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b4kuch1n · 4 years

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The Future Is In Space! (and so is the rest of you)

Okay, so. Gordon should’ve seen this coming.

And he did, to be fair: Joshua’s always loved space. Joshua loved the idea of flying cars when he was a tiny little thing, if the fact that all of the toy cars he had were thrown with intense force at one point or another meant something, and he clapped at the night sky once when Gordon got them both stuck at a gas station in the middle of nowhere due to… circumstances… which was super, ultra, uber cute as fuck . Especially because Gordon had just applauded him for singing along to a song on the radio when they parked, and that was very possibly the first time Joshua registered clapping as a possible positive reaction to something he likes, or whatever like that. Gordon Freeman has a PhD in theoretical physics and theoretical physics only.

The point is that Gordon loves Joshua so fucking much. No, the point is that Joshua has always liked space. He chose for himself a set of space-themed PJs when Gordon took him to the mall, and he likes food with weird colors because that’s “alien food”, and he has given away all of the toy cars he had to make space for toy space ships of many sizes, and Gordon has had to have a conversation with him once about upending a dusty fish bowl onto his own head so he could look like an astronaut. He doesn’t do that anymore, because Joshua is genuinely a really smart kid who just needs the required pieces of information to put things together by himself.

Gordon loves him so much.

Gordon also has only experienced a single year of relatively radiation-free, sludge-free, organic, non-Black Mesa- poisoned air and also freedom (to an extent) since. You know. Almost dying and also losing his right arm in Black Mesa. Where he jumped into a few portals, one of which leading to an alien world called Xen, where he had to kill what seemed to him at the time a spiteful god against his own existence.

That, and not the Joshua-loves-space part, is the part he didn’t see coming. Hadn’t. Still doesn’t, if he can be honest for a minute. There are days it still doesn’t feel real, just to contrast nicely with the days when what’s left of his right arm and his right shoulder hurt, and days when power outage hit unexpectedly and the lights went out without warning, and days when he fights to not let some stupid fucked up slights against him go because that’s just how the world is that’s how things are now keep your head down and don’t think Gordon just shoot just let your trigger finger pull itself in you are in a comedy of error a laugh track a monkey on a leash just dance just move your feet j

Hey, no digging your heels in there. Throw yourself off your rhythm, Gordon. Joshua. Joshua loves space. Joshua is going to an elementary school now. Joshua just came home from a “career” day, and the parent invited to speak is a retired astronaut.

Joshua said: “I wanna be an astronaut when I grow up!”

Joshua likes numbers. Somewhat. He’s not averse to them, at the very least, and homework’s kind of bullshit from the concept to the execution but when Gordon and Tommy and Coomer sit down to keep him engaged while he does it he has fun with math homework. He likes video games, he likes the puzzles in the youth magazines they signed up for at his school, he likes messing with shape blocks and pulls out some cool combinations Gordon doesn’t see coming sometimes. Joshua is a smart kid that enjoys a fair challenge. Joshua is totally astronaut materials.

Joshua is going to space.

Joshua is absolutely going to space.

Xen is, coincidentally, also in space.

Gordon is calm. He totally has a good poker face. He performs well under pressure, especially very specific types of pressure, e.g. when there are rules in place he can cling to and ground out an appropriate plan of action. He could improvise a presentation in class in a pinch, because he knew what presentations are and what he’s been working on and what the teacher expected. He could jimmy his car out of an ice patch, because he knew how cars work and how ice acts. He can smile and say “That’s great, Joshie! You just gotta work hard for it, and then you’ll be in space in no time.”

Gordon has an image he can provide to show how he feels.

[Picture ID: a drawing of Gordon Freeman standing in front of his son Joshua, cut off at their chest. Gordon is a tall man, a bit heavyset, with tan skin and mid-back length, messy curly brown hair that’s greyed at his temples due to stress from surviving the hellhole that is Black Mesa and Xen. He’s wearing his comfortable worn-and-faded t-shirt, which is orange with a very faded graphic printed on the front. Joshua is a young boy with brown skin and short dark curly hair, brown eyes that’s brimming with light and happiness, and a wide happy smile. He’s wearing a light green t-shirt. Gordon is smiling at him, with another shot of his face enlarged and superimposed on the drawing right next to his head. This Gordon is screaming. This Gordon is screaming his heart out, and his face is scrunched up while his mouth opens wide, and he’s screaming a silent scream and he will never stop.]

---

Contrary to how it appears to everyone, Benrey doesn’t live full time at the Freemans’.

Well. He does “sleep” there. If he actually sleeps. That’s one of the questions that Gordon has had ever since Black Mesa that he never got to or bothered to ask, and then when they had to defeat Benrey in the final boss fight he thought that was it with his chance to ever ask. And then Benrey came back and the situation took a hard left into throw-the-whole-suitcase-out awkwardness and Gordon thought it better to never bring those questions up ever again. It’s. Ongoing. Like his climb back into being a normal, mostly law abiding, neutral good citizen, who has no ties to that research facility that blew up and opened a portal to hell in space.

It helps that Benrey really is just… a dude. Now that he’s not eighty feet tall and clipping through walls anymore, he can definitely pass as someone who just really loves to mess with people for a laugh. Which… well, Gordon’s judgement of character is probably better discarded in the kitchen trash compactor now, but he’s not gonna lie and say that’s all Benrey seems to him. He doesn’t even mess with people for laugh, not really. He is just. Like that. He’s an alien, but in the sense that’s…

Well, to Benrey, humans are alien. So that’s that.

And also Black Mesa did stretch the definition of ‘human’ in the physical sense pretty thin. So, again, that’s that. It all fits together like sliced pita bread.

The other thing that helps is that Gordon has the tendency to forget about risks or consequences when they are not directly in front of him, which he sometimes overcorrects, but this time around it helps move the sentiment into the philosophical window pretty quick, and then he can throw a brick through that one, because philosophy sucks ass. Gordon’s moving along well! He only had to change prosthetics twice because the first two were in order too heavy for his shoulder and too energy consuming, and all three are fully covered by the overlords that didn’t want Black Mesa to become a Thing in history, and now he works remotely for a uni that just lets whatever happen. It’s chill. It’s mostly chill.

He could’ve just chugged along never thinking even an inch deeper about Benrey’s Benrey-ness again, and Benrey makes that easy, because Benrey loves walking around and looking at things and being a bit of a spectacle with a straight face. Okay, Gordon doesn’t know for sure if Benrey loves doing those things, because he’s not Benrey. He just knows that Benrey does those things, frequently, and with an expertise that baffles even him, who knows full well how Benrey is. Well enough. Awkward territory, all of this is, really. The Point Is that Benrey actually doesn’t appear at home too much! He plays games through the night sometimes, sure, and ever since he called second dibs on any cereal in the apartment he always appears at the right time to claim that, but the whole thing is. Balanced. Benrey doesn’t seem to have physical personal belongings outside of the PS3 and four copies of Heavenly Sword he lugged back one day (the rest of the game library everyone kinda chimed in here and there to build up, because console is common ground fair use for everyone, while PC is where Gordon streams and also works, so it’s off limit), and he rarely uses utensils to eat anything, so to anyone but the team it’d seem like he’s barely there at all. Except for his presence of course. That’s… a lot harder to negotiate.

Gordon’s gotten very, extremely good at it though. It’s his life. Things fit together, mostly. He can deal, he has been dealing, and it’s even been fun. It’s definitely really funny here and there.

Gordon’s about to break the equilibrium. Introduce a nasty new specimen into the scene.

“Bro I knocked for a hot minute,” Benrey says, at the same time as Gordon’s blurting out, “I need to go back to Xen.”

“Huh.”

“Wha- Why do you knock? You’ve never knocked. You’ve literally only ever broken in.”

“Wanna… start now.” Benrey intones in that exact way, and then knocks on the door again. It doesn’t even sound good. These doors are all made with the weird thick composite that makes a dull plastic sound when knocked on.

“Don’t do that, just use the doorbell if you want to-” Gordon catches himself. “No matter. I need to go back to Xen. As soon as possible, but anytime in the next… twelve years… will work.”

Benrey just looks at him for a long time. An extended minute. Maybe even two.

Gordon is just staring back.

“You’re at. The door.” Benrey says, in a low voice. Gordon blinks. “Rude… rude little boy Freeman, huh.”

Gordon takes a deep breath. “Benrey-”

“Gonna let me in? Soon? ‘s bad etiquette… greeter… doesn’t even let guests in. Bet your wares aren’t even good.”

“Alright! Alright.” Gordon snaps, but he also does step back for Benrey to walk in, which. Really, that’s never been necessary. Benrey’s always come in and out as he pleases. Usually Gordon just walks out into the living room and Benrey’s already on the couch playing whatever game catches his eyes on that day. The decorum of knocking and walking in is simply never present.

Well, Benrey does knock on Joshua’s bedroom door. But that’s it.

They walk together into the living room, then Benrey situates himself on the couch, and Gordon settles on the carpeted floor next to the table to observe him. He’s never seen Benrey actually fold his limbs up into the position he’s usually already in when walked in on before. It’s mostly normal movements, which still catches Gordon off-guard a bit.

“Nice couch you’ve got here,” Benrey says, and pulls out his phone to fiddle with. It’s a Nokia 2700 Classic, with a theme downloaded from the Ovi Store, and a firefighter-themed 2D platformer that does get insanely hard in places. Tommy got him a snazzier Blackberry a while back, but he refused that one. Gordon didn’t really get it, but. Whatever.

“It’s always been here,” Gordon replies on reflex.

“Liar… Gordon Lie… man.” Benrey seems to need to chew on that one for a second. “Gordon Lieman. This building’s like. Ten years old.”

“That’s practically forever dude. That’s longer than they sent me to MIT for. Joshua’s not even that old.”

“He’s gonna. In… seven… years.”

Gordon remembers what he needs to talk with Benrey about again. “Goddamnit,” he slaps his own face - not with the hard prosthetic this time, thank you very much. Took him six months of HEV training and a year with a prosthetic to get it to heart. “Okay, so. Xen.”

“Wait. Math’s wrong… eleven. Years.”

“Don’t distract me! Xen!” Gordon throws his arms up, finally making Benrey actually look at him proper. “Joshua wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.”

Benrey puts his phone down.

“Yeah,” Gordon scrubs his face, with his flesh hand. “So I need to… do something about Xen. I have a plan. I need to find materials, and then I need a way to Xen…”

“What’s an astronaut.”

“A- no.” Gordon sits up straight. “No, you’re fucking with me. You’re doing this on purpose. I’m fucking about to go nuts, dude.”

Benrey looks him up and down, makes sure his head movement is clear in the dark living room, lit only by the lamppost outside the window. “Yeah,” he says, “no shit. You wanna go back to… Xen… and stuff. Freeman lost his mind.”

Gordon opens his mouth to retort, but then closes it with a click. “Okay,” he mumbles after a moment of thinking it over, “okay. I get where you’re coming from.”

“Haha, get it. ‘cause I’m from. Xen. And shit.”

“Not funny, dude.” It is a bit funny. “But I’m not- okay, so, listen, Joshua’s a determined kid, alright? He’s smart, and he’s healthy, and he likes space. He’s… the chance of him becoming an astronaut is not zero.” Gordon pulls his legs up to his chest. “If it’s up to me, it’s gonna be a hundred percent, ‘cause that’d make him so happy. But even if I’m not the one writing the almighty script I’m still gonna do my best to help him if he’s serious.”

Benrey continues looking at him. “Uh-huh.”

“And… that includes. Never letting him near Xen.”

“Mm.”

“And I know, I know Xen’s like. Ten fucking floating rocks at least a million Texas lengths away from Earth, but it’s still there, y’know? It’s still there. You’re from there! You know it’s still…”

“Yeah?”

“... I. Want to blow Xen up.”

Benrey settles into the draw-me-like-a-French-girl pose. “Sounds good. How’re we doing that.”

“Well, we’ll need explosives that can actually detonate in Xen’s climate, and acquiring that’s gonna put me on so many shitlist-” Gordon almost physically grabs his own hand to yank himself back to Benrey’s answer. “Wait. Are you really just… relenting? Are you actually in this now. Benrey?”

“Say more about the explosive though.” Benrey blinks innocently at him. “Please? Explosive cool. Maybe illegal. Super cool though.”

Gordon is not doing the frog mouth thing. He’s not. He’s totally not. He sighs a long sigh; there, no more rude expression. “I am only thinking about using explosives, because it’s costly and we’re gonna have to transport it. So you have nothing to snitch about. Who would you even snitch to, anyway? Fucking- we are under an indefinite two-way nondisclosure clause, if any of us ever open our mouth to a stranger about that we’re gonna get sacked, but. Wait are you even involved in that? You came back after we signed those papers. Well Tommy’s officially ‘representing’ us, so it’s all tangential kinda, so maybe he can just add you, but why would you-”

“No explosive run huh… What’re you gonna… use. Then.”

“-subject yourself to the law- alright, yeah uh. To be honest I was thinking raw force? Because I do have around twelve years to make this work, and Coomer has insane strength that has leveled a Xen island before, and Bubby is… I think he just isn’t aware that there’s supposed to be a limit to human strength at all. They forget to put that in when they pumped him with knowledge juice. He can- wait, Bubby can just make fire. He can maybe negate the climate conditions for us, so explosives are still in the question here, and- Darnold, last I heard he’s doing some ‘Sour Patch Kids but real’ stuff… sounds like seriously corrosive stuff… We can. We can have a plan.”

Benrey is on his phone again. “Nice.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Gordon dry swallows some dust from the carpet. He realizes he’s gripping on it pretty hard with his prosthetic; he’s close to ripping a chunk of it out. He takes a deep breath and relaxes the plastic hand. “We’re gonna need to make and test the explosives, and we’re. I need to tell everyone. Convince them to help. And we’ll need a portal back to Xen.”

Benrey’s still clicking away on his phone - probably playing that firefighter game again - but he’s looking at Gordon at the same time. Gordon looks up just in time to catch the sharp grin disappearing from his face.

Alright. Maybe Benrey does love doing Benrey things. At least one of them’s actively enjoying this.

---

Gordon’s well aware how ridiculous he is. Is sometimes seen as. Perceived as. Terminologies.

Mostly he copes fine with that. He’s lived it for as long as he’s alive. Most decisions he makes are met with a raised eyebrow at the sublest and outright laughter at the rudest. Transitioning, that was a long, long period of his parents going from “haha funny joke but don’t tell it in public yeah” to “oh shit that’s for real huh? That’s for real” to confused, but silent, silence. Him applying for MIT and seeking a scholarship was definitely the career advisor at his high school laughing uncomfortably for a long time, because Gordon’s never held down a project properly, has he? How’s he doing this? And then him adopting Joshua officially was at least ten separate conversations with Joshua’s grandparents patting him on the back, it’s okay if you don’t! We can care for him. It’s nice to have children around the house again! We know you’re busy! We know there’s things youngsters like you want to do before getting tied down with children. Trust us, we know. You don’t have to .

Gordon knows. He’s never had to make any of the decisions he actively made, but one, that’s why they’re decisions and not punishments , and two, in many ways including cerebral, he did. Kind of have to. In many ways those are the only steps that make sense for him to take. They were the foundation to who he is as a person, with a sense of self that must be supernaturally obscure, because he’s. He’s got a lot of things to balance. A lot of tight ropes to walk.

Gordon’s many things, a lot of those he doesn’t fucking recall himself. Maybe that’s by itself absurd enough. He’s had a lot of time to learn, and a bit of time to relearn, being okay with being absurd.

Black Mesa “helped”, in the same way it spared the rest of him when it got his arm cut the fuck off. It’s a horror comedy. It gave him a bit of a new perspective on absurdity.

“Don’t you dare,” Gordon grouches, because he’s learning. He’s always learning. “Don’t use the a-word.”

Bubby puts his arm together in front of his chest. “I’m not about to! Don’t presume you know what I will do.”

In a way Bubby’s incredulous look stings worse than Benrey’s deflection, Gordon reasons, because Benrey has emotional (?) stakes in Xen’s existence. Maybe he has an external heart or something that’s still beating and keeping him alive on Xen, though Gordon hopes he’d’ve at least been transparent about that when they talked about blowing the place up. Bubby though, Bubby doesn’t have emotional ties to many things altogether. Bubby’s also a tube baby who sets himself on fire with his thoughts. Himself and other people and/or objects. Not as absurd as Benrey being Benrey, but absurd enough to be way above Gordon on the a-scale, and thus has no rights to call Gordon absurd.

“You have to admit though,” Bubby says after a moment of silence.

Gordon takes a deep breath. “No, actually, I don’t have to admit shit,” he says, with what he can call patience with just a little bit of definition stretching, “you ever thought of that? I actually can just never admit that blowing up a whole planetoid system is a bit out-of-the-box thinking of me. I can just say that it’s totally normal and expected behavior of me, and what’re you gonna do with that? Huh? Do go on.”

“Oh don’t be pissy at me,” Bubby huffs, and goes back to staring at the buoy bobbing on the water surface, tied to his fishing line. “You’re scaring away the fish, Gordon. Everyone knows you don’t talk and stomp around on the piers while people are fishing. It’s rude.”

“You’re literally only trying to see if you can set a fish on fire as a prank,” Gordon points out, more for his own sanity than to prove anything to anyone, least of all Bubby.

Benrey looks like he’s ignoring Gordon and Bubby’s exchange, just sitting at the edge of the piers, legs swinging evenly, but Gordon well knows he’s listening in. If not because he’s somewhat invested then because most things that frustrate Gordon is great entertainment to him.

He is, maybe, a bit, somewhat invested though, must be. He brought Gordon to where Bubby and Coomer are camping, afterall. No reasons else to do it, especially when they have time to wait for them to come back to civilization. Twelve years, in fact.

Gordon can wait (he can forget, but in his book that’s the same as waiting, really), and he doesn’t begrudge Bubby and Coomer’s “honeymoon trip”, which has consisted thus far of them trampling about in ~~nature~~ , e.g. deep ends of the world that they do not and should not have access to, but somehow end up in anyway. Gordon only knew because Coomer’s grown fond of taking pictures, and once in a while if they get wifi he sends everyone some. The most memorable one was a pitch black square except for two dots of light in the distance, with the geotag pointing to them being in the Mariana trench.

They’re having fun, and Darnold and Tommy take effort to “decontaminate” them between trips, as well as make them learn wildlife interaction guidelines (Bubby probably already knew, but he didn’t care, and still nobody’s sure if he cares now), so Gordon doesn’t mind. Has no reason to mind. Until now, but only a tiny bit.

They decided to stop in a seaside town somewhere up North three days ago, and wifi’s spotty at best but Coomer still managed to send them pictures again - of him fighting a dolphin and Bubby making fun of a goat skeleton in a museum - and then Gordon got tired of staying up thinking about Xen at night and shot his shot. It took them another day to check their message again, and Bubby replied saying “don’t third wheel other people, weirdo” and Gordon just sighed and resigned himself to staying up way too late for another week or so. But then Benrey asked him to go to GameStop with him, which. Admittedly that was suspicious as hell, but Gordon reasoned Benrey knocked and asked to be let in the other day, so what the fuck, right. And then he stepped through the GameStop’s door, noticing the glass being darker than usual, and ended up on this piers where Bubby’s been trying to have a laugh at some poor fish’s expense.

Bubby made fun of him for third wheeling again, despite Benrey also being right there, and despite Coomer not even being there.

“Did you guys have a fight or something?” Gordon asked, because maybe he can be a little bit spiteful. He’s allowed.

“No,” Bubby grumbled. “Harold impressed Gregory with his punching power, so he’s invited to the Punching Tournament. I don’t like being in water for a long time so I stayed. Their sandwich’s not even good.”

Gregory turned out to be the giant squid that lives a few kilometers off the shore, and another few kilometers under the sea level.

“I’m gonna issue an a-word ban, actually,” Gordon declares, when he comes back to where Bubby’s sitting on his journey to wear a track into the piers. “I think that’s more conducive to real conversations.”

He’s being distracted, he knows. And maybe he’s letting himself be a bit distracted, so he can have a minute to improvise a script. Benrey just fast traveled him here, he did not prepare any materials, he doesn’t even have his notebook with him. That’s where all of his plans are! And his doodles. Mostly his doodles, but that’s a part of his thinking process, so he’s allowed.

“Alright, Mister Fucking-Insane-Person,” Bubby shrugs.

“Doctor.”

“Oh, my bad! Doctor Fucking-Insane-Person.”

“Also that’s a ban dodge and you know it. Also you still don’t have any rights to call me anything! I refuse to submit in this matter.”

Bubby turns around fully to put his hand on crossed legs and stare at Gordon. “You sure, Gordon? Are you very sure about that, when you warp out of thin air to where I am missing my husband very much and not torturing fishes for fun, saying things about blowing Xen up ? Is that not ragingly absurd, Doctor ?”

Gordon takes another deep breath. For his own benefit. For his own wellbeing. “Okay, one, Benrey warped me here, I was not responsible for that. Two, you’re trying to set fishes on fire, and your husband is punching more fishes while a giant squid cheers him on, probably. And three, which part of blowing Xen up is absurd, now? Feel free to elaborate on it. I’m all ears.”

“The very idea of it!” Bubby exclaims, accidentally shoving his fishing rod off the optimal position, chasing away the few fishes not shunned by his radiating malicious intent yet. “Who even thinks of that?”

“Me,” Gordon snaps back, “and you guys kinda ruined what ‘absurd’ even means at all for me, so don’t try me at it.”

Bubby shuts his mouth with a click, but his brows are still furrowed in the exact way that claims, loudly even if soundlessly, that he thinks that’s stupid.

“No, go on, Doctor Bubby,” Gordon presses. “You’ve got the quiz. Try your hand at it again, go ahead.”

“Alright, then, how are we even doing it? If we’re doing it. And there’s no we yet, mind you.”

“I- okay.” Gordon holds his hands up. “I’ll admit I do not have the specifics yet. But logistically at least, it’s entirely possible. We’ll need,” he calculates a number real quick, “thirteen hundred pounds of column charge slurry, but if we have something high corrosive we can wrap up safely until detonation we’ll need even less. We can. Make that much. If we have Darnold’s help. We need access to Xen itself, which Tommy has the biggest chance to get. We’ll need to put the explosives deeper into the ground than surface level, so we’ll need to dig some holes, but with Doctor Coomer’s strength we can take care of that. And then we’ll need to trip it, and that might pose a problem in Xen’s climate, but we can manage a chemical fuse, or. Y’know. Just burn it hot enough to explode, which.”

He ends that speech with a vague and a bit jerky wave of his hand towards Bubby.

Bubby just blinks. “Huh.”

Benrey snickers under his breath, either at a fish or at Bubby’s reaction, Gordon doesn’t know. He wouldn’t even be able to guess, since Benrey still has his back to the entire commotion.

Gordon catches himself holding his breath, so he consciously exhales slowly. It’s okay. It’s whatever. He has twelve years. He can take some detours if necessary. He can forget, even. Maybe.

“That Doctorate turns out to be for something, huh,” Bubby continues. “That does sound pretty plausible, afterall.”

“Huh,” Gordon’s turn to blink. “Wait, that’s it? You’re in now?”

“Yeah, sure,” Bubby swings his arm out, “even though I’d like to be testy for a while longer, I also want to blow things up. Outside is very large, but it severely lacks opportunities to see things explode, so I’ll have to make it happen myself now.”

