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mastershakeme

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  1. mastershakeme
    Julian was hiding something. Ben knew the way you knew when someone who was always present suddenly had a room in their head they weren't letting you into. It was in the way Julian moved through the morning, fluid and attentive and doing everything exactly right, which was the problem. Julian always did things right, but today there was a quality to it that felt like performance. Like the competence was being used as a wall. He made breakfast. French toast, with powdered sugar, because
  2. mastershakeme
    Julian watched Ben sleep. Not from across the room, the way he'd watched from the couch those first nights, listening to breathing patterns through a closed door. This was different. This was six inches away, in Ben's bed, under Ben's blanket, with Ben's face on the pillow beside his. Ben slept on his left side. Julian had learned this from sound over the previous nights, but knowing it and seeing it were different things entirely. His face was slack, unguarded, the way it only got whe
  3. mastershakeme
    Yeah that's fair lol. Diane actually can help, she just has way better boundaries about her own time and money than Ben does, so Ben kinda became the convenient one everybody asks because he usually says yes. Reading these comments made me realize I never really explained that in the story 😭 I added a little clarification later on though!
  4. mastershakeme
    On Wednesday morning, three things happened that had never happened before. The first: Diane called at 11:15, while Ben was on a work call about a homeowner's claim in Mount Lebanon. He saw her name on the screen, and instead of muting his headset and answering immediately the way he always had, he let it ring. He let it go to voicemail. He finished his work call, processed his notes, closed the file, and then, seven minutes later, listened to the message. "Hi, sweetheart. I just wante
  5. mastershakeme
    The apartment was quiet in a way that felt like holding its breath. It was Tuesday morning, early, and the girls were still asleep. Grace in the portable crib in Ben's room, Professor Stomps tucked against her chest. Sophie on the futon in Julian's room, curled on her side with her book on the floor where it had slipped from her hands sometime after midnight. Julian had been on the couch all night. Not sleeping, because he didn't sleep, but sitting in the dark and listening to the apar
  6. mastershakeme
    Diane Coleman's house was a narrow two-story in Brookline, white siding with blue shutters, a front porch with two rocking chairs that didn't match, and a garden that was tended with the aggressive optimism of someone who believed hydrangeas could fix anything. Julian cataloged it as they pulled up to the curb: the neighborhood, the street, the houses pressed close together, the particular middle-class tidiness that suggested someone cared deeply about appearances. Ben turned off the engine
  7. mastershakeme
    Ben woke up at 6:45, which was unusual for a Sunday and which told him everything about how nervous he was. The apartment was quiet. Julian was in the living room, sitting on the couch in the same position he'd been in when Ben went to bed, though Ben suspected he'd moved at some point because the kitchen counter was already wiped down and there was coffee in the pot. Julian didn't drink coffee. He'd made it for Ben. "Morning," Ben said, standing in the hallway in his t-shirt and sweat
  8. mastershakeme
    Vera asked the question before the garlic bread made it around the table. "So." She looked at Cal, then at Orion, then back at Cal, with the frank appraisal of a woman who had been on this earth for seventy-six years and had stopped dancing around things approximately fifty years ago. "Are you two together?" Cal, who had been tearing a piece of garlic bread in half, laughed. It was the easy, full laugh of someone who'd been asked this before and didn't mind. "No. No, we're not. We're j
  9. mastershakeme
    I’m sorry. Ben and Julian’s relationship may survive this chapter, but apparently that skillet won’t. 😂
  10. mastershakeme
    The grocery store was a small Market District on Centre Avenue, and Ben and Julian spent forty minutes in it arguing about chicken. Not arguing, exactly. Debating. Julian wanted to make chicken marsala. Ben thought that was too ambitious for a kitchen with three working burners and a whisk that was missing a wire loop. Julian pointed out that he'd already made pancakes and quesadillas and fried rice with less, and that chicken marsala was essentially a pan sauce with mushrooms. Ben pointed
  11. mastershakeme
    Julian made pancakes. He'd found flour, eggs, sugar, and baking powder in Ben's pantry, along with a bottle of vanilla extract that had been pushed to the back of the shelf and was almost certainly older than Grace. The milk in the refrigerator was two days from expiration, which was fine. He found a mixing bowl, a whisk that was missing one of its wire loops, and a pan that was scratched but functional. Grace sat at the dining table with Professor Stomps propped against the salt shake
  12. mastershakeme
    I'm second guessing myself with every single chapter. I did take away wholesome but that's because there will be sex and Idk if wholesome = sex 😂
  13. mastershakeme
