#it was all the way across the st and park but i was mildly concerned for a second that she was abt to fight like a coyote for this animal

[salemcat09]

You want a request? What about drarry and something with healers? Like maybe one is a healer and has to treat the other, or perhaps they’re both healers and end up working together, whatever floats your boat!

First off I just want to say I am SO SO sorry for how long this took, there's no excuse I'm just lazy. Anyway ,thank you so much for the request! I apologize for the fact that kind of took the first part and ran with it, the story is kind of taking the request loosely but I hope you don't mind too much :-)

(Read below the cut)

St Mungo's Malady (drarry)

• malady /ˈmalədi/ noun

- a serious problem.

Work had been hectic at St Mungo's for days now. It was the start of summer and all the children were returning home from school, of course with that comes reckless kids getting injured in ridiculous ways.

Draco had just finished tiding up his equipment from the last patient and was ready to go home and rest when there was a gentle knock on his door. Sighing, he opened it.

"Sorry Draco, but Margaret's had to rush home and there are not enough people on the shift, could you stay for another hour? It'll only be a few patients, promise" It was his very stressed coworker, Hannah Abbott. He cursed his breath but smiled politely, not trying to get on anyone's bad side more than he already was after the war.

"Of course, send them through". He hurriedly gathered his things and set them out ready for his patient and sat in his desk chair waiting. He heard the slight click of Hannah's heels hurriedly tracking the hall to the waiting room and back. The door once again creaked open and Hannah guided two people in, a short and oddly familiar dark-haired man and a strangely blue-haired child, Draco assumed to be around six.

His coworker kindly handed him the papers he needed and gave a small shocked sounding gasp and what Draco supposed was meant to be a reassuring smile (that just made him anxious, because why would he need reassuring). The blonde read his expression and gave a small nod to the papers she'd given before backing out of the room.

Draco smiled at the two people in front of him and gestured for them to sit, the man sitting in the chair across from him and the child hopping onto the bed. He furrowed his brow at the man, trying to understand why he looked oh so familiar but he failed, instead shaking his head and introducing himself as Dr. Greengrass.

The name belonged to his ex-wife, whom he'd only been married to for a year and a half before the relationship ended (it was inevitable, they were both gay but settled for each other to please their parents, they were miserable). The pair were still good friends though, and Draco saw no need to change his name again, being that he'd fought so hard to change it in the first place.

He read over his papers quickly to see what exactly he was treating (he assumed) the child for, expecting to see something along the lines of "accidental magic gone wrong" or "fallen off his quidditch broom". He ended up seeing that the child had fallen from a tree with a suspected broken arm, but also saw something else.

He recognized that name. Edward Lupin. Lupin had been his defense against the dark arts teacher in his third year and he would never admit it but he had been his favorite teacher. Of course, that didn't last long because the teacher quit after only a year, and died not long after. He also knew the first name. His mother had said something about a cousin killed in the war, by his Aunt Bellatrix, who'd left a young child behind. He knew the father of the child had not been well accepted, something about being old and poor and a half breed. Judging by the last name it was likely his previous teacher.

This must be the child he thought to himself. He felt sorry for him, his cousin. Being left all alone. But he presumed he wasn't exactly alone, he had his grandmother and whoever this man was. It just occurred to him at that moment to look at the listed caregiver's name, find out who he was.

He inhaled sharply reading the name. The name he saw so much yet always dreaded. The name of someone who had taken up so much of his mind for almost his entire teenage years. The name of someone he hadn't seen in years. Harry Potter. He looked different. Older. Draco knew he was only 23, they were the same age. But he also knew how the stress of war could age you.

He composed himself and looked between the two, trying his best to remain professional as he treated his blue-haired patient. He could tell Potter was trying his best to do the same but both were failing and the conversation was beyond awkward. Surprisingly enough, however, Har- Potter wasn't seething in disgust, but instead seemed interested and somewhat concerned.

Luckily for Draco, all he had to do was check over Teddy's (as he'd been told he preferred to be called) arm and try and see how much damage was done, before referring him over to another department. As he was guiding the two out (the younger one excitedly bouncing up and down with the lollipop he'd been given) Potter turned to him. "Nice to see you, Draco" he smiled.

As politely as possible and trying not to be thrown off by the man's own politeness, he replied "Just doing my job, Potter". And with that his old nemesis and crush turned on his heel and left, Draco closing the door behind him.

He sighed heavily and sunk down the back of his office door. He prayed there were no more patients today and he could just get home and wipe the entire interaction from his memory.

-•-

As much as Draco tried, for weeks he couldn't get the encounter out of his head. So many thoughts and questions rushed through, so many awoken feelings he'd all but forgotten. Of course, his biggest question was what on earth was someone like Potter doing with his young cousin? And letting him fall from a height like that?!

He cringed in embarrassment at the thought. Why was caring so much? The was a stupid question, he knew exactly why. The obsession of his youth was creeping its way back in. Who knew such a small thing could set him back so far.

In the end, he settled on asking his mother. If he was being drawn to Potter again why not just....allow it? He was being daft and he knew it but his ego would always rise above that. He wasn't going to stalk Potter again, that would be childish...and mildly creepy to be honest. No, he was just going to ask Mother why Potter was with his cousin. That seemed somewhat normal.

He walked into his mother's bedroom and knocked lightly on the door. She raised her eyebrows slightly but made no effort to make conversation with Draco, no surprise there. Draco noticed that she was sewing and didn't want to be bothered but frankly, he couldn't care less. He cleared his throat and finally Narcissa sighed and turned to him.

"Yes, Draco?" Anxiety fueled up inside of the young man, tempting him to back out and run. But he had to know.

"Mother, what would Harry Potter possibly be doing with my cousin's child?" He tried to act calm but sweat was curating on his palms and it was impossible not to notice. His mouth was dry. There was no reason for behavior like this, he was acting like a silly school boy with a crush.

His mother rubbed between her eyes and let out another deep sigh. "As far as I am aware, Mr. Potter was made godfather at the time the child was born. I assume now that either my dear sister would be raising him, or Potter would. Why?" Her voice seethed with sarcasm when speaking of her "dear" sister. And it was evident by her voice she had little to no interest in what her son was saying, her temper running thin.

"He came in with Teddy at work today, as his caregiver. I was merely curious is all" Draco responded, not exactly lying but not exactly telling the whole truth either.

"Hm, very well be off then" As blunt as ever Narcissa requested he leave and Draco of course obeyed, thinking to himself he ought to work out his...struggles on his own.

-•-

It was many weeks before he saw Potter again. He half expected half hoped for him to appear at work, for Teddy of course. But in the end, he never showed. By the time the end of Summer was rolling around and leaves began to darken, Draco had given up. He knew he was being stupid, hoping his old nemesis from school would just happen to walk by him so he could get one more glimpse at that horrid person who caused him so much stress. He still hoped though. He was still disappointed when September 1st came and summer was officially over.

He was taking his daily stroll down the parks of muggle London, having just bought his morning coffee after a long night shift at St Mungo's. As per usual, he kept his head down. If anyone from school happened to see him he was sure they wouldn't notice. The Draco they knew had always kept his chin unbelievably and insufferably high much like Draco now, who was skittish and quiet always trying to avoid being seen. That's why he didn't notice the man of his dreams walking straight into him with another scorching hot coffee.

The two collided, the coffees exploding onto each other, and both of them crashing to the harsh concrete ground beneath them. Draco swiftly stood up and without thinking whipped out his wand to clean the mess. When he looked up from the small puddle of coffee (on both his sweater and the ground), he noticed the stranger had done the same, going to use magic to clean the mess. He had obviously noticed as well, and they shared at silent moment of solidarity before both muttering scorgify under their breath.

Draco kindly reached out a hand to help this person up, knowing the collision had been entirely his fault and wanting to make up for it. Much to his dismay, however, he met the eyes of the other. For a split second, he didn't realize, simply seeing the most gorgeous green eyes. But then it clicked. He drifted his eyes slightly up to the left of this so-called stranger's face. The white lines of a lightning bolt spread out, slightly raised above his dark skin. It was him.

The flustered blonde acknowledged he had been staring for a tad too long, and blushed profusely before pulling, who he discovered was, indeed, Potter, to his feet. He coughed awkwardly and brushed himself off, to give his hands something to do (he found himself doing that a lot, especially recently). He gave a polite smile and avoided Harry's painful attempts at eye contact before hurrying off, back in the direction he was going before the interruption.

"Draco wait!" Draco gasped slightly and turned, to see Potter desperately smiling at him. He cursed under his breath and prayed to Merlin that Harry wouldn't want to talk but simply exchange simple pleasantries before being off on his way. He could handle that at least. Despite his deep hatred of small talk, he had gathered quite good at it over the years and felt prepared enough for whatever 'how are you's and 'how have you been's Potter may feel necessary.

To his misfortune, Potter started with hello. That wasn't a good sign. Draco smiled politely once again and said hello back, still with an inkling of hope that this would be quick. He may have been wanting to speak with Harry for months, and he may not have left his mind, but he certainly wasn't prepared to have this meeting completely random on a busy street in London on an early Wednesday morning.

"How have you been? I've been hoping to catch you since we last bumped into each other but Ginny's schedule has been somewhat intense" the younger man chuckled and scratched the back of his neck just where his hair stopped most endearingly way possible. It wasn't that that caught him though. Ginny. Of course. Potter's little Hogwarts romance. He assumed they were married by now, much like he himself had been.