That’s a tiny bit worrying, but Gordon’ll take it. He’s used to Bubby being a tiny bit worrying anyway. Wouldn’t be Bubby without it.

“Now shoo,” Bubby turns around to fiddle with his fishing rod again, carefully moving it back to the optimal position, “you chased all the fishes off. Gonna have to start my work from the beginning now. It’s hard work tricking fishes, you know.”

“Don’t tell Coomer,” Gordon warns, “I want to let him know myself.”

“Sure, sure.”

“I’m serious.”

“Aren’t you ever.”

Gordon figures he’s done all he can on that front.

Benrey catches up with him when he’s walked away dramatically for a few minutes and is now at the main street of the town. “Rudeman.”

Gordon did forget him at the piers, so that’s on him. “Sorry, but also, do you have a plan to get us home, or what? ‘Cause I don’t have my car and I’m not hitching a random ride if I can help it.”

“Gotta... find a GameStop first. Score some Sports Champions 2 for the. PS3.”

“Alright.” Gordon nods. “Wait, do you need a GameStop to transport us? Is that a thing?”

“Huh,” Benrey just looks at him, and then pulls out his brick phone.

Gordon rolls his eyes, but then catches a glimpse of the screen, and sees the digital clock. “It’s- fuck, it’s almost five! Joshua’s almost home.”

“Oh look, no GameStop on the… roadside. What’re we gonna do.”

“Benrey, you- goddamnit,” Gordon frantically pulls his phone out of his pocket. He tries to yank his right arm out of Benrey’s hold to hold it steady, but Benrey doesn’t yield. “Fucking, let me,” he unlocks it and finds Joshua’s number, which is on top, because he added ‘01’ before his name, because he’s had plenty of experiences with arranging files so they don’t disappear on him, “c’mon, c’mon… Hey Joshie! Are you at school right now?”

“Hi Dad, yes,” Joshua answers, at the same time Gordon registers that he’s walking, Benrey pulling on his arm.

“Sorry I called in the middle of class, buddy, but we’re gonna. I’m gonna be a bit late home, okay? I’m outside right now, but I’m on my way- oh, no, we.”

They’re in his living room. Gordon puts his arm, just released, on top of the couch. This is his couch. The bowl of cereal he finished right before Benrey dragged him out’s still on the table. The PS3 lays silent in the TV cabinet, as it’s always been. He does go around the table to put his free hand on all of these things just to be sure.

“Dad?” Joshua asks from the other end of the line. “Are you okay?”

“I.” Gordon dry swallows. “No, yeah I- I got home. Me and Benrey were out for a bit and we got? Lost? But we found our way back, and I’m. I’m home now. I was really worried I wouldn’t make it back in time to open the door for you, so I called! But I’m home now.”

“That’s good!” Joshua says, even though Gordon can still hear worry in his voice. Sweet kid, his boy is. “Thank you for telling me in ad-advance.”

“I’m sorry I interrupted your class. Dad’ll be more careful next time.”

“It’s okay. What are we having tonight?”

Gordon takes a deep breath, holds it in for a moment, and then breathes it out, slowly. “We can have mac and cheese again, or we can try our hand at naan and make some soup to go with it,” he says, willing his voice to calm down. “We still have the yeast Ms. Juney gave us last month, right? We can go get bread flour when you’re home.”

“Okay.”

“Go back to class, buddy. See you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah. Can we have chowder tonight too?”

Gordon laughs. “We’ll look into it, but sure! If we can find the ingredients for it. Alright, bye now. Love you, honey.”

“Okay,” Joshua says again, and when Gordon’s about to move the phone from his ear, he adds, “Love you too, Dad.” And then he hangs up.

Gordon goes to the couch and sits down. He’s maybe cradling his phone a bit. It’s still warm from him gripping on it way too hard. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

“That went well, huh,” Benrey says, from the hallway. Gordon looks up to see him closing the door behind him, what looks like a copy of Sports Champions 2 for the PS3 in hand.

Gordon laughs, again, for real this time. “That’s- where'd you even get that?

---

They did make naan, or a version of it. Joshua likes messing with flour, Gordon caught him walking his fingers through the bowl, leaving tiny “footprints”. They couldn’t agree on a fish to put in the chowder, so they shelved that plan and bought some canned beef-and-vegetables soup instead. The naan turned out… fine. They tasted enough like naan, and Gordon only burned like two. Which was maybe thanks to the apartment’s stove top burning a bit less hot than it did the last time they used it; Gordon made a mental note to check on the gas or. Whatever one does. When that happened. He just needed to look up a number, call it, and stand next to the (hopefully) professional who would come while they did their work.

Benrey sat at the couch while the Freemans cooked and ate their dinner, either being on his phone or scrolling idly through the PS3’s library. Joshua asked if he could try and throw naan pieces into Benrey’s mouth from the kitchen table, which Gordon allowed, but with the preset limit of only three pieces, and the condition that he picked up the ones that missed himself. He then asked Benrey very politely if he could open his mouth to catch the bread, and then made a lot of mental calculations before throwing each piece. The first one missed, but the other two were snatched up by Benrey in a somewhat shark-like display, which Joshua clapped excitedly for.

Gordon heard Benrey come to the kitchen table, which Joshua was wiping off with the designated kitchen rag (the fourth one this month alone; it feels like someone’s eating them as they’re replaced sometimes), while he was cleaning the dishes. “Hey lil’ gamer dude,” Benrey said, and Gordon could hear him rustle around in a pocket of his puffy vest. “Scored big in the. Minigame.”

“Thank you,” Joshua replied politely.

“Here’s your price,” Benrey said. Gordon assumed Joshua was holding out his hands to receive whatever Benrey gave him, because he couldn’t hear any noise that thing made, just Joshua’s little excited gasp.

“It’s like the... Intarna-Internation… nal… Space Station!”

“Huh,” Gordon could hear Benrey blink, “that’s what it is…”

“Yeah! These are, here, they’re solar panels! They charge the batteries in here.”

“Nice.”

“Thank you Benrey!”

“Yeah, GG.” And then Benrey shuffled back to the couch, if Gordon interpreted the noises correctly.

Joshua held onto the price trinket until he asked Gordon to put it in the tool cabinet, along with the cake moulds and decoration kit courtesy of Gordon’s hectic MIT years. It was… Gordon could see why Joshua thought that was where it should go. It could be considered a cookie cutter, if the shape weren’t kinda suboptimal for a cookie. It also did look like the ISS, with wings and all.

Nobody in this household’s baked anything sweet in this apartment for at least a year, but. Well. Never say no to free, reusable stuff.

Gordon’s phone vibrates when he’s just sat down at the kitchen table again, a mug of garbage instant coffee in hand. He abandons it to go get his phone from where it’s charging on the living room table.

It’s Coomer. “It’s Coomer,” Gordon says out loud. “That’s weird- he’s. He doesn’t call.”

“He’s calling. Now.” Benrey says from where he’s sitting, on the couch. Gordon takes a deep breath and doesn’t deign it worth a rebuttal. He accepts the call instead.

“Hello Gordon! I heard you want to blow Xen up.”

Gordon pinches the bridge of his nose. “Bubby told you.”

“He did! In great details!”

“I- alright, whatever, I didn’t expect actual results with that one anyway.” Gordon remembers about his coffee. He comes back to where it’s waiting for him on the kitchen table, and takes himself a generous sip, letting it burn his mouth. “Fuck!” He sets the cup down maybe a bit forcefully. “Oh that’s a bad decision. What did- what did he tell you?”

Coomer takes a moment to gather his thoughts, leaving a blank minute where sounds of the wind and waves on the shore come through his mic. Gordon hopes he isn’t thinking about sleeping out there tonight, for the full nature flavor or whatever. “ A large part of his speech was about explosion! And how big and grand it would be. And also about how much he fucking hates Xen!”

“Glad we agree on that front,” Gordon mumbles.

“So am I! I also fucking hate Xen!”

“That’s. That’s fair, really, it’s a garbage place. But- did he, like. Have you heard anything about the actual plan? Did he tell you anything about the actual plan I definitely mentioned to him?”

Coomer pauses for another moment, probably to recall. “Nope! Not a word about a plan-”

“I fucking knew it,” Gordon mumbles.

“-though that is very thorough of you, Gordon!”

"Okay, listen,” Gordon picks his mug of coffee up and starts pacing. “I actually don’t… have all of it yet. I know me and Benrey are in,” he flicks his gaze to Benrey again, who does nothing to deny the statement, “and Bubby’s now in as well. I still need to- okay, the plan’s basically that we find or make enough explosive for the ten asteroids on Xen, we bury it at the core of said asteroids, and we blow that up so it blows Xen up. I have- I don’t know the specifics of how to make that much explosive yet, but I’ll convince Darnold somehow, and if he sits this one out then we’ll borrow his lab when he’s not using it. And I’ll ask Tommy about a way back to Xen, his. His dad’s done that plenty. He doesn’t seem to like Xen much, right? That’s the impression I got, so we can spin this into us doing him a favor or something. And then we transport the explosive to Xen, I can borrow a truck for that, I know someone, and then we dig into the ground there, that’s where we can really use your superstrength, and then we put the explosive in and. Set it on fire. Bubby, uh, agreed to take care of that.”

Another beat of silence follows Gordon’s speech. He seems to have been making that one a lot recently, mostly to himself, in his room, while writing things down in his notebook. He finds himself chewing on his own lip, so he makes himself stop and takes another gulp of the coffee, which has thankfully cooled down to gulp-appropriate temperature.

When Coomer speaks again, he seems to have chosen his words carefully. “I will need to ‘sleep’ on this, Gordon. You are right in your assessment that you do not have your plan together yet!”

Gordon takes a deep breath. “It’s okay,” he says, as much to Coomer as to himself. “It’s true. It’s half-thought up right now. I still need to figure out- figure out Darnold and Tommy and Mr. Coolatta. I, yeah,” his voice’s dropped to a mumble by now, “I think I need to sleep on it too.”

“Gordon.” The rustles that accompany Coomer’s voice gives the impression that he’s sitting down onto the pebble-littered beach as he speaks. “I would like to see Xen obliterated, and I think we can get it done.”

“That’s,” Gordon stops on his pacing in the kitchen, “That’s not. It’s okay if you’re not interested, Coomer. You don’t have to walk it back on me.”

“Please do not question my fucking hatred for Xen, Gordon.”

“O-okay.”

“But I am not in favor of hazy dreams anymore. I have gotten to see a lot during my ‘honeymoon’, and now I have broken free, and mere words on a script cannot placate me. I would like to see proof that it’s possible before I participate.”

Gordon takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

“I believe you can do it, Gordon!”

“Thank you,” Gordon says, a little bit dazed, while Bubby’s voice comes through from a distance at the same time, “Are you reciting poetry again?”

“In what distant deeps or skies, burnt the fire of thine eyes?” Coomer answers. “On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?”

“Stop praising that tiger while I’m right here!”

“I’ll,” Gordon says before Coomer can get fully caught up in Bubby’s antics again, “I’ll come back to you with. The details. When I’ve hashed it out. Thanks for,” he exhales, “thanks for holding out for me, Coomer.”

“So it is, Gordon, so it will be!”

Coomer hangs up there, and Gordon sits down at the kitchen table again. He finishes the mug of coffee in one long gulp. It’s gone a little bit more room-temperature than he likes.

“Sleep on it,” he mumbles, “good advice.”

“You should. Do that.” Benrey says from the couch. “Sleep good for body for soul.”

“You know what, when you’re right,” Gordon says, and stands up and goes brush his teeth. He then sits down at his work table and writes down questions until four in the morning.

---

Gordon used to suck at making phone calls. He’s kind of a champion at it now.

Funny thing is there’s an epiphany to it as well: he didn’t grow up with cell phones, so making phone calls was a hierarchical thing for him until he was like. Twenty years old. Kids used the landline when absolutely necessary only, and adults used it whenever they damn well pleased, because they paid for it and they had businesses to take care of . And Gordon was… not much of a rule breaker, surprisingly enough. Oh he fell short of where rules lay plenty, but he didn’t really intentionally break them. So he took calls when his parents said he could and when he absolutely needed to, and that habit persisted well into his adulthood.

He might also just be not very good at holding his tongue when speaking and. That was no good for phone calls. Kiddies phone calls. ‘cause he just realized one day that adults said whatever the fuck they wanted on the phone really, and nobody chastised them for it, no divine punishment, no sudden death round.

A sermon on self-love, that was; Gordon just takes phone calls now. Worst case scenario, he just turns his brain off and lets his mouth do its work. When people don’t presume they know better than him, they don’t presume he’s talking out of his ass ninety percent of the time.

That’s- that’s what he thought. Gordon’s wrong, a little bit. He can be wrong. Has been wrong plenty before. He can correct himself, here, he’s gonna do it right now: worst case scenario, he has to recite his plan, conceived so far in total isolation from anyone he knows and whose opinions he cares about, to the person who’s the most skittish and averse to what his plan is bringing about among those people, over the phone, where he can’t see and gauge body language and facial expressions.

Gordon would… like to meet Darnold face to face for this. But. It’s work. It’s, well, it’s closer to work than to play, given that he’s gotten mildly stressed out over it, and their lunch at the only Taco Bell in the whole desert is strictly pleasant, not-work talk only. And Gordon really, really enjoys those lunch dates, because he never has to think about damage control or having an identity crisis in the middle of one. They’re just nice, normal, a tiny bit shouty (the Taco Bell is usually packed and the acoustic’s not good, but it’s a Taco Bell, and it’s a ritual now), mostly jovial, lunch with a friend, eating subpar food he’s learned to enjoy. They don’t talk about what happened at Black Mesa, they don’t talk about work in general, they don’t even talk about soda outside of appraising the gaudy color combinations for any new sponsored drink. They talk about Joshua, about Darnold’s cat Lumbar Support, about Coomer and Bubby’s travelling, about new game releases, about Sega vs. Nintendo, about the weather.

Gordon doesn’t want to fall short of where the rules lie, not this time. So he calls.

“Doctor Freeman?” Darnold answers with the title, which sets the tone pretty well. Gordon takes a deep breath and steels himself.

“Doctor Pepper.” He pauses. “Darnold. Hey. I, uh, I’ve got a thing I wanna ask.”

“Go ahead!” Darnold goes quiet for a moment, to finish his sandwich, Gordon’d guess. He’s called in the middle of Darnold’s lunch break. “I must preface however that we’re working outside of office hours, and I can only advise you at the moment. Anything further will have to go through the… official channels.”

“Okay, that’s alright. I just.” Gordon worries his lips. He realizes he’s tugging pretty hard on his left sleeve; he makes himself let go. “I have a. Plan. That’ll need your expertise.”

“I’d be delighted to help then! Feel free to share more.”

“It’s about, uh.” Gordon takes another deep breath. He’s been consuming a lot of oxygen recently. “IwanttoblowXenup?”

Darnold goes, predictably, quiet for a moment. It doesn’t sting less when it’s predictable.

When he speaks again, it’s in a clipped, professional-but-barely tone. “Please say that again, but slowly.”

Gordon closes his eyes against the sunlight streaming in from the window in his bedroom. “I want to. Blow Xen up.”

“Gordon,” Darnold sighs. “Doctor Freeman.”

“I know.”

“Your megalomaniacal tendencies have grown since we last met.”

“It’s not- I’m not doing it for fun!” Gordon throws his free arm up. “Okay, this is genuinely a lot of effort and stress for something I’d do for pleasure, Darnold. I also couldn’t care less about fucking Xen - okay that’s not true, I’ve lost like a week of sleep over blowing it up, that’s not not caring, but like. I can’t. I need it to not be there,” he stands up from his bed and starts pacing, “and I have. A plan. Half of one. About that much. So it’s not hopeless-”

“Gordon, please slow down.”

“-as long as I have your help and- and Tommy’s, okay, I will. uh.” He taps on his thigh with his free hand too, for good measure. Go the whole nine yard with fidgeting, why not. “I. So, Joshua wants to be an astronaut,” he intones, and for the first time in a while he’s reminded again of how this started, how it took over his life for a hot minute, and it almost gives him the hiccups, “and. Y’know. Xen is in space. So it needs to not be there anymore. So I want to. Blow it up.”

Darnold goes silent again. Gordon thinks he can hear the epiphany punch the air out of him. Fuck, he hates phone calls.

“As much as I want to berate you about how you’re treating this matter and yourself,” Darnold resumes primly after a moment, “my lunch break is ending in exactly fifty-two seconds, and this sandwich will take me another two bites to get through. I’ll see you in the Taco Bell’s parking lot at three AM this afternoon, Gordon. Drink water.”

He hangs up. Gordon goes drink water.

Benrey clips into the apartment when Gordon’s on his third mug of iced water. “Whoa, hydration streak,” he says, settling himself on the kitchen table.

“I can go a bit crazy,” Gordon mumbles. “I’m allowed a little bit of funk and insanity. This is my house.”

“It’s… actually. MFA’s.”

Gordon groans. “Don’t fucking remind me. I tried to forget that. Also it actually belongs to the NRC, since they apparently can just scare MFA into giving employees housing, which I’m really fucking horrified by, but I’m choosing to not think about it, and you can’t make me.”

“It can be mine soon.”

“Do not attack and dethrone Nils Diaz.”

Benrey huffs. “Killjoy Freeman.” He shifts his pose so he’s sitting up straighter. “You wanna… try out Premium Water? Free trial for a week, you can manually cancel your. Subscription. After.”

Gordon stares at him. “What’s Premium Water.”

Benrey opens his jaws, wide, showing his teeth. He points inside as if there’s anything Gordon wants to find at all in there at the moment. Then he closes it with a click and stares back at Gordon.

Gordon just sighs. “No, Benrey.”

“Guaranteed beddy bye time, no charge,” Benrey blinks at him. “Black Mesa Sweet Voice™ a hundred percent effective. Five stars… satisfaction… rating.”

“You’re fucking lying, because I’d never leave it five stars. You get three at best.”

“Gonna catch you when you fall off the. Chair. Gonna be romantic.”

Gordon laughs. “No, not allowed.” He sighs and finishes the mug of water like it’s mead and he’s some Dungeons and Dragons elven ranger. He gives himself brain freeze. “Ah, fuck, oof,” he slaps his own forehead, “bad decision. Bad decision. Okay, I. I appreciate you asking instead of just going for it, but that’s the reality of asking, right? The person you ask can say no. And you’ve just gotta learn how to deal with it.”

Benrey just keeps staring at him, but he’s used to that now. It’s only a tiny bit unnerving. “How’s learning’s... satisfaction rate.”

Gordon sighs again. “It sucks ass. Fucking hate learning.”

Benrey grins at him, and then he checks his phone and it’s already time to go.

“Drink this,” Darnold says immediately when Gordon climbs into the shotgun seat of his car, and holds out a beaker of bubbling purple liquid.

Gordon just stares at it. “Darnold, what is this.”

Darnold sighs. “It’s the Potion of Not Telling. I also drank a sample before coming here,” he holds up an empty beaker with some of the same purple liquid at the bottom. “It blows us up if we tell our employers what we’re up to.”

Gordon ponders this very carefully. “Does. Tommy, for example. Does he count as my ‘employer’?”

“No,” Darnold says. “‘Employers’ only cover people and/or establishments you’re currently under an employee contract with and receiving salary from.”

“Alright,” Gordon intones carefully, and downs the whole beaker. It tastes like… the jello packaged like seahorses Tommy brings over sometimes. The red ones, specifically. It makes him feel a bit bloated, immediately, and he rubs his side a bit anxiously when he sits down in the car. “You’re actually under NDAs at all times, huh,” he says, as an opening line.

“Same as you, Gordon.” Darnold takes the beaker back from Gordon’s hand and puts it in with the other one. “Black Mesa seeked me out and offered to find me a position in a brewery, as well as fund any of my independent ventures, as long as I do not say a word about what… transpired… back there. The official record’s that I was stranded on an island with curious dino-esque creatures for four years, instead of worked in Black Mesa’s mixology department, and honed my craft with their help, using the fruits native to that island.”

Gordon laughs, and rubs his face with the prosthetic hand. It’s like putting your face on the car’s dashboard. “Sounds like them alright. At least yours sounds exciting, instead of fucking insane. They said I was ‘chasing an entropy in the desert’ and it ‘ate my hand’. What the fuck does that even mean?”

“We attempted feats of miracle, only it was not under their accountability,” Darnold says, “and we were punished for it. No matter, we have more important things at hand. What is this plan you’ve cooked up, Gordon?”

Gordon takes a deep breath, finding it easier than it’s been for a while, and relays what he’s got down of the blow-Xen-up plan to Darnold. They never look at each other meanwhile, both staring at the cars lined up haphazardly in the lane across from them, Gordon in a barren calmness as words leave his mouth, Darnold with his arms crossed in front of his chest, his whole presence compacted into a contemplative, silent piece.

“That is an intense reaction to a faraway threat, Gordon,” Darnold says when Gordon’s speech is over. “Xen is not only at least a galaxy away, but also a few dimensions over, if I understand the briefing right. I haven’t thought about that wretched place for almost a year.”

“Sorry,” Gordon says, not really feeling any of it, but making the effort.

“You don’t have to. I understand where you’re coming from.” Darnold taps idly on his own arm. “I was… extracted… swiftly from Black Mesa after I met you and your friends. I did not witness what happened after, but I saw… enough.” He takes a deep breath as well. “We can all have intense reactions to anything.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not maladaptive,” Gordon says. He’s gone to therapy. It was really good for helping him build a system that filters out the things that actually fucks him up and makes some sense of the rest, but it doesn’t lift him out of the comedy of his life itself. It can’t. That’s not what therapy’s for.

“Indeed,” Darnold says. “But I can’t be the judge of that. My domain lies with potion mixing, and I dare say I am a true expert at it, but I can’t claim expertise at other people’s life. Especially not yours.”

“I get it,” Gordon nods. The world kinda bobs a tiny bit when he does that. “I. Know not to indulge my impulse mostly. But sometimes decisions come back to haunt me, and those are usually just about choosing one furniture over another, or tying my shoelaces in the bunny ears way instead of the circle way and having them undone in the middle of a meeting and stepping on them and falling on my face, but this time it’s. It’s Joshua’s life. And there’s just no limit anymore to what can happen, not since.” He swallows. “Black Mesa.”

Darnold nods.

Gordon blinks. “I know it’s a little bit crazy.”

“It might be,” Darnold says, “but as a famous mixologist once said: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Even if that gain is just your peace of mind.”

Gordon lets out the breath he isn’t even aware he’s been holding. “Thank you.”

“You do not need to,” Darnold smiles, “I do stand to gain from this as well, since I really need to test this flavouring that’s supposed to land on pleasantly tart on the taste scale but goes into intestine-destroyingly sour territory instead. I need to know what makes it that corrosive, and testing on humans is entirely unethical.”

---

Gordon got home before Joshua. Benrey’s also not home. He lays down on the couch and takes a nap.

He wakes to a quilt over most of him, light turned on in the living room and in the kitchen, and silent chatter. His sense of smell kicks in a minute or so into him still laying on the couch, blinking up at the ceiling; he smells fish sauce and sugar cooking.

“Tommy’s over,” he mumbles.

“He awakes,” Benrey says, seemingly into thin air. Gordon feels the couch shift minutely as Benrey makes to stand up from where he’s sitting leaning back on it. “Good eatin’. I’ll go get the. Food. Coloring.”

