#I promise talking about the weather and the latest movie will not kill you

[16sundayss]

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[tainted-wine]

Tuning In Tonight

Present Mic x Reader (NSFW)

(A 10k story because I have no self-control. Here’s a fic about a troubled cafe employee that turns into a Mic fan and later SEX)  

You soaked in the heat of your apartment after enduring the chilly walk back home from work. Wasting no time, you tossed your coat aside and kicked off your shoes before plopping onto the bed. Another week, another paycheck. Today was exceptionally busy at the cafe. Fridays always were, really, but today had put you to the test against quite the cast of characters. But even in the face of screaming kids with careless mothers, business people with absolutely no patience, and teens that didn’t think you were worth making eye contact with, you prevailed. You liked your job, even with the odd rough days. The staff was kind, the pay was fair, and the fact that it was smack-dab in the middle of the city means that it was visited by the occasional hero. Those were the days that filled you with joy, taking you back to the times when you dreamed of having the same career. But some things just weren’t meant to be. Your younger, more passionate self would chide you for accepting this life. For not using every breath in your body to ensure that you would one day become a hero that everyone remembered, but such persistence would only hurt you more in the long run. At least you were still able to find a comfortable living elsewhere. You settled with the cards you were dealt just fine, and yet that’s exactly what bothers you. Is it really okay to just give up and settle this after trying so hard? 'Nope, my mind’s not going anywhere near that rabbit hole today.' You sprang back up, heading to your room with extra pep in your step to undress and prepare a shower. The hot water soothed your tense body and cleared your mess of a mind. There was no room for any negative thoughts on a Friday night, the nights that you always look forward to the most, because it was time for the weekly radio show hosted by the lively pro hero Present Mic.

Your first experience with the show happened months ago, during a day where you were feeling extra exhausted for no particular reason. Turning on your old radio to lift your spirits, you happened to tune in just in time for the voice hero’s live caller segment. ‘Why not?’ you thought to yourself as you dialed the station's number and patiently listened to the rings. “Hey, thanks for calling, my dear listener! Hope you’ve been having a rockin’ day today!” There was something about having such an energetic and carefree voice directed to you that just brightened you up from inside. The conversation didn’t last very long, your sudden shyness being part of the reason why. It ended with you honoring the usual routine of requesting a song before disconnecting. As short as the encounter was, it left a strong impression, and you wanted it to happen again. Just like that, you became a loyal fan of Put Your Hands Up! radio. It was a great way to end work for the week, winding down and getting ready for the weekend as the station played a wide variety of tunes. And every time Mic was ready to take calls, your phone was ready to dial. You talked about whatever came to mind—how work was treating you, discussing his latest accomplishments as a pro hero, sharing silly events the two of you had in life. Whatever you discussed, no matter how mundane the topic, Mic always sounded eager to listen and respond with the boisterous voice he was known for. Even on the nights where you felt especially drained or under the weather, his unwavering enthusiasm never failed to clear the dark clouds over your head. In short, he was a lovable guy. So you relaxed and killed some time with the help of the internet and some phone games until that special hour arrived. You turned to the station and was greeted with the loud intro that took some getting used to. “Yeeeaaaahh! Present Mic here, and thank you for tuning in to Put Your Hands Up! Are they up? Because we’re about to get started!” And so begins the music that you swear is just a playlist of the hero’s personal favorites. You laid back on your bed and let your mind drift as the songs played. Your friends plan on meeting up for a movie tomorrow; can’t miss out on that. Maybe you’ll stop by the store afterwards so you can restock your fridge. What should you do Sunday? Meh, just make it a lazy day and hang around at home, you suppose. You returned to your phone and continued scrolling through your favorite websites. Time went by quicker than expected, Mic’s announcement of taking calls catching you by surprise. The first few calls were picked up by other listeners, doing the usual routine of sharing their day or talking about recent issues. Mic gave advice wherever he could, and his desire to help anyone who was willing to reach out to him felt so damn genuine that it made you smile. Another call was picked up before yours. Oh well. You listened to what ended up being a youthful male on the line. “H-hi, Mr. Present Mic!” The nervous yet excited voice was pretty heartwarming. A young teen, most likely.

Mic laughed. “No need for the ‘mister,’ listener! You’ll make me feel old!”

A bunch of frantic stuttering could be heard from the boy. “Ah, so sorry, sir—I mean mister—I mean Mic!” You giggled along with Mic as the poor boy tried to collect himself. “Deep breaths, little listener. What’s on that speedy little mind tonight?” “Well,” the boy had finally steadied himself. “I’ll be finishing middle school soon, and I’m ready to start training to be a hero. I just really hope I can get into U.A. and meet you! I wish you could be my English teacher!”

Awww. “Shucks, little guy. First, good job on finishing up middle school. I hope your parents have a rockin’ party ready for you! Second, you’ve got guts for aiming for the highest! Make sure you study and prepare, 'cause U.A. only accepts the best!” There was a pause on the other end. “So, is there a chance that I won’t make it?" “My little listener,” you could tell that there was a gentle expression on Mic’s face as he spoke. “There’s always a chance, so I want you to promise me one thing. If that chance hits you, don’t give up on your dream. Get the most out of whichever school accepts you. You know how many amazing heroes I met who came from schools with pretty lame reputations? There’s a lot of them, trust me. I’ve also met my share of cocky young heroes who rag on others just because they don’t have the fancy brand of U.A. or Shiketsu on their resume. That’s all it is, kid. A brand. Just because you couldn’t strike a deal with a major record label doesn’t mean your music career is already dead.” “Music?” the boy said in confusion. “But I’m not talking about mu—oh…metaphor.” Mic chuckled lightly. “There ya go, listener! Your language is doin’ fine. You don’t need me! But if you think you do, you know where to call me for another chat!” “I do!” the boy said happily. “Thank you, Present Mic! I promise I’ll keep doing my best!” You listened to the two talk for a little longer. The boy had some real determination and you admired it. He’ll hopefully reach his dream. You won’t wish ill will on others just because you didn’t reach yours. Giving everything you had and still not being enough was something no one deserved to experience. The boy had requested a rather angsty rock song that was trying really hard to sour your mood, but you’re not going to give the depressing vocalist what he wants. On the next segment, you internally rejoiced when you hear Mic’s voice in your ear. “Hey there, Mic.” “Oh? Is that my favorite lady listener I hear?” You giggled at the flattering question? “Maybe? I didn’t know you had favorites.” “Ah, you’re right! Not very professional of me! Don’t worry, listeners! I swear I love you all equally!” He boomed. It’s moments like this that taught you to keep your phone a fair distance away from your ear when you speak to the great voice hero himself. “So how’s the cafe treating you?” After so many talks, Mic had learned a few personal details about you, including your job and the area you worked in. He’s commented on how humble your life sounds; you didn’t disagree. “It’s been the same. Nothing new.” Your plan was to share one of your experiences with the more unruly customers today, but something else was weighing on your mind now. “Come on, girl. You’ve gotta have something spicy to share with us, don’t ya?” “Actually,” the last call was really sticking to you for some reason, you couldn’t help but let it slip out. “I want to say that what you told that boy was very sweet. And I was wondering…” Your voice caught in your throat. “I was wondering…” ‘Is it okay to give up?’ You didn’t want to say that. ‘What if you sacrifice everything you have, but still fail?’ You don’t tune in to be a downer. ‘Did you know that I was like that boy once?’ You talk to Present Mic to feel good. “Wondering what? You still with me, listener?” Mic asked. The concern in his voice urged you to spit something out already. “I was wondering exactly which pro heroes you knew personally. You said that you’ve met a lot,” you lied. You weren’t wondering that at all. Still, you won’t mind hearing his answer. “Ha! Where do I even start? Now’s the perfect time for some free promotion for the awesome heroes out there that deserve some sweet limelight! Let me start with a cool guy named Koi. He’s pretty new to the scene and works on the coast.” He went on and on about many lesser known heroes you weren’t familiar with at all, but that made the information all the more intriguing. He spoke highly of each person, listing their accomplishments and how hard they worked to get where they are. As always, he managed to perk you back up. You made a mental note to look up these heroes later. “Whoa whoa, record scratch, guys! The lady’s got me rambling for way too long. Trying to soak up all the time, are ya?” He sneered in the most light-hearted way. You laughed innocently. “Of course not! You were being so passionate about every hero that you mentioned, I didn’t have it in me to stop you.” “Well, I’ll forgive you just this once! You know how to end it. Hit me with that request!” The rest of the broadcast carried on through the night as a drowsiness began to creep on you. You listened to the last of the songs while getting cozy under your sheets. “Time to finally put those hands down! It’s been a blast, listeners! I hope you’re ready to rock with me next time! Good night!” You switched off the radio and finally allowed yourself to drift off. ‘Good night.’ ——— The weekend had flown by. Before you knew it, it was back to business at the cafe. You were always thankful for not being part of the morning shift on Mondays, your co-workers sharing horror stories of the tired and moody zombies demanding complicated orders as quickly as possible. Your shift started at noon. The day was going by smoothly, no wrenches thrown into your usual pattern. Small talk with the customers, impressing the regulars by guessing their orders correctly, practicing your latte art, it was a meditative cycle for you. By the time the sun was down with no recent customers, you were ready to start cleaning up. The place closes in less than twenty minutes and the rest of the staff was sitting around patiently. A ring at the door alerted you all to the sight of a man briskly walking in, gripping at his overcoat as he recovered from the cold outdoors. “Welcome sir,” you greeted while heading to your position behind the counter. The other workers gave their own welcome and followed suit. “Hey!” He said loudly. “Didn’t mean to barge in like that. It’s cold enough tonight without all of this wind.” The voice made you pause. The man approaching you had blonde hair pinned up into a messy bun, some stray locks hanging freely. He adjusted his glasses as he flashed you a smile. That voice…and paired with his appearance…there was no doubt about it. 'Present Mic?' “Heh, looks like I’ve been exposed already!” Mic said with a chuckle. You placed a hand over your mouth, not realizing you had said his name out loud. “Sorry, it’s just really nice to meet you in person. I’m a fan.” You thought you saw him pause as well, eyes widening for a brief moment before asking, “Are you, now? And have we talked before, dear fan?” His voice was calmer than what you were used to hearing on his show. “We have, on the radio. Quite a few times, actually,” you admitted. And with that, his smile was enhanced to blinding levels. “My favorite lady listener! I thought I recognized that sweet voice!” Mic didn’t seem to respond to your blush and kept going. “I remember you said that you worked around here, but I sure didn’t expect to bump into you!” “Well, fate’s treating us both well tonight. I can’t properly express how excited I am to meet you while on the job. What can I get you tonight?” You hid behind your professionalism and waited for his order. Mic rubbed at his chin and pondered. “Well, I’ve been convinced by word-of-mouth that you guys have some yummy pastries. What do you think will go well with some hot cocoa?” Fortunately, the cafe’s menu was practically branded into your mind, so even the presence of a pro hero isn’t enough to make you draw a blank. “I’d personally recommend one of our warm treats. Maybe you’d like to try our filled croissants? The strawberry one is my favorite.” “Mmm, sounds delish. I trust you,” His grins were seriously trying to make you melt. “Hit me up with a cocoa and a strawberry croissant for here!” After taking his order, Mic seated himself at a table to wait for his sugary meal. As you prepared his chocolate and croissant, you couldn’t resist stealing an occasional glance at him. He was studying the cute decorations that littered the place and gently bobbing his head to the indie music playing through the speakers, but the two of you happened to lock eyes once, forcing you to immediately look away. Whenever you saw him in the media, his eyes were usually obscured by the orange shades that went with his hero outfit. Now you realize just how green they are, almost as if they glowed. It didn’t take long to prepare his order, and you decided to grant him the special treatment of delivering the food to his table. There was no one else to serve, after all. “Hey,” he said. “Would you mind sitting down with me?” Your heart fluttered. “Not at all, Mic.” You pulled back the chair opposite to him and took a seat. “Call me Hizashi.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Present Mic is always too busy for a snack break.”   “Of course, Hizashi.” You listened to Hizashi’s compliments on the food and drink, trying not to stare as he ate. You were always so sure that he couldn’t possibly be as loud and lively as his hero persona, and you were mostly right, but even now as he dined at a simple cafe, he still somehow radiated a cheerful and positive energy. The warm feeling you got from hearing him on the radio was dwarfed by what you currently feel now that you are seeing him in person. He had eaten the last of the flaky bread before speaking again. “You know, now that you’re right here in the flesh, I gotta ask you something that’s been bothering me since my last show.” Lime green eyes peered into yours as he idly stirred the cup of chocolate. “Were you alright that night? You sounded…conflicted when we were talking.” A lump caught in your throat. You didn’t expect something like that to stick with him. Surely he had more important matters to worry about. “Don’t worry about it,” you answered. “I just had silly things crossing my mind at the moment.” Hizashi took a sip, his eyes not leaving you. “Alright, I don’t wanna pry. I know you’re a grown woman, but I do like helping people. It’s my favorite part of all three of my jobs.” His smile never faded since he walked in here and man, you weren’t used to him looking or sounding so soft. You sat there silently, fighting internally as you tried to decide whether or not to confess. The pro hero waited, drinking and showing no signs of impatience. Your hands gripped at your apron as you took a breath. “I wanted to be a hero.” The only sort of reaction you noticed were his raising eyebrows. “Ah,” he murmured. “Do you still want to be a hero?” A beat of silence. “…No.” Hizashi watched, probably waiting for you to say more, but you still didn’t know how much you wanted to share. “Does that bother you?” He asked. You nodded. “I’d like to hear why, listener.” Hearing the term you were so used to on his show lifted some of the pressure. Ironically, he was probably the best listener out of anyone that tuned in. You straightened your posture and swallowed. “Then I should probably start from the beginning.” And so you let it all spill. How you once had the same glorious dream as so many other children. You explained all of the time and effort you put into the tests and exams, but it was never enough, and your quirk always failed to impress spectators. You had family and friends that supported you for so long, had sacrificed so much to make this happen, but when you realized that your pursuit was leading you to homelessness, you accepted defeat. Hizashi paid close attention, only making a small comment here and there, but he waited for you to finish to say anything more. “I’m sorry you couldn’t get there,” he said sympathetically. “It’s fine.” You were looking down at your lap, unable to hold his gaze throughout most of the story. “I recovered pretty well. It’s nice here.” He hummed and leaned back in his seat. “That’s good! Not everyone can bounce back from that. Sounds like it’s still bothering you, though. Are you sure you don’t want to try again? I’m more than happy to help you out.” You shook your head at the generous offer. This man was too kind. “Thanks, but that’s alright. I’m happy where I am, it’s just that…” You paused as you tried to form the frustration you’ve felt for years into words. “I had put my whole life into this, gave up everything I had, and…and I don’t have anything to show for it, you know? Feels like the biggest waste.” “Yeah, maybe it was.” His blunt admittance surprised you. “But when you realized you weren’t getting anywhere, you stopped before you hit rock bottom. I know some students of mine who wouldn’t have that self-control.” He gave a soft snort at the thought. “Hell, when everyday is such a painful climb, you forget if there’s even anything waiting for you at the top. Maybe you would’ve reached the peak just to finally keel over.”  You nodded along with his feedback. It wasn’t anything new; you’ve comforted yourself with similar words, albeit with less metaphors. And yet, your pesky mind couldn’t accept such logic. “But people don’t like quitters.” Hizashi kept going, arms crossed and staring intensely at his empty plate. “Because quitting apparently means that you’re weak, not that you were smart enough to see that you’re just hurting yourself at a certain point. Man, you know how many people wouldn’t be stuck doing stuff that they hate if this mindset didn’t exist? I know a guy who finally won the heart of the heroine of his dreams, and I was like, ‘Awesome, dude!’” You watched with mild amusement as Hizashi’s volume was slowly rising along with his increasingly animated movements. “But surprise! Turns out that she makes for the world’s worst girlfriend! The poor guy is in his own little hell, but he’s wanted this gal for soooo long and he’s still soooo sure that they’re fated to be together. If I used my quirk to scream at the guy to break it off already, he’d still manage to ignore me!” A snicker nearby caught both of your attentions, turning to see the other staff members looking very entertained by his storytelling. Hizashi coughed out of awkwardness and shuffled in his seat. “You, uh, you get what I’m saying?” His voice returned to a calm tone. “Yeah, I get it,” You replied. “I never considered all of that. Sucks for your friend, but I understand the feeling. It must be frustrating to watch from the outside, too.” “Oh yeah, it is.” He sighed and rested his face in one of his hands. “I know they say that you can’t save people that don’t want to be saved, but it’s not gonna keep me from trying. Good to know that you climbed out of that hole yourself. Well, almost.” He finished off the now-lukewarm chocolate. “Your dream died, so handle it like any other death. Mourn and move on. Dwelling on it or thinking about everything you could have done differently is irrational.” You heard him mutter something under his breath, something about someone rubbing off on him too much. The gears turn in your head. Your eyes wonder to a small stain on the table as Hizashi’s advice breaks through your somber barrier. Mourn and move on.

“I’ll try,” You’re shocked by how dry your throat suddenly is. The sound of sweeping and chairs scraping across the floor makes you snap your head to the clock. It was past closing time! “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry!” You didn’t even know if you were apologizing to Hizashi or your co-workers. “I lost track of time! Let me get that for you.” You took his trash before he could respond and quickly joined the others to clean up. “Sorry about that,” one of your friends said. “I guess we all got caught up in your cute little talk.” “Do you have to eavesdrop on every table in this place?” You asked with no real malice. Pretty much the whole staff has a fondness for gossip; perhaps it was just a side effect of working such a job. “Oh, you know me. Why do you even ask?” she laughed. You focused on cleaning the tables as Hizashi stood and straightened out his clothes. You hoped that he wouldn’t leave just yet. His pep talk was appreciated and you wanted to thank him properly before your bus got here. Your bus that was scheduled to arrive ten minutes ago. 'Oh shit!' “My bus! I have to—dammit! I gotta go!” You dashed into the back to gather your belongings and grab your bag. Hizashi and the others looked too stunned by your burst of speed as you exited the cafe and rushed to the bus stop, the biting cold having little effect on your adrenaline-filled body. 'Maybe the bus is late too. Maybe I can still make it.' Your sprint slowed down the moment you saw your ride home already speeding away. It was too late to catch up. You could only watch as the large vehicle drove out of sight, dropping onto the stop’s bench as you caught your breath. Wonderful. This is what you get for getting too comfortable with one of your customers, hero or not. “Hey!” Speak of the devil. You turned to the sight of Hizashi jogging around the corner and toward you. “Man, you move pretty fast.” He caught up to you and took in your tired and defeated form. “And by the looks of it, you still weren’t fast enough.” A loud groan escaped you. “It’s no big deal, really. Another one arrives in about thirty minutes.” “Ah, think you can wait that long in this cold?” A shiver ran through your body immediately after his question. Wow, it really was freezing tonight. You shrugged your shaking shoulders. “I’ll have to. It’s still better than walking.” “Or maybe I can take you home?” Your head snaps back to him. Did you hear that right? “You…you want to take me home?” You repeated. That radiant smile returns to his face and adds another wave of trembles to your body. “I help where I can, and I’m kinda the reason you missed it in the first place. It’s the least I can do for such a loyal listener.” You hesitate, your still-harsh breaths forming misty clouds. You trusted him, no doubt about that. No, what was making you hesitate were his tender expressions that were illuminated by the nearby streetlight, and his lax and inviting posture as he waited for your answer with his hands tucked in his coat, and the realization that Yamada Hizashi was pretty damn handsome.   Pure hot red was rushing up to your face. Surely that was the cold’s fault. “That sounds great,” you uttered before you could even stop yourself. “Alright! Come on, then. I’m totally not dressed to be standing out here for long.” You followed him back to the cafe where an old-fashioned Ford mustang was parked. ‘Classy.'  Your co-workers were watching you enter his car, some with smirks or giving you a thumbs-up. ‘Perverts. It’s not like that.’ At least, you didn’t think it was. The drive home was calming. The radio played lowly as background music while you gave him directions to your apartment. You kept sneaking a peek at him from the corner of your vision, a peaceful look on his face as his fingers tapped on the steering wheel to the beat of the music. He seemed to be the type that hated complete silence; you didn’t mind. The streets were fairly empty, so it didn’t take too long to reach your complex. Hizashi pulled up and parked. “Welp, here’s your stop!” He announced as he hit you with another knockout smile. “Thanks for taking the Present Mic Express, listener.” You removed your seat belt, but made no further movements. “Thank you, Hizashi. For the ride…and the talk. You’ve helped me a lot today.” You say as you dare to look into his hypnotizing irises. He shrugged at your gratitude. “I’m just a customer who was in need of a nighttime snack and met a special gal that turned out to be even greater in person.” It took everything in your power not to cover your face like a flustered schoolgirl, instead breaking eye contact as you felt the heat return to your cheeks. “Thanks, you’re pretty great too.” You shuffled a bit as you both sat in silence. “I’m leaving now.”

