#and she was a little flaky as a supervisor | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

taexual · 6 years ago

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HOLIC - 24 | jb x reader

pairing: Im Jaebum x Reader

genre: enemies to lovers au | roommate au

warnings: some angst, some fluff

words: 5.4k

disclaimer: i do not own the gif, please let me know if it belongs to you, so i can give proper credit

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You could not get Jaebum’s voice out of your head all throughout the next day at work. You’ve only heard the song once so you couldn’t recall all of the lyrics, but the melody echoed around your mind and you found yourself humming along under your breath the entire day. You should have asked Jackson to forward the song to you instead of bailing like you did. You should have also thrown your arms over Jaebum and screamed at him about how good his music was until he finally believed you. But there was something stopping you from doing that.

In part, it could have been your own naturally reserved nature. Despite craving affection at times, you weren’t usually overly affectionate either. Hugging people out of the blue wasn’t something you were brave enough to do no matter how much your hands were itching to touch them. More than that, however, you had a feeling it was the fear of what would happen after – you’d hug Jaebum, fireworks would explode, but… what then? The overhwelming amount of feelings his music had caused you did not make a good pair for the uncertainty you felt, as well as the plain obscurity regarding your future with him.

You’ve been listening—or, well, trying to listen—to Eva, your supervisor, as she explained to you and a few of your colleagues how to handle the sudden swarm of schoolchildren that were coming to an exhibition at the gallery, and still replaying the chorus of Jaebum’s song in your mind, when you felt someone watching you.

Truth be told, it could have been anyone. A fair number of weird characters appeared at the gallery and just stood there, staring at nothing in particular – stoners, usually, but seemingly sober people dozed off here pretty often, too – but you could already tell this wasn’t the case before you even shifted your gaze to the far corner of the gallery where Jiho had just entered through the backdoor, stopping immediately after he caught the sight of you.

You hadn’t called in sick today, after all. But, oh, at that moment, you truly wished you had.

You looked away, ignoring the shivers of anxiety that had run down your spine and focused on Eva’s words instead, hoping Jiho would go away and you wouldn’t have to talk to him. You’ve already asked him to take your picture out of his exhibition and you didn’t feel like clarifying anything else to him. You’d naively hoped you could go on living without ever having to admit to him that you’d genuinely thought his interest in you was romantic. It seemed so obvious and so stupid now.

Jiho, however, didn’t think you and him owed each other any serious conversations, and that was why he strolled up to you, giving Eva a smile – that she, of course, reciprocated – and then asking to talk to you for a moment. He couldn’t understand the flash of terror in your eyes; he just wanted to borrow you for a quick chat.

You’d have paid good money to get Eva to tell you that you couldn’t leave with Jiho, but she merely nodded, giving you a suggestive smile as if to say that she supported whatever was going on between you and the photographer. Little did she know…

“I should really be back soon,” you told Jiho as he guided you towards the quieter—and emptier—part of the gallery. “With all of these exhibitions happening, I need to know what our plan is.”

“I won’t keep you long,” he said. “Are you free this weekend? I’ll be staying in the city for a little longer after my exhibition and I was hoping we could hang out, organize ourselves a little photoshoot. What do you say?”

You squeezed your lips shut as you tried to find a way to reply to this.

“I don’t think so,” you ended up saying. No point to toy around and pretend. “I have plans.”

You didn’t have the slightest clue what you were going to do this weekend, but staying home was far better than hanging out with Jiho. He wasn’t a bad person – he was actually rather nice, all things considered – but you had an entire list of people whom you’d have rather spent your weekends with.

“Oh,” Jiho’s tone was flatter now. “Well, will you, at least, make it to the opening night of the exhibition?”

“I, uh—”

“W-why—look, I can’t help but feel like there’s something you haven’t told me,” he said and your heart picked up speed. “If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to, but I’d appreciate it if you respected me enough to say it straight to my face without making up excuses.”

The way he put it made you feel like you were the one who’d hurt him by dismissing his attempts to spend more time with you and, perhaps, in a way, you really have been disrespectful to him as you tried to deal with your own emotions – but you still couldn’t ignore the fact that you had all of these emotions to deal with precisely because Jiho hadn’t been clear enough about his intentions from the beginning.

“I’m sorry,” you said, inhaling deeply. You didn’t want to give in to your guilt – misunderstandings were, usually, a mutual problem – but you knew it wouldn’t be fair to him if you didn’t fully explain yourself, no matter how dreadful the thought of him mocking you was. “I didn’t mean to be flaky. It’s just… I-I guess I just don’t want to be a part of, uh, you know, whatever you’re doing with those girls.”

Jiho’s eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean? I’m not doing anything with any girls. If, uh—if you mean the people I’ve photographed, then they are all friends.”

“Am I your friend?”

“Yeah, of course.”

You nodded, the words spilling out of your mouth far easier than you’d have expected them to, “well, see, I had assumed I was something more.”

Jiho blinked. “W-what do you mean?”

“Well, you know,” you said, anxious for him to understand even though it was clear that, unless you explained what you meant properly, he would not, in fact, know. “I thought you and I were more than a, uh, network connection. Or what do you call this? But it’s fine. I misunderstood your intentions, I guess that’s my bad. It’s just a little weird for me now.”

He could clearly see that it wasn’t a little weird. You looked about as uncomfortable as it was possible to get.

“Oh,” Jiho said. You avoided his eyes but his gaze remained firmly set on you. “I—well, I can’t say I didn’t suspect that this might have been the case. I’m sorry if my intentions weren’t clear from the start. I’m always very… accomodating. That sounds wrong—I just… I’ve been doing this for a while, as you know, and the girls I usually hang out with don’t expect anything but business from me. They’re my friends, of course, but they’re also my source of inspiration most of the time. You are, too.”

He sounded nice. A lot nicer than you’d have expected from him and, all of a sudden, you didn’t understand why you’d dreaded to see him so much. Jiho wasn’t trying to purposefully lead you on and trick you into posing for his pictures – but, then again, he could have been more professional about this and actually ask for your consent before using your picture in his exhibition – he just didn’t think you’d be this much of an outsider in his world. Sure, it was wrong of him to assume you’d understand what he wanted from you but, at the same time, it wasn’t exactly right for you to assume the exact opposite, either.

“It was a misunderstanding,” you said again. “I guess, both of us should have been more open with our expectations, right?”

“Yeah,” Jiho chuckled, glad to hear your voice sound lighter. “I guess we should have. For the sake of this, I do have to mention that I value our friendship. I think you’re very interesting. But – and I know now that I should have mentioned this as soon as I met you – I’m not interested in dating. The real kind of dating, I mean.”

You didn’t know what other kind there was, but you chose not to question that right now, when it was starting to look as though you’d resolve this with little to no further damage to your dignity.

“That’s fair,” you said. “I have to mention, then, that I’m really only interested in exclusive relationships. I guess we’ve run into a bit of a conflict of interests here.”

Jiho shrugged his shoulders.

“Not necessarily,” he said, “I’m not holding you back from being involved with other people romantically. If anything, I encourage that. You look really beautiful when your eyes glitter with affection and even though I know we—” he stopped suddenly, choosing to word it differently, “uh, I don’t think I was ever the reason why your eyes were glittering like that, to be honest with you. I’d say your heart was always someplace else.”

“Hmm,” you cleared your throat. You’d just started to feel more comfortable but all of that backfired when you noticed the subtle smile on his lips. As if he knew something about your life that you haven’t told him about. “Well, anyway, I don’t regret meeting you per se. I regret the circumstances. But you’ve taught me a lot and I’m grateful for that, I just—”

“Listen, here’s what we’ll do,” he cut you off, recognizing the dismissal in your voice and knowing that you were about to attempt to get rid of him. “I won’t bother you to the point of you getting a restraining order against me, alright? That’s not really my style. But let’s not throw this to waste. Like I said, I genuinely value every friendship I develop and ours is no exception. So, if you decide you’re comfortable enough to meet up with me again, then let me know, yeah?”

You watched him for a moment, not sure why he was almost desperate to keep you in his life.

“Why?” you finally asked just to truly get everything off of your chest. “I-I mean, you know a lot of people. Plenty of girls. I’m nothing special, w-what’s the point?”

“That’s exactly the point,” Jiho replied. “All of these people – as you’ve said – are important to me. And you’re one of them, I already told you. And, who knows, maybe in the future, we’ll find a way to work together. I don’t want to lose that opportunity.”

“Work together?” you raised your eyebrows. “You mean in terms of photography, of course?”

“I mean anything,” he said with a smile and then continued before you could ask anything else, “so, think about it, okay? We don’t have to be the best of friends but we don’t have to be strangers, either.”

“Hmm.”

“I’ll let you get back to work,” Jiho said then, understanding that you biting your lip was a signal that you didn’t have much else to say. “But I’ll still be waiting for you at the opening night of my exhibition, so… think about that, too.”

He left with a wave and you knew the quick movement of his hand lasted about as long as his memory about this would last. There was no way he’d ever notice you missing in a crowd of beautiful people that would come to his exhibition.

Perhaps the day of his exhibition was really going to be the day when you finally called in sick, or, perhaps, you’d convince Eva to give you cleaning duty and then spend the whole day in the basement below the gallery, cleaning old frames and sneezing from the dust. Or, as unlikely as that was, perhaps you’d actually step on your pride and show up to see Jiho’s photographs one more time.