"I've been alright, thank you. Ginny?" He couldn't help himself but ask. All possibility of a quick conversation out the window. He knew they must be together, why else would his schedule be centered around hers. Potter chuckled again and raised his eyebrows before answering

"Yeah, the way I said that makes it sound like we're married or something, we're not. We're not even together. We live together and co-parent our son, James, together with Luna is all. And with Teddy around more it's always best to have some sort of other parental figure around for him. So our schedules tend to revolve around each other." Draco was stunned. On one hand, he was silently pleased to hear that Harry wasn't still with Weasley as he assumed. But son? He had no idea of Harry having a child, he thought he would have found out by now given he's the chosen one and all.

"You and Ginny aren't together? You're single then?" Draco cursed himself for the way he said that, he hadn't meant to come across so upfront he genuinely was just curious. He had a habit of saying things that sounded right to him but as soon as they were said aloud he would realize how wrong it sounded to anyone else. He played it cool and decided it was best he ignore the slip up for now, he could always lay awake in bed in three years time and go over what he could've done instead.

Luckily for him, Potter laughed. Not a chuckle but a genuine laugh. It even made Draco's lips twitch a tad, and neither noticed the other but both of their eyes had darted down to the other's mouth for just a second. "Ginny and I split up, yes. About three years ago and she's now in a long-term relationship with Luna, but we're still great friends. We have to be considering we only had a son a few weeks ago" he did that awkward neck scratch again that just killed Draco. "And for the record yes I am indeed single, I have had a few relationships here and there but as of currently I am. Gosh sounds like I'm writing for a dating site" Draco laughed this time.

The blonde turned his head to fill in time while thinking and noticed a park bench right next to the pair. He gestured and Harry nodded, both sitting down somewhat awkwardly next to each other, to continue the conversation. "Sorry about your coffee by the way" Draco muttered just now remembering how they'd found themselves here in the first place.

"It's fine, you'll just have to buy me a new one next time" Harry laughed. It took Draco a few beats to catch up and realise Potter was joking. He forced an awkward laugh before Harry spoke again. The younger man nudged the older, in a humorous friendly manner that confused the older "I mean unless you do actually want to get a coffee sometime? You'd still owe me of course" Draco panicked, this time he really didn't know if he was joking or not. To him it sounded serious and borderline flirtatious. He decided to play it safe, and respond with a half joke

"Yeah alright then" he laughed. Harry also laughed while looking almost directly into his eyes.

"Alright. I can uh give you my number and organize it? Or we could go now if you like, take this conversation with us" He was definitely serious now. And still tiptoeing on flirtatious but Draco was sure he imagined it. Draco nodded

"If you don't have elsewhere to be, I'm sure you do, you know, mister chosen one and all, but if you don't I wouldn't mind popping into the diner down the road" Harry laughed at the chosen one line, glad someone would finally take it lightly and joke about it for once.

"I do not have anything else to do, being the chosen one dosn't do much for your social life on a Wednesday morning it appears" He smiled at Draco and began to stand "Other than this of course" he teased

"I'm flattered Potter" Draco quipped back half sarcastically. He took a deep breath and reminded himself this was just coffee. Old school mates catching up, nothing more. He did admit it was strange though. That Harry, whom he had hated so deeply and who had hated him was suddenly so friendly and almost key word almost flirting with him and appeared to have asked him out in some strange twisted way.

Little did Draco know, Harry was going over the exact same things. Except he was much more confused. He had to admit he had been thinking about Draco an awful lot since their last meeting. And having discussed with Ginny and even his ex (but still good friend) Neville it was clear his feelings toward him from the start. In fact, it appeared everyone had realized but him. That was normal though, he tended to be oblivious. But why had Draco accepted? He was joking at first but judging by the other man's face he was considering it, so Harry took his shot. Still half-joking but then he agreed? He had expected Draco to have walked away right at the start but he stayed. And now they were heading to a diner together for coffee, still chit-chatting about their day to day lives since school ended.

Harry also thought back to when he was with George. He had truly liked him, loved him even, but they weren't a match and broke up after nearly three years. It had been like this. He acted like this. And he knew why because he was always the same with his crushes/partners. He was like this with Cho then Ginny, George, Neville, and now Draco. And while the name never ceased to shock him (though it did explain a lot about his school rivalry) he knew it was the same as all the others. What was different was how Draco was responding. He was responding how all his other partners had. No resentment, no weirdness, just as if they had always been friends and this was normal for them. Harry had no complaints but it was still strange.

Slowly they made their way to the diner. Draco holding the door open for Harry. They ordered their coffees and began the conversation all over again. They talked about eighth year, finding jobs after school, Draco's marriage, what St Mungos was like, and if being a healer was something Harry could possibly look into (he liked the idea Draco raised of becoming a Hogwarts nurse), and even talked about their sexualities, something Draco had never done before. Somewhere in this midst numbers had been shared, and they agreed to meet up again at the same park. Hopefully not by crashing into each other this time Harry made sure to add. And all was well.

End.

#i hope you liked it! #i had to add in a bit of background harry/neville in there as well i couldnt resist #as well as harry/george #feel free to switch out george and neville for other hc if you want it doesnt affect the story #harry potter #draco makfoy #drarry #past hinny #harry x neville #harry x george #healer!draco #harry raised teddy #hinny coparent au #i couldnt set this is 04 without james im sorry #linny #harry potter fanfic #drarry fanfic #request #ask #draco is accidently a bit nd coded but its fine #its one of my hc anyway so it checks out XD

[micahrodney]

Thread; Chapter 3 - Over The River

The following is a commission for Matthew Caveat Zealot.  Neil screamed, and started forward.  His head collided with something hard, but it wasn't his claustrophobia-inducing ceiling. As the foam-padded leather made contact with his face, he realized he was no longer in bed.  The young man was sitting upright, belted into the rear passenger seat of his father's Plymouth Voyager.  

“Whoa-” Neil's father cried in response, nearly losing control of the vehicle.  “Are you okay?”

Taking stock of his new reality required some mental recalibration.  Last he remembered was spending the evening with Damian.  The people-pleasing and worldly youth had been attempting to get Neil to broaden his horizons – and more relevantly his palate – by eating some chicken dish called Tom Kha Gai.  Afterwards they went back to Neil's place and may have had a bit to drink.  He vaguely recalled getting a voicemail from his father.  His dreams were vast and vivid, but as he tried to scrape together the scattered fragments of his vision they faded away.  More importantly was the rather noticeable gap in events.  

Neil took a deep breath as his father began to steer the vehicle towards the side of the highway. The digital clock above the tape deck read 5:45 PM. A large highway sign revealed that they were just 60 miles outside of St. Clair, Michigan.  They were 300 miles from his dorm room.  

To his left was his sister, Dawn. She was the younger of his two sisters, but she still had two years on him.  While the older sister, Kim, had been the spitting image of their mother, Dawn looked more like their father.  Her hair was naturally chestnut brown, though it was presently dyed black with electric yellow streaks, the better to match her grunge aesthetic. Dawn's usual attire was comprised of leather jackets and jeans, though she was wearing black sweats for the road trip.  

Occupying the passenger seat, into which Neil had just rammed his head, was his brother Travis. His beard seemed to have grown two inches since they had last spoken.  The boisterous one in the family was oddly quiet today, wearing a plain forest green sweater.   This was also a far cry from his Hawaiian shirt obsession.  

“Neil?” His father asked, after putting the car in park on the shoulder. “You good?”  

“I'm sorry, I just had a nightmare I think,” Neil explained. Maybe he was still having a nightmare.

That, or he had somehow lost several days of his life. They were on their way to his mother's memorial, which meant he had somehow fast-forwarded his life by about three days.  Which begged the question:  how the hell did that happen and why could he not remember any of it?  

“It's a nice change of pace, dude,” Dawn said, her attention split between her Gameboy, Walkman and the stick of gum she was chewing on. “Honestly you've been kind of a zombie since we picked you up.”

“Oh yeah, says the Borg,” Travis teased.  

“Don't hate my tech.  It makes the real world way more bearable,” Dawn retorted, resting her temporarily-misplaced headphone back over her ear.  

Neil took special notice of the word 'zombie' and decided to expand on that thought. “Have I been acting weirdly?”  

“I mean I figured you were just sad because of... you know,” Travis gestured towards the others in the car.  

It had to be especially hard for him, now sitting in the spot where their mother had for most of their lives, until the accident.  Three years had passed by in a miserable blink.  What were three days in the grand scheme of things?

“This is gonna sound weird,” Neil began, and that was putting it mildly. How exactly did one ask the question he was going to ask?  

“That would be a first,” Dawn quipped sarcastically.  Clearly The Smashing Pumpkins were not excluding her from the conversation.  

The proud patriarch Kevin Brown turned to Neil and gave him that same kind and understanding gaze that he always did.  His gentle eyes, that distinctive cleft in his chin, and a soft smile that won over even his mother. Neil could trust this man, out-of-touch as he was, with anything.  

“What day is it?” Neil asked.  

“Neil, you're scaring me now.  Are you okay?”

“Dad, please.  What day?”  Neil insisted.  

“It's Friday.  We picked you up from your dorm this morning,” Kevin said. “Neil... you're not on drugs are you?”  

“No, dad it's not like that,” Neil scoffed.  “I just-  I don't know, I haven't been sleeping right lately and everything is all... hazy.”

“Dude, it's dad.  If you're on something he won't get mad at-”

“I'm not on anything!” Neil shouted.  The confusion had devolved into frustration and Travis's well-intentioned comment was doing nothing to abate it. “Just because you fucked up your scholarship-”

“Hey!” Kevin interjected soothingly, reaching back to place a bracing hand on his shoulder.  “Easy now, there's no need to go off on your brother like that.”

