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quagmireisadora · 5 years ago

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[Jonghyun / Taemin] After the Fire

Prompt: A is a struggling writer going through a creative block, until B literally crashes into their life, claiming that they are a modern-day muse. Rating: R-ish(?) Warnings: some explicit descriptions Length: ~10,000

Summary: Drawn to danger, I burned my own house down.

(Written as part of the Winter of SHINee fic fest. Please go support all the entries there)

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“... we thank you for your manuscript and applaud your efforts in completing another book. Unfortunately, it is not quite in the vein of what we are looking for. Please stay in touch for…”

In Jonghyun’s eyes, there is only one way to construe the letter—your stuff isn't sexy enough.

He knows the standards the publication house upholds. When he’d first applied to write for them, presenting a short story full of elucidated gasps and pants and whatnot: he’d done his research. The other writers and their works are miles apart from what he could ever produce. Those books are too salacious, too irreverent for him to match.

So, he knows there is a yardstick, and that he is required to be faithful to it, if he must help retain their astronomically high readership.

Honestly, though… the only reason Jonghyun writes erotic literature is because it is easy money.

Coming straight out of college, he first tried his hand at working for obscure webzines. That was a very weird, isolating experience. His colleagues were constantly embroiled in intellectual and cultural debates, the likes of which a man of his upbringing could never participate in—the elegance of noir films, the chaos of punk history, the artful French New Wave. Not only did these subjects evolve outside the barriers he grew up between, the webzines’ subscribers were largely foreigners, rendering a monolinguistic man like him… well. Useless.

Following this, he’d done a stint at small, virtually unknown publications. He’d written largely ignored thought pieces for national papers. He’d even submitted the less embarrassing specimens of his attempted poetry to the Metropolitan office of which, none were imprinted on subway doors. Yet.

To the interested employer, his CV reads like a grocery list of jobs: I did everything I possibly could with my mediocre talent, just so I could earn a living. And he doesn't mind that—encourages that thought, in fact. It is Jonghyun's earnest belief that only by downplaying his past professional experiences will he ever get a step ahead, climb a rung higher. It is also Jonghyun's earnest belief that dream jobs do not exist and, in this economy at least, settling is a good idea when you have qualifications as meaningless as his.

So no, he doesn't turn any work down. Nothing is beneath him. And that attitude has led him here—to writing cheap erotica for easy money.

Except, Jonghyun hasn't a single erotic bone in his body.

He is a man, most certainly. Red-blooded as they come. But something about writing down the act, about describing it in the most colourful and drawn-out details... femininity must surely be a prerequisite, he thinks. To notice the way that things look or sound or feel or taste in those short moments. To recreate that passion, that ecstasy, that urgency with paragraph upon paragraph of meticulous and explicit narration: one must need a very observative mind. Or a hyperactive imagination. Because something that lasts just a few minutes from his perspective, can only be recreated with such intensity if it were a woman on the other side of the pen.

So no, Jonghyun doesn't do sexy. Despite having penned three short novels, all with the reluctant perusal of internet porn, he doesn’t do sexy. He doesn’t do softcore, he doesn’t do taboo or wild or… anything, really. He just isn't capable of indelicacy like that. He reasons he can probably try romantic, but that’s not what this specific job entails, does it? No, and the letter is good evidence of that, he realises, stowing his last manuscript away for recycling.

Where sexual depravity is concerned, Jonghyun is running on empty. And if things don't change soon, his bank account will too.

------

His mother doesn't know, of course. She thinks her poor son, her youngest baby, is so deeply mired in the nine-to-five that he doesn't even have time to visit these days. Writing is time-consuming. Writing entire novels, even more so. He doesn’t tell her what his job is, though. He keeps it vague. I’m working at an office. I’m working for a big company. I’m working in a building on Saemunan-ro.

As common a name as Kim Jonghyun is, a pseudonym is useful in many ways, he realises. He doesn’t get strange calls from distant relatives, demanding what the hell does he think he’s doing, while ignoring the fact that they went looking for erotica in the first place. He doesn’t have his young cousins approach him with was that really you, hyung? or can we get an early copy of your next one? His friends and ex-associates don’t have a clue. He would like to keep it that way: Minho already gives him a hard time about growing into an old shut-in, if he had the faintest idea of what was going on behind those closed doors and drawn curtains… Minho would no longer be a friend, Jonghyun wagers with shame.

Even so, the question of inspired writing—if he can call it that—still remains. Rather, the question of how he will pay next month’s rent, how he will settle the stack of overdue power and internet and water bills, still remains. Seoul is an expensive city to live in by oneself, and he cannot move back under the same roof as his mother and sister, not with a scandalous job like this.

At this point he has no way of stimulating his mind without resorting to stealing from other writers.

And so, the idea of a fan-meeting event is a sort of lifeline. He figures it could help if people show appreciation for his work: even if those people are wild-eyed and pimple-faced oily young men who should be ashamed of themselves, his morality yells wordlessly. But he is no one to judge. And if they prove to be a motivation, if they can help him get out of his block, then all the morality in the world can go to hell.

The event isn’t as clandestine as he imagines it to be, either. Outside the venue is a board yelling out a “SHIN YUN BOK PUBLICATION AUTHORS’ CONVENTION”. The doors are wide open. The sound of chatter, the smell of food, the murmur of excitement, all floats out to the lobby just outside.

When he enters, his face obscured by a surgical mask and a large pair of sunglasses, the place is packed. A man is on stage, calling out polite directions for crowd control. Jonghyun recognises him as his employer. Or at least, he is the guy who interviewed him over a grainy skype call late one night. He self-consciously checks his disguise and walks deeper into the fray.

A semi-circle of tables is arranged around the hall, each nominated to a writer. Upon studying the occupied seats, Jonghyun’s premise is solidified when he realises eight out of ten appear to be women. Somehow, this information impresses him.

When he ducks under the ropes and is stopped by a security guard, he points at the only empty table in wordless explanation. Some awkwardness ensues: a request for ID, a weary denial on the basis that pseudonyms aren’t on any ID, a quick consultation by text message, an unenthusiastic “OK, sir. This way, please.” Soon after, Jonghyun has taken his place and assumes the target of many pairs of staring eyes in the room. Some point and snicker, some watch him awestruck, some even take photos. Selcas! Like he is some sort of celebrity! He feels uneasy and oddly vulnerable, fidgeting with his sunglasses as they threaten to slip on the sweat beading his face.

But when the doors are finally shut and the event declared open, Jonghyun’s jealousy soars.

There are lengthy, winding lines of people waiting to speak to nearly all the other writers--but not him. No one approaches him. Not for the first ten minutes, not for the next half hour. In spite of all the staring from before, no one wants to speak with him. No one is interested in getting his signature.

It is only now, at such a place and such a time, that a series of paranoid questions fills his head. Does anyone read his books? Does anybody like them? Is he not popular? Is his work insignificant, even in circles like these?

If the number of people dying to speak with the others is anything to go by… then no. Jonghyun is not in the least bit popular.

He overhears his neighbour chuckle to say things like, of course there is a sequel coming out or yes, I based that character on myself. There are squeals, there are gasps, there is enough veneration to drown Jonghyun in self-pity. Suddenly, he wishes for that love and admiration. He wishes someone would ask him interesting questions and expect fascinating answers; dote on him just the way they dote on the rest of the panel.

His jealousy is poisonous enough that it spreads through his blood. His eyes burn with it, his pulse throbs against it, he feels it bristle in and out of his nostrils with every breath. His sweat begins to sting. His solitude starts to prick. His confidence dwindles to nearly nothing. The weight of envy makes him slide lower and lower into his seat. He plays with his marker and acts nonchalant. Acts like he is unaffected. But in truth he feels like crying. He feels like going home. He feels like quitting--

When his latest book is suddenly slammed onto the table, he yells and jumps a foot off his seat. Eyes turn to him again, this time with thinly veiled distaste rather than disinterest. He looks up at his assailant to find a lanky young man donning fashionable sunglasses and equally fashionable clothes.

“Sign, please,” the guy says in a tone that borders on demanding.

------

What surprises Jonghyun isn’t the fact that he has a “fan” in someone like Lee Taemin, as he introduces himself later. It is more astonishing to him that other people immediately follow his example and accost Jonghyun with copies of his work—some that look well used and dog-eared to the point that he is afraid to touch them. More and more readers who claim to love his writing flock over, while this Taemin character stands by. Silent, watchful, critical.

As he doles out autograph after rushed autograph, Jonghyun can’t for the life of him understand how the situation reversed itself in the blink of an eye.

“Uh… thank you?” he expresses uncertain gratitude. “I was. Surprised.”

“Mm hmm, so what do you want to do next?” the guy counters, folding up the sleeves of his baggy tee-shirt. The crowds have long dissipated. Security has rounded up all the stragglers, even the rowdy ones trying to get too close to that overly popular writer who went by the penname of Eonsook. But no one seems bothered by Taemin. No one cares that he is still here, still engaging in lazy conversation, going at his own pace. Everything about this is so peculiar. Everything is the opposite of his expectations.

“Well, I was about to go home and eat dinner, so—”

“I meant,” an exasperated look berates him. “What do you want to do for your next project?”

There is no answer for that. Jonghyun doesn’t plan these things out. He sits in front of the screen and starts to pour things onto it until he realises none of it is usable. Then he gives up. Rinse, repeat.

But he is expected to answer now. He is expected to say something rooted in a fully formed thought. He is expected to answer this man, this person who appeared out of nowhere and somehow managed to single-handedly create the interest Jonghyun was looking forward to. So, is there also an expected answer? Is there a right and a wrong response? Should he take the question as a cue to say something else, something scripted for such interactions? He doesn’t know.

He settles for a vague, “Uhm, is there anything in particular that Taemin ssi likes to read?” If he has learnt something from his time writing about politics, it is this: the best answer to a difficult question is another question.

An indifferent shrug replies. “Don’t really care. As long as there’s sex in it.”

He’d make a great politician, Jonghyun thinks as he starts to gather his things. “Well. I’m sure you’ll find plenty to satisfy you, then,” he gestures around them at the nearly vacated hall.

The man on the stage waves to him, he waves back. They will probably speak on the phone later on, and Jonghyun will bombard him with questions.

“But I like what you write,” Taemin continues, drawing is attention back. Physically holding his chin and turning his face so they are looking at each other again. “I want you to write more. Much more. A series!” there is a hint of excitement on those puffy lips.

Jonghyun knows not to aggravate people like him. People who are probably more dangerous than they appear to be. He takes a cautious step back. “I… I wish I could, sir. But you see—”

“I’ll pay you to do it.” A sure motion pulls an expensive-looking wallet out. A wad of cash is counted before nearly all of it is set onto the table. “An advance. I’ll give you three times that when you’ve finished the first draft. How about it?”

He stares at the fan of ten thousand won notes. Rent, he reminds himself. You must pay rent by the end of next week. But what the hell is he going to write?! “Sir, I’m… I’m really very sorry. I don’t have any plans to write the next book and. And I’m not even sure what to write so—”

“I’ll help with that,” Taemin insists. “You need ideas, I’ll give you all the ideas you need. I’ll… I’ll be your muse,” he decides.

Jonghyun stares for a long uneasy moment. Where is security and why aren’t they doing anything? he wonders. He takes another step to back away from the weird man. But the money is right there, perfect bright green rectangles that seem to have come fresh out of the mint. The overlapping portraits of Sejong the Great are all pleading with him to be pocketed. Just say yes! the king is shouting out, even in that placid gaze. You don’t have to follow through, just take the money and run! He can’t find you, anyway!

No. That would be disingenuous. That wouldn’t be right. No matter how desperate his situation, Jonghyun would never resort to thievery. He shakes his head and stays his hand, making no move to accept the money.

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you, Taemin ssi,” he bows and rushes off.

------

Their story begins and ends at Namdaemun.

She looks at its sombre face, artillery fire still marking some of its masonry and disrupting the course of the story. Their story. It is the gate that reaches out for a hug, she thinks when a cold wind picks up and threatens to swoop her shivering self away. It is the gate that offers an embrace, arms angling out from its stiff middle, like a father consoling his sad and broken child. How odd it looked in its place. How quaint, to be the only survivor of its own story. No more kings roam under its elegant archway. No more guards train their arrows from the pagoda. No more tigers rustle nearby under the cover of trees, desperate to find a meal.

This gate… this thing. It shouldn't be here. But someone has shown it their kindness and tended to it; fed it with mortar and concrete and newly painted timber. Someone has seen fit to breathe new life into it.

Their story begins and ends here.

She met him once, then many times, upon the tufts of grass framing Namdaemun. She met him and with every meeting the distance between them diminished from feet to inches to barely anything. She met him, met all of him, met every place on him with every place on herself. His hands would smell of spice. Of coal and heat and rain… perhaps he tended to a garden in their time apart. He had the gentlest hands. When he touched her, they felt like lamps against her skin. His warmth would intoxicate her.

Maybe he was made of fire, she would wonder in the hours they lay next to each other, breath stuttering and pulse racing. Maybe he was a jinn.

“You’re not small enough to fit in a lamp,” she would tease him when they'd stumble over each other.

In her loneliness, she’d dream of him, floating on clouds made of cotton. She'd imagine him traveling from land to unknown land and sea to unending sea. She would imagine him soaring, his skin burnished and his eyes like bronze.

But he is long gone, now. He has left her side and his hands warm someone else's days. She is the survivor of her own story. She is a stiff gate looking for someone to embrace, someone to comfort. She endures, just as Namdaemun endures. They stay and they wait, the gate and her, in the hope that someday there will be a finale to their respective stories.

And then they will breathe a unified sigh of relief.

------

Jonghyun supposes it would’ve been wise to expect a second meeting.

He is still shocked when the time comes: a buzz from downstairs, a murmured excuse about routine maintenance, a knock on the door that sounds far too eager to be just pest control.

When he opens the door to find the familiar lanky frame, he panics. There are no more disguises obscuring the distance between them now. Each man is plainly visible to the other. Jonghyun feels caught. Trapped, like a wild animal hunted until metal teeth closed around his leg. He frantically searches for something to hide behind, forgetting that he could simply shut the door again.

The creepy man named Lee Taemin invites himself in. He saunters casually, ambling the length of the hallway, looking around the room and humming, appraising it, measuring it. Measuring Jonghyun, who is still shocked and unable to react in a way that protects him.

“Wh-what’re you—?!” he begins when some of the shock has worn off.

“You don’t make a lot of money, do you?” Taemin cuts him off. “Why don’t you accept my offer? I’ll pay you plenty. More than you’ve probably ever seen. Then you can move out of this dump.” Even as he says this, he runs an appreciative hand over a row of books. “I can help you realise all your dreams, you know?”

“How did you even find me?!” Jonghyun counters.

“Does it matter?” the other drawls, shaking his head in exasperation. He swings his arms around himself as he walks, and when his palms meet, he lets them clap together. Like he’s out on a relaxing stroll in the park. Everything about the setting is preposterous. “I tracked you down, now I’m here, and I’m giving you a second chance. Isn’t that what’s important?”

He stares, trying to figure out this puzzle of a human being. What is this guy? How is he so at ease right now? What is this game he’s playing and why? Why with Jonghyun, of all people? Does everything out of his mouth sound like that? Like a simple fairy tale? I’ll do this, then you do this, then we’ll live happily ever after. Ridiculous!

He’s only ever seen people like that on dramas. Badly written and poorly acted dramas.

“Please leave,” Jonghyun requests, maintaining a formal tone despite all the peculiarity of the setup. “Or I'll call the police.”

Taemin clicks his tongue. “Not until you answer me.”

“Sir, I can’t be bought for no reason.”

“But I’m giving you a reason,” Taemin points out as if the concept is too difficult for Jonghyun to understand. Which it is. “I pay you, you write for me. I like what you write, I pay you to do more. It’s like…” he gestures, standing in the middle of the room, his stance oddly graceful and formidable at the same time. “Like when a king enjoyed an artist of his court and promised his patronage,” he illustrates. “That’s what we’ll be like.”

The smile on his face is a perfect representation of a magician’s. Maybe he is something of a trickster, Jonghyun thinks. Maybe he likes to put on a show and confuse people.

“The publication house already pays me,” he informs.

“After you finish the book,” he is challenged. It isn’t a lie, but how does this guy even know?1 “And only proportional to the sales. I’ll pay you regardless. In fact,” Taemin points. “I want you to write these books especially for me. My eyes only.”

So that’s it? Jonghyun wonders. Just a rich kid feeding his own kinks? He scoffs and rakes through his hair, sitting down at his desk to think.

He decides to consider it, because yes, he needs the money. Yes, he wants to stop living in fear of sleeping hungry. Yes, he doesn’t want to be destitute at the age of thirty-one, before he’s even had a real relationship, let alone marry and have kids.

But can he really uphold his end of a deal like that? Can he really write what this guy is expecting him to write?

“I’m not good at… at sexy things,” he finally declares, motioning with his hands as if to show they were empty. “I have to work very hard at it. I can’t do it the way the rest of the authors do, and—” he sighs, remembering the way crazed readers had flocked to everyone else’s tables. Remembering his sales numbers, and the words of the manager of the obscure bookstore as he complained about having to lug all the unsold copies back into storage.

Trash, he’d called them.

“Really, I’m not even sure why you came to me, when someone like… I don’t know. Eonsook? She’s the better choice, clearly.”

Taemin walks closer, his lips pursed like he is thinking of a convincing argument. Maybe he is, from the way his eyes are so focused and bright. There is an unbreakable determination in his every movement. He crouches in front of Jonghyun, sighing as he looks up.

“Your first book,” he begins. “A story about a man with a delusion. That he is in love with a woman. They fight, then they grow close together. And then, the man is cured through therapy. But,” he clicks his fingers. “His delusion has been passed to the woman. Brilliant idea,” he compliments. “Excellent writing. And yeah, sure, the sex stuff left a lot to be desired but…” he shrugs. “I liked the story. I liked that there was more to look forward to than just two people going at it. And you wrote to tell us that story, not to satisfy my needs, I could see that,” he assures. “So why not do more of that?”

Jonghyun gives a soft laugh despite himself. “Because that book sold less than a hundred copies. And the feedback was dismal—”

“Fuck the feedback,” Taemin shakes his head, a frown creasing his features. He looks young; too young to be involved in disreputable matters like this. Or… maybe at the perfect age to waste his time on such prurient endeavours. “Fuck what any of them think. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“And you do?” Jonghyun doesn’t mean to be so standoffish but he cannot help it. Here is a stranger, coming out of nowhere, to validate him and say nice things about his pathetic attempts at writing. Here is someone trying to convince him that sales don’t matter, popularity doesn’t matter, even the adoration of the readers doesn’t matter. Then what does? Jonghyun confronts with a scowl. What does this guy know?

Taemin chuckles. “All I know is this. I like everything you write.”

------

“This world is built on supply and demand,” Taemin explains.

He’s still here, hours later. By Jonghyun’s benevolence, of course. They are sitting on the floor, a laptop with a blank word document between them. The cursor is blinking… blinking incessantly. It taunts with each flicker.

Tell your story, Taemin said to him. Tell your story. Write it all down. Whatever you’re thinking of. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as your put it down in words.

Easy to say. Because try as he might, he doesn’t know where to start. He doesn’t even have the shadow of a beginning, forget the middle and the end. There is no story in his mind, no words waiting at his fingertips.

This is a waste of time.

Taemin continues regardless. “The readers of this kind of stuff... their lives are filled with disappointment. With reality. They want the impossible: sultry encounters, beautiful getaways, improbable scenarios. You see?” he signals like his words are shedding light on abstruse philosophical concepts. “They want what they can’t have. And writers like Eonsook understand that. They supply that demand. That's why she’s always making bestsellers.”

Jonghyun considers this for a moment, seeing some truth in those claims. He takes a look around his own apartment, eyes roving over the small desk and small sofa and small kitchen. It is a liveable space, he reckons. It is better than a half-basement, or a slum with toxic asbestos roofing and poor access. But he is aware that in the bigger picture, he is still poor. He is confined. He is restricted. He is at the bottom of a heavy and insurmountable hill.

Disaffection comes easily to people like him. And short of being on the wrong side of the law, there is only one way to be at ease with his circumstances.

To pretend.

“But you? You fuck everything up,” Taemin carries on, amusement in his features. “You take that supply-demand model and turn it on its head. You say, I decide what I'll write. I decide what I produce. This is my art, not my bread. This is more than a paycheck for me. This is more than a popularity contest for me. That's what I see you think, and…” he shakes his head, chuckling as he reclines on his palms. “I gotta say, I find that really ballsy.”

