#file name is literally 'disaster lunch'
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#art is a bit older but hey take this doodle from a while ago#never posted b/c I wanted to pair it w/ another sketch but idt that's happening fam#I actually tend to think that hector would be able to manage a baaarrrrre minimum of civility around cass post-series#(just for the sake of Ed/Quirin + the DK and his place in everything)#but thinking abt the opposite and what a confrontation would look like btwn them is always fun#file name is literally 'disaster lunch'#my art#tts hector#hector#my post
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Found Family
holy shit did this one get way out of hand. Don’t expect them all to be this long because hot damn this is a monster compared to literally everything else but it just wouldn’t stop
(should I have expected this? probably. we all know how I am about found family.)
anyway enjoy 4.5k words ig
based on this post | @maribatmarch-2k21 | find more here
***
When Marinette had been chosen to intern with Monsieur Wayne’s PA, she hadn’t been expecting anything special. Sure, the Waynes were an odd breed and generally considered strange, but Marinette hadn’t actually expected to have much contact with them—if any at all.
She was here to earn credit for her business degree.
Instead, she has… well. She thinks she’s been somehow inducted into the Wayne family, mostly on accident and kind of as a joke.
That is, until it very much wasn’t.
***
Her first mistake, she supposes, was being too good at her job.
Marinette is an old hand at keeping track of multiple moving parts and riding herd on stubborn people who’d otherwise be too distracted or goofing off. (She was the Court’s leader for more than just being the latest in a long line of Ladybugs, after all.)
After the first two days shadowing Selina—“please, darling. Ms Kyle is so formal”—and learning the broad strokes of the job, Marinette felt confident enough to dig her nails in and get to work. Selina spent most of her time dedicated to international tasks and arranging Monsieur Waynes’ private affairs—all of which was highly classified and not discussed with Marinette—so she turned her attention to inter-company affairs.
Her first order of business was personally meeting with as many people in managerial positions as she could get. Not a requirement for the job per se, but these were people she’d have to interact with often and Maman had always stressed the importance of building connections in the workplace.
“People,” she would say, “are far more willing to do what you want them to when you’ve endeared yourself to them.”
So Marinette takes that advice and spends her breaks and lunches charming employees and giving baked goods to security guards and learning the names of the cleaning crew. She doesn’t speak to the department heads, because Selina handles their correspondences, but everyone else is free game as far as she’s concerned.
She becomes a well-recognized face astoundingly quickly.
***
Marinette probably should’ve seen the rumors coming.
It’s common practice in not only the Wayne family, but in most business conglomerates, for the children to quickly rise through the ranks of their company—if not just handed a high position right off the bat.
It took barely a month before the eldest was all but running Human Resources, and the second was placed as Head of Security practically out of nowhere. Monsieur Drake is the youngest (and most terrifyingly calculated) CEO to ever hold Wayne Enterprises, even if he does share the title with his father.
The other three are still too young or have yet to express an interest in the company, but people say it’s only a matter of time.
The track record speaks for itself, even if Marinette wishes it didn’t.
As a girl who’d come mostly out of nowhere and found herself with far more divisive sway in the company than she had any right to, it’s no wonder everyone thinks she’s some sort of secret Wayne finally coming out of hiding.
Marinette had nearly choked on her coffee when Selina dropped the bomb of that particular tidbit of company gossip.
“Most think you’ve been unofficially adopted,” Selina tells her, looking far too amused for Marinette’s liking. “Seeing as you’re too old for official avenues now.”
Marinette looks up warily from the schedule she’s rearranging. Selina had all but shoved the thing at her a month ago when she started suggesting more efficient ways of managing the CEOs’ valuable time.
“Only most? Does that mean the rest have common sense?”
Selina’s grin widens even further, if that’s possible, and Marinette regrets her question even before the older woman starts speaking.
“Oh, of course not!” she laughs delightedly. “The rest are hoping to hear news of wedding bells. It’s high time someone swept a Wayne off the market, don’t you think?”
***
“So you’re the new little sister I keep hearing about.”
Marinette stares up through narrowed eyes at the brightly smiling Dick Grayson. In her stomach, there are already the beginnings of resignation starting to form.
“It’s nice to finally meet you!”
This man is going to bring her nothing but trouble. She can tell.
***
Dick takes a liking to her. And she, against her better judgment, finds herself doing the same to him.
It’s a little hard not to, if she’s being honest. He’s bright and bubbly and brings her bagels during his morning break without her ever having asked.
It takes practically no time at all before Marinette considers him a friend, relaxing when he’s near and laughing openly at his ridiculous jokes. Despite being the head of HR, he’s not great at the whole ‘professional’ thing and often employees will walk by to find him draped across a chair or balancing precariously on the edge of her desk while she tries and fails to get some work done while he’s around.
It really doesn't help all of the ‘Marinette is a Wayne’ rumors running around. Especially when Dick starts pointedly calling her every variation of ‘little sister’ that he can think of just to annoy her (and, she knows, because he thinks the entire situation hilarious).
***
Three weeks after befriending Dick, Selina all but shoves her into Monsieur Drake’s office and, in no uncertain words, says, “He’s your problem now.”
Marinette blinks at what she can describe as nothing other than a disaster area and just… sighs.
Tim blinks back at her.
The motion is somehow both completely blank and filled with an uncomfortable amount of knowing at the same time. There is also, she notices, a frankly ludicrous amount of concealer caked beneath his eyes and more coffee cups scattered on every flat surface than Marinette has ever seen in her life.
She knows his schedule like the back of her hand seeing as she spends hours of her day pouring over it to make sure everything runs smoothly. He has no prior engagements for the next three hours.
“You’re not going to take a nap just because I ask, are you?”
He snorts. “Absolutely not.”
She nods, having expected the answer; her phone was already at her ear before he even finished speaking. “Hey, Dick!” she greets, sounding brighter than she feels at the moment, and watches as Tim stiffens in front of her. “Yeah, no. I was just wondering if you’re busy right now.” She pauses. “Oh, good! Can you come up to Tim’s office for me? Yeah, I need you to knock him out so I can fix his dumpster fire of an office.”
Tim has since started waving his hands frantically at her, panic setting in behind his eyes.
Marinette stares at him, unmoved. “Thanks, Dick! You’re the best!”
The silence after she hangs up is deafening.
“I don’t know if I should be impressed by the ease you’re manipulating me or pissed off that you’re doing it in the first place.”
She hums thoughtfully. “Does your decision have any bearing on my future employment?”
His eyes squint. “…No.”
Marinette shrugs, mind already whirling with what she’ll need to get done first and calculating how long she’ll likely have to get it done. “Then I think you should skip right over both of those and land on resignation as quickly as possible, Monsieur, because you’re going to have to get used to it regardless.”
It’s silent for a long moment, and she worries for just a second that she’s severely crossed some sort of line. Then Tim bursts out laughing instead of, you know, firing her like he probably should have.
“Oh, yeah. You’re going to fit right in here.”
Marinette doesn’t ask where the ‘here’ is. She’s pretty sure she already knows.
***
It takes ten days for Marinette to wrangle Tim’s life into something resembling order. His office is clean and organized to his liking. She’s developed a system of filing so that all paperwork goes through her and is quickly sorted into ‘can be handled by Marinette’, ‘forge his signature and tell him about it later’, and ‘actually important enough to have Tim read through’.
His schedule is the most efficient it’s ever been and Marinette is quickly honing the skill of getting him properly dressed and out of his office in under thirty minutes. (Dick is, thankfully, a great teacher and has little to no qualms about giving her the key to all his little brother’s weaknesses.)
Selina stares at her when Marinette all but drags Tim from his office, a folder tucked neatly under his arm and the sugary monstrosity of a caffeinated beverage she’s bribed him with in her own, with a whole ten minutes to spare before his meeting with the Board.
“My dear,” she says solemnly, “you are positively magic.”
She doesn’t even look up from where she’s simultaneously wrangling Tim’s hair into submission and laying his tie down flat. “You have no idea.”
***
She knows Tim is capable of professionality. She’s seen the cool facade he pulls up in front of the Board members and the kind but impersonal smile he uses on the employees of Wayne Enterprises. (He is not the Ice Prince of the Wayne family, but Marinette believes he should have some equally ruthless sounding title.) He is aloof and sharp and every inch the businessman people praise him to be.
She’s seen it. And yet…
“Monsieur. Why are all the Lexcorp contracts I gave you done in crayon?”
Tim doesn’t stop messing with his Rubix cube or even look up at her when he says, “Cause deadbeat fathers don’t deserve the respect of a pen.”
Marinette is very tired. She does not have time for this. “What are you talking about?”
“Lex is a bitchass absentee dad and I live to inconvenience him.”
“What about inconveniencing me?” she all but whines. “I can’t hand him these!”
That does make Tim look up at her, eyes wide with false innocence and mouth pouting up at her. “But sister dearest, I’m your little brother. It’s my job to inconvenience you.”
Growling in frustration is probably an inappropriate reaction to the situation.
But, Marinette thinks, so is the fact that both of the Waynes she associates with regularly seem hellbent on convincing the world that she too, is a Wayne, so.
(Is this how Alya felt dealing with the twins? Cause if so, Marinette takes back every joke she ever made—little siblings are a bitch.)
***
She meets Damian without warning.
Honestly, she never really expected to meet him at all but, well.
She finds him in Monsieur Wayne’s office, sitting at his father’s desk and doing something that she thinks is vaguely illegal, but she’s not about to tell her Boss a dozen times over how to parent his children.
Damian is a near-perfect copy of his father with darker skin and calculating green eyes. There’s also a more potent aura of danger around the child than there is around his father, like Damian hasn’t yet learned how to hide behind his public persona as his father had.
Or, Marinette looks at the teen thoughtfully, perhaps he just chooses not to.
“Monsieur Wayne,” she greets. Children like to be treated like adults, she knows, and Marinette doesn’t think this one is any different. “Selina hadn’t told me you’d be in the office today.”
“I don’t run my schedule by her,” he says flatly. A response she expected considering Dick’s stories.
“Of course not,” she agrees.
He finally deigns to look up at her and something flits across his expression, too fast for her to pick up on it. “Are those for Father? Bring them here, I’ll deal with them in his absence.”
Marinette raises her eyebrow. “I’m not sure that’s wise Monsieur.”
Damian scowls and sticks his hand out. “I’m perfectly capable of forging Father’s signature. Give them here.”
She does not move and, instead, lets her lips quirk up into the smile she’s been fighting since she stepped in here.
“I don’t doubt it,” she tells him, and she doesn't. Forgery seems exactly like the kind of skill a child who broke into the CEO’s office of a multi-billion dollar company would have. “But you’ll find that all forging of signatures has been finished for the day and that these,” she shakes the sheaf of papers lightly, “actually require your father’s attention.”
He snorts disbelievingly and it says a lot about Marinette’s life up until now that the blatant display of disrespect doesn’t piss her off but instead reminds her of Chloé and of the fact that she still needs to reschedule their spa day. It's been too long since they spent time together in person.
“Well,” she pauses and eyes the papers thoughtfully. “‘Requires’ in the sense that its information needed to trounce the Board when they start spouting off greedy bullshit about cutting corners on our humanitarian efforts. I’m not sure how much of it is actually useful for anything besides that.” She shrugs. “But homework is homework, yes?”
That gets her a thoughtful once-over. His hand lowers and he then turns back to whatever he’s messing with on his father’s computers.
“Very well,” he concedes. “Father will be back in approximately thirteen minutes. You can leave the papers and I’ll inform him of their… importance.” He smirks, but it’s more like he’s letting her in on a joke than anything else.
Marinette smiles back as she sets the folder on the desk, feeling, oddly, like she’s passed some sort of test.
***
The day after, both Dick and Tim are waiting for her with what looks like an entire bakery laid out in her workspace.
“Uh,” she says eloquently, setting her purse down on her chair because there’s not a single open space on her desk not filled with some kind of pastry. “What’s all this?”
She looks up to find neither Dick nor Tim has stopped staring at her since she walked in. “We heard you met Damian yesterday,” Dick starts warily, like he’s scared of her reaction.
The response does not abate her confusion.
“Yes, I did,” she says slowly. “That does not explain all… this.” She waves a hand, trying to encompass them as well as the state her desk is in.
The two brothers share a look.
“It’s a bribe,” Tim tells her simply and Marinette is taken aback for all of a second before her eyes suddenly narrow.
Dick cuts in hastily before she can say anything. “It’s more of an apology, really. For Damian’s behavior.”
But Marinette is confused and frustrated and just a bit offended by the apparent not-bribe at this point. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, but it only does so much.
“Damain’s behavior was fine,” she tells them with measured neutrality. “You two, on the other hand, are being weird and it’s freaking me out.” She crosses her arms expectantly. “Seriously, what’s going on?”
Appearing from out of nowhere, Selina drapes herself along Marinette’s shoulders and snags a raspberry scone. “I do believe,” she says as if sharing a secret, “That they are trying to keep you from quitting, kitten.”
Marinette wrinkles her nose. “Why would I quit? I like this job.”
She also likes the Waynes (in general, if not right then) and she likes Selina. The woman was a good mentor who didn’t shy away from the dirtier parts of the job and taught Marinette all she knew. (Even the bits, she noticed, that had little to nothing to do with being a personal assistant and were more likely to be found in the repertoire of a thief.
But, Marinette is in possession of her own sticky fingers and knows how to not ask questions, so. You know—curiosity killed the cat and all.)
She doesn’t voice any of that, but Selina, at least, knows it anyway. Marinette isn’t quiet about her gratitude after all.
“First meetings with the youngest Wayne don’t often go well,” Selina tells her. “In fact, I think he has a habit of making the interns cry.”
Dick makes some kind of offended noise. “Hey! He hasn’t done that since he was twelve!”
Tim elbows him in the ribs and Marinette makes a vaguely skeptical face at all three of them before deciding it wasn’t worth it. She has actual work to get done today and pastries to get rid of before she can even start.
She pats affectionately at Selina’s hand before grabbing as many boxes as she can hold. “Come on you two,” she says to the brothers. “You’re going to help me hand these out to the rest of the company.”
Dick immediately starts doing as told but Tim hesitates, humming thoughtfully. “You know that’s not going to help your whole ‘I’m not actually a Wayne’ thing, right?”
She glares at him. It doesn’t stop Tim from grinning like the utterly unrepentant little shit he is.
***
Things are quiet after the Damian Incident for a whole two weeks. It’s the longest lull Marinette has had since she first started and became somehow involved with the Waynes.
It ends because Dick finds out about the crush Marinette has been nursing on the Head of Security for three months now.
The Head of Security who is Jason Todd: second eldest Wayne sibling and Dick’s brother.
He takes it better than expected.
(Almost, she thinks later, a little too well.)
***
Despite her friendship with Dick and Tim—or perhaps because of it?—Jason had never seemed very interested in her. At first, Marinette had shrugged and counted it as a win; there was one Wayne, at least, who neither found her situation funny nor used it to poke fun at her.
They were on friendly terms, she supposed. Security has always been one of her more regular stops in the building, so she’d spoken to him often enough. He liked complaining that she spoiled his team rotten with all her treats.
But she also noticed that he likes her cherry danishes, so.
And then she noticed how crooked his grin was when he smiled. And how he seemed to have an arsenal of nicknames for everyone he knew. And the small collection of classic romance novels filled with sticky notes he tries and fails to hide in his desk. And, and, and.
It was around the time she began unconsciously memorizing his schedule based on when he was and was not there for her pastry deliveries, that she realized she may have made a misstep somewhere.
Jason was stubborn and passionate and flipped between overly proper and crass light a damn light switch. He was also, as stated, very much not interested in her.
Not that she would’ve pursued him anyway. He was a coworker as well as her friends’ brother.
Now if only one of said brothers could understand that.
“You should ask him out,” Dick suggests not for the first time and Marinette sighs, also not for the first time.
She loves Dick—she truly does—but he has been an aggravating level of unhelpful since he found out about Marinette’s latest romantic disaster.
“I’m definitely not doing that.”
Dick groans, like she’s being the unreasonable one. “Why are you being so stubborn about this?”
“Because I don’t like embarrassing myself?” she asks rhetorically. “Not everyone can have a fairy tale romance like you and Wally.”
He throws his coffee stirrer at her. “We are not a fairy tale.”
She shoots him a flat look. She’s heard Dick talk about Wally and Tim’s told her all the stories and she was there when he and Wally finally got their shit together. Dick was unbearable for an entire week with his gooey, lovestruck new lease on life.
“You two are the definition of fairy tale. You two make fairy tales look like trashy romance novels.”
He opens his mouth to argue the point before forcibly cutting himself off. “No. Stop distracting me. We’re not talking about that; we’re talking about you and Jason.”
“There is no ‘me and Jason’,” she reminds him through her clenched teeth.
“Not yet,” he says optimistically. Like it’s a fact, like he knows something she doesn’t.
He makes her want to slam her face into a wall. Truly, he does.
***
Dick stops running his HR papers up to her office. Instead, he’s somehow convinced Jason to play errand boy for him even though he literally never looks happy about it. What used to be a flimsy excuse for Dick to slack off for a few minutes and gossip with her has now turned into awkward silence as Jason drops off the papers and leaves without even a ‘hello’.
During their shared breaks, Dick takes to orchestrating ‘chance encounters’ between her and Jason, all but shoving them into each other (and even actually shoving that one time). She catches Jason shooting dark looks at Dick every time he does it, and if she’d been holding any iota of hope at this point, it’s been smashed to dust. Jason obviously knows of his brother’s meddling and isn’t happy about it.
But Dick just can’t take the hint.
Every failed plan of his makes him steadily worse about it all—more frantic and frustrated and like he wants to strangle her for her stubbornness. (The last feeling being more than mutual.)
Dick’s meddling starts to make her and Jason’s previously friendly, if distant, relationship awkward and embarrassing. With every pointed comment, she gets closer to just punching Dick in the face. Or, maybe, she’ll just tell Wally who really ate all the chocolate strawberry macaroons she made; it’d certainly be more devastating.
***
It all comes to head on a Thursday, after most employees have left for the day.
They run into each other in a breakroom, and she watches as Jason suddenly goes stiff, eyes flicking over her shoulder to no doubt scan for Dick. That single action makes her expression sour and she slams her empty mug down with more force than was necessary.
For Kwamis sake, he looks like a cornered animal. An image not helped by the way he jumps a foot in the air and stares at her like he’s worried she’ll suddenly lunge at him.
“Can we agree this is ridiculous?” she says abruptly. “I don’t know what Dick is trying to accomplish with his wingman schtick, but we both know it’s not going to work. Can we just… agree that he’s an idiot?”
A complicated look crosses Jason’s face before he snorts wryly. “Yeah, we can agree on that. Dickie-boy has always been a few sandwiches short a picnic.”
“I know things have been awkward between us lately, and I’m sorry about that, but I hope we can keep being friends?” she says hopefully.
“What in the world do you have to be sorry about?” he asks before she can start catastrophizing about the bewildered expression he makes at her words. “It’s not your fault.”
The smile she shoots him is rueful and she shakes her hand in an ‘ehh’ type gesture. “Kinda is. And I understand if the-” she makes a vague gesture between them that she hopes properly conveys ‘my giant, stupid crush on you’, “you know, is too much for you. Just say the word I’ll try and keep out of your way.”
She’s trying to be comforting or understanding or something like that, but all her words seem to do is make him upset. “Absolutely not,” he insists. “Sunshine, you are not going to change your routine just to make me feel better.”
Marinette crosses her arms, frowning up at him. “Why shouldn’t I? If I’m making you uncomfortable-”
He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “Uncomfort- Marinette. ” She jolts a bit at the use of her name. She doesn’t think he’s used it since her second week at W.E. “I’m not sure who made you think otherwise—and if it was Dick just tell me cause I’ll kick his ass —but barring the fact that I still enjoy your friendship regardless of any… feelings-” Marinette concentrates very hard on not showing emotion when he says that, “-it’s not your responsibility to deal with it.”
Okay, but… that makes no sense. Of course her feelings were her responsibility, that’s the whole point of them being hers.
“If it’s not mine, then whose responsibility is it then?” she asks, wondering where the hell his train of thought is running.
“Mine, obviously.”
She gives him a look, complete with narrowed eyes and thinly veiled judgment. “What? Is this some kind of gentleman’s martyr complex? Is that what’s happening right now?”
Jason huffs a laugh, but there’s no humor in the sound. “If me taking responsibility for my own damn feelings is a martyr complex then sure,” he snarks, not unkindly. More like he’s trying to protect himself by retreating behind a sour attitude.
Her mouth is halfway around a retort when his words catch up to her brain and she freezes.