Travis had turned back to face the road.  A few cars passed them, one even blaring on its horn unhelpfully.  Dawn popped a bubble between her teeth.  

“Now listen, son. If you say you're not, then you're not.  I trust you completely,” Kevin said.  “We'll take you to a hospital when we get to St. Clair and have the doctor check you out, okay?”  

“A hospital,” Neil nodded.  “Yeah, that's probably a good idea.”  

“Maybe they'll put you in a straitjacket,” Dawn smirked.  

There was no malice behind the comment.  Underneath the would-be nihilist's harsh exterior was a tiny grain of affection for her family, especially her younger brother.  This was her twisted way of trying to calm him down and make him feel at home.  And, oddly, it was working.  

“Sorry, Travis,” Neil said.  “I'm just really... I don't know.”

“You don't have to apologize,” Travis said, still not turning around. “It's a hard time for all of us.”  

He had the biggest heart of any of them, but it was also the most easily wounded.  When they were younger, Neil had been intensely jealous of the theater kid brother of his.  He was the center of attention, and by a wide margin the “favorite” child of their father.  As a result, the two boys fought constantly and viciously.  

Things only started to change when Travis left for college and started to mature.  But with the maturing mind came evolving tastes. He was a self-described “party animal”.  And one night he had partied too hard on the wrong side of LA.  Within a few weeks he was absent to all of his classes, and a no-call no-show termination at work.  

They found him on the UCLA campus between two bushes.  It had taken a lot of work, but their father had managed to turn a five-year jail sentence into two months of rehabilitation.  Being a lawyer's son had its perks.  The true penalty was the loss of his football scholarship.  That and the expression on their mother's face when he confessed to her he was an addict.  

Neil regretted his words now.  Apart from being the one big taboo in the otherwise accepting family, making such a cheap shot at his brother made him feel unclean.  When Neil had first found out, he was a little too keen to finally have something to one-up the perfect son with.  Teenage hormones were no help, and he hadn't developed a proper sense of empathy yet.  

“There but for the grace of God go you,” their mother would always tell Neil.  

That was bullshit as far as Neil was concerned, in the infinite wisdom of a adolescent.  He was better than Travis.  He was smarter. He didn't fall into the stupid obvious traps that all drug users did.  The mandatory D.A.R.E. Program had done a number on his concept of nuance.  But even as Neil railed on his brother, all their parents could do was just shake their heads with a mixture of disappointment and sad amusement.  

Disappointment.  That was a potent word. And that's what Neil felt like:  The family disappointment.  In spite of Dawn's fashion sense, Travis's past, and Kim's taste in men, Neil was the one who didn't fit in.  And it was nobody's fault but his own.  

---

St. Clair, Michigan was the homestead of their mother.  It was as far removed from Voxton as you could be.  The scenic town was nestled in the isthmus between Lake Erie and Lake Huron.  It was founded along the St. Clair River which flowed somewhat unimaginatively into Lake St. Clair.  

The river was one of the geographical borders which marked the edge of the continental United States.  Across the river to the east was Canada, should one feel inclined to attempt a crossing in the frigid waters.   Neil had only been here a few times in his life, and never while his mother was alive.  For some reason it was her dying wish to be interred in the family plot a few miles up-river, but she'd never expressed any interest in visiting the place.  

This was their fourth trip to the charming post-card worthy dell, where every street corner looked ripe for a postcard and every citizen seemed to come straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The skies were blue, the horizon dotted with lighthouses and the only noise was the sound of motorboats gently cruising down the river.

“How are you feeling, Neil?” His father asked, when they parked the car outside their hotel.  While Kevin Brown dressed to the nines when he was with clients or in court, he preferred a casual look; khaki's with a crimson-and-grey striped cardigan.  

“I think I'm okay for right now.  Still a little fuzzy on the past few days,” he replied.  

Fuzzy, but details were coming back to him.  It was rather odd, more like he was recalling an episode of a television show which he'd fallen asleep during.  He seemed to have some vague idea of stumbling  to his classes for the week, but there was something hollow and robotic about the memories.  They had no spark to them, no authenticity.  It was like he was on auto-pilot, which may have very well have been the case.

For a moment he did consider the possibility that he had been drugged.  But the only people he had been with in the past week were Damian and his classmates, none of whom had the means or motive to do so.

“We'll have a doctor check you out anyway,” Kevin said, in the way that brokered no argument.  “There's a nice new facility just south of here in East China.  Only opened up a couple years ago.”  

Modernity was Kevin Brown's sole rubric for quality.  

“Daddy!” Came an overeager feminine voice from the opposite end of the parking lot.  

Kim, the oldest child, was eternally dressed like was late for a board meeting.  Straight out of the 80s with a shoulder-padded salmon pantsuit and her dyed-blonde hair in a perm that framed her slightly chubby face.  She had come a long way from the auburn-haired teen in overall's Neil had a vague memory of from his childhood.

She was tailed by her current boyfriend, a middle-aged trucker who chose to mark this momentous occasion by putting his least-stained plaid shirt.  The corners of his stubbled mouth were still dripping with chewing tobacco residue.  

“Honey!” Kevin said, embracing his daughter.  “And this must be uh...”

After disentangling herself from her father, Kim lifted a hand gesturing vaguely in the direction of the gentleman.  “This is Rocky.”

“Pleased to meet ya, sir,” said the trucker, taking Kevin's hand.  

“Uh, likewise Rocky,” Kevin replied, shaking it hesitantly.  He was presently engaged in trying to calculate the staggeringly narrow age-difference between him and the man now dating his first child.  

“Guys how are you all!” Kim said, pulling all of them in a group hug.  

Only Travis truly returned the hug.  Neil was trying not to suffocate under the noxious fumes of whatever perfume she was wearing, and Dawn with her slender frame had managed to slip out of the grasp entirely.

“Glad to see you haven't changed, sis,” Travis teased. “Still pushing papers?”

“Papers nothing, little bro.  Real estate has never been this good.  You know I don't know what that guy in the White House is doing right now, but if keeps it up, I'm gonna be filthy rich,” Kim laughed in a way that she surely thought was musical.  

“Maybe you can buy some clothes that come in colors  that don't belong in an old folk's home,” Dawn remarked, her attention somehow still fixed on the Gameboy which should surely have been running out of battery by now.  

“Oh you,” Kim sighed, giving Dawn her own special hug.  A sour-sounding electronic chirp seemed to indicate the gesture had cost Dawn a life. “I love your hair!  I bet this is such a fun time in your life.”

That was the saccharine-sweet way of saying “this is just a phase”. There was definitely a wide line between the two older children and the two younger.  Travis had been made humble by his fall from grace. Had he not, he would have turned out exactly like Kim.  Brimming with sunshine and not a drop of it genuine.

“So,” Kevin said, cutting in.  “The ceremony begins at noon tomorrow.  We have to run Neil to the hospital real quick.”

Kim let out a dramatic gasp.  “Oh no!  What's wrong, little man?”

“It's nothing big,” Neil replied, dodging another attempted hug.  “And it's kind of a private matter.”

Kevin caught the comment and nodded his approval.  “Dawn, Travis are you two going to be okay here at the hotel by yourself?”

Dawn nodded and began walking towards the hotel.  If she had enough AA batteries, she could have survived in a cardboard box.  

“I think we'll be okay, Pops,” Travis said.  “I hope you feel better, Neil.”  

Neil patted Travis's shoulder in a conciliatory way, and the two parted.  He was unable to dodge the second attempt at a hug from Kim, who pushed her head into his shoulder, even though she had to lean down slightly to do it.  

“Feel better, buddy!”  

“Thank you, Kim,” Neil grunted, more than a little embarrassed.

---

The doctor's visit was about what could be expected.  There was nothing wrong with his brain, according to a CAT scan and an MRI.  Kevin Brown's money always did the talking about both procedures were tackled over a five-hour period, despite a warning from the doctor of potential complications with the readings.  

His father was brilliant and humble, but he knew exactly how to get what he wanted. To benefit his children he would go to any lengths.  After Neil had been poked, prodded and had an unseemly collection of fluids removed from and added to his body, the final diagnosis was remarkably unhelpful.  

“Stress-induced narcolepsy?” Kevin asked.  “My son wasn't asleep, he just doesn't remember anything.”  

“That's the best conclusion we have right now.  Some patients with narcolepsy can also experience somnambulism; sleep-walking.  It's uncommon, but it has happened,” replied the stoic, but clearly annoyed Dr. Faust.

“I just,” Kevin sighed in frustration. “I don't understand.”    

“Sir, your son's brain chemistry is fine,” Dr. Faust explained. “Apart from a little sleep deprivation his scans are perfectly normal. Furthermore the toxicology reports show a clean bill of health.  Only that came back was a little bit of underage drinking.  It's not drugs, it's not some form of mental disorder.  The truth is, sir, I don't know what happened to your son.  The best thing we can do is keep an eye on him and if he has another attack like that, bring him right in so we can examine him.”  

“This is unbelievable,” Kevin fumed, his docile nature slowly ebbing away from stress.

“It's okay, Dad,” Neil said, placing a hand on his father's shoulder. “Let's just go, it's midnight and we have the memorial tomorrow.”

Kevin was willing to stay there all night if he had to, but Neil's pleading had worked. He put his jacket back on, without bothering to roll up his sleeves and straightened his tie.  Ever requiring the last word, he turned back to Faust.

“I hope you're right, Doc,” Kevin declared.  “Come on, Neil.”  

