL, they evaporated upon walking into the Roughnecks upmarket ONEOK Field home. I found my name fixed to a locker in Premier League-class changing rooms, a kit printed with my chosen No4, and was given a comfortable flat to sleep in. I met a young group of players who were impatient to prove themselves and a staff that was building from the ground up. Immediately, I wanted in.

Irving was familiar with me through a recommendation from another English coach I had played under the previous summer. As long as you dont want too much fucking money, he said, half-smirking, fully serious, as I sat trembling in his underground office at the end of my trial, wed like you to join us here this season.

I squirted a response, agreeing to become the 11th signing in Tulsa Roughnecks history then floated back to my new apartment. With no Wi-Fi installed yet, I hurried a mile to the nearest Starbucks to Skype my parents. As the call boop-boop-booped into life, the clouds broke and an orange sun bounced through the windows. Two expectant faces 4,000 miles away squeezed together inside my phone screen.

They want me, I announced, as relief as much as joy plastered all our faces. Im going to be a Roughneck. In the most improbable location a baseball arena in tornado alley, USA I had finally found my first professional football home.

Upon signing for enough money to contentedly live on, but not too fucking much I became part of a unique squad. Given the clubs new status, no players had past experience in Tulsa, resulting in an utterly egalitarian dressing room. No captains, no cliques, no hierarchy. And initially, not much leadership, conversation or banter either. Far from the abusive pre-season initiation stories Id heard from English first year pros, I took a seat at my locker, one of 21 equal parts. In Tulsa, rookies might have pumped up the balls, but our own were left unharmed.

The Roustabouts. Photograph: Lori Scholl

Almost inevitably, this unfamiliarity resulted in a slow start to our season. But form steadily improved and, ultimately, playing for a brand new club proved much like playing for any other. We won as many games as we lost, the squad united through plane rides, card games and nights out on away trips to Arizona, Washington and California, and we put ourselves in contention for post-season playoff qualification. After winning our final fixture 2-0, the fate of our season hinged on Austin Aztex beating Seattle Sounders 2 our rivals for a playoff berth one week later.

When the game arrived, Melega, Irving and the rest of the organisations staff suggested we watch together. Over the course of the year, players had grown close to the creators of a club at which most of our contracts were close to complete. So, on a hot September night we gathered inside Empire Bar, where orange Roughnecks scarves entwined with more faded football memorabilia on the walls. We knew our chances of progress were slim and the whole night shimmered in end-of-term affection. One midfielder had landed after-season work at the pub and nipped behind the bar to pull me a pint. By kick-off time, a Twitter invitation lured hundreds of Roustabouts cramming through the doors.

So we watched together. The staff, who had turned a fanciful idea to fill a stadium into a real life football club. The fans: regular Tulsa townsfolk wholeheartedly embracing their new hobby. And the cluster of coaches and players parachuted into this baseball playing southern US city from all corners of the globe and tasked to get the football rolling.

We did, but there would be no fairytale finish to Tulsas first season in the USL. Seattle won 3-2 and the settled table ranked us seventh best in the Western conference. On paper then, several of the 24 North American expansion clubs were more successful than Tulsa in 2015.

But as nail-biting TV-watching evolved into a lively end of season party, there felt like plenty to celebrate for all involved in the Roughnecks organisation. League positions and trophies are important goals for a football club. But truer measures of success for a start-up sports team are surely its reception by a city and integration into local culture.

To my mind, that has been the Roughnecks chief success, one that makes the club a model for future expansion teams. Irving placed as much importance on us bonding with fans signing every autograph and sharing post-match drinks in local bars as any onfield tactics. Melegas staff appointed The Roustabouts de facto club ambassadors and organised the squads appearance at several community events.

The result was that a diverse ONEOK Field crowd produced the fifth highest average attendances in the league nationwide, a remarkable feat in the clubs first season. When jogging through downtown on cool down days, workers banged on office windows, kids hi-fived us, and pick-up truck drivers affectionately tooted horns. And one year on, now plying my trade in Sweden, I still receive regular well wishes from Tulsans via Twitter.

As the afterparty staggered to Legends the citys resiliently popular country dancing hall and players, coaches, club staff and supporters joined cowboy-booted locals on the dance floor, the assimilation felt complete. To sustain this professional soccer proliferation, each new North American club must dance to its own beat. And thats how I learned to Tulsa two-step.

This article appeared first on In Bed With Maradona Follow Laurie Bell and In Bed With Maradona on Twitter

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/from-manchester-city-to-oklahoma-how-a-rejected-footballer-kept-the-dream-alive/

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