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nicklloydnow · 11 months

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“IN THE ANNALS OF ROCK HISTORY, Chinese Democracy is a punchline and a cautionary tale. Guns N’ Roses spent more than 14 years working on it. At the beginning of the process, they were still arguably the biggest rock band in the world. By the end, they were Axl Rose fronting a collection of musicians who could’ve staffed a rock & roll fantasy camp.

Much of the band’s core when they began making the album — Slash, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum, Gilby Clarke — either quit or were fired (or both) along the way. New members reportedly had to be approved by Rose’s spiritual adviser, an aura-reading psychic from Sedona named Sharon Maynard, who was often referred to as “Yoda.” At various points, the band’s lineup included ex-members of Nine Inch Nails, Primus, the Replacements, Devo, and the Psychedelic Furs. The list of musicians who auditioned, contributed, or visited the sessions includes Dave Navarro, Brian May, Sebastian Bach, Moby, and Shaquille O’Neal.

You could write an entire book about the tenure of avant-garde guitarist Buckethead, who communicated with bandmates through a hand puppet, and for whom a chicken coop was constructed in the studio, where, according to Zutaut, the guitarist would record his parts and watch porn. Zutaut also once claimed that, after Rose’s wolf puppy took a shit in said chicken coop, Buckethead resisted efforts to clean it up, claiming he loved the smell.

The entire project wasn’t only time consuming, it was wildly expensive, with costs reportedly running to a quarter of a million dollars per month at some stages, and a final tab of at least $13 million. The protracted recording process was a function of, among other things, Rose’s desperate effort to match the sound coming out of the speakers to the sound in his head. A less charitable reading was that he’d simply lost the plot, and without a strong creative counterweight — someone like Slash or Duff who was equally invested in the outcome — there was nobody to help him find it.

(…)

Within the insular confines of the GN’R fan community, though, there were devotees like Dunsford and Madeline, for whom Chinese Democracy wasn’t an embarrassing bomb from a megalomaniac who’d alienated his most important collaborators. It was an overlooked magnum opus by a misunderstood genius. If GN’R’s early albums bottled a certain amount of anti-social rebellion, Chinese Democracy represents a kind of counterrevolution, in which its relative unpopularity has only intensified the passion of its adherents.

Madeline told me that for years on GN’R forums, “85 to 95 percent of fans wanted nothing to do with Guns N’ Roses unless it was discussing the old lineup. Then you have people like me — we call ourselves five-percenters. All we cared about was Chinese Democracy.”

(…)

Amid this void, the less-dedicated fans lost interest, leaving a hardcore group who feasted on any scraps of information they could scrounge. Every paparazzi photo of Rose would be studied for clues to his mind state. Fans would discuss a stray quote from a band member with the dedication of Talmudic scholars.

This sense of scarcity was foundational to the fan community. Anyone with access to new music or information — or anyone perceived to — has cachet. Unreleased music is the most prized of all currencies.

GN’R fans who manage to procure unreleased tracks, or even snippets of them, fall into two basic categories: hoarders and leakers. Hoarders keep whatever they find for themselves or share only with a handful of trusted friends. Leakers distribute it to the rest of the fans. Within the community, hoarders are both despised and venerated. They’re viewed as anti-democratic elitists, but they’re insiders with something everyone wants. On occasion, a hoarder may sell unreleased material or trade it — and some make real money doing this — but they intuitively understand the scarcity principle. If they distribute music widely, it not only puts them at risk legally, it also erases the music’s value and endangers their heightened status.

(…)

By the time of Chinese Democracy’s official release, most of its songs had already leaked, occasionally in dramatic fashion — including one, bizarrely, when then-New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza brought a CD-R of unreleased songs to Eddie Trunk’s radio show. The album’s anti-climactic arrival fed the fans’ thirst for more music. Suggestions from Rose and others that the album was intended as part of a trilogy, and that there was enough music to fill several albums, convinced some fans there was a lost classic just gathering dust in the band’s vault.

In light of this, many fans have come to resent GN’R’s secrecy and stinginess with new music. “The band should’ve figured out a way to manage their community online in a more positive way, instead of keeping them in the dark for so many years,” says Kooluris. “They’ve created all these monsters who just want to pillage, steal, and grab whatever they can get because they don’t feel like they’ve ever been appreciated by the band.… It’s like Stockholm syndrome. They’re chained up in the basement, they haven’t been outside for years, so they act in unhealthy ways.

“It’s more than the music,” he continues. “These people are looking for belonging.… But these guys invest so much that it distracts them from being happy. Because you’re not going to be happy if you’re all in on GN’R.”

(…)

The studio was Village Recorder, the legendary birthplace of Steely Dan’s Aja, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, and Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. GN’R moved their base of operations there in 2000. Nineteen of the CD-Rs Bird found in the locker were rough mixes from the 2000-01 Village sessions. They included complete songs, instrumentals, rehearsals, and alternate versions of previously released material. The sessions were legendary among fans. Nothing had ever leaked from them. This, they believed, was where they’d find their lost classic.

(…)

Fans have now been waiting nearly as long for a Chinese Democracy follow-up as they waited for Chinese Democracy. Whispers swirl about the imminent arrival of a new full-length culled from this batch of leaked material. But is this stuff any good?

Within the GN’R community, views diverge. “There’s plenty of material that could really be a legendary album,” says Dunsford. Kooluris is less sanguine: “These fans think Axl’s got another ‘Paradise City’ or ‘November Rain’ in the vault, and he fucking doesn’t.” There’s widespread enthusiasm for the raw, guitar-driven “Hard Skool,” which was released as a single in 2021 and hearkens back to pre-Chinese Democracy GN’R. It’s a particular curiosity because many fans interpret the lyrics (“You had to play it cool, had to do it your way/Had to be a fool, had to throw it all away”) as a shot at Slash, who rejoined the band with Duff in 2016, and ultimately contributed guitar parts to the finished song.

Many of the leaked songs aren’t hard to find online. Listening to them, it’s easy to convince yourself that with a little polish, “Atlas Shrugged,” the tense, dramatic “Perhaps,” and “State of Grace,” an industrial-tinged midtempo creeper, could’ve anchored another classic GN’R album. Other tracks feel half-baked. But judging these songs based on rough mixes feels unfair. Exploring ideas that never get fully fleshed out and trying things that don’t succeed is how the creative process is supposed to work. This, of course, underscores the moral argument against leaking unreleased music. “Ultimately, there’s only one truth,” says Kooluris. “It’s stolen music. These guys try to rationalize it, but it’s not theirs.”

(…)

One of his long-running motivations around leaking music has been to stick it to “the hoarding putzes,” though he recognizes the biggest hoarder of all is Rose himself. “He doesn’t owe anybody anything, but sometimes he teases like he’s going to do something, then nothing happens, and people get frustrated,” Craig says. “It’s almost like drug addicts.… You’re so desperate for a fix you’ll do things not within the norm to get your fix. All these kids are acting like they’re members of a spy ring.… You don’t see that with Metallica or Faith No More.”

(…)

Being a music fan has changed a lot in the past 20 years. Collecting an artist’s every release was once the sign of a true die-hard. Now, we all have that for nearly every artist in existence for the price of a monthly subscription fee.

So, in this time of instant access and overwhelming abundance, what defines real fandom? How do you prove it? Well, if you’re Rick Dunsford, you do whatever it takes to get your hands on the music nobody else has. When being a fan is easy, you do what’s hard. These GN’R fans — not just Dunsford, but the whole collection of crazies — understand that.”

“This, in the Year Punk Broke A.D., was months before Nevermind, and a year before Kurt Cobain, on the exact same journey as GN’R, rocked a “Corporate Magazines Still Suck” T-shit on Rolling Stone’s cover. But even as grunge and punk revivalism supposedly unseated mainstream rock in the Nineties (or so the myth goes), Guns N’ Roses, who’d been covering punk groups the U.K. Subs and the Misfits for years, were playing in stadiums alongside Metallica (another band that covered the Misfits, as well as punks Fang years before Nirvana). Mainstream rock, with all its primordial influences, was still bigger than ever and would remain so for at least a couple more years. This box set, memorializing the 30th anniversary of Guns N’ Roses’ overwhelming and intimidating Use Your Illusion albums — arriving, in true GN’R fashion, a year late — presents some interesting alternate facts for the alternative explosion.

(…)

The albums, in hindsight, present the paradox of a band of outsiders who have become the biggest band on the planet but still want to be rebels (see also: Neil Young’s fable of Johnny Rotten, and Kurt Cobain’s fable of Kurt Cobain). It’s a portrait of an identity crisis and it eventually tore them apart. But at the time, they rose to the challenge and reaped the rewards, even if by all accounts the Use Your Illusion albums are still Too Much Music.

(…)

By this point, the band had been called up from the streets and had risen to the occasion. They were still working together, and, gosh, maybe even liked each other. Three decades since their release, we know understand how the Use Your Illusion albums represented the most of what they could do, and they secured their legend. If they had called it quits completely after the tour, like the Police did after Synchronicity, and avoided all the nasty press digs, it could have been a clean break and we probably still would have gotten Chinese Democracy. But Use Your Illusion was a testament to their determination, which is still their driving force. Not grunge, not Spin, not good taste (or even bad taste) could hold them back then or now. This is a portrait of the kings of the jungle.”

#axl #axl rose #guns n roses #chinese democracy #use your illusion

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hecateisalesbian · 7 months

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questions be upon ye

1-30

Cheese Quesadilla no chicken bc I like em plain. ALSO IT COSTS LIKE $10 FREAKING DOLLARS FOR A CHEESE QUESADILLA THE OTHER DAY AT CHIPOTLE EXCUSE ME??????????

do whatever the hell you want just don’t hurt anybody and don’t shove it in my face :) (I personally love meat and other animal based items to ever go vegan lol)

idk so much about the color but I absolutely hate when houses are just like only white and grey and beige. Put some color in there! (Cough my mother)

I sooo want dragons to be real lol but probably like oceanic mystical creatures like who the hell knows what’s down there

all forms of potatoes but I’d die for my mothers mashed potatoes (made with real™️ potatoes not cauliflower)

yeah it costs like $5 on Amazon and I’ve sharpied it a dozen times and I’ve had for like 4 years but it works and it’s waterproof

turmtles

no lol sometimes I don’t even change into pajamas

sorta but I’m reallly bad at being in a consistent habit of doing it. It’s just like the three step proactive stuff bc my skin is really acne prone

apple. Orange is only good if it’s in the morning (I say that like 99% of my flights aren’t in the morning)

Like everything especially my stuffed animals but two things that stand out to me is my stuffed leopard that my nana got me from the Colorado Zoo when I was super young (at the time I thought it was a cheetah so I named it Cheetah lol) and from my later childhood (like 8 or 9) my friend got me a snoopy blanket for my birthday and I still have that

I just use whatever is convenient (but I do use dandruff shampoo and conditioner)

Normal: probably stealing money or putting myself in a system to make sure I’m insured or something. Purge kinda thinking: murder every corrupt rich person and politician I can (also JK Rowling)

oh yeah totally

Burning, then it’s kinda a tie between drowning and freezing bc both take a while.

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE mint chocolate chip slander will NOT be tolerated

bite my nails mostly and shaking my leg

Taro probably but some places don’t make it super good which sucks (also popping boba)

freaking. Brussel sprouts. Those heckers should burn farther down than hell

Mulan slays and The Lost City of Atlantis (Kida) is my bae

idk 🤷 can I say decimals? It’s not so much weirded out as it is cool weird but 0.999 to infinity or whatnot is equivalent to 1

I don’t even have a water bottle (see 14)

lots. I’m gonna get a second piercing soon and I wear crap ton of rings (like Phoebe from Friends) and necklaces and bracelets and big dangly earrings (but I’m allergic to nickel)

American cuz I live/grew up in America lol

yeah but I know my parents would disagree

absolute crap

baggy tee and baggy ripped jeans with fishnets and docs.

mashed potatoes are the bomb tbh

I love ravioli

Spectator you were supposed to literally ask me anything you dummy /lovingly

#asks #this took a while lol

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whatdoesshedotothem · 2 years

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Tuesday 1 October 1833

12 55

very fine morning F62° at 8 ½ am – at German – breakfast at 9 50 in ¾ hour - sat thinking of π-! let her take W.C- we should not be happy together now I have no confidence in her and she is vulgarish M. Christiani 6th lesson from 11 to 12 20 - M. de Hagemann seul called a little before one to take me to the picture gallery in the palace - admission 24 shillings = 2 ½ marks - about 900 pictures in 9 rooms - very few of the Italian school - many of the Dutch and Flemish schools - saw none that I particularly liked except a Madonna and a head of Xst by Carlo Dolcé [Dolci] and a head by Leonardo da Vinci - and a sculptor’s studio at Rome painted by a Danish artist of great promise who died last year at Rome - the perspective and painting excellent - everything seems reality - the fir-wood boards of the floor are inimitable – in the gallery from 1 to 2 30 – then M. de H- went with me to order a plate for my cards Madame Lister to be 5 dollars, and 100 plain white cards to be 14 schellings – M. Christiani told me this morning that he taught Mr. Barker French (to speak very well) in 4 months – he Mr. B- did not know one word of it before – his grand ball to the court and about 460 people at the hotel d’Angleterre did not cost quite 1700 dollars - - the master of the hotel and princess Christians’ maître d’hotel arranged it all – a nosegay presented to each lady on entering - home at 2 ¾ - to dinner at the de H-s today a party so dawdling and looking after things to put on ordered a remise today the 1st I have had - dressed - at the de H-‘s about 5 - Mr Peter Brown did not dine there

SH:7/ML/E/16/0118

as expected - but we had M. Sarmento the Portuguese chargé d’affaires and M. Arana the Spanish ditto and 2 Danish officers - very nice dinner – the dessert 4 dessert-dishes of fruit apples, pears, green grapes from out of the garden and preserved barberries (that we gathered on Sunday) and all the rest handed round – and not at all on the table except soup à la Julienne at first – roast beef, boiled turbot, mutton cotolette covered with bread crumbs vegetables hare apricot tart, cheese and then butter – 2 common green bottles of claret, and 2 decantes of Madeira, and 4 caraffes of water on the table, but the servant went round with the wine – just before or after the hare something in lemonade like glasses handed round (like rhum punch) neither Lady H- nor I took any – at dessert, some cakes handed round – coffee immediately on leaving the dining room – then Noyau handed round (did not take any) – the gentlemen staid till 8 ½ very agreeable which Lady H- had thought long - tea on the going away - and read our letters Lady H- had had one from Lady S- and I 3 pages and under the seal of ½ sheet (nice kind letter) from Lady VC- the C-s likely to be at Whitehall next winter joint concern with Lord S- going to Leamington to see his mother and sisters Lady H- took me to Madame Billé from 9 ½ to 9 48 to return her visit of the other evening and then set me down at home at 10 - the open caléche and I had no hat on - she evidently does not like Madame and seems as Miss Ferrall told me inclined to say not much good of the place court or people but I shall never enter into it she says the people envy their being able to do more than the rest can I think she has a bad temper and after all that he poor little man is the best of the two but she is all kindness to me she does not seem really happy probably the fault is in herself – at my German and wrote the last 19 lines till 11 55 very fine day – F62° at 11 55 p.m.

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rhonddaandallaneuro · 2 years

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With the driving in Ireland it seems you are either on a freeway or driving narrow lane ways and roads through villages scattered throughout the countryside. The small towns are beautiful with thatched roofs intermingled with character buildings that would have been mansions in their day. Packed close together with doorways only a metre from the road. Very enchanting but some times a nightmare for the driver as you negotiate the narrow passage with other vehicle’s.

Stone seems to be the preferred building product and one can only imagine how hard it was so many generations ago when you cleared your land to build your home and fence lines. Backbreaking is an understatement. This said, the Ireland of today is a lot more commercial then when we last visited and to say no longer a cheap holiday a fair comment. The tourist attractions with greatly improved services are some of the most expensive I have come across. COVID can not be blamed as the attractions visited are still a gift from Mother Nature, however the story justifying the cost is not.

Life however is to be enjoyed so to the Cliffs of Moher we drove through these small towns stopping off, under Lindsay’s suggestion, to a natural chocolate factory that clearly prefers the new Irelands culture charging exorbitant fees for a product not really that good. How you can get a cup of tea wrong amazed me.

Spent a short time in Galway but it is now not a small town but an industrial centre that perhaps has lost its character and mystic. Maybe we just did not go to the right places but the fact that when entering the city you drive past factories, petrol stations and motels only, suggests otherwise. Not thinking about returning in a hurry.

