Guilty Pleasures

I brought my new lover home. He was a bit wide-eyed--you know, with his one eye--about moving from Italy to England and eight years forward in one shake of a lamb (of God)'s tail but then he jumped onto my back and wrapped around me and demanded a piggyback ride. Since I'm just that awesome, I gave him one through the streets of Londontown. Sure, I could have brought him straight home but a flat looks like a flat looks like a flat and I aim to impress. We went to the skankiest club I know to dance and let him scare people a bit then went to my place and screwed like crazed weasels in heat. Not that I know what that looks like because I've never watched crazed weasels go at it. Ew. And a great time was had by all, and he only playfully threatened to kill the queen once. The end.

::Schu's Nexus living room now has a coffee table and a different couch. He's wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but the healing bracelet killwithmymind gave him a while ago is still visible along with some bruises.::

Nagi asked a question, and, sure enough, here she shows up. I personally think Nii would make a great Daddy for Töt. They both love stuffed bunnies, and they're both disturbing as all hell. She loves scientists. Maybe their bunnies could get together and... shit, I'm squicking myself. Anyway, they're the match-up of win.

Ken-ken's still in the Nexus. So cute! For now I'm lurking and letting other people mess with him. He's just too easy.

Ichigo's color is deep pink. Chicka chicka bow wow!

I waaaaaant one: blood puddle pillows.

I can't believe some people are actually donating blood to this guy. Yeah, I went through the Rosenkreuz School of Hard Knocks, but this is common sense, people! Speaking of, this humor article from The Onion amused me: "Majority of Parents Abuse Children, Children Report." It's tragic! The vegetables, the bed and bath times, the denial of new toys! The unwanted physical contact of being... hugged in front of your friends. Ja? Try growing up in the wrong side of Berlin in pre-unification Germany like a lot of my personalities did.

Hide the liquor, the kittens are alkies! That's a cat macro waiting to happen. Also, a comment of great justice: "OMG! That's why Hemingway cats developed thumbs! TO POUR HIM DRINKS"



Yeah, anyway, you might notice that my couch is different now. That's because I bled on the last one. It was a rougher job than usual, I had to Portal myself here to my couch so I wouldn't splat from hitting the ground from falling from a great height, then from here I had to PINpoint myself to our doctor because my head had been knocked around so badly I couldn't accurately Portal any further.... We have a special deal with him so I don't have to sit in a waiting room and sit in the middle of people radiating sickness and pain. Getting rid of the chip in my head means I can have CT scans done for my head, which is great. (The bullet that's lodged in my back is much lower down. The small metal bits in me here and there don't appear to be a problem, thankfully.)

I love the way our doctor talks. I wouldn't have cared as much once, but now I love a Welsh accent due to the Welsh tea cutie on Torchwood. Our doctor can bitch me out for using a colored tie and headband to cover my bullet wounds any day. Call me "Richard" in those annoyed Welsh tones some more, doctor, 'cause you know I love it. (My pseud came from me being clever. My name sounds like "Shool-dick," after all.) I have some lingering headaches, but nothing's messed up inside my skull.

Brad was thrilled by the damage me and Farf did. Thrilled. At that point Farf said he wants to rejoin us permanently, so Brad said he'd start looking for an apartment that had three bedrooms. I told him not to bother, because I couldn't take living with Farf anymore, not with his electricity crawling along my skin all the time we're in a space together. (Yes, let's all do that Linkin Park song together: "These wounds, they will not heeeeeeeeeeal....") I told him I'll be looking for my own apartment. Brad flipped his lid. Loudly and vehemently and with some punches and a lot of wrist grabbing. I retaliated, going from his American English to the local English when I really started to lose it and wallop back. I started out saying I was going to get my ass out and into a new apartment and ended with me saying I would have a new flat and I would kick his fucking arse. We surprised Farf, who never saw me and Brad white trash fight like this when he'd been with the team. I hadn't had as much say back then. He put himself bodily between us to stop it. Farf said he'd be willing to find his own place, but Brad doesn't want him moving out either. Yeah, Brad, we make great pets.