“Okay.” You stayed where you were, staring at the door handle like it was the last thing you might ever touch. “I can’t wait to talk to you again on your show.” “Ditto.” “Alright…I’m leaving now.” “You already said that.” You squirmed some more. ‘Come on, you probably just look creepy at this point. Hurry the hell up and say something.’ “Is there something else you wanna tell me?” There was a small hint of amusement in his voice, and you gathered the courage to look at him again, shocked to see that his friendly smile had shifted into something a little more smug. It was probably safe to say that he’s reading the atmosphere pretty well. ‘Then just go for it.’

“Do you…do you want to come inside me—” FUCK. “Come inside with me! Do you want to come inside with me?!”  You were practically shouting the invitation in a feeble attempt to hide your slip-up. Hizashi threw his head back and cackled. “I’d love to, sweetheart! No need to be shy about it. I don’t bite.” You still sat there as the car turned off, his casual acceptance putting you into a stupor. Which version of the question was he even saying yes to? Whichever one it was, he had just accepted your offer to sleep together. You hadn’t been with anyone in years, and now you suddenly do this? A rush of cold wind hit you when he opened his door. “Come on, unless you planned on doing it in the car?” He laughed when you furiously shook your head.  “Good. As much as I love my old girl, she’s probably not very comfortable for something like that.” You only shivered in response as you finally stepped out of his car and joined his side to guide him to your place. All it took was an elevator and a quick walk down the hall to reach your door. It was a little embarrassing to bring a pro hero into your small single-bedroom apartment. It had all of the essentials for a comfortable living, but there wasn’t much room for luxuries. You both kicked off your shoes at the entrance before you hurried to organize some stray clothes and bags. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting guests.” “No worries,” Hizashi didn’t seem to mind as he got comfortable on a chair near your kitchen area and scanned the place. “This is nice.” You snorted at the comment. “I suppose,” you murmured. “It’s nothing worth praising.” “What, finding a place to stay after running yourself down for years? I think that deserves some praise,” he says so matter-of-factually.  That was a really admirable way to put it. “Thank you.” “Mmhmm,” he hummed, watching you finish replacing your things. Now you’re just standing here, not sure what to do next. How do you even start this? Your only experience was a clumsy one with a friend way back. “Well, we can’t do much at this distance, can we?” He says lightly as he gestures you to come closer. You comply and take his offered hand, letting him gently tug you down and onto his lap. He positioned you sideways, your legs laid out over his and making you look and feel like a nervous child. His face was so close, those green eyes looking shinier than ever. “You’ve done this before, right?” His warm breath brushes against your face as he speaks. “Yeah, I have,” you paused and wondered if you should tell him more. Hizashi was getting to know you more than you ever intended. “With a friend some years ago…it was a mess. Two virgins that had no idea what they were doing.” You laughed at the memory. “Heh, I feel you on that one. My first wasn’t the most dignified moment either.” You felt his body shake with his chuckle. His hand was still holding yours, thumb pressing against the space between your knuckles in a sort of massage. The feeling soothed you as his free hand came up to remove his glasses, your body shifting with his as he set them down close by. “In fact, your boy used to be a one pump wonder!” He smiled at your bewildered reaction to the information. “Hey, it’s not my fault sex feels so awesome!” You giggled into his shoulder. He spoke to you with such familiarity that it was impossible to stay anxious. It was why you enjoyed talking to him on the radio, but you never imagined it being the same during a scenario as intimate as this. “Hey, Don’t laugh at me! I’ve gotten better!” He said in mock anger. “And lucky for you, you get to see just how much. Welcome to my private show, listener.” He wiggled his eyebrows in a way that was more comical than seductive. A hand gently held the back of your head, and you let it pull you in to press your lips against his. You closed your eyes and savored the feeling, his lips softer than expected. Your kisses were timid, giving little more than lingering pecks, and Hizashi patiently returned them, slowly adding more pressure and passion as encouragement. The feel of a tongue swiping against your lips made you squeak in shock, getting a chuckle out of him. “That was adorable,” he teased, his voice suddenly at a lower pitch that made you shudder. “You startled me,” you retorted before returning to the kiss, this time with your lips parted to grant him entry. He caught you off guard again by sucking lightly at your lips instead, forcing a gasp out of you before slipping his tongue into your mouth. Your own muscle shyly met his, stroking each other in a lazy dance. His hands moved to hold your face and he’s doing it so tenderly. A hot desire is flowing through your veins from his kisses alone; you can only imagine what else he has in store for you. After a few more wet smacks, the two of you finally parted to catch your breaths, you especially. “Wow,” you couldn’t help but gasp. Hizashi gave a breathless laugh. “Getting overwhelmed already? We haven’t even taken any clothes off yet.” He wasn’t as composed as he let on, a red flush spreading across his face. The hands holding your face moved down to wrap around your waist as he moved his kisses down to your jaw. You sighed and tilted your head back to give him access to your neck, burying your fingers in his hair as you felt him lick and suck at your pulse. Beneath the smooth locks you felt a pin that held his sloppy bun together. “Hizashi? Can I-ah,” a hard suck on your sensitive throat forces you to pause. “Can I…your hair?” You tapped at the pin to get your point across. “Go ahead,” he groaned against your neck, not even slowing his assault as you pulled the small clip out and watched his golden locks fall to his shoulders. He purred to the feeling of you combing through his hair like fine threads. “It’s really pretty,” you whispered, still shivering from the love that he was showering on your skin. He pulls away from your neck. “Are you saying my hair isn’t always pretty? Trying to hurt Mic’s feelings?” He said with a pout. He looked all the hotter with his long hair draping the sides of his face. “Not at all! I think Mic makes for a handsome cockatoo,” you jest with a smirk. “Heh, you got jokes, huh? We’ll see who’s laughing once I get these annoying clothes out of the way.” He double tapped your thigh. “Up.” You stood up and watched him follow instantly, noticing the bulge that was beginning to grow beneath his pants. You quickly tore your eyes away from it. “Hold on a minute, I know what we’re missing.” He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved his phone. You waited, wondering what he could possibly need on his phone right now. A few taps later, a smooth melody began playing from the device. “Oh yeah, I’m feelin’ it already.” He set the phone down and shut his eyes, getting a feel for the beat of the sensual R&B song. This man was unreal. “You have…a lovemaking playlist?” You uttered while watching him get into a groove. “I’ve got a playlist for a lot of things, baby. Nothing sets the mood like a good tune. Don’t worry, sweetie, I’ll go first.” And so he began his slow movements, swaying and bouncing in rhythm to the music, pulling his coat back and shrugging it off in a steady and seductive manner, tossing it aside. Watching a personal strip show of one of your favorite heroes was both hilarious and hot. On one hand, he was giving you playful and goofy faces while lip-singing to the sensual vocals. On the other, ‘I’ll be damned,’ you thought, because he really did know how to move his body and was successfully captivating you. His hips were moving in slow circles as he grabbed the bottom of his shirt, lifting it up and revealing his impressively lean torso. ‘Oh, his hero outfit doesn’t do his body justice.’ You were so impressed by the chest and the abs that were just thick enough to be visible, you didn’t notice him struggling to pull the shirt off of his head. With his top completely bare, he smoothed a hand down his hair and leered at you with a slow lick over his lip. “Liking what you see, baby?” How the hell did his voice get so deep? Why was he being so sexy right now? Your throat was dry all of a sudden, so you simply nodded. “Good.” His hands ran over his chest, making sure you were watching them before they began an agonizingly slow descent, tracing over hard lines, his muscles rippling with the mesmerizing thrust of his hips, a sight so erotic that you wanted to look away, but just couldn’t. With the buttons and zipper quickly undone, his thumbs hooked beneath his pants and began to pull down and oh shit he was pulling at his boxers too. You were really about to see it and you didn’t know if you were ready, but your eyes remained glued to his waist as his masculine v-line and a neat trail of blonde curls was revealed, your breathing getting heavier with the knowledge that he was only centimeters away from revealing his… “Naaaah, I’ll leave these on for now.” Just like that, his voice returned to his loud and cheerful pitch, pants readjusted and no longer on the brink of revealing his manhood. Confused, you look back up to see an infuriatingly innocent face staring back at you. A pang of disappointment hits you hard; Hizashi had just teased you big time. “Your turn.” You stood there awkwardly, having no idea where to even start. “I…uh…” You try to get into rhythm with the song and already feel like a fool. “I’m not much of a dancer. Can I just undress?” You felt a little bad. You didn’t want to kill the mood just because you didn’t know how to be as light and silly as him. Hizashi casually approached in all of his topless glory. “Don’t stress, girl. The stage and spotlight ain’t for everyone,” he empathized. Slender fingers took hold of the bottom of your shirt, and he looked into your eyes for silent permission. You gave a slow nod of approval and lifted your arms so that he could smoothly remove your first article of clothing. He discarded the shirt quickly to lay his hands on your bare waist, tracing over your soft and sensitive skin, making you jump slightly. “That tickles,” you snickered. “Sorry, sorry.” His hands went higher until they reached your bra, fumbling with the clasp at your back. “Mind helping me out? I still haven’t mastered these contraptions,” he asked through gritted teeth. The fully concentrated face for removing an undergarment was a real hoot, but you showed mercy and joined his hands to undo the fastening and pulled the straps down your arms. With how hard he was staring at your exposed breasts, it took everything in your power not to cover yourself, keeping your arms at your sides. “Damn. You’re gorgeous, you know that?” He spoke softly, giving feather-light touches over the mounds of flesh. “Can’t believe you’re giving me the honor of seeing you like this.” You warmed over at the praise and his touch, a thumb brushing lightly over your nipple. “You…look really good too,” you complimented back, your own hands coming up as you considered exploring his body. Hizashi noticed your hesitation and took a hold of your wrists. “You can check me out with more than your eyes, babe,” he says with a wink, and then places your hands right onto his hot and hard chest. ‘Woah.’ You swear that your heart stopped for several seconds. Hands slightly trembling, you run them slowly over his firm pecs, listening to his quickening breaths as you went lower to feel his abs. Present Mic was never really on your list of sexy heroes. You never bothered to imagined what the rowdy guy looked like underneath that superstar getup. ‘Shame on me, I suppose.’ The hero quietly reveled in your touch as he returned to your breasts, kneading them gently to bring out soft moans from you. There was something extra close and affectionate about just feeling each other, hands caressing and pressing every inch of both of your bodies. Your first time wasn’t this slow and steady; you and your partner were too embarrassed by so much clumsy fumbling that you ended up rushing to the main act. An arm wrapped around you and pulled you closer, a pair of lips speaking right next to your ear. “To the bed.” The song currently playing had a much more raunchy vibe to it, matching the growing intensity of the room as Hizashi gently pushed you back onto the mattress so that he could peer down and take in your body from above. You felt even more vulnerable in this position, but the man’s gaze, although lustful, was still gentle and nothing to be afraid of. You had enough courage to take his face and bring him down for another kiss, lips moving more boldly this time. Hizashi smiled behind the kiss, but had other plans and trailed downward, picking up where he left off during the first make-out. He licked a wet trail across your neck, wasting no time in reaching your breasts and peppering one with kisses, the slightly ticklish sensation filling you with pleasurable tingles. Too modest to watch him shower your body with love, you instead closed your eyes and focused on the feeling as the naughty music played on. The wetness of a tongue was flicking across your nipple, making your breath hitch, but it was the complete engulfment of wet heat that made your eyes fly open to the sight of him hungrily sucking at you like he was being nursed. You could still feel his tongue swirling around your nipple in the wet cavern of his mouth. It felt so good, bringing forth an ache within your lower body. “Ah, Hizashi…more…” Your plea came out as a shuddering moan. “Patience, babe,” he panted before switching to your other breast and giving it the same delicious treatment. Soon he continued his trek downwards, kissing at your stomach and playfully dipping his tongue into your navel. “Alright, time for these pants to go.” You lifted your hips to help him pull them off, nervous but so desperate to feel him touch you more. Surprisingly, he left your panties on and placed his lips right on your hipbone, making you twitch. The kisses wandered to your thighs, taking his time in enjoying the texture of your flesh as he licked, sucked, and gave the occasional nip to make you jump. You can feel the hot desire in your core building up as he got closer to your mound, your insides throbbing in anticipation, ready to be probed and explored already. Finally his face was right at your clothed pussy, a sinful grin forming as he observed the very damp spot. You were ready for him to finally remove the last barrier that prevented your bodies from joining. What you weren’t ready for was the shock of his tongue pressing against the thin cotton and licking at you like it wasn’t even there. Even with the shaky gasp that escaped you, you felt mortified. “H-Hizashi? What are—that’s—ohhh.” His lips managed to close right around your protected clit, the feeling muted but still powerful, but this was all so new to you. It’s one thing to fantasize having someone put their mouth there, but to actually…! Hizashi halted his ministrations and looked up at you. “What is it? Did I do something wrong?” The panic in your breathless voice probably worried him a bit. You didn’t want him to think that he screwed up, it’s just that…ugh, you didn’t even know! “I, uh, you don’t have to do that, really,” you stammered. The pure confusion on his face was unexpected. “What? Go down on you? I love doin’ that, babe. You don’t?”

You were tempted to grab a pillow and hide your face. “I…don’t know. No one’s ever done that to me.” “Oh?”  He tilted his head, resting on one of your thighs as he watched you curiously. “Well this guy would love to do it to you. May I?” ‘Yes. Yes, please do it.’ You just couldn’t be as shameless as your inner thoughts, so the most you could do was squeak, “If you want.” Hizashi rubbed soothing circles around your inner thighs. “I’ll just give you a sample, alright? You just lie back and feel it. Actually…” He raised himself and took a hold of your hips, tugging you to the edge of the bed. He was now kneeling on the floor with your legs hanging over his shoulders. Even with your panties still on, you never felt more exposed. His mouth was back on you in an instant, licking long stripes up your covered womanhood. You could feel your heated lust, could feel your juices seeping out to mix with the saliva that was coating your ravaged underwear. But it didn’t look like Hizashi planned on letting up on his assault anytime soon, pressing his face against you as if he was craving your nectar from the source, but insisted on holding himself back. As you whimpered from the wet grazes and your growing arousal, you realized that this just wasn’t going to be enough. “Please,” you whined. “I need more.” “More?” The hero’s voice was husky, and the wicked look he was giving you wasn’t helping matters at all. “What do you want more of?” Your knuckles were turning white from how hard you were clutching the sheets beneath you. “You! Your mouth! Please, take them off!” “You like what my mouth does, baby?” He gave you a quick lick. “Yes.” “You wanna feel more of it?” “Yes, please!” You begged. “Wanna feel my tongue push inside your pussy?” The sudden vulgarity of his words made you clench. “Y-yes.” A finger runs up and down your slit, the cloth’s texture doing nothing but irritating you at this point. “Good, because your taste and smell is driving me wild.” His fingers hooked around the lace and, thank the gods above, finally pulled them off, sticky strands of your arousal being pulled along with it. Repositioning himself, he used his thumbs to spread you open and take a good look at you. ‘Oh God, that’s a bit much.’  You shut your eyes to avoid his invasive ones that were looking straight inside of you. Just before he dove in, a new track began to play. “Oooooh shit, I love this song!” You looked to see Hizashi on the verge of jumping up in excitement. After being so turned on, you managed to forget that he’s a dork. “They’re just asking me to go all-out on you, aren’t they? Get ready, sweetheart. I’m about to send you to heaven.” Your breathing quickened as he leaned in, suddenly understanding that his teasing was just to make you extra sensitive to the real deal, because his breath alone was sending pleasant shocks through you. The first long lick up your sex already had you moaning loudly. A pair of hands held your hips down to prevent you from bucking too wildly, thighs quivering on his shoulders as he hungrily lapped at you. Among the indecent sounds between your legs, you also noticed the song’s lyrics were describing the very act Hizashi was performing right now, his mouth working more vigorously whenever the singer expressed the desire to lick a girl, to make her cum all week. He was avoiding your clit, giving full attention to your sopping folds, sucking on them loudly before deciding to plunge his tongue straight inside of your pussy. The intruding muscle had you squirming against his hold, rubbing against your walls and pushing into you as far as possible. You noticed that Hizashi’s eyes were closed in bliss, giving soft moans as if this was bringing him just as much pleasure. Whatever the case, the sight of him enjoying himself so much was something you’ll be seeing in your erotic dreams for weeks, maybe months to come. You lost control of the sounds leaving your body as the pleasing heat grew, tongue thrusting in and out of your body, his nose pressing against your neglected clit. The thorough tongue-fucking was bringing you so close to the edge. Hizashi released a long and deep moan and…you don’t even understand what happened next. The sound sent the mother of all vibrations bouncing throughout your insides, forcing you into a violent convulsion of an orgasm. You didn’t hear your own scream, the music, or see Hizashi’s amazed expression when you tightened your legs around his head in a vice-like grip. Everything was suddenly muted save for the tremors wracking your entire being without mercy, pleasure pouring over you so strongly that it was frightening. Your surroundings slowly took shape again as you came down from your high, panting and waiting for your limbs to become responsive again. A hand brushed stray hairs away from your face, and you saw a very pleased hero laying beside you. “You alright, baby? You know where you are?” He asked jokingly. “Yeah,” you breathed. “How many fingers am I holding up?” “Shut up.” You swung your weak arm and smacked him in the chest. “What the hell did you do to me?” “Sometimes I use my quirk to add a little kick,” he explained while rolling onto his side, giving your damp face a quick peck. “All it takes is a bass boost to soak the dancefloor, am I right? Though maybe that was too much. I didn’t know whether to be turned on or scared with the way you were spazzing out. Hope your neighbors didn’t think you were being murdered.” You shrunk into yourself. “Oh. Sorry,” you mumbled. You watched his hand casually explore your sensitive skin, catching a glimpse of the bulge in his pants that was more prominent than ever. “Your…” You gestured to his groin. He looked down at his stiff predicament and huffed. “Ah, yeah. It’s kinda been killin’ me. You good to keep going, babe?” How could you possibly say no after the ride he’s given you? “Yes, of course.” You moved to get up, but he gently pushes down on you. “Stay right here. I just need a minute.” The bed shifts with the loss of his weight and you watch him grab his discarded coat, fishing for something in its pockets and mumbling about something that he always keeps around, until you hear a little “a-ha” as he triumphantly holds up a condom. “Safety first~,” he says in a sing-song voice. Wow, he’s a prepared guy. Disobeying his orders, you raised yourself to sit upright. “Can I do the honors?” You asked. Honestly, you were just curious to see what he had in store for you down there. Hizashi looked surprised but pleased. “Be my guest!” he said excitedly, removing the wrapper while approaching you. The tent in his pants just sat there in front of you, begging to finally be released. “So, do you want me to finish my little show, or do you want to be the one to take’em off?” He watched your face intently as he thumbed at the band of his pants. You gulped loudly. He clearly wanted this night to be all about you, but he deserved some attention. “I’ll do it.” You whispered, taking a delicate hold of his pants to pull them down and revealing an intricately designed pair of boxers. Colorful urban-style shapes and characters covered the underwear, art that you would expect to see on the city’s walls. Any other time, you would take a moment to appreciate the impressive work, but you had a horny man to take care of. With a shaky tug, his final clothing was removed and the freed erection sprang out and smacked you in the face. The horrified ‘eep!’ and the utterly offended look you were giving his cock had Hizashi cracking up. “Shit, I’m sorry, babe!” He choked between breaths. “I guess I should have given you a heads up!” You were too embarrassed to even respond or look him in the eye. “Hey now, I promise he won’t hurt you again.” He gave you a pat on a head like a grumpy child and held out the condom to you. You silently took it and observed his manhood with a cautious look, as if it would somehow lash out and strike you again. He was pretty long; while his girth didn’t look too intimidating, you doubt that he can fit all of his length into you. It twitched when your fingers wrapped around it, rubbing up and down the soft yet firm organ and earning some sharp breaths from Hizashi. You finally attempted working with the music, stroking to match the same slow tempo. You took the lubricated protection and placed it over his swollen head, your other hand keeping up your rhythmic pumping as you pulled it down, stroking every uncovered inch until he was fully sheathed. “Fuck, girl. That was sexy,” Hizashi had watched your performance with lustful wonder. “You really don’t give yourself enough credit.” The praise excited you in more ways than one. His hands were on your shoulders and pushing you back down with him climbing on top, returning you both to your earlier positions. One hand reached between your legs and slipped a finger between your folds, dipping inside to sample your wetness. “Are you ready for me, baby?” His voice returned to that low raspy tone that had you throbbing for him all over again. Your nodding was so frantic that you made him laugh at your eagerness—your want has overpowered your doubts. He takes hold of himself and places the tip right at your entrance, your heart racing in anticipation to be filled. A sudden kiss distracts you. It was the deepest kiss he’s given you, lips practically holding yours prisoner while his tongue curled around yours. Breathy moans left both of your mouths. You were being effectively distracted until you felt the sharp burn of being stretched, your arms wrapping tightly around his neck while he pushed inside as slowly as he could. He drank up your whimpers and you consumed his growls of restraint. Every inch felt like it went on forever, hot and pulsing and overwhelming, yet your greedy pussy clamped down and sucked him in until you were completely filled. Hizashi stayed there, finally detaching his lips so that he could study your face. Those green eyes that enchanted you at the cafe for their warmth and kindness were now glazed over with something raw and insatiable. Such a look made you tighten around him, savoring the groan he gave in response. Your legs wrapped around his waist as the signal to start moving, and he complied with a slow and shallow pace. The friction was already creating another burning knot in your core. The other time someone was inside you like this…there was pleasure then as well, but it was nothing compared to this. Nothing compared to a partner who knew how to properly prepare your body and keep your mind at ease. Hizashi’s hair was draped all around you, creating a romantic enclosure of just him and you, everything else in the room feeling so far away. His thrusts were getting stronger, your heat and tightness making it too difficult for him to keep things slow. You didn’t protest and took every electrifying stroke with a helpless cry. Even with all of the sounds you were making, you dare say that the man above you was being even louder. “Ah…fuck…oh, baby you feel so fucking good. Oh yeah, fucking squeeze me just like that,” his language also became a lot more colorful, apparently. Concerning volume aside, his words only added to your pleasure. Your heels dug into him, pushing him deeper inside and brushing against that spongy bundle of nerves that had you writhing. “Shit, thanks sweetheart. Been lookin’ for that spot.” He pants with a mischievous smile across his sweaty face. With a particularly hard slam that makes you see white, he slows down and starts a deep grind. “Ah! Hizashi!” You weren’t prepared for such powerful stimulation, his dick hitting your sweet spot while his pelvis rolls against your clit. He elevates himself for a better angle, forcing you to disentangle from his neck and instead fumble desperately at his arms. The hot tension was tightening at an alarming rate with the pleasure he was giving to both of your most sensitive spots. Your gaze constantly switched between Hizashi biting his lip in a sexy focused expression to his contracting muscles as his hips press and rub against every inch of your cunt. Your nerves could only handle the sensual onslaught for so long—it didn’t take long before they were all set ablaze and reduced you into a trembling mess with your back arched and mouth hanging open in a silent scream. Sure, it wasn’t a heart-stopping climax like the one he gave you with his mouth, but the simultaneous spasms of your clit and innermost walls was its own amazing experience that had you melting into a blissful puddle. “Mmm, that’s it. That’s a good girl,” Hizashi groaned in approval. Your orgasm was still rippling through you when he buried his face into the crook of your neck and returned to his rutting, now at a much faster pace. Tears pricked at your eyes from the overstimulation. Your own choked sobs were smothered by the most intense moans you’ve ever heard sounding right in your ear. “You’re so amazing, baby…so damn beautiful.” How the fuck did he sound so sweet even when he’s on the verge of nutting? This hero has given you more than he even realized. He’s given you his company and joy every Friday, he’s given you kind words at your job, and now here he was giving all of himself to you. The emotions, the hypersensitivity, the closeness, it was all too much for you.

