#you would not believe how long i agonized over how to organize these posters in a way that made the Most Visually Pleasing Color Palette

[ladywaffles]

✨ 9 favorite films that i watched (for the first time) in 2023 ✨

i was tagged by @sluttyhenley! similarly to her, i also had a bit ("bit") of a tom cruise meltdown this year. yes, i've made it everyone else's problem. no, i will not be stopping <3

tagging @peanuthamper @twinkboimler @redbelles @starrybouquet @starryinspace :D

[sweetscentences]

Small Changes: Chapter 3

On AO3 here. Thanks for being patient with me formatting this for tumblr <3

The sun set, and Rosinante was getting worried. Law hadn’t come back yet. Rosinante knew that Law could handle himself, knew he told him to take as long as he needed. But an old paranoia was creeping up on Rosinante. It didn’t help that this was the longest he’d been separated from Law in over half a year. 

Garp dragged him down to the docks to watch the sunset when Rosinante’s anxiety started to grate on him. But the sun finished sinking below the horizon, and there wasn’t any sign of Law. Rosinante gnawed, absentmindedly, on one of his nails. 

Garp smacked his hand from his mouth and hauled him to his feet. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” Rosinante asked, but followed after Garp. 

“My grandsons stay with me when I visit. We’re going to go grab them.” There was an uncharacteristically soft smile on Garp’s face. “Besides, they know those woods better than anyone. Maybe they’ve seen your brat.” 

Rosinante wasn’t sure if he would describe Law as any sort of brat, let alone his. He mellowed out while they traveled together- partly because he was dying, partly because he had someone to care about. But even when he first joined the Donquixote Pirates Rosinante would have described him as a homicidal little shit before he called him a brat. 

He didn’t bother nitpicking though. Garp considered anyone younger than him a brat, and Rosinante… 

Lying was his livelihood. Sometimes, it came easier than breathing. But calling Law his son was the easiest lie he ever told.

The best lies were the ones a person desperately wanted to be true.

Garp lead them through the forest confidently, even though they quickly deviated from the path. Before too long, they arrived at the base of a massive tree. A treehouse the size of a small cottage was braced in its branches, and the sound of young voices floated down from it. 

Young voices cursing. In Northern. Garp shot Rosinante a look. 

“What are they saying?” he asked, just as Law’s voice reached them. He was slowly working through the pronunciation of a particularly graphic threat involving ice picks and vital organs. 

Rosinante heard it many times after he dragged Law away from the Donquixote Pirates. Back then, Law actually following through wasn’t out of the question.

Rosinante thought it best not to share that much. “Nothing good,” he said simply. 

Garp looked like he might press for more information, when loud laughter from above them distracted him. Garp’s soft smile turned into something sharp. 

“You brats!” he bellowed. Silence fell immediately, and three boys poked their heads out of the treehouse’s window. There was a mix of horror and excitement on their young faces. 

“Hi Gramps!” the smallest one, with a straw hat balanced on his head, called cheerfully. Rosinante had seen that hat before, on wanted posters. Which meant this must be Luffy- Garp’s grandson who had been charmed by Red-Haired Shanks.

“Hey Gramps,” the only blonde of the group said with a wave. Garp regaled Rosinante with enough stories about his boys that evening for him to know this was Sabo- a street rat from the other side of the island who often served as a ringleader in the boys’ schemes. 

Which meant the last boy, grinning sharply down at them, had to be Portgas D. Ace. Rosinante wasn’t sure how Garp handled two boys who inherited the will of D. He barely managed with one. 

Then Rosinante remembered Garp was a D. himself. No wonder he wore Sengoku out so easily.

“Hey. Gramps.” Ace’s voice was more a challenge than a greeting. “Go fuck yourself.” 

Rosinante fought the urge to choke on his own tongue. Garp’s face went red. Even if he couldn’t understand the words, Ace’s tone and smug grin were painfully clear. 

Rosinante was distracted from Garp starting a tirade by a figure making their way down the treehouse’s ladder. 

It seemed Luffy noticed the same thing. “Be careful, Torao!”

Rosinante’s hands twitched with the effort of keeping them by his sides. Law wouldn’t appreciate Rosinante stepping up to help him. Wouldn’t appreciate being coddled, even if Rosinante could see his legs shaking. But he wasn’t going to grab Law, not when he didn’t know if his touch would be welcome. 

When he didn’t know if his presence would be welcome.

A few agonizing minutes later, Law was on solid ground and staring up at Rosinante. He scratched a faded pale patch on one of his arms- the only nervous tic Rosinante ever saw from him. 

Neither of them knew what to say. 

Law settled on saying nothing at all, instead taking a deep breath and opening his arms to Rosinante. He didn’t hesitate before dropping to his knees and pulling Law into a fierce hug. Law’s arms wound around his neck, and his head tucked against the hollow of Rosinante’s throat. 

Law trembled slightly, but Rosinante didn’t acknowledge it. His hands were shaking too, after all.

There were so many ways he could have lost Law. To Doflamingo. To the Amber Lead. To the fact that he was a Marine. 

(There were so many ways he could still lose Law.)

“I knew for awhile,” Law admitted, his voice muffled by Rosinante’s shirt and the rounded shape of Northern. Garp somehow made his way into the treehouse to give them space, but Rosinante taught Law to be wary of prying ears. “I knew back on Minion. But I wanted to pretend I didn’t.” 

“I wanted to pretend too,” Rosinante said, holding Law a bit tighter. The fact that Law allowed it, that he squeezed Rosinante back, told Rosinante more than words could. 

“There are things I need to tell you,” he said. “About how I grew up. About being a Marine.” He hoped, desperately, that his birth as a noble wouldn’t be what drove Law away from him. He felt Law tense in his arms, and ran a careful hand up and down his back. 

“Nothing like that,” he promised. “Never anything like that.” 

For all that Rosinante had done for the Navy, lying and killing alike, there was never anything comparable to Flevance. He would die before aiding a genocide. Would die before killing children.

Law relaxed again with a shaky exhale. Nodded. His arms loosened a bit, and Rosinante took that as his cue to let go. Law stepped out of his arms, but didn’t go far.

“I meant to come back sooner,” he said. “I got distracted.” 

Rosinante shook his head. “I told you to take as long as you needed.” He smiled at the treehouse, where Garp was herding his grandsons down the ladder, keeping a tight grip on Luffy. “It looks like you made some friends.” 

Law shrugged and scratched his arm again. “They’re weird, but funny. Luffy ate a Devil Fruit too.” 

“Oh.” Rosinante sat back and watched Garp try to corral his other two grandsons as Luffy wrapped strangely long arms around his neck. That explained some of Garp’s worry over the boys, as well as his resentment of Shanks. A Devil Fruit wasn’t likely to end up in a village as small as Foosha without a pirate’s involvement. 

Garp successfully caught Ace and Sabo in something that looked half like a hug and half like a wrestling move. He straightened out and marched towards Rosinante as the boys resigned themselves to their fates and slouched against his chest. 

“Let’s head back into town. Something tells me the boys haven’t eaten yet.” 

Apparently food was the magic word with Garp’s grandsons, who burst into an intimidating round of cheers. Law shot Rosinante a helplessly confused look. Rosinante couldn’t help but throw his head back and laugh. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Law took hearing about Rosinante’s past better than he hoped. He half expected his childhood as a noble to be the final straw for Law. Instead, Law told him he couldn’t help where he was born, and that he didn’t act like a ‘complete bastard,’ so it didn’t matter. 

They both knew it mattered. 

Law traced the scars on Rosinante’s hands and arms with careful fingers and burning eyes. Rosinante wouldn’t be able to tell him they hadn’t hurt. Law understood the body far too well to believe that. Rosinante resolved, then, to never tell Law about his knees. Law would worry over them, over him, far too much. But there wouldn’t be anything he could do. Every doctor Sengoku took Rosinante to said the same thing: they healed wrong when he was too young, and his body developed around the mangled parts. Any surgery would be more risk than it was worth. 

It wasn’t so bad, in the temperate East Blue. They didn’t ache or lock up the way they did in the Northern cold.

After a few minutes of cataloguing the wounds on Rosinante’s arms and grinding his teeth, Law softened. 

“That language you whisper in sometimes,” he said. “What is it?”

Rosinante was surprised Law noticed. He either had incredibly sharp ears, or he wasn’t asleep half the times Rosinante thought he was. 

Sadly, Rosinante was certain it was the latter. 

“It’s the language of Marie Geoise,” Rosinante sighed. “The language of my family.” 

All his family but Senoku, that was. Sengoku and now Law. 

“Even Doflamingo?”

Rosinante tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. “Even Doffy.” 

Law stared down at his lap. His hands squeezed Rosinante’s.

“Will you teach it to me?”

Rosinante’s eyes widened. An old taboo stole the breath from his lungs. 

To the Celestial Dragons, teaching a commoner the Holy Tongue would have been the greatest sacrilege. A betrayal like no other. One so severe that even Rosinante’s parents never did it. 

But Rosinante hadn’t been a Celestial Dragon in a very long time. 

“I’d be happy to,” he breathed. 

Law released his hand, only to shuffle closer and lean against his side. He even let Rosinante wrap an arm around him.

After that, Law took the news of Sengoku’s visit significantly worse.

He shut down, briefly, his breath catching and his hands curling into fists. He didn’t look up at Rosinante when he told him he needed to leave. Told him that Luffy and his brothers invited him to go fishing, and that he would be back after sundown. 

It seemed he was trying to handle his anger, his grief, without lashing out. Rosinante wouldn’t stop him. Instead, he did his best to stay busy around Makino’s bar on the off chance that Law came back early and needed him.

It was a bit before midnight when Law returned, creeping into their room and pressing himself wordlessly against Rosinante’s side. 

For awhile, the only sounds were the rumbling chatter of the bar below and the cricket song from outside.

After a few minutes, Law spoke. “He’s the Fleet Admiral.”

“He didn’t know.” 

“How?” Law snarled, an old, familiar anger sharpening his voice. “How could the Fleet Admiral not know?” 

“Because the government is corrupt and cruel,” Rosinante said. It wouldn’t be good to lie to Law here. Not again. Not about this. “There are people in power who know what Sengoku would never approve of, so they do it behind his back. They do it, and they burn records, and send bribes so he doesn’t find out.” 

Few people knew how little Sengoku actually controlled. So much of what he did was standing as a figure-head. 

Law made a pained sound. Covered his face with his hands and ducked his head to his chest. Rosinante pressed on anyway.

“I spoke to Garp about it. Sengoku tried to run an internal investigation, but with the ruling family dead there was no one to fund it. Not that they ever would have.”

He took a shaking breath. Reminded himself that not knowing would only hurt Law more.

“There were only a few, vague records left. As far as Sengoku could tell, all the others were burned.” 

That, it seemed, was too much for Law. He started sobbing, curling in on himself and Rosinante’s side as Rosinante dragged him into his lap and against his chest. 

“So that’s all it took?” Law hiccuped, one of his hands twisting to grab Rosinante’s shirt. Anchoring himself against Rosinante. “A few burnt papers and it- it never happened?! We never happened?!” 

He made a sound like a dying animal, pressing his face against Rosinante’s chest and quickly soaking his shirt with tears.

Rosinante didn’t try to hush him, didn’t offer any meaningless platitudes. Law would never accept them, in the same way he would never accept pity. 

“It happened. Nothing can change that,” Rosinante growled, fighting to keep his voice steady. He was angry, so soul-burningly angry about what Law was forced to endure.

It was the same anger he wielded as a weapon, when he wasn’t much older than Law. The same anger that drove him to burn the hospitals that turned Law away, that made Law cry. 

The anger he wished he didn’t have. The anger he shared with Doflamingo. 

“The people who did it will be punished. In this life or the next.” 

Rosinante didn’t believe in fate as an unknowable, intangible force. He believed in fate as something that was made, something resting in a person’s hands. Something that depended on the strength of a person’s will. 

Law was the most strong-willed person he’d ever met. 

“What if I don’t believe in another life?” Law asked, breathless and horrible.

This was dangerous territory, Rosinante knew. But he promised himself he wouldn’t lie to Law again. 

“Then we work to see them punished in this one.” 

Law stilled for a moment. Took a deep, shuddering breath.

“I won’t ever be a Marine,” he said. 

Rosinante ran a hand through Law’s wild hair. He didn’t take his hat when he left that morning. 

“I wouldn’t ever ask you to be one,” Rosinante told him. He meant it too. 

He knew Sengoku would want Law to join the Marines. Rosinante would make sure he never brought it up in front of Law. 

