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startanewdream · 3 years

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the fall

Summary: James lives. Sirius falls.

Notes: Sometimes people ask if in my Jily Lives AU series, Sirius dies like in the book. I like to think not, but I never wrote one way or another, because after all I don’t want Sirius to die.

But if it happened like in the books, here it is how I imagine it would go (not really part of the series, but it mentions events there):

Sometimes James still dreams of the fall.

It was something he always feared.

Most people wouldn't guess but he always had a fear of heights; that was the reason he first mounted a broom and took of for the sky - more than any fear he felt, James loved taking risks, being dare. It made him feel alive.

He never stopped fearing the height, but he trusted his broom and in all his short career at Quidditch there had been only one accident, one time a bludger hit him too hard and he fell - later he would claim he had blacked out, but the truth was he stayed awaked through all his fall, until someone managed to grab him and save him.

James never forgot that feeling of being adrift in the air, condemned to fall in that one-way trip. He remembers thinking that this must be like the angels felt when they were falling from grace.

His mother had been Catholic and she had told him all the stories. He had not paid attention to most - his father's adventures stories were much more to his taste - but there were some that caught his attention. Daniel in the lion’s den. Samson with his hair. The fallen angels.

He always thought it must have been hard for them, being cast away from heaven. James loved flying, loved being above everything and feeling free; he would have hate being trapped on the ground.

He would hate losing his wings.

When he was six, his father allowed him to stay awake well past his bedtime and they camped in their backyard. It was a cold November night, but James was too excited to feel cold; his dad was telling stories of long lost heroes when James saw the fall for the first time.

It looked like a line of light crossing the night sky, something falling quickly in the space of a blink of an eye and vanishing before he could understand. And then another and another, after a few seconds or minutes, a number of little lines appearing in the starry sky. It was beautiful.

It scared him.

'Are those angels, dad? Are they falling again?'

His father had smiled.

'No, James, those are falling stars. Shooting stars. Make a wish'.

James did not feel like wishing for anything. Stars were made to be in the sky too. They shouldn't fall.

When he told that to his father, he smiled again and hugged James.

'Those are not really stars, son. Those are meteors, parts of a comet that came too near Earth. What you see is just the meteors entering our planet and burning in the process'.

'It's strange'.

'It's just an event, like eclipses or the phases of the Moon. But this one is special, it happens once in thirty years. The first time I saw it I was your age'.

'Does it hurt them? Those meteors when they burn?'

'No more than the water is hurt when it's raining', his father assured him. 'They are just rocks. I thought you would like it. This meteor shower is called the Leonids'.

'Like the Greek hero?

'Like the constellation Leo, actually'.

This picked up his interest even more. James loved lions, loved the courage they represented and loved how they were the symbol of a House he would be someday.

He watched the rest of the meteor shower in a blissful mood and that night he dreamed of falling stars that were not really stars nor they were falling.

A decade later, he convinced his friends to fly to the top of the Gryffindor Tower, equilibrating precariously on the bricks of the tower, to watch another meteor shower.

Remus slept right away, tired even in a moonless night, and Peter was trembling too much to enjoy the show, but Sirius stayed awake with him all night, watching the stars, almost clapping each time he saw a shooting star (this meteor shower was much less impressive than the other James saw, but it didn't matter. It was never about the stars).

'Do you think wishing upon a star really works?', Sirius asked him in a low voice.

'Depends. What are you wishing for?'

Sirius had turned to look at him.

'If I tell you, it doesn't come true', he said as if it were obvious, but James just stared back at him, waiting.

He knew Sirius would tell him because there were no secrets between them. They trusted each other too much for that.

And just like he knew it would happened, Sirius blinked.

'I wished - I thought of my family -'

James frowned then, still remembering the raining summer night where Sirius had appeared in front of his house, wet and trembling, and had told him he had run away from home. James had done the only sensible thing - he had stand aside to allow Sirius to enter and had helped him change his clothes.

He didn't understand what Sirius could wish about his family - as far as James knew, none of them were really Sirius' family and he was much better away from them.

'My brother, actually', Sirius whispered, sounding guilty of even having this thought. ' I wish I could have him back'.

James thought of the first day of classes that year, when Sirius had come face to face to his brother after running away, and how Regulus had turned his back on him, had refused to hear Sirius calling him, and how heartbroken Sirius had been.

'You don't need him', James said forcefully, hating to see Sirius so down. Sirius was made to shine even more than the star he was named for. 'I am your brother. I won't ever leave you'.

Sirius beamed at him them, his eyes full of love and James knew he was right. They were more than best friends. They were brothers.

Years later he would feel guilty when he found out the truth about Regulus, how he had been brave after all and how Sirius never discovered it.

Years later he would watch Sirius fall and the only wish he could make was that it was all a dream.

But right then they didn't know better, so Sirius offered his hand, which James ignored in favor of hugging him, and they stood together watching the meteor shower.

That was how James and Sirius did most of the things. Together.

They laughed and they pranked and they made mistakes together. They wronged together too and they faced detentions - when they started to get separate detentions, they invented a mirror to talk to each other.

When James realized he fancied Lily Evans, he told Sirius first - Sirius didn't seewhat attracted James in Evans, but he supported, helped him with some cheesy lines (none of it worked) and promise he would marry James if Evans was still rejecting him by the time he were thirty. James knew how much that meant for Sirius, who never really seemed to care about dates and relationships.

And he didn't doubt Sirius would be there for them to grow old together.

When he finally started dating Lily, he told Sirius, even before telling her, that he was in love with Lily. And then, as he said it (Sirius had rolled his eyes, but James knew he was happy for him, because that’s how they were with each other - if one was happy, the other was too; if one was that sad, the other found the reason and punched it in the face), he realized that he had never told Sirius that he loved him too.

'I love you, Padfoot'.

Sirius had stopped to look at him, looking only confused.

'Yeah, I know. We are brothers'.

And then James felt stupid for thinking he had to said how he felt out loud. He never once doubted Sirius loved him either; of course Sirius would feel the same.

Nothing change after they graduated. Sirius was with him in the Order, for the most important and most boring missions, for the days were hope were lost and for the small victories they managed.

Sirius was his best man in his wedding, making a speech that made everyone cry and filled with puns about dogs and stags that made James laugh even if none of the other guests understood. And Sirius was by his side when his parents died.

Years later James would see Sirius hearing about his mother passing away with just a blink, but when he heard about the Potters, Sirius came and hugged James and they cried together, because they were both losing their parents. Sirius had not only been a brother to James, but also a second son that his parents had loved fiercely - and Sirius had loved them back, had found in them all the care and support he lacked from his own parents.

And then Sirius was somehow the only family James had (Lily was part of him, so it was different), until Harry was born - and it was obvious that Sirius would be the godfather.

And even more obvious that he would be their Secret Keeper.

Except it didn't happen like that because Sirius had an idea and James had believed it was the best, because he wouldn't dare to mistrust Peter (he was already hiding things from Remus and that hurt him too much).

But Peter - who James had also loved too, but maybe he should have told him that more - betrayed them and by the tiniest luck James and Lily and Harry survived. Peter died. James tried not to think about it.

For the next years there was some peace. Sirius got to fulfill his wish of being an Auror, James went to his studies, Lily went to preparing her potions. And Harry grew up happy and with his family complete.

Until the fall.

If James had to describe it, he always thought it would be much like the falling star. The angel would be thrown from the sky and at first he would trust his wings to keep him from falling like they always had done; but much like the meteor, the wings would burn brightly upon entering Earth and the fire would consume them, until there was nothing of the feathers and the angel would just fall, in what would seem forever - but the ground would be nearer and nearer until, finally, the angel would hit it.

The angels survived in the stories, but James remembers the story of Icarus, who dared to fly to close to the sun and fell to his death in the sea.

Sirius was no angel and, like Icarus, he always flew too high, James knew, because there was nothing holding him back.

James had a son and a wife to protect with his life and somehow this grounded him, made him think more than when he was young. Sirius loved them all, but he was free.

That didn't worry James for a very long time. Sirius was a star. It was okay for him to be high in the sky. He was made to be there.

Until the fall, where the laws of the physics didn't seem to matter.

In hindsight, James thought he should have paid attention. Sirius had been dismissed from a work he truly loved, had to hide for being hunted after telling the truth the world didn't want to hear. He had lost everything he had fought for in the last fourteen years and he was forced to hide in his old parent's house, the one place he had tried so much to run away from. He was careless and out of practice.

Lily tried to warn him and James didn't listen. It had been so long since James had worried about Sirius - instead, it was Sirius that was always comforting James with his worries and problems. At some point in their lives Sirius had become the older brother to him, just as much as a godfather - a second father - he was to Harry.

Harry loved him and he never thought of Sirius like anything other than his family too. Harry would hear Sirius and trust him and care for him.

They should have expected Voldemort to use it against them. Voldemort could not use James or Lily - Harry wouldn't believe it - but when he came for Sirius, if only pretending to, Harry didn’t doubt it for a second and feared and didn't care about anything other than saving his family.

It was a trap and as soon as they found out, they came to rescue Harry. Someone should stay behind to tell Dumbledore, but Sirius never considered waiting while his godson was in danger.

James never expected him to. He knew Sirius enough to know he loved a challenge and he loved Harry even more.

But James never expected Sirius to fall either.

James remembered the first meteor shower he saw. In one moment there was nothing, just the a normal night sky, full of stars and constellations he would someday learn about. And then the lines were crossing the sky, flashes of light that seemed to either last one second or fall forever until they vanished in the horizon.

That's how Sirius falls. Forever until the horizon comes.

He is dancing with Bellatrix, a dance of lights and carefree laughs with a cousin that is not his family - James is his family, the Potters are his family - when the spell hits him. It's not green, so James is not concerned, but then Sirius falls behind, gracefully, quickly, into a veil that seems to welcome him with open arms just as James did the night Sirius ran away from home.

And then he is gone.

Not dead. Gone.

Like the falling stars in the meteor shower, vanishing into nothing.

James wishes for him to return with all his heart, but nothing happens. He begs to any god that might be listening. No one answers. Nothing changes.

After all these years he has an answer to Sirius' question (it's a waste of time to wish upon a star) and he can't even tell him.

He stares at nothing, feeling numb, for once not hearing Harry's cries and then Lily is there, hugging him and it's only when James can only breath through his mouth that he realizes he is crying, kneeling in the ground in front of the veil, his hand raised expecting Sirius to grab his hand so James can save him.

Nothing happens.

He doesn't know how he survives the next week. He doesn't remember anything except for a few flashes - punching Fudge (because that's what Sirius would do) destroying the motorbike that Sirius left on the Potters house, attacking with a kitchen knife Sirius's mother portrait (it works, and they manage to take her out - Sirius would have been happy).

It's only when Harry returns from school and asks him in a very quiet voice if he blames him, that James feels like waking up.

'No', he whispers. 'It's only Voldemort's fault'.

He doesn't blame Harry - his son did what he thought it was the best with the few information he had -, he doesn't blame Dumbledore for trying to keep Sirius away, he doesn't blame Snape for being a dick and messing with Sirius' head and he doesn't blame himself for not being able to prevent what happened.

The only one he has to work on not blaming is Sirius, who should have know better, who should have been more careful, who should not dare to leave James' side.

But then again, when he got the chance, Icarus flew too high too. And Sirius was not made to be locked.

He finds Harry in the backyard of the house some day, looking at the destroyed motorbike; there is a toolbox next to him, and James remembers Sirius teaching Harry about motors a long time ago, sharing his passion with his godson.

Harry doesn't ask why the motorbike is destroyed; he seems to understand whatever anger made James do it. He just starts fixing it and, after a while watching his son working, James grabs some tools too.

It's a hard work, under scalding heat, but they never complain.

'I asked Nearly Headless Nick how ghosts were made', Harry whispers one afternoon, while he is changing the tire.