When Gordon’s gathered enough of himself to sit up, Benrey’s nowhere to be seen. Tommy’s shifting something animatedly on the stove, while Joshua carefully carries one bowl at a time to the kitchen table.

“Hey Dad!” Joshua says when he catches Gordon’s eyes. He puts the bowl he’s carrying down to free his hand for waving. Gordon waves back.

“Hey Joshie, hey Tommy. What’re you guys making?”

“Caramelized pork b-belly!” Tommy says from his stove station. “And... sautéed vegetable medley.”

“With rice!” Joshua adds.

“A perfectly balanced meal.”

“I picked the vege-ta-bles!”

Gordon folds the quilt to busy his hands. This one’s definitely not his. He may have one somewhere in the closet, but it hasn’t made an appearance in… six months. He thinks. “What did you get for us, buddy?”

“Carrot!” Joshua holds up a finger. “It has a lot of vita- vitamin… A.”

“Awesome,” Gordon says and goes over to the kitchen table to high five Joshua. “What else did you choose?”

“String beans!”

“Oh?” Joshua hasn’t been much for that.

“Uncle Tommy’s gonna teach me how to eat them!”

“A dash of- of flavour, packed in one Kn●rr’s Complete Seasoning packet, is all you’ll need!” Tommy switches to a lower voice when Gordon peers over his shoulder at the pan on the stove. “That is not true. Kn●rr is only… fit to be- be on the floor.”

“Are- you’re not putting that in then?”

“No, I just use salt and pepper.”

Joshua giggles. Tommy extends a hand that Joshua can slap on in place of a high five.

Gordon gets out the utensils - spoon for Joshua, chopsticks for him and Tommy - and brings the rice cooker to the table once the light’s jumped to orange. He plates the pork, scooping Joshua’s helping into his personal plate first, while Tommy finishes with the vegetables. Tommy lets Joshua choose which vegetables to go on his plate; Joshua bravely gets a little bit of everything.

They eat dinner on top of companionable conversation, Gordon and Tommy taking turns asking Joshua about school and other things.

“I heard you want to- to be an astronaut,” Tommy asks. Joshua dutifully finishes his mouthful before answering.

“Yes! I want to go to space!”

“Do you want to meet- aliens?”

“Yeah!” Joshua’s excitement cools down a little bit as he scoops up another spoonful of rice with a piece of string bean carefully balanced on top. “I read the Wiki-pea-dia about it though. They say there’s no dis-discernable e-vidence of aliens yet. We sent the Voyager Golden Records an’ they haven’t… answered yet.”

“That’s how p-physical mails are,” Tommy smiles while getting himself a piece of the caramelized pork. “It used to take… weeks... before we hear from our friends who are far away. And the- the universe doesn’t have a… an Everywhere Wifi Network yet.”

Joshua shares a conspiratory look with Gordon and mouths not yet . Gordon laughs. Gordon’s clutching his bowl maybe a bit too tight.

“You can become an astronaut and- meet aliens. In space,” Tommy waves his chopsticks with a flourish.

“I’ll teach them what- what e-mails are!”

“It’ll take a- a lot of hard work, and you have to be able to eat string beans.” Tommy takes an exaggerated look at Joshua’s plate, now cleaned of food. “Oh! Would you l-look at that! Mister Joshua Freeman is… perfect astronaut materials, according to… the NASA guidelines.”

Joshua beams with a pride that knocks something loose in Gordon’s chest.

They finish dinner and clean up together, then Gordon sends Joshua back to his room to do his homework, agreeing to an hour of video game after if he can get it done before nine. Gordon cleans the dishes while Tommy puts the kettle on and makes them both hot chocolate.

“I bought some-something for Joshua today,” Tommy prompts. Gordon looks back to see him hold up the exact same cookie-cutter-thing Benrey gave Joshua the other day.

“Oh- oh my god.” Gordon laughs. “Holy shit?”

“Wh-what’s the matter, Gordon?”

“Do you guys have like a hivemind or something?” Gordon pulls off a glove to open the tool cabinet and pull Benrey’s gift out. “Benrey gave Joshua this. I don’t even- what’re these supposed to be? Where d’you guys even get them from?”

“It’s the- International Space Station Biscuit Cutter!” Tommy puffs out his chest, slightly indignant, but definitely bemused as well. “They’re issued by- NASA, cut from the s-scrap metal of the hulls of… prototype spaceships. They’re very rare!”

Gordon stares at the one in his hand. “And now we have two of them.”

“They’re… very valuable! You can sell them for a high price.”

Gordon smiles. He puts Benrey’s apparently rare and expensive gift back into the tool cabinet and puts the glove back on. “You’ve gotta ask Joshua about that. It’s for him, afterall.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, crumbled into grains only by the click-clack of dishes in the sink and the water running from the faucet. Gordon weaves himself into a solid piece of nerve, bracing, bracing.

Tommy’s… better acquainted with the crazies of these things than most, maybe. He’s apparently said “fuck it” to the administrative work that his dad would’ve liked to hand back to him at one point, and just. Got a PhD in nuclear physics instead. Gordon’s been through something like that, and from experience he can tell that it would’ve taken real nerve to do it. He also can tell that no matter what it still rubs off on you, and you don’t recover from that kinda consistent exposure to idiosyncrasies, because you don’t ever feel like there’s anything to recover from , really. It’s just how it is, and the world’s off-kilter, not you. Like Benrey, Tommy’s world runs on a different axis, and he and the rest of them are, in many ways, looking both through strange eyes.

Gordon’s a little bit jealous of that. He’s honestly not sure if he can ever fully get Tommy, but then. Plenty of people never get him, and here he is. He can learn to wear it as well as Tommy, one day.

Right now though. Tommy’s important to the plan. Gordon knows that, in a theoretical way. Ha, theoretical…

“I would like to not be insane,” Gordon says, more to himself, at the same time as Tommy setting his cup of hot chocolate down and saying, “Benrey… told me.”

“Oh… I. That’s? Good?”

“Wha- you’re not insane , Gordon!” Tommy waves his hand. Gordon can hear it, even if he can’t see it. “You’re… creative.”

“Thanks Tommy,” Gordon says with a huff of laughter that he doesn’t think reaches Tommy at all. “I. I get it though. I got Bubby to turn around on it, but everyone else did say that it’s a little bit fucked up that I thought of doing that at all.”

“But they… agreed on helping you anyway.”

Gordon taps on the metal wall of the sink. “That’s… yeah. Well, other than Coomer.”

“Doctor Coomer doesn’t think you’re crazy,” Tommy protests. “He just has... boundaries.”

“That’s fair. He’s allowed that. He more than deserves that.” Gordon blinks. “Wait- why am I arguing down on my side? I need you to be on board for the plan to work.” He laughs, bowing down over the sink. He’s shaking a little bit. “Wow. I’m a little bit gone. Can I be a little bit gone?”

“You’re… totally allowed, Gordon” He feels Tommy tug on his elbow. With a deep breath, he lets go of where he’s gripping on the edge of the sink with white knuckles, and lets Tommy lead him to the kitchen table. He dutifully sits himself down on a chair, lets Tommy take off the gloves, and holds the cup of hot chocolate Tommy pushes into his hands carefully. “It’s your house.”

“It’s MFA’s.”

“It’s yours,” Tommy says, determinedly, and Gordon takes a deep breath and sidesteps every implications that has. “You can have your fears, and… and your plans, and your hopes. For Joshua. It’s your place, Gordon.”

Gordon takes a shaky sip of the hot chocolate. Tommy puts on the gloves and finishes washing the dishes for him.

“Sorry,” Gordon says, mostly aiming at the dishes thing, but. He also just kinda wants to put that out there.

“There’s nothing to be… be sorry for,” Tommy replies, amidst the noises of the dishes and the water running.

Tommy talks while Gordon drinks his hot chocolate; in the end, whether he wants to or not, he’s accepted a bit of the job the Gman holds. Gordon knows this, that’s how Tommy vouched for and kept the Science Team from a much worse fate than relative freedom except for a story no sane man’d believe anyway. Mister Coolatta Senior seemed to be impressed by the choice, aside from all the worries that come with it.

“He’s… he’s proud of me,” Tommy says, softly. “I know he only wants what’s best for me.”

“He’s been awfully accommodating,” Gordon says, remembering about the movie night they had after Tommy’s birthday bash last year. That man pulled a gun on him. As if he’d walk out on Tommy, if Tommy’d asked for him to stay around.

“He… doesn’t involve me… with his problems,” Tommy says. “Some parents do that.”

Gordon can’t find anything to say to that, so he finishes his hot chocolate.

“I got a vote when they brought Xen up the-the other day,” Tommy says, when the dishes have all been cleaned and put on the rack to dry. He pulls out the chair next to Gordon and picks up his cup of hot chocolate. It’s still steaming, somehow. “I-they were thinking it was- it’s too risky to leave a bridging point open like that. They want to… demolish it.”

Gordon chuckles, and then it becomes a full body laugh, and then he’s curling up on himself, the empty cup between his hands. He shouldn’t clutch it like this, it might break. He’s broken the handle off of a mug before, when one of his old prosthetic wasn’t calibrated perfectly. He can’t stop laughing though. Not enough to let go of the cup now.

“Holy shit,” he wheezes. “holy motherfucking shit. We’re doing it. We’re doing it? Xen’s fucking going down.”

“It sure is!” Tommy says, and claps a polite golf clap for Gordon’s victory.

---

Gordon does have shit he needs to do for the online classes he teaches, but outside of it he’s still way too idle. He and Joshua go to the aquarium and the museum whenever the schedule works out, and once in a while they drive by Roswell to catch a plane taking off into the sky, and he does grocery runs and tries to clean around the house and do laundry on a timetable, and there’s always the PS3 Benrey dragged back that’s now public good, as well as his probably too long Steam list, but. Gordon’s shit at talking himself into and out of doing things. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel right to start doing something, so there’s a black hole of time between him thinking “I should get to this” and him actually doing it. And Joshua’s life isn’t just him; his son’s going to school now, and he’s made friends at school, and he talks to them on the phone and goes hang out with them on weekend afternoons.

Gordon’s not as good at holding onto time anymore, now that things’ve. Changed.

So figuring the explosives out’s been good for him. It’s just what he does back in uni again, except without a supervisor, without having to write anything down properly (just legibly’s enough), and without peer review. It’s mostly math, but with the spirit of two middle schoolers stealing sodium crumbs from the school lab to throw into puddles. It’s closer to play than he expected. Closer than playing Horse Simulator 3D on the PS3.

He and Darnold spend the day building the corrosion rate equation, pouring Darnold’s concoction on rocks Gordon figures have the same make-up as the ground on Xen. Benrey doesn’t bring the venture up often, but every other day Gordon finds clumps of dirt and random rocks that weigh suspiciously little for their size in his glove compartment. He brings those in for the pour test as well, and they build a simulation based on them.

Balancing the corrosion with the heat’s a bit tricky; Gordon needs to know how hot Bubby’s ignition can go, since their number’s high. He was about to shoot Bubby a call when Coomer’s latest photo arrived. Gordon recognized the street in it.

They put the project on hold for an afternoon so Tommy and Darnold can have the lab to decontaminate Coomer and Bubby. Gordon spends that afternoon getting the air fryer he ordered last week out of the box while Benrey reads the manual out loud wrongly. He calls Joshua to let him know they’re having guests over that evening, thankfully in the middle of the school recess this time. Gordon tries to remember Joshua’s exact timetable at school, he really does. It’s just not fruitful a task.

When Joshua arrives home, Gordon’s in the middle of arguing with Bubby over how much water’s left in air fried food. “Hey Granpa! Hey Bubby!” Joshua waves at Coomer and Bubby, “hey Uncle Tommy! Hey Doctor Darnold! Hey Benrey! Hey Dad!”

Gordon steals the chance to close the air fryer while Bubby’s joining in with the “Hey Joshua!” chorus and distracted. “We’re making spring rolls and egg rolls!” He calls after Joshua, who’s in his room putting his backpack away. “You can choose the filling yourself!”

The kitchen barely fits everyone, so comes dinnertime they move the living room table up next to the TV cabinet to make space for the spare straw mat, and lay out a tablecloth on top for good measure (Gordon’s had enough experience to remember to do that). They sit on the floor in the living room together, almost shoulder to shoulder, and at some point the conversation gets away from Gordon entirely. He just nods when Joshua points at something he wants and gets some in the bowl for him.

“I’ve heard somebody wants to become an astronaut,” He hears Coomer say at one point.

Joshua puffs out his chest proudly.

“Doesn’t everybody at some point,” Bubby says. “I wanted to be an astronaut too, when I was forty.”

“Oh I have seen the photos,” Coomer continues, a gentle light in his eyes, “It is very beautiful out there.”

Joshua asks for help with his homework after dinner, and Tommy and Darnold sit down with him for that. Benrey joins Gordon at the sink while he’s pouring dish soap into one of the large bowls they used. He doesn’t know what to do but blink at him, dumbfounded.

“Check this out,” Benrey says, and spits lime green into the sink. When the light clears, the dishes have become spotless.

Gordon stares at the sink. “I- you- th- is that- you can do that? ” He points at the plates. leaning on the sink’s edge.

Benrey grins. “New… new skill acquired bro. Just got the EXP for it.”

“You spent your EXP on dish cleaning ?”

“We should conserve water, Gordon!” Coomer declares from behind him next to the kitchen table. “Water shortage is caused by corporate greed, but with certain individual actions we can improve the situation ourselves!”

“Please don’t kill Mark Schneider.”

“Worry not, Doctor Freeman! His death will not be by my hand directly!”

Gordon laughs, helplessly. “Everything happens so much,” he laments, only semi-jokingly, as he takes off the cleaning gloves and puts the plates on the rack.

“Keep up, Doctor Freeman,” Bubby says.

“They certainly do,” Coomer says, much more nicely. “I’ve heard your plan is soon coming to fruition!”

Gordon nods. “Yeah, it’s. Yeah. We were,” he swallows, “Darnold and I, we were about to ask for Bubby to let us test his fire. Figure out if he can reach the ignition point we need.”

“Well now, that sounds like a challenge,” Bubby says.

Gordon finds a price tag still stuck on one of the bowls that he’s very sure wasn’t there when it was brought out. “Benrey,” he groans. Benrey just gives him a shit eating grin. “You’ll need to hold a temperature for about three minutes, and then the mixture takes care of the rest,” he says to Bubby, while swatting Benrey on the shoulder.

“Just three minutes, isn’t it.”

“Do not try and stay for more. I’m serious. When it explodes it’s gonna turn seriously corrosive. You’re gonna be sludge ten seconds after it gets on you.”

Gordon can hear Bubby blink. “Oh- oh. This is serious huh. We are blowing Xen up.”

“We are, darling,” Coomer affirms.

Bubby shifts on his chair. “I’ll need. A minute.”

When Gordon’s done with the dishes, he turns back to the kitchen table to catch Bubby letting go of Coomer after a hug. “Son of a bitch, you went for it, you motherfucker,” Bubby says, a bit too loudly, fixing his glasses.

Benrey sings a very high note over his voice. “Language!” Gordon hisses.

“Oh, sorry.” Bubby pats his own mouth. “Forgive a man, I’m still working through it.” He switches to a mumble, seemingly only to himself. “It’s real. I’m gonna set Xen on fire. Gonna show Black Mesa what for. It’s really gonna happen…”

Coomer pats Bubby on the back lightly, making him almost hit his face on the table. “We’ll finally move fully away from the game, my dear Professor,” he says, and he’s smiling. He’s smiling very wide.

“I can be your Professor,” Bubby mumbles. “I can blow Xen up.”

“ We can blow Xen up,” Gordon corrects him. “Me and Darnold didn’t agonize over a- darn modifier for a week and a half so you can set our work on fire and take all the credits.”

“Hush, let me process things, you rude bastard.” Benrey censors bastard with another burst of pinkish light.

“I can see the other end,” Coomer says, cheerfully. “Now, Gordon, I’ve heard you need help digging into the core of a few asteroids?”

---

They mark a date for the excursion.

He ‘woke up’ early, and made himself and Joshua an actual breakfast for a change while Benrey finished off the box of cereal that was open. “Dad’s got a work thing coming up,” he told Joshua while scooping extra egg onto his plate. “I’m gonna have to stay on site for a night.”

“So you’re not going home tonight?” Joshua asked, taking the plate handed to him by Gordon, but making no move to go back to his chair.

Gordon nodded. “I’ll be home tomorrow though, but you’re gonna have to stay at your grandparents’ tonight. I’m gonna come pick you up at their place tomorrow afternoon. You should pack a spare change of clothes and your pajamas to bring to school.”

“Okay,” Joshua said. And then, “What’re you staying on-site for?”

“I’m,” Gordon said, “Okay, you can’t tell anyone this, yeah? I’m blowing asteroids up.”

He could see Joshua’s eyes brighten. It was visible . “ In space ?”

“Yes,” Gordon laughed. “But it’s very experimental, which means…”

“It’s not ready for the public eye yet,” Joshua whispered, almost reverently.

Gordon laughed again, and took off the mitten on his hand to ruffle Joshua’s hair. “You’re gonna be okay staying at your grandparents’ place? If you don’t like that I can ask someone else to come over instead.”

“It’s okay,” Joshua said, finally content to go sit down again. “Can I bring my skate shoes?”

“Sure thing, put them in a bag.”

Gordon called Joshua’s grandparents to let them know to pick him up at five (Joshua chimed in to ask them to remind him about the roller skates), and then Joshua got his backpack and spare clothes and bag for the shoes and the house was once again vacant.

They don’t have a vehicle, but Tommy sings and Bubby joins in and Darnold keeps a beat and after a while Benrey starts playing songs out of the shitty speaker on his phone. Gordon’s even spent the day before sleepless, but that’s kind of everyday now. He hadn’t anticipated having to get used to a day having twenty four hours again, but well. He hadn’t anticipated anything while going through Black Mesa, really. It wasn’t really ideal thinking-far-ahead environment.

Benrey seems bouncier when he’s on Xen. Gordon didn’t think about it, but when he steps through the portal he has a flash of that image from what feels like a lifetime ago: Benrey giant as the Earth itself, blocking everything else in sight, his form longing to catch up with his already immense, oppressive presence. Taller than any walls, any mountains, any barriers between himself and a measly human’s fleeting existence.

Gordon shakes his head. At his least incomprehensible, Benrey’s said it was “a show”. “Like. Cable TV. A television series,” Gordon’s asked.

“Like a cutscene,” Benrey’s replied, as if Gordon was the one too slow for the course.

Benrey now felt nothing like whatever that was that happened to him and the Science Team last year. Benrey now felt just… like a dude. Doing a barrel roll, while saying “Ooooo barrel roll” with a straight face. While his Nokia 2700’s still crushing whatever song it’s playing into oblivion.

Gordon doesn’t deal in implications anymore, so he starts singing along to whatever everyone else’s singing as well, and focuses on carrying their homemade Xen-specific dynamite blocks to where they’re going to dig their largest hole into the core of this wretched piece of rock.

It takes a day, kind of; he doesn’t sleep, out here in the thin atmosphere of Xen, where the stars don’t blink and red light comes in a hue from inside the dirt. He doesn’t have to force himself to go lay down at midnight like back home, he just sits down, at the edge of the portal, when the explosives have all been installed, and watch Coomer and Bubby ready themselves.

They can hear Bubby’s cackles ringing in Xen’s air and also in their comms, as he lays in Coomer’s arms and they race the fire, starting from the outer ring of asteroids to the main Xen island. They jump from rock to rock, red light trailing after them while the dirt itself breaks apart, not with a boom, but with the sound of bubbles breaking after a wave crashes on the shore. Xen glows brighter than it probably ever has, in its disintegration.

Benrey sings a few vacant notes, standing on nothingness; the light from his mouth blends in almost perfectly with Xen’s dying light.

“You got all of your belongings outta there?” Gordon asks, half as a jab, half serious. “Didn’t leave anything important in your old apartment?”

Benrey doesn’t answer, for a moment. When he does, it’s just to mumble, “oh look, there’s fireworks.”

---

They got home early from it.

Gordon takes a nap on the couch; he only wakes up from Benrey turning the sound up to max and then shooting a rocket at a truck in Far Cry 3. “Dude,” he throws an arm up over his face, and winces when it’s the plastic arm. “What the fuck.”

“Go pick Joshua up,” Benrey says, definitely too conversationally, and barely understandable under the noises from the game. “Gordon. Sleepman.”

“You’re slipping,” Gordon comments as he wrestles himself out of Tommy’s quilt. He forgot to give it back to Tommy, he realizes sleepily, picking up the phone he left charging on the living room table. It’s seven already.

The drive to Joshua’s grandparents’ place is not a long one. He finds Joshua sitting at the porch of the little house, backpack and the bag with the roller skates at his feet. Joshua jumps up at the sight of Gordon’s car, and before he can walk through the gate he’s already found his arms full of his son.

Joshua clings to his neck with a death grip. “I’m sorry I’m late,” Gordon says. “I was tired, so I took a nap, and forgot the time.”

“It’s okay,” Joshua mumbles, “you were tired.”

“I blew up so many asteroids though.” Gordon says, and Joshua laughs.

They drive home after saying goodbye to Joshua’s grandparents (Joshua’s grandpa put a wrapped up pot pie in Gordon’s hands with an iron grip and a gaze that communicated clearly what would happen if he refused it), and Joshua agreed to take a detour to the Roswell airport for the night. Gordon absentmindedly texts Benrey taking the kid to watch airplanes, get your own food , and puts his phone away for the drive. The radio’s on, but Joshua doesn’t sing along. Gordon’s vocal cord’s still tired from Xen (no more, Xen-no-more it is, there’s just a vast of empty space inbetween dimensions there now) so he also stays silent.

They get ice cream at a drive-thru on the way, and then they’re at the highway, parking on the roadside, looking over the rail at the airport. A plane leaves the ground there and goes into the air. Gordon’s struck by how different it is from a bird or a moth; nothing about the plane communicates any internal movement, it just. Moves. Up and up. Like a JPEG sliding across the screen under someone’s puppeteering with a mouse.

Joshua stares at the plane, unblinking. “Is it dangerous in space, Dad?” He asks.

Gordon taps his hand on the steering wheel. “It’s.” He starts saying, but stops to clear his throat. “It can be. There’s a lot of math going into making things that bring a human into space, and a lot of different people doing different parts of that math, and. Sometimes some people do their math wrong. Sometimes they try something new, and we don’t have the good math for that new thing yet. Sometimes new things break into the old math, and we need to. Work around that new thing.”

“What happens if,” Joshua swallows, “someone does the math wrong?”

“We try to catch it,” Gordon says. “That’s why there are so many people doing the math. So if someone gives the wrong answer, they can spot it early, and fix it.”

“What if nobody does,” Joshua says. He’s still looking through the car’s window, at the stroke of cloud the plane’s long flown past.

Gordon puts his hands on the gear stick. “That’s very, very rare to happen,” he intones carefully. “They have to check, over and over, before they send a ship into space.”

Joshua turns from the window to Gordon. He looks at Gordon’s prosthetic hand, on the gear stick. “I’ve only found books about spaceships that have gone to space,” he says, quiet.

