#renting in a fucking suburb without a car because its the only thing we can afford-> ruined my fucking life

[thedisablednaturalist]

People should get reimbursed for commute time

If it takes someone over an hour to get tk work, that should be part of their pay.

Many people have to commute long distances/through areas of slow traffic because they cannot afford to live closer to their workplace. This is also why work from home is a big thing.

If corporations want people to return to their offices, they need to make it appealing enough. I'm not going to fight through traffic for 2 hrs in my free time just to sit at a computer all day, when I could just stay home and don't waste that time.

Corporations would be forced to invest in local affordable housing, perhaps even affording housing credits. They would need to invest in local infrastructure (which in the US is falling to pieces) and improve public transport in their area (faster commute -> less cost to the company, less cars on road -> traffic moves faster, employees without cars would still be able to get to work). Also people would be less stressed and actually take the time to drive safely because they wouldn't feel the need to rush. It would make companies actually take an interest in how their workers get to work and investing in local communities.

I live sort of near DC. We have a HUGE amount of workers commuting into the city and its surrounding cities. Retail workers also have to commute to these cities and suburbs because they cannot afford to live in those areas. My boyfriend commutes an hour to his part time job at a kennel in a rich town. A lot of people live in the more affordable, lower income, far away areas in the nearby states because housing prices in my area are fucking insane. I knew someone who commuted 2+ hours to work and 2+ hours back. There are people who drive even more than that.

And where do these employees have to live? Food deserts. Crumbling infastructure. No parks, no walkability, no public transport, bare bones everything. Only the cities which only the few can afford have basic infrastructure. And even the people living there have to commute to OTHER even richer areas. There's a ton of places where housing developments have just been shoved and are surrounded by nothing but farms. There's nothing local to do, so everyone goes to the closest town and city. It's also why you see a lot of older towns have abandoned main streets. Why have your business cater to the 100 people who live there when you can be in a city with thousands?

There has been some recent interest in paid commute times. 1 2 especially with corporations trying to get workers to go back to the office. Personally, I love working in my office because having a separate space outside my home helps me keep work and home separate and allows me to focus easier since I'm not in "home mode". I don't have room for an office in my parents house so working from home kinda sucks rn even though it would help a lot since I'm disabled. But it is nice being physically near my coworkers, even if it gets annoying sometimes. Also many jobs involve fieldwork (like mine!) which can't be done remotely anyway!

There would be incentive for corporations to keep their employees close AND provide more remote work options for those living farther away. As well as matching pay to fit rent/housing prices in the area (or vice versa).

Also there needs to be something done about corporations having their entire workforce sourced from another country entirely, working for pennies. But that's an even more complicated situation that I don't have experience in.

#long post #its 6am rant time #its so much more sustainable to have people live and work in the same communities #so many resources are spent on commute #i like my drive because it gives me time to wake up and i like just sitting n focusing for a bit #but my commute is also pretty easy since I am going away from the city towards the lower income areas #on the other direction it is backed up completely most days #we drive a lot during work to bc we visit different restoration sites and we get paid for those driving times! #it all comes down to corporations not giving a shit about their employees lives #pls dont try n dox me there are a ton of areas near DC like mine #so its harder than you'd think #but yea ive seen some crazy fucking traffic and commute times #corporations should invest in their communities instead of acting like fucking parasites #remote work #return to office #commute #labor rights #id love if sustainable city experts n economists chimed in #sustainability #sustainable cities #local economy #community

[365days365movies]

April 5, 2021: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) (Recap: Part One)

Yeah, so...Spectrum exploded last night.

So, I'm unfortunately a little behind. BUT NEVER FEAR! I'll get back on time before you know it! So, uh...where were we last time? OH RIGHT! Let's talk about black comedy. And I don't mean black-and-white comedies, or comedies prominently featuring African-American culture and demographic. No, I mean dark comedies.

The "black comedy" functions off of macabre or taboo humor and jokes, and is often closely associated with biting satire and commentary in film. That definition is loose as hell, I know, but it's all about the subject matter. The most common subject matter for dark humor is death, of course, and related subjects to death. War, murder, strife, madness, and violence are also common topics here.

Some of the best comedies are black comedies, though. For example, Brazil (1985; dir. Terry Gilliam) focuses on themes of depression, dreams, terrorism, totalitarian governments, and madness. And it's GREAT. How about The Death of Stalin (2018; dir. Armando Iannucci)? The title ALONE should tell you everything you need to know about the tone and topic, AND YET...

It's HILARIOUS. And also informative! If you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend it. And again, that film is about, well...the death of Stalin, and the fallout of his disastrous and murderous regime. Dark, DARK topic, but very funny movie.

Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is about war; Fargo is about murder in North Dakota; Heathers is about a toxic relationship and the death and murder of teenagers; Birdman, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance is about an actor's existential crisis and complete mental breakdown; and Trainspotting is about the devastating effects of drug addiction and features a DEAD BABY FOR CHRIST'S SAKE...and yet they're all full of laughs! Except for the baby scene. Fuck me, the baby scene in Trainspotting.

So, yeah, these are a diverse group of films, that's for sure. But where does it all start? There's 1942's To Be or Not to Be (dir. Ernst Lubitsch), which is about a Polish theatre company who need to escape in the midst of...well, 1942 Poland. If you don't get why that's dark, you should probably look up some history, bud. Charlie Chaplin would dip into the role in 1947's Monsieur Verdoux, which I mentioned last time. And there's the seldom-talked-about Kind Hearts and Coronets (dir. Robert Hamer), a 1949 film about murder for status, essentially.

But it's hard to argue that the most prominent early black comedy is 1944's Cary Grant vehicle, Arsenic and Old Lace.

Directed by Frank Capra, this film was based on a 1941 stage play, and is about...well, we'll get to it. While its prominence as a black comedy is one reason I'm watching this movie, the other is...well, to be honest, this is a movie I heard about CONSTANTLY from my Mom, as this is one of her favorites. And yet, like Dirty Dancing, I've somehow never seen it! Let's remedy that.

So, without further ado, let's get into it! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

The film starts off with a BANG, as a man calls me a “big simp” to my face! Actually, he’s screaming at a Brooklyn Dodgers game, where a massive fight breaks out. This fight quickly transitions to a city hall, where a line of people are waiting to file marriage licenses. Amongst the line is Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) and Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane).

Brewster is hiding from the press, as he’s a famous reviewer, and author of the Bachelor’s Bible, and it would be quite the scandal for him to get married. And yet, he’s head over heels in love with Elaine. After going through an existential crisis about the whole thing, he gives into Elaine’s sweet demeanor, and the two file their marriage license officially.

It’s Halloween day, and we move from the city to the suburbs of Brooklyn, where two policemen, O’Hara (Jack Carson) and Sanders (John RIdgely) are on patrol. Sanders tells O’Hara of the kindly Brewster Sisters, the sweetest women on Earth, both of whom live in the neighborhood. Currently, they are being visited by Reverend Harper (Grant Mitchell), Elaine’s father. He’s speaking with Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha Brewster (Jean Adair), the kindly aunts of Mortimer. 

Also living there is Mortimer’s brother Teddy Brewster (John Alexander), who apparently believes that he’s Teddy Roosevelt, which is...hilarious. Dude is hilarious, seriously. The cops come over to visit the two, and collect some clothes and toys for local charity. Also, Teddy only leaves a room by screaming “CHAAAAARGE!!!”, and running up the stairs, and I love Teddy a lot.

Reverend Harper and the cops leave for the night, and the sisters settle down for the evening. Abby and Martha state that their plans for Elaine and Mortimer should go as scheduled, which is probably talking about their marriage. Abby also mentions that she’s done something while she was away, to Martha’s delight and surprise. They tell Teddy that he’ll soon be digging a new lock for the Panama Canal...whatever that means.

Martha’s about to go to the basement to see what Abby’s done, but she states that because she was all by herself, the surprise is in the window seat. As she’s about to look at the surprise, Elaine shows up in the window, and the two arrive to give the happy news that they’re married. Elaine goes to tell her father of the news, while Mortimer goes to tell his sweet aunts. Afterwards, the two will be on their honeymoon, going to Niagara Falls. And I should say, they’re quite a sweet couple.

After telling the news to his aunts, he asks them where his notes are for his new controversial book, Mind Over Matrimony. They go to look for it around the house, and Teddy comes downstairs, dressed up in attire to “go to Panama.” Aunt Abby comes across a childhood picture of Jonathan, Mortimer’s brother and apparently a violent sociopath or some sort. She goes to burn the picture (geez), and Mortimer continues to look for the notes. He goes to the window seat.

Yup! It’s a body! Looks like Abby and Martha’s sweet old lady act is a guise for some myurder! Which I know, just because it’s the most famous thing about the movie. However, Mortimer thinks the murderer is Teddy, and tells his sweet old aunts about the body, asking that he gets put into an asylum. But Abby notes that Teddy didn’t kill the man, and they already know about the body!

Which, yeah, surprises Mortimer, obviously.

Abby cheerfully admits that the man, Mr. Hoskins, was poisoned by a tainted glass of elderberry wine, and that they did so on purpose, hiding the body before the Reverend came for a visit. The whole thing isn’t a big deal; it’s just Abby and Martha’s little secret!

After they leave, and brush off the whole thing as easy as needlepoint or macramé as a hobby, Mortimer, is completely broken by the whole affair, and is partially convinced that he’s dreaming. All the while, Elaine’s trying to get Mortimer to come over and speak with her father. But Mortimer can’t exactly forget about this whole silly murder thing, and goes to confront his aunts about it. He learns that Teddy’s digging not a lock, but a grave in the cellar. As he’s done with 10 other bodies. Or maybe it’s 11 others?

After picking up a phone call from Elaine, then hanging up abruptly (and understandably), Mortimer finds out how this whole thing started. See, the two have a “Renters Wanted” sign in their front lawn, and the neighborhood thinks that it’s there so the two sweet old ladies can offer help to anyone in need, even though they aren’t actually renting to anyone. In reality...well, they do it for another reason.

See, an older gentleman stopped by a bit ago, and he had a heart attack right there in the living room. After seeing how peaceful he looked, the two decided to bring in other lonely old men and bring in the same kind of peace. And from there...well, yeah, you get the general idea. They’ve been poisoning them with arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide mixed in with elderberry wine. Apparently, Martha’s got the mixture just right so that it tastes delicious. With all this explained, they offer Mortimer a sip of wine. Which he’s understandably nervous about.

But with all of that done, Elaine comes over to check in on him. But he’s not able to tell her anything, which greatly (and understandably) confuses her. He basically kicks her out (which enrages her, once again understandably), and calls a judge with the intent to frame the whole affair on Teddy, who’s always been.unstable. Which, for the record, is not even SLIGHTLY going to solve the problem.

But as he’s on the phone, a man named Gibbs (Edward McWade) comes in to rent an apartment. He’s all alone in the world, with nobody to care for him. And of course, this leads to the women trying to poison him with the wine. It’s a funny yet tense moment as he stops just short of drinking the wine, distracted by Mortimer’s freakout over the phone. But Mortimer gets off the phone JUST in time to scare Gibbs away and stop him from drinking the wine. And it is...VERY funny, goddamn.

As Mortimer tries to tell the aunts exactly what’s wrong with what they’re doing, the phone rings. It’s a call from Witherspoon (Edward Everett Horton), who runs an asylum that Mortimer wants Teddy committed into. However, they don’t quite have room for him, as they have too many Theodore Roosevelts at present. However, they do need more Napoleon Bonapartes. I love this goddamn movie.

Still, Witherspoon agrees to take him in despite that, and Mortimer head out to get the paperwork done. However, he asks his aunts to not do anything until he gets back, and he also proises that he’ll attend the “services” for their latest victim. He leaves, and kinda steals a cabbie’s car in the process (I love this movie, I’m telling you), and Abby and Martha start shutting things down for the night. However, as they do, they get a mysterious knock on the door. They pretend not to be home...only for a man with an ominous scar to enter the room regardless.

Let’s pause here, shall we? See you in Part 2!

#arsenic and old lace #frank capra #joseph kesselring #cary grant #priscilla lane #raymond massey #jack carson #peter lorre #jean adait #josephine hull #john alexander #john ridgely #userveil #johnsonshildy #userkeanu #usersasha #user365 #comedy april #365days365movies #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year

[bongaboi]

Liverpool: 2019-20 Premier League Champions

30 years of hope: my life as an ardent Liverpool fan

After three decades of near misses, slips and tears, the Merseyside team’s wait for another league title is nearly over. So what does it mean to a scouser and lifelong fan?

by Hannah Jane Parkinson

I am three years old in the photograph, hugging a plastic, flyaway football. I am seven, arriving tentatively for my first training session at a local girls’ club. I am bounding back to my mother’s car, blowing hot breath on cold hands, beaming, the salt from the artificial turf embedded in the soles of my trainers.

I am eight and glued to the television, watching teen wunderkind and my Liverpool hero, Michael Owen, score the perfect goal against Argentina in World Cup 98.

I am nine. I give up one of the few days I have to visit my father to attend my first ever match at Anfield, Liverpool FC’s famous stadium. A week later, my father dies. These two events are inextricably linked in my mind, and the guilt continues to whichever day you are reading this.

I am 10 and make my first appearance in print in a feature for the local paper, the Liverpool Echo, about girls getting into football. I am quoted as saying that all my sister cares about is boys and fashion.

Twelve years old and the fuzzy letters of “Parkinson” on the back of my shirt arch down my shoulder blades.

I am 13. Our team, known as Liverpool Feds, are approached by Liverpool FC to become their official girls’ outfit. We visit Melwood, the first team’s training ground. The full-size goals loom like scaffolding.

I am 14. My hero, Owen, makes the same move to Real Madrid that Steve McManaman made five years before him. This breaks my heart. Suddenly, all I care about is boys and fashion. Without really making a decision, I give up football. Cold winter nights are spent inside on the sofa watching Sex and the City. I discover live music and MySpace.

I am 15. I own the entire range of Clearasil products. A group of my schoolfriends and I take a night off GCSE revision to watch the 2005 European Champions League final in Istanbul; the first the club has reached since the mid-80s, and so it is forbidden not to watch. Liverpool are losing by three goals at half time. A lost cause. Minds wander to the second biology paper… But wait. Liverpool pull back to 3-3. And win on penalties. Pandemonium. We join the throng in the streets; the blaring car horns; the beer jumping, like salmon, from pint glasses; the embrace of strangers; the straining vocal cords.

I am 18 and living in Russia, watching games on my first-generation smartphone via a 2G internet connection. Each time a player goes through on goal the signal drops to endless buffering. Liverpool finish second in the league, four points behind bitter rivals Manchester United.

I am 26, we are bearing down on the title. Steven Gerrard in an impromptu on-pitch team talk, after a crucial win against the newly flush Manchester City, shouts hoarsely at his players: “This does not fucking slip now!” The next home game, Gerrard – one of the best players the club has ever seen, captain, scouser, Liverpool FC lifer – literally slips on the turf against Chelsea to concede a goal. We lose. Manchester City finish top of the league by two points.

I am 29. I am in Cuba, where the internet is heavily censored. But I manage to watch the last game of the season, which will be decisive. Liverpool finish the league with 97 points; the highest points tally ever for a team that doesn’t win the title. City win again. With 98 points. Liverpool do, however, win the Champions League – for the sixth time – after scoring four goals in a sublime semi-final comeback against Barcelona. The injured Mohamed Salah, watching on the bench, wears a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Never Give Up”. The T-shirt sells out.

I am 30. I have never witnessed my beloved Liverpool FC lift the title. Two months from now, this is going to change. As I write Liverpool have a 22-point lead at the top of the table. Of 84 points available this season, they have taken 79. Next Monday is the derby against Everton.

I want to untangle what this will mean to me – the fan who met Steven Gerrard a couple of years ago, grinning like a child; the fan who, two weeks ago, was unbelievably touched when current star Trent Alexander-Arnold recorded a video message to cheer her up during a bad time. What it means to other fans: those who witnessed the dominance of the 1980s, and the younger ones who have known only disappointment. And what it means, too, for the future of the area of Anfield itself.

It’s late February in the Flat Iron pub, one of the many dotted around Anfield. Steve Dodd, who is 49, is with his friends Dan Wynn, 26, and Gerrard Noble, 47. All from Somerset, they are having a pre-match drink before the home game against West Ham. Steve talks of the current Jürgen Klopp-assembled side as the best Liverpool side he thinks he’s ever seen.

The friends have been scouring the internet for places to stay in the city for the last home fixture of the season, but to no avail. “Rooms are going for £400 a night,” Gerrard says, his eyes widening. He and Steve are allowing themselves to get excited, but Dan, who like me has yet to experience a league title win, looks anxious and rubs his thighs. “No,” he says, “I don’t want to jinx it. Though I’ve been kicked out of various WhatsApp groups for being smug about all the results.” Steve tells me they weren’t prepared for it, this three-decade-long wait: “I just thought we’d go on winning.”

