#throw all that shit together in a stew and it's like. do these ingredients really go together. what is the chef DOING

[icicleteeth]

Another quirk to Warmhoney Steppe fic that I’ve been writing over the course of a year on and off (that I never talk about lol) that I’m only just noticing is the overabundance of fish metaphors I’m sorry I’m like this 😶

#and like. warmhoney culinary adventures #i say writing over the course of a year like it isn't like 7k words #i am slow and it's so overindulgent in a lot of ways that only i specifically understand that i die of mania and cringe every time i write #one sentence or line of dialogue i am not kidding #me writing this fic is like watching a home cook in very amateur ways prepare 500 different ingredients like growing your own cilantro in #the backyard for one ingredient and keeping bees for the other ingredient and cultivating strawberries so that when it is strawberry season #in 7 months they will be the very best strawberries and it's like this chef is putting WAY too much effort into preparation and for what. to #throw all that shit together in a stew and it's like. do these ingredients really go together. what is the chef DOING #nobody understands what the chef has made and do not know at all if it is even good but the chef seems happy... #yeah that's me with this fic

[asweetprologue]

Geraskier prompt: Cooking and sharing food

hey, sorry for the wait on this one! i’m trying to answer an ask or do a prompt every day in october but I also have school so we’ll see how it goes lmao

anyways I really thought this prompt was cute as shit so here we go!! more below the cut so this post doesn’t take up too much of ur dash 

On the feeding of wolves

One of the first things Geralt had learned when Jaskier came to stay at Kaer Morhen was that the bard could cook.

Jaskier had never come to stay at the keep before. Geralt had never asked. It always felt like overstepping, when he’d thought to bring it up. Jaskier had his own life, friends and coworkers and family that he needed to catch up with, prestigious court positions to fill, beautiful men and women to fall into bed with. He already followed Geralt around for the better part of the year, most of the time. To ask him to come and stay longer, to live in close quarters with Geralt and meet his family… It was too close to asking for what Geralt really wanted. 

That had changed recently, something exciting and tentative springing up between them. Geralt wasn't sure if Jaskier had only just developed a more-than-platonic interest in him, or if he’d realized Geralt felt the same, or if he’d just suddenly decided to throw caution to the wind. Whatever the case, Geralt was glad for it. Things had been better over the last few months than ever before, even if they’d yet to formally put a name to what they were doing. So Geralt had finally built up the courage to ask Jaskier if, maybe, he wanted to come north with him, and Jaskier had gleefully agreed.

Geralt had been worried about Jaskier getting along with the other wolves, fretting over it the entire way up the mountain pass to Kaer Morhen. It turned out he needn't have worried, however. Jaskier had a secret, full proof plan to seduce the witchers of the Wolf School, and it involved warm loaves of bread and a judicious amount of spices.

On the road Jaskier never cooked. Geralt had spent - he didn't even know. Hundreds of evenings, probably, roasting meat over an open fire or tossing it into a pot for stew, throwing in whatever vegetables and herbs he’d been able to scrounge up. Jaskier had complained plenty when it wasn't to his liking, but it didn't bother Geralt. He was a man of simple needs; a warm bowl of soup in the forest or a hunk of chicken in a tavern was enough to suit him. As long as it kept him going towards the next task. 

Jaskier, on the other hand, was a noble deep down and it showed in his tastes. He didn't mind the food they picked up in taverns along the road, but it was obvious that he preferred the fare they received at banquets and the occasional festival. He had a sweet tooth a mile wide and a sensitive palette for spices and ingredients. Geralt, with his heightened sense of smell, should have been better than Jaskier at picking them out by far, but the bard had a knack for it.

It turned out that “knack” was built on real skill. On the day of their arrival, Jaskier had strode into the main kitchen of the keep and said, “Oh finally, a real oven!” Geralt had written it off, only to wake the next morning to Jaskier making dozens of dainty hot cross buns. The fire was crackling away in the stove, and a pot of tea was already boiling away. Jaskier had turned to him with a brilliant smile on his face, flour in his hair, and said, “Those ones just came out! Help yourself. Where are those brothers of yours?” Geralt had stood for a moment, blinking in surprise, before he picked up one of the buns. It was delicious, hot and flaky with a subtle sweetness to it.

It had become a bit of a ritual since then, in the week that they’d been at the castle. Jaskier didn't always make breakfast, but he cooked at least one meal almost daily. He was good, too, his food packed with flavor and warmth that made Geralt feel lazy and content afterwards. Jaskier insisted that they all sit down to eat together, even old Vesemir, and the other wolves began to open up around the bard. Eskel was pleased to have someone else around who had his appreciation for more academic pursuits, and Lambert quickly found that Jaskier was an easy sell on any shenanigans that he wanted to pull. Even Vesemir seemed to enjoy his company, asking Jaskier after Geralt’s exploits on the Path - “He is woefully silent when it comes to his own victories, aren't you darling? Let me tell you about last spring, when he took down an entire nest of archspores near Toussaint -”

It was good. Great, even. Geralt had no idea where it was fucking coming from.

After the first week he finally cornered Jaskier in the kitchen, where the bard was working on dinner. Lambert and Eskel had felled a deer earlier that day, and Jaskier was planning to make some kind of stew with the tough meat. He was currently kneading a dark lump of bread dough, probably to go along with the meal and serve as breakfast the next morning. He looked up when Geralt walked in, his expression pleased. His chin lifted and he nodded to a hissing pot on the stovetop. “Oh, Geralt, glad you’re here. Will you be a dear and stir that for me? I’m afraid the onions might start to stick.”

Geralt did as he was bid, picking up the wooden spoon hanging nearby to shove at the onions in the pot. There must already have been some spices thrown in - garlic, some rosemary, thyme - because it smelled heavenly. “I didn't know that you knew how to cook,” he said after a moment.

Jaskier hummed, focused on his task. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and Geralt watched distractedly as his forearms tensed and released as he kneaded the dough. “Hmm, I suppose you wouldn't. I don't know much about roadside cooking, so I always left it in your decently capable hands. We’ve never settled anywhere long enough to make use of a kitchen.”

Geralt watched the bard, onions forgotten. “You never said. Where did you learn?”

Jaskier glanced over at him and the away, blushing. “Oh, here and there. When I was a boy my parents felt I was too loud to be in the presence of guests, so they usually sent me to the kitchens for the staff to watch over. No idle hands in there, let me tell you. They put me to work quickly enough, little tasks to keep me busy. I helped out more as I got older, until my parents deemed it inappropriate behavior for a viscount.” He smiled down at the dough beneath his fingers, shaping it into a round loaf. “I think that's where I found my love of music and making, if I'm being honest. There were always sounds in that room, people singing and laughing while they made food to feed the house. I like being a part of that.” He met Geralt’s eyes. “I like making people happy by making things.”

Geralt stepped closer, reaching up to lay a gentle hand on Jaskier’s neck. “You don't have to,” he said. “They’ll still like you even if you don't do things for them.” He took a breath, and then continued. “I’ll still care for you. Always. You don't have to be useful, Jaskier.”

Geralt heard the bard’s breath hitch, and then Jaskier leaned forward to press a soft kiss to his lips. When he pulled back he was smiling warmly. “I like doing it,” he said, “but thank you. It means… more than I can say.” Taking Geralt’s free hand in one of his flour coated palms, he said, “I care about you a great deal as well.”

Geralt opened his mouth, unsure of what he was about to say. Something embarrassing, like I want to wake up to your cooking every day or I used to dream about this sort of thing or maybe just I love you. Instead, he said, “I think the onions are burning.”

They were. The kitchen was filled with the rich smell of over caramelized onions, and Jaskier gasped as he pushed past Geralt to attempt to save them. He cursed up a storm as he pulled them from the heat, looking down into the pot with a pout. Geralt huffed a laugh, knowing that Jaskier would find a way to pull it all together regardless. There was flour on his palm in the shape of Jaskier’s hand, and something in his chest that he thought was there to stay. The kitchen was warm, and Jaskier’s hair had flour in it once again, and Geralt felt like he was finally, finally home. 

#witcher #the witcher #geralt of rivia #geralt #jaskier #geraskier #geralt x jaskier #geralt/jaskier #prompts #octoberfest #theanisplanet #thank you so much for the prompt! #making food for and with each other is so tender wow #i know that last line is kind of headass but you know what it's my fic and I do what i want :) #also I wrote this fully at 3:30am so if there's spelling mistakes that's why i did edit it but yknow #my work #october2020

[frog-punches]

hey. ippo characters cooking

Ippo: solid cook! can't make anything super complicated but can make most basic dishes you can throw at him. his main specialty is fish and seafood (obvi), really likes breading and frying stuff. always fucks up somehow when he bakes. and he really really likes cooking with other people, he thinks it's really fun

Takamura: no lol. doesn't know how and doesn't have the time or interest to learn it. the most he'd do is like, eggs and bacon/ham for breakfast

Kimura: he likes baking! breads n muffins in particular. doesn't have much experience cooking(his mom usually cooks for him uwu) but can throw together something edible if need be. he likes making italian food the most

Aoki: fucking excellent. been cooking since he was very young. of course ramen is his main specialty, but he can also do desserts, pastas, curry, soups, stews, whatever. Likes to do everything homemade if he has the time.

Miyata: only sticks to the most basic of dishes. fried eggs, fried rice, pasta. maybe he likes to make himself salads but that's only if he happens to have enough shit laying around the house to make a good one. kinda wants to learn how to make better stuff but whenever he's about to cook it's like "eh. what's the point" and makes spaghetti

Sendo: Likes any dish where you just cut up a bunch of shit and throw it in a pot with some spices. Despises dishes more than he likes to cook so he sticks to dishes where you only need knife/cutting board/ pan or pot/bowl. Would absolutely rely on something like an instant pot or crock pot if he had them. definitely the type to cook his steak super rare

Mashiba: nahhhh. i think maybe he tried to learn after he started taking care of himself n his sis but it's just not his area. will handle dinner if Kumi can't cook and he doesn't feel like wasting money ordering out. just steamed or stir fried veggies + a pan cooked piece of meat (like a chicken filet) on rice and that is It. kumi handles it the vast majority of the time

Kumi: Unfortunately basically had to learn how to cook after her parents' death because ryo is Useless, see above. luckily she does enjoy cooking quite a bit. really likes oven baking meats like ribs and chicken thighs. she'd also really be into making her own stuff like jams n broth. Like ippo, very solid all around cook, but she can do more than him and is just more talented than him at it

Itagaki: pretty good! knows how to get creative with whatever he has and knows how to make ingredients last a while. he'd be really into pickkling veggies and smoking meats. really really loves fresh fruits, would probably make himself a fruit salad.

Sawamura: mmmmmMeat.. tastey. really good at making steak and porkchops. really likes making sandwiches of basically any kind; pbnj would probably be a big comfort food for him. Definitely the type to try weird food combos and end up really liking them.

Kamogawa: never adds much spice to his food. steamed fish and veggies, chicken breast with salt and pepper, basic soups etc. has kinda a sweet tooth so he'll make some brownies for himself as a lil treat sometimes

#them......! #always nervous giving hcs what if there's something in the manga that directly contradicts me oh no

[bondsmagii]

hey Miceál! if you are in the mood, i'd like to ask you for a great favor. could you share some irish recipes with me? even just one would mean a lot to me. i am half irish, but i am an orphan and i grew up in another part of europe, so i have very little connection to that side of me, and i believe it is very intimate to share something that my ancestors also shared, in order to commune and get to know them through my body in whatever way i can. thank you in advance fellow fenian!

hello, fellow Irish orphan! there are lots of wonderful Irish recipes out there, but I’ll share a couple that have special meaning to me and that I have fond memories of. it’s a classic: Irish stew and soda bread! this is a classic for a reason. there’s nothing more comforting on a cold and rainy day than a steaming bowl of Irish stew, and soda bread is probably the easiest kind of bread to make. it requires no waiting around for the dough to rise; you just make that dough and get that bread.

soda bread

first, the soda bread. it’s a great accompaniment, but it can also be made on its own and eaten whenever you need a good wholesome snack. slather a bit of butter on that badboy and indulge.

soda bread ingredients:

250g plain white flour (not self-raising, just plain)

250g plain wholemeal flour

100g porridge oats (I have made it without these before but if you want that authentic experience you’ll probably want the oats)

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

25g butter, cut into small cubes

500ml buttermilk (if you have no buttermilk, I find adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to a cup of milk and stirring for a few minutes works fine)

soda bread creation time:

preheat oven to [takes a deep breath] regular oven 200C, fan oven 180C, or if you work with Fahrenheit (holy shit I spelled that right first time??) that’s around 390F and 355F respectively.

mix together all the dry ingredients, so your two flours, your oats, your bicarbonate of soda, and your salt.

rub in the butter so it’s all good and mixed in. remember to go easy on the dough, it has to be treated very gently. 

add the buttermilk and stir the mixture carefully but quickly with a kitchen knife. you don’t want to be doing anything remotely near kneading, so you get to stir with a knife because apparently that’s somehow more gentle.

once everything is mixed, shape the dough into a round, flat-ish lump. just like the round loaves you see.

use the knife to score a nice good cross over the top of the dough. according to tradition, this is to allow the fairies to escape, but it’s also really good for allowing the bread to cook through properly.

put on a baking sheet and bake until it sounds hollow when you knock on it. this takes between 30-45 minutes in my experience, but after the 30-minute mark check regularly because it can be any time.

if for whatever reason it’s not ready yet, just flip ‘er upside-down for a few minutes.

leave to cool on a wire rack (to prevent the bottom from getting soggy) and covered with a tea towel (to keep the crust crusty).

from my experience this bread can sometimes be very dense, but experimenting with cooking times and flour ratios will shift it. I’ve found wholemeal to be slightly denser than plain flour, so once you get the hang of it tweak the recipe until it’s to your liking!

Irish stew

now times have changed you can make this in a slow cooker if you like, but I’ve never done that (yet -- I shall this winter and report back). this is how I used to eat it: sitting at the old wooden table in my friend’s kitchen, while her mam ladled it out of the massive saucepan that could drain a small lough.

(I have since become vegetarian, but this recipe would be just as nice as a hearty vegetable stew. if you’re vegetarian or there are any vegetarians out there who’d like to try it, hit me up for a recipe as I’d change this one pretty significantly in terms of technique if there was no meat.)

there’s a little controversy, as there always is with classic recipes: traditionally Irish stew is made with mutton, but mostly everyone just uses lamb. there’s also a debate raging about whether or not it should just have potatoes and onions in it, but honestly go ham. so long as there’s some nice tasty root veggies in there it’s grand, but of course potatoes are a must.

Irish stew ingredients

2 tablespoons vegetable oil 

lamb chunks (I just get them already cut from the supermarket)

potatoes 

roughly chopped onion

finely sliced leeks

roughly chopped carrots

2 tablespoons plain flour

1 1/2 pints beef stock (I just use a stock cube or two)

note how the vegetables have no measurements. this is just because I tend to make whatever looks right for the amount of people I’m cooking for.

Irish stew creation time:

heat the oven to 180C (or 355F)

take half of your vegetable oil and heat it up until it’s warm but not going crazy, and then add half your lamb and brown it.

take the lamb out and put it into a big casserole dish (or any large dish that has a lid and can go in the oven).

cover the lamb with half the potatoes, carrots, onions, and leeks.

add the rest of the oil to your frying pan and brown the rest of the lamb, and then add that into your casserole dish (or equivalent) over the veggies.

cover with the rest of the veggies so you have a weird veggie-meat lasagne.

add the flour to the frying pan and stir it around to soak up all the juices, then heat for a couple of minutes. add the stock a little at a time until everything turns to a nice, thick sauce with no lumps. it’ll kind of look like thick soup or brown gravy.

pour this sauce into your dish with all the meat and veggies.

if you have any stock left over, throw that in too. put the lid on and cook it in the oven for about an hour.

after an hour check to make sure there’s still plenty of sauce. if there isn’t, add some boiling water. the meat and veggies must always be covered with liquid, or they’ll dry out. once this is done (or if everything is fine!) bake for another hour, checking a little more regularly to make sure it’s nice and saucy.

if there’s too much sauce at the end, bake for a little longer with the lid off.

once the hour is up, it’s done! add salt and pepper if you like. best served piping hot with a hunk of thick crusty bread, while the wind and rain howls outside.

I hope these work out well for you and I hope they succeed in making you feel a little closer to your family. as part of your wider Irish family and the slightly narrower Irish orphan family, I hope these recipes bring you warmth and comfort as the days get colder.