The cliffs themselves are stunning and worth the walk. Mother Nature really is the master of creation and design. The brutal sea smashing against the cliffs made of sheer stone a beautiful site with islands in the distance.

From here we drove down to Limerick, where we had planned to stay while having dinner at the famous bar, Dolans, however after visiting King John’s Castle we elected to move on. King Johns Castle is a great place to visit but again the influence of the mighty dollar in tourism is reflected by a glass building built within the precinct removing the uniqueness of the site. Well worth the visit as it explains some of the most important events within the Irish history and culture. Just no longer the photo shot that you must have.

In our trip we have not really experienced that much rain but that was about to change so we stopped in Foynes for the night. A great local pub with staff (young females) who lugged our very heavy luggage up the longest stairs in the world to the delight of Allan and Lindsay. The beer was great and atmosphere even better but one soon understands it is still a small town and not in a hurry to change. Tea was taken by 5:30pm or you did not eat. Haha The local seafood was amazing and drinks cold. Borrowed an ice bucket to take drinks to our rooms to start polishing off some of the various spirits we have acquired during our short time here. Did I mention that we could but 4 bottles of scotch or other spirits for the amazing cost of euro 42 which equates to $14 a bottle. Never let a bargain go by, now all we have to do or should I say Julie and Rhondda have to do is drink it.

Foynes is famous for the local attraction, Flying Boats museum. We could not get in as it apparently only opens when the owner desires. Looked in from the outside and looked great but it is what it is and this is Ireland. Hahaha

Today we start late (8:30am) by Allan’s standards and will do the Ring of Kerry ending up in the more southern parts of Ireland. Looking forward to some great views.

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stisdale · 2 years

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A Winner Every Time

When I was fourteen, I went to the county fair to work on the midway. I looked older than I was; I felt simply old. I longed to leave my family, my dismal school, the smallness of that big county. My parents and I lived in a fragile cease-fire. I was frantic for a different life, and I didn’t see a way out that didn’t involve burning everything down. I was already halfway to a bad end.

At the start of the fair, I had gotten a carny initiation, a free ride on the Octopus that didn’t stop when it was supposed to but kept gyrating until I was screaming to get off, until I cried. Then I was part of the crew, with their dirty hands and easy smiles. I worked the milk bottle game, trying to talk men into knocking over the pyramid with softballs. “You, sir, you look like a winner!” I shouted, often to boys I knew from school. The three bottles were numbered 2, 6, and 14. “Under 9, over 19, a winner every time!” I shouted, trying to get the customers to aim for particular ones. But the bottles were weighted with lead, the balls were mushy, and I had been shown how to stack the bottles off-center. I knew a lot of the boys and they knew me, and yet somehow we were strangers there. This was a different play on a different stage. They took my bait and I took their money and they hurled, eyes on the giant panda bear over my head. The bottles tilted and rocked, but didn’t fall. “Oh, that was so close!” I yelled. “Try again!” All around, the other talkers shouted in a goodnatured battle for customers: “Hey, buddy, give this a try!” Through the hot, dusty afternoons, I straightened the heavy bottles and gathered the scattered softballs. On into the night, I called out to the passing crowd. It only costs a dollar to win! A winner every time.

Was I disappointed to discover the game was rigged? No. The cynicism of a smart fourteen-year-old is ancient and deep. I knew that grown-ups had fixed all the games long ago; the rules weren’t fair, justice was never served. So I gathered the softballs and swung my long hair in a flick of disdain as the young men threw.

The sweat dried under my arms as the shell of sky paled into turquoise and black. The neon flickered into rainbows and the crowd got older, noisier for a while, then quieter; then the last few people wandered out and the taillights faded. The music stopped and we cleaned up. Sometimes we took a quick roller-coaster ride or a spin on the Scrambler before we shuttered everything for the night. I had met a boy, a young man of about eighteen, traveling with the carnival. Toward the end of the week, just as everything was closing up, we stepped onto the Ferris wheel—a few minutes just for us, a favor from the ride jockey. We held hands and rode my deep, inchoate longing up and around and down and around. I could see into acres of darkness, the distant lights of a town I had lived in all my life, the headlights of travelers going away. I gazed out at the dark world, at whatever came next.

He pulls me close, leans over, holds me with gentle, grimy hands: “Come with me.”

-Excerpt from new essay in Oregon Humanities Magazine, Fall, 2022

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throughtheglassdarkly · 5 years

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Missing Pieces, part 6

Welcome back. When last you were here, Day got all schmoopy. Onward.

So, Denny’s happened. Later, we agreed that eating at Denny’s at 8:00 p.m. was somehow less respectable than eating at Denny’s at midnight. But it was a long day and we all could stand to have some greasy comfort food. We all decided to head home, get an early night’s sleep, and then head out to Schenectady in the morning to check out the beer hall. Bella decided to stay over at Pam’s place, letting Duke Lamington know where she was, and everybody else went back to their places. I spent a solid 25 minutes giving Adrian index card updates via Paisley.

As I was about getting ready to go to bed, I noticed a quick flash from across the street. Upstairs, Yova noticed it, too, and we both looked out the window to see a jalopy. Yova quickly got dressed and dashed downstairs, while I was able to see a pretty big guy – not big in the Day or Nash sense, but a heavyweight human man – jump into a car and drive away. It was a beat-up old sedan that looked about as functional as Yova’s crappy pickup. Around this time, I heard banging at the door. When I checked to see who it was, Yova was on the other side. We quickly confirmed with each other that we’d seen what we saw and we quickly decided to get the others and have them bunk in our building for the night. She drove off to get Pam and Bella.

Around this time, Pam heard the banging of a jalopy coming down the street. She went to take a look and saw a figure hop out of the driver’s side of the car. She opened her window and called out, asking him if he needed any help. He was pretty taken aback and stammered out some explanation. “Well, you know, you should get your muffler examined, because there are noise regulations around here,” Pam said. Facing the full fury of the Parent-Teacher Association, the dude took a solid minute to come up with something else to say, but before he could, there was the sound of another car coming. The guy hopped back in and peeled out, but not before Yova was able to snap a picture of his license plate. She got out, hurried up to Pam’s door and explained what we saw. Pam and Bella each packed an overnight bag to come stay with us. On the way back, they picked up Day, who was disgruntled and unhappy and even less talkative than usual.

Yova and I each gave up our beds for the evening so our guests could have them. In Yova’s case, it was because her couch was long enough for her to sleep on comfortably and Pam and Bella were small enough to share her bed. In mine, it was because I felt my bed was more structurally sound than my couch as far as supporting Day. Before we went to bed, Day said that we should try to make a visit to the DMV in the morning to try and track the license plate down.

We all hunkered down for the night and four of the five of us got some sleep. I’d like to say that I was one of them, but the chainsaw noises coming from my room couldn’t be drowned out, no matter how many pillows I pressed against my ears. The next morning, Day was bright-eyed and bushy tailed, coming out of my room and asking what was for breakfast. I pushed myself up to a sitting position and said, “You know, the first eight times or so, I thought that it was just head-on collisions between tractor-trailers on the street outside. How much freaking coke did you snort to fuck up your septum that badly?” “It wasn’t coke, it’s sleep apnea! And I had a rough day, I needed some me time!” he retorted. After a few moments of dead silence, I managed to get out, “That lotion is for my feet. Not. Nefarious. Purposes.” “And yet, it smells like lilacs,” Day said. I got off the couch, stomped over to the fridge and slapped a box of Eggos on the counter. “All right! You got peanut butter and jelly, too?” he asked. I pointed to the pantry and fridge and went off to take a shower.

Upstairs, Yova was about to go out and start her morning workout routine, only to discover that Pam was up early and had already made breakfast for her, some Russian dish involving almost-stale bread. Yova told me later that it was something her mom used to make, which stopped her dead in her tracks from going to the gym. Day went upstairs for second breakfast and Pam whipped up some eggs and bacon for him and some blueberry pancakes for Bella. I spent a solid twenty minutes cleaning up the mess in my kitchen before I met the rest of them downstairs.

We hightailed it over to the Albany County DMV. Thankfully, we got there early enough to where there wasn’t too long of a wait. A Mrs. Pepperpot type person called Day up to her window. They bantered for a minute with Day first trying to be friendly (it worked about as well as you think it did), and then leaned on her with the bad-cop routine. She rolled her eyes and finally agreed to enter the license number, at which point her eyebrow raised. She leaned on her elbows and told Day, “I really don’t have time to deal with some guy’s bullshit today. The queue isn’t going to get any shorter and my lunch break is four hours off. I’ll throw you a bone, just get out of here and let me do my job. Now, I could tell you who owns the vehicle, but it’s not going to do you much good, because this vehicle was reported stolen two weeks ago.” He asked her where it was stolen from and she told him it was from a neighborhood up in Amsterdam, about thirty minutes east.

While they were going on about this, I sat in the waiting area, completely traumatized and telling the others about the mess that was left. “He snored like a drunk grizzly,” I said. “Well, that’s not something he could control,” Pam said. “He dragged the Eggos through my peanut butter and jelly,” I said. “I mean, in terms of sins, that’s not a mortal one,” Yova said. Then I looked up at them and said, “And you don’t even want to know what I found in the wastebasket next to my bed.” That led to dead silence. “That bottle of lotion was three quarters full yesterday. Now it’s half full,” I said. “Oh. We’re going to have to get rid of your bed now,” Bella said.

Day came back over with the information he’d gotten and we traipsed out to Amsterdam, me giving the thousand-yard stare all the while. When we pulled up to the street where the car had been taken from, we realized that it wasn’t exactly an affluent neighborhood, but certainly not a bad part of town. It kind of reminded me of the working class neighborhood I grew up in. Day, unwisely, decided to take the lead on the investigation and scouted around, looking for someone to ask for info.

Eventually, he spotted a pair of hausfraus having a chat over their fences and he went up to talk to them. From the sight of their faces, it was obvious they had absolutely no idea what to say to the giant of a man standing before them, but eventually one of them greeted him. He started asking questions about the missing car, telling them he was a PI, and trying to be friendly. I don’t mean to drag the guy (too much) but friendly isn’t exactly his strong suit. They were not interested in the conversation at all, but one of them did let slip that there was another PI asking around about the same thing, a woman. “I think you should probably go talk to the police,” one of them said, and then they turned back to each other and continued their conversation. Yep. He got Karened.

Fortunately for our investigation, we had a secret weapon of our own: a fully-fledged by-God member of the Parent-Teacher Association. While Day sulked in the car, Pam walked up a few minutes later, asking the women if she could talk to them about the local school district and how her family was planning to move to the area. They were much more receptive to Pam and they started telling her each and every gossip about the area. When Pam asked about crime, they said that the neighborhood was usually pretty safe, except for the strange car robbery a couple of weeks past. Pam managed to out-Karen the Karens as she led them into conversation, learning about how nobody was that sorry to see Mr. Jeffers’s car go because it was a real piece of junk. They stage-whispered to her about how they wondered if there was a possibility of drugs and whether Mr. Jeffers might have smoked five whole marijuanas.

Once we knew whose car had been stolen, we dropped Day and Bella off to talk to Mr. Jeffers while the other three of us went to go talk to the po-po. Day started asking Mr. Jeffers questions using the same techniques that got him nowhere with the Karens and Bella mercifully interrupted, turning out the cutesy act, batting her eyes, and asking Mr. Jeffers if they could get some info from him to help find his car. He was disarmed and agreed to tell them what he knew, what wasn’t much. He wasn’t all that upset that the car was stolen – the insurance company was already processing a claim and he was going to get a better car out of the deal. He was able to tell them that there were a ton of cigarette butts all over his driveway, but aside from that, he didn’t see anything because he wasn’t home when the car was stolen.

Pam, Yova, and I went to the police station, which was pretty small, only covering a couple of neighborhoods. Yova took the lead with the receptionist, telling her she needed to make a report with a detective about a man taking pictures of her through her apartment window (not, technically, a lie). The officer came out and Yova gave him her report, but gave him a phony address from nearby. When she gave him the info for the car, he mentions that an Albany PD officer came through, asking about the same info. Yova asked for her contact info and he gave her card. The officer’s name was Brenda Break. When Yova tried to call, the voice mailbox was full, so we decided to swing by the precinct on our way back to Albany.

“So, Brenda Break,” I said when we got back in the car. “Her parents must have hated her.” “I wonder what her middle name is?” Pam asked. “Probably Beatrix. Brenda Beatrix Break,” I said. “Ooh. Or Bethany. Brenda Bethany Break,” Yova said. “Brenda Bridget Break?” Pam asked. “Brenda Barbie Break?” I asked. “Brenda Brianna Break?” Yova asked. “Brenda Belinda Break?” I asked.

You get the picture. Point is, we were still coming up with middle names for her when we picked Day and Bella up. He looked kind of – surprised? Taken aback? – when he heard what we were saying and we explained that we were trying to figure out what the middle name of the officer from Albany PD who was looking into the car was. He went pale when we said we were going to go speak with her and started stammering out some obvious lies about why he couldn’t come along. We saw right through that and asked him what was up. He let out a long sigh and came clean about it: Brenda was his old partner on the force, someone who he didn’t always get along with but who he had a mutual respect for.

It was at this point that Yova had a horrible realization and she turned to me. “Derek, didn’t you say the guy who you saw out your window was on the heavier side?” “Yeah,” I said. “Bigger dude, not like Day, but hu – ohhhhhhhhhhh,” I said, realization dawning on me as well. “What? What is it?” Day asked. Yova and I looked at each other, then at him. “Day… do you think maybe the guy who stole this car was…” “Was who?” he asked. “Your Fetch,” Yova and I said in unison. He slumped against the side of the car. “And maybe that’s why Brenda’s looking into it, because she thinks it’s you?” Yova asked. Day didn’t have much to say to that. “Listen, if you want, we can drop you off back at your apartment. You don’t have to come see her if you don’t want,” Pam said. Day took a minute to respond, then nodded, saying that he’d rather not. We dropped him at his place and agreed we’d pick him up when it was time to go to Schenectady.

As we pulled away from his apartment, I said, “Okay, I wasn’t going to say it when he was in the car, but were they seriously Day and Break?” “You see, I was thinking that, too…” Yova trailed off. “I mean, it could have been worse,” I said. “She could have been Nancy Night.” And with that, we drove off to speak to the po-po for the second time that day.

Albany PD was considerably bigger and busier than the Amsterdam PD. There was a secretary at the front desk who somehow managed to look both stressed and bored at the same time. Yova took lead as usual and asked him about Officer Break, saying that she had information about a case she was handling. He agreed to go get her and disappeared down the hall. When Brenda came down the hall, I was surprised to see she was much younger than I was expecting, and attractive. Kind of like a battle-hardened, corn-fed Emma Stone.

When she saw us, she stopped in her tracks and told the secretary that she was going to step out for a few minutes. She asked us what information we had for her and Yova gave her the cliffs notes. Brenda held the door for us and led us down the hall to an out-of-the-way room. Once she got us down the hall, she started acting positively giddy, saying, “Oh, man, this is so great. I’ve been trying to talk to some of you guys for so long, and you always run from me. But now you’re here! This is great! This is awesome!” The four of us looked at each other, clearly not understanding. But then she started dropping hints that she could see what we really are.

“Wait, so… what do you see me as?” Yova asked. “You’ve got this crazy bright hair and eyes, it looks like starlight and nebulas,” Brenda said. Yova pointed at me and said, “And does he have feathers?” “Oh, yeah. A shit-ton of feathers,” Brenda said. I bristled a little at this and said, “I don’t have that many feathers…” Brenda told us that a little more than two years ago, she’d suddenly started being able to see changelings (she obviously didn’t know what we were, but from what she was describing, it was clearly changelings).

I asked her when she was able to start seeing us, and if it was around May 2015. “A little later than that,” she said. “I had this partner – big, gruff guy. And he used to wear the most godawful aftershave. Smelled horrible. He disappeared and… this one day, I would swear I could smell that aftershave. I went out my front door, smelling it. Only it wasn’t my front yard. It was this weird brambly maze, I didn’t recognize it. But I kept going after that scent.”

She told us that eventually she made her way through the Hedge (not that she knew it was the Hedge) and found her way out at a Little League field a few minutes from her house. And ever since then, she was able to see things that she hadn’t before. This, as you might guess, left us all completely nonplussed. She wasn’t threatening or anything – she seemed completely thrilled to be talking to some of us. “You have to understand, we’re a skittish lot,” Yova told her. “If someone we don’t recognize comes running full on at us, our first instinct is to bolt.”