We talk about how important it is that Klopp’s politics match the club: Liverpool is a leftwing city; Liverpool is a leftwing club. At the last election, Labour retained all of its 14 MPs on Merseyside. The city has never forgiven the Tories for former chancellor Geoffrey Howe’s strategy of “managed decline”. Thatcher is a hated figure. But so is Derek Hatton, the former city council deputy leader and member of the Marxist group Militant. Last month, Italy’s rightwing politician Matteo Salvini was forced to deny that he had pulled out of a visit to Liverpool after the metropolitan region’s mayor called him a “fascist”. During several games last year, chants rang out for Jeremy Corbyn. The current prime minister conspicuously avoids visiting. As Gareth Robertson, who is a part of the immensely popular The Anfield Wrap podcast, with more than 200,000 weekly downloads in 200 countries, puts it to me: “Not only do we want a good football coach, we expect almost a political leader, someone who gets us, and our city, its values.” Humorously, there have been petitions for Liverpool to become a self-determined scouse state, and “Scouse not English” is a frequent terrace chant.

The club has a mantra: “This means more.” It pisses off other teams and is, understandably, dismissed as marketing speak. But isn’t it true? Isn’t the 127-year-old club what people think of when anyone, anywhere in the world, mentions “Liverpool”? The famous football team that plays in red – allowing for the Beatles, of course.

The city has another team, the blue of Everton. I have nothing against Everton. I consider Everton fellow scousers and too little a threat to focus animosity towards. In a way, the clubs are unruly siblings; we love and scrap in equal measure. Totally different personalities, but born of the same streets.

Four years ago, a man named Jürgen Klopp arrived on these streets. Or more accurately, he arrived in the suburb of Formby, renting the house from his managerial predecessor, Brendan Rodgers. Klopp is the football manager that even non-football fans like. He’s Ludovico Einaudi, seducing those previously uninterested in classical music. He is a man of principle; a baseball cap permanently affixed to his head, as though at any point he might be required to step up to the plate on a blindingly sunny day. Perhaps for the Boston Red Sox, owned by Liverpool FC’s American proprietor, John W Henry.

Klopp is erudite. He is proudly anti-Brexit in a city that voted 58% Remain. “For me, Brexit makes no sense at all,” he has said. He is a socialist: “I am on the left … I believe in the welfare state. I’m not privately insured. I would never vote for a party because they promised to lower the top tax rate. If there’s something I will never do in my life it is vote for the right.” He grew up in a humble village in Germany’s Black Forest, and it shows. There’s a saying in the region: “the hair in the soup”. It means focusing on even the tiniest things that can be improved.

He has the good looks of one of my favourite 1960s Russian film stars, Aleksandr Demyanenko. He hugs his players as though they were the loves of his life and he might never see them again. Journalists like him for his press-conference banter as well as his eloquence. He visits children in hospitals. He is funny. When Mario Götze, one of his star players at former club Borussia Dortmund, left for Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich, his explanation was: “He’s leaving because he’s Guardiola’s favourite. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I can’t make myself shorter and learn Spanish.”

Liverpool have had many famous managers, of course. Bill Shankly (there’s a statue of him outside the ground); Bob Paisley (ditto); Kenny Dalglish. But Klopp is already being talked of as one of the best ever.

Liverpool the city has evolved from its shamefully prominent role in the slave trade – in common with other major British ports – to a place with a diverse population and a well-won reputation for being friendly and welcoming. But the tragedy and scandal of Hillsborough, in which 96 fans were crushed to death in 1989 at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground, is etched into the nation’s sporting history, and its social justice record. After a 27-year-long battle to clear the names of the Liverpool fans whose reputations were smeared, after inquests that lasted two years – the longest case heard by a jury in British legal history – a verdict of unlawful killing was returned. But, as Margaret Aspinall of the indefatigable Hillsborough Family Support Group pointed out, after David Duckenfield, police commander at the ground, was cleared of manslaughter last year, no one has yet been found accountable for those killings.

The Sun, which categorically did not report “The Truth”, as the infamous headline went, but was found to have published untruths that blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster, is a red-top pariah here. The paper is the bestselling national in print, but shifts a measly 12,000 or so copies on Merseyside. A branch of Sainsbury’s was once found to be selling copies under the counter, as though they were counterfeit cigarettes. It’s a boycott that has lasted longer than many marriages.

The socially progressive values of the club extend to it supporting an end to period poverty – free sanitary products are available in every women’s loo at Anfield. Last month, the Reds Going Green initiative saw the installation of organic machines to break down food waste into water. The club even has its own allotment, which grows food to serve to fans in the main stand. It was the first Premier League club to be officially involved with an LGBT Pride event in 2012, at the invitation of Paul Amann. Amann tells me how he set up the LGBT supporters group, Kop Outs, because: “It’s essential that our voices are heard, our presence is welcomed and respected.” The group works alongside the Spirit of Shankly supporters’ group and the Fans Supporting Foodbanks initiative and has regular meet-ups. These things mean something to me: a football fan as a girl, and now as a woman. A woman who dates other women. A woman who doesn’t want to hear homophobic chants on the terraces. Or, it goes without saying, racist ones. Jamie Carragher, ex-player and pundit, has apologised on behalf of the club for its backing of striker Luis Suárez, who was banned from playing for eight matches in 2011 for making racist comments. “We made a massive mistake,” Carragher said. “What message do you send to the world? Supporting someone being banned because he used some racist words.”

Back on the pitch, some of this season’s performances have been, quite simply, balletic. Others as powerful and muscular as a weightlifting competition. Formations as beautiful as constellations. Forward surges as though our fullbacks were plugged into the mains. Possibly the best fullbacks playing today: 21-year-old local lad Trent Alexander-Arnold (known just as Trent) and the fiery Scot Andy Robertson (Robbo) are spoken about by pundits as innovators. Gary Lineker and I text, rapturously, about the two of them.

For a football team to be consistent, for a team to win the league, it must be capable of winning in many different ways. The aesthetically pleasing playing out from the back. Lightning counter-attacks. Scraping 1-0 wins in the final minutes (and, particularly at the start of this season, we have done a lot of that. It’s something Manchester United used to do in their 90s pomp, and naturally, I hated them for it). Mindful of the trauma of The Slip, the agreed club line is “one game at a time”, said again and again, as another scouse son, Pete Burns, once sang: “like a record baby, right round, round, round… ” And my God, how many of those we’ve smashed. The current side is the first in England to hold an international treble (the Champions League; Uefa Super Cup; Fifa Club World Cup). We have not lost a home game for almost two calendar years. Shortly, we’ll no doubt break the record for the earliest title win during a season; the most points across Europe’s top five leagues.

It is, even to the neutral, extraordinary stuff. It is, even to the haters, albeit grudgingly, extraordinary stuff. In 2016, one of the greatest stories of modern football was the previously mediocre Leicester City winning a surprise title. Liverpool’s dominance this season surpasses that for drama. It is watching history in the present.

Being at a game at Anfield is like being high while ingesting nothing. The stands seem to have lungs. Though You’ll Never Walk Alone has become supremely emotional, an anthem for strength and perseverance post-Hillsborough (“walk on through the wind / walk on through the rain”) it’s a song originally from the musical Carousel. It was a standout 1963 cover version by Liverpudlian band Gerry and the Pacemakers that kicked off its adoption at Anfield. “It’s got a lot of lovely major-to-minor changes at often unexpected moments that have the effect of emotionally blindsiding you,” music journalist Pete Paphides says (although he’s a United fan, so feel free to discount everything he tells me). “But it’s also obviously very hymnal, with a chorus which invites that religious ambiguity. It was Aretha Franklin’s version that John Peel played after Hillsborough and rendered himself incapable of carrying on by virtue of doing so.”

Anfield has always been something special; players from countless teams often talk of it being the greatest ground they have ever played at. Or the most intimidating. Or the most electric. But of late, there’s an extra buoyancy. The crowd salivates.

Watching the game against West Ham, we take the lead within 10 minutes, but they quickly equalise, before going ahead. We score twice more. It is our 21st consecutive home win, setting a Premier League-era record. At the end of the game, Klopp and his players applaud the Kop end, fans’ eyes glistening with both emotion and wind chill (“walk on, through the wind… ”)

Adjacent to the stadium at the redbrick Albert pub, Clara, Tom, John – all in their 20s, students, and local – and John’s dad, David, who is 53, are cheering the last-ditch win. I repeat what I asked Steve and his friends: just how excited should we all be?

“Very fucking excited,” says John. “Very fucking excited,” Tom concurs. (Scousers use swear words as ellipses. And the speed of Liverpudlian patter matches the rat-a-tat-tat of freestyle rappers.) The Albert is floor-to-ceiling in flags; unassuming from the outside, iconic inside. Across the road at the Park – the “Established 1888” sign above its door – it is Where’s Wally? levels of rammed, entirely usual for a match day. But the mood is as disbelieving as triumphant. It hasn’t happened yet, but it already feels as though people are waiting to be shaken awake from a dream. Around the corner, posters at another fan favourite, the Sandon, advertise a huge end-of-season victory party. I grab a burger at the Kop of the Range, a kebab joint not far from a scarf stall that has seen its business rocket over the past three years.

My Uber driver, Mohamed, 35, moved to the city from Sri Lanka. A massive Salah fan, he tells me his own revenue booms when the club win a game – happier fans means higher fares. “People don’t want to spend money on a loss,” he says. “If we win, the whole mood lifts. You can feel it in the car. Though when you start driving with Uber, they tell you not to mention what football team you support. Because football means a lot to people. There are many feelings involved with football.”

It’s unsurprising to me that even back in Sri Lanka, Mohamed was a fan. Liverpool is a global behemoth. The richest club in the UK outside Manchester.

A £1.7bn valuation; £533m turnover; pre-tax profits of £42m. Matchday ticket revenues increased (thanks to a regenerated £110m main stand). Visiting the club shop, there is LFC-branded gin; babygros; even a Hello Kitty tie-in range. As Richard Haigh at consultants Brand Finance tells me, next season’s kit deal with Nike is “expected to represent the largest in history. Brands will be willing to pay to have some magic dust of LFC.” There are official stores as far afield as Dubai and Bangkok.

John W Henry has won the support of the fans for his positive handling of the club. And yet, despite this huge wealth, Anfield is the 10th most deprived neighbourhood in the country. Boarded-up houses surround the stadium. The club has not covered itself in glory in the past, accused of buying up properties in unscrupulous ways. But it is hoped that local enterprises, such as the community-run Homebaked cake shop and new housing association properties, will make the neighbourhood better.

Last week, we were knocked out of the FA Cup in a match against Chelsea. Or, as I call that fixture, Kensington versus Kensington. (In Liverpool’s “Kenny”, 98% of residents are among the most deprived 5% nationally. In London’s, residents earn three times the national average.)

In the league, there has been a blip. Last weekend we finally lost. And we lost 3-0 to, with the greatest respect, Watford; not a bad side, but a side ensconced in a relegation battle. Arsenal, who once went a whole season unbeaten (“the Invincibles”), and are keen to keep that record, tweeted from the official club account: “Phew!”

But I am not panicking. It’s possible Dan from the Flat Iron is panicking. But Klopp isn’t panicking. In typical fashion, he said the fact we played an absolutely awful game of football was “rather positive… ”

“A couple of years ago,” our hero reminds us, “I said we wanted to write our own stories and create our own history, and obviously the boys took what I said really seriously. It is so special. The numbers are incredible.” In a nod to Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous line that his greatest challenge was “knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch”, Liverpool chief executive Peter Moore says now: “We are back on our perch.” As The Anfield Wrap’s Gareth says: “In a dream scenario, a period of dominance follows. Not so long ago that dream was just that. Now, it’s a reality that is much easier to imagine.”

Four more games. Eyes on the prize. For me, at last, 30 years in the making, eyes on the prize.

#2020 #premier league #ynwa #liverpool fc #you'll never walk alone

[prorevenge]

Psycho Ex gets my egoless revenge with a side of heavy-duty karma.

The following story occurred over the course of 13-8 years ago, and I apologize preemptively for the length, because it is a bit involved.

I was in a relationship for 9 years with a girl I met in college. We broke up on the cusp of my 29th birthday. While breakups and divorce are never trauma-free, this one was as close to that as I believe is humanly possible to get, there were no fights and minimal drama, and I moved to a new city to get a fresh start and be nearer my dad/stepmom/half sisters, as I'm close to them and it was nice to have family during this. Get an apartment, start over, everything's good. Then I meet "her."

Things with her seemed good at first. She was the polar opposite of my ex. She's quiet yet nice, had her life relatively together (my first wife was very unfocused and horrible with money), physically a complete contrast, wild in the bedroom--I thought I had hit the jackpot.

Anyhoo, I fall for her hard. We have a whirlwind romance, move in shortly, and we have this glamorous life where we make good money (she was a corporate accountant, I had a decent small business, we're pulling in 150K+ combined), renting a luxury apartment, one car paid and the other brand new, no kids. Things are great, except that we drink too much together and some other underlying issues I'm blind to at the time. We get soused one night and drive to Vegas, and get married on the strip after 6 months of dating and 9 of knowing each other. The ink is barely dry on my divorce papers from version 1.0, but no matter, I'm in love. My family likes her overall. Her family loves me. We adopt cats. We talk about trying to have a kid.

We upgrade our life and take on more debt, just as the housing bubble bursts and the economy tanks, she loses a couple jobs due to her inability to show up on Mondays, and I start losing clients as the ones I have start cutting their advertising budget (my field). Things start to get pinched, and she first starts complaining, then gets petulant, because now we can't spend the way we used to, the quarterly mini-vacations dry up, plus we're cooking at home instead of going out to eat 4x a week. We basically stop having sex a little more than a year into the relationship (didn't realize it then, because I was dumb and love-blind, but she cheated on me during this period).seRealizing what we're up against with our normal bills plus our credit cards, I go out and get a job bartending at a posh resort, the only other real skill I have at the time that's marketable. I get two other part time gigs to help make ends meet. She still complains, and throws me an ultimatum before I even start getting paychecks, laying the blame at my feet. I say fine, screw this then. Had we stuck it out even a few more months, things would have started to turn a financial corner. Instead, she goes full two-faced, mean-spirited bitch on me. The night we first fight, she "attempts suicide" by scratching her wrist with a leatherman, then calls 911, gets admitted to the hospital (I arrive home to cops telling me this), and has the security guard toss me when I show up to see if she's okay because she doesn't want to talk to me. I use the quotes because there was a small collection of firearms nearby I bought for her target shooting hobby which were untouched, so it was obviously just a ploy for attention.

We basically fight for the next week, I give her everything she wants, which includes leaving the house, signing over my new truck to her, and only taking stuff I brought into the relationship, basically enough to fill a small storage space. She's financially pinched so I sell my office furniture for cash and don't even touch the bank account, just take my biz money and one CC I got separate from her. I go to the Bay Area for a few months, financially struggle, don't get the job I was sure was on lock. During this time, I have this revelation one evening--I drink too much and that it's caused a load of problems in my life, so I quit, and I haven't touched a drop since.

Broke and realizing nothing I try is working, I come back to town, live with my dad for a month, find a roommate, then a shit retail job (my business has dropped from 7-8K per month at its height to now around 500/mo), I bike everywhere bc I can't afford a car, and my credit is toast partially due to her love of spending on plastic, so I'm facing bankruptcy. I'm 31, and this is really humbling, but whatever, I'm alive, have dealt with hardship before, this won't last forever. She has kept her house, declared personal BK on her debts, keeps her car, and has been dating a series of men starting a couple weeks after we split. While I never asked the details, apparently she's also reached out to a few of my friends and badmouthed me a bit. This would be mildly annoying, but add in two factors--she's dragging her feet on the divorce due to not having money to file, keeps up contact on the pretense of us needing to talk, but plays emotionally manipulative head games during the whole sequence ("I've realized I still love you, that's why you can make me cry so easily," and other bullshit Hallmark movie lines like this). Also, we live in a suburb that's smaller and tightly knit, so multiple places I go to like my church, the bookstore I frequent, and the coffee shop right by my place, she talks endless shit to people. Says I was a cheater and physically/emotionally abusive (complete crap, but whatever), I'm stalking her, I supposedly stole tens of thousands of dollars from her, the whole nine. Some people actually believe her, I even get threatened by a wannabe biker one night that's literally twice my age with violence, itself a funny story but not the point.

Finally, after some more bullshit and back and forth, she leaves town (more falsehoods around this, including her borrowing a bit of money she didn't end up paying back, and sticking me with a massive overage on our cell bill right before we split the account). My dumb, trusting heart hurts but I'm mostly relieved to see the last of her, realizing she's only nice to me when she wants something. She goes to NY to shack up with another guy, gets pregnant 15 minutes later. Finally sends me divorce paperwork. I sign it and send back quickly, all notarized docs, everything organized and flagged. She attempts to be "friends" and I want no part of this BS. I'm businesslike, she gets upset. She screws up filing, blames me. I say "whatever," straighten out the court issues. One week after the divorce is finalized, the kid is born. No word from her after that for two years, thank god. I get a new career, start advancing in it, and start dating a new woman that I'm still with 10 years later. Weirdly enough, they knew each other, and she didn't like her, partially because one of my ex's infidelity partners was her ex-husband, during a time they were exploring patching things up for the kids' sake (though there were multiple reasons for her distrust, apparently she always gave my wife an icky intuitive feeling).

