#cancelled the subscription right after i was done but i felt like i was gonna suddenly be £65.99 poorer despite it 🫡

[baeshijima]

how i felt before, during, and after the drip marketing

#just genshin <3 #i am so normal about neuvillette i swear #(<- she says like a liar.) #anyway throwing up for the nth time #beloved all my wishes will be saved for u !!! and i hope ur happy i did the picsart free trial just to make that transparent image of u 🐥 #cancelled the subscription right after i was done but i felt like i was gonna suddenly be £65.99 poorer despite it 🫡 #genshin impact #neuvillette

[sssn-neptune-vasilias]

Hey, you don't need to reply to this, but I just wanted to see how you were doing, given the recent news.

Long post I guess because I started typing and couldn't shut the fuck up I guess.

TL;DR Honestly, I'm sad, and I'm tired, and I'm frustrated.

I've been a fan of RoosterTeeth since my friend Mark put me on to RvB in like... 2005? I've been a fan of AH since Michael's Impossible Game RageQuit in... 2011??? RT First was the first subscription service I've ever paid for- before my PS+, before fucking anything- the second I got my credit card in 2013. I've been a RWBY fan from when the Red Trailer first aired at the end of RvB season 10 in 2012. I've been a RT/AH fan for most of my fucking life

I've referred to Kdin as "fugz" because I just thought that was her screenname at the time. Finding out what that name meant to her at the time genuinely makes me want to vomit.

I'm still processing. Shit is still coming out. The fan is still being assaulted, let alone hit.

I remember getting into RT almost two decades ago because they were just a small indie company making silly videogame videos and they genuinely felt like a family. And I know that's fucking silly to think but I was in middle school and impressionable and that was genuinely the image that they put to the public, so why wouldn't I want to believe it? I remember watching RT expand and grow and the RvB crew get even bigger and not just being voices making Halo characters move anymore but faces playing games together. I remember Gavin, Michael and Ray get involved. I donated for LazerTeam. I've watched hundreds of streams. I've watched probably thousands of hours of RT/AH content in my life.

I thought the stuff Micah spoke about would be the worsts things got, but now we're getting everything Kdin's talking about and it's so fucking upsetting and disheartening. And I'm glad she still thinks the CRWBY are good people but like... at this point does it even matter?

I've known RT/AH have been circling the drain for a while now. It's been really fucking obvious to me at least, and I'm p sure I've made a bunch of comments about it over the years. Everything I love about RT has been in a downward spiral. Michael hasn't done RageQuit in years. Gavin and Michael don't do PlayPals anymore. RvB had two abysmal seasons back to back, gen:LOCK season 2 was such an obvious attempt to put a bad taste in everyone's mouth so we'd stop talking about the show so they could cancel it without anyone missing it. RWBY shot the goodwill it'd gathered for having a solid 2 seasons in 6 and 7 (after having an absolutely garbage seasons 4 and 5) in the back of the head with Penny and Ironwood's entire characterization. I'm not at all excited about this stupid JL/RWBY crossover, and I don't think it's gonna make enough money or new RWBY fans to even break even, let alone make much of a profit. WB just dissolved fucking Cartoon Network Studios there's no fucking shot RT survive this.

As far as RWBY goes... I don't know. And at this point, I'm finding it hard to care. RWBY's been one of my favorite shows for a really long time but I kinda just wanna tear away from it so I don't have to deal with the pain of it eventually getting cancelled. I think over 90% of my current friend groups I've made because of RT/AH content. Some of my best and oldest friends I've met because or RWBY or RvB or what have you. I'm glad after all this time I finally got to go to an RTX and meet my friends and cosplay and enjoy myself. But right now... kinda wishing I wasn't an RT fan. Kinda wanting to cancel my First subscription. Kinda wanting to just be done with RWBY and everything else.

Idk, maybe I'll rebrand as a BNHA blog I guess

#The D

[brightgnosis]

Had the energy, so I did a bunch of gardening today to fix all of the squirrel damage. Also sprayed what we had left of the Squirrel Stopper to try and keep them out again; the last two cans we have, for some reason, won't spray. So fingers crossed that what little I had left in the first can was enough 🤞 Maybe for now, at least.

I looked online to see if I could get more since our Tractor Supply has stopped carrying it for some reason- and I can. But it's like double the price of what Tractor Supply carries it for 😬 I really don't want to pay $12 a spray can (plus the shipping) when they used to sell it in store for $5, you know? But it works- and it works well. And gardening without it's nearly impossible at this point ... They're such a menace here ... I may just have to fork over for it in the end if Tractor Supply never gets it back in.

My Husband and I "sat down" over Discord over his break and looked at our bills. We decided to cancel my consult for my Tubal Salpingectomy for now and wait until after we've paid my Hearing Aids off before moving on that again- unless it looks like they may come for sterilization procedures too (on top of Contraception, like they're already trying). In which case we'll haul ass and get it done come hell or high water ... But for now? We don't have a sex life anyways, honestly, and we're pretty happy with that. So there's no need to rush it, and I'm ok with that; I'd honestly rather hear right now anyways.

I also made the decision to cancel my Lunar Bath Ritual subscription. They send a wonderful number of emails each month, and I was really surprised by that. But I just wasn't getting anything out of it while I had it, personally ... It's very Eclectic NeoPagan based and that's just not what I practice or connect with. So I went ahead and cancelled it; we also decided together to "cancel" our DeathWish Coffee subscription now that we can buy it in local stores 9though technically we didn't truly cancel it so much as I'm just pushing back the shipping date because we were grandfathered into the old pricing and I really don't want to lose that if we ever decide to get it back; the new price is so expensive).

Because of that, I went ahead and did a Pay-In-4 setup through Paypal and bought myself some new Head Scarves from the last shop I purchased from instead. Now that I've increased my wardrobe options finally, most of my emotional breakdowns surrounding clothes lately have been centered around the fact that I don't have a headscarf to go with certain niche Items I really want to wear. So I'm really hoping that this goes a long way in reducing the number of breakdowns that I have about clothing again.

I already had Hunter Green, Charcoal (which def looks more Dark Blue and I use it as such), Pink Lemonade, and Teal ... So this time I bought myself their Cream, Sand Cream, Mint, Salmon, and Plum. Then I looked round to try and find a similar one in a proper Red and settled on this one as well.

The final Pay-In-4 total came out to $22 and some change every 2 weeks, which is easily doable for us; though the second payment is quite close to my double Dentist + Hearing Aid payment so 😬 Gonna have to keep an eye on that week. Still.

I'm about halfway through with the art piece of Chava and Adam an the Tree of Life and Death that I drew to replace the old Egyptian Heka piece that someone on Tumblr drew for me several years ago; I felt like it was time to finally change it in the frame, and I'm really happy with how the replacement piece is coming out. It's slow going because of the Neuropathy in my hands, however. But it should still be done by the end of the week if I keep at it.

Trying to occupy myself with small, non-strenuous things after all the gardening; I'm really glad I had the energy for it this morning, but it definitely still wiped me out.

#Personal #Daily Life #Life of a Disabled Homemaker #Alphabet Soup #2022 #Gardening #Garden 2022 #NonTrad Housewife #NonTrad Homemaker #Pagan Homemaker #Pagan Housewife #Veiled Pagan #Verderer #Hearthkeeper #Pagan Homemaking #Queer Homemaker #Queer Homemaking #Queer Housewife #Disabled Homemaker #Disabled Housewife #Disabled Homemaking #Domestic Witch #Domestic Witchcraft #Green Witch #Green Witchcraft #Cottage Witch #Cottage Witchcraft

[laughingmango]

1558w, complete, General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kamila & Sissel (Ghost Trick), Jowd & Sissel (Ghost Trick), Yomiel & Sissel (Ghost Trick) Characters: Sissel (Ghost Trick), Kamila (Ghost Trick), Jowd (Ghost Trick), Yomiel (Ghost Trick) Additional Tags: Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Christmas Presents, Video Game Mechanics, baby engineer at work, professional ghost at work

For @azurefishnets... last year! But what’s a backlog amirite. Now it’s seasonal again!

Kamila shook her head.

“Too bad you don’t get it, Sissel, do you? It would be fun to work on this together.”

Talking to the cat was a tried and true pastime whenever she got a technical break from the absolute concentration her projects required. In that cozy wintry afternoon, brandishing a plastic welder that would be heating up for next minute or so, Kamila looked at her cat, at the pieces of the soon-to-be noise-cancelling earrings spread out on the table, at her apple tea in her favorite mug which had gone cold thirty minutes earlier but everybody knew that it was the thought that counted and that tea was more of a state of mind anyway, and felt at peace with the world.

Sissel could not quite say the same. What didn’t he get? Couldn’t he? He walked onto the table, feigning nonchalance as only a cat (or a ghost) could do, watching her solder three blue plastic rings and fasten them to an earrings base on one side and to a short chain on the other. At the other end of the chain were the blue silicone bits Alma put in her ears at night, the ones Sissel was not allowed to play with. The look of the plastic rings matched that of the silicone plugs – not the same, but they looked good together, as if they were always meant to be part of the same item. Sissel meowed: he got that much. Kamila set down the rings for a moment and sneaked him a scratch on the back, but did not seem to care for a follow-up to her statement.

The earrings were not the only item on the table. A small crawler robot retrofitted from one of Kamila’s early competitions was waiting for the finishing touches – its flashy new red coating was taking entirely too much to dry, as resin coatings are wont to do, and a bottle of ketchup stood next to it. Sissel slipped into the ghost world to paw at the bizarre contraption, still wondering. He understood soldering, he understood knitting, he knew it was bad when acrylics dripped out of their bottles. He understood checkers and had a beginner’s grasp on chess, and knew how to play mean card tricks with a small human help, so all in all, there was no reason to cut him out of the afternoon’s entertainment. He found the knack that made the little robot start and gave it a little ghostly push, out of boredom and contrarianism.

The robot grabbed the ketchup, surveyed the table, found what looked like a dish and was about to squeeze the condiment on Kamila’s tools when she reached for the off button.

“Sissel, no!” she snorted. “Not like that!”

She never could figure out how the cat pulled these pranks, and as a prospective scientist it stung like a personal failure. Still, as a prospective scientist, she had come to the irrefutable conclusion that it was none other than the cat who did it, and it felt like their little secret, and a bit of magic that brought a strange joy to her rigorous world.

“You silly kitten, you know you are my favorite tester in the whole wide world.” She fastened the welder to its holder and gave Sissel her undivided attention. “And I know you are very, very smart.” That netted her some understated purring that may or may not have been intended as a demure agreement. “And that you understand at least half of what I’m saying. The other half is the stuff you don’t want to hear so that doesn’t count.” Busted.

“But these are the presents I am making for my mom and dad, Sissy. We don’t know who your mom and dad are, so we can’t bring them presents!”

Kamila ran a hand through his cold fur, giving her full consideration to the scenario she had only evoked in a burst of mindless musing. “...or should we bring cat treats to the park next week? Maybe they’re still there and I would not want to be rude. I am very grateful to have you, you know.”

Was that all? Sissel headbutted her wrist when he grew tired of pretending to have a heartbeat and breathe, moving away to the other end of the table and staring at her with bright unblinking eyes.

Humans did love to overcomplicate things, really.

Yet that thought, or part of it, remained appealing.

So he set out to work.

It so happened that Jowd shared many traits with the quintessential cat. This was not always a help to Sissel, who had taken to spending most of his time among humans and sometimes felt like he missed out on the finer complexities of both species. It was, however, enough for him to know, deeply and intimately, that the way the detective went on and on about his upcoming work trip overseas was a desperate caterwauling, a call for help. He was so offended by the sheer fact of being expected to hold a speech at some conference that he neglected to share any details about it, or Sissel wasn’t paying attention on the rare occasions when he did, but what was clear was that the sole thought of leaving felt like torture.

Sissel, then, played a waiting game. He would need a stage for his trick: the right moment had to present itself at the police station, among a crowd of Jowd’s colleagues.

It rained; McCaw walked into the atrium and threw the wet plastic wrapping of a snack into the nearby trashcan. Sissel closed the lid when nobody was watching, letting the plastic fall toward the ground; a well-timed loosening of the radiator’s valve blew it away from the trashcan and close to Jowd’s feet. Now – and this was crucial to Sissel’s plans – Jowd had good eyes and lightning-quick reflexes. He would see the perilous transparent slip of plastic and sidestep to avoid it, even gaining a modicum of admiration from the bystanders. It would only garner more sympathy for his plight, then, when an improbable chain of events that began in the dusty spaces above the cupboards made a bowling ball fall on the desk next to where he’d landed, triggering the drawers’ spring-loaded latches at once and throwing all three drawers at Jowd’s calf with considerable strength. The man yowled in pain as he fell over and squinted at the last movement of this drawers disaster: a sheet of wrapping paper and a ribbon somehow flew out of them only to land exactly on his shoulder.

“Doctor’s gonna order some rest for this. You are welcome,” he said through the ghost world. Jowd’s laughter almost tore down the place and so Sissel congratulated himself upon a job well done: his dad had gotten his present.

His other dad would turn out to be a more complicated affair.

Not that anyone else in all his extended families had any claim to the title of “uncomplicated”, ever, but Yomiel remained the uncontested champion in the opposite direction and so Sissel tailed him for a few days, in and out of the ghost world, waiting for inspiration to strike. Yomiel’s new life needed… a dishwasher, a subscription to at least three computer magazines, a book called “Cooking for newbs” (spelling uncertain), a substantial supply of hair gel, a cat-shaped ladle and a cat-printed tie, Sissel learned, none of which were things a ghost cat could provide, unless a ghost cat felt like stooping to ghost crimes.

Rain again. It was a dark and stormy afternoon when Yomiel grabbed an umbrella and got ready to make a run to the convenience store down the corner; Sissel duly followed him inside the umbrella itself. They coasted a pile of junk discarded next to the wall of an abandoned building – broken chairs, a desk, file cabinets, cardboard boxes littered the sidewalk. Nothing special, nothing new. If not for his ghost senses, Sissel would have never given it a second thought. But that presence was there, undoubtedly. So Sissel jumped out of the umbrella and into a fire hydrant, and from there he frantically looked for the control unit of the nearest street lamp.

Sunlight was fading, and the city would soon bask in in its warm artificial lights, but that one street lamp lit up ahead of time to shine a spotlight on the pile of cardboard boxes. Yomiel raised an eyebrow under his shades. The street lamp went out and lit up again. Yomiel shot it a pointed look and approached the boxes underneath.

As he moved one of them aside, a kitten meowed at him, red fur darkened by the relentless rain. It was lost and hungry and had the biggest, roundest paws; Yomiel teared up as he tried to hold it and felt it hold him in turn. He cradled the kitten close to his chest and greeted it with his warmest, most private smile.

The whole street lit up.

“I know it was you, Sissel,” Yomiel whispered to the empty boxes. “You could’ve just told me! Who’s givin’ ya this knack for theatrics?”

“Statistically, you.”

“As if. I’m onto you. But… thank you, my friend.”

“...you are welcome. Just don’t name it after me, will you? Try to break the streak?”

“I’m not making any promises.”

#ghost trick #sissel #yomiel #jowd #kamila #fanfiction

[5-seconds-of-bucky]

All The Kisses

A/N: I really like this one. 

Summary: All the types of kisses you share with Shawn throughout your relationship 

Word Count: 2.2k+

Warnings: Some swearing and brief mentions of an anxiety attack. Very, very fluffy. 

The First Kiss 

You were just sitting next to each other on the ground and doing homework. Music was playing softly from your laptop and not much was said as you both worked on your Chemistry labs. 

“Can you check this equation for me?” Shawn asked, pushing his notebook towards you. He smiled when you looked up from your notebook with big eyes, having not heard what he asked. 

“What?” You brushed a loose strand from your ponytail back. He swore you had never looked cuter. 

“Equation. Check,” he chuckled. 

“Oh, sure.” You scanned over the numbers, erasing a two he had placed in front of Hydrogen, “Hydrogen has a subscript of two when it’s alone, so you don’t need the two in front.”

“Thanks.” His smile was soft and you swore you could have kissed him right then. 

Last First Kiss started playing and you sang along quietly, when Shawn asked you, “Y/N, have you had your first kiss yet?” 

“Shawn, you’re my best friend. Trust me, you’d be the first to know if I did.” You weren’t really fazed by the question, but Shawn seemed somewhat shocked by your answer. 

“Have you been on a date?” 

“Nope.” You rolled your eyes and let out a playful sigh. “Oh, I am such a poor, lonely soul.” You placed your hand to your heart and made a dramatic frown. Shawn laughed. 

“I could be your last first kiss, “ he stated with a glint in his eyes.

“Stop plagiarizing One Direction. Write your own songs.” 

“I have!”

“Exactly! Use them!” You both laughed. Shawn watched you as your face returned to a more restful expression. The hair that fell in front of your face did little to block the small smile still resting on your face. “What are you staring at?”

“Just how beautiful you are.” You blushed profusely. Your best friend who you happened to have a decent sized crush on just called you cute? No way. 

“What are you talking about?” You tried to brush off the comment, but every thought of it made you blush even more. 

“You’re so pretty. I have no idea how you haven’t had your first kiss or even been on a date, but I’m gonna change that.” Before you could respond, his lips were on yours. It was short and sweet, but it left you breathless. 

Shawn started at your shocked expression, worried he had done something wrong. “I’m so sorry, I should have asked-” He was cut off by you cupping his cheeks and pulling him in again. He smiled. Nothing could beat this moment. 

Top of the Head Kisses

“I don’t know how I failed it,” You exclaimed through tears. You were leaning against your car, a hand covering your tearstained face. “I worked so hard.” 

“I know baby. I know,” Shawn said softly as he pulled you into his chest. His right hand went around your waist while his left held your head to his chest. He had seen you study for a whole week. You had gone to the teacher every day after school, having to cancel some of your plans with him. It didn’t make sense that you had spent all this time trying and failed anyways. 

“I hate history,” You mumbled, wrapping your arms around him and pressing you head further into his chest, as if it would keep you safe from the tortuous grade. 

“It’s alright babe. It’s just one grade. It won’t kill you.” “It dropped my grade four points.” 

“It’s all going to work out. We can figure out where you went wrong so you can prepare for the next one, alright?” 

“Okay.” 

You stayed there for a few more minutes, enjoying the company of your boyfriend. He placed his head on top of yours and you smiled. 

“You’re the best boyfriend ever. You know that right?” 

“Yeah.” His smile reached the side of his face when he heard you laugh. “You’re the best girlfriend.” He put his lips on the top of your head, staying there for a second before kissing it. “I love you.” 

“Love you too.” 

~

“Y/N, can you come over here?” Shawn asked from the doorway that lead outside. You were at your parents house and there was a campfire set up outside, waiting for everyone to gather around. 

“Yeah, just let us finish this round,” you said dismissively. You and your brothers were playing Mario Carts and you were about to win when you got hit by someone’s power up. “Who did that?” 

Both of your brothers laughed and you sent a glare in their direction. “You’ve got to be kidding me! How did you win that one?” one of them asked. 

“Skills, baby.”

“One more round.”

“You’re on.”

“Y/N,” Shawn chuckled from the doorway, walking towards your place on the couch.

“What, babe?”

“There’s a fire outside. Come on, let’s go.” The hand he had stuck in his pocket fumbled with the case he had been carrying around for a while. “I have something important to ask.” 

“You can just ask me here.” Your eyes never left the screen in front of you as you talked to him. 

“You have to come outside.” 

“It’s gonna have to wait then.” 

Shawn shook his head. It was going to take a lot to get you outside. “You’re crazy,” was all he mumbled before leaving a kiss on the top of your head. You leaned slightly into him and he wrapped an arm around you. “Love you babe.” He pressed another kiss to your head and walked outside, looking at the perfect proposal scene in front of him. 

Wedding Kisses

He couldn’t take his eyes off of you. From the moment you walked down the aisle to the moment he was told he could kiss the bride, Shawn’s eyes were on you. 

“You may kiss the bride,” Shawn didn’t wait a second, wrapping his arms around you and dipping you before crashing his lips on yours. You were both in fits of giggles afterwards, you telling him that you thought you were going to fall over with how clumsy he was. 

“I would never drop you, my dear,” was the only response he had. It seemed like he couldn’t get enough of you all night either, kissing you every chance he got. 

It took all his willpower not to kiss you during your first dance. It was all he wanted to do, yet he realized that he had all the time in the world to do it. With your head on his shoulder and his head resting on top of yours, he was able to sneak in a few to your temple. He could feel you smile on his shoulder every time he did, and nothing had ever given him a better feeling. 

All too soon, the night was over, but he kept kissing you everywhere he could reach. 

“I’m never going to get tired of this,” he mumbled as you swayed together in your apartment. You were holding each other close, swaying to the music playing from your phone. 

“Me either.” 

Last First Kiss came on, and you both burst into a fit of giggles. 

“Can you believe this is where it started?” you asked, lifting your face from his chest to get a full look at his face. “Six whole years ago.” 

“You were so cute back then.” His head fell back in laughter when you swatted his arm with a fake frown. 

“I was. Too bad I’m so beautiful now.” 

“All the better, my dear. Everything about you is magnificent.” He dipped you and leaned down to kiss you again, smiling as he realized this is how he got to spend the rest of his life. 

Forehead Kisses

“Alright, three, two, one!” He shouted from three rows back. You were at one of the areas Shawn was performing in that night. You thought it would be cool if you jumped off the stage and struck a pose in the air. The stage wasn’t too far off the ground. What could go wrong? 

You jumped as high as you could, sticking both your arms in the air and making a silly face. Everything was fine until you landed. Your feet gave out from under you and you landed hard on your left knee. “Fuck!” 

“Babe,” Shawn ran towards you kneeling down next to you and trying to get you to sit back. “Are you okay? What hurts?” 

“My knee.” You voice came out strained and you hugged it close to your chest. “Holy shit.” 

“It’s alright babe, I’ve got ya.” He carefully picked you up bridal style and carried you backstage to get you checked out. He sat down and laid you across his lap, allowing you back to rest on the armrest of the couch. 

Your face was still contorted in pain, grimacing more when you knee was being inspected. 

“It’s gonna be alright, babe,” Shawn whispered, pressing his lips to your forehead and letting them linger for a second. You curled up closer to him, signifying that you wanted to stay like that. He smiled in adoration and put his lips back to your forehead, staying like that until you were able to stand up and get back to his dressing room. 

~

“Breath with me, baby,” you whispered as you held him close. You took deep breaths, trying to get him to sync with you. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” Soon enough, his breathing became more regulated and you were able to pull back slightly to get a better look at his face. 

He was a mess. His anxiety had been through the roof the past few weeks and tonight was his breaking point. Luckily, you had been there when he needed you and you were able to calm him down. 

“You’re okay,” You said softly, running your fingers through his hair and pushing you lips to his hairline. You left a few pecks there before pulling him down to lay on your chest. 

“You are so strong,” your lips were still pressed to his forehead, “and I am so proud of you.” 

Belly Kisses

“Shawn, he’s kicking!” you shouted from the bedroom, placing your hands on your stomach as you felt the flutters. 

Shawn all but ran to the room, dropping to his knees and placing his hands on your belly to feel. “Oh my gosh. He’s kicking.” His smile reached his ears as he looked up at you. “That’s our kid.”

“That’s our kid,” you confirmed, placing your hands on top of his. 

“I love our little bub. I love you,” He stated simply, closing his eyes and resting his forehead on you belly, taking in the moment. After a few seconds he picked his head up and started blowing raspberries on your belly, causing you to shake with laughter. 

“Shawn!” He was mesmerized by the sight. His beautiful wife, pregnant with their child, laughing like he had just told the funniest joke in the world. He placed a quick kiss to your belly before standing up and cupping your cheeks, kissing you like the night of your wedding. 

Temple Kisses

“Shh, Jack. It’s okay, mommy’s got you.” You said as you rocked your two week old son in his room. It was one in the morning and you were beyond exhausted, but Shawn needed to rest. He had a long day of interviews coming up that day and you didn’t want him to be tired. Of course, Jack had other plans. 

His cries seemed to be intensifying by the minute, leaving you to hope that he wouldn’t disturb Shawn. You felt like you had tried everything. You had fed and changed him. You even went as far to change his pyjamas, hoping that maybe he just didn’t like the material. Nothing seemed to be working. Sometimes, you knew, he just needed his dad. You were hoping that wasn’t the case tonight. 

Your hopes were crushed when you heard soft footsteps coming down the hallway and the door opening slowly. 

“Sorry. I was trying to let you sleep but he won’t stop crying and I don’t know why.” You were close to tears and Shawn could tell that you were frustrated. 

“No, no, it’s okay. Let me try.” He took the wailing baby from your arms and started bouncing to soothe him. It took a few minutes for it to stop, but Jack eventually started to calm down, falling asleep on Shawn’s shoulder. “There we go.” Shawn carefully placed his son back in his crib and turned to look at you. “He just need his daddy tonight.” 

You were almost asleep standing up and Shawn smiled to himself. His perfect little family all in one room. You jumped slightly when you felt his arms wrap around you. 

“You’re such an amazing mom. I hope you know that,” he mumbled into your shoulder. 

“You’re an even better dad.” You turned your head to kiss him on the temple, sliding your head down afterwards to rest on his shoulder. 

