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thebrochtuarachs · 4 years ago

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Something in the Rain - “Friday Lunch”

A/N: I’m sorry I posted this a week late but I had work to do over the weekend and couldn’t squeeze it in. But alas, here I am at 2:00AM posting this as inspiration struck and I wanted to share this new chapter with you all even with pending work waiting tomorrow morning. :) Thank you for reading and all your lovely comments on this little fic. <3 Again, this fic is me trying to get back into writing so some things might be off. I also noticed that I didn’t really set a particular location for this fic so I invented most of the areas where this is set but in essence, think of it in major CBD areas. I hope this update brings a little joy to you as we continue to stay home in this pandemic. As always, your comments and suggestions are always welcome. Lots of love, M.

AO3 / C1: A Day In June : C2: Definitely, Maybe : C3: So We Meet Again

XXXX

Jamie scheduled to arrive 15 minutes early for their meeting to make sure that they were able to get a seat before the lunch rush. Nothing extraordinary was happening on this particular Friday with only some paperwork and quick calls taking his time so there was no rush to get back to the office.

Just as he left his building, he spotted Claire at the crossing heading to the plaza.

“Claire! Wait up!” Jamie called out as he tried to catch her but to his surprise, Claire ignored him and crossed the street nonetheless. Confused at first, Jamie let it go and went with the next group of people.

When he arrived at the restaurant, Claire acknowledged him with a cheerful greeting. “Hi! I just arrived, thought I’d come a little early to save us a seat.”

“I know.” Jamie replied casually but Claire’s questioned look prompted him to follow through quickly. “I saw you earlier just before you crossed the street. I called your name but maybe you didn’t hear me”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I probably didn’t. I usually have my headphones on when walking and completely unaware of anything except well...walking.”

“No worries. It’s all good.” Jamie replied, thankful for the explanation but it was no big deal really because what’s more important to him was that she was there. “Did you order yet?”

“No, not yet, was waiting for you. I’d probably get the soy chicken chops today. How about you? What are you ordering? How was your chicken yesterday?”

“It was really good and tasty! Now, I know why you come here weekly.” he stood, ready to get in line. “I’ll probably have what you’ll be getting. Any drink preference?”

“Maybe a large red iced tea” Claire said, taking out her wallet to get some cash.

“No need.” Jamie halted Claire as humbly as he could hoping that she saw the genuineness of his lunch offer. “It’s my treat today for introducing me to this meal.”

Claire mused initially but accepted his kind gesture. “Thank you.”

Jamie came back with their food and added french fries for a side dish. “This is for sharing, feel free to get some” He said, serving their food and giving the tray back to the counter.

If Jamie thought there would be an awkwardness to their sudden acquaintanceship, he thought wrong. There was something about Claire that just puts him at ease.

“You know, come to think of it, I should be treating you for sharing your umbrella the other day.” Claire said, beginning to eat and Jamie following suit.

“Well, I’m currently and probably addicted to this chicken now so, call it even.”

“Haha, sure.”

“So, what are you specializing in?” Jamie asked, continuing the conversation.

“I’m a pediatric neonatal surgeon at North Hope General Hospital. I’m finishing, or hoping to finish, my residency in a year. How about you?”

“I’m an associate lawyer with Fraser Clan Law.”

“Oh, that’s why your name was familiar. Your family’s company has been here in the city forever, almost like an institution!”

“Yeah, been here for around 50 years. My grandfather started it and now my father is heading it and I joined a few years back after I finished law school.”

“Is it something you’d always planned? Joining the family business?”

“Kind off, yes. I have been going to the office since I was young so I grew up in that place. But I learned to love the profession as well, seeing my family do it, defending and fighting for justice… gives me a thrill.”

“I can relate to that somehow. Whenever I’m in the O.R., saving a life, especially babies, seeing the look on the parents face when they see and hold their child for the first time. Nothing makes me happier than keeping families together, it’s just the best”

The rest of the hour flew by fast as they exchanged interesting work stories. Thankfully, Claire wasn’t bored with the cases and Jamie wasn’t squirmish with blood. However, by the time they we’re opening a new topic, they had to get back to work.

“Mind if I walk you back to the hospital?” Jamie asked as they exited the restaurant.

“I wouldn’t mind. But, I’m actually heading to the same building you dropped me off last week.” Claire said as they made her way.

It was a shorter walk then, Jamie thought, but glad she agreed. “Lead the way.” He pointed across the street. “Do you have a clinic there?”

“Somewhat?” Claire began to answer as they crossed the street. “I help run a free extra-curriculars school for kids from nearby orphanages and shelters. We have art classes, dance classes, theater, books, etc. Whatever interest kids have, we might have it. Also from time to time, I do check-up the kids if they’re healthy too”

With Jamie’s silence, Claire looked to him and found him smiling. “What?”

“I never would’ve guessed that was what you’re doing here.” He answered, Claire shyly shrugged. “What prompted this venture?”

Before she was able to answer, a man called out to Claire ahead of her building.

“Claire, are you heading up?” a slender man in a three-piece brown suit approached them, holding a cup of coffee on his right hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No problem and yes, I am heading up. Would not want to miss the puppet show.” she replied. “Oh, Jamie Fraser, this is Frank Randall. Frank Randall, Jamie Fraser. Frank volunteers here as a history teacher to the kids.”

“Fraser? Like the law family Frasers?” Frank asked, extending a hand.

“Erm, yes. Hi, I’m Jamie.” Jamie replied, taking the handshake.

“Frank, nice to meet you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to be late for the puppet show so, I’ll let you be on your way.” Jamie gestured to Claire. “Thank you for lunch.”

“No, thank you for lunch and the walk here.” Claire turned to Jamie in response. She could see there was something on his mind but the presence of Frank was holding him back and if her instincts were right, they were thinking of the same thing.

“Well, I’ll get going. It was nice meeting you, Frank.”

“Wait!” Claire called as Jamie turned to leave. “Same time next week?” she asked hoping it was obvious enough between them despite the short time they’ve known each other.

“I’ll be there.” Jamie smiled and nodded then turned to leave.

Thankfully, Frank didn’t ask anymore questions about Jamie as they rode the elevator but a pang of regret hit her on their cut moment. There was more, she felt it but it never materialized with the interruption. She feared that the moment lost might turn to a chance gone before anything even happened.

Her mind was tossed until the kids dragged her from the elevator to watch the show with them. On that moment, Claire focused on the present and let everything about next week go until it was there.

#outlander #outlander fanfic #outlander fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #something in the rain #SITR #chapter 4 #friday lunch #SITR Chapter 4 #jamie fraser #claire fraser #claire beauchamp #frank randall #mia writes #yaaay

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tittty-bitty · 4 years ago

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Toshi glances at the door of his apartment as it opens at 1:45 am. He was actually contimpating calling Shota a few minutes ago to check in on where he was at. But from on the look of his face you could clearly tell it was an especially rough night. The crime rate spike after his retirement hasn’t gone down all these months later and it hasn’t been easy on Shota. Dark circles a little more prominent then usual, stiff posture as he walks in and a actual frown on his face vs his usual blank expression.

“Do you want me to run a bath? Food? Anything?”

When they started dating Yagi would make dinner for him when he got home and Shota tried to eat it for the first few weeks until yagi caught him throwing it up an hour later as his stomach was still recovering after being kicked especially hard. Now they have an agreement no food unless Shota texts him ahead of time.

Shota responded to the question with a grunt that sounded like a no. Yagi knew it wasnt ment to be rude but rather he hardly can stand let alone talk. Shota wobbles to the bedroom and flops into bed with a groan. Yagi gets up, grabs some items from the bathroom and follows the walking corpse to the bed.

“I understand your tired but I really rather not have the sheets smell like sweat and blood.”

He starts with the capture weapon, carefully unwrapping it from Aizawas neck and tossing it to the side. The jump suit is a little bit of trouble with Shoutas reluctance but he knew it had to be done. Now with the first task of stripping his exsaughsted boyfriend bare he rips open the new package of deoterant wipes. Getting his armpits, chest and neck then skimming over the rest. With the “cleaning” done he gets the lotion out. A nice lavender scent advertised for relaxation, and something that will help with the drying properties of the wipes. With a pat at Aizawas thigh he signals him to flip over, which is a slow process. With that Yagi straddles Shota and starts the process again on his back and thighs. Making sure to add pressure with the lotion step and knows he’s doing a good job with Shotas groan of relief. With a cheeky light pat on Shotas ass, Yagi gets up and heads to the living room again.

Eventually Yagi comes back with a weighted blanket and a candy worm, suprised Aizawa found the energy to turn to his side. Yagi lays the weighted blanket on Shota and holds a CBD gummy against his lip.

“Come on, it will help you stay asleep.”

Shota reluctantly eats it and chews slow while Toshi puts the items back in the bathroom, his gaze following Yagi as he prattles around the room. When he finds his work is done, he leans over and kisses Shotas scalp goodnight and turns to leave but is stopped by a light grasp on his fingers.

“No. Stay.”

Toshi rolls his eyes with love and the firm command as he goes to turn off the lights in the apartment. He comes back to find an impatient glare peeking out from under the blanket. He slips under the covers to spoon Shota when he is lightly and lazily forced into the position of the “little” spoon. Aizawa coiling his arms around Toshis middle, carful of the scar, face smooshed into his hair as his legs wrap around his waist in a death grip. Toshi chuckles at the possessive hold, feeling like a glorified body pillow. They sit in silence for a few seconds when Toshi goes to check his twitter one last time before the silence is broken.

“Why do you do so much for me? It was just a longer shift.”

Toshis thumbs pause in the middle of a retweet of a meme from one of his fan pages. Trying to figure out how to respond.

“Well, part of it is knowing my retirement is what is making the crime rate go up so much. So it’s kind of reassuring knowing that I can take care of someone that is trying to solve the problems that I can’t fix anymore.”

Shota responds with a annoyed grunt. Toshi rolls his eyes with a smirk and craned his neck to try to look at Shotas face.

“And shockingly, I care for you very deeply sweet heart. And I want you to know that your cared for with a welcoming safe home.” Finishing with a kiss to his bicep.

It might be the lighting, but Shotas eyes look very glossy in the lights the blinds fail to shield away. Very odd as his eyes are usually extremely dry at the end of a shift.

Toshi turns back around with a smirk. “Also I didn’t want to sleep next to a man that smells like a highschool track team.”

“Wow, the symbol of peace is a romantic and a jackass. Alert the press.

“Wait till they hear about his octopus of a boyfriend.”

Yagi chuckles as Aizawa tugs on one of Yagis bangs in retaliation.

———

Shota waits as the CBD starts to kick in. You would think that chasing after villains with agility quirks would put him to sleep but his insomnia says otherwise. He hoping that and holding Yagi in his arms would relax him enough. Not only is he the worlds longest body pillow, but just touching him makes him on another level of comfortable that he didn’t think was possible.

He’s about to start dozing off when he feels a dip in the bed behind his neck. Mochi mews as she bops Shotas head in affection, and curls against his neck with a soft purr. All while Yagi chuckles at probably one of the weird memes his fans tag him in. Shota is to exhausted to do anything more then to let a few tears roll down his face as his heart soars with a realization for happiness. 4 years ago he never thought he would be this content, let alone surrounded by anything like a family.

He leans a little farther into Yagis hair and takes a deep breath through his nose.

“You need to switch back to the citrus conditioner. Just because your an old man doesn’t mean you need to smell like one too.”

“Who knew that a man that doesn’t shower until his scalp can grease a frying pan could be so hypocritical.”

