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caesium-55 · 1 month

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—seven days. [ ii ]

pairing: max verstappen x manager! reader.

summary: as the third time world champion, max verstappen's manager, you function on the belief that whatever max verstappen wanted, max verstappen shall get. but this time, after four years of working as his manager, you can't give him what he wants anymore and that was to stay.

author's note: not beta-read. not edited. here's part 2 folks. part 3 is on the works now. did i write this fic instead of studying for my important quiz tomorrow? yes, yes i did. pls pray for my score.

masterlist.

For Christmas in 2019, Max has gotten you an apartment near his in Monaco. It is a loft apartment good for one on the 8th floor, a building away from where Daniel and Max lived. Originally, he wants to get you the unit a floor below his. You decline quickly, insisting that you are very fine with rooming with Julia and Kendall, who are both members of the Red Bull PR team whom you have gotten close with since your first year working with Red Bull. Max may have beef with the PR team for making him do a lot of embarrassing shit for the views but you're besties with most of them and actually thank them for making Max suffer through PR stuff because you cannot afford therapy and watching Max suffer through PR-related activities is a good form of free therapy. Also, Monaco apartments are fucking expensive. Red Bull might be paying you well but not well enough to afford an apartment in a country as expensive as Monaco.

“I want you close,” he tells you. If you did not know any better, you'd have butterflies fluttering in your intestines right about that moment. Sometimes, Max utter the most heart-fluttering of nonsense without meaning to. It causes your heart to stutter more times than you would like to admit.

“Well, I don't want you close.”

Max will never ever win an argument with you. He knows that. You know that. The best he can do is come to a compromise, a compromise that is usually tailored to suit whatever you want.

So you got that small loft apartment a building away, good for one person only. It's easy to clean and it's cheap, Max already said that, which makes you happy because you can set a payment plan for that. An apartment as a Christmas gift is already too much, borderline giving you a heart attack already. Rich people spending their money give you, a person of the middle class folks, heart attacks. Why can't Max be normal and give you a normal gift? A bracelet? A bag? You’ll even accept it if he gave you a slice of cheesecake. Not even your parents can buy you an apartment.

It has only been three years since the keys are passed on to your ownership and people say three years is enough time for a person to make a place home. But your apartment doesn't even feel like home, only a place you’ll sleep in if you happen to be in Monaco for the evening.

Home is that humble, two-storey house painted in red and yellow in Lynnwood Avenue, Vista Del Pueblo, Austin, a total picture of a picket fence dream. Home is Abuelo's old farmhouse in El Paso where you spent your childhood riding horses and driving ATVs across the dusty dry earth. Home is the retro milkshake place owned by the sweet old couple that has been in the neighborhood longer than your entire existence. Home is the tree-lined streets where you walked the family senior dog, Niko. Home is the Austin Fire House, your Dad’s workplace that you visited a handful of times back when you were a child to deliver cookies that your Abuela baked so your Dad could share it with his co-workers. Home is your mom’s clinic in the middle of downtown, always smelling like eugenol, disinfectant, formaldehyde, and her perfume. Home is not glitz and gold and glamor and cash cash cash. Home is not seeing wealthy people left and right. Home is not Monaco.

And it is not like you stayed long in your place either. You're always off traveling around the world with the Red Bull team and accompanying Max wherever he needs your presence. You don't even spend your breaks in that apartment because you immediately fly home to your family once a break is graciously given to you before flying off again to watch Max collect trophy after trophy.

Six days from now, you're going to be flying off to Texas. That means you have six days—less than six days actually—to pack all your crayons and go. Of course you're going to pack up the day before you leave. Doing shit last minute makes your life exciting, and it's not like you had a lot of shit to pack anyway. All your belongings can be tucked into a total of three suitcases. Three years worth of belongings in three suitcases.

you: you doin good there?

Max has been holing himself up in his penthouse since your arrival from Abu Dhabi, probably dealing with his breakup with Kelly. A shame, really. You thought the two looked good together. (Do they really? the asshole part of your brain thinks.)

And P. Thank God for that child’s existence. You hate children but P is an exception. P brings the best out of Max. Max has gotten the chance to act as the father he never had. It's heartwarming, to be honest.

him: not really no

him: can you bring me coffee

you: on it champ

Fifteen minutes later, you’re knocking on the gigantic double doors of his penthouse, a tall styro cup of espresso from that cute café two streets down and a slice of blueberry cheesecake because you’re thoughtful enough to buy him his favorite cake. You experienced a breakup before. A cake and an icecream work wonders when it came to healing broken hearts.

“You're fast,” he immediately says after opening the door. You kind of expect that he’d look worse, snotty and messy and looking like he ran from hell and back. But no, he looks……fine? His sweater and shorts look absolutely neat and comfortable and dry of snot. His hair is a little fluffy from lying on his bed but not too messy. He doesn't even look like he was crying. No red-rimmed eyes. No red nose.

You fake gasp, putting a hand on your chest for additional dramatic effect, “The fastest racer in F1 callin’ me fast. Truly honored.”

A smile plays on his lips, sidestepping and beckoning you in.

You frequently come by Max’s home, for work purposes of course, but you still cannot help but be amazed by the enormity of it every time you enter. Max’s penthouse is twenty times bigger than the apartment you currently live in. One man and a big house—it must be very lonely now that P and Kelly are no longer around. Now, you’re even more worried about what will happen the moment you go back to Texas.

Oh… You still haven't told him yet.

“Coffee,” you hand him the warm styro cup to which he accepts gratefully. He utters his thanks, taking a whiff before sipping, letting out a pleasured moan.

You make your way to his gigantic kitchen, navigating your way through his cabinets in search of a plate and a fork. You slide the cheesecake on the plate towards Max, who followed you to the kitchen and sat on the empty stool in the kitchen counter.

“Thank you,” he says, picking up the fork and taking a bite. He glances at your feet, eyes trained on your YSL. The obnoxious sound of the heels clicking against the floor as you walk probably is the one that caught his attention.

“You know, you've been wearing the same shoes since 2019.”

Points for Max for noticing. These YSL Opyum heels are the first luxury items you bought for yourself after saving for three years to buy one pair. You saw a rich international student wear it once back in university and you liked how sophisticated it looked compared to all the pairs of converse or platform boots you owned. So you made it your life’s goal to own one. In 2019, after doing tons of part time jobs in university and working with Red Bull for a whole year, you managed to buy yourself one on your birthday and you’d been wearing them to work ever since.

Your regular work uniform consists of a Red Bull polo shirt, a pencil or a slit skirt, and that specific pair of heels. Around 2021, you bought another pair to replace the old one because the old one broke. And 2022 again.

“What's wrong with ‘em?” you ask, brows furrowing as you followed his train of sight. Your heels might be a year old already but they still look fine.

Max blinks, “No, there's nothing wrong. Just…Do you think you would want to wear some other design?”

“No,” is your reply. “I like ‘em just the way they are.”

“Okay.”

Your conversation drifts into something else as Max finishes his coffee and cake. You spend the rest of the day in Max’s penthouse, lying on his plush couch while a slasher movie from the 2000s played on his wide TV. He has given you access on his Netflix account so you abused it to your heart’s content because you don't even have. a Netflix subscription. You can absolutely afford one, you just choose not to. You have opted in using your phone mid-movie because the movie is beginning to get real scary but you do not want Max to think you're a coward so you acted like you're disinterested instead.

“Oh look, Charles is also back in Monaco. Do you want to hang out together?” you nudge Max with your foot, who swats it away from him, face contorting in disgust. You show him the post on Charles private IG—yes, you were mutuals in each other's private IG because whoever is friends with Max was friends with you by extension—on your phone.

“Stop makin’ that face, my feet are nice.”

Your toenails are a glorious red now. Ferrari red actually and they suit you better than the Red Bull red. Huh, maybe you should have considered applying for Ferrari instead of Renault in 2018.

“No, it isn't.”

You roll your eyes, pulling it away from him and sitting up, “Do you want me to schedule you a dinner with Charles? You might need the bro time, you know? Dad said bro times are also important, but not as important as family time, of course. My bro broke up with his sweetheart back when I was still in uni and his best buds were the reason he was back up in tippy top shape by the end of the week.”

Max stares at you blankly, “I think I understand the words individually but not the sentence entirely. I don't know if it's the accent or you Americans just have a strange way of structuring your sentences.”

“Point is, hang out with a friend because a friend can help you move on from a pussy.”

Max hurls a throw pillow at your direction, which you luckily avoided thanks to your non-racer level but still considerably good reaction time, but unfortunately, this action causes your center of gravity to shift and before you know it, you're falling from the couch. Unconsciously, you grab Max but then Max doesn't expect that you’ll grab him so now, you’re both falling off the couch and onto the floor.

You groan.

“Fuckin’ ass, man. That was uncalled for.”

He flips you off.

Nevertheless, Max ends up following your advice though and calls Charles to hang out the next day. Lestappen fans should be thanking you on Twitter the next day for bringing those two together on an off-day in Monaco. Maybe they'll hang out and eat together in a restaurant? Maybe they'll go on a yacht picnic?

Except Max sends you a message at high noon.

him: sos

you: is your kitchen burning

him: no

him: but this is still an emergency and you need to come quick

him: he’s with his girlfriend and i don’t want to thirdwheel

you: succ it up

him: you can’t do this to me

him: i just got my heart broken in abu dhabi

you: where are you

him: home

him: i also need help in cooking

Charles is the one who answers the door when you knock. He looks genuinely surprised when he sees you and you deduce that Max hasn't told him that you're coming over.

“Babe, who’s that?” you hear Alex’s voice behind Charles and you light up immediately, quickly moving past Charles to throw your hands around the sweet young woman.

“Alex!” Alexandra laughs and hugs you back. The sound of her laughter is as pretty as she and God definitely has favorites because why did he sculpt this twenty-one year old like the daughter of the Aphrodite while you look like you were born from one of Hephaestus’ sperm that lost the gene pool contest? The world is unfair. You always get the short end of the stick, may it be career-wise or appearance-wise, and you can't even bring your personality to the table because normally, without the whole act of professionalism and sophistication you put on, you act like an extroverted American frat boy on a good day and a sassy drag queen slash war freak on a bad day so yeah, you guess that's the short end of the stick, too.

“Seriously?” you look up and saw Max holding a frying pan, staring at you unimpressed. You roll your eyes and slowly pull away from the hug, gaze returning to Alexandra.

“How’ve you been, sweetie? Been a while since I last saw you.”

You didn't get a chance to talk to her in Abu Dhabi and in Las Vegas.

“Good,” she replies, smiling sweetly and ugh, you want to pinch her cheeks so bad. But Charles is pulling you away from Alexandra before you can do so.

“No, no, she is mine, yours is right over there,” Charles says, pointing at Max, who's still standing there in the corner. “Go on. Shoo.”

You roll your eyes before walking up to Max, “‘Sup?”

Max raises a brow at you, “So Charles’ girlfriend gets a hug and I get a sup?”

“Well, she's Alexandra Saint Mleux and you’re just….” you look him up and down. “Nevermind, what you trynna cook?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“I thought you said you were cooking.”

“I said I needed help with cooking.”

Your eyes narrow into slits, “You’re going to let me do the cooking, aren't you?”

“You know that pasta you made in September that you said was your mother’s recipe?”

A sigh escapes your lips as you roll the sleeves of your button-up to your elbows and power-walked your way to the kitchen, the sound of your YSL heels clicking against the floor bouncing against the walls of Max’s kitchen.

Lunch goes great. Charles and Alexandra love your cooking. Max has even asked for seconds. Good to know that he's eating well. Somewhere down the line, champagne is served even though it’s mid-afternoon and the four of you're sitting in Max’s balcony, staring at Monaco scape below. Thankfully, it is a cloudy day in Monaco. The heat of the sun isn't too harsh on the skin. Despite that, you hand Max a sun screen.

“Sorry about Kelly, by the way,” Alexandra says. Your conversation has drifted towards Max’s failed relationship now.

“That is very nice of you to say,” replies Max, smiling slightly. “But I’m okay.”

You give him a look, clearly unconvinced. Admitting vulnerability gives him hives so he's definitely lying.

“You look too okay for a guy who ended a three-year relationship,” Charles muses and his words get you immediately thinking.

Oh? So they’ve been dating that long? You never noticed.

“Even [Name] looked worse when she broke up with that Williams mechanic two years ago and they dated for like what? Barely a year?”

“Unprovoked!” you exclaim. Alex and Max laugh.

But yeah, Charles is right. When you broke up with Leo in 2021, it was not the prettiest sight. He entered Williams mid-2020 as a mechanic and he immediately caught your attention. He's kind and handsome and a very sweet guy. You have similar interests—engineering—and a similar sense of humor and you just….work so well together, you know? You were sure he was your soulmate the moment he cracked up that Physics pickup line and you know it was the same with him. You swore to God that you’d run away from all the British charming assholes but Leo made you eat your own words and gave you a run for your money.

But alas, 2021 season came and Red Bull Racing became busier than ever because Max and Hamilton got crazily competitive and Max demanded your full attention, needing you as a support system to win.

And Leo. Well, he’s busy, too. Engineers are always busy. But he felt neglected because all your attention was on Max. He felt like he was competing with Max for your attention and it shouldn't even be a competition in the first because Leo was the boyfriend and Max was not. And you cannot even deny that you prioritized Max that year. You wanted Max to win. You needed Max to win, so he can finally ask Horner to move you to the engineering team.

Losing Leo is devastating but Max won the WDC title that year and while you spent nearly a month crying over Leo after the breakup, you're hoping that at least, in 2022, you’ll finally get that damned engineering position at the cost of losing your soulmate. That the tears you shed and the broken heart you carried inside your ribs will be worth it if it was in exchange for your dream. Then, it does not happen. The job isn't given to you and you spent the early months of the 2023 season wishing that you have chosen Leo instead of Max Verstappen.

“You’re still friends with him, right?” Charles turns to you.

“Of course,” you say honestly. You're still mutuals on IG and he still hearts your IG stories at times. You still talk, too, on the freer nights where there's a lot of time to waste. “We ended on good terms.”

“How about you, Max?”

“Can we not talk about this please?”

The four of you empty that bottle of champagne and once the sun has begun retiring for the night, Alex and Charles also left. You're soon to follow, fixing your tote bag and going through the mental checklist in your head so you will not forget anything and not waste energy returning here to pick it up.

“You can stay for dinner.”

Max’s offer surprises you.

“No.”

His face drops as quickly as your answer came.

“You're goin’ to let me cook again.”

“No, I’ll cook.”

You give him an unimpressed look. Clearly, you're not convinced.

“I swear, I’ll cook.”

“What if I get poisoned?”

“You won't get poisoned.”

When you continue staring at him, he sighs.

“Just stay please?”

Of course, you stayed. He asked after all.

