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gun & lili // another encore

@pachinkoparlors

The suite vibrates with a kind of excess that borders on grotesque, the sound too loud for the square footage, too raw for the tasteful abstract art bolted to the walls. The hotel never intended this room to hold distortion; it was designed for quiet negotiations and discreet affairs. Tonight it holds neither.

Old Japanese punk tears through the speaker system, the bass blown out so badly it rattles the glass panes overlooking Tokyo. Reizo is on top of the couch now, boots grinding into pale upholstery, one hand gripping a bottle of tequila while he pours it into a girl’s open mouth with theatrical sloppiness. She shrieks when it spills down her chin and onto her dress, and her friend laughs too loudly, already filming. Security lingers near the entrance, eyes glazed with professional detachment. A manager paces the hallway outside, voice thin and urgent as he mutters about “international press metrics,” as though digital numbers can sanctify what is happening here.

Tokyo glows beyond the windows, humid and electric, neon signs flickering in colors that resemble open wounds. The city does not care.

Nobuo Takeda stands at the center of the room and does not sit.

His sunglasses remain on, as they have been since he walked off stage. His bleached hair hangs damp against his back, clinging faintly to the collar of his black shirt, which is unbuttoned just far enough to suggest carelessness without ever being accidental. At six foot three, he turns proximity into pressure without effort. The snake-scale tattoos on his right hand shift when he flex his fingers around a crystal glass, the ink catching the low amber lighting so that it appears textured, almost animate.

The word sold out continues to hum somewhere beneath his ribs. He can still feel the audience in his body—the heat of them, the roar, the way thousands of voices merge into something animal. It leaves him wired and faintly irritable, as though the voltage has nowhere left to go.

When the door opens again, more girls are ushered inside with casual choreography. Laughter precedes them, bright and polished. Perfume slices through the layered smells of alcohol, sweat, and cigarette smoke. Some of them carry themselves with the practiced ease of agency hires, women briefed on how to laugh, when to lean in, how to appear spontaneous while watching the clock. Others hover at the edges, less certain of their role but eager to find one. Nights like this are ecosystems of transaction, whether anyone acknowledges it or not. Glamour can be arranged. Desire can be scheduled.

Gun does not look immediately. He allows Daichi to finish mangling the same story he has told three times tonight, nodding just enough to signal attention. Eventually his gaze drifts, unhurried and predatory in its assessment.

That is when he notices her.

She is the shortest girl in the room by a margin that makes the difference impossible to ignore. In a crowd engineered around height—heels, posture, elongated silhouettes—she barely clears a few shoulders. The visual imbalance draws his eye in a way deliberate glamour rarely does. She does not immediately latch onto anyone, nor does she project herself outward with calculated enthusiasm. She simply stands there, small within the frame, as though someone placed her in the wrong composition.

He watches her for a moment longer than he intends.

Then he pushes away from the bar.

The shift in the room is subtle but immediate. Conversations bend around him. People adjust their stance without acknowledging that they are doing so. He crosses the space at an unhurried pace and stops in front of her, the height difference becoming almost absurd in its clarity. He does not need to lean forward; the imbalance establishes itself.

He tilts his head down slightly.

“Huh,” he says, almost to himself.

Up close, she smells clean, understated. There is no overwhelming sweetness, no aggressive floral insistence. The restraint registers.

He slides his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose just enough to see her eyes clearly, holding the moment a fraction longer than necessary before pushing them back into place.

“You,” he says, voice dry and controlled, pitched low enough that it does not draw spectators. “What’s your name?”

Behind him, a chair topples and shatters the rhythm of the music with a crack against marble. Laughter erupts near the kitchen. Reizo begins chanting something obscene and off-beat, slapping the ceiling with his palm as if testing its structural integrity.

Gun does not turn around.

He flexes his right hand and rests it on the back of the couch beside her head. The gesture is casual in appearance and precise in placement. He does not touch her. He does not need to. The proximity itself is a declaration.

“You’re going to need a ladder to talk to me properly,” he adds, a crooked smirk tugging at his mouth. “Or you can shout. I won’t take it personally.”

He lifts his glass and takes a slow sip, watching her over the rim without disguising his appraisal.

Around them, the party continues to dissolve into a kind of beautiful ruin—money converting into noise, reputation into sweat, hired affection into something sloppier and less defined.