'He wouldn't return', James says without taking his eyes from the cylinder, trying not to sound resentful. 'He would have gone on'.

'Dumbledore once told me death is just the next adventure'.

'Sirius would never refuse an adventure'.

Harry smiles at him, with tears shining in his eyes, and he nods.

It's a long summer. James wakes up screaming sometimes - it's the fall, always the fall - and Lily is there for him, kissing him and embracing him until he falls asleep again.

She is the sun for him, the one star he can count on to keep shining, to return every day after it sets.

Lily is mourning too (she loved Sirius too, even though people would forget it), and sometimes he catches her crying silently; he is the one to embrace her, and then what happens is that they cry together.

But being with Sirius mostly of his life taught James that pain, like happiness, is better when you have someone to share.

It's Lily who suggests they make a funeral for Sirius - not a sad event, just something to represent him and a place to let them pay their respects - not with flowers, because Sirius never cared for them, but James thinks he would like to receive motor magazines from time to time.

So they place a tombstone near where James' (and Sirius') parents are buried. It's empty, no coffin and no one to pay the homage Sirius truly deserved (a big speech, music playing, lots of people crying), but it feels somehow like an ending really, when James stares at the silver tomb and sees the name of his best friend and brother there.

Lily was right after all; Sirius isn’t there, not really, but James comes to that place to talk to him, to tell him what's happening, even if it makes him sad to realize how much Sirius is missing.

He hopes that wherever Sirius is (in heaven, pranking innocent angels at least and waiting for James), Sirius gets to hear and cheer too for all the good news.

He never stops missing Sirius, just like he still wishes his parents were still there. When the war is over, he takes a break to come to see Sirius, to open the champagne they promised they would toast to when Moldy-Voldy was finally gone. It's a lonely toast, but James pretends Sirius is there; a dog passes by - it's not black, it doesn't look remotely like Sirius' animal form -, but James sees it a sign.

The next day, after he visits a shelter and returns home with a black dog, Lily just smiles.

'Hello, Padfoot', she says letting the dog sniff her then lick her face, and just like that the dog is already part of their family.

Sirius is not there for Harry's first hangover (he would have laughed and give Harry various tips on how to avoid passing out, and also various tips of preparing the best drinks), he is not there when James and Lily get pregnant (he would have complained about not being godfather again) and he is not there when Harry marries (Sirius would have cried harder than James).

And he is not there when James sees for the first time his grandchild, a beautiful tiny boy that brings tears of joy to his eyes when a very tired Ginny lets him hold his first grandson.

'He is perfect', he whispers, unable to look away from the baby just as once he couldn't look away from his son. At his side, Lily is letting the baby hold her pinky, beaming. 'Did you decide a name for him after all?'

'Well -', Harry begins, sitting right next to Ginny on bed and taking her hand.

'We always thought of naming after you if it were a boy', Ginny says, exchanging a look with Harry.

James looks up.

'I am honoured -'

'Until we saw him for the first time', Harry interrupts him, his voice soft. 'When he opened his eyes, I swear there were like a million stars there shining for us. So we thought of - something else'.

'What?'

'Sirius', Harry says simply. 'Instead of making it his second name, we thought of calling him Sirius. Sirius James Potter'.

James looks back at his grandson. It's fitting.

'He does look serious', he whispers, and some part of his mind hears Sirius' barking laugh, teasing him indignantly for going for that old joke.

More than the tease, James swears he can hear the happiness too. Sirius was always a Potter anyway, this is just one way of making it somewhat official.

'It's a lovely name', he agrees, smiling, and indeed when the baby opens his eyes, James sees all the stars there that won't ever fall.

#James Potter and Sirius Black #Jily Lives AU #But not a happier world this time #Angst #With some sort of happy ending #t: fanfiction

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lion-time · 3 years

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Time for some VF headcanons cause I’m bored

-The Force will just randomly install and uninstall the fridge in the main room whenever they feel like it.

-Pidge has a nape piercing which not many people know about.

-Chip helps with the vocals for Stereolactic. He also helps beta test the Voltron game from time to time.

-Lance will set EVERYTHING on fire every time he tries to cook. The food. The kitchen. Himself. EVERYTHING.

-The cadets make a game out of stealing Lance’s jacket. Whoever steals it without him noticing for the longest is the winner.

-After Keith cuts off his mullet, the rest of the Force hold a little funeral for it. Tears ensue.

-Daniel’s extensive Voltron knowledge can freak out the active pilots sometimes. Dan is completely unaware of how much potential blackmail he actually holds.

-On a similar note, Daniel has written Voltron fanfiction and you can’t convince me otherwise.

-Hunk has written a theme song for his lion

-Whenever the team strumbles across something which is annoying yet perseverent, they will describe it as being powered/infected by Lotorium.

-e.g ‘Ugh. This thing is being really annoying!

‘Sounds like it might be powered by Lotorium.’

-Just like how there’s an ex-Lotor group of evil Drules (the Syndicate), there’s a group of good ones too, who help the Den.

maybe i’ll do more when i feel like it these were just ones off the top of my head

#voltron #vforce11 #voltron force #vf pidge #vf daniel #vf lance #vf keith #vf vince #vf larmina #vf allura #vf hunk #vf lotor #voltron headcanons

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v-thinks-on · 4 years

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A Fond Farewell

Note: This hypothetically takes place at the beginning of Jeeves in the Offing, inspired by the description of Jeeves’s departure:

It was that dreaded time of year again when Jeeves took his annual vacation. As chummy as things have always been between us, Jeeves is a hardworking man and deserves his well-earned rest. That’s not to say I don’t look upon the long days of his absence with more than a little trepidation, but, well, I tried to keep a stiff upper-lip as we stood in the hall for our tearful farewells.

I clapped him on the shoulder and attempted to unship a toothy beam.

It must not have passed muster, however, because Jeeves answered, “Are you certain you do not wish for me to remain another day?”

“Not at all,” I insisted valiantly - if that conveys the sense I want - “I’ll just be off to Aunt Dahlia’s where I can relax without a care in the world.” I gave an airy wave of my arm for emphasis.

“Indeed, sir.”

I detected that old vein of skepticism of his, which earned him a reproachful look, but I confess I didn’t really have the heart to argue. Even a man with as much sang froid as I couldn’t help feeling a little drippy at this juncture. Still, I forged on, “And don’t you worry, I won’t so much as think Bobbie Wickham’s name. Consider it abolished from the Wooster memory! The only name upon my lips will be your own.”

On this point some explanation may be needed. Roberta Wickham, slotted to be one of my fellow inmates at the aged relative’s abode, was a beautiful girl who, on one occasion, I’d gone so far as to ask to marry me, much to Jeeves’s chagrin. Fortunately it hadn’t worked out. She turned me down with a laugh, though it took stabbing Sir Rodrick Glossop’s hot-water bottle at her suggestion for me to see that Jeeves had been quite right about her; I wouldn’t have another peaceful moment if I took her to the altar. A stronger man than I was needed for such an office, if such a man could be found.

Getting back to the present moment, Jeeves replied, “Very good, sir,” and he seemed pleased, though sometimes it’s a bit hard to tell with him. The corner of his lips lifted a smidge and I took it as a good sign.

“Well,” I said after a pause, shifting my feet awkwardly and taking Jeeves’s hand with some thought of shaking it, “I suppose you must be popping off. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your shrimp.”

“Not at all, sir. Parting is such sweet sorrow that I’ll say goodnight till it be morrow.”

I thought I recognized the gag from somewhere. “Shakespeare?” I hazarded a guess.

“Very good, sir. Romeo and Juliet.”

When in doubt, Shakespeare is usually as good a guess as any and Jeeves is particularly fond of his romantic stuff. “A lucky guess,” I admitted.

“Yes, sir.”

My smile wavered. “I feel like that fellow who’s always moaning about losing gazelles. How does it go? ‘I never nursed a dear gazelle’ - and something about ‘a soft black eye’ - ‘but when it came to know me well, and love me, it was sure to die.’”

“‘To glad me with its soft black eye’, sir.”

“‘Glad’? You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you say so, Jeeves.”

“It’s an archaic form equivalent to ‘gladden’, meaning ‘to make glad’.”

I gave it some consideration. “I’m certainly not glad now, but I think I understand the principle. But don’t you worry about me, enjoy your shrimping and return tan and fit. In the meantime I’ll make like Daniel in the lion’s den and emerge a friend to all - except Bobbie Wickham, of course.”

“Very good, sir.”

I belatedly released Jeeves’s hand after making only a cursory attempt at giving it a proper shake.

He paused a moment on the threshold, one hand on the doorknob about to turn. Instead, abruptly, he lifted my chin and leaned in toward me. His dark eyes seemed to hide infinite depths. He pressed his lips to mine for but an instant and then he was gone.

#v writes #Jeeves and Wooster

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ellariasand · 4 years

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i’m not gonna teach him how to dance with you

pairing: frank castle x karen page summary: frank's helping karen with a story. some slight miscalculations put them in serious trouble. rating: t warnings: references to sexual situations & canon-typical violence - no actual depictions of either; swearing word count: 8.2k (sweet jesus) a/n: i’m not particularly used to posting my writing on tumblr (you can find this same piece along with others over on my AO3), so this is new for me! big props to @peoniesforfrankcastle for pitching me the softball of “what do you think would happen if frank and karen ended up in their own version of the landlord threesome situation from new girl??”, because that’s a normal thing to discuss at 1:30 in the morning on a saturday. enjoy!

“You’re sure this is the place?”

It’s pissing rain outside the pathetic blue Jetta Frank’s sitting in — because of course it is. It’s dark, it’s wet, and the only thing he can see properly is the profile of Karen Page’s face, highlighted by soft blue dashboard lights. It’s cold, he’s not dressed properly, and he’d be at home in bed if not for her. He’d be warm, comfortable, and not packing three different pistols on various parts of his body. He’d be, for as much as the Punisher can be, safe.

But Karen, despite every warning and caution and threat to her life, never quite knew when to quit.

She’s packing quite a different arsenal as she sits in the passenger seat, hands still covered in glitter from the bachelorette party she’d been at an hour earlier. Marci had insisted, she claimed as she checked the clip on her own gun, just an hour to say hi — but Frank knew better. Just an hour, he thinks as she makes sure her tape recorder’s working, is an hour she doesn’t have to think about what she’s about to do.

“Wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

She sounds absolutely certain as she speaks, even though Frank can see her hand shake as she stuffs the gun and the tape into her coat pocket. Her research is sound, her head screwed on straight, her plan well-equipped. (Well, perhaps not so much her plan as the plan Madani and Frank helped her make, but it’s all the same to her.) She’s Darius and Daniel all at once, throwing herself into the lion’s den without even a backwards glance.

She’s here for a story, and she’s going to get what she wants, no matter how it scares the shit out of her.

Or Frank, for that matter.

“You’re dead sure?”

His voice is as deadpan as it was the first time he asked - all bite, no bark. Someone once joked that he sounds like he gargles with rocks when he does that, pulls out the Marine voice. The voice meant for giving and receiving orders, not sitting in a Volkswagen with a Bulletin reporter helping her with a story. Apparently, it’s as intimidating as the bruises perennially darkening the orbitals of his eyes - not that he’d be able to tell, the way Karen responds to him.

“Yes, Frank.” She sounds as impassive as he does, if not more. He can’t read her expression in the low light, but he’s sure it’s as stolid as his. “Why are you so concerned about it?”

All he can think to do is scoff as she pats herself down in a quick double-check.

“Because I’d’ve appreciated it if you’d told me we were going to a Cooley gun club instead of having to hear about it from Lieberman.”