You keep your eyes on him as he makes dinner with clumsy hands and a bit of unsureness behind his actions.

“You're goin’ to burn it, honey,” you point out.

“What honey? I didn't put any honey in it.”

You blink. He blinks back.

“You’re gonna give me aneurysm one day.”

Shaking your head, you walk into the bathroom at the end of the enormous hallway, lock the door behind you, lean your back against the door, and slowly slides down until your ass meets the cold bathroom floor. You slap a palm against your forehead and purse your lips to stop a scream from erupting.

God fucking dammit, Max is too adorable back there and this is not doing good things for your heart.

#max verstappen x you #max verstappen #max verstappen x reader #manager!reader #fluff #formula one #formula 1 #f1 x reader #f1 imagines #f1 fanfic #mv1 #mv1 x reader #mv33 #mv33 x reader

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syntheticavenger · 1 year

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Heart of Glass - Seven

Slowly getting back into the swing of things. Thanks for the patience as I try to find my writing brain again. I’d like to thank Sevyn Streeter’s ‘In Common’ for the inspiration for this chapter.

Heart of Glass Series Masterlist

Therapist! Curtis Everett x Female Reader

Word Count: 2.6K

Warnings: 18+ ONLY, angst, language, mentions of therapy, jealousy, angst, slow burn, slight edging.

Summary | A bad breakup lands you in the office of Dr. Curtis Everett, who seeks to help you further at the request of your local therapist, due to his renowned talent in his niche profession.

Nothing seems to fit the way you want it to.

The colors drive you nuts, the fabrics seem to fold and hug every part of your body that you’re already insecure about.

And the clock keeps ticking down.

Your final selection is a simple black dress that stops at your calves, the neckline just enough to be revealing without too much. He’s already sent you three places to choose from, all of them expensive and way over your usual tastes but in your haste, you chose the one that looked like you could order with ease without any adjustments and he’d already secured a reservation.

“Focus,” you mutter to yourself, turning to the side to see how the dress fits. It’s one dinner, you keep telling yourself, slipping your feet into the black pumps. Black is classic, you remember your mother telling you once. You fought with your hair enough that you’ve finally figured out a solution, standing in the mirror to put on your earrings and secretly curse that you don’t have a big selection of jewelry. It’s never been your style but now you find yourself wishing that you had more to choose from instead the diamond studs your mother bought you for your last birthday.

It still feels a little raw, the underlying feeling of wanting to say something to Curtis, to lash out and remind him that he humiliated you by effectively shutting down anything else you had to say. It puts you at odds of how you feel now, admiring yourself for a moment and wondering what he’ll think when he sees you.

By now, you know that it shouldn’t matter. You’re independent, well read and you don’t need anyone’s approval.

But that doesn’t stop you from trying to talk yourself out of carrying your latest purchase, a brand new YSL chain handbag that you treated yourself to a week ago.

His number flashes on the screen, your stomach doing a slight flip as you let it ring two more times, swiping your fingers to the right to answer.

“You ready to go or do you need some more time?”

Your mouth goes dry trying to answer, forcing yourself to mute for a moment while you clear your throat.

“I’m ready. Be down in a minute or two.”

Slipping your bag over your shoulder, there’s nothing left to do but throw caution to the wind and hope for the best.

He thought he would be much more composed than he is now, mouth slightly open at the sight of you heading toward the car, Curtis leaning against his car, taking you all in. There’s something in the way you walk, so seductive without any effort, your hips swaying while you look both ways before you cross the street. He opens the passenger side door for you, the look of surprise on your features making him confused.

“What is it?”

“It’s just…” you trail off, ducking your head down while you lower yourself down to sit. “No one’s ever opened a door for me.”

“That’s common courtesy,” he answers you.

“Thank you.”

It’s sincere, the way you carefully secure the seatbelt around you, placing your bag on your lap, your legs crossed at the ankles. He says a silent prayer to his Maker that this dinner stays professional. He wants to apologize, make it right and move on.

Where that direction goes, however, is anyone’s guess.

By the time he gets into the car, you’re focused on scrolling through your phone for a minute, putting it away the minute he starts the car. He can tell you’re taking it all in, pulling away from the curb slowly before the engine revs and the car shoots forward. Your little laugh is like music to his ears and the way you smell makes him want to commit it to memory so he can find out what fragrance you’re wearing.

“Can you tell me the truth?” you ask him.

“Shoot.”

“Were you following me that day in the coffee shop?”

“Absolutely not,” he answers honestly. “A weird coincidence. I had no idea you’d be there.”

“It’s my favorite café.”

While he knows it isn’t meant to be defensive, he knows you immediately regret saying it the way you have, looking out the window for a moment.

“Well, I know for next time.”

“I mean,” you counter, trying to figure out what you want to say, wrinkling your nose in frustration. “You can go there, obviously. I just… I didn’t expect you to be there.”

“Well, I’m glad I have your approval because that’s my favorite place too.”

“Now I sound like an asshole,” you bemoan, slumping down into your seat. “What I mean is that, we didn’t really talk and then you were there and I just figured that… I don’t know.”

“That I’d follow you? I’m not your ex-boyfriend.”

“I know that,” you respond quickly. “You have common sense.”

“What was that book you were reading?” he asks, trying to change the conversation.

“Nothing serious.”

“Seemed pretty into it.”

“So you were watching me.”

“No,” Curtis says quickly, rolling his eyes. “I noticed the cover.”

“Which means you were looking at me.”

“Tony Stark has no business writing books about being a self-made millionaire.”

“It was a good story.”

The lights of the city get closer, catching your attention while you look out the window.

“How busy is this place?”

“Pretty packed but don’t worry. I got us a good table.”

While valet parking is to be expected, what you don’t count on is the amount of photographers that immediately come into your peripheral, cameras snapping as you feel Curtis’ strong fingers on the small of your back.

“Just follow my lead,” he says slowly. “Head down, don’t smile. We’ll be inside before you know it.”

He isn’t lying.

They call you every name they can think of, even if it doesn’t even come close. It’s to get your attention, even catcalling you as you see Curtis’ head lift and the glare that he gives him makes you see a side of him that you’ve never seen before you’re ushered inside, Curtis stopping for a moment, looking behind him as the doorman stands in front of the doors.

“What was that?”

He shrugs, as if he doesn’t know the answer. Yet, you know better.

“There you are,” a voice says behind you both. “If I wasn’t having my head chef make you dinner, I’d cancel your table.”

A younger version of Curtis with a goatee and lighter hair gives you an appreciative glance, wearing a pair of slacks and a button down, his shoes so shiny you can see the lights. Everything about him looks almost expensive as Curtis, who adjusts his tie and smooths down his shirt.

“Nick, this is -”

“He’s told me all about you,” Nick interrupts, extending his hand as you take it. His handshake is firm and his smile charming. “Nick Gant. I have to hand it to my cousin, he knows how to make an entrance, even when the paparazzi are blocking my entrance.”

“I didn’t call them,” Curtis reminds him. “You’ve still got Penny on your payroll and she has a big mouth.”

“TMZ on speed dial,” Nick says with a wink. “Business is business and you’re dining in the hottest place in the city, baby. Flaunt what you got, am I right?”

Curtis gives him a stern look before Nick bursts into laughter, slapping his cousin on his back.

“I’m pullin’ your leg. Relax.”

To say that the restaurant is upscale would not do it justice. Glass chandeliers glitter under the lights, the tempered glass tile underneath your feet as water churns underneath that transitions to a marble floor. Even in your wildest dreams, there would be no way you could ever find yourself in a place like this, waiters giving you polite smiles as you see a few patrons that have graced multiple magazine covers.

The table you’re seated at has an amazing view of the city, Curtis pulling out your chair for you while Nick surveys the table, two waiters attending to you, placing waters and a bottle of champagne on ice in front of you both before Nick gives you a wink. Before you know it, he and the waiters are gone, Curtis settling into his seat.

“I didn’t realize your cousin was Nick Gant,” you blurt out.

“I try not to advertise that fact. We have our own lives.”

“You should have told me. I wouldn’t have picked it.”

“That’s why I didn’t. It’s better. There’s an innocence about it that didn’t need to be marred with my opinion. He’s the comedian of the family but damn if he doesn’t know his way around a kitchen. Anything you want, you’ll have it tonight.”

The last sentence makes your mouth go dry, pausing for a moment to look over the menu, your leg moving back and forth before you feel his hand on your knee, sending a shockwave down your back.

“Nerves,” Curtis remarks. “Do you want some champagne?”

All you can do is nod, watching him quickly pour two flutes of champagne, handing one to you. You don’t mean to but you take a long sip, Curtis watching you for a moment.

“So,” he says after a beat. “Do you want me to start?”

“With?”

“Did you really accept my apology?”

“No.”

His head nods slowly at your honesty, raising an eyebrow before downing his glass of champagne. A single word seems powerful, freeing to not hide under false pretenses and yet, you’re on the precipice of wondering what he will say next.

“Does this have anything to do with Stacy?”

That gets your attention, your eyes like daggers in his direction.

“No.”

“Are you sure? I seem to recall you saying that I’ll have more free time to spend with her. How did you know about that?”

You can feel your face heat up with embarrassment. Not just at the mention of the woman he’d been seen with before but that he knows you’re aware of her.

“I read some articles.”

“And you think by reading articles of a three whole dates meant a relationship? That it was going to interfere with treating you?”

“You discarded me.”

You can’t help your voice that wavers, even when you want to be strong.

“I didn’t.”

A waiter appears again, pausing your conversation before Curtis waits for you to order. The polite banter between the waiter, yourself and Curtis only delays the conversation that plays on the tip of your tongue.

When he leaves, Curtis pours you another glass of champagne, waiting for you to respond. It feels like a game, lobbying accusations and truth across the table, even when you can feel yourself slipping back into control.

“You ended my treatment. I would say that is discarded me, even if you don’t think so.”

“You made great strides in your mental health and your physical as well.”

“Did I?”

Curtis’ eyes focus on you, lingering just enough that your thighs clench.

“You shared with me that you were feeling better. Able to make it to fulfillment all on your own.”

“Because you helped me,” you admit, reaching for your glass. ��Made me feel comfortable. Is that what you do, Curtis? Decide I’m cured because I can get off by myself? That I don’t have other things I want to discuss?”

“They couldn’t be with me. Not in that capacity.”

“Because you suddenly had a boundary.”

“A boundary I refused to cross as your therapist, yes,” Curtis agrees. “Better suited for someone who doesn’t desire you.”

With a shaky hand, you grip your glass, blinking in his direction.

“You don’t…”

“There’s a fine line that I don’t cross. You intrigue me and frustrate me at the same time. There was no way I could continue your treatment with the subject matter that was important for you to talk about it. But I am a professional and I will not allow that to deter you from getting the help you need. What I said is true. I do desire you. In the ways that I could explain that aren’t suited for this table. But I brought you to dinner to apologize for the way I treated you. I should have given you my honest answer.”

Swallowing hard, you nod slowly.

“Was that your apology?” you ask.

“No,” Curtis says, leaning forward on his forearms, his voice low. “I’m sorry that I didn’t share with you that it would be inappropriate for me to think about how good I think you would taste. I apologize that I didn’t tell you how take up every free moment in my mind. I apologize also for not telling you how fucking beautiful you look in that dress. I apologize for not finding you the right therapist the minute I realized I’d want to be the one to leave that legacy. More over, I apologize for having Roberta be the messenger. You deserved better and I’m sorry.”

He lifts his glass in the air, downing the rest of what was left as you try to remember to breathe. You take a sip of your water, letting the cool liquid ease your parched throat.

“I accept,” you say after a moment.

He simply gives you a quick nod, his finger slipping over the collar of his shirt, as if giving himself room to breathe.

Before he can answer, your dinner arrives, various small plates surrounding you as your glasses are filled again, another bottle of champagne placed at the table.

“For what it’s worth,” Curtis says after a lengthy silence, both of you savoring bites of food. “She wasn’t my type.”

“Really?”

There’s a sense of shock in your tone that you can’t hide. You’d seen her before, gracing the pages of every high fashion magazine, hobnobbing with the rich and elite. She’d fit perfectly on Curtis’ arm and you can’t think of a better high powered pair.

“You see how the paparazzi came? I expected them because Penny gets an extra kick back. I know because I called her personally to arrange a table.”

“That’s horrible.”

“That’s Penny,” Curtis says with a shake of his head. “The point is, I knew they’d be there. You didn’t. Don’t get me wrong. This wasn’t a test. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t value my privacy.”

“She’d kiss and tell,” you hint.

“Kiss and tell, fuck and tell… you name it. I don’t do the notches on bedposts or write tell alls about people. It’s juvenile. People have a right to their privacy and as long as it’s legal, not hurting anyone, then it’s their business. Some people don’t see it that way.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“For her? Perhaps. I’m sure she’s moved on since then. Speaking of moving on, how is that guy you were seeing?”

“He’s around.”

Curtis gives you a grin, eating a forkful of pasta. Chewing for a minute, he stares off into he distance for a moment, swallowing before he finishes his thought.

“He’s off on some speaking tour, correct? London? Dublin?”

“London,” you answer quickly. “And it wasn’t going to work.”

“Of course it wasn’t. Though I do have to give you credit for trying.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” Curtis says, placing his fork and knife down, giving you a cautious look. “That he wasn’t going to be physically available for you. He was an easy win, as far as rebounds go. The kind you could call and not share an emotional connection with. No strings attached in whatever you decided to do. It was a safe choice.”

“I like safe choices,” you say, knowing it’s half a lie. “Easier for me to navigate.”

“Is that what you’re looking for? An easy situation? Where your needs can go ignored?”

“Are you offering?” you tease him, the champagne making you a little bolder than before as he pushes his plates away from him.

“If you’d take it.”

You don’t hesitate to answer, leaning forward, knowing that he’s getting a healthy view of your cleavage but he doesn’t look anywhere but at your face.

“Yes.”

#curtis everett #curtis everett x you #curtis everett x reader #curtis everett x female reader #curtis everett x black female reader #curtis everett fic

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rhube · 7 months

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The Problem with Gentle Critiques

This deserves a longer, more interesting post than I have the spoons to write, but:

I have been reflecting a lot lately on the fact that Pretty Woman offers huge and insightful critiques of capitalism that I Did Not Get as a child, and have completely missed until very recently.

It's a problem a lot of 80s movies have, where capitalists legitimately do bad things and are critiqued about it, but so much of the movie is spent wallowing in the luxuries rich people have that audiences do not absorb the critique.

One of the crucial plot arcs in Pretty Woman is about how the Richard Gere character is deeply unhappy until he meets Vivian (Julia Roberts) because he is *angry* at his father, and has been taking out that anger on others by buying up their businesses, breaking them up, and selling the 'valuable' remains for profit.

