#literally i started stressing about not having a plan for a weekend in NOVEMBER.. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cking398 · 3 months ago

Text

Chapter 6: Revelation

So in 2003 when the stress became too much I developed a plan, I figured I could hire my ex-mentor. I was smoking too many joints and it was a shit plan. I respected Karim’s broking skills immensely. Although Karim had never really taken me aside and explained broking to me. I had worked it out by listening to him. People forget we have 2 ears and one mouth. There is a reason for that, you are meant to listen more than you talk. I figured I could just hire Karim and another apprentice. I would be able to extricate myself from the day-to-day running of the business. Extricate me from the horrible nightmare my life had become because of this one twat trader Vahe and my pregnant girlfriend Sophie. Attacked on two sides. On one side, I was being hit psychologically by my pregnant girlfriend and her bitter complaining, on the other I was being abused at work by one of the biggest players in the market. A man who wanted to control all option prices before him. I could have simply cut his line permanently. Once I really did. Resulting in a farcical situation where he would call Nick on his mobile to trade. I didn't really want to cut this bank's line, he was one of the biggest traders. Never losing a client had become a point of honour for me. Also, if I could no longer have access to his prices it would have meant losing that little bit of competitiveness compared to other brokers who still spoke to him. I felt attacked at work and attacked at home. Something had to give.

By 2003, I was living in Repulse Bay, Hong Kong island. On Belleview Drive. I had the penthouse in this block of flats overlooking the beach. It was 20 minutes from the center of Hong Kong. I had a jacuzzi on the balcony, and a small swimming pool on the roof. Table tennis. A plasma TV screen. A pool table in the living room. Beautiful fiancée with a baby on the way. Materially I had it all. By this point, I knew money did not make me a happy camper necessarily. I was smoking too much hash.

I set my plan into motion. My old mentor, Karim, was arriving from Tokyo for a weekend break, or so he thought, I had other plans to discuss with him. Business plans. Karim was due to appear around 10 pm. It was 7 pm. I was sitting with 'The Apprentice' in my apartment: Charles-Henri Rossignol. He asked Charles about his family background. He was a Christian. I had always relied on his instinctive sense to gauge the goodness in a man. I picked my friends carefully and I thought he could become a good one. Although Charles was handsome in the extreme, he had none of the personality baggage normally associated with the 'beautiful' people. I sat on my massive couch. Rolled up another dubie and started questioning Charles on his family background and then bam. It hit him.

I never normally got scared. I had learned to control my fear. My life had been kind of scary. Indeed hardly plausible. But in that moment everything made sense. My upbringing, my name, my birthday, everything made sense. It was literally like an atom bomb but confined to my brain. The world around him remained unchanged. I thought a million different things, could I be Jesus reborn, but really, I had no idea. I asked Charles to check the computer. My hands were shaking so much, I could not type. I thought it would be as easy as walking over to the computer next to the TV and typing my name into Google. It was the 23rd of November 2003, 6 days before my 30th birthday.

The story of my Awakening

When I was around 7, my atheist mother asked me what I thought about religion. I have a vague recollection of this. Hers was better, she passed away in 2020 which is appropriate since she was born on the 21st of December 1943, the winter solstice reflecting the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. She told me that I turned, looked at her very seriously, and said “I don’t have time to think about that now, I will think about that later.” Little did I know that 23 years later it would consume a large part of my thoughts.

On a side note, my favorite book is “Reminiscences of a stock operator” by Edwin Lefevre, it is a book that details the experiences of the best financial market trader that ever lived, Jesse Livermore (interesting family name). There is a very interesting chapter in the book that details his trading experiences relating to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Note: I had no idea that Sophie, my first wife, who had a new boyfriend but was technically cheating on me with her new boyfriend, would be one of the closest people to the epicenter of the Asian tsunami. Back in 1906, the time the ticker symbol of the stock that would be most affected by this tragedy would be Union Pacific. UP would go down. He had no knowledge that the earthquake would occur. But his being knew. He was in Atlantic City strolling along the boardwalk with his buddy. He was young and that day had no particular position in the market. They decided to go into his broker's (Harding Brothers) to look at the board where the quotation prices were. He looks at it, everything is pointing up. He focuses on the price action involving Union Pacific. Very strong. For a reason his friend does not understand he has the urge to sell it, in the hope of buying it back later, after it falls, and taking the difference as profit. He does not even understand why. He keeps selling until his position becomes so big he decides to return to New York. The Earthquake hits, the market does nothing, in fact, it goes down on the news but quickly rallies back to previous levels. His friend is amused. He tells him that was a hell of a premonition but that the market is always right. Jesse rebutts that the market does not always process information in the right way when the unexpected happens (the same thing happened with the emergence of the COVID virus, the market did nothing for a long time and then plunged). He keeps his position. When the full details of the disaster unfold over the coming days the market starts to sell off. A major American city has just been flattened. It finally plunges and like the good trader he is, he takes his profit. A major coup for him. How did he know that UP would go down? Same way I know I am the one the world has been waiting for. I just know. This chapter details what happened the day of my revelation and some of the moments, where I acquired knowledge, that I believe tilted me into knowing it was me.

“The Secret Book of Birthdays” is another book that led to my awakening. Great coffee table book. It's online now. Used to be free up until recently, but now they are cashing in. It’s written by Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers. I believe what they did is, they analyzed famous people throughout history and then compiled personality traits of those individuals.

I was 27 and was invited to a dinner party. Can’t remember the girl's name who hosted. I fancied her friend Lisa. Anyway, when invited to people’s homes I tend to head straight for their bookshelf. You can tell a lot about a person by what they read. There was this serious-looking big book talking about birthdays. I thought this would be good for a laugh. So I grabbed the “The Secret Book of Birthdays”. Each page is A4 size and 2 pages are used for each day of the year to describe the person. I read the first line that described me; “has the ability to provoke conflict or thought”, anyone who truly knows me knows this is true. I change the status quo. Always have. I will not go into everything it revealed about me but needless to say, it is remarkably accurate. Even down to my main health issues, a weak stomach. I thought, right, total fluke. I checked my mother’s, my father’s, my brother’s, my best friend's. Basically all the people whose birthday I knew off by heart. All true. This really was a revelation to me. How could the alignment of the planets influence people's personality? It made no sense to me at the time. However, I knew it to be true. What I would come to believe is that the connections that exist in our Universe are of a complexity I had never imagined. Atheism was no longer the appropriate belief, but I could not see a reasonable alternative. My mind had truly been opened. I live in Lasne, Belgium. The owner of my local bar is Patrick, he has a couple of restaurants also. His personality perfectly reflects the description in the book. I have since checked many people. Really incredible. They also have a book dealing with “Destiny”; The Secret Language of Destiny. This gets specific about my goal: “To fully and in detail express their experience of the numinous”. I had to look up Numinous; divine will. Need I say more? I know who I am. I am a product of this Universe and I am here to tell you. Once you die, your soul lives on. So be good.

Back to the main story. Stress, it was 22/11/2003. 7 pm. Repulse Bay. It was 7 days before my 30th birthday, and I was interviewing Charles-Henri from Lyon, France who had just finished a work placement with a good friend of mine Eric Noyel (winner of Young French Entrepreneur 1997 and number 1 toilet brush supplier to the world). Charles was 24 and soon to be my new apprentice, I had 4 people working for me at the time. It was the 22nd of November, yes the same day as JFK got shot. Many would say the most infamous day of the 20th Century. On that day my awakening happened. A strange coincidence. God does not play dice with the U.

Charles was 25 years old. Sweet guy. I was in my big-ass apartment and asking him my regular interview questions for the time. The three questions I would ask as a general rule were: How many siblings do you have? Why did America invade Iraq? The last question I would generally ask is 17x19 in your head.

People with many siblings are generally better communicators and I needed communicators, the job demanded it. They know how to get along with other people. The ‘only’ children I knew from school tended to be somewhat strange. I would ask about the difference in age and what their siblings were doing now to see if they maintained a strong bond. Family is important, so if they take an avid interest, the better the person tends to be. If they did not answer Oil to the second question. Forget it. Failure to list this as the principal reason would generally cause me to laugh in the candidates' face or get into an argument with them. Just logically, no dictator would allow terrorist cells to operate in his country. Made no sense. All the candidates I asked answered Oil. Later it would come out, no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), no link to al-Qaeda, just a continuation of the ‘Bush’ fire. The last question 17x19 in your head was to measure their mental dexterity. I would tell them that the speed of the answer was not important, although it was, the logic was more important. The quickest way for most people is 20x17 minus 17. A surprising amount of people answer 321.