He waits for her reaction, aware that most girls in rooms like this respond instantly, filling silence with laughter or flattery. For the first time since leaving the stage, his curiosity feels sharper than his boredom.

pachinkoparlors

"Sex pah-ti."

Nari rolls her eyes. In Korean, she tells Soo-min— who goes by Susie outside of her home country except for when speaking with her fellow compatriots— that she doesn't do sex parties. No matter who it's with, where it's at, and certainly no matter how much it pays. And inviting her in English, nonetheless, is not going to make it any more enticing.

"No way," Nari responds, wedging her cellphone between her shoulder and ear as she walks around in her bedroom, sorting through outfits. "Those are against the rules, you know that. The app could find out and ban you for life." A handful of years removed from her military brat years, where she would have been— and certainly was— partying with reckless abandon, she knows better than to jeopardize her career over a few thousand extra yen.

Just a few years shy of 30, Nari— who goes by another name outside of her home country, too— Lili— simply knows better. Susie, younger, hasn't learned her lesson.

(And she supposes she hopes that Susie never does. In her early days of being a rent-kano, she'd made a mistake she shudders so hard thinking about that she has practically created a mental block of the incident. Having to do with a love hotel and a lonely businessman, anywhere between 45-50. It's why she only takes clients within the age bracket of 21-36.)

"Please, Lili. We need you. You'll make sure we're safe," Susie negotiates. "You've been doing this longer than us. You'll get us out if we're in trouble." After a beat, Lili still hasn't agreed. "What if I convince them to pay you the same amount as us, but no sex? No kissing."

She should leave them be. Guilt by association— it's an American thing that she's learning about. Shame... it's a concept everyone in Asia is familiar with. Put them together and you have...

"Fine. I'll be there."

===

Fast forward to the party. Lili is a wallflower by choice. Whoever had booked her did so last minute and didn't specify in any of the fields how they'd like her to act or what they'd like her to wear. Probably because of the rush. No matter: She has a wavy platinum blonde bob these days, and she finds that renters are generally pleased with blondes.

She's not having the worst time, and that's due in part to the fact that she's being largely ignored. Everyone's buzzed, some more than others, including Susie, who's giggling in the lap of one of the clients in the kitchen. There's a loud bang that makes her jump a little where she stands, nearly spilling the Sapporo in her hand. It's hard being the most sober one in the room. The drunk ones are stupid but at least they probably feel alive, and for that, Lili finds herself somewhat jealous of Susie and the other girls.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad...

This sex pah-ti thing.

It's then that she sees him. She doesn't acknowledge him; they're looking at each other for a hot minute before he finally says something. And she chuckles. Her mouth opens to respond— but the arrogant comment about needing a ladder bursts out first, and she doesn't miss a beat.

Bringing the Sapporo close to her chest, she yells up at him over the loud music: "Or I could just take down a few rungs off your own."

In the kitchen, Susie pops her head out, not saying anything, but looking at Lili like she'd just seen a ghost. It probably has something to do with who Lili's speaking to at the moment. Lili picks up on the shock, though she doesn't make any kind of connection. As far as she knows, this man— this guy is just another drunk prick needing a quick way to get off. Though she doesn't smell alcohol on him, necessarily. Just cologne.

Susie gives him a look like remember, you gotta be nice! And for the first time, Lili finds herself struggling to do so. She can usually pretend without much of a hitch. The environment is getting to her; the notion of what's going on behind closed doors in the suite is becoming somewhat palpable, and she's feeling a bit nauseous. To recalibrate, she beams at him, albeit too sugarcoated for the way she'd yelled at him earlier. It's sarcasm... Like he said, he shouldn't take it personally.

It comes out before she can stop it: "Watashi wa Honoka desu." The lie. "Dozou yoroshiku onegaishimasu." She doesn't really know what possessed her to lie— it just came out. If he's curious in the morning, maybe he'll look at all of their profiles and fact check on his own. She's convinced, though, that he'll end up not caring come sunrise. The sort of lowlifes who hire girls like this don't care if your name is Sarah or Sakura. They just want one thing. Lili supposes she refuses to give her real name because it means she still has some sort of power over them...

#lili x gun #han nari #gun #thread: another encore

savior complex // joel & spring

@page21

A lot of the times, when things get this broken, people don't fret too much about putting them back together.

If it's not ignored, it's destroyed so it can start new; it's easier that way. But in the same way that winter pays its respects to autumn by preserving leafless trees despite the freeze, spring pays its respect to winter by building off of what's already there when it blooms over again.