He pulled his head up to kiss your temple in return before saying, “I am so lucky to have you two.” You looked up and smiled tiredly, allowing him to see the dark circles under your eyes from multiple nights of interrupted sleep. “Let’s get you to bed, pretty mama. You need some sleep.”

#Shawn Mendes #Shawn Mendes fic #Shawn Mendes fanficiton #Shawn Mendes imagine #Shawn Mendes one shot #Shawn Mendes writing #Dad!Shawn #husband!shawn #boyfriend!Shawn #soft!shawn #Shawn Mendes x reader #Shawn Mendes x Y/N #Y/N #Shawn Mendes fluff #Anna writes

[mgares]

HOW TO BUY A HOUSE - IN 3 EASY STEPS

There is a lot of confusion out there about how to become a Homeowner so I thought I would take a moment and put it into Average Joe speak. That, and in my experience, some people go about it totally backwards which is counter productive to the end goal.

STEP 1. - ASSESS YOUR FINANCES

This is fairly simple. Eliminate non-essentials from your spending budget and stick it in the piggy bank. Modify spending habits to generate savings. Make short-term lifestyle changes.

It's just temporary and if canceling monthly memberships (Netflix, Gyms, Any Subscriptions), adjusting your shopping habits [I got some great tips for this], or eliminating other non-essential spending allows you to keep more money in your pocket to get a home versus flushing rent dollars down the proverbial toilet? Bit of a no-brainer if you ask me.

Bottom line is you have to have money ready-to-hand for the transaction. Even with the "zero down" options like VA and some USDA loans; just to name a couple.

There are inspections, appraisals, escrow funds, repairs, home warranty policies, property taxes, closing costs, and other such considerations that must be paid in order to get a home of your own.

"Do Not Save What Is Left After Spending; Instead Spend What is Left After Saving" - Warren Buffett

Figure out what kind of a down payment your financial situation will allow for. The more, the better, but very few people I know got 20% of the purchase price [a.k.a. - conventional/bank loan] sitting around collecting dust. Good news is you don't necessarily have to have that much.

One of the most common loans is a FHA that only asks for 3-5% down AND there are down payment assistance programs out there if you are really Stuck Like Chuck when it comes to finances. NOTE: This does NOT mean they are going to give you ALL of your down payment; you gotta have some chips in that poker game too.

I like to recommend that people shoot for at least 6-8% of the purchase price of the "kind of home they want" just to make sure all the bases are covered - down payment AND cost(s) of the transaction. Folks, that's a lesser down payment than Owner Finance options for the same "kind of home" as Owners generally ask for 10-15% down.

This total can be a combination of self-savings, down payment assistance, assets that can be used as collateral against the loan, monetary or tangible gifts from friends/family members in some few cases, and more.

Each person is unique and different in how that 6-8% manifests and lenders can vary in what form(s) of down payment they will accept.

EXAMPLE:

Purchase Price: $150k

FHA Down Pymt (3-5%): $4,500 - $7,500

Other Cost(s): (3% +/-): $4,500

Total Savings Needed: $9,000 - $12,000

Kill some bills, sell your "junk" - we all got crap laying around the house we don't use worth money in various amounts - and modify spending habits in a positive manner.

If you are a two car family... can you get by with just one vehicle on a temporary basis [turn that car, and its bills, "into" a house]? Perhaps you have a skill set or piece of equipment that can earn you extra cash here and there on your terms? What changes to your lifestyle can you make that will put another dime or dollar into that kitty bucket?

Finally, do whatever it is you need to do to put those greenbacks into a savings method you can stick with. Whether that is a traditional banking institution or an old shoe box under the bed; you do you. If this means you have to ask someone in a position of trust to hold it so you don't spend it? Guess what you should consider doing?

STEP 2. - TALK TO LENDERS

Let's talk about the "When" of contacting a lender. The only true answer to "When" is... When You Are Ready and only you know how Ready you feel.

I've had clients express the sheer dread they felt about reaching out to a lender and it's an understandable fear. One of my people even said that they felt applying to lenders and having them see their credit condition was akin to stripping naked in front of a total stranger.

But, and as I told my client... think of it like going to the doctor for a full physical exam. Hospital gown over your birthday suit and all. Lenders are professionals there to do a job. They do NOT judge or speculate just because they have intimate knowledge of or about you.

If you suspect you may have some homework to do, credit wise, then it's better to contact a lender sooner rather than later. This allows you to get a game plan together and knock out credit related targets while you are saving funds for your down payment goal. Once completed, you are able to resume your application with confidence moving forward.

"Everything You Want Is On The Other Side of Fear" - Jack Canefield

However, if you are one of the few who feel their credit profile will be a "non-issue" then my suggestion becomes waiting to speak to lenders until you have most, if not all, of your down payment goal met.

When applying to a lender always ask if they perform a Soft or Hard inquiry against your credit report. Most of the lenders I know [and I will list two of my favorites for you here in a second] will execute a Soft Credit Inquiry to determine credit worthiness. This Soft Inquiry does not impact or affect your credit score - should such be a matter of concern to you.

Something else I've noticed is that people don't seem to understand shopping for lender is very much like shopping for an automobile. The overall requirements of any one particular lender (or dealership) can be totally different from a fellow lender's (or dealership's).

Just because one says "No" does not mean they will all will say "No". And even if the first lender tells you "Yes"... I would still encourage you to apply to more than one who does Soft Inquiries. Compare apples to oranges to find the best fit for your home purchasing needs by reviewing interest rates, terms of repayment, mutual rights and remedies, and so on and so forth.

Only after you have secured lender approval (which may be conditional based on various factors) and they have given you the green light to shop up to the amount of $X.00 do you move on to Step 3.

STEP 3 - FIND YOUR REALTOR

The vast majority of the population feels the path to homeownership is "finding the home and then buying it" - through a Real Estate agent. This is NOT the case.

Selecting an agent to help navigate you through the complexities of The Offer and Purchase process is the absolute LAST step to be taken.

What Happens When You Do It Backwards:

You shop for, and find, that PERFECT place and then reach out to an an agent or contact the website that is listing that property. The agent involved determines you haven't spoken with a lender and may now recommend one to get the process started.

Just to let you know... most of us agents are unable to do much of anything at this point without your having secured a lender first. There are some agents out there who are also qualified mortgage consultants but I, personally, haven't met one yet so I don't know how they work.

At this point the agent may also put you on an e-mailer list that scouts the MLS's and regularly sends you properties "matching" the ideal home that you originally asked about.

Why?

Because "that home may not still be there when you are in a position to buy". That's agent speak for... this is gonna take a bit of second and that property will most likely have sold by the time we get you lender approved.

I can't emphasize enough the fact that we agents don't "GET" you that house - the lender does that by providing the loan to pay for it. Us agents help you shop for a home and protect your best interests when buying it.

We deal with the butt-ton of technical paperwork coming/going from every which-a-way at all hours of the day, manage the contract negotiations, handle scheduling and execution of services by professional providers involved in the transaction, are your personal defacto counselor/moral support during the stress mess of buying, and more. None of which can be done until a lender gives us the green light to begin.

Well, most folks aren't mentally or emotionally prepared to reach out to said lender on the fly like this. Fears of "what that lender will see" or personal misgivings about "not qualifying" due to credit condition can halt the whole process at this point. Perhaps leaving you with negative emotions about the whole experience thus far.

But, for the sake of argument let's say you muster up the courage to reach out to a lender anyway. You'll discover that they are people too - most with a generous heart and helpful personality.

You might even discover that your credit was nowhere near as bad as you had built it up in your mind to be. Or, the lender may come back with a little homework for you. Take care of This and That and we'll be able to get you into a home.

The "whammy" of doing it in reverse order like this is that the lender will also share that you will need X thousands of dollars as a down payment to make that happen. Talk about a case of sticker shock!

Obviously, this can be discouraging and disheartening. To overcome one obstacle only run smack dab into another you weren't prepared to tackle? It may start to feel like you are looking up the side of a mountain, the goal of owning a home clearly in your line of sight, but you lack the climbing equipment (not to mention the funds to acquire such) to reach the summit.

It may feel like "that's it, game over" at this point. I know because I, too, approached home ownership azz-backwards like this before I became a Realtor. Felt like someone had ripped a bit of my soul away and left me frustrated and crying inside my heart and mind.

DON'T give up on yourself or your dream of home ownership. Back up, regroup, and attack that goal again. This time, in the correct sequence of events.

"You May Have To Fight A Battle More Than Once To Win It" - Margaret Thatcher

Do this and I promise you that there will be no better feeling in the world than those you experience at the closing table when you are finally handed the keys to your very own home.

Disclaimer: Opinion Editorial for educational and/or informational purposes. Content presented is deemed accurate and/or reliable at the time of authorship. Any errors or omissions present in material(s) are unintentional. You are encouraged to execute your own research.

#MGARES #VirtualPropertyRealty.com #homegoals #househunting #homebuying #realestate #realestateagent

[greenninjagal-blog]

It’s Always Been This Way (Hasn’t It?)pt2

Hello! Did someone order 52 pages of Virgil angst, gayness, and magical shenanigans? If you missed the prologue you can find it right [here]!

Summary: After deciding not to go back to Hogwarts for their final year of school, Virgil, Roman, Patton, and Logan all enjoy living together in their quiet muggle neighborhood and doing small tasks for the Order. It would be nice, Virgil thinks, if he wasn’t actively lying to their faces every day.

Also if the Neo Death Eaters weren’t trying to kill his friends.

Words: 21,080 (and no thats not some joke)

Read on AO3 ||  My General Writing Masterlist

Chapter One: Liar, Liar (House On Fire)

“This is absolute bullshit and they know it!” Virgil yells to no one, as he slams the morning paper on the table.

From somewhere not far away, Patton’s voice calls out “language”, but Virgil doesn’t really register it at all. He’s too busy reading over the front page article again as if he missed something the previous four times he had read it. He flicks his wand (Cypress, 9 inches, semi flexible) across the kitchen with barely a thought which makes the coffee pot start up and his favored mug place itself under it.

It’s somewhere past eight in the morning, and Virgil still feels drowsy which probably isn’t helping his mood at all. He hasn’t gotten a full night's rest in at least three years, and he doesn’t expect to get it for another ten years. And that’s only if his half muggle born ass survives that long.

He snarls at the paper again, slamming a fist on the table hard enough that the stinging goes all the way up his arm to the back of his eyes, and that in turn ruffles the owl on the perch in the corner out of its trance.

“Sorry Logan.” Virgil breathes in deep and snarls it back out.

The horned owl titters on the perch turning towards him, blinks twice in a sophisticated way that’s made doubly effective by the strange rectangular pattern around its eyes, and then reaches out its wings. With powerful gust and a blur of brown, white, and black feathers, the animal leaps into the air. It morphs with precision, a complex series of motions that elongates its body, shrinks the eyes, and changes the number of bones under its feathers all together. Its fascinating to watch: in less than a second the air is filled by a stern looking seventeen year old with square glasses, a sharp nose, and matted dark hair that rarely appears to have a strand out of place.

But then again, Virgil thinks its fascinating every time Logan breaks the law at all. There’s something about seeing a man so rule orientated like Logan breaking those very same rules that makes Virgil’s heart flutter in that entirely unhelpful way.

“Salutations, Virgil,” Logan says, sounding exactly like he had just swallowed a muggle computer. “May I inquire what has your frustrations today?”

Virgil huffs, sliding the paper across the table for his friend. “See for yourself.”

Logan picks it up at the same time as Virgil flicks his wand at his mug and exchanges it for the one Logan favored. Logan’s still frowning at the article when both the cups come levitating through the air and set themselves on the table between them.

The Daily Prophet had never been Virgil’s favorite source of information. It didn’t take a genius to know when a reporter was being paid to report--or not report-- something. Not to mention it was practically controlled by the Ministry and that it was more concerned with sales than with accuracy.

Still, Virgil is too much of a sucker for routine to cancel his subscription to the utter nonsense. Which leads him to mornings such as this: grumbling into his coffee mug, with his illegal animagus of a friend across from him equally displeased and showing it in the way his eyebrows furrow and his thin lips squeeze together, with Patton in the other room somewhere, probably stress cleaning again (which is marginally better than when he’s stress eating), and Roman out on his morning jog through the quiet muggle neighborhood they called their own.

It’s strange, Virgil thinks, knowing that none of their neighbors are aware of the nuclear bombs that rest in each of their pockets disguised as sticks that they might have picked up in the park last Saturday.

It’s strange, Virgil thinks, that its September fourth and none of them are at Hogwarts, or even intending on going to the esteemed magic school that had been their homes for six years prior.

It’s strange, Virgil thinks, knowing that Dee’s family had helped finance the Dark Lady's rise to political power and then had started murdering muggles in distant countries and the Daily Prophet was refusing to acknowledge any of it at all.

They’d all be seventh years this year, completing the second half of their courses and preparing for the NEWTS and practicing their nonverbal spells. And maybe Virgil’s spent too much time in his own head this summer because he misses going the kitchens and tapping out the rhythmic pattern of “Helga Hufflepuff” on the barrel that would open up to the soft, cozy, and quiet common room. From the very first moment he had done it himself, Virgil had always felt a bit like he was walking home when he entered the Hufflepuff dorms, as ridiculous a notion as it was. (And he’d die before he’d admit that to anyone else.)

But even here, in Roman’s semi-modest muggle neighborhood, it feels a bit like that. He can’t pretend that he doesn’t like waking up and seeing those three again and again and again. He doesn’t want to either.

He feels guilty about it. A whole lot of guilty. For the first month of them living together, Virgil hadn’t been able to sleep at all, because he’d been so afraid of waking up, and finding the spell over them had broken.

Virgil can survive losing a lot-- he’s done it before with his mother, his home, his holidays, his sanity (on Thursdays, specifically),-- he doesn’t think he can survive losing them too. And that’s partially his fault, he supposes: his defining character trait has always been that fierce loyalty, with a more than a dash of selfishness that his mother hadn’t managed to iron out of him. 

He loves the spell that was over them. He also hates that he loves the spell that was over them.

The second they found out it would be over and they’d never forgive him for using them like stepping stones.

His fingers tighten around the mug at the spiral of his own thoughts. Logan’s eyes flick up from his reading to look at him, and Virgil wished he knew what that sort of look meant. If they had actually been friends for five years, he probably would have known.

Its a little late to ask.

It doesn’t matter much because the next moment the front door opens with a loud boom and a louder voice sings the ending line of some Disney song that Virgil recognizes only because it had been in the back of his head for three days straight. (That song from that night when the four of them had curled up in the living room and Roman had tugged him into a cuddle and then forgotten to let go of him before he fell asleep with his head on Virgil’s shoulder and-- and he was blushing just thinking about it.)

Virgil makes a mistake of swallowing his coffee at the same time as Roman Prince comes tromping into the kitchen after his morning run. And hell, if it didn’t take every single muscle in his body to keep from spitting his drink back up.

Virgil has seen Roman come back from runs before: it was part of his routine that he rarely switched up and he had admitted to Virgil once that it was when he did his best thinking. Alone with his music in his ear, his wand in his pocket, and the rhythmic pounding of his sneakers on the pavement-- Virgil could see how it was appealing. If it didn’t require getting up so early, or going outside, or like...exercising, Virgil would have totally been down to run with him. 

But the way that Roman comes into the room-- his shirt in his hands, instead of on his body like a normal person, glistening with sweat that seemed to drip off every single muscle which was only emphasized by the smug look on his face, his eyes sparking with his endorphins running rampid and his face still flushed from his workout--like he knew, the little shit, knew that he was making Virgil short circuit by looking like that.

Virgil swallows his coffee, with his hands around his mug so tightly he thinks it might take a crowbar or diffindo to get them apart.

Logan turns into an owl again.

(Animals don’t feel emotions quite like humans, Logan had said once and Virgil has never been able to get over that particular jealousy.)

“What's the matter, Morgan le Fretful?” Roman asks with that shit eating grin of his that, by itself, can turn Virgil’s thought process into a first graders string art project. That smile coupled with his gleaming abs and Virgil’s complete and utter gayness? Oh he’s down for the count and out of the game all together.

“Boo,” Virgil manages, “Weak.”

“I think it was a good one!” Roman responds so blithe and warm that Virgil wonders if the sun came to earth for the day. Logan flutters his feathers, which only makes Roman laugh more.

“Put on a shirt, Princey,” Virgil says, deliberately not looking at him as he says it. He steals the paper back from Logan’s place, and pretends to find the articles in it interesting and not at all offensive. 

"And if I don't?" Roman's wiggling his eyebrows and Virgil can tell because the picture of Celestina Warbeck (the famed Singing Sorceress, whom Roman had once said should be the next Disney Princess) was blushing furiously and waving her face in her article.

Virgil glares at the singer and she gives him a wink like she knows exactly what his heart is doing in his chest. He changes pages as fast as he can, grabs his mug and his wand in one hand, and does not look up at Roman.

"If you don't, Patton's gonna have a hard time putting out the Bluebell flames I'm gonna--"

Virgil stops mid sentence as his eyes catch on a familiar face on the page. A face he hadn't seen in a year, but saw each and every time he had a nightmare. The paper crinkled in his hand.

"Virgil?" Roman says playfulness gone. "If it's really that much of a bother I'll put it on--"

Virgil blinks once, twice, and he swallows hard. "What? No its-- Its fine. I don't care." He folds the paper and sticks it under his arm as he convinces himself to keep breathing.

Roman stares at him (shirt around his neck like hawaiian lei). Logan gives a ruffle of feathers and touches down at the edge of the table next to Virgil's elbow. Despite being a bird, and despite the fact the markings around his eyes only look like glasses, the gaze he holds is sophisticated and knowing. Virgil refuses to look at him, at either of them. He finds a spot just over Roman’s shoulder to stare at in conviction.

"I'm fine," Virgil says again, as if that will convince them. 

"You're clearly not." Logan's voice says and Virgil just barely restrains himself from batting the glasses off his face. (When the first animagus was done, why didn't they included a sound with their morphing? A bell ringing? A tumblr notification noise? Something???)

"Yeah, last time you acted like this after reading the paper, you disappeared for a day, without explanation." Roman says (and Virgil doesn't flinch, does not, does not), "So to prevent Patton from worrying all day, I'm gonna wait for an answer that's the truth."

"It is the truth!" Virgil responds. And its not a lie. Not a whole lie. Barely a partial lie. Its nothing compared to the other lies he's been telling.

And when neither of them fall for it, he lets out a defeated breath. "You guys remember Professor Remus Dukeson?"

Roman snorts, "Crazy Divination teacher? The one who ate a physical teacup in third year?”

Logan picks up a feather from the table, one of his own feathers, and twists it in his fingers, “What about him, Virgil?”

“Do you know what Alstroemeria flowers represent?”

Virgil unfolds the paper from under his arm, “He’s dead.”

Virgil doesn’t expect them to understand. He can’t expect them to. Logan thought Divination was a waste of school funds. It was the only class he didn’t even attempt to master. And Roman and Professor Remus never once got along. After the disaster of third year Roman had dropped Divination like it had been going out of style, and maybe it had. By fourth year only half the class had stuck around. 

And Virgil had been one of them.

He hadn’t been particularly good at it: he didn’t like his tea without sugar, the crystal balls never once filled with smoke for him, and he mixed up the head and life lines on his during the Palmistry portion of his OWLs despite having had the class for three whole years by then. Professor Remus had mentioned he had a latent talent once upon a time, but the man had also said that Roman was going to cast a forbidden curse at Virgil and Logan was going to win a duel with Professor Sanders, so Virgil hadn’t put much merit in his words.

But seeing the teachers face, his smirking mouth, his mustache that always had something in it, and even seeing his picture shuffling side to side as he was trying to stripe which unfortunately was not a new phenomenon to anyone who took his class...seeing Professor Remus in the Obituaries with the cause of death being labeled as an unsolvable murder? Oh, there was something cold about that, something that makes Virgil’s empty stomach churn and his head feel warm, and his fingers itch for the coin in the secret pocket over his heart. 

Theres a flash of red in the corner of his eye and Virgil freezes, but in the end its just Roman tugging his shirt over his head, and pushing back his sweat drenched bangs. He’s frowning, as people do when they hear someone died.

“Oh man,” Roman says, “That’s pretty awful. I mean he was a terrible teacher, but I never wanted to see him dead.”

“Agreed,” Logan says. He flips the paper to read the small written eulogy himself. “I wonder who the new teacher in his place is?”

“Maybe they brought back Trelawney?” Roman suggests.

And just like that the topic is gone and Remus Dukeson is forgotten. Virgil wishes that his right hand would stop feeling like someone had stabbed him with a thousand needles in the meantime, please and thanks.

Listening to them feels a lot like they’re standing on opposite sides of a one-way glass wall. They keep talking, the topic gone, and in a few minutes Virgil’s little freak out will have been forgotten to them. Virgil thinks he should be thankful for that: with his life on the line he really doesn’t need them to be prodding into why exactly crazy Remus Dukeson’s death matters all that much.

Crazy Remus Dukeson who would have been the only one who could have helped him out of the hole he’d been digging for himself for the past two years. But if he was dead, then there was no one left who could vouch for him when all of this was over, no one who would be able to stand in a court room and say without a doubt that Virgil had done the only thing he could have done, no one who would want to believe Virgil was a good guy.

And, of course, Logan was not stupid in any manner. If past memories hadn’t secured such a reaction as his as one of normality, then surely he would have put two and two together. Surely if he hadn’t had five years of false memories under his belt he would have realized that Virgil was hiding something behind that glass mirror of his, and that it was bad and evil and going to get them killed.

Virgil slips out of the room about the same time as Roman and Logan start arguing over whether Divination should even be a course offered at school (a debate of which has been ongoing for three years now). Part of him wants to be sad that it's so easy to just fade away from and exit the room without making them even turn from each other.

But Virgil knows how Roman and Logan stare at each other when they get into a debate, how everyone stares at Logan when he gets filled with that prim-and-proper, fuck-you fire. Outside of seeing him break the laws with ease, watching Logan get passionate is one of Virgil’s favorite sights. (Even if the first memory of it that Virgil has also includes Logan giving him a bloody nose and Patton crying--) 

Roman isn’t any different. That’s why he purposely eggs the ravenclaw on, and then stares stupidly at Logan’s flushed cheeks with a cocky smirk that is absolutely impossible for Virgil to witness when the other still hasn’t showered from his run.

So really its for his own sanity that he manages to escape the room when he does.

***

Virgil is coming down from his room at a quarter after four when Patton assaults him with the brightest wand-lighting charm Virgil has ever seen performed. 

“Pat! Fuck!” Virgil stumbles back on the stairs covering his eyes against the white light. “Warn a dude!”

“Virgil!” Patton yelps, “Language!” But he giggling far too much for it to come out stern. Virgil feels the other boy batting his hands away from his face, “Stop, stop that, Virgil!”

Virgil squints past the glare, “What are you--”

“Smile!”

Then there's a flash of light even brighter than Patton’s wand followed by a puff of purple smoke that practically spelled out what was going on.

Virgil coughs, waving off the smoke while Patton removes the wizard polaroid photo from his camera. His brain is working overtime trying to remember what holiday it is because Patton never breaks the camera out unless its an important date. But Virgil had his calendar in the room marked with all their birthdays, and the major and minor national holidays--magic and muggle alike because Patton had started crying the last time they forgot to tell him about Arbor Day and Virgil wasn’t ready for that to happen again in this lifetime or the next or the one after that. He’s even marked the full moon, because he was pretty sure the girl from the public library was a werewolf and didn’t want to accidentally wander outside if she missed a potion on one of those nights.

“Pat,” Virgil says in a sort of defeated, anxiety ridden tone. “What’s going on? Who’s birthday--”

Patton just laughs at him, and Virgil has to shut up at that. Patton’s laugh was like a waterfall, like bells chiming, like angels signing. Virgil would rather pitch himself from the Astronomy Tower than miss any second of his glorious happiness. 

Its unhealthy. Its gonna be the end of him.

Virgil can’t help but smile at the other’s toothy grin. And if he gets a hug out of it? Well, someone once mentioned that that Virgil was touch starved, so that’s the reason he melts at Patton’s touch.

Patton shows him the picture without relinquishing any hold on him. Somehow that leads to them stumbling around on the stairs until Virgil’s sitting and Patton’s basically in his lap, fuck. But Patton doesn’t even seem to notice at all.

“It’s no one’s birthday!” Patton says, “I just was cleaning up earlier and I came across a bunch of photos from school!”

And just like that Virgil’s short lived happiness evaporates. Dread settles on his shoulders like a cloak, and anxiety wriggles straight down his throat to grip his pulsating heart. “Oh?”

It comes out too innocent. Patton doesn’t notice.

“Yeah! I got so many pictures of Logan and Roman and Me! I used to carry this camera around everywhere! Don’t you remember?”

Virgil remembers. He remembers it very well. Especially when he can see the crack on the side where the flash bulb hooked on before he had accio-ed it right out of Patton’s hands in second year and tossed it back and forth with Dee until even Logan had come to Patton’s defense. Especially when Logan had called all three of them childish and then Dee had laughed some sort of nasty laugh and tossed the camera right over the edge of the moving staircase, before linking hands with Virgil and dragging him out to the quidditch pitch for the rest of the time before dinner.

Virgil mentions none of this. “Yeah? What about it?”

