A PEEK INSIDE : jon's first aid kit

new msg received @ private terminal — @ccrleone. subject: re: MORBID CURIOSITY … [ REMASTERED ]

MOMENTS OF PEACE ARE SCARCE. EVEN FAR FROM THE BATTLE, IN THE QUIET OF THE HOSPITAL they've shipped michael to, the silence lingers, oppressive. forced. a guise of serenity worn thin by the smell of sterilising chemicals and blood and sickness wafting throughout every corner of the facility. it settles heavy even in the empty stairwells that shepard takes upwards as he traces the path he's memorised ( though he's only taken it once, a couple weeks before ) to the room of captain michael corleone. more aptly: the room that captain michael corleone shares with a number of the injured and the sick, though none quite close to dying. a small thing, but it matters.

the extent of michael's injuries were at first, and for days, vague. it was only through persistent digging through a series of unofficial channels, some of them alliances he had forged on his own in recent months and several of them friends of the don — an effort that had grown increasingly frantic when shepard learnt that michael corleone had been shipped from the clearing station to a hospital, a transition that implied graver injury and more severe methods of management — that shepard eventually unearthed the truth. michael's life had not been at stake. shepard had visited anyway as soon as time allowed, to make certain of it with his own eyes. and for the sake of the don, though perhaps not so much as for his own sake.

maybe it was the corleone family name that warranted michael's speedy extraction from combat. that's the likely case. even with eyes on his boy, shepard expects that don corleone's reach holds a certain power even as far out as the pacific theatre and that, shepard aside, there are plans laid out for any number of contingencies. whatever the case, michael being sent to a hospital was not the death sentence that shepard had feared it might be.

he glances, now, across the row of beds lining the room. most have cleared out — gone home or gone to the grave, who knows, but nonetheless gone — to make room for new and unfamiliar faces. the room is full; none of its cots ever lie empty.

michael looks well from a room's distance away. awake and aware, and better-rested, at the least. this shepard ascertains as he nears michael's bedside.

' what do you make of this? ' says michael in greeting, straight to business, brandishing the papers in his hand.

shepard knows what this is about. still, he takes the evidently very pressing papers from michael's hand. silence lapses between them for a minute or two as he picks his way through the printed text and squints closely at the clusters of letters that blot and swim, though he knows very well what they say. the gist of them, anyway.

he takes a moment, too, to — very carefully — choose his words. ( michael might suspect something if he spoke too quickly. shepard's surprised, really, that he's made it this far along without any trouble. then again, if michael's ever been suspicious, it's just as likely that he's simply kept quiet about it. )

" nothing to make of it, skipper, " shepard says at last. michael is not a stupid man. far from. one poorly chosen word could be a grievous misstep; don corleone had warned him of this. this is not a task as simple as accompanying his youngest overseas — if simple is the word for making oneself part of a Great War, as great a war as this century or any other may ever see. but war is war, to shepard. being a friend to michael, on the other hand, and as the don had put it, is no easy undertaking.

though michael himself is not difficult to like. it might have been more difficult if it were santino, a man that shepard finds almost unbearably abrasive even at his cheeriest ... or fredo who, on the other hand, leans much too far the other way. shepard wouldn't have a damn idea what to do with him.

the fact is that neither of them would have ever ended up here. neither sonny nor fredo have the will, or the want, to ever go against the don's wishes. this choice — to be here across the sea, on the front lines and far from father and family — is one that is distinctly michael. a choice that may have cost him his life ... and yet it was his. he had made it.

but that brings about other problems. michael's smart in ways that sonny and fredo aren't, calculating in a manner that isn't so easy to tell beneath the soft-spoken amicability. that, to shepard, commands a respect greater than sonny's loud and hotheaded streak ever will. it also makes him dangerous. ( not unlike his father. ) with sonny, all shepard would ever have to do is be willing to take a beating. with michael, though ... with michael, he treads with care.