Nanuq has chosen, whether on purpose or not, one of the warmer days in February in Kugluktuk to trek out near the floe edge. About time he meet this neglected fisherman's shack that Spring has mentioned a time or two needed some TLC. This far into the film, Naomi has found her footing and is relying a little less and less on Joel, who's happy to watch from afar and is a skidoo ride or phone call away.

Really, the only reason it's gone as smoothly as it has so far is because of Spring. Her scout work, her brother's aid, the way she has a connection to just about everyone in the hamlet— if she hadn't been there at the Enokhok Inn the night they met, he's not sure things would have shaped up. You could argue that, inevitably, he and Spring would have crossed paths one way or another— the Nat Geo crew has shaken things up, to say the least— but there's a reason for magnetism, always, even if the reason is that there isn't one.

"This doesn't look so bad," he says, leading in taking a closer look despite the fact that the girl has probably been here a million times. It's cold, but not debilitatingly cold, not freeze-your-nose-hairs-off cold. He has his Carhartt on, a Red Sox hat, a pair of fleece-lined jeans, his trustiest pair of work boots. Gloves, of course— but a pair of red Milwaukee wrecker ones, so he still has ample mobility in his fingers. It's worth noting that the shack looks bad, and TLC was putting it lightly. However, it's the exact kind of thing Joel's been itching to busy himself with now that he's more or less taken a backseat on the film. It's up to Nay, now. This— this is something he can own all the way.

And no, not in a way like, he'll want to put a shiny gold plaque that says IN HONOR OF JOEL BARRETT, DOCUMENTARIAN on when he's all done with it. In a way like, he promised Spring he'd lend a hand someplace around the hamlet as a thank-you for her agreeing to be his scout— and this is him holding himself accountable. Besides, a month away from his garage where all his happy tools are has him feeling withdrawals. Idle hands are the devil's playground, as they say.

"Watch your step, sweetheart."

He trudges through some wayward planks leading up to and throughout the deck of the shack. It looks as if a bad storm or blizzard blew a chunk of it off, including the roof. The door leading inside blows open, its hinges creaking with the breeze. A ceiling light hangs from its wires, and the bones of a once well-oiled machine are still there: shelves, a desk, a chair, some hooks with old tools and poles. Just resting. Rectangular rings of dirt are on the floor, outlining where deep freezers once were.

Bravely, Joel stomps twice on the floor when inside. The planks don't crack in half, but he knows they don't have much life left. Without a clue of the age of this building, he figures it's safest if they replace the majority of it with newer, stronger, weather-treated material. The frame of it will still be here.

"I think it'll take more than a weekend, but I'm willing to get the project started and hire a crew of guys to see it all the way through. What do you think? Is it worth it?" He asks Spring because she knows this place better than anybody, even better than some of the elders. He looks over his shoulder at her, feeling kind of tall in the otherwise tiny shack. A grin splays across his face.

"We could always turn this place into Kugluktuk's first Dunkin'. Whadda you think?" Hands stretch out in front of him, mirroring the window facing the water. "Lines and lines of polar bears and narwhals and seals ready for their early morning hot n' readys. Could be good business here."

#joel x spring #joel barrett #spring #thread: savior complex

rafemccawley

Ben Affleck as GAVIN BANEK in CHANGING LANES (2002)

endless gifs of rae's muses :: polina :: ( 3/∞ )

#ana's edits #endless gifs of rae's muses #polina visual

endless gifs of rae's muses :: polina :: ( 2/∞ )

#ana's edits #endless gifs of rae's muses #polina visual

endless gifs of rae's muses :: polina :: ( 1/∞ )

#ana's edits #endless gifs of rae's muses #polina visual

page21

Spring doesn’t look up immediately. She stays fixed on Luke, propped on one elbow in the slush, dazed in a way that makes him seem smaller than he is. Not unconscious, but blinking through the chaos like a man who just realized a PhD won’t protect your jaw. Expensive coat rumpled, hair disheveled, bruised ego sprawled across the sidewalk.

“Yeah, uh, I’m fine,” she says, her voice lower than usual, gravelly with the leftover heat of a scream she didn’t know she had in her.