“Your feelings?” she repeats. “Your feelings for… me?”
His voice is carefully neutral when he says, “Those would be the ones.”
Her mouth opens and closes and opens again. “You like me? Seriously?”
His face spasms at the question, starting at anger before he properly looks at her and the surprised expression on her face. He pales.
“You didn’t know?”
“No!” she squeaks, something she hasn’t done since she was fifteen. “Well Dick said but I didn’t believe him!”
And fuck, she thinks. This means Dick knew the whole damn time, didn’t he? Oh, she is so going to kill him the second she gets the chance.
Jason runs a hand down his face, covering his mouth as he gathers his bearings. Suddenly, his eyes shoot back open and land on her. “Wait. If you didn't know, then what the hell were you talking about just now?”
She blushes to the tips of her ears and buries her face in her hands so she doesn’t have to look at him. It was easy when she thought he’d figured it out himself. It’s harder now that she has to tell him. “I- I was talking about my crush on you.”
He’s quiet for so long that she gets antsy and peeks out from behind her fingers to see his expression. He’s still looking at her, but now there’s a wide, crooked smile on his face. The expression softens something in her chest and she lowers her hands.
“Really?” he asks, leaning closer.
Marinette nods, feeling a small smile spread across her lips.
He jolts forward, hands reaching for her before suddenly stopping just shy of touching. She startles a bit at the motion but doesn’t move away.
Jason licks his lips, smile smaller but no less bright. “I- can I?”
She blinks. “Can you what?”
“Kiss you.”
The blush returns full force, but with it also comes a smile, giddy and bright. She nods and no sooner than she does, is he swooping down to pull her into a toe-curling kiss. His hands cup her face with a tenderness that makes her smile, makes her giddy, and it’s not long before they’re both smiling too wide to actually kiss and are forced to break apart.
His hands fall to her back, practically engulfing her, and his chin drops onto her head. It’s warm and cozy and she thinks she could so very easily get used to this.
Later, they’re going to have to deal with Dick and Tim and Selina and the teasing they’ll no doubt have to endure—not to mention how much worse the rumors are going to get—but right now? Right now Marinette pulls Jason back down for another kiss and very pointedly doesn’t think about it.
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Congrats on hitting 500! 🎉. Can you please do 2 from the fluff prompts for Rossi and the rest of the team?
Thank you! This is so bad because I do not write fluff well, but it was so funny (to me. Literally nobody else is going to laugh.) Umm... yeah. I wrote this in the car home. Ignore any errors, I didn't proofread.
Everyone is OOC. I had to do that to make it more fluff-like, just go with it.
2: what have you done to my kitchen?
Trigger Warnings: eating, food, food mentions, eating habits, birthday/birthday celebrations
read on ao3!
With hindsight, it probably wasn't the best idea the BAU had ever had.
At the time, it had been.
See, Rossi was always very concerned about the eating habits of the rest of the team. Which did make sense given that Reid was the best example. And that was because he ate three meals a day, everyday, at the same time. So the bar was below the ground.
He would bring in snacks, and then suddenly remember that his blood pressure meant he couldn't eat them, so Derek had to. He would accidentally make too much lunch, which would pull JJ away from her files. Apparently Hotch absolutely adored a certain food (he hated it) which always made Emily eat it. Aaron just took what he was given without complaining because Dave had far too much blackmail for him to risk his wrath.
So the team thought they could return the favour. Weekly cooking lessons- they weren't really lessons, a more accurate way of describing them would be Rossi's pretend cooking show the rest of the team watched- had become a tradition after the first one. They reached a point where Will, Beth, Savannah and the kids tagged along. Sometimes Alex and Kate would pop in, and they had a rota to dictate who would deliver to Ashley.
The first time Emily went had been an experience for everyone.
And even though they all knew that the many accidents involving Rossi's food were deliberate and always had been, they played along because it made him feel good, and it was a very lovely thing for him to do. He wasn't always good at showing his love the way it was needed, but with this, he always tried.
So as his birthday came closer and closer- although he kept denying it, not wanting it to become a big event- they decided how they were going to celebrate and show their appreciation for everything he had done at the same time. It was such an easy decision it was almost laughable.
They were going to cook for him. And not just a single meal. No, a feast, that the entire team, past and present, could enjoy. JJ and Morgan, as the most competent adults were making the mains, Emily and Spencer had been tasked with the sides because there was no way they could mess up a salad and Penelope and Hotch were sorting out desert.
It had been a perfect plan. Strauss was going to take Rossi out in the morning, and he would spend the day with her, Joy, and some of his other friends because apparently, he had those. Hotch would then turn up with Jack and take the spare key from wherever it was hidden- he wasn't allowed to say, and the rest of them would turn up after. By the time Rossi came home, everything would be ready. It might be a good time to place some emphasis on the had.
Aaron hadn't been able to find the key. Instead of waiting to see if someone else could get it, he'd thrown a rock through the window, climbed in and unlocked the door from inside. Unfortunately, Rossi's alarm was silent, so it was only the sirens came closer did he realise what was happening. And if that wasn't bad enough, Will was the cop they'd sent. He found it funny. Everyone whose name wasn't Aaron did.
He thought that would be the end of their problems. It was just a start.
His and Penelope's cake batter had gotten mixed up with one of the dishes JJ was making, which would've been fine, but they couldn't tell which one, so they'd both needed to start again.
And whilst that was happening, Derek had burnt his. Aaron had cursed Rossi for having an electric stove, which led to Jack politely asking what a "fudging mochafluffer" was. Emily told him what his dad had actually meant.
Emily had put a bowl in the microwave. She'd asked Aaron if it could go, and when he'd seen that it was just butter and chocolate- she was helping Penelope- he said yes, because he assumed she would've checked that it was a microwave proof bowl. She hadn't, and the bowl melted, leaving the microwave full of burnt chocolate and partially melted butter.
Spencer had somehow managed to avoid injuring himself, but that was all. He had been tasked with making salad. Vegetable salad. As in, a salad that contained vegetables. When Aaron went to help Emily determine whether a sauce was too hot- it was, by a large amount- he was covered in sprinkles. Jack's laughter identified him as the culprit.
Then, because of all the restarting and incidents and quantity of food they were making, they'd run out of dishes. After all, Dave was one person most days. Four, if Joy and her family came down. The most he ever had at one time was the team and family. Even then, only a few pots and pans were needed.
But because they were already running well behind schedule, they'd just tried to wash, dry and use alternative containers if they needed them urgently. With all six of them- and Jack- in the area, a few were dropped, and some didn't even clean in the dishwasher.
In short, the whole thing was a disaster. But as there was no clock in the kitchen, everyone assumed they still had time to salvage something. Anything, so Dave's birthday wasn't a disaster.
They didn't. Because as Aaron and Emily argued about why anyone would want to eat toasted lettuce- Emily's point was the lettuce had come straight from the fridge so putting it on the toaster would get it to room temperature, Aaron's was that he'd heard smarter things from Sergio- a key turned in the lock.
Erin walked in first, only realising what had been done in her absence when Dave walked through the door. He blinked. Then he rubbed his eyes. And then he pinched himself. When it became clear that he wasn't dreaming, he groaned.
"What have you done to my kitchen?"
And that was a good question. Every surface was covered in half-finished dishes, bowls, cutlery, food and other unidentifiable substances (Emily's cooking.) The six of them were a mess, their clothes completely ruined, and Aaron- who must have won the argument about lettuce- had some in his hair.
"Surprise?" Aaron said, completely deadpan.
"Dear me. Right, all of you, out. The spare bedroom has clothes for all of you. Get changed, and then we'll sort this out."
The team left, feeling terrible.
That feeling faded, because when they came back, Dave was eating one of their many not quite complete dishes. Straight from the bowl. But he seemed to like it! He actually liked it!
"We just wanted to do something nice for you," JJ said.
He shrugged. "I know. Erin kept checking her phone, so then I basically annoyed her into telling me. I know you've basically ruined my kitchen, but your intentions were good, and I appreciate the attempt. Truly. It was very sweet of you."
"Does this mean we get out of having to clear up?" Emily asked.
"No. We'll worry about that later. You must be starving, doing all of this since whenever it was."
"We started a bit later than planned," Penelope confessed.
"Oh I know. Very graceful dive Aaron. You do realise the spare keys are in the same place they've always been?"
Aaron frowns, then walks out, and reaches down somewhere the others can't see. When he comes back, his cheeks are flushed. "Oh."
"Indeed."
"Wait, you can't cook anything. It's your birthday!" Derek says.
"Whoever said anything about cooking?" Dave replies.
Right on cue, the doorbell goes. Dave takes the bag, giving the student on the other side a generous tip. He turns back, pizza in his arms. When he sees the shocked looks on everyone's faces, he shrugs.
"It's good."
Spencer laughs, and gets the extra paper plates out.
They sit in the living room, some of them on the couch, some of them on the floor, and Dave realises that despite everything- or maybe it's because of his broken window and messy kitchen- this has been the best birthday he's ever had.
It's a feeling only solidified when each member of the team takes one final slice of pizza without a single thought of anything other than enjoyment.
#hotchley’s 500#tw eating#tw food#tw food menton#tw eating habits#tw birthday#tw birthday celebration
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Gaps in His Files (Part 8) [Relabeled; Refiled Series]
Fandom: Sanders Sides
Relationships: Logan/Patton
Characters:
Main: Logan, Patton
Appear: Remy, Virgil (but only in the epilogue)
Summary:
Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.
When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?
This is set 25 years before Sometimes Labels Fail though it’s story is completely independent of it and it is not necessary to read that one first.
Notes: Superhero AU, memory loss, past child abuse, past child neglect, unhealthy ideas about ones place in relationships, emotional suppression, self-deprecating thoughts, medical procedures mentioned, very brief unhealthy views of sex
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
Erm. Logan says a few not so nice things about people who struggle academically which are very wrong. I think from context it is clear that the author doesn’t agree with it. As a teacher I do not endorse his statement and in the missing 10 years he’s learned the lesson for himself... he’s just a very dumb smart high school kid. That being said, I thought I might warn you all especially with the fact that people might be in the middle of finals and a little emotionally vulnerable to that one.
Patton spent most of the morning getting Logan familiar with his red files while also asking him subtle questions about his real opinions on things. The mention of the crying thing did sting a bit even though Patton already knew it made Logan uncomfortable. Patton knew that from the beginning, but he’d still let Logan force himself to try to help when Patton was upset.
God, Patton was a bad person.
After he’d helped Logan get a good feel of the newer files, they started brainstorming about how best to work on recovering his memories over lunch.
Patton had thought they were on the same page, that being they were going to read through the pages in his files hoping he’d remember something in them. However, now he was doing that finger tapping thing on the table while he chewed slowly on his sandwich.
“What?” Patton finally asked.
Logan had clearly been waiting to share because there was no pause before his response. “Have you heard of Blight?” Logan asked, casually, as though that were not a name that made most of the population shudder when they heard it.
“This is nothing like that,” Patton said firmly before he continued with that line of thought.
“Why couldn’t it be?” he asked with a curious head tilt.
“Because… because it’s not,” Patton said.
“Do you have any evidence that it isn’t? Just because it was a device instead of a superpower does not mean it is not the same methodology.”
“It’s just not,” Patton said, “It can’t be.”
“Why?” Logan asked again.
“Because none of them recovered,” Patton tried not to snap.
Logan hummed. “Ah. That seems like an emotionally charged conclusion.”
“Can we please just not talk about it?” Patton implored, turning back to his lunch even though he wasn’t hungry anymore. There were a few moments of silence.
“Did you know,” Logan started, and Patton sighed, “that Blight was on record as having telekinesis before she revealed herself as a Mind Warper? People say she must have implanted false memories in her victims, but if she really was then it would be evidence of-”
“The Monofacultas Theory,” Patton finished for him.
Logan gave him a startled look. “You know it?”
“I’ve known you for over three years Logan and while I agree that the theory is interesting and feasible, there are no known cases of someone having a set of powers that span more than one of the Tri-divisions.”
“If Blight had telekinesis there is. She would have had a physical power as well as a mental one. Witnesses said…”
“She tore the minds of an entire city apart at the seams and restructured them to her desire. Excuse me if I don’t trust the validity of those mind’s statements especially when they have been disproved by video evidence.”
“Just because she didn’t use telekinesis for that one situation caught on video doesn’t mean she couldn’t.”
“Fine,” Patton said. “Say you’re right. Why does it matter?”
“Well I have telekinesis.”
“So, you want to… move your memories back into place?”
“Basically, yes.”
“With your telekinesis?”
“Well, brains are ultimately physical objects.”
“And you are going to not simply give yourself a stroke because…?” Logan shrugged. “Absolutely not Logan.”
“It would be interesting,” Logan said, eyes alight. “I could prove that powers are not truly divided into physical, metal, or energy powers but are originally one singular power that develops due to circumstance during early childhood.”
“If your brain doesn’t literally explode because you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“All science has risk.”
“No, Logan.”
He gave him the look that Patton was not allowed to call a pout.
“Can we at least try some less extreme methods of memory recovery before the theoretical methods with no hard evidence? Like continuing to read your files to try to jog your memory naturally as we had discussed.”
“Fine,” he agreed, looking downtrodden. Patton really hoped he got his memory back before he got too restless and tried something like that.
“If you’re finished eating, we should get back to reading,” Patton said. Patton was certainly finished with his lunch.
The afternoon went well without any major disasters or talk about dangerous methods to get memories back. Logan had not remembered anything, but he’d been calm and patiently started sorting through his files in chronological order. Then, when Patton left him alone for a moment to go to the bathroom, he somehow managed to find his daily planner from where Patton had hidden under a blanket in the front hall closet.
“It’s fine,” Patton insisted from the couch, watching him pace back and forth and wringing his hands. “I called your advisor and told him you wouldn’t be able to meet with him because you were sick.”
Logan frowned at him. “You shouldn’t’ have done that. I could have gone. I don’t want to appear irresponsible by skipping meetings.”
“He wanted to talk about your research. You would have had no idea what he was talking about,” Patton reasoned.
“I would have managed.”
“Logan,” Patton said patiently. “Your research area is partial differential equations. Do you even know what those are?”
Patton could tell by the look on his face that he had no idea. Yet he still stuck his nose up in the air. “I know what a differential is, and I know what an equation is. I am sure I can figure out how to do parts of them.”
“You haven’t even taken multivariate calculus.”
“It can’t be that hard.”
“It is,” Patton groaned, “It is hard.”
“Perhaps for you,” he said hotly.
“No,” Patton ground out. “For you. The 28-year-old you spends hours a week trying to understand these things and he has a bachelor’s degree and almost 6 years of graduate education under his belt. You are in high school.” Logan just gave him a withering glare and turned his attention back to the planner.
“I’m supposed to teach two courses tomorrow,” he said.
“Oh, absolutely not,” Patton said.
“I have a responsibility rather or not I have my memories.”
“Logan, listen to me. You have not graduated high school. You cannot teach a calculus class.”
Logan bristled. “I took calculus last year and got an A.”
Patton had to take a steadying breath. “That is not the same as teaching it.”
“It can’t be that hard. I will simply explain the information to them.”
“And when one of them asks you how to add two fractions?”
Logan’s eyebrows crinkled. “That is a basic skill. I am sure anyone in a college calculus course can do that easily.”
“You have clearly never taught a day in your life.”
Logan bristled. “Any adult who cannot add fractions should immediately be kicked out of university and returned to kindergarten where they belong.”
Patton looked at him for a moment hoping perhaps he would figure out on his own why what he just said was completely out of line. He just kept his jaw stubbornly firm. Patton took a breath. “And that is why you cannot go and teach these students.”
Logan scoffed. “I am not sure why my future self would put up with such things.”
“Because you almost failed your real analysis course,” Patton answered in a heartbeat. “Your first semester of teaching, you were also taking a first-year graduate real analysis course and you couldn’t understand a word of measure theory. It was the first time in your life that you had to work for a C. One day you looked at your students and came to the realization that the look on their faces when you tried to explain the product rule to them was likely the same expression your professor saw on yours when he tried to explain the existence of non-measurable sets. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and if we let someone else draw the line for stupid, there is every chance we’d end up on the wrong side of it. So,” Patton said crossing his arms, “I am not going to let you go ruin your own reputation with your students as a teacher who is not an asshole because you’ve not had to toe your own line yet.”
Logan met his eyes, clearly wanting to argue, but Patton just kept his face strict and his arms crossed. Logan’s face cleared suspiciously quickly, and he backed down. “Fine,” he agreed. “I will stay here.”
“Good,” Patton replied eyeing him. “Now put down the planner and let’s go back to work.”
Want to read more? Use the links below!
AO3 Part 9
My Masterpost
#sanders sides#logan sanders#patton sanders#logicality#tsss#superhero au#memory loss#past child abuse#past child neglect#emotional suppression#self deprecation#gaps in his files#labeled universe#relabeled; refiled#adriana writes
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Babysitting Butcher Chapter 52
I was sitting with Frenchie, Kimiko was going over the footage from the drones with Billy, helping him edit it with more precision and a better eye than most people would think to give her credit to have, and I was explaining the issue that I had after my chat with Grace about the chips.
“So what you’re saying,” he was squinting at me, but I could tell he wasn’t seeing ME. “Is that Ryan has trios chips, but Mallory doesn’t believe that they were placed there to track him?” I nodded, still not quite sure he was paying attention to my image. “What would be l’ objet then?” His eyes narrowed, as though it would help him grasp the answer to the same problem I had issues finding the solution for. “Chips, they are used to track, to listen, to -” his eyes widened, and then he refocused on me. “Is there someone here, in the building,” he clarified, “that knows more about tech?”
“Yes,” I’d looked up our in-house technology guru, wanting to know their name, just in case I had to tap their shoulder next. “Carrie Stavos.” I grabbed my desk phone and hit the extension I’d memorized that morning. “Stavos? Yes, this is Dr. Taylor, could you come to my office? Of course, finish that up and come up after.” I signed off with the young sounding woman and hung up. “She has to finish up with -” It was my turn to squint. “I’m sure you’d understand what she’d explained,” my lips quirked and Frenchie smirked in answer. “She’ll be here when she finishes up, in about ten minutes.” I checked my watch. “That gives me a chance to go through some emails, and you can check on those two -” I nodded toward Billy’s desk where he and Kimiko were working in almost complete silence, but their heads were close and they were both taking turns clicking and moving the mouse.
While Frenchie slid over to Billy’s side, I clicked through emails, finding one from an unknown source with a video file included. Great, fabulous, just what my day needed, more shit. First I put the email through the handy dandy backward trace, thinking that my new fan would need to learn quickly who they were dealing with and what type of fun resources I had at my fingertips. The video I sent to the security systems, they could look to see where it originated, who saved it, and then hopefully who forwarded it to me.
While those systems were running, I answered the more mundane of my correspondences. The yeses and the nos, the requests, and the denials. I had to imagine that I wouldn’t have the answers to my mystery email by the end of the day, normally anonymous emails took anywhere from forty-eight hours upward to backtrack, so I was shocked when I got the telltale ping that signaled they’d run it through the available programs and they had my answers.
Clicking open the report, I sat back as I read it. The email had originated from our office, from one of the mailroom email accounts. This account is utilized by anyone who can access the mailroom, which means literally anyone who can gain entrance into the building. The mailroom computer isn’t secure. It holds nothing classified, so needs no password to log on. Great, that’s fun.
The video, I read on, was also from our building. My office, it went on to be more precise, on the date of my hemmorage. When I nearly went nuclear and wiped out EVERYTHING. It was time stamped from the moment I swiped in that morning until an hour after I’d been rushed to the undisclosed clinic. The security person who had backtracked the feed and written this piece of the report said that only our people should have access to the feed, and only the people with security clearance of those in the video storage and above should be able to clip, edit, and share it through our systems. The clearance numbers used, however, match nothing they could find.
I sighed and sat back, somewhat surprised that Billy didn’t hightail it to my desk, but he was muttering with Frenchie about something in their footage. Why this video, I wondered? Why now?
Putting the headset on that I kept on hand, just in case I needed it for something as tasteless as this, I took a deep breath to fortify myself and clicked play.
Have you ever watched yourself nearly die? I don’t mean figuratively, but literally see a video of you come within inches of death? There are films, entire movie series that have that trope. Escaping death, only for it to continue to come for you, wanting nothing more than to make sure the balance is kept even.
As I watched the video of the day I walked into our office, so full of certainty that I’d fixed it, I’d fixed the massive fucking disaster of a personal invasion that Homelander forced on me I felt bile start to rise in my throat because of the surreal quality of it. Hearing my voice say the words that I barely recalled saying to Billy come out of my mouth. Seeing me do things that I still take for granted, the mundane day to day shit, things that I knew within moments would become things I’d pray I could do again.