A small balloon of pride inflates Jonghyun’s chest at the words, to his own surprise. He shifts and clears his throat. “Th-that’s all well and fine, but… but it doesn’t help that no one will read my stories.”

“Tell me something,” the other contests. “Why did you start writing in the first place? And—” he holds up a finger between them. “Don’t tell me it’s for the money. You could do anything and earn money. Why this specifically?”

“W-well, because… because what else am I going to do with a major in—?”

“No,” another shake of the head stops him. “No. Don’t answer from up here,” Taemin taps his temple. “This isn’t about rationality. This is about how you feel. About why you feel that way. Give me the answer in here,” he reaches forward and pokes a finger into the centre of Jonghyun’s chest.

He stares at the perfectly shaped fingernail, at the faint pink that dissipates into flesh below the joint. Why does he write? What compels him to scribble on stray pieces of paper? What makes him put his thoughts down on phone notes? What is it that surges in his chest when he’s in the shower, when he’s about to go to sleep, when he’s listening to a beautifully sad song for the first time? What makes him write?

“I… I have a lot to say,” he concludes. It feels like an admission of guilt—freeing. Splitting the restraints he’d been struggling against for… perhaps, years. It is like a large weight has come off his shoulders and now he can stand up straight. Now he can float off the ground. Now he can fly. He sighs and closes his eyes. “I have a lot to say. About… everything. And I—” he shakes his head, looks up from the finger, glances at the blank screen, turns his attention to the face of someone who is listening. Someone who is here and who does not appear to be in any hurry to leave.

“I really want someone to listen.”

With a pleased smirk, Taemin tilts his head and nods. “So start talking.”

------

He wonders what sounds he would hear, if he were up on the moon.

Would he hear the distant roll of waves? The rushing and ebbing of tides, their froth effervescent in the shell of his ears, their folding and retreating as sharp as the feeling of sand between his toes. Would he hear the occasional beep of a passing space shuttle? Would he see the face of another human in the window of the craft as it zooms past, their hands mirroring a wave and their faces reflecting each other's smiles?

What would he hear in that vacuum?

Would he hear the patter of his heartbeat, like water dribbling off a tin roof to roll along the eaves and fall against leaves, touch the ground, seep into the earth and become lost? Would he hear it speeding and softening like the tides, waxing and waning like the moon, repeating itself over and over, spinning like the earth does, like the stars do, like this universe does? Or would he feel an urgency in his lungs, the frenzy to drink in as much breath as he could, to gather as much oxygen in each inhale and retain it until his sight shook and his hearing went dissonant and he realised that he could hear nothing on the moon?

Nothing?

Maybe it would be hope. Maybe he would hear the sound of unfiltered sunlight hitting his skin. Maybe he would hear the whisper of a solar wind playing with his hair. Maybe he would hear his smile, his happiness, his joy even in solitude like that. Maybe he would hear something like that. Maybe it would be melodious to his ears, maybe he would dance to it, on the ashen rigoleth, the dead and cracked surface of the moon. Maybe he would float from crater to crater and find himself repeating circles, large ellipses that never ended. No beginning and no end. Maybe he would hear the most perfect sounds that ever existed. Maybe he would hear the sonorous representation of heaven.

Maybe the moon is full of music.

------

Jonghyun stretches his arms and arches his back, rolling his neck tiredly. The light outside his windows has dimmed by a large degree. The sun has gone down hours ago, without his noticing. He blinks and feels around himself to reach for a light switch. An afterimage of the laptop screen remains in his vision for a while as he stands on complaining legs and ankles. A grumble in his stomach alerts him of the time. Dinner time.

“Taemin ssi…?” he calls out, rubbing his eyes. “Taemin—”

It takes him a moment to realise he is alone. “Eh?” he scratches his cheek, trying to recall the sound of the door opening and shutting. He can’t tell how long it has been since the other left. There are no traces of his visit, no discarded teacups, no dirty plates with crumbs, nothing. He checks the bedroom, the bathroom, just to be sure. But it’s true: he has been a bad host.

Jonghyun really has been doing nothing but writing.

Searching for his phone to type out an apology, he realises belatedly that he doesn’t have a contact saved under “Lee Taemin.” With a repentant pout, he hums to himself. Next time, he promises himself. I’ll make it up to him next time.

When he’s settled down in front of his laptop again, this time with a steaming bowl of kal-guksu, he makes a choked sound at how much he has typed. Scrolling through page upon page of a very coherent-looking storyline, a reverberating surprise runs its course through him. Did he really do all this? Was that guy really serious about all that stuff? Has his inspiration finally returned to him, after all this time, all these years?

A muse… he feels the hint of a smile playing under his cheeks. He has a muse.

“That… isn’t that something imaginary?” Minho asks him when he excitedly gushes about the encounter. “Like, something that old men used to think up so they could make paintings and all that?”

“You’re just looking for an excuse to call me old,” Jonghyun dismisses. They’re lying on Minho’s carpet, listening to music. The sun is streaming through tall slider doors, and the usual sound of traffic is absent on a Sunday morning like this. Even the shadows look blue, their hue fluid and sparkling like light bouncing off of water. He feels calm, he feels like he is cradled in a hammock. As they relax side-by-side and read off their phones, there is a plot swirling in the back of Jonghyun’s mind. It buzzes and stirs, waiting to break out and lay itself down in orderly lines and sentences. He nurses it, pets its back, scratches it between its ears. He gives it a name.

But it can wait.

“Look at this,” he scrolls through a namuwiki article on the Muses, holding it out for the other to see. “It says this famous novelist from America calls his bowling trophy a muse. Wah…! He’s written so many famous books!”

“He’s old, too,” Minho snorts before he’s swatted at by an annoyed Jonghyun. “OK, OK!” he defends. “OK. I get it. You have a muse. So, is she hot?” he grins and rolls onto his elbows, a happy glimmer in his large eyes. “Does she pose for you? Do you get to take her on dates? How does it work?”

“It’s a guy,” Jonghyun frowns.

“Really?” Minho hums, the slightest disenchantment pulling at his lips. “But it says here that muses are supposed to be beautiful women. Look,” he wrests the phone away from his friend and goes to the image section of the article.

His point is proven by several old and colourful depictions of elegantly posed women, loose garments draped over their voluptuous fronts. There is no hint of an awkward lanky male form in dark and brooding clothes that blend him into his bleak surroundings. The women’s expressions are calm and filled with wisdom, unlike Taemin’s youthful fervour. The only feature that is barely reminiscent of the young man are the dark, mystical eyes.

Something inside Jonghyun grows uneasy.

“I mean…” he shrugs, hoping to give an explanation. He doesn’t have one, not at that moment. He doesn’t know how to defend his experience. All he knows is a name, some very sound advice, and the promise of money… money he hasn’t yet received, mind. He realises he is dealing with a stranger, after all. That if he isn’t careful, his prefatory suspicions of Taemin being a dangerous guy might still come true.

“Look, why don’t I introduce the two of you when he visits again?” he offers as justification, trying to push the issue aside. “You’ll like him, he’s got an... entertaining sort of personality, you’ll see—”

“I have a better idea,” Minho rejects the response. “Why don’t you just let me read one of your books, eh? I searched for your name and nothing comes up, you know? Are you really getting published at all? Or are they just taking you for a ride and stealing your work—?”

“Let’s just,” Jonghyun holds his hands up between them. He feels alarmed at the turn their conversation has taken. “Look. Let’s talk about this later, OK?”

“Hyung…” Minho makes an exasperated face, but he’s a good friend. His words are rooted in concern. He slowly settles back onto the floor, giving up on his argument, intertwining their legs. The soothing sounds from his music system take over once again.

What remains is Jonghyun’s fear of losing a dear friend.

------

“Who are you, really?” he shoots his misgivings the first chance he gets.

It has been many weeks since their last meeting. He has been progressively furthering the new book, or whatever it turns out to be in the end. What first sat as an idea in his scribbled notes has grown tall and strong. He now has chapters, and multiple plotlines that diverge from and converge on each other. He has dialogues, he has beats, he has imagery, he has descriptions. He has woven all the ends to make one whole, one complete mass, one continuous flow. Things are coming together, and Jonghyun is amazed at his own progress.

But his gratitude doesn’t dilute his distrust.

As soon as he barges into the apartment, Taemin demands to read through whatever there is so far. For a long time, he sits reposed on the sofa: silent for once, interest wavering only when he is addressed.

“Huh?”

“Are you just some rich chaebol kid looking to spend his dad’s money? Is this… just fun for you?” Jonghyun expounds on the interrogation. There is some insecurity in his tone, some residual lack of confidence from previous encounters that have left him wounded. Even he can tell. But he continues, unabashed in his self-preservation. “All this… this muse stuff. What’s in it for you?”

“I told you,” Taemin offers an apathetic shrug. “I like your writing.”

“I thought you like books with lots of sex,” Jonghyun frowns and counters, pointing at the tablet in the other’s hold. “I don’t have any of that in there.”

“Are you planning on keeping it that way?”

“Well, I wasn’t really going to, but—wait, no, listen to me,” he is nearly distracted, and the momentary look of triumph on Taemin’s face leaves him flustered. “I need to know who you are. I need to know why you’re doing this, and I need to know now,” he places his ultimatum. “Or I’m not writing another word.”

Taemin sits up and releases a slow exhale. His gaze is amused. It roves over his host, appraising him like a teacher would a child on his first day of school.

“What if I don’t tell you?” he posits. It’s not a challenge. His tone is chatty, conversational. As if he’s asking, what if cars could fly. He leans forward and smiles that magician smile again. “What will it change, if you know? Is it going to fix your life? Is it going to rid you of all your problems? Is the world going to make sense?” he motions with his hands. “Of course not. So why do you want to know?”

“Because—!” Jonghyun wants to say it will sate his curiosity, but he can’t admit that. Something about that feels like a confession. He can’t speak his mind like that.

“Look, I like that you’re curious,” Taemin reads his mind anyway, still smiling. “I like that you want to learn about things you don’t understand. I think that’s important for a writer. But I think what’s more important is figuring out what the real question is.”

He blinks with confusion. “The real question…?” he shakes his head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re writing this thing,” the other waves the tablet. “And you’ve advanced really far into the storyline. Things are getting exciting, characters are finally starting to become full people I can be invested in. I can’t put this book down even if the house was burning,” he compliments. “But there’s something missing. And I can’t tell what it is, except that it exists. In there,” another poke into Jonghyun’s ribcage. “Maybe the question you should be asking then, is what is missing? What else do you need? What else is there for you to find?”

A clearing of the throat, a shift of the seat. Jonghyun won’t acknowledge it, but the words resonate with him.

Missing. Something is missing. Something needs to be found. Something is waiting to be discovered. Something that he requires to complete this story… or maybe complete himself. Something that once sat in an empty slot in his chest must be recovered. He doesn’t mean for the thought to be so profound. But it is that very same profoundness that makes him believe it’s probably true. Something is missing inside him. Something is missing from his life. Something is missing from his world. And he needs to find it.

“Will you help me look?” he entreats his muse.

A magnanimous stretch of the arms replies. “It’s what I’m here for,” Taemin grins and falls back onto the cushions, continuing to read.

------

They stand outside the apartment block and Jonghyun is still not sure about this.

“Look, I really don’t think—” he starts to beseech, but Taemin silences him with a wave of his hand. He clicks on one of the call buttons and a ring starts to go, only raising the panic in Jonghyun’s gut.

“Just meet with her,” the other persuades, rational as always.

When someone answers on the other side of the line, it’s as if his entire body freezes until he is nudged. “U-uhh… yes. M-my name is uh… I mean. That is—”

“Is this a prank call?” the woman asks with anger in her voice.

Another nudge shakes his senses up. “N-no…!” Jonghyun insists. “Uhm, we—you and I. We work for the same company. M-miss Eonsook.”

A long pause. Some rustling of cloth. Some whispered conversation in the background. Then the woman’s voice returns. “OK, come on up,” she finally acquiesces before a loud buzz swings the front door open.

“Go!” Taemin hisses at him, grinning wide under the dark sunglasses that have become his signature.

The building isn’t much different from Jonghyun’s own apartment block, but there is something lighter about everything. It feels… nicer. There are planters with pretty flowers along the corridor. The lifts are clean and fully functional. The walls are devoid of posters and advertisements. TV sets can be heard outside some of the doors, as can the whistle of pressure cookers and the nagging of mothers. The atmosphere is homely, welcoming. He doesn’t feel like he’s intruding on anything, so he continues to walk in confidently.

He reads the numbers on each unit as he passes by, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings and wishing Taemin were accompanying him.

When he’s at the door he was looking for, he rings the bell and waits.

The woman who answers him is somewhat recognizable. He remembers seeing the straight jet-black hair, the round jaw, the parrot-hooked nose, the no-nonsense stare. Even if he has never before glimpsed her puffy lips or heard her soft voice, he remembers her from the fan-meeting—and possibly from other occasions, when they bumped into each other at the publication office.

Nobody can tell she is one of the most popular writers in the country.

“Ah, hello,” he bows low and his sunglasses slip off his face to clatter to the ground. He scrambles to put them back on, but simply pockets the disguise when he notices the turn in her mouth. “M-my name is—”

“You must be the person who writes as Grapefruit,” she guesses correctly. Her diction holds a soft lisp. Barely there, unlike Minho’s often baby-like pronunciations. He blushes and nods at the floor in response to the question.

“Come in,” she invites him, the grille door swinging outwards.

Other than the ordinary-looking furnishings, her home is full of photos. As he pulls the surgical mask to his chin and wanders through the apartment, Jonghyun cannot help but study them all, turn by careful turn. All over the walls she has displayed pictures of herself, her family, her friends, and another woman. A sister, he guesses at first, before correcting himself when his eyes go to a shockingly intimate polaroid.

He doesn’t realize he is staring until he hears his host pointedly clear her throat.

“Some juice?” Eonsook offers the glass on a tray. He accepts and stands awkwardly for a few minutes, shifting from foot to foot.

“Y-you have a very nice place—” he begins.

“So,” Eonsook cuts him off, showing him a seat. “How can I help?”

“H-help?” he blinks, his thoughts clouded.

She raises her eyebrows, wets her lips, digs her teeth into the lower one. “It’s a polite way of asking why you’re here,” she clarifies. He can tell there is laughter waiting to bounce out of her throat. In everything she does, there is an underlying strain of confidence. She exudes it in waves that come off her and lap at his own chest, nearly pushing him back with their force.

“R-right! Yes, of course,” he jumbles with the glass in his hold, looking around for a moment before accepting the proffered seat. “I—I came to ask you for… for advice.”

She follows his example and sinks into an armchair, crossing her legs and watching him for a moment. A long and entertained moment. “Oh?”

“Y-yes…” he insists. “You see. I’m—I’m currently working on this book, and. And I’m at this part that I need to research before I write it. So…”

“What kind of part?” her interest is immediate.

He tries to think of a way to describe it, nervously scratching the back of his neck and fumbling with the collar of his tee shirt. He feels unreasonably nervous, cognizant of the sweat beginning to stream down his back. “W-well…” he tries.

“Is it a sexy part?” she asks.

“N-not really.”

“Hmm, I guessed as much,” she leans back into her chair. “I’ve read your work. You’re not much of an erotic writer, are you, Grapefruit ssi?” she sums him up with narrowed eyes. And yet, there isn’t any sign of malice in her observation. He glance is approving, in fact. Admiring. “Your stories are very different. Emotional. They’re for a very… cerebral audience. Is that always your intent?” she asks with some fascination in her gaze.

He blinks up at the ceiling, thinking of a genuine answer, not wanting to disappoint her for some nameless reason.

“No,” he concedes after a while. “I think it’s just… because of the kind of person I am. I think it requires me falling in love first before… before my characters fall in love.” He runs a finger over the rim of his condensate-covered glass, nodding contemplatively for a moment. “W-what about you?” he asks. “What is your intent? When you write, I mean.”

She hums, crossing her arms across her front. “Intent…” she hisses a breath in. “There doesn’t always have to be one, you know?” she says conversationally. “Like you said, we can feel very strongly about something, and then write about it. Tell a story around it. I think that’s possible,” she accepts. And when she smiles, he feels an odd sense of solidarity with her.

“What… what does Eonsook ssi feel strongly about?”

The woman smirks. “You were staring at her just now,” comes the simply reply. Accompanying it is the smooth motion of a hand coming up to support her chin, a ring glinting on its third finger.

Jonghyun bumbles an apology.

“There is nothing else I feel as strongly about,” she reveals. “There is no one I love as much, no one I care about as much, no one who matters to me as much. And so,” she holds out a hand between them. “I write about her. About us. I suppose…” she finishes with a grin, a clever gleam nestled in her eyes. “I suppose you can say she’s my muse.”

“A muse…!” Jonghyun’s heart runs on a treadmill at the words. “Do you think…” he begins, shifting forward in his seat. She mirrors the movement. “Do you think you could teach me? How you find the courage to tell your stories?” he requests.

“Courage?” Eonsook chuckles. “It doesn’t take courage to make people happy, Grapefruit ssi,” she shakes her head. “Because that is what we do. We ultimately make people happy with our work. They read it, they smile, they feel good. Maybe they forget about it after some time. Maybe some of it stays with them for years. Who knows?” she shrugs. “As long as we get them to smile.”

He feels awe at that. “As long as they smile…” he nods again, this time in understanding.

------

With every jump of his hips, he is filled with a murder of crows that flutter to the far edges of his body—to the villages settled in his fingertips and the townships developed in his toenails. With every jump of his hips the leaves inside him quiver from the force, as birds take to the skies between his stomach and lungs.

When they travel, when they journey through him, his sighs tell the tale of that journey. They sing like bards, reciting how the crows travel carrying messages tied to their feet. The sighs paint pictures of beaks pecking at his outer edges, his boundaries, his geographical territories. With every jump of his hips he is breaking those boundaries, violating the treaties that hold those borders sacred. With every jump, he is less self-contained, less of an uncontested dominion.

He secedes. He surrenders his independence. He lets himself be taken captive by the thrum of the man below him. Inside him.

With every jump of his hips, he abdicates the throne of his identity. He makes the other king. Gives his crown to another head. And the crows carry news of this shift in power to all the lands that were once under his reign. They carry the news, propelled by the sighs, released at every breath, every hitch, every gasp. Every jump.

In his own kingdom, he is now a pauper.

To have meaning, to be defined by a name and description—all this no longer applies to him. The other man has changed his definition. The other man has made him… not him. But if he is not himself, who is he? If he is not who he was born as, if he is no longer the man he introduced himself as, who is he? What is his name, now? What can he call himself? How will he present himself to strangers, if he is a stranger to his own self? If he looked himself up online, what would the results be? Would they just become strange unreadable symbols?

If he is not himself, then he does not exist: or, at least… this is what he has always thought to be true.

But now his hips jump, and his voice breaks, and he calls out a name that doesn’t belong to him. With every jump, he becomes a blurry existence.

------

They grow close, Eonsook and Jonghyun. They become friends.

She talks to him often, sometimes on the phone, other times over dinner. On a second visit to her apartment, he learns the other woman from the photos is Gwiboon, who talks a mile a minute and laughs like an erupting volcano. The two of them accept Jonghyun like he has always belonged in their life, always had a place in their home and their hearts. They are kind to him. They are kinder than most others have been.

Perhaps because there is nothing to hide from them. He doesn't have to lie about what he does for a living, doesn't have to make up stories about how he spends his free time. He doesn't have to shut his doors and draw his curtains with them. There is nothing to be ashamed of, in their company.

It's freeing.

Jonghyun continues to write, faster and longer than ever before. He writes like he breathes. He enjoys how uninhibited it makes him feel. He finds himself feeling more and more confident about this story, even going back to the rejected manuscript and making edits with a red marker. He meets Taemin at a café and spends most of the time scribbling in a notepad as they hide from other patrons in a corner booth.

With every page he writes, a mass of pride grows in his ribcage.

“So, what now?” Taemin asks him one afternoon, having finished the latest draft and giving it his seal of approval. “Where does the story go from here?”

“Hmm...” Jonghyun nurses a cup of coffee. It is early in the morning. He has been organising his books and wardrobe and even his thoughts while the other read. He has been carefully making his way through all that needs to be settled—in his writing and outside it.

“I could write some more about the way the characters feel. You know, build more plot buffer. Or,” he gives half a shrug. “I could. Resolve it in a certain way.”

“A certain way,” Taemin raises an eyebrow. “What way?”

“Well. They could. I don't know. Fall in love, and—” the other is vehemently shaking his head before Jonghyun even finishes his sentence. “What? Why not?!”

“Too forced,” Taemin disapproves. “It would just be pandering to your readers, when the story doesn’t naturally flow that way. Consider everything that’s happened. There is no justification for them falling in love. All they've done is meet a few times and exchange... banter.”

