#but yeah. i gotta. actually open google drive and make a new document for once and not stare off into my notes app

[loquaciousquark]

Hi! I think I remember you posting about "making" your own computer? I'm sorry to bother you with something like this, but was it difficult? Would you say you have to know a lot about how computers work to do it? Thanks!

Heck yeah!!! Oh man!! Gosh guys can I talk to you about building computers and how EVERYONE willing to do some basic googling is almost certainly capable of this I promise?

Welcome to:

Okay okay okay so let me spin you a li’l yarn: I was in optometry school in 2010-2011ish and I had been living up to now on prebuilts, mostly laptops, but DA2 was recently out and gosh darn it I wanted something I could play a proper game on. A friend of mine had a 10yo daughter who wanted to build a computer herself, and he told me if I’d buy the parts, he’d walk both of us through how to do it (what really happened was the 10yo built my first computer and I watched and brought drinks, so–no, I wouldn’t say you have to know a lot about how computers work to do it!).

The physical requirements are some basic manual dexterity & arm strength (you gotta be able to manipulate some tiny things and put some pressure on some connections) and you will most likely need to lift up to 15 pounds, although you can limit that if you go for smaller components. The ability to bend forward and twist and reach will also probably be necessary, although some careful planning can also likely mitigate that.

I think I have pictures of the actual build process somewhere, but regardless, it resulted in this bad boy that served me well for about nine years. I was shocked to see how easy it was to put together, honestly; if you can follow a Lego assembly book, you can put a computer together. With tools like PCPartPicker that have built-in compatibility checks to make sure all your pieces fit, it’s a piece of cake to put together a parts list that you can feel really good about. You just pick whether you want your motherboard to come with fancy lights or not (hint: rgb is unironically cool & i’ll fight anyone who says otherwise).

In the end, you’ll need a set of basic components. You’ll need:

A case to put all the pieces in

A motherboard, the circuit board of the computer that connects everything, basically the heart of the computer

A CPU, the brain of the computer that determines processing power, or basically how fast it can do math and direct traffic

a CPU cooling system, which can be either mechanical fans or liquid cooling, gotta keep that baby chill; may or may not come packaged with the CPU depending on what you get

A graphics card (aka GPU), the thing that makes video games look pretty (and what will probably be the single most expensive item in the build depending on how good you go)

RAM, a short-term memory processing component that comes in different amounts (4gb, 8gb, 16gb, 32gb, 64gb if you’re a madman) depending on how fast you need your short-term memory to work. Good RAM allows you to do things like open a bunch of Chrome tabs at once, run Photoshop at the same time you’re listening to youtube videos, or process the demand of loading up a host of enemies in Mass Effect. Most everyone these days can get by just fine with 16gb of RAM, which is what I have.

a hard drive (or the new, faster, more expensive version, a solid state drive) which functions as your long-term storage bins. This is where you save documents, images, and install your programs. These come in tons of sizes–the larger your files are, the more storage space you’ll want. I always put at least a terabyte of storage in my builds.

a power supply unit or PSU, which gives the electrical juice for everything to run

a monitor (the more hertz, the smoother the video will be - you’ll want either 60hz or 144hz depending on how much your number of frames-per-second matter to you)

a keyboard and mouse

speakers or headphones or both!

Optional addons:

RGB lighting for everything :O

an optical drive (aka something to put DVDs, Blurays, or other physical CD disks into)

fancy liquid cooling pipes

additional case fans; most cases come with adequate fans, but if you are using the computer in a room with poor ventilation or you find that certain components are running hot, you can install additional fans

coincidentally you can also get fans with RGB lighting too

cable extenders when you are going for a specific color scheme

So it can definitely all look overwhelming at first, but when you start to look at how everything is laid out, you’ll notice some trends. Look at these motherboards, for example.

These are just four random motherboards I pulled off Newegg, a commonly used computer parts purchasing site. Sure, the colors are a bit different, but the layout between them…is all basically the same! Here, I’ll draw it out.

In just about every modern motherboard you buy, this will be the rough layout. Everything else is window dressing–what kind of GPU you get, what kind of CPU you get, whether your RAM lights up cool colors or not. Your motherboard will ALWAYS include a map that has extensive descriptions of what each connection does.

Much, much, much more under the jump!

Most of these you won’t even need!

There are always some compatibility things to consider–as I mentioned, PCPartPicker can help you figure out a lot of these–but the biggest one to care about is the CPU. There are two major companies that make CPUs, AMD and Intel. They both have pros and cons on the chips they make, but right now, AMD makes a family of CPUs called Ryzen that both outperform and are cheaper than Intel’s current leading brands, the i7 and i9 lines. Intel was king of the hill for a long time, though, and their CPUs are still really good quality, so some people still go with them over the cheaper alternatives for now. (There are some reports of black screens with the new Ryzen lines, but as I’ve never owned one, I can’t personally speak to how common that is.)

Regardless, once you pick which family of CPUs you want to go with, AMD or Intel, you just have to pick an Intel-friendly or AMD-friendly motherboard. This is always specified in the description of the motherboard. I own the Asus z370 motherboard, so here’s what it says in the description for CPU:

Anyway, once you’ve picked all your parts and had everything shipped to you, it’s literally just a plug-n-play, step by step until everything’s plugged in. Your motherboard manual will also include recommended order of installations, too, and often how to install them.

It helps to remember that the manufacturers of all these parts understand that they are expensive, and they really DON’T want to make them hard to install! Broken or difficult pieces during installation means that the customer is upset, and upset customers ask for refunds and lose brand loyalty.

It also helps to understand that a lot of these connections are based on certain standards–I didn’t realize until I was rebuilding my current machine that these holes set for screws really do work with just about everything you get, as long as it’s the same generation, because motherboard manufactures WANT you to have the flexibility to go any attachment brand you like and still be able to use their board to mount them. 

So, you pick your case and open it up, and you put the motherboard down on top of all the little screw holes until they match, and then you screw all the screws down firmly.

Old rig, partially disassembled:

New, in approximately same state:

(One of the reasons I went with this larger white case than a smaller, slim case like my old one, is because this nicer case has what’s called “cable management;” that means there’s a built-in back area behind the motherboard where all my cables can be jammed without messing up the “aesthetic” of the glass window. My first build obviously did not have that, as seen in that first picture at the top of this post, so I had to just jam my cables wherever I could fit them so that the sides would close, haha.)

Anyway, you can see that the motherboard is just screwed in where it should be, and my CPU is already installed where it should be. I haven’t mounted the cooler for it yet because I needed to clean off the old thermal paste and install new thermal paste before doing so. My two sticks of RAM are also mounted in the top right in the motherboard’s recommended configuration & locations for two sticks (vs. one, vs. four).

Then, with the cooler in place, it looked like this:

So the cooler I have is liquid cooling in a closed system (the thick black tubes running right to left) which is attached to a fan that mounts in place of the white fan on the left from the previous picture. It was as simple as unscrewing the old fan and putting the new one in its place. I think I even used the same screws. The fan is powered by that thin cable running along the top of the case that plugs into a little socket on the motherboard labeled “CPU Fan.” It was as simple as just finding the right plug; it doesn’t even have directionality, just a three-pin socket, so it doesn’t even matter which way you plug.

Already it’s looking like a proper computer! And because this case has cable management, I took a picture of what it currently looked like from the backside.

This case is cool because it has a neat set of connectors mounted on the back of this little hideaway to connect the case fans. I could have run the white fan cables through to the front of the motherboard for them to get power/marching orders, but it was cleaner aesthetically to attach them here in the back. Nothing wrong with connecting them on the front, though–that’s what I did in my original build!

You also might have noticed I’ve mounted the PSU in that white case by now as well. It’s the large black and red box in the bottom corner, seen best from behind. The white case comes with what’s called a PSU shroud, which just means there’s a fancy white cover over it to keep the ~aesthetic~ when viewed from the front side.

The next step is to mount the graphics card!

There’s instructions in your manual as to exactly how these mount, but it really and truly is just removing the dust cover brackets where you need to, and then a delicate plug & play, pushing that big guy in until you hear the click! (Click good, snap bad. Haha. I’ve changed out these cards several dozen times and never broken one, though!)

You can also see the ugly red-tipped cables plugged into the GPU and the motherboard, both on the right side. These come from the Power Supply Unit (they are all permanently connected in most brands, and look basically like a squid’s tentacles–once you have your items mounted onto the motherboard, you just look for the connector from the PSU with the right number of pins and plug it in!)

This guy is the worst. He is fat and hard to maneuver and always requires SO MUCH FORCE to click into this delicate bendy board and your heart will ALWAYS be in your throat as your fingers shake from how hard you’re having to push to sink it, and it will ALWAYS eventually go in but you’ll hate every second of the doing. I hate you, 24-pin EATX. I hate you so much.)

The next thing I did was mount my optical drive (because yes, I still own one), my hard drive, and my solid state drive.

