#Which I accepted... I love accepting things that dentists offer me... It's how I got an operculectomy years ago. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

m-jelly · 2 years ago

Note

I don't know if you still accept request but Imagine Levi getting his wisdom teeth removed from the dentist. When he comes back, he's a completely loopy and disheveled mess, spouting cute shit he wouldn't normally say prior to the operation. He's so needy and drowsy from the meds that it makes you want to care for him and show him how brave he was for getting his wisdom teeth removed .with lots of love✨💓😍

eheheheheh this is cute.

@kenkopanda-art <3 go check out her art, she's an amazing friend <3

Wisdom teeth

Pairing: Levi x Reader

Genre and tags: Romance, fluff, modern AU, established couple, cuddly Levi, needy Levi.

Concept: Levi gets his wisdom teeth pulled out and Erwin drops him off home to you. Erwin warns you about Levi being very odd. When Levi registers you're with him, he cuddles you and showers you with love and affection.

Tag list: @ladycheesington @levisbrat25 @skittlelover69 @strawberrybunny123 @nyxiieluna @li-anne @galactict3a @notgoodforlife @demonsimp6

You finished off your meeting in your office and ended the call. You checked your watch to see Erwin would be delivering Levi to you soon. You would have taken Levi to have his wisdom teeth pulled, but you had a meeting that you couldn't move. So, Erwin kindly offered to pick up Levi from your home and then drop him off at home.

You changed into comfy clothes and got out Levi's for him. You got some food and drink out for him that he was allowed. You unlocked the front door for Erwin and carried on getting things ready.

Erwin called your name. "I'm here!"

"Send Levi to the bedroom!"

"Got it!"

You walked over after you finished cleaning your office. "Hey, how is he?"

Erwin rubbed the back of his neck. "He's high, really high."

You hummed a laugh. "That so?"

"Yeah and he would not stop talking about you."

You blushed a little. "Really?"

Erwin chuckled. "He kept talking about how much he loved you, how much he cared about you, how much he loved you, how he would kill for you."

You giggled. "So cute. Well, I'll look after him from now on. Thank you for taking him and dropping him off for me."

"I hope your meeting went well."

You nodded. "Fantastic." You squeaked when you were tackled form behind into a hug. "Levi?"

Levi gripped you tightly. "Mine."

"Yes, I am yours."

He looked over your shoulder at Erwin. "She's not yours! She's mine! I know you've been eyeing her. Before I asked her out, you wanted her. Well, she's mine."

Erwin blushed. "Levi, you need to calm down. I'm not going to take her away."

"Good, cause she's all mine."

You hummed a laugh. "I've got him for now. Thank you again."

Erwin waved. "Good luck!"

You shuffled to the door as Levi held onto you. You closed the door and locked it. "How you feeling Levi?"

Levi nuzzled his face against you. "You laid out my clothes for me. You're so sweet."

You turned in his arms. "Well, I wanted you to feel comfortable. I made you something nice to drink and eat. It's all safe for you."

Levi kissed you. "You're so good to me." He kissed you again. "So kind and sweet. I love you. You're the best thing to ever happen to me."

You giggled. "Thank you, but tone down the kissing."

"Why!? I want my kisses! I love kissing you."

You rubbed his cheek softly. "Because you've had your teeth pulled out, that's why." You kissed the end of his nose. "I'm going to get your drink."

Levi followed you. "No, no I need cuddles. I need cuddles a lot more than I get."

You turned to Levi and laughed. "You're being really honest."

He pouted. "I just want make-out sessions. I want cuddle sessions. I want more of it."

You hummed a laugh at the swelling starting, which made him look adorable with his chubby cheeks. "So, you want more cuddles and kisses?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"We already kiss and hug a lot, so you want it even more?"

"Yes." He walked up to you and grabbed your breasts. "I also wanna massage your boobs more. They're so soft and lovely." He hummed a little. "You are so beautiful. You make my heart flutter. I really do love you so much. You make my heart sing all the time. Each day I can't believe we're together. I don't think much about myself and you are so beautiful, you're truly wonderful. I want to marry you, have children with you and do so many things together. I want to go on holiday together again and often."

You blushed hard. "Levi..."

He hugged you. "You're my world." He sniffed and started crying. "I can't ever lose you. I just love you so much."

You played with his hair. "I love you too."

He hummed and squeezed you. "You smell so good. You always smell good." He let you go and hummed. "Tired and thristy."

You handed him a drink. "There you go. Go rest, my love."

He welled up. "No. I don't want to lose you."

You held his hand. "Alright, let's go sit down together."

"Don't leave."

You sat down with him. "I'll never leave you. I really love you and I want the marriage and the kids as well."

Levi downed his drink. "Good." He flopped onto your lap and hummed. "You're thighs are so good."

You played with his hair. "Thank you."

He rolled over to look up at you. "You're incredible. You really are." He let the tears flow. "I don't deserve you, but I'm so happy that I have you! I'm very lucky! I love you!" He cried your name. "I love you! I've had nothing but bad things in my life until I met you. You're my shining light." He placed his hand on his jaw. "Ow."

You slipped down on the sofa and held him. "Shh." You held him close. "You need to talk less, okay? Your mouth is really going to hurt soon. So, please rest it."

He whined. "Okay."

You kissed his forehead. "I love you, Levi. I too can't believe you are mine. I am thankful for it and I never ever want to let you go."

"Hold on tight."

"I will."

He grabbed your bum. "I'll hold on tight."

You laughed. "That's a tight hold you have."

"Yes."

#aot levi #levi ackerman #levi #snk levi #fanfic #aot fanfiction #levi fanfiction #levi x you #levi x y/n #aot x you #captain levi #levi aot #levi x reader #levi ackerman fluff #levi ackerman x reader #levi ackerman x you #jelly fanfics

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hermannsthumb · 4 years ago

Note

As per our convo, Newt getting set up with Hermann via Hermann’s father’s binder full of pre-approved suitors for his son...

(from @k-sci-janitor 👀) easily one of our funniest concepts yet. I was going to end on newt coming over for dinner scenario but I like the ominous open ending. I'm not actually sure when kaiju attacks fall in the PR timeline so excuse my handwaveyness, LOL

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

Hermann’s relationship with his father is what one would call strenuous at best, but—Hermann must admit, to the man’s credit, and in spite of his many flaws—he took the news of Hermann’s sexual orientation as unflinchingly as if Hermann had told him the day’s weather. It was a bit annoying, in fact. Hermann had agonized over the proper way to breach the subject for months, certain it spoke to some sort of personal ruin (whether ostracization from the Gottliebs or being forbade following through on any attraction he may feel whilst still living under the family roof, he wasn't sure), before finally simply announcing it one day at the breakfast table on a whim.

It had been a long-standing tradition that Hermann’s parents compile a binder—effectively of dossiers—on all the most eligible bachelors (for their daughter) and bachelorettes (for their sons) to aid in the choice of the latest Gottlieb mate. It was easiest this way, or so Hermann and his siblings were told. Parental approval was already secured. The histories of each were already secured, which bypassed any nasty shocks that might emerge in the courtship stage. Most of them were children of his father's colleagues or bright minds in their own rights: surgeons, and dentists, and mathematicians. Poets were strictly forbidden.

The occasion of Hermann’s breakfast table announcement had also been the day Hermann’s father presented him with his very first binder of prospective mates—a few days after his eighteenth birthday, and shortly before he was to go off to begin work on his PhD. His father had slid him a hand-written binder of names, no more than a dozen, and all with accompanying photographs. “All are accomplished young women,” he assured Hermann. “We can arrange any meetings of your choice over your winter holidays.”

Hermann glared down at the row of frozen smiles. He stabbed his fork into his cooked tomato wedge. “I don’t want to marry any of these women,” he said, and turned his glare on his father. He still had a rebellious streak in him at that point, something nurtured by a charismatic young man he used to trail after in boarding school, who pierced Hermann’s ear with a sewing needle in the boys’ toilets and listened to songs about setting things on fire. In late this streak had manifested itself in Hermann in nicking packets of cigarettes from his father’s study, one of which was in his pocket now. The weight of it made Hermann feel bolder. “I don’t want to marry any woman,” he continued. “I like men.”

The binder was drawn away in silence, and Hermann was free to eat his toast and tomatoes. The next morning a binder of young men was in its place.

(In a way the acceptance infuriated Hermann. It meant he could not blame his father’s obvious dislike for him on an unfounded, homophobic prejudice; rather, it was a result of Hermann’s own personal failings.)

The binder was placed at Hermann’s breakfast plate every day until he left for his studies. It was placed at his plate when he returned from them five years later. Not even the emergence of the kaiju from the bottom of the ocean shortly after Hermann turned twenty-four dampened his father’s hopes, nor turning all their scientific efforts towards the new jaeger program: some names were removed from the binder (the reasoning Hermann shudders to think at), more still were added, though Hermann is expected only to consider it once a week now on account of his busy schedule. This was one of such days.

“Your brother is very happy with his wife,” Hermann’s father reminds him. “She was one of my first suggestions for him, in fact.”

Hermann is not fond of his sister-in-law. Too rude—too cold. Though perhaps that makes her perfect for Hermann’s brother. “Haven’t we got bigger things to worry about these days than whether or not I’m going to marry?” Hermann says. He adds milk to his tea. “I’m sure they’re all, er, marvelous selections, only—”

“Your sister, too, with her husband,” father says.

Hermann sighs. He hasn’t got much of the rebellious streak he used to in him anymore—too stressed. Not fancying a fight before they’ve even begun today’s coding work, he picks up the binder and begins flipping through it. Sons of engineers working on the jaeger program with them, prominent young chemists, many of whom Hermann has been presented with since he was eighteen. Plenty of them are even handsome. Half of Hermann wonders if he should just pick the least-unappealing one of the bunch and be done with it already. He turns the page over and freezes. “Oh,” he says. “This one is—new.”

“Hm?” father says.

Hermann holds up the binder, tapping at a new entry. “Newton Geiszler.”

“Dr. Geiszler,” father says, nodding. “A child prodigy from Berlin—he’s made tremendous strides in kaiju science in such little time. And,” he adds, “three PhDs. Two of them before he even turned twenty.” The unspoken implication was that Dr. Geiszler far surpassed Hermann in intelligence and Hermann should feel ashamed for not skipping as many grades as Dr. Geiszler.

Hermann feels he ought to resent Dr. Geiszler for it, but he's finding it difficult to summon up any animosity towards him. It's likely because Hermann finds Dr. Geiszler to be strikingly handsome in his photograph: cheeks which haven’t quite lost their baby fat (giving him the appearance of being a scruffy hamster), large, thick glasses, tousled hair, an easy grin. Three PhDs, and German at that. And a child prodigy? “I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned him to me before,” Hermann says. He seems precisely the sort father would. Geiszler’s photograph is black-and-white and a bit grainy, but Hermann swears he could make out the lightest bit of freckles across his cheeks.

“I’d not heard of him until he published an article last week on kaiju biology,” father says. “Besides—he’s moved to America.”

Geiszler has three piercings up the side of his left ear. “I am going to write to him,” Hermann declares.

Father nods, and picks up his newspaper, clearly already disinterested. They speak no more of it that day.

It is not hard to find Dr. Geiszler online (his name is not the most common, and his field of study certainly isn’t), nor is it hard to match his photograph to his faculty page on MIT’s website. From there, Hermann retrieves Dr. Geiszler’s email address. He takes the evening to read over Geiszler’s publications spanning back to 2003 before he gathers up the courage to type out an actual email.

Dear Dr. Geiszler,

You do not know me, but I have recently been made acquaintance with your work and find it—Hermann pauses—scintillating. My father and I are—Hermann backspaces this—I am currently working on the development of the jaeger program…

There’s a response waiting for him the next morning. It’s as enthusiastic as it is brief. Dr. Gottlieb- That’s so awesome!! Believe it or not I’ve been following your work too. I have a million questions for you about the jaegers. If it’s classified info I promise I won’t tell. -Newt

It makes Hermann smile like nothing ever has before.

Hermann’s correspondence with Dr. Geiszler does not transgress beyond the professional until the following January. By that time, Hermann and his father have successfully completed the coding for their first jaeger prototype, and Hermann has been offered his fair share of tenured university positions to pick from as he likes. He finds himself oddly disappointed that none of them are in America with Dr. Geiezler. This, which leads to the realization that he’s grown rather fond of Dr. Geiszler, is perhaps what drives Hermann to uncharacteristic sentimental extremes on January 19th: he orders Dr. Geiszler a birthday present. The first email Dr. Geiszler sends him after that addresses him as Hermann. The first email Hermann sends Dr. Geiszler after that addresses him as Newton. Things move rapidly after that.

“Are you still writing to that young biologist?” Hermann’s father asks him in March. Hermann has spent the last two months devouring every bit of information Newton has seen fit to divulge about his personal life: his dexterity with no less than three different instruments, his favorite loud monster movies, how he’d love to get a kaiju tattooed on him one day. Hermann suspects he might be falling in love with Newton. In hardly five months! These are war times, Hermann supposes, so it would make sense. People are meant to do such extreme things.

“I am,” Hermann says.

“I’ve asked around about him,” Hermann’s father says. His expression is stern—unimpressed. “About his character. I’m not sure it’s wise to continue your correspondence.”

The reasons are this. Dr. Geiszler’s methods are unorthodox. Dr. Geiszler is loud and uncouth, and has little respect for his intellectual superiors. Dr. Geiszler was thrown out of a convention once for storming up on stage and stealing a microphone from an engineer to shout about the destruction coral reefs. Dr. Geiszler was in a distasteful band for several years. Dr. Geiszler was once arrested for egging a politician’s house. Dr. Geiszler has gone on record as describing the kaiju as “kinda cool”. Almost none of this is news to Hermann; in fact, that which is only causes Hermann’s affection for Newton to grow. “I will consider your advice,” Hermann says, knowing he won’t. Besides, it's not as if his father really has Hermann's interests at heart—Hermann knows he merely wishes to preempt any scandal Newton Geiszler could possibly bring upon the Gottlieb name.

In April Newton goes on television and declares that he’s sure the kaiju are extraterrestrial in origin, on account of their great size and his brief examination of a sample from the second kaiju to make landfall. He’s laughed off by his older peers before he can get another word out. The email he writes to Hermann afterwards is furious, capslock-heavy, and expresses that Hermann is the only one who takes him seriously in the whole world. It leaves Hermann certain that he is in love with Newton.

“Dr. Geiszler was interviewed on some American television program,” Hermann’s father says a few days later.

“I know,” Hermann says, proudly. Newton was on television. “I watched it.”

“He made some extraordinary claims,” Hermann’s father says.

But Hermann is thinking only of the outfit Newton wore (skinny jeans and an oversized leather jacket, so out of place compared to the suited other scientists sitting around him), the shade of his eyes (hazel), his short stature (hardly taller than Hermann), and the cadence of his voice (high, but not unappealing). He’d been so confident, and carried himself with a self-assurance that was foreign to Hermann. It was marvelously attractive. “I’m sure they're correct,” Hermann says. "Every single one. Newton is a terribly brilliant scientist." All bold claims are met with derision at first, are they not?

Newton’s theory is proven correct after the next kaiju attack, when experts other than him get their hands on kaiju samples and validate his claims. The general consensus after that is that the kaiju are not of this world. And Newton was the first to propose the theory! Hermann sends Newton an email full of congratulations, and Newton responds with a heart emoticon in his sign-off. Newton isn't just a brilliant scientist. “Newton is a genius,” Hermann tells his father, dreamily.

The binder reappears on Hermann’s work desk a few months later, Newton’s page torn conspicuously from it. Hermann tips the whole thing straight into his trash can. He has more important things to worry about—arranging a meeting with Newton, perhaps. Hermann ought to have him over for dinner.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #Anonymous #the new post editor is weird but I like that I can make things pink

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rjpen · 4 years ago

Video

youtube

My father came to me in a dream in New York City one day.

I was walking down a busy street at the time, so it was something of an inconvenience; but I hadn’t seen him in years, so I kept calm and carried on. I kept the rhythm of my steps, and I continued to avoid the fast moving obstacles of people and traffic. I began to hum to myself. It’s a thing I do to manage stress, or distress - which is an odd thing to identify upon re-uniting with your own dad, but it was present none the less - we hadn’t seen each other in over 15 years, and this was a waking dream after all.

I hum to myself in the dentist’s chair when they get the drill out. Or anything else that buzzes menacingly, but they told me they don’t mind, and I think they and the assistants are quite amused by it. It beats screams.

