#by the end of this case he's called apollo cool several times

[shcherbatskayas]

klavier is the most helpful of the aa prosecutors, but it's so important to mention that he's such a bitch to apollo in the beginning of 4-2, up until he figures out that he's also on the side of the truth. please observe the pettiness on display here.

#klavier gavin #aa4 #apollo justice ace attorney #by the end of this case he's called apollo cool several times #and gave him advice mid trial #and worked against his own witness to join apollo in the hunt for the truth #apollo told klavier that he rides a bicycle and klavier instantly became smitten #i love klavier he's my favorite bitchy little blonde guy

[tsarisfanfiction]

The Wrong Brother

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rating: Teen Genre: Angst/Family Characters: Michael, Will Michael isn't the brother Will needs, but he's the one that's there. Whumptober day 2, "I'll call out your name, but you won't call back" and delirium! More of an emotional/angsty whump this time, as the prompts might suggest. Also Michael&Will, because there isn't enough of that in the world (there will never be enough!)

The raid on the Kronos supporters had been a success, technically.  Michael hadn’t enjoyed deferring to Clarisse, who had taken command as the head counsellor of their main war cabin, but capturing the flying chariot had had up for it – or would have done, if Clarisse would admit that the Apollo cabin had the claim to it because they had been the ones to seize it.  They’d disrupted the titan’s forces and gained something useful out of it, but Kronos’ supporters were good fighters, and the monsters were cold, ruthless, and numerous.

Unfortunately, the chariot hadn’t been the only thing they’d brought back with them.  No-one from the raiding party – the entire Ares and Athena year-round campers, almost all of the Apollo year-round campers, most of the Hephaestus kids, and several of cabin eleven – had come back unscathed, and in several cases the injuries had been severe.

Will was the only year-rounder from the Apollo cabin that was more than simply passable at healing, and he’d pushed himself too hard patching everyone else up.  Chiron had helped, but there were some things only Apollo kids could do, and Will had borne the brunt of the responsibility, much to Michael’s frustration.

He carefully didn’t think about why Will was the only skilled healer in camp all year around, or about the yawning gap where an older brother with healing at his fingertips should have been.

Michael had done what he could, but despite his own accelerated healing, he’d been part of the casualties and it was a lot harder to force people to not overwork his brother when he was covered in bandages himself.  Even if he hadn’t been injured himself, there wouldn’t have been much he could’ve done to lessen Will’s burden.

But perhaps Will would’ve been okay, if exhausted, if they hadn’t somehow ended up with an illness passing through the camp – one of them must have caught it on the raid, and while most campers were shrugging it off without much difficulty, Will’s exhaustion combined with being in close contact with several infected had eventually resulted in a very ill younger brother.

Chiron had isolated him in a small room off of the infirmary, both for his own protection and to make sure there wasn’t a more violent strain about to break through the rest of camp.  Most of the demigods were banned from visiting, to be safe, but after a few arguments, Michael had forced his way in.

Will might be the camp’s top healer, but Michael was the head counsellor of cabin seven, for all that fact hurt if he thought about it for too long, and technically that put him in charge of the infirmary, even if his bedside manner was shit and he couldn’t do much more than administer the basic medicines or wrap up open wounds.  He was also Will’s big brother, and refused to leave him alone while he was sick.

Unfortunately, Will didn’t seem to register his presence at all, barely reacting when Michael tipped nectar down his throat or changed the cool cloth on his forehead.  It hurt, and it was worrying, but there was nothing more Michael could do except try to keep him comfortable, and send agitated prayers their father’s way.

The second day into Will’s quarantine, Michael nudged the door open with his foot, arms full of cloths and worried siblings behind him.  Just like the first day, Michael didn’t let any of them follow him in to the room, and was immediately glad when he entered to find Will crying.

“Will?”  The cloths were discarded at the foot of the bed with no ceremony as Michael hurried to his brother’s side.

"Lee?" Will sobbed, hand reaching out for empty air, and Michael’s heart twisted.

"Lee's not here, Will," he said, ignoring the way his voice broke on their brother's name.  He caught Will's reaching hand with both of his, hooking a foot around the chair he’d left in the room to drag it close enough to sit on without letting go.  "It's me, Michael."

"Lee!" Will protested, and Michael had to tighten his grip as his younger brother tried to reach out again, muffling a curse when Will started to reach out with his other hand instead.

"Lee's not here," he repeated, hating that he had to say it at all, that it was the truth, that Will was too sick to remember - or maybe sick enough to hallucinate.  Lee had always sat bedside vigil whenever any of them got sick, even before he became head counsellor, and Michael could understand why Will was calling for him.

Gods knew he might have done, if it was him sick in that bed instead.

"He's not here," he said again, shifting to catch Will's other hand with one of his and trying to place it down on the bed again. Will fought him, tears seeping down his face, and Michael’s own eyes were prickling with poorly-buried grief, too. "It's just me, Will. Just Michael."

Illness sapped Will’s strength enough that his hands couldn’t break free from Michael’s grip, but that didn’t stop him from trying, or from getting more and more agitated when he couldn’t.  “Lee!”

Fuck if it didn’t hurt, hearing Will call for Lee so desperately.

Michael had always been awful at the bedside manner thing, but he’d been Will’s big brother for five years now.  Hugs weren’t really his thing, but they were Will’s, and various siblings had dished them out at various points during Will’s time at camp.  Michael had, on rare occasions, been one of them.

Clearly, one was needed now.

He dropped Will’s hands and wrapped his arms around his younger brother instead, leaning awkwardly onto the bed as he pulled Will half-upright and guided his head to rest in the crook of his neck, leaving one hand buried in tangled blond waves.  The old cloth that fell from Will’s forehead went ignored.

“Lee,” his brother sobbed again, quieter, and Michael found himself being hugged back, Will clinging to him like a limpet.  “Lee, don’t leave me.”

The quiet plea tore into Michael, not just because Lee was gone, had left them for good, but because Will was talking to him like he was Lee, and Michael could never be Lee.

“It’s Michael, Will,�� he repeated again, and fuck, his eyes stung and there was salt trickling into the corners of his mouth.  “Lee’s g-”  His throat closed up entirely, stifling the word gone until it felt like he would choke on it, or throw up.  “Not here,” he amended, and if he buried his face in Will’s hair, well no-one else was allowed in the room to see.

Will didn’t get the message, more tearful pleas for Lee assailing Michael’s ears, and Michael felt completely useless.

Lee would’ve been able to do something.  Lee would’ve got Will’s attention, had enough healing skill to bring down his fever and break whatever was making Will think he was still there, still with them.

Michael could do none of that, assaulted by grief he’d tried to bury because he was head counsellor, he didn’t have time to break down and grieve when everyone else needed him to be strong for them.  Quiet sobs dragged themselves out of his throat, muffled in Will’s hair.

“I miss him, too,” he admitted to blond locks and unhearing ears, his words drowned out by Will’s increasingly desperate cries.  They raked through Michael’s chest, a reminder that he wasn’t a healer, couldn’t even comfort his little brother properly.  “Fuck but I wish he was here.”

He hiccupped and hid his face further into Will’s hair, hating himself for it because he shouldn’t be using Will as a shield from the world but he was, because it was the loudest he could be without worsening his siblings’ grief and it was obvious that Will wasn’t registering anything he said.

“Lee,” Will whimpered, and Michael couldn’t even tell any more if he was being somehow mistaken for their brother or if Will was just begging Lee to come back.  “Lee.”

Michael pulled him tighter.  It wasn’t like there was anything else he could do; he wasn’t a healer, couldn’t magically get Will’s fever to break if the medicines weren’t already working on it.

He wasn’t a necromancer, either.  Lee was gone and never coming back, and Michael was absolutely shit at everything Lee had been good at – listening, comforting, helping.  He was Will’s big brother but right then he was the wrong big bsicrother and that wasn’t something he could even try to fix.

All he could do was hold Will as he cried, and try to pretend he wasn’t breaking in the process.

#whumptober2023 #no.2 #lyric #i'll call out your name but you won't call back #delirium #percy jackson and the olympians #riordanverse #fic #referenced character death #sickfic #percy jackson fanfiction #riordanverse fanfic #michael yew #will solace #lee fletcher #tsari writes fanfiction

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

But You Can Never Leave [Chapter 5: Don’t Even Think About It]

Hi y’all! I’m so sorry I’ve been gone for so long...finals and job hunting got the best of me. I will be updating more frequently going forward. As always, thank you so much for reading!! 💜😘

Series summary: You are an overwhelmed and disenchanted nurse in Boston, Massachusetts. Queen is an eccentric British rock band you’ve never heard of. But once your fates intertwine in the summer of 1974, none of your lives will ever be the same...

This series is a work of fiction, and is (very) loosely inspired by real people and events. Absolutely no offense is meant to actual Queen or their families.

Song inspiration: Hotel California by The Eagles.

Chapter warnings: Language, very very very little sexual content.

Chapter list (and all my writing) available HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii​ @loveandbeloved29​ @killer-queen-xo​ @maggieroseevans​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​ @im-an-adult-ish​ @queenlover05​ @someforeigntragedy​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​ @joemazzmatazz​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye​ @namelesslosers​ @inthegardensofourminds​ @deacyblues​ @youngpastafanmug​ @sleepretreat​ @hardyshoe​ @bramblesforbreakfast​ @sevenseasofcats​ @tensecondvacation​ @bookandband​ @queen-crue​

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! :)

You’re in the crowd at The Rainbow, although you aren’t sure why; this has already happened.

Freddie is skulking across the fog-draped stage as he belts out the chorus of In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited, all glistening tan skin and teased hair, a pillar of nimble black leather; John is only a silhouette in the mist. Brian looks like something that’s crawled out of a cocoon: leggy and insect-like, the sleeves of his flowing white blouse like a pair of wings. And Roger...Roger’s in the back, of course—“the hardworking one in the back,” he always says—with a glittery black kimono-like shrug hanging loosely off his bare shoulders. He’s drumming feverishly, sprays of Heineken flying off his floor tom, his forehead and blond hair dripping.

“Whoa, whoa, la la la, whoa...

I can see what you want me to be,

But I'm no fool,

It's in the lap of the gods...”

Somehow, as the fog clears, Roger’s eyes find you in the crowd. He grins in that effervescent, blameless way that he does. And now you know for sure that this is a dream; because there’s no chance Roger could see that far without his glasses.

There’s a banging noise coming from somewhere, but it’s muted, distant, splintered like an echo.

Dream Roger is fading away, dissolving as the lights shade to black on the stage. He disappears, and then Freddie does too, and then Brian, and finally John. The crowd you’re standing in is a sea of churning, indistinguishable faces.

The banging grows louder, closer. You can hear a new voice now.

You swim up from unconsciousness and punch into daylight. You’re laying on your back in bed in a small, rustic hotel room; it takes you a second to remember what the world looks like now. It’s not November at the Rainbow Theater. It’s December 11th, and you’re in Rome.  

You sit up in bed and turn towards the door. Whoever is out there is knocking so forcefully that the distressed wood rattles on its hinges.

“Hey, Dorothea Dix, wake up!” Freddie is shouting through the door.

You rub your eyes as your feet touch the cool teak floor. The band flew into Rome late last night, and has one full day to burn before their concert on the 12th. You’d pitched the idea of visiting a few museums, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Roman Forum, St. Peter's Basilica, maybe even the Baths of Caracalla or the Temple of Venus and Roma; but it had been difficult to get anyone to commit at 2 a.m. when you were all exhausted and dragging luggage into the modest, quite geriatric hotel. Queen may finally have a Top 20 album in the U.S., but the streets aren’t paved with gold just yet.

“Darling, need I remind you that this was all your idea, you simply must wake up this instant—!”

You swing the door open. Freddie is standing in the hallway in a vivid yellow-and-black jacket and white jeans, tall boots, dark hair huge and curly, folded aviator sunglasses peeking out of his pocket.

“Get ready, bitch,” he says, grinning, then slips the sunglass over his dusky eyes. “All those gorgeous marble blokes with their cocks hanging out aren’t going to ogle themselves.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You start with the ruins, then end up at the National Roman Museum after lunch. Brian and Chrissie meander through the halls of cracked marble goddesses and heroes and piecemeal fractions of bodies, their hands intertwined; Chrissie took a few days off work to meet the band in Rome, and she’s glowing with the thrill of being reunited with Bri. Freddie is contemplating the displays, tapping his chin thoughtfully and chatting as John nods along and sketches in his notebook. There’s a photographer scurrying around snapping photos of the band for some magazine, to the vexation of the museum employees. They scowl from the corners of the rooms, their suits pristine and arms crossed, muttering to each other in Italian.

Roger leaps in front of a hulking statue of Perseus and mimics the pose. “What do you think?” he asks you, wielding an invisible spear. “Am I courageous? Divine? A mirror image?”

“You’ll have to work on the hair. And gain like a hundred pounds.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Pounds?!”

“Whoops. Kilos. A lot of kilos. But I think I like you as you are. Can I see your hands?”

Roger falls out of his pose, smiling. “Yes ma’am.” He presents his palms for inspection. The first weeks had been hell for him as his hands were worked into touring shape, repeatedly blistered and worn raw, iced and treated and bandaged by you each night only to be pummeled all over again the next day. Of course, Roger hadn’t described it that way; he shrugged at the blood and swollen knuckles, his eyes already alight with the promise of future shows. That’s just a casualty of fame, love, he’d told you. I’d take it all again and more. The last of his blisters have healed now into discolored callouses, rough whirlpools of memories from cities like Glasgow and Bristol and Helsinki and Munich. “I can get more pounds too, you know. I’ll be swimming in them. I’m gonna buy you a mansion when we get home.”

“Not so fast, blondie.” You graze your thumbs over his rugged palms and release him. Aside from your annoyingly incessant concern for Roger, your job hasn’t proved to be too taxing: there have been sprains, minor lacerations, severe hangovers, some alcohol poisoning, and one case of syphilis that you identified and sent the unfortunate man to a doctor for, all of which afflicted the roadies rather than the band.

“How’s Jo doing?” Chrissie calls over from where she and Brian are scrutinizing a sculpture of Apollo. She tosses Roger a smirk.

“Fine,” he replies briskly. “It was amicable. She understood. Nothing personal, just with the tour and everything we knew it wasn’t going to work out. Bad timing, that’s all.”

“Hm. That’s not exactly how she described it.”

Roger sighs, irritated. “Well, Chris, I really can’t control what she chooses to tell you, can I?”

“Shhhh. Play nice, love,” Brian coos, massaging Chrissie’s shoulders.

Roger pops a cigarette between his lips and moves to light it. A museum employee rushes over, waving his arms frantically. “Per favore, signore, no smoking near the exhibits—!”

“Oh, right, right. Sorry.” Roger tucks the cigarette away, then turns back to you. “Okay, no mansion then. What’s your fancy? Diamonds and gold? Tigers on leashes?”

“A harem of sensual Italian men?” Freddie suggests. Chrissie bursts out laughing.

“I hope not,” Roger says.

“You know what I really want?” you say, eyeing busts of Hadrian and Nero.

“What?” Chrissie asks.

“A camera. A really good one. To document all of this, our adventures. I mean, I know we have...” You wave towards the magazine photographer, who’s mostly snapping shots of Freddie and Roger. “But it would be nice to have my own photos. Carry them around in my wallet, force strangers to look at them, cover my refrigerator with them, all that sentimental stuff. So the minute you kids start making real money, I’d like a nice Canon. Or a Nikon. Or whatever the best camera is.”

“The Canon F-1 is quite good,” the photographer offers.

“Perfect! Clearly, I know nothing about cameras. And will need a hefty instruction manual. But I’m still excited.”

Roger winks. “I believe in you.”

As you all wander into the next room, Freddie spies a grand piano and sprints to it. He slides onto the bench and begins testing the keys. A distraught museum employee appears instantly.

“Signore, please, this is for the museum staff only, please signore!”

“Oh relax, darling, I won’t break it.” He begins experimenting with some light, jazzish melody.

“I love Rome,” you decide as you stroll past the Aphrodite of Menophantos. “Are you sure we can’t stay here forever?”

John frowns as he shades in whatever he’s drawing in his notebook. “It’s too bad we couldn’t make it to Florence.”

Freddie rolls his eyes from the piano. “Deaky, darling, this Dante’s Inferno obsession has got to go. It’s positively morbid.”

“He ends up in paradise,” John protests wryly.

Freddie snorts. “Yes, well, Florence is a three hour drive each way. Next time perhaps. Once we’ve all got private jets and Nurse Nightingale over there has her posh camera.”

“And we’ve acquired trophy wives to pose with us,” Brian jokes. Chrissie squeals and shoves him good-naturedly.  

“We could go to the beach,” John proposes.

“A seaside rendezvous?” you say playfully.  

Freddie hums and nods as his fingers fly over black and white keys.

“Signore...” the museum employee begs. The photographer circles Freddie and the piano, snapping picture after picture.

“The beach?!” Roger whines. “It’s too cold for that! We can’t swim, we can’t sunbathe practically naked, what’s the point? And we’re checking out that club tonight. The one by the hotel, what’s it called, Fred? El Fuocolio?”

“Il Fuoco,” Freddie corrects, amused.

“Ah. Forgive me for not keeping up with my Italian.”

“We don’t all listen to opera, you know,” you tease Freddie. He peers over at you thoughtfully, then continues playing. “I’ll go to the beach with you, John.”

He almost drops his notebook and pencil. “Will you?”

“Of course. I’ll have fewer opportunities in my life to see the Italian seaside than get tipsy and evade dodgy men at some bar, most likely. Although I will miss seeing your dancing.”

“Aww!” Now Roger is dejected, his huge blue eyes pleading. “You have to come with us.”

“Next time,” you promise him.

“This time.”

“Next time.”

“Fine.” He points at John. “Don’t let her get eaten by a shark or run off with some Italian playboy.”

John grins. “I’ll do my best.”

Two burly security guards arrive and begin shouting at Freddie in Italian. “Oh fine, fine!” he snaps as he stands and abandons the piano. The museum employee beams triumphantly.

“Fred, I think we’ve tormented them enough,” Brian says.

“Bri, can we go to the beach too?” Chrissie asks. “Please?”

“It’ll be chilly.”

“I have a jacket. And I can borrow yours if necessary.”  

Brian chuckles. “Okay. We can go. Ostia’s the closest one, I suppose.”

“You’ll love it,” you tell him. “It’ll be like time travelling. You get to stand on the same shore that the ancient Romans did, bury your feet in the same sand, watch the same sunset. That should appeal to an astrophysicist such as yourself.”  

“How poetic,” John muses.

Roger comes to you, shrugs off his black leather jacket, drapes it over your violet sweater.

“Roger, don’t—”

“I’ll miss you,” he interrupts, smiling, then presses his lips fleetingly to your forehead.

~~~~~~~~~~

The four of you take a crowded, decidedly unglamorous bus to Ostia and walk the beaches under the fading afternoon sun. It is chilly by the crashing water, and the wind whips across your cheeks forcefully enough to sting; but none of that stops you. Brian and John collect seashells, and Brian retreads all the details of the tour—all the things he wishes he could do over, all the things he wants to change going forward—as John listens, smoking and nodding when appropriate. You and Chrissie kneel in the cool sand and shape castles with your hands, giggle about how messy and lopsided they are, scribble notes in the soft sifting remnants of stone and quartz: Chrissie loves Bri, Buy Sheer Heart Attack today, Queen was here. And you’re thinking about Roger more than you should be, and Chrissie knows it; but she’s not going to say anything about that now.

When the boys come back, Bri sits in the sand next to Chrissie and begins to decorate her castle with the shells he found: scallops and clams and tulip shells and oysters and tiny lightning whelks. She claps and hugs him, leaps into his lap, pulls him in for a kiss.  

“This is terribly unfair,” you say, staring morosely at your now even less impressive sandcastle.

John appears beside you and offers a massive pink conch filled with very small, pristine, glossy shells. You gasp and clasp a palm over your heart.

“Really?!”

“Yeah,” he says, puzzled. “Who do you think I picked them for?”

“You’re the best. The absolute best. A treasure. I owe you my life. Wait...” You pick up a thin shard of driftwood and write into the side of your sandcastle: John Deacon, and then a heart encircling it. “You are officially lord of the sandcastle.”

“A prestigious position, surely,” he says, smiling, then passes you the conch. “Go on.”

As you place the shells, he finds a dried bit of seaweed and impales it on the piece of driftwood, then plants the makeshift flag on the tallest tower of the castle.

Brian glances over and shakes his head, his mess of curls shivering. “Chris, love, I fear we’ve been outdone.” Then he nods to the words you and Chrissie carved with your fingertips. “Leaving letters in the sand?”

“Promotional material,” you quip; but you can tell the wheels in Brian’s magnificent mind are whirling.

As the sun sets over the Mediterranean Sea, golden speckles of light floating disembodied on the waves, the four of you get gelato and browse through bookstores and wander down cobblestone streets. And on the bus ride back to the hotel, Brian points out constellations as you hold the conch shell in your lap and doze against John’s shoulder.

~~~~~~~~~~

Brian and Chrissie depart to get dinner when you arrive back at the hotel, taking the rare opportunity for a date night. You try to think of a more romantic destination than Rome. Paris? New York? Venice? Probably none of those. You push the images that flood your thoughts away: candlelit meals with violins serenading in the background, the warm cascading glow of streetlights, tossing coins into fountains older than either London or Boston, gazing over the table and into the ensnaring oceanic eyes of the person who won’t be there. Roger.

“Do you think Roger and Fred are back yet?” you ask John in the lobby. He’s still got his notebook in his jacket pocket, but he won’t let you see it.

“I doubt it, but let’s find out.”

You ride the elevator to the band’s floor, still clutching the conch shell, as John fields ideas for dinner.

“Roger’s going to want pizza and beer, but we might be able to get Freddie to go for something more swanky. Actually, he’ll probably order dessert first. There’s a restaurant down the street that I heard has phenomenal tiramisu and lasagna.”

“Oh god. I would kill for a good lasagna.”

“No need for all that,” John says. “We don’t have enough cash for your bail.”

“If they serve lasagna in prison, you can leave me here.”

“But then who would patch up our debaucherous roadies?!”

You laugh as the elevator lurches to a halt and the doors open. “Just call me up in prison and I can talk you through it—”

You step out and turn down the hallway; then all the air vanishes from your lungs. Roger’s fumbling with his key as he tries to get into his room...and pressed between him and the door is a raven-haired, modelesque woman in a short red dress. His eyes are closed, her tongue darting between his lips, his free hand skating up her bare thigh and beneath her dress. And suddenly you’re being dragged back into the elevator, John’s arms locked around your waist. He hits the button for the lobby then reaches for you uncertainly.

“Are you okay—?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I’m totally fine, I’m...” But for some reason, your throat is burning and your eyes are blurring with tears. You try to blink them away and they drop down your cheeks like rain.

“You’re not,” he realizes softly.

“Goddammit,” you choke out, sobbing.

“Hey, don’t do that,” John pleads. “Please don’t do that, please don’t cry—”

“Oh god, I’m so sorry, this is so stupid...” You fan your face and try to wrangle your breathing. The way he was touching her...I can’t forget the way he was touching her. “I am so stupid.”

“You’re not,” John flares. And when he opens his arms you rush into them, burying your face in his jacket as he pulls you closer, drowning you in his warmth. “You’re not stupid,” he says, quietly but severely. “You’re wicked smart and wonderful and perfect, so you’re not allowed to say anything to the contrary. Alright?”

“Okay,” you whisper. And it occurs to you—as your breathing slows, as your tears subside—how incomparably comfortable this feels, homey even.

John clears his throat. “Hey, not to break this up or anything, but you’re sort of stabbing me with the conch shell.”

Incredibly, you laugh as you back away, swiping at your eyes. “Sorry.”

The elevator doors open, and John leads you out into the lobby. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says. “We’re going to go to that restaurant on the corner and I’m going to order a lasagna—”

“John, I don’t think I can eat anything.”

“Doesn’t matter. Did I say you were going to be forced to eat it at gunpoint? No I did not. I’m going to order a lasagna, and if you want some awesome, and if you don’t we’ll just sit and talk. And you can nibble table bread or drink so much wine you forget today ever happened, whatever you want. You make the rules. But we’re going, and I’m ordering lasagna.”

“Okay,” you reply, sniffling, smiling up at him gratefully.

The restaurant is teeming with tourists, and you end up seated at a tiny table near the back with very dim lighting and a roaring fireplace. It’s deliciously hot, burning away your misery; or, at least, making it feel as if it might belong to someone else, as if maybe you heard about it from a friend or in a song, maybe even dreamed it. You take Roger’s leather jacket off and hang it on the back of your chair. When the waiter arrives, John orders for you.

“One lasagna, the biggest one you have, and extra table bread, and uh...” He skims the menu. “Two red wines and a Coke. And a sparkling water. So the lady has a selection.”

“Si, signore. Grazie.”

When the waiter leaves, John lifts off his jacket too, then unbuttons his shirt to his navel. The sweltering glow of the firelight dances across his pale skin in a way that is mysteriously distracting. “Well, it definitely doesn’t feel like December in here.”

“I’m sorry, maybe they could move us—”

“No, that’s alright, I know you like it. And one should be sweating in Southern Italy, don’t you think?” He tears off a hunk of bread when it arrives and plates it for you. The conch shell lays on the table by the salt and pepper shakers, to the visible confusion of the waiter.

“Thank you. For everything, John. Really.”

He gazes at you with those blue-grey eyes that can look like either clouds or steel depending on the occasion. Tonight they are misty, like the froth over waves, impossibly soft. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he says gently. “I don’t know if that helps at all, but I think it should. It doesn’t mean anything to someone like Roger, what you saw tonight.”

You sigh. “I guess it doesn’t. And I’m sorry, I know it’s ridiculous, I know that, and I’m just so frustrated and...and...I get it, I get that I have no right to care about anything Roger does, which is why I feel like such an idiot for reacting this way, but I just...I just...I’m just so...so fucking torn up about it and I’m sick of being surrounded by it all the time and I’m...I’m so...I’m...look, I’m sorry, can you button your shirt or something? That’s very distracting.”

“Oh, it’s distracting, is it?” John asks, grinning.

“Don’t you dare—”

He undoes several more buttons. “How about now, are you sufficiently distracted?”

“John, no!” you wail, laughing.

“I wouldn’t want to do anything to distract you from your tortured inner monologue...” He removes his shirt entirely and tosses it to the floor. “How are you now?”

“Very distracted,” you wheeze.

“Excellent.” He smiles, resting his face in his hands, the firelight flickering over his bare chest and shoulders, reflections of flames in his eyes. “See, you don’t look so sad now.”

“No, I guess I don’t.” You bite into your hunk of bread. But still, the way he was touching her...  

John sips red wine and smirks teasingly. “You know...if you ever get tired of the celibate lifestyle...I’m always game.”

You laugh, shaking your head, and open the Coke bottle. “That’s very much appreciated. But I don’t just want sex.”

“I know,” he replies, solemnly now. “You want him.”

“That’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think you’re pathetic at all.” That seems like it must be a lie, but John sounds genuine.

“You’re my best friend, you know,” you tell him. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“Certainly not get treated to authentic Italian lasagna.”

You chuckle. “I’m sure that’s the least of your talents. Veronica is a very lucky woman.”

John nods, staring down at the table now, pushing crumbs around with the back of his hand. “If you say so.”