The hard drive and SSD both serve the same purpose (long-term data storage), but the SSD is much faster and uses newer technology. It’s also more expensive for the amount of storage you get, so I have a 256gb SSD that holds my operating system, my heavily-used programs like Firefox and Photoshop & Premiere, and one or two video games I play the most that I would like to load as fast as possible. This is the drive that can allow me to restart my whole system in less than five seconds.

The hard drive is 1.75 terabytes and holds everything else: fics, pictures, videos, music, other games, etc.They mount onto the racks with pre-drilled screws. The optical drive just slides into the socket snugly until it hits the back of the rack.

All of these use a standard connector called a SATA cable which runs between the back of the drive to a SATA socket on the motherboard. Most motherboards come with at LEAST six or seven of these connector slots, and some come with more. They look like this:

and are pretty universal. Any kind of extra storage or drive you want to add to your computer will probably connect with a SATA cable. I think my motherboard, my SSD & HD, and my case purchases all came with a pack of loose SATA cables of different lengths to be used for whatever I wanted.

The rack each drive is mounted to came installed with the case and pre-drilled with screw holes (and provided screws) for attaching either the HD or SSD in every slot. Because this case is all about aesthetic, it also comes with two vertical SSD mounts on the back of the case if you wanted to remove the right-side rack altogether, but as I mentioned, I have the optical drive, so I couldn’t go with that option.

So now we have all the major pieces mounted! The last set of connections are a collection of small fiddly pieces that all plug in roughly the same area and do things like light up the case’s LED, provide that startup beep, connect the USB sockets on the case’s front to power, etc. This is by far the section that takes me the longest because I guarantee I will ALWAYS plug at least two into the wrong socket and not have a beep, or my audio won’t work or something until I go back and reconnect them.

The next thing was to plug in my monitors and…see what happened when we hit the power button! (Monitor connections just plug directly into your graphics card in the back of the case.) And here’s what happened!

So it turned out when I was connecting my SSD (which has my OS on it), I was pushing on the little connector while sitting on the back side of the case. I thought I had the thing in the socket, but what I’d actually done was jam the connector just under the lip of the motherboard (that is, not connected to anything at all, just hanging in open space). Once I realized, though, it was an easy fix!

The last thing I wanted to do to complete the clean white look I wanted was to replace those UGHLY red PSU cables with what are called “cable extenders.” I bought some white ones on Amazon; because most PSUs’ cables are permanently attached at the box, you plug your cable extenders into the other end and then feed them through the case, so that’s the only portion visible. The ugly PSU cables are still there at the other end of the white cables, just hidden in the cable management area behind the motherboard.

I spent some time fixing up the cables to curve exactly how I wanted them to, then picked my LED RGB colors and closed up the open side with the glass wall. All that was left was to plug in my mouse/keyboard/speakers/headphones/mic/webcam, etc., and we were done!

Ta-daaaa!

The first build I did, the one in the blue & black case, took us about two days due to some unexpected problems. First, we were trying to salvage an old CPU from my HP prebuilt to save a little money. Unfortunately, they used basically no thermal paste to connect it to its fan, and when we were trying to get the fan off, it actually tore the CPU out of its socket and bent a bunch of its pins. I ended up going to Best Buy or something and getting a replacement off the shelf.

The other issue I had was that I foolishly didn’t back up my files, and lost a bunch of them in the rebuild (including my Hawke’s original run through the DA2 game :( :( :( ) Always back up your files before ever going in and messing with your case!

Over the years I replaced a bunch of components in it, which is why it lasted me so long, but the transfer into the new case only took me about three hours, and that was with a bunch of breaks throughout. I probably could have done it faster if I hadn’t wanted to savor it, haha. The cable management for the backless desk took a lot longer, though! (…and a LOT of zip ties.)

I do set my new build on a small glass stand (again, from Amazon) because Hamlet’s pretty sheddy and I wanted to keep airflow as good as possible. I’m limited on how many case fans I can install since I have the optical drive rack taking up a lot of space on the right, but I could install new fans on top if I wanted. My temperatures are great, though (I monitor with CoreTemp & GPUTemp, as well as my motherboard’s built-in temp monitoring software), so I don’t need to unless I decide I need more RGB.

Anything I might want to add, I run through PCPartPicker to make sure it’ll fit what I already have. For example, my parts list looks like this (full view and complete parts list available at this link): 

ANYWAY.

If you are patient, if you can fit small Lego-like pieces in labeled sockets, and you are a decent googler, you can build your own PC. It’s really, really hard to do serious damage to components nowadays, even if you plug something in wrong. There’s a bunch of resources, though, and I’d recommend the following places to start:

newegg.com - parts for sale, getcher parts here

pcpartpicker.com - put your list of components together, and it’ll flag any compatibility issues or known problems

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/ - great starting point for new builders, tons of advice and how-to’s for every step of the process, and a decently responsive community to help troubleshoot any issues you might have

And I obviously love doing this kind of thing, so if there’s anything I can help with, I’m more than happy to try! Just let me know, and I hope this was helpful!

#anonymous #quark replies #quark's pc tag #long post for ts #very long post for ts #lots o videos and pictures for ts #a quest for fps

[ot3tropetober]

Eliot and Hardison are travel journalists for rival publications who keep showing up in the same places 

Fic for this (~3500 words) is below the read more! Some notes: 

[backstory on why Hardison is writing these comes from this post]

[Eliot, Parker, and Hardison are all commenting on this document, think of it like the chat in Google drive? In-document comments from Eliot are italicized, from Hardison are in bold, and from Parker are plain text] 

By the time Will Coffey stepped off the plane in Dallas, all he wanted was a nice long shower and to sleep in his own bed for once. Being a travel journalist for a leading travel magazine had its perks– a month-long trip across Mexico, for example, all expenses paid or at least reimbursed – but after a month on the road he was dead tired and ready to be home. 

Is this supposed to be me? Why am I living in Dallas? 

Yes, and also, you don’t actually live in Dallas, Eliot, you live here, in Portland, with us. 

I know that, I just– you know what, never mind. 

Well, Will Coffey likes Dallas. 

I am Will Coffey!! 

That’s the spirit. 

The other thing about being on the road for a living was that sometimes it felt kinda lonely, and as relieved as he was to be home, the first couple of minutes after he walked in, turned on the lights, and looked around at an empty place, that was always a little bittersweet. But the only other person he’d really seen in any kind of serious capacity the whole time he’d had this gig was a fellow traveler who spent just as much time on the road as he did, so it just kinda was what it was. He set his keys and his bag down and headed to the kitchen for a beer, but he hadn’t even opened his fridge when his phone buzzed a couple times. It was a text from Sarah, his editor. He’d known her forever– they shared a couple classes in college. Now they shared the stress of managing a print publication in an increasingly digital world. 

“Did you see this?” she had written. There was a link in the next message. “How does this guy get this stuff up so fast?“ 

Will already knew what he was gonna find before he clicked the link, and sure enough, it directed him to a popular travel blog called The Travel Geek, which was a ridiculous name for a travel blog but people absolutely went wild for it. Will liked it too, not that he would ever really admit it, but that probably had more to do with the guy who ran it than anything else. They had…not a thing, exactly? It was hard to explain whatever was going on with Jeremy Edwards, who by rights Will should probably hate for stealing his stories and his audience. But the problem with that was mainly that the guy was so goddamn likeable. 

I’m guessing that’s you. 

You would be correct. 

You think I think you’re likeable? 

No, I know it. 

he is pretty likeable

Yeah, yeah. 

Will had met Jeremy a couple of years ago, right when he was just starting out with his blog. Jeremy said he’d been reading Will’s stuff for a while and would love some advice from a pro. It wasn’t like Will didn’t know it was a little bit of flattery, and it wasn’t like he didn’t know it was a little bit of flirting, either. It also wasn’t like Jeremy was bad to look at. So Will said sure, he’d be glad to, and they were in Belgium, so they shared some beers, ate fries from a baraque at one in the morning on a park bench, shoulders pressed together, while Will tipsily rhapsodized about gaufre de Liège while Jeremy laughed and laughed. 

I have never *rhapsodized* about anything in my damn life. 

Have you heard you talk about food? This is not a criticism. I could listen to that all day. 

Nothing really happened, in the end, just a good conversation and the promise to keep in touch. That turned out to be easier than it should have been, because they started covering the same damn things, all the time. One big world, and somehow they were always sharing part of it: Will was in India on a camel safari through the Thar Desert, and Jeremy was there, keeping Will up at night tappity tapping on his keyboard. Or Will was in Oatman, Arizona, for a piece on Route 66, and there was Jeremy, taking selfies with the wild burros roaming the streets of the town. Or Will was traveling around Japan, doing a feature on onsens, and Jeremy was there, too, acting like he wasn’t looking in Will’s direction while they sat, very naked, in the soothing hot water. It went on like that for a while until finally one night in Barcelona, in front of Sagrada Familia, he looked at Jeremy, tall and handsome in this absurd brightly patterned scarf, and said, “This is ridiculous, man,” and pulled him in for a long, lingering kiss. 

Do you honestly think it would have taken me that long? 