You came a third time, the sensation toeing the line between pain and pleasure as you clung to him tightly. He gave several more thrusts before reaching his own peak with a howl that might encourage a file complaint or two. You just held him, feeling every shiver run down his limbs and every shaky breath expelled from his powerful lungs. Both of you rested in each other’s embrace. If only things could just stay this way; Hizashi never failed to make you feel so good, in more ways than you even dreamed of. “Woah woah, you alright?” Said man’s panicked voice startled you. Before you could ask what he was talking about, you felt the moisture running down your cheeks. When did you start crying? “What’s the matter?” He tried again, his troubled eyes breaking your heart. ‘It’s nothing,’  that’s what you wanted to say, but your throat felt constricted as more tears fell. Hizashi didn’t need to hear you—he simply pulled you up into a proper hug, saying nothing as you cried in confused frustration. The music had stopped at some point during the sex, the only sound present now was your soft weeping. You let the soft rubs along your back soothe you, his other hand cradling your head. The tenderness of it all just made you want to cry more, but you held back and calmed yourself down and spoke. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” “Nothin’ to be sorry about, listener,” he returned to using that term, making this feel like another one of your friendly night talks. “It gets pretty intense sometimes.” He pulled you into a kiss, this one much lazier than the others. This was it. The kissing. It was too sweet, too sincere, the warmth of it blossomed something inside your chest that felt too earnest to be simple lust. Was he aware of what he was doing to you? Were you just overthinking this? Weren’t one-night stands supposed to have boundaries? Hizashi pulled out of you, leaving behind a sad emptiness that wanted him back immediately. He rose to his feet and headed to your bathroom, most likely to dispose of the condom. You heard his voice sound out of the room. “I’ve got little angels and devils to teach tomorrow, so I probably shouldn’t stay for long.”

Your heart felt like lead. “Okay,” you muttered. There really was nothing more to this. He was putting his boxers back on when he continued. “But…if it’s not too much to ask, maybe I can come by again?” What? Was he messing with you? “You’re serious?” You didn’t mean to sound so disbelieving, but your emotions were such a mess right now and you won’t appreciate having them toyed with. His pants were pulled up next. “One hundred percent serious!” He exclaimed with, dammit, that smile that lit up your entire being. “Maybe I’ll visit the cafe some more too. You were right about that croissant!” He returned to your side on the bed, wrapping an arm around your waist. “What I’m saying is, I think I like my favorite lady listener more than I thought.” Your heart was freed from its petrified state and swelled. Your arms swung around him before you could even stop yourself. “Hizashi…that’s so great but…you’re such a busy pro hero…I’m just a…how will this work?” You were rambling into his chest. “Easy girl, it’s nothing complicated. I’ll visit you whenever I have the time, alright? Ready to give you some support and…attention.” There’s that silly eyebrow wiggle again, making you laugh. You just kept on cuddling him, enjoying his presence for as long as you could tonight. A few minutes passed when you felt him shrug and break the silence. “Ah, what the hell.” He took hold of you and fell back onto the mattress with you now laying against him. “I guess I can stay for the night. I’ll just have to deal with waking up extra early tomorrow.” You snuggled into him and smiled. “Thank you,” you whispered. It’s unclear what kind of relationship you just formed with Hizashi; maybe this was only something temporary. All you knew is that you had him by your side, and you were going to cherish every minute of it and waste nothing. You’ll never waste a second of your life again.

[mithrilhearts]

For the commentary thing! That reunion scene at the end of your latest chapter of May Your Forge Burn Bright 💖 I'm still living for that

May Your Forge Burn Bright - Chapter 9 The Reunion, you got it!

Commentary & scene under the cut - spoilers ahead

It was easier to walk with the wind than against it, but regardless of how fast Bilbo’s feet carried him, he was no match for a thunderstorm. Between the bone-shaking rumbles overhead and the blinding rain, it would be a miracle to make it halfway back to Ered Luin without crumbling or being swept away by the wind itself.

Wiping his sleeve against his eyes to try and get some of the water out of them, Bilbo wasn’t sure whether it was rainwater or tears that he was swiping away, but he certainly looked like a picture of perfect misery, and felt like one too! Soaked to the bone, stuck in a terrifying situation with no shelter, but there was a determined streak about him. Regardless of what he was putting up with now, he had all intentions to fix things with Thorin. If that meant they never completed their hillside conversation, then so be it. So long as the dwarf was in his life, then that was what mattered.

Another strike of lightning, that was far too close, hit one of the trees overhead, causing the tree to split down the trunk and for a good chunk of branches to start falling in Bilbo’s general direction. Not that he could hear or see it thanks to the sounds of the storm.

With his eyes screwed closed so tightly and keeping a sleeve over his face to protect himself from the rain, Bilbo didn’t see the oncoming form that got a firm grip on the front of his waistcoat and yanked him forward several paces and out of the way with a mighty yelp. It almost felt as if a wild animal had gotten a hold of him and Bilbo immediately tried to scramble, but the loud sound of part of a tree hitting the ground behind him had him prying open his eyes. Not to mention, he had been enveloped into a grip he was only vaguely familiar with.

Me, thinking to myself, how can I really make Bilbo M I S E R A B L E? Throw him into a storm, because we all know by now that he hates the damn things. This is probably his worst nightmare. YES, GOOD. I know, I know, I'm a monster. I've been told this a time or two.

Me, who doesn't watch romantic movies or read romance novels, etc. What's the best way to set up a reunion? See above. Put Bilbo in a terrifying situation and let him get saved at the last second. First I was thinking of like, maybe a wolf or orc attack, but if you've read Dragonhearted, Thorin already got to save Bilbo from wargs.

This whole damn scene was made up on the fly and I'm insanely proud of it. Moving on.

Hazel eyes tried to fight against the rain, but the water stopped for just a moment as a coat was being held over his head to block some of the weather, and it allowed Bilbo to look at what could have been his end. Being crushed under the force of falling branches...and yet…? “Thorin!” How? Why? Did Bilbo actually get knocked around so hard that he was stuck in a dream?

No, dreams didn’t feel that warm.

“You’re a foolish creature and should know better than to storm off by yourself!” Thorin scolded over the howling of the wind, a scowl to his face as he looked just as Bilbo remembered whenever these moods struck the dwarf. Unpleasant. “You could have been killed, I promised to keep you safe…” And Thorin would not let that promise fall through.

“You came for me…” Bilbo murmured, though unable to be heard over the sounds of rain and wind. Thorin’s coat might have acted as a decent enough shield against the actual rainwater, but it was nothing for the sounds. “I was on my way back! I needed to apologize for what I said, and I’m not sure how else I can express that. From the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry-”

“Maralmizu, Bilbo."

Bilbo’s ears twitched before dropping. Now was not the time for secrecy, they could play that game once they were out of this vicious weather. Not to mention, Bilbo had been trying to give a heartfelt apology. An annoyed huff came from the hobbit as he continued to stare at Thorin, caring less and less about thunder and lightning as the seconds ticked by. “What does that even mean, Thorin?” Though asking a dwarf to reveal their secrets was like trying to move a mountain with your bare hands.

“I love you,” Thorin was far gentler this time than the scolding he had started with, staring at Bilbo’s wide hazel eyes. “And I have for some time now and just...too afraid to say it. Too afraid that being me might scare you off, and it did...but I-”

“Oh, you really are a stupid dwarf!” That bold Tookish behavior was finding its way to the surface once more, no longer hiding in fear from a few unsavory blokes from Bree. Wrapping his hands around both of Thorin’s braids and standing on his toes, it didn’t take much guidance from Bilbo’s small tug for their lips to meet with eyes fluttering closed.

It felt like a missing piece had finally been slotted into place.

FINALLY. I'm so glad this hurdle has been addressed. Even I was getting like...okay boys, it's time to be honest here, have that talk, give the ol' smoochy smooch and let's move on! I wanted it to be something I hadn't read before, and maybe it's a little cliche with hollywood but hey, rain kisses are cute, aren't they?! Let them kiss - THORIN USING HIS WORDS. Look, I don't wanna sound cocky or complacent, but this scene had even me melting into a puddle of goo.

It's always nice when the writer loves their work, right???

I needed a memorable scene. Bilbo's afraid of storms, his life gets saved, and rain kiss. All perfect things for a perfect scene and it is one of my finer moments. Sometimes all it takes is a terrifying push to get someone to take that step. We got the kiss that I denied everyone in a few chapters previously, though let's be real, the fireflies would have been much better than lightning and rain water.

All that mutual pining and worrying about baggage and burdens was for nothing. It was irrelevant and could be tossed down the mountainside. Thorin wasn’t sure when the last time he had felt so light was. Was this what tossing your cares aside felt like?

Still keeping one arm up with the side of his coat as a shield from a good portion of the rain, Thorin’s other hand carefully cupped just below Bilbo’s jaw, rubbing a thumb across the small and barely visible cleft of that smooth chin.

Bilbo was the first to pull back, and found his cheeks aflame with Thorin inching forward as if to chase those lips before their eyes locked again. “As romantic as a kiss in the rain is…can we please go home?”

Was it too sappy to declare that a location didn’t make a home, but a person did?

“You’re my home,” Apparently not sappy enough for Thorin to spill the words. Funny how one small gesture removed an entire emotional blockade that he had been trying to keep up all this time.

Bilbo hummed slightly in delight at the words, giving a firm nod in agreement. “You’re my home too.” Dropping back to his normal height instead of being raised on his toes, Bilbo moved to lace his hand with Thorin’s free one. “Let’s get out of this storm then. I’d rather not catch a cold in all of this.”

Thorin couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at the idea of being sick. “Alright, but only because I’m not sure how susceptible hobbits are to colds. We dwarves are made of sterner stuff.”

Somehow, Bilbo didn’t quite believe that.

THE THEME OF THE STORY HAS HIT.

Home is where the heart is - it's one of my favorite themes to follow, or messages to send. Home isn't a place, it's the people you surround yourself with that make you the happiest. Whether that's family, a significant other, your best friends, that's what makes home. For these two, home has never been 'The Shire' or 'Ered Luin' or whatever places they've rested their head. I'm glad they both finally see that, and it's a message I like to put in a fair amount of my pieces, alongside some others.

And of course, another consistency that I love bringing into my pieces, Made of Sterner Stuff - based off of a one shot I did early on when posting my fics. Sick Thorin? Yes please. Plus, it's very fun to make fun of as he most certainly is not made of sterner stuff. Bilbo being the realistic one though and urging them to get out of the storm even thought it's "romantic and rainy"? That would be me.

This is nice and all, but...how about no?

As I said before, I wanted a scene you could picture, and one that would be remembered. Something that lived up to the epic expectations of Bagginshield and them finally spitting out the words we've been cheering them on to say. It might not be FIREFLIES and NORTHERN LIGHTS, but I sure as heck and happy with it and enjoy rereading it.

[theyreonlynoodlesmike]

Could you write about the boys (separately) reading with S/O. Do they prefer reading or being read to? What is their go to book? What is their favourite part of that book? Do they prefer books from their pasts or more modern books? If they don't like reading, do they bother S/O while they're reading? How?

OH I LOVE THIS ASK. Thank you so much for asking this and I hope you enjoy

The Lost Boys x Reading with their S/O

David

This boy isn’t the biggest reader of the four, but he still reads a decent amount. The boys had seen the development of the “moving picture”, but silent movies were still the only movies available until the 1920s. So, reading was still a big part of their early lives, even when things started to go on screen

David prefers to read, but he doesn’t mind being read to. He just likes to have control, and he likes to dictate how fast you end up going through the book. This way, he also gets to choose when you two stop, and, more often than not, he’ll read you a book that he’s already read. Books that he hasn’t read he’ll read by himself, and he’ll offer to read them to you if he liked them. He likes to have you lay your head on his chest as he reads to you, and he’ll run his fingers through your hair as his eyes scan the page. He knows he has a nice voice, and he definitely uses it to his advantage during these times. If you’re the one that’s reading, he’ll only half-listen. He’ll have you lay against his chest as you hold the book in front of you, sitting up against the cave wall. He’d rather use this time to run his fingers through your hair and kiss your neck, only purposely distracting you just a little bit.

David likes horror books, almost as much as he likes horror movies. His go-to book is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, only because he’s read it so many times. He likes how descriptive it is, and how the monster is portrayed in the book (He hated the movie so much he almost wanted to burn down the theater he saw it in). He relates far too much to the monsters disdain for his creator, and draws far too many parallels between Frankenstein and his monster with his relationship with Max. His favorite part is when the monster tells of how he’s lived before he confronted Frankenstein, and it reminds him of the life he had before Max had found him and his boys. 

The only way he cannot relate to Frankenstein’s monster is with the loneliness the monster feels. David has always had his brothers, and, now, you. Though, he sees you as similar to the mate that Frankenstein’s monster had always dreamed of, and he smiles when he tells you that once after reading the book to you. You’d given his chest a small hit, reminding him that both the monster and his desired mate were supposed to be hideous. He’d smirked, and pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “We’re not exactly gorgeous when we wear our true faces, sweetheart.” He’d reminded you, and you’d rolled your eyes.

David likes gothic horror, but he’s a bit of a slut for Stephen King. King started releasing his books in the seventies, and David was just happy that more horror books were being written. He hadn’t expected to become such a fan, and he has a small collection of both his books and the movie adaptations. Though, he has varying opinions on all of them

Dwayne

This boy READS. He’s the most well-read of the boys, and, even as movies became more popular over the last century, he still reads more than anything. He’s had to see and sit through various movies because of the other boys, but Dwayne genuine prefers books. He’d rather spend two hours at the cave in his imagination as he scans the pages of whatever book he nabbed from the library than go to whatever movie the others picked. Movies are cool, but he didn’t really start paying attention to them until they were in color

Dwayne has so many books it’s a little insane. They’re stacked around the cave, and the other boys, if they want to read, never really have to go to the library or a store to find a new book to read. All they have to do is pick one from Dwayne’s stacks, and promise that it’ll be returned to it’s proper place. Dwayne has started writing his name inside his copies so none of the other boys can claim that it was actually theirs. He frowns whenever he sees a dog-ear or a ripped page, and he always gives whoever was responsible a death glare

Dwayne has spent so much time reading to himself that he practically melts when you offer to read to him. He’s not much of a talker, so he’s far too willing to cuddle with you on the couch and let you read your latest book to him. After that, he definitely prefers to have you read to him. Sure, he’ll read to you from time to time. Usually, when it’s late at night and you’re far too tired to focus on the pages. But, he’d much rather hear your voice make the authors work come to life. It’s a bit of a coin toss as to who will be read to, because you like to hear his voice as much as he likes to hear yours. Eventually, the two of you decide to take turns

His go-to book is a book that infuriates him. It’s The Trial by Franz Kafka, and the first time he read it he laid face down for nearly an hour. The others had asked him if he was okay, and he’d replied by giving them finger-guns. He proceeded to read the book over and over, trying to make sense of it because there had to be something he was missing. Something that explained the absurdness of the plot. His favorite part is the parable the priest gives him, and he once told it to Paul just to make him as confused as he had been the first time he read it. When you ask him for a book suggestion, he offers that one. A week later you throw your copy at him and yell at him for suggesting it. He laughs and catches it, as he knows exactly what you’re feeling. It’s a book he always suggests, mainly because, as far as he’s concerned, everyone should suffer reading it just as he had. The two of you will rant about it for hours

Dwayne will read anything. He’s not necessarily picky, and he’s read pretty much whatever book he could get his hands on. He can’t necessarily get a library card, so a lot of the books he has have to be found some other way. He doesn’t like to have to steal from the library, and prefers to either buy or steal a book from a bookstore on the boardwalk

Paul

Paul doesn’t read

The boy can’t sit still long enough to actually get into a book, and it wasn’t like movies weren’t already a thing. He quickly had a preference for them instead, though he finds it hard to sit through movies as they become longer and longer. Movies, specifically comedies, only used to be two reels long, which ran for about twenty minutes tops. As movies started hitting the hour and two hour marks, the other boys became accustomed to how much Paul would interrupt them

He will only tolerate books if you read them to him, but even then his attention isn’t guaranteed. He’ll spend the entire time kissing your neck and face, and he’ll try to tug any clothes that you’re wearing off your frame. Eventually, he’ll settle in bed next to you. It may take awhile, but Paul will finally lay down with his head on your chest and close his eyes as he listens to your voice. He’ll even lay still if you pet his hair, and he’ll nuzzle your chest if you begin scratching one of his sweet spots. Sometimes he’ll ask questions or make comments, just like he would if it was a movie. You’ll have to pause to answer them or respond, and there’s a chance he might use the distraction to start a conversation with you. If you’re really determined to keep on reading, he’ll sigh and roll his eyes as he lays his head back on your chest. There have been a few times where he’s fallen asleep, but he tells you it was purely out of boredom. Not because he was actually relaxed or something

Even if you’re reading by yourself, he stills spends a good chunk of time trying to get you to pay attention to him instead. Whether that’s just to talk to you or to get into your pants. He’ll walk around the cave, blasting his music and smoking a joint. When you give him a small glare for the loudness of the music, he’ll return his own bright smile. He’ll flop onto your bed in your nest, shaking the mattress. He’ll poke you and attempt to tickle you, before crawling up to kiss your cheek and neck. Then, before you can swat him away, he’ll flip to lay on his back and stare at you like a playful tomcat

If you tell him to stop, he’ll whine. “It’s not my fault!” He’ll sit up and prop his head up by his elbow. “C’mon, we’re already laying in bed. Why don’t we do something a little bit more...stimulating?” He’ll say with a suggestive lift of his eyebrows. He was using ‘big words’ on purpose, since he was convinced that since you like books that you must think those were sexy or something. You’ll roll your eyes, but he’s not nearly as willing to lay down and relax if you’re the only one hearing the story. He’ll rip the book right out of your hand, ignore your cry of “Hey!”, and will plant his lips on yours. There, that’s much more like it.

