#again all of those moons just blot out the sun or it's a little potato transiting in front of it

[vickysaurus]

Here's what Mars gets! Phobos, its nearest moon, is tiny compared to ours, but it's also much closer by and the Sun looks smaller because it's farther away, so it still manages to cover up a decent chunk of the Sun. But nothing like the perfect eclipse we have.

The gas giants have plenty of moons, but because the Sun looks much smaller from them as it's so far away, the bigger moons just blot out the entire Sun when they pass in front of it. Of course, we don't really have photos of this from their non-existent surfaces, but we can see the moons' shadows dancing across the planets' clouds!

Now, this happens all the time on Jupiter, every single orbit of the four biggest moons, since they orbit in almost a flat plane seen from the Sun and Jupiter is such a big target for the shadows. But it's much, much rarer on Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, which just like Earth are tilted. The moon shadows only hit the planets during the two spots in the planet's orbit when the moon orbits happen to cross in front of the Sun. And considering how long these worlds take to orbit, that makes it very rare! Which is why there's no real pics of this happening on Neptune, where the opportunity only comes around once every 82 years! And even then, only one of its moons would cast a big enough shadow to see from Earth with Hubble or JWST, since Neptune is kind of far away and we sadly don't have any spacecraft orbiting it.

NO OTHER PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM GETS TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSES!! THE SIZE AND DISTANCE OF OUR MOON FROM EARTH AND THE SUN MAKE THE PERFECT CIRCUMSTANCES TO GET TOTALITY!!! THE EARTH AND MOON ARE SOOOO COOL AND OF COURSE OUR SUN!! I LOVE LIVING ON EARTH I LOVE YOU EARTH I LOVE YOUUUUU MOON I LOVE YOU SUN

[justanotherbandomdevotee]

A Cursed Half Life.

A Jalex One Shot.

T–C�

Era- Put Up Or Shut Up! All Time Low.

Pairing- Alex Gaskarth and Jack Barakat.

Word Count- 3887 Words.

Warnings-

·                   Pretention.

·                   Really Long.

·                   Horribly Written.

·                   A Few Swears.

·                   Nothing Too Triggering, I Hope.

Author’s Note-

This one shot was kind of inspired by good Times and Drugs and Candy. Feel free to leave criticism and to point out my mistakes. Enjoy.

-Sentient Potato. U

Do you ever have those days where you are unresponsive to everything? Like, you could be lying in bed with a famished tummy and a parched mouth or sitting on the couch with a full bladder, but you do not move because you just do not care, at all. Days when your brain is working with a skeleton crew and is doing the bare minimum to keep you alive while your heart feels worn out and grey and is pumping red viscous fluid into your veins cause it is its job and not because it some sort of a feat or marvel that one is supposed to be awed by. Hours where you realize that your existence is just as unremarkable as an emo pop punk band describes it to be. Moments where you can practically see the color palette of your life and its grey, blue, and downright depressing. Unsolicited hauls of long lost motivation plague you and the fervor and zest for life that possessed you less than 24 hours ago is now lost.

Have you ever felt that? That feeling of muddled mesh of memories that is your day. Seconds of gravity defying clarity blot your existence and at the end of the day, you feel frustrated and exhausted even though, all you’ve done is lain in bed and listened to songs sung by people in skinny jeans and eyeliner who are angry at the world and are rightly so.

That was my life.

The desperately passionless description was the definition of my existence. In a sea of faceless, nameless, vapidly moronic, and mildly inspiring humans, I was tragically uninspiring and apathetic and just as forgettable as the rest of them.  I imagined the sea to be a hoard of generically caricatured men and women with feature-less and round faces, square and triangle shaped bodies, fingerless limbs, no connective lines to fill in the gaps, and grey.

A sea of mundane and grey people out of whom, no one stuck out, and then it happened.

My purposeless, in my opinion, life suddenly found meaning.

In the sea of grey and banal entered a person who was all sorts of hues.

I met the guy of my dreams.