If he couldn’t read her expression before, he can now. It drops like a sack of bricks, and for all that his voice suddenly sounds upset, Frank can practically feel the weight of it hit his chest as the frown envelops her entire face. It dents her eyebrows, creases her forehead like some imitation of a child’s origami project. It’s a frown of surprise, not dissimilar to the ones he used to see on Lisa when he caught her reading past her bedtime. She’s been caught with her hand in the metaphorical cookie jar.

Even if Lieberman hadn’t tattled, Frank would’ve figured it out eventually. Anyone north of 119th this late was asking for trouble, if not pointing the gun at their forehead themselves. Even he didn’t stray this far if he didn’t have to. Not if he wasn’t on a job. Once Central Park was in their rear-view, he’d gripped the Weston under his jacket a little more tightly.

Karen’s parked herself right in the middle of a warzone, and judging by the loss of confidence in her expression, she knows it.

“I didn’t want to lose my chance at getting you to help,” she mutters. She sounds as much of a spitfire as she did before, but the way she’s gripping her coat sleeves betrays her real reaction. “David knew?”

“‘Course he did.” Frank scoffs. “Guy can hack the NS-fuckin’-A, you think your laptop’s any different?”

Karen’s frown deepens, the delicate origami construction of her face crumpling.

“So that’s why you agreed to come,” she says quietly. It’s almost enough to make Frank regret his choice of words. Almost, if not for the truth of what they’re about to do weighing down on his shoulders.

“You can’t just...throw yourself in with the Kitchen Irish, Karen,” he replies, firmly but carefully.

“I did it with Grotto.”

It’s like she doesn’t even think before the words are out of her mouth. She’s so sure of herself. It scares Frank. Just enough.

“Yeah,” he says, “And look how that turned out.”

“With you in the driver’s seat of my car, wearing a tape wire and helping me with a story.” Karen’s still wearing the frown, but she’s repurposed it now. Outfitted it to her advantage. Crumpled the paper and refolded it - treasure out of trash. “Not too bad in the grand scheme of things.”

She says it with a shrug and a nonchalant glance over at him, and Frank can’t muster much beyond an incredulous laugh in response. A small part of him knows he’d walk through all seven circles of hell with weights tied to his legs if it meant helping Karen with a story, but sometimes he wonders how she does it - looks danger in the face and laughs like it’s nothing more than a carnival clown, there for her amusement. Like the few inches of column space she’s afforded can be weaponized as much as the Ruger she keeps in her purse.

Karen dances with devils and comes out in first place every time, and Frank should know. He’s one of them.

“We get in, you talk to the guy, we get out, alright?”

He says it with a deadpan that hardly hides how much he’d rather taken Karen right back home, but he doesn’t stop Karen from fixing her lipstick in the mirror, doesn’t stop himself from checking that all three of his pistols are loaded and ready to go. The faster they’re in, the faster they’re out, and the less he has to feel his heart pounding in his chest like an animal trying to escape its cage.

“No funny business.”

Karen’s nod in response is perfunctory - she’s thirty-two, not twelve. She knows how this works. Frank knows that too, but the words come out anyway, in some vain attempt to reassure himself that what they were about to do wasn’t completely and utterly batshit. They’re more of a mantra than a command, and Karen’s response comes quickly on their heels as she pops open the door to the Jetta.

“People say my sense of humor is surprisingly dry.”

Frank Castle has, thus far, simply been too angry to die. No other way to phrase it. He’s been shot, tortured, run through, hit by cars, and electrocuted, amongst a handful of other, unmentionable things. He’s gone through more injuries than a child’s video game character, and yet he’s gotten back up, beaten and bruised, every time, without fail. Whether it’s stubbornness or just rage, no one can ever really tell.

But, he thinks as she smirks and hops out of the car, Karen Page might just end up being the death of him.

___________

The club they end up loitering outside of is dark, barely more than a husk of a building on the outside. It’s creative, the amount of effort these scumbags put into disguising themselves in plain sight, despite their existence being as common knowledge as the Harlem bus schedule. Decrepit storefronts, butcher shop basements, even the occasional apartment over a nail salon. Real estate in New York is slim, and Frank’s seen just about all of it - and a disproportionate amount of it with Karen at his side.

He doesn’t understand how he keeps getting dragged into these places, these undercover ops for information held so closely it might as well be fantasy. He doesn’t understand how Karen gets herself involved, much less convinces him on nothing more than a hunch and a prayer to follow at her heels, sneaking about like Zoey when she’s trying to dart out the apartment door before Karen can catch her.

He is, as Lieberman not-so-lightly puts it, built like a brick shithouse — sneaking isn’t particularly his style. Pretending to be someone else is something he’s done enough of in his everyday life. The life belonging to Pete. The life that doesn’t quite fit right - a present from an overbearing grandparent that collects dust in the basement from disuse. An old shirt, run through the wash one too many times that ends up stretched and worn, too grimy and ugly for everyday use.

The only parts of that life that seem to fit right are the ones with Karen in them. Even if they involve breaking the law.

The both of them are soaked by the time they’ve made it down the street, out of sight of their little blue getaway vehicle but in too much of a hurry to have bothered with an umbrella. Mercifully, there’s an overhang, and in some stroke of luck, the Irish at least have the courtesy to answer quickly when Karen knocks at the peeling wooden door with bare knuckles.

She’s good at that, sneaking right in the front door instead of prowling around out back. Good enough that Frank can only stare in silence as she barely blinks at a burly, dark-haired man opening the door, drilling her with enough questions to unsettle a Marine. He watches intently as she tosses around names Frank’s never heard, places he’s never been like she’s at some kind of fucked up family reunion. She calls him Robert and herself Harriet, and all he can think as they’re invited to cross the threshold is that at least it isn’t Pete.

The inside of the club looks more inviting than the outside, but Frank’s eyes are too busy scanning the interior for exits to notice the furnishings. He lets Karen do all the flattering as they’re dragged through room after room, past locked door after locked door, each one more and more concerning as Karen makes inane comments his ears barely hear. He’d been primed on all the exits - and that did mean all - but the anonymity of what lay behind those dark panels of wood doesn’t bode very well for them.

He manages to count sixteen separate doors by the time one of them opens to invite them in. The creak of it grates on Frank’s nerves, but he pays no mind as his attention zeroes in on Karen, whose blonde hair is disappearing into a dimly lit room, leaving him to chase after her like fool’s fire.

His eyes are practically evolved for low-lighting by now, but his pupils still blow wide as he ducks past a burly security detail and into the darkened room. He could swear he’s stepped into an old-fashioned parlor, one of those overly ornate ones from the PBS dramas Karen likes to watch. Velvety couch, paintings on the wall, the works - even that awful gold gilt that old New York money people thought was pretty, rather than like they’d plastered scrapyard salvage all over their walls. Frankly, his grandmother had had better taste in decor, but clearly the new Irish have money. And they want to prove it.

They want to prove they can defend themselves, too, based on the three men Frank clocks the instant the door snaps shut behind them. Strapped to the gills with firepower, looking like they could take a hit from a train and not move and inch, and angry to boot. Not too dissimilar from himself, in a way, aside from the way they mold themselves around the presence of a much slimmer man, in much better clothing, looking significantly more smug.

If Frank had to describe him, he’d say the man standing in front of he and Karen looks like one of those people mothers describe as “homely” when they’re young, but is really just the kind of person women cross the street to get away from on their commute home. Pasty, skinny, unsettling to a degree that Frank can visibly notice as Karen’s posture goes rigid. The suit he’s wearing is very obviously couture, as are his cufflinks and shoes, but it doesn’t offset the alarm bells that his general presence sets off in the both of them. Not enough to truly make either of them afraid, but enough to suck all the air out of the room in less than an instant.

Why do all drug lords remind Frank of the rats in the 34th Street subway station?

Perhaps because of the way they sneer like this one does, overconfident and cocky when Frank knows he could crush him under the heel of his boot in one step. Perhaps because of the way they carry themselves like they own the world, own the people standing in front of them and all that they’ll ever say simply because they’re on home turf. They’re leeches of the worst kind - vacuums of airheadedness and egos so big they could stop a truck.

Frank prays this isn’t the guy Karen’s come to see.

There’s a reason he stopped doing that.

“Ah, Miss Smith.”

His voice is as cocky as his face, dripping with something between venom and crude oil. His hand extends towards Karen, and Frank can only watch as she accepts it with a plastic smile.

“What a treat to finally speak in person. And this is Mister…?”

“Martin,” Karen replies. “My partner, yes.”

“Partner.” He says the word as if considering it, as if the answer is better than he’d been expecting...which is, ironically, the best reaction Frank’s gotten to his own presence in years. Clearly the beard he’d started growing in was doing its job as a mask. “Wonderful.”

He’s like a cartoon villain, this guy - if cartoon villains trafficked women and had bodyguards wearing enough firepower to set a building alight. All he’s missing is a mustache to twirl. Too bad he looks too young and skinny to be able to grow one.

“We weren’t expecting a third,” he jeers, “But in that case, would you prefer business or pleasure first?”

Karen shrugs, and Frank mirrors it. It doesn’t look as friendly coming from someone as broad-shouldered as him.

“I suppose we could do both,” Karen says. “It’s a bit late for shooting, but I’m not opposed to firing a few rounds while we talk about the--”

The laughter that cuts Karen off is even more jeering than the Bad Bond Villain’s voice. It’s high-pitched, off-key - like the vocal equivalent of nails scratching on a chalkboard. It takes a significant amount of Frank’s restraint not to flinch as he grins at Karen, far too boldly to simply be friendly.

“Oh no, my dear,” he replies as Karen’s mouth is left hanging open. “This isn’t that kind of club. Did Georgey not tell you?”

Karen’s mouth closes, then opens, then closes again as she blinks. Frank offers a quick “no sir” in place of a response from her, despite the fact that the closest thing he’d ever heard to the name Georgey was one of Karen’s silly pet names for her dog. Whether she’d crucify him for that, he couldn’t tell, but it was better than leaving the reject Lucky Charms man hanging. The expression on the man’s face tells him that’s a bad idea.

“His loss, my gain, then.” The man shrugs, sits up straighter in his seat. “You two are...swingers, no?”

Ah. So, not a gun club then.

Frank can feel Karen tense next to him. Not enough to alarm the asshole, but enough that he hears her breathing go shallow, notices the way she sits up that much straighter on the couch. She nods, refusing to break character, but he can see how far the comment has thrown her off course. He even goes a bit stiff himself - and not in the way the creep sitting in front of them would hope for - so he’s not sure he blames her. He can do guns, he can do knives...but this was new.

“It’s all part of the deal.” The creep sounds far too satisfied with himself, far too pleased in reaction to Karen’s nod that wasn’t any more than perfunctory. “We give you what you need, you give us...a little something in return.”

The look he shoots at Karen is enough to make Frank’s trigger finger twitch.

The locked doors suddenly make more sense, much the same as the furnishings that seemed slightly too impeccable for a mafia den. Everything is slightly too pristine, slightly too well-oiled for a bunch of amateurs fresh out of metaphorical diapers. No criminal gives this much of a shit about appearances unless they’re trying to impress - who that is, Frank doesn’t know, but he can only imagine the kinds of clients that run through here. A gun club in the middle of Harlem is bad enough, but this? Nothing wrong with a bit of fun if you aren’t psychotic, but...

“You traffic girls and you run a swinger’s club.” Frank’s voice sounds like he’s down an entire construction site’s worth of grave, disguising the sarcasm he can’t quite keep out of it. “Clever.”

The man nods, oblivious to Frank’s train of thought.

“We pride ourselves on it.” Pride isn’t exactly the word Frank would use, but the emotion shows on his face anyway. “The guns are a temporary cover. While we get our hooks in, so to speak. Clearly a good cover though, eh?”

He’s teasing Karen now, clearly trying to get under the thick skin of the identity she’s created for herself. It won’t budge, Frank knows that much, but the remark still makes him shift in his seat, fighting off the urge to throttle the bastard before they’ve even gotten a word out of him.