" ... it means you go home, i guess. that's it. that's all. " he lowers the medical evaluation papers, careful not to crease them ( the proof of his success, of michael corleone's eventual separation from the military, though he lets no hint of his relief spill into the uneasy quiet between them ) as he sets them at michael's bedside. his gaze lingers, on nothing in particular, before he looks again to michael.

' guy like you — probably got family that'll be happy to see you again, ' he thinks of saying. he doesn't. the words would sound tacky, coming from him, and unusual, to say the least. he's never had a family to speak of, never particularly cared for the sentiment, and michael knows that. the implications of bringing up the matter of family now ...

a man like shepard, under any other and more ordinary circumstances, wouldn't care to know much about the corleone family. ( someone like him should have very little, if anything, to do with the family at all. whether his association with the corleones will continue after michael's return home, whether it will ever even be spoken of, is a decision left with the don. ) and he doesn't care to have to lie to michael in any way — not now, not ever. shepard likes michael. he really does.

WHAT IS JOEY QUINN'S BIGGEST TEMPTATION?

LOVE me, please.

Joey Quinn can be a very simple man sometimes. He's been through hell and back, seen the world at its lowest when he was a kid and then some when narcotics became his niche, himself an easy man to sway to substances that take your mind off it all. But through it all and well beyond it, he will never be able to contain himself from falling over and over again for the scheme of love and affection - especially the romantic.

Christine, Debra, Carissa, Nadia, Cindy, Jamie... it just never stops - he can never stop. Every one of them, every step, a different hurdle and a different problem altogether. He's been led on and used and been the on-leader and user all the same, yet he persists. He can't resist it. The temptation of spending a lifetime with someone he loves. That's the cheese to Joey's trap.

A PEEK INSIDE     :     jon's netflix watch history

A PEEK INSIDE     :     jon's pantry

‘   don’t   tell   pop   ,   alright   ?   it’s   my   news   to   tell.   ’ @ccrleone

news.  that   was   a   funny   way   to   put   it.   this   particular   piece   of   news   felt   so   much   more   than   that   —   like   the   idea   of   labeling   it   with   a   lousy   four   letter   word   was   somehow   doing   it   a   grave   injustice.   like   he   was   —   on   the   contrary   —   making   molehills   from   mountains.   then   again,   that   had   always   been   michael’s   thing,   had   it   not?   the   very   same   cool   and   collectedness   that   he   carried   —   even   as   a   boy   —   was   one   of   the   surefire   ways   to   drive   sonny   absolutely   insane.   mostly   because   it   reminded   him   of   just   how   much   the   two   of   them   were   different   despite   the   same   blood   pumping   through   their   veins.

news,   he   thought   again,   scoffing   at   the   sheer   audacity   the   word   contained.   it   was   earth   shattering   news   —   the   kind   that   would,   sonny   was   certain,   break   the   old   man’s   heart   when   he   learned   that,   despite   everything   that   he   had   done   for   his   ungrateful   youngest   son,   he   had   taken   it   upon   himself   to   enlist   in   the   army.   essentially,   to   volunteer   to   die   for   a   bunch   of   total   strangers.

although   he   had   significantly   calmed   down   since   his   outburst   after   first   learning   of   the   news   himself,   the   eldest   corleone   still   had   a   tough   time   in   processing   these   things.   still,   it   was   a   relief   to   know   that   michael   still   had   his   heart   set   on,   ironically,   doing   the   right   thing.   it   was   for   this   reason   that   sonny   let   out   a   deep   exhale,   bringing   his   arm   out   to   rest   his   hand   on   his   kid   brother’s   shoulder.