Sengoku wouldn’t like it. He would think Rosinante was encouraging Law to be a pirate through inaction. But Rosinante didn’t think he was being that passive. Law would be whatever he wanted to be. Rosinante would watch over him as long as he wanted it. 

Sengoku would just have to make peace with his grandson being a pirate. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rosinante sent Law off to Ace, Sabo, and Luffy’s treehouse the moment he spotted Sengoku’s ship on the horizon. (Apparently Law had been sparring with the boys. They showed their bruises off to Rosinante and Garp proudly. Law was a far gentler teacher than his were.) Law didn’t hesitate or complain, he only grabbed his hat, gave Rosinante a quick hug, and waved to Makino as he swept out of the bar. He wasn’t comfortable being around Navy ships. Wasn’t even comfortable seeing them. 

Rosinante watched the ship approach from his window over Makino’s bar. When it docked in the harbor, he slipped out of the bar’s back door and into the woods, silencing himself as he went. 

He trusted Sengoku, and he trusted Garp, but he didn’t trust the men Sengoku would be bringing. Not implicitly. 

Not again. 

He settled himself down on a fallen log and braced his head in his hands. His Observation Haki was good enough to cover the village and the nearby coast. He could recognize Law, a bright spot a few miles away, moving with Garp’s boys. Sengoku and Garp were forceful presences, making their way through the town to the woods. Closer and closer to Rosinante. 

It was only a few minutes before Rosinante heard their voices. 

“If this were anyone but you, I would be suspicious, Garp,” Sengoku said, his voice tense. The sound of it made a pit grow in Rosinante’s stomach. 

“Is that a compliment or an insult?” Garp laughed. 

“It’s simply a fact. You don’t have a scheming bone in your body,” Sengoku told him. “It’s a wonder where your son came from.” 

With that they walked into a clearing, and Rosinante’s line of sight. 

Sengoku looked tired. He had clearly lost weight, and there were bruise-dark shadows under his steely eyes. Rosinante never thought of him as an aging man. He held himself too proudly for that. But now his features were haggard and worn- grief etched into every line of his face Rosinante never noticed before. Garp held up a hand to stop him, and he nearly stumbled. 

Rosinante ignored the way his hands shook. Ignored the way his stomach rolled. Ignored the horrible, choking lump in his throat. He let his bubble of silence grow to cover the clearing. 

“Garp, what are you-“ 

Sengoku’s eyes landed on Rosinante. 

His mouth dropped open. 

Rosinante was up and crossing the clearing before either of them could blink, dragging Sengoku into a smothering hug. 

“I’m sorry,” Rosinante said, and Sengoku’s arms snapped around him like a vice.

Sengoku held him bruisingly tight. It sent twinges of pain through Rosinante’s still healing wounds, made his ribs ache. He didn’t care. Sengoku had thought he was dead, and now he was crying against Rosinante’s shoulder. 

Rosinante had never seen him cry before. 

“How?” Sengoku asked, his voice shaking as much as his body. 

“I don’t know,” Rosinante told him, just shy of hysterical. “I thought- I knew I was…” he took a deep, heaving breath. Pushed the thought of dying out of his mind. “Law saved me. I don’t know how.”

He knew, generally, that Law saved his life using his Devil Fruit, but he still refused to share any details. Just like he refused to tell Rosinante how he healed himself. 

Law told him about Flevance. He wouldn’t say anything about this. 

Rosinante wasn’t sure he wanted to know. If it was bad enough for Law to keep it from him, he didn’t know if he could stomach it.

“Doffy has spies in the Marines,” Rosinante said, before Sengoku could press about Law. There would be time for that later. He pulled back just enough to look Sengoku in the eye, but didn’t let go of him. “I don’t know how many, but at least one is a Lieutenant called Vergo.”

Sengoku’s teary eyes hardened. “Vergo? You’re certain?”

Rosinante wasn’t going to tell Sengoku any details. Wasn’t going to tell him how he was beaten. How many times he was shot. Wasn’t going to tell him how certain he was of his own death. 

Instead he said, “he’s Doffy’s man through and through.” 

“He’s been following me around lately, insisting on ‘supporting me through my grief’,” Sengoku snarled. Rosinante’s blood ran cold. 

Sengoku saw the fear in his eyes and softened. One of his hands came up to cradle the back of Rosinante’s neck- a familiar gesture from a time that Sengoku’s hands dwarfed his. 

 “I haven’t let him anywhere near me,” Sengoku promised, and Rosinante could breathe again. 

“He’s probably waiting to see if I’ll get in contact with you,” he said. “...Which means Doffy isn’t sure I’m dead.”

That was a terrifying thought. 

Rosinante knew it would happen sooner or later. Knew that Doflamingo wouldn’t be able to write off his disappearing corpse as the work of wild animals for long. He was too paranoid for that. 

But still, imagining Doflamingo tearing through North Blue looking for him, looking for Law, leaving his dog to follow at Sengoku’s heels… 

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Rosinante said.

Sengoku laughed- a sharp, waterlogged sound. He cradled Rosinante’s face in his shaking, calloused hands. “You? I’m the one whose son has come back from the dead.” 

Rosinante made a noise embarrassingly close to a sob. “I never meant for you to think I was dead,” he promised. “But it wasn’t safe to contact you. I needed-“

“You were looking out for more than just yourself,” Sengoku cut him off, idly brushing a tear from Rosinante’s cheek. “You were looking out for that boy. The one with the Amber Lead.” 

“He doesn’t have it anymore,” Rosinante said, finally stepping out of Sengoku’s hold. 

“The Devil Fruit?” Sengoku asked, his expression serious. 

Rosinante nodded, trying not to tense too much. This would be the moment that decided if he would go back to the Marines, or be forced to run from two powers. 

He didn’t want to lose a father again. But he would do it, he would walk away, if it meant saving Law’s life.

Sengoku sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He ground his teeth. Rosinante held his breath. 

“We could spin it in Rosinante’s favor.”

Garp’s voice was an unexpected shock. Rosinante had half-forgotten he was there. Sengoku had too, if his widening eyes were any indication. 

“What do you mean?” Sengoku asked, unexpectedly eager. The fact that he was entertaining the idea at all...

“The Donquixote Pirates stole the Devil Fruit,” Garp said, spreading his hands. “How could we know which member did it? Commander Rosinante had reason to believe he was compromised, so he escaped and took the kid and the Devil Fruit with him.” 

None of it was even really a lie- Garp simply moved some things out of order. It could work, Rosinante realized, if people didn’t dig too deeply. There was only one problem.

“How do we explain the boy eating the Devil Fruit?” Sengoku asked, frowning the way he always did when he was deep in thought. 

Garp grinned. “An accident!” he laughed. “The brat was too sick to realize what he was eating.” 

Rosinante’s eye twitched. 

Sengoku glowered at Garp. “Who would believe someone ate a Devil Fruit by accident?” 

“My grandson did it,” Garp said with a shrug. 

“Is your grandson an idiot?” Sengoku snapped. Rosinante burst out laughing as Garp’s face reddened. 

“It could work,” he said, before Garp could start a fight. He didn’t think Foosha Village could survive one of Sengoku and Garp’s brawls. “Late stage Amber Lead poisoning can cause hallucinations. Who could know that it didn’t for Law?”

It was hard to mention that fact so casually. There was more than one time Law tugged at Rosinante, asking him to describe the world around them so he could be sure the poisoning hadn’t reached his brain. His mind was all he had, towards the end. He was so afraid of losing it. 

Garp grinned, triumphantly spreading his hands. “There we go! An easy solution.” 

Sengoku closed his eyes in a lightly pained expression. Rosinante chewed on his lower lip. 

“I wonder if we even need to say that much,” he said. 

“What do you mean?” Sengoku asked, his voice stern. 

He was speaking as the Fleet Admiral, then. Not as Rosinante’s father. 

Rosinante straightened up. “I took a sick child and a Devil Fruit away from the Donquixote Pirates. I was caught, and in that confrontation the Devil Fruit was lost. What more do I need to say?” 

He didn’t want the Navy focused on Law. He didn’t want anyone in power focused on Law. It wouldn’t lead to anything good.  

If it came out that Law was a survivor of Flevance… 

(A memory came to Rosinante’s mind of the Ohara incident. Of a little girl’s face on wanted posters.)

“Does anyone but you know that Law had Amber Lead specifically?” he asked Sengoku. 

Sengoku’s shoulders slouched. “I doubt it,” he said, dropping the authority in his voice. “Piecing together the boy’s origin was… difficult, to say the least. It’s unlikely anyone will investigate him to the degree I did.” 

“Why?”

“Because I thought he might be the answer to what happened to you.” 

Rosinante’s mouth went dry. His heart stuttered. 

Sengoku smiled thinly. “If nothing else, it seems I was right about that,” he said. “I never recorded anything I found about the boy. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Sengoku closed his eyes and took a deep breath, grounding himself the way he taught Rosinante to. 

“Could he keep up a lie you told him under scrutiny?” Sengoku asked. 

Rosinante’s mind came to a screeching halt. He could barely believe Sengoku was considering this. That he was planning for it. Rosinante did his best to gather himself, and focus on the matter at hand.

“Easily,” he told Sengoku.

He decided to leave out the fact that Law would take any opportunity he could to spit in the government’s face. Lying would be nothing for him. 

“What’s the plan, then?” Garp asked, a rarely heard seriousness in his voice. 

“We’ll deal with Vergo first,” Sengoku said with a nod. “We’ll try to bring any other spies down with him. We can spin Rosinante not checking in as intentional rather than him going AWOL. The boy…” he trailed off with a sigh. “We’ll work the boy into it.” 

“Law won’t go into Marine custody.” Rosinante decided now was as good a time as ever to bring that up. 

“Why not?” Sengoku asked, his voice sharp. That commanding bark never intimidated Rosinante as much as it did Sengoku’s troops. 

(Maybe it was because none of them ever found Sengoku sprawled out on their living room floor, singing nonsense songs to his pet goat as he fed her treats. That kind of thing softened one’s image of a man.)

“Flevance,” Rosinante said simply. “It’s a minor miracle that Law forgave me for telling him I wasn’t a Marine. Another miracle that he agreed to be civil with you.” 

“Civil?” Sengoku asked. 

Garp cut in. “Means the kid won’t pull a knife on you.” 

Sengoku stared Garp down. “Did he pull one on you?”

“Nah,” Garp said. “Only ‘cause he didn’t have a knife to pull. But your kid gave him one the other day.” 

Sengoku shot Rosinante a look. He raised his hands in defense. “I’m not leaving him unarmed when Doffy’s after him.” 

“How many years has Doflamingo spent grooming him?” Sengoku asked, and Rosinante grit his teeth. “How sure are you that he won’t go back to him?” 

“I’m very sure,” Rosinante hissed, his voice hard as he rolled his shoulders back and straightened up. 

(Like a cobra rising to strike, Doflamingo laughed, once.) 

He might not have been certain a few months ago, but any good will, any tolerance Law had for Doflamingo died when he shot Rosinante. He was probably higher than the average Marine on Law’s shit list, at this point. 

Sengoku had never quite figured out how to deal with Rosinante when he was angry.

“I didn’t mean to… doubt either of you,” he said. The lie was so bad he flinched as he said it. 

But Rosinante recognized the intention, and forced himself to let it go. “Just… just don’t say anything like that around Law.” 

“I won’t.” 

Garp grinned. “This is going to be a disaster, isn’t it?”

Rosinante sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t want to admit out loud that Garp was certainly right. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Garp was mostly right. 

Predictably, Sengoku had no idea how to act around Law. 

Even more predictably, Law hated Sengoku on principle. 

Rosinante was sure the only reason he didn’t bolt or try to attack Sengoku was because he attached himself to Rosinante’s side. He was intent on keeping his promise to be civil. Rosinante wouldn’t admit it out loud, Law would smack him if he did, but it was painfully endearing.

To Rosinante, at least. Sengoku looked just as ready to run as Law did. 

The meeting was agonizingly awkward and stilted. Thankfully, Garp brought Luffy to ease some of the tension. He was currently chatting Sengoku’s ear off in barely passable Grand, telling him a story about almost being eaten by crocodiles. 

Rosinante hoped it was just a story, but considering the alarmingly proud look on Garp’s face, it wasn’t. 

Luffy was simultaneously providing a distraction for Law, having offered Law his hand when everyone settled in Makino’s closed bar. Law was carefully experimenting with seeing how far he could stretch Luffy’s fingers, and trying to feel the rubbery bones beneath the skin. He was clearly having a wonderful time with it, if the grin crawling across his face was any indication.