Yagi yelps as Aizawa bites his sholder.

#erasermight #we love couples who’s love language is playful banter #if any writers want to give me some pointers let me know #also I have that Halloween fic started it’s just gonna take a bit with all my classes #I’m debating on making it a one shot or multi

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loquaciousquark · 5 years ago

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Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E91 (Jan. 21, 2020)

Good evening, everyone! Sorry about missing last week; @eponymous-rose was out of town and I had some other commitments. Regardless, here we are! Brian is looking handsome and cold, as are Sam & Travis on the couch. Everyone is wearing coats. Is the heat broken?

That said, tonight’s guests are Travis Willingham & Sam Riegel.

Brian starts us off asking Sam if he’s remaking the Wire in Beverly Hills. Sam basically embodies that hello fellow kids meme tonight in a hand-knitted beanie from his wife, a bomber jacket, a yellow tee, and skinny jeans. They quickly photoshop in smoke trailing out of his mouth. We’re just a few minutes in and this is off the rails already.

Announcements: The next issue (#5) of Vox Machina comics comes out Wednesday, Feb. 19! It’s also available online at Dark Horse Digital and Comixology. And that’s it! Huh.

Episode 91: Stone to Clay

Brian tells us this is the first time ever to have Sam & Travis alone on Talks. I’m stunned and so are they. Sam says, “between me, Brian, Dani, and Travis right now, there’s four tens on this show right now.”

We’re already into questions less than ten minutes into the show. Truly this is a remarkable night.

63 in game days and 21 episodes passed between Caduceus’s first mention of Stone (episode 71) and Fjord connecting the dots. Travis blames the internet connection and his really bad ADHD night, as that was the night he and Laura remoted in from the hotel.

Brian tells us that when Ashley used to skype in, she could only see Matt & couldn’t see or really hear anyone else.

Travis says there was a huge delay for him between mouths moving and the audio coming through, and then that audio was pretty distorted. Laura could handle it okay, but Travis just heard a jumble and couldn’t parse it.

Sam took a CBD bath the other day and found it exactly as relaxing as a normal bath. Sam & Travis commiserate about taking baths only to have their knees pop out of the water. Tall people problems smh

Caleb & Nott completed the spell in less than a week, including dealing with the Angel of Irons & brokering peace treaties. Travis though the laughter was going to be Helas.

Travis says he definitely didn’t hear the name the first time (he remembered dust but not stone from the lava pits). “Look! Yes! No, I was not listening before! Thursday nights are my times to enjoy my friends and food! Marisha is an amazing note-taker; why would I ever take my own? This is how I got through college!”

Sam says he keeps a mission checklist in his head and has for ages. He has a page in his notebook labeled “To Do” that includes things like visiting Kiri or Shakaste, in case they have downtime and need ideas.

Travis asks if he continues writing in his (apparently) very small handwriting, and Sam says he has to leave room for Laura to draw all her dicks. They all marvel that she is actually a very good artist.

Travis honestly still thinks the Stone name is a huge coincidence, especially since Taliesin didn’t have access to Fjord’s last name when he created Caduceus’s last name and backstory. Sam challenges Travis that even if that were true, doesn’t he think Matt will find a way to tie it together?

Travis says Fjord doesn’t want anything to do with the last name and it’s not even his real name. He’s not convinced this isn’t a coincidence.

Travis did a lot of research into orphanage naming conventions when coming up with Stone. He does have a backstory as to how the orphanage manager picked Stone as his name.

Travis thinks Matt would have emphasized the Stone name more sooner if it had been a true connection and not coincidence.

Brian: “He does like to take credit for coincidences, doesn’t he?”

Nott didn’t think there was a catch in the ritual; Sam was more surprised they were allowed to achieve the milestone at all. He was shocked it happened so soon in the story and that the spell is relatively easy to cast.

He didn’t know it would fail, but there was a moment when he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go through with it. Travis agrees everyone was shocked when it didn’t work.

Fjord’s current stance on faith and destiny hasn’t changed since the last time he discussed it. Faith is a slow thing for Fjord and he really does think the name is a coincidence.

Sam as a player is excited to see what comes next for Nott; “if she had been transformed into Veth at that moment, I would have been excited to see what comes next. The fact that it’s still Nott makes me excited too. I’m excited to see more of Nott since she’s the best character in the M9.” He also confesses he was a bit relieved, in part because it’s delayed the inevitable. At some point she must decide if she is going to stay or go with the M9.

Cosplay of the Week: @kajicosplays on instagram of a lovely lady Percy. Brian: “Isn’t it fun when Taliesin’s characters live?”

Deep down, Nott knows she will do the transformation at some point, but at that last moment where she had to make a decision she had to check in with herself to make sure she was ready. Sam Riegel as a D&D player also knows that you have to trust your DM and make choices.

Brian misreads the word “ribbing.” Sam teaches Travis what rimming is. We all learn a lot about each other.

Sam thinks Fjord can realize when the time comes to set jokes aside. He thinks Fjord was very respectful. Travis has honestly forgotten that the conversation took place.

Travis has Dani answer from Fjord’s perspective. It’s actually pretty insightful, talking about how Fjord recognized someone hesitant to give up these newfound powers that have become intrinsically tied to self-worth.

Fjord has always been loyal, and Travis sees his protectiveness of the M9 as a logical extension of this.

Right now, he has found some agency & self-direction and is hopeful to share that sense with everyone else (he especially mentions Yasha).

Sam & Travis start quoting from Half-Baked. This is chaos.

Nott does want to stay with the M9, but she also wants to go home for sure, both of those things. The kiss with Caleb wasn’t necessarily a goodbye; it felt like the closing of a chapter. It felt like something to mark the end of the experience.

Now they’re quoting Beverly Hills Cop. Oh, boy.

“You look like you wrote Pitch Perfect.” When did this turn into a roast?

Fjord has no memories earlier than the orphanage (The Driftwood Asylum). There were a couple dozen kids there aside from him; Travis thinks some of them might have been named Stone. It also operated as a small child-labor workshop for carpentry & woodshop stuff. “It was a terrible place all around.” He has no images of parents or being dropped off.

Sam thought the Nott transformation would be more endgame, though he feels it makes sense that it’s not. “While Nott transforming into Veth was my original goal, what’s great about these long games is that your goals can change two or three times before the end. Now I can explore all these other things: does she want to go back and be a housewife? How does she rectify her obligations to her husband and child to the life that she’s made with the M9? It’s so exciting and interesting.”

Brian asks a hypothetical: if she could transform back but lose all Nott’s memories, would she do it? Sam: “Oh, that’s tough. I don’t know.”

Fanart of the Week: a lovely piece by @pen_draws with everyone in the hot tub.

Travis is very trepidatious about returning to the open ocean after rejecting Uk’otoa. He wants to make sure the third temple is sealed. It feels like it would be too easy for someone not to come and try to collect the job he left half-finished. He also wants to go back to Darktow.

Sam doesn’t know if Nott is still in love with Yeza, although she definitely still loves him. He’s playing with the idea of a high school sweetheart being exposed to the world and then going back home. But Yeza’s amazing, a great guy, perfect. “I guess we’ll find out when/if she turns back into Veth.” Sam feels guilty talking about him. “He’s a fictional character and I feel guilty that he might be watching the show.”

Neither Nott nor Fjord trust Essek. Travis: “He just went from being cold and aloof to being really warm. I know there’s been time and he’s lived an isolated life, but...time will show if he’s being genuine. All of our haunches were up. All of us were on level five alert.” He’s being so helpful that Travis doesn’t trust Mercer with him.

Fjord never ever considered becoming a paladin of the Traveler. “No. Fuck no!” The Wildmother reached out and directly intervened to save him. Travis gets super creepy bad vibes from the Traveler’s relationship with Jester (Sam agrees).

Nott feels more pressure when her own problems become the focus. It’s hard for her to open up and talk about her feelings. She’d rather pick up on other people’s problems. Sam also acknowledges it’s more pressure on him (and anyone) as a player when the whole table is looking at you.

And that’s that! Is it Thursday yet?

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long post for ts

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karajaynetoday · 4 years ago

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everybody's got their demons, even wide awake or dreaming | part one

Photo credit: Jess Gleeson

Hello friends! Hope you’re having a lovely day wherever you are in the world. Thank you to everyone who voted in my little Google form thing on what they’d like to see me write next. Here’s Part One of my 5SOS x music journalist story. It’s a little angsty, and as the first chapter this is a lot of introduction to the OC and her story, but I hope you like it! It’s the first time I’ve written an OC into a fic, so I’d love to know your thoughts and if you’re interested in reading more about Lizzie and her adventures interviewing 5SOS.

Shout outs to @wheniminouterspace and @calumrose for helping me sense-check this concept, and @spicycal for giving me feedback on it in its draft stages. You’re all gems!

Word count: 5.1k

Warnings: Fem!OC, minor swearing

More writing here | send thoughts/feedback/suggestions here | if you’d like to be on my taglist go here

Lizzie Lawson was having a bit of a day. Her train had been late, she dropped her coffee moments after receiving it from the cute barista downstairs (and broke her favourite keep cup in the process), and her work computer had decided to run updates the moment she sat down at her desk. Maybe she shouldn’t have bothered to get out of bed this morning.

Her colleagues were tapping away at their keyboards, answering phone calls, and discussing upcoming story ideas with each other - the usual tasks, especially for a Monday morning. Lizzie, computerless and caffeine deprived, had to settle for a cup of instant coffee from the kitchenette, and had taken to tidying up her desk while her computer was restarting over and over again but still somehow not ready for use. She was on the floor, sorting through the snacks in her bottom desk drawer (crackers that were two months’ past their expiry date, some gummy worms, and what seemed like hundreds of cans of tuna) when James, the music editor, stuck his head out of his office and called for her.

“Lawson! Where are you?” James sounded confused. He could’ve sworn he’d seen Lizzie at her desk moments ago, and then suddenly she popped her head up like a meerkat.

“Jimbo! Here. What’s crack-a-lackin?” Lizzie responded, standing up and brushing herself off as she headed towards where James was standing in his office doorway.

“Got a pitch for ya. Step into my office, if you’re finished with your spring clean.” James chuckled as he stepped back inside and sat down on the couch opposite his desk.

A number of journalism awards were displayed on the shelf above the couch, and the floor to ceiling window overlooked Sydney’s CBD and its tall, grey buildings, with a glimpse of the harbour ocean in the distance. Lizzie had to admit she’d imagined herself in James’ desk chair more than a few times; the music editor of one of Australia’s leading youth and pop culture publishing companies, regularly travelling the world to interview award-winning artists, and assigning and guiding well-crafted investigative pieces on the entertainment industry and those within in.

But, in reality, Lizzie had only recently worked her way up to being in the music department, after a couple of years on the news desk and a series of casual internships at different publications around the place. But music journalism, and the passion she had for live performances and watching artists grow and develop their sounds and aesthetics over their careers, was where Lizzie had always wanted her career to go. She was grateful to James for having her on the team, but she also knew that he didn’t recruit just anyone - so her writing must’ve been strong enough to get her here. James was a good boss, salt of the earth, always had his team’s back, but he was also a little mysterious, and this morning’s meeting was one of those where his face was giving absolutely nothing away as Lizzie joined him on the couch in the office.

“So, what’s up?” Lizzie said, trying to hide the nervousness in her voice.

“Well, Lawson. You’ve only been on deck for a few months, but turns out my gut instinct about you has paid off. That profile you did on the 1975 last month has gotten some good feedback and traction out and about.” James spoke in a measured tone, pulling his laptop off the coffee table and opening it.

