hammondxlucille

[hammondxlucille]

closed for @wrongtvrns / @ nirvana

You know what they say, liquid courage, is it? Lucille wouldn’t imagine herself approaching the woman if she wasn’t three tequila shots deep. But there was something oddly familiar about her, a chord stuck in Luce’s memory that they had met before, and maybe even spoke? She had tried to shake it off, go back to the dancefloor with her friends, even tried flirting with a few strangers while her heart pounded in time with the music. But every few minutes, she found her neck craning, trying to get another glimpse of this mysteriously familiar stranger. While tequila was strong enough to embolden her to walk over, it was just as strongly taking away her memory of how they’ve crossed paths before. Even as she crossed the dance floor to where Gen was standing against the bar, swiping the back of her wrist against her forehead without a care to the makeup she so carefully put on hours earlier - Luce was sure her sparkly eyeshadow had probably already smudged all over her face to the point of looking like Edward in that one Twilight scene. She leaned her elbows against the bar itself, ordering another tequila soda with lime in between glances snuck at Gen. “Shit, I-”, she stumbled over her words when the other caught her staring, “I’m not -”, a small, tipsy laugh and Lucille again pushed her short, blonde hair off her forehead, “Have we met before? I’m so sorry, maybe you just have one of those faces - I just really feel like we’ve met before.” 

[hammondxlucille]

closed for @invsblstrngs / at stacks

Laptop keys tapped under Lucille’s fingers as her hands flew across the keyboard, essentially braindumping everything needed for her current fixation. It wasn’t for her actual program at the school, rather a special interest she had been focusing on in the past months - she had read Out in Theory by Lewin & Leap and had since fallen down a rabbit hole of queer perspectives on modern anthropological finds. There was a forgotten plate of breakfast food sat next to her laptop, the syrup all but disintegrated into the fluffy pancakes and a (now wilted, sad) pile of fruit next to it. But Stacks was quiet, the staff never minded if she took up a stool in the corner of the bar for a couple hours on a day like today. She didn’t even hear the bell above the door ring out, announcing someone’s entry, or the woman greeting the Stacks waitress. It wasn’t until the woman’s warm voice spoke out “pick-up for Lorelai” that Lucille raised her head, corners of her mouth immediately lifting into a smile. “Well well,” she chuckled, playfully teasing Lore, “you’re not stalking me now, are you?”  

[hammondxlucille]

closed for @lapagliaalice / walking downtown

The leash was pulled taut between herself and Arthur, Luce tugged ever so slightly, signaling to the german shepherd too much, slow down, don’t pull mom. There was a silent language between the two, built on years and years of trust, work, and living together. From the moment Lucille brought Art into her life, she knew she had met her soul dog. And yes, she was certain her soul dog was her childhood cattle pup, and sure again with the golden retriever that framed her teenage years but Art.. Having a pet that was entirely your own, not your parents or the farms, but yours  - it was a different kind of bond, exemplified tenfold when Lucille got them into search and rescue. The trust built on the trail, off the trail, following a scent and climbing down - Art trusting his mom to keep him safe while he focuses on the trace, Luce trusting him enough to take her to the lost hiker. The early mornings when they get a call at 3am, or late nights when the phone rings at 9pm. The drives to the site of the incident, the camaraderie and dedication to saving someone’s life ringing through the air. She was lost in thought , reminiscing on the last rescue they had worked when she realized Arthur had sat right in the middle of the sidewalk, his nose pointed to a blonde haired woman waiting for the crosswalk to turn. Lucille chuckled and pulled his leash once, twice. Damn, she thought, this lady must have something … Art took one tentative step forward and rested his nose ever so slightly against the corner of her bag. “So sorry, he’s very friendly.” Lucille started when the woman noticed her dog, “I think maybe he smells your lunch or something in your bag.”

[hammondxlucille]

full name:  lucille marie hammond

nicknames: luce, lu

aesthetics: here is her pinterest board

age & dob:  29, july 9

residence:  woodside heights . she rents an apartment 

occupation:  grad student, tour guide at museum of history and science, volunteer search and rescue agent

appearance:

faceclaim:  florence pugh (specifically with the short choppy blonde hair).

style:  lots of oversizes sweaters, hoodies, flannels. corduroy pants, jeans, thrifted work pants. pretty consistently wears her pair of blundstones. beanies. lots of rings and other jewelry.

personality:

positive traits:  empathetic, curious, patient

negative traits: reserved, anxious, stubborn

likes:  going on runs, journaling, reading, hiking and camping, slow mornings with her dog, a cup of coffee that has been sitting out for exactly 7 minutes so it's cool enough to drink, yoga

dislikes: cats, technology, when one pillow on her bed gets flat faster than the other ones, news articles trapped behind paywalls  

fears:  running water, needles (but only in the medical sense)

pet peeves:  when people interrupt her reading, misconceptions about german shepherds & other working dogs, reality tv, the influencer accent

faves:

ice cream flavor:  vanilla with hot fudge

time of the day / night:  midafternoon, just before dinnertime

weather:  cool but not cold, cloudy but not raining or snowing

breakfast food:  waffles with chocolate chips and a black coffee

dinner food:  her mother used to make a chicken broccoli bake - despite her best efforts, she can't seem to duplicate it  

colors:  any green besides neon.