And, in the end, you managed to eat your half of the lasagna after all.

~~~~~~~~~~

When you get back to your hotel room, it’s very late in Italy...which means it’s only early evening in Boston. You pick up the phone and resolve to use the last of your miniscule weekly allowance for a long distance call.

Your mom answers on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Guess where I am right now.”

“Hopefully on a date with that nice Roger boy.”

“Oh my god, Mom.”

She titters pleasantly. “Tell me, dear. Germany? No, no. Spain.”

“Rome.”

“Oh!” she sighs, steeped in nostalgia. “Daddy and I went there on our honeymoon! Ages ago, of course. But it was wonderful, otherworldly. Like getting lost in a fairytale. How do you like it?”

“I love it,” you murmur. “Mom, can I ask you something?”

“Always, dear.”

You twirl the phone cord around your fingers anxiously. “How did you know that Dad was the one?”

“Hm.” She pauses; and you can envision the way she takes a step back and glances up at the ceiling whenever she’s thinking something over. Oh, maybe I do still miss parts of Boston. “Well...you know Daddy wasn’t single when we met. And neither was I.”

“Yeah, I think I remember that part of the story.”

“I’m not sure if I can explain it, dear. Truly. I...” She drifts off, pondering it. Finally, she says: “I’d had plenty of other boyfriends. I’d been interested in other people. And people are all so different, they all have something unique to offer to your life, whether good or evil. But when I met your father...I just felt like I couldn’t live without him. Suddenly nothing else seemed possible if he wasn’t in the picture. Like if he wasn’t there I’d spend the rest of my life missing him. Does that answer your question?”

“It does, yeah.” You close your eyes and feel the dark Mediterranean night air breeze in through the open window. The conch shell has found a temporary home on top of the antique dresser. “I love you, Mom.”

“Aww, I love you too, honey. And you’ll make the right decision, whatever that is.”

You look out into the constellations that Brian introduced to you earlier, Aries and Fornax and Perseus. “I hope so.”

#queen #queen fic #roger taylor fic #but you can never leave fic #but you can never leave series #but you can never leave #queen fanfic #john deacon fic #roger taylor x reader #john deacon x reader

[rvnclwsews]

100 One-Shot Prompt: Dying

Summary: Nico begins to see how his relation to the Underworld can have a positive impact on the culture at Camp Half-Blood.

     The sun was hot and bright as it beat down on the camp Nico could feel his dark hair getting warm as he made his way across the open square to the Apollo cabin. The camp was quiet with the fatigue and grief of battle still hanging heavy in the air. In contrast the sunny day felt like a mocking thing. He pushed the sleeves of his hoodie up to his elbows to get some small relief from the warmth and, he figured, to be prepared to wash his hands once he got inside. Will was nothing if not thorough in his aid station management.

               He walked into the cool first floor of the Apollo cabin. The whole first floor had been turned into a triage center with neat rows of cots. The small amount of lounge furniture was pushed against one wall in abandon. No one was looking for a place to practice their guitar right now. There was a staircase to his left that went up to the beds where the Apollo kids slept and a few private rooms either used for campers that needed more private treatment or, in Will’s case, a quiet office. Being head councilor had its perks.  A few of the Apollo kids glanced up at him before going back to their work with bandages or salves. Nico glanced around before he spotted Will towards the back of the cabin. He was standing next to a patient’s bed, his fingers on the boy’s wrist and watching his watch. He lifted his head and spoke something to one of his younger siblings who wrote furiously on a clipboard before Will turned away and spotted him.

               The look on Will’s face felt like a weight on Nico’s chest. His usually warm complexion was pale and sallow. There were dark circles under his blue eyes, blue eyes that looked bloodshot and glassy. He approached Nico and stood close, talking quietly to respect the patients.

               “Hey,” he said. One side of his mouth turned up in some small effort of a smile. He shoved his hands in his lab coat pockets. Nico looked him in the eyes, hard.

               “Are you okay?” Nico knew he wasn’t always so good at communicating his feelings but he tried to pour every ounce of his concern into his voice. No use. Will just shrugged.

               “eh,” he replied, “I’ll be okay.” Nico put his hand out and held Will’s arm, squeezing in a subtle show of support. Will sighed and for a second shut his eyes hard to hold back his emotions.

               “It’s Kayla, Will. You don’t have to be okay,” he murmured before letting go. Will opened his eyes and nodded, swallowing hard.

               “I know, Sunshine, but I have to try. At least for them.” He gestured to the room behind him with a nod of his head.

               “I know.” Nico said solemnly. Will seemed to brighten up a small fraction.

               “So did you just come to check on me?” He asked. Nico shrugged a shoulder.

               “Well, you and the dead, but you more so,” he shot him a small smile, “I can’t cheer them up.” Will grimaced at his comment. “Sorry, that probably wasn’t very sensitive.” Nico twisted his skull ring nervously. Will shook his head dismissively.

               “Come with me,” Will said, walking towards the back of the cabin. Nico fell into step next to him until they turned down a hallway Nico had to admit he didn’t notice they had. At the end of the hall was a door.

               “I didn’t know this was here,” Nico commented.

               “Well we can’t keep the dead on cots up here. Different climate control requirements.” Will opened the door to reveal a staircase leading down to a basement level. Now that he thought about it Will was right. They had to keep them somewhere until funeral arrangements could be made. A basement level would be much easier to regulate conditions. He’d just never considered that any of the cabins had basements. Then again, his was partially underground, so it wasn’t too hard to believe. When they reached the finished basement level morgue Nico froze. He felt the blood run from his face.

               The eight campers were laid out on tables which he expected, but what bothered him deeply were the two Apollo kids carefully, silently, cleaning and preparing a body.

               “Nico?” Will was looking at him, concern in his face. Blood was rushing in his ears, deafening in the silence of the morgue.

               “Why?” Nico whispered.

               “Why what?” Will responded. Nico swallowed down what even he could admit was an intensely emotional response.

               “None of these campers have mortal families?” Will looked confused.

               “What? I mean, a couple are… were year-round kids but… what is this about?”

               “Stop,” Nico said to the quiet room, “stop!” his voice came out a little harsher than he had meant but the two kids stopped what they were doing and looked at him, and that’s what he needed. He looked at Will again who was looking at him with a combination of confusion, annoyance, and… pain? “Sorry, “ he said, “but this shouldn’t be your job. You all tend the living, not the dead.” Will crossed his arms over his chest, a defensive expression on his usually easy-going face.

               “I don’t think we’ve ever done a bad job of it before.” The idea that Will, younger than the two kids standing with them now, had once been responsible for preparing the bodies of his friends and peers made his chest ache. He put his hands up in a gesture of supplication.

               “I didn’t mean it in that way. I only meant you guys shouldn’t have to do this. I need to find Chiron.” He turned to leave the basement and the cold that seemed to penetrate his bones. He vaguely heard Will telling his siblings to stay put and leave everyone be until he got back. He was only minimally aware of Will following him up the stairs and out of the Apollo cabin.

               Nico had lived for years now with the grief of losing Bianca and his own mother. Just the emotional strain of finally being able to grieve his mother after being robbed of the memory of losing her and then regaining said memory was intense. But those things had helped him understand more about grief and the impact death has on the living better than most of his peers. That wasn’t to say that demigods were unfamiliar with the complex feelings of grief and loss, they had done it more in the last several years than most of them had ever imagined they would. But Nico understood the need for accurate funerary rites because he had been robbed of giving them to the two people he had loved most in the whole world.

               “Chiron!” he yelled, bounding up the steps to the Big house. No answer. He knocked on the door, hard. “Chiron!” Will’s feet pounded up the porch steps behind him. He didn’t prod or speak, just stood over Nico’s shoulder. A little part of him noted his appreciation for Will who didn’t know what this was about but was still willing to back him up, no questions. Well, no questions yet, Will was absolutely going to ask questions later. But Nico could deal with that when the time came.

               “Mr. Di Angelo, what is the matter?” Chiron approached the porch from behind, carrying his bow with him. Nico whirled around and Will caught his shoulders before he ran right into him.

               “Chiron, the Apollo cabin should NOT be preparing the bodies.” He got straight to the point. A mild look of surprise flickered across Chiron’s face before it returned to a neutral gentle expression. Nico took a deep breath and tried to gather his thoughts, running his hands through his dark hair. “I mean, you know how this is supposed to go. They have families! It’s an important part of the grieving process that their families handle them. Not just that, but some of these kids have families with different religious beliefs. I’m technically Catholic for the gods’ sake! Don’t give me that look,” he gestured to Will who he could feel was staring at him like he had two heads. Why was he surprised, he knew Nico was Italian. “This isn’t right.” Chiron nodded as Nico spoke, taking in his words thoughtfully.

               “Yes, Mr. Di Angelo, I am well aware of the old practices. The border tends to act as a deterrent for inviting mortal parents into the camp,” Nico cut him off.

               “A deterrent can be worked around,” Chiron held up his hand.

               “not to mention that culturally its has fallen out of custom for the kin of the deceased to prepare the body.” There was a few moments of silence between them until Will finally broke it.

               “You wanted us to stop because the families are supposed to do this part.” He didn’t ask a question, simply spoke it out loud to make sure he understood the idea. Nico could see the sheen of tears in Will’s eyes. Will turned his eyes up to Chiron.

               “We need to call Kayla’s dad.” Chiron nodded grimly.

               “I suppose that we could work out some way to at least present the option to the families. I’ll discuss it with Mr. D. I the interim, Mr. Solace, I suggest you speak to your siblings about their own interest in taking part in the process. You are all kin as well.” Chiron turned his attention back to Nico. “Perhaps someone would lend a hand in discussing this with the other campers? I for one would be glad to see a return of old traditions if you think it will help.” Nico felt like a warm little spark was growing in his chest. He hadn’t felt this kind of resolve in a long time.

               “Of course I’ll help.” Will pulled him into an embrace and Nico could practically feel the relief falling away from him.

               “Thank you,” he pulled away and wiped his face, smiling at him. “For the rest of us, thank you.” He held Nico’s hand, squeezing it for a moment before letting go and running off to the Apollo cabin again. Chiron put a hand on Nico’s shoulder.

               “You know, your father doesn’t usually have the same number of children his brothers do,” Nico scoffed, “but you might find it interesting to know that you aren’t the first of his children to take an interest in guiding the living through the process of death.” Nico twisted his ring again absently.

               “I always thought my association with the underworld was off putting.” He remarked. Chiron nodded.

               “Yes, I can see why you might get that idea. Indeed it’s very possible to feed that fear. Or you could do as you have begun, and use your association as a source of comfort and wisdom to those less accustomed to facing the inevitabilities of life and death.” Nico considered the possibility. Could he really be a guiding figure at camp? A sort of mentor? He’d always thought his nature would drive people away but the idea that he could make a positive impact in this time after the battle was won happened to be an idea not so far out of reach. He smiled then and looked back at Chiron.

               “I’ll do my best.”

#nico di angelo #pjo/hoo #solangelo #will solace #rick riordan #riordanverse #camp half blood #head canon

[yungimmortals]

phone numbers | jaime (ft. risa)

date: december 26, 2020

summary: a long-overdue phone call, a heavy dose of salt in an old wound, and a very low battery

An unknown number flashed across his screen. Never one to pick up the phone unless he absolutely had to (and definitely not one to pick up when he didn’t recognize the caller), Jaime let it go to voicemail, tossing his phone onto his bed. 

Swiveling in his desk chair, he spin in a full circle before returning his focus to  the project he had been working on since getting back to his apartment earlier that evening. Christmas with Katie’s family had been fun; now it was time for Jaime to recharge. Restoring a vintage typewriter -- Jaime’s Christmas present to himself -- was the perfect thing to do. In the last hour, he had polished it, ridding the typewriter of years of rust and grime. All the type-levers were in place, all the knobs and buttons in working condition. Now it was time to work on the carriage lever and the platen, time to get the machine ready for writing. 

Dismantling his typewriter was a delicate process, interrupted again by the ringing of his phone. “Where is it?” He mumbled, turning is his chair and taking a dive at the bed when he spotted his phone. Snatching it up, he recognized the same number that had called earlier but was saved the trouble of a debate as to whether or not he should answer it when his screen went dark once more. A moment later, a voicemail notification flashed across his screen.

Curiosity piqued, Jaime unlocked his phone, raising it to his ear to listen to the voicemail. The last voice he expected to hear drifted out of the phone’s speakers and he dropped it in surprise. 

Jaime, it’s me. I need to talk to you. I hope this is still your number.

Without hesitation, he returned the call. There was one ring, then two, then three. Jaime bounced his leg up and down before spinning around in his desk chair, his stomach a pit of nerves. As the line continued to ring, he was almost positive he had imagined the voicemail. But then there was an audible click, followed by the sound of his sister’s voice.

“So this is your number. Rowan’s handwriting is absolute shit, I couldn’t tell if that last number was a seven or a four. Can’t believe she wants to go to art school with that chicken scratch.”

“Risa?”  

“You sound surprised.”

“Well, I, er. That is-”

His sister’s laughter sounded tinny, far away. “Jaime, relax. Oh, and Merry Christmas. Did you get our card?”

Jaime switched the call to speaker phone and placed his phone on his desk. He stared at it blankly before scrubbing his face with his hands. “Card?”

“Yeah, Ro made you a Christmas card in her risography workshop. She’s building her portfolio for college but I’m sure she told you that since you talk, like, all the time.” Risa sounded bitter as she spoke, changing the subject quickly. “Anyway, I need to talk to you about something. Is this a good time?”

In eight years, his middle sister had never once called of her own volition. Even convincing her to be a part of Jaime and Rowan’s ‘family phone calls’, had taken a few years of their littlest sister badgering her. Now Risa was calling and it sounded important and Jaime couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He must have been silent for too long, he realized, hearing his sister clear her throat.

“Jay, if you’re busy, just tell me. I’ll find another time,” she said, though from her tone, Jaime could tell that if they didn’t talk about what was on her mind now, they likely never would.

“No! I mean, no, I’m not busy. I was just-- yeah, no, I’m here. What-- what’s up?” Jaime pushed his typewriter to the side before rummaging through his desk drawer for a notebook and pen (just in case he needed to take notes). He chuckled as Risa told him to buckle up, already welcoming the familiarity with which she was speaking to him, no matter how strange it felt.

“This isn’t what I’m calling about but I might as well tell you while we’re here. Dad’s sick. He said you cursed him or some shit, but it’s all bull. He went off the deep end a few years ago. Totally cuckoo. I figured you didn’t know, since you and Ro have your stupid agreement to never mention Charles to each other. Says he’s seeing things. Monsters and shit. Which I would call bull, but I remember that creepy guy. You know, the one waiter at the Dog & Pony that would always stare at you and Mom when we all went for dinner? He only had one eye. I don’t mean like an eyepatch. I mean one freaking eye, right in the center of his head. Don’t know if you ever noticed that, but I did.” Now that Risa had started talking, it seemed she couldn’t stop. “And that’s not the last time I saw something or someone weird like that. There’s a girl who works at the nature center in the park and I swear, Jay. I freaking swear that she melts into the trees. She’s a dryad right? I got lunch with your aunt last week and she filled me in on some stuff. I don’t know how she got in touch with us. Said something about your dad, I don’t remember. But, anyway, we got lu-”

“My aunt?” Jaime interrupted, feeling guilty for doing so, but not seeing where he could get a word in edgewise if he waited for her to pause.

“Oh, shit. Wait, there’s a picture, did I mention a picture? Before I forget. It’s with your card. I was digging through some of Mom’s trail crew stuff in the attic a while back, looking for her old boots, and I found it. It says ‘David’ with a heart next to it on the back. That was his name, right? Your dad?”

Jaime blinked, surprised at both the abrupt subject change and the mention of his father. He didn’t want the subject of his aunt to drop but the photograph won his curiosity. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“Okay, so you’ll see it, but, like, it’s totally weird. There’s a lens flare on it but it’s, like, just across your dad. Kinda ruins the whole picture, you can’t see him at all. It’s like when you try to take a photo of the sun. Mom looks beautiful though, but she always did. I think they were at Otter Cove, and I know that was one of your favorite trails.”

Like trying to photograph the sun. Jaime almost laughed. Risa had no idea how close to the truth she was. Which reminded him, “You had lunch with my aunt?”

“Dude, yeah. And she’s, like, so cool. If you’re related to so many cool people -- myself and Ro included, obviously -- how did you turn out like this?” 

He could hear Risa laugh on the other line and just rolled his eyes. He glanced down at his notebook where he’d written a collection of words: cursed, Cyclops, dryads in Acadia? The latter was underlined several times, whether from surprise or excitement, Jaime couldn’t remember. He realized his sister had started speaking again. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” 

“I was saying, if you were paying attention, that we went to Geddy’s -- that veg place on Main? -- for lunch and she was telling me about some fancy neo-classical city? New Athens or some shit like that, I think. In New York. Is that where you live? Ro told me you were like, weirdly into Greek mythology one time. But honestly, that tracks with some of the stuff I’ve seen. Hey, how come your aunt was looking for me, not you? She said something about mist but it was. like, not even a foggy day. We could see out over the harbor. Crystal clear.”

“The Mist,” Jaime correctly automatically, then pinched the bridge of his nose. The list in his notebook grew longer as their call stretched on. “I don’t know,” he admitted, in response to Risa’s question about his aunt. “Did she tell you her name?”

“Artemis? Which I was like hello, weird, since I was literally just thinking about you and your Greek mythology phase. I asked if she was David’s sister and she said ‘if that’s what he’s calling himself now’. Do estranged siblings run in your side of the family or something?”

At that, Jaime made a choking sound, staring at his phone. The resulting crow of laughter from his sister made it clear that she’d been expecting, no, hoping for that reaction. 

“Just messing with you, Jay. Relax. Anyway. She’s got this, like, wild grrl gang of hikers that travel the country? Gave me a pamphlet, told me to consider it. She said I could tell Rowan too, but when I did, Ro didn’t seem to care at all. She’s just got art school on the brain, I think. Your aunt had told me that would happen, said that the Mist was thicker around our sweet baby sister. But, uh, do you know what the Mist is? I’m, like, pretty sure you do since you corrected me a minute ago.”

“I-”

“Yeah that’s what I thought. So anyway, Aunt Artemis said you’re a demigod. Guess your dad’s name isn’t really David, huh? Last I checked, there’s no Greek god of boring dad names. Care to fill me in? Is that why I’ve seen some weird, like, mythological creatures around the harbor when we were growing up? Oh and Grandma Hana says hi.”

A distressed sound escaped Jaime’s lips. He had forgotten his sister’s habit of bouncing from subject to subject and here it was, smacking him in the face with more new information than he could handle at the moment. Christmas wishes had been exchanged with his grandmother the day before, so he didn’t have to worry about acknowledging that topic, thankfully. His brain was working in overdrive and he could practically feel Risa’s impatience, the longer he was silent.

“Jaime,” she prompted. 

He sighed, massaging his temples as he stared down at his phone. “His name isn’t David, it’s Apollo. Artemis’ brother. They aren’t named after the Greek gods, they are the Greek gods. So yes, that makes me a demigod. And it sounds like...you can probably see through the Mist. At least a little more than most mortals.”

“Holy shit. And you never thought ‘hey maybe I should tell my sister this super freaking weird but also totally cool thing about me’? What the shit, Jaime!”

He opened his mouth to tell her that he hadn’t known until after he left, until after he read the letter their mother had left for him, but Risa was steamrolling ahead.

“Wait...wait, so that was the Artemis? Your aunt is the Artemis? And she- and she invited me to join her immortal Hunt?” He heard a muffled shriek, like she had covered the receiver with her hand. A small smile spread across his face. “Well, I’m saying yes...obviously.”

“Okay, hold on a second there. That’s a big decision, don’t you think you shou-”

“Oh no, no. I’m going to stop you right there. You don’t get to play the big brother card here, Jay. You don’t get to keep secrets for years and then tell me I need to think about accepting an offer from a goddess. And don’t say some shit about me looking after Rowan. She doesn’t need anyone to look after her. You’d know that if you were here. Honestly, she does a better job looking after me than I do her. Shit, wait. Does that mean Dad’s not crazy? Did you really make all those people sick all the time? Did you...make Mom sick? Isn’t Apollo the god of healing?”

“I wasn’t playing the big brother card!” He protested weakly. As she continued, Jaime blanched. Several times. First at the mention of his absence, then at the mention of Charles’ theories, and again at the mention of their mother. “I’m sorry,” he started, hoping Risa understood that he was apologizing for leaving. They would have more time to unpack that later, he figured. 

"Charles is definitely still crazy. I didn’t make all those people sick. Mom either. I, uh, I only did it once. Made someone sick, I mean. It was a boy that bullied me at school during the years Mom was sick and Charles wouldn’t listen to me about it. One day the kid was beating me up and hitting me and, and I, I don’t know what happened. I pushed him and pushed? I don’t know, energy? At him, and I gave him the chicken pox or something, at least I think that’s what the school said. Chicken pox,” he scoffed, ducking his head, despite the fact that Risa couldn’t see him. “He’s the god of many things. Music, the arts, the sun. Healing, yeah, but plague and illness is the flip side of that.”

“Like the plague arrows he shot at the Greeks. Before you say anything, yes, I’ve read the Iliad. And The Song of Achilles, which, if you haven’t read it, you have to.” As if realized she’d gotten off track, Risa was quiet for a moment. Jaime was thankful she didn’t push him on the subject of his powers; he wasn’t sure what he would have said if she had. When his sister spoke again, she sounded farther away, her voice detached. “Artemis told me there are other children of Apollo. You have other family.”

It wasn’t a question, it was an accusation -- that was clear. When Jaime answered, he sounded tired. “I do, yeah.” Though his sister couldn’t see it, his expression was one of regret. “But it’s, it’s not like that, Ris.”

“I didn’t ask what it was like,” she snapped. After a moment of tense silence, he could hear her sigh. “I’m going to contact Artemis. Learn as much about your world as she’ll tell me. And then I’m going to join the Hunt.”

With a click, the line went dead. 

Jaime stared at his phone in silence until the screen darkened, battery dead as well. He heaved a sigh, detangling himself from his desk chair to plug his phone into the cord on his nightstand to charge. So much for recharging, he thought to himself, knowing his own battery was dangerously low. Exhaling a groan, Jaime sunk onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling once more. To the constellations on his ceiling, he murmured, “That went about as well as it could have, all thing considered.”

#m: jaime #npc: risa #self para

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

ION BEAMS AND ATOM SMASHERS: SECRETS OF MOON ROCKS On July 20, 1969, as Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder from the “Eagle” lunar landing module, he found himself surrounded by a sea of grey -- an expanse of powdery dust no human had ever seen in person. The iconic print made by his left boot marked but the first step on a long journey of discoveries about the Moon and our own world -- both of which hold secrets that scientists are only beginning to uncover. Fifty years after the Apollo astronauts collected samples of Moon rocks and dust during their forays across the lunar landscape, there are still mysteries to be solved, and one University of Arizona scientist is looking for answers. Jessica Barnes, an incoming assistant professor in the UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, was recently selected by NASA to receive access to preciously unopened Moon rock samples. Under NASA’s Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis, or ANGSA, program, Barnes will be granted access to Apollo 17 sample 71036, which contains almost four ounces of rock. Several samples from that mission were initially processed under nominal laboratory conditions, protected from air exposure by a nitrogen cabinet at room temperature, and placed into cold storage within one month of return. “When these samples were brought back, the curators had the foresight to say, ‘In this moment, we don’t have all the methods to answer all the questions these samples could help us answer,’ and so they locked some away for future study,” Barnes says. “They realized that future technologies would allow us to do things that would have been impossible at the time, and that people would come up with new questions. It’s really exciting because we’re at that point in time now.” Barnes is on a quest to find out where water came from in the early solar system and how it has evolved over time. Previous research, including some of her own work, suggests that certain space rocks known as carbonaceous chondrites brought water with them when they impacted Earth and Mars, and potentially some of the larger asteroids. It is no coincidence that Bennu, the target asteroid of the UA-led OSIRIS-REx sample return mission, is a carbonaceous chondrite. “To understand where water in the solar system came from, and particularly how it ended up on Earth, Mars, and in the asteroid belt, we have to consider the Moon,” says Barnes, whose current research focuses on tracing water meteorites, including some of Martian origin, and Moon samples collected during Apollo 11, 14, and 17. “Understanding how life on Earth began is intimately tied to the story of how water arrived here. Lunar samples are critical pieces in this puzzle because unlike Earth, where the oldest rocks have largely been erased by plate tectonics, the Moon’s ancient rock record is still intact.” About 4.6 billion years ago, when a swirling nebula of gas and dust began collapsing into a disk that would give rise to our solar system, the rocky planets and the carbonaceous chondrites were developing in different places and at different times, Barnes explains, which poses a problem for the scenario involving early asteroids as harbingers of water. “It was only 10 years ago that water was discovered on the Moon, not only on the surface, but also inside minerals,” Barnes says. “In science, that is a pretty short timescale, and we don’t have it all figured out yet. How much water is there? Did it come from the Earth during the great impact that we think created the Moon, or was it given to the Moon later? Is it distributed uniformly or in patches within the Moon’s mantle?” To find answers to such questions, Barnes, who wasn’t even born when the Apollo astronauts crisscrossed the lunar surface on foot and with their rovers, is using technology that wasn’t invented until the early 2000s. “When you first receive your sample, you don’t know what you are looking at, so you start with a visual analysis,” Tom Zega says, pointing to a simple dissecting microscope, like the ones used in introductory science labs. Zega is an associate professor of planetary sciences, and materials science and engineering, and co-investigator on the ANGSA project. He also is director of the Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility at the LPL, a state-of-the-art facility designed with one goal: extract as much information as possible from samples, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial. Studying a piece of Moon rock under an optical microscope is only the first step in a series of analytical techniques UA researchers have at their disposal. At the end is a 12-foot-tall transmission electron microscope, or TEM. Funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA, its serial number is “1” because it is the first of its kind in the world with this exact configuration. Its 200,000-volt electron beam can probe matter down to 78 picometers, scales too small for the human brain to comprehend. “If you want to know what an atom from the birth of our solar system looks like, I can show you,” Zega says. To get a sample to where it gives up that much detail of its origin and history, however, requires a suite of complex instruments and expertise that no single discipline can provide. “Today, all the interesting science happens at the intersection of various fields,” Zega added. “In my group, we have cosmochemists, quantum chemists, astrophysicists and astrodynamics, among others. This work requires a unique mix of knowledge and skills. Take the TEM, for example: it’s a quantum-mechanical tool, so you have to be an expert in physics, materials science and chemistry, all at the same time.” Another instrument, called an electron microprobe, allows researchers to discover certain properties of a sample by scanning it with an electron beam. As it does, a spatial image of the sample emerges, in this case revealing an abstract, speckled landscape of light and dark areas that cosmochemists can read like a map. “Heavier elements appear brighter, and lighter elements appear darker,” Zega says. “So this tells us, for example, where and how much iron there is compared to oxygen in a lunar sample.” When Barnes moves to the UA this fall, after wrapping up her current research at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, she hopes to be able to expand the capacities of the Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility with a next-generation NanoSIMS instrument, which stands for nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry. The beauty of this technology, she says, lies in its ability to analyze isotopes, essentially different “varieties” of chemical elements, at very small scales -- less than one-fiftieth the width of a human hair. Measuring the composition of different volatile elements such as hydrogen and chlorine in the rock tells the researcher something about the chemical make-up of the magma from which the rock crystallized and how its chemistry evolved over time. “These data allow us to understand the chemistry of the Moon’s interior,” Barnes says. “Ultimately we are able to say something about how the Moon evolved and where its water came from.” The possibilities don’t end here. To a curator during the Apollo days, a focused ion-beam scanning electron microscope, or FIB-SEM, would have sounded like utter science fiction: By smashing the bonds between atoms inside the sample with a beam of heavy gallium ions, the instrument works essentially like a nano scale excavator, Zega explains. “Except that compared to other FIBs, which act like shovels, this one is a scalpel,” he says. FIB-SEM allows scientists to cut out tiny pieces from a sample with high precision and analyze only those pieces. This technique recently enabled Zega’s team to discover a grain of dust forged in the death throes of a star long before our solar system was born. “What we want to know from our samples is, how well do they conform to how we think the solar system formed based on astrophysical models?” Zega says. The same applies to the origin of the Moon, Barnes says. “It’s not just analytical instruments that have improved. In the last 10 years, major advancements in impact simulations and numerical modeling have allowed the community to simulate the speed, size and number of the bodies that might have been involved in creating the Earth-Moon system.” Analyzing samples from extraterrestrial bodies goes beyond the origins of the Earth and the Moon, of course. They are critical pieces in the puzzle because they allow scientists to test hypotheses about formation processes in the solar system based on simulations and models. “We have had lunar samples here for decades,” says Timothy Swindle, director of the LPL. “Our faculty have been studying the composition of the Moon for a long time, and what’s so special about these samples is that they were valuable 50 years ago, and they will be valuable 50 years from now.” “Being able to study these previously unopened samples is like a whole new lunar sample return mission,” Barnes says of the value of studying 50-year-old Apollo samples. “Not only do we get to be a part of the history of opening these samples, but we also will be using this opportunity to study how curation practices, such as ambient versus cold storage, affect our ability to measure a lunar water signature. “It’s exciting because this has never been done before.” TOP IMAGE....A NanoSIMS isotope ratio image showing water-bearing minerals (colors) in a sea of water-poor glass (black) in Apollo sample 10049. These were the last phases to crystallize from the lava as it cooled on the surface of the Moon. The scale bar on the lower left measures about one-fiftieth the width of a human hair. (Image: Jessica Barnes) LOWER IMAGE....Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt stands next to a steep-walled crater named Shorty on Dec. 13, 1972. The UA's Jessica Barnes is among the scientists selected by NASA to be granted access to previously unopened samples, including some collected during NASA's last manned mission to the moon. (Photo: NASA)

#space #science #Astronomy #physics

[hazyheel]

Monday Night Raw 3/11/19 Review