Gordon turns over, and holds out that hand. Joshua climbs over the gear stick to give him another hug. “Experiments are important to those ships too,” Gordon says. “They give the people who make the ships important information to make them safe.”

Joshua just buries himself in Gordon’s arms.

“I’m really sorry I came home late and didn’t call you, Joshua,” Gordon says, and hugs his son tighter. “I won’t do that again. I’ll always call when I’m home late.”

“I don’t have to be an astronaut,” Joshua mumbles.

“Oh, no- nononono, listen,” Gordon says into his hair, with all the determination he can muster up. “Listen, Joshua, you become whoever you want to, okay? You don’t have to be anything, but you don’t have to not be anything either. That’s my mistake, you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re good. You’re good. You’ll be an incredible astronaut. You’ll be the first man on Mars. Jupiter, even.”

“Jupiter is a gas giant,” Joshua mumbles. “There isn't any land to land on.”

Gordon nods. “That’s why it’s called landing , I get it.”

---

They drive home after, and Joshua asks to sit with Gordon while he and Benrey play Mario Kart. Gordon agrees, which means he has to clamp down on any curse he almost lets out when someone bumps him off the damn road, while Benrey does some magic or whatever on his screen. Who the hell knows.

After their third match, Benrey elbows Gordon in the arm to signify a break. “Beddy bye hour,” he says, not even looking at Gordon, “for… babies. Hattrick means I make the rules.”

“You didn’t come first in the second match,” Gordon argues, but quiets down when he looks down to see Joshua asleep leaning on him. “Okay, don’t fucking choose Toon Link for me again while I’m away,” he points a finger at Benrey, who’s residing smugly in the to-be-chaos of his own making. “I’m fucking serious.”

He carries Joshua to his bedroom and tucks him in, and then detours to the kitchen for some water.

“Ooh, hydration,” Benrey comments idly.

“What d’you know about it,” Gordon mumbles when he settles back down on the couch. He looks at the TV screen to find Inkling on one of the shitty bikes. “What the hell man, this bike sucks ass. Fucking Shit Taste McGee over here.”

Benrey laughs.

Gordon plays the game, while thinking about the sendoff party they’re throwing for Bubby and Coomer next week, before the grandpas go off gallivanting in yet another forbidden corner of the Earth. Coomer lovingly calls it their “honeymoon”, but Gordon has full faith this is gonna be what they do forever. Or at least until they’re bored of Earth, and start aiming for the Moon instead. Probably not a bad place to be in.

“Thinking Xen thoughts, aren’t’cha,” Benrey says, while sending a shell after some poor computer character.

Gordon grins. “Ha! Sike! I’m not even thinking about Xen.” He pauses, catching the full force of a fireball a Mario shoots at him. “I haven’t thought about Xen at all actually. Since I got home with Joshua.”

“Achievement unlocked,” Benrey says, and extends a hand. Gordon stares at it.

“Wh- huh?”

“High five, idiot.”

“Oh,” Gordon says, and slaps that hand. Benrey’s eyes widen at the noise.

“Yo that’s a. Crunchy noise.” He claps his hands together, and he’s laughing now, light flowing out in a thread of something like baby blue. “This rules,” he says happily.

Gordon smiles, and then some motherfucker flings a shell at him, so he falls off the road again.

He stays up way too late again, and time doesn’t stop slipping, and when Darnold gives him a vial of neutralizer for the Potion of Not Telling at their little party the week after it gives him something like mania and he hugs Coomer like an idiot while the old man slaps his back in a motion that’s supposed to be comforting. He sleeps that off as well afterwards, and wakes up to Tommy surfing the channels on his TV, complaining about lack of daytime talk shows. When he forgets about the scheduled blackout a month after, he still calls the concierge with shaking hands and then climbs into his bed like he’s four again and there’s a storm outside. He still thinks about Black Mesa, and about Xen.

There’s just a little addendum now, that he can remind myself of.

It’s weird how quickly it blends into everything else, but. Well. It’s weird everything .

He makes cookies again, comes the winter, and teaches himself how to decorate cookies, just to have something to do. Joshua throws his pencil onto the notebook one day to go dig out the lumpy, supposedly-ISS-shaped cookie cutters from the tool cabinet.

“Careful,” Gordon calls after him.

Joshua toddles back with the cookie cutters in hand. “Can we have ISS cookies?” He asks.

Gordon says yes. He also looks up a buncha references, prints them out, and tries to get the cookies exactly correct, making two “outside” cookies and an “inside” one, with schematics of the inner chambers of the ISS drawn on. Joshua loves it.

“Here’s where the astronauts sleep,” He points at the spot that’s supposed to be the service module, and Gordon’s proud of getting that part right on the cookie.

He ruffles Joshua’s hair again. “Hey, maybe you’ll sleep there in twenty years,” he says, and marvels at the levity to that sentence. Just a little bit. It’s washed away with Joshua’s smile, and then they busy themselves with folding bags for the cookies instead.

#hlvrai #gordon feetman #joshua freeman #benrey #tommy coolatta #dr. harold coomer #bubby #darnold pepper #fanfiction #ask to tag #+ one art inside but it mostly has to do with the fic #I will. draw more from this fic and put them in as time goes on #the formatting's a bit wack bc I just copied the formatting from ao3 #I will come back to fix stuff up later #okay now I take more naps #have a good day! and also thank you for reading this fic if you do!

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tracynotabi · 3 years

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Riptide Day 0-1

So I wasn’t going to record my time in Ohio, just because I forgot to take pictures and we weren’t really mobile, but looking back, there were just too many memories to forget and I just really wanted to share with everyone how much fun this community is, despite the fact that we were canceled.

Most people will be referred to by their names, but I’ll introduce them with their tags first. If you see this and would like your name removed/changed, please let me know.

Also, some of this is not a perfect play-by-play because I am writing purely from memory.

Also, please note, there is degeneracy.

Thursday; September 9, 2021

Starting off the day, Kevin (The Doctor) and I had basically no sleep. We woke up at 7am PDT (read: 6:30am but too lazy to get out of bed) after getting to be around 4-5am mainly because Kevin wanted to hang out with his friends in Discord before he leaves them for the whole weekend. Me? I was just procrastinating on packing.

Joey (Big Large) texts in our group chat that we never got rid of from Emerald City that they’ll be at my place in 10 minutes with Ivan (Ivayne), because they were driving up north from Elk Grove, which is about 20 minutes south of where we live.

The plan was to drive to Robert (PotatoesAreYum)’s place and then make the two hour drive to San Jose, where we would catch our 1:45pm flight.

Why did we do this? Because our tickets were canceled for Blacklisted 6 and we couldn’t get refunds so we only had credits to work from, but apparently, Sacramento Airport did not have available flights to Ohio that were by Alaskan Airlines.

We took off, leaving Sacramento and heading to Davis. Part way through, we get a text from Robert asking how far out we were, because he had to poop, but we were 11 minutes out.

Robert, the descriptive man he is, describes that his poop was ready to crown, so he was good. I thanked him for the visual, because goddamn, I needed another one after getting a Snapchat from Joey the night before of his ass hanging out in jorts.

Robert: At least I didn’t sent a picture like Joey. But if you want a picture, I could send you one. Me: I would cancel your flight.

We end up driving south to Kevin’s brother’s house, where we tried to find a Jack in the Box that was on Google Maps. We spent about five minutes looking for it before ultimately giving up and going to a Hawaiian BBQ/Donut shop. We were just as confounded as you are probably right now. Food was OK.

Kevin’s brother insisted the Jack in the Box was there but for the life of us, we could not find it. He took us to the airport and off we went to Chicago. Yes, they played Smash at the airport, because this is what Smash players do.

They also played on the flight. Sidenote: there was this very loud cat in the aisle across from me that was meowing like crazy.

Flight from Chicago to Cleveland sucked. It was hot and cramped and they took our baggage away.

We land in Cleveland at about 11pm? Parker (Boringman [Sip Mastah]) was waiting for us at our gate because he had landed an hour before us.

We go down to Ground Transportation to reach our shuttle when I read the little red tag one of the flight attendants gave me. It said that our baggage would be given to us at the end of the flight.

... Well, we had just passed through security and going down the escalator at that point.

Well, fuck.

We run into Washington at baggage claim and I’m panicking because I have no idea if our luggage is going to pop out at baggage claim. Joey, Kevin, and I go up the escalator - the WRONG escalator and we go up a flight too much. We go back down and the airport’s just empty.

Makes sense, it’s 11pm EDT and there’s not a single worker in sight.

Robert texts us saying our luggage popped out and I hate life because the wording on the ticket, I swear, implied it wasn’t going to come out of baggage claim.

We go back down, grab our luggage, say bye to Washington, and head on our to the shuttle wait area.

There, we run into Luke (Yung Quaff) and Will (Twisty) from Massachusetts. Apparently, they had been waiting for the shuttle for over an hour and it was about 11:30pm at this point in time and we’re so tired because we’ve been travelling the whole day and there were people waiting for us to goon with.

We get to the shuttle and it’s an hour to the resort. Crying inside.

We check in and our room is on the other side of the resort from Guttey and Spencer (Mr. Watch and Learn)’s room even though they provided our confirmation number when they got their hotel room. What the hell.

Seeing everyone in that room was so amazing. I can’t remember everyone there exactly, because let me tell you, that room at one point probably had more people than it should have and we most definitely violated some kind of fire hazard.

Friday; September 10, 2021

Twisty ended up staying the night in our room because we had a two bedroom, two bathroom suite with six people. Our suite had a king bed, two queen beds, and a queen pull-out from the couch. Joey and Robert - the two largest people - stayed in the king bed. Kevin and I shared a queen. Ivan had a queen. Parker had a queen. Though I believe the first night, Parker and Ivan shared the queen (?) and Twisty stayed on the pull out.

Twisty barrel-rolled the whole night.

The bed squeaked so much it was insane. I think it only really bothered me, but that was fine because the guys needed their rest more than I did.

Spencer, the god that he is, ended up driving from Long Island to Ohio, and he offered to take us to go get some groceries for his room and us at Meijer.

It seated five, but I don’t really count as a full human size-wise, so I sat at Kevin’s feet, who was sitting in the passenger seat, underneath the dashboard, while Guttey, John (Gluteus), and Luke sat in the back.

Shoutouts to Meijer. Had a ton of awesome stuff.

A bunch of wings and thighs that probably weighed as much as a chicken itself plus 2 Liter Coke for $8.

It was all a blur, but we ended up in the Chad Room at some point - the Presidential Suite, just as crews were starting.

We end up meeting Yuko, who had a very large speaker about the size of me curled up. He ended up making an entrance and there’s a video on Twitter where you can just hear Joe (Qtip) go, “I’m scared.”

Also ran into Zoey (Frost) again. :) Haven’t seen her since she left NorCal. We ended up just talking a bit, catching up, before I think Kevin needed me to go back to our room for a Wii.

I ended up walking entirely back to our room on the other side of the hotel - next to the convention center, getting out Wii, only to find out two things:

1. We didn’t have composite cables. 2. There was no other outlet.

We ended up getting kicked out after Qtip’s team won anyway.

Can’t remember anything else, other than the goon was too hard and too real but if you would like for me to include anything that happened while I was there, let me know! :)

#Riptide #Undertow #Project M #Super Smash Bros #Fuck Nintendo

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thecreaturecodex · 4 years

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Rakshasa, Subahu

Image © @tredlocity

[Commissioned by @crazytrain48. Arduin has some of its own takes on standard D&D monsters, especially as the game’s mechanics distanced themselves more from 0e. The rakshasa in Arduin is more fragile than this interpretation of it, but it deals one negative level per natural weapon, so I wanted it to be appropriately beefy for that sort of offensive capacity.]

Rakshasa, Subahu CR 14 LE Outsider (native) This creature looks like an oversized humanoid gibbon with luminous eyes, clawed paws and curling tusks. A faint stench of carrion wafts from the monster’s body.

The subahu are rakshasas that dwell in shadowy places and have an affinity for death and the undead. They form from evil souls who sought to deny others the ability to reincarnate. As such, their very touch sucks the life out of mortal creatures. Worse, once slain, they can rejuvenate their body even if it fully destroyed. Only the recitation of particular prayers on holy soil is capable of permanently slaying such a monster.

The most difficult task in fighting a subahu is determining who it is, and escaping their powerful charms. Most subahu spend most of their lives in humanoid guise. Their mental powers extend to warping the perceptions and attitudes of humanoids, making them view the rakshasa as a trusted friend or loved one, even if they later see it committing monstrous deeds or reveal its true face. Such dupes typically form a barrier between the subahu and any adventurers seeking to kill them. While foes deal with their minions, subahus rain arrows and spells at a distance, saving the joy of their energy draining attacks to finish off weakened enemies.

Subahu often make alliances with undead monsters. They see both undeath and incarnation as a rakshasa as ways to cheat the gods out of a soul. Some subahu promulgate undead influence into the plots of other rakshasas. Their lives are often as decadent and sybaritic as those of rakshasa rajas, but with a decidedly morbid and grotesque aesthetic bent. They tend to take a patient approach to their evil, but do enjoy attention. Many subahu maintain double lives, masquerading as priests of strange cults, guildmasters of thieves or assassins, or other aliases that provide an excuse for their proclivities and ample fodder for their plots.

Subahu CR 14 XP 38,400 LE Large outsider (native, rakshasa) Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., lifesense 60 ft., Perception +18 Aura charming (30 ft., DC 23), stench (10 ft., DC 25) Defense AC 26, touch 17, flat-footed 18 (-1 size, +7 Dex, +1 dodge, +9 natural) hp 202 (15d10+120) Fort +13, Ref +16, Will +12 DR 15/good and piercing; Immune ability damage and drain, energy drain, negative energy; SR 25 Defensive Abilities rejuvenation Offense Speed 40 ft., climb 30 ft. Melee 2 claws +22 (1d8+8/19-20 plus energy drain), bite +22 (2d6+8 plus energy drain) Ranged +1 longbow +22/+17/+12 (2d6+8/x3) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. Special Attacks detect thoughts (DC 23), energy drain (1 level, DC 23) Spells CL 11th, concentration +17 (+21 casting defensively) 5th (5/day)—cone of cold (DC 21), feeblemind (DC 21) 4th (7/day)—charm monster (DC 20), enervation, phantasmal killer (DC 20) 3rd (7/day)—displacement, fireball (DC 19), heroism, stinking cloud (DC 19) 2nd (8/day)—acid arrow, command undead (DC 18), invisibility, touch of idiocy, web (DC 18) 1st (8/day)—grease (DC 17), mage armor, magic missile, ray of enfeeblement (DC 17), unseen servant 0th—acid splash, detect magic, detect poison, mage hand, message, read magic, resistance, touch of fatigue (DC 16) Statistics Str 27, Dex 25, Con 26, Int 19, Wis 16, Cha 22 Base Atk +15; CMB +24; CMD 42 Feats Arcane Strike, Combat Casting, Combat Expertise, Deceitful, Dodge, Extend Spell, Improved Critical (claw), Mobility Skills Bluff +26, Climb +16, Diplomacy +24, Disguise +26, Intimidate +24, Knowledge (arcana, religion) +16, Knowledge (local, planes) +19, Perception +18, Sense Motive +19, Spellcraft +16, Stealth +23 Languages Common, Elven, Infernal, Necril SQ change shape (humanoid, alter self) Ecology Environment any land or underground Organization solitary Treasure double standard (Large +1 composite longbow [+8 Str bonus], other treasure) Special Abilities Charming Aura (Su) All humanoids within 30 feet of a subahu using its change shape must succeed a DC 23 Will save or be charmed by the subahu for 12 hours. This charm effect is broken for an individual creature if the subahu attacks them, but not if it resumes its true form or if it attacks another creature. This is a mind-influencing charm effect, and the save DC is Charisma based. Energy Drain (Su) Every time the subahu inflicts a negative level, it heals 5 hit points. The save DC is Charisma based. Rejuvenation (Su) A slain subahu returns to life in 2d4 days unless specific prayers for the dead are said over its corpse in hallowed or consecrated ground—knowing these prayers requires a successful DC 25 Knowledge (religion) check. Spells A subahu casts spells as an 11th level sorcerer. It does not gain other class abilities of the sorcerer class, such as a bloodline. Stench (Ex) A subahu only emits its stench in its natural form. The save DC is Constitution based.

#rakshasa #subahu #pathfinder 1e #arduin #commissions

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borisbubbles · 4 years

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17. CZECH REPUBLIC

Benny Christo - “Kemama”

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So first off, thank you for the nice commens. 😇The past few months haven’t been the happiest time for me, so thank you for your patience as I scraped my bearings together for another post! 😁

So I will now extend that same sympathy to Benny Christo, whom I think I damn fucking underrated. Let’s jump in~

ENTRY ANALYSIS

As one may expect i INSTANTLY liked “Kemama” because you know, it’s a fun, laid-back, tropical afro-breeze, completely different from anything else we would see in NFs and the year. EXACTLY the type of song I was hoping the Czech NF would deliver (and deliver they did, see NF Corner). This level of mild like swung into strong unironic like upon realizing that the title is a contraction of “Okay Mother” 😍 and the song deals with the subject of overcoming racially-tinged discrimination and rising above the hate. That just feels very poetic and apt? “Kemama” felt like the entry that had to overcome the highest odds in order to earn the respect it so fully deserves, and still hasn’t fully reached it.

.In our Western European bubble, comprised mostly of gays and left-liberal straights, we have a very grateful and universal acceptance of many different kinds of [lizard] people that make up Eurovision casts. Yet with “Kemama” we may have reached an unusually grimy undercurrent of coded racism.

Of course nothing I read was outrageously rancid, than Cod for that. The worst statement I read was a double-whammy of “EWW THIS ISN’T CARIBBEANVISION” and “WHY WOULD SOMEONE FROM *KENYA* WANT TO REP CZECHIA IN EUROVISION?”, and yes they first got the continent wrong and then *also* got the country wrong in the follow-up post and then they were torn limb from limb by a pack of aformentioned left-liberals. I’m sorry but i can’t not have any other response than laughter in the face of yet another fucking MORON faceplanting themselves with words like a... racist JK Rowling if you will?

Still, while I never read something outright vile about Benny doesn’t mean I found his deniers really annoying and they were! Think “Ew Solovey is ‘Too Aggressive’ it will NEVER DO WELL IN ESC”, a statement that isn’t coded nor racist (and yet extremely false and misguided), functioned as a similar idea by the same minds. A statement borne from the same breed of narrow-minded stubbornness which has caused elitist morons to be all “there is **SOMETHING** about “Kemama” i do *NOT* like and I cannot lay my finger on it... but I **DO NOT** like it at ALL. It won’t ever qualify because everyone will think the same way I do” -- Eurovision snobs, tiptoeing around racial coda in January 2020.

They would also insist that Benny was “arrogant” because he was seemingly impervious to their (de)constructive criticism. Like, if you were a biracial butterfly living in a slavic country who had to deal with statements such as the above on a regular basis, you WOULD block out the noise. And if you heard them often enough you will start to block them out pre-emptively. DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW COPING MECHANISMS WORK?? (oh wait you’re white-privileged. Nevermind 🙄)

So naturally, when Benny decided that he would revamp “Okay Mother” by adding in MORE African elements it only made me love him even more lol. 😍 Was it a bull-headed, contrarian and possibly really stupid decision? Yes, yes and absolutely yes. Was it worth it? Well he managed to incite even more meltdowns in a group of people I feel nothing but contempt for, so hell yeah? Eurovision was cancelled anyway so who cares how much ‘worse’ “Kemama” actually got.

Okay, so we’ve arrived at the revamp.

Granted, it wasn’t the best ‘vamp, I’d be a fool to deny it. The new elements threw a wrench in the melodic balance of the song. Out went tropical laid-back fun, IN went that fucking guitar oh my god this is some Hotel FM piano levels of overbearing I swear. (nb: this still didn’t stop me from ironically stanning Hotel FM’s lame asses anyway 😍). However, it made the personal backstory that I loved and savoured take a backseat to the now inferior composition. 😭

Regardless, New Kemama was fundamentally the same song, and I fundamentally liked Old Kemama, so whatevs, it made no different to me. In the eyes of many Eurovision diehards we were experiencing WORST PRESHOW SEASON EVER (after three songs... lol) and nothing clinches this brainworm more than a revamp announcement. “OH MY GOD HE WILL RUIN IT! I CAN GUARANTEE YOU I *WON’T* LIKE IT”. Self-fulfilling prophecies, ya know? It certainly didn’t help when the official channel accidentally uploaded a vid with broken soundmixing (‘OMG HORRIBLE LAST IN THE SEMI!!!!’ calm the ever-loving HELL down) and took another FULL WEEK to upload the correct vid. The damage had already been done. Typing "SEE I TOLD YOU THE REVAMP WOULD BE SHITE HA HA HA” in the Kemama comment box really just is the ESC equivalent of reponding with “Actually, *all* lives matter :smug:” to a BLM support pamphlet, isn’t it?

NF CORNER

While not my favourite NF of the bunch, I found the Czech NF to be lowkey epic. Not epic enough to remember its name but regardless Czechvision or whatever marked the end of an era because it was also the last selection spearheaded by Jan Bors :o

I think I’ve made it clear enough in the past that I’m somewhat mixed on Bors Era Czechia - Lake Malawi were a toetapping good, Ickolas was a pockmarked, skin-crawling evil and the other three inhibit a purgatory somewhere between “moderately nice” and “moderate timewaste.”

Still, I have great respect for the man who orchestrated Czech’s comeback after scoring NINE POINTS TOTAL across three years with the mindset of “So what? Why says we can’t win?” so ofc I was all into the idea of the “EIGHT INDIE ANGELS, HAND-PICKED BY BORS HIMSELF” NF that would serve as his swan song.

Naturally things went down the drain the second Bors left, with one of the eight peacing and his successor cancelling the live broadcast (does anyone remember what exactly happened? I vaguely recall one was the cause of the other but lol it’s July can’t be bothered to factscheck (Factsczeck?) anymore, bitches.

Anyway, ON TO THE GOOD STUFF, and yes, there was plenty.