Frank’s never been good at holding his tongue, but he’ll do it for Karen.

She nods at the remark, a sound coming out of her mouth that’s as far from her real laugh as Frank imagines she can possibly get. It’s a hollow tittering sound, like hearing birds chirping through the metal of a roof they’ve nested on, but it’s convincing enough for their host, whose grin borders just the slightest bit on insane.

“We’ll give you two a moment,” he says. “Only reasonable to let you get...comfortable.”

There’s that teasing voice again, and Frank hardly has the chance to let it annoy him before one of the guards is swooping in on them, an ominous black-clad raven with an assault rifle strapped across his chest. He almost reaches out when he puts a hand at the small of Karen’s back, not quite pushing her but not letting her move of her own free will either. The cold stare Frank receives when his nerves jump is enough to tell him that he should follow, or suffer the consequences otherwise. He’s not particular to following the rules - not anymore - but he chooses to make an exception this time.

The creep stands by as the two of them are herded away, towards a door at the far end of the parlor that hangs just ajar enough to remind Frank too much of The Shining. The darkness beyond doesn’t look promising, and the results aren’t much better as they’re herded into some kind of dimly-lit antechamber, presumably a dressing room of sorts. Broom closet would’ve been a better term for it, given the fact that Frank and Karen are nearly chest to chest once the gorilla takes his hands away and leaves the two of them in relative dark, lit only by mood lighting that does about as much for Frank’s eyesight as a flashlight with mostly-dead batteries.

He can see about as much of Karen as he could in the Jetta, but he’s hesitant to say anything. Who knows how much of the club the Cooleys had bugged for posterity - he wouldn’t be surprised if there are cameras hidden in the tiny cracks of exposed brick he can see behind the swaths of fabric covering the walls. These types didn’t seem entirely beyond a bit of voyeurism at all.

“You okay?”

Frank Castle is not a man to whisper, but that’s how his voice comes out anyway; low enough that it would probably be unintelligible to cameras. It’s not as though he needs to shout in this broom closet anyway.

Karen shakes her head, less as a response to his question and more as if she’s trying to shake cobwebs from her brain that she’d missed when she dusted last.

“I swear to God I didn’t know this was going to happen.” She’s rambling, her sentences peeling off one after the other with no way of stopping them. “There was nothing in the notes about it. Not in the witness statements, not in the police reports...fuck, somebody should have told me or else I wouldn’t have brought you here into the middle of this—”

“Hey, hey, hey.”

Frank’s hands are on her shoulders before he can think to stop them, a grounding wire for his emotions and hers. He knows how it feels to have a plan go to shit, that feeling of the ground spinning underneath you without any recourse to stop it. He can see that feeling in Karen, the way her pupils are so blown with fear he can practically see himself in them. It’s not often that anyone can strike fear into Karen Page.

“Shhh. It’s okay.” He’s rubbing her arms now, though perhaps a bit more for his own sake than for hers. “Even Lieberman missed it. It’s not your fault.”

It really isn’t. He’s not sure how a sex club got confused with a gun league - all euphemisms aside, even Lieberman isn’t that stupid - but the Irish must be smarter than he thinks. Or, at least, clever enough to deflect attention away from themselves. It makes sense, in the long run of things, he thinks... if you’re that kind of subway track scum that traffics human beings.

“I’ll handle it,” he mutters. “You go out the back, call Nelson or Walker or somebody, get the hell out of here. I’ve still got the tape so you’ll still get what you need, I promise. I can take care of—“

“What?”

Karen’s voice interrupts the speech that he has memorized all too well, and he short circuits. Feels his hands squeeze her shoulders in place of a question. Watches her shuffle in place, shift her weight to her hip. He’s not prepared for this. This doesn’t usually happen.

She’s got her eyebrows raised, shoulders squared under his hands. His mouth opens, closes, then opens again. He can’t focus when she’s looking at him like that. Can barely focus when she’s looking at him at all.

“Red door down the hall takes you out the back,” he sputters. Now was not the time for thought-out tactical plans. “I’ll get you what you need. You just get out.”

He’s not sure exactly how he’ll manage that, but he will. It’s the least he could do, in return for everything she’s--

“Frank, I’m not leaving.”

He can feel Karen’s enunciation down to his bones. It rattles her shoulders and moves the curtains that swirl around them, an energy not even Red could match if he tried. It’s an energy that speaks to the reason she’s good at her job, why and how she gets herself into situations like this, cramped in a tiny dressing room in a swingers’ club well past midnight when she could very well be at home, safe and secure without a second though otherwise. It’s an energy Frank knows all too well.

Here she is, looking as much like a scared rabbit as Frank’s ever seen, and Karen chooses now to be stubborn.

“You kiddin’ me?”

His arms flop down at his sides, and the air stings his palms where they’d touched Karen’s shoulders. She’s looking straight at him now, and that’s all he can focus on - the stinging and her eyes. Both of which flare when she shrugs.

“No, I don’t think I am,” she replies. “I don’t think “coercion via the Punisher” is a printable source. It’s my responsibility to get this information, and if takes going a little out of my comfort zone, then I’m more than willing to—“

“The guy wants you to strip down and have sex with him, and you call that your responsibility?”

It seems like an applicable moment to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration, had he not broken it less than a week earlier. His definition of “responsibility” might be more muddled than the average New Yorker’s, but being propositioned for a threeway in exchange for information is certainly not in his dictionary.

“He included you in the offer too,” Karen protests, “And I’m pretty sure I just heard you say ‘I’ll handle it’.”

“Not by playing into whatever fucked up fantasy he’s got in mind!”

He might as well have pulled the pistol out of his waistband for all the good his words did. They ricochet off the walls like stray bullets, and he can see them lodge into Karen, though the way she rolls her shoulders and stands all that much straighter proves that she’s not in any mood to back down. She never is, and he knows it. Anyone who assumes otherwise is in for the shock of their life.

Being around Karen is like sticking your finger in an electrical socket, and Frank is a curious kid who doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

“How badly do you need him to squeal?”

He chooses the sentence carefully, measuring his words as though they can remedy the situation all on their own. He’s not good with that, figuring out what to say. Actions speak louder than words, he’d always believed that, but this is Karen’s show. Karen’s livelihood. A livelihood she’d built on words alone.

Her expression doesn’t change.

“Enough that I’m willing to stay,” she says. “Frank, this story could wipe out a whole new generation of Kitchen Irish before they even get started. If I get this guy to talk, they’d be busted wide open within the week. Maybe sooner.”

“Same thing could happen to your head if you say the wrong thing.”

“I’m a journalist, Frank.” Karen squirms under his gaze, but doesn’t falter. “Saying the right thing is what I get paid to do.”

But you shouldn’t have to.

That’s what Frank wants to say. Wants to blurt it so loudly that the shit-for-brains in the next room can hear him loud and clear. Wants an excuse to bust them out of there, to avoid this situation entirely rather than subject himself to the burning gaze of this woman who doesn't know when to quit. He wants to shake some sense into Karen’s head, despite the fact that she’s about the only sensible person left in his life.

“I emptied a clip on a man,” she says. Her words are measured, careful. “I think I can handle...that.”

It suddenly feels like there’s not enough air in the room for both of them to breathe.

“Fine.”

Frank can’t tell if she’s being entirely serious, or if this is another facet to the facade she’s put on tonight - whether her bravery is manufactured entirely because she’s too persistent to walk away from a story unfinished. The room feels like it’s running circles around him, and he’s too dizzy to fight.

“You want it?” His voice is harder now, sharper. “Let’s go in there and get it.”

It’s not quite the Punisher persona she’s used to - it’s a little frayed around the edges, askew from being out of place - but Karen recognizes an irritated Frank when she sees one.

“I can do it by myself,” she sighs. Frank isn’t convinced - not when there’s half an army on the other side of the door and a creep who’ll undoubtedly take advantage of her the moment he turns his back.

“Like you said,” he replies, “he said both of us.”

Karen frowns.

“You’re really going to go in there and do this just to get me to admit that I’m wrong?”

“Could do worse.”

His shoulders are too heavy with the weight of their predicament to really make his shrug convincing, but he does it anyway. Tries his hardest to look nonchalant, despite the fact that his dominant hand still burns - this time for something a bit more significant than the air it’s currently grasping at.

“Too much longer in here and they’re going to get suspicious,” he offers. “Either we do this or we don’t. Your pick.”

He’s offering her an ultimatum. Karen fucking hates those.

“I do the talking.”

It’s the only thing she says while she’s shrugging off her jacket, loosening the top button on the starched, Wednesday Addams-looking blouse she’s got on. It’s the only confirmation Frank gets to shirk his own hoodie (how he’s going to finesse hiding the wire he’s wearing, he doesn’t know), before she slips out of the dressing room and back into the parlor, where Redhead Dr. No has shirked his own suit jacket, and the armed gorillas have all but disappeared.

He can’t tell if the feeling in the pit of his stomach is regret, but it certainly makes him nauseous all the same.

If it’s at all possible to have dimmed the already barely-lit lights of the parlor, that’s what they’d done in the time it’s taken he and Karen to argue their way into this mess. He can see the room for what it really is now that he’s removed the rose-colored glasses of playing along with Karen’s scheme: the way the room is laid out, with larger-than-usual couches, designed with open slats for things Frank didn’t even want to begin to think about. The fact that, despite being part of a much larger complex of rooms, there are no doors leading anywhere except the small antechamber, and no windows either. All that’s missing is some shitty Careless Whisper saxophone playing in the background, and even Frank wouldn’t do that song that much of a disservice.

“Ah, the lovebirds return.”

The phrase lovebirds makes the hair on Frank’s neck stand on end, but he beats the impulse to stir like a startled cat down just enough as their host approaches, clearly more keen than when they’d been whisked away. He’s rolled the sleeves of his shirt up, and Frank’s fairly certain he can see rope burns up and down the lengths of his arms - fresh enough that they might not even be a day old.

That is what makes him startle.

“It’s club policy for couples to...initiate proceedings,” their host says, with an eagerness that makes Frank want to beat it out of him. “To ensure all parties have a comfortable evening. Unless, of course, you’d like to…?”

“No, I think we’re fine.”

Karen’s face is red as she replies - not the kind of red it gets when she’s angry, but a brighter kind. It makes her look gaunt.

“No sense breaking the rules our first time ‘round, huh?”

The man smiles, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Very well,” he sneers. “I’ll be here. Whenever you’re ready.”

Whenever you’re ready.

The dealer’s voice is laced with the chill of dry ice, and that fact doesn’t escape Frank. This isn’t some jaunty weekend experiment, where consent is key and anybody who isn’t comfortable can bounce when they want to. This is payment, and he expects his full share, whether they like they like it or not.

That’s the thought that ruminates in Frank’s head as the dealer fiddles with the buttons on his perfectly-starched shirt, and Karen moves into his space enough that his vision is enveloped by her. That’s the thought as she steps in close, close enough that they can share the same breath, and that’s the thought as he considers the fact that nothing on Earth could possibly be more humiliating than this. The thought of touching and being touched in ways that don’t bear thinking about is worse than any embarrassment he’s ever suffered. Worse than any hazing his Marine buddies ever put him through, worse than any and every time he’s said something stupid and gotten himself landed in the wrong place at the wrong time. He feels stripped bare, down to the bone, and he hasn’t even taken off his clothing yet.

But for a moment, he looks at Karen, and thinks of the way his hands burned when he touched her, and a part of him thinks, Maybe if we spin this, we can get out mostly unscathed. Maybe this won’t be so bad. Not with Karen. He thinks that, of all the people he could end up stuck here with, at least it’s her. Their foreheads are touching, and he can feel Karen skate her own hands down his arms until she’s gripping his. At this distance, he could reach out and--

But then another part of him remembers Maria, remembers that he can’t recall the last time he used those hands to do anything but cause hurt. He remembers everything he buries deep inside, under layers of Kevlar and firearms and a voice so gravelly no one could ever think that it had ever belonged to a father. He remembers all the reasons why Karen shouldn’t trust him anywhere near her, and the situation morphs, molds itself into something that could only be a disaster, could only end with both of them hurt in a way that no stitches or antiseptics or trauma nurses could ever fix. It’s inescapable, and it’s all his--

“It’s the red door, right?”