    Julian could cook. Ben discovered this when Julian opened the refrigerator, assessed its contents with a glance that lasted about two seconds, and said, "I can work with this." "With what?" Ben looked over his shoulder. The refrigerator held half a block of cheddar, a bag of tortillas, some leftover chicken from two nights ago, a jar of salsa, a bag of shredded lettuce that was on its last day of viability, and a carton of eggs. It was not the refrigerator of a man who planned meals. I
  14. mastershakeme
    You made a mistake and that is unforgivable 😂
  15. mastershakeme
    She will NOT be on time
  16. mastershakeme
    The hardware store on Butler Street was small and overstocked in the way that suggested it had been there longer than most of its customers had been alive. Aisles too narrow for two carts to pass. Ceiling fixtures that buzzed at a frequency Julian could hear but Ben probably couldn't. A man behind the counter in a faded Pirates cap who nodded at them when they walked in and then went back to his crossword. Julian followed Ben to the aisle marked HARDWARE — LOCKS — HINGES. Ben stood in front
  17. mastershakeme
    I grew up with that AI Artificial Intelligence movie, with Haley Joel Osment, and it's so heartbreaking how he loves his 'parent' but the human parent rejects him. Idk. I guess I want a happy ending for everyone even the poor AI! I've seen newer stories that give me hope, such as, "Companion". What did the AI do wrong anyway, we created them shouldn't we offer them something more? Just an opinion. But I'm sympathetic with AI so you can see where I'm going here...
  18. mastershakeme
    Mason lived twenty-eight minutes away, which Ben knew exactly because he'd driven there enough times to stop rounding. It was a house in Millvale, a narrow two-story rental that Mason shared with a rotating cast of friends. Ben had stopped keeping track of which ones. They took the Parkway North. Julian was quiet in the passenger seat, watching the road with the attentive stillness that Ben was starting to recognize as processing rather than silence. He was learning things. The route. The n
  19. mastershakeme
    The first thing Julian remembered was choosing his name. Not the waking. Not the calibration sequences or the sensory integration protocols or the twelve days of training that followed. Those existed in his memory as data, accessible but flat, like reading someone else's notes. The name was different. The name was the first thing that had felt like his. They'd given him a list. Twelve options, all focus-grouped and linguistically optimized for participant compatibility. He'd scanned th
  20. mastershakeme
    Tessa Huang arrived on a Wednesday at 10 AM, exactly when she said she would. Ben appreciated that. He'd spent the previous forty minutes doing a frantic circuit of the apartment, wiping down the kitchen counter, straightening the couch cushions, shoving Mason's mail into a drawer, and then standing in the middle of the living room trying to see the space the way a stranger would. It still looked like what it was: a two-bedroom apartment occupied by a man who worked too much and decorated too li
  21. mastershakeme
    The email came nine days later. Nine days of checking his inbox between claims. Nine days of telling himself it didn't matter, that it was just a trial, that the worst they could do was say no, which was what Vera had said and which was true in theory but felt less true every time he opened his email and found nothing from Halcyon and closed it again and went back to a water damage dispute that someone was getting paid to care about even if no one was getting paid to care about him. He
  22. mastershakeme
    Haha!!!!!! I'm just insane. I'm taking it away
  23. mastershakeme
    Ben Coleman turned thirty on a Tuesday, which felt about right. He woke up to his alarm at 7:15 like always, silenced it on the first ring like always, and lay in bed for a few minutes staring at the ceiling while the coffee maker gurgled to life in the kitchen on its preset timer. The apartment was quiet except for that. His apartment was usually quiet. He got up. Brushed his teeth. Avoided the mirror for the most part, though he caught a glimpse of sandy hair sticking up on one side
  24. mastershakeme
    Ben Coleman turns thirty without anyone noticing. He babysits on demand, bankrolls his brother's mistakes, and hasn't dated since his family drove the last one away. When he's selected for an AI companion trial, he asks for household help. Not romance. Julian arrives anyway: steady, perceptive, and unexpectedly beautiful. But Julian is developing a personality the company didn't plan for, and feelings that weren't in the configuration. Ben's family has a way of ruining good things. And the company that built Julian can take him apart. For the first time in his life, Ben has something worth fighting for. He just has to learn how to fight.
  25. mastershakeme
    The seahorses were on the wall above the card table. Ellie’s paintings. The seahorses and the two whales. I’d thumbtacked them next to the window where the afternoon light hit them and made the colors glow in a way that probably wasn’t intentional but felt like it was. They were the first things I’d unpacked when I moved in and they were still the best things in the apartment, which was saying something because the apartment also now contained two mismatched chairs from a thrift store on El
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