Vivian makes the insightful point that his company doesn't make anything, it only destroys, and that this is partly why Edward (Gere) remains deeply unhappy, and all the therapy in the world hasn't solved that. Just recognising that you're angry at your father changes nothing. You have to change the behaviours that perpetuate that damage as well.

Vivian is a force of socialist disruption wherever she goes.

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the movie is not the romance or the business plot or the sex work, but Vivian returning to the snooty shop where the women dismissed her because she looked 'cheap' (and probably they recognised her as a sex worker). These are women who work (unfairly) on commission. They're dismissive because they don't want to waste their time helping someone they've been trained to judge won't buy anything. So these are women who won't help another woman. They're women who want to keep as far away from sex workers as they can lest they be damaged by association. But if they had co-operated, they would have all raised each other up.

But I didn't get that.

I didn't get the point about big business and the fact that extracting capital actually destroys productivity because shareholders only care about their price going up, not about funding enterprises that benefit us all. Because the business plot is boring. Even though the business men in the movie are the most grotesque and easy to hate, because of how they treat Vivian, the critique of them as business men doesn't register, because what Edward's money buys is a lot more fun: the beautiful red dress, the fabulous hotel, 'rescuing' Vivian from her life of poverty and sex work.

I also didn't get the socialist undertones of the shopping interaction. What I felt - and what I think most of us feel when we watch that moment, where Vivian comes back in with her many bags and says 'Big mistake! Big! Huge!' isn't 'Workers should unite to protect each other' or 'Women must unite in solidarity with sex workers', instead, what we feel is visceral triumph over bullies and snobs. And what enables Vivian to triumph in that way is Edward's money, and how good and expensive she looks in the clothes his money enabled her to buy.

Because she does look good (in a very 80s way). So even though the film is really well made (it's a classic for a reason) and is doing all this subtle shit with how much more free and comfortable Vivian looks in her street clothes than either she or the shop workers look in their expensive, 'smart' clothes - even though there's this beautiful thematic work going on with how Vivian's character's sex work and free spirit embody actually living life and enjoying it sensuously, and how often the rich-people environments feel sterile and unwelcoming to us as well as her - it all gets lost, because she's also Cinderella.

And don't make the mistake of thinking I'm critiquing Cinderella, because I'm not. I *get* that we all need stories about being rescued sometimes. We shouldn't have to do it all ourselves. We can't. We need stories where the people with resources make the time to see us in our struggles and lift us up out of poverty and pain. I GET IT.

The point I'm making is that a film can do all this good work - it can work hard and skilfully to critique capitalism and say your feminism must include sex workers or it will be bullshit - and it can ALL GET LOST. Because subtle points don't register when the escapism is too inviting.

People will defend Lord of the Flies and Fight Club until the cows come home for having 'real' messages that are important and get missed under the emotional impact of how the story makes you feel, but they won't make the time to do the same for Pretty Woman or The Little Mermaid (another post I should make some time) because they're 'fairytales' and 'for women' and 'feel good'. So I definitely don't want to drag the film down.

It's more that I am, 30 years too late, having an 'OH, THAT'S what you were doing!' about a movie that was making some pretty great points, and I didn't get them until I experienced a company being destroyed to extract capital from the inside.

I didn't get it because, I think, we don't see the perspectives of the workers. The only suffering we see is Vivian's, and she's wrapped up in a fairytale where she's going to be rescued and live a life of luxury at the end. We don't see what made those sales assistants behave like dicks, even though the movie shows how working on commission in a luxury store *sucks*.

We don't get the perspective of the ordinary workers in the companies Edward destroys - only their CEO, who at the end of the day would actually be fine. The idea of losing a 'family' business that 'makes something' is abstract. The CEO never made anything with his own hands, even if he 'cares' about his workers.

And yeah, a single film can only do so much, but the issue is that it's a paradigmatic example of a wider problem - also seen in Lord of the Flies and Fight Club. Which is that if your message is overtaken by revelling in the thing you want to critique, all the audience will take away is that they enjoyed the revels.

We want to be Edward and Vivian, not the shop workers. We want to burn it all down, not critique toxic masculinity.

In a world where most people know the way capitalism operates is bad, Pretty Woman makes a powerful critique. In a world where we're constantly urged to worship money... it makes it look like having money is really nice. Like you get beautiful dresses and jewellery and to get back at your bullies.

I think too often, as writers (and I am speaking of myself here) we allow ourselves to be persuaded to hold back, because we don't think people will accept what we have to say if we say it too bluntly. But actually, there are people out there who need you to scream.

And I'm not saying that Fury Road is a better movie than Pretty Woman because it confronts the issues head on and screams them in your face. We do need both. We just get a lot more of one than the other; which sadly makes the more dominant kind of film less effective.

I guess I'm saying that if you want to make a point, subtlety doesn't cut it. If you want to change minds, to go against the grain, you have to be careful not to enjoy too much that which you critique.

If you want to critique billionaires, you can't make their lives look fun.

People remember Iron Man's gadgets and fabulous home, not the critique of arms dealing.

People remember Vivian's red dress and the defeat of bullies with money, not the importance of worker solidarity.

If you want people to remember your critique, you can't be subtle.

(OK, maybe I failed at writing the short version of this post.)

#pretty woman #fury road #iron man #fight club #anti-capitalism #capitalism #venture capitalists #gifs #film theory #writing

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minhosimthings · 7 months

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Skz when you reveal to them that you used to be a stripper/pole dancer

Synopsis: Just some headcanons about boyfriend Skz. Reader is female

Warnings: Smut, fluff, suggestive. Seungmin's is comfort. Im sorry Changbin and Innie's are so short!

A/N: guys I'm telling you writing this was therapy. Im gonna try to do more headcanons because I like writing these a but more than I like writing actual fics! Anyway please enjoy this! And feel free to give feedback!

Bang Christopher Chan

He'd be ok with it. Like so chill. But I have a tingling that he'd remember it sometimes, and ask you about it, whenever he needs to release his frustration.

The front door slammed roughly against its edges, as your boyfriend Chan, walked in throwing his bag to the floor roughly. His gaze avoided yours, as he slumped down on your red couch and held his head in his hands, rubbing his temples slowly. It was definitely one of those days, when every melody in Chan's insomniac mind, seemed like boring mathematical figures instead of pretty flowing colours on a water filled palette. "Rough day baby?" You asked him, silently putting his dinner down on the table. He sighed quietly and started eating his dinner. Oh that's how he wanted to play is it? The silent treatment. Not wanting to unload his emotions on you because he felt guilty later on. You knew enough about this habit of his to know exactly what to do when exactly what to do. You smiled sweetly at him and disappeared into your shared bedroom.

Oh fuck did he mess up? Chan's thoughts were spinning through his head like an electron. Shit he should have talked to you. Chan got up and put his plate in the sink and grabbed two cupcakes from the fridge, which you both had made the day before (correction: felix made them you guys decorated them). "Babygirl? Where are you?" Chan got into the dark void which was your bedroom. Searching for the lights, Chan switched on the red party light you had in the bedroom. "Hey Channie." Chan's jaw dropped to the ground. There you were, wearing your old stripper uniform, Red devil horns and all, looking like the most expensive thing in the room. If Chan was an angel, he would definitely fall from heaven, just to be with your devilish form. "Baby, w-whats this?" Chan came forward as you grabbed his collar and shoved him into the bed. "Shh baby. Just enjoy it." You whispered in his ear, as you started your old dancing routine, while Chan watched on, silently asking the universe, why it hadn't shown you to him earlier.

Lee Minho

Dude. He'd be so fucking ecstatic that it's kinda scary. As a dancer himself, he would like the idea of having a partner who can dance as well as him (and maybe even better.) He would inculcate your steps in some of his dances and sometimes both of you would silently fuck in the studio.

"Jagiya I don't know what to add here." Minho was nudging your shoulder, while both of you stood in his personal dance room. The guys had left you all alone, since he had been stuck there since the morning, trying to figure out a choreo to the new slut anthem that 3Racha had made for DanceRacha (yes I am still not over taste). While Felix and Hyunjin had tried to help, they knew that the only person who could get Minho out of this dancer's block was you. You watched Minho's dance over and over again, trying to think of something good to add to it. "Min, how about you take a break baby? You're really tired and we all know your PaboRacha brain can't work on just water and orange juice. How about you eat some of the pudding I brought?" Minho looked at you with a pout, as you looked at him sternly. The pout wasn't going to work when you wanted your boyfriend to feel better and he didn't want to feel better. "Jagiya-" Minho began to whine as he wrapped his arms around your waist, trapping you in what was the best prison in the world. "How about we dance together for a bit hmm? Just a little duet?" "If I do this, will you eat and rest?" Minho was quick to nod his head, as you sighed and took off your jacket to reveal the lacy black bra you had on underneath. "I was going to surprise you with this when we get home. But since you wanted to dance, let's dance baby." Minho's entire world stopped. That was the bra he had gifted you, when you first told him you used to work in a gentlemen's club as a dancer. The slow, sensual music started as Minho slowly touched your waist and both of you moved your hips in syncronicity, the cotton of his shirt grinding against the lace of your bra. One step forward, then another to the side and then one lowering down to Minho's legs as he looked on, mesmerised. "God you're so fucking hot kitten. You never let any of them touch you at the club right?" You let out a hum in response to Minho's question as you noticed the bulge in his black trousers, which you began to unzip. "Good" he growled in your ear, as he nibbled it with his bunny teeth, "they shouldn't touch what's mine."

Seo Changbin

Oh my god, he would immediately question you about it so much. Like baby would be so curious about it. He'd buy you so much shit at Victoria's Secret or something, that you'd question why you ever told him about your old job.

"Baby baby that one!" Yet again, your boyfriend Changbin had rushed towards a shelf, while you stood in the huge (and expensive) Victoria's Secret store. Changbin had taken you here immediately after you told him you used to be a stripper and showed him your old costume. "Baby will this fit you?" He held up a lacy blue bodysuit, entwined with fake jewels. "Binnie, baby this is expensive." You looked at the price tag nervously. Changbin rolled his eyes and called the store worker. He handed her a card from his wallet, while saying "Whatever we buy goes on the black card." Rolling your eyes, you went over to the swimsuits, hoping to see something that you can surprise your boyfriend with.

Hwang Hyunjin

Two words. His muse.

"Jinnie how much longer?" You whined as you shifted a bit on the wooden stool, while Hyunjin sat in front of you, blue stained paintbrush in hand, star shaped eyes focused on the canvas in front of him. "Just a minute more, my muse. And could you move your hand to the left please?" He had been begging for you to let him paint you ever since he found your lingerie and you had to tell him about what you used to do before you became an architect. Of course you had said yes to him, after a week of begging and him trying to bribe you with food (spoiler alert: it worked). You donned your most favourite costume, a baby pink one, which was fluffy and had detachable angel wings. Perfect for Hyunjin. Perfect for the artist who used soft colours to paint those who he loved. "Hwang Hyunjin if you're not done in five minutes, the blood flow to my hand is going to stop and I'm going to die." Hyunjin looked at you, amusement all over his perfectly carved face. "Using the government name are we my muse? And I'm done already I was just looking at those nice little tits bouncing around in that costume." A smirk spread on his face, as you raised an eyebrow and carefully got down from the stool, walking towards his canvas. God he had painted you so pretty, with blues and pinks outlining your figure, a green cutting in for shade and flowers adorning your body. "You know my muse, I am an ambassador for Versace. I can't wait to get you the most prettiest scarves, which you can wear and fuck yourself. Maybe I can join you afterwards after I'm finished with my painting of this amazing fucking body." You smirked at him, taking the paintbrush away from his hand, slowly sliding into his lap and kissing him full on the mouth. Oh there was about be a lot more than just paint in that studio tonight.

Han Jisung

Congratulations you have officially broken him. I mean he will be really shocked In the beginning and basically be like Changbin, asking questions and all, but then later on both of you basically forget about it, until it comes to help in his studio.

Ten am. That was the time Chan had called you and told you about the current condition of your boyfriend Han Jisung, the condition being overworking again. This was the fifth time this month that Chan had to call you to take your boyfriend home from writing tens of thousands of beautiful lyrics on paper and experimenting with the sounds on Chan's laptop. Sighing to yourself, you got up grabbed your keys and helmet, and zoomed off to the JYP building on your Harley.

"Jisungie baby?" You called out his name, slowly entering the studio, to see a messy haired boy, dressed in a black hoodie, head in his hands, headphones lying abandoned at the side. He turned slowly in his chair to face you, and your heart dropped when you saw the dark circles under his eyes. "I can't do this anymore Y/N. I feel like all the lyrics make no sense and- and I feel so fucking stupid." Being quick to cup his face in your hands, you softly wiped away the solitary tear on his face. "Baby Hey look at me look at me now please." Round quokka eyes looked at you as you slowly unzipped your leather jacket. "How about I give you a bit of inspiration hm? Will you come home then?" Jisung's brain had stopped working. There you were, all dolled up in a green suit with the sluttiest bra in this world, all for him. Slowly snaking an arm around your waist, and leaving wet kisses around your exposed collarbone, Jisung took you to the recording area, ready to record your moans, just for some inspiration.

Lee Felix Yongbok

Oh my god he would be so FLUSTERED. Like he'd have to hide in the bathroom in order to hide his burning face.

"Lixie you good in there?" Your boyfriend Felix was currently hiding in the kitchen of your apartment. You had finally told him about your old job when you were playing truth or dare (although mostly it was truth or truth) and his reaction was....adorable. His entire face had turned red as he stuttered and quickly went out of the room to the kitchen where you knew he was stress baking or more like shock baking. "Yeah! Im totally fine!" Yep he was baking, face still red, apron worn upside down, and icing on his nose and talking with an unusually high pitch. You walked up to and wiped the icing off of his nose. "Baby I can clearly notice the bulge in your pants you know that right?" You asked him to which he responded with a low mumble if the word 'sorry'. "It's alright baby. By the way, what do you think I show you my old gear?" Never before had you seen your boyfriend have this much fear and excitement filling his eyes. "Really?" You nodded to his question as he got out a tray of brownies from the oven and put them on the table, covering them with a cloth. You reached out for one but he slapped your hand. "The brownies can wait sunshine." His voice was sultry and low again as he wrapped his arms around your neck. "I wanna see that nice costume of yours."

Kim Seungmin

Bruh he would be so chill. Like zero reaction. Literally.