Patton waves the photo in his face and, really, it's a pretty terrible photo of him. He didn't even know skin could be that pale and his hair is sticking up from where he had been running a hand through it all evening, and his irises were red from staring directly into the flash.

“I saw that we don’t have any pictures with you in them!” Patton sighed, “It’s terrible! You’ve been our friend for so many years! I can’t believe that you aren’t in any of our pictures!”

Virgil forces himself to keep smiling. It hurts his cheeks. “Well you know me…”

“So we have to take a bunch of pictures right now!”

Patton sets those blue eyes of his on him, and Virgil cannot believe that he’s 100% wizard. Somewhere someone in his family line had to be part selkie because those are definitely baby seal eyes, and who the fuck is gonna say no to them? Not Virgil!

“Okay,” Virgil says. “Alright sure, whatever you want.”

And he means it. He’d give Patton all the stars in the universe if he didn’t think removing them would make Logan lose his shit about order and necessity.

Besides Virgil has just as few photos of them as Patton has of him. So when the photo session is over and Patton’s hair was dusted purple and Virgil’s eyes hurt from the brightness and they were both crying from laughter, Virgil makes sure to snag one of the better photos for his own room.

(It was always so easy to laugh with Patton, so easy, nearly too easy. But that was okay for now.)

“Oh! I almost forgot!” Patton says, looking up from his glistening stack of pictures suddenly, “The Order is having a meeting next week.”

“Oh?” Virgil swallows nervously, “you mean like, having a meeting, here?” He folds the picture of him and Patton in his pocket, running the edge of the photo between his nail and the skin under it. (He’s pretty sure the photo version of Patton is talking the photo version of himself out of a panic attack, but he disregards it.) His other hand comes to his mouth, and he nips away at the black chipped nail polish. 

Patton shakes his head, and Virgil can’t but help a sigh of relief. “Nope! No worries, kiddo! Thomas-- wow, it sure is silly to call him by his first name!-- Professor Sanders and I talked about how uncomfortable you are with anyone new in the house, so instead we agreed that it was easier for us to go to him to give our reports!”

Patton hums looking at another picture, where he had magicked up some cat ears for the two of them. “Plus it would be a pain to have to undo all those charms you set up for one measely meeting!”

“Cool,” Virgil says.

It's not really, because Virgil hates leaving the house, hates stepping into an area that could so easily be compromised, hates when he can’t be sure if he’s leading his friends into a trap or if he’s just being paranoid again. But that’s definitely better than inviting people, even the Order, into the house that Virgil had made sure was their safe haven.

But Patton takes his quietness with grace. He gives up one of his blinding smiles and Virgil is vividly reminded of how pretty he looks like this. Virgil knows that the secrets he’s keeping from them are unforgivable, knows what they did to the trio of boys is terrible and deplorable and shameful. Despite that, Virgil can’t help but feel...relief that Patton is smiling like this.

Patton doesn’t remember why he should never smile at Virgil, doesn’t remember the year after year of Virgil tearing him down, doesn’t remember what Virgil and Dee did to him. And Virgil is selfish enough to be grateful for that.

“Oh would you look at the time!” Patton says brightly, “I better go start dinner before Roman gets into the pantry again! Are you going to be joining us, Vee?”

Virgil nods, even though he doesn’t really catch whats being said to him.

“Yay!” Patton holds his new pictures to his chest, “I’ll call you when its ready then! Love you, VeeVee!”

He says it so effortlessly.

Virgil wishes it didn’t feel like a snake wrapping around his chest and squeezing the breath right out of him. Patton pops back down the stairs, leaving a cold empty space in Virgil’s lap where he used to be. He jumps the last step and gives one last wave to Virgil as he turns the corner--

“Hey, uh, Pat?” Virgil says at the last second.

Patton hums to show he’s listening, even though he’s still flipping through their pictures. “Yeah, kiddo?”

“Will Remy be there?”

Patton blinks and looks up the stairs at him. Virgil’s nails dig into the banister. Something flickers in the Ravenclaws eyes, confusion or pity. Virgil’s not sure there’s a difference at this point.

“Remy? Oh! You mean the Ravenclaw that joined the Order the year before us!” Patton shuffles the photos with a smile, “And you mean at the Order meeting, right?” He tilts his head to the side as he thinks, before shrugging and offering, “I’m not sure!”

Virgil breathes like he’s a drowned man finally come up from the water. “Uh, cool! That’s cool.”

The itch to recheck his charms hits him then. Like being trampled by a Mountain Troll.

Remy’s not a threat, Virgil tells himself.

Except that he is. Virgil had met the Ravenclaw twice before, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t acutely aware that Remy was a very skilled Legilimens. 

And the last thing Virgil needs right now is someone poking around in his head. Virgil’s seen first hand what a Legilimens can do to someone: Patton looks at him with a smile instead of with tears, Roman challenges him to duels over the spot on the couch rather than to the death, Logan has no clue how attractive he looks angry out of his mind and giving people nosebleeds with his barefists.

“I do.”

No, Virgil doesn’t need someone looking in his memories, even at a glance. Not now, not when they’ve come so far and the Order is so, so very close to being able to combat the Dark Lady before she takes over the Ministry of Magic.

At best, he’ll be labeled a Neo-Death Eater. At worst, no one will ask any questions and they’ll just kill him without hesitation.

He needs to check the charms on the house, because that’s something other that just sitting on a staircase in the center of the house and having a break down where one of the others will see him.

Virgil launches himself to his feet and takes the six stairs upwards two at a time. He runs his fingers over the wall as he goes, picking at the peeling wallpaper that none of them have taken the time to fix yet. There are pictures of baby Roman and his muggle family at the beach on the walls and classical music coming from beyond the closed door of Logan’s room. Virgil moves beyond it all to his room at the end of the hall.

Well he calls it his room, and so do the others. Virgil thinks they might be a little upset if they ventured into the room that Roman had given him and found it was nearly the same as it had been at the beginning of summer break two years ago.

The window facing the street had the blinds drawn and a thick layer of dust over the windowsill because Virgil was not in the process of airing his dirty laundry or his room. The bed was neatly tucked in from his routine habit, the floor was clean and clear, his extra shoes lined up at the foot of the bed so he couldn't trip over them in the night--those were things he did to remember his mother; she always did like it when he kept his room neat. He had a total of eight outfits in the closet, which he was sure if Roman knew about he'd have a heart attack. So far Virgil had avoiding the issue by magically changing the shade of black in his shirts every other day.

The only things that Virgil had brought into the room that weren't absolutely necessary for him to have was that calendar on his wall, a collection of seventh year textbooks he had bought himself even though he wasn't going to school, his school trunk that he hadn't touched since getting off the train last year, and now, a picture of him and Patton making silly faces and laughing (very happy to be unfolded).

He slips out his wand and wanders towards the window.

The spells are all over the house, on every window, over every wall, under every carpet. Roman had put the first layer on himself when he was sixteen, and later when he, Patton, Logan, and Virgil had been inducted into the Order of the Phoenix, Thomas Sanders had come over and reapplied more of them. Once the Transfiguration Teacher had finished, Virgil had then moved in and quietly applied his own.

They were subtle differences in magic, in skill, in finesse. Virgil had smoothed over the rough edges and connected the corners that no one else might have noticed if they hadn’t gone looking for them. Every full moon Virgil had snuck around quietly checking the magic cloaking spell and then muggle deterrent spell and the silencing spells---

Needless to say the one time the girl scouts had rang the doorbell, Virgil had nearly had a heart attack. Patton had bought ten boxes of cookies with Roman’s money before Logan had managed to get Virgil to put his wand away.

Virgil had obsessively checked the spells after the girls had left until he found the loophole that had allowed the girls to get all the way to their front door. By the time he found it dinner had gone cold and only Logan was left awake to witness Virgil trip down the stairs in his haste to fix it.

Roman hadn’t even known he had been adding spells at all until Logan had tried to floo Remy Dormire into the house.

So Virgil’s first time meeting the legilimens is really not a good one. There had been something about the way that Remy had looked at him while Roman gave him the “dude what in Merlin’s name??” speech that made Virgil uneasy. Something about the way that a smile had flickered across Remy’s face and he sipped on his homemade tea that only Patton had touched, something about the way that Virgil felt like Remy had gotten inside his head without him drawing his wand, something about the way that Remy had said “It’s all cool hun! Paranoia is all part of the game!”, which made it sound like Virgil was overreacting yet again.

Something about the guy feels wrong to Virgil.

So he adds more charms to the house, ones he’s sure no one but himself and the trio of boys he lives with can get through.

It doesn’t feel like enough.

And in the end, he's right about that.

***

Their role in the Order is small really. They’re all too young to be doing anything important like infiltrating the Ministry-- except Logan, who despite choosing not to graduate from the esteemed magic school had been offered several internships over the summer which he had denied. Patton’s Uncle Kiddel had been very adamant that Patton be as far removed from danger as he could get, and while Roman had been a bit bummed at the lack of action he had jumped at a chance to offer his family’s house for their activities while his parents took an extended vacation to some place that Virgil doesn’t remember.

The combination of parents between the four of them is depressing: Roman’s muggle parents are unreachable, Patton’s are dead, Logan’s Dad took his mom to a safe place in another country, and Virgil’s mom… well, there’s an understanding between the four of them not to bring up parents unless they were trying to bring the mood down to rock bottom.

So really they are just four seventeen year olds living in the house together. Roman monitors the muggles near them, Logan handles correspondence between certain branches of the Order (although Virgil suspects that Thomas Sanders fields some of the letters before they get to them). Patton monitors the wizarding world. Virgil exists to be anxious on the edge of their consciousnesses.

He doesn’t have a job title really, but Virgil is the one who does his best to keep the rest of them alive and safe and not killing each other (which, surprisingly, happens at least once a week, when Roman gets tired of having no logical reason to practice magic and then starts charming things in the house that shouldn’t be charmed, when Logan runs out of work to do and restlessly snaps at them until a fight starts, when Patton gets too far in his head about what would happen if the Dark Lady manages to win against them and refuses to let any of them leave the room lest they disappear on him--)

So their part of the Order’s functions are minuscule. 

Virgil doesn’t see why they have to go at all, but he goes with Patton, Logan, and Roman to the Order meeting all the same. The location they pick is a townhouse that magically doesn’t exist until they need it to. When it does exist, its across the country so they take the brooms there, which makes Roman so happy he cries five minutes into flying, and almost makes Virgil not hate the heights so much.

(Roman, of course, used to be a Quidditch player, a Chaser, up until he decided not to go back to school that year. Virgil used to split his attention between watching Roman’s windswept hair and Dee’s cheeky smile when the latter managed to beat a bludger just right to knock the Quaffle right out of Roman’s hands.)

Virgil sidelines those memories and grips the handle of his broom until his knuckles are white and the cold air of the upper atmosphere begs him to stop holding so tight. Patton flies beside him, naturally swerving like a lackadaisical snake with the ease that only comes with having ridden brooms since he was in diapers. Ahead of them Roman does a loopdeloop and tries to goad Logan into racing him, who in turns calls him every childish name in the book.

It takes them forty minutes to get there. Roman wins the race, and because Logan is petty, he changes the color of Roman’s firetruck red robes to a dull beige.

“Hello Professor!” Patton waves to Thomas Sanders as the older man appears on the street across from them, and because Virgil’s luck is terrible, Remy Dormire appears next to him.

“Patton,” Thomas greets them all warmly. “I’ve told you guys to call me Thomas before.”

Said Ravenclaw ducks his head sheepishly, “Its just feels so strange! You’re always going to be my Transfiguration teacher to me!”

Remy cooes at him and pats Patton on the head, “You are so adorable, hun.” He says, “Come on Bitches! Its cold as balls out here and I’m ready to hear all the juicy gossip you babes have been collecting!”

Virgil is more worried about a muggle peeking out their windows and seeing four teenagers with brooms and long cloaks so for once he agrees with the magic mind reader. The glasses on the older boy's head are mirrored, which makes it hard to tell who he’s looking at, who’s mind he’s reading. Virgil reaffirms his mental walls as he follows the others inside.

The inside of the townhouse looks pretty much like it hasn’t been used in years. There’s layers of dust on everything. Which Virgil guesses is why Remy’s face screws up when Thomas’s hand lands on his shoulder and guides the older boy towards one of the rooms. Remy shrugs his hand off as soon as he physically can, and then brushes the area on his leather jacket that Thomas had touched, like he could wipe the phantom traces of the man off it.

“Vintage Leather, Babe!” Remy doesn’t quite hiss, but it’s a close thing. “No touching!”

Thomas laughs good naturedly and Remy’s snarl fades a bit back to that condescending look that Virgil always associated with him. Roman sneezes three times in succession, and his eyes start watering and he croaks something about dust being the bane of his existence.

“Pardon me,” Logan says to Thomas, “He will be completely unhelpful until this is cleared up. Scourgify!”

It was frankly impressive. At least, to Virgil it was. Patton always got that excited look on his face when someone did magic, and Roman was too busy sniffling and rubbing his red eyes to really watch. Remy rolled his eyes and Thomas smiled at Logan when he performed the charm that left the previously untouchable room into a cozy living room with plenty of space for the six of them.

“Excellent job, Logan!” Thomas said.

(For a moment Virgil feels like he’s back in class and Logan just won another ten points to his house for being naturally gifted at forcing things to shapeshift.)

Logan blushes at the compliment, so Virgil thinks he’s not alone in the flashback.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s great,” Remy bulldozes the compliment and tosses himself on a length of sofa meant for two people. “Its time for the good gossip, girls!”

“None of us are female presenting--” Logan starts, but Remy rolls his eyes and waves him off. 

“What-everrr! Pat come sit with me, babes!”

Virgil wants to drag Patton far away from Remy, but the older Ravenclaw raises an eyebrow at him like a dare. Virgil counts to four and reminds himself that Remy is part of the Order and Thomas is there and even if he is a legilimens that doesn’t mean that he’s going to read any of their minds. In fact, he’s likely there just because he got bored doing whatever the fuck Thomas has him doing.

Patton jumps on the cushion next to Remy and bounces on the seat like an excited child. Logan opts for a spot on the adjacent couch with Thomas, Roman on the floor like a drama queen who needs to be the center of attention, and Virgil ends up perched on the armrest next to Logan’s elbow where he can easily see both the fireplace and the door to the dusty parlor. 

Thomas is a comforting presence, Virgil thinks as the discussion starts. He had been their professor and he had taught all of them and had been right beside them when they were sworn into the Order. He had never been cagey about this past, being a half blood from Hufflepuff who had been there that day that Harry Potter had defeated Voldemort and witnessed all the fighting first hand. He had joined the Order not long after that final battle by tracking down Headmistress McGonagall and subtly asking if there were any alternative plans for if another dark wizard started raising.

According to Thomas he had gotten the job as a Transfiguration teacher less than a year after that and Virgil really never had the guts to exist in the same room as Headmistress McGonagall long enough to ask her if that was true. 

“Remy?” Logan says, after a lull in the conversation, which Virgil, himself, only realizes because Logan’s elbow slides onto the armrest and its dangerously close to touching Virgil’s thigh.

The other member of the Order takes another moment to respond which makes the hairs on Virgil’s neck raise. Remy’s hand is twisting through Patton’s hair so casually and somehow they ended up with Patton leaning heavily on Remy’s shoulder. Virgil thinks it would be weird for anyone else, but Patton likes to touch and its most likely that Logan and Virgil haven’t been providing enough of those touches recently. Remy’s still wearing those stupid sunglasses even though they are inside and its dark in here, but Virgil knows instinctively that he was reading thoughts. 

Probably. 

“Hmm, doll?” Remy says, “Sorry I zoned out when y’all started getting boring. You know me; I just can’t keep my focus on things when theres a cute boy around!”

Virgil wants to point out that they don’t know him, but Patton meets his gaze and Virgil loses the courage to say anything.

Right, they should be avoiding instigating a fight here.

Regardless Roman spread himself out on the ground and sighs dramatically, “I know what you mean, Rem! All these glor--”

“Remy,” Remy says, peering down his nose at Roman, “Its Remy. Or just don’t address me at all, hun.” 

Virgil thinks the whole room is thrown for a moment. Remy’s tone isn’t necessarily icy or cold, and he’s still grinning when he talks, as if they’re sharing a private joke. He twists one of Patton’s curls so gently, it almost looks intimate. Virgil can see Logan’s jaw shift at the motion, and how Patton seems to be unsure if he should be moving away or staying still.

“S-sorry?” Roman says, unsuredly.

Remy smiles at him, with something that’s borderline unfriendly, “Sure, hun. Now are we done here, or are y’all still doing that small talk thing?”

Thomas shifts in his seat, “Actually there is one more thing I want to let you four know about.”

At once he has all of their attentions. Logan who had been talking the most moves to straighten his tie again, and Roman sits back up so he can see the Professor clearly. The room gets a sort of eerie feeling to it, and Virgil swears for a moment that he can see his breath in the air.

“We’ve gotten some suspicious reports about the Dark Lady and her followers.” Thomas says, “I’ve had some suspicions for a while, but we recently got proof-- thanks to Remy-- that the Dark Lady has a time turner on her.”

“A Time Turner?” Logan says, “I thought all of them had been rendered useless after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries when they were all caught in a time loop?”

“Wait wait wait, we’re saying the lady who wants to legalize casual genocide now has the ability to go back in time?” Roman yelped. “Doesn’t this mean all of our possible plans are useless then?”

"I told you, babe!" Remy sings, boredly, "All it would do is worry the poor things!" He rests his chin on Patton's shoulder, which startles a ticklish giggle from the younger Ravenclaw. 

Thomas ignores him, "We're not sure what the implications are if it yet." He admits, "Headmistress Mcgonagall, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and Ron Weasley are all discussing the possibilities of it now. I was told to advise you guys of the situation." Thomas gives them each a look, and then he smiles, "Don't worry too much about it, boys. We'll take it slow and smart and we'll figure this out."

Its a pep talk, Virgil realizes. And in a weird way, Virgil guesses he does feel a little reassured.

In another way Virgil's mind tunnels downward towards the forbidden memories of a Slytherin boy who told him two years ago that the Dark Lady possessed a means to turn back time and what both of them had done about that.

Thomas is looking at him, he notes, suddenly. 

"What?" Virgil asks right as his palms begin to sweat, and his mouth tastes like his black nail polish as he forces his hand away from his mouth.

Thomas frowns, "I...well, I assumed that you would find this information a bit more surprising."

Virgil squeezes the sleeves of his jacket. His jaw creaks open, reminding him pathetically of how tense he was. "Well its like you said," he defends lamely. "We shouldn't worry too much. If the Lady already has a Time Turner, we can't do anything about it now."

Remy is grinning at him. Like the cat that caught the canary and Virgil is the very dead canary in this scenario.

“I’m sure I’ll have a break down later and, you know, over analyze absolutely everything.” Virgil hurriedly says. Which maybe isn’t the best thing to say because now Patton’s staring at him with those wide doe eyes that he makes when he wants to wrap Virgil in a hug. Roman and Logan share a look that shows that maybe they aren’t as convinced, but Thomas nods understandingly and doesn’t push it.

He stands up from the couch and addresses Roman, Logan, and Patton, “I trust you three to keep an eye on him, please? Despite the new news, the Order’s decision so far is to continue work as usual. I’ll be in touch if that changes.”

Logan stands to mirror Thomas and offers his hand. “We’ll do our best.”

Which sounds a little strange to Virgil, because really they weren’t doing much of anything. Thomas had tried talking the four of them into going back to school this year but Roman had gotten antsy about the muggle murders and had dropped out to take care of his parents. Logan and Patton would die before being separated from the Gryffindor, and of course Virgil had followed along with them. 

Thomas had set them up with easy jobs and then sent them magical homework via Owl so they were still learning things although Logan seemed to be the only one who was truly excited about more homework. Its enough for now.

Virgil gathers their brooms while Roman breaks into one of his glorious tales of living life in a Muggle neighborhood, followed by Patton make a pun that makes Thomas laugh and Logan groan. When they finally stumbled outside, it’s nearing ten at night and the stars are out.

“Interesting,” Logan states with his eyes to the stars that were just barely seeable behind the halo of the streetlamps. But before Virgil can ask what exactly Logan is seeing in the stars (he had always been the best as Astronomy), Remy vaults down the steps of the house.

“Hey, Badger-boy!” The older Ravenclaw says. He’s grinning again, in a way that makes Virgil’s skin feel too loose, and his palms too slick from sweat, and his mind sing out every protection spell he knows. In the darkness his sunglasses seem even more impractical, and Virgil is left staring at his own reflection rather the other’s eyes.

“What?” Virgil answers, despite the fact he’s not wearing any of his house’s bright yellow and no one had dared call him a badger since he and Dee had put Alfred Hitchcockopolous in the Hospital wing for a day in First Year for it.

Remy laughs. Its the type of laugh that someone gives when their particularly stupid animal does something stupid and has to face the stupid conseqeunces for it.

“Nothing, babe.” He says. “Just wanted to see your face one last time.” He turns to Patton, and flicks his glasses down just enough that he shows off those golden eyes. “Stay adorable, Freckles.”

Then he flashes a peace sign at them and apperates away.

Thomas sends them on their way, with waving hands and farewells and a promise to see them soon. Roman does helix roll once he’s in the air to show off, and Logan berates him for risking the Muggles seeing them, while Patton laughs like an angel beside them.

Virgil glances back at the ground, ignoring the swoop of his stomach at the height difference, to see Thomas staring at the spot Remy had been last with a frown. As if sensing him, Thomas looks up, gives Virgil an unreadable smile, a wave, and then he too apperates away and the street is empty of all the signs they were ever there.

***

“Well that was fun,” Roman hums landing his broom with utmost ease. With a hand through his windswept hair, he turns that charming smile on the rest of them, which somehow still sparkles despite the lack of actual light. He’s a silhouette, a shadow, a half visible fraction, and yet Virgil has absolutely no trouble seeing the full on Roman-ness of the action.

“We have very different definitions of fun,” Logan notes, and turns Roman’s red robes back to a less offensive beige. Virgil bites back a smile when Roman complains about him being petty and uncreative for someone in Ravenclaw.

And if it starts a lighthearted magic battle in the enclosed backyard, well, there are no muggles out at near eleven in their quiet suburban dream neighborhood. In the flashes of red and purple and blue he can see Logan and Roman grinning like fools and he can feel Patton’s laughter reverberating through him when the other boy leans on his shoulder and watches the two quibble.

Its….happy. Virgil is happy.

Watching them like this, watching them laugh and have fun and enjoy themselves, even after they were just told that the evil force they were combating had the ability to change timestreams. They’re so resilient, so optimistic, and Virgil wishes that he could place some complicated spell on the house right here so that they’d never be disturbed and they could just exist like this happy forever. 

But Virgil knows that Roman would detest being stuck to one place for forever and Logan would run out of things to do and turn bitter and Patton would wonder why they weren’t happy anymore and then come to the conclusion it was somehow his fault.

There’s no way to preserve the happiness forever. Virgil spent all of fourth year combing through the books in the restricted section for a spell that he could cast and he had come up blank.

“The best type of prison,” Dee had said, once upon a time, “is one that the prisoners do not know they’re in.” 

“You really think Prince needs to be aware of a prison to want break out of it?” Virgil had shot back.

And Dee had just laughed and flipped the page of his book.

That had been before he had become a Neo-Death Eater, Virgil thinks. Because he hadn’t been wearing the skull clasp on his robes yet, hadn’t started avoiding Virgil like he had contracted Dragon Pox, hadn’t started actually using the mind magic excessively ….

Virgil’s smile slips, and Patton notices almost immediately. “Kiddo?”

Virgil nudges him with his shoulder, “‘M just tired, you know? Talking to people and all that.”

He feels the Ravenclaw laugh softly. Theres a flash of red where the grass by Logan’s feet catches fire, and the other wastes his turn of their duel using aguamenti to put it out before one of the neighbors look out their windows or it spreads to the deck where Patton and Virgil are and then consumes the entire house.

Roman laughs at him. “My house? Are you sure? Virgil’s put so many charms on that thing nothing short of an atomic bomb is going to bring it down!”

Not true, but Virgil feels himself preen at the compliment anyway. He rubs the back of his neck and knows his face is a flushed pink, but its too dark for anyone to make it out.

“Yeah, sure,” He calls to them, “Now, if you excuse me, I’m going to go overthink everything Professor Sanders just told us.”

“Professore Sanders told us--” Logan starts, but Virgil knows that tone all too well and he manages to wave it away.

“I know, I know. Nothing to worry about.” Virgil waves his wand blindly towards the door handle and unlocks it with Alohomora (a spell which only works for one of their four wands). “I’ll see you guys in the morning!”

“Goodnight, Virge!” Patton calls after him, and because he’s a good person he adds, “I’m making french toast tomorrow for breakfast if you want to help!”

“Happy Nightmares, Jack Smellington!” Roman throws in because he’s much less of a good person.

Virgil closes the door behind him. His body leans against it for a second, hearing the sounds of his friends getting back to their shenanigans. He gives it maybe ten minutes before Roman and Patton start up the cheery Hogwarts chants and an impromptu dance routine in which Logan is dragged around the backyard, trying to pretend like he still has dignity.

Its nice. Virgil fumbles through the kitchen, using the light from the magic hall sconces to guide himself down the hall and then up the stairs. The pictures on the walls of the other three laugh and rough house around. Virgil runs his fingers over the picture frames as he walks.