Though he did not buzz menacingly, I hummed to my father, there on 2nd Avenue, and he hummed back. He kind of resonated. Words rang out with great eloquence, but the consonants never formed. The words simply vibrated, and I tried to find harmony with them. Sometimes perfect 5ths, sometimes clashing 7ths and 4ths - sometimes in a uniform lockstep beat, in time with my heart or the steady pulse of unrelenting Empire State footsteps - ever forward and constant; other times in challenging cross rhythms and alternate timings that teeter on the brink of chaos, the very edge of loosing all apparent form before suddenly completing their cycle and resolving again into a perfect fractal image.

In this way, we talked.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what he said, and I wouldn’t, it was a private conversation after all - but he left me with a song.

****

Soon after, a close friend, Jack Brown, had just gotten married, and text me a series of tender chords he’d strummed out on his honeymoon (he apologized for his playing in the voice note, explaining that he was unaccustomed to the ring on his finger, and it was making him stumble over the frets. I thought that was just about the most adorable thing I’d ever heard.) He wondered if I could do something unexpected with them.

I kept humming around the streets of New York.

******

A month before the death of George Floyd, I was in London and I reached out to an old colleague, Lanre Malaolu suggesting we finally got round to connecting in the way we’d put off for years and collaborate while I was grounded on a rare trip back in the UK. I had just finished this complicated sort of anthemic lullaby about love, legacy, loss - and how men particularly, deal with such vulnerabilities - with my brother (together we go by the musical pseudonym ‘TUNYA’). Lanre’s recent work exploring tenderness within Black masculinity seemed a perfect, unexpected, and exciting match to explore the themes of the music visually.

By the time of filming in August, the world had been brought to a screaming halt by the rawest, largest, and most powerful display of Black community, pain and activism since the Civil Rights movement of the 60s. A palpable sense of communal grief had dominated every conversation, on a global scale, magnified and brought to boil by the losses and fear of a world brought to its knees by COVID-19. John Lewis had died. Colston was dumped in the sea, and confederate monuments were armed battle grounds - defended by white militias and conquered by Black ballerinas. Chadwick Boseman died. I missed my dad. A world full of uncertainty lacked leadership and compassion, and each new week brought new, unresolvable heartbreak. The core team involved in the film had been privately trying to learn how to be grieving, vulnerable, Black and publicly on display for months, and the piece grew to reflect that. The responsibility as artists to share what light and answers we’d found and contribute that back into a community fractured and isolated by social distance, thrust not only a sense of purpose on the project, but a guiding momentum. It could now only be this.

Joshua Nash is an extraordinarily sensitive performer, and his unique blend of abrasive power and overwhelming vulnerability guides the piece through a physical embodiment of his own personal journey through a universal grief. The battle for control and suppression, the desire to tidy away a past too painful to confront, and the ultimate realisation that the only escape from the trappings of an eternal fight - is to allow oneself to feel it. To accept the pain of past battles, honour it, and through that knowledge, gain the peace necessary to thrive and progress beyond it.

To a world seemingly divided into two camps, both struggling to address a painful history, a cancerous personal and public legacy, I hope the piece’s foreword (unpublished in the end, written late one night between rehearsals, trying to pin down our direction) offers a guiding light toward its redemptive resolution:

“Those who fell before you fought,

For you

Not to be bound in mourning

But to free your life’s celebration”

In the end, like them all, Don’t Wait is simply a love song. It is about finding the path through life’s necessary, good trouble, to life’s intrinsic celebration.

More love, always

Watch the video here

(Photographs by Helen Murray)

————

DON’T WAIT

Sweet, sweet sun

Shine!

I couldn’t wait

Darling

To hold you in these arms

I couldn’t wait

Darling

To keep you

Quite as warm,

Warm as I would have liked

But I’ll soft speak

On the wind

And I

Won’t let you fall apart

If you hold me

Inside

Sweet sweet sun

Please

Shine

The first time I met you

I felt that I could fall into the sun

And still feel the light

Of your eyes

To guide me home

The first time.

The first time I met you

I felt like my life had just begun

Born again,

A better man, a better man

For you

And I’ll be around

On the wind

And I’ll guide you through the night

If you

You call me out

I will hold your hand

I never meant for you to

Stumble

and fall

Without me

Oh, there’s a song in you

All that I never taught

I never thought

I’d have to

I wish I could

More than anything

I want to hear

Oh,

What a song you are

And don’t sing

Like you let me down

You couldn’t

Let me down

And don’t feel

Like you let me down

You could never

Let me down

Don’t ever feel

Like a fool

In those blessed moments

When you fall into the truth

Sweet sweet sun

Of mine

Shine.

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imaginejamesandsirius · 4 years ago

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A, The Bachelor AU please?

Sirius hated this show. He really, truly did. A whole bunch of desperate women who'd been told they were worthless for half their lives felt pressured into auditioning because they were the scandalous age of twenty-four and not yet married. And then there were the bloody men that signed on, looking forward to free dates and sex (in the later episodes) without having to do any of the legwork of actually finding dates.

That being said, Sirius wasn't so secure in his finances that he could afford to quit. As part of the crew, he had all his expenses paid for for the duration of the season, and a hefty check to go home with. If he thought that he could get work somewhere else, he would. He'd applied and been rejected more times than he could count, and the longer he worked on The Bachelor, the harder it was for non-reality shows to consider him. He'd only gotten onto this show because Remus had already been working on it. To be fair to Remus, he'd warned Sirius that it was horrible from the very beginning, but the bills had started piling up and being a waiter just wasn't cutting it.

While he was working, he kept his mind on the framing of the shot and not anything that was happening inside of it. It was only when the work was done for the day that he let himself complain, even in his head.

He was so used to ignoring all of the people that appeared in front of the camera that he almost tripped over his feet when he saw who the Bachelor this season was. Bloody gorgeous was the only phrase coming to mind, and he couldn't get his brain to work past that. All the past Bachelors that Sirius had met looked basically the same. White skin, light brown hair, vague five o'clock shadow, and a smile that looked like it had been purchased directly from a dentist's advert. They were never really skin or really buff, just somewhere in the middle, but not so much in the middle that they'd be considered out of shape; it was so much nothing that it drove Sirius up the bloody wall.

This guy though, he looked nothing like the others. He could've been plucked directly from Sirius's imagination. He reminded Sirius a lot of James, his boyfriend from secondary school. They'd broken up when James went back to India for uni, and he hadn't heard from him since.

Sirius cocked his head, then gaped. That was James. What the sodding hell was he doing here? "James?" he blurted.

James looked over when he heard his name, then grinned. It still made Sirius's heart stutter in his chest. "Sirius? Bugger, it's good to see you." He hugged him, and Sirius hugged him back automatically. He felt the same way in Sirius's arms as he remembered, even though they were both older.

"What the hell are you doing here? I didn't think this sort of show was your thing."

James's mouth twisted. "I lost a bet. In my defense, I never thought they'd actually accept me. Lily couldn't stop laughing when I got the news."

"You still talk to Lily?"

"Well, she ended up at the same uni as me, so it was easy. Plus she didn't speak any Hindi when she first got there, so she kind of needed someone to help translate." James gave a helpless shrug. "I tried to look you up, but you weren't talking to your parents anymore, so."

"Yeah." He hadn't wanted to be easy to find, but that was because of his family, not anything to do with long lost friends. He didn't feel like explaining that, but James probably knew it anyways. "So if you don't want to be here for the usual reasons, what are you planning on doing?"

James shrugged again, looking supremely uncomfortable. "I dunno. When it gets to the end, I guess I could just not give a rose to either of them and that would work, right?"

"Not sure," Sirius admitted. There was a formula to how the show was supposed to go, but they broke the rules every once in a while if they thought it made it more interesting. "They might have you fake it just to have a finale," he said, because they'd done shite like that before.

"Really? They'd do that?"

"It's a scripted show, mate."

"Great," James said flatly. "I'm really looking forward to this."

"Kinda sounds like you shouldn't have lost the bet."

"Shouldn't you be on my side?" James asked.

"How would that be funny?"

James snorted, then made a disgusted face when someone called his name. "See you later?" he asked hopefully, taking slow steps backwards so they knew he'd heard them.

"Definitely."

James grinned before leaving, and it lit up his entire face.

Sirius's heart ached for a moment. Good to know that he was still in love with James even though it had been years. Their break up had been sad, but inevitable. James had known where he was going to uni since before they'd even met (let alone started dating), and it would've been stupid for him to have changed his plans for Sirius. Even if he'd offered to stay, Sirius would've insisted that he go. Maybe, since James wasn't here for the relationship promised at the end of the show, Sirius could see if he was interested in getting back together.

"Was that James?" Remus asked, and Sirius jumped; he'd been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn't heard him coming.

"Yeah," Sirius said.

Remus kindly did not mention that he'd surprised him. "Huh. I didn't know he was back in the country. I talked to Lily last week and she didn't mention it. What's he doing here? You back together?"

"Not yet," Sirius said automatically, then had to correct himself. "I mean, I have to ask him if he's still interested. He's not here for me."

"Then what's he doing here?"

"He's this season's bachelor. He lost a bet," Sirius said, preempting the next question.

"Fucking hell," Remus muttered. "This'll be interesting."

James showed up at Sirius's door-- Sirius didn't have to ask to know that Remus had told him which room he was in-- that night when shooting was done. "That was miserable."

"I'll only get worse," Sirius warned. "After they start pretending to actually like you, they get more catty."

"What makes you think they won't like me? I'm a damn catch."

Sirius snorted, shoving at his shoulder.

James caught his hand before he could pull away. Their eyes met. And held.

Mark that down as definitely still interested, Sirius thought to himself, somewhat giddily. Neither of them said anything, but sometimes they didn't need to. This was how it had all started for them at Hogwarts. They'd had to reassure each other after a while that yes they fancied each other and wanted to date, but that initial interest had been easy to spot-- and it was the same now as it had been then.

"I really missed you," James whispered.

"I missed you too. Kinda sucked not being able to talk to you."

"Yeah," James said with a crooked smile. He let go of Sirius's hand and turned to face him a little more fully. "Look, I know it's... been a while, and maybe you're dating someone else-"

"I'm not."

"Good to hear," James said, fondness seeping into his expression. "I know the timing's utter shite-- with the show and everything-- but I'd like to give us another try. I mean, we were good together. Really good."

"We were," Sirius agreed, smiling at him return. "How about this. We work on the show in the day, and at night, we just... do this. Talk. Catch up. If we're both still interested when filming's done, then we can talk about where we go from there."

"Should I start working on my talking points now or?"

Sirius snorted. He'd missed this.

As it turned out, the producers opted to let James choose neither of the finalists because they had enough footage to make up the drama elsewhere. James was unspeakably relieved about that, and if he was honest, Sirius was happy about it too; he knew that it wouldn't have meant anything if James had had to pretend to choose one of the contestants, but it was nice all the same.

Because James was an absolute sap, when he went to Sirius that night, he brought him a red rose. He even had a little smile on his face like he knew exactly how corny it was and loved it for that very reason. "Do you accept this rose?" James asked.

"You're so buggering stupid," Sirius said, the words not near enough to hide the blush on his face.

"That's not the line."

"I'm making it one," Sirius said. He snatched the rose from James and pulled him into a kiss.

#prongsfoot #marauders #sirius black #james potter #fanfic #filled #no magic au #post hogwarts #getting together #siriuslystarbucks #Anonymous

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apriorisea · 4 years ago

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BTS Imagine Series: Don’t Leave Me, Pt. 5

Hoseok x You

That night, he doesn’t meet the others for a late dinner. He doesn’t join them for a few drinks after. He doesn’t even answer Jungkook’s text about playing video games together. He just goes back to his apartment. It’s big and empty and silent. He hates it. The last message from you hasn’t changed, no matter how many times he looks at it: Please don’t. So he doesn’t. He sits silently in his dimly-lit kitchen for hours. His knee is killing him. But it doesn’t hurt more than how much he misses you.

----

You sit in your car for 45 minutes, crying until you just can’t anymore. Your head aches, your eyes sting, your throat feels raw. You hurt. The first thing you see when you enter your apartment is his jacket hanging on the back of a kitchen chair. Your stomach lurches. I don’t get it. A few more stubborn tears slip down your cheek and you wipe them away angrily. You move instinctively towards the chair, reaching out to touch the jacket before you can stop yourself. “How can you seem like you love me so much, but not enough?” you whisper to him. Except he’s not there. The apartment is silent. Empty. Just like it was for the 3.5 weeks while he was touring, except--- Your breath catches in your chest. Except he’s not coming back now. Closing your eyes tight against the tears that bubble up, you suddenly realize you don’t want to be alone in this empty, silent apartment. You grab your phone and before you can stop yourself, open Hoseok’s contact. “No.” Your heart hurts so much, but you force yourself to navigate out of his contact and to your best friend’s instead. “Hi,” you sniffle when he answers. “Can you come over?” He’s there within 15 minutes. By this time, you’re changed into baggy sweats and sitting listlessly on the couch. You’d washed all your make-up away, which only highlighted how red and swollen your eyes were. You’d kept the TV on as loud as you could, unable to bear the silence. He knocks once before letting himself in. “Hey,” he says hesitantly, shutting the door behind him. “What happened?” You take a breath to explain---and lose the words in a torrent of tears. Sighing, he moves to sit next to you on the couch, reaching out an arm to wrap around your shoulders. “All right, dummy,” he says, rubbing your arm. “Tell me.” The two of you had known each other practically since birth, so you had complete confidence that he’d be able to interpret your watery, muffled, garbled storytelling. By the time you’re finished, the second wave of tears is over. You sit back, wiping your nose on your sleeve. “All right,” you say thickly. “You tell me.” He’s quiet for a moment, before turning to look at you shrewdly. “Are you really ready for my opinion?” “I....” you hesitate; one of the things you loved the most about your best friend was his ability to offer unbiased, straight-talk opinions. Coincidentally, it was also one of the things you hated the most about him. “No,” you admit. Nodding, he gets to his feet and heads for your kitchen. “Please tell me you have ice cream or chocolate or something; I came woefully unprepared.” You watch him rustle around the kitchen through puffy eyes. “You think I’m wrong,” you posit. “No.” He pauses in his search and turns to look at you seriously. “I think you have every right to be upset and hurt, and for that I want to punch his face in.” The amount of snot you’d accumulated through your crying-fest causes you to make a really unattractive noise as you manage a laugh. “I’m serious,” he insists, returning to the couch with a bag of mini-Snickers, a half-full carton of mint chocolate-chip ice cream, and two water bottles. “I’m a good 10cm taller than him; he wouldn’t even know what hit him.” “You,” you say, already feeling a little better at this familiar humor. “You were what hit him.” Smiling, he hands you a spoon. “So.” He opens a mini-Snickers and pops it into his mouth. “Did he ever apologize? Or did he just keep insisting that he wasn’t a liar?” You pause, putting your ice-cream-laden spoon back into the tub. “He...” Frowning, you trade your spoon for your phone; with your best friend here next to you to help analyze, you’re not afraid of opening Hoseok’s messages anymore. “He just keeps saying he’s not a liar.” “Yeah, I really can’t get behind that,” he says, shaking his head. “Whatever his reasoning might be, he did lie.” “Right?” you say glumly, folding your arms over your stomach, ice cream forgotten. “Honestly, that’s part of what hurt me the most: that instead of trying to apologize or explain, he just kept saying he wasn’t a liar.” “Well he was flustered,” he reasons logically, digging his own spoon into the now-abandoned ice cream. You raise an eyebrow. “So that makes it okay?” “Hey.” He waits until you accept the Snickers he’s offering you. “I’m on your side, dummy. Always. And I never said it was okay.” You exhale heavily and tip your head back to rest on the couch. “The closest he ever got to apologizing,” you remember, “is saying that he never meant to hurt me. Isn’t that the oldest excuse in the guy playbook?” “It’s turned into that now,” he shrugs, “But some of us actually mean it still.” You’re quiet for a moment. “The worst....” You take a second to catch your breath, feeling fresh tears sting your eyes. “The worst part was when he said but.” “But?” “I asked him if he even loved me,” you say quietly, “And he said “Of course I love you, but....” The tears catch the end of your sentence, carrying it away. Wordlessly, he leans over, pressing his shoulder against yours in a familiar sign of solidarity; a code the two of you had made, a sign that the other person wasn’t alone, wasn’t shouldering everything on their own. It helps. The two of you sit like that for a long time, snacks ignored. Finally, when you feel like you’ve caught your breath again, you clear your throat. “Okay. I’m ready for your opinion now.” You reach for a Snickers. He nods, gathering his thoughts again. “Generally speaking,” he begins, “This dude’s a good guy, right?” “Yes.” The answer comes immediately, easily. “He’s never mean or cruel?” he persists, looking carefully into your eyes. “He doesn’t demand things? He’s not abusive?” “No.” “Good.” He thinks again. “Does he take care of you? Worry over you? Try to make things easier for you?” Your stomach knots as you remember all the little conversations you’d had before Hoseok had left for tour: don’t forget the trash, the landlord’s coming over, remember your dentist appointment. “Yes,” you whisper. He nods. “Do you believe that he loves you?” “Yes.” Even with how much your heart was hurting right now, you knew it was true. “Except for the but.” “Here’s my theory.” He takes a long drink from his water bottle first. “There’s something he’s trying to protect you from.” This catches you completely off-guard. “...Protect me?” “Yeah. Whatever it is he’s “hiding” from you is being hidden in an effort to protect you.” “Like--like what?” He shrugs. “I don’t know. But...we both know the hectic life of an Idol, right? How much their privacy is invaded, the death threats, the stress....It’s not beyond imagination, right?” Defamation. “Right.” “Now,” he turns towards you seriously. “Hear me carefully: I don’t agree with it. Whatever it is. You’re in a committed, serious relationship, and that requires transparency and intimacy in all things. There really shouldn’t be secrets, no matter the reason for them. That’s my opinion, anyway.” You nod slowly. “But....the two of you are still brand-new in a baby relationship.” He sits back. “These things take time to work out.” There’s a long pause. “So you think I was wrong?” you ask eventually. “Not wrong,” he says firmly. “He still lied to you. And then lied about lying. You still have a right to be hurt.” He studies you for a moment. “What do you think?” Your swollen eyes are aching and your head is starting to swim a little from exhaustion and the crying. “I think....I want to be in an honest relationship, with someone who loves me enough to include me in everything. A real partnership.” You exhale roughly. “And I think I’m sad. And tired.” You look over at him. He smiles gently. “Ready for sleep now?” “I think so.” You grab his arm and give it a squeeze. “Thanks for coming,” you say. “Sorry it’s so late and I’m such a mess.” He laughs. “I’m pretty sure I called you over at 3 in the morning after Ex #4 dumped me.” You make a face. “Usually I hate it when you refer to your ex-girlfriends just as “ex # whatever,” but.....man, I hated her so much.” “She was the worst,” he agrees easily. Growing more serious, he adds, “But your guy is not the worst.” Bumping your leg with his, he goes on. “I’ve seen how happy you’ve been these past few months. That makes me vouch for him more than anything else. I just want you to be happy, dummy.” You both get to your feet and you accept his hug willingly. Sighing heavily, you say, “I’ll keep you updated.” “I’m always here,” he says as you walk him to the door. “Speaking of Idol-privacy, though, are you sure it’s even cool that you told me all of this? Am I going to get snipered on my drive home??” You laugh. “It’s fine. I’m sure he’s talking and commiserating with all his buddies right now, too.” The thought twists your guts a little. Shoes back on, he gives you a look. “Okay. Get some rest. Text me in the morning, okay? And don’t be afraid to give yourself a little time to think. Just listen to your instincts. It’ll be okay.” “Thanks. Drive safe. Send me a text when you get back?” “Yes, ma’am.” With a final wave, he’s gone. You close and lock the door behind him, feeling much lighter---though still heartbroken. As you shut off the lights and head for bed, you can’t help but picture the scene again: Hoseok, surrounded by his brothers, explaining and defending, getting advice from the older ones and support from the younger ones.....The image brings you sorrow and relief at the same time. “You should be here with me,” you whisper to his pillow. “But at least you’re not alone.”