The night started out with a classic Shield entrance through the crowd, although instead of the riot gear, the men came out in their new merch. Reigns said that if last night was his last match, he would be satisfied. They said that they all had business to take care of tonight. With that, Ambrose and Reigns left Rollins alone in the ring. He was quickly interrupted when Paul Heyman showed up. Rollins took the words out of Heyman’s mouth, saying that while Brock absolutely destroys guys that are his stature, smaller guys are his kryptonite. Heyman argued that Lesnar didn’t have time to prepare for those matches, pointing out that the matches were changed at the last minute. Heyman then showed a Lesnar hype package for some reason. At the end of the promo, Shelton Benjamin of all people attacks Rollins, hitting several German Suplexs and leaving.

Grade: A-. Really good promo, and I love the way they are building this story. The fact that they are acknowleding how good Lesnar works with smaller guys is a step in the right direction

With that, we went right into Benjamin vs. Rollins. Pretty slow match, surprisingly. But there was one point where Rollins went for a suicide dive, but Benjamin intercepted with a high knee. Heyman was on commentary, and he took a phone call, saying that it was Lesnar on the phone, and that he will be on Raw next week. Seth won with a Curb Stomp.

Grade: C-. I had high hopes for this match, but it really disappointed. They decided not to go all out for this match, so it was a bit boring. Right guy won.

Finn Balor came down to the ring as Rollins was leaving, getting in the ring for an Intercontinental Championship match against Bobby Lashley. For some reason, they just had Lashley’s face on the titantron during Balor’s entrance. On a completely unrelated note, apperently Renee Young is from Toronto, but isn’t a maple leafs fan. What a world we live in. Anyway, Lio Rush was not at ringside, apperently still recovering from some random hit from Braun Strowman last week. As Balor was about to hit Lashley with the Coup de Gras, Rush showed up at ringside, ringing the bell. Finn went for some sort of springboard move, but Lashley hit a spear for the win. Lashley is the new intercontinental Champion.

Grade: D. These guys just don’t have chemistry, not really. It’s only once in a blue moon that they put on a good match together. I didn’t want to see Balor lose the belt so soon, especially not to Lashley. Just not too enjoyable.

Backstage, Charly interviewed Baron Corbin about how he was a dick when Roman left to fight leukemia. He just said that he was gonna kick his ass, and that he had been carrying Raw.

Ronda Rousey came out to address her actions from last night. Ronda immediately heeled on the crowd, and honestly, she is kinda better at it than face promos, but it is still awkward. She said that she gave Becky Lynch the win last night so that she can embarass both of them, and that no one can stop her. Dana Brooke came out to interrupt, and I have no idea if she is face or heel. She acted face, and said that she won’t let Ronda keep disrespecting the company. She gave a whole speech, and all I could think about was how she was gonna get her ass kicked. Promo was decent though. She wanted a title shot, but Rousey just beat her up. 

Grade: D+. Just not worth having. I think that this could’ve been short and sweet, and we didn’t need an angle of her beating up a low card guy (this is coming from a guy that loves Dana Brooke for no reason at all.) Just keep it simple. Even not showing up would’ve been cool, we all know why she attacked Lynch last night, we didn’t need it spelled out for us. But either way, it was just unnecessary.

Next up, we had Bobby Roode and Chad Gable vs. Aleister Black and Ricochet. Contrary to the normal matches with Black and Ricochet, Black was the one who was selling most of the time. Roode and Gable hit an awesome neckbreaker/ german suplex combo. Match ended quickly after Black tagged in blind, and hitting Roode with a roundhouse kick, a knee and Black mass for the win. After the match, the Revival attacked Black and Ricochet.

Grade: C. It pains me to see a set of such awesome competitors get so overexposed so quickly. This feud should be awesome, but it just feels mundane now. People say it all the time, but the length of the show is really hurting feuds like this, where seeing Black and Ricochet all the time makes us think they aren’t as special. I hope they continue the feud into Wrestlemania, and they pull out all stops. But for now, they need to mix this feud up.

Then was a moment of Bliss, where Alexa was set to reveal who the host of Wrestlemania is. She revealed that she is the host of Wrestlemania. She left just as quickly as she showed up. Young and Graves were making a bunch of jokes on commentary. Graves obviously was thrilled. I’m not a huge fan of Bliss as host, I’m not really sure what she will do, but maybe it’ll be entertaining. I always thought of a comedic host, but we will see what she does. Backstage, Charly interviewed Braun Strowman about attacking Colin Jost last week. He said he didn’t really care if it was okay or not. Then a backstage aid told Strowman that his car was there, but Strowman didn’t know about it. I guess SNL, Colin Jost, bought him a car. In a card, Jost joked about Strowman destroying Vince’s limo, and how he got screwed out of a title shot. Strowman then destroyed the car. Strowman then tells the aid to tell Che and Jost that he will beat them up.

Then we had an Elias concert. He made fun of the city, and No Way Jose came out. Elias attacked him. and the rest of the conga line. Jose had new hair too! So yeah, this happened, not gonna grade it. They then showed the next inductees into the Hall of Fame: Harlem Heat. Definitely into that, Booker T is a 2 time hall of famer now, along with Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair. Lacey Evans came out, and walked over to the commentary desk, while Corey and Renee freaked out and Michael was thoroughly annoyed. She put a fan in Renee’s face. T’was humorous, and the best use of Lacey Evans yet, because she had a staredown with Nia Jax at the top of the ramp. It didn’t lead to anything, but at least it teased the possibility of Evans actually doing something. Progress?!?

So next up was Nia Jax vs. Natalya, after their confrontation last night. She said that she needed someone to have her back tonight, with Beth Phoenix coming out in her corner. The match lasted for a minute, and Beth Phoenix just caused a DQ. The heels retreated, but the Boss n’ Hug connection attacked them backstage.

Grade: D-. Kinda dumb of a segment, although it was cool to see Phoenix back. I just don’t see why Tamina and Jax need to still be in the title picture. They are bad, straight up! I wish they would just fade out of the division, and maybe Bayley and Banks take on a smackdown team. Or even Natalya and Phoenix. Anyone other than Tamina and Jax.

Next, we had the confrontation between Triple H and Batista. Batista came down to the ring dressed like a Hollywood asshole, and had security and I hate him with every bone in my body, so WWE is doing well with booking their heel. Batista was a little rusty on the promo, but he acted like a very tough, and calculating heel. He is fine with fighting Triple H, but on his own terms. He said tells Trips to give him what he wants, and Trips refuses. Trips called his security the “guardians of the independent scene.” Funny. Batista said that he left because Trips always looked down on him, and he wanted to get away. Batista said that the only reason Trips won’t give him the match is because he isn’t in control. The promo devolved into them just shouting at each other like children. The match was confirmed after a shouting match that went on for way too long. Batista’s only line was “give me what I want.” Batista said that this would be his last match, and he wants to end Triple H’s career too. Trips then said it was No Holds Barred.

Grade: D+. I was looking forward to this, but I didn’t like what happened. They ended up just yelling at each other, and it was annoying. Took way too long to get to the point. It would’ve gotten a lower grade, but I like the hint that this may end up a match for Triple H’s career. The No Holds Barred stip was a given, but I didn’t expect a career threatening match. I’m looking forward to it. But the actual segment started out strong, but quickly died a horrible, annoying death.

Kurt Angle was up next, out to address his career. He recapped his career, and put over Pittsburg. He announced that this will Wrestlemania will be his fairwell match. He then said that this would be his final match on Raw, against Apollo Crews. Huge honor for him. The two had a quick match, Angle winning with the Angle Slam.

Grade: C+. Good match, although it was short. More importantly, who will get Kurt Angle’s final match? My mind went to either Drew McIntyre or Roman Reigns. Either would be very good, but I think McIntyre deserves it, given that the two really made TNA together. But Reigns needs a match too. So this is definitely a story I’m looking forward to.

Next, we had Roman Reigns vs. Baron Corbin, but before we started Drew McIntyre attacked, and left him laying. Reigns fought back a bit, but ate a Claymore, and then a second into the ringpost. Rollins came out to check on him, and they sorta played up a concussion angle. Reigns refused medical attention, and waked out very slowly. It was on his own power, but Rollins helped him out a bit. Ambrose was pissed, and he told Trips that he wanted Drew McIntyre in a falls count anywhere match. They battled into the crowd, and Ambrose threw a little table at Mcintyre. At one point, McIntyre was lying down on a rolling case, and Dean pushed it into another equipment case. It didn’t look very good. McIntyre and Ambrose brawled on the announce table, before McIntyre hit a low blow, stabbed Ambrose in the head with a pencil, and then threw him into the LED boards. McIntyre got the win after hitting a Claymore while Ambrose’s head was in the railing.

Grade: C+. A medicore match to end out a mediocre night. The stipulation was kinda fresh, and Drew looked good, but the outcome was not in question. Kinda fun, but ulimately just being used to set up Reigns vs. McIntyre.

Overall Grade: D+

Pros: opening promo; Kurt Angle announcement; main event (kinda)

Cons: pointless Dana brooke beatdown; Intercontinental Championship match; Black and ricochet overexposure; Nia and Tamina still being relevant; triple h and batista “promo;” 

Commentary call of the night: Renee Young- “You’re excitement creeps me out.” Corey Graves “Well, uh, leave.”

#wwe #wwe raw #raw #monday night raw #roman reigns #seth rollins #dean ambrose #the shield #paul heyman #brock lesnar #shelton benjamin #finn balór #finn balor #bobby lashley #lio rush #baron corbin #ronda rousey #dana brooke #aleister black #ricochet #bobby roode #chad gable #braun strowman #alexa bliss #lacey evans #nia jax #tamina #triple h #batista #kurt angle

[deathbyvalentine]

LARP Prompts

Hors d’ouvere

He popped the grape in his mouth, turning away from the dance floor and making his way through the clusters of people chatting and laughing and twirling. He was alarmingly sober, none of the punches or mixers nearly alcoholic to hit him even a little. Noble parties weren’t fun if you were sober. Everyone was shallow or spiteful or boring. Nobody just relaxed, it was a hotbed of politics and scandal and backstabbing.

The observatory deck was blessedly quiet and cool. When the doors shut behind him the peace was almost oppressive. There were plush benches and he lay on one, gazing up at the sector through the clear ceiling. It was possibly the only time he felt anything close to being jealous of psykers - the stars and planets were gorgeous enough, to add the light of the astronomicon into that mix would render the view rapturous. As it was, it already moved him. 

The view both calmed and excited him. It was like a reassurance that there was a future waiting for him, away from all this bullshit. One day he would travel and explore and it wouldn’t matter who he was. It would matter what he could do.

He wondered if his mother had did the same thing. Felt restless and trapped by the family she had married into, and followed her career into the stars. He flipped open the compass in his pocket as he often did in his more melancholy moments, looking at the scrawled note inside he had memorised. Maybe she had decided that exploring was more important than her son. He didn’t blame her. He just wished he could have joined her.

Washing  (Ancient Greek AU)

Callum slipped their feet into the cool water, sighing as they did so. It was going to be a hot day - you could feel it in the air. Dust was coming up from the roads and hanging in clouds, refusing to disperse. The sky was blameless and blue. Golden morning light touched every leaf and stone. The valleys were starting to wake up and soon the pilgrims would be snaking up the mountain, people seeking prophecies and solutions. But for now, there was peace. 

The vapours have rendered them weak, dark circles painted under their eyes, a thinness about them that verged on spirit like. The oracles always seemed more of the next world than this one. But the water did their part in healing and refreshing them, as it always did. It sparkled like crystal, throwing light with every ripple. They leaned down to scoop up a handful, pouring it over their head. Their chiton stuck to them wherever the water fell, becoming almost translucent. 

They were expecting someone today. But then, they had thought that every day this month. Someone that kept flickering in and out at the edges of their visions. A man with two voices but one face, eyes that flickered with fire. Whenever they tried to seize on him, the smoke disappeared between their fingers. They had no idea who it was. But they couldn’t stop thinking about him, intrigued. 

They stood, pulling back from the pool and taking a deep breath. Time to go prepare, give the people the truth they sought, whether they were prepared for it or not. They closed their eyes and turned their face upwards towards the sun, letting the blessing of Apollo touch their skin and warm them from the inside out.

Dreams

Everything was drenched in gold light all over again, the sector and it’s problems very very far away. This was home, Cal’s heart told them. Nothing could hurt them here. And they slept.

Distantly, they felt something. Someone saying their name, murmuring it in prayer. It troubled them and they wanted to reach out and heal whatever ailed - what were they called again? The name seemed unimportant. It slipped from their fingers and disappeared into the golden air. And so they slept.

In their sleep, deep dark dreams troubled them. Images of violence ravaging planets, Mitra hopping from body to body, Bridge struggling, Nic gasping for breath. But they were only dreams.

And so they slept.

Stealing Practice

The first thing he learnt is that this bloody standard uniform needed more pockets. He was getting rather tired of tucking things into the back of his trousers only to slip down. His pilot coat was similarly useless in holding anything of worth. However, the ultimate combination looked absolutely incongruous but was a treasure trove of hiding places; his flight suit with his noble coat over the top. He had managed three ash trays, a pair of boots, Nic’s bolt pistol and Med’s scanner in this outfit. He had to walk extremely carefully for fear of injuring himself and/or rattling. 

After he had nailed the simple ‘lift and conceal while the person is turned around’ method of stealing he decided to expand his repertoire. It had been a while since his skills had been honed after all. His teenage years were a little while behind him. He set himself challenges, partly to amuse himself in lieu of actual duties, partly just to see what he could get away with. 

It was a shame Jones was Off-Limits as Lance frequently eyed up his cases of Voidman’s Friends, wondering how quickly he could palm them before he noticed. He gave it a good whole two minutes. Hawke however, he was fair game. Lance got a rather cigar case from him with nothing but a lean against his shoulder, feigning interest in the weapon he was fitting. It sort of seemed too easy. Anya’s goodwill rendered her similarly simple quarry. He got two icons from her, a calligraphy pen and a set of gloves before he realised it wasn’t due to skill and more her lack of realisation she should give him zero benefit of the doubt. 

It was time to level up. 

Esme was first. She had joked about stealing the necklace from her throat and that sounded like a challenge to him. He had been expecting it to be more difficult, but leaning in close to her and resting a hand on the back of her neck had clearly flustered her beyond all reason. It had been easy to unclip the icon and let it slip down his sleeve before grinning at her and leaning back, disappearing a few minutes later. 

One of Nic’s cats proved rather resistant to being stolen and he decided that if it was a living, autonomous being it counted for double points. Triple, he amended, once he saw the bloody scratches on his forearms.

Then, there was the ultimate challenge. Gwyn’s prayerbeads, always hanging from their waist. There was a none zero chance he would get stabbed attempting this. But he would do it. For the art.

The first three times they grabbed his wrist so hard he got a bruise around his wrist, which of course he demanded be kissed better. His moments had been chosen mostly when they were looking the other way but they seemed to have eyes on the back of their head. 

So maybe it was low, but he ended up succeeding when he had his arm around them, covers pooled around their waist, lying in bed. This was always when they were at their most relaxed and occasionally closed their eyes. With his free arm he fished the prayer beads from the pile of clothes and shoved them casually under his pillow.

It didn’t take them too long to notice and when they did there was a long moment when Lance was faced with the very real possibility of having his nose broken again before they burst into laughter and told him to keep them. 

Then it was time for step two of his grand plan, the one he refused to analyse or consider in depth. He didn’t want to think about why he wanted to impress the man or if this was an elaborate flirting ritual or just the product of boredom. Each item he carefully placed outside Bridge’s quarters, balanced in a somewhat precarious pile. The cat was a particular obstacle but with the liberal application of treats decided to stay put. The armscrew just tutted and rolled their eyes but decided not to interfere. Lance was clearly too stupid to be dangerous. He left a note balanced on top: “Training, Round one.”

Tomorrow 

He practically vibrated with excitement as he sat on the bed, legs hanging over the edge and jiggling with barely contained energy. There was a small twinge of guilt in amongst the excitement, guilt that he was so excited about flying something other than the Devout. He’d make it up to her later. 

His medical was going well so far, as he knew it would. The augmetics had more than corrected any problems he had had, and he hadn’t been ill from anything worse than a hangover in recent memory. His heart was still pretty damn strong, his lungs only a bit battered from iho. No addictions, no real vices. There was no reason that he’d be unable to fly her. 

Meeting a craft for the first time was always a magical experience. By turns it was like meeting a partner, a companion, a lover or a pet. He had no idea what the Spiderwidow would be, but he was willing to bet his life she was nothing like a pet. She was too vicious for that, too deadly. He was going to have to be careful. Which was exciting enough to make his heart speed up. 

He was impatient for the paperwork to be signed off and introductions to be made. One more sleep until a very belated Candlemas present. He would be touching something made for the Astartes. He would be interacting with the ghosts of angels, buried deep inside the manifold.

Pacific Rim DuD AU

The water rushed in where the metal had severed and cracked, making electronics fizzle and spit. It was pouring like blood from a wound. Cal gasped at the shock of the impact, feeling it as though it had hit their flesh. They looked over at Baris who had his teeth gritted tight, trying to resist the urge to panic. At least if they were going down, they were going down together. Or so they thought.

A moment later there was a roaring screech, the kaiju lurching forward with its claws, sending a wave of water that knocked them a little off balance. They struggled to right themselves and that few seconds made all the distance. The creature lunged forward again and ripped through the entire jaegar, ripping Baris from Cal’s mind and body.

Excruciating pain crackled across their body like lightening, a broken circuit pressing into their shoulder and shooting down every muscle, making their hand clench tight. Their balance was now completely broken in more than one. The jaegar stumbled and crashed into the sea, unable to support itself on one pilot. Water soon covered Cal’s head, one by one the lights of the circuits and machines disappearing out.

It didn’t matter. Baris was gone.

Sober - T67

Astrid woke up, mouth feeling like a desert. She rolled over in Syn’s bed, finding it empty. Syn must have already went off to work. She had got very diligent since the syndicate had decided they wanted the Saints. She had to. The stakes were higher than ever.

On autopilot, she reached for the bedside table before realising that she would not find any pills there. She let her hand fall on her face and groaned out loud. This was day three of this utter bullshit. She sat up, letting her curls fall behind her like a pink waterfall, a highly tangled one. She had not been sleeping well. She had not been doing anything well. The past few days had been a testament to that.

She was forgetful, tearful and ill. She tossed and turned all night, wanted to fuck constantly and had no appetite. She had turned from bubbly and warm into withdrawn and anxious. Her nails were bitten down to the quick. She didn’t like who she was when she was just Astrid. She didn’t like being clear headed, seeing everything as it was, without the soft bubblewrap drugs gave her. It made everything softer and kinder. And this world was anything but kind.

Already, she missed Syn. Since Rei had died she had become lonelier, clinging to whatever family she had left. But with this new insight, she was rather aware that to many of them she was something of a liability. She didn’t like knowing that. She didn’t like it at all.

She would dress up so tonight Syn would have something to really look forward to coming home to. She may not be good at a lot of things but she was good at looking good. That was like a skill. If you squinted. She had to believe that because if that wasn’t true, what else did she have?

Fresh Hell - T67

Her fingers were dyed indigo, the flimsy gloves nowhere near enough to protect her skin. She stretched her fingers out in front of her, wondering if she could pull it off as an intentional look. Oh well. It was too late. The deed was done. She wasn’t quite sure if it suited her yet.

She definitely looked paler, a few of her softer curves seeming sharper. Her eyes looked more green, her freckles more like stars. The blue framing her face was new and frightening but she thought she might like it. She knew Rei definitely would have, had they been around to see it. This way they actually would have looked like siblings. For the first time she could see the ghost of their sibling in her face, the same cheekbones, the same shape eyes. It was terrifying to know that the only physical evidence of Rei left on this world was herself.

Rei should have lived. Rei was smarter, tougher, more loved. Maybe they didn’t have to be gone entirely - maybe Astrid could be more like their sibling. They could learn. They could grow. They could be tough. They shrugged on one of Rei’s jackets, admiring the effect in the mirror.

The companies and press and syndicate might be able to forget Rei. Astrid would make sure the Saints never would.

Huntsman/A Brand New Adventure - HEA

He stood on the branch, barely breathing. He notched the arrow, bringing the bow up, drawing the string back. He was every inch the hunter, dirt streaked down his face, leaves tangled in his hair. The cart was about to trundle underneath the tree where he was lying in wait. His gang were hidden in the other trees lining the dirt road, in hoods and dresses, with swords and daggers.

He held up one hand, the universal signal for ‘wait for it’. He gave a low, keening whistle, it carrying easily on the wind. One of the horses below looked up, ears flicking curiously. One of its riders followed its gaze up to the tree, and his eyes widen in surprise. That moment is all Peter needs.

He lets the arrow loose and it hits it mark, right in between the rider’s eyes. With a whoop he somersaulted out of the tree and fell upon the cart like a carnivorous beast. It was over in a matter of minutes, blood mixing with the golden coins as the Merry Men shovelled them into sacks.

Morose, Peter sat on the broken wheel and picked at a scab on his knee. Robert clicked his tongue as he pulled the short straw to go and check on their mercurial leader.

“What’s up boss? I thought that went well. No casualities, tons of cash, sticking it to the Sheriff.” Peter mumbled something.  “What was that?” “I said it was too easy.”  Robert blinked. “What?” “It only lasted like, two minutes, nobody did a dramatic scream, I didn’t see any bones or anything!” “Most people count that as a win.” Peter returned him a withering stare. “I’m not most people.” He stood, letting his legs stretch. He had gotten a little taller from when he had first alive, his cheekbones a little sharper. He looked more teenage like than child like.“No point in a fight if it’s not even fun.” “Tell you what. When you get back to camp, we’ll find you a proper bear to wrestle with, okay?” The younger man immediately lit up, flashing a grin, bad mood forgotten. “Yes! What a good idea I’ve just had! We’ll find a bear!” Robert rolled his eyes but smiled, amused. “Right you are boss.”

Rescue - HEA

The rock on which he had almost drowned had become something of a refuge for Peter. When the world got too noisy or his head too confusing, the world was quieter there. It made him melancholy, the light sadness settling on his chest like fresh snow. It was sadness without a name or cause, the type that felt as essential to the human condition as breathing. It was too big to name, and even a philistine like Peter could feel it.

He let his feet sit in the lapping water of the lagoon, for now ignoring the flashly glints of a mermaid’s tail or the light tickle of their fingers. Sometimes he would snap from his reverie and play. Today though, he would not be stirred from his dark thoughts, and he did not even look up from the spot at which he stared.

Something was troubling him.

The worst part he wasn’t quite sure what it was. The boys were dancing around their campfire, celebrating the latest batch of dead pirates. The fairies were organising their latest orgy, the mermaids were feasting on the bones of the lost and the various tribes were either at war with him or celebrating his victory with him. So why was his mind circling in on itself, like something had scented blood in the water?

He leaned back, looking up at the stars. Unless he was in a bad mood, the stars were always visible in Neverland. He finally siezed upon what exactly the problem was, though it did not add any sort of clarity to the situation. He had forgotten something. 

This was of course, not in and of itself a particularly spectacular affair. He forgot things frequently and with relative impunity. What was unusual was the fact he remembered forgetting something. It hadn’t just danced out of his brain with no announcement - it had left a mark. And like a missing tooth, he couldn’t quite stop tonging at it. 

He would be distracted for a short while, but he would keep remembering that absence and on and on it would go. He finally stood, scowling at the sky as though it was personally responsible for his plight. He’d get to the bottom of it, he always did.

Glass/Flame - Parador Hanging Out

Mattias leaned back, placing his feet in Sol’s lap and stretching. The land hadn’t quite fully recovered from the presence of the invading forces, but it was getting there. The family’s forest had remained standing throughout it all and being The Coast, there wasn’t exactly any irreplaceable structures to loose. The parador had been restored to very almost its former glory. 

Mattias was happy to return after his sailing adventure to the Broken Shore. He sat in Sol’s lap and showed him the few cuts and scrapes he had gained, the story between every one. The excitement from him was clear. His first real scrape with violence and it had been an abundant success the likes of which the Empire had rarely seen. It didn’t seem to occur to the younger man that not all wars would be like this and perhaps he had been lucky. Of course he had put it down to his own skills and prowess despite knowing next to nothing about fighting or strategy. 

He clung to Sol as the evening drew in. He had missed him, and he made that clear, kissing his neck and occasionally incautiously catching him with his gilded antlers. It had been to him ages since he had seen his lover, several seasons. Mattias (who’s attention span was somewhat short) had stretched this into eternity. As the sun set over the mountains, he fell asleep against his chest, exhausted merely from recounting his adventures. Glass wondered how Flame managed to expend so much energy on merely existing, though he wondered fondly.

The Fragile, Initial Concept

He cuddled into his side further, stealing even more warmth from him, seemingly oblivious to the fire crackling in front of them. The night was not cold - he would not freeze but this was his pretence for closeness. The Hunter knew this, this small attempt at guile and did not bother hiding his affectionate smile. 

The Innocent seemed to thrive much more on warmth of the heart than warmth of the flesh. Wherever he was, with whoever he was with, he sought touch and affection. Hugs, nuzzles, hair pets, with seemingly little awareness of the concept of personal space. He certainly didn’t have any himself and it didn’t occur to him anybody else would either. It was one of the ways he needed to be protected, The Hunter yanking him back from creatures or creations that would rather not be lavished with attention.

The Hunter’s eyes were focused on the forest around them, ears pricked up for threats, looking for the darkness moving in a way it was not supposed to. The Innocent’s eyes were trained up at the sky, marvelling at the endless wonder that was the network of stars and planets, drawing patterns between them. Everything was art, if you looked at it in a special way. He pointed out some of the patterns he had found, explaining the stories he had made up to go with them. Stories free of bloodshed or lies. Mostly they seemed focus on exploration and friendship. The horse was friends with the bear who was friends with the lily flower who grew brightly in the sky. It was laughably childish, no real structure or plot, but he seemed to enjoy telling them all the same. And the Hunter enjoyed listening. 

They seemed an odd pair, curled up close, one broad and one slight, one dream like and one grounded in reality. Like a deer and a lion spending time with each other. 

#prose #larp #prompts

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Okay! Here’s the last of the non-canon outtakes featuring Franziska and Phoenix’s arrest. This one follows that which I linked there. Phoenix and Franziska argued a little more, she stormed out, she and the rest of the family complained about Phoenix, which is where that bit with Diego came from, and then she has an idea. I like the part that gives some more insight into her relationship with Phoenix, as I discussed in the other outtakes post how close they used to be, and I most especially mourn the material of Franziska and Kristoph going head-to-head, but it just cannot fit with the overall arc I wanted.

But there’s actually not any rules, so if I want to post scrapped plot threads, who’s gonna stop me? Nobody that’s who. 

She has never actually been to the office, despite it being one of Phoenix's frequent haunts; come to think of it, she cannot recall ever having gone to the Borscht, either. His physical presence faded from her life and a ghost tried to fill the hole caused by his absence. Traffic is heavy even at this time and she rehearses potential opening statements as she curses at the other cars and the slow crawl they are locked into. It is 4:52 when she pulls into the lot, scrambling from her car; on a Friday, he may have already left by now, leaving the work to the junior partners - though if he has, she is marching back to the detention center and telling his client that along with all of his other vices, he isn't even a dedicated attorney.

Gavin's office is like Grossberg's: much larger than Mia or Phoenix's holes-in-the-walls or even her father's office, hosting more than two attorneys, and the decor is as tacky and indulgent. Her feet sink into the plush carpet and she glances over the polished surface of the waiting room coffee table before she looks around for someone to speak to. There is a desk that looks like it is the reception area, but no one at it. 

[This connecting segment never got written, but here she meets Apollo and asks him if Kristoph is still here because she needs to speak with him. Apollo asks for her name and she gives it as "Franziska Edgeworth" which ends up a brick joke with Apollo much later.]

Despite the fact that the boy - probably not a boy, he can't be that young if he works at a law office, at least 17 - said that Gavin was about to leave, he is sitting at his desk when Franziska enters his office, his hands folded in front of him like he has known to expect her for longer than he has. He can't have expected her. "Do shut the door behind you," he says, gesturing to it.

The office is well-decorated, fancy - more like many of the prosecutors' offices she has seen, nothing like any of the defense attorneys within her own family. She takes her time returning to the door which she left to swing ajar behind her, scanning the bookshelves and the coffee table. The latter holds a decorative paperweight, and the former, bookends, all heavy looking (injuries appear consistent with a strike from a blunt object and given the location of the wounding to the head the attacker appears to be shorter than the victim); on the desk there is a letter opener (stab wound to the throat, though shape of injury does not appear consistent with any kind of knife), but for that she would have to move toward him, away from the door. Better to run, for several reasons: the other attorneys are still in the office and would hear any skirmish taking place within the room, but Gavin would not risk his reputation chasing her down in front of them. She could claim self-defense - she would claim self-defense, she is not her father, she would not strike first - but she is the interloper in this office, and the only witnesses are people who have reason to be sympathetic to Gavin. 

The door clicks closed. "What brings you here, Ms von Karma?" Gavin asks with a smile that could be pleasant if she did not know the true nature of the man. "Or - you didn't happen to change your name, did you?" He leans forward, his head tilting almost imperceptibly, but the light of his desk lamp catches on his glasses and for a moment the flash of the light hides his eyes behind them. 

"No, I didn't," she replies. "However, I thought it best to be discrete, given that it is very much not customary for a prosecutor to show up unannounced at a defense attorney's office."

"And your reason for such is...?" One eyebrow arches. He nods at the chair in front of the desk. "Please, sit down."

"No thank you. I intend to keep this brief." She touches the back of the chair and gives one of the legs a nudge with her foot; solid, heavy, more likely to become a liability to her should she try to pick it up and use as a weapon. "Phoenix Wright."

Gavin's expression does not change from the tiny, closed-lipped smile he has been giving her. Cool under fire in the courtroom; why should he not be outside of it as well? "I do not make it a policy to discuss my cases with the prosecution, Ms von Karma."

"I am not prosecuting this case. What I am is a friend of the defendant’s, and concerned about him, and so have come to check in on how his case is progressing.”

Gavin does not respond right away. Instead he stares at her, as though through her. "Then ask him," he says. "It is not as if the police refuse a prosecutor come to speak with a detainee at any time of day or night. You have left your office early enough that even were you a defense attorney, you would be let in without trouble." The languid smile does not leave his face. "I think one of two things, Ms von Karma: either you have something you wish from me specifically, or you and the accused are not as close of friends as you thought."