When you got home that night after work, all you really wanted was to flop down on your bed and sleep until it was morning again, but, apparently, it was nearly impossible to call it a night at six o’clock in the evening because your roommate – who’d apparently gotten home about twenty minutes before you did – popped his head out of his bedroom, letting you know that he’d ordered take-out because neither of you had gone grocery shopping and thus began a conversation that changed the course of the rest of your night.

“Great,” you replied, still a little awkward after you got to see a much deeper side of him last night at Jackson’s studio. “You could have texted me, I’d have bought some food on my way home.”

“I didn’t realize until I got here,” Jaebum replied. “And by that time, you were probably in your car on your way back already. It’s fine, though. I ordered enough food to eat leftovers for breakfast tomorrow.”

“Alright,” you said. “Let me add a reminder to my phone so I could go shopping tomorrow.”

“I’ll do it,” he offered. You took your shoes off in the hallway and gave him a look. He smiled in response, “what? I’ve brought food before. Several times, even.”

“Well, yes, but lately, you’ve been spending your nights at Jackson’s studio,” you pointed out carefully. “I didn’t expect you to—”

“Well, the song is more or less done. I’m not adding anything else to it right now,” Jaebum cut you off. “I’m working on, uh, something else right now, but there isn’t much I can do without the lyrics.”

“You said writing went well when you were with Jackson.”

“Yeah, but not for this song,” he explained and you tried to ignore the sudden rush of adrenaline when you realized that you and Jaebum were having a legitimate conversation about his music. “I need a different atmosphere for this song. And, either way, I’m not writing tonight. Just can’t do it. So, I’m all free.”

You smiled, the exhaustion you’d been feeling slowly fading away. “Was this a subtle offer to hang out?”

“It was,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of his room as an invitation for you to come in. Obviously, you were not going to pass on the—unexpected—offer.

“Okay,” you were still smiling, your heart hammering inside of your chest as you walked towards his bedroom. Jaebum moved away from the door to let you inside. “So, this song you’re working on – what’s it about?”

You took a leap asking this – you knew that – but instead of changing the topic – even though he did want that – Jaebum just shrugged his shoulders, closing the door of his room and plopping down on his bed.

“Love,” he said, patting the spot next to him as an indication for you to sit down. “But, then again, all songs are, aren’t they?”

You shrugged your shoulders, sitting down on his bed next to where he was laying. “You tell me, you’re the songwriter of this household.”

“I guess if you’re looking for love, you can find it in any song,” he hypothesized. “I don’t want this song I’m working on to be about the kind of love that you have to look for, though. I want this song to be full of obvious love. I want the song to be love.”

You couldn’t help the swelling feelings in your chest as you listened to him talk. This had to be the first time you heard him open up about his songs—and the process that went into creating them—in real life, not just over texts at four in the morning when both of you were beyond exhausted and had not met each other in real life yet.

“Do you always try to focus on one emotion when writing songs?” you wondered.

Jaebum considered this for a moment, his eyes focused on the wall of the room in front of him. He wasn’t looking at you but you didn’t really need him to – for now, it was enough that he was teling you about something that was so meaningful to him. Although you’d have loved to see the sparkle in his eyes that appeared whenever he got excited about something, you considered yourself lucky enough to take a quick dip into the endless oceans that were his mind.

“I guess I do,” he finally answered. “When there are so many emotions inside of you, you can’t help but try to choose one and hold onto it when you write, otherwise, you’ll only create chaos. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but I want my music to, uh… to mean something, I guess? I want the lyrics to be deep but easy to understand, however paradoxical that sounds.”

“Well, anything’s possible when you put your mind to it,” you said and earned a look from Jaebum – a hopeful one. It was a look that unleashed even more butterflies into your stomach that was already full of fluttering wings as it was. “And I think you’ve done great so far. The song I heard yesterday – “Don’t Touch Me” – I think it had the right amount of depth while still being relatable.”

“Yeah,” Jaebum looked away from you. “I worked on the lyrics for that one for a long time.”

“Do you…” you started to say, but then realized you lack the courage to finish your question. Talking about something as personal as a song about his ex-girlfriend might have broken Jaebum out of this laid-back state he seemed to have been in and the last thing you wanted was for him to kick you out of the room for prying too much. “Nevermind.”

“Hey, you can’t do that,” he warned, sitting down properly, and then checking the time on his phone. “The delivery guy clearly got lost with our food. The least you can do is finish your questions while we wait. Otherwise, we’ll just sit here in silence.”

“Are you saying you’ll stop answering my questions once the food gets here?”

“Absolutely. I’ll be too busy eating to talk.”

You smiled. “Alright, well, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but—”

“I’ll try to,” he said, cutting you off. The look in his eyes was reassuring and the electric shocks you felt signified that the connection you’ve felt with Jaebum before you met him wasn’t fictitious. It was there, it had just been hiding underneath your daily arguments and frustrations. God, you were so glad to feel those sparks again.

“Okay,” you said. “Do you always write songs from personal experience?”

“I do,” Jaebum answered. This time, he didn’t look away from you.

You felt like he was telling you this because he knew you wanted to know. It was obvious that he usually felt great discomfort when he was forced to talk about his music, but it seemed as though he had finally realized that the reason why you were so curious to know more about this was because you genuinely enjoyed hearing him talk about this. So, he did. He talked about himself because that was what you wanted and, with a surprising jolt of his heart, Jaebum realized that he wanted to give you what you wanted. All that you wanted.

“I don’t think I could write songs about abstract concepts,” he revealed then. “Or maybe I could. But they’d lack the emotion I seek. They’d lack the depth.”

“So, Suji,” you said, speaking the word that made him inhale sharply. “Why did you choose to write about her?”

He looked down. “You can’t tell?”

“Well, I got the general idea why from the song itself,” you said. “But I’d like to hear you explain it.”

“There’s not much to explain, really,” he said, scanning the tiles of the floor of his room and then suddenly shooting his gaze to you. “It’s kind of like you never explained to me what happened between you and Jiho.”

You blinked, surprised to hear him turn the topic around. “I, uh—okay. I’ll talk if you talk.”

Jaebum chuckled lightly at this.

“Okay, that’s fair,” he said and then, after another deep breath, continued, “I’m usually working on multiple songs at the same time. Well, not full songs, but�� verses for them. Lines. Sometimes certain words just come to me at the most random moments, so I write them down and then I use them when I’m trying to put a song together. Every day, I might find myself writing different lyrics and it all depends on what I’m feeling at that moment. It depends on the strongest emotion. And, of course, ever since I left Suji, I’ve just felt angry. Bitter. And living with these emotions meant writing about them.”

“I heard that,” you admitted, your voice small. “All of that. The most surprising thing to me, I guess, was that the song didn’t have an ounce of love in it, and yet it was still undeniably a love song. Somehow, it was an almost hopeful love song.”

This brought a smile to his face. “Those who are in love have a tendency to see love everywhere.”

It was you who looked away this time.

“Anyway, I had no love left in me anymore,” Jaebum continued after you didn’t say anything. “Not towards her, at least.”

“You focus on one emotion when you write,” you said, “but maybe you put more emotions into your work without realizing it. Maybe you were expressing your anger and bitterness, but you ended up expressing your hope of moving on with your life without her. Maybe, you accidentally ended up expressing your hope of loving someone again, too.”

“Maybe,” he agreed, still smiling. You weren’t looking at him so he took this time to watch you before finally speaking again, “so, what about Jiho?”

You sighed. “Oh, that story is far less inspiring and, uh, it lacks the romantic aspect, too. It’s just plain embarrassing, actually.”

“How so?”

“Well, turns out,” you exhaled slowly, “Jiho never actually had any romantic interest in me. He was looking for a… I don’t know, a networking connection, I guess? Just someone he could photograph. Someone with an attractive enough of a face that he could invite to his shows.”

You could tell by the way Jaebum’s gaze lingered on you for a few seconds before sliding to the floor that his thoughts had wandered someplace else. Perhaps, he was remembering the question he’d asked you when you and him were watching a movie and he’d insisted that five days was enough for a person to understand if they had feelings for someone. Back then, you told him that Jiho had to have feelings for you or otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken you out this many times but, clearly, that was not the case at all.

“Sorry,” Jaebum spoke then, his eyes on you again. “How did you find out?”

“Oh, that’s the fun part. I got to his pre-show that Friday night,” you said, “and there was a ton of girls there. Not just in attendance, but as models in his exhibition, too. Every single picture contained a girl and she was photographed in the exact same way as I was—”

“Wait,” he stopped you suddenly. “He used a picture of you?”

Jaebum sounded weirdly offended when he said this.

“Y-yeah, he wanted to,” you replied. “But I asked him to take it out of the exhibition. I don’t know, maybe it was stupid. He never asked for my permission to use it and it’s almost like I would have been fine with him using the picture, as long as I was the only girl he’d photographed. I asked him to take the picture out as soon as I found out I wasn’t actually the only one. Naïve, right? Stupid, too.”

“Not at all,” he disagreed, surprising you. For a moment, you almost had to double-check if this was really the same person who’d teased you for dating someone who wasn’t brave enough to kiss you. “You had obviously thought he was seriously into you. Actually, he’s kind of a dick for not making his intentions clear.”

“I confronted him about it,” you admitted. “He apologized and asked to stay in touch but, honestly, each time I think of him, I just get so incredibly embarrassed as if he’s leading me on and laughing at my little-girl expectations behind my back. Even though this was a genuine misunderstanding. Or so I hope.”