You should have seen the look on Brad's face when I announced that I was moving out on my own. Priceless. He hasn't looked out for my interests in too long, and the only time we ever have any sex or "give Schu some quiet stillness" time is when I get Farf out of the house and make it happen, so screw him.

I packed up my stuff and put it in storage. Locked doors are something Schwarz doesn't really doesn't respect because we all easily pick locks, and Brad can be a vengeful bitch, so why take a chance? When in London, I'm crashing with some activist friends while I look for a flat to call my own. I'm not going to my Nagi to live with because Brad would think that meant something I don't intend it to, and besides, Nagi recently thought it was so cute that Shudibi-chan has learned some light HTML and about cat macros.

I wonder how well Brad will handle wrangling Farf by himself. I've always wrangled everyone: making sure Farf didn't kill too many people we weren't being paid to kill, making sure Nagi was eating and wasn't staying up too late cybering....

I'll miss things, like watching Heroes downloads with Brad and Farf. We're all rooting for Sylar, who looks much better to me dressed as Zane, but Brad also has this thing for Adrian Pasdar. Yeah, Pasdar's hot, but Brad may be the only guy who thinks Pasdar was the best thing about Near Dark instead of the Aliens reunion team. C'mon, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein as fun-loving psycho killers! Brad complains that they were reckless and undisciplined. Whatever. They died stupidly, but they were cool until then.

So I have my own back. It's me against 99.8% of the world. Reminding myself that no one is a special snowflake rings kind of hollow. But maybe if I don't have Farf's electricity rubbing my nerves raw all the time I won't be as hair-trigger angry as much.

Why did I forget that people suck so badly? Is this what happens when I keep my shields up more often?

I'm a popular dinner guest these days, eating with Greed and with dream_departed and sinofsurviving. The dinner in my own reality with Nagi went well, even though Brad and Nagi did their alpha dog teeth-baring and metaphorical territorial pissing throughout. Brad passed on the information about that organization that wanted London Aya, and Nagi's people will be looking into them too. None of us wants a new Eszett-like organization to start to form.

I practiced some nearly forgotten art skills to help Nagi and tried to get a better feel for what the new Schuldig in the Nexus is about.

Gojyo figured out who kill_the_buddha is. No good deed goes unpunished. Oh, and hide_in_a_smile isn't a cute kitten anymore, so once the honeymoon period ends we should probably, unfortunately, expect the angst train to resume.


Watching these two guys trade insults is pretty amusing. Meanwhile, Aziraphale has fallen prey to one of the nastiest LOLs I've seen in a while.


Happy birthday, monkeyneedsfood! You don't look a day over 518.

Last night was bad. I ended up staggering in at 11 a.m. this morning, looking like enough hell that Brad got over his "you melted people's brains with your rage yesterday" thing enough to say that I looked like hell and I should quit my Nexus boyfriend if he left me like this. I told him it was already done and then took a long shower. It took me 10 minutes to get all the blood out from under my fingernails.

But then I felt London Aya getting physically attacked by two people trying to shut down his telepathy as well. I Portalled over--dressed, you pervs--and took them down, ripped the information of who they worked for and why they wanted Aya from their heads, knocked them out, left them to a surprised Aya to be restrained, Portalled to fucking Cardiff to steal out the records and recordings they had there and kill a technician, and Portal back for the two luckless bastards unfortunate to attack someone who belonged to me. (Yay, time-warping abilities of Portals!)

He wanted answers. Very Aya of him. I Portalled all of us off the street and into the hotel room we liked to get for his lessons. Fortunately for any innocents out there, nobody had the room at the time. I swear, if anybody had been in there, I would have defenestrated 'em if I didn't just melt their brains and toss 'em in a closet.