Franziska blinks. "Pardon?" The part of her paranoid enough to assess Gavin as a threat is the part of her that keeps her mouth moving; she cannot allow him to know that she suspects him, but he has given her a different opening. "Phoenix and I are not - what, exactly?"

If she plays this right, she can make him hand her an alibi. 

"You can hardly blame him, can you?" Gavin says. "How careful he has to be with his reputation since he was disbarred -- and for forging evidence, at that."

"He did not--"

Gavin holds up a hand. "You don't need to tell me that," he says. "I was, as you recall, the one person in the Bar Association--"

"--who voted in his favor. I am aware."

"But you understand where this places him. Whatever the truth, to the rest of the world, he forged evidence for the sake of personal victory. It hardly helps appearances for someone so accused to spend a great deal of time with a von Karma, now does it?"

For a moment she is struck silent. Phoenix pulled away from all of them, not just her. He closed himself off from everyone; he stopped confiding in Miles even though they live together, he drifted from Mia, Maya complained that he stopped texting. It wasn't just her--

-- Maya could coax him out to lunch when she came home from Kurain, Mia dragged him to get occasional haircuts, Ray saw him at Trucy's magic shows whenever Phoenix went -- Franziska went to Miles' apartment and only ever found him sleeping, she went to the office and saw his daughter more than him, she went weeks at a time without him answering her texts, she got her news of him from everyone in the Edgeworth-Fey grapevine but him, she stooped to texting Larry, she --

-- she wasn't abandoned by her oldest friend in the world because of what her goddamned father had done --

-- was she?

Gavin pushes his glasses up and his face curls in a smile that does not touch his cold eyes. "You never realized?" he asks. "I thought you more observant than that. We all have our blind spots, I suppose."

This morning in the detention center was the first time in years he was so open with her, and he wasn't open. Of everyone he locked his heart away from, it was her most of all. Her oldest friend in the world, who supported her every aspiration, who celebrated her getting her badge before him, who grinned at her for countless trials across the courtroom, setting her adrift as soon as her name became slightly inconvenient because of his own mistake.

She can't take this as an excuse for coming to see Gavin. She can't let this go. "He wouldn't," she says. "He believes in me -- not for a rumor -- nor for what my father did --"

"No? Then let me be frank with you -- I have looked into your court record, quite extensively. For a prosecutor, you have a very even ratio -- except in one particular instance. You have a perfect loss record against your own brother."

"Where are you going with this?" she snarls. She knows the bluffing sort and Gavin is not it -- he sees several moves ahead instead of just the backs of his opponent's cards.

[I unfortunately forget precisely how this line of dialogue would end. He basically implies she's corrupt and has been throwing trials to Miles, and turns it into a threat somehow -- I think he was going to threaten to bring an investigation down on her head. There was also going to be a jab somewhere obliquely referencing Klavier what with Kristoph remarking on Franziska's "remarkable loyalty" to her older brother, enough to hand him victory.

[She would then storm out and go back to the detention center to speak with Phoenix again. She tells him that she went and spoke with Kristoph, and that finally makes Phoenix crack. He has a speech that is something similar to what he says in Acing the Turnabout to Miles about being terrified that Kristoph is going to kill any one of them who investigates too closely. 

[His fear gets to Franziska; we see her paranoid edge earlier with her looking for a weapon when going into Kristoph’s office (which by the way that paragraph is one of my absolute favorites I’ve written), and it returns here She doesn't want to go home alone for fear of walking into her death and she calls up Lana to accompany her home, because Lana knows what it's like to have someone making those threats toward her. She picks Lana up at the office where she works with Mia and Diego and two of them go back to Franziska's apartment, find it fine and empty, but Franziska packs a weekend bag and crashes with Miles for the weekend. She tells him it's to help him and Trucy; this is true, but it is also her being afraid to be on her own, and her afraid to leave then on her own. She doesn't know if Kristoph would target them.]

#bullshit defense au

[greek-bangtan]

Love in a Lightning Storm

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Masterlist

Pairings: Taekook, side Namjin and Yoonseok

Wordcount: 9.6k

Rating: Mature (18+)

Warnings: Mature Content, Smut, NSFW

Jungkook slotted right into Taehyung’s life like he had been there the whole time. At meals and group hangouts, they were now a full set of seven. Sometimes it grew to eight (or nine) if Delilah and Jihyo, who were now an item, decided to join. Instead of petty competitions, Jungkook and Tae became sparring partners. The pair drew a crowd every time they went to practice because so people wanted to take pointers from their techniques.

They would walk and talk a lot. It was nothing special, but it was Taehyung’s favorite way to spend time together. Whether it be strolling along the beach of Long Island Sound, trailing through the strawberry patches, or wandering around the Canoe Lake, they did it all. The duo would often be gone for hours, parting with the rest of the group after either lunch or dinner, depending on their schedules.

Sometimes they held hands, but most of the time they kept to themselves, bumping shoulders occasionally as they meandered around the campgrounds. They finally got to know each other, telling stories of their childhoods in the mortal world, and sharing funny adventures from earlier in the summer (When he recollected dunking Jimin’s head into the lake that one time, he neglected to mention the reason he did it).

Their group of friends had obviously noticed the drastic shift in their relationship. However, they let them be for the moment, even though Yoongi had to reign in Hoseok’s burning curiosity several times. Jimin was the only one to know what or who went down in the forest, wringing the answer out of Taehyung the very next day. Everything was more fun with Jungkook around if Tae was being honest, and he was rapidly coming to enjoy the other’s presence.

It had been almost two weeks since their rendezvous in the woods, and they had only held hands since then. Taehyung was astounded by how gentle the younger was with him, and at how his personality had finally become what the rest of his friends had always said it was. Sure, he still had his cocky moments, but somehow they had become endearing instead of infuriating. When Taehyung expressed this sentiment to Jimin, he only got a smug “I told you so,” in response.

Jungkook was very obviously devoted to him, and his heart sang under all of the subtle affection. It was the little things that had Taehyung falling quicker than he ever had before. The way Jungkook would interlock their pinkies, or leave a small bouquet of wildflowers on Taehyung’s pillow, or come find him just to give him a handful of strawberries he had picked. He didn’t know how he’d gotten so lucky.

He was sitting by the strawberry fields with Jin, Jimin, and Hobi again. The four of them were sprawled out in the grass, talking and joking, trying to one-up each other to see who could make everyone laugh the hardest. So far, Hobi was winning by a long shot.

After their cheeks ached and their stomachs were sore from laughing so hard, they just sat there, watching as fluffy white clouds rolled by. Jin got bored quickly and started making flowers to put in everyone’s hair. If Tae was being honest, this facet of Jin’s powers was one of his favorites to see in action. The older boy could make any flower he wanted appear with a snap of his fingers, and he liked to do it often. In the end, he tucked cherry blossoms behind Jimin’s ear, and gave Hobi a vivid combination of tiny roses and sunflowers. Taehyung wound up with a delicate crown of baby’s breath and buttercups.

“There, now you’re all pretty,” Jin said, clapping his hands in satisfaction. Hobi scoffed.

“So you’re saying we weren’t pretty before?” He complained, throwing his hands up in feigned exasperation.

“I mean… Jimin and Tae were but you can always use the improvement,” Jin taunted, causing the other to squawk indignantly while the younger two boys dissolved into a fit of giggles.

“I’m just kidding Hobi, you know you’re pretty. You literally glow, and most of the time it has nothing to do with your powers,” the eldest relented. Taehyung laid down in Hobi’s lap, minding the flowers in his hair before batting his eyelashes up at the other boy.

“I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to beauty… ” he paused to smack Jimin when he snorted at the statement, “I am! In case you forgot my mom is literally the goddess of beauty, so don’t laugh. As I was saying, I’m an expert, and I can say with full confidence you are 100% pretty,” Tae concluded with a nod.

“Even if you were ugly we’d still love you~” Jimin added, eyes crinkled in amusement and affection.

“Stop you guys are too soft,” Hobi said, curling in on himself out of embarrassment.

“Hey, it’s the truth! You’re a solid eight at least,” Jin shrugged.

“I can work with an eight,” the son of Apollo laughed.

“If he’s an eight, what are you?” Jimin asked, chuckling along with him.

“Obviously a ten,” Jin replied nonchalantly, before losing his straight face and laughing instead. “It’s hard being one of two tens in a world of eights,” he managed after he had regained his cool.

“Who- who’s the other ten?” Jimin questioned, still breathless with mirth.

“Tae, of course,” Jin replied.

“Can’t argue with that, but not even Joon, your boyfriend, is a ten?!” Hobi exclaimed between gasps of laughter.

“Nah, he’s too much of a clutz to be a ten,” he said without hesitation.

“You’ve really thought about this a lot, haven’t you,” Taehyung giggled.

“Don’t judge me, I have a lot of alone time to think while I’m tending to the plants,” he defended. Taehyung waved him off.

“Just wondering,” Tae replied with an amused grin. Jin only huffed at him in contempt.

“Alright children let’s stop bickering,” Jimin intervened. And with that, their stomachs collectively decided it was time for dinner.

When they made it to the dining pavilion, the remaining three members of their party had not yet arrived. They always started eating without each other, so the four of them went ahead and got their food.

Taehyung’s meal was interrupted by a pair of hands covering his eyes, and he broke into a smile, immediately knowing who it was. He grabbed Jungkook’s wrist and turned to look up at him, smile widening when they made eye contact and he saw his expression reflected in the other’s face. Their gazes lingered for a moment, before being shattered by obnoxious cooing from Hobi and Jin.

Tae glowered at the pair without any real heat behind it, he shook his head in fond exasperation. Jungkook gently removed his hand from the silver-haired boy’s grasp and plopped down on the seat next to him. They shared another soft smile before returning to the group conversation that was now in full swing since Namjoon and Yoongi had finally joined them as well.

Jin and Hobi were still going back and forth over the rating scale of one to ten, while their boyfriends watched with matching looks of befuddlement. Jimin and Taehyung just laughed, and Jungkook looked half amused, half equally as puzzled as Namjoon and Yoongi.

Taehyung felt Jungkook’s foot brush against his under the table and moved to hook their ankles together while they ate. He glanced over briefly to gauge the other’s reaction, and saw him staring at his grilled chicken sandwich with a shy but satisfied grin. Tae was unable to stop himself from beaming in return.

Screw Jeon Jungkook for doing funny things to his heart.

They wrapped up the meal, all of them going separate ways for the evening. Taehyung felt a tug on his sleeve, and turned to see Jungkook looking at him expectantly.

“Walk with me?” he offered, and Taehyung gave him a nod. He chose to ignore the call of “don’t forget to use protection!” that came from Jimin behind them. It’s not like they would need it anyways. Yet.

They strolled away from the pavilion, Jungkook leading them towards the sandy beach of the Long Island Sound. A comfortable silence settled between them, and in no time they had arrived at the shore.

Taehyung took his shoes off, and Jungkook followed suit. The pair trailed parallel to the water, and Taehyung relished in the cooling sensation as it washed over his feet and stuck sand between his toes. He hummed and took a lungful of salty sea air. He really did love the beach.

When they walked by a log of driftwood, he motioned for Jungkook to stop.

“Come sit,” he said, and patted the log next to him after he had taken his own place. Jungkook obliged, sitting so that their thighs were pressed together and their knees would knock occasionally. Jungkook was staring at him. He could feel it and it made him giddy. After a few minutes, Taehyung had had enough.

“What are you looking at?” He turned to the younger with an amused smile. He flushed slightly at being caught.

“I- you’re just so pretty,” he breathed, tucking a stray lock behind Taehyung’s ear and fingering carefully at the flowers still entangled in his hair.

And Taehyung had been told that a lot in his life. He’d be rich if he had a dollar for every time someone told him he was “handsome, pretty, beautiful,” etc. But with Jungkook, it was different for some reason. It was something about the way he said it with so much sincerity in his voice, so much honesty in his eyes. This time Taehyung really and truly believed it.

“Can I-”

“Just kiss me.”

And boy did Jungkook kiss him. 

                                        ✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿ 

Taehyung grew a lot more physically affectionate with Jungkook after their little makeout session on the beach. He could tell the younger was growing more confident in their relationship by the day. The relief was visible on the doe-eyed boy’s face every time Tae responded positively to one of his advances, and even more so when he made his own.

Taehyung felt close enough to Jungkook now that he was wondering when would be a good time to bring up taking the next step in their budding relationship and becoming something more. Luckily, the raven-haired boy provided him with a golden opportunity another week later.

He had gotten to camp in mid-May, and it was already the end of July. He couldn’t believe how fast the summer was passing. It had been months, and one of the only things that he hadn’t done at the camp yet was ride a Pegasus. It’s not that he was nervous (ok maybe he was a little nervous), he just didn’t have any particular interest in doing so. He frequently found other things to occupy his time.

So when Jungkook offered to take him up on his Pegasus, he had said yes without a second thought. He’d never flown before, not even in an airplane, but he figured he’d at least give it a try. They were up bright and early the next day, arriving at the stables just after breakfast to get saddled up.

They stood in front of the stall, looking in at the Pegasus who was currently munching on some hay. Its reddish-brown coat shone in the sunlight streaming through the open window.

“So what’s its name?” Taehyung asked, eyeing the creature curiously as it lifted its head in response to his voice.

“Um… Tony Montana?” Jungkook offered, although it sounded more like a question‍ than an answer.

“Tony Montana? Really? Did you name him that?” the silver-haired boy giggled, trying hard to stifle his laughter.

“No, Yoongi did,” the younger replied, cracking a smile himself. “He’s really into rap and hip-hop, I’m not sure if you knew that.”

“Well I do now,” Tae grinned, and turned to watch as Jungkook left for the tack room and came back soon after, slipping into the stall with Tony Montana. 

“I call him Tannie for short though, most people do,” he continued as he harnessed the Pegasus. When he was finished, Jungkook gave its snout a few pats before leading him out of the stall, through the stables, and into the paddock outside. Taehyung trailed behind them, a little wary lest the creature kick at him.

Once they were in the open air, they stood back as the Pegasus spread his wings and flapped a few times, ruffling his feathers. Once he had stretched, Tannie trotted over to Jungkook and nuzzled into the side of his face, obviously familiar and affectionate with the boy. Then he turned to Taehyung, who remained still, and took a few tentative steps forward. Taehyung extended a hand for the creature to sniff at, and was surprised when he nuzzled his hand too.

“What is it with you and your affinity for animals, huh? It took him like a week to warm up to me,” Jungkook said with a chuckle.

“I probably smell like apples or carrots or something. Maybe even both,” Taehyung whispered, not wanting to startle Tannie at all.

“I don’t think you have to worry about him anymore Tae, I promise he’s super docile,” Jungkook encouraged, so Taehyung started to pet the Pegasus’ head, and scratch behind his ears.

“Are you ready?” the younger said, addressing both Tony Montana and Tae himself.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Taehyung responded. Jungkook showed him how to mount the Pegasus, and then helped him up after demonstrating. When he was seated comfortably, Tae shifted backwards so the younger would have room to sit in front of him. The raven-haired boy followed him up, swinging a leg over Tannie with ease that only came from years of practice.

“You might wanna hold on tight, he’s pretty fast,” Jungkook teased after they were both settled in the saddle. Taehyung wrapped his arms snugly around the other’s slim waist, relishing in the feeling of being pressed so close together.

“Ok Tannie, take it away,” Jungkook commanded, tapping his heel on the Pegasus’ flank. Tannie snorted and shook his head, before taking off at a gallop across the field. Unfurling his wings from his sides as he ran, he gave several powerful beats and then they were airborne.

Taehyung gasped, stiffening behind Jungkook, his hold around his stomach growing even tighter. Jungkook took one hand off the reigns, patting where Taehyung’s own were clasped over his belly button.

“Don’t worry, you’re not gonna fall. Even if you do I can easily save you, remember?” he soothed, turning his head to give Taehyung an encouraging smile.

“I know, just not used to flying,” he replied, smiling weakly.

“You’ve never even been in a plane before?” Jungkook questioned.

“No, never had the need to. My town was small, but it had everything we needed. We never went on vacation, never really had enough money. Camping trips and visits to my grandma’s farm were as far as we got,” Taehyung elaborated, pressing his cheek into Jungkook’s shoulder as he watched the stables become smaller and smaller below them.

They did a few laps around the camp to acclimate Taehyung to flying, and by the time they exited the property line, he was much more relaxed.

“So where are we headed?” He asked the younger as they followed the coastline.

“Technically we’re not supposed to be leaving camp, but Chiron said it was ok as long as we don’t touch down. It’d be a bad idea to land since neither of us has weapons or armor to protect ourselves. So I figured we’d fly around for a bit and take in the view,” Jungkook said.

“Sounds like a good plan,” Taehyung replied, pressing a quick kiss to the back of the raven-haired boy’s neck. Now would be a good time to tell him, he reminded himself. But for some reason, it didn’t feel right yet. Maybe on their way back.

He couldn’t see it, but he could hear the perpetual smile in Jungkook’s voice as they talked and joked back and forth. The ground sped by below them as they covered mile after mile.

“I can’t believe you’ve never seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off!” Jungkook exclaimed.  

“Listen, I know I’m not as ‘cultured’ as you are,” Taehyung retorted, making air quotes with his fingers, “but you don’t have to remind me about it every chance you get!” He tickled briefly at Jungkook’s sides in retribution, laughing at how the younger squirmed even at the feather-light touches.

“Give me one example of a classic movie that you have seen, and maybe I’ll stop,” he taunted, turning briefly to look at Taehyung with an eyebrow cocked.

“I- The Princess Bride? Does that count?” Jungkook pretended to think over it for a moment, chin held pensively between his thumb and forefinger.  

“Ok fine. I’ll let you have that one, but just because you’re cute,” he finally relented after Taehyung pouted at him.

“What’s wrong with that movie? It’s got everything: humor, action, adventure, romance, suspense, what more could you want?” the older boy questioned, slightly miffed.

“It’s just a little unrealistic I guess. I’m sorry but they never would have made that fall down the hill without at least breaking something,” Jungkook said, and Taehyung laughed.

“What! It’s true!” He said indignantly.

“But it’s a fictional movie, dummy! Or did the rodents of unusual size from the fire swamp not clue you into that?” he giggled.

“I forgot you’ve never been to New York City, the rats there can get huge! You wouldn’t believe the size of this one that I saw once in the subway, it-” Taehyung cut off Jungkook’s rambling by leaning forward and kissing him. The angle wasn’t the best, but he sighed into it nonetheless.

“You talk too much,” Taehyung said after they had broken apart, booping Jungkook’s nose.

“Shut up,” he grumbled, and his lips were so red and pouty that Taehyung just had to kiss them again.

“You know, if you fell down a hill I’d go after you,” the silver boy murmured a few minutes later, chin hooked over Jungkook’s shoulder as they flew back towards Camp Half Blood.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Might break an arm, but it’d be worth it,” he continued. This was it.

“Jungkook?”

“Yeah?”

“I like you a lot.”

“I like you too, Tae,” he said, playing with Taehyung’s fingers against his stomach.

“I think I’m ready now,” he finally said, causing Jungkook to still.

“Really? Tae it’s fine if you want to wait a little longer. I don’t want you to rush into anything. I’ll wait for you, however long you need,” the younger responded, voice filled with sincerity that made Taehyung’s heart flutter.

“But you’ve waited long enough. I promise I’m comfortable, and I want this. I want us,” Tae said, grabbing Jungkook’s hand and lacing their fingers together like they’d done so many times before.

“If you’re sure…” Jungkook said, still hesitant to pressure the other into anything.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” Taehyung said, and he could feel Jungkook relax in his hold, finally appeased.

“These past few weeks have been more than I could’ve asked for, you’ve been nothing but wonderful to me. I’d be so happy if we were together, officially,” he continued.

“You make me so happy Tae, you have no idea,” Jungkook whispered.

“So this is it? We’re official now?” Taehyung asked.

“I guess so,” Jungkook said, and once again Tae could hear the smile in his voice.

“Boyfriends?”

“Boyfriends.”

“Maybe boyfriends will be our alwa-,”

“I take it back.”

“Noooo, you’re not allowed to!”

“Watch me, bitch.”

                                        ✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿ 

Not much about their relationship really changed after they put a label on it. They still teased each other incessantly, held hands often, and stole quick kisses whenever they could. Their friends didn’t know yet, but Taehyung could tell they were getting suspicious.

“Are you sure you’re still getting to know each other?” Jimin asked, cornering him a few days after their ride on Tannie.

“You know I like him Jimin. We’re taking thing slow,” Taehyung replied, evading the actual question but not quite lying.

“If you say so,” the shorter boy said skeptically.

“I could ask you the same thing though. What’s going on with you, Hobi, and Yoongi?” Taehyung countered, changing the topic to something that had been on his mind for a while now.

“Shhhhh! Keep it down would you? And nothing’s going on between us, they’re in a relationship. What could possibly be going on?” Jimin bluffed, not making eye contact with Tae.

“Jimin, as well as you can read me, I can read you. I know you like them. I’ve seen the looks. Nothing bad is going to happen if you tell them that. The worst they can do is say no, and then you just go back to being friends. They won’t cut you out just for confessing, they’re not like that and you know it,” the taller said, pulling Jimin into a comforting hug when he started to tremble.

“I know that, I just- I’m so scared Tae. How can I like both of them so much? They’re so talented and perfect for each other, and I’m just plain old unclaimed me,” he whimpered, burying his face in Tae’s shoulder.

“Hey, hey don’t cry, it’s ok,” he said, rubbing Jimin’s back comfortingly. “You’re so amazing, Jimin. I’m sorry for bringing it up. But it sounds like you needed to get this out, huh? You could’ve told me you know,” Tae carried on, squeezing Jimin tight before pulling back to look him in the eyes.

“I know and I’m sorry I didn’t, but I wasn’t even sure of my own feelings for a while, and they always seem so content together I didn’t want to come in and ruin it all. The last thing I want is for them to be unhappy, especially because of me. I lo- like them too much for that,” he sniffled, rubbing his eyes as he composed himself.

“I love you, don’t forget that. And Yoongi and Hobi love you too, they would never judge you for your feelings. Just think about it ok?” Tae suggested, pulling Jimin in for another quick hug.

“I love you too Tae, I don’t know what I’d do without you. And I will, I promise. Thank you, for letting me get all that out,” he gave a watery chuckle.

“That’s what I’m here for. Now come on, let’s go sneak Tannie some strawberries, apparently he loves them now,” Taehyung said, leading the way towards the stables.

“What a coincidence,” Jimin replied with a wry smile.

“If Jungkook asks, it wasn’t me.”

“Whatever you say. You know, you’re still not off the hook about starboy,” the shorter said, bumping into Tae as they walked along.

“Hmm sorry I didn’t quite catch that, did you say something?”

“Tae!” He winced when Jimin punched him in the shoulder.

“Ouch! That hurt!” the taller boy cried out, rubbing at the sore area.

“You deserved it,” Jimin retorted with a shrug.

“I most certainly did not!”

                                        ✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿ 

Another week had gone by, and August had come in a blaze of heat and thunderstorms. Not in the camp of course, but they could see the heavy gray clouds and flashes of light roll by outside of the protective boundary. Storms now automatically reminded Taehyung of his boyfriend, after seeing him conjure ball lightning during one of their walks around the lake.

Speaking of his boyfriend, they were supposed to meet up a few hours after dinner at one of the hills on the outskirts of Camp Half Blood. The pair had planned to watch the latest thunderstorm brewing in the distance. He had been waiting a good twenty minutes past the designated time, and he was starting to think Jungkook wasn’t going to show. Which wasn’t like him at all. Just as he started to grow anxious and ponder the idea of going to look for him, a figure appeared over the crest of the hill. Followed by another, and another, and so on. Taehyung face-palmed.

“Sooooo Taehyung,” Jimin drawled as he drew within speaking range. “How long were you two idiots planning on keeping the fact that you’re dating from us?”

“Jungkook, what did you do,” Taehyung groaned.

“Sorry? Jin caught me sneaking out to come meet you, and when he asked where I was going, I couldn't lie. You know how bad I am at it,” he said sheepishly.

“If Jin caught you, then why is everyone else here too?” The older began to speak for Jungkook.

“Well this isn't something I could just keep to myself, so I went to tell Joon, and Yoongi was with him already. He went and got Hobi, who got Jimin, who went to find Del,” Jin rattled off.

“I mean, it’s not like we all didn’t have a clue anyways. You guys are a lot of things, but subtle isn’t one of them,” Jimin teased.

“I so called it, right back at the very first bonfire,” Hobi crowed in delight.

“Thanks to you guys, I’m now several drachmas poorer,” Namjoon added, but his smile was fond.

“Congratulations and all that,” Yoongi mumbled, leaning heavily on Hobi and rubbing his eyes sleepily. Taehyung thought he looked almost cat-like, having most likely fallen asleep while Joon was working on his latest research Only to have been abruptly awoken by Jin’s boisterous entrance.

“This isn’t how we wanted you guys to find out,” Taehyung said apologetically. Jungkook stepped forward to stand beside him, facing their group of friends together for the first time.

“Everything has been kind of fast, and it’s still kind of new, so we just wanted to let things run their course before we got too serious. It would’ve been pointless to tell you if we weren’t sure things would work out,” Jungkook pitched in, draping an arm around Taehyung’s waist.

“So, I take it things are working out just fine?” Hoseok asked with a grin.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Tae replied, leaning into Jungkook’s side and tilting his head to look at him. He was met with only warmth and affection, and he felt himself melt a little more. Taehyung didn’t think he would ever grow tired of this feeling. Their brief moment was interrupted by a retching noise from Yoongi, which earned him a sharp jab from Hobi.

“Let them be gross, it’s cute,” he reprimanded, narrowing his eyes at his boyfriend.

“It’s sickening- stop you brat!” Yoongi grouched, and this time he was quick enough to dodge Hobi’s bony elbow.

“At least we don’t act like an old married couple,” Jungkook taunted.

“Oh I know, Jin and Namjoon are so disgustingly domestic that-” Yoongi began to counter, but Jungkook interrupted him.

“I was talking about you.”

“Do you guys hear something? Is there a mosquito around here or…” the older boy teased, pretending to ignore Jungkook completely. Taehyung giggled, and laughed even harder at his boyfriend’s offended look.

“Come on, you have to admit, that was pretty funny,” he cajoled, trying to tickle Jungkook when all he would do was pout.

“Betrayed by my own boyfriend,” he said dramatically, shying away from Taehyung’s wiggling fingers.

“Great, now I’m a seventh wheel,” Jimin lamented, and Namjoon patted him on the back in consolation. Taehyung tensed at the remark, trying to gauge his expression. However, he could only find amusement and affection in his friend’s face. He sighed in bittersweet relief, praying silently that things would work out for Jimin. Gods knew he deserved the world. 

“You ok?” Jungkook murmured in his ear, noticing his boyfriend’s change in demeanor.

“I’m fine, it’s not really my story to tell,” he whispered back, shooting the raven-haired boy a smile which was easily returned. Jungkook pulled him closer into a side hug and pressed a quick kiss into his hair. Taehyung relaxed completely at the silent display of comfort. Such a short time together, and Jungkook always knew just what to do to make him feel better.

“So… are we gonna watch this thunderstorm or not?” Yoongi interrupted the group’s idle conversation. It was supposed to be just him and Jungkook watching the storm, but the alternative was more than acceptable as well. Taehyung could only shake his head and laugh, taking his place on the grass next to his boyfriend. So they all settled in for the next hour or so, and Tae felt more content than he ever had before in his life.

                                        ✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿ 

Taehyung was visiting Tannie again in the stables, armed with a handful of strawberries he had picked on the way there. He ate one, then fed the next to the Pegasus, and continued as such until they were almost gone. He was about to give the last berry to Tony Montana when a familiar voice from behind made him startle.

“You know, if he gets fat I’m blaming you,” Jungkook said, sauntering in through the open stable door. Taehyung recovered quickly, popping the last strawberry teasingly into his mouth instead, eyebrow raised.

“Now where would you get that idea from?” He said coyly, stepping forward to meet Jungkook.

“A little birdie named Jimin,” the younger said, reeling Tae in by grabbing his hips. Unexpected, but not unwelcome.

“Of course it was Jimin,” Taehyung rolled his eyes, his boyfriend chuckling at the gesture. They settled into a silence that was underlain by an odd sort of tension. He felt Jungkook’s familiar burning gaze on him, and when he met the younger’s eyes, they dropped to his lips. Taehyung did a quick check of the immediate vicinity to make sure they weren’t about to scandalize anybody, and cupped Jungkook’s cheek to draw him into a kiss.

The younger’s mouth was well-known territory at this point, and they easily fell into a rhythm. Taehyung gave a stifled gasp when Jungkook surged forward, deepening the kiss and latching on to Taehyung. He was almost feverish in his ministrations, tongue sliding against the roof of the silver-haired boy’s mouth, hands wandering dangerously close to his ass. Tae broke away panting and held Jungkook at an arm’s length.

“What’s gotten into you,” he questioned, giggling breathlessly. The doe-eyed boy looked a little stricken.

“I’m so sorry Tae, I don’t know what happened, you just- I shouldn't have done that, especially here, oh my god,” he babbled, burying his face in his hands.

“Relax Jungkook, it’s fine. No one is around. And I was the one who kissed you, remember?” he reassured, hugging the younger boy.

“But that wasn’t really like you, are you ok?” Jungkook blushed all the way up to the tips of his ears at the question.

“I’m fine, I just missed you I guess?”

“But I just saw you yesterday silly!”

“I know. It wasn’t…. like that,” Jungkook stumbled over his words, growing increasingly red. Realization dawned over Taehyung, and he couldn’t stop the salacious grin that spread across his face.

“Ohhh I see. Did you miss me, baby?” The younger gave an aborted nod.

“Well you said it yourself, you can’t have me here. So where are we going?” Taehyung asked, handing the decision over to Jungkook.

“R-really?”

“Yes baby, I missed you too you know,” the silver-haired boy said, trailing a hand down Jungkook’s chest before giving him a little nudge.

“Lead the way sweetheart,” he urged, and that was all it took to get the younger moving.

“Lucky for us,” he muttered as they stumbled out of the stables together, giggling like school children, “the Zeus Cabin is empty because my siblings have training now, and won’t be home for another two hours or so.”

“You totally planned this you little shit,” Taehyung laughed, giddy at the prospect of what they were about to do.

“Ok maybe a little, but I swear I didn’t mean to jump you like that. All of a sudden I just wanted you really bad…” his voice shrunk into a whisper as they approached the cabins.

“I could tell,” the older boy needled playfully, and Jungkook just gave him an unimpressed look.

The door clicked shut behind them as soon as they entered. And Jungkook was on him, mouths clashing and hands grappling to tug off shirts. He gave a muffled grunt of surprise that melted into a giggle and he was backed up towards Jungkook’s bed, falling onto it in a graceless heap.

Jungkook kicked off his shoes, pulled Tae’s sandals off, and crawled up the mattress to hover over him.

“Wanna make you feel good,” he said lowly, mouthing at Taehyung’s jaw and moving up to nibble on his ear.

“Is that ok?” he whispered, making charged eye contact and waiting for consent.

“Yes baby, make me feel good,” Taehyung breathed, swallowing hard at the fire in Jungkook’s eyes as he dove back in for another kiss. They went slow, sloppily making out for a while before getting into anything else. Tae let out a soft moan when Jungkook finally slipped a thigh between his legs and ground their crotches together, friction feeling incredibly satisfying after so long without contact. But soon it wasn’t enough, and Tae needed more.

He sat up and began fiddling with Jungkook’s pants, and when he struggled to undo them, the raven-haired boy stood up to shuck them off and discard them on the floor. Taehyung propped himself up on his elbows as Jungkook returned, lifting his hips when the other made to remove his loose cotton shorts.

Jungkook settled back on top of Tae, both now clad in only their underwear. The younger just stared for a bit, taking in the beauty underneath him. He ran his hands over Taehyung’s smooth thighs, soft stomach, and all the way up to brush away some stray locks of silver hair that had fallen into his face.

“You’re so beautiful Tae,” he murmured, genuineness shimmering in his eyes. And Taehyung, who was very rarely flustered, blushed under the scrutiny. That made Jungkook grin, and he thumbed over the rosy heat on his boyfriend’s cheeks.