Brenda wanted to talk with us at length about what we were. As much as we realized we probably had to do this, none of us were comfortable to keep going with that conversation in the precinct. She told us that she had a lunch break coming up and we agreed to meet with her at a nearby restaurant.

And that’ll about do it for this week’s installment. Next time: brunch with Brenda! And other shenanigans. Until then, be safe, and may you always keep your Bath & Body Works under lock and key.

#Changeling: The Lost #changeling #ctl #recap #ic #that bottle cost me 14 dollars

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spaceorphan18 · 3 years

Text

Head Over Feet (2/14)

After Kurt and Blaine broke up the second time, they went their separate ways, living their separate lives in New York City. Fifteen years later, a retirement party brings them back together into each other’s orbit, with surprising, for both of them, consequences. Are they able to fit each other into their already complicated and messy lives? And are these newfound feelings real? Or just echoes of a past relationship?

Canon Divergent after Season 5.

Ao3 Link

A/N: Since the first chapter seemed to be such a huge hit - I'm dropping this today. This was all originally supposed to be the first chapter anyway! Going forward, I'm going to try to update once a month. Thanks for reading - and I hope you enjoy! :)

Thanks to @snarkyhag for the beta. :)

***

Chapter 2: Loser Like Me (Part Two)

Kurt Hummel loves sex. He loves the feeling of strong hands holding his body, rough lips against his skin, and a hard cock buried deep within him. And that morning he had woken up feeling particularly horny. He isn’t sure what exactly he had been dreaming about but his dick aches to be touched. And luckily he shares his bed with a very hot guy who doesn’t mind taking care of it for him.

He and Ian have been together a little over a year now, though this moving in together thing is new and still taking time to get used to. Sex, however, is not an adjustment they need to make. Ian doesn’t seem to mind Kurt waking him up with a hand on his cock, desperate to be fucked. Ian might be a little slow to wake, but not long after they start, Ian’s already pulling Kurt to a quick orgasm; Kurt spilling all over Ian’s fist as Ian pumps his hips into Kurt from behind.

The thing is, as much as Kurt loves sex, he’s not one to draw it out. Kurt finds himself holding steady onto the bed frame, staring at the wallpaper, as Ian takes his time fucking him. And the wallpaper is incredibly ugly. Seriously. He knows that Ian isn’t the one to have picked it out, but it’s a striped puke-green, burnt-orange, and tacky-gold, left over, most likely, from a renovation to the old building from the sixties. It’s a travesty that it’s remained on the wall so long, and if Ian would just fucking come already, he wouldn’t be forced to stare at it for so long.

Kurt fucks his hips back a little, hoping that Ian will pick up the pace. He leans back for a kiss (that wallpaper is seared forever in his head, god) and gives out a little moan. It’s a tiny bit performative, but it seems to do the trick, and Ian’s hips finally begin to snap, pushing him to his own orgasm.

“Fuck, Kurt, I could wake up this way every day for forever,” Ian says, sucking a kiss to his shoulder.

The word ‘forever’ echoes in Kurt’s brain uncomfortably. Kurt turns in Ian’s arms, quieting him with a kiss. “Happy to oblige.”

Ian goes in to deepen the kiss, but Kurt pulls away. Now that he’s feeling a bit satisfied, he wants nothing more than to take a shower and get ready for the day. He’s got about a thousand things to do, and he’s eager to get started. Ian tries to keep him close -- he’s always wanting to make out after sex -- but Kurt manages to slip out of Ian’s light grasp.

“Shower time,” Kurt says, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Mmm, let me join you.”

The thought suddenly makes Kurt twitch but he tries not to show it. What is wrong with him? His incredibly handsome boyfriend, with his disheveled dark hair and playfully pleading light eyes wants to join him in the shower for a possible part two of morning sexy times. But having Ian shoved in next to him in their tiny shower stall makes him feel claustrophobic.

He pushes past his discomfort to allow Ian to join him. He even gives in to a little light making-out. But there’s no way sex is happening in that bathroom.

They do their morning routine together, bumping into each other in the tiny bathroom. The sink is covered in bottles and sprays, creams and soaps, razors and combs, and they have to reach over each other to grab what they need. Kurt is normally a very organized person, and when he moved in, he took the time to organize a side for each of them. But since then, Ian’s stuff has slowly migrated over to his side, and Ian’s slowly been using the products on Kurt’s side. And mostly, he’d be fine with the sharing if things would just keep their place. However, he doesn’t say anything, enjoying Ian’s good mood.

Ian suggests breakfast, wanting to go to the little bagel shop a few blocks down. He asks Kurt to walk with him but, just wanting a few minutes to check his emails alone, he declines. Ian throws a look of disappointment but heads out, stating he’ll bring Kurt something back. Kurt tries not to feel guilty about it, and reminds himself that there’s nothing wrong with wanting a few minutes to yourself. Besides, Ian’s still excited that they’re living together. He’ll calm down. Surely. Right?

Ian being gone gives Kurt a few minutes to pick up the apartment. There are clothes discarded in the living room, where they had been left after starting sex on the couch the night before. There’s an old pizza box sitting on the coffee table, a few mugs with half-drunk tea, and a scattering of papers. And underneath a pile of Ian’s sheet music is the mail from the previous week, most of which is Kurt’s. He clenches his jaw as he goes through it, annoyed that he’s just now seeing it.

There are a couple of old bills in here that need to be paid, as well as a bright red envelope that looks like an invitation sent from McKinley High. He looks over the invitation with curiosity, though something else quickly catches his eye. It’s a jewelry catalogue sent to Ian. Specifically, a men’s jewelry catalogue. And Ian doesn’t wear jewelry. Highly suspect of it, he looks it over, and a growing anxiety starts to spread. This could not possibly mean…

The door slams shut and Kurt jumps from his spot on the couch. It’s just Ian home from the bagel shop.

“I got your favorite, multigrain with that fancy whipped cream cheese that you like,” Ian says. He hands him the bag and gives him a kiss on the cheek before sitting down next to him.

“You didn’t give me my mail,” Kurt grumbles, taking the bag. Then adds a quiet, “thank you.”

Ian shrugs it off. “I figured you’d see it eventually. I’ve been wondering when you’d open that red envelope. I wanna know what it is.”

“Oh,” Kurt places the bag with his breakfast on the coffee table and picks up the envelope from his lap, opening it. He gives it a fond smile. “I guess my old choir director is retiring. There’s a party for him back in Lima.”

“Well, that’s cool,” Ian says, grabbing the invitation out of his hand. “Quaint. I’m guessing you aren’t going? I mean, other than mentioning your dad, I’ve never heard you talk about your time in Ohio. Hell, I’ve never even heard early New York stories. All I know is one day you walked into my piano bar, a full grown man, mysterious and sexy.” Ian wiggles his eyebrows. “Hard to imagine you in high school.”

“Well, I can assure you I was anything but sexy,” Kurt says. A flash of a memory crosses his brain - one of a performance in a warehouse, lots of boys in blazers, and a really uncomfortable situation for young Kurt. He shakes his head, ridding his mind of it.

“So, are you going to go?” Ian asks, far more interested in the idea than Kurt is.

Kurt scrunches his nose at the thought. He hasn’t stepped foot in Ohio for a better part of a decade. There aren’t even people from high school he still talks to, not on a regular basis anyway. It’s sweet of Will Schuester’s family to think of him, but maybe he’s better off sending a card or something.

“I don’t know,” Kurt says, he stares at the invitation, unsure of how he feels about it. “I don’t know.”

***

Wednesdays mean that Ian is home all day. He is a classical pianist by trade and his day job is playing with one of New York’s symphony orchestras. In the evenings, he usually plays gigs at local bars. But on Wednesday, he has time off from both jobs to be home all day. Wednesday used to be the day where Kurt spent all his time with Ian. Now that they live together, Kurt usually spends his Wednesday anywhere but home.

It usually lands him at his own job, running a small theater that he co-owns with his old friend, Elliott Gilbert. Technically, Elliott’s rich grandmother’s money bought the theater, and Kurt had been brought on to manage the projects and productions that happened there. It’s still quite a work in progress, as the building had been nearly condemned when they originally bought it a few years earlier. But with all their hard work, they’re beginning to draw in better productions, and this might be the first year they actually draw a profit.

When he gets in that afternoon, he finds Elliott up in the rafters, working on some of the lights. Kurt watches for a moment as Elliott finishes whatever he’s working on. It’s hard to say, but he has the toolbox with him, so Kurt can only guess it has to do with the lights nearly coming down the other night. They really need to get an electrician in, but Elliott’s pretty handy about these things, and will at least try to do what he can before they have to ask for help.

Kurt watches a good few minutes as Elliott finishes up and comes down the ladder.

“You’re being quiet,” Elliott says, carefully bringing down the toolbox as he reaches the bottom of the ladder. Kurt, hands in pockets, just gives a gentle shrug. “You’re not usually quiet, which means it can only be one of a few things. Something’s up with your dad. You want a favor. Or it’s boyfriend problems.”

“Well, my dad is fine, and I don’t need anything,” Kurt says. “So….”

Elliott lets out a heavy sigh, and places the toolbox on the ground. “It wouldn’t kill you to go to therapy, you know.”

“You’re not my therapist?”

“Alright, so this session is going to cost you three-hundred dollars,” Elliott looks at his watch. “You have twenty minutes. Go.”

Kurt lets out a laugh as he follows Elliott to the edge of the stage. Elliott jumps off but Kurt lowers himself to sit on the edge, his legs hanging off. Elliott makes a shrug for Kurt to get on with it.

“So, I was going through some mail, and I found this jewelry catalogue. It had a lot of men’s engagement rings,” Kurt says. Elliott makes a face as if to say ‘and…?’ Kurt purses his lips. “I think Ian might ask me to marry him.”

“Have you guys even talked about marriage?”

“Definitely not.”

Elliott doesn’t seem at all convinced. “Maybe it was just an ad then. I get shit like that all the time. I somehow managed to be subscribed to a women’s lingerie catalogue for years.”

Kurt still can’t rid himself of the low-level anxiety he’s been feeling about it all day. “Even so, I just… don’t like the idea.”

“I thought you and Ian were doing great?”

“We are, we are,” Kurt says. Elliott, again, doesn’t seem convinced. “Ian’s in the honeymoon stage of wanting to do everything together, and I don’t know. We’ve been together for a year. We know how we are. Do we really need to do everything together now that we live together?”

Elliott folds his arms across his chest. “Kurt, if this is becoming an issue, why did you agree to move in with him in the first place?”

Kurt stares up at the ceilings. The old, red curtains have a few fringes and tears, and Kurt wonders vaguely, if they should get new ones or if anyone would really notice. He kicks the stage lightly as he avoids Elliott’s question. “I mean, my apartment lease was up, and they were going to double my rent.”

“Oh, god,” Elliott chokes out. “Please tell me that wasn’t the only reason.”

“It’s not,” his voice squeaks a little too much on the words. “I also, you know, love him.”

Elliott shakes his head. Kurt knows judgment when he sees it. “This is just classic Kurt,” he says.

“You know, there’s nothing wrong with having an adjustment period with having to live with someone after I’ve had my own place for so long,” Kurt says, defending himself.

“Uh-huh.”

“I just like my independence.”

Elliott’s eyebrow is arched high. “Or you like sabotaging your relationships.”

Kurt scoffs, looking off to the side of the stage. They’re going to need to scrub this whole place down before allowing anyone to do a production here again. Elliott, however, is not letting him off the hook, and eyes him hard. “I do not do that.”

“Then why have I seen you more in the past couple of weeks than you’ve probably seen him?”

It’s a fair question, Kurt admits to himself. “Well, I do find you tolerable.”

“Kurt, you don’t find any of your boyfriends tolerable,” Elliott says. He almost sounds annoyed, but he knows Elliott’s limits and he knows he hasn’t reached them. But truth be told, he’s as sick of himself as Elliott probably is. “Who was that guy before Ian? That Matt guy? Why did you break up with him?”

He picked the scab, of course Elliott is going to rip open the old wounds. “Because he wanted me to be ‘a part of the family’,” Kurt replies, using air quotes to highlight his point. Matt had been a sweet guy, but his family had been his life. He hadn’t been ready to be a part of any family, let alone one that had been as close as Matt’s had been. He felt as if he had been suffocating every time they went to visit. “His family was crazy. I didn’t need to be a part of that.”

Elliott nods, continuing on. “Okay, and Joey was the one before that. I remember him because he helped clean up this place when we bought it.”

Kurt bites his lip. He did feel bad about that. Joey had been so quick to offer his time. But Joey also had been there. All the time. It had been too much. “He was super clingy,” Kurt says quietly, though he hates that he’s seeing the trend.

“Sure he was,” Elliott says. A grin slips onto his lips. “And then there was Steven.”

“He wanted to marry me six months into the relationship,” Kurt says. He snaps a little too loud, his voice echoing in the empty theater. Elliott remains amused, even if Kurt is not. “Who knows they want to get married six months into a relationship? Why are you getting on my case about this? It’s not like you don’t go through, like, three guys a week.”

Elliott throws his head back in a laugh. “Well, I am at peace with my slutty ways. Look, Kurt, it’s not about the number of guys you go through. It’s just that, well, honestly, I’ve known you forever. And I know you’re this old school romantic and the slutty ways will never be satisfying for you. Did it ever occur to you that the reason it doesn’t work out with these guys is not because you’re this progressive independent, but because deep down you want to be an old school married, and haven’t found the right person to be with yet?”

The gnawing pit in his stomach starts to fade as he thinks about the old fantasy -- the one he had as a kid, where you met your prince, and you lived happily ever after. Only, real life doesn’t happen like that. Most guys are not princes, and the ones who are don’t always lead to happily ever after. He knows better than to be unrealistic, but maybe he’s pushing people too far away.

“Do you think I’ve made a mistake?” Kurt asks, he begins bouncing his foot against the stage again.

Elliott goes soft in deposition. “You know I can’t answer that for you.”

“You’re probably right,” Kurt says. He thinks of Ian - of his kind smile and good heart. He shouldn’t be running, even if every ounce of him feels like it’s too much. “Ian is a good guy, and I’ve been…”

“Difficult?”

“I was going to say myself, but thank you.”

“I do my best.” Elliott playfully taps his knee. “If you want, though, you can crash at my place for a few days. I’m gonna be out of town. Some third cousin is getting married, and Mom insists that everyone be there.”

“No, I’m good,” Kurt insists. And then an idea hits him. “You know, I got an invitation to go back to Lima. Old high school choir thing. Maybe I’ll take a long vacation and do that. It could give me some time to clear my head -- reflect on my questionable life choices.”

Elliott gives a hearty laugh. “You haven’t talked about Lima in years. Besides, going back to Lima might force you to dig into your past, and we all know how much you enjoy doing that.”

Kurt swats at Elliott. “It’ll be fine. What’s the worst that can happen?”

***

After work, Kurt doesn’t go home right away. Instead, he opts to walk around the city for a while. There’s a slight chill, causing him to bundle his jacket a little tighter, and the sky is overcast, threatening a storm rolling in. He won’t be out too late, but he knows Ian is back home waiting for him and he’s just not ready for it yet.

His conversation with Elliott plays over in his head. He does like his independence. He always has. Even when he had been a little boy, his parents had let him play on his own. And after years of rejection from kids his own age, he learned that sometimes being on your own is your best bet. It’s not that he doesn’t like the company his boyfriends have brought him over the years. He just likes his space. And his peace and quiet. And his room to move about as he pleases. And sometimes boyfriends make him feel too tied down.

But he can’t help but think about what Elliott had said. The thing that seems to stick in his brain, wiggling to the forefront of his thoughts. Maybe he wants to be an old married? Maybe he does want that connection, that one person who seems to know him, who understands him enough that there will be days when they’re inseparable, and days when they’re apart. He likes the idea of coming home to the same face every day to see someone who can read him like a book, who will enjoy the same things as him, who will love him for the insufferable human being he always seems to be.

But are there really people out there like that?

Maybe he’s not giving Ian enough credit. When they had decided to move in together, Kurt thought it had been the most optimal choice. Living costs would come down. He’d have a partner to spend his time with. And the sex. God, Ian knows how to have sex.

