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linebreaker · 5 years

Text

Birthmark

Also on AO3.

Warnings: light angst; brief mentions of past violence; mentions of past discorporation; discussions of historical anti-Semitism and violence against Jewish people.

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Aziraphale first noticed the mark one morning when Crowley was puttering around the kitchen. The buttery sunlight was filtering through the herbs in the cottage window and fat bees were bumbling about outside, bumping against the glass in their search for flowers.

Crowley had just awoken from one of his week-long naps and stumbled out into the kitchen. Aziraphale regarded him over his reading glasses. He looked soft and sleep-worn, red hair flattened charmingly on one side. His yellow eyes were half-lidded and he was rubbing at one of them with his knuckles.

“Coffee?” he grunted.

“Afraid there’s nothing fresh, dear, but I can—” Crowley flapped his hands at him when Aziraphale went to snap his fingers.

“No, no, no. No. I can get it,” he muttered and then promptly banged his hip against the table corner as he made for the kettle. “Shit!”

Aziraphale huffed out a breath of laughter. “If you insist. That’s what you get for doing it the hard way.”

“It doesn’t taste the same when it’s miracled.”

Looking no more alert—but decidedly more aggravated—than he had before, Crowley went about preparing the kettle. Aziraphale’s morning paper was open in front of him, but it was mostly for show now. He enjoyed watching the demon do mundane things like cook and tend to his garden, so he took ample time to glance up and observe between each line he read.

—carry out services themselves rather than employ private firms, the chancellor has said. John McDonnell said he—

Crowley was still in his sleep clothes. He normally kept to his waistcoats and jackets and sinful trousers, but he’d been noticeably more lax in his apparel over the last few months of their retirement. Aziraphale didn’t mind.

—wants to limit the outsourcing of services such as bin collections by obliging councils to run them—

His loose-fitting pyjama bottoms were slung low on his hips. The long-sleeved grey shirt he wore looked soft, its collar wide enough to drape aside and expose a portion of the demon’s shoulder. Aziraphale let his eyes trace along his skin, forming constellations out of the freckles there.

—when existing private contracts expire. Cleaning and school dinners could also be taken back under the plans. The government—

Crowley was barefoot. As he filled the kettle, Aziraphale watched his toes curl against the tile. He rocked up onto the pads of his feet, exposing their delicate arches briefly, before settling again.

—said decisions should be left with local councils. The Confederation of British Industry said Labour’s proposal was “an extreme move devoid of evidence yet—

He managed to get the kettle on without further incident and turned to rest against the counter. With his back to the window, the morning light streamed in around like a halo, silhouetting him. Dust motes drifted lazily through the beams of sunlight.

—dripping in dogma.” In a speech on Saturday, Mr. McDonnell said outsourced contracts were costly and lacked accountability as decisions—

“What’re you looking at, angel?” Crowley asked when he glanced up again. The sunlight made it hard to see his face, but Aziraphale thought he sounded amused.

He smiled and, heart stuttering, answered, “You.”

Crowley froze momentarily. Aziraphale watched as his entire frame went rigid, his edges rippling like a mirage in the desert, before he relaxed again. He scoffed and grumbled something incomprehensible, then turned away again.

Something small and fragile unfurled in Aziraphale’s chest like a blooming flower. He smiled to himself and went back to his paper.

It wasn’t much longer before the kettle started whistling. Crowley moved to take it off the flame and go about preparing his coffee. It was while he was reaching to retrieve (see: steal) Aziraphale’s novelty angel mug off of the top shelf that his shirt rode up to reveal a band of skin. Aziraphale’s eyes were drawn briefly to the divots at the base of the demon’s spine, a little thrill running through him at the sight of them.

Then he noticed the mark.

It was a swath of skin—paler than that which surrounded it, a small swirl of white—that sat just above the jut of Crowley’s hip. Aziraphale squinted, but the shirt fell down and obscured it from view before he could get a decent look.

“Crowley, what is that?”

“Hm?” He was distracted adding heaps of instant coffee to his mug. Personally, Aziraphale detested the stuff, but Crowley was unaccountably attached. Probably because he’d had a hand in inventing it. “What’s what?”

“That mark—there, on your side.”

Crowley finished his preparations and took a sip, smacking his lips in satisfaction. Then he seemed to take in Aziraphale’s question. He paused, rim of the mug pressed against his mouth, and blinked his reptilian eyes at him. “Huh?”

Aziraphale scowled at him as he made his way over to the table—he had a feeling that the demon was being deliberately obtuse. “What is that mark? I don’t think I’ve seen that before.”

Crowley looked bemused as he took his seat across from Aziraphale, mug firmly clutched between his palms. “Never seen it before? You’ve seen me without my clothes on, angel.”

He lifted one eyebrow suggestively and Aziraphale felt his face go hot. Images flashed through his mind—Crowley beneath him, his sweat-slicked thighs up around Aziraphale’s hips, his body arching up like a bow and his slitted pupils blown wide as he came—and he quickly looked away.

“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat and focused on folding his paper for a moment. “I was rather preoccupied at the time.”

When he glanced up again, he noticed that Crowley was sporting a lopsided grin and there was a rather fetching shade of pink staining his cheeks. “Yeah?”

Aziraphale huffed and rolled his eyes. “You know perfectly well that I was, you wicked thing, so stop trying to distract me. What is that mark?” he asked again, pulling off his reading glasses and pointing them at the demon. He knew he sounded petulant, but he was terribly curious.

Crowley’s grin faded slowly, an ember burning out until it curled black and lifeless at the corner of his mouth. He shrugged and the wide neck of his shirt draped further down his shoulder. “That mark’s the reason I hate the 14th century.”

Aziraphale, whose gaze had been inextricably drawn to the gentle slope of demonic clavicle that was now on display, blinked and looked back up into his eyes. “What?”

“Well,” Crowley quickly amended, “it’s the main reason, anyway.”

“I thought you once told me that you hated the 14th century because of the Papal Schism?” Aziraphale asked.

“That was certainly part of it, yes,” he confirmed and took a sip of coffee. He looked more alert now. The soft, sleep-mussed air that hung around him after his naps was quickly dissipating. “As well as that Hundred Year War thing and The Plague.”

“As I recall, those were both terrible things that you took credit for,” Aziraphale reminded him with a quirked eyebrow. As much as Crowley seemed to despise the 14th century, it hadn’t been all fun-and-games for Aziraphale, either. Three simultaneous popes, millions dead, revolts and uprisings—it was all enough to make an angel crazy.

“Yes,” Crowley whined, slumping forward in his seat dramatically. “It was full of terrible things and I was terribly busy.”

“Oh, well, you poor dear.”

Crowley scoffed. “Angel, I get the distinct impression that your sympathy is not entirely genuine.”

“My sympathy for devils—you or otherwise—is limited, but I do genuinely adore you, so do with that as you will.”

“I shall,” Crowley said with an absurd waggle of his eyebrows. Aziraphale’s stomach swooped and he rolled his eyes with a fond tolerance.

“Crowley,” he said mildly and tried again. “The mark on your side?”

The demon’s bright yellow eyes regarded him over the top of his mug and, for the first time, Aziraphale could see weary resignation in them. It suddenly struck him how difficult Crowley was making this. A frisson of worry ran down his spine.

“Is—is there something you don’t want me to know? I mean, if so—” he hastened to say when Crowley’s mouth opened. “—that’s perfectly fine. We don’t have to tell each other everything. I just—Well, I just thought—”

“It was an exorcist.”

The rest of Aziraphale’s sentence died in his throat. He felt it whither and turn to dust, coating his tongue with bitter ash. He coughed and asked, “I, uh—beg pardon?”

“An exorcist gave me this mark,” Crowley repeated calmly and gestured towards his left side with a nod of his head. He’d put his mug down and was now focused on Aziraphale. “Back in 1349.”

Aziraphale’s mind began to race. 1349? Where did this happen? Italy? It must have been. Wasn’t I in Italy around that time? Why didn’t he call me for help? Unless—no, we still weren’t really considered acquaintances then, were we? Let alone friends. I don’t think The Arrangement was even in place for another few hundred years—

“Stop.”

The gentle command cut through his increasingly distressed train of thought and Aziraphale jerked in his seat. He sucked in a breath through his teeth and blinked up at Crowley. At some point, he had gotten up and come around to stand beside Aziraphale’s chair, half-sitting on the edge of the table.

“W-what?” he asked, thrown by the demon’s sudden proximity and still reeling from his confession. An exorcist. Why would—

“I said stop.”

Aziraphale blinked. Crowley crossed his arms with a beleaguered sigh and stared down at him. He’d pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and Aziraphale’s heart gave a squeeze at the dusting of light freckles he could see across his skin.