“Sometimes that's enough!” Jonghyun defends, then softens. “Is... is it not?”

“You tell me.”

“No, you tell me!” Jonghyun insists. “Is it not enough for them to know each other? To enjoy the company? To... to feel comfortable with each other? That should be enough sometimes, right? Wouldn't that be enough for you?”

“Is that the real question—?”

“Yes! Yes, it is!” Jonghyun shouts, and as he does, he is painfully aware of the fact that this is not how he had planned for this conversation to ensue. He is conscious of the fact that he has made it a confrontation rather than keeping it within the bounds of an emotional exchange. There is a feeling of being put under an unannounced spotlight, its glare harsh against his face. He breathes hard, gripping the edge of the kitchen counter before him, doubling over in preparation for the rest of his episode.

“Yes, it is,” he repeats in a quieter, gentler tone. When he straightens up, he stares at the other with pleading eyes.

“What am I to you?” he repeats with some desperation.

Taemin looks satisfied at the question, like he has been waiting a long time for it to emerge. He remains relaxed despite the friction, despite the anxiety in his host. He continues to smile like an illusionist, continues to watch like a judge. “Before I answer that,” he begins in a calm, collected voice. “And I will answer it. But before I do, I need to you to tell me first: what am I to you?”

The reaction enrages him. “No,” Jonghyun warns. “No. Enough games. Enough running around in circles. You’re never honest with me. You only talk about this… this shit!” he angrily motions at the tablet the other had been reading from. “You can’t avoid this anymore. You have to answer me now.” He holds a hand up between them and counts. “Who are you? Why are you helping me? What do I mean to you?”

“Hmm,” Taemin rocks back and forth. “You really want me to tell you?”

Jonghyun makes wide, aggravated motions. “Who else will—?!”

“You want me,” Taemin clarifies. “To tell you. Who I am,” he raises his eyebrows. “You really don’t know? Have you really not known? All this time?”

“That’s why I’m asking—!”

“No, you’re not,” the protest is cut off. “You’re asking because other people are asking: what does he do in there all day, who is he with, who is this muse he’s talking about all of a sudden. You’re asking because you need to give them an answer. An answer that isn’t really the answer,” the corner of Taemin’s lip turns up. “Isn’t it?”

“Wh-what…?” Jonghyun shakes his head, the hair on his arms standing on end.

Taemin skips off his stool, meanders around the counter, advances on him.

Jonghyun’s breath sounds like an elasticized gong. His inhales are like rubber bands, stretching on for hours and hours. He is buzzing, like he sits inside something alive. Inside a heart and the lights decorating Namdaemun at night are made of lamps that glow soft and warm as if someone is holding him in an embrace and showering him with solace while their eyes are speaking to him in a different tongue in a speech of a foreign land where jinn live and grant wishes and there is nothing to see for miles except murders of crows carrying messages on their feet telling the world that the empire has fallen the world is coming to an end and the—

------

Mapo bridge.

It talks to him. It asks how he is, if he’s eaten yet. It tells him to turn his head up and look at the blue sky once. It tells him it loves him. It tells him that the brightest moments in his life are yet to come.

Jonghyun cries hard enough that his body shakes from the force. Minho stands very close, looking worried and reaching out for a hug. But he is told to wait. Not yet. He is told to wait, Jonghyun will need him soon.

Words are everything he is. Words are his life and soul. His bone and sinew. His drifting days and sleepless nights. Words have created him, penned him down—not the other way around. They have built him up, bound his loose pages and given him a spine. They have made him Kim Jonghyun. They have made him a writer, a poet, an artist. They have made him what he is. And he would never have realised this, were it not for Taemin.

Were it not for himself.

“I write for myself,” he claims to the sad and bloated waters of the Han, knowing the other is listening. Somewhere. From within the crevasses of his mind, Taemin is listening. “I write for myself.” It is a heavy claim to make. It is heavy as lead. It is tied to Jonghyun's feet as he trains to run his ink across a coastline. The claim is heavy enough to need lugging around on his hipbone. It is heavy, it is full. Like an earthen pot spilling its contents.

His face is drenched when he speaks those hefty words, when he acknowledges them. He sobs and his fingers tighten on the rails of the bridge, the place he would often visit when he felt sad and alone. But he isn’t alone. Minho is here for him. Eonsook and Gwiboon wait in a car nearby. And Taemin.

Taemin exists in the beats of his pulse.

Behind him, traffic swishes past. In front of him, the river hushes his crying. “I write for myself,” he lets go of the full pot and watches it splash, watches its shards rock a little on the ground, after they've separated from the whole.

많이 힘들었구나

He touches the words of the bridge and nearly answers out loud. He nearly says yes. Yes. It was tiring. It was terrifyingly easy to give up on my dreams. He rocks a little in place and finally Minho gathers him into a tight hold, stroking circles on his back.

It was awful, Jonghyun wants to say. But I found him. I found myself. I found contentment. I found it. And now I can walk away from you saying yes. Yes, it was tiring. It was hard. But now my breath comes easily. My heart beats easily. My life runs easily. I am alive. I am free. I am happy.

I love myself.

#jongtae #long fic #shinee

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tomhollandish · 5 years ago

Text

Always Like This

A/N: After maybe two years of never writing anything, I’m back for @pparkerwrites writing challenge! This is my magnum opus, clocking in at 14k, and it’s inspired by Studio Ghibli’s Whisper of the Heart, The Louvre by Lourde, the prompt “I wish we could stay like this forever”, and my own anxiety about finishing college and growing older.

Summary: As you begin wrapping up your final year in college, you have some wishes, fears and regrets. This is the story of how you overcame all of them, with a little help from your friends. Platonic!Avengers x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, mentions of past Bruce Banner x Reader and Quentin Beck x Reader (Yeah, I know,)

Warnings: Cursing, Mentions of (public) sex, and the reader being an anxious wreck

Word count: 14k (my bad)

* * * *

There is a tap once, twice, three times against the plastic cubicle, but your attention is elsewhere. As you breathe heavily, you can still see the black and white pages of your latest research endeavor printed underneath your eyelids. You swim in the words, trying to pick out what you can even comprehend when the rapping becomes less gentle.

“’Tis some visitor,” you recited, mumbling out the lines of a poem you’d once memorized. “Rapping at my chamber door.”

“It’s campus police,” the visitor said, and you fumbled to sit up properly. The harsh florescent lights made your eyes bleed, and the ugly khaki uniform of the man hovering over you was just as terrible a sight.

“Fuck,” you cursed, and then upon realizing that you just cursed in front of an officer (a glorified security worker, but you weren’t about to take pot shots right now), you covered your mouth. “I’m sorry, I just–”

“I just need your ID.” He smiled politely and you squirmed under the gesture.

“Right.”

You found it wholly ridiculous that this man was carding you in your campus library at—what time was it? —three in the morning as if you could be anyone other than a student. No sane person would be doing this without reason, and even so your reasons were wearing incredibly thin as your shitty bachelor’s degree grew closer into your clutches.

A bachelor’s degree in English? What will you even do with that?

Doesn’t matter what it’s in. It just matters that I’ve got it.

You didn’t want to spend four years doing something you hated. (With your bullshit Liberal Arts Program, it was really only two years of English, but who was counting?) You thought it would be easy to just pick up some desk jobs that would pay the bills once you graduated. But then you decided to grow noble and have an ambition and things rapidly changed.

The officer handed your card back to you. His eyes flitted over to the mess of a work station you had, before giving a pitying smile. “Long night huh? Haven’t seen you stay here this late in a while.”

Goosebumps ran up your arm. You tried to play it cool, painting on a smile as you wracked your brain for familiarity. “I’m sorry, have we met before?”

“No, not really. I’ve been working this shift for maybe two years, and you’re on this floor a lot at night. I just, uh, remember you.”

“Uh,” you blinked, unable to answer. The odds of this guy remembering you were like, twenty thousand to one. And while you were a regular patron of the third floor (it is the film section after all) it seemed unlikely that someone could pick out your face.

The guard seemed to understand that he’d stumped you, so he scratched the back of his neck sheepishly and moved on. Still stunned, you stared back at the pile of books across the table and groaned at the thought of continuing. It was late, and you had class at ten the next morning. The very class you were doing all this work for.

You sighed deeply and pondered whether or not to call it a night—it was only the third week of the fall semester and you were already working like a dog. There was a terrible feeling in your gut that if you didn’t save your energy for later, it would bite you in the ass.

Settling for checking out one last book, you scribbled down its call number and pulled yourself out of the mini cubicle, heading for the stacks. As you made your way you noticed that there were really only a few other people with you, many of them with their heads ducked into textbooks or laptops, engrossed in their own worlds.

The people began to fade away as the rows and rows of books dominated the room. You looked up and down between your notebook as you stomped through sections, passing anatomy, then biology before glancing at American literature. You ducked down one row, fingers grazing every book as you mumbled the call number under your breath, afraid it would escape you.

Finally, you knelt down, wincing as your knees cracked audibly in the quiet library. Sitting on the bottom shelf like it had been waiting on you for eons was the book in question; an innocuously black bound book, the title in plain white letters on the spine. A library reprint. You opened it, just be sure it was the exact copy you were looking for, when you realized something.

Someone had annotated this copy. Your school didn’t charge damages for writing in library books, but this person seemed to have written paragraphs worth of content between margins and on blank pages. It was the kind of analysis that could only belong to someone taking it very seriously; perhaps a fellow film studies major.

But the writing wasn’t mesmerizing because it was insightful, rather, it was because you recognized it. You stomped your way back to your seat with purpose, looking for the other companion novel; a newer, cleaner, bigger book and yet, as you flipped the pages you caught glimpses of the handwriting—legible, but obviously a quick scrawl. The e’s were always connected to the letter after it, and the m’s were hardly definable squiggles, but it was still nice to look at.

As you’d combed your way through these books, you’d found their handwriting more than once. They usually echoed the sentiment you’d been trying to capture, but they had done so first. It had discouraged you at first, thinking yourself a simple copy-cat, but it later comforted you that someone shared your ideals.

It was wishful thinking to wonder about them. Useless and distracting.

You still entertained the thought.

The whole trip back to your dorm, you busied yourself with thoughts of them–their major, if they had graduated already or if they were still here; what if you shared a class with them, or better yet, if you knew them? Your mind filled with romantic possibilities as your body took you through the process of getting you home—a maneuver you could pull in your sleep.

Once at home, you forgot all the formalities of bedtime routines and simply stripped down, crashing straight into bed. Sleep would overcome you in any moment, but in your last fleeting moments of consciousness you dreamed of flipping pages and handwriting.

* * * *

If college were a racket, you’d be fucking rich.

You’ve been at the same shit for nearly two decades, and still you felt like you were the absolute best at it. Sure, you weren’t top of the class (probably not even close) but your professors loved you and other students made the effort to know your name. You weren’t the obnoxious teacher’s pet, nor were you class clown, but people acknowledged your existence, which was honestly more than you could ever ask for.

It was moments like these when you thought twenty thousand a year (all in loans!) might have been worth it; you were talking with your professor—whom you called Kyle with the ease of an old friend—after class about some nonsense that had happened over the weekend, about the movies you had watched recently, and about school.

You felt a strange bittersweetness as he began to talk about your undergraduate thesis again, bringing up all the regalia that your presentations entailed. Maybe he noticed your sudden hesitation at the topic, because he stopped speaking and hummed.

“You’ve already started working on it, haven’t you?” It was a confirmation, but there was still a layer of trepidation to his voice you couldn’t decipher. You nodded, but it didn’t disappear. “You’re far more prepared than the others.”

“I’ve been thinking about this since sophomore year,” you confessed. “It’s nerve wracking, thinking about the presentation, but I like the topic.”

“When you blurted out your thesis during the first meeting, I think everyone wanted to kill you,” he laughed. “But as I’ve gotten to know you, I’m not surprised at all. You always know what you want.”

There was a lull then—a moments hesitation where you wanted to bluntly correct Kyle and tell him that you didn’t actually know what you wanted, but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead you smiled, and took that silence as a good place as any to end the conversation and quickly walk out of the room as the reality of your situation crashed back into you.

Staring at the tiles beneath your feet, you tried not to trip over your own mental leaps. Everything came folding in on itself as you thought of the upcoming semesters like the end of an era; the last of your eighteen years of education. Anxiety crept up your spine like a chill, and you felt yourself gripping your books tighter to keep from shaking.

And them something jammed into your shoulder, hard, the books in your hand spilling all over the floor. You grumbled to yourself, thinking you’d clumsily walked into a wall, but then you heard “Um, hello?”

Fear struck your heart as you turned to face someone: a boy, looking at you with knotted brows and his arms open with the expectation of an apology. Your fear turned to annoyance as you studied details like his tiny, low ponytail, his navy-blue blazer and the copy of The Sound and The Fury clutched in his hand.

You looked back at his face, painted with clear annoyance and spat out a half-assed, “sorry,” topped with a fake smile. His animosity was near palpable as he heel turned and kept walking, leaving you to pick up your things alone. You muttered under your breath angrily.

“Asshole, English Major Prick.”

* * * *

It was ironic to call the boy you’d bumped into earlier an asshole, considering who you spent your time with.

Your Monday/Wednesday afternoon schedule ended with a late as hell lunch with some old friends. Emphasis on old, because you were pretty sure after your major switch you had nothing in common with these men anymore.

“And what I’m telling you,” Tony Stark punctuated with a wave of his hands, “is that there’s no way Beck’s design would even theoretically work, let alone should Dr. “MIT graduate” allow him to continue with this completely doomed to fail idea.” He pointedly took a bite of the (likely now cold) pasta he’d spent ten minutes raving over before spitting it out onto a napkin. “God, what the fuck is up with this cafeteria?”

“Maybe if you would shut up for ten seconds, your food would still be warm.” You never had any clue what the self-proclaimed genius was ever talking about. It was a wonder you considered him a friend still, but even his annoying tendencies couldn’t break the brotherhood you all had from sharing the shittiest dorm on campus freshman year. You felt like you still owed Tony a debt for killing that roach in your shower all those years ago.

“I agree with Y/N, for once.” You side eyed Strange, wondering if there was some sort of punchline, but then he gave a nod of solidarity. “You’ve been complaining about this guy non-stop.”

“Beck is just,” Tony banged his fists on the table, shaking every one of your trays. “So infuriating. Y/N, how did you ever fuck this guy?”

“Stop,” Bruce says, his arms hovering over his drink and other objects that might fall over. “Tony, I’m begging you to let this go.”

“See, even Bruce admits he’d tired of this. Can we move on please?”

“Oh? Tired of me bring up your ex in front of your ex?”

“Tony, knock it off,” Bruce warned, but there was no threat in his voice. Tony dropped the subject, but still looked at you with a mischievous glint in his eye.

“Or do you have any exciting developments in…what is it you do again?”

You threateningly held out your fork towards the engineering major and he flinched. “I’m about to major in murder if you don’t Shut. Up.”

The three science majors stopped their babbling and hurriedly shoveled their food into their mouths. You sighed into your cup of powered lemonade. While you were used to Tony’s jabs, he was right: your future felt inconsequential next to their aspirations. But you would be damned if you let either him or Stephen Strange know that you felt that way.

Bruce laced his fingers together and fidgeted for a moment. You turned to him, and he smiled nervously. “So, how’s your paper coming along?”

There was another awkward pause as you sipped your drink, trying to come up with something impressive or dramatic enough to hold their attention. And then you rolled your eyes at the thought. “Well, I’m at the part of the process where I sit in the library until my mind goes numbingly blank from staring at an empty word document or director interviews or companion books and then I go home and never sleep.” You said honestly. This earned a laugh out of Tony.

“English Majors: They’re just like us!” he joked.

“That fact that you think college majors are equivalent to high school cliques is very telling of your immaturity,” you sneer at Tony. He throws a fake smile at you—not that any of his smiles are ever real.

“Psychoanalyze me all you want, Dickinson,”—his habit of calling you whatever writer came to his mind was also telling— “But the fact is, the three of us are more like each other than we are to you. It’s just facts.”

You looked to Bruce for a moment. Like always, he was on the same wavelength as you—he averted his gaze the moment you two locked eyes. “Be that as it may, we’re still friends somehow.”

“‘Somehow’ being the operative word,” Strange spoke under his breath. You narrowed your eyes at him.

“Not my fault the three of you are giving into society’s capitalist ways and are only in it for the money.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Tony says, dropping his fork in his barely touched food. He purposefully scoots his chair back with a grating noise and you wince at the sound. “Y/N, I can’t handle you when you’re like this.”

You huffed. “Now you know how we feel about you all the time.”

“I’m done with this discussion. Strangelove, Brucey,” he acknowledges his friends by their stupid nickname before rolling out. Strange sighs before following his lead, but Bruce stays put.

“He’s sensitive about that.”

You shrugged. “Then maybe he should try going into a career that helps people instead. No ones making him become a money mongering executive.”

“You know what his dad is like.”

“Yeah, rich.”

Bruce dragged his hands down his face, but there was a chuckle underneath his exasperation. “Your coldness is honestly so incredible. Aren’t writers supposed to be compassionate?”

“I am compassionate,” you stated defensively. And then, more flippantly, “Just not to rich industrialists who steal from the middle class.”

You laughed when Bruce shook his head at you. “You’re unbelievable.”

“So are you,” you said, nudging his shoulder with your own. There was nothing in the gesture, not like there used to be. “I mean, you want to be a nuclear physicist, or whatever. Ain’t nothin in that but prestige and your name on same wall.”

“You know that’s not what I want.” He used that voice, the one you’d become intimately familiar with towards the end of your relationship. “I just want to pursue something I’m passionate about. Isn’t that what you want too?”

The fruit under your fork slid out and rolled across the table. Both of your eyes followed it as it fell out of sight, and then you said nothing. Bruce sighed.

“I didn’t mean too—”

“Yeah you did.”

The buzzing of your phone jolted you two out of the tense moment. You lifted it up, seeing a message from Steve. You felt Bruce’s eyes peering over at your phone.

“You got to go?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll walk you there.”

“No, Tony’s probably waiting for you outside. He’ll just follow both of us if you don’t go with him.”

He pursed his lips, caught between a rock and a hard place. He looked up at you as you prepared to leave.

“I really didn’t mean it.”

“Even if you didn’t, you’re right.” It wasn’t hard to admit anything to Bruce, even after everything. “You’re damn good at it too.”

He tried to swallow back his bashful smile, but there was still a shimmer of it in his eyes. “You’re good at what you do, too.”

“Well, after four years, I’d fucking hope so.”

Bruce laughed through his goodbye, and you reveled in that small victory as you booked it to the art building.

* * * *

Perhaps it’s the creative part of you, but a piece of your heart fully adored that decrepit, godforsaken building. The elevator was broken, the hallways were a rotating gallery of amateur and professional projects, and it always smelled like some sort of chemical, but the building has charm.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Steve stopped in his tracks to look at you when you said that. He’d been guiding you through the labyrinth known as Bauer Hall with a well-trained quickness. He resumed it after the initial shock of your statement wore off. “You’re a real romantic, you know that?”

“I do,” you said, knowing there was no way to defend yourself from such a true statement. “But so are you.”

“There’s only so many things I can romanticize, and I have to say, Bowser Hall ain’t one of them.” You laughed through your nose at the ridiculous nickname. “Besides, I’m all romanced out.”

Steve walked through a room lined with canvases bigger than the both of you. In different corners students painted in different styles, with different elaborative brush strokes that revealed their subjects in a matter of moments. Someone’s music played from a wireless speaker, but you imagined everyone had tuned it out.

Steve lead you to his station, which was currently covered with photos of you. It was embarrassing to see yourself plastered all over his desk, but as you studied to pictures closer, you became enthralled.

“Is it narcissistic to compliment how awesome these looks?” Awesome didn’t even encapsulate the emotion. Not by a long shot. Over the summer Steve had approached you about featuring in his senior art show pieces, and you’d shot preliminary photos. He couldn’t guarantee that he’d paint you given the complexity of his idea (as well as his own perfectionism) but now he was promising that he would paint you.

So, you stared down at the photos, remembering the how he’d climbed onto your roof at night and shined a flashlight taped with blue gels through your window and you tried not to laugh. The fruits of that night where in your fingertips, and you were struck at how much more somber your face looked on a physical photo than it had on the camera that night.

“It’s not narcissistic considering Nat took the photo,” he said, leaning over your shoulder. He rummaged through the stack before he pulled out a specific picture. “I think I’m going with this one.”