----

He was alone. It was well past midnight, and he hadn’t heard from you again. The apartment was dark and empty and still silent. He sat alone in the kitchen, his thoughts a mess. Finally, at 3am, he drags himself out of the kitchen and down the hall to his empty bedroom. He stares at your side of the bed for ages. In the end, he grabs his pillow and favorite blanket and takes it back into the living room with him. He curls up on the couch, turns the TV on so it isn’t so silent, and tries to sleep. Everything hurts. How? How did he end up losing you anyway?

#bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts clean imagines #BTS #non-smut #bts imagine series #don't leave me pt 5 #don't leave me #bts imagine hoseok #hoseok #jhope #hobi

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growingingreenwood · 4 years ago

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Hey I start college this week any advice? Hope all is well you are amazing!

Omg good job!! That's so exciting!!!! Alrighty, I have a bachelor’s degree and now i'm working on my Rec Therapy Degree so I’ve had like 5 and a half years of college/university experience so hopefully at least something here will be helpful for you.

What are you going to collage to take?

One- Try to sit in the front of of the lecture hall

Classes will probably be a lot bigger than you’re used to and many people find this intimidating. I used to sit at the very back of lecture halls because I hated having to walk past rows of people, but you know what? My grades suffered for it. I’m an easily distracted human being with crippling ADHD and so being able to see everybody's computer screen was a nightmare for me. Half the class was watching movies or playing games or whatever so I didn't hear a damn word my teacher said. The closer I was to the front, the less distracting it was for me. Plus, I find that when I’m more familiar with being closer to my teachers it's easier and less intimidating for me to ask them for help or to re-explain things.

Two- Don’t be embarrassed, everybodys a mess and other people have your question.

The colleges I’ve been to have been nothing like highschool. We’re all in this together, we’re a suffering squad okay. So if you're too tired to ‘look good’ SICK half your class probably has not showered in like five days. Have a question that you think might make sound dumb? I can literally assure you that other people have the same question and pray somebody else will ask it. All of you are confused, it's okay.

Three - BUY YOUR TEXTBOOKS USED!!!!!

Oh my god I cannot stress this enough. For some reason professores and schools are out here hustling textbooks like starving soundcloud rappers. We don’t need that shit. Your school probably has a facebook group or two where students are selling their old textbooks much cheaper than you could get them in bookstores. And when I mean cheaper, I mean by like 100 - 200 dollars. If you're on a physical campus, lots of people put lists of what books they're selling on their lockers so keep an eye out for flyers as well.

Four - Join a club!

One of the things I really love about college is all the low pressure social situations. There's literally tons of clubs at most universities rankings from really open (First Year Social Club!!) to ridiuclously niche (We All Play Super Smash Brothers In Full Costume Once A Month) so its a great place to start when it comes to making new friends and finding some cool stuff to do!

Five - Don’t fall for the ‘too cool’ trap.

Lots of people have endless fun in college (like me) and some people really, really hate it. Personally, I think it has a lot to do with your attitude about being there. There's tons of pep rallies, carnivals, festivals and whatever else held by your school that can actually be super fun to attend but many people think they're ‘too cool’ for things like that. Don’t fall into this trap, I can assure you those that went to the events had like 9 billion times more fun.

Six - ASK FOR THE HELP THAT YOU NEED

This lesson took me so long to learn, but it was life changing once I did learn it. There's tons of resources available to you though most universities, and most of it was probably paid for through your tuition so it makes no sense to NOT access these things. See what your school offers for counseling services, stress reduction, learning activities held in the library, financial aid, make use of your teachers office hours, things like that. Crawl through your school’s website and see what they have to offer you, you can get some really really good life advice sometimes. If you’re falling behind in school work and need an extension, ask for it. Literally the worst thing that can happen is your teacher telling you ‘no.’ Which, honestly, in my near six years of schooling has literally only happened once and it was because the teacher personally didn’t like me.

Seven -- C’s Get Degrees

School Burnout Is REAL, she is sneaky, and she will hit you when you least expect it. I really struggle with having too high of expectations of myself when it comes to my work/life balance. This is the only year that I haven't worked at least 20 hours a week on top of full time university education and that only because of COVID and my immune issues, however for some reason I always expect myself to do like 3 - 4 hours of homework a day. Which is lunacy. At least it is for me. I literally cannot even count how many times I’ve put my grades before my physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental wellbeing. How many times I’ve forced myself to keep studying when I knew that I had already surpassed my limit hours ago because I thought that getting an A was more important than anything else. Especially myself. That’s not true.

You weren’t put on this earth to get straight A’s, you were put on this earth to be the best you that you can be.

So sometimes, you really do just gotta accept that ‘C’s get Degrees’ and you gotta close your textbook, go paint your nails, call your friend, and go to bed.

Eight -- Everything Can Be A Learning Experience

There are endless things to learn at college, and most of them aren't what the teachers are telling you. College is where I first learned that it really isn’t the end of the world to fail sometimes. It happens, it happens to everyone, but there's always something to learn from every ‘failure’ and part of it is how you can better handle failures in the future. It teaches you how to work with people, share ideas, and grow in your self-confidence. If you take the time to self-reflect when you find yourself struggling in aspects of your life in college, you can really learn a lot about yourself and how you present.

It was through self-reflecting on some of my peer interactions that I realized my vocabulary was creating a rift between me and them, as several people as it as a way of me purposefully trying to make myself seem ‘better’ or ‘more educated’ when in reality I just forget a lot of simple words and end up using some ridiculous monstrosity in casual sentences. The more I made that known about myself in interactions, and mentioning how much I read, helped my interactions because it helped people to better understand WHY I speak that way. This lesson has continued to help me throughout my life.

Nine -- Missing Lectures is a Slippery Slope

My attendance rate was already a lost cause by the time I got to University (my highschool almost didn't let me graduate because I had an 87% absentee rate and something like 300 missed detentions but I was 1 of 3 Full Honors Students and they wanted the funding so they ecentually let me lol) but I have watched many a student crawl into this 'Chronic Skipping' pit with me in my years. Im not really sure why it happens, but basically as soon as you miss 2 lectures for no concrete reason (like a dentist appointment or cause your sick or something) it's game over for you. You'll miss two classes, then three, then four, then 2 a week, then 3 a week. Then you start skipping other subjects too. Then you end up like me and suddenly its the end of the term and you realize you've only attended 4 entire classes, one of which was the first day and the other 3 were exams. (True story, that was my 8am Political Science Class in my second year)

I hope this helps somewhat!!!! Let me know if you have any specific questions!

And thank you lovely, I’m chugging along doing my best trying to get back into my creative bubble which for some reason seems to be rather elusive and hard to track down thus far.

#not tolkien #momma tolkien #tolkien mom things #collage tips #tips for collage #tips for university #answered asks #haleigh speaks

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maritimeericandersen · 4 years ago

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BDRP Questionnaire

Your Name: Sidney

Characters: Eric Andersen, Clara Baudry (Euterpe), Ferb Fletcher, Pedram Ratigan, Laszlo Robinson

Pick one of your characters and talk about their growth (we recommend choosing an older character, but it’s up to you!) What about their story has surprised you? What are you proud of? How have they changed from their original inception to now?

If we’re going by oldest characters, then Eric it shall be!!

As far as growth, I think the major thing that I’ve really enjoyed is getting him to be self sufficient and taking care of things he wasn’t used to before being out on his own. Eric had always been one of those kids who got to take a back seat to planning anything! Like doctors or dentists appointments. He never had to deal with the bank or paying for things like his phone or the internet. And for Eric, a simple boy, if it isn’t right in front of him he doesn’t think about it. Out of sight, out of mind, baby! So him being out here on his own has put all of those things in his direct line of sight. Getting new clothes, shoes, food, water, balancing all of this on a limited budget. You know, taking care of himself. I know the bare minimum is certainly a ridiculous thing to be proud of someone for, but here I am lmao.

Obviously a big part of him having not perished and just going back home was Mr. Moon!! Huge thank you to Lauryl and Jun for taking pity on me and Eric when we first got here lmfao. Eric getting a job, food, boarding, and pity taken on him got him started! And getting a pep talk to actually apply and go to university! Where he’s carving out a future for himself that he chose to do and that wasn’t influenced thinking about the Order or his family or anything but him!

I also really enjoy all the friendships he has made!!! Ollie! And Alice, and Ian, and HARU, and Henry, (but Henry he already sort of had but I’m super jazzed to see where those two can go,) and although I’ve never done a thread with any one on the volleyball team (besides Jake and Olaf, but not in the context of them being on a team!!) I’m sure Eric assumes they’re all the Very Best of Friends. So I really love that he has friends and a little community of people that he can show for himself!!

And Eric really hasn’t changed from my original thinking of him. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing but he was always supposed to be that kid in class who showed up a little late and asked if he could borrow a pencil. I think, if anything, the things around him in his story have changed a bit in my own brain in order to fit in to the universe of BDRP now that I’ve been here a little longer (almost a year!!!) to have a better understanding of how the world works!! But yeah, all and all, he is still on the original path I had for him going into this.

Pick another character (or the same character if you only have one) and talk a little about where you WANT them to go. What are your plans for them going into the new year?

Moving on to Clara:

What I want for her, personally, is to soften up and lean into her more excitable side. The one that isn’t so concerned with money or the way she looks or what other people are perceiving her to be. I want her to open up more!! Being a Muse will be super helpful to her because I think for a character to help someone else, they’re going to need to have a bit more vulnerability to them? Like, all mentor or helper type characters have to gain some semblance of trust from the person they're helping to get them to see that they aren’t in an environment to be judged or taken advantage of. Right? Like uh, Obi Wan isn’t necessarily up front with Luke about everything but he gives him many truths, like how he and his father were very good friends, so Luke trusts him! Or when Professor Keating is vulnerable with his students, telling them about how love and poetry and those deep dark feelings inside of you are what life is all about, and they trusted him wholeheartedly!

In order to do that, she’s going to need to let go of her own fears!! And grow! I want to see her learn that part of being people’s friends, or when being someone’s guide as a Muse. I think her coming to understand that sharing her story and history will be very helpful in her journey to becoming this generation’s Euterpe. I want to see her come into her more active magic by developing emotionally! Working through her anger and letting go of that to make more room for the part of her that wants to connect and be around people.

I am also really excited to see where her connections take her in the coming future! The Groove Room as her first helping gig to Ber! Being in a band!! Working at Tiana’s place and performing original music there!!! Getting to talk more with Franny, her idol!!!, will be fantastic for her. I’m so super duper excited to see where she goes.

Pick a thread or a plot that you’re proud of and talk about why you loved it.

This is an insane question because I genuinely love them all so much you guys 😭

For Eric: Any thread he’s had with Jun since that has helped move Eric along in getting to be his Own Person and getting his act together. Again, thank you Jun! I really really enjoyed his first interaction with Lou? I thought that thread was hilarious and yet cringed the entire time writing it because Eric is such a ridiculous person. I also liked his thread with Olaf when they went on the tour of the university!! Their conversation about the gryphons was really a challenge on Eric and having to think about hunting from the perspective of the other side, which he had never really done before. Also just him having a genuine and intelligent conversation with a fairy who is now also playing a sport with him has probably been very helpful to him!!! I love his threads with Haru because getting to write his reactions to her learning about the human world always brings me such delight. All this threads with Ollie are great because I get to write that part of Eric that is just a dumb boy hanging out with his bestie!! I love that so much since he’s so much more relaxed and I find their banter to be an easy back and forth. Getting to meet Isa for the first time was a blast, I really enjoyed their interaction. Most recently I was super de duper in love with him and Henry’s re-meeting. I hadn’t had a chance for him to really face the Order without him having to go all the way back to everyone, so getting that connection with Henry was a good inbetween and getting to write him talking to someone who knows the life and his plight was so cathartic for him!

For Clara: Any thread between her and Franny is so fun!! Her first meeting with Franny was great because I got to try and capture one of those moments that’s like, you know and adore this person and they’ve done so much for you but they have noooo idea who the hell you are. So that was a lot of fun for me, not so much for Clara lmfao, but hey it was the first step in getting her to this stage in her relationship with Franny, which she never thought she would even have!!! I really liked the two threads she got to have with Callie before she departed, it was very kind of Pet to give me those moments of giving Clara the knowledge of what/who she was!! Otherwise she would be walking around, still in the dark about her magic! OH, I loved the thread with her and Mei Q. !! I think it was important for her to get the advice of being open to people from an outside, neutral source who had no stake in Clara at all other than to just tell her what was up. Even if she didn’t really trust it lmao, it planted the seeds in her brain. I also really liked her thread with Imelda where she was trying to finagle the truth about her and O’Malley out of her lmfao. It was a challenge for me to think of dialogue that wouldn’t give her away, so that was very fun!!! And thank you Imelda for not firing her! And then of course, her thread with Ber and getting him to let her help her with the Groove Room! It gave me a chance to use her magic and start to explore the beginnings of how she is going to approach being a Muse while also giving her the first taste of adventure. Getting to write a Clara whose mind isn’t wrapped up in her account balance and is instead thinking about the love of life is always a very fun time for me, so that thread has been nice to write.