The light in his eyes visibly unsettled Garp and Sengoku. Rosinante knew Law noticed this, and was fairly sure he was playing it up. 

“Luffy-ya, do you bleed?” he asked. Sengoku looked at him sharply. Luffy barely paused in his storytelling. 

“Just if I get cut!” he chirped, before launching into another story of almost getting eaten- this time by a large wildcat. 

Law only hummed, stretching Luffy’s skin and holding it up to the light to see the veins running below the surface.

Rosinante leaned down and whispered to Law in Flevean, “don’t be creepy on purpose.” 

“It’s not on purpose. I’m just curious,” Law said, which was a weak defense, seeing as he stared Sengoku down every time he asked Luffy a strange question. 

Rosinante raised an eyebrow at him. Law caved, and heaved the most put-upon sigh Rosinante ever heard. 

“Hey, old man,” he called to Sengoku, which was hardly polite but definitely better than however Law was thinking of him. Sengoku’s eye twitched a bit at the disrespect, but thankfully he didn’t say anything about it. 

“You raised Cora, right?” Law asked.

If Sengoku was confused by the name, he didn’t show it. Instead, he nodded. “I took him in when he was young.” 

Law stared at him for an uncomfortably long minute. Even Luffy fell silent to watch. 

“Then thanks,” Law said. 

Rosinante wouldn’t have been able to stop his smile if he tried. 

“I should thank you as well,” Sengoku told him, his lips twitching. “It’s my understanding that you saved his life.” 

Law nodded, shifting in a way that made it clear he was uncomfortable. Not with the praise, Rosinante knew, but with the reminder. 

“I’m a doctor,” he said, simply, and went back to playing with Luffy’s hand. 

Rosinante shot Sengoku an approving look, both to thank him and to keep from pushing his luck. Luffy helped that as well, poking at Sengoku and asking him if he’d ever seen a Sea King. Garp took over answering that, tugging Luffy out of Sengoku’s personal space before he could start climbing on him. 

“Are you doing alright?” Rosinante asked Law. 

Law shrugged. “I don't like this. Or him. But I get to kill two birds with one stone.” 

Rosinante did not get a chance to ask what, exactly, Law meant by that.

“Luffy-ya,” he called, waiting till he had the other boy, and everyone else’s, attention. “Does this hurt?”

He brutally bent one of Luffy’s fingers until it touched the back of his hand. 

“No,” Luffy said, oblivious to the horrified adults around him. “Should it?”

“Yes.” Law smiled, all bared teeth. “Do your bones break?” 

“I don’t think so,” Luffy shrugged. Law lit up. 

Before anyone could stop him, Law braced Luffy’s arm and twisted his hand completely around. It was a clear, practiced movement that would break any other person’s wrist. Luffy laughed. 

“Can you move your fingers?” Law asked, briefly meeting Sengoku’s horrified stare. 

“Yup!” Luffy chirping, obligingly wiggling each one. 

“That’s fascinating,” Law muttered. Luffy grinned at him, as if he understood the compliment. It absolutely was a compliment, coming from Law. 

Law pinned Luffy’s wrist down and continued twisting it, like he was turning a corkscrew. Luffy went back to his conversation with Garp.

Rosinante looked at Sengoku. He was staring at Law, one eye twitching, with a concentration similar to when he was putting together a puzzle. 

A slightly disturbing puzzle, in this case. 

“Cora, do you have a notebook?” Law asked, finally letting Luffy go and watching his wrist spin back into place with an almost manic fascination. His fingers twitched lightly. 

Rosinante knew all about Law’s hobby of small animal dissection. If it were anyone else Rosinante would find it unpleasant, but Law got so excited when he talked about veins, and nerves, and the way tendons strung a body together. It was a good thing Law had enough manners not to ask if he could cut Luffy open. Rosinante wasn’t sure Luffy was sensible enough to refuse. 

There was a small notebook and a pen in Rosinante’s pocket. He pulled them out and handed them to Law, who started writing frantic notes. 

“Is this… normal? For him?” Sengoku asked, watching Law write. 

Rosinante wished he could tell him it wasn’t. 

“Pretty much.”

It was better not to tell Sengoku this display was tame by Law’s standards.

But Law’s curiosity was satisfied. Sengoku was deeply unnerved. Two birds with one stone indeed. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The boy is certainly… unsettling,” Sengoku said, staring up at the windows over Makino’s bar. Law went to bed hours ago, and Garp left with Luffy not long after. After that, Rosinante and Sengoku settled behind the bar, passing a flask of rum back and forth. 

Rosinante looked at Sengoku, accepting the flask when he was offered it. He would wait to be offended. Sengoku might have a point beyond insulting Law. 

He could almost see why some people thought Law was unsettling, but he didn’t agree. Law was too easily flustered, too easily riled. Too fascinated by the most surprising things. Too genuine in his rage and his joy. Too small. Rosinante struggled to see him as anything other than endearing. 

“But he’s your son.”

Rosinante struggled to swallow the lump in his throat. “I don’t think he sees me as a father. I don’t think he could.” 

From what he told Rosinante, Law’s father was an incredible man. A man that Law loved and admired. A man he had, at one point, wanted to be like. It wasn’t Rosinante’s place to compare himself to him. 

“It’s obvious that he loves you,” Sengoku said. He snatched the flask from Rosinante before he could knock the rest of the rum back in an impressive display of self-pity. 

(He knew Rosinante’s habits well. Half the reason they ever drank together was so Sengoku could be sure he didn’t drink too much.)

“He does.” Rosinante meant to agree, but the fear crawling up his throat turned the words into a question.

Sengoku knew Rosinante well enough not to call it out. Instead he stood and grabbed Rosinante’s arms to haul him to his feet, and into a hug. Rosinante melted into the embrace. He clung to Sengoku like he did as a child. It was difficult, now that he was taller than Sengoku, but they managed.

“I have a week in Foosha,” Sengoku said, his voice rough and unsteady. 

Rosinante swallowed a sob. Nodded against Sengoku’s shoulder. 

“We can make a plan in that time.” Sengoku squeezed Rosinante sharply, then pulled back just enough to cup Rosinante’s face in his calloused hands. Tears ran tracks down his face, even as his lips curved up.

“You’re alive.” 

Rosinante hiccupped. He tried to bite down the feeling rushing up his throat before he remembered this was Sengoku. This was his father. Rosinante sobbed. He clung to Sengoku and wailed, breaking down in a way he hadn’t since he was a child. Since the first time Sengoku made him feel safe. 

It had been too much. 

Everything with Doflamingo. Living when he should have died. Law drifting every day between death and life. It was too much. 

It was all too much.

Sengoku was steady as ever, holding Rosinante upright. Running a hand over Rosinante’s back, a hand through his hair. Taking clear, long breaths that were easy to match. Easy to fall into rhythm with, even if Rosinante’s chest rattled as he did. 

Sengoku didn’t try to soothe him. To hush him, or promise everything would be well. It would only set Rosinante off again if he tried. Instead, he held Rosinante close for as long as it took his grief to run dry. For as long as it took him to gather the pieces of himself together. 

When he straightened up, his hands stayed- balled tightly in the fabric of Sengoku’s coat.

Sengoku was wearing a smile Rosinante had never seen- the smallest tilt to his lips, his eyes pained and warm all at once. Rosinante untangled his hands from Sengoku’s coat, squeezing his shoulders before letting his arms fall to his sides.

Sengoku reached up to wipe the last tears from Rosinante’s face.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he promised. Rosinante could only nod and watch him leave, too choked up to speak. 

Rosinante stood alone in the dark for a long time, breathing deeply and grounding himself as best as he could.

Once he felt he wasn’t about to start crying again, he slipped back inside. He made a bubble of silence around himself as he snuck into his and Law’s room. There was barely enough moonlight spilling in from the window for Rosinante to see where he was going. He used the small washbasin by his bedside to clean the makeup from his face.

He knew he should regret the tattoos. But instead he found, time and time again, that he didn’t. They were a reminder of something wonderful just as much as they were a reminder of something awful.

There was a rustling sound behind Rosinante. He turned to find Law sitting up in his bed. 

“Cora?” he asked, his voice thick with exhaustion. 

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Rosinante said, stepping forward to ruffle Law’s hair. 

He lazily slapped Rosinante’s hand away. “I was already awake. Mostly.” 

Rosinante hoped Law would sleep better once he was cured, but he didn’t really expect it. Amber Lead was far from the only thing that plagued him.

“Insomnia again?” 

Law didn’t answer. Instead he ducked his head, his clenched fists twisting the bedsheets. 

“Law?” Rosinante prodded, kneeling by his bedside. 

“You’re a fucking idiot, Cora,” Law snapped, so sharp that Rosinante flinched back. 

“Wh-”

“You’re an idiot.” His voice was a hiss- sharp and cold. “You’re an idiot who’s so used to his Devil Fruit he can’t tell how damn loud his voice is.”

Rosinante’s mouth went dry. He took a shuddering breath.

He almost didn’t notice Law start to cry; his shoulders shaking, his small chest heaving.

“I already said we’re family, didn’t I?” 

Rosinante’s body moved before his mind could catch up, opening his arms for Law to fall into. 

“I’m sorry,” Rosinante breathed, as Law’s arms wound around his neck. “I’m sorry for not listening.” 

“Just don’t do it again,” Law snarled, but the sound was softened by the way he clung to Rosinante. 

He let himself relax into the hug. Let himself trust that Law wasn’t going anywhere. Wouldn’t be lost to him in the night- to sickness or to Doflamingo. 

“I love you, Law.” 

Law’s hold tightened. 

Rosinante had a son.

[awkward-lesbian-writer]

Sarah Lyons x Female Lone Wanderer Christmas Fanfic

(This is probably not as good I as I hope but I started this at 3:30am and I’m tired lol, I am currently writing this part at 4:45am but anyways...on to the fanfic!)

It was December 25th 2277 and it was Lissandra's first Christmas outside of Vault 101. She wasn't sure if she should be glad she managed to live this long or sad. She had lost her father over the course of months but managed to find Madison Li, the woman her mother wanted to be her Godmother. She defeated the Enclave and with the Lyon's Pride Brotherhood of Steel and currently resided at The Citadel. The Citadel, regardless of the fact that everyone was soldiers, was actually a lot more lively than the Vault.

Sure the Overseer would organize a Vault wide party in their atrium but here, everyone was laughing and even drinking some pretty rancid stuff regardless if it was a holiday or not. Apparently one of the Scribes had made moonshine, she only knew of moonshine from the pre-war history books that had been in the Vault. A week prior they had each been given a name, they had to find a present for that person as some sort of game. She was pretty sure it was called Secret Santa, the adults played it in the Vault. She had drawn Sarah Lyons...okay that was a bit hard. If she had to described in four words, Lissandra would say: Woman shaped battering ram. The Power Armor the woman wore made her look smaller than she actually was.

It wasn't until the day after Fawkes, her rather intelligent Super Mutant friend/companion, turned on the purifier instead of Lissandra or Sarah sacrificing themselves, that she saw Sarah out of her armor. The Citadel had showers for women and men, in separate rooms of course, and Lissandra had gone there shortly after arriving and saw the older woman in nothing but a tank top and her Brotherhood issued pants. She wasn't even sure if woman shaped battering ram was fitting for her, she would love to see her try and arm wrestle Fawkes.

She managed to find to put together a pretty powerful laser rifle as an actual clean look canvas with intact and still slightly liquid paint, nothing a bit of water wouldn't fix. She first sketched out the Lyon's Pride symbol before painting it with Sarah's face on one side and her father's on the other side. She knew how important they were to one another, maybe not as close as Lissandra had been to James but they loved one another.

The 19 year old tipped the fine tipped brush into white paint before signing on the black background 'Lissandra' in the bottom right corner. Granted, they were suppose to do one present but it was after all her first Christmas outside the vault. She missed her friends, she missed Amata, she missed the safety of the Vault but at the same time didn't. She reached over and plucked a Fancy Lad Snake Cake from it's box and pealed the wrapping off it before popping the small cake into her mouth.

There was a knock on the door and before she could say anything, the door opened and she instantly turned the easel, she had also found with the canvas, around so it's back faced Owyn Lyons, Sarah's father. He chuckled and rubbed at his beard. "You get me?" She shook her head. "Sarah?" She remained quiet. "I won't tell her kid."

Lissandra swallowed the cake and nodded before turning it for him to see. "I already made her a new rifle but...I wanted to do more."