“Beautiful,” he repeated. When Taehyung couldn’t take it anymore, he sat up and kissed Jungkook square on the mouth, the other boy immediately reciprocating. He pressed a kiss to Jungkook’s cheek, his chin, and ended at the column of his throat where he sucked bruising marks that had the younger moaning. When he felt satisfied with his work, Tae reached down to tug off his boyfriend’s boxers. Jungkook didn’t stop him, but he did catch his hands when they went to give attention to his now exposed cock.

The raven-haired boy leaned them both back onto the bed slowly, pinning Taehyung’s hands above his head and pressing their red and kiss-swollen lips together again. He drew away and eyed the older splayed out under him again.

“What do you want Tae? Whatever you want and I’ll give it to you. Wanna make you feel so good,” he said, a little desperate. Tae thought for a moment, drawing it out to tease him.

“Your fingers,” he decided, and Jungkook groaned.

“Ok, lemme grab the lube then, be right back,” and Jungkook tripped his way off the bed, just managing to catch himself before he fell.

“Why are you only clumsy when we’re about to get frisky?” Taehyung laughed as he watched the other rummage through his dressers for the bottle. He pulled his own underwear off as he waited.

“I can’t help it, you make me nervous,” he admitted, plopping back down on the bed with the lube and a condom. For some, the chit-chat might be awkward, but none of the atmosphere between them was stilted. Only comfortable, trusting, and even getting more heated as he gazed at Jungkook’s half-hard cock, wanting it in him. He didn’t miss the appreciative looks his boyfriend was giving him either.

“There’s no need to be nervous, baby. If you’re doing something wrong I’ll tell you and we’ll move on, no judgment. That’s how it works,” he said before kissing Jungkook again. “Now hurry up and finger me or I’ll do it myself.”

The younger grabbed a pillow to settle underneath Taehyung’s hips before lubing up a finger and leaning down to swallow the moan his boyfriend gave as he slowly pressed in. It had been a long while since he’d had someone else’s fingers in him, and it was a little overwhelming at first. Jungkook gently began pumping his digit in and out, getting Tae used to the sensation before adding another. He moaned at the intrusion, feeling good but something still lacking.

“M-more Kookie,” he said, and Jungkook added a third finger. After a few tentative thrusts, he hit something that sparked white-hot electricity throughout Tae’s body and made him see stars. He keened, tensing as his boyfriend prodded repeatedly at the bundle of nerves.

“Right there, huh? Does that feel good?” Jungkook asked, getting even harder himself as he admired Taehyung falling apart underneath him.

“Ah! So good, just like that baby,” Taehyung moaned, rocking back against the other’s fingers. He honestly could have cum from Jungkook’s hands alone, but that’s not what he wanted. So when he felt himself getting close, he grabbed the younger’s wrist to stop his movements. Tae gasped as Jungkook carefully withdrew his fingers, shivering when he clenched around nothing.

“Wanna ride you Kookie,” he panted, getting up on his knees and swapping places so he was straddling Jungkook. The raven-haired boy’s hands immediately went to his hips, gripping tightly while he watched Taehyung grab for the condom and tear it open. Jungkook hissed as he rolled it on, adding more lube to his hand and giving the younger’s dick a few strokes. He was more than hard enough, but Taehyung liked to watch the way his eyelids fluttered shut at the stimulation. 

When he was ready, Taehyung lined himself up and slowly sank down onto Jungkook’s cock. They moaned simultaneously at the sensation, the younger’s grip tightening even further on his waist as he struggled not to move. He inched down, allowing himself to adjust fully before he bottomed out.

“You fill me up so good baby,” Tae whimpered, moving his hips experimentally and sighing at the spark of heat it sent up his spine. He started to pick up the pace, and Jungkook keened underneath him, hips starting to buck up to meet Taehyung’s movements. He threw his head back and bit his lip to muffle in any noises he might make. The drag of Jungkook’s cock along his walls felt so good, and he knew if he opened his mouth he wouldn’t be able to keep quiet.

“Huh, Tae, s-so tight,” Jungkook groaned, his voice strained. Taehyung started bouncing, working his thighs so the younger would go deeper each time. A choked off moan ripped from his throat as Jungkook angled his hips in just the right way that found the same bundle of nerves from before.

Tae’s thighs shook as he kept working himself on Jungkook’s cock, the younger gasping and panting below him, looking more and more fucked out by the minute even though he wasn’t the one taking it up the ass. Taehyung couldn’t help but smile at that, squeezing his eyes shut at the overwhelming pleasure coursing through his body. His thighs began to tremble, and he knew he couldn’t keep up this position much longer.

“Kookie, I want you to fuck me, can you do that for me, baby? Fuck me good?” he hummed as he pulled off Jungkook’s member, leaning forward to brush their noses together. “Hmm?”

“Yes Tae, I’ll be so good for you,” he nodded earnestly, flipping them over so he was once again hovering over Taehyung. He brought the previously discarded pillow down to tuck underneath the older’s butt for a better angle. When Jungkook pushed back in, Taehyung’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and high pitched whine slipped out.

Jungkook moaned above him, immediately picking up speed so Tae was pushed up the bed a little with every thrust. He wrapped his arms around the younger’s shoulders to ground himself as his cock nudged against Tae’s prostate with each stroke, pushing him closer and closer to the edge.

They made eye contact as Taehyung scrabbled against Jungkook’s back for purchase, mouth hanging open in a silent scream of pleasure. The younger swooped down for a sloppy kiss, more teeth and tongue as anything else, muffling the whines and grunts that escaped them both.

Jungkook’s hips began to stutter, strokes becoming erratic, and Tae knew he was close. He could feel himself approaching his own orgasm, but Jungkook seemed to be nearer, eyes squeezed shut and staccato breaths piercing the otherwise still air of the cabin.

“Come on, come for me baby,” he encouraged, tightening around Jungkook and bringing a hand up to tug at one of his nipples.

“No, want you to come first,” Jungkook whined, swatting his hand away and instead reaching down to pump Taehyung’s cock. The older keened at the stimulation. That coupled with Jungkook pounding into him even faster wouldn’t have him lasting long. He grabbed at Jungkook's back again, nails scratching as he drew to the edge.

“Oh god Kookie, gonna cum! Gonna-” and then he was tensing up, biting at Jungkook’s shoulder as he came harder than he ever had before. Taehyung trembled, not processing anything beyond the feeling of Jungkook stroking him through his orgasm and still chasing his own inside of him. He jerked a few more times before going completely boneless.

“Tae, wanna come, wanna come so bad,” Jungkook cried out, using Taehyung’s oversensitive and pliant body to find his own release.

“It’s ok baby, you’ve been such a good boy, go ahead,” Tae cooed, somehow finding the energy to pull the other down for another kiss. Jungkook whined into his boyfriend’s mouth, and when Taehyung began to suck and lick at that one spot just below his ear, the younger boy was gone.

He gave a high pitched noise that was half gasp, half sob, before pressing his entire body into Tae’s and spilling into the condom. Taehyung ran a hand through Jungkook’s mussed hair as he came down, eventually rolling off the side so he wasn’t crushing his boyfriend. He removed the condom with a grimace, tying it off and dropping it on the floor to pick up later. Taehyung, just now feeling the mess of cooling cum on his stomach, wrinkled his nose and lazily flopped his arm onto Jungkook.

“Go get a washcloth, I’m gross,” he mumbled, and before he knew it, Jungkook was walking to the bathroom completely naked, ass on display for Taehyung to admire as he went. He returned promptly, gently cleaning Taehyung up before getting some of the stray lube off of himself.

He laid back down on the bed, away from the soiled part of the sheets, and Taehyung immediately moved so his head was pillowed on Jungkook’s chest. He dropped a kiss on the younger’s collarbone before his eyes drifted closed and he gave a soft hum of contentment.

“Was that good?” Jungkook asked, nosing at Taehyung’s silver hair.

“Hmm, perfect,” the older confirmed, and he could feel Jungkook’s smile against his head.

“You have bomb dick game,” Tae giggled, and Jungkook laughed along with him.

“How are you feeling though? Not too sore?”

“Nah, I should be fine by tomorrow,” he replied, waving away his boyfriend’s concern.

“Ok, let me know if you need anything though,” Jungkook insisted, and Taehyung giggled again.

“What? I’m serious!” the raven-haired boy grumbled indignantly.

“I know you are, it’s cute,” he said, tilting his head to meet Jungkook’s gaze. They got lost in each other for a while, as they often did.

“How did I get so lucky,” Jungkook breathed, expression achingly fond.

“I should be the one asking myself that,” Tae replied, smiling softly. The younger moved to kiss him again. It was sweet, so sweet it made Taehyung’s toes curl. The pair laid there, the soft smacking of their lips the only sound in the now quiet cabin, until something must have cued Jungkook in to the fact it was time for him to go.

“The others will probably be back soon,” He said against the older’s lips, not wanting to give him up just yet. Tae grinned into the kiss, cupping Jungkook’s cheeks and pressing a kiss to his nose before breaking away.

“I should get going then,” Taehyung agreed reluctantly, shuffling off of the bed to pull his clothes back on and straighten himself out. Jungkook did the same, and walked his boyfriend over to the door.

“I’ll miss you,” Jungkook said, to which Tae chuckled.

“You’ll see me tomorrow at the beach silly, we’re all going swimming before the fireworks, remember?” he responded, dropping a parting kiss on Jungkook’s cheek.

“I’ll see you soon lover-boy, but I’ll miss you too” he continued as he backed out the door, not really wanting to leave so soon, but knowing he had to.

“Bye,” Jungkook called.

“Bye, baby!” Tae answered, and blew him a kiss before he was gone. 

                                        ✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿°•∘♥∘•°✿ 

The next day, Taehyung woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, excited to get to spend the frolicking in the ocean and top it all off with fireworks. August was drawing to a close, and he couldn’t believe it was almost the end of summer already. Time had gone by way too fast. Tae would be staying at camp year round, with a two-week long visit back to his grandmother’s farm scheduled for New Years.

Jungkook would be leaving him, along with Yoongi, Hoseok, and Jimin. He was going to miss them terribly, but they would visit for a week during Christmas, and be back in the spring. He had Delilah, Namjoon, and Jin to keep him company throughout the fall and winter months. Plus, he was planning on going to see them all at least once while they were gone. Jungkook maybe a little more often if he could (he was a little biased, ok?).

But Taehyung didn’t want to think about having to part ways with his friends and boyfriend in a week or two. He didn’t want to be sad, especially today, which was supposed to be upbeat and celebratory of another successful summer at Camp Half Blood. He changed into his bathing suit, threw a tank top on, and packed a bag with the supplies he’d need for the beach today. He stopped by the Hermes Cabin to pick up Jimin, and they went to get a quick breakfast at the dining pavilion before heading to the beach.

Jin and Jungkook were sitting on towels underneath an umbrella when the pair arrived, watching Namjoon search the water for the tiny crabs he seemed to have an affinity for. When Taehyung had asked Jin about it a while ago, he had said his boyfriend claimed they were a very intelligent species that he admired them. Jin thought he only liked them because they’re cute, and was too proud to say otherwise. Tae had to agree with the latter sentiment.

He sat down next to Jungkook in the shade while Jimin joined Namjoon and they all waited for Yoongi and Hoseok to arrive. The mint-haired boy had a tendency to sleep in. It often took twice the amount of sunshine to get him up and moving, which was where Hobi came in. They worked well together. Taehyung couldn’t help but think they’d get along even better with a third addition to balance their polar opposite personalities. He felt helpless, knowing Jimin had the potential to be doubly loved, but not willing to break his friend’s trust by interfering. He sighed, deciding to forget about all his worries for now.

He rested his head on Jungkook’s shoulder and the younger boy brought a hand up to card through his hair. Taehyung leaned into the touch with a gratifying smile.

“Do you wanna go swimming?” He asked, playing with the frayed hem Jungkook’s t-shirt.

“No, I’m good,” he said, eyeing Namjoon and Jimin who were now splashing around in the surf.

“Really? But you love the water!” Taehyung exclaimed, surprised at the uncharacteristic behavior.

“I do, but I just don’t really feel like it now,” he evaded, and the silver-haired boy knew his boyfriend wasn’t telling the truth, but he let it slide for the time being. He’d figure it out eventually anyway.

As it turned out, “eventually” came a lot sooner than Taehyung had originally thought. Hoseok and a ruffled looking Yoongi arrived, the latter making a beeline for the shade so he could go back to napping. The rest of them bar Jungkook headed for the water, shying away from the cold at first but quickly getting acclimated.

They had a good game of something like water volleyball going on, and Jungkook still had not joined them. Which was odd considering his competitive nature. His shirt was not off either, which had Taehyung even more curious as to what was going on. Usually, he took any chance he could get to strut around topless.

“Hey, Jungkook! We just finished this round, now’s the perfect time to join and even up the teams for us!” Jin called, waving him over from his spot in the sand.

“No thanks, I’m good!” he replied.

“Oh come on you party pooper! What are you too scared you’re going to lose?” Hobi provoked, pulling out tricks to get Jungkook in the water. 

“No, I’m just really comfortable where I am right now,” he lied, although the bluff was obvious to everyone.

“Will you do it for me?” Taehyung implored, batting his eyelashes and upping the charm. He could see Jungkook struggling with himself, and after a few moments of hesitation he sighed and stood up. Jimin, Hobi, and Namjoon cheered, but Jin just scoffed.

“Such a brat, I swear he only listens to you now,” the older complained to Tae, who just laughed.

“I have him whipped,” he joked, and made Jin drop his disgruntled facade to crack a smile. They turned to the others when Namjoon gasped, Jimin let out a shriek of laughter and Hobi started choking on his own spit.

“What? What is wrong with you three?” Jin demanded, and then his gaze alighted on Jungkook’s now bare chest and back, and he froze.

“You two are animals,” he sputtered, pinching the bridge of his nose and looking away as he shook his head in disapproval. Taehyung just shrugged, shameless. Jungkook on the other hand, was quite evidently mortified.

They had all been given a direct view of the marks Tae had left the day before; streaks of muted red across his shoulders and down his back, already-fading hickies littering his collarbones. The younger refused to make eye contact with anyone, wading his way out into the water to join Taehyung.

“You all asked for it,” he grumbled, cheeks and ears a vibrant rouge.

“Well we didn’t think you’d look like that,” Jimin chortled, nearly toppling over into the water as he laughed with his entire body.

“What did you do Tae, try to eat him?” Hobi joined in on the teasing.

“No, we haven’t tried that yet,” he retorted, and Jin looked like he was going to faint. Namjoon threw the volleyball at Taehyung’s face, but his aim was horrific so it veered off and hit Jungkook instead. They all dissolved into even more mirth and the younger boy went after Namjoon. A splash war ensued, previous game forgotten.

When it was lunchtime, they all tumbled back onto the sand, exhausted from running around in the water all morning. Jungkook pulled his shirt back on as soon as he dried off, and shot Taehyung a menacing look when caught him snickering at his plight. He stalked over, and the older tried and failed to school his expression.

“This is all your fault,” he growled, prodding at Taehyung’s sides where Jungkook knew he was especially ticklish. He giggled and squirmed out of his boyfriend’s grasp, running to hide behind Jimin.

Jin pulled out a picnic basket and began to distribute sandwiches and drinks to everyone. They all munched away at their food. Idle chit-chat melded into the crash of the waves against the shore and the buzzing of cicadas in the distance.

Spent and chilled from the water, Taehyung chose to nap in the sun for the afternoon, (not forgetting to put sunscreen on at the insistence of Namjoon). Jungkook laid down next to him, curling their fingers together and resting their conjoined hands on his own chest. Tae smiled at the gesture, and fell into a relaxed state of almost-but-not-quite sleep.

The next thing he knew, Jungkook was shaking him awake and it was time for dinner. Other campers had joined them on the beach by then, and he spotted Jeonghan and Jungwoo a ways along the beach with the rest of the Aphrodite Cabin. Small campfires had been lit for them all to cook hot dogs and roast marshmallows over as their evening meal.

Their group of seven gathered around one of them with a mix of campers from other cabins, taking turns heating things up over the flames. Taehyung bet Jungkook that the younger couldn’t roast him the perfect s’more, and he accepted the challenge head-on. The truth was he didn’t really feel like doing it himself, but no one else had to know that.

His boyfriend returned, golden-brown dessert in hand, and fed it to Taehyung messily. He ended up with marshmallow smeared across his cheek and melted chocolate on his lips, but none of it was sweeter than the kiss Jungkook gave him under the guise of “cleaning him up.” Taehyung knew better, and smiled as their lips slotted together. Jungkook tasted like summer, a cloying electric heat. His touches were the fizzling energy just before lightning struck. He was everything.

They pulled away soon enough, mindful of the fact they were in a very public setting. It was starting to get dark out earlier these days, so shortly after they finished dinner, everyone was settling in for the annual fireworks display. Still, they clung to each other, claiming a blanket to sit on. Jimin was sandwiched between Yoongi and Hobi on another blanket, looking happier than ever as they pointed out faint constellations to each other. Namjoon and Jin were curled up together, admiring the way Artemis’ rising moon glittered over the water.

Jungkook maneuvered them both into a more comfortable position so that Taehyung was seated between his legs, back pressed up against the younger’s chest. He tipped his head back on Jungkook’s shoulder, watching the way the moon and firelight danced in his boyfriend’s eyes. Tae was suddenly overcome by a surge of emotion, and the burning need to express it.

“I love you,” he blurted, clapping a hand over his mouth as the words slipped through. It was way too soon to be throwing that around. They hadn’t even known each other that long, and had been officially dating for even less time.

Jungkook hadn’t given him a reaction either, so he took that to be a bad sign. Gods, he was so stupid. Things had been going so well, and he just had to go and ruin them. He started to shuffle away, but the younger stopped him from moving by wrapping his arms tight around Taehyung’s waist.

“Hey, you’re not going anywhere, and neither am I,” he said lowly, lips brushing the older’s ear.

“I’m sorry I shouldn't have-” but Jungkook cut him off by pressing a kiss to his temple.

“I love you too. I know it’s soon, and I know it’s cliche, but I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. I’ve never felt so comfortable with anyone else, not even my family. The last thing I would do is leave you for telling me you love me,” he said, chuckling a little disbelievingly.

“Gods, you have no idea how wonderful you are,” he continued, planting another kiss on Taehyung, this time on his cheek. It came back wet.

“Hey now, none of that. Don’t cry,” he soothed, pulling the older fully into his lap so he could bury his face in his shoulder.

“I’m sorry I don’t even know why I’m crying. No one has ever made me feel this way before, I don't really know what to do with myself,” he croaked with a watery laugh.

“Never apologize for your feelings, Tae,” he said, brushing their noses together.

“When did you get so wise, huh baby? Who are you and what have you done with my idiot?” Taehyung joked, and Jungkook nudged his shoulder playfully. He pulled back to take in the younger, bathed in the pale light of the moon which accented his strong jawline and cheekbones. He always called Taehyung pretty, but he himself was darn close to a masterpiece.

“I love you,” Taehyung said again, just because he could now.

“I love you too,” Jungkook whispered, and the older cupped his cheek to reel him into another kiss, this time disregarding the people surrounding them.

“You’re mine now, right?” Taehyung murmured, breaking the lip lock and resting his forehead against Jungkook’s.

“All yours, no matter the weather,” he replied.

“Even if it’s storming?”

“Especially then.”

Taehyung kissed him again, hard, but it wasn’t much of a kiss because he was smiling too wide. A cheer went up as the fireworks began, vibrant color illuminating the late summer sky.

But Taehyung hardly noticed, too wrapped up in Jungkook to care.

They could make their own fireworks. 

                                                         ~FIN~

#bts #taekook #yoonseok #namjin #bts au #au #greek au #pjo au #pjo universe #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #park jimin #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook #namjoon #seokjin #yoongi #hoseok #jimin #taehyung #jungkook #rm #jin #suga #jhope #v #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan

[grimelords]

Hello and god bless, I have finally finished my November playlist a week and a half into december. Disco, Guns N’ Roses, an entire doom metal album and everything in between. Please enjoy.

​Extraball - Yuksek: Aside from the extremely nice electro bass I think what I appreciate most about this song is that the chorus seems like the sort of thing you could sing in a round, or as some kind of children’s clapping game.

Mirror Reaper - Bell Witch: Let me be the first to apologise for putting an 80 minute doom metal album as the second song on this playlist. I’m sorry. It was selfish and it won’t happen again. That said, please listen to this because it is transformative. I’ve listened this a lot this month and it’s really affected my mood I think. Doom metal is one of the only genres that takes itself seriously enough to release an album that’s just one 80 minute track but I really can’t fault them for doing it. This is a piece of music that demands to be listened to in full, and while it does naturally divide into movements like anything else this long would, it would be weaker overall if it were split into individual tracks or listened to individually. A lot of the playing on here, which is very sparse in long sections feels like ritual music of some kind - a feeling that’s compounded by the length when you’re absolutely lost within it. It makes electric bass and drums feel like modern ritual instruments and this album feels like an invocation of the spirit of loss itself.

Sixteen Tons - Merle Travis: For some reason I keep thinking about and listening to different versions of Sixteen Tons. This is Merle Travis, the orginal songwriter, but this is a new recording he did in 1989. Notably I love the very plaintive solo in the middle of this, but I especially love that he changed the lyric at the end to say “I owe my soul to Tennessee Ernie Ford” which feels like an agressive rebuke or a solemn nod but I can’t tell which.

Looking Up - Michael Smith: My girlfriend sent me this song because she heard it on the podcast Good Christian Fun which as I understand it is an exploration of the bizzare world of american evangelical christian media. Anyway this song rocks. It sounds like Todd Terje remixed the theme to some lost 80s sitcom and I really can’t get enough of it.

Wild - Beach House: This is such a beautiful song. I love the tinny drum machine and the live drums that sound programmed constrasting against the huge wall of guitar and synths. I used to listen to this album a lot a few years ago when I worked night shift and it reminds me of standing on top of wine tanks in the cool night air at 2am texting my now girlfriend as she went to bed. Sorry.

Piano Concerto No. 3 In D Minor, Op.30: 1. Allegro ma non tanto - Sergei Rachmaninoff: I had a friend in school who did his licentiate degree in piano in year 12 and was obsessed with this piece. One day he took me through the whole first movement and showed me how the theme is established and comes back in different forms over and over again throughout and basically taught me how to listen to classical music which was very kind of him because it’s something I’m only really appreciating now.

Verklärte Nacht, Op.4: String Sextett for 2 Violins, 2 Violas and 2 Cellos - Arnold Schoenberg: This is an early Schoenberg piece before he got into that good good atonal serialism, but it does still have moments that presage what was to come. I don’t really have much to say about this other than it’s a very good place to start with Schoenberg because it’s like proof that he was a human man at one point.

Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) - Harry Belafonte: I’ve really been thinking about how work songs like this and like Sixteen Tons become international hits. This one especially, in the 50s, was it because it was a really good song (which it is) that a lot of people related to or was it a sort of exoticism about funny banana song (which to be fair, it also is).

Boogie Wonderland (12" Version) - Earth, Wind And Fire: This is the song you hear playing from the other side of the door when you get to heaven.

Apollo’s Mood - The Olympians: This album is basically a collection of Daptone All-Stars under the name The Olympians just doing their thing and it’s really amazing. I especially love the harpsichord in this, an instrument that doesn’t get nearly enough of a workout in soul music. Also, I don’t really know how to describe it but I really love the way the snare roll that starts it off and comes back a few times sounds - buzzy and busy without rushing anyone.

Saturn - The Olympians: This is the song you use for your montage at the end of a James Bond movie that’s just four minutes of him relaxing and drinking different cocktails by himself that the critics called ‘wholly unneccesary’. In the drums and bongo break he does a little dance and falls over.

November Rain - Guns N’ Roses: As far as overblown classic rock epics go, I really wish November Rain had the cultural place of bad song Bohemian Rhapsody or Stairway To Heaven because underneath the 9 minutes of stings and bullshit it’s actually a very beautiful and sad song written by an idiot.

Sisters Of The Moon - Fleetwood Mac: With the current wytchy cult that Stevie Nicks has around her it’s easy to forget that she wrote songs like Sisters Of The Moon, a song explicitly about a witch converting other women to witchery. I love the big extended phrase of guitar chords in the chorus and I’m very mad about how this song fades out just as it’s absolutely going off.

When The Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin: Rounding out this unexpected classic rock trio is When The Levee Breaks which I was thinking about because I was thinking about The Big Short. This song sounds so good and there’s been so much written about the famous drum sound and the production but what I only learned this month is that it was apparently recorded at a faster tempo and then slowed down afterwards, which explains a lot about a lot of the sounds in here.

Bad Liar - Selena Gomez: This is maybe the pop song of the year honestly. It’s so good in every single aspect, especially the when she says’ oh baby lets make reality, actuality, reality’ which is a very weird lyric. So is 'you’re taking up a fraction of my mind, every time I watch you serpentine(?)’. Great stuff all around.

Hello Miss Lonesome - Marlon Williams: I saw Marlon Williams a year or so ago and it was one of the best gigs I’ve been to because things just kept going wrong. Broken strings and misunderstandings and all that sort of thing, and the highlight for me was in this song the drummer got overconfident and started pushing the tempo near the end and eventually tripped over himself so badly they had to stop and start again.

The Voice Of Q - Q: Here’s how you can tell a song is good: you can only find it on Spotify on a compilation album called 'Cocaine Boogie: 24 Kilos Of Underground 80s Dance’. This song seems like a classic case of 'somebody bought a vocoder’ and it’s very very good, another fantastic entry in the canon of interplanetary disco. I also love the children sadly pleading with Q to come back at the end, because the song hasn’t really given you any understanding of who or what Q is other than a being with a voice who is from space.

Take A Trip - Rev. Utah Smith: If I were, hypothetically, to start, for example, a UFO cult, I would definitely have my congregation sing this song. I love it so much. Outside of the fun premise it does what good gospel music should do and completely uplifts my spirit by promising a better life after this one, and if I get to go there by rocket ship, well that’s all the better.

Normal Person - Arcade Fire: I love the little 'do you like rock and roll music? 'cause I don’t know if I do.’ he sings at the start because it sounds like they’re into their 13th hour of recording or something. I love the lead guitar that sounds like it’s severely undernourished but trying its best and I love how strangely heavy the bass and rhythm guitar is compared to a lot of their other songs. A good song to sing along to while you’re driving.

Top Of The World - Kimbra: I don’t know exactly how or why but Kimbra made a Kanye song. Playing the dual roles of Kanye and Featured Artist she does a great job and once again defies whatever I thought she was going to do next. I can’t wait for the album, I hope it has even more Raps.

Eric’s Trip - Sonic Youth: I’ve never gotten much into Sonic Youth because they seemed way too New York Cool for me, so imagine my heartbreak when I found out the lyrics to my favourite song of theirs are wholesale lifted from an Andy Warhol film. I still have a lot of love for 'my head’s on straight, my girlfriend’s beautiful, it looks pretty good to me’ though.

I Hope I Sleep Tonight - DJ Seinfeld: God I’d be embarrassed if I blew up on soundcloud with the name 'DJ Seinfeld’ and then had to keep it when I put my album out. This album varies pretty wildly in quality but I really love this track, the synth melody that just careens around wildly while the rest of the song happens nearby is what does it for me I think.

Problem With The Sun - Nicolas Jaar: “In an interview with Self-Titled Magazine, Jaar said “I was watching a documentary about bugs. It said that if they looked at the sun, they’d die. I thought ‘Oh, that’s funny; that’s cute’ and I wrote a track about it (…). If you find something really special in a tiny story about bugs, it could have a much bigger meaning than that. I like the idea of turning life into this miniature thing”.” He’s used this particular voice modulation on a couple of song and it really cracks me up because it so thick and textured and just plain silly but somehow it suits the song perfectly.

Long Strong Diamond - Baggsmen: This is a song I remember seeing on Rage late at night years and years ago. The guy was dressed up as a werewolf and kidnapping some girl but he gets so distracted by his song about being a werewolf that she ends up escaping. Extremely mad to find out that the guy in this song from years ago that I love is none other than personal enemy of mine Jake Stone from Bluejuice.

XO/The Host/Initiation - The Weeknd: Trilogy could well be the best album of the decade. Remember when The Weeknd was this mysterious anonymous guy who was firmly a character and not an actual guy who seems to actually believe what he’s singing? I love Trilogy because the progression across the three discs from like 'cool indifferent party guy’ in House Of Balloons to extremely deranged cult leader in Echoes Of Silence is very satisfying. Initiation especially is great because it’s like a cool fun song about a party mixed with some extremely dark shit about the clocks not working so you can’t tell the time and the blinds not working so you can’t see outside in a scary pitch shifting voice. “And all I wanna do is leave 'cause I’ve been zoning for a week and I ain’t left this little room, trying to concentrate to breathe” but you absolutely MUST meet my boys.

This Guy’s In Love With You - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass: Anyway here’s a change of pace. A very peaceful song about just fucking dying if she won’t be your girl. I love how dramatic this song gets before completely stopping and starting again into a very relaxed trumpet line.

Jasmine (demo) - Jai Paul: I’m obsessed with the cult that develops around guys like Jai Paul and Jay Electronica, who put out two songs that are so good that it drives people insane when they don’t put out any more. There’s apparently a bunch of stuff happening with Jai Paul currently that I haven’t been keeping track of but The Fader had a really good article earlier this year about how the Jai Paul leaks and how insane it made everyone. Aside from all that, the song is pure magic - just listen to it and you can understand why everyone was obsessed as they were.

Freaking Out The Neighbourhood - Mac Demarco: I remember I saw an interview with Mac Demarco talking about this song and he described the riff as just some dumb little thing he made up which is shocking to me because I am totally obsessed with how good it sounds. It’s perfect!

Bob - “Weird Al” Yankovic: Yes baby it’s Weird Al’s all-palindrome Bob Dylan parody! I was telling my girfriend about how this is actually really good songwriting because even though it’s essentially gibberish it has enough good imagery and fun sounds that it works anyway and really how different is 'may a moody baby doom a yam’ to 'transient jet lagged ecto-mimed bison’ from the Mars Volta which also appears on this list? Anyway she hated it, and rightly so.

I Have Good News To Bring - Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Live from the basement church of my UFO cult, a beautiful version of Take A Trip that sounds like it was recorded on the organ of an empty baseball stadium at night.

Julia - Jungle: I have been desperately waiting for three years now for another Jungle album and they finally posted about new songs the other day and I got very very excited. This is an amazing song, every sound in it is so perfectly placed and the vocals are very beautiful and have such a rich bass for such a high tenor. I love the way the drums subtly get very busy in the last few choruses, I could listen to this song for hours.

Ray Gun (feat. DOOM) -BadBadNotGood & Ghostface Killah: I love that this song is maybe 20bmp faster than Ghostface or Doom are expecting. Doom especially sounds far more excited than he has in years and they both do really well with it. Also, I was certain the melody it breaks into in the last third was some Lalo Schifrin bit I’ve heard before but I can’t seem to find any info corroborating that. If it’s familiar to you or you know where it’s from, please reply to this post because it’s been driving me crazy.

Confessions Pt. III - BadBadNotGood & Colin Stetson: Any song where Colin Stetson has to play with others is funny to me. He’s such a self contained ball of power that him joining a traditional group like it just wouldn’t work. Sure, this song does sort of sound like him doing his own thing for seven minutes while the band sort of reacts to him but it is absolutely fantastic anyway.

Everyone Nose (All The Girls Standing In The Line For The Bathroom) - N.E.R.D: Remember when Pharrell was crazy? This song is total chaos. The pitched down sample in the hook, the two note bassline, the sax that just hoots once a bar. And I absolutely love the contrast of the beautiful bridge, especially the 'achooo’ backing vocals.