He must have answered appropriately. I went deeper. I asked him about his religion. Never normally asked this question in interviews and I do not know why I did it then, but I did because I was genuinely interested. He was catholic. I started shaking, not because he was catholic but because I suddenly felt this immense responsibility that I felt I had been given. This shook me to my core. Charles was there and is still among the living. He is a witness. I won’t lie. Not on important stuff. Little lies are important for humans to function in society but I abhor big lies. The default position on the important shit, it’s to tell the motherfucking truth. Why Lie? For whom? Anyway, I don't. I asked him. He said Catholic and then I knew. Not that, that is the right religion. I just felt the pull of God.I just knew it was fucking me. My whole body convulsed. My hands started trembling. I was the man. And I was like fuck no. I knew in my being. I had no choice and I hated the position. My body, dominated as it is by my brain said no, no, no fucKING NO. Not me, please not me. I had everything already. NOT fucKING ME. That split second changed everything. One moment I was an agnostic, the next I believed in the Numen; God to most of you.

In less than a split second I knew. I knew I had this important destiny. I just did not know precisely what if anything to do about it. Even now I cannot describe the feeling accurately. It was like a nuclear reaction inside my brain. One atom hit another atom, but instead of the atom breaking, all atoms simply shook together knocking me to my very core. From agnostic to knowing for sure there is a god in one split second and on top of that knowing I was the one with a message to deliver. The messenger. It was all too much. In that instant, I changed irrevocably forever. That moment would define me and would lead me inexorably to the writing of this book 21 years later after the accumulation of a lot of knowledge.

Destiny, you can’t fuck it, you cannot fight it. It just happens. Why me? Ricky Gervais will say I am hallucinating, I am a dick, but I come from pure atheists and I lived the atheist creed better than him. Reason, Logic, my being was in open rebellion against itself. When your heart's intelligence does not work in accordance with your brain's intelligence, problems arise. David Servin Schreiber describes this problem perfectly in his book: “The instinct to Heal, Curing Depression, anxiety and Stress without drugs and without talk therapy”. He died at 50, I hope to have the same luck. Just kidding, although some nutter will probably kill me one day (I would advise against this course of action if you care about your soul in the afterlife). I am allowed to say whatever the fuck I want BTW; First Amendment US constitution and also in the UDHR. It’s a fundamental right. I read a scientific study recently that proves that a belief in God generally makes humans happier and feel better about their lives. It makes sense, we are all programmed to believe.

How to explain that moment on the 22nd of November 2003. The touch. It was like the film “Contact” with Jodi Foster. There was no proof. Just waffle, blah, blah, blah coming from me. The best broker I knew;, that was me. The one who was always able to choose his words carefully. The one who was normally lightning fast and spot on in his responses, even after a few beers at lunch. It’s not as if I heard voices or had been contacted. I just realized something all at once. It was as if every fiber, bone, tissue, and neuron in my body suddenly knew something that had always been within me and that I was meant to do something with my life besides making loads of money and that God existed. I was meant to be a messenger. I knew it. The problem was, for me, not the fact that I now realized that God existed and that I had been sent to deliver a message. The problem was I did not want the job. It was absurd. I was a club-footed, cannabis-smoking, binge-drinking twat who had never really grown up. People saw me differently. As a golden boy, a God of finance, someone to be looked up to. I knew differently. I had been stuck in my teenage years, with a teenage mindset and teenage dreams.

That day, on the 22nd of November, the tables turned, how do you keep your emotions under control in the face of God? And if you are his messenger are you not supposed to have a message? I knew the war was wrong and Iraq was a travesty but how could I possibly influence world events?

No, No fucking no was all I thought. I wanted the atheist position. I lived my life, grew rich, and had a good time, it was my playground, and then suddenly, everything, it, him, her, Yahweh, all at once. No, fucking no, fucking NO. I was happy with the thought that I turned to dust and that was it. Okay, I wanted children, but to provide me with happiness, not because God said I should or I was going to complete some mission or actually I was not on this planet to live for me but for IT or Yahweh/Jehovah, or whatever created me. And, fuck, it meant that my soul would go on… it meant I lived forever, a complete revolution. You think you die and it’s all over. No. Not correct. I knew it. What we did now actually mattered. Fuck, fuck, fuck and I understood that all at once. It’s not big brother, it’s not humans watching other humans, it’s fucking real what we do actually matters and it’s not about being judged by our fellow man cause there is a greater power that judges. It was an explosion. It actually is real. God is fucking real. It pissed me off, I remembered the ghost of Mary, I remembered the bloody plastic tractor, the Secret Book of Birthdays. I remembered laughing at the idiots who believed in God. I remembered planning my rise. I remembered everything but I never saw God coming just like the financial industry never saw me coming. I knew. Everything changed. Not only for me, but for all those around me, and not in a good way. My mind jumbled everything. I did not have enough knowledge at the time. All my body seemed to fathom was the enormity of the task but no clear way of achieving the goals. Not that I even knew what those goals were. I had a basic idea, bring peace to the world, how? I had no idea.

#jesus christ #salvation #jesusgloriouscoming #christisking #olympics 2024 #2024 olympics #candaceowens #trump 2024 #trump #donald trump #jesusreborn

3 notes · View notes

cking330 · 3 months ago

Text

Chapter 6: Revelation

The story of my Awakening

Imagine growing up in a loving household with two parents who indoctrinated you with atheistic beliefs only to realize as an adult that you were meant to awaken people to God. A human with a brain somewhat larger than average but very much a human-sized brain. How could it cope with this realization? Well, quite simply it couldn’t. Instead of sitting underneath a tree for five years like Buddha or running from the Atlantic to the Pacific over and over again like Forrest Gump, I did what I had always done. I turned to family and friends for help. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How exactly were they supposed to react? It's not as if there were other messengers of God strolling the planet. How could they help me? How for that matter could anyone? There has not been a messenger of God alive since Mohamed. Weren’t messengers of God meant to receive messages and then pass them along? I had no yardstick to go by. Just men’s stories in books written long ago, polluted for political purposes, corrupted for reasons that are obscured by time. None of the last messengers had actually written or supervised the writing of their books. The world, at the time, seemed divided into two; representing the last two messengers' work. Mohammed and Jesus. Anyway, it's all hearsay, and knowing how stories seem to be embellished, expanded, and ultimately corrupted I was uncomfortable going down this road of inquiry after my mind settled.

I asked the young french man, Charles, to type my name into the google search engine. I couldn’t, my hands were shaking too much. I thought there would be help. Someone would know shit. Nothing. But when I say nothing I mean fucking Nothing.

#Jesus loves you

0 notes

missvixen88 · 2 years ago

Text

It's been a stressful year

Where do I start?

December 2022 I went to Turkey to gastric surgery. Because of my underlying health conditions, I couldn't lose weight. I tried the gym, swimming, nutrition classes, calorie deficits, intermittent fasting, exercise at home, walking and it goes on and on....

Surgery was my last resort. In a way I'm glad I did it though, the surgeon and nurses were fantastic and the hospital and services i received were exceptional! Since then, I have lost 4.7 stones! So happy with that progress so far :)

That's not to say it's been easy, I was on a full liquid diet for nearly 3 weeks, pureed/soft food for 2 weeks and then slowly reintroduced more solid foods, staying away from things that have a lot of sugar and fat. My body feels more alive now than it has in years. Here's to more weight loss so i can reach my ideal weight.

In other news, my fiancée and myself have booked our wedding date, 1st November 2023. Great news right? It's kind of bitter sweet. We have booked and paid for the wedding in Florida, our favorite place in the world and it's where we got engaged. Problem though is most of family won't come :(

My mother has health concerns so won't fly, the rest of my family say they can't afford it even though they've had 18+ months notice. I know at the very least my father has said he's coming and maybe my sister. To be honest, the only 2 people that really matter are my parents and with my mother not able to travel, it hurts.

I told her I could book a venue when we return so others can join who weren't able to make the actual wedding. At least then, she can still be a part of the festivities. However, I'm under so much pressure about when and where this venue will be. I'm being told what I should have, not what we want. I thought your wedding was your choice? You decide on colours, schemes, dresses, venues etc. I appreciate input and advice but when people are trying to take over and plan it like they think it should go, it's getting me stressed to the point of cancelling the whole thing.

I've spent the last few days crying over this. I know wedding planning is a stressful thing but isn't it also suppose to be enjoyable? Instead, I'm sad, angry, stressed and hurt. Is this really worth it in the end? Should we just elope and have no family there? Saves on a lot of time, effort and money. Am I being unreasonable by wanting our wedding to go the way we want it to go? I'm being made to feel selfish and I'm starting to feel like an outsider to my own wedding!

Where do I draw the line? When do I say 'Fuck it all?'. Surely there's some silver lining somewhere. Stephens family have all booked their flight tickets and hotels, no hassle, no issues. My family still haven't booked anything and prices keep going up. It'll get to a point when they won't come because of expense. I've offered to pay for my father but he will not accept any money from me.