So flash forward two years. I get a call from my current squeeze. She's just talked to a friend who was also a very brief roomie of "her" after our split. She's breaking up with the baby daddy. There's a custody fight. He's saying he doesn't know if it's his. Will I help her? Well, it's the right thing to do, so even though I don't trust or particularly like her, I say yes. I get the call, and a sob story. Most of it doesn't add up--he took the kid, but thinks it's actually mine, to prove paternity I'd need to come to NY and take a paternity test at one of their facilities, also he hit her, put a GPS tracker on her car, brother is a Russian mobster who threatened her, all very far-fetched. Needless to say, even without this fanciful tale, I generally assume if this woman is talking, it's a lie, so I'm suspicious. Her lawyer calls me, and seems like a clueless shmuck. I get a letter from him, very unprofessional and not even on a letterhead (every other legal doc I've seen has "from the law offices of blah blah" on it, but this is literally just off a laser printer), and says, verbatim "I, M___ K___, am the ex-husband of J___ K___, and was married to her from 6/07-8/09. I have no legal interest in the child." Super shady.

Not wanting to end up in a situation where I've allowed myself to be legally fucked over, I make my own lawyer consultation appointment. Before I can even go, the baby daddy finds me on Facebook and sends me a message. Between calls with him, his lawyer, and the impartial lawyer NY state appoints for the child's welfare, I get a very different story. He knows it's his, he had a paternity test done on the sly at birth because she had been promiscuous before they got together, and she was pregnant so quickly he was concerned. They broke up because she was drinking too much, he busted her with a bottle of vodka as she was driving with the kid in the car. She stood up in court, claimed I was actually the father, and she had no idea where to find me (he found me in 10 seconds online, I'm a tech guy with massive social media presence, a tech blog, multiple writing credits on publications, my frigging name as a domain, plus I've had the same cell phone number for 14 years). Also the other BS was just that, he's an IT guy for a university and his brother works for a carpet cleaning chain, plus just like in our relationship, he never hit or stalked her, etc.

So she, not knowing what I know, starts sending me text messages. I say "Filled out and on its way back to your lawyer," and toss it in the trash. I'm so tempted to send her some poetic message about how the truth is coming back to haunt her, but I resist, because I'm not doing this for her, but rather for the sake of their son and his father, so let's keep my ego out of it. I provide legal statements to all in the court. Tell them I know it's not possibly mine because I hadn't been with her since April 15 of '08, kid's birthday is in Sept of '09 (I remember the date because, due to taxes, I got fucked twice that day). Explain when she was in NY, which is the likely dates of conception, prove I was thousands of miles away on the west coast. Tell them to look through her social media, where she meticulously tagged herself and took tons of pictures of even their mundane locations. Provide a blood sample to a local lab. Tell them salacious details about her drinking and occasional drug use, including her abused prescriptions and a previous hospitalization where she was held for psych eval due to taking way too many pills.

Court comes, and she gets blindsided. Stack of depositions and a collection of statements from me were what sealed the deal, apparently, and the incredibly stupid game she was running is fully exposed. Gets no custody, no support, supervised visitation once a week. I run into her ex-roomie, upset, but instead of giving her attitude, I just calmly tell her the scam J__ was running, then let her "pull out of me" the truth about our split. She's flabbergasted, but also a horrible gossip, so it gets around town like wildfire. People I barely know, including the aforementioned biker, all come up to me and apologize for misjudging me. I'm years past the stage of having any morbid curiosity to check her social media, but every few months she pops up as a "suggested friend," and I notice bemusedly the number of mutual friends plummets from triple digits to eventually 3. Baby's father sends me a massive Amex gift card for Christmas, as much as I make in a week at the time. I call and tell him I don't know if I can accept it, I don't want him or anyone to think I did this for a reward. He virtually begs, saying "you helped save my family. This is nothing in comparison. Thank you." We break down crying on the phone, and eventually form an odd, distant friendship based on mutual respect for each other. I even had dinner with him a couple times when I had to go to NY for biz over the years, and I always buy, because the poor guy has done enough and gone through enough having to coparent with this train wreck.

To this day, she's apparently struggling to stay sober (alcohol and other substances), and has minimal involvement in her child's life due to her inability to show up when expected. Baby daddy tells me she's been in legal trouble, financial issues up the ass, and a string of boyfriends that never last more than a few months. I'm doing well, got married again three years ago, raised step-children, am reasonably financially successful, and rather like my life. Granted, a large part of this story is just karma in action, but I feel like I did the right thing, wasn't petty, and what I did do hit her where it hurts.

TL;DR: Ex-wife fucks my life, destroys me financially, tries to trash my reputation, then tries to use me as a scheme in her custody battle years later. I talk to the court directly, work with the baby daddy's lawyers, and get her exposed for the psycho, lying wench she is. She loses custody, struggles, and the good people live mostly happily ever after.

(source) (story by heymomo7)

#prorevenge #by heymomo7 #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10

[ohblackdiamond]

all of your b-films (peter/ace, nc-17)

“Don’t kid yourself about the guys. They want the old days back as much as we do. Maybe even more.” Nine years after Peter leaves KISS, Ace unexpectedly joins him for a part of his club tour.

Notes: Thank you @collatxral-damage for the initial inspiration and showing me a lovely picture of Peter and Ace from around the fic’s time period that warms my heart every time I look at it.

Thank you Peter and Ace for just being messy, sweet boys.

“all of your b-films”

by Ruriruri

           “Morning, man.” Ace closes his eyes, rubs them with one hand—he looks like a kid when he does that, looks almost innocent. There’s never been anything innocent about Ace Frehley. Not since Peter’s known him, at least. Known him. Fucking known him.

           Peter shifts, forcing himself to sit up in bed as the old aches and pains rush through his bones. It hadn’t been a good crowd last night. The club circuit, lousy as hell even on its best days, isn’t where Peter wants to be, but it’s where he’s ended up. Paul’s there, too, though he’s booking the clubs out of his own vanity and desperation to tour, a fact that amuses the hell out of Peter—both of them going it alone and trying to pump up a crowd that hasn’t been around for either of them in almost ten years. The only thing really separating Peter from anyone still in KISS is the balance in his bank account.

           The only thing separating Peter from Ace is the carton of orange juice Ace is pushing to his lips. Peter takes a gulp, but Ace keeps holding the carton up anyway, so he manages a few more swallows before Ace, satisfied, sets the carton down.

           “Doing all right there?”

           “Yeah. Yeah, I’m doing all right.”

           “Good.” There’s the familiar pop of a beer can. Peter doesn’t question where Ace got it when this hotel isn’t even classy enough to offer a minibar, just watches Ace down half the can in three swallows flat before he continues. “You got this room booked for tonight, too, don’t you?”

           “Yeah. The gig’s only an hour away.”

           The corners of Ace’s mouth perk up.

           “You wanna have a cheerleader? I think I did pretty good there last night, even if I didn’t have the skirt.”

           “I want another lead guitarist, is what I want.” Peter laughs, dryly, then adds, “I mean it. You were something else back there.”

           He had been, too. Just like the good old days. No, better. Just like the days when they’d rented out ballrooms. Before Ace’d got on coke but way, way after he’d started drinking. Back when he thought he was untouchable and that made him untouchable, like a gulped-down placebo. He’d been good enough to make Peter want to do better, want to pound those skins with a fervor and a fever. Peter had watched the audience, those loaded expressions on their faces, how they shifted like kaleidoscope beads when he started bearing down, really bearing down. Laying into those drums, unleashing something he hadn’t had in eleven years now. Course, he was paying for it this morning, arms feeling like cement blocks, but Ace… Ace was all right. Ace could’ve played the whole damn show and been all right.

           Ace just shrugs.

           “’S nothing. I wanted to. Figured while I’m in town, y’know.” There’s not the ease to Ace’s words that used to be there. There’s an edge, an anxiousness. Peter hates to hear it. Hates to hear it because he’s heard it so much from his own throat. Ace shouldn’t have to worry like that. Should be spending his time in his recording studio, or helping Monique out with the multiplication tables, anything, just anything, but Peter knows damn well Ace’s time is split between when he has his coke and his pain pills and his booze and when he’s trying to get more of all three.

           “The hell’re you doing in town, anyway? This isn’t L.A. Isn’t even fucking Fremont.”

           Ace quirks a small smile.

           “Well, I thought you knew, Peter.”

Peter shakes his head.

But Ace can’t be here for any solid reason. Nothing out in some nowhere California suburb. Nothing he could want out here. Even a drug contact wouldn’t make sense. Neither of them can get the good stuff anymore, the pure shit that Ezrin used to pile on the studio desks like an early snowfall. The old dealers are long gone. Ace doesn’t really want to shove out the albums these days—he’s just looking to fund his binges. He’s doing magazine interviews, news spreads. Tapping the vein of one twenty-something KISS Army vet at a time, hoping they’ll buy whatever he’s selling out of pure nostalgia for being twelve and pimpled.

           Peter’s not much better. He’s not much better, but he’s trying. Sometimes he’s trying. He winces in pain as he reaches for the orange juice carton, taking another sip, remembering, faintly, that in Europe they just drank it at room temperature. The milk, too. No, no, the milk was warm. They acted like ice was a foreign concept. The girls, though—the girls spoke the same language all over. Legs spread like peanut butter across a piece of bread. Money changed, races, nationalities changed, but the groupies had never seemed any different. All of them just as eager to suck his cock or let him fuck them or both, depending on mood and inclination.

It hadn’t become a creature comfort for Peter the way it had for Gene. It hadn’t become something he needed, just something he liked. A fringe benefit a wife back home had never kept him from enjoying. Ace, either. Ace had told him once that Jeanette understood and Peter had laughed at him.

           “Lydia understands, too. She understands enough that she tries following me every fucking tour—really thinks I’m gonna leave her—”

           “No, no, I mean she really understands.”

           “About the girls?”

           “Not just that.” Ace’s face had scrunched up, just briefly, and Peter glanced away. Hadn’t pushed for more, but from then on, the knowledge was there, right there. From then on, he couldn’t so much as give Jeanette a hug without thinking about it. Feeling sorry for her, even, for taking it, for understanding, whatever that shit really meant. Ace was too much of an open book. Every lousy thing about him ended up tugged to the surface eventually, like an oil spill cresting over ocean waves. He couldn’t hide things. Didn’t have the heart to.

           Right now he’s watching Ace finish off the beer—behind him, he can see the remnants of a six-pack Ace left on the table near the closet.

           “You wanna go on with me again tonight?” Wouldn’t even be fifty people there, but they’d go nuts. For Ace they’d go nuts. “Just a couple songs… ‘Black Diamond,’ ‘Hard Luck Woman,’ what do you say?”

           “Aw, Peter, whoever you got as your lead guitarist is gonna be pissed if I show up again.”

           “Nah, he’ll just ask for your autograph.” In fact, last night he had asked for it, secondhand, too shy to ask Ace directly. Could you, could you get him to write his name on the setlist for me, he’d asked, and Peter had honestly meant to, but then another round of drinks had found its way backstage and he’d been useless again. “C’mon. Old time’s sake, Ace.”

           “Maybe.”

           “Don’t maybe me, Ace, either say you’re gonna do it or say you’re not—”

           “Let’s get out of here first.” Ace sets the beer down on the nightstand, and then he flicks it, frowning as it topples over. There isn’t a single drop draining out from the lid. He holds his hand out like an afterthought. “I’ll drive.”

           “Fuck, no. I’ll drive.”

           “Peeeeeterrrr,” Ace drawls, then giggles. “C’mon. One more car crash and we both get our names in the paper.”

           “One more car crash and I’m down another life.”

           “You got at least four more.”

           “I’m driving, man.”

           “All right, all right.” Ace shambles to his feet properly, yanking on last night’s jeans and t-shirt. Another nostalgia piece. This one’s got Debbie Harry in all her blonde bombshell glory silkscreened across the front. Debbie’s still taking care of her man, or so claim the tabloids, but Blondie’s long gone. Another fucking shame. Peter takes awhile longer to get dressed himself, lugging out his suitcase from under the bed and pulling out a fresh t-shirt and slacks. Ace watches him get dressed, which ought to rankle Peter more than it does, ought to make him snap out that he’s not some cripple, that he just hurts sometimes, that’s all, but that vague concern on Ace’s face stops him as he zips up his slacks and stuffs his keys and wallet in his pocket.

           “You ready?”

           “Yeah. Yeah, I’m ready.”

           They listen to the car radio, same as they’ve always done. Ace switches stations constantly, beer in one hand, the dial in the other, like he’s trying to hone in on a signal he can’t find. The heavy metal crap’s oversaturating the market. It’s not like it was back in KISS, back when they weren’t even solid on the word for it. There’s no soul to it now. No hunger. Just scrawny kids with shitty hair bitching about money and fame they don’t even fucking have. Peter keeps the radio on anyway. The wheel feels familiar in his hands as he turns off on an exit, directionless, aimless. Traffic’s not so terrible when he doesn’t know where they’re going, when they’re passing all sorts of kitschy shops and storefronts and letting mohawked teenagers cross the street in front of them. Traffic’s not so terrible at all.

           They ran out of the old topics last night. Wives and kids. So now they’re onto talking about Ace’s new album, coming out later this year—maybe, maybe. Peter’d done some of the drumming for it, even some of the backing vocals. There’s some good stuff there.

           “It’s all timing,” Ace says, dryly. “They’re working on another album, too, so if I can get mine out just before or just after—”

           “You’re better than that.”

           “’M not better than that.”

           Peter doesn’t answer. Peter doesn’t answer, and Ace doesn’t defend himself, just turns the radio dial again, finds an oldies station, and soon, there’s “Get Off of My Cloud,” slamming in as irreverently as ever. Jagger singing about parking tickets. Peter doesn’t even know what Jagger’s singing about these days, what album he’s promoting now, but he knows he still has an audience for all Brian’s been dead in his pool for twenty years now.

           “They’re still really good guys, y’know.” Ace is conversational, his sneakered feet tapping out of time against the rental’s dash. “Eric and Bruce are nice. I don’t wish them anything bad.”

           “I didn’t say I did—”

           “Gene and Paul, too.”

“Okay, now, that’s bullshit, Ace.”

“It’s not! You know it’s not, man.”

“Maybe you don’t wish them anything bad, but you’re not telling me they’re good guys.”

“You know ’em as well as I do, Peter.” Ace exhales. Out of the corner of his eye, Peter watches him lean forward and retie his shoelace as he talks, the beer can nestled between his thighs. “Paul’s always been a nervous wreck. You get past that and he’s all right.”

“You got past it, you mean. You used to blow him on tour.”

“You’re damn right I did.” Ace laughs and takes another gulp of beer. “Never did calm him down any, but—”

“Did you fuck him, too?” Peter’s not sure why he’s bothering to ask when it doesn’t matter. Ace’s list of conquests never got too extensive. He’d always done far more champagne and coke than groupies.

“Paulie? Nah. Don’t think he was up to it.”

“What about Gene?”

Ace blinks, then laughs again.

“Fuck, no. He’s an opportunist, but he’s not all that queer. You know that.” Ace pauses. Peter can feel his stare, brief but way too knowing, given how drunk he is, on his face. “You jealous, Cat?”

Peter snorts and changes the radio station.

           “Why the fuck would I be? I don’t care where your dick’s been.”

           “Dunno. Pretty late in the day to be asking me all that, is all.” Ace takes another swallow of beer.

“Just curious.” The words hang in the air for a couple seconds too long, and Peter clears his throat. “Figured it might make it feel like a high school reunion or some shit. Hearing ’em on the radio and thinking, Jesus, I fucked that bastard.”

Ace crooks a grin.

“You think that about me?”

“Maybe if I heard you more.”

Ace’s expression shifts briefly before that spaced-out, dopey look slips right back on like a baby’s bib. He doesn’t say anything for a good half a mile, doesn’t even hum along to the radio, which makes Peter a little on edge, but then Ace finally starts up again.

“Don’t kid yourself about the guys. They want the old days back as much as we do. Maybe even more.”

           “You’re a fucking liar. Keep going.”

           “You ever watch their music videos?” Ace closes his eyes and laughs. “Christ, poor Paulie. I haven’t seen anyone that desperate since Carter tried to get reelected.”

           “Good.” Peter reaches over for the beer in Ace’s hand. Ace doesn’t even blink before lifting it and tipping it to Peter’s lips, not that it shuts out his next comment. “They never did any better than ‘Beth.’ They never will. Nobody’s gonna let ’em forget that.”

           “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

           Ace lowers the beer. It’s as good a signal as any.

“Where’d you want to go, Ace?”