Parties - Shlohmo: Bad Vibes was such a moment. It is such a beautiful album, and a very easy album to fall asleep to and then wake up 20 minutes later terrified and choked by your headphones because Trapped In A Burning House, the song that sounds exactly like its title and nothing like the rest of the album, came on. I have such a strong emotional reaction I really can’t explain to the cutoff samples of people laughing near the end of this song.

Bering/Human Till Born -Talkdemonic: I have no idea how I came across this album but I’ve been listening to it constantly for ten years now and I still find new things to appreciate in it. The drums especially in Human Till Born are a source of obsession for me.

Don Caballero 3 - Don Caballero: For a long time I never 'got’ Don Caballero or Hella or any of these supposedly legendary math bands, despite loving so many bands obvously influenced by them. But then one day this album, and this song especially just clicked for me. It also happened to coincide with one of the most surreal weeks of my life when I was on a cruise ship and all I listened to was this and a field recording album that seems to have completely deleted itself from my computer since then. The best advice I’ve heard for listening to this is, and bands like it is that it’s backward. The drums are the lead instrument and everything else works around that, if that helps. This song has a twisted sort of morose quality that’s really hard to pin down. Some days it is absolutely heartbreaking, which sounds silly but it’s true.

B.Y.O.B. - System Of A Down: There’s a few reasons I was thinking of this song. First and most importantly it’s because of that dog vine but the other reason is I was thinking about how there hasn’t been a good anti-trump song yet outside of YG’s FDT, and that came out before the election. This and American Idiot came out in 2004/5, and I suppose it’s only been a year since the election so we’ve got a few years yet until the real hits come out I guess. Or I suppose he’d have to actually properly declare war, which, you know.

4D/MTI - Koreless: These songs are so intertwined in my head I feel like you can’t have one without this other. 4D is such a simple, beautiful piece of music. The synth that sounds like glass and the chopped vocals getting more and more contorted as the song goes on contrasted with the propulsion of the drums is so great. Both of these songs have a meticulousness and restraint to their sound, every single piece is perfectly where it should be and nothing else is allowed. Even MTI using so much white noise feels incredibly controlled and when it totally drops out it feels like coming up from underwater.

New Lands - Justice: Remember when Justice took 4 years to write a follow up to their album that lit the world on fire and instead of doing the same thing again they made a classic rock album? Everyone was so mad. Luckily this song is incredible and everyone was wrong once more.

You Discovered The Secret And Juiced It For All Its Majesty - Venetian Snares: This is from an EP called Cubist Reggae which I think a lot about in concept alone. This is probably the song that illustrates the idea worst but I love it a lot. My incredibly unpopular opinion is that Venetian Snares is miles better of Aphex Twin and whoever but everyone’s written him off as the Rossz Csillag guy so he doesn’t get no respect. I love how detailed his music is, how every one of the million sounds seems to be perfectly placed. I think he’s in a similar position to Autechre where he’s been making and listening to only his own music for so long now that he’s forgotten how normal music sounds, which is good.

Blues Run The Game - Jackson C. Frank: I made a playlist a couple of years ago of all the songs I sing to myself when I’m just walking around or whatever and it turned out about 6/10 had 'blues’ or 'hard times’ in the title, which is tough but it’s ok, and this was one of them. If you want to read a wiki article that’ll make you cry, read Jackson C. Frank’s, but mostly you should just listen to this, his only album.

Thermal Treasure - Polvo: I played this song for my girlfriend and during the intro she said 'you have such a wide variety of tense, off kilter music seeminly designed just to put people on edge’. I’m a huge fan of this very defensive sentence in Polvo’s wiki article 'Their sound was so unpredictable and angular that the band’s guitarists were often accused of failing to play with correctly tuned guitars’.

FML - Kanye West: This is such a strangely affecting song and it’s hard to be sympathetic to Kanye as a narrator sometimes (especially when he insists on doubling down on dogshit lines like “'I'mma have the last laugh indian cause I’m from the tribe called chekaho’”) but against all odds you can identify and relate to his struggle to hold onto the woman he loves and not be undone by his own worst instincts. Musically this is the best The Weeknd has ever sounded and I already love him a lot, and the way the drums lead into the sample at the end is just perfect.

Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) - The Mars Volta: This is the album I’ve probably listened to the most in my life. As a teenager I would listen to this album every night for easily a year and somehow there’s still something new to hear in it. It’s almost hard to listen to it now because I have so much Teenage Feeling attached to it but it’s still an incredible piece of work. Jon Theodore deserves a statue for his drumming on this album, and this song especially, in my humble opinion.

Life’s A Beach! - Studio: God I love Studio. I think if you tried to describe them on paper you could never make it sound like good music. “It’s sort of, balearic , reggae, guitar-led dance music and the songs go for about 15 minutes most of the time.” But it is good music! I absolutely promise it’s incredible music!

The Number Song (Cut Chemist Remix) - DJ Shadow: I love this remix because it feels like theseus’ ship as demonstrated via remix. How many parts can you swap out for similar but not identical parts before it’s a completely different song. The drums are almost the same beat, but a totally different sample.The Jackson 5 horns in the original that signal the transition to the second half are still here with the same function, but it’s an entirely different horn sample, and an entirely different second half save for 'the party’s already started, and it’s about to end’. 

listen here

#playlists

[spideyxchelle]

Hey queen of spideychelle nsfw headcannons/fics 💦. You don’t have to write it but may I suggest some spideychelle kinky car sex 😈

ahem. yes you may. what a lovely way to ask. i love nice, polite anons. NICE POLITE ANONS GET KINKY SPIDEYCHELLE SEX. boom. obviously this has sensitive content.

mj’s clunky, 1997 honda is not the world’s greatest car. prudence, the car’s name is prudence yes, does the job, though. she gets mj from point a to point b and that’s all she really needs from a car. besides, she’s a high school student in new york. its a miracle she even has a car. 

so to the students of Midtown high, mj’s shitty 1997 honda is a mercedes. 

she drives friends to and from places and its a novelty to not have to wait for the subway. she drives herself to school and everyone is shocked when she pulls in with her prudence because Michelle Jones has a freakin’ car. she was already a badass before prudence, but prudence really ups the stakes of her awesome. 

the best part about prudence, though, is that she is perfect for makeout sessions. mj doesn’t have to worry about people bursting into her bedroom while she’s trying to nibble kisses on peter’s neck. privacy, for a teenager, is a hot commodity. 

and peter likes the privacy that prudence offers just as much as mj does. because he’s a weird, easily embarrassed noob. and the few times someone has caught them kissing he’s been unable to look her in the eye for several days after. which isn’t conducive to her life. 

it’s a wonder, really, that they’ve even had sex. what with peter blushing and fumbling around her whenever things get even a touch awkward. 

but, in prudence, peter doesn’t feel any pressure. she knows he doesn’t. so sex with peter parker in her car is always the best kind of sex. he’s a superhero with no inhibitions that loves to make her cum. what kind of a strange, awesome sentence is that?

car sex is the best.

the problem with car sex is that peter isn’t always eager to have it. it feels public, he’s always saying. like anybody could walk by the car and see his head between her legs as she scrambling to grab on to anything to center herself. 

so she makes car sex a night thing. so that people won’t just look in the car and see. they’ll really have to look. and if people are so interested in what’s happening in her car that she has to peer in than they have other problems. 

but even that adjustment doesn’t make him eager to fuck her sideways in her car. he’s go so many anxieties about the public thing. 

which is why MJ likes to get him mad. really mad. if she can piss peter off and get him to take out his anger in hot, angry sex…really, its a win-win for both of them. it’s almost a public service. because peter is always in a better mood after sex. and your friendly neighborhood spider-man is a better public servant if he’s in a good mood, ie. he’s gotten laid. 

so she makes it her life goal to piss peter parker off. NOT an easy task, okay?? he’s the human equivalent of a happy puppy. maybe some kind of lab. 

the most sure fire way she’s learned to get him there is to flirt with flash thompson. which is what she does. as often as possible. its always uncomfortable for flash who doesn’t know how to respond to her advances when everybody knows she’s with peter. but the best is peter. he watches on, eyes piercing, and his whole body goes rigid. 

today, she’s laying it on extra thick. she watched the episode of BSG the night before where apollo and starbuck fight in the ring. and she’s been itching ever since. 

mj even briefly touches flash’s shoulder. which peter intercepts and grabs his girlfriend’s hand in the middle of decathlon practice. he shakes his head and announces to no in particular, “nope.” flash snickers and manages a somewhat clever retort, “jealous parker?” somewhat being a low standard. 

but peter isn’t having it. he shoots flash the nastiest look and starts to pull mj from the gym. abe calls after them that practice isn’t over but mj can tell he isn’t listening. and she’s thrumming with excitement. its tingling down to her toes.

he notices her smirk and scoffs, “that shit isn’t cute, mj.” “aw, peter,” she purrs, “you do care.” he squints at her and decides, “where is your car?”

and she’s shocked. he usually doesn’t want to go at it this early in the day. its daylight out. that’s his no-go. that’s his people could see rhetoric. it’s so unlike peter. 

she must gape for a moment too long because he repeats, “mj. where. is. prudence?” she gulps and answers, “the back lot.” he doesn’t reply to that, just turns them around and starts to tug her toward the back lot.

see, usually peter isn’t like this. usually he lets it weigh on his mind a little longer, her purposeful flirting. he doesn’t lose his cool in decathlon. and when practice is over and its darker, he makes his move. 

but this is bold. blatant, too. everyone in practice has to know at the very least they’re going to go and smash faces. flash thompson is a weird sort of foreplay for them. 

he takes a quick look both ways when they get at her car and then opens her back door for her. she stares at him. so he speaks, “get in the freakin’ car, mj.” her lips curl deliciously wide, “this car?” he raises an eyebrow, “really? you’re gonna do this?” she shrugs one shoulder flirty, “maybe.” 

so peter nudges her in the car, giving her a tap on the ass. she bites her lip and figures she doesn’t need to be told twice. she crawls in the car and turns around. peter climbs in behind her and slams the door shut. he looms over her, nudging her legs apart so he can be between them, and then, he kisses her. 

its not a sweet kiss. its dirty and wild. and in broad-fucking-daylight. he gets a hand clutching the back of her neck with the slightest, sweetest pressure. it goes straight to her core. 

she moans into his mouth and peter yanks her thigh so she’s no longer sitting but instead is flat on her back. he fits his hips between hers and rolls up against her. she can feel the car shake. 

and mj is one of the only midtown students with a car. people are gonna know its her. and she’s dating peter. so it won’t be that much of a stretch to figure out the second party. 

also, she’s moaning into his kisses. which may help amateur detectives crack the case. 

peter slides his hand down her neck and between her breasts. and then further. the friction between them as he snaps his hips against hers is maddening. his hands going straight down into her jeans is killer. mj squeaks as he wastes no time sticking his fingers inside of her. usually he has more finesse about this. he’s gentler, softer and waits to warm her up more. but he doesn’t want any of that now. she can tell. he just wants to get her off as many times as possible. 

and that’s an agenda she can support. 

“peter,” she sobs and he bites her lip. hard enough that she hisses. his fingers are sliding in and out of her faster and faster. making his hand slick with her wetness. it pools in her panties. and he’s not fingering her to tease her. he’s working her over with an end goal in sight. 

her eyes flutter open and sunlight shines in. the fact that she’s in her car in daylight sends her over the edge. he doesn’t smother her mouth with a kiss as she cums. he lets her scream his name. he wants people to know who exactly is making her car shake. 

she barely has time to recover, its all happening so fast, before he’s yanking her jeans and panties off and unzipping his own pants. she’s faint from her first orgasm and whimpers, “let me return the favor.” “later,” he growls, “i wanna be inside you.” and fuck. she wants that, too, okay? like, she really wants that. 

he snakes his dick out of his boxers and pushes himself inside of her in one fluid motion. her head snaps back and she lets loose a cry. five minutes ago she was in decathlon practice. now she’s in her car in the back lot in daylight being pounded to oblivion by her boyfriend. what a weird day. 

as he sets a punishing pace, mj lets lose a guttural whine with each snap of his hips. peter lets her noises fill the car for only a minute before he offers her his fingers to suck on. the fingers that were inside of her. 

she tastes tangy and salty. and its strangely erotic. so she sucks on his fingers like he’s offered her a god damn present and moans around them. his eyes darken and he angles his hips upward to get deeper inside of her. 

her eyes roll back. heaven is here in the backseat of her crappy 1997 honda. 

peter fucks her. hard and dirty. she’s not sure how else to describe it. 

and when she cums, she sees white. beautiful, warm white light. it shoots through her and her legs clamp around his waist, milking him for every drop. she cries around his fingers and her whole body shakes. desperate to cling to this moment for as long as it can manage. 

when she collapses, absolutely spent, peter follows after her. a strangled cry of his own. and then the car is silent. 

he takes his fingers from her mouth and she runs her fingers through her hair, just at the nape of his neck. “i’m sorry,” he finally mumbles, “i was rough with you.” she’s breathless, “yea you were…but don’t be sorry.” “i broke our no daytime sex in the car rule.” “you made that dumbass rule, not me.” it was almost thrilling, doing it in the daytime. 

“everyone is gonna know what we came out here to do,” he settles on. she turns her face to kiss his cheek, “well…since they already know…might as well….”

and mj, with a few moments of great difficulty (because prudence is not a large car), turns peter on to his back. she can already feel his member rising to attention again. and figures, decathlon practice was pretty much over already anyway. she might as well enjoy this.

and she does. actually. correction. they both do. 

#headcanon ask #trash can

[thebuckblogimo]

My Ten All-Time Favorite Albums.

July 17, 2020

I’ve previously written that one of my roommates during senior year in college was a very musically-oriented guy. Rick, the original “Buddman,” Budd was from Pittsburgh, PA. As a kid he learned how to harmonize from his Dad who was a totally-into-it barbershopper. In high school the Buddman sang in a doo wop group called the Del Renos. In college he played the Hammond B3 organ for the Paramounts, the only soul band on the Michigan State University campus during the late ‘60s. Later in life he helped form a doo wop group, Deke and the Blazers, that did some national touring. It also bears mentioning that Rick could play the piano by ear. After downing eight or ten Rolling Rocks, he would fall forward, bang the keyboard with his head, and play those 88s with his ear. Just kidding, folks. Kinda, sorta...

The Buddman recently listed his ten favorite albums of all time on Facebook. He included some interesting background and personal insights with his selections. He then suggested I do the same. I took him up on the challenge, but it turned out to be a more difficult task than I had anticipated. It was hard for me to compare music from the ‘50 and ‘60s to music recorded many years later. And it was not easy to narrow my list down to ten. Nevertheless, I finally did so. I’m not on Facebook, so I’ve listed my top ten here:

1) A Package of 16 Big Hits (Motown)--This 1963 release was Berry Gordy’s very first compilation album. I associate many of its tracks with getting my driver's license at 16 and bombing around Detroit in my Dad's new Pontiac Bonneville. I think it's so good because all of the songs were recorded before Motown began to rely on a formula that employed funk brother Jack Ashford's incessant tambourine. Almost every tune on this record sounds different from the next. For example, Marvin Gaye's "Stubborn Kind of Fella" showcases the Vandellas singing background vocals and flautist Beans Bowles playing a distinctive solo. While Mary Wells' "The One Who Really Loves You" features an arrangement that includes a hint of vibraphone, some sweet piano, a syncopated conga drum and background harmonies provided by an obscure group called the Love Tones. Another unique cut is "Come and Get These Memories" by Martha and the Vandellas. It sounds unlike any other tune the group recorded after it. The LP's original cover graphic is really cool, too--a package wrapped in kraft paper and "stamped" in postal fashion with the names of the tunes and the artists who performed them. 2) Live at the Apollo, Volume II (James Brown)--It was Rick Budd who first took me to the bridge and dropped me into the funk of James Brown, the "godfather of soul" and the "hardest working man in show business." I know that the Buddman favors Live at the Apollo, JB's first live album from 1963. But I put my money on this 1968 two-record set. When I was living at Water's Edge apartments during my senior year in college, we'd play Side 2 at Saturday night parties, get up to dance, and not sit down until it came to an end--19 minutes and 37 seconds later. The live versions of "Let Yourself Go," "There Was a Time," "I Feel All Right," and "Cold Sweat," are amazing. The set also includes renditions of such pre-funk Brown ballads as "Prisoner of Love," "Try Me" and "Please, Please, Please." The 2001 Deluxe CD Edition includes a tantalizing 23-second "My Girl" musical interlude. All I can say is "...good gawd...uhh...ooh ahh...hah..." 3) Hot Buttered Soul (Isaac Hayes)--Released during June of 1969, this four-track album put Isaac Hayes on the R&B map for Stax-Volt. When I returned to MSU for my final quarter of school in the fall of '69, Hot Buttered Soul supplanted the Beatles' Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band as my favorite pot-smoking album. It should not, in my estimation, be played in the background or listened to while idly vacuuming the living room rug. The only way to truly appreciate this masterpiece of Memphis soul is to "actively" listen to it--with the volume up, the lights low, in an altered state of mind, on the couch. Let Hayes, with his deep-baritone rap; the Bar-Kays, delivering some twangy, psychedelic guitar riffs; and the plaintive sound of violin strings, which were added to the mix in Detroit (presumably by musicians from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra), take you on a journey that starts low, aims high and hits bone-jarring crescendos on Hayes' interpretations of "Walk on By" and a 19-minute version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." Listening to this album can be damn-near orgasmic. 4) Chicago Transit Authority (Chicago)--Although this eponymous album was released in 1969, I did not come to truly appreciate it until a couple years later. (The group, by the way, was sued by the CTA and soon changed its name to Chicago). I practically wore out my copy--or at least Side 1 of this two-album set--at my first apartment as a single guy on Appoline in Dearborn. I love the way these Windy City guys meld jazz, rock. soul and orchestral influences to produce a sound in a category with Tower of Power, as well as Blood, Sweat & Tears. Besides lead guitar, bass and drums, you can hear the "pow" of brass and the serenity of woodwinds on this production, provided by a saxaphone, trumpet, trombone, clarinet and flute. You can also hear an array of percussion instruments such as cowbell, claves, tambourine, etc. I'd kill to have any one of the three distinctive voices possessed by Robert Lamm, Peter Cetera and Terry Kath as they take turns on lead vocals. The six-minute instrumental "Introduction" on Side 1 takes the listener on a journey that climbs hills and descends into valleys. It then transitions into the rock classic "Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?" which, in turn, transitions into "Beginnings," yet another rock classic. The first cut on Side 2 features the underrated "Questions 67 and 68." While on Side 3 you'll find the self-indulgent "Free Form Guitar," which I hate, frankly, because it's "noise music" to my ear. There's also an excellent cover of the Spencer Davis Group's "I'm a Man." Best Chicago album of all time, in my opinion. 5) All Day Music (War)--I was in my first big-boy job at AAA when one day in 1971 I was knocked out by the title song from this album and walked over to Grinnell's music store after work to purchase it. There is no mistaking the unique sound of War as the group fuses elements of low-rider soul, rock, jazz and Latin rhythms. My main man Joe McCracken, some of the pals and I would invariably "tune up" singing "All Day Music" at "the pit," another name for my basement apartment, before heading out to Your Mustache, a raucous music room just two blocks from where I lived. I like all of the tunes on this album and want to give a shout-out to "Slippin' Into Darkness," but I can't lay enough praise on the title cut. It remains one of my all-time favorites, a true "nugget" that I never get tired of listening to. 6) The Best of The Guess Who Volume II (The Guess Who)--I'm not easily sold on groups with three guitars and a set of drums. I generally prefer rockers who add horns or a piano to the mix. It is particularly because of the skillful keyboard-playing ability of Burton Cummings, as well as his distinctive voice, that I love the work of these fellas from Winnipeg, Manitoba. In fact, before I lost my music collection in our fire of 2010, I owned more LPs by The Guess Who (probably 10) than any other group. This compilation was released in 1974. The track listing includes 11 tunes recorded between 1970 and '73, all written or co-written by Cummings, after long-time lead guitarist Randy Bachman left the group to form Bachman-Turner Overdrive, aka B.T.O. I absolutely love eight or nine of the cuts--"Albert Flasher," "Guns, Guns, Guns," "Sour Suite," "Glamour Boy" and more. But for my money this album's piece de resistance is "Runnin' Back to Saskatoon" with its building, straight-ahead momentum. M’boy Burton sings of hanging out in such Canadian prairie towns as Moose Jaw, Moosomin, Red Deer and Medicine Hat. How many times did we slam beers at the Phase 1 in Dearborn with that tune blasting on the juke box? After which we'd cruise back to my house on Rosemont in Detroit and blast it some more on the stereo. If "American Woman" is all you know about The Guess Who, make time to discover this Canadian group's north-of-the-border interpretation of rock 'n' roll. 7) Street Corner Symphony--(The Persuasions)--As I mentioned earlier, we'd tune up on "All Day Music" at my first apartment, but before we headed out the door for the "Mustache," we'd pull out this 1972 a cappella album, fire it up--along with a couple of jays--and sing some of its best tunes: a medley including "He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother" and "You've Got a Friend"; an upbeat version of the Temptations "I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You)"; "Temps Jam,” a medley of Temptations classics; a superb rendition of "So Much in Love," originally done by the Tymes; and "People Get Ready," the old Impressions chestnut. Only then would we be truly ready to hit the bar. This album sparked my initial interest in music made with nothing more than the human voice. I eventually purchased four or five Persuasions albums and several by other popular a cappella groups. An aside: One summer during the early '70s there was a lengthy beer distributors strike in Detroit. Luckily, in those days, we could easily cross the Ambassador Bridge or go through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel to get to Ontario to purchase Canadian suds. It was a sweltering Sunday afternoon when we picked up a case of LaBatt 50 Ale in Windsor and drove to some outdoor venue to see a concert featuring The Guess Who, the Persuasions and the Sun Ra Arkestra. Talk about an eclectic lineup of artists. To this day I consider that beer to be some of the tastiest I have ever swallowed, and that concert to be one of the best I have ever seen. 8) Crystal Green (Rainbow, featuring Will Boulware)--By the mid-to-late '70s, my musical preferences had started to take a turn. From then through the early 2000s I bought mostly what I call "WDET music," less commercially popular vinyl and CDs that I heard on Detroit's world-class (at the time) public radio station, as well as lots of jazz and fusion. The 1977 release of the rareish LP, Crystal Green (not to be confused with the group's similarly titled album, Over Crystal Green), is unquestionably my all-time-favorite jazz/fusion record. After I first heard the upbeat, six-minute "I Like It" on the radio, I knew I had to have the album for my collection. After I bought it and put it on my turntable at home, the mellow groove of the very first cut, "Hossan," knocked me off my feet. In fact, I love all six cuts on this album. I regret that Rainbow, featuring pianist Will Boulware, is not available on Spotify, my go-to music source these days. 9) Meet Me in Uptown (The Mighty Blue Kings)--I recall driving down Woodward Avenue in Royal Oak on my lunch hour one day in 1996, listening to WDET on my car's radio, when a raucous tune began to play. It immediately hit me. Bam! Right upside the head. I'd never heard anything quite like it before. When the deejay finally identified the hall-party sound from the set he had just played, it turned out to be "Jumpin' at the Green Mill" by the Mighty Blue Kings, a "jump blues" band out of Chicago. The seven-piece group with horns, piano and a stand-up bass features the "ballsy" baritone of Ross Bon. This unpretentiously produced CD was ahead of its time, recorded before Brian Setzer resuscitated swing music in the late '90s. "Jumpin' at the Green Mill" remains my favorite cut. Of the 13 selections on this album, here are the ones I'm partial to: "Loose Lips," "Cadillac Boogie," Big Mamou," "Meet Me in Uptown," "Rag Mop" and "Pink Cadillac." Kudos to WDET for opening my ears to this and other diverse types of music such as bluegrass, ska, world, Cajun, zydeco, Tex-Mex and sophisticated forms of hip-hop. 10) The Teenagers Featuring Frankie Lymon--I'm old enough, and bought records early enough, to be able to say that I purchased three 78 rpm discs in 1956 at the Two By Four Record Shop in Dearborn: "I Want You to Be My Girl" by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers; "Stranded in the Jungle" by the Cadets; and "Priscilla" by Eddie Cooley and the Dimples. But it was the summer of that year when my Auntie Julie surprised a then-nine-year-old "little Lenny" with his first 331/3 rpm "long play" album. This platter on the dark red GEE label sparked my lifelong love affair with doo wop (although I don't recall the music being called that in those days). Young Frankie's 13-year-old soprano had a far sweeter sound than Michael Jackson's shrill voice at the same age. And the Teenagers 17-year-old Sherman Garnes edges out Melvin Franklin of the Temptations as my all-time-favorite bass singer. I almost slipped the 1998 release of Trampoline by the Mavericks, featuring the catchy and energetic "Dance the Night Away," with the soaring tenor of lead singer Raul Malo, into the number 10 slot here. However, I couldn't turn my back on the kid group that is at the foundation of every musical emotion I have ever felt.

The end.

[injectionmoldchina]

New Post has been published on http://www.injectionmouldchina.com/cool-plastic-molded-part-images/

Cool Plastic Molded Part images

A few nice plastic molded part images I found:

Printing the past: 3-D archaeology and the first Americans

Image by BLMOregon Photos were captured at the Pacific Slope Archaeological Laboratory on the Oregon State University Campus in Corvallis, Dec. 13, 2016, to accompany the feature story below: "Printing the past: 3-D archaeology and the first Americans." Article online here (and below): goo.gl/viKEZF

Photo by Matt Christenson, BLM Story by Toshio Suzuki, BLM

—————————————-

For the first Americans, and the study of them today, it all starts with a point.

A sharp point fastened to a wooden shaft gave the hunter 13,000 years ago a weapon that could single-handedly spear a fish or work in numbers to take down a mammoth.

For a prehistoric human, these points were the difference between life and death. They were hunger-driven, handmade labors of love that took hours to craft using a cacophony of rock-on-rock cracks, thuds and shatters.

They have been called the first American invention, and some archaeologists now think 3-D scanning points can reveal more information about both the technology and the people.

The Pacific Slope Archaeological Laboratory at Oregon State University takes up only a few rooms on the ground floor of Waldo Hall, one of the supposedly haunted buildings on campus.

There are boxes of cultural history everywhere, and floor-to-ceiling wood cabinets with skinny pull-out drawers housing even more assets, but the really good stuff, evidence of the earliest known cultures in North America, lives in an 800-pound gun safe.

Loren Davis, anthropology professor at OSU and director of the lab, thinks 3-D scanning, printing, and publishing can circumvent the old traditions of the field, that artifacts are only to be experienced in museums and only handled by those who have a Ph.D.

“We are reimagining the idea of doing archaeology in a 21st century digital way,” said Davis. “We don’t do it just to make pretty pictures or print in plastic, we mostly want to capture and share it for analysis,” he added.

Nearby in the L-shaped lab, one of his doctoral students is preparing to scan a point that was discovered on Bureau of Land Management public lands in southeast Oregon.

Thousands of points have been unearthed since the 1930s in North America, the first being in eastern New Mexico near a town called Clovis. That name is now known worldwide as representing the continent’s first native people.

More recently, though, other peoples with distinctive points were found elsewhere, and some researchers think it means there was differing technology being made at the same time, if not pre-Clovis.

One such location is the Paisley Caves in southern Oregon ― one of the many archaeologically significant sites managed by the BLM.

The earliest stem point from Paisley Caves was scanned at Davis’ lab and a 3-D PDF was included in a 2012 multi-authored report in the journal Science.

Davis estimates his lab at OSU has scanned as many as 400 points, including others from BLM-managed lands in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

More scans would mean a bigger database for comparing points and determining what style they are.

“Ideally, we want to get as many artifacts scanned as possible,“ said Davis. “The BLM offers a lot of access to public data ― this is just another way of doing it.”

—

Transforming a brittle piece of volcanic glass, by hand, into a beautiful and deadly 4-inch-long spear point is a process.

In one hand would be a hard shaping rock, or maybe a thick section of antler, and in the other would be the starter stone, which in addition to igneous could be jasper, chert, or any other chippable rock that creates a hide-puncturing level of sharpness.

After what might be hundreds of controlled strokes and rock rotations, the rough shape of a lance or spear tip would take form. Discarded shards of stone would often result in more points, or other useful tools like scrapers and needles.

Clovis points are distinguished by their length, bifacial leaf shape and middle channels on the bottom called flutes. Eventually the repetitive flaking of the point would stop, and the hunter would use precise pressure points to create the flute on one or each side that likely helped slot the finished product into a spear-like wooden pole.

The hunter was now mobile and ready to roam.

—

Prior to 3-D scanning, OSU doctoral student Sean Carroll picks up a can of Tinactin, gives it the obligatory shake, and completely covers “one of the oldest technologies in North America” with antifungal spray.

The talc and alcohol from the athlete’s foot remedy helps the software see even the slightest indents in the point, and it rubs right off afterwards.

“I want to scan all the Clovis I can get my hands on,” said Carroll, who came to OSU because of Davis’ 3-D lab and is using the medium as a big part of his dissertation.

Two random items, a power plug adapter and a ball of clay, are placed on each side of the fluted point to give the camera and light projector perspective. The objects create margins that force the structured light patterns to bend and capture more of the point’s surface detail.

Even so, like the hunter rotating the shaping rock, the archaeologist has to rotate the foam square holding the three items. Each scan takes about six seconds.

Carroll and Davis estimate that the learning curve for this process was about 100 hours. One hundred hours of trial and error — and a lot of watching YouTube videos — for a finished product that they think is indisputably worth it.

A completed 3-D scan of a point will have about 40,000 data points per square inch. The measurements are so precise, they can determine the difference between flake marks as thin as a piece of paper.

Davis says no archaeologist with a pair of calipers can come close to measuring the data obtained via 3-D, because simply, “there are some jobs that robots are really good at.”

“If the end game is measurements, well you could spend your whole life with a pair of calipers trying to achieve what we can do in 10 minutes,” said Davis.

—

Last year, the famous human relative nicknamed Lucy had 3-D scans of her 3.2 million year old bones published in the journal Nature.

In 2015, archaeologists from Harvard University completed a 3-D scan of a winged and human-headed stone bull from Mesopotamia that stands 13 feet high at the Louvre Museum.

And the Smithsonian Institution is currently beta testing a website dedicated to publishing 3-D models from its massive collection, including molds of President Abraham Lincoln’s face and the entire Apollo 11 command module.

All of these new-school efforts are based upon the old-school scientific principles of preservation and promotion.

Rock points, fossils, hieroglyphics — various forms of cultural assets are susceptible to environmental conditions and not guaranteed to be around forever. Three-dimensional scanning is the most accurate way to digitally preserve these items of merit.

Once accurate preservation is done, there are opportunities for promoting not just science, but specific research goals.

In the case of the Lucy bones, scientists hope that crowdsourcing the 3-D data will help get more experts to look at the fossils and prove that the tree-dwelling ape died from a fall.

When it comes to comparing one specific stemmed point to an entire hard drive of scanning data, BLM archaeologist Scott Thomas thinks the work being done at the OSU lab can move archaeology to a new level.

“The 3-D scanning method blows anything we have done out of the water,” said Thomas.