“I know your brain,” Crowley said. “I know it’s going hell for leather right now trying to figure everything out and I’m sure you’ve somehow managed to blame yourself.”

Aziraphale swallowed and looked away, his eyes lowering to study the wood grain of the table.

“Angel, we weren’t even friends back then,” Crowley said in exasperation, echoing his earlier thoughts. Aziraphale looked back up at him. “You thinking that you were in some way responsible for a run of bad luck I had nearly 700 years ago is just your—” He stammered briefly, jostling his shoulders like he was trying to knock the right words loose. “—angelic guilt or whatever.”

“You saved me more times than I can count and I couldn’t even—”

“I saved myself,” Crowley insisted.

Aziraphale swallowed around the lump in his throat. “You shouldn’t have had to,” he said softly, heart fluttering like a wounded bird within the cage of his ribs.

Crowley made one of his incoherent little noises and then turned away, casting his angular features into profile. The corner of his mouth was pulled down in a frown, jaw grinding back and forth. Aziraphale wanted to reach out to him—to press love in the shape of fingerprints into his warm skin. However, he didn’t think his touch would be well-received at the moment.

Instead, he asked, “Will you tell me about it?”

Crowley looked at him out of the corner of his eye, seeming to consider him. “I think it’ll just upset you,” he finally said.

“I’m afraid that ship has sailed, my dear,” Aziraphale told him. His throat squeezed around the words as he spoke them, rasping against them until they were little more than a whisper. “Please tell me.”

The sigh that passed Crowley’s lips was an ancient thing—something he’d been carrying around for nearly a millennium in his chest. He rolled his neck back and forth. Then he said, “It was in Basel.”

“Switzerland?” Aziraphale asked, blinking in surprise.

“Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t Switzerland at the time, but the sentiment is the same. That’s where it happened. Y-you remember how, after The Black Plague, there were—well, um, there was a lot of hatred towards the Jewish community?”

Aziraphale nodded once, a grim set to his mouth. “I remember,” he said. “The pogroms.”

The Jewish Black Death massacres. They’d started up in 1348 as a result of the plague sweeping across Europe and had lasted for a few years. Christians killing Jews because they thought they were somehow responsible for the disease that had ravaged the continent—that they had invoked the wrath of God or were poisoning the well water. Ridiculous, Aziraphale thought viciously.

Crowley uncrossed his arms so that he could gesticulate while he spoke. “Right. It was a crazy time; everyone was dying and people wanted someone to blame.”

“They usually do,” Aziraphale said without humor. He reached across the table for Crowley’s abandoned coffee, brushing his arm against the demon’s hip. “Human nature.”

“There’s nothing natural about wanting to wipe out an entire race or religion.”

“I don’t disagree.” He took a tentative sip of the coffee and grimaced, quickly holding it out to Crowley. “That is terrible,” he coughed, smacking his lips to try ridding himself of the burnt flavor.

“You just don’t have my exquisite taste,” Crowley sighed, taking the mug out of his hand. His fingertips slid across Aziraphale’s knuckles and an involuntary shiver ran up the angel’s spine. “Anyway, that’s what I was doing in Basel. My people had sent me there a few days before the massacre—I didn’t want to be there and I didn’t have anything to do with the previous pogroms in Savoy or Erfurt or Toulon, really. I think they just assumed I had.”

Aziraphale believed him. Though Crowley had definitely softened during the course of their 6000 year acquaintance, he had never seemed the type to tempt people into mass-slaughter. He was more the inconvenience-people-into-sinning kind of demon. He’d said so himself that, many times, the humans basically took care of the big stuff themselves. No tempting needed.

“And Basel is where you met the, uh, exorcist?” Aziraphale asked.

“Mm-hm,” Crowley mumbled, staring down into his mug with pursed lips. “And, really, I use the term exorcist extremely loosely. He wasn’t what I would consider a professional by any means. I think he just got lucky.”

What Aziraphale wanted to say was that, if the man had truly been an amateur, maybe it was Crowley who had gotten lucky. He bit his tongue, though. Crowley’s posture was hunched, defensive—his shoulders curled forward and his back bowed. His eyes had a distant, vaguely haunted look to them. So Aziraphale swallowed down his anxiety and waited.

Eventually, Crowley blinked like he was coming out of a trance and looked over at him. His yellow irises were blown out, encompassing his eyes. “He got me the day after the riot. There was still ash in the air from, um—from where the townspeople had locked the adults up and set the building on fire. There were kids that the Christians were forcibly converting and I was—I had been drinking. I just, uh—” Crowley paused. Took a breath. “I just don’t like it when they get kids involved.”

“I know,” Aziraphale said, infinitely gentle.

“Anyway, I think my—my glasses slipped and he saw my eyes or—I dunno, he smelled sulphur on me or something—”

You don’t smell like sulphur, Aziraphale thought, but didn’t dare interrupt. You smell like frankincense.

“—but I p-passed out or he knocked me out and the next thing I remember is that I was strung up somewhere. It was dark and smelled like—like hay and shit. Probably a barn. He, uh . . .”

Crowley trailed off, looking away again. He was running his nails along the rim of his mug, filling the silence with a low, chittering resonance that set Aziraphale’s teeth on edge. He longed to reach out and lay his hands over Crowley’s—to still them and imbibe some comfort. He linked his fingers together on the tabletop instead.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked in an even tone, trying to sound as though he wasn’t crawling out of his skin.

Crowley’s eyes skittered back over to him. Tension was evident in the set of his jaw and the stark whiteness of his knuckles where he gripped his mug. “Do you want to hear about it?”

Aziraphale frowned, his heart clenching painfully in his chest. He’d been present at an exorcism before. Rome, around the turn of the 19th century. He’d stood back and observed as two Catholic priests attempted to drive the demon Leraje from the body of a young woman.

It had laughed and snarled threats, and Aziraphale had felt its opalescent eyes rake over him. Then Father Cancio had begun chanting his Latin phrases and Father D’Agostino had thrown blessed oils and holy water in its face. The demon’s skin had split and steamed, blisters forming over blisters as Leraje writhed and shrieked. Its dirty fingers had gouged marks into the arms of the chair it was tied to, blood pooling along its cuticles as the nails snapped off, its joints buckling. It bit off the woman’s tongue—spat it onto the floor at their feet—and blood had boiled in its mouth as it shouted obscenities at them.

It had lasted for hours. In the end, Leraje had been exorcised and the woman had died in the chair. Aziraphale could still smell the blood; could still hear her skin sizzling under the holy water.

Then he imagined Crowley in Leraje’s place and his stomach turned so violently that he nearly threw up.

“I never want to hear about you getting hurt, my dear,” he eventually whispered. “But I am here if you want to—”

Crowley waved a hand, cutting him off. “No, I, uh—I’d rather not discuss the details of that, if it’s all the same to you, angel.”

Aziraphale’s breath left him in a messy rush and he felt lightheaded with relief. He had asked Crowley to tell him. He would listen if the demon wanted to explain what had happened to him during his own exorcism attempt, but Aziraphale would rather peel his own skin off than have those images in his head.

“Of course,” he said, voice weak.

Crowley set his mug down on the table behind him, then folded his arms across his midsection, hands grasping loosely at his own elbows. “In any case, after—after everything, I managed to get loose and kill the silly bugger.”

Good, Aziraphale thought viciously.

“I was in pretty bad shape,” Crowley continued, staring blankly off into the middle distance. There was a fine sheen of sweat glistening at his temple and Aziraphale watched his throat move with a swallow. “I got out of Basel and only just managed to make it to the next town before I collapsed. The exorcist—he didn’t have any holy water, thank Somebody, but he did have this, uh, I dunno—a coin or a pendant. I didn’t get a good look at it. It must’ve been a holy relic or something, because it burned like a blessed sonofabitch; left welts all over that I couldn’t heal.”

Crowley reached down absentmindedly and touched his side where Aziraphale knew the mark to be. “This one was the worst. It got infected and I got a fever. I’m sure you can imagine what that looked like back in 1349.”

A lump of dread settled in the pit of Aziraphale’s stomach, poisonous apprehension seeping out into the rest of his body like lead into drinking water. “Like you had the plague.”

Crowley clicked his tongue and said cheerlessly, “Got it in one, angel.”

“What happened?” Aziraphale asked and Crowley sighed wearily.

“The fever wiped me out—put me into a coma, most likely. The townspeople thought I had died, so they buried me in a mass grave with other plague victims—”

“What?” Aziraphale gasped, horrified.

“—and I don’t remember much after that. I discorporated at some point; wound up back in Hell. After lots of paperwork and whatnot, I got back topside around 1378.”