He genuinely doesn’t understand your interest in them, but he’ll support it anyways. He’ll knick books from bookstores for you and give them to you as gifts. He smiles whenever you thank him/like whatever he chose, and then tap his cheek for a ‘thank you’ kiss

Marko

Marko doesn’t read that much, but he’s not nearly as bad as Paul. He reads a few short novels here or there, but he was ecstatic when comics became a thing in 1933. He was quick to ditch novels in favor of whatever publication company had come up with that month. By the eighties, he has a collection that any comic book junkie would kill for, and even own a few ‘rare’ copies. He doesn’t let Paul, or either of the others, near them and god forbid the inclemate weather coming inside the cave ruins them

Because of his preference of comic books, neither of you can really read to eachother. Instead, you two will lay on the bed inside your nest, each with your own individual comic to page through. Marko chews on his thumb the entire time that he reads, and the two of you will pause to make comments about whatever you’re reading. Most of your reading material are comics that he’s lent you, and he only lets you touch them because he loves you. He swears that you’re the only one allowed to look through them, but he doesn’t go far enough as letting you take them with you

Due to his preference, he prefers new over old. He wholly believes that comic books have gotten better over time. With everything from the art style, the characters, and just the different writers that have come up over the years. He still reminisces about the golden and silver age, but modern is where it’s at! Of course, the bronze age only just ended in 1984

His favorite comic book series is Watchmen by Alan Moore. He watched the superhero genre grow and develop, so he loved when the writers decided to point out how flawed some of the caped crusaders could be. While also creating some pretty awesome ones of their own. He understands that they’re all caricatures of what’s wrong in society/people, and he lives for the symbolism. The characters, the plot, the dialogue? Marko loved everything about it, especially the ending. The giant squid monster? Epic. Marko geeked when it was revealed who the real villain was, and he wouldn’t stop ranting about it for hours

He’s really upset that the Frog brothers just happen to run the best comic book store on the boardwalk, and he has to be dragged away from the store each night. He still remembers when their parents ran it instead, and he’s been pissed about the “new management” ever since the kids were old enough to sweep floors and run the cash register. Marko may or may not be the reason they were tipped off about vampires, but he swears that it was an accident. He also swore that it wasn’t like they had any proof, so they didn’t need to kill the teens immediately (he just didn’t want the store to get shut down)

If you ever want to get him to read a regular novel, you’re gonna have to read it to him. He’ll take a page out of Pauls book and lay his head on your chest as you read, closing his eyes as he listens to your voice. He’ll actually keep his hands to himself, and will focus on just holding you tightly to him instead. He treasures these moments, especially because he just gets to listen to you for over an hour. When you decide to stop for the night, Marko will whine and beg you to keep going. You’ll giggle and promise to pick it up tomorrow, and he’ll sigh. He can be won over with kisses, and the two of you can have some regular cuddle time instead

[beanfic]

I was doing fine...

Pairing: Josh Dun x reader

Word Count: 1.3k

Warnings: Angst

Summary: You were doing fine, you truly were, that was until he showed up on your front porch

Author’s note: I feel like I haven’t written angst angst in a while, so I did this? I hope you enjoy it! Feedback is appreciated :)

“What are you doing here, Josh?” You say sternly, your hands resting on your hips. Your eyebrows furrow as you glare at the boy standing on your front doorstep. The rain patters behind him, splashing upon his ankles. His curly brown hair lays in front of his eyes from the weight of the water. His eyes carry guilt.

“I need to talk to you, Y/N, please let me inside.” He wipes his forehead with his sweatshirt sleeve. Half of your body is hiding behind of the door as you peek around. 

“I don’t know if that is the best,” you mumble, closing the door a little bit more. Josh sighs as he leans over and peers into the crack between the door and the frame. His brows eyes connect with yours, and suddenly you’re drawn in once again. 

“Please.” His voice was barely audible, but you still can hear it. You nod softly and pull the door open, allowing room for Josh to enter. Your eyes are still locked with his. You are not able to look away from his gaze. You drop your hands from the door and slowly takes a step back into the entryway. Josh shuts the door softly behind him. 

“Do you want to go to sit?” You eventually are able to peel your eyes away from his and glance over at the couch in your cozy living room. The sight of the couch brought back the memory of your first kiss that you shared with Josh. It was two years ago, and it was raining, just like tonight. He had invited you to go to the drive in to see one of the newest horror movies that had just been released, but the weather had other plans. Making the term rain check become literal, you two decided on heading back to your place to spend the rest of the night. He showed up with pizza and cookie dough, and make you laugh effortlessly the entire time. You remember how he had asked you to dance to a song that was playing on the record player, and your arms were wrapped around his neck. He had asked to kiss you, making sure you were comfortable with that, and it was one of the best ‘first’ kisses you had ever had.

“Y/N?” Josh’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts. You see him already sitting down on the couch, arms resting on his knees, and he was fiddling with the hem on his sleeve. “Are you going to come sit down?”

“Yeah.” You brush your hair out of your face and slowly step towards the couch. Not wanting to sit too close to Josh, you sit as far away as possible. The room is quiet, except for the raindrops prickling on the windows and the soft breaths coming from Josh. 

“I need to tell you I’m sorry. I know I have told you this many times, but we ended our relationship on not so good terms and I don’t want it to be like that,” he begins to speak. The words ‘ended our relationship’ ring in your ears, and your eyes glaze over as reality hits you like a brick. About a week ago, Josh had confessed that the relationship was taking up too much of his time, and it was not healthy for him to continue being in a relationship at the moment. No matter how many times he reminded you that it wasn’t your fault and that it was just timing of life, you didn’t believe him. You tried your hardest to forget about the breakup the past week by keeping yourself busy with picking up extra shifts at work and working on your latest hobby project.

“Ended,” you murmur. The word feels foreign on your lips. 

“Y/N, I know how hard it must have been for you, and I truly am sorry for breaking your hard. This past week must have been-”

“I was fine,” you cut him off. You glance over at him and notice that his eyes are wet with tears.

“What?” 

“I said I was fine. I was doing perfectly fine this past week. Actually, I have been fine until you showed up.” The familiar knot begins to form in your throat, warning you that tears are about to come. You swallow hard and look down at the ground. 

“I should have known, you are the strongest person I have ever met.”  His words are filled with honesty, and you have to shut your eyes hard to keep yourself from crying. You can tell he notices you are about to cry because he shifts in his seat so his knees are facing you. You feel his hand rest on your knee, rubbing small circles into your skin. 

“It’s not like I don’t want to see you, Josh. I’m just trying my hardest to understand and be respectful of you. Of course, I’m broken. I love you and it’s killing me inside that we can’t be together.” 

“I love you too, Y/N, and that is why I want the best for you, you know that. I’m touring so much and it’s not fair for you or me. The time,”

“Is just not right,” you finish the sentence for him. It is not the first time you have hard that come from his mouth. “I understand, Josh. I just need to be okay with it. I just don’t think I can wait around for you.”

“I’m not asking for you to wait around for me, Y/N. I want you to be happy, and that means living life the way you want and to the fullest capacity. Please promise me that you will go and live.”

You sigh and wipe your eyes, “Yes, Josh, I promise I will go and live my life. I’ll always be here if you need something though, okay? I’ll always love you, even if it just platonic.”

“I love you too, Y/N. I’m really sorry, again.”

“Please no more apologies,” you let out a small laugh. “It really is only making this harder. I mean it that I was doing fine before you showed up.”

“Should I leave?” Josh asks.

“I think it would be easier for both of us if you leave, I mean it seems like we are on good terms, right?” 

Josh nods, “Yeah, I agree.” He stands up from the couch, and once you meet height with him he pulls you in for a hug. You wrap your arms around his torso and take in his familiar scent. 

“I’m going to miss you, Joshua,” you mumble into his chest. 

“I’ll miss you too, Y/N.” He pulls away from you but stops with his left hand on your shoulder. His brown eyes are looking into yours, and you shyly smile up at him. You watch him back up towards the door, opening it and stepping outside. You follow, resting your hand on the doorframe. Josh stopped right before taking the last step towards your driveway and looked over his shoulder. His eyebrows crumbled together as he softly smiled as if he was trying to bid farewell without words.

“Bye, Josh.” You continue to keep your strength and not cry as you watch him get into his car and drive away. You wish he said bye with words, but maybe it was best that his last words were that he will miss you, and not the reality of saying goodbye. 

You close the front door and rest your back against the wood. Taking a deep breath, you place your face into your hands and let out a scream. You weren’t sure why your body had chosen anger over sadness as the emotion to with his departure, but you didn’t fight it. It was surprisingly making it easier to accept the fact that Josh was gone, and you most likely were never going to see him again

[puckinghell]

A Million Different Ways | William Nylander

Summary: Saying the L-word is scary, but luckily, there are a million different ways to say I love you.  Words: 1737 Note: I’m writing to deal with my emotional distress over this playoff loss. 

There were a million different ways to say I love you, and Will was pretty sure he’d gone through them all.

Well, all but one; he hadn’t actually said the words “I love you” out loud. But he had a good reason for that. You were his best friend, and you weren’t interested in him.

But nothing was stopping him from saying I love you in every other way. Sometimes he even thought you were telling him the same thing. But surely that was just in his mind. He didn’t care, though. He would continue to tell you, until you inevitably got with some other guy, who could tell you those three little words. That was a day Will didn’t think he would ever be ready for.

1.

It had been a hard week and on Friday night, you wanted nothing more than to have a movie night with your best friend. You had these nights every Friday night Will wasn’t playing, and when he was, you’d move it to Thursday or Saturday night. You rarely missed a movie night, and you weren’t about to this time.

But boy, you were tired. School had been busy and work had been tough, and when you walked into Will’s apartment, you were too exhausted to even properly greet him, instead flopping down on his couch and instantly pulling a blanket over yourself.

“Good evening, Y/N. I’m great, thanks for asking, Y/N,” Kappy said sarcastically. He shot Will a look. “You’re gonna need the TV, aren’t you?” With a dramatic sigh, he unplugged his controller before Will had even answered.

“I would invite you to stay and watch the movie with us, but I’ve seen enough of your ugly mug for one day,” Will told him instead, then turned to you. “You look tired. Did you get enough sleep last night?”

You would’ve answered him, had it not been for the yawn that escaped your lips, and he simply giggled. “Clearly not. Are you hungry?” His eyes lit up. “We bought chocolate cake earlier today and I saved you the last piece.”

The thought of chocolate had your mouth watering. “If you bring me the cake I won’t question you about your choice to buy chocolate cake in the middle of the season,” you promised him.

Will sat down next to you on the couch, swinging his arm over the back of it.

“Well, then,” he said. “Why don’t you pick the movie?”

2.

“Why are you always late?” you whined when Will finally got into the car. He shot you a look, then pointed to his hair.

“It takes time to look this good,” he joked. You knew he was joking not only cause his laughter-filled voice, but also because his hair currently looked like a bird had tried to nest in it. Usually Will took some time to do his hair after practice, but this time, he’d clearly forgone it, instead opting to be with you as soon as possible.

You might’ve told him that if you missed even the beginning credits of the movie, you’d kill him. You’d wanted to see this movie since it was announced and when it turned out it would only just work out for Will to join you after practice, you’d offered to pick him up and drive straight to the cinema. 

He was wearing sweats and clearly hadn’t brushed his hair after the shower, but he still looked good. It was unfair, really. If you didn’t brush your hair, you looked homeless.

“You’re annoying,” you told him, putting the car into motion, and Will grinned at you.

“Get used to it. I plan on annoying you for the rest of my life.”

The rest of the car ride went as usual, when you two got together. Will yapped on and on about practice, you made fun of him a little, he teased you back, then quickly made sure you knew he didn’t mean it in a bad way. Suddenly, in the middle of one of his sentences, Will’s head shot up and his mouth shut.

“What?” you asked worriedly, trying to catch his eye while also paying attention to the road.

“The song!” he yelled out. “In practice they were playing a song, and it reminded me of you. It was a Carole King song.”

“You were listening to Carole King in practice?” you frowned, but he didn’t even seem to hear you.

Instead, he was manically scrolling through his phone, hooking it up to your car radio, and then, familiar tones filled your car.

As soon as you recognized it, you couldn’t help but smile.

“You’ve Got A Friend.”

He shot you a smug smile. “Cause I’ll be there whenever you need me.”

“Now that is a true friend.” Then you turned up the radio and you two sang along at the top of your lungs.

You couldn’t even really remember what movie you were going to see.

3.  

Will texting you was not an unusual thing, but Will texting you on 2am on a Tuesday was a bit odd. However, in these circumstances, you should’ve expected it.

You could’ve texted back but it was late and dark in your room and you were still half asleep, so instead, you called him.

“Will?” you mumbled. “Why did you text?”

“Oh.” His voice sounded muffled, and a bit scratchy. He didn’t sound sleepy, but he sounded tired. No, more than that. Exhausted. “Sorry, I didn’t think about the time.” He paused. “It’s just that you’re the one I text when I need to smile.”

Your heart broke at his words. “Oh, Willy, I know it sucks, but there’ll be another playoff series…”

“Not like this.” The words came out too forceful, too fast. You could tell they were ringing in his ears, had been ringing in his ears ever since that final buzzer went off in Boston. “This was all my fault. I should’ve performed better. They were counting on me.”

You’d known that’s what he was thinking. And you knew it hadn’t been his best series, but considering the circumstances, you thought he’d done fine. He’d missed half the season, played a position he didn’t usually play, played with linemates he’d never played with, played third line minutes… and his stats were still fine.

But that’s not what he saw. All he saw was a loss. Again.

“They were counting on all you guys,” you told him softly. “And that’s what happens in hockey, sometimes. They were counting on Tampa and Calgary too. But you know what? You did great, and no matter what, I’m proud of you.” You were quiet for a bit, but there was no response from Will. “How can I help, Willy?”

It was silent on the other end. Then, softly, his voice small: “Can you just take my mind off it? Talk to me about something else. Literally anything else.”

And so that’s what you did. You talked about your annoying professor and your friend, who got back together with her no-good ex-boyfriend. You talked about the weather and your plans for the weekend, which included going on a run, something you hated doing but forced yourself to do anyway. You talked about the latest news on the Kardashians. Anything to make him stop thinking. Anything to make him feel better.

Finally, around 3, Will’s voice came through the phone again. “Thank you for calling me this late.”

You smiled. “I’ll always be there for you, Will. You know that. That’s what best friends are for. ”

4.

Before you’d known Will, summer had been your favorite season. Now, it just meant you wouldn’t see your best friend for two months, and as you stood in the airport hall, surrounded by people, you already couldn’t help but feel incredibly alone.

And he wasn’t even gone yet.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he said, his eyes soft. It was hard on him, too, but at least he was going home to see his family.

“Not as much as me,” you told him, and when he shot you a look, you stubbornly crossed your arms. “You know damn well I go nuts without you in my life.”

“I’ll still be in your life, miss drama queen,” he giggled. “Just over the phone, for a little bit.” The smile faded. “You know you can always call me, right?”

You nodded. You knew he’d always be there, always just a phone call away, but it wasn’t the same, and he knew that too.

“Well, goodbye, then, I guess.” You didn’t wanna drag it on any longer, knew it would hurt no matter how long you stood in a crowded airport hall staring at him, trying to memorize the color blue of his eyes or the crinkles around them when he smiled. Every year, you tried to memorize his face, his voice, his smell… but every year, you could feel that memory drift away from you during summer.

“It’s not goodbye, it’s see you later.” Will opened his arms. “Hug me.”

He didn’t need to ask you twice; you jumped forward, throwing yourself into his arms and burying your face in his neck. His skin was warm against yours and you had to swallow away a lump from your throat.

Finally, it was time to let go, and when Will stepped back, there was a strange look on his face.

“I…” But he cut himself off, cut himself off before he could say the full three words.

Maybe one day. But not now.

“Text me when you get home,” he said instead.

“You’ll be in the air, what could you possibly do about anything?” You tried to tease him, but your voice didn’t quite reach the right tone.

He shrugged. “I just wanna know you’re safe.”

Your heart leaped and you forced it down, bit the inside of your cheek. “Okay,” you told him. “I will.”

He reached out, squeezed your hand. “Bye, Y/N.”

“Bye, Will.” With those words, you watched him as he walked through the gate. Then turned around and left for your car.

You didn’t see him turn around before he reached security. You didn’t see the movement of his lips, three little words whispered in the air, never to be heard by anyone but himself.

There were a million different ways to say I love you, and now, Will had truly gone through them all.

[ionlyreadfivebookslastweek]

Bless the Broken Road - 13

Upon landing, Jane and Spencer headed to the hospital to interview the latest victim, Valerie.

“We’re going to do something that’s called a cognitive interview. It helps you recall details better than you normally would,” Jane explained to the girl. Spencer remained in the doorway, giving the two of them space to talk. “Close your eyes.”

The girl obliged.

“It’s dark. You’re walking on campus. Where are you?”

“I’m walking back from the library to my dorm. It’s chilly.”

“What do you hear around you?” “Nothing. I have my headphones in. I’m listening to music.”

“Is there anyone around you?”

“No. It’s a ghost town... wait! There’s a man in a hood that passes by on another path running parallel to the one I’m on.”

“Can you see his face?”

“No. A minute later, someone grabs me from behind-” she gasped and her eyes flashed open.

“It’s alright. You’re safe. You did well.” Jane looked towards Spencer. He nodded and pulled out his phone, stepping out of the room to call Morgan, who had gone with Rossi to the place that Valerie reported she last remembered. ”Thank you for speaking with me. I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” Valerie snapped with a shake of her head.

“Not exactly, but I do have a bit of an idea,” Jane confessed to her as she stood to leave.

She met Spencer in the hallway and headed out.

Heightened campus security was put in place as the team headed to the hotel for the night.

Jane and Spencer shared a room.

In the middle of the night, Jane was woken up by a nightmare. Spencer had gone to the bathroom and re-entered the room shortly after she had sat up, his sudden appearance causing her to jump.

“Are you alright?” Spencer asked, concerned.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just had a nightmare,” she told him, avoiding his eyes.

He sat back down on the bed and reached out to touch her face, making her look him in the eyes.

“I’m OK,” she assured him, although she had flinched at his touch.

He let it go and they returned to bed.

~

The next morning, they found the body of another girl who had been raped.

“She probably regained consciousness too soon and was killed cause she saw who he was,” JJ guessed.

Jane became overwhelmed by anger at the situation and walked off, trying to clear her head.

Spencer found her sitting on a bench a ways away. He took a seat next to her and touched her leg in a supposed-to-be comforting way, but retracted it when he noticed her flinch at his touch. Gathering all of the clues from her recent behavior, he asked, “What happened to you?”

Her eyes went wide as she looked at him, although she wasn’t all that surprised he knew something was up. She looked away again, at the squirrels playing in the distance.

“You know my ex I told you about? The one that used me for my brains and cheated on me?” She looked back at him and he nodded. Her gaze fell away from him again. “Well, eventually, he wanted more than just my brains. I was so afraid of being alone again and having no one if I lost him, so I went along with it and did whatever he wanted. So I slept with him even though I didn’t want to until one day I was brave enough to resist. I tried to leave him but he wouldn’t let me go, so he, he raped me and then he broke up with me.”

She paused and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her sleeve.

“I was an outcast and alone at school again so I knew I couldn’t report it. It’d only isolate me more.”

Spencer looked at her, wishing he could somehow go back and keep this from happening to her so she wouldn’t have to deal with all of the hurt she’d gone through.

“That’s why I’ve been jumpy lately. Including at my birthday when things got more heated between us. It just triggered the memory of what happened.”

“Can I hold you?” he asked permission.

She smiled at the gesture and nodded, leaning into him as he wrapped an arm around her.

“I promise I would never hurt you or force you to do anything you aren’t ready for.”

“I know that.”

“We should get back to the case.”

Jane agreed, standing up and following him back to the rest of the team.

After another hour or so of trying to find the UNSUB, they were still unsure of how to do so.

“There might not be a way of finding this man, but we know his methods,” Morgan stated. “We could set up a trap for him. Have someone pose as a student and catch him in the act. We just need someone who looks young enough to pass as a student.”

Everyone turned and looked towards Jane.

Jane sighed and nodded. “Alright.”

“No, Jane. You don’t have to do this,” Spencer insisted.

She looked at him. “Yes, I do. It’s either I do this or he rapes and possibly kills another girl. I got this.”

That night, Jane started walking across campus as the others had. She was wearing earbuds just like Valerie, only they weren’t playing music. They were feeding her information from Morgan, who was watching her from a distance to make sure she would know exactly when the UNSUB was coming up behind her.

Jane continued walking along. A few minutes later, she heard Morgan in her ear telling her he was coming.

“He’ll be right behind you in 5...4...3...2...1.”

She felt the man reach to grab her and she shoved her elbow back into his stomach. She spun around and continued fighting him until she had him pinned to the ground where she could pull out her gun.

The others ran in to help her arrest the man. As the man was being escorted away by the local police, Spencer ran up to her and hugged her tightly.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” he breathed.