“Get some sleep, kiddo!” One of Patton at a Dragon Petting Zoo from second year tells him.

And Virgil has every intention of it.

He does. 

But he gets to the front of his room and there’s a warmth against his chest that makes his blood freeze. His hand frantically pats his chest, pressing into the warmth, trying to determine if its real or just something in his head, please let it be something in his head, please, please--

Its not in his head. He throws himself into his room and locks it behind him. The lights stay off and he drags the curtains closer together just to make sure that absolutely no one can see inside. Then he crawls into the closet, with his breath coming out in shaky breathes too rapidly to count.

His hands shake too hard to unzip his sweatshirt all the way. It gets jammed by his belly button. The burning against his chest feels like an open flame right to his right pectoral, hissing with heat, demanding to be appeased. Virgil couldn’t have ignored it if he had wanted to. 

He doesn’t want to look.

He looks anyway.

His hand opens the invisible seams of the hidden pocket right over his chest. There are only two items in it, but Virgil drops them both into his lap anyway. He kneads his palms into his eyes and forces himself to take a breath and hold it-- one second, two, three-- which is about as long as it takes for him to remember every lie he’s ever told to the trio outside.

As long as it takes for him to remember whose lives are on the line if he messes up.

As long as it takes for his hands to steady enough to pick up the coin from his lap and for the sudden heat to fade. The closet is doors are firmly pulled closed and Virgil twists his Cypress wand in his hand.

“Lumos,” Virgil whispers scarcely more than a thought. He’s sure that the sound of the dishwasher in the kitchen is louder than his own voice. He’s afraid any louder will make Roman or Logan burst into the room and demand to know what he’s doing and he doesn’t have an explanation, doesn’t have an excuse, doesn’t have an escape.

They’d hate him if they knew.

Virgil hates himself for them.

The coin is a Galleon, but despite the shiny color and the heavy weight, Virgil knows its fake. He made it after all, pouring over the details for most of two days. But it would never stand up to a Goblin; Virgil doubts it would stand up to a normal wizard if they looked for more than a couple seconds at it.

The Protean Charm on it is too strong for it to go unnoticed to a trained eye.

He told the others he collects Galleons with specific dates on them. “A half muggle thing,” He had told Patton who had taken him very seriously and started checking the dates on every coin he came across. Even now, Galleons show up on the kitchen counter with dates of their birthdays and the first day of Hogwarts and the day they would have graduated.

The serial number on the rim of the coin in his hand had changed.

It was a series of four numbers and then various letters that Virgil decoded with a slight glance at-- he had memorized the code and then burned the last key in existence after all, too paranoid to risk someone ever finding it. 

It takes Virgil a second, a moment, a year to understand what date it was. For him to get his brain to work past the dread that bubbling up his throat like a bottle rocket. 

And his breath gets caught in his chest when he does.

It’s tomorrows date.

Its tomorrows date and there’s no time to warn anyone without revealing his source.

Its tomorrows date and someone in the Order is going to die.

Virgil does not have a good night, or happy nightmares, and he most definitely does not sleep at all.

***

“You look like death,” Roman says the next morning when Virgil slumps on the stool at the kitchen counter. Virgil can smell his cinnamon body wash from clear across the kitchen which is entirely unhelpful in the light of things because now he’s thinking about Roman in the shower after his morning run and when there are other things to be thinking about. 

“Gee, thanks Princey,” Virgil says very tiredly.

Patton is cooking bacon to go with the French toast. It’s sizzling. Does all bacon sizzle so loud? It smells so good Virgil might throw up. His stomach feels empty, but the thought of actually chewing and swallowing food makes head dizzy. 

“-rgil, Virgil!” 

Virgil blinks for a second, glancing up from the bacon to see that Logan had somehow appeared next to him.

“You do not appear to have slept at all, Virgil,” Logan says thoughtfully. “If it is about the Dark Lady, I can assure you--”

“It’s not,” Virgil says, which sounds like a lie even to him. 

Patton, Logan, and Roman all share a look. A silent conversation that Virgil feels unnecessarily annoyed to be excluded from.

“What?” He snaps.

“No offense, Helga Hufflegruff,” Roman says, “But its not like you to be this out of it.”

Virgil flicks his wand at the coffee mugs across the kitchen, “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Kiddo,” Patton says.

“The eggs are burning,” Virgil waves him off. And for a moment it works on taking the attention of him. He takes all of one breath, while Patton squeaks over the breakfast and Roman and Logan watch on ready to jump in and help before the fire alarms go off. But the moment passes and he feels the suffocating gaze of his housemates on him again.

Granted he did look awful. The picture of both him and Patton which had taken residency on his desk had winced when Virgil had stumbled from the closet. There’s a crick in his neck that he can’t get rid off no matter how much he rotates his head and his eyes feel heavier than they have any right to be. Screw his eyeshadow, he hadn’t even put any on today.

He was still in his clothes from yesterday, and he was careful to keep his left hand in his pocket or his sleeve, because he had bitten his nails until they bled last night, though if anyone asks he’ll tell them the morning paper Owl had bitten him when he had forgotten to pay it.

“We should do something today,” Virgil says suddenly.

Which is not the right thing to say. At all.

Roman chokes on his orange juice, and ends up spilling more on the floor than he gets in his throat. Patton nearly drops his hot pan in the sink with how quickly he whips around to stare at Virgil.

Logan adjusts his glasses, “Pardon?”

“Are you sick?” Roman blurts out, rasping as he tries to dislodge the last of the juice, “Is it Dragon Pox? Scrofungus? Heartbreak?”

“Heartbreak isn’t a sickness,” Virgil squints at him.

“Additionally how would one’s heart break?” Logan asks, “Unless it was frozen with Glacius by some means--”

“People can die from Heartbreak!” Roman interjects, despite the fact no one suggested anything about dying. Virgil’s stomach churns around and the coffee on his tongue tastes stale at the thought.

“I’m not dying!” He says quickly, hotly. His fingers squeeze his mug tightly, drawing the warmth from the liquid inside it and hoping it covers the coldness that came over him.

“Yes, it seems much more likely that he was affected by the imperious curse,” Logan suggests.

“I’m not under any curse either!” Virgil hisses, “I just… I thought--” He grits his teeth, “I thought it might be nice to get out of the house.”

Entirely. And never come back.

“You never want to get out of the house,” Roman points out.

“Well I do now!”

Logan does that thing he does when he doesn’t believe something-- a mix of tilting his head and tapping his fingers on the nearest surface while his eyes rotate around the surroundings. Virgil likes to think it was a subconscious reaction: he’s actually observing the room for threats so that he could produce a working solution.

Roman summons more orange juice from the fridge and makes it pour him another glass.

Virgil twists his mug in his fingers and chances a look towards Patton. He spent most of the night trying to figure out what to do, trying to figure out what to say, what he could say. He thinks that he turned over every scenario ten times and fought off the nauseous urge to vomit all through the fourth hour that morning.

He thinks that if he can just get Patton to say yes.

He thinks if he can just get Patton to leave the house that he'll be able to keep all of them safe if the attack is at their location.

(Because that's in question too. Its possible that by some blessed fate that the dread and certainty in his stomach does not mean its going to be here thats attacked. Its possible that he's just paranoid. Its possible that when Professor Remus Duke told him he had a natural latent ability for Divination that the teacher was just spouting nonsense like usual. Its possible.)

((Virgil doesn't take chances like that. He won't. Cant.))

"Virge…" Patton says.

Logan adjusts his glasses, "Thomas told us that work should continue as normal. As such, I have several letters I must attend to-- a group in Romania is requesting the Orders help in tracking several suspicious individuals, a wizard in America got apprehended by MACUSA without proper papers, and Thomas asked me to make a list of where a certain wizarding plant can be found and I've received a pile of responses just this morning I have to comb through-- I can't just drop these tasks. Patton has already agreed to help me."

"What?" Roman says, "Why didn't you ask me?"

"I'm afraid that the thought didn't cross my mind," the Ravenclaw admitted somewhat guiltily. "But Patton has a superior knowledge of the wizarding world that I believe would be most beneficial, and-- I mean this with the least amount of offense-- I feel that if you or Virgil were to join us, we'd be more hindered than helped."

"Ouch," Roman says with wounded pride, and jabs Logan in the shoulder. "I cannot believe you think I'd be bad at answering letters! My handwriting is amazing."

"The chicken scratch you call handwriting is atrocious." Logan bats his hand away easily, "but that's not why I think you helping would be counterproductive."

“Its not?” Roman asks.

“Its not?” Virgil echoes with just enough of a teasing tone that Roman turns his coffee mug into a chicken like the disrupting asshole he is. The bird squawks the second its lungs are formed and Virgil drops it the moment the warmth turns from “warm liquid in a mug” to “living thing with a heartbeat he can feel”.

“Roman!” Logan yells, stumbling back to avoid it and crashing into Patton. They both land on the floor in a heap of limbs and cooking utensils. The chicken flaps over them, screeching something awful. Patton’s glasses somehow end up hooked with Logan’s and their faces mere inches apart and brown chicken under feathers in both their hair.

Roman’s laughter almost makes it worth it: breathless and gasping for air, doubled over and wheezing like an idiot.

It only takes a moment before Patton’s laughter joins in with Roman’s, very much sounding like the usual angels on high. Virgil watches the glorious sight of Logan’s entire face turning redder than an Hippocampus skin and immediately transforming himself into in an owl.

Virgil can’t really blame him. If he were hit at point blank by both Roman and Patton’s carefree laughs like that, he’d turn into an Owl too, regardless of if an Owl was his animagus form or not.

It takes Patton three times to turn the chicken back to a mug-- missing twice because he’s laughing too hard to keep his wand from shaking, and once because the chicken is fast-- and by that time Roman’s on the floor with a hand gripping his chest, grin wider than the fucking sun itself, feathers on clinging to his clothes and his shirt riding up his stomach just enough to be a tease. Logan transforms back long enough to move the cup from the floor to the sink, but when he turns around to see the Gryffindor, his cheeks flare back up and Virgil can feel the heat from where he is.

The bacon definitely burns.

Virgil doesn’t really think any of them notice.

He doesn’t even notice until the fire alarm goes off.

Roman groans from the floor and Virgil coughs into his sweatshirt sleeve to hide his face. A sound like that? Even with the background of a shrill alarm and the smell of smoke, it makes the room itself feel hundreds of degrees warmer, makes the whole world seem to fade away, makes Virgil want to plunge his face into a bucket of ice water.

Logan hits the smoke detector with his beak. Patton throws open the kitchen windows, giggling foolishly.

“You’re cute when you blush, Vee,” Roman says from his spot on the floor.

“Fuck off and die,” Virgil tells him.

“Aw, but your little ears!” Roman cooes, dragging himself from the floor like it was some tremendous task. He pinches the air with both his hands like he was supposed to be pinching Virgil’s ears.

Virgil’s hands immediately switch position, covering the tattletale tips of his ears. “Shut up!” He grumbles.

“Not exactly my forte, Virge!” Roman sings, “Just ask anyone!”

Logan does that thing where he lands on a surface and turns back to human, and Virgil gets a front row seat of seeing Owl talons elongate into slender legs that cross ever so confidently as he settles on the barstool next to Virgil. And the way that Logan ever so casually reaches up to loosen his tie just a millimeter?

If Virgil wasn’t blushing before, is now.

(He thinks he likes this version of Logan Ackroyd more: the effortlessly oblivious tease, compared to the bloody knuckled version that so angrily put Virgil in his place in the middle fourth year)

“I can attest to that,” Logan says, with the crease in the corners of his lips that implies a smile being hidden just below the surface, “He really does never shut up.”

“Wh--hey!” Roman gasps,”Patton! Logan’s bullying me!” He drapes himself over the smaller Ravenclaw with a dramatic flare that causes Patton’s whole face to light up. Sunlight bounces off his glasses but his eyes sparkle like the ocean on a sunny day.

“Sorry kiddo!” He says, “That’s just how he is!”

“Falsehood!” Logan calls.

“Losing battle,” Virgil nudges him. Oh god, what just came over him? His elbow feels tingly, like some sort of numbing jinx, but warm and welcome. Logan actually laughs as he straightens himself back on the chair.

(Logan laughs like he’s in a library about to be scolded for being too loud. Virgil isn’t sure what it would take for him to laugh louder. He wishes he had time to figure it out.)

Breakfast comes after that. With Patton severing french toast and Roman spilling orange juice on Logan's plate because the Ravenclaw told him he was putting far too much syrup on his and Virgil convincing Roman to shove an entire piece in his mouth just to prove that he could.

"Really attractive, Princey," Virgil says when the Gryffindor chokes and has to spit out soggy mush.

"You love me," Roman coughs.

"Yeah," Virgil says. It's a mostly meaningless statement. Because Roman thinks everything loves him, because Roman is very loveable, because it's light and witty banter and that's what they do.

Because Virgil’s thinking about the coin in the pocket on his chest, because Virgil is thinking how likely it was for him to be able to pry both Logan and Patton out of the house without a real reason, because Virgil is weighing his friends lives in his head like its just another sucky Arithmancy problem on the homework he put off until an hour before it was due.

And because Virgil is not really thinking about what comes out of his mouth, it comes out honest and true and it takes him three more blinks to realize that Roman is staring at him, with something like akin to...to...surprise?

“What?” Virgil asks, his breath hitching all of a sudden. He was tired but he wasn’t so tired that he could have started just talking out loud-- and even if he had surprise was not the thing that Roman would have on his face. Disgust, maybe. Anger, definitely. What kind of person can look at the people sitting next to him and think about how likely it was for someone on the street to kill them? How could he think about blood purity at a time like this?

But then again how could he not?

“You agreed,” Roman says, a tinge of awe.

“What?” Virgil tries again, because he really doesn’t know what is going on. Logan and Patton are staring at him too, but Patton’s smiling and Logan’s rolling his eyes and they’re tugging Logan’s plate between them in a silent argument of who gets to do the dishes.

“You agreed! About liking me!” Roman says down right giddy.

Virgil’s brow furrows, “Princey, we literally live together. Of course I like you.”

“But you said Love!”

Virgil glances at Patton for help. Patton is enchanting a sponge to wash the cups and is therefore, no help. His stomach does a flop. A flip flop. A flip flop right off a fucking cliff top.

Roman’s face appears right next to his, earnest and full and bright. Virgil thinks its like standing at ground zero of an atomic bomb.

“You never say Love. And I think if I remember correctly the last time you implied you even liked me, it was when Logan tried to cook and you got food poisoning and I gave you a bucket to throw up in.” Roman says. “So this is a big thing!”

Virgil should tell him its nothing, because even with his heart threatening to jump straight out of his chest, and his hands aching to curl in the fluff of his russet hair, and his eyes darting to Roman’s lips which for some reason are still right there next to Virgil’s own-- because even with Virgil thinking of that night years ago when Logan had given him a righteous nosebleed and he had run off and hid behind the One-Eyed Witch Statue on the third floor and had the biggest gay breakdown of his entire life--

Virgil should tell him its nothing because he’s been lying to Roman and Patton and Logan for two years, nearly three.

Virgil should give Roman’s face a shove away and make some insulting comment that will draw out those offended dramatic noises he likes so much.

Virgil should.

“I guess,” Virgil tongue warps around the words without an ounce of his permission. “Don’t go--”

“YES!” Roman hollers over him, throwing his hands in the air so suddenly that Virgil legitimately forgets what he was saying. “This is perfect! Amazing! Splendid!”

Virgil should tell him to calm down, that it means less than nothing. But Virgil threw away his entire life for them: for Roman’s celebratory fist pumping and sparkling eyes, for the quirk of Logan’s lips and the late night sleepy talks about the stars, for the taste of Patton’s baking and the feel of those tight, warm, safe hugs. He wants to dance around the word “Love” and its billions of meanings in billions of languages, because he knows that if he thinks about it for too long, he’ll realize that he loves the three of them in every sense of it.

Which, decidedly, means much more than nothing.

But there’s also that thing.

That thing where Virgil is lying, has been lying, will continue to lie, right to their faces. Which stands to be the absolute worst thing he’s ever done and if he stops it he’ll die a horrible painful wizard death and then they’ll be doubly angry with him for it. 

But isn’t angry with him-- isn’t never wanting to see his face ever again-- better than them being dead? Which is likely what they’re all going to be if Virgil doesn’t do something to convince them to leave the house for the day.

Them, he thinks and then hesitates because its not really “Them”. Patton’s got magical blood: blood so pure it practically glows under his skin and his wandwork is practically flawless. Logan’s got half magic blood, too, which is half more magic blood than sad little muggleborn Roman has. 

The anxious feeling of dread creeps up Virgil’s back, like a dementors fingers ghosting along his spine before it spins him around and gives a soul sucking kiss. Once the thought comes he can’t get it out of his head: the idea that if the Neo-Death Eaters show up here, and they breech the defenses that Virgil’s put up, and they catch them by surprise, the idea that they’d hesitate to hurt Patton or Logan or Virgil, but they’d execute Roman without a thought.

Virgil is staring at Roman.

Virgil is listening to Roman talk about something.

Virgil is thinking about Roman’s corpse lying on the ground in the kitchen, as a green light steals away his life in an echo of two forbidden words.

“Hey Princey,” Virgil says, trying to hide the way his entire body is shaking. “Let’s go on a date.”

Because Roman being angry at him, being unable to ever forgive him, being so enraged he can’t think about Virgil without wanting to put him in St. Mungos, will always be better than Roman being dead and Virgil having not done anything about it.

Roman looks at him and he smiles so prettily Virgil almost thinks he’d be able to forgive himself one day.

***

Virgil has never been on a date before. 

It’s tragic. Embarrassingly so.

If Virgil were watching this broomwreck from the outside, he’d been on the floor in tears from laughter.

Roman bumps his shoulder casually, “Relax, Felbert the Fearful! There are no roofs around to cave in on us.”

The joke doesn’t quite land for Virgil, but he laughs anyway. Roman deserves it, at least.

For putting up with Virgil not knowing the first thing about that how one proceeds on a “date”. He thinks he watched a Hallmark movie on this shit once or twice back before...everything. He thinks that it should have given him some clue how to act, what to say, where to go. But all they do it remind him how completely and utterly bootless he is in the grand scheme of things.

Disney, of course, never really taught the whole “take it slow” sort of thing. And with magic? Forget it. He wonders how Patton’s parents did it, how the famous Weasley’s did it, how any wizard ever did it.

(He supposes that it helped that in most cases that neither partner was hiding a double life behind a cloak of fake memories implanted in the other, but really what did he know.)

They had gone shopping. Kinda.

Roman had gone shopping. Virgil had watched him try on muggle clothes again and again, listened to him complain about prices, and testily remark about color coordinating. He tried paying the girl at the cash register in sickles and Virgil got a good laugh at his face when he realized his mistake. He tried on two T shirts just it looked like he was participating his fair share even bought one, but once it was in the bag he forgot what the design had been.

(He did not forget the way that Roman’s eyes had roamed over him and the way that he had mentioned how nice it would be to see that shirt on his floor.)

Virgil wished his heart was in it, wished that he could get his shoulders to unwind, wished that he could stare at Roman for a few minutes without thinking about what an awful person he was.

They have Ice cream for lunch specifically because Logan is not there to tell them not to. 

It devolves to Virgil splattering Roman’s nose with Chocolate ice cream and only getting half an apology out before Roman shovels a spoonful of strawberry into his mouth. Like a kiss. Indirectly.

Virgil wonders for all of three seconds if Roman’s tongue also tastes like strawberry.

“There’s a music store,” Roman says. “It just opened around the block. I’m sure it has some PG music for you to listen to, Edgelord.”

They hold hands. Virgil can’t tell if Roman can feel him shaking, or if he notices how distracted Virgil in worrying about something he won’t share. The music store is so muggle-like its distressing.

Virgil loves it. The musty smell of the building despite it being brand new, the feel of actual records in his hands, the beats in the background that his head bops unconsciously. Roman makes comments about the artwork on every cover that Virgil flits through, which is impressive because Virgil isn’t even looking as much as pretending to.

Its hard for him to be excited about an album of music when his friends could be in danger.

Its hard to remind himself why he needs to draw out this date as long as he possibly can to make sure that Roman doesn’t go back to the house. 

They catch a movie at the local theater. Virgil doesn’t remember the plot at all because Roman throws an arm over his shoulder halfway through it. Its dark, mostly silent, and Roman smells like cinnamon and ash that somehow is very attractive on him. Virgil leans in, selfishly enjoying the warmth that comes with it.

Virgil’s eyes...close just for a second.

Only a second.

“Hey, Vee,” Roman says, “Maybe we should head home?”

“No!” Virgil snaps awake so suddenly their heads collide. “Ow! Fuck!”

Roman’s pained laughter joins him. The lights are on, now so Virgil must have slept straight through the credits. He wants to curse himself for that one. What if something had happened? What if a Neo Death Eater had tracked them all the way to the theater and crept in during the show?

The ache in his head subsides to a mild annoyance that makes his eyes water. 

“Okay, wow, ow,” Roman says, “If I knew you were gonna wake like that, Stormcloud, I would have done something else!”

Virgil freezes. “What did you just call me?”

Roman blinks a couple times, “Stormcloud? Is that alright? I figured it might be nice to, uh, have a nickname that’s not an insult.” He sounds strangely hesitant, strangely unconfident, strangely not-Roman like.

“Its...fine,” Virgil says and pretends like the name doesn’t strike half a million chords in him. “Totally fine.”

Roman hums like he isn’t convinced. “Yeah well, we should get back to the house. I’m sure, Pat is making dinner.”

“Uhh!” Virgil says, “Or we could not!”

The Gryffindor raises an eyebrow at him. 

“I just, I mean--” Virgil’s not good at excuses. 

“Vee, you literally just fell asleep on my arm in the middle of an action movie. You’ve been unable to focus all day. I have half a mind to think that you only wanted to do this because you’re so sleep deprived that you can’t think straight.”

Virgil doesn’t have anything to say to that. There’s a stain on Roman’s shoulder from where he had been drooling. Roman presses their foreheads together and they both wince where the lumps collide.

“Listen,” Roman says, “I love spending time with you. How about we go back to the house, and throw on a movie and just...cuddle or something?”

Its not fair.

Virgil wants it so badly as whimper builds in his throat. But he doesn’t want to chance it, doesn’t want to risk it, doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t.

Roman leads him out the door. 

Its dark outside. Its still not dark enough. The town isn’t far enough from their house, and the longer Virgil is silent the closer they get back to the house. His hands twist in his pockets, his nail rubs over the engravings in his wand.

He needs something, anything, to catch Roman’s attention. Keep him away from the house until the days over and he’s sure there’s no chance that the Neo-Wizard Nazis are going to show up and kill Roman. 

“We should stop at the bookstore and pick up Logan’s order for him,” Virgil suggests.

“Logan just picked up his newest shipment two days ago, remember?” Roman says. “I dropped them and he yelled at me for a full hour.”

“Do we have milk at the house? Maybe we should get some groceries while we’re out.”

“Patton wants to go tomorrow instead. And only he knows the list. But he’ll love if we come with him.”

“A play!” Virgil says weakly.

“Hm?” Roman blinks lazily from beside him. The street lamps give him halo.

“I heard there’s a play going on!”

“There are no plays this week, Virgil.”

“I swear there was one.” Virgil says, “You know we should check just in case--”

Virgil has seen the news on the TV before: he’s seen coverage of car crashes that had lit on fire, of the forests burning in California and the Amazon, of muggle apartment buildings being swallowed entirely from faulty wiring. He’s kept a lighter in his back pocket for the longest time, for emergencies, for those moments when his wand is out his hand and needs to resort to a more unexpected muggle way of defending himself. He’s started tiny fires made of leaves in his backyard, of candles in his moms house when the summer rain storms knocked out the electricity again, of a pile of photos at his feet wiping away any evidence that would allude to what they had done.

Still watching Roman’s house explode is so much more terrifying. The blast of heat burns his body even from down the street. The noise is deafening, but the sight is ghastly: the roof of the building shoots straight into the air and then dissolves apart until its swallowed by the resulting black cloud, the windows break outward sending millions of shards into the surrounding houses, half of that ugly sofa that Virgil had fallen asleep so many times on shattered on the asphalt road barely four feet from the two of them.

Oh, its something straight from a nightmare and it makes Virgil’s stomach violently turnover and his eyes water and his heart jump straight up his throat to the back of his mouth. His limbs freeze at the sight, as if keeping from moving would keep the destruction from following. Flames lick the the inside windows, a thousand twisted toxic tongues that burned brighter than the sun in the night sky. 

In seconds the building is unsalvageable and Virgil’s throat closes up like someone magicked away the very oxygen in the air. 

“Virgil!” Roman yells some a million miles away from him, from right behind him, from beside him with a hand on his upper arm, tight and squeezing and real. “Protego!”

A white shield forms in front of him seconds before a chunk of the TV in the downstairs living room crushes him completely. An arm, Roman’s arm, wraps around him and drags him back from the flaming wreckage.

“Logan!” Roman screams, “Pat!”

And suddenly Virgil snaps back to the present, to the way the noise is louder than life, to the way that they stick out like sore thumbs in the middle of the road. 

“Aguamenti!” Virgil shouts pointing his wand at the the neighbors hedges. He doesn’t remember drawing it or thinking about the spell, but he knows that the family of four that live there just hit a rough patch financially and don’t need to pay for a house on top of that.