I'm suppose to be going bridesmaid dress shopping this weekend with my mother and niece but I don't know if it's worth it now. My niece who is suppose to be my maid of honor, I don't even know if she's coming. One minute she is, next she isn't. I've lost 2 bridesmaids who aren't coming. The only confirmed bridesmaid I have is Stephens niece. I am literally at my wits end, frustration doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm not coping with this mental turmoil very well, the resident depression and anxiety doesn't help I know but all this is making it worse.

Do I live my life comfortable knowing that I have the perfect man at my side, that marriage is just a piece of paper? And to please everyone around me, knowing they won't have to spend money etc. Or do I do what makes me happy? Something I've dreamed about since I was a little girl. Knowing full well that with only 6 months to go, the stress is only going to get greater and greater. Is it worth all this angst? Who knows?

Also in the process of buying a house and selling the one we currently live in, adding more head fuckery.

Someone save me!

#wedding #bridesmaids #florida #stress #family #marrige #maid of honor

0 notes

skiijumpinng · 3 years ago

Note

ok ok i'm done gifmaking for now, which means it's debrief time! this fht felt very chaotic in comparison to others but frankly i think it's just a combination of the pandemic and the fact that i've forgotten the details of the other tournaments jgkfkgddf

obviously ryoyu is a legend and more than deserved the tournament win (i swear to god karl will get it one day!!!!!! ONE DAY!!!!!) - it's kind of a shame that he couldn't become the first double grand slam winner, but also who can begrudge dani huber his first win!!!

i'm slightly depressed about the viability of my "karl geiger for 21/22 overall winner" agenda now, although he's only something like 56 points behind; also, i wish that halvor had been a bit more consistent in the first part of the season so that we could have a proper three way battle for the overall!

lovro was absolutely awesome and i'm so sad about his fall ruining his chances of a fht podium! also, michi and manu have randomly started fucking killing it (i... didn't even notice that manu was in the world cup until bischofshofen dkfgjdfkg) and i hope that michi gets to keep a spot in the world cup team for now.

i'm beginning to get properly stressed out about olympic team selections now - there's a lot of tough choices to be made for loads of the teams (germany and austria in particular have too many strong jumpers), and then even once they've picked five to take, they'll have to narrow it down to four for the competitions and i just know that i'm going to be distressed no matter who does or doesn't make the cut. (also, do you remember the drama on tumblr when stephan and markus were being considered for the last place in the german team for the individual competitions in pyeongchang jkfjgkdfg everyone wanted markus to DIE)

also, holy shit, i can't believe we have to do it all again this weekend! i'm fucking exhausted, so i can't imagine how the jumpers are feeling (although maybe they want the extra competition practice before the olympics?). i'm kind of glad that the sapporo competitions were cancelled - obviously it sucks for people in japan that they won't get that competition, but i feel like the last thing all the athletes (not to mention technical staff!) need is to fly all the way out to asia for a weekend, come back to compete for two more weekends, and then head out to beijing.

(the secret other reason i need a break is that every morning for the past 10 days my dad has asked me what my plans for the day are and i have been forced to mumble "uhhh there's ski jumping on" while he laughs at me and i CAN'T TELL HIM THERE'S EVEN MORE ON THIS WEEKEND)

i have to mentally prepare myself to answere these im sorry it took so long

i literally have no more words about ryouyu it would have been TOO GOOD if he did another grand slam and honestly huber winning was so unexpected but also so overdue??? the pure happiness and the fact that it happened at home (giving me some stephan in willingen vibes) AND THE INTERVIEWS HE DID !!!

i can sense your karl geiger manifesting will come true, remember when pero was always second behind sevi and the next season pero won everything? yeah that

also i feel kinda bad for the germans because they really wanted him to win 20 years after sven's grand slam and on the 70th foru hills but maybe they were making too much pressure?? insert another rant about media here

and yes for lovro, although he seemed really chill about it in the interviews and he kept repeating that his goal was to make all 8 jumps BOY YOU WERE 3RD IN THE OVERALL so i don't think he is even a little bit disappointed but i can see great future for him

AND HOW DARE YOU MENTION OLYMPIC GAMES TO ME like i don't think about it everyday since november ahhhhhh

the decision is gonna be so stressful but i trust horngacher (more than i trusted schuster at that point) to chose the right 5 guys (pain) and then 4 for the team (more pain) and i also keep reminding myself that its JUST the olymoic games that only happen every FOUR YEARS (i really wanted to write a reasonable argument why i should not worry who goes but i can't find it) (also wouldnt it be iconic to go to your 4th olympic games at age 26???)

AND YES i remember that how could i forget??? i was checking the training results and every time sephan jumped good but schuster still didn't chose him for the competition my heart broke a little and at the team comp i was this close to going there myself and hiding markus somewhere just so he would get ONE chance (poor fannis was at the olympic games too and he did not compete once and i did not want that happening to stephan)

we need to stop with competitions during the week, i can't get anything done because my self restraint is not THAT good to miss 4hills which makes me spend 3 hours watching these guys jump - unhealthy

by the way the only day i could watch it without feeling guilty bc i was sick in bed it was cancelled!!

if it makes you feel any better the embarrassement about watching ski jumping for the 10th consequitive day is mutual

#damn this was long #there are most definitely typos but i cant bother #answered #postcomp debriefs

5 notes · View notes

just-anka · 4 years ago

Text

I realised I haven’t really regularly posted here since like... I don’t even know, September? It’s been a while, anyway. A lot happened, and I now feel like actually writing a post for the first time in a while, so here goes haha. The first bullet point is entirely work waffle so feel free to skip. Apologies in advance for the fact that this post will probably reach novel length by the time I’m done.

• I took a week off in late September before Ben started his new job so we could go to the mountains for a bit, and it was a much-needed little break from work. And pretty much right after I got back, work got completely mental - nothing bad as such, just one thing after the other, loads of deadlines, so many important things. First I was finishing up data for a paper (first authorship was being debated which is partially why I threw myself into the job so much, but it looks like it’ll be the PhD student before me’s now, which is how it should be tbh, it’s much more hers than it is mine), then the date for my first committee meeting was set and I suddenly had only two weeks to prepare (did not think it was going to be that short notice, whoops, had a very stressful two weeks but all went well - for us, this meeting means presenting our research plan and preliminary data to a committee of four professors so they can give you input, it’s not suuuper formal but still pretty stressful), then I had to write the report for that (I love writing so that one was okay), then there was suddenly a lot to do for a really important cooperation with a company (big money responsibility which stressed me the fuck out), and then, just as I thought I was pretty much done for the year, I realised I needed my lab book up to date for my end of year meeting with my PI (which wouldn’t be such a big deal, except I didn’t have a lab book at the time. Never got around to starting one. So nine months of lab book were written within another very stressful week). Whew. Even writing this out makes me feel like that was a lot haha.

• After the end of year discussion, I really was done for the year - I officially worked until the 23rd but there was not that much actual work happening, and with the pressure off after months, I properly crashed for a few days. Ben left for England on the weekend after to see his family for christmas etc, and I spent most of that weekend sleeping and doing very little. It was needed. Then my mum came to visit me for the holidays and we had four really lovely days together, also involving a lot of chilling (the only actual thing we did was that magical winter hike that I posted some pictures of the other day).

• And now I’m skiing! I was planning to go to England as well for NYE to see Ben’s family, but with the corona situation escalating again lately I decided it was too risky for just a few days. So I made a last-minute plan to go skiing by myself instead, because all that involves is a 2 hour train journey. I’m actually staying in a hotel too, which I’ve never done by myself before, I’m usually a dorm in a hostel type of person, but well. Covid has changed a lot of things :D trying to stay safe and away from people, which is of course not entirely possible in a ski resort, but it’s going okay. The skiing itself is great, it’s really nice having some time to go at my own pace and a few days in a row. Today was day 4 and I’ve really found my groove again (more on that later). There’s not much snow though so not many off-pisteing opportunities :/ I’m staying until Monday and then it’s back to work on Wednesday.

