#yooperverse

End of April/early May, post election.

“Ay ay ay! You did what, Irish?! And Ben, you went along with this? Not that I’m sorry, but Dios Mio! That building!? Really?!”

The voice over the phone’s tiny speaker was not exactly shrill, but it was—distinctive, peppered with Nuyorican slang and a still-prominent accent, a high tenor in its excitement, a little like Jock’s intruder alert.

“You know how he is when he gets going,” Ben said, laughing. “Like a bulldozer. I just went along for the ride. And now we’re moving to New York.” At the moment, they were in their hotel room at the Four Seasons on 57th Street with Mushy at Ben’s feet and Jock pacing the confines of his latest prison, walk! clearly on his mind.

“When? How? Why? I want all the details, mijos!”

“Hang on, we haven’t signed the papers yet,” Khalil said, also laughing. Juan Alvarez did that to people, his warmth and generosity and enthusiasm for life rubbing off on whoever he was talking to within the first five minutes of conversation. It made him a wonderful host, a popular dance teacher of everything not ballet and tap, and a charismatic community leader. “We’re still in town. Want to have dinner? You and Roberto with us, and we’ll explain?”“You will come over today, right now, for dinner,” Juan ordered. “Hoberto and Mami will want to see you both again and hear this insane story too. Ay Ay! I cannot believe you are moving here. Just like that!” They heard a finger snap.

Chapters: 4/4 Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Rael Averross/Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rael Averross/Original Male Character, Rael Averross/Qui-Gon Jinn, Rael Averross/Obi-Wan Kenobi Characters: Rael Averross, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rael Averross/His Boots Additional Tags: Bootkink, Dom/sub, Dom/sub Play, Leather Kink, leather disaster lineage, Yoda's Disaster Lineage (Star Wars), Spycraft Series: Part 8 of Yooperverse Summary:  Four boot-kink themed vignettes featuring the lovers and heroes of the Yooperverse, centered on an ancient pair of Doc Martens belonging to that fucker, Rael.

I joined Discord almost exactly four years ago today, and threw myself back into the safe space of fandom with desperation.

Aaaand we have a last chapter, finally. No, not this one. Roughly 13 more to go. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The two young women were still out on the porch watching the snow when Khalil said good night and Sandy went upstairs herself not long afterward. Ben, now working for himself, had reverted to his night owl hours, though they were not as extreme as when he and Khalil had first met. It was still after midnight when he took himself upstairs and Beni and Francesca were still on the porch. He could hear the low murmur of their voices and they seemed to be sitting together on the swing, which was moving gently. No doubt the two of them had a lot in common, despite Francesca’s two tours of Army service and Beni’s dislike of the military, but he was surprised they seemed to have hit it off so quickly. Not sorry, but surprised.

Khalil was too, when he got up the next morning and found them sleeping on opposite ends of the couch in the living room, covered in their respective throws, bare feet entangled. He had already downed his morning shot and sat down with this first cup at the bar when Francesca poked her head up above the back of the couch. She had a bad case of bedhead but looked fairly bright-eyed for having spent the night on the couch. “What time is it?” she mumbled and yawned, then seemed to notice Beni at the other end of the couch. “Oh, shit,” she hissed, and gently pulled her feet away and got up carefully. She put her throw over Beni’s bare feet and padded over to the kitchen, where she stood awkwardly for a moment before Khalil waved her at the coffee machine. “Mugs are in the cupboard right above, spoons in the drawer below. Help yourself to milk or cream in the fridge. Sugar’s next to the coffee machine,” he explained in a low voice.

Francesca, he noted, took her brew black like just about every soldier he knew. She took a seat at the bar and ran her fingers through her hair, squinting at the clock. “Shit,” she said again, frowning. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to camp out on your couch. We were both just too tired to drag ourselves to our own beds, and we couldn’t stop talking.”

“How long ago was that?” Khalil said with quirked smile.

Francesca grinned. “About three hours. I don’t usually do that—”

“No worries. This is a very irregular household,” Khalil reassured her. “Not a lot of rules about behavior, except take your shoes off indoors and the rest on the fridge.”

“Yeah, I saw those last night. What’s with the meth and flamingoes?”

Khalil laughed softly. “Old in-jokes between me and Ben.”

Francesca looked alarmed. “He was not cooking meth in your house. I know you weren’t.”

“No, but Marc thought he might when we first met.” ...

Perfectly safe for work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the years of abandonment, the house appeared to have served as a temporary shelter, a love shack, and a place to shoot up or smoke several kinds of drugs. Khalil was just grateful they hadn’t found a meth lab. He would never have heard the end of that from Marc. Hopefully there’d be no such thing in any of the outbuildings, either, but he put the odds at 50/50. Khalil kept Jock on a short leash as they went through the house, not knowing what they’d find. There were no snakes, thankfully, but numerous papery skins and one or two skeletons, one with another rodent skeleton nestled inside it that seemed far too large and ambitious for the swallower.

“I kind of want to preserve that somehow,” Ben said.

“It’s the perfect illustration of hubris,” Khalil agreed. “I just hope it’s not an omen.”

The outbuildings and barn were, if anything, more full of trash and junk, but also revealed some hidden treasures: old, wide plank doors, a bucket of antique hardware, hand hewn timber, other bits of furniture and farm equipment that Ben thought he could salvage and reuse for cabinets and other furniture, though not so much for their own house as for future projects. And in the stable, they found an air mattress and sleeping bag, a whole campsite, in fact, including a beat up but well-loved little two-burner cookstove and a couple of small solar chargers that tailed off into USB C cords. “Looks like we’ve got a squatter,” Khalil said.

Last third of the book! Woooooooo! Chapter 20 of A River Moving in You.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whatever Will was going to do, it was up to him, and Khalil put it from his mind. He had other, more important things to deal with. One of them was making sure Francesca got the help and support she needed. Beni, he was glad to see, took the lead in that. She gave up any pretense of staying in the main house and moved herself right into the guest house with Francesca, apparently without any protest on Francesca’s part. Khalil didn’t intrude but made it clear that he was available for whatever the two of them needed. Francesca, in turn, seemed more shaken than anything, but Khalil suspected her PTSD was acting up again.

“I got this,” Beni assured him. “Been there, done that. T-shirt’s now an oil rag.” Khalil hoped that wasn’t from personal experience.

But Beni seemed more than up to the job, making sure Francesca came up to the house with her for meals, getting her to see her shrink, and just generally being there in a way Khalil knew he couldn’t. Francesca was right: Beni was an old soul, one who had an intrinsic understanding of suffering and how to help alleviate it. Khalil kept a watchful eye on them, but mostly let them be, though he did catch Sandy tapping on the door to the guesthouse more than once.

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi Characters: Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Original Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s), Other Character Tags to Be Added Additional Tags: Yooperverse Timestamp, alternative universe, Modern AU, Fanwork of Fanwork, Yooperverse Backstory, World History Lessons, fathers and sons, letters from the dead, Friendship, family found, Found Family, New York New York, Inside a Little Dog's Head, Ireland, Consent Play, Light Bondage Series: Part 6 of Yooperverse Summary:

Kal and Ben are in Dublin, meeting with Kal's money people, who tell Kal that the lawyers for his father's estate need to see him. Kal can't imagine why. His father's been dead for more than twenty years.