“Of course I am,” she assured him.

He pulled back and looked at her. “Let’s go home.”

~~~~~

It was mid-October. Jane and Spencer decided to enjoy the beautiful autumn weather by spending a Saturday in the park.

Jane sat against a tree while Spencer laid his head in her lap. As she read to him, she stroked his hair.

"Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days. The End,” she finished, closing Alice in Wonderland and setting it next to her.

“What do you want to do now?” Spencer asked, staring up at her.

“Well, it’s around 12:30. Do you want to go get lunch at Starbucks? That way we can get coffee too,” Jane suggested.

“Sounds great.”

You both stood and gathered your things before heading off.

While at Starbucks, they ate and sipped their pumpkin spice lattes at a window booth.

Jane stared out the window, watching the people walk by. Spencer stared at her. After a while, she looked and caught him staring.

“What?” she asked with a chuckle as his cheeks tinged red at being caught.

“You’re just so beautiful,” he smiled.

She smiled back and shook her head. “You’re crazy.”

“What do you want to do this afternoon?”

Jane’s eyes sparkled as an idea came to her. “I have an idea, but it’s a surprise.”

She stood and went to go throw her trash away before guiding Spencer out the door and back to the car.

“You have to close your eyes, otherwise you’ll figure it out before we get there,” Jane told him. He chuckled before obliging. “Now no peeking.”

Five minutes later, he asked, “Are we there yet?”

“Nope.”

“How much longer?”

“Not long. I’ll tell you when we get there.”

A few minutes later, Jane pulled into the place. It was an apple orchard/pumpkin patch place.

“Now?” he asked.

Jane laughed. “Yes. You can open your eyes.”

He opened his eyes and his mouth broke into a wide grin. “An apple orchard and a pumpkin patch?! Wow! This is going to be so much fun! You mean we’re going to get apples AND pumpkins?!”

“Mmhmm,” Jane giggled. “I figured tonight we can make caramel apples and apple crisp and carve pumpkins that we pick out!” she explained.

“Oh my god, I love you!”

Both of their eyes went wide and there was silence as they both realized what he had just said.

"I mean, I love this! This is great! We should go now!" he spoke fast, quickly getting out of the car.

Jane hurried to open her door and follow him. “Spencer!” she called. He shut his door and started walking so she rushed to catch up and step in front of him.

"Wait! Spencer!" Jane reached up and kissed him. When she pulled away, she said, "I love you too"

"You do?"

She laughed. “Of course!”

He pulled her in for another kiss.

The pair spent the afternoon pumpkin and apple picking, taking plenty home to bake and carve.

Once they were satisfied with their selections, they headed back to Spencer’s apartment. First, Jane made apple crisp while Spencer set up the table for carving. After Jane put the apple crisp into the oven, they were able to start carving pumpkins.

“Spence, I think you need to calm down a little,” Jane giggled as she watched him excitedly stab his first pumpkin. “I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

Once they both had cut the tops off of their first pumpkins, they began to take the insides out.

Spencer took a handful of pumpkin guts and threw it at her.

“Ahh!” she shrieked. “Spencerrr!” Jane grabbed guts from her own pumpkin and threw them back at him.

Soon they were in a full-fledged pumpkin gut fight, creating a huge mess. They stopped when the oven timer went off and Jane had to take out the apple crisp.

After that was set out to cool, they were able to finish carving without any more gut throwing.

They finished carving their pumpkins (two each) before taking turns showering and changing into comfy clothes.

“Wanna save the caramel apple making for another night and watch Halloween movies?” Jane asked.

“Sounds good to me. You can pick the movie,” he told her.

“Yay!” she cheered, running over to the stack of movies and selecting The Nightmare Before Christmas right away.

They settled in on the couch and began the film. Jane cuddled into Spencer and he took her hand, rubbing circles with his thumb on the back.

Jane smiled. “Remember when we first met? You wouldn't even shake my hand cause of your germophobic beliefs and now look at us,” she observed.

“The number of pathogens passed during a handshake is staggering. It’s actually-”

“Safer to kiss,” she finished the fact for him. She reached up and kissed him. “I love you,” she told him for the second time that day, enjoying how it felt to say it.

“I love you too.”

~~~

Monday morning, Reid and Addison rode up the elevator together. On the way up, Spencer leaned down and kissed her.

“We should probably try to be professional at work so this might be my last chance to do that for a while,” he explained with a grin.

“Well in that case...” Jane reached up and kissed him one more time.

The doors opened as they were still kissing. They broke apart upon hearing Garcia’s squeal of excitement.

“Oh my stars, my OTP is so cute!”

“Good morning, Garcia,” Jane laughed.

“Hey Jane, can you help me with something?” the blonde asked.

“Sure, what is it?”

"Follow me.”

Garcia began walking off and Jane obliged, hurrying to keep up. She sent a look behind her to Spencer, shrugging her shoulders.

They arrived at Garcia’s lair and she shut the door behind them.

“What do you need help with?” Jane asked again.

"I need you to help me get an update on my favorite couple,” Penelope grinned. “I need details.”

“Oh,” Jane hesitated. “I’m not sure Spencer wants all of the details of our personal lives to be shared.”

“Oh, I assure you I’m planning on interrogating him as well. Now, are you keeping Boy Wonder happy? Is he keeping you happy? Have you slept together yet? What did you do this weekend?”

Jane sighed and replied, “Yes, yes, no, and on Saturday we spent the morning reading in the park, the afternoon picking pumpkins and apples, and the evening carving those pumpkins and watching Halloween movies.”

Penelope peered at her. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

“We said ‘I love you’ for the first time, Pen,” Jane confessed.

Garcia squealed, causing Jane to cover her ears.

Before she could press for more information, JJ came into the room.

“Hey ladies, we have a case.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Bless The Broken Road Masterlist

~~~~~~~~~~

Tag List:

@cynbx @neon-deanmon @drw0301bieber @notsosmartbutcute

[fayewonglibrary]

Face To Faye (2001)

Louis Vuitton’s new Asian muse, Faye Wong, is Cantopop Queen, rising movie star and 24-seven mother all rolled into one. Just where does she find all that energy? Li Jie finds out during an exclusive interview in Hong Kong. Translation Serene Seow

MY STARS must have been shining. What was originally an impersonal fax interview with Faye Wong blossomed into an exclusive photo shoot and a rare 40-minute chat up-close-and-personal with the star, just a day before she was to make her way to Japan to promote her latest album. Straight from the horse’s mouth, there are concrete plans in the pipeline for Faye to star in a Japanese TV soap, a first for any non-native singer. It seems the Harajuku-Shinjuku-Hello-Kitty worshipers came to know about her existence through Wong Kar Wai’s highly acclaimed Chung King Express, resulting in, first, a movie fan club, then an influx of her music.

Meeting The Faye Lady It was a glorious Saturday afternoon when the Queen of Cantopop strode into the classy photo studio situated at Chai Wan in busy Hong Kong, clad casually in a camel-coloured jacket, jeans and retro sunglasses (looking even taller in person), where our crew awaited her. Still flushed from the cold weather outside, she promptly asked Singaporean-born, Hong Kong-based makeup artist, Zing, to commence on her makeup, and then hairstylist Ben Lee, to work on her hair. Making small talk in fast, fluent Cantonese, the trio quickly got down to the beauty business. The interview was supposed to have been over and done with during Faye’s hair and make up session, but her PR graciously agreed to give me more time with her after the photo session.

Music Is Her Life What began as her pursuit of higher education upon migrating with her family in 1989 from Beijing to Hong Kong, turned out to be a stepping stone into Hong Kong’s thriving music industry.

She accounts her success to that God-given voice and a natural awareness of different genres of music. Despite rumors of her being media-phobic, throughout the 11 years of her highly successful music career, Faye has always had the media on her side.

Her brand of alternative music stems from a brush with R&B, something that was totally new to a Chinese national like herself, owing to the fact she seldom had any dealings outside the Chinese city walls before then. The freshness of the sound caught her attention, so much so that it spurred her on to make a trip to the States to learn more about Western music. Upon returning, she got in touch with some underground musicians in Beijing. Their passion for music made her realize her folly in restricting herself to just performing. She began trying her hand at writing music. To date, Faye’s personal favorite is the album entitled Frustration, simply because, among all, this is the one that she was most involved in. She also likes the consistency of its stye of music.

“Inspiration comes from an accumulation of common things that might have slipped you by in your mundane routine. It’s something emotional, so it can’t be forced or nurtured. If I can’t get there, I can’t get there,” she shared. Having the discipline to adhere to a fixed timetable helps, but at the end of the day, inspiration is not something at her beck and call, not even for a demi-godess of the music world.

In the recording studio, it is common practice to turn off most of the lights, leaving just enough to enable the artiste to glance at the lyrics. How she does that through her signature tinted sunglasses is anyone’s guess. And the reason, “to calm down so nothing can distract me.” Still on music, Faye is already working on her next album. She’ll be collaborating with Singaporeans whom she has worked with before. The album is due out in Fall.

Fashion Front Faye belongs to that special celebrity camp that does not, will not, follow fashion blindly. Her only indulgence - the mere flipping through of fashion magazines such as ours, and that’s on a rare occasion. She volunteers to not being brand-conscious, though in reel life she gets paid to deck out in designer couture, as can be seen on the cover of her previous album. In real-life, however, Faye favours fuss-free yet stylish apparel from the racks and trunks of Louis Vuitton, but the clothes have to have as few details as possible.

Fitness Fancy Too many people who don’t’ know the real Faye are quick to label her “frail” and “sickly”. The svelte Faye herself laments her skinny frame each time she catches a glimpse of her own reflection in the mirrors after a shower. What she wouldn’t kill for an invigorating game of badminton or volleyball, activities she used to enjoy back in school. But alas, her celebrity friends can’t spare the time. The only time she gets to enjoy their company is when they gather for friendly, rousing sessions of mahjong or when they chill at a pub.

A Natural Mother More controversial than her delicate physique is her entering motherhood. But what the rest of the world saw as a courageous act (her having a baby at the peak of her career), seemed the most natural thing to her. So natural she even likened it to an incident in Beijing some time ago when she was photographed using a public loo. It never occurred to this self-assured individualist that this move might have caused her her fans or even her carer!

Now basking in the limelight of her success, this jet-setting mother who does not enjoy the same luxury of spending as much time with her child as other stay-at-home mothers, nonetheless brims with pride when the topic of her little one comes up. “My daughert has more dates than I do. I think its because of her commendable PR networking skills. She is very independent so I’m not worried. I only hope for her to grow up happy, be a person who is true to herself and those around her, nothing else really matters.”

SHOOTING STARS What’s challenging, memorable and made up of many fashionable moments? An afternoon behind the camera with uber performer, Faye Wong. Cheah Wei Chun pens this harried albeit enviable diary.

It was the cover shoot that almost never was, what with covergirl Faye Wong zipping off to promote her album in Japan just days after. But with a little luck from above, our crew, made up of senior photographer Veronica Tay, Li Jie, Feature Editor for Nuyou magazine and yours truly, packed our overnighters and headed for the bright lights of Hong Kong to meet the Faye Lady for our most important cover shoot to date.

“Was she friendly”, “Did she chatter?”, “Is she as skinny as she looks on screen?”. Those were some of the questions the staff bombarded us with when we came back to work, tired but pleased as punch after the successful shoot.

I can’t claim to know the real Faye, but the working one is a real pro - efficient, polite, cooperative and what a poser! What can I say? She knows just how to make the camera love her. We are just thankful for the chance to do beautiful justice to our celestial covergirl.

I hope you like our picturesque fly-on-the-wall collage that promises to give you an insight into Faye Wong, the very private heavenly body.

------------------------------------------------------------------

SOURCE: NUYOU MAGAZINE

[one-of-us-blog]

Thin Ice (Doctor Who S10E03)

Today Drew is forced to watch and recap “Thin Ice”, the third episode of Doctor Who’s tenth series. Despite his intentions to take the TARDIS back to his office, the Doctor and Bill have taken an unexpected detour to ye olde London. Bill soaks up the sights, but soon realizes something is amiss in history. Can she and the Doctor get to the bottom of this temporal conundrum before the thaw comes?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, you did such a great job with your latest recap! I agree that this isn’t a gold tier episode, but it’s still a lot of fun. I love that St. Olaf still plays such a huge role in Rose’s life, and she’s more than willing to play into the town’s customs in order to help her tribe out. I think Sophia’s fake boobs were a highlight for me, but Rose’s cowbell story was really great. That’s enough about recent events, though, because now we’ve got some business to attend to in the distant past!

Buttocks tight!

Episode directed by Bill Anderson and written by Sarah Dollard

Starting right where we left off, the Doctor figures out that the TARDIS has landed him and Bill in London, 1814. Specifically, this is February 4th, the date of the last great Frost Fair. You know, the last in a long line of those famous Frost Fair everyone’s heard about? Apparently they used to be a pretty big deal, and everyone would walk out onto the frozen Thames and have a big ol’ party because when the odds are you’ll die of syphilis before you turn 30 you might as well, right? Bill wonders about the Doctor’s ability to steer the TARDIS since it didn’t take them home like it was supposed to, but he says the TARDIS has a mind of its own and sometimes you’ve just got to roll with the punches. Bill isn’t immediately thrilled at the idea of exploring old timey London, since she’s Black and slavery is a thing that she has to take into account. The Doctor admits that slavery still exists and that things could get dangerous, but, y’know, that’s life. He and Bill change into period-appropriate clothing while something very large stirs under the ice covering the Thames.

After the credits, Bill and the Doctor, now dressed appropriately, stride out into the Frost Fair, and Bill can’t help but wonder about the effect their presence here could have on history. Butterfly Effect, etc. The Doctor tells her to just have fun with it, and she sets off to sample all the food of the Fair. Or, well, she considers it, but it turns out the food in 1814 is pretty darn gross so she’s not as turned on by that. There are some fun attractions, though, like a sword swallower and some wrestling, that she enjoys. She can’t help but notice there are a lot more people of color wandering about than she’s used to seeing in movies or on TV shows based in Regency England, and the Doctor agrees that history has been pretty whitewashed for the most part. Just ask Jesus.

All of the activity on the ice is drawing the attention of the massive creature below the ice, and it sends some smaller, glowing creatures up to the surface. Bill and the Doctor chat with a conman who has a special coin trick he uses to trick people out of money with, and while the Doctor’s trying to figure out how his con trick works Bill notices the glowing lights beneath the ice. Bill asks the Doctor about the lights, and he says he noticed them a while ago, but didn’t want to spoil her good time. An old timey drunk wanders out onto the ice alone and begins following a few of the lights. More lights appear and wander around him, and when the fog clears he’s vanished beneath the surface. The Doctor quizzes Bill about what sort of lights they’re seeing, but then they’re approached by little girl who tries to con them into helping her find her lost dog. While she’s distracting them another street urchin sneaks up and steals the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. They give chase as the children run off, but as the kids get further from the fair the boy is surrounded by the lights. They dissolve the ice he’s standing on, and the Doctor barely has time to snatch back his screwdriver before the boy disappears beneath the ice completely. Bill demands the Doctor save the boy, but the Doctor says there’s nothing he can do. He tries to talk to the boy’s friend, Kitty, but she runs off just after Bill storms away.

The Doctor finds Bill nearby, but she’s not in the mood for a pleasant chat. She’s just seen a child die, after all, and she’s awfully shaken. The Doctor points out that she was just in a colony full of dead people, but she says that was different because she didn’t actually see them die. She asks the Doctor if he’s seen someone die before, and he says he has but it still bothers him. She asks how many people he’s seen die if it bothers him so much, and he doesn’t know. She asks if he’s killed anyone, and after some insistence from Bill he admits he has. Once again, though, he can’t say how many. He says that in his line of work you have to be able to move on quickly, because if he gets caught up in wasting time on grief or outrage then even more people will die. Bill tells him not to lecture her, but he says as her teacher it’s his job to teach her. She has to learn how to move on, because her being outraged isn’t going to help anything. He says they need to find the urchins who are living nearby, because if anyone will know anything, it’s them.

Luckily, Kitty is nearby and overhears most of this. She brings Bill and the Doctor to her gang’s hideout, and she says she and the other kids were paid to promote the Fair. Their employer wants more people out on the ice, but before Kitty can say who paid them the other kids start asking where the boy who died is. The Doctor distracts them from this question and ingratiates himself by giving them all some stolen food and reading them a story that’s appropriately creepy for the time. Bill promises Kitty that she and the Doctor are going to find out what’s going on and make sure no one else gets hurt, and Kitty asks if the two of them are still fighting. Bill assures her that they’re not, because she’s moved on. The Doctor asks the kids who paid them to promote the Fair, but all they know is that he’s a gruff dude with the tattoo of a ship on his hand.

Bill says it shouldn’t be too hard to find a dude with that specific tattoo, but the Doctor says that’s boring and he has a better idea. He gets his hands on some clunky old diving suits, and he and Bill wade out onto the ice and wait for the lights to appear. It doesn’t take long for the lights to appear and begin swarming around Bill, and she’s barely able to get the Doctor’s attention before she disappears beneath the ice. He dives in after her, and at the bottom of the Thames the two of them see that the lights are attached to anglerfish-like creatures. More importantly, though, they realize they’re standing next to that incredibly huge creature from earlier, and that it’s being held in place by giant chains. The creature stares at them with its big ol’ eye, and after Bill and the Doctor make it to the surface they reflect on the sound the creature made. It was a miserable wail, and the Doctor says the creature is a prisoner.

They catch sight of the conman from earlier, and it turns out he’s been catching the anglerfish and turning them into pies to sell at the Fair. The Doctor examines one of the anglerfish, and says they’re not carnivorous so they must be willingly cooperating with the creature. Why? Bill wonders if the creature is what’s making London so cold, and the Doctor says it’s possible. Bill assumes it’s some kind of weather-controlling alien, but the Doctor says it might not be an alien. The Doctor says they might be able to get some intel from the conman, and, after begging to know how he performs that awesome coin trick, asks if he’s seen a man with a tattoo of a ship. They’re by the docks right now, and Bill realizes there are probably a lot of dudes with nautical tattoos around these parts. Instead she just asks if he’s seen anyone acting suspiciously since the Thames froze over, and he admits he has.

Bill and the Doctor head to a workhouse further up the river, where a group of dredgers are digging stuff up out of the river. Thanks to the Doctor’s psychic paper they’re able to get inside, and the foreman lets slip that all of this is run by a man called Lord Sutcliffe. Bill asks the Doctor why the men are bothering to dig up mud from the river, but the Doctor says it isn’t mud. The creature’s head is about a mile away from here, which means they’re probably situated near its other end. In other words, these dudes are shoveling the creature’s shit out of the river and turning it into bricks. Bill is not pleased. The foreman here isn’t the brightest bulb, and the Doctor’s easily able to get some information out of him. The bricks are sent to the steel mill to be used for fuel when they’re ready. The foreman says the word on the street is that the stuff burns much longer and hotter than coal, and can even burn underwater. Bill is impressed.

Bill and the Doctor head to the home of Lord Sutcliffe, and he’s pretty sure there’s something alien going on here. The creature is producing fuel that’s suitable for interstellar travel, so maybe it’s alien in origin, but right now it’s looking like Sutcliffe is the alien. The Doctor asks Bill to set this interrogation out, as she has a temper and the Doctor knows she’s going to get fired up while talking to a guy who feeds humans, including children, to his captive monster in order to get the fuel he wants. He says they can’t have her temper getting in the way of them getting information, and she reluctantly agrees to let the Doctor do the talking while she sits nearby. Ever the teacher, he tells her that passion fights, but reason wins.

That sounds good on the surface, but doesn’t hold up too well once Sutcliffe enters the picture. Upon catching sight of Bill he becomes furious, outraged that a Black woman would be allowed to lounge around his fancy white house, referring to her a as a creature and demanding she stand in the presence of her betters. That’s too much for even the Doctor to stomach, and he promptly punches Sutcliffe in the face. He and Bill are both pretty sure Sutcliffe is human, since it would be hard for an alien to convincingly act that racist. Bill and the Doctor are tied up by Sutcliffe’s cronies, and Sutcliffe says he doesn’t know where the creature came from. It’s always been there, and the secret of it being chained up in the river has been passed down in his family for generations. The Doctor realizes that the crony holding him has a tattoo of a ship on his hand, and puts it together that Sutcliffe is the one paying to have more and more people attracted to the Frost Fair. He even paid for all of the special entertainment, like the circus performers and that elephant who keeps wandering around, to be brought in to make sure this is the biggest Frost Fair in decades.

Sutcliffe admits to taking advantage of the situation he was presented with. This is the first major freeze the creature has been able to produce in years, so he wanted to make sure there were plenty of people out on the Thames while it was still frozen over. Bill reasons that production has been down since the creature hasn’t been able to eat enough people, and Sutcliffe fires back with some more of that good ol’ racism. He tries to justify his actions, saying that if it weren’t for the fuel the creature produces, his factories would rely on coal. People die in coal mines all the time, so this is basically the same thing, ya know? That holds about as much water as you’d think. The Doctor gives a speech about the value of life, and how a species is judged by the value it places on its underprivileged members, and Bill is moved. Sutcliffe, however, is not. Sutcliffe says since Bill and the Doctor know about the creature then others must as well, so he tells his cronies to move his plan forward.

Bill and the Doctor are carted off in a carriage, and Bill commends the Doctor on the power of his speech. They’re unloaded and stuck in a tent full of barrels of the creature’s homebrew fuel. Sutcliffe plans to blow the barrels, causing half the fair to fall into the river and be eaten by the creature. After a meal like that, Sutcliffe’s going to be swimming in fuel. The Doctor says that’s going to draw attention, but Sutcliffe says London will mourn a fireworks display gone wrong and then move on with their life. Bill and the Doctor are tied up, but the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to loosen their bonds. The noise of the screwdriver draws the attention of the anglerfish, who hunt by sound, and one of the cronies is sucked under the ice when he tries to steal the screwdriver away.

Bill and the Doctor are free, and the Doctor says Bill has to make a choice. Do they free the creature, or leave it imprisoned? Bill says it might eat a ton of people if they set it free, and the Doctor admits it might. But if humanity’s future is based on the suffering of the creature, what kind of future is that? Bill asks why she has to decide what happens, and the Doctor says he can’t make a choice for the human race. Oh, not this again! Bill weighs her options for a moment, and decides to free the creature. The Doctor sets to work disarming Sutcliffe’s bomb and sends Bill out to get people off the ice. Bill enlists the help of Kitty and her gang of urchins, who run around telling the crowds that the ice is melting and that people are falling through. That gets people moving, and they run off the Thames in droves. Sutcliffe tries to assure them that the ice isn’t melting, but no one listens and he tells his cronies to blow the bombs now. Bill tells Kitty and the urchins to get off the ice, but when Sutcliffe tries to blow up his bombs all he does is free the creature.

Turns out that the Doctor, in his diving suit, took a few of those explosive barrels beneath the ice and affixed them to the chains holding the creature in place. Good thing that fuel can burn underwater, huh? The creature, now free of its bonds, rises up and breaks through the ice. Sutcliffe falls through one of the cracks it causes, and, if there’s any justice in the world, gets eaten by it. Bill reunites with the Doctor and makes it off the ice before it completely breaks apart, and the two of them watch the massive creature swim past. The Doctor says it’ll probably head somewhere cold and will hopefully avoid humans, but Bill wonders if they might have unleashed a predator on Greenland. The Doctor says he’ll check on Greenland to make sure it’s still okay.

The urchins are called to Sutcliffe’s house and dig into a massive feast while the Doctor forges Sutcliffe’s will. One of the urchins in Kitty’s gang is a boy, and the Doctor’s fixing it so he’ll be named Sutcliffe’s long-lost heir and the urchins will never go hungry again. The Doctor lands the TARDIS back in his office just as Nardole arrives with his tea. Nardole is pissed once he realizes the Doctor broke his vow and went off world, but Bill is more focused on the fact that, despite a ton of people seeing a massive creature swimming in the Thames, she can’t find any record of it. There is a record of Sutcliffe’s fortune being passed to a street urchin, though, and the urchins did, in fact, live happily ever after. Bill thanks the Doctor for saving the day, but he reminds her that she was the one who gave the order. Nardole’s still got a bee in his bonnet, though, so the Doctor makes him a deal. They’ll flip a coin, and if Nardole wins the TARDIS will stay put, but if the Doctor wins Nardole will get off the Doctor’s back. Thanks to that conman’s trick the Doctor wins, and Nardole mutters off to check on the vault.

Unfortunately, the vault is more active than it should be. Something on the other side of it knocks, and he assures it that no one’s opening the door anytime soon. He tells it that even if the Doctor is distracted by his new friend, Nardole is still here and that means it isn’t going anywhere.

The End