He looked impressed, speechless even. The girl mainly kept to herself, except for asking for a few missions here and there to earn some caps, they knew nothing other than she came from Vault 101, was James' daughter and was Madison's Goddaughter...not that Madison seemed to pay much attention to her. She took the silence to grab another snack cake, this time biting it in half. "You paint?"

"I did my fair share in the vault." Lissandra answered truthfully. "It's been maybe two years since I last picked up a paint brush." Speaking of which, she picked up the fine tipped brush and put it into the cup of water, swirling it around to clean the brush of the paint.

"Well I think she'll love it."

"I hope so." she laughed making him smile. "What can I do for you Elder?"

He looked confused before realizing he came here for a reason. "Oh." He looked at the pocket watch he carried. "It's seven forty-five. The party starts in fifteen. Trying to give everyone a heads up. Be in the common room at eight." She nodded and he left her room.

"Right." was all she could say as she looked at the painting.

Pulling her Vault suit up from where it hung at her waist and slid her arms in, pulling the zipper up to the middle of her chest and grabbed the wrapped rifle, it was in a box...there was no way in held she'd try to wrap it with out a box. Her father taught her to always find a box big enough if she believed she couldn't wrap the actual present. Looking at the canvas, she debated whether or not to quickly go find something to put it in but shook her head. No time. She tested several spots with her fingers to make sure it was dry and it was, her name drying quickly too.

The common room was about three minutes from her room, it got so loud in there sometimes that it used to keep her up but she was used to it now. She walked in and saw several BoS Soldiers sitting around, enjoying that fucking moonshine. She threw up the first time she drank it and had never heard Sarah laugh so hard before while trying to comfort the puking teen. She instantly went to her normal corner and sat down on a couch when Sarah walked in in nothing but a tank top and her standard issue BoS pants, she'd suggest it was a cold but the Capital Wasteland rarely got cold anymore since the Great War.

She was carrying a box and was laughing when one of the soldiers attempted to pass her a beer bottle re-purposed as a moonshine bottle. She waved her hand and said something along the lines of later. She looked at Lissandra and that smile turned bigger. She moved through the growing crowd of soldiers and stood on the other side of the table that Lissandra sat in front of. "You look pretty." she stated making the 19 year old knit her brows together. She looked pretty? She looked like she did every day just minus the smell of the wasteland.

"...uh...thanks?" she asked.

The Sentinel looked around and noticed people were already giving their presents. "Here." she put the box on the table making Lissandra realize they had gotten each other.

The young woman blinked several times before snapping out of whatever stupor she was in and put her box on the table before pushing it to Sarah. "I got you." she stated making the blonde snort with laughter. "Do you want that first or..." she raised the canvas up a bit that was backwards so Sarah couldn't see it yet.

"Oh!" she reached out for it making Lissandra hesitantly pass it to the older woman.

Once it was in the Sentinel's hands there was no going back. It was turned over and she saw those blue eyes taking in every inch of it. Her own hazel eyes looking nervous as she tried to figure out what expression she was reading. "Sentinel?"

Sarah opened her mouth but automatically shut it. It was a good solid and agonizing three minutes before those blue eyes looked up and locked with Lissandra's hazel eyes. "This is beautiful." she spoke making the Lone Wanderer's heart almost leap out her chest. "You did this?" The young woman nodded. She moved around the table and actually hugged the woman making her tense up and squeak as she felt those powerful arms wrap around her.

"Might wanna open your other gift before you put me in this bear hug." she managed.

"Alright but after, you're opening yours."

"Yes ma'am." chuckled the teen.

The wrapping paper wasn't proper wrapping paper. She took pages from old and destroyed books, she actually liked how it turned out.  She watched as Sarah seemed to carefully take the wrapping off, maybe she wanted to read the pages? The top of the box was lifted off and inside was the laser rifle that took Lissandra two sleepless nights to get working. On both sides was the Lyon's Pride symbol painted on it. She picked it up and took some of the energy cells she put in the box into the gun before watching it light up as it activated.

She aimed and fired, the laser cutting a moonshine bottle directly in half and striking the wall, leaving a scorch mark in it's wake. Everyone jumped at the sound of the bottle breaking, mainly from the top of the bottle hitting the ground and shattering rather than the laser cutting it in half. "I tested it on super mutants, it's very efficient." she stated as Sarah ejected the energy cell.

"You're amazing, you know that." she spoke tilting her head to the side making a blush appear on the young woman's cheeks. "You found this?"

"M-Made it. I made it."

"Alright, amazing is an understatement." she sat her gun down gently and smacked the younger of the two hard on the back. "Your turn."

Right, it was wasn't it? She noticed the wrapping on her present was posters, possibly pre-war posters at that. She undid them gently and lifted the top off to see a leather jacket that made her think of Tunnel Snakes, fucking Tunnel Snakes, but her eyes locked on the yellow 101 stitched into the back making her pull it out and smile. The jacket Butch gave her when she left had been warm and this felt about the right weight. She shifted and slid it on before smiling as she tugged the sleeves up a bit to her elbows, the sleeves of her Vault suit sticking out.

The blonde tugged on it a bit before smiling. "Guess that kid at Rivet City was right about your size."

Wait what? "Kid? What kid?"

"Butch I think. He said he knew you when he heard me mention your name. Admitted to bullying you when you were younger, almost broke his nose but he managed to say you two were friends now."

Where they friends now? She'd have to go to Rivet City and see what he was doing there? Sure she sided with Amata to keep Vault 101 open but she didn't expect anyone to leave or at least leave and go that far. Rivet City took Lissandra about a fully day to reach due to all the Super Mutants, Raiders, and creatures that wanted to kill her. She looked back in the box and saw a framed photos that made her heart nearly stop. One was of herself with her father, having been taken by Jones a few months before James left the Vault, the second was a photo of her father with her mother, and the third was her mother's favorite biblical saying. The last time she saw these three photos, they had been in her father's room and office back in the Vault.

She picked up the photo of herself and her father, her thumb rubbing across the glass. "How?"

"I went to your Vault after getting the jacket by Butch made. He said the current Overseer would know what else to give you. Some of the inhabitants were not friendly but that Amata, sweet girl." Lissandra knew she was a sweet girl and when she was younger, she had a crush on her best friend up until she was 18 but had she been sweet the day she told Lissandra she could never be apart of the Vault again? That hurt more than anything. She helped Amata take control of the Vault from her father and was told that there was no longer a place for her to stay in the Vault.

Fawkes being the gentle soul he was, carried a distraught Lissandra back to the Citadel. Her mind wasn't in a right place to fight anything or anyone along the way. She stayed locked up in her room for several days, managing to eat what Sarah or some scribes dropped off for her. "Yeah." was all she could manage as Sarah stared at her. She moved and hugged her this time, arms slipping around her waist to return it.

"Mistletoe!" shouted someone making the two look to see a Scribe standing beside them and looked up, what looked like a paper mistletoe was being held above them. She had seen plastic ones in the Vault, maybe she could run to the Vault and ask Amata for one for next year if she remained with the Brotherhood.

The two looked at each other, Lissandra blushing as Sarah smirked. "I...no..." was all Lissandra managed to get out. She and Amata had "kissed" when they were eight, a quick peck on the lips as Butch teased them with a mistletoe...that sure shut him up. "I mean not that I wouldn't...I...I don't know what I mean but..."

She never finished her sentence before lips pressed against her own. They were slightly chapped but soft at the same time against her. She barely managed to catch the whistling of several Soldiers whistling at the sight of their Sentinel kissing their newest recruit. Sarah pulled away with a small wet noise before eyeing the young girl again, she put her left hand on the girl's cheek before leaning in and kissing her again. This kiss probably should've happened somewhere private cause next thing the 19 year old knew was there was a tongue pushing it's way into her mouth.

This was something she had never done before, properly kissing like this instead of a quick peck. The blonde's arm tightened around her waist, pulling their bodies together. Breasts against breasts and hips against hips, even though Sarah stood maybe an inch taller than Lissandra. Someone clapped beside the two making them pull apart and Sarah turned a pretty red as she saw her father standing there.

"You want to make out with our newest recruit, than take her to your bedroom." he chuckled making Sarah nod.

Lissandra lowered her head, her hair moving to shield her face as BoS men and women shouted words of encouragement but a few men said something inappropriately that made Sarah hugged her waist tightly, possessive almost. Her father shouted something to make them shut up as the blonde lifted the younger woman's head and pressed their foreheads together.

She saw the Lone Wanderer's expression and smiled. "Ignore them." she whispered. "Ignore them and focus on me." Sarah saw Lissandra run her tongue along her bottom lip, wetting it most likely.  "You're the best gift I could've been given this year." There was a look of surprise on the other woman's face. "I mean, if we're...I assumed..."

Lips pressed against Sarah's quickly. "No you didn't assume." she chuckled. "I've liked you since we met on my way to Galaxy Radio. Regardless to the fact you were a bit of a hard ass but I...I felt something. So you're also the best gift I could've been given this year. After this shitty fucking year I had, you're my silver lining. So does that mean we're...?"

"You're my girlfriend. On December twenty-fifth, we became girlfriends. Remember that." she stated cupping Lissandra's face.

A smile formed on her face. Would her father approve? Sarah's father seemed to. Hell would Madison approve? That was all that mattered to her now. Aside from Sarah, Madison was the only other person she cared about. "Thank you." she whispered as tears slid down her cheeks.

Those power arms wrapped around her, pulling her into a comforting hug and she buried her face into Sarah's neck. She had lost her father and lost her home but she gained a girlfriend. "Let me know when you're okay, everyone will tease you for days if they see you crying." chuckled the blonde making a laugh erupt from the younger woman. She nodded and tightened her hold on Sarah.

They stayed like that for several moments, soldiers passing their gifts and alcohol back and forth. Sarah rested her chin on top of Lissandra's head and smiled towards her father who flashed a smile of his own and a thumbs up. He approved and to be honest, Sarah couldn't have chosen a better partner. "I love you." was all the young woman said.

"I love you too." whispered the Sentinel.

When asked Lissandra would admit that even though she had been exiled from her home and lost her father, this Christmas wasn't as bad as she thought it would be. Sarah made everything better from day one. She'd openly state that she would never wish to return to Vault 101, she was happy with Sarah. She was happy being her girlfriend and eventual fiancee. Even though she was parent-less, she wouldn't trade this life for anything because she was loved and cared for by the most important person in her life, Sentinel Sarah Lyons.

(Note: SARAH LIVES IN MY FALLOUT 4 FANFIC CAUSE REASONS! Mainly I hate Maxson and I like the headcanon that Maxson over threw her to take control over the Prydwen but instead of Sarah dying, she was left for dead and Lissandra vows to take revenge on Maxson but that'll happen in my main Fallout 4 fanfic...whenever I post it lol)

[crimethinc]

Surviving a Grand Jury: Three Narratives from Grand Jury Resisters

We’ve prepared a zine version of our guide to grand jury resistance, which originally appeared as episode #59 of the Ex-Worker podcast. This zine presents the voices of three people who successfully stood up to grand jury indictments: one who served jail time for resisting, one who went on the run rather than testify, and one who supported a grand jury resister from the beginning to the end of the process. You can also read their narratives below.

Please print out copies of this zine and share them with anyone who is curious about what it looks like to confront the full force of the so-called justice system and win. For a wide array of resources on resisting grand juries, consult this list. You can also watch this live video presentation.

Click the image for a zine version of this text.

A Few Words about Grand Juries

Grand juries serve the state as a sort of auxiliary legal proceeding to force people to inform on each other. A grand jury isn’t a criminal trial; there’s no judge present. It takes place entirely in secret. As a witness, you can’t even obtain transcripts of your testimony.

Only the prosecutor and the jurists are allowed in the room with the witness. The jurists are chosen according to the prosecutor’s agenda and not screened for bias. The grand jury doesn’t have to inform you about the details of what they are investigating; you have no way to know what information might be incriminating for you or another person.

Grand juries suspend Fifth Amendment rights. They can subpoena you and give you “immunity” in order to force you to testify; if you refuse, they can jail you for up to eighteen months. This immunity does not protect you from prosecution; it only stipulates that the information you personally provide cannot be used against you, although the same information provided by someone else can be.

All this explains why people who do not want to be complicit in enabling the state to persecute communities refuse to give any information to a grand jury whatsoever. You never know what detail might be used against someone else. Even if no one is guilty of any crime, providing information to a grand jury can result in ongoing legal harassment that can ripple out and affect many people.