“Y-you discorporated? How—how did I not know that? You, erm—” Aziraphale stopped. Drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to center himself. When he opened them again, he found Crowley’s gaze on him. The yellow of his irises had retreated back to their centers. “You don’t look any different,” he told the demon. “You got—what? A-a copy of your body?”

“Did I mention: lots of paperwork,” Crowley said and Aziraphale was relieved to hear humor in his voice.

“1378?” he asked, then sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Just in time for the Papal Schism, I see.”

“Three popes are three too many, angel.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” he said lightly, letting a small smile pull at his mouth. Then he amended, “In this case.”

Crowley chuckled and the pressure seemed to ease off of his shoulders, the tension that had gathered around him like graveyard mist breaking apart and abating. The soft morning sun had transformed his hair into a coppery halo; it caressed his face, highlighting the delicate lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.

Aziraphale watched him for a few moments, then asked hesitantly, “And, um—the mark was, uh, still there when you—when you came back?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “It was the only one. Everything else hadn’t left so much as a scar, but this one—it stayed. Dunno why. Maybe because it was the deepest wound or maybe because it was the one that eventually discorporated me. Or maybe Hell just left it there as a reminder when they remade my body.”

“A reminder?”

Crowley shrugged, the loose nonchalance he was trying to affect ruined by the way his eyes flitted away from Aziraphale’s face. “A reminder that I’m weak or—or maybe reliant on them?”

Aziraphale ached for him. His heart was a crushing weight in his chest. You aren’t weak, he thought.

He swallowed and lifted a hand towards Crowley, hovering just shy of touching him. “May I see?” he asked in a quiet voice.

There was a moment when he thought that Crowley would refuse; would push himself away from the table and disappear into the bedroom; would hole himself away and sleep for a hundred years. But then Crowley sighed, resigned. He reached down and lifted the edge of his shirt, pivoting slightly so that Aziraphale could view the back of his hip.

The mark was obvious, but Aziraphale let his eyes drag over the rest of Crowley’s golden skin before he examined it. He ran his gaze along the shallow dips between each rib, counted the lumps of his spine. Patches of freckles stood out like tiny galaxies.

“You’re beautiful,” he said absentmindedly. Then he blushed.

Crowley huffed out a laugh, relaxing. “Thank you, angel. You’re not so bad yourself.” Aziraphale looked up at him just in time to catch a cheeky wink. He rolled his eyes.

“You’re also ridiculous.”

“You like me.”

“I certainly do not,” Aziraphale said airily and his heart gave a little flutter when Crowley chuckled. With a smile, he returned to his perusal of the warm skin before him, finally letting himself look at the white mark on Crowley’s side.

It was smaller than Aziraphale had initially thought—no bigger than a two pence—and was almost perfectly round. He suspected that whatever had made the mark had been intricately decorated, but the curving lines it left behind were now blurred and he couldn’t make out any details.

“You didn’t try to miracle this away?” he asked.

“Oh, I did,” Crowley said, sounding resigned. “No good. It’s one scar that I can’t make go away.”

It doesn’t really look like a scar. More like a patch of vitiligo, he thought, reaching up unthinkingly to touch the mark. He laid his fingertips against its edge and Crowley hissed out a shocked breath.

Aziraphale jerked his hand back, distraught. “Oh, I’m sorry!” he stammered. “I-I didn’t—”

“You’re fine,” Crowley said, a slight tremble in his voice. His shirt was still pulled up, but he’d reached down to cover the mark with his own hand, rubbing at it. “Just startled me is all.”

Aziraphale watched him run his fingers along the skin, worry gnawing at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. You can touch me, if you want.”

“Well, dear, I always want to touch you,” he said without thinking and with far more levity than he felt. Crowley lifted his eyebrows at him and Aziraphale huffed. “Oh, hush. You’re hardly scandalized.”

Crowley grinned. “Here,” he said with a little sigh and reached over to take ahold of Aziraphale’s hand. His grip was a loose circle around his wrist, fingertips stroking over his pulse point and sending frissons of pleasure up his arm. Crowley pulled and Aziraphale went willingly, his heart in his throat. He let the demon press his palm against the mark, his own fingers smoothing over the back of Aziraphale’s hand before he let go.

His skin was warm and pliant, and Aziraphale let himself enjoy having it beneath his fingers once again before he really focused on the mark. He ran a thumb along its edge. It was smooth, not raised like he expected a scar to be—more like a birthmark.

And then it struck Aziraphale. That’s exactly what it was: a birthmark. Crowley had been tortured, branded, killed, and then had carried the mark into his new body after his resurrection. A reminder of his failings.

Before he could think about what he was doing, Aziraphale leaned forward. He placed his lips over the mark, sucking a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the white skin. Above him, he heard Crowley hiss in a startled breath. Fingers wove through his hair, caressing his scalp.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked, sounding breathless.

He kept his mouth where it was. Using his tongue and teeth and lips, he pressed love and reassurance down into the skin, marking Crowley’s side. The demon’s ragged breaths filled the kitchen and his fingers dragged through Aziraphale’s curls when he pulled back to examine his handiwork. Where the white birthmark had once been, the skin now stood out red and blotchy.

“Did you just give me a hickey?” Crowley asked, sounding equal parts offended and impressed.

“Not really,” Aziraphale said and passed a thumb over the red mark. Angelic power tingled like a static charge as he miracled the erythema away and Crowley gave a little jolt.

“Hey! What did you do?” he huffed and craned his neck to take a look.

Then he froze.

Aziraphale watched him, his pulse thrumming like hummingbird wings in his throat as Crowley touched the skin where the mark had once been. In its place, a mass of dark freckles now stood.

An angel’s kiss.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Aziraphale told him, his voice reedy. “I just—I adore you. I worship every inch of you. And if there is a part of you that causes you pain—a mark that reminded you of an event so traumatic you would despise an entire millennium because of it—Well, if I could take that mark away . . .”

Crowley looked up at him, his eyes wide, but said nothing. Aziraphale swallowed down the worry that threatened to choke him and continued.

“You aren’t weak,” he told Crowley. “You are wily and resilient and you care so much. I know that you’re a demon and you don’t want to hear it, but I see so much good in you that naming everything I love would be like counting the stars. I can’t do it. You are made of starlight. I wish that I was half as strong as—”

He didn’t get to finish. Crowley swooped down and caught his mouth in a bruising kiss. Aziraphale gasped into it and reached up to catch ahold of Crowley’s shoulders, hanging on. The demon’s fingers traced over the tops of his ears and down along his jawline as he kissed him, eliciting tiny shivers from Aziraphale.

It lasted only for a few seconds before Crowley retreated, playfully nipping at Aziraphale’s bottom lip as he went, but the angel was left winded. Crowley smiled at him, looking beautifully rumpled, and said, “Thank you, angel.”

It sounded remarkably like I love you, too.

Aziraphale grinned back, relief and happiness pouring out of his bones like sunlight and warming the garden blooming in his chest. His heart pounded. “You’re quite welcome, my dear.”

They spent a few moments quietly regarding one another, Crowley absentmindedly touching his side through his shirt. Then he reached out to Aziraphale, laying a hand against his cheek.

“I,” he said in a gentle voice, drawing out the syllable as he swept a thumb across the skin just beneath Aziraphale’s eye, “am going to take a shower.”

Aziraphale blinked. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Been asleep for a week,” Crowley said by way of explanation. He dropped his hand and pushed himself away from the table. Aziraphale watched him go, eyes drawn to the sway of his hips, and tried not to feel disappointment that Crowley was walking away instead of kissing him.

He sighed and mumbled, “Well then, I suppose I’ll make some tea.”

“Or you could join me?”

Aziraphale looked over at Crowley. He was standing in the kitchen entrance, leaning heavily against the doorframe. There was a smile on his face, and he looked soft and vulnerable in his too-big shirt and bare feet. Then his eyelids fluttered and his smile morphed into a predatory grin, lips curling up to reveal his straight, white teeth. Arousal dropped into Aziraphale’s stomach like a lead weight; his breath shuddered out of his lungs.

“C’mon, angel,” Crowley said, his voice a deep rumble like the beginnings of a summer storm. “I’ll put marks all over your skin this time.”

Then he disappeared through the doorway, leaving Aziraphale gaping in his wake. The angel sat there for a moment, listening as Crowley moved about on the other side of the small cottage. The shower started up.

Aziraphale thought about Crowley’s naked skin; about steam curling up around his legs and hips and back; about water beading along freckles instead of white birthmarks. He smiled and stood.

The tea could wait.

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Based on the prompt: “Why does Crowley hate the 14th century?” Requested by @needscaffeine. This took FOREVER, as I had to wrestle it to the ground and get it back on track several times.