#writing #commission #shortfic #cosmichorror #scifi #sliceoflife #fiction #serial #thread

[trustafarian-theserialfiction]

“trustafarian” part 16: girls from 8-11 stay up all night (and I can get a discount) April 4, 2016 10:22pm

The day of the big hoopla, Dan was already exhausted before they left Maison Rokkoku.  Bruce had been in a panic through the end of March after hearing through the show-vine that Wrongbar of all places (even Dan was surprised) was gone-but-not-forgotten.  After finding out it wasn’t a forever thing, and it’d be back sometimes, kind of, but not really, Bruce had gone on some kind of manic bender and dragged Dan and whoever else he could, to every event he got invited to, which was sometimes two or three venues within five blocks within one night.  Or two or three places that were extremely far apart.  Dan couldn’t remember much about any one place, let alone all of them.  They had all had that characteristic humidity, the seasonings varying a bit place to place, depending: sweat and hair product, weed haze, beer and cigarettes, cat piss and patchouli and other weird smells including spilled moonshine.   One night after several hours of watching Bruce throw himself around a tiny lightless room in the market, Dan had gone out for air and in the little alley he’d smelled hash-blunt smoke for the first time in his life, which made him feel profoundly underdeveloped in the opposite of the way his weedless life usually made him feel. Andreah had been there as well, with friends she didn’t seem to need to bring around for introductions.  They all liked Bruce, though, and he seemed to know their names but spent the night in what Dan read as a chemically maxed-out fury.  He seemed to think he’d done Dan a disservice by not bringing him to any of the parties he’d gone to that winter; it was an issue of how fast everything changed. And, specifically, he was upset about the fact that Dan had blinked and missed Wrongbar—what was next, Bassmentality?  So this was them knocking-on-wood.  Refusing to take T.O. for granted.  Not letting good things pass them by. Jean-Paul seemed to gravitate toward Higher Grounds for respite oftentimes when their excursions put them nearby, but he came out with them every night and Dan was thankful.  The club crawl had taken them through the great outdoors, even; they’d gone back to the ravine one night and had a youtube rave somewhere away from where people were sleeping.  It had been green, terrifically green, everywhere new grass and leaves were coming in and the lighthazed-sky oculus over the oasis had dipcoated everything else that bluey-dusk palette.  For a few minutes the green had been so bright against the dusky backgrounding he’d thought he’d somehow stupidly tried some of Bruce’s bottle of fluorescent-purple “rave juice” earlier and gotten so high he’d forgotten.  When the green dimmed down with the nightfall he’d quickly realized that he’d have been much, much higher suddenly, if he was coming up on Bruce-portion-number-two, and he wasn’t.  He’d then rightly chalked it up to being slightly high from all the laughs and the shawarma Jean-Paul had gotten him earlier; after he’d preemptively asked Bruce about an ipod dock/speaker set-up for the yearly flashmob bake-in at High Park, Bruce had done him two better and reemerged from his room with a nice compact vintage boombox with an aux cord as well as a two port usb lithium battery with an led party-light clipped in.  And he’d insisted on bringing it and them with him, and VJing southward through the ravine (before streetcar hopping south to some hardcore shindig Mouse and Pete were excited about, some multiday fest). They’d stopped in to the Mediterranean-and-shawarma place at the Runnymeade intersection to eat, on their way out that night from the Maison. From there they’d walked up, over to Keele, and caught the St. Clair streetcar coreward from there with new transfer slips that had been left in a ziplock bag folded around a magnet stuck to the underside of the TTC shelter bench. Bruce said the magnetbags were all over the city and people even coordinated live in some codeword-heavy facebook group, to find good slips nearby when their stop didn’t have any or a bag had been removed. Apparently everyone in the city who rode transit knew to get transfers they didn’t need so they could cache them for people like Easter eggs, if not in the bags then just around the stop somewhere.  Bruce had said some places on the east side had “set in stone” laundry-line spots and every day there’d be rows of papers like socks drying, folded over a nearby gate top or trash bin.  Dan still hadn’t noticed any such spots but didn’t rule out simply having overlooked them for what they were, before.  Like the weird door to the roof from Bruce’s room.  He’d wished someone had thought to tell him before, so he hadn’t risked the sign-foretold fine at the station more times than necessary.  That evening the giant spire downtown had blinked up at them, all the way up where they were.

Standing in the same spot as he had a few nights back (three or five, just after it had rained and while it was still really warm, before the weather had rewinterized sharply, obviously anticipating his ex’s arrival as warmly as he was), the looming antenna weirded him out today, as it had the time they’d been headed to the ravine.  The last time he—they; the squad, such as it was tonight, with himself, Jean-Paul, and Bruce—had been out of the junction.  It had snowed again overnight, since then. “It’s like something from Blade Runner,” he spoke without thinking, somehow hearing the thousands upon thousands of other times that charge had been made of the thing.  He rolled his eyes at himself, expecting his comment to go over silently.  He was leaning against the streetcar shelter wall absently circling the streetcar loop with his eyes.  They were at the start of the line, and the sky was turning from lilac to coppery black.  It was a cold, clear night.   His breaths were back in front of him, a recurrent spectral inverted-shadow.

“I know,” Jean-Paul agreed. “That thing should only be in a movie-city, its really so ominous and alien, there’s nothing in Montreal like it.”  He paused before correcting, “although they do have that giant electric cross.”

“Like at the funeral in Romeo Plus Juliet!” Bruce was high off his ass and smoking his first road joint in an attempt to summon the streetcar.

Jean-Paul continued like he hadn’t heard. “But that’s not aliens that’s Catholics, different beast.”

“OH MY GOD,” Bruce bellowed, and a couple of the few other people around on the corner in front of them looked over, unfazed but mildly interested.  “That’s exactly what it is, it’s like war of the worlds!  Do you guys know that war of the worlds prog record, Jeff Wayne is the guy?”  Dan didn’t, and Jean-Paul shrugged so he figured not saying anything covered him too.  “Oh snapple-cranapple, we should listen to that sometime this month.” Dan knew what war of the worlds was, he’d seen the Tom Cruise movie on TV.  The comparison kind of fit, that was true; one, the tower was clearly made to let you know that the vista you were seeing was of-the-future but, two, maybe the future was kind of hinky in a hard to place, insectoid-seeming way.  He didn’t know anywhere in Vic that wasn’t at sea level and the fourth floor condo he’d lived in, stood in the shadow of the only actual high-rise in Victoria (which had seen a lot of the last century before making it in to this one).

They got off the streetcar earlier than they had before, at an intersection with a pizzapizza at one corner.  Here Jean-Paul made them wait inside while he went to a side door on the same building and let himself in somehow.  He was back what seemed like a long time later, maybe ten minutes after Dan had started reading a free paper he’d fond on a table. Bruce had wandered off to smoke a joint across the street in the field before that and hadn’t come back. With his friend Elinor at his elbow Jean-Paul finally waved at him through the window and he came back outside, ready to complain.

“Where’s Bruce,” she beat him to the punch, seeming legitimately alarmed for some reason.  It looked like she was gently wringing her hands, even.  She had a sweet, shy kind of voice. Soft and high, like his ex’s singing voice (which was eerily different from her regular voice).  Elinor sounded like Grimes when she talked, and kind of looked like her.  She was dressed like some kind of post-apocalyptic punk doing a Blossom cosplay.  A fair number of girls he saw around town seemed to, it was close to how Andre dressed but there were several key differences that placed them in distinct girl-genres in Dan’s mind.  Andre was very granola but these girls looked like they were more granola.  They looked like they farted granola.  And then yelled at it for being there.  This girl probably only looked like she could yell.

He shrugged and said “somewhere getting high.  Higher.”  He could tell already that she was one of those overly-invested, mother-hen mom-friend types his ex always thought were so perfect for a couple of months.  He still didn’t know what it was about these mom-friend girls that had made his ex try to befriend a string of them, and he wasn’t sure what signalled time-up, each time, either.  He got the sense that neither did the girls, or his ex.  They usually both seemed upset at one another and walked away feeling equally mislead, but he wasn’t clear on what it was all about so he had no idea who had been right.

“Gotta get up, gotta get up, gotta get up,” Jean-Paul sort of mumbled musically to the air, and Dan could hear the 90’s dance even though he didn’t specifically know whatever song it was.  It was that characteristic progression the notes had taken.  Jean-Paul didn’t seem overly concerned about where Bruce could be.  He was smoking a cigarette happily and had been pre-drinking weird medicinal-tasting craft cocktails in his apartment all evening, with Dan going one-for-two.  The cocktails showed on his face by making it pink and pliant-looking.

“I’m gonna text,” she pulled out her phone, looking upset, and pounded some message to Bruce into it.  Almost as soon as she put the phone away there was a shout from across the street, Bruce waving the lit square of his phone screen back and forth at them, deadcentre in the dim field.

Bruce boinged his way back to them hastily as they crossed the street to meet him, and got picked up by the deceptively strong hugging-arms of Elinor, who told him never to worry her like that.  When she put him down again it was just as someone was leaving a box of crusts inside the pizzapizza, and Bruce hooted, scampering in to heist his next batch of munchies.

“Gross, crusts” was all Dan had to say about it.

“Gross, pizzapizza,” Jean-Paul and Elinor corrected in unison.  They laughed together, and Dan could see that they were friends in way that Jean-Paul and Andre, for example, were not.  It didn’t really make him like Elinor more, or maybe it did, he wasn’t sure.