Finally, she lifts her head. For a heartbeat, the sidewalk narrows down to just him. Joel—breathing hard, hair loose, eyes sharp and wary. He looks both familiar and impossibly new at the same time: the same intensity in his gaze, the same quiet command in the set of his shoulders, but sharper somehow, honed by the time they'd spent apart. He carries the weight of the two years they haven’t spoken, yet there’s a lightness to the way he moves through the chaos, a confidence she remembers. The steam from their breaths mingles in the sharp October air, a fragile, misty bridge over a silence that has stretched far too long, and for a moment she simply admires him—what has changed, what hasn’t, and how impossibly him he still is.

“Spring? Is he—Dr. Mercer, can you hear me?” Chloe hovers nearby, hands half-raised as if she wants to grab Luke but is terrified she’ll make it worse.

“He’s okay, Chloe. Just give him a sec,” Spring mutters, though she doesn’t move toward him. Her gaze is locked on Joel, tracing him like she’s trying to read a memory. She tucks a damp strand of hair behind her ear, hands still trembling from adrenaline. A chuckle of disbelief escapes her—dry, breathless, a sound she didn’t realize she’d been holding back.

“Did he get you?” she asks Joel finally, eyes scanning for any signs of bruises or cuts. Her voice steadies into something more like herself, though there’s still an edge to it.

The shock is settling into something heavier now—a familiar ache twisting in her chest. Maybe it’s the smell of him, or the way he moves, solid and cautious in the middle of chaos.

“You’re soaked,” she breathes, noticing the dampness on his jacket and sleeves. Her eyes flick to his hands, then back up. “Nice hook, though.”

She exhales, letting the tension in her shoulders ease slightly, even if her heart still pounds.

“Jesus,” Luke interjects, brushing off slush from his coat, standing upright despite a faint cut on his lip, hair still messy but his posture confident, a subtle edge in his voice. “What just happened?”

Spring gives a small, wild grin, glancing from Luke to Joel and back. “Some bitter Philly fan decided to pick a fight.”

Her gaze lingers on Joel a moment longer, breath catching in the cold air. She reaches down to help Luke to his feet, hand brushing against his as he steadies himself, and for a heartbeat, the fight, the adrenaline, everything fades into the sharp ache of recognition she can’t quite put into words.

“Joel,” she says, finally speaking clearly, voice firm but threaded with tension, “this is Luke. He’s my... I'm his TA,” her throat tight. “And, uh—Luke, this is Joel. Joel filmed a doc in my hometown a couple years back.”

Chloe shifts forward slightly, nervously tugging her sleeve. “And Chloe,” Spring adds with a half-laugh, gesturing, “my roommate.”

The pause that follows stretches, heavy and electric. Luke meets Joel's gaze, confident, unflinching, a trace of charm laced with tension. Neither moves, but the air is thick, charged, weighted with Spring’s presence between them—the past, the present, everything unspoken.

Luke extends a hand, smooth and controlled, tone polite but edged. “Luke Mercer. Nice to meet you.”

Spring swallows, her chest tight. She watches the interaction, aware of the unspoken boundaries, and of the quiet storm she’s caught between. Joel’s presence pulls at something deep inside her, and the streets of Causeway feel impossibly small around them. Chloe hovers a step behind, watching both the men and Spring, unsure whether to intervene or just bear witness to the charged stillness.

pachinkoparlors

He's not much bothered by the slush at all until Spring points it out, and it's then that Joel is a little more conscious of how cold his sleeve feels against his elbow and how his jeans stick to his knees. Nothing that he can't handle though. "No," he responds, shaking his head. The guy didn't 'get' him. Sure, it's been a while (don't ask him to define it exactly) since his last fight, but they call muscle memory "muscle memory" for a reason. You memorize enough of the drive that you can zone out and still end up where you need to be without a hitch.

Head tilts to size up the man that she's with. "It looks like he wasn't so lucky." He nods over to him, encouraging Spring to help him up. By the way he's dressed, Joel would have guessed he was some bigwig who got caught in the fray on his way home from the office, too engrossed in his work to remember to avoid Causeway, Beverly, and Nashua on Bruins game days. He doesn't look like the type to be at a hockey game on his own volition. He must be a stranger, because Spring doesn't hang out with people that look like him.

"Oh. You know this guy?" he asks, checking with Spring and finally looking at the stranger in the eyes. There's a slight laugh in his voice as he bridges the gap between his hand and Luke's. "Hey. I'm Joel. What a wicked first impression, eh?"