#recipes #anon #asks

[ericsonclan]

Practically Brothers

Summary: Marlon and Louis spend some time helping each other out before having a joke off later that night.

Word Count: 2602

Read on AO3:

“Careful, Lou! Don’t move so much!” Marlon warned as a bit of the vegetable oil spilled onto his pants leg.

“Shit, sorry!” Louis flashed an apologetic grin over at his best friend. “I just got excited I guess. We haven’t done a hairdo day in forever.”

Marlon smiled warmly at Louis’ words. It had been a while since they had done this. For the last couple years Louis and Marlon would get together in Louis’ room and surround themselves in the secret stash of pillows that Louis had (although everyone at Ericson knew about it so his stash wasn’t very secretive at all).

Once they got hidden away in the stash of pillows on his bed they would begin the process of helping each other with their hair. Life had been so hectic lately though that neither of them had had the time or energy for this special time together. With struggling to get enough food for everyone, making sure that the school was safe and dealing with more deadheads than they can count, everyone at the school was exhausted.

Marlon dipped his finger into the vegetable oil once more and began to moisturize Louis’ dreadlocks. Louis sat there quietly for a few moments before he began to whistle. Marlon bopped his head around here and there to the tune. The two of them enjoyed the peaceful moment as Marlon continued to work on Louis’ dreads. After a few seconds Louis stopped humming and his eyes wandered over to the small amount of vegetable oil that stood in an old soda bottle.

“I hope Omar never finds out how much of his vegetable oil we’ve stolen,” Louis’ words made Marlon pause for a moment before resuming. Louis didn’t have to look at his best friend’s face to know that he was smiling.

“Yeah, this will be a secret that we take to the grave,” Marlon held out his hand that wasn’t coated in the oil and Louis shook it firmly.

“We shook on it so now we gotta keep it a secret,” Louis smiled as he sat still.

“I was going to keep it a secret either way. Omar is scary when it comes to food,” Marlon’s words made Louis laugh softly.

“Isn’t that the truth,” Louis looked outside the window and noticed that some of the leaves were beginning to fall. Soon this season would be over and the cold harshness of winter would be upon them. Louis wondered how much stress would weigh on Marlon’s shoulders throughout that season. Marlon never seemed to take on more than he could bear. At least that was the impression that Louis had gotten over the years. Louis snuck a glance back at his friend. He was really thankful to have Marlon as a leader. He won hands down over all the shitty adults that had left them the moment the world went to hell.

“All done,” Marlon spoke up and wiped off the oil on his hands before he took off his letterman jacket. The blond tossed it beside him on his right and shifted his weight. Louis scooted over on his knees and grabbed the knife.

“Alright, dude, stay extremely still or I might accidentally shave off part of your mullet.” Louis smirked.

Marlon frowned over at his friend for a moment before a subtle smirk appeared on his lips. “That would be way too high a price to pay.”

“It would be a travesty,” Louis began to shave the right side of Marlon’s head where some new hair was growing in. He only needed to shave a small portion of it. “Have no fear, I won’t harm this majestic mane,” Louis grinned and continued his task. Once the right side was done he picked up his friend’s jacket and shook the loose hairs off onto the floor before tossing the jacket over on Marlon’s other side. Shuffling over, Louis began the process once again on the left side. The room was quiet except for some quips from Louis here and there. After a few minutes he was done. Louis scooted back and nodded proudly. “Yep, you are still rocking that eighties look!”

“Someone has to,” Marlon smiled and worked to get his jacket back on. He glanced out the window and saw the slant of the sun. “Shit, I need to go talk to Brody about the fishing shack. Could you find Aasim and go over the traps again? It will be easier if you’re there seeing as you’re the one who made them and all,”

“I’ll see if I can. My piano may be calling to me,” Louis got off of his bed and stretched.

“Louis, please. For me,”

Marlon’s tone made Louis pause before nodding. “Okay, I will be with Mr. Stick in the Mud in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!”

Marlon chuckled at Louis’ words then waved goodbye. Soon both of them were off to their respective tasks.

The day went by fairly smoothly. Marlon had been able to figure out a solution with Brody regarding the efficiency of the current fishing spot while Louis had fixed the traps. All it had cost was a headache that Aasim claimed he had gotten from Louis’ talking. Louis insisted this was a false accusation and that Aasim simply didn’t drink enough water that day.

Evening was quickly upon them. After Ruby and Sophie had worked to prep the ingredients with Omar for dinner and once the perfectionist chef himself signed off on the meal, dinner was served. Louis immediately took a spot next to Marlon who was sitting at a table with Ruby, Brody and Rosie. The pitbull casually sat beside Marlon who snuck little treats to her here and there when Ruby wasn’t looking.

The four of them ate the food happily, enjoying the warm, comforting stew that they had eaten for years and would continue to until the walkers got them or - as Sophie had proudly declared - old age did. She always believed that all of them could live until they were old and withered. Dinner continued to be peaceful as people at the different tables chatted and conversed until Marlon let out a huge burp.

“Good Lord,” Ruby waved a hand in front of her face and frowned at Marlon.

“Sorry,” Marlon smiled sheepishly and began to sip his stew when Louis spoke up.

“Yeah, you should be. This is a real burp!” Louis belched loudly, causing Marlon to nearly choke on his stew. The pair laughed loudly while Ruby got up and stormed off with a huff.

“Honestly, you two,” Brody got up and jogged after Ruby. The pair talked quietly for a minute before Brody offered that they could have some tea which brightened up Ruby’s mood immensely.

“Alright, Marlon, it's a joke-off time,” Louis grinned and saw the sparkle of joy in Marlon’s eyes.

“Okay, but you better get ready to lose. You’re the one that's going to get stuck with dish duty,” Marlon smirked over at Louis.

“That’s funny because I could’ve sworn I saw your name on the list for dish duty.” Louis returned the look back at his best friend.

Soon Mitch and Aasim moved to a table nearby Marlon and Louis’ table along with Willy who jumped down onto the spot next to Mitch. All of them were interested in seeing this joke-off. It had become a fairly regular routine with this pair. Marlon and Louis would throw back jokes back and forth and whoever ran out of jokes first or felt that the other one had done better would lose. The loser would then be stuck with an annoying chore.

Louis cleared his throat and decided to start the joke off. “I saw you picking flowers the other day for a girl,” Louis leaned forward and looked at his friend. “I bet Rosie liked them.”

Marlon smiled at that joke before adding in his own. “Hey Lou, the spiders called. They want their baby back,” Marlon smirked when he saw that Louis had understood he was referring to his hair.

“Oh ho ho, well played,” Louis grinned. No one else seemed impressed by these jokes. They were usually bad, corny or downright dumb jokes about Marlon or Louis. Occasionally Rosie or one of the other kids got thrown into the jokes but that was less frequent. Louis pondered his next joke for a while before delivering it with a smirk. “Marlon is so white that sunscreen puts him on,”

Marlon chuckled at that which made Louis laugh as well. “Oh yeah? Well, Louis, I hate to break it to you but the tooth fairy doesn’t take teeth that are lost on account of being a dumbass,”

Louis’ eyes widened at those words and he held his heart in mock sadness. Marlon began to laugh some more at that which in turn made Louis’ laughter grow. “Hey, Marlon, y’know why Rosie has a mattress in the headmaster’s office? It's because you smell so bad even she won’t sleep next to you,”

Marlon felt the zing of that one and immediately had a comeback. “Well the only reason your piano doesn't run away from your stank is because its legs don’t work!”

Louis paused at Marlon’s words, impressed by the reply. The pair was quiet for a second before they burst out laughing. The two of them continued to shoot jokes and zingers back and forth until Marlon held up his hands.

“Alright, alright, I’ll forfeit this round but you’d better watch out for next time,” He smiled competitively at his best friend. Louis returned the look and leaned his elbows on the table.

“We’ll see about that. After all, both of us are-”

“Idiots,” Violet butted into the conversation as she walked by with the twins and Tenn.

“Actually it's pronounced geniuses. We are joke masters.” Louis smiled at the blonde who rolled her eyes as Marlon and Louis high fived.

“Well, you’ll face the daunting task of being under the watchful eye of Omar as you clean dishes tomorrow,” Louis stood up from his spot.

“Oh boy, I can't wait,” Marlon quipped and rose as well.

“You still have one more night of freedom. So how about you join me in the music room?” Louis offered and Marlon nodded warmly.

“Sounds good to me, Lou. I just need to grab something from the headmaster’s office.” Marlon began to walk alongside Louis.

“Alright, then I shall see you soon. If you get lost, just follow the sound of my mesmerizing music,” Louis pulled on the sides of his coat as he strolled forward.

“Will do, but I think Rosie and I will be able to navigate the winding halls of the admin building just fine,” Marlon waved a quick goodbye to Louis before jogging up the stairs. Rosie followed close behind.

Minutes later Marlon had entered the office. He strolled forward and reached out for the map that lay on the table. His eyes wandered over it for a second before he felt Rosie pawing at his leg. “Sorry, girl,” Marlon gave the pitbull some loving pats and headscratches. “We can go hang out with Louis now,” Marlon tucked away the map in his pocket and grabbed the red pencil.

Rosie led the way down the stairs and happily trotted towards the music room where Louis had begun to play his music. Based on the strained notes and the slightly off-centered music, Marlon guessed that the piano was due for a tuning. Louis turned when he heard the door creak open thanks to Rosie’s paws whacking against it.

“Seems you were able to find the music room after all,” Louis smiled playfully at his friend who returned the smile.

“Yeah, it was a good thing I had Rosie with me.” Marlon sat down on one of the chairs and a pile of dust shot up and swarmed his face. He coughed loudly and Louis stopped his playing for a moment.

“You okay? Getting choked up because you lost the joke off?”

Louis’s words made Marlon look over with a competitive expression. “Ha, you wish,” Marlon coughed loudly for another moment before he took a deep breath.

Louis studied his best friend for a moment to make sure he was really okay before he began to play the piano again. His fingers danced around on the keys, creating a beautiful, playful melody that was only partially lost due to the untuned piano.

Marlon listened and smiled softly as he looked at the map. His mind quickly wandered back onto the safety of the school. He wondered if it was wise to start enforcing a tighter safe zone. After a few minutes Marlon decided against it. He wouldn’t make any major changes, at least not tonight. He doubted he’d be able to properly assess such a weighty decision at the end of the day when his energy was low. So instead he enjoyed his friend’s music.

After a little while Louis stopped his playing. “Y’know, maybe you should learn to play the piano,”

Louis’ words made Marlon glance up. “Yeah, well I bet I’d sound pretty shitty compared to you,”

“That's what practice is for. Surprising as it may be, I wasn’t always a piano master. Shocking, I know,”

Louis’ words made Marlon crack a smile. “I think I’ll stick to the guitar, thanks.”

“Well, I’m sure the day you track one down will come soon. With all the wild stuff we’ve found on some of these deadheads, I wouldn’t be surprised if we found one with a guitar,” Louis spun around on his piano bench to look at Marlon.

“That would be the dream. I miss playing guitar,” Marlon tilted his head back with a tired smile. “Well, it's getting late so I should head to bed.”

“Alright,” Louis rose up from his spot to sneak in some final pets for Rosie. He knelt down and whispered conspiratorially to the pitbull. “Make sure he actually gets some sleep, Rosie.”

“Hey, I can hear you,” Marlon looked down at his friends as he placed his hands on his hips.

“Damn, looks like we got caught, Rosie,” Louis’ gaze focused on the pitbull who was panting happily. “Alright, but seriously dude. Don’t push yourself,” Louis’ eyes locked with Marlon’s.

“I won’t,” Marlon smiled reassuringly and was relieved to see that his friend relaxed at those words before standing back up. Marlon continued to look at Louis for a moment before he walked forward and gave him a hug. Louis immediately returned it. The two of them held onto that hug for a moment before Marlon let go. He gave a final smile and wave, wishing Louis goodnight before heading off towards the headmaster’s office.

Marlon slowly walked down the hall, his eyes glancing around at all the graffiti that covered the walls as he walked up the stairs. Today had been a good day. He had been able to give his mind a few moments to get away from all the stress that being the leader brought, but now it was time to focus again.

Marlon glanced back at the music room as the sound of the piano filled the halls once more. He was really glad to have a friend like Louis. No, friend wasn’t the right word. Brother felt more fitting. Even though the world had gone to shit and life could be hell he knew he would always have Louis on his side. With that comforting thought putting Marlon’s heart at ease, he began to climb the stairs again, ready to continue his role as protector of the school.

#twdg #twdg louis #twdg marlon #twdg rosie #marlon rosie brotp #louis marlon brotp #fanfic

[trashyeggroll]

Cooking prompt for ThunderGrace? I hope the finale doesn't fuck shit up!

:: throws hands out to the guard rails :: I THINK WE ARE OKAY? WE MADE IT? It REALLY feels like they haven’t signed Chantal to the next season officially yet and HOPEFULLY the only question is whether to rightfully upgrade her to a main cast member 😤

After Chantal said Grace was making phở for the surprise wedding, I had to lean into that for this prompt, and if you go back and look at the scene, there really are like vermicelli noodles and such sitting on the counter and i just 🥺

Spoilers for season finale ahead, plus the angstiest prompt ficlet thus far. Also it’s 2am and I adrenaline-typed this, sorry for errors!

Sitting on one of the breakfast bar stools, Anissa watched quietly as Grace tended to the stew she’d been nursing to life all day, from just beef bones and water to the heavenly-smelling broth filling the air now. It was a long, tedious process of waiting, skimming, and stirring, adding spices here and taking out the brisket there, and most astonishing to Anissa was that Grace did it all from memory, hardly stopping so much as to measure a single ingredient. Star anise, cloves, fennel, coriander, cinnamon... Anissa knew the long list well by now, too.

“It’s a shame we don’t have any fish sauce. Life under siege,” Grace would sigh, washing her hands between tasks.

“Do you have any idea how hard it was to get star anise?” Anissa would joke back from her seat. “You can make it the right way for me, after all this.”

“As your wife.” Grace offered a smile that made Anissa feel more bulletproof than lungsful of air.

“As my wife,” confirmed Anissa, sliding a hand across the table. “I love you.”

Grace’s fingertips met hers on the cool surface, and the shapeshifter’s expression softened. “You sure you’re ready for what your parents will say?”

“Psh, after all this? Disapproval of my engagement is nothing, and besides—once they get to know you better, my family’s gonna love you, too. There’s no question.” Her gaze dropped to their hands as Grace pulled back, fingers slipping away from her as she peeked into the stockpot again. She looked so at ease, so... warm, confident. Anissa swallowed against the lump in her throat, thankful that Grace was focused on the phở and not her likely pained expression.

“Every family has their own recipe for this. My foster parents are the ones who taught me this,” Grace was saying, rueful. “But the fun thing about getting married is... we can have our own family recipe now. However the Pierces like it best, and it’ll be ours.”

Anissa’s heartbeat was picking up. She knew what was coming, and not just the words. “Pierce family phở, huh? In that case, I think you’re gonna wanna add extra pepper for Jen.”

Grace chuckled at that, brushing a loose curl from her eyes as she turned to look at her fiancé. As much as they’d been through, individually and together, Anissa never felt as sure, as safe in her reality, as when Grace Choi was smiling at her, whether a reluctant reaction to one of Anissa’s bad jokes, or the bright, sunlight warmth of right now, when she was thinking of their future together. Anissa would do anything to give that to her, to be able to visit Grace at the bar once again, walk through the park and go see movies on their days off. Those things had seemed so... quaint, at the time. But today, and for too many unknown days ahead, Anissa could only enjoy these hours, watching her wife-to-be tend to something she loved.

A knock on the door, Gambi arriving before the others, drew Grace’s attention, and Anissa closed her eyes as the kitchen blinked, green-black code replacing the oven, and Grace’s confused expression glitched along with it, almost like when she shifted between forms. But that wasn’t what this was.

“Anissa?” she asked, her voice tinny and far away, and Thunder’s heart grew heavy again. “Anissa, what’s happening?”

The world around them had nearly completely broken to pieces, but Anissa kept her eyes locked with Grace’s as she replied, “I love you, Grace. I love you.”

Seemingly endless blackness overtook her vision, and then Anissa was opening her eyes again, with TC’s face leaning close over her. He quickly leaned back, his eyes changing from neon green to his natural brown, and took a respectful step away as Anissa sat up on the medical bed.

“Anything new?” prompted the younger meta, gently.