Jaebum nodded, humming in response but staying quiet otherwise. He was thinking about something again and, even though you already had trouble guessing what he was thinking about under normal circumstances, this time, he looked even more indecipherable than usually.

It seemed so unexpected that Jaebum had taken your side instead of teasing you but you couldn’t explain why you were expecting him to be mocking. Jaebum may have been rude to you a handful of times in the past, but the longer you lived with him, the more he proved himself to actually be understanding and even compassionate.

“No offense,” Jaebum started to say, “but it didn’t seem to me as though you were very infatuated with Jiho, either. I-I mean, the conclusion of this whole thing is bad, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to talk about it, but I’m just getting the feeling that finding out what he really wanted from you helped you free yourself from some sort of constraints.”

“Constraints,” you repeated.

“Yeah,” he shrugged his shoulders. “Like you were forced to keep seeing him against your wishes. Maybe because you thought you owed him your time because you thought he liked you. Or maybe because you just wanted to be with someone, but it wasn’t necessarily him – and there’s nothing wrong with that. It just seems to me like finding out the truth about Jiho freed you, essentially. Now you have fewer things to worry about.”

“Because I didn’t really want to be with him,” you said.

“Right,” Jaebum confirmed. “But that’s just what I think. Sorry if it’s—”

“No,” you said, swallowing with great difficulty because your body was suddenly overcome with a thick wave of hotness. “No, I think you’re right.”

You didn’t think he was right. You knew he was. Days leading up to Jiho’s pre-show at the restaurant, you were trying to come up with a way to let him know that you couldn’t continue seeing him because your thoughts – and your heart – were elsewhere. They were right here, in this room, in the hands of the person who understood all of your emotions without having to hear you voice them.

“So, how come?” Jaebum asked, distracting you and making your heart syncopate its beating to the sound of his voice. “How come you still went on those, let’s call them dates, with Jiho even though you didn’t really want to be with him?”

Lifting your eyes to meet his, you smiled briefly. “You can’t tell?”

He responded to your smile with one of his own – recognizing his words from your lips – and then shook his head. “There’s no way I was right about everything.”

“You were,” you said, completely unprepared to embrace the fact that Jaebum must have known that the only reason why you went out with Jiho was because you were jealous. Jaebum could have had any girl he wanted and you were looking to prove a point that you could get yourself a guy, too. “You were, surprisingly, right on point.”

Instead of gloating about that, Jaebum just nodded in acknowledgment and then said something you’d never expected to hear him say, “you know, I’ve never tried to explain to you why I texted Suji that night it all started.”

Surprised to hear him address this topic without you basically forcing him into talking about it, you blinked a few times. “Y-you… you haven’t.”

You could remember Jaebum opening up to you about his past with his ex-girlfriend – all so you wouldn’t get in touch with her – but his reasons for texting her that night were about as vague as it was possible. He said he’d felt lonely. He said he’d lacked self-control. But back then, all of the things he’d said seemed more than enough. Jaebum had a hard shell and just this one crack that revealed this tiny bit of information about him was more than enough for you at the time.

You knew him better now; and all because he wanted you to know him better.

“Would you like me to?” Jaebum asked. “Explain, I mean.”

Unable to speak, you nodded.

“I was jealous,” he said simply.

You weren’t sure if the rapid beating of your heart was caused because he’d just mimicked your reasons for going out with Jiho or because Kiera had suspected that Jaebum got back together with his ex because you met Jiho.

“Why?” you dared to ask.

“Back then, I thought I was jealous because you had a chance at an actual relationship while I didn’t,” he said, “so, even though I knew I could never work with Suji, I just called her because she was the closest thing to a relationship I’ve ever had. All along, I was just trying to prove a point.”

“Funny,” you said with a straight face. “That was exactly the reason why I went out with Jiho.”

“I know. That’s why I guessed that,” Jaebum smiled. “You and I are more similar than we sometimes realize.”

“You said ‘back then,’ though,” you pointed out, unable to focus on your similarities with him when you were scratching the surface of something potentially life-changing. “Do you… not think that that was the reason anymore?”

Jaebum was hoping you’d notice and yet continuing to speak proved to be more difficult than he’d expected.

“I don’t,” he said. “I do think I was jealous, but I don’t think I was jealous of something as abstract as the fact that my roommate was capable of starting a relationship while I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, you’re not into anything that’s abstract in any way.”

“That’s right, I’m not.”

Shakily, you asked, “what were you jealous of, then?”

“I don’t know,” he concluded, his honest eyes resting on yours. “I can’t seem to find an explanation that would make sense. I just know that there was some jealousy-induced emotion there that forced me to dial Suji’s number after months of avoiding her and the strength of that emotion could not have come from something… abstract.”

You weren’t sure if you felt relieved or disappointed to hear his explanation suddenly turn vague again, but this was far more than you’d expected from him so, with a small smile, you nodded.

“This wasn’t really an explanation,” you pointed out. “You still didn’t give me a proper answer why you texted her.”

“Maybe. But that’s because I don’t have the answer myself,” he said, “so, I gave you all I have.”

He’s never voluntarily revealed all of his emotions before, especially not when he wasn’t sure what he was feeling in the first place. You couldn’t even begin to explain your joy to hear him talk so openly but you had to physically restrain yourself from reaching over and wrapping your arms around him in an uncharacteristic display of affection again.

God, it seemed as though your life had suddenly turned into one long period of desperately wanting to touch Jaebum but restraining yourself because, just like he couldn’t find an explanation for his jealousy, you couldn’t find a possible outcome of your embrace that wouldn’t tear down all that you and him have been trying to build after your last fight. There were so many things that could have gone wrong at any moment and, right now, you weren’t ready for any kind of change.

“Thank you,” you said slowly, wanting to remain in this moment—your gazes locked in an embrace your bodies weren’t brave enough for—forever. “I appreciate that.”

Jaebum nodded and was about to add something else when the doorbell rang. For a moment, both of you were confused – far too lost in the little world inside of your apartment – but then Jaebum realized.

“Ah, the take-out,” he spoke, getting off the bed. “About time.”

He left the room to open the door and that broke the spell inside of the bedroom but that was okay. Everything was okay. Because you saw the smile on his face when he left. Because you knew he was just outside of the bedroom and you could hear how fast he tried to pay for the delivery so he wouldn’t have to stay out in the hallway for longer than it was necessary.

And, even though you and him wouldn’t talk about anything as deep as this when he’d be back, even though you and him wouldn’t pour your hearts—and feelings—out to each other tonight, even though you wouldn’t get to touch him in ways that you’ve wanted to, everything was okay. Everything was okay because you knew he’d be here with you, smiling at you from across the bed again.

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prorevenge · 7 years ago

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Refuse to be a decent human? Lose your house.

Warning: Very long story.

It's 2011, my boyfriend and I decided to rent a house with our best friends - an engaged couple with two kids. I'm changing names here: I'm Kylie, my boyfriend is Jim, and our couple friends are Brad and Angelina. Jim, Brad, and myself are active duty military.

After over a month of searching we found a really cute house- 1850 sqft, nice yard, great neighbors, only $1350/m, hardwood except for 1 room, 7 minutes from our base. The landlord is in a different state but tells us she pays one of the neighbors to manage the keys for her. It's a military town and that's not uncommon. We all met up with him, toured the house, decided to sign the lease.

We moved in sometime in August. We liked the house, but there were crickets coming into one of the bedrooms through a crack in the window sill. The landlord didn't want to fix it and said to caulk it. It worked, no problem.

We noticed the carpet in the living room was a little dingy and asked her if she would mind paying someone to clean it since we moved in that way. We even made a note of it and took pictures when we moved in. She said no. I bought my own cleaner and the carpet lightened a few shades.

In October, we went to cut the heat on and it didn't work. So we realized the oil tank was empty. Part of the lease states when we move out we needed to leave a full tank of oil, which isn't really a problem as long as we start with a full tank and use all the oil in it. Call the landlord and ask her to have the oil company come fill the tank - which it's 2011 so it's going to cost $1200 to do. She says no. We told her fine, we wouldn't be leaving a full tank when the lease was over though. She got mad and said we had to because it was a clause in our lease. We had the oil company provide statements to say the last time it was filled was that prior January and it was empty when they came to fill our tank that month. We filled the tank, but the heat still didn't work. It's been 2 weeks and it's really getting cold, we asked the LL to get a repairman out to the house. Brad and Angelina have two small kids that need to stay warm. My landlord took another week to fix the heat, and the people that did it were... questionable. It worked for a month, but then quit. We called in our own repairmen to come handle it since the last ones creeped me out, and he noticed some major issues with the chimney that needed attention right away. Like it was unsafe to run the heat at all, the damned thing was about to collapse. We let her know, emailed scans of the paperwork from our nice Honeywell tech and two quotes from contractors to get the work done. (it's going to be $3000-3500ish) It's an emergency repair, at the point it's December and we are really cold. We were using space heaters. The kids have chest colds and Angelina is ready to fly into our landlord's state to handle her physically. I mailed all of that information to her (Angelina's bodily threats omitted) with a signature confirmation and a letter stating the issue.