I didn’t even know that he was the guy of my dreams or that I had a guy of my dreams instead of a girl, but the moment I saw that messy hair with a blond strip running along the length of his right side’s hair strands and eyebrows that were bushy enough to rival my own, I knew that I was fucked, completely and thoroughly fucked.

He was the very embodiment of everything that I wanted to be, but wasn’t because I was too busy being a melancholic piece of shit. He had this smile that could make me forget about all of the crap that I had witnessed in the 18 years of my existence and the best part was that the physical appeal of the smile wasn’t even the best thing about his smile; it was the drum roll before it.

That blatantly clear moment of anticipation where everything hung in balance and just for those few fleeting seconds, the whole world stopped. Everything slowed down, the flow of time, the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a calm and still lake, the wrinkles in the air created by a butterfly’s wings when they beat, and my heart rate. It was mellow and dramatic at the same time, it was endearing. Because the drum roll led to something to beautiful to describe without sounding like a sappy, love sick puppy, I always paid more attention to the drum roll. The drum roll was more beatific anyway.

The smile was cherubic and enamoring, but the drum roll was mysteriously captivating, just like him.

He was mischievous and an open book. He wore his heart on his sleeve and his emotions were constantly on display, not because he expressed them explicitly, but because his eyes were too expressive. Whatever he said or thought, his eyes betrayed the naked truth, they always did. He suffered the consequences of wearing his heart on his sleeve. He suffered them on a daily basis, but he never learned. He never learned to hide his feelings and he never learned to recognize another’s feelings.

He had a blessing, he was too stunning to not fall for. He also had a curse, he was too dense to notice someone else’s affections for him, unless or until that person went all out and pulled off an extravagant and embarrassing event to declare their undying love for him. Otherwise, he remained blissfully unaware.

Maybe I should have done something like that, loud, explosive, obvious. Maybe he would have picked up on my hints sooner instead of almost throwing it all away, quite literally.

After debating with myself for over a month, I had finally decided to do something about my feelings for him. It was going to be my last subtle attempt, not because I was fed up of him not getting the point, but because I had done everything under the sun, moon, and the stars to get his attention.

So, on my way to the studio, I bought our favorite coffees from the small and one of a kind café and wrote a small paragraph on his white Styrofoam cup. I dented his cup in the process and as a result it looked a little unaesthetic, but the message was heartfelt.

During the drive to the studio, I could feel a storm of doubt and general anxiety tearing my sanity away. The steaming cups were precariously dancing, unaware of their empty and crushed fates as my grip tightened around the wearing out leather of my steering wheel.

When my car came to a jerking stop in a parking space, the clouds over Baltimore looked like they were ready to burst open any second.

I got out of my car, after the shrieking door sent every cat in a 5 mile radius into an early reincarnation, and started walking towards the golden, revolving glass doors of a small dilapidated building that stood crumbling in the corner of the parking lot.

Small stones dotted my path and what-ifs plagued my mind as I walked against the wind current. The wind was howling in my ears and nipping at my skin, causing it to become red and sensitive. I picked up my pace and quickly walked into the warm confines of the studio.

The ugly carpet covered floors were not a sight to behold and I quickly started climbing the bare and chipped stairs, taking two at a time, because I did not want to get stuck in an elevator again.

 I came to a halt in front of the recording room that we had booked out for the day and was about to open it when my brain decided to go into overdrive and started producing vibrantly colored scenarios with surround sound, all of which detailed the very plausible rejection of my feelings in an exaggerated manner, but since I was already pretty scared, I was accepting these over the top scenarios as my very near future.

“Where is Alex?” I heard our manager, Flyzik, grumble in a disdainful voice. I decided to actually open the door and enter the room instead of standing out there with a thudding heart and gradually exhausting itself mind.

I sheepishly pushed the creaking door open and all eyes, including the lone bird’s eyes that was perched on the ledge outside the only window in the room, shot up to look at the cause of creaking.