Eszett is dead. Nobody else has been able to scrape up the money and mojo to be as big as they were. But little organizations are operating under the radar now, and Aya's recently focused ability had come to their attention. The British Isles in particular have a lot of little talents, and now that Aya's little talent isn't amorphous and unconscious it's rising above the pack. They wanted it. They'd start looking at Schwarz soon if Brad got serious about taking higher profile gigs as what we really are or even if we just advertised Farf as a freak lightning thrower.

Aya figures this means more may be coming after him in the future, and he's probably right. I told him that that's why I stripped their surveillance center raw and intend to hand in the material and our two attackers to Brad and Farf for deep questioning. Aya demanded he get data as well, since he's in danger. I reminded him that Brad didn't give a rat's ass about him. He reminded me that I did. We argued a lot, and then we kissed for about three minutes, with passion and with tongue.

Poor Aya. He'd figured that all his passion had died a slow death as his Yohji had dragged him and their relationship through the mud years ago. He's with Ken now, but it's more because Ken loves him than because he feels anything other than some vague attachment to him. Being attracted like this to anyone, let alone me, is throwing him for a loop. I took advantage of his shock at his own actions to tell him that I'd give him a synopsis later. Then I Portalled away with the stooges to Chez Schwarz.

Farf looked very happy to get fresh meat to play with. Seeing him was... very difficult. I have to remember that he's him, not him. Being able to feel him makes a difference at least.

As I handed over the surveillance stuff and records and told Brad the lowdown, he looked like he was nearly getting hornier. Getting a challenge, having a one-up on an enemy, and seeing me become a more versatile operative in his employ now that I can Portal are all making him happier and more vital. I gave him that, and he knows it. I couldn't help getting a smile on my face watching him during that.



Yeah, everybody else is warring with Iron Man. I'll just stay on my couch with beer and munchies and watch from a distance.

::Schu's eyes look a bit dazed, and he has a gauze pad taped to the side of his neck.::

Farfarello returned. My Farfarello. Or kind of not really my Farfarello, never has been.

I should watch what I wish for.

He tracked us down. Turns out he'd been living in some backwoods area of northern Ireland and had a five-year-old son who'd gotten run over and killed by a hit-and-run driver about two weeks ago. Farf tracked the man down and killed him slowly, painfully... and rather stupidly, because he had to run from the cops over it. Getting too emotional about a hit can do that, especially when you don't have teammates watching your back. His kind-of wife Sally blew up about the whole thing, they fought, and he killed her in his rage. Once his berserk cleared, he freaked the hell out.

After years of not bothering to send so much as a word to us, he showed up at our flat looking for us to fix things for him. Brad was trying to set up a pay system for disappearing the little indiscretion with the police near Sligo, probably involving Farf doing some jobs for us. Me, I fumed... then was assigned hospitality hostess duty to our splintered and staticky bundle of rage and grief.

Sally had let him kill a little now and then but prior to the past two weeks he hadn't wallowed in mass bloody murder for quite some time. I found a slum area in London and let him go, watching his back and doing some cleanup all the while. All part of the walking-the-Farf duties I used to have. He invited me to join in with him as I sometimes did before but I refused and held my mind and self back. No way I intended to get drawn into him while he was like this or while I was angry at him.

Eventually he realized that and asked what the fuck was wrong with me. I actually went Animal Kingdom on his ass and said something about how he had been a wolf but then found a dog bitch and abandoned his pack to try to be domesticated, but when that utterly failed he came back to us to clean up his mess. More amused than annoyed, he asked me what I was, and I said I was a coyote.

He'd said that Schwarz's members had always used each other, so why should that change now? I could just vaguely hear his mind wondering whether he should rejoin us or go his own way.

He actually thought he'd share my bed, the arrogant fucker. He'd never spent the entire night in my bed before, and he sure as hell wasn't now. I told him he could sleep on the living room couch and be thankful I didn't put a rope around his neck and tie him to a post in the yard.