           “Mmm. I think it used to be just over… oh, change lanes, change lanes. There, yeah. Take a left.”

           Peter obediently makes the turn.

           “You sure about this?”

           “’S an adventure, Pete.” Ace cracks another grin. “All right. Pull in over there.”

           “The bakery?”

           “Yeah.”

           “Ace, I can’t parallel park for shit.”

           Ace laughs and fumbles over Peter, one leg on his lap, the other straddling the gear shift. Peter lets out a litany of curses, but Ace just keeps on, pushing Peter’s hands off the steering wheel and managing to park the rental—perfectly—amid a chorus of honking horns.

           “You crazy fucker!”

           “We got in, didn’t we? C’mon.”

           “I can’t come on with you on top of me, asshole!”

           Another snort.  Ace’s hair, plenty dark enough, but limper than it used to be, brushes against Peter’s face for a second as he climbs off him and steps out of the car, holding the door open for him. Peter stumbles out, breathing still a little heavy, following Ace into the dingy bakery.

           Inside, the counters are still laden with early morning pastries. Doughnuts and cinnamon rolls and muffins laid out beneath the glass. Some cookies and chocolates up top. Peter cocks his head, wondering what Ace wants, resigning himself to cleaning up the rental after. But Ace doesn’t even spare the pastries a glance before striding over to the counter.

           “You got any white cakes?”

           The counter girl nodded.

           “With white icing… nah, nah, it’s not for a birthday. Don’t write on it. It—” Ace pauses, glances briefly at Peter, furtive look on his face. “Didja have the tiered kind?”

           “The tiered kind?”

           “Fuck, gimme a pencil, I’ll just draw it.” Ace’s brow furrows. For a second Peter thinks Ace is still talking to him, but then he sees the girl hand him a pen and a napkin. Peter starts to look over as Ace draws, but Ace just curls his free hand around the napkin, like a kid hiding his answers. He pushes the napkin over to the girl at the counter without another word.

           “I’ll pick it up tomorrow morning. You got my name, right?”

           “Yeah.” The girl’s staring at the napkin. Peter recognizes that expression, that dawning look. It’s not one he gets these days outside of the clubs. Sometimes not even then. “You were in that band. KISS.”

Ace just nods and tosses his arm over Peter’s shoulders before they head toward the door.

“Yeah. He was, too.”

--

           Ace has Peter stop at a couple more places after that. Lunch at a soup and sandwich shop. Twenty minutes or so at a record store, Ace flipping through the rock magazines, brow furrowed. He’s looking for an advertisement for his upcoming album. Peter, meanwhile, skims the teenage girl shit, stuff like Tiger Beat and Rock Scene, snorting at the pinups. Ratt grimacing. Jon Bon Jovi shirtless. And, inevitably, there’s Paul with his fly unzipped and his tanktop askew, with Gene standing sullenly next to him, neither even trying to smile for the camera.

           “Look on the back side,” Ace says absently. Peter flips the page, half-surprised to see his own face staring back. His and Ace’s and Paul’s and Gene’s. It’s from the Japan concerts. It’s from when they sold out the Budokan five nights in a row.

           “Jesus Christ, doesn’t this shit piss you off?”

           Ace shrugs and doesn’t answer.

           “I’ve been out almost ten years and they’re still getting every drop of use from me they can!”

           “Hey, now. Marilyn Monroe’s been dead almost thirty years and she still sells pinups.” Ace pauses. “Course, you’re not quite that cute, but—”

“It’s fucking trashy.”

“You’d be more pissed off if you weren’t in there at all, man. It’s a good picture.” Ace leans over, tracing Peter’s face on the magazine spread with his fingernail. “It’s a real good picture.”

           “You’re an idiot,” Peter responds on idle automatic. Ace laughs again as Peter creases the magazine cover before he sets it back on the stand

           “They don’t have the ad in yet. ’S all right, though.” Ace cocks his head. “When’s your show start?”

           “Eight.”

           “Then we got time.”

           Peter almost expects him to ask for the keys again, but he doesn’t. There’s the familiar, brief clasp of Ace’s hand against his arm as they head out of the music store, too. Peter feels like an urchin, walking out of these shitty little shops without buying anything, when ten years ago, he’d been worth ten million. There’s nothing he wants here, but that doesn’t matter. He can’t help feeling fleeced. He can’t help feeling cheated.

           Once they’re back in the car, Ace is hopeless as usual. He’d stashed another beer in the backseat floorboard this morning, apparently, and now he’s swilling it down. He���s cracking jokes and making passes as if he has to anymore, as if he really ever had to, while Peter tries to keep his eyes on the road. It’s not until Ace strokes his arm that his concentration really starts to falter, and falter badly, and by that time, they’re almost at the hotel.

           Fucking around is thoughtless as ever. Peter pulls into the parking lot and they’re scrambling in the backseat before too long, but something about it feels pathetic now, like chasing that first cocaine high with the honest hope of catching it again. The scars from ’74 aren’t so bad on Ace’s face as they ought to be, but the lines sinking into his forehead and around his jaw aren’t just vague insinuations these days. They don’t keep Peter from kissing him. They don’t keep Peter from wanting him.

           “Let’s go in,” Peter finally says, armrest digging into his back, half breathless for all that they’ve only been groining around. Clothes not even off yet. Ace’s hand is wormed down beneath Peter’s slacks, but he hasn’t managed to get more than a few fondles in, and he’s been too damn lazy to even unzip him. “I’m not cleaning this shit up after.”

           “Who says there’ll be a mess?”

           “There always is.”

           “All right, all right,” and they stumble out together, Peter having to hold him steady. The hotel receptionist doesn’t blink, but Peter could swear he feels her stare on them both. Two middle-aged guys faltering around at only three in the afternoon. She’s got to be judging them, but Peter barely gives a fuck by the time they’re back in the room, sinking onto clean sheets and making each other ordinary again.

It’s better in the hotel. It’s a lot better. Ace never gets desperate for it even when he’s drunk; there’s this eerie, canny awareness to him that makes Peter wonder. Peter presses a couple kisses up Ace’s neck, trailing to meet his chin and finally his lips, remembering the sticky taste of black lipstick and the burn of first-rate champagne. He can’t leave a smudge on him with both their faces bare, but sometimes he wants to. Right now, he wants to. Ace, gasping beneath him, pistons his hips eagerly.

They used to keep it going forever. Usually there’d be a girl between them, sometimes two or three and they’d entertain those girls first, hotel overflowing with booze and blow and the pungent smell of sex. Three in the morning and they’d still be at it, the warm, wet heat molding skin to skin, and fuck, wasn’t it sordid, wasn’t it rotten, except when Ace would smile or crack a joke or—or some stupid shit like that, and yank the whole sorry lie out from under his feet. Remind him, crazily, that under the greasepaint, he was just some guy from Brooklyn who’d gotten lucky. Peter didn’t think Ace meant to do it. It didn’t even make him mad to be torn out of the reverie; in fact, there was something weirdly refreshing about it. Every tour had leeched a little more out of shy, cautious Paul until he’d all but replaced himself with that prima donna Starchild; every tour had hardened Gene up from a workaholic Kelly girl to an overbearing, self-righteous bastard. Ace had drowned in coke and booze, sure, but at least there was always something about him Peter could recognize. Something Peter could come back to.

Could keep coming back to, even now. Peter leans over, licks absently at the sweat beading and dripping on Ace’s face as he yanks down his jeans, yanks off his shirt. The rest of him’s softened up, but Ace’s legs are still skinny as ever, thighs twitching when Peter reaches for his cock and slowly eases into a steady rhythm around him. Ace paws lazily at Peter’s fly a few times, and at first Peter bats his hand back, until Ace’s fingers get a little more meaningful, the dreamy, dazed look in his eyes fading, and then Peter lets Ace unzip him and start stroking his dick in turn.

“Remember?” Ace says, all of a sudden.

“Remember what?”

“That first time. That first time, with Sweet Connie.” Ace isn’t breathing much heavier yet for how hard he is. No surprise. Peter had never gotten a great look at him from the drumkit, but any guy who’d get off onstage every night he could and still manage to stumble through choruses and encores afterwards had something, some kind of stamina holding him up. “Back in ’76. She was trying to be coy, y’know, like she hadn’t fucked every rockstar who’d come through Little Rock…”

“Yeah, I remember.” Connie had been a badge of honor. A sign of making it. Biggest whore in the whole damn South and yet they’d all wanted a piece of her. She’d taken turns with KISS, going from bed to bed like a demented circuit rider. “She dove right down under the covers like she was bobbing for apples.”

Ace snickers.

“Yeah, and then I got her outta the way…”

“I didn’t even know you’d switched at first.” They’d both been down there, after all. Ace had been pulling Peter’s toes, giggling like a Bond villain on acid as Peter spewed at him to knock that shit off while he was getting blown. Then there’d been a little rustling, a little mumbling, and then Connie’s mouth was off his dick and Ace’s was there instead, mouth tight and hot and wet around him. Didn’t feel any different. Didn’t panic when Connie popped back up for air and planted a hard kiss right against his mouth, confirming everything. Didn’t panic at all, just peeled back the covers to meet a pair of sleepy brown eyes, still half-covered in eyeshadow and greasepaint. Ace hadn’t stopped. Just given him a thumbs-up.

           Peter had given him one back.

           “Didn’t you? Nngh, thought my… technique might… might be distinctive…” Ace trails. That glazed look in his eyes is getting a little worse with every shove of his hips as Peter’s fingers rub against his dick. “Fuck, you’re not gonna stop at handjobs today, are you? Figured you were a little more romantic…”

           “Turn around, then.”

           “Nah, nah, just get over here,” and then Peter, grumbling, stops jerking Ace off long enough to shift and close that last lonesome distance between them. Straddling him like he’d done a hundred times before, easy. Easy. Ace slides his hand down, starts stroking their cocks together in an smooth rhythm while Peter shudders above him. His dick’s throbbing almost painfully against Ace’s, precum slickening Ace’s grip, always so casual, so relaxed. Only Ace could ever make fucking around seem almost languid and still manage to drive Peter insane with it. Every needy drive, every urgent breath he presses against Ace’s skin, the needy roll of his hips, craving more pressure, more intensity—every bit of it doesn’t seem to do a damn thing until Peter grasps at Ace’s hair, pulling roughly, until he presses a few more kisses to his neck and cheek and mouth. Until Peter’s teeth catch on Ace’s earring and tug, making Ace groan, turn his head from side to side.

           “Fuck, Peter…”

           Peter watches the focus fade in and out of Ace’s expression like a flickering lightbulb. There’s something different about it than usual, something he can’t place. Like something’s bothering him. But he’s close. Too close to play around anymore. Ace’s strokes get more purposeful, free hand clasping Peter’s shoulder, leaving faint pink indents among the freckles, and Ace comes only a couple seconds later with a quick jerk and a curse, eyes sliding shut, grip loosening, come mingling with the scent of sweat in the air, all over both their stomachs and cocks. Peter half-expects Ace to finish stroking him off like usual, but instead he lets go entirely.

           “Mm, just use me, you wanna?”

           “You’re so fucking lazy,” but there’s no rancor in Peter’s words, none at all, as he repositions his painfully hard dick between Ace’s thighs. Ace smiles and squeezes them tight around him, enveloping Peter’s cock in a soft, slick heat that’s so easy to thrust and grind against.

           “’S a nice view. Always is.”

--

           Ace plays for him that night after all. “Black Diamond” and “Hard Luck Woman” both. He’s not on, really on, the way he was the night before, but that doesn’t really matter. The crowd still goes insane. Some guy, some fan comes up to Peter afterwards, asks if they’re gonna tour together, really tour together, the two of them, and Peter hasn’t felt so warm in years.

           “It isn’t the same without you guys,” he confesses, and maybe he’s drunk, but Peter doesn’t care. It feels good to hear. It feels good to be wanted. “KISS, I mean.”

           “It’s not,” Peter says, and he waits, wondering when he’s expected to give those stupid pat answers just to guarantee Gene’ll throw some backing vocals his way next album, or Paul’ll toss in a song from his discard pile. Peter hasn’t been playing their game over the last couple years and the last dozen interviews, and he knows it rankles the hell out of them, Paul especially, to still be dodging questions on why he left nearly a decade on. Has to be hurting Eric’s feelings, too, but… well. The only crime Eric committed was showing up for an audition, but on Peter’s lowest days, that’s crime enough.

           The guy doesn’t push for more, though, just leaves after a handshake. No opportunity to splatter his bitterness in front of an eager audience. Instead it’s just his band again—a band it’s bleeding him to keep—and Ace, sunk down in his seat, gulping down champagne like water. Peter hasn’t been keeping track of Ace’s drinks, but he has been paying attention to Ace’s demeanor. He’d autographed all the setlists, sloppily. Even a couple napkins. Added a star onto his name sometimes, the playing card others, like he’d forgotten his own moniker. Peter only knows because he’d signed them right after.

But what’s really concerning is that he’s not cutting up with the band. None of the half-remembered jokes, not even the old drunken bullshit about aliens and Jendell. No, Ace is just being quiet. A lousy sign if ever there was one. Peter sighs, checks his watch—half an hour since he had a drink of his own, which is downright impressive, and good enough for him to opt to lean in, nose brushing against Ace’s hair, not even half on accident.

“I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

           “Peter, ’s fine—"

           “You’re gonna pass out. I’ll take you back.”

           “Oh, the fuck do you really care, man?”

           “Jesus, Ace, just c’mere—”

           “No, I mean it, I really mean it.” Ace takes another swallow of champagne, then pushes the glass down the table. “Always figured I knew you better than anybody. Always figured I knew what you wanted.”

           “What’re you talking about?”

           “I mean…” Ace exhales, “Christ, Petey, you still got Gene’s bass. Sentimental as fuck. You can’t tell me you don’t know.”

           “Don’t bullshit me. What do you mean, I don’t know?”

           Ace’s eyes narrow. He grabs his arm and gets up abruptly, half-lugging Peter out of the chair.

“I ain’t gonna say all this shit in front of your band.”

Any other time, that would’ve rankled the saboteur in him. Would’ve made Peter want to demand Ace say exactly what he had to say right now, in front of God and the band and whoever the hell else cared to listen in. His pulse is already up higher than it needs to be when he takes a good look, a really good look, up at Ace’s face, those odd, dark eyes that always saw too much, the purse of those lips that he’d tried to kiss to bruising only hours before. The way his mouth’s starting to twitch down.

He’s not holding it together. Unbelievably, Ace isn’t holding it together.

“C’mon, then,” Peter grumbles out, and leads him out of the club and back to the rental the way he has two dozen times before. The drive back to the hotel is almost unbearable. Ace is quiet, mostly, for the hour it takes. Never offers any apologies or explanation, just changes the radio station every so often. Once Peter steals a glance to the side just to find that he’s passed out—but he jerks back awake when Peter makes too sharp a turn on an exit.

“You think I came clear over to fucking California for the hell of it?” he says softly, finally, after Peter pulls into the hotel parking lot.

“Figured it might be for the album. Figured you had somebody you wanted to see.”

“Only showed up for you.” In the dim light of the streetlamps, crossing over from the lot to the hotel entrance, Ace rubs his neck like he’s feeling around for a choker that isn’t there. He’s not stumbling quite so badly now. Peter’s seen him so much worse and still coherent. “I keep up, y’know? I keep up.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” They all keep up. They all fucking keep up. Gene knows what Paul’s doing knows what Ace’s doing knows what Peter’s doing, and vice-versa, all around the bend. Any given month. Any given month. That obsessive, incestuous circle of awareness. That underhanded vibe to following each other, endlessly following each other, through magazines and MTV, scattered columns and radio ads. He doesn’t understand it for all that he’s a part of it.

“You know why I came by, don’t you? Pete, don’t you?”

Peter knows. Maybe, deep down, he’s known the entire time.

--

           The next morning, Peter gets up early. Watches Ace sleep for a minute or two—he’ll be dead to the world way past check-out, if Peter doesn’t rouse him himself—but Peter doesn’t really mind. Another charge on a second-rate hotel isn’t the worst expense he’s dealt with over the last couple years. The days he had more money than God are gone, aren’t ever coming back, but he can afford this.

           And he can afford a cake from that little bakery, even if he can’t parallel park over there. Three tiny tiers, white icing. Not terribly bigger than a baby’s cake, the kind the parents buy just so they can tape the kid wrecking it. No real decoration beyond the little piped-on stars surrounding each tier. No writing on it, either, not when the whole of it’s gone unsaid and barely-said for going on thirteen years now.

           Thirteen years.

           Peter gets back to the hotel with the cake box under one arm, fumbling with the key. Fumbling with the crappy little saucers and the plastic flatware and the plastic cups that’re all the kitchenette offers. Trying to make everything presentable, neatly arranged on a tray, the cake right there in the center. He pours what’s left of that orange juice carton into the cups. It’s not champagne, but it’ll do. It’ll do for today.

           “Hey. Hey, Ace.”