#good omens #good omens fic #good omens fanfiction #ineffable husbands #fic prompt #fic request #crowley #aziraphale #angst #light angst #fanfiction #fic #fanfic #oneshot #this turned out a longer than i thought it would #holy jeebus it's a monster

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texasrcttlesnake · 4 years

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rules: pick five shows, then answer the following questions. don’t cheat. tag some people. tagged by: @viceprone! tagging: steal it!

1. btvs 2. battlestar galactica 3. the closer 4. z nation 5. sanctuary

WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTER IN 2? everyone on this show is terrible and i love (most?) of them, but i gotta go with space papa on this one. bill adama will destroy you six ways from sunday and live to tell the story later. by far the worst thing he's ever done was allow lee to live. that was a poor decision.

WHO IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE CHARACTER IN 1? without hesitation, xander. when you look up the word 'nice guy' in the dictionary, xander harris' face is next to it. not surprising considering that he is joss' self-insert, but my god the entitlement! treating his friends like shit! belittling EVERYONE around him! i hope his wifi signal is clear on that high horse of his. it's a shame he didn't lose his eye sooner.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE EPISODE OF 4? there are so many good ones, but hands down, "siege of murphytown". roberta warren is the baddest motherfucker alive and is so fed up with murphy and his tyrannical bullshit that she storms his city and is ready to put a bullet in him...... and it all ends with murphy asking her to help him find his daughter. that is the drama i live for.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON OF 5? season 2. everything starts to take a darker turn. helen magnus goes THROUGH it this season. we get introduced to kate. there's a zombie episode! nikola tesla is being a little shit! it's a good time.

WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE COUPLE IN 3? brenda/sharon! never in my life will i ship anything canon and THAT IS JUST FINE.

WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE COUPLE IN 2? (caprica) six/roslin. there were moments. again, i will never ship anything canon.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE EPISODE OF 5? "broken arrow". kate plays host to an abnormal and spends an entire episode fighting her friends dressed up like a goddamn super villain.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON OF 2? unpopular, but i loved season 4. everything is terrible. time is running out for the fleet. laura has cancer again, galactica is falling apart, and there is no hope. it's suffocating! the final battle is what really makes it.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU WATCHED 1? god i started watching in..... elementary school? i was super into it until it ended. i've ended up rewatching it every few years since then.

HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN 3? after battlestar ended, there was a void in my heart where laura roslin used to be. mary mcdonnell joined the closer in season 5, and i ended up watching the whole series because of it.

WHICH DO YOU PREFER, 1, 2, OR 5? in terms of rewatchability, i have to go with buffy. i can't bring myself to jump down the battlestar rabbit hole. i wish sanctuary was streaming somewhere!

WHICH SHOW HAVE YOU SEEN MORE EPISODES OF - 1 OR 3? i've rewatched them both a whole lot so... that's a tie.

IF YOU COULD BE ANYONE FROM 4, WHO WOULD YOU BE? addy carver, the goddamn baseball bat swinging lunatic. she shoots first and asks questions later. a GOD.

PAIR TWO CHARACTERS IN 1 WHO WOULD MAKE AN UNLIKELY BUT STRANGELY OKAY COUPLE? buffy/giles is my unlikely otp for this show. no i will not be answering questions or taking criticism at this time.

OVERALL, WHICH SHOW HAS A BETTER STORYLINE, 3 OR 5? the closer is your pretty standard procedural with a lot of quirky mishaps along the way. sanctuary had a long arching goal throughout its entire run which was to make the world a safe place for abnormals... so, definitely sanctuary.

WHICH HAS BETTER THEME MUSIC, 2 OR 4? battlestar has a good depressing intro which pretty much tells you exactly what you're getting into. z nation fucking slaps when you hear that HAVE MERCY hit. z nation wins.

#iii. ooc #it was difficult to not include every damn procedural i've watched within the last ten years #sheesh

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thecomicsnexus · 5 years

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The Long Road Home

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #245 DECEMBER 1985 BY GERRY CONWAY, LUKE MCDONNELL AND MIKE MACHLAN

SYNOPSIS (FROM COMIC VINE)

An amnesiac Steel staggers through a barren wasteland. The moment Steel collapses, he is set upon by mutant cockroaches. Unbeknownst to Steel, his conflict is observed by the Six. Steel defeats his insect adversaries. Steel is confronted by Olanda. Steel collapses at Olanda's feet. Olanda escapes with Steel, just as a killer-bot, sent by the Six arrives on the scene. Olanda destroys the killer-bot. The Justice League of America continue clean-up, and repairs, on their bunker headquarters. Hank Heywood demands to see his grandson, Henry.

J'onn J'onzz, the Manhunter From Mars, informs Heywood that his grandson has gone missing. Steel awakens. His memories of his identity have returned. Upon learning that Steel is a member of the Justice League of America, Olanda shuns him. Steel reveals the last thing he remembers. His grandfather, as Commander Steel, had led Infinity Incorporated in an attack on the Justice League of America. In personal combat, Steel had beat Commander Steel unconscious. A cosmic storm of incredible magnitude threatened the live of the denizens of Cameron Street.

Rendering aid to civilians, Steel had fallen through a time warp, forcibly shunting him forward one billion years in the future. Killer-bots attack the Hexagon. Steel repels the killer-bots. Olanda's father reveals himself to be the Justice League of America's arch-nemesis, the Lord Of Time. After years of conflict, the Lord Of Time grew lonely. The Lord Of Time used his own DNA to clone seven "children", six boys, and one girl, Olanda. The Lord Of Time's obvious favor towards Olanda sowed the seeds of dissent in his six sons, who turned against him.

The Six stole the Lord Of Time's Chrono-Cube, using it to amass an army of killer-bots. The Lord Of Time enlists Steel's aid in regaining the Chrono-Cube. Leading the way, Steel takes down all opposition, as they storm the stronghold of the Six. Regaining the Chrono-Cube, the Lord of Time goes back in time, to unmake the Six. Steel spends some time with Olanda, before using the Chrono-Cube to return to his own era.

REVIEW

Some writers, when they take on the Justice League, want to push their own characters (or their new additions to the team). I am ok with that, and it generally goes well. But Steel is just not interesting. There are some aspects to the character that would make great stories, but they haven’t been really explored here. And dedicating a full issue to the character, in a story that doesn’t require him to be the protagonist, doesn’t help.

Any other character could have taken his place. And the silver age ending makes this more in line with the early issues of JLofA (that I don’t like).

The art also doesn’t help the case. It just feels aged and generic. Like it could have been fine ten years before.

If you are reading Crisis tie-ins, you could skip this one.

I give the story a score of 3

#luke mcdonnell #bill wray #steel #crisis on infinite earths #dc comics #comics #review #1985 #modern age #justice league #jla #justice league of america

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cacchieressa · 5 years

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Insomnia in a Strange City by Clare McDonnell

Too hot with the duvet on, too cold with it off, I am a corkscrew, twisting on the edge of wine-dark dreams. The territory is scented by others, making an intruder of me. Tired of watching each red minute pass I go to the window, look the city in the eye.

A tethered dog barks twice to ask if he is alone in the world. There is no reply.

Jaundiced light bleeds over the pavement and spills into oily puddles that splash the worn shoes of a lame night-walker. Macho youths bluff their way past shadows in doorways. A Coke can dances along the gutter to its own tinny music.

A tethered dog barks twice to ask if he is alone in the world. There is no reply.

Lovers, whose fermented hurt explodes through the black bottle-neck of night, scream their grief at each other. A coiled cat unwinds itself into an arch, then settles again on yesterday's dead headlines. An alarmed car, molested by a stranger, shrieks in panic for its owner.

A tethered dog barks twice to ask if he is alone in the world. There is no reply.

Then suddenly dawn sighs and a blackbird sings of home. I crawl under the alien duvet and crush the poking fingers of insomnia that teased my tired mind. In splintered dreams of dark streets, I run to comfort the tethered dog. We lie together in our chains.

#poetry #national poetry month

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classyfoxdestiny · 3 years

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Keir Starmer pushes to scrap one-member-one-vote for Labour leader and return power to MPs

Keir Starmer is pushing to scrap Labour‘s one-member-one-vote approach to party leadership elections and move to an “electoral college” system dominated by MPs – in a move that would likely lock the party’s left wing out of power for good.

Labour’s ruling national executive is expected to hear the plans at a meeting on Friday evening, with the leadership’s intention to put the change to the party’s annual conference next week.

Under the system, the vote for leader would be split one third between MPs, one third between unions, and one third between constituency Labour parties – in contrast to now where all party members get a single equal vote.

The change, which critics say is a factional move to permanently disempower opponents of the leadership, would return Labour to a similar system to the one used until 2014, when one-member-one-vote (OMOV) was introduced by Ed Miliband.