“No. Not today.” Anissa swung her legs over the side of the bed, reaching up to the base of her skull to remove the sensor TC had designed for this exercise.

On the other side of the room, another bed held the prone form of the real Grace Choi, the one who wasn’t doing any smiling or cooking or announcing their engagement today. She’d shown no signs of recovery since the fight that left her in a coma, weeks ago, and Anissa was fighting to not lose faith. Where she had so genuinely thought she’d finally get to spend her nights and mornings with the woman she loved, instead Anissa had become accustomed to the low whirs and flashing lights of the machines that monitored her fiancé’s physical hold on the world of the living.

The longterm care facility was a nice operation, clean and with kindly enough staff, but it smelled like a hospital, like sickness, to Anissa. Nurses were regularly in and out of the room, adjusting Grace’s position to avoid bed sores and muscle atrophy, though Anissa would take over those duties whenever she could be there. Knowing what Grace had gone through as a child, it didn’t feel right to let strangers constantly handle her body, and no matter what was happening out in the rest of the world, Anissa took full responsibility to bathe her fiancé in a quiet, painstaking ritual that usually left Thunder feeling raw and near tears. It was such a far fall for the powerful shapeshifter who’d lifted her dinner table clear off the ground.

“She’s still there,” TC was saying. “We know she hasn’t gotten worse.”

Anissa nodded, offering him a quiet, but genuine ‘thank you’ before he left the room. TC’s modified brain stem connections let him step into Grace’s mind, similar to how he’d gone into Khalil’s, and he’d found that she was looping in the same broken memory of their last day together. No matter how much Anissa begged, pleaded, or explained, the dream-Grace wouldn’t wake up from it, and so instead, she’d learned to just play along. To relive that memory in peace, to have that modicum of Grace in her life, however long it would last. It was all she had, for now.

Ten minutes, or ten years, Lynn had said. Anissa would be there every day, would be asking every meta she came across at the boarding school or in other cities if they could help. She had made a promise, she had been the one to open the door to the next level of commitment... and like Jefferson Pierce and his father before him, Anissa Pierce’s word meant something in Freeland. She would never give up on Grace.

#asks #ask meme #prompts #thundergrace #anissa piece #grace choi #trashy writing #black lightning spoilers

[buoyantsaturn]

I’m in Hell (9/?)

summary: it’s thanksgiving! plus some

word count: 8,359

read on ao3

Nico was so incredibly, unimaginably bored. During the evenings and on weekends, he had Will and Bianca to occupy his time, but when they were at work and school, what was Nico supposed to do? The house was clean, the laundry was done, and their wedding was planned, so Nico wandered around the house aimlessly in search of something to do. What did he even do with all his free time in the past? Did he really spend so much time on his homework every day?

At the thought of his classes, Nico brought out his laptop. He’d had to complete a manuscript for the final assignment in one of his classes, and what good was a manuscript that was just sitting in a folder on his desktop?

He started off with a simple reread, though once he got a few pages in, he decided to start over from the top of make some minor edits. By the time the front door opened and Will and Bianca returned home, Nico was about a quarter of the way through his manuscript. 

Will came around the corner into the living room and leaned over the back of the couch to press a kiss to Nico’s cheek. “Hey, Babe,” he greeted, and Nico turned his head to meet him for another kiss, though Will held back and gasped. “You’re wearing your glasses again!”

Nico frowned, wondering why glasses would keep him from getting a kiss. “Yeah, and?”

Will darted forward and pecked at Nico’s lips. “You look good in glasses. What are you working on?”

“Manuscript,” Nico replied simply, turning his gaze back toward his laptop. 

“A new one?”

Nico shook his head. “Same one as before. I’m going to edit it as much as I can and then send it off to a few publishers to see if anybody will take it.”

“That’s great!” Will wrapped both of his arms around Nico’s shoulders from behind and pressed kiss after kiss to any part of Nico he could reach. “I’m proud of you.”

Nico tensed, hiking up his shoulder in an attempt to bump Will away, though Will just held Nico tighter. Nico squirmed. “Get off of me,” he said, beginning to laugh when Will’s kisses on the side of his neck started to tickle. 

“Alright, fine,” Will said, though he pressed one forceful kiss to Nico’s cheek before he pulled away completely. “I’m feeling pizza tonight, what do you think?”

“Yeah, sure,” Nico replied, and when Will stepped back, Nico stretched his arms over his head. “Does Bi have any homework she needs help with?”

“Yeah, but I’ll help her,” Will replied. “You go ahead and keep working on your book.”

Nico saved his document and shut his laptop, jumping up off the couch. “No, you should relax. You’ve been working all day, and I could use a break from editing anyway.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Go sit, and order the pizza or something.”

With a nod, Will turned and went back into the living room, while Nico made his way into the kitchen, where Bianca was sitting at the table, her homework already spread out in front of her. 

Nico pressed a kiss to the top of her head as he sat down beside her. “Hey, Princess, how was school?”

After a week or so of editing and proofreading and editing some more, Nico decided that if he read through his manuscript one more time, then he was going to drive himself crazy. He took a day to find the submission requirements of a few different publishing companies, then mailed out an armload of manuscript-filled envelopes while he was on his way to pick Bianca up from school. 

Then, the next day, he was bored again.

Luckily for him, he only had a few hours to lounge around without anything to do before Will came home from work, having taken an earlier shift than usual that morning to get him home just after lunch. 

Will dropped himself onto the couch beside Nico, resting his head in Nico’s lap and throwing his legs up over the arm of the couch. “I could use a nap,” Will said. 

“Nope.”

Will pouted up at him. “What do you mean, nope? I can take a nap if I want to!”

“Nope, I’ve been bored out of my mind for the last few hours, and if you take a nap, then I’ll be bored again,” Nico explained. 

Will hummed. “What if I keep you entertained for a little while, and then I can take a nap?”

Nico raised an eyebrow. “What kind of entertainment are we talking about?”

Will grinned. “Did you have something in mind?”

Nico twisted a finger in one of Will’s curls and gave it a light tug. “No, but it sounds like you do.”

Will reached up and grabbed onto the collar of Nico’s shirt, pulling him down for a kiss. “I’m thinking… We get up, we go to the bedroom, close the door…and figure out what we’re wearing in our wedding.”

Nico snorted, knocking his head forward, and accidentally headbutted Will in the nose. 

“Ow!” Will exclaimed, sitting up and holding his nose.

“Sorry!” Nico shouted, though it was difficult to sound sincere while he was laughing so hard. “Are you okay?”

Will frowned at him, and let go of his nose. “I think so.”

Nico took Will’s face in both hands and drew him in to place a kiss on the bridge of his nose. “Better?”

Will scrunched up his nose. “I guess.”

“So,” Nico said, “you don’t know what you’re wearing in the wedding yet?”

“No, why, do you?”

“I have a suit, if that’s what you’re asking. Don’t you?”

Will shook his head. “I mean, I have a suit, but… No, I’ll need to get a new suit, shoes, I’m thinking maybe I should get a bowtie--”

“Do you even know how to tie a bowtie?” 

Will pouted. “I can learn!”

Nico’s hands slipped down from Will’s cheeks to lock loosely behind his neck. “Do you want to go buy something? We could at least go look around somewhere even if we’re not buying anything, and we could figure stuff out for Reyna and Cecil, too.”

“Yeah, that sounds good. Lunch first, though? I haven’t eaten since I left here this morning,” Will told him. 

“Of course. Want me to make you something?”

“You don’t have to,” Will replied. “I was probably just gonna throw a sandwich together.”

“Let me,” Nico said, already standing. “Hot or cold?” 

“Cold’s fine.” 

“Any special requests?”

“No,” Will said, his reply muffled by the pillow he’d fallen onto. “Surprise me.”

Nico entered the kitchen and gathered a few sandwich ingredients, taking his time as he made two sandwiches - one for Will and one for himself - though he didn’t get far before his phone started to ring. He set the device on the counter nearby, answering the call and setting it on speaker phone. “Hey, Annabeth, what’s up?”

He heard her let out a frustrated sigh. “The project I’m on just got canceled so I’ve got nothing to do for the rest of the day and I need to vent.”

“Huh,” Nico muttered, then hurried to say, “I mean, that sucks, and I’m happy to let you vent at me, but would you be interested in coming shopping with me and Will this afternoon? It’s for wedding stuff.”

“Oh!” Annabeth said in surprise. “Uh, sure! I was just gonna head home and stew in my anger but that sounds like a much better idea. Just let me know when and where, and I’ll meet you there.”

“Actually, do you have any stores in mind? You know, since you’ve done this before and I haven’t.”

Annabeth snorted. “Yeah, sure. I’ll text you the address, just let me know when you’re ready.” 

“Sounds good. See you soon.”

Nico ended the call before he finished up the sandwiches and carried both plates back to the living room. Will was on the couch where he’d left him, but now he was sprawled out across the length of it, appearing asleep though Nico had a hard time believing he could fall asleep so quickly. 

“Wake up, Sunshine,” Nico said gently, and Will cracked one eye open to look at him.

“Have I told you that I love you?” Will asked before he pushed himself upright to lean back against the arm of the couch. 

“Not in the last...six hours or so,” Nico replied. He stepped closer to hand the plate over, but pulled it back at the last second and leaned down for a kiss. 

“Well, I love you,” Will told him with a smile, and Nico handed over the plate. “Thank you, Darling.”

Nico lifted Will’s feet off the other end of the couch and set down, letting Will’s legs rest in his lap, and balanced his plate on Will’s shins. “Annabeth just called, by the way,” Nico said. “She’s gonna come shopping with us.”

“Oh, thank God,” Will said, “someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“Do you guys have any sort of color theme that we should be looking for?” Annabeth asked as she led them into some independent wedding boutique. 

Nico and Will exchanged glances, and Nico shrugged. Will said, “I don’t think we do. Should we?” 

“If you don’t have a lot of decorations, then it’s not a huge deal, but you should probably at least have something to give a little cohesion to the wedding party. So, any thoughts? Favorite colors maybe? Knowing Nico, I would normally say that classic black and white would be the way to go, but we don’t want your wedding to look like a funeral.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” Will said, and squeezed Nico’s hand as he looked down at him. “Any ideas?”

“Aside from black and white? No. You?”

Rather than answering, Will looked back at Annabeth. “Any suggestions?”

Annabeth looked between them like they were a complicated equation she was trying to solve in her head. “Show me your engagement rings.” Nico and Will held out their left hands without question, and allowed Annabeth to examine the rings. “Why not silver and gold?”

“That’s a great idea!” Will said with a grin, and grabbed Nico’s hand again. “What do you think?”

Nico smiled back up at him. “That sounds perfect.”

“Great, so now that we’ve got that figured out,” Annabeth started, “what are we here for?”

“Well, I need to get a suit, but I can do that on my own time. We were thinking...ties? Shoes, maybe?”

“Do you think they have flower girl dresses here?” Nico asked.

With a shrug, Annabeth replied, “I don’t see why not.”

“Oh, shit!” Will exclaimed suddenly, possibly too loud for the quiet store they were in, and startled the other two. “We don’t have a ring bearer! Do we need one of those?”

Nico turned to Annabeth for an answer. 

“We didn’t have one, but if you want, I could see if Luke wants to do it.”

“Great! So we can look around for something for him, too, just in case,” Will said, and started leading them further into the store. 

“I see ties over there,” Annabeth said, and pulled on Nico’s arm to guide them in the right direction. She stopped a few feet away from the wide array of ties on display. “We’re going with silver and gold, right?”

“I found silver,” Nico said, reaching for one of the ties, and on the other side of the display, Will selected another tie and announced, “I have gold!”

“Good. Now trade,” Annabeth said. 

“What? Why?” Nico asked.

“If you trade, it’ll match your rings,” she explained, her eyes still scanning the display until she seemed to find what she was looking for and selected another tie. “You don’t have to, of course, it’s just a suggestion.”

“No, I think we should,” Nico agreed, and held the tie in his hands out to Will. “It feels, like, symbolic, somehow.”

Will smiled at him, and swapped ties. He turned toward Annabeth and asked, “What do you have there?”

Annabeth held up a silver and gold striped tie. “I’m going to ask if they have something like this for kids. Actually, you need a dress for Bianca, too, right? Let’s go find a kid’s section.”

They wandered the store for a short while - not too long because the store wasn’t actually all that large - until they found the children’s section. As Nico and Will wandered toward the area marked for flower girls, Annabeth went toward another display of ties.

Nico and Will meandered between the rows of clothes, ending up on opposite sides of a single rack as they sifted through dresses. “Do you ever feel like you have no idea what you’re doing?” Nico asked over the rack. 

“You know, it’s not like I’ve planned a wedding before either,” Will teased. “I’m just really good at pretending to know what’s going on.”

Nico searched through a few more dresses before he continued, softer than before, “I’m glad I have you to pretend with.”

Will grinned, and there was a sparkle in his eye. “Yeah, I’m really glad I get to plan this wedding with you, it would really suck to have to get married by myself.”

“Don’t make me call this wedding off,” Nico threatened, but couldn’t keep the smile off his face even as he said it. 

“You wouldn’t. You love me too much!”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“Okay, well, since our wedding is still on because you love me more than anyone has ever loved anything on the planet, what do you think of this one?” Will pulled a dress off the rack and held it up for Nico to see. It was primarily made of a shimmering silver material, and had a gold sash tied into a bow in the back, which separated the simple top of the dress from its poofy tulle skirt. 

“That looks perfect,” Nico told him, “except I hope you know what size will fit her, because I have no idea how children’s clothes are sized.”

Will had a late start later in the week, so he volunteered to take Bianca to school before heading out to find himself a suit for the wedding, but before he left he asked Nico, “Are you sure you have a suit to wear?”

“Yes, I promise you, I have a suit,” Nico told him for what felt like the tenth time. 

“‘Cause you know I’m going out to get one for myself right now if you want to join me, and you can get one for yourself.”

Nico stepped up to him and held Will’s face in his hands. “I’m going to try to say this clear enough that it gets into your head and finally sticks: I have a suit. I don’t need another one. Now, I love you, but please leave so Bianca isn’t late for school.”

Will hummed, eyes narrowing. “Alright, if you say so.” He darted forward for a kiss, and when he pulled back he said, “Love you, too.”

Once Will and Bianca had left, Nico made his way to his bedroom and threw open the closet doors. He searched through the clothes, though he wasn’t able to find his suit after a few minutes. He tried to think back to when he packed up his room at Hazel’s apartment, but couldn’t remember packing or unpacking his suit, so he decided it must still be over there. 

Nico got dressed and headed over to Hazel and Frank’s place, not bothering with a warning text since he still had a key and he was just going to pop in for a few minutes at most. He wasn’t expecting, however, that when he opened the door, Frank would be sitting on the couch in his pajamas and eating a bowl of cereal. 

“Uh, hi?” Frank said, his voice expressing confusion but no surprise at all, as Nico froze in the doorway. “Did Hazel leave the door unlocked for you?”

“Um, yep, she must have,” Nico said awkwardly, hoping that he wasn’t being too obvious as he stuffed his keys back into his pocket. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to be here, or I would’ve texted first. I just need to grab something from my old room.”

“Sure, no problem,” Frank said, and he turned back to his cereal and whatever was playing on the TV. 

Nico hurried through the apartment, heading straight for his old room, which was almost entirely bare aside from the few furniture pieces he’d left behind. He walked up to the closet and slid open the pocket door, though there wasn’t even a single empty hanger inside. 

He dropped his head against the doorframe and groaned. “Shit,” he whispered, then called out of the room, “Hey, Frank, did you guys empty out my closet?”

“No, that was you,” Frank replied.

Nico stepped out into the hallway so that he didn’t have to shout as he continued, “I could’ve sworn I had a suit in there! I wore that suit on my first date with Will, but I can’t find it anywhere! I was going to wear it for my wedding!”

Frank tipped his head back on the couch and shot Nico a frown. “You were just going to wear some regular old suit for your wedding? Neeks, you have to get a new one.”

“Well, yeah, I do now, because I have no idea what happened to my other one,” Nico complained, walking back into the living room. He leaned his forearms on the back of the couch beside Frank’s head and hesitated for a moment before asking, “So, uh, are you doing anything today?”

“Are you about to ask me to go tux shopping with you?”

“Maybe.”

Frank shrugged. “Sure, I don’t have any plans. Besides, I’m gonna need my own suit one of these days, so better sooner than later, right?” He glanced up at Nico. “It’s not weird to get a suit before even talking about the wedding, right?”

“I think you’re in the clear.”