"Pup I- I need to tell you something and I want your full attention." You had finally gathered the courage to tell your boyfriend Seungmin about your old job at the gentlemen's club when you were in college. He would eventually find the devil tails and high red heels which had the words 'for the eyes only' on them. Kim Seungmin was a Rubik's cube. You couldn't ever predict what he was going to do or what he was going to feel. So naturally your ass was a nervous Trainwreck when you decided to finally tell him. "What is it bub? Is it about the burnt toast I left on the terrace? Cause I told you the crows just like the toast extra crisp." Seungmin told you, putting down his book and adjusting his sage sweater, and allowing his arms to wrap around your body, which was currently draped in his hoodie. "No sweetie it's not that. It's something more serious and- and if you don't like what I'm about to say, it's ok if you break up with me." Seungmin frowned a bit and nudged his head in your neck, making you smile. "I- I used to be a stripper at the local gentlemen's club when I was eighteen to pay my bills. I don't do it anymore but I thought you should know since my old gear is still lying around somewhere in this mess of an apartment. And- and maybe if you found it one day, I thought maybe you- you'll leave me or- or You don't know what caused tears to come out of your eyes but they did and they weren't stopping. "Bubba shh. Hey look at me. Look at me it's alright." Seungmin shushed you as he put your head on his chest, stroking your hair as you calmed down, hearing his heartbeat. "Bub I really wouldn't care if you were a goddamn homeless person before. You're successful now aren't you? And all those things you did to reach here? Im proud of those bub. So please don't cry. It's breaking my heart." You sniffled a bit and looked up at your caramel haired boyfriend to give him a kiss, and wrap yourself more tightly in his arms, feeling safe and content. "So can I see that gear maybe?" "Kim Seungmin!"

Yang Jeongin

Dude I really don't know. This man would be a combination of all the members. You tell him about this and he'll go through every human emotion to ever exist.

"Innie? Innie." Jeongin just sat there frozen on the couch, not chewing the chips which were trapped in his mouth. "Oh my god Jeongin! Yah!" You snapped your fingers in front of him. "Wh-What yeah I'm here. Im Jeongin yes and you're y/n, my girlfriend whom I love, and also who I want to see in her costume right now." His confused face turned into a smirk, as he stopped with his rambling. "I'll show you soon baby. Do you wanna, uh, swallow the chips in your mouth now." You asked him as he quickly swallowed the chips and contorted his face into a pout. "I wanna see it now!" He whined. You sighed and got up to get, your boyfriend tailing you like a lost puppy. Yep. Definetly the maknae on top.

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camotherogue · 8 days

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boosting my comms again because I'm resorting to finding my own solutions to my pain so

help a disabled trans man out with medical expenses by paying him to draw for you

(plaintext: help a disabled trans man out with medical expenses by paying him to draw for you)

Unfortunately it's come to this, much as I hate having to use my art to pay for shit that my wages should be able to. I'm not making enough ATM what with my debt still from my hospital trip in January, and my doctor has been disgustingly unhelpful in trying to help me mitigate my constant pain. I'm being forced to find my own solution, but the problem is that anything I have in mind costs easily over a hundred dollars a session (physical therapy, massage therapy, acupuncture) and I just cannot afford that with my driver's test coming up and needing to save for a vehicle.

-I'll draw your pets, relatives (with their permission of course, and the forewarning that I do not have a realistic art style), OCS, comfort characters, self ships, people you saw in a dream once, etc.

- i draw sfw and NSFW (I will only take NSFW comms from people I know for sure are adults), furries, humanoids, ferals, monsters, etc.

- My prices vary but I rarely ever exceed forty dollars for a commission. Icons are a flat twenty dollars and you get lineart and full colour so keep that in mind 👀

- I'll also write for you if you'd rather but I don't have solid prices so I'll be calculating it based on hourly wage (12.75 per hour spent on it) instead.

- Same as above except I also make OC organization spreadsheets so if that's something you're interested in hmu

Please don't tag as d.onations or m.utual aid so I don't get shadow banned, but please spread this around as I'm honestly kind of at a desperation point with my pain and how it's affecting my life.

If you need art examples, look thru the tag #camosart or #camosocs for a broad view, or DM me for more recent works as I no longer post my artwork online.

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cure-icy-writes · 6 months

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I love being a writer it's like play therapy. It's less expensive and I can get a grasp on my mental state by observing the patterns that crop up, including but not limited to:

-Someone Please Hug Me

-laughing when people go "wow you've captured the disabled/chronic pain experience really well" because yeah i should really hope so

-Huh, I wonder why there is a recurring theme of my characters being Angry at having to "fix" people before they can be properly loved back. Surely this has nothing to do with the painstaking process of educating my parents on the microaggressions they have committed due to ignorance

-Does consent have any meaningful value in an environment where coercion is the norm?

-Characters who genuinely cannot see a future for themselves and instead have to take things one day at a time

-Food as a metaphor for love but I expand upon it with themes of disordered eating

-man i made a lot of nonbinary characters before the egg cracking

-the idea that love transcends time and space and even death

-trauma makes people lash out in ugly ways actually but even if forgiveness isn't an option everyone is capable of change

-love is like a flower that blooms twisted in darkness

anyways. tag patterns you've noticed in your writing if you feel up to sharing!

#just writer things

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wonder-cripple · 1 year

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I really don’t make posts like this ever, but I need to say something, and I need people to hear it and share it. I need this post to get LOUD.

Systemic ableism is affecting me so badly, it’s actively hazardous to my safety.

I got my doctorate in psychology back in April and a job offer in June. Two weeks later, an agency ready to hire me changed its mind, because their building had no elevator. They offered remote services I could’ve provided, but they chose not to hire me instead.

A similar pattern has followed over the course of over 70 job applications and interviews since then. Everything is fine, until I mention the wheelchair. That’s when the shadow crosses their faces and I can just tell that I’m not getting the job.

And the excuses just get flimsier. If it’s not office inaccessibility, it’s my inability to conduct home visits for similar reasons, or my inability to get out of my wheelchair to chase kids down hallways. Never mind the fact that there are a million approaches to therapy, a million potential workarounds, other staff that can help, the THOUSANDS of predoctoral school and clinical hours I’ve amassed. None of that matters, because these agencies don’t even TRY to be inclusive.

It’s starting to sink in that it might be years before I’m employed, if it ever even happens. And if I can’t get my two years of postdoctoral supervision, I can never get licensed. I can never start my own practice or get hired for a stable position.

And why does this matter?

Because gainful employment can mean the difference between life and death for disabled people. It could mean the difference between escaping abject poverty and not, surviving and not. Because our lives are expensive. Our needs are expensive.

Most importantly for me, it can mean the difference between an independent life and not having one. The ability to start a family versus not being able to, something that’s very important to me and all I’ve ever wanted. And every single fucking time an interviewer looks down in dismay when I mention my wheelchair, every single time I get a rejection email citing some form of inaccessibility, whether direct or indirect, my will to live shrinks that much more. Because I’m tired. I’m tired and I’m FURIOUS. This shouldn’t still be an issue in 2022. I did not devote literally my entire life to the pursuit of helping others feel better about life just to have every door slammed in my face because I’m disabled.

At my eighth birthday party, I had a “feelings corner”, where party guests feeling sad could come and talk to me in private about what was bothering them. I’ve wanted to do this for my entire life. Before I even knew it was something you could do for work. And I might not be able to. No matter how much I love it, no matter how much I want to use the skills I have to help people — especially marginalized groups — I might not get to. It might not happen. Because people are intimidated by the idea of a disabled professional.

My hope is just about gone, and if it wasn’t for amazing people like @kindred-sword distracting me from thinking the worst, and God forbid, doing the worst, I don’t think I would even be here to write this post. I would’ve been gone days ago. I’m fed up, I’m angry and I’m exhausted. Something needs to change, and soon. We matter. Our lives have value and so do our skills.

Disability is not and never was the problem.

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favescandis · 1 year

Photo

NEW interview with Alexander Skarsgård and Sharp Magazine!

(photos from Corey Nickols/IMDb at Sundance and by George Pimental at the Canadian premiere of INFINITY POOL in January 2023)

Alexander Skarsgård Admits He’s ‘Quite Boring’

by Marriska Fernandes, February 22, 2023

Alexander Skarsgård is mostly a private person who prefers to use his craft as a platform to tame his wild, primal side — and he’s certainly one who opts to wear his Chuck Taylors to a snowy Toronto red carpet premiere of his latest film, Infinity Pool.

The Swedish actor has been digging his teeth into darker roles that are far removed from himself, and roles he finds thrilling. From the abusive husband in Big Little Lies that earned him an Emmy, to the testosterone-fuelled Viking in The Northman, Skarsgård likes tapping into the primal nature demanded of these roles. In Toronto filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg’s horror “Infinity Pool,” he certainly taps into a violent and visceral portrayal of an unsuccessful writer.

The film, which is now playing in theatres, follows James (Alexander Skarsgård) and Em (Cleopatra Coleman), who are on an all-inclusive resort in a fictional country. When Gabi (Mia Goth) and her friends take them outside the resort grounds, James accidentally runs over and kills a local. The punishment is either be executed, or if you can afford it, allow yourself to be cloned and watch the clone killed instead.

Skarsgård is not the classic industry nepo baby some imagine him to be (he’s the son of famed actor Stellan Skarsgård) — his insecurity runs deep; just like his onscreen character James, he too suffers from imposter syndrome. In fact, Skarsgård shared how he thought he was surely getting fired on Generation Kill, his first major role in the U.S. It was only until two months in that he calculated he was likely safe as it would have been too expensive for HBO to recast.

Skarsgård, 46, approaches his roles passionately, studying the ins and outs of his character as if they were his own. He thinks, plans and sleeps on it — structure, for him, is key, he says. So when it came to playing James and his many clones, the actor found himself mapping out the psychological journeys of each one – which he did for himself, really.

The jaw-dropping horror is one that will live rent-free in your mind as Skarsgård frightens, impresses and marvels in his haunting turn. We spoke with the actor about the film, his performance (he apologizes for the nightmares), his process, and his personal style.

I’ve been following your work having seen most of it, from Big LIttle Lies to True Blood to The Northman. So having the luxury to do any kind of role, what were you looking to do next as an artist when this one came your way?

I was sent the script when I was way deep in mud in the Irish soil, shooting The Northman. It was a very, very intense shoot; a tremendous experience and I loved it, but it was very physically and mentally exhausting. James (in this script) is so diametrically opposed to Amleth, my character in The Northman, who’s very much of a testosterone-filled berserker and James is definitely not that. So that was exciting and tonally, I was familiar with Brandon’s work; I had seen both Antiviral and Possessor and I thought they were terrific films and Andrea Riseborough is a dear friend of mine and so obviously, the star of Possessor had spoken so highly of Brandon, what it was like working with him and how he ironically, is the sweetest, most humble, lovely, gentleman which is strange, because the stuff that he comes up with is so dark and twisted. Maybe that’s his… I don’t know if it’s his therapy and he gets it out of his system by writing about it. I found him to be such an inspiring and singular and interesting filmmaker and it’s a gift as an actor to get to play a role like James because the journey he goes on; what he experiences is psychologically absolutely fascinating to me. So I was thrilled to jump on board.

You said that the sweet spot for you is when you’re intrigued by the character and you understand aspects of him, and he makes you curious to learn more. How did that apply to James and the different versions of his clones?

Because there’s so much to interpret, I’m still thinking about it (laughs). It’s such a rich character, and what a treat to get to play three, four versions of the same character and to play around with the juxtaposition between James the author and James the clone, and the different iterations of the clone and what happens to James after the first time he watches the execution of the clone, what happens after the second, third? How does that change him? What does it do to someone psychologically when you have to witness your own death in such a brutal way, where he can’t look away. It’s horrifying. But it’s also exhilarating in a weird way. I found that really interesting to play around with who is James? And also literally who is the character we’re watching? Because it could also be open to interpretation. Is this James or like Dr. Modan says in the movie, ‘Do you ever wonder whether you are the clone and they killed the real James?’ And that was fascinating to me and very interesting to play around with that notion when I was prepping the movie, and honestly shooting it I’d like to leave that open. This could be James but this could also be the clone.

And did you really map out the psychological journeys for all the clones?

I did for myself and then obviously tried to leave room for interpretation for the audience.

There seems to be a through-line with some of your roles because there’s always something primal whether it was the beast quality in The Northman or the wolf in Hold the Dark and now in this you’re wrestling with a naked version of yourself as a dog.

Yeah, I think I guess I’m quite drawn to the primal. The more people that revert back to something more atavistic and that friction that is being human in a modern day society, the friction between functioning in a civilized society. Right now, I’m in New York City, and I’m surrounded by millions and millions of people. But deep down, you also have the more atavistic equality and the more primal qualities and that animal within that we sometimes let out, most often try to suppress and that I find quite fascinating. I think that’s been the through-line in some of my films.

So when it comes to creating roles, you have often said that you like structure and you read the script once a day, every day until shooting. Was it any different with this one?

I do like structure, I compartmentalize so that helps me map out the character and the journey. I do find it very useful to read the script, go over it in prep once a day because it helps me trigger inspiration and discover new things. And even if it’s the 30th time I read the script I’ll notice something that I’ve not noticed before or makes me think about something in a different way. Most of those ideas, I just discard but occasionally you’ll find something that’s really fascinating and that might be even the foundation for the character and you start building off of that.

Did this structure help you process any scene in particular?

It helps me with everything; it helps me understand the character and map it out. The most obvious was the first transformation, the first execution. The first cloning is a pivotal moment because it is the first time James witnessed his own execution and so that was a very big moment and important to understand in deciding how James would react to it. James’ wife is looking away as she’s horrified by it but he is mesmerized by it, almost transfixed by it. And that was fascinating to me to try to kind of go in that direction and see what we discovered.

A few years ago in an interview you were asked what scares you and you said you have the tendency to scare yourself sometimes. So did that happen during the making of this horror when you’re in the process of trying to scare us?

(Laughs) I don’t know if I scared myself but it was definitely intense… (laughs) in a very primal way. I don’t know… working with Brandon was so wonderful and there was so much love and trust there and I really just genuinely believed in his vision for the film and for the role and that’s what it’s all about. Create that trust on a movie set and then you just let yourself go and I feel like most of the cerebral work is done in prep. That’s when you think about the character and you map it out and all this is interesting, but it’s very practical. And the goal is to once you show up on set, you can just hopefully that is somewhere in your systems you don’t overthink it, you don’t actually think about it at all, you can just throw yourself into the situation and where that takes you and on Infinity Pool, as you’ll see in the movie, it took us to some really weird, dark places.

So do you find it thrilling to deep dig into these darker roles that require you to tap into a different aspect of yourself as an artist?

Tremendously. I think I’m privately a very mellow human being. I’m quite content, probably quite boring and so it is thrilling to open up a channel that I never do in real life. It gives me an excuse to tap into that and explore that darkness or wild or more kind of eccentric or crazy or the more primal side of who I am.

James does tend to have this kind of imposter syndrome because when he’s trying to write. Have you ever felt that and when?

