#heartstringsduet asks

[herefortarlos]

hello dearest. 🧥🚒⛰️ please <3

Hello, beautiful!! Are you proud of me, Michelle, I answered an ask in a little more than a day 😂

🧥Whose fashion do you like the best?

I loveee Marjan's many iconic looks, with the bright colors, and jewelry, accessories and how she coordinates with her hijabs! But in terms of fashion that I can see myself wearing, I think I prefer a lot of Grace's looks! I am a big sweater girl, although how Grace can wear as many sweaters as she does in Texas, I will never know. But I would wear the hell out of that Marjan dress here! So I like these two best!

🚒 Quick! You’re suddenly a part of the universe! What do you do?

Ahh, what do I do that is within my realm of possibilities and experience and that also allows me to be friends with these beloved characters?? 😂 I got it! I would be a 911 dispatcher so I can be work friends with Grace AND I would be one of Tarlos' neighbors! When we introduce ourselves to each other, we of course say what our jobs are and oh look at that, you're First Responders, and we have similar things in common! You're queer, I'm queer, let's hang out and see if we can be friends!! And ideally I would be invited to some hangs at their place so I can meet everyone else in the 126. It's the perfect plan!

⛰️What’s one hill you’ll die on regarding this show? (the more trivial, the better)

Okay, this one is proving harder than it should be! Hmm, oh, I was always a TK can cook believer and would very much die on that hill!! I had no idea where it came from that our man couldn't cook! He was a firefighter and they know how to cook tasty, filling meals! And he lived in NYC, and there's no way he was ordering take out and going out every night with how expensive that can be! And again, being a firefighter I am assuming he would need to be eating nutritious meals to stay in top rescuing form, so he wasn't surviving on cereal and instant ramen! I don't think he often cooked elaborate meals for himself, but he definitely had the capability. Carlos of course changed that because cooking is one of his love languages and TK finally had someone he loved that he knew would appreciate his cooking! I cannot tell you how happy and vindicated I felt when we got TK cooking that beef wellington in 4x12 🤗

[welcometololaland]

9, 12 and 17 please 🐿️

thank you, michelle!!! my squirrel sister <3

9. tell a story about your childhood

okay so i was reflecting today, and i think the reason that i'm scared of getting locked in a small room is because when i was about five years old, one of my parents' family friend's kids (he was also, like, 6 or 7) locked me in an attic as a 'joke' and i think i'm scarred for life from that LMAO. i thought my parents were going to go home without me!

12. what's some good advice you want to share?

my best legal advice - if you're going to say something risky, don't put it in writing.

17. name three things that make you happy?

snowboarding, squirrel pictures!!!! (or pictures of any cute animals), hiking to a really beautiful destination.

(from this ask game)

[reasonandfaithinharmony]

Ding-Dong. It's the Nice Ask Week ghost👻 Since you're an expert gif-maker: if you could direct a single scene between two or more characters, what would it entail and how would it be shot? :D

(Omg, I'm so late to these! 🙈 Sorry about that.)

This is such a fun question! I feel like I'm giving an answer that's somewhat adjacent to it? But my thoughts immediately ran in this direction, so hopefully that's okay.

I think I'd want to direct a soft and cozy scene where we get to see TK and Carlos wake up together in the morning. (It's kind of shocking to me that we haven't had that yet.)

Start with a wide shot, then shift to close-ups. Decent lighting, please. Golden beams of sunlight falling across their faces. Smooth camera movements that let each moment breathe. An overall feeling of warmth.

And while I'm playing pretend, I'm going to imagine that this is the first time they wake up together in the loft.

If I go a step further, I'd like to also request Carlos' first morning in the loft, waking up alone. Let's make the lighting colder here. And shoot it in such a way that a parallel gif set of the two scenes is the natural result.

Carlos waking up in the loft, where he imagined building a home with TK. The first time TK wasn't there. And the first time he was.