I gave a flustered smile and a tiny wave from where half of my body was hanging inside the room. Flyzik rolled his eyes and I prepared myself for a lecture of a lifetime when Jack spoke up. “Oh! there you are, I am so sorry I asked you to pick up my coffee.” I looked at him in a confused manner while flyzik decided to visually murder the lanky teenager who was sitting on a revolving chair near the soundboard.

“You mean to tell me,” Flyzik started in an incensed tone before some sort of realization happened in his head and he stopped. “Whatever, just get your skinny ass in hear and lay down your vocals.”

“Yes, Sir.” I spoke and gave him a two fingered salute with my right unoccupied hand. Flyzik rolled his eyes again as I opened the cracked door wide enough to accommodate my frame through it.

I walked towards Jack and handed him his coffee. Jack for a second looked startled, but then a smile of pure joy stretched across his thin lips. God that damned smile was going to be the death of me.

I didn’t want to give him the coffee in a room full of techies, producers, and our other band members, but it was now or never.

I walked into the yellow bulbs lit recording booth with a single and silver microphone in its centre and started recording my vocals.

The soundproof glass only allowed me to see Jack and not hear him and for the next 2 hours, my voice became more and more strained and my heart became more and more weary. My distracted mind was making it very difficult for me to record and it wasn’t just my imagination.

Rian and Zack were trying to calm a flaming flyzik down and the techs looked tired from having to hear the same part over and over again.

After our manager made me want to crawl into a hole and die, I finally plucked the courage to ask Jack about the message. Weather he had read it or not, weather Jack reciprocated my feelings or not.

Jack had left in the middle of my 30th mess up and hadn’t returned yet. I excused myself from the stuffy room and walked away to find the Lebanese.

With ringing ears, I had walked out of the recycle air conditioned studio and into the cold weather of Baltimore, Maryland, when I saw a sight that was brutally gruesome and inspiringly gentle at the same time. I saw him leaning against an ugly and yellow car while kissing a girl who was way too short for him.

I could feel tears welling up in my eyes and my heart stopping for a few seconds. My brain went into shock and for the first time since my decision to do the coffee cup trick, it was silent, completely and utterly silent.

I turned around and speed walked into the studio, leaving the heart breaking sight behind me.

I was in the blue carpet covered lobby when my knees gave out, my lungs stopped working and my brain resuscitated itself.  I felt my chest cave in as a sudden influx of screaming thoughts and motions of denial flooded my mind.

 I toppled over under the pressure of it all and kneed on the carpet that was covered in questionable stains. My heart was thudding against my rib cage and throat.

‘Why was this hurting now? He has had plenty of girlfriends in the past, why does it feel so horrific now? Why is it affecting me so badly now? Why do I want to claw my skin out now?’ My thoughts voiced themselves in my head in a high pitched and concerned tone as hot tears leaked down my face. It was getting more and more difficult to breathe through the fat tears.

‘It’s because this time it means something and you know it.’ a calm voice spoke, cutting its way through the frenzy of my panicked thoughts.

The words caused me to freeze and my tears to abstain from falling. They remained in the confines of the eyes as I dejectedly glared at a stain while allowing the words to sink in.

I acknowledged the fact that the voice was right and tried to accept that it was true, agonizing, but true.

A part of me was fighting ferociously, though, telling me that all of those nights under the soft glow of the stars where we talked about our dreams while making up names for constellations, those sleep overs where we watched Home Alone over  and over again while quoting it and throwing popcorn at each other, those consoling words that we spoke to each other in the dead of the night because another girl had decided to toy with one of  our hearts and break it, all of that wasn’t just friendship. Those secret looks, the knowing grins, that intimacy, it didn’t exist between people who were just friends. My brain, however, was drawing a blank every time it tried to play any one of those memories because the big screen of my mind was continuously playing that heart shattering scene.

As each screening ended, only to restart, I swear I felt my heart stop and drop into my stomach. Like, the grief and shock from watching it over and over again had somehow caused my muscular heart to turn into stone, become unhinged, and fall into the hydrochloric acid that lined my stomach.