songs:  you're gonna go far by noah kahan

other random stuff:

a cherished item:  her brother's clothes.

usual mood: friendly, upbeat, optimistic

1 thing they want to do / experience before they die:  go to japan

___

Background (tw death of sibling)

Dirt under her nails is as natural to Lucille as breathing. Lucille, Lucy, Luce, grew up on a small farm in the hills of Montana. She was surrounded by chickens and goats, dogs and cows, a loving family made complete with one older and one twin brother. There wasn’t one day that she didn’t spend outside, whether helping her father fix the stables for the few horses they had, cleaning out the goats’ pasture - Luce did it all and she loved every minute. On the occasions that they could take a weekend off, typically when a neighbor could watch over the farm, Lucille’s father saddled up the horses and they rode off to their favorite campsite. The two-hour horse ride felt like seconds, the weekends felt like minutes. Looking back, Luce wishes she could remember more from those days, the calmness, the clarity that surrounded her family. 

When Lucy was 15, a darkness fell onto the family. Her twin brother had gone on a camping trip with some of the neighborhood kids to a campsite up north, near a river bank that was frequented by most of the local folk. It was about a one-hour horse ride, one that Lucille and her family had been taking for most of her life at this point. To this day, her only regret is that she didn’t go on this trip, citing a test on the following Monday that she was woefully unprepared for and needing the precious weekend hours to study. If she had gone, maybe she could have convinced Henry to have one less beer. To stay 3 more feet away from the water. To - . 

She can’t even think about what it could’ve looked like, what could have prevented it. Henry’s friends, who were also Lucy’s friends as it happens in small towns, have offered before to tell her the story, to explain what happened that fateful evening when the water was too quick, the current too strong. But she’s never been able to bear hearing about her twin’s death. Not the actual details, no. Never. 

Lucille spent the rest of her teenage years in a daze - what’s one to do when one loses a half of their heart? High school came and went in a blur. Somehow she was accepted to San Diego State, somehow she pledged as a biology major, and somehow she made it through. She had lofty goals of using her bio degree to go into conservation, of becoming the next Jane Goodall or Rachel Carson (would she ever admit this was some convoluted exploration into her desire to stabilize water levels across the globe, as if that would somehow explain or excuse or fix Henry’s death? No, she won’t), but became disheartened quickly when faced with real job applications, internships, the like. The conservation sphere had morphed into a money grab, a conglomerate of corporations with their own selfish intentions and politicians with seemingly bottomless pocketbooks. 

She crashed out 3 months post-grad. Lucille sold almost all of her belongings and bought a van - reno’ed it while living in it (rookie mistake, but also the California weather was a bit more forgiving than, say, Montana), and eventually found herself travelling across the US with a german shepherd she found at a gas station in Albuquerque. Luc and Arthur drove for about 6 months, taking their time exploring the midwest, landing for a few weeks in Cheyenne, a month in Chicago even, eventually finding solace in Woodside. She still can’t say what exactly it was about Woodside, perhaps the breeze of the lake on the first frigid day she passed through town, maybe the friendly bartender at Rustic House. After a week spent in her van, inconspicuously parked just outside of the city’s central, Luc had signed a lease for an apartment in Woodside Heights, a quaint lofty unit with plenty of natural light. She worked relentlessly with Arthur to find purpose in her life, eventually training his nosework and enlisting in the volunteer search and rescue team through Michigan’s parks and wildlife department. Even still, Lucille found herself restless. She was eager to do something that no one would expect from her. So when a search and rescue friend invited her along to a dig site in South America, citing that one of their site assistants had to drop out of the program and they needed extra hands, Lucille found herself saying yes before her brain could even process it. Besides, she convinced herself, she had a biology degree - she could and would be useful on a dig site. Lucille fell in love with it the moment she stepped foot on the quarry, deeply dreading the day she would have to fly back to the States.

And to no one’s surprise, Lucille felt stagnant upon her return. The days began to blend together just as they had before, becoming eerily similar to the period of her life just after her college graduation. She felt antsy, like something was bottling up in her and shaking and threatening to explode. And so, to quell that need for more, Luce did something that no one having their quarter life crisis has ever done before. She applied for a master’s program. 

Now, Luce finds herself spread rather thin. She’s in her third year of the program but technically only just finishing up her first year of credits and truthfully? She doesn’t want it to end. Lucille didn’t realize, in the years following her brother’s passing, just how much she loved academia, how much she loved learning. How much she adored sitting with her professors, or her classmates, going back and forth about an idea, a proposal, a find from across the world. How grounding it was to finally master a subject, a theory, well-enough that she could debate it with scholars twenty, thirty, forty years her senior. How she can tie in her work at the college with the kids in the museum, dropping little nuggets of knowledge onto these impressionable minds, instilling a love of humans and our history while still getting in her 10,000 steps a day (you try walking around the whole museum 6 times in one day - it’s a workout). On the rare occasions she is not tied to her workspace at the school or wandering around with 20 teenagers in her tow, Luce often is seen around town, led into whatever shop from which Arthur smells something good drafting out or finishing up a yoga flow on her apartment balcony when the sun is hitting it just right in the mornings. 

[hammondxlucille]

FLORENCE PUGH Entertainment Weekly, February 2024

[hammondxlucille]

Florence Pugh British Vogue (2024)