Seeing Billy go for our lunch, the rolling in my stomach grew, a pain reminiscent of what I’d felt before. I knew what was coming, but to see it from THIS angle? It was as if I HAD died, and this would have been my view - what I would have seen while people rushed inside. Wait-- How had they rushed in?
I clicked back, the rush of the blood down my legs my starting point. I hadn’t made a sound, but Billy mentioned that my temperature had gotten so high that I’d set off an alarm, which alerted security. Why didn’t I hear it on the video? The alarm didn’t start until the first three people came in, faces I didn’t recognize, and none of whom should have been able to enter, since only Billy, Mallory, and I had access aside from Security override. None of this trio had security markers on, and they didn’t look all that rushed. I couldn’t hear their conversation, another redflag, since I heard every other sound, and after a gesture, the alarm FINALLY sounded and then things moved the way they should have.
“Billy?” Calm, that’s how I sounded, which would have shocked me, but by this point nothing was all that surprising. “Could you take a look at something for me?”
Getting Billy calmed down after HE watched the video wasn’t as simple. Frenchie’s eyes were wide enough to see every divot on the moon, and I was contemplating cancelling everything for the rest of the day to distract him the best way I knew how.
“Those three fuckin’ -” how his nostrils could either get so thin that NO air could possibly pass through or so wide that he could inhale ALL of the air in the free world was beyond me, but the true power was how he could do either and make me want to climb him like Mount Everest and - Damn it, Ronnie, get your head in the game. “You coulda died, and they were doin’ fuck all.”
“Actually, they were wasting time,” Frenchie offered, and I could tell he wished he hadn’t. “I meant they were possibly looking for a way to -”
“See how long it would actually take for my self destruct button to engage,” I nodded, why bother fucking lying? “Who are they?” Important question, since clearly that mattered most. “I couldn’t really see their faces, but they don’t look familiar.”
“Knew where the cameras were,” Billy grunted, pulling me onto his lap as he sat in his own chair. “Knew where they were and kept their heads down. Not amateurs. Knew they’d have to raise the alarm too, cause sooner or later, your temperature would and no one could cover that mess up.”
We were considering this newest blip in our nest of blips when the knock came to the door. Kimiko raised her eyebrow at me in question, but I just sighed. “That would be Stavos. The techie guru we asked to consult.” Pulling free of Billy, but not before giving in to a steadying kiss, just to remind one another that at least ONE part of our world was steadfast, I walked to the door to let in what I could only imagine would be MORE bad fucking news.
Carrie Stavos didn’t look like I thought she would. I had a thought that she’d be spiky haired and edgy. Instead she looked more librarian with a hint of a kindergarten teacher tossed in for fun. Glasses perched on her nose, she took in her surroundings with the ease of someone who was used to blending in with the wallpaper. Unfortunately for Carrie, I needed her to be the center of attention.
Once I had her situated in my chair, my laptop out of sight out of mind, I started with the soft balls. First with the types of chips that might be implanted in people, then on to the reasons for the chips. From there we went to more nefarious reasons for chipping people, superbeings for instance.
“Superbeings?” Her eyes widened. “You want to chip supes?”
I shook my head emphatically. “No, I most certainly do NOT want to chip supes.” Couldn’t be further from the truth. “I’m simply asking, if I found out that a particular supe was, in fact, chipped multiple times, what would the purpose aside from GPS be for those chips?”
From wide to narrow slits, thinking hard, I could tell, Carrie was working out the question I’d posed her. “I know that the Seven are chipped, for location, of course.” A tilt of confirmation and understanding on my part kept her going. “If you found that other supes were chipped, and if they had more than one?” Another tilt, and she sighed, her head shaking. “I can only think of one reason and it’s terrible.”
“Terrible?” It was Billy, leaning forward and eager, because while Ryan was his responsibility if something was terrible for a supe, he would like to hear about it.
“Yes, terrible.” Carrie looked a little green around the gills. “I’ve heard of a type of chip, I thought they were like Urban Legends, but maybe not.” A tiny sigh escaped ever as she blanched a bit. “Inhibitors.”
Now my eyes turned to slits as I tried to process this reality. That a chip could be implanted to - no, they wouldn’t have, would they? “Inhibitor?”
“If there’s more than one?” I nodded, barely seeing Carrie as I ran through the list of Ryan’s powers like a scroll. “Each chip could be specific for ONE power, in place to stop that one, hold it at bay. Inhibit the supe from accessing it.” Not training him to use his powers responsibly or control them, but to literally neuter him. I felt like throwing up. “Terrible.” She whispered and I had to concur.
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The Five Times Blue bought Yellow Coffee chapter 2
Summary: An AU where Blue is a family lawyer sharing an office with Yellow, a prosecutor. There isn't much crime in Beach City, but both of them are still pretty busy. Blue's name is Bisma, Yellow's name is Yasmin.
Thank you to @nebula-gaster for reading this!
Read it on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26799136/chapters/65378467#workskin
Read it from the beginning: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26799136/chapters/73013262#workskin
Warnings: none, just fluff
Bisma walked into the office with pep in her step, a small smile on her face. Going out for lunch always helped her focus on her work when she came back, even if she just sat on a bench and ate her food brought from home. Today’s custody case was particularly difficult, with both parties adamantly refusing to co-parent and fighting for full custody. After being yelled at on the phone for almost an hour, Bisma had splurged on a sandwich from one of her favourite coffee shops, and a tea to bring back with her.
She had hesitated for a moment, but also bought Yasmin a coffee. She’d been quite snippy with her this morning, and maybe this would make up for her comments. After listening to Yasmin’s rants, she knew exactly what kind of coffee to get: black, with a shot of espresso or two at the very least.
Bisma nodded respectfully at one of her colleagues, but didn’t slow down to chat. She had paperwork to file, and the child in her custody case was supposed to come and visit right after school. She took a deep breath, straightening her shoulders as she tried to spark her confidence. She was a good lawyer, she could do this, it would all work out…
She paused as she saw Yasmin standing in the hall, cursing softly. There was a small refreshments station for clients and lawyers, but the instant tea they kept there always tasted awful, so Bisma usually ignored it.
Yasmin was glaring down at the coffee machine like it had personally wronged her, her tacky gold thermos clutched in one hand. If Bisma didn’t know that Yasmin vacillated between insufferably smug and maniacal ranting on a good day, she would have been concerned. She jumped as Yasmin hit the side of the machine, making the cheap plastic rattle dangerously. Bisma didn’t want to intervene, but she also didn’t want to be blamed for her office-mate’s shenanigans, especially when she was literally holding the solution in her hand.
She walked up to Yasmin, clearing her throat. Yasmin stepped to the side, but didn’t actually look up. Evidently, she thought that someone was just trying to get by.
“Here.” Bisma held out the coffee cup, quickly pulling it back when Yasmin whirled around. Thankfully, she managed to save both of them from a coffee disaster. Once Yasmin was fully facing her, Bisma carefully passed the coffee on. “I thought you could use one.”
Yasmin looked down at the coffee, then back up at Bisma. “…Thanks. Do you want me to pay you back now?”
“Oh no, you don't have to.” Bisma waved her free hand quickly, as if to swat away the idea. She hadn’t meant to make Yasmin think she was so cheap that she needed to be paid back for a coffee… though, it would be nice if Yasmin actually bought her a coffee instead of the reverse. Still, Bisma wasn’t going to push for it. “I just felt like getting it.”
“Thanks again.” Yasmine grabbed a few packs of sugar and a wooden stirrer from the coffee station. “I guess we should both head back to the office.”
“Yes, we should.” Bisma began walking along, keeping pace with Yasmin.
She didn’t try to talk any more, and neither did Yasmin. For once, there was a comfortable silence between them. If this was what buying coffee got her, Bisma would have to shell out more often.
#su#su fanfic#steven universe#Steven universe fanfic#blue/yellow zircon#blue/yellow zircon fanfic#human au#coffee#5 times and 1 time#5 times and 1 time fanfic#my fanfic#my fanfiction#my writing#my stuff#blue zircon#yellow zircon#zircon lawyer#zircon lawyers
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The Desert Three (2)
ao3
Maybe he’d had better ideas.
“What kind of man do you think I am?” Jesse accused, “I have never affiliated myself with any of those things! Neither have my sons! How dare you accuse me of that, Valenti!”
“I didn’t accuse you, Manes,” Jim sighed, rubbing his temples, “I was simply asking if there was a reason why both the handprint and your son’s DNA was at the crime scene.”
Jesse paced, face angry. Jim had to give it to him. This was quite possibly the only time he’d ever seen him go to bat for Alex. Rather than call him weak or demean him, he was insisting that he could never. Alex would never.
"Listen, I don't know how his DNA got at the scene, but he didn't have anything to do with that handprint, Valenti. There's evil out there and my son makes questionable decisions, but he's smarter than to get caught up like that," Jesse spat. Jim huffed, shaking his head.
"If you're so sure, then why didn't you say that in your interview?" Jim asked, "Manes, what happened that night?"
Jesse stared at him with cold eyes for a moment before shaking his head. He dismissed the whole situation and stalked out of the bunker, leaving him there to wonder what he was supposed to do next. Who else knew about aliens?
After a few minutes of brainstorming, he decided he was sort of at a stopping point. He needed to talk to someone else. Someone who knew more. There was clearly an alien on the loose and it was dangerous. He needed to find it before anyone else turned up dead.
He slowly started making his way out of the bunker and towards his car. He let his mind slip a bit as he thought about Rosa. The one night she wasn't with him, the one night she was vulnerable, it'd gone so bad. Was this because of him? Was she targeted because of what he knew? Was this really his fault?
"Excuse me, sir?"
Jim turned quickly towards the voice and saw a tall, thin man. He looked weak and desperate, clothing tattered and face sunken in. His skin was clearly a shade of brown, but he looked sickeningly pale.
Most importantly, there was a handprint on display on his neck.
"Good God," Jim breathed, trying not to drop his things. Instead, he sat them on the hood of his truck and went near the man. "What happened to you?"
"Someone– Something attacked me," he said, somehow looking up to Jim even though he was taller, "I heard I should come talk to you."
Jim thought about questioning who he heard that from, but the thought vanished from his mind almost as quickly as it entered. He became much more focused on this man.
"Can you help me?" he asked.
"Yes," Jim said honestly. He wanted to know everything. "What's your name?"
The man leaned on Jim to steady himself.
"Noah," he said, "Noah Bracken."
-
"This is so fucking illegal."
"Yeah, but it's kind of a rush, isn't it?"
Alex shook his head with a smile as he typed. They were crouched behind the police station, trying not to seem suspicious as Alex quickly tried to dismantle the cameras just long enough for Kyle to get in and get out.
“If you become a criminal, don’t blame me,” Alex snorted. Kyle flicked him in the arm.
“Says the guy who literally got arrested.”
“For something I didn’t do!”
“Don’t yell, we’re trying not to get caught!”
“Okay,” Alex said instead of arguing, finishing one last little bit on his computer before looking over to Kyle, “You’ve got twenty minutes to copy everything.”
“I only need fifteen,” Kyle bragged.
“Don’t test me.”
Kyle grinned, body pumped with adrenaline as he slipped in through the back door.
It was 1:10 PM. Half the officers were on their lunch break (including his father) and the other half were too wrapped up in the Desert Three case to notice young Valenti walking around. He got lucky and anyone who did see him didn’t think anything of it, thank god for both of his parents being on the force. It also happened to be the day that Mr. Kahn was on camera duty and Kyle knew from personal experience that he was more than likely doing crossword puzzles instead of watching them enough to see that they were frozen.
Kyle looked both ways before using a key he’d taken off his mom to open his dad’s office. It was dark and Kyle wasn’t going to risk actually turning on the lights. Instead, he pried open the bottom drawer of the desk and searched through the files until he found his father’s copies of the case papers. He flipped through them, taking papers he didn’t recognize.
He stopped when he saw the post mortem photos.
“Oh my God,” Kyle breathed, eyes focusing on the handprint on Rosa’s face. He’d never seen anything like that before. How did they happen? How did they think Alex was capable of doing that?
Instead of thinking too hard about it, he shoved the papers into the waistband of his jeans and went to get the hell out of there. His mind was racing and he needed to go show it to Alex. Maybe he would know who could’ve caused that.
“Kyle.”
Kyle’s back hit the door and he tried not to act suspiciously as his mother walked near him. She eyed him and he smiled, sucking in to make sure she wouldn’t be able to see the papers down his pants. She looked him up and down anyway.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was coming…” He hesitated for a moment too long. “To see if Dad wanted to go hunting this weekend! But he wasn’t in.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. “Okay.”
“I’ll ask him when he gets home, I guess,” Kyle went on, “I’ll see you later, Mom.”
“Be home for dinner, you hear me?” she said. Kyle nodded and quickly fled before she made him crack.
He made it back to Alex with a minute to spare.
“Here, put this in the back,” he said, lifting his shirt to get the papers. Alex made a disgusted face.
“Ew, I’m not touching those, they’ve been down your pants.”
“Such a baby.”
“Says the homophobe.”
Kyle rolled his eyes and put them in the bag himself. Alex made sure there was no trace of him tampering with the cameras before he closed his laptop and stood up.
“Now what?” he asked. Which was a valid question. He couldn’t exactly read over stolen police documents at the Crashdown or Bean Me Up with a suspected murderer. Bringing them back to Alex’s could seem sketchy if they got caught and bringing them to Kyle’s sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.
“I… I don’t know where to take them without risking getting caught.”
“Well, where’s somewhere that no one goes?” Alex asked, “Also somewhere that isn’t sketchy for us to be. Also close enough for me to get home quick so I don’t get caught leaving my house. I am supposed to be on house arrest, you know.”
Kyle knew he wasn’t trying to be complicated, but he was.
“Okay…” Kyle breathed, looking around as if an idea would just pop into his head. Which, it sort of did. “Wait, we could go to my dad’s hunting cabin. He barely ever goes there anymore.”
Alex looked at him like he’d lost it. “That isn’t close.”
“Look, do you want to be close or be caught?”
They glared at each other for a few minutes before Alex finally realized he had a point. Kyle liked when he thought of good ideas before Alex. He had to be a genius to out-think him.
“See, I’m really smart,” Kyle grinned. Alex glared at him.
“I’d hit you weren’t literally breaking the law to help me.”
Kyle felt awfully proud as they snuck towards his car.
-
“You both are going to give me a fucking aneurysm.”
“We haven’t done anything!”
Max grabbed Michael’s arm, pulling him back so he didn’t react badly to Isobel. But Michael was already fucking angry. She kept bitching at them, kept scolding them for simply existing. The more that was said about the case, the more she lost it even if no signs were pointing to them.
He was beginning to think maybe he wasn’t the only one feeling guilty.
“Isobel, you can’t lock us away,” Max said calmly, “We have to act normal or we’re going to be suspicious.”
“Then stop going to places where you’re more likely to fuck up!” Isobel said.
“I went to The Crashdown for a fucking burger!” Michael snapped back. Isobel glared at him and went to say something before she winced and grabbed her head.
“Just be careful,” she said calmly.
“Iz, what’s wrong?” Max asked, letting go of Michael to go towards her. She shook her head.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, “Fuck.”
Michael caved just a little bit, his head tilting to the side as he watched Isobel slowly move to sit down against the bed of his truck.
“Isobel, what’s going on?” he asked. She just held her head and let herself fall against Max.
“My head hurts.”
Michael stopped arguing. He always stopped arguing.
-
Max moved Liz’s hair off her shoulder.
“Thanks,” she sniffled. He managed a small smile and watched her take another bite of ice cream.
He knew she was off-limits, that being around her was a bad idea, but she’d called him and he couldn’t say no. Now, as he sat with her and listened to her, he was glad he hadn’t.
“I’ve never felt so confused in my life, Max,” Liz admitted, “I mean, Alex is my friend‒one of my best friends. I’ve known him since we were little and he loves Rosa. Or, I thought he did.”
“I don’t know Alex all that well, but he doesn’t seem like the killer type,” Max said. Then again, Isobel didn’t seem like it either.
“I know! He’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met!” she groaned, laying her head on his shoulder, “He literally couldn’t even kill a roach. But then how did his DNA get there? It was the middle of nowhere.”
“I don’t know,” Max answered honestly. Even though Michael had confessed that he liked Alex, it still didn’t explain his DNA. how would Michael have even gotten it on him in the first place?
“Sometimes I just want to talk to him, hear his side, you know? I’m so tired of not knowing,” Liz said. She molded into him closer. He stared at her for a moment and got a serious urge to push her away. Why did she have to wait to get so close until after he had something to hide? “But I can’t even look at him.”
“Uh,” Max said, shifting in his seat just a little, “I can… I can talk to him for you.” Shut up, Max, shut up!
Liz lifted her head off his shoulder and looked him with wide, thankful eyes. She trusted him so much. Why did she have to trust him so much?
“You could?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God, that means so much to me. Thank you, Max.”
He let her hug him even though he knew he wasn’t going anywhere near Alex Manes.
-
“Dude, did they even look into anyone else? It looks like they decided you did it on day one and just looked for evidence to prove them right instead of looking for the actual killer.”
Alex sighed and dropped the thick stack of paper, rubbing his eyes. There was something about reading pages and pages about why you killed your friend that was really disheartening. Stupidly, he wished Michael was looking through it with him. Even though he’d made it clear he was only in it for sex, he wanted him. He wanted to be held and kissed like he wasn’t racing against the clock to prove his innocence. Was that so much to ask?
“I don’t know,” Alex said. When he looked up, Kyle was half-way through a pretty shitty murder board. “What the fuck is that?”
Kyle whirled around with a wounded look on his face. “I worked hard on this.”
“You look like you watched too many Unsolved Mysteries episodes.”
“Jokes on you, they didn’t use these in Unsolved Mysteries.”
“Yeah, because that’s where the joke is.”
Kyle rolled his eyes and turned back to his murder board. It had borderline-comical red string connecting things, but a bunch of sticky notes on it to mark the parts that didn’t connect. On the side were all the questions. Who had a motive to kill Rosa? Who had a motive to frame Alex? Who was capable of putting those handprints on the girls? How did this person get Alex’s DNA at the crime scene?
“I just… I don’t understand how you connect,” Kyle said, huffing softly. Alex stared at the board for a few seconds longer, almost forgetting that he was involved and becoming super interested in that handprint.
“What the hell could cause that handprint?” he asked, “That… That barely looks human. Like, it’s human-shaped, but why is it that color? It doesn’t look like a bruise.”
“Alex,” Kyle said, sharp enough to steal his attention, “It says your hair. Who the hell got a strand of your hair?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, think,” Kyle pushed, “Anyone you’ve gotten close enough to that they could’ve gotten a strand of your hair?”
“I would’ve noticed if someone pulled my hair out.”
“Fine, anyone you’ve, like, gotten in a fight with? Or like ruffled your hair? Something like that, something where you might not have noticed,” Kyle rambled. Red flags struck Alex and he felt painfully uncomfortable. He shifted and looked very seriously up to Kyle.
“What if, whoever is framing me, isn’t framing me on purpose?” Alex said. Kyle furrowed his eyebrows. “Like, what if my hair got on someone’s clothes and they were at the crime scene and it fell off?
Kyle seemed to be holding his breath as he asked, “What do you mean?”
“Okay, if I tell you this, you can’t say anything to your dad or anyone, okay? Promise me,” Alex said. Kyle nodded, becoming gravely serious alongside him. “The night of the murders, I had a guy over and we… Well, you know. What if… What if my hair got on him and he went there?”
“Alex,” Kyle said seriously, stepping closer, “Who?”
Alex started to feel sicker and sicker by the minute, tears brimming his eyes as it made more sense. No wonder he wouldn’t be his alibi. Alex blinked them away before he could let his emotions get the best of him. If someone was able to fucking frame him, they weren’t worth his tears.
He looked up at Kyle with newfound determination.
Questions:
Why would Guerin kill the girls?
How did he put the handprints on the girls?
Did he act alone, or did he have help?
“Still can’t believe you slept with Michael Guerin of all people. Why not Zach Little? He’s hot and he’s into dudes and he doesn’t murder girls in the desert,” Kyle said, “Sounds like a catch to me.” Alex rolled his eyes.
“I didn’t know he was going to murder people when I slept with him,” Alex retorted. He didn’t add that he’d slept with him after the murders, nor did he ask how he knew Zach Little wasn’t straight when, last Alex had heard, he was firmly in the closet.