A few days pass and nothing from our bitch LL. I got onto Google and read the landlord tenant act and local landlord court cases just to see if I had a leg to stand on. I also spoke to my JAG, who's brother happened to be a real estate lawyer, who was also friends with my next door neighbor (the keyholder dude, who surprise, never got paid to watch the house) and decided to come over for dinner with all of us at their place. He gave me some really good info. The next morning, I called our landlord and told her, "look, you get this repair done or I will condemn the house and not pay a dime of rent until it's done". She says she doesn't believe me. I overnighted a certified letter to her explaining the issue and requesting the repair be started within 5 business days since it was an emergency and I had already reported it a week prior. 5 days go by, nothing. At this point I'm ready to walk out on the lease but don't have quite enough legal issues to back that up so- Jim and I requested 20 days of vacation from the military. I drafted a letter to LL telling her she had 10 days to get the repair done or we would terminate the lease, and we would not be paying rent while the heat was in disrepair. I cited the previous letter and included her signature confirmation for it also. 4 days before we go on vacation, I overnighted and signature confirmationed the letter. Two days before we are set to go on vacation I called a city building inspector, set an appointment, he came and condemned the house - it took him less than 15 minutes to decide. Brad and Angelina took off to Angelina's mom's house and Jim and I headed out to spend a few weeks in WARM, SUNNY Florida with his Cuban family. (mmmm, the food). We prorated rent for every day the house was condemned. I called the building inspector every few days to see if the work was done. He also demanded that my landlord do a few minor electrical repairs. Several days have gone by... I spent half that month's rent on good food, liquor, and Disney world tickets. On the 6th day in Florida, the landlord calls me threatening eviction. I told her to please take me to court because I was ready to embarrass her. I cited the landlord tenant act, told her I was going to sue for travel costs to FL, hotel costs, and at that point she was already looking at $850 and it was just going to get more costly. (Longshot, but, I was mad). I also said we were prepared to just walk out if it wasn't done by the time the certified letter stated it should be, again, I wasn't kidding. I had already reserved a uhaul. Oh, and she would be reimbursing me for that $1100 in oil I hadn't been able to burn. She said fine and finally replaced the chimney two weeks after the place was condemned. My neighbor told me she had to borrow money from her family to get it done. Not my problem. She also told me I was a horrible person who was torturing her and her 5 year old who were victims of domestic violence. She also told me we were only slightly better than the last tenants, who she "thought were black by how terrible the house looked when they left". Okay, wow, a slum lord and a racist - I should play the lottery. I'm sorry for your situation but your husband has been a shit to you since you got together. How do I know? Turns out, one of my supervisors is friends with her old supervisor and he and other members of her chain of command had responsed to fights where her and her husband hit each other. Apparently the husband is a drunk too. They tried to get her to leave him but she is just as bad, she busted out his windshield one time and burned all his stuff another. Turns out she got a general administration discharge. She seemed so nice and sweet when we were getting ready to sign that lease. I still can't believe what a bucket of kuku for coco puffs she turned out to be.

Whatever, we came home to a house with functioning heat. Brad and Angelina decided not to move back in but that was all cool with Jim and me. We notarized an agreement between us and told them we totally understood and would take over the rent. Missed them after they left, though.

Later on, in March, a realtor knocked on my door and said he wanted to show the house to a couple. I said, you have the wrong place buddy, I'm renting this right now. He's like no, the owner wants a short sale hopefully by July. I explained I had no notice and was a little confused but it was okay. He was very uncomfortable and unhappy to have walked into a situation where a tenant didn't even know he was coming. I told him it was totally fine, and went on to divulge some details about his new client. He was pretty appalled. He leveled with me- its a cute house but really only worth $90k due to the market crash. It had last sold for $124k, according to zuilla. She's asking for 120k and on the verge of foreclosure. Seriously? I let the couple and realtor in the next day. Didn't worry about it after that. He came to take detailed pictures so he wouldn't have to bother me with flaky potential buyers. He was so nice, I let him help me find a new house to rent when my lease was up. We are still friends on Facebook.

Then, in July the realtor called me and asked if he could show the house to a client. Absolutely. I cleaned and made sure I looked nice for her visit....and when they got to my house I noticed the lady was black. And she wanted to rent. I said, ma'am, call me later today and don't tell anyone. She did! I told her what my LL said about how she couldn't believe her past tenants were white because they left the house trashed when they left. I said, "I don't think this is a good house for you, I know a great guy who is renting out his beach side condo for the next year while he goes out to Africa, why don't you call him?" I text his listing to her, she calls him, ends up renting his house.

None of that is really revenge. Before we moved out, Jim and I cleaned the house. We left the carpets sparkling clean (had professionals come in and do it), payed a gardener to come in and make the yard spiffy, patched up some small nail holes and even painted some window trim that was chipped when we moved in. we basically left it better than we found it, we had already repainted 3 bedrooms in flattering colors when we first moved in (that was approved by the LL no problem of course). We took pictures before and after we moved in. A month goes by, we are all settled in our new condo, and she didn't give us a dime back in freaking deposit. $2400 down the damned drain, plus the cost of little repairs we made out of pocket so we couldn't have to deal with her crazy ass.

I was angry. I began organizing to go to court. Then suddenly Jim is told he's deploying soon. the fuck. A week goes by- Also, I'm pregnant. Which we were casually "not trying but trying" to do. We were happy about that part, but I was puking every day twice a day and emotional. Then Angelina calls me and guess who is on Craigslist slinging her shit hole slum? My LL. I lost it. I got on the same forum her ad was on and posted about the house, every single problem we had, every phone call, every snotty email, how many weeks we went without heat, the crickets, LL's messed up relationship with her off and on again husband, the oil tank, and the racist comments. I never said "don't rent or buy", just shared my experience as a tenant. I didn't name any names but I did link her ad. Received 7 emails thanking me stating LL seemed really nice on the phone but they would be dodging that bullet.

The house foreclosed a few months later.

(source) (story by slumriverofbliss)

#pro revenge #by slumriverofbliss #prorevenge #pro revenge stories #revenge stories #pro #revenge

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pbandjesse · 7 years ago

Photo

I’m very tired and I don’t want to have to do this for very long. So I’m doing the talk to text again. Just why my Bose last night was 4 ½ pages long. Sorry about that.

Eyes are very itchy. My allergies haven’t been so bad so it’s annoying that they’re acting up again. But today was pretty great. I’m mostly not stressed. And I accomplished almost everything I wanted to do.

I slept really well last night but it was still hard to get up in the morning. I was mostly concerned I was going to be late. Because I was going to the steel side ships and I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to bike there. So I woke up a little earlier than I really mean it to. But I got dressed and felt pretty good. I did some yoga. I couldn’t make breakfast. I just had weird stomach pains. So I just didn’t. And brought some snacks for later. I headed out of here a little before 8:30. Which is ridiculously early since I had to be there at 9. But as I was liking up the other guys were already there. So that was cool. I was working with a couple people I haven’t talked to you much. But James was there. Who’s the hot guy that gave me the cupcake. And he’s definitely my favorite. Even invited me to hang out with him and his girlfriend. Since I’m also new in town. He’s not actually knew but he lived in Philly for a few years. He’s from Baltimore originally. But he still trying to make a new friend group now that he’s back. It’s nice that he’s trying to make me feel welcome. And honestly both of these new jobs are so great for that. Almost everyone there is accommodating and relatively close to my age. And it’s just really cool that they’re all being so nice.

James showed me around Taney and help me figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. I helped him sweet. But I was very overheated. I had one long sleeves because I was cold when I left the house. But I end up changing in the closet just because I had to get that shirt off. It’s definitely a learning curve figure out how to wear pants and a uniform shirt. I’m going to have to figure it out quickly I know but for now I’m sort of fumbling in the dark.

Because I’ve only done still so yesterday they let me pick which ship I wanted to be on. And since I was on the submarine yesterday and I have the speech down I thought I would do it again. So a little after 9:30 we head over to our ships. James was on the Chesapeake so he was right by me. But I would mostly be alone for the day. One of the guys help me turn on all the lights and the TVs. But I felt pretty comfortable. It was a good day.

There’s only one weird hiccup in the morning. Something I hadn’t considered working at the ships especially on steel side, was that I was going to be alone. And on the submarine it’s the farthest from the harbor stores and restaurants and foot traffic. There’s definitely still foot traffic but it’s back where there isn’t anything besides the back of the aquarium. So if something happens like what happened today I’m all alone. And what happened today was I was harassed by some guys on the pier that then came on the ship and sort of cornered me in my box. I mean I wasn’t in danger at all they were just kind of like cat calling me. And only a little. Asked me if I had a boyfriend and try to get on the ship for free. But I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t have a phone number for James yet and I wasn’t sure when to turn off the customer service niceness and tell them off. But eventually they left. It was just very eye-opening what I may have to deal with. But for the rest of the day it was fine. I did tell my supervisor and he was absolutely horrified. And again I was reminded that everytime I tell a guy friend about cat calling or other types of harassment they are always shocked like it’s the worst thing they’ve ever heard. But honestly I told him the same thing every time I have been a woman for my entire 27 years of life. And I am so used to this by now. It sucks and it’s scary but it’s not unusual. I mean he ended up telling me that there’s a panic button inside the ticket booth. Which is great. But do I really want to call the cops because it doesn’t seem like it would be worth it. Like it would be a waste of time to call the cops on two people that were just making me a little uncomfortable. And they weren’t really doing anything wrong per say. They were just being weird. And not even weird I don’t know how to describe it. I’m going to see if I could talk to upper management about a better way to handle cat collars or men being weird from the pier in the future. Because honestly I think they just haven’t had a lot of women on staff and they’re not prepared to handle a situation like that. I don’t know if it could be just having the managers come by more often or what. But something because I could see that situation not being good very fast.