Karen’s voice is a whisper, barely audible even when she leans in close (too close, too close, she’ll get hurt); it’s easily misconstrued as sexy, but really, it’s a well-practiced way of communicating in crisis, and Frank can hear the wobble in it even as she breathes.

He nods just enough that she can feel it, without looking like he’s doing anything but...well, setting the mood. Karen nods too, and he’s sure the both of them look fidgety - like nervous first-timers, not sure how to proceed. And it isn’t far from the truth - Frank’s got no idea how he’s going to proceed from here, but he’s nothing if not good at improvising.

“I, ah...think you should take charge.”

This she says at full volume, loud enough that their partner can hear. Like she said - she knows when to say the right thing.

And Frank knows enough about the fear on her face that his pistol’s out of his pocket before she can blink back tears.

And when he blows them out of there, it isn’t a euphemism.

_________

The sun is peeking out over the horizon line by the time the two of them stumble down the sidewalk to Karen’s walk-up. It plays peekaboo with them, reminding them that they've survived to see another day as Frank watches Karen digs for her keys in her purse. It’s stopped raining now, though the air is still muggy with its aftereffects, and they walk slowly as they approach the stairs to her building. She’s got cuts in three places on her face, and he’s got at least one broken rib, but they’re out. They’re safe.

She’s safe.

Her hands are still shaking though, vibrating ever so slightly as she attempts to find the right key to get them into the building. The ring jingles like an out-of-tune band, and Frank can see the frustrated, tired tears in her eyes as they slip out of her hand and onto the ground.

“Let me.”

He stoops before she can and dutifully ignores every protest from his tired, overworked muscles as he picks the bundle of metal up from the ground. They chime their high-pitched tune as he does, muffled by the size of his hand compared to Karen’s, like wind chimes in a distant open window. She doesn’t look at him - won’t look at him, maybe - as he straightens his back, but she can’t hide her frenetic blinking from him as he does. He doesn’t blame her. This is the longest night either of them has had in years.

He’s never sure how to fill long silences between them. He’s a man of few words, always has been, and the idea of saying anything when his entire body wants to shut down is beyond his area of comprehension right now. Is he supposed to hug her? Pat her on the back, tell her it’s alright after she watched him (not for the first time) eviscerate a handful of human beings like it’s nothing? Nothing he could possibly say can erase that. Erase everything else he’s ever done to her, every layer of hell she’s been dragged through and back out again. Silence feels like the only appropriate response, the only way to avoid dragging her through anything else.

She’s the first to speak up, naturally. Her voice comes out soft, a quiet monotone Frank suspects she uses to disguise the fact that she’s choking back a night’s worth of emotions all at once.

“Thanks.” She’s still not looking at him, but she doesn’t move to wipe away tears, doesn’t hide behind the high collar of her jacket to avoid him. “Do you want to…?”

She hesitates, and Frank can nearly hear her backtracking in her head as her sentence drops off. The missing word hangs in the air, heavy and loud despite the fact that it never leaves Karen’s mouth.

Stay.

“I’ll be up working on this damn thing to make the deadline.” She shrugs, as though overnight shootouts and going thirty-six hours without sleep are a regular part of anyone’s workday. The laugh that comes with it is watery. “Might as well have some company.”

The scoff that escapes Frank’s mouth isn’t entirely intentional, but it isn’t accidental either. He can feel the bruised muscles in his face sting as he lets the sound ring, ducking his head to fiddle with the glittering skull trinket she keeps on her key ring.

“Almost get your head blown off and you’re worried about a deadline,” he mutters. “Should be resting.”

“So should you. And I know for a fact you won’t sleep a wink.”

Karen shrugs, reaching a hand out for her keys. Frank obliges, and there’s something of a smile on his face when he does. The little skull glints in the light of the streetlamp, a sly reminder of just what kind of a mess she’d gotten herself involved with.

“I started this story,” she asserts, “And now I'm obligated to finish it. Just like any job.”

“You think you’re gonna be able to get anything outta that wire?”

“I’ll have to,” she says. “If not, I’ll pester Turk, see what else he can get me. Maybe do a ridealong or something. I know what’s there. We saw it. I just need proof.”

Frank laughs then. Not maliciously - not really intentionally, either. It just spills out, a soft, short bark of a thing that sounds off coming from him. Frank Castle doesn’t laugh, much less like that. It’s like interference on a radio; a negative side effect of pushing the wrong button or adjusting the wrong lever. The AM channel no one ever wants to use.

“Y’know,” he huffs, “I wonder if you don’t know when to let something die.”

It’s not that he doesn’t think before he speaks - Frank’s a smart man, he knows what happens when someone backs Karen Page into a corner. He’s seen it, from the moment she shoved that photo of his family in his face while he was chained helpless to a hospital bed, and he respects it. She’s a force to be reckoned with, a hurricane of immense proportions that doesn’t give a shit who you are or how much power you say you have if you’re in the way of the truth. Karen Page is not someone to be taken lightly.

But she’s more than that. She’s also a human being, a woman with a life, friends, family that cares about her. She’s got more than blood on her hands and a legacy so stained she can’t even use the name her family thought to give her when she was born. She’s better than that, better than this ugly, misshapen world they’ve both found themselves in whether they like it or not. She’s the best goddamn thing to happen to New York - hell, the country, probably - since god knows what, and to lose her to the storm of her own determination is something that Frank thinks might snap a lot of people clean in two.

Himself included.

He knows he’s said the wrong thing, knows he’s pushed that button of hers that makes her cheeks flare red and her voice hike up a few notches. He can tell as soon as the words are out of his mouth, as soon as she bunches her keys up in her fist in a way that’s got to hurt as she finally looks him in the eyes.

“Oh, you mean the hundreds of people that would die because I put myself over the truth?” She spits the words out like they’re shitty vodka from Josie’s, like if she kept them in she’d explode. “What am I supposed to do, just let this fall by the wayside? Tell Ellison I need him to switch me to the lifestyle section this week? I can’t just let it go. That’s not how this works.”

A part of Frank knows she’s right - knows that this shit won’t stop until the world can see the man behind the curtain - but a bigger part of him, the stubborn, protective part of him that he can never quite seem to fight down, can’t live with the idea of danger knocking at Karen’s door.

“You could’ve been killed before the truth ever got out!” He doesn’t mean to be as loud as he is, but that hidden part of him doesn’t like the quiet. “You really want to do that again? You want to put a gun to your own head like that?”

“I was hardly in danger of anything except hurting my own pride and you know that. I just let myself get scared.”

Frank can see her flex her hand where her keys are digging into her palm, but she doesn’t relent. She doesn’t look angry, but he can see the way her jaw clenches to fight back another round of frustrated tears threatening to spill over. He can see how tense she is, how close her shoulders are to touching her ears. She’s got every hallmark of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but she refuses to move an inch.

“Don’t make this about my safety, Frank,” she says. “You can’t keep mothering me like this. I can handle myself.”

She stares at him like she bore a hole directly to his soul, and Frank’s skin burns when she looks at him like that. Not like fire, but like acid. Corrosive, stinging, sizzling. It’s a burning that seeps through his clothes, plasters them to his body so nothing he does can serve as escape. It’s the worst in his hands - pins and needles that suddenly makes that “reach out and touch faith” song make more sense. He feels the stinging down to his bones, and sometimes he wonders whether he’s just a skeletal ghost floating around anymore. Whether the rest of him matches the skull crudely painted on a vest in his closet.

No, it’s not like fire. Fire would be too easy, too instant. One splash of water and it’s out, wiped from body and from memory. It burns brightly but shortly, in and out of someone’s life with almost no passing thought beyond treating the wounds left behind. Fire is an easy solution. Fire doesn’t come from people who matter.

No, the burning Frank feels isn’t fire, because Karen Page never does things the easy way.

“‘M sorry,” he says, conceding another in a long list of arguments that neither of them would ever be able to win. He doesn’t know what to say, what to do to stop the burning. Isn’t sure if he wants to stop it. “Just didn’t—I didn’t want it to be like that.”

“Didn’t want what to…”

Her sentence drifts off before she can finish it, and he can’t be sure whether she understood what he was referring to. Her fists clench and unclench, and the burning worsens when she looks at him like she’s staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Frank, come on.” Her voice is tired - the groan of someone who’s been through far too much, far too soon. “You’re bleeding. I’m tired. Let’s just go up, and you can crash on the couch and we’ll talk about this—“

In the morning. Later. After. That’s always how it goes. Let things settle. Let them rest. Let the blood flow out of things, let the venom run its course. Take the rose-colored glasses off and let reality settle back in before anyone does something dumb. Karen wants an after for him, she’s said as much. She wants him to be able to walk out, as unscathed as a man with blood on his hands can ever manage to be.

What she doesn’t realize is that his after is already standing right in front of him.

Which is his only explanation for why his hand shoots out and closes around her arm like he’s pulling her away from some invisible danger. It’s the only explanation for the way he spins her like a top, until they’re close enough that he can see her eyes dilate in surprise. It’s the only explanation for the way he can feel his heart pounding in his chest, a feral animal broken free and running down the streets of Brooklyn with wild abandon.

It’s the only explanation for the way that he kisses her on her front stoop for God, the early morning garbagemen, and the rest of the modern world to see.

Karen Page, he realizes, is everything good left in the world. She is sun after a thunderstorm and a comfortable bed after a long day. She’s raucous laughter at a terrible joke, the kindness of a stranger when you need it most. She’s good friends and fond memories and the ridiculous way she dances to Lady Gaga whenever she finishes a piece that gives her trouble. She’s the beers they share on her fire escape after weeks away and the tight feeling he gets in his chest every time someone asks what the hell he’s still fighting so hard for. She’s everything he thought he’d given up the right to have a long time ago, and she’s everything he fights to keep.

Pulling away from her is painful. More painful than any gunshot, any gut punch, any knife wound he’s ever received. Pulling away from Karen is like pulling the skin from his bones, the air from his lungs. It’s like the burning he feels, only a million times worse. A million hot pokers on his skin, burning away anything that makes him who he is and leaving nothing but a shell, cradling this stubborn, beautiful, terrifyingly intelligent woman in its arms.

All that’s left is her. All that matters is her.

Her eyes are closed when he finally moves far enough away to see her face in full. For a moment, he panics, terrified -- too close, too close, fuck, did I make her cry again? -- but then she’s opening them, something he thinks might be glee or absolute horror written on her face. He can’t tell which is which, so he improvises.

“Didn’t want to do that in front of the Irish.”

Karen’s pupils are still dilated, and the glee-horror-something-else-maybe morphs. Becomes a little clearer.

“Oh.”

It sounds less like surprise and more like a smug question. He shrugs. He’s still got a hand at the small of her back.

“Didn’t want them to get a chance at it either.”

Now he sounds smug. The garbagemen can definitely see them now. He’s not sure he cares.

“Mmm.” Karen doesn’t bother to move. Doesn’t bother to separate herself from him. “Kinda glad about that.”

Frank quirks an eyebrow.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.” She fiddles with her keyring. Glances at the tiny skull. Jams the whole thing in her pocket. “‘Cause you kinda just ruined it for me for the rest of my life.”

“What, the saving your life or the kissing?”

“Both.”

She taps his chest with her newly free hand, and the spaces that have been hollow there since the park feel just that much fuller. Just enough to ease the ache.

“But mostly the latter.”