I stayed there on my hands and knees for the longest period of time and when I finally got up, I felt weak and dizzy.

I was going up stairs to let my team know that I was going to call it a day when a Malibu Barbie-esque girl came running down the stairs.

Her blonde hair was flying furiously behind her and her big, blue eyes had mascara stained tears. Her curved upwards red nose was standing out against her porcelain like skin and she sniffed loudly while pushing me out of the way.

The tiny girl with an hourglass body was pretty powerful and I was caught off guard. The combination caused my back to slam painfully into the hard and popcorn like surfaced opal wall that encased the stairs.

She didn’t even stop to apologize or offer an explanation and kept jogging down the stairs before disappearing behind the doors.

Once, I couldn’t see her even after straining, I decided to go back to doing what I was doing.

The air was thick with the scent of a cheap knock off of an expensive perfume. It was a feminine smell. I rolled my eyes out of irritation as the smell started burning my nasal cavity and continued walking. The berry and flower induced chemical lingered all around me and followed me till the dark brown door of the recording room that we had rented out for the day.

Matt was going to be so incensed, but something about the tiny girl was familiar and that was preventing me from caring about hearing another one of Matt’s self-loathe inducing scolds.

As I popped the brown door open, I saw, to my surprise and relief, that it was completely empty, sans him.

The lanky bastard with my heart was standing against the studio’s sound board. His back was facing me and he was looking at something with a fond smile. I knew that it was a fond one because I could see its reflection in the glass that encased the recording booth. He was making heart eyes at the said object and my blood was boiling. Before my brain could set off into another frenzy of high pitch toned questions however, he looked up and I felt all the thoughts filtering out of my head. I also, in the same breath, realized that the heavily perfumed girl was the girl whom Jack was kissing. Suddenly, my heart started fluttering with hope. It was fanciful, but it was a strong surge of hope. So I held on to it.

The black tinted glass showed a blurred rendition of his perfection and even though his eyes weren’t directly staring at me, I could feel my heart rate picking up. He did that, he made me feel the most basic forms of emotions, happiness, sadness, jealousy and anger, to their full extent and power without even trying. I sometimes wondered what he’d manage to do to me if he started trying.

 It was annoying how he never noticed the slight stutter, the light slurring of my words, and throb of my reverberating heart beat against my throat. It was infuriating. How could he be so fucking clueless?!

When he noticed my unflattering reflection in the glass of the booth, his wide smile became wider and his lips parted to show his pretty teeth. I could tell that under the bright light of the yellow bulbs, his smile was glittering like the traveling and calm waves of an ever stretching sea under the marvelous glow of the sun.  

He turned around slowly, the object of his affections coming into focus.

When I saw the crushed Styrofoam cup in his royal blue sweater pawed hand, my breath left my body. Suddenly, I was very aware of everything in the room, the dust heavy air, the pulsing ghost reverbs of Rian’s drums, the lingering feeling of Zach’s steady and deep bass lines cutting through the air like a sharp knife, the ass shaped dents in the red leather couches, the soft cushioning of the black carpet underneath my converse’ soles. Everything was uber clear and I wasn’t enjoying it, at all.

My brain was misinterpreting the meaning behind his grin. ‘But his eyes’ the same voice from the back of my head spoke. ‘NO! NO! NO! HE ISN’T SMILING BECAUSE HE RECIPROCATES ALEX’S FEELINGS, HE IS SMILING BECAUSE HE IS TOO SWEET TO LAUGH. HE IS EMBARRASED! ITS EVIDENT FROM THE WAY HE IS SCRATCHING THE BACK OF HIS HEAD WITH HIS FREE HAND!! THAT IS IT! TIME TO MOVE TO LIMA, PERU, TO START A NEW LIFE FROM SCRATCH.’ My pessimistic thoughts screamed over the voice of reason. I was standing in front of the love of my life and was having a mental war that was preventing me from opening my mouth and doing the logical thing of explaining myself to him.

“Took you long enough to confess.”