But the rest of my day was absolutely fine. I had over a hundred people come through again. But over the span of 8 hours instead of 5. So it was a lot more spread out. But the weather was gorgeous and it’s such a nice time being out on the boat. I mostly did embroidery. But my Bluetooth headphones came in so I also listen to some podcasts. I read my book for a little while. And I talked to a lot of really cool people. It was really nice. I really like working on the submarine. And Amy the woman who hired me, made a mistake on the schedule and I do have an overnight when I come back from my trip this week. So I have a whole extra 16 hours so that’s pretty sweet. I also I’m going to try to take the test and work my way towards that pay raise and become a museum educator. I mean I am in a museum educator in everything but pay and title. So I just have to finish all these tests. But I feel like I can at least get the Able Body sailor test done this week. And then it will just be 15 test to go.

I got my lunch break really late. But I prefer that so it was totally cool. I went and sat on the pier and watch some ducks. And the rest of the day went fairly fast. At the end of the day a coast guard guy came and was taking pictures of us for possibly the defense website. I’m not clear on that. I’m also not clear on who he was. I think he might have been a student? I don’t understand. But he was very nice. And showed me how to properly fold the ensign. Which is what they call the flag on the boats. Because everything about has a stupid name. He had me pretend to be giving a tour at one point. For a photo and I was pointing at something and saying I didn’t know what it was and just making things up. Like I was pointing and saying this is just a hole in the wall that I think is for naps. But I know is actually for torpedoes and I have the guys rolling over that.

Are poor managers set off the alarm on the ship twice trying to beat the timer and run down the gangway. So that was very funny. And then it was time to go. James and he walked over to Taney to clock out and we talked for a bit. Exchange numbers. He’s a cool guy and I hope that we can actually be friends. And not just do that thing that adults do where they say we’ll hang out we never do. I’m pretty good about following through. As long as the other person isn’t flaky.

I was really glad to go home though. I had planned on getting Shake Shack but was too hot and felt dirty so I decided to just go home. I ended up making the last of my veggie chicken nuggets and french fries. And it was actually really good dinner. I had one of my avocados as well. Maybe I’ll have Shake Shack tomorrow. We’ll see.

I took a shower and chilled. I had talked to Sabrina and she’s going to check in on Sweet P while I’m gone so I had to give her a key. When she got home I ran upstairs and gave her the key and we hung out for an hour talking. Then I came down here and work in my studio, and finished my diorama for this week. Just was able to find a simpler one for me since I was very stressed out over the two more complex ones. So I’ll go back to those at some point next week but this week very simple. I did get to include lights though so that was cool.

I finished packing for my trip and now I’m just ready for bed. I’m working on the constellation tomorrow. And I’m looking forward to that. I am attempting to wear just a black T-shirt. But the two I have are a little Loca. So we’ll see if it’s all right. If it’s not I have my long sleeve one still there. I just don’t want to get too overheated and feel miserable. It’ll work out. I hope it is just a nice day. And everything is fun and good.

I hope you all sleep well tonight. And that’s the weather stays nice. Good night everyone

#ootd #embroidery #work #boat #good day #monday

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dotshiiki · 8 years ago

Text

CoL, chpt 8

I am so sorry I wanted to post this morning but my supervisor asked to change tomorrow’s morning meeting to today and I was instead scrambling to get everything in order for that and yeah, back to doing this while I’m having lunch, oh wells.

VIII: WILL

As their borrowed Ford Mondeo wound its way south, Will wondered what he'd gotten himself into.

It wasn't his first road trip. He'd taken many as a kid with his mom, back when she still did music tours. Most recently, he'd gone cross-country in Leo Valdez's camper-dragon from New York to New Rome. In terms of size and reliability, the car Annabeth had borrowed off her dad fell somewhere in between Naomi Solace's tiny Chevy (old and beat up, but incredibly dependable) and Leo's spacious but insane contraption (prone to—literally—flaming temper tantrums). It was one of those solid suburban models, great for a college professor and his family of five. Maybe a bit on the squeezy side with three grown boys in the back seat. It was just as well the Roman demigods had stayed behind. If Frank Zhang had been in the group, Will didn't think they would have fit.

Anyway, the car wasn't the problem.

It hadn't been so bad when Annabeth had been at the wheel, but then she'd traded with Thalia—who drove like a maniac, weaving in and out of traffic like an F1 driver negotiating a race track. Sure, they were in a hurry, but a little caution probably wouldn't be amiss.

On Will's left, Nico grumbled, 'I don't see why Jules Albert couldn't have driven us. At least he used to be an actual race car driver.'

'I heard that,' Thalia said.

Will considered Nico's zombie driver. He'd only encountered the dude once, but he remembered two things about him. One, the guy was really steady at the wheel. Two, you could smell his rotting corpse all the way from Olympus.

That might not have been such a great idea on a six-hour car ride.

'Well, I guess it would've been a bit of a squeeze with five of us as passengers instead of four,' he pointed out instead. 'You wouldn't wanna be squashed up all the way to L.A.'

'I don't want to die on the way to L.A., either,' Nico muttered. 'I could have shadow travelled.'

Will rolled his eyes. 'With all five of us? We've talked about this, Death Boy. Unless you've learned how to transport large groups on your own without dissolving into shadow, we're doing this the long way.'

Nico glared at him, though Will wasn't sure if it was targeted at his use of the hated nickname or the aspersions he'd cast on Nico's abilities.

Probably both. Not that Will cared. Nico was cute when he got mad.

On Will's other side, Percy had been staring out of the window with his chin propped on his hand, gazing at the sunset over the Californian mountains. Now he turned to watch them, his eyes darting between Will and Nico as he followed their exchange.

'Who's Jules Albert?' he asked.

'Long story,' Nico said.

'It's a long trip,' Thalia called back. 'You may as well spill.'

Will zoned out as Nico told them the story of his undead ex-F1 champion chauffeur. It was one of those tales that always made Will curious about the different parenting styles of the gods. You wouldn't imagine the Lord of the Underworld to be a concerned—albeit behind-the-times—parent, but there you had it.

Will's dad, on the other hand, was pretty much the opposite. Apollo was nothing if not current. You probably didn't get to be the god of music and poetry and that sort of stuff if you couldn't keep up on what was trending. On the parenting front, though, his record was more flaky: fickle with bestowing gifts (unlike Nico and his inheritance of a full spectrum of Underworldly powers, being an Apollo kid was like a lottery for godly skill) and attention (Apollo wasn't always great about remembering who his children were, let alone communicating with them). Though he'd been better since his enforced stint as a mortal. He'd even sent Will a birthday card when he turned eighteen, which might have been a first for any godly parent. The quest Apollo had recently undertaken must have given him a new appreciation for the trials his children went through.

Was about to go through, in Will's case.

In Tartarus.

What had he been thinking, volunteering for this quest? It wasn't like he had a ton of experience with this sort of thing. Sure, he'd played his part in two wars, but he wasn't one of the front runners for the dangerous quests. He wasn't Annabeth, leading a team of demigods on a heroic air/sea voyage. He wasn't Thalia, who'd basically signed her life away to hunt monsters for Artemis.

He wasn't Percy, hero of the Battle of Manhattan, saviour of Olympus twice over, a demigod with credentials longer than most minor gods, whom even Will's own father respected (and Apollo didn't hold that many people in high regard).

Percy, who couldn't remember why everyone admired him.

Thanks to a potion Will had administered—yeah, okay, it was to save his life—and maybe screwed up so that he was now dying slowly from an empousa's curse.

Annabeth blamed herself, but Will knew some of it had to fall on him, too. He was the healer, after all.

That was why he was here.

If Will were the jealous sort, he might have been concerned that Nico was with them, too. Will was fully aware of the crush Nico had once had on Percy. (Not that Will could blame him. He'd be lying if he said he'd never had at least one dream about those brilliant green eyes and roguish smile.) But jealousy wasn't really Will's style. He preferred to think of it as Nico accompanying him, helping him atone for his mistake.

Besides, Will was the one who had volunteered them both. It wasn't entirely selfish. There had been something in Nico's face that morning, a flicker of the shadow that never quite left his boyfriend's soul. Nico never spoke much about his time in Tartarus—not to Will, not to anybody. All Will knew was that Nico had been there at some point during the war, and judging from certain hints he'd picked up from Hazel and Reyna over the years, it hadn't been a walk in the park. But everyone seemed to think Nico had just shrugged it off and moved on by now.

Except recovery from a traumatic experience wasn't quite so straightforward. People often thought healing was always about getting better, but Will knew that there was always a part before, where you had to get worse. The same way a fever raged through the body to expel the germs inside, you often needed a psychological unravelling to dislodge a trauma. Will had seen it happen to Percy and Annabeth in the fall after the Giant War. He'd watched them go through the painful process of falling apart and coming back together.

Nico, on the other hand, seemed to have buried his time in Tartarus deep inside himself. Maybe his friends couldn't see it. But Will wasn't Camp Half-Blood's best healer in a century for nothing.

And that morning, Will had sensed Nico's need to tackle his demons, to face whatever he had encountered head on and beat it this time. He needed to return to Tartarus, whether he knew it or not. And Will would be damned if he let Nico do it without him.

Although he'd be lying if he said he wasn't scared shitless about what they might face down there.

To calm his nerves, he ran over the provisions he'd packed for their journey: nectar and ambrosia, naturally, but also all the specialised healing supplies he could get his hands on. A jar of Lemnian mud. A tincture of Moly. And of course, Gatorade, because Nico was bound to try something stupid at some point with his Death Boy powers.