“Oh! Well, that’s… good, right?” Lizzie still couldn’t figure out exactly why she was in James’ office. Or why she was so nervous.

“Correct, it is good. It’s been great to see you come into your own a little bit, and develop your interview style. I also really appreciated you stepping in to cover the Matt Corby interview for Hannah the other day, when she had that stomach bug.” James continued, seemingly searching for an email or something on his laptop as he spoke.

“No worries! Hannah’s notes were really thorough, plus I definitely had a Matt Corby phase when he was on Australian Idol back in 2006! Oof, that fringe, you know?” Lizzie cringed internally when she heard herself starting to babble.

James snorted, before clearing his throat. “I’m sure Matt was glad the 2006 hairstyle didn’t take up too many words in the final profile piece. He was pretty happy with it though, and his management were too, according to the label. So happy, in fact, that they’re requested you to profile another one of their artists.”

James had Lizzie’s full attention now, and she still couldn’t read his expression. “Really? Me? Who’s the artist?” She asked, trying not to get too excited too soon.

“Yes, indeed, you. 5 Seconds of Summer, or 5SOS. They’ve got a new album due out in a month or so, and their publicist is keen to fly you out to LA for a few weeks to follow them around while they wrap things up in the studio, and do a profile piece on their journey to date. Are you familiar with their stuff? They’re offering us an exclusive, something about the album being linked to their homeland or something, so they wanted to go with an Australian media outlet first.” James set his laptop back down on the coffee table and angled it so Lizzie could see an email on the screen that had a few lines of text and a photo of a band onstage.

5SOS. Was Lizzie familiar? Oh yes, she was familiar. Lizzie Lawson hailed from the western suburbs, and 5SOS was the area’s biggest success story. Aussie boys made good, with millions of albums sold, billions of song streams, thousands of concerts played all around the world, that was their career to date. But for Lizzie, 5SOS were always a bit closer to home. She’d attended the same high school as three of the band members, and Michael Clifford was someone she called her best friend, once upon a time. Ashton had also befriended Lizzie’s older brother Lachlan when they’d worked together at KFC. That was years ago now, and they’d all fallen out of touch, because sometimes that’s just the way the universe works. You grow up and you move on and you don’t keep the same friends, because sometimes they move to the other side of the world and get super famous as successful musicians. Or something like that. Even if they know your deepest secrets, or biggest fears, or hopes and dreams, or you trust them more than anything, sometimes they still leave you.

Lizzie’s previous state of intrigue quickly became panic, because what if she wasn’t actually being chosen based on the merit of her work? What if the 5SOS team knew about her connection to the band, and were going to use it to manipulate her writing in some way? What if it was all a ploy to get her and Michael in the same room so he could finally call her out on what had gone down between them all those years ago? What if -

“Lawson! You on planet earth still, or wait?” James snapped his fingers in front of Lizzie’s face to get her attention. She shook her head to clear it, and wrung her hands together in her lap.

“Yep, I’m familiar with their work. A little fuzzy on the most recent work, but I have a bit of knowledge on a lot of their early stuff. And Youngblood, of course. Everyone knows Youngblood. ARIA song of the year, a billion streams, etc etc.” Lizzie spoke, meeting James’ gaze as he cocked his head at her curiously. He knew Lizzie had a tendency to get a little nervous when she was put on the spot, but there was something about her right now that was a little more unsettled than usual that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Good. Well, if you’re down, the label will cover three weeks accommodation in Los Angeles. Labels don’t usually do that kind of thing, but their manager is super keen for you to get enough quality time with the band to build up a solid profile piece. We’ll cover your daily expenses, I’ll send you instructions for the claiming app, and then we just need your passport to get the flights booked. Sound okay?”

“Y-yep. Yes. Okay. Right. When would I be leaving?” Lizzie pinched her thigh through her jeans to double check that she wasn’t dreaming, and that yes, this was actually happening.

“Friday midday. We’ll put some feelers out in LA, and see if there’s any other interviews you can do while you’re there, but your focus will be on 5SOS because they’re picking up the bill for your stay. But that being said, don’t let that sway what you write. They’ve requested you because they like your deep, detailed, open style of profiling, so don’t be afraid to ask some curly questions to get the answers that will craft the right piece, you know?” James spoke firmly, looking pointedly at Lizzie who quickly nodded in response.

“Right, well, I’ll cc you into this email chain with their publicist and manager, and we’ll go from there. You can hand over your other pieces to Hannah, you’ll need to spend the next few days prepping for LA and doing whatever research you need to feel ready. You’ve got this, Lizzie. I know you can do a great job.” James was trying to be encouraging, as he stood up and opened the door to his office, but Lizzie’s heart was pounding with nerves and she barely hear his words.

She walked back to her desk in a daze, and Hannah had to literally poke Lizzie in her side to get her attention and ask what James had said in the meeting. A few excited squeals and a bear hug later, Hannah was off and running talking about lists of things Lizzie needed to organise before her international adventure was due to begin in a few days’ time. Lizzie, on the other hand, still couldn’t believe it. What the fuck was happening?

The next few days flew by in a haze of emails, life admin, last minute shopping trips and a lot of deep breathing on Lizzie’s part, and before she knew it, she was wrangling her suitcase out of an Uber and into the international terminal at Sydney Airport. Lizzie, as a generally anxious person, had arrived the full three hours early for her flight, but her parents had treated her to a flight lounge guest pass (because they wanted her to know they were proud), so she was able to deal with her nerves by eating far too many complimentary croissants and hash browns.

Soon enough, the time to board the plane arrived, and Lizzie was grateful that she ended up in an empty row of seats, by some miracle. Praise be to the airline gods, or whichever higher power had decided she’d be able to at least try and get some sleep in the next fourteen hours. She’d set her phone and watch forward to Los Angeles time, so she could try and adjust her body clock accordingly, which meant that she’d have to stay up for a few hours at least.

Lizzie tried to be productive, and tapped away at her research notes on her laptop for a little while, before she found herself opening up the band’s instagram page in her browser. The four men staring back at Lizzie through the screen seemed a million miles away from the gangly, excitable teenagers she’d known all those years ago. There was an interesting intensity about them in the photograph, steely gazes and defined bodies under carefully selected clothing, but there was also a peacefulness in their poses beside one another. Like being together, in this moment captured minutes before heading onstage, was the most natural thing in the world. Lizzie found her eyes drawn towards Michael; his dirty blonde hair swept across his forehead (not dissimilar to the style he’d had in their high school days, to be honest), and it was accompanied by some scruffy facial hair and a dangly cross earring in one ear. His grey-green eyes seemed to peer right into her soul, and Lizzie involuntarily shivered at the thought of seeing him again in person in a day or so.

She was still anxious about whether or not this entire thing was a scam, but nonetheless, she was going to try her darndest to be a consummate professional, and write the best profile story of her life. In her research, Lizzie had reviewed some previous 5SOS interviews, and she’d cringed her way through their Rolling Stone interview from many years prior. She remembered reading it at the time it was published, unable to believe some of the words attributed to the boys she’d once called her friends, and the intense aftermath that followed. Understandably, they’d avoided in-depth profile interviews since, so Lizzie was incredibly curious as to why they’d changed their mind. Why now? Why her? She closed her laptop and drifted into sleep, curled up across three airplane seats and tucked under a thin blanket.

Lizzie’s shoulders and neck were stiff when she awoke, an hour or so before her flight was due to land. She used the in-flight wifi to check her emails quickly, and noted a new one from 5SOS’s publicist Danielle, which welcomed Lizzie to Los Angeles and explained that she should catch a taxi to her accommodation at the address listed, and that she should give her a call once she was checked in. Right. That seemed straight forward enough.

LAX customs were intimidating as ever (god, Lizzie was so nervous), but Lizzie made it through without incident and was able to quickly make her way into a cab with a driver who seemed familiar with her accommodation address. They drove her to a boutique-looking hotel, and when Lizzie checked in and made her way up to her room, she was pleasantly surprised at how nice it was. A queen-sized bed, a good desk for working at, a nice view from her balcony of the Hollywood Hills, a small kitchenette with a fridge and microwave, and a glorious bathroom that had a very enticing bath tub in it (Lizzie’s shoulders and neck were already thankful for the idea of being able to soak in some nice hot water for a while).

After checking the room for serial killers (better to be safe than sorry, right?) Lizzie had a quick shower and changed out of her travel trackies and oversized hoodie into a pair of jeans, a clean shirt and a blazer, before opening up her phone and scrolling down to Danielle’s contact. A few deep breaths were required before Lizzie built up the courage to press “call”.

“This is Danielle!” A cheery American accent answered on the other end of the line.

“H-hi Danielle, this is Lizzie, from Junkee Australia. You said in my email I should give you a call once I was all checked in, and I am, so…” Lizzie found herself giggling nervously and facepalmed.

“Lizzie, of course! How was your flight? Long and boring?”

“Yep, that about sums it up!” Danielle’s enthusiasm made Lizzie feel like she had to perk herself up a bit in conversation.

“Well, I’m sure you’re gagging for a nap, but we’ve got to get you adjusted to the timezone so we can make the most of your time here. I’m just finishing up something in the office, but I can swing by your hotel in about 45 minutes, and we can go over your story pitch and the band schedule for the next few weeks, and figure out your interview time slots and other things you can go along to observe, if that works for you?” Lizzie could hear Danielle’s keyboard clacking as she spoke.

“Sure, well, you have my number now, so just text me when you get here. I’ll try my best not to nap in the meantime.” Lizzie’s somewhat dry response got a laugh out of Danielle, who agreed and bid her farewell, ending the call.

Placing her phone down on the bedside table, Lizzie looked around the hotel room that was set to be her home away from home for the better part of the next month, and spotted a coffee machine on top of the mini fridge. If she was really going to keep her no-nap promise, caffeine was definitely in order.

True to her word, Danielle arrived at the hotel within the hour, and soon Lizzie found herself sat beside Danielle on a fancy couch tucked in a corner of the hotel lobby. Danielle had opened up her laptop, and also pulled a plastic folder of documents out of her tote bag.

“Okay, so… I’m sure you’ve done your own research, but here’s a few hard copies of the band bio, album press release, and a few other tidbits from the label, along with a hard copy of the band schedule. It’s all confidential and coded, the electronic version I’ve emailed you will have the proper locations for everything, but I thought a print out might be handy anyway. The boys are recording some stuff at the studio Calum has at his house tomorrow, so I figured we could introduce you there and then after that figure out what else you’d like to get done. There’s an industry showcase for some of the new songs at the end of the week, and then they’re doing various promo and album prep things, finalising mixes, photoshoots, etc, so there’s a bit of variety for you. Any initial thoughts on how you want to do the interviews for your profile?” Danielle rattled off, gazing at Lizzie expectantly when she finished speaking.

Lizzie blinked at her a few times before collecting herself. “In my research, I found it really interesting to hear the band and some of the fans talking about how 5SOS has evolved into the collective effort of four individual artists, not just the band as one artistic music entity, so I was hoping, if possible, to interview them individually, as well as observing them as a group. Would.. Would that be okay, do you think?”

Danielle pursed her lips, before breaking out into a smile.

“I think that sounds exactly like something the band would be willing to do. Damn, Matt Emsell was right - you do know your stuff.” She chuckled, handing the folder of documents over to Lizzie and pulling out the schedule that was on top.