“Cool. Just let me finish eating and, you know, get dressed, and we can head out.”

“Alright.” Nico made his way around the couch and sat down to wait. “Oh, and we can’t let Will know we’re doing this, because I promised him that I already had a suit.”

Frank raised an eyebrow at him, then looked back to his cereal, nodding. “Alright, very cool, start your marriage off on a lie, that’s fun. That’s fresh.”

For another week, Nico felt like all he did was sit around. There was cooking and cleaning to do every so often, but still, when Bianca was at school and Will was at work, Nico had a hard time figuring out what he should do with himself. 

His phone started ringing one afternoon, though he didn’t recognize the number. Normally, Nico would ignore a call from a number he didn’t know, but with nothing else to entertain him that day, he figured he could make himself some fun by screwing with whatever telemarketer was on the other end.

He picked up the phone with a simple hello, and heard in response, “Hello, this is Malcolm Pace from Wise Owl Publishing, can I speak with Nico di Angelo please?”

Nico straightened up in his seat despite the fact that Malcolm couldn’t see him, and stuttered out, “This is me-- That’s me, I’m Nico.”

“Hi there, Nico, how are you doing today?” Malcolm asked politely.

“I’m fine, how are you?” Nico answered automatically, his body completely frozen in shock, though one knee slowly started bouncing in place until the movement became rapid and practically shook Nico’s entire body.

“I’m doing great, thanks for asking. I’m calling about a manuscript you sent in recently; Wise Owl Publishing is very interested in what you’ve sent us. I’d like to schedule a time to meet with you here in the offices so that I can talk you through all of the technical aspects of getting your book published, and have you sign a few things. Would you be available sometime soon for a meeting?”

“Yeah, yes! I have, uh, my mornings are free all this week, so is there any time then that would work for you?”

“Let me just check on that…” Through the phone, Nico could hear the sound of Malcolm typing rapidly on his keyboard until he continued, “Yes, it looks like I’m free tomorrow morning at ten-thirty. How does that sound?”

“That’s perfect.”

“Great! It looks like I already have your email, so I’ll be sending you a follow-up shortly just as a reminder, and I’ll include the building’s address and directions on how to find my office once you arrive. And I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“See you tomorrow.”

As soon as Nico hung up, all he wanted to do was scream, but instead he stared down at his phone in disbelief. He debated texting his friends to share the good news, and thought about calling Will, but he couldn’t manage to make his thumbs work, so for about ten minutes all he could do was sit there in silence. It was the email notification from Malcolm that finally allowed him to move again. 

He read the email a few times, as if needed reassurance that this was real, and put the address into Maps to figure out where he needed to go. And maybe this was preparing too early, but as soon as Nico managed to get on his feet, the first thing he did was run to his bedroom to pick out an outfit for the next day - it wasn’t a job interview, but it wasn’t like he could just show up in jeans and a t-shirt either...right?

Oh God, he had no idea what he was doing.

He got on his laptop and started down a Google spiral as he tried to figure out what was supposed to happen at this meeting tomorrow - what Malcolm would say, what he would have to sign, and even how long it would be before he could actually have a hardcover in his hands. All the research was just giving him more and more anxiety, but as soon as the front door opened when Will came home with Bianca, all of the excitement immediately returned. 

Nico leapt off the couch and ran for the kitchen, throwing his arms around Will and nearly knocking him off his feet in surprise. 

“Hey, Babe, I missed you, too,” Will said around a laugh, catching himself on the counter with one hand while the other patted Nico softly on the back. 

Nico pulled back so that he could see the look on Will’s face as he said, “My book’s getting published!”

The smile dropped off of Will’s face, replaced by a slack-jawed look of surprise. “Seriously?” 

“I have a meeting with a publisher tomorrow!”

Will’s smile returned full-force, beaming as he wrapping his arms around Nico’s waist and hugged him so tight he lifted him off the ground for a second. “That’s amazing! I’m so proud of you!”

“What’s going on?” Bianca asked as she stepped into the kitchen, having taken her time hanging up her coat and taking off her shoes. 

Nico released his fiance and turned to Bianca, kneeling down in front of her and explaining, “I wrote a story, and now a publishing company wants to help me make it into a book!”

“Woah, really?” Nico nodded. “That’s so cool!” Bianca jumped forward and wrapped her arms around Nico’s neck, and he returned the hug with the same amount of enthusiasm. 

After they broke the hug and Nico stood up once again, Will looked at him with a more muted smile, and a concerned arch to his eyebrows. He grabbed Nico’s hands in his and said, “I don’t want to diminish how amazing this is - because, don’t get me wrong, I’m unbelievably happy for you - but… This won’t interfere with the wedding, will it?”

Nico squeezed his hands. “No, don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure nothing happens until after the wedding. Besides, I’m sure I’ll need to do some editing, and at least one of their editors will have to read over everything. It’ll take time. But I promise, I’ll make sure they know about the wedding.”

Nico dropped Bianca off at school the next morning before driving into the city. Even with the time it took to locate the right building and find parking that wasn’t incredibly far away, Nico found himself navigating himself through the Wise Owl Publishing house with about half an hour to spare before his meeting with Malcolm. Better to be early than late, he supposed. 

He waited around outside Malcolm’s office for a while before the door finally opened and a man with blond hair and glasses greeted Nico with a smile. “Hey there, Nico di Angelo, right?”

“Yeah, hi. Malcolm? It’s great to meet you.” They shook hands, then Malcolm welcomed Nico into his office. 

As Malcolm sat behind his desk, and Nico took a seat on the other side, Malcolm said, “So, just to reiterate: We’d like to publish your book, and I’m sure you’re interested, otherwise I don’t know why you would be here. Right?”

“Right.”

“Great. So,” Malcolm reached into a drawer in his desk and brought out a folder which he placed on the desk between them. “I’ve already had one of my editors read your manuscript and make notes on a few things that need editing - mostly minor things, because, seriously, you’ve done a fantastic job with this story. I’ll make sure you get into contact with Julia in case you have questions about any of her notes. Now, normally we give writers about two months to incorporate any notes, but considering the state your manuscript is in right now, I don’t think you should need more than a couple of weeks, so I’d like to have your edited manuscript back here by the first.”

“Oh, uh--”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“Well, I’m getting married on the third. I’m going to be pretty busy with, you know, wedding stuff, for a little while.”

“Oh! Congratulations!” Malcolm told him. “That’s totally fine! As long as we can get things rolling on our end before Christmas, there shouldn’t be an issue, so… Let’s make it December twenty-first. Now, let me just print out a copy of the contract I’ll need you to sign with an updated schedule…” Malcolm typed furiously on his keyboard for a few moments before the printer in the corner whirred to life and spat out a few ink-covered pages. He handed the contract to Nico and said, “I’ll give you a few moments to read this over and sign it, unless you have any questions. It has all of the information you should need, like the projected schedule for the publishing process, compensation, and a few promotional things. We do require that our authors go on a book tour to promote the new releases, but we will cover your housing and transportation for the duration of the tour. Any questions?”

Nico did his best to listen to everything Malcolm said while reading through everything on the contract, though it was all a bit too much to handle all at once. “No, I think we’re good.” He probably should have tried to read through it all until he completely understood what he was signing, but really, Nico was too excited to bother. He figured that if they tried to screw him over, it would only be in the compensation, but he wasn’t really doing this for the money. 

“Fantastic.” Malcolm handed him a pen. “If I could just have you sign and date on this line here, we’ll be all set.”

Nico signed, and slid the contract back across the desk. 

“Let me make a copy of this for you, and then I’ll walk you through everything I have for you here.” Malcolm moved back toward the printer and copied the contract, keeping the original for himself and giving Nico the copy. “That’s for you to hold on to, and everything in this folder is yours as well - I already have my own copies of everything. This has your manuscript with Julia’s notes, Julia’s card so that you can get into contact with her, and the typical publishing schedule.” Malcolm took out the schedule, and started writing on it. “Going by this schedule, if you have everything submitted by the twenty-first, and if we’re able to get to work before the holidays, then you can expect the release date to fall sometime around the end of April, and we’ll start on the book tours about a month beforehand.”

“How much control do I have over the specific dates of the book tour?” Nico asked. “My fiance’s birthday is in March, and our daughter’s is in April, so I’d like to be home for those, if possible.” 

“We can figure things out once we determine the actual publishing date. Now, if you don’t have any more questions, I’ll let you be on your way to finalize those wedding plans of yours.”

Nico went through Julia’s notes as soon as he got home, and got so into his editing that he almost forgot to pick Bianca up from school. Luckily, he was only a few minutes late, and Bianca hardly seemed to notice. As soon as she saw him, Bianca ran up to him and demanded, “Nico! Do you have your book yet? Can I see it?”

“No, Princess, not yet,” Nico told her. “It’s gonna take a few months before it’s ready.”

“Oh,” Bianca said, visibly disappointed, “okay. Let’s go home. I’m hungry.”

Nico smiled and led Bianca out to his car. 

When they got home, Nico portioned out a small bowl of Goldfish crackers for Bianca to snack on while she did her homework, and he sat down next to her just in case she needed any help. They remained there until Will came home about half an hour later.

Will pressed a kiss to the top of Bianca’s head and said, “Hey, Bi, how was school?”

“Good,” she answered simply. 

Will moved toward Nico next, pressing a kiss to his lips first, then said, “Hey, Babe, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Yeah, sure,” Nico replied as he stood, and said to Bianca, “Just shout for us if you need any help, okay, Bi?”

“Okay.”

Nico followed Will into the hall, just far enough away that Bianca wouldn’t be able to hear. 

Will leaned back against one wall and pulled Nico close, resting his forearms on Nico’s shoulders. “So,” he whispered, “how would you feel about my mom coming up for Thanksgiving and staying here through the wedding?”

“Oh,” Nico said, his eyes widening slightly in surprise. “Yeah, sure. You know, I hadn’t even thought about Thanksgiving. I’ve been too focused on the wedding. I’ve always gone to Sally’s for holidays, so I kind of assumed that’s what we’d do.”

“I’m sure we can figure something out,” Will told him, twisting a finger in Nico’s hair. “I don’t want you to have to give up seeing your family just so I can see mine.”

Nico sighed, leaning into Will’s touch as he thought. “What do you think about having everybody over here? Like, anyone who’s planning on going to Sally’s can come over here instead. I’m sure Sally wouldn’t mind a break from hosting.”

Will smiled softly. “That sounds completely crazy, but I’m sure it’ll be fun. I don’t know how many people we’ll be able to fit in this house, though, considering it’s only ever been the three of us.”

“So, I’ll text Sally and see what she thinks?”

“And I’ll see what I can do about getting Thanksgiving day off. If not, I’ll just go in early so I can get back here to help host,” Will agreed. “I mean, whether we end up hosting or not, I’ll try to get the day off, of course.”

TO: Sally; i have what is possibly a once in a lifetime offer

FROM: Sally; Should I be worried?

TO: Sally; will and i are thinking about hosting thanksgiving, thoughts?

FROM: Sally; And give me a break from hosting? I’ll gladly take that offer.

TO: one big dysfunctional family; thanksgiving at my place

TO: one big dysfunctional family; everybody bring something, no freeloaders allowed

TO: RARA; you should try to get your flight moved up so you can come over for thanksgiving

TO: RARA; also so you can keep me sane between then and the wedding

With a final guest list of nearly twenty people, Nico’s anxiety was through the roof. Reyna and Naomi had arrived the day before, and Sally had shown up that morning to help with the turkey. Gradually, his friends had started to arrive, starting with his sister and Frank, then Percy, Annabeth and Luke, Jason and Piper, and Leo arrived on his own. Will’s siblings, Austin and Kayla, come somewhere in the mix of Nico’s friends, and he worried for a moment that they would feel out of place without Will there to talk to, but Kayla and Hazel instantly hit it off - something about a commonality between the two involving their idiot brothers. 

Paul showed up late with Estelle, and Bianca was instantly fascinated by the baby. Lou Ellen arrived not long after them, also falling in love with Estelle immediately, and between her and Bianca, Paul and Sally hardly had to pay any attention to their own daughter. 

The turkey still had about half an hour to cook, and the counters were littered with side dishes - unfortunately, communication between the many parties was difficult, so there were multiples of a few different dishes, but at least there wasn’t anything missing as far as Nico could tell. 

He was slowly slipping into a panic as he realized that there were hardly enough seats for even half of them, and he couldn’t expect them to eat in shifts. He started scratching at his arm, his eyes darting around the room. He was struggling to count chairs and people - and plates, did he even have enough plates? - in his head, when the front door opened and Cecil stepped inside. Oh God, not another person.

Nico was too busy recalculating things to realize that Cecil hadn’t walked in alone, and soon there were arms around Nico’s waist and a chin resting on his shoulder.

“How’s it going, Darling?” Will whispered in Nico’s ear. 

Nico spun around in Will’s arms, staring up at him in a panic, his hand now latched on to the other arm, gripping the skin with his nails. “I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know how to host! The last time anybody got together in my apartment was for New Year’s last year when I was really out of it, so Hazel hosted. I don’t know what to do.”

Will set his hands on Nico’s arms and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Let go,” he whispered, his hands sliding down to pull Nico’s part. “Don’t worry about it, okay, Darling? I’ll take care of it. Can you hold on for just a minute while I change out of my scrubs? I promise I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Nico nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thank you, Will.”

Will smiled at him, then pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’ll be right back.”

Nico watched his fiance walk down the hall, he saw Will smile and greet a few people on his way to the bedroom. 

“Nico,” Naomi said from behind him, and Nico jumped at the sound of her voice.

“Yeah? Can I get you something?” he asked, his heart rate speeding up once again as his anxiety spiked. 

Naomi took Nico’s hands in hers and squeezed them. “I just wanted to let you know how happy I am that Will found you. I know I’ve said this all before, but I really am overjoyed that he was able to build a family here, and I don’t think he could have done that without you.”

“I can’t take the credit for that,” Nico tried to argue. “He has his siblings and his job--”

“But he has you at the center of it all. I know you might not believe me, honey, but I know my son, and if it weren’t for you, Will and Bianca would probably be having another Thanksgiving on their own. I truly am grateful for you, Nico, and I can never express that enough.”

Nico didn’t know what to say to that, but luckily he didn’t have to try.

“Mama, are you trying to embarrass me again?” Will’s voice came from behind him as an arm slipped around his waist once more. 

Naomi scoffed, and released Nico’s hands to cross her arms over her chest. “What good would it do me to try to embarrass you when you aren’t even in the room?”

“If I’m remembering correctly, the last time I found you alone with my fiance, you had him convinced that I would have starved without him,” Will pointed out.

“Okay, but she was right,” Nico said, shooting Will a smile over his shoulder.

Will pinched Nico’s side. “Don’t you start with me now.”

“Boys, please, keep your flirting to yourselves,” Naomi said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to start setting out dishes, if that’s alright with you.”

“Mama, you’re a guest here, you don’t need to do that,” Will insisted.

Naomi waved him off. “I’m happy to help.”

Will seemed like he was ready to follow his mother around until she agreed to step out of the kitchen, but Nico grabbed his arm before he could even twitch. 

“Hey, I need to talk to you,” Nico said.

“What is it?” Will asked, all of his attention snapping to Nico in an instant. “Is something wrong?”

“We don’t have enough room for everybody,” Nico pointed out. “Where’s everybody supposed to sit?”

“Is that what’s got you so worried?” Will asked gently. “We can figure it out as we go. Whoever doesn’t fit around the table can sit around the coffee table in the living room, or something.”

“That’s not...rude? To make people sit on the floor?”

Will set his palm against Nico’s cheek. “Honestly, Babe? I don’t think anybody will care all that much. They all look pretty happy just hanging out, so I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Once the turkey was taken out of the oven and carved, Will announced that it was time to eat, and everyone lined up to grab a plate. Nico and Will hung around until everyone else had their food, though Will did put together a plate for Bianca so that she could get a seat at the table before all the chairs were taken. By the time Nico had gotten his food, there wasn’t anywhere to sit in the dining room or living room, so he and Will stood at the island, overlooking the gathering in front of them. Nico was happy to see that there wasn’t much segregation between Will’s friends and his own. 

Will leaned toward Nico and asked, “Are you feeling better now?”

Nico tipped his head toward Will and smiled. “I always feel better when you’re around, Babe.”

Will snorted and elbowed Nico in the side. 