It was nearly midnight by the time they pulled into West Hollywood, a time that seemed eerily apt for approaching the Underworld. The dark didn't seem to faze Annabeth, who navigated Thalia expertly through the winding streets.

'It was dark, too, the last time we were here,' she said, shrugging.

'That was what, ten years ago?' Thalia said. 'Your memory's insane!' Then she abruptly clamped her mouth shut. In the rear-view mirror, Will saw her biting her lip in consternation.

Annabeth frowned out the window as they passed the only shopfront still lit up, a crooked neon sign flashing 'CRUSTY'S WATERBED PALACE' over its door. 'Some things don't change much.'

Thalia pulled up by the kerbside of a black marble building with tall glass doors. Golden letters above them screamed 'DOA RECORDING STUDIOS.'

'We're here,' Annabeth said. She opened her door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The others hopped out as well. There was a sign on the building door that said:

VALET PARKING AVAILABLE CARS NOW ACCEPTED AS COLLATERAL

'What does it mean, collateral?' Percy asked.

'Payment for passage, probably,' Annabeth said. 'Though I'd like to get the car back to my dad eventually if possible.'

'We already blew up his car once,' Thalia said. 'What's another?'

Annabeth sighed. 'Let's just go.'

Inside the building, the hallways were lit with lava lamps shaped like ancient torches. Rows of plastic fold-up chairs lined the walls, all filled with dismal-faced people who looked like they might not be entirely solid. Bluegrass music belted out from a speaker box in the corner of the ceiling.

At the end of the hallway was the most ostentatious desk Will had ever seen. Made of polished mahogany and embedded with blood-red jewels, it stretched in front of a plain silver elevator with a single button: down. In an ornate armchair behind the desk lounged a man in an expensive Italian suit. He was kind of handsome, a bit like Nico, with his olive skin and finely chiselled features.

'Group of five?' he said. His accent was vaguely European. 'What was it, a car accident?' He pulled out an iPhone and brought up an app. 'No alerts from Thanatos. How many times do I have to tell Death to update me when he makes a delivery?' He swiped across the screen to a time display. 'Never mind—you'll have to wait. I have a crossing scheduled now.'

He shoved the phone back in his suit pocket. 'Tickets for crossing thirteen-oh-eight-one!' he announced to the room at large. Then he turned back to the five of them. 'Have your fare ready when I get back. Prices are on the chart.'

He indicated a sign on the wall, where a list of fare prices and timings were printed:

Standard passage—1 drachma; wait time: 10 years Expedited passage—10 drachma; wait time: 5 years

Shorter wait times by negotiation only. All bribes accepted.

Check PlutoXE for latest exchange rates.

Children over 12 pay full fare.

A bunch of ghostly people shuffled forward, tickets in hand. Most of them were pretty old, but Will thought he spotted at least one young face that looked vaguely familiar. Before the group could get to the lift, Nico stepped between them and the Italian-suit man.

'Hello, Charon,' he said, crossing his arms.

Charon did a double-take. 'Oh, it's you. Don't you have better ways of visiting your father than clogging up my ferry?' He looked suspiciously at Will, Annabeth, Percy, and Thalia. 'And which part of the no-living-allowed rule don't you understand, kid?'

When Nico still didn't answer, Charon said, 'Fine. They better pay up, though.'

Nico tapped his finger on the expensive mahogany desk and gave Charon a pointed look. 'Who helped you argue for your last pay raise with my dad?'

Charon sighed and shook his head. 'Okay, okay. This lot isn't going to be happy to be bumped, though. Celebrities,' he grumbled. 'Always so demanding.'

With a jolt, Will recognised the familiar-looking kid as an actor who'd OD'ed last summer. And some of the older faces in the group had that vague, seen-them-on-TV-but-can't-name-them feel of TV personalities from his mom's generation.

Charon sent the actor kid and four other spirits back to the waiting line, silencing their complaints with a threat to bump them further down the list if they gave him any more lip.

'And don't even think of changing the music channel when I'm gone,' he warned.

They filed into the lift with Charon and the rest of the celebrity group. As soon as the doors closed, they found themselves descending in the darkness, landing with a splash on the surface of a black river. When his eyes adjusted, Will saw that they were in a cavern lit by gemstones studded in the volcanic rock. The lift had expanded into a barge, which Charon poled towards a shore of black sand. He let them off on the beach at the bottom of a rising path that led up towards a foggy grey meadow.

'My next annual review is in a month,' he said to Nico.

'I'll keep it in mind.'

They hiked up the path with the other souls. At the top, they entered an enormous screening area like the kind you saw at airport security: a long winding line marked out by post-and-rope barriers, except the posts looked like they were made from femurs and the ropes from sinew. The end of the line split into ten security checkpoints, all manned by ghouls in pale green uniforms. They were frisking the spirits that passed through the metal detectors, except at a smaller, separate line on the end marked 'EZ DEATH', where the spirits passed unmolested.

'They've…upgraded,' Annabeth noted.

'Luckily for us,' Nico said. 'Come on.'

He led them to the other side of the rope-barrier line, where a roped-off channel had been marked out 'SECURITY PERSONNEL ONLY'. Nico lifted the barrier and they all ducked under it. The nearest security ghoul turned to them, but when he saw Nico, he gave a sharp salute and returned to his duties.

As they got closer to the entrance marked WELCOME TO EREBUS, Percy yelped and stepped back, treading painfully on Will's toes. A moment later, Will saw what had startled him and nearly jumped out of his skin himself. An enormous three-headed Rottweiler had appeared out of nowhere, so big that it spanned the entire row of checkpoints.

'Cerberus,' Annabeth said.

Three heads leaned towards her, their tongues lolling out. Will ducked to avoid being splattered by monster dog drool.

Cerberus's tail wagged. One of the heads barked. It was deafening, but it sounded…joyous. Another dog head made a low, pleading sort of whine.

'He…does he remember me?' Annabeth said in amazement.

Nico shrugged. 'Possibly.' He raised his hand to scratch Cerberus's left head. The dog was so big, it was unlikely that Nico's small hand could have made any difference, but Cerberus seemed to be pleased by the attention nonetheless. Annabeth copied him on Cerberus's right head. The middle one whined and gave Will a hopeful sort of look.

Will hesitated. Pat the monster guardian of the Underworld? Well, sure, why not. In some weird way, it was kind of like visiting his boyfriend's home and meeting his pet dog.

After passing Cerberus, they followed Nico through a gigantic field filled with glassy-eyed spirits. These parted naturally before Nico, leaving them an open path to walk through, but closed the gap behind them once they passed.

'Is anyone else as freaked out as me?' Percy whispered.

Will nodded. It was like being in a crowded room at an insane asylum: every spirit chattering away to itself with no apparent awareness of anyone else.

'Well, it's not the first time we've been here,' Thalia said.

'Don't tell me.' Percy sounded resigned. 'I've been through this before and I just don't remember.' He turned to Will. 'I would've thought this wouldn't be your first time, though.'

'What makes you think that?'

'You're dating Death Boy here, aren't you?'

'Don't call me that,' Nico said sharply, shooting Will a look that said plainly, This is all your fault.

'We haven't actually done the meet-the-parents thing,' Will said.

'Sure we have,' Nico said. 'I've met yours.'

Just as he said this, they reached the gates of a magnificent palace built of glittering obsidian. It was silhouetted against a backdrop of craggy volcanic mountains. Its grounds stretched across the Fields of Asphodel to reach the edge of the only bright spot in the gloom: a gated community surrounding a tropical island. A low parapet made a ring around the palace grounds, marking out the sector of the Underworld that was Hades's personal territory.

Standing at the edge of it, Will was reminded of the first time he had brought Nico home to Schoharie and they'd stood in front of his mom's tiny house. Nico had given him a terrified look, like a caged animal about to be led to slaughter. 'Are you sure about this?' he'd asked.

'Relax—it's just my mom,' Will had reassured him. 'She'll like you.'

Looking at the black obsidian palace, he imagined the situation in reverse. It didn't match, though. You could fit ten of Will's houses into the courtyard of this palace. And Hades wasn't just Nico's dad. What demigod wouldn't have a healthy amount of respect, if not fear, for the Lord of the Dead?

Then again, that kind of applied ot all the gods. And Nico had met Apollo, though the fact that the god had been a mortal kid barely a year older than Will himself at the time probably reduced the intimidation factor.

Nico seemed to sense what Will was thinking. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. 'Maybe I should invite you over to stay. See how you like meeting my parents. Fair's fair, right?'

'Ha ha.'

'Seriously, I do have a room there.'

'Let me guess, decorated with skulls and stuff?' Will said dryly.

'How did you guess?' Nico shrugged. 'My dad thought it was funny. I think. Hard to be sure, with him.'

'Guys,' Thalia said, 'back to the quest? You can get past the meet-the-parents hurdle when we make it back. If we make it back.'

Annabeth pointed to a path leading off to the right of the palace gates. 'That way, isn't it?'

'That would be the shortcut, yet,' Nico said, his face sober again. The shadow of Tartarus flickered across him again. He looked like he had more to say about the route, but he just pressed his lips together and started down the path.