Less and less people are filtering through the area, which tells him the initial rush of the crowd is over and done with. But rest assured, there are still fans around: tipping the buskers who always prop themselves up outside with their drums outside of the stadium, haggling with the merch peddlers (for both Flyers and Bruins), lining up near the Dunkin that's just across the street. It's the thumping heartbeat of the city, nowhere near close to going to bed.

"Damn. He got you good. I'm sorry, bud," Joel is attempting to be sincere, but he picked up on how Spring introduced him. And how Chloe— her roommate, who he gave a polite smile and 'nice to meet you' too— is seemingly unsure of what to do around him. There's something going on.

Really, he's just so used to seeing Spring alongside people like Mikkel, Nivi, Elisapee, Lazarus. All with their own flaws but with their feet planted firmly on the ground. His mind flits to them momentarily, wonders what they'd say about Luke. Would they think the same way about him as they thought about Joel when he first came around Kugluktuk?

"Say, are TAs and teachers usually out for extracurricular activities like this or was this just a one-off sorta thing?" His words are jagged around the edges, that Boston accent out and just a tiny bit aggro; it was more or less down a level or two when he was in Canada two years ago. Now Joel is fully enmeshed. Before Spring can answer, Luke interjects, slipping an arm around her waist.

Joel clenches his jaw.

"We'd better go. The train's coming soon and we're already a few minutes behind,"

Joel lifts a brow, then cracks a pseudo-friendly smile. "Right. That'd be smart." He then glances over at Spring. Exhales sharp through his nose. Then juts a hand out for her and her roommate to shake; takes Chloe's first, then Spring's.

"Well, it was nice seein' you. Take care of yourself, kid."

page21

The sight of the beer can bouncing off Joel’s head snapped the last thread of Spring’s academic composure. For two years, she’d been practicing “resilience” in a classroom—parsing it, defending it, citing it—but this was a different kind of survival entirely. The shock of Joel’s hands on her arms—the sudden, searing familiarity of his grip—fused with the leftover adrenaline of the win, turning everything white-hot and immediate.

Joel didn’t wait. His hook landed heavy on the stranger, whipping through the night air and disrupting the shuffle of the crowd, sending the man reeling sideways.

“What the fuck?” Spring snarled, lunging forward before the fan could even recover.

She didn’t play the victim. She didn’t hesitate. She jammed her forearm into the guy’s chest, shoving him with all her might while Joel kept the pressure on.

“Go back to Philly, asshole!”

The fan roared, swinging a wild, clumsy arm that whistled over Spring’s head, missing her by inches. She ducked fast, grabbing the front of his orange jersey in her fist to keep him off-balance, fabric twisting tight in her grip. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs, loud enough to drown out the car horns and chanting fans spilling down Causeway.

For a few moments, despite the two-year silence and everything unsaid between them, she and Joel were working the same problem from different angles. Pressure. Disruption. Containment. A two-on-one forecheck on Causeway Street.

“Spring! Spring, stop!”

Luke appeared like a man who had accidentally stepped onto the wrong movie set. He was breathless, his coat hanging open, hair slightly disheveled, staring at the scene with pure horror. He didn’t see the history vibrating in the street; he just saw his student—who also happened to be his girlfriend—brawling in the grit beneath TD Garden.

“Luke, stay back!” Spring warned, teeth grit as she twisted to dodge another shove.

But Luke, driven by a desperate need to stop the scene—to restore order, civility, anything—pushed into the center anyway. He didn’t even register Joel; he just saw a drunk guy and Spring in the middle of it. He reached out to grab the fan’s arm, trying to be the adult in the room.

“Hey, knock it off!” Luke shouted. “You need to walk away!”

But the Philly fan didn’t care about Luke’s tone. Or his coat. Or the authority in his voice. He just saw a fresh target putting hands on him.

“I don’t think so, pal!” the fan bellowed.

He wound up a massive, clumsy right hook and let it fly.

The sound was sickening—a wet thwack of knuckle meeting jaw that seemed to split the night in two.

Luke’s head snapped back. His glasses went flying into the crowd, swallowed instantly by black and gold. And then he crumpled onto the pavement in a heap of charcoal wool.

pachinkoparlors

The last thing Joel expects is for Spring to join in on the brawl, but once she's in, he can't stop her— because before he can even register it, the Flyers fan is throwing punches at her. Luckily, she dodges it— it's not easy to land a punch when you're over the bay, Joel knows— but the fact that it's thrown in the first place blows the lid off the pot completely. Because he probably would've been alright sending the guy home with a black eye for lobbing a can at Joel's head. Not like it hurt much. But hitting a girl? It's a cardinal sin. And Joel sees red.