Grand juries serve to gather information on dissidents far beyond what police and prosecutors could gather on their own; they have been used to isolate, divide, and destroy social movements since the 1960s. Grand juries are currently being used to target anarchists, anti-fascists, and indigenous water protectors who struggled at Standing Rock.

If you’re subpoenaed by a grand jury and you decide to resist, you have two options: show up in court and refuse to testify, then serve time in prison for contempt, or go on the run before your first court date.

Click the image for a pdf of this poster.

Three Who Fought the Law and Won

The following stories are from three comrades: Esme, who served jail time for resisting; Devlin, who went on the run rather than cooperate; and Cora, who was the partner of a grand jury resister and supported them before, during, and after imprisonment.

We’re deeply inspired by the choices these people made in resisting the state. We hope that if you ever have to face a grand jury, criminal charges, or police harassment, their words will give you strength and faith in yourself. It can help to learn from the experiences of those who walked in your shoes before you—to know that you are not alone.

A Knock on the Door

Esme: I remember when those douchebags first came to my door. I particularly remember the tall man with sharp features and creepy blue eyes. He knocked on my door at 6 am. When I answered, still half-asleep, he said, “Oh, hi, sorry to wake you. I saw through your window that you were sleeping. You know this is my least favorite part of the job.” He was there to subpoena a friend of mine. I slammed the door in his face. Over the following months, my friends got served their subpoenas and had to go to court dates. I helped to organize support for them. At the time it felt like an agent was lurking behind every corner—and the tough part was sometimes they were.

Cora: I was awoken that morning by my partner, who was in shock. Federal agents had come looking for a friend and former housemate of ours. They wanted to serve him a subpoena to testify before a grand jury. The days that followed were a flurry of hushed conversation, larger displays of solidarity, crying, and panic.

Our house was awkwardly built with four doors to the outside and many windows. It wasn’t the greatest layout for feeling protected when paranoia struck. I was home alone one evening when I heard car doors slam outside our house. This wasn’t strange for our neighborhood, but my fear of the feds turned every sound into impending arrest or another subpoena. This time, it was federal agents. A group of five medium-to-large men with flashlights, in black clothing, began assessing our home from the outside, starting near my partner’s bedroom door, around to our backyard, around the side yard and completing the circle up front. I stayed hidden. I was afraid they would enter the house, thinking it to be empty, and corner me there alone—but they only seemed interested in our yard and our home’s exterior.

It was after this that all of us—my partner, and housemates, and I—decided it was absolutely necessary to move. They had already subpoenaed the people they had originally been searching for. Why were they still coming around? What did they want with our house? We weren’t under the illusion that a new house would provide more safety, but the anxiety mounting in that space was beginning to feel overwhelming and we needed a change of environment. We found a new home quickly and eagerly moved in. We had just begun to settle in when the FBI visited us again.

Esme: One day two men were lurking outside my house. I pushed away what I thought was an irrational paranoia. I let myself believe they were Mormon missionaries. I walked outside to my car and they addressed me by my name. I shut the car door and ran into my backyard. I couldn’t think fast enough. I fumbled with the latch on the gate and they yelled after me that they had positively identified me, so the subpoena had been officially served. I turned around and grabbed it out of their hands. They offered to take me into the grand jury right then. I didn’t answer them, but walked into my house and burst into tears. I remember crying and repeating the words “I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this” over and over again as my friends read the subpoena. I knew what it meant by that point, as several of my friends were already in jail over this shit. It never occurred to me to do anything other than resist, but I was terrified.

Cora: When my partner was issued a subpoena it felt like a nightmare. It was the same grand jury that had already subpoenaed our friends, who were now serving jail time for resisting. None of us felt we had the tools to navigate what was ahead of us. I treated it like a job, because there was so much we didn’t know.

Esme: I called a public defender and explained the situation. I told him that I intended to not cooperate. He said in a condescending tone, “Oh you can’t just NOT cooperate with a grand jury subpoena.” I explained that I knew exactly the consequences: eighteen months max in jail for civil contempt, and that I was prepared to do it. I told him that if he was going to represent me he would have to respect that. After that he never questioned my resolve once. Ultimately, I would have to educate him about how grand jury resistance works.

Cora: It surprised me how little the defense lawyer understood about grand juries. Maybe that was just me giving too much credit to lawyers, cause I was like, you go to school for eight years for this, you should know what’s going on. It boggled my mind. Luckily, we were able to talk to other, radical lawyers. There wasn’t a lot of information online, and a lot of it was contradictory. So we talked to lawyers who had explicit experience in political cases. It’s not that our lawyer was incompetent, it’s just that grand juries are so outside the scope of regular court cases—to the point that the lawyers can’t even be in the room.

Esme: Just like my lawyer, my parents initially encouraged me to “consider my options.” I told them flatly that I knew I was going to go to jail over this and that if they wanted to visit me while I was in jail they were going to need to respect my decision. In this one conversation, our relationships changed from a parent/child dynamic to one of adults. Being clear and upfront with both my parents and lawyer about how this was going to go it made it much easier for all of them to support me in the ways I needed. This meant they never pressured me to cooperate even if they didn’t understand my ethical reasons for non-cooperation.


Cora: No one knew how long punitive detention for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury subpoena would actually be. One isn’t sentenced to a particular length of time, but attorneys told us that eighteen months was the maximum. We were told to expect the maximum because of my partner’s public refusal to cooperate and the overt political nature of the investigation. We went from meetings amongst friends, to meetings amongst family, to meetings with attorneys, to phone calls with comrades trying to gather as much information as possible in the short time before inevitable incarceration. We stayed busy.

The wait was agonizing. No matter what we did amongst friends, amongst our political milieu or in our romantic relationship, I never felt prepared to have my partner’s physical and emotional presence stripped from my life. I never felt prepared to watch them experience detention and isolation. We talked with people who had experienced similar repression, made plans for communication, strengthened our relationship while supporting one another through the trauma of uncertainty and constant harassment from the State. We made big banners for demonstrations and, after, hung them in our house as encouragement. We even got married in order to grant ourselves some luxuries and legal rights regarding prison visits and attorney-client privileges.

Esme: We’d had some time to talk out scenarios before this happened, and we decided to get married—not out of love, but practical necessity. We knew that was the only way Cora would be able to visit me. They would continue to be an unwavering support person to me through the hard months to follow. Thankfully, they were not the only person to rise to the occasion. Many friends and loved ones showed up to hold me up and support me. Friends would come by our house and drop off food and treats and gifts on the regular. This isn’t to say everything was rosy—the stress of the time definitely reverberated throughout our friendships. Many stepped up to mediate conflicts—it really did take an extended community to support us.

Cora: In those days leading up to Esme’s incarceration, we were hardly ever alone. It would have been easy to be isolated as a couple, to feel trapped in this intense experience that was effecting the two of us most intensely, but luckily that didn’t happen. I think that’s part of why our relationship has stayed as strong as it is through all of this—even when friends couldn’t always show up in the ways I wished they would, we were really held by a large community.

Threats and Pressure

Esme: After the subpoena, the prosecutor hurled all kinds of threats at me. I was told I would be charged with criminal as well as civil contempt and other crimes if I refused to cooperate. The paranoia that had been a dull roar in my mind increased to full-blown panic. I blamed myself for lack of vigilance for letting myself get subpoenaed. I had been anxious before, but now I started to experience more intense panic. It was getting more difficult to determine which fears were worth paying attention to.

We knew from affidavits in the case that some of us had been followed, so it would make sense to believe I was being followed. Sometimes I would see an SUV with government plates parked outside my house—but that blue-eyed man who came to my door the first time had been driving a beat up old Pontiac. So there was really no way of knowing how deep the surveillance went.

Sometimes clearly absurd fears would enter my brain and I couldn’t push them away. Once I was driving and heard a series of ticks and beeps. I began to fear a bomb had been planted under my seat. I sat stopped at a red light and considered my options. I was almost certain this wasn’t real, but the Feds had bombed Judi Bari’s car this way in 1990. But surely I was not as high a priority as she had been. Waiting for the light to turn, I couldn’t reason my way out of this. I pulled over into a Burger King parking lot and got out of my car. I walked a safe distance away I waited a few minutes before cautiously approaching the vehicle again. I checked under the seat, then under the car itself: nothing. I felt the seat for anything inside it: nothing. I got back into my car, took a deep breath, and got to work just a couple minutes late.


Experiences like this helped me develop a framework for how to handle these kind of fears. I created a set of four questions, and for each one I’d either ask a friend’s advice or imagine what advice they might give. The questions were:

How likely is it that what I fear right now is real? What evidence do I have for it? Has this happened to others?

If what I fear is real, how serious of a threat is it to me in this situation?

Can this situation be addressed? Is there anything that I can do to make myself safe from this?

How costly or inconvenient is this precaution? Is this response illegal? Could I get hurt or get in more trouble?

Using this framework, it made sense to get out of the car to check for a bomb. Though the likelihood of the threat being real was remote, the precaution I took was low cost and only made me slightly late to work. Having this structure helped me feel like I was doing all I could to keep myself safe.

Often, in scary repressive situations people oscillate between feeling strong fear and then pushing it out of their mind—without taking basic precautions to handle what they’re afraid of. Dealing with repression is about risk management. We can’t be completely safe from the state or from the far right, but there are steps we can take to mitigate some of the potential harm. Since then, I’ve used this framework with households and other groups to assess risk from both feds and neo-Nazis.

Cora: As Esme’s court date approached, we rented a hotel room with friends and talked all night. It was moments like this that kept us going, and something worth doing if you’re facing any kind of repression, because everything will feel like shit. In hindsight, I realize there are a few things I would have done differently, especially around asking for support. I mean we got amazing support, especially all the fundraising and one friend who gave us a few hundred dollars to cover Esme’s rent and car insurance and stuff. At the time I didn’t want to ask for support just for me because it felt like a finite resource. Thinking about asking close friends for more than just basic friendship felt like taking something away from others. I didn’t really realize how the experience was affecting me. I also don’t know how receptive I would have been to someone saying “this is just time for you.” On a certain level, I wasn’t able to do all the intense support I was doing and also check in with all my emotional needs. Esme was the same way, and we brought that out in each other. We both stayed really task-focused.

Esme: That night in the hotel I could feel my freedom slipping out from under me. I hadn’t seriously considered going on the run, but in that hotel room it suddenly seemed so appealing. How was I going to walk into the hands of my enemies the next day, when I could just as easily breath the free air for another day? I thought about trying to live underground in the States or leave the country and start a new life under a different identity—but both would have to be indefinite if not lifelong exile, which seemed hard to imagine. Jail time at least had a max of eighteen months, and it seemed like most people usually did more like six. And I could get letters from my loved ones, something much harder to pull off from underground. So, going on the run seemed like the harder option, although it perhaps represented an even larger middle finger to the law. I reconciled myself to my choice.

I spent the night embracing my friends and watching Mean Girls 1 and 2 (spoiler: the second one is terrible, don’t bother). I appeared at the courthouse the next day delirious from lack of sleep but ready to face my incarceration.

Devlin: I didn’t decide to become a grand jury resister on the day the federal agents emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, forcing their subpoena into my unwelcoming hands. Decisions like this are rarely made in the moment. For me, it would be more reasonable to say I started to make this decision five years before I was subpoenaed, when I first learned of Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar. At the time, he had just been sentenced to eleven years and three months for resisting grand juries in New York and Chicago. A fighter for Palestinian liberation, Dr. Ashqar was jailed several times between 1998 and 2007 on civil contempt charges. These were intended to coerce his testimony to a perennial grand jury investigating Palestinian nationals on racketeering charges. As exhausting as the protracted struggle must have been, Ashqar was unyielding in his defiance, refusing to implicate anyone, saying in court that he refused “to live as a traitor or as a collaborator.”

In 2007, the case came to a head. As they admitted defeat in turning Ashqar into a state agent, the law played their final trump card: a punitive prison sentence, meant to strike fear into all of us watching from the sidelines. For me, as I’m sure for many others, it didn’t have that effect.

I was in awe of Ashqar, of his contempt, in the choices he made to reject his status as innocent witness and take on the complicity of solidarity. Resistance felt alive and real to me in that moment. I decided then that if ever I was called upon to resist a grand jury, a thought that seemed impossibly far away to a young anarchist who had yet to see the inside of a jail cell, I would try to breathe as much fire into the legacy of grand jury resistance as I was capable of.

I wanted my resistance to be as defiant as it could be. I didn’t want it to be based on the fact that I was “innocent,” but rather to be a clear and outright refusal of everything they wanted from me. I hoped that this complete defiance would inspire others as Dr. Ashqar had inspired me.