“Well, have you heard from him since then? Did he seem suspicious?” Kyle wondered, already prepping his marker to add any new information.
“I mean, yeah,” Alex sighed, “I asked him to be my alibi and he pretty harshly rejected me, but I took it as him being scared to outed, you know? Plus, with his personal situation, it’s not a good thing to be putting himself under the eye of police. Or… that’s what I thought, I guess.”
Kyle let out a motherly hmph and wrote on the board that Guerin was “a sketchy murdery mofo”. The whole thing had Alex feeling jittery and anxious, so he stood up. He needed to have something on his mind other than the guy I love is framing me for murder, the guy I love is a murderer, the guy I love somehow murdered someone with a broken hand and‒
“Wait,” Alex said, “Michael couldn’t have done it. Or, at least, not done the killings. Maybe he was there‒he was probably there‒but his hand was broken.”
“Was it already broken then?”
“My dad broke it that night,” Alex said. Kyle’s eyes widened and he clearly went to ask about that, but Alex wasn’t about to receive any questioning on that. “I’m gonna go get some water, do you want water?”
“Um, okay,” Kyle said, voice softer than it’d been since they’d decided to look into this together.
Alex made his way into the kitchen and began getting two glasses of water. Only, as he checked for ice, he realized there was fresh fruit in the refrigerator. It didn’t really make any fucking sense, but Alex tried not to think too hard about it as he got the two glasses.
“I thought you said your dad never comes up here,” Alex said as he walked back into the living room.
“He doesn’t.”
“There’s fresh fruit in the fridge,” Alex said. Kyle looked over to him with genuine shock on his face.
“What?”
“Yeah.”
Alex followed Kyle back into the kitchen where they both stared at the fruit as if it was going to solve the world’s problems. It didn’t. They began looking around the kitchen, suddenly more concerned as to why his dad was coming all the way to the cabin enough to have fruit.
Which is when they found an entirely different file.
“What’s that?” Kyle asked, looking over Alex’s shoulder as he opened it.
It left little to the imagination. Detailed accounts of everything, even down to the handprint. It described things that Alex had presumed to be fiction. Some of them were things Alex hadn’t even thought about, even in a fictional sense.
“Aliens.”
-
Jim looked at all the new information Noah had given him. It was too much information.
“How do you know all of this?” Jim asked. Noah was sitting across from him at Mimi DeLuca’s bar in a back room she’d let him use when he asked. He explained he wasn’t really eager to bring a sketchy man to any place that he could be around his son and she’d complied.
“I got attacked by one,” Noah explained, “Could I get some more water, please?”
“Sure,” Jim said, “But that doesn’t explain how you know so much. Did this alien tell you everything?”
“No, I saw him kill a girl. It made him stronger, I saw it,” Noah insisted. He was clearly affected by whatever happened.
“And that handprint… It didn’t kill you?”
“No, but it almost did,” Noah said, shaking his head, “Don’t you believe me?”
Before Jim could say maybe he didn’t, he suddenly did. He believed him quite a lot. But he was smarter than that. He had to be. Jim excused himself to get water, trying to clear his head as best he could despite the cloudiness that had overcome it.
He passed Mimi and she gave him a tiny pendant to slip into his pocket.
Suddenly, his mind felt a lot clearer. He put on a smile and went along with whatever Noah said.
-
“Alex, let me in.”
Something was wrong. Michael knew he was supposed to stay away from Alex, but the guilt was weighing on him; he wanted to make sure Alex knew he was on his side. If Max could support Liz without outing themselves, then Michael could sure as hell show Alex that same support. He just needed Alex to know he wanted him for more than sex.
He was going to be his alibi.
But the problem was Alex wasn’t answering him. He knew he was in there. The light was on, but he wasn’t answering. That was a fucking problem.
“Alex, open up,” Michael repeated, knocking a bit harder. He just wanted to see him. He wanted to protect him. He was willing to sacrifice himself for that.
When the window finally opened, Michael had to reroute his entire thought process. Alex stood there in nothing but low-hanging sweat pants that Michael hadn’t actually seen before. His hair was wet and his chest was glistening. Michael could smell the distinct scent of his body wash.
“Get in here,” Alex demanded. Michael blinked at him twice before he clambered through the window.
He didn’t actually have time to ask him how he was or tell him that he would be his alibi because Alex just grabbed him into a biting kiss. He could feel his brain malfunctioning as Alex stripped him of his shirt, ripping it halfway through.
Getting a proper breath in wasn’t an option. Alex pushed him into his bed, climbing on top of him and pinning him down before he could think. Things moved so fast and, honestly, he didn’t mind. He kept kissing him deeper, biting harder, distracting him more and more from whatever was in his head.
Distracting him so much that he didn’t realize he was tied to the headboard until the knots were so tight that it hurt even his undamaged hand.
“Whoa, Al–”
He was cut off by Alex shifting all his weight onto his chest and a fucking toy lightsaber was shoved under his chin, pinning him in place.
Alex was staring down at him with wide eyes, mouth set in a hard line. He looked more than a little betrayed and Michael quickly realized that maybe he should’ve expected this. Alex was one of the smartest people he knew. Of course, he would figure it out. Of course.
“You’ve got five seconds to tell me why you fucking framed me or I’m calling the cops.”
Michael was frozen with a fear he wasn’t used to having with Alex. However, it became very, very obvious that Alex knew a lot more than he could’ve ever imagined. Alex looked sort of scared, yes, but he’d decided he was going to put up a fucking fight. Because of that, Michael relaxed as much as he could, trying to show he wasn’t going to hurt him.
“What do you know?” he asked softly. Alex shoved the lightsaber harder under his chin, forcing him to make eye contact.
“Doesn’t matter, does it? Tell me everything then I can see where the lies are,” Alex said. Michael took a heavy breath, but it was hard with Alex on his chest. He seemed to notice that and lifted his weight just a little. It was super conflicting, honestly, because Alex looked hotter than ever. You know, despite the fact he looked like he would kill him.
“Okay,” Michael agreed. He knew Isobel was going to fucking kill him, but he was running out of options. He had no idea what Alex knew or didn’t know. If he lied and it didn’t match then he was fucked. “Okay. I didn’t frame you.”
“Oh?” Alex asked, his tone showing he didn’t believe him. Thankfully, his eyes betrayed him.
“I swear to God, I would never, ever put you in harm's way. I didn’t mean for your DNA to get there and I am so, so sorry that it did,” Michael said. Alex didn’t let up on the lightsaber. “But, yes, I was there that night.”
He could see Alex gulp. He knew he was right, but hearing the confirmation didn’t make him feel better. Instinctually, Michael tried to move his hands to grab ahold of him, but it pulled against his restraints and he let out a pained groan as it rubbed his damaged hand the wrong way. Alex pushed harder on the lightsaber, pushing Michael’s head into the pillow.
“Why?” Alex demanded, “What do you get out of killing Rosa? How did you do it with a broken?”
“I didn’t kill Rosa, Alex, I swear I did not kill her or any of the girls. I promise you,” Michael insisted, trying to show Alex how sincere he was. He could take Isobel and Max thinking he was a killer, but Alex? No.
Yet, Alex didn’t seem to buy it.
“You expect me to believe that?” Alex scoffed.
“Yes,” Michael said definitively, “Alex, I am so sorry. I should’ve been honest with you from the moment shit got bad for you. I wanted to. I really, really did. I’ve never felt so fucking guilty in my life. I was coming to tell you I would be your alibi.”
“So, what, you feel guilty about framing me, but you don’t feel guilty about killing three girls?”
“I didn’t kill them!” Michael insisted. Alex gave him a look that said ‘shut up, my dad’s home’. Michael took a deep breath. “I didn’t kill them. I saw who did and I fucking bolted.”
“Why wouldn’t you go to the police?” Alex asked, his cold exterior breaking just a little as his eyebrows twitched towards the middle, “Unless it was someone you care about and you were trying to protect them‒Max or Isobel. And, their hands weren’t broken, so they could’ve done it… So, they’re the aliens? Not you?”
Michael felt his blood run cold and he stopped breathing, surely looking like a deer caught in headlights.
“Or… are you? Is it all of you?”
Alex’s accusatory tone was switched out for sheer curiosity. It reminded Michael that he was still a kid, still a boy who was curious about the world and not a man trying to interrogate him before he turned him over to be killed. However, the lightsaber didn’t move, so it was kind of up in the air.
“You look scared of me,” Alex said out loud. He moved the lightsaber, but Michael still couldn’t breathe. “You’re an alien.”
“Are you going to kill me?” Michael breathed. Alex blinked a few times, the thoughts behind his eyes shifting and readjusting to the situation.
“Your friends killed three people and you let the police frame me. Even if you go to be my alibi, if you don’t say anything, I’m fucked. You fucked me over and you let me sit with that for weeks. You let me trust you and… for what?” Alex scoffed. “I don’t give a shit if you’re an alien or not. I do care that you’re a liar and an accessory to murder and that I’m going to get life in prison for it. Or, fuck, the death penalty is still a thing in New Mexico. I could die because of you.”
Michael closed his eyes, trying to remember how to breathe for a completely different reason now.
“You’ve ruined my life, Michael,” Alex said, that cold tone coming back, “You ruined my life to save an actual fucking murderer. Even if I get off, people will still think I’m guilty. I’ve done my fucking research, I know how this ends.”
“I made a mistake.”
“You and your friends destroyed my life, destroyed the lives of Rosa and Kate and Jasmine’s families, and you don’t even care because it saves yours. You only want to cover you and your friends’ asses,” Alex went on, “And everyone else be damned. I should turn you in.”
“Please, Alex… Please, if we get caught, it’s worse than jail. If they find out what we are… what I am, I’m done for. I’m a science experiment. I’m sorry, I am, I just‒”
“I’m not going to,” Alex said softly. He slowly untied his hands from the headrest, somehow being gentle even after everything. “I’m not as cruel as you.” Michael felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “But if you ever try to talk to me again, I’ll tell my dad. And, trust me, he’s a lot scarier than any cop.”
It was strange, looking up at Alex. He seemed so sure of himself and of his statement. He was using his father as a weapon and he didn’t seem to even notice. For a moment, Michael was scared for him, scared for whatever was going on that he was blind to. But then he remembered that he’d destroyed a boy he loved and it didn’t matter.
“Get out.”
-
All he needed was this.
“I can’t believe those girls got murdered by that monster. Rosa must’ve been special, huh?”
Three days. Jim had been talking to this man‒this thing‒for three days. He already knew he wasn’t human, he caught that quickly. He just needed proof that he was the one who hurt his daughter.
And now he was getting it.
“I mean, why else would that boy separate her from the other two? Must’ve been special.”
How proud of himself must he have been to brag about that? Brag about details that weren’t even released to the public? Jim knew that aliens all had some level of pride about their race, but this? The audacity.
He stared down at the piles of evidence and every detail of the case, trying desperately to piece shit together. He needed something to directly tie this man to Rosa’s case. He needed proof that he did it and not Alex. A motive for why he did it wouldn’t be so bad either.
“Jimmy, come to bed,” Michelle said. His eyes looked up to where she stood in the doorway.
Sometimes he forgot how lucky he got. Sometimes his mind would slip and he would get clouded or distracted. But then she would stand in the doorway of his home office in nothing but one of his shirts, her hair down and face bare and he remembered.
He put the files down, giving her his full attention. She smiled at him and came closer. When he pushed away from the desk, she sat in his lap and he held her close. He liked moments like this. Quiet, normal moments. No aliens, no work, no infidelity, no addiction. Just her and him. It didn’t take much to remember Kyle’s little feet padding through the halls to find them and acting all disgusted when they kissed. The disgust stopped when the kissing happened less.
“I need… I need to figure out how to fix this,” he admitted to her. His eyes closed as she cradled his head, massaging his scalp. “I feel like there’s no answer.”
“You need to relax. Overdosing on information isn’t going to help you,” she told him, “I want you to solve this as much as you do, but you haven’t slept in days. Come to bed.”
“I know, I know, I just… I need that one thing, you know? Just the one thing to make it all fall into place,” Jim said. Michelle breathed against his skin and he thought about just falling asleep right there with her on him.
“Well, maybe talk to your son,” she whispered, voice reluctant. Jim blinked out of his thoughts and craned his head to her.
“Excuse me?”
“I caught him coming out of your office the other day and then found my key to the station in his pocket when I was doing clothes. Not to mention he made it no secret that he was talking to Alex on the phone last night,” she informed him, “He thinks he's so slick.”
Jim blinked in confusion. Kyle? Kyle was putting himself in this? Why the hell would he do that?
“As much as I don’t want him to be involved in this case, I think he already is,” she went on, “I’d rather one of us steps in before he does something we can’t fix. So, talk to him, see what he knows, and then ask him to stop.”
“What the hell could he know?” Jim asked out loud.
Michelle lifted her head and she looked at him in his eyes, really looked at him. She said nothing, insinuated nothing, but he knew. He didn’t know what she knew or how she knew it, but her silence spoke volumes. He felt a little sick.
“Okay, I’ll talk to him,” he agreed.
“Thank you.”
They sat there for another moment and then he took a deep breath, grabbing a hold of her before standing up. She held onto him tighter.
“Let’s go to bed.”
-
Isobel knew something had changed for the worse.
“Hey, what happened?” she asked softly. Michael was laying on her bedroom floor, trying his damndest to act like he wasn’t crying. He was relatively silent, but his breathing had changed and she’d been way too good at noticing little details lately.
“Nothing, leave me alone,” he grunted.
She watched his back intently. Something had gone very shitty, but she wasn’t sure. Well, she could guess. Last they’d actually talked about anything serious, they’d agreed no Liz, no Alex, and no talking about it. Sure, every new detail had her on edge, but… still.
“You’re crying, that’s not nothing.”
“Isobel, leave me alone,” Michael said firmly.
Isobel considered it but instead chose to reach out to him. If they couldn’t talk about what was going on, they were going to explode. She was already dealing with the worst headaches of her life every five seconds.
“Don’t touch me!” he snapped when she reached for him. She jerked her hand away and watched as he turned to her, face tear-streaked and angry. “You just can’t leave anything alone, can you?”
“Wh‒”
“This is your fault, everything that’s gone wrong with Alex is your fucking fault,” Michael continued, “I-I finally found something good and it’s all fucked up because of you. He won’t even look at me.”
“I only said not to talk to him because I don’t want you to feel guilty or tell him! It was for your own good!” she argued.
“Jokes on you, he’s a fucking genius,” Michael laughed, a new wave of tears showing in his eyes. Isobel could feel her blood turning cold.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“That he knows. And he figured it all out on his own,” he told her. She felt like the air was stolen from her lungs. “He knows it all. All except…”
“Except what, Michael?” she asked, horror more than clear on her face and in her voice and he didn’t even seem to notice. “Except what?”
“Except that you’re the one that killed those girls,” Michael told her. The bed seemed to drop out from beneath her as her mind swarmed.
“Wh-what? No, I‒”
“Killed them. I saw you,” he said, “You didn’t look right, but it was you.”
Isobel didn’t know what happened after that.
-
“Have you talked to Alex?”
Max wanted to put his head through a wall. He didn’t know exactly what to tell Liz. Could he feel bad about not doing something he had no intention to do? It didn’t matter, he did anyway.
“Um, Michael did,” he said. Liz was holding onto his arms and she tilted her head to the side, no less interested even knowing that he didn’t speak to him himself. He gulped softly and tried to think of what to say. He should’ve prepared for this moment. “Alex didn’t do it, Liz.”
“How do you know?” she wondered, clutching his arms for details. He didn’t know what the hell to give her.
“Just… Just trust me. Alex didn’t do it, I know for a fact that he didn’t.”
Max watched confusion flush over her face and she held onto him tighter. He wasn’t really able to get out of her grasp without literally prying her off which he didn’t want to do, so he stayed put and stared at her.
“How?” she asked him softly. Liz watched as he gulped and looked anywhere but at her. She’d watched enough true crime documentaries to know the signs of a man trying to figure out a good lie.
“I just do. Please don’t let this ruin your relationship with Alex, okay? He’s innocent,” Max begged.
Liz felt a little sick and she slowly let go of her grasp on him. She felt more sure than ever that Alex was innocent and that Max… wasn’t.
“Okay, thank you,” she said. Max smiled and he looked so sweet. And yet, not quite. “I’ll see you later.” He blinked a few times before realizing she wanted him to leave.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll see you later. Bye, Liz.”
Liz waited until he was outside before pulling out her phone. She dialed the number that she knew by heart and it picked up on the second ring.
“Liz?” Kyle asked. She took a deep breath.
“Are you in contact with Alex?” she wondered. She knew they weren’t exactly friends, but she knew Kyle was nothing but loyal when it came down to it.
“Uh…”
“Figured. I need to talk to both of you. Where do you guys meet?”
“Alex is on house‒”
“We both know Alex figured out how to fuck with that day one, so where do you guys meet?”
Kyle was silent for a moment before he said, “My dad’s cabin.”
Liz held her head high and watched Max drive away.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
-
“She’s what?”
“Drunk! She’s drunk, help me.”
Michael scoffed and turned his truck around, quickly heading towards the crash site that he really wasn’t that far away from. He hadn’t seen Isobel since their argument a few days prior purely for self-preservation reasons. He wasn’t expecting her to go in the desert to get wasted.
When he pulled up behind Max’s jeep, he wasn’t all that surprised to see them both just sitting in the sand. In fact, he was a little annoyed that they were just sitting all calm.
“What’s going on?” he asked as he walked closer to them. Max looked up to him with eyes that could kill.
“Michael, I thought we agreed that‒”
“That what? That it was totally fine as long as I took the fall?” Michael asked. He meant to have a lot more anger than it actually held. He was just so drained. However, Max didn’t have a reply to that. Michael sighed and plopped into the sand beside them. “I get it though. There was just… a lot of weird shit about that night.”
“I think,” Isobel said, voice higher and louder than usual as a reminder that she was definitely intoxicated, “I think I should just turn myself in.”
“No, you’re not going to do that,” Max sighed. He seemed to have lost the fight too.
“Why not?!” she asked, voice quivering slightly. Michael frowned as he watched her eyes fill with tears. “Michael’s right, I’m ruining everything for both of you. If I just… come clean, you can be with Liz and Michael can be with Alex and I can be where I belong. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
“Honestly, I’m pretty sure Liz is mad at me,” Max sighed.
“And Alex basically threatened to get his dad to dissect me if I ever talk to him again,” Michael added. They both looked to him with wide eyes. “But, listen, Iz. I know I said a lot of shit to you, but… Honestly, it didn’t look like you that night. Like, it was you, but there was just this look on your face. It didn’t look like you.”
“I don’t remember it at all,” she whined, falling against Max’s shoulder with a pout on her face, “I swear I would never do that. I-I’m not a killer.”
“I know, Izzy,” Max said, hugging her close. Michael stared at them both before locking eyes with Max. They had a short, silent conversation that ended with them both on the same page.
They were all in way over their heads.
-
“So we’re in agreement that Isobel did it.”
“Well, Max’s hand is too big and Michael’s hand was broken and they both have reason to cover for her, so yes.”
“Fuck.”
Alex couldn’t help but smile as Liz leaned against him to get a better look at the murder board. He hadn’t realized how much he missed her. Well, that’s a lie. He definitely realized, he just didn’t want to. But now he was more than a little thankful that she was on his side.
“Now we just have one piece left of the puzzle to find,” Kyle said, marveling at his masterpiece, “What was the fucking motive?”
“I don’t know,” Liz groaned, raking her hands through her hair. They both turned to watch her collapse on the couch. She was clearly thinking hard, thinking of something to piece it together. “This is all just so weird and so much. I mean, Max and Michael were still trying to be on our sides while covering for her. They tried to be good while loyal, right? So maybe there’s a piece we’re not seeing because we’re not in the situation.”
“But they’re aliens and all the files make it pretty clear that they’re evil,” Kyle said. Alex looked at him for a moment and they were both only sure about the fact that they weren’t sure. It just didn’t sound right that Max and Michael were evil. Even if they did assist in murder.
“Michael’s a dick, but… I don’t know, I think they’re all scared,” Alex said, “Whenever I last spoke to him, he was genuinely scared I was going to turn him into a science experiment. Maybe Isobel felt threatened?”
“Okay, but Michael didn’t kill you when he felt threatened,” Liz interjected, “And Max… Well, fuck, I basically cornered Max and he was too out of it to even think of a lie ahead of time. I think there’s something off, something we don’t know.”
“Color me impressed,” another voice said which caused them all to jump. They all looked to see Sheriff Jim Valenti standing in the doorway. Alex felt his blood run cold. Of course, of course, he gets caught by the fucking Sheriff. “Lot of strings you put together.”