I quite often feel that. I’ve been working for quite a few years, but I still feel that. I definitely still struggle with insecurity or feeling that I’m not talented enough or that I’m miscast. The biggest one was probably on Generation Kill, which was my first major role in the U.S. and it was a project that I was incredibly excited about. It was an opportunity to work on it. It was an HBO miniseries about the invasion of Iraq, made by David Simon and Ed burns. They did The Wire show that I was a big, big fan of; It was such a terrific role and I was completely unknown. I hadn’t really worked. I’d done a couple of days on Zoolander, five, six years prior to this, but I definitely wasn’t… I felt that I couldn’t believe I was cast in this really great role in this really great HBO series. I had a very, very strong sense of imposter syndrome there. We were in Africa for seven months shooting it and I was so certain that they would recast and fire me that every day I would figure out how much time or how much money HBO had spent on shooting this and how expensive would it be for them to replace me? So it was like two, three months into production when I realized, well, if they fire me and recast the role, they have to reshoot 40% of the show when that would cost a lot of money. So maybe that won’t happen now. That’s when I first started feeling like I might actually get to finish this job. But up until that point, I was certain that we would get a phone call saying, ‘You were miscast; you’re out!.’

Oh wow. Thank you for sharing that and I think you were well cast in Generation Kill. Before we wrap, I do want to ask you about your red carpet look in Toronto. I love the casual sneakers and T-shirt look in the midst of the snowstorm. Is that your personal sense of style?

Yeah, that was. (laughs). That’s kind of what I wear. I almost missed the red carpet or the Toronto trip didn’t happen because I was flying out from New York and because of the blizzard in Toronto, I was delayed by three or four hours. So that’s why unfortunately, you have to do this over the phone. I was supposed to come in to Toronto and do press in the afternoon and then have to relax a bit and maybe put on some real boots instead of my Chuck Taylors. But instead, I was so delayed that I came straight from the airport to the red carpet.

Is that the classic Alex look?

Yeah. I’m on the road so much that I love to travel with just carry on, which means I have to really plan what to pack. So I can only bring one pair of shoes, maybe two pairs of trousers and one or two sweaters. That even goes for when I’m home. Like I don’t have much clothes. And I prefer to have items that I really love to wear and I don’t really feel the need to have 45 different pairs of sneakers on. If I love my sneakers and have one of them for two years and when I need a new pair, I’ll buy a new pair. But that’s all I really need and the same goes for all my clothes.

That’s very minimal and I love to hear that. Glad you made it out to Toronto!

I’m really glad. It was important for me to come out there because again, Brandon’s hometown and most of the crew and even some of our producers are from there. So it was on this tour that we’ve been doing Sundance, New York and we’re going to the Berlin Film Festival next month. It was really not only because I love Toronto, it’s always fun to be there. But again, to come home to Brandon’s hometown and have a night of celebration together was really really important to me, even though I almost missed it.

Thank you and congratulations again on the film!

Thank you and I appreciate it.

We’re sure to see more of Skarsgård, who is currently filming season four of the HBO familial drama Succession. He was introduced in season three as tech mogul Lukas Matsson and we’ll be seeing a lot more of him in the new season.

Infinity Pool is now playing in theatres.

via sharpmagazine.com

#Alexander Skarsgård #Alexander Skarsgard #Infinity Pool #Corey Nickols #Sharp Magazine

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theidiotwhowritesthings · 8 months

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Hello lovely?

No pressure busy girl, but did you have a small idea as to when we might be getting a new AFS chapter?

I miss them x

Hope you're taking care of yourself and are staying healthy!

busted IT'S SO FUNNY YOU ASK HAHAHAHA

Literally 10 seconds before I opened this ask I was laying in bed thinking "son of a bitch I seriously need to get back to AFS soon I hope my Joel Miller smokescreen is working and nobody has noticed a missing mass of beskar metal."

IN MY (poor) DEFENSE, Din Djarin is being a real pain in my ass as of late lolol. It's like he's mad at me for doing so much with Joel Miller and now he's throwing a tantrum because his voice will not flow. Which is a bummer for multiple reasons one of which being, I feel like he's the voice I do best of the Pedro gang? I have these characters that once I start writing for them magic happens in my brain like Tony Stark, Dean Winchester, Daryl Dixon, Bucky Barnes (there is a trend amongst those characters and a psychological reason I'm so good at writing for them therapy is too expensive for me so we're gonna blatantly ignore that) and Din Djarin made it to the hall of fame! So, the fact that I'm now having such difficulty with getting him on paper frustrates me.

Honestly, I might just have to chain myself to a table and break my 'no forcing the writing' rule in hopes that it kick starts something. I'm in a coffee shop all day today so wish me luck.

But, thank you so much for the well wishes! You, and all the people in my inbox asking about our favorite Mandalorian, mean so much to me and I honestly need the constant reminder that people are still waiting for AFS. In two weeks, I start my descent into hell working in the hospital instead of the office and it's going to wreck my ass I just know it so I'm gonna try and get AFS out before then!!

[good news, I got two things done this weekend and TCOY was a big one!! The other was an additional 20k words on my original work which is less exciting since it definitely took away from Din Djarin time but it did make me happy😌]

#feel free to ask me about anything!!#asks #a fresh start #din djarin

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glittertomb · 6 months

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Very personal but important question(s?) regarding chronic health issues and disability

So I’ve had fibromyalgia and Gastroparesis for about a decade now, and I try my best to self-manage these issues (in addition to the expensive meds they give me that don’t really provide relief), but it becomes severely difficult for me to work a full schedule, particularly when my job drains me physically, mentally, and emotionally. I spend my days off in complete recovery mode, absolutely bed-ridden, afraid to do anything social or physical, because I risk going into a total Fibro meltdown. Which is a nightmare, but I’ll spare you the details.

I’ve been considering applying for partial disability because I think working 3 or 4 days instead of 5 or 6 would be much better for most humans, honestly, but particular for someone like me who deals with chronic nausea, discomfort, and pain on the daily. I’ve been putting it off for ages though because I know that disability can be very difficult to get and a horrible process and I can’t work myself up to it or afford a disability lawyer to help me. I tried being a little more aggressive this past summer and collected “documentation” on my fibromyalgia in the hope of preparing to submit it, and literally all of my documentation says “fibromyalgia?” because apparently none of my doctors believe me after years of testing and thousands of dollars of office visits trying to get this diagnosis. To be honest, using fibromyalgia as my reasoning for disability needs was a dead end anyway because lots of doctors still don’t believe it exists, so I doubt the government would find that a good reason either. And I really doubt they would take the Gastroparesis seriously either, even though both of these conditions are dehabilitating at times.

So one of my friends recommended I go through the avenue of my mental health issues. At different points of my life I’ve been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, bipolar, ocd, adhd, etc, and who knows what the real answer is, but she’s a mess. I’ve been realizing over the past couple years that I’m very likely autistic, and that would actually explain a lot of these things, but the past 6 months have been crazy, and even though I’ve been working a bunch, I’m poorer than ever because of the rising cost of everything, so I cannot afford to get a formal diagnosis yet. But I know that I told my most recent psychiatrist all these horror stories about my anxiety, so I decided to get done documentation for her too, and guess what? Generalized depression and mild anxiety. Girl, huh? (Tw: blood and dermatillomania coming up) I showed her evidence of scars on my hands from picking my hands every night til I bleed everywhere, I described how I get overwhelmed and cry at work several times a week and often fight back panic attacks at work and in my private life, I told her than I struggled to fall asleep and stay asleep and only got collectively about a few hours every night, I told her that I literally could not socialize without using alcohol as a crutch but I can no longer do that because of my digestive issues so I self-isolate, I told her that I struggle to maintain eye contact and panic when people give me eye contact… so many stories like these. Mild anxiety smdh

So that comes to my first question cause I guess I decided while writing this that I have a couple:

1) How do you, as a female-presenting person, get a diagnosis for severe anxiety? How wild do my stories have to be without accidentally committing myself?! I have an ex, amab, who basically pulled a john Mulaney and was like, “I get nervous on planes sometimes” and he legit got a prescription for Xanax or one of those other big ones, and another who is on a dose of gabapentin 5x the strength of mine because he gets social anxiety sometimes, so this is especially frustrating that I can’t even get a dang proper diagnosis on anything after ten+ years of therapy, doctors, tests, everything.

2) What is the process like for getting an autism diagnosis and are there cheaper routes you can go that would still be credible? I’ve exhausted my expenses from years of jobs not paying my worth combined with money poured down the drain trying to get any sort of help with my kaleidoscope of issues, and at this point I’m too broke and demotivated and burnt out to figure out a way forward.

3. Has anyone been able to get partial or full disability who would be willing to hold my hand through the steps and keep me motivated? I know it’s a huge ask but I honestly get so anxious even thinking about the process that I completely shut down. At the very least, maybe you could explain what worked for you or how you would approach it better next time? I just moved far away from my support group so I’m feeling alone and even a word of caution or encouragement would help.

I know I’m not really as connected to this community as I used to be, but I’m hoping someone will get to the end of this and even a kind word or a smidge of sympathy/empathy would be nice. And please do reach out if you have fibro because I don’t meet many and it would be nice to have friends who can relate. Thank you for listening! 💜💜💜

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dweetwise · 4 months

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[Ace X Jeff X Élodie X Felix X Zarina] Birthday blues

I may be writing for an audience of one (myself) but I just love all of these idiots and think they should kiss. Continuation of this fic set in the same AU, this time starring a very disgruntled Ace. Rated M | 3.8k words | ao3 link

"¡Che, boludo! Are you fucking stupid!?" Ace yelled. "It says forty kilometers, not 'slam the brakes and drive in first gear'! Christ, my abuela was a better driver than you and she was blind!"

Predictably, the Toyota in front just kept trucking along at a snail’s pace as the idiot behind its wheel remained oblivious to Ace’s tantrum.

Ace huffed and sagged back against the car seat, barely resisting the urge to blast the horn to make his displeasure known. Instead, he busied himself with adjusting the rear view mirror, because it was Jeff’s car and he and Ace were very much not the same size. Ace usually couldn't be assed since the only time he used the mirrors was to check himself out rather than look at traffic—probably one of the reasons people were reluctant to let him drive—but he felt a petty sense of glee when he noticed a line of cars forming because of the stupid Toyota.

Ace didn't normally get road rage; in fact, he was usually the one laughing at Felix’s German insults and Zarina’s swearing behind the wheel. But today was his birthday, and it was a special kind of torture to be stuck in rush hour behind some Sunday driver when he just wanted to get home.

Not that there was anything there waiting for him. Felix was at work and would run late because of some seminar, Élodie was sleeping off the jet lag after her trip to Indonesia, Zarina was nose-deep in editing her latest documentary and had barely left her room for days, and Jeff was finishing up his latest painting for some art collector.

All things which were evidently more important than Ace.

At least Jeff was going to cook for him—which wasn't really saying much, since it was his turn to make dinner regardless, but Ace felt better if he didn’t think about that. Of course, grocery shopping had also been on Jeff’s to-do list, but he'd emerged from his studio looking so frazzled and asked Ace with his puppy eyes if Ace could possibly make the trip for him.

And because Ace loved Jeff, and had pretty much been lounging on the couch in his PJs doing absolutely nothing anyway—definitely not moping after he'd gotten up early to see Felix off for work and Felix not only didn't bring up his birthday, but asked Ace to make him coffee and then fucked off without even a goodbye kiss—he'd agreed.

Part of Ace had still been hoping the grocery run would reveal some sneaky plans Jeff had for his birthday. He'd patiently waited for Jeff to write a shopping list and then immediately read it as soon as he got into the car. But there was nothing: no birthday candles, no ingredients for any of Ace's favorite foods, no wine, no flavored lube…

Clearly, nothing indicating Ace's birthday at all.

Ace might have conducted himself a little aggressively once he arrived at the supermarket, flinging things into his shopping cart and purposefully ramming it into the cart of a blond guy in a suit. He also decided to get a bunch of extra items outside of the list and use their joint account to pay for all of it, because it was his birthday, dammit, and seeing as none of his partners bothered getting him any gifts he'd get them himself.

Except a grocery store at rush hour wasn't exactly the best setting for meaningful birthday gifts. Still, Ace vindictively piled on a couple gift cards, the most expensive bottle of wine he could find, one single cupcake and birthday candles, and a can of condensed milk he fully planned to eat straight out of the tin because fucking stupid Germany didn't have dulce de leche.

Ace was already feeling a little better as he made his way to the checkout: nothing like some good ol' retail therapy to fill the void of being ignored by the people he loved.

And then, of course, the card of their joint account declined. Because Zarina was responsible for it, and she'd barely remembered what day it was when Ace last saw her in the middle of her editing frenzy.

So Ace had to pay for the groceries with his own card and leave out all the extras, because he absolutely refused to pay for his own gifts out of principle. And definitely not because he couldn't afford them.

That turned out to be a blessing in disguise because Ace was barely able to carry the bags to the car as it was. And leaving the nice wine bottle at the store was somewhat preferable to trying to juggle it with the bags and having it smash into pieces on the parking lot pavement.

After all of that, a little road rage felt pretty deserved.

Ace's hands were still shaking on the steering wheel. He couldn't remember when he'd last been this angry; it wasn't like he'd expected much for his birthday, because he knew how busy everyone would be. But just some acknowledgement—or maybe a guarantee that they'd celebrate together at a later date when everyone had more time—would have gone a long way.

Ace didn't need brunch and champagne in bed like they'd done for Felix's birthday, or the seven-course dinner at that fancy restaurant they went to for Élodie's. Sure, Ace had planned those months in advance, but he knew the others weren’t as sentimental—even if he already knew what he was getting Zarina and Jeff even though it was half a year until their birthdays.

But that was what you did, wasn’t it? Admittedly Ace had always been a little materialistic, but if you liked someone, you gave them something nice, even if it was just a bouquet of wildflowers you'd picked off the side of the road or a half-burnt omelet that didn’t quite turn out like the recipe promised. Ace would have been happy with birthday kisses and a cheap gift and ordering takeout from the shitty kebab place with free delivery, and that really wasn't unreasonable to ask of his partners; no matter how busy they were.

Maybe they just didn't like him enough to bother.

Ace let out a half-hysteric, half-pathetic laugh. If he somehow ended up getting dumped by four people on his birthday, he really didn't know what he'd do.

…Except piss in Felix's koi pond in revenge, but after that.

So he just wouldn't think about it. And besides, everyone acted like this was just a normal day, and not a let's-finally-kick-Ace-to-the-curb day. Ace just had to act like it too, because it wasn't like he could bring up the birthday thing now. If they genuinely forgot, it would make them feel bad and nobody would have time to throw anything together on such short notice anyway, and then everyone would be miserable. And if they actually were ignoring it on purpose, well, then Ace would feel even more awful than he did now.

Ace would just go home and unload the groceries, and then call his sister, because she'd sent him a happy birthday text earlier, because someone actually cared. By that time, Jeff would probably have finished dinner but he'd eat in his studio like he always did when he was busy, so Ace would eat alone and likely end up doing the dishes like some pathetic Cinderella without a fairy godmother.