I also thought about it from a security standpoint: my brain was like a hard drive that stored valuable information, and I had no way of knowing what stray detail I remembered could be used to incriminate comrades of mine. So my perspective was that the best way to prevent the state from having access to that information was not only to encrypt the information (stay silent) but also to never give them physical access to the hardware (in this case my body). Thus, I went on the run.

Esme: On the morning of my court date, my parents, my partner, my lawyer and I got coffee across the street from the courthouse. My lawyer noticed a stocky man with a military haircut holding a newspaper in front of his face and staring at us. My lawyer said we should talk outside. For my parents, this one fairly minor act of surveillance seemed to shatter their cherished view of a benevolent government.

A number of people had shown up to the courthouse to support me, including some older folks who had done support for grand jury resisters in the 70s. I met two who had been part of an urban guerrilla group back then and wished me their support. One of them told me about an oath that they used to say to each other back in the day:

If ever I should break my stride, or falter at my comrade’s side

This oath shall kill me.

If ever my word should prove untrue, should I betray the many or the few

This oath shall kill me.


If ever I withhold my hand, or show fear before the hangman

This oath shall surely kill me.

It was powerful to feel like included in a tradition of resistance, even if some of our political inclinations were different.

I walked in to the courthouse with my lawyer. We were led to the third floor where two men introduced themselves as prosecutors. One of them was the man with the creepy blue eyes and sharp features I had seen months earlier on my doorstep. When my lawyer introduced himself, the blue-eyed man identified himself as the lead agent on the case.


I remained silent while my lawyer schmoozed with the prosecutors, and then I entered the grand jury room with them. My lawyer, of course, had to stay behind.

The room resembled a community college classroom. It had an overhead projector and the dozen or so jurists sat in chair/desk combos arrayed in rows facing me. I was at the front of the room as though I was a guest lecturer. The prosecutor asked me my name and date of birth. I told him. Then he asked me where I worked and I figured it was as good a time as any to start resisting. I stammered out a refusal. He then asked me a slew of questions: peoples names, where I was on certain dates, where others were on specific dates. With growing confidence, I refused to answer each question. As I wasn’t allowed to have my lawyer present or record any of the questions, I would ask for a break after every three questions and go into the other room and write them down so I wouldn’t forget them. This way I could share what they were asking about with everyone else, and make this secret process more transparent. Leaving the room frequently was also a way of demonstrating to my lawyer and others that I wasn’t answering their questions, so there would be no doubt.

After a dozen or so questions and refusals, the prosecutor said he had heard enough. As I got up to leave the room, a jurist in the front row smiled and raised his fist in salute to me. I still wonder to this day what that guy’s deal was. Maybe he had something to do with the outcome of things? But I may never know—that’s the thing about repression, there are so many bizarre unknowns that you just have to accept. 


After that I was taken in front of a judge, granted immunity, questioned by the grand jury again and refused again. By the time all this was over the workday was over and I was given another court date a few weeks away. It felt a bit anti-climactic. I had prepared myself to go to jail. I had packed up all my stuff, found someone to rent my room, and now I had to go back to my house where I no longer really had a room and kill time until I went to jail.

As I waited, I searched for ways to prepare for what really can’t be prepared for. I talked to more former political prisoners who offered incredible advice and emotional support. I made plans with my partner, parents and friends about my support.

After another court date I was given a self-report date and at 9 am on a grey morning, after all that waiting, I gathered with a small group of comrades and my parents to say goodbye. As the time approached for me to go in I started to hug people goodbye I started crying and an older comrade grabbed me by my shoulders and looked into my tear-filled eyes and said “Hey, you’ve got this! Seriously, don’t doubt it for a second, you’ve got this!”

That phrase would come back to me often in the following months.


Jail Time

Cora: I wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like to have my partner be so physically absent from my life. While Esme was in jail, I focused all my emotional energy on supporting them. This involved writing long letters every day, micro managing their support, talking with friends about our visits, meticulously planning my trips to visitation and really trying not to plan for life after they got out. I tried not to think about the future. They could be in for over a year, and at the end of that could end up indicted as part of the ongoing investigation. There was also the fear that I would be indicted as a result of the grand jury’s findings. The future was so unclear that the present was all I could grasp.

I buried myself in work every other day of the week. Shortly after my partner’s subpoena, I took on a second full-time job. I used my 60- to 70-hour work week as a way to exhaust myself and dissociate from the trauma I was incurring. It gave me purpose while I felt aimless and heartbroken. I withdrew from many friendships and stayed firmly in high-functional crisis mode. If you had asked me at the time what kind of support I needed, I wouldn’t have been able to say. I felt like any care someone gave me was taken away from Esme. In retrospect, I’d do a few things differently. But I do think it was important for both of us to focus on practical details and things we could control. It wasn’t until much later that we both realized how not okay we had been.

Esme: When I walked through the front door of that jail, I was shuttled between various booking rooms for hours. Around 11 am, I was given a ham sandwich and some pudding in a brown bag. I decided that if the state wanted to lock me in a cage and attempt to ruin my life, I would resist by making my time in jail the best thing that had ever happened to me. I looked at that ham sandwich on white bread and decided that I was going to eat as healthily as I could for this meal and all the ones to follow. So I left the white bread and pudding in the bag. It sounds weird but this helped me feel like I was regaining some amount of agency.

They took me in front of a guard sitting at a desk who called himself a counselor. He asked me a slew of questions to figure out if I was eligible for placement in General Population. I tried to answer every question so that I would qualify. I remember him smirking and rolling his eyes when I told him I was straight. But at the end he said I looked like I was eligible for GP. He sent me back to a holding cell, then came back a while later and inexplicably took me into the solitary confinement unit and put me on cell alone status. The guards told me, “Since you haven’t committed a crime, and you’re being held here coercively not punitively, we can’t house you in GP with criminals.” I responded that my co-defendants were in GP, but they didn’t offer any other explanation. I found out later that at that same time my co-defendants were being transferred to other solitary confinement units as well. It’s clear to me that the prosecutor was trying to apply extra pressure to us to get us to break.

I woke up the next morning at 6 am to a tray of warm food being slid through the trapdoor inside my door. I again picked through for the less processed seeming parts and ate them, even though I wasn’t hungry and wanted to keep sleeping. I figured I would take what I could get.

After breakfast, they asked me if I wanted to go to the rec yard. I had assumed I would be in this one cell all day and jumped at the opportunity to get out. They put me in what passed for a rec yard in solitary, which turned out to be a triangular cell with chain link fence on all sides and a vent through which cold air blew but you could see the sky if you stood in the right place. It was barely larger than my cell and it was so cold I couldn’t really do anything other than shiver. After that, I stayed in my cell during rec time.

I started journaling: planning out workouts and other self-improvement activities. In the evening a cart came by my cell and I was told I could pick two books from it. I picked out the longest one I could see. Then scanned the titles for anything familiar, to my surprise I found an Octavia Butler book I had been meaning to read. The familiar author brought warmth and joy to me when I was confused and alone. Her writing, bleak but yet so honest and nuanced, felt like just the emotional tone I needed set going into the next few months of my life.

I asked about phone calls and was told that I could make one 15-minute phone call each month. It seemed unbelievable, but it was true. I would have to be sustained by letters. On the third day, when I started receiving them, everything got so much better. The guards seemed resentful of having to read all my mail but their resentment just made me feel better and better. The first book I received was Vida by Marge Piercy, which follows a woman in a fictionalized Weather Underground type group as she tries to survive living on the run. I knew some of my comrades who had also faced repression had gone on the run, but I had tried to avoid any contact with them or knowledge of what they were going through so as not to lead the authorities to them. Vida made me feel connected to what they might be going through. The story doesn’t glorify life on the run—it left me feeling like I was the lucky one to be safe in a cell rather than precariously waiting for the cops to come busting my door down like my comrades surely were.

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Life on the Run

Devlin: At the beginning of my time on the run, my comrades and I had to leave the area quickly and figure out a more concrete plan along the way. Much of the work hinged on having a network of solidarity and computer skills. It’s actually quite a bit of work to protect yourself digitally. I won’t go into specifics, but the skills we needed were not those we could have learned on a whim. We were able to do it because we had years of experience to draw from.

At one point, a security breach meant that we had to relocate for fear of being tracked. We relied on the quick thinking and very generous solidarity of comrades from all over who helped tremendously with our transition. This type of anarchist solidarity was invaluable and without it we would never have been able to do what we did.

Getting needs met like health care and money were major obstacles. Over time, living in a situation not of our own choosing was physically and emotionally detrimental. We had organized our lives around fighting the state. Suddenly, when we didn’t have any fight to do or decisions to make, our camaraderie eroded. Bonds between close comrades started to break down and I felt trapped and without an outlet or shared fight to channel my energy into.

Those stresses caused health problems which became harder and harder to address because I was on the run. These compounding effects became major obstacles.

At home, I had lived through highs and lows of struggle and repression but they were shared highs and lows. All of a sudden, no one around me understood the constant crisis I was going through or even why I had moved to that place at all. People didn’t even know my real name, yet I was trying to build authentic bonds of camaraderie with them.

I remember once a cop showed up at my house and they waited at my door and wouldn’t leave. My mind raced. I remembered that I had mapped out a way to escape by jumping between rooftops, but I hadn’t tested it and didn’t know if it would work. I had this internal freakout but I quieted my fears because I would have to deal with the implications later. Right now, I just needed to get out. My body became weirdly calm as I went through the house burning everything that could be used to identify me. I also ate a package of cookies cause I didn’t know the next time I would be able to eat. I sent word to let friends know what was going on, got a backpack together for my rooftop journey, and looked out the window one last time—and the cop was gone.

Friends later found out through social engineering that the cops were involved in something entirely unrelated, and we were able to return to that spot. Even so, it was incidents like that that shook my nerves so much. The simple act of interacting with a cop—something many people would consider routine—would have completely changed my life at that time. I lived in constant fear of having to interact with law enforcement.

I see how I needed every moment of that build up, all of the reinforcement of self that I put into the previous ten years to get me through the experience intact. When the focus of the radical left had moved on to the next crisis, when I hadn’t seen my dearest friends in years, when I was puking blood from a mysterious illness with no way to see a doctor, when I didn’t even have my own name to give coherence to my words, what I did have to hold onto was the promise I had made to myself—and implicitly to all others engaged in struggle—that I would put everything I had into the fight. Prolonged psychological dissonance can really disorient, subjecting what seems like our strongest foundations to deterioration. Anarchy became the one place to which I could recede that remained intact; resistance struggles the thread that connected my past to a possible future.

Maintaining Mental Health

Esme: As the days became weeks, I got some basic stuff on commissary and had a routine planned in half-hour increments so I would always be busy. I was teaching myself to eat and write with my left hand, practicing Spanish in the evening, reading Foucault in the morning, writing three long letters after dinner, and starting to meditate.

My cell looked west out over a park, but the tiny window was opaque and foggy. There was one corner, though, where the clear epoxy that sealed the window hadn’t been fogged over. Through that tiny gap I could make out two trees in the distance on a hill, silhouetted against the sky. I would watch them for hours as the light changed. I still feel a happy sense of nostalgia when I think of how beautiful those two trees were. Since my release I’ve gone back and tried to find them, but none of the trees really seem right. Maybe they have been cut down, or maybe I imagined them.

Every now and then the guards would transfer me to another cell. None of the others had a view like the first one. One cell was so cold my bones ached from the pain of it, and I couldn’t sleep. I asked for a second blanket but they never gave me one. This was the hardest time: I felt so alone and sad, and not being able to sleep much made everything harder. If I slept during the day when it was warmer, I’d be up awake at night with no light, unable to read or distract myself from my thoughts, which were often dark. When the dark thoughts came, I would do ten burpees and then sit for a minute and scan how I felt, and do it again, as necessary. As bad as that was, I could hear other inmates having harder times—once I heard one pounding the walls and screaming about being suicidal. A unit of cops in riot gear beat them until they were quiet. Incidents like this were impossible to ignore, because they stood out so starkly from the monotony of my days, but each time they happened I was plunged into much darker thoughts.

After the cold cell I was transferred to one with a window that faced a wall, and no mirror. This detail may seem insignificant, but my ability to see my reflection had previously allowed me a sense of identity that was suddenly lost. Without an image of myself or a companion, my mind became a stranger and stranger place. I looked inwards and saw nothing. So instead I turned to my letters. It was these correspondences that gave me a sense of self. I was not an island but an amalgam of my relationships, conversations, and collective passions. Whether I was working out, meditating, eating, reading, or writing letters, I was doing it to strengthen my interactions with the outside world. I lived off of the letters, zines and books I received.