“Of course you are,” you poked fun at him, but you actually did like that photo. The light that shined across your eyes was blue, but you were shrouded in a hazy purple. It was a close shot, with your hands framing the expression on your face that was equal parts haunting and beautiful. Steve had been trying to capture those hard-to-explain moments that crossed people’s faces, and yours had been the most agonizing. In his words.

“With most people it takes forever to get the shot. You got it in one.” There was veiled concern in his statement, but you’re a master of words. You drop the photo and step back from it all, looking at Steve.

“Wasn’t hard,” was all you told him. Steve took the photo and tacked it up to a ready to paint canvas.

“I’m thinking about using these two as well.” Steve handed you two other photos of different subjects, only one of which you really know.

“When’d you take this?” You flipped over the photo Sam, his face caught precisely between elation and realization. Steve took it gingerly before sitting back on his stool. You wished he could paint the look of utter longing that plagued his own blue eyes.

“He got the deployment letter that morning,” Steve explained. His voice was low as he talked through the lump in his throat. “I asked him to pose for me, because I knew when I saw his face that I wanted to capture whatever the hell it was I just saw.”

“He’s used to being your guinea pig. I’m sure he liked knowing he’s the inspiration for your project.”

“He’ll probably hold it over my head ‘till I die,” Steve managed a laugh, but it was hollow. The sigh he took afterwards could have cracked his ribs.

“It’ll be a great gift, you know? A huge photo of his favorite thing—himself.” His laugh this time was slightly more genuine. You’d have to take it.

“Who’s this?” You showed Steve the second photo, one of a man whose face was marred with the shadow of blinds, his eyes looking back as if it pained him to. Nat was a wonderful photographer, and Steve had an amazing vision, but you knew Steve well enough to know that whoever this was, the look was all his own.

“Oh, that’s Buck,” he said easily, and you lean forward as a gesture to elaborate. “Bucky, my best friend?”

“Not ringing any bells.”

“Hmm. You probably don’t know him because he was in Prague the semester we became friends.” Steve had been part of your freshman dorm nightmare, but he lived on a different floor than the rest of you. You didn’t get to know him until you realized Nat was a mutual friend.

“Did he spend a whole year there?” You leaned forward and stared at the picture, trying to find any recollection of this guy. “Cause it’s been like, a year since then.”

“No, but he did have an internship when he came back, I’d forgotten about that.”

You dropped the photo, feeling jealousy prickle down your arms. “Wow. Busy guy.”

“He tries to keep himself busy. Otherwise he looks like that all the time.” You understood the implication. You pinned the photos next to each other and contemplated just how Steve was going to recreate them in all their glory. He seemed to have the same thought, because he ran a hand through his hair.

“It really will take me all semester, but I’m excited.” He bounced on his feet. “I think I’ve found my thing.”

“Your thing?”

“Yeah, my niche, I guess,” he shrugged, but his excitement was contagious. “It’s good to be excited about something again.”

“I’m glad you love your project, because it’s going to turn out amazing,” you assured him.

“Thanks. I started Sam’s painting already and it wore me out. I think I’ll start on Buck’s next. Sorry,” he shot you an apologetic grin. “I’m just tired of looking at the same colors.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me for anything,” you said earnestly. “I totally get it. In fact, I think I’ve taken a long enough break on my own work.” You backed away from the blank canvas and glossy photos, feeling claustrophobic all of a sudden. “It’s no masterpiece, but.”

“Hey, your writing is always incredible. I read that paper you wrote about the mis-en-scene of Art Cinema.” He recited with your work with such ease, it made you blush. “You’re really good at writing., Y/N.”

“You remembered.” You tried to laugh off the little swell of pride in your chest. “You’re sweet, Steve, but this is a lot more than a three-page writeup.”

“If it’s yours, it’ll be great. What’s your thesis again?”

“The politics of monster movie horror films.” When you told him, Steve shook his head with a proud grin.

“See? That’s brilliant!”

“It’s been done before—”

“Everything’s been done before. But you haven’t done this. You’re smart, you love movies, and you’re the most well rounded, analytical person I know. You’ve got this.”

You wanted to run back and give him the clingiest hug of your life, but instead you swung bashfully on the doorframe. “Thank you for your support, Steve, but I have to at least write it first.”

He waved you off. “Fine. Go, be great.”

You felt something unidentifiable rise in your stomach as you left, the knot only growing bigger and bigger until you reached the library. You wanted to exhale it out of your chest as you pushed the up button in the elevator, but it stayed stuck in your throat instead. You decided to leave it be as you settled into one of the plastic cubicles on the third floor, your home for the foreseeable future.

* * * *

Anxiety. That had been the feeling.

It gnawed at your stomach and in return you gnawed at your lip, thinking about Steve’s success as an artist and Bruce’s summer spent applying to grad schools. The future was in sight for both of them while yours was blocked by your laptop screen, showing you the three pages you had done out of the twenty you needed.

Angrily, you slammed the computer screen down and shoved it into your bag. The buzzing overhead light made red spots dance in your eyes even when you closed them, so you figured it was time for a break.

And by “break”, you meant spending the fifteen minutes between your apartment and the library trying to reword the sentence that had been bugging you over and over again. You were so out of it that when you opened your apartment door you were in shock of all the people sitting in your living room, despite having seen all their cars parked out in front.

Someone’s greeting went whizzing by you, but it’s only after the door slammed shut did you piece together that it was Pietro. The rest of the group chorused “Hi Y/N” with varying levels of enthusiasm.

“Hey, sorry they’re so loud,” Wanda pulled her cardigan close when she crossed her arms, smiling uncertainly at you. “I won’t have them here too late.”

“Nah, they’re fine,” you brushed off, slipping out of your uncomfortable shoes. You hated the fall—it always encouraged your terrible habit of style over function. “I’m just here for a quick costume change then it’s back to the ol’ grind.”

Normally Wanda would chuckle at your ridiculous phrases, but she creased her brows when she continued talking. “Actually, we were thinking of grabbing some food. Pietro’s bulking, or doing some other stupid diet and Viz thought we could go back to the diner. You know, the one on the corner of 11th?”

Oh, you knew the 11th street diner. It was the premier spot; you’d been there on dates, 21st birthdays, celebrated there after long arduous projects, and gorged on fries after movie marathons with Peter. The sheer mention of the diner was enough to make you swoon, and Wanda was likely exploiting that weakness.

So, when you sighed, her eyes lit up. “I’m sorry,” you said, watching as her shoulders deflated. Your heart broke at the sight. “I have to work on this paper. It’s—”

“Your senior thesis, I know, but. Y/N when was the last time you ate?”

You had the audacity to look defensive. “I ate with Bruce and Tony earlier today.”

“I saw Bruce and I asked him. He said you only ate a bowl of fruit and some lemonade.”

Snitch. “I wasn’t hungry.”

“You need to take a break from your work or you’re going to burn out.”

The sound that came out of your mouth was harsh and condescending. “I’m already a burnout, Wanda. I’ll be fine. Have fun at the diner.” You dodged the rest of her questions by slipping into your room and closing the door. As you hurried into a sweatshirt and old jeans, you heard the gang walk out of the house and leave you in silence. You checked to see if the apartment was empty before grabbing your things and locking up.

You planned on daydreaming the rest of the way back to the library, but the sound of a bicycle following you made your hair stand on end. When you turned to see who it was, you relaxed the grip on your pepper spray.

“Fucking hell, Parker,” you chastised as the teenager as he hopped off his bike and came up to walk beside you. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“You looked like you were going to shank me,” he laughed, falling into stride with you. Regardless of his own destination, Peter would always ditch his own path to walk with you, day or night. The night part was incredibly sweet and chivalrous. “Where are you going anyways?”

“Library,” you said curtly. You were tired of explaining yourself. “You?”

“Came back from MJ’s, I’m heading home.” Peter still lived on campus due to his scholarship, and frankly, you were a little envious. It would be amazing to live seven minutes from the library again.

“How is the new girlfriend?” The smile in your voice made Peter roll his eyes.

“MJ’s fine. She’s in abnormal psych and she hates it because it’s too basic for her.”

“Ugh, yeah I took that class. But it’s a prerec for—”

“Psychopathology,” you two said simultaneously. “She told me.”

“If she wants, she can have my old notes from the class.”

Peter quirked his brow. “You still have them?”

You shrugged. “I keep all my old notebooks.”

“Why?”

The question was simple, but you felt yourself pondering the answer for longer than you’d care to admit. Why did you keep all that old stuff? You never went back and studied any of it, so it was essentially junk. Yet you treasured it like a childhood keepsake.

“I don’t know,” you lied, completely aware that you felt exposed by Peter’s question and embarrassed by the real answer. “I thought they’d come in handy one day. Looks like I was right.”

Peter looked at you, and it struck you how similar the expression was to the one Bruce had given you earlier. When he’d asked you about passion and doing what you wanted.

He seemed to drop the topic, because when he opened his mouth again, he said, “I don’t think she needs it, considering how much she loves that kind of stuff, but thanks for offering.”

You only hum in acknowledgment, spending the rest of your walk together listening to the cars passing by and the soft clicks of Peter’s bike chains; sounds that had plagued you since sophomore year.

After this year, you’d never hear them again.

You bit your lip to keep from sighing. Peter would surely ask you what was wrong, but you couldn’t admit all this to him. He had way too much on his plate, between his honors scholarship, his biochemistry major and his job running the Photo Lab, it was a wonder he even spent time with you.

There was no way to tell Peter you missed him without spilling your guts, and you were too tired and too scared to say it. So instead you made a joke when you parted ways, and spent too much time in your head worrying about what you should’ve said.

And if you’d been paying attention instead, you wouldn’t have bumped into someone for the second time that day. This time the person had spilled all their books, a large stack of hardbacks that scattered in the doorway.

“Oh, shit, I’m so sorry,” you said, not looking them in the eye. You crouched down to help them pick up their books, but when you placed The Essentials of Faulkner into someone’s hand, you looked up.

The blue eyes were soft on yours for a brief moment before recognition sparked in them. The man furrowed his brows before standing to his full height, which towered over you even when you stood too.

“You again,” he said, arrogance still pronounced. The English Major Prick.

Your blood pressure seemed to spike with anger. “Hey, I said I was sorry.”

“I’m mostly just shocked at my odds,” he said. “I must be the unluckiest person in this whole university to get knocked over by the same spaced-out girl twice.”

“One,” you glared, “I didn’t knock you over, my shit fell the first time. Second of all, you could also avoid me, ya know.”

“Oh, so this is my fault?”

“Hey,” a third party cut through your arguing. Someone walked around you two, flicking his middle finger at the both of you. “People have to fucking walk here.”

“Mind your business, asshole!” you whisper-yelled, and at the same time the English Major Prick said “Take a fucking hike, buddy!”

You were about to stare at him, but he was already disappearing into the pitch blackness. You shook off the encounter and headed back up to your regular post on the third floor.

Determined to actually get farther than before, you treaded through the floor stacks, searching up and down for the theory books you needed. One such book you found on your first stop, flipping through the index to find the pages you were looking for. A flash of blue caught your eye, and marked all over the page was the mysterious handwriting, like in the books from before.

“Huh,” you said, wondering what the odds were that you had checked out the exact same books as this person. It was unbelievable, and quite fantastical, if you were honest, but here it was; their handwriting in your hands once again.

“I wonder if I’ll find you, mystery person,” you lamented, before closing the book and carrying on.

* * * *

Weeks passed by in a similar haze: you would spend your days pretending to take notes while in reality you were highlighting sentences in articles, re-wording paragraphs and rearranging structures in your head. Mid-terms came and went, stringing you out even further. Time was unraveling at the seams, only stitching itself together when you needed to know what day it was or where to be.

Everyone around you seemed to be planning for something though; whether it was grad school or lining up jobs, or even something as simple as graduation, their eyes were on some far away prize while you could barely visualize waking up the next day.

Kyle noticed this. “You look awful,” he’d said, after he begged you to stay and talk after class. You rolled your eyes.

“Is that all you wanted?”

“No,” he said pointedly. “But it is concerning. You’ve been working on your paper?”

‘Working’ was both an understatement and a gross misuse. “I’ve been staring at the screen wondering why it doesn’t sound like I know it can.”

“That’s the dilemma of the author,” Kyle chuckled, but you were too numb to respond. “Tell you what. When you come in for your advising,”—he put emphasis on the word because he knew you hadn’t signed up for a time slot yet— “bring your essay and I’ll edit it. Sound fair?”

“You know it’s still a first draft,” you whined, mostly to hide the dread that bubbled in your throat.

“I know, and I expect it to be rough. But I know you’ve been working hard, so let me help you out. Please.” He added the extra please to sweeten the deal, and it had worked. Which is how you ended up outside of his office, contemplating which spot to take when something caught your eye.

It was blue ink, the m’s and n’s nothing but little scribbles, the capitol J hanging well below the line. It was familiar, so familiar that you fumbled around in your backpack for the research book you’d been carrying around with you, the one that held mystery persons notes.

You held up the defaced text, looking between the scrawl on the page and the name written on the line. It was exact match down to the ink, and you gasped in elation.

“I found you,” you whispered, making a squeal of delight. “I actually found you, James Buchanan.” You squinted, reading the name in the slot. Your excitement died down as you tapped your finger to your lips.

The name didn’t ring any bells. You didn’t expect that you would know the mystery writer, but the fact was, you shared an advisor. You pressed your fingers to the name as if it would disappear before your eyes.

“You complicate things,” you told it, as if somehow, they could hear you, feel you. Maybe they could.

“I’m no shrink, but talking to pieces of paper is definitely on the spectrum of insanity.”

His voice couldn’t scare you, even if it was so sudden. An office door closed, and Thor looked at you in amusement. He looked better than you last remembered, considering you hadn’t seen him since he had told his father—the college professor—he was dropping out.

“What are you doing here?” you straightened up, facing him with a beaming smile. He mirrored the expression.

“Talking to dear old dad about some things,” he took a few steps way from what you presumed was his father’s office. “Checking in on Loki.”

“How is the snake these days? Haven’t heard from him since you left.”

“I suppose there really is no reason for Loki to speak to any of you anymore.” Thor side eyed you. “Not that he shouldn’t.”

Thor’s departure had been a curveball in your sitcom-esque life up until that point. He was the connective tissue in your helter-skelter friend group; smart, compassionate and charming, he’d taken all of you out of your fussy shells and made you relax in ways you didn’t even realize you needed to.

And then, just like that, he was written out, and in his absence the void grew and grew until you didn’t feel like friends with anyone anymore.

It hadn’t been Thor’s fault. He’d done it for himself, and you were proud of him. You just wished it didn’t make things so goddamn complicated. So different.

You couldn’t dump that on Thor. “Yeah, well, he’s probably busy freaking out over the LSAT to even remember we exist.”

“God, it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” Thor laughed. “I have all these videos of him cramming and falling asleep on the dinner table. I once picked him up and put him back in bed and Hela filmed the whole thing.”

“Shut up,” you said, a maniacal grin forming on your face. “Odinson, don’t lie to me.”

He wasn’t lying. The two of you laughed loudly in the hallways as you watched Thor lift Loki like he was a little girl into his arms and proceed to walk through their house, Hela snickering behind them. You were bracing yourself against a wall trying not to howl, while Thor held no such qualms about letting his booming laughter fill the silence.

It registered somewhere between your fourth gasp for air and Thor’s winding down laughter that someone had opened a door. And then, in a low, pointed voice they said, “Hey, people are trying to study in this lounge.”

You tried to hold back your laughter, but Thor’s insistent giggling kept a smile on your face. “Sorry,” you said behind your hand. “We didn’t realize—”

The smile slipped off your face when you looked up, seeing the angry pout of the English Major Prick staring back at you. His eyes glanced between you and Thor, leaned cozily up against a wall and laughing at something private. Embarrassment coiled in your stomach.

“Didn’t realize the lounge was right there. Sorry.” You averted your eyes. Thor had stopped laughing at this point, turning to you with an expectant look. You nodded and waved goodbye, noting the look he gave the English Major Prick as he walked past him.

And then he turned his accusatory stare back to you. “Was that Thor Odinson?”

“Yeah?”

“I thought he dropped out.”

“So what if he did?”

“What’s he doing hanging around the English department?”

You crossed your arms. “His father is a professor here, smartass.”

“Oh.” All his malice seeped out as his shoulders deflated. The two of you stood awkwardly facing one another. It had been a long time since you’d bumped into him that day (twice), but you’d started to see his face everywhere. Out of the corner of your eye in the stairwell or sitting on a table in the school café you’d catch brunette hair and distant, sad eyes.

They were never that way when he looked at you. It was probably the anger.

“Read any Faulkner, lately?”

You wanted to fucking die. It was lame as hell, but he didn’t seem like he was leaving anytime soon and you just had to break this tense air.

“What?”

“Every time I see you, you’re reading Faulkner.”

He looked away for a moment and you banged your head against the wall when. You muttered stupidstupidstupid to yourself while he chuckled.

“You’re paying too much attention to me, mystery girl.”

The nickname made you perk up you head. “Mystery girl?”

It was his turn to look embarrassed. “Uh, yeah,” he stammered. “That’s what I’ve been calling you in my head.”

He seemed to realize what he’d said too late. You sucked in a breath to calm down the nerves that felt like they were frying all over your body. “You think about me, huh?” It didn’t sound cheeky like you wanted it to—it sounded almost hopeful.

“You left quite an impression on me. Literally, my shoulder is bruised.”

You hummed. “Better than what I’ve been calling you in my head.”

“Oh, and what’s that?”

“Oh, you really don’t want to know, buddy.”

He was out of the lounge now, leaning on the door frame and fully facing you. “But I really, really do.”

You smiled down at the ground, partly because you were about call this boy a prick to his face, but also because he was smiling at you for once, and he looked rather sweet when he curled his hair behind his ears.

“English Major Prick.” His eyebrows shot into his hair and you had to put your hand over your mouth to stop laughing. “I told you you didn’t want to know.”

“No, no, it’s—” he scuffed his shoes against the ground. They were well shined oxfords with scuff marks on the very tips. “I deserve that.”

“So, we finally agree on something.”

The bashful smile he gave was infectious. “Well, I’d prefer you not refer to me as that.”

“Who says I’ll be referring to you at all?”

“Well, you do think about me.”

It shouldn’t have affected you as much as it did, considering you knew he did the same. And yet your reaction was textbook flustered. “I mean—”

“Bucky.”

“What?”

“My name,” he continued. “It’s Bucky. Bucky Barnes.”

Oh shit. Oh no. “You’re Steve’s friend?” It came out as a question because you were suddenly terrified. You had been off-handedly telling Steve about this guy for the better part of the semester and now you knew he was his best friend but you were also—no, you were not falling for this guy you barely knew.

But you did feel something in this stupid little interaction. Especially when you saw a new expression on his face—surprise.

“You know Stevie?” Stevie. Cute.

“Yeah, he’s—I, huh.” You took a minute to gather your thoughts. He was patient about it. “I modeled for him? You know, for his senior exhibition.”

Something crossed his face before he said, “Oh,” in a tone that was supposed to be surprise, but sounded like something else. “You’re the girl he’s painting.”

God, this could not be any more complicated. “Yeah, I am.”

The conversation came to a full stop, and from behind Bucky a familiar bearded face popped out, looking for him. “Hey, Barnes, don’t leave me hang—” Quentin Beck’s entire face went pale when he saw you, muttering out a “sorry,” before disappearing into the lounge.

Bucky whirled around, and you didn’t expect the wide eyes he gave you. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Get Quentin to shut up?”

You snorted and he shushed you, but it was no use. The two of you broke into suspicious giggles, trying desperately to be quiet.

“It’s a long story. One you don’t have time for. Quentin will set this building on fire if you don’t pay attention to him.”

Bucky bounced his shoulders against the wall. “You’re probably right.”

You stood there dumbly for a moment, not meeting one another’s gazes until Bucky cleared his throat.

“I guess, um, I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.” You turned around on your heels so you wouldn’t have to see him anymore, but also to hide the stupid, childish grin you got from thinking about bumping into him again.

* * * *

You found yourself thinking about Bucky Barnes at the most inopportune, and rather inappropriate times.

You were never going to make a move on him; he was smart and well rounded and Steve’s best friend, three things that intimidated you into only confessing your feelings in drawn out day dreams. In your head he would always say yes, but there were many other discrepancies between your head and real life.

For example, in your head your essay was a masterpiece, but on paper you weren’t so sure.

A strange assembly of people sat around your table to read your magnum opus: Nat, Bruce, Wanda, MJ and Pete all flipped through the copies of your first fifteen pages, highlighting and scratching in notes. You had decided to stay with them and answer any initial questions, but it got very quiet very quickly as they became absorbed with your writing.