❝      yeah,   sure.      ❞

unenthusiastic   not   because   he   didn’t   believe   michael,   but   because   of   what   he   knew   would   inevitably   follow.   and   yet,   despite   the   two   of   them   being   huddled   together   in   the   corner   of   a   vacant   room,   with   the   rest   of   the   family   lounging   at   the   dining   table   post   pop’s   birthday   cake,   sonny’s   voice   still   came   out   in   an   almost   whisper,   moving   his   hand   from   michael’s   shoulder,   to   threateningly   point   at   his   chest.

a lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns. that was what vito corleone had said once to santino and what young tom hagen, then only sixteen, had overheard from a room away. afterwards, he had gone to that corner room in their home which housed the law library — which, in the years previous and until then, had been of very little interest to him. but that night, in the low yellow light cast in steep angles across the shelves and walls by the singular lamp he lit on a nearby table, he sat in one of the armchairs ( near slipped off the plush leather seat ), closed his eyes, and inhaled the scent of the old texts stacked high in the shelves and up to the ceiling. it was then he knew how he would make himself of use to the don.

he kept his personal studies sequestered within the privacy of his own room until he finished college. in the months that followed, as he began attendance at a nearby law school, hagen was permitted to establish for himself a corner of study in the library. it was not a long drive from newark to long island, and so tom still spent his evenings and weekends ( excepting those rare days he put aside to make the lengthier travel to new brunswick, and the occasional nights he would spend there after a day's pursuit of the young sicilian woman he had recently met ) in the corleone home.

when the room was not used for conference between the don and his visitors, tom studied here. it afforded him slightly more comfort than the desk in his bedroom and the stiff chair he had long outgrown, and the separation between leisure and academics it offered was a welcome change, too — though the old space had only become storage for more texts, the bedroom's desk made into a cramped study away from this study.

and this was a spot in the house that most of the young corleone children who visited the home, who trickled constantly through every room and every hall that they deemed suitable as lanes for giddily chasing one another through, left alone. the solemnity of the room alone seemed to have the power to repel them.... well. most of them.

it had never been in tom's nature to be loud or particularly verbose. but, surrounded by brothers and a sister ( all of whom demanded to know his innermost thoughts, or else insisted on causing endless racket of their own ) he had spent the rest of his childhood after eleven immersed in chatter and noise. sometimes, in the absence of conversation, he spoke aloud to himself still, quietly, while he worked through his thoughts — to fill the silence that would so often be filled by sonny's fast comebacks or connie's playful churlishness.

he thought he had squashed the habit entirely, but evidently not. and so he cringed for a moment at michael's unexpected comment. but the tension washed away quickly, amusement rising in its place.

" i never knew you had an interest in law, mike. " michael had indeed been one of those few small children that could not be repelled by the sight of a large and heavy book; there were few things at all, tom thought, that could repel or frighten that boy.

sonny had made clear his distaste at the idea of another four years spent book-learning, though that had been long evident to anyone who had eyes and ears; opinion of freddie's academic potential, despite all his intent on joining santino alongside their father in the business, had somewhat wavered in those final months before graduation. it could have been one way or another. but it was clear ultimately to tom, and likely to fredo himself, that college might eventually disinterest freddie or that it might turn out too ill-suited for his steadily changing temperament. even in the waning of his young teenage brusqueness, his amicable and increasingly mild nature did not strike tom in any way as scholarly.

but michael ... he always had about him a quiet but quick wittedness that would serve him very well in academics. if he wanted. ( that was their father's wish, tom believed, though don corleone had never voiced it to him. )

tom picked his reading from off the side table where he had laid it, before he had then leaned back in his seat and contemplated aloud what he had read. " reasonable suspicion, in this example. yes. probable cause — no. " these were simple concepts. but, as with most the topics discussed in his first-year courses, tom's interests of course extended beyond the conceptual. he had formulated a structure for personal study of material in addition to his regular coursework: a system of specialised reading and of trawling through old court cases and records and of scouring through even the morning papers for anything novel or otherwise sensational. of finding the crux of all these legal fights, or the lack of ... that point of failing, a lawyer's botching after which his case and his defendant could no longer be saved. it was excessive, perhaps — but if tom hoped to work for the don, there could be no weakness in his legal capability or expertise. " good eye. ear. that's what i would have fought first. a little tricky in the details, it would be a tough case to turn ... but if i knew more, i think i could do it. "