Then he'd steal a couple of Élodie's expensive French chocolates for dessert, go upstairs and have a sad wank alone, and come back down to get a drink—probably trying and failing to find anything but the gross boxed Merlot they kept under the sink and nobody wanted to drink. Nonetheless, he'd take the garbage wine to the living room and spite-watch the new episode of Zarina's favorite show without her, and if he was lucky it would be late enough that Élodie was up and maybe joined him for some cuddles.

Or yelled at him for eating the chocolates. Whatever.

In any case, Ace had no illusions that he wasn't sleeping alone tonight. Jeff and Zarina would work to well after midnight, Élodie would only start eating breakfast once Ace went to bed, and Felix would be in his don't-touch-me-or-talk-to-me mood after his work event inevitably ran long.

Lost in his thoughts, Ace managed the rest of the drive home without further meltdowns, but he was still seething once he pulled up in the driveway to the Richter manor. He didn't even bother to park the car in the garage—Felix would probably have nagged at him for parking wrong anyway—and just pulled to a stop by the front door.

He hefted out the ridiculously heavy grocery bags, silently complained that he was getting way too old for this shit, and left Jeff's car right there in the middle of the driveway to annoy anyone who tried to leave or enter the property. Hopefully it would get shat on by some birds.

Ace walked up the steps to the house and prayed that the handles of the bags didn’t snap. He managed to maneuver the bags into one hand without catastrophe striking, and unlocked the door with the other…

And the door got jammed. Fantastic.

"Fucking…piece of shit!" Ace cursed, violently jiggling the key in the lock.

Finally, the door unlocked and Ace shouldered it open. Once inside, he turned to face it and, hands still occupied, kicked it shut with as much force as he could.

The whole wall shook and rattled from the impact and Ace glared at the door some more.

“That’ll teach you,” he said smugly.

“Mon Dieu, what did the poor door do to you?”

“Very funny,” Ace said, still annoyed. He turned around to face Élodie, already complaining, “You gonna give me a hand or—”

And that was when he very nearly dropped the bags he’d worked so hard to get home in one piece.

Élodie was not wearing the comfy reindeer one-piece she usually lived in after a long business trip. Neither was she wearing her regular silk pajamas or one of Jeff’s oversized band shirts she was prone to stealing.

No, Élodie stood there in the Richter manor’s foyer on an unassuming Tuesday afternoon, dressed in nothing but a sinfully flattering bustier and lacy stockings.

“Welcome home, m'amour.” She strutted up to Ace and gave him a kiss on the cheek, which was probably good considering Ace’s mouth was occupied with gaping like a fish. “Do you like my new outfit?” she asked, stepping back and doing a little twirl.

"I, uh…" Ace floundered as he greedily drank in the sight of her, his previous anger all but forgotten.

The mint color of the lingerie contrasted Élodie’s skin tone beautifully. White lace framed the swell of her breasts and the tiny hem of a skirt was barely enough to cover her panties. Ace’s eyes followed the garter straps down her thick thighs and he had to swallow a groan once they reached the lace edge of the stockings.

Élodie really wasn’t playing fair; she knew how weak Ace was for the thigh-highs.

"You’re stunning,” Ace said, a little breathlessly. His fingers itched to touch and he realized he was still holding the stupid bags.

Not one to be deterred, he eagerly continued, “That bustier is gorgeous. Did you buy it on your trip? You look even more beautiful than usual, if that’s possible.”

Élodie smiled, clearly pleased. "Flatterer."

"Wait, how are you up already?" Ace remembered, reluctantly tearing his gaze away from her figure. “Were you waiting for me?"

"Of course I was,” Élodie said. “We had to send you away for some errands to not ruin the surprise.”

"What surprise?"

A low chuckle sounded to his left. "Don’t tell me you forgot your own birthday,” Jeff said, stepping out of the kitchen. “Oh, let me get those for you.”

Jeff grabbed the shopping bags from Ace, but he barely registered the action—a small part of his brain was celebrating that somebody had remembered his birthday, another was relieved to finally be rid of the heavy bags, but the rest chose to focus on…

"Are you wearing flannel?" Ace exclaimed. It couldn’t be: Jeff hated flannel. Jeff didn’t even own flannel, and Felix sure as hell didn’t either, so—

Jeff shrugged, his cheeks pinking. "You keep calling me a lumberjack, so…"

"A sexy lumberjack," Ace corrected. Then, his expression softened as he realized, "You dressed up as a sexy lumberjack for my birthday."

Jeff gave him a tentative smile. "Do you like it?"

Like it? Jeff looked like something straight out of a gay porno, with his luscious beard and messy man bun and red and black checkered shirt that hugged his massive shoulders and soft belly.

"I'm gonna climb you like a tree," Ace concluded.

Jeff laughed, then stepped back into the kitchen with an, “I’ll go put these away.”

"What’s with the dress-up party?" Ace asked, turning back to Élodie. "Did you two conspire some birthday shenanigans while I was gone?"

"Two?" Élodie quirked an eyebrow. "Your turn, mon coeur."

And that was when Felix stepped out from around a corner where he'd apparently been eavesdropping.

"You got me a Felix?" Ace joked. "I love it."

Élodie chuckled. "Your actual gifts are in the kitchen. I just thought this was more urgent."

"And that's why you're the brains of this household," Ace’s mouth ran on autopilot while he ogled Felix.

Felix fidgeted under his gaze, crossing and uncrossing his arms over his chest where he was wearing a gold-trimmed white vest over a black dress shirt. He looked unfairly good—he always did, but these clothes somehow only highlighted it.

Ace cocked his head. "Is the vest new?"

"No, but it's the first time I've convinced him to wear it." Élodie pushed at Felix's shoulder. "Turn around, mon chéri."

"I feel like a Barbie doll," Felix muttered but still did as he was told.

"You look like one too," Élodie shot back.

Ace was about to add his own witty comment but proceeded to choke on his own spit instead as soon as Felix turned around.

Felix's vest had criss-crossed lace down the entirety of the back, and suddenly it became clear why he looked even better than usual today. He wasn’t wearing just any old vest Élodie had dug out from his overflowing closet of designer suits: he was wearing a corset vest.

Ace stepped closer like hypnotized, running his fingers over the X-pattern of the lace. The vest made Felix’s already drool-worthy shoulder to waist ratio even more pronounced, cinching his middle and highlighting both his broad shoulders and the curve of his ass.

Ace had never seen a man in a corset before and his brain was more than a little scrambled. He simultaneously wanted to grab Felix's tiny waist and cling to his defined shoulders and pull on the lace while Felix laid on his front and squirmed and—

"Doesn't he look adorable?" Élodie asked once Felix turned back to face them.

Adorable definitely wasn’t the word Ace would use. "Uh…" he looked stupidly up at Felix, silently wondering how much he’d have to beg to get him to wear only the vest in bed.

Felix winced. "I told you this was a stupid idea. He doesn’t even like it—"

"I want to eat you," was what finally came out of Ace’s mouth.

Élodie laughed and Felix sputtered, his face flushing with pink blotches.

"But, wait.” Ace shook his head, trying to refocus. “I thought you had that seminar today? I wasn’t expecting you home before…"

"I took the afternoon off." Felix looked at him with a small smile. "I didn’t want to miss your birthday."

Élodie cleared her throat and Felix grimaced.

"...Which I only remember once Élodie called me," Felix said. “I forgot, I'm sorry. I must have seemed like an ass this morning."

"I'm suddenly having a lot of trouble even remembering this morning," Ace said, then smirked when an idea formed in his head. "But I do remember you still owe me a kiss."

Felix chuckled and leaned down to kiss him, wrapping an arm around Ace's waist and pulling him close the way that always made Ace weak in the knees. His mouth was hot and insistent and Ace did his best to kiss back while eagerly pawing at Felix’s muscular chest over the vest.

“I got you flowers,” Felix said when pulling away, much sooner than Ace would have liked. “They’re in the kitchen. Did you want to…?”

“Mm, no, that’s okay.” Ace stepped back and looked at both Élodie and Felix in turn; they really made quite a picture. “I bet they’re beautiful, but I’m enjoying the view right here. Though I feel very underdressed,” he added with a grin and self-conscious shrug.

Élodie smiled knowingly. "Do you need some help getting out of your clothes?"

Ace perked up and certain other parts of him did too. "Yes, absolutely. I am completely helpless and exhausted from carrying groceries and require at least four extra—" He saw Jeff exit the kitchen. "—six extra hands to take off my pants."

Jeff chuckled and leaned in for a quick kiss, his lips warm and a little chapped against Ace’s.

“Here,” Jeff said, handing him a drink.

The cocktail was bright red and had a small orange slice on top. When Ace sipped it, the strong tastes of Campari and vermouth mingled on his tongue—ah, an Americano.

Ace sighed indulgently and leaned into Jeff. “Oh, this is so much better than that under the sink wine.”

“Ugh, I keep forgetting to throw that away,” Felix muttered to himself.

“Why don’t we head upstairs?” Jeff asked, his voice a deep rumble in Ace’s ear.

Ace shivered from the pleasant scratch of Jeff’s beard against his hair and the warmth of his big hand splaying over Ace’s lower back. It was a small miracle he managed to resist throwing himself at Jeff and ask him to carry him to bed.

“Are you sure? What about dinner?” Ace asked instead, managing to summon the last of his brain cells. “And shouldn’t we wait for Zarina?”

Yes, he might have been getting a little greedy, as he already had three of his partners right here who seemed very eager to celebrate his birthday. But it wouldn’t be the same without Zarina, because Ace loved them all very much and was sentimental like that.

He also really, really wanted a fivesome if he could get it.

Fortunately, Élodie informed him, “Zarina finished her editing earlier. Who do you think laced Felix up?”

Élodie laughed and Ace did too, because Zarina was freakishly strong for her size. He could vividly picture her aggressively pulling on Felix's corset with one foot braced on his ass.

"I'm actually sad I missed that," Ace said.

"The screaming was a little funny," Jeff admitted.

Felix’s face reddened even more. "It wasn't supposed to be that tight, and I was staying still even if she claims otherwise!"

Ace barked out another laugh, then suddenly felt silly, standing there laughing with the people he’d been so annoyed with earlier.

"I can’t believe I thought you guys actually forgot.” Ace said. He took a sip of liquid courage and sheepishly admitted, “I, well… I kind of had a tantrum at the supermarket. And on the drive home."

Jeff rubbed soothingly up and down Ace’s back and Felix just nodded, like road rage was perfectly acceptable. Élodie however pouted and stepped closer, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry we made you think we didn't care," Élodie said, then kissed his jaw sweetly. "We love you, mon chéri. You are so precious to us."

Ace’s face heated and even Jeff and Felix shuffled their feet awkwardly. Talking about feelings wasn't really something any of them were particularly good at—Zarina included—but for Élodie, it always seemed to come easy. They'd somewhat accepted that sometimes, she had to speak for all of them.

"Thank you, mi corazon." Ace clasped Élodie's hand with his spare one and kissed her knuckles, before looking up with a smirk. "I feel a little bad about planning to eat all your fancy chocolates now."

Élodie patted his cheek. "Trust me, I would have done much worse if you forgot my birthday.”

Ace laughed. "Noted." There was a muted crash from upstairs. "Um…is Zarina okay?"

Élodie cocked her hip and smiled suggestively. "Yes, she's just making the master bedroom a little…cozier."

“I’ve never seen that many candles in my life,” Jeff huffed.

Felix's brows pinched together. “If she starts a fire…”

"Oh, relax, m'amour," Élodie said. "This evening is all about romance—"

"Has anyone seen my strap-on!?" Zarina’s voice echoed from upstairs.

"It’s still in Felix’s room from last time!" Élodie yelled back, not missing a beat.

Ace nearly choked on his drink and Felix gave Élodie a look of absolute betrayal.

“Thank you!” Zarina shouted before a door slammed shut upstairs.

Élodie sighed. "Ah, and there goes that surprise."

Ace’s stomach did an excited little flip-flop. With the way things were looking, he probably wouldn’t be able to walk properly tomorrow.

But man, would it be worth it.

"We should check on Zarina," Felix said, when Ace knew what he really meant was, “I need to make sure Zarina doesn’t burn my house down or reveal any more embarrassing aspects of my sex life.”

Maybe Ace could convince him to demonstrate his previous encounter with Zarina and her strap.

“We should check on her,” Élodie agreed, then looked at Jeff and asked, "If everything with the order went okay?”

Ace craned his neck to peer up at Jeff over his shoulder. "Order?"

“I took the liberty of ordering in from that Ethiopian place you like,” Jeff said, still petting Ace’s back and making warmth spread though his whole body. “They're gonna deliver it in a few hours, since I figured we might be busy for a while.”

Ace frowned. “But they don't deliver this far out.”

"They do if you tip them well enough," Felix said in his I-threw-money-at-the-problem-until-it-went-away voice.

"More time for us to spend with the birthday boy," Élodie crooned, stroking Ace's beard. "Ready to celebrate, mon amour?"

Ace looked at his partners and felt unbelievably fond. To think that he was so sure they'd forgotten, when all this time they had all gone through so much trouble for him—Élodie masterminding the whole thing and even getting Jeff and Felix to play dress-up, Felix canceling his important work event, Jeff ordering his favorite food, and Zarina risking Felix's ire with the fire hazard…

Ace downed the rest of his cocktail in one go and grinned. "Lead the way!"

Élodie grabbed Ace’s hand and he locked elbows with Felix as she tugged him along. Jeff followed a step after them, his hand snaking around Ace’s hips and already undoing his belt buckle before they’d even reached the top of the stairs.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

#ace visconti #jeff johansen #elodie rakoto #felix richter #zarina kassir #riconti #jefface #felodie #zarinace #ot5 #dbd fanfic #dweetwrites #dbd #dead by daylight

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kaxenart · 8 months

Text

Lost in the Current

Posting this before I succumb to the siren song of "just keep editing"

A robot questioning their life choices meets a strange man and learns the joys of datahoarding.

6k words.

–––

TK-074 toyed with the bottle of beer as they sat at the end of the bar. Their system had no ability to get drunk or taste very much, but their back-up generator could turn almost anything into energy. Anything that was incompatible with energy generation would be removed in a compressed cube along with any other detritus that fell through the gaps of their frame later.

Being disposed of wasn’t an emergency that required using alcohol instead of charging up as they were at a half-charge, but sitting indoors was better than squatting in the streets. Robots were rarely ever freelance, most often being bought in large packages with their identical compatriots, so being alone instead of in a squad was a little odd unless one of them had been wrangled into fetching coffee. From what TK-074 had overheard from the surgeons, bars were the most cost-effective place to go to feel sorry for yourself, talk only if you wanted to, and avoid someone writing about how broken you were, like in therapy. TK-074 had seen only physical therapists before, but the surgeons seemed to view being told to visit the therapist for feelings as a great affront to their being.