           Peter has to poke Ace to get him to as much as open his eyes. Ace grunts, tries to just roll back over, but Peter clamps down on one of his arms, yanks him into sitting up in bed.

           “Ace, c’mon, man—”

           He’s afraid Ace is going to slink back down into the covers just to spite him. He’d deserve it. Deserve it as much as he deserved anything he ever got from a bedmate or a wife. But then Ace catches sight of the tray and that tired expression shifts to something else. Something warm. Something that could be all right, whether or not they ever make it again.

“You picked up the cake.”

“Course I did.”

“Pete,” and there’s a heaviness to Ace’s tone that isn’t just from waking up, maybe a slight, unbelievable crack, “Pete, you didn’t have to—”

“I did.” Peter swallows. “Thirteen years. Hell of a long time to put up with me.”

“Aw, Pete, you’re not so bad—”

“Nah, I’m worse.” The smile’s tugging on his face, pulling up his cheeks. His heart’s beating too hard as he reaches over, brushes Ace’s mussed, wavy hair back behind his shoulder, hand lingering there. His arms haven’t hurt all morning. Not a twinge of pain. It might as well be ’76 again for how good he feels right now. “Hey, let’s get this cut, yeah?”

Ace’s fingers catch his. Lace around his, really, callused fingertips against the back of his hand, stroking his knuckles. Peter rubs them in return. Every movement seems lighter. Every moment seems softer. Like something he can believe in, like a gentler reality than he’s pictured in years, as Ace rests his head against his shoulder, and smiles.

“Yeah.”

#kiss the band #kiss fanfiction #ace frehley x peter criss #ace frehley #peter criss #actually i'm in need of love #lemon

[sigritandtheelves]

Surface

Rating: Teen/Mature Timeline: Season 6 Tags: angst, UST, developing relationship

This is a follow-up to the story “Drown,” and I think it will be a 4-part series all together, moving from seasons 5-8 (probably veering into s8 AU). You don’t need to have read the other story first, but it may help. No beta: sorry. CW for brief references to child death (canonical) and hints at something non-consensual (”Biogenesis”).

For @scully-eats-sushi who wanted more. 

_+_

In their sixth year together, the world seems conspiring to mock her with nightmarish gestations: a slimy umbilicus down her throat, vomited out onto a freezing metal grate; a monstrous eruption from a man’s chest in the desert; a backyard of unearthed infant corpses, thrown away like trash. And perhaps most painful, the cruel incubation of Mulder’s once-dead relationship with another woman, rekindled.

Still, she thinks, he tries. Drugged, he tells her he loves her and it is like a fist gripping her insides. She brushes it off, heart pounding, and he never brings it up again. A few weeks later, she tests him—mentions dogs and kids and houses—and he play-acts dumbfounded, as if what she suggests were the truly alien, and not this midnight goose-chase. She doesn’t need the suburbs. Doesn’t want them, even. But she aches for a shared space, for a heavy arm over her waist when she wakes and two coffee mugs in the sink before work. She wants the car to take them to a cabin by a lake, not to Area 51; she longs for its trunk to be full of sunscreen and sleeping bags instead of case notes and clandestine emails. Not every time: she doesn’t need it always. But sometimes the desire to not be alone is overwhelming.

Christmas will be hard for her, he knows, so he distracts her with a ghost hunt that turns more real than he’d expected. Afterward, she shows up at his door and they grin and gift to each other, and it’s the best holiday he’s had in years. Maybe since childhood. He senses that she’s opening to him again, and he’s almost brave enough to do something about it. He settles for a kiss to her temple, on pulling her head against his chest while snow falls outside and colorful paper litters his coffee table. She takes a deep breath, nose to his solar plexus, and he feels her relax. They fall asleep, curled into each other. She’s late to her mother’s house in the morning.

In another hospital she almost dies, and he breaks down at her bedside again without her knowing. He sobs into the sheet at her shoulder and wonders how long he can keep himself from her, from scooping her to him and turning away from the work and the darkness and the car that drives the endless road. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into her hospital gown. “I’m sorry I can’t give you what you need.” But she sleeps and sleeps and doesn’t hear. Later, when she’s awake, he toys with her thumb and tells her that maybe death only finds you when you seek its opposite. It’s his timid, cryptic way of acknowledging her desire for life, perhaps even her desire for him. It’s all he’s able to give that day.

Cassandra Spender re-appears, Diana Fowley wedges dangerously between them again, and the Syndicate burns. Two weeks later, seeking death’s cause and unwittingly finding its opposite, Scully delivers a baby during a hurricane and comes face to face, once again, with all the losses she’s tried to forget.

_+_

When the weather cleared, they drove the hour-long trek to the airport in soggy silence. Mulder sensed the weight of something—heavy—pressing between them, something besides the fiasco with Diana. Their flight was delayed, as were many others, because of the storms, so they sat uncomfortably in a crowded airport bar and grill. Mulder tugged at the two hanging drawstrings of his raincoat, wondering what he might have done to upset her. The star profiler, befuddled as usual by the complexities of his partner, blinded by his singular focus, was at a loss when he looked at her.

“Scully,” he said finally.

In a daze in front of her tuna melt and side salad, she at first didn’t respond. He said her name again and she looked up. “Yeah?”

“What’s up?”

Scully frowned, not knowing how to respond. What could she possibly say to him over bad food in a south Florida airport restaurant that could capture the thing that sat on her chest all day, every day? The men who’d kidnapped her, violated her, tried to kill her with cancer, created then murdered her child, and left her barren—almost all were all dead, but would never be brought to justice. She was entangled in a partnership with someone who would die for her, but who didn’t seem capable of intimate connection, unless it was with busty brunettes who worked for his enemies. And she’d spent the morning reliving in her head the miracle of childbirth that she’d witnessed first hand, trying to forget about the fact that it was a thing her body would never have a chance to do, no matter how much she wanted it. So she was running low on hope, running low on motivation. She poked at her salad and said, “Nothing, it’s fine.”

Her frown echoed back at her on Mulder’s face. “Scully, please. Talk to me.”

She considered briefly what he might do if she said all these things, though she was sure he knew them already. What he was asking for was a simple answer, and she had no such thing to offer. She shrugged. “It’s the same as ever, Mulder. I’m just...” she sighed. “I’m struggling to strike a balance between happiness in my work and being heartsick for all the things I’ve lost. Nothing new.” There. He could make of that what he would.

“You’re not happy in your work?”

Scully’s eyes closed and she shook her head. Of course that’s all he heard. “No, Mulder, I am happy in my work. I love what we do.” Flat, toneless.

“So, then…”

She wouldn’t help him; he could put together the other pieces on his own.

---

Perhaps out of some perverse misinterpretation of her distress, Mulder decided that playing house would be a good idea. The day after her birthday, they dressed in pastel and khaki to role-play in what felt like a vulgar mockery of what he seemed to think she wanted. “You know, you’d fit in really well here,” he said, and it was like an elbow in the kidney. He wouldn’t stop touching her, even once tried to kiss her, but it was all of it a cruel joke. She found herself slipping too easily into wanting to touch him back—a lingering pat on the hand, then her own fingers quickly jumping away when his eyes found her face. It could have been fun, she thought, this trash-monster suburban-horror case, but instead it just hurt. His eye-waggle as he patted the bed beside him—what would he have done if she’d wiped off her facemask and slid into that tiny space beside him? Or if she’d dropped her robe and straddled him right there, facemask and all? He’d have panicked and run, choked on his own innuendo.

But she didn’t want another case to end in awkward silence en route to an airport, so in their rented minivan on the way out of Arcadia, she spoke before the heaviness could settle between them.

“You know I’d never want to live in a place like that, don’t you? You can’t think I’d actually fit in there.”

“Why not, Scully? Nice houses, nice people…”

“Nice people?”

“Big Mike was nice.”

“Mulder, that place was like Stepford. What the hell makes you think I’d want that?”

“I…” but his mouth just hung open for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. He was tired of guessing and being wrong.

“That’s not what having a life means to me, Mulder.” She was tired of his guessing and being wrong too.

“Then what…”

But he never finished the question, and she never answered.

---

He read Padgett’s “novel” in a state of both arousal and rage, the one feeding the other. How dare this man, this stranger, see her this way? How dare he be right when Mulder was always so wrong? She’d been sitting on his bed, goddamnit. About to fuck another killer, maybe, while Mulder waited for her two rooms away.

And then, “Agent Scully is already in love.”

Her face: inscrutable.

Later, in his arms, she sobbed like he’d never heard, and he squeezed her small body to him, desperate for the thump of her heart against his own. He rocked her, sat back on the floor to hold her closer yet. His hand went inside her shirt, up her back to feel her hot skin, to feel her heart beating from both sides of her ribcage. “You’re okay,” he whispered. “Shh, you’re okay. I’m here.”

“Mulder,” she whimpered into his chest, bloodying him everywhere and he didn’t mind. Of course her love was his, and how terribly uncareful he’d been with it, how stupidly, recklessly thoughtless. But then, how dangerous the pull of this thing now… He couldn’t help it. He kissed the top of her head and let himself feel, for once, the overwhelming current of his own love for her. When her breathing slowed, he cupped her face in his palms and kissed her mouth, just once, just briefly.

She looked at him with such vulnerability, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. How could he possibly shoulder the weight of that need? How could he give of himself to her, when he was needed in so many other ways? Rather than collapse under its burden and run, as he may have done months ago, he embraced it—embraced her, again. “I’m here,” he repeated, and he felt the shuddering heaviness of her sigh that emptied into his now-bloody shirt. Somewhere in his chest, something loosened. It was his death grip on the truth, he realized later, his fierce and desperate commitment to the Only Thing That Matters. And most surprising to him, he found that in the space created by that loosening grip, something else found its way in. Something like hope. Something like a future.

_+_

On a warm Saturday in April, he tries again not once, but twice. First in their office, he finds a lazy excuse to spend time with her—hurled clichés and a stolen mouthful of her frozen dessert, when he’d rather taste her mouth. They’re going to kiss, he knows it; he can feel it in his toes like the moments before a sneeze. But then he spots an out for himself, and, coward that he is, he runs again. He leaves her disappointed with melted sugar on her hands.

Second try: evening. Stars in the sky, the smell of suede from her jacket, the feel of her ass against his hips, crack! crack! of the bat, and she is giggling again, god help him. This is the best he’s ever felt. He is beginning to get it, he thinks: together like this, it hurts less. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t need to torture himself like some ascetic in order to deserve his victories. Maybe, just maybe, love makes him stronger instead of an easy target. In the parking lot he kisses her again, a real kiss this time, with one hand tucked into the curve of her waist and another in her hair. He is weak-kneed with want for this woman. Her mouth opens under him and he groans into it. How could he have known it would feel like this? It scares him and he lets her go. She lays her palm to his chest, closes her eyes for a moment, then gets in her car and drives away.

In shared hallucination, they recognize their codependency, their perfect complementarity. Hand to muddy hand across a bouncing ambulance car, they confirm their faultless symmetry.

And then he is sick, is hearing voices, is collapsing in a stairwell. She calls him and hears the worst thing, the very worst: that other woman’s voice that says “Fox” in that breathy way. She asks, but he won’t say who’s there, just tells her it’s okay (it is decidedly not okay; she knows who is there). He hangs up on her and then the other woman is suddenly naked and climbing into bed with him and he tries to tell her no, but his head hurts so so badly and he can’t stop any of this and he wants to cry out for his partner and feel her cool hand on his head, but he can’t, and then there is darkness.

When Skinner calls her “Dana,” she knows it is very bad. She learns, none too subtly, that the other woman was with him in the night. He screams her last name, his always-cry of desperation, and he can see himself through her eyes, through the fuzzy gray monitor, but he can’t hear her thoughts alone through all the terrible noise.

Then, as he did for her, she is flying across the world to save him. She is standing in warm sand (not ice) on a spaceship that is, though she does not know it, knitting her inner scars back together into smooth flesh, that is healing healing her, deep on the inside where what she thought she’d lost comes back awake. She is learning the secrets of all life’s origins while, inside her, originating cells come back to life.

-end-

#a thing i wrote #season 6 #xf fanfic #msr #angst

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

DOTW 9 - Start

With Hanji and Moblit at work so much, Eren had noticed a few things. Moblit was almost always exhausted when he came home, while Hanji almost always had way too much energy. Hanji was horrible at cooking and cleaning, so when he was home, Moblit was the one who did all the work. It didn't sit right with Eren. He was sitting at their dining table eating their food. He used their water and power and slept in their spare bed... and he paid nothing for all it all. He didn't like it. He wasn't used to it... but with the cast on his ankle, he couldn't find a new job. Without a job, he couldn't pay for his share of everything. So he started helping around the house. Just small jobs at first. Like doing his own washing, or stacking and emptying the dishwasher. When neither of the pair said anything, he took it to mean he was doing the right thing. With the chores being done, Moblit had more time to rest, and more time to be with Hanji, and that made him proud. Every morning he'd wait until the house was empty to start. He'd vacuum and mop, before cleaning through the kitchen and tackling the washing. He even managed to get the curtains down and wash them, surprised to find they were actually white and not the coffee colour they'd been when they'd gone into the machine. Sure, it was hard as fuck to manage the stairs with a full basket of washing and annoying cast on his leg, but it was worth it. The house felt bigger and brighter, it smelt like lemons and oranges, instead of the empty void left from scent cancelling spray, and he most of all, it kept his mind busy. Almost daily he'd text Marco, his friend wanted to catch up, but even with all the work he was doing around the house, Eren didn't feel like he had the right to invite Marco over. He still felt at times he was being too pushy and clingy. His anxieties getting the better of him, especially when he didn't hear from Levi again after they went shopping. He also didn't want to get too attached to the place, because Zeke had promised he'd return... not that his heart was listening to his head. In the apartment, he couldn't play his music too loud, but if Moblit wasn't on split shifts, he could have it as loud as he wanted. No one was there to judge his awful singing. No neighbours were banging on the door because he was being too loud. He'd missed music so much. It kept the demon at bay, and kept the memories from suffocating him. So he kept going.

Waking up later than normal, he went about his morning routine in the bathroom, before getting dressed to face the day. A small amount of concealer hiding the black bags that marred his face. He'd had nightmares the night before, and how he hadn't woken Hanji and Moblit, he had no idea. Grabbing his crutches, he headed downstairs.

Moblit was cooking breakfast as his limped in, while Hanji was sitting at the dining table. It was rare for them both to be home in the morning, and his stupid anxieties rose their ugly head

"Good morning, Eren. Come take a seat"

He swallowed hard. His first instinct was to run. It didn't matter that Hanji was smiling, he was sure she was about to yell at him. Limping over to the solid jarrah dining table, he slid into the seat closest to Hanji. He'd fucked up. He'd fucked up and now they were getting rid of him...

"Eren, are you alright?"

Nodding quickly, he pushed a fake smile to his lips

"Just a little sleepy"

"Aren't we all? Anyway, Moblit and I wanted to have a little chat with you"

Here it came. She was going to yell... he'd messed up. He shouldn't have cleaned the house. He should have stayed in his room, where he couldn't make trouble

"Moblit and I have been talking..."

Cutting her off, the words fell out before he could stop them

"I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have cleaned without asking. You've got every right to be mad... I mean... it's your house and I'm stranger... I didn't mean to make trouble for you"

"Huh. What? No. We're not mad"

"Y-you're not mad?"

"Hell no. If you want to clean the house, go for it. No. That's not what we wanted to talk about"

"It's not?"

"Moblit, are you mad Eren's been cleaning our house?"

Moblit snorted

"Nope. It's never looked or smelt better, and it's been a huge help having another set of hands around here"

"You're not going to yell?"

Hanji placed her hand on his

"Nope. We actually wanted to know if you'd like to make it an actual job. Not like a real job, but more like for pocket money?"

"What? Why?"

"Because you're cleaning our house, silly"

"You're letting me stay here... I can't pay rent or anything... I don't need payment"

"Sweetie, we didn't take you in so you'd do stuff for us. And we thought you might feel a little bit more independent if you had some income coming in"

"But you guys are the ones paying for everything. It's not cheap living here, even in the suburbs and there's food, water, power, rates, gas... then you've both got cars on top of the house costs"

"Trust me. Between Moblit's job and mine, we're fine. And besides, we want you to feel like this is your home too"

"But it's not"

"You're practically family. Seriously. If you want to have people come over, that's fine"

"People?"

"Like Marco, or Levi"

"Levi doesn't like me, and Marco... I didn't want to invite him over without your permission"

"Marco is your friend. It must get pretty lonely here"

"It's alright..."

"Oh. Then maybe I shouldn't have invited him over?"

"You... invited him over?"

"Yep. He's coming to dinner, and so is Levi"

He wasn't prepared to see either of them...

"I thought we could make it a celebration"

"What are we celebrating?"

Coming over from the kitchen, Moblit placed a plate stacked with pancakes down in front of him, and another plate down in front of Hanji

"Hanji, what have I told you about starting at the beginning?"