I don’t know, baby, it took your cowboy ass five years in real time, so Will’s doing a lot better than you. 

OoooooooOooo 

We had a lot goin on!!! And what is that supposed to be, parker? are you some kind of ghost? 

it made more sense in person 

I’ll take your word for it. 

It wasn’t a relationship, exactly. It was just something they did, sometimes, if they happened to run into each other on the road. It wasn’t like he was getting invited home for the holidays, or anything, and he was fine with that, really. The long and short of it was, they’d basically been circling each other for years now, professionally, personally, whatever, but the professional stuff was definitely getting in the way of anything else. Because Will would sit down and write out his long, detailed articles with carefully selected photographs that would look just right on the page, while Jeremy had already turned out quick blog entry after quick blog entry, listing off places people should visit with witty little one sentence summaries, and people just ate it right up with a spoon while Adventure., Will’s magazine, slowly saw its sales circling the drain. It stung a little. Maybe more than a little. It wasn’t like he could say the guy wasn’t working hard, but damn. Hell, the best selling issue they’d had in a couple years was the one where Sarah had masterminded a collaboration between Will and Jeremy. Blogging was definitely here to stay. 

That night in Belgium was five years ago, and at the time it seemed impossible that the internet would ever really fully overtake print. But bloggers and phones had both gotten smarter over the last five years, and now everyone wanted their news in little chunks that they could read on a screen during their commute, so travel blogs were the hot new thing. Will grimaced as he looked at the blog entries Jeremy already had up from Mexico, where they’d run into each other at least half a dozen times. 

Five Reasons You Need to Visit Mexico City Right Now; What You’re Missing Because You’re Not in Monterrey; Everything You Wanted to Know About Agave But Were Too Afraid to Ask 

“You gotta be kidding me with this,” he muttered, staring at his phone and thinking about the half-written article he had saved on his laptop detailing the history of agave and how to experience Jalisco as more than just the birthplace of tequila. 

He pulled up Sarah’s number and dialed. 

“I don’t know how we can compete with this,” he sighed, when she picked up. 

“We’re going to have to adapt,” she said. “You know that. I can hear you making a face." 

"I don’t want to blog,” he complained. “I like print." 

"I know,” she sighed. “I’m working on it. Anyway, I’m glad you called, I was going to call you. I need you to go to Italy. Flight leaves tomorrow." 

"No way. Not interested,” he told her. “I just got back to my apartment, Sarah, I’ve been in Mexico for a month. I’m beat." 

"It’s not my fault that you spend half your time on extracurricular activities,” she teased. 

“You can just say sex,” he said. “I won’t be offended. And it’s not half my time. Like, maybe twenty-five percent. Anyway, I get the job done." 

"Yeah, and you’re very good at it, which is why I need you to go to Italy,” she said. 

“I’m not saying yes,” he told her, “and I’m not interested. But what’s in Italy that’s so important for me to get to?" 

"You’ll love this one,” Sarah promised. “It’s a food festival." 

Okay, maybe he was a little interested. "Oh?”

“Yeah,” she said. His phone buzzed in his ear. “I just emailed you the details. Including your flight info." 

"Dammit, Sarah–" 

"Oops, emergency, the printer’s on fire, gotta go!” she chirped, and the line disconnected. 

Yeah okay that’s Parker huh

Yep!

I do know y'all a little bit. 

“Dammit,” Will said again, and opened Sarah’s email to read up on his next destination. 

+ 

The food festival turned out to be a week long international celebration of local food from around the world. It only happened once every few years in October, when a world of people descended on the city of Torino, and more specifically the park by the River Po, where they set up tents and stands and served pretty much every kind of food you could imagine, and Will loved food and could imagine a lot, so that was saying something. It was pretty cool, seeing all these people from all over the planet showing off food that was important to them, sharing it with strangers. It really was the whole planet, too, the way the park was set up you could walk through a continent at a time, with all the countries on it represented at their own space. He figured he’d pay his respects to the hosts first and start with Italy, which was definitely the largest section. Halfway through the displays he found a stall with some folks from Campania selling fresh mozzarella di bufala the size of his fist for a Euro. It was speared on a stick like a candy apple so he could walk around with it, nibbling on the sweet cheese as he checked out the festival’s other offerings. Aged cheeses covered in mud and straw from a little town in France. A swanky tent with wood plank floors where the Filipino agriculture offices had a set up with big displays dedicated to traditional food and heirloom crops. Six different kinds of wild rice were layered in a glass display bottle in the booth dedicated to Indigenous agriculture in North America. There were folks from the Yucatan peninsula displaying cured meats and wild honey. There was a whole series of displays about preserving, protecting, and raising Maasai red sheep, from Kenya. The whole event was really impressive, actually, and even though his body had no idea what time zone he was in, he didn’t feel too tired– although that might have been more because he’d been downing every cup of coffee from anyone selling it. 

Okay, this actually sounds pretty cool. But now you gotta fake a whole food festival like this if we ever use these aliases. 

I don’t have to. That’s a real thing. Happens every couple of years. I was gonna ask if you wanted to go to the next one. Parker can probably find us a job after, anyway. 

I’d love– like that. 

Hardison. HARDISON.

Why isn’t this deleting the things I tell it to delete??? 

Ooh, forgot to tell y'all, this chat records your keystrokes? You know. Just in case you happen to type something sappy about how much you love me, and then delete it before you send it in the chat. Pretty much exactly what just happened. 

Dammit Hardison I’m gonna delete YOU

Baby, that doesn’t even make any sense. 

im w hardison on this 1. it’s ok if u love things eliot. especially food . or us 

Just let me finish reading Hardison’s make believe story so I can get back to dinner prep, ok? 

(he loves us) 

I know :) 

Will strolled around the park, snapping photos here and there, jotting down notes. He talked to folks from all over who came here to run their country’s booths, locals who had come out to enjoy the day, and people who had traveled long distances to be there. After a couple of hours and a really good lunch, he found an unoccupied bench near the river and posted up there for a while, notebook open next to him as he flipped through photos on his phone, the story he could tell about this event already starting to take shape in his head, and he had to admit, at least to himself, that Sarah had been right about this one. Nobody else on their staff knew food enough to get this right. But even though he had a good idea where to start, he couldn’t help feeling a little overwhelmed, too. You could spend two weeks here and still not talk to everybody, and it seemed important to try, somehow. 

“Well, well, well,” said a voice, and Will looked up from his phone and his notes to see the tall form of none other than Jeremy Edwards. 

“Dammit, Edwards,” Will swore. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Again?" 

Yeah it’s pretty much EXACTLY like that every time

Mmmhmm. You talk a big game, man, but no one here believes you. 

What he said ur like that stuff u put on the dessert u made 4 us last wk

Stuff on dessert– the Italian meringue? You really comparing me to Italian meringue?! 

Is that the stuff that was kinda hard and crunchy on the outside but actually really soft and sweet inside? 

Yep that’s the stuff

This is the worst conversation we’ve ever had. 

It’s weird how I can hear you smiling right now, though.

Shut up, Hardison, I’m reading.  

Got him! XD 

"Looks like it,” Jeremy said. He took a seat next to Will on the bench, despite the fact that Will had absolutely not fucking offered it to him. He grinned. Will looked back at his notes before he smiled back. “We’ve really gotta stop meeting like this." 

"Yeah, well, trust me, I’m working on it,” Will grumbled, and risked a look at Jeremy again. Still handsome, and still smiling, unfortunately. He thought about the blog a little and made himself frown. “So, you’re here to blog about this, huh? How many blog posts have you done already?" 

"None so far,” Jeremy said, scratching his chin, “but I am working on one right now. Tentative title, How to Tell The Guy You’re Casually Seeing And Have Been Chasing All Over the Globe That His Boss Sent Me Here To Work With Him." 

Well, there was a lot of information there, but Will decided maybe sticking with the professional stuff was better for now. "I’m sorry, you’re here for what?" 

Jeremy shrugged. "Sarah really liked that collaboration thing she got us to do last year, I guess, wanted to try it again for this. I said yes. It’s good for your magazine and it gives my blog some credibility with all you snooty print folks." 

"We’re not snooty,” Will said, although that wasn’t exactly true. Maybe they were, a little. He unlocked his phone and saw the email from Sarah, the subject line of which read: “DON’T ARGUE IT WILL BE GOOD FOR YOU/US/THE MAGAZINE.” He sighed and looked back at Jeremy. “I can’t believe she sent you to a food thing." 

"I’m offended,” Jeremy said, although it didn’t much sound like it. “I know food." 

"Oh really? So last year when we were in Beijing and you were looking for a McDonald’s that was just you knowing food, huh,” Will drawled.

“Sometimes you just really want a Happy Meal,” Jeremy joked, and Will just shook his head.

“I guess we should figure out what we’re doing, then,” he said, and Jeremy raised his eyebrows. 

“About the story,” he said, “right?" 

"Yeah, about the story,” Will grumbled. 

“Whatever you say,” Jeremy said affably, just like always. 