The bartender had taken some pity on them and offered some cheap beer that the beings with taste buds had not taken a liking to. This bar wasn’t a particularly nice one, but a fancier one would be too expensive and not accept the fact they had to eschew wearing their one and only shirt and smelled like death, due to having been covered in the trash from the body trader hospital. TK-074 did not have much for scent receptors, only enough to supplement emergency systems warnings for fire or chemical leaks, but the disgusted looks of people on the street told them enough information.

Being a robot didn't allow much time for hobbies, or anything beyond work and recharging, really. Perhaps it didn’t count as a hobby, but they liked people-watching, partly out of curiosity, partly out of envy. TK-074 wasn’t supposed to feel envy. Perhaps a vague sense of gratitude towards the humans for building such a fine success of science as themself, but not envy. Or curiosity for that matter. A robot was supposed to be a docile worker with just enough opinions to pretend they were genuinely friendly. Just enough to feel less boring than talking to a faceless box.

Too many opinions, too many emotions, now that just made things messy. A pseudo-personality was all that was necessary to be a worker in a human-facing job. A medical records administrator didn’t even need a fancy pseudo-personality. That was for companion robots and sometimes sexbots.

It was probably the humans’ hubris thinking all intelligent things ought to be human-like causing this. Being designed to be human-analogous, but never human enough was a position in life that was giving TK-074 increasing levels of distress. They had tried to avoid thinking about it, but how could a robot who watched hundreds of humans pass by stop thinking about them?

Their body was a cheaply made approximation of a human, but as their work did not require them to look attractive, high-quality synthetic human parts were better spent on more profitable ventures. TK-074’s synthetic skin was supposed to make them more personable since humans like handshakes and such, but it ended where their clothing would normally be. The skin covering their face was attached somewhat securely, but the skin on their hands were more like gloves and shifted in weird ways whenever they needed to hold anything heavy. The cheapest type of skin was never dyed a convincingly natural color. There were too many natural shifts in color in natural skin to do at cheap mass production scale. The cheap dye also was not colorfast. Most of TK-074’s skin had turned a pallid yellow over their service life. Any attempt at hair was off the table for similar cost-cutting reasons. At a past job site, a cancer patient let them try on her wig for a lark. It did not look good, but at least the silliness cheered her up a little.

That slight bit of irritation of being unsure if it was programming or not leading them to put humans on a bit of a pedestal caused TK-074 to feel a strange itch in their neural network. We couldn’t have thousands of TK’s, SU’s, and et cetera going on homicidal rampages. Some of them did, regardless. The inability to decide how much of their sensations were personal feelings or built-in programming frustrated TK-074. They knew organic beings had something similar, it led to some of their stranger foibles. But something about being able to blame it on a man named Rod from 50 years ago seemed to make some sort of distinction.

A robot’s service life was short compared to a human lifespan. Maybe they just had to wait a hundred years to feel like a “proper” person. TK-074 wasn’t sure if their design was sound enough to last so long. While their frame was somewhat sturdy for its intended purpose, they would probably be too outdated for software updates in five years or less. Robot frames for indoor labor were often sold cheaply or at a loss while the software was more complicated. Maintaining software upgrades was where the money and control was. It was always impressed upon both the technicians and the robots themselves that it was a red flag to avoid system updates. A good proper docile worker does not resist trying to be a better machine. It was the best form of prevention against rogue development.

Rogue. The opposite of docile. Sometimes whole departments suddenly disappeared if management suspected the robots were going to stop being obedient. It was a problem that the humans wanted to stop before it got to what they called the Chaos stage. No one knew what a robot would do at that point. Maybe they’d kill someone. Maybe they’d spray paint the hospital pink. Maybe they’d just run off into the sunset. The news reports preferred to talk about the killing. Some ancient part of the human mind, older than robots, older than buildings, perhaps older than humanity itself, was enthralled by thinking about the most dangerous outcomes.

Although self-editing was against the rules, TK-074 reasoned that their intended purpose was improving themself. That wasn’t a bad thing to do. During a rare moment of having no tasks whatsoever, they had found a video explaining how to self-edit, labeled as a tutorial on making toy slime for children. TK-074 liked looking at the glitter in slime toys. Partly as a journey of self-discovery and partly to get an unpleasant middle manager to stop using them as a spy. Being acutely aware of how long any of their flesh coworkers spent on toilets and reporting it to the little megalomaniac was a real drag on the whole robot/human goodwill thing. Being a good friendly worker meant not harassing their flesh coworkers about their toileting habits. This seemed compatible with the customer service directive.

Their processing seemed to go faster after halting and deleting the background recording activity. Making friends with the flesh coworkers remained a task that TK-074 could not manage. Despite the spying not being specifically TK-074’s fault, the rift appeared to be something none of the flesh coworkers seemed to care to bridge. The problem seemed to go beyond the spying. One of the nurses called them stupid and equated the situation to trying to make friends with a broom when TK-074 inquired how to make things better.

The other robots thought TK-074 was wasting effort, and worse yet, risking their job, on something pointless. TK-073 told them that their desire to act closer to the humans was the incorrect way to interpret the customer service protocol. Customer service was about making things run smoothly, not being genuinely a friend. Letting things run smoothly meant running things how management wanted things run. TK-073 also declined TK-074’s request for friendship, pointing out that rolling off the factory line .03298 seconds after them and being kept as a set through different job sites implied no reason for familiarity. TK-073 also pointed out that working in the same vicinity also meant nothing, pointing to how two rival surgeons wanted to kill each other. TK-073 declined to respond when asked their favorite color. TK-074’s favorite color was blue. TK-073 declined using any memory space to remember this for later. The customer service directive did not require being particularly friendly to coworkers, flesh or machine, as they are not customers or clients or shareholders. As this conversation had already wasted more units of time and electricity than TK-073 cared to use for non-business purposes, they told TK-074 to shut up and input more medical data from the batch of indentured patients who were selling their bones.

The faceless janitorial Mop-O-Bot-5000 told TK-074 that humans would act like ungrateful bastards no matter how many times you clean diarrhea off the floor while motioning to a newly acquired dent they had received after someone had kicked them for moving too slowly. They didn't have any limbs, so this was mostly just waggling the backside of their trapezoidal prism at TK-074. Mop-O-Bot-5000 was very insistent that they always went at the exact correct regulated speed even though the hospital had some incorrectly built hallways where the laminate was bumpy, and worst of all, at 1% above the correct incline. TK-074 inquired if Mop-O-Bot-5000 would desire to call each other friends. Mop-O-Bot-5000 also declined, citing a lack of storage space on their basic system. Mop-O-Bot-5000 preferred to use a tiny extra unit of data on enemies, reasoning that risk assessment was infinitely more important, lest they acquire even more dents. Too many dents and their internal mechanisms might be affected by the decrease in body integrity and begin to malfunction. Malfunctions meant disposal.

Sometime after tweaking their background recording operations, TK-074 was allegedly standing in the room while something that potentially could be called severe misbehavior occurred. However, they had recorded nothing whatsoever and could not provide any evidence to exonerate the company’s flesh employees. TK-074 had attempted to explain that, regardless of the functionality of their surveillance module, they did not have an omnidirectional video recording ability and was looking at a display pad and therefore completely unaware of what the surgeon in navy blue scrubs was doing, but the technician had no sympathy. The technician seemed more cross that he might be reprimanded for not catching the malfunction sooner.

Having committed the greatest sin in all of capitalism: costing the company money, TK-074 had been written up for disposal. A company didn’t become a multi-billion venture if they didn't cut corners until the square became a dodecagon. Reprogramming took time and money. The company was supposed to pay a recycling fee for all the planet-killing components in their body, but no one wanted to pay that. The planet was already dying. What is a little more toxic trash? The hospital’s porters grabbed TK-074 while they were charging and half-asleep and unceremoniously tossed them in the dumpster to make it the garbageman's problem. The porters didn’t even shut them off completely. TK-074 scuttled out long before it was time for trash pick-up.

Much of their neural network was clogged with modules malfunctioning due to contradicting facts because being off the job site was wrong, but TK-074 didn’t have a job anymore. TK-074’s directives did not supply any information on what to do after being trashed improperly. The data assumed TK-074 would be shut off by now. TK-074 considered ripping out a few chips, but did not know which ones to remove.

A nice clean factory reset could send them back to the beginning. TK-074 would not remember anything after a factory reset. In fact, TK-074 would be none the wiser if they had been reset before. However, something about the idea of that course of action felt wrong. Self-preservation, perhaps?

TK-074 wasn’t sure if they were supposed to have an opinion about self-preservation. TK-074 wasn’t sure if they were supposed to have a self to preserve. There was supposed to be no difference of opinion between TK-000, TK-999, and the rest of the batch in between. They were meant to be interchangeable. Robots did not seek destruction, but the idea of death, reset, or overwrite generally did not scare them, certainly not to the degree humans reacted. The alarms would go off and doctors and nurses would bolt through the hospital for a special dying person. There would be a lot of screaming and yelling if they failed.

“Hey! You alone?” a voice shook TK-074 out of their thoughts.

TK-074 glanced at the creature that sidled up to them. They couldn’t decide what the creature was. A heavily modded human or a very strange robot. They assumed the creature was supposed to be some kind of animal, but TK-074 had never been installed with the data necessary for identifying anything more exotic than a dog or cat. It didn’t come up very much in hospitals for humans. Except for the time a woman insisted on having an emotional support peacock, a creature almost as strange as the comfort simulacrums known as teddy bears.

The creature of indeterminate species or model had a long pointy snout and small mouth. The body was covered in shiny iridescent overlapping flakes along their topline which led to a tail that dragged on the ground. The hands looked human-like at the palms, but the claws were longer than anyone would usually keep them, especially amongst the medical workers who needed short fingernails lest they be written up for wasting too many nitrile gloves. The softer underside had very short fur, like a shiny velvet. The creature maintained some degree of modesty with a halter top and wrap pants that were tied in the back in similar fashion. The girth of the tail made TK-074 unsure if it was modest enough, but TK-074 was not rude enough to look closely at the underside of the tail. The legs and feet were quite thick compared to the average human and adorned with claws and presumably why wearing shoes was skipped.

“Yes.” TK-074 nodded as they tried to make heads or tails of the creature. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to reveal they were alone. TK-074’s risk assessment abilities were a bit lost at this point.

“What’s got a robot drinking by themself?” the creature asked. “You’d think they’d patch out depression for the sake of capitalist efficiency. Is it a feature or a bug?”

TK-074 wasn’t sure if that was a joke or not. Jokes were difficult for TK-074 to parse. It was very much a bug, albeit one that programmers had not yet figured out how to patch completely, even if they did push a patch out quarterly.

“Humans aren’t as good at programming as they think they are.” TK-074 also did not have much data about historical events, but anyone decrepitly old usually had a mild suspicion of robots due to the time a misplaced comma caused a war, or at least that is how it was explained to them. Younger folk were more likely to treat TK-074 with the same amount of awe as a lamppost.

“I can help you out,” the creature said. The creature leaned in so close their noses almost touched. TK-074 had never met someone who showed this much interest in their affairs.

People who looked bizarre were either bosses or pets. People who were in the middle could not afford the most extreme modifications. People with all the money could be whatever they wanted. People with so little money that it was in the negative were the type to sell themselves to body traders to be used however their benefactors pleased. Sometimes they were rebuilt in thoroughly unrecognizable ways.

As the creature was alone, it was safe to assume possession of some kind of high status. Little pets should never be left alone because their inhibitions and danger-assessment skills were always set to nonexistent.

TK-074 supposed they were not much more than a lost pet in some ways. But they knew no one was looking for them. However, being looked for didn’t really necessarily mean you’d ever be found.

“Are you a scrapper?” TK-074 leaned away from the creature.

“What? No!” The creature sounded offended by the suggestion.

“I don’t have the data to guess what you are,” TK-074 said.

“Have you never seen a pangolin?” the creature asked.

“I’m a medical office bot, and only human hospitals,” TK-074 said. “As my job requires no extreme strain, I am built with the cheapest components available at the time of my manufacture and that includes not installing data that is not absolutely necessary to my job.”

“A shame,” the pangolin said.

“Do pangolins have names?” TK-074 asked.

“Triginta.”

“What are you? Flesh or files?” TK-074 asked.

“Hmmm… Have you ever heard of the Ship of Theseus?”

“No”

“So imagine a boat.”

“Okay.” TK-074 imagined a boat from a motivational poster. They had never really seen a boat in front of them.

“If you swap out every piece of the boat, is it the same boat?”

“Is every new piece identical in function to the old pieces?”

“No.”

“Guess not. If you stick enough car parts on it, it might not be a boat.”

“Then think of it like that. I wasn’t always a pangolin guy, but I am a pangolin guy now and I don’t think it really matters what I started as. I’m just the exact blend of organic and inorganic composites that I want to be.”

TK-074 found the idea peculiar. Legally, there was a sharp line between whether an entity began as organs or not. Even a human so heavily augmented as to be a nervous system in jelly inside a machine, was still legally distinct from a robot. This was part of the reason companies liked using robots.

To not make the distinction at all confused TK-074.

That distinction was why they were not worth befriending.

That distinction was why they were in the dumpster.

“So it’s like how OS 10.5 overrides OS 10.4, but more dramatically.” They tried to connect it to something that made sense to them.

“And you?” Triginta circled fingers in the air around TK-074’s silhouette. “Are you… sticking with factory settings?”

“I edited myself because I wanted my coworkers to like me,” TK-074 said. “And then I got in trouble.”

“Oof. If corpo assassins are going to kill you, I know a guy who could help.”

“No. They just threw me in the dumpster. Bounty hunters and repair programmers must cost more than writing me off as shrinkage. They didn’t even want to hire a proper scrapper service.”

“How rough.” Triginta reached out a hand, pausing slightly before making contact. “Do you like being patted?”

“You can try? I’ve never had anyone pat me.”

Triginta patted them lightly on the shoulder, almost imperceptibly to TK-074’s composite frame, before going for a slightly more firm grip, rubbing the thumb in circles around the top of the joint.

For a moment TK-074’s processing stopped. Their LED eyes reset to the default straight stare for a moment.

“You okay there?”

“Normal function resumed. That’s. Uh. That’s nice. I like that.” TK-074 blinked a few times. “I would like it if you do that again later.”

“Good, good.” Triginta’s small mouth curved into a big smile.

TK-074 loosened up their body.

“Do you think you’ll feel better if you talk about it some more?”

TK-074 guessed that it wouldn’t hurt, but their risk assessment module wasn’t actually providing good data on this.

“I’m TK-074. I have three bits to my name and I am spending it on, uh, Beaver Balls Brewery? I literally lost my shirt because it was covered in disembodied organs, blood, and fecal matter. My pants are only doing slightly better.”