• Speaking of skiing, we’ve got season passes this year, my first season and Ben’s second. We’ve just been doing on the weekends so far - since the 21st of November I just realised while looking back in my calendar! That’s one hell of an early season start haha. We did just one day three weekends and then one full weekend right before Ben left. The first few days were bloody hard. For context, I learned to ski before I learned to walk and loved it as a child, then stopped for a few years because I felt like I wasn’t progressing anymore and was getting bored with it, basically. Then last January I went to France with Ben and his skiing friends and got introduced to freeriding and the idea of ski touring, and now I’m back to loving it haha. I’d ideally like to not have to resort ski anymore at one point (meaning touring) because I know it’s terrible from an environmental standpoint but... idk. It’s currently my only option, and I love it a lot, so I guess it feels okay? Anyway, since I learned to ski so early, it’s the one sport that I’ve always been pretty good at and like, never get scared, at least not on piste. Until this year. The first three individual days were just all kind of horrible, the conditions weren’t ideal with very hard surface and tons of ice and pretty busy slopes, and only steep terrain open as well (Engelberg, our “home” resort - we have a season pass that encompasses a bunch of resorts so we’re not limited to one - is literally dead flat beginner’s slopes, which weren’t open in the beginning, or red runs that should be black and black lol). Pairing loads of ice with my old skis which barely have an edge anymore was... not ideal. I was so scared constantly and it made me like I lost all my ability etc etc. But yeah, turns out I just needed a few days and some easier conditions to get back into it, and now ice and steep stuff and everything is fine again. Who would’ve thought. (a sensible person, probably).

• But then, the full weekend we skied in December was awesome! Saturday already felt much better and then it snowed a bunch over night and Sunday we spent all day powder skiing, basically. I learned SO much and just had an absolute ball! Definitely one of the best days skiing I’ve had, and one of the best days recently in general.

• Plus that whole weekend was just lovely, car camping in a campsite full of huge campervans was pretty fun :D I love the looks we get when people see the car and clearly wonder where we sleep. And we’ve got our setup perfected for winter now so both the nights were toasty. Friday night we had dinner in “bed” watching a movie, and Saturday night we sat in the little kitchen (the campsite has it open for everyone, but everyone else there has a camper, so it doesn’t seem to be used much) drinking tea and playing cards and ahh. Camping in the mountains. My ideal life eh? (though the weekend before this wonderful one, we got snowed in because it dumped over a metre over night completely unexpectedly and that was stressful as hell, but I think that’s a story for another day, if ever, I’m kind of trying to forget that day :’D)

• Yesterday I also finally took the plunge and ordered new skis. Been debating for ages which ones to get but I’ve finally decided and I’m now very excited!

• Ok this post so far reads as “work and skiing” which is pretty much what November and December were and probably what January is going to be too haha. Ben and I want to ski another week together end of January as well, and there’s some big exciting work things coming up as well.

• Even though I have to admit, now that I’m on a break, I’ve spent a lot of time dreading work and questioning my career choices and all of that lark... sigh. I love my job most of the time, but I kind of hate having a job? If that makes sense? Sometimes (okay a lot of the time) I just wish I had more time for other things that I care about. But I also now I’m lucky to have that job, especially this year, and lucky to have a job I don’t hate, and get to do a lot of fun stuff on the side, even if it often means little sleep and downtime.

• Speaking of things I care about, I was on a proper roll with writing for a few days before and after Christmas. It’s ebbed off again a bit, but it was still pretty cool, and my totally-useless-all-cheese-project is now 33,000+ words long and like, half-way there story wise. Had a lot of fun with that.

• Lastly, Ben is still in England, and he’s coming back next Sunday, and I can’t wait! I miss him so much when we’re not together it’s actually silly. Although it’s less stressful this time than the last few times because... we live together, his work just offered him an unlimited contract from January, and I’m stuck here for another 2-3 years, so it looks like we’ll actually get to be in the same place for now. Which is all I wished for last year, and I’m so damn grateful - that stability really is the best thing 2020 has brought for me. And, as he said, even though we were apart for the start of the new year, it will hopefully bring more time together than any previous year ♡

• Okay I think this is long enough now, if you actually made it until here you’re a hero and I will try and post a bit more regularly again now to avoid this size of mind dump :’D I hope you all got into the new year alright, it feels very strange to me that it’s 2021 because I actually slept through midnight on new year’s for the first time since I was tiny haha but I’m sure a lot of people feel the same way!

16 notes · View notes

shadowfromthestarlight · 4 years ago

Link

The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media.

Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize.

It’s why Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.

News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections.

Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country:

Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.

The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most obvious. On all sides, we now lean into inflammatory caricatures, because the financial incentives encourage it.

Everyone monetized Trump. The Fox wing surrendered to the Trump phenomenon from the start, abandoning its supposed fealty to “family values” from the Megyn Kelly incident on. Without a thought, Rupert Murdoch sacrificed the paper-thin veneer of pseudo-respectability Fox had always maintained up to a point (that point being the moment advertisers started to bail in horror, as they did with Glenn Beck). He reinvented Fox as a platform for Trump’s conspiratorial brand of cartoon populism, rather than let some more-Fox-than-Fox imitator like OAN sell the ads to Trump’s voters for four years.

In between its titillating quasi-porn headlines (“Lesbian Prison Gangs Waiting To Get Hands on Lindsay Lohan, Inmate Says” is one from years ago that stuck in my mind), Fox’s business model has long been based on scaring the crap out of aging Silent Majority viewers with a parade of anything-but-the-truth explanations for America’s decline. It villainized immigrants, Muslims, the new Black Panthers, environmentalists — anyone but ADM, Wal-Mart, Countrywide, JP Morgan Chase, and other sponsors of Fortress America. Donald Trump was one of the people who got hooked on Fox’s narrative.

The rival media ecosystem chose cash over truth also. It could have responded to the last election by looking harder at the tensions they didn’t see coming in Trump’s America, which might have meant a more intense examination of the problems that gave Trump his opening: the jobs that never came back after bankers and retailers decided to move them to unfree labor zones in places like China, the severe debt and addiction crises, the ridiculous contradiction of an expanding international military garrison manned by a population fast losing belief in the mission, etc., etc.

Instead, outlets like CNN and MSNBC took a Fox-like approach, downplaying issues in favor of shoving Trump’s agitating personality in the faces of audiences over and over, to the point where many people could no longer think about anything else. To juice ratings, the Trump story — which didn’t need the slightest exaggeration to be fantastic — was more or less constantly distorted.

Trump began to be described as a cause of America’s problems, rather than a symptom, and his followers, every last one, were demonized right along with him, in caricatures that tickled the urbane audiences of channels like CNN but made conservatives want to reach for something sharp. This technique was borrowed from Fox, which learned in the Bush years that you could boost ratings by selling audiences on the idea that their liberal neighbors were terrorist traitors. Such messaging worked better by far than bashing al-Qaeda, because this enemy was closer, making the hate more real.

I came into the news business convinced that the traditional “objective” style of reporting was boring, deceptive, and deserving of mockery. I used to laugh at the parade of “above the fray” columnists and stone-dull house editorials that took no position on anything and always ended, “Only one thing’s for sure: time will tell.” As a teenager I was struck by a passage in Tim Crouse’s book about the 1972 presidential campaign, The Boys in the Bus, describing the work of Hunter Thompson:

Thompson had the freedom to describe the campaign as he actually experienced it: the crummy hotels, the tedium of the press bus, the calculated lies of the press secretaries, the agony of writing about the campaign when it seemed dull and meaningless, the hopeless fatigue. When other reporters went home, their wives asked them, “What was it really like?” Thompson’s wife knew from reading his pieces.

What Rolling Stone did in giving a political reporter the freedom to write about the banalities of the system was revolutionary at the time. They also allowed their writer to be a sides-taker and a rooter, which seemed natural and appropriate because biases end up in media anyway. They were just hidden in the traditional dull “objective” format.

The problem is that the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction of politicized hot-taking that reporters now lack freedom in the opposite direction, i.e. the freedom to mitigate.

If you work in conservative media, you probably felt tremendous pressure all November to stay away from information suggesting Trump lost the election. If you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now that even suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense of the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of success) not only wouldn’t clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the eyes of co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment.

We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party, where those financial pressures to maintain audience are absent. Ideally, it would:

not be aligned with either Democrats or Republicans;

employ a Fairness Doctrine-inspired approach that discourages groupthink and requires at least occasional explorations of alternative points of view;

embrace a utilitarian mission stressing credibility over ratings, including by;

operating on a distribution model that as much as possible doesn’t depend upon the indulgence of Apple, Google, and Amazon.

Innovations like Substack are great for opinionated individual voices like me, but what’s desperately needed is an institutional reporting mechanism that has credibility with the whole population. That means a channel that sees its mission as something separate from politics, or at least as separate from politics as possible.

The media used to derive its institutional power from this perception of separateness. Politicians feared investigation by the news media precisely because they knew audiences perceived them as neutral arbiters.

Now there are no major commercial outlets not firmly associated with one or the other political party. Criticism of Republicans is as baked into New York Times coverage as the lambasting of Democrats is at Fox, and politicians don’t fear them as much because they know their constituents do not consider rival media sources credible. Probably, they don’t even read them. Echo chambers have limited utility in changing minds.