But permanently? The buzz of anxiety begins to grow at the thought. There are too many little things about Ian, too many things about himself that just don’t feel right. It’s not perfect. Well -- it’s never going to be perfect, he argues with himself. But still…

The storm breaks sooner than Kurt expects, a sudden heavy rain coming down. Kurt stands on the street corner, looking up at the sky as he gets drenched. Maybe the universe is trying to tell him something, and he can’t help but laugh as the rain splashes his face.

Just as he’s about to head home, however, he catches a sign on the corner of a building. A sign advertising an open leasing on a loft, with a number attached. For a moment, he’s transferred back in time to all those years ago, when he lived in a loft in Bushwick with four other people all of whom had been trying to make it in the city. He hasn’t thought about that loft in ages. Hasn’t thought about those people in ages. God, what even happened to…

He tries hard not to think of the name that first pops in his head. But he can’t help but see the face. He shakes his head, as if attempting to get rid of the image.

Nostalgia hits him just then.

Nostalgia for a place he left long ago, for people whom he never thought he’d miss. He is going to take that trip to Lima. He does need a break from Ian. He does need to get his life sorted out. But mostly, he feels a soft ache for returning home -- even if he’s not sure where that is anymore.

***

A week later, Kurt finds himself rolling up to one of Lima’s three motels in a car he rented at the airport. It’s strange coming back to the city he grew up in and, yet, not returning back to his childhood home. He had thought about driving past, but he hadn’t necessarily wanted to see through the window to see whatever happy suburban family had bought the place. Instead, he had driven straight to the motel that he had booked himself the moment he knew he would be coming back.

There is something surreal about returning to the place you grew up after so much time has passed. It’s like time has frozen, remaining exactly the same as the moment you left, even if there are new storefronts in the old buildings, expansions where wooded areas used to be, and a real attempt, it seems, to clean the place up. It feels unchanged, and Kurt can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing. It’s just a thing.

It’s evening by the time he gets in. The motel room is bland and tiny, and the four channels on the TV don’t offer much entertainment. He lays down on the bed to stare at the ceiling, thinking if there’s anything he could do. Most places in Lima shut down before eight, even on a Friday night. And it’s not like he has anyone to call. He had been texting Mercedes Jones earlier in the week, shocked that her number had still been the same, but she had explained that she wouldn’t be getting in until very late and implied that whatever plans she had wouldn’t be with him. He had understood, and it’s not like he won’t be seeing her the next day anyway. Scrolling through his phone, he finds that he doesn’t have a single other contact from high school he could call.

Maybe he should just text Ian -- but as his thumb hovers over his boyfriend’s name, he remembers that Ian is probably playing a concert that weekend. And even if he waits until later when Ian’s home, he just doesn’t want to ruin Ian’s good time by explaining that he can’t quite quash the crushing sense of loneliness that seems to be his homecoming.

Why did he think this would be a good idea?

Out of the corner of his eye, he notices a neon flashing light, and through the window he sees a building that he hasn’t thought about in years. Thinking anywhere is better than being stuck in that sad motel room for the next twelve hours, Kurt heads out into the night.

***

Scandals is, if nothing else, exactly how he remembers it. Not that his memories are anything more than fuzzy blips of moments from long ago. He remembers the same posters being on the wall, in the same tattered state. He remembers the huge, neon signs lining the walls. And god, the music even feels strikingly similar. There aren’t, he thinks with a laugh, any drag queens though.

The atmosphere is quiet for a Friday night. There are a few guys out on the dance floor, enjoying each other’s company, but most of the people in the bar are huddled in the darkened corners. No one looks up from their conversations to notice him come in. The bouncer is too busy flirting with a denim dressed, bearded guy leaning against the wall to notice him slip by.

He’s not a few steps in when he realizes coming out to a bar seems like a silly thing to do, but makes a deal with himself to have one drink before he heads back to the motel and to do the sensible thing in calling Ian.

But as he heads to the bar, he sees something that makes him freeze in his tracks.

Is that…?

It can’t possibly be…?

Blaine Anderson is sitting at the bar, casually chatting with the bartender as he sips a beer. Kurt is stunned to see him, his mind reeling at how this is even possible. There is only one gay bar in Lima. And he’s probably here for the reunion.

But still… Blaine Anderson, of all people.

There’s a tiny part of him that wants to run. Turn on his heel and walk right back out of that bar and not even worry about the formal meeting they’ll inevitably have tomorrow at the reunion. He doesn’t though.

He watches Blaine for a moment, in his element, throwing his head back to laugh at something the bartender said. It’s astounding to Kurt at how much and how little Blaine has changed. Age, it seems, has done him well. There’s less gel in his hair, allowing the natural curls to reveal themselves. His face is harder, jawbone more defined. He’s wearing a dark sweater vest, but no bowtie, and the shirt underneath is unbutton, revealing a wisp of hair on his chest. Blaine is no longer that young boy he once knew. Sitting at the bar is a man.

And yet… his movements are exactly the same. The way he crinkles his eyes when he laughs, the way he lightly touches the bartender’s arm while expressing his point, the way casually plays with the napkin on the counter. That’s still the Blaine he used to know.

Kurt takes a deep breath, releasing the tension running through him. He could leave… but he doesn’t really want to. It’s been a decade since they’ve seen each other. That’s enough time to let old wounds heal, right?

Kurt takes the plunge.

“I’m guessing this place rarely sees a man as gorgeous as you. Mind if I buy you a drink?”

Blaine turns around, utterly shocked to see him there. Kurt’s confidence slips as the silence lingers. Maybe this had been a bad idea. But then, Blaine breaks out into a grin.

“Kurt?” He says his name slowly, as if it’s unfamiliar in a way, but easily slides off his stool, going in for a hug. It’s awkward -- where do you put your hands and arms? How close do you stand? How do you properly greet someone you once agreed to share your life with? Someone who is a relative stranger now. It’s bizarre to him that somehow, Blaine still feels so familiar in his arms. “Please, join me.” Blaine offers the stool next to him as they slip apart. “I’ll definitely take you up on that drink.”

Kurt sits down, suddenly feeling much more nervous than he had been. Blaine waives down the bartender -- asking for beer, while Kurt shortly asks for an amaretto sour. He definitely needs something to calm him down. How is Blaine being so calm? Is he hiding it better? Or is it that he’s soon to be on his third beer?

“So, what are you doing here?” Blaine asks, placing his head on his hand, now looking amused. There’s no anger there. No resentment, or negativity. Blaine genuinely seems to be happy to see him. Based on how they had left things all that time ago, Blaine could have harbored some ill will towards him. But they are both adults now. And it had been a long, long time ago.

“I’m in town for Mr. Schue’s retirement party,” Kurt says. He rubs his legs, not sure what to do with his hands.

Blaine nods, finishing off the beer he had been drinking when Kurt had arrived. “Oh, yeah, I figured that. I meant, what are you doing here ?” He uses both hands to point down.

“Oh!” Kurt feels a little silly not understanding. Thankfully, the bartender brings them their drinks. Kurt wastes no time gulping half of it down as if it were a shot. “I saw it from the motel window. Call me crazy, but I was feeling nostalgic.”

“Huh,” Blaine takes a long sip from his bottle, narrowing his eyes as he thinks it over. “You’re not staying with Burt?”

“Oh, god, right you wouldn’t know,” Kurt laughs as he stirs his drink. “Dad retired a few years ago. He and Carole moved to Arizona to be closer to her sister.”

“Ah, gotcha.”

“I guess I could have stayed with Uncle Andy,” Kurt continues, remaining fixated on his drink as he talks. “He and his sons took over the tire shop. But we’re not exactly close. And he has, like, ten dogs. I’d rather take my chances with the motel.”

Blaine nods, sympathetically.

“What about you?” Kurt asks. “How’s your family?”

“They’re pretty good,” Blaine says, easily. “Cooper has three little girls. Here, let me show you.” Blaine wastes no time fishing out his phone, scrolling through the roll for a picture of three gorgeous young girls who all, clearly, take after Cooper. Kurt coos accordingly but he can’t help but notice Blaine’s left hand, and the indentation of skin where a ring used to be. It makes him wonder.

“So, what are you doing now?” Kurt asks, trying to relax on his stool. He rests his elbow on the wooden bar, and his head on his hand.

“I teach, actually. New York Institute of Fine Arts,” Blaine says, taking another sip of his beer with a laugh. “I mean, I still perform every now and then. But an adjunct professor was needed, and a friend of mine pulled some strings, and I just kind of fell into it. I love it though.” There’s no lie in Blaine’s voice. Blaine had always been a passionate person, but it’s clear by his demeanor that he loves his job.

Kurt smiles meekly, happy for him. “A private school, of course. How very you. Actually, now that I think of it, that’s not far from my theater.”

“You have a theater?” Blaine’s eyes grow wide with interest.

“Well, half a theater,” Kurt rocks his head from side to side, as if it’s a silly little thing, and not the pride and joy that he’s sunk most of his adult life into, now. He plays with the nearby peanut bowl. “The Gilbert Theater.”

“Oh, I know that place,” Blaine says. There’s excitement in his voice. Kurt isn’t sure why this makes him happy. “I thought it had been condemned. I mean - I’m sure you’ve fixed it up.”

“Oh we have,” Kurt says, thinking about all the work he’s put into it over the years. “Elliott and I renovated it. You wouldn’t even recognize it now.”

Blaine takes another slow slip of his drink. “Elliott? Like from college?” Kurt nods slowly. “Ah. So are you guys…”

“Oh, no,” Kurt quickly corrects. “God, no. Business partners only.” It’s such a funny thought to him. Elliott. They’re like brothers. No, he’s definitely not romantically linked with Elliott. There is someone else… but he quickly pushes Ian out of his brain. He doesn’t want to think about him. “So this is crazy, right? That we both ended up in the same sleazy place? Maybe the universe was trying to push us together again.”

Blaine gives an uncomfortable laugh. “Well, there is only one gay bar in Lima, but I suppose…”

An awkward silence grows between them. Blaine bops his head to the music. Kurt munches on some peanuts. They both avoid direct eye contact. The uneasiness that Kurt had felt when he first walked in begins to return. Maybe he should go.

The bartender breaks the silence, asking Blaine if he’d like another drink. There’s an ease there that Kurt picks up on. Blaine knows the guy -- like really knows the guy. Kurt shifts from side to side not sure what to say or do. He eyes the door, he can still slip out if he needs to.

“Man, I cannot believe how little this place has changed since I used to come here,” Blaine says, taking a look around.

“You mean when we were in high school?” Kurt asks. He’d hardly say coming the three times that they did a lot.

“No, it was actually after…” he trails off but Kurt picks up on what he’s saying. After they broke up. After he broke Blaine’s heart. Blaine kind of skips past the beat. Why dredge up all that old stuff. That’s what the reunion is for, right? Something turns in the pit of Kurt’s stomach. “When I moved back to Lima, I used to come here a lot. Thought maybe throwing myself into this place might make me feel better. Not so alone, you know?”

“Did it help?” Kurt’s voice is small.

“Maybe,” Blaine says with another laugh. “I don’t know, it was so long ago. You know it…” he pauses, thinking it over. “Alright, if I tell you something - do you promise not to run screaming?”

Kurt’s intrigued. “Of course.”

Blaine stares intently at his bottle. “After you and I ended things -- I came back to Lima. And I sorta, kinda dated Dave Karofsky for a while.”

Of all the things that Blaine could have said -- that is the last thing Kurt expects to hear. It makes Kurt chuckle into his drink. He can’t even picture it, it’s such a wild thought. “Wait, seriously?”

“Shocking, right?”

“A little. More so that you were into a bear.”

The tension breaks as they let go into easy laughter. The conversation becomes lighter as they begin to discuss old things. They talk about Dave Karofsky, and how someone who had once been Kurt’s ghost had turned into a friend whom Kurt sees every few years for lunch. Blaine mentions he had attended Dave’s wedding. Kurt mentions he had lunch with Dave and his husband last year. It’s strange how things can change so much in twenty years.

They talk about Dalton -- though not about that staircase. The staircase that will forever be burned in his memory for better or worse. Instead, they talk about Sebastian Smythe with fondness, though neither could say where he ended up. And about the one time Blaine sang at the Gap to impress a guy whose name neither can remember.

And for a moment, unprovoked, Blaine mentions his husband. It’s a startling jolt into reality, but Blaine doesn’t give him any more than a name and a passing story about having to explain to his husband why he refuses to shop at The Gap. It’s not like Kurt hadn’t heard Blaine had gotten married. He doesn't remember who had told him or when or even how he had felt about it. Blaine had wanted to be married. He got his wish. And Kurt is happy for him. He wants to be happy for him. Still, that missing ring…

As they reminisce, the bartender brings them more drinks. The room begins to feel warm and familiar. Kurt isn’t sure if it’s alcohol or Blaine that is making him feel so comfortable so far from home. They talk about high school and old friends, people whom they’ve lost touch with and people they’re looking forward to seeing tomorrow. Kurt learns that Blaine developed a surprisingly deep friendship with Santana Lopez. Blaine learns that Kurt hasn’t talked to Rachel Berry since college.

“I just couldn’t after that show,” Kurt explains. They’re both giggly from drinking too much - Kurt having to hold his hands up when the bartender offers him a third. “I mean - not that she even tried to keep in touch with me. But my god did you watch that thing? It was terrible! She was fine - she was always fine. But who decided that would be what America wanted to see for a decade?”

Blaine snickers into his drink. “Well, personally I was offended. ‘Slaine’,” he uses both hands to make air quotes around the character’s names, “was written out after year two. I was like ‘fuck that’. It’s just as well. Had he stayed on, I might have had to sue their asses for defamation of character.”

“You are not wrong,” Kurt says, unable to stop laughing as he thinks about it. He puts a hand on Blaine’s shoulder to balance himself so as to not fall off his stool.

Blaine notices and smirks. “How drunk are you right now?”

“Less drunk than you are,” Kurt smiles into his glass. He is buzzed but not at all drunk. In fact, he feels good and relaxed and happy. When had he last been this happy? “Anyway… All I know is that a terrible writer wrote ‘Cert’ as the sassy yet sexless gay best friend. And he stayed on the show. The. Entire. Run. If anyone has the right to sue, it’s going to be me.”

“Well, for what it’s worth. I don’t think Cert was anything like you,” Blaine says. He leans in close. Kurt can smell the sweet scent of raspberries. “Personally, I thought you were always sexy.”

Something in the atmosphere shifts. Suddenly, Blaine is close. Close enough that he can see the depths of Blaine’s golden eyes. There’s something there that Kurt hasn’t seen in a long time, and it causes him to break.

He’s not sure what it is that makes him say it. He’s not sure if it’s the heaviness of guilt, or the friendliness of Blaine’s demeanor, or the fact that all of this nostalgia is causing him to reflect on his life’s choices - but he can’t help but let the words stumble out. “Blaine, I’m so sorry.”

Blaine looks at him, genuinely confused. “For what?

“For a lot of things, I feel like I owe you an apology for so many things,” Kurt rambles on. “I was not in a good place and you… I shouldn’t have ended it. I mean I shouldn’t have ended it the way that I did. I shouldn’t have hurt you like that. And I’m sorry that I did.”

Blaine takes a moment to think it over, as if he’s processing everything Kurt’s saying. “Kurt…” he lets out a sigh. “You weren’t the only one who was a mess back then. You don’t have anything to be sorry about. We had a good thing. We had a great thing, even. But it’s fine. It’s all in the past, and I’m fine.”

Kurt feels a bit of relief wash over him. Maybe this is why he needed to come back. Maybe he had just needed to bury his demons. He feels lighter than he has in, well, a while. He reaches out for Blaine’s hand and squeezes it. It feels comforting in his own.

“Look at us now, all grown up,” Kurt says, a smile sliding across his face. “I mean, you’re married and I’m…”

“Kurt?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s an open marriage.”

Blaine places his free hand just above Kurt’s knee and squeezes, ever so lightly, he holds it there, stroking his thumb along the side of his thigh. It’s an invitation. His cock gets there first, as he watches Blaine’s hand, firm and strong. His brain becomes fuzzy, but all he can fixate on is the urge to have Blaine’s hand travel up. This is closure, right?

“Come with me,” Kurt makes the quick decision not to second guess this. He grabs onto Blaine’s hand with purpose, sliding off the stool and taking Blaine with him. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Blaine smirk as he throws out a few bills on the counter to pay for the drinks.

***

They’re in the bathroom stall, where Kurt vaguely remembers making out once back at the end of his senior year. They never would have done anything as daring as have sex in a public place, but just kissing, even in a place that accepted it, felt naughty and fun back then.