I woke up pressed against his morning wood, with one of his hands down the front of my silk pajama bottoms toying with me and the other under my Henley over my stomach, toying with my navel piercing. (cursed_bird, I knew the difference immediately.) I yelled, and he claimed that when he opened the door to my bedroom last night I told him to get in bed with me, as if anything I say while at least half-asleep means anything. (I read that he actually had missed me over the years.) He bit the side of my neck and said that I always liked it eventually. I told him that I may be a slut and like the stimulation, but there's no damned way I'm going to be his rebound fuck and plush toy. I refused to be used like that, and there was no way I wanted to be this close to his mind when he's even more of a mess than he used to be.

Brad came in with his gun drawn to break up our throwdown before we got to inflict more than a few bruises on each other and told me to get out for a while. I hope he schools Farf's ass.

I don't know what I hope.

A lot of people have had a new year start recently and many of them made resolutions. A lot of them probably made the easy, cliché resolutions like "Lose weight and exercise more," when by 4 January you can see the gyms already getting emptier.

But you don't need a mandatory cut-off like the start of a new year to actually evaluate your life, see things you want to change, and start trying to change them. There are things, people, and ideas you may have outgrown or that have become toxic to you, or you may have outdated conceptions about things, people, or ideas.

I'm evaluating.

Mmmmmfuck. I am so high.... I saw my Aya from a distance today, but more than that I felt him... and he felt me a bit.

I saw him sweeping in front of the shop wearing tight white jeans under the apron. His daywear fashion sense has really changed over the years. Then again, with the way Kryptonbrand dresses him and his entire team all super-kink and with those creepy masks that don't even hide their identities, I guess he couldn't continue being dowdy.

I actually wanna touch his mask while he's wearing it to see if it achieves skin temperature if he wears it long enough....

Back to the narrative. I set myself up in an alley not far away and used a compact's mirror to watch him because why waste energy? I wanted to feel him out without having to do a notice-me-not at the same time. And if you're wondering why I carry a compact I encourage you to make guesses. You remember how I said that people from the same universe have a similar maker's mark or fingerprint? Fuck, when I reached out with my mind to him we resonated at the same frequency. My knees nearly buckled. I love my Nexus posse, don't get me wrong, but this Aya was mine, he remembered things I had done in detail even if he did put an evil and delusional spin on them, and... he was mine.

Seeing Nagi again wasn't the same because he'd become a part of me again as soon as Brad and I had gotten close enough to Tokyo. Radio Free Schwarz. We'd reestablished enough of a strong link that I can faintly feel him even in London. I hadn't seen or felt Aya in years, but he still tasted a little of me and now I had the inter-universal experience to differentiate him from just_a_murder even beyond that Aya not being the right age or knowing everything I've done. The flavor was different.

Poor London Aya-kun, all he had left were his obligations. He was content enough for a guy who'd gotten everything he'd wanted, even if none of it was something he got to keep, and had no dreams left to take their place. He was cold ashes, smiling faintly all the time because then people would think he was okay. He had his obligation to keep away from his sister for the sake of her safety and purity, his obligation to make sure Yuki was safe and okay, his obligation to his new team, his obligation to look out for Ken and get subtle vengeance on Chloe for every racist remark.... He's all about other people again, still, but the passion's been killed right out of him.

My Aya, and internally I went all "Daddy's come to fix it and make it all better!" And then I had to internally smack myself so I squeed a little less like a flower shop fangirl. Mustn't rush over and break the Aya.

Then I felt a stirring in the planes, small, so small, tasting so familiar. A low-level telepath would never have noticed it. It was Aya. He'd sensed something wrong and this tiny little bit of psionic power in him tried to look for it. He'd never done that before! I never even saw the potential in him the last time we met. Then again, he'd been so repressed every other time, and it's been a while.

I couldn't help reaching out to mentally caress those little baby tendrils. In my little mirror I watched him shiver, then walk emphatically inside.

Fuck, I'm so excited!