“So studio at Calum’s tomorrow from 10am, I’ll swing by and collect you so we can do introductions, I’ll stick around for a bit just to make sure you’re all good but otherwise I’m just going to let you do your thing. The band have been doing this for long enough now, they don’t need their publicist hovering.”

The curiosity was killing Lizzie. She couldn’t not ask.

“Danielle, I’ve got to ask this, sorry. Do the band… know me? Know that I’m the one coming to interview them?” Lizzie managed to get out, avoiding eye contact.

“What do you mean?” Danielle cocked her head to one side, clearly confused at the question. “I sent them the Matt Corby piece you did, and they liked that, so that was one of the reasons we asked you out here. So they’re familiar with your work, if that’s what you’re asking?”

“No, um… oh god, I’ve made this super awkward now.” Lizzie laughed dryly, wringing her hands together. “I mean, I know them. Personally. Or at least I used to. I’m from Sydney, and I went to school with Luke, and Calum, and… Michael. So I was just wondering, um, if they realised that it was me and that was part of why I was asked to come to LA for this…Not really sure why that would make them choose me, but I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page before tomorrow.” Lizzie finally dared to look up at Danielle, whose expression was unreadable.

“Hmm, well, that is interesting. As far as I know, that wasn’t a factor at all. We all genuinely liked your writing style, so whether or not the boys made the connection, I have no idea. They’re not super keen on any irrelevant personal life stuff making it into this piece though, so if this is going to be a problem for you, we should deal with it now.” Her tone was slightly less warm than before, and Lizzie could sense the protective publicist side of Danielle kicking in.

“Definitely not a problem. I entirely intend to be fully professional, and like you said, my writing will speak for itself. Just wanted to put it all out there. Not a problem for me.” Lizzie spoke up, willing herself to sound more confident than she felt.

“Good. We have no problems here then. I’ve got to run, but text me with any questions, otherwise I’ll see you at 9.30am tomorrow for the drive to Calum’s!” Danielle’s tone was nice and bright again, as she shut her laptop and gathered her belongings, patting Lizzie’s shoulder in what she assumed was some sort of attempt at calming her nerves.

It didn’t work though. Not a problem for Lizzie? Bullshit. Not a problem for 5SOS, and Michael in particular? Seemed unlikely.

Lizzie was worried she’d have a restless night’s sleep because of her overwhelming anxiety about the next day’s reunion, but the exhaustion from her travelling overtook her and she almost slept through her alarm. A quick shower and a shot of espresso later and Lizzie was downstairs waiting for Danielle to pick her up to head over to meet the band.

“Morning! How’d you sleep?” Danielle chirped as she rolled into the car park, her car window down.

“Very deeply, thank you! The room is really comfortable. Thanks again for organising.” Lizzie mentally urged herself to keep up the small talk as a way of hiding her nerves.

The car ride over was mostly quiet, but when they pulled up outside of what Lizzie assumed was Calum’s house, she definitely felt like she was about to vomit.

“Just so you know, I flagged our conversation last night with the band. About your pitch around the individual interviews, and also about your little… connection to them. Ashton didn’t seem to think it was a problem, so it should all be fine.” Danielle mused, as she opened her car door and hopped out. All Lizzie could do was nod, because her throat was dry and she was starting to panic. She blindly followed Danielle through the front gate and around the side of the house to a building in the backyard, Lizzie strained to hear what sounded like raised, male voices floating towards them as they approached. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it didn’t entirely sound positive.

Danielle knocked loudly on the door and shot Lizzie a reassuring smile, before the shouting subsided and it swung open. Calum Hood stood in the doorway, and Lizzie sucked in a breath. It’d been eight years, maybe more since she’d last seen Calum, and even then, had they spoken? She couldn’t remember.

Calum smiled at Danielle, and then his eyes flickered over to Lizzie, not quite carrying the same happiness, but not entirely losing it either.

“Morning, ladies. Welcome to casa di Calum, come on in.” He spoke with that scratchy, deep voice of his that Lizzie had reacquainted herself with when watching hours of interviews during her research.

Danielle stepped passed Calum into the room, and she indicated for Lizzie to follow, which she did. Lizzie could feel Calum’s gaze on her as she brushed past him, but the minute she stepped inside, any sense of warmth or welcome she’d felt before vanished.

Luke and Ashton were standing over by the sound recording panel, turning to look at Lizzie and Danielle as they entered. Lizzie thought she saw a hint of a smile on Luke’s face (they had survived Year 8 Maths together, after all… that had to count for something, right?), but Ashton was unreadable.

Entirely obvious, though, was the look of bitter disdain on Michael Clifford’s face when Lizzie finally spotted him hunched over on the couch along the wall. Those grey-green eyes were staring her down with a harsh glare. It had familiarity about it, Lizzie realised, but not in a good way.

Danielle cleared her throat in the silence, and turned to Lizzie.

“Well, I believe introductions might not be required, but in the interest of professionalism and courtesy - “ Lizzie didn’t miss Danielle’s pointed glance towards Michael, who was still scowling silently towards everyone - “Lizzie Lawson from Junkee, I would like you to meet Calum Hood, Ashton Irwin, Luke Hemmings and Michael Clifford, also collectively known as 5 Seconds of Summer or 5SOS.”

Lizzie waved, and then immediately cursed herself for being so goddamn awkward. She received a nod of recognition from Ashton, and small smiles from Luke and Calum. From Michael, more scowling. This was going to be a long three weeks.

“So, Lizzie, why don’t you go through the pitch for the profile that we discussed yesterday? The boys already have a bit of an idea, but I’m sure they’d love to hear it from you.” Danielle was being overly encouraging, but it worked, and Lizzie took a deep breath before speaking.

“Thanks, Danielle. And thank you to you guys, honestly. I know this is a little strange for all of us -”

“Fucking oath it is.” Lizzie heard Michael mutter under his breath, but she continued, undeterred.

“But, I’m really excited to have the opportunity to interview you and pull together this story. Especially on behalf of the Australian music media. I know they haven’t always given you the recognition you deserve, but I think this piece is a chance to overcome that. Anyway, the specific pitch I’d love to go with is reflective of you as individual artists, as well as the collective band group. If it’s suitable, it’d be great to have the chance to speak to each of you one-on-one as well as a group, to give a holistic view of your journeys as people and as musicians and what you’re trying to achieve with this album. So… yeah…” Lizzie trailed off nervously, clenching her hands at her sides.

“I love it. We’re happy you’re here, Lizzie. I really loved the Matt Corby piece Danielle sent us, and like you said, it was really important for us to have the perspective of an Australian journalist for this story and where we’re at right now.” Ashton’s calm voice broke the silence, as he nodded at Lizzie in agreeance. Luke and Calum nodded too, and Lizzie tried not to look towards Michael because no doubt he was still glaring at her.

“Great! Everyone’s on the same page. I have to dash off to a meeting, but Lizzie has my number if she needs it, otherwise all of you please behave and don’t scare her off, nor say anything that means I’ll have to destroy her tape recorder. Sound good? Good!” Danielle rattled off quickly, moving out the door and shutting it behind her.

The tension in the air was thick, and it was all seething from Michael’s direction towards Lizzie. She closed her eyes for a moment, before reaching into her bag and pulling out her phone, notebook and pen. She spotted a chair behind her, and turned back towards Luke and Ashton.

“Well, where do you want to start? A group sit down, some general thoughts on the journey so far and what the album experience has been like?” Lizzie offered, trying to make herself sound enthusiastic, but also in control and like she knew what she was doing.

Luke, Calum and Ashton all murmured in agreeance, and moved themselves over to sit by Michael on the couch, while Lizzie dragged the chair she’d spotted over to sit facing them.

“Right. All good if I audio record this?” She asked, hitting record on her voicenotes app after three heads nodded at her.

“So, the album. Where did it begin? Did anyone or anything influence or kick off the sonic direction or the start of the exploratory process?”

The conversation was flowing quite well, Lizzie though. Ashton dominated most of the responses to her questions, but Luke and Calum chipped in their perspectives throughout. Michael didn’t say a word, even when Calum poked him in the side, and instead of glaring at Lizzie he was now staring blankly at the wall over her shoulder. An improvement, sort of, but still not ideal from a journalist and interviewee perspective, let alone when the interviewee was someone who used to be Lizzie’s best friend.

Before she knew it, an hour had past, and Ashton stood, remembering a meeting they had scheduled with the label and their management team, and bringing the interview to a close.

As Lizzie was packing up her equipment, she cautiously brought up the topic of the one on one interviews.

“So, does anyone in particular have free time in the next few days, so I can start on the individual profiling part of the story?” Lizzie asked, her tone hopeful.

Michael’s response was to push straight past her and walk out of the studio, muttering to himself and slamming the door as he went. The loud noise made Lizzie flinch, and she realised her heart was racing and her hands were a little shaky.

“I’ve got time, LL Cool J. I’ll meet you at Joan’s on Third for lunch, say 1pm?” Lizzie smiled at the pld nickname Calum slipped into his quiet response to her question.

“Works for me, C Dizzle Swizzle. Thanks again for your time today, I really appreciate it. Not to sound like a broken record, but I’m really excited for this piece and the chance to tell your story.” Lizzie found herself grinning like an idiot as she met Calum’s warm gaze, and noted that Ashton and Luke were also smiling at her.

“We’re excited too, Lizzie. Even if… some of us might not quite be as enthusiastic as they should be. But, don’t worry. He’ll come round.” It was Luke that spoke this time, his striking blue eyes somehow staring straight into Lizzie’s soul as he looked at her.

“Here’s hoping.” Lizzie tried not to sound too dull in her response, but it was a challenge.

Because honestly, how the fuck was she going to do a profile on all four members of 5 Seconds of Summer, if one of them could barely stand being in the same room as her?

Time will tell, Lizzie thought to herself as she walked out of the door to Calum’s studio and into the warm California sunlight. Time will tell.

Taglist: @suchalonelysunflower @blackbutterfliescal @redrattlers @loveroflrh @spicycal @notinthesameguey @metalandboybands

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justasparkwritings · 4 years ago

Text

Codename Cupid: Chapter 9

Previous: Another Shot at Love Pt. 3

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook X OFC

Genre: Fluff, Secret AgentAU, AgentAU, Government Agent AU, Slice of Life

Rating: PG15

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: Swearing, Kissing, Mentions of Consensual Sex,

Summary: The P.I.(Y/N) wakes up in the arms of the man from the bar, Jungkook, and goes on another quest to find the first man who broke Lee Euna’s heart.

Searching for Seokjin Pt. 2

Present Day

I awoke the following day to untangle myself from Jungkook, whose arms and legs ensnared my own. His warmth radiated through me, lingering as I step out of bed, my bed, and am grateful to be fully clothed. Somewhere between making out and drinking a gallon of water, we had found ourselves snuggled under my duvet, and sometime after midnight, nearing 2AM, we had fallen asleep. If I wasn’t careful, this was going to turn into a whole sleeping together twice and having sex once or whatever nonsense Cameron Diaz spewed in The Holiday.

It’s not often that I sleep through the night or sleep well. It’s rare that I find the silence of my apartment comforting in the slightest, which is evident by the industrial locks on my door and windows, coupled with the registered gun in my nightstand – never loaded – or the countless surveillance measures I’ve put in place to guarantee my safety. The countless hours I’ve accumulated listening to meditation, ASMR videos, are all signs that my line of work brings little to no peace of mind.