We All Poop - “ All the Blood (Positive Song Actually)”

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Yes, as you can imagine I ofc IMMEDIATELY fell into like when I saw that chyron and invisioned the inevitability of the Czech Rep’s Rep immediately alienating every parent just based on their name alone <3 😍 w/e WAP quickly became that “Good but not great” song you find in every NF that everyone gushes over because it’s the whitest option available. Like, yes, “All the blood” is good, but musically it’s identical to Green Day and Twenty-One Pilots and god name ANY 90s-early00′s American Punk Rock band. For me the enjoyment came from the fact that WAP were openly crazy vegan fundamentalists and the VC clip actively condemns the use ANY animal protein by replacing the cattle and game with LITERAL HUMAN BEINGS. 😍 :fusedmarcintensifies: :kasiamosage:

Pam Rabbit - “Get up”

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Ohhhh YES a glorious experimental Synth-Trap song only I could love and ofc I did. God what is there even to say; the provocative darkness of the verses combined with the swirling amorphousness of the chorus gives me LIFE. LUFF THIS SHIT <3333 Ftr, this was also the fave of Slovene Juror duo / synth angels / Boris faves ZALAGASPER, further proving their pathetic naysayers that they own all things music and the haters can suck a series of-

Barbora Mochowa - “White and Black Holes“

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Lol, yes even with a “Get up” existing, there was a song I liked even more. Barbora proved a very competent Lana del Gay last year, but I was a YUGE fan of this year’s... Kate Bush-Björk blend of ethereal awesome. It is so soothingly beautiful and the rare example of a song that I find completely free of flaws. Were the competition not such a hard place, I’d be pissed she didnt win (at least she won the jury vote MASSIVE KUDOS to every alum on that) but w/e this selection had opions and I’m rather robbed of a “Kemama” than I am of a BRILLIANT IRREPLICABLE AETHERBALLAD. ~Danse balance sûr les white and black holes~

Elis Mraz & Cis T - “Wanna be like”

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I *VERY* strongly felt that if the Czech Republic wanted to win ESC, they should have picked Elis and even now I STILL believe she could have won. That isn’t to say I gushed over “Wanna be like” because I find it kind of annoying lol. Yes, I LOVE an annoying female voice (:Tones&Icackle:) but Elis’s reaches a Camilla Cabello sort of place for me (good lord get Senorita OFF the fucking radio) and the Scat + White Guy Rapping middle-eight. 😬. However, the second I opened up the video clip for this paragraph and was immediately BLASTED by Elis murdering a ukelele and wearing a “schoolgirl” outfit straight from a Japanese tentacle porn movie and OH MY GOD THE AGGRESSIVE TWERKING made me reconsider that hey, this min-sized Meghan Traynor actually kinda highkey owns, yo! Yet, I’m not at all bothered we lost her in the Czech NF because we got UNO DOS QUATRO CINCO SEIS :fatmansplit: fill up the megameme slot instead, so...

Eurovision 2020 vs Eurovision 2021

BENNY RUINED HIS SONG AND NEVER WOULD HAVE QUALIFIED. jk I’m not a moron. Sure, “Kemama” wasn’t an easy sell because you know AFROBEAT in a contest where half of the people watching are fash (ie: all of Eastern Europe, who watch out of ~Nationalistic Sentiment~ 😬), but there are Kemama live renditions out there and he owns them SO hard lol. A few soundmixing issues really would not have stopped Benny from qualifying in that RIDICULOUSLY WEAKSAUCE SEMIFINAL are you fucking kidding me. He probably would’ve bombed in the Grand Final, but I mean it’s Czech and it’s not Ickolas so ofc it would have.

And Czech renewed him for 2021 regardless of the sceptics, woohoo! I think part of it was due the Czech not wanting to re-organize an ENTIRE NF from scratch without Jan Bors, but probably also because Benny owns live when he isn’t engaged in psychological trench warfare with actual human detritus <3 and also because the Czech fucking CARE about their artists and don’t drop them like a sack of rotten potatoes wtfshitprus.

Can’t wait for the moment when he qualifies and Efendi does not, etc, etc.

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’d say that the core around which the Ben Drama spun was pretty standard fare: niche fave beats out the concensus fave, meltdowns ensue, people convince themselves it was the WRONG decision because it wasn the result they wanted, try to disown the song and make a fool of themselves because the song slaps, sorry. Even the revamp drama felt more of less generic for me, because yawn fantards melting down over a revamp of a song they don’t even like what else is new.

However, what I do take away that the revamp was ENTIRELY Benny’s idea which he told no one about (cue to JAN BORS having a social media meltdown like he’s Caesar at the Ides of March 💔) added MORE afrobeat just to troll his haters even more <3 God, I’d say it was bad from a musical perspective but this level of in-your-face defiance is fucking iconic and hilarious, sorry. This entire this year is so batshit bonkers that the concept of a someone potentially shooting themselves in the foot and “torpedo’ing” their qualification chances (not rly, he would’ve Q’d anyway lol) JUST to take the moral high ground in a racially coded argument only HE took seriously may not even be the craziest concept in the year! (lol it definitely isn’t. Look at the pics I haven’t greyed out yet)

This and more yield Benny some well-earned Senheads! Yay!!

Score: 3 Senhits out of 5.

#Eurovision #Eurovision 2020 #Eurovision Song Contest #Czech Republic #Czechia #Bohemia #Ben Christovão #Benny Christo

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oosteven-universe · 4 years

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Conan Serpent War #2

Conan Serpent War #2 Marvel Comics 2019 Written by Jim Zub Illustrated by Stephen Segovia Coloured by Frank D'Armata James Allison Illustrated by Vanesa R. Del Rey James Allison Coloured by Jean-François Beaulieu Lettered by VC's Travis Lanham In an unprecedented comics event, Robert E. Howard’s characters join forces along with Marvel’s Moon Knight, in an all-new saga built on REH and Marvel lore from across the ages! The serpent god SET plans to usher in an eternity of darkness, and only the chosen warriors across time and space have a hope of stopping him: CONAN THE BARBARIAN, SOLOMON KANE, DARK AGNES, and the man known as MOON KNIGHT! First of all I love Jim and his mind and ability to craft a story. Then add Stephen & Frank into the mix and by all the gods above this is utterly sensational. While some of my favourite writing from Jim comes from his Dungeons & Dragons work and this is right up that alley so for me this is something he was meant to do. It is also the kind of storytelling that I miss from Marvel so it's great to see this from them showing me there is hope that good, strong and interesting, see unexpected also, books will make it to stands. The opening here is everything one could hope for and so much more. This Priestess is devout and helps heal and the setting is just perfect. Then the moment Set reveals himself to her I almost cried, dropped the book and sat just staring at his magnificence and I have to say, sigh, that was a moment one doesn't forget in their lifetime. When we see John talk to the four of them while they are in groups of two is interesting. Mainly because I wonder at the significance of two groups instead of one that splits up. Not being aware of the others seems deceitful, misleading and sows doubt in the reader to his true purpose. Of course by it doing this Jim has engaged the readers' mind so they are sucked into this for the long haul. Oh how the imagination works and how the reader thinks is something Jim's incredibly adept at bringing out in the reader. You know how I felt seeing Set this issue and the entire book is illustrated in such a powerful way. John's segments as well with their variations and what we see has this whole mystical quality to it that perfectly suits what the characters represent. The linework here is stellar as it's strong and how the varying weights are utilised to showcase the attention to detail is stunning. Also faces, facial expressions, body language and the overall look of each character we see is so perfectly rendered and Stephen & Frank's Moon Knight makes me drool. The composition inside the panels with the utilisation of the backgrounds bring us a very good look at depth perception, scale and bring a sense of size and scope of the book. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show such masterful eyes for storytelling. The colour work we see here and how Frank utilises these flesh tones and the various hues and tones to create shading and enhance the musculature and facial features is so utterly dynamic. How we see the shading, highlights and shadow work through the colours and their hues and tones is done so spectacularly. I am loving the way that this book is structured. The choice of who is teamed with who is interesting as well. While Conan and Agnes share that love of the fight and have these strong wilful personalities make them similar and as the story moves forward we see just how much. The same with Moon Knight and Soloman Kane, two men whose faith in their gods drives them to purge evil from the earth make them uneasy allies. So to see how Jim is able to showcase their similarities and their differences as well as how they work together is so great to see play out. This is the kind of storytelling that is universally beloved. The writing is strong and crafted superbly while the interiors are stunning in their detail and the impact the imagery has is beyond compare.

#comic books #comics reviews #Marvel Comics #jim zub #stephen segovia #frank d'armata #vanesa r. del rey #jean-francois beaulieu #travis lanham

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tomasorban · 5 years

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THE ZODIAC: CANCER THE CRAB

Date of Rulership: 22nd June-23rd July; Polarity: Negative, female; Quality: Cardinal; Ruling planet: Moon; Element: Water; Body part: Heart, Lungs, and stomach; Colour: Silvery Grey; Gemstone: Pearl; Metal: Silver.

In the signs thus far examined, we have seen the formative energies of life achieve expression through different mediums: initially through the spontaneity and impulsive carnal drives of Aries; then through the aesthetic kaleidoscope of meandering Taurus; and finally the subdivision of vital force under the command of Gemini which enabled an innovative, evolutionary leap of consciousness. The latter’s propensity to concurrently exist in material and ethereal worlds also made sentient an intermediary realm in which the physical and spiritual mingled. Many would understand this intermediary plane to be the unrestrained world of imagination, intuition, thinking, memory, and emotion. It binds spirit to the body, and the emancipating dialogue that ensues between the two as a result engenders far-reaching repercussions for both. It invariably shapes the bundle of psychological habits and impulses that each of us calls self. It is the god Proteus and the nymph Thetis; a primordial ocean of acute shape-shifting awareness. Sometimes one might find themselves trapped in a kaleidoscopic labyrinth of geometrical contours or in shapeless clouds. At other times, one might see a sequence of rhythms or sounds, hear colourful objects, and taste backward or previously unseen locomotion. At other times still, one can be overwhelmed or possessed by anxiety, fear, titillation, love, or relaxation one minute, and riddled by a complete absence of emotion the next. At some point it might be apparent that everything in existence comprises the skin of a gargantuan cosmic animal and at other points all created matter might appear to be discarnate and autonomous entities that simply inhabit the same cosmic space. Polarities can coalesce under a singular experience and thinking processes are transposed to concentrated levels that elude comprehension on the physical plane. Nothing is ever controlled or mediated; there is just a perpetual waxing and waning of thoughts and ideas that explode onto the sands of consciousness one minute and dry up the next. Time becomes a helium balloon, expanding as to spur the perception that a plethora of daylong activities have been squeezed into the space of a few minutes and then shrinking as to flush out the space of a day in two seconds. In this realm, the personal can become impersonal very quickly and barriers deemed impenetrable in the physical world are breached at will.

Gemini’s severe allergies to the emotional faucet rendered it somewhat superficial, insensitive, and impotent to the depth of experience, an anomaly which is corrected with the inauguration of the Cancerian archetype. Because the formative energies of Cancer originate from this intermediary realm of being which connects the physical and spiritual, it acquaints humans with their individual souls but also with the anima mundi, the cosmic soul of Mother Nature which unites all creatures irrespective of size or complexity. A newborn inclination to look inward for nirvana underpins the fundamental Gnostic adage of this archetype, namely that the external environment, the mechanical world into which we are born, appears to be an exotic synthesis of indifferent and insensitive elements that cannot offer inner harmony or fulfilment to spiritually-orientated humanity. The only hope for the human condition, according to Cancer, is to turn on the emotional faucets of the psychic plane and let the cold and hot water form a sensitive current that incite a sense of meaning and purpose and drive the impersonal spirit or life force through the tumultuous waters of life until it is again time to reunite with the paradisal state of perfection in maternal unconsciousness.

“Folks, life’s all about being feelings,” says Cancer. “Feelings and sandcastles, my friends! I like to build mine with all sorts of implements, usually down by the seashore. If I don’t use sand and water its paint and pastels, and sometimes I even use pen and writing paper. I create them with my vivid imagination and decide who or what is going to be living inside. I decide upon fates and lifespans and transcribe the romantic events that will unravel within its high walls. Sadly, there comes a time when the incoming tide levels and sucks them back into the pit of the ocean’s stomach. I understand the tides, the coming and going of primordial energies, and the cycles of the cosmos like no other which is why I build my houses strong. Strength equals domestic stability and tranquillity, something everyone wants! I use the sturdiest things available–sticks, stones, metals, bits of detritus from the seabed–to insulate my soft and squishy parts from Mother Nature’s wrath and Man’s acidic and unbecoming temperament. As a humanitarian, I’m always willing to share my space with an appropriate other, especially if that other is a poor, helpless soul in need of smothering or mothering.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m tactile and love affection. I’ll also admit that I do have too much of the moon and the sea in me; my moods can go from black, to low, to white, to high, and to crescent shape in the space of about a microsecond. I can be volatile that way, but I more than make up for it with my talent for story-telling, my attention to detail, and my emotional rapport. I can also be timid and shy, but once you’ve gained my trust and extricated me from my crabby shell you’ll feel like you’ve known me for years! Once I’m out you’ll have to be rather gentle with me; I’m not particularly fond of prying eyes or confrontation, verbal or otherwise, so I will often sidestep around these. If this is not possible or plausible I’ll just thrust my big old pincers out and threaten to dice the adversary up into little pieces. You should also know that I’m a fiercely faithful friend, and my concern for the welfare of others can often be mistaken for clinginess and co-dependence. My soul is dark like rocks of obsidian, and deeper than the Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean. Just like these qualities strike night terrors in those individuals not quite attuned to their inner selves, so too does it nurture my own worst nightmare–the fear that I might be deserted to my own devices and have to face life alone.”

Cancer is undoubtedly the first sign to actively work through the mimetic bank of the collective unconscious, drawing upon cosmic archetypes like the tribal brother or sister, love, the heroic journey, utopian societies like the legendary Atlantis, and the struggle between seemingly disembodied forces of good and evil to create its own narratives, real or imagined. Souls incarnating through the stars of this zodiacal constellation more often than not exhibit melancholia, sentimentalist romanticism, and a longing to recapture the locus classicus of Golden Ages bygone. The latter is most likely due to the fact that Cancerians retain prenatal memories of the paradisal perfection within the womb, and hence looking backward into the past is also examining a longwinded path that meanders further and further from union with the divine. Their deep connection to the supranormal and creative powers of the greater subconscious mind and its intuitive faction, as well as a heartfelt obsession with the subtler and intimate details of our psychological makeup makes them the true hub of the arts. It is no coincidence that souls born under the aegis of Cancer tend to be artists, writers, musicians, and poets. The unconscious willpower or drive of a Cancerian soul is second to none.

Lamentably, Cancer’s derivation from an imaginative plane experienced through the electrical power of primordial ebbs and flows without the aid of a transistor isn’t all milk and honey. Cancerians are notorious for letting the intellectual throne of their personal kingdoms be usurped by emotion, and we all know what happens when unchecked emotions are given prominence over wisdom and intellect: problems and worries multiply and quickly distort our perceptions of the outside world so that everyone appears dishonest, deceptive, potentially threatening, and narcissistic. Emotionally disturbed Cancerians usually repress their feelings for prolonged periods, letting grievances and resentments simmer and become pressurised deep in the confines of their unconscious until these can no longer be contained. When the tempestuous eruption finally comes to pass, the rock-melting intensity of the sonic blast can be so potent as to incinerate, alter, or disfigure relationships permanently. This is one of just many reasons why Cancerians are introverts, choosing to traffic in relationships that are highly unlikely to balloon into melodramatic love affairs or force them into encounters with their own shadows.

Like Aries, Taurus and Gemini, there are also two symbols associated with Cancer the Crab. The first of these, the animal totem, evokes the primary psychic composition of all beings born under this zodiacal sign; deriving from and dwelling in the element of water, crabs are tranquil, expressive and passive in their habits. The existence of a shell denotes a self-absorbed proclivity towards domestication, introversion, emotional vulnerability, and cultivation of the soul’s imaginative realm. In embarking in a cross-cultural and historical examination, we find that the ubiquitous expression of this archetype has altered in time. For some of the prehistoric cultures, Cancer was represented as a crayfish. Moving into historic times, the ancient Egyptians imagined the constellation as an embodiment of the morning sun–Khephera –whose totemic animal was the scarab beetle. The modern image associated with this archetype was inherited from Babylonian or Chaldean astrology, the latter also influencing the iconography used by the Persian and Hellenistic peoples. The fixed stars associated with this constellation were deemed of utmost importance given that they delineated the seat of an ethereal Great Mother Goddess from which all life in the cosmos had sprung forth. Two ancient calendars, the Egyptian and the Mayan, further illuminate Cancer’s importance as an archetypal indicator of cosmic beginnings and endings: the ancient Egyptians, ascribed prominence to it as the home in which almighty Sirius, the mediating star of the wheel of heaven, rose heliacally to herald the New Year; and the Mayans prophesized that an alignment of the planets within Cancer would spur an act of un-creation and spell the end of the universe. In Roman myth, the goddess Juno fashioned Cancer and placed her in the starry heavens to serve as a cosmic chronometer and reverse the forward-moving cycle of creation when she finally felt that the process of becoming would be of no further benefit to mortals and immortals alike.

The second symbol, an astrological shorthand for the zodiacal sign, shows two identical figures whose arrangement discloses polar opposition. In Gemini this image of duality symbolizes a conunctionis or marriage of opposites, but in Cancer it draws attention to the insuperable psychic tides that are inherent in the nature of this archetype and demonstrated by the gravitational forces and see-saw interfaces imposed upon the earth by its mediating planet, the moon. The two spirals pertaining to each figure may be interpreted in a variety of ways; either as a pair of breasts, symbols of fecundity and divine providence, or as two spermatozoa whose conjunction generates the miracle of life. Both are connected to creation and both recall the feminine element of water as the great cosmic womb through which evolutionary life processes take root. Naturally this sign is intimately connected to physical conception and birth, as well as the psychological dependence of the developing ego on the uroboric Self. Hence, the symbol also serves as a memory cue for those primordial moments of happiness, fundamental unity, oneness, and paradisal perfection experienced in the womb before birth, along with the sadness and loss that comes from being separated from the maternal realm of unconsciousness.

#astrology #astropsychology #astrotheology #consciousness #zodiac

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sweatybrandon · 5 years

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13, 30, 32, 35 (atttid)!!

Thanks Hannah! 💕💕

13. Are there any songs that have a special meaning to you? Why?

I just answered this one here and considering you want me to talk about my baby I shall hold off until a few questions time 🤣

30. Rank all albums?

Sam’s Town

Hot Fuss

Day & Age

Wonderful Wonderful

Battle Born

32. Do you have any merch? (post pics if you want)

I have a bootleg standard Killers shirt and one of the ones from their EU summer tour where it has Brandon in the gold suit on the back (but it’s in orange as they had to reprint as they fucked up their spelling of the Macron stadium!). For Christmas i also got a light up K and a print of the soundwave of ATTTID x. I also have a jar full of confetti and a bag of it from Latitude that I haven’t found a home for yet! Only one bit of my ‘merch’ gave them money yeah SUCK ON THAT BRANDON!

35. Give me a song and I’ll say anything I want about it. (ATTTID)

My baby! My absolute baby! Other songs come and go but this one remains. Firstly, the composition of the song is just pure gold. How it starts with this quiet little piano note and then builds into that stadium size anthem it’s wonderful! The chugging (if that makes sense) guitar is just immense and god the entire song is incredible. And to think Brandon was like 21 when he wrote it, ridiculous. And then god the lyrics mean so much to me it certainly came into my life in full effect when I needed it most, and it is the song that started my descent into being fully up their arses 🤷‍♀️ Also LIVE! The buildup to it and the suspense and I don’t know about at your show but at mine everyone started then chanting ‘I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier’ before it even started! And then when you’re actually meant to chant it god hearing 50 odd thousand people singing those lyrics was enough to nearly bring me to tears (Brandon did something stupid and I laughed instead thanks babe!). Yeah live it’s a diffrenert beast entrely it’s magical and I want to experince that feeling everyday! Also a random thoght I just thought of but I love that we have to wait until basically the end for the title of the song to be sung.

#thanks hannah! hmm that looks more like a mini essay about atttid 😂#i would die for that damn song #breathethatfire

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badbackgroundscience · 6 years

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“I am NOT a prize to be won!”

God, I hate Namor. With his stupid winged feet, stupid DreamWorks eyebrows, and his stupid objectification of Sue Storm.

Yeah. Mr. Submarine Man kidnaps the Invisible Woman in this issue and demands she give him 24 hours to convince her to marry him. Like scumbag human(oid)s are wont to do.*

But he does have exactly one redeeming quality. He knows one science fact.

[A moment of pedantry: Technically, it’s not the flame that’s burning. That’d be the fuel source generating the flame as it burns. Moment over.]

Unfortunately, like the term “power vacuum” implies, as soon as you create a vacuum -- assuming there’s no rigid structure keeping stuff from getting into the newly vacuumed area -- a bunch of air and what that air can carry is going to rush in and claim the space for itself.

Because a vacuum is just a lack of stuff -- a lack of matter. Sure, we can argue about quantum fluctuations, like particle/antiparticle pairs that spontaneously pop into and out of existence, but that doesn’t matter on a human or Atlantean scale. And the law of diffusion tells us that gas particles want nothing more, by way of the fact that they’re (for the most part**) all just bouncing around in random directions, to move from areas of higher concentration to lower concentration until everything’s all evened out. So, the instant there’s no air somewhere, other air is gonna take its place.

Basically, Johnny’s just gonna get his hair blown around a bit. And maybe that wind in going to be strong enough to blow him out like a birthday candle. But the vacuum itself wouldn’t last long enough to cause a flame off,

let alone cause his saliva to boil and the capillaries in his eyes to burst and his lungs get torn to shreds as the air in his lungs forces itself out of his chest.

Vacuums really suck the fun out of being able to light yourself on fire.

Anyway, Reed basically turns into the Hulk, setting off on a murderous rampage because Namor stole “the one thing [he loves] most in the world”.

...Sue’s not a thing, Reed...

Johnny and Thing get Dr. Strange’s help to teleport ahead of their stretchy leader, but first the Thing asks a question that made my science brain go all a tangenty.

Strange’s astral form aside, how can you touch nothin’?

Technically, you’re always touching nothing, in that the physical particles that make up your body can never actually come into physical contact with one another.

Atoms, as you learn in 4th or so grade (I distinctly remember this because marshmallows were involved, but your experience might be different), are over 99% empty space, with a cloud of electron waveparticles*** orbiting a teeny, tiny, but much more massive, nucleus.

But you might notice that when you run at full speed into the nearest wall, it very much does not feel like it is almost entirely empty space.

So what gives?

You might think it’s because all electrons are negatively charged, so they’re all repelling one another. I mean, that’s true, but there’s another property of electrons that’s vastly more important.

Every single electron in the universe is exactly identical to one another. The only way you’re able to distinguish them is their exact ‘locations’. As electrons are waves as well as particles, and we’re working within the confines of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, this isn’t as straightforward as you might think.

On top of that, electrons are forbidden from occupying the exact same place at the exact same time. My saying “because they’re fermions” won’t mean anything to you unless you study particle physics, but that rule - known as the Pauli Exclusion Principle - applies to all subatomic particles that qualify as fermions.

(To be a fermion, you have to be a lepton or an odd-numbered quark composite particle. Electrons are leptons; lone protons and lone neutrons are each made of 3 quarks, so many (but not all****) atomic nuclei are therefore fermions.)

So, by these properties and rules combined, when electrons get too close to one another, they exert a sort of pressure that resists getting even more close together. It’s this pressure that makes your body think it’s solid.

Superheroes (or villains) that can walk through walls get around this by using quirks of quantum mechanics on a non-quantum scale. Having not yet seen the new Ant-Man and the Wasp movie (and actively avoiding trailers and spoilers), their baddie Ghost might be doing some of this.

I’ll get back to you on that.

A battle ensues under the waves, ending with Sue getting out of her cage***** and stopping Namor from killing Reed and the Thing. Strange transports them onto the submarine Reed used to get down there, and they all escape while Namor broods.

Oh, and somehow the Sorcerer Supreme also physically moves Namor’s palace to an unknown location, in an attempt to confuse the Atlantean. Like, he picks up the ground underneath it and everything.

Wizards, man.

* Just because you never got a chance doesn’t mean you deserve one, dude. Even if you hadn’t tried to murder her teammates several times.

** High school chem kinetic theory assumptions:

Gases are made up of particles in constant, random motion. They continue in a straight line until they collide with something. These collisions are perfectly elastic, meaning no energy is lost or gained.