They walked over to the ravine instead of streetcar hopping and again, Dan was admittedly impressed-upon by the sprawling view of the spire, the inland-sea of green around them, and by the ambivalent extremes of the oddly-knowing-and-poetic weather.  On the trail Bruce told them something was afoot at the Circle K, which turned out to mean they were supposed to follow him to the gas station at the foot of the path they were on.  This was where they’d been met by Andre and several of her friends who were also Bruce’s friends but didn’t seem to know Jean-Paul at all and didn’t know Elinor well but were very happy to see her.  They seemed kind of creepy in some way to Dan, like they were too happy and too super-nice.  He couldn’t tell what they were high on but assumed that whatever it was, it was their favourite.  Or it was really agreeing with them, at least.  They seemed very agreed-with.  He didn’t know anyone who acted like that while high.  They were seeming to him like hippies in a movie, but not exactly, more like evangelical baptists or something.  He tried to better recall what he was thinking of, maybe that George Clooney movie O-Brother-Whateverthehell. It had been a while since he’d seen whateverthehell.

They all trooped from the Circle K onto the subway at Dupont (a station Dan had been through but not out in, which Bruce said was his personal favourite), and went down to Higher Grounds to put their heads together. And caffeinate over a pre-bake.  Once they were ensconsed in the vape lounge and everyone Dan didn’t know was inhaling their own personal balloonbag of stabilizer, Dan realized he was feeling queasy.  

“Like about-to-cross-the-graduation-stage queasy.  Is there a--” there was a pharmacy nearby, he knew.  But he had no idea what he could take that was non-drowsy but good for nausea so his next question died on the way.

“DUDE,” Bruce was all agog.  Dan knew that face.  He raised his eyebrows at it, asking it what the fuss was.  Last time the fuss had been that the orange juice wasn’t orange juice.  “Look around you!”

Dan scoffed.  “I don’t want to fall asleep on my feet, I’m not captain weed-face,” he deflected onto his low tolerance, arguing with a stoner about whether weed was the solution to everything was pointless.  One of the Andre-friends laughed like “captain weed-face” had been a really, really funny joke.  Apparently in that universe, it was.  Dan didn’t plan on visiting, regardless.

“You don’t need to be, that’s not what I’m packing!” Holding aloft a snapcase half full of pre-rolls and half full of baggied loose shake, he proceeded to convince Dan that this weed was exactly what he needed.  It worked because he felt like hell.  Falling asleep and missing everything wouldn’t be such a bad call.  But supposedly this was high-cbd pure sativa, which Dan sort of approximately understood when he was told.  He got that the near-absence of thc was supposed to help avoid the couchlock issue. And he got that Bruce had gotten it from a fan who worked at the ultra-fancy quasi-legal dispensary that had opened up a few blocks down Dundas from the Maison.  He just didn’t expect any given drug someone was giving him to be all it was built up to be; years of “really great coke” had never seemed to amount to what he would have called really great highs.

It tasted different in an unexpected way, from the vape bag.  Like honeyed woodpulp or something instead of pine sap.  He felt something lift off his brain, like a layer of crud peeling off it and blowing away.  This was followed in short order by a similar sensation accompanying his queasy feeling’s departure from his midsection. It was a pleasant relief, and he was surprised to be thanking Bruce, and Roscoe for having the lounge.  Roscoe was supine on a lounger with his feet up, black unmarked cowboy boots crossed on an ottoman.  He rocked the chair occasionally on its pillar base, his arms up behind him.  He seemed to be trying to stretch something in his back out.  He knew Bruce and Andre’s friends, and seemed to like them.  Their names were Raven and Shay, but Dan still wasn’t sure which was which, they seemed to be a paired set.  Neither of them looked like a raven.  They were both dressed more or less Elinor, who was also trying to layer on a good high before going back out.

Finally Jean-Paul got a text that said the opener was on.  The showcase was starting two hours late; they’d gotten down to the market expecting one hour later than the posted time plus fifteen minutes for the first act to warm up.  It seemed best to show up after it had started, anyway.  No pre-show showdown that way.  They coated back up and trooped out the back, heading to the venue with the copyright infringement logo, which Dan saw was up on their exterior, glowing like it wasn’t a legal complaint waiting to happen.  Maybe it wasn’t, maybe this was a licensed brand expansion, it was right in the middle of downtown Toronto.  An ambiguous beacon, and Dan hoped it wasn’t an omen.  Raven and Shay were making some kind of fuss about how the Banksy that had been nearby was gone finally, but it was unclear whether they did or didn’t like Banksy.  It was pretty clear they didn’t like 8-11 and didn’t really want to go in.  Neither did Elinor, she was doing the hands again, hanging back. The window of the place was full of a weird art installation of melting horned masks, lit with panic-inducing marshmallow peeps pink and yellow.  There were little cards with text, but he didn’t saunter up to read.  There were people there, smoking outside and talking loudly, and music could be heard from somewhere deep inside the building.  The bass vibrated through the ground and everything else, but nothing of the music itself was coherent from where they were.

Jean-Paul was texting someone who came outside after a few minutes, complaining with feeling about the awol soundtech—this was the person who knew the person who was involved in hosting the event somehow.  They were ushered inside through a maze of small rooms that were and were full of, the kind of hipster sculptural-conceptual art stuff his ex loved. Dan realized she was probably in heaven, as he followed Jean-Paul following his friend through the pitchblack entrance cave lit only by a tv playing a Warholian “weird footage” film, through several psychedelic rooms leading back to a staircase down to a basement from a grindhouse movie, which was full to the low, grizzled pipe-and-wiring rafters, with happy shiny people.  Everyone looked very stylish, sort of like Andre and her friends, but glossier.  He saw a lot of logos and brands, not so many stained or ripped or patched things.   Glad to have found out about and used Jean-Paul's small washer and dryer, Dan realized they were the least fancy people there, in terms of the things his ex generally evaluated as fancy, but he really didn’t care.  It felt like an accomplishment anyway, to be here, holding himself together.  Holding down his new turf, it was supposed to be.  Trying to get her to go away, so this wouldn’t keep happening—so she wouldn’t get attached to some appalling idea like moving to Toronto.  Like making all new friends for him to run into and later be unfriended by.  

Their posse squoze its way in to the periphery of the thick crowd, shoulder-to-shoulder with one another.  Dan heard Bruce ask Raven-and-or-Shay if they were going to be okay and whichever it was yelled back that it was actually a great place to be on acid.  The yell barely made it to him from three feet away, but he was focusing on hearing what they said.  Acid, duh. So that was that mystery solved.  He’d never done acid but didn’t really think this place or this crowd would have been in his top ten places to be on acid.  It was enough like a visualization of a freaky trip as it was, which really seemed too intentional to have not been. The walls bristled with a thick, uninviting layer of some kind of calcification that was everywhere, and full of cobwebs.  

The first set had ended as they were on the stairs, and despite people overflowing from the dancefloor into the linked circuit of downstairs house-of-frightenstein style alcoves, very little space had opened up while the mc queued up some canned music to time-fill.  Dan was again glad he’d taken Bruce up on the weed, and scanned the crowd. People were sweating and looking restless but resolute about holding the floor.

He sighed, kind of glad of the press of people in the harsh yellow light of the maybe-go-outside-for-a-minute between-set lights.  He didn’t see anyone he knew aside from who he was with, which meant his ex hadn’t brought anyone.  He wasn’t sure who she would have brought, when he considered it. At his elbow Jean-Paul prodded him and when he tilted his head to show his attention was drawn, said “that guy at the mixer is Elinor’s friend.”  The mc.  Dan hadn’t clocked him as someone who would be in Elinor’s circle, but had looked at his outfit and decided he’d never feel like he, personally, looked like too much of a hipster, again.  It was reassuring in a way.  He was dressed like the opening sequence of rugrats had been left out overnight to form a puddingskin which had then been skimmed off and made into Hawaiian shirts, which he had decided to make into everything he was wearing.  He had on one pair of Urkel glasses as a headband and one on his face, and Dan wasn’t sure either had real lenses.  They might not have had lenses.  He was wearing one dangling earring, which seemed to be a string of shorter dangly earrings stuck together.  It looked like there was even a tiny figurine in the little flare cascade.

“He’s very...” hip, colourful, dressed-up, silly, visible, elaborate, contrived, “very 8-11.”  Jean-Paul barked a HA and Dan was gratified that they seemed to agree.

“He’s sweet.  Day job is teaching people tennis.  The rent here is astronomical, and they got a C&D for the sign they’ve been sitting on.  But it’s really something, what their collective is doing here.”  Dan wondered how many tennis instructors it took to mismanage a venue.  But he was impressed; these people were his age, presumably, like the little mc who had flittered away with people, leaving the floor-fillers to their own devices in the eye of the oubliette.  Dan couldn’t have even started to consider an undertaking like leasing an event space and floating it for however long.  It sounded like a nightmare.  But the place was packed, at least.  Then he wondered how many people were there gratis, like the seven person group he was in.  

The floor had emptied a tiny bit, and Raven and Shay were now—by some agreement between them he’d missed—flowing out from around the squad into a gap at the centre of the floor.  The two of them began to do a quarter-time interpretive dance to the fillermusic, clearing a wider and wider sphere of avoidance around them as tighter-wound attendees side-eyed them and decided it was time for air after all. About half as many as left, stood around with their space-price beers in hand, watching in amusement.  If Dan hadn’t known the two of them were on acid, he’d probably have guessed quickly.  They looked like melting puppets doing a two-sides-of-the-mirror pantomime intermittently.  It didn’t look bad, but it was extremely uncomfortable in a vague way.  Eventually Andre and Bruce joined them, picking up their flow.  They weren’t bad either, and there were a couple hoots from onlookers.  Jean-Paul tapped his elbow again, and gestured toward the entrance with his head.  Dan nodded and the two were sort of conveyed via a sort of peristalsis through the twisting warren of parlors, out to the front where it was cold and dark in sharp contrast to the interior.  Jean-Paul was smoking by the time they were on the sidewalk.  Weirdly Dan could feel himself wanting to be back inside, instantly.  He thought it was the cold until he spied a familiar shape with a sinking sensation of dread.  It was his ex, standing with people, talking and people-watching casually.  She looked a little stiff, like she was exercising a lot of self-control to seem like she was totally at-ease.  He knew that was because she was.  Suddenly he didn’t find running into her very intimidating, because he had, and she just looked like...the same uptight insecure weirdo he had known forever. When he tried to turn around more fully so that she couldn’t see him, it had the opposite effect and from over his shoulder he heard a noise, like she had noticed him.