By the time he looks back up, Roman is down the street and Virgil doesn’t think there’s a single thing on this planet, magic or muggle that could stop him. So Virgil, the reigning king of making poor decisions in the moment, charges after him.

(Because he knows what this is, know that houses don’t just explode, knows that Roman is about to charge head into battle. He knows that Virgil would never forgive himself from turning tail and running when any of those three are in danger.)

So Virgil-- also reigning king of mistakes and regrets--charges after him with is wand drawn and prays to deities he does not believe in that he won’t see Dee tonight.

There are three Neo-Death Eaters on what used to be Roman’s front lawn. Virgil stumbles at the sight of them, at the sight of their long black cloaks and white theater masks and the skull pendants they wore so proudly. He doesn’t think they can be more than a few years older than him or Roman, but they find another section of the house to use Bombarda on and shriek joyfully when it sends part of dresser into the next door neighbors roof.

Roman makes use of Flipendo Tria on the first one, and clocks the next with his bare fist. Virgil uses Oppugno on several flaming objects (shirts maybe? Logan’s sweater vests?) and sends them wrapping around the face of the last one before she can make any move against Roman. 

“How dare you touch me, Filthy Mudblood!”

Roman punched him again. And then a third time for good measure.

“I may be muggle born, but I’ve never needed magic to fix my problems.”

It would be a good dramatic line if he wasn’t trembling as he delivered it, if Virgil didn’t need to throw protego between him and the guy he had punched because the Neo-Death Eater had managed to get his wand again, if they were acting in a movie this wasn’t real.

Roman snaps the guy’s wand in half and throws it into the fire before sprinting towards the front door.

“Patton!” He yells, “Logan!”

“Roman!” Virgil yells and lunges for him. They go tumbling to the ground, knees scraping on concrete pathway up to the house but Virgil doesn’t notice. He can’t notice, not really. 

He’s too busy imagining Roman as a flambeed corpse, as a crispy unrecognizable mass, as ashes fluttering in the wind.

Roman shoves against him, frantically calling for their friends.

And the smoke robs his throat of any moisture, clogs his lungs with lead laden gases and deteriorates his vision. There’s another explosion (Virgil thinks its the fire reaching the chemical closet in the downstairs powder room) and the force of it knocks Virgil across the lawn. His shoulder slams into the grass with a popping noise Virgil is pretty sure it isn’t supposed to make and his vision goes white for all of a second as his chest flops over and his other shoulder follows in a tumble of limbs. 

When he can see again Roman is right over him. He’s glowing-- kinda. The fire behind him creates a halo effect all over his body. Whatever words he’s saying, they’re lost in the buzz of Virgil’s brain as it reconnects and reboots and the panic comes back.

In the grass by his hand is a burned photo: the one of him and Patton that they took on the staircase, the one he put in his room, the one he kept.

And the fire burned him right out of the picture.

“--irgil!” Roman says, “We have to get up!”

Virgil nods dumbly at him. He tears his eyes away from the picture and grabs Roman’s forearm so he can help him get up. He smells like smoke and ashes and that Cinnamon body wash he liked so much. Virgil breathes it in and chokes on the air.

“We need to get out of here!” He says, “To the Rendezvous point! They’ll find us!”

Virgil isn’t sure Roman hears him at all, isn’t sure that Roman even remembers that they had a rendezvous point for if the base was attacked. But he doesn’t try to go running into the unsalvageable house again, so Virgil thinks that its enough.

(He doesn’t think about Patton on the kitchen floor desperately gasping for raspy breaths pinned under a flaming beam of the house and unable to move. He doesn’t think about Logan screaming as the flames swallow up his pant legs, and his sweater vest and his hair. He doesn’t think about them yelling for them and Virgil dragging Roman away from the fire and leaving them to die. He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t--)

Away. They need to get away. Before a Neo-Death Eater shows up that they can’t beat.

Down the street. Virgil’s eyes are watering, his heart is thumping, his thoughts are screaming.

Somehow he still manages to see the enemy before they see him.

Its just that Virgil has absolutely terrible luck. It’s just that the shock makes him forget  Its just that Virgil freezes with half of a hex on his tongue, when his eyes catch on the other figure. Or more specifically, his wand.

Virgil doesnt know a lot about wands, but he thinks he knows more than average. Patton always did have a habit of rambling about his hobbies and wand making happened to be on that list. But even before that, Virgil would know that wand blindfolded: Elm, nine inches, with a rougarou hair core.

And he'd know it by the way it never quite looked like it fit in the hands of its owner.

Said owner, who was staring at him like he was the biggest idiot to ever grace the earth, someone who had been hit with confundgus until he couldnt remember his own name, someone who for some absolutely idiotic reason, decided not to curse a Death Eater the moment he saw one holding a wand at him.

"Virgil!"

Virgil feels the spell blast by him, missing his ear by mere inches. The Death Eater is almost as lucky: the spell hits the black Honda Civic behind him and explodes outward. The Death Eater is launched back towards them rolling across the asphalt, but his cloak took most of the damage.

“Confringo!” Roman shouts again, and another blast of a spell goes out.

"Protego!" The Neo-Death Eater counters and for a moment Virgil doesn't see the shield go up, doesn't see a way for him to escape the spell. 

Virgil grabs at Roman's arm, because it's the only thing he can think to do, and the last half of the flame veer to the side just enough that the enemy can scramble to his feet behind his shield.

"What are you--" Roman snaps, fiery and hot, and demanding of Virgil.

"Adorable!" The Neo-Death Eater cooes at them, "You actually thought those flames could hurt me?"

Virgil feels feverish just hearing that voice. Its a slippery eel of a tone, something sinister and mocking and Virgil knows it too well. So does Roman. So does everyone.

Its the voice he uses when he's scheming, when he's hiding something and wants you to know it, when he's got the upper hand in a conversation.

Its the voice that is undeniably Dee’s, and no one else's.

“Ekans,” Roman growled.

“Guilty as Charged, Prince,” Dee Ekans smiles like snake oil and mistrust, “I take it you saw the Fireworks? They were a bit disappointing for my taste, but then again all things muggle usually are.”

“Sectumsempra!” 

Virgil mouth tastes like ash. Roman’s wand slices the air like a sword, like a knife, like death, and the green spell flies towards Dee faster than Virgil can react. (He knows what that spell does: they’ve all heard the rumors around Hogwarts of the Potions teacher that created a curse that killed from bloodloss, they’ve all heard how it can’t be cured and how Severus Snape took the countercurse with him to the grave--)

Dee throws himself to the side. He’s not smiling anymore, not when the spell shreds the flaming car behind them. His hand moves to the side of his face, the left side of his face, where some part of the magic had skimmed him and left a precise line that welded with cherry red.

Roman raises his wand again, and this time Virgil leaps in front of him. 

“Virgil!”

“Patton, Logan,” Virgil gasps out but he cant remember when he stopped being able to breathe. The world threatens to start swimming so he grabs Roman by the forearms to steady himself. “Patton and Logan.”

Dee hisses violently, “Don’t worry about your blood traitor, Little Raccoon. My father invited him for a stay and when he leaves I’m sure he’ll want nothing to do with you.”

Virgil squeezes Roman’s wrists, but Dee’s face is too proud to be lying about this one.

“Be more worried about the owl.” Dee’s grin came back, a blinding white in the fire of around them. “Last I checked only one wing had been broken, but Mother does move very fast.”

Roman roars and lunges forward, but Dee presses his bloodied fingers to his lips and blows them both a kiss. By the time Roman gets around Virgil, gets close enough to grab the Neo-Death Eater that is Dee Ekans, the Slytherin had twisted up in his cloak and disapparated into a black cloud of smoke. 

Virgil wants to throw up. Distantly he’s aware that there are sirens ringing, and he knows that means that Muggles are on the way.

He should be terrified, but all he can feel is relief. Patton is alive, Dee had said so. He was full wizard, a pureblood, from a pureblood family. He was alive for now.

Virgil grabs Roman by the back of his shirt, “We have to go.”

Roman slaps his hand away, “Why did you do that?!” The flames dance behind him, giving him wings of fire. Somehow his breath his hotter than them. “Why did you stop me from killing him?!”

“We have to go, Roman.” Virgil ignores him, “Logan needs us.”

“Ekans deserves to die!”

“Roman!” Virgil yells, “It’s time to go,” He tugs him towards the end of the road, “I’ll explain later.”

“No!” Roman slaps him away again, “You’ll explain right now! I’m so sick and tired of not knowing what the hell is going on in your brain! Why did you stop me from hitting him? He’s the bad guy, Virgil!” 

“We don’t have time for this!” Virgil says he grabs on to Roman again, yanks him towards the end of the street. Roman fights him every step of the way, smelling like ashes and cinders and charcoal.

“Answer me!”

“You are no good to anyone in wizard jail, Prince!” Virgil snarls back.

“Bullshit!”

Virgil wants to take a swing at him, wants to yank his wand out and litter him so full of spells that he can’t move a muscle until Virgil finds Logan and gets all three of them somewhere safe, wants to cup Roman’s jaw and tell him everything between rough lip-biting kisses.

“You’re always doing shit like this!”

Virgil doesn’t do any of those things. He drags both of them into the community park and the wooden area beyond that. The heat between them blisters his fingers, stinging and burning and telling Virgil that its not worth it. But Virgil is a Hufflepuff, and Hufflepuffs are a loyal sort of people. And really that is Virgil’s biggest flaw.

“Running off, being secretive, pretending to be happy when you obviously aren’t--”

Roman gets a hand under Virgil jaw and shoves him up, up, and away. Virgil hits the ground with this tongue between his teeth and tears threatening in his eyes. 

“Roman!” He snaps, spitting blood from his mouth.

“Whose side are you on?”

Virgil’s body freezes.

Roman stands over him, moonlight shadows painting his face. His wand twists in his hand. He’s always been dangerous, Virgil remembers suddenly, with the effortless magic in his veins and the endless spell knowledge in his head and the whimsical creativity in his words.

“Virgil,” Roman says breathless, and he looks angry. Rightfully so. “The only one of us who would have both the information and the opportunity to give our location to the Death Eaters, is you.”

“What? Why would I--”

“You wanted me out of the house.” Roman says in an accusatory tone that makes Virgil’s blood slow in his veins. “You wanted me--the most powerful of us-- out of the head quarters, for a day of activities you weren’t even enjoying, and on that same day my house is blown up.”

Virgil scrambles to his feet, but he still feels off balanced, “It’s not like that--”

“Isn’t it?” he hisses, “You pestered us all last week about what charms were set up around the house! You said you were adding more! How do we know you didn’t take some off?”

“Because I didn’t!”

“You’re a master at Charms.” Roman snarls, “It would have been a sinch!”

And Virgil doesn’t know what to say to that. His hand slips into his jacket pockets, just barely resisting the urge to go for the hidden pouch over his chest that’s numbly cold--

Roman shoves his wand at him. “No! Hands out of your pockets, Storm.”

“What?”

“You heard me!” Roman said, stepping around him, like he’s some dangerous wild animal and Roman is the hunter come to put him down before he hurts another innocent person. “Did you or did you not give information to the Death Eaters? Did you tell them our location so they could kill us?”

“Roman!” Virgil takes a step back, his hands come out of his pocket and he starts wondering if maybe he should have been reaching for his own wand, after all. 

Roman looks angry; he looks like the fire that had eaten up his house. His hold on his wand is so tight, Virgil can see the red oak wood threatening to split. Small sparks dance at the edge reacting to Roman’s anger. No muggles would be out here in the woods, and the neo Death Eaters should still be dancing around the bonfire of the house. The only person who would come was possibly Logan, and they didn’t-- Logan wasn’t-- 

There was no one to stand between them, or direct attention away. For all intents and purposes they were alone in the world.

“That date was just a ploy,” Roman growls, “A ploy that I fell for!”

“No!” Virgil wants to list all the reasons why it wasn’t just a ploy.

But that of course isn’t the problem here. The problem is that it was a ploy in the first place. It was a ploy that Virgil made and took advantage of Roman to get him to follow in it.

Virgil tongue feels swollen, and he isn’t thinking. He knows he isn’t thinking. Because the next thing out of his mouth is the biggest mistake he’s ever made: “When have I ever done something to purposely harm you guys?”

 “I don’t know, maybe every single school year up until fourth year--”

Roman stops. 

Blinks.

“Every single school year up until…” He repeats, and Virgil feels the cannonball of dread in his stomach swell until shoves its way up through his lungs and up his throat. 

He’s imagined the way it happens a million times. Each one worse than the last, each one dangerous and bad and terrifying. Still the sight of Roman’s copper eyes turning purple and the light that drifts off him like an angelic aura is worse than all of them. Its his nightmares, come to life, and it’s staring at him with a murderous expression.

“Roman?” Virgil whispers, and maybe there’s a faint hope there that he’s wrong and the spell over him hasn’t broken and Virgil hasn’t lost the only thing he’s had for the past two years. 

“These are false memories,” Roman says. It feels like a slap in the face. “Why are there false memories in my head?”

Virgil’s mind tells him to run, and to run fast, but his body doesn’t move an inch. Not even to breathe. Roman had effortlessly used Sectumsempra against Dee, and Virgil is weaponless against him. He needs to get out of there, before either of them do something they’re going to regret. 

But at that moment there a sound of something tumbling through the branches above them, and Virgil looks up out of instinct. 

Its an owl, and it looks like it hell. Virgil lunges to catch it before it hits the ground, because even in the moonlight he’d know that white and brown and black pattern anywhere. 

“Logan!” Virgil calls, slightly more than horrified because he’s no owl expert but he’s pretty sure owls wings aren’t supposed to do that. There’s blood too. Virgil doesn’t know what to do with blood like this. “Roman! Roman I need--”

He stops when he sees the the other hasn’t lowered his wand. “Roman?”

“Avada--”

Virgil doesn’t hear the end of it. All he sees is the green light and then… 

And then there’s just darkness.

***

Dee had told him on the first Train Ride to Hogwarts about the Sorting Hat. 

“It uses Leg-ili-men-cy,” Dee had said holding up identical Chocolate Frog Cards with Salazar Slytherin on it “Thats a type of magic. It reads your thoughts and figures out where you’d best fit.”

Virgil had been so happy to be a Hufflepuff. He had never thought it was going to end up being a death sentence. 

***

“-nnervate.”

Virgil blinks his eyes open groggily. His whole head feels a bit like it was stuffed with tissues, like that Christmas that he spent sick out of his mind and Dee had shown up in the fireplace with more pumpkin pasties than he could carry and sugared butterfly wings for his mom, like that time they had hung out over the summer when Dee had wanted to practice for his position as Beater on the Slytherin Quidditch team and Virgil had dragged out his old baseball supplies only have Dee accidently beam him in the head on the first throw, like that time when Roman had cast a killing curse at him and Virgil hadn’t even tried to move out of the way.

And suddenly the fogginess of his head gives away to absolutely panic and its the cold type that surges through his veins freezing over his muscles and making his lungs work over time for air that only comes in every third heave. Its the panic he remembers and hates because its only happened once before and that was the worst day of his life.

He needs his wand.

His hand doesn’t even reach to his chest, not to mention across his body to the inside of his left boot where he normal keeps it. It takes him a moment to realize its not his lack of coordination, not his lack of focus nor disconnected thought process struggling to comprehend what was going on: his arm was being prohibited from coming forward by a rope.

Whats more is that when Virgil looks up too slowly putting together the pieces, Roman is standing over him with Virgil’s wand in his hand and an angry look on his face.

It feels like a nightmare; one of his worst ones yet. Its the version where he can’t wake up. The one where Roman has his wand and he’s been dragged somewhere he doesn’t recognize (the woods? Some woods somewhere?) and he’s been tied up because they can’t trust him and--

 And Virgil can’t figure out why he’s alive at all.

He knows what curse Roman sent at him. The bad taste in his mouth and the tingling pain in all of his limbs shows he knows it. The object anger in Roman’s expression is just further confirmation.

And yet, Virgil’s still alive, his pulse fluttering like a pixie’s wings as he desperately tried to come up with an excuse, an explanation, something that he can say that wouldn’t get him killed.

“Hey, Storm,” Roman says with a mockery of a smile that makes Virgil flinch. When was the last time he called Virgil by his last name? Fourth year? “I’m glad to see you alive.”

“Ro- roman,” Virgil gasps. He presses his back against the tree as if he can melt into it. The rope scratches at his wrists. Roman leans closer, and he’s always been taller but its never been threatening until now.

“Wanna tell me why there’s a bunch of fake memories in our heads?” Roman suggests with the end of the wand.

Virgil can’t tear his eyes from the tip, the glowing red that lies there ready to spark whenever Roman wants it to. Virgil’s watched Roman do spells for years; he knows how easily magic comes and flows through him and a wand. Even if it wasn’t through his own wand, he rarely ever messed up.

Is that what happened? Roman made a fluke with the killing curse and now Virgil was still alive when he should be dead?

Virgil’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. Pulling it off will probably make his mouth bleed.

“That was not a rhetorical question, Virgil,” Logan’s voice says icily from beyond the wand.

Virgil pries his eyes away from the wand, to where Logan is standing half turned away, with his arm in a makeshift sweatshirt sling and his clothes rumpled and blood crested. There’s a table in front of him where he’s looking at several things with his good hand and his wand is sticking out of his deep pocket like it was just another day out of class. A breeze blows through the trees.

It looks like it should be a happy place.

Virgil doesn’t think he’s ever been so terrified in his life.

“I-”

Roman looks at him impatiently. “You-?”

He wants to say he doesn’t know, but thats a lie. He knows why there are fake memories in their heads, has known for nearly three years. He’s known and lied and he’s so sick of lying.

But if he doesn’t lie, he has to tell the truth.

And the truth will kill him. Literally. Virgil can feel the stinging pain of his forearm, the burning warmth that he isn’t sure his brain is just making up.

He squeezes his eyes shut pressing his back against the bark of the tree he’s tied to. His voice is quieter than the breeze through the leaves. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Roman scoffs, “Did you hear that, Logan? He says he can’t tell us.”

Logan doesn’t answer so Roman lunges forward to grab Virgil by the front of his jacket and hauls him to his feet. Virgil’s knees threaten to give out but he forces himself back against the tree again, getting as far away from the Gryffindor as he can. 

(He still smells like ashes, like smoke, like death and danger, and an enemy--) 

“I can’t believe you, Storm,” Roman snarls at him, “All this time you were pretending to be our friend, pretending to be more than a friend, and then you turned right back around and fed information to the neo wizard nazis? Who does that?! Other than you, apparently?”

“It’s not like that!” Virgil wishes he kept silent. His eyes are burning with the desperate need to stop the tears from falling, but he doesn’t think he’s been doing a good enough job.

“Tell me what its like then,” Roman challenges.

And Virgil’s mouth snaps shut. His tongue tastes like blood again. His whole mouth tastes like blood.

“His jacket,” Logan says distantly. “He never goes anywhere without that jacket.”

Virgil’s chest constricts, “No.”

Logan glances back at him, then at Roman and without even saying a word they both nod.

“No!” Virgil squirms back into his hoodie, as if he can make himself smaller or make the jacket stick to his back. “Please! Roman!”

Virgil had been smart when he made his jacket. He had been smart when he shielded it with charms to ward off rain and mud and soda. He had protection against cuts and scrapes and fire. Honestly Virgil could charge into battle with nothing but his jacket and most likely come back unscathed from the amount of spells he put on it.

But he's not stupid enough to think that between Logan’s endless knowledge of spells, Roman’s creativity in making new ones, and their combined level of determined spite, that his charms would do anything more than delay the inevitable.

It takes them twenty minutes.

Virgil’s wand flicks in Roman’s hand and then Virgil is left shivering, tied to a fucking tree, begging uselessly for them to stop. His jacket phases right off him, like it was made of some ghost material that existed in a secondary dimension where they can see it but not touch it. Virgil doesn’t understand beyond the fact that its wrong. 

“Accio,” Logan says.

His jacket-- the one his mother had bought him, the one that he had painstakingly stitched back together after every adventure with Dee, the one that he had enlarged every time he had outgrown it because that jacket was his safety blanket-- his jacket sails right towards Logan and lands over Logan’s broken arm’s shoulder.

Virgil’s voice is raw. “Guys, please. Stop--”

They don't stop.

Virgil almost wonders what his life would be like if they did.

“Logan,” Virgil repeats, “Logan, please, don’t--”

“Specialis Revelio,” Logan says ignoring Virgil entirely. His wand waves over Virgil’s jacket. And Virgil can’t tear his eyes off the interior pocket he had charmed away from normal eyes, that glows red in response to Logan’s spell. 

Logan doesn’t even look at him as he flips the jacket over and tears the patch open. Maybe if he had he would have hesitated, even just a little. Roman crosses his arms, squeezing Virgil’s wand in his hand. Virgil shakes his head, blinking back those unhelpful tears, and the whimper thats climbing up his throat.

“What is he going to find?” Roman demands.

Virgil wishes the rope was just a bit longer, just enough that he could bring his hands up to his ears and block out the accusatory tone.

Logan pulls out the Galleon, and rubs it between his fingers for a moment. Virgil’s breath catches at the sight of it, his dark bangs tumbling into his eye sight and his gaze losing hope when Logan says quietly, “Coin Collecting.”

 He doesn’t sound surprised. He doesn’t sound like anything.

“There’s a Protean Charm on this.” Logan says in that same cold tone. “And the date on the border...this is yesterday’s date.”

Roman snarls, oh god, he snarls. Virgil’s chest seizes at the sound. He’s been crying for the past several minutes but that's nothing compared to the absolute dread that floods over him.

“It’s not like that!” Virgil says, “Guys, please!”

“Isn’t it?” Roman growls, “Who were you talking to?”

“I wasn’t--”

“Roman.” Logan interrupts, and Virgil’s stomach drops out.

Because he knows what's in Logan’s hand now, what can make him take on that face, so pale, so horrified.

He knows deep in his heart that the past two years were never going to end quietly but this is something worse. This is his nightmare, this is the scene that keeps him up at night, keeps him terrified of falling asleep and risking seeing that sort of expression on their faces, except this time there is no gasping awake, no pinching himself until his vision blurs and he’s staring up at the ceiling of the guest bedroom in Roman’s house.

Roman’s hands shake as he takes it from the Ravenclaw, that single little paper, worn with age and love and desperation folded into eighths and hidden in his pocket a million times over. 

“You--” Roman says, and, oh god, those brown eyes rage with a fury so much like the fire, full of so much hatred, that Virgil feels it from where he is tied up. Roman can’t finish the sentence, and that’s as scary as what else he could have said.

Its a picture. The picture.

Its thirteen year old Virgil and thirteen year old Dee and its Virgil biggest mistake.

“You’re still friends?” Roman’s voice shakes just like his hands.

“Its not what you think!” Virgil repeats like a broken record, his eyes burning, his voice begging, “Please it’s not--”

Roman rearranges the two wands in his hand and flips the picture around and pinches the top on either side of the fold and gives just a quick jerk of his wrists--

“ROMAN!” Virgil screams. “NO! Please! No, please don’t!” 

And the picture--

He thrashes against the bindings, and the sound he makes is not human. Its a scream, its desperation, its absolute terror and panic. His eyes blur with tears, and his lungs beg to be allowed to inhale again, and his arms are sticky with blood and burning around the wrists where his movements caused the rope to slice his skin and, and, and.

And all Virgil can see is that picture in halves on the ground between them. One half him, one half Dee, and their winter scarves twisted together so that the yellow and green are on both sides and their arms linked just enough to show off those handmade sweaters.

His knees go weak and Virgil ends up on the ground, without being able to drag his eyes from the way Dee had smiled four years ago and never again.

“Repario,” Virgil whispers desperately, despite the fact he doesn’t have a wand and he’s never had enough skill to perform wandless magic. “Repario, please, Repario.”

His chest heaves, shuddering his entire frame with the pleading gasps and wish, wish, wishing the halves back together because despite the fact that he knows the picture like his own face in the mirror, he needs it to not be torn apart, not be ruined, not to be unrecognizable.

“Please, please, pleasepleaseplease,” Virgil sobs, “Please don’t... take it from me...please Repario, Logan, please!”

He tugs on the bindings again, and his head drops to his chest, vaguely aware that he’s soaked and shivering and this is the longest he’s gone without his jacket since he was ten, and that he hasn’t cried this much since he had last hugged his mom and she had said that she was proud of the man he had grown into and the friend he would die for. 

“Why should we do anything for you?” Roman demands, “You got Patton-- he’s-- and Logan’s arm--” Roman blows his breathe out of his nose like a Chinese Fireball, “You’re a Death Eater!”

“I’m not,” Virgil hiccups, “Please, I swear!”

Roman’s foot slams down on the pieces of the photo and grounds them into the forest floor.

Virgil blubbers his way through another series of pleading that falls on deaf ears. His fingernails dig into his palms, sticky with blood from his wrists. He tugs uselessly at the rope again, as if it had somehow become loose in the past three seconds. Snot runs down his chin, and salty tears burn his eyes and irritate his neck where he can’t wipe them off. His shoulder blades ache, but its really nothing compared to how the cavity in his chest seems to gnaw at him from inside.

Then Roman is right in front of him, dragging him off the ground by his shirt collar and forcing Virgil to meet his gaze and the tip of a wand, Virgil’s own wand, digging into the soft flesh under his jaw.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, stop, I’m sorry--”

“Shut Up!” Roman snaps.