Right when I’d learned how to handle the cold isolation and identity crisis of solitary confinement, when I felt ready to endure this for the next sixteen months, I was transferred to General Population.

It was nothing like what you see on television.

People were initially suspicious of me, as I didn’t have the normal paperwork that other inmates had. My story didn’t quite make sense to some. Most people had never heard of civil contempt. Once I was able to show them a newspaper clipping about my case people started to trust me. Then I met an older bank robber, John who said he had been in prison in the ’70s, the same prison, in fact, as the ex-urban guerrilla folks who had come to my court date and shared their oath with me. I asked John if he knew those people and he did a double take. He said, “Holy shit, you’re into that stuff?” I said “No, no, no, they are just friends of mine—but we believe in a similar cause.”


After that John, dedicated himself to looking out for me. He said that he missed the old days of principled convicts who didn’t betray each other and he saw me as staying true to that legacy, I was flattered.

I made other friends in general population, kept up with my workouts, started to fall behind on my correspondence, played cards, tried to explain anarchism to people and generally had an OK time. One thing that I found difficult to navigate ethically was racial politics. I am white and thus I had to sit with white people at lunch, watch the white TV, etc. I tried my best to buck these rules and build friendships with people of color, since I’m ideologically opposed to white separatism—moreover, some of the other white inmates were affiliated with white supremacist gangs. One way I managed to do this, oddly enough, was by hanging out with evangelical Christians. The Christians were organized on a multiracial basis. Though I didn’t go to their Bible study I would work out with them, and play cards and chess with them. 


In some ways time went by fast as I started to build real friendships with other inmates based on emotional support and vulnerability. I was also able now to have hour-long contact visits with my partner and my family.

Cora: The waiting room, the same room where I last saw my partner before they were taken into custody, was grey. The walls were large, painted brick interrupted by the occasional bulleted list of rules and expectations. I always arrived right when visitation hours began. We waited there until the guards called visitors up in groups to go through security.

I and handful of others, often families with children, were led through a long series of heavy doors to the visitor area. As we entered the room, I watched as people recognized one another, briefly hugged and sat to talk with their incarcerated loved ones. I didn’t see my partner, but thought maybe they would be one of the few inmates trickling in. Over the following few minutes, my mind went directly to the worst-case scenarios. I knew they were in solitary confinement. Were they hurt? Were their visitation privileges rescinded? Did I misunderstand the visitation guidelines?

A guard came from behind and asked me to follow him. I was led into a small room off the main visitation room. This room had two small television screens with telephones attached. The visitation wouldn’t be in-person but over the screen. My heart sank as I waited for a familiar face to appear on the screen. Their body was small on the screen, the camera was an awkward distance from where they sat. This made our communication feel less personal. I remember moving closer and closer to the screen instinctively, trying to hear their words more clearly and see their face more clearly. The visit was brief. It was hard to know what to talk about with one another. I can’t quite remember how long visitations were, but I do remember that video visitation was shorter than in-person ones. Our time together was via video for the majority of their incarceration. Two visits in a row, the video wasn’t working, so we could only communicate over the audio.

Release

Esme: At a certain point, my co-defendants had all been released after refusing to cooperate. I was the last of us left inside. After a few more months the judge finally determined what my comrades and I had known: that my incarceration had become punitive since there was no way I was going to cooperate. Much earlier than I’d expected, I was released back into the world.

Cora: I had almost no warning that Esme would be released. It was so surreal. It might have been the day before, or the day of—I ended up getting a call for our friend letting me know. I was preparing for eighteen months; we’d gotten married, I had my schedule down for visitation. We had a system, and we’d been getting good at it, and then it was suddenly over. I hadn’t planned for what would happen after. I felt like if I started to think ahead, I’d get caught up in longing for that. So when they were released, I didn’t even know what to do. It was hard to even feel relief, since the grand jury was still convened and the possibility of future subpoenas and indictments still hung over us. It seemed impossible that three or four people would be incarcerated over this for months and no indictments would follow. Esme was home for now, but would it even last? Or would I be the next one taken in? A lot of us had experienced being detained or mass arrested, things that were a direct result of certain conflicts with the police and state, but this felt like a different category. It’s not like there was a sentence to be served and then it was over. We had no timeframe for how long we had to wait. One lawyer identified the date they thought the grand jury convened, but because they could always reconvene and subpoena more people, it never felt like there was an end. It just hung over us until it eventually dissolved into our past. But I put it in the back of my mind because there wasn’t a lot I could do except keep functioning.

Esme: The shock of release was intense. Riding in a car felt so bizarre. I had lost so much weight none of my clothes fit. I had picked up strange mannerisms and new anxieties. But I was overjoyed to be with my comrades in the flesh again. The collective trauma we all experienced brought us much closer and forged powerful bonds that continue today. Some of my friends would stay on the run for years after, but that’s another story. There were some who betrayed their comrades and capitulated to the state’s demands. I won’t waste my breath on them, except to say that their mistake was tremendous. They lost all their friends and endured just as much trauma as any of us, but they cut themselves off from any support because they chose to throw others under the bus. Not only was their decision unethical, but in the end it wasn’t even self-serving. My experience was painful and lifechanging. Many years have passed and I’m still healing from it, but I do not regret my decisions for an instant.

Afterwards

Cora: Now that this is as behind me as it will ever be, I can see the ways it has shaped me. I moved out of town and onto a farm, in part because of my fear of the police. I had so many traumatic experiences about having them in my home. On the other hand, I feel much stronger and more capable than I did before—specifically, I know exactly how to do this and I could do it again. I know how to navigate the prison system, and I have much more empathy for incarcerated people. When I write them letters now, it feels more personal. I’m also proud of how I was able to build relationships that held a foundation for us all to hold each other through this experience. It helped us get out of the theoretical realm and solidify what we really think and believe. Being able to watch someone I love so much make those decisions based on their personal beliefs was inspiring. We can also say of course we would never crack, but it’s interesting to see someone actually rise to that challenge. It made it seem possible for me, because I was terrified I was going to through the same thing.

Esme: When I first got out, I thought I was fine. It wasn’t until years later that I realized how not okay I had been. Thanks to therapy, hallucinogens, learning about trauma, writing and the loving patience of friends I’ve healed a lot. I’m forever changed but in many ways I am stronger and I’m able to come to anarchist struggles with a focus and intention that I learned from my experience.

Devlin: After several years had passed we assumed that the grand jury had ended, since usually they have expiration dates. But even so lawyers I had talked to suggested that if I ever interacted with police again in my life I would certainly go to jail—so the question of coming out of hiding could not be taken lightly. But the life I was living on the run felt so difficult and I didn’t feel like I could keep living it. I had repressed my feelings during this time so much that I had in a sense lost my ability to feel, I started taking more and more dangerous risks because I didn’t see the point in anything.

But some part of me was aware of the self-destructive path I was on and I discussed it with my comrades. We made the decision that the cost of staying underground was no longer viable.

None of this is to say that it was all bad. It’s easy to emphasize the negative, but there were so many incredible high points I may not have experienced otherwise. Like when I drove for hours in a car full of friends and swam with dolphins in the ocean I remember thinking, “I’m supposed to be in jail right now!” It made the joy feel that much more intense.

Returning to my life felt like exiting one dream world for another. My first run-in with the police felt like the real test of whether or not things could settle down for me for awhile. I had no idea if I would be in jail just for a few hours or if I would be in there for way longer. I wondered to myself, “What do the cops know? How much info did they share between agencies?” But in the end I was released.

Coming back to my life and seeing people was hard, seeing how their lives had moved on. Distance had grown between us. I had to immediately find a job and a place to live. I got a bizarrely normal job in an office and just went through the motions of a functioning person. Over time, it’s grown to feel more and more like my life again.

I still feel rootless and disconnected in big ways at times, but I’m starting to feel comfortable with that. I have been able to make deep friendships with people all over, engaged in disparate but consistently inspiring work. I feel appreciative of the people and struggle around me even if I don’t entirely know where I belong. I embrace emotionality and a more communicative process of dealing with the difficulties of lifelong anarchist struggle. I expect to face harder things in the future than my experience on the run and I think now I’m more prepared to deal with what may come. I feel really strong now and as committed to my politics as I ever was. In some ways I feel less isolated that I did before I went on the run.

Being on the run brought contradictions between many of us, between who we wanted to be and who we are on the surface. So many people set aside their own needs and did support to make resistance to repression possible. At the same time, there were people who I feel let us down and that added to the pain of the whole experience.

If I had to offer anything resembling advice to someone who was thinking about grand juries or repression more generally, from the comfort of a home or stable life, it would be to decide right now who you are going to be. Know what your struggle looks like and spend every fucking day building that context in one way or another. If you are serious, you will be tested. In those moments, you can lean on the continuity of your resistance, and on the rest of us and our experiences. You, too, will be fanning the flames of someone else’s defiance.

Our thanks to all of these comrades for sharing their stories with us. State repression affects everyone, even those who aren’t directly in the line of fire, but there are ways to survive. Years after the ordeal, Devlin has reassumed every aspect of their old identity, as far as the state is concerned, and has a decent paying tech career, despite their stint on the run. Esme is directing amateur theater companies, and Cora is tending to animals on a farm while studying to be a nurse practitioner. Esme and Cora’s relationship with each other and with most of the friends who supported them through this time is still incredibly strong.

As Devlin said, if you’re serious, you will be tested. We may not all face the same kinds of repression, but it’s easy to live in fear when we see what happens to our comrades. We hope these stories have given you some tools and perspectives to use if you or your friends are ever in this situation. As a side note, Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who was such an inspiration to Devlin, was released this June!

Part of how the grand jury holds its power is through secrecy. The people in charge of these proceedings want us to be mystified and terrified. They want us to live in fear, knowing that fear can keep us docile and contained. The more we learn about how grand juries work and how we can keep ourselves whole and sane as we navigate them, the less power they can hold over us.

“The state demeans everything that we hold dear when they threaten us in this way. The most free and wild thing we have in this world is our love for each other, and we know that our health, our safety, and our liberation can only exist in a world without their cops, their courts, and their cages. Our strength lies in knowing that we can provide that for each other, and that nothing they offer or threaten is worth betraying our commitment to our communities.

“As state repression escalates, I know that all of us are struggling with the trauma and the grief that comes from the forces we fight against, and the vulnerability that we feel to the state in its despicable efforts to attack us. What I also know, what I believe with all my heart and everything I have, is that we have the strength we need to take care of each other and to fight back until we win.”

-Katie Yow, grand jury resister

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

If We Only Tried, Chapter 2: You Might Really See Me

Finally returning to this Luke x Lorelai fic thanks to a special request by @actuallylukedanes. Happy birthday!! 

Summary: Spring cleaning and reminiscing, with a touch of mutual ogling. There were some things you just didn’t do with your close male friends, and getting trapped alone together without a change of clothes and then letting them use your shower was now officially on that list.

Crossposted on AO3, more notes there.

“Okay, what do you want to watch?”

Luke’s blank stare was priceless. “Whatever you want to watch is fine.”

“Come on, you’re not in the mood for anything specific?”

“No musicals.”

“Deal. But I mean really, Luke. We’ve got, like, all the movies. Cheesy, sappy, fight-y...pick your poison.”

He sighed. “Okay, suspense.”

“Ooh!” Lorelai’s face lit up. “Nice. Rory never goes for suspense first. Let’s see...”

She turned away to dig through a pile of DVDs until she pulled one out triumphantly. “Rear Window. What do you say?”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay.” She handed him the DVD. “Put this in, would you? I’ll get the popcorn.”

She disappeared while he shouted after her, facing the TV. “Popcorn? What popcorn? We searched your entire kitchen yesterday and there was no popcorn there.”

Offering him a grin, Lorelai returned, snacks in hand. “No, you’re right, there’s not. But I do have some, I forgot until just now. It was in my underwear drawer."

“Why was it in--” Luke held up his hands. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, and look on the bright side. Now it can be lunch and we’ll have the choice of pizza or burgers for dinner.”

“Yum.” He looked queasy, and she felt the briefest pang of guilt for not being the kind of person who stocked salad. Then she brushed it off, because who would eat the salad on all the normal days when Luke wasn’t trapped in her house with her?

After coaching him on the movie night rules, and pouting when he blatantly broke all of them, Lorelai settled in. It was weird watching a movie with Luke, Taciturn Guy--but also fun.

When he did have a comment, it was usually perceptive, with a heavy dose of snark. And then she would have to argue against his point, which made watching the movie take longer, but it was worth it to see him get all flustered.