[theghostofashton]

Nice ask week ghost here 👻 Since you just wrote 'now I wake up by your side' - would you rather be famous or work for/with the famous?

hi michelle! thank you for the ask 💕

becoming famous feels a little like my worst nightmare, and i feel like these fics kind of made it worse, honestly. it draws a lot of inspiration from taylor's reputation and i did such a deep dive on that album while writing (prior to writing this universe i'd been kind of lukewarm about it as a whole and i honestly think writing this verse gave me such a new appreciation for it) and really just..... it all seems so exhausting, being famous. way more trouble than it's worth for me, someone who is pretty private irl. i feel like i am way too anxious to be famous at my core and i am okay with that

working with the famous, on the other hand? that, i could get behind. i don't think i'm the type of person to want specifically to work in hollywood, but i could see myself doing it if the opportunity arose. i think it'd be a lot of fun to see inside of that world, i find it so fascinating

[noxsoulmate]

Nice Ask Week: If your favorite author would write a Tarlos fic, what do you think the genre/themes would be? :D

😍 thank you for thinking of me during nice ask week 🥰

ohh, but how to answer this question? there are so many amazing creators out there and we're so, so blessed in this fandom to have so many writers share their works with us 🥰 personally, I sometimes find it hard to keep up with all the new fics because there are just so many 😂 obviously I'm not complaining, of course!

As for genres/themes, I'm a lover of so many things. It truly depends on my mood, but I do have to admit that with Tarlos, I'm lately mostly into AUs and/or canon-divergent first meetings between these two. Which is crazy because when I first joined the fandom, all I wanted to read was canon-compliant fics, codas, fix-its, spec fics etc. I think it might've changed over time because they're now in a happy and healthy relationship in canon - so my focus shifted a bit.

Of course that doesn't mean I'll ignore a fluffy domestic slice-of-life fic with them as husbands 🥰

I'm not sure I even answered your ask correctly 😂 so I'll just end it by listing a few tropes that I would read right the fuck now if someone posted a fic for it:

Royalty AU

Fairytale/Fantasy AU

Enemies to Lovers AU/canon-divergent

Two-Person-Love-Triangle (God, I'm such a sucker for those!!)

Famous AU - bonus points if it involves (social) media speculating about them

(yes, I'll totally love anyone to pieces who sends me links to fics that fit any of these, even if there's a 99% chance I've already read them 😂)

[tailoredshirt]

What is something that will never fail to cheer you up? :D

Hi, Michelle! <3

I think the most foolproof way to cheer up/calm down/whatever is to take a walk outside or at least get out of the house and go do something.

Also, watching funny videos on YouTube, like classic SNL skits, Whose Line Is It Anyway, news bloopers, etc. I am easily entertained!

[louis-ii-reyes-strand]

Boo! It's the Nice Ask Week Ghost 👻 Tarlos gets a brand new and exciting pet, it's . . .?

Ahhh!

I think I’d like to see them with a rat.

Hear me out.

Lizards (or at least Lou I type lizards) are common pests in Texas. Rats are common pests in New York. I think it would a hilarious change of pace to flip to script with their pets. This only works if you don’t think too hard because Carlos has def seen his fair share of barn mice and TK’s love of little critters is unmatched.

Failing all that I want them to have ferrets because ferrets are cute little noodles. And the image of these men walking a pair of tiny ferrets around on a leash sends me.

[alltheprettyplaces]

Top five things you'd want to check off before 30 :)

michelle we turn 30 next year 😵‍💫

living on my own!!! i'm there financially now, just need some circumstances to clear up and then boom i can finally use all my matching kitchen tools 💖

get a damn tattoo. i've only been talking about getting some for years. and also my 30th is on a friday the 13th and i really wanna get a black cat one or something that day so i need some before that one haha

feel like my brain isn't turning to mush every day. i'd like to go into a new decade feeling mentally healthy after spending the majority of my 20's just keeping my head above water

perhaps moving international :) i keep talking about that working holiday visa that you have to apply for before you turn 30. so ya know maybe hello australia sometime in the next year and some

and then idk it'd be nice to go on date with someone i'm genuinely attracted to lmao.

[chaotictarlos]

For the Nice Ask Day: What is the food you eat most? :D

Mac and Cheese! It's my favorite food.

[herefortarlos]

👬 What Tarlos moments are you most looking forward to? 🔫 Who murdered Gabriel? 🤏Which minor character(s) will we see again?

Hi, sweetheart! Me slowly going through these but I will get them done by the end of this week 😂 Not too much should be uncovered from the first episode!

👬I'm looking forward to all the Tarlos moments, Michelle!! But let's see... I am really hoping that we get one of them in danger and the other losing their mind over it! You know I eat up all that angst 😁 Would love a, "Don't hurt him, take me instead." But not sure we'll get that lucky!