Labour MPs, most from from the left of the party, broke ranks on Tuesday ahead to slam the proposal – warning that it would undermine party democracy.

“As a Labour MP, I should have no greater say in leadership elections than other Labour members,” said Rachael Maskell, a shadow culture minister on Sir Keir’s front bench.

“The members are ultimately the Party and they should equally elect their leader. OMOV is the most democratic system. Let’s respect our members, let’s respect Party democracy.”

Veteran left-winger Jon Trickett said on Tuesday night that any such move was “a wrong headed backwards step which ought to be rejected” while former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said it was “critical Labour MPs make it clear they reject this proposal and reassert right of members to elect leader”.

Keir Starmer’s office and Labour’s press operation declined to comment on the proposals, which are yet to be formally published but which have been widely briefed.

No Labour MPs have yet publicly endorsed the plan or made arguments for it, but many moderates privately support it as a way of marginalising their factional opponents. Some commentators have proposed various justifications for removing the vote from members, such as that MPs represent non-member constituents, that members cannot be trusted, or that the party leader needs to be on good terms with MPs.

The party leadership also plans to change the rules to make it harder for party members to challenge unpopular MPs with a “trigger ballot”. Most political parties in the UK have members select their candidate for MPs before the election, but Labour sets a higher bar for challenges to prevent members from ousting MPs and ruining their careers.

Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership the rules were changed so that an MP could be challenged for the party’s nomination if one third of either party branches or affiliate branches in a constituency voted in favour of it. However, the LabourList website reports that the leadership wants to raise this bar to a majority rather than one third.

Sir Keir was elected leader on a left-wing platform aping Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto, but has quickly shed many of his his campaign promises and appointed Blairites to key positions in the party.

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The proposed rule change for electing the party leadership is expected to effectively lock the left out of the leadership in future because the right wing of the Labour Party dominates the parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). The rule change to make it harder to challenge sitting MPs would “double lock” the system so that MPs remained overwhelmingly aligned to the party’s moderate, right or centre.

If the rule change is to happen the proposal it must first get through the NEC and conference. Left-wing NEC members say it should be ruled out of order because it was “sprung” on them at the last minute. Passing the motion would also require the support of moderate-led unions, including Unison, USDAW and the GMB.

It is currently unknown whether the leadership could get the plan through the party’s conference. While the party’s left has still come top in all internal elections since Sir Keir was elected leader, tens of thousands of mostly left-leaning members are thought to have left the party, with more suspended or excluded by the party’s staff ahead of the annual meeting.

The current one-member-one-vote system was originally introduced on the initiative of Labour’s right wing to make it harder to elect left-wingers to the leadership, but the system’s original proponents miscalculated their own popularity and ended up with Jeremy Corbyn.

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brookstonalmanac · 3 years

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Events 5.25

567 BC – Servius Tullius, the king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victory over the Etruscans. 240 BC – First recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet. 1085 – Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo, Spain, back from the Moors. 1420 – Henry the Navigator is appointed governor of the Order of Christ. 1521 – The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw. 1644 – Ming general Wu Sangui forms an alliance with the invading Manchus and opens the gates of the Great Wall of China at Shanhaiguan pass, letting the Manchus through towards the capital Beijing. 1659 – Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England following the restoration of the Long Parliament, beginning a second brief period of the republican government called the Commonwealth of England. 1660 – Charles II lands at Dover at the invitation of the Convention Parliament, which marks the end of the Cromwell-proclaimed Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and begins the Restoration of the British monarchy. 1738 – A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ends the Conojocular War with settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners. 1787 – After a delay of 11 days, the United States Constitutional Convention formally convenes in Philadelphia after a quorum of seven states is secured. 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: Battle of Carlow begins; executions of suspected rebels at Carnew and at Dunlavin Green take place. 1809 – Chuquisaca Revolution: Patriot revolt in Chuquisaca (modern-day Sucre) against the Spanish Empire, sparking the Latin American wars of independence. 1810 – May Revolution: Citizens of Buenos Aires expel Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros during the "May Week", starting the Argentine War of Independence. 1819 – The Argentine Constitution of 1819 is promulgated. 1833 – The Chilean Constitution of 1833 is promulgated. 1865 – In Mobile, Alabama, around 300 people are killed when an ordnance depot explodes. 1878 – Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opens at the Opera Comique in London. 1895 – Playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison. 1895 – The Republic of Formosa is formed, with Tang Jingsong as its president. 1914 – The House of Commons of the United Kingdom passes the Home Rule Bill for devolution in Ireland. 1925 – Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching human evolution in Tennessee. 1926 – Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura, the head of the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic, which is in government-in-exile in Paris. 1935 – Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks three world records and ties a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1938 – Spanish Civil War: The bombing of Alicante kills 313 people. 1940 – World War II: The German 2nd Panzer Division captures the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer; the surrender of the last French and British troops marks the end of the Battle of Boulogne. 1946 – The parliament of Transjordan makes Abdullah I of Jordan their Emir. 1953 – Nuclear weapons testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test. 1953 – The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston. 1955 – In the United States, a night-time F5 tornado strikes the small city of Udall, Kansas, killing 80 and injuring 273. It is the deadliest tornado to ever occur in the state and the 23rd deadliest in the U.S. 1955 – First ascent of Mount Kangchenjunga: On the British Kangchenjunga expedition led by Charles Evans, Joe Brown and George Band reach the summit of the third-highest mountain in the world (8,586 meters); Norman Hardie and Tony Streather join them the following day. 1961 – Apollo program: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces, before a special joint session of the U.S. Congress, his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade. 1963 – The Organisation of African Unity is established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 1966 – Explorer program: Explorer 32 launches. 1968 – The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, is dedicated. 1973 – In protest against the dictatorship in Greece, the captain and crew on Greek naval destroyer Velos mutiny and refuse to return to Greece, instead anchoring at Fiumicino, Italy. 1977 – Star Wars (retroactively titled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) is released in theaters. 1977 – The Chinese government removes a decade-old ban on William Shakespeare's work, effectively ending the Cultural Revolution started in 1966. 1978 – The first of a series of bombings orchestrated by the Unabomber detonates at Northwestern University resulting in minor injuries. 1979 – John Spenkelink, a convicted murderer, is executed in Florida; he is the first person to be executed in the state after the reintroduction of capital punishment in 1976. 1979 – American Airlines Flight 191: A McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashes during takeoff at O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, killing all 271 on board and two people on the ground. 1981 – In Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council is created between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 1982 – Falklands War: HMS Coventry is sunk by Argentine Air Force A-4 Skyhawks. 1985 – Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people. 1986 – The Hands Across America event takes place. 1997 – A military coup in Sierra Leone replaces President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah with Major Johnny Paul Koroma. 1999 – The United States House of Representatives releases the Cox Report which details China's nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades. 2000 – Liberation Day of Lebanon: Israel withdraws its army from Lebanese territory (with the exception of the disputed Shebaa farms zone) 18 years after the invasion of 1982. 2001 – Erik Weihenmayer becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, in the Himalayas, with Dr. Sherman Bull. 2002 – China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrates in mid-air and crashes into the Taiwan Strait, with the loss of all 225 people on board. 2008 – NASA's Phoenix lander touches down in the Green Valley region of Mars to search for environments suitable for water and microbial life. 2009 – North Korea allegedly tests its second nuclear device, after which Pyongyang also conducts several missile tests, building tensions in the international community. 2011 – Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her 25-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show. 2012 – The SpaceX Dragon becomes the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous and berth with the International Space Station. 2013 – Suspected Maoist rebels kill at least 28 people and injure 32 others in an attack on a convoy of Indian National Congress politicians in Chhattisgarh, India. 2013 – A gas cylinder explodes on a school bus in the Pakistani city of Gujrat, killing at least 18 people. 2018 – The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becomes enforceable in the European Union. 2018 – Ireland votes to repeal the Eighth Amendment of their constitution that prohibits abortion in all but a few cases, choosing to replace it with the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland. 2020 – George Floyd, a black man, is murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest when he is forced into a prone position face-down on the ground for more than nine minutes, provoking protests across the United States and around the world.

#Events

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usafphantom2 · 2 years

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flickr

G. Verver Following

F-4E Phantom II s/n 66-0303

USAF F-4E Phantom II s/n 66-0303 inflight over Busch Stadium and the Gateway Arch, 12 July 1967. McDonnell Douglas photo.

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wallpaperpainting · 4 years

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Why Is Outdoor Paint Considered Underrated? | Outdoor Paint

There’s article about nice weather, an alfresco amplitude and a abandoned attractive fence, asperous table or old annual pot that gets bodies agog to paint.