To keep from bursting with anxiety, you’d let your mind drift, thinking of the earlier days when this might have been a dinner party, or maybe even one of Tony’s house parties. And then you remembered that Steve had been to those too, but on the peripheral of everyone else. And if Bucky was his best friend, he must have been on the fringe as well. What it would have been like if you’d known him then…

Their insistent chittering interrupted your daydream, so you engaged them by saying “Something you want to share with the class? Peter, MJ?”

Peter shrank back at your raised eyebrows while MJ’s bored look persisted. “I was just telling him that I think your topic has been done before.”

You instantly remembered why the younger girl intimidated you so much. MJ seemed to read your face, because she continued: “I like your take on it though. You break it down in new ways, but you don’t dumb it down for your readers.”

“Okay, okay,” you repeated. There was nothing you could do with praise except keep your paper the way it was, but that wouldn’t help you write the remaining pages. “Everyone else? Thoughts?”

Nat kept scribbling down something in the margins while she spoke, never looking at you. “Your argument is well thought out, and your choice of movies reflects it really well.” She added one last embellishment before smiling up at you; small and genuine, but gone in a flash. “I might even add in one more film if you can.”

You breathed out to keep your elation under control. Had you seriously pulled this off? And so far away from the deadline? “You think so? Like the theory doesn’t feel like an afterthought?”

“Not at all. It feels like you’ve developed it pretty well. It’s solid.” Bruce complimented. His smile was warm and there was a twinkle in his eyes when he slid your paper back to you. “It’s a pretty good paper.”

The elation disappeared, replaced with a cold rush of fear. “Is that all? It’s just good?”

Your panic must have been alarming, because everyone tripped over themselves to console you.

“I like the part where you call the films low-key racist.”

“Thanks, MJ.”

“Yeah, you picked some good movies. You should use Jurassic Park.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a monster movie,” Peter explained this like you were stupid, and hadn’t just write fifteen pages on the ethics of monster movies.

“It doesn’t, it’s not—”

“It doesn’t work. No one wanted to fuck the T-Rex, Peter.”

“Can we focus on my theory and NOT on fucking T-Rex’s?”

Wanda came to your rescue. “Y/N, the theory is sound. It’s a well-constructed paper, with very minor issues—”

You wanted to tear out your hair. “What issues? You guys haven’t said anything!”

“Hey, hey,” Bruce came out of his seat and walked around you, placing his hands on your shoulders. Your short breaths became a sigh as you let him soothingly rub out the tension. You hadn’t been this close to Bruce in a long time, not since you two broke up sophomore year. But he could still read your anxiety like a book.

“Calm down. We know this paper is important to you.”

“I won’t graduate without it.”

“But you did a great job.” The occupants of the room smiled at you, and they felt honest. “You picked us to read it because we wouldn’t lie to you, right?”

You nodded. Bruce really did know you well.

“This is a great paper. Your teacher will love it.”

Bruce had never lied to you, but it didn’t mean he was infallible.

Kyle had a strange look on his face while he read your paper. A couple of times you’d broken away from your daydreams (usually about Bucky—you really did think about him in your worst times) and caught him whispering questions to himself or underlining furiously. You caught words being written in bold red ink and your heart dropped out of your stomach.

“Y/N this is,” he started, but was unable to finish. “It’s rough.”

“It’s my second draft, Kyle.”

“I know,” he was trying to use a calmer voice, but he was strained. “But it’s very early, and if you go back and fix some things, I think it’ll make more sense.”

“It doesn’t even make sense?!”

“Hey.” His tone was firm against your hysterical whine. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

His hands were laced across his desk as he looked to you pointedly. Your words died in your throat. There wasn’t anything you could tell him, there was no reason your draft was shitty. It was all you, all in your head, everywhere except on the page where it needed to be.

When you didn’t answer Kyle sighed. “You know you’re one of my favorite students, right?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“No, it does matter.” He was offended, you could hear it. Offended, concerned, and angry.

“You’ve never gotten higher than an A- on your papers. Not in my class. But you’re extremely smart and I know you can read my comments, so I’m just wondering why you think it’s okay to waste my time—and your hard work—not changing your essays when I tell you to.”

You felt like a scolded child. Tears pricked in your eyes, but you held it together. Just not enough to speak.

“Everything is here, but it feels like you’re holding back. Like you can’t see the bigger picture, and that’s not like you. So, I’m asking you, right now, why you’re afraid to put everything in this essay.”

“I—” your voice was thick with emotion. He knew you were on the brink of collapsing, and he sat back, defeated.

“This paper isn’t the same as all the others. You can’t get an A- and go. As you go farther in academia things change, and you have to step it up. You’re a senior, Y/N.”

“What if I don’t want to be?”

You weren’t sure how that thought slipped out of your mouth, but Kyle sat up when it registered to him what you’d said.

“That’s just how it is. Are you…are you scared of that?”

Your heart rattled in your chest. The obviousness of his accusation hit you like a freight train, and Kyle could tell he was right.

“Y/N,” he started, but you stood abruptly, snatching the paper off his desk. “Y/N, wait.”

“I’m sorry, professor, Kyle, I just—” you left it at that before bolting, shooting down the stairs and storming out of the building. The tears came dripping down your face and you crumpled, breathing heavily like you’d never had air before.

It was utterly humiliating. Passerbys would look at you and remark in hushed tones, avoiding you like the plague. You wanted to scream about how normal this breakdown was, but it didn’t feel normal.

He’d seen through you like glass and shattered you twice as easily. Everything was raining down too fast, and there was no way to stop it.

You were shaking so hard that when a hand came to rest on your shoulder you hardly felt it. “Whoa, Y/N?” came Peter’s warm, boyish voice. “Hey, hey what happened?”

He slid next you, curling his arm around your back and forcing you to lean on him. You did so with very little protest. His heart beat was steady as he coddled you, and through bleary eyes you could see Ned Leeds squatting to look you in the eye.

“Hey, do you want to talk about it?” His voice was so soft, like he was talking to a baby. The thought made you laugh.

“I’ll be fine in a minute. I’ll just, bounce back up and it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

“You don’t have to pretend, Y/N.”

“Yes, I do Peter,” you sighed, feeling another round of tears prick at your red rubbed eyes. “I have to, or else everything will come fucking crashing down—”

“Hasn’t it already?”

The statement pierced through your sobs like an arrow and you glared at Peter. Even through watery eyes you managed to take him aback.

“I’m not going to sit here and have you fucking patronize me, Parker!”

“Fine then, let’s go somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

Peter didn’t exactly smile, but his mischievous look was enough to ground you. “Somewhere the entire campus can’t see you have a breakdown.”

* * * *

Now that winter was approaching, the sunsets crept up earlier and earlier until by 7 pm the sun was already set, and twilight brought out the first twinkle of stars. Peter led the way up the scaffolding stairs to the sloped roof of the creative sciences building, despite having the afterhours key.

“I wanted the nostalgia of sneaking up here,” he told you, tossing his backpack over the highest point of the building and hauling himself up. The two of you helped Ned and the walked over to the best vantage point on the entire campus.

This far from the city, and with the lights out in most of the buildings you could see the stars wink into existence. It felt like lifetimes had past since you were last up here—it was Thor and Valkyrie who’d imparted this knowledge on you and you’d kept it confined within your friend group ever since.

The three of you laid down, backpacks under your heads like pillows. The only sounds were of the wind in your ears or the cars down below. You breathed deep to clear your lungs, and you hiccupped out your last sob.

“My professor says I’m afraid of change.”

There was a shift on either side of you as Peter and Ned simultaneously sat up and stared.

“He said that?” Ned asked incredulously. “Like, to your face?”

“No; he kind of asked me, I guess? I don’t know. He fucking read me.��

“Are you scared?”

Peter’s voice was as uncertain as you felt. No, that was a lie—you’d know this for quite some time now. You closed your eyes, letting it all wash over you.

“I wish we could stay like this forever.”

“You mean crying over a paper that’s worth all of your grade and contemplating jumping off a roof?”

You laughed outwardly and loudly at Ned’s response. “No. Well, Maybe.”

“Elaborate.”

“I want to always be in college. It’s been the most stressful, chaotic, stupid crazy time of my life and I just,” you opened your eyes to face the truth. “I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to leave all of you, some of us scattered in the wind, the rest of you left behind. I want us to stay like this forever: sitting on the roof and counting the stars and pointing out constellations we don’t even know the name of. Laughing in the diner until midnight and screaming on the streets every time we jaywalk. Drunken house parties, movie marathons. This era, forever.”

There was a moment of silence after your confession, and you dragged your hand down your face. “Sorry, that was—”

“That was sooo poetic,” Ned told you, reveling in your embarrassment. “How long have you been holding that in?”

“Y/N,” Peter said seriously. “You can’t just fail your classes and bomb your senior thesis and stay in college forever.”

“That wasn’t the plan.”

“You sure? Because it’s all going according to plan.”

“Peter, what if I’m not ready to leave?” You sat up to face him. “I’ve been going to school my entire life, and now I’m just supposed to walk out and be an adult? I never thought I’d even make it past the age of sixteen, let alone do all this! What if I can’t do it?”

“You think any of your friends are ready? You think Bruce, or Wanda or Steve are just, full fledged adults, ready to take on the world?”

They hadn’t even occurred to you. The mention of them felt like a slap in the face.

“God, for someone so smart, you’re really stupid. None of us are ready for whatever the hell is out there. We never were!” His voice had that pain in it, the one that shouldn’t belong to someone so young. “We all wish it could be crazy fun teen shit all the time, but we have to move forward. And we have to do it together, so we don’t leave each other behind. That means you have to move on.”

“Damn,” you let his words sink in. “When did you get so wise?”

“Sophomore year,” he said precisely. “When I had a mental breakdown over chem class and you told me the exact same thing.”

You blinked. “What?”

“You told me that the crying and the failing happened to everyone, but that I couldn’t dwell on it and stay stagnant. I had to be the best version of my myself, and that included moving forward from my mistakes.”

You remembered that moment. Peter had been curled up against the wall of his tiny, dirty dorm room and you, Bruce and Tony had coaxed him out with the promise of ice cream and you knew for the first time in your life that you always wanted those boys in your life. You smiled at Peter.

“Sneaky trick, Parker.”

“I learned from the best.”

Your phone buzzed against the roof and you picked it up before it rattled off the edge. Wanda had called three times, and she was calling again.

“Hello?”

“Where are you? Peter said you were crying?”

You shot a look over at the brunette and he played dumb. “Yeah, I was.”

“Well I was worried about you! You usually come home and change by now, or at least tell me you’ll be late but…” her voice morphed into concern. “What happened?”

You didn’t want to be at home right now. In fact, you didn’t want this night to be like all the others—with you laying in bed until your mind finally shut down. You turned to Peter and Ned and mouthed a question, to which they nodded vigorously.

“Hey Wanda, I was thinking we could get some food and catch up. Say, 11th Street Diner?”

She grappled for words before giving a snort of disbelief. “You’re a heart attack, you know that?”

“Meet me at 8.”

* * * *

Wanda had brought everyone—and by everyone you meant her usual motley crew of Clint Barton, Nat, her boyfriend and her brother. They were all wreaking havoc in different sections of the diner: Pietro, Peter and Ned were outside filming skateboarding tricks while Vision was taking his sweet time picking something at the jukebox. Nat and Clint had taken seats at the bar to get their food faster, leaving you and Wanda sipping your shared milkshake. Strawberry, like you both liked.

“Wanna hear a secret?”

“Tell me.”

You two used to do this when you realized you hadn’t talked in a while. You’d tell her something no one else knew, because she was both your roommate and the best at keeping secrets. So, you leaned over and whispered into her ear about the time you gave Quentin Beck a hand job in the corner booth of this very diner, and she sucked down her drink to keep from screaming with laughter. Or possibly disgust.

“How long have you been keeping that in?” Pink liquid still escaped her mouth and you handed her a napkin.

“Since we dated.”

“Do you regret it?”

“While I never want to do it again, no, I don’t.”

“It’s breaking the rules, but can I ask for another secret?”

You tilted your head. “‘Fraid I’m all out.”

“Not quite,” she said coyly. “What happened, when Peter said you were crying?”

You watched the ice in your drink while you swirled your straw and monotonously recounted the events of your disastrous advising meeting and the roof with Peter and Ned. Wanda’s face fell into its usual pensiveness.

“Is he right?” The question was leading, but you fell for it regardless.

“Yup. Peter and I have established that my subconscious is sabotaging my paper.”

“I always knew you’d be your own worst enemy.” She wasn’t not smug when she said it, but the sip of her milkshake is. You snatched the glass yourself and she pouted.

“You’re right, I just hate hearing people say it.”

“Well, it’s because you’re always in that big brain of yours.” She prodded her finger on your forehead, like fuckin E.T. “And your overly romantic heart.”

“God, you’re like the fourth person whose told me that.” You counted them on your fingers. “You, Bruce, Q, and Steve. That’s entirely too many.”

“Five,” Nat interrupted, walking up to your table with Clint in tow. “I’m saying it now. Also, Bucky Barnes has been staring at you for ten minutes.”

A shot of adrenaline went through your heart. “Bucky Barnes? Where?”

“He’s at the bar, alone, so I suggest you do something about it.”

Wanda looked at you expectantly, then leaned out of the booth to get a look at him. You hissed at her to stop, but her mouth curved into a satisfied grin.

“Well, he sure is handsome. I wouldn’t mind if you ditched us for him, but you’ll have to tell me the details of this later. After you properly explain the Quentin hand job thing.”

“The what now?” Nat’s stoic face broke into one of pure shock, so you found it a good a time as any to escape the tension and enter…new tension.

Bucky turned his head to act like he wasn’t overtly staring at you, but you’d caught the sight of his eyes going wide. You sat on the stool next to him and waved off the server before leaning over the counter.

“You know I can see you even though you aren’t looking at me, right?”

He seemed to be ready for the confrontation now, because when he swiveled around there was confidence painted on his face. He opened his mouth but you stopped him in his tracks.

“Actually, before you say anything, do you want to get out of here? We have an audience.”

He looked behind you to see three sets of eyes peering over the booth you’d just left. He huffed before placing exact change next to his plate and standing up. You followed suit, snatching a few fries off his plate and flipping off your friends.

When you two stood on the curb of the diner, he confessed, “I walked here, so, there’s really nowhere for us to go.”

“Oh.” You realized it was the same for you, but you tried to hide your disappointment with a smile. “That’s okay. We can walk.”

So, you did. When you told him you’d go anywhere but the library, he seemed surprised. “You like, live there.”

“So it would seem. I’m just not really in the mood to do any work tonight.”

“Oh, so it’s one of those days.” He said it so knowingly, and you realize that he is also an English major, and a senior.

“Yeah, I’ve been working on my senior thesis.”

“No shit,” he said, but without the condescension. In fact, he’d been perfectly civil. “Same here.”

He talked about how he was taking Southern Literature because it was dark and surprising. His paper was on the Southern Gothic, and how that idea had moved on to other aspects of modern American ideology. Bucky moved his hands when he talked, his broad shoulders going up and down. He was wearing a blue bomber jacket that you liked because it caught the light from the street lamps nicely.

“What’s yours on?”

“Oh,” you came out of your thoughts abruptly, unsure of what he’d said. “Well, I specifically study film—”

“That makes sense.” He blurted out, and you creased your brows.

“What do you mean?”

He hissed out something to himself. “Nothing, it’s just when you’re on third floor sometimes I see you watching the weirdest shit and I wonder ‘why is she doing that in the library?’”

It took a minute for you to fully understand the implication. “You’ve seen me around?”

He rolls his head with a laugh. “You’re hard to miss.”

This was news to you. You’d flown under the radar for quite some time, never having joined any clubs or sports people could recognize you from. You’d gotten a few compliments on your outfits in the past four years, but nothing you thought could make you known.

He was very good at making your stomach turn into a mosh pit of butterflies. You felt not exactly vulnerable, but strangely delicate around him. Like you were floating on air.

So, to quell that feeling, you replied. “I’d beg to differ.”

“I’ve seen you around the library since, what, sophomore year? You’re always on third floor, you walk in like you own the goddamn place.” He smiled down at the ground when he talks about you. It was the cutest thing in the world to watch him curl his hair behind his ear and smile at you sideways.

“You never noticed me.”

It was true, you hadn’t. “I try to pick through my memories and find you. I feel like I’m retroactively learning about you.”

“Thinking hard?” It’s an accusation you’re okay with, because he was bashful, not arrogant when he said it.

“Maybe.”

You swayed when you walked beside him, thinking you could listen to his stories for hours. At times you felt like you were boring him, because the stories of Austria and internships were large compared to your freshman dorm party memories, but he laughed like he’s never been more entertained in his life.

“I wish I’d talked to you earlier. Gotten your name from your lips before anyone else had said it to me.”

Your eyes widened. “I never told you my name?”

He shook his head, and the hair came out from behind his ears. “No. that day I told you mine, was it the first time you’d heard it?”

“Maybe. I think Steve just calls you ‘Buck’.”

“Steve talked about you first. And then when I became friends with all his adjacent buddies, they talked about you too. And then, of course, when I went back to Quentin that day, he told me.”

“God,” you groaned. “What did he say about me?”

“That you’re smart and crazy and kind. He would say your name like it was cursed and enchanted all at once.”

“And my friends call me romantic,” you rolled your eyes.

“I’ve been branded that too. But I don’t mind it so much. There’s worse things to be.”

“Like what?”

“Like an English Major Prick.” He emphasized that last consonant and you hid you face in your hands.

“You won’t let me live that one down, huh?”

“Maybe. If I like the way you say my name, I might consider it.”

There was a split second where you realized how fragile the moment was; one wrong step and it was broken on the floor like humpty dumpty. You thought of your professor pegging your fear of change. Peter’s words echoed in your brain and you felt like you were jumping off the roof when you said:

“Bucky Barnes, you smooth son of a bitch.”

He smiled, brighter than the moon. All at once, everything that was ever certain was shattered, but you leaped over it and left it behind.

* * * *

Steve called you in one last time about two weeks before the showcase. You were scribbling over the words written by the mystery writer (James, you affectionately called him) while Steve wiped sweat from his brow. And incidentally, paint in his hair.

Tapping your leg to the beat of whatever pretentious song, you were too engrossed in your ‘work’ to hear Steve say “You look happy.”

“What?” you screamed over the music.

He turned it off and sat next to you with a smug look you disliked. You pushed his face away and he only laughed, that big almost fake sound you knew was real.

“Seriously, you’re so empathic that whatever your feel, I feel. And today’s goin’ great.” He gestured to the painting that was supposed to be you, but all you saw were swirls of paint. You took this to mean things were going well.

“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “I had a rough week last week, but things are getting better.”

“Did you talk to your advisor again?”

“Yeah.” Kyle had spent the better part of an hour picking apart your thesis in ways you couldn’t have even imagined. By the end of it you’d had at least three pages worth of new material, but still a hell of a way to go. “Kyle and I worked it out.”

“That’s good. You know my advisor’s freaking out about my work? He thinks it’s too complex.”

“It’s just faces.” It sounded dumb to say, but that was the way you saw it.

Steve picked up your chin. His fingers were wet and cold with paint. “You’re not just a face, Y/N.”

“Ah!” you screamed as lilac rubs off on you. “Let me go, paint monster!”

You dropped your book into his lap as you ran around looking for the sink. Steve’s laughter subsided as he looked down, puzzled at the writing that swirled around the pages of the library book.

“Hey, Y/N?” he called out, but you’re preoccupied with wiping paint off your neck. “Y/N?”

“What?”

“Where’d you get this?”

“The library, doesn’t it say that on the spine?”

“But this hand writing,” His voice tapered off.

You exchanged the book for the rag and assessed James’ words. “I’ve been curious about it too. It was in like, all the books I checked out, isn’t that wild? And—get this—it belongs to some guy named James Buchanan, and we have the same advisor. Isn’t that crazy?”

Steve looked like he was trying to say something, but he eyes turned towards the door as someone knocked twice.

“Yo, punk? You in here?” Bucky’s voice carried into the room. When he walked in, he immediately paused, taking stock of the two of you staring at him.

“Oh,” his voice wavered and a nervous smile appeared. “Hey.”

Steve’s eyes cut to yours, and you feel immense pressure. “Hi, Bucky.”

“Hey, Buck.” Steve’s voice is a bullet, and Bucky turned to him, automatically annoyed. “Y/N has this book I think you’ve read.”

“Oh, which one?” He crossed the room in easy strides, and you were helpless in the situation you thought Steve was orchestrating. When you handed it to him his eyes lit up in recognition as he flipped through it.

“Holy shit, I really wrecked this one, huh? Good thing the university really doesn’t give a shit.”