Sally, Paul and Estelle were the first to leave when Estelle fell asleep, and next were Percy, Annabeth and Luke for the same reason. Either one by one or pair by pair, friends and family started to head out, until Jason and Piper were the only couple that remained. Somehow during the night, Jason and Nico had gotten caught up in a video game argument - then competition - and lost track of time until it was nearly midnight. Jason and Piper already lived over an hour away, so Will offered them the couch for the night.

“Uh, Babe?” Nico started. “I’ve slept on that couch, and it’s hardly a decent bed for one person.”

“Sure, the couch part isn’t great, but the bed isn’t half bad,” Will replied, already dragging the coffee table across the carpet until it was out of the way of the couch. He pulled the cushions off the couch, and brought the bed out from inside, revealing a full double bed. “There you go! Let me just get you some pillows and blankets,” Will said to Jason and Piper. 

As Will started toward the linen closet at the end of the hall, Nico ran after him. “Hey, hang on a second! That couch has been a bed this entire time? I slept on that thing for, like, two months! Why didn’t you ever tell me it was a bed?”

Will shrugged. “I dunno, I just… I thought you liked the couch?”

In order to make up for leaving so early the day before, Will had to be to work before the sun rose on Friday, which meant that he wasn’t able to have breakfast with everyone that morning.

It was nice to have so many people together that morning, but Nico didn’t think he’d ever had to make such a big breakfast in his life. He’d practically emptied out the fridge in order to make sure everyone had enough to eat, yet he hardly remembered to eat something himself until Jason reminded him to take a seat at the table. 

“Thanks again for letting us stay here last night,” Jason said as he started clearing the table after everyone had finished eating, “and for breakfast.”

Piper stepped up behind Nico, and in a single quick motion, pulled the elastic out of his hair to release the bun that sat on top of his head. “Maybe to repay you, you’ll let me give you a haircut.”

Nico spun around and reached for the hair tie, but Piper held it over her head - Nico had never more hated being one of the shortest in the group. “What if I don’t want a haircut?”

Piper grinned and ruffled his hair. “C’mon, you don’t want to look shaggy in your wedding, do you?”

Nico crossed his arms with a huff. “Fine. But just a trim, okay? I like my hair long.”

“If you like it long, then why do you only ever wear it up?” Reyna asked from the sink where she’d started washing the dishes. 

“I like it like that!”

Piper patted him on the head. “Sure you do. Get me a towel and some scissors, would you?”

Nico batted her hand away, and pointed toward the counter next to the stove. “Scissors are in there.”

“Oh, get a hairbrush, too!”

He started down the hall toward the linen closet to find a towel, but as he passed by the living room, Bianca called out to him, “Nico, will you come play Mario with me?”

Nico stopped and poked his head into the room. “I can’t right now, Princess. Why don’t you ask your grandma? I bet she’d love to play with you.”

“But Grandma doesn’t know how to play video games,” Bianca argued. “I’m sure you could teach her.”

“Okay.”

Nico continued down the hall, passing Naomi as she came out of the bathroom, and heard Bianca shout, “Grandma, can I teach you how to play Mario?”

Nico took a towel out of the closet, then stepped into his bedroom for a second to grab his hairbrush before he returned to the kitchen. 

Reyna and Jason were washing and drying dishes respectively, and Piper grinned at Nico as soon as she saw him. She pulled a chair out from the table and patted the back of it. “Ready, Neeks?”

Nico dropped into the chair and held out the brush for Piper to take, then draped the towel around his shoulders like a cape. This wasn’t the first time Piper had cut his hair for him, so he knew the drill. 

As Piper started brushing the knots out of his hair, she said, “So. Will. Is he good in bed?”

Nico hoped his face wasn’t bright red. “I’m not answering that.”

“Oh, come on! It’s just some classic beauty shop gossip!”

“Yeah, but this isn’t a beauty shop, it’s my kitchen,” Nico pointed out, “and his mother and daughter are in the next room. So, no, I’m not talking about that.”

“You’re no fun,” Piper said, her pout clear in her voice. “Just for that, I’m going to shave your head.”

“No you’re not!” Nico exclaimed, and tried to jump out of his seat, but Piper must have anticipated the move, and held him down with her hands on his shoulders. 

“Relax, I’m kidding!” Piper set the brush aside and used her hands to angle Nico’s head down so she could start trimming. “We can’t just sit here in silence, though. There’s gotta be some gossip you can share.” 

Nico sighed as he tried to think. Eventually, he said, “Frank bought a suit for his wedding, even though they haven’t set a date or anything.”

“That’s hardly gossip,” Piper told him. “Everybody knew they were going to get married from day one. You’re going to have to try harder than that.”

After another few seconds, Nico started, “I got my ears pierced again, like, six months ago. Because, well…” He trailed off, and when he tried again, he spoke quiet enough that only Piper would be able to hear him. “Bianca kind of...sorta...caught Will and I having sex. She didn’t see anything!” 

“Oh, you have to elaborate on that,” Piper insisted.

“Yeah,” Jason said from the sink, “and speak up, so you won’t have to say it all again to me.”

Nico groaned and buried his face in his hands, but Piper grabbed his shoulders and sat him up again.

Will’s shift kept getting extended as critical patients were brought into the ER, so even though he was supposed to by home in time for lunch, it wasn’t until the early evening that he was finally pulling into the driveway, utterly exhausted. He kind of wanted to sneak inside and head straight to bed, but as soon as he stepped into the kitchen and saw Nico standing at the stove, he froze. 

At first glance, when Will saw the back of Nico’s neck, his tired brain supplied the image of Nico’s hair being pulled back into a ponytail, but after Will blinked his eyes a few times, he realized that Nico’s hair was shorter. It was still long on the top of his head, four or five inches that still allowed Nico’s hair to curl and wave, but the sides and back of his head were cropped closer, an inch in length at most. Will suddenly felt much more awake than before. 

“You got a haircut.”

Nico reached up and rubbed at the back of his neck, as though he needed to remind himself that the hair was gone. He cleared his throat and said, “Uh, yeah, Piper did it before they left this morning. It ended up much shorter than I wanted it to be, but… It doesn’t look bad, right?”

Will moved toward him and pulled Nico close with an arm around his waist. “It looks so good,” he said, his voice low, and he brought his other hand up to card through the short hairs at the back of Nico’s neck. He closed the distance between them and kissed Nico in a way that he hoped expressed just how good he looked. 

Nico pushed Will back, but Will simply moved his lips to Nico’s neck instead. “You realize there’s other people in this house, right?” he asked, but Will just hummed in response. “Specifically, our daughter, your mother, and my best friend, who are all people that I would prefer not walk in on this.”

Will finally pulled back, running his hand through the longer hair on the top of Nico’s head. So soft. “Sorry, Darling, I’m just trying to admire you.”

“I don’t know how you expect to admire me with your eyes closed,” Nico replied. 

“You know what I mean,” Will said with a pout. He brushed his fingers through Nico’s hair once again, his eyes catching on a certain spot that seemed bare. He couldn’t have a bald spot developing on the side of his head, could he? “What’s this?”

Nico snatched Will’s hand away. “It’s nothing.”

“It looked like a scar,” Will said, his pout curling down with worry.

Nico dropped his gaze. “My dad...when he was still drinking, I got pissed and dumped out a bottle of some expensive old whiskey, or something, and when he found out, he… He hit me with the bottle. That was the last straw - I moved out right after that.”

Will’s hand moved out of Nico’s hair as he spoke, his palm resting against Nico’s cheek instead as his thumb stroked Nico’s skin gently. “Is that why you’ve kept your hair so long?” Nico nodded, a just barely-there twitch of his head that didn’t dislodge Will’s hand from his cheek. “I’m sorry for pointing it out. It wasn’t even noticeable until I started messing around, I promise.”

“Thanks,” Nico whispered, finally allowing his eyes to meet Will’s once more. 

“You really do look amazing, you know,” Will continued, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I mean, I loved the long hair, too, but this is a pretty welcome change.” He kissed the tip of Nico’s nose next, then his lips once, then twice. 

“Will,” Nico complained as he pulled away, but Will could see that he was smiling.

Will dropped his forehead against Nico’s with another pout. “You’re going to make me wait to express my appreciation for this haircut until everyone goes to bed tonight? That’s just cruel.”

“Nope,” Nico said, popping the p and turning Will’s pout into a confused frown. “I’m making you wait until our wedding night, since Bianca’s sleeping in our room until your mom leaves.”

Will buried his face against Nico’s neck and groaned. 

thanks for reading!!

buy me a coffee 

#solangelo #will solace #nico di angelo #i'm in hell #mine #my writing

[epersonae]

let's try this again, with numbers this time! taagnus for the ship meme, but i'm paring down my questions to: 1, 2, 7, 9, 11, 12, 18, 22, & 29 (please and thank)

I feel like many of these have different answers if you look at Stolen Century vs BoB vs post-canon, and a few of them I think I’ve written about, so I might end up jumping around time-wise and dropping in links as appropriate. (ed: or I might just refer to things and not link :shrug:)

1. Who makes the first move and how?

I wrote a whole-ass thing about this with the BoB, to which the short answer is there’s some wild mutual flirting at the Solstice Festival, but Magnus makes the first actual move. (Things escalate quickly.) When they get back together after Story and Song, Taako’s the one who makes a move, encouraged by Kravitz.

I have yet to really solidify my thoughts about Stolen Century, tbqh. I wrote a thing where they have a one night stand right before their mission training starts, and I think they don’t get together during training because they’re both trying to be professionals. (Magnus more so than Taako, because he feels how young he is, and he’s trying to be taken seriously by all of these fairly powerful magic users.) But then they start sneaking around during the first year, when they realize that professionalism is pretty much blown to shit. As for who makes the first move...I think Taako drops mad hints, for like weeks, while Magnus is still trying to be An Professional Guarding This Ship, bless his heart. Honestly, I don’t know, and maybe I should play with that idea and see where it goes?????

2. Who is the most insecure and what makes them feel better?

Stolen Century: Magnus, but he’d never admit it. (being allowed to help, he feels needed)

BoB/post-canon: Taako, and he’ll Magic Missile you if you suggest it. (being given unconditional affection out of the blue, it freaks him out but feels so good)

7. What do they get up to on a night out?

Just imagine with me, for a moment, Taako dragging Coach Magnus (possibly with the whole goddamn team of kids) to the most exquisite restaurants in Tessaralia. Like, just, the image of it.

Similarly, Taako and Kravitz absolutely get homebody Magnus out of Ravens Roost for all sorts of fancy restaurant nights. Taako complains about the food but enjoys both the food and the complaining. Alternately, any given post-canon liveshow is its own night out, even if Merle’s there as a third wheel.

Also: Chug ‘n Squeeze threesome? Yes please. (oh hey @tarkesians is THIS the double-date concept we need to write? Possibly feat. Fantasy Olive Garden?)

9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other?

Taako does canonically do the Thong Song, so.......

And Magnus wears hideous cargo shorts, and tuxedos with the sleeves torn off.

It’s a match made in heaven.

11. What do they hide from one another?

For so long, there’s no secrets on the Starblaster. (Magnus tries to keep it from Taako at first, when he starts to have feelings for Lucretia, but that lasts for about 10 minutes.) But Lup makes Taako promise he won’t tell anyone about the lichening, and that’s an important turning point; later, neither of them talks about how much it hurts to see the destruction created by the Relics. Magnus in particular doesn’t talk about how freaked out he is that the Chalice could be used and they just wouldn’t know.

At the BoB, they’re both hiding how serious their feelings are -- not just from each other, but from themselves. Everything feels more serious than it “should” be, and neither of them knows what to do with it.

For quite a while in the post-canon, Taako absolutely will not let Magnus see him without his glamour, even after they’re back together. And at the same time, Magnus tries to keep it quiet that he’s seeing Lucretia again.

Post-Reckoning, Taako has to continue to hide the whole story of how they killed Kalen, and he hates it. (Magnus tries to keep chill about falling in love with Kravitz; again, that lasts about 10 minutes. FWIW, there’s gonna be something about all that in the Reckoning epilogue beach vacation, and I’m hype.)

12. What first changes when it starts getting serious?

On the Starblaster, it’s so gradual that I don’t know if they even make note of it. I say that, and then think of the fic I wrote about Magnus dying on the mushroom planet, and Taako making mushroom candy, and is that how he realizes it? I do think Magnus gets more careful about not just throwing himself into danger, and Taako gets more open about showing affection.

When it threatens to get serious at the BoB, Taako starts flirting with Death. Which is not to say that his relationship with Kravitz isn’t meaningful, but there’s a certain aspect of not wanting to make a Thing of it with Magnus, and oh here’s something else.... That also turns out to be serious, joke’s on him.

I feel like I’ve written something about how it gets serious after Story and Song, but generally for me what makes it serious is actually talking about it, and including Kravitz in that conversation. Also, Magnus gets a permanent guest room at Reaper House, and he builds a bigger bed for the house in Ravens Roost. (I was just joking with Kath in chat about Merle trying to figure out guest room arrangements during summer vacations at the manor in Bottlenose Cove, given all the everything. Although I think it makes Merle a little nostalgic for Polyblaster shenanigans.)

18. When they fight, how do they make up?

Taako makes food. I’m a big fan of that headcanon that Taako has a whole food language, so he’ll make a fancy desert if he thinks he’s forgiving Magnus, and a big hearty dinner if he’s apologizing.

Magnus does like to talk it out, at least post-canon, but he’s made peace with the fact that it doesn’t always happen, and so the backup is dad jokes and backrubs. (Back on the Starblaster, he’d try to bring home interesting ingredients, which sometimes works and sometimes.......grass stew it is, I guess.)

22. Where does the first kiss happen?

My favorite version of the first kiss is the BoB one, where they’re dancing at night during the Solstice Festival and Magnus dips Taako, and whoops......kiss!

29. Why do they fall a little bit more in love?

Taako sees Magnus always trying to do good, in his wild and reckless way; twice he gets to see the man he loves growing into himself, becoming more thoughtful and sincere without ever losing that energy he first fell for.

Magnus sees the side of Taako that he’s always hiding a little bit: his caring for Kravitz and Angus, his fierce love for his sister, his friendship with Ren. He loves Taako’s creativity, his flair with magic. (He feels so much love and gratitude when he sees Taako and Lucretia finally repairing their relationship. It’s something he hoped for but never expected.)

They both see something of their love for each other reflected in their relationships with Kravitz, too, and that deepens all of those relationships.

#taz balance #taagnus #now I have more story ideas thx #ungarmax

[twiststreet]

Progresso Report -- ??? 2018

It’s been a long time since I did one of these (August?)-- things in 2018 got messy.

This is an ongoing series of charts that I keep to track my slow but inevitable ascendance to a higher and more eternal plane of existence than you, a frail normal person bereft of the life force that courses through me.  As I believe Paul Atreides once explained to a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gessit order, the First Law of the Mentat is that “A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”  Or as I believe Tommy Lee once said, in The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band, “We partied like clockwork, bro.  You could check the clock in whatever time zone we were in and figure out exactly what kind of shit we were into.”  

I started new charts in September that I’m happier with, but then everything fell apart in that last half of 2018.  Work/regular-life exhaustion-- things just got especially tiring over here; people dying-- this year had a little bodycount there for me; a lot of chart confusion this year; my New Years plans falling apart; people getting sick, me with this cold; dental stuff; housing stress (I’m trying to find a new place) which has meant a resurgence in budgeting stress. 

I guess it’s been a long year.  But I don’t want to be one of those “oohhhhh 2018 how dare you” people much either, because (a) it’s the same assholes who are like “look how busy I am” on the internet, give it a rest, and (b) they say that every single year, and it’s not like Bowie and Prince died this year.  

 I stopped cooking sometime in November, so I’m going to skip the numbers.  Which means no number analysis for 2018 trends.  But things just ... yeah, things fell apart.  Except for writing, weirdly, where I’ve filled about two notebooks, since August (which is an unusual amount for me-- I’m usually pretty slow).  I think that’s been a lot of it-- when I get in a good place writing, it’s hard to not tune out everything else, but.  

So 2019 is going to be a dust it off and start over kinda year as it turns out.  

The Weekly Section:

Cooking:  I was cooking up until November and then stopped cold around Thanksgiving-- travel always discombobulates.  Recipe-wise, though, I fell off on trying new recipes.  Chicken oyakodon one night in August or September, which didn’t turn out too good.  A lot of messing around with hot pot recipes and a veggie stew, in November-- I was kinda into the hot pot, and want to circle back to that, when I get cooking again.  I have Thai Chicken written down for October, but no idea what that means, and I circled back to that Udon-Shrimp recipe again.  

