#I genuinely hate my personality sometimes because I'd have a lot more options for jobs if i wasn't so damn introverted/socially anxious

[tardis--dreams]

I finally sent my professor the request if she could be the examiner for my oral exam so now i can't wait to send the same request 2 more times or have to ask her in person because i know she never replies :)

[drlucypreston]

👀

Thank you for the ask! This is a couple of unfinished scenes from my major WIP, which I’ve mentioned before - a non-linear love story which is sort of an exploration of some different possible timelines, sort of a sequel to the soulmate au I wrote a while back, and sort of a few other things! They’re a bit rough, and I’m not sure if these scenes will make the final cut, so here they are for your enjoyment. Set somewhere in a sort-of season 1 - you’ll see.

"Lucy, what have you told them about us?"

Nothing. She glares up at him, and beneath the smirk, the question is genuine. Something in his face changes, just for a moment, and then he keeps going like nothing happened.

Later, back at her mother's house and long into the night, her phone rings. Again.

"I'm changing my number," she says, in lieu of greeting.

There is a long silence in which Lucy isn't entirely sure why she doesn't hang up, and then Flynn says, "You really haven't told them about us."

"You sound disappointed."

"Surprised," he corrects. "You hate keeping secrets."

"You don't know me." It's almost automatic, and they both know it isn't true.

"Mint tea with far too much sugar, that expensive chocolate your mother buys you, and Doris Goodwin's Lincoln biography." Lucy looks at the table, where all three items sit, and Flynn takes her silence as confirmation. "You can say a lot of things about me, Lucy, and I'd deserve almost all of them, but I do know you."

"I'm getting married," she says - one thing, just one thing he doesn't know, couldn't know. One way to prove him wrong. It works, too - there is a pleasingly shocked lack of retort from Flynn. "That's why nobody knows about us. It never happened here."

“You’ll have to tell me where to send the gift basket,” Flynn says flatly.

“He’s a good person. A doctor.”

“I’m sure.” Lucy is fairly sure she can hear Flynn roll his eyes. “You’re just never going to marry him.”

"You don't know that. I might."

"You tell me you actually want to marry him, I'll turn myself in tomorrow."

She doesn't answer.

"That's what I thought."

Lucy sighs. "Where are you?"

"Ready to hand me over to your Homeland Security friends?"

"It's my job, isn't it?"

"A farm outside Mexico City," he says. "An abandoned missile silo in Wyoming. A warehouse in Vallejo."

"Are any of those true?"

"Does it matter?"

"To me."

He sighs. "They were. Not any more."

“I guess that’s something.”

More quiet.

“You know I have to tell them you called, don’t you?”

“I’d expect nothing less.” When she imagines his face, she imagines him smiling. “Goodnight, Lucy.”

“Goodnight, Flynn.”

————

It keeps happening. He doesn’t call every night, or even most of them, but somehow, whenever it’s late and she can’t sleep, her phone will ring.

They don’t talk much about Rittenhouse, about what he wants, what they do to each other. She isn’t speaking to a time-travelling terrorist - though, even in the daytime she’s less and less sure that’s an accurate description. Sometimes they barely talk at all, just sit on the open line, and she still can’t name the feeling that makes her not hang up. That makes her keep answering.

“You haven’t tried to recruit me for a while,” she says one night.

“Either you’ll believe me one day, or you won’t,” he replies. There’s just a hint of an edge in his voice, because she’s breaking the rules, she’s bringing out there in here, and they don’t do that. “I don’t worry about that any more.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you.”

There is another pattern, though - when the call ends. Lucy asks again where he is, and he gives three new options.

“A factory in Mountain View. A church hall in Utah. A mine in British Columbia.”

“You couldn’t afford rent in Mountain View,” she says, and he laughs.

“Who says I paid for it?”

“You can’t have liked the mine much,” she says. “I always imagine you somewhere with windows.”

“And how long do you spend imagining me?”

————

“What about after?”

“What about it?”

“I mean, none of this will have happened.”

“It will have happened,” he replies, “but I’ll be the only one who remembers.”

(send me a 👀 and i’ll post a snippet of art/writing that i never got around to finishing this year (r.i.p))

[redshiftsinger]

how bad does this dude treat his kid that he's working full time, weekends, and overtime just to get out of the house???

THAT RIGHT THERE. I had a teenage fast-food job starting at 15 (but nearly 16) and I'm gonna tell y'all. Yeah, I liked it by comparison to a lot of the rest of my life, but it was also a very exploitative and not healthy environment. I liked that I had my own money that I had complete control over (legally, parents can control the money that their minor children earn, so if my parents had decided to be butts about it I would've been SOL, but lucky for me I had parents reasonable enough to agree that my own earnings were mine to do with as I chose. I did sometimes get harangued about what I chose to buy, if my purchases were observed and disapproved of, but I had my own bank account and my spending wasn't closely monitored). I liked that having a job meant that I could make up an extra fake shift and have an excuse not to be at home once in a while (though, not often, because they chronically scheduled me the absolute maximum they could legally get away with and still call it "part time" more often than not, by which I mean I worked a LOT of 36-38 hour weeks). I liked that, unlike at home and at school, my adult coworkers treated me a lot more like a peer and a lot less like a child. Managers did managing, of course, but I was managed the same as the adult employees, it wasn't patronizing. The relationship was more equal than any other area of my life, particularly with the non-management adults I worked with. Even with management, unlike at school and with my parents, if I decided I truly hated their directives I was free to quit -- another point of greater autonomy and more-equal footing. But also, it was fast food. They treated me like the rest of the employees, sure, but they DID treat all their employees like shit. I got stranded out of town once and wasn't going to be able to be back in time for my next scheduled shift, and even though I called in as soon as I knew, had no attendance problems, and was crying from stress about it already, the manager harassed me and treated me like a liar, and threatened me with being fired if I didn't find someone to cover my shift on my own. I was made to scrub a stranger's explosive diarrhea off the bathroom stall walls (and floor, and toilet) with no PPE other than a pair of gloves. I had to work late shifts on weeknights when I had school in the morning, sometimes multiple closing shifts in a row, to the point that I started falling asleep in class. And I mean, yeah, I could've quit... but it was my one lifeline to a taste of something vaguely resembling autonomy, and also I felt like I had to earn money to help support my mom and sister after my dad fucked off (and if I didn't, mom just filled whatever free time I had with a chores list a mile fucking long, so I'd have no free time either way and if I quit then I'd ALSO have no money and never get to do anything fun even when I managed to get a scrap of time for it because there wouldn't be money for it). I have a lot of lingering issues, yes. And I feel really bad for this kid, because there are two options here: One, he actually genuinely thinks he likes working so much at the worst possible kind of job a person can work, for similar reasons to why I thought the same as a teen; or two, his dad bullied him into working and he feels like he has to PRETEND to like it. Neither is a "feel-good story".

This is presented as a feel good story.