~~~~~

Hot damn, the tenth series streak continues! I really liked this one, and there were a lot of little moments that really sold it for me. I know Martha addressed the perils of being a time traveler of color before, but when it was brought up back then it felt like the Doctor (and the writers) wanted very badly to brush all of that aside and just focus on the fun parts of a period piece. Here, Bill draws attention to the existence of slavery and the position that puts her in, and the Doctor doesn’t try to shoo all that negativity away. I also really liked the Doctor’s remark about history having been so whitewashed, which felt more organic of an explanation for all the people of color in this episode than the one the Doctor gave back when he was running with Martha. It was nice to have a villain’s racism be pointed out, and to not have it excused or pardoned because that’s ‘just how things were’ during his time. Thanks to the wonderful film discussion group I’m lucky enough to be a part of, I’ve seen many more classic movies over the last two years than I had for most of the rest of my life. It seems like inevitably there will be something that grosses me out in these classics; a white character will do or say something racist, or a male character will do or say something misogynistic, or a character who isn’t white will be so shrouded in tokenism that it’s impossible to look past. That’s not even touching on Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which is its own unique brand of vile. There are people out there who don’t feel the need to call out that sort of stuff because it happened so long ago, and that’s just how things were back then, but I just don’t think that’s acceptable. Turning a blind eye to past transgressions allows for the continued existence of those same transgressions; if we were more honestly critical of the whitewashing that’s permeated the history of film, I have to think things like Gods of Egypt or that awful Ghost in the Shell remake wouldn’t have been allowed to happen. I know this all seems tangential and long winded, but seeing Doctor Who so blatantly and deliberately say racism is bad, even if it happened in the past, got me thinking about all of this, and I really appreciated the show making a point to take that stand.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’ll say that I enjoyed seeing Bill grapple with seeing more sides of the Doctor, as well as the moral dilemmas she was faced with. I’m liking the dynamic between Bill and the Doctor more and more, even though I wish I’d gotten some more information about what the creature was and where it came from. How was it able to control the weather? Where did the angler fish come from? I have so many questions!

I give “Thin Ice” QQQQ on the Five Q Scale.

Check back soon as Eli… Listen, I don’t know how to work this one, the next episode of The Golden Girls is about Blanche dating a dude in a wheelchair. Just read Eli’s “Stand by Your Man” recap, okay? After that I’ll post my recap of the next episode of Doctor Who, “Knock Knock”.

Until then, as always, thank you for reading, thank you for punching and thank you for being One of Us!

[andinewton]

Healing the Hurt - Avengers Redemption Series - Part Two - Chapter 9

Characters: Bucky Barnes, Amelia Richards (OFC), pretty much everyone from the MCU appears at some point!

Pairings: Bucky x Amelia (ofc)

Warnings:  Chronic pain, physical disability, implied smut, eventual smut, swearing, fertility issues, pregnancy, angst with a happy ending, Stark has a heart.

Word Count:  151372 (complete with additional epilogues added)

Summary: 
Everything is going well at Avengers Tower, Bucky is integrating into the team slowly but surely; he longs for his confidence back but knows it's going to be a long road, never more than when he meets the new secretary at his doctor's office.

Amelia Richards is a career SHIELD agent, recruited straight out of college into the "company" but now she finds herself passed around from department to department, her latest position as a secretary at Avengers Tower proving monotonous compared to her former life, but when James "Bucky" Barnes walks into her office one Friday evening everything changes…

Join Bucky as he rediscovers parts of himself he had thought long lost with someone who considered herself broken for a long time, helping one another heal in more ways than one...

Master List

Chapter 9

Summary:  Bucky gets sent on a mission and Natasha decides it's time to introduce herself.

During their early morning run, Sam had tried to grill Bucky about his weekend, especially after what Nat had said, but he just said it was good, spent with a friend, and sped off to catch up with Steve. Steve noticed Bucky couldn’t seem to get the smile off his face and he knew exactly why. Agent Richards definitely seemed to have had a positive effect on him.

Bucky was true to his word and at eight-fifteen he knocked on Amelia’s door with a takeout coffee just how she liked it and a danish pastry. He had forgotten how different she looked in a suit, having seen her casual and without make up the last two days, and while she was pretty without she was stunning with. Her suit consisted of a straight grey shift dress, a long line matching jacket and a pair of small heeled black court shoes, and she invited him in while she got her bag and crutch. They talked about the weekend as they rode in the elevator to her office and he not only walked her to the door but waited until she had unlocked it and got settled at her desk. He winked at her as he left, greeting his own shrink as he passed him on the way out and whistled as he went for the elevator. He came back at lunchtime, as promised, and took her up to the roof where he had a picnic basket waiting and a second lawn chair, and when she finished work he was waiting to help her lock up and post her mail in the chute before escorting her home. He asked her every time how she felt, checking she didn’t need anything, and offered her the takeout he had promised over the weekend. They ate together and she tried to convince him he didn’t need to take her to work again the next day, although she was enjoying his company immensely, but he was there at the same time the next morning, with coffee and another danish. This became their routine, and the rest of The Avengers noticed, but Nat had her curiosity piqued the most, and she was determined, despite Steve telling her to leave it, to find out who Bucky was spending his time with. He had already missed two movie nights and he had never been off The Avengers floors for anything other than work since he arrived. No, Nat wanted to know what was going on. Amelia was finishing her filing when she received a message from Bucky. She didn’t like checking her phone during working hours but she was up to date and the doctors were all out on a business lunch, so she pulled it from her inside pocket. He was being sent on a mission with some of the team and would let her know when he was back. She had been expecting this so she wished him luck and promised to cook for him when he returned. So far she had been promising to cook for him every night and he hadn't let her, anything she started he either helped extensively or took over. She didn’t mind, and he took instructions well, but it had become something of a running joke between them. Occasionally Steve was invited for dinner with them but he often declined, giving Bucky the opportunity to spend time with her alone. He could see how good for him she was and thought it couldn't hurt to encourage it. It was lunchtime and Bucky had been gone for three days now. Amelia missed him, even after only knowing him such a short amount of time, and she hoped he was safe on his mission, but she knew the drill. It was why she had tried to remain single once she began active duty, feeling it unfair on those she knew to have to worry about her. She had lost touch with some good friends due to being deep undercover but it had only served to make her realise that unless someone knew the business there couldn’t be anything of a relationship. Without him she didn’t go up to the roof, she didn't have the security clearance anyway and the steps up were a pain, especially as her pain levels seemed to be through the roof at the moment. Her bullet wound had healed, her stitches removed, but her joints reminded her the cold weather was here, making her feel at least fifty years older than she was. She was debating whether to go home for lunch or the cafeteria when someone came to her desk. She looked up with her professional smile and it faltered slightly when she met the grinning face of the infamous Black Widow. ‘Natasha Romanov. I have an appointment.’ Amelia was quite sure she didn’t, she had no appointments for another hour but she checked all the same. ‘Uh, I’m sorry Miss Romanov, I don’t have an appointment with any of the doctors for you. I can make you one, if you need me to?’ ‘No, it’s with you.’ Nat continued to smile. ‘It is?’ Amelia asked uncertainly. ‘Your lunch is at one, right?’ Nat checked her watch. ‘I’m two minutes early, but I was thinking we could go get a bite to eat.’ Amelia stared at her for a moment. She wasn’t sure whether to be worried or surprised. ‘Are you going to kill me, Miss Romanov?’ She asked honestly. Nat laughed. ‘No, I’m not going to kill you, I just wanted to meet you. Lunch?’ ‘Sure, okay. Let me just…’ She locked her computer, then her drawers, grabbed her bag and crutch and carefully got to her feet. ‘You want a hand?’ Nat frowned, having not realised she was hurt until she stood tentatively and came gingerly around the desk as though each step pained her. ‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’ Amelia smiled despite her meds having almost worn off, needing food before she could take them or she could be quite ill. ‘Where would you like to eat?’ Nat shrugged. ‘I don’t mind. I know a nice little deli a block over.’ ‘By the time I get there it’ll be time to come back.’ Amelia stated as she locked the office door. ‘We can get a cab.’ Nat told her and it was in an uncomfortable silence that they rode the elevator down, Nat hailed a cab and they arrived at the deli. They both got their orders, taking seats near the rear of the room, and it was only then that Nat leant on her hands and gave her a serious look. ‘So, how do you know Barnes?’ Amelia realised she had known, deep down, that this would be the topic. Bucky had kept her separate from all but Steve out of The Avengers, and someone was eventually bound to ask questions. ‘He came into my office a few weeks ago and asked me to have dinner with him. I mean, not as a date, just dinner.’ ‘Huh.’ Nat sat back in her chair with her soda, taking a long drink through the straw. ‘Are you the agent who took a bullet for him?’ ‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Ohhh.’ Nat dragged it out and started unwrapping her sandwich. ‘And what are you and Barnes doing now?’ ‘Doing?’ Amelia asked. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, Miss Romanov.’ ‘Are you dating, fuck buddies, what?’ Amelia laughed out loud. ‘We’re friends. That’s it.’ ‘You’re not after anything else from him?’ Nat eyed her suspiciously and when she looked down at her food Nat realised that maybe her assumption she was somehow spying on Bucky was wrong, maybe she just liked him. ‘He’s a nice guy. I like spending time with him.’ She said quietly. Nat sighed. ‘I think I owe you an apology.’ ‘Does that mean my sandwich hasn’t been poisoned and I can eat it?’ Amelia asked and Nat grinned at her honesty. ‘I didn’t do anything to your sandwich. But, I’ll get you another soda. I’m kidding, it’s fine.’ She held up her hand as Amelia went wide eyed. ‘You thought I was spying on him for either SHIELD or HYDRA.’ Amelia made it a statement rather than a question. ‘Can’t be too careful.’ Nat explained. ‘You and he are really just friends?’ ‘Just friends.’ She confirmed as she finally unwrapped her sandwich. ‘Wow.’ Nat shook her head. ‘Bucky doesn’t trust easily. You must be something special.’ ‘I don’t think so. He’s just being nice.’ ‘He likes you a lot.’ Nat explained. ‘I haven’t seen him this happy since we finally got Tony to cave over the accords and his enrolment on the team. He’s settled in better since he met you than anything else we tried.’ ‘Maybe it’s just having someone who isn't on the team to talk to, someone not business?’ Amelia suggested. ‘Maybe.’ Nat said, not believing it for a second. ‘But I’m not convinced.’ They talked for the entirety of the lunch hour, including the cab ride back, and Nat learnt as much from watching her as she did from talking to her. She realised this ex SHIELD agent had feelings for Bucky, maybe a little more than a crush, but she did seem genuine, and Nat liked that. She would have a proper look through her file later but for now she invited her to join her for dinner, realising she was pretty much on her own in the tower, and she seemed easy to talk to. Of course, if she could find out if Bucky reciprocated, this could be an interesting development.

Chapter 10

[bountyofbeads]

Neil Young’s Lonely Quest to Save Music https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/magazine/neil-young-streaming-music.html

For those of us that are of the age to have experienced the 'Golden Age' of vinyl records, 'Rock N Roll' and coming of age during 'Woodstock' this is a must read article. It will bring back wonderful memories!!!

It also touches another heart ♥️string reaching those with disabilities through music!!! 🎵🎶

🔈🖤💜💙💚💛🧡❤️🎶🎼🎵🎷🎹🎺🥁🎻

"In that moment, talking about our sons, I realized how all of Young’s obsessions fit together: They are centered in a common understanding of experience and how it shapes us. Human development is led by our senses. Our senses exert a formative and shaping pressure on our brains. So if our experience of the world around us can damage our brains and our souls, it makes a kind of intuitive sense that music can also help us feel better. Every musician, and every music fan, believes that."

Neil Young’s Lonely Quest to Save Music

He says low-quality streaming is hurting our songs and our brains. Is he right?

By David Samuel's | Published August 20, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 20, 2019 1:31 PM ET |

Neil Young is crankier than a hermit being stung by bees. He hates Spotify. He hates Facebook. He hates Apple. He hates Steve Jobs. He hates what digital technology is doing to music. “I’m only one person standing there going, ‘Hey, this is [expletive] up!’ ” he shouted, ranting away on the porch of his longtime manager Elliot Roberts’s house overlooking Malibu Canyon in the sunblasted desert north of Los Angeles. The dial thermometer at the far end of the porch indicated that it was now upward of 110 degrees of some kind of heat. Maybe the dial was stuck.

When you hear real music, you get lost in it, he added, “because it sounds like God.” Spotify doesn’t sound like God. No one thinks that. It sounds like a rotating electric fan that someone bought at a hardware store.

No one in their right mind would choose to live in the canyons outside Los Angeles, especially in the summertime between noon and 5. There isn’t enough water or shade. After a few months of summer heat, the scrub on the mountainsides is baked dry. Then someone gets sloppy with a stray cigarette butt or a campfire or the power company fails to maintain a power line and a spark accelerates into a terrifying wildfire that sends up pillars of thick smoke that from a distance hovers over the canyons like an illustration from an old Bible. News crews record burning mansions, which are intercut with the winsome llamas of the rich and famous that have been safely removed to Zuma Beach. Stragglers are incinerated in their cars.

The view was incredible, though. Young has been living up here on and off for decades. At one point, he owned more than 1,000 acres of much-coveted Malibu real estate, where movie producers and actors and billionaire tech tycoons build mansions with supersize swimming pools, grotesque advertisements of corruption and hubris, which are some of the major sins that Young rails against.

I enjoyed listening to Young rant on about the modern condition. We were vibing. He is passionately opposed to global warming, genetically modified seeds, corporate greed-heads who are despoiling Mother Nature and an assortment of other sinners who interfere with our God-given right to happiness. His ire this afternoon, directed through me and my notebook and my Sony digital recorder, was focused on the engineers of Silicon Valley, against whom he has been zealously waging war for decades. Silicon Valley’s emphasis on compression and speed, he believes, comes at the expense of the notes as they were actually played and is doing something bad to music, which is supposed to make us feel good. It is doing something bad to our brains.

The same goes for everything else that Silicon Valley produces, of course: the culture of digital everything, which is basically a load of toxic, mind-destroying crap. It’s anti-human.

“I’m not putting down Mark Zuckerberg,” he continued, his voice taking a turn. “He knows where he [expletive] up. Just the look on his face,” he said, wagging his finger toward a television screen inside Roberts’s living room, where the Facebook chief executive was giving sworn testimony before a panel of lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. “You know, he came to me in a dream the other night, and I felt really sorry for him,” he said. “He was just sitting there sweating and kind of didn’t know how to talk, because he [expletive] up so badly.” There he was, Zuckerberg, on the large-screen TV, sweating bullets.

Young was no longer the righteous wandering hippie avatar of his early album covers. He’s an old man now at 73. He’s fleshy and jowly and red-faced, with long, stringy hair. He looked like a prosperous prairie farmer (hogs or cows, some form of livestock) minus the overalls. You can imagine Farmer Neil attending church every Sunday and preaching manic sermons from the pews. What’s still the same are his eyes, smoldering like two hot coals stuck beneath his overhanging brow that featured so prominently on the cover of “After the Gold Rush,” his third album, released in September 1970, back when young people, stoned on primitive weed, might plausibly spend an entire weekend listening to his visions of a lone wanderer adrift in a lost Eden.

As we went back and forth about the dynamics of digital sound-compression and the general evil of big tech, Young got mad about his Facebook user agreement, which not even his high-priced lawyers can untangle. “I’m pissed off about my user agreement,” he says. “I’m pissed off about my privacy policy.”

Yet I could tell that this wasn’t what he wanted to be talking about. Young doesn’t want to be a downer. He is passionate about music. The point of music, and of Young, is to make people feel less lonely. I had taken him to a dark place that he didn’t want to go.

“I really wish this interview hadn’t happened,” he later said, seeming more downhearted than angry.

“I feel horrible,” I answered, and I did. I was hoping to soothe the old rock star, who spoke to me through the headphones of my Sony Walkman at the moments I felt most isolated and alone. The last thing I wanted to do was make him feel bad. It felt awful. What I wanted was to hear him play music and to write more songs. “I mean, the worst thing I could have done is to make you feel defeated,” I told him, “and now that’s what I’ve done.”

Neil Young has always been a little too hot to handle, so passionate and smart and always a little bit off his rocker, which might be part of the glory and also the downside of being Neil Young. Yet what weirds me out most about his emotional weather patterns, which are superfamiliar to me from my teenage Walkman years, is the new sense that each of his individual miniflights and tantrums was being processed by a tiny hyperaware control freak who lives inside Young’s personal control tower. The little man charts every little fragment of new meaning or awareness and what its trajectory might potentially signify on a giant whiteboard. Young hears you listening, and he is hip to that angle, and he incorporates that in his next riff. Polite conversation under such conditions can be a baffling and frustrating type of experience. After an hour, we agreed to turn the tape recorder off, and Roberts orders pizza. But the little man in the control tower was still up there, watching.