Got a little better with tacos, but not fully great there yet.  Kept trying to make my own pickled onion, but never got it right.  

Project Work: If I added up all the numbers here, this would be the bulk of my time during this span.  A lot of writing-- almost every day.  Mostly on a comic project, so one of those things that might become nothing (and maybe should be nothing-- it stinky), but.  And a lot of reading for that, old comics mostly, the classics, revisiting stuff-- it all kinda devolved into me rereading Uncanny X-Men #260 a lot, though I couldn’t tell you why. 

Trying to remember what makes something good.  That’s a bit I never figure out how to deal with-- I have a thing when I’m in the middle of a creative thing, where I just kind of throw my hands in the air and go, “I have no idea what makes something good anymore.”  Like, what do you want out of a thing??  What makes a fictional thing good?  I don’t even know when I’m in the middle of all this.  

Or I don’t know what’s good for right now-- what feels hokey or what feels hip and modern; like, you don’t want to be the guy doing ... remember when some Iron Man guys came back with a new comic in the 00′s with like ... an 80′s Iron Man comic except trying to sell that exact sound in 2005 or whatever, and were like “Hey kids”? I think about that all the time.

Looked at a lot of the big hip popular (non-DC) books -- but just from a vulture-y place, so nothing I’d feel comfortable talking about.  I don’t know-- I don’t ... I’m a little lost at the moment, I guess!  Or I know that I’m not making something good, because I’m not that guy, so wheeee.

I did like a Image book I saw, called the Outer Darkness.  I thought that was kinda funny-- kinda cute.  I’m really into LOEG: The Tempest-- I think that’s really fucking good.  I scribbled down on a sheet that I liked some old John Porcellino comic where he plays football or something with his kids.  I finally read the ending of Sin Titulo, which it turns out I didn’t have to do.

Gym: This has been a huge improvement for this year.  Except for the last couple weeks while I’ve had a cold, I’ve managed to escalate the gym more. (A) Spending more money on it, (B) involving a trainer for a period of time, and (c) having the gym walking distance from my job so I could make it part of my “At work” time in my head and not my “me doing me” time, those all I think turned out to be the trick for me-- I was angrier about not going, when money got involved, especially.  These would have good numbers...

The Monthly Section:

New Restaurants: 

I had Okonomiyaki for the first time.  (These are mostly not my photos-- I had photos but just changed phones so most of my photos got lost).  I didn’t really feel strongly about it, though-- it felt like good hangover food and I don’t drink like that much anymore, so.  

A lot of time got invested in Korean fried chicken and chicken wings.  There’s a  place in Koreatown that I got a little obsessed with (namely, the vaue meals over at Kyochon).  Tried some Japanese fried chicken, that place on Sawtelle for comparison-- no question, the Koreans won that battle.  (Though, Honey Kettle over the Koreans, but-- it’s a different flavor profile, is all, so).  

New places around where I live and work.  A new taco place.  A new “Asian small dish” place.  A vegan Thai place that ... I can’t say I recommend.  A westside Korean place, so.  In November/December, I’ve gotten really interested in the Indonesian food in my neighborhood so I’ve been eating a lot of that-- it’s like Thai but different ingredients, so a fun little adventure there.  Some crappy 3rd street Asian restaurant I didn’t even write down the name of.  

Finally went over to Guerilla Tacos.  (That’s my photo).  I really enjoyed those tacos-- Jonathan Gold had talked that place up for years when it was a truck, but I’m lazy and hadn’t gotten around to it.  (I’m not really a truck fan!).  Boy, those tacos, though... That’s the (a) Pocho Taco (ground wild boar, pine nuts, raw tomatilo chile, chipotle crema, aged cheddar & pico de gallo in a crunchy shell) and the (b) Albondigas Taco (chicken meatballs, stewd tomato salsa, castelvetrano olives, and parsley).

LA Stuff or Travel:  Travel for Thanksgiving.

A Harlan Ellison memorial at the Egyptian theater.  They played his Outer Limits and Twilight Zone episodes, and specially cut together videos of him talking or his TV work (his Gidget episode or his Burke’s Law episodes or what have you).  LQ Jones talked about making the Boy and His Dog movie; Josh Olsen talked about co-writing that Twilight Zone episode; Leonard Maltin talked about seeing The Terminator for the very first time with Harlan in the audience yelling at the screen.  It was nice, getting to be there.

I had car problems so I took some hour-or-two long walks on nights when I was relying on Lyft, just seeing what walking in LA’s like.  (It’s fine!  I mean, it’s not ideal, but it’s fine). It’s nice knowing that’s an option at the end of the day, at least.

One time at lunch, I walked by Mel Brooks having lunch with friends.  I heard him say “I love that we’re doing this” but didn’t stand there and gawk or eavesdrop like I wanted to.  But I don’t know-- I was really really excited about that.  Mel Brooks!

I went to a comedy thing for the first time in too long-- Superego and Wild Horses did a team-up improv night, where they improvised a play about middle-aged white people, getting together at a house by a lake.   I need to see more comedy-- I know that I find that very calming and I don’t know why I haven’t been, but.

Went to another Indiecade, the indie game festival-- two highlights there.  One was Flight Simulator-- a game where instead of simulating being a pilot, you simulate being a passenger on a trans-Atlantic flight, in real time.  So it’s just a simulator where you sit in a seat and wait for a flight to be over...?  That made me laugh-- I really quite enjoyed the creativity of that, and getting to speak with the guy who was making it.  (I asked a bunch of questions-- yes, your character will have a book he or she can read-- but not “Why” since that seemed extremely gauche to ask).  

The other thing was as I was walking by a room, a guy was like “hey, want to hear a guy talk about making music for the Star Wars games.”  And I was like, “Fuck it, I don’t give a shit about that, but I want to sit down and I got no place better to be, so let’s do it.  I GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO.”  

But it actually turned out to be a really fucking interesting discussion because... because the guy had a job that coincided exactly with where my head’s been at with the stuff I’m working on, with just thinking about comics, old comics, balancing wanting to invoke old shit while still doing new shit, and how that job of writing for comics exists for so many people, especially people not working on their own shit, who are working with pre-existing properties with expectations around what those properties and that kinda experience should deliver.  

Which is-- they hire you to be you, but they’re also hiring you to do Star Wars, to do a thing that sounds like Star Wars.  

So he talked about having to break down all the different ways that he could approach that problem-- with one way just being imitating the melodies that came before you.  But he talked about the better route being how ... He put it in terms of like language-- like the music of Star Wars has a language to it (horns, woodwinds used against bloop blarps, whatever) and it’s about figuring out how to talk in that language, but that doesn’t mean you have to say the same thing once you speak the language.  I don’t know.  

I’m not doing it justice-- I found it very interesting, and weirdly on point to what I wanted to think about, way more than I expected.

Documentaries:  I think I mentioned them all on here.  That He-Man one.  F is For Fake.  (I saw the Lego and GI Joe episodes of the Toys That Made Us).  Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, which I was really, really into-- I thought that was really cool.  City of Gold.  Some Netflix movie I’m forgetting.  That last Star Wars video by the Red Letter Media guys, if that counts.

Oh, and ... one night I had a Twitch stream on for noise, because that’s what I do now I guess (???), and the people on the Twitch stream themselves put on a documentary about Logan Paul.  It was the Shane Dawson docu-expose of Logan Paul or Aaron Paul or whoever those assholes are.  I only saw the first one of those, via Twitch stream, but holy shit, that was... whatever the fuuuuuuck that was.  I want to watch the rest of those.  Just a window into a completely other dimension of humanity.  But the window itself had a history of blackface...?  Like, you lookup the host of the documentary, the guy DOING the expose, and it’s like online people going “why he do blackface?”  What????????  What the hell is going on with Youtube???

I definitely want to go back to those.  I want to see the Darkness That’s Coming.

Movies:  I don’t know-- I saw a bunch of movies.  

Let me see:  Personal Shopper (terrific movie!), Support the Girls, Crazy Rich Asians, Buster Scruggs, that El Royale piece of shit, that Spiderman cartoon, Sometimes a Night Is For Us All (?), rewatched the original Suspiria, a shitty Netflix horror movie called Beyond the Gates, the Other Guys again, a Simple Favor, The Predator, Destination Wedding, Mayhem, half of Rampage. Saw a lot of movies with my nephews (rewatched Knight & Day and MI: Fallout, the Tooth Fairy, Jumanji 2, Castle of Cogliostro, rewatched Ant Man 2-- I know people aren’t into it but I like the wannabe-Elmore-Leonard plotting, Jackie Chan’s Skiptrace, Daddy’s Home 2 (no!), School of Rock). 

I rewatched Buckaroo Banzai over Thanksgiving after people went to sleep and I didn’t have anything to do.  I fucking hated that movie as a kid-- almost got thrown out of a screening of it because I was yelling stupid shit at my friends during it and whatever.  But I always wanted to revisit since so it’s a touchstone for so many nerds -- it improved as an adult knowing what they were up to, at least, understanding better what they were trying to do, but I wouldn’t say that I was wrong as a kid either, not exactly... I’d put it down as “interesting” at the moment.  It’s helpful knowing the reason it looks like shit is they hired the cinematographer of Blade Runner, but then the producers made them fire that guy after only two or three scenes...

I think I’m missing some stuff on this list, but...

(Saw a few episodes of that Jack Ryan show with my family, too, since that’s their kind of thing, apropos of nothing-- it was not great!  Like, some guy’s in Vegas getting beat up because he wants pervy sex and then Jim From the Office frowns-- or I don’t know how to describe it, but ... not great).

Highlighter Videos:  I did a bunch.  I should do a separate video wrap-up for the year though, like people do.  That might be nice to have done.

Goals:

Three Scripts for the Project:  Technically I wrote way more than 3 but most of them got ripped up along the way.  But yeah, goal met.

Flowchart for Game: Still in progress on the flowchart-- kind of feeling inspired again to tackle all that, after Bandersnatch though.  The game within the game, not the show itself.  I love the fake games people imagine when they make shit like that, how vivid they always seem as compared to the real thing.  There’s a game that gets described in a Kelly Link short story that I think about more than I think about games I’ve spent 90000 hours on.

I didn’t do a favorite games of the year list, but this year was all about discovering the Yakuza series for me. And just... the way those games are all about excavating the same exact, relatively-understandable space, Kamarucho, year after year, game after game.  I think that’s really ... I don’t know what the right word to describe that is.  I just find that architectural obsessiveness really curious.  They’re curious games.  I could go on and on about them but instead, no.   

2019 Plan: My goal for this year was to create a good plan for 2019-- making a list of movies I want to watch, types of recipes to try, that kind of thing.  I think that’s what I’m going to do over the next couple days while I’m sick and have time off work.  

Finish Books:  I didn’t finish one!  Got too consumed by reading ... some comics I will never admit to having read.  Hoo-boy.  I have gone all the way down the rabbithole.

Cooking Class:  Nope.

Major Tidy:  Nope.  Smaller tidiness, yes, but I need to get rid of a lot of clutter.  But like I said, I think I’m going to have to move (and I’m thinking to a smaller place-- I think I have more space than I need right now) so that’s going to happen whether I like it or not.  

Finish Best-Of Assembly: I’ve been preparing a best-of this blog in case / when tumblr invariably goes down.  But in the course of that, a lot of things have to be slightly rewritten or edited down-- a lot of weird raving pared off things, so.  

Overall: There was more that probably I was too lazy to scribble down on the charts.  Things got lazy.  Things got derailed.  Things have to get put back on track. I’m not back at square one-- I feel good about having written as much as I have at least (even if I have a lot of work left before any of that’s... anything??).  But.  I’m glad a new year is coming-- it’s my favorite holiday; it’s the only holiday that promises anything really valuable.  A fresh start beats candy anyways, after you’re old enough to eat candy all the time because no one’s around to stop you.  A fresh start sounds nice...

#what gets measured gets managed

[alltheloveinthegalaxy]

Beast of Burden Chapter 3

Ch. 3 Momentary Peace

Hey y’all. We out here. This one is explicit, so younglings, be warned...er go away. Hope ya enjoy! Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions or requests for the story even. I love feedback :) 

Rey breathed Ben’s air as she rocked against him, controlling the rhythm of his hips with hers as she moved on top of him. Guiding her hips with his large hands, he gazed up at her. 

His breath was ragged as he sputtered grunts of effort for her. He reached up to take her enticingly enlarged breasts in his hands, her nipples swollen and pink. 

“Ah!” She winced. 

“Sorry!” He was horrified, releasing her. 

“No, no, it’s okay,” she whispered, lowering herself to his face to brush her lips against his.

“I keep hurting you,” he murmured against her lips as they maintained a steady rhythm. Sweating and merging together. Rey’s belly was now an obvious spectacle without her cloak and tunic on to hide it and even that barely did the job. 

“No, it feels so good Ben, please don’t stop,” she whisper-moaned into his ear. He marveled at her, admiring each and every new change in her body. He loved the sight of her slightly protruding belly rubbing against him as she received him.

“Oh Ben, yes!” Rey screeched. “Oh stars Ben, right there!” 

She rolled onto her back after they shared an orgasm that shook them both to the core as they prayed with the Force to never end. 

Her head spinning, she basked in the feeling. Ben rolled over and kissed her stomach. 

Rey and Ben had not seen each other for over a month as both of them had to return to the opposite sides of the war to act as if nothing was going on — as if Rey wasn’t carrying Ben Solo’s child. 

But here they lay, in their secret hiding flat on Takodana — a secluded structure in the woods where Maz had promised their privacy and safety. Beams of sunlight streaked their bed. It was 3 in the afternoon and they had been at it since, well, probably around 7 am. 

Rey’s libito had transformed into a beast of its own — but Ben didn’t seem to mind. Although he was starting to grow tired. His eyelids began to flutter open and closed as he drifted off in exhaustion. 

“You can’t go to sleep!” Rey said, playfully hitting him with her pillow.

“Ugh,” Ben sighed, turning away from her on his side. “You’ve worn me out. I can’t anymore today....And are you sure all of this activity is good for the- the-”

“Baby?”

“...Yeah.”

“Ben you’ve got to learn how to say that word. You’re going to be holding one in 5 months,” she chuckled. “Holding our baby.” 

“Okay, well whatever, you didn’t answer my question.”

“Maz said it’s perfectly fine,” Rey grinned, proudly. 

Ben covered his face with his hands in embarrassment. 

“You asked Maz?” He groaned. 

“Of course! Who else was I supposed to ask? Your mother?” She teased.

Ben rolled over onto his stomach and pulled the pillow over his head. Now she’d done it. 

“She took the news well...” Rey said softly, standing up to pull her robe over her shoulders. 

“What?” Ben pulled the pillow down slowly, to reveal his eyes. “What the kriff do you mean?” 

“Don’t swear at me Solo,” Rey mused, tying the robe closed and walking out of the room. 

Ben tossed the bedding aside and stood to follow her, still completely naked. 

Rey strode into the kitchen to boil water as Ben trailed after her. 

“Rey, what did you do?” Ben said, leaning against the cooler, towering over her and blocking her from opening it.

“Move please, I’m going to fix breakfast.” She smiled.  

“You don’t know how to cook and besides it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon,” He pointed to a ticking wall clock. 

Rey folded her arms. 

“Okay, I told your mother that I’m pregnant.” 

Ben’s jaw dropped as he raised his hands up to gesture a “what the kriff” at her, although the words never left his lips. 

“She knows it’s yours, I told her everything.”

“Everything?” 

“Everything.” 

Ben swallowed and moved out of the way of the cooler, raising his arms in the air in surrender. 

“Don’t worry Ben, everything will be kept secret, for now. It’s going to be fine. We’ll sort out the details later.”  

He stormed out of the kitchen, trying to contain his anger and shock. He needed a moment to process this — or forget about it if that was possible. 

She chuckled, watching his naked backside stride out of the room, clenching his fists as he left.

When he reemerged 30 minutes later he wasn’t dressed his typical astringent First Order attire. Although his new garb wasn’t far off. He wore a jet black jedi - resembling tunic. Loosely fitted with long sleeves, the robe reaching his mid thigh was cinched with a tight thick belt at the waist. 

Rey’s eyes were on him, he had her attention. 

He wore his usual tall, tight fitting black boots with black loser fitting pants. Her lightsaber dangled from his belt as he walked passed her to pour himself a cup of caf from the pot she’d just made. His hair was still slightly wet from the fresher and his skin smelt of minty soap.

As she followed him with her eyes, Rey dropped the ceramic bowl of food she was attempting to prepare. It shattered on the tile floor, splattering a mismatched concoction of ingredients all over the ground. 