Now, he couldn’t care less that there are people who might know what they’re doing. His desire is too strong, his brain clouded in a haze of need to taste Blaine again; the wonder of if it will feel so good after so long. The room is broken up into stalls, dimly lit, and smells as if they are the next in a long line of gay men who will use this place to relieve themselves in more ways than one. Kurt pulls Blaine back to the farthest stall, ignoring that there’s another couple occupying another stall, the panting sounds of their fucking echoing in the room. It only turns him on more.

Once the stall door is locked, Blaine looks at Kurt, his large, dark eyes more sure than Kurt is about this. It almost throws him off kilter but Kurt looks to Blaine’s mouth, and suddenly he remembers all the things that can be done with it. His resolve broken, Kurt lunges for a kiss.

Blaine kisses back with force, pushing Kurt back into the wall. Kurt doesn’t even care that the metal bar for handicap use is pressing against the back of his thighs. He just wants to feel Blaine. They kiss deeply, wantonly. His sense memory returns and suddenly he feels like a teenager again, hungry for Blaine back when he had been first discovering what sex is. Kurt moans into the kiss that encourages Blaine to slide his tongue against Kurt’s.

They’re all hands and mouths, wrapping themselves around each other as they make-out. Kurt wraps his arms around Blaine’s neck, combing his fingers through Blaine’s curls as he pulls Blaine closer to him, enough so that their bodies are sliding against each other. Blaine brings his hands down to Kurt’s ass and squeezes with both hands. Fuck. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s gotten so hard so fast.

They begin to rock against each other as they kiss. Kurt can feel Blaine’s hard cock pushing up against his own. If they keep going at this speed, he is not going to last long, and dammit, he refuses to come in his pants.

Kurt breaks the kiss, only for Blaine to start kissing along his jaw and down his neck, Blaine’s touch is electric, and Kurt can’t help but feel dizzy with pleasure. He loses himself in Blaine’s embrace, soaking up the feeling as much as he can. It’s been fifteen years since they’ve fucked - how can this possibly feel so good?

Blaine works his way back up to Kurt’s mouth, though this time, Kurt is able to slow it down. Kurt busies his hands with the buttons on Blaine’s pants. Blaine takes a slight step back, allowing for Kurt to pull him out. Kurt takes a quick second to look down at Blaine’s cock; his thick and delicious cock. If only they weren’t in a bathroom stall right now, Kurt would take his time devouring that cock. Instead, he takes to stroking it, becoming satisfied with the low moans and grunts that are eliciting Blaine’s mouth.

Blaine steadies himself against the wall, as he begins to pump his hips in time with Kurt’s strokes, fucking himself into Kurt’s hand. “Let me,” Kurt says, in a low whisper, biting gently at Blaine’s lips before they fall into a sloppy kiss. Blaine is close - he knows Blaine is close, he can feel it as Blaine arches further into his hand. Kurt speeds up his hand, deliberate in his strokes. It’s a little rough, but Blaine becomes more and more undone, uttering little obscenities as he closes eyes and allows himself the pleasure. Blaine comes, jolting into Kurt’s hand, and lets out a moan that Kurt covers with a kiss.

“Give me a second,” Blaine says, breathlessly, holding firmly against the wall as he comes down.

Kurt smirks, licking the come off his fingers. His own cock is throbbing with need but there’s something incredibly satisfying seeing Blaine loose and fucked out.

Blaine takes a second to put himself back in his pants and then goes down on his knees. This isn’t at all what Kurt had been expecting, and his eyes go wide as Blaine sucks a kiss over Kurt’s clothed cock.

“You really don’t have to do that,” Kurt says, feeling a little guilty. Blaine’s legs are sticking out of the stall door and anyone could interrupt them.

“Shut up and let me blow you, Kurt,” Blaine says, a wicked grin on his face as he unzips Kurt’s zipper. Kurt’s cock bobs free, and like a man allowed to drink water after years in the desert, Blaine sucks Kurt all the way down in one go.

“Jesus, fuck Blaine.” He really doesn’t care if there’s anyone else in there who can hear them. Blaine had always been good at blow jobs; always so eager to give them, and Kurt’s glad to know that Blaine’s enthusiasm hasn’t changed. Blaine sucks him down, greedily, and he loses himself in the sensation of Blaine’s velvety mouth on him.

“I’m curious about something,” Blaine says, pulling off. Kurt can’t imagine what, but he doesn’t have to wait long to find out. Blaine begins to stroke him, slowly, drawing it out. Then sucks a kiss to the tip of Kurt’s cock, using his tongue to swirl and tease it, before he sucks him down once more. Kurt lets out a heavy groan as his knees nearly buckle. “Huh. So that really still does things for you?”

Kurt can’t help but give a little laugh. “Shut up and finish me off, Blaine,” Kurt manages the tease despite him now being desperate to come.

Amused, Blaine obliges, sucking Kurt into his mouth again. Kurt closes his eyes, taking it all in as he lets Blaine take him over the edge. He spills into Blaine’s mouth, Blaine being able to swallow with ease -- something, he notes, Blaine hadn’t been able to do before. As Blaine pulls off, he licks his lips, and remains on his knees for a long moment.

The atmosphere then shifts suddenly. Blaine looks down for a long while, and Kurt can’t tell what Blaine’s feeling -- Guilt? Sadness? Regret?

“Thank you for that,” Blaine says, his sincerity layered with something that feels like finality. Blaine gives Kurt’s hip a kiss before helping put Kurt back into his jeans. There’s something strangely intimate about it, and despite the fact that Kurt is feeling blissed out from his orgasm it’s now tinged with a heavier, unknown feeling. Blaine gets to his feet. There’s a lot going on behind his eyes that Kurt can’t read, but Blaine says nothing, only gives Kurt a soft kiss on the lips. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Blaine leaves the stall but Kurt stays, unsure what to make of everything that happened. A lot just happened. A lot. And as the buzz of sex begins to wear off, a sickening gnawing grows in his stomach. He just had sex with his ex-fiancé whom he hasn’t seen in years. He just cheated on his boyfriend. But what makes Kurt feel the worst, as he slides down the wall to sit on the sticky floor because his legs can no longer hold him, is the realization that for Blaine - that might have been his way of saying goodbye.

#s.o. writes things #head over feet #klaine #klaine fic

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rhysintherain · 2 years

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I don't think most people, even the ones who regularly read books, appreciate how much the internet has changed book culture.

In the early days, when manuscripts had to be handwritten, or each letter had to be set by hand, books were as much a status symbol as they were entertainment. But that's not how it was in the last decades before the internet.

When I was a kid, I lived in a house with walls lined with books. I'm not exaggerating when I say my mother had thousands of them. They weren't expensive; most of them cost around 25 cents at thrift stores and garage sales, with a few notable exceptions, like medical encyclopedias and obscure off-gridder manuals on how to make your own solar panels and build a house out of discarded bottles or whatever.

So, even though we were pretty poor, we had books. Even then, between my mother's lousy taste in fiction and my absurd pace of 3-5 books a month, I was constantly cycling material from the public library. Books were on every available flat surface, to the point you often had to move some to sit down. The books I was reading were piled beside my bed. The ones my mom was reading were on the coffee table. You could tell my books because they had streaks of nail polish, like ghostly pencil marks, where I'd dragged my finger across the page and my dry nail polish had left a line. If I was going on a trip I had to guess how much I was going to read, and weigh being without a new book against the space it would take up in my bag. Stories were readily available, but they were only accessible through physical volumes, one per story.

Don't get me wrong, the internet was there; it had fanfiction, which I occasionally read, but it didn't have books the way it does now.

But now we live in a world where books are available anywhere. Even if I don't have internet everywhere, I can download hundreds of books on my phone, or thousands on my Kindle.

Most of the ebooks I buy cost less than 10 dollars. My sister didn't pay for books through all of highschool, she just read pirated pdfs on her laptop.

And books don't hold the power over stories that they used to. You can find stories in twitter threads, and tumblr posts, and independent blogs, and fanfic sites.

Just as the mass manufacture of books brought the consumption of fiction to the masses, the internet brought them authorship. Anyone can write an original story, or a reimagining of a classic one, or the next chapter in their favorite saga. They don't need to meet copyright requirements, and they don't need to sell it to a publisher. All they need to do is write it and post it, and people will find it.

So now we're back in a world where physical copies of commercially distributed stories are a status symbol. Self-proclaimed Book People post pictures of their shelves, aesthetically arranged by color, and talk about how eReaders "just aren't the same", and treat books as sacred vessels of narrative, too precious to be marked or folded, even though they could get the same story for free online.

Because anyone can have stories, anyone can make stories, through the internet. A 14-year-old reads crime fiction for free on her laptop; a single mom gets through her days reading 3-dollar romance novels on her battered Kobo; a bank teller writes fanfiction about his favorite monster-hunting tv show that have far better character development and pacing than the original.

And the Book People tell us this cheapens stories. They're right, of course, but only in an economic sense.

You see, simply reading isn't enough to prove you have the money to buy books and the space to store them anymore. Anyone can read nowadays. So we've moved the status of the activity onto the aesthetic: shared stories to the feel of paper under our fingers, literary critique to carefully curated "currently reading" photos.

In a hyperliterate society, how do we define ourselves as readers? Not by our stories, but by our books.

#books #reading #fiction #stories #i finally managed to get my complicated feelings about #book bloggers written out #this is not a callout for book blogs just some observations on reading culture and how it changed with the internet #sometimes it makes me a little sad #what would Anne have thought? or Matilda? or Lazlo?#would they be sad at what books have become?#or elated at the possibilities for stories?

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fishmongeringstudies · 3 years

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twenty nine: dear owner, the corpse in your coffeeshop is in love with your daughter

five days before i left for america i met a friend that i hadn't seen in nearly a year for dinner at a little christian cafe which sat on the second floor of one of the old shophouses in holland village. i never remembered the cafe was christian until i walked into the dining area and was greeted with psalms 91-14 printed in glossy sticker paper across the far wall, and i always forgot about it just as quickly as my eyes flitted past to the swing seats near the window, the booths with the mahogany tables, the hanging planters overflowing with fake flowers. the waiter seated us by the window; i took the bench and my friend took the swing. my back was to the window and the sun was setting past it, a thin slice of evening carved out of the gap between the high-rise apartments on the other side of the road. the light played across my friend's face as we picked up menus and thumbed through travelogues, pictures of venice, selections of coffee. 'what do you recommend?' he asked. i pointed at the pancakes.

the dutch baby pancake is not, in fact, dutch. it was derived from a kind of pancake originating from germany, but due to some convoluted and long-lost misunderstanding or another is now known best for having a name that is both endearing and worth grinding the heel of your toe into. the dutch baby pancakes at the cafe in holland village cost eleven dollars and ninety-cents, service charges and government taxes not included. they require fifteen to twenty minutes of extra preparation time as they are baked in the oven to-order. when your baby is ready, it comes to you served in a hot skillet, a strip of fabric wrapped around the handle to facilitate safe handling.

the cafe in holland village is one of my favorites, which says less about the cafe and more, i think, about me. the first time i went there it was with a friend who remains to this day one of those foundational pillars i think of in times of doubt. we were seventeen. the world was both very small and very intimidating because we had begun to pay attention to the wavering line between the known universe and the wilderness that lay beyond it, to become conscious of what we could and could not touch. this cafe, being outside of the immediate and the familiar, was one small step into that wilderness.

the berries and yogurt pancake comes with a generous serving of summer berries, sweet vanilla yogurt, ice cream, and a granola crumble that is made in-house every day by the chefs who work in the kitchen across from the room with the psalms printed on its walls. for my eighteenth birthday my friend and i ordered matching pancakes, sat there while the sky blackened outside the window, talked about what we wanted to do when we weren't kids anymore. but we weren't kids anymore. we hadn't been for a while. we were eighteen. both of us. old enough to know what we wanted; just not how to say it.

after we had finished our pancakes and exhausted the dining area of all the oxygen my friend and i got up, paid the bill, and wandered down the street to the tune of led lights and faint bar music from parties we could not see. it was seven or eight p.m. and holland village looked like the kind of place you went to to forget what you looked like, but i was leaving for america in five days and my brain was a vacuum-sealed bag of horror so it had the reverse effect of making everything brighter, more vivid, harder to avert my eyes from in the moment. we had both ordered sweet pancakes, i the berries and yogurt and he the apple pie, so we decided to get fries to offset the sugar. the fries place at holland village is either german or dutch or swiss. i cannot recall. it occupies a little storefront beside the entrance to the basement of the piazza mall, in front of which is a narrow strip of fake grass and a few tables and fold-up chairs. because the path lies on a slope, the tables and chairs are slanted as well. i spent most of the evening wondering when my fries would tip over. in the end, they never did.

a pizza place opened on the first floor of the mall about a year ago. when i was working on my final papers from home in the fall, my father would often bring back pepperoni pizzas and cheese bread in the evenings. it's been a while since i saw everyone.

these days i sleep later. i'm starting to let things get away from me again. a month ago from today i would have been horrified at the mere thought of it, of the slippage that leads to all the broken bottles on the floor, but in summer the days are so long i want to wrap them around my wrists and throw myself off the highest point in the sky like an eagle caught in a nosedive. it's hard to stick to a routine. but in some ways, once you've fallen into one, it's harder to let go.

things acquire meaning as you walk away from them. i would know this, having spent most of my life leaving. and yet, looking back on the last nineteen years, i am forced to admit that i lived every single one of them and that i did so with a hard, shimmering resolve. like a firecracker set off on a moonless sidewalk, crackling with split-second sparks, the sound sharp enough to cut your fingers on.

06.18.21

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ewfsdvsd · 3 years

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I think it's fantastic news

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jayznetworth · 3 years

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Jay Z Net Worth

Jay Z Net Worth is assumed to be an incredible $1 billion dollars by 2021, which made him the richest rapper actually, along with the preliminary {BuzRush.com} millionaire inside the rap business. However, Kanye has since end up being the wealthiest, pushing Jay-Z lower to #2.

Jay Z Net Worth Corey Carter, is undoubtedly an American citizen rapper, business owner, and buyer. He became a single in the top selling music artists ever, after getting supplied 100 million records, and gotten 21 Grammy awards for his work.

Much like the majority of {BuzRush.com} other powerful musicians and athletes around the world, Jay-Z did not allow music serve as the be-all and finish-all his job. He diversified, and started out purchasingnightclubs and restaurants, their very own clothing line and report label.

Early Living

Shawn Carter came to be across the fourth Dec 1969 in Brooklyn, New You can actually, U . s . Claims. He was elevated in Marcy Properties, {BuzRush.com} a real estate task in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant area. Gloria, Shawn’s mommy, increased him along with the 3 sisters and brothers following their father abandoned them.

Shawn joined Eli Whitney Senior citizen Secondary School in Brooklyn till it was shut down reduce. He then attended the encompassing George Westinghouse Technical and Career Education and learning Elderly Senior High School with upcoming rappers The Well-known B.I.G. and Busta Rhymes, adopted by using a stint at Trenton Main Senior High School Graduation in Trenton, Nj. He in no way done Senior citizen Senior High School.

Gloria obtained a thrive box for Jay-Z’s bday, primarily sparking a need to have music. Pursuing this, he started off cost-free-styling and creating words, after a name ‘Jay-Z’ to identification his coach ‘Jay-O’.

Profession

In the beginning, Jay Z Net Worth was promoting documents from the trunk area of his car. He’d no history deal, and it was unsigned, so he do whichever he could to market his audio.

He launched the history content label Roc-A-Fella information with Damon Dash and Kareem Biggs, that had been kept along with them stunning a submission deal with Top priority. This then authorized Jay-Z to generate his very first recording ‘Reasonable Doubt’ in 1996.

Go toward right now, and Jay-Z {BuzRush.com} can handle the document for several top rated albums using a solo performer around the US Billboard 200 with 14. He’s also possessed a number of number #1’s round the Billboard Very hot 100.

The amount is Beyonce & Jay-Z’s put together online worthy of?

By 2021, Jay-Z’s internet worth is $1 billion, and Beyonce’s internet worth is $500 million, which provides the pair a combined internet price of $1.5 billion.

So, how Exactly Does Jay Z Spend His Money?

Jay Z exists in the $6.85 thousand condo in Manhattan. He apparently hired a $400,000-for every-four weeks summertime time residence within the Hamptons.

Also, he features a large selection of automobiles for example Tesla Product S, Bugatti Veyron, GMC Yukon, Mercedes-Benz Mclaren SLR, Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, 1957 Chevy Corvette, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, Ferrari F430 Spider, Most Respected Phantom plus much more.