It led into a dim tunnel that smelt of earth and minerals and something else that Will couldn't quite put his finger on. It reminded him of the smell of ancient magic, the way the soil of Lemnos, with its healing properties, gave off a different scent from commonplace mud. The tunnel narrowed and sloped downwards. The air took on a chilly, metallic quality. Will could smell iron in the walls now, like they were made from the blood-soaked earth of a battlefield or the stones of a sacrificial altar.

They emerged into a dark cavern. The path beneath them sloped steeply towards a sharp drop-off: a cliff overlooking a pitch-black chasm. The whole cavern churned with a deep, coercive magic. It snaked out of the chasm and wound itself around Will, a compelling force drawing him to the edge like it was a magnet and Will a hapless steel nail.

'Do you guys feel that?' he whispered.

Annabeth shivered. 'It's Tartarus. The pull—once it latches on, you can't break free of it.'

'Like running from a black hole.' Nico's voice was hollow and echoey in the cavern. He stared down into the chasm and then turned to Will. The dim glow of the stalactites cast eerie shadows across his pale face. A thousand nightmares played in his eyes.

Will reached for his hand, although he wasn't sure if it was to offer Nico some comfort or take some for himself. Nico's fingers were trembling and even colder than usual.

'Well,' Thalia said, 'we do want to go in now, so…'

As if an unspoken signal had passed among all of them, they reached for each other's hands at the same time. And then, linked in a tight circle, they jumped.

A/N: I realise the layout of DOA recording studios is not quite in keeping with the canon description in Lightning Thief, but where’s the fun in repeating the books? Let’s just say Charon redecorated a little. All those pay raises must have gone somewhere, right?

Continue to chapter 9 | Back to content page

#pjohoobigbang2017 #pjohoobigbang #curse of lethe #percy jackson #annabeth chase #thalia grace #will solace #nico di angelo #charon #solangelo #percy jackson fanfic #pjo fanfiction #hoo fanfiction

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

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The Man Behind the New Front Row

In the fashion world, there are a bunch of rules. Most people are scared to break them, sometimes for good reasons, other times not.

About a year and a half ago, Kerby Jean-Raymond, the creative director of the fashion line Pyer Moss, led subway-challenged fashion editors to Crown Heights in Brooklyn for a show called “American, Also.” A fantasy of black life free from the threat of racism and police brutality, it featured a 40-person gospel choir, artwork by Derrick Adams and references to “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” a pre-civil rights era travel guide.

For reasons that extended beyond wokeness, Mr. Jean-Raymond’s show was one of the most acclaimed of the season. Then he followed it up with a decision to toss out the fashion calendar, in favor of showing just once a year.

A select group of established designers had begun this move a few seasons before, but Mr. Jean-Raymond was arguably the first who made that decision just when he was poised for stardom.

Was he nuts? Some thought so.

Fashion insiders have a tendency to forget that the biggest designers usually rise by upending convention rather than upholding it. In that way, the naysayers are a little like veteran political pundits whose pontifications about electability don’t mention that our two most recent presidents made it to the White House by positioning themselves as disrupters of Washington tradition.

Nate Hinton, the founder of the Hinton Group, a two-year-old fashion P.R. firm, understood the logic behind Mr. Jean-Raymond’s move. Mr. Hinton is his publicist and, therefore, a chief enabler, a guy whose job undoubtedly includes a certain amount of implementing the client’s wishes.

Still, sucking up wasn’t principally what was going on when he helped Mr. Jean-Raymond arrive at the conclusion that the fashion calendar was a relic.

First, said Mr. Hinton, who is 39 and looks closer to 26, there was the cost of staging a show twice a year (usually $150,000 each time, at minimum). That made sense a decade ago, when having a fashion week slot was the only accepted way for a designer to build heat around a collection.

Back then, sites like Style.com ran pictures within a day or two — but hardly anyone saw them so the clothes weren’t old news when they hit store shelves, and fashion magazines, several months later.

Instagram changed that. Yet designers, egged on partly by the publicists who made money publicizing those shows, kept going broke trying to keep up.

“It makes no sense,” Mr. Hinton said during one of several interviews over the last week. “It cripples young designers.”

That is particularly true for his clients, many of whom are people of color in an industry that just five years ago had barely any brand-name black designers.

But now, Mr. Jean-Raymond’s approach to fashion week is spreading throughout the industry, along with an obvious question: What if Mr. Hinton, as one of fashion’s most promising young image makers, reaches the top tier of the fashion heap by helping to kill fashion week?

WHEN PEOPLE DISCUSS publicists — an admittedly small group — conversation usually centers on whether they lied on behalf of a client or said yes or no to a journalist’s request for an interview.

Fashion publicists operate differently.

At KCD, the industry’s most august firm — which was started in the early 1980s — the founders Paul Cavaco and Kezia Keeble used their previous work as fashion stylists as the building block for their company.

Its principals today are certainly capable of doing media strategy for designers clawing their way out of catastrophe (see: John Galliano), but they also produce scores of fashion shows (Marc Jacobs, Versace), manage brands’ social media (Balmain) and broker partnerships between mass retailers and luxury designers (see: Target and Missoni).

That makes them something like a fashion hybrid of a P.R. firm and a Hollywood agency. (Their all-black suits even match the ones favored by agents at CAA and William Morris.)

For many years, KCD’s chief competitor has been PR Consulting, whose founder, Pierre Rougier, is largely inseparable from Nicolas Ghesquière and Raf Simons, two erstwhile fashion darlings. Where friendliness was KCD’s corporate mandate, PR Consulting helped create an air of exclusivity for Mr. Ghesquière and Mr. Simons by dismissing those perceived as wannabes (or worse, middle market.)

Mr. Hinton worked for both firms, and his solo career seems like an attempt to meld the friendly demeanor of Ed Filipowski (his boss at KCD, who died in January) with the clubby synergy that exists between Mr. Rougier and the curated circle of designers he represents.

“That’s how Kerby and I relate to each other,” Mr. Hinton said. “It’s part of why I understand his vision and what he wants. We know the same people, we share friends, we hang out.”

BACK WHEN MR. HINTON entered the industry, there wasn’t just a dearth of black designers. There were few black behind-the-scenes people in positions of authority. “I don’t even know if I can think of one,” said Mr. Hinton, who has a level of candor, even chattiness, that for better and perhaps for worse, is uncharacteristic of publicists.

Mr. Hinton grew up in Norfolk, Va. His mother was an anesthesia technician, and his father wasn’t around, he said.

“There was never enough money,” Mr. Hinton said. “That’s part of what motivated me.”

At Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk, he staged fashion shows in which students modeled borrowed street wear from Iceberg and Girbaud.

At Shaw University, a historically black college in Raleigh, N.C., he studied physics, but protons didn’t capture his attention quite like Tom Ford did.

In 2003, Mr. Hinton graduated with a degree in business administration. He moved to Washington, D.C., for a job at Federated, the department store conglomerate.

A year later, he moved into an apartment in Paterson, N.J., and commuted to New York City, where he was hired as the sample supervisor at Prada (that’s fashion-speak for running the company closet). From there, he moved into the brand’s public relations department.

In 2011, he was hired by Mr. Rougier at PR Consulting.

In 2012 he was fired by him after a dust-up whose central elements — operatics and pettiness — sit atop fashion’s periodic table.

The end came after the actress Emma Watson picked a dress for the MTV Movie & TV Awards. It was made by a little-known brand called Brood, whose account representative at PR Consulting was Mr. Hinton. “It was like my first V.I.P. moment,” he said.

On the day of the show, Mr. Hinton got what he described as a violent flu and failed to get the news release out before his trip to the emergency room. People magazine was among several outlets that published pictures of Ms. Watson without naming his client.

“I’m, like, slightly incapacitated,” Mr. Hinton said. “I can’t really respond to emails and texts. And so Pierre calls me, and he’s going off on me.”

Looking back, Mr. Hinton realizes it would have been smart to text Mr. Rougier and say he was in the hospital; that not informing him had a flaky millennial quality.

Still, Mr. Hinton said the final straw was the apology he didn’t deliver. “I was fired for my reaction to that call, which was just as saucy as his,” he said. (Mr. Rougier, asked about this, called Mr. Hinton “a great guy.”)

Soon after, Mr. Hinton was hired by KCD.

Two of the firm’s clients were Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow, who, as the creative directors of Public School, were among a tiny group of well-known minority designers.

“Nate really got close to them and became part of their team and their circle, and I think that opened his mind to what he really wanted to do,” said Rachna Shah, a partner at KCD who served as his immediate supervisor.

In 2016, Mr. Hinton received a phone call from one of Mr. Rougier’s top aides. She informed him that Raf Simons was taking over Calvin Klein. Might Mr. Hinton come to work on the account?

Mr. Hinton said he would, seeing it as an opportunity “to sort of clear my record with Pierre, if you will.”

“Also,” he said, “it was Raf, and being able to order his clothes at a discount was great for me.” (Mr. Hinton was kidding. But also not.)

IN 2018, RUMORS began to spread that Mr. Simons’s days at Calvin Klein were numbered. When it became clear the prophecy was true, Mr. Hinton started plotting his next move.

Through Antoine Phillips (a vice president of brand and culture engagement at Gucci) and Laron Howard (a marketing manager at Burberry), Mr. Hinton met Mr. Jean-Raymond, who had recently held his much discussed Crown Heights show and was looking for a publicist.

“I went to all the big firms,” Mr. Jean-Raymond said in an interview at his Chelsea offices.

One told him they already had “one black designer” and didn’t need another, he said. Others proposed exorbitant monthly fees.

