AMOTM

the idea of shane having a separate small fridge in the garage where he keeps frozen mice for spaghetti, but this means when ilya asks about it in passing while shane is looking for water shoes, he's distracted and just goes, "oh, drinks and spaghetti" and ilya just ??? you have?? freezer just for pasta????? actually no this sounds like a Rule you would make yeah sure why not.

NO SHUT THE FUCK UP THAT IS SOOO GODDAMN CUTE!!!!!

FROM PAGE TO SCREEN: Fire in the Hole

A young David Hollander (who is so sexy!!!), had just had his first big promotion, being internally deployed from a mid-class job at Health Canada to a higher-class job at the Treasury Board of Canada as a policy analyst, coming with not only a pay raise but a new cushy office!

To celebrate, his new bosses invite him to a celebratory dinner, and instruct him to bring his family and introduce them.

So, of course, Yuna and David bring their little shanebug. Their prized possession. He gets forcibly stuffed into nice khakis and a button up. He hates it, but what baby/young toddler doesn't hate fancy clothes?

They get there slightly late because Shanebug did not want to get up from snuggle-time and threw quite the tantrum, and David's bosses, who are mostly old men with grand babies, find him just adorable. They're all taking turns holding him and pinching his cheeks, but Shane just wants to return to his father's lap. He doesn't like strangers holding him for more than five minutes. Furthermore, he would not sit in the crappy restaurant high chair. David awkwardly laughs it off, slightly embarrassed that his baby was being so pouty at dinner and held him in his lap.

The food comes, Yuna and David didn't order Shane any because he's a baby. He'll just have a bottle later before bed ☺️ (wishful thinking, really.).

There's the usual boring conversion topics. 'How's your wife?' 'Oh, great, how's your wife?' 'Oh, great. How are your kids?' 'Oh, great. How are your kids?' 'Oh, you know. College. Oldest is getting married in about 5 month.'

But it's around fifteen minutes in when David realizes some of the men keep glancing over, not at him, but at Shane. And that Yuna is holding in giggles?

David looked down to see about half of his salmon filet was... missing? Weird. He looks a bit further down to see his little -well, no- Shanebug with two fistfulls of his salmon and a half-chewed mouthful of it.

"Shane!" David exclaims. "Bug, no. You're not supposed to be eating solids." He gently scolds, trying to remove the salmon from Shane's fists.

Shane squirms and kicks his legs, stuffing another fistful into his mouth.

David's bosses laugh, a rich person laugh. The laugh of men who play golf and drink top shelf whiskey.

"Really? Because it looks like he eats solids." One of them jokes, leading to more laughter. How embarrassing, David thinks.

"Dada... Sa-mom." Shane says, looking up at David with teary eyes and a pout that says, 'but daddy, I'm starving' in no words.

David, embarrassingly, buckles immediately and let's Shane eat over half of his salmon. Shane would've eaten more if Yuna didn't stop him. Afterwards, Shane slept like a rock all night long. And, I mean, a win is a win!

I, knowing that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, waited carefully for the lab director to be deep in conversation with someone else on the other side of the laboratory. And then I took my chance.

Test tubes, as it turns out, are really bad as shot glasses. Their shape turns any liquid inside into a stream, so you really can't knock it back quickly - it takes a couple seconds. Additionally, the best way I can describe the taste of virus concentrate was "sterile rot". A very unique kind of bad! Made worse by the test tube's inefficiency as a shot glass.

(by the way we were studying bacteriophages, not animal viruses. these viruses are too specialized on attacking prokaryotes to even recognize our cells as targets at all, according to studies.)

(but also like. if the viruses managed to successfully switch hosts and killed me with a violent infection, itd still be worth it.)

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

with shane on his lap a la this gif of jude law in wilde

Also a little extra bc I had the time. They've been like this all night. Might as well crawl into each others skin my god