+

It was actually pretty easy to figure out how to cover the festival now that he had a partner in crime. They worked out a plan that afternoon, sketched out a couple of pieces, a collab for Adventure., a short guest piece for Will on The Travel Geek, and a short story in the magazine for Jeremy. Sarah signed off on everything from afar– “What time is it where she is? Does that woman ever sleep?” Jeremy asked, as they both got email after email. “I don’t think she does, man,” Will laughed– and they got to work pretty quick. There was plenty to do and they were both here for a few days, so they wandered through the park as they worked, stopping occasionally to sample food or take photos.  Eventually they walked all the way out of the park and into the city, up to a big plaza, Piazza Castello, in the center of the historic part of town. They got gelato from one of the many carts set up nearby for the festival, and sat outside, eating and talking as the sun set. 

It was nice. It was always nice, when they ran into each other. That wasn’t the problem. But they’d been stuck in the same routine for years now: they’d find themselves in the same place, Jeremy would laugh, Will would pretend he was annoyed, and then they’d spend a good chunk of their time together enjoying each other’s company in as many ways as they could find, and then they’d head to the airport and go their separate ways. And that was that. This shouldn’t be any different, but somehow it was. Maybe it was the sunset lighting up Jeremy’s skin, or maybe he’d just been lonely too long, but maybe they needed to figure out what they were doing with more than just the stories they were here to tell. 

“You wanna get dinner?” Will said, before he could talk himself out of it. 

“Yeah,” Jeremy said, smiling again, and this time Will let himself smile back. Just a little.  

They asked around for recommendations and ended up at a little restaurant in the city, a few blocks from the Piazza. They split a bottle of wine, a margherita pizza, and some perfectly fried fish, and they didn’t really talk about work at all. 

“You know,” Jeremy said, about halfway through the wine, “not for nothing, but I’ve gotta say, this looks and feels a lot like a date." 

"I wasn’t under the impression that you’d be opposed to that,” Will said.

“Oh, I’m not opposed,” Jeremy told him, “I’m just a little surprised you’re asking. I figured at this point it was gonna have to be me who said something." 

Will eyed him carefully, thought back to a lot of nights on a lot of trips. "How long exactly have you been waiting around?" 

"I mean, don’t get the wrong idea, here, I haven’t been pining away for you like some Victorian in a bad novel,” Jeremy said, and Will snorted. “But yeah. I played a long game, man. I gotta say, though, after that fishing boat incident in Guyana I really thought you figured out we had a thing." 

"Yeah, well, I didn’t have time to notice, I was too busy taking pictures of you hiding behind that skinny British guy when that big old fish jumped out of the water,” Will snickered. 

“Big old– that thing was two-hundred and thirty-four pounds of ichthyological torpedo headed straight for yours truly,” Jeremy said, and Will chuckled. “Big doesn’t really describe it.”

“Hmm. It was kinda wild he thought we were gonna get in the water with it,” Will mused.  He winked. “Glad you finally remembered you owed me dinner for keeping him from pushing us into the river." 

"Ha. You know Sarah wants us to work with that guy again, right?" 

"Aw, hell,” Will said. “Really?" 

"Yeah,” Jeremy confirmed. “She said she was gonna talk to you about it when we got back from this. Canada this time, so when Mister Fisherman tries to throw me in the water at least the hypothermia will probably get me before the monster fish does." 

"Nah,” Will said. “Don’t worry about that. Nobody throws you off a fishing boat. Except maybe me. No. Well. Maybe. No,” he concluded. 

Hah. I mean, okay, that does sound like me. 

Oh, I am aware, trust me. 

“Sarah maybe also mentioned we might do a few more of these little…collaborative things,” Jeremy said, drawing invisible circles on the table. “Maybe even in a more formal capacity." 

Will raised his eyebrows. "No way she talked you into giving up the blog." 

"Oh, definitely not,” Jeremy said. “But funnily enough, people keep sending me emails about wanting a print version of some of my photographs? But I don’t really have the publishing connections. A magazine, though…” he shrugged. “Me and Sarah figured we might come to some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement, somehow. Might be seeing more of you, is what I’m trying to say." 

"Can’t say I mind that,” Will said, and reached out across the table to cover Jeremy’s hand with his. 

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Jeremy answered, and this time Will didn’t try to hide his smile. 

/end 

Okay? 

Okay, what? 

Well where the hell is the rest of it? 

What rest of it? It’s clearly implied that they’re dating now. They’re dating, they’re happy, they’re gonna work together for real, happily ever after, et cetera. 

they should have at least kissed. i would be into that 

This is what I’m saying. Where’s the resolution, here? 

Baby, anytime you want a kiss, you know where to find me. 

What I want is for you to take this seriously since you’re making us read all of it. 

Wow, okay. Here: 

They walked around the city for a long time after dinner, still holding hands, and the kiss they shared later under the moonlight felt like a promise. The Actual End. 

Y'all happy? 

too sappy 4 me but idk what eliot thinks

Not your best work but it’ll do, I guess. 

Are you still in the kitchen? 

Yeah, why? 

I’m gonna come give you a demonstration of my best work, that’s why. 

Bring it on, man. 

do i get a demo too

You know it.

#author: coffeesuperhero #leverage ot3 #parker x hardison x eliot #hardison x eliot #leverage #ot3tropetober #submission

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt.69

Never had Keith gone about an investigation the way Lance did. The Pidge was strong in his boyfriend, as was the “teacher” vibe. Coloured Markers, corflute boards, budget printer print-out photos of Lotor and his gang, contrasting against the photos of the crime scenes that Shiro had fetched for them. Curtis’s idea of supplies hadn’t been up to Lance’s standards, so Lance had done some online shopping then picked up the order, as well as far too many snacks. Keith kind of thought it was over kill. His boyfriend’s room wasn’t big enough for everything, as it was Keith was squashed between Shiro and Curtis on Lance’s bed. Blue was smacking marker lids across the floor, jumping out to knock down a new marker each time one was taken away from her. Kosmo was snoring on the bed, he’d tried pulling one of Lance’s pillows apart, a sock sacrificed to keep the puppy busy.

Pacing back and forth, they’d lost Lance in the crime scene files. Lance was processing, pausing to ask the occasional question as he read, and drank from the bag of blood he’d tucked into his top pocket. Keith worried that Lance shouldn’t be on his feet, but he couldn’t point that out. His boyfriend was so busy pacing that he shouldn’t notice each time Shiro dug his elbow into Keith’s ribs, or Curtis passed over a snack, he’d fix them with a stare for a moment, before going back to reading. For a team briefing, the three of them were useless, all they could do it wait... awkwardly. Keith wanted to pull Lance into his lap and tell him to rest. He felt like maybe this was too much. That maybe he’d put too much pressure on Lance and Lance wasn’t actually reading the documents before him, and was actually procrastinating breaking up with him because he’d known he’d eaten literal trash. He hadn’t told him he’d nearly ended up a vampires dinner and that was how Shiro had found him.

Shiro caved first. For all his patience, his brother could be pretty impatient

“Lance, are you going to talk to us?”

“We have been”

Keith sucked his lips in to hide his smile. It’d been a while since Lance used that line on him

“No, you’ve been asking questions and making a hole in the floor”

“Ahhh, but we did talk, did we not. I think I want to see the bodies? Can I see the bodies?”

That wasn’t what Keith expected. Lance was gentle and piece loving person... a dead body kind of stuck with you... as did the smell

“Hold up. Why don’t you tell us what you’re thinking first?”

“I’m thinking that this was an amateur... No. someone trying hard to look like one. We know they’re not human, a human couldn’t take on a wolf like this. Each of them had to be lured. A vampire and a wolf is difficult, we’ve got egos. Even a lowly vampire has an ego. Top quality blood is a myth, selling dodgy blood to pick a fight is a possibility. We’ve all gotta eat and bad blood is bad for everyone involved... but you guys have already thought of all this...”

Keith tried not to stare at Lance. His boyfriend might be a lawyer, but he’d make a hell of a teacher too. He just had that aura about him right now. Tall, shoulders back, the way Keith kind of felt like a kid again...

“I don’t think Coran would give us access. There’s autopsy reports...”

“Yeah, but there’s some things you can’t get a from a photo. Scent, size, that kind of thing... that’s okay. It was just an idea, any scents probably wore off by now. Do we know how long Lotor’s been here?”

“From talking to him, about a month. Do you think he’s involved?”

Lance raised an eyebrow

“He’s not the killer. Can you imagine him messing up his dress shoes with a lowly vampires blood? He’d probably be insulted at the thought, and make them scrub his shoes clean before they expired. If he’s behind it, he would have sent a minion. You can Google up a thousand pages on how to kill a vampire. Nah. Not him. Axca is thinking of turning on him. She’s not happy and you can see it. She’s probably been pushed to the outside, there’s a difference between her and Lotor. Narti clearly lets her ego get the better of her. Ezor and Zethrid are dating. I’d say that’s pretty much the pecking order”

Shiro let out a whistle as he crossed his arms. Kosmo thought he was wanted as he started nosing between the pair of them, his nap interrupted. Shifting enough, his pup climbed into his arms

“You haven’t even met them”

“Don’t need to. Can we go to the park? Where the werewolf and vamp was found?”