“Um, sir, I‒” Kyle started. Sheriff Valenti held his hand up to silence him.
“You don’t need to explain to me. Like father, like son, right?” he chuckled, stepping forward to look at the murder board. Alex stayed a few steps away, ready to run if he had to. “Tell me. Where does a Noah Bracken fit in on this board?”
“Who, Sir?” Liz asked. Sheriff Valenti gave her a kind smile.
“He’s the man who I believe is guilty. He knew much more about the case than was released publically and he seems emotionally attached to not only the case, but Rosa in particular. He’s guilty, I just need one solid piece of evidence,” he chuckled. Kyle, Alex, and Liz all shared confused glances.
“But… But Max and Isobel and Michael…” Kyle started, “They’re guilty. Look, that looks like a girl-sized handprint. That guy…”
“Is attached to the case,” Sheriff Valenti said, confusion on his face as he tried to piece it together. Alex felt like his brain was short-circuiting. “How do they fit together?”
“Sir, I don’t think he was there,” Alex managed to say. Sheriff Valenti looked at him. “Michael would’ve told me if he was there.”
Sheriff Valenti took a long, deep breath. It made Alex both uneasy and like he finally had a shot at fucking being free all at once. Finally.
“I guess we’ll just have to have a talk with them and see.”
#malex#malex fic#echo#echo fic#alex manes#michael guerin#kyle valenti#max evans#isobel evans#liz ortecho#jim valenti#roswell new mexico#my fic#desert three
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Do you have any advice for writing or creating regularly? That’s hard for me and I’d like to get better at it.
it boils down to what works best for you personally tbh. i’ve got a system to write semi-regularly (or i did......restricted movement hours have kinda forced me to restructure that lol) and it works for me but that’s just how my brainyot works. i’m a routine-based creature so working writing into my routine was how i got myself to write semi-regularly.
ive also had significant Brain Junk for most of my life and was gradually able to navigate how best to create in spite of that but im also like, medicated for it and the like so self-care was a factor. i couldnt create shit while i was too busy lying in a pool of my own filth having fits of paranoia about the nature of reality so i was hardly about to make myself try and create stuff when that wasnt even on my radar.
i can share some of the things i do to keep myself writing though! like again this isn’t something that’s for sure gonna work for everybody cause everybodys wired differently but i hope some of it helps!
1. daily wordcount - i’ve mentioned this before but i have a daily wordcount that i do for my original fiction. i don’t apply the same standard to fic-writing because that risks making it an arbitrary barrier that puts too many numbers on my internal list. that being said, it’s very small. i make myself do 200 words per day. if that gets me going and writing more than that, awesome. if not, i still got a little bit done. 200 words is small, and it’s not overwhelming to catch up on if i miss a day. no matter how shitty im feeling i try to get in 200 words.
2. routine - since i’m a routine-based person by nature i basically found ways to finagle creative processes into all that. it’s not hard and fast because that kind of rigid structure makes me balk and i’m not that disciplined lol, but it’s usually something like “i have an hour-long lunch break at work and literally nothing else to do during it so i’ll write in that time period” or “i have thirty minutes of sitting by the stove making dinner so i’ll write until it’s ready”
3. momentum - or what my housemate fondly calls “The Juice.” if i have The Juice of inspiration i keep that going for as long as i can. if something’s not working for me i don’t scrap it or toss it right away. if i’m having trouble with a scene i make a note to myself and move on to a different one. example of this from my latest wip, which is part iv of mayhem
i hadnt worked out what was gonna go there and nothing was coming to me easy in the moment so i stuck the note there and kept going. my works are full of this shit. if i can’t think of a name or if there’s a statistic or a character i haven’t worked out yet i don’t wanna break my focus and momentum so i slap a note in the first draft and keep going. at a first draft stage the important thing is getting the words Out so it doesnt matter if theyre perfect. ill go back and fix them later, revise all i need to. first drafts dont need to be good, they just need to be there so i can spruce them up later.
on the flip side do not be like me and commit to this momentum so bad that you forget that you are a human being who needs to eat and consume liquids. i do that sometimes because of who i am as a person and it is a serious flaw of mine, do not be like this. sometimes getting some food in you is what you need to get The Juice flowing again and that sounds kinda gross and i am sorry
4. planning and hangups - this ones dependent on how you create. i forget where this analogy came from, but i’ve heard it said that some writers are architects who need a blueprint of where they’re going before they end up there and some writers are gardeners, who don’t need a set plan so much as they need to keep going. i’m definitely an architect - a lot of my works start out as bulletpoints of what scenes i wanna cover, what topics i wanna explore, etc. - though i have on occasion simply Written without any set destination, usually to force myself out of a creative slump. me being a big planner used to be one of the biggest barriers for me creatively because i’d spend hours agonizing over minute universe details and never start the dang story. this still happens from time to time. like heres what my organizational folder looks like wrt “pray for disaster”
that is not even all the files in there. why do i have two dictionaries. jesus. like i make these giant ass fuckin....tomes of stuff i like to keep track of, which i like to call “bibles” lol. except i could tell that getting too organized was gonna be an uphill battle with very little payoff so by the end i just made a “MISCELLANEOUS BULLSHIT” doc and for now i throw everything in there if it doesn’t fit into something like a dictionary or timeline
shit like this is why i like to just sit down and write without a clear destination in mind if i’m having writer’s block. that’s one of those things that goes hand in hand with the way i take advantage of my own momentum - if i reach a certain point where i’m just picking at details and not doing any writing i just go “ok motherfucker sit down and write shit. we will work out the details later.”
5. motivation - the ways i tend to motivate myself are weird so idk how true this is for anybody else but i’ve been writing for a pretty large part of my life. i went to college for english/creative writing and got a whole dang degree cause i still wanna make this my vocation somehow. one thing i cannot ever turn off is the writer part of my brain that’s going “oooh huh that’s not how i would’ve written that” in literally every piece of art i consume - tv, movies, books, songs, etc. sometimes that’s enough to inspire me into doing something on my own time. most of the time though if i’m feeling stumped i tend to crack open some of my personal favorite works, like books or fics that have really resonated with me, to fall in love with the art all over again. seeing the way different authors and artists do their craft helps me get in the zone of wanting to write more cause i get this nice feeling of “damn, these people really did those things with those words.....that’s fuckin amazing.....i wanna do that.”
you do risk falling into the trap of “ugh i can’t write like them though” but that’s the beauty of writing. nobody can write the way anybody else does. ofc i can’t write like terry pratchett, only terry pratchett can write like terry pratchett, and if i compare myself to terry pratchett i’m only gonna get sad and mopey. but i can write in a way thats totally unique to me so i should not try to write like terry pratchett because that’s just impeding my own creative energy in the interest of trying to cookie-cut myself into someone else’s zone. only terry pratchett can write like terry pratchett but only i can write like zero graffitibible.
i hope that was helpful? like this is all stuff that works for me so no guarantee it’ll work for everyone else.
oh right and idk how many of yall are minors because let it be known that i do not condone underage drinking; i am an adult who occasionally will get crunk because i like to write drunk and edit sober. if you too are an adult who can legally consume alcohol feel free to write while buzzed because that is a nice way to write with zero fuckin inhibitions. i dont get blackout drunk or nothing just a little buzzed and sometimes what i write makes no sense but i am at times at my most productive at 2am while mildly buzzed. its a thing.
like again i’m not really an authority on this by any means - this is just what works for me. but if it works for you too, great!! find your zone and all that
#anon#ask#z speaks#alcohol mention cw in case anybodys got that blacklisted#theres nothing as liberating as writing after having consumed 1.5 beers and feeling like a gOD#i say 1.5 but realistically its more like 1#i am a tiny person who cannot hold their liquor#and beer really is just mulled fartweed but thats all right#creating is pain and pain is living and sometimes that entails drinking mulled fartweed cause itll loosen you up enough to really Write#i dont lean on this too much btw#its just like if i happen to get buzzed ill usually go 'you know what i should totally do. write.'#it is at times incomprehensible
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me: i’m going to sleep.
also me: but first let me write words about my FeelingsTM on Martin Blackwood. (ft jon sims)
The voice at the other end of the phone is new; it throws Martin off a moment.
“Oh, uh, hello -” he says, feeling absurdely self-conscious. “This is, um - Mrs Blackwood’s son, Martin? Are Betty and Floretta not here today?”
“We’re a bit short of staff,” says the youthful voice on the phone. She talks very fast. “But they said you’d call, of course! I’m Lisa. How can I help you, Mr Blackwood?”
“Hi Lisa,” Martin says and then rolls his eyes at himself, gripping the phone tighter. “I’m just - I’m just wondering how my mother’s been doing this week?”
Lisa is efficient; she gives less details than Betty does, but she sounds less bothered to talk than Floretta, who always finishes with a sigh, like the whole world rest on her shoulders and she’s got no time to indulge Martin and his pesky requests about his mum. Perhaps she truly doesn’t; It’s a small home, after all, and they’re treating his mum right, he knows that, but it’s not like they’ve got a lot of funding. Plus, Floretta’s got two kids and her husband was laid off a year ago so he understands that his phone calls are bothersome.
When Lisa’s done, Martin thanks her and then, he braces himself, and takes a deep breath: “D’you think I could talk to her for a bit?” he asks.
“Oh,” says Lisa. “Oh I’m sorry she’s, um - she... fell asleep, after lunch.”
“Right,” says Martin. “Of course, sure, yeah.”
Lisa is a very bad liar. Nothing like Betty. Betty’s so good at coming up with excuses for his mum that it had taken Martin two months after she had been admitted and he’d started working at the Institute to realize that Betty was lying at all. He’d called almost every day then, feeling awful about not being here for his mother anymore, no matter the fact she’d insisted on it more and more as he grew older. Two entire months, until Betty had said, one afternoon “Ah, can’t do kiddo, she’s playing bridge with the others.” and he’d realized she was just being kind to him by not saying the truth. His mum hated bridge, and cards games in general. He was pretty sure it was because his dad had liked it.
Now Martin calls every Tuesday, at 1.30pm and tries to pay a visit the first Sunday of every month - as well as on birthdays. She’d agreed to see him, the first few years, on his birthday. She doesn’t anymore, but a little bit of hope never hurts. Every two weeks, he’s taken to dutifully write her a letter instead. Those are never returned, so maybe she reads them at least, even if she never answers.
He hangs up on Lisa after thanking her again, and pretends he doesn’t hear the pity in her voice. Then, he puts his head between his arms, and he breathes very hard and sternly tells himself he can’t cry at work, even if on Tuesdays afternoons, he’s always alone in the office he shares with Gary (who’s got a class at university), Helena (who goes to write at the library) and Celine (who’s got the day off). It’s silly, getting hang up on stuff like that; he’s 25 for god’s sake, not 13. He should be used to his mum’s silence, now. Still. Still, he wishes - if she could just talk to him, just a bit - when was the last time he even heard her voice?
He’s busy feeling deeply sorry for himself when the office’s door abruptly opens; he startles hard and scrambles up to sit up straighter, sending a few files flying off his desk as he does, and meets the extremely unimpressed (beautiful) eyes of Jonathan Sims, who’s scowling at him.
“Um, hi?” says Martin, a bit lost as to what the hell Jon is doing here.
“Do you have absolutely no respect for the profession or your colleagues?” Jon asks.
Martin gapes. “...What?”
Jon waves some paper in the air; Martin blinks. “M. K. Blackwood,” Jon says slowly, like he’s stupid. “Is that not you?”
“Er, right, yes? I mean - yes, of course that’s me, we - we literally talked yesterday you haven’t forgotten my name did you?” (Contrary to what people think, Martin does have some kind of pride, and a sense of shame; the idea that Jon - who is as handsome as he is awful - may not even remember his name is kind of a blow to his non-existent self-esteem)
“No,” Jon says in a clipped voice. “I didn’t. Do you know why, Martin?”
“...Because we’re colleagues?” Martin tries out.
“Because I pay attention to details,” Jon retorts. “Contrary to you, apparently! That paper is - it’s awful is what it is. The ideas aren’t bad per say, but not only is your conclusion absolutely wrong, I can’t even work to disagree with you because half of your sources are missing.”
“Why - why did you even read my paper?” Martin asks, bewildered.
Jon’s scowl somehow manages to look even more disdainful than before. “You literally rambled about it yesterday.” he says. “When we were talking.”
“Wait. You were actually listening?”
“I - Of course I was listening Martin -”
“I mean, no - no offense or anything, but you did just - got up in the middle of the discussion and just. Left.” Martin says slowly. “Without a word.”
For the first time since he barged into his office, Jon looks unsettled for a second; Martin is pretty sure he’s not even dreaming the way Jon’s cheeks turn slightly pink.
“Right,” he says. “Right that... probably... wasn’t very polite of me.”
“Yeah that really wasn’t.”
“Well, I apologize about that,” Jon says stiffly. “But obviously I had to check - anyway, the point is, your paper is a disaster. And not just this one! I went to check other things you’ve written and good lord what do you have against citing any bloody sources -”
Martin is back to gaping, as Jon continues to prattle on everything that’s wrong with his work; who - who even does that? Martin wasn’t aware researchers actually read papers. Well, not their other colleagues’ papers. Well - not Martin’s papers. To each their own, and all that; Martin had read a lot of them, when he’d first started working here, but it was only so he could exercize himself to write in that fancy university language, and learn the structures and all; English was the class he’d tried to miss the less at school, because he liked words, but that didn’t mean it was easy to pretend he knew how to write about ghosts academically.
Apparently, according to Jon, he’s still managed to do it wrong for years, too.
“Sorry?” he hazards at last once Jon’s verve dies down.
Jon looks aghast. “Sorry? That’s all you have to say?”
“I, I mean what - what do you want me to say?” Martin asks a bit helplessly. “It’s not like - Nobody ever told me I was doing it wrong.” he finishes a bit lamely.
“How?”
“I don’t know! Maybe, maybe they just - didn’t care,” Martin shrugs; his neck is starting to warm up. Jon frowns.
“Well I care,” he says, darting his (absurdely gorgeous, it’s really terrible) eyes on Martin with such piercing intensity that Martin feels a little chill running up his spine. “The Institute is already not taken seriously enough in the academic field, and it’s bound to be treated as even more of a joke if our researchers don’t even bother trying to write anything properly. I don’t know how nobody has ever told you this before, but next time for god’s sake, just write down your sources as you go.”
“...Right,” says Martin. “Right. I’ll - I’ll do that. Yep.”
“Good.” Jon nods curtly.
There’s a beat of silence; they keep staring at each other. “Um,” Martin says after a moment. “Is there, uh - anything else? I can help you with?”
Jon opens his mouth; closes it; then opens it again and says: “You’re wrong about the spiders. They’re nasty things and they certainly don’t deserve any mercy when they find their way in a kitchen.”
And then he turns around and leaves as abruptly as he arrived, and Martin just blinks at the still open door, utterly baffled. His cheeks are flushed, and his heart is beating just a tad too fast in his chest.
“Nope,” he tells himself. “Nope, you’re not doing that. You’ve got to build self-esteem, remember?”
(I care, said Jonathan Sims.)
(Martin’s stomach does a weird little thing. He bites down a smile, and goes back to work, trying very hard to keep frowning at himself.)
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Cornelia Street (7/9)
A/N: oh my god they were quarantined
yes. It’s one of those fics.
AU, obvs
I’m posting as I go and idk how many parts this is going to be, likely won’t be very long but I literally don’t know what I’m doing and should i be starting yet another WIP? definitely not but fuck it lets fucking go
Title is from T-swizzles Lover album, I’m OBSESSED
Summary: Three years ago, Kurt and Blaine went on a disaster of a date and never quite got off on the right foot. Now, just before they graduate from NYADA, there’s a national outbreak and they’re both self-quarantined in a mutual friend’s apartment.
Read On AO3
On Tumblr: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Part 7
Kurt runs his hands through his hair, shaking off the last suds of his shampoo out of it before shutting off the water. Sara Bareilles’s voice is still leading him to thoughts about Blaine, and how he led him in the dance yesterday with the gentle swing of his hips.
It had been nice, to say the least. Dancing with Blaine in his arms had felt like he’d finally found the missing puzzle piece he’d been searching for his whole life. Waking up next to a still sleeping Blaine should’ve been awkward, but only felt like the most normal thing in the world, a routine that was way too easy to settle into and—
Shit.
He is in way too deep and he hasn’t even kissed Blaine yet.
Woah, yet? That’s a little presumptuous of you, isn't it?
If he’s going to. If Blaine even wants him to.
Kurt needs to stop thinking about Blaine ASAP, but his brain has made it clear that that’s not quite an option at the moment, so instead, he just turns the cold knob on the shower.
He heads to the kitchen when he’s done, and he’s met with the sight of Blaine humming along to Despacito while he finishes cleaning the dishes they’d used for dinner last night. Kurt can’t keep from cracking a smile.
“Having fun?”
Blaine, obviously a little surprised by Kurt’s presence, lifts his head and his mouth twitches up into a grin. “Actually, yeah. I used to hate doing the dishes when I was a kid, but then I got this job at a fast food pizza place. I realized that as long as I was washing dishes, I didn’t have to deal with customers. It sort of pavloved me into liking it.”
“God, that's such a mood.”
“The other explanation is that I’m training to be a fifties housewife.” Blaine shakes his head and makes a face, placing a plate on the drying rack. “Sorry, that was dumb,” he mutters.
“No, it was funny,” Kurt raises an amused eyebrow. “And if we’re going by the fifties’s standards, I suppose that makes me the workaholic husband.”
“Well, have fun at work, honey!” Blaine calls out, face twitching up into a grin as he holds back a chuckle.
Kurt walks up to the door as if he’s going to head out (which, they both know he can’t actually do) and pulls a coat still hanging on the rack by the frame of it. He drapes it over himself and waves to Blaine. “I will, make sure to pick up the kids early from school today!”
“Oh yeah, little Feta has a soccer tournament this afternoon, doesn’t he?”
“Feta?” Kurt raises an eyebrow.
Blaine shrugs. “Yeah, like fettuccine Alfredo? Alfredo is a valid name.”
“Okay, if you get to name our son that then I’m naming our daughter Audrey, as in Audrey Hepburn.”
“I support that.”
“Now that our kids have proper names, I suppose I should be getting to work, huh?” Kurt asks. “Those taxes aren’t going to file themselves. And I have a long commute from here to the computer.”
He turns to leave, but Blaine laughs and quickly grabs the nearly empty box of cereal on the table and holds it out towards Kurt. “Wait! Don’t forget your briefcase!”
“Silly me! How could I forget, thank you!”
Kurt doesn’t even think about it—he’s too into this strange and weirdly fun game they’ve set up. As Blaine hands him the cereal box in lieu of a fake briefcase, Kurt tucks it underneath his arms and leans forward to press a quick peck to Blaine’s lips. Blaine reciprocates, lightly placing a hand behind Kurt’s neck.
It isn’t until they pull away that Kurt realizes what he’s done.
They go absolutely still for a moment, eyes locked, neither daring to move any closer or further from the other.
Kurt wonders for half a second if he accidentally crossed a line he shouldn’t have.
And then the next half of the second Blaine’s lips are on his, hands grabbing desperately at his waist, so sudden and intense that the momentum sends them stumbling backwards a little. They don’t stop until Kurt’s back hits the table, and he sinks his hand into Blaine’s satin soft curls.
The gesture elicits a small gasp from Blaine, who slides his hands down Kurt’s back and tugs so that their bodies are flush against each other’s. Kurt reciprocates, pulls him closer, kisses him harder until they’re just this chaotic bundle of bumping noses and roaming hands.
They finally pull away, Kurt’s blue eyes wide as a prairie because he had wondered if Blaine was picking up on the same thing he was and… well, he certainly doesn’t have to wonder anymore.
“Sorry,” Blaine mumbles, shaking his head with a sheepish smile on his face. “I uh, don’t know what came over me.”
Kurt doesn’t hesitate to pull Blaine back in for another embrace. “Me neither,” he breathes. And in all honesty, he doesn’t really care. All he knows is that this quarantine thing just got a lot more bearable.
*
“I don’t think you’re playing this right.”
“Nonsense, I used to play this every day at lunch with the New Directions. Cards were easily the best way to pass the time. Santana even showed us this one game called Chingasos… which is surprisingly violent for a card game…”
After making out for… quite a long time (like, a really, really long time, not that Blaine’s complaining), they’d set some blankets down in the living room floor and exchanged card games.