“Rey!” Ben reacted, spitting hot coffee back into his mug. 

“I’m sorry, you startled me,” she reasoned, kneeling down to clean up the mess. 

“How so? By the way this coffee is very burnt. Don’t worry about this, I’ll clean it up, go sit down.” He shooed her away with a flick of his wrist. 

“Where did you get those clothes?” Rey said, standing up with pieces of the broken bowl in her hands. Ben grabbed a broom to sweep up the food off the ground. 

“Maz left them here,” Ben said, unaffected. 

“They look like Jedi robes,” she pointed at him. “They’re nice...you look so...you look like a Skywalker...you look like a Solo.” 

He flushed with hues of red all over his face, neck and hands as he tried to ignore her. She walked away from him to place the broken pieces of the bowl in the garbage shoot. 

The open windows let the light of sunshine fill the tiny kitchen as the trees sang in the wind outside. Rey was happy to be back the midst of a lush forest — this time she wasn’t running away from Kylo Ren. She was defeating him, one day at a time, breaking down his walls to reveal a man who acted and looked more and more like Ben Solo with each passing day.

She sat down, gazing at him lovingly. 

“What are you doing with my lightsaber?” She asked.

“It’s technically mine.” He said, pouring her pot of caf down the sink and lighting the stove on to brew a new one. 

“It called to me,” she insisted. 

“I’m just borrowing it,” he said. “You can’t share?” 

Rey smiled sheepishly. 

“Are you going to make me breakfast?” She changed the subject, still admiring his new look. 

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever would you like, princess?” He asked sarcastically, still cleaning up debris from her spill. 

The word sort of slipped out of his mouth. It was something his father used to say to his mother when he was annoyed with her or teasing. 

Ben gritted his teeth, regretting his Freudian slip. Shit. What the kriff is happening to me? He winced, shaming himself and rolling his eyes as he turned his back to her to grab an arm full of vegetables out of the cooler.

Rey sort cocked an eyebrow at him, also taking note of the out of character remark.

“Princess?” Rey laughed. “Are you joking?”

“Yes,” Ben blushed. 

“Since Leia is technically a princess, would that make you a prince?” She blurted clumsily after skimming through his thoughts. She took a sip of caf. 

“No.” he shot. “Get out of my head.” 

“A prince,” she trailed off. “I never thought about that before...”

“Stop it.” 

“You started it.” 

“What do you want to eat, Rey?”

“I would like three eggs, rye toast, hashbrowns, pancakes from that Takodana mix, crispy potatoes and ooh there was some left over beef from last night’s stew and—”

“Yes, I got it, you’re hungry.” Ben almost argued with her, to insist that she eat something a little more nutritious but buttoned his lip as he remembered her her life as a starved scavenger. 

He’d make her whatever her heart desires. And he’d dressed in those ridiculous Jedi robes just to make her smile — and also because they were clean. 

Rey drew a luxurious breath, finally washing her partner’s sweat off of her under the warm pressure of the stone fresher. She could see Ben outside through a tiny window as she peeked at him on her tip-toes. 

He was aggressively slicing wood with the blue blade of her repaired saber for the old wood burning stove that would keep them warm tonight. Perhaps he was training simultaneously. 

She felt her stomach twist. Oh maker, not again. She hoped she wouldn’t vomit. As her pregnancy advanced, so did her nausea, which seemed to be getting worse by the day. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply, as Maz had recommended.  

As she turned the shower off and reached for her towel to wrap around her, she felt the ground rumble beneath her feet. 

Woah...now I’m really going to be sick.

Ben’s senses kicked into high alert after a ripple in the ground knocked the pile of wood he was so carefully stacking, to the ground. 

That was no earthquake. That was a ship landing. 

The all too familiar sounds of TIE fighters zoomed above the trees. First, panic set in and then, an eery calm. 

They were here. The First Order. Whether or not they knew he was there was not apparent but he didn’t have time to sit around and wait for them to find him. 

Jumping over the pile of logs, he sprang toward the cabin, throwing the door open and hurrying to their sleeping quarter. 

“Ben, they’re here-” 

“I know!” Ben said. “Where are my clothes?” 

“They’re in that wash bucket over there, I figured they needed to be cleaned,” she said, biting her nails. 

“Kriff,” he muttered, digging his lightsaber out of a black box. 

“What are we going to do? Do you think they could find us out here?”

“Yes,” he said. “Get dressed now. Take this, you’ve got to get far away from here,” he said, handing her the lightsaber as he clipped his own to his belt. Rey tugged on her usual clothing as quickly as she could, her hair still wet.

“Do you think Hux suspects—” 

“I don’t know.” 

An explosion sounded outside, shaking the cabin and knocking Rey into him as as she tried to contain a scream.

“Rey,” he grabbed her hands, bringing them to his chest. “You’re going to have to run. On foot.” 

It wasn’t the prospect of running that scared her but the worry that the First Order may have figured their scheme out — that she might never see Ben again. 

“What about you?”

“it’s better if they don’t see us together,” he insisted. “You’re going to have to trust me.”

She swallowed hard, staring into his eyes. But her confidence in herself did not waiver. 

“Okay,” she said, determined. 

“I’ll come back for you, sweetheart,” he said, clipping her lightsaber to her belt for her and kissing her forehead. “I promise.” 

And with that, she ran out of the cabin and into the woods. She ran as far as her legs would take her through the Takodana forest. 

To be continued...

#Reylo #reylopregnant #reylo fanfic #fanfic #star wars #rey and ben solo #ben solo #kylo x rey #rey of jakku #the last jedi #kylo ren

[meatismurderbutalsodelicious]

How I Make a Chicken Stock

This is a special request from a friend and former colleague who wanted a good, simple chicken stock recipe. 

As a home cook, one thing I’ve learned over the years is that it’s good to have various stocks and broths available for making soups, sauces and stews, as well as to add character to a variety of notoriously bland starches like potatoes, pasta or rice.

I first learned to make stock on Alton Brown’s Good Eats back when the Food Network actually cared about cooking, food and educating its audience.

However, over the years I’ve seen and read other recipes and the following is how I make one type of chicken stock; I’ll refer to it as Western-style. 

I also make an Asian-style chicken stock, inspired by the broth needed to create Hainan Chicken Rice. 

A lot of stock recipes begin with using the carcass, giblets and remnants of a hearty roast chicken dinner bird. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t roast a chicken on a weekly basis. If anything, I might just roast or pan-fry some chicken thighs if I am in the mood for a chicken dinner. Also, of late, butchers, especially those in supermarkets can sometimes not include the giblets—the liver, heart and neck—in the raw bird’s cavity.

So this is a recipe completely made from scratch, that incorporates basic ingredients, a few not-so-basic, and a little bit of roasting.

Carpe pullum!

Ingredients

4 pounds chicken wings or thighs or a combination

1 large onion, skin-on, halved

4 carrots, washed  cut into 2-inch half-moon slices

4 Celery ribs cut into two inch slices

1 Leek

2- to 4-sprigs Fresh Thyme

1- to sprigs Fresh Rosemary

1 cup Fresh Parsley

2 bay leaves

1-tablespoon of black peppercorns

1- to 2-tablespoons kosher or sea salt

4 to 6 whole cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

3- to 4- tablespoons vegetable oil

(Optional, see recipe below: Saved miscellaneous vegetable bits and bobs)

Water to cover and replenish

Butcher’s twine

First off, I’m all fancy ‘n shit, so I make a bouquet garni with about a 5-inch piece of the leek. I tend to take from the transition part of the leek, where the dark green begins to turn white.

Next, cut into the leek segment about half-way through, so you can open its leaves and run it under the water to remove dirt, insects and impurities. Once that’s completed, open the leaves and tuck in the rosemary and thyme sprigs and the bay leaves. Then, using the butcher’s twine, tie the leak up firmly. It should look like this.

I use either all chicken wings, or a combination of chicken wings and thighs for this recipe. Both parts of the chicken are full of fatty skin, rich meaty flavor, and cartilage, which adds an underlying unctuousness to the final broth.

Next, pre-heat your oven to C200-F390 degrees for at least a half-hour.

Grab your carrots, give them a quick wash under the tap with a veggie brush or good sponge. I want all the nutrients and flavors for this recipe. Then chop the  carrots into 2- to 3-inch half-moon slices. 

Toss the chicken and carrots in the vegetable oil in a bowl to make sure they’re all evenly covered. Season with kosher or sea salt and fresh crushed black pepper.

I prefer to use a roasting pan with a rack, since I want to cook the combination on a high heat, very quickly to evenly brown and to render out as much fat as possible. I do not like a fatty stock, it limits its culinary flexibility.

Pop the tray into the middle of your oven and let it cook for 20-minutes. Then, go in and check for browning and to make sure you avoid uneven cooking and/or burning of the carrots. 

This is all about caramelization and releasing sweetness.

Flip the chicken and carrots as you see fit then return to the oven for another 20- to 30-minutes until the chicken is cooked through, its skin golden and carrots lightly charred.

Obviously, you can go for longer in the oven and get the skin much darker and crisper, but, remember, that impacts the color and flavor of the final stock.

While the chicken and carrots were browning, you should have prepped your veggies. I mean, it takes all of five-minutes, but micromanaging is kind of the whole point of writing recipes, when you stop and think about it.

This is where Alton Brown and I diverge—you’re going to be simmering your big stock pot for three to four hours and in the end you’re going to want to be able to strain as much of the nectar from the pot without having to be squeezing water-logged vegetable matter through a sieve. I mean, I don’t, anyway...

We’re talking big chunks of celery, 2-inches, easy. The onion? Just leave the skin on and half it. 

The broth is going to be simmering for so long, it will draw out the flavor and nutrients from veggies without them all collapsing to mush. Well, almost all...

Garlic. I love garlic. I believe it adds the underlying umami flavor to a chicken stock, so, depending on their size, I use anywhere from 3 to 6 crushed garlic cloves with their skins. But, you do you.

Let’s get to the simmering...

Into your stock pot—I use my trusty Dutch Oven (because you can bung this in a C200-degree oven if you’re in a hurry and get it done in about two hours)—add the chicken and carrots, the bouquet garni, celery, onion and garlic.

Fill the pot until the contents are covered by at least an inch of water. Throw in the parley, and the whole tablespoon of black peppercorns and on tablespoon of kosher or sea salt. You can taste and season again towards the end of the cooking process before you prepare the broth for storage.

Now, this is where we kind of throw authenticity and strict rules out the window. 

I cook a lot and I hate food waste. For the last two years, inspired by Not Another Cooking Show’s Steve Cusato, I’ve been storing remnants and bits and pieces of leftover fresh veggies in my freezer in a storage bag. 

The ends of fresh asparagus or fresh broccoli? Yes. Mushroom stems? Yes. Whole tomatoes or mushrooms that are looking a little long in the tooth? Of course!

My mission, when I create a stock, is to maximize the flavor so that the final product is complimentary with a wide variety of other vegetables, meats and fish. 

My chicken broths never taste the same, their colors vary, but, they’re flexible and delicious. And that’s the joy of cooking, really.

Now, put a lid on the pot and bring it up to a rapid boil, give the pot a good stir to mix all the chicken, herb, spices and vegetables together, then put the temperature down to create a nice, gentle, easy rolling simmer. 

Put the lid back on and let the stove-top burner do the rest.

I tend to check on the broth on the hour. I give it a good stir and if I see the fluid level dropping too much, I top it off with water and adjust the burner.

Four hours is the longest I’ve ever simmered a broth. As I said above, I once did it in about two hours by blasting it in the oven, but for me, making a chicken stock is the kind of exercise you do on a cold, rainy Fall or Winter Sunday afternoon. 

It’s actually easy to prep and the steps are pretty straightforward, the monitoring, quite lazy. 

Once you feel the chicken stock is completed to your taste profile, season as needed, stir and then strain the broth into storage containers.

I use a fine-meshed strainer with either cheesecloth or paper towels as a screen to make sure all the meat and vegetable matter is screened from the liquid.

This recipe easily gives me 2- to 2-and-1/2 quarts of chicken stock. 

Normally, I keep one quart in the fridge, while portioning off the remainder into 8-ounce or 16-ounce containers I can keep in the freezer. 

I hope you give it a try. Enjoy!

#homecooking #chicken stock #broth

[voxlunch]

Hi! Blast from the past, do you happen to still recall the steak prep recipe(with the brine and newspaper) you made in a LRR video ages upon ages ago? I really enjoyed it a few years back-and as my three year run of vegetarianism is coming to a close I figured I'd pull it out again. The video looks like it's no longer up. Thanks for all you do.

Transcribed Verbatim by Alex Steacy From The Von Hoffman Bros’ “BigDamn Book Of Sheer Manliness”-Please distribute and enjoy!

Macon’s Politically Incorrect Salt Steak

This recipe involves more than a modicum of showmanship and isguaranteed to command the attention of your guests. For maximumeffect, have them scrub up and get involved with the preparation.

But first, a word about your dinner guests. If your friends are thetype who stew over the sodium content of their Diet Cokes, who cringeat the fat content in a Caesar salad, who fret knowing that theirBordeaux contains sulfites, who wouldn’t dream of using real butter ona baked potato, who use ground turkey when making a batch of chili…If this describes your peer group, then the first order of business isto go out and cultivate a more lively set of friends!

When you succeed in Befriending that gang who savors a good singlemalt before dinner, accompanied by a generous portion of cheese,followed by a sumptuous repast dripping with rich sauces and a varietyof wines, topped off with a good cigar and a snifter of cognac… nowyou’re ready to pull out the salt steak! (Contrary to popular belief,your new friends may have a greater life expectancy because they spendmuch less time worrying about chicken shit.)

INGREDIENTS:

1 Large sirloin steak, 1-½ to 2 inches thick (porterhouse is alsonice!); the larger the piece of meat, the better, as it decreases thesalty outside to tasty inside ratio

6 sheets of newspaper, no color print (we prefer the Wall Street Journal)

1 Large bowl of kosher rock salt

1 Jar whole pepper corns

2 Jars Lawry’s lemon pepper

1 Bottle Worcestershire sauce

1 Jar of Grey Poupon mustard

1 roll of masking tape

10-pound  bag of Kingsford charcoal

Start by laying your fire. The biggest risk is not using enoughcharcoal (more on this later). Your charcoal bed should be at least 6inches thick (leave the grill off after you light the fire).

After you’ve got the fire started (and you’ve replenished yourfavourite beverage), mix the spices (rock salt, pepper corns and lemonpepper) together in a big bowl. Lay the six sheets of newspaper open,and plunk that hunk of beef down in the middle o it. Open the jar ofmustard, and slather one side of the meat with a ¼-inch-thick layerof it [1] (your friend’s eyebrows should raise perceptibly at thispoint).

Next, grab several handfuls of the spice mixture, and plaster it tothe mustard. You should have enough spice on there so that you won’tget any mustard on your hands. Then dump enough Worcestershire onthere to color the whole thing brown. [2] Carefully turn the steakover and repeat on the opposite side.

When you’ve finished making a mess of this beautiful piece of meat,wrap it up in the paper, and secure with masking tape [3] (try tocover as little area as possible with the tape-think of the ribbon ona Xmas present). When the bundle’s secured, immerse the whole thing inyour bucket of water [4]-your guests should be howling by now!

Replenish your drink, and tell a few dirty jokes while you wait forthe fire to reach its peak. Let the bundle soak.

When the fire has reached its zenith-and your Weber is about tomelt-pull the soggy package from the bucket, squeeze out the excesswater, and throw it directly on the coals (pray that the fire does notgo out!)

Depending upon the size-of-fire to size-of-bundle ratio, allow about10 minutes on each side. The paper should dry out, and be on the vergeof catching fire.

When the bundle is looking good and charred, [5] rescue it from thefire, and (using your now-empty bucket) remove the paper and scrapeall the mustard and spices off the meat. The steak at this point hasbeen partially steam cooked, and will have a sickly white appearance

Put the grill back on your kettle, and brown the steak for 3-5 minutesper side. When it looks like an edible piece of beef again, [6] sliceinto ¼-inch-thick strips and serve. If you’ve done it right, thesteam from the newspaper has traveled through the spice layer andimpregnated the meat with flavour while retaining the juices-amarvellous little example of applied physics.

Be careful not to overcook it though-there'as a fine line between a perfectly seasoned piece of meat and a salt lick. Good luck!

#Anonymous

[forthelove-aokaga]

Prompt: Air Dry

Prompt: Air Dry

“Yes! I win!” Kagami shouts in joy.