“I can explain, it was supposed to be a joke, haha, April Fools.” I wanted to slap myself. I wanted my cringe-y past version to slap myself, my future version to slap myself, I wanted my dead goldfish to slap me. The utter absurdity of the asinine words had me drowning in a pool of my own sweat and shame.

“So, in the middle of June, you decided to pull off an April Fool’s prank?” Jack asked in a mocking tone, his eyes were gleaming with mischief and his smile was a dead giveaway of the fact that he did not believe me.

“It’s a horrible thing to do, you know.”

“I can explain-“

“Playing with someone’s feelings like that.”

“I need you to lis-“

“Here I thought that you were truly in love with me.”

“I, just will you-“

“But its all a joke.”

“Jack, I-“

“Oh the utter despair of heartache is real and cruel.”

“Oh, for the love of,” I never added an entity because I was furiously crossing the 5 steps long space between us and crushing my thin lips against his pink ones.

It was a passionate kiss, we were both kissing desperately. In the still aired room of the studio, I could feel our hearts thudding as one. Our eyes were closed and our mouths were going at it with a renewed sense of urgency.

He tasted like spearmint and coffee and the molecules around my nose weren’t densely doused with the cheap scent, but were light perfumed with the intoxicating smell of guitar polish, some male oriented deodorant, and his sweat.

My right hand was holding the back of his think neck and my left was lying precariously against his thigh. His arms were loosely, but securely, wrapped around my thin waist. I made me feel safe.  

We pulled away as the oxygen between us finally ran out, leaving us breathless and wanting more. My stomach was exploding, a kaleidoscope of butterflies and explosive fireworks were exploding in my stomach. My heart was pumping blood into my body with a reinvigorated sense of purpose. I could feel goose bumps on my skin and looking into his almond shaped eyes with blown pupils, I could tell that he was feeling it too.

A state of affectionate lethargy fell over us as he sat down in the worn out revolving chair and pulled me into his lap. I was more than a little reluctant because let’s face it, Jack was too skinny to not collapse under my weight.

“You won’t hurt me.” Jack reassured and pulled me into his lap. I could feel his bones digging into my butt cheeks, but I stayed quiet.

“What did you mean by “It took you long enough to confess.”?” I asked in a soft tone, something about the situation demanded a soft tone.

“Well, I kinda, sorta, maybe, had a very vague idea about your feelings for me.” I felt Jack’s lips brushing against my collar bone as he replied in an equally hushed tone.

“And you never said anything?!” I asked in an incredulous manner, my eyes bulging in horror as I moved away to look at him. The scenery changed from his silky, shinny hair to his sheepishly grinning face before he explained to me that he didn’t want to ruin our friendship.

“I went through years of unsolicited torture of the romantic kind just because you didn’t want to ruin our friendship? I have half a mind to not ask you out now.”

“Hey, had it not been for my hawk like eyes, your little love letter would have never seen the light of day. I had thrown it away.”

“And that fixes this how exactly?”

“I… you could have been a little more obvious, Alex!”

“Says the most oblivious piece of shit in the universe!”

“Yeah, well you love this oblivious piece of shit!” Jack retaliated and we fell silent. It was a crushing silence, I was itching to say something to wipe that smug smile of his lips.

“Cat caught your tongue?” Jack cooed.

I rolled my eyes and leaned in to kiss him again and again and again and I never allowed him to slip away.

He gave me purpose and made my banal and bland life more tolerable. He made me more inclined to the idea of living than the idea of existing. I promised to love him for an eternity and I did, with every fiber of my being and every inch of my height, I loved Jack Bassam Barakat and he loved me back.

It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows and there were days, months where the two of us fought like an old married couple, we bickered back and forth and pressed buttons that we immediately regretted, but in the end, we always crawled back to each other because a, no one else wanted us, b, the band suffered, and c, we were too madly in love.

Calling him mine and being called his by him, it was pure elation and allowed me to live a whole and fulfilling life, instead of the half and cursed life that I was initially sentenced to.