And Virgil’s mouth closes, but the whimper escapes just enough that Roman gives him a violent shake. The back of his head hits the bark of the tree, and Virgil remembers those hands that had held him as they fell asleep on the couch with movies playing, those hands that had caught him when he fell off his broom in sixth year, those hands that had pulled him out of the way of the Whomping Willow-- those same hands were very capable of of crushing his trachea without magic at all.

Roman backs him up until he’s pressed against the tree and Roman is the only thing holding him up. 

“How long have you been feeding information about the Order to Dante Ekans?”

Virgil whimpers.

“Tell me!”

“It’s not like that,” Virgil hiccups, “I swear Roman--”

“Don’t swear to me!” Roman’s fist tightens, “You and that snake put false memories into our heads! You made us believe that we were friends for who knows how long! I can’t believe we trusted you! I can’t believe I really thought--”

He lets out a breathy laugh, that’s void of the warmth he’s known for, “So tell me how long you’ve been a traitor, Storm, or I’ll leave you here for the wolves to enjoy, bite by bite.”

“I--” Virgil squeezes his eyes closed but it does nothing to relieve the feeling of being burned alive by the other’s eyes. “I’m sorry I can’t...Roman...p-please you...have to believe me.”

“Give me something to believe!” Roman hisses between his gritted teeth, the wand jabs him in the jaw, but the whatever magic Roman’s trying to produce won’t come out because its still Virgil’s wand and unicorn hair cores are as faithful as they come.

Roman throws the wand to the side and instead hooks his other hand on Virgil’s collar. “I haven’t heard a single reason why I shouldn’t believe you aren’t a Death Eater or why we shouldn’t leave you tied up right here.”

God, if Virgil wasn’t terrified before, he is now. Because he’s lost a lot, and he was prepared to lose some of it, but he’s never been alone. He’s never not had someone to have his back, never not had someone to remind him what he was fighting for. The idea of Roman and Logan simply apperating away and abandoning him in the middle of this forest by himself causes his lungs to stutter in complete horror.

He doesn’t care if they hate him. He doesn’t care if they keep him tied up, or frozen over with petrificus totalus, just as long as they take him with them.

“Virgil!” Roman yells, and Virgil flinches, at the loudness of his tone, at the closeness of their bodies, at the sharpness of his canines. He’s got to be delirious from terror, because he’s pretty sure Roman’s eyes are rimmed red and there’s lift in his voice that sounds like he’s pleading for the truth.

Virgil doesn’t know how else to apologize to him, so he says the same words again and again and again.

Then all at once he feels it.

The feeling of someone shoving their hand directly into his brain, ripping apart the muscle at each wrinkle. There’s no precision to the attack; its bloody, and violent, and unpracticed. Claws that thrash and slash and its not like Dee’s soft touch. And that alone triggers Virgil’s urge to vomit.

The walls come on instinct: practiced instinct, muscle memory. They’re strong and thunderous and built out of critical necessity to protect and defend. The claws scratch at the barricade dragging along the stone like it can out run Virgil’s ability to set it them up.

“Virgil,” Logan’s voice comes from somewhere far away, strained, tired. He doesn’t say to let him inside, but Virgil can hear the unspoken words.

Of the two of them Dee had always been better at Legilimency and Occlumency. He had to be. Virgil wasn’t great at either, but they had practiced every night for a year, and then Virgil had done it by himself in the following years, and that had to count for something, didn’t it?

“S-stop!” Virgil sobbed, “Logan!” His hands yank the rope again pulling as far as they can but he can’t get anywhere near his own body, much less where Roman is holding him up.

“Let him in.” Roman commands, “Virgil, let him in!”

Logan isn’t a practiced Legilimens. In fact Virgil bets he’s barely done this more than twice, and even then he needs to use a wand for it. He’d get tired long before Virgil’s walls would come down.

Virgil blames his own unstability. He blames it on the rising feelings he’s harbored for Patton and Logan and Roman and he blames it on Dee leaving him with them. He blames it on the feeling of Roman’s skin so warm on his own freezing, on the touch of Logan in his mind which disregarding the raw, rough edges of the claws, still feels like the raven haired ravenclaw and Virgil still wants to hoard those touches and keep them for himself. He blames it on the fact that he’s wanted to tell them for years now, and that he doesn’t want them to hate him, and, and, and. 

And Logan’s claws leap upward and Virgil’s walls are a second slower then they should have been.

Virgil feels his throat burn with his own stomach acids and memories flash by his mind’s eye, tearing them apart as it goes, searching ever so violently for the memory that explains why Virgil is the way he is, as if his whole life hasn’t been building to this outcome.

Virgil snatches them away from Logan, snatches and stashes and saves those tiny bits behind secondary and tertiary walls before Logan can get to them. Again and again and again until Logan is bruised and battered and Virgil can’t breathe and they’re standing in--

The living room he grew up in. His pictures on the mantle with both him and his mom and three of them emptied where the pictures stolen away. The coffee table has three mugs of tea on it and magazines about the city and the remote that was missing a battery because Virgil had stolen it to put in his secondary Xbox control earlier. 

His mom is there, hugging him tightly, “I’m so proud of you, my little storm cloud. I’m always going to be proud of you.”

Virgil tackles Logan out of that memory. 

Grocery store. Virgil’s been staring at the cereal for five minutes. His wand is in his boot, and his hands are in his jacket. Clenched into fists.

“Pardon me, young man? Would you mind helping me reach the great value box up there?”

Mom. She smiles at him. She doesn’t know him. 

“Yeah, sure. This one, right, Ma’am?”

Another person, a shadow from the end of the aisle, No, no, no, not here-- 

Virgil locks the rest in a black box. Logan doesn’t fight it.

“Don’t you dare try to take this from me, Ekans!” 

Anger. Angry. A challenge. Mistake. Mistake. Mista---

“Lo--Logan!” Virgil gasps. 

“Nasty little fates,” The professor mutters, “Nasty indeed. Do you know what Alstroemeria flowers represent?”

“Logan!”

“Face each other! Grip your right hands!”

“Please!”

Fourteen year old Dee is staring at him. Their hands are clasped tightly, and thin stream of red wrapping around their fingers weaving them together. Professor Remus’s wand doesn’t shake. Virgil doesn’t hesitate.

“I do.” 

Virgil goes limp in Roman’s arms. Seven feet away, Logan stumbles back further, tripping over a tree root and hitting the ground almost as hard as Virgil does. Maybe harder with that broken arm of his. Virgil’s not sure from how intensely his own body shakes trying to get rid of the vile feeling of someone else being in his head. 

He lets out another sob, yanking on the rope and falling as far forward as he can. Roman’s embrace isn’t comforting, but its something. His throat feels dry and eyes burn and he wants to get his hands on that pesky time turner that caused them to do all this just so he can stop himself from ever being born in the first place.

“You--” Logan says. He’s pale, paler than before, paler than paper, paler than the ghosts at that stupid castle. “You made an Unbreakable Vow.”

And whatever slim reserve, whatever dignity, Virgil had left, breaks and he’s gone.

(Next Chapter)

Quick Taglist: @whizzie72​ @chelsvans​ @faithfulcat111​ @felicianoromano​ @holliberries​ @jemthebookworm​ @killerfangirl3​ @silverflame-wc @stricken-with-clairvoyancy​ @treasureofpriam​

#lamp #dlamp #anxceit #prinxiety #hogwarts bois #Hogwarts au #IABTW(HI?) #Working title: It's Always Been This Way (Hasn't It?) #attempted murder #spellcasting #mind reading #time turners #ravenclaw!logan #ravenclaw!patton #Hufflepuff!Virgil #gryffindor!roman #Ravenclaw!Remy #sanders sides

[wxy85]

People have no sense of reality, responsibility or commitment. They will adopt cute little pigs or ducklings or puppies and when their cutsy itsy baby animal turn into a grown ass swine or duck or dog, suddenly they’re not cute enough anymore to be worth the trouble. Guess what Linda, you should have thought of that before. It’s the same goddamn thing with the fitness implants, sure it’s tempting to hack yours, amp it up to the max and live your muscle growth fantasy. But who’s gonna wipe your butt when you’re too big to bend your arms? Who’s gonna feed you with that fucking funnel to get the bare minimal 10k calories you need to survive? Who’s gonna sponge bath you? Who’s gonna take care of every one of your fucking needs because you’ll be as helpless as a fucking potted plant? I got stories like that every month, they’re nothing special. They’re sadly common stories of abandonment, broken dreams and aborted love stories. Ever since we opened the Bullpen with a few other guys, we’ve been receiving hundreds of requests to take in boyfriend, husbands or sons that were a burden on their family due to their size. But we can’t take everyone in, as much as we want to help those overgrown bulls. Their care is expensive, and we had to make the Bullpen a sustainable space. We take in up to 50 Bulls max, 30 gay bulls 20 straights there is an overlap for bisexual ones. We feed them, take care of them in a five star complex. Each bull have a dedicated caretaker that see to his every need. A happy bull is a growing bull and a growing bull is a bankable bull. The facility is filled with camera and we sell subscriptions to channel broadcasting the feed to muscle fetishists all around the world. We sell bulls from time to time too. We make sure the people adopting them are able to take a decent care of them. That allows us to have new bulls over and so on. Oh come on! Cut that fucking outraged face,i don’t need a lecture on how this is prostitution and human trade, I know what we’re doing. I don’t care what you think, we’re actually helping those big morons because no one else would. I’ll tell you the story of Rafael, how we got him here, how we rescued him from of a fucking shithole and how much better he is now with us. Rafael application was sent in by his boyfriend Chad. There was a lot of pictures documenting their story and a long long letter from Chad explaining why we wanted his beloved bull gone from his life. Let me tell you that letter wasn’t a touching text about the man he loved, it was the cry for help of an asswipe that didn’t see the writing on the walls. They met in college they were both 20 years old, Chad was your all american closeted football player and Rafael was a brilliant exchange student from Mexico. They fell in love, thoug i suspect it was only skin deep but I’ll never know for sure. Chad a square jaw blond hair blue eyes and that thick body of a football player while Rafael was a model like young man with dark almond eyes jet black hair, full lips and a very open and joyful face. I knew right away he’d be a hit in the bullpen. After a year of relationship Chad had opened to Rafael about his muscle fantasies and talked his very enthusiast boyfriend into getting his fitness implant unlocked and amped to the max. Like always it was fun at first. Within the first few month Rafael had turned into a real fitness freak. One of those adonis you see all over your IG feed. But that was merely a temporary state as Rafael was just beginning his journey toward freakdom. Six month into it, Rafael was already a big as a pro heavyweight bodybuilder, his shape was incredible, thin waist, ripped body, massive arms and ass and legs. Chad didn’t mention anything about it but from Rafael’s bulge on the pics of that period, he was also growing down there. It was probably the best period for them. Chad paraded his trophee boy all over the place. The tipping point was when Rafael dropped out of college. One of the very bad side effects of amping up an implant is that it upset the hormonal balance so much that it slowly turn people into dumb obedient and totally dependent persons. Bulls if you want. As it started to affect Rafael, he tried doing odd jobs but couldn’t keep one because of his degrading emotional state and shears size and range of motion. And yet, he was still growing. As expected, one year into the process Rafael had left the realm of humanly possible. Bigger than any roidhead, he was turning into a dumb obedient bull in need of constant attention. It was a full time care that Chad couldn’t provide. What happens in that sort of situation? What wasn’t said in Chad’s application? I had a faint idea of course. Rafael growth chart had started to curb down but he was far from done. Remember what I said : a happy bull is a growing bull. I knew Rafael wasn’t receiving proper care, I just had no idea how much of a shitshow it really was. Rafael was to be my new protege. My former one had been sold to an rich entrepreneur from the United Arab Emirates (with the utmost discretion of course). And as I perused the various applications I saw potential in Rafael and decided to be his caretaker. I took the Bullpen truck and drove all the way to their place to pick Rafael up. Due to their size, Bulls don’t do well in planes or bus. The truck has been modified for their comfort and has some material for emergencies an unplanned events. Chad and Rafael lived in a small house on the outskirts of the town. An affordable place for a low income couple. I remember pulling in their driveway an early morning of june. I was greeted by a nervous Chad, waiting for me on the porch. He was a gorgeous man but he looked like shit. Dirty sweatpants and t-shirt, messy hair and bags under the eyes. He was a wreck, it almost sparked sympathy in me but I knew Rafael was sort of the real victim here. -”Hello, Chad. I’m Leigh. We talked on the phone, I’m here to pick Rafael up” I said forcing an ultra brite smile. Chad eyed me from top to bottom, I knew the man was checking me out. I had a perfectly configured fitness implant and I dare say my body was fitness magazine cover material. I was wearing worn out jeans and a tight t-shirt that did hug my body in the most flattering way and a very expensive pair of shades, but the display wasn’t intended for him. -” Yeah, he’s inside.” he said nervous. I could feel something wasn’t quite right. Most of the bulls are waiting to be picked up more impatiently than their carers are waiting to get rid of them. I decided to probe around a little. -”Is his stuff ready?” I asked. -”He doesn’t really have stuff to pack. He doesn’t fit into anything anymore.” He said growing more nervous. “...And he doesn’t know yet.” I felt my face crack on the spot. Chad froze, probably afraid I’d just cancel the pick up. -”You didn’t tell him? That's irresponsible” I snapped. -”It’s not easy ok?!” Chad said eyes watering. I took my sunglasses off and stared right into his eyes until he squirmed on the spot. -”Spare me that bullshit.” I said flatout. “Let’s get going.” I said pointing at the door. When we entered, the first thing that I took in was the smell. It was terrible. And the second thing was the mess. It was equally terrible. We entered the living room, there was several dirty mattress piled on the floor. It was a makeshift bed for Rafael. he was still sleeping. I felt my heart tighten, he was dirty, unkempt. I wanted to punch Chad for doing that to his boyfriend. I had never seen a bull left in such a terrible state. Chad walked to Rafael and shook his shoulder softly. It felt unnatural. -”Rafael, wake up.” he breathed “wake up.” Rafael stirred. He was incredibly large compared to his boyfriend I’d say around 6’6 and over 400lbs with a body fat in the singledigits. Yet that seemed smaller than what I expected. It dawned on my that he might be underfed. Rafael slowly woke up, asking Chad for a hug. Chad looked dead inside, he went along but I could tell he wanted nothing to do with Rafael. and then Rafael spotted me. -”Who’s that?” he said. I remained silent, letting Chad take responsibility. -”It’s Leigh, he’s here for you. He’s gonna take you to the Bullpen.” To those guys the Bullpen is a fucking Disneyland on roids. Getting accepted in is generally the best day of their lives. So I did not expect the reaction that followed. -”YOU’RE ABANDONING ME?!” Rafael cried. The whole fucking house shook. Chad almost pissed himself of fear. I stayed stolid, straight in my designer leather boots. Two things about bulls: first they’re submissive stay cool and they’ll obey. Second, they’re practically harmless overgrown teddy bears. So I while Chad was expecting him to go on a roid rage like rampage I knew Rafael would most likely just start wailing and sobbing. -”You can’t leave me! You said you’d take care of me. That you wanted it.” Rafael said. Chad couldn’t even look him in the eyes. -”Babe, you said you loved me. That we were in it together. You can’t give me up.” Rafael said between heavy sobs. Chad remained silent as Rafael was stuck on repeat. His hair was long and unkept. His tears flowing on his cheeks, leaving trails in the dirt. That was the last straw. I laid my hand on Chad’s shoulder and shoved him toward the door. -”Get out of here. Wait outside. You’re useless.” I said I turned to Rafael who was looking at me for the first time really. -”I wanna stay with Chad.” Rafael said still sobbing. I looked for a clean spot to sit but couldn’t find any so I stayed up. -”When was the last time you two had sex? or even some sort intimacy?” I asked. “When was the last time he took care of you? When did he cleaned you last time?” -”I don’t fit in the shower anymore…” -”There is a hose outside, he could wash you. He could clean the dump he makes you live in. Does he even feed you correctly?” Pregnant pause. -”Look, I can’t force you to come with me. But I’m pretty sure you’re not happy here… Can I at least give you a haircut and a shower. We’ll talk afterward. Rafael nodded. -”Good.” I breathed. “I’ll be right back.” I walked out to the truck. It had basic clothes and an first aid kit. I put some clean clothes, soap, shampoo, sponge and an oversized towel in a bucket and walked back to the house. Chad was out by the door, smoking and staring at me. I shot him a nasty look. -”don’t move from here till I’m done.” I said. Back in the living room Rafael was up. Trying to cover his nudity with hands but he was so wide, thick, muscular and hung he had troubles being decent. I smiled to him and gestured for him to move toward the backyard. I made him stay on the concrete terrace -”Sorry it’s gonna be cold.” I said I then splashed the big man with water, He shivered as the cold water hit his massive body. I drenched him and then cut the water I grabbed some soap and the sponge and started washing him. I love washing bulls. I love rubbing their massive muscles. I started with his back, Rafael was really a gorgeous one, sinewy and massive. He had a tapered waist that highlighted his insane V shaped torso and his huge round ass and legs. His proportions were insanely erotic. I was boning in my jeans as I felt his thick muscle, rubbing suds in worshiping manner. He was breathing slowly, definitely enjoying some much need attention. I moved to the front. He was even more impressive upfront, he had proper bull neck and massive traps. His pecs were gorgeous full slabs of muscle adorned with large large brown nipples. His abs were hard, defined and bulged in an obscene manner. Between his legs was a fat uncut cock, probably a 10 incher, all chubbed up by all the attention he was getting. I rolled off his foreskin to clean him thoroughly his dick hardened in my expert hands. I teased him just enough to get him almost fully hard and flustered but not enough to send him over the edge. With the grime gone, his skin had a warm light brown tone that highlighted his incredible physique. I noticed a few stretch marks on his shoulders and ass. Bulls grow so fast they need a good skin moisturizer or stretch marks happen. I had some nourishing oil to fade them, I made note to use it afterward. I noticed a few dark traces on his pecs that hadn't disappear. I got a closer look and my heart sank as I noticed those were bruises. -”How did you get those?” I asked afraid of the answer. -”It’s nothing.” He said deflectively. -”they’re not noting. They’re bruises, the are blueish so they’re a few days old already and they’re on a weird place.” -”It’s my fault… i didn’t even notice them.” -”how so?” -”I can’t stop my growth. Chad said I needed to but I can’t stop it. I couldn’t obey him… and…” Rafael stopped breaking down in tears again. I hugged him, getting my clothes drenched in the process. We stayed a few minutes, I hold him tight, rocking him softly until his sobbing stopped. -”I’ll come with you.” he said softly. -”That’s a relief... I wouldn’t have left you here anyway.” I said. “I’ll take of you and I’ll make sure you’re happy. You can count on me. Let’s get this over and tear out of here. Sit.” He obeyed and i proceed to wash his hair and then buzz it in a short neat fashion. His gorgeous face was finally in full view. He was looking tired but he still was that drop dead gorgeous young man from his college picture. I rinsed him one last time with the hose. I oiled his marks, put some ointment on his bruises and then helped put on shorts short and a string tank top made of soft light brushed cotton. I got him a pair of flip flop for his massive feet. His fat dick was leaving a major dick print in his grey shorts and his tank was hugging his massive frame. He was even more handsome than i expected. I put all the stuff back in the bucket and we went around the house to get to the truck. I stashed the bucket in the truck and got my tablet out. I prompted the contract on it and hold it out to Rafael. -”I need your signature on that contract. The bullpen will be your legal guardian. We’ll see to your every need and well being. In exchange we’ll monetize captions of your daily life in the bullpen.” I said. Rafael looked at me and then at Chad still on the porch of the house where he had been chain smoking out of stress and/or guilt. Rafael’s last glance was heartbreaking but brief. He pressed his thumb on the tablet to sign. Without a second glance he climbed in the truck. I looked at Chad, and decided to ignore him. I’m pretty sure sure I wouldn’t have been able to control myself and would have punched him in the throat. Instead I climbed in the truck and drove away from here. The trip’s only event was our stop midway. we stopped for food and coffee at a dinner in the middle of nowhere. Rafael was like a kid on Christmas when I told him to order everything he wanted. The waitress was shook by the amount of food he ordered and all the patrons were staring at the massive man taking up almost two seats of our booth while he shovelled crazy amounts of food in his mouth. He looked so happy, it was contagious. I can’t save every bull in the world but I try. One bull at a time. He was totally oblivious to the nasty stares he was getting and so was I. I delighted in watched him dig in his food and as I ate mine I booted my tablet to get some stuff done. -”What are you doing?” he asked between two mouthful. -”Don’t talk with a full mouth. I’m just taking care of some… paperwork… regarding Chad.” I heard him gulp and from the sudden silence coming from his side of the table, I noticed he had stopped eating. I raised my head to look at him look at me with a concerned face. -What?” I asked -”You’reporting him?” I breathed deeply. -”Yes. For domestic abuse and endangering the life of others.“ Rafael laid a thick hand on mine. -”Please don’t.” He said. “He’s had enough trouble.” I shot a hard look to Rafael. making it clear i disapproved his decision. Relationship with Bulls is not just bossing them around and stuffing them. There needs to be trust and respect between a caretaker and his bull. So I deleted the report i was about to send. -”Fine.” I said. “I don’t approve of it but I guess it is your decision to make.” -”Thanks.” he said with relief. Once we were done with lunch I paid the astronomical tab and we were back on the road. It was 10pm when we reached the Bullpen. We were both exhausted. I took Rafael straight to his room. It was a vast room with hardwood floor, white walls and ceiling, a massive bed with white sheets and a little furniture in clear would with discreet steel reinforcements. It had windows that took all of the far wall of the room and showed the forest encircling the bullpen. I gave him a tour of the room before closing the blinds. -”I’ll let you rest for tonight. I’ll give you a tour of the facility tomorrow morning.” I said. -”Leigh?” -”Yes?” -”I don’t wanna sleep alone.” -”Of course.” I said. “I’ll just grab a shower and go to sleep with you. -”I could use a shower too.” he said shyly I smiled and gestured him to the bathroom. I went to the dressing and retrieved two pair of soft loose boxers for us after the shower and went to bathroom where Rafael was struggling to get undressed. The bathroom was a large room in polished concrete with a large wooden reinforced stool that doubled as a stepladder and a storage for shower supplies. It was designed for bulls to sit on and for caretaker to climb on to clean their bull. Their was sprinklers heads on the ceiling to ensure an efficient use of water. I watched Rafael try to take off his tanktop before, it was a turn on watching big guys struggle and that would definitely please the watchers of our channels. They loved seeing big guys struggle with mundane tasks. Rafael ended up looking at me with a pleading look. -”Sit.” I said. He obeyed. I climbed on the stool and grabbed the bottom of his tanktop and lifted it off his massive frame. -”Stand up.” I grabbed the waist of his shorts and yanked them down. He gasped as his big dick flopped in the open. I went to a laundry box by the entrance of the bathroom and dumped the clothes in them. It then turned my back Rafael and undressed. I felt him watch me. I wanted him to watch me. Bulls have a crazy sex drive they need sex several times a day to be happy. And that bull hadn’t had sex in a while. It was my duty to make him happy… plus Rafael had got me sort of horny. I turned around as if i wasn’t naked, exposing my perfectly shaped body and decent cock, walked to the tap and unleashed a a warm rain in the room. Rafael was on the stool in the middle, he was beaming… I wondered when was the last time he had felt hot water on his skin. I washed both of us, he sat obediently on the stool while I took care of us. I wasn’t just cleaning him i was massaging his huge muscles, caressing his huge frame, exploring part of his body that hadn't been touch in a while. His pits, his crack, under his pecs or under his lemon sized balls. He was hard as a rock. I grabbed his fat dick and stroked it pretending to clean it. He was looking at me, waiting for me to make a move. I leaned against him and kissed his soft lips. He moaned in delight. We made out for a few minutes. We then sat next to each other and started masturbating each other. His temperature was rising, we would exchange kiss and caress as we pleasured each other. -”Get on your back. I know what my bull needs.” I said Rafael laid on his back on the stool, licking his lips in anticipation. He raised his legs in the air exposing his hole. I grabbed the lube in the shower supplies and used a generous amount on both my dick and his hole. I started teasing his hole with my cockhead. He was breathing hard, looking at me with lust, he begged me to fuck him. I went in slowly and gently. He was tight and hot around my dick. I’d go back and forth with the tip to loosen him. Sliding myself further in everytime. Until I had all my seven inches buried in him. He was slowly loosening around me and soon I was pounding him good. It felt amazing having his massive legs around my body as I pounded his huge ass. I grabbed his dick and wanked him as I fucked his brain out. The moment he came I allowed myself to pound him harder and fill him with seed. His whole body relaxed, shook by occasional spasm of the afterglow. After a little rest, I cleaned both of us again. After helping my bull in a sitting position I turned off the water, towelled us and helped him put on his boxer before going to bed. Rafael was just at the beginning of his conditioning as a bull and he was already doing so good. He’d be one of the best we had ever had here. I knew it. We laid on the massive bed and hugged each other to sleep. -”Leigh?” -”Yes.” I said half asleep. -”thanks.” -”My pleasure.” I chuckled. I heard him from afar as I was falling asleep. -”Please… tell me you won’t leave me.” -”I won’t. You’re mine now...” I said before blacking out.