Media companies need to get out of the audience-stroking business, and by extension the politics business. They’d then be more likely to be believed when making pronouncements about elections or masks or anything else, for that matter. Creating that kind of outlet also has a much better shot of restoring sanity to the country than the current strategy, which seems based on stamping out access to “wrong” information.

What we’ve been watching for four years, and what we saw explode last week, is a paradox: a political and informational system that profits from division and conflict, and uses a factory-style process to stimulate it, but professes shock and horror when real conflict happens. It’s time to admit this is a failed system. You can’t sell hatred and seriously expect it to end.

Matt Taibbi is one of the only people I subscribe to. He’s one of the few journalists I like because I actually believe he’s genuine.

6 notes · View notes

suffering-and-happy-about-it · 5 years ago

Text

Teenage Wasteland (Sriracha, Part 20.)

Description: A problematic college student gets the worst summer job of the ‘83 - Jim Hopper, the Chief of police in your hometown will have you as his secretary since his old lady Flo has two months lasting holiday. It was agreed so Hopper could let you far away from all the trouble

Part Summary: The relationship seems to reach it's top by the November of '83 - but you're not one of those who would've Jim walk away without explanation.

Warnings: Angst, more angst and a child.

A/N: And after the whole relationship thingy, we've finally arrived at the destination I was most excited about. Inspired by Cold As Ice by Foreigner and Baba O'Riley by The Who.

Word Count: 6.5 K

Tagging: @nemodoren, @creedslove

Master list: H E R E

That morning, you got out of bed really late - it was Saturday, a few days after December had started, so neither of you had to leave early for work or school. Your nearest shift at the bistro started on Sunday evening, so you had all day just to hang out around each other.

And you could just tell that something's bugging Jim of since the moment he let his feet slip out of the bed. It was the start of December and you knew that it could be the incoming Christmas. Also, you agreed to have dinner at your parents' next weekend, so that could be adding up to his stress as well. You visited Joyce and both her boys just the weekend prior, training for the Christmas Eve.

You helped her with cooking the potatoes and baking the turkey, preparing all of the cookies and even drank one shot of a weird Brandy she offered you. It was an awesome dinner - Will brought his whole party over, Hopper spent most of his time talking to Jonathan and when the dinner came by, eight persons were sitting at the table without anyone realizing, since Nancy Wheeler came by as well, picking the kids up. You really enjoyed the whole night and Hopper seemed so as well.

When he didn't speak to you a word during the whole morning, that was when you started to get irritated by his behavior as well.

"Something bit your ass in the bed?" - You looked at him when he came back from having a cigarette, closing the terrace door behind him. - "I swear it wasn't me." - You joked and continued preparing the lunch, checking out the burning stove in the corner as well.

You could pinpoint the exact moment when you knew something's off - he didn't even smile at your remark. You wouldn't want to let him walk away with such an attitude. If he thought he can fucking just walk away without explaining himself, boy, wasn't he wrong?

And yes, there was, in fact, much to talk about. But how the hell should he tell you without making you upset? He found a little girl in the woods who was scared out of her mind and who needed home. He didn't want to break up with you, under any circumstances - once he found the happiness, why should he give up on it? But at the same time, he knew that he can't make Eleven trusting him with you being around. All he needed was some time.

“Partners.” - Suddenly, you stood up in front of him, looking him in the eyes, obviously having another of you monologues, just as you used to when there was an argument incoming his way. And again, he surely didn't hear more than half of it. - “Do you know what that word means?”

“Two people loving each other?” - Jim guessed and took a beer out of the fridge. You stood there with the cloth you were using for cooking on your shoulder and you had both your palms on your hips. You opened up your mouth and furrowed, not expecting such an answer.

“Yes, basically. But don't you try to beer me out or outsmart me, Jim Hopper! But you know what else partners should do? Share feelings, talk about things that are ailing them? Have you heard that before?” - You slowly walked next to the couch, following him, kneeling next to him. He felt your palm slowly tracing his shoulder and neck just before you turned his face at you.

He knew that he's dancing on thin ice because you were literally everything he got at the moment. You were a person that meant home, warm arms when he needed a hug, kind words when he needed to brighten up his mood, lips that always accepted and gave him the sweetest kisses. And you knew him - he told you everything.

You knew everything about Sara, he told you about Vietnam, about Diane, his time in New York. And you didn't stop listening for a moment - once he was done, you just held him in your arms for a little longer than the previous time, letting him know that it's still isn't late for him.

You let him understand that he still has the right to love and to be loved in the first place.

“Come on, Jim. Just tell me.” - You begged before stealing his breath away with a kiss. He smiled when you leaned your forehead to his with a calm expression.

“I'll be moving out of the trail.” - Hopper started slowly. You almost smiled when he told you that, but then you realized that he said he's moving out. There wasn't any we are moving out. There was no you in that plan. With a stiffed smile, you moved away from him. The tears started to gather in your eyes and Jim almost gave himself a smack. So much for not making you upset, huh?

“That's great, I suppose. Good for you.” - You nodded and stood up, facing away so he wouldn't see you crying.

“No. It's not what you think.” - He stood up, catching your shoulders in his palms, gently massaging them. - “I just need to be alone for a while. I think I've discovered something and I just need to test it out. I need some time.”

“And where exactly in the sentence I'm moving out you hear the word we?” - You asked back, making his hands let your shoulders go. - “Because I can't hear no matter how hard I try, Jim.”

“Y/N, come on...” - Hopper followed you to the bedroom. He was watching you running around that room, abruptly packing all of your clothes while you started to cry.

“Jim, if it's just that you're not happy or feeling safe with me anymore, you can just tell me. If it's just another woman, come on, tell me. If you're worried about that we are going to end up like you and Diane, I did all I possibly could to show you otherwise. Just...” - You stood up, looking him in the eyes. - “Don't give me the famous I need time excuse. I beg you. Just tell me that we are breaking up, make it quick, painful and hard to swallow. At least, make me hate you.”

Really, so much for upsetting you. He fucked up grandiosely, Just as Jim Hopper always did. There was no way that all of this could go any worse than it already did.

“I don't want to do any of that, you crazy woman. Did you even listen to a word I said?” - Hopper opened up his mouth and your eyebrows rose rather quickly. He already upset you and now he was calling you crazy? Oh dear Lord. You stood up, exhaling loudly, putting your hands on your hips again. You, my dear, you were a piece of art in his eyes.

Because no-one could make him feel like a little bitch as you were capable of in five minutes of your free time.

“You selfish bastard.” - You laughed ironically and continued with packing your things. Now, he turned on an engine inside of you and he could be sure that you're not going to leave a single string of his clothes dry. - “Are you planning to add me to your tragic backstory? To tell women in pubs how you had a crazy ex-girlfriend who left you all alone, brokenhearted, in your trail and never came back? That's what you want?”

“Y/N, calm down, this is...” - “You won't be telling me when to calm down, James Hopper. No. I gave you five months of my life, I found a part-time job so I would be sure that I have my own money to help you paying food, rent, clothes. I patched you up mentally when you came back home after the whole Will Byers thing, I tried to give you everything I could. Don't you even dare to tell me to calm down!” - You yelled at him while you packed the stuff you got in the bathroom and pushed it inside the bag, taking your shoes on.

Fuck his lunch, his trail, fuck him. That was what you repeated to yourself when you put the jacket on and ran into the snow in front of the trail. It looked beautiful - snow was covering every inch of the driveway, the trees, the grass was nowhere to be seen and the quarry behind the house was frozen down. Such a beautiful look, but you didn't have the time to look at it.

“Stop!” - Hopper ran after you only dressed up in his shirt, jeans, and socks. But you walked further and further away from him, showing him your middle finger. - “I love you, okay? I love you, you lunatic.”

That was what stopped you from walking further away, taking a short breath in. He never said that. Never. You could feel it in his touches and looks, yes, but he never told you just as you never told him. You turned around to look at him, watching him walking to you only in his socks. He must've been so cold and you just knew that he's going to be sick after that.

“I love you, yeah, I guess. I mean, I've never been good with my words and you know that.” - Hopper mumbled and caught your face in his palms. He felt so warm, but you felt how much he was trembling. No wonder, Hawkins was always freezing during winter. - “But that's just how the things are. How they are supposed to be, I guess. And you better believe me when I tell you that there is anyone who would I rather spend every minute with. But I really need some time.”

At that moment, you smiled dreamily and caught his sides, letting the bag fall on the ground. It wasn't the biggest or the greatest feelings sharing you have seen, but that didn't matter. All that did matter was that he wasn't lying, which you could easily say. What other lunatic would run after you in socks?

“So just... Don't leave me, alrite? And when it's goin' to be the right time to come back, I'll let you know.” - Hopper smiled at you when he saw you crying again. After that, you almost pushed him to the ground when you leaned for a kiss.