"I was getting there"

"Oh, by all means, continue then"

"I'm trying to"

Moblit kissed Hanji's cheek fondly, returning to the kitchen to grab his own plate, while Eren stared down at his pancakes. He really wasn't used to having someone make him a breakfast like this

"You've got a scan booked at 11, if everything looks good, we can go ahead and take that cast off. I'm not making any promises, but the last scan looked really good"

His last scan had been almost right after his injection induced heat, and he couldn't even remember it. Hanji had apologised over and over for it all, and for how the doctor had treated him. She'd also put him on multivitamins designed for omegas, and wanted him to work on gaining weight. He'd always tried to keep his figure in check, so the thought of gaining weight didn't sit well with him. He'd rather be too thin. He wanted to get back into dancing once the cast came off, and most alphas preferred a thin omega. Zeke had preferred a thin omega... the idea that his brother wouldn't recognise him if he gained weight scared him more than he'd admit

"When I can start dancing again?"

"Not just yet. We'll need to work on building strength back up in your ankle. I know it's not what you want to hear, but rushing into dancing again could lead to further complications. You could do permanent damage and never be able to dance again"

"So..."

"So, we'll take it slow with rehab and walking. I know you have a yoga mat, gently yoga stretches are alright"

"I... don't know that much yoga. Most of the stuff I do is stretching"

"As long as you're not running around in 6-inch platforms, things should be ok"

Moblit took the seat across from him with a smile and a nod

"You should eat before they get even colder"

"Oh... right. I think I'm in shock"

Hanji choked on her mouthful of pancake. Draining half her mug of coffee, she sucked down a deep breath while still coughing

"Sorry! It's just sometimes you say the cutest things"

He wasn't trying to be cute

"It's fine. I was thinking you could help with tonight's menu?"

"Zeke taught me how to cook... I don't know much... but I can generally follow a recipe"

"You're doing better than Hanji. She tried to prepare this romantic dinner one time, but forgot she'd put the roast in the oven and ordered takeaway instead. We were woken in the middle of the night by the fire alarm"

"She... no way"

"It wasn't my fault. I came off my shift after spending three days at the hospital... I shouldn't have been adulting"

"After that, its became a ritual to check the oven every night"

"I can see why"

"Eren, you're supposed to be on my side"

"You shouldn't have been in the kitchen"

Hanji stared at him, failing to hide her smile

"Ok. Maybe not. But Moblit didn't marry me for my cooking prowess"

"No, I had to marry you because no one else would"

"That and I make stupidly happy"

"Yeah. You really do"

Struck with the unexpected prangs of jealousy, Eren didn't know how he was supposed to act. He didn't understand relationships. He only understood behaving and doing what he was told. Zeke would kiss and hug him, let him sit in his lap as he fed him, but he was his brother so none of that counted. Stabbing his fork into the tower of pancakes, he blocked Hanji and Moblit from his mind.

The trip to hospital was kind of over before it really set in. His anxieties gripping his mind and not letting go. Hanji tried to soothe him, only for it to all go over his head. He couldn't concentrate. All he could think about was the scan. He was sure they were going to tell him he'd have wear the cast for the rest of his life and that he'd never dance again. So when he was told his scans were good, and that he getting itchy piece of shit cast off... He wanted to scream with happiness. After weeks of confined itchy smelly torture, his ankle was free! He wasn't free from crutches just yet, but fuck it felt good to have the cast off. Ruffling his hair, Hanji was all smiles as they walked back to her car. His ankle was a bit stiff, but it was barely noticed

"How does it feel?"

"Amazing. I'm not going to miss it"

"Don't forget you need to take it slow"

"I know... I can't wait to wash my foot"

"Let's get you home then. We need to decide on tonight's menu"

"Wasn't Moblit doing that?"

"He's gone to get groceries, and we've got like a hundred cookbooks at home that we've never used. We can get as creative as we want"

"I want to take a bath first... if that's ok?"

"You don't need to ask. It's your home too, remember"

Home. He couldn't really think of it like that. Home was wherever Zeke was... but Zeke had told him to stay with Hanji and Moblit... so maybe it really was "home", just for now?

"Thank you"

*

The bath was magical. He'd scrubbed and scratched at his ankle until he was sure all itchy and flaky skin was gone. He had new scarring from the operation, the scars barely making a dent in comparison to his old ones. Running his fingers around the two parallel scars of his past, his whole body shook. No matter what happened, they'd always be there. He'd never be able to escape the tight feeling of the invisible hold they held on his chest. If he ever found an alpha he truly wished go to be intimate with, they'd run once they knew the story behind them. Allowing himself a few moments to compose himself again, he wiped at his face. He wasn't in that place anymore. The people who'd do this to him were gone. He had a new "home" here... and despite how loud and invasive Hanji was, she'd never do what they did to him. He couldn't help being wary around Moblit. The male alpha had done nothing wrong, he'd even gone out of his way to try and make him feel welcome, but Eren couldn't control his fears and anxieties. He couldn't help the sick feeling that sometimes formed in the base of his gut. Not that Moblit ever said anything about it. About the distance or the timid looks. The man took it in his stride, probably because Hanji would have told him he was damaged. The love the pair of them shared... he didn't understand. Not when he'd witnessed such violence between alphas... not when he'd witnessed what his father did to his mother... but maybe... maybe this was what he needed? A place where they really didn't care he was an omega?

[the-voice-of-hell]

Rent is Theft, part 1

Working Title:  Rent is Theft, formerly The Floor

Note:  My MC is a Filipina trans woman and I am not.  If you have any advice or feedback on that or anything else, hit me up.

                                                        ***

     Fear is not the best motivator.  Check out the shivering guys who fear god so much they break his laws with perverse passion.  The fear compels, but also wracks your mind, makes you do things that don't make sense.  Things that lead you straight to the thing you're running from.

     So I was coding for a living, off and on, about twenty years.  It was great money at first - I went a little crazy, got cleaned up, took care of some surgery, whatever.  But when investors woke up from the dream of magic computer money, the money in my life started to suck.

     First thing to happen was we all lost our jobs.  I do interview well, so I was one of the lucky half that managed to squeak into something new.  But now they were paying maybe sixty percent of what we used to get, and expected to do twice as much work.

     And the companies were all unstable, prone to big layoffs, buyouts, and collapses.  So we became like migrant laborers, moving from office to office every few years and - if we were lucky - making only ten percent less money for twenty percent more labor each time we changed bosses.

     The smart thing to do in that situation would have been to spend my spare time learning everything I could about programming in the latest greatest languages, but who has the energy for that?  As my skills became less current, I became less desirable for employment.

     And this is where the fear came in.  To give myself the time and energy to do that homework, I had rented a fancy new apartment downtown.  With work within walking distance, I could add hours of commute time back to my days.  But the rent was outrageous.  I could afford it, but I'd need to stay employed.  It was a gamble and the fear grew.

     This whole time, the coding language I knew best was being supplanted in the industry by something completely different.  I could probably have limped by as a coder if I just learned that one new standard.

     But my mind was wracked.  Every night, I'd get home and do nothing.  Hell, maybe I was forgetting the things I already knew.  I was never a genius about that stuff in the first place.  So when the office switched to the new standard, I knew I was ruined before it was even made official.

     What happened next is hard to describe.  But I think you'll understand, because it's about the world you know.  It's about the crap you're living through, the things that are running your life invisibly, making themselves felt so powerfully without making themselves known.  Fuck it, here goes.

                                                        * * *

     I got home from work early again.  Last week, no question.  I was doing myself up more than usual because I wanted to remind anyone who might be in a position to save my ass of whatever my charms were.  I know a few dudes at the office fancied me or whatever their idea of me was.  But as I walked through the revolving door, the shoes were killing me and I knew this was all for nothing.

     The white sun disintegrated within a few feet of the giant bulletproof windows, leaving the overgrown slate tiles to be illuminated by a ceiling of nuclear-powered next gen LED lights.  Spiders of light grew and shrank on my glasses as I went into the office.  The door was propped open.

     I did the move where you put your face in like a cartoon character, seeking permission to enter.  The manager had her back to the door but there was no one else present, so I assumed I wouldn't be interrupting anything.  As I came in, said "hello" and took a seat, she didn't bother to turn around.

     "Just a package, take your time," I said.  I'd been checking to see if my new phone was in yet.  By now it was a bit of a laugh because I knew I couldn't afford the bill for continuing its service.  And wouldn't it be hilarious if it arrived just after my evicted ass hit the street?

     As I enjoyed the relief of not standing on heels, a whiskery white man appeared at the door in a dull grey-blue uniform and tool belt.  When the manager didn't turn around for him - what the hell was she even doing back there? - he looked to me.

     I can't not be pleasant.  Most of the time, there's a smile for anyone who has the temerity to look straight at me.

     "Hello, how are you?"

     "You sign for thees."  He passed me a clipboard.  I accepted it, but I tried to hail the manager again.

     "Um..." What was her name?  I still don't remember.  She'd been there only a week, part of a parade of faceless people who clearly found something intolerable about the position.  So I took the pen off the clipboard and signed it with an indistinct squiggle.

     "Dank you. Here is keys.  You use them now.  All the old ones are no good." He handed me a sub-shoebox-sized brick of cardboard and hastily turned around.

     "Uh, thanks?"  My mind was still reeling a bit as he walked out the door, but I put the box on her desk.  I'm sure they wouldn't want me messing with that.

     Finally the manager turned around, coming up with an orange packing envelope that she tossed on the desk irritably.

     "What is that?"

     "Keys, I guess.  Looks like, uh, Eversure Secu-"

     "Why did they give them to you?  That isn't good security."

     "He must have assumed I work here."

     She looked off to the side. "You want to work here?"

     An uneasy shiver of unexpected hope rose in my stomach. "What?"

     She looked back to me.  "Just kidding.  It was a package?  Who for?"

     The hope left and I wished I could be upstairs in my bathroom.  I sat on the discomfort stiffly. "Courtney Marquez. 1203."

     "OK."  She glanced back without leaving her seat.  "We don't have it."

     "OK."

     My feet didn't like walking again, but I was glad to be out of there.  The slow elevator dragged me to the dozenth floor and I went to my lost apartment.

     The place was meant to be a condominium.  During a housing bubble when all these amazing tech jobs were supposed to fill the city with rich youths, developers crunched their numbers and somehow decided that meant it was go time for multimillion dollar condos the size of one bedroom apartments.  Now, either because there weren't as many jobs as advertised, or because value-conscious tech people decided to live in the suburbs, or because the jobs weren't paying what was expected by naive market researchers, dozens of the buildings had to be converted into luxury apartments.

     It was a good time to be me when that happened.  My own jobs had been so unstable I couldn't afford to be locked into a mortgage, but an apartment was much easier to walk away from - and I earned just enough to afford the place.  It was half the size of what I had for half the money in the 'burbs, but I was single and spent too much time working to have a hobbyist's possessions.  My worldly belongings fit neatly into the small, sterile environment.

     But then I found that everything was more expensive in the city.  Every. Damn. Thing.  Need rubber bands?  Three fifty.  Need toilet paper?  Ten dollars.  Need to eat?  Get used to hunger.

     So I was living on the margin, no savings to speak of, and a job less than a week from collapse.  I left the heels at the door and lay down on the couch, eyes looking past the TV into the void of blue sky.

     The tall glass windows were all this seafoam green color and the thermal properties kept daylight from penetrating far.  It suffused the room with a soft blue light, but no warmth.  That was fine.  My body pressing into the thick cushions was raising enough heat.

     Those clean, slick new windows, with a color like eroded broken bottles on the beach.  When I first knew I was going to be able to afford a luxury apartment, I was hoping to get into one of those multi-colored deals that look like they're made of legos with a designer color palette.  But the only thing close enough to work to justify the move and still in my price range was this beast, with those plain green windows on a monolithic building with a brushed steel exterior.  One face of the building had no windows at all, just a dull brutalist edifice.  It looked like the kind of place you'd send old people to be converted into soylent green.  In The Future!

     I actually liked it there, despite all the trauma, the general lack of welcome, just for no good reason.  Maybe it was being in the city, where there are so many people, where I felt more at home on my feet than in the car-dependent endless parking lots of the 'burbs.  Maybe it was that the smallness felt right, like the amount of space my small life should occupy.

     So I cried.

     I don't cry energetically.  My eyes just run everywhere and a I gasp a little.  My eyes roll in my head sometimes, which is weird because they are closed.  I think it's like when someone lies and you can supposedly tell because they glance up and toward the creative side of the brain.  My eyes are trying to find a thought that will save me from sadness.

     My mind was a blank, so it just played over recent events, but in my imagination I was crying the whole time.  Crying walking home from work, coming through the revolving door, sitting in the office.  Crying when the locksmith guy gave me the box of keys.

     He had assumed I work there.  I thought my creativity was spent, in the blank hours fear had me wasting.  But this idea came all at once.  At first my mind was treating it as a joke.

     What if I just had the company re-key the apartment?  The managers here change every month, so I'd quickly become unrecognizable and assumed to belong.  No one here really knows each other, I never told anyone I was going to have to leave.  Hell, I hadn't even told the manager.  And they were having such a hard time filling apartments that I probably would not get surprised by the next tenant.  I knew for a fact the rest of my floor was empty apartments, and some other floors besides.

     Yeah, I could totally do that, haha.  The company that built the place, whoever owned it now, they were running it with a skeleton crew.  Just totally oblivious to what was actually going on in there, except insofar as it sent them a miniscule amount of money.  Yes indeed, just me living there like nothing had happened.  Nobody would be the wiser.

     It was a joke, of course.  No one gets away with that kind of thing.  Well, there's always some random freak who pulls off an amazing crime and makes the papers.  But that's never you.  It's the exception, only a fool would gamble with trying to get away with crimes like that.

     But my mind kept filling in the details - how I would do my laundry, whether I could keep the power on, how I could do the key trick without arousing too much suspicion.  Dusk turned the sky a dark lavendar by the time I realized my eyes were dry and salty, and that this wasn't a joke.  It was something I was going to do.

                                                        ***

     What does a manager wear?  I looked in the mirror the next morning.  I'd wear a pink baseball hat and a North Face jacket.  Dark grey athletic pants, pink and black sneakers.  Reading glasses around my neck, hair in a pony tail.  Looking in that mirror before the disguise came together, I thought I just looked like a scared ghoul.  My glassy eyes had the most serious dark puff beneath them, my skin had paled to a cream coffee color from years under fluorescence, the permed-in wave of my hair was combining with the dregs of yesterday's products to form a medusa bob.  The couped snakes were still writhing in brainless death throes. I grimaced and admired the yellow forming near my dark gums.  This ghoul needed some work.

     An hour later, I made the phone call.  Said my phone,

     "Eversure Security."

     "Mm, yeah, this is Mona Zapata from the Myrmidon Apartments.  We want to order more re-keys..."

     I decided it would be less suspicious - and point less directly at me - to re-key the whole floor.  While I talked specifics I felt like something was trying to jump out of my throat.

     "To come in?  Oh yes, is he available today?  Hm, I think after our office closes would be better for me.  How late is he open?"

     No, I would have to intercept him in the lobby while the manager was possibly still in the office.  Or would I?

     "Oh, listen.  I have to run some money to the back on 6th right then.  How about we meet partway?  Have him catch me in the bagel shop at 9th and Stewart, then we can just walk around the corner."

     "...OK."

     Another hour later, I circled the block to make sure I was coming from the direction of 6th.  I saw no one in a dull grey-blue uniform and tool belt.  A waste of effort.  I went into the bagel shop.  No uniform there.

     I'd need to make a purchase to stave off the awkward. A plain bagel with cinnamon cream cheese and a Snapple.  I'm not sure what I expected that to taste like but it was horrible.  I left the rest of the gooey thing on the table and sipped the tangy beverage while the big numbers of time ticked by on my phone.

     It didn't take long for doubt to come over me.  What if the person at Eversure had forgotten to make a note, or the guy in the pants had missed it?  He'd be going into the office then without me to catch him.

     At three 'til, I started to shake my head side to side nervously, like I was in strenuous disagreement with Claude Rains.  Let 'em think I was crazy.  At one minute, I leapt out of my seat and threw the remains of my nauseating purchase in a trash can on the way out.

     Jogging up the block, I swiveled my head in hope of spotting him driving by.  As I passed the alley behind the building, I noticed a van back there.  I couldn't see the side.  If that was him, did that mean he was already going around to the front?  What if they'd confirmed the appointment by calling the office?  Why hadn't I thought of the possibilities?

     Just as I was about to leave line of sight completely, I noticed the van move.  A little rock.  I backed up, and jogged down the alley.

     It was a wide alley, to admit garbage trucks and large deliveries.  The grey-white morning filled it with light.  I veered close to the building on the far side of the alley until I saw the side of the van.

     Eversure.  I slowed my roll.

     Whiskers from the day before was behind the van closing the doors when I saw him.  He looked at me with a little start.  This time I noticed his name tag read "Niko."

     "Hello," I said, "I'm glad I caught you."

     He was quiet longer than I would have preferred, then, "You ah... Mona Sapata?"  He consulted a clipboard for the last bit of information, then looked expectant.