Gas particles have no volume. (This is obviously not true, but we assume this because the distance between particles is >>> the size of the particles themselves)

There is no attraction or repulsion between particles (e.g. gravity or electromagnetism).

*** You might remember from science class that light acts as both a particle and a wave. Well, particles do, too.

**** For example, a standard Hydrogen nucleus has only 1 proton, and therefore 3 quarks, and is a fermion. A standard Helium nucleus has 2 protons and 2 neutrons, and therefore 12 quarks, and is not a fermion. It’s a boson. But that nucleus is still surrounded by a cloud of 2 electrons, which are both fermions.

***** Sue has obviously forgotten the concept of pressure being force divided by area. She wouldn’t have had to have Johnny get her out if she just concentrated the full force of her field on a single spot...

Fantastic Four #27 - Writer: Stan Lee, Art: Jack Kirby, Ink: Geo. Bell

#comics #fantastic four #physics #vacuum #pauli exclusion principle

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breadnoise · 6 years

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3,4, and 11!!!

3. Which was the hardest to make, in terms of technical execution?

i think definitely my most recent one, the yoongi bday gfx! mainly because of the animation portion; there were so many elements and layers in that singular panel that it was difficult to keep track... and photoshop was not made for animation lolol getting everything to line up and things to not show when i didn’t want them to show was hard ;; also as you know i had a hard time thinking of multiple cohesive panels for that one and coming up with a colour scheme.... lol rip overall it was a tough one ;( and i still don’t think i’m that proud of it but i guess i’m glad i got it out on time haha

4. Which has the most “you” in it, however you’d define that?

✨ask me about my graphics!

this is interesting.... i think maybe my hoseok bday one? i’m not sure but i that one i felt like i was the most comfortable making it and i actually like that one (lmfao). i guess it’s the use of like...flat colours, negative space, and stronger composition... and the colours are vibrant but not overly bright or saturated? i mean i really don’t like green but i think i just feel the most drawn and attached to that one out of all of my works lol ALSO i rly like typography and i felt like the focus on the typography is something that’s quite.... me??? haha idk

11. Least favorite part of the creating process?

one is coming up with colours schemes 😪i find that looking for colour schemes via generators or websites is something that just doesn’t work for me for some reason because i’m super anal about details and getting things exactly right so colours always take me forever to choose... another thing i hate about making things for tumblr specifically is the fact that i have to work at such a small size and the resolution of everything SUCKS SHIT god it makes me sad ;( i could work in a larger resolution and downsize i guess but when you zoom out you just realize that the detail you spent forever on is like NOTHING so :(

#thank you cass!!!!#sorry it's a bit rambly haha i tried to be brief but i love talking abt this stuff #comeherejimin #ask

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kidsfromyesterdaypod · 5 years

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Episode One: It’s Not a Phase, Mom [Transcript]

To make Kids From Yesterday as accessible as possible, we’re transcribing our episodes for you to read!

Note: we forgot to clarify this in the episode but when we talk about the days where people obtained downloads in ways that don't pay artists and that being different to how people consume music now, obviously the current methods of streaming and paid downloading are much better. Always, always support your artists no matter who they are.

Listen here

Courtney: Hello and welcome to Kids from Yesterday. This is an emo podcast that’s gonna be all about emo culture. Every week we’re going to do a deep-dive into facets of emo culture that interest us. So, I’m Courtney** **

Clodagh: And I’m clodagh and today and we’re going to be talking about why emo is not a phase.

[theme song plays. It is an original composition that strongly parodies a lot of pop punk bands]

Court: I have ‘why podcast?’ written here [laughs]

Clo: [laughs]

Court: so basically, me and Clodagh were talking the other day about…. what were we talking about?

Clo: I think we were talking about, as typical, we were talking about diet culture and how when we were teenagers the only bodies we had to admire were, or like look up to, were thin white women, and we were kinda talking about how I had never seen bodies that look like mine. Cause when I was a teenager and I was going through my emo phase, I was like a size 16 to 18, and how in Kerrang! – which was the only magazine I ever bought – or on Kerrang TV I didn’t see any bodies that look like mine and we kinda started to talk about that and it kinda just... the idea I think

Court: Grew from there

Clo: Came from that, yeah

Court: I just remember screaming at you through instagram messages, CAN WE DO AN EMO PODCAST and you agreed, for some reason? [Laughs]

Clo: [Laughs] Yeah

Court: But definitely that’s a topic that we were just talking about there that we want to do a deep-dive in at some point, and talk about that aspect of emo culture cause I think, like, fashion and that whole aspect of it was such a huge thing. And like if you were emo as a kid you had the hair and you had the clothes and you dressed like Hayley Williams or you dressed like, you know, Gerard Way

Clo: Yeah

Court: And there was no in-between and both of those people were, you know, thin

Clo: And white and cisgender

Court: Yeah. So there was a lot of stuff like that, and when you look back on it now it’s like wow there really wasn’t very much variety for us. So we definitely want to talk about that at some point but eh, ‘why podcast?’, to answer that question...

Clo: Something else I’d kinda been thinking about, I dunno if I mentioned this to you, but in the days leading up to that conversation id been thinking about how My Chemical Romance had kinda gotten the blame for a spate of suicides

Court: YES

Clo: And self harm, and there was this whole thing in the Daily Mail, I know they’d had a concert in London at some point afterwards where they were all chanting F the Daily Mail, em, and I’d kinda been thinking that, isn’t that bizarre that this band got the blame for something that was completely irrelevant and to people from the outside looking in, parents, adults, were you know, air quotes, concerned about it, but they were taking it up completely wrong.

Court: Yeah

Clo: [in a mocking voice commonly used when people made fun of emo kids in 2006] they just didn’t understand

Court: It wasn’t a phase. But yeah, it was interesting and it’s the same as like Marilyn Manson getting blamed for like murderers and serial killers and stuff, it’s that real ‘we don’t understand this’, Satanic Panic thing, we have a bunch of kids covered in eyeliner, as I am today – and it pained me to paint eyeliner around my face, it’s everywhere, its never coming off.

Clo: [Laughs]

Court: But that was, I imagine to a lot of parents, confusing and strange, and the only reference you have are all those shows that were like this emo did it and you always have these kids that hang out in a house in the middle of nowhere with like, pentagrams painted on the walls, and like fuck satan and like stuff like that, so like you can see why, but it is ridiculous, so it was interesting to see bands that were intrinsically linked with mental health issues. Which again is something else we want to talk about, maybe in a future episode.

Clo: Yeah

Court: But there really was that whole fear, I guess, that kids were listening to this music and becoming depressed, instead of a bunch of sad kids found a bunch of artists who heard them and said to them that this is ok. Or, in my Chem’s case, that this..that they’re... not ok

Clo: [laughs]

Court: I hate myself

Clo: [laughs]

Court: But you do have that thing where that was...I mean, what got you into emo music? Clo: For me, it think...yeah it started...it started…. It all started around 20… no 2006, I’d say, was when I first got into My Chemical Romance. 2006, 2007 I think it was...I can’t really remember… and I’d start listening to My Chem because... mainly because I used to stay up all night watching music channels and I remember I’d stay up until Scuzz would play the My Chem songs and then I’d go to bed

Court: [fondly] Remember Scuzz?

Clo: That’s not a thing anymore, which I recently found out… but yeah, but I got into it that way, and as I started secondary school, you know the people in my class were into High School Musical and they were into Chris Brown and I kinda, you know, as much as… you know when you do, when you start secondary school, you try to fit in with everyone else in your class. And I had got an interest in R&B music and High School Musical but I was still really into My Chem and Fall Out Boy, and then I met a couple of people in the year below me who were, like, really into My Chem and Fall Out Boy and I was like oh my god, these people, I’ve met people who are into the same music as me, and from there it progressed. And then I guess there was Twilight, I read the saga, and then Paramore did a song for it and I was introduced to Paramore, and they became my favourite band, my favourite emo band. So yeah, but it’s just always been, just there. Avril Lavigne? Busted? I think for everyone, it goes back to Busted

Court: [laughs]

Clo: Were you a Busted or McFly girl?

Court: I was a Busted girl. For years I refused to even acknowledge McFly cause I was like, they’re a rip off of Busted, as if three-piece boybands didn’t exist before that, as if they weren’t a rip off of Blink, or Blink weren’t a rip off of Green Day and stuff. But like to child me, I was like [mocking] I like Busted and McFly suck

Clo: I was the same.

Court: I discovered Avril Lavigne then as well. Discovered is a… I mean like, she was on the radio, there wasn’t much discovery there, but I really liked her, and then something happened and I got really into Linkin Park. Actually I think part of that, going back to Twilight, I was really into the books before the film happened, and Stephenie Meyer had a website and she used to make playlists for each of the books, so she had Muse and Linkin Park and a bunch of other bands that I’d never heard of, so I would’ve been 13 I think, and I remember one Christmas I was like, can I have all these Linkin Park albums? And one of my aunts being like, [pearl clutching] ‘WHAT?’

Clo: [laughs]

Court: ‘You’re a child!’ But like, that was kinda like the first thing. And I do remember being the same in school, like you just want to fit in

Clo: Yeah

Court: But Ii was kinda looking for people who were into all this stuff, and then when I was in first year somebody mentioned FOB, it was actually the year they went on hiatus, she’d gone to see them and I was like, who the hell are FOB, and then… no! That’s a lie, I knew who FOB were! So there was a Now 60-something or a Now 50-something...I can’t...what number are we on now? Would’ve been a Now 40, maybe, I don’t know, but it had This Ain’t a Scene It’s an Arms Race on it, and I remember listening to it and thinking that was the first time I’d ever heard a song for what it was, as opposed to just,

Clo: Yeah

Court: Oh I like the music to this, or oh I like this, like I actually heard the lyrics and it was kind of my introduction to poetry I guess? I got really deep and emo into these things before I’d even realised I had but like I’d never thought about going to see these bands, cause that was like...I didn’t have any friends who liked them so like, going to a concert was completely beyond me. So a girl was like, I saw FOB and now they’ve gone on hiatus, and I was like well first of all, what the hell is a hiatus?

Clo: [laughs]

Court: If only I knew [laughs]. And then like, second of all, I didn’t know that was even a possibility. So like I think I discovered Paramore around the same time as you with the whole Twilight thing, with Decode and I Caught Myself and, em, I was kinda late to the My Chem game which is really interesting, there was people that were so into My Chem and I just...I dunno, I dunno what stopped me from...but like, at the same time, I was trying to listen to like Kanye West and all these other people I have absolutely no interest in now but that at the time I was like, ‘yeah other people talk about this stuff, I wanna listen to this too’. I did eventually find people who did like all the stuff i liked, and that was where I found Panic! at the Disco and like… god, I can’t even think of any of them, really, those are all the main ones. I actually found my old iPod the other day and I looked at the music on it and it;s the same.

Clo: [laughs]

Court: It is the exact same stuff that I listen to now, they have two other bands that I don’t listen to now. Remember Young Guns? Clo: [excited] Yeah!

Court: Yeah. Young Guns and Orson.

Clo: Oh my God, yes, they had that one song. Yesterday?

Court: No Tomorrow

Clo: Tomorrow? Oh.

Court: [laughs] ‘yesterday, or tomorrow?’ [Laughs]

Clo: [laughs]

Court: Yeah. That was the only difference, everything else was All Time Low. Oh yeah! Forgot to mention my faves. All Time Low. I am a sad All Time Low Stan. I have seen them 20 times and I don’t want to talk about it.

Clo: [laughs]

Court: But Paramore is your, like

Clo: Yeah Paramore are my baes. Like what you said about This Ain’t a Scene, I first...I’d heard of Misery Business because I was somebody who did like My Chem, I did like Fall Out Boy, and I would, like watch Kerrang! and Scuzz to try and find that music. At the same time, I was watching The Box. I was really, shamefully so, I was really into Chris Brown, I was really into – still really into – Beyoncé, just kind of into R&B but also into emo. Like my iPod would’ve been really really mixed at the time?

Court: Yeah

Clo: so I kind of was like, I fit in here, but I also fit in here with the emos, and I guess I kind of progressed more towards that because they understood me. [laughs] Like, they were really, really into this music and because I had been kind of into it but also as an outsider, someone who was the only person who was kind of into it, my interests were elsewhere. But I remember in first year I actually went to meet Gary Barlow from Take That.

Court: [incredulous] Wowwwww.

Clo: And the picture… in the picture is me and I’m wearing a red and white top, I have like a black waistcoat on and there’s a little tiny Green Day badge on it

Court: awhhhh!

Clo: I’m dressed in the colours of American Idiot. I’m like, staying true to myself but also, you know…

Court: hanging out with Gary Barlow?

Clo: Hanging out with Gary Barlow!

[both laugh]

Court: So I guess trying to define what emo actually is, is really difficult.

Clo: Yeah. It’s different I think between different people. I guess like the American sense of the word might be something completely different to what it is here. I know at least in Ireland, or at least in my group, the emo kids didn’t just listen to emo music, we also listened to a lot of pop punk, and I don’t know if that would’ve blended in in America as well as it does here. I guess because here at least anyway – I think – emo is defined by what’s on Kerrang!

Court: yeah

Clo: and there was a lot of Good Charlotte, a lot of Sum 41, Puddle of Mudd, all that kind of stuff, and then as well, you have the goth music, like Marilyn Manson, Metallica, metal music that was kind of blending in with the emo scene as well, but it’s definitely…

Court: We didn’t have that distinction I don’t think. Like you see on American MySpace, and on Tumblr now even, they had a distinction between emo and scene kid. And I guess, considering the bands I was listening to, I probably would’ve been more scene than emo, but with the people I hung around with… I guess to me, the pinnacle of emo was My Chem.

Clo: Yes. Definitely.

Court: And, even, I’m like here’s all these other bands that I listen to… like, when you talk about emo, you talk about My Chem. But we were also limited in who came to play here I think. Even in England, they had a lot more bands and a lot more venues. Even if they only played in London you could still travel down, whereas here it was kind of… a bunch of bands came around 2010/2011/2012, and then nothing, and still kinda nothing, we go through phases of who comes here and who doesn’t. And even on revival tours or anniversary tours we’re skipped over a lot

Clo: You Me at Six will never forget us, though.

Court: I hope not. [laughs]. I mean, the last time they played here, he was like, ‘we’ll probably never come back here again’

Clo: Oh yeah! That was really sad

Court: Thanks, Josh. [laughs] Really appreciate that. Still don’t know what he meant? Whether he was thinking like, Brexit, or he was thinking, ‘can’t be arsed with this’, or..

Clo: Is it because it’s so expensive to bring – did he say that on stage, or is it just a thought I had? This is my life. Is it something somebody said or is it something I thought? But did he say on stage that it’s too expensive to bring equipment over?

Court: I don’t think so?

Clo: then it was just a thought I had.

Court: Maybe he’d said something like that before? I know – Tangent Time! – I know smaller bands… so there’s a band called Mallory Knox, who I really like, fucking love them so much, but I remember talking to them somewhere and being like, come play a show in Ireland and they were like, we’ve looked into it before the last few tours we’ve done and it’s just not worth it because of the cost of the venue and the cost of bringing over the equipment, it just… they were like, we’d end up losing money.

Clo: Ahh.

Court: and he was like we can’t even guarantee that we’d like sell enough tickets to make it worthwhile, so they were like, sorry!

Clo: Maybe it was you, then, who said it to me afterwards. I feel like we spoke about it afterwards and you must’ve said that to me. Because I don’t see how my brain would go there to think about that

Court: come up with that

Clo: yeah

Court: I dunno, did….uhh….yeah, maybe I did. I really don’t know

Clo: [laughs]

Court: I really don’t remember. But getting back to what defining emo as, I do think it’s interesting that there’s a whole culture where your clothes and your hair and what you listen to were identifiable. You could see somebody in the street and even if they didn’t have the full fringe or multicoloured hair or the weird clip-in racoon extensions, you’d still know, that’s an emo

Clo: yeah

Court: that’s one of my people. And I think that’s something that always really interested me.

Clo: Yeah actually, when I was standing on O’Connell Street earlier, I was kind of looking around to see what people were wearing and I was trying to pick out in my head like okay who around me might identify as emo or at one point identified as emo? I feel like it’s a bit harder now to pick somebody out as an emo because not only are we… not gone past the emo… stage, if that makes sense?

Court: Yeah. I mean, the actual, like, era, I guess.

Clo: era, that’s it.

Court: I mean a lot of people wear the clothes now, so it’s not….

Clo: yeah, so a lot more people would wear Converse, a lot more people would wear Doc Martens, whereas back during the emo era, those were things that were reserved for emos. If you wore Converse, you were an emo.

Court: People would make fun of you.

Clo: Exactly. Whereas now, every second person is wearing Vans, everyone’s wearing Converse, and skinny jeans are huge, and the check shirts and all that kind of stuff. That was something that I would’ve worn a lot of and looked around for people in the Navan emo scene

[both laugh]

Clo: to see who else was one of my people! But yeah, I think it’s a bit harder now to pick them out of a crowd.

Court: Yeah.

Clo: But it was something that hugely defined…. And I guess as well it goes with punk rock, you can tell a punk rocker, from then at least, a mile off. Mohawks, leather, all those kind of things, and definitely it’s the same with emo.

Court: Yeah. I think even now, the whole idea of stuff a punk would wear, like patched jackets, that’s a big thing, everybody does it, or like you have facial piercings, you must be a goth, whereas everyone has their nose pierced.

Clo: and tattoos as well! Wrist tattoos especially were I feel like a big thing in the emo era? Notably a phrase that was two words, one on each wrist. Or stars.

Court: Ah, the stars. Remember those? Clo: The black and red stars.

Court: Reaaaally glad I never did that.

Clo: Same! [laughs] and I definitely think that again, they were things that were reserved for goths, emos etc but now they’re generally just...you know, flooded into the mainstream and they’re everywhere.

Court: Yeah. So it’s really hard to define what it is now compared to what it was then. It was very very much a case of weirdos in the back of the classroom, everybody thought they were weird, and would say it, several times a day. Not speaking from experience or anything. [laughs] but you could see it, and they’d all kind of migrate towards each other and everything. And I don’t think that’s…. Maybe it’s not even as necessary anymore. I do think it was partially a survival thing, back in the day

Clo: Yeah

Court: Because there was such a stigma around having poor mental health, we’re talking even back in 2012… when did you finish school?

Clo: 2011.

Court: Yeah, so I finished in 2012 and even back then, you couldn’t talk about being depressed. Whereas, my sister goes to the school I went to and she said it’s much better now and I think you can talk a lot more openly about that kind of thing. And they’re a lot more accepting of LGBTQ students whereas when I was in school that was not discussed but you could kind of see an overlap between the emo kids and the ones who were LGBT. so I do think maybe in part it was a survival thing, we had a way of distinguishing ourselves so that we could find other people like ourselves. I don’t think anybody decided ‘let’s all wear this’, we also thought it was cool, it’s not like ‘Just gonna put on my survival gear now!’ but it did help, I think. You always know, oh hey I can talk to you about this band, most likely. Clo: Yeah

Court: but there was some people who like, if they were super into My Chem and you were like oh I like All Time Low, they’d be like [scoffing] ugh god they’re such sellouts, like I do remember someone laughing at me for saying All Time Low is my favourite band, she was like [scoffs] All Time BLOW? And I’m like, they call themselves that, it’s not

Clo and Court: [together] an insult!

Court: yeah! Like they fully know how terrible they are. And I fully know how terrible they are, but I still love them very much. But it’s just, I do think it’s interesting that that’s…

Clo: Yeah, definitely. And even, I think the great thing about it as well – this actually happened to me, like, a few months ago, when I was in work. And this girl… she was like, chatting away to me, she was like 19 in NCAD [Irish national college of art and design] and she was talking to me about music and I had just gone to see You Me at Six do their ten-year Take Off Your Colours anniversary show and she was talking to me and she was like oh I’m an emo, I like My Chem and everything like this, and like I said she was about 19 and I was like oh have you ever heard of You Me at Six and she was like no, who are they? And she made me write down the name in her phone

Court: [Laughs]

Clo: So she could go look them up! And I was like oh my god she’s emo and she doesn’t know who YMAS are. But as well as that, being able to cluster to each other and find each other, we’re able to find new bands

Court: Yeah

Clo: and as much as I envy the 80s, everyone going to record stores

Court: Yeah

Clo: As they romantically do in John Hughes films, I think we had a kind of a cool thing going on as well in that you’d find a band, you’d go home and you’d download their music

Court: illegally, usually

Clo: you’d find it somewhere, illegally, and you’d download it and it was on your iPod. And I think that was a really fun time. Whereas now, with Spotify, there’s no such thing as listening to a whole album anymore, you listen to a single here and there but back in the emo era, you would download the whole album and you’d listen to it from cover to cover because you wanted to see if these would, you know…

Court: if they were any good, or if this was something you could add to your… I mean that was something as well that really appealed to me, I got bored with pop music. Pop music is designed to be boring after a while, it fits into a very specific time period and a very specific style, so when everybody else was listening to music and was like this person is really good, these are great, I’d get bored after maybe 10 or so listens, and the first time i listened to any of these bands, I realised there’s no trend. And i do think that has changed now. A lot of bands, especially ones on major labels, have kind of fit into a trend. All the main guys like Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco, they change with the general mainstream trend.

Clo: Yeah

Court: And it’s keeping them afloat, it’s giving them new audiences, cause obviously us ageing emos aren’t going to keep them alive forever but it is interesting how people switch genres now. Like, remember the whole Five Seconds of Summer thing? And like all those kids were previous One Direction fans and they scooped up a whole new

Clo: music, yeah

Court: based on kind of being pop punk? But kind of not. But all those kids would identify as emo. And I remember being on Twitter and seeing those kids be like ‘omg flannel shirts and skinny jeans are like the 5SOS uniform. Like you wear one and you know I’m a 5SOS fan’.

Clo: oh my gosh

Court: and it was really weird, but it was so weird seeing it because of what we just said, it used to be ‘that person probably likes FOB’ whereas they had their own little like, this is how I find my people.

Clo: yeah

Court: and i think being in that emo space…. I mean, I did my thesis on fandoms. I’m super into the concept of fandoms. I have a psychology degree, it’s not very useful.

[both laugh] But! I did it on fandoms and on the people who are involved in fandom spaces and it has always fascinated me the way we gravitate. I was kind of on LiveJournal, I was kind of on MySpace. But for some reason as a child I was like, these can’t be… a child, I was like, 14… but these can’t possibly be Pete Wentz, this can’t actually be Hayley Williams, and I don’t why I doubted it so much. I think it was the whole ‘everyone’s lying on the internet’. So i was reading stuff and thinking that’s really cool, but it’s clearly not them. So I was kind of out of it a bit, and so I’d see it, and drama would happen, and I’d be like ‘what drama? They’re not real’. But you’d see that and it would be like an analog fandom, maybe you’d have friends to talk to or people in school to talk to but you weren’t like, entrenched in this community. It was very offline. So I think the coming online – maybe that’s why you don’t need the fashion as much anymore. It’s just if I have an account that has a My Chem lyric in it or a FOB lyric in it, or I tweet these bands I might find new friends. Or a lot of bands have their own forums or fanclubs and stuff, so maybe, I dunno, maybe that’s not a thing people need anymore.

