Kaz almost dies. Inej almost leaves his room without sitting on his face.

Everything is going to plan up until the precise moment it starts to fall apart.

"Don't slouch, Maxine, it makes you look common," says Barbara.

None of this makes any sense, really. Jim's barely laid a hand on her, if he doesn't count the occasional hand-up over difficult terrain, or accidental (mostly accidental) groping when an explosion throws his bridge crew around, and Jim doesn't count that, because if he counted that he'd be at third base with Keenser by now.

Better safe than close. A phrase Alleria repeated to herself so many times over their lost years that it has become some strange combination of vow and hymn.

Bandom Big Bang: Monsters Inc AU. Pete and Patrick are hard-working monsters at Bono's energy factory and Brendon is a babysitter who stumbles through an activated closet door. Chaos, monster-kissing, and sinister plots abound, along with a hotass Abominable Snowman.

"It's Karen," she says hopelessly in the middle of his doorway like he wouldn't know her a thousand other ways. The whiff of perfume on her, Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb trapped underneath a thick smear of booze, or the sound of her shoes on the hard tile floor. She's drunk already; her breathing is faint and thready. Her face is too hot.

Cycles of love and loss and understanding.

Over the years and across the provinces, they have explored together every li of what there is to offer in this between them.

In 1992, HAL is born on a college campus in Illinois.