Exterior Paint, Exterior Wall Paints & Colours for Home .. | outdoor paint

It can be a baby activity or an aggressive one (even one involving the advice of a professional). It can be a aloof endeavor or a ancestors affair. It doesn’t alike accept to amount anything, for those who accept extra acrylic buried in the basement and a apparent that screams for attention.

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Outdoor Paint to Make Your Home Stand Out – outdoor paint | outdoor paint

We saw a accouter box revitalized with aerosol paint, annual decals and coats of adorn and the top of an old ancillary table corrective to actualize a consciousness-expanding effect.

Readers submitted added images – adorning barade columns, a bound of corrective rocks, a checkerboard annual pot and an old ladder corrective and bizarre with dragonflies. They can be beheld in our photo gallery. (You won’t appetite to absence it. You can bang on it below.)

DIY Paint Dipped IKEA NORNÄS Outdoor Bench – Sarah Hearts – outdoor paint | outdoor paint

Among the projects photographed by The News:

• Dawn Martin Berry-Walker has added one of her paintings, “Jazz in Motion,” to the patio breadth in the jazz-themed garden at the home she shares with her husband, Henry Walker, in Buffalo’s Masten District. It’s one of several paintings she has done in the garden, forth with handpainted rocks. Works by added artists are additionally on display.

19 Rules for Your Paint Colour Scheme | Pat McDonnell Paints – outdoor paint | outdoor paint

Berry-Walker, a retired aerial academy algebraic abecedary for Buffalo Public Schools, is arch controlling of the Pappy Martin Legacy Applesauce Collective and is the babe of the backward applesauce icon/band

Why Is Outdoor Paint Considered Underrated? | Outdoor Paint – outdoor paint | Allowed for you to my personal blog, with this time period We’ll teach you in relation to keyword. Now, here is the very first picture:

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un-enfant-immature · 4 years

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ARCH Venture Partners raises $1.46 billion across two funds for biotech investing

Against a backdrop where the life-or-death consequences of biotechnology innovation are becoming increasingly apparent as the world races to develop vaccines and therapies to treat COVID-19, life sciences investor ARCH Venture Partners has raised $1.46 billion in funding to finance new tech development.

The two funds, ARCH Venture Fund X and ARCH Venture Fund X Overage, are the latest in the firm’s long line of investment vehicles dedicated to invest in early stage biotechnology companies.

“ARCH has always been driven to invest in great science to impact human health. There isn’t a better illustration of our principles than our all-in battle against COVID-19,” said co-founder and Managing Director Robert Nelsen in a statement. “The healthcare revolution will be accelerated by the changes that are happening now and we are excited to continue to invest aggressively in risk takers doing truly transformational science.”

ARCH portfolio companies Vir Biotechnology, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, VBI Vaccines, Brii Biosciences, and Sana Biotechnology are all working on COVID-19 therapeutics; while Quanterix is developing technology to support clinical testing and clinical trial development. Another company that ARCH has backed, Twist Biosciences, has gene editing tools that the company believes can support therapeutic and vaccine development; and Bellerophon, a developer of inhaled nitric oxide delivery technologies, received emergency access approval from the FDA as a treatment to help alleviate respiratory distress associated with COVID-19.

The firm’s Overage fund will be used to take larger stakes in later-stage companies that require more capital, the firm said.

“Our companies bring cutting-edge science, tools and talent to bear in developing medicines for a wide range of diseases and conditions faced by millions. With these two new funds, we are continuing that work with urgency and a deep sense of purpose,” managing director Kristina Burow said in a statement. “We invest at all levels, whether it’s fifty thousand dollars or hundreds of millions, so that each company and each technology has the best chance to advance and change the landscape.”

The two new funds are roughly the same size as ARCH’s last investment funds, which closed in 2016 with $1.1that billion, but are a big jump from the 2014 ARCH funds that raised $560 million in total capital commitments.

The increasing size of the ARCH funds is a reflection of a broader industry trend which has seen established funds significantly expand their capital under management, but also is indicative of the rising status of biotech investing in the startup landscape.

These days, it’s programmable biology, not software, that’s eating the world.

“ARCH remains committed to our mission of the last 35 years, advancing the most promising innovations from leading life science and physical sciences research to serve the worldwide community by addressing critical health and well-being challenges,” said Keith Crandell in a statement. “ARCH has been privileged to found, support and invest in groundbreaking new companies pursuing advancements in infectious disease, mental health, immunology, genomic and biological tools, data sciences and ways of reimagining diagnostics and therapies.”

Managing directors for the new fund include Robert Nelsen, Keith Crandell, Kristina Burow, Mark McDonnell, Steve Gillis and Paul Thurk.

#TechCrunch

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ericfruits · 7 years

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Why Airbus’s tie-up with Bombardier is so damaging for Boeing

LIKE an airliner in service, Bombardier’s C-Series programme has had multiple highs and lows. In 2008 the Canadian firm began its attempt to break Airbus and Boeing’s duopoly on smaller jets, spooking the pair into upgrading their own models. Costs and delays pushed it near bankruptcy in 2015, followed by a bail-out from the Quebec government worth C$2.8bn ($2.2bn). The next year an order for 75 C-Series jets from Delta, the world’s third-biggest carrier, kept the programme aloft. But decisions in September and October by America’s Commerce Department to agree to demands by Boeing, an aerospace giant, to impose a total tariff of 300% on importing those planes into America risked the C-Series project crashing once and for all.

On October 16th came a surprise surge. Bombardier said it would hand over half the project to Airbus, a European aerospace firm, free of charge. Bombardier and Investissement Québec, the province’s investment arm, will own about 31% and 19% respectively. Aviation Week, a trade journal, called it “the deal of the century”. For Bombardier, whose shares rose 16% on news of the deal, it rescued the C-Series from a premature demise, and pulled the firm clear of a financial cliff.

Airbus had first looked at buying into the C-Series in 2015 but did not invest, worried about the technical risks in its development. But now the C-Series is in service, so the tie-up makes more sense. Bombardier, for its part, lacked sales expertise for big jets or a global maintenance network, which was putting off buyers, but Airbus thinks it can fix these problems by sharing its marketing skills and servicing system.

The latter’s shares rose by 5% this week—Airbus now owns a controlling stake in a new aircraft, admired for its fuel efficiency, for which most development costs have already been paid. “This is a win-win-win situation for everyone”, crowed Airbus’s chief executive, Tom Enders. But not for Boeing, Airbus’s arch-rival. The deal is aimed at sidestepping the tariff imposed at the American firm’s behest. Airbus plans to assemble Delta’s jets—half the components of which are American—at its existing factory in Alabama. It hopes that will result in the C-Series being classed as a domestic product.

But overturning the tariffs may be easier said than done. Jennifer Hillman of Georgetown University, who was a commissioner at America’s International Trade Commission (USITC), thinks that the deal comes too late to affect the decision to impose anti-dumping or anti-subsidy duties against the C-Series (although the USITC may strike down the duties anyway). Boeing has insisted that any duties should be “paid on any imported C-Series airplane or part”. It could also argue that not enough value was added in assembly, and that Airbus therefore should still face the duties. Airbus and Bombardier’s manoeuvre “looks like a questionable deal between two heavily state-subsidised competitors to skirt the recent findings of the US government”, Boeing said.

It is right to fear the new combination. Although Airbus has lost ground in “widebody” jets recently as it refreshes its range, the European giant has already grabbed half the market for “narrowbodies” such as the C-Series. Analysts think the tie-up will further tighten Airbus’s grip. Boeing may now have to spend tens of billions of dollars launching a new narrowbody jet to compete, much sooner than planned.

And by pushing for tariffs on the C-Series, Boeing has annoyed customers, from Delta to the governments of Canada and Britain, which are threatening to tear up future military contracts. News of the tie-up was greeted warmly not only in Canada but also in Northern Ireland, where the C-Series’ wings are made. The Democratic Unionist Party, the province’s largest party, which supports the government of Theresa May, the British prime minister, said it was “thrilled” with the deal.

For Boeing, “the wounds are self-inflicted”, says Adam Pilarski, the former chief economist of McDonnell-Douglas, now part of Boeing. If Boeing had let the Canadian minnow alone, after all, the C-Series would probably have sold only 300 or so planes. But now Boeing’s tariffs have destroyed the C-Series’ value and handed it to its rival for free. Airbus wants to sell up to 6,000 of the planes over the next 20 years.

The triumph of the “cute little plane”, as Airbus once dismissively dubbed the C-Series, however, should not obscure a more troubling trend, which is the increasing dominance of Airbus and Boeing in aerospace. Instead of breaking their duopoly, Bombardier was consumed by it.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Protection racket"

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watchilove · 4 years

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First launched in 2015, the Legacy Machine Perpetual has been crafted since in red gold, platinum, white gold and titanium. A new 18k yellow gold case with striking blue face now joins the series: a limited edition of 25 pieces.