Frank can’t even remember what the latter is, but Karen’s kissing him again and that’s all that matters. This moment, on this grimy doorstep, with her hands bunched in his coat and his wrapped around her back.

So this is what it means to finally have an after.

#do i know how to tag this? absolutely the fuck not.#the punisher fic #punisherff #kastlenetwork #kastleff #my work #maggie.txt #karen page x frank castle #the punisher

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voltrontranscript · 4 years

Text

VForce E1: New School Defenders

Episode 1: New School Defenders

Transcript by @dragonofyang

Summary: We meet Daniel, a young Voltron fan after the Voltron Force is decommissioned, as he recounts the glory of Voltron and joins the Galaxy Alliance flight school, where he meets former pilots Lance, Pidge, and Hunk. But the Voltron Force doesn’t simply toe the line drawn by Sky Marshal Wade, and with Daniel and Vince’s help, they retrieve their lion keys.

[Google Doc]

Boy: Come on, Daniel, I dare you to do it.

Girl: Double dare you!

Boy: Do it!

Daniel: When are you guys gonna learn? It’s not a dare if I wanna do it.

[Cut between Daniel and Voltron as they chase the robeast, then return to Daniel.]

Daniel: You guys missed it! The lions just formed Voltron! Someday, that’s gonna be me. I’m gonna pilot the Black Lion.

Boy: Huh. You wish.

[Transition to Daniel’s bedroom, where Daniel narrates to the audience.]

Daniel: Yeah, I do wish. Unfortunately, it looks like that’s all it’ll ever be, now. Just a wish.

[Transition to a flashback of Planet Doom.]

Daniel: Not long after the Voltron Force wrecked shop on that robeast, they defeated Lotor and his Drule army. It was epic!

Lotor: What?

[Cut to a flash forward, where the Voltron Force celebrates their victory with the city.]

Daniel: I even got to go to the galaxy victory celebration. It was the greatest day of my life! Until… It was a disaster, but no one was hurt. That’s why I couldn’t believe how quickly everyone forgot all the good Voltron had done, as if they’d been brainwashed. The Defender of the Universe was declared a hazardous threat and decommissioned without even attempting to fix it. How shady is that? My dreams, gone. Now the only thing that excites me is going fast, really fast. So, I enrolled in the Galaxy Alliance flight academy, where things have turned out to be slow. Really slow. When’s life gonna pick up some speed? Of course, if all that wasn’t about to change, I wouldn’t be here telling you this story.

[Transition to opening sequence, with an electric guitar playing under the following lyrics.]

Woo!

One, two, three four!

Voltron’s here, kicking down your door!

Five, six, get with it.

We blaze ‘em with the sword and they can’t get away.

Seven, eight.

We’re bringing down the hurt so we’re here to stay.

Nine, ten, we here to win.

Voltron’s here, let the games begin!

Oh! (Let’s Voltron!)

Form up, let’s go!

All night! Let’s go!

Alright, we gonna rock (rock!) and roll (roll!)

Now to rock (rock!) and roll (roll!)

Oh!

[Transition to Daniel in class at the flight academy.]

Professor: ...and so the Galaxy Alliance Fractal Fighter has been Earth’s primary strike and defense weapon since… which battle, cadet Daniel?

Daniel: Huh? Um, the battle at Gemini Four?

Computer: Correct.

Professor: Commander Lance. To what do we owe the honor of a visit from the youngest head flight instructor in academy history?

Lance: I realized it was nearly the end of the first term, and I have yet to greet our first-year cadets. I wanted to get a look at the faces I’ll be seeing when they get into the cockpit in their third year.

Daniel: Ugh, third year.

Lance: So, do any of you potential pilots have any questions for me? Yes, cadet?

Daniel: Sir, with all due respect, why are you here teaching instead of defending the universe? What really happened with Voltron?

Professor: Daniel! You know mention of Voltron is forbidden by Sky Marshal Wade! There are severe consequences for violating this order. Commander Lance, I’m so sorry for--

Lance: It’s alright. I’ll speak of this once and only once. Yes, I used to be the pilot of the red Voltron lion, but after the incident, that’s something I’ve put in the past. Myself, along with tech sergeants Hunk and Pidge--formerly the yellow and green lions--are now loyal soldiers in the service of the Galaxy Alliance military. And Princess Allura, the former blue lion, is ruling on her home planet of Arus.

Daniel: What about the leader of Voltron? The black lion pilot, Commander Keith?

Lance: Ex-commander Keith is a wanted fugitive, and nobody knows his whereabouts.

[Scene change to Keith wearing shades on a beach.]

Manset: So, Commander Keith, I hear you are interested in the location of Wade’s secret base.

Keith: Your hearing is good.

Manset: Why are you seeking this base? Are you looking for trouble?

Keith: I’m looking for something Wade has that doesn’t belong to him, which may lead to trouble, but that doesn’t concern you. I paid you good money for that location, so--

Manset: Yes, well, unfortunately, some people are willing to pay more for your location. Please, do not make a big scene.

Keith: The size of the scene is up to you.

[Cut back to Daniel’s classroom.]

Daniel: How could you and the rest of the team just turn your backs on Commander Keith and Voltron?

Lance: Defending the universe is our top priority, and that’s exactly what the Galaxy Alliance is doing! Voltron was just a vehicle.

Daniel: Just a vehicle?

Lance: That’s enough. You, up. You’re coming with me. You, too.

Vince: Me? W-what’d I do?

Lance: Guilt by association.

[Cut back to Keith on the beach.]

Keith: So, this is how it’s gonna be.

Manset: At least I returned your money. You can count it. It’s all there.

Keith: Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

Masked Guard 1: Ah!

Masked Guard 2: Whoa.

Manset: A sword? Really?

Keith: It’s a weapon of honor. You wouldn’t understand.

[Cut to Lance, Vince, and Daniel entering an office.]

Wade: I assure you all, this supposed rising Drule threat is nothing but rumors to stir the masses.

Coran: But, Sky Marshal Wade, our sources have intercepted increased chatter about this mysterious commander Kala, specifically mentioning Lotor.

Wade: Lotor is dead! Furthermore, Ambassador Coran, if your sources happen to be “The Den”, you’d better think twice before quoting their intelligence to me considering they’re viewed as rebels against the Galaxy Alliance. You continually test my patience, honorable gentleman from Arus. Tread lightly. Good day. Commander Lance, these must be the cadets you called me about?

Lance: Yes, sir.

Wade: Normally I don’t like to concern myself with petty academy matters, but I take my “no Voltron” policy very seriously.

Daniel: Sir, I take full responsibility. He doesn’t belong here. I hardly know him, and he--

Wade: Do not speak, cadet, and don’t play that sickening nobility card, either. It’s a liability in combat. I need an army of obedient, ruthless, fighting machines, not some saps who are going to hesitate to consult their moral compass! Of course, this won’t be a problem for you if you violate my policy again, because a second offense would mean expulsion. However, this being your first, you are receiving the automatic sentence: latrine duty for the rest of the first term, and all of the second term, as well. I hope this teaches you to scrub Voltron from your lives completely.

Lance: I’m sure this experience will give them an entirely different perspective on Voltron, sir.

Daniel: It already has.

[Scene change to the latrines.]

Daniel: Man, I am so sorry I got you into this… mess.

Vince: Hey, you just said what I was thinking. I’m more of the non-confrontational type.

Daniel: Yeah, speaking of “type”, I’ve been meaning to thank you for helping me in class. How did you do, uh, that?

Vince: A tech-gician never reveals his tricks.

Daniel: Huh, you’re an interesting guy, um… I don’t even know your--

Vince: It’s Vince. Should I pretend I don’t know your name’s Daniel to make this less awkward for you?

Daniel: Probably. Well, I definitely owe you one, Vince.

Vince: Ah, don’t worry about it. You can just save my life sometime.

Daniel: So, Vince, what do you think of this place so far?

Vince: You mean, besides the life sentence of latrine duty, and the fact that one of our heroes turned out to be a total snart?

Daniel: Yeah, and then there’s this. I came here to fly jets, and all first-years do are stupid simulators.

Vince: Actually, I like the simulators. All the fun of flying, with none of the death.

Daniel: Unlocked?

Vince: You wanna…

Daniel: Totally.

Vince: Wait, I thought you didn’t like the simulators.

Daniel: I don’t, at least not when we’re supposed to be in them. But now, we’re like Commander Keith, rebel outlaws, operating in the shadows.

[Cut to space, where a single fighter cruises across the screen.]

Keith: I can’t believe Manset was a traitor. He was thoroughly vetted by the Den. And why’d he return my money? It just doesn’t make sense… Says the guy talking to a space mouse. Huh? The coordinates to Wade’s base? “It’s all there.” This is Stalker calling the Den. The watering hole has been located. I’m going hunting. Set course for the Tarvos moon of Saturn.

[Cut to the flight simulators in the Galaxy Alliance academy.]

Daniel: See? These simulators are way too easy. I’m ready to try this stuff pulling twelve G’s.

Vince: Alright, Whiny McGee. You want me to make this interesting for you?

Daniel: Whoa! I thought you were non-confrontational!

Vince: I am, in real life. Well, would you look here? It seems the simulator wants to feel more hurt.

Daniel: Easy pickings.

Lance: What? Can’t you boys keep up?

Daniel: Commander Lance?

Lance: You just want to get expelled, don’t you? Considering this is most likely your last act as GA cadets, let’s see what you’re made of. Hope your straps are on tight.

Daniel: Why? It’s not like these simulators are going to rocket off--woah! Whoo-hoo! Yeah!

Lance: You might want to pull your emergency brake right… now.

Vince: Y-your simulator almost killed me!

Lance: Huh, and Voltron contraband to boot. Wade would throw you in a secret holding cell to rot. Lucky for you, I’m not Wade. Boys, welcome to…

Pidge: The Den.

Lance: Cadets, I’d like you to meet--

Vince: You’re Pidge!

Daniel: The Green Lion pilot! That’s Hunk, the yellow lion!

Pidge: What are you doing? You’re not even welding anything.

Hunk: Yeah, but I wanted to make a cool entrance for these little dudes.

Lance: Mission accomplished.

Daniel: Is Keith here, too?

Lance: Always with the Keith.

[Transition to Keith breaking into a building, then back to the Den.]

Pidge: Why would you draw glasses on top of my glasses?

Daniel: Um, six eyes? I don’t know, I’m not an artist.

Hunk: Well, I’d better get back to duty, but I look forward to working with you clowns in the future.

Daniel: Huh?

Vince: Huh?

Lance: We need to keep up appearances. We’ve been pretending to be the epitome of a good soldier and loyal to Sky Marshal Wade so that he never suspects our underground activities. Pidge and Hunk have built this secret network that has access to Wade’s GA resources.

Pidge: It’s been quite useful in helping Keith on his secret mission.

Daniel: What kind of secret mission?

Lance: The kind that’s a secret.

Daniel: Okay, fine, but you still haven’t explained why we’re here. What does any of this have to do with us?

Lance: Let’s just say your talents have been noticed, and we’d like to cultivate them. In fact, how would you like to take a very cultivating course right now, taught by yours truly?

Vince: Totally! What’s the course?

Lance: Toilet Scrubbing 101. Oh, you’re right, you already have a bit of experience. We’ll call it 102.

[Cut to Keith continuing to infiltrate the building.]

Keith: Great.

Guard: All clear.

[Cut back to the Den.]

Daniel: Okay, we can tell there’s something cool going on here, but if it involves cleaning more toilets…

Lance: Look, I’m going to be asking you to do a lot of things in the future that won’t seem to make sense, but there will always be a reason. The question is, after what you’ve seen, do you trust me?

Daniel: I think so, but why won’t you just give us a straight answer about anything?

Lance: Partially because you aren’t ready to know, but mostly because it’s way more fun for me this way. So I’ll ask again: do you trust me? Because if you don’t, I can have Pidge erase this from your memory.