You were having trouble processing what he’s said. Steve had gotten up wordlessly, but there was a particularly blank look on his face as he avoided your eyes. You turned back to Bucky, who was fondly reading over James’ words.

“Though Scott himself does not adhere to Weaver’s interpretation, the fact still remains that the tension between the Alien and Ripley,” he trailed off with a stunned look. “I was a regular old critic, huh?”

Your eyes nearly popped out of your skull. “You wrote that?”

He was startled at the way you raised your voice, and answered cautiously. “Yeah, like, years ago. For a film class I took.”

You reeled back at the information. You fought the urge to open your backpack and ask him if he’d written in all the other books, but that couldn’t—how could he be—

“I checked out, like, seven books from the library this semester and they all have the same handwriting in them. And then, I found out that it matched to a guy named James Buchanan—”

“Barnes,” He finished.

“What? No. That’s not what I saw.”

“That’s my name. James Buchanan Barnes.”

You sat there dumbly, your eyes narrowed in thought. There was no fucking way that he’d written in all these film books. In every single one you’d painstakingly read with romantic ideals and dreaming of who it’d belong to and how you’d meet. The fantasies were crumbling around you, leaving you in the dust.

Bucky’s face was earnest though. Steve was silent behind both of you, painting away like your worlds weren’t colliding.

“You. Okay,” you restarted. “If your name is Bucky,”

“Doll, it’s a nickname—”

“Let me finish.” You ignored the ‘doll’ part and tried to Sherlock your way through this. “If everyone you know calls you Bucky Barnes, why did you write ‘James Buchanan” on Kyle’s sign-up sheet?”

Bucky settled into the stool Steve had been sitting on. “It’s a joke between the two of us. He thinks it’s funny, so I humor him when I can.”

“Okay but, the books are companion pieces for films, I thought you were an English lit major?”

“I am, but I took Intro Film sophomore year.”

“What? With who.”

“Kyle.”

You thought back to two years ago, when you’d been new to the world of film, and you’d met Kyle for the first time. You’d aced that class with flying colors, quickly becoming one of his star students. Coincidentally, so was Quentin Beck, a cock sure boy who got into arguments over any little thing with you. The two of you were the most outspoken in the class, and you never paid much mind to anyone that wasn’t him. But there had been other people that would wait after class for a moment with the professor, and it was in those memories that you recalled him.

Brunette hair, but far shorter. Crystal blue eyes and impeccable clothes. Bucky.

“That…you were in that class? But I never—”

“You never noticed me.” His voice was resigned and so was his smile. He’d told you this before, that he’d seen you around before, but you never imagined he’d known you since sophomore year. “I remembered you from all the way back then: you had long, shiny, impeccable hair and this glint in your eye whenever you talked. Which was a lot. You could dazzle the class just by breathing. And I sat rows and rows behind you, and never spoke. There was no reason you would have ever seen me.”

There was a wavering sadness in his voice, and for a moment, Bucky looked exactly as he did in Steve’s portrait: haunted by the past, unable to fix it.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why am I just now figuring out that you’re the boy of my dreams?”

There was music playing in the background that hadn’t been there before; a cozy, soft melody by one of Steve’s favorite artists. It matched Bucky’s breathlessness as he gazed at you with a tilted head and eyes full of hope. A far cry from just seconds before.

“What did you say?”

“I’ve been thinking about this mysterious ‘James Buchanan’ who’s written exactly what I think, and has seen all the same movies as me. And I’ve been wondering what he’s like, or if he’s nice, of if he’d ever even like me if I met him.”

A coy smile stretched across his face. “Well, what is he like?”

“He’s,” you blanked for a moment, trying to tone down all the wildly romantic thoughts you’ve been having ever since you’d met Bucky Barnes. You decided to risk it all and tell him the truth.

“He’s very smart; he reads Faulkner but think Hurston has more heart. He dresses like he already has his PhD but it looks good on him. He’s sweet but extremely romantic, which is okay because I could listen to him talk for hours. He’s a bit of a prick, though.”

He hung his head back when he laughed at the last part, and you felt your heart swell tremendously. He wasn’t mocking you. He was agreeing with you. You knew this to be true.

“Well, do you think he does like you?” Bucky suddenly became serious. He was nervous.

“I don’t know, does he?”

“Can you two just fucking kiss already?”

Bucky threw something at Steve, but you couldn’t tell what. In the moment he threw it you were laughing, but once it’s over his hand slid onto your face and pulled you into a kiss. Your eyes closed when you felt it, and he tilted his head to keep you occupied. Otherwise you would have heard Steve triumphantly yell “yes!” behind you two.

Bucky rested his forehead against yours. His blue, blue eyes were so much lovelier this close. He whispered, “I think he does.”

You kissed him quick, once, then twice, then sighed contentedly. “Good. I like him too.”

“Well I for one am happy for them.”

This time you see a wet paintbrush beam for Steve’s eye. “Less talking, more painting, punk!”

* * * *

Bucky is lost in thought when the door to Kyle’s office opened. There was a low chatter between two people and he looked up to see Kyle propped up in the door was as you spoke to him. You were dressed up nicely in a tweed coat that matched his own.

Kyle’s eyes rested on the chair Bucky sat in and he perked up in recognition. “Oh, James,” he said, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry, were you waiting for me?”

“No, not you.” He stood up and brushed out the wrinkles in his shirt before coming to your side. You gave him a quick smile before turning back to your professor, whose face was openly shocked.

“Oh,” he said in a dubious, but delighted voice. “So, this is happening.”

“We’re going to the senior art exhibition to see our friend’s graduation project,” you explained, looking rather annoyed at the two men. “We’re both in one of his paintings.”

“Together?” he asked, a bit of scandal in his voice.

“No,” you droned, shutting it down. “Mind your business.”

“You’re both my advisees, this is my business.”

“Good night, Kyle,” you said pointedly, turning around and marching down the hall. Kyle sent a congratulatory wink at Bucky, who acknowledged it with a salute.

As he caught up with you, he handed back a thick essay, riddled with blue ink and yellow highlighter. You added it to another similar essay, one with exclamation points and significantly less marks.

“How’d he like it?” Bucky made conversation as you two trekked across campus. Winter made the nighttime seem even darker, but the two of you glowed underneath the street lamps.

“He loved it. Said it was infinitely better, and then apologized for the millionth time for making me cry.”

“What did he say about the part about Ripley and the Alien?”

You shot him that crazy grin, the one that looked unbelievably beautiful as you approached the traffic lights. Your face was highlighted in red and Bucky thought of the painting you two were about to witness.

“He didn’t say a thing. I should have cited you on that.”

“I’m not a published writer.”

“I know. But one day when you are, I can tell people I gave you your start.”

Bucky laughed, mostly to keep his heart from beating out of his ribcage. Crazy, crazy girl.

You two entered the exhibition hall and traded your backpacks for flutes of fake champagne. The room was lighted lowly, the works of art brandished with bright lights to show off their artistry. You two walked through still life paintings and abstract canvases, marveling some he understood and other’s that made him think.

“Art’s not my forte,” he confided. You hummed, taking a lofty sip.

“Mine either. But they’re gorgeous.”

You floated down the hall as if pulled by a string, and Bucky noticed what you were hung up on.

Steve’s paintings were hanging in a trapezoid shape, and when you walked closer, they seemed to engulf you in color. To your left was Sam and to your right was Bucky, but you stared dead ahead at yourself.

Bucky had seen the painting early, per Steve’s request. He’d helped him move them from his apartment, and had seen the three of you looking very somber and one another.

You were silent as you examined the pieces, and Bucky strode right up to your side.

“So, what do you think?” you started. “I know art isn’t your forte.”

“She’s gorgeous.”

You hummed, pointing to your right. “I like this one better.”

He rolled his eyes. “What do you like about it?”

“His eyes; they’re so expressive. I remember being moved when I saw the reference picture. It’s haunting, but ethereal.”

This wasn’t poking fun now, you genuinely meant it. Bucky tilted his head.

“I was thinking about the future.”

“But you’re looking back.”

“Isn’t that ironic?” There was no humor in his voice. “I was thinking about how it could be the last time I ever modeled for Stevie, done everything at his beck and call, whatever the fuck he wanted. How it was my last year to do something impressive, something memorable. How I had,” he eyes looked to yours for a flash, but you caught his meaning. “Wishes. Regrets.”

Your hand snaked up his back and rested on his shoulder. The touch burned and comforted him all at once. “Do you still have them?”

“Some of them. Not all of them.” He gave you a smile and a quick kiss. Not you.

“Good. That’d be a shame. These three deserve to be happy.”

“They look so beautiful when they’re upset, though.”

“Don’t they?” you sighed and laid your head on his shoulder. “They should hang them in The Louvre.”

“They’d shove me in the back.”

Steve’s voice echoed from your left, and Sam strolled up with him. He stared at his own giant face, all mellowed out with blues and pinks.

“This face deserves to be in every museum. Front and center.”

“God, I did not miss the sound of your voice,” Bucky groaned.

“And I didn’t miss your sour attitude Barnes, and yet here we are. Y/N, remind me again why you’re with this loser?”

“Hmm, I don’t know. He’s had a crush on me for a looong time,” you drawled, lacing your hands together when Bucky rolled his eyes. “Decided to give him a shot.”

“I’m glad you did. Now he can finally stop talking about you with that look one his face.”

“What look? You mean that one?” Sam pointed to the portrait.

“That same exact one.”

“I’m leaving.” Bucky marched back the way he came, with you, Sam and Steve laughing at his heels. He tried to turn away and hide his smile, but everything was falling into place very nicely. All those wishes and regrets withered when he walked back to the entrance and found all their friends gathered loosely on the street.

Bucky had never been part of a friend group so large, but they cheered at his arrival. You greeted everyone in different ways; shoving Peter light heartedly, hugging Bruce and telling Tony to fuck off. They walked as a pack down the street to the 11th street diner, stupid, young and infallible as they all jaywalked, hollering like they were committing murder and not a minor traffic offence. In the hilarious chaos your hand found Bucky’s and you ran like hell, racing Pietro though you two knew you would lose. He kissed the back of your hand. Tony gagged.

He wished they could always be like this.

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bananashemmo · 6 years ago

Text

Committed The Robbery (Part 13)

Pairing: Y/N/Gangmember!Ashton

Rating: NC-17

Request: Yes

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

Summary: On a scale from 1 to shit, how fucked would Ashton be if he ended up banging the other gang member Luke’s little sister Y/N?

Read Committed The Robbery on Wattpad

With tired eyes and a bored expression, you leaned your cheek against the palm of your hand. Your pencil was swinging between your fingers and you tried your utter best to focus.

Whoever had decided that classes after 7 P.M were a great idea, was in a serious need of a health check. Nobody was able to concentrate at this time of the day.

Not even a girl like you.

Your book was open and you were trying your best to catch along with whatever paragraph in the law enforcement was stated. Paragraph numbers were shown on the large screen in front of you, but you couldn’t keep along.

You just wanted to drift away into your own thoughts. Imagine that you were somewhere else where it didn’t require you needed to use your mind.

Even the guy next to you were half asleep. He was struggling more than you and he was known for being the better student.

You wondered if you should just give him a nudge in the shoulder. But he looked so peaceful having his eyes closed.

He was probably listening anyway.

You looked down at your notes and tried to understand what you had been typing. At first, it was decent notes that you needed to use for a few projects next week, but when you tried to scan what it said, you couldn’t read your own words.

You had also ended up doodling instead. That was when you realized that you had lost your concentration.

There was no point in sitting here.

You took a scan at everyone else. It was actually many who had met up, some even looking pretty committed. It was no wonder, some enjoyed not having to meet up early for a class.

You wouldn’t say you were a morning person either but being here this late.

It should be a crime.

You shut your notebook and placed your pencil on top of it. There was no reason in trying to write something down if it wasn’t readable after all.

You glanced over at the glass door that was the only way to see the hallway. The lights were actually off, indicating that the sensors hadn’t caught movement. Nobody was out on the hallway at this time.

That was no wonder. You were the only class that had ‘night’ classes, meaning that it was only the 25 students in the room that was around the whole place.

Everything else was shut down, if you walked further away than to the end of the hallway, you would need to use your ID card to shut down the alarm.

You looked back at the professor who seemed and sounded so committed. Professor Jakarta was like, so into this subject you sometimes wondered if he’d rather be in the law enforcement than a college professor.

You glanced back at the glass door again, feeling you saw a movement and you did.

Your eyes widened in surprise and your lips parted slightly. You were so sure you were seeing wrong but when Ashton moved closer to the glass you knew your eyes weren’t being fooled.

You furrowed your eyebrows confused, not knowing what he was trying to illustrate with his hand movements.

You were great at reading people but this was getting out of hand.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” You mouthed towards his direction and he grinned lightly.

“I know,” He mouthed back and made movements with his hands as if he was motioning you to walk out of the room.

You shook your head in response, you almost wanted to say no out loud. But it wouldn’t be possible for him to hear and neither did you want to disturb the class.

Ashton made movements again and it was so distracting to you, you grabbed your back and stood up from your table. You walked down the stairs that lead down to the door and tried to avoid the long eyes after you.

You used the excuse that you needed to go to the bathroom and almost knocked the door into Ashton even though it was glass separating you and he could see you.

“What are you doing?” You whisper-yelled once the door was shut and grabbed him by the arm to move a few meters away so you wouldn’t spoil you through the glass.

“You know you can’t be here.”

“The boys are out tonight and I was bored so I headed to your dorm but you weren’t home. Your scared roommate said that you were here so I showed up on my motorcycle.”

“And?” You looked at him with blinking eyes, skipping through the part that he mentioned Alba seemed scary.

That wasn’t the shocking news of the day.

“I thought I’d ask you out for a milkshake.”

You looked at him dead in the eye as if he was being serious. Was he seriously showing up on a Tuesday night asking you out for a milkshake? Not to mention dragging you out of a class where you were supposed to be for the night.

“I’m in the middle of a class.” You mentioned as if he hadn’t noticed and nodded your head back.

“I know,” He smiled, “I could tell how bored you were. I’m sure you will forgive yourself for skipping one class. Please?”

You looked at him not knowing to say. Your eyes drifted towards the classroom where you were supposed to be. You had never skipped a class before and the guilt was filling in your veins.

But you also knew that you wouldn’t get anything from sitting in the room. Professor Jarkata had already lost you and that was kind of the point of no return.

“I shouldn’t be going with you. I can’t walk away from here.” You said more quietly and tried to sound serious so he would understand.

“You can’t walk from here?” He asked, copying your tone and you nodded your head in agreement. But your seriousness was killed by the smile growing on your face.

“Fine then,” He accepted and in one swift movement had you lifted in his arms.

“I’ll just have to carry you then.”

As you walked down the street after Ashton had parked his motorcycle by the parking lot, you couldn’t help but grin and smile at the same time.

Fine, he had won this time. Thinking further than you and you accepted your little mistake. Sometimes he was being too literate but that was what you fell for.

You looked up at him and squeezed his bicep because of his teasing tongue sticking out from his lips.

“Stop looking at me like that.” You mumbled and hit him instead. He could barely feel it, you hit like a feather.

“Like what?” He asked back and looked forward. He could see in the corner of his eye that you were rolling your eyes by his ridiculous question.

“Like you’re a child who just got their will.”

“I kind of feel like that.” Ashton smiled and stopped when you came closer to the ice cream shop where neon lights were illustrating the whole street. It wasn’t hard to notice where it was, it brightened with pink, blue and purple colors.

You didn’t know this place but Ashton seemed familiar. He opened the door for you and invited you inside where a few students were. Not someone you knew of, but you could tell as they were sitting with books studying.

“How do you know this place?” You asked and he shrugged his shoulder.

“You’d be surprised how many places I know in this city.”

You didn’t know if you were supposed to take that as a good thing or not and you stopped in front of the counter to look at the many different ice creams.

“Weren’t we supposed to get a milkshake?” You asked and looked up at him.

Ashton nodded his head in agreement and wrapped his arm around you when someone walked past you so you wouldn’t stand in the way.

“What is really cool about this place is that you get to pick whatever ice cream you want to be blended like a milkshake. My personal favorite is the mango sorbet which they blend with a bit of milk. It’s like, the best milkshake I’ve ever had.”

You nodded your head by his explanation and placed your hands on the glass on the counter.

you looked at the many signs. They had even made an ice cream that was based on Oreos and cheesecake. There were also the typical ones like chocolate, strawberry, and pistachio. You looked over at the corner with various fruit-based sorbets.

“I think I’d like to try the hazelnut ice cream.” You pointed towards the ice cream and Ashton nodded his head in agreement.

He smiled over at the cashier and ordered a mango and a hazelnut milkshake.

You didn’t know if you were supposed to pay for yourself but since he had invited, he was also insisting on paying. You didn’t want to argue with him because you knew from the start it was a lost battle.

You waited carefully for your milkshake and when you were given them Ashton held yours and headed towards a couch where you could sit.

He also made sure to grab a few napkins, just in case.

The taste of the milkshake was actually amazing. It reminded you so much of Nutella, which made sense because it was made on hazelnuts. It was so well made you needed to make a mental note remembering this place.

“So when are we going to talk about it?” He asked and you furrowed your eyebrows.

You didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Talk about what?” You asked, taking another sip of your milkshake.

“About that kiss by the fountains.”

You almost choked on the liquid and you leaned forward to grab one of the napkins. He was right about needing one and you looked up at him with wide eyes. You wanted to be polite but he took you off guard.

“Really, Ashton?” You quivered an eyebrow at him but smiled.

“You haven’t thought about it since?” He asked and you looked down at your fingers by the question. They were getting cold from holding the milkshake.

Of course, you had thought about it. In fact, you had been thinking about it every single day since it happened. You had no idea how to shake it off your shoulders. No matter what you did, Ashton would always come to your mind and it was hard trying to get him out of your head.

When you woke up the next day you actually thought it was a dream. Or more like a nightmare because Luke finding out was hunting you down. It was almost like you had forgotten what happened between you and Ashton in the first place.

You leaned your head against the cushion of the couch and looked at him with soft eyes.

“I think about it... A lot.” You mumbled and he nodded his head in agreement.

“I do, too.” He admitted and took a sip from the yellow milkshake.

You could feel your cheeks ready to brush and you briefly looked down at the menu card on the small coffee in front of the couch. It had the ice creams you had been looking at by the counter so there wasn’t much new to be distracted by.

You looked back at him and bit down on your lip in thought.

“Should we tell Luke?”

This time it was Ashton’s turn to widen his eyes and he moved the straw away from his lips.

“Are you planning my sudden death?”

You didn’t want to laugh by the question but you couldn’t help but giggle just a bit. The way he was asking showed he was clearly serious, but you didn’t know what to answer.

It was indeed a stupid question.

“I just think it’s hard to keep secrets all the time.” You admitted and shifted in your seat.

“You’ve been keeping a pretty great secret for many months now. Sometimes you act like nothing ever happened between us.” He mentioned and you lifted your eyebrows by his words.

“You feel like that? Because it’s still affecting me to this day.” You answered and he also widened his eyes.

You looked at each other trying to come up with something to say that was going to take away your weird feelings about the situation. You had never actually spoken up about this for so many months, it was almost as if it didn’t happen.

“It’s not like I can show up in front of Luke and say hey... I kissed your sister last week not to mention I was the one taking her virginity.”

If you had been drinking a sip of your milkshake, you would have choked again. Sometimes he was just straight forward and you weren’t really prepared for it.

“I know it’s weird but uh... Have you been with someone ever since?” You managed to ask and looked down at the ground to keep yourself from looking awkward.

“No, I haven’t.” He answered honestly and looked at you carefully, “I haven’t been feeling like myself since then. And when we all were thrown out of college, everything just seemed to change. I haven’t had girls on my mind at all.”

You couldn’t help but feel just a little bit happy inside.

“Have you been with someone?” He reversed the question and asked you.

You looked at him sincerely and shook your head. There was no one at college that caught your interest and especially not the way Ashton could. He always managed to make you feel safe no matter what trouble you were in.

“Of course I haven’t. That night with you has been my only time. You can practically call me a virgin again.” You said quietly and leaned your head to the side.

He widened his eyes and you didn’t know if it was because of your comment or if it was because you hadn’t been with someone since him.

What did he expect though? You weren’t really the type of girl to jump on whatever guy came close to you.

“I actually thought you had kissed someone. Might as well be something I’ve made up in my mind.”

You rolled your eyes by his words and you shook your head, “The only guy I’ve kissed is you. Have that in mind.”

“I will.”