     "Yes, Niko was it?"  I offered a hand.  He didn't know what to make of that, but stepped forward and obliged.  It was the first time I'd intentionally touched someone in years, and felt sweaty and more dishonest than the criminal alias.

     But I do interview well. He smiled. "Mona.  Le's go.  You want me to, ah..?"

     "Come in the back door, it's closer."  I let him in with my key - still technically a bona fide tenant at this point.  He carried a large yellow-orange toolbox that smacked the metal door frame as he passed within.

     The elevator in the open lobby was the only reasonable way up.  Plain view of the office.  This is where it would all fall apart, I thought.  Walk on his right.  As the gaping glass windows of the office come into view, always move between him and them.  The manager was in.  She glanced up to acknowledge me and I nodded back.  My lips spasmed as I tamped down the reflex to make an insincere grin a little too late.  I stood between him and her, his expansive movements and slow swing of the big toolbox no doubt making him as plain as day.

     Glancing back at her as the elevator finally arrived, I saw she was looking down at her paperwork again.  I braced myself against the elevator door until the man was inside, then slipped in with a deep sigh.

     "Uh, a little... out of breath from... jogging back.  You didn't get the message?"

     "Message? Oh, bagel shop ting. I don' like to meet out of office.  Not professional."

     I stared at his eyes and he seemed not to notice.  They were slightly yellow and marbled with pink veins, with big pale grey satellite dishes in the center.  My throat was trying to turn inside out again, and I stopped talking until I could sort that out.

     I stayed with Niko as he went from door to door.  At each he started by taking a master key out of a tiny grey strongbox in the bottom of his tool kit which he'd use, then promptly return and seal.  As he partially disassembled each lock, installed a new tumbler, and recorded unknown numbers and letters in a little yellow notepad, I acted like he was the most interesting thing in the universe.  At first it was difficult to get him to say anything, but by the time he finished, I knew fifty new and useless things about Montenegro.

     When he was finished, the office downstairs was still open.  I followed him out, standing between him and the office again.  Standing in the alley,

     "How long before we get the keys?"

     "They'll be delivered two, three days."

     "Mm, can one of us pick them up instead?"

     "...OK."

     I didn't like getting that response from people at this company.

     "Listen, I have some things to do in the neighborhood where your office is.  I'll stop by at the beginning of the day after tomorrow, the day after that, right?"

     "...I don't know why.  OK."

     I don't want you jerks calling the office and don't trust you to call an alternate number if I give you one.  "It's no problem, and thanks for everything Niko."

     Then I had to go find out where their office was located.

                                                        ***

     The next day I woke up in my then thoroughly rumpled disguise, head aching from immoderate consumption of Midori with grapefruit soda.  I was an hour late for work, but my delusions of charming my way out of a layoff had sloughed away while I was playing hooky.  I rolled onto my belly with my head hanging off the edge of the cushion, and slid my phone from under the table.

     No.  No call for them.  No more of that.  The stereo had worked its way through my grunge folder completely and was now into joke bands.  Liam Lynch dared me to haul my bowling ball cranium off the couch.  Not cool.

     While my head thundered down the alley, I punched the off button and returned quickly to the couch.  Strike.  As the pins quieted down, I wondered about my friends.  If you could call them that.  When I was a child, friends were people you shared your soul with at three in the morning.  All I had now were coworkers.

     I liked a few of them well enough.  Stephanie Kim admired me as a vision of her possible future - she just started transitioning while we worked together.  But everybody had rubbed me the wrong way at some point or another, even Stephanie.  A few months before, I overheard her having a weird racist conversation with some white dude about how Japan, Korea, and China were the great, classical civilizations of Asia.  Like the rest of us were all in grass skirts sacrificing cattle.

     And the rest of them, mostly white guys, just full of themselves in a culture that held them up as the avant garde of human existence.  Tech culture would change the world.  Startups were the innovators that would bring on the technological singularity and whatnot.  Or at the very least, they would be the next Microsoft millionaires - as if that was something that ever happened now.

     That wasn't even so bad.  I got along well with most of my team.  But the way they were acting during this upgrade situation...  The solemn judgmental nods.  The talk about how easy the new code was.  Fuck those guys all to hell.

     Which left me with nothing like friends.  But that's how it always was between jobs.  I'd just never let myself slip out the door like this before.  It felt different, and much more final.  I was turning into a shadow, voluntarily consigning myself to an existence outside of the human race.

     Then my bladder came knocking, reminding me what being human was really all about.

                                                        ***

     Read part two here.

#Rent is Theft #part 01 #nanowrimo april 2018

[furynewsnetwork]

LISTEN TO TLR’S LATEST PODCAST:

By: Paul Meekin

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” – Confucius

On July 12th during a national day of action I saw a chatroom of peers light up with support, providing numbers for congressmen and senators to call and demand they support the regulation. It was a forgone conclusion that Title 2 was good, and ISPs were evil. I was about to chime in with my own views, but my co-workers reminded me rocking the boat in such a way is bad workplace politics.

So, thanks to my passive aggressive nature, I decided to explain the situation here.

Title 2, in a nutshell, treats internet traffic (Bandwidth usage) like a utility; Preventing Internet Service Providers from speeding up or slowing down connection speeds from businesses to consumers – just like the water company won’t charge you extra for good shower pressure.

Additionally it prevents ISPs from prioritizing their own content by creating a ‘fast lane’ on their servers for their own ‘stuff’.

Put in place by The Obama administration and the FCC in 2014, Title 2 designed to ensure ‘fairness’ on the world wide web and the Trump administration and current FCC chair Ajit Pai oppose it.

You’ve probably read that that Title 2 guarantees a ‘free’ and ‘open’ Internet. For example Comcast is legally prohibited from blocking the ports that allow you to download illegal movies and porno from BitTorrent, and prior to Title 2, they tried to do just that. And Verizon was recently caught throttling Netflix data as a ‘test’ too.

It’s also argued Title 2 exists because most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have a monopoly in a given area; In Podunk Iowa or Minnetonka Minnesota, Comcast may be your only option, thus allowing them to do whatever they want regarding data speed and content blockage without a free-market solution to keep them in check.

ISPs like Comcast and AT&T argue revoking Title 2 doesn’t eliminate the ‘open’ internet. They argue Title 2 is unfair – limits the market, hurts jobs, and in a decidedly Bernie Sanders-ian move, prevents companies that use the most Bandwidth from paying their fair share.

Additionally, it prevents them from offering cheaper, lower-speed options to the disadvantaged.

The issue is more complicated then various “Support net neutrality!” campaigns would lead you to believe. Most people barely understand what Title 2 even is, but are happy to pick a side and throw full-throated support behind it – and that includes libertarians and conservatives who are against Title 2 primary because democrats are for it.

Billion dollar companies like Facebook and Netflix and Google are using their immense influence to encourage their users to fight against other billion dollar companies….without quite explaining the complexities of the issue.

This creates confusion and a team sports mentality. In sports, I don’t care if you root for the Patriots and don’t know what a weak-side zone blitz is. But Title 2 isn’t sports, and the last time everyone so blindly chose a side and demonized the other, Donald J. Trump was elected President.

We need to be knowledgeable about the issues. Especially ones as complex as this. And being knowledgable requires leg work beyond copy and pasting a post you saw on Reddit.

Being knowledgable also requires diving into the logistics of Internet infrastructure, which is messy and complex. John Oliver will tell you it’s boring. I’d tell you John Oliver doesn’t have a computer networking degree and I do, and that HBO GO probably uses quite a bit of Bandwidth they don’t want to pay extra for.

Title 2 is ultimately a question of infrastructure.

“Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly. ” – Roger Ebert

It’s also question of backbone. The Internet’s backbone is an amalgamation of wires inter-connected to form a ‘trunk’ line. It’s not a trunk in that it’s a single, thick, line of cable, but rather a trunk in that most all Internet data flows these specific lines.

For example, to access this story, you clicked this link, that click went out, connected to a line, connected to a series of routers, which connected to the server(s) The Libertarian Republic rents, which pulled this specific story, and then the servers did the whole thing in reverse to get it to you. Likely in less than five seconds.

The ‘backbone’ is the space between TLR’s servers and whatever server you use (Comcast, AT&T, Cellular).

Who owns the backbone? Not who you’d think. Companies known as ‘Tier 1’ providers ‘own’ the backbone. There’s only a few of them: Level 3 communications, Telia Carrier, NTT, Tata Communications, and GTT are the Tier 1 providers – they have the wires and chords and power sources that ‘run’ The World Wide Web.

So if you think about it like a highway, ‘Tier 1’ providers are responsible for every freeway in the country because they own all the cement.

Major companies like Google, Netflix, Facebook, and others negotiate with ‘Tier 1’ providers directly – paying a toll based on Bandwidth usage (not speed), among other technical factors – to be let on the highway.

Tier 1 providers traditionally support Net Neutrality because it doesn’t affect them. Just like a construction company doesn’t *care* about what the speed limit on the highway they’re building is. As long as you pay the toll to use the road they build and maintain, they’re happy.

That’s backbone. The crux of Title 2 – and Net Neutrality – is the rib-cage – or to use the highway metaphor – the off ramps.

As I’m sure you’ve seen, rib-cages and off ramps are far more complex, delicate, and specific than backbones and highways.

And this is where ISPs come in. Companies like DirectTV and Comcast are the guys connecting us to the backbone. They negotiate with Tier 1 providers for access, then build out their own infrastructure in cities, suburbs, and rural communities. This is known as ‘last mile’ infrastructure.

‘Last mile’ infrastructure, is a logistical and financial nightmare. In much the same way an off-ramp must include stop lights, merging lanes, and other more complicated infrastructure, as does ‘Last Mile’ infrastructure as it spiders out from the backbone into homes and businesses in rural and urban communities.

Think about how expensive – and inefficient – it would be to build a paved road out to Middle of Nowhere, Montana to serve six houses in four different locations. Now imagine that the longer that road is, the less pavement you have to work with, and the road becomes thinner as you go.

This is known as denigration of signal – the further out from the backbone you go – the weaker the Internet will be – there’s less space on the road. Now imagine that road needs to serve Mac Trucks, 18 wheelers, clown cars, Greyhound buses, sedans, and pickup trucks. Coming and going, 24 hours a day – and the cars on the road are increasing every.single.day.

Now imagine rush hour on that road.

Now imagine it’s illegal to ban 18 wheelers from that road, or charge them a toll in exchange for widening it because they already paid the highway guys , and your own company trucks aren’t allowed to use the side ramp to get where they need to go faster.

Oh, and no speed limits allowed.

…You can almost see where the ISPs are coming from.

“I don’t believe in the no-win scenario,” – Captain Kirk

So you can see why ISPs have a dog in this fight, but what’s the fight actually over?

In a nutshell, because ISPs control so much of the most difficult infrastructure, they want more control over the services they provide: They want the right to charge for faster speeds, prioritize content as they see fit, and throttle and charge companies who use most of the bandwidth for the privilege.

Especially as it pertains to streaming services like Netflix Instant – which caused a massive spike in worldwide bandwidth usage – and cut into TV and Cable subscriptions – which, ironically, most ISPs bundle with their Internet packages.

So cable TV subscriptions dwindle as streaming gets more popular, putting more stress on Comcast’s servers due to the increased network load, while at the same time slashing ISPs’ cable profits – and by the very nature of Title 2, ISPs can’t do anything about it.

If Comcast wants to charge a service fee for Netflix bandwidth to the consumer (or to Netflix) they can’t. If they want to launch their own video streaming service and offer faster speeds if you sign up in conjunction with Internet service – like they could with cable or telephone service – they can’t.

ISPs would also enjoy the ability to block certain kinds of packets – including those from P2P services like BitTorrent or even UseNet, where a majority of online piracy sharing of illegal movies, games, and pornography takes place. Comcast got in trouble for doing this pre-Title 2.

Meanwhile, those companies using the bandwidth think it’s unfair they’d need to negotiate twice. They already paid the Tier 1 provider. Already paid for services. Why should they be charged extra for having a successful business?

Netflix is changing the world – why should it be punished for innovating while Comcast was busying twiddling its thumbs with Cable TV and land-line telephone service?

Title 2 makes sure all services are treated fairly on the Information Super Highway. If ISPs can block BitTorrent data, why can’t they block Netflix or Hulu, the entirety of the ‘Dark Web’  or websites they deem to be ‘fake’. Heck, Comcast could block any news coming in that’s negative about them.

See what I mean about this being confusing?

Thus, it’s a custody battle between the Intolerable force of the Government vs. the Unconscionable desires of big-business ISPs. The American people are the kids in the middle who know, deep down they’re going to get fucked in the ass either way.

Who do you want to fuck you in the ass, America?

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” – Ronald Reagan

Right now, it seems the American populous would prefer the long, bloated, semi flaccid phallus of the federal government do the fucking, as pro-freedom rhetoric from companies like Google is parroted by the social media masses.

It’s shocking how eager people are to echo sentiments from these companies without even a little bit of research – not that the people trying to convince you care much about educating you. To Google, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Netflix it’s not about you or your freedom or your open internet.

It’s about their wallets.

You think Google and Twitter, who routinely play left-wing favorites when it comes to advertising on YouTube and ‘verified’ statues on Twitter, care about free speech and an open internet?

Of course they don’t. If they did, Milo Yinnapolis would be verified. Philip DeFranco and Dave Rubin and Prager University wouldn’t be in a constant battle for Monetization on Youtube. YouTube wouldn’t have asked their creative community to endorse Hillary Clinton en-masse.

(It’s also a government regulation puts more power in a Federal government that previously shut down the multi-million dollar online Poker industry and happily uses the Internet spy on American citizens.)

But ISPs are no prize, either. They’re making billions of dollars as it is now, and after their ISP Privacy data win, look to gain much more based on the sale of private browsing data.

They also provide your telephone, your television, your home security, and Internet, often semi-forcing you into paying for services you don’t want or need because they’d be cheaper that way (can you say ‘Triple Play’?). They have said they want to throttle and block certain kinds of data. Comcast tried it and got caught.

If Title 2 is repealed they will limit your access to certain kinds of data and charge companies that use the most.

Allowing ISPs do to whatever they want regarding Data Speed when they’re the only providers in many areas is a very scary proposition. And to be honest, I thought Libertarians hated speed limits?

It’s a slippery slope, as they say.

The reason I’m writing this – even after Net Neutrality had its 72 hours of press coverage and we’re onto different and other things now, is because there is so much confusion and frustration when it comes to explaining it. To understand it – and the positives and negatives of Title 2, you need to understand how this all works first – at least a little bit. And most people aren’t interested in educating you. They’re interested in your blind support. So when it comes up again – and it will – you, and I, can point to this article so we at least have a somewhat informed jumping off point.

To reduce this issue to memes and catch phrases and tweets is a joke. To say what it could do without explaining how it works is negligent. To make it a left vs right issue is asinine.

I am dreadfully weary of what ISPs could do to my data, what they could charge me for, and what they could block me from. The fundamental point of the internet is that you can get on from anywhere in the world, and it’s the same for everyone. If the Internet changes based on your ISPs policies, that’s a problem.

So, yeah, I support Net Neutrality and Title 2…For now. But unlike most everyone else, I had to think about it first.

WATCH TLR’S LATEST VIDEO:

The post What we Need to Talk about when we talk about Net Neutrality and Title 2: Backbone. appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

via Headline News – The Libertarian Republic

#IFTTT #Headline News – The Libertarian Republic

[junker-town]

How France is bringing romance back to American football

Illustrations by Brittany Holloway-Brown

Finding the romance in football américain

By taking football out of America, the French made it more communal and passionate than ever

Louis Bien •

La Courneuve may not have become France’s football powerhouse if Bruno Lacam-Caron hadn’t chased a girl. They were dating when she introduced him to a classmate named Yazid Mabrouki, who told Lacam-Caron that he wanted to start an American football club — football américain, in the parlance — in their dirty little Paris suburb 32 years ago. Lacam-Caron thought that joining the Flash might bring him even closer to her.

His relationship with football endured longer than his relationship with the girl, who he later married then divorced. He has never left the Flash, through the long period when the team was a glorified group of friends playing in a park, to now as a European Football League powerhouse. The Flash have won the French championship nine times and claimed a European championship. They have never been relegated out of France’s Élite division. Lacam-Caron has been the team’s general manager since 1994.

American football is a sub-chic sport in France, fervently practiced but in just a few small, insular places like La Courneuve and Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône in the Paris suburbs, or Thonon-les-Bains in the Alps. It has become French like so many things that define France — simple and good, rough and beautiful, like red wine and two-top cafés. It isn’t ubiquitous, but the sport is growing. There are now approximately more than 22,000 American football players in France, up from 2,000 20 years ago.

Lacam-Caron was one of the first few.