[loansguide01-blog]

MoviePass parent’s CEO discusses the service’s rocky year

New Post has been published on https://loansguideto.com/%20/awesome/moviepass-parents-ceo-discusses-the-services-rocky-year/

MoviePass parent’s CEO discusses the service’s rocky year

In the space of a few months, MoviePass went from being the most wonderful startup on the block to a cautionary tale about growing too big, too fast.

By the time the summer of MoviePass came to an end, the company that was going to permanently disrupt the box office was hemorrhaging money. It changed its subscription plans repeatedly, while a service outage found its mother company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, asking creditors for a$ 5 million loan.

The company’s past year is littered with tales of woe, including funding the movie “Gotti,” which earned the fabled 0 percentage on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. But this week, MoviePass announced a return of kinds, with the launch of Uncapped, which brings back its limitless subscription plan( with caveats ).

Shortly after that news fell, we sat down with Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth to discuss the company’s rocky year, and how he intends to right the ship long after most have discounted MoviePass outright. We’ve already written up some of his more newsworthy statements; now here’s a fuller( but still edited and condensed) transcript of what he told us.

TC: What is the status of the plan to spin-off MoviePass at this phase? We last heard from you back in January.

TF: We filed our S-1, which is public information out there. And we’re continuing running full speed ahead.

TC: So what the fuck is Helios and Matheson look like moving forward?

TF: Helios and Matheson will still be patently the largest shareholder of MoviePass. And then MoviePass Entertainment will be with MoviePass Films, MoviePass Subscription and Moviefone.

TC: Why does it make sense to spin-off?

TF: It constructs sense from the standpoint of multiple reasons. One is because it will be a fully integrated entertainment company there. So if we plan to go forward and do any other acquisitions or whatever else we’re doing, genuinely we’ll simply focus on the amusement side.

TC: Do you still view MoviePass as a good investment?

TF: Absolutely 100 percentage, without a doubt. Because you created a household name, you changed the industry forever, even with AMC doing subscription and Cinemark doing subscription … even though they all said they would never do it , now they’re all doing it because you definitely changed the model. I think we grew obviously style too fast, where that was our problem in the technology side, being able to figure out people who were gaming the organizations of the system or doing hoax on the system, sharing their codes. So I guess now that we’ve relaunched the $9.95 Uncapped Plan, that’s where you really took six months to figure out on these new technologies side ways to really stop that from happening going forward.

This August 23, 2018, file photo shows MoviePass debit card and used movie tickets in New York.( AP Photo/ Richard Drew)

TC: Gaming the system…was the primary source of the problem?

TF: Oh, yeah. They would share their code. You’d have one person going to 20 movies a month, 30 movies a month. Which you know and I know, as much as we like movies, most people aren’t going to 30 movies a month. And the way we figured that out into the system was when we started auditing people’s[ accounts ]. How many times did they change their device. When they take it and then they bring it back.

TC: So the primary fixing you consider on your aim is various kinds of isolating those people and get them off the organizations of the system? Or how much of it is actually changing the fine print on the plans themselves?

TF: Even back then with all that abuse, 80 percentage were just regular movie-goers. Your average movie-goer that would go to four movies a year, and you’re trying to get them to double to go to eight movies a year, right? So when you’re sitting here looking at that, it was the 20 percent that were the abusers that were ruining it for everybody else, from the standpoint of gaming the organizations of the system or whatever. But I could go on … tales of people gaming the system. People use MoviePass to go to the restroom in Times Square.

TC: One of the complaints from consumers is that they felt like they had the carpet pulled out from under them. The schemes were constantly shifting. Is that going to continue to be the case moving forward?

TF: No. This scheme was always the scheme in the background of what you would move towards. But testing different plans, whatever it was, along the way. For instance, another issue is where people would go to the theater, they’ll pick up the ticket, they’ll hand their ticket to the kid or their child or their friend or whatever it is, they’ll go and keep watching the movie, and the person that’s paying the subscription goes back home or whatever they do. So now, even with our technology, we’ll be able to ping them inside the movie.

TC: You are actually tracking where people are?

TF: No , not tracking. When they go to log in to get a ticket, you have to do a locating because you’ve got to know what theater they’re at. So as they do that, you’re gonna go ahead when the movie starts 30 minutes later, you’re able to ping them inside the theater, only to make sure they still are at that theater.

TC: What sends up a red flag? Is it merely the sheer number of movies somebody’s going to in a month?

TF: It could be different things. It could be multiple locations. It could be multiple cities. It could be all kinds of different things. So those are all the algorithm that we’ve been building along the way.

TC: The new plan is limitless with a caveat. What are the parameters?

TF: You have full inventory like the old days of what you’re able to go to, whether it’s a Marvel movie or whatever it is. And that’s what the people want. They don’t want curated movies. I also believe that although we are did caps … people don’t really look at caps.

TC: Looking back on what happened in the past year, do you feel that the company was transparent enough with consumers and shareholders while all this was going down?

TF: Absolutely. I suppose on the stockholder side, utterly. I believe our revealings are route, route above and beyond, which is proven out over period, and I suppose on the interests of consumers side you’re always transparent as fast as you could be on different things that were going on, but you’re right from the standpoint of, you’re growing so quick so fast.

TC: In order to actually be profitable if you are generating revenue with your own original content, what does the breakdown have to be? How many of your movies do people with these pass have to go see in order for the whole thing to be profitable?

TF: Not as many as you’d gues, because if you’re just profitable on the subscription side alone, you know, break-even and profitable on that, and then you have your movies on top of that as your ancillary revenues. For instance, some of the pre-sales and commitments that we already have on our movies, you’re already way ahead of the game, and then when you start tying it back to subscribers, how much does each subscriber drive as gross revenue? Right now, everybody looks at it as $9.95 or $14.95. Those numbers will jump dramatically for — I mean, coming up soon. Sooner than later.

TC: What kind of period are we talking about for the subscription side to actually become profitable?

TF: Oh, well, that’s interesting. It’s profitable right now.[ A Helios and Matheson spokesperson later clarified that Farnsworth entailed MoviePass’ subscription business is profitable on a revenue-per-subscriber basis .]

TC: When did it turn profitable?

TF: I will tell you this because this is out there, MoviePass has actually paid Helios back fund over the last several months for loans that they have, so that gives you an idea of when we really started focusing on getting rid of the 20 percent of abuse.

TC: Are you able to disclose numbers for this new scheme, as far as number of subscribers?

TF: Seem, we’re extremely happy. We’re definitely well over 800 percentage growth in the last few days. And that’s conservative.

TC: What are you doing beyond announcing this plan to actually win those people back?

TF: Well, a lot of them are coming back already that have canceled in the past, and we’ll be doing things you’ll see coming out even more and more, especially towards the ones that were loyal over time and truly stuck it out over the last two years.

TC: What is the company’s relationship like with theaters at this point?

TF: We have good relationships with them, but the whole business model now is we don’t depend on them. We’re not looking at them from non-respendable revenues side, from the discount side, because you’re doing your own. You’ve got the subscription and your own original content, so that’s what we’re focused on.

TC: Does the relationship with the studios become problematic one you start creating your own films?

TF: No, because if you look at some of our past movies, Lionsgate’s a distributor, Universal’s a distributor, so they’re making money on us now, so they’re even more open now to dealing with us because now all of a sudden they’re realizing that we’re one of their clients. So, if we use Lionsgate for distribution for one of our movies, we’ve got Universal trying to get the same deal, so it’s the opposite with the studio side. The studio side, we’ve got great relationships with them for sure.

TC: Last year things were seeming rough and there was a point where the service was downed and the company needed a fairly large investment. What were those dialogues like with investors?

TF: I think if you look at our investors, the institutions, they’ve all done fine. I mean, they’re more than willing to invest in the next rounds of whatever they can do to invest, so I believe the big snafu there was the charge card company, when one company sold to another company or whatever. We had done business with them for four years, so they decide that it’s too much credit for them and literally called the credit line on a Friday night and I do a personal guarantee on a Saturday. So, were the conversations interesting? Yeah, they were to say the least.

TC: What is Moviefone driving? What is the value proposition for you with it?

TF: We only brought on Matt[ Atchity ], who was the inventor of Rotten Tomatoes … We’ll start doing more. We merely engaged a very well-known person for Moviefone that will start doing all our red-carpet events.

TC: “Gotti” must have been a learning experience.

TF: Not really. Let me tell you why. Because we never looked at “Gotti” as a money-maker. They knew it would break-even or whatever, but they were projected that it would do $1.3 million in the box office here … Then when we pushed it with MoviePass, we took that up to$ 5 million.[ Technically, $4.3 million .] So, I entail, when you can take a movie — I gotta be careful here, but when you take a movie that might not be that great or perfect, and you can move that needle, was always our theory of subscription.

TC: It sounds like you’re still optimistic about the theatrical business.

TF: Last year was the first time that theatrical was up in what, 20 years? Attendance, right? And then as we started going through our little snafu, you watch numbers have fallen now. So I also think what’s interesting is, the industry was nervous to espouse you, and then all of a sudden when they thought maybe it was gonna go away, then all of a sudden they’re trying to embrace you. It’s like, wait a minute, maybe we do want them as part of the model. So I guess, if you look at it overall, the whole ecosystem of theatrical, I don’t think that’s going anywhere at all. Because it’s like there’s certain people, and I believe millennials for sure, they were never experiencing the theater side. Because they’re not gonna pay $15 a ticket, guy takes his girlfriend there or a young kid, and all of a sudden they’re spending 100 bucks on a night out going to the movies. Even though, it’s still the cheapest entertainment out there.

So with a subscription model, where it stimulates it more user-friendly, then they feel — it’s funny if you look at AMC’s quotes out there, from what’s going on with their subscription, intake at the concession stands has doubled. We’ve been saying that all along. Because people feel if they’re there and they’re not putting fund out of their pocket, they’re more free to spend money at the concession stand.

TC: Once the movie theaters realize that you might be going away, they’ve embraced you.

TF: They all know, the studios know the amount of tickets we’ve bought for certain movies. So if you’re buying 30, 40 percentage of a movie nationwide, of a major studio … I think if you look back over the year of different points, different turning points, it was when they did the research report, it was Hollywood Reporter, and it was at CinemaCon. They did this research where we didn’t know about it, and they were putting it out at CinemaCon. Well, it came out, and it was raving reviews. It was: We were better than Netflix, we were better than Amazon, all these things. And is speaking to how people would listen to us 52 percent of the time[ about] what theater to go to, all these different things.

So when that “re coming out”, when we assured it, of course we’re all happy to see how great the report is. And literally 15 minutes later, I’m like, son has the gates of Hell just opened in Hollywood. These guys aren’t even a year old, and they have this kind of control over our box office. I mean, think about that from a technology standpoint. Suppose about that like from an Uber with a taxi service. Airbnb and the hotel industry. We’ve all lived through that. We all use it.

TC: You suppose MoviePass is disruptive in the same way that those industries are?

TF: Oh my gosh, utterly. We’ve proven it. We’ve changed the whole model forever. Where now, the No. 1 player in the world, AMC, is doing subscription. Even though they’ve said the whole time,’ It won’t work, you can’t do subscription, it doesn’t work ,’ blah blah blah, whatever … So in hindsight, would you do it differently, where MoviePass would have been private and then grow it and then go to an IPO? But we didn’t know … we thought it would do well.

TC: Would you have[ maintained it private ]?

TF: In hindsight?

TC: Yeah.

TF: You’d likely sit there and build it up for a couple of years, without being under the microscope of everybody looking at every move you construct. Because even though they are look at Uber or whatever, they’ve had, over the years, their systems hacked or this, that and everything else … and it’s not that big of news, because you’re not under the microscope. We didn’t know that it was gonna grow as fast as it did.

TC: Were there any moments of doubt during the past year?

TF: No … There was no moments with me where I thought it would go down. Where it would just disappear. In my intellect, it was too big to fail. Where you made a household name in less than a year.

Read more: feedproxy.google.com

#entertainment #moviepass #tc #ted farnsworth

[toomanysinks]

MoviePass parent’s CEO discusses the service’s rocky year

In the space of a few months, MoviePass went from being the hottest startup on the block to a cautionary tale about growing too big, too fast.

By the time the summer of MoviePass came to an end, the company that was going to permanently disrupt the box office was hemorrhaging money. It changed its subscription plans repeatedly, while a service outage found its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, asking creditors for a $5 million loan.

The company’s past year is littered with tales of woe, including funding the film “Gotti,” which earned the fabled 0 percent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. But this week, MoviePass announced a return of sorts, with the launch of Uncapped, which brings back its unlimited subscription plan (with caveats).

Shortly after that news dropped, we sat down with Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth to discuss the company’s rocky year, and how he intends to right the ship long after most have discounted MoviePass outright. We’ve already written up some of his more newsworthy remarks; now here’s a fuller (but still edited and condensed) transcript of what he told us.

TC: What is the status of the plan to spin-off MoviePass at this point? We last heard from you back in January.

TF: We filed our S-1, which is public information out there. And we’re continuing going full speed ahead.

TC: So what will Helios and Matheson look like moving forward?

TF: Helios and Matheson will still be obviously the largest shareholder of MoviePass. And then MoviePass Entertainment will be with MoviePass Films, MoviePass Subscription and Moviefone.

TC: Why does it make sense to spin-off?

TF: It makes sense from the standpoint of multiple reasons. One is because it will be a fully integrated entertainment company there. So if we plan to go forward and do any other acquisitions or whatever else we’re doing, really we’ll just focus on the entertainment side.

TC: Do you still view MoviePass as a good investment?

TF: Absolutely 100 percent, without a doubt. Because you created a household name, you changed the industry forever, even with AMC doing subscription and Cinemark doing subscription … even though they all said they would never do it, now they’re all doing it because you definitely changed the model. I think we grew obviously way too fast, where that was our problem in the technology side, being able to figure out people who were gaming the system or doing fraud on the system, sharing their codes. So I think now that we’ve relaunched the $9.95 Uncapped Plan, that’s where you really took six months to figure out on the technology side ways to really stop that from happening going forward.

This August 23, 2018, file photo shows MoviePass debit cards and used movie tickets in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

TC: Gaming the system…was the primary source of the problem?

TF: Oh, yeah. They would share their code. You’d have one person going to 20 movies a month, 30 movies a month. Which you know and I know, as much as we like movies, most people aren’t going to 30 movies a month. And the way we figured that out into the system was when we started auditing people’s [accounts]. How many times did they change their device. When they take it and then they bring it back. 

TC: So the primary fix you see on your end is kind of isolating those people and getting them off the system? Or how much of it is actually changing the fine print on the plans themselves?

TF: Even back then with all that abuse, 80 percent were just regular movie-goers. Your average movie-goer that would go to four movies a year, and you’re trying to get them to double to go to eight movies a year, right? So when you’re sitting here looking at that, it was the 20 percent that were the abusers that were ruining it for everybody else, from the standpoint of gaming the system or whatever. But I could go on … stories of people gaming the system. People use MoviePass to go to the restroom in Times Square.

TC: One of the complaints from consumers is that they felt like they had the rug pulled out from under them. The plans were constantly shifting. Is that going to continue to be the case moving forward?

TF: No. This plan was always the plan in the background of what you would move towards. But testing different plans, whatever it was, along the way. For instance, another issue is where people would go to the theater, they’ll pick up the ticket, they’ll hand their ticket to the kid or their child or their friend or whatever it is, they’ll go and watch the movie, and the person that’s paying the subscription goes back home or whatever they do. So now, even with our technology, we’ll be able to ping them inside the movie.

TC: You are actually tracking where people are?

TF: No, not tracking. When they go to log in to get a ticket, you have to do a location because you’ve got to know what theater they’re at. So as they do that, you’re gonna go ahead when the movie starts 30 minutes later, you’re able to ping them inside the theater, just to make sure they still are at that theater.

TC: What sends up a red flag? Is it just the sheer number of movies somebody’s going to in a month?

TF: It could be different things. It could be multiple locations. It could be multiple cities. It could be all kinds of different things. So those are all the algorithms that we’ve been building along the way.

TC: The new plan is unlimited with a caveat. What are the parameters?

TF: You have full inventory like the old days of what you’re able to go to, whether it’s a Marvel movie or whatever it is. And that’s what the people want. They don’t want curated movies. I also believe that even though we did caps … people don’t really look at caps. 

TC: Looking back on what happened in the past year, do you feel that the company was transparent enough with consumers and shareholders while all this was going down?

TF: Absolutely. I think on the shareholder side, absolutely. I think our disclosures are way, way above and beyond, which is proven out over time, and I think on the consumer side you’re always transparent as fast as you could be on different things that were going on, but you’re right from the standpoint of, you’re growing so quick so fast.

TC: In order to actually be profitable if you are generating revenue with your own original content, what does the breakdown have to be? How many of your films do people with these passes have to go see in order for the whole thing to be profitable?

TF: Not as many as you’d think, because if you’re just profitable on the subscription side alone, you know, break-even and profitable on that, and then you have your movies on top of that as your ancillary revenues. For instance, some of the pre-sales and commitments that we already have on our movies, you’re already way ahead of the game, and then when you start tying it back to subscribers, how much does each subscriber drive as gross revenue? Right now, everybody looks at it as $9.95 or $14.95. Those numbers will jump dramatically for — I mean, coming up soon. Sooner than later.

TC: What kind of time are we talking about for the subscription side to actually become profitable?

TF: Oh, well, that’s interesting. It’s profitable right now. [A Helios and Matheson spokesperson later clarified that Farnsworth meant MoviePass’ subscription business is profitable on a revenue-per-subscriber basis.]

TC: When did it turn profitable?

TF: I will tell you this because this is out there, MoviePass has actually paid Helios back money over the last several months for loans that they have, so that gives you an idea of when we really started focusing on getting rid of the 20 percent of abuse.

TC: Are you able to disclose numbers for this new plan, as far as number of subscribers?

TF: Look, we’re extremely happy. We’re definitely well over 800 percent growth in the last few days. And that’s conservative.

TC: What are you doing beyond announcing this plan to actually win those people back?

TF: Well, a lot of them are coming back already that have canceled in the past, and we’ll be doing things you’ll see coming out even more and more, especially towards the ones that were loyal over time and really stuck it out over the last two years.

TC: What is the company’s relationship like with theaters at this point?

TF: We have good relationships with them, but the whole business model now is we don’t depend on them. We’re not looking at them from the revenue side, from the discount side, because you’re doing your own. You’ve got the subscription and your own original content, so that’s what we’re focused on.

TC: Does the relationship with the studios become problematic one you start producing your own films?

TF: No, because if you look at some of our past films, Lionsgate’s a distributor, Universal’s a distributor, so they’re making money on us now, so they’re even more open now to dealing with us because now all of a sudden they’re realizing that we’re one of their clients. So, if we use Lionsgate for distribution for one of our movies, we’ve got Universal trying to get the same deal, so it’s the opposite with the studio side. The studio side, we’ve got great relationships with them for sure.

TC: Last year things were looking rough and there was a point where the service went down and the company needed a pretty large investment. What were those conversations like with investors?

TF: I think if you look at our investors, the institutions, they’ve all done fine. I mean, they’re more than willing to invest in the next rounds of whatever they can do to invest, so I think the big snafu there was the credit card company, when one company sold to another company or whatever. We had done business with them for four years, so they decide that it’s too much credit for them and literally called the credit line on a Friday night and I do a personal guarantee on a Saturday. So, were the conversations interesting? Yeah, they were to say the least.

TC: What is Moviefone driving? What is the value proposition for you with it?

TF: We just brought on Matt [Atchity], who was the creator of Rotten Tomatoes … We’ll start doing more. We just engaged a very well-known person for Moviefone that will start doing all our red-carpet events.

TC: “Gotti” must have been a learning experience.

TF: Not really. Let me tell you why. Because we never looked at “Gotti” as a money-maker. They knew it would break-even or whatever, but they only projected that it would do $1.3 million in the box office here … Then when we pushed it with MoviePass, we took that up to $5 million. [Technically, $4.3 million.] So, I mean, when you can take a movie — I gotta be careful here, but when you take a movie that might not be that great or perfect, and you can move that needle, was always our theory of subscription.

TC: It sounds like you’re still optimistic about the theatrical business.

TF: Last year was the first time that theatrical was up in what, 20 years? Attendance, right? And then as we started going through our little snafus, you see numbers have dropped now. So I also think what’s interesting is, the industry was nervous to embrace you, and then all of a sudden when they thought maybe it was gonna go away, then all of a sudden they’re trying to embrace you. It’s like, wait a minute, maybe we do want them as part of the model. So I think, if you look at it overall, the whole ecosystem of theatrical, I don’t think that’s going anywhere at all. Because it’s like there’s certain people, and I think millennials for sure, they were never experiencing the theater side. Because they’re not gonna pay $15 a ticket, guy takes his girlfriend there or a young kid, and all of a sudden they’re spending 100 bucks on a night out going to the movies. Even though, it’s still the cheapest entertainment out there.

So with a subscription model, where it makes it more user-friendly, then they feel — it’s funny if you look at AMC’s quotes out there, from what’s going on with their subscription, consumption at the concession stands has doubled. We’ve been saying that all along. Because people feel if they’re there and they’re not putting money out of their pocket, they’re more free to spend money at the concession stand.

TC: Once the movie theaters realize that you might be going away, they’ve embraced you.

TF: They all know, the studios know the amount of tickets we’ve bought for certain movies. So if you’re buying 30, 40 percent of a movie nationwide, of a major studio … I think if you look back over the year of different points, different turning points, it was when they did the research report, it was Hollywood Reporter, and it was at CinemaCon. They did this research where we didn’t know about it, and they were putting it out at CinemaCon. Well, it came out, and it was raving reviews. It was: We were better than Netflix, we were better than Amazon, all these things. And talking about how people would listen to us 52 percent of the time [about] what theater to go to, all these different things.

So when that came out, when we saw it, of course we’re all happy to see how great the report is. And literally 15 minutes later, I’m like, boy has the gates of Hell just opened in Hollywood. These guys aren’t even a year old, and they have this kind of control over our box office. I mean, think about that from a technology standpoint. Think about that like from an Uber with a taxi service. Airbnb and the hotel industry. We’ve all lived through that. We all use it.

TC: You think MoviePass is disruptive in the same way that those businesses are?

TF: Oh my gosh, absolutely. We’ve proven it. We’ve changed the whole model forever. Where now, the No. 1 player in the world, AMC, is doing subscription. Even though they’ve said the whole time, ‘It won’t work, you can’t do subscription, it doesn’t work,’ blah blah blah, whatever …  So in hindsight, would you do it differently, where MoviePass would have been private and then grow it and then go to an IPO? But we didn’t know … we thought it would do well.

TC: Would you have [kept it private]?

TF: In hindsight?

TC: Yeah.

TF: You’d probably sit there and build it up for a couple of years, without being under the microscope of everybody looking at every move you make. Because even when you look at Uber or whatever, they’ve had, over the years, their systems hacked or this, that and everything else … and it’s not that big of news, because you’re not under the microscope. We didn’t know that it was gonna grow as fast as it did.

TC: Were there any moments of doubt in the past year?

TF: No … There was no moments with me where I thought it would go down. Where it would just disappear. In my mind, it was too big to fail. Where you created a household name in less than a year.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/24/moviepass-parents-ceo-discusses-the-services-rocky-year/

[fmservers]

MoviePass parent’s CEO discusses the service’s rocky year

In the space of a few months, MoviePass went from being the hottest startup on the block to a cautionary tale about growing too big, too fast.

By the time the summer of MoviePass came to an end, the company that was going to permanently disrupt the box office was hemorrhaging money. It changed its subscription plans repeatedly, while a service outage found its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, asking creditors for a $5 million loan.

The company’s past year is littered with tales of woe, including funding the film “Gotti,” which earned the fabled 0 percent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. But this week, MoviePass announced a return of sorts, with the launch of Uncapped, which brings back its unlimited subscription plan (with caveats).

Shortly after that news dropped, we sat down with Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth to discuss the company’s rocky year, and how he intends to right the ship long after most have discounted MoviePass outright. We’ve already written up some of his more newsworthy remarks; now here’s a fuller (but still edited and condensed) transcript of what he told us.

TC: What is the status of the plan to spin-off MoviePass at this point? We last heard from you back in January.

TF: We filed our S-1, which is public information out there. And we’re continuing going full speed ahead.

TC: So what will Helios and Matheson look like moving forward?

TF: Helios and Matheson will still be obviously the largest shareholder of MoviePass. And then MoviePass Entertainment will be with MoviePass Films, MoviePass Subscription and Moviefone.

TC: Why does it make sense to spin-off?

TF: It makes sense from the standpoint of multiple reasons. One is because it will be a fully integrated entertainment company there. So if we plan to go forward and do any other acquisitions or whatever else we’re doing, really we’ll just focus on the entertainment side.

TC: Do you still view MoviePass as a good investment?

TF: Absolutely 100 percent, without a doubt. Because you created a household name, you changed the industry forever, even with AMC doing subscription and Cinemark doing subscription … even though they all said they would never do it, now they’re all doing it because you definitely changed the model. I think we grew obviously way too fast, where that was our problem in the technology side, being able to figure out people who were gaming the system or doing fraud on the system, sharing their codes. So I think now that we’ve relaunched the $9.95 Uncapped Plan, that’s where you really took six months to figure out on the technology side ways to really stop that from happening going forward.