For Ferb: Literally any thread with his siblings. I want to take this moment to personally thank Emma and MK for giving me the Flynn’s in the span of ?? like four months?? Which was insane to me, because when I was writing his app I was like, “I will probably never get my siblings, and I will just have to accept that.” but then bam, next thing I know, there they were. So anything with them has been like my dreams come true. I loved his thread with Mei K. asking him to prom via sign!!! Too pure. The thread with Su when she was helping him work through what being a sibling is like and then cementing their friendship was really good because it got him to open up and doing that with Ferb seemed ?? impossible to me, so getting to write that was wonderful! Also his thread with JJ! Getting to gush about sign language was so much fun for for me, so thank you so much, Bee for giving me that opportunity!!! His and Vanessa’s thread at the carnival was really fun, too, especially since I made it my personal goal in that one to cut any dialogue from him and work on how he communicates without using words in that sort of fast paced situation where he couldn’t use his phone to know what she was saying, so, I thoroughly enjoyed that one, too.

For Ratigan: I honestly find any interaction with Ratigan to be a blessing to me because I genuinely feel terrible for asking for threads with him since he is so mean. His thread with Tiana and getting her to take up his offer on a loan was awesome, especially since it was one of the first things I got to write with him!! Very much appreciate Emma for willing to put Tiana in that position! It also gave me the thread with him and Simba, which was really funny since they are such opposites and getting to write Ratigan playing nice but secretly envying everything that Simba is/has was really interesting. Both his threads with Errol of course because it just gives me the opportunity to write him being the mean spirited person that he is. I adored his thread with Franny when she told him the news that she was pregnant!!! It gave me the chance to reflect on him and his relationship with her and the fact that he actually does like her and would snipe anyone who came for her. Not that he would admit that at all. LOVE his threads with Bianca, them staring one another down like a pair of cowboys waiting to see who will draw first has been so much fun to write!! I love writing that part of him as his paranoia knows no bounds. And his thread with Zira?? Has been immaculate because writing him in a place where he doesn’t think he is the superior one in the room would never happen in any other context, so I absolutely love getting to write him getting put in his place lmao. Also, having just finished the AU thread with LP was really fun!!! I liked getting to play into the tropes and the campiness of the spy genre and getting to see what he would act like in the face of genuine emotion.

For Laszlo: Literally all this threads lol. Writing Laszlo brings me such joy, as he is such a ray of sunshine. Him and Lachlann were a hoot and a half. I looooooooooved him and Eilonwy!! Both because she is such a treat but also because getting to write about him witnessing magic being put into his art while speaking to the person behind the magic was fantastic for what he wants to do in the future! Both his threads with Simba have been great, I love their vibe so much. The three-way thread between him, Lou, and Tiana for the mural was super fun!! I got my first taste into what discussing art would be like while also getting to think about how Laszlo would approach art while getting help from two other voices, so that whole thing was just chef kisses. His thread with Cornelius right now has been really lovely, I like getting to write them having a fun time together and being bros!! His threads with Franny have been so good, I adore them so much, their relationship is so fun to write. And of course, Marlin, too!! Their first thread was really fun and gave me the opportunity to write comedy as well as trying to figure out how he would react to embarrassment and all that. His thread with his mum is still coming along but I am in loVE with it so far. Petunia is the best, so getting to write with her and trying to figure out how that relationship has developed with them both being adults now has really been such a delight for me. I’m so happy because, bruh, like Ferb, when I was applying for him I told myself I would probably never get his intimidate family and that was going to be okay. Now look at us, who would have thought-

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 strengths and talk about why you think it’s one of your strengths.

Warning: Cop Out Ahead

Hmmm, I think the only strength I can think of would just be that I’m open to changes? I have no problems in people damaging my ego because I simply do not have one lmao. There’s really nothing I will be offended at needing to move around or change to fit. I like being able to hear what other people have to say about my writing, even if it’s to do something completely different with where I was going because I wouldn’t have ever thought to do it like that!! Which I’ve learned in rp is super great since there are so many people here with so many different ideas and perspectives and characters and it brings me such joy to hear you all talk and collab and read what you’ve written!!!!

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 areas of improvement.

Oh gosh, where to even begin.

1. I’m terrible with metaphors and comparisons lmaooo. I will attempt to write something lyrical or flowery and then I’ll come back to it and be like:

so that I definitely need to get better at!! Stop comparing things that don’t make sense!! Also not just using them to make my point as clear as glass. I think a big portion of why I write terrible, embarrassing metaphors is because I’m scared of being misunderstood so I feel like I have to give everyone a giant neon sign saying what I mean like seven times over. When in reality, everyone here is an intelligent individual who also writes very well so they will have no problem figuring out what I mean because, in all honestly, whatever I am writing isn’t going to be that convoluted!!

2. My sentence structures are always all over the fucking place. I do run ons, fragments, repetitive, I do all the sins baby. I need to clean it up and get my act together. Which brings me to my next point,

3. Editing. I’m very terrible at editing my own work because a lot of the time I don’t want to read my own writing so it makes me reluctant to go back over and check what I did. But then when I DO go back and read it to remember what I did for a reply, I read all the easy mistakes I could have fixed which means the person I’m writing with read it, too, which makes me cringe more and makes me not want to read what I wrote all over again, and then it is just one massive positive feedback loop that ends with unedited work and a bunch of nonsense left for someone to interpret. I gotta stop it!! I either need to get some self confidence somehow or just suck it up and get to editing more so people don’t have to suffer for my mistakes.

Pick one of your plots, or even just a character, and come up with a list of 3-5 “mentor texts” where you can look for inspiration or research, then write a short (2-4 sentences) why you picked those texts. (They don’t have to be books, either!)

I feel like I’m back at school doing a Work Cited page lmao. But okay, for Ratigan:

Of course, the most obvious: The Adventure of the Final Problem by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Thank god this was a short story, lmao. Honestly, reading it you could tell a bitch was just trying to put a wrap on it because Doyle doesn’t really go into detail about anything besides Holmes and Watson’s road trip. Like it never goes into detail about the big back and forth game between Holmes and Moriarty, it just tells us that they had one and this story takes place at the end of it. We only ever get Moriarty through Holme’s storytelling and from afar from Watson’s point of view. So it’s kind of funny that this guy, who appears in one short story and only mentioned in one other book, who had barely any character besides being smart, has been turned into this notorious villain name. I mean….his power….

Anyways, the reason I read it was because Ratigan is the Moriarty of Basil of Baker street, so I figured it would be useful to read the source material since my only experience with the character was Andrew Scott’s in Sherlock the show and then Jared Harris’ in Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, who I still reference since I think he was a brilliant casting choice and is closest to the guy described in the story besides the guy who played Niles in the Nanny showing up as him in that one episode of Star Trek Next Gen lmfao. It was actually very helpful when trying to think of how to adapt him into a person rather than a cartoon rat. It gave me more insight into the criminal world aspect of his plot, too, and how he ran it and everything: “ He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.” So that made me think, well why wouldn’t he want to be involved? Why would he want to sit pretty instead of being involved with things like Ratigan? Well, if I made him do it at one point and know that he hated it, then he would do everything in his power to not have to do stuff like that ever again. Hence why he was an assassin and why he worked his way to the top. This also gave him credibility and made people fear him. I also liked how petty the character was. Like the whole part about him trying to kill Holmes and paying someone to push a brick off a roof or run him over with a carriage had me laughing. “Kill him in the dumbest way to make his obituary look ridiculous!!” But yeah, aha, this was mainly very helpful to me when trying to think of how his criminal background would work.

Die Hard (1988) because Hans Gruber baby!! He is one of my fave og villains for many reasons! He’s calculated, witty, intelligent, and dangerous. The movie does a good job of not just telling us these things, but showing us! In his scheme, in his back up plans, shooting the glass upon knowing a bitch is barefoot in there, and trying to get McClane to trust him by improvising in three seconds flat. Obviously the best part is when the police think they’ve got him on his heels by cutting the power when actually that was the plan all along to get into the vault since he knows their protocols!!! I really like that clever and planned out approach to crime and villainy for Ratigan (even if I am too dumb to know what I am doing (^: ) Like Hans, he doesn’t think that what he is doing is for the Great Good or that what he is doing is the right thing. He is fully aware that he is not a good person! He had the chance to get out, but it was of his own volition to go back to that life. I took that villain approach to Ratigan from Hans in that there is no complex reason as to why he does what he does. He’s not like the big purple grape who thinks he has to do it as a favor to the universe, he just wants money and to live comfortably, the end.

Person of Interest, for a lot of reasons actually, but mainly for the character of Elias!! And his whole organized crime operation. He is among that smart and calculated villain trope (even though he wasn’t really a villain over the course of the show lmao.) What I liked about him was that he went into the life of crime because he knew that was how things were going to get done in the world. Watching the show you see the hierarchy of the criminal underground and how he cultivated crime into an organized and sort of civil matter when given rules and regulations!! His overall poise, too, was the kind of villain I wanted for Ratigan. Also that Elias was the guy that people could go to if they needed something done that they themselves couldn’t get around or that was just too grey area for them to go through with themselves. He’ll pull the trigger, he’ll plant the bomb, he’ll ruin someone’s life. I love that concept a lot for a villain, because they already know they’re knee deep in the shit, why let someone else corrupt themselves when they can do it and do it without the whole fuss of morals.

And now, a wishlist! Jot down a few themes or stories or genres etc that you want to maybe pursue in the upcoming year! (i.e. a good ol’ fashion forbidden romance, maybe you want to dig deep into racial identity etc) This doesn’t have to necessarily be attached to any characters or stories you have now– it’s just meant to help you see for yourself what kind of stories call to your heart.

More technology vs magic things! I feel like that theme of the natural vs the made would be fun and interesting considering the juxtaposition of the town to the forest and stuff!!

Also, I mean even doing small, stupid shit with technology would make me very happy

More friendships!! (esp for Clara lol) More enemies!

I would love to do something of like building a house or renovating a place together. if any one wants to go HGTV, please come see me :^)

Scavenger hunt type deal? Like a video game! Get one thing in order to get the next thing so that you can get the next thing until they eventually find what they were looking for.

Misunderstandings! Either ones that are funny and light hearted that result in hijinks or the good old fashion devastating kind that sets trust on the edge.

And then to echo a few of yalls, and MK in the werewolf vs vampire chat, the opportunities of tension between those two parties. I think that would be SO cool??? not even for like a Big Boss Battle, but the build up to it would be really good! making alliances that wouldn’t otherwise be made, stirring the pot to make tensions worse, blackmail, threats. I barely have any stake in this, lmfao, but hey this question asked for things that didn’t have to be attached to my characters so. I would just be sitting on my computer with a bowl of popcorn for it. Big Vampire Diaries/the Originals Energy.

OPTIONAL: Why do you RP?

Since this whole experience has been brand spankin’ new with my first go around in the rp world, the answer is just very simple: it is an absolute delight.

Getting to write with people that double as this built in community/fandom that has been created is actually insane to me. It makes me so !!!!!!!!!!! because it’s so cool!! There’s really nothing out there like it! I like the collaboration aspect so much because it keeps everything exciting and fresh at all hours of the day! Not even just like within your own stories, but getting to see other people’s stories that I’m not even apart of.

Honestly, getting to read the things you guys write for free makes me feel like I’m doing highway robbery. Every day I am a humble peasant who wakes up and is getting to feast upon what you monarchs come up with.

Which just makes me want to say thank you to everyone here because I felt (and STILL DO) like such a fucking idiot coming in here not knowing what I was doing. But you all just welcomed me on in, made me feel comfortable enough to continue writing, and I sincerely believe you all kept me going on this wild and wacky year. I know I don’t talk at all in the big group chat because I am chicken shit!!!!!!!!!! but you’re all very lovely people, I feel lucky and blessed to have found you. Thank you for taking in a newbie like me into your long standing home!!

#bdrptask #not me having to use a whole painting for euterpe since she isn't even in the movie

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charlierainfordsso · 4 years ago

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Okay, since it’s Christmas/New Year, your local ginger Jorvik-obsessed grinch is feeling vaguely festive. So, as a present, I gift to you a long Charlie x Josh piece, which explores how they met and is full of nauseating fluff and so much sweetness you’ll probably have to go to the dentist for cavities. It’s under the cut, happy holidays- now let me grinch in peace.

___

When the roads of Jorvik became blanketed in at least two foot of snow overnight, traffic ground to a halt. There was no way lorries and cars were getting through this. The owners of the delicate warmblood horses tucked them away in their stalls, wrapping them up more carefully than any Christmas present. Suddenly, the landscape was dotted with hairy, sturdy ponies and cobs, the only horses capable of ploughing their way through the deep drifts to get where they needed to be.

But Charlie could.

Isolated from the rest of Jorvik, the rangers of Redwood Point worried about how they’d feed their horses. Rovar’s Gap had drifts up to their armpits. No feed lorry could get through there.

Right now, she was in Silverglade village, loading supplies into a well-crafted sleigh. Standing patiently at the front, their breath curling into white clouds of steam, were Dreamweaver and Foxfire, known more commonly by their stable names, Fancy and Sven, respectively. The two grey Irish cobs could have passed for twins were it not for Sven’s paler coat. It had been a long time since Chas had worked the two in harness together, but she’d dug the old leather out from her tack room, shined it up, and borrowed a sleigh from the Jarlassons, who bred and drove Clydesdales.

The two harnessed horses drew a crowd of curious children, all wrapped up to the ears in scarves and hats and mittens by their doting parents. Sven, good natured as ever, bent his great shaggy head down to their affection. Fancy kept hers up and haughty, but still had a crowd of admirers. The mare almost seemed to be posing, aware of how striking she looked in the brass and leather gear.

Charlie flicked her red hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand as she noticed a stir over by Steve’s barn. She glanced back at the loading process, but Courtney, Big Bonny, and Lance, who was back in the village visiting his parents for Christmas, rather than at Starshine, were all helping out. They seemed to have it well under control, so Charlie made her way curiously towards the barn.

She didn’t expect to see Josh holding court, but that’s exactly what she saw. Blankets and cushions were spread out over the floor of the barn, and a group of entranced teenagers were gathered while he told a story with lively gestures and his wonderfully free grin. He had a lock of his white-blonde hair falling into his eyes, and Charlie wanted to brush it out of the way. She’d offered to cut it, but he said he liked the longer length. And it suited him. Softened his features a little.

Charlie took her eyes off her boyfriend and let them wander over the group of teens. These few had chosen to stay for the winter Jorvik experience, rather than the oh-so-popular summer camp. She wondered how many of them would stay on at the end, like she had, two years ago now.

But then again, she thought as she glanced over to Josh with a small internal smile, I had love to make me stay, and that’s a powerful motivator.

None of the teens looked older than fifteen, and Charlie, though she was only nineteen, suddenly felt rather old, envying their fresh faces, their innocence, their differences all lost in the face of their shared love for horses. She hoped none of them would have to learn of the Soul Riders, and the fine and dangerous line they walked between good and evil to keep the two separate. Across the miles that separated Starshine Ranch and Silverglade, Charlie felt Stargazer sense her sudden weariness. She knew that the handsome chestnut Jorvik Warmblood raised his head from his grazing, gazing across the river as though he could see her.

‘Are you okay, dear heart?’ His resonant voice asked her gently in her mind.

‘I’m fine, fire horse. Not a thing to worry your head about.’ Her response seemed to settle him, but she could feel his concern linger, so she added; ‘Go back to your grazing. We’re not strong enough to do this for long without a headache yet.’

He sent her a wave of affection that she returned, then she felt his presence leave her mind as she returned to the here-and-now.

Josh was spinning the youngsters a tale that he’d once fooled her with; the Jackalope story. He hadn’t noticed her yet, so she leant quietly against a wooden column and folded her arms, listening to the same soothing drawl that lulled her to sleep on the bad nights. He didn’t understand all that she did to keep Jorvik and then the world from descending into chaos, but he knew all about nightmares. And he was the one thing that kept them at bay for her, just as she did for him.

“…I zagged and I zigged, but the beast caught me… with the razor-sharp teeth of a rabbit and the pent up anger of an antelope, it gored me through my favourite foot!”

Charlie covered her mouth with her sleeve, suppressing a snigger. She knew this game of his well. He’d see how ridiculous he could get before someone caught on. It was how they whiled away the long hours of herding cattle between Starshine and Mistfall, him with his story-telling and her backing him up, straight-faced, as they rode along.

“When the winter wind blows, I still feel the sting…” Josh dropped his voice ominously, and Charlie gained a petty amusement from the way the younger teens clung to each other’s arms, “…and my foot’s never been the same since. I won’t show you the scar, the sight of it would horrify you! To this day I can’t take my boots off in front of others.”