Daniel: Okay. We’re in.

Lance: Phew! That’s a huge relief, because we do not have a memory-erasing device. That’s science fiction.

[Cut to Keith walking through a corridor.]

Keith: What are you making, Wade?

Guard 1: Hey, you. Have you seen anyone suspicious?

Keith: Probably another false alarm set off by space mice or something.

Guard 2: Yeah, but we gotta run through the motions anyway.

Keith: Decrypt security code. Come on, come on. Shh. Shoo!

[Cut back to the Den.]

Lance: School is in session. How much do you know about Sky Marshal Wade?

Vince: He’s the head of the Galaxy Alliance’s military division.

Daniel: And a snart who hates Voltron.

Pidge: True, but it’s more complicated than that. Wade’s been wanting control of the alliance military for years, always claiming that Voltron was dangerous because the power within the lions is an ancient technology that isn’t fully understood.

Lance: Though we can’t prove it, we know he sabotaged Voltron to turn the public against it.

Daniel: I knew it!

Lance: Wade used this as an excuse to convince the Galaxy Alliance that Voltron’s power isn’t to be trusted. He got them to regulate the lions back to their storage chambers on Arus.

Pidge: However, I believe that Wade actually just wanted to study their technology.

Lance: While I believe it’s time to start your first class project. Wade is a well-decorated general, but he’s particularly proud of his four-stripe pin. Pidge has made a replica of this pin, and you boys are gonna swap this out.

Daniel: Your master revenge plan is switch out his favorite pin for a fake?

Lance: Yes. Remember our earlier conversation about trust?

Daniel: Remember you don’t have a mind-erasing device?

Lance: Touche. Let’s continue anyway, shall we? Latrine duty happens to be the only hole in Wade’s security. The toilet-cleaning cadets have pretty much unfettered access. And like all disciplined army men, Wade does everything on an air-tight schedule, and I mean everything. Now, we already know you have a talent for sneaking around, so when Wade’s coat is off for his “0600”, that’s your chance to make the swap. Should be a piece of cake.

[Transition to Daniel and Vince in Wade’s bathroom.]

Daniel: Nice.

Vince: Sweet.

Vince: I think this time he’s finished. Like us. How did you… What were you thinking?

Daniel: I didn’t think at all. Guess you’re lucky I’m impulsive.

Vince: Yeah, well, consider the “saving my life” debt paid. I was hoping to hold that over your head, but--

Wade: Look at this mess, you insufferable beast! I swear, if you chase one more mouse...

[Scene change to Keith, sneaking through the vents.]

Keith: Found you.

[Scene change back to Lance, Daniel, and Vince.]

Lance: Ah, there it is. Nice job, boys. Piece of cake, right?

Vince: More like piece of meat.

Lance: Well, you did such a good job, that I’ve decided to expel you from the academy, after all. Unless you’d rather stay and finish out your two terms of latrine. You are showing great promise in that field of study. Go on and pack your bags, boys. We’re taking a road trip.

[Scene change to space.]

Vince: This is all happening so fast.

Daniel: I often find fast is the best way.

Lance: So, I think you boys have earned the right to know a bit more about Wade’s pin. More like “pins”. And more like “keys” than “pins”.

Daniel: The keys to the lions!

Allura: Welcome to Arus, and welcome to the Castle of Lions.

Daniel: Whoa. Where’s the black key?

Lance: I assure you, it’s in good wrists.

End.

#voltron force #keith #lance #daniel #allura #manset #wade #vince #pidge #hunk #coran #transcript

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fishandchipsandvinegar · 5 years

Photo

Such A Funny Pair - An Ineffable Husbands Mix

A playlist for celestial romance. Listen on Spotify.

God this playlist got so long so fast. A couple odd choices, but I hope you’ll agree with them. This was a combined effort. I thought I was done, and then my roommates would suggest another perfect song! Thanks to @thegay-uillotine for putting up with my endless chatter about this.

1. What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong “I see trees of green, red roses too, I see them bloom for me and you.”

2. Best of Friends - Fox and the Hound “You're not even aware you're such a funny pair.”

3. There’s No Way - Lauv ft. Julia Michaels “We just dance backwards into each other, trying to keep our feelings secretly covered.”

4. Having You Around - July Talk “But now you’re here, never fear, and I'll never fall.”

5. Heaven - Troye Sivan “All my time is wasted feeling like my heart's mistaken, oh.”

6. The Fall - Half Alive “It's like sharing a dream with someone. Once you say it out loud it can't be undone.”

7. Rewrite the Stars - The Greatest Showman “You know I want you, it's not a secret I try to hide. I know you want me. So don't keep saying our hands are tied.”

8. History - One Direction “'Cause the truth is out, I realize that without you here life is just a lie. This is not the end, this is not the end, we can make it you know it, you know.”

9. We Didn’t Start The Fire - Billy Joel “No we didn’t light it but we tried to fight it.”

10. End of the World - Great Big Sea “Save yourself, serve yourself, world serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Dummy with the rapture and the revered and the right.”

11. Check Yes, Juliet - We The Kings “Don't ever look back, they'll tear us apart if you give them the chance.”

12. Oh L’Amour - Erasure “Looking for you. You were looking for me. Always reaching for you. You were too blind to see.”

13. Us Against the World - Coldplay “I’m drunken as a Daniel in a lion's den, and tonight I know it all has to begin again, so whatever you do, don't let go.”

14. Who Wants to Live Forever - Queen “And we can have forever. And we can love forever. Forever is our today.”

15. Somewhere - West Side Story “Hold my hand and we're halfway there. Hold my hand and I'll take you there.”

16. If Love Was a Crime - Poli Genova “Together we're untouchable, you and me against the world.”

17. This is Why We Fight - The Decemberists “Come to me now, lay your arms around me.”

18. Hurts 2B Human - P!nk and Khalid “Now if we defeat all odds and it was us against the world, you can count on me, you know I'd have your back.”

19. How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful - Florence and the Machine “Tell me you see it too. We opened our eyes and it's changing the view. Oh, what are we gonna do?”

20. Lovers in a Dangerous Time - Barenaked Ladies “Sometimes you're made to feel as if your love's a crime. Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.”

21. When the Morning Comes - A Great Big World “I wanna move on. There is so much more than who's right or who's wrong.”

22. Run With Me - Hudson Taylor “Oh, I'll meet you at eye of the storm, oh.”

23. How Deep Is Your Love - The Bee Gees “'Cause we're living in a world of fools, breaking us down when they all should let us be. We belong to you and me.”

24. You’re My Best Friend - Queen “I've been with you such a long time. You're my sunshine and I want you to know that my feelings are true. I really love you.”

25. We Belong - Pat Benatar “Have we become a habit? Do we distort the facts? Now there's no looking forward. Now there's no turning back.”

26. Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us - Starship “I'm so glad I found you, I'm not gonna lose you. Whatever it takes I will stay here with you.”

Listen on Spotify. Choose your own side.

#playlist #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #good omens #Am I almost done with these two?#Probably not?#you should eat your favourite frozen treat and listen to this playlist

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christsbride · 5 years

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Predicaments

Romans 8

Ah, those predicaments . . . life is full of them. Often they are of our own making. Other times they just seem to happen mysteriously to us. Occasionally, predicaments are comical or borderline crazy. Sometimes they can be irritating and troublesome. But one thing is for sure: Predicaments are unpredictable. And embarrassing. And confusing. And really weird.

Like the time I was leading a Bible study at a church I'd never attended before. Shortly after getting underway, I noticed two people (latecomers) standing at the door, reluctant to join us. The woman was much older than the man, so I paused, looked in their direction, and welcomed them to join our group, saying, "Why don't you and your mother pull up a chair and join us?" Well, you could've heard a pin drop. Too late I realized my mistake. She was his wife! Throughout the first part of the session (which seemed like an eternity), I felt like dead meat, and they glared at me like a couple of circling buzzards. When we took a coffee break, they were out of there.

At times like this, I find a measure of relief in knowing that Scripture records one predicament after another. Can you imagine how Peter felt immediately after he had deliberately denied the Lord for the third time . . . then heard that ominous cock crowing in the distance? Talk about embarrassing.

And what about Daniel, who refused to obey the injunction of King Darius. Though Daniel continued to obey God, he wound up spending the night in a den of lions. Talk about confusing!

And who can forget David's inexplicable actions when he fled from Saul and found himself in enemy territory and "disguised his sanity . . . and acted insanely in their hands, and scribbled on the doors of the gate, and let his saliva run down into his beard"(1 Sam. 21:13). Talk about weird!

I'm comforted when I realize that God is in sovereign control of all of life. He not only knows the times and the seasons; He is also Lord of the unexpected and the unpredictable. Our times and our trials are in His hands. Even when we feel embarrassed or confused or do something really weird.

Whether we're on cloud nine, enjoying His blessings, or caught in the thicket of some tangled predicament, He hasn't let us go. By His grace, He remains "for us" (Rom. 8:31).

Remember, He is the God of your soaring spirits as well as your perplexing predicaments.

from Chuck Swindoll's Daily Devotional http://bit.ly/2I17gZL via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Chuck Swindoll's Daily Devotional #Insight for Living

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agaychristian · 6 years

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Everything Happens for a Reason

September 26, 2018

So as I have been driving around the past few weeks I have been listening to a Christian music radio station.... like it's all I've been listening too. I haven't even tuned to the local news talk station I used to listen to all the time.

And as I've been listening, there are some songs that seems to come on more often than the others... I could be wrong, and it could just be because of what the songs are... but I once again feel someone is trying to tell me something.

I posted a while back about eating lunch in my car and hearing the song "Fear is a Liar".... well it comes on a lot...

so does "The Breakup Song" it has a line"so Fear you don't own me" and "Fear you will never be welcome here"

Another one is "Confidence", and it goes something like this "Guve me faith like Daniel in the lion's den, give me faith like Moses in the wilderness, give me a heart like David, Lord be my defense, so I can face my giants with confidence. You took a Sheppard boy and made him a king, so I'm gonna trust you and give you everything"

And this past year I have been struggling and debating with myself about coming out or not. I'm afraid how people will react, I'm afraid I will lose my friends, in afraid I will lose my church family....

But idk... maybe by coming out I can grow even closer to God... maybe by conning out, I can be vocal and show my church friends what the "clobber passages" are actually about... tho arguing that subject with a Southern Baptist is like arguing with a brick wall.

But idk... maybe I'm meant to spark change within my church... tho I doubt my church would ever leave the SBC... and the SBC couldn't get any more homophobic.

Maybe it's irrelevant, maybe it doesn't matter abt the church as a whole, maybe I just need to change one person's mind/ heart on the subject.

Tho that presents the other problem... in person I am not a confrontational person, like if you see my really arguing and getting vocal and mad/ upset/ enterfetic in person... it normally means I am royally ticked (there is actually more approperite words, but trying to avoid anything that even remotely leans toward profanity) off.

Tho I also get vocal and entergetic when discussing a passion, but will not be mad or upset... tho these subject tend to be sci-fi related, or could be theoretical like FTL, multiverse, etc... or othe subjects that go over most people's heads.. which is one reason I'm so quiet. It's no fun having such conversations if the other person can't understanding what in the world I'm talking about.

But the "anti homosexual" topics in the Bible, is a vast and tricky topic to maneuver... like if someone else and I get into it online, at any time I can end the conversation and just leave.... but in person I can't juatbdo that... also I will see that person again.

I'm an introvert so don't like confertation in person, I avoid it like the plague.... but coming out irl, just puts me right in the center of attention and confertation.

Also the other day on the radio the radio host guy said something like "we can't handle things in our own, God gives us more than we can handle to help us know we need him" or something like that.... and that really spoke to me, as right now I am going through so so so much. I know I need God to get through it all...