"You sonuva bitch!"

He lunges at the guy, pinning him down on the sidewalk, this end of the street pure chaos at this point. A perimeter had formed around the three of them, lined with folks egging the fight on with their phones out. It's a lot to fucking handle— flashing lights all around you, hollering strangers, whether Spring is okay. Joel's on top of the fan, one hand fisted around the collar of his stupid Flyers jersey while the other hand is dealing blow after blow. Outside of the circle, people are just trying to get through and go home.

Joel is busy trying to make a point. "You gonna hit a girl? Huh?" Between grunts. "This how they do it in Philly? Huh? You motherfucker."

Joel feels a pair of hands grab him by the shoulders, forcing him to his feet. He wouldn't have been so easy to peel away if it weren't for the sheer force of the yank. "Get off 'im, you piece-a-shit!" It's two of the guys' friends, getting in on the action. Joel gives the taller one a hard shove on his shoulders, knocking him into his friend.

"Your friend's a fuckin' idiot!"

And before it's all-out mayhem (Joel, what do you call this?), there's the jarring whistle of a siren. Presumably a cop on a bike called to this corner of the stadium. The spectators scurry away like roaches retreating in their hidey-holes. The Flyers fans get whisked away by who Joel assumes is one of their girlfriends, who is apologizing to him profusely while at the same time berating the three of them for getting into a fight anyway.

The only evidence of a fight left is Joel looking a little disheveled (did they even land a punch? If any one of them did, he's reeling too much from the adrenaline to be cognizant of it) and... shit. Spring.

The cop, who probably doesn't get paid enough, checks the damage. And since no one's lying on the pavement dead, he huffs and drives away.

Breathing heavy, Joel turns around to look for Spring— she's standing over some guy. He knits his brows. Her other girl friend's there too. He swipes his thumb across his nose to get at an inch and looks down at them.

"You okay?" he asks Spring, and only Spring.

theworldofcinema

#hehehehhehhehee.

page21

The week had been a grind of midterms and studio critiques, culminating in a three-hour seminar on coastal zoning that had devolved into a pedantic debate over who, exactly, gets to define “resilience.” By Friday, Spring’s brain felt like a dry sponge. Chloe had staged an intervention, appearing at their dorm with tickets and a look that brooked no argument. “You’re Canadian,” Chloe had said. “We’re going to the Garden. Wear the jersey.”

Luke had met them there after a faculty reception, still in his blazer and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. He’d spent most of the game discussing donor relations and research funding for the position he’d given her, his applause polite and timed a half-second behind the crowd’s. He didn’t quite get the bloodlust of a power play, but he liked seeing Spring animated. When his phone buzzed in the third period, he’d offered a distracted smile.

“Department head. I’ll catch up with you on the sidewalk,” he’d said, already drifting toward the concourse with his professional mask firmly back in place.

Spring hadn't waited for him. She was used to finishing things on her own, and the Bruins were playing like they had something to prove. For two hours, she wasn't a UEP student at Tufts; she was just a hockey-obsessed body in black and gold, screaming herself hoarse over a missed slashing call.

The crowd spilled out onto Causeway Street in a chaotic, jubilant surge, the sharp October air cutting through the residual heat of the arena. Spring was still buzzing, gesturing wildly at Chloe. “No, because if you’re going to commit to that forecheck, you can’t just peel off like that. You have to trust the second line to—”

The impact was sudden and total. A heavy, solid weight slammed into her back, knocking the breath clean out of her lungs. She stumbled forward, her boots skidding on the grit of the pavement.

“Hey!” Chloe whipped around, her face twisted in a classic Boston scowl. “Seriously? Watch where you’re going!”

Spring turned too, her irritation primed and ready to be vented. But as she squared her shoulders to face the stranger, the words died in her throat. The world didn't just slow down; it stopped. The sirens, the chanting fans, the smell of street-vendor pretzels—it all went mute.

Joel.

Her face didn’t have time to put up its usual academic defenses. It just opened. Her eyes went wide, a flicker of something raw and unguarded passing through her before she could even think to catch it.

“Oh.”

The word was a ghost of a sound, swallowed by the roar of the city.

Chloe looked between them, her defensive posture softening into confusion. “Wait. You know him?”

“Yeah,” Spring said, her voice sounding like it was coming from a long way off. “I do.”