This August 23, 2018, file photo shows MoviePass debit cards and used movie tickets in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

TC: Gaming the system…was the primary source of the problem?

TF: Oh, yeah. They would share their code. You’d have one person going to 20 movies a month, 30 movies a month. Which you know and I know, as much as we like movies, most people aren’t going to 30 movies a month. And the way we figured that out into the system was when we started auditing people’s [accounts]. How many times did they change their device. When they take it and then they bring it back. 

TC: So the primary fix you see on your end is kind of isolating those people and getting them off the system? Or how much of it is actually changing the fine print on the plans themselves?

TF: Even back then with all that abuse, 80 percent were just regular movie-goers. Your average movie-goer that would go to four movies a year, and you’re trying to get them to double to go to eight movies a year, right? So when you’re sitting here looking at that, it was the 20 percent that were the abusers that were ruining it for everybody else, from the standpoint of gaming the system or whatever. But I could go on … stories of people gaming the system. People use MoviePass to go to the restroom in Times Square.

TC: One of the complaints from consumers is that they felt like they had the rug pulled out from under them. The plans were constantly shifting. Is that going to continue to be the case moving forward?

TF: No. This plan was always the plan in the background of what you would move towards. But testing different plans, whatever it was, along the way. For instance, another issue is where people would go to the theater, they’ll pick up the ticket, they’ll hand their ticket to the kid or their child or their friend or whatever it is, they’ll go and watch the movie, and the person that’s paying the subscription goes back home or whatever they do. So now, even with our technology, we’ll be able to ping them inside the movie.

TC: You are actually tracking where people are?

TF: No, not tracking. When they go to log in to get a ticket, you have to do a location because you’ve got to know what theater they’re at. So as they do that, you’re gonna go ahead when the movie starts 30 minutes later, you’re able to ping them inside the theater, just to make sure they still are at that theater.

TC: What sends up a red flag? Is it just the sheer number of movies somebody’s going to in a month?

TF: It could be different things. It could be multiple locations. It could be multiple cities. It could be all kinds of different things. So those are all the algorithms that we’ve been building along the way.

TC: The new plan is unlimited with a caveat. What are the parameters?

TF: You have full inventory like the old days of what you’re able to go to, whether it’s a Marvel movie or whatever it is. And that’s what the people want. They don’t want curated movies. I also believe that even though we did caps … people don’t really look at caps. 

TC: Looking back on what happened in the past year, do you feel that the company was transparent enough with consumers and shareholders while all this was going down?

TF: Absolutely. I think on the shareholder side, absolutely. I think our disclosures are way, way above and beyond, which is proven out over time, and I think on the consumer side you’re always transparent as fast as you could be on different things that were going on, but you’re right from the standpoint of, you’re growing so quick so fast.

TC: In order to actually be profitable if you are generating revenue with your own original content, what does the breakdown have to be? How many of your films do people with these passes have to go see in order for the whole thing to be profitable?

TF: Not as many as you’d think, because if you’re just profitable on the subscription side alone, you know, break-even and profitable on that, and then you have your movies on top of that as your ancillary revenues. For instance, some of the pre-sales and commitments that we already have on our movies, you’re already way ahead of the game, and then when you start tying it back to subscribers, how much does each subscriber drive as gross revenue? Right now, everybody looks at it as $9.95 or $14.95. Those numbers will jump dramatically for — I mean, coming up soon. Sooner than later.

TC: What kind of time are we talking about for the subscription side to actually become profitable?

TF: Oh, well, that’s interesting. It’s profitable right now. [A Helios and Matheson spokesperson later clarified that Farnsworth meant MoviePass’ subscription business is profitable on a revenue-per-subscriber basis.]

TC: When did it turn profitable?

TF: I will tell you this because this is out there, MoviePass has actually paid Helios back money over the last several months for loans that they have, so that gives you an idea of when we really started focusing on getting rid of the 20 percent of abuse.

TC: Are you able to disclose numbers for this new plan, as far as number of subscribers?

TF: Look, we’re extremely happy. We’re definitely well over 800 percent growth in the last few days. And that’s conservative.

TC: What are you doing beyond announcing this plan to actually win those people back?

TF: Well, a lot of them are coming back already that have canceled in the past, and we’ll be doing things you’ll see coming out even more and more, especially towards the ones that were loyal over time and really stuck it out over the last two years.

TC: What is the company’s relationship like with theaters at this point?

TF: We have good relationships with them, but the whole business model now is we don’t depend on them. We’re not looking at them from the revenue side, from the discount side, because you’re doing your own. You’ve got the subscription and your own original content, so that’s what we’re focused on.

TC: Does the relationship with the studios become problematic one you start producing your own films?

TF: No, because if you look at some of our past films, Lionsgate’s a distributor, Universal’s a distributor, so they’re making money on us now, so they’re even more open now to dealing with us because now all of a sudden they’re realizing that we’re one of their clients. So, if we use Lionsgate for distribution for one of our movies, we’ve got Universal trying to get the same deal, so it’s the opposite with the studio side. The studio side, we’ve got great relationships with them for sure.

TC: Last year things were looking rough and there was a point where the service went down and the company needed a pretty large investment. What were those conversations like with investors?

TF: I think if you look at our investors, the institutions, they’ve all done fine. I mean, they’re more than willing to invest in the next rounds of whatever they can do to invest, so I think the big snafu there was the credit card company, when one company sold to another company or whatever. We had done business with them for four years, so they decide that it’s too much credit for them and literally called the credit line on a Friday night and I do a personal guarantee on a Saturday. So, were the conversations interesting? Yeah, they were to say the least.

TC: What is Moviefone driving? What is the value proposition for you with it?

TF: We just brought on Matt [Atchity], who was the creator of Rotten Tomatoes … We’ll start doing more. We just engaged a very well-known person for Moviefone that will start doing all our red-carpet events.

TC: “Gotti” must have been a learning experience.

TF: Not really. Let me tell you why. Because we never looked at “Gotti” as a money-maker. They knew it would break-even or whatever, but they only projected that it would do $1.3 million in the box office here … Then when we pushed it with MoviePass, we took that up to $5 million. [Technically, $4.3 million.] So, I mean, when you can take a movie — I gotta be careful here, but when you take a movie that might not be that great or perfect, and you can move that needle, was always our theory of subscription.

TC: It sounds like you’re still optimistic about the theatrical business.

TF: Last year was the first time that theatrical was up in what, 20 years? Attendance, right? And then as we started going through our little snafus, you see numbers have dropped now. So I also think what’s interesting is, the industry was nervous to embrace you, and then all of a sudden when they thought maybe it was gonna go away, then all of a sudden they’re trying to embrace you. It’s like, wait a minute, maybe we do want them as part of the model. So I think, if you look at it overall, the whole ecosystem of theatrical, I don’t think that’s going anywhere at all. Because it’s like there’s certain people, and I think millennials for sure, they were never experiencing the theater side. Because they’re not gonna pay $15 a ticket, guy takes his girlfriend there or a young kid, and all of a sudden they’re spending 100 bucks on a night out going to the movies. Even though, it’s still the cheapest entertainment out there.

So with a subscription model, where it makes it more user-friendly, then they feel — it’s funny if you look at AMC’s quotes out there, from what’s going on with their subscription, consumption at the concession stands has doubled. We’ve been saying that all along. Because people feel if they’re there and they’re not putting money out of their pocket, they’re more free to spend money at the concession stand.

TC: Once the movie theaters realize that you might be going away, they’ve embraced you.

TF: They all know, the studios know the amount of tickets we’ve bought for certain movies. So if you’re buying 30, 40 percent of a movie nationwide, of a major studio … I think if you look back over the year of different points, different turning points, it was when they did the research report, it was Hollywood Reporter, and it was at CinemaCon. They did this research where we didn’t know about it, and they were putting it out at CinemaCon. Well, it came out, and it was raving reviews. It was: We were better than Netflix, we were better than Amazon, all these things. And talking about how people would listen to us 52 percent of the time [about] what theater to go to, all these different things.

So when that came out, when we saw it, of course we’re all happy to see how great the report is. And literally 15 minutes later, I’m like, boy has the gates of Hell just opened in Hollywood. These guys aren’t even a year old, and they have this kind of control over our box office. I mean, think about that from a technology standpoint. Think about that like from an Uber with a taxi service. Airbnb and the hotel industry. We’ve all lived through that. We all use it.

TC: You think MoviePass is disruptive in the same way that those businesses are?

TF: Oh my gosh, absolutely. We’ve proven it. We’ve changed the whole model forever. Where now, the No. 1 player in the world, AMC, is doing subscription. Even though they’ve said the whole time, ‘It won’t work, you can’t do subscription, it doesn’t work,’ blah blah blah, whatever …  So in hindsight, would you do it differently, where MoviePass would have been private and then grow it and then go to an IPO? But we didn’t know … we thought it would do well.

TC: Would you have [kept it private]?

TF: In hindsight?

TC: Yeah.

TF: You’d probably sit there and build it up for a couple of years, without being under the microscope of everybody looking at every move you make. Because even when you look at Uber or whatever, they’ve had, over the years, their systems hacked or this, that and everything else … and it’s not that big of news, because you’re not under the microscope. We didn’t know that it was gonna grow as fast as it did.

TC: Were there any moments of doubt in the past year?

TF: No … There was no moments with me where I thought it would go down. Where it would just disappear. In my mind, it was too big to fail. Where you created a household name in less than a year.

Via Brian Heater https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

[wbwest]

New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/06/02/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-6217/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 6/2/17

Whoo boy! This is gonna be a controversial one this week, but I’ve got some stuff to get off my chest.

First up, there was controversy surrounding the new Wonder Woman film (in theaters now!). Theater chain Alamo Drafthouse announced women-only screenings for the film, where proceeds would go to women’s charities, including Planned Parenthood. Originally planned to be 5 screenings at the Austin and Brooklyn locations, tickets sold out instantly and more screenings were added. According to Alamo, the screenings were meant to be a celebration of “Girl Power”, and were only open to those who identified as women. Now, this isn’t the first time Alamo has done special screenings, as they have screenings for active military members, as well as for children with special sensory needs.  I’ve also heard other explanations, like the screenings give women a safe space to watch the film without having it mansplained to them the entire time. But, of course, the social media shitstorm started. A lot of folks who might be considered Men’s Rights Activists felt that this was discrimination, and that they should retaliate with all-male screenings of the next Star Wars movie.

As Twitter was dead over the holiday weekend, I tweeted that the backlash to the screening was stupid, but the screening itself is also kinda stupid. Now, hear me out: I see both sides of the issue here. Alamo wanted to make a fun exclusive event to celebrate the release of a movie starring a female superhero. That doesn’t happen every day, so it was a cause to celebrate. I’m not “butthurt” over the idea. That said, Alamo had to know they’d get this kind of reaction, as this kind of thing is somewhat of a slippery slope. “How is it a slippery slope, Will?” So glad you asked! Let’s, for a moment, propose a different kind of screening. Let’s say it was a Black Only screening of Get Out. I mean, it had a similar pedigree in that it was a Black horror/suspense film from a Black director – something that also doesn’t happen every day. You’d better believe people would have a problem with that! Sure, it could be spun as a celebration “for the culture”, meant to foster community and whatnot, but White people would shit ALL the bricks! So, as this has been great publicity for both Wonder Woman and Alamo Drafthouse, they knew exactly what they were doing when they set out to do this. In the long run, this isn’t gonna hurt Alamo or Wonder Woman one bit, but let’s not act like this was some kind of altruistic celebration of sisterhood. This was Shrewd Marketing 101.

See? I toldja this would be a controversial one, and I’m just getting started!

Let’s visit the world where Hollywood and politics intersect. You see, comedienne Kathy Griffin posted a photo of herself holding what was meant to be Donald Trump’s severed head. AND PEOPLE LOST THEIR MINDS! Trump, himself, even took time off from golfing and nudging his way to the front of photo ops to tweet about it, saying that it had affected his 11 year-old son, Barron, who apparently thought the photo was real. The backlash was strong against Griffin, who apologized hours later, but still ending up losing her Squatty Potty endorsement, as well as her CNN New Year’s Eve gig with Anderson Cooper. A lot of people seem to be in agreement of the backlash, but I’m gonna take a different approach: I don’t think the photo was that bad.

There are so many things to unpack here, so bear with me as I try to navigate through all of it. Societies have a history of burning politicians in effigy as a form of protest so, while extreme, how is this any different? Had she actually decapitated the man, and was brandishing his severed head on social media as some sort of trophy, that would’ve been too far. Like it or not, this was “art”, and you don’t really get to judge art. It can make you uncomfortable but at least it triggered some sort of opinion or emotion, which means it did its job.

I also feel like this is a situation where folks are more upset by the messenger than the message. Kathy Griffin isn’t taken seriously. We’ve put her in this box along with Andy Dick and several other unpredictable, slightly unstable comedians who at one time did a stint on an NBC sitcom. We don’t expect anything “deep” from her, because we’ve already written her off. She knows this, as she’s in on the joke. I mean, her reality series was called My Life On The D-List, so she knows she’s not a top-tier celebrity. Still, she has a team behind her, as everyone in Hollywood does, and they all decided that this was something she was going to do. Maybe she felt it’d just blow over because of her lessened celebrity status, or maybe it’s doing just what she thought it would. A friend and I were talking about it the other night, and he’s the one who made me realize it was the messenger we were blaming here. After all, if Samantha Bee had done this, liberals would be creaming their jeans about how daring and smart it was. Why? Because that’s what people expect of her. Griffin made the simple mistake of veering out of her lane, and that’s how we got to where we are now.

Now, let’s look at the photographer, Tyler Shields, whose work tends to push boundaries like this. For him, this was just another Tuesday photoshoot, and this isn’t the first time that Griffin has worked with him. I mean, just look at some of his work above. He likes weird shit, but again, it’s art and we don’t really get to police it.

Meanwhile, there’s the whole thing about Barron thinking the photo was real. That poor, poor boy. To quote Hank Hill, “That boy ain’t right”, and the family either refuses to acknowledge it or is dealing with it in secret. On the one hand, I guess I have to commend the fact that we’ve “grown” to the point of saying “Kids are off limits”, but I find it convenient that we’re adopting that stance now. Where was that when comedians were calling little Chelsea Clinton a “dog” every chance they got? Where was that when Sasha and Malia had to see the stuff folks said about them and their family? It’s a shame that Barron doesn’t know the difference between a photo and reality but, as one Tweeter put it, it wouldn’t be an issue if Donald actually lived with his son. But I digress. I think this whole thing has been blown way out of proportion to dominate the news cycle. After all, last weekend it was looking like Jared Kushner was in the hot seat, and then next thing you know, it’s Kathy Griffin this, and covfefe that.

Where to next? Oh yeah, remember Mary Kay Letourneau? She was one of the first stories of teachers sleeping with their students to hit the news. Back in the late 90s, Letourneau fell in love with her student, 12 year old Vili Fualaau, and ended up getting impregnate by him. She was convicted of child rape, served 3 months in jail, and THEN got caught having sex with Fualaau in her car just two weeks after her release. And she got pregnant again. She served 6 years that time, but married Fualaau when she got out. And they lived happily ever after…until May 9th of this year, when Fualaau filed for legal separation from Letourneau. Now 33, perhaps Letourneau simply got too old for him at 55. But the plot thickens! Yesterday, that bastion of journalistic integrity, The New York Post, reported that the separation was really just something of a scam. You see, Fualaau wants to get a license to sell pot, but he knows they’ll do a background check before granting it to him, and it wouldn’t look good to be married to a registered sex offender. He claims they’re still in love and this is just a business arrangement. So, while he awaits his pot license, he’s working as a DJ in Washington state. Too bad she couldn’t fuck some ambition into him all those years ago! Fun fact: one of Letourneau’s brothers is a foreign policy adviser to the president. He’s clearly been doing a heck of a job lately!

Still here? OK, then let’s talk about some pop culture stuff. Someone at NBC must’ve read my Upfronts post, as they just announced changes that perfectly mirror my suggestions. This Is Us will no longer be moving to Thursday, and will stay put on Tuesday nights. Meanwhile, the comedies planned for Tuesday, Superstore and The Good Place, are moving to Thursday to join Will & Grace and Great News for a 2-hour comedy block. This is how it alway should’ve been, and I’m not quite sure what’s going on at NBC. From the cancellation/uncancellation of Timeless to this new schedule scramble, it makes you wonder who’s at the wheel over there. Still, I think these are smart moves, so hopefully they’ll work out in the long run.

The hardest working man in Hollywood, Ryan Seacrest, is developing a new show. Best.Cover.Ever. will air on YouTube and will feature people singing cover songs, vying for the chance to sing a duet with the original artist of the song they sang. Hosted by Ludacris, the show will feature Demi Lovato, Jason Derulo, and Backstreet Boys to start out. Contestants are asked to upload videos of covers of “Trumpets”, “Confident”, and “As Long As You Love Me”. The artists will each choose two finalists, who will be the contestants actually featured on the show. The winner gets to duet with the original artist for an exclusive YouTube performance. It’s an interesting concept, and it requires a partnership with a streaming service to work, but I’m still not sure it’s going to be successful. I’m also surprised that it’s not on YouTube Red, where they can charge for it. After all, nobody really talks about the offerings on YouTube Red, but this is the kind of thing that could get folks talking and maybe boost subscriptions. I’m a sucker for “As Long As You Love Me”, so I’ll be keeping tabs on this just to see how it fares.

Major news in the world of pop music this morning, as will.i.am confirmed that Fergie has left the Black Eyed Peas to focus on her solo career. The news isn’t exactly a surprise, as last week it was announced that she was leaving the band’s label, Interscope, to start her own label, Duchess Music, over at BMG. It’s still a pretty big deal, though, as she’s been with the band for the past 15 years. Still, I feel like their time has come and gone. They showed up, gave the world a suitable soundtrack replacement for Jock Jams, and left their mark. However, will.i.am says they’re still together, recording new music to celebrate their 20th anniversary as a band. To be honest, I thought they were gonna be done in 2008, when they released The E.N.D., but it proved successful enough, with the hits “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling”, that they just kept trucking along. Now there are rumors swirling that Nicole Scherzinger might replace Fergie in the group, which would be her third time in a group, after Eden’s Crush and The Pussycat Dolls. I swear, Scherzinger must have a tail or something, because there’s some sort of defect that’s preventing a label from being able to package her as a solo act. Always a bridesmaid…Anyway, let’s pour one out for The Duchess and her tenure with Your Grandma’s Favorite Rap Group.

Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings recently said that he felt Netflix should be canceling more shows. In his mind, they have too many hits, which results in creators taking fewer chances and not “swinging for the fences”. The successful shows are basically taking real estate from potential new hits. Now, it being the internet, there’s no “real estate”, per se, but it’s still marketing dollars, bandwidth, etc. It used to be that you could count on a Netflix series getting at least 2 seasons, but they just killed that with the cancellation of The Get Down after its first season. Yesterday, they followed the trend and canceled the sci fi series Sense8 after its second season just debuted last month. If the axe is swinging, I’m worried about the shows that aren’t generating a ton of buzz right now, like F is for Family and the adaptation of Dear White People. Kind of a weird problem to have, though: too much success might be making them complacent. It’ll be interesting to see how this affects the Marvel shows, as well as the Netflix perennials like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.

There was a scary moment last weekend at Phoenix Comicon, when police arrested a man who reportedly had three handguns, a shotgun, knives, pepper spray, and throwing stars, and had a reminder on his phone that said “Kill JDF.” That’s right, folks – his plan was to kill the Greatest Power Ranger of All Time, Jason David Frank, as well as some police officers. Sidebar: can you imagine being so absentminded that you need to set a phone reminder to make sure you remember to murder your target?! Anyway, the reason police were able to capture 31 year old Mathew Sterling was because he had told his plan to some chick on social media, who then tipped off the police. Anyway, JDF continued with the convention as if nothing had happened, claiming that he wasn’t going to let fear govern his life. Meanwhile, the convention cracked down on prop weapons and banned them from the show. In fact, if you were getting your Saba or Dragon Dagger swords signed by JDF that weekend, he was posting on social media that you would have to leave them in their boxes. This has caused other conventions to look at their own weapons policies, so look for some changes coming up on the con circuit.

Song of the Week

This week, I give you “You Look Good”, but Lady Antebellum. This is just such a funky song, and could’ve been a contender for Song of the Summer had they waited a bit longer to release it. Anyway, it’s like the 2017 offspring of Santana and Rob Thomas’s “Smooth”. I really dig it, and I think you will, too.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

Hailee Steinfeld is in talks to star in the Transformers spinoff, Bumblebee

After 14 years off the air, MTV is bringing back the MTV Beach House this summer

WGN America has canceled slavery drama Underground after 2 seasons

There are reports that Steven Spielberg is gearing up for an Animaniacs reboot

Fresh off the recently canceled Powerless, Vanessa Hudgens was announced as a judge on the upcoming season of So You Think You Can Dance

Scott Pelley is out as the anchor of CBS Evening News, and will return to 60 Minutes in a full-time capacity

A Sin City TV series is in the works

Universal is reportedly interested in Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for the role of The Wolfman in their Dark Universe franchise

Speaking of Dark Universe, I called it last week: Warner Bros may sue Universal over the Dark Universe title. According to official documents, however, it appears Universal may have had the name first.

Charlie Heaton, of Stranger Things fame, is reportedly up for the role of Cannonball in the X-Men spinoff, New Mutants – which is now supposedly going to be a straight horror movie. Um, OK…

Speaking of New Mutants, Fox continues to mine Netflix shows, as 13 Reasons Why‘s Henry Zaga has been cast as Sunspot

Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor have split after 18 years together

The Ludacris-hosted Fear Factor reboot premiered on MTV this week

Tiger Woods was arrested for a DUI, even though he had no alcohol in his system and was found passed out in his car. He says it was the result of mixing prescription drugs, but the whole thing sound fishy

Sharknado 5: Global Swarming will premiere August 6th on SyFy, guest starring Charo, Fabio, Tony Hawk, and Chris Kattan. This thing is one Ted Lange appearance away from becoming a Love Boat reboot

Thanks to an article on Slate, we now know to pronounce the “T” in Gal Gadot’s name.

I had absolutely no desire to see Wonder Woman. While she was my favorite part of of Dawn of Justice, I just wasn’t jazzed about the idea of her starring in a World War I period piece. I mean, we already got that movie, and it was called Captain America: The First Avenger (before you history buffs come out of the woodworks, I know that movie was set in WWII: War Harder). I wasn’t looking forward to DC’s lackluster attempt at a retread of that. So, imagine my surprise when I found myself in the theater on opening night. And then imagine my surprise when the movie ended, and I realized that I LOVED it!

It might be premature to say that Warner Bros has finally righted the DCEU ship, but Wonder Woman is definitely a step in the right direction. My buddy Chad predicted that it would be the new gold standard in comic book movies, and while I don’t think it quite achieves that, it’s definitely the gold standard for the DC Universe. It’s one of the rare comic book movies where I left and didn’t really have any issues with plot holes. It was such a joy to watch, thanks to the acting of Gal Gadot. First of all, she’s so goddamn beautiful that it should be illegal for the camera to be trained on her for prolonged periods of time. Seriously, I thought I was gonna have a seizure like those kids did from that Pokémon episode back in ’99. She does such a great job playing  up Wonder Woman’s sweet naiveté about “Man’s World”, but is also a commanding presence during the battles. It’s funny how when she was cast, we were all saying “She’s too small to be Wonder Woman”, but watching her onscreen, all those doubts slip away.

Now, as much as I loved it, it’s not a perfect film. It deftly straddles the line between “suspension of disbelief” and just plain hokey, but it sort of feels like a 90s comic book movie in that way. And while Patty Jenkins may have directed it, Zack Snyder’s fingerprints are ALL OVER IT (as he co-wrote it with Allan Heinberg). I swear, I think about 60% of it was pure green screen, as I sat there thinking to myself, “This is on a soundstage. That is on a soundstage. Oh, that’s definitely a sound stage.” At points (especially during the final act), it shifts into that “Snydervision” that most of the DCEU movies are in, where it just becomes a copper-tinted music video.

Plus, I’m still not sure about the shared universe nature of the DCEU. While Marvel has almost flawlessly built their world over the course of many films, it just feels so forced with the DC movies. Whereas the MCU feels organic, the DCEU feels copycat. The framing device of the movie is meant to sort of further that idea of a shared universe, but I’m not sure it works. To be honest, I’d probably enjoy it more if I knew nothing about Dawn of Justice or the fact that she’ll pop up in Justice League later this year. She’s strong enough to stand on her own, and the rest of the disappointing DCEU almost taints her.

All that said, it’s really a great cinematic debut for the character, and young girls finally have their own big screen hero. Not to give too much away, but as the film starts, Diana is a wide-eyed little girl, and I could see so much of the audience connecting with that. I thought of my own daughter, and the fact the she now has her own hero. I think that will mean a lot to folks. As far as I’m concerned, scrap Justice League and the rest of the solo films on DC’s slate, and rush Wonder Woman 2 into production stat! For these reasons, Wonder Woman had the West Week Ever.

#Boybands #Comics #DC #Marvel #Movies #Music #Politics #Pop #Power Rangers #Race #Random Rants #Social Media #Star Wars #Television #West Week Ever #X-Men