I will never admit to sleeping well in a man’s arms, but damnit if I didn’t sleep like I’d rubbed CBD oil all over my body and cocooned myself in Egyptian cotton. Jungkook’s arms are nothing like anything I’ve experienced before. They’re strong, assuming, muscular yet lean. His right, decorated in a tight sleeve of tattoos, expressing the deepest parts of his life, flexes lightly, holding me to him. I could spend days, weeks, months, tracing the lines on his skin, asking him questions, wondering aloud the meaning behind the ink. Jungkook’s body is strong, impenetrable, washboard abs that I could easily wash my dirtiest of laundry on, but it’s his eyes and smile that give him away. He’s soft, he’s cozy, he’s inviting and he’s respectful and sexy and mysterious and all-consuming at the same time. He’s all I want to think about, and I know he’s all that’s going to be occupying my mind until I see him again.

I turn the coffee maker on and open the fridge to see what I can scrounge up for breakfast. Miraculously, the hangover is non-existent, most likely because I drank so much water before falling asleep, in an attempt to stare into his eyes, like a galaxy, ever expanding as they pulled me in.

“Morning beautiful,” Jungkook says, a tattooed hand running through his raven hair. His bare chest confronts me, the wide expanse I had spent the better part of 8 hours pressed upon, staring unapologetically.

“Hi,” My voice is a soft whisper. “You sleep okay?”

“Mm, best night sleep I’ve had in a while. Your mattress is insanely comfortable,” His smile is light, bright and glowing.

“Oh, so it wasn’t snuggling with me?” I question.

He tilts his head, unsure, “Snuggling?”

“Yes?” My confidence is wavering.

“Cuddling,” He says.

“Snuggling,” I reply.

“Cuddling,” Jungkook’s smile grows.

“They’re the same thing,” I inform him.

“Are they? Snuggling sounds like, like leaning,” He takes a step towards me. I’m very aware that I remain pantless.

“Oh god, how many times have you seen While You Were Sleeping?” I allow him to cage me in against the fridge, his forearm resting against the cool stainless steel.

“Enough to know that leaning is a sign of mutual want, it’s about desire, craving, needing,” He recites.

“Leaning,” I whisper, my breath a ghost across his lips.

“Wanting,” He closes the space between us, his gentle and velvet lips press delicately against mine, the dull roar of heat building as he slips has hand up my thigh to rest on my hip, under my shirt. He licks my bottom lip gingerly before parting them and welcoming my tongue into his mouth. The pressure of my tongue on his releases a low moan as my hands rest on his pecks. I am fully aware that I could do this forever.

Jungkook pulls away first, slowly disentangling his lips from mine.

“Are you saying you want me?” I ask, eyes still closed.

“Do you want me?” He retorts.

“I asked you first,” I tease.

“Can I take you to breakfast?” His eyes are unwavering as they stare into mine, the authenticity and kindness washes over me, a blush coating my cheeks.

“Like a first date?” My teeth pull the inside of my lip into their grasp. I haven’t gone on a first date in a while, let alone with a man like Jungkook.

“I’d like to think last night was our first date,” He says, hands still on my hip, thumb drawing circles on my skin. The sensation is calming, a trance coming over me as my body responds gently to his.

“I’m cool with that,” I say. “Do you want to shower or anything before we go? I know I don’t have anything for you to borrow…”

“A shower would be great,” Jungkook nods.

“Without me,” I clarify.

“Oh?” He quirks an eyebrow, a trait I’m already starting to find sensual.

I smile, “But maybe after you buy me breakfast, we’ll see.”

“Maybe after I buy you breakfast, I can take you on a traditional date, dinner and a movie? Earn my keep?” He counters, leaning in again to press an adoring kiss on my lips.

“You don’t have to earn anything,” I say.

“That’s good to know,” He responds. I can tell in his eyes that he’s had to pay a price before, someone down the line made his love a commodity, not something worth freely giving or receiving, but earning. He was worth something, and its sinister ramifications still remained in the darkness of his irises.

“I’m not a prude, I just, your eyes,” I clarify.

He opens his eyes wider, “My eyes?”

“Yeah, I want to know what I’m going to be drowning in before I take the dive,” I tell him. My hands, still on his forearms, move up and down gently, an offer of comfort in this moment of vulnerability.

“You’re so poetic,” He earnestly responds.

“I minored in English,” I tell him.

“Mm, what do you think about dinner?” Jungkook asks again.

“How do you know you won’t be sick of me?” The question, flying out of my lips before I can stop it, insecurity flinches across my face.

Jungkook, though, laughs, his nose scrunching softly. “How about Monday, you free Monday say 6:30?”

“I can do Monday at 6:30,” I tell him, “You’ll pick me up?”

“Absolutely,” He nods.

Inhaling, I ask again, “You won’t be sick of me?”

“I’m not sure I’m ever going to be sick of you, but ask me again in a few months,” Raven eyes, wide like saucers, sincerity abounding, bring calm to my intense, laser focused, unwaveringly anxious orbs.

“You’re really sexy,” Deflecting, I speak again. Anything would be better than a conversation about my vulnerabilities. “I’m not so sure we’re going to make it to break-

His lips are on mine before I finish the sentence. His hands, once drawing tantalizing shapes on my skin, have now pulled me to him, his hips grinding into mine. His gorgeous digits sprawl against my ass, anything to get me closer to him. I in turn have wrapped my arms around his neck, hands entangling in his locks. I can’t stop the moans that escape my lips as he grinds into me again.

“We’re never going to make it to breakfast,” My voice comes out between a moan and a breathy whisper, Jungkook’s lips leaving wet open-mouthed kisses down my neck, teeth nipping my collarbone. “J-Jungkook,”

“Y/N,” He responds, eyes tracing my clothed figure before meeting mine.

“I’m starving,” I whine, a smile cracking through my lust.

Jungkook laughs, doubles over laughing hysterically. “I’m sorry, yes, I’ll shower quick, yeah? Ten minutes? Do you know where you want to go?”

“Yeah, I know a place,” I tell him. “Let me brush my teeth and get you what you need to shower.”

“Perfect,” He’s still recovering, the dulcet ring of his laugh hitting me straight in the heart.

“On a constructive note?” I stop at the door to my bedroom, pausing.

“Hmm?”

“I slept really well too, and that’s not normal… But I’m not sure, in this moment, if normal is ever anything I have ever wanted?” I tilt my head to the side, feeling my pulse quicken.

“It’s overrated,” He nods, his voice mimicking mine, cautiously fielding the hidden meaning in my words.

“Yeah, totally,” I nod.

I am positive I have said too much, what guy wants to hear their supposed one-night stand say that they slept better with the other person there? We didn’t even have sex! He’s going to think I’m clingy, oh god, that’s the worst. He’s going to think I’m clingy and then when he discovers that I am actually a relationship-phobic asshole, who can barely hang onto the relationships with her blood relatives, not to mention the fraying connections between friends, a romantic relationship is impossible.

But what if he’s different? Oh, hope, you fickle bitch. What if he’s considerate and thoughtful and listens when I rant and is okay that I own a gun? What if he likes the way I cling to him in my sleep, or how I brush my teeth a minimum of 2.5 minutes, often 3, morning and night, and never skip flossing? Will he like my cooking? Or how I sing to every single song that plays through my speakers, and listen to the same ones over and over until they’ve become a part of my psyche?

You cannot tell me Taylor Swift didn’t write Out of the Woods about me.