My diagnosis, after a lifetime of listening and an afternoon on Roberts’s porch and a couple of longer off-the-record interviews about his life and work, is this: Neil Young is trapped in a cycle of second- and third- and fourth-guessing, which is an affliction that is not unique to his brain. To escape from this cycle, he is continually forcing himself back into the moment and then trying to capture that feeling and energy, which is a specific kind of artistic choice. That larger cycle, combined with his magnificent control over his art, is what makes him such a uniquely vital and generative artist, at an age when peers like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have become skeletal holograms of their former selves. When he looks back, which is something he did often during our conversations, it is toward the specificity of what some younger version of Neil Young did in a particular moment when he really nailed it. The latest live album he released was recorded at a gig in 1973, in Tuscaloosa, at the University of Alabama; it is part of an archival series, and they are all miracles. As Young once put it, “I’d rather play in a garage, in a truck or a rehearsal hall, a club or a basement.” What he is after is not some ideal sound but the sound of what happened. The missed notes and off-kilter sounds are part of his art, which is the promise of the real, but also, even mainly, of imperfection.

The idea that big technology companies are engineering all that back-and-forth out of his music just kills him. It’s gotten to the point where he doesn’t want to write music anymore, he admitted. I tried once again to console him.

“The songs always came to you in bunches,” I said. It’s an encouraging thought. But Young was only willing to meet my optimism halfway.

“I’ve got great melodies, and the words are all profanities,” he answered. “I was just telling Elliot the other day, I’m not interested in making any more records,” he insisted, plunging us down once more into the void. “They sound like [expletive].”

Young’s belief in the saving power of music couldn’t be any more personal. In 1951, at age 5 in Ontario, he got sick with a fever, which turned out to be polio. His father, the hockey writer Scott Young, chronicled the Toronto Maple Leafs and wrote young-adult novels about stouthearted boys on ice that were a staple of Canadian boyhood. Neil was not meant for hockey. His mother, Rassy, was a sharp-witted panelist on the popular weekly Winnipeg television show “Twenty Questions”; she was always intensely protective of her son. When I asked him about what it felt like to be a sick child and to grow up lonely, he said: “I loved playing music, and I wasn’t that alone. You know that’s what I wanted to do, that’s what I wanted to do with my life, and that’s all I paid attention to.”

Maybe Young could have become a big rock star without that childhood illness, without being so complicated. His peers talent-wise, at 19, included genius musicians like Stephen Stills, Duane Allman, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, the last of whom was the greatest American popular musical talent maybe ever. What set Young apart from that company was his sustained refusal to bend to anyone else’s idea of what audiences wanted to hear. His signature move was to accomplish something amazing and then blow it up, in the pursuit of something that would sound even more real.

“Neil Young,” his first solo album, recorded in 1968, at 22, after his departure from the supergroup Buffalo Springfield, showed off ageless melodies combined with clever, wised-up lyrics (“I used to be a folk singer/keeping managers alive”). The album failed to sell. The sound was too pretty and too clever at the same time. His second studio album — and first with his longtime band Crazy Horse — “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” is my personal favorite Neil Young record, and was also Elliot Roberts’s favorite (he died two months ago). It introduced what became Neil’s defining edge, i.e., the sound of his ruminations, distortions and mistakes. The album made it to No. 34 on the American charts, and included the hit “Cinnamon Girl.” He wrote much of the album while running a fever of 103.

Young joined with Stills, David Crosby and Graham Nash (my personal ordering of talents) in the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, with Young positioned as the defiant outsider against the gorgeous harmonies of the latter three. CSNY turned Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock” (she watched the festival on TV) into a generational anthem, and then imploded. (Side note: The year after Neil Young got sick as a child, Mitchell — then a young girl living in Fort Macleod, Alberta — contracted polio during the same outbreak of that disease. She also found herself in writing songs. Maybe something about that childhood illness, which left both children weakened for several years, altered the way that Young and Mitchell processed the evidence of their senses. The dreamy harmonics both favored, and the way that the music and the words shade into each other, suggests both the wooziness and the emerging clarity that a child coming out of a fever might experience.)

Young’s fourth solo album, “Harvest,” distilled his songwriting gifts, which had been given broad exposure through the supernovalike appearance and implosion of CSNY, into a collection of Southern California-inflected hits like “Heart of Gold,” “The Needle and the Damage Done,” “Old Man” and “Words (Between the Lines of Age)”; it became the best-selling American album of 1972, despite critics labeling the raw vulnerability of the songs as off-putting, self-pitying or as one critic put it “embarrassing.” The AM radio success of “Harvest” cleared a path toward the stratospheric levels of commercial songwriting success and luxury-hotel-suite destruction enjoyed by the Eagles, a supergroup of superbrilliant songwriters who, unlike Young, preferred highway driving.

In response to the success of “Harvest,” Young switched up his style again, obliterating his hit radio melodies with epileptic seizures of dissonance and feedback. (Young himself suffered from epilepsy, to the point that he would have seizures and sometimes black out.) “Heart of Gold,” as he explained it in his liner notes, “put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride, but I saw more interesting people there.”

For the time being, there would be no more pretty melodies and note-perfect guitar playing. Instead, Young’s music centered on a distinctive alternation of melodic beauty, earsplitting feedback and passages where he seemed to be playing his guitar with his fist. On a third or fourth listen, these passages often revealed themselves to be part of larger, deliberate, gorgeous patterns that bent the listener’s ear in the directions that he wanted it to go. You had to listen to the whole albums all the way through to really hear the songs. Young’s own guitar playing sounded too deliberate to express the fullness of his own sound, so he often featured the rhythm guitar playing of Frank Sampedro, who played loud rock ’n’ roll in his garage, which was the sound that Young was after in perfecting imperfection.

Within his own specific lineage of deeply melodic rock-guitar playing, incorporating infinite branching possibilities and a taste for soulful, aggressive dissonance, Young is great to listen to. But a better pure player than Young would be a guy like, say, John Frusciante, the former guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who is wildly talented. Give both men 30 seconds to solo, and Frusciante would blow Young off the stage, just as Duane Allman would blow Frusciante off the stage. Young is something else, though. He’s a genius, a word that can be usefully defined as the ability to create and realize an original style that, in turn, can for decades generate its own genres of music containing the DNA of deeply original songs by other extremely talented, original songwriters and musicians, all of whom owe something to him. His music helped shape the melodic-depressive post-Beatles catalog of Pacific Northwest angst, which was brought to its songwriting peak by Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Elliott Smith, the Irving Berlin and Cole Porter of suicidal ideation and addiction. Cobain committed suicide on April 5, 1994. Smith, who was an even more intimate songwriter, in the same catchy, brilliant, self-pitying vein, stabbed himself through the heart and bled to death on Oct. 21, 2003, in an apartment in Los Angeles. While the circumstances of both deaths are disputed by conspiracy theorists, Neil Young is indisputably still here.

But he is stumped. Let’s take a moment to look at the future of recorded sound, the topic that has got him so overheated. The invention of the phonograph in 1877 by Thomas Alva Edison, a k a the Wizard of Menlo Park, and one of the great visionaries in American history, marked the culmination of several decades of attempts to capture the magic of sound in physical, reproducible form. Early sound recorders used a large cone to capture the air pressure produced by sonic waves created by a human voice or an instrument. The cone directed sound waves against a diaphragm attached to a stylus, which thereby inscribed an analog of those waves onto a roll of paper or a wax-coated cylinder. The use of electrical microphones and amplifiers by the 1920s made it possible to record a far greater range of sound with far greater fidelity.

Magnetic tape, which was pioneered in Germany during the 1930s, propelled another giant leap forward in fidelity, while also beginning the process of freeing sound from the physical mediums on which it was recorded. Tape could be snipped and edited and combined in ways that allowed artists, producers and engineers to create symphonies in their own minds and then assemble them out of multiple takes performed in different places and at different times. The introduction of high-end consumer digital-sound-recording systems by companies including Sony and 3M further loosened music’s connection to a physical medium, thereby rendering sound infinitely plastic and, in theory, infinitely reproducible. Then came the internet, which delivered on the mind-boggling promise of infinitely reproducible sound at a cost approaching zero.

At ground level, which is to say not the level where technologists live but the level where artists write and record songs for people who care about the human experience of listening to music, the internet was as if a meteor had wiped out the existing planet of sound. The compressed, hollow sound of free streaming music was a big step down from the CD. “Huge step down from vinyl,” Young said. Each step eliminated levels of sonic detail and shading by squeezing down the amount of information contained in the package in which music was delivered. Or, as Young told me, you are left with “5 percent of the original music for your listening enjoyment.”

Producers and engineers often responded to the smaller size and lower quality of these packages by using cheap engineering tricks, like making the softest parts of the song as loud as the loudest parts. This flattened out the sound of recordings and fooled listeners’ brains into ignoring the stuff that wasn’t there anymore, i.e., the resonant combinations of specific human beings producing different notes and sounds in specific spaces at sometimes ultraweird angles that the era of magnetic tape and vinyl had so successfully captured.

If you want to envision how Young feels about the possibility of having to listen to not only his music but also American jazz, rock ’n’ roll and popular song via our dominant streaming formats, imagine walking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Musée d’Orsay one morning and finding that all of the great canvases in those museums were gone and the only way to experience the work of Gustave Courbet or Vincent van Gogh was to click on pixelated thumbnails.

But Young hears something creepier and more insidious in the new music too. We are poisoning ourselves with degraded sound, he believes, the same way that Monsanto is poisoning our food with genetically engineered seeds. The development of our brains is led by our senses; take away too many of the necessary cues, and we are trapped inside a room with no doors or windows. Substituting smoothed-out algorithms for the contingent complexity of biological existence is bad for us, Young thinks. He doesn’t care much about being called a crank. “It’s an insult to the human mind and the human soul,” he once told Greg Kot of The Chicago Tribune. Or as Young put it to me, “I’m not content to be content.”

I was surprised to find myself talking with Young at all. He only really agrees to speak with the press, or to the press, to publicize something new and weird, like his 3,000 square feet of miniature Lionel train track that he housed in his barn or the experimental film he recently made with his wife, Daryl Hannah. For years, Young also put on a benefit concert for the Bridge School, which educates children who have cognitive and sensory disorders. Young’s sons, Zeke and Ben, both have cerebral palsy.

That’s another thing about Young that rescues him from nihilism and self-pity: He does stuff, even if what he does sometimes seems loony. He made a documentary and a YouTube channel about converting his 1959 Lincoln Continental to operate on alternative fuels, and he has been known to distribute unlicensed non-G.M.O. seeds at his shows, from which his fans can grow their own, uncontaminated grains. A few years ago, he appeared on David Letterman’s show to introduce his PonoPlayer, which was his first attempt to right the wrongs that streaming music is doing to our brains. “It means righteous in Hawaiian,” he told Letterman, who seemed both impressed by the device and thoroughly perplexed by the need for it. “Is this a digital way of recording analogous sound?” Letterman asked. “I’m struggling here to find something I can understand.”

His next remedy, which is why he invited me out to Roberts’s home, is a website that he calls the Neil Young Archives: a digital repository of his recorded work that he introduced last summer at considerable personal expense. (“Let’s say, ‘Well over a million dollars,’ ” Roberts suggested to me later, with a sigh.) The interface for the Archive looks like a set of old file cabinets that might have been heisted from an old-time bail bondsman’s office. By clicking open the various cabinets, you can stream every song that Young ever released and a growing portion of his unreleased songs in information-rich file formats and play them back through a DAC, which is a digital-to-analog converter device that approximates the sound of good vinyl.

“What I do with my life now is I try and preserve what I did so that decades from now it will still be there,” Young said. “I wish I could do this for Frank Sinatra. I wish I could do it for Nelson Riddle. I wish I could do it for all of the great jazz players. I wish I could do it for all the great songwriters and musicians and everybody who recorded during the time and before the time that I did. But I can’t.”

There are audiophiles who mutter politely but approvingly about Neil’s crusades. And there are the non-gear-heads who remain passionate about American popular music and the miracles it contains. Ooooh-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. That’s the harmony on “Down by the River,” and it’s glorious, right? Your whole brain relaxes in a warm bath of sound. Now try to feel that pure glory and relaxation, that sense of wide-open spaces, the unique confluence of cultures and sounds that together make up America’s purest and least-expected gift to humanity and all the history and pain and loneliness and satisfaction behind it, in a lo-fi digital stream.

At the center of Young’s efforts are his own engineers, who are at least as important to him as Old Black, his favored Gibson Les Paul. “He wants the honesty of what went down, not some pasted-together overdubbed representation that’s not the truth,” Jon Hanlon, one of his favorite engineers, told me from the modest beach house where he takes breaks from recording and remastering miles of Young’s tapes. When we met, he had just completed mastering a 1973 live performance at the Roxy of “Tonight’s the Night,” which is one of Young’s finest and most harrowing records. The rawness of the anger and the sorrow and the joy that are all mixed up together on that record transcends any particular cut. “The truth is that the human condition is imperfect,” Hanlon says of that record. “He captures that imperfection. He wants to capture it in its birth, at the moment that it happens.”

Hanlon has spent years working his way up the Young recording hierarchy, at the topmost rung of which lived an engineer and producer named David Briggs, whose driving, funny, off-kilter personality is best captured in a photograph that shows him in a cowboy hat holding a long black rifle; the gleam in his eye suggests that he wouldn’t mind shooting someone. “That’s the guy that I wanted to find out about,” Hanlon recalls. When Briggs died, Tim Mulligan, who had been mixing Young’s live shows since the 1970s, inherited some part of Briggs’s mantle. Then came Hanlon, who was brought up to the ranch in 1990 to engineer “Ragged Glory.”

“He’s a control freak,” Hanlon says, in a tone of complete approval. “If he wants your opinion, he’ll ask for it. If he doesn’t, it’s foolhardy to wade in. He’s 10 steps ahead of you in his thought process.”

Young’s favorite place to listen to his own songs isn’t the studio, Hanlon says. It’s behind the wheel of his car. Consciously, you’re driving the car, which leaves your mind more open, which is a trick that Briggs taught Young. “We get on the two-lane blacktop,” Hanlon explains. “There’s something that happens when you drive, without trucks. You hear what comes to the top without focusing too hard.”

The physical condition of 40- and 50-year-old master tapes from the golden age of rock ’n’ roll depends on how they were recorded and stored and on what kind of tape, which is why remastering old recordings is such a pressing necessity and why digital-recording technology, as opposed to low-quality streaming services, can be a gift to musicians, properly deployed. While some types of tape, like Scotch 250 tape, are usually fine, even after decades in storage, other forms of analog tape haven’t fared as well. “Ampex 456 half-inch, quarter-inch tape,” Hanlon says, when I ask about the worst offender. Run it through a pinch roller to play it, and the backing comes off as an oily gunk. You need to bake it in an oven at low heat to reconstitute the backing and make the tape usable. With Young’s old Buffalo Springfield stuff, you could see right through the Mylar, Hanlon says, which means that the music on those tapes, or some of it, is simply gone.

Tim Mulligan has worked together with Neil since “Harvest,” in 1971. His first session was a remote in the old hay barn where Young recorded “Words,” along with “Alabama” and “Are You Ready for the Country.” The guy who knew how to bake Ampex tape, he tells me, was George Horn, a mastering engineer who worked at CBS San Francisco and later at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. “George had a crude setup using a hair dryer and cardboard box,” Mulligan recalls. “We then upgraded to a convection oven with a candy thermometer and timer.” The tapes were carefully rewound, then cleaned, lubricated and repaired until they were playable again and could be rerecorded. After a few precious days, the old tapes turned back into gunk.

The master tapes for “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” were in particularly bad condition, Mulligan recalls. So it’s important to get the work done right and get it done now.

Even engineers in Silicon Valley can hear a difference in the stuff they are selling and what Young’s team is so desperately trying to preserve. As Tim Cook, the head of Apple, recently told a reporter, without any evident trace of humor, “We worry that the humanity is being drained out of music.”

Steve Jobs, Cook’s predecessor, was also a big music fan. “He listened to vinyl in his living room because he could hear real music,” Young told me. “ And he loved music.” When I ask if he ever spoke directly to Jobs about turning Apple’s iTunes into a platform for music that didn’t sound bad, Young nodded.

“Oh, yeah,” he answered. “He said, ‘Send us your masters and I’ll have my guys do what they can with them to make them sound great.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s impossible, your iPod won’t play anything back.’ ”

Jobs disagreed. “He said, ‘Well, our guys can make it so that your music can play back through it.’ And you know he was right,” Young said. “It does play back, and you can recognize it.” He pauses. “But it’s not my music.”

When Jobs’s biographer asked him about Young’s offer, as related in the biography “Becoming Steve Jobs,” Jobs snapped, “[Expletive] Neil Young.”

All of my life, I had never rid myself of the preposterous idea that someday Young would vouchsafe to me some life-altering truth, until one day it happened. My younger son, Elijah, I told Young, has a great ear for music, but his ability to process sensory information is off, which means that he has been drowning since birth in an ocean of sound. This has led to problems with language and balance and nausea. From the time he was born, his hands were also clenched into tiny fists, and they remained that way for over a year. He seemed to be in some kind of pain.

Otherwise, he is a bright, intensely curious child, who is fascinated by the workings of cause and effect and understands language at a normal 5-year-old level but repeats words with great difficulty. To compensate for his deficits, Elijah was blessed with a rock-star smile that can light up a room — a smile so bright and warm that he learned to use it to distract people from his obvious physical discomfort, in a world that was always wobbling and flipping over, and from his inability first to talk and then to pick up small objects or insert a screw into a bolt. Instead, he smiled at people. When they asked him his name, his inability to produce intelligible sounds made him turn away quickly in frustration, which was usually interpreted as shyness. He would try to build a tower out of blocks, then knock down all the blocks. Then he would turn back to them, laugh and flash that smile.

A child in pain is a tragedy and a burden that can be all-consuming, but that’s not how I experience Elijah. He is my friend. He is a source of joy and love and warmth, who has also been the cause of several hundred sleepless nights, which can in turn be the source of soaring anxiety. Thanks to Elijah, I have become aware that speech is a conscious act that requires the coordination of 32 muscles in the mouth, 16 of which affect the shape and positioning of the tongue.

It could be cerebral palsy, a light case, perhaps, Young replied, in an oblique reference to his sons. It is something like that, but it’s not that, so I wasn’t sure exactly how to answer. It’s not genetic. It’s not fatal. Something was inflaming his young brain, disrupting the formation of healthy neural connections; the cause might be historical, or ongoing. Either way, there were kinks in the channels through which sights and sounds flowed. Either those channels had to be ironed out or new ones had to be opened up.

I asked Young what it does to a marriage to have a child like that. Neil has been married three times. His ex-wife, Pegi, Ben’s mom, was a singer-songwriter and environmentalist but died on Jan. 1, 2019, of cancer. She had worked with Young, to whom she was married for 36 years, before divorcing in 2014, to establish the Bridge School.

“It’s good for the marriage,” he said firmly. “If it’s a good marriage, it brings the marriage even closer together. It’s one of life’s great experiences. It’s an enriching thing because it teaches you the value of love.”

Young’s immersion in a program of intensive therapy for his son Ben led him to become obsessed with new ways of hearing and modulating sound. His album “Trans” was a monument to his attempts to communicate with Ben and to find a musical language that could convey what Ben was hearing — and perhaps even serve some therapeutic purpose. As Neil put it to his biographer Jimmy McDonough, the album was “the beginning of my search for a way for a nonoral person, a severely physically handicapped nonoral person, to find some sort of interface for communication. The computers and the heartbeat all have to come together here — where chemistry and electronics meet.”

In that moment, talking about our sons, I realized how all of Young’s obsessions fit together: They are centered in a common understanding of experience and how it shapes us. Human development is led by our senses. Our senses exert a formative and shaping pressure on our brains. So if our experience of the world around us can damage our brains and our souls, it makes a kind of intuitive sense that music can also help us feel better. Every musician, and every music fan, believes that.

It was this belief that led me to the work of a French doctor named Alfred Tomatis, who, in the late 1940s and ’50s, began manipulating sound in the hope of healing people. Among his patients were opera singers and fighter pilots, whose brains had stopped processing sound correctly as a result of work-induced auditory trauma. Because our fight-or-flight response is connected to our auditory system, any disturbances can cause a host of physical symptoms. Tomatis came up with a treatment that involved decreasing or emphasizing specific frequencies of what he believed to be particularly salient forms of music — including Gregorian chants and the music of Mozart, which is perhaps the most perfectly structured and at the same time most effortlessly fluid sound that human beings have ever made (at once the most human and the most perfect music on the planet). These interventions helped retune the muscles that control the auditory pathways through which sound makes its way to the brain.

In the 1950s, Tomatis successfully used his techniques to help opera singers whose prolonged and eventually traumatic exposure to their own vocal extremes left them unable hear high and midrange sounds. After graduating from medical school, he worked for the French Air Force, where he noticed that prolonged exposure to certain ranges of sound produced by factory machinery and jet engines produced a range of negative physiological and psychological effects, in addition to hearing loss.

But Tomatis’s methods languished in relative obscurity for the second half of the 20th century in part because they didn’t align with the then-dominant machine model of our brains, which suggested the organ contained a set of parts that performed specific functions. Once broken, those functions could not be restored.