He straightened up from his looming posture and the young riders glanced at each other nervously, clearly spooked. Charlie remembered being at their stage well. Experienced enough to know that Jorvik was a magical place, and yet…not wise enough to know what to believe.

“What do ya think?” Josh asked cheerfully, seemingly unaware of his nervous audience, but Charlie caught the glint of mischief in his hazel-green eyes. He looked around, finally spotting her. She lifted one hand from her folded arms, gave him a tiny wave. He gave that heart-flipping grin of hers, and a sly wink. Play along. She could do that.

“Well obviously,” she said, keeping her voice neutral and deadpan as she pushed off the column and sauntered forwards, “you zagged when you should have zigged.”

Her words garnered the attention of the teens, and she heard their flurry of whispers. All things she’d heard before.

“…she’s the one who got trained by those weird druids…”

“…I heard her horse is the bravest in Jorvik …”

“…well I heard they’re both equally crazy…they ride stunts no sane person or horse would try…”

“…she knows Anne Von Blyssen, the dressage rider…”

But she kept her attention on Josh. The teens’ distraction gave him enough time to arrange his face in a very good mockery of surprise.

“You mean some kinda zig-zag manoeuvre? That’s so crazy it might actually work! Gotta pass that to my buddies in the US.”

“You do that.” Charlie remarked with a grin, before turning to the teens. “Alright kids, story time’s over. You guys have horses to take care of.”

They scattered faster than those unnervingly stealthy chickens at Sunfield Farm. Chas wandered up to Josh, stepping into his waiting embrace and wrapping her arms around his torso. She buried her face in his shirt, breathing in his scent. Pine and fresh air and saddle oil.

“Hi,” she said happily into his shoulder, tightening her hold as his hand stroked her hair, “what brings you to Steve’s?”

“Hi yourself darlin’,” he responded quietly, “picking up some feed for Mary’s sheep. What are you up to then?”

Charlie gestured vaguely behind her in the direction of the sleigh. “Taking supplies up to Redwood Point. Can’t get a lorry up that slope with the snow, never mind over the bridge.”

Charlie gave an internal shudder at the thought of any motor vehicle trying to cross that stone arch in snow. It was bad enough without. She felt Josh’s chin move on her hair as he looked towards the sleigh.

“Smart.” he said approvingly, and she felt a pleased warmth at the compliment, stepping back from his embrace to move around to his side. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders, and she put hers around his waist, as they wandered outside, strides in sync. “Looks like we’ve got a little time before they finish loading.”

Charlie gave a hum of agreement. She glanced over to the young riders, now fetching their mounts from Steve’s paddock. Their orange tops, swapped from t-shirts to thick fleeces for the winter, marked them out as visitors. Their loaned horses, the Jorvik Warmbloods that Moorland specialised in, were shaggy with their thick winter fur. Charlie was pleased to note there were a couple of boys among the riders. Moorland’s riding camps had always had a bit of a gender imbalance, but that seemed to be changing.

“I remember being one of them.” Chas said a little nostalgically, shooting Josh a mischievous grin as they ambled up to the runestone on the tiny hill behind Steve’s taking in the view. “Simpler times, eh?”

“Worse times,” Josh said firmly, “because I wasn’t with you.”

“You sap.” Charlie nudged him affectionately with her elbow, before standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, fully aware of just how cold her lips were. He retaliated by tickling her ribs under her thick fisherman-knit jumper and she squirmed away, putting her hands on her hips in mock-offence. He pouted teasingly at her, before opening his arms. Unable to stay mad at him, even as a joke, she accepted his hug.

“First time I saw you, you were one of them,” Josh recalled, gazing down towards Moorland. Chas cocked her head and he glanced at her from the corner of his eye, “but I never told you about that, did I?”

Chas shook her head. “You have to tell me now.”

Josh cleared snow off the low stone wall and sat, pulling him down with her. “It was in the days before the ranch, when I still worked at Moorland…”

“A year before,” Chas recalled, “that was when I arrived.”

“Right,” Josh nodded, “your hair was all blonde and spiky and short then.”

Chas held a strand of her long red hair and examined it. Sometimes she still thought she could see blonde dye at the very ends, though it had been so long since she’d dyed it.

“Anyway, there you were, this spiky scrap of a girl with that stallion that everyone else gave up on for his temper, but you saw yourself in him…and I remember lookin’ at you two and thinking…”

They looked like they’d like to fight the world. And they looked like they might just win too.

That was what Josh thought when he saw them. Loretta had wandered over to introduce the newest batch of summer campers, giving him some half-hearted flirting since Justin wasn’t paying her any attention. As usual, the oblivious boy remained…well, oblivious.

They were the usual bunch of fresh-faced horsey hopefuls, wide-eyed and wondering. Most of them were British, and stared at his Western gear in abject fascination.

But she was different. It wasn’t that she wasn’t British. She was, and when she spoke it was a Highland Scots accent that sounded like the river rolling over smooth stones. It was her attitude. She stood apart from the others, tall and lean as a whip, golden eyes distrustful and sharp as a fox. At her back stood that stallion, Stargazer. Josh knew that stallion all too well. He was a rescue. Nobody knew his past, but he treated each human as though they were his mortal enemy. He’d launched the farrier through a stable partition just last week, and nobody in Moorland stables hadn’t experienced the fiery chestnut’s wrath. With the exception of Justin, the only human Stargazer seemed to tolerate. And even then, only barely.

Yet here that fiery devil-horse stood, muzzle nearly touching this strange girl’s shoulder. He was more fierce than a knight guarding a royal, or a dragon guarding a damsel, like in the stories Josh’s mother had read him as a child, tucked up in bed in their Wyoming mountain cabin. What kind of magic had she worked? Not, of course, that magic was real (or so he thought at the time) but if it was, she had to have used it.

Her hair was in spikes that seemed to represent her personality. When she answered a question her responses were often monosyllabic, always cutting. Her face was striking, a straight arrogant nose, a strong, sharp jaw, heavily freckled from the summer sun, but never showed a smile or even a twitch of her lips.

Josh was intrigued by her, he couldn’t deny it. His mother had never tired of reminding her that troubled people led others into trouble, but he found himself around the troubled ones, humans and horses alike, all too often.

“Charlie Rainford. Strange kid.” Thomas had remarked, his dark eyes, so like his son’s, watching the new riders take care of their horses. The girl, Charlie, seemed to be in her own world with Stargazer, the usually temperamental stallion dozing as she brushed him. “Won’t talk about her parents or home life at all. Just that they sent her here to get her out of the way. Horses make her happy, and she’s a natural. I’d swear she’s ridden before- and maybe she has. But she’s reckless- rides like the Devil’s chasing her. And if she doesn’t, then the horse runs like it anyway. They’re bad as each other.”

Josh let his gaze drift to her again. “He thrown her off yet?”

“He tried. Bucking, bolting, nearly flipped over. Went the whole nine yards. She stuck like a limpet and hasn’t had a problem since.”

Josh was fascinated. What had made Stargazer take to her? Why hadn’t she given up on the sour horse like everyone else?

From that day on, as much as Josh tried to break the habit, he couldn’t help but notice Charlie Rainford whenever she was nearby.

“Really? I caught your attention even then?” Charlie was amazed. She remembered that first meeting. She’d been hurt and a little disoriented over her parents abruptly launching her to Jorvik, finally having had enough of her constant chaos and troublemaking in a desperate bid to get them to look at her, their daughter, rather than an expense, someone to be paraded at parties for all their rich friends then hidden away again. Jorvik was strange, loud and confusing. The only thing that had made sense was Stargazer, that let-down, angry look in his eyes the same as hers, and she’d known instinctively that all he needed was someone who wouldn’t give up on him.

She’d noticed Josh as she trailed at the back of the group, distancing herself. He’d seemed friendly, polite, but distant. A couple of years older than most of the summer camp riders. She’d heard the other girls whispering about him in the stables, about how “cute” he was. All she’d seen was another person to potentially let her down if she got close. So she’d stuck to Stargazer, the horse becoming her rock and anchor, the only thing that supported her as her world was turned upside down by magic and mayhem.

Eventually though, that had changed. The quiet, calming manner Josh always had around spooked horses had gradually worked on her, settling her. He’d shared his dreams of having a ranch with her, and in response to him letting his guard down, she’d confided her past in him. Though he hadn’t quite understood the whole Soul Rider business, he’d supported her through it, eased her grief over Elizabeth when the time came. And she always knew when he needed a distraction from his homesickness, or just someone to listen to him.

At the end of Charlie’s summer camp, she’d flat-out told her parents she wasn’t coming home. She was a legal adult, Jorvik needed her and accepted her for who she was. The other reason, of course, was her steadily growing love for Josh, which she hadn’t admitted to anyone then, not even to herself.

The admission of their feelings had come at Christmas last year, in a beautiful yet all-too-cliche mistletoe moment carefully set up by Alex and Maya (with how clueless those two were about eachother, Charlie thought, it was a miracle they’d clued into Josh and Charlie) at a party hosted by the Moorlands. And now, here they were. Charlie looked at Josh’s side profile, suddenly aware of how very lucky she was. He turned his head and caught her looking, smiling at her. She traced his features with her gaze.

“What are you lookin’ at?” he asked her, pulling her closer against his side. Charlie shook her head, feeling a faint warmth in her cheeks.

“Nothing at all,” she murmured, “merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

He tilted her chin up with a finger, dropping a sweet kiss on her lips before grinning at her. “And happy anniversary too.”

#sso #star stable online #star stable fanfic #star stable christmas #star stable josh #christmas fanfiction

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crushedbyhyperbole · 5 years ago

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Beyond Broken - Chapter Five

Chapter Summary: Jess's interactions with her lonely man move forward and her friendship with David begins to evolve. She is beginning to move on from her loss on D-Day but can't see it for what it is just yet

Her lonely man is awkward funny and she's still oblivious to how taken with her he is, subconsciously she knows something is there but she's not ready to accept it yet.

Words: 2.6k

Warnings: Bit of angst related to missing loved ones, a toxic friendship, bit of home-wrecking, bad language

Situational Evolution

Jess spent her Sunday painting the bathroom. On a whim she bought a few cans of paint in a rich, deep teal colour. She and Will had been planning on redecorating last year but they could never agree on a colour. And so, by default, it stayed the same.

The large oval tub was white with copper coloured fittings. The tiles were white mosaic style with scattering of copper accents. It had worked well with the beige, but the beige bored her. It looked better with the teal, but the paint was still patchy. She’d do another coat on Monday after work.

There was a buoyant sense of accomplishment that accompanied her throughout the rest of her evening. She felt a little guilty, having just gone ahead and changed something in the house. Their house. It didn’t feel anything like what she expected moving on to feel like but she supposed the process had to start somewhere. It was just a house, after all, only a bathroom. All the things that made her life with Will great were locked up inside her, in memories and feelings. A few licks of paint would never change that.

Monday breezed by without so much as a by-your-leave. After a full day at the practice she delved into the rest of her redecorating. She skipped dinner in favour of a few of her signature mojitos made with navy rum and brown sugar, and with a substantial buzz she’d fallen asleep on the sofa once again.

Sleep claimed her quickly but she didn’t rest easy. Her dreams were mercurial.

Jess awoke to her alarm on Tuesday morning with a crick in her neck and a headache. She reached for the hand she’d been holding to find herself alone and her dream companion fading to nothing more than the idea of a man, and a feeling of intimacy. Had she been dreaming about Will?

“You seem different today.” Sadie said as they went through the appointments for the day.

“It’s just a bit of a hangover. Jessica had too many rums last night.” She chastised herself.

“Did she now?” Sadie jested. “Good party, was it?”

“No party.” Jess scribbled notes in her diary. “I painted the bathroom.”

“Good for you. We have to celebrate the little things these days.” She squeezed Jess’s shoulder. “You look great, by the way. You’ve got colour in your cheeks.”

Sadie was the eldest of the dentists based at the practice, and she was one of Jess’s closest friends. At fifty four, she was twenty two years older than Jess but she was still young at heart.

“Hey, do you want to grab a few drinks this evening?” Sadie asked later as they were setting their tools in the UV steriliser.

“I’m meeting David tonight.”

“You mean you’re walking his dog while he spends time with that boyfriend of his, who you’ve never met.”

Jess had told Sadie some of her arrangement with David and she hadn’t approved. The consensus was that Jess needed time for herself and not to be the enabler for the self-destructive behaviours her not-quite-brother-in-law displayed. He needed real help and Jess was too soft to force him to face his issues.

It wasn’t that simple. Jess also needed him. His high demand on her time kept her busy and mentally occupied. It distracted her from her own pain. She knew that was also not healthy.

“I can do after ten?” Jess offered with a shrug.

“Another time, maybe.” Sadie gave her sad smile. “Don’t make me abduct you one night.” She hugged her briefly and left Jess to lock up.

David was waiting impatiently at Neptune’s. He handed her the customary offering of tiramisu hot chocolate, the dog leash and a peck on the cheek. He asked how she was but it felt strained.

“What’s going on? You seem stressed.”

“I really miss Silas.” He sighed, shaking the tension out of his shoulders. “I must have it bad if I can’t go two days without seeing him.”

She didn’t blame him. Missing someone that bad was like a gut punch that kept on giving.

“It’s still new.” She smiled reassuringly. “It’s only been a couple of months, hasn’t it?”

Wow, a couple of months? Is that how long she’d been helping him lie to Bill?

“Almost three.” He nodded, glancing in the direction he needed to go to meet his beau.

“Why don’t you bring him one evening. I’d love to meet him.”

“Yeah I’ll ask him. Listen, Jess, I’m gonna go. I’ll meet you back here at ten. Promise I won’t be late.” There was barely time for a reply before he was marching off. He hadn’t even walked her across the street to the park this time.

“Have fun!” She called after him.

Jess wasn’t fooled by the apparent amiability of the weather; she carried her waterproof poncho in a small tote bag and had swapped her heeled pumps for a pair of boots.

She meandered the paths of the park as was her routine. Without David there talking she had more time to think, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Daisy did her business and Jess dutifully picked up. The dog was bouncing in and out of the bushes, excitedly chuffing as she snuffled around. Jess couldn’t help but smile at her.

Down on the boardwalk she wondered if the lonely man would be there, and he was. Sat in his usual spot on a bench by marker twelve.

She gave him a nod of acknowledgement and received one in return before taking up her place at the railings. Both the sea and the sky were calmer than they had previously been. Jess thought the clouds were thinning even further despite the cooling transition from evening into night.

The ocean always made her feel small and helpless. To think of something so massive, uncontrollably powerful, and somehow alien, gave her shivers. It was natural to fear things we didn’t understand. She imagined what it would be like to stand here while a ginormous wave grew out of the ocean, bearing down on the land and washing everything away, even her. A wave like one in a disaster movie, hundreds of feet high. She’d had dreams like that in the past when she was feeling overwhelmed and unsure of choices in her life. She’d never envisioned one in her fully conscious mind though. It gave her goosebumps.

A shiver passed over her, and she came back to herself to find that she was not alone. Swiping at the moisture under her eyes, she flicked a quick glance to see the lonely man. He’d noticed her tears, a concerned look on his face.

“It’s calmer today.” She said, glancing at her watch. She’d been stood in silence for more than an hour. “I still don’t trust it though.”

The lonely man nodded as if considering. “Yes, those pesky storms are far from reliable.”

“Maybe the Lord of Thunder is angry.”

“God, of Thunder.” He interjected flatly. “He would be the God of Thunder. Lord of Thunder just wouldn’t do him justice. Rather insulting if you ask me.”

She laughed at his dorkiness.

“Oh, my bad.” She held her hands up in mock surrender, jostling the bell on the dog’s leash. “God of Thunder, please don’t strike me down.” She spoke up to the sky with a light laugh tickling the cadence of her voice.

“He would never…”

She was almost lost in her own amusement as the lonely man looked ruefully out to sea.

“Not angry, sorrowful.” He said after a while fixing her with a knowing look. “I mean, I imagine he’s more sorrowful than angry. Just a speculation. Obviously I don’t know him. How would I?”

Jess couldn’t help but laugh at his goofy ramblings.

“He’s an Avenger and not at all like anyone I’d ever hang with.” He scoffed.

“I wouldn’t know.” She turned back to the dark horizon. They were deep in twilight now, the clouds a lighter dark against the coming night.

“You do not know The Avengers?” he seemed surprised.

“Nope. I know of them, sure. But I don’t know much about them. Wouldn’t recognise one. Couldn’t name one. Save for the God of Thunder who I now know is an Avenger, thanks to you.” She shrugged.