“Why?”

“I want to take a look around?”

Lance stated it like it was obvious

“We searched...”

“I wanna get a feel for it. Use these spooky vampire senses on mine”

Lance wiggled his fingers, Shiro bringing up a hand to cover his face

“This isn’t a joke”

“No, if it was a joke, it’d be Professor Plum with a candlestick in the sewers”

Keith didn’t get the reference, but it made Curtis laugh. Looking at him, Lance sighed

“Babe, it’s from Cluedo. Shiro, how could you have not played Cluedo with him?”

Because they weren’t really board game people?

“Don’t look at me”

“I am looking at you. Fiiiiine. Can we at least do drivebys?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m trying to understand? How else am I supposed to help?”

“You’re not a hunter...”

Lance waved his hand at Shiro, like he was shooing him

“Hunter, smunter. You sound like Keith. I’m going to tell you the same thing I told him, you’ve got a team of supernatural people around you who want to help. We don’t know shit on SmallDick, only that I want to punch him and he’s Zarkon’s dog who’s hear to bring back the prodigal son. Blah. Shiro, you should totally talk to Matt and Rieva. Rieva said some pretty concerning things about Honerva being on the nuts side. Out of everywhere in the damn world... Nope. Never mind, Allura is pretty unforgettable, though Lotor has rocks in his head if he thinks she’ll be wooed so easily”

Shiro leaned in, loudly whispering

“He does this a lot, doesn’t he?”

“Yep. He didn’t warn you, but anyone judgmental gets punched in the dick and sent out into to hall”

Lance cleared his throat, reaching over, he plucked up a piece of paper from in front of his laptop

“Excuse you, you heathens. I made a sign”

He had indeed. “Free Dick Punches For Judgemental Douches”. Keith tried not to laugh. The orange writing in very neat cursive that didn’t look threatening at all. Especially not when there was a smiley face in yellow at the bottom of the page. Curtis raised his hand, Lance pointing at him

“What?”

“You’re not going to keep everything about the investigation in here, are you?”

Lance shrugged

“Why not?”

“Because we still need to fit Coran, Allura, Matt and Rieva in here”

Lance opened his mouth and closed it. Only Curtis was brave enough to point that out

“Curtis has a point. We can’t uninclude them”

“We’re not. We were just... ugh. I don’t want to leave everything upstairs where anyone could see it. We need a secret headquarters”

Lance had gone slightly crazy. Pidge’s kind of crazy. Talking too fast, thoughts a million miles an hour, crazy. They were literally inside a kind of secret headquarters. His boyfriend had used up too much of brain and needed to calm down

“Babe... You’re talking really fast again. No more permanent markers, or whiteboard markers. Curtis is right. We have a conference room for a reason. I like that you wanted me to feel safe, but if we’re going to be a team, we need everyone’s opinions”

Lance frowned at him, crossing his arms

“You didn’t raise you hand”

Shiro elbowed his side

“Yeah, Keith. You have to raise your hand”

He was not being teased by the pair of them. He didn’t sign up for that

“Fuck off. Lance and I will go to the park, while you two move all this stuff to the conference room. Or maybe ask Coran if there’s a storeroom we can use. We’re likely to be laughed at by the Blades for Lance’s use of colour if any of them saw this”

Lance looked scandalised

“My use of colour is on point. I’m not afraid to punch them in the dicks”

God. Okay. Lance needed out before Shiro started pointing out the flaws in his plan... like some members not having dicks. Standing up, Keith moved to take Lance’s hand as he cradled Kosmo against his chest with his busted hand

“Babe, we’re going. You know we talked about this”

Lance stumbled, lightly resisting being tugged along

“I knooooow, but every time I think about them hurting your feelings I want to hit them... and it makes me more determined to work this out without them”

He’d encountered determined Lance before... Determined Lance could definitely be determined, but Keith was briefinged out

“And we will... just... after we take a break and get some fresh air. I think your high or something”

Lance pulled out of his hold, crossing his arms again

“I’m not “high or something”. I’m Lance, and I think you’re fine...”

Oh lord... Now Shiro was chuckling at Lance’s dad joke. Curtis pointed out

“Keith’s right. You have grown more animated”

Lance frowned down at his pocket, pulling the bag out, he sniffed at it

“I think the blood is super fresh. When it’s really fresh or I’ve drunk too much, it’s all buzzy and my ego gets huge. Am I being weird? I feel like I’m being weird”

Lance was always kind of weird

“Yes, babe. You’re being weird. Now we’re going to take a walk and then we’re going to go for a drive”

“If we’re going for a drive, we need my keys. Our precious fur son is not going on that bike of yours”

Keith took a deep breath, before slowly releasing it. Fresh blood was like caffeine for Lance... Too much “caffeine” meant too much “ego”. Too much “ego” meant a Lance acting without thinking. He’d take Lance and Kosmo to the park, where hopefully Lance would burn off some energy...

#once bitten twice stupid #oncebittentwicestupid

[pendragonfics]

H@CK3R

Paring: Griff/Reader

Tags: female reader, reader is a hacker, established relationship, canon compliant, angst, fluff.

Summary: The problem with being a paid hacker was that you could really do anything you wanted. Legally? Not really. But you still did it, even without the warrant required.

Word Count: 2,056

Current Date: 2017-09-14

The problem with working early was that the bed was too warm. Too soft. Too snuggly. And your bedfellow? Well, he was all that and more. Your boyfriend Griffin had been a one-night stand four years ago, and when you both had tried to sneak out of the motel the next day, you found each other struggling to make a getaway with a sock half on and buttons in the wrong holes, and decided that, instead of leaving it at the best damn sex you’ve ever had but at want to take this to Starbucks? It’s my day off. Then you just couldn’t get rid of each other.

He was like the white splotches to your panda, the cream to your coffee, the accelerator to your 1992 Chevy. When you came home early after early starts, he came home late after late stars, or whenever he pleased, really, smelling of engine oil or whiskey or someone else’s cigarettes. But waking up, well, that was the thing. You wanted so badly to be the small spoon to his larger one, wanted to stay so close to his chest and smell in the musk that was so Griff and trace your fingers over his tattoos until he woke up.

But you had work.

You always had work.

“I gotta get up,” you moan against his chest, one of those bear-like arms tangled close to your back, keeping you near his warmth. It was so nice, and if it was on your little-to-none paid holiday days, you’d savour it, but you can’t. Unless you want to be broke and snuggled up to Griff, you must greet the day. You groan when his arm grows tighter around your waist. “Griff…”

He groans back. It’s a guttural noise, animal-like, ferocious. But to you, it’s nothing but a kitten impersonating a lion. Griff might be built like a hurricane shelter, tattooed like bus stop, drive a battered pickup truck and swear like a sailor, but he’s a sweetie.

“Griff.” You repeat. “We can snuggle later. I’ve – I’ve got to get up.”

He makes another noise. Then, in that handsome accent, “Do you really gotta go?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

---

The problem with being a paid hacker was that you could really do anything you wanted. Legally? Not really. But you still did it, even without the warrant required. The man who hired you always pixelated his face when on the regular Skype, and spoke with a surprisingly All-American accent that most certainly pledged allegiance to the flag and then stole from it. Because that’s what you were – the canary. Back when miners were actual people who had pickaxes and dug for lumps of coal to burn, they had a thing where they’d use a bird to make sure it was safe. That bird was you – scoping out the world from behind a shield of encrypted software and ones and zeroes and code that you could do in your sleep. You figured out the chinks in the armour of Big Pharma and those seemingly impregnable places, and exploited them for your boss to do what he would with it.

And you just did it. You weren’t really morally flawed. Maybe just a teeny-tiny bit. A smidge. You still took the money from your boss, you lived from it. It’s what kept you from being just like your ancestors, starved by poverty or drowned in addictions. You kept hacking, you kept getting paid. Did it make you a bad person? You didn’t want to be a bad person. You helped elderly ladies make it to their cars when it was rainy and they forgot an umbrella. You let younger kids win arm wrestles with you. You knew all the lyrics to Mama Mia! The Musical! Bad people didn’t sing disco.

Griff caught you like this one evening. He came home smelling like engine oil again, his undershirt splattered with traces of it, his eyebrows quizzical and questioning your still fingers at the keyboard on your laptop. He knew you could write eighty words per minute, and when you were still, it either meant there were no words to come out, or perhaps all of them were stuck somewhere, aching to be translated from brain to keyboard.

“Babe?” He asked, and placed one of your knitted shawls over your shoulders. It smelt like something used in the washing machine, but with Griff standing over you, his scent overpowered that. “Something wrong?”

You shake your head, closing the screen. “Nope,” you reach up to stroke his facial hair, enjoying as Griff hummed as you carded your finger through his manicured hair. “It’s probably nothing.”