You smiled at him and took a look around the shop. It had a bit of diner vibe because of the old school colors. You didn’t mind though, you kind of liked the place. It was located nicely and wasn’t near any kind of creepy street where Ashton usually stayed with the boys.

You had a question in your mind that came up by your thoughts drifting. You weren’t sure if you were supposed to ask but you did.

“Did you uhm-,” You looked down at your feet carefully. He looked at you in wonder, wanting you to continue.

“Did you bring Amelia here?”

Ashton’s lips folded into a straight line by your question and he sipped on his milkshake as if he was in thought. It would make sense since he knew of the place, you kind of put the puzzle pieces together by that thought.

“No, I actually didn’t.” He explained and leaned back in his seat.

He ran a hair through his brown curly locks and sighed to himself.

“I don’t go to the places where Amelia and I stayed. It just brings back too many memories. Especially the bad ones. I don’t want to go through nightmares every single day. That’s now how I want to live my life. So I’m just trying my best to try not run against the walls. And by that, I just avoid the places we used to hang out.”

“How do you know this place then?” You asked after carefully listening to every word he had to say.

It was a sensitive subject but you liked seeing that side of him. That soft side.

“I used to study here. Just like the ones over there.” He nodded his head towards the young ones being around your age.

Your eyes adverted back to his and you smiled, “Do you miss it?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I don’t. That depends what mood I’m in.” He answered and the conversation continued like this.

You talked about anything between earth and ground. You loved just hearing him talk because he was so passionate about his stuff but he was also a great listener. You felt that he heard every single word and kept it in his mind.

You were happy that it was actually a relaxing day. Nothing dramatic was happening and it was just the two of you.

But sometimes things were said a bit too quick.

It was only an innocent way to the toilet that made you almost collapse with a guy that hadn’t seen you in the process. He almost spilled his ice cream all over her but he was lucky that he missed.

It made Ashton stand up from his chair in one swift movement and headed towards the guy with fire in his eyes.

“Are you blind? You could see her walk forward.” He made a movement to push the guy away from you and you looked up at him with wide eyes.

“Ashton, it’s okay I can handle this.” You tried to grasp his arm but he shrugged you off.

“I’m sorry, it was just an accident I swear.” The guy explained, he was wearing a leather jacket that seemed significant.

“You know an accident would be my fist to your face if you don’t leave within five seconds.”

Your eyes widened and you wanted to yell at him but instead, you grabbed his arm to pull him out of the shop. You’d rather walk out than the owner suddenly showing up and banning you from being there due to inappropriate behavior.

You kept on pulling him by the arm until you stood on the parking lot, the lights from the shop reflecting on Ashton’s face.

“What was that? He did nothing to harm me and you literally attacked him!” You didn’t want to yell but it came off like that.

Ashton looked down at you with a tight jaw and pressed his hands into his pocket pants.

“I can’t take you anywhere. You just fight everyone.” You didn’t want to sound sad but it was the truth.

He glanced over at you because of your words and he chewed on the inside of his cheek. His brain was running through with answers but he couldn’t come up with something that was going to solve it.

“You bring the worst out in me.”

Your jaw fell and you didn’t know how you were supposed to handle his words.

He moved his hair away from his eyes to show his sorrow. He was serious about his words and you wanted him to continue. You needed to hear his explanation.

“It doesn’t mean I’m blaming it all on you. I’m just having such a hard time because I am so insanely afraid that something is going to happen to you.”

“Nothing is going to happen to me, I swear.” You leaned down to grab his hand and intertwined your fingers.

“Every corner you turn, there will be someone ready to tear you down. Once you’ve experienced a loss. You will look over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”

You could feel your heart beat fast by his words, he was in serious pain and you had no idea how to take him out of his misery.

“We will figure this out okay? Someway... You can’t walk around every day feeling miserable and in fear of someone is going to take me away from you. I can’t let that happen.”

He didn’t seem fully convinced but when you moved up to stand on your toes to give him a kiss, it soothed the pain he was feeling.

“Come on,” You nodded your head towards the motorcycle and followed him towards it.

He looked at you with sad and almost defeated eyes but the blush on his cheeks showed the warmth you gave him just by being near him.

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marketerintel · 6 years ago

Text

The One-Hour Guide to SEO: Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

We’ve covered strategy, keyword research, and how to satisfy searcher intent — now it’s time to tackle optimizing the webpage itself! In the fourth part of the One-Hour Guide to SEO, Rand offers up an on-page SEO checklist to start you off on your way towards perfectly optimized and keyword-targeted pages.

If you missed them, check out the other episodes in the series so far:

The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 1: SEO Strategy

The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 2: Keyword Research

The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 3: Searcher Satisfaction

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of our special One-Hour Guide to SEO. We are now on Part IV – Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization. So hopefully, you’ve watched Part III, where we talked about searcher satisfaction, how to make sure searchers are happy with the page content that you create and the user experience that you build for them, as well as Part II, where we talked about keyword research and how to make sure that you are targeting the right words and phrases that searchers are actually looking for, that you think you can actually rank for, and that actually get real organic click-through rate, because Google’s zero-click searches are rising.

Now we’re into on-page SEO. So this is essentially taking the words and phrases that we know we want to rank for with the content that we know will help searchers accomplish their task. Now how do we make sure that the page is optimal for ranking in Google?

On-page SEO has evolved

Well, this is very different from the way it was years ago. A long time ago, and unfortunately many people still believe this to be true about SEO, it was: How do I stuff my keywords into all the right tags and places on the page? How do I take advantage of things like the meta keywords tag, which hasn’t been used in a decade, maybe two? How do I take advantage of putting all the words and phrases stuffed into my title, my URL, my description, my headline, my H2 through H7 tags, all these kinds of things?

Most of that does not matter, but some of it still does. Some of it is still important, and we need to run through what those are so that you give yourself the best possible chance for ranking.

The on-page SEO checklist

So what I’ve done here is created a sort of brief, on-page SEO checklist. This is not comprehensive, especially on the technical portion, because we’re saving that for Part V, the technical SEO section, which we will get into, of this Guide. In this checklist, some of the most important things are on here.

Descriptive, compelling, keyword-rich title element

Many of the most important things are on here, and those include things like a descriptive, compelling, keyword-rich but not stuffed title element, also called the page title or a title tag. So, for example, if I am a tool website, like toolsource.com — I made that domain name up, I assume it’s registered to somebody — and I want to rank for the “best online survey tools,” well, “The Best Online Survey Tools for 2019” is a great title tag, and it’s very different from best online survey tools, best online survey software, best online survey software 2019. You’ve seen title tags like that. You’ve seen pages that contain stuff like that. That is no longer good SEO practices.

So we want that descriptive, compelling, makes me want to click. Remember that this title is also going to show up in the search results as the title of the snippet that your website appears in.

Meta description designed to draw the click

Second, a meta description. This is still used by search engines, not for rankings though. Sort of think of it like ad text. You are drawing a click, or you’re attempting to draw the click. So what you want to do is have a description that tells people what’s on the page and inspires them, incites them, makes them want to click on your result instead of somebody else’s. That’s your chance to say, “Here’s why we’re valuable and useful.”

Easy-to-read, sensible, short URL

An easy-to-read, sensible, short URL. For example, toolsource.com/reviews/best-online-surveys-2019. Perfect, very legible, very readable. I see that in the results, I think, “Okay, I know what that page is going to be.” I see that copied and pasted somewhere on the web, I think, “I know what’s going to be at that URL. That looks relevant to me.”

Or reviews.best-online-tools.info. Okay, well, first off, that’s a freaking terrible domain name. /oldseqs?ide=17 bunch of weird letters and tab detail equals this, and UTM parameter equals that. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what all this means. By the way, having more than one or two URL parameters is very poorly correlated with and not recommended for trying to rank in search results. So you want to try and rewrite these to be more friendly, shorter, more sensible, and readable by a human being. That will help Google as well.

First paragraph optimized for appearing in featured snippets

That first paragraph, the first paragraph of the content or the first few words of the page should be optimized for appearing in what Google calls featured snippets. Now, featured snippets is when I perform a search, for many queries, I don’t just see a list of pages. Sometimes I’ll see this box, often with an image and a bunch of descriptive text that’s drawn from the page, often from the first paragraph or two. So if you want to get that featured snippet, you have to be able to rank on page one, and you need to be optimized to answer the query right in your first paragraph. But this is an opportunity for you to be ranking in position three or four or five, but still have the featured snippet answer above all the other results. Awesome when you can do this in SEO, very, very powerful thing. Featured snippet optimization, there’s a bunch of resources on Moz’s website that we can point you to there too.

Featured Snippets: From Start to Finish

How to Discover Featured Snippet Opportunities – Whiteboard Friday

How to Target Featured Snippet Opportunities – Whiteboard Friday

Use the keyword target intelligently in…

The headline

So if I’m trying to rank for “best online survey tools,” I would try and use that in my headline. Generally speaking, I like to have the headline and the title of the piece nearly the same or exactly the same so that when someone clicks on that title, they get the same headline on the page and they don’t get this cognitive dissonance between the two.

The first paragraph

The first paragraph, we talked about.

The page content

The page’s content, you don’t want to have a page that’s talking about best online survey tools and you never mention online surveys. That would be a little weird.

Internal link anchors

An internal link anchor. So if other places on your website talk about online survey tools, you should be linking to this page. This is helpful for Google finding it, helpful for visitors finding it, and helpful to say this is the page that is about this on our website.

I do strongly recommend taking the following advice, which is we are no longer in a world where it makes sense to target one keyword per page. For example, best online survey tools, best online survey software, and best online survey tools 2019 are technically three unique keyword phrases. They have different search volumes. Slightly different results will show up for each of them. But it is no longer the case, whereas it was maybe a decade ago, that I would go create a page for each one of those separate things.

Instead, because these all share the same searcher intent, I want to go with one page, just a single URL that targets all the keywords that share the exact same searcher intent. If searchers are looking to find exactly the same thing but with slightly modified or slight variations in how they phrase things, you should have a page that serves all of those keywords with that same searcher intent rather than multiple pages that try to break those up, for a bunch of reasons. One, it’s really hard to get links to all those different pages. Getting links just period is very challenging, and you need them to rank.

Second off, the difference between those is going to be very, very subtle, and it will be awkward and seem to Google very awkward that you have these slight variations with almost the same thing. It might even look to them like duplicate or very similar or low-quality content, which can get you down-ranked. So stick to one page per set of shared intent keywords.

Leverage appropriate rich snippet options

Next, you want to leverage appropriate rich snippet options. So, for example, if you are in the recipes space, you can use a schema markup for recipes to show Google that you’ve got a picture of the recipe and a cooking time and all these different details. Google offers this in a wide variety of places. When you’re doing reviews, they offer you the star ratings. Schema.org has a full list of these, and Google’s rich snippets markup page offers a bunch more. So we’ll point you to both of those as well.

Images on the page employ…

Last, but certainly not least, because image search is such a huge portion of where Google’s search traffic comes from and goes to, it is very wise to optimize the images on the page. Image search traffic can now send significant traffic to you, and optimizing for images can sometimes mean that other people will find your images through Google images and then take them, put them on their own website and link back to you, which solves a huge problem. Getting links is very hard. Images is a great way to do it.

Descriptive, keyword-rich filenames

The images on your page should employ descriptive, keyword-rich filenames, meaning if I have one for typeform, I don’t want it to be pick one, two or three. I want it to be typeformlogo or typeformsurveysoftware as the name of the file.

Descriptive alt attributes

The alt attribute or alt tag is part of how you describe that for screen readers and other accessibility-focused devices, and Google also uses that text too.

Caption text (if appropriate)

Caption text, if that’s appropriate, if you have like a photograph and a caption describing it, you want to be descriptive of what’s actually in the picture.

Stored in same domain and subdomain

These files, in order to perform well, they generally need to be hosted on the same domain and subdomain. If, for example, all your images are stored on an Amazon Web Services domain and you don’t bother rewriting or making sure that the domain looks like it’s on toolsource.com/photos or /images here, that can cause real ranking problems. Oftentimes you won’t perform at all in Google images because they don’t associate the image with the same domain. Same subdomain as well is preferable.

If you do all these things and you nail searcher intent and you’ve got your keyword research, you are ready to move on to technical SEO and link building and then start ranking. So we’ll see you for that next edition next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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toothextract · 6 years ago

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The One-Hour Guide to SEO: Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

In the fourth part of the One-Hour Guide to SEO, Rand offers up an on-page SEO checklist to start you off on your way towards perfectly optimized and keyword-targeted pages.

If you missed them, check out the other episodes in the series so far:

The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 1: SEO Strategy

The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 2: Keyword Research

The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 3: Searcher Satisfaction

https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/mho6yl0p39?seo=false&videoFoam=true

https://fast.wistia.net/assets/external/E-v1.js

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

On-page SEO has evolved

Most of that does not matter, but some of it still does. Some of it is still important, and we need to run through what those are so that you give yourself the best possible chance for ranking.

The on-page SEO checklist

Descriptive, compelling, keyword-rich title element

So we want that descriptive, compelling, makes me want to click. Remember that this title is also going to show up in the search results as the title of the snippet that your website appears in.

Meta description designed to draw the click

Easy-to-read, sensible, short URL

First paragraph optimized for appearing in featured snippets

Featured Snippets: From Start to Finish

How to Discover Featured Snippet Opportunities – Whiteboard Friday

How to Target Featured Snippet Opportunities – Whiteboard Friday

Use the keyword target intelligently in…

The headline

The first paragraph

The first paragraph, we talked about.

The page content

The page’s content, you don’t want to have a page that’s talking about best online survey tools and you never mention online surveys. That would be a little weird.

Internal link anchors

Leverage appropriate rich snippet options

Images on the page employ…

Descriptive, keyword-rich filenames

Descriptive alt attributes

The alt attribute or alt tag is part of how you describe that for screen readers and other accessibility-focused devices, and Google also uses that text too.

Caption text (if appropriate)

Caption text, if that’s appropriate, if you have like a photograph and a caption describing it, you want to be descriptive of what’s actually in the picture.

Stored in same domain and subdomain

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

from https://dentistry01.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/the-one-hour-guide-to-seo-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization-whiteboard-friday/

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andrewuttaro · 6 years ago

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New Look Sabres: GM 63 - PHI - Brandon Montour

The Flyers tonight are a really tough pill to swallow. Ugly mascots that end up changing the game aside, overly optimistic Sabres fans such as myself have been looking up in the standings at who these guys can catch, rather frustratingly so as of late. With a Flyers win tonight they surprise the Sabres from behind and hop ahead of them in the standings. Can you imagine that violent, orange cookie monster impersonator surprising you from behind? Want to hear another surprise from behind, no this isn’t a sex joke: Marco Scandella paired with Brandon Montour. OH VETERAN, MY VETERAN! WHATSOEVER WOULD COACH HOUSLEY DO WITHOUT YOU! Housley’s prioritization of veteran minutes is going to be a whole paragraph in the Season Retrospective isn’t it? Yea, THE SEASON RETROSPECTIVE THAT WILL HAPPEN IN APRIL IF HE CAN’T PROPERLY UTILIZE THIS ROSTER! Ok, stop, Andrew. Optimism; remember the optimism with which you started this blog. Ugh, what different days those were. Speaking of not making the playoffs, let’s talk trash about the last team the Sabres played in the playoffs! Philadelphia, the past of this match up it that old ballad about working class cities just smashing their blue-collar lunch pals at each other as hard as possible. The world and the NHL has changed and now a playoff matchup between these two teams looks more like it would be a speed-skill bonanza then any kind of grit-for-grit hockey men party. The Sabres are building something new while the Flyers are copying the Penguins model: yeah, I said Penguins! Sabretooth wasn’t wearing pants when Gritty wasn’t even a sparkle in Jakub Voracek’s eye yet! 2011’s rematch is a going to go for the Sabres in 6, you sloppy copycats. That was fun; too bad it’s going to make this next part harder. This was the night the playoffs died. But no, you’re New Look Sabres, you preach taking a New Look at this team time and time again! How can you say its over!? Well, eight points with twenty games left will do that to you. Luckily, we’re not focusing on that tonight.

New Flyer Ryan Hartman set the tone of this game leveling Rasmus Dahlin along the boards early. Zach Bogosian and the old-time hockey alliance came crashing in like you know and instigator penalty, other penalty, whatever-whatever it panned out to nothing. Want to know why contemporary hockey fans don’t give a shit about keeping fighting in the game old boys club? It doesn’t help. At best it gives your team a moderate morale boost at worst it chops years off dudes’ lives. Whatever, it didn’t help the Sabres win this game. If the Sabres weren’t outshot each period they were certainly outplayed. By eight minutes in the Flyers were already up 2-0 on the backs of Oskar Lindblom and Jakub Voracek. Let’s get something out of the way: this loss wasn’t because of Carter Hutton. He was left out to dry and when we look back on this season their will be poetry in that. More and more every year this club is Jack Eichel and friends. Our favorite Patriots fan put this team on his back and made us believe again like Tom Brady! Ok, that was gross to write. I’m sorry you had to read that. I’m going to collect myself now. Jack Eichel did get the puck from Skinner and did toe drag a fucking bullet in there, but the period ended 2-1 and even the grossly optimistic types like me still kind of felt this crap wasn’t going to get much better. Like the cold, cruel march of time closer to death the Sabres would get scored on once they began to give us hope. 15 minutes into the second period James van Riemsdyk redirects a puck in front and gets the orange boys up 3-1. What is that? This is one of those game Casey Mittelstadt flashes the kind of brilliance we’ll get from him on the regular in a year and a half or so? Awesome, New Sabre Brandon Montour gets the play going in the defensive zone that would eventually end in Casey Mittelstadt tapping in a goal via Evan Rodrigues and Conor Sheary. 3-2 Flyers would be the high-water mark of this game for the Sabres as the only positive highlight of the third period would be Travis Sandheim doing his Sabres ten game winning streak impression and crashing the net less then a minute in to get the Flyers their two-goal lead back. Whatever whatever, Claude Giroux, whatever whatever, can you believe they eliminated Caelynn on the Bachelor, whatever whatever; Sabres lose 5-2 in regulation and give up another spot in the standings falling to a full eight points back. The Panthers might still win their game at the posting of this and they can hop over the Blue and Gold too because irony has no bounds in the season of the ten-game winning streak that saw no playoffs.

So yes, it’s not over until the fat lady sings. There is a ridiculous scenario where the Sabres win 65-75% of their remaining games to sneak into the playoffs. As I began saying last night, start cushioning the blow now, fam. Enjoy what’s left of the ride but start thinking about what’s for dinner. I’m letting my soccer side out starting now. Hell, I just posted on my politics blog for the first time in like a month. Let loose, Spring is officially 21 days away even if playoffs aren’t. However, this is not how I’m ending the blog today. No sir: we have a new player to celebrate. Brandon Montour had about as decent a game as you can have in a loosing effort on the road when your new coach insists on putting you with a negative player that is really only in because he’s been in the league for a while. I mentioned Montour being the catalyst of the Mittelstadt goal play earlier, but Montour made some good moves in this game. He broke up a lot of opposition passes in the defensive zone, more than you expected before with this Sabres defense. For all you suburban hockey dads he also laid out a decent hit or two in the third period that feels right in a game against the Flyers. He made his mistakes too, struggling in the offensive zone shortly before the JVR goal. Nonetheless Montour is a clear addition to this team and if shit ever gets better here for a Sabres fan I have a feeling #62 will be a part of it. This one just hurt, and I very much look forward to turning my attention to the Rochester Americans for tomorrow’s Amerks Angle update. I’ll be discussing banners in that one so if you need a palette cleanser check back tomorrow.

In fact, cross-promotion city here because how long can we talk about this dreadful team, if you got an eye for Soccer, I have a whole soccer blog at Rochester Rhinos Outsider if you want to check in on that. I also have a politics blog but let’s keep it in the sports family for right now. Right now: I just want you to like, share and drop a comment on this post. Let’s commiserate together because now, with the deadline past this is the bed we’re sleeping in from now until April 6th, fam. I’d love to hear from you. If you’ve read this far you probably won’t mind a conversation with me either. Reply or @ me on twitter or DM on twitter or Tumblr. If you’re only on this blog because I posted that neat little graph last night, stick around, there’s another one of those coming Saturday! No matter what you’re here for, it’s the Sabres that brought us all together and no matter how ass they maybe they can’t take that from us! Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. In all the busy-ness of the last few days I forgot to mention Kyle Okposo is back already. Evidently his concussion was only slightly worse than Jeff Skinner’s ankle injury and he’s already back! I like to think fan support helped that along.