“Oh, it’s you two,” she announced herself, breaking away from her people.  Dan turned their way and saw them behind her, watching from where they were standing.  They weren’t glaring or anything, no one was throwing bottles.  “Long time no see,” she shrugged at them both, forming a triangle with them by the display window.

“Big night tonight,” Jean-Paul mentioned, acknowledging that she was there and why.  He sounded very bored, but didn’t blow his cigarette smoke in her face, which Dan appreciated.  He really didn’t want a scene.  He hadn’t planned on talking to her at all, the thought hadn’t occurred to him.  

“Ugh don’t make me think about it, I’m supposed to be in there right now.”

“You were supposed to be on hours ago,” Dan spoke up, but just carrying on the conversation like it wasn’t weird to be talking to her seemed really spineless, so he added, “long time, yeah.”  He grimaced, feeling stupid.  That was barely words.

“Oh, Dan, don’t be so—listen, I’m sorry,” she sounded troubled, and he believed her when she said she was sorry, but he was also annoyed suddenly by how she’d said it.  He hadn’t even considered that she would apologize to him, it had seemed a lot like everyone wanted him to apologize to her for wasting her time and money and emotional energy and bla bla bla. “Look things ended, and it could have, it didn’t need to be.  I shouldn’t have listened to that asshole, and I’m sorry I let him publish that, I was just—we were high and I was shit-talking, I forgot—I didn’t really think it was all on-record or whatever, after we started doing lines, and yeah.  I guess that’s journalism. I’m sor—it’s my bad.  Please don’t stay mad at me,” she concluded in a kind of wheedling tone. He heard Jean-Paul scoff out a puff of air from his nose, next to him.  Suddenly suspicious, he looked at Wishelle closely; her skin looked washed out and too dry, wherever she hadn’t put makeup, and he could see that she’d had trouble because she’d decided to glue in extra long eyelashes and it had run into her liquid eyeliner-corrections time.  No one else would ever have noticed, unless they’d seen her screaming at her reflection’s eyeliner for hours, a trillion times.

“Maybe I wont,” he finally shrugged.  “Listen, good luck.”  He kind of wanted to remind her that she was about to do something really stressful.  She groaned theatrically and shifted where she stood, expelling some tension.  Her outfit looked cute, dark matte tights sticking out from under her big coat, and it annoyed Dan to be wearing the shoes she liked.  And the coat she’d picked.  They still looked like a salt and pepper shaker set.

“See you inside?” she sounded fretful, but he wasn’t sure whether she wanted them to watch or not.

“We’ll be there,” Jean-Paul cut in decisively.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The two-track set Wishelle had put together went find, if sort of underwhelming.  She’d done a sort of spooky-surfy musicbox-sounding plink-plink-plink kind of riff on some sort old doowop sounding base-track Dan didn’t recognize. There were distorted loops of a few samples of vocal sections, the one that was most decipherable was “we loved each other we just couldn’t get along.”  It was about their breakup, hit like an epiphany.  He wasn’t the only one who kept thinking about when they’d made music together when he did new work.  Her own on-mic contributions were repetitions of the phrases sung in a way that sounded like she only knew English phonetically. It was fine, overall, but it was hardly thrilling or innovative.  Not as many people came back in for the second opener, but it was crowded and she had a new logo printed the laptop plugged in to her big keyboard.  Her music sounded really sad to Dan, melancholic even.  It was pretty but he felt it draining him while he listened to it.  It was a lot like the feeling he’d been trying to avoid when he’d said he didn’t want to get kushblasted before getting here.

They stuck around for the appearance of the headliner, who was another thing all together; candles on plinths were being lit around the spot in the centre of the audio equipment.  Some dark synth longplay was on to keep people happy in the downtime.  Seemed like a fire hazard to be setting up candles, from Dan’s point of view.  Elinor and Jean-Paul were conferring about something under the general din; she at least had stopped looking worried about things.  The others were still holding a circle of floor with their ritualistic looking modern ballet, but had been relegated to the absolute front of the crowd. They seemed happy to have started a mosh, such as it was.

Wishelle appeared again after ten or fifteen minutes, and seemed intent on watching the closing performance, but after standing in the throng for a minute, looked around impatiently, her gaze quickly locking with his, laserlike.  We crossed the beams, he joked to himself, feeling sort of pathetic.  She drifted his way and asked if he wanted to come upstairs and do a line of some really good coke she’d been linked up with, and for a second he missed her so much that he said sure.  Or he missed coke, or having his life make sense to his mom, or something.  Whatever he missed, missing it hit him like an icepick in that moment, and he chased her upstairs to try to get away from it.  He wasn’t sure the others had seen him leave, but he had his phone and if necessary he could get on wifi somewhere and coordinate, or just go back to the Maison himself.

Upstairs in the staff bathroom (which seemed to be as much in use as the other toilet closet), they did the rest of her coke, which turned out to once again be coke Dan wouldn’t have called good.  He felt worse immediately and said “I can’t believe you told that guy I had a trust fund, what the hell was that about?”

She seemed taken aback like she hadn’t been expecting bickering when she’d invited him to do coke with her in the bathroom, but she laughed. “That’s me. You’re not the trustfund kid, you’re the scammer.”

“What?”

She sighed, rolling her eyes cokeily, fishing around in the baggy for anything that might form a line of granules.  “He was making fun of us both, he’s an asshole.  Trustafarian scammer.  As in, a scammer who targets trustafarians.”  Oh. Dan his misread it.  But then, so had Jean-Paul.  This way was actually kind of better—at least it was only half a character assassination.  He had never been scamming her.  Probably that had been the Slackjaw guy projecting because he was scamming her, for a story at least, and assumed Dan was like him.  Dan decided they probably had been fucking but that it really didn’t matter now anyway.  “He introduced me to his friend who’s a producer but apparently I wasn’t supposed to do coke with his friend, so bla bla bla, you know?” They had definitely been fucking.

“What a fucking loser,” Dan smirked, meaning the guy and her as well, a little.  To cover that part better he added “you already ditched him, right?” She loved ditching people.

“Obviously, with that man-bun hair?  He was the worst.  So pretentious and fake-woke.”

He laughed and said “NEXT,” as in bring-in-a-new-one, and she laughed because it was a thing they said to make eachother laugh, and then kissed him.  It was unexpected and awkward, but most of their kisses had been awkward somehow.

“I need to go find—my friends,” he broke it off and stepped toward the door.

“He’s not going to—come on, stay a minute,” she was wheedling again, and it was patently unattractive.  It took Dan a second to fixate on what she’d started to say, but the word “he” was like a hook, pulling his attention back to it.

“You’re just trying to make me stay in here.”

She lost her patience, he saw it happen. It was simultaneously when she stomped her little booted foot on the mangled linoleum and balled her fists.  She’d never actually punched him but when she was mad she went into what he thought of as her cannonball form. “YEAH, NO SHIT.”

“Okay, I’m sorry, look—this is a surprise and I’m not really into it. I’m still--” recovering from when you dumped me because some asshole with stupid hair convinced you it was a good career move.  Dan felt himself get angrier, the feeling propelled by the stimulant wave like mario doing a spring jump. “Hey, y’know what, fuck you,” and he started to open the door.

She reached past him and shut it with a bang, and the jarring noise clapped the edge off his frustration with her for a second, but he knew what this mood was, and he knew he’d be back to full frustration in a second.  This was her fighting mood.  “Please don’t run off,” she sounded annoyed but like she was trying to be calm.  “You know I’m just—it’s the coke.  You’re being mean, too.  We’re both being assholes.”  You’re being an asshole, he wanted to say.  I’m just here. “I’m sorry I made things weird, I really want us to be friends.” Couldn’t’ve wanted that when we were a couple? he wanted to ask. What had changed, he asked himself.  Everything, came the answer.  He lived in Toronto now, and she didn’t.  He was friends with the kind of people who were friends with the people she tried so hard to network with for work.

“I’m sure you do,” he said, wanting it to be mean.  She looked hurt and angry and stepped away and he could tell he’d been mean successfully.  He told her “this isn’t high-school anymore, grow up,” and left her in the bathroom.  It felt like the most epic, savage burn on an ex anyone had ever gotten off. He walked away feeling amazing for about half the time it took to get back through the eddies of people in all the little antechambers.  By the time he was in the main performance space, he felt kind of shitty.  It was utterly black inside except for the candles and a few cell phones, and the maestro was at work.  It was quite the production, in fact.  Basically a one-man melodic metal band on a synth, with backing layering filled in by a loopstation.  The music successfully engulfed him and took him out of himself, and when the house lights were starkly flipped back on afterward, he blinked, wondering who he had come in here looking for.

Jean-Paul was there, his hair a halo, unmistakable as always.  Bruce and that contingent were all excitedly talking to the synth lord.  It occurred to Dan that they had prior knowledge of the biggest name on the flyer, although he didn’t—it was probably why they’d shown up. He couldn’t image why else Andre would’ve agreed to, when he thought about it.  He went to join Jean-Paul and Elinor along the wall, watching people leave.  The whole last set had taken only as long as he’d been in the bathroom.  He wasn’t sure how long that had been, now.  It felt like it had been two minutes.  He chewed the inside of his cheek gently, trying to keep his teeth busy.