---

That night, instead of being in the crook of Griff’s arm, you’re positioned on the edge of the sofa arm like you only own that part of the chair, laptop perilously perched on your knees. Or rather, on a huddle of blankets and Griff’s jackets that are keeping you from turning into an icicle in the night air. The screen lights your face up as you plough through malware and firewalls, flicking switches in the code before you until it gives you a green light.

I’m in, you thought to yourself.

Your boss’s computer was not as well-protected as your own, and for that, you wondered how you’d never really thought of getting into the hood of his browser and looking at that secretive life lived. He had a folder of kid’s pictures on the desktop, some Freddie Mercury music, an unfinished picture of a boy with earbuds in from Microsoft Paint program.

You overlooked those. Instead, you fished deeper, going for the password-protected folders (an easy entry, your software could undo it easier than Griff undid your own bra) that were full of pdfs, documentation. Your eyes dart around the titles, and you realise. They’re all your files, things you’ve sent to him over time, all neat and tidily kept deep in his PC like archives of dirty secrets. There are files from six, seven years ago, as well as one you sent just three days ago.

“Tell me more,” you whisper to the empty air.

There’s no reply, unless you count the snuffle Griff makes, a snore, and a shift over the bed to the colder side of the mattress. Your side. But instead of thinking of how damn good it would be to be there beside your boyfriend, you return your attention to the screen. Closing that folder, you find one down the list titled crewmen. While the other folders are ordered by makes and models of cars, a word that doesn’t fit the cypher stands out like a grey hair on a dark-haired head.

You enter the folder, and blink.

It has thirty-six jpeg files in it, all labelled by surname. You know this, because you’re there, and so is Griff. The rest of the faces are unfamiliar, perhaps people you’ve met by off chance once in your life time, because they look bland. Unfamiliar. There’s a boy with sunglasses, like the drawing you found, an African American man, a woman with a small neck tattoo, an Asian man…you could keep looking at these unfamiliar people, but your eyes drift to Griff’s file.

Hesitantly, you click it. The photo is from before you met, and you only know that because there’s a tattoo missing under his ear in the picture. He isn’t smiling. He isn’t smiling because this picture is from a mug shot. You know Griff has done some shitty things and some shady stuff too, you don’t ask, but you just know. From what you can read from the jpeg, he’s from Arizona, has an offshore bank account and a long middle name you’ve never heard him talk about.

Next, you click on your file. It has a photograph of you, swiped from a post uploaded in 2011 from a deleted Facebook account. It has your name, your address, your status with Griff, your abilities, your wants, needs, life catalogued so neatly in Times New Roman font that it makes you retch, splutter, cough. Quickly, you swipe the two files, exit the hack, and toss your laptop onto the lounge, aghast.

You’ve found your answer.

---

When you tell Griff what you did that night, he’s silent. When his burner phone goes off, he doesn’t answer it. He’s just sitting there, looking at the files you’ve grabbed a hold of, lightly scowling at the picture of himself from years ago on your screen. You’re silent too. Sometimes, there doesn’t have to be words to say things. Sometimes, the silence speaks for itself.

“You work for Doc too?” He asks after a while.

You shake your head. “I don’t know who I work for.” You admit. “He’s very American, and we never see face-to-face. But he always wears a suit on Skype.”

Griff nods. “That’s Doc.”

You shiver. It can’t be coincidence that you’re both lovers who work for the same man. You’re no criminal, but from what you read, you see that Griff is, and constantly is. He’s the muscle, the intimidator, the man with a gun who tells you Shut up and give me the money! You can’t imagine Griff like that. He’s not like that with you. He’s got the words sand and wich tattooed on his knuckles (that was after a few too many drinks one night), and when it’s stormy outside he turns off his phone and keeps you close to him because he knows how much you hate thunder. But it says he’s killed people. Did it make him a bad person? You didn’t want him to be a bad person.

“I want to run away,” you whisper to thin air. “I can’t be responsible for this anymore.”

Griff types one finger at a time into incognito mode on Google Chrome, spelling out M-E-X-I-C-O. You shake your head. He deletes those letters, and types out, C-A-N-A-D-A. You don’t shake your head. Griff smiles, and while you flop backward in the chair, defeated at life and existence itself, his burner phone rings.

“Is that –,”

He nods. “It’s always Doc.” You swallow, watching as he flipped the archaic little phone open, holding it to his ear. You can’t hear the words on the other end, not with a speaker that’s straight out of 2003, but you get the gist of it from the way Griff’s mouth is twisting. At last, he snaps the phone shut, and a breath escapes your lungs. “Another job.”

You remember submitting a text file two days ago. It’s the last file you’ve sent, and while you’re sure he has a backup for you in case you go AWOL (like you’re planning to do), it’s the thought that counts. The last of your taint on the world around Atlanta.

“After…?”

You don’t need to finish. He nods. “After.”

---

When Griff comes home the night after the last heist, he’s gotten rid of his precious pickup truck and traded it in for an old 1970 Camaro. You raise your eyebrows at the muscle car, but remembering your boyfriend looks like a fiend and totally the type to not blink at in a jaded gem like a Camaro, you keep quiet. Everything in the apartment you can’t take with you has been methodically put into moving boxes stuffed with firelighters and newspaper, and with the sprinkler fire alarms on a well-paced timer, there’s sure to be enough damage there to erase all trace of you two existing in that apartment. There’s no way for sure you’re getting the bond back.

When you toss your bag in the back of the car, you jog up to the apartment, lighter in hand. But before you make the place go up in flames, you see you’ve left your laptop on the table. You know Griff is waiting on the street, and time is precious, but still, you log on, and open Skype messenger.

Screw you, Doc you type.

You flick the lighter, and light the wick leading to the boxes, leaving your laptop open, the screen to be soon burned to a crisp, hard drive fried as you and Griff leave your lives as criminals to become someone adjacent to that noun. You decided then and there, as you both hit the interstate that it didn’t make you bad people to bad things. Just people.

#griff baby driver #griff #baby driver #baby driver x reader #baby driver fanfic #jon bernthal #jon bernthal x reader #chaotic--lovely #pendragonfics #Female reader

[qqueenofhades]

i know you [i walked with you once upon a dream]: two

please at least try to look surprised: this is now a multi-chapter. find part one here, find it on AO3 here.

“Yeah, no,” Noah says. “That doesn’t sound slightly weird, Lucy. That sounds full-on, balls-out insane.”

Lucy doesn’t answer immediately, concentrating on chopping the carrot and not her finger. They’re making dinner together, as Monday is the only night of the week that their schedules coincide long enough to let them both out at the same semi-reasonable hour, and she tries to comfort herself with the familiar routine, the savory smell in the kitchen (it’s barely two-butt-sized, but they make do) and Noah’s obviously very logical contention that the whole thing was either a bad-taste joke, some actor doing an ambush-unsuspecting-people-and-film-their-reactions piece of performance art, or a sicko trying to scout her out to get close, judge the possibility of gaslighting her into thinking they know each other. All of this, and anything else, is about a hundred times more likely than whatever Garcia Flynn was trying to claim. Anything.

“Honestly,” Noah goes on, scraping the diced leeks off the cutting board and into the pot, “I think we should call the cops. The guy talked about killing people? Thinks you gave him information for it? He’s not stable. I want to know right away if he comes back, okay?”

“He said he wasn’t going to.” Lucy finishes the carrots, then ducks down to check how the bread is doing. “I don’t know why, but I. . . kind of believed him.”

“Why?” Noah gives her a funny look. “You don’t actually know this guy, do you?”

“Of course not! What, you think that I’ve known this random crazy man all along and haven’t said anything about it, and am conspiring with him in whatever he’s up to?” Lucy is hurt. “Thanks!”

“Honey, no, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a dick. I’m just worried for your safety. Are you sure we shouldn’t file a restraining order?”

“Like I said. I got the feeling he meant it. That he was going to leave and not come back.” Why this still should hurt at all, hours after her brief, silent breakdown in her office, Lucy doesn’t know, and decides not to think about. “Anyway, how was your day? Anything thrilling happen on the orthopedic surgery floor?”

Noah gives her a slightly odd look, as this determined change of subject clearly isn’t doing anything to disabuse his notion that she’s repressing her feelings again (she’s not repressing, she’s just dealing with things, things she can handle, what’s in front of her). But he doesn’t push it, they stir the stew and set the table, pull the bread out of the oven, and break open a bottle of whatever is next up the wine scale from Two-Buck Chuck (Five-Buck Clive?) They chat more or less as normal, but Lucy doesn’t tell him about the flash drive that Flynn gave her. She knows she should, so he can suggest that she do the right thing and either destroy it, or hand it over to the cops as evidence when Flynn inevitably turns up in the news for doing something stupid and/or dangerous. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t even know why.