And you always hear "everything happens for a reason"

Back in early 2016 I had a lot of huge personal stuff happen, and I lost my job, had to move back home. In December 2016, I was in the app Whisper and made a post about how I wish i wasn't gay cause I'm a Christian or I wish it was ok to be gay and Christian or something like that, don't know how I worded it. And next thing I know, someone responds telling me I can be gay and Christian and they tell me about Justin Lee's book "Torn".

Since then I have learned more abt these verses, gotten involved with some gay Christian groups on Kik, and have considered coming out multiple times... have actually told one friend during this time.

While I still have some major personal stuff ruining my life atm... if all this hadn't happened in 2016, I would still have a nice high paying job, have gotten several raises... be getting ready to take a humongous test that would allow me to get a promotion, I would own my own house, and be able to take vacations frequently.... but I would most likely have never learned it is ok to be gay and Christian... I would be a closeted gay Christian that hates and hides part of himself and would be telling others that it's not ok to be gay, I would be pointing to those clobber passages and saying see it says so right here.

I might even be saying a woman, unknown as I'm still an introvert and would still rely on internet dating via apps or websites... but I would eventually settle for someone and probably never truly be happy.

So knowing everything happens for a reason, I am where I am now for a reason... just don't know what that reason is yet... or maybe I do... idk.

Maybe all this I've been thinking, itbis because that's hat God actually wants me to do.... maybe I'm hearing these songs about trusting God with everything, and casting my fear into the fire, and telling fear he ain't welcome here, and praying to God for the faith hope and heart to be able to face my giants... maybe it's because I need to pray for these things and just go for it.

Or maybe I'm overthinking all of this like I overthink everything....

And like always maybe I rambled a bit in this... but for someone who doesn't share personal things, doesn't share his emotions, doesn't really open up, or like taking in general ... I have found it easy to just talk/ vent/ whatever on here. I mean even if no one eve says anything or even likes a post... it is very therupedic to post like this on here.... tho I actually get joy when someone likes my post or comments/ replies/ messages or whatever...

tho sometimes I wonder when someone likes a post as soon as I post... it's like, dude did you even have time to read it... like you just sitting there waiting for my next post? You sit there like that, you may turn to dust before I post again lol.

But anyway that's enough rambling for now.

#Me #lgbt #gaychristian #lgbtchristian #closeted #inthecloset #gay christian #lgbt christian #gay

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stupid-damn-harp · 3 years

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Notes on “little prayer”

“let ruin end here”

The lack of capitalization and punctuation in this piece serves to soften everything spoken. This line, “let ruin end here,” would sound much different if preceded by a different title and proper capitalization. But instead, we almost feel this as a whispered prayer. The narrator is willing for ruin to end and for his desires to be met with patience and understanding.

“let him find honey / where there was once a slaughter”

This plea for honey in a place of slaughter means a total shift. To find honey (naturally), you’d have to be in an area with honeybees. There would have to be plants nearby to be pollinated. Slaughter Yards wouldn't have this sort of abundant vegetation. Neither would other places of slaughter like a battlefield. It almost makes me think of the poem/song “In Flanders Field” and all of the poppies that grow there now. Asking for honey to replace the blood soaked into the grounds of these places is nothing short of a miracle, but it’s a beautiful miracle and goal.

“let him enter the lion’s cage / & find a field of lilacs”

I want to say that this is a reference to the biblical story of Daniel and the lion’s den. This small prayer that he’s offering is not only on behalf of himself or others that he may have met, but also for this long-dead person that was in a terrifying situation. He wants to fix that and ease it a little bit. He’s not asking for the lions to be removed from the cage, he’s merely asking for a field of lilacs to exist in the same space. Just as with life, sometimes we can’t have trials removed, but we can ask for little bits of joy to be sprinkled throughout them instead.

“let this be the healing / & if not let it be”

I love these two lines. It sounds as if he’s wishing for healing for everyone and everything from the past to the future, but also cautioning that a little prayer might not be enough. And, if the little prayer ends up not being enough, he wishes that whoever hears the prayer will “let it be.” Let it be. Are we letting the prayer be? Or are we letting the places that need healing be, allowing them to rest until healing comes? It also gives the impression that he’s asking for his prayer to still stand even if it isn’t healing. The first part of the line says “let this be the healing” and then it finishes by stopping at “let it be.” The poem is allowed to exist even if it’s not useful, and I love that.

This poem was added to the anthology because it contains biblical references while simultaneously defying the traditional “norms” for a Christian prayer.

Bibliographical Information:

https://poets.org/poem/little-prayer

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Bad Trip: Eric Andre Recounts His Wild Experiences On Set

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Note: This interview took place in early 2020, prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

Eric Andre is feeling nostalgic. He wistfully recalls a simpler, but arguably not any less crazy time in his life, as he anticipates the public’s reaction to his upcoming movie, Bad Trip.

“Back in like 2009, I’d dress up like Ronald McDonald and head into a McDonald’s,” Andre tells us about one of the earliest segments for his Adult Swim series. “I’d be drinking booze, crying and smoking cigarettes in there. That was all just with one mic and one camera on me.”

For over a decade, Andre and director Kitao Sakurai have been entrenched in the experimental comedy scene. But the team behind Adult Swim’s The Eric Andre Show has moved from killing time with a bare-bones setup in dingy New York City fast food joints to far higher production values in the feature film world. With those bigger venues come bigger risks, and the potential of infuriating someone not in on the joke. In one harrowing instance, Andre and his Bad Trip co-star Lil Rel Howery had their lives threatened during a confrontation in an Atlanta barbershop.

“It was our second day of shooting [Bad Trip] and this guy pulled a knife on us,” says Andre, with a mix of both joy and concern in his voice. “For this bit, our dicks are caught in a Chinese finger trap. So we’re stretching our junk back and forth. The guy’s like, ‘Oh, hell no!’ He grabbed a knife and chased us out. We could barely run in the thing, and Rel fell down and rolled under a truck. That was terrifying. That was Rel’s second day, not only of filming the movie, but ever doing hidden camera pranks. So he was miserable.”

There are no limits for Andre; anything goes in the name of comedy. The scope may be wider now, but Andre is still up to his same signature brand of absurdist humor. So enters Bad Trip, an extreme hidden camera film that is also something of a road trip adventure for Andre and Howery, one they’ve been working toward since 2013. In the film, Andre and Howery play two best friends who embark on a cross-country journey of self-discovery. In the process, they subject the unknowing public to radical stunts like faking a prison break (with help from co-star Tiffany Haddish) or menial day jobs that result in gushing blood or embarrassing nudity.

While Bad Trip feels like a big moment and natural extension of the comedian’s brand, Andre has been an important face in comedy for years. The Eric Andre Show has been a fixture on Adult Swim since 2012 with its much anticipated fifth season finally arriving in October 2020. Andre has also been a bright spot in series like Man Seeking Woman, Don’t Trust The B—- in Apt. 23, and Two Broke Girls. In recent years, he even landed prominent voice acting roles, appearing in Matt Groening’s Netflix series Disenchantment and Jon Favreau’s The Lion King.

In many respects, Bad Trip is what Andre’s career has been building toward, as he puts together what could easily be his purest—and craziest—piece of work.

DEN OF GEEK: You’re no stranger to unscripted “man on the street” style stuff, but did you intentionally want to make this bigger or have specific goals since it’s a movie?

ERIC ANDRE: The weekend Bad Grandpa was coming out, my agent called me and he’s like, “Hey man, this Bad Grandpa movie is testing through the roof. It’s going to make a bunch of money. You do these crazy pranks.” Season two of The Eric Andre Show hadn’t even come out yet, but he’s like, “You should meet up with Jeff Tremaine and you guys should work on something together.” This is how long I’ve been working on this. At that point I barely knew how to slap a television show together, no less a movie.

So me and my team and Jeff and his posse just kept putting our heads together and developing and writing this idea and started going around town pitching it. But after seeing Bad Grandpa we were like, “Holy shit. Hidden camera pranks can work, narratively,” which is groundbreaking. Borat did that too. The only difference between [this and] Borat is that the cameras were part of the conceit because he was a journalist from Kazakhstan. This is hidden camera where the cameras weren’t overt.

In terms of a script, were you guys working off more of an outline, or did you actually have a full script written out?

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You still need a story that you’re getting across like in any other movie. The actors’ parts were scripted, but it was kind of like an outline in other areas. Obviously we don’t know what the people that we’re pranking are going to say, but once my clothing gets vacuumed off and I’m butt naked at a car wash, we get the idea that the person we’re pranking is going to have an emphatic reaction to that.

We would kind of make guesses based on the severity of the prank on how the person was going to react and sometimes we were wrong and you had to reshoot. You do the prank a few times until you get the result you want and you tweak it each time to yield that result. But it is like an experimental filmmaking process because you just have to shoot way more and you have to hope for the best. You have to get out there and continue talking to the real people until you get the plot points that you want. We’re getting actual exposition from real civilians. That’s what makes the movie so rich.

It would seem that a movie of this nature would have a lot of unused footage when stuff doesn’t go as planned, but that’s interesting to hear that you’d keep filming scenes until you got what you needed.

Every reaction in the movie is 100 percent real. We never ever faked a reaction or asked the person that we’re pranking to say a specific thing. We only use genuine reactions. That was kind of our ethos going into it. Honestly the audience can smell it when it’s fake, you know what I mean? They can sense it and it jeopardizes the rest of the pranks because then they’re like, “Wait, if that’s fake, then is that fake?” Nothing can be scripted.

On The Eric Andre Show you’re usually doing these kinds of pranks by yourself, but here you have Lil Rel Howery with you. Was it nice to have a partner in crime when you were filming this?

Yeah, it was a little like starting over because I’m usually just out there on my own. There are two things that were different from The Eric Andre Show, which is that on The Eric Andre Show I’m just being completely absurd and schizophrenic in public. But for this I had to be more grounded and we needed narrative information out of a random pedestrian on the street. So it was a lot more challenging. This is like an evolution from the performances I was doing in The Eric Andre Show.

And then Rel and I had to figure out our dynamic, not get in the way of each other, plus gel and be believable as this hapless duo. It’s a different feel because you’re going out there and it’s awkward with real people. You’re going out and pissing people off. It’s all to get a rise out of people. It’s intense and it’s dangerous. So, it was like a crash course for Lil Rel, but by the end of it he understood the mechanics of it and how to take people on a ride.

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You’ve gotten to do a lot of voiceover work in animation lately, between The Lion King, Disenchantment, and your upcoming role in Connected. Did you ever expect your career to head in this direction?

Not at all. I always auditioned for this kind of stuff, but I never got it. Then I got an email for a Matt Groening project and I was like, “It’s Matt Groening. He created The Simpsons. I got to audition for this.” I didn’t think I would get it. It was like a Hail Mary pass, and I even did it on my phone. Then they were like, “They want to see you,” so I auditioned again, I got the role, and I kind of broke it all open.

Once you get booked for one cartoon, all these other animation projects are like, “Oh okay, you get it. Let’s get him in there next.” Then I got Lion King and I’ve got a couple of other animated movies on the way. But really, having Matt Groening vouch for you is pretty damn big in the animation community.

I loved what you and Dan Curry did with the KRFT PUNK Special. Was it surreal to see that character get put in the spotlight and how much that universe has expanded?

Yeah, well, there’s nothing more organic than KRFT PUNK. I remember when Dan first pitched the character, in what I think was season three. He pitched it kind of jokingly because it’s such a dumb idea. But we’re in the business of dumb ideas. We’re in the dumb idea industry. It just instantly became a fan favorite and he’s one of the most popular characters from The Eric Andre Show. So, his spin-off was warranted.

Do you think that more KRFT PUNK could happen? Dan Curry was talking about how he wanted to go to Antarctica to do a Flat Earth special.

Yeah, absolutely. We’re expanding our universe in big ways. We’re onwards and upwards.

Bad Trip is available to stream now on Netflix.

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