Clo: yeah. Definitely for me I came into the online world with bands, I went there to find them, but I would’ve had a fandom, or like a like for the band, offline. When Gabe Saporta from Cobra Starship joined twitter in 2008, that’s when I joined. I didn’t care about anyone else, I just wanted to find Gabe on twitter.

Court: TELL ME ALL YOUR THOUGHTS, GABE.

[both laugh]

Clo: And Bebo, I probably would’ve been on Bebo when I started my emoness, and at that point, your’e just friends with people you know. Instagram today you just follow people you don’t know, you make friends with people who are into the same things as you but you just never meet them. Whereas with Bebo you got to know who from your friends were emo, as opposed to finding emo friends.

Court: Yeah, I get that. I think now it’s a lot different.

Clo: And I think that’s how we ended up flocking together. We met through another band who are not emo. Categorically not emo. And we ended up flocking together because we had shared interest in other bands like Green Day and Paramore and things like that.

Court: Yeah, I actually don’t even remember where I met you first, but my first memory of hanging out with you properly was in the queue for Green Day. So Green Day played Marlay Park in..2010?

Clo: Yep!

Court: and I still think of that as possibly one of the best gigs of my life. And it was it was before Green Day released Uno, Dos and Tré. Which we will talk about in detail at some point when we do our Green Day special. But it was around then. No, they released that in 2012 or 2013. So it was post… it was 21 Guns! Yeah it was the 21 Guns tour! And I got to meet Paramore that day. My friend won a private meet and greet with Paramore and I was too smol to appreciate it properly. And I was 15 or 16… no I was just gone 15, and I remember like SHAKING all the way through it like I don’t know how to talk to people? And I remember my mother freaking out cause she was like you’re going to be hanging out with a band like by yourself and I was like, they’re Christian! And she was like oh ok good, they probably don’t even drink. And at the time I don’t think Hayley did, cause she was worried about her voice and stuff

Clo: Yeah

Court: I remember being like these guys are good! But anyway I did that then I remember coming out and sitting on a wall then going over and queuing, and running into you and Nicole in the queue. And you guys were just in front of me for the whole thing.

Clo: Yeah I remember that gig, it was amazing. It was such a good show. And yeah I remember you telling me you met Paramore and I was SO jealous. I didn’t end up meeting them until 2013 I’d say? I met them, they played Belsonic in Belfast, and I won meet and greet tickets through the Paramore Fan Club.

Court: I remember that, and it was like 2 dudes and they were super nice? Wasn’t it?

Clo: What?

Court: The Paramore Fan Club. Wasn’t it two guys?

Clo: Oh no. The american one?

Court: the irish one?

Clo: No it was through the online fanclub. So I paid like 30 dollars a year or something.

Court: Woah. The All Time Low one was like 5 dollars a year.

Clo: The following year they got rid of it so they ended up doing it for free and I was really annoyed and the only reason I paid 30 dollars was to be in the running to win tickets if they ran these competitions. But I had other friends who went up to Belfast with me and they had won tickets as well through the fan club so we all got to go in and meet them. I was so nervous. What did you say to them? Do you even remember what you said? Court: Em… I remember talking to Jeremy. He had a Linkin Park branded Sharpie and I was like that’s so cool and he launched into this big story about it and I was like [sigh] you’re so cool and I was babbling at Hayley about how psyched I was for the show and then I was like omg your shirt’s so cool – remember Skelanimals? They were like…

Clo: yeah

Court: So I was like [babbles]. There was a lot of that. Except like, their manager. I dunno if it was their manager, she could’ve been… I dunno who she was, but she was really bitchy and mean. And they were happy to just stand there and chat. Jeremy and Hayley were just chatting themselves and joining us into the conversation, Zac was kinda...there. As he often was, he was just kind of there. And then Josh came out late, said sorry to Hayley for being late and then stood behind us, ignoring us.

Clo: Oh?

Court: And I went over and said hi and he was like oh hi, and I was like there’s only two of us here and I know we’re talking five hundred miles an hour but we haven’t attacked you? And like I haven’t screamed or done anything terrible. Cause even when they came out and said hi first I was shaking so bad, but like I didn’t fangirl or anything, I was just trying to keep it all inside. And I was so proud of myself for being so, like, stoic. Like I am so cool. And then he came out and was all sorry I’m late to Hayley and she was like, yeah cool, and their manager came out and was like we’re doing pictures now and then they have to go. And they were kinda like, we’re just chatting, it’s fine, so she kinda hurried them on. But I remember like, I loved Josh up to that point and it was real like, ‘never meet your heroes’ except Hayley was amazing. She was so sweet and so nice and she like gave us hugs and everything and it was just….it was… for never having met a band before, and that being my first experience of meeting a band, it was so positive except for the Josh bit cause I remember leaving and being devastated.

Clo: Yeah it’s definitely a case of don’t meet your heroes. Josh and Zac were gone by the time I got to meet them so it was just Jeremy, Taylor and Hayley. I was freaking out a bit. I was chatting to Jeremy, I don’t remember what I said because my friend afterwards was like oh my god you were chatting away it was great and I was like “Were we? I don’t remember.” I was shaking so much. I remember Hayley came to sign my...I had this Paramore book...I was like ‘I like your hair!’ and as soon as I said it, I was like “CLODAGH. What have you done. Why did you say that?! She probably gets that all the time, it’s probably the one thing she doesn’t want to hear at a meet and greet. What have I done, I’m so uncool, I said I like your hair to Hayley Williams”. She gets it all the time, so I was super embarrassed about that. But for a first time, it was really good.

Court: Yeah, I think for a band that are that big that are constantly getting bigger still – like they’re one of the few bands that are still growing because their sound has changed as they’ve gone on and it’s one of the few sounds that I believe it’s what they wanted to do, as opposed to a big label has gone hey, you need to appeal to this audience. Like I honestly believe that’s the music they wanted to write and that’s why I still like it, but for a band that big to be that accessible is cool.

Clo: I also think they have kept their audience as well. Fair enough, the last time they played here they played the Olympia Theatre [a 3,000 capacity venue in Dublin] which is a lot smaller than the 3 Arena

Court: So good though

Clo: Which they previously played, it was so good though, it was a great gig I was front row. But they didn’t… they could’ve well played the 3 Arena and kept the same audience. And even brought new people to see them. So I think they sold themselves short on that one.

Court: Yeah. I wonder was it just cause they hadn’t been here for a while? You see some bands be like, I don’t think we’ll sell this venue. Cause I know All Time Low played the O2 or the 3 Arena or whatever it’s called now

Clo: I think it’s the 3 Arena

Court: I’m old. Anyway, they played the 3 Arena and they ended up having to block out all the seats cause they just… they just might as well have played the Olympia.

Clo: I didn’t know that they played the 3 Arena, how long ago was that?

Court: That was….. 2016.

Clo: Okay. Okay.

Court: Just delving back into my All Time Low memories. [laughs]

Clo: Yeah.

Court: yeah, 2016. So they had done an arena tour in England and obviously thought, this is the same. And you’re like, no buddy, no it’s not. It was the same when they played Belsonic, everybody from Dublin just travelled up there and all the people from Belfast who wouldn’t normally travel, and some people flew over as well, so obviously they sold out Belsonic.

Clo: Yeah.

Court: And I think they thought well, we can do something this size in Dublin as well.

Clo: mmhmm.

Court: Cause they announced their Dublin show and I was really excited and everyone that was there was like ‘I’m not fuckin travelling down there for that.’

Clo: [laughs]. Although I’ve seen All Time low and I’ve listened to... some of their albums are really good ...pop...emo music. I don’t know if I can say that in front of you.

Court: [laughs] you can, that’s ok. I can take it.

Clo: I really enjoyed them, but I wouldn’t consider myself a huge fan. Like I said, I would listen to their stuff but I’m not really...I wouldn’t say they were one of my faves anymore.

Court: They’re still one of my faves. I mean their last album was diabolical. I just hated it so much, it made me angry.

Clo: mmhmm.

Court: It was one of those things where I thought, you tried something and it just didn’t work.

Clo: And that’s quite upsetting though, when your favourite band goes and does something like that, cause I can’t even imagine the heartache I’d have if Paramore came out with a shit album.

Court: See I think for them, they’ve been on FBR for so long, All Time Low only recently got signed to Fueled by Ramen, so I feel that they were like oh we need to try something new so they had this 80s electro-synth-pop-sort-of-pop-punk thing that they tried? And it was supposed to be a concept album except it wasn’t very well put together. Obviously somebody in a marketing room was like we have this character and you could write the thing about the character. But that only ever worked for My Chem. And only because Gerard was a genius.

Clo: Absolutely. And he’s somebody that obviously you can see with The Umbrella Academy which is on Netflix now, he was, or is, a writer and he knows how to write these intricate stories about characters. Whereas, All Time Low, they don’t really have a background in that? Court: [laughs]

Clo: I’ve never seen them come out with anything outside of that…

Court: they’ve done one kind of experimental album before. I loved it, people hated it. I hated it when I first heard it and it’s now one of my favourite of their albums. And this one was just… horrendous. Actually disappointing as hell. But they’re still my faves and I still have small faith that their next thing they’ll go back to basics. And they kind of have, they’ve released a couple of singles and they’re kind of more what they used to play. Paramore are still a fave...even though Panic! At the Disco is now just Brendon Urie – I mean it has been for a while, but now that it’s admittedly just Brendon, I still love them. I remember I saw something the other day where you were like I hate their new album. And, I don’t! I don’t love it, I like some things on it, I don’t actively hate it.

Clo: Their style from every single album that they’ve released, their style has changed.

Court: Yeah

Clo: when you go from AFYCSO to Pretty.Odd, they’re so different. I feel like their second album Pretty.Odd is so different because I know Ryan Ross was a massive fan of the Beatles

Court: yeah

Clo: And I feel like he took creative control of that album and fucked shit up and left the band. Their third one… Vices and Virtues, that was…

Court: I think that’s my favourite

Clo: I really like that one. They are… I feel like the Ballad of Mona Lisa is pop but emo.

Court: Yes.

Clo: It had radio success, at least here in Ireland.

Court: I think I agree. That was their single they released. Before that they had done a single for Jennifer’s Body. Loved that film, so good. Him and Spencer – oh, Spencer!

Clo: [fond] awh. That was when Ryan and

Court: Jon

Clo: Jon Walker. Had left.

Court: I always feel like Ryan thought, because he wrote the lyrics for that, that if he left them, they’d be screwed.

Clo: Yeah

Court: And then, they weren’t. Cause actually Brendon is really good at writing songs. I just think he’d never got a chance before that. If they were to play here or they were to play somewhere that I could get to, I’d go see them again, no bother. I’ve seen them in England a couple of times, once in the Forum in London and…...I think they played Slamdunk as well one year, too. And then they played the Olympia here a few years ago too.

Clo: Yeah that’s the only time I’ve seen them. I went to that gig on my own, actually.

Court: Awhhh! I didn’t know you were there!!

Clo: And it was incredible! I had so much fun. It was enjoyable cause I think the girl beside me was on her own as well

Court: Oh, okay

Clo: But we didn’t really like...it was a non-spoken thing, we were just kind of there having a great time

Court: That was a great gig. I’m trying to think who else… Obviously FOB. I’m not mad on their new stuff, but I feel like FOB are emo dads.

Clo: yeah

Court: and they’ve grown with their sound and it’s….I think it’s respectful of their original audience, as opposed to being too commercial in some ways. I feel like a lot of their audience is our age and older, like people in their early 30s were into FOB cause they were the original emo band, so I do think that what they’ve done is that they’ve grown with their own sound and they’re kind of going ‘we’re in our 30s and we’re dads and we’re getting older and here’s stuff that we’d listen to’, but that still respects the lyrical thing that got people interested in the first place. I can respect it even if I don’t love it.

Clo: yeah

Court: And then obviously My Chem.

Clo: They are… yeah. We are in twenty nine scene right now.

Court: TWENTY NINE SCENE! YEAH!

Clo: They… their last album was set in 2019, Danger Days

Court: Was it?!

Clo: it was set in the future

Court: We’re in the future!

Clo: We’re now in 2019 and there was a lot of conversation about, will they come back in 2019 because I was actually listening to it earlier on and at the end, Dr. Death who’s like the radio voice over – it’s another concept album – he says, you know, ‘bye for now, I know you’ll miss me’ and there was a lot of conversation about whether My Chem will come back in 2019. Obviously in 2019 we have the Umbrella Academy which is Gerard Way’s comic that was released on Netflix…. Will they come back? Who knows. We’ve got another 7 months to find out.

Court: I can’t see it happening. I would love… I never got to see them live.

Clo: Did you not?

Court: No. And when they last played here in 2011, they were giving away tickets on the radio, that was Brian and Dara on the Lock In [a radio show that ran at night on Irish music station Spin1038 between 2011–2013ish that played more alternative music and gave away tickets to alternative shows]... the Lock Down?

Clo: The Lock In

Court: The Lock In. And they were giving away tickets. And I’ve Blink tickets, I’ve won all sorts of tickets but this girl I know who was a huge huge fan of My Chem won them instead of me, and I was like yeah I’m happy, I’ll catch them the next time.

Clo: Yeahhh….

[both laugh]

Court: and it just didn’t happen. I did get to see Gerard play at Reading and Leeds...Well it was Leeds fest I went to, in 2014, so when he did…. I mean, it was as close as I was going to get

Clo: yeah

Court: You’re making a face, Clodagh’s making a face

Clo: Close enough

Court: yeah, it was fine, I didn’t love that

Clo: Did they do any My Chem songs?

Court: No. And he said, I watched, actually, an interview the other day, I dunno it was from four years ago, but he said that when he was doing those tours that he didn’t want to play My Chem songs because he didn’t want to set a precedent where people would expect him to always do that

Clo: Okay

Court: Cause I think he thought he was going to continue doing music, and then he disappeared off the face of the earth for a while, then he ended up in Wales. It was a whole weird thing.

Clo: Yeah I was on his Twitter account the other day doing a lot of research for this podcast, and he had something like ‘go follow this account for updates on Gerard Way’s life’ or something, I can’t remember what the account was called, but he hadn’t tweeted himself since 2015

Court: yeah he literally just stepped back from everything. I think he had, I dunno, whether he just got kinda lost? Or wanted to spend more time with his family, and then got focused on UA and on writing more… I think he’s still writing UA, I’m not sure?

Clo: I think he might have another one as well, I can’t remember the name of it but it was in his Twitter bio so I can only assume he had been writing another comic or something else. Which is great, at least we’re still getting something from Gerard Way’s brain.

Court: He’s still working on stuff, but I think he’s just kinda done. And I’ve seen Frank Iero andthe Cellabration and whatever one came after the Cellabration. So Frank Iero’s bands at the moment have a concept for each album but he changes the band name for every concept. The first one was FrnkIero andthe Cellabration, then there was FI and the.. something [Patience], and now there’s FIAT Future Violents.

Clo: See this I didn’t know

Court: Yeah so I’ve seen them…. Twice. Three times? No, I went through a phase of having...I developed really bad anxiety and I had a sensory problem where loud noises would cause me to have panic attacks. So I went to see Frankie in The Academy and somebody whistled really loudly close by and I literally had a panic attack and had to go home so I saw them twice and was in the room to see them three times.

Clo: Oh no!

Court: Which kinda sucked. But I got to see them, I saw them in Bristol, which was a weird place to go to, they supported Mallory Knox

Clo: another band

Court: Yeah, Mallory. I’d travel...Well I don’t anymore, I can’t anymore, but I used to travel a lot for gigs. Especially when you go to England, tickets are like 15 quid.

Clo: They’re dirt cheap.

Court: Yeah. Like it’s obviously because it’s easier for them to get there and easier for them to get gear around and stuff, but you’d spend 15 quid on a ticket and have the best time of your life.

Clo: 15 euro on a Ryanair flight.

Court: Yeah!

Clo: I used to be the same. I think the last time I travelled to see a band was last January, a band called [inaudible], psychadelic rock, totally not emo. They were really really good, but other than that, I would’ve travelled a good bit to see YMA6, I was a bit obsessed with them there for a while. And their live gig Final Night of Sin, and I went to see them in Southampton but it was completely random but it was the only place I could get tickets for, Belfast a couple of times, but other than that I think it’s been pretty quiet with regards to travelling for gigs. It’s definitely mostly been YMA6.

Court: Yeah. Like there’s no bands….the next band I’m going to see is Fever 333, and it’s the singer used to be in Letlive., if you remember that from a couple of years ago? So there’s nothing like, it’s really quiet here, bands don’t really come here.

Clo: Yeah, like I said earlier we had YMA6 came over in November, they played their 10 year anniversary show for Take Off Your Colours. Before that, I can’t remember the last emo band that I went to see.

Court: Yeah. I had tickets for Cute is What We Aim For. Now, I had those tickets, and then they cancelled, and then I found out some stuff that he’d said online originally when the MeToo stuff came out. And it was really stupid and ignorant. He apologised because people were like EHHH, SORRY?

[together] WHAT?

Court: And he was basically schooled, and he did apologise genuinely, but I was still like, that’s dodgy as all hell. It was basically just like ‘women are stronger than that’ and it was just like, no.

Clo: uhhhhh….

Court: It was real like, he wanted to be on the side of, women aren’t weak because that’s what he thought women were saying?

Clo: Okay…

Court: And he completely got the wrong end of the stick and it was really shitty when I read it, and I read his apology and his apology was better than most apologies we’ve seen and it was just, like, a completely ignorant thing he’d said. But I think had I seen that before, I would’ve been really mad.

Clo: Would it have turned you off going?

Court: Probably, I do think that’s another episode we need to talk about

Clo: Definitely

Court: what would actually stop you going to see a band, because as we know, over the last couple of years, a lot of bands have been outed for doing shitty things, especially in the era of MeToo, we’ve had a lot of people come forward and say this happened to me, this happened to me. Something had happened to a friend of mine, actually, a few years ago, that she was really brave and came forward and said… and that drama is still ongoing, which is really sad and really shit because other people are now involved in it too, and I just think like when you’re a teenager, you’re really trusting.

Clo: yeah

Court: and even if you are attracted to people in the band, you don’t really know what it is you’re expecting to happen? So if someone were to give you that kind of attention or ply you with drink or do whatever, I don’t know how I would’ve reacted as a kid to that, and obviously not every experience is mine, maybe some people did think they knew what they were getting into and it didn’t turn out that way. I do think that’s a future topic

Clo: definitely. So I think we’re going to wrap it up, I think we’re going to talk a little bit about maybe what kind of reunions would you like to see over the next Twenty Nine Scene. What do you want to see happen?

Court: Hmm. Obviously I would love to see My Chem come back

Clo: yes

Court: I don’t think they will. I think Gerard’s so resistant to the idea of doing anniversary tours. But a lot of bands are and then it comes around to it and nostalgia and stuff kicks in, so obviously that’s going to be top of the list. Emm… I’d love to see Hey Monday.

Clo: Oh my god, YES. I’d love for that to happen.

Court: I know Cassadee is… Cassadee Pope, she went on the Voice of America or whatever they call it over there, won, and is now is like a really successful country-music star. Which, like, good for you! Some of her songs are so great. I’d love maybe a one-off date maybe in England somewhere, I might go.

Clo: I would love to see that happen.

Court: Whatever happened to Metro Station?

Clo: Oh gosh. I’ve no idea. They met on the set of Hannah Montana, the two guys, obviously Trace Cyrus is Miley’s brother, and Mason Musso was the brother of the guy from Hannah Montana, I don’t remember what his name was, Oliver or whatever

Court: Yeah

Clo: So that was bizarre

Court: [laughs]

Clo: and the least emo thing to happen, hanging out on the set of Hannah Montana, but I think...I would actually like to see them. I really would, I remember there was a tour, Believers Never Die, and it was Hey Monday, Metro Station, FOB, Cobra Starship, and another band… but I remember that being my dream lineup. Really really wanted to go see that.

Court: that sounds amazing

Clo: I think ATL were the fifth band

Court: Of course they were

Clo: Cherry on the top of the cake for you. [laughs]

Court: Of course they were. Cobra Starship – you were...I just remember…. We didn’t really talk that much online, but I remember vague Facebook interactions, you were OBSESSED with Cobra Starship

Clo: [laughs]

Court: whenever I thought of CS, I’d be like ‘Clodagh really likes them’

Clo: their music wasn’t really emo, I think they kind of got their association, at least for me, through FOB. Gabe and Pete were really good friends, and they were on the same record label as well. I was obsessed with CS. I remember when I found out I won the meet and greet with CS, I fell to the floor

Court: [laughs]

Clo: and started crying

Court: super, super dramatic

Clo: very dramatic. So we met them, the meet and greet was amazing. I have a photograph that is just awful. We queued all day obviously so we’d get front row, but it didn’t matter if we got front row. In the meet and greet our phones died, and we have one really, really bad picture, it’s pixellated, it’s really dark, it was taken in the Green Room in the Academy downstairs just in bar lighting conditions

Court: Can we put it on the instagram?

Clo: yes

Court: even though it’s horrible?

Clo: I don’t think we’ll be able to make it out

Court: just circle your face

Clo: if I can figure it out, it’s very very dark. I’d love to see them. A band called Family Force Five supported them. Do you remember them?

Court: No?

Clo:They were like Christian metal emo, right.

Court: what a genre. That’s a mash up.

Clo: Their albums are really good and kinda metally-emo, but they were about Jesus and God. But they were kinda really good.

Court: There was a lot of Christian rock bands. Paramore started out as that. Then remember like Skillet?

Clo: Reliant K? I don’t know how that’s pronounced.

Court: Reliant K, yeah.

Clo: I used to love them, they were kinda Christian rock as well.

Court: yeah. It was really strange how many of those bands because as famous as they did and then… I’m sure we’ve forgotten loads for the reunion, but obviously top of 2019 wishlist is My Chem.

Clo: 100%. So that’s it for this week, thank you so much for tuning in and listening to this podcast, Kids From Yesterday. If you’d like to find us on Instagram we’re @kidsfromyesterdaypod and we’re on Twitter, @kidsfromydaypod.

Court: If you’re listening, make sure to share it, share it with your friends, tell people...I dunno… share

Clo: post it on your instagram story and tag us so we can share it too. We wanna be friends.

Court: we need friends. We don’t have any friends. Yeah, so, thanks so much for listening, and we’ll catch you next week. BYEE.

Clo: byeee.

0 notes

xekstrin · 7 years

Text

Got You On My Gaydar (Pharah/Mercy)

A/N: A short fic for @theivorytowercrumbles. I promised I’d write something like this months ago. (NSFW)

Pairing is Pharah/Mercy, set in some ambiguous modern AU.

"Don't look now, love," Lena said, nodding over to the doorway. "But I think the vampire's emerged from her cave."

Confused, Fareeha followed Lena's gaze to see their roommate hovering near the entrance of the Palazzo. Amélie was the last person she expected to see at the bar, even if it was Pride weekend. She looked just a little uncomfortable, scanning the room with her arms tightly crossed.

Leaning as far back in her stool as she could go without falling off, Fareeha yelled across the bar for her roommate's attention. "Hey! Amélie! Over here!” She had her experience dealing with more than a few rowdy crowds, and Fareeha developed an earbreaking whistle just for the occasion. It pierced right through all the noise.