Maybe he’ll be all of these things… or none of them… maybe this isn’t the start of something new, as Zac Efron would say, but just… a moment?

~~~~~

That evening, after Jungkook has left, I venture to my favorite grocery store. Not only do I not have anything for breakfast, but there is nothing to make any semblance of a meal, let alone alcohol to wash it down with. I don’t hate cooking. But I hate cooking, in the way that most millennials do. The prep, the planning, the shopping, the chopping, then the actual cooking and cleaning? Why is it so difficult? Why so many steps? Why does it matter if I use oil or butter in the bottom of a pan? How come my banana bread turns out soggy in the middle if I use a square pan instead of a rectangle? Why is it a science?

I digress. The point is, I’m going to the store. AirPod in one ear, podcast playing at a low roar, list in my phone, I grab a mini cart and head straight for produce. Why I go to produce first when I always bruise what I put in first, I do not know. Some deep masochistic tendencies within me. Nevertheless, I walk towards the oranges, trying not to laugh uproariously at the joke being told and grab a bag of Cuties. Gathering a variety of items that will soon be left to rot in my fridge, I stop dead in my tracks. Standing in front of me, a sight I have been searching for, well, my search has truly just begun, but still, in his full glory, reaching for Braeburn apples, a bold and incorrect choice, he stands.

“Kim Seokjin,” I whisper, eyes narrowing on him. He’s unbelievably handsome, pouty lips, dark eyes and a baseball cap protecting his face from the harsh lights of the grocery store. A cream t-shirt covered by a black bomber jacket with a wide collar, he’s a sight to behold. I don’t know what to do. I have none of my PI tools, but then again, I have a cell phone. I quickly switch to camera and try to covertly take a few photos of him before he’s turning around and walking away from me. Tossing a few items into my cart, I follow, but he’s gone. Not in the chips aisle or frozen section, nowhere to be found in the bakery, in the millisecond it took me to blink, he’s disappeared.

Making my way out to my car, I find a note sitting on my seat. Freezing, I inspect my surroundings. No shattered glass, no misplaced seats, no smudges or fingerprints on the door handle. I feel the taste of bile in the back of my throat before I realize the sensation overcoming me, and as if in slow motion, I turn my head and vomit. Fear does crazy things to you, and it’s been a while since I’ve been this scared. Trembling hands and shaky breath, I reach for the handle to the backseat, locked. I check the driver’s door, a cold sweat soaking through my sweatshirt, locked.

Who the fuck broke into my car and locked it on the way out?

I quickly place the groceries in the backseat and grabbing a pair of gloves from the extra box I keep, daintily pick up the envelope. Opening it, a single piece of paper is folded in thirds.

“Stop looking, Y/N,” I read. I read it again, turning it over and over.

Stop looking? Looking for who? For what? I’m always fucking looking, don’t tell me to stop and not be specific about it. Tilting the paper, catching the evening light, I see a watermark, two trapezoids meeting at their shortest, parallel side before branching out. Who is classy enough to stalk me, leave a note in my car, and have a watermark on what feels like silk cardstock? This is not normal, not even for the highest-level criminal.

My phone rings, and the jolt of fear cascades through me again.

“Hello?”

“Hey – I found that guy you’re looking for,” C says.

“I thought you said you weren’t looking,”

“I wasn’t, at work,” The condescension is clear in her tone.

Exhaling, I ask, “What did you find?”

“He’s in the area, he dated some heiress to a huge conglomerate, but other than that, he’s pretty low key. Works a day job in an office doing accounting,”

“Who was the heiress?”

“It doesn’t say, literally anywhere, whoever it was scrubbed the web clean of it,” C takes a sip of what I’m guessing is Merlot.

“Is there anything unusual about his profile?” I question.

“No, he pays his taxes, never had a ticket, lives a pretty average life,”

“Okay, okay, can you send me the –

“You know the deal,” C reminds me. Ah yes, the “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but no paper copies or digital trail” deal, an unspoken agreement.

“Fine. Tell me this, what’s the mile radius of where he lives?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t run into him before. He seems to operate around where you live,” C tells me. “Look, I gotta go, that was my one good deed for the year. Don’t call me, I’ll call you,”

“Sure, love you,” I say.

“Love you more,” She responds before hanging up.

If he frequents the mile around my apartment, that greatly increases the likelihood of me running into him again. Realizing I haven’t put the cart back, I exit my car, careful not to step in the pool of vomit, and start to wheel the cart to its resting place.

I, very kindly, push it through another cart and as I turn to leave, find myself nose-to-chest with a baseball cap wearing, broad shouldered, pouty lipped stunner.

“Sorry,” He says, eyeing me. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I’m sorry, I truly wasn’t paying attention either,” I tell him, shaking my head in faux embarrassment.

“Are you okay? You look a little, sick,” Seokjin worries.

“Oh yeah, totally, just a little … evening sickness,” I lie.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of that,” He smiles politely.

“Yeah, sometimes I just you know, get sick,” I say, trying to buy time. This is easily the worst conversation I’ve ever had, and I once asked an A-Lister if he could take a photo of me and his wife… at an award show, where he was nominated.

“Hmm,” He nods, “Well, have a good night.” Seokjin turns and walks back to his car. Hastily moving into mine, I wait with bated breath for him to pull out before I start to follow him, sugar free tropical popsicles be damned.

Next: Tailing Taehyung

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googleweeddelivery · 4 years ago

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What Exactly Are Cannabis Edibles, And How They Should Be Consumed?

What Are Cannabis Edibles?

Cannabis Edibles are cannabis preparations that can be eaten. From gummies to brownies, they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They may contain one or both of cannabis' active compounds, CBD and THC. As marijuana legalisation becomes more widespread, they're getting more popular.

How Do Edibles Work And How Long Do Their Effects Last?

Cannabis is metabolised in the lungs when it is smoked or vaporised. Your digestive system, on the other hand, is responsible for the digestion of meals. The former is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream through the lungs, whereas edibles take longer to digest. As the cannabinoids dissolve in the stomach, they are metabolised by the organs of the digestive system, and you begin to experience their effects.

Surprisingly, many users believe that the effects are also longer-lasting, despite the fact that they take longer to feel. This is because, even hours after you've taken cannabis, your body may not have finished processing them altogether. After the peak amount has been metabolised, the effects should progressively fade over the next few hours.

What Can I Expect From Consuming Edibles?

Expect delayed results, since it might take anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours to feel the effects. And, depending on when you ate them (empty stomach or not) and your body's chemistry, they'll last longer, up to several hours in certain cases.

How Can I Maximize My Edibles Experience?

Start small with edibles to get the most out of them, especially if you're new to them. THC dosages of between 5 and 10 mg are advised. However, this may necessitate some planning ahead of time. Even if you have a smoking tolerance, avoid overconsumption. It's not the same as allowing yourself to smoke.

Keep in mind that the best doses are those that are customised to your body, weight, gender, level of fatigue, and temperament. Keep in mind that edibles are not the same as non-edibles. If you got a certain impact with brownies, that doesn't mean you'll receive the same result with gummies. It's critical not to include cannabis in every meal you eat. Instead of being used as food, they will be used as medication.

What Is The Difference Between CBD And THC Edibles?

CBD edibles are a fantastic method to acquire the therapeutic benefits of cannabis without the psychoactive effects of THC. Rather than feeling high, you'll feel soothed and relaxed. Expect euphoric effects from THC-infused edibles, on the other hand. In general, when making a decision, keep in mind that THC will make you feel, whilst CBD will make you feel the effects.

Can Cannabis Edibles Help Me With My Sleep?

Marijuana is frequently lauded for its ability to alleviate sleeplessness. Edibles are frequently linked to a higher physical and psychological response to THC bliss. As a result, many individuals recommend them as a good way to get a good night's sleep.

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Although the effects of a specific cannabis strain are based on a variety of factors, indica and sativa have a few common characteristics that can be relied upon. The former have a strong relaxing, couch-locking, and even sedating effect. The sativa strains, on the other hand, are known for their uplifting, energetic, and concentrating qualities.

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rapeculturerealities · 5 years ago

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Dee Rees was waiting outside a discreet home on a quiet street in Los Angeles on a warm day in June, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Arrest the President.” She led the way past her fragrant jasmine bushes, past a kidney-shaped pool, past a Great Dane the size of a tween into an intimate guesthouse that had been converted into a music studio. The walls were painted dark blue and nearly every spare inch of wall and floor held equipment: Fender guitars, synths, amps, speakers and keyboards. The floor was covered by so many power cords that they resembled an area rug. A recording of an off-key voice earnestly singing was playing loudly on a loop. Rees shot me a pained look. “I’m not a singer,” she said.

Nearby, standing at a microphone, the singer Santigold was humming along to Ree’s voice and mimicking the undulations until she knew them by heart. The musician Ray Brady, sitting at a computer nearby, cycled through a series of drum-machine sounds until they heard one they all liked, and Santigold started singing over it. The air-conditioner was off — it interfered with the quality of the recordings — and the air was dense with humidity that no one seemed bothered by.

Rees and Santigold were recording a series of demos for a big-screen futuristic opera titled “The Kyd’s Exquisite Follies.” The screenplay, which Rees had been working on for about a year, describes the journey of a young, black androgynous musician living in a small town who sets off for “It City” in search of stardom. “An outsized, sequin-spangled, sunglassed Cosmic Being leans into frame,” reads the description for the first scene. “It is Bootsy Collins if Bootsy was simultaneously tripping on acid, André 3000 and CBD Frosted Flakes with extra sugar.” Her mood board for the project features images from the cultural festival Afropunk and a dream cast of Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, Janelle Monáe and the R&B singer Syd. The whole thing almost sounded like a fantasy incubated deep in a Twitter thread, but Rees later told me that she was inspired to combine the cultural legacy of “The Wiz” with the grandeur of the “Star Wars” franchise to create a kid-friendly movie as canonical as her reference points. “I was like, ‘Where’s “The Wiz” for us, for our kids, for queer kids?’ ” she said.

Rees has been working toward this moment for nearly 10 years, assuredly moving from indie films into blockbuster cinema with the hope of establishing a creative freedom few directors attain. She is placing a thick spread of bets, in the hope that she will soon be able to play as boldly as she wants. Legacy, she told me, is her ultimate goal: “I want to create work that matters and lasts.”

At 43, Rees has already had the type of success that will outlast her. In 2011, she released her first feature film, “Pariah,” a lush coming-of-age drama about a young black woman named Alike grappling with both her sexuality and the world’s response to it. The movie won more than a dozen awards, including, most notably, the N.A.A.C.P. Image Award for Outstanding Motion Picture. Last year, the movie was included on IndieWire’s list of best films of the past decade, along with “Moonlight,” “Carol,” and “Call Me by Your Name” — movies that also feature queer narratives, though it’s worth noting that “Pariah” came out years before them. In 2017, she released her next feature film, “Mudbound,” a drama about the lives of a black family and a white family working the same plot of land in Mississippi in the 1940s. It garnered four Oscar nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay, making her the first black woman to be nominated in the category. Her latest project, opening on Feb. 14 before streaming on Netflix, is her most Hollywood yet: Starring Anne Hathaway, Willem Dafoe and Ben Affleck, “The Last Thing He Wanted” is an adaptation of the 1996 Joan Didion novel about an American journalist investigating illicit arms sales to Central America during the Reagan administration. It is Rees’s attempt to demonstrate her range across scale, genre and star power.

But here in Los Angeles, her deepest professional desire was underway. Rees had already secured a producer for “Follies” in her longtime collaborator, Cassian Elwes, as well as a costume designer. Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic had signed on to create the visual effects. The next stage of the process was to produce a music sample that could be played for potential financiers, studio partners and distributors, to generate excitement for the project.

The main song she and Santigold were working on that afternoon was a duet between the hero, the Kyd, and an unseen entity offering support from afar. “The intention here is that the Universe is accompanying her, and she doesn’t realize it,” Rees informed the room, using her hands to show two entities orbiting around each other, the smaller one oblivious to the larger one. She described the song as a ballet, with choreography. The Universe is not a metaphor, she explained; it’s an actual character, a guiding light and love interest, which she imagined being played by Erykah Badu. The song lyrics included melancholic lines like “It was easier when no one was looking” and “People see you as they need you to be.”

Santi, as everyone in the room called her, finished singing one part and began recording another, in a lower intonation to indicate a different voice. She and Rees were building out the bones of a pivotal point in the narrative: The Kyd is reflecting on the isolation, loneliness and self-doubt that accompany a rise to stardom — feelings that Rees teased out from her own life experiences as a young director. They worked intently for nearly an hour this way, playing keyboard, looping drums, recording Santigold as she sang both parts, then pausing to get feedback. When Rees wasn’t feeling something, it was obvious: She remained silent but shook her head “no.” When she liked something, she bounced in her seat and offered affirmations like “that’s hot.”