At age 14, he was living in the middle of France when his older brother died of leukemia, then he went — “psheeewwww,” he says — to Paris to live with his mother. Lacam-Caron’s parents were divorced and he didn’t like his stepmother or stepfather. He laughs and admits he was “a big asshole.” He says that maybe 80 percent of the original 26-person team was in trouble with the law, including him. He stole car radios and sold them. The other guys stole money, cars and wallets.

“It was a good salvation for me and my friends to be on this team,” Lacam-Caron says. “Because we create a new thing, a new family. We didn’t have a past. We come in like virgin people.”

Lacam-Caron didn’t care that he was playing an “American” sport. The sport shaped him as he and his teammates were simultaneously interpreting it 5,500 miles from the States.

France’s first American football club formed in 1980, four years before the Flash. In the years since, Lacam-Caron has helped build the Flash into a self-sufficient football machine, just as other programs are being molded in hidden places around France. French football exists. It isn’t a secret. It is spreading as a whisper you must be privileged enough to hear. And to the sport’s closest caretakers, that’s just fine.

“What does La Courneuve mean?” Mike Leach is wondering. “Is it some dude’s name, you think?”

I think the Washington State head coach thinks I know because of my name, and because I pronounce French words better than he does. I say it may have something to do with roosters, which isn’t even a little bit correct.

“They like roosters and frogs,” Leach says. “Why the fascination with roosters and frogs?”

The rooster is the national bird, and I think they just like to eat frogs.

“Well you know Benjamin Franklin thought the wild turkey should have been our national bird.”

The question I asked was about Flash de La Courneuve’s pro style offense and whether that was Lacam-Caron’s influence. Leach has been a friend and consultant to the program since 2010. He knows the Flash almost as well as anyone, but curiosity gets ahead of him a lot.

Leach loves history and wants to travel more, talk to more people, and see more things. His first head coaching job — 11 years before he took over Texas Tech, and 23 years before he took over Washington State — was with the Pori Bears in Finland. He had to have an interpreter tell his players what he wanted them to do. Physical demonstrations often translated better than words.

“Sometimes they’d laugh at inopportune times, and I’d be like, ‘Uh, hey, well hopefully you got that,’“ Leach says. “They were probably goofing on me, which would be understandable.”

Shortly after Leach was fired from Texas Tech in 2009, he met Lacam-Caron in a roundabout way through a former Flash quarterback named Braxton Shaver.

Shaver came from McMurry University, a small Methodist college in Texas, to play two seasons in La Courneuve before trying to find “a real job.” Then he decided he missed his friends in France and went back to La Courneuve to play three more.

Shaver’s last season in France was in 2006. In 2009, Lacam-Caron reached out to Shaver because Hal Mumme, the godfather of the Air Raid offense, had become McMurry’s head coach, and he wanted to know if the coaching legend was interested in visiting the Flash.

Mumme declined the offer, but he put Shaver in touch with Leach, who was living in Florida without a coaching job. Leach had wanderlust and a lot of time on his hands. He and Lacam-Caron exchanged a few phone calls, and then Leach was on a plane to spend a week in La Courneuve as a guest of the Flash.

“I was in touch with him, he said, ‘It’s not a joke. It’s Mike Leach,’” Lacam-Caron says. “And fuck, Mike Leach came.”

In La Courneuve, a street market envelops the games. The city is a popular place for artists and writers who want to live in “Paris” without paying the rent. A good deal of the population, 36.3 percent, was born outside of France’s five-pointed continental footprint. Booths outside the stadium sell dishes from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Tahiti. Inside the stadium, music will be blasting, “and the best way to describe it is ‘explicit,’” laughs Shaver.

He and Leach became close friends after that first meeting. They explored Cuba together. In 2015, Shaver traveled to the Middle East by himself, a trip he says he could only do because of the confidence he developed when he continued his playing career in La Courneuve instead of some Texas arena league.

American football clubs in France need American imports to succeed. American players are simply better — they start playing football at an earlier age, in better facilities, with more quality coaches, and a more rigorous practice schedule.

The way Leach and Shaver landed in La Courneuve is the same way that players in far-flung schools come to France. Few people seek it out. The opportunity has to come to them, often by word of mouth, and then players have to be daring enough to go.

“There’s a story you always hear, a kind of agreed upon story, of Division I football players from big schools sometimes don’t do so well when they go to the European leagues,” Shaver says. “They carry their pads to practice, they’ve got to ride the subway, they’ve got to wash their own clothes when they get home.”

They’re good players, but they have to be a little scruffy to end up in France. Ryan Perrilloux, former five-star prodigal son of Louisiana football, started last season for the Argonautes in Aix-en-Provence. Josh Turner, once a top-150 high school recruit for Texas, was the offseason’s prize signing for the Thonon-les-Bains Black Panthers, even though he was never much more than special teams ace for the Longhorns. He served a two-game suspension in 2014. Black Panthers president Benoit Sirouet calls him “the best athlete of his time here in France.”

Thonon-les-Bains is the most secluded of France’s football cities, hugged between the French Alps and Lake Geneva. The town is next to Évian-les-bains of Evian Water fame, and the Black Panthers play their games in full view of the real life three mountain tops on the bottle label. Players joked that they were showering in Evian water after games: The water from the shower heads really was that clear.

Thonon is small, a town of about 40,000 people where football is bigger than even soccer or rugby. American football is the only sport in which Thonon can claim a top-league team all its own. Sirouet says the club now has almost 500 members. The Élite squad won back-to-back titles in 2013 and 2014 behind French national team head coach Larry Legault.

Sirouet attracts a lot of athletes who are tired of France’s obsession with soccer. The Black Panthers regularly draw 1,000 to 2,000 people to watch home games at perhaps the best American football facilities in the country.

“It’s pretty weird seeing like a full turf practice field in the middle of France,” says Sam Poulos, a former dual-threat quarterback for Grinnell College in Iowa. He will be going back to Thonon to play a second season. “That’s a lot of money for a town or team to put in.”

American players get paid, too. The monthly stipend isn’t much — 500-800 euros a month depending on the club — but most of their French teammates pay dues, and often buy their own equipment.

The perks are better than the pay. Poulos gets housing and a car that he shared last season with former Idaho State linebacker P.J. Gremaud. The team was sponsored by local restaurants, so Poulos and Gremaud could go to a different establishment every night and get a free meal.

Clubs practice just two or three times per week and play games every other weekend. There’s no comprehensive film study. Most of the French players have to work jobs, or go to school, or be parents. Poulos and Gremaud, free of the football regimen as they knew it, took mid-week trips into the surrounding nature, up into the mountains.

“It was absolutely incredible,” Poulos says. “One of the more beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

Shaver has been back to La Courneuve from Texas five or six times since his last season. Leach visited a second time in 2015 to host a football camp, and hosted three Flash coaches to shadow his staff for three weeks through the Boise State game in September. Lacam-Caron once asked Leach if he would like to coach for the Flash. Leach said no, but the offer stands.

“I’ve actually thought about if and when I ever retire,” Leach says. “Just pick out someplace over there and I guess rent a house … satellite from there and kind of saturate the region.”

Shaver will will hop on a plane for any flimsy reason to come back. He likes the idiosyncrasies.

“After a game in college, we’d all gather around on the field and say the Lord’s Prayer, right?” he says. “At La Courneuve, at the end of the game they bring out Heinekens.”

Anthony Dablé would rather he never play in France again. Just a handful of French players have ever made it to the NFL for even a tryout. Richard “Le Sack” Tardits, born in Bayonne, set the career sack record at Georgia before spending three seasons with the Patriots until 1992. He is the only French person to ever play a regular season game in the NFL. Dablé could be second, and the first who was entirely Euro-raised.

Dablé came close last year. In February, he signed a one-year minimum contact with the Giants to play wide receiver, but was cut from the team at the final roster deadline. He bided his time in Boca Raton, training at XPE Sports Academy, throughout the season. He had tryouts with the Jets and Patriots in September. In early January, he signed a reserve/futures contract with the Falcons and may finally take the field in 2017. At 28, his opportunity is now and only now.

When he was 17 his cousin showed him the video game NFL Quarterback Club ‘98. Dablé didn’t understand the rules, but he understood big plays when they happened — long passes and kickoff returns — not just by the yards they gained but by how scarce they were, even in the polygonal universe.

“And you know that it’s special because it doesn’t happen all the time,” Dablé says. “You have a lot of runs, and short gains and everything, so when you have a big pass and a big play, you understand.”

Dablé calls football his father. His biological father wasn’t around as he grew up, something he was OK with until he was 19 and rudderless. He had dropped out of his university psychology program and was working in fast food when he joined the Grenoble Centaures, his local team.

The machinations that wear down some players invigorated Dablé. He spent hours, daily, watching clips on NFL.com. He watched so much American football that he learned how to speak English from the commentary. His 6′4 frame is prototypical in the United States, and mammoth in France where football doesn’t usually attract many of the best physical athletes. With the Centaures, he had several coaches teaching him the game, hands on, no translation needed.

Dablé became a specialized big play weapon.

“The mindset and the lessons that you get from football, and the game of football is so similar to life,” Dablé says. “It tells you not to give up, and to have a plan, and help each other, have each other’s back.”

Dablé’s first career reception was a slant he housed in his first game in front of a crowd made up of friends and family. The first big game he played was in front of 7,000 people for the Élite division championship against the Flash in 2011, in which he caught another touchdown.

“It’s like practice is the way it works,” Dablé says. “Whether it’s one person or 100,000, that’s the same. You just have to do your job.”

In 2011, Dablé watched a man who looked a lot like him go No. 4 overall in the NFL Draft. A.J. Green was 6’4, 211 pounds, with a 4.5 in the 40-yard dash — like Dablé, or close enough. He set his eyes on the more competitive German league, joining the Berlin Rebels, then the New Yorker Lions, Europe’s preeminent club. In two seasons, Dablé caught 145 passes for 2,437 yards, and 32 touchdowns. He won two German titles and the Euro Bowl — Europe’s Super Bowl.

In early 2016, the NFL called. His agent had forwarded Dablé’s tape to the NFL United Kingdom office, where it found former Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, now working as a league ambassador. Umenyiora brought Dablé to London the next day for a workout, then — upon confirming that Dablé was the same athlete he saw on tape — told him to take a trip to Florida to train for the NFL regional combines.

The Giants hosted Dablé for a tryout two weeks later, then signed him right after. He was wanted. His mother cried. He couldn’t stay on the roster, but he knows now that he belongs to a class of people who can call themselves the best in the world at something. His future is in football, and he says he will only play it at the highest level before heading off to the sport’s peripheries, into coaching or broadcasting.

“When you get to a certain level, it’s harder to go back down,” Dablé says. “It’s going to be boring.”

Dablé misses the kinship of small-time French football and where it has brought him. It’s hard to make friends with NFL players, especially as a complete outsider, he admits. Rosters turn over rapidly. Some cliques have been in place since high school when many professional players remember playing against each other.

But returning would be like admitting he needs the coddling of a parent. France doesn’t get the external attention that mounts pressure and creates prestige.

“Because really a game of football is just four quarters,” Dablé says. “What’s happening is advertisements and a show — before the game, the tailgate, and all the family comes and they have a barbecue together — that dynamic that brings the game of football has to happen in France so that it can grow.

“Because even in France, it’s not called football it’s called American football, so people know it’s American. That’s not our sport.”

The French don’t genuflect. John McKeon, a former NC State offensive guard, played in La Courneuve after a stint with the Helsinki Roosters in Finland. He thought he had a chance to make the NFL as a 38-game starter who had helped protect Philip Rivers. When he didn’t stick, he said “oh shit” and went abroad. McKeon had NFL size, but his new teammates stood up to him.

“A lot of these guys are paying to play, they come in after work, after they’ve had a long day at work, they’re tired,” McKeon says. “There was this defensive end who I think played Division II or Division III ball here in the U.S., but he was a French citizen. … He comes in right off that bat, head down, trying to take out the new American kid, who they’re paying to be here.”

McKeon now runs American Football International, a website chronicling American football as it is played outside the United States. Joining the Flash allowed him to go to places like Moscow, Barcelona, and Vienna. Culturally, it felt more like football as he wanted it to be.

“It’s that community aspect — ‘I’ve played next to this guy for five, 10 years,’” McKeon says. “We love the game, we love each other, it’s not because I’m getting paid a lot of money. And that kind of goes back to why I fell in love with football. I was disenfranchised with college.

“College is not a friendly sport. College is a professional sport.”

Formal American football has existed in France for more than 30 years now, despite its barriers to entry. Few major sports are as unintuitive, or require so much space, expensive equipment, and bodies. Marc-Angelo Soumah remembers when teammates used to play in motorcycle helmets. “[We] didn’t know much about the game, but we had a lot of enthusiasm,” he says.

Soumah was a Flash player in the 90s before joining Browns training camp as a 29-year-old wide receiver in 2003. He later became president of the Fédération française de football américain (FFFA) and is now head coach of the second-division Fontenay-sous-Bois Météores. He once had to work an entire summer so he could buy his own equipment. Back then there was just one supplier called Trocasport, and cleats, a helmet, and a full set of pads could cost $2,000 in French francs.

American football was too expensive to be played on a whim back then. Today, newcomers to American football can afford to play more casually. Xavier Mas, head coach of the two-time defending French champion Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône Cougars, has noticed that his under-19 players seem to have different motivations than he did.

“Some of these kids, they only have two practices, and they are like asking for, ‘Do you have this type of glove?’“ Mas says. “And I’m like, ‘Dude, you don’t even know how to play football and you’re already talking about how you will look on the field?’

“I’m trying to find a football player and not a model.”

The clubs do a good job of managing themselves, but they lack strong central organization. The FFFA doesn’t have the resources to do much more than sponsor the teams in France. The most equipped organization in Europe, the International Federation of American Football (IFAF), is a farce of leadership disputes and dysfunction, exemplified by the 2015 IFAF World Championship.

In France, club-level caretakers like Lacam-Caron, Sirouet, and Mas are the most competent drivers of the sport’s development. They are first-generation football players, so their stake is personal. They are inclined to protect what they feel is best about American football, even if it means neglecting attention and profitability.

The word “American” in the name of the sport works against it. The French are notoriously wary of anything they think might impinge on their cultural identity. The government has been trying to beat back marauding vacationers for decades, and has resisted the English language’s global takeover. Media coverage of American football largely centers on head trauma and domestic abuse scandals.

French football clubs have agreed on a few small gestures to distinguish themselves. There’s a reason the name of the France’s championship game — Le Casque de Diamant, the diamond helmet — is not a “bowl.”

“I am French,” Soumah explained in a 2015 interview. “For me, if I call it a ‘Bowl,’ I’m going to have the impression of copying the Americans. A French name shows that it is appropriate [for France].”

The growth of the sport would accelerate if international players started popping up in the NFL — say, if Dablé or Vikings receiver Moritz Boehringer from Germany became American football’s Tony Parker and Dirk Nowitzki, respectively. The NFL is understandably hesitant to invest in an unstructured system, however, leaving the sport to move at its glacial pace toward mainstream relevance.

“Players are here for passion, because they love the game,” Soumah says. “And that’s the way we play it, for the guys next to them, for their coaches.

“You know Bill Belichick, ‘Do your job?’ That will never work in France.”

On Nov. 13, 2015, 130 people died in terrorist attacks around Paris. Three explosions occurred near the Stade de France where an international friendly soccer match was taking place between France and Germany, just four kilometers away from where the Flash de La Courneuve play their home games. Two Flash players worked at the Bataclan, the night club where 89 people were killed. They both called in sick with the flu that night.

La Courneuve doesn’t get many visitors. It has one of the highest rates of violent crime in France, and has become associated with acts of terrorism that have taken place in the last year. Many of the perpetrators had been living in Paris banlieues like La Courneuve. France, like many Western nations, is dealing with a rise in racism and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Lacam-Caron brought his players, many of them Muslim, closer together after the Nov. 13 attacks. Insulated them. The Flash quickly set out trying to get updates from every member of the club to make sure no one had been hurt or victimized. They organized discussions between players, coaches, and the organization’s board to iterate in no uncertain terms that it did not equate “Muslim” with “terrorist.”

“We then refocused on the practice of sport, our social actions, and the organization of [activities] in order to ensure that our members think of something else, and do not fear.” Lacam-Caron says.

La Courneuve as France sees it — and as the world thinks of it, when it thinks of it — is different from how its players and fans know it. The insularity of France’s American football programs has served them well as both a barrier against negativity and a force of communal and personal growth. That incubation means that football in France won’t be big business like the NFL soon, or ever, but it also preserves what’s special about it.

The sport has defined itself in marginal places that are more beautiful and welcoming because football exists in them. The questions of what is “French” football and what can “French” football become assume there isn’t an answer already.

“Very quickly, we understood we have a role on the society, we were the connection, we were an example, and we can do something,” Lacam-Caron says. “We had a mission. And the sport was a secondary goal for us.”

<!-- (function($) { $(document).ready(function() { var pub_date = $(".sbn-body-feature.sbn-body-entry.sbn .feature-head h3").html(); pub_date = pub_date.split('')[1]; $('.date-insert').html(pub_date); }); })(jQuery) // -->