He flashed her a smile that lit up his entire face. Something dropped in her chest right down to her stomach, making her feel jittery. Holy hell he was handsome. And yes, there it was, the hot blush she got when she was embarrassed. Just great.

“You have a little something on your neck.” He waved his finger at her.

Distracted, she fumbled to feel her skin.

“A little higher.” He rumbled. “No, to the left. No, my left.” He watched awkwardly as she failed to find it. “Please, allow me.”

When he stepped forward she almost jumped back, stumbling over the dog, who yelped. Gasping, she gripped the railing to steady herself.

The lonely man looked torn, stuck between a choice of back off or catch her. He backed off.

Shocked by the sudden potential contact, she frowned. She didn’t know the man. Strangers didn’t just touch other strangers. And strange men shouldn’t just go touching women who don’t want to be touched. She supposed he was only trying to be helpful.

“My apologies.” He said stiffly, his large hands held out as if to steady himself on unsteady ground. “It’s just a dark smudge of something, dirt perhaps.”

“It’s not dirt.” She rebuked, her pride kicking in. She always took personal hygiene very seriously.

Sensing her offence, he backtracked. “Not dirt, no. Impossible. Definitely not dirt.”

“Poor Daisy Duke.” She crooned, scooping up the dog. “It’ll be paint.”

“Oh! You’re a painter?” He seized the opportunity to draw the conversation on. “How lovely! What do you paint?”

“My nails mainly. Occasionally I paint a bathroom.” She chuckled at his confusion, trying to bring the mood away from her harsh reaction.

Initially she’d thought him a solemn, troubled man, waiting out in the rain for some kind of peace. There was something about him that she felt connected to, like his outward display of – how to describe it - mourning, maybe, was akin to how she felt inside. Now she saw he was light-hearted and really quite funny in an awkward, goofy kind of way.

Unable to make sense of the man, she decided to change the subject. Time was getting on and she had to meet David back at Neptune’s.

“I better be going.” She gestured with a thumb directed over her shoulder. “It was, ummm, educational talking with you.”

“The pleasure was all mine.” He smiled warmly if a little reluctantly. “Would you like company on walk back through?” The suggestion was hasty.

“No thanks, I’m good.” She said. “See you tomorrow.” The little smirk that curled her lip was involuntary and she turned to hide it, waving vaguely in leu of a goodbye.

“Good night!” He called.

David arrived at precisely ten o’clock, jogging around the corner, dishevelled like he’d rushed his clothes on only minutes before.

“Good visit?”

“The best!” He hugged her tightly, planting a lingering kiss on her cheek. Did she want to know where those lips had been?

She was always happy to see him happy. It was more rewarding than you would imagine, putting yourself out there to help someone who then relied on you to help keep the balance of their fragile but fierce happiness. Jess felt, in moments like these, that it was all worth the effort. This feeling was exactly why she supported him the way she did.

“Did you ask him about meeting up? I really wanna see this mystery man who makes you so happy.”

“I did.” David was sheepish. “He doesn’t think it’s a good idea.”

This didn’t sound good at all. Usually when David got defensive it was because he’d done something wrong or because he knew that people wouldn’t approve. It was rare that he wouldn’t tell her the truth however.

“Why not? I’m not going to bite. I just want to meet him. It’s not like me seeing him is gonna somehow trigger your dad finding out or anything.

“He’s not ready to meet people, you know, out.” He tried to explain it away but couldn’t look her in the eye.

She felt the irritation rising up under her skin as a restless burning feeling. She clenched her teeth, pursing her lips and going fully with the disapproving frown.

“I accept that you don’t have to tell me everything. It’s your life. But when all I’ve ever done is support you, the least you can do is not lie to me, David.”

“It’s complicated, Jess. I can’t ask him to do this.”

“David, so help me god…” She hissed.

“He’s married, Jess. As in straight and married. As in going behind his wife’s back to sleep with me, his gay lover.” His agitation faded as the words flooded out.

“Jesus…”

Her mouth fell open and she didn’t know what else to say. She felt pity for him and his situation but she also felt angry for being kept in the dark. Knowing wasn’t any better than not knowing. In fact, now, all she could think about was that man’s poor wife. People had so little left to feel happy about, after D-Day, that to wreck someone’s marriage knowingly was pretty despicable.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“No. No, you don’t.”

“I know you, Jess. You think I’m a selfish prick for getting involved with a married man. I’m no homewrecker.”

Okay, so that was pretty close to what she thought, but still…

“He’s never going to leave his wife, and I accept that. They lost their child like I lost Will and Mom, and he is all she has left. He still cares for her, he’s just gay. And this makes us happy.” He gasped emotionally, shoulders hanging down. “We found something together that keeps the darkness at bay, you know, we’ve both lost so much.”

A tear slipped free. How could she not understand? She’d lost as much as anyone.

“Jess, I’m so sorry.” He reached for her and she went to him, hugged tight against his chest. He kissed the top of her head and rested his cheek there. “I’m so tactless sometimes. You’re always so strong that I forget you’re suffering too.”

That was her curse. She was always the strong one, the one people turned to for support. She cared too much, gave everything asked of her and took very little back.

“Am I forgiven?” David mumbled into her hair.

The wind was getting up again, cold and gusty, carried off the see and straight up the street. The effect was not unlike a wind tunnel during high winds.

“Not by a long shot.” She slapped his shoulder, withdrawing back to her own space. “There’s going to be a free dinner in it for me sometime in the near future.”

“Cheap dinner though.” He cringed. “I’m a broke-ass basic bitch right now.”

Jess couldn’t help but laugh. She’d probably never call in that favour, like the hundreds before it. David was her brother. Not just because of Will but because they shared this strange life together, each needing the other in some way just to get by. She wasn’t sure if she needed David in the same way but he kept her tethered to Will in a way that allowed her to live rather than moping at home in a pit of her own despair. She was a high functioning griever.

#thor fan fiction #thor fanfic #thor x ofc #thor odinson #marvel fanfic #post infinity war #pre endgame #sad thor #thor falls in love #cloudy's writing #beyond broken

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jgroffdaily · 5 years ago

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[This article appears in the September 16, 2019, issue of New York Magazine.]

Within minutes of my meeting Jonathan Groff, he asks if I would like a slice of cherry pie, and then, only a short time later, if I would like to be eaten by a giant plant. The first I readily accept because Groff and the rest of the cast of Little Shop of Horrors have thoroughly analyzed the desserts they picked up for a bus ride down from New York to the suburban Philadelphia puppet studio where they’re rehearsing for the day, and they’ve all concluded it’s the best option. The idea of being eaten by a plant seems a little less palatable, considering the contortions involved in entering the hippopotamus-esque maw of the man-eating Audrey II, which is operated by several puppeteers, and because I’m not sure if Groff is making a serious offer. I learn quickly that he is always offering you things, and those offers are always serious.

The puppet in question represents the largest form of Audrey II, a sassy carnivorous horticultural oddity that convinces Seymour, an awkward flower-shop assistant, to commit murder in the pursuit of fame, fortune, and a suburban life with the original Audrey, a human who works with him. The day I visit, Groff, playing the misfit Seymour (despite good looks that actor Christian Borle, who plays the maniacal dentist, Orin, describes as “scrumptious”), and his castmates are climbing inside Audrey II one by one, figuring out how each of them will die. Wearing a hat from Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s “On the Run II” tour, Groff jumps inside wielding a floppy machete, which is so un-aerodynamic it keeps getting stuck in Audrey II’s lips. Groff suggests a real machete prop would be sturdier, and they try substituting an umbrella, which flies out more cleanly. Michael Mayer, the director, says with satisfaction, “It’s a belch!”

Staging this revival of Little Shop is “illegal fun,” as Groff puts it. The original ran from 1982 to 1987 but never transferred to Broadway, at the insistence of writer-lyricist Howard Ashman, who wanted to preserve the show’s off-kilter spirit in a smaller space. Ashman and composer Alan Menken would go on to fill the Disney Renaissance — which consisted of films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast — with the Marie’s Crisis–ready melodies and queer subversions you can already hear in Little Shop (Ashman died of aids-related complications in 1991). Despite a Broadway staging that kicked off in 2003, this version is staying put at the Westside Theatre Off Broadway in hopes of preserving the quirky spirit of the original. There’s a lot of laughter in rehearsal as well as dress codes like a “kimono Wednesday,” which Mayer enforces by handing me a spare kimono when I drop in that day.

I can’t imagine anyone who is consistently involved in or adjacent to homicide having a better time. In addition to playing a murderously nice guy in Little Shop, Groff stars in Netflix’s David Fincher–produced drama Mindhunter, playing an FBI agent who interviews serial killers; the show is based on the real work of John Douglas, who was one of the first criminal profilers. Considering he’s no big fan of true crime, Groff is somewhat confused about how he became a poster boy for gore and mutilation, though he’s enjoying the texts from friends who point out that even when he does musical comedy, there’s a dark edge involved. A few days after we meet in Philadelphia, we’re talking over breakfast at the cozy Grey Dog in Chelsea, where he insists on paying for everything, picking up all the water and utensils, and getting up from the table to refill my coffee cup when it’s empty.

Groff signed up to star in Little Shop this spring after careful consideration, by which I mean he got the offer and then listened to the original cast recording on repeat for a whole weekend. He’d never played Seymour before, unlike the majority of white male theater actors, but he had positive memories of seeing the first performance of the 2003 Broadway version just after high school, when he was rehearsing the role of Rolf in a non-Equity tour of The Sound of Music. “I wanted to make sure that I’m bleeding for it eight times a week,” he says, which is his measure for doing musicals; he wants to make sure he won’t get bored with the material. Even now, when I assume he might want a break from it during rehearsals, Groff still has the album on repeat. “I never went to college, and I’m not educated, really, so I couldn’t say, like, intellectually why that is,” he says. “When I listened to it, it shot through my heart.”

There’s a clue, however, in the way he remembers obsessing over the film version of the show as a seventh-grader, standing in his kitchen with the song “Skid Row” on repeat — specifically when Seymour sings, “Someone show me a way to get outta here.” It was an appealing message to a closeted kid whom Groff describes as just “a sweaty, uncomfortable person with a secret that was so deep-rooted I wasn’t even flirting with the idea of being myself.” With a little distance from that version of himself (the child of a phys-ed teacher and a horse trainer, growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and occasionally having to clean stables on the weekends), Groff recalls the kinds of tells that seem obvious in retrospect, like, say, listening to “Skid Row” on repeat. Or developing an obsession with I Love Lucy, which he still watches before going to bed. Or dancing along to the Donna Reed’s Dinner Party album when his parents weren’t home. There’s a similar longing in Little Shop, which has the queerest kind of perspective on its central couple, as Audrey and Seymour imagine an unreachable, heteronormative life away from skid row and where she looks “like Donna Reed.”

If there’s a murderous kinship between Little Shop and Mindhunter, it extends to the shows’ shared skepticism about that white-picket-fence-style normalcy. Holden, Groff’s profiler character, is a cardboard cutout of a man with a girlfriend who introduces him to 1970s-style sexual liberation, but he is ultimately more fascinated with the deviancy of the killers he’s interviewing. To play him, Groff shuts down his charisma, amassing such emptiness between his angular jaw and his eyebrows that you wonder if he’ll slip into deviancy himself. It’s a performance of square, even sinister straightness that feels close to the best-little-boy performances of closeted queer men, though what seems to thrill Holden most in the show are his interviews with killers. “Sexuality is so complicated, and the people I’ve ended up working with who have cast me in straight parts are interested in looking at things in a complicated way,” Groff says, noting that he feels the argument about whether gay actors can play straight, or vice versa, has gotten “sillier” as time goes on. “Being out and gay and being myself, it allowed me to find people that weren’t closed-minded.”

Groff came out when he was 23, without directly consulting his agent, after he’d become an idol to the nation’s theater teens of Facebook by starring as the sexy, rebellious, tousle-haired Melchior in Spring Awakening. “I was so compartmentalized,” he says, “singing about sex but then not talking about it.” He remains thankful for the way Mayer, who also directed that show, choreographed the explicit sex between himself and Lea Michele’s Wendla clinically, without asking them about their own experiences. He hadn’t spent too much time worrying about the aftereffects of coming out on his career, which were more limiting in 2009 than they are now. “I did think I might not be seen as a romantic lead, but ultimately I was okay with that,” he says, explaining that he was in love at the time and didn’t want to hide it. “At 23, I’d rather just have a real romantic relationship than pretend to have one with a girl.”

Several years after coming out, Groff booked a leading role in HBO’s Looking, a comedy-drama about gay men in San Francisco, which he calls one of the most fulfilling roles he’s had. The series ran for two seasons and got a wrap-up movie but never quite found a viewership, even among queer audiences, instead receiving, as he puts it, “a total mixed bag of very extreme reactions.” Some of that was because people just didn’t like the show — which was often slower, more interior, and whiter and fitter than people may have wanted — and some of it was because it was “carrying a lot of weight; there wasn’t a lot of specifically gay content on a major cable network.” To Groff, making the show opened him up to the possibility of using material from his own experience in his work. Among the cast and crew, “we would talk about stories about PrEP and uncut dicks and monogamy,” he recalls, among “so many stories about anal douching,” and those anecdotes would make their way into the scripts. He was used to a sort of “closeted training of the mind” to abstract himself from his own experience. Looking taught him he could use it.

Recently, Groff has developed an ability to end up near the center of cultural sensations. He stepped in for Brian d’Arcy James as Hamilton’s fey Britpop version of King George III midway through the show’s Off Broadway run. It was a somewhat ideal gig, given that he was onstage for only about nine minutes a night, performed crowd-pleasing kiss-off songs, met Beyoncé, earned a Tony nomination, and got a lot of reading done backstage. This fall, he’s in Disney’s sequel to Frozen, where he returns to play Princess Anna’s rugged (at a Disney-appropriate level) love interest, Kristoff. In the first movie, while Idina Menzel’s Elsa got the vocal-cord shattering “Let It Go,” Groff sang only a few lines of melody between Kristoff and his reindeer, Sven. This time around, he’s putting his Broadway training to use with a full-length solo. It’s the second one he recorded for the movie, since the writers had one idea for a Kristoff piece (“a jam”) but then canned that song while promising Groff they’d write something different, which he didn’t quite believe. “Then they fucking wrote that other song,” he says, characteristically effusive. “I was like, Wow, and the animation of the song is so brilliant.”

As personable as Groff is and as successful as he has become — and as beloved, especially among theater fans and people like my mother — there’s a point at which he maintains a certain distance, in what feels like a way to stem his own impulses. He doesn’t use any social media, though he did consider it when Looking was struggling, before he realized “I’d have to be good at it and want to do it, and I don’t.” He has never thrown himself a birthday party, because the impulse to make sure everyone’s having a good time would stress him out too much. In behavior that reminds me of both a secret agent and Kim Kardashian, he regularly goes through and deletes all his texts after responding to each of them. “I want to make sure I get back to everyone,” he says, holding his iPhone up in front of me to reveal the remarkably few surviving messages.

Before Groff gets up to leave breakfast and travel to rehearsal by way of the single-speed bicycle he rides around Manhattan, we end up talking about the larger trajectory of his career. Considering that he’s scaling down for a revival run of a musical Off Broadway, was he ever the kind of actor who thought of his work as building up to something? A big film? A franchise? “I think I gave that up when I came out of the closet,” he says. “I gave up the idea that there was an end goal or ideal or some kind of dream to work toward.” An image appears in my mind of the life Audrey sings about in Little Shop, a place that’s comfortable, traditional, and expected, somewhere that’s green. “When I moved to New York, what I wanted was to be on Broadway. That happened and then I came out, and it’s sort of been anybody’s guess since then,” Groff says. “I like when something makes me cry or I can’t stop listening to it. Okay, I want to do that.”

Little Shop of Horrors is in previews and opens October 17 at Westside Theatre Upstairs. Buy tickets here.

#jonathan groff #interview

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noona-clock · 6 years ago

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Working On It - Part 2

Genre: Teacher!AU

Pairing: Brian (Day6) x You

By Admin B

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Oh, yeah, and I love you, Nothing’s Wrong

“Thanks for the pizza,” Sam said before pushing himself up off the couch to go put his empty plate in the dishwasher.

“You’re very welcome.” You were already in the kitchen putting the leftover slices in a Ziploc bag so he could take them for his lunch tomorrow. (Side note: that had been something which had been a little difficult to get used to - giving the leftovers to him instead of keeping them for yourself. But, according to Sam, the school lunch was ‘horrific’ so...)

“Are you watching anything on TV tonight?” your nephew asked in the most casual of tones.