Kurt is currently sitting across from Blaine, cross legged and explaining the rules of Spits as they play. There are two piles, and the point of the game is to get rid of all your cards by placing them on top of either pile, but only in numerical order. If both piles have the same number card, you could slap the top of the piles, say “spits”, and the opponent would have to take all the cards.
They both place 2s on either piles of cards, and Blaine jumps to press his hands flat on top of them. Kurt has been playing this game for years, though, and is too quick for Blaine, so his hands land on top of Kurt’s instead of the cards.
“Eat ‘em and weep,” Kurt says with a cocky grin, shoving the pile of cards towards Blaine.
“Isn’t it read ‘em and weep?”
“You’re stalling.”
Blaine mocks a scoff, mostly because he is. “Are you implying that I’m causing a distraction in order to prevent my loss?”
“Okay, nobody talks like that, you’re definitely stalling.”
“No, this is stalling,” Blaine says. He tugs Kurt’s hands and rolls backwards on the blankets, pulling Kurt on top of him and leaning up to kiss him and abandoning their card game. He can feel the smile in Kurt’s lips and can’t contain a grin of his own.
When they finally release each other, Kurt lets out a contented sigh and rests his head on Blaine, draping his arms over his body, fitting in in every space Blaine didn’t even know was waiting to be filled.
“This is gonna sound weird, and kind of random… but I feel really safe with you,” Kurt says.
Kurt’s head, resting on Blaine’s chest, lifts when he laughs.
“Heard that, coronavirus?” he jokes. “Actually,” he continues, starting to absentmindedly trace shapes on Kurt’s back with his finger. “It’s funny that you say that, because you kind of make me feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff.” He realizes that may not have come out exactly as he wanted it to. “I mean, like, in a good way. Not in a I’m worried you’re going to push me off way.”
“You’re probably just about the only person I can stand in a ten mile radius, currently, so I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
“What about Adam?” Blaine finds himself asking. His heart is a canon in his chest, and he wants to pretend he doesn’t know why he asked that question, but he knows exactly why.
He’s falling fast and hard for Kurt, and if he runs back to Adam the moment Blaine stops being his only choice, again, it’s going to suck. He’s heard stories about people who got stuck in elevators for twelve hours and then eloped the second they were rescued. And then the inevitable divorce that followed.
Blaine doesn’t want Kurt to want him because he’s bored; he wants Kurt to want him the same way he wants Kurt.
“Adam and I over for a reason,” he finally replies calmly.
The urge to just stupidly blurt out Which is? is so strong, and Blaine’s honestly surprised he doesn’t. Apparently, though, his silence is enough of a cue for Kurt to continue.
“I—and feel free to stop me… if it gets too weird or too–if you don’t want to hear this.”
“You can say anything to me,” Blaine answers without hesitation. Kurt’s cheeks pressing harder against Blaine’s chest tell him that he’s smiling.
“Okay… I think I just got swept up in the idea of finally being in a relationship, or of finally having someone who wanted me that I didn’t care if we weren’t necessarily right for each other. I mean, at the time I certainly didn’t have enough experience to know that it wasn’t right.”
Blaine hummed in encouraging agreement, urging Kurt to keep going.
“I think we were both hoping the other would evolve into the person we wanted them to be, if that makes sense. Like, I’m… I’m pretty naturally guarded. I don’t always wear my heart out on my sleeve and I think that bothered him.”
Blaine nods. Though he doesn’t feel like Kurt is particularly withholding around him, he can see why people would think that. Kurt has told Blaine all about what he endured during high school. That would be enough to make anyone a little wary of the world.
“And I don’t know if there are just parts of me I wasn’t willing to share because I’d be sharing them with him,” Kurt continues. “But there were parts of my life—little things, I’m not in like organized crime or anything—that were just for me. I’m fairly social, but if I needed an hour alone after he had friends over, he took it really personally.
“On the other hand, I always thought he took life way too seriously. Every single show or song we listened to had to have some sort of profound deeper meaning or else he labeled it as trash. What an exhausting way to live!”
Blaine chuckles. “I know what you mean. I dated Sebastian for a while, and he would constantly talk about his summer trips to Europe, which was interesting at first but after a few weeks I realized that that seemed to be the entire focal point of his personality.”
Kurt laughs. “Yeah…”
“Anyways, you were saying?”
“Oh, right... well, back in December I was watching When Harry Met Sally with Rachel and it was that scene where Sally says “We never do fly off to Rome at a moment’s notice”. And I just… realized. I went to get things from his place that night and applied to live in the NYADA dorms again for the next semester.
“I guess it was just never right with Adam. It took me way too long to figure it out. I think I might’ve figured it out sooner if we’d finished our date,” he mumbles absently, like he’s just thinking out loud.
Blaine has to bite his cheek to keep from smiling so damn hard.
They lay in easy silence for a moment, holding each other until a high pitched tinny noise interrupts them. Kurt whips out his phone and Blaine sees the Snapchat notification.
“Oh my god,” he sputters out incredulously.
“They really made a Quarantine filter,” Kurt says in awe.
Kurt unlocks his phone and presses the button to access the filter. It’s greyscale, with a blinking red dot in the corner, like it’s supposed to mimic a found footage movie. At the bottom of the screen is written “Day ___ of Quarantine”.
“Come on, let's take a picture,” Kurt says, casually hiking an arm behind Blaine’s neck and settling his head higher up in Blaine’s chest. He quickly snaps the picture of them cuddled up together.
Blaine watches Kurt, grinning when he types out the caption in two separate blocks of text.
Do you have your quarantine buddy?
Yes, I have my quarantine buddy.
Part 8
#klaine#klaine fanfiction#glee#kurt hummel#blaine anderson#cornelia street#MY BAD YALL IM GONNA TRY AND FINISH IT WITHIN A WEEK TO MAKE UP FOR IT LMAOOOOOOO
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Wicked games, Chapter 9
Poppy was disappointed when Loki didn’t return that day to see her. That was something she never thought she would think, but she did.
The following day she was completely healed up. She called Fury to ask for a car to pick her up, not wanting to risk taking public transport in-case of another attack. She wasn’t sure if Loki was still around or not to protect her again.
Even though Loki said not to go back, she had to. She needed answers. If she wasn’t going to get them from Loki, then she would get them from someone. She just wasn’t entirely sure who yet.
But her luck was in that day when she got to the HQ. As there was a hustle and bustle about the place, about a god being there. The god of thunder. She knew from his file that he was Loki’s brother. Or, Loki was adopted. But at least he would know something.
So she sought Thor out during her lunch break. She found him just staring out of the large glass window, looking over the fields that surrounded the HQ.
‘Thor?’
‘Yes? Hello there.’ Thor turned and gave her a warm smile.
‘Hi. My name is Poppy. I was just wondering if I could ask you a few questions, about Loki?’
Thor frowned at the mention of Loki.
‘Uh, sure.’ He nodded and crossed his arms over his chest.
‘What’s the Chitauri and what do they have to do with Loki?’ She asked.
‘The Chitauri are an alien race, vicious and show no mercy. They are under control by a higher being, known as Thanos. Not to be trusted. Loki was captured by them after escaping from here. He made a deal with them. He wanted their help to take over earth, in return he would give them the tesseract. You must know about the attack on New York last year, yes?’
‘Yeah I heard about it.’ Poppy nodded.
‘Well… I believe that Loki wasn’t himself when he made this deal. It’s not like him. He did some unforgivable things back home, but something like that… It just doesn’t make sense. The Chitauri are known for their torturous ways. I can’t imagine that they are happy about being defeated. I believe that Loki is in hiding from them, or has been captured by them. He won’t come to me for help, or here. He doesn’t trust these people.’ Thor sighed.
‘How did he get the tesseract in the first place?’ Poppy asked.
‘He broke out from here with it.’ Thor answered.
‘But, what about the incident in Stuttgart? And why would Loki want to rule the world?’ Poppy frowned, a little confused.
‘Only he can answer that question. As for Stuttgart, I believe it was another attempt to take over. But this time he didn’t have the Chitauri as back up. The tesseract was taken from him, which I can imagine has infuriated him somewhat. I am surprised he hasn’t turned up here yet to take it back… Why the interest in my brother?’
‘I am Fury’s new assistant. I just need to know as much as possible. For, safety reasons.’ Poppy lied and Thor believed her.
‘Very well. Just mind how you go. There is something not quite right with this place. But I cannot put my finger on it.’ Thor said suspiciously.
‘Ok… Thanks.’ Poppy said as she backed away and went back to her office.
She couldn’t wrap her head around it all. None of it made sense to her. Apart from she was sure that Loki was abused and beaten. By SHIELD and this alien race. And it clicked to what Loki wanted from her, he wanted the tesseract back. She was sure of it. But she wasn’t sure why, yet.
Once she was finished her duties for Fury, she went to the lab and sneaked a look inside. That’s when she spotted a blue shining cube in the middle, being tested on. She knew the tesseract was a cube, she wondered if that was it or not. She couldn’t be sure.
‘What are you doing?’ A voice behind her made her jump. She spun around to see Natasha Romanoff there, looking at her warily.
‘I was heading home. But that caught my eye. What is it?’ She asked as she tried to remain calm and collected.
‘That’s the tesseract. Very dangerous. We need to figure out its energy source.’ Natasha said as she stepped up to stand next to Poppy, looking into the lab through the glass window.
‘Energy source? Isn’t that just the energy source. Like, the thing itself?’ Poppy asked.
‘Yes. But we don’t know what is causing all the energy, or how to control it. We have a hunch there may be something more to it than meets the eye.’
‘Oh.’ Poppy said as she looked at the weird object. ‘Well, I’m getting out of here before it blows the place up or something.’ Poppy said as she threw her jacket on and left.
When she got outside, she took a big deep breath. Her hands were shaking with nerves. She wasn’t entirely sure why. But she had a rough idea that it was because she was stepping into dangerous territory.
That evening when she got home, the car dropped her off again, she went inside and was attacked by Loki. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her like a doll.
‘What the hell do you think you were doing? I told you, you were NOT going back there. You keep disobeying me!’ He yelled at her.
‘Stop shaking me. You’ll shake the memories out of my brain.’ She snapped at him.
He stopped and just kept his iron grip on her upper arms.
‘What is your problem?’ She snarled up at him.
‘My problem? Is that a stupid mortal keeps putting herself at risk and doesn’t do as she’s told!’ Loki shouted back at her.
‘Fine. If you think I’m a stupid mortal then you won’t care about what I saw today.’ Poppy shrugged and ducked under his arm as he loosened his hold on her.
She walked through to the living room and dumped her bag and jacket down before collapsing onto the sofa.
‘What? What did you see today?’ Loki asked as he followed her through, glaring at her.
‘No. Nothing that a god would care about from a stupid mortal.’ Poppy said sarcastically as she put her feet up on the coffee table.
Loki narrowed his eyes at her as he lunged, straddling over her and gripping her cheeks roughly with his fingers. They dug into her skin, making her whimper from the pain. But she kept her stare hard at Loki.
‘Do not play games with me, girl.’ He warned.
‘So you’re actually speaking, touching and threatening me again. That’s something compared to lately.’ She said quietly, just, while his grip was still tight on her.
His nose scrunched up at her answer. But he released her cheeks from his grip and was about to say something else but she got in there first.
‘I saw the tesseract.’ She blurted out, rubbing her sore cheeks.
Loki’s eyes widened and his features changed instantly.
‘You… what?’ He asked, surprised.
He wasn’t sure if he was more surprised that she actually saw it, or the fact she knew about it.
‘Yeah. The blue square thing? I saw it. I know where it is… That’s what you are using me for, isn’t it?’ Poppy asked, knowingly.
‘What do you know of the tesseract?’ Loki asked, still straddling over her.
He pressed his hands to the back of the sofa at either side of her head. Glaring into her eyes, waiting for her answer.
‘I know that you used it to escape from SHIELD. That you made a deal with the Chitauri, they would get it in return for their help taking over earth. But that failed, in New York. You got away, then tried to take over Stuttgart on your own. But that was a disaster too and the tesseract was taken from you by SHIELD. Now you want it back, either to take over the world, or more attempt to again, or to give it to the Chitauri. My guess is the latter.’ Poppy said smugly as she crossed her arms over her chest and grinned up at Loki’s shocked expression.
It wasn’t often he was left speechless.
‘Am I right, or am I right?’
‘I knew from the moment I saw you that you were a smart one. Far too smart for a mortal.’ He hummed and gripped her chin, this time gentler.
‘Is the Chitauri after you?’ She asked again.
‘Yes. They want the tesseract. If I don’t give it to them… Then it will no doubt be my life.’ Loki admitted to her, distracted as he looked at her pink lips, brushing his thumb over them, thinking back to when he forced his cock between them.
He slid his thumb between her lips and to his surprise, she suckled against it as she looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes.
‘You really know where it is?’ Loki asked again, trying not to get distracted.
‘Yes.’ Poppy nodded when he slipped his thumb out from her mouth. ‘Use your mind thing and you will see what I saw today.’ She offered and tilted her head up more to him.
‘Why are you being so compliant?’ Loki asked, curious.
‘Originally it was to get rid of you. But I have to admit. If SHIELD abused you… I don’t like bullies. I want to hear your side. Please.’ Poppy said softly.
Loki couldn’t pick up any lies from her, he knew she was truthful.
��They wouldn’t believe me. When I fell to earth. They thought I was a threat. I can see why, with what I did to my brother. I sent the destroyer after him, but I was never aiming to hurt any mortals. But SHIELD thought I had another plan. So they beat me, stripped me of my powers. It took months before I was able to escape. Due to a simple error on their part, someone forgot to lock my cell after beating me. I was able to get out. I came across the tesseract, used it to gain my power back and escape. I was then captured by Thanos while I was traveling though the tesseract, trying to get home. We made a deal. But that plan was foiled in New York. I tried again, alone. In Stuttgart. A moment of weakness seeing Thor allowed me to lose the tesseract. But I was able to get away, just. Now the Chitauri and Thanos are after me for the tesseract, or my life. So I found you. And here we are now.’
Poppy was surprised that Loki had actually opened up to her like that. But she was glad he did.
‘Loki… I…’ Poppy didn’t even know what to say. She felt sorry for him, truly. No one deserved to be beaten like he was. By SHIELD and the Chitauri. It was no wonder he was trying to get it back, to literally save his life.
She still didn’t excuse him for what he did to her in the first place. But she was going to help him if she could.
‘I still hate you. But I want to help you.’ She said after a moment’s silence.
‘Why?’ Loki asked, curiously.
‘Because, as much as I hate you. I still don’t want you to die.’ Poppy shrugged.
‘Is that the only reason?’ Loki purred and slid his hand down her side.
‘Yes.’ She said through gritted teeth. ‘Why did you stop coming here, this last week?’ She asked, wanting to know.
Loki sighed and moved back, off of her and he stood up.
‘Loki. Tell me. Please.’ She pleaded.
‘I… It’s been so long for me, without companionship. Then I saw you and wanted you. Badly. I was willing to do anything and everything to have you. Because let’s face it, you wouldn’t have accepted me without force. Then you hated me, truly. The pain I saw in your eyes that day. I knew it would be better to just, let you be.’ He said through gritted teeth, hating the fact he was opening up to her.
Poppy stood up and walked over to stand by him.
‘You know. You could have just, taken me on a date or something. You wouldn’t know I would turn you down unless you tried.’ She shrugged.
‘Yeah, sure. Because a mortal would go on a date with a god who just killed many people.’ Loki said as he turned to face her.
‘Fair enough… Loki, this is… I do hate you, for what you did to me. But I do want to help you. Truly. They messed you up real bad, didn’t they? I… I saw you the other day. You were completely in a trance, like you were somewhere else. Then you came back and I could see the pain and fear in your eyes. You were so harsh with me after that. It’s because they visit you, don’t they? The Chitauri? That’s why you are so angry most of the time. They’re still trying to control you?’
‘You’re even smarter than I thought.’ Loki sighed. But he nodded. ‘They do. They check up on me, to make sure I am doing my best to get the tesseract back. I don’t have long left and I am tired of hiding. My energy can only take so much, from shielding me from Thanos AND the Chitauri’s gaze.’
‘So why were you not wanting me to go back to work today? Your only chance?’ Poppy asked, that was the only thing she was confused at.
‘Because, dear Poppy. Seeing you injured yesterday, that hurt me. Something I haven’t felt in a long, long, time. I fear I have become too smitten with you. A mere mortal. It disgusts me.’ He hissed as he ran the back of his hand down her cheek.
‘Really? That’s your way of trying to tell a girl you’re into her? Jesus, Loki. You need a lot of practice.’ Poppy shook her head and walked away to the kitchen.
‘I am not into you. I just, cared for you a bit more than I wanted to. Briefly. But that is past now.’ Loki said in a firm tone again. But Poppy knew now, she knew it was an act.
‘Well, are you going to look into my mind or not? I want to get this part over with.’ Poppy sighed.
‘No. I believe you. Show me on the map where you saw it.’ Loki motioned to the map he had drawn out of the HQ from looking into her memory.
Poppy nodded and went over to said map. She circled it with a red pen.
‘That’s where I saw it… So, what’s the plan now?’ She looked up at Loki.
Loki sighed as his eyes raked over the map.
‘I need to alert my army.’
‘You have an army?’ Poppy asked, amazed at the thought.
‘A small army, yes.’ Loki rolled up the map and was preparing to leave.
Poppy rushed after him and put on her jacket. She turned around and knocked into his firm chest.
‘Where are you going?’ He asked as he looked down at her.
‘Going with you.’ She said as if it was obvious.
‘No, you are staying here. You’ve done more than enough.’ Loki said as he pushed her so she fell down backwards onto the sofa.
‘Yeah but it’s thanks to me that you have all this information. And who’s in your army anyway?’
‘SHIELD have a lot of enemies. It’s just finding the right people.’ Loki grinned.
He was preparing to disappear, but Poppy launched herself forwards and wrapped her arms around him. So she was teleported along with him.
When they landed at their destination, Poppy nearly collapsed. But Loki swiftly wrapped an arm around her to steady her.
‘Stupid girl.’ He hissed at her.
‘Charming.’ Poppy hissed back at him as she got her bearings.
They were in an old abandoned underground warehouse type of place. There was a bit of hustle and bustle between a bunch of men.
‘This is your army?’ She asked as she looked at them all, looming over computers and writing out plans.
‘Yes. They all used to work for SHIELD. They’re going to help me get the tesseract back.’ Loki said as he walked over to the large table in the middle.
‘How? It’s like a fortress.’
‘That’s where you come into it.’ Loki said simply, as if it was obvious.
‘You want me to go back there? Seriously?’ Poppy groaned.
‘You were the one who did so, even after I told you not to. So it’s your fault you’re in this again.’ Loki huffed.
‘What is the plan then?’ Poppy asked as she crossed her arms over her chest.
‘Why are you helping me now? You put up such a fight, now you are wanting to help, willingly.’ Loki asked, an eyebrow up at her as he waited for her answer.
‘I… Don’t know. I guess, I don’t like bullies. Even though you are one. It’s not right what they did to you. SHIELD and the Chitauri things. As I said before. Whilst I hate you, I don’t want you to just… Die. I don’t hate people that much. So I’ll help you get that damn cube and then I can have my life back.’ Poppy said, but she wasn’t so sure if it was going to be that easy.
Though she sure hoped it was going to be.
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Nancy Drew: The Lady of Larkspur Lane AKA None of this is a Good Plan Guys
So I fell really behind in the show (and every show) with the start of the semester, but I have finally caught up, and am right back on my bullshit.
Commentary time! With many ellipses tonight
What was that smashing on the ground? Hopefully not something important/that will come back to haunt us (possibly literally) later…
In every universe Nancy’s fashion sense is questionable. Wear the Horse Shirt and Mom Jeans Bess!
Bess and Ace’s relationship is so wholesome and I love it
Is she really okay with it though?
I hate that this episode is a spooky mental hospital episode because it’s going to be tropey and that has a high likelihood of possible ableism…
Mmm. Don’t like you Amaya. Bess is more than a pretty face and deserves to be treated with respect. Fight me.
Oh no. If Carson dies…
I mean it would be easy to cover up. Prominent lawyer. Small town/local prison. Plenty of disgruntled clients and opponents. Of course, Mrs. Hudson didn’t sound interested in keeping her involvement secret, but if she did want to…
All our hope is on you Ace. Hey. Stop rambling and panicking darling, you’ve got this. Probably.
Why are you not driving your beloved truck?
She is about to be locked into that file room I swear…
Suspicious, sudden, aggressive mold
Oh, ok, I guess I was wrong, but that’s ghost footsteps if I’ve ever heard them
I mean she looks nothing like your “runner” from earlier but sure
Oh are they going to try and put her in a room as a patient…is that what they mean by runner? God kill me now.