He looked exactly the way he was supposed to look here. He didn’t look like a stranger in a remote outpost anymore; he looked like the city had been built to accommodate him. The cold had turned his cheeks a rough red. His jacket was half-closed, his posture steady and bracing, as if he were always prepared for a gale-force wind. For so long, she had convinced herself that Kugluktuk was the only place he existed. Seeing him on Causeway Street felt like a glitch in the universe.

A short, breathy laugh escaped her. It wasn't because it was funny—it was because the irony was too heavy to carry.

“You just body-checked me on Causeway,” she said, shaking her head slightly. There was no edge in her voice, only a strange, vibrating warmth and a massive amount of shock.

She took a half-step back, just enough to see him clearly, needing to confirm that he was solid and not some hallucination triggered by the North End air. The river of fans kept moving around them, a black-and-gold tide that refused to pause for their ghosts. A car horn blared nearby, grounding her back in the reality of the city. Almost two years of silence compressed into the three feet of concrete between them.

Finally, she breathed.

“Hi, Joel.”

pachinkoparlors

"You—" a wry chuckle as he takes her in— "you act like I did it on purpose."

If you're not moving along in the school of fish, you might as well be food for the sharks. He's just glad he was being chewed out by a little girl and not some 'roided out hockey fan. The shimmy-after-a-game is something Joel is usually good at, and somehow, it all just works; everyone ends up where they need to be and there's not usually a fight. But causing a traffic jam was the least of his worries, and so was catching up with the other three at Sullivan's. He'll get there when he gets there. What matters to him now— and what sort of overthrows everything else— is that Spring is here.

In Boston.

Outside of TD Garden.

In front of him.

How the hell?

All around them, bodies move, and Joel hears Spring's friend say something else to her. He just can't quite make out what. There's too much chattering and laughter within the microcosm, and he's spending his energy tuning into what Spring is going to say— if anything. His memory blinks back to when he was alone, camping out and filming in Kugluktuk, observing some muskoxen. To keep him company while he ate, he'd turn on the radio and fight with the knob until it gave him Spring's show, whenever she was on.

And at the same time, he's trying to muster up something to say. What could be said? There aren't enough words in the English language or even in Inuit that would encompass the way he feels right now. Seeing her. For the first time in years. Out here in his pocket of the world. Where they promised she'd be at some point in life, and yet, in never quite happened under Joel's terms.

He opens his mouth, about to say something about her hair, when he gets rammed forward again, this time a bit more forcibly. He braces himself against Spring, not wanting to crash into her or make her fall down, his hands gripping her arms and holding her steady until he regains his balance. "Jesus H. Christ, are you alright?" he mutters to Spring, but besides that, he doesn't get a chance to say much before an empty beer can gets thrown at his head. Pissed now, Joel turns around, and it looks like he got his wish after all. Some Philly Flyers fan decked out in orange, looking like a traffic cone, twice Joel's size weight-wise but about the same height.

He's drunk and belligerent, and he goes, "Hey, Masshole! Get the fuck outta the way!"

And Joel doesn't think twice, not really, before he throws a right hook.

aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman

Aenigma (1987)

page21

@pachinkoparlors

#screaming crying throwing up

joel & spring // the garden

@whisperofspring

The cold North End air hits him like a body check. He doesn't snap his jacket shut; he clutches it closed and shuffles out of TD Garden alongside his buds, swimming in the throng of Bruins fans. "That slashing call on Pasta was fuckin' garbage," Teddy's a step ahead of him with Yahtzee. Yahtzee goes, "We win and you still find somethin' to complain about." And Abby, Teddy's girlfriend, smacks his arm, "Hey, be cordial. We're tryin' to get old Suit over there to buy as all drinks. — What say you, Joel? Wanna come with?"

It's October— the start of the NHL season— and Joel's no big hockey fan, but he likes to catch the opening day of every Boston team if he can. Something about hometown pride... something about the crowd as everybody funnels through the arena whether the game ended in a win or lose. It's the total antithesis of a long stretch in the remote wilderness. So when Ted, Yaht, and Abby said they had a spare ticket, well, Joel would've been an idiot not to go.

Scrambling out toward Causeway Street, Joel chuckles, about to answer— spew something about not feeling like being their babysitter when he's already got a kid at home. But he catches a glimpse of something, the back of someone's head, almost close enough to tap their shoulder. It immediately makes him focus, blurs all the noise around him. He thinks it's her.