You knew exactly why he was asking: because he wanted to play his video game, and you couldn’t afford to buy a TV for his room at the moment. Until you could, the two of you had to share the one in the living room.

“No, I am not,” you smirked. “I’m going out again, actually.”

“Where are you going?”

“So, I ran into your teacher at the grocery store,” you told him, reaching for your purse on the kitchen counter and rifling inside for your lip gloss. “Mr. Kang. I ended up explaining things to him more, and he asked me for coffee so we could talk.”

You heard Sam choke all of a sudden, and your head snapped up to see he had been taking a sip of his Coke.

“Ew!” he coughed.

“What? Ew, what?”

“You’re going on a date with my teacher?!”

“No!” you cried immediately. “It’s not a date!”

The expression on Sam’s face was one which clearly said ‘You’re kidding, right?’

“He asked you out for coffee! That’s a date!”

You pursed your lips as you tossed the tube of gloss back into your purse. “We’re going to be talking about you, and trust me, I would not talk all about you on a date.”

“Gee, thanks,” Sam deadpanned.

“You’re welcome, sweetie.”

“Well, if he pays for your coffee, then it’s a date.”

“I’m sorry,” you scoff-chuckled. “Are you a dating expert, then?”

“Everyone knows the guy always pays on the first date!” Sam retorted with raised eyebrows.

“It’s not a date,” you assured him for the last time as you headed over to the couch where he was setting up camp for the evening. “I won’t be out for long, but if I’m home after 10, you had better be in bed. You got it?”

Sam rolled his eyes, but he still murmured a ‘Yes, ma’am.’ And you still bent down and pressed a loud, wet kiss on his forehead.

“Twice in one day?” he grumbled, squirming away from you.

“I love you,” you told him with a chuckle before turning back around to grab your purse and keys. “Call me if you need anything or if someone breaks in and tries to kidnap you.”

You were already on your way to the front door, your back to him when you heard him actually say it. Like, he said the real words.

“I will. Love you, too.”

They were faint and his tone was pretty begrudging, but... The sound of them still made you pause, and your heart skipped a couple of beats.

Six months ago, you never would’ve guessed that hearing a twelve-year-old boy tell you he loves you, too would fill you with so much warmth.

But here we are.

It had actually been so long since you’d been to The Grind, one of the local coffee shops in town. You’d had to make the financial sacrifice of artisan coffee in favor of simply making your own for over a year now, and frankly, no one had even asked you out for coffee since then...

Kind of sad when you really think about it.

Mr. Kang was already there, sitting in one of the plush armchairs, but he stood as soon as he saw you come in through the door.

You grinned, though you had definitively decided not to bring up Sam’s idea that this was a date. That would make things sufficiently awkward, and you were already going to be talking about less than pleasant topics.

“Hey, Mr. Kang,” you said as you approached him.

He smirked at you and replied, “Please, call me Brian.”

You’d been out of school for ages now, but it still felt weird to call a teacher by his first name. Even though he hadn’t even been your teacher!

“Sorry,” you chuckled. “Force of habit, I guess.”

Brian simply smiled at you before turning and gesturing toward another part of the shop. “There are a couple of open chairs back there. If you want to go save them, I can get our drinks.”

Your first instinct was to refuse because - well, he was offering to buy your drink. And that made you think it was a date. But you knew it wasn’t. You’d just met him earlier today, and he’d only asked you for coffee because you’d started pouring your heart out to him at a grocery store. You accepting his offer would not solidify this as a date. Not in the least.

“Sure, okay,” you nodded. “I haven’t been here in a while, but I remember them having really good Chai lattes.”

“One Chai latte,” Brian nodded before he headed off to the counter to order.

You, in turn, headed back toward the two open chairs in the back corner of the shop. Brian had obviously suggested them because they allowed you a fair amount of privacy. It was a Thursday evening, so it wasn’t particularly crowded, anyway, but still. You would rather not concern the customers who were there when you inevitably started crying.

After settling down in one of the navy blue chairs, you set your purse down by your feet and began to survey the shop. It hadn’t changed as far as you could remember, at least not the layout and decor. The employees had probably changed, though the only one you could really remember was the handsome, slim manager.

Yet another handsome, slim guy caught your eye, though; he was walking around talking to the few customers occupying the shop and enjoying their drinks. Maybe he was the manager now? He had a sort of managerial aura about him, in any case.

You thought he would meander over to you, but he stopped and sat down once he approached a girl around your age - or maybe a few years younger. Her smile lit up her face when he slid into the chair next to her, her eyes gazing at him adoringly.

You had no idea what their story was, of course, but you couldn’t stop yourself from speculating. They were obviously dating, maybe even in the beginning stages of a relationship? Or maybe they were just so in love that he still made her smile like that? Either way, you couldn’t help but be jealous.

It had been so long since you’d been in a relationship. You’d pretty much forgotten how it felt to smile at someone like she’d just smiled at him. How it felt to look at someone like she was looking at him.

And... lowkey... you did kind of wish this was a date.

Not that you were into Mr. Kang -- Brian!

I mean, yes, you thought he was good-looking. And, so far, he seemed like a high-quality person. But you had no expectations or fantasies that he was interested in dating you in any way. He was your nephew’s teacher! Didn’t that mean he was off limits?

And he probably had a girlfriend, anyway!

Before you could fall farther down this particular rabbit hole of thinking, Brian arrived with two mugs, setting one down carefully on the small table in front of you.

“Thank you,” you murmured with a soft smile, slipping your fingers through the handle and lifting it up to take a sip. The spicy warmth filled your chest, and you almost let out an audible sigh of contentment. It was just as good as you remembered.

Brian let out a soft groan as he sat down, and he took a sip of his own drink, his eyes meetings yours over the rim of his mug.

You cradled your own mug in your palms, drumming your fingers gently on the ceramic surface and biting the inside of your cheek nervously.

Well.

Here goes.

“So, I guess it really all started a few months before the accident,” you began, trying your best to maintain eye contact. “My grandma was the one who raised me, and she got really sick. My brother was quite a bit older than me, so growing up, it was really just me and my grandma. When she got sick, I knew I needed to be the one to take care of her. It’s not like it was an obligation or anything; I wanted to do it, and my brother was busy with his own family. You know how much of a handful Sammy can be.”

Brian chuckled, tipping his head in a little nod.

“I was in school at the time - dental school. But...” You let out a very heavy sigh, already feeling the tears stinging your eyes. “Things got -- she wasn’t getting better, and I couldn’t deal with school and taking care of her. So I put school on pause for a bit. Or what I thought was a bit. I got a part-time job at a dentist’s office as the receptionist so I could help her out financially as much as I could but still have time to take care of her.”

You paused to take a sip of your drink, though the huge lump of emotion in your throat made it difficult to swallow. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Brian adjust in his seat, moving like he was getting something out of his pocket.

And when you looked back up, you saw he was holding out a tissue for you.

“Thank you,” you murmured, taking it and clutching it in your hand. “Anyway. She didn’t last much longer, but it was still in the middle of a semester, so I couldn’t just go back to classes right away, you know? I stayed at my job, and I had every intention of quitting and picking my classes back up once summer was over. And then...”

“The accident,” Brian whispered.

“The accident,” you choked out. “All of a sudden, I didn’t have a grandmother, I didn’t have a brother or a sister-in-law, and I had a twelve-year-old I had to take care of. If I go back to school, I don’t have any money because I’m not working. My brother left a small inheritance for him, of course, but they wanted it set aside for college. And I totally agree with that. But it does mean I have to have a job, and if I’m working, I can’t go back to school. I don’t have time, I can’t afford it. But this receptionist job pays less than half what I would make if I had finished my degree in dental school and could work as a dental hygienist. Right now... I’m just kind of stuck. I can’t really do anything to help myself, and I feel like I can’t even help Sammy. I can’t afford to send him to see someone he might talk to, someone to help him deal with everything.”

You had to stop and press the tissue to your eyes, lowering your head and holding yourself back from letting out a huge sob.

Brian reached out and laid his hand on your arm, squeezing it just like he had at the grocery store earlier.

“Oh, my god,” he murmured softly. “I am so, so sorry.”

“Nobody ever told me life could be this hard,” you said with a sad chuckle.

“I know. And there’s not a lot you can do at the moment, huh?”

You shook your head, glad he understood that and didn’t tell you something like ‘things will get better’ or ‘everything will work out.’

“Well, I can’t help all that much,” he told you with a shrug, his brow furrowed deeply. “But we have a school counselor. I can email her and ask her to talk to Samuel.”

Oh, god! Why had you not thought of that?!

“Really?” you asked hopefully. “That’s not -- I mean, I don’t have to --”

Brian shook his head quickly. “No, of course not. It’s part of her job.”

A very big sigh of relief escaped your lips, and you threw Brian a watery smile. “Thank you. That would be such a big help.”

Things had been difficult before, but now that Sam was acting out and getting into trouble at school? You weren’t at all sure that you were equipped to handle that. You didn’t expect him to be a perfect angel, of course, but you were still trying to adjust to everything. trying to figure things out. At the moment, it felt like you were just barely holding your head above water.

If you could just get Sammy’s life more sorted out, then that would help things tremendously.

Honestly, thank god you’d run into Brian at the grocery store. As lame as it sounds, it kind of seems like it was fate. He was going to help Sammy in a way you couldn’t, and you were already more grateful than he could ever know.

Part 3

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alexsfictionaddiction · 5 years ago

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12 of the best feel-good books

I think we could all do with a pick-me-up right now. We’ve been in some level of isolation for over a month and we’re perhaps being forced to accept a new normal. However, we’re still seeing frightening and tragic headlines all day every day (ration your news time, if you’re not doing so already), so of course, fear and hopelessness is going to set in. If you’re not used to spending time alone, loneliness is also a huge possibility but we know that books are a great source of solace in times like this.

Maybe you want to do your own research and discover how far into the realms of science-fiction we’ve got. For you, I have compiled a list of the best books that pandemic fiction has to offer but if you’re looking for something more light-hearted, I’ve got the perfect tonic. Whether you need a laugh, to be comforted or to simply remember what life used to be like, here are some books that will help you escape the current face of reality. Above all, remember that it’s perfectly natural for your mental health to be suffering at the moment. Do whatever you can to look after yourself and stay safe.

1. The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary

Remember when you could just move in with a stranger without worrying about keeping two metres apart at all times? Tiffy and Leon share a flat and even a bed but due to entirely opposite work schedules, they manage to not even meet for months after Tiffy moves in, only communicating via texts and notes left on the fridge. But Tiffy’s controlling ex-boyfriend and Leon’s innocent prisoner brother ignite a connection that is fuelled by basic human kindness and a touch of romantic attraction, of course! This quirky rom-com has been a bestseller for over a year now and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a celebration of love, friendship and the unexpected happiness that can come from taking calculated risks. Beth O’Leary’s second novel The Switch has also just been released, so there has never been a better time to read her debut!

2. Wonder by R. J. Palacio

A beautiful story of empathy, kindness and acceptance, Wonder has fast become one of the most popular and widely read contemporary middle-grade novels. Auggie Pullman was born with a facial deformity and he’s attending mainstream school for the first time but of course, kids can be staggeringly cruel to those who are different. Wonder kickstarted a global kindness campaign and spawned a film adaptation, which is one of the best and most faithful I’ve ever seen. It has already given so much to the world and I know you’ll get a lot of joy out of it too.

3. The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Of course, not all sci-fi is doom and gloom. This is the first instalment in Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series and it’s laugh-out-loud funny. It follows a misfit crew of space travellers and their wonderful smile-inducing relationships. Celebrating the coming together of a variety of races, sexualities and personalities, it features a lot of loveable memorable characters who begin to read like dear loyal friends. If you’re looking for quirky, light-hearted sci-fi in a similar vein to Star Trek and Firefly, you’d be wise to start here.

4. Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Arthur Less is a struggling writer about to turn 50 and the love of his life is engaged to someone else. To say that he’s not feeling too hot right now would be an understatement but he has been invited to a range of literary events around the world, so he does the logical thing and accepts them all. We can’t travel right now but with Arthur, you’ll visit Paris, Berlin, southern India, the Moroccan desert and Japan. You’ll also go on a journey of self-acceptance, learn how to love the life that you have and appreciate the time you have left.

5. Hot Mess by Lucy Vine

It’s rare that a book makes me guffaw out loud in public but Hot Mess did exactly that, when I read it a couple of years ago. Ellie is a single woman who hates her office job and is absolutely nowhere near having her life together. However, she does have some great friends and a lovely relationship with her dad Alan, whose drafts of a romance novel are truly side-splittingly hilarious. We see Ellie through terrible dates, trauma confrontation and a quest for true happiness that is hugely satisfying. It has been described as a modern-day Bridget Jones but I found it much more relatable and actually quite a lot funnier!

6. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

It’s the first in a trilogy of novels that explore the trials and tribulations of finding romance when you’re genetics professor Don Tillman. Don likes facts, logic and reason and he applies all of these things to his latest endeavour, The Wife Project. He knows exactly the kind of woman he wants to marry but then he meets Rosie, who ticks none of his boxes and he’s forced to accept that perhaps true love doesn’t always follow the rules. Don and Rosie’s relationship is such a heartwarming, mutually beneficial one that will make you laugh and leave you with a big bag of warm fuzzy feels.

7. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

There is a huge chance that you will have read The Hobbit but what better time to revisit a funny, charming favourite? Re-embark on the quest to retrieve Smaug’s treasure, take back the Lonely Mountain and make a plethora of fantastic friends along the way. As well as relating to Bilbo’s personal growth throughout the novel, I think the idea of facing epic threat and mortal peril in unknown environments and yet still returning safely home to a quiet comfortable life is the reassurance we need that this too shall pass. Of course, it will also be an intoxicating nostalgia trip, so there’s really no reason to not pick it up again!

8. The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

I read this over the Valentine’s Day period and was so enchanted by it. Gavin is a top baseball player for the Nashville Legends and he has recently discovered that he has never given his wife Thea a genuine orgasm and it’s threatening the relationship. So he does the logical thing and turns to his team mates, who actually double as a secret romance book club. They suggest taking a leaf out of a smutty Regency paperback to save his marriage -what could possibly go wrong? Funny, heart-warming and touching, it’s a great choice if you’re looking for a rom-com with a difference.

9. My Pear-Shaped Life by Carmel Harrington

If you’ve spent a lot of self-isolation being wholly unproductive and perhaps not looking after yourself too well, you may be feeling that you’re simply not good enough. Especially if your social media is full of happy healthy people doing just about EVERYTHING. Meet Greta, a struggling actress who is used to playing the role of the funny, overweight girl in all areas of her life. That’s ok as long as she laughs with everyone else, right? But things have been pretty rough lately and it’s only when she hits rock bottom that she begins to realise that maybe things need to go a little bit pear-shaped sometimes. With joy and despair in equal measure, this new novel, populated with an array of wonderful characters, will teach you that true happiness comes from simply being you.

10. A Boy Made Of Blocks by Keith Stuart

Eight-year-old Sam is autistic and struggles to make sense of the world. His dad Alex has also lost himself somewhere along the way and needs to change. Minecraft offers a place where father and son can rediscover their bond and put the family back together, block by block. I reviewed this incredibly moving, uplifting story when it was first released a few years ago. It’s actually inspired by Keith Stuart’s real-life experiences, which I think give it an extra dollop of heart-warmth!

11. The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

The entire focus of this fantastically written YA novel is on embracing your own personal uniqueness and on not being afraid to let it out. Michael is a mixed-race gay teen who has grappled with his identity for his entire life. On arriving at university, the idea of becoming a drag artist causes everything to begin to slot into place. Told in verse, The Black Flamingo will show you how your boldest brightest colours can shine through the darkest of times. Highlighting the power of words and challenging all forms of homophobia, whether it be external or internal, this is a book that I’m sure will become a staple of LGBT+ literature in years to come. As for now, it will simply inspire you to live your very best life, regardless of who tries to prevent it.

12. Reasons To Be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe

As the title may suggest, there is plenty to smile about in Reasons To Be Cheerful. It’s chiefly a coming-of-age novel about a young woman called Lizzie living in 1970s Leicestershire. She has just got a job as an assistant to a work-shy, racist dentist who is desperate to join the freemasons. Navigating this new position alongside a relationship with her alcoholic writer mother, a boyfriend who doesn’t seem terribly interested in her and a few unlikely friends, Lizzie’s life makes for some pretty amusing anecdotes. Whether it’s the simple retro setting or small cast of eccentric caricatures, there is something quite other-worldly yet familiar about it. There is a lot of detail that is relevant to the period it’s set in, including the blatant social prejudices that were so rife at the time. I am too young to have experienced 1970s Britain but it certainly feels authentic to what I know. I have no doubt that those that were there will get even more enjoyment and nostalgia from Lizzie’s life than I did.