The machine model of the brain “has been a disaster clinically,” says the psychiatrist Norman Doidge, who over the past decade has popularized much of the pioneering work in the science of neuroplasticity in two best-selling books. “We now know that mental and sensory experience and activity actually change the brain’s ‘wiring’ or connections,” Doidge told me. As Eric Kandel, one of Doidge’s teachers at Columbia, defined it, “Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change its behavior as a result of experience.” In 2000, Kandel was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology.

At dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant in Toronto, I told Doidge about Elijah. What particularly interested me, I said, was that his symptoms mirrored those of a child to whom Doidge had devoted a case history in his second book. Could he help us?

Maybe, he said. With proper reshaping of his auditory cortex, Elijah’s balance might get better and his nausea might stop, which would in turn make it possible for him to develop more normally. Doidge suggested that we take Elijah to the Listening Center in Toronto for an assessment. The center is run by Paul Madaule, who was first Tomatis’s patient in France, then his assistant.

Coincidentally, I added, Young experiments with masking and distorting sound contained some similar ideas. He had two sons with cerebral palsy. “He was probably on to something,” Doidge said.

Spending a day and a night in downtown Fresno, Calif., is like walking into the dreamscape of a midperiod Neil Young album, with once-glorious movie palaces taken over by churches that minister to addicts and drunks. The signs along the way advertise Aladdin Bail Bonds, the Mezcal Lounge and the Lucky You Tattoo parlor. One of the messages of Neil Young’s music has always been that flat spaces are lonely, and the people who inhabit them feel small.

In the next year, Young would announce that he was releasing a book about sound, “To Feel the Music,” written with Phil Baker, who helped developed the PonoPlayer. He also found enough new inspiration to record an album with Crazy Horse, his first in seven years, called “Colorado.” While I was in town, I was able to catch a show.

Fresno’s sizable vagrant population was distinguishable from the concertgoers clustered outside the Warnors Theater mainly by the amount of dust on their shoes. The concert had been announced only a week earlier, which meant that pretty much everyone there was a local — the kind of audience that Young likes best. The inside of the Warnors Theater has been perfectly restored, with a high gilded ceiling and gorgeous acoustics.

“I’m still living the dream we had/For me, it’s not over,” Young sang onstage, facing his band, Crazy Horse, with Nils Lofgren on guitar. There was something clumsy and vulnerable in the way that the men faced each other onstage, bowing back and forth as they soloed in a show of old-school male competitive affection.

“Thanks for coming out,” he told the crowd when he was done. “We appreciate it. Glad you could get those tickets. I like seeing you people here.” A cigar-store Indian hovered over his shoulder. I counted only four people in the audience who were holding up phones. He played “Tired Eyes,” then “Powderfinger,” flailing away at his big old guitar laid across his bouncy gut. “You are like a hurricane/There’s calm in your eye/I wanna love you but I’m getting blown away.”

“God bless you, Neil,” an old hippie lady in a blowzy floral dress shouted. Maybe he only looked cranky. He finished another song and gazed up at the ceiling in wonderment, admiring the great cathedral of sound in which he was standing.

I don’t know if the evils that Neil Young is warning us about will come to pass. I don’t know if G.M.O. seeds are truly killing us or if all the missing information that Silicon Valley is engineering out of music and the rest of our lives is doing something truly evil to our brains or whether these are simply the latest obsessions of a habitually cranky, inventive, restless man.

There are plenty of neurologists who remain skeptical of the idea that sound can help rewire people’s brains. What I can also tell you is this: I listen to rich audio files through a decent-quality DAC and I hear more, and it makes me feel better. Also: I don’t know when or how or if certain parts of my son’s brain will get unstuck. I don’t know whether he will learn to talk in a way that his friends or teachers or people besides me and my wife and his brother and sister can easily understand. I’m not even sure what degree of change is desirable. Some brains, like Neil Young’s and Joni Mitchell’s, are just wired differently.

That said, I will never forget watching Elijah during the first week of his therapy in Toronto, as modified Mozart was piped into his brain and he just suddenly looked down at his little fist and started opening and closing his hand for the first time — because suddenly, he could. After the second session, six weeks later, his reflexes and fine-motor skills had markedly improved, to the point where he could catch a ball or slap his mother across the face when she says “no” to his request for another marshmallow. He isn’t nauseated anymore. He can walk and even run, while continuing to be a joy to be around. Just the other day, in the bath, waiting for his mother to come home, he looked at me and said, “Oh, me home, Mama!”

I listened to the tapes that Elijah was hearing, on which Mozart’s perfect sound was continuously interrupted by filtering that sounded like static, before it then reasserted itself — an effect that is familiar to any Neil Young fan. The filtering effects had helped in whatever way to heal Elijah’s brain. So what is the effect of engineering so much complexity out of the music we listen to, and replacing it with fake, jacked-up sounds, doing to my brain and to yours?

It’s strange to imagine that Young might be a prophet of sorts — but maybe not. His lesson is that everything human is shot through with imperfection. Filtering that out doesn’t make us more perfect; it is making us sick. He’s a great artist, which means that he sees and hears more, which may make him a loon, but is also why he is still worth listening to.

“These places are so great,” Young said onstage in Fresno. “We’re so lucky they’re still here.” He sang, in fine voice: “He came dancing across the waters/With his galleons and guns.” At 73, he is still a man walking through a hurricane, which begins inside a perfect melody that dissolves into dissonance and feedback, inside of which there is something wonderfully, miraculously whole.

David Samuels is the author of “The Runner” and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart.” He last wrote for the magazine about Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s foreign-policy guru.

[noncompliant-fuckery]

1-99, it's been a while :)

I know :) but mostly cause all the ones I’ve been seeing are ones we already done or are kinky as shit and that’ll possibly be awkward.

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most?

-Batman-Jaden Smith. Retrograde-James Blake. H.E.R- Focus.  Loyalty-Kendrick Lamar.  Location-Khalid. Blind Man-Xavier Omar.

2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

-All of my ancestors.

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.

-I don’t know where I put my books and technically the only book I have near me right now is two of my diaries which are strategically hidden in my room and that's a book, right? So anyways, “I think she was talking about me, I hope. I've been thinking about it with a smile on my face since.”

4: What do you think about most?

-college and everything i'm neglecting to do

5: What does your latest text message from someone else say?

-”Your glasses should be here in a day or two.”-dad

6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on?

Without. Just underwear. The less the better honestly 😉

7: What’s your strangest talent?

Lol Nothing will prepare you for what I have to say... So every once in awhile but not very often something will happen to my eye and if I press the part by my tear duct next to the bridge of my nose it’ll make a squeaky sound. I think it’s linked to my allergies lol

8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence)

-Boys go to mars and girls go to jupiter? Haha idk

9: Ever had a poem or song written about you?

-Never had the pleasure.

10: When is the last time you played the air guitar?

-Probably last week tbh

11: Do you have any strange phobias?

-fear of having someone slice the back of my knees

12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose?

-I was always more of a sticking foreign objects in my mouth kind of kid (that sounded so bad lol)

13: What’s your religion?

Agnostic I think.

14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?

-Fucking around on my ripstik. At the beach, or just walking around exploring.

15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?

-Neither honestly.

16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?

-Not much of a band person but my favorite artist right now is Chance the Rapper. Green day was good at some point though.

17: What was the last lie you told?

-Probably that I support my dad getting a second job and that I stayed home all week when I didn’t. Both told to my parents. You may be an angel but I am a horrible person inside lol

18: Do you believe in karma?

-Yes.

19: What does your URL mean?

I’m half stud, and half muffin. Style wise. Named by my sister.

20: What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?

-weakness: no perseverance. strength: finding the good in every bad situation and coming up with clever ways to do things either for fun or to solve problems.

21: Who is your celebrity crush?

-Michelle Rodriguez 😍

22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping?

-Nah

23: How do you vent your anger?

-A frustrated scream, a lot of cussing, a strong urge to punch something. But this only happens if I'm completely alone and can’t hear me and i'm not thinking about consequences. Which is quite literally never. Otherwise, I get very very quiet.

24: Do you have a collection of anything?

-I have a collection of empty water bottles littering my bedroom floor right now?

25: Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?

-Depends on the conversation and person. But I like video chatting with you to remember what you look like and sound like sometimes. Its also fun 😊

26: Are you happy with the person you’ve become?

-I’d say it’s a nice improvement.

27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?

-hate: pure silence because it is most definitely not silent. Love: the sound of grocery bags being carried into my house lol

28: What’s your biggest “what if”?

-What if I stayed in gymnastics or tae kwon do

29: Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

-Thats complicated. I believe something happens to the dead and I’m not sure “heaven” is the end destination. Humans are aliens. We are not special and if people believe we are a lone here, their dumb af.

30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.

-My fan and Bob the teddy bear

31: Smell the air. What do you smell?

-Nothing, my allergies are killing me right now.

32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to?

-Nothing's quite made that much of an impression for me to remember such a place.

33: Choose: East Coast or West Coast?

-Theres no snow on the East Coast..I think

34: Most attractive singer of your opposite gender?

-Jidenna. He has an interesting look.

35: To you, what is the meaning of life?

-Life is a grand experiment to test all that can make or break us.

36: Define Art.

- A ketchup stain on a white t-shirt.

37: Do you believe in luck?

-Depends but yes.

38: What’s the weather like right now?

-Blue skies, the sun is shining, a couple baby clouds and the wind is blowing the leaves outside my window. Seems hot.

39: What time is it?

-3:30pm

40: Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?

-Yes. So many close calls but no not yet.

41: What was the last book you read?

-Book 3 of The Testing series called Graduation Day by Joelle Charbonneau. College interrupted my finishing it.

42: Do you like the smell of gasoline?

-Love it.

43: Do you have any nicknames?

-Shoshoes, Worm.

44: What was the last film you saw?

-Dawn of the Plant of the Apes or maybe Kidnap

45: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?

-Sprained my neck and back

46: Have you ever caught a butterfly?

-No there scary up close but one landed on my ass once.

47: Do you have any obsessions right now?

-Starting old shows that have like 10 seasons

48: What’s your sexual orientation?

-Lesbian

49: Ever had a rumour spread about you?

-Don’t quite remember but possibly. Nothing to crazy I’m sure

50: Do you believe in magic?

-I believe that there's a possibility for it one day.

51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?

-Yes

52: What is your astrological sign?

-Aries 😈

53: Do you save money or spend it?

-Both. Not a good combination

54: What’s the last thing you purchased?

-Movie tickets

55: Love or lust?

-Lust

56: In a relationship?

-Nope

57: How many relationships have you had?

-One real one.

58: Can you touch your nose with your tongue?

-lol no.

59: Where were you yesterday?

-In my room

60: Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you?

-My shorts are pink and black.

61: Are you wearing socks right now?

-Less clothes the better, remember.

62: What’s your favourite animal?

-Turtles

63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?

-Make em laugh

64: Where is your best friend?

-Home finally I think?

65: Give me your top 5 favourite blogs on Tumblr.

armyofchaos of course, elaxisfae, prettyboyshyflizzy, aniefiok, sixpenceee

66: What is your heritage?

-Who knows.

67: What were you doing last night at 12AM?

-Talking you and playing Assassins Creed

68: What do you think is Satan’s last name?

-Watson

69: Biggest turn ons?

-lol

70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?

-Yes

71: You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?

-Sorry little guy, I’ve got bills. But I'll call the cops or get someone's attention to do it for me.

72: You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?

-A: the important people will know. B: Complete my promises. C:Hell yea, the hell is after this life??? What happens to my inner voice? Me???

73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love.

-Trust is love.

74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?

-Off the top of my head, Yoga by Janelle Monae and Jidenna.

75: What are the last four digits in your cell phone number?

-5703

76: In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?

-Laughing and communicating

77: How can I win your heart?

-By giving a damn.

78: Can insanity bring on more creativity?

-If I’m to be honest, those pills.

79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?

-Being friends with you

80: What size shoes do you wear?

-All my shoes right now are men's and those are size 8

81: What would you want to be written on your tombstone?

-”Here lies a gay potato”

82: What is your favourite word?

-Fuckernaut. I call ppl that in my head quite often. Yes, that includes you.

83: Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart.

-Fuck.

84: What is a saying you say a lot?

-Oh my god, honestly, definitely, seriously, jeez… I have a problem, help lol

85: What’s the last song you listened to?

-Currently,Drake-Marvins Room.

86: Basic question; what’s your favourite colour/colours?

-Black, army green, burgundy.

87: What is your current desktop picture?

-Some kind of stone stairway/hallway. I should really update it.

88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?

-That fucking orange cheeto with legs.

89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?

-Depending on the person “How do you really feel?”

90: Turn offs?

-Trump supporters

91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?

-Telekinesis.

92: where are your parents from?

-America

93: You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

-When my mom started getting sick

94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?

-We’ll go with Kehlani today.

95: You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?

-You already know where 😊

96: Do you have any relatives in jail?

-Yup, a couple of dumbasses.

97: Have you ever thrown up in the car?

-Not inside the car but out the door on the side of the road.

98: Ever been on a plane?

-When I was little.

99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say.

-You stupid fucks.

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7 design predictions for 2017, that might actually happen

Every year, blogs like this one try to predict what’s going to happen in our industry over the next 12 months. Design is a product of its environment and good design reflects the world that it exists in; no one has a crystal ball, so unsurprisingly design predictions are wrong as often as they are right.

However, there are clear emerging trends on the web. Sometimes we see developments happen in front of us. Sometimes they keep coming up in conversation. Sometimes one solid idea unites a set of related trends. More often than not, we’re just following the age-old pattern of revolution and counter-revolution.

Here are seven developments I think we’ll see this year, together with a score on how confident I am that I’m right…

1. 2017 will not be the year of VR

VR is amazing. The ability to disconnect from your context and immerse yourself in a more flexible reality is genuinely world-changing. What’s more, the technology is finally mature enough to deliver on its promise. But VR will not be a mainstay of web design in the next 12 months.

The common objection to VR is the cost of the kit, but actually a VR headset is relatively cheap. A smartphone costs in the region of $850 (and only lasts a month less than the contract you sign to get it) and the mobile web is still growing at pace. (What’s more, you can use that self-same smartphone and some cardboard to create a rudimentary VR setup.)

Most people are too lazy to put on a VR headset just to order pizza

What’s holding up VR is our laziness. If you look at your web stats, you’ll see that most mobile browsing occurs via wifi; in other words, we’re browsing the web on portable devices when we’re not mobile. We know that we’ll get a better experience on desktop, but the desk is all the way over there, and my phone’s already on, and it’s in my pocket…

The biggest challenge to VR is that it can’t be used casually. VR is an event, an experience. Most people are too lazy to put on a VR headset just to order pizza. So we’ll play games, watch movies, tour vacation spots, but we won’t browse Vice, or flick through Facebook, or just kill time. Until we do, VR will always be a supplementary technology.

 Confidence: 8/10

2. We’ll be obsessed with security, but forget passwords

For many people, 2016 was a bit of a gut-punch, and there’s inevitable fallout from that. In industry terms, it doesn’t actually matter if Russian hackers put Trump in the Whitehouse, what matters is that the issues of hacking, privacy, and security have entered the public consciousness.

It’s very likely that over the next 12 months we’ll see an increase in the use of browsers like Vivaldi. It’s very likely that many more sites will be using SSL certificates. It’s very likely that every client you meet this year is going to have at least some questions about security.

One potential benefit of our renewed obsession with privacy is the end of passwords. Passwords have never been secure, because humans aren’t good at remembering long strings of random characters, and computers are. Passwords have always been a least-worst solution. The last few years have seen numerous attempts to move beyond them, ranging from master password applications, to social media sign-ins, to email-based logins. Finally, we have a great alternative in the form of fingerprint ID.

In 2017, the option to sign into sites using your fingerprint will become commonplace. The ubiquitous nature of mobile devices, and the steady decline of desktop browsing, coupled with the obvious benefits of a unique identifier that you don’t need to remember, will be the tipping point for simple security on the web.

Confidence: 6/10

3. Someone will finally make AI work

Obviously it won’t pass the Turing test, it won’t even try to. But provided that the marketing department agrees to call it “AI”, then machine learning and pattern recognition will make 2017 year zero for widespread artificial intelligence.

…it’s a short hop from A/B testing, to collaborative A/B testing where results from multiple sites are pooled into a single AI

At the core of this AI revolution, will be an enhanced approach to A/B testing; A/B testing only produces reliable results when you have many thousands of sessions to gather feedback from—more than most sites can muster. With the continued growth of design patterns, and the acceptance of design convergence over the last couple of years, countless designers are working with comparable UI elements. All of which means it’s a short hop from A/B testing, to collaborative A/B testing where results from multiple sites are pooled into a single AI. Complex design problems can then be solved using feedback from millions of users across thousands of sites.

In 2017 someone will release a cloud-based solution that will gather data from across the web, and interpret it intelligently so users can design from an informed point of view. This process won’t replace designers, because insights will, by necessity, be broad and work on a design pattern level. How to implement those insights will be a key talent for designers over the next decade.

Confidence: 3/10

4. The death of the web(site) and an end to online advertising

Designing sites as component-based systems, rather than as individual pages has been a popular approach for a number of years. The latest formalised version of the approach is Brad Frost’s Atomic Design. The value this methodology brings is an increased flexibility, greater consistency, and a more responsive approach across different media.

In 2017 we’ll take the next step by detaching components from sites, and delivering content as brands, rather than distinct websites. A travel service for example, might have hotel listings, flight listings, venue reviews, currency conversion, weather reports, all displayed in a single browser window, and all syndicated from different content providers. We’ll effectively be browsing as we do now using multiple tabs, but on a single screen.

Initially these services will be web apps, eventually we may see them evolve into distinct browser-like applications.

The side-effect of this new approach to syndication will be the final nail in the coffin of the floundering advertising revenue model. Advertising has always been a flawed method for funding the web: adverts are intrusive, unpopular, and impact content.

There are now two distinct webs forming, the traditional web that is locked in to single providers, and a SaaS model in which micro-payments buy access to select content. As 2017 progresses we’ll see the growth of the payment model, not in the form of paywalls, but in tiny micro-payments, enabled in the browser, that pay for syndicated content as we consume it.

Confidence: 2/10

5. The web will be beautiful

Utilitarian design has been the de facto approach for five years or more. We talk about design being “invisible”, as if a user being aware of design is somehow harmful.

Through 2016 there was an increasing interest in “delightful” design. Companies like WeTransfer enhanced their value with conspicuous design. Leading design thinkers like Stefan Sagmeister were advocating for beauty. The austerity of flat design has already been supplanted by a rediscovered love of gradients.

A reaction against the over-reliance on frameworks has lead to designers exploring more expressive ways of communicating

As human beings we’re attracted to beauty. If a product is beautiful, the experience of using it is more enjoyable. A product that is enjoyable, will be used more.

The drive for beauty is tied up in a number of ongoing trends. A reaction against the over-reliance on frameworks has lead to designers exploring more expressive ways of communicating. Hand-lettering and illustration are amongst the most in-demand design skills.

Even a clunky 2017-style AI can follow a set of rules to make type legible, to make colors inclusive, to make layouts responsive; those skills have all been mastered. In 2017, each designer’s strength will be their own craft skill, a unique vision of what is beautiful.

Confidence: 9/10

6. Design tools will explode

It’s a common misconception that there are a lot of design tools available. In actuality, there are a few key areas that receive all the attention, while the bulk of our processes are under-served. If you need a color picker, you have almost too much choice. If you’re looking for a prototyping tool there are a dozen or more professional-grade options available. If on the other hand you’re looking at vector graphics, you realistically have three options. For Bitmap artwork, it’s more like two.

There is clearly an appetite for new solutions to new problems. Web professionals, by our nature, are the first to dive into new technology. We think nothing of working with applications that are still in beta. The growth of prototyping tools demonstrates that there’s also a generation of software developers out there, ready to create innovative, exciting, and affordable design applications.

At the very least, in-app tooling will dramatically evolve this year. Adobe is reportedly working on AI additions to Creative Cloud as it tries to re-establish its dominance in the market, and it’s likely that other major players will follow suit.

Automation is the key word for software in 2017, and it will all be aimed at freeing up your time for more creativity.

Confidence: 7/10

7. The unstoppable rise of VX Design

Right now, someone somewhere is writing a Medium post in which they coin the latest industry buzz word. It’s probably very similar to “UX” only more-so. It’s probably “VX”; “VX” is one step along the alphabet, and still includes the cool sounding “X”. “VX” could be a reference to “VR”, it probably stands for “Virtual Experience”.

The term “VX Designer” will be virtually meaningless, but eight out of ten designers will be using it on their social media profiles by December. Several new design blogs will pop up, dedicated to “All things VX”. At this year’s MAX, Adobe will announce a specialist version of Creative Cloud, targeting “VX Designers”.

By the end of the year we’ll all be pontificating on “VX” as the only legitimate approach to design in 2018.

Confidence: 10/10

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