“How much time do you have on your mind exactly?” - You led him back inside and made him change his socks and tugged him into the blanket on the bed. Now you were believing that maybe he really just needs some time.

“Hard to say. Just wait for me a while?” - He asked, pulling you in for another kiss. You knew it's time to leave even if you wanted to undress him and make sure that he's all warmed up.

“I'll ask my mom to take me back for a time. At least, I'll have time for studies, because there ain't going to be anyone who would distract me with fucking.” - You mumbled, sticking your ice-cold fingers under his shirt, having a sick smile on your lips.

“You love to be distracted with the fuckin', baby.” - Hopper mumbled back while he undid the zipper on your jacket, ready for a few rounds. But you stopped his hand and kissed his forehead.

“I do. And I do love you too. But this has to wait.” - You rose your eyebrows, leaning in again. - “I'll do wonders to you once you tell me that you're ready, baby.” - You whispered, stealing him one last peck from the lips. Hopper was smiling as he watched you leaving his driveway in your car. He could only thank Gods that such a wonderful and nasty woman found him and made him hers.

On the other hand, your mom was rather surprised to see you at home with your things packed into a bag. She was still pretty sour about the thing, as she called it, happening between you and the Cheif, but she somehow managed to keep her face straight during all of your family dinners and she even defended your choice when someone asked her about that relationship.

“Oh, honey.” - She opened up her arms as soon as she figured out you must've broken up. You let her hug you, but you chuckled nervously. - "It didn't work out, did it?"

"Mom..." - You waved her off and took your shoes off while she closed the door behind you. It was freezing outside. But you knew that she still had something to say. - "It's natural, it happens sometimes. The things just don't work out. I'm not even surprised that you and the Chief... That wasn't a healthy relationship for you, darling. He's a complicated man with a complicated past. Don't blame yourself. You're so young and you'll find a man to love you properly."

"Mom, we didn't break up." - You told her with a big smile while you put your jacket on the back of a chair. Your mom turned back at you and she started to apologize, but you just laughed again and hugged her. You knew that she's worried and that she doesn't like seeing you falling for a man so older than you were, let alone falling for a man with past as complicated as Jim's was. It wasn't that she hated him or whatever, she was just worried that he breaks your heart one day.

"I got your point mom, it's fine, really." - You hugged tighter and kissed her cheek. - "We just talked like two responsible adults and agreed that Jim needs some time for himself. Also, he said that he wants to move out to something bigger than the trail is."

"Oh, wow. Chief really means it seriously." - She said and you could say that she's really surprised. And pleasantly surprised. - "You can just start to call him Jim already, it's been five months since we started dating. He won't take that as a disgrace of his Chief status." - You mumbled to her and stood next to her by the sink, helping her with cooking the lunch.

Your brother did something that you didn't expect at all - as soon as he got home from hanging out at his best friend's, still Steve Harrington's, he hugged you so tight that you almost couldn't breathe. Even your father was glad to have you home around Christmas.

You did as you were told and went to work, studied for exams and overall really tried to move on with your life while Jim was up to his business.

He called you on Christmas Eve and wished you Merry Christmas, repeating you that he loves you and how much you mean to him, promising you a big gift once you come back. The call on its own was already a big present for you.

But that was the last time you heard about how he's doing and his whereabouts. Days passed from Christmas Eve, weeks and then months. January flew past you so quickly that you had barely any time to notice the time. Hopper was in your mind literally all the time, naturally, but the loneliness really hit you on Valentine's Day. You watched all the couples going for a dinner to their bellowed fast-food bistro, Marty's, girls were carrying chocolates and roses they got from their lovers and you?

Hopper didn't even call you. There was no call, no message on the recorder, no letter or a goddamn card. Not even a piece of paper with a stamp on it. That was the day when you've had about enough.

Hopper was literally just fucking around with you - and he should know better than doing that. You were a lady that didn't take any shit. His shit, your brother's shit, Harrington's shit, just no-one's.

The other day, you literally stormed into the office of the PD, looking as pissed as never before. When the boys saw you, they knew that the boss is in some serious trouble. They noticed that you hadn't shown up for a time - in the fall, you stopped at least twice every week with something homemade for them, but haven't visited the station for months at that point. And when they asked Hopper, he never gave them valuable answers. But your face at the moment you walked in and, holy damn, even Callahan almost pissed his pants.

"One question." - You looked at each one of them. - "Where is James Hopper?"

"Did something happened?" - Powell slowly got up and tried to at least... Negotiate with you. You rose your eyebrows.

"So he stands me up for almost three months and you dare to ask if something happened?" - You told in an ironic voice. - "Nothing happened, yet. But when I get my hands on him, either I will smack the fuck out of him, kick his balls or just straightway kill him. I haven't really decided yet."

Calvin looked at Callahan and gulped. That man brought a storm upon himself. The first few weeks, they made fun of him having a full-on blown relationship with you, but they accepted it as a matter of fact. In the end, there was no wonder why Hopper fell for you with your character and witty remarks. There were a lot of people actually wondering about why the fuck you've chosen Jim as your partner, but it worked out somehow. And everyone who wasn't blind saw it. But when he pissed you off and clearly did, the officers wanted to be as far away from you as they possibly could.

"He took a few days off. We thought you're together and you have some plans, you know, all the Valentine stuff going around..." - Calvin spoke to you and he saw you grinning. That bastard. That ass. That jerk. Oh, you had about hundreds of names for him and you'll yell each other at him once he'll stand in front of you.

"Try to look for him in the trail. If he's not there, drive to the cabin on this address. But don't give it to anyone, it's for cases of emergency. It's in the woods about fifteen minutes from the town." - Florence gave you a small piece of paper with an address and you knew that you'll have to buy a map to find that. You nodded. She really meant the part about the secret, whispering it to you.

"If he stops by, tell him that I'll kick his little sorry ass as soon as I see him." - You mumbled to his boys and left the station, walking to the car as cold February wind messed up your hair.

"Well, normally tell I would like to have her at home." - Callahan told to Powell as they both turned away to sit down again at their tables. - "But I wouldn't want to be Hopper right now."

"If you're going to thirst about boss' girlfriend again, leave me out of it, I beg you." - Powell told him, looking at his crosswords again.

First off, you stopped at the trail just as Florence advised you. Jim's car wasn't there, but you wanted to look inside - when you took the key from under the big mossy rock, you got into the trail easily.

You stopped for a second and looked around. It was just empty, not the home with the burning stove you remembered. So, Jim really did move out - there wasn't anything remaining after him or you, or your relationship.

There were no dishes, no clothes, the bathroom was completely empty. You could see yourself walking out of the terrace just two months ago, giggling as you run through the trail, James laughing and following you. That was the first day it snowed and you stood there and laughed before the first snowflake fell on your nose.

The pictures he had there had disappeared as well - even the one where you've had a beautiful dress and you were giving James a smooch while you were in a police department party together, it was when November was ending. He looked happy as he was holding a beer to the photographer, telling him not to take a photo of you, smiling from ear to ear.

Even his album of nasty photos of you has disappeared - for example only wearing his shirt or you in the shower, or the photo he took on the day you were supposed to leave Hawkins. There was no clue remaining after you ever being there - or that he ever was there.

You felt brokenhearted and used. You didn't leave the goddamn town just because of him. You threw the chance to study at an elite university out of the window just to be with him. You had already sacrificed so much for that man - you whole dignity which you just threw away because you were crazy for him, the whole town just having straightaway fun of you now. You hid in the trail for two months only to spend time with him, not leaving it for the whole day so nobody would know. Every night of those two months, he had a plate of food finished minutes before came home, his laundry was done, you ironed his clothes and took care of the whole trail...

And James repaid you with this. Just disappearing into the thin fucking air.

You looked at the piece of paper Florence gave you and for a while, you searched it on the map. You've visited a few wrong locations on the search and smoked almost half of the pack of cigarettes. But when the night came, you stopped at one place that indeed looked old, but the lights were on. After a short walk, you've noticed his Blazer. And you got mad again.

While you walked in the direction of the cabin, preparing a speech for him, you stumbled upon a wire, making a loud shooting sound when it ripped apart. It was a bang sound so loud, that it scared the birds away. Before you picked yourself up, you saw movements inside the cabin, lights going almost immediately off, and shortly after, James himself came out of the door.

And when you saw him standing there, the bomb inside of you just went off.

"Hey!" - He yelled at you, certainly not being able to recognize you in the darkness. Slowly, he was walking to you and you noticed a gun in his hand. His personal gun. - "Who's there?"

Without hesitation, you ran to him, smacking his cheek and pushing him back. Then you grabbed some leftover snow and threw it at his shirt. Yeah, at the moment James perfectly knew who you were.