Beginning with a blank sheet of paper, MB&F and independent Irish watchmaker Stephen McDonnell have completely reinvented that most traditional of horological complications: the perpetual calendar. The result is Legacy Machine Perpetual, featuring a visually stunning in-house movement – developed from the ground up to eliminate the drawbacks of conventional perpetual calendars.

The fact that the new complication looks sensational and can be fully appreciated dial-side is just one of the many benefits offered by the new movement, controlled by a mechanical processor (patent pending).

LM Perpetual features a fully integrated 581-component calibre − no module, no base movement − with a revolutionary new system for calculating the number of days in each month. And it holistically reinterprets the aesthetics of the perpetual calendar by placing the full complication on dial-free display underneath a spectacular suspended balance.

The perpetual calendar is one of the great traditional complications, calculating the apparently random complexity of the varying numbers of days in each month − including the 29 days in February during leap years. But traditional perpetual calendars do have a few drawbacks: dates can skip; they are relatively easy to damage if adjusted while the date is changing; and the complications are usually compromises of modules powered by base movements.

The fully integrated, purpose-built movement of Legacy Machine Perpetual has been designed from scratch for trouble-free use: no more skipping dates or jamming gears, and the adjuster pushers automatically deactivate when the calendar changes, so no problems there either!

Traditional perpetual calendar mechanisms use a 31-day month as the default and basically “delete” superfluous dates for the months with fewer days – by fast-forwarding through the redundant dates during changeover. A traditional perpetual calendar changing from February 28 to March 1 scrolls quickly through the 29th, 30th and 31st to arrive at the 1st.

LM Perpetual Engine as seen in the Platinum version

LM Perpetual turns the traditional perpetual calendar system on its head by using a “mechanical processor” instead of the conventional space-consuming grand levier (big lever) system architecture. The mechanical processor utilises a default 28-day month and adds extra days as required. This means that each month always has the exact number of days required; there is no fast-forwarding or skipping redundant days. And while the leap year can only be set on traditional perpetual calendars by scrolling through up to 47 months, LM Perpetual has a dedicated quickset pusher to adjust the year.

With its open dial revealing the full complication and suspended balance, it’s the harmonious mechanical beauty of LM Perpetual that really steals the show. And in an interesting technical twist, that eye-catching balance hovering on high is connected to the escapement on the back of the movement by what is likely to be the world’s longest balance staff.

Using an innovative system developed especially for Legacy Machine Perpetual, the subdials appear to “float” above the movement with no visible attachments. The skeletonised subdials rest on hidden studs, which is technically impossible with traditional perpetual calendar mechanisms because they would block the movement of the grand levier.

Taking a clockwise tour of the dial, at 12 o’clock we see the hours and minutes nestled between the elegant arches of the balance; day of the week at 3 o’clock, power reserve indicator at 4 o’clock, month at 6 o’clock, retrograde leap year indicator at 7 o’clock, and date at 9 o’clock.

The Legacy Machine Perpetual won the Best Calendar Watch Prize at the GPHG (Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève) in 2016.

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Legacy Machine Perpetual in detail

Inspiration and realisation

The Legacy Machine collection was conceived when MB&F owner and creative director Maximilian Büsser started fantasising. “What would have happened if I had been born in 1867 instead of 1967? In the early 1900s the first wristwatches appear, and I would want to create three-dimensional machines for the wrist, but Grendizers, Star Wars, and fighter jets would not have been around for my inspiration. But I do have pocket watches, the Eiffel Tower, and Jules Verne, so what might my 1900s machine look like? It has to be round and it has to be three-dimensional.” The result of this was Legacy Machine No.1, first launched in 2011 – followed later by LM2 and LM101.

The LM Perpetual project began with a meeting between Maximilian Büsser and Northern Irish watchmaker Stephen McDonnell. McDonnell had been a long-time Friend of the brand and played an instrumental role in the realisation of MB&F’s very first timepiece, Horological Machine No.1. As Büsser was thinking of developing a perpetual calendar for the fourth watch in the Legacy Machine collection, McDonnell replied that he had an idea for a perpetual calendar that addresses many of the drawbacks associated with conventional examples.

Three years and a great many sleepless nights later, Legacy Machine Perpetual was born.

Conventional perpetual calendars

Conventional perpetual calendars are generally modules comprising the complication, which is fitted on top of an existing movement. The calendar indications are synchronised by a long lever (in French: grand levier) running across the top of the complication and passing through the centre. As the date changes, this long lever transmits information to the appropriate components and mechanisms by moving backwards and forwards.

The existence of the grand levier means that there can be nothing in the centre of the complication that might impede it – like a suspended balance with its staff running right down through the centre of the movement to an escapement on the back.

This lever also means that perpetual calendars require a full dial, which may have cut-outs or windows, as it is impossible to support subdials with studs because they would block the motion of the big lever mechanism.

In the traditional grand levier system, perpetual calendars assume that, by default, all months have 31 days. At the end of months with less than 31 days, the mechanism quickly skips through the superfluous dates before arriving at the 1st of the new month. Any manipulation or adjustment of the date during changeover can result in damage to the mechanism, requiring expensive repairs by the manufacturer. The dates can also jump or skip during changeover, negating the whole point of the perpetual calendar in the first place, which is not requiring adjustment for years. Or decades.

“I call perpetual calendars boomerang watches because they come back for repair so often,” says Maximilian Büsser. “The mechanisms jam, block, break, or jump days when they shouldn’t.”

Mechanical processor

Legacy Machine Perpetual uses a patent-pending “mechanical processor” consisting of a series of superimposed disks. This revolutionary processor takes the default number of days in the month at 28 – because, logically, all months have at least 28 days – and then adds the extra days as required by each individual month. This ensures that each month has exactly the right number of days. There is no “skipping over” redundant days, so there is no possibility of the date jumping incorrectly.

Using a planetary cam, the mechanical processor also enables quicksetting of the year so that it displays correctly in the four-year leap year cycle, whereas traditional perpetual calendar mechanisms require the user to scroll through up to 47 months to arrive at the right month and year.

The mechanical processor also enables an inbuilt safety feature that disconnects the quickset pushers during the date changeover, eliminating any risk of damage while the date is changing.

While the conception and development of this mechanical processor-controlled perpetual calendar complication is a noteworthy achievement in itself, Stephen McDonnell went even further by managing to place all 581 components of the movement in virtually the same-sized case as LM1.

LM Perpetual Engine as seen in the Platinum version

Opening up a new world of perpetual calendar aesthetics

Doing away with the calendar’s big lever has allowed for completely new aesthetics not possible when conventional systems are in use. MB&F’s mechanical processor enables the centre of the complication to be used, thereby saving space and allowing design freedom as the full dial is no longer necessary.

Legacy Machine Perpetual takes advantage of its fully integrated movement to place the perpetual calendar mechanism on top of the movement main plate so that it can be appreciated from above. Legibility is often an issue with perpetual calendars due to the sheer number of indications, and LM Perpetual addresses this by using skeletonised subdials (except for the time indication) that appear to float above the complication with no apparent support from below.

Balance above, escapement below

In yet another innovation, Legacy Machine Perpetual uses what is likely to be the world’s longest balance wheel pinion to connect that elegantly suspended balance, hovering above the top of the movement, to the escapement on the back of the movement. Ensuring the practicality and reliability of this approach was essential before any other development work began.

While the view through the display back is animated by the escapement, it’s the spectacular hand-finishing of the bridges and plates that really captivates the eye.

Legacy Machine Perpetual Technical Specifications

Legacy Machine Perpetual is available:

in platinum 950 with blue face (limited to 25 pieces);

in 18k red gold with grey face (limited to 25 pieces);

in 18k white gold with purple face (limited to 25 pieces);

in 18k white gold with dark grey face;

in grade 5 titanium with green face (limited to 50 pieces);

and now in 18k yellow gold with blue face (limited to 25 pieces)

Engine

Fully integrated perpetual calendar developed for MB&F by Stephen McDonnell, featuring dial-side complication and mechanical processor system architecture with inbuilt safety mechanism. Manual winding with double mainspring barrels. Bespoke 14 mm balance wheel with traditional regulating screws visible on top of the movement. Superlative hand finishing throughout respecting 19th century style; internal bevel angles highlighting hand craft; polished bevels; Geneva waves; hand-made engravings.

Power reserve: 72 hours

Balance frequency: 18,000bph / 2.5Hz

Number of components: 581

Number of jewels: 41

Functions/indications

Hours, minutes, day, date, month, retrograde leap year and power reserve indicators

Case

Material: 18k 5N+ red gold, 18k white gold, 18k 3N yellow gold, platinum 950, grade 5 titanium.