Having a person who was affordable, black and understood his message was the logical step, so he called Mr. Hinton.

For a few weeks, Mr. Hinton fretted about whether to start his own agency. Then Mr. Osborne and Mr. Chow of Public School called to say they were leaving KCD and wanted him to do their P.R. under the table. He replied that there was no need to work surreptitiously since he was about to start his agency.

Mr. Jean-Raymond gave Mr. Hinton and his five-person team desks in the Pyer Moss offices in Chelsea. According to Mr. Jean-Raymond, Mr. Hinton will also be getting equity in the company, though when and how much isn’t totally clear. “It’s in process,” Mr. Hinton said.

A number of clients Mr. Hinton later signed up failed to pay their bills; fees usually run about $7,000 a month. They parted ways with Mr. Hinton, and others joined up.

One is Sergio Hudson, a Gianni Versace-obsessed African-American designer who made the pantsuit Demi Lovato wore to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Another is Claudia Li, a New Zealander of Chinese descent whose clothes have a Comme des Garçons on the Q Train to Fort Greene vibe.Last week, she and Mr. Hinton stood in a conference room at her sunny garment district office preparing the seating chart for her Feb. 8 show.

Ms. Li, 31, wore a white hooded sweatshirt and a pleated yellow and blue skirt she designed. Mr. Hinton had on a black Aliétte hoodie, Acne Jeans (“my faves”) and Rick Owens sneakers that look like Converse All Stars and sell for about 30 times the price.

While Mr. Hinton moved around color-coded Post-its, Ms. Li talked about how lucky she was to work with him.

For one, she said, her previous P.R. personcost too much. For another, Mr. Hinton “recognized the establishment without being enslaved by it.”

Mr. Hinton chimed in about the importance of speaking directly to consumers and building community around brands. “But we’re not trying to say, ‘Screw everyone,’” he said. “We’d love to have Anna Wintour at her show.”

“I’d literally faint,” Ms. Li said.

I asked Mr. Hinton if he was in a position to call Ms. Wintour and plead Ms. Li’s case.

“I can call her,” he said. “Would she answer the phone? Hell, no!”

Of course, Mr. Hinton encountered Ms. Wintour when he worked the red carpet at the Met Gala for KCD. And he sort of knew her before that.

“At Prada, I was responsible for delivering her clothing orders,” he said.

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#Life style

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don-and-angie · 5 years ago

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renovations ..

At our rented house, we’ve had the builders in. It started with a large chunk of plaster falling off an upstairs window surround, just before we moved in ... at which point we discovered there had also been a serious leak in the lounge, requiring a towel and a bucket on the floor all the time. The landlady agreed she must get it fixed. The first timeline estimate we had was “3 days plus a day painting”, which seemed possibly optimistic at the time. Then, when they actually started, the full extent of the problem began to be revealed. The builders have now been here for four weeks, and haven’t yet finished. “You know, Cape Town weather ...” was cited more than once, but they’ve only had one day where work was impossible. Other little contributors included the way tiny cracks became ugly big ones as loose rendering was hammered off adjacent walls; old, wet bricks fell off with the plaster; chipping at one side of a wall made chunks fall out the other side; and so on. On many days, no supervisor was present, so progress was ... well, just like the UK. Then the owner decided to repaint the whole front of the house while they were at it, a trendy dark grey-brown rather than sky-blue; and the neighbour asked that the flaky paint on the back was dealt with at the same time ... Meanwhile, we have been virtually housebound on all weekdays, as the team needed access; and although the workers are reckoned very trustworthy, leaving a front door open and unwatched is never a good idea in a big city. Hospitality has been a no-starter, as dust and grit is inevitable, and we have no opportunity to clean through before work starts again. All in all, it has proved a considerable test of patience / long-suffering / grace, and we have (gently) made the letting agent aware; and told the site supervisor that we will now be locking the house up from time to time, just so that we can go out together for a morning ... Fortunately, the painting is going well, and they really shouldn’t need many more days to finish it. Sadly, perhaps, we won’t be enjoying it for long, as we had already given notice before work started, and are moving to a more convenient apartment in a few weeks! There again, we did prefer the courtyard walls sky-blue, rather than sludge grey ...

#africalite #gotthebuildersin #renovations

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thefrugalistalife · 6 years ago

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On the plane again! So after riding around London for the day, we hopped over to Paris right quick to see some sights. We started early that morning with a walk from the hotel to the bus stop to catch the transfer to the airport. There wasn’t much time to get super comfy on the plane since the flight was only an hour. Once we landed, we hit the ground running basically. The trip was only 24 hours so I only carried a backpack.

We had a few hours to kill before checking in to our hotel; that gave us plenty of time to walk around the city and knock a few things off the list. A few days before the trip, Robert sent me a video about how simple it is to see a few sights in a short amount of time so I knew the idea of how to spend 24 hours in Paris wouldn’t be hard to accomplish.

Hardware Société

The Continental-Honey and Cinnamon Fromage Blanc, Anzac Crumble, Roasted Rhubarb and Apple, Croissant, Petit Apple Juice

Having an early morning flight plus a train ride into the city makes anyone hungry. I’m not entirely sure how long (or how far) we walked but once we got off the train, we beelined it to food. Fortunately, Hardware Société is directly across the street from Sacre Coeur. The Australian restaurant was already packed by the time we got there so we stood outside like we were waiting to get inside the club. It took me a while to realize the menu was in French with English translations next to it(duh Alex!). It looks like a lot of food but The Continental dish didn’t leave me stuffed; I felt satisfied and nourished. I usually don’t eat a breakfast like this but when in France, do as the French do right? Hardware Société is the perfect backdrop to a Saturday or Sunday brunch with a group or a SO. It’s not a large restaurant but the rumbling from many convos going on sets a vibe.

Basilique du Sacre Coeur de Montmarte

After the nourishment, we stopped by the Basilica to see what’s up. We didn’t go inside because there was just too many people around. Literally, there were people EVERYWHERE…makes sense because the structure is the 2nd most visited monument in Paris.

Galeries Lafayette

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Les points communs entre les marques @heronpreston, @gcdswear et @wearefromfuture ? Un amour sans concession pour la couleur vive et une envie de bousculer nos habitudes mode. 🤖 . . . A découvrir aux Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann. #GaleriesLafayette #HeronPreston #Gcdswear #FromFuture #Newbrand #WeArefromFuture #SpringSummer19 #SS19 #Trend #Trendy #Fashion #Tendance #GaleriesLafayetteParisHaussmann

A post shared by Galeries Lafayette (@galerieslafayette) on Mar 9, 2019 at 2:25am PST

I had the idea in my head I was going to Paris and ball out on a designer bag because when is the next time I’d be able to do that? I dreamed of the day I bought my first Louis Vuitton or Gucci bag with no worries…then I woke up. Walking into Galeries Lafayette is overwhelming and a sensory overload. Every high-end designer you can think of has a section in the mall plus there are a few floors. Being there is an experience really…especially at their Louis Vuitton store. I’ve never been in a LV store where I stood in line for personal service with a consultant. I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking when I imagined myself actually walking out the store with a bag. Needless to say, I didn’t leave with a bag…not even a scarf.

Musee de Louvre

If you don’t do anything else in Paris, go to the Louvre museum. I’ve dreamed of going but when the video for APESHIT, I wanted to go even more. By this time we’d already checked into the hotel and rested for a bit. After a quick train ride over, we finally made it! One tip I learned from Robert’s research: go through the back entrance. It’s quicker and there’s less people. We got there around 5:30 and the museum closes at 6 so we didn’t get to see too much of the art but I made it to the gift shop and balled out a bit *prayer hands emoji*.

Eric Kayser

Robert put me on to Eric Kayser about a month before we left. Besides being a baker/restauranteur, he’s a renowned French food writer so obviously his restaurants have to be fire. He has several locations around the city but the one we went to is walking distance from the Louvre. The foods at the restaurant are baked fresh all day everyday so there isn’t ever a time they run out of your fave pastry. One item that made me chuckle a little were their mini beignets. We all know the New Orleans version but it’s interesting to see another iteration of the dessert. The Eric Kayser version is stuffed with raspberry and lightly covered with powdered sugar. Of course, we couldn’t leave Paris without having more croissants either. I’d say the difference between French croissants and the ones here is the texture; it felt more flaky and softer than the ones we eat here…they were like clouds really.

Arc de Triomphe

We were in Paris during the weekend protests of their president. My supervisor mentioned it to me before I left, telling me “if I saw people in vests, go the other way”. We saw them as we walked past the Arc but I felt like they didn’t present too much of a threat to me. The Arc de Triomphe is one of those monuments you only see in movies so it’s weird to see it in person. Considering the arch is in memory of those who fought in wars, it makes sense as a protest location. We saw at least a hundred police officers on the streets on horses and in their riot gear ready and prepared for whatever happened that night. It’s interesting to say I was around when all of it was going on.

Place Du Tocodero/Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is THE HIGHLIGHT of the entire trip. Again, it’s one of those things you see on tv or in movies but never think you’ll see it in person. It’s synonymous with anything dealing with love and it only felt right that I’d be there with the person I love very much. I think the both of us stood in shock for a minute because it’s like “Dang, we’re actually here experiencing this together.” I got so excited I sent a photo of the tower to my therapist since she’s been to Paris with her husband before(light flex). I didn’t know this but there’s a light show every hour where the lights flicker and the entire city looks like it’s lit just from the Eiffel. I want to go back during the day to get a closer view of it and go inside.