"You selfish, fucking, arrogant, ignorant dickhead! You jerk! You idiot! You motherfucker!" - You yelled at him at the top of your lungs, crying hysterically. James slowly exhaled, messaging his nose, lowering the gun. He should know better - he should know that you're capable of tracking him down. He should give you a call or something, but he needed to keep distant and radio silent.

One of his sides was happy that you were there. He missed you so much that it often kept him awake all night long. Sometimes, when he sat at his office all alone, he almost dialed your number just to hear you asking who's on the other end. He missed you sleeping next to him, the way you talked and poked fun of him. He missed you as a whole.

The other side was straightway terrified. You were already in a hysterical state and he knew he fucked things a lot by what he has done. Jim knew that he should explain rather quickly before losing everything that was remaining of your we.

"How can you fucking explain this, James?! How?! You stood me up for almost three fucking months, you left me all alone without a clue whether you're alive or dead, you haven't called, send me a letter, you haven't done anything to let me know!" - You pushed him again and Jim closed his eyes for a while, licking his lips. - “Was it a fucking guessing game for you? Huh? Because I didn't find any of it exciting or fun.”

Yeah, he fucked up badly. You even called him James and you barely have done that before. This is going to take a lot of talking, step by step trust re-building and a load of eating out before you'll be able to trust him again.

"Baby, listen..." - Jim tried to calm you down, but you made one of your hissing sounds, warning him that if even dares to come closer, you'll hit him again with no problem.

"No, you listen! If there's another woman in there, I swear to fucking God, James! You're dead if I find someone out there. I will cut your fucking balls off and wear them as a necklace!" - You pointed at the cabin and at the exact same moment, someone else came out. But it wasn't a woman, just as you would've expected. It was a boy, presumably, looking at you with their hand risen up. You saw James looking at him, snapping as soon as he saw the risen hand.

"Down. Put the hand down, immediately. She's not evil or dangerous." - James stood up in front of you, pushing you behind him, covering you with his body. - "She's just very angry."

After a minute, the boy straightened up and put the hand down, looking at you with interest. What the fuck was happening? Since when did James have a child? Or at least another one which was at least ten years old? Since when it lived with him? What on the world was going on? - "Angry?" - The child asked back and at that moment, you realized that it's not a boy. It was a small girl with short, curly hair, dressed in an old sweatshirt and sweatpants that were too big for her.

"Angry." - She repeated once again before disappearing into the cabin once again, presumably thinking about something.

You stood outside for a moment longer, your arms were still holding Jim's sides and his hands held you in once place.

"Let's just say we have a lot to talk about." - Jim muttered slowly before letting go of you to take a good look at your face since he hasn't seen it in months. He looked at your photo on his nightstand every night since you separated and even though, he forgot how beautiful you were. Especially when you got mad at him. The curve of your nose, opened up lips, and wide eyes. You were stressed and you didn't have any idea of what to think, but it didn't take away any of your beauty.

Without him barely realizing what he's doing, his palm went to palm your jaw, his thumb drawing a circle on your cheek. You were a person who meant the world to him and for the first time in the last three months, he finally felt complete again.

"Will you come inside? We're just havin’ dinner." - Hopper whispered to you and you nodded, wiggling out of his arms, walking to the door. The girl was cautiously watching every move you made, her finger was put on a word in the vocabulary. She was reading the definition of the word angry. That situation was making less and less sense.

Jim helped you out of the jacket, putting it onto the couch. The couch he had in the trailer. Actually, you knew a lot of things in the cabin apart from the couch - you also knew the TV, the fridge and the bookcase. But where did the child came from, you had no idea.

You sat down onto the reaming chair between the girl and Jim. The girl moved further away once you sat down, keeping a safe distance between you. The dinner was rather quiet since you and Jim needed to talk and the girl he got there wasn't really talkative at all. When the main dish was over, Hop served you and himself chocolate ice-cream and a cup of coffee while he gave the girl a frozen Eggo and sent her to the room, telling her not to get the food all over the bed.

"Start talking, James, because this shit is just ridiculous." - You mumbled and watched the wall in front of you, drinking the coffee, not even trying to pay attention to the ice-cream. But you made sure that the girl's doors are closed. - "Do you have any more daughters I should know about?"

"She's not my daughter, Y/N... Or... It's complicated. Remember the Will Byers disappearance incident?" - He asked and you just nodded with a quiet hum, still watching the wall. - "She had escaped the lab nearby. They held her there like a little biology experiment, can you imagine?"

"No, Jim, I can't, but I'm sure that that won't stop you from continuing your story." - You mumbled ironically as a clap back, which made Jim pause for a second before continuing. He was getting everything he deserved, after all.

"She lived in the woods ever since. I was giving her food into a small box every night and one day, she appeared there and started followin’ me. The government is after this girl. And they would do her terrible things once they would find her. I couldn't let that happen." - Jim finished quietly.

He was saving a little girl while you thought he's back to his fucking everything that moves schedule. He was there with her the whole time.

"But not telling me wasn't a solution. Leaving me in the dark wasn't a fucking solution." - You whispered back, not able to look at him. Saving a girl was a good excuse to disappear from the surface of the earth for three months. It was. You couldn't argue with him because of that. But that didn't mean you're over it. Not that easily.

"I know. I should've told you. It was a dick move and I'm really sorry. For everythin'." - His palm found yours on the table and entwined his fingers with yours. - "I'm really sorry."

At that moment, the girl opened up the door again. You almost tried to drag your hand out of the table, but Jim just tightened the grip. Once you knew about Eleven, she should know about you.

"Angry?" - The girl pointed at you with a question. Jim smiled and shook his head, motioning her to sit down with you.

"She was. At me, not at you." - He answered and you nervously looked at her sitting down next to you. She was watching every inch of you which really made you nervous.

"Pretty." - She said simply before turning her face to Jim. She looked at your entwined fingers and furrowed a bit. - "What's that?"

"Holding hands, that's somethin' you do with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you know, kiddo? This is my girlfriend, Y/N. This is Eleven." - Jim introduced the two of you. For a long time, you just stared at the girl without any movement before you rose your palm to shake hers. Small steps at a time, you reminded yourself, small steps at a time.

The girl was definitely weirded out by the gesture, her hand reached out for yours with suspicion before she caught it. It was a ten seconds lasting handshake before she quickly fetched the hand back on her lap. Clearly, the trust between you two was on point zero and lower.

Then, when this awkward part was finally over, she turned back to Hopper, clearly having more questions on her tongue. For a while, there was silence as Eleven tried to think about some meaningful sentences.

"What is a girlfriend?" - Eleven asked silently, giving too much caution on every syllable.

"Someone you love. A member of your pack, just like the lonely wolf in the fairytale we read yesterday. A member of a family." - Hopper enlightened Eleven in a quiet voice, smiling at her.

"What is a love?" - Eleven asked, being completely caught up in the topic. Her eyes were curiously shining.

"Fetch the vocabulary, this is the word of the day." - Hopper said and as you watched Eleven disappearing in the only room with a proper door, bringing the book she had there before, you realized that you're completely silent, barely breathing. You were afraid to talk or move - Eleven finally calmed down and at least ignored your presence. You didn't want to disturb her and Hopper having their time. Also, from a psychological standpoint, it was seriously interesting.

Finally, Hopper let go of your hand and looked at the word love, just as Eleven did.

"Deep and affecti-cti-onate emotional at-tachment to a person." - She read slowly and really, she was far behind the kids of her age. She looked at Hopper as if she read a spell, and Hopper nodded, licking his lips before continuing.

"It's a feelin’. A feelin’ inside of here." - He pointed at his heart and Eleven mirrored his actions. She nodded, which made him continue. - "You feel happy and safe when the person is around. They make you stron’ and they care about you."

Eleven nodded, looking away for a while before she first pointed at Hopper before she pointed her finger at her chest. - "Love?"

"Yes, this is love." - Hopper stood up and packed her vocabulary, messing her curly hair up. - "Say good night."

"Good... Night." - Eleven mouthed slowly, looking you in the eyes. You smiled back, wishing her a good night as well. With a grin, Hopper led her to her door, making her dress up into her pajama.

"Are you goin’ to stay here a while?" - Hopper asked with hope in his voice, walking behind you. His palms circled around your shoulders, massaging them. - "Here? With me? I have a bottle of good wine in the fridge, I'll give you a ride home, I've missed you..."

"A little while won't kill me." - You bought his offer and a contained smile appeared on your lips. Hopper was still caressing your shoulders and the back of your head leaned into his belly when Eleven opened up the door, standing there, cautiously watching you. She never stopped looking around for a second, didn't she?

"Ready." - She nodded at Hopper and he left to tug Eleven in. You walked around the cabin and cautiously looked at every corner of it, listening to a quiet small talk going on before you saw his shadow sit down to read her a bedtime story.