How is that cover working?
Of course there’s a haunting and she’s talking the one person who super believes in it
Damn son, the sass
How convenient that Ryan and Bess are having lunch only a table or so apart (love her face as Ace goes by)
Straight to the point. Alrighty. Maybe learn just a little subtlety when discussing hits on people…?
That was interesting emphasis. Your father wouldn’t, but you don’t deny that someone might have.
Ace, I’d say don’t ruin this for Bess, but that woman’s initial attitude and apparent ignoring her the entire lunch made me kind of want it ruined – but what do you think Bess can achieve here that you can’t?
Why does this orderly remind me of George Salazaar and why is that deeply unsettling?
Welp, it’s not sealed off anymore. Once again, nice job breaking it Drew.
So much sass. First Ace, now Bess. My favs are really bringing it
Tall jar of mayonnaise? Really?
No, Bess, don’t just spill everything to this stranger. That’s a terrible plan.
I find it highly suspicious that now that it looks like she’s connected to the Hudson and or/shady dealings, you’re suddenly interested
I repeat, don’t hurt Papa Drew…oh thank god! A transfer to State is the best worst thing that could happen
That doesn’t look like an official transfer vehicle…is this a fakeout and now the hit’s going to happen? Easier to fake a death in a traffic accident (round 2)
Ace! Are you perpetrating a prison break you wonderful, disaster of a human?! I love you!
It sounds bad when you put it that way Carson…
More sass, this time about your laundry list of Crimes!
Noble dumbass
That is the vaguest plan I’ve ever heard of
That is the first place they’ll look for him…oy…
George is unimpressed. I am just glad that question didn’t go where I feared it might
Archery and Axes are not the same thing, trust me
Why do you have a massive axe in your house anyway, Carson?
That shot was entirely for the audience to see how well-built Ace is, wasn’t it? Not that I’m complaining…
Oh this is interesting…I’m a little surprised how easy that was.
Why does Mrs. Dodd know what Kate’s necklace looked like to the point of that being how she “recognized” her? That seems like an odd detail
“Other lady”? So not someone she knows. Lucy’s secret? A real key or a metaphorical one?
The Thin Man is another spirit. I’d stake my life on it. But is his book real?
Ace…not…not the right approach. In fact the absolute wrong way of handling probably the worst possible way for this situation to go
I still don’t like you, but you have a point at the immediate moment
I love you Bess, take her down and win her over all at once
You done fucked up Drew. Flickering lights, creepy fast-spreading mold, ball with what looks like blood on it rolling about the hall unprompted. I sense a jumpscare a-comin’
Surprisingly fewer “the ghosts of dead patients gone violent in limbo” than I was expecting, pleasantly so.
Of course Nick-not-Ned knows Bible quotes. Because he has been established as the resident Book NerdTM and therefore knows important quotes from all books ever written
Creepy demon has a Bible? That seems off. Not an evil spirit then? Someone alive?
Of course they did, because the Hudsons and their people are smart
I like this new badass business bitch Bess. Also kinda hot. (better if she goes back to her usual hair though, the poodle is not a good style choice)
Mr. Roper? I think that falls under Names to Run Away from Very Quickly
The Whisper Box? Seriously?
Is that blood on the ball or just a flower? It bugs me that I can’t tell
Nancy! Bad plan.
A life for a life. That’s not a bad negotiation. But if anyone can find a digital footprint, I believe it’s Ace.
Maybe I misjudged you almost as much as you misjudged Bess…
Don’t ignore Lisbeth…L
Well shit. I’m almost concerned for Ryan’s life. I mean he’s still a scummy douche-canoe and has not redeemed himself, but I almost care.
No. No romantic bullshit. Platonic teamwork is fine.
What is so bad about pulling the alarm?
Okay, it’s a flower. Somehow that makes it worse?
A keycard? To what/where? And will it work after so long?
The door disappears. That’s…not good. And that’s a Lot of Bugs
I am deeply unsettled by all of this
Nancy, you need to stop having near death experiences…
Excuse me, what?! That’s the end of the episode?!
So next week we’re going to end up with part 2 in the Sanitarium right? So I can only mark this as “so far so good in terms of ‘not as ableist as you could have been’”?
#Nancy Drew#CW Nancy Drew#Nancy Drew tv show#Nancy Drew 2019#there was a lot happening this episode#mostly bad decisions#and me on pins and needles waiting for the mental hospital ableist stereotypes#back on my bullshit#semi-liveblogging#onward to whatever the trippy fuck this week will be#edit: he reminds me of George Salaazar because it is him#still deeply unsettling for some reason though
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Cross Life Chapter Six
Summary: Moving across the pond was supposed to signify new beginnings for the Kirkland family. Arthur’s parents seemed to take that a bit too literally for his liking.
Chapter Index
This was moved from my old account
Noise flooded through the hallway as the bell rang, Arthur's teacher yelling something about plans for the next day. Arthur ignored him, pushing through the waves of students crowding the doorway.
Today was the kickoff of The Lukas Initiative, as Vlad had officially named it, where they were supposed to deliver their first letter to Mathias, Or, rather, Lukas was supposed to.
At lunch, Lukas handed them a list of stories, each one accompanied by a short summary. The three went over the list, Lukas going into detail for some of his favorites. They eventually chose one, a saga about a man named Frithiof, who was sent into exile for defending the one he loved from her brothers. It was a sweet story, or so Lukas had said, and they decided that they were going to use it for their first letter. It was easy enough to change some things to fit their current situation.
He walked as briskly as he could without running, shoving his through the Sea of Fools to their meeting spot. While it was close enough to Mathias' locker that they would have a decent amount of time, it was quite a ways from Arthur's final class, which made it an inconvenience.
Lukas and Vlad were standing in front of a trophy case when he arrived, Vlad impatiently tapping his foot against the white tile. He gave them a sheepish smile, muttering an apology for his lateness.
"No problem. We needta hurry." Vlad motioned for them to follow, picking up the pace when they actually did.
Mathias' locker was located down a hallway and to the left, unfortunately in the crowded main hallway. Though he now knew it didn't make a lick of sense, Arthur at first thought the lockers lining the halls were for decoration. There was no wonder he thought that way his first few days, however. The school was rather large, and, as he had assumed, it would take too long to constantly go to lockers. As a result, everyone carried their backpacks with them.
And though he could say it to himself, Arthur refused to admit to others that he was wrong. Especially Vlad and Lukas.
As Vlad had explained, lockers were used for extra things, such as winter coats and sports gear. Some students chose to store emergency supplies in theirs, one of those students being Lukas. Apparently, he hoarded his college-ruled paper as a firedrake did with its jewels.
They stopped at a corner, leaning against each other in an attempt to see Mathias' locker. Whichever one it was, it was unsurprisingly like all the others, blue, with a gray number label. But to Lukas, from his wide eyes and gaped mouth, it was the beginning to an end, one that he would have to face, blind to its outcome. Arthur snorted. How dramatic.
"Ok." Vlad clapped his hands together, looking back and forth between Arthur and Lukas. We've got two minutes at the most until Mathias comes to get his stuff for soccer. We could, of course, wait until he leaves, but then Mathias wouldn't-"
Arthur cut him off. As much as he didn't want to, he had to say it. "We can't wait until he leaves. I've got Madrigal practice in a little more than five minutes."
He could see Lukas' face fall from the corner of his eye. Earlier, he had offered to leave the two if an extension was needed, only for Vlad to shake his head. "The three of us do it together or we don't do it at all," he claimed.
It was when Lukas nodded that Arthur resigned himself to it. It wasn't that he didn't want the plan to go through, he was the one who wrote it! Arthur just had no idea what he was supposed to do when it came to the execution. Sure, he knew he was to write the letters, but when it came to the actual delivery of said letters? Arthur had no part. No role.
He checked his watch. The simple metal band gleamed under the harsh lights. His mother had bought it for him as a "present", but it knew better. It was most likely yet another test to see if he would actually wear it, to check his "morals".
"If we're going to do it today, we need to do it now."
He and Vlad turned to Lukas, who was holding the dusty rose envelope. His grip tightened around it, face scrunched up with fear and worry.
Vlad put his hand on Lukas' shoulder, giving him a supportive grin. "You can do it, Luke! Don'tcha worry, when ya get back, Arthur and I'll be here for emotional support." He patted his shoulder, once- twice- three times before letting go, shoving him along.
Lukas averted his eyes, biting his bottom lip. He raised the envelope, reading the name carefully and painstakingly written in cursive.
Arthur leaned against the wall, softly tapping his foot. He didn't have time for second guessing, for Lukas to suddenly start regretting everything. Arthur didn't understand why he didn't just swallow it all and get on with it. It was something he surely would've done.
He finally snapped when Lukas gave him a look that screamed for help, wide eyes, sucked in lips, and everything else that came with it. Arthur rolled his eyes, tsking as he snatched the letter from Lukas' hand. It was smooth as he rubbed his thumb back and forth, over the rose engraved in the flap, the paper swooshing as he did so. Arthur pursed his lips. "What's his locker number?"
Vlad scratched the back of his neck. "Uh... pretty sure it's 1019."
"Thanks." He hoped that Vlad was right. If he wasn't, they would have a disaster on their hands.
He turned the corner, stalking over to Mathias' locker. And just as quickly as it began, with a small push into the slats, the deed was done.
As Arthur walked back, he could see a familiar figure from the corner of his eye. He turned to Alfred, giving him a small smile and wave before turning his attention to Vlad and Lukas. He stared at Lukas, who was blushing and hiding his mouth behind his hand. Arthur's voice, along with his expression, was deadpan as he spoke. "It's done."
The blush darkened. "Thank you."
"I will not do this again on Friday."
"I know."
Vlad smiled, giving a soft chuckle. "So~. That was a good start. We'll do better on Friday."
Arthur nodded. Lukas would do better on Friday, even if he had to force him to do it.
The choir room buzzed with activity and excitement. Mr. Vargas pointed around the room, ordering stacks of paper onto wooden tables and gaggles of students against concrete walls. It was loud, loud enough to give Arthur a throbbing headache.
"Quiet." Mr. Vargas' voice boomed through the classroom, and, amazingly enough, it quickly fell silent. Everyone except for a select few seemed to perk up. Arthur scoffed at the sight of these fools with their eyes so wide and attentive.
With everyone in the room still and listening, Arthur just barely doing the latter, Mr. Vargas looked down at his clipboard, tapping his glittering pen against the bottom. "Please keep quiet as I start putting everyone in alphabetical order."
He started at the very first row, then on. After saying each name, he waited until they came up to call the next. It was a slow process, laid back, but Arthur supposed that that was just Mr. Vargas' style.
He tapped his fingers against the wall as he waited for his name to be called. According to Mr. Vargas, it would be easier to pass out necessary files if they all sat this way. Arthur knew it was a lie, because, if it was actually true, he would put his regular classes in the same order. They would have to rearrange into parts when starting the music, anyways. This whole thing was ridiculous. Unnecessary.
"Alfred F. Jones, ma boy, you're up, and Arthur Kirkland next to Alfred."
Arthur rolled his eyes, groaning. Of course, he had to sit next to Alfred. Of course, the universe would be this cruel. Pushing himself away from his comfortable spot, he strolled to his newly assigned seat, plopping down with a huff.
Alfred slumped down next to him, giving Arthur a nasty glare. He replied with a haughty smirk.
Mr. Vargas watched the exchange with a raised eyebrow, along with a few other students, before clearing his throat. "Ok... next person!"
Pulling his backpack up from the side, Arthur slid it under his chair. he leaned against Alfred as he did so, who tried his best to shy away. Arthur clicked his tongue. Interesting. He made a quick, forced apology before sitting back in his chair.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Alfred staring at him, but ignored him, instead choosing to examine a particularly painful hangnail. Whatever he wanted, it wasn't important and would just waste his time. And though he wasn't doing anything significant or important at the moment, he would still count a potential conversation a sacrifice of precious moments.
Mr. Vargas chucked the clipboard and pen on top of the piano, clapping his hands as he paced back and forth at the front of the room. he stopped, giving everyone a lazy, lethargic grin. "Welcome to this year's Madrigal Choir, everyone." When the whoops, hollers, and applause finally faded, he continued. "With just a single sweep around the room, I see some old faces, new faces, and, of course, some newly graduated wenches." Multiple chuckles and glances towards a few people in the room. "So let's give another cheer for a good, productive year!"
The class started another round of noise, Arthur giving a few soft claps, if only to go along. He winced as Alfred gave an earsplitting yell. He gave Alfred a disgusted look as the noise died down, but was irked when he was ignored.
When Alfred slumped back down in his chair, Arthur couldn't help it, his thoughts about wasted time be damned. "Thank you for viciously slaughtering my ear. It was much appreciated."
He didn't say anything in return, which only succeeded in making Arthur even more annoyed.
It wasn't until Mr. Vargas started on this year's goals and plans that Alfred chose to hop down from his stallion and speak to him, He leaned towards Arthur, whispering, his voice firm with accusation. "What's in it?"
Arthur leaned back, crossing his arms and legs. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
A suspicious look. "I saw ya. Y'know I saw ya slippin' that envelope into Mathias' locker. What was in it?"
Arthur tsked, turning his attention back to Mr. Vargas. If he were to tell Alfred about Lukas, about his not-so-subtle crush, he didn't know what the idiot would do with that information. What would happen to Lukas. What this Mathias would do if- no, when- he found out.
Only paying half attention to what he was saying, Arthur made his voice sound firm, final. "It's none of your business."
He ignored Alfred's protests, tuning in fully on Mr. Vargas. Even with his position up front and Arthur's row towards the back, his voice was loud. He walked towards a table, picking up one of the stacks of paper. "Ok." He licked his thumb, tabbing through the papers multiple at a time. "What I'm passing out to everyone is a packet that'll give y'all some more information about the choir. Costs, costumes, commitments, etc."
As he went from row to row, passing out his packets, Alfred took the opportunity to grate on Arthur's nerves yet again. "Whaddaya mean, 'it's not my business'?"
Huffing, Arthur turned to Alfred. Why did he have to be so persistent? Couldn't he just accept the fact that Arthur wasn't going to give him what he wanted? It was amusing at first, yes, but now, it was just plain annoying. "None of your business. Meaning, you have no role in this. None whatsoever. You don't need to know anything because it does not affect you."
"But this-"
"Ok, boys!" Mr. Vargas stopped in front of them, grabbing two packets from the very top of his stack, which was now in disarray. "One for Alfred, and, one for Arthur." Just as Arthur lifted his hand to take the packet, Mr. Vargas pulled it away. Alfred snickered. "Oh! I've already given you one."
Arthur narrowed his eyes. When had he- oh, that was right. Last Friday. He smiled, nodding. "Yes, you have."
Mr. Vargas bopped his head side to side, beginning to walk away, before stopping once more. He chucked the packet towards Arthur, who caught it with a quick burst of reflex, speaking as he walked away. "I've got extras, anyways."
"Thank you, sir." He gave him a sweet smile, running his finger back and forth over the staple in the corner of the first page. He let the smile fall as soon as Mr. Vargas was several chairs down.
Having watched the entire exchange, Alfred snorted, crossing his arms and leaning back. "So you're one of those types," he murmured.
He figured that Alfred didn't want him to hear that, considering how quiet his words were, but Arthur decided to comment anyway. "I'm one of those types?"
He nodded. "Yeah." His voice was stiff, tense, looking as if he would rather be anywhere else than talking to Arthur. Arthur rolled his eyes. The fool was the one who started the conversation, and now he was getting defensive.
Putting his arm on the back of the chair, Arthur adjusted his position, sitting on his right leg and turning to Alfred. Arthur made a fist and rested his chin on it. "And tell me, what type is that?"
Alfred flipped the page in his packet, just as Mr. Vargas had said to do, Arthur doing the same. Slower, but, nevertheless the same. Alfred didn't say anything, just reading the page along with the rest of the group, and Arthur began to think he wouldn't talk at all.
Huffing, Alfred looked at Arthur, raising an eyebrow. "Ya honestly don't know?"
With a honeyed smile, Arthur waved his hand. "Enlighten me."
Alfred tsked. "You're one of those types that're friendly to people who'll give ya somethin' ya want, but the second- the very second- they stop being useful, they're suddenly a pile of dog shit you stepped in."
Arthur scoffed. As much as the people in this school insisted the opposite, Alfred was an asshole. An arrogant, infuriating asshole.
He had to give him props for being so bold, however. Swiping the invisible dirt off his packet, Arthur snorted. "You've no idea, Golden Boy."
Alfred stiffened, sending Arthur a worried look. Arthur wasn't going to comment on it, considering that there could've been some private baggage lugged on with it, even if it did make him a tad bit curious.
"Now, turn the page." Arthur followed Mr. Vargas' instructions, scanning through the newly uncovered paper.
It covered costs, including costumes, club fees, and sheet music. He winced at the grand total, which was a low triple digit number, but high enough that it would take a few days to convince his parents. It would be a good idea to start this evening, even if he cringed at the thought of bringing that conversation up.
At the grumbling and gasps of the room, Mr. Vargas waved the paper around. "Calm down, calm down. I know uniforms cost a lot, but if you can use yours from last year instead of buying a new one, that's great. In fact, I recommend it. For those of you who can't afford to get your own customized costume, I have some used ones from over the years." Mr. Vargas gave everyone a reassuring smile before looking back down at the packet. "Now, turn your attention to 'club fees'."
Arthur drummed his fingers on his thigh, over and over and over again. He understood that this was necessary and that they were probably going to do the same- or at least something similar- thing the next week, but he couldn't help but want to start already. To get all of this over with and behind him.
Arthur groaned, hanging his head and rolling his eyes when Alfred started to speak again. "So tell me, what're ya tryin' to do with Mathias?"
It was nothing he needed to know about. Arthur was tempted to tell him yet again that it was none of his business, that he should just accept that fact that he would never know. But- and damn his insatiable appetite for knowledge and gossip- he was curious.
Smacking his packet onto his lap, Arthur turned to Alfred, eyes narrowed and head cocked to the side. "Why do you even want to know?"
He already knew the answer. That Mathias was his friend, and he worried about him and would try his best to protect him. Even if it meant interrogating and dealing with scum like Arthur.
The look of disgust on Alfred's face was familiar, one that various people have been sending his way for years. He sneered, and Arthur thought it looked unnatural on his face. "Why do I even wanna know? I wanna know 'cause I don't want one of my best friends to be caught in whatever your rotten fingers have been conjurin' up. It would be just like ya to make him fall in love with ya- or at least with a friend of yours that doesn't look like complete horse shit- and then rip his heart out once he's good n' vulnerable. Hell, I bet you would laugh."
Despite it being the purpose of the words, Arthur felt no pain, no sting from them. He took a deep breath, letting it all soak in. Alfred's tone, the hatred on his face as he spoke, he went over it all. He clenched his fist, his fingernails digging into the meat of his palm. It was odd that he was as calm as he was, considering his normal conflict resolution was yelling, accented with a few punches to the face.
When Arthur spoke, he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Is that what you think of me?" He gritted his teeth, tightening his fists.
Alfred snorted. "Do I think of ya as someone who'll gladly ruin someone's life for your own twisted amusement? For sure."
His hands were shaking, his fingers denting crescent moon shapes into his palms. Arthur reached out and grabbed what little fabric Alfred's t-shirt collar had, pulling him forward and snarling. At the surprised look on Alfred's face, Arthur almost smiled but smacked the temptation down in favor to bellow in his face. "If you think- if you even think- for one measly second that I'm going to allow you to-"
"Boys? Alfred, Arthur?'
Arthur let go of Alfred and pushed him away, snapping his attention to Mr. Vargas. He was smiling, tapping his foot, perfectly calm even with the thought of what might've broken out in his classroom had he not stopped it early. The majority of the room was silent, eyes wide and mouths gaped as they stared. A few turned to another, whispering and giggling and gossiping. Arthur inwardly groaned, imaging the pesky rumors that would surely spark up after this incident, spreading to everyone what he did.
And he knew, even with his short time at this school, in this country, that that is what would happen. Every single person would know that Arthur Kirkland threatened the school's favorite golden boy, Alfred F. Jones. Never mind that they wouldn't know what actually happened, what Alfred said, or the circumstances behind it. No, he knew he would be the villain in this one. He was prepared for it. Expected it.
"Sorry, sir. We just had a bit of a... disagreement." He got quieter as he spoke, covering his mouth with his hand.
Mr. Vargas was skeptical. "Are ya sure? It was lookin' as if Arthur was two seconds from punchin' your face in. If you're gonna have a lovers spat, be sure to do it outside of choir."