#feel good #books #recommended #recommendations #uplifting

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justsomebucky · 6 years ago

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The Three Date Minimum - 2

Summary: Reader is the last single person at her office, and while she puts on a good front, she’s lonely. Will dating apps find true love, or will she swear off romance for good?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x fem!reader

Word Count: 2,377

Warnings: language, drinking, minor angst?, fluff…this is fluff.

A/N: Please enjoy this chapter. Have some bartender!Bucky. Also - please note that I tried everything to fix this stupid spacing issue. I would recommend reading on a normal browser or your mobile browser (or Ao3) and not in the app.

“I wasn’t even supposed to be in that neighborhood, can you believe it? The bus was late and I had to make sure my daughter got to school okay so I just drove her myself. So anyway, there I was just minding my own business, and out of nowhere I see –”

DING!

“I’m so sorry,” you said, offering a forced smile to the guy across the table. “I think our time is up.”

Your current speed date, Scott Lang, looked genuinely disappointed that he couldn’t finish his story about the time he met some famous somebody-or-other.

“Definitely rating this date as my best of the night, so far,” Scott said as he stood, reaching for your hand to give it a peck. “It was great to meet you, Y/N.”

“It was nice to meet you, too.” You tried to force a smile to your face for his sake. “Take care, Scott.”

He flashed another boyish grin and gave you a wave before awkwardly wandering over to his next date’s table.

Well, now you felt awful. It wasn’t that he was a bad or boring guy, it’s just…there wasn’t any spark. Maybe that was stupid, but it was how you felt. And while you believed him when he said his daughter was an angel, you weren’t ready to be a step-mom.

Anyway, first speed-dating experience wasn’t all that great, just as you had predicted.

Your dates so far were a lawyer who seemed suspiciously interested in your driving record, a dentist who tried to get you to show him your teeth and then commented that he could see the plaque from across the table, a guy who had just moved to New York following some time spent in jail for insider trading ('white collar crimes barely count' according to him), someone who couldn’t stop talking about his mother, and now Scott Lang, nice guy extraordinaire. To be fair, Scott was the best of the bunch.

Meanwhile, Natasha looked like she was having the time of her life. She had so many free drinks and more than once you saw guys arguing when their time was up and they didn’t want to leave her table.

Wearily, you glanced at the clock on the wall. There was still another forty-five minutes to go.

For a bar called The 107th in the middle of Brooklyn, you would have thought the experience would be a little more interesting. It was new place, supposedly trendy, and had a confusing name (it wasn’t on 107th street??), but to you it seemed like a normal local bar.

And even after your last semi-decent date, the thought of going through yet another three-minute introduction with someone new made you anxious. Before the next guy could get to your table, you gathered your coat and bag and ripped off your name tag, making your way over to the bar.

---

“What’re you having?”

You eyed the bartender, not bothering to reply just yet since you were mid-sip. He must have just started his shift, because when you first arrived there was a tiny woman with mermaid hair tending to customers.

The alcohol was just a band-aid for the situation, really. You never used it as a crutch, but some situations called for a little backup. It was liquid courage for some, and a little liquid tolerance for you.

When you put the now-empty glass back down, you pushed it toward him like you were in some kind of cowboy movie. “Rum and coke.”

He gave a nod and turned away to refill your drink, looking a little bored with your choice.

You let your eyes flicker up to the mirror above the shelves and shelves of liquor. Behind you, the speed-dating was just wrapping up with the final round. The results would be handed out soon; you hoped Scott Lang had found someone better suited for him.

As for you? Most of your time had been spent at the bar and Natasha hadn’t even noticed.

“I heard a rumor that dating used to be an organic thing,” the bartender mused, breaking you out of your reverie. He set your new drink in front of you. “You know, meeting someone, feeling a spark, going on a first date…”

You shook your head. “That’s not how it works anymore. It’s the digital era of dating. Now you’ve got to have a pristine profile complete with model-level selfies to gain anyone’s attention, or come to shit like this in a basic bar and hope someone finds you tolerable.”

He didn’t seem offended by your little insult. “You’re a part of that group, right? So why are you sitting over here instead of talking to your last date?”

Your brows furrowed a little. “You ask a lot of questions for a bartender. Is that normal?”

He gave you an amused look. “Just curious. These events cost money, right?”

“They do,” you confirmed. “But the only reason I’m here is because my roommate paid. She caught me watching TV in my pajamas on a Friday night again and she wouldn’t leave me alone until I agreed to go.”

“Nice. So which one is she?” The bartender leaned over, arms resting on the bar top as his eyes scanned the crowd.

There was no point in hiding her. He would have spotted her eventually, anyways.

You reluctantly spun on your barstool and found her almost immediately. Her megawatt smile lit up the room; how could anyone possibly miss her in a crowd?

“There,” you said, pointing. “Natasha, the beautiful redhead standing over in that corner.” You glanced back at him to see him squinting that direction.

Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to instantly drool over her like everyone else tends to. That confused you, since he wasn’t unfortunate-looking himself.He would definitely be her type.

“So if she’s your friend and she brought you here to help you, why has she not noticed you over here drinking all alone?”

The barstool squeaked as you turned back around. “Because this is what happens.”

He stared at you blankly.

“She gets the attention,” you explained, taking another sip. “I get the hangover.”

Your nosy bartender didn’t look convinced. “How do you figure that? Didn’t you just have a few speed dates?”

“Yes, but they’re in rotation, they had to come to my table. She literally had guys fighting to have more than three minutes with her.”

He made a face but didn’t say anything, so you continued.

“And I know because it’s happened always. Every friend I’ve ever had has been more enticing than me, from high school all the way through college, where my roommate then was also a bombshell who turned heads everywhere she went. I’m so used to being invisible that it’s second nature.”

“Well…I’d say your name in a scolding tone, but you ripped your name tag off already.” He shifted on his feet, crossing his arms over his chest. “It sounds to me like you’re making excuses to protect yourself. When is the last time you put in any effort? Do you just brush everyone off? Do you even try?”

“Try?”

“Let yourself be open to the possibilities?”

The possibilities? What the hell was with this guy? Was he some kind of failed psych major? It took all your strength not to splash your drink in his face and leave. He was lucky you were trying to be nice.

You could feel your blood pressure rise. “First of all, whatever your name is, I don’t think you know me well enough to sit behind your bar counter and judge me!”

The corner of his mouth lifted a little in amusement. And no, he was most definitely not more attractive in that moment. Absolutely not.

“Name’s James, but my friends call me Bucky.” His head tilted a little and you saw that his eyes were a cool blue-grey color, with just a little obnoxious twinkle in them. “What’s your name?”

“Y/N.”

“Well, Y/N, do you try?” He had that stupid, infuriating little hint of a smile again. God, it was amazing that this place was still in business with an obnoxious guy like him at the bar.

“Yes, I try. I just sat through five three-minute dates, for fuck’s sake. I just…I’m not meant for anything like that.”

“You know when I said try, I didn’t mean actively push people away.” Both eyebrows raised as he assessed you again. “Because I think that’s exactly what you’re doing, even with me right now.”

The door opened then, and a huge crowd of women donning matching pink shirts walked in giggling with a girl wearing a sash that said Bride. That was your cue to get the hell out of that bar.

You downed the rest of your drink quickly, offering him a small fake smile as you set the glass down. “Yes, well…I think I’m going to swipe left on this conversation. It’s been…enlightening, James.” You reached into your bag to pull out some money, but the bartender waved his hands.

“Call me Bucky. And it’s on the house. You seem like you needed it.” With a nod and wink, he turned away again to make the million shots a newly-arrived bachelorette party wanted.

As if you would ever accept something for free from someone with that attitude…

“Thanks anyway, James,” you muttered. Without a glance back to him, you set the money on the bar and stood up, determined to either pull Natasha away or leave her there.

---

“One date down, two to go.” You stretched your legs out under the table and leaned back. Wanda wanted to hear all about the event the night before, so the two of you went to a nearby café for a quick lunch.

Wanda eyed you over her coffee cup. “That only counted as one date?”

“Apparently,” you muttered, picking at your scone. “Natasha’s rules.”

She leaned forward. “Got any ideas for the next two?”

“No, not unless you know someone?”

“There are lots of someones on dating apps, Y/N.”

You groaned, putting your head in your hands. “Wan, not now.”

“Come on,” she chided, gently pulling your hands away from your face. “If you give some of the apps a try, I’ll…I’ll do your donation calls for a week.”

That had you interested. Not only could you potentially be left alone for a month, but have less work to do. “Two weeks, one for each remaining date.”

Wanda held out her hand and you shook it.

She had the nerve to look genuinely excited, that absolute witch. “First I think we’ll try Tinder. My neighbor’s husband’s sister met the love of her life…”

You sighed as you tuned her out, trying to enjoy your last moments of Tinder-free life.

---

After lunch, Wanda came over and teamed up with Natasha to harass you until you agreed to download the dating apps.They helped set up your account, even forced you to take about fifty pictures before they were satisfied with your profile.

“Wait, what do I do?” You glared down at the offending app on your phone, trying to ignore the nervous feeling in your stomach.

Natasha flopped down on the couch next to you. “When you see a profile of someone you’re interested in, you swipe right. If they swiped right on you too, it’ll tell you that you’ve made a match.”

“What’s the blue star thing for?”

“A super like!” Wanda’s eyes lit up. “I wonder if you will find any of those!”

Unlikely.

“So, in theory, I could like all these people and they could loathe me and I would never know?” That didn’t sound so bad. It was like less hurtful window shopping.

“Sometimes you’ll get the occasional douchebag and you’ll have to put up with bad messages, but yes, that’s generally how that works.”

You played around on the app in silence for about five minutes, going through and swiping left on most of the profiles you read.

“What was wrong with that last one?” Wanda asked, frowning at you. “He seemed cute? He had a kayak and a puppy! You love puppies.”

The last one she was talking about was also wearing a shirt that said Federal Boob Investigator, but leave it to the romantic to not notice that.

“Just wasn’t feeling it.”

Natasha scoffed. “Are you gonna swipe right on anyone?”

You gave her a look. “Maybe.”

Before you could react, Nat grabbed your phone from your hand and started swiping right on almost everyone with a wicked gleam in her eye.

“Stop it! You’ll make me look desperate,” you screeched, trying to grab the phone back.

She let out a gasp, then turned the phone to you. “Y/N! Look at this guy. Look at him! His name is Wade and he is perfect!”

He was handsome enough, but his profile was pretty weird. “No, Natasha. He probably thinks he’s hilarious and has deep-rooted abandonment issues or something.”

“Exactly. You need someone different and exciting like that. We’re getting you out of your comfort zone, remember?”

You watched in horror as she swiped right.

Then, that wicked gleam in her eye got even brighter as she showed the screen again.

“It’s a match!”

“Natashaaaa….”

“Oh shit, he messaged you already!”

“He did?” You snatched the phone back, crawling over her to get away. You didn’t want to admit it, but your stomach was in knots. “Oh my god, he did!”

“What’s it say?” Wanda leaned over. “Read it!”

“He wants to see me tomorrow.”

You read the message over and over. A handsome guy, who most definitely probably definitely had some issues but also seemed cute and funny, wanted to see you.

God, you hoped you didn’t regret this.

When you glanced back up, they were both staring at you. Something about this whole situation seemed too good to be true. There was no way in hell that anything would last.

Logically, if you went into it thinking it was just a one-time date with a hot guy, there wouldn’t be a problem, right?

“Well?”

“Are you gonna reply?”

And if there weren’t feelings involved, you could stand to have a little fun.

You grinned at them. “Of course. I have two bets to win now, don’t I?”

---

Part 3

Masterlist

no taglist

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fanfiction #jsb three date min

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stoprecedinggumswithoutsur-blog2 · 5 years ago

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Stop Receding Gumline

What is the very best home remedy for receding gums? There are some home remedies which are more powerful than others. Some people swear by a professional toothbrush and mouthwash, but when you simply take away the sugar in your diet plan you can't be prepared to own your gums and teeth are working by themselves. It doesn't make sense. So, we'll only accept the fact we need both sugar and vinegar to care for the gum disease and make an effort never to allow it to be a habit.

A home remedy for receding gums which works well may be the use of a mouth squirt, such as a flavored mouthwash. I do not understand the reviews on these, but it's something to look at.

Is there a home remedy for receding gums which will not cause you to smell such as the bakery at Christmas? You know the one that smells like white bread and cinnamon, with some dark tea mixed in. Those are my favorite home remedies remedies.

Whenever you are down on your own, it's easy to forget your oral health is in peril. In the long run, it's your teeth and gums that cover the price.

I'm not suggesting that home remedies for gum disease really are all bad. A fantastic healthy way of life and lots of fluids are very important. It's only that lots of folks don't get the consequences of eating bad foods.

How To Stop Receding Gums From Getting Worse?

A home remedy for receding gums might include an increase in water intake or taking a little extra fiber into your meal. Just rememberwe do not always have to hold having bad breath to love our oral health.

Allergies to dust, pollen, mold, and bacteria could lead to problems in the mouth and overall health of their teeth. Getting a good night's sleep is crucial, but it also helps you to ensure that your human body is in its optimal state of health. Your entire body will thank you.

However if it isn't done properly, gum disease might turn into a critical problem. It can even cause periodontitis disease, that is perhaps one of the very usual forms of gum disease.

Extra fiber and also a multi-vitamin can also help with the prevention of gum disease. It's also very important to have enough rest, stop smoking and drinking alcohol, and reduce stress and look for a good quality personal hygienist. These are just a few of the things you can do to improve your overall wellbeing.

Should you choose one of the things and there is nothing else you can do, this home remedy for receding gums that are the answer you want. If there is nothing else you can do, then think about adding an everyday multivitamin supplement to your everyday diet.

Stop Receding Gums At Home

A probiotic supplement is just a helpful addition to this diet and can be found in most pharmacies and supermarkets as either probiotic mouthwash or anti-bacterial products. Considering all the home remedies for gum disease available, a multi-vitamin with good amounts of fiber and vitamin D might be exactly the thing you want to put your gum disease within the path to recovery.

Therefore you were told by your dentist which you have receding gums. Now what exactly do you do? Once you get to the dentist, you're likely told you have receding gums and possibly tooth decay. But do you ever stop to consider?

I was told my teeth were so bad and tooth decay was an opportunity and which was the extent of it.

My dentist had given me what is referred to as dental restoration that seems to imply that the biggest news is how to treat tooth decay. Ofcourse it's going to be cited in precisely the exact same breath as home remedies for any other problem that has show up at precisely the same time.

We've got heard it stated that the Dentist will put down his foot on what you can eat and what you can not. You know he is going to tell you what you cannot eat. You will be told that which the most daily intake would be and what exactly the many poisonous foods will be to eat.

And so we are told by our dental doctors that people will need to avoid the ordinary sweet or high carbohydrate foods which were proven to cause allergies and migraines. And when you have never had a candida infection I'm afraid you are in for a major surprise. That's the way common candida is in the USA.

If you want to learn the facts about home remedies for tooth decay, then you'll find out that it is in fact that the bacteria and yeast that infect the gums are liable for your own sore throat and bleeding gums. It's well documented that it was a fungus that caused it to occur.

Remedy To Stop Receding Gums Fast

Yet another reason home remedies are not so successful is because they can't permeate the blood system and behave in the mouth. It is believed it is our immune system and B vitamins that will be the key ingredients in eliminating their plaque and bacteria from the teeth. The more of the natural substances you ingest the better your chances of eliminating plaque and whiten gums.

The only reason it is so tricky to remove the plaque and bacteria out of one's teeth is since it does not seem to comprehend them as foreign. It seems to believe that the'foreign' disease and bacteria will be the conventional flora that live on your teeth. It's your immune system which must become strong enough to recognize the gap between ordinary flora and the harmful fungus and bacteria.Visit Here:https://robertmchamberlain.atavist.com/how-to-stop-receding-gums-from-getting-worse

The best way I have found for curing gum diseases is through herbal medicines. By taking one or two capsules of the following herbs once every day and they will help strengthen your immune system and also help eliminate plaque and bacteria from the teeth.

These herbs work just like no other and once you get rid of the plaque and bacteria they help get rid of the infection that causes you to feel a little off each of the time. These herbs are not likely to offer you instant effects, however they are going to help improve your quality of life in the future.

Lavender: This herb includes white seeds that might be crushed and used in cooking or baking. It's extremely mild and used as an overall body tonic or found in toothpastes that have less antiseptic properties compared to regular toothpaste.

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