The cabin seemed oddly impersonal. Hopper was trying to hide his life away from Eleven. It was for Eleven to feel like she was the only one in his life, the center of his small universe. Hopper was focused on Eleven and their bonding and you knew that, but it hurt to see Hopper completely erasing everything you two had. He should've told you right away. You weren't a bitch and this was a completely understandable situation.

Then you looked into his small room in the back of the cabin, repressed by only a doorframe and a piece of dark cloth. And Jesus fucking Christ, you could straightway tell that this room is Hopper's doing. It was ultra messy, his clothes were everywhere, there was an empty can of beer here and there, some leftovers, dirty and fresh clothes, unmade bed - yes, home sweet home.

And there you saw it - his old detective books, the album of naughty photos and the photo you loved so much directly on his nightstand. You walked through the mess and looked at the framed photo, having a small smile on your lips. When you put it down, you bent over to pick up his shirt, covering yourself in it.

You've missed him so much. Oh, you closed your eyes, breathing in his smell mixed with cologne and cigarette smoke. Dear Lord, the smell on its own made you smile.

After a while, you went back to the living room, still seeing his shadow reading the bedtime story, you've heard his voice changing rhythm and depth depending on which character he was reading as.

You didn't even know how, but during your waiting for Hopper, you've fallen asleep. When he entered the room, looking at sleeping Eleven for the last time, you were sitting on the couch, your legs were folded below you.

A smile spread on his lips when he walked to sit on the couch next to you. Hopper didn't mean to wake you up, but he couldn't stop himself as his fingers reached out to smooth the hair off your neck. Before he could stop himself, his lips were traveling on your neck. He heard you sleepily giggle, your palm smoothing one of his shoulders while he laid you down.

"Well, hello there." - You murmured into his ear and hugged him, while he pressed his body onto yours bringing you even closer. - "I've missed you." - Hopper sighed and continued with kissing down a trail between your breasts.

"Oh, did you?" - You mumbled back, slowly waking up. You've been sleeping for only twenty minutes, but since you've been on the edge of breaking down the whole day, you've been really tired.

"Every damn night." - His face appeared in front of yours and that smile... Made your heart pound faster. Your fingers were caressing his jaws and you finally rose your knees to rest them on his sides, pressing himself closer.

"Jim, Eleven..." - You mumbled and looked on the door while Hopper worked on kissing your neck, unbuttoning the shirt you had on. - "She's asleep. I swear."

"You also swore that you have a bottle of wine. Empty promises." - Your fingers caught his chin and you brought his face back to look at you. - “It will be better not to take things quickly. What about me coming here tomorrow? Its Saturday and maybe, I can find some things both me and Eleven like.”

“No. For the first few times, I think it shouldn't be for too long. Before you both get a hold on it.” - Jim sat up and you immediately followed him. - “What about Monday night?”

For a while, you kept quiet. Eleven was definitely a special girl, but now, she was somehow a part of your life as well. It was up to Jim and you to find a way to make all of this work. Slowly, you reached out for his hand and held it tightly.

“Yeah. Monday evening sounds about right. I’m usually ready to go at eight o’clock precisely. Do you want to pick me up at Marty’s?” - You asked innocently, a smile appearing on your lips.

“I'll be there. Eight o’clock, not a minute late.” - Jim answered and you nodded, standing up, ready to go for your jacket. Both you and Hopper knew that you have his shirt on, but you weren't giving it back by any chance. Of course, he walked you to the car, where you gave him a short look before opening the door.

“See you on Monday. I'll take some food from the bistro so you won't have to cook. That girl is already enough of a wretch.” - You smiled and almost got in, but an arm stopped you. Hopper leaned in, cathing your waist and giving you a deep kiss. You got caught up in the moment for a while, but after a while, he let go off you.

“Monday, at eight o’clock. not a minute later.” - You whispered, stealing the last peck before you drove home.

#eleven #eleven stranger things #stranger things #stranger things Netflix #hopper #james hopper #jim hopper #jim hopper x reader #jim hopper imagine #chief jim hopper #hawkins police chief #hawkins indiana #netflix

37 notes · View notes

thequibblah · 4 years ago

Note

Not sure how to phrase this properly lol but... curious to know more about how writing fits into your life - like is it something cathartic and enjoyable for you to do with your evenings, do you start to feel pressure of updating from readers - does that motivate or stress you? Basically, love your fic and thinking about how much I want more made me wonder about you as a human and how you have time and motivation, if you catch my drift haha

under the cut bcs this got long <3

ooooh! i had a phase last summer where i was like, 4-5 chapters ahead of what i was posting, which was why i was able to keep up the schedule i did, and that was genuine, 100% fun. in retrospect, it was unreal — i took a break to go on (safe, socially distanced!) vacation and did not write a single word that whole week, maybe made one note in my google doc about an idea i’d had, and came back still ahead of schedule. i rode that high for as looooong as the inspiration kept up haha.

i cannot stress this enough, though, i was literally eating sleeping breathing come together. as in, i listened to my playlist constantly, i probably worked on it more than i worked on work, i thought about upcoming plots in the shower, i thought about it when trying to fall asleep. like, that was the level of dedication it took to keep up the pace i wanted to keep up — not necessarily in a bad way! the reason i even could do it was that the ideas were coming and i was in a very good place creatively. that’s the exact mindset i have had when writing original projects, like a novel or my senior thesis. the difference is, those are obviously shorter term than this is.

on the one hand, i’ve always written with self-imposed deadlines. like, a couple of years ago, i drafted a novel, and i was like, this is going to be done by the end of the summer. it was done in 20 days because i knew i was never going to have that kind of time when school started up again. on the other hand, there’s a difference between those deadlines — even my senior thesis deadline, which felt like a minor issue because i was so ahead of schedule — and i have to update this weekend, human beings at a scale incomparable to ever before are waiting on me!

it’s all about a balance between fun and that pressure, and it comes from really knowing yourself as a writer. i know when to give it a rest and not force a chapter, versus when to just sit down and spew garbage because eventually my brain will kick into gear again. i’m a massive perfectionist which can make that hard! there’s already parts of the fic that i’m like ugh i should’ve done this differently — whether or not i have the stamina to go back and add/fix things when i’m finished remains to be seen, and i also don’t know how people would feel about those kind of changes.

i would say that last year after i started regularly updating, i worked on a chapter every week, which usually meant writing after work or on my lunch break. then this january when my parents came around i had a lot less time, so i kind of lost the groove. i do think i need to have the mental space to write, and when that’s taken away from me because i’m trying to do other things, no amount of inspiration or planning ahead can help. like, i came up with ideas from june to november of last year, pretty much, and those ideas are still tiding me over now, which is way better than having to think now when i don’t have the time. i can just check my outline and be like, ok this happens now, let’s do it.

so i guess i would say i need to find the time and motivation for two separate parts of writing — the thinking and the typing. if i have enough of a sense of what happens (i.e. if i’ve done the thinking) then the typing becomes exponentially easier.

i’m much more of a daytime or nighttime writer — as in, not in the evenings, because that’s when i’m done with work and need to do other things! the best time to write is always late at night for me haha. which...doesn’t always work so well — sometimes i put away my laptop, and then continue writing on my phone just to get an idea out, and then it’s like, two hours have gone by...

i don’t know if this answers anything at all or is just a horde of word vomit, but i hope that’s interesting context for you?

#anon #ask me

1 note · View note

mysweetestcreature · 5 years ago

Text

Tomorrow Never Knows (President!Harry) Chapter 10: Not a Bad Thing

(Banner by the wonderful noblewomankat!)

***

Monday November 24, 2008

It’s been days since they’ve had a normal conversation...or any decent form of communication for the matter. This past week had consisted of multiple attempts (on her part) to talk to him, but each time he’d make up some excuse to cut all dialogue short. “My mum’s waiting for me outside, maybe next time?” or “I’m actually late for practice, but I’ll catch up with you later,” but of course he never did. Beyond her comprehension is how she had managed to mess everything up so badly in so little time.

Eleven minutes.

Harry had arrived eleven minutes after she had accepted Jasper’s invitation. There’s nothing she can say that can justify why she’d done it because even she isn’t so sure. Maybe she was scared. She’d been so hopeful about where this friendship with him would lead them once before, and it had costed her the first heartbreak of her life. The biggest part of her wanted so badly to wait for Harry to ask her, but a small yet seemingly influential nerve had let her insecurities take over.

She wishes she hadn’t cared so much about what other people had thought, and instead used her own judgement. She hadn’t realized just how difficult it would be for their roles to be reversed, and she only has herself to blame for it.

“I wish you’d stop stressing,” Cici tells her as