In New Orleans, Jay Z Net Worth stays in the $2.4 million previous Presbyterian Church featuring 3 learn rooms.

He’s an amazing range of pieces of jewelry just like a strong gold chain diamond necklace that may be worth $234.000. Also, he includes a Hublot Huge Group view worthy of $73,700.

Often he brings his family members on a break on $3.half a dozen mil personal Bahamas isle and $61.4 zillion yachts.

Shows

Allow me to share the favorite features of Jay-Z’s profession:

Favored Rap/Cool-Hop Artist, United states Tunes Awards (2004, 2009)

Very best Men Cool-Hop Musician, BET Honors (2001, 2004)

Online video of the year, Guess Honours (Otis, 2012)

Hustler of the period, Guess Cool-Hop Awards (2009,2012 and 2011, 2013)

Lyricist of the season, Guess Trendy-Hop Prizes (2009)

MVP from the year, Wager Cool-Hop Awards (2009)

Performer from the time of year, Billboard Songs Prizes (1999)

Finest Around the world Men Solo Designer, BRIT Honors (2010)

Finest Rap Single Overall performance, Grammy Prizes (99 Issues, 2005)

Preferred Jay-Z Estimates

“I would deal with the area go shopping, the bodega, and just grab a pieces of paper bag or get liquid - something just to acquire a paper bag. And I’d create the terminology round the document stuff and bag these ideas in my budget right up until I obtained back. I Then would move them within the notebook.” - Jay-Z

“I’m not even near being our god, nevertheless i function the lord damn challenging.” - Jay-Z

“I consider connections are destroyed up because of the media.” - Jay-Z

If you haven’t been effective, then you definitely don’t understand how it feels to get rid of everything.” - Jay-Z, “Successful individuals have a larger anxiety about failure than people who’ve never done anything

3 Strategies of Good results from Jay-Z

You’ve now learned about Jay-Z’s web worth, and exactly how he obtained success here work most effectively success instruction to learn from Jay-Z:

1. Creativity Can Attack at any time

You observed the man, he familiar with invest in a package exclusively for the brownish pieces of paper to ensure he could create lower any lyrics or ideas that discovered his brain. If this hit, Inspiration can strike anywhere, and Jay-Z ensured he was ready for. He most likely drank that bottle too, but that’s near the point.

2. Constantly Be Hustling

Jay-Z’s web well worth isn’t similar to this of many other rappers on earth. Need to find out why? he did not check out rapping. He entered entrepreneurship, purchasing dining establishments and clubs. This is the time virtually all his web worthy of originates from.

3. Don’t Hold out Til You Have Everything Required

Jay-Z did not also have the products or cash he’d have loved because he initially started out. However, he earned use what he’d, and began where he could.

This could probably be precisely why many people never get commenced alone dreams. They are declaring they’re waiting right up until they’ve everything they require. Powerful folks learn other techniques for getting commenced without everything jazzy information.

Overview

Jay-Z is among the most efficient hip-hop performers in the world, and he’s additionally a efficient businessman. Everyone knows he or she is the real thing, and also the internet cost of more than $1 billion shows it.

He’s encouraged lots of other performers in the future frontward and commence making.

More Info-

https://www.buzrush.com/jay-z-net-worth/

https://sites.google.com/view/jay-z-net-worth-update/home

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crimefighter-bae-b · 3 years

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I have nowhere to vent except here so here I am and be prepared.

I was looking at a product on Sephora, it’s from a brand called Briogeo, and it is 100% cold pressed castor oil. The brand has this listed as Fairtrade. Keep that in mind.

My beef is not with the brand, it’s with everyone in the comments saying the oil is too expensive. For reference, the oil is about $30 (CAD) which imo sounds about right for oil? Oils tend to be expensive for a number of reasons. But so many people in the comments kept saying ‘But I can get a bottle of castor oil from amazon for 14 dollars!’.

Let me say right now, that if you are paying $14 (CAD) for a bottle of castor oil, I am like 99% certain the person on the other end of that transaction- the person making the castor oil- is getting screwed over. And not just in terms of wages!

Castor beans contain a horrifically awful toxin called ricin. Ricin is one of the most toxic substances to humans, and the people who make castor oil who are often people in poorer countries, predominantly women, are being exposed to this toxin every single day they go into work.

I can’t speak for the brand, I can’t speak for the working conditions in the factory that makes this oil, but what I do feel confident saying is this: I think because of the use of slave labour all of us have a very misconstrued idea about what things should or should not cost. I think that purchasing a Fairtrade item and then complaining about the cost of it is very ignorant when said item still falls within the cost I would expect for a comparable item. I also find it incredibly frustrating how quick people are to complain about it when they don’t know the first thing about the process to manufacture said item.

One reviewer said ‘They’re just castor beans, no reason for it to cost so much!’.

Just castor beans. Literally an incredibly dangerous, toxic item to handle that requires good facilities and a whole bunch of PPE for the people who handle it so that they don’t fall victim to a very horrible death. There is no antidote to ricin poisoning btw, and you are likely to die within 36 to 72 hours after you are poisoned.

Yeah, what a fun job.

I can’t say for sure where the money Briogeo is making goes, obviously. But maybe before people fucking start complaining about the cost of things maybe they should realize they live in the real fucking world where things don’t just magically exist. There are real people, putting in real effort, and exposing themselves to very real danger. And they aren’t doing it for you. These people are not making it because they fuckin love making castor oil! They are doing it to feed, clothe, and house themselves and to try to find some kind of stability and security in their lives.

If anyone knows more about the Fairtrade process let me know. But yeah, god, I just needed to get this off my chest somewhere.

#I just needed to rant

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artificialqueens · 3 years

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Cause Though the Truth May Vary, This Ship Will Carry (Gigi/Nicky) - Campvanjie

AN: Based on the prompt: “You weren’t supposed to hear that.” - “Well, you shouldn’t be saying it then.” A slight AU Gigi/Nicky, little bit of unrequited crushing and a lot of fate, originally posted to my old AO3 account on May 24th, 2020. Edited as well to add non-binary pronouns for Gigi out of drag, as the original used male pronouns. Don’t worry, I’m the original author and only want all of my stories collected under one pen name.

Summary: Nicky and Gigi strike up a friendship online, but just can’t meet until the time’s exactly right.

CW: slight mentions of homophobia.

The sun’s almost setting on an August day when Gigi flicks through the games in their library, bored of sniping enemies from rooftops, set on finding something else that has a competitive mode, kicking underneath the bed to find their headset. It would probably be best to at least try to talk to other people, and maybe even count up all the times people call each other gay without even realizing they’re talking to someone, who’s made sixteen dollars an hour dressing up as a girl and working at the rock climbing wall for all of high school.

There’s gay, and then there’s Gigi Goode; with a closet hanging full of custom couture, not that they’d ever admit to their mom that her work isn’t the worst.

There’s only one player in the team’s group chat, as Gigi adjusts their headset so they can talk into the mic.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Hi!”, laughs the voice in his headphones; crackling as Gigi shoots and blows apart a box in the game’s lobby. There’s an accent there he can’t quite place, not that it matters so much, since the guy on the other end easily guides him through the map and even cracks a couple of jokes as one of the other team’s players is booted off a cliff. Maybe he’s Spanish, or Russian, since there are lot of Russian people on the server at this time of almost- night.

They queue for another round, his player’s character stopping next to a poster of one of the girls in the game.

“I like her, do you?”, he asks, and Gigi cringes a little. Straight guys were fucking exhausting, but this was just embarrassing-

“Like, this coat, with the belt like this, makes her waist look like she is a wasp. The insect, not the white people.”, he keeps talking, and Gigi’s eyes widen a little.

“Yeah, I’d buy those boots.”, they joke, hoping that whoever it is, will take it in stride, and he won’t have to listen to someone who’d been cool for the past half an hour, suddenly start losing their mind over how gay that was to say out loud.

“The boots? I want this hair- I want just Mortal Kombat hair but like this color, and maybe instead of a gun I want the scepter, like Sailor Jupiter. You’ve seen that, yes?”

Gigi blinks a couple of times. He’s serious?

“Like, of course. Yeah.”

“She’s a Mugler bitch. Hm, aren’t you?”, the voice teases on the other end; kicking at one of the boxes in the game.

Gigi is silent, as their queue timer runs out, and their team join another game which is already active when they’re dropped in.

“It’s the Hermes winter collection.”

“What?”

“That jacket is a dupe from the Hermes winter collection. You said Mugler-”, Gigi repeats, blasting through a wall in the game.

“Oh- oh you’re saying- this past winter! Of course! Maybe someone on the design team is also a fan?”

“Maybe.”

The two of them finish the round, and Gigi eagerly hits yes; when a little box pops up to add TheNickyDoll to their friends list.

(Gigi adds him back on Discord, too- because they’re probably not taking the Xbox to college, and then, they can send pictures right away.

He’s not a serial killer, and he’s cute.

Gigi can’t help but wonder if Nicky thinks the same of them.)

They slowly knit together in between Gigi’s first semester, and when Nicky moves into a new apartment in the eleventh arrondissement in Paris, and pops a bottle of champagne against his camera on his phone, propped up in his new kitchen. He plays with the zipper on his hoodie, and Gigi still can’t help but be surprised with how simple his wardrobe is.

Gigi spends hours carefully curating their wardrobe, though they supposed in Europe, there were just better pickings.

“Don’t you have friends?”, Gigi jokes, shirtless against the white brick walls of their dorm.

“Everyone will be over later, but I just wanted to do a toast for your timezone. It will be like three am for you when everyone else gets off work.”

“So this is a private party? Well… okay let me get my card.”

“Seriously? Not that kind of party!”

“Didn’t say it was. Congratulations, by the way. I got you something! Well like, I found it, and it’s so you-“

Gigi flicks the camera to face forwards, swinging to a painting hanging in the closet.

“Aw, well you didn’t have to- what the fuck is that?”

“Putin! I painted him in like the eighth grade. My mom was dropping off some stuff last weekend and I can mail him-“

Nicky’s eyebrows shoot up, pots and pans clattering on the other end of the line.

“Bitch, I am trying to not be the victim of a hate crime.”

Gigi laughs a little bit, flipping the camera back to focus on their face.

“I never asked, what do you even do?”

“What?”

“Like you- you have a job right? What’s your job?”

“Ah, I’m working, well I worked at a makeup store, but now I have some contracts, and maybe, you know- this neighborhood is where all the bars and the clubs are. If there’s no work on the runways maybe some will be looking for new girls.”

Gigi’s cheeks run hot for a moment.

“Wait, you- you’re a girl?”, they ask weakly, hoping it won’t absolutely ruin their entire… whatever it is, when you’d rather have a private housewarming alone in bed, than pretend to enjoy the beers that are flowing through the rest of the hall downstairs.

“Only when I’m being paid. Do you know- well, you have to in America you have RuPaul’s show- it’s like that-“

“You do drag? Wait, really?”

“Shhhh.”, he stops them, pressing a finger between his lips. “It’s like, I haven’t got any bookings yet but some of the clubs are interested- some of the parties, too. I can be a bottle girl.”

Gigi simply blinks repeatedly in the screen.

“What- is that too gay? I thought we were both pretty gay.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Hey-“, Gigi keeps the camera on their face, their eyes flicking up towards the naked mannequin resting against the closet door. Most of Gigi’s things were still at home, but there was a black feathered swimsuit they’d been working on- if they took out the waist just a bit-

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Wow, we are getting deep in, Dr Phil.”

“Seriously, what is it?”

“I’m feeling pink recently. Usually just- something simple. Blue. Black. It’s soothing.”

“Black is not a color.”

“Then it’s my favorite not-color.” Nicky pours from the bottle into a flute on her counter. “Get something to drink, come on.”

“Uh-“

“Doesn’t matter what. Come on!”

Gigi reaches for Red Bull, yesterday’s alcohol mixed into it, tangy and stale in the metal can.

“Okay.”

“Pace a Salute!”, Nicky cheers, and they clink their drinks against the camera.

Two months later, there’s a wrapped package on his stoop, covered in foreign postage, wet at the edges like it’s been through- what Americans would call the ringer, the labels so scratched over he can barely make out the return address, when he cuts the cardboard open on his kitchen counter.

If this was that stupid Putin painting, he was deleting Gigi from his entire life-

Inside, is fabric folded in paper, a little cloth ribbon tied around where a card is tucked in.

“I dont know what your actual skin tone is because you need better lights but merry Christmas if it doesn’t fit or doesn’t match sell it on eBay and get better lights”,

Gigi has written, in neat, large letters.

Nicky carefully unfurls the rest of it, and there’s a blue and pink bodysuit inside, accented with green and yellow panels that glitter like the facets of a diamond, and a yellow jacket, the bottom cut off just below the ribs, hemmed in thick stitches so the fabric won’t roll up.

Had Gigi gone and had this made? Or was it off the rack?, he wondered, digging for price tags and labels in the fabric.

Nothing.

Shit.

He fires off a message to Gigi, who is still showing as offline, given it’s probably six in the morning where he is.

14:17

How much is this “gift” you got me? Wtf…

FaceTime me later.

There’s predictably no response, and that night; he paints carefully in the mirror in his bedroom, laying out the little black dress he had chosen for the performance on his bed.

At the very last minute though, it’s that little suit from Gigi that wins out, nude panels sliding over his tights as he shimmies in front of the mirror.

It’s not perfect, but it all looks very nice.

When later comes, Gigi is wearing a red wig with blonde streaks that she runs her long fingers through, winking at the camera.

“My mom’s actually a professional seamstress. It didn’t cost anything, babe.”, she says with a little shrug, a tight yellow dress barely moving around his shoulders. There’s always a party here; and Gigi can’t imagine hating it more, the little college town bigger than he was used to, and yet still- too small for what she really wanted.

“If you want other stuff, I’ll send it. There’s lots of stuff that I don’t really wear anymore and we kind of have the same style. It’s not like anyone can say anything, then they’d have to admit they’ve seen me out in public. Or I could even make you something, I’m bored all the time.”

“Why are you doing this?”, Nicky asks.

“I dunno. It’s not like you’re my competition. You’re my friend.”

19:41

Anyway, I’m dropping out of school, getting a nose job and moving out to LA.

Gigi types out on their phone, underneath the table at their family’s annual thanksgiving dinner.

19:41

Maybe not all at once.

Nicky’s reply comes lightning fast- making Gigi grin.

“Are you seriously getting nudes right now?”, one of their brothers asks, and their mother glares at the both of them over the table.

“I’m getting some new sketches from my atlier in Paris.”, they seethe, glancing back down at the floor. Nicky’s been trying to teach him French, like it’s something that occupies them so that Gigi doesn’t implode; in between sending him links to his favorite shows to watch, and YouTube links to makeup tutorials.

(He still hasn’t figured out if Nicky means it; or if he’s trying to be shady, and just doesn’t know how.)

“Atlier is where you get the clothes made, dumbass. Mom’s sewing room isn’t Paris.”

“Shut up!”

“All of you just stop-”

19:43

It’s a hard time in life in general.

Try not to listen so much to those voices in your head.

Nicky’s text pops up with a loud, mechanical pinging noise, three dots still hovering under the message as Gigi forces looks up from the screen and glowers across the table as they reach for more baby carrots.

19:43

Make mistakes, but not too many, haha. You’ll figure it out.

If it makes you feel a little bit better, I’m moving to San Fran

19:43

What? For real?

Gigi’s nails frantically tap over the screen.

19:45

Yes! I bought a ticket.

And my husband called an immigration lawyer, we’re going to get my green card situation set.

“Lawyer-”, Gigi gasps; and their entire family pauses, glancing over the table at them.

“Jesus Christ. You did it, didn’t you? You got arrested your first semester, and you weren’t even gonna tell us-”

“You weren’t supposed to hear that.”, they snap, flipping the bird at their oldest brother.

“Well, you shouldn’t be saying it then.”

Their whole table erupts in a discussion Gigi can’t pay any attention to.

19:50

Cool.

That means I get to see you soon.

It’s gonna be great.

They taps ou, and close the app with a smile.

They hadn’t known if Nicky even had a boyfriend, not that it mattered; until it did.

Apparently; he had been married, for almost the whole time they had known each other- a blow Gigi hadn’t quite expected, to leave them as breathless as landing in Los Angeles; the shock not setting in, not in full, anyway- until they are standing in a new apartment, looking down at a menu of instructions on how to set up the wifi in the unit, fingers hovering over everyone in contacts.