While Noah is taking a shower, Lucy opens her laptop and Googles “Garcia Flynn.” She doesn’t get much; nothing, in fact. Right, because it’s probably an assumed name, something he’s picked to cover his tracks. But just to be thorough, and on a whim, she Googles “Lorena Flynn,” as she recalls him mentioning that name. This does turn something up. A Facebook page, that while it is set to private and she can’t get all the details, at least gives a location: Dubrovnik, Croatia. Croatia – she supposes that could explain the accent. And it’s a bit surprising that even this much proof of his story exists, when she was prepared for it all to be fictional. But then, all the best lies have a kernel of truth at the center, that bit to give them their veneer of plausibility. He could have done his research, borrowed real people to support his story. What that is, and why that is, Lucy still has no idea. She stares at Lorena’s picture. An elegant, classically attractive woman, looks like an old Hollywood film star a bit, dark waves of hair and designer sunglasses. She doesn’t look like the kind of woman who’d marry a lunatic. But then, of course, that is hardly the wisest metric to go by. The best ones can bury it the deepest inside.

There’s a sound in the hall as Noah gets out of the shower, and Lucy jumps and quickly closes the window, like a kid looking at Those Pictures on the internet while their parents’ backs are turned. She’s not doing anything wrong, objectively speaking. She’s just covering her bases, performing due diligence. The sort of things historians do, when faced with a mysterious individual who needs identifying before the paper can proceed. Ordinary.

“Hey.” Noah sticks his head into the living room, towel around his waist, wet and shirtless. “You still working? Come on, it’s only Monday. You gotta pace yourself.”

“I – yeah, just checking something.” Lucy shuts the laptop and smiles. “Sorry.”

“You wanna join me for, you know?” Noah waggles an eyebrow. “A little night music?”

“I – ” The words I have a headache actually almost pass her lips. “I’ll just be a minute, Noah, okay? Go on, get into bed, I know you’ve had a long day too.”

He gives her a second, slower look, as this answer, while objectively ordinary and acceptable, is – when considered with the rest of the day’s events – decidedly evasive. But he pauses, then nods and withdraws, heading back into the bathroom to get dried off and changed into his pajamas. Lucy waits until she hears the bedroom door shut and the TV click on, then puts down the computer and clenches her fists, furious at herself. Whatever this is, whatever effect it’s had on her, she has let it go on more than long enough. She can write it off as anything she wants, any angle she wants to put on it about sick mom or work stress or wedding planning headaches, but she’s completely thrown, off-balance, and has no idea how to regain it. Unless she does something, well, incredibly stupid, and anything further with Garcia Flynn whatsoever is going to fit that description to a tee.

She fishes in her pocket and pulls out the flash drive. Opens the computer back up and plugs it in, wondering too late if it’s going to download some kind of virus, hold her hard drive for ransom, something like that. The only file on it is a Word document. For Lucy.

Lucy hesitates. She distinctly remembers him saying something about it not being easy to look at the answers, and that she had better be sure she wants them. You’d think, if he was trying to recruit her into whatever con he’s playing, that he would insist she read it. Unless this is some sort of reverse-psychology trick designed to fake her into it. That’s it, isn’t it? So it looks as if she decided to do it on her own?

Good god, is she ever overthinking this.

Lucy stares at the document for a frustrated moment longer. Then she can’t bring herself to click on it, closes it, and ejects the drive, getting up to hide it in her purse. If he turns up in the news for unsavory reasons in the next few days, she’ll hand it over to the police. Otherwise, that is the end of this.

That is the end of this.

Lucy doesn’t sleep terribly well that night, and by the time she wakes up, Noah is already gone; he works the buttcrack-of-dawn shift on Tuesdays. She groans, silences her alarm, and rolls out of bed to get ready, remembering to make breakfast this time since she doesn’t want to rely on the charity of crazy strangers for Starbucks. It’s as she’s standing in stocking feet, gulping down toast and checking her phone, that she glances out and sees a black car parked outside the house.

She thinks nothing of it, at first. It’s a public street, after all. But after she’s brushed her teeth and has put on her jacket, double-checking she has her papers and her notes, she heads out to her car and gets in, determined not to act as if she has anything to hide. She pulls out without incident, and has almost made it to the end of the block when, in her rearview mirror, she catches sight of the car backing out as well and rolling casually down the road after her.

Lucy’s hands tighten on the wheel. They are not, she reminds herself, following her. This is still within the realm of allowable coincidence. And if they are on a stakeout looking for people that, say, their crazy suspect might have recently made contact with, she could, again, just hand them the flash drive and probably do everyone a favor. She merges into morning traffic on the Bayshore Freeway and determinedly puts it out of her mind.

The rest of the day is more or less normal. She’s still a bit distracted at her lecture, but manages to bull through it. She spends the afternoon battling through her inbox and doing admin; there is a history department meeting later, but she can probably skip it. They email the minutes around anyway, and she wants to talk to her sister.

Lucy heads out just in time to catch the evening rush, sits drumming her fingers on the wheel for some interminably long interval, and finally makes it to her mom’s house in Mountain View. This is Google/Facebook/Silicon Valley Nerd HQ, so if the family hadn’t owned the house for a few generations already, they definitely would have been far outpriced by now, and as Lucy pulls into the driveway, she notices that the in-home nurse’s car is parked by the detached garage. She isn’t going to be able to just drop in and talk to Amy without getting the report on her mom as well, so she should probably brace herself for that. Okay.

Lucy parks and gets out, heading up the walk and knocking. Amy opens the door with her headphones still around her neck; she does a weekly podcast on politics and feminism and liberal activism, that kind of thing. She has a few regular listeners and even some advertisers, though she hasn’t figured out how to monetize it consistently, hence why (among other reasons) she’s still stuck at home as the primary caregiver for their mom.  Lucy would invite her to move in with her and Noah, but their apartment is small enough as it is, and however close she and Amy are, it is still awkward to third-wheel with your big sister and her fiancé. She knows it’s hard on Amy, though, that this has fallen so disproportionately on her. Mom used to nag her to get a real job, do something with her life, not just dink around on the internet. Follow Lucy’s example. Be more like Lucy. Study hard, like Lucy. Amy’s been half in her shadow most of her life, seven years younger. Always encouraged Lucy to do her own thing more, to take that job at Kenyon College, rather than staying beholden to Stanford and Mom’s legacy there. But just as Amy can’t quite leave, uncomfortable as the fit may be, Lucy can’t either.

“Hey, you.” Lucy hugs her sister and follows her inside to the kitchen. “How’s – how’s Mom?”

“Same. As usual.” Amy attempts a shrug. It sounds horrendously callous to say that you wish something would happen, something would change, when that means your mother is going to die – as domineering and inescapable as Carol Preston could be, her daughters do love her. “Aren’t you usually busy later on Tuesdays?”

“Yeah. I needed to. . . to ask you about something, actually.” Lucy sits down at the table as Amy makes them hot chocolate. With that, not knowing how to do this except straight out, she launches into the strange story of Garcia Flynn and his visit yesterday, the flash drive he gave her, his insistence that they used to know each other, and the rest. Even the car this morning, and her brief and doubtless mistaken insistence that it was following her. It spills out of her, all of it.

Amy listens impassively, though her fingers tap on her mug. She doesn’t tell Lucy that she’s crazy, which would be the obvious solution. Then she says, “So what do you want to do?”

“I have no idea.” Lucy rubs her temples with her cold fingers. “I can’t deny that what he said kind of. . . I don’t know what it was, just that it almost felt like it might explain something. But, well, obviously he was a few branches short of a tree. I have enough crap going on in my life right now. I don’t need to get involved in this.”

“But,” Amy says, with her usual knack of cutting through Lucy’s evasions and rationalizations and getting to the heart of a situation. “You want to.”

Lucy looks up with a wry, faint smile. “It’s a mystery. You know how I am about those.”

“Yeah, but you usually work on historical ones, stuff that took place years ago and can’t turn up or develop in unexpected ways now. Live mysteries are a little more dangerous, Lucy. Especially, by the sound of things, this one.”

“Pretty much.” Lucy sighs. “I’m not going to do anything dumb. I just. . . he seemed really convinced that it was something to do with me, and I. . .”

“You like to help people,” Amy says. “Even crazy ones who turn up out of the blue at your office one day. Did you read whatever it was he gave you? His Zodiac Killer letters, or whatever?”

“No. I’m. . .” Lucy hesitates. “I’ll do it later this evening,” she says, unsure if that is a lie or not. “I should get going if I don’t want to sit on 280 all night. Love you, Pooh Bear, thanks for letting me vent.”

“You’re welcome, Piglet.” Amy manages a grin. “Hey, it’s a lot more interesting than anything going on in my life right now.”

Lucy nuzzles her sister’s head affectionately – what would she do without her? – grabs her purse, and heads out of the house, oddly relieved to escape without being required to pay court on her mother. She opens her purse, fishes for her keys, and –

“Miss Preston?”

She looks up with a considerable start, almost dropping them. It’s a guy in a black suit and tie – not Flynn, though – who couldn’t look more government-agent if he tried. “Can I ask you a few questions? Briefly, I promise.”

“Excuse me? No, you can’t. This is private property, by the way. So you are here. . . why?”