She enjoyed him flustered.

“I still say it doesn’t make any sense,” Luke protested over the rolling credits. “First things first, if you think a guy is a murderer, you don’t just let him--”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lorelai cut him off as she left the couch. “I get it already. The psychological thriller isn’t perfectly logical. It’s a movie, Luke. It’s allowed to be a little ridiculous.”

“Not if it wants me to take it seriously.”

“Grump.”

“Hey, you asked.”

“Actually I didn’t,” she replied over her shoulder, foraging in the kitchen for more crackers. Hungry enough, they weren’t so bad.

“You invited my opinion when you wouldn’t shut up about yours,” he argued.

“Well, mine is right.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, what do you want to do now?” She stared out the kitchen window at the heaps of snow and shook her head. “It’s barely lunchtime.”

“Honestly, I’d like to start putting this place back together. All your piles of crap are giving me nightmares of you dead underneath them.”

“What do you mean?” She frowned at the table, covered in old dishes and infomercial cookery that she’d bought when Rory was little and never bothered to use again. “You want to help me spring clean?”

“Well, ‘want to’ might be overstating it a little. I want something to do, and I desperately want your house not to look like this anymore.” He waved a hand at the debris. “So, yeah, I guess.”

Snacking, she weighed the privacy violation of him sifting through her stuff against the benefits of it actually getting done, and didn’t have to think for long. After all, Luke was already in the middle of her life. What didn’t he know that could surprise him among her junk drawers?

“Okay, let’s do it. We can start here,” she decided. “The kitchen will be easy since it’s not very sentimental.”

“Really.” Luke didn’t sound convinced. “Not this set of baby spoons? Or the duck-shaped measuring cups?”

“Oh, well, those stay. Obviously.” She shot him a grin.

“See? Everything is sentimental with you.” He sighed and prepared to dive into battle over every chipped plate.

****

“Oh, Luke, look!” Lorelai pulled a sheet of blue poster-board out of the closet and handed it to him. “Isn’t it great?”

“It’s...something.” He peered at the careful lettering until he understood it. “Oh, hey, I know what this is.”

“Rory’s class project.” Lorelai sat on the floor next to the closet, and took it back from him to study. “How she agonized over this. Everything had to be just right. The marker color, the letter spacing, the straightness of the lines.”

He grinned. “Well, that’s Rory.”

“Yeah, but she was twelve!” Lorelai met his fond smile with her own. “And then she nearly had a breakdown in the last few weeks when she couldn’t get half the information she needed.”

“Yeah,” Luke said thoughtfully. “I remember.”

Surprised, Lorelai dragged her eyes away from the project. “You do?”

“Mm-hmm. She needed her dad’s side of the family tree and couldn’t get ahold of him. I never heard how you finally found him, by the way. She told me about the A she got on the project afterwards, that was it. What happened there?”

“Christopher,” Lorelai said simply, as though the name alone was an explanation.

“He’d dropped off the map again--he does that,” she pointed out. “Back then, we’d only just moved to Stars Hollow...we’d been living in Hartford, he’d visited us there, but not here. His number was disconnected. So we couldn’t expect to hear from him, we couldn’t go to him, and her assignment was to interview that side of her family just like mine.”

He leaned over to turn the family tree back around and appreciate how tidy--and complete--it was. “So, what did you do?”

“I went over his head.” Her smile was fierce, if a little brittle around the edges. “I went to my mother, who used her connections to get his parents’ information stretching way back. It was just easier.”

He knew how strained her relationship was with her parents in those days, and how nonexistent one was with Rory’s other grandparents. But he also knew it remained a raw wound in some ways, so he nodded as though the story were that simple. “That makes sense.”

Setting the paper aside, Lorelai smiled at him. “I can’t believe you remember that, though. What was it, seven years ago? And you barely knew Rory.”

“Maybe,” he replied easily. “But she made an impression. Just like her mother.”

Lorelai looked away. “Oh, now.”

“I mean it.” He wasn’t smirking anymore. “It was obvious as soon as you moved here, what a great kid Rory was, and what a great mom you had to be to make that happen.”

“No, Rory came out that way,” Lorelai argued. “I barely did a thing there.”

“Stop selling yourself short. Just imagine if Christopher had raised her,” he offered. “Or your mother.”

“Oh, god.” She grimaced. “I’m honestly not sure which picture is worse.” Visions of her little girl dying in a motorcycle crash or marrying a Stanford man at nineteen flashed before her eyes and made her shudder.

“See?”

“Yeah.” She accepted the implied compliment reluctantly. “Thanks, Luke.”

“Always happy to reintroduce reality to your world. Or try, anyway.” He blinked and looked past her to the stack of books at her side. “So how will you decide which of these to get rid of?”

“Oh, those stay.”

“All of them?”

“Yep.”

“You can’t possibly know that they all need to stay.”

“Why not?”

“You haven’t even looked at them.”

“Well, that’s the classics section. Celebrity memoirs, books on movies, kitschy books to put on the coffee table and dust off regularly. Every house needs those.”

“Okay, but when was the last time you read them?”

She quirked her lips at him, not answering, and that was all the answer he needed. “You have to get rid of some of these. Keep the books you actually use.”

Lorelai waved a hand. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ve got like twenty gardening books lying around here. We’ll get rid of all of those and call it even.”

“It doesn’t work that way.” He tried to rein in his exasperation. “You’re supposed to be decluttering. Which equals caring about what you use and don’t--not your relative amount of stuff.”

“Whoa, when did you become the Martha Stewart of home organization?” Lorelai poked him in the arm. “It’s fine if I don’t get rid of every useless thing I own. Let’s face it, that’s like eighty percent of what I own!”

“Fine.” On that, they could agree. “But if you’re not really going through your books, I’m going to leave you to it. Mind if I use your shower? That kitchen cabinet adventure was disgusting.”

“I had no idea the one under the sink was growing alien life!” She protested. “But yeah, go for it. I’ll be here.”

Flipping through a book about the Beatles that she was pretty sure she’d read to Rory as a baby, Lorelai realized that she’d forgotten to tell Luke where the towels were just as he was already in the shower. “Oh, crap.”

Also, whose clothes was he getting into after he cleaned himself up?

She headed upstairs, trying to be extra loud as a warning, before recognizing that the sound of the running water would mask her no matter what she did.

Lorelai knocked on her own bathroom door, feeling miserably awkward. There were some things you just didn’t do with your close male friends, and getting trapped alone together without a change of clothes and then letting them use your shower was now officially on that list.

“Hey, Luke?”

There was a pause, as though he wasn’t sure how to respond, any more than she was. “Yeah, hey.”

“Do you need something to wear? Or, I don’t know, a towel?”

“Found a towel,” he told her, his voice sounding strange through the door. “Hall closet. You think I don’t know where you keep stuff? I’ve fixed every part of your house, Lorelai.”

“Oh. Right.” Idiotic of her. “What about clothes?”

“I’m just going to get back in the ones I was wearing. It’s no big deal.”

“It’s a very big deal,” she told him as she heard the water turn off. “The ones you were wearing came through the snowstorm, and then survived bio-warfare in my kitchen. I can find you something else.”

She could almost hear his frown, but he agreed more quickly than she expected. “Yeah, okay. I guess that would be good.”

“Good.” Triumphant, she thought it over. Best chance of success, her stash of ex-boyfriend clothes. Something of Max’s might fit him. “I’ll be right back. Then we can wash yours.”

“Even better.” He knew exactly where she’d be looking for clothes that would fit him. He didn’t have to like it, but it was practical for the moment.

She was back in two minutes, not having much to choose from, prepared to shove the clothes through a crack in the door and avert her eyes. Luke exited the bathroom before she got the chance.

“Thanks,” he said, taking the clothes and giving them a once-over before stepping back inside the bathroom--with nothing but a towel draped low around his waist, still damp all over from the shower.

When he shut the door behind himself again, Lorelai slumped against the wall to fan herself. Wow. Just...wow. That was what was hiding under those flannel shirts all this time?

I mean, sure, she knew he cleaned up nice, but that was compared to his usual baseball cap-burger flipping style. This was a whole new kind of surprise.

What other surprises was Luke hiding?

****

“Next room?” Luke asked once he was done dressing, damp hair curling behind his ears in a way that made her stare just a little too long.

“Lorelai?”

“Sorry.” She smiled, and with a shake of her head, came back to earth. “You really want to dive back into my mess?”

“Sure. Let’s just aim for a less toxic room this time.” He shrugged at her expression. “What else have we got to do except clean and watch movies all day? Unlike you, I’m not used to sitting on my butt for hours watching fake people live their lives.”

“My god, Luke, so dramatic.” Lorelai led the way to her bedroom, then grinned when she realized he was no longer with her and turned to find him hesitating outside the doorway. “You can cross the threshold. I promise, no garlic or crosses to be found here.”

“So I’m a vampire now?” His familiar scowl returned, but he followed her in.

“Well, I wasn’t sure. Why else would you be standing outside like you needed an invitation?” She sat on the only empty corner of her bed and surveyed the space where she’d successfully pulled out half of all her clothes to sort and downsize them.

“Jeez, this is a mess,” Luke said, evading the question. “How much of this stuff do you even wear?”

“Dunno.” Lorelai beamed up at him, pulling a random shirt off the nearest pile. “But does that really matter when the clothes are as awesome as this?”

“It’s got a tongue on it.”

“It’s vintage.”

“It’s old and it has a tongue on it. There is no way you will ever wear that again.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lorelai reached up and began taking off her long-sleeve shirt.

“Hey--” He started to panic before realizing that she was wearing a tank top underneath. She tugged the t-shirt down, beaming triumphantly. Luke’s mouth went dry, despite how hideous the shirt was. It barely fit, clinging tightly to all of Lorelai’s curves.

“What? Look, I’m wearing it.” She crossed her arms, eyes smirking, waiting for his argument, but it didn’t come.

“Yeah.” He swallowed hard. “Yeah, you are.”

“Nothing?” She tilted her head curiously. “Nothing about the tongue, or the frayed seams, or how I’m too old for t-shirts?”

Luke shut his reaction down hard and fast, knowing how perceptive she was when she focused. “Nope. Who am I to judge your fashion choices, anyway?”

Delight spread over her face--not the response he was expecting. He watched it happen, bemused.

“What a great idea! You are exactly the person who should judge my fashion choices!” She nudged him toward the bed, getting him to sit with a gentle shove.

“Huh?”

“New game.” She removed the t-shirt, Luke watching as it landed on the floor, then grabbed a pile of clothes from her closet floor and dumped them at his feet. “I have to sort through all my clothes, right? Decide what to keep, what to toss. Well, how better to utilize your willingness to help than with the always-in-style fashion show?”

“Fashion show.” He wasn’t sure whether to be amused or scared. You never knew with Lorelai.

“Yeah.” She became more excited about the idea the more she thought about it. “It’ll be way more fun than just sorting and piling to infinity, and it’ll give you a real role in the process. Since we both know all you can really do is make comments I’ll ignore anyway, at least this way, I’m giving you a chance to justify them.”

“This is bizarre.”

“Is that a vote against?”

Resigned, Luke shook his head. “No. Just an observation.”

“Great!” She grabbed a handful of items from the top of the pile and headed for her bathroom. “Stay right there. I’ll be right back to strut the catwalk.”

The terrible French accent she added to her words made him chuckle and remember the fashion show she’d walked in with her mother a few years back. He was still grinning at the memory of that when she came back in, wearing a pair of low-rise black jeans, a blue sequined top, and a pink sweater with feathers along the neckline.

She jutted out one hip. “Well, what do you think?”

“First of all, ow--my eyes.” He grimaced, and she frowned.

“No reason to be mean, you know.”

“Not mean. Honest. That sweater looks like a Valentine’s Day goose was killed for the sake of a very poor life choice. And sequins make anybody look like they should be in Vegas.”

“Fine.” She took off the sweater, apparently indifferent to its fate, and let it join the vintage tee. “What about the jeans?”

Without the sweater, some of her stomach was left exposed between the sequined shirt and the jeans. No part of him could honestly protest that.

“Uh, they’re good. The jeans are fine.”

“Huh. Cool. Thanks.” Pleasantly surprised, Lorelai selected her next offerings and offered him a grin. “Okay, gimme a sec.”

She practically skipped off, delighted by their new pastime, completely oblivious to Luke's realization that he'd just set himself up for an afternoon of slow torture in the form of bare skin and clinging fabric.

“No problem,” he said to the empty room. “I’ll be right here.”