“What was all that?  You missed this Fragonard guy here,” Jean-Paul gestured with his chin toward the front.  Bruce was bouncing around, they all looked like groupies. “It was very... heavy metal and reflective.”

“Yeah, uh.  I.  Saw the candles.  Atmosphere.”

Elinor looked at him closely for what seemed like the first time, peering into his face. “You look like you want to leave,” she said, and he liked her.

“I do.  I’m, I want to go.  Back.  Home,” he caught himself add on to the tumble of words.  He felt like he’d done something sneaky or wrong—he realized he was feeling guilty, maybe for “relapsing” and not thinking about the others or wanting to tell them.  They’d be worried if he did and were worried already because now he was acting different and looked weird.  He tried not to make it worse by getting paranoid about it.  Maybe it was because they were all there to back him up and he’d ditched them to go do drugs and ...relapse on his relationship.  For as long as it took them to get on eachother’s nerves he had half been hoping she’d ask him to move back with her.  His thoughts were choppy and it felt like he was getting wires crossed.  “I think this place is getting to me.”

Jean-Paul looked like he was going to say something, his mouth opening for a second before he shut it again.  He looked at Bruce and Andre and their friends instead, and told Elinor “you take Dan out, I’ll find out what they’re doing now,” before moving decisively to do so.

Elinor slid into the space Jean-Paul had left, looking at Dan still, in that careful, mom-friend way.  “I wanted to go upstairs to find my friend and say goodnight,” her tone suggested he might like to go too, which he had just said was the case.  He rolled his eyes and then felt like an ass.  She was just being nice.  Nodding with what felt like an insincere expression of some sort, he lead the way out because she hadn’t.  Upstairs he broke off when she spotted Maximum Urkeldrive and went to the frontmost foyer before the main door, hovering in the dark next to the TV with the black and white footage, hoping his ex hadn’t stuck around after he’d gone downstairs. The others found him as a group, with the solo guy, Fragonard in tow. He and Bruce were yaking each other’s ears off about some dude named Shulgin. It didn’t sound like music talk.

They let the place as a tangle of walkers of talkers, and when Dan spotted his ex talking to the same people she’d been with earlier, he was thankful all over again for the camaraderie that had been tapped for him.  He was so elated that for the rest of the walk north through Chinatown up to the a transfer-laden stop to hop from, he understood that cliche about walking on air. Even on the streetcar he felt like he wasn’t really touching anything around him, like he was being propelled through space because there was no resistance, not because he was sitting in something with powered motion.  At the subway the group split up, and Elinor opted to go along with Bruce and the others.  Dan assumed it was because they were more likely to need a nanny with them and so she was magnetically drawn to that side of the split.  They all went off to some other party the music man wanted to go to in Scarborough. Bruce said Pete was there, and tried to beg Dan and Jean-Paul into coming along, but looked at their faces and seemed to catch some clue from whatever they looked like.

On the walk up from high park station, after a long, serious silence, Jean-Paul asked “so, how’d that go?”

Dan felt like it was a question he’d only have asked if he knew something about it from how Dan was acting, but it wasn’t like there was any way to confirm it if he just dodged around addressing it. “What, how’d what go?  Tonight?  I guess I got,” revenge? “closure,” he awkwardly jammed in, because it sounded mature. More mature than whatever they’d really gone down there for.  His injured pride?  It all seemed to corny in retrospect, and he wondered if he had, at last, managed to have one good coke high in his life after all.  When he reflected in belated confusion on his cloud-9 stint, his elevated mood really only made sense in that context.  Or maybe he was just in the valley now, and that was why he couldn’t figure out why a win had felt like a win.

“I found it all underwhelming, if I’m being honest,” Jean-Paul had a tone of arch sniffiness, and Dan laughed.

“Not the next Kate Bush, monsieur critic?”

“Hardly!” His loud scoff echoed off the dark, well-treed suburban enclave they were traversing.  In the distance the city was quiet except for the occasional siren of the red-light running variety.

Dan started to laugh, but it caught, and instead he threw up into a hedge, some runny bile that seemed to be all he had left from the stew he’d made himself for lunch and eaten again for dinner. Suddenly feeling very miserable, he thought for a horrible few moments that he might start bawling there in the street, bent over a hedge, with his friend as an audience.  He felt like he wanted to be done talking about his ex forever, but he didn’t know how to say that without sounding overly dramatic or caught up in the moment or some other stupid thing.  It felt like she was there, like she’d piggybacked along with them because she wanted them to talk about her. Dan heard himself make an anguished sort of moan, the kind anyone might if they were suddenly violently ill.

“Okay there?” Jean-Paul’s hand on his back, the hand of a friend who has been right beside countless other early-morning street-puking fools, and been one many times besides.  It made Dan feel a lot better about life in general, somehow.  Not just that someone was there but the way Jean-Paul was there.  He felt himself sag almost all to pieces, and let Jean-Paul walk them back to the groundfloor unit where it was warm and bright, and sit him down on the couch and make him tea.  Jean-Paul made himself a hot toddy and the two of them talked about nothing for a while, until Dan fell asleep under the heavy silk afghan draped over the back of the sofa.

[thesinglesjukebox]

RANDY NEWMAN - PUTIN [3.55] Days since last bout of controversy: five 0

Brad Shoup: This was corny when Randy dropped it last year. After 14 months of Putin standing in for the failure of technocratic governance, it's excruciating. It's a sketch of the man as rendered from a Colbert monologue: a collection of rusty zingers (the Kurds line, pretty much everything related to The Putin Girls) with rotted connective tissue. I suppose I should be thankful that he just made a mildly ambitious Mark Russell tune, rather than stretching this to Broadway length. [1]

Alfred Soto: He's topical and funny! He inserts details like the Trans-Siberian railroad. Through it all he sings in the thick-as-tar accent signifying that He's Being Ironic. As usual with this dude, he goes over my head and talks to boomers. [4]

Iain Mew: Robbie Williams's take was more enjoyable to listen to and funnier. It was also 90% about Robbie Williams and still had as much to say about Putin as this. [3]

Ian Mathers: This sub-Capitol Steps crap is the kind of thing that makes it very hard to remember that Newman is perfectly capable of both cleverness and decent melodies. I mean, he is, right? Have I been living a lie? [3]

Edward Okulicz: Newman takes this barely-there song which would have to weigh twice as much to even be a trifle, and sings it in a way that's so leaden, it crashes like a bowling ball. It's like a really awful musical number where the writer smugly thinks that because things rhyme, they're clever. It's no "Putin Putout," that's for sure. [2]

Nortey Dowuona: Big, shiny, cheesy singing from Newman as the swinging, chaotic piano sails through the expanding, energetic drums, tangled horns, tinkling guitars, sharply drawn strings and goofy choirs alongside the stiff and vivid bass. [7]

Rebecca A. Gowns: This reminds me of elotes: corn covered in cheese. Randy Newman has made Putin into a cartoon villain, one that's half-Disney, half-South Park. It's theatrical, silly, clever in a nerdy way, and dumb if you think about it for longer than a moment. Lord help me, I like it. I really shouldn't. But I do. Much like elotes. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: Well, now I know how Mueller's flipping everyone. [3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: "Great political art doesn't exi-" [0]

Jonathan Bradley: In his 1999 song "Great Nations of Europe," Randy Newman turned the colonial powers of the West into Randy Newman characters: nasty, self-serving, and pathetic in a way that fails to dispel their malice. "Putin," from Newman's 2017 album Dark Matter, does the same for Vladimir; the Russian president is here an aspiring imperialist overly amused by silly puns about "Kurds and whey." When The Simpsons had George H.W. Bush move to its setting of Springfield, the show's executive producer Bill Oakley clarified that their parody was "not a political attack; it's a personal attack," and "Putin" works along similar lines. This Putin is a man who thinks a great deal of himself, and is dangerous enough to insist that those around him should too. That allows for propagandist grandeur as well as pettiness; this Putin claims everyman status while insisting at every turn of his own superiority: "You saying Putin's getting big-headed?" he scoffs. "Putin's head's just fine!" Newman allows his character to wander into bombast before that character reels back his comedic excesses in recognition of their silliness. So this Putin has a chorus line that chants ribald praise, only to have it negated by a paternal scolding: "Putin hates the Putin Girls, cause he hates vulgarity." Later, when his offsiders try to tell him the United States won the Second World War, he chuckles: "that's a good one, ladies." This probably has little in common with the real, nastier, more capable Russian leader, but "Putin" doesn't need to have a lot to say about Eastern European geopolitics. Its concerns are about subjects Newman has sung of across six decades now: power, and the brazenly squalid ways those who wield it are happy to use it. [9]

Will Adams: At the beginning of the year I complained about "Chained to the Rhythm" and its passive, inoffensive approach to the protest song format, but I didn't know how bad it could be. Imagine that same lack of insight except with plonky piano, punching down on women and Peter Griffin levels of explaining-the-joke ("Putin puttin' on pants!" "Kurds! Way!" GET IT?!). At the end of 2016 we were relieved the year was over, and that 2017 would be a fresh start. It's now almost 2018 and with each day we're wondering how many more circles of Hell we're about to descend. Won't the music at least sing us sweetly into the fire? [0]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#Randy Newman #Putin

[saxifactumterritum]

for @lucyemers: Can I ask for: "put your arm around my--or just fall on me, that works too" for any of my favorite detective fandoms? (Endeavour, Lewis, Grantchester? Whichever is calling to you.) 