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duaneodavila · 6 years ago

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Paul Manafort’s Lawyers Learn That Obvious Thing You Learned As A Summer Associate

Paul Manafort (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

Yesterday, Paul Manafort’s attorneys — Richard W. Westling of Epstein Becker & Green, Kevin M. Downing, and Thomas E. Zehnle — filed a sensitive motion in Manafort’s ongoing battle with Special Counsel Robert Mueller over allegations that Trump’s former campaign manager lied to federal investigators over and over and over again. Unless you’re Alan Dershowitz, you probably know that lying to the feds is a bad move.

Given the touchy nature of the matter, Manafort’s attorneys made several redactions to the filing that would end up publicly available on PACER. This is where things go off the rails.

As anyone with more than a week or two of litigation training knows, the first thing you do when you’re given a redacted document is highlight and copy the redacted portion and paste it into another document. If the redacting counsel is either lazy or clueless, the underlying text will show up because the default manner of PDF redacting only inserts a black layer over the text rather than actually getting rid of it.

And that’s just what Mike Scarcella of Law.com did and you know what happened next!

It’s astounding that mistakes like this still happen. A couple years back, the DOJ took a shotgun to their whole LIBOR prosecution by failing to appropriately redact testimony by former Deutsche Bank trader Gavin Black. In that case, Law360 found the screwup and the DOJ scrambled to replace the document. When asked for comment

A DOJ spokesperson attributed the improper redactions to “a technical error in the electronic redaction process” that allowed for “manipulation” of the file’s “metadata,” according to Law360.

Yes, the “manipulation” of “metadata” that is copying and pasting. Crackerjack outfit Jeff Sessions ran.

But this time the shoe is on the other foot and it’s the defense’s turn with the dunce’s cap. The compromised Manafort document is still available here if you’re looking to do some copy and pasting.

If you aren’t, here are the paragraphs that were supposed to get the ax:

* (See, e.g., Doc. 460 at 5 (After being shown documents, Mr. Manafort “conceded” that he discussed or may have discussed a Ukraine peace plan with Mr. Kilimnik on more than one occasion); id. at 6 (After being told that Mr. Kilimnik had traveled to Madrid on the same day that Mr. Manafort was in Madrid, Mr. Manafort “acknowledged” that he and Mr. Kilimnik met while they were both in Madrid)).

* In fact, during a proffer meeting held with the Special Counsel on September 11, 2018, Mr. Manafort explained to the Government attorneys and investigators that he would have given the Ukrainian peace plan more thought, had the issue not been raised during the period he was engaged with work related to the presidential campaign. Issues and communications related to Ukrainian political events simply were not at the forefront of Mr. Manafort’s mind during the period at issue and it is not surprising at all that Mr. Manafort was unable to recall specific details prior to having his recollection refreshed. The same is true with regard to the Government’s allegation that Mr. Manafort lied about sharing polling data with Mr. Kilimnik related to the 2016 presidential campaign. (See Doc. 460 at 6).

* The Government has indicated that Mr. Manafort’s statements about this payment are inconsistent with those of others, but the defense has not received any witness statements to support this contention.

* The first alleged misstatement identified in the Special Counsel’s submission (regarding a text exchange on May 26, 2018) related to a text message from a third-party asking permission to use Mr. Manafort’s name as an introduction in the event the third-party met the President. This does not constitute outreach by Mr. Manafort to the President. The second example identified by the Special Counsel is hearsay purportedly offered by an undisclosed third party and the defense has not been provided with the statement (or any witness statements that form the basis for alleging intentional falsehoods).

You know what they say, “money can buy you $15,000 ostrich feather coats, but it can’t buy you tech savvy attorneys.”

Paul Manafort’s Lawyers Tried—and Failed—to Redact This Sensitive Legal Filing [Mother Jones]

Earlier: Stupid Lawyer Tricks: Legal Tech Edition

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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flames-bring-a-ton-of-ash · 7 years ago

Note

Hey how long does it usually take you to write a id chapter? I mean, when you actually focus on writing, how long does it take you? I am very excited for the new chapter :)

Hey! I’m hoping to look back over the chapter here soon and then send it to my betas, so I should be posting it by tonight :)

That’s a good question. It can vary, depending how well-thought out I have the chapter ahead of time. I usually start with an outline, and it’s written in a very random way. It’ll have random lines of vague plot ideas, then sometimes I’ll write a whole paragraph or dialogue on it, and then I fill in the pieces as I go, rather than write from intro to ending in order. And sometimes I’ll copy and past sections, moving them to other parts of the outline and switching up the order of events. This last chapter, I was skipping all over the place while writing it, because I would get random ideas for dialogue or description sentences, so I’d write a few paragraphs in the middle, then skip near the end, then come back near the beginning, etc lol. It’s like filling in pieces of a puzzle for me, almost lol. One section, I had no clue what dialogue to put there, so I just left it as a vague one sentence thing on the outline, then I had inspiration the one night while I was showering, and was tripping over myself to rush out in a towel and quickly type up the few paragraphs of dialogue that entered my brain haha. And that was all I ended up writing that night.

But, when it comes to me actually sitting and focusing on writing, I’d say it takes me about 2-4 days of actual writing, to finish a chapter. Now, that doesn’t include days in between there where I might not write anything, due to being busy or tired or whatever. But if we’re talking about actual evenings when I pull up the document and start typing, it’s about 2-4 days. Idk if I’ve ever sat and written an entire chapter in one go, except the much shorter beginning chapters of ID. Even when I write one shots, it takes about 2-4 days of writing, because I usually hit my limit after around 2-3k words, where my brain starts to shut off on me, and I’ve learned to just stop and come back to it the next day, rather than force myself to try and write more, which just leads to frustration.

So, it’s not the fastest writing process with me, but I’d rather take my time and get it right, then feel pressured to bang it all out in one go, and not be satisfied with it lol. That was a really long answer to your question, so I apologize XD

#Anonymous

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zanytimetravelenthusiast-blog · 5 years ago

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ProfitMail Review Discount And Large Bonus

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Offer something which the consumer absolutely values

Consumers following through on a Call-To-Action and also joining their email IDs are, most likely as not, searching for something beneficial in their inbox everyday. What they assuredly do not want to see is spammy emails that are much more mess than use. Provide the information they're trying to find, in addition to info they didn't think they needed.

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thelmasirby32 · 5 years ago

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Quantum supremacy and nine SEO trends that’ll flip 2020 on its head

Get ready because SEO trends will undergo revolutionary changes in 2020. Make sure you are on the side that embraces this revolution, rather than the one that resists it.

Google has achieved “Quantum Supremacy”, this means that they have built a quantum computer capable of performing tasks that would take modern-day supercomputers 10’s of thousands of years to accomplish.

In 2020 Google will start using these new breakthroughs for commercial purposes. This will make Google’s search algorithm exponentially more powerful since the quantum processor is fully programmable and can run general-purpose quantum algorithms and machine learning applications.

I know, scary, right.

Quantum Supremacy might affect SEO in several ways:

Making search more relevant

New tactics to overcome black hat SEO

Lightning fast and reactive algorithmic updates

Rankings that are truly based on relevancy and merit of website content (instead of backlinks)

Dramatically change Google Image search results

This is just one aspect of the future of SEO, let’s talk about the rest.

1. NLP oriented content

Google just released a new update in October of 2019 called BERT (which is based on NLP), which has impacted the ranking of more than 10% of queries in Google.

What is NLP?

In computer science, natural language processing (NLP) is a field in machine learning which focuses on the ability of a computer to understand, analyze, manipulate, and potentially generate human language.

Bonus

Do you want to learn about the basics of NLP? This paper from Stanford University can surely help.

Furthermore, NLP is changing the landscape of businesses since it has the ability to extract critical information from unstructured data (mainly in the form of invoices, online customer chats, emails, or any plain text).

BERT is a deep learning model in NLP used to analyze large bodies of text to provide interesting results and insights to users. The best part is that it’s open-source, which means anyone with Python experience can train the model.

If you’re interested in learning more BERT then check out this official explanation of BERT from Google.

This breakthrough has the capability to understand a sentence based on concepts, intent, and context (not solely on keywords). Moreover, It looks at words that come before and after a sentence when understanding context.

In a nutshell, what makes BERT different is its bi-directional approach that wasn’t implemented in the preceding algorithms of Google, like Word2Vec and GloVe.

Let’s understand it with an example

Sentence-A: The man went to the shop.

Sentence-B: He bought a PlayStation 5.

Label: IsNextSentence

BERT can perceive the relationship between Sentence-A and Sentence-B based on the word ‘the man’ and ‘He’ and ‘the shop’ and ‘PlayStation 5’. Previous algorithms couldn’t understand the left and right context in sentences.

Thanks to BERT, Google can now understand longer queries better than before. Moreover, it can detect the opposite as well. Have a look at the below example:

Sentence-A: The man went to the shop.

Sentence-B: Google is changing the gaming industry.

Label: IsNotNextSentence

Sentence-A and Sentence-B have no relationship, and they are entirely dissimilar.

But what is BERT’s takeaway?

There is no official explanation from Google, but according to the real SEO experts like Bill Slawski and Ryan Jones, who have been in the SEO industry for more than ten years, you should ignore advice from so-called SEO experts.

Are you thinking BERT can’t be implemented practically until you are a Python geek?

Boy, do I have some news for you.

Let me show you the Google NLP API tool that you can use to optimize your content.

This tool helps businesses identify unique entities from invoices, live chats, emails, or any plain text.

The part I love about this tool is that it can recognize your content against your competitors’ content and Google is using the same technology in ranking websites.

Follow the steps

Go to Google NLP Tool that looks like this:

Type anything that comes to mind. I’ve input my author bio and clicked Analyze.

This powerful tool shows four critical sections: Entities, sentiments, syntax, and categories – each section has significance for understanding content.

As it’s evident, in the ‘entities’section, Google can understand ‘Ata Khan’ is the name of a person. Entities can be the name of any person, a place, an organization, a number, and so on. Google is rapidly growing its entity library.

In ‘sentiment’, Google can understand the context of any sentence from being positive to negative.

‘Syntax’ is the technical part of language forms the grammatical structure of sentences.

The ‘categories’section is my favorite part which lets you know if your content is written for the right industry or not.

Let me explain all this with an example

Type your keyword that you want to rank for in Google. I’ve used the keyword “Best Smartphones 2019”. I opened the site that was ranking for the number one position and copied the content.

I then pasted into Google NLP. Now comes the best part, you can check whether you’re writing for the right industry or not.

Paste your content into the box to compare the results with your competitors’ content.

You should aim for a confidence score of 90% or higher in the industry you want to rank for.

But what happens when it doesn’t show the right industry? Double-check to see if you are using industry buzzwords and words used y by experts in your field (by observing the content ranked by Google).

Want to see an example of why Google ranks the ‘Car Movie’ Wikipedia page?

The reason is simple – the page contains words that are all related to movies, words like :

Director

Producer

Screenplay

Actor

The secret to a better ranking is to include as many entities as possible in your content, as per Bill Slawski.

2. SEO semantic HTML

Semantic HTML is a crucial part of SEO which most marketers ignore.

What saddens me is that most companies hire web developers that don’t have any SEO experience. This, of course, presents huge problems down the road.

I believe every good developer should know SEO, primarily technical SEO (which helps earn better rankings in search engines).

Below is a developer’s style of writing code that doesn’t possess SEO skills

<html>

<head>

<title>Example</title>

</head>

<body>

Here goes logo, navigation, etc.

</div>

A place for website’s main content

</div>

Footer information, links, etc.

</div>

</body>

</html>

Now, look at the below code, which is perfectly written for SEO. It has <title>, <main>, <p>, and <footer> that aids Google in identifying important elements on the page.

<html>

<head>

<title>Example</title>

</head>

<body>

Here goes logo, navigation, etc.

</header>

<main>

<p>A place for website’s main content</p>

</main>

Footer information, links, etc.

</footer>

</body>

</html>

What is the main advantage? Semantic HTML helps in getting a featured snippet of your website on search results pages.

According to my research, most featured snippets are taken from the <p> element.

Look at this keyword “Why people fall in love”.

Now take a look at the HTML version of the answer.

What do you find? The featured snippet is taken from within a <p> tag element.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen businesses hiring writers who don’t have any basic knowledge of HTML and end up publishing content that doesn’t rank well.

They write on Microsoft Word or Google Doc, and they use different features to make an article look better, but at the cost of poor HTML structure.

Need a real example?

Take an article written in MS Word and I paste it into the visual editor of WordPress. It looks something like this:

Such a messy code isn’t likely to be featured as a snippet by Google.

3. Schema implementation

As of November, 45% of websites on the internet don’t use Schema at all.

This is a great opportunity to increase your organic traffic as few businesses are utilizing this great traffic source.

And here’s what a search listing with featured snippets look like:

You can mark up any information with schema tags that are relevant to your business, such as reviews, ratings, and prices as compared to normal snippets which only contain a title, URL, and meta description. The greatest benefit of utilizing rich snippets is that they attract more clicks because of the larger real estate they take when displayed on SERPs (as well as providing additional useful information for searchers).

For some people, the implementation of schema tags appears to be a daunting task…But it’s not! Google tag manager makes this process very easy. Check out this tutorial which breaks down schema tag implementation step by step.

4. Voice search

Voice search is becoming more useful to users because it’s more personalized. Now, you can talk to your personal assistance as if it were a real human.

SEOs have been talking about voice search for a decade, but they still don’t know how to optimize their content for it.

If you want to be picked up by Google Assistant, you need to optimize for featured snippets because more than 40.7% of the voice searches are taken from featured snippets, according to Backlinko.

Why is voice search the future?

The reason is simple…people have become lazy. People love to shop online. And people love to chat with friends instead of meeting at a physical location.

So how do you optimize your featured snippets to be presented in Google Voice Search? Simply write the answer to the question but be sure that specific words from the questions are mentioned.

Need an example?

Look at the keyword below. The words in the question are included in the answer. This has helped to get the snippet featured.

Featured snippets may contain:

Paragraphs

Numbered lists

Bullet lists

Table featured snippets

Youtube snippets

You should try to use as many of these formatting types when writing your answers. Check out this detailed guide on getting featured snippets picked up by voice search.

5. The speed update

This is a pretty common trend, so why did it make this list? Because despite Google addressing its importance, corporations continue to ignore it.

So what has Google done so far?

Made speed a ranking factor.

Investing time and money on AMP technology across Google.

Built the new speed feature in Google Search Console.

The latest chrome version now labels slow websites with a “shame” badge.

So why is Google coming down hard on page speed optimization? Does it really matter? Well, Amazon is a great example of the importance of page speed optimization. They found that every 100ms of latency cost them1% in profit – that’s a staggering $4 million dollars in sales.

That’s a tenth of one second! Imagine what Amazon could achieve if it increases its speed by 1 second!

Ever wonder why this happens? It’s because our brain makes decisions in milliseconds, not seconds.

6. Creating branded queries

Branded queries are a direct sign of your business’ credibility since users are searching for your brand name in Google.

According to the ranking factors report by Brian Dean, branded search is a ranking factor.

The founder of Backlinko has created an astounding SEO blog that has become a brand in the SEO industry.

These branded queries provide a hint to Google that users love their blog which has helped them gain higher positions in the SERPs.

Have a look at the below Google Analytics report, 40% of monthly traffic is coming from returning visitors. It’s become a brand.

Moreover, you can also use Google Search Console to see your branded search queries by clicking New>Query>Type your website name>Apply from the Performance Report.

But the real question is how will you make your website a brand?

There is no secret. You’ll need to focus on providing excellent content to your audience that no one else can provide.

According to my experience, blogs with their own unique voice and personality (that no other blog can replicate) have the highest chances of becoming a brand.

Here are some tips to make your blog a brand:

Keep the website name easy to pronounce, easy to spell, and easy to speak.

The shorter the domain, the better (and .coms are best).

Promote your brand name on social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Write your own unique content. Branded topics perform substantially better than non-branded ones (like the “Skyscraper Technique” by Backlinko).

Survey your visitors and customers to understand what they need from your industry.

7. Cumulative optimization

Cumulative optimization is the process of continually optimizing your website and pages until you achieve your goals. The idea is that you never stop making improvements and analyzing your customers’ needs and wants.

Let’s talk about a case study by Ahrefs.

Ahrefs attempted to rank number one for the keyword “free backlink tool”, but they failed. The webpage kept at the 8th position on the SERP despite them doing the following:

On-page SEO

Page speed optimization

Image optimization

Internal linking

Paid traffic

Guest posting

The first rule of optimizing is to ask the question, why are you optimizing in the first place? Maybe you’re not getting the rankings you deserve, maybe you’re not generating sales, or maybe it’s something else. Whatever it is, make a note of it.

Once you’ve identified your issue, you need to type your keyword into Google and observe the top-ranking pages. Specifically, you should observe:

On-Page SEO with comprehensive content analysis

Off-Page SEO with no-follow and do-follow backlink breakdown

Ahrefs recognized that the top-ranked pages were providing backlink tools free of cost, but Ahrefs’ cost seven dollars (as a trial demo).

A week within the day Ahrefs made their backlink tool-free (which allowed anyone to check the backlinks of any website – along with other useful information), Ahrefs gained the number one ranking. They didn’t create a new page, they simply updated their existing page.

That’s why if you’re not getting the desired ranking for your page you’ll need to audit the page and find out what you lack that could be holding you back.

8. Video SEO

Businesses that utilize the power of video marketing get 49% more revenue year-over-year than those that don’t.

The reason? People love watching videos.

Leading blogs in the SEO industry like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Backlinko focus on making videos to generate quality leads.

Small businesses don’t focus on making video due to it being expensive But thanks to freelancing platforms it’s become cheaper these days. Moreover, you can use video tools that can help you further to create engaging videos.

You’ll need to understand that making videos on just any topic isn’t an effective way of video marketing (you must fuel it with keyword research).

Keyword research is a crucial step in finding topics that can be picked by YouTube and Google.

You can also find great topics on YouTube. Go to any channel in your industry, click “Sort By”, and choose “Most Popular”. You’ll end up with a list of topics that are popular – create videos for those.

Another fantastic way to find topics is by YouTube Search Predictions.

*Note – Do you want to copy the keywords from the suggest list all at once without any tool? Click on “Report search predictions” at the bottom of the suggestions list. It will pop up like this:

Once you do that there will be an option to select all keywords and copy.

Are you eager to make successful videos? Follow these tips:

You have five seconds to persuade users to keep watching your video.

Retention is a ranking factor. If you are getting more views, but only a few users are watching the entire video.

Most of the views on YouTube come from suggestions. It means you need to invest time to make a good thumbnail to attract users.

Invest in writing a script. Nothing can beat a good script. As an example to learn, watch the best videos in your niche and download subtitles.

9. E-A-T centric website

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness – three factors help Google whether to trust a site.

Recent Google algorithms have penalized many health sites because misleading health information can lead to the death of a person. Many blogs hire cheap writers to write thin content and then rank those blogs with black hat techniques.

Google hired more than 10,000 search quality raters to discover thin websites, and they follow the instructions mentioned in the official PDF.

Every SEO should read this entire document to have a better understanding of the future of SEO.

Healthline strictly follows the instructions in the document and gets traffic in millions.

But how?

As we know, “Expertise” is the number one element. Healthline only hires professionals who are experts in their niche.

The second element is “Authoritativeness”. Healthline provides strong references to prove the authenticity of a topic.

“Trustworthiness” is the third element and it looks at the website’s UX and UI, age of the website, reputation on social media and online reviews.

It indicates when you should focus on:

Hiring expert writers in your niche. Not all writers are equal. If you write yourself, make sure you follow the E-A-T rule with an impressive author bio.

Must have an “About Us” page to show your testimonials from clients, awards, and qualifications.

Content should be written to help users, not Google. If you make your users happy, Google will reward your website with higher rankings.

Wrapping up

SEO trends keep changing with the advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence, but the main mission of Google remains the same – to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

So don’t let your competitors have all the fun. Execute these aforementioned SEO trends and watch your site climb the ranks.

Here is a short summary of what we just covered

Using Google’s NLP tool to optimize your content

Implementing Schema to cover more space and clicks from users

Making use of featured snippets to get traffic from voice search

Speeding up your site to avoid Chrome shame badge

Writing quality content to entice users to remember and search for your brand on Google

Focusing on improving a webpage that is not performing well until it achieves abetter ranking

Making interesting and compelling videos

Making your website E-A-T Centric (that is, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)

What do you think the future of SEO will look like in the year 2020? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.

Ata Khan is Co-Founder of Xoobo, a digital marketing agency that is on the bleeding edge of the industry.

The post Quantum supremacy and nine SEO trends that’ll flip 2020 on its head appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/01/02/quantum-supremacy-and-eight-seo-trends-2020/

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