They can’t call their mom; not this soon, and their brothers would tell her, and the whole plan would crumble; just like everything had with Nicky; whose calls Gigi had declined for the past solid month; the nights they had spent with their phones propped up behind desks and dressing room mirrors fading into something beyond memory; that they refused to think about any more than they had to, the messages asking if they’re alright answered in curt, short replies.

How could they have been so stupid, thinking that they were talking-talking, teasing that Nicky and they were friends; when Gigi didn’t even know what his real name was.

(Unless it was Nicky?)

Shit.

Gigi waits for their phone to load into the app, and refreshes the friends list a couple of times, until they can see Nicky’s icon at the top, the side of the circle cut through with a little green dot, and taps twice to start a call.

“Hi?”

Nicky’s greeting floats in the air, between a breath and utter silence before Gigi swallows their pride, pressing the phone to the side of their face.

“What do you know about connecting a router to a tower if I live on the…um third floor?”

The line crackles, but soon there’s a tiny, familiar chuckle. “First of all, that is not how you do any of that-”

They talk a little more, every day; in between, Nicky moves to New York and Gigi cuts a tape that they put in the mail with a wink. They’re due for a visit home soon, and carefully proposes- maybe it’s time they meet Nicky. New York isn’t far at all, and a layover would make for a cheaper flight, anyway.

Their plans stack up in hours of calls; and Gigi think they’re almost back to normal. Until, three days before the flight is supposed to leave, there’s a call they had forgotten to wait for, and their fingers hover over the message box below Nicky’s name, vibrating with anxiety and excitement all at once.

09:22

Hey. I had a family thing come up.

Gigi types, and then erases the text, steeling themselves as they taps out another one that makes a little more sense, and doesn’t seem like such a lie.

09:30

I’m so so so so sorry about this

I had some things come up and my trip fell through.

They send this instead, surprised to see Nicky start typing back immediately.

09:35

You’re not going to believe this

I have some work things that started recently and so it would have been really shitty to have a guest over now.

09:35

No way!

09:37

Yeah. :(( But we’re gonna hang out someday, I swear!

09:37

Dont worry! You’re definitely gonna see me.

Real real real soon!

“-Where do I go?”, Gigi asks, pulling at the bottom hem of the ornate jacket she wore, fiddling with the gold telescope in her hands. The lights behind the set burned brightly, making the thicker bottoms of the outfit feel much warmer than he had remembered them being.

“Go to that green square on the ground, and wait there, when you see the little arrow light up, you can enter the Werk Room and then we’ll have you stop inside, get your opening line, and let you see the other girls.”

“Okay.”

He does as he’s told, prancing in and kicking his boots in front of him as the lights move to capture Gigi’s entrance, his head only snapping to the side when given the signal, so he can see the others who are already crowded around the pink tables he’s only dreamed of seeing for so long.

“Holy Shit…Nicky?!”

In reality; Gigi can see far more of the detail of Nicky’s face; of her eyebrows and carefully painted cheeks and lashes, of all the effort that they had only really talked about, his eternal summer tan and the long fringe of black hair that he’s always nudging across his forehead, or slicked against a beanie, gone behind a platinum blonde veneer that’s so much brighter than Gigi has ever seen. She’s thinner, and taller, careful breaths underneath sequinned shoulder pads, knees knocking together as she gasps.

“Gigi!”

Widow and Crystal glance at each other over the pink table.

“Hold up, you guys know each other?”

In the flesh; Gigi is impossibly small, the sharp angles of her face, and the dark brown hair that sticks up in angles which Nicky traces against the white of his pillows in his bedroom on the screen of his phone in the morning, taped underneath a gold-tipped pirate hat, and lush, wavy curls. She looks like a model on the runways where Nicky used to work; so close to him that he can feel Gigi’s breath on the back of his hand, as he tightens his grip around the epaulets on her shoulder.

“Gigi Goode.”, she repeats, and Gigi giggles a little at that.

“The Nicky Doll.”, she laughs, and her voice sounds so much more solid, than it ever has over every crossed wire.

Gigi’s hand swings, squeezing Nicky’s tightly as they swing around the table; like the others who are there don’t matter at all. She rests her head on Nicky’s padded shoulder, cocking it just slightly, waiting there, as Crystal’s eyes flash at the scene before them.

“…and may the best woman win.”, Gigi whispers, only for Nicky to hear.

#rpdr fanfiction #nicky doll #gigi goode #gigi x nicky #pre-ship #fluff #online friends au #s12 #on set fic #queen au #campvanjie #concrit welcome

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hypnoticwinter · 4 years

Text

Down the Rabbit Hole part 14

As the loud, clanging gunshot rings out again, Elena gives me a sympathetic look and leans in a little closer to me. I gingerly take my hands away from my ears, but when she speaks I still can’t hear her through the earplugs. I reach up and start to take them out but she gives me a look and smacks my hand back down, and then she is tucking my hair back behind my ear and fiddling with the plugs. She presses down gently and the earplugs slip in a tiny bit further and then I truly can’t hear; I guess I just hadn’t inserted them all the way. I flash her a grin and a thumbs-up and she smiles at me a little indulgently. My eyes linger on her a little longer while she crosses her arms again, leans up against the painted brick wall of the firing range.

Ahead of us in the central stall, the robot and the tall, slim man with the joysticked control box are looking for more targets. The robot is holding the biggest rifle I’ve ever seen, one-handed no less, and though the shells it spits out with each trigger-pull have got to be the size of Coke cans – okay, maybe not that big, maybe about the size of a mediumish pill-bottle – it handles the recoil without any strain at all.

Down further the overhead rack whines and sends a dinner-plate sized target whizzing across the line again. The robot’s head tracks it for a moment before with a single swift and precise motion it flicks the barrel of the gun to the left and pulls the trigger. I wince again, less from the sound of it now, thanks to Elena’s help, and more due to the resonating shockwave of it throbbing in my chest.

The man with the joystick toggles something on it and the robot racks the bolt of the rifle, tilts it skyward to check the chamber, and then ejects the massive magazine and puts it on the table before it.

“As you can see,” the man says, looking around at us, “this new model of armature skeleton is the most advanced yet. We’ve put absolutely everything into this bad boy,” he grins, slapping the chest plate of the robot; it doesn’t react. “Gyroscopic stabilizers, redundant systems in practically every area, newest cyborgnetic processors, the works.”

“You said you were from Europe, right?” Ellis asks, and the man nods.

“That’s correct. This is going to be a bit of a joint venture. As I mentioned before, I’m Max Euler, one of the scientists from Anodyne Berlin’s robotics department. We reached out to the administration here,” he says, nodding to Makado, “when we felt that the skeleton was in the final phases of testing and could really do with an…extremely adverse environment to put it through its paces. Then, when we discovered that you were facing a certain…difficulty retrieving an artifact, well, everything seemed serendipitous.”

“You don’t sound very German,” I observe. A few heads twist around to look at me and I can see Makado hide a smile. Euler doesn’t miss a beat, though.

“I actually learned English in America,” he tells me. “That’s why I don’t have an accent when I speak it. Deep-immersion in a culture is the best way to learn, I believe. Now, do we have any other questions about myself or the armature or has its performance spoken for itself?”

To be fair, the thing’s performance was very impressive. Over the past couple of hours we watched him demonstrate its speed, its agility, its coordination…everything that would interest the men and women on the team with ex-military backgrounds, which, from what I gathered from the past couple of days, was the majority. I think only Crookshank and another man I had met only briefly before he’d disappeared again, a short, sinewy, compact individual who introduced himself with a wide, flashing grin as Klaus, just Klaus, weren’t. Well, possibly Elena, actually. Is the Coast Guard part of the military? I don’t know. I think so but I’m not certain. I should ask her if I ever manage to get her alone again.

Alone. That’s a laugh. These past couple of days in the barracks have been a decidedly different experience than what I’m used to. I’m not a particularly shy person and I’m confident enough that I’ve never had any real reservations about my body, but the absolute lack of privacy is something I’ve never really experienced before. I got used to it quickly enough, changing in front of everybody. The first time I was motivated mainly because I knew for certain that if I made a big deal of it I’d be taken even less seriously. Aww, look at the little baby, wants us to turn around while she puts a new shirt on? How cute! She thinks we’ve never seen a pair of tits before!

I guess if I want to psychoanalyze myself I could ask why I want to fit in so badly with these people, but it’s obvious, isn’t it? Being the outsider aches, and even if you can fox-and-grapes yourself into believing that it’s okay because you’re “better” than them, you’re always going to know how much bull that is, somewhere deep down.

As far as becoming part of a team goes, you can either have it built in or have it be something you build up. If I came here and I was a male ex-Marine or even something like a paramedic, or perhaps even a lineman (power line lineman, not football lineman), I’d be much more easily accepted. Not that I think the fact that I’m a woman really has much to do with it; it’s about experiences. What the hell does a reporter know about Real World Things, like how to build a fire or pitch a tent or hide food where a bear can’t get it? Or how to fire a gun, splint an injured leg?

I know how to do some of those things, to be fair. But I don’t have the credentials. Instead I have to build it up, I have to be willing to learn, I have to put in work without complaining, I have to play ball no matter what. Challenging an institution, even a little one like a team like this, is impossible until you get inside of it. You say something like, ‘uh, I think I’d prefer to have all of you not stare at my tits while I change my shirt’ and boom, all the goodwill you’ve built up is gone. You have to play ball, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

“Roan?” Makado asks again, sidling up to me while Euler prattles on about something else up in front. I take another look at him and the robot and flick my eyes over to Makado.

“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. What’s up?”

“I want to show you the recording equipment we’ve got for you.”

We slip out of the firing range and head down the hallway, Makado’s heeled footsteps echoing off the tight corridor ceiling. She’s wearing her hair down today, with a broad headband resting high up on her forehead to keep those unruly curls in line. “Makado,” I say after a moment, “can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“How dangerous is this going to be?”

She stops, turns and looks at me. Her lopsided gaze is calculating. “Very, I’d imagine,” she says eventually.

“Mm.”

“Why, are you having second thoughts?”

“No,” I tell her, “not particularly. I just wanted to – mentally prepare myself.”

“You know,” she says after a moment, “I was pretty certain you were going to chicken out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I assumed, you know, throw you to the wolves for a day or two in the barracks with the team, you’d get scared enough to realize this is a bad idea.”

“They’ve been decent to me, actually.”

“As they would have been to anybody,” she smiles, guiding us around a corner. “But I think you might find that my, and apparently your, definition of ‘decent’ might not match with that of a lot of other twenty-something female reporters.”

“If I quit, who’d work the camera?”

“It’s a camera,” Makado laughs. “How hard can it be?”

“Show me the camera and I’ll tell you.”

She shows me the camera and then blushes after a moment. “Christ,” she says. “Stop laughing, it’s a camera.”

“This is what you’re going to use? Where’d you get this, Walmart?”

“Look, our budget isn’t –“

“How much did this cost? A hundred bucks?”

Makado looks at me for a moment. “Eighty,” she says finally. I knead the bridge of my nose.

“I literally have a four hundred dollar camera in my bag back in the barracks that could take better video than this,” I say, “and that’s my backup SLR.”

“SLR?” Makado frowns. I wave it away.

“It’s a kind of camera. Mine’s digital, it can take stills or video. I have…I think three or four memory cards left? So probably about 60 hours of video, I’d guess. More if you’re okay with thirty frames per second instead of sixty. What’s the video going to be used for?”

“It’s classified,” Makado says. “I can’t –“

“Do you want good video or not?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Look, I really can’t tell you. We just want you to record the operation, that’s all. You don’t need to give it an edge or a slant or an angle or anything, just record it.”

“Mm,” I grunt. “Alright, that’s fair. What’s the deal with the crystal? Why is it so important?”

“Don’t press your luck. This camera you have, how fragile is it?”

I laugh. “About as fragile as this one, relatively,” I point. “Maybe a little more. If it breaks down there I’ll want an assurance that you’ll replace it.”

“If it’s in the budget.”

“A personal assurance, for my personal camera,” I elaborate. She looks at me dubiously.

“You want me to buy you a new camera with my own money?”

“If it breaks.”

“When did this turn into a negotiation?” she asks. Her voice is exasperated but I can tell that she wants to smile. “Fine. How about this? If you break your camera but the footage is usable, I’ll get you a new one. No footage, no camera.”

“Alright.”

“And you’re taking this one as well, as a backup.”

“Fine. I’ll need to get my charger, though.”

“For the batteries? You don’t have it with you?”

“If you recall, I thought I was just going to be coming in and then leaving the same night. I didn’t plan on getting caught up in this adventure of yours. My charger’s back at my motel room in town.”

“Guess we’d better go get it, then.”

And then Makado is putting her arm around my shoulder and ushering me out of the dingy storage closet, and then out of the building entirely.

* * *

“You know,” I say as the little Volkswagen powers down the main road and out the gate, Makado giving a cheery wave to the guard in the gatehouse as she passes, “this really isn’t the sort of car I was expecting you’d drive.”

She laughs. “You and everybody else. See, this actually used to be my aunt’s car. She won the lottery, bought herself a new car, gave me this one, and I was like, ‘hey, what the hell, free car, might as well use it’ and from there it grew on me.”

“It’s so tiny.”

“If you turn that into a crack about my height, you’re walking back to the Flesh Pit.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I laugh. “Although you are kind of fulfilling the stereotype by being so touchy about it.”

“That’s it –“

“I’m joking.”

“I know,” she says, flashing me a quick grin.

The world outside is like a bright warm hug. I realized as soon as Makado lead me out of the squat, evil-looking concrete Security building that for the last three days in the barracks I had been suffering from a myopia of purpose; I’d done little more than work out in the gym, hang out with Elena, and play wallflower, listening to the team laugh and joke and riff off each other. If I were to close my eyes, here in the car, with the top down, trailing my hand in the breeze, I’d be asleep in five minutes.

“You look peaceful,” Makado observes, and I crack an eye open, fix her with what I hope is a sardonic gaze.

“Do I not normally look peaceful?”

“Well, considering I’ve known you for about four days now, and about half of those we were both wondering if I was going to have to send you to federal prison, I’d say that generally you haven’t looked very peaceful.”

“Fair point.”

We drive on in silence for a little longer. “You know,” she says, “there’s no shame in backing out.”

“If you didn’t want me to go you shouldn’t have offered,” I tell her. “It’s too late now.”

“If you want the truth, I did it more for Peter than for you.”

“That’s bullshit,” I tell her. She looks at me a little uncertainly.

“He likes you, you know,” she tells me.

I look over at Makado, really look at her. I look at the lines of the tendons in her neck, loose and ropy but ready to spring into life and brace at a moment’s notice. I look at her cheeks and her eye and her lips, at the way she grips the wheel loosely in one hand, the other hand draped over the edge of the rolled-down window. She glances over, catches me staring. “Have you told him yet?”

I let out a little burst of mirthless laughter. “I haven’t even been able to tell my dad yet.”

“Why not?”

“Why haven’t I told my dad or why haven’t I told Pete?”

“I meant Pete.”

I roll the words around on my tongue for a long, long time before I finally say them. “Because Pete might like me, but he still loves you.”

Makado lets out a breath like I’d punched her, and I look over at her incredulously. “Oh, come on,” I say. “You couldn’t tell? Have you seen the way he looks at you?”

“I don’t –“

“I don’t know what happened between the two of you, not exactly, but I know for a fact that he still has feelings for you.”

“I thought you and him…”

“Let’s just say I’m probably not going to be interested in men for a while,” I say. “Maybe for the rest of my life,” I add with a hollow laugh.

“That isn’t funny,” Makado says quickly. “And what do you – oh.”

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. Hell, if I were in her position I wouldn’t know what to say about it.

It feels good to tell someone.

“Are you scared?” she asks, glancing over again.

“It doesn’t feel real yet,” I tell her. “I got the letter with the results about a week ago. They wanted me to come back in and ‘discuss my options’ but there aren’t any. Once I get sick I’ll be scared, I imagine.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You probably don’t want sympathy, but…”

“The only thing I don’t want is someone treating me differently, that’s all. Maybe I’m dying but this is going to be a long slow goodbye. And right now I still feel fine,” I say, wondering if I really believe it.

“I was meaning to tell you,” Makado says after a moment. “I think I can get you some ballast.”

I look at her sharply; she keeps her head still, eye on the road. “You’re serious?” I ask after a moment.

“Dead serious.”

“How?”