He smiles. “I’m sure your mother wouldn’t mind.”

This is an odd enough statement that it catches at Lucy briefly, but does not engender in her any further desire to cooperate with him. She turns her back and starts to get into her car, only to discover that there’s another one of them leaning against it. “Just a minute, Miss Preston, that’s all we ask. We can make this quick, you’re not in any trouble. So if you’d – ”

“No, I’m not interested in it, and I’d like to be on my way please.”

“Miss Preston – ”

“Hey,” a voice says from the sidewalk. “There a problem here, gentlemen?”

The agents (since that is clearly what they are) glance up with a start, to see some guy out for an evening stroll unwisely deciding to insert himself into their business. He’s cute in a boy-next-door kind of way, clean-cut, blue-eyed, though the faint whiff of Budweiser is just enough to make Lucy wonder if he’s located his courage recently and in liquid form and has no idea what he’s walking into. He has a certain way of standing, however, a cool and careless ease, that makes her think that she wouldn’t want to pick a fight with him. As the agents stare at him, he repeats, “Problem?”

“No, sir. None. You step along and enjoy your evening.”

He grins. A bit sardonically. Looks at Lucy. “Ma’am?”

Lucy gives him the please-make-these-assholes-leave look that every woman has had to perfect, and he picks up on it right away. He steps forward, pulls something out of his pocket – a badge or something, she doesn’t see what exactly it’s supposed to be, but either way, it makes the agents scowl at him, but decide not to push their luck. They slope off into their unmarked car – though Lucy wishes that she could be sure that’s the last time she’ll see them – and she glances at her unexpected rescuer. “I – well, thanks. I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome, ma’am.”

“Again? Ma’am? Really?”

“Sorry.” He shrugs, holds out a hand. “Wyatt Logan.”

“Lucy Preston. Nice to meet you.”

They shake. She’s tempted to ask him what exactly he showed the Bad News Bears to make them leave, but it’s also not something she’s liable to get a straight answer for. “So what, you just take nighttime walks in case you need to swoop in and make some creeps clear out?”

He shrugs. “No. That was by accident. Better than sitting at home by myself, though. I – ” He pauses as if about to say something, and stops. “You have a nice night, m – Lucy.”

“Thanks.” She smiles at him quickly, as he continues on his way, she glances after him for a moment with a strange, fleeting sense of déjà-vu, and then gets into the car. It strikes her that he has the same sort of lingering sadness around him as Flynn, a ghost that walks quietly next to him and breathes his air and colors all his shadows, a man who has been sitting and drinking in an empty house, not to feel good or to enjoy himself or share the burden, but simply to forget about it just for a little while, to breathe without the ironclad ache in his chest that is there the rest of the time. She wonders suddenly if he’s lost a wife too. No reason. Just occurred to her.

She gets into the car, not without a final look around. As if she’s expecting something, somewhere, someone, anyone to be waiting to stop her.

They’re not. She drives home. Checks around before she gets out. No one there.

No one there.

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

Garcia Flynn has done a stupid fucking thing.

(Rather, he thinks bitterly, like the rest of his stupid fucking life.)

He didn’t even realize how much until last night, when he’s sitting in some dim-lit, no-account bar in Las Vegas (looks slightly different from ’62, though the showgirls and the bright lights and the bad decisions never change – seems like a good place for him) drinking as much as the bartender would serve him, and someone slides onto the creaky chrome stool next to him. “Excuse me. Mr. Leslie?”

Flynn starts slightly, as that was the name he used to use for his intelligence work – Leslie was Errol Flynn’s middle name, and he used to wish so hard to be that Flynn when he grew up, the cowboy and swashbuckler and adventurer, and not this one, this. . . God, whatever it is, he doesn’t know. Still, though, he’s not in the mood to play. In Croatian, just to be an ass, he says, “I don’t speak English. Go away.”

“I think you do.” The man answers him in the same language, making Flynn’s head spin sharply, and gives half a shrug, as if to say that this didn’t have to be hard. He is clearly unaware that he is dealing with the master of doing things the hard way. “Can we talk?”

“I can’t stop you.” Flynn throws back another shot, which burns all the way down. He won plenty of drinking contests against Russians, which is no mean feat, but he feels almost light-headed, whether from a combination of drinking on an empty stomach or – fuck, he knows well enough, now that he’s a vagrant who remembers a world that nobody else does, who has saved his family and lost his soul, and has nothing and no one else to live for. “Or at least, it would be messy if I did. Do you really want to make them stay late mopping you off the floor?”

“Funny. Still a funny man. Not that I’d think you have any reason to be.” His interrogator is a completely ordinary-looking sort (but then, they all are). Looks vaguely Slavic, though if that’s the reason for the Croatian, which they are still speaking, who knows. “We know what you did.”

“Congratulations.” Flynn wonders if the bartender will give him another. “What did I do?”

“You stopped the hit on your family. Destroyed the Mothership. Altered the timeline back to its original format – almost.” The man – no, the Rittenhouse agent – looks at him with calm, cool eyes. “Left a few snags here and there. But for the most part, yes.  Nobody remembers, because technically, none of your adventures ever happened. You never stole the machine, and they never followed you. So as a result, nothing you did to us in the past ever happened. We’re still here, just as we always were. We’re still angry, and stronger than ever. And you just destroyed our time machine.”

At that, Flynn almost does go for his gun, stopped barely in time by the knowledge that if he opens fire even in a dive like this, he will spend at least the next night in jail, and it’s going to be difficult to get out even without quite all of his previous criminal record. Stealing the Mothership wasn’t the only thing he’s done on the wrong side of the law, just the most spectacular, though it’s true he’s mostly broken said law with government immunity. He wonders if the NSA will object to one of their assets being swept up like this, or even if he still works for them. Nothing makes sense. But he is now sitting here being blackmailed by fucking Rittenhouse, and if they think he’ll take that lying down –

“Did you,” he growls, this time in English, “have a point to make?”

His interrogator shrugs. “Did I? You know, we might have let it slide if you’d just gone back and saved your family. Even thanked you. After all, without that, you never steal the Mothership, those three never get involved or find out about us, we’re able to complete our launch and acquisition at Mason Industries, no mess, no foul. But then you had to both destroy the Mothership, in which we had invested a great deal of time and capital, and you had to give Lucy Preston information about the old timeline, as well as the role that she and her. . . friends played in it. If she gains knowledge about it, she’ll become a threat. All of them will.”

Flynn has been about to rage, but at that, he freezes. Thinks abruptly that indeed, in his hunger to see Lucy one more time, to tell her that it was done, he’s inadvertently caused the opposite to happen. Forgot that Rittenhouse was anything but defanged – that indeed, by saving his wife and daughter, he has erased all of his own efforts to remove them from history. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter – but now they’re stronger than ever, angrier than ever, and he has supplied them with a wealth of targets on which to punish him for his presumption. Lorena and Iris themselves, back in Dubrovnik, convinced that he just walked out on them without a word for three years, far longer than he’d ever been afield on any mission. Had an explosive argument about it, everything he tried to explain obviously sounding like utter delusional nonsense, until Lorena ordered him to get his head straight and not come back until it was. That may take, at a minimum, until the heat death of the universe. Iris staring at him and seeing a stranger, exactly as he feared. Five seconds of the happy reunion, and then it all fell to pieces.

And now, he has painted a target on Lucy’s back for a resurgent and very much alive Rittenhouse. Given her everything, the whole story, out of whatever stupidly noble, misguided impulse he had to fill her in on what she’d forgotten. If she reads it, if she remembers, if she believes even a fraction of it, if she starts looking, asking questions –

He’s saved his family, yes.

Saved his family, and destroyed everything else.

Flynn feels as if there is an angry rhinoceros in his chest struggling to get out. He grips the scarred edge of the bar, struggling to absorb the magnitude of his mistake, which is impressive even by his standards. He can’t protect Lorena and Iris and Lucy, and everyone else who Rittenhouse is going to hurt in retaliation for his attempts to take them down. Indeed, nobody has seen anything yet, in terms of their possible destructive power. All stops out. No holds barred.

Jesus.

Jesus.

“We’re watching her, you know,” the agent goes on. “We know you visited her. You better hope you live up to your promise to stay away. From all of them. If you contact your wife and daughter again, if you contact Lucy again, if you thought you’d be clever and send something to Logan or Carlin as well, if you so much as glance at a picture of them online, we’ll know. And then we’ll kill all of them, and this time, there will be no Mothership for you to fix it. You’ll just get to live with that. Forever. You disappear, cause no more trouble for us, and they live happily ever after. Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it?” He grins. “Huh, Garcia?”

Flynn remains completely motionless. He is plunging through endless, icy, dark water, curling and cutting in his chest. He has never been so afraid – and so angry – in his entire life.

The Rittenhouse agent waits for his answer. When it doesn’t come, he shrugs, finishes his drink, and stands up. “Have a nice night,” he says. Puts on his hat. The bar door opens and shuts.

He’s gone.

#lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #timeless ff #i need a tag for this fic #once upon a dream #probably