That ability to compare points can lead to insights on how these hunting tools moved over geography, and even expand theories about how native groups learned new technologies.

“It’s going to be a really powerful tool someday — not too far off,” said Thomas.

While long-term data analysis may not be the sexiest form of archaeology, holding a 3-D printed stem point is a pretty cool educational tool.

Davis of OSU has incorporated 3-D prints into his classes and said his students are able to make a tactile connection with artifacts that otherwise are not available.

“The students really enjoy these printed and digital models and often say that they are almost like the real thing,” said Davis.

—

This spring, Davis is traveling to Magadan, Russia — aka Siberia — to inspect and scan some points that may be linked to Clovis peoples.

The goal in Siberia, of course, is to further expand the 3-D database. He is specifically interested in comparing them to stems from a BLM-managed site he excavated in Idaho called Cooper’s Ferry.

As his student, Carroll, begins to clean up and put the scanned points into their individually labeled ziplocked bags, Davis can’t help but mention how much easier international research could be with 3-D scanning.

“You can share cultural resource info with people in other countries and you don’t have to come visit,” he said, adding that Russia isn’t the easiest country to enter.

“It’s as easy as sending an email,” Carroll agreed.

Davis then mentioned his 11-year-old child and how much of school curriculum these days is web-based as opposed to text-based.

“There’s nothing wrong with books, I’m a huge fan of books, but it’s a different way of learning,” said the archaeology professor.

And with that, he made another point.

— by Toshio Suzuki, [email protected], @toshjohn

Best places to find 3-D archaeology online: — Sketchfab.com is one of the biggest databases on the web for 3-D models of cultural assets. Institutions and academics alike are moving priceless treasures to the digital space for all to inspect. Two examples: via the British Museum, a 7.25-ton statue of Ramesses II is available for viewing and free download; and via archaeologist Robert Selden Jr., hundreds of 3-D models are open to the public for study, including several Clovis points from the Blackwater Draw National Historic Site in New Mexico. — The Smithsonian Institution is bringing the best of American history to a new audience via their 3-D website (3d.si.edu). Amelia Earhart’s flight suit? Check. Native American ceremonial killer whale hat? Check. Face cast of President Abraham Lincoln? Check and check — there are two. And their biggest 3-D scan is still coming: the 184-foot-long space shuttle Discovery. — Visitors to Africanfossils.org can filter 3-D model searches by hominids, animals and tools, and also by date, from zero to 25 million years ago. The sleek website, with partners like National Geographic and the National Museums of Kenya, makes it easy to download or share 3-D scans, and each item even comes with a discovery backstory and Google map pinpointing exactly where it was found.

#Cool #images #Molded #Part #Plastic #Injection Mould

[mageknight404]

Hey, Ray! It's thanks to your videos on the 3DS release of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney that I got into the series. After the first trial of Turnabout Goodbyes, I decided to buy the trilogy for myself, and I had a great time with all three games! It was the characters' personalities and developments that kept me engaged with the stories they had to tell, so I'm curious. Who are your favourite characters in the series and why?

Hey, glad to hear it! The Ace Attorney games are a lot of fun and remain the only visual novel series I can easily get into, so I’m glad others can find it just as accessible.

There are a lot of characters in this series that I like, both major and minor, throughout the entirety of the series, so I’m rather spoilt for choice. So I think it’d be best to list my Top 3 under three categories - Legacy(main characters across the whole main series), Pre-Apollo Justice(characters from the original trilogy and the Investigations games), and Apollo Justice onward. Likely spoilers on this list, but I’ll try to keep them light.

LEGACY

1. Maya Fey - I think it’s pretty safe to say Maya’s my favorite character in the whole series. She’s cute, her antics are hilarious, she has great banter with much of the main cast, and she goes through so much turmoil in only 3 years(ranging from losing loved ones, being tried for murder multiple times, and being kidnapped), and even more when she returns for Spirit of Justice, yet sticks it out with a smile and a grin no matter how bleak it gets.

She always tries to be helpful and shoulders a lot of burden when she feels she’s let people down(mostly Phoenix). She acts playful and junk when it comes to her becoming the next Master of the Kurain Channeling Technique, but she certainly understands the gravity of it as the games go on and we learn more about her and her family, ultimately embracing her title as Master come Spirit of Justice; at this point she’s 28 years old now, yet is still the same cheerful happy-go-lucky spirit medium we’ve all come to be familiar with. She even manages to utilize her powers in clever applications several times to either help herself or others get out of a jam. She’s a well-written, fun, and engaging character and I’m looking forward to what Capcom does with her next.

(also she looks so freaking cool in Spirit of Justice, look at her!)

2. Miles Edgeworth - Edgeworth is another dude who benefits from having so much character development in the main series and his spinoff games, going from an antagonistic jerkface with a smug streak, to a morally conflicted lawyer seeking his true purpose in the law world at large, to being a genuine rival and friend to Phoenix in their search of finding the truth in cases, which makes it all the more incredible when he was intended to be a one-off unlikable boss character in his initial appearance in the first game. He’s smooth, he has great wit and top dialogue, and it’s all the more hilarious when he makes simple blunders and loses his composure. You really do get to appreciate the nuances in his character as it gradually changes with each game in the series, and the payoff being fantastic post-AJ.

Investigations 2 gets special mention as it goes to great strides to show Edgeworth’s legal conflict when his badge and methods get called into question, suggesting he is more like a defense attorney than a prosecutor. Despite all odds he is unfettered and continues to pursue the truth by carving his own path instead of embracing the teachings of his father Gregory, or mentor Manfred von Karma, to the hilt.

3. Ema Skye - Here’s a character that isn’t as utilized as the other two and was retconned into existence post-original trilogy, yet still managed to be much more than a Maya expy. She’s introduced as a replacement for her in the added Case 5 for the DS port of the first game - plucky, bright, and really into science and forensics, and is looking to learn more about these to help solve crimes, starting with clearing her sister’s name of murder. She eventually gets to study abroad and is ready to apply her earned knowledge into action come Investigations(which was supposed to be her game but eh, it worked out for Edgy in the end)…

…And then we see her again in AJ and she’s just a detective, bitter that she failed her exam to become a forensic investigator and her personality change becomes all the more sad and real. Even so, her eyes still light up whenever she gets a chance to practice her skills, and when she returns in Spirit of Justice, now a full-fledged forensic investigator, her cheerfulness, inquisitive nature, and plucky attitude return in full force, and I get so giddy seeing Ema be so happy after her sour streak two games prior. Like Maya, Ema always tries to be the bright spot if she can lend a hand to a friend, and she’s such a fangirl of Edgeworth, even in SoJ.

Me personally, I’m waiting for some genuine chill interaction between Ema and Maya in a future title. (aside from the very end of the DLC case in Spirit of Justice, we never get to see the two interact much on amicable terms, which made me sad.)

PRE-APOLLO JUSTICE

1. Adrian Andrews(Justice For All/Trials and Tribulations) - JFA was a game full of problems, but Case 4 was not one of them. Headlining a great deal of that case was Adrian, manager to the accused, Matt Engarde and stellar Samus Aran cosplayer. She starts off cold, confrontational, and analytical but is a classic and rather tragic defrosting ice queen. She was left devastated after her close friend and mentor(sister in the anime) Celeste Inpax commits suicide after a skeezy and petty love triangle with her, Engarde, and his rival Juan Corrida goes horribly awry, which almost drove Adrian to commit suicide herself after losing her pillar of strength(Adrian has a dependency issue). This is brutally dragged out in court in order to get her to talk about her role in tampering with the crime scene of the main case, and it just about leaves her as a broken mess.

Fortunately for her, the truth about the crime comes out and exonerates her as being a potential murderer, but still has to do jail time for her role mentioned above. She doesn’t mind though and we see her with a smile on her face to show that she is now free of grief and ready to move on. Her debt is paid seven months later, as we see her again in Case 2 of T&T having done her time, which a much sunnier disposition and outwardly friendly towards Phoenix(who she was at odds with for most of Case 4 in JFA). We even getting to see more of her real self - still meticulous, but now helpful yet very clumsy and prone to making slip-ups as a result. I know a few people who have suicidal thoughts, and it’s very disparaging to see a woman like her so broken in JFA, but so refreshing to see her be so better off in T&T, as seeing Adrian smile is a wonderful feeling. As far as incidentals are concerned, she’s my favorite of the original trilogy. (and it made me feel all the more sorry for her seeing her squirm in despair animated in the anime)

- 1b. Lana Skye(Ace Attorney - Rise from The Ashes) - Ema’s older sister and the accused of Case 5 of the first game. I’m putting this here because Lana shares many traits with Adrian - mannerisms, troubled past, and desperation to hide said past from others(in Lana’s case it’s to hide it from her sister instead of herself). They even look similar to one another, haha. She goes from being a skilled attorney to Chief Prosecutor, but is actually more of a puppet being stringed along by the mastermind of the crime and has done some very morally grey things in regards to her troubled past, all to make sure to protect Ema’s innocence even if it damns her own image. It wouldn’t be fair if I mentioned one and not the other because of how similar both Lana and Adrian are as characters, so why not.

Also I really like Lana’s prosecutor design and wished she showed up or got referenced to in future games along with Ema.

2. Dick Gumshoe - He doesn’t appear in AJ onward except in a flashback, otherwise I’d consider him a Legacy character. Gumshoe is the Maya to Edgeworth’s Phoenix before Kay Faraday; a bumbling, scatterbrained detective, and the posterboy for pistolwhipped butt monkey who’s always in danger of having his salary slashed, but he’s a helpful dude and always pulls through at the last second when it counts, pal. There really isn’t much I can say about him, as he’s very much a self-demonstrating example, but he’s so much fun that I don’t think it matters.

What really makes Gumshoe so much fun for me is how much of a foil he is to Edgeworth and his interactions with him in general, as well as the lengths he’s willing to go to help him out. Investigations made it clear that he has no less than infinite respect for him from the moment they met, seen in Case 4, and more or less weighs on him hand and foot from then on. Edgeworth may find some of his antics irritating, but nonetheless considers him a reliable asset and welcome ally to help solve cases, likely due to how dependable he is in critical moments. Even when he’s in danger of losing his job or is kicked off the case, he still finds ways to help the cause, either by himself or by enlisting Phoenix’s help(to the point that part of me wonders what’d happen if Nick actually hired him to work at the office). He’s a good man, loyal to his job and his supervisor, and I can’t help but admire the man.

3. Shi-Long Lang(Investigations 1 and 2) - Hugh Jackman and his Wolf Fang Fist! Lang’s more or less Edgeworth’s rival in these games(moreso the first) and is very much an “act now, debate later” fellow, whose ideology comes to blows with Edgeworth’s more than a few times, and in his haste often makes a few leaps in judgement that punches holes in his logic. At the same time, he’s a badass Interpol agent with a boa collar coat, a smooth theme, and is a father to his very loyal police force. Despite conflicting ideologies, he’s still able to help Edgeworth out from time to time, even if it’s not for his sake but for Lang’s own or the case at large. And when things get serious, oh boy is he ready to throw down(see both Case 5s). He’s a pretty simple dude, but I just really like him.

(also it takes some balls to be able to block Franziska’s whip midlash)

APOLLO JUSTICE ONWARD

1. Apollo Justice - Wow, surprise! I like the main character of this arc! To be perfectly honest, I liked Apollo in his home game, but didn’t think much of him at the time as he was more or less in the back seat for 40% of his own game, while Phoenix did the rest of the work for him and usurped glory that should’ve gone to him alone.

That all changed starting with Dual Destinies and especially with Spirit of Justice.

Apollo was intended to be Phoenix’s replacement as he starts his own thing, but Capcom exec mandates forced Nick to be included in AJ and he was shafted some prime opportunities for establishing character development and backstory, only really getting some hints about his heritage to another character. Dual Destinies gives him a best friend who instilled a backstory for his rather quirky catchphrase “I’m fine!”, turning it into something heartwarming when he reveals they used to shout it to one another to lift their moods, and then made Apollo go on the warpath when he learns of his pal’s death and who might be responsible for it. Expanded even further in the next game where we finally find out about Apollo’s upbringing, his biological and foster fathers, and his relation to the local prosecutor Nahyuta Sahdmahdi. These events put my boy in the spotlight, who proves by the end of the game that he’s more than capable to walk tall with the big boys. He goes from being a loud and hot-blooded youth to being a worthy member of the Wright Anything Agency Triuumverate, to eventually standing on his own as a bonafide lawyer.

SoJ was the best thing to happen to this kid, and I’m so glad he was able to rise to the challenge.

2. Simon Blackquill(Dual Destinies/Spirit of Justice) - Simon is the local prosecutor for DD and makes a welcome extended cameo in SoJ. He’s a prison inmate, but gets to do the lawyering thing from the slammer because he’s just that good. His main deal is that he serves as an antagonistic force to Athena as Edgeworth was to Nick and Klavier to Apollo, and he was a bit of an edgy dude himself being a swordsman and styled like a samurai, always quick with his razor-sharp wit AND razor-sharp wind, commanding his pet hawk to handle evidence, SILENCE-ing the crowd, and using his psychological knowledge to play the situation to his advantage. He was also a jerk for most of DD.

Point at hand here is that while I thought the game was playing up his psyche knowledge a little too much(he came off more as a more intense version of AA!Edgeworth instead), he was still a wonder to witness. He’s a delightful smartass with a really cool theme and I dug the swordsman motif. Dude even breaks free of his shackles multiple times whenever he’s ready to make a serious statement. Eventually we find out that he was framed for the death of Athena’s mother(of course) and is acquitted by DD’s end. Though it was a little hokey, I did get a great feels moment between and Athena and thought nothing else of it.

And then he shows up in SoJ to assist Athena in Case 4. Here, all limiters are off - he’s a full snarkmaster with excellent comebacks, such as calling Nahyuta “Sad Monk” constantly, SILENCEs him, and even tells Athena to get her act in gear in a great moment when she breaks down in the middle of the case. This case made me appreciate Simon a hell of a lot more, and it showed that he was a great foil and aloof big brother figure to Athena when they’re on the same side for once. He’d better come back for more!

3. Dhurke Sahdmahdi(Spirit of Justice) - THIS FUCKING GUY. Introduced as the possible culprit of Queen Amara’s assassination of the Kingdom of Khura'in and insinuator of starting the rebellion against its corrupt legal system, we eventually find out that he’s actually Apollo’s foster father and is the most real, coolest guy ever. Seriously, I adore this dude. He’s such a nice, chill guy and a respectable father figure, constantly lamenting that he wasn’t able to be in Apollo’s life more often due to him being a wanted man. Case 5 is a roller coaster of intensity, and Dhurke helps bring out a lot of fun in that case. I can’t say anymore without going into heavy spoilers, but by playing the game all the way through, you’ll understand why I love this man so much.

It should be noted that SoJ’s Khura'in segments being so unrelentingly bleak for the first half of the game was actually turning me off from playing it, as I became gradually more and more apathetic to the kingdom’s plight and was in fact dangerously close to dropping the game for a while as I was getting impatient and disinterested… until the backstory bomb dropped about Dhurke and Apollo halfway through Case 3. This instantly revitalized my curiosity about the two and their relationship and helped push me to complete the game. Long story short, the payoff was damn well worth it, and Dhurke footed that bill personally.

Also he’s voiced by freaking Jamieson Price. Bless this dragon who never yields.

HONORABLE MENTION - Athena Cykes - I mentioned a few years back that Athena was a character who when she was first introduced, I had apprehension toward, as I was forebodingly expecting her to be a super annoying sidekick or supporting character. Her design, which I thought was silly at first but has now grown on me immensely, did not help at the time. Then Dual Destinies came out and I was immensely surprised at how much I enjoyed her character.

Let’s be honest, DD was Athena’s game. Even though she, Nick, and Apollo were tritagonists, its story centered around her and she was featured prominently in every case, DLC included. As a whole, this was Athena’s story. People may have differing opinions whether or not this was warranted or justified, especially when it meant pushing AJ alumni to the side, but Athena kept proving her salt in each case regardless - whether it’s by serving as the heart for Phoenix or Apollo, or getting dirty herself to save her close friend Juniper, twice, she was ready to help out.

I have a very delicate tolerance when it comes to Genki Girl characters - if done properly, I pretty much love them on the spot; if done poorly, I want to wring their necks out of existence. It all depends on how well the girl in question exerts her energy. And to my surprise, Athena passed with flying colors. She’s excitable, competitive, and eccentric, with just a pinch of sass. She’s also really impetuous, but remains focused enough to deliver a good argument, especially when it comes to using her heightened hearing to dispel one’s discord in their heart. When the pressure is too much, she breaks down and regresses back to her sheltered childhood state where she becomes emotionally repressed and almost catatonic, yet even in her darkest hour she fights against the pain.

I found myself enjoying Athena’s character arc a lot in DD and really grew to like her more and more. Her willingness to help stems from her relationship with Simon and wanting to set him free by proving he didn’t murder her mother, as they were close friends prior to that event, and I genuinely wanted to see her succeed. Outside of her heavy plot, she’s a fun character and, I’ll be honest, I’m thankful her role was toned down to a more supportive one in SoJ to let the AJ alumni shine(and boy howdy do they ever).

Oof, that was a lot to get off my chest, but I hope this was satisfactory for you, anon!

#ace attorney #characters #opinion

[robininthelabyrinth]

Coldwave AU, where Len was burgling STAR Labs when the accelerator blew up - and thus he ended up merged with Stein as Firestorm

Fic: In What Furnace Was Thy Brain? (Ao3 Link)Fandom: The FlashPairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, Clarissa Stein/Martin Stein

Summary: Yes, this time Len will admit his plan had been really stupid.

———————————————————————————————–

Len’s bored, and being bored, he looks for something to do.

Mick would call this the Most Dangerous of moods, comparing it to his own impulses towards pyromania, the point where the itching under his skin has gotten to the point where something needs to be on fire and anything will do. This is when Mick starts trying to distract Len, keep him busy, so that his brain won’t seize on the first, worst thing to do.

But Mick’s not here right now.

That’s presumably why he picks up a newspaper at the newstand about the Particle Accelerator being opened up and goes “I’m going to rob that.”

After all, when everyone’s eyes are going to be fixed on Wells, Wells’ eyes aren’t going to be fixed on all the interesting tech prototypes he keeps in the back parts of his labs.

Unsurprisingly, like all of Len’s absolute worst ideas, it goes sideways almost immediately.

Breaking in is easy enough: service entrance to the gigantic ring of the Accelerator itself, a forgotten worker’s tunnel that wasn’t closed all the way, and from there into the back part of the lab. Len’s figuring on staying there while they turn the Accelerator on, stowing the take somewhere, then sneaking out with the gigantic crowd up front before coming back after everyone’s already discovered the theft and stopped looking for it.

He’s gotten inside, no problem, and he’s even made it to the labs with the prototypes – so many prototypes, many with helpful labels in someone called CR’s handwriting – to start looking for the goods, but there’s a noise. Just a whisper.

Len didn’t get to be this good a thief by ignoring his instincts, so he hides himself in one of the labs.

A hand mirror shows him the main hallway without revealing the whites of his eyes.

There’s a faint crackle of sound and the scent of – ozone? Like lightning? – and a man appears at the other end of the hallway. Len didn’t see him approach.

Must be the angle of the mirror.

The guy walks over and hits wall, which slides open. He ducks inside. Maybe five minutes later, he walks back out, door sliding shut again.

Secret doorway. That’s got to have some cool tech stuff hidden away.

Len grins, but he doesn’t head out immediately. The guy – tall, dark hair, Caucasian, probably works here – did appear out of basically nowhere, after all; and if there’s one secret door there may be secret passages.

He waits about ten minutes to be sure the coast is clear. The roaring of the crowd outside is helpful as a guide: the presentation has definitely started.

Len’s barely started to head back to the lab’s tech stash when the alarms start blaring.

Top volume, too; that doesn’t sound promising. He was pretty sure there were, like, ten variations of “don’t worry, it’s 100% safe” in the newspaper.

Looks like someone miscalculated.

Abruptly, some guy – tall, kinda muscular – runs into the hallway at full speed, passing right by Len without so much as a glance at him, heading inside the Accelerator and yelling something along the lines of “if I don’t get out, you’ve got to close the door! Promise me, Cisco!” over his shoulder.

Well, that’s some serious Apollo 13 stuff right there.

Len plays a hunch and follows him into the actual Accelerator. If there are alarms going off, his plan of stealing things from the labs isn’t going anywhere anyway, so he may as well figure out what’s gone wrong.

“What are you doing?” Len asks the guy.

“How’d you get in – no, I don’t care, hold this,” the guy says. “There’s something wrong with the Accelerator. It’s about to blow.”

“Blow as in –”

“Blow.”

“Shit,” Len says. This is why Mick vetoes his dumber ideas.

He should go now.

“I’m going to try to adjust the inside to make it explode upwards,” the guy says. “It’ll still be bad, dark matter’s going to go everywhere, but we won’t – it won’t decimate the surrounding area.”

“I don’t want this city decimated, even in part,” Len says, because that’s just no. “What can I do to help?”

“Like this –”

About four minutes in, the guy says, “My name’s Ronnie. Ronnie Raymond. You?”

“Leonard Snart,” Len says, too focused on rewiring the relevant sequence to think of one of his alibis. “Like this?”

“Yes! Just like that, perfect!”

“Great,” Len says. “Now let’s get out of here before we blow up.”

Ronnie checks his watch. “It’s too late,” he says grimly. “By the time we get there, Cisco will be locking the door –”

“Screw the door,” Len says, and drags him towards the worker’s exit.

The Accelerator is starting up.

This is the stupidest plan Len’s ever made, and he’s glad, perversely, that Mick isn’t here, even if every single day since the fire he’s woken up willing to give his liver in exchange for seeing him again, because at least if Mick’s angry at him somewhere, Mick’s not here. Mick’s not going to die with him.

Because Ronnie has a fiancée he’s mentioned like three times now, and he’s going to get married and be happy and have a purpose in life that isn’t just aimlessly chasing adrenaline high after adrenaline high as if it can make up for the gaping hole in his side where he left his husband and partner behind.

Len glances behind him.

The sparks are starting.

“Hey, Ronnie,” he says as they get to the door.

“What?” Ronnie gasps, prying the door open. The whistling is so loud that it’s hard to hear him. There’s something whirling above their head and it’s coming down towards them at full blast.

“Good luck with your girl,” Len says, and shoves him through.

The next wave hits Len dead in the chest, and Len has just enough time to think, “I guess that’s all she wrote –” before he’s gone.

And then he’s gone.

Gone.

Not gone?

The first few months are –

He’s not sure.

He’s not entirely there.

He walks and he falls and sometimes he flies and he doesn’t entirely know what’s going on; everything’s confused, he just gets flashes of strange things –

Math formulas he never learned –

Heists he barely recalled that he remembered –

Technology that he was sure died out before his time –

Mick –

Clarissa –

He doesn’t even know a Clarissa –

He doesn’t know how long it is before his brain starts actually recording what’s going on around him instead of just experiencing it.

He wakes up in a bed made of boxes.

He lifts his head.

“Hey, hey,” a woman’s voice says, sounding calming. He looks at her. She’s thirty, homeless. Unclean hair, circles under her eyes, puffy cheeks, several layers of coats. There’s a blanket over her legs from where she’s been sleeping not far from him.

Who is that girl?

That’s not his voice.

He opens his mouth, but he can’t speak. The thoughts are gone, the words are garbled.

It’s like two sets of words are trying to come out of his mouth at once.

“Relax, babe, it’s cool,” she says.

It’s not cool, it’s Cold, he thinks.

That one was him. Cold’s his prison nickname, Hot and Cold for Mick and him; he’d developed a fondness for temperature-themed puns since then.

“You want some food?” she asks. “Or some more sleep?”

I demand you tell me where I am at once! And – good lord, what am I wearing –

I need to know where I am and how long and –

His hand is on fire.

Is his hand on fire?

My hands are on fire! My head is on fire!

No.

Not fire.

Fire is Mick, the fire took Mick, the fire took him and tried to eat him and Mick stayed with the fire instead of coming with him –

I don’t know a Mick.

Of course you know Mick! What sort of universe would it be if he didn’t know Mick, if he –

Oh.

Oh, oh, oh, wait.

He knows this.

He knows –

Damnit, if he could only think; this is something to do with Mick, some diagnosis someone had suggested which had been wrong, wrong, wrong, but he remembers reading up on the symptoms just in case, the symptoms, something with the brain, something –

If he could only think –

He forces his mind to be quiet, just closes his eyes, rocking back and forth a bit, focusing on blank-blank-blank, white sheet of paper – formulas – no, white, white snow, white empty snow like in the mountains they went once – skiing is delightful this time of year – he’s never been skiing, skiing is for yuppies – I beg your pardon – goddamnit, think of the white snow, just the snow, nothing but the snow –

His mind slowly stills, and the words finally can come.

“Psychotic,” he forces through numb lips. “First break. Late –”

The buzz in the back of his mind gets louder; he ignores it.

“Late onset,” he manages to say. “Late onset – schizophrenia. Hearing voices. Disordered thinking.”

Actually, I must admit, that makes a certain amount of sense.

“Man, that sucks,” the woman says. “But still, you’ve been, like, catatonic for ages; this has got to be a step forward, right? You take some bad shit or something?”

I don’t do drugs.

That was weirdly in chorus or something.

“No,” he finally says aloud. It’s weirdly easier when the voices and the memories and everything drowning him seem to be in agreement. And then – “How long?”

“No idea, man,” the woman tells him regretfully. Her name’s Jaz; he remembers her telling him that over soup. They had soup yesterday; she fed him. Jaz and Rashid and Josh and Aryeh and Fatima; they were all homeless and they’d seen him with his vacant eyes and starving cheeks and sleeping where he fell, and they saw kin – they’d brought him to their boxes and let him sleep there with them, and they fed him when they had something to spare. “Fatima found you first, but you already looked pretty ragged. You know where you were when it started?”

He can’t even remember his own name.

He knows that there’s a Mick somewhere, or maybe he doesn’t; he knows there’s a Clarissa who’s worried, or maybe he doesn’t, but damnit, his brain just isn’t responding.

Disordered thinking is quite common in untreated schizophrenia. Hallucinations, too – that explains how he’d felt certain that his hands and his head were on fire.

He needs a way to tell time that doesn’t involve a stop or a finish.

In physics –

Fuck physics.

He raises his hand up to his head.

Shit, his hair’s nearly an inch and a half long, maybe two inches; he can feel it starting to curl like a crazy person. It does that every time, so he normally keeps it clipped – that’s half an inch – and the average person grows half an inch of hair every month.

So, two months, maybe three.

That was quite clever.

Yeah, it really was, wasn’t it?

That��s why he’s won all those awards.

…he’s never won an award in his life.

Great, the delusions have started.

He needs to get treatment.

Most definitely.

There are pills for this. Cognitive therapy. Plenty of things.

That would be helpful. And we need to get away from these homeless people – they’re certainly not going to help, and they might be a danger. Or in danger from me, for that matter.

They’re homeless people. They don’t have to help, but they did; they helped keep me alive. They’re perfectly capable of determining the level of danger they’re comfortable with here.

If that were true, they wouldn’t be homeless.

No need to be fucking classist about it. There are so many reasons you can become homeless.

…perhaps it was a bit of a hasty judgment.

Besides, I’m pretty damn white-passing, at least until my hair starts going crazy. What sort of moron helps a mentally ill white man? That’s the most dangerous creature on earth. Look at the statistics.

I beg your pardon! That’s hardly true!

Great. So now I’m an idiot. No one ever said anything about spontaneously developing narrow-minded privilege when you got sick.

I am – good lord, I’m arguing to myself about identity politics. I must be –

Don’t say ‘crazy’.

Fine. Schizophrenic. That seems like a reasonable explanation; it’s supposed to come on rather abruptly, isn’t it?

Yeah, but there’s treatment.

I should obtain treatment as quickly as possible.

Right, so treatment. Number one on the To Do list.

And finding Clarissa.

Who the hell is Clarissa?

Images swim sickeningly before his face: a woman, young, vivacious, smiling; eyes glowing under her veil on their wedding day, lips curled up like she had a secret smile; hair tossed over her shoulder as she laughs, bringing in dinner and kissing him on the cheek as he worked on the whiteboard –

None of that has ever happened to him. For fucks’ sake, he might appreciate the occasional woman or two, he might even accept that somewhere lost in his memory he might marry one – green card, maybe? A dare? At threat of a gun? – but a whiteboard? That’s just right out.

Jaz puts a bottle of water in front of his lips and he drinks gratefully. He’s sat back down sometime; he’s not sure where.

Right, right. He needs to think about getting treatment. A shrink.

I do not need a shrink!

Yes, you really do. I really do. Whatever.

…I will concede in this situation it appears to be reasonable to consult with one.

Geez, thanks muchly. When did I become such an arrogant snot?

That’s rude.

I’m rude!

I don’t want to get involuntarily committed.

I’ll use a fake name and break out if they do. Sheesh, stop worrying.

I can break out of places?

I’ve broken out of plenty before. It’s like breaking in, but less tedious.

I don’t remember being able to do that.

Well, you don’t remember Mick, so you’re clearly from the damaged part of my brain.

I beg your pardon! You don’t remember Clarissa; you cannot possibly be the symptoms of a sane mind –

“Hey, buddy, you good?” Jaz asks. Fatima and Josh have returned and the three of them are crowding around him. His head’s on fire again, but his hands aren’t, so he pushes himself up.

“Thanks for your help,” he says, because that’s nice and polite, and they have taken care of him. “I need to find –”

Help.

Clarissa.

Mick.

“– something.”

“You do you, man,” Josh says, but his eyes are worried.

“We’ll be here to take you in if you need to,” Fatima says. “It’s getting cold again.”

“There’s a house on Maple Street that’s always empty, the third one down from the stoplight,” he says. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he’s sure it’s true. “You could stay there, if it snows.”

They look surprised, but pleased. “It ain’t Family, is it?” Josh asks.

“No,” he says. He’s sure of that much. “No, not Family. Freelance.”

Freelance what?

I don’t know.

I miss Mick. He’d know.

Who is Mick?

We need to find him.

We need to find Clarissa. She’ll be worried.

Mick first.

Mick doesn’t even want to see you. Clarissa wants to see me.

Fuck you.

Please. I just want to see her.

Fuck, I’m a bleeding heart. Just stick a shiv in my heart, will you?

Shiv? Good lord, is that prison slang?

He has no idea what else it would be if not prison slang.

Oh, shit, his head’s on fire again.

Maybe it’s some sort of metaphor?

It could be a metaphor. But for what?

Fuck if I know. Leaving Mick to the flames?

That sounds like a bad thing.

It was. He needed me and I left him behind because he picked the flames over me, and now he hates me and doesn’t want to see me and it’s terrible because I feel empty, like a vat that’s been all poured out.

I don’t think I did anything like that.

What about Clarissa? You didn’t tell her where you were going. She probably thinks you’re dead.

Maybe I did do something terrible, then. But why the fire? I’m Jewish; I don’t buy into Christian symbolism.

Yeah, I know. Never have, even if I’m not the most religious Jew. Hard to avoid the Christian imagery everywhere, though, ain’t it? And there was Hannukah. I remember Hannukah was coming up.

Yes, Hannukah. We were going to celebrate, Clarissa and I, but I left because – I don’t remember any more.

I wasn’t celebrating, I don’t think.

Are you my past self? Some younger equivalent of me?

Shit, maybe. Is schizophrenia associated with amnesia? Am I actually super old? Did Mick die and I replaced him with someone called Clarissa?

No, I don’t think I ever knew a Mick. Maybe I’ve forgotten him?

That’s unlikely. You don’t forget someone like Mick.

“Hey! Buddy! Hey!” Fatima is shouting in his face.

“Sorry,” he says automatically.

“You wanna come with us?” Jaz asks. “We’re going to try to find that place on Maple; we’d be happy to have you, you can point it out.”

“No,” he says. “I need to go. Thank you for your help.”

“If you’re sure,” Josh says.

“You took care of me,” he says firmly. “Thanks.”

“No need for thanks,” Fatima says. “You kept us warm.”

He nods. Not sure why they’d need the extra body heat, but sure. In the winter, the more the merrier, he guesses.