Dimensions: 44 mm x 17.5 mm

Number of components: 69 components

Water resistance: 30 m / 90′ / 3 atm

Sapphire crystals

Sapphire crystals on top and display back treated with anti-reflective coating on both faces

Strap & buckle

Black, grey, brown or blue hand-stitched alligator strap with gold / platinum / titanium folding buckle matching case material.

‘Friends’ responsible for LM Perpetual

Concept: Maximilian Büsser / MB&F

Product design: Eric Giroud / Through the Looking Glass

Technical and production management: Serge Kriknoff / MB&F

Movement design and finish specifications: Stephen McDonnell and MB&F

Movement development: Stephen McDonnell and MB&F

R&D: Ruben Martinez, Simon Brette and Thomas Lorenzato / MB&F

Wheels, pinions, movement, axis component: Paul-André Tendon / Bandi, Daniel Gumy / Decobar, Le Temps Retrouvé and Swiss Manufacturing

Balance wheel bridge and plates: Benjamin Signoud / AMECAP

Balance wheel: Andréas Kurt / Precision Engineering

Balance spring: Stefan Schwab / Schwab-Feller

Bridges: Rodrigue Baume / HorloFab

Perpetual calendar parts: Alain Pellet / Elefil

Hand-engraving of movement: Glypto and Eddy Jaquet

Hand-finishing of movement components: Jacques-Adrien Rochat and Denis Garcia / C-L Rochat

PVD-treatment: Pierre-Albert Steinmann / Positive Coating

Movement assemblage: Didier Dumas, Georges Veisy, Anne Guiter, Emmanuel Maitre, and Henri Porteboeuf / MB&F

After-Sales service: Thomas Imberti / MB&F

In-house machining: Alain Lemarchand and Jean-Baptiste Prétot / MB&F

Quality Control: Cyril Fallet / MB&F

Case: Alain Lemarchand and Jean-Baptiste Prétot / MB&F

Gold ingots CoC ( Chain of Custody) : Nathalie Guilbaud / Cendres et Métaux

Case decoration : Bripoli

Dial: Hassan Chaïba and Virginie Duval / Les Ateliers d’Hermès Horloger

Buckle: G&F Chatelain and Nathalie Guilbaud / Cendres et Métaux

Crown and correctors: Cheval Frères

Hands: Isabelle Chillier / Fiedler

Sapphire crystals: Martin Stettler / Stettler

Strap: Multicuirs

Presentation box: Olivier Berthon / SoixanteetOnze

Production logistics: David Lamy and Isabel Ortega / MB&F

Marketing & Communication: Charris Yadigaroglou, Virginie Toral, Juliette Duru and Arnaud Légeret / MB&F

M.A.D.Gallery: Hervé Estienne / MB&F

Sales: Thibault Verdonckt, Virginie Marchon and Jean-Marc Bories / MB&F

Graphic design: Samuel Pasquier / MB&F, Adrien Schulz and Gilles Bondallaz / Z+Z

Product photography: Maarten van der Ende and Alex Teuscher

Portrait photography: Régis Golay / Federal

Website: Stéphane Balet / NORD Magnétique, Victor Rodriguez and Mathias Muntz / NIMEO

Film: Marc-André Deschoux / MAD LUX

Texts: Ian Skellern / Quill & Pad

Biography Stephen McDonnell

Stephen McDonnell was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1972. He has been interested in watchmaking ever since he remembers, tinkering and “repairing” his grandfather’s clocks as a precocious four-year-old. While growing up, McDonnell’s passion − which he describes more as an addiction − never abated, however as watchmaking was not a particularly well-known career path in Northern Ireland, he always thought that it would remain a hobby while he worked in another field.

Stephen McDonnell

After completing a degree in theology at Oxford University, McDonnell returned to Belfast and gradually fell into repairing clocks for a number of watch and clock shops. This led to the realisation that watchmaking might well be a career after all. After completing a one-week Rolex course − until then his experience had been virtually exclusively with clocks − McDonnell moved to Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 2001 to do a six-month course at WOSTEP (Watchmakers of Switzerland Training and Educational Program). Upon completion, he was offered an instructor position at WOSTEP, which he held until 2007 when he decided to set up as an independent watchmaker.

McDonnell became an accomplished, though self-taught, movement designer, which provided him with a very rare skill set as watch constructors rarely have hands-on practical watch experience.

Stephen McDonnell

McDonnell moved back to Belfast with his wife and two children in 2014. He now works from his own comprehensively-equipped workshop, enabling him to make anything he needs for prototyping. An absolute horological perfectionist, McDonnell likes to control all aspects of the development process from conception through to 3D design, construction, the creation of technical plans, and prototyping.

The Legacy Machine Perpetual won the Best Calendar Watch Prize at the GPHG (Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève) in 2016

MB&F – Genesis of a Concept Laboratory

Founded in 2005, MB&F is the world’s first-ever horological concept laboratory. With almost 20 remarkable calibres forming the base of the critically acclaimed Horological and Legacy Machines, MB&F is continuing to follow Founder and Creative Director Maximilan Büsser’s vision of creating 3-D kinetic art by deconstructing traditional watchmaking. After 15 years managing prestigious watch brands, Maximilian Büsser resigned from his Managing Director position at Harry Winston in 2005 to create MB&F – Maximilian Büsser & Friends. MB&F is an artistic and micro-engineering laboratory dedicated to designing and crafting small series of radical concept watches by bringing together talented horological professionals that Büsser both respects and enjoys working with.

In 2007, MB&F unveiled its first Horological Machine, HM1. HM1’s sculptured, three-dimensional case and beautifully finished engine (movement) set the standard for the idiosyncratic Horological Machines that have followed – all Machines that tell the time, rather than Machines to tell the time. The Horological Machines have explored space (HM2, HM3, HM6), the sky (HM4, HM9), the road (HM5, HMX, HM8) and water (HM7).

In 2011, MB&F launched its round-cased Legacy Machine collection. These more classical pieces – classical for MB&F, that is – pay tribute to nineteenth-century watchmaking excellence by reinterpreting complications from the great horological innovators of yesteryear to create contemporary objets d’art. LM1 and LM2 were followed by LM101, the first MB&F Machine to feature a movement developed entirely in-house. LM Perpetual, LM Split Escapement and LM Thunderdome broadened the collection further. 2019 marked a turning point with the creation of the first MB&F Machine dedicated to women: LM FlyingT. MB&F generally alternates between launching contemporary, resolutely unconventional Horological Machines and historically inspired Legacy Machines.

As the F stands for Friends, it was only natural for MB&F to develop collaborations with artists, watchmakers, designers and manufacturers they admire.

This brought about two new categories: Performance Art and Co-creations. While Performance Art pieces are MB&F machines revisited by external creative talent, Co-creations are not wristwatches but other types of machines, engineered and crafted by unique Swiss Manufactures from MB&F ideas and designs. Many of these Co-creations, such as the clocks created with L’Epée 1839, tell the time while collaborations with Reuge and Caran d’Ache generated other forms of mechanical art.

To give all these machines an appropriate platform, Büsser had the idea of placing them in an art gallery alongside various forms of mechanical art created by other artists, rather than in a traditional storefront. This brought about the creation of the first MB&F M.A.D.Gallery (M.A.D. stands for Mechanical Art Devices) in Geneva, which would later be followed by M.A.D.Galleries in Taipei, Dubai and Hong Kong.

There have been distinguished accolades reminding us of the innovative nature of MB&F’s journey so far. To name a few, there have been no less than 5 Grand Prix awards from the famous Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève: in 2019, the prize for Best Ladies Complication went to the LM FlyingT, in 2016, LM Perpetual won the Grand Prix for Best Calendar Watch; in 2012, Legacy Machine No.1 was awarded both the Public Prize (voted for by horology fans) and the Best Men’s Watch Prize (voted for by the professional jury). In 2010, MB&F won Best Concept and Design Watch for the HM4 Thunderbolt. In 2015 MB&F received a Red Dot: Best of the Best award – the top prize at the international Red Dot Awards – for the HM6 Space Pirate.

MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual Gallery

The Legacy Machine Perpetual won the Best Calendar Watch Prize at the GPHG (Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève) in 2016

Stephen McDonnell

MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual Yellow Gold First launched in 2015, the Legacy Machine Perpetual has been crafted since in red gold, platinum, white gold and titanium.

#Legacy Machine #Legacy Machine Perpetual #LM Perpetual #MB&F #MB&F Legacy Machine #MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual #MB&F LM Perpetual #news #Perpetual #Perpetual Calendar #Press release

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