“The suits the team wears, the locator is in the helmet. At the end of the first day, you guys will make camp right near a ballast bulb. You do the math.”

I think about that for a moment, then shrug.

“Seems easy enough. Would it even help me?”

“It might. I don’t know, I’m not a scientist. Isn’t it worth a shot?”

“Sure. But what if…I don’t know, what are the side effects?”

Makado laughs. “Well, undiluted ballast…you’ll get really fucking horny. You’ll probably want to drink it right there so you don’t have to worry about hiding a fucking bottle of it from everyone. And it’s going to taste really, really gross.”

“I meant more like physiological stuff.”

“As far as I know it’s mildly addictive but nobody ever figured out if it was actually chemically addictive or if it was a mental thing. Like, the difference between coffee and cigarettes being addictive.”

“Speaking of,” I say. “You smoke?”

“I don’t.”

“Good,” I tell her. “Nasty habit.”

“Okay, miss two-packs-a-day.”

“Ouch. Low blow.”

“Did you always smoke that much?”

She pulls back onto the main road and then turns onto the side street that leads down to the motel. By daylight Gumption looks even sadder than at night. Fewer shadows to hide the cracks.

“No,” I tell her. “I used to smoke about a pack a week or so.”

“Let me guess,” she says. “When you found out you said ‘fuck it’ and started going all in?”

“Seemed like the thing to do,” I say. “I like nicotine, just not a fan of smoking, necessarily. Too concerned about my lungs’ wellbeing.”

“Right,” she agrees. “Alright, we’re here.”

The warm, dry air has sucked all the life out of me. “Alright,” I say, not opening my eyes. “The charger is on the nightstand, you can just run up and get it…”

“Go and get your damn charger.”

I groan, pop the door, stagger out of the low-slung Beetle. “Question for you,” I say, leaning back in.

“Yeah?”

“Why are you personally taking the time to drive me around?”

Makado laughs. “Do you know how busy I am as the Head of Security?”

“Very, I’d imagine.”

“I’m not busy at all. Place runs itself unless there’s an emergency. I do about two hours of phone calls and emails per night sitting in my quarters in my pajamas, rest of the time I just hang around and pretend to do something, anything, that justifies my salary.”

I can’t help but smile at her. “Glad I could give you something to do, then.”

“Go get your charger,” she repeats, reclining the seat backwards. She unclips her seat belt and shuts her eyes. “I’ll be right here.”

* * *

I can tell someone’s been in the room the minute I walk in. I’d left the do not disturb sign on the handle, they’ve taken it off, left it on the floor right in front of the door. I stare; then there is a soft, subtle sound from inside the room and I take a step back, reach behind me for the door handle.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Erica Walken tells me, stepping out from the bathroom. She has in her hand a small revolver, held about waist-high, barrel pointed unwaveringly at me.

It isn’t much to look at, that little gun, the barrel glinting in the low, warm light cast by the lamp over on the bedside table. The inside of the barrel seems like it must be the blackest, darkest, heaviest thing I’ve ever seen, and it draws my eyes to it like it were a singularity. Forget movies, forget books, if you have a gun pointed at you there’s no way to be cool, no way to just quip out a one-liner like in a movie. I an feel my hands shaking at my sides and if I don’t get a grip on myself my legs are going to follow suit. But I’ll be damned if I’m not going to at least try a one-liner. When’s the next time I’ll get the chance?

“Put the gun down,” I tell her. My voice almost trembles but I lock it down.

“No,” she says. “Did you come alone?”

“Y-yes. What the hell do you want?”

“You’ve been a hard woman to track down for the last couple of days. Sit down.”

She jerks the gun at the armchair in the corner and I move slowly to it, my back prickling with the knowledge that she’s still holding the gun on me, and sit.

She stares at me for a moment longer. “Are you working for the Company?” she asks me, and something in the way she says it, in the way she’s looking at me, makes me think that this is a capital-letter Very Important Question.

“The Containment Corporation?” I ask, trying hard to keep my voice innocent. She waves an irritated hand.

“The Containment Corp, Anodyne, whoever. You know what I mean.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then why the hell are you back?” she growls. “I know you went with Peter, even though I told you not to, and when you and he disappeared I knew they must have caught you. What the hell are you doing back here?”

“What the hell are you doing in my room?” I snarl back at her. She tosses her head, looks down her nose at me.

“Looking for answers,” she says. “I have a right to know –“

“Lady, I don’t know who you think you are but if you think I’m going to overlook the fact that you broke into my motel room –“

“Answer the question,” she tells me. She moves her thumb and draws the hammer on the revolver back and it locks into place with an ominous click.

“No,” I tell her. “I’m not working for them.”

She stares at me for a long while and I stare back at her, keep my face carefully blasé. “Alright,” she says quietly. “What happened? Why haven’t I been able to get in touch with Peter? When my boy heard the alarms he tried to get out of the Pit. He told me that the ditch had been filled in with concrete, he was trapped in there.”

“Your boy?”

She waves her hand impatiently. “The young man who went in there with you. Marcus.”

“Oh. I didn’t know they’d filled in the ditch,” I say softly.

“Well, they did. He can’t get out.”

“Where is he now?”

“Back in the Pit, of course. He wouldn’t have lasted a day out there on the surface, he’d have been caught in an instant. What happened to Peter? Why can’t I get him on the phone?”

I must be very deliberate now, and choose my words carefully.

“They caught Peter,” I tell her. “I don’t know what happened to him. I only just managed to get away.”

Her eyes narrow. “Bullshit,” she says, the word sounding out of place in her small, elegant mouth. “You’re working for them.”

I can see her knuckles whiten on the grip of the pistol. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

“I can get him out,” I say quickly. “Marcus, I mean.”

“How?” she asks.

Yes, Roan, how? the little voice asks somewhere from the back of my head, and I close my eyes. “They made me a deal,” I say slowly. Maybe it’s pathetic but I feel a little better not being able to see the gun. “I’m going into the Pit. Tomorrow or the next day. I can find him, get him out of there.”

“And turn him right in to the Company?” she snorts. “Fat chance.”

“If you shoot me,” I say with sudden confidence, “you’re never going to see him again. He’s going to die down there and you won’t be able to get him back.”

Erica’s mouth is a tight line. Her eyes are like chips of obsidian. “He’s down there for a reason,” she tells me. “Tell me about this operation they’re pulling. Have they found one of the crystals?” she asks.

My mouth drops open. “You know about those?”

“So that’s a yes?”

I snap my mouth shut. She leans forward, and the muzzle of the revolver snuffles forward. I have to stop myself from cringing back into the chair. If she were to pull the trigger, at this range the bullet would -

“I’m going to blow your fucking brains out,” she says, “if you don’t tell me what you know.”

“Okay,” I say, frantic now, “okay, Jesus Christ, fine, they found a crystal! Is that what you want to know so bad? Yes, they found one. They’re going down to get it and I’m going with. Fuck!”

“Do you know the route?”

“No! Look, I don’t know what the hell you want or what you’re planning, but -”

“Focus,” she says. “They have a crystal. You’re certain? You saw footage of it?”

“Yes,” I say.

Erica blows a breath out. She looks very tired suddenly; she leans back against the counter and the gun finally wavers away from me. “Alright,” she says softly. “It looks like I –“

“Roan? You okay in there?” someone calls from outside the hotel room, and Erica and I both jump. She hurls to her feet, giving me a murderous glare.

“You bitch,” she says. “You brought her with you? I should -“

“Roan, who are you talking to?”

Erica looks as though she doesn’t know what to do. She glances back at the door and then down at me. I can see her start to say something, but before she can get the words out, there is the soft snap of a card fitting into the lock and then the handle turns. My panicked eyes turn to Erica and I can see her raising the gun, mid-snarl. “Hide the gun!” I hiss urgently, and she stares at me for a frozen moment before the door opens all the way and Makado, holding a pistol of her own, a slim black automatic, peeks around the corner. Our eyes meet but she can’t see Erica, the woman is around the corner from her.

Erica is staring at me and I flick my eyes back to her; she hasn’t put the gun away and I try to implore her to with a look, but she’s having none of it. She moves to the wall and the floor creaks. Makado’s aim shifts up and over to the corner as Erica flattens herself against the wall, revolver extended ahead of her, head-height.

I feel as though I’m going to pass out but I know I have to do something, and finally after my anguished nerves have been screaming at me to move, to flex my muscles and move, goddam it, I rise lurchingly, a sudden motion that seems in immediate retrospect to have been a very bad idea. Makado’s gun wavers for a moment but Erica swings around almost immediately and starts to get a bead on me. Makado rushes forward and bursts around the corner, knocking me to the floor in the process. I land hard and lay there for a moment, then I roll over. I see Makado on the ground, Erica on her knees, the two of them struggling over the revolver, Erica trying desperately to stuff her finger back into the trigger guard. I snap out a kick and catch her in the side and she whoops out a breath and lets the gun go for a moment. Makado jerks it away from Erica and I finally, finally see the outline of Makado’s pistol, discarded on the floor right in front of me, blending in with the dark carpet.

Before I can snatch it up Erica bolts to her feet, stepping on Makado’s forearm in the process, a yelp boiling out of Mak’s mouth as she wrenches her arm out from beneath Erica’s shoe, but Erica is already sprinting out the door, slamming it behind her. “Mak,” I say urgently, trying to hand her the gun, but Mak sees it and freezes, and then her eye flicks up to mine, wide and scared, and then I realize I’m pointing it right at her. “Shit,” I say, jerking the barrel away from her. “I didn’t mean to – I’m sorry –“

She reaches out, grabs it and takes it from my nerveless hands. “Grip first,” she says, and then clambers to her feet and rushes out the door after Erica.

By the time I manage to get to my feet and stagger out of the room after her, Roan is there leaning up against the balcony, revolver and pistol both slung away into one pocket or holster or other, watching the big black car roar out of the parking lot fast enough to leave twin streaks of black rubber in its wake.

“You okay?” I ask, breathless still, and Makado glances over, eye wide and limpid.

“Yeah. You?”

“I think so.”

She blows a breath out, inclines her head forward until her forehead rests on the cool metal bar of the balcony. I think about it for a moment before I do it, but then I reach over and gently lay my hand on her back, and I feel her stiffen and then relax. She has a terrible knot of muscle just above her shoulderblade and I work at it with my fingers, run my thumb over it in slow, firm strokes. “That’s nice,” she murmurs after a moment.

“You’re pretty tense,” I observe.

“Well, we both almost died, so…”

“How did you get in?”

“Oh, I made a copy of your keycard when we took your stuff the other night,” she says. “Might have come in handy later.”

“Good thing you did.”

“Never know when you’ll need something like that. We got lucky.”

“Peter told me that Erica’s with the cult,” I say, and Makado nods.

“Yeah,” she says. “What the hell was eating her, did she tell you? She can be a bit of a loose cannon but I’ve never seen her pull a fucking gun on anyone.”

“I don’t know,” I frown. “She - she knew about the crystal somehow, she was asking me if I’d seen it, if we were going down to get it.”

“Ah,” Makado says lightly, “that would do it.”

She does smell like peaches, I realize suddenly, standing this close to her. Her back feels very warm beneath her thin shirt, and her skin has a muscley firmness to it that my fingertips find appealing.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask her. Her eye flickers open; I can see her glowering at me from beneath the crook of her arm.

“Mind your own business,” she says.

“This is all about the crystal, isn’t it,” I say thoughtfully. “It was just bad timing, our coming in when we did. You thought we were after it.”

She looks at me bleakly. “Yeah, I did. I didn’t know what to think so I made the call. Beginning to think it was a bad one.”

“Why can’t you tell –“

“Because you don’t need to know!” she snaps. “Because some things are supposed to stay secret.”

I take my hand off of her back. She shuts her eye. “I suppose now you’re going to be mad at me,” she offers, and I blow out a sigh, look out across the parking lot. I can see heat distortion off in the distance, out across the plains beyond the town limits, and in the distance I can see the electric fence.

“I’m not mad at you,” I say so softly that she has to ask me to repeat myself. I look down at her and give her a faint smile. “I’m not mad at you. I’m not – I’m not mad at anything, I guess, not the Pit, not the Corporation, not anything. I wish Rey didn’t have to die but if this crystal is so damn important then what else could you have done? He’d have thrown himself down that elevator shaft if you’d let him. Probably wouldn’t have done any damage, but -”

“A couple of years ago,” Makado says, straightening up, hands on her hips, twisting her back left and right, coaxing a deep crack from her spine like something heavy slotting into place, “we had someone get in with a bomb. He was schizophrenic. Convinced that the Pit was going to swallow the world whole. He sprinted for the orifice and if we didn’t put him down he would have dropped that bomb down there and it would have wrecked the gantry, would have hurt the Pit like fuck, maybe even gotten another choke response out of it. As it was it cracked the fuck out of the concrete exclusion plate, we had to put in a new one.”

I can see ghosts swimming in her eye when she looks at me. “I can’t let that happen again. Even if it’s, fuck, ten times less severe than 2007, there’s eight guys down there in that control room in the monitoring station at all times who are counting on me not to let something like that happen.”

“You did the right thing, then,” I tell her, wondering if I’m lying.

“I – what?”

“You did the right thing,” I repeat. “I don’t know if I would have done anything different if I was in the same position, because you’re right, you can’t risk it. You don’t know what Rey wanted to do, you don’t know who he was or whatever he was carrying. You made the call. As long as you make a decision you’re doing something right, even if it turns out to be the wrong decision. The wrong decision is better than no decision.”

Makado nods after a moment. “Yeah,” she says. She’s looking out in the same direction I am but I can tell from the way she’s staring off across the dusty plains that whatever she sees out there lives mostly inside her head.

“Now, to be fair, I don’t know how I’d live with myself afterwards, but in the moment I’d still make the same call.”

Her eye flicks over to me and then her lips split in a slow lazy smile. “Well aren’t you just a ray of fucking sunshine.”

I grin back, nod to the car. “You’re really not going to call the cops on her?”

“What’s the damn point? She’ll be out of the county by now. Tell you what, do you know her phone number?”

I start to say I don’t, but then I think about it and lead Makado back into the motel room, fiddle with the room phone until I can find a call history. “There,” I say, pointing to one entry. “That’s her. She called me about three days ago, before I came to the Pit. Told me not to go.”

Makado nods, takes her phone out, punches the number in. It rings and rings and then goes to voicemail. “Erica,” she says, once the tinny beep sounds, “this is Makado Veret. Look, I’m not calling the cops on you. I know you probably don’t believe me but as far as I’m concerned this is no harm no foul, alright?”

Her eyes meet mine. “We know about your guy in the Pit. Roan told me you were asking questions about the crystal. I’m only going to warn you once. Whatever you’re planning, call it off.”

Makado’s eye flickers over to me, then away again. I can see her throat bob as she swallows, then she continues. “You probably can’t reach him by phone but if you do get ahold of him, tell him to head to the main gullet and up to the monitoring station. I can’t promise immunity but I’d rather get him out of there alive than dead, and I swear to you I will try to get him off property without any federal charges. Call it good faith. But if you pull the shit you just pulled again,” she says, her voice cooling so quickly I can practically hear the snap, “or if you try to interfere with my operation, you’re going to be coming back out in a bodybag. Oh, and I have your gun. Call me back.” She rattles off her number and then hangs up, blows a breath out.

“Think she’ll call you?”

“Maybe,” Makado shrugs. She reaches into her pocket, pulls the revolver out, examines it. “Free gun, though, if she doesn’t.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works.”

“That was a joke,” she explains, and when I start giggling I can’t suppress it even though as far as jokes go that was fairly lame, but I realize that it’s just all the adrenaline from the fight flooding out of me belatedly in one long relieved flow and even as Makado cuffs me playfully behind the ears and tells me it wasn’t that funny, I manage to make her smile, and I suppose that ought to be enough.

When we get back, charger and a couple of extra half-full SD cards tucked carefully into my pocket, Elena is the only one who noticed that I’d been gone for long, but when she asks where I’ve been, rolling over on her stomach to peer at me from her messy cot, I just shrug. “Out,” I tell her, and content myself with a mysterious smile while she shakes her head and returns to her magazine, muttering something about fucking admin under her breath, but it’s with a crooked smile that I know is meant for me, and when I flop onto the cot next to her nobody gives me a second glance and I feel, for just a moment, like I am starting to belong.

Continue with Part 15

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#mystery flesh pit #Michael Crichton #thriller #novel #writing #original writing #horror #caving #monster #writeblr #alt lit

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