🔫 Once again, I am convinced that ranger Chief Bridges has something to do with Gabriel's murder! I think Gabriel was quietly looking into more corruption within the rangers and he was getting too close to something!

🤏 We'll definitely be seeing more of Asha and Joe, which I'm excited about because I love seeing Paul and Marjan having some love in their lives! Lou 2, is probably the "minor" character I'm most excited about though 😂 He is the star of the Tarloft!

[welcometololaland]

20!

hehe hello michelle. this one was the best question - so good i'll answer it twice!

20. oh no! the kids are hooked on your fics. what behaviours are their parents now concerned about??

i regret to inform the parents that the kids are now:

signing a 12 month lease with their enemy by accident;

card counting in las vegas;

letting cats drive buses;

fighting 1 customer per day as per lola's rules of hospo work;

quasi-adopting a young child on a hawaiian vacation;

playing a four hour tennis match and then going on a walk around paris;

marking up iron clad NDAs;

being a speed demon on the roads;

having sex in a hospital storage closet;

taking electronics into the shower;

fighting over the only bed left in the furniture store;

using a 'magic' theme to dress up as magic mike;

filming carlos reyes in public and making him into a tiktok star;

getting turned on by a mutual hatred of flower arches;

being overrun by ants;

getting trapped in grocery store parking lots;

making supermassive mistakes;

lying (by omission) to their boyfriend about living with their mom;

getting walked in on by their mom (during the morning after);

adopting some very strange coffee habits;

chewing earbuds;

insisting that jerking off together in the shower isn't sex;

performing as the lead in an underwater adaptation of macbeth;

naming a rat after their crush;

buying aquarium rocks when they don't have fish; and

near bankrupting themselves at a pet store.

spoiler: the kids are not okay.

[justasmallbloginabigklainefandom]

24 for the non-US ask :D

24. What other nation is joked about most often in your country?

Why do I have the feeling you did this on purpose.

It's Germany.

Like, Belgium is on thin fucking ice as well, but with Belgium it's more like "we are the older sibling, who does care deeply for their younger sibling, but who also doesn't give a lot of shits", whereas with Germany it's more alike to, as we call it, burenruzie, aka little often-not-hostile fights between neighbours. Fuck you guys (affectionate).

We do assume you guys do shit on us, though. As in, this is a two-way street.

[theerastour]

For the album ask game: Midnights

sorry I'm answering this late I fell asleep last night!!

-favorite lyric: no one wanted to play with me as a little kid, so I've been scheming like a criminal ever since to make them love me and make it seem effortless

but a new addition: Every mornin', I glared at you with storms in my eyes, how can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dyin'? I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick, my face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick

-favorite song: ugh so hard yoyok

-song that makes you cry: bigger than the whole sky and yoyok

- song that’s a fucking bop: karma ✨

-least favorite: snow on the beach

Send an album!

[theghostofashton]

Boo! It's the Nice Ask Week Ghost 👻 What is a food you've been meaning to try but haven't had the chance to?

oooh hi michelle! thanks for the ask!

i really want to try ethiopian food. one of my cousins loves it, and she keeps sending me recs, but there aren't any places near me :( hoping i'm able to find some soon because it looks so good!

[cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut]

💡 🎁 :D

💡This one is answered here

🎁Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

From the story I started today, and am hoping to make progress on during my nightshift.

Inexplicably, and out of nowhere, something stirs Carlos in the middle of the night. He can’t put his finger exactly on what, feels heavy and disoriented when he wakes, blinks into the darkness, as if he’s been lurched back to consciousness from somewhere so far away. He’d been sleeping well, dreaming of something warm and sweet, but now his senses are sharpening, and he realises what he can hear.

A voice. Muffled, indistinguishable, but there. Somewhere beyond their bedroom door, someone who shouldn’t be here.

Carlos sits bolt upright. The cotton wool feeling of deep sleep recedes. Blood whirs through his ears in its place, rushing with the pounding of his heart.

“TK,” Carlos whispers, frantic, “TK, can you hear that?”

It’s only now, when he turns to look at his husband’s side of the bed, that he realises TK isn’t there.

[mooshkat]

Nice ask week ghost here 👻 What should be on every show's soundtrack and for what scenes would it be used?

I feel like adding anything by m83 could be beneficial to a soundtrack. as for scenes,, maybe something monumental and emotional? a lot of their music feels a lot to me like being able to let go and be free