[I did Lewis :) def in a dopey Hathaway mood. Thanks for the variety to choose from, this was kinda fun. Hope you like]

“The Story Museum?” Hathaway asks, following Lewis out the front of the station into the drizzle, the bottom of St Aldates looking greyer and duller than ever. “What, did the White Witch escape the wardrobe?”

“Yes, James,” Lewis says. “We’ll walk.”

Hathaway groans even though the Story Museum is just up St Aldates, five minutes away. He pushes his hands into his pockets and falls into familiar step. Robbie’s been back from New Zealand for three months now and they’re mostly back in sync, the most friction that comes up between them these days is a quick game of rock, paper, scissors for the honour of ‘you be in charge for this’. James is sure Robbie’s rigging it somehow, he’s somehow ended up lead in most of the unpleasant situations they’ve come across. He is automatically the lead on a scene, Lewis is there to consult not give orders, but Hathaway does defer to him if Lewis gets a head of steam going and forgets. Hathaway walks a little closer, so they’re shoulders are brushing, and Lewis snorts.

“Not the White Witch,” Hathaway says.

“No white witch, just a body in the library,” Lewis says. “The butler did it.”

“A homicide? At the story museum?” Hathaway says, looking at Lewis. He looks good, still, relaxed and happy.

“Did you listen to Moody?” Lewis asks, mildly, and then reaches out to rest a hand in the small of James’s back. James grimaces; he’s been effectively hiding his slight fever from Robbie all day, hopefully this isn’t going to be the end of him. Robbie doesn’t seem to notice any extra heat. “Let’s cross the road. Not in the museum, round the back where they store things. It seems someone fell, Doctor Hobson says not an accident.”

“Right,” Hathaway says.

They walk the rest of the way in silence. Hathaway talks to Hobson on the scene and looks at the body from the top of the stairs. His head fills with static and then quickly empties, leaving him unsteady and light-headed, oddly woozy, the image of death imprinted on his corneas like when you look at a light and blink hard. He goes outside for a cigarette while Lewis does his own investigation of the good doctor. Maddox is already there going over the scene and comes out to join him.

“Bit of a mess, sir,” she says, ducking under cover of the pram park with him. “No smoking, unless you’re a dragon.”

“Sorry?”

Maddox points to a sign which says, exactly as she relayed, ‘no smoking unless you are a dragon’. Hathaway stubs his cigarette out- his hands are trembling a bit anyway. It’s freezing, the rain somehow down his collar, but he can feel heat at the back of his neck and cheeks.

“Bloody big mess,” he agrees. He’d only taken a quick glance. “What’ve you got?”

Maddox runs through it; volunteer, too young, Christ Church student doing fine art. Queer. Maddox says it with a pause, side-eying Hathaway like he’s going to bring accusatory questions to bear on her. Then again, hadn’t Lewis done that to him, when they’d investigated… ? it’s an accurate enough concern. James’s head swims and he lights another cigarette.

“Did you turn into a dragon?” Maddox says.

“Piss off, sergeant. Pop across the road to her college, find out what you can.”

“Her father teaches history at Christ Church choristers, sir,” Maddox says, grimly. “Her brother’s there, too. Do you want the honours?”

“God, no, Lewis can do it,” James says. “Everything’s very close, do they ever stray beyond st Aldates?”

“They live in Thame, sir,” Maddox says. “Big family pile. I’d hold off on finding her friends and stuff until talking to the family, sir.”

“Right. You know your job, what are you pissing about out here for?” James says, trying to hide how cold and tired and odd he feels. Maddox gives him a completely unimpressed look and leaves him to his misery and cigarette, merely pointing at the dragon sign again as she goes. Robbie comes out and James shuts his eyes, relieved.

“You alright, James?” he asks, coming and taking James’s elbow. “Here, give that.”

He takes the cigarette and puts it out.

“Got to me a bit,” James says.

“Happens, even now,” Robbie says. “That all? You look whiter than your usual luminescence. Laura commented.”

“She would,” James grumbles, as the world falls away.

“Alright, there is something else I can tell,” Robbie says, distant, far away, fuzzy, leagues and leagues over the sea. “You look unsteady, put an arm arou- oh! Or tip over. Alright, lad.”

James rests his aching head against Robbie’s shoulder and lets the earth tilt and blur. Robbie keeps him up, hands strong and sure, then carefully helps him sit. He vanishes for a bit and returns with Laura. James rolls his eyes at her but she gives him a stern look so he keep schtum.

“You’re running a fever,” Laura says. “Take him home, Robbie.”

“Right you are,” Robbie says, kissing her forehead and then dragging James to his feet.

“Up and down, up and down,” James grumbles, leaning on his shoulder.

They walk slowly back to the station, James revives as they get further from the scene and the dizziness fades a little. It seems to come and go in waves. Robbie still makes him sit in the car while he runs back inside for their keys and whatnot and James falls asleep. He wakes up when Robbie shakes him, careful not to be rough. He’s crouched outside the car and James blinks at him, fuzzy and dull.

“We’re home, come on,” Robbie says. “Let’s get you inside and warm.”

James realises he’s shivering halfway across the drive and decides that Robbie looks warm. He glues himself to Robbie’s side and gets a soft laugh and an arm around him for his trouble. He’s guided inside and up to his room, Laura and Robbie’s room down the hall, the spare across the hall, the office and bathroom. James looks around the familiar spaces, feeling distant from it all. They haven’t lived here long, only a few weeks. He’d helped Robbie house search and known he’d have his own room, but he hadn’t expected to be asked to live there full time in whatever capacity he wanted. The river’s close for canoeing and they have a garden for Robbie to putter around. James’s heart squeezes and he scrubs at his face; he’d always assumed he’d end up on his own, maybe get Robbie on every other weekend from his romantic life. But they’d made space for him.

“Come on,” Robbie says, pushing him into the room and toward the bed. “Good god, Jim, when did you last tidy in here? You haven’t even been in long enough to make a mess but look at this place.”

“I just never finished unpacking,” James says, sitting on the edge of the bed.

The dizziness is coming back again. He shuts his eyes. He hadn’t quite believed he’d not be moving again soon. His guitar’s unpacked and his books, but they’re downstairs in the living-room, Robbie had insisted and Laura likes listening to him play. James curls up, not really paying attention to his surroundings or Robbie being in the room, giving in to instinct and memories of being alone and just sleeping things like this off. He dreams an odd, dim dream about a cloudy dragon, and when he wakes up it’s to dimness and someone moving quietly around. He’s no longer in his clothes, down to his suit-trousers and undershirt, and he’s under a blanket. He sits up and reaches for the overhead.

“Hang on, lad,” Robbie says, softly, and puts on a standing-lamp instead.

The room’s filled with warm light, a bulb that’s less bright or one of those slow environmentally friendly ones. James looks around in confusion; the last of his books that he’d not unpacked downstairs are on shelves, the boxes are gone, the photograph of he and his Dad is on a shelf, the picture of Nell, younger and happy in the sunshine, next to it. His signed Ry Cooder record sleeve is also displayed, his picks and capos and gorilla tips are in a ceramic bowl James recognises from packing at Robbie’s. He feels bewildered and exhausted but Robbie comes and sits on the bed, resting a hand on his forehead and peering at him. James leans into the hand and closes his eyes.

“Thought I’d make myself useful while you slept,” Robbie says. “Feeling any better? I think your fever’s up, I’d expect that in the evening. Lyn and Patrick always wanted ice lollies when they were sick, you don’t have a sudden urge for mini-milks and strawberry splits do you?”

“I always have an urge for strawberry splits,” James says without inflection, then ruins it by yawning widely and slumping further against Robbie.

“I didn’t want to invade, like, so I left you your trousers but you should get out of them before you sleep again,” Robbie says.

“Why did you…” James gestures helplessly around at his carefully unpacked and displayed items. Robbie sighs.

“You seem to be having a bit of trouble settling here,” Robbie says, shifting so his hand’s cradling James’s face. James closes his eyes again but he can tell Robbie’s smiling, it’s in his voice as he goes in. “Thought this might help. and I got to have a nose. I’m a detective, naturally nosey. I’ve been curious about this lot for years; what does a man like you keep? I half expected a single rucksack, battered from use, and a suit. Should’ve seen the books coming, I suppose. And the fancy glasses.”

“Speaking of, I’m wearing contact,” James says, waking up a bit more and getting up, heading to the bathroom to get more comfortable. He comes out in his glasses and boxers, searching idly for pyjamas. Or sweats, more likely, he can’t remember buying pyjamas in years. Robbie hands him a pair and a bottle of water along with two paracetamol. “Thanks.”

“Back off to sleep?”

“I’d prefer company.”

“I could accompany you.”

“You’d be bored stiff, Robbie.”

“Maddox sent me the case file on that contraption of yours,” Robbie confesses, pointing an accusatory finger at the ipad on the bed. “Sofa?”

They head downstairs and James curls up against Robbie, shivering even with a blanket so Robbie gets a duvet from the spare room and a cup of tea before letting James curl up close again. He puts the TV on, his feet up, and works on the case file while James gives in to the soft fuzz the world seems to be today. He nearly drops his tea, dozing off without finishing, and Robbie takes it away and tucks his covers around him, wraps an arm tighter around him, and kisses his hair. James breathes out, the realisation that he really is home, that it feels like home, that he’s wanted and welcome, it all washes over him in an exhausted wave of light-headed relief and sweeps him on under to sleep, warm and safe and watched over.

#lewis #I dunno what to tag this #nice happy pleasing relationships where everyone is happy and no one is dead #well someone is dead because this is lewis #but #fic #prompts