Watching the two women work, I realized that Rees didn’t just have an idea for music, she had created an entire universe, writing all the songs, arranging the melodies and constructing a 3-D model in her head of the sets and landscape. To her, composing compelling songs and comedy numbers while grabbing milk at the bodega comes as effortlessly as directing some of the biggest actors working in Hollywood. Despite that, the biggest question about her career now is whether Hollywood will allow her the longevity she craves.

“I know this character,” Rees said at one point about the Kyd, though she might have been talking about her own journey as an artist so far. “That feeling of being trapped, wanting to be an artist, knowing the odds are against you and doing it anyway.”

A few weeks later, Rees was sitting in a small coffee shop in Harlem, not far from where she lives with her wife, the author Sarah M. Broom, who recently won a National Book Award for her memoir, “The Yellow House.” Rees had been stationed there for a while, talking to other regulars, reading the short-story collection “Heads of the Colored People,” by Nafissa Thompson-Spires, and working on her laptop. Rees is a minimalist: Everything about her has an understated elegance, from the twists in her hair to the black and camo Jordans that she likes to wear. That day, she was dressed in a tailored white-and-pink-dotted button-down shirt and carrying a backpack.

Rees told me that people often describe her success in the film industry as overnight, which feels dismissive of the years she spent hustling for “Pariah” and glosses over the years that she struggled to sell pilots and feature films since then. “I’ve spent 12 years slugging away,” she said. She’s quick to point out that most of her work has not made it to market.

Rees said her strategy is to work on “five things at once and see which one sticks.” Each time we talked, she was working on a new project. Once it was a television show about a black police officer in the South, set in the 1970s. Another time it was a potential collaboration with a black playwright. This is both a survival tactic designed to navigate the ever-changing tides of a mercurial entertainment industry and perhaps also a defense mechanism: better not to get too attached to a project that doesn’t get picked up. The gap years after “Pariah” taught her to be strategic.

“For me, everything still comes with a grain of salt,” she said. “I never trust if it’s going to happen until you see a grip truck pulling up.” Many black women who make a compelling, noteworthy debut never manage to make a second feature — think of Julie Dash or Leslie Harris, whose names you might not know but who are responsible for, respectively, the indie films “Daughters of the Dust” and “Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.” “It seemed like people wondered if that was a fluke,” she said about “Pariah.” After “Mudbound,” she felt that question of her directorial ability has been answered. “Now it’s just about, How much do I get to do?”

From Rees’s vantage, this is the time to be working as quickly and furiously as she possibly can to get all of her dream projects off the ground — not just “Follies” but also a lesbian horror film she plans to write with her wife and a sci-fi graphic novel that she can eventually adapt for the screen. “It’s a creator’s market,” she told me. “There are more canvases, and not just feature films. You can work online, you can make different kinds of TV. You can make your thing, and they’ll come to you.”

Rees was referring, in part, to streaming services, specifically Netflix, which financed and is distributing “The Last Thing He Wanted.” Over the past five years, Netflix has done the same for hundreds of original shows and movies, many of which are critically acclaimed and attract as much attention and accolades than the offerings from traditional movie studios. In 2019, Netflix released 60 films, and analysts estimate the company spends more than $8 billion on original content a year. “We’re not a 100-year-old studio or own intellectual property like Disney does,” Scott Stuber, the head of films at Netflix, told me. “We don’t have an archive or a library, so it’s very important strategically to get in business with filmmakers like Dee, Alfonso Cuarón, Martin Scorsese, and that is our differentiator.” Netflix’s elbowing into Hollywood has propelled other companies to follow suit, including Disney, Hulu, Apple and Amazon, all of which now produce exclusive streaming content. Netflix’s dominance is likely to be challenged in the coming years, but the company has already reshaped consumer standards, including the expectation that people can watch high-quality, Oscar-worthy first-run entertainment from the comfort of their couch.

To stay competitive, traditional studios now have to pay attention to what those services are doing and try to beat them at their own game. Many of the directors making the best material are coming from the indie world, Rees reminded me: Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins. “And it’s not because of altruistic reasons but because of moneymaking reasons,” she said. “Studios are realizing it’s profitable to keep their eyes open. Netflix forced the rest of the industry to take more risks. The advantage for filmmakers is that they’re making it impossible for the rest of the industry to be dismissive or willfully ignorant, and they make the industry consider films and filmmakers that they might not have considered.”

Rees also pointed out the desire for content aimed specifically at black consumers, noting that studio heads and industry leaders were finally paying attention to the black appetite: “We’re the consumers and we’re the producers. And we’re saying: No more ‘Green Book.’ We’re not interested in that.” Though Rees tends to avoid social media and the internet, she sees them as levers for this radical change. “The gatekeepers can still modulate production, but they can’t modulate awareness in the same way,” she told me. “With that awareness comes a hunger, and it sustains a stable of artists.”

In the 1970s, Rees’s parents bought a home in a largely white neighborhood in Nashville. Her father was a police officer; her mother, a scientist at Vanderbilt University. When I first asked Rees to describe her childhood, she told me it was a “typical, boring suburban experience.” She was an only child who liked to lose herself in video games, “Garfield” comics and Choose Your Own Adventure books. The family was solidly middle class. “At the grocery store, it was my job to hold the calculator and calculate the grocery bill as we went along,” Rees recalled fondly.

But Rees’s “typical” childhood also included anecdotes about growing up adjacent to white people who questioned her family’s presence in their midst. Neighbors hung Confederate flags as curtains. Kids toilet papered their trees, prank rang the doorbell, ripped up the roses that her mother planted in a wagon wheel. People regularly tossed garbage in their yard as they drove or walked by. “It was my job to pick up that trash,” Rees said. “They always seemed to be looking at us like, ‘How can you be here, how can you have more than us?’ ” Rees’s father often parked his police car outside their home to “let people know not to [expletive] with us,” Rees said. “You were constantly bracing for it, preparing for it and trying not to let it provoke you, as it was meant to do.” These incidents, and the questions about belonging they raised, can be felt in all her films.

Rees graduated in 2000 from Florida A&M University with a master’s degree in business administration and worked in marketing for a series of health and beauty companies. Rees envisioned herself as Marcus Graham, one of the young black advertising professionals in the movie “Boomerang.” “I really thought I’d be working with people like Strangé,” she said, referring to the eccentric Grace Jones character who gives birth to a perfume bottle in a cosmetics commercial. None of the jobs lasted more than a year, but the detour was productive: She went on a commercial shoot for a client, Dr. Scholl’s, and followed the production assistant around out of curiosity. She was energized watching the work, prompting her to reconsider her career trajectory. She was accepted to New York University’s graduate film program in 2003.

Rees had never been to art school or even touched a camera. “I had no idea what I was doing,” she said. She struggled with the assignments, which often consisted of making short film experiments. “I failed and I failed hard,” she recalled. Her professors seemed to pay more attention to the better students. “It felt like an instant divestment of interest.” By the second semester, she was considering dropping out. “On the first day, they told us that ‘only two of you will make it,’ ” she said. “And I was not the one who seemed like they were going to make it. I was like, ‘This is a waste, it’s so expensive, I shouldn’t do this.’ ” At 27, she worried that she was too old to start a new career.

Rees confessed all her fears and insecurities to her girlfriend at the time, who told her: “O.K., so there’s only going to be two of you. That means you and who else?” The pep talk helped, as did the support from a few professors, including Spike Lee, who has served as the film program’s artistic director for nearly two decades. Lee was impressed by Rees’s storytelling abilities and her eye, which already felt uniquely her own — rare for anyone, but especially students. “In my experience, very few people have a style right off the jump,” he told me recently. “It’s something that you develop over time, and she had it. I never had any doubts about her being successful. I could see that she was going to do what she had to do to get where she wanted to get.”

She felt her work began to click when the assignments moved into documentary. “That is when I found myself and found my voice,” she told me. She took a trip to Liberia with her grandmother and the budding cinematographer Bradford Young. “It just felt like no one was looking, and I felt confident and was able to make the doc.” That film, “Eventual Salvation,” tells the story of her 80-year-old grandmother, Earnestine Smith, as she travels to Monrovia, where she lived for decades, and confronts the aftermath of a devastating civil war.

She loved imagining herself into the shoes of her subjects. “It helped me be a better director, because I could see that ‘Oh, if I’d gotten this shot, it would be a better dynamic, better storytelling through body language.’ ” Rees’s graduate thesis was a short film called “Pariah,” and the strength of the script landed her at Sundance Labs to incubate the short into a feature. Lee offered guidance, and Young, still unknown, drenched the film in the shimmering, richly colored patinas that he would later use in movies like “Arrival” and “Selma.”

While at N.Y.U., Rees shortened her name from Diandréa to Dee. She was establishing a boundary between herself and the world that to this day feels as if it safeguards her personal life. She was coming out as a lesbian, which at first, her parents chalked up to an “art-school thing,” Rees said. But once they realized she was truly in love with a woman, they imploded. Her mother came to New York to try to stage an intervention. Her father was embarrassed. “Nashville is superconservative and small, and I guess word was getting around,” Rees said. Neither parent spoke to her for some time, but both came to see a screening of “Pariah” in New York in 2011. The support in the room eased their worries, as did the affiliation with Sundance. “My life wasn’t a wreck, which somehow made it more acceptable for them,” Rees said.

A common theme threading through Rees’s projects is the way the world places limits on people and whether that destroys or liberates them. The moments in her movies at which her characters confront that existential dilemma are often extremely subtle, but powerful nonetheless. In “Bessie,” the 2015 HBO movie Rees made about the blues singer Bessie Smith, we see how Smith rebels against societal expectations in her sexual fluidity, hard drinking and even in her confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan at one of her shows. But the moment that is most revealing is Smith, played by Queen Latifah, sitting fully nude at a vanity, her body shining with oil, seeing herself surrounded by the trappings of fame but ultimately alone and aging. She’s facing the choices she has made and seemingly deciding whether she’ll make different ones tomorrow. In “Pariah,” it’s the spark of possibilities reflected in young Alike’s eyes as she watches a dancer slide down a pole to Khia’s pleasure anthem “My Neck, My Back” in a gay nightclub.

What is striking about Rees’s work is that even though none of her movies are explicitly autobiographical, she still finds ways to channel her life experiences into them. Embedded in “Mudbound,” for example, is the experience of her great-grandparents, who picked cotton, but it also reflects the amorality of racial violence and how a country can fight against it in a war, while still perpetuating it at home. At the center of “The Last Thing He Wanted” is a father-daughter relationship complicated by guilt and obligation, but it’s also a thriller whose main character is determined to expose government corruption.

Rees realized early in her career that as a female director working in Hollywood, she wouldn’t have the same liberty as, say, Richard Linklater or Noah Baumbach to explore the details of her life onscreen. Rees made compromises so that she could still work on the themes that interested her most. “When I first started out, I was like, ‘I’m not going to do adaptations,’ ” she told me. “I only want to do my own stuff, but I quickly realized that I couldn’t survive because of the time it takes to get people to want to do your original thing.”

In 2014, Cassian Elwes, a longtime Hollywood veteran who has produced such films as “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” and “Dallas Buyers Club,” found himself horrified after reading about the extreme gender imbalance prevalent in Hollywood movie making. Dr. Stacy L. Smith, a communications professor at the University of Southern California at Annenberg, has found that less than 5 percent of major Hollywood movies were directed by women. People of color were also dramatically underrepresented. (Those numbers have not fluctuated significantly in the years since.) Elwes was similarly shocked to read that most young white male directors make their sophomore projects not long after their first; most women of color take years. Many of them, unable to support themselves during that gap, give up.

Around this time, two young producers brought Elwes the script for “Mudbound.” He fell in love with it, and his mind drifted to “Pariah,” which he’d seen at Sundance. Elwes sent Rees the script. A few years earlier, Rees had wanted to adapt the novel “Home,” by Toni Morrison, to explore the paradox of freedom for black Americans returning home from overseas; now she realized she could inject that desire into “Mudbound.”

“He was the first producer who was just like, ‘It’s yours,’ ” Rees recalled. “It wasn’t exploitative or like you should be grateful. He was like, ‘Whatever you want to do, let’s work it out.’ He’s believed more in me than some producers of color.”

A movie like “Mudbound” could easily be saturated with simplistic Hollywood narratives about the resilience of black people and the restorative power of interracial friendships. But Rees was not afraid to show a world where some white people are evil and none will save the black characters. Rees first impression of the script was that it was “a little too sweet.” It featured music as the balm easing tension between the two families. Rees wrote more scenes explicitly featuring the Jackson family, including one around a dinner table where they discuss their dreams of purchasing their own parcel of land, only to be interrupted by the white landowner, who demands they come unload his truck. The film finds its own emphatic language for the spectral horror of white violence in America through quiet vignettes: The tight face of a well-dressed black man, riding in the back of a white man’s dusty pickup truck. The wet and swollen face of a white woman sobbing into the arms of a black matriarch, whose resignation and fatigue can be read in the set of her mouth.