Color leeched out of Alfred's face as Mr. Vargas wagged his eyebrows, smiling smugly. The class erupted in giggles and chatter, some shouting out to Mr. Vargas to congratulate him on his quick and witty thinking.
At his words, Arthur figured that either Mr. Vargas had no clue of Alfred and Kiku's relationship, or that man had the world's most twisted sense of humor. Arthur smirked. If he was going take an opportunity, Arthur would as well.
"Oh, my apologies, sir. I can assure you, we'll make sure to take it elsewhere next time."
Alfred's head whipped towards Arthur, expression one of pure horror and surprise. He smirked, leaning back in his chair.
Mr. Vargas batted his eyes before breaking into a full chortle. When he finished, he wiped his eyes with his knuckle. "Ah... that's great. I like you, Arthur. This'll be a great year."
Taking in all the envious glances of his clubmates, the fidgeting and harsh breathing of Alfred, and the overall chaos that was to come, Arthur closed his eyes, hung his head, and sighed.
Two weeks in, and he already had no idea what he was doing.
If Arthur thought the Kirkland dinners were pure Hell, then the mandatory family time afterward was whatever was under. The hour of sitting in the living room, begrudgingly doing the planned activity and suffering the whole way through was established after Arthur's temper tantrum, as it had been dubbed. Which one, he didn't know and didn't care. His mother had named its purpose "family bonding", though Arthur knew it was just so she could show that she was still in control.
Arthur was scribbling drafts down for the next letter, crumbling and tossing them behind him when he found it to be subpar. They had settled on simply comparing Mathias to Magni, God of Strength- or so Lukas had claimed, but that hadn't made anything easier. At least with the story, he could switch out the characters with Mathias and Lukas and weave some flowery words to go with it. But now...
Arthur groaned, carding his fingers through his hair. He was stuck.
As he chucked yet another inked draft over his shoulder, his mother- of course, it had to be her- clicked her tongue. She turned her magazine flat on the arm of the couch, narrowing her eyes. "You are going to be picking those up after you've finished, yes?"
From the occasional glances upwards from his father and Peter, he knew they were listening. Paying attention. It didn't matter.
Not even bothering to stop writing, or even to look up once, he spoke. "I dunno. Maybe I'll get them, maybe I won't." He didn't need to see the look on his mother's face to know that it was there. Arthur weighed the pros and cons of starting yet another argument, but the cons dropped down. He needed her happy.
Which reminded him...
"Excuse me one moment." He stood up from his spot on the floor, arching his back and stretching. Quickly, Arthur ran up the stairs and grabbed his backpack, lugging it back down to the living room. He dropped it with a thump, not caring at all about the contents inside.
His mother watched him as he unzipped the middle pocket, moving several folders around until he found it, and pulled out the packet from earlier. He tossed it to her, the packet twirling before it hit her stomach. Peter snickered but was silenced by a look from their father.
"What's this?" She looked up and down before lifting the page and doing the same to the back. His father looked over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. He grunted, turning back to his book.
Sitting back down and crisscrossing his legs, Arthur propped his chin on his fist. "It's an information packet for the Madrigal choir at school."
A nod. "So you decided to join that. Good."
"Indeed."
he sat there, watching as she tabbed through the packet. When her eyes widened and she stilled, he stood to stand behind her. "What? What's wrong?"
She turned towards him, waving the packet in his face. "Do you see this?"
"No, I can't because you're waving it around like a madwoman." He snatched the packet, glancing down to see what she was flipping out about. There was digits and-
Oh. That's what she was going on about. He handed it back to her, returning to the floor. "That's not too bad."
The packet hit the couch cushion with a crack. Her face was growing red, her jaw clenching. She was angry, and though Arthur originally didn't want to get into it, he was already in the middle. He winced as she yelled. "You want me to spend four hundred dollars for a customized uniform that you'll only wear for a part of one year?"
Peter whistled, mocking a bomb falling from the sky, and, at Arthur's glare, stuck his tongue out and went back to his homework. His father stayed silent, the only indication that he heard what they were saying being a raised brow.
Arthur crossed his arms, cocking his head to the side. "You don't know that, mum. I could do a Madrigal choir in college. I could suddenly become interested in reenactments of the Renaissance period, and when that happens, dearest mother, I'll need my four-hundred dollar customized costume." He smiled, figuring he would seem more agreeable that way.
But, of course, she wouldn't cooperate. She looked at him as if he had gone crazy, with her brow lowered and lips propped up in a sneer. "You want me to do something for you when you've done nothing of what your father and I have asked you to do."
Arthur threw his hands up in the air, shaking his head. "What have you asked me to do in the past month?" By then, his father had closed his book and set it on the end table, leaning back and watching. Peter was still doing his homework but was smiling and bopping his foot, a telltale sign that he actually wasn't paying attention to it.
"A month ago, your father and I told you to become a respectable person. I have not seen any improvement."
The conversation was starting to grow strangely familiar as if he had heard something similar almost every single night. It began to grow old, being yelled at about the same thing daily, and Arthur was sick of it.
He tsked. "You constantly say that, but you've yet to tell me what you think a 'respectable person' is like. It's ridiculous, and, quite honestly, pathetic. You tell me to do something, but don't say anything else. It's just vague words, said over and over again."
And there it was. Arthur getting defensive and angry over something so minor. It was something that was becoming more frequent, at least once a day now, and though he tried to control it, to hold it back, it never worked. Counting to ten, he knew, would not do anything.
Drumming her fingers against the arm of the couch, an infamous Kirkland scowl spread across her face. She was quiet for a couple of minutes, and when she finally spoke, she whispered, growing louder as she went on. "Are you seriously asking me how to be decent? How to not act like a little shit and behave properly instead of yelling and screaming at anyone who doesn't do what you want them to?"
He wasn't going to get into this with her, not with Peter there. Taking a deep breath, running his fingers through the plush, white carpet, Arthur pushed himself up to stand.
His father leaned forward in his chair, propping his elbows on his knees, looking as if he were preparing to break up a fight. It only succeeded in making Arthur angrier, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth, a warmth spreading across his cheeks.
He turned to his mother, put one foot back and the other in line with his shoulders, and bowed with a swivel of a hand and extra flamboyance. When he looked up, the shock on his mother's face was enough to make him smile. "I'll be needing a decision by next Wednesday, Your Majesty." Then he walked away, grabbing his stuff on his way out, towards the stairs, without paying any attention to Peter or his parents or anything.
When he reached his bedroom, he fell against his bed, groaning. It felt as if Arthur was in a circle, going round and round and round, with no planned stop in sight.
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I'VE BEEN PONDERING PREDICTOR
This section is now obsolete for YC founders presenting at Demo Day, we have a dress rehearsal called Rehearsal Day. That means two years later you'll be making $4. If you find yourself saying a sentence that ends with but we're going to keep working on the startup, you are in big trouble. One reason founders resist describing their projects concisely is that, at this early stage, there are no external checks at all. I could see the average town was like a roach motel for startup ambitions: smart, ambitious people went in, but no startups came out. You can see it in old photos. If so many startups get demoralized and fail when merely by hanging on they could get code released on the production servers before lunch.1 Going to or back to school is a huge predictor of death. It's remarkable how wedded they are to their standard m. So approach this like an algorithm that gets the right answer by successive approximations. It sounds crazy, but there's a good chance the outrageous price they want will later seem a bargain.2
But both began with a core of fanatically devoted users, and all three instantly said yes. Many observers have noticed that one of the executive class riding the elephant.3 Programmers, though, like it better when they turn down acquisition offers usually end up doing better. I've learned a lot about: the company that solved that important problem.4 Don't get too deeply into business models. I worry that if we don't acknowledge this, we're headed for trouble. By individual managers without any additional approvals. This is one of those they remember. Service rates for men born in the early 1980s that the term yuppie was coined.
Let me mention some things not to do is expand it. He turned out to be more like bureaucrats. Wars make central governments more powerful, and World War II lasted less than 4 years for the US, as in all the other Allied countries, the federal government with policies and in wartime, large orders that kept out competitors.5 5 months behind the rapacious one. There is no real distinction between read-time lets users reprogram Lisp's syntax; running code at compile-time is the basis of Lisp's use as an extension language in programs like Emacs; and reading at runtime enables programs to communicate using s-expressions, an idea was returning whose name sounds old-fashioned precisely because it was so rare for so long: that you could make your fortune.6 Which in turn means the variation in the amount of wealth people can create has not only dropped out of grad school, but we're going to keep working on the startup, but we're going to keep working on the startup. A rounds. We try to pick founders who are good at building things, not ones who are slick presenters.
I cross this out? Here there were 3 choices: NBC, CBS, and ABC. We take for granted the forms of fragmentation we like, and worry only about the ones we don't. The late 19th and early 20th centuries had been a book.7 The metaphor people use to describe the way a startup feels is at least a roller coaster and not drowning. Don't worry if your company is just a bunch of guesses, and guesses about stuff that's probably not your area of expertise. Since then he has not only dropped out of grad school, but appeared full length in Newsweek with the word Billionaire printed across his chest.8
Don't put too many words on slides. So if you don't let people ship, you won't have any artists. And since people vary dramatically in productivity, paying market price meant salaries started to diverge. It would be unthinkably humiliating to fail now. In most places the atmosphere pulls you back toward the mean.9 A startup is so hard that working on it can't be preceded by but.10 Audiences tune that out. After a while they all blur together. But when I went looking for alternatives to fill this void, I found practically nothing.11 In tax rates, federal power, defense spending, conscription, and nationalism the decades after the war looked more like wartime than prewar peacetime. The ambitious had little choice but to join large organizations that made them march in step with lots of other people—literally in the case of big corporations. Nor did they work for big companies.
It's difficult to imagine now, but every night tens of millions of families would sit down together in front of their TV set watching the same show, at the same time. Mostly they crawl off somewhere and die. Some switched from meat loaf to tofu, and others to Hot Pockets. There are three reasons. This kind of expert witness can add credibility, even if the audience doesn't understand all the details. As big companies' oligopolies became less secure, they were less able to pass costs on to customers and thus less willing to overpay for labor.12 There I found a copy of the server software running on your laptop.13 And when you can do that much better with computers.14 Then replace the draft with what you said to your friend.15 We try to pick founders who are good at building things, not ones who are slick presenters. No other computer manufacturer had ever been able to outsell them.16
Thousands of companies run by their founders were merged into a couple hundred giant ones run by professional managers.17 Chance meetings produce miracles to compensate for the disasters that characteristically befall startups.18 I was considering starting another startup.19 There is a huge predictor of death because in addition to the distraction it gives you something to say you're doing.20 Viaweb's was the Microsoft Word of ecommerce. For us the main indication of impending doom is when we don't hear from you. Something comes over most people when they start writing. Oh yeah, we had to interrupt everything and borrow one of their conference rooms to talk down an investor who was about to back out of a new funding round we needed to stay alive.21
When a language is made entirely of expressions, you can write it and push it to the production servers was two weeks. So what's the real reason there aren't more Googles? Plus public TV for eggheads and communists. But don't give them more than four or five numbers, and only give them numbers specific to you. Make a soundbite stick in their heads. As well as pushing incomes up from the bottom, by overpaying unions, the big companies of the 20th century meant most people who weren't already in it. If you find yourself saying a sentence that ends with but we're going to keep working on the startup. Nothing is forever, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more forever than most things, and sometimes the existing companies weren't the ones who did it best. Business owners weren't supposed to be making money either.22 When people do that today it's usually to enjoy them again e.
Notes
And of course the source files of all. Without distractions it's too late? The image shows us, they could to help the company, you have good net growth till you see with defense contractors or fashion brands. The VCs recapitalize the company down.
The powerful don't need its reassurance. Trevor Blackwell, who probably knows more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The CRM114 Discriminator. It seems justifiable to use those solutions. The most striking example I know it's a significant cause, and the manager mostly in Perl, and a wing collar who had it used a recent Business Week, 31 Jan 2005.
Credit card debt stupidest of all the rules with the other meanings are fairly closely related.
And maybe we should be protected against being mistreated, because living at all. I mean no more unlikely than it was because he was skeptical about Viaweb too. There's comparatively little from it.
I'd encourage anyone starting a startup idea is crack. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and partly because users hate the idea that evolves naturally, and their houses are transformed by developers into McMansions and sold to VPs of Bus Dev.
But knowledge overlaps with wisdom and intelligence can help founders is exaggerated now because it's told with a faulty knowledge of human nature is certainly more efficient. This is a big market, meaning master.
Moving large amounts of money from them. You can't be hacked, measure the degree to which the top schools are, which have varied dramatically.
It's hard to avoid sticking.
The point of saying that this isn't strictly true, because any VC would think Y Combinator is a trap set by evil companies for the firm in the room, you could try telling him it's XML. Give us 10 million and we'll tell you alarming things, a market of one investor who for some reason, rather technical sense of not starving then you should push back on industrialization at the bottom of a type of lie.
How can people who get rich, people would be very popular but from what it can buy. But those are guaranteed in the computer, the 2005 summer founders, HR acquisitions are viewed by acquirers as more akin to hiring bonuses. I have set up an additional disk drive.
Ii. But there seem to want them; you don't, but the route to that mystery is that some of the word that came to work for startups is uninterruptability.
I'm compressing the story a bit more complicated, because software takes longer to close than you otherwise would have gone into the work that seems formidable from the formula. The situation we face here, since human vision is the only significant channel was our own Web site. Disclosure: Reddit was funded by Y Combinator is a great hacker. Or it may have now missed the video boat entirely.
In high school, the initial capital requirement for German companies is 47. What people who don't like the stuff one used to do that, isn't it?
Creative Destruction Whips through Corporate America. Instead of making the things they've tried on the young Henry VIII and was soon to reap the rewards.
How much more analytical style of thinking. 01.
The solution was a kid and as a percentage of startups small this first summer, we're going to give it back. PR has at least once for the first scientist.
I overstated the case of journalists, someone did, but he doesn't remember which.
Interestingly, the number of spams that have already launched or can be times when what you're doing. The Department of English Studies. There are a better strategy in an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to need to offer especially large rewards to get significant numbers of users, not conquest.
An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in Lisp. Most computer/software startups are simply no outside forces pushing high school textbooks. Don't invest so much the better, but starting a startup, both of whom have become direct marketers. That will in many cases be an anti-recommendation.
Does anyone really think we're so useless that in Silicon Valley.
But it is certainly part of an urban legend. No VC will admit they're influenced by confidence.
The liking you have a better influence on your board, there was nothing special. Record labels, for example, the term whitelist instead of Windows NT? Stone, op. The founders we fund used to be able to distinguish 1956 from 1957 Studebakers.
Thanks to the guys at O'Reilly, Greg Mcadoo, Aaron Swartz, Slava Akhmechet, Geoff Ralston, John Collison, Tad Marko, and Robert Morris for the lulz.
#automatically generated text#Markov chains#Paul Graham#Python#Patrick Mooney#march#Which#growth#people#sup#PR#company#Does#school#disasters#top#secure#customers#right#tendency#strategy#class#disk#word#language#work#addition#computer
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Why Retail is Dying: The Self-Inflicted Wounds Theory (and What’s Next)
The commonly accepted view of why the traditional brick and mortar retail business is imploding is that Amazon is out-executing and simply eating everyone’s lunch.
While it is true that Amazon has built an incredible business around a number of significant competitive advantages and the consumer product discovery process has profoundly changed due to consumers’ adoption of mobile and social media — that doesn’t tell us the entire story.
My view is retailers are suffering most from self-inflicted wounds in response to changes in market equilibrium between retailer, consumer and brand.
Catching a Falling Knife
Retailers overbuilt. Period.
They didn’t overbuild because they were stupid and felt like wasting money.
They overbuilt because they missed early signs of rapid ecommerce adoption and the impact that mobile devices would have on steepening that adoption curve.
That fundamental miscalculation combined with industry standard long-term leases for big box retailers, then further exacerbated with public earnings expectations driving aggressive store roll-out schedules formed the perfect storm for traditional brick-and-mortar retail.
The outcome? Too much capacity, not enough demand.
But the subsequent response to all that excess capacity is mostly self-inflicted.
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The Retailer-Supplier Arms Race
In most, if not all industries, long-term profits are compressed over time where only those with the lowest cost advantage and lowest cost of capital can survive.
Retail is no different. The overbuilding of retail outlets only helped to accelerate this process.
To ease the pain of excess capacity, retailers do what companies do in such circumstances; they disrupt long-standing equilibrium and kick off an arms race by squeezing their suppliers without mercy.
Here’s what happened:
Retailers demanded higher margins, return allowances, marketing contributions, markdown dollars and hundreds of other “programs” that all favor the retailer and stack the deck against the consumer product company.
To add insult to injury, retailers also resorted to private labelling and knocking off their suppliers’ best selling products to capture more of the margin dollars on fast moving products.
And to top it off, in order to attract traffic in an increasingly homogenized world, retailers have taken to a strategy of endless discounting which weakens the brands they carry and erodes much needed contribution margin. All of which has created a feedback loop which puts pressure on retail execs to squeeze their suppliers even more.
Not a pretty picture.
The Next Big Hit
If you have ever spent more than 15 minutes working with large retailers, you know they are perpetually craving new products.
They are forever addicted to the next hit product because hit products bring the thing they need the most: foot traffic.
So, instead of cultivating and developing relationships with emerging brands by offering incentives to innovate in concert with the retailer (they will tell you they do this but ask any new brand how their roll-out at “mega store x” went and you will hear a different story), they deploy draconian contractual provisions which are exactly the opposite of what fragile, new companies need to succeed and continue innovating.
The key takeaway is that the retailers themselves have created a serious threat to their flow of product. As I mentioned above, Amazon is without a doubt a major competitive threat, but what most people don’t realize is that the retailers have been busy strangling themselves.
All of which leads us to the current “death of retail” moment.
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The Microbrands Strike Back
Whether you are an emerging brand or an industry giant, in the last few years, there has been a proliferation of SaaS tools that enable a company to control every aspect of the consumer product value chain.
Whether it is developing and sourcing new products or targeting and converting new customers, tools like BigCommerce, Mailchimp, OptinMonster, ShipStation and many, many more have greatly reduced the barriers to entry for conceiving of, producing, marketing and fulfilling a consumer product.
As is typical when you dramatically lower the barriers to entry for a given industry, a wave of new start-ups enter the market shortly thereafter.
New brands are quite literally popping up every day.
While many of these brands will fail, the truly innovative ones will succeed. And now, instead of having to hope they get picked up by large retailers, they can start selling in a matter of minutes using BigCommerce.
There is no need for rent. No need for long-term contracts. Just sign up for a free trial of your favorite ecommerce platform, connect your free Mailchimp account and you are on your way.
Large consumer product companies have adapted too.
In response to retailers attempts at gaining leverage on their suppliers, large consumer product companies have launched their own counter-measures such as building out direct-to-consumer channels while smaller players have been forced out of business or have had to dramatically alter their channel strategy.
Now, instead of relying on the foot traffic of retailers, they can target new customers with microscopic precision.
These same brands can fulfill their orders directly through their own distribution network or the many capable 3PL players in the market.
Getting direct access to the end consumer has never been easier on one hand and it has never been more competitive on the other.
These changes have delivered the last thing traditional brick-and-mortar retailers needed; more competition.
Attack of the Microbrands
A deep-dive analysis of the rise of the microbrand using hyper-targeted marketing and just-in-time manufacturing by Scott Belsky, CPO at Adobe.
Read it on Medium here.
“Retail is Dying,” or The Three Front War
Yes, sure Amazon is eating their lunch, but now in addition to trying to defend against a strong adversary with a significant scale advantage, retailers have opened up wars on two more fronts:
Rapidly emerging brands that are skipping retailers entirely like SA Company
Large consumer product companies that have had enough of the draconian terms forced upon them by the largest players in retail.
So, now retailers find themselves fighting a three front war all the while the underlying economics of the retail business worsen.
This is a recipe for disaster.
Retailers are being clubbed by the almighty Amazon while being subjected to the death of a thousand cuts from new brands that are chipping away at every conceivable niche and micro-niche.
Not surprisingly, the number of retail bankruptcy filings has increased significantly and is unlikely to subside any time soon. At the time of writing in 2018, there have already been 6 retail bankruptcies.
The dynamics outlined above are not short-term disruptions to an otherwise healthy market. They are significant and long-lasting changes that will require wholesale changes in operating tactics, channel strategies and financial levers.
Historically, change of this scale works out poorly for the incumbents.
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Why Retail is Dying: The Self-Inflicted Wounds Theory (and What’s Next) published first on https://goshopmalaysia.tumblr.com
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