Aomine wiped his brow and gave Kagami a smug look. “Yeah that’s coz’ I let you win,” Aomine smirk finishing his sentence.

“Fuck you. I won fair and square loser,” Kagami walked up to the bench and chugged down the water. “You’re just sour because you lost to me~”

“Like hell I would,” Aomine sat on the bench beside Kagami and grabbed the redhead bottle from him.

“What the- I was drinking that Aho!” Kagami looks at Aomine full with annoyance.

“Relax princess it’s just water,” Aomine continued chugging down the drink. Aomine then glanced to side and saw Kagami started pouting and stuffing his bags with an attitude. He loves it when the redhead pouts at him its actually cute that Aomine can’t help but teases him more.

Aomine then pulled Kagami’s face towards him in one hand squeezing his cheeks. Kagami eyes gaze to the side in anger not wanting to deal with Aomine. Aomine then chuckles and lean in until their lips met each other for a slow kiss. Aomine pulled apart from the kiss and notice that Kagami cheeks were flushed from it.

“You’re so cute Taiga. We’ve kissed so many times and you still blushed like it’s still our first kiss,” Aomine chuckles pulling Kagami lips again for another kiss.

“S-shut up…” Kagami pulled himself from Aomine grabbed his bag and started walking back home.

“Hey wait up!” Aomine grabbed his bag and chase after Kagami.

He and Kagami have been dating for almost two months now. They met each other again when they saw each other on campus and realised that they were enrolling in the same college. They caught up with each other and one thing led to another, they’re dating now. It was awkward at first when they started going out together, both somewhat enemies in high school are now holding hands to the movies.

They went for movies and dinner dates plenty of time just enjoying each other’s company and getting to know each other. The furthest intimate thing they’ve done after almost two months of dating was making out until they’re breathless, Aomine wanted more but he didn’t want to push Kagami away by moving so fast just because he was horny. Just time will tell.

They both arrived at Kagami’s apartment to hangout for a drink before Aomine heads back home.

“Hey, can you wait a bit today? Let’s have dinner together today since tomorrow’s a weekend you can stay a bit longer. I bought beef so I can some beef stew for us.” Kagami said as he offered Aomine a glass of iced tea.

“Hmm… hold up let me check if Satsuki has the key,” Aomine hold up his phone and called up his bestfriend.

“I still can’t believe you and Momoi are still together until now.” Kagami chuckles sipping on his drink.

Aomine sighs and still waiting for the phone call to pick up. “Don’t even remind me. It’s bad enough I’m sharing the apartment with her but I also have to eat what she co-” Aomine cut his sentence off when the other line answers.

Looking at Aomine’s face he knows this is going to be a long call so he gestured infront of Aomine that he’s going to take a shower. Aomine nodded continued his conversation with Momoi. Kagami made his way to his room.

*** 20 minutes passed and Kagami still hears Aomine voice faintly talking from the living room. He ruffled his hair with the small towel throwing it in the hamper and made his way to kitchen fridge for a glass of milk. He then bend down and grabbed all the other ingredients to prepped for dinner.

He puts on his apron and turns his music on his phone to ‘Sunday morning by Maroon 5" and starts chopping up the ingredients for the stew slowly humming to the song. He finished prepping his ingredients and bends down again grabbing a dutch oven pot to start cooking.

He then realised that he can’t hear Aomine’s voice from the living room anymore, so he turns around and saw from the kitchen counter Aomine stood still with his phone in hand and mouth gape open to him.

“Are you okay?” Kagami stepped closer to the counter. “Oi, aho?” Kagami tilt his head to the side in question and waved his hand infront of Aomine’s vision. The man didn’t even flinch. “Are playing? Well whatever…” Kagami turns back around to continue cooking.

“….are you naked Kagami?” Aomine voice appeared and he saw Kagami’s bare back infront of him.

Kagami turns his head slightly to reply and continues cooking “Hmm? Yeah…why?”

“What do you mean why?! Is this really okay we’ve only known each other for over a month plus and…” Aomine is lost for words when he sees Kagami’s ass swaying each time the redhead moves.

“What? I’m used to air drying myself after a shower. Like you haven’t seen other people nude in the gym showers.” Kagami said the last part sarcastically.

Is he hearing this right? Kagami always air dries himself in the nude at home? The Kagami Taiga who’s shy everytime they kiss have no problem being nude at home. The equation just doesn’t add up.

“It’s my house so I can do whatever I want. So shut it Aho.” Kagami stirs his concoction ignoring what Aomine thinks. Everyone always see each other’s naked in the gum showers anyway.

“Said the guy who still blushes everytime he’s kiss,” Aomine murmured slowly.

Kagami got angry and turns around to Aomine’s direction too abruptly that the he hit the spoon from the pot to flicked out and hit his Kagami’s thigh. Kagami hisses from the pain and drop to his knees. Aomine shocked from Kagami’s hissing immediately ran to the man side.

“Fuck that’s hot! Shit…” Kagami curse as he touched the wound.

“You can say that again…” Aomine turns off the burner and kneeled beside Kagami.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Now?! You want to joke around now? Fuck…” Kagami shouts at Aomine.

“Ok…ok… let me see…” Aomine slowly stretched out his hand to touch Kagami’s leg but his hand was pushed away. “Come on Taiga let me see the burn.”

Kagami kept pushing Aomine’s hand away that the bluenette got annoyed and looked at his boyfriend face. His whole face is red to his ears and eyes pooling with tears.

“Are you kidding me? Now you’re shy? The guy who just cook stark naked.” Aomine laughs at the remarks.

He then pulled Kagami’s leg with force to see the burn ignoring the redhead hands still pushing him away. The skin was really red but no blood had broken the skin. Aomine got up to the bedroom and came out with a tube of toothpaste and a wet towel in his hand.

“Toothpa- OW!” Kagami hissed in pain as Aomine gently placed the wet towel on his thighs and slowly dabbing the burn area. Kagami then flinch when Aomine fingers spread the toothpaste on his burns.

“There we go. Toothpaste helps cool the skins from the burns pain.” Aomine wiped his fingers in the towel and place it on the kitchen counter. “I think you should cover up to avoid more accidents. And your little buddy there is peeking out from your apron.”

Kagami quickly pulled on his apron to cover his dick embarrassed from Aomine’s pointing it out. He knows his face is blushing pathetically infront of Aomine. He groans from the whole fiasco.

“Just get out.” Kagami looks angrily at Aomine with his flushed face.

“Well that was some thank you,” Aomine said sarcastically at Kagami. “You can’t stand can you? The burn is rubbing against the other thighs.” Aomine sighed seeing his stubborn boyfriend looking away.

“It’s fine I can mana- Woah! Put me down stupid!” Kagami was suddenly carried ‘bridal style’ and he struggled to get off.

“You push me one more time and I’ll dropped your ass here Taiga” Aomine growls and Kagami flinch sitting still.

Aomine placed Kagami sitting down on the bed and head to the dresser. He rummage through the drawers and returns with a sweatshirt and boxers. Aomine then turns around giving Kagami his space to change. Kagami remove the apron and place it on his lap, he then pulled on the sweatshirt over his head.

“Umm…I need pants…” Kagami said slowly.

“Pants would just make the burn worst. You need to air it out for the night, so just wear the boxers.” Aomine said looking out the room window.

“Okay I’m done,” Kagami notify Aomine to turn around.

Aomine turns and was breathless when he sees his boyfriend in an oversized sweatshirt and a short boxer briefs was just too sexy than when he was naked. He was hot naked but dressed like this just leaves up more for imagination. Shit he’s getting turned on now.

Aomine clears his throat and sit besides Kagami. Kagami fiddle with the hem of his shirt and sat crossed legs to avoid his thighs from touching.

“…thanks for the help Daiki…” Kagami leaned on Aomine and said with a slow voice.

“You’re welcome Taiga,” Aomine said with a sigh.

Kagami then leaned in and kissed Aomine slowly as a thank you, until the other man pulled him closer to deepen the kiss. It was passionate, it was tender it was everything they had both been needing and wanting. Kagami broke away from the kiss breathless.

“Come closer.” Aomine patted his lap. Kagami licked his lips and came to straddle Aomine carefully avoiding the burn, as he seized Aomine’s mouth with a hard kiss and bit at his bottom lip. Aomine sighed contentedly at Kagami’s sweet, hot breath as he reached up to cup Kagami’s chin in one strong hand. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment before gently putting their foreheads together. “You do know that I really really really like you right?” Aomine asked.

Kagami smile, giving Aomine another kiss. “Yeah…”

“This is sweet and all but, I’m still sticky from before,” Aomine flipped Kagami to lay on the bed. “You wait here and keep those legs open for me.” He teases Kagami before making his way to the bathroom.

“You dick!”

#aokaga #aomine daiki #kagami taiga #scribbles #my brain kept writing gag stuff.... #i really want to write sex stuff...

[oceangl1tter]

unpopular opinion: mac and cheese is only proper if you eat it with a small tiny spoon that can only fit one mac at a time

derivations://

I don't really know what's the point of writing all of these poems besides wanting a personal comfort and having an easy way out. Or is it an easy way in? I can't seem to stave myself off of it even though there's no return profit. My ability of spacing out lines in a purposeful way is really not something I could show to a potential employer or anyone around me. Or maybe that's just the South Node appeal calling to me. I want to find a way that could commercialize what I write. Package it in plastic wrap and present it to customers in an aesthetically pleasing way. But shouldn't the words be enough?

There are so many things I want to learn but it still feels like I'm going nowhere. The website I try to code looks like graphic design is my passion but unironic. I'm only 15% into the course and we've only slightly cracked into front-end development—(the visuals, so not back-end/ server-side coding). The process is like puzzle pieces that you mix and match together or a recipe book (and you have all the ingredients) but anything I make ends up freezing into a catatonic mess blaring with random RGB hexcodes I subbed in. I assembled an IKEA drawer with my housemates and ____ a few days ago and sometimes.. things just don't fit until they're in someone else's hands; I was talked down like a baby about finding "holes that fit into other holes" and while mentally infuriated, my fingers fumbled around like I was dealing with a Rubix cube blindfolded or something—but really, I'm just allergic to Swedish design. In a laughter I tell everyone in the room that I thought and asked myself what language Swedish people speak; at least it could boost my alibi of just being dumb and not dumbfounded by Swedes.

The things that I'm excited for deflate my sense of purpose but they really do send a rush of discovery. I turn to Reddit to scratch these itches. Watching people's motion reels are both a blessing and curse. I look at aesthetically pleasing sketchbooks that got people into the dream _______ I never knew people could have. I unfurl my optimism yarn until there's none left. Scatter small pains. I recognize that I just don't have the ardor and would rather be hidden in observations than cast my rod; but I do try! But I know when it's not enough—when it's not right. I think I should make things pretty until I realize that unpretty things are perfectly fine. I have ideas, that's all. Am I any different from my dad? Art for the sake of beauty has a single purpose of gratifying. My first draft for visitation was devoid of any real emotional labor and just caked on a cold stew of edgy, depraved imagery. It's fucking empty! How is that any different from my art/motion design things that I follow along by way of YouTube tutorials? Yeah I make a cool thing. Why do I give a fuck about this cool thing if it has a temporary purpose of gratification. Slightly pretentious. I also talk as if I'm fucking Picasso. Just kidding, Picasso would not fuck me. I also would not want to fuck Picasso. Actually, I don't know what I want. Maybe I just want to git gud. Not to denounce any of the great, amazing creations I see that take hours/days/weeks/months/years to do. I just don't know if I'll ever be satisfied. Also, I'm probably just jealous doing all this thinking in a glass room. I needa just get out. I needa be okay with starting out. I need to be okay with being bad with things I find important to me. I need to be less careless with things I don't think I'll be good at. Maybe I should apply this to everything else in my life.

When I was enrolled in Abacus class a millennium ago, we transitioned from the physical Eastern calculators to paper print-outs the size of half of an index card. The transition was to ease into calculating with simply a mental image of the abacus with the help of muscle memory. We would stand in a line, all of us next to eachother, and we'd hold up the card in front of us as equations flashed on a light blue screen. Crying because I just couldn't get it. Held that card up, my arm tired and shit, with nothing to wipe ‘cept that paper sheet. The instructor pulls me aside and I tell her that I can't do it. I don't think I've changed since then. At least I can calculate groceries now in my head though.

hear me out://

A few days after I find out, I'm having a lil tear session in the dorm showers. If the shower drain could talk, its narration would probably go like this:

day 273

-she hasn't even turned on the shower on yet and she's already crying lmao

I don't know why it hits me. One moment I feel fine and the next I feel a bit of a bitter twinge. Maybe of how much I had poured my heart out in ways I hadn't before; perhaps as an atonement. My impulsive Xylitol javelin-throwing had other reasons. Perhaps an affirmation that everyone I had ever ______ _______ . In hindsight, it didn't turn out that way but who else would listen so ardently? so selflessly? pay to be the audience? even if it was divisive? sit here past twilight in an empty building? and silently watch a tantrum unfold? I've written and shelved, written and shelved. Some things have a passtime. Other things I wouldn't want to return to.  Now, it's obviously different. The occupations of the mind are different. There are no words left unsaid but there are gestures I wish I had done better, I could still do better but I deem too late. I don't try to find replacements because there can be none. —- E And L Five Ps: Final reflection://

St.Vincent's crooning in her Strange Mercy album takes me through Winter. I "steal" a concept from her 6th track, Strange Mercy, that explores the concept of how it can be "cruel to be kind". It's the perfect tenderness I need to raise frailty back to life and to properly transition the deadness of Winter to a more sweet and dewy fragility, one more aligned with Spring. For my first revised poem, I returned back to ‘visitation’ and tried to establish the poem’s center of gravity. After re-reading it again, I realized that many of the images I wrote, though they were descriptive, masked the poem from progressing in its work beyond creating a sense of atmosphere. I knew that the poem needed a spine to hang its imagery flesh off of but I did not know where to start, so I went back to my critiques and looked for lines people read as most interesting.

The first line "in winter, the sound of your skin is screaming" was the one that stuck out the most, so I took that line on its own and brainstormed on how I could ground my poem with this line. I asked myself questions like: Why winter? Whose skin is screaming? Screaming in what way? Why the sound of skin? I initially had chosen winter because I wanted to fit it into the theme of frailty, decay, and death but nothing had really transformed from beginning to end because of it.

The original poem would still stand on its own even if I took out the season. I found that it would be more interesting to use negation and have it play a more integral role, so I changed the season to Spring. This created many doorways. From the poetry collection I read, Half-Lit Houses, I noticed that the poet describes the “outside” world before zooming in and I compared it to my poem, where I start off already “zoomed-in”/magnified and the reader is thrown in with no context.  Every line that follows is then trapped in having to connect to it, too magnified for the reader to navigate the bigger picture. With this in mind, I did not stick with the original format of this line opening the poem-which took some time to actually do because I really wanted to force it to be for its unsettling effect.

Another critique I got was what work the title was doing and how it connected to the rest of the poem. I’m not sure why I thought of visitation the first time I wrote this poem but after changing the poem’s descriptors from subtle decay (“quiet unmoving/and breathing”, “patient’s kneading”, “a carcass”) to more physically present feelings (“Lacerate”, “savory blood cracked”, “wailing at Hospital Walls”), the poem was no longer the ghost it originally was and instead birthed a more visceral feeling, a beast, alive and begging to be heard. I wanted to mask the setting up until the end which would make that final connection of visitation hours at a hospital. Had the scene been introduced earlier in the poem, I think it would be more of a dark cloud looming than the delicate freshness I was trying to go for—the kindness of the grass and the cruelty of its blades. The setting in the first few stanzas is left open and how it moves to the hospital location is not explicitly clear but it's the drifting airiness I like that are reminiscent of Spring days and walks surrounded by rustling, blooming trees.

This poem came out rather naturally after figuring out its premise but I made several alterations to the movement of the words just before the last stanza. I knew it would be revolving in an arc, circular as if blown away only to return back, and I wanted something that would encourage an analogous reading—cognizant of the way ones eyes would read it when scanning.

The poem itself pulls from different memories; some I was not there for, and others I noticed. My favorite line of the poem is: "He stands there."

circadian rhythm://

I knew, relatively, the parallelism but I didn't know exacts until my dad told me to scan his medical reports for a checkup. There's a likeness of timelines. The event I pulled from happened on 1/1/2001, 9 months after my birth.

Coincidentally (or not), it's winter.

#mystuff