Rachel Morrison, the film’s cinematographer, who received an Oscar nomination for the film, said she was drawn to Rees’s ability to “put the audience squarely in the main character,” she told me. For example, when filming Laura, a woman at a loss for who she is in the world, the shots feature her petite, wiry body dwarfed by the soggy terrain and gaping blue sky. Rees was “uncompromising in only the best ways,” Morrison said, in a tone rich with admiration. She recalled an instance where Rees wanted a shot looking through a screen door, from the outside world into a dark home. “It was a ton of work, balancing the bright sun and dark shadows, but I was like, ‘If it’s worth it to you, I’ll do it.’ ” It was worth it to Rees. Morrison spent close to an hour manipulating the set to capture what would amount to seconds of screen time. When Morrison saw the final cut, she realized the elegance of the shot and how beautifully it articulated the difference between the two families and the worlds they inhabit. “It’s one of my favorite shots in the film,” she said.

After they finished “Mudbound,” Rees told Elwes that she wanted to adapt the Joan Didion novel. He knew Didion’s agent and was able to option “The Last Thing He Wanted.” “We took it around to all the studios, and no one would deal with it,” she said. “Netflix jumped in and saved it. But it was hard in that way. You think because it’s Joan Didion, like, of course — but nope.”

Rees struggles not to take the studios’ lack of interest in her work personally. When I asked her how she rationalized their indifference, she took her time answering, clearly weighing how much of her inner thoughts about Hollywood she wanted to air in public, staring into her coffee all the while. “When stuff doesn’t make logical sense, to me, I go to a place where there’s only one thing that can explain this. You know what I mean?” She paused again, fiddling with her latte. “It feels like a double standard, and the double standard to me is race.”

I asked her how she coped with being so demonstrably talented as a filmmaker and yet feeling thwarted in her efforts at the same time. “The only refuge I have is to do more work, to be relentless and keep making and making, and hopefully, eventually I won’t have to continue to prove that I have the capabilities.” She felt this deeply when “Mudbound” was passed over by major studios, even though it resembled a Birney Imes photograph come to life and featured mesmerizing performances by Carey Mulligan and Rob Morgan. It eventually sold to Netflix, reportedly for $12.5 million, the largest deal to come out of Sundance in 2017. “I’ve learned to go where the love is and work with who wants to work with you,” she told me. “The thing you’re up against is not new. Since first grade, the moment you enter school, you’re up against racism. But it’s still stunning sometimes.”

What remains striking about Rees is that these challenges haven’t muted her ambition. Elwes repeatedly highlighted it. “It’s gigantic,” he said, marveling. “She could be knocking out independent movies all day long if she wanted to.” But instead, with something like “Follies,” she is trying to create a pop-cultural empire. “She’s building a world, and right now in Hollywood, most people are just making another version of a comic book or a sequel or a remake,” Elwes said. Her fearlessness and talent are why he immediately agreed to help her produce and finance her sci-fi opera after she floated the idea by him in a text message. He has been hustling to raise the $80 million or so that she needs to pull it off. “It’s not a slam dunk,” he said, “but whoever takes the risk will get the reward.”

Toward the end of our meeting at the coffee shop, Rees told me shyly — a rare mode for her — that her biggest dream is to work on a major feature-film trilogy, something even more audacious than “Follies.” “I want to have a world with a black woman at the center of it, who ends up leading a rebellion,” she said. “I want to create a whole new world rather than color in somebody else’s.” The trilogy Rees wants to build takes place in a dystopic time, a hellscape devastated by climate change and out-of-control social media where people have to meet a minimum “credit” rating in order to have a decent quality of life.

Rees hopes that “The Last Thing” will be a bridge between her past work and her larger ambitions. Unlike her previous films, “The Last Thing” is a fast-paced political thriller with car chases, shootouts and body counts that includes tight close-ups and impressionistic landscape shots. The effect is claustrophobic and dizzying — a departure from Rees’s previous, more linear work — and yet the audience remains, as Morrison reflected, squarely in the perspective of Elena McMahon, the journalist at the center of it, played by Anne Hathaway. As McMahon loses her moral compass, the viewer becomes disoriented, too, and unable to keep up with the revelations, which, at Sundance, caused many critics to pan the movie.

When I spoke with Rees by phone from Sundance, right after the first reviews came in, she sounded sanguine. Her film had been “trashed,” she said, “but I still believe in it.” Then her voice perked up as she proceeded to tell me the details of a few still unannounced deals she had inked since we last saw each other. From her perspective, it seemed, the critical response was a blip in what she plans to be a long career.

Rosie Perez, who portrays a photojournalist in “The Last Thing,” told me that the day she arrived on location in Puerto Rico to shoot the film, she immediately noticed Rees’s sharp intelligence but found her aloof. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to connect with her,” she said. When it came time to work, Rees was meticulous but hands off. She set up the scene, positioning the camera with her own hands at times, and then stepped away. “It freed us up to just act,” Perez said. “She lets you do your thing. But you have to trust that she’s doing hers, too.”

Once, after a scene, Rees called cut, and Perez asked Rees if she was sure they got the shot. “She looked at me and said, deadpan: ‘I wouldn’t have moved on if we didn’t.’ ” Perez, deep in recollection, let loose that famous laugh from deep in her nasal cavity. “I was like: ‘Got it. Let me shut the [expletive] up.’ ” Her admiration for Rees was cemented in that moment.

But that wasn’t all she got from Rees, Perez told me, recalling a scene in which she and her co-star, Anne Hathaway, are running to catch a plane, dodging gunfire. “Anne is running like Catwoman, sprinting toward the plane,” Perez said. “I felt like the older lady trying to keep up.” She mentioned this to Rees, who replied, “Well, that’s your character, isn’t it?” At first, Perez’s ego was bruised. But later, Rees told her, “I hired you because you’re a kick-ass actress and also because you have the courage to look like a grown-ass woman.” At the time, Perez was splitting her time on the set of the second season of Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It,” where she was guest-starring as Mars Blackmon’s mother. Lee didn’t want Perez to wear a lot of makeup, and Perez initially balked. But her time with Rees adjusted her priorities: “I walked onto his set, and I was like ‘O.K.’ ” Working with Rees, she said, “gave me the confidence to do that.” That, she said, was Rees’s gift. “You have to let her be who she is, in order to see what she is trying to give you.”

#Black women #workplace #misogynoir #racism #Rees #director #film #voices

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jackalopefreckles · 4 years ago

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I feel like Ive aged at least 6 years since covid started. Im angrier. Less adapted to being outside then I used to be- which is saying a lot. This time last year I was?? Actually healthier mentally then I had ever been and looking forward to having the house alone for a month which?? Was the most freedom I wouldve ever had.

A lots fucking changed. I drove halfway across the country- all 30 hours at once with my big brother AND two elderly dogs, plus my cat. All animals on too many drugs (the vet said they couldnt overdose, and then failed to give any further instruction) cami peed on herself twice, unable to move. I had to waterboard her in Phoenix, a truly terrifying hell city where all the roads are raised and overlapping and its a hot as shit cause its?? What june?? Time was so fake this year I mustve just been stoned the whole time till I ran out of weed, and since moving its been a relief to be able to turn off the spinning anxious thoughts for a few hours

my big brother joined us. He brought a new dog with him which?? Is always a lot, plus I have this pack of dogs now cause the puppy wouldnt leave the super cancer ridden dog alone, and Im able to get her cbd regularly here, so shes always comfortable now instead of just?? Sometimes which is a lot nicer. We didnt think shed make it to chrisrmas. I thought shed die with me home alone to take care of everything, like always. It was almost a relief, I wouldn't have to coach my brother through the grieving process at least, and I had already finished. Its hard now even, for me to realize she might even have another christmas (but I wont hold my breath)

I feel safer going outside here then I did in Austin. I only went out a handful of times in texas, for the last few months I was ordering almost all groceries, and only going to the store once mask mandates were mandatory (theyre not anymore. Im so worried for texas. I missed a huge freeze by mere months. I dont think my elderly dogs wouldnt survived it. If I was alone with them, Im not sure I woudlve.

My parents took my brother to mexico with them. I begged them not to go, told them how irresponsible it was to travel across boarders. To visit an island and take all the plane germs with. I told them that even if my mom and brother were staying at home all day with me, my dad was still going to work and he didnt know what his coworkers were doing. That they wouldn't know what the people on the plane were doing. That at any point they could become the stupid americans that killed half an islands population.

They left a week after today last year. The boarders were closed the next day. Their friend has been traveling back and forth ever since. I have no idea how, except for the fact shes white and rich and wont hesitate to destroy a child, so I can only imagine how shed treat costomer service.

I will no longer allow this angry aggressive woman to ever make me feel bad, and I will allow myself to finally fight back. Im an adult, maybe not all the time (cause lets be real I'll always be a bit too eccentric for most) but when I get angry and allow myself that anger, it's not a bad thing. Anger doesn't have to make me feel like Ive done something wrong. Im usually very just in my actions, and I wont allow my parents influence to tell me all anger is misdirected and hurtful for reasons I couldnt understand. Its okay for me to be angry.

I think being alone with animals for months is at least reassuring that my childhood was unreasonable if nothing else. Which of course is a silly polite society term for pretty fucked, if nothing else.

My aunt had to gall to say weve had a good 2020 cause our family wasnt hurt, and I had to walk away from the zoom call. I haven't attempted communication with any of them since, not that I normally do. Of course none of us died, all rich old white people, most of them retired and able to stay home all day (not that all of them did, I learned about my grandfathers routine and just.. Im honestly surprised no one got it yet. Of course I knew from the beginning if anyone was gonna get it and die, it probably wouldve been me. Hence the 8 months of solitude before the move.

Was the move in August?? Im so unsure about time. Even with 2020 vision.

I tried to date when I moved here. Strictly on tinder. What was the point? On and off testosterone due to the wonders of texas, hadnt changed my body nearly as much as they should've a year after being on them. I look much more handsome now. Im also allowing myself to toss gender aside completely. He/him doesn't mean man, and they/them dont mean nonbinary, so why not mix them since Im?? Not really either.

It wasnt even a thought process like that to start. Much more "this is nice" which I think more gender should be allowed to be. Dont gotta be deep just comfortable.

I wont ever allow my parents to forget what they did. I ended up with three dogs I didnt want (I was so looking forward to not having any dogs) and I ended up taking care of my brother. Again. Its easier without my parents at least. Everything always is. My dogs are even happier. Cami finally isnt anxious 24/7. Again, a sad reminder my childhood wasn't great. Daisy is healthier. Trauma can be stored emotionally or with health issues, often both. I think the cancer dog getting better and?? Surviving and thriving so much longer then the vet said (how good was my old vet?) Is another unfortunate nail in thay proverbial coffin.

Im not as soft and openly loving. Im even more touch starved somehow. Harsher. I still want to choose love and compassion, but Im not letting myself fall into the trap of being so nice people wont be nice to you. Fighting back is something I wont feel shameful about, because it never stopped me from doing it completely anyway.

I was already reaching this on my own though. This was just more coffins, more nails. This didnt need to happen. We know our government let this happen. Its still letting it happen. Im not sure when Im getting my vaccine. My big brothers sick of quarentine and keeps trying to get us to go out. Sometimes I yield, and we go to a park, or the top floor of the parking garage. I get a vegan hotdog from nearby. We talk and laugh and were genuinely just. Boys being boys.

I shouldn't have to deal with parent shit anymore. I do though, especially since two out of three are unemployed and we can really only afford to live here cause of them (they owe me if anything though. Especially with my brother and these animals) I hope I can get a job soon. Or maybe even go back to school. Im lucky I had so much saved up (for top surgery, which I guess wont happen before Im 25 like I really tried for. I wouldve done it before now, but texas waitlists and rules kept holding me up. I literally went to an appointment in dallas, a 4 hour drive, just to found out the surgeon canceled on me for the second time)

Its incredibly depressing, and I know Im lucky to have had that stash. So many people didnt have anything and lost so much. People lost people. Half a million at this point. I remember when it got to 300,000 and I just?? Felt so awful it was so close to how many people we lost to AIDS. Its over that by so many now. It doesn't really stop, does it??

Is that catholic guilt?? Or maybe just irish guilt in general. Is it something I inherited or earned through all the end of the worlds and once in a lifetime recessions Ive been through. Im not sure how many off the top of my head, theyve been coming since I was so small and its always more and more. Im not even catholic anymore. I cant stop being irish though, even though the brits tried (and succeeded. Weve lost a lot. The current royal cotastrophy is bullshit as well, the only person who deserves a royal title is from Meniappolos

My home is decorate all inside for st patrick's day. My big brother loves it so Im going all out, and its def making me feel much more irish then usual (which is a lot Im over half)

I think I just wanted to say Im not the same. I hope I can still be happy an obnoxious is public. I wonder if I remember how

#TIRED #happy covid anniversary #time to post this without reading it lmao #long post #rambles

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