Is it still winter? No – gotta be March, sometime. Last burst of winter before spring.

Clarissa will be celebrating Purim. It was always her favorite.

They end up on a street somewhere in the suburbs. There’s an older woman in there, still beautiful in her way.

He’s never seen her before.

No.

That’s not right, he has. They’ve been here before, looking from a distance, catatonic and blank, but still watching.

Have they –

A memory rips out of the back of his mind, drifts to the surface.

Mick kept turning around to try to see him, but he’d kept back, kept to the dark. He’d looked – not good, he was burned all over, but it looked like they’d mostly healed up, and he had mobility. His eyes were bright and clear. He still looked like Mick. That was good.

He’d been loading a truck. Grunt work. No one ever appreciated Mick’s qualities, no one but him; they all underestimated Mick, either because Mick wanted them to or because they just didn’t understand how good he was, how skilled, how clever, all because he was sick and because he was violent and because he didn’t have smarts the way they thought of them –

He seems like quite a brute.

You take that fucking back!

He punches himself in the face a few times, hard as he can make himself do it, just to make the point stick, until even the voice in his head is yowling for mercy.

His nose is bleeding, his eye is swelling, but the voice says, I won’t say it again, and that’s worth anything.

They back away from Clarissa’s window.

We should probably go to temple for Purim.

We should get drunk for Purim. Religious requirement.

Maybe not in our current state.

Yeah, that’s a good point. Good one, hallucination.

I am not the hallucination! You are!

Pssht. I bet that’s what all the hallucinations say.

I am not a hallucination.

Let’s go find Mick again.

We don’t know where he is.

We tracked him the first few times, and we were catatonic. Also, stop saying ‘we’, it’s I. Just me in this body. I’m not suffering from dissociated identity disorder.

Wait, am I?

Damned if I know. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of the softer sciences, but then again, I never imagined it would be relevant to my life. It’s not called multiple personalities anymore?

No, they updated the book. I think.

Oh, that’s helpful! Now we know exactly what type of insane we are!

We’re not insane. I. I’m not insane. Schziophrenia’s nothing more than a mental disorder, which can be handled with appropriate treatment; you shouldn’t make value judgments –

Huh, look at that, his hands and head are on fire again. They seem to do that a lot.

We – sorry, I – should keep track of the pattern. Perhaps it is associated with some emotion?

They – he, damnit, even though it’s increasingly easier to think as a ‘they’ – walk through the streets. The fire seemed associated with anger or other strong emotions, but they could force it in or out. They couldn’t keep the illusion for that long, though.

Oddly, that seemed to be the only visual hallucination.

Neither of them wanted to look in a mirror, because one of them was right – forty but strong, salt-and-pepper hair and blue-eyes, or old and white-haired, brown-eyed and glasses – and the other one didn’t want to know if they were the delusion, as they were both pretty sure they were the right one.

“Hey!” someone calls. “Wait!”

Oh, great, it’s the guy that’s been chasing them.

Neither of them remember exactly, but the memory floods forth clear as lightning: the man who’s been looking for him, looking everywhere, following their traces, and they’ve been avoiding him, even while mostly catatonic and running on instinct. Well, no reason to change now.

They duck into an alley, but he follows. They fly to the roof and hide there.

Did we just fly?

We totally just flew. How did we do that?

I don’t know!

You’re the delusion! You tell me!

Don’t start that again. Perhaps it was part of the delusion, that we flew?

No, I think we’re really on this rooftop right now. The fire just came out of our hands, Iron Man style, and we…flew. That was pretty cool. Maybe we actually just climbed the side of the building and thought that we flew?

We should try it again.

What, and risk having it shut off halfway through?

Good point. Perhaps we should try again, but once we are closer to the ground. Who is the young man following us, anyway?

Not sure. He’s not Mick.

No, we’ve established Mick. Isn’t there anyone else for you?

Lisa.

Who’s Lisa?

My sister, you dumbass!

Oh. My brother died in a car accident when I was a child.

I don’t – you know what, let’s not get into that again.

I most fervently agree.

So who’s this guy? He looks familiar.

Distantly, yes. An employee, perhaps?

Nah, he’s not a criminal.

I worry when you say things like that. No, he’s not one of mine – someone else’s. Wells.

Wells?

Yes, the name is familiar – I was going to see him –

Wait. I remember – the Particle Accelerator. Harrison Wells.

That’s the one!

I saw him there. And in the newspaper, right before.

Yes.

And this guy – I saw him, too. He was in the Accelerator. I pushed him out.

So it’s your fault he’s hunting us down.

How’s it my fault?

No doubt he wishes to thank you.

That’s dumb. You don’t thank people for shit like that, certainly not by stalking them through the city; you pay it forward, somehow.

So you have some philosophy after all.

Yeah, yeah. It’s just common sense.

Hmm. I think he’s gone.

I wanna go see Mick again.

Let’s do that, then. After we eat something.

I’ll break into the local bodega.

Couldn’t we have something more substantive than chips today?

I’ll grab some Ramen. Stop whining.

Words cannot express the depth of my joy at the thought of eating microwaved noodles in a cheap Styrofoam cup. Which I’ve stolen, let me not forget.

I’ll break into a Family-owned Italian restaurant and have some pasta next to the bags of cocaine, how about I do that instead, huh?

Ramen is fine.

Time passes in fits and starts.

They watch Clarissa, who cries, sometimes, alone in her living room where she thinks no one is looking, late at night.

They hunt Mick, who is becoming increasingly more paranoid that someone is following him. He works shit jobs, dumb muscle, intimidation; he deserves better. At least he doesn’t get arrested.

Clarissa goes to work and pretends to smile.

Mick lights a house on fire and stays to watch it far too long, but they call the fire department before he burns with it, and he runs when he hears the sirens. They run, too.

Fly, actually. They keep thinking they can do that.

Visual hallucination number two.

He clips his hair again, so they have a way of keeping time, but sometimes he blinks and finds that he doesn’t know where the last few weeks have gone. He sometimes goes to stay with Jaz and Fatima and Josh and the others in the house on Maple, which they’ve turned into an informal artist’s collective-slash-shelter.

They debate visiting Mick’s shrink, and finally do. The pills just make him sick, really sick, and they don’t seem to help at all, so after a month they stop taking them.

After some debate.

He’s never debated himself this much in his life.

They avoid Ronnie and his concerned wife, Caitlin, who works at STAR Labs and who he talks to on the phone a lot; Ronnie is very earnest and very enthusiastic and he believes that his life was saved by the mysterious man he is hunting.

He’d say that he doesn’t know who in their right mind thinks that stalking someone down is a good way to thank them for their life, but in view of his visits to Clarissa’s home and Mick’s safehouses, maybe they don’t have room to judge.

He’s still not sure where he came up with Clarissa. He only knows she means a lot to him.

The fire hallucinations continue ceaselessly. Hand, head, sometimes the soles of his feet.

Sometimes he touches things and they become other things. He literally turns water into wine once, which is just funny, though the fact that he can even taste the wine when he drains the water bottle stinks of a worsening mental state.

Their second attempts to get pills for their problem doesn’t work any better than the first.

They start experimenting with their hallucinations, which are at least very consistent. Sure, they’re mentally unbalanced, but as the voice in his head puts it, that doesn’t mean they can’t be scientific about it. After all, when else would they get such an opportunity to explore it from the inside?

It’s interesting, though it’s not entirely enough to erase the sense of loss of their real life.

He wishes he could go to Clarissa, or to Mick, to explain, to ask for help, but he knows how dangerous untreated schizophrenics can be. He knows how dangerous he can be.

I don’t remember killing quite so many people. Or – anyone at all, actually.

It gets easier after the first one.

Does it really?

No.

Oh.

My first one, I was nine. My dad told me to shoot a man, execution style. I stood too close and the blood and brains got all over me. I threw up afterwards, snotted up crying like a baby.

I’m…terribly sorry.

Dad nearly broke my wrist kicking my ass after that. He said I shouldn’t have cried.

Your father is awful.

Yeah, I know, right? You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to accept that.

The worst my father ever did was make me go to rabbinical school before finally permitting me to focus on physics and chemistry.

I never even graduated high school.

One of us is a startling well-developed delusion.

No kidding. I always thought it was exaggerated in the movies, how it was basically two totally different people, personalities, histories, that sort of thing.

For me as well! It always seemed so absurd; surely it wasn’t actually like that. I suppose my karma has repaid my hubris several times over by giving me you.

At least there’s only two of us.

Don’t frighten me. I can only handle one of you.

Back at you. I wish I weren’t schizophrenic. Assuming this is schizophrenia, which I’m starting to doubt.

I wish for many things.

Yeah. Clarissa.

Mick.

I don’t think I appreciated Clarissa enough, assuming your version of my life is correct. She’s so funny and smart, and she always seems to know how to get me back on track.

Yes, she is. You’re right. I should have appreciated her more when I had the chance. And assuming you were correct, there was Mick –

I didn’t appreciate him enough.

No, you did. I did. I really did. I loved him, and I saved him just as he saved me. But I – you – whichever one of us. We should have gone back to him, after the fire. He wanted you to.

He hated me.

He still loves you.

He’s not missing me the way Clarissa’s missing you.

He doesn’t know you’re missing.

No, he does. I think Lisa told him. I always check in with her, even if I’m in prison.

Why didn’t you this year?

Same reason as with Mick. She’d be in danger from me.

Memories drift up to them, memories of Lisa, of their childhood. Not good memories.

You’re not your father, you know.

No. But I’m not taking the chance, either.

Yes. I suppose not.

They watch as Central starts to become…strange.

“A streak?” he asks, frowning at Jaz who waves the blog page she printed out from the library in his face. “Fighting a – multiple man? Is this a joke?”

Or a tabloid.

“Or a tabloid?”

“No!” she says. “It’s real. I swear. I saw the streak myself, just the other day; moved faster than you could see, but definitely there. Bright red, lightning, the whole works.”

Out of morbid curiosity, he uses Aryeh’s computer – he’s the only one who has one, a used one he fished out a dumpster and repaired and now leeches wifi where he can – to hack into the traffic cameras.

“I didn’t know you could do that. Can you do that? Is that legal?” Aryeh asks Rashid.

“No. Definitely not,” Rashid says. “That is very illegal. Buddy, what are you even doing?”

He hushes them both.

“You can’t find the Streak like that,” Jaz says archly. She has the same nasal drawl as the rest of them: Central City slums, the accent that sneaks in to everyone’s voice eventually if they spend enough time in the bad parts of town. He suspects that’s one of the reasons they accepted him into their group, in the beginning: what few words he stuttered out identified him as part of the extend family of slum-dwellers. “It’s too fast.”

“He,” he says.

“What?”

“He. The Streak is a man,” he tells them, his eyes still fixed on the screen, where’s he’s paused the streak just enough to identify a hand, an arm.

A man who can move at super-speed. He could stop him, with a little technical help - something cold to slow him down – he could –

He could spasm and flail because his movements have stopped responding to him again, that’s what he could do. It always felt incredibly bizarre when that happened – as if his brain were sending two sets of instructions at the same time, one moving one way, the other another, but it never worked.

He can’t fight a speedster this way.

He sighs in regret.

Why would you want to fight him? He’s done nothing to you, and I must say, you’ve already fought plenty of people.

Listen, when people first found Mount Everest, do you think they said ‘oh, I’ve already climbed plenty of mountains, and this one’s done nothing to me’? That’s not how it works.

Adrenaline junkie.

Stop sounding so dismissive about yourself.

I never knew I was so brave before you.

Trust your subconscious.

Hah! Not in a million years. Regardless of which one of us is the ‘right’ one, I think we’ve both learned a very important lesson about not trusting our subconscious.

Yeah, well, my subconscious is apparently manifested in a stubborn, snobby old physic professor with an occasional daredevil streak.

I do not have a daredevil streak.

I wasn’t the one who threw us off a building to see if we could learn to fly faster that way.

It worked!

It was still stupid.

Well, yes…

Turns out they’re not the only ones watching the Streak. Not the only ones thinking.

Mick’s been tearing through all the safehouses they’ve both had for the last few months, almost as if he’s looking for something –

He’s looking for you.

Well, he can’t find me. I won’t let him.

– and Mick knows him too well. Too well, too well. He looks at the Streak and he goes: I know who would like to fight that.

I know who would stand at the foot of Mount Everest and say, “Hell yes, I’m going to climb that.”

“Someone’s fighting the Streak!” Jaz exclaims. “And he’s got a gun that shoots fire and someone’s already called the media, says the guy’s name is Heatwave!”

“Heatwave?” he asks, frowning, and goes to look at the television.

That’s Mick.

That’s Mick.

Shit!

You have to stop him. Fire is a useful weapon against a speedster, based on our assumptions regarding cell regrowth and enhanced metabolism –

But you need to be slow and cold if you really want to fight a speedster, I know, I know! He’s going to lose, and thus far, no one’s ever seen the people the Streak fights ever again. We need to find something – there’s no way to get liquid nitrogen on such a short time frame –

They rifle through their memory together, physics and crime and academia and street-slang all meshing together in a horrific mess which they both bemoaned as the destruction of their carefully ordered minds.

The cold gun – STAR Labs! You saw it when you were snooping, right before the Accelerator exploded –

It wasn’t finalized.

With a speedster on the loose? I’m certain STAR Labs would have finalized it by now.

On my way now. Please don’t – whatever you do.

I’ll do my best not to interfere.

Mick snarls on the television, the speedster having hit him quick as lightning, and they grab one of the illegal guns they bought for the artist’s collective when the Family started knocking and they run to the window and they leap and they fly.

He remembers studying the blueprints of STAR Labs.

It has roof access.

He’s not even questioning if this is a hallucination or not; he doesn’t care. He needs to get to the cold gun.

No one’s guarding anything at STAR Labs anymore, and the cold gun is easy to find. He grabs it and heads back up. He’s not going to let the Streak hurt Mick, he’s not, he’s not, he’s not – no more than he could let anyone hurt Clarissa –

He hears the sound of a fight from the other room, coming as if through a speaker, then a loud whoosh.

“I have him,” a young man’s voice says proudly. “I mean, ouch on the burns, but they’re already healing. Sorry about the suit, Cisco.”

“Why do you keep hurting my baby like this?” another young man, presumably ‘Cisco’ asks plaintively, then his tone changes. “But still: Heatwave! Our very first non-meta villain!”

“What do we do with him?” an anxious-sounding young woman says. “Should we put him in the Accelerator with the others? Or do we just drop him off at the police?”

“He’s discovered Barry’s identity, or at least that Barry is the Flash,” a low, mellow voice, male, older than the rest, says. “That’s the nickname you prefer, right, Barry?”

“Yeah,” the first young man says. “The Flash is so much better than the Streak. So you think we should keep him?”

“At least for now,” the older man says smoothly. “We can work out some sort of transfer system one the threat of metahumans isn’t looming over the city.”

That’s illegal.

No kidding, that’s illegal. That’s illegal imprisonment, failure to obey due process, keeping vital information from the masses, which don’t even know that metahumans are definitely a thing –

“Rory’s dangerous,” another voice, also older, also male, cuts in. “I agree with Dr. Wells in this case. He’s escaped Iron Heights before. I’m not sure we can risk him getting out again and telling everyone about you guys here.”

“Let me go,” Mick slurs. He’s been knocked out, but he’s reviving; it’s evident from his voice.

“Shit, he’s waking up,” Cisco yelps. “Put him in the Accelerator, Barry; I’ll open up another tube –”

You ready?

I supposed I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Go get them.

He takes a deep breath and pulls the fire inside his skin. He won’t be able to keep it that way long, but maybe long enough.

Then he marches into the room and fires the cold gun right at the one dressed in red.

He gets them by surprise, all of them, and the one in red, whose cowl is pulled back and who is just a young man after all, the speedster himself, is covered from toe to torso. He memorizes the face – he’ll hack Facebook and find him if he has to after this, for leverage – and he snarls, “Get your hands off of my partner.”

A black man pulls out his gun. “Stop!” he shouts. “Police.”

He turns the cold gun on him.

“Joe! Don’t let it touch you!” the Flash calls in a panic, and the policeman dives behind a table when the bolt of blue flame comes towards him.

“It’s Leonard Snart!” the policeman shouts. “Rory’s old partner!”

“I thought you said they didn’t work together anymore!” Cisco yells from where he’s dived behind a desk. The young woman has grabbed the other man in the room, an older man in a wheelchair, and carted him behind a glass door.

The older man’s eyes glitter in anger, though. Not fear.

He’s unable to use his legs, but he’s not afraid, not at all. That’s strange; the Wells I knew was a reasonable man, and quite cautious with his life. He’s hiding something.

Possibly a weapon. Keep an eye on him.

Right.

“I’m stuck!” Barry shouts.

“Vibrate fast enough to melt it!” the man in the wheelchair calls.

He ices the kid’s feet again. “Do that,” he says icily – Really, must you? I’m stuck in here with you, you know – “and the next time I’ll hit your face, and then I’ll hit your face with my goddamn fist until you crack into a thousand pieces, and see if your speed helps you heal from that.”

“Joe, wait! Don’t shoot him!” another voice calls out.

He turns his head, just a little, and he sees the man at the door.

It’s him. Ronnie Raymond, the one who’s been hunting him.

“Why the hell not?!” Joe shouts angrily. “He’s hurting Barry.”

“He saved my life!” Ronnie exclaims, throwing himself in front of them, grabbing Joe and grappling his gun. “He saved my life, and he helped save the city, and I’m sure he has a good reason to do what he’s doing.”

“Ronnie!” the young woman shouts, sounding distressed.

“He’s a goddamn criminal,” Joe shouts, fighting to pull the gun back. “There’s not an ounce of good in him.”

I think, loath as I am to admit it, you might be the real one between us.

Then where the hell is Clarissa from? Or, hell, the science?

I don’t know. I thought I was real, I really did…

“Len?” Mick says, his eyes wide and abruptly worried. He rises to his knees. “Lenny, is that you? What happened to you?”

He’s abruptly aware of how dirty he is, how his hair has grown out another few inches, just short of starting to curl; how he hasn’t really paid much attention to baths because he keeps losing time.

The man in the wheelchair is still watching. His eyes are still glittering. He is still unafraid.

He is still unafraid – except when he glances at Barry.

Len bites his lip, and plays a hunch.

He takes three steps forward and presses the gun against the Streak’s – Barry’s – head, and he looks him in the eyes and winks with the eye that isn’t facing the man in the wheelchair, and then he says, “Sorry, kid. End of the road.”

Ronnie and Joe look up from their fight, eyes wide in horror. The young woman shrieks. Cisco shouts, “No!” Even Mick’s mouth gapes open, not in negation, but in a silent question of ‘why.’

Barry, looking straight at Len, frowns a little, clearly wondering what he’s up to.

He doesn’t think he’s going to die, the Flash; he trusts in Len’s little wink and Ronnie’s vouch for him.

Len’s not sure if it’s youthful bravado or hope and trust and optimism in the goodness of strangers or perhaps in fate.

Len makes as though he’s going to push the trigger.

There’s lightning in the room.

And a blur of yellow.

Len was already turning to aim at him, finger pressing the trigger for real.

“The man in yellow!” Barry bellows.

“Doctor Wells!” the young woman screams, hands clenching futilely on the empty wheelchair.

Cisco scrambles to the desk. “I’m activating the therma-threading!” he shouts. “That’ll melt the ice!”

“You ruined my plans,” the vibrating man hisses, his voice dark and dangerous and Len’s gun is somewhere else and he’s being held up by his throat and his fingers are scrabbling there.

Mick scrambles to get his heat gun from where it’s on the desk, shouting, “Lenny! Lenny!” in a voice that sounds like his heart is breaking, but the vibrating man kicks him back, knocking him on the floor.

The Streak is shouting, frantic, vibrating at speed, his suit glowing, the ice melting, but it won’t be fast enough.

Ronnie gets the cold gun, but the second speedster knocks out of his hands, throwing it against the wall, carrying Len with him as if Len weighs only a feather.

I think - I’m afraid - that this is ‘it’ for us.

Yeah. Me too.

And then their hands are on fire again, and their head, too, just like always when they’re panicking, that stupid hallucination back again, except the speedster – a second speedster, he wasn’t expecting that, he thought he’d have a gun or something – is shouting in pain and letting go for some reason –

“Len,” Mick gasps, and his voice has changed. It’s still scared, still broken, but now there’s something else there.

Awe.

Adoration.

Worship.

“Len,” he says again. “Len, you’re on fire.”

It’s not a hallucination?

Wait. If that’s not a hallucination –

Maybe the pills didn’t work because we weren’t schizophrenic.

And perhaps we’re not the same person at all. Perhaps I really am me, and you are you. Perhaps the Particle Accelerator merged us or something – my Firestorm matrix mixing with the dark matter –

That’s nice. Let’s discuss later.

Len lights his hands on fire and throws it at the speedster.

Mick has grabbed his gun now, crawled over, and he shoots it at him as well, and the speedster howls and runs forward and knocks them all back, but by that point the Streak is free.

But the Streak doesn’t run straight for the yellow speedster.

He runs for the cold gun.

The ice covers the second speedster from head to toe.

“I think I got him,” Barry pants.

“Ya think?” Cisco says. “Caitlin, will that kill – him?”

“If he’s a speedster like Barry,” the young woman, Caitlin, says briskly, clearly forcefully ignoring her horror, “then no; it’s just slowing him down.”

Len ignores them. “Mick,” he says, staring at his partner, who’s picking himself off from the floor and sliding his head gun into a very attractive thigh holster. Len misses him so much.

Mick reaches for him, and Len draws away. “No,” he says. “If the fire is real, then it’ll hurt you.”

He hesitates. “You all see the fire, right? It’s not just in my head?”

“Yeah,” Joe says. “We all see the fire.” He looks deeply shaken. “That was – that was the man in yellow.”

“Yeah,” Barry says grimly. “Yeah, it was.”

“Barry, your dad –”

“Is innocent,” Barry says. “Just like I always said.”

Man in yellow? Dad, Iron Heights, innocent –

“Wait,” Len says. “You’re Doc Allen’s kid? Really?”

Barry turns and gapes at him.

“What?” Len says defensively. “We were cellies, way back when. I used to read his mail, what he got from his kid.”

“You read my dad’s mail?!”

“There wasn’t anything else to read!”

“You’re a dick!” Barry says, but his eyes are starting to tear up. “Oh man. Oh man. If I’ve caught him –”

“Doc Allen can finally go free,” Mick says. “Good for him.”

“Leonard Snart?” Ronnie says hesitantly.

“Yeah, stalker-boy?” Len says.

Ronnie flushes and Caitlin barks a laugh, which she immediately covers her mouth. “Sorry,” she whispers.

“I just wanted to ask,” he says. “Is, uh – is Professor Martin Stein in there?”

Yes. Yes! That’s me!

“Oh, great,” Len says. “You gave him a name.”

We already knew my name.

Only because we stalked Clarissa’s mailbox. And we didn’t know it was your name for sure. We couldn’t trust you about it.

Well, it clearly is, so there.

Very mature.

“So he is?” Ronnie says, looking excited. “I knew it! I knew the Firestorm matrix must have merged into your systems – I’ve been working on a way to get the two of you apart –”

Apart?

Apart?

Holy shit, apart.

Yes. Absolutely yes. We should try out whatever this clearly intelligent young man has planned immediately.

So quick to get rid of me, huh?

I suspect that you’re about to have a reunion with your husband, and I don’t want to be here for that.

Yeah, good point.

“Can you separate us?” he asks Ronnie.

Ronnie looks at Cisco.

“Uh, I mean, I have the device, we can give it a try,” Cisco says. “But first, can we discuss how Doctor Wells is secretly evil?”

“He’s not Wells,” Joe says.

Everyone looks at him.

“Wells has an iron-clad alibi for the time of the death of Barry’s mother,” Joe says. “I’ve been – suspicious. For a while. Because of just how interested he is in Barry. But his story all checked out.”

“But, then – how?”

“I don’t know,” Joe says. “But conversations with numerous individuals who knew Harrison Wells before and after the accident that killed his wife all agree on one thing: the Harrison Wells from afterwards wasn’t the same man as before, and in ways that even grief has trouble explaining.”

“Have you searched the building?” Len asks Barry. “You have superspeed. You could do it.”

“What for?” Barry asks blankly. “You think he has some sort of secret hideway? Here?”

“I saw him walk into a wall downstairs,” Len offers. “When I broke into the building during the Accelerator explosion.”

“You did what?!” Mick says, looking horrified and pissed off the way he always does when he’s discovered one of Len’s stupid-crazy plans.

And, yes, this time Len will admit his plan had been really stupid.

“Let’s put him in the Accelerator,” Barry says firmly. “And find the room.”

The room is –

This is absolutely fascinating!

I’m glad at least one of us is enjoying this.

“Wells is from the future?!” Cisco yowls.

“Speedsters can travel through time?!” Barry yelps.

“You and Iris are married?!” Joe shouts.

“You know you’re still on fire?” Mick asks Len in a low tone. His eyes are a little glazed over. “It’s, uh. It’s really nice. Very pretty.”

Your partner is a pyromaniac.

Did I not mention that?

You did; it’s different being confronted with it directly like this. He also appears to have pyrophilia.

I think he just likes the idea of me not being able to burn.

Mr. Snart. Look into your husband’s face. That is definitely pyrophilia.

Len looks.

Hmm.

Okay, maybe the voice – maybe Martin Stein – had a point.

Of course I have a point. And just Stein is fine; I prefer it. Only my wife calls me Martin.

That’d be Clarissa, I take it.

Yes. You know, I think we’re adjusting to the merger; our thoughts have increasingly untangled, yours to yours and mine to mine, and we haven’t had any movement issues in a while.

And we haven’t been able to do the memory sharing so much anymore.

No, indeed. I think we’ll slowly be able to fade into a simple psychic bond.

Simple?!

Well. Compared to before…

Compared to the bit where we thought we had schizophrenia, you mean.

“Mick,” he says warningly when Mick reaches out to try to touch him.

“Oh, please,” Mick says. “Just a little.”

We can try to make the fire lack heat.

Can we do that?

I said we could try, not that we would necessarily succeed.

Len focuses, and Stein focuses, and when they feel like they’ve got something, Len gently reaches out and takes Mick’s hand in his.

The flame beats against Mick’s fingers harmlessly.

Mick swallows, hard, and stares. “Lenny,” he marvels. “Lenny, look at you. You’re the Burning Man.”

Uh, Stein, I don’t suppose –

First let’s figure out if I can block out my awareness of what’s going on first, thank you.

Right. And separate, too, if we can.

That would be even better.

Len clears his throat. “Can we talk about getting me and Stein separated?”

“Uh, sure,” Barry says. “Thanks for your help, uncovering Wells and all.”

“Happy to help,” Len drawls.

“Did you have to frost Barry for it to work?” Cisco asks.

“I was trying to rescue my partner,” Len says reasonably. “I didn’t realize about your Wells.”

“Wait,” Barry says. “But you winked at me!”

“I wasn’t going to shoot you,” Len explains. “No reason; I don’t kill unless it’s necessary – I never liked the heat. Besides, Stein’s squeamish –”

If it means you don’t kill people, then yes, I’m squeamish!

“Anyway, I just saw that he was really, really calm for a guy in a wheelchair, is all,” Len continues. “The only thing that worried him were threats to Barry.”

“Because he needed Barry for his evil plan to return to the future,” Cisco says. “And I can’t believe that was a sentence that came out of my mouth.”

“Is that necessarily an evil plan?” Caitlin asks, gnawing on her lip. “If he just wanted to go home…”

“He came to the past to try to wipe Barry out of existence,” Cisco points out. “His notes indicate that he thought that succeeding could mean that he cause a miniature quasi-black hole – not a real one, or we’d all really be screwed - to be formed here, destroying Central City and everyone in it –”

“Say,” Len interrupts before Cisco can go into too much detail. “While you’re looking up anti-speedster tech ideas, can we pause for a second and see if there’s anything in that doohickey about me?”

“About you?”

“About me and Stein, I mean,” he says. “Us separating.”

“Yes, Mr. Snart,” the AI they’ve managed to access chirps. “You and Professor Stein are called Firestorm when joined together. Your power set includes –”

They listen.

“Hold up,” Joe says. “What was that about nuclear power?”

I’m more concerned about the part that said that we will deteriorate into an explosive material when separated for too long.

Guess you’re not rid of me yet.

To be perfectly honest, Mr. Snart, I don’t know what I’d do without you by now.

Go back to your normal life.

What, and give up flying and minor criminal activity?

Hey! It’ll be major criminal activity, now that I know we aren’t schizophrenic and inclined to break down while on a job.

Then I must object –

“So you’re going to help us, right?” Barry says anxiously.

What?

“Huh?” Len says aloud.

“If we put Wells in prison,” Barry says, looking at them with big wide puppy eyes. “And if we get the thing to separate and stabilize you to work, then, maybe, could you stay and help? We need a main scientist - plus, you know, extra firepower - to help us fight the metas. They’ll destroy Central City if we don’t stop them.”

“Actually,” Len says, putting aside Barry’s absolutely ridiculous suggestion for the time being – and judging by Joe’s face, he agrees that it’s ridiculous, “let’s talk about your definition of ‘prison’ first. And about a few things I’d like to call, in order: the Geneva Convention, the Constitution, and Missouri state law. Do you know what all those things have in common?”

“Uh,” Cisco says. “No?”

“You’re violating all of them!”

Mick laughs.

It takes two days for the separator to be finished.

Two very long days, given that Stein absolutely refuses to let Len and Mick get on with their reunion until he’s out of there.

(He’s left the door open on potentially joining up and then shutting away his mind to let Mick enjoy the flames, but only if Len will agree to Barry’s ridiculous plan of becoming Team Flash’s new mentors. Mick – who had initially objected to the idea of becoming ‘heroes’ – suddenly changed sides on the debate when he heard the offer. He’s such a pyrophiliac.)

Not being able to screw did mean that they actually had to talk about it.

“I shouldn’t have left,” Len tells Mick without looking at him.

“I shouldn’t have gotten distracted,” Mick says, also not looking at Len.

“Not your fault,” Len says. “It happened so suddenly. It just went up. I know the risks, with you; I shouldn’t have taken you in there at all. I don’t hold it against you at all.”

“And I don’t hold you leaving against you,” Mick says. “Well, not anymore. You got scared, and you ran. You were trying to defend yourself.”

“Still –”

Oh for God’s sake, just forgive each other already.

Len snorts.

“What’d our guest say?” Mick says, turning to look at Len for the first time in this conversation.

“That we should forgive each other already,” Len says.

“I can do that,” Mick says.

“No more feelings talk for at least another few years,” Len agrees, and then Mick is there, right there, right in front of him, back again, partners again –

I take it back! Go back to being angry at each other!

Len snorts against Mick’s lips.

“Lemme guess,” Mick says, pulling back a little from where he’s holding Len close. “He’s complaining.”

Len hums in agreement and kisses Mick again – ignoring Stein’s theatrical groan – and then pulls away. “Soon,” he says.

“I’m going to go encourage Cisco and Ronnie to work faster,” Mick says.

“You do that,” Len says, and goes for check-up number a thousand from Caitlin.

(Wells is still defrosting. Caitlin estimates a full defrost will take three days, the countdown to which restarted yesterday because Len was feeling grumpy and didn’t want everyone’s attention to go away from fixing him.)

Oh, and Lisa shows up to yell at Len, but he was expecting that. He wasn’t expecting her and Cisco to hit it off quite so well, but hey, if she’s happy, he’s happy.

If the device works and he’s not schizophrenic and not joined together with Stein anymore, everyone’s going to be happy.

They put on the device.

Something just clicks into place.

Pulling apart is –

It’s easy. They just step apart, as if they’ve always known how to do it. And then they step together, hand in hand, and they’re one again. Then apart.

“So we just have to do that regularly, huh?” Len says to Stein, studying the older man���s features even as Stein studies his.

“Yes,” Stein says. “It appears so.”

“Guess we might as well stick around here, then,” Len says. “Wouldn’t want these idiots to get into trouble without us.”

Stein smiles. “I think we’ll be able to find enough adrenaline to keep even you interested,” he says.

“Len,” Mick says from the door.

“I’m going to go find Clarissa,” Stein says hastily, and heads out.

Len takes a step closer to his partner, then another. Mick’s eyes are fixed on him, his pupils already blown, and it doesn’t matter that Len can’t light on fire without Stein, not at all, because Mick wants him just the way he is right now.

The only question, really, is if they’re going to make it to the safehouse – any but the one on Maple, for which he’s already handed the lease over to the artist’s collective and pre-paid their taxes for a few years – or if they’re just going to fall down right here on the floor of the lab –

Judging by Mick’s face and Len’s quickening breath, they’re not going to make it to the safehouse –

“Uh, guys?” Cisco’s voice pipes up through the intercom. “I think we have a problem. A…monkey problem.”

“Technically,” Catilin chimes in, “I think he’s a gorilla.”

“I think he has mind control powers,” Barry says.

Len and Mick look at each other.

“Safehouse,” they say at the same time.

Team Flash’s emergencies can wait until tomorrow.

Ronnie ends up in charge of the cold gun. He mostly uses it against speedsters and as a high powered fire extinguisher when Len and Mick get too fire-happy. When accompanied by Caitlin’s later development of frost powers, they’re officially the chillest couple on the block.

(Cisco and Len high-five while everyone else groans.)

#my fic #dccoldwave #leonard snart #martin stein #mick rory #clarissa stein #the flash