Amélie twitched at the familiar call. Rolling her eyes before she even spotted the pair, Amélie set her shoulders straight and searched until they met eyes. Fareeha grinned, lifting up her beer in a salute.

Reluctantly, like a cat slinking into view, Amélie wove through the crowd to join them.

"Whatcha doin' here?" Lena wanted to know. "I thought you said you were going to stay in tonight, neighbor."

Expression deadpan, Amélie pulled her hoodie zipper down until it rested just below her navel, exposing a low-cut crop top that pushed her breasts up nearly to eye level. "Getting free drinks."

Fareeha's eyebrows shot straight up. "Well then. Godspeed."

When Amélie vanished, Fareeha turned to see her other roommate still blinking furiously at the sight.

"God, I'm gay," Lena mumbled.

"And taken," Fareeha reminded her gently.

"I'm monogamous, not blind." Shaking her head a few times, Lena downed her beer in three quick gulps. "Did you know our roommate is hot?"

"She cleans up nice." The two of them still had to shout to be heard. All around them, music pulsed from a dozen hidden speakers as a half a hundred revelers threw back shot after shot after shot. The Palazzo was their local haunt, a short walk from their apartment and their weekly refuge. Seeing it bustling like this was heartening. At the same time, Fareeha wondered if maybe they should have just stayed home and watched one of those Japanese cartoons Lena was always trying to shove down her throat. "I think she's in a bad place right now, though."

"What?" Lena shouted.

Taking a deep breath, Fareeha tried to clarify. "Would not date!"

Somebody opened up one of those goddamn popper things right next to her face, the shotglass-sized noisemakers filled with confetti. Fareeha swiped the confetti off the warm wooden bar, feeling just a little sweaty from a combination of yellow overhead lights and body heat.

"...What?" Lena shouted again, forehead scrunching in confusion.

A cute, tiny butch Asian girl vaulted onto the bar, her ass right next to Fareeha's hand. She flinched back involuntarily, resting her fist on her lap and squeezing the fabric of her camo pants. On top of being Pride, it was uniform night. Fareeha balked at the idea of wearing her uncomfortable formal RCAF stuff just for a discount... but the lazy camo+black tank getup seemed to be acceptable, and it was easier than squeezing into, like, A Generic Sexy Cop Costume or something. "Nothing."

Lena was in a leather jacket and aviators, which she called her douchebag uniform. Nobody else got the joke but her, and she didn't get a discount, but she wore it every other month anyway.

The cute butch had a whole gaggle of friends and admirers playing a drinking game that involved a lot of kissing. Dryly amused, Fareeha watched them try to pass a playing card from person to person without using their hands. Whenever one was dropped, the pair had to share a kiss.

"Ahh, the old suck'n'blow," Lena said sagely.

The cute butch dropped the card the next time it circled past their little group, so she grabbed the girl who'd held it last and pulled her closer. Holding her by the face, she circled her legs around the other girl's waist, kissing her hard. Unable to help herself, Fareeha stared until the pair noticed they had an audience. Sticking out her tongue, the instigator winked at Fareeha. "Hey, you're pretty cute. Want to play with us?"

Oh boy. Heat rushed to her face. Fareeha just drew circles on the bar in front of her, tracing meaningless patterns with the condensation leftover from her beer. Sitting a little closer, Lena nudged and prodded her, trying to encourage some kind of response.

Not dissuaded at all, the--- very attractive, and very... very young--- woman leaned down so she could be heard over the crowd. "You can take a drink when the card falls instead of kissing. No pressure!"

Lena nearly shot out of her seat, throwing her hand into the air. "I'll get another pitcher!"

"Hey, wait--!" Fareeha shouted after her, but Lena was already gone. Still stiff and awkward, Fareeha let herself get drawn into the circle of women and girls, wondering what might happen if she just bolted out of the bar. But she hadn't paid her tab, and she didn't really want to run, and then the woman next to her was pulling her arm down, trying to get her face-level.

Being tall was going to be a handicap in this game.

It was hard to keep track of names and faces when there were so many. Some dropped out and some new faces tapped in, arching up on tip toes to reach her, cheeks hollowed out as they tried to keep the playing card sucked to their lips. Fareeha dropped the card a lot, and after the first few times she stopped getting nervous that one of them would just grab and kiss her.

Hana, the ringleader with the pixie cut, kept everyone in line while still egging on everyone who wanted to play a little riskier. To make the game easier, Fareeha sat back down and soon Lena was right next to her. She didn't play, but she had a lot of fun watching. Occasionally she snapped photos and threatened to send them to her mother.

"I'll snap your neck," Fareeha promised her.

"As if Ana wouldn't be pleased as punch to see you enjoying yourself." Lena pushed the mug into her hands. "Drink up."

They clinked their glasses together and Fareeha started chugging to a loud group chant. She was careful... right up until she reached her limit and then staggered right past it. Every so often the group composition changed, with everyone swapping places so no two women were placed together more than once. So Fareeha steeled herself to kiss the next girl she could, the next time she dropped their card.

The world spun. And then, when the card dropped, Fareeha came face to face with the darkest, bluest, prettiest eyes she'd ever seen.

"Well?" the stranger said, tilting her head to the side. "Aren't you going to have another drink?"

Say something, Fareeha thought desperately. Do something cool. You’re a cool person! People have shot missiles at you and you were less nervous than this. You’re funny! You can say cool things.

“I’ve,” Fareeha said, pulling the other woman closer by the waist. “...Got you on my radar.”

Fareeha cupped her face with one hand, tilting her head back to kiss her. She felt more than heard the stranger gasp in surprise, her body stiffening. Before she had time for second doubts, though, the blonde grasped Fareeha by the back of her head. Keeping her in place with two hands, she deepened the kiss, pushing her whole body up against Fareeha’s.

A loud cheer pulled Fareeha back to reality. Letting go of the stranger, Fareeha stood a respectful distance away, spine ramrod-straight and her face warmer than ever.

The stranger was just as red, avoiding eye contact, but grinning.

“Well,” the stranger said, clearing her throat.

“Of course it would be Angela who got the shy one out of her shell,” Hana griped loudly, grimacing at the blonde. “It’s the eyes, isn’t it? Dr. Barbie’s got the prettiest baby blues ever.”

Folding her arms, Angela smiled thinly. For the first time, Fareeha noticed she was dressed like a doctor... sort of. The lab coat didn’t cover much, and it definitely did nothing to hide how much thigh she was flashing. “Jealousy doesn’t become you, darling.”

Hana didn’t seem phased. She clapped her hands loudly in front of Angela’s face. “Share!” she clapped again to accentuate every word. “The! Beef! Angela!”

Lena cackled, and as the two other women bickered lightheartedly, Fareeha felt forgotten. The world spun again, but unpleasantly this time. Mumbling an excuse to leave, Fareeha took her drink and exited the circle to step outside.

What was I thinking?

Compared to the bar, the bar balcony was freezing. The cold wind slapped her in the face, waking her up enough so that she could think a little clearer. With shaking hands, she lit a cigarette.

She half expected to find Amélie out here, avoiding the crowd as much as she was. The two of them always gravitated to the same spaces, somehow. Outwardly very different, a deep streak of introversion brought them together on balconies and lonely streets. Every time Lena spent the week at her girlfriend's place, silenced reigned in the apartment, not punctuated by a single word.

Still in there getting those drinks, then.

The back of the bar held some low wooden benches, and a similarly made railing to hang off of and people-watch the street below. It wasn’t as packed now that the parade was over, but not quite empty, either. So Fareeha didn’t even notice she’d been followed until Angela was suddenly standing right next to her.

“Fareeha, right?” she said, giving her a bottle of water and taking away the beer. It sweat in her palms, ice-cold.

Fareeha just looked at her, mouth clenched shut, the cigarette crumbling away between her fingertips.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. Then she twisted the bottle open, listening carefully for the crack of the seal breaking. Pretty or not, it probably wasn’t a good idea to accept a drink from a stranger. “Thank you.”

Standing at her side, she faced the street and produced a carton of her own cigarettes from the lab coat. “Do you mind?”

Fareeha slid her the lighter. Thanking her in a murmur, Angela lit a cigarette, drew a long breath, and sighed. “Sorry if I’m misreading you, but I got the distinct feeling I made you uncomfortable back there.” She finished her own bottle of water, taking the time to choose her words carefully. “I wanted to apologize. That’s all.”

But I’m the one who kissed you? Fareeha wanted to protest, but instead she just squirmed.

Angela shrugged, as though acknowledging the unspoken. After a few more minutes of silence, she crushed the cigarette out on a nearby ashtray. “I hope you have a good night, Fareeha.”

She moved to leave, trailing a hand over Fareeha’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Fareeha said. "Wait."

Angela paused, head tilting to the side again. A patient, yet expectant smile on her face. Mumbling something, Fareeha put out her cigarette as well, fiddled with the empty water bottle, rubbed the back of her neck.

So Angela took pity on her, stroking her bare shoulder one more time before cupping the back of Fareeha's neck.

“Now that we know each other's names,” she said with a teasing grin, “Would you like to kiss me again?”

Of course she did, but she didn’t know how to say it. So she set her hand over Angela’s, giving it a squeeze.

She let Angela pull her down into another kiss, more careful and gentle than the first. Angela hummed, smiling against her lips. Whatever Angela was curious about, or looking for, she seemed satisfied by the time she pulled away. Fareeha chased her, kissing her again even as a small voice in her head screamed that this was a serious error in judgement. She couldn't even blame it on the alcohol. No matter how buzzed she got, Fareeha had a talent for sobering up quickly afterwards.

They weren't alone up here, not by a long shot. But in that moment it felt like a bubble had sprung up around them, blocking out all outside distractions. "Do you live nearby?" she asked, one hand on Fareeha's hip. The other hand kept a tight grip on the back of her neck. Their foreheads were pressed together, and even through the noise they were close enough that she didn't need to talk any louder than a murmur.

That voice soothed her, calm and sweet and just firm enough to be reassuring. Fareeha nodded. "An apartment."

"I'd love to see it, if you aren't expecting guests anytime soon."

Wow.

She couldn't remember anyone ever coming on to her this strong before. Direct and without pretense was Fareeha's style, ostensibly, but to have it presented to her like this was surreal. After paying her tab and shooting a quick text message to the group chat (Amélie was two glasses away from starting a bar fight just for the fuck of it, and Tracer realized Hana was some kind of internet-famous person and wanted to hang out with her) she put a hand on Angela's shoulder and lead her outside.

The walk to her apartment never felt so long before. She noticed Angela was wearing heels, thick glossy black ones that clicked louder and louder the further they got from the Palazzo.

Should she make small talk? Ask what brought her to that particular lesbian bar? Fareeha's hands itched for something to do, and she flexed them, making anxious fists until Angela spoke again.

"I'd really like to hold your hand, Fareeha."

"Sure. I'd love that."

So Angela does, taking it and swinging it with a smile as they walk. Fareeha's stomach lurched and did excited backflips, and before she could help herself she was giggling nervously. "Your um. Your feet don't hurt?"

"Why," Angela said, "Are you offering to carry me?"

"I probably could." There wasn't any way to say that without sounding like she was boasting, but it was true.

An appreciative gaze swept over her from head to toe, blue eyes sharp as a knife. "I can tell."

Heat rose up the back of her neck, and Fareeha found herself having second doubts again. Was she really going home with someone she met at the bar not even an hour ago? Pausing just in front of her apartment door, Fareeha asked for some room to breathe so she could have another cigarette.

"Roommates hate it when I smoke inside," she explained even though it didn't need explaining, needing the assurance of nicotine and warmth.

Angela agreed with a soft noise. "Mhm. Share with me?"

Fareeha nodded and she was about to get out her carton when Angela took the her by the wrist with both hands, bringing the lit cigarette to her mouth like she was eating out of Fareeha's palm. She wasn't sure why that was so powerfully erotic but it was, and her mouth went dry as Angela let her go to exhale a stream of blue smoke.

She couldn't help kissing her again, tossing the cigarette aside so that she could hold her close.

"Take off your shirt for me, Fareeha." A palm trailed down, over the thin black fabric. "You're wearing a sports bra underneath, aren't you? It won't look too suspicious if anyone sees you."

Right here? Fareeha stilled, conflicting thoughts scrambling in and around each other. After just a moment of hesitation she did as Angela asked, tugging her tank over her head and tucking it into the back pocket of her pants.

Free to touch her more, Angela pressed her up against the front door of her apartment, running both hands up the length of her body. Her hands were just a little cold against Fareeha's skin, tracing the twitching lines of her abdomen with open admiration. "You're so pretty. What next?"

The way she phrased it was too sweet to be an order. Ego fluffed by all the praise and attention, Fareeha found she was driven to obey purely out of a desire to please Angela. Her hand twitched down, flicking open the front button on her pants. Then she hesitated, thinking of her shoes, and the awkward mental image of tripping over her own two feet if she tried to kick them off at the same time as her pants. So, heart thumping loudly in her ears, she stripped off her sports bra.

Angela's eyes widened a fraction, but her expression didn't change from coolly amused. Sticking out her tongue, Fareeha crossed her arms over her bare chest. "No more. Let's go inside if you want the rest."

"I absolutely do." Angela covered her mouth with one hand, giggling. "You know, this just confirms my initial diagnosis of you."

"Pfft." She fumbled with her key fob, unlocking the front door with shaking hands. She wasn't sure what switch had flipped, but shedding her clothes for Angela meant some of her nerves had slipped away as well. "That's a lame joke."

"I don't try to pretend I'm not lame," Angela said, which didn't seem true but Fareeha wasn't going to push it.

Under the lab coat, Angela was just wearing a buttoned up blouse and a scandalously short skirt, thigh high stockings ending in a lacy trail around the circumference of her pale skin. Fareeha touched it, bending her knees low enough so that she could reach her, grasp her and yank her up into her arms. As she promised, picking her up was easy, and Angela was not displeased by that at all. "So what's the diagnosis, doc? Give it to me straight."

"Oh!" she quickly latched onto Fareeha's shoulders, hugging her and laughing. "Hmm. Well, you're a soldier, not just dressed as one for pretend. You walk and look like one." Leaning to the side, she smiled wryly at Fareeha's feet. "And the way you tie your laces." She hugged her tighter again, lipping Fareeha's ear as the other woman walked in, kicking the door shut. "And you like taking orders."

A little shiver rolled down her spine. "You got me," she said.

"Not your roommates, though. Old friends, maybe?"

Living room or bedroom? "Mmhm. We go way back." Even if Amélie was weird and depressed and Lena was always complaining about not having time to see her girlfriend. Shifting her grip on Angela, she realized there was no way to hold her like this that didn't put hands on her ass, or her waist, or her soft thighs.

Probably shouldn't worry about being a gentleman to the woman with her legs wrapped around your waist.

Angela distracted her with another kiss, carding her fingers through Fareeha's hair and lightly massaging her scalp.

Bedroom. She was sure Angela would say something if she didn't like it.

After setting Angela down delicately on the edge of her bed, she worked off her boots and pants. Her whole body hummed with pleasure and excitement, especially with how Angela seemed frozen in place by the sight of her naked form.

She leaned back and admired Fareeha, sitting on the bed with her left shoe dangling by her toes.

Fareeha pressed a knee to the mattress, one palm on Angela's shoulder. "Do you want me to undress you too?"

Shrugging out of her jacket, Angela let out a huff of excitement. "In a moment." Once her arms were free they went around Fareeha's waist, tugging her closer. Angela placed a kiss right on the center of her chest before her lips wrapped around Fareeha's nipple, teeth grazing just enough to get it to stand at attention.

Sighing in pleasure, she took Angela's head in both hands, directing that mouth to her other breast. She went willingly, one hand reaching up to massage the breast she'd abandoned, fingers catching and tweaking the sensitive peak.

The other roamed hungrily over Fareeha's body, rubbing and stroking over her ribs, squeezing her thigh and ass, and finally slipping between her legs to stroke right at the source of pooling, dripping heat.

Fareeha groaned openly, hips twitching forward, onto Angela's fingers. "Y-your hands are so soft," she gasped, stroking down the back of Angela's neck. She was maddeningly gentle, exploratory, her thumb resting lightly just over Fareeha's clit. "Fuck. I need more than two, Angela," she growled, grinding harder onto her lap.

"Are you sure you can handle that?" The other woman sounded almost smug, like her delicate fingers were something to be afraid of.

"I can take anything you can dish out."

Angela's eyes glinted with distinct pleasure at the challenge. "You're lucky we're not at my place," she said, and Fareeha almost cried as she pulled her fingers free. "I'd make you eat those words. Lie back."

She did, getting off of her lap to stretch out on the bed, heart thumping out of her chest. Angela pulled her shirt off, a lacy black bra unhooked and joining it on the floor. "Touch yourself," she said, kneeling between Fareeha's legs with her palms on her thighs. "Show me how you like it."

Masturbating wasn't really a part of her usual... thing. She'd do it lying facedown at night, a quick rut to get the tension out. Putting herself on display for a stranger? Well...

Face warming up again, Fareeha did as she was told. She traced a straight line down between her lips with two fingers, head thrown back and eyes closed.

"While looking at me, please," Angela said. Because of course she did.

She had to force herself to meet those dark blue eyes. Everything in her fought against it, but she wanted this, nerves be damned. Angela settled forward, gently guiding Fareeha's legs open so that nothing was hidden.

"Not sure where to start," she admitted, but she slid her fingers over her entrance, getting her fingers wet and biting back a moan.

Angela groped her breasts, squeezing and stroking with casual possessiveness. "Well... what were you hoping would happen once we got to this point?" she prompted with a smile. She caught Fareeha's nipple between her fingers, pinching it hard enough that she whimpered.

"I thought I'd go down on you and you'd be nice enough to return the favor."

And I can't put my foot in my mouth if it's otherwise occupied.

Moving from chest to shoulders, Angela kept touching her. She stroked her face, pulling her head up for another lingering kiss. "And then what?" she asked, left palm over the back of Fareeha's hand. Her right hand dipped under her own skirt as she watched Fareeha, eyes narrowed but never blinking once.

Oh, fuck. "I..." Oh, fuck, she was going to come. "I... You know, I'd do whatever might make you happy."

Angela's pale skin flushed bright red, the only visual betrayal of her nerves and excitement. Leaning forward, she buried her face into Angela's shoulder, unable to meet her eyes any longer. She muffled herself, her fingers buried knuckle-deep inside herself. Angela squeezed her tightly, kissing the top of her head and her cheeks as she gasped.

Pulling Fareeha's hand up to her mouth, Angela cleaned her fingers, licking away the traces of clear arousal. Then she kissed her again on the mouth before ducking down, shimmying further out on the bed so that she could taste more.

Angela seemed tired of teasing her, maybe pushed past being able to feign patience any longer. One hand went under her knee as she pressed an open kiss right over her wet entrance. Still twitching from her first orgasm, Fareeha nearly jerked away. She forced herself to stay as still as she could, cursing loudly as Angela brought her back to the brink.

It was so much easier to let go this time. Now that she didn't have to face that calm, unblinking stare any longer, Fareeha finally relaxed. She squeezed Angela's free hand, spine loosening as she sank into pleasure.

"Inside me," she whispered, before she lost the ability to form any words at all.

Angela seemed so precious to her right then. She was gentle, careful even after being given the go-ahead. But she also didn't need further urging to add a second finger, and then a third.

Yes. Fareeha didn't dare say it out loud, only moaning as Angela filled her up, forced her to accomodate that deliriously wonderful stretch. Angela's fingers worked inside her, twisting and searching as her tongue stroked Fareeha closer and closer to release. Yes, fuck yes! Fuck me, please, fuck me!

She couldn't keep quiet this time, but it was Angela crooning in pleasure that made her see stars. She'd been pushed past the point of pleasure into pain, and Angela kept sucking on her clit as though trying to pull a third orgasm from her, but she couldn't. Gasping, Fareeha tugged on her head until she stopped, spurred to act. Angela looked confused at first, hesitant.

"Is everything--"

Fareeha kissed her hard, tasting her own come on Angela's lips. Rolling them over, she worked a hand between them. She was still high on her own orgasm, shaking from exhaustion. It was something like a runner's high, being pushed past a limit she didn't know she had until Angela was clenched tight around her fingers.

Her nails dragged down Fareeha's back, the salt of sweat stinging, making her feel alive. "Is this good?" she breathed against Angela's lips, forcing her to be the one to answer now, take just a little bit of that control away.

"Y-yes. Yes."

She took Fareeha in with no trouble at all. Her underwear, pulled to the side, rubbed against the side of Fareeha's hand every time she thrusted in. The fabric was drenched, wetness smeared between Angela's thighs and all down Fareeha's hand, staining the sheets.

"You're making a mess," Fareeha purred, just a little lightheaded. "Why didn't you let me take care of you sooner?"

Angela's jaw worked, teeth grit. Her pulse hammered out a fierce drumbeat, pounding clearly under her pale skin. "Wanted to touch you." She gasped, pulling Fareeha down for another kiss. "Wanted you to come first."

Fareeha smiled, deepening the kiss. Lazy, slow, spoiled, like she had all the time in the world. Angela stiffened--- and then her hips canted up, jerking so hard Fareeha almost got knocked off of her. She was surprisingly strong, spewing out a slurred stream of vulgar-sounding German. Fareeha thought she had heard a slight accent, some vowels stretched out oddly whenever Angela spoke. It was pretty satisfying to have it confirmed this way.

Angela looked up at her, seeming almost in shock, mouth wide and gasping. Then she murmured for Fareeha to stop, put a warning hand on her wrist and pulled her fingers free. Settling down, Fareeha kissed her, locked their legs together as Angela slowly relaxed.

Stretching a little, Fareeha closed her eyes and smiled at the aching burn between her shoulders. She wanted to stay like this, comfortable and warm, with Angela petting her hair until she fell asleep against her chest. But after a while Angela begin to fidget, kissing Fareeha over and over again, almost as an apology.

"As much as I'd love to, I can't spend the night, dear." Angela kissed her one last time before slipping out of bed. She put her clothes back on--- well, she was still wearing most of her clothes, but whatever was on the floor was soon quickly back in working order. She definitely looked like she just got fucked, her hair turning wavy and curled at the ends even as she tried to untangle it with her fingers. "I have work in the morning."

Ah.

Fareeha tried not to look disappointed, sitting up with her legs criss-crossed. She kept her gaze down, biting her lower lip until Angela said her name again.

"Fareeha."

A hand rested under her chin, lifting her gaze back up again.

"I had a really good time."

Is that it? Is it over?

Angela kissed once more, sweetly, and Fareeha reached out to put a staying hand on her hip. "Can I have your number?" She cracked a grin. "I'm better at texting than talking."

To her suprise and pleasure, Angela perked up at once. "Sure!" She found her phone, entering in Fareeha's number. "Last name?"

Her cheeks warmed up. "Amari. A-M-A-R-I.” She fucked a woman without even learning her last name. “I--- I don't normally do this."

"Neither do I, Ms. Amari." She called Fareeha, and her phone started buzzing in her pants pockets. Rooting around for them on the floor, Fareeha answered the call and saved Angela's number. "But I'd like to do it again soon, as long as it's with you."

A parting kiss on the cheek and she was gone, just as quickly as she'd arrived. Fareeha sat in her bed for a while, body still thrumming with pleasure.

When she went to sleep, she dreamed about her.

#fanfiction #overwatch #pharmercy #xeksplicit

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