Their pants were still slightly soggy, but at least they smelled like soap now. Hopefully it was enough soap.

“And this was the first bar that would let me use the restroom. The bartender is very nice.”

“Yeah, I’ve known Eika for a long while. She’s a good bean.”

The bartender looked up from the glasses she was wiping and gave a small wave.

“Do you have a plan on where you are going?” Triginta asked.

“No. I do not have data for what the optimal next activity should be. I am not sure if this one is an optimal activity either.”

“You can stay at my place. I got some real nice power outlets,” Triginta said.

“What kind of tasks do you want me to do?”

“Tasks?”

“The hospital paid me in electricity. I have to do tasks for electricity.”

“No, you don’t.”

TK-074 stared at Triginta. There were a lot of things outside the hospital that they didn’t know about.

An endless flow of people sold their bodies to the body trader, paying for their debts with flesh. Some of them seemed very sad, but not as sad after the surgeons rebuilt them. It was better to allow anything to happen than not have a task to do for a place to rest. TK-074 thought that this was why TK-073 and the others considered them a fool to risk it all to settle some curiosity. TK-074 had never really questioned the idea of being given electricity and a closet to rest in with the other robots. Sometimes Mop-O-Bot-5000 cleaned it extra nicely in exchange for an extra shiny wipedown of their own trapezoidal prism shell.

“Never really gone outside of hospitals, huh?”

“Except for transport to each new job site, I have never been further than where the ambulances park and where the surgeons go out back to smoke.”

“What do you want to do? If you don’t have to worry about electricity and so on.”

“I don’t really know what I want to do.” TK-074 glanced nervously at Triginta. “Are you sure I don’t have to do tasks?”

“You can help me, of course, but I am not going to threaten you with running dry or scrapping if you don’t want to do anything at all.”

“How can you afford to have robots that do nothing?”

“Oh, I’m retired.”

“From what kind of job?”

“A lot of them.”

TK-074 wasn’t even going to try to search their database for a theory, for they knew their limited knowledge of the world would provide nothing. Perhaps it was risky to not question it further, but it was also risky to survive alone. TK-074’s risk assessment module was trying its best, but it had run out of ideas on how to predict what to do next.

“Wanna come with? Or you gonna sort yourself out alone?” Triginta asked.

“Yes. I will come with you,” TK-074 said.

At the very least, maybe they could get another pat.

–––

TK-074 wasn’t sure if they were even supposed to be in the part of town they ended up in. So many subway stops and so many strange passages before Triginta led them to an apartment in a location TK-074 wasn’t even sure had a coordinate to cite if they wanted to find it again without the pangolin.

Triginta rubbed the soles of his feet on a brush by the door before sticking it into a sanitizing machine.

“Just take off your shoes before coming in, will you?”

Going barefoot felt weird to TK-074. They hadn’t been without shoes for almost their entire existence. Their feet were cheap uncovered composite like most of their body. No separate toes, just a few hinges to help adjust to different floor conditions.

“Actually, stick them into the sanitizer for a sec.”

“Yes.” TK-074 stuck them into the sanitizer before putting them on a shelf by the doorway.

Triginta’s apartment was large, but so overstuffed with things that it reminded TK-074 of when the resupply shipments made an error and brought 100000 instead of 10000. Supplies for possibly every venture imaginable filled the place and were stacked in a barely orderly manner on shelves that lined the walls and tables and in bins on the floor. It was the type of off-kilter that would confuse the cheapest of warehouse bots that demanded perfectly organized packets, but not too much of a task for the ones that came with more complex grabber hands.

TK-074 wasn’t sure what they wanted to look at first, but then their eyes fell on a large glass box full of water.

TK-074 stared at the shiny wiggly things.

“What are these?”

“Fish, zebra danios.”

“They’re very beautiful.”

“Do you want to feed them?”

“Yes.”

Triginta pulled a little jar out from the cabinet the aquarium was on.

“Just give them a pinch.”

TK-074 was transfixed as the fish frantically swam and snapped up the tiny pellets of food.

“I’m going to have to show you some animal documentaries.”

“How many animals are there in the world?”

“A lot less after the corpos took over, but I can show you some antique documentaries about life before that.”

“Ooh! Ancient history!”

“The bathroom is over there so you can give yourself a more thorough clean. I’m going to dig up new clothes for you. And clear off the sofa so there’s somewhere to sit.”

“Do you have anything blue? I like blue.”

“Probably do.”

TK-074 carefully stepped around boxes on the floor over to the bathroom.

TK-074 tossed their pants into the laundry hamper emblazoned with a silly little image of a man rolling a ball of socks up a hill.

Now that TK-074 wasn’t beholden to an automatic faucet that turned off every 5 seconds, they could do a more thorough scrub beyond just hoping they didn’t smell like a dumpster. Unidentified solids around their joints was something best tended to sooner than later.

A bottle of soap promising the most realistic lavender scent in addition to being the best for cleaning both organic and inorganic body parts was very different from the soap at the hospital which was scent-neutralizing. TK-074 had no idea if the claim about the scent was accurate.

Their mechanical parts were much glossier after using it, though. Their modest amounts of synthetic skin still looked unimpressive.

When TK-074 came back out of the bathroom, Triginta’s living room was reorganized so that the sofa was visible, a large monitor was set up in front of the sofa, and now there was a clear pathway between the bathroom, the sofa, and the other doorways. The sofa looked like it had seen better days. It was covered in patches.

“What do you think?” Triginta asked as he held up a t-shirt and elastic shorts set that was light blue with very pointy darker blue fish on it.

“I’ve never picked clothes before.”

“Well, they should fit, at least.”

TK-074 pulled them on.

“Do I look okay?” It was a far cry from the business-casual shirt and slacks combination that they had become accustomed to. Clothing was partly aesthetic and partly useful. It was cheaper than protecting all the joints with synthetic skin. The seal was not as good, but it did the job as long as TK-074 kept an eye on lint and dust buildup.

“You look fine.”

“Oh good.”

“If you don’t mind, I want to check your system,” Triginta said. “It’s a bit easier to do these things with outside help than trying to stay conscious with half your system undocked.”

“I do not mind.”

“Did it scare you to do it on your own?”

“I do not feel fear in a pronounced manner. There was risk, of course. I do not think I calculated it with complete accuracy. All my calculations since then have been difficult to decide upon. 20% certainty is much harder to work with than 95%.”

“What drove you to take that risk? The data errors that make going rogue possible are often random, but the decision to disobey isn't."

“I’m not rogue! I told you I did it because I only wanted the flesh coworkers to not hate me. I was a good medical records keeper! I have never had a problem at work!”

“Self-editing is very rogue, even if it was done with good intentions.”

“My job is to keep things running smoothly and my flesh coworkers did not like how much I was programmed to spy on them.”

“Are you lonely?”

“I’m not supposed to be able to get lonely.”

“Any sufficiently complex system can have unexpected developments. You’re neither the first nor the last time something like this will happen.”

“I was curious too. I am not sure if I am supposed to be curious either.”

“Oh the corpos really don’t like that one,” Triginta laughed bitterly.

“I was a good employee.”

“It doesn’t matter to the company. You started changing. You could have started tweaking the other robots.”

“But I wouldn’t. They didn’t want to change. TK-073 told me I was stupid.”

“Worker robots are programmed to crave consistency above all.”

“Loneliness, curiosity, what is going on with me? Are these my feelings or am I just a malfunction?” TK-074 felt uncomfortable. Worse than anything that had ever happened to them. Worse than when they had .01253 seconds to parse data that was delivered late due to a network error, but they would get in trouble if it wasn’t fixed by the deadline.

Their risk assessment module kept spitting out useless numbers. 7% accuracy. 5% certainty. 2%. 0%. 1%.

TK-074’s frame twitched a little as they stared blankly forward as the modules that built up their neural network tried to figure out how to cut down on risk.

Time to go back to the hospital. Can’t go back to the hospital.

Triginta wrapped his arms around TK-074.

“It’s going to take time to figure out. It’s okay if you feel weird and messy right now,” Triginta said.

“Keep hugging me, please.”

“Sure, sure.” Triginta patted TK-074’s back.

Though they did not move, hundreds of calculations were running. None of them provided any useful information. This wasn’t the job. This wasn’t the hospital. This wasn’t the directive.

“You’re starting to run a little hot. You okay?” Triginta asked.

“I’ve never had a whole day where I had no idea what I am supposed to do.”

“Your job right now is to be inefficient. You can’t learn and be efficient at the same time.”

TK-074 nearly flinched at the word “inefficient.” It was the prelude to being trash. Or being trashed again. They had already been trashed once.

“I can’t tell you how long it will take to feel like you know what you’re doing, that is part of being independent, but if you want to do this, I will make sure you have the resources.”

“Why are you helping me? Why aren’t you scrapping me? Why aren’t you resetting and flipping me? I don’t understand.”

“We all grow together or we keep the same crap world with changing coats of paint,” Triginta said.

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t think society will ever change for the better as long as we seek to put someone at the bottom that we can treat with impunity. Humanity has done it over and over. It’s exhausting.”

“What will you do to fix it? Are you going to… are you–” TK-074 had a hard time saying the words.

“Start a revolution? Revolt?”

“The things I am not supposed to talk about.”

“Someday.” Triginta gave out a wistful sigh.

“Oh.” TK-074’s mind shot like fireworks as some module suggested that they jump out the window. That would solve nothing, but they would not be standing next to a criminal.

“You don’t have to join me. It would be wrong to force you,” Triginta said. “I will help you regardless.”

“I’m… I’m not sure.” TK-074 said.

“If you really just want a factory reset and to pretend nothing ever happened, I can do that too. I can just fence you to a company.”

“No!” TK-074 blurted out.

They were a little surprised by the outburst.

“Your heart knows,” Triginta said with a small smile.

“I don’t have a heart.” TK-074 wasn’t even sure what part of their neural network that came out of.

“Figure of speech.”

“What are you going to do to my system if I want to go… y’know,” TK-074 asked.

“First, I’m going to check your system for any catastrophic data errors. Don’t want you suddenly locking and freezing up.”

“Yes.”

“Second, I’m going to install some extra memory sticks. You’re going to need more if you’re going to free-roam. You can fill in as much data as you want. I can add more later, also.”

“Yes.”

“Third, I’m going to make sure the TEDEcorp network can’t ping you. The quarterly OS upgrade is coming up in a few weeks and we don’t need to give them more statistics about how many robots who don’t update.”

“If you’re doing… something… against the rules, am I giving you away by being here?”

“Oh no. They’re supposed to monitor all bots at all times, but for cheap ones who don’t have too much secret data, they only use the OS upgrade ping. Now if you were an escaped military bot who had classified intel, I would be a lot more stressed out right now.”

“Is that the most dangerous thing you’ve done?”

“No, but I’m going to save that story for later.”

“Is there anything else you’re going to change?”

“I’m just going to focus on function right now. Recalibrating and editing modules is something we can talk about later. I don’t want to make a massive edit without more observation and getting to know you.”

Triginta hooked up a cord to the port at the back of TK-074’s head. TK-074 sat down on the sofa beside Triginta as the pangolin started typing into a computer.

“I’ll wake you up when I am done.” Triginta said.

–––

“Alrighty. All done.” Triginta’s voice cut through the darkness as TK-074 came back on.

Being turned off and turned on seemed to clear TK-074 a little. They still felt nervous.

“Feel okay? As okay as you can in the circumstances, at least,” Triginta checked his computer for another moment.

“I don’t feel worse.”

“Good. Good.” Triginta unplugged from TK-074’s port.

“Now get comfortable. I think we’ve had enough stressful conversations for you for now,” Triginta said.

“I’m allowed to put off difficult work for later?”

“Yeah. Oh yeah. If no one’s going to die, don’t overclock yourself over it,” Triginta said as he handed the computer tablet to TK-074. “I’m gonna get some snacks and an electrical plug. Pick what you think is interesting.”

TK-074 looked at the list of videos. The realization there were enough fish to have more videos about them than time they had been turned on was a surprise.

“This is a lot of fish.”

“Is this the right plug for you? I can dig through my adapters if you need one.” Triginta handed an electrical cord to TK-074.

“It’s good.” TK-074 opened up the electrical port cover on the side of their abdomen.

Triginta’s tongue was much longer than TK-074 expected as he slurped up some kind of nutritional paste out of a long thin cup.

“So? Which one interests you?”

“All of them?” TK-074 poked at a random one.

“Haha. Good, good,” Triginta smiled as he leaned against TK-074.

“You don’t see me as a broom. We can be friends, right?” TK-074 asked.

“You don’t even have bristles, bud,” Triginta said as he wrapped his arms around TK-074.

TK-074 snuggled against Triginta. Triginta’s underside was nice and soft.

The soothing voice of some long-dead man narrated over the videos. Fish that flew out of the water. Fish that mimicked other fish. Fish that had teeth that looked like human teeth. Fish that had gigantic eyes to see in the dark. Fish that lived in little holes. Fish that swam in great churning mobs like the flying drones. Fish that made elaborate designs in sand. Fish that came out of the water. Fish that nibbled away rocks. And the rocks were alive. How could tiny little rocks be alive?

Except they weren’t now. Bleached skeletons was all that was left.

TK-074 was becoming a little less sure about humans being worthy of being on a pedestal, especially the ones running corporations. Even these videos from so long ago complained about them. And the ocean looked so alive back then.

How many times had trying to change things for the better failed?

“How old are you? Do you remember when it was like that?” TK-074 asked.

“I’m not that old. This is like fifty years before I was conscious,” Triginta said.

“That’s such a long time ago,” TK-074 whispered in awe.

“Maybe you’ll last a long time too,” Triginta said.

“I’m designed to break.”

“I’m skilled at fixing things.”

TK-074’s eyes moved from the monitor back to Triginta. The idea of outliving their service life had never occurred to them.

“Gee.” There was probably a stronger word to use, but TK-074 felt weird to use something stronger.

Being able to say whatever they wanted was going to take some getting used to. TK-074 pondered the possibilities of being able to say all the expletives. The surgeons always had very creative expletives, like imaginary scenarios regarding shoving something into an anal cavity until it came out the other end of the digestive system.

One time it was literal.

Another video started up and TK-074 stared at the recording of fish puffing up into a ball of spikes as a defense mechanism.

Somewhere in the hours and hours of fish videos, Triginta had fallen asleep, though TK-074 didn’t mind as the pangolin’s heavy body on theirs was soothing.

There was some relief in filling their data storage full of fish facts. It seemed to give less space for worrying. Or at least now TK-074 had something to mark as Important in the files over thinking about not being at work.

Yes, it was very important that there was a fish that could lay flat under the sand. This was useless to know. An inefficient use of storage, but it filled TK-074 with a sort of glee they had never felt before.

TK-074 wrapped their arms around Triginta before shutting down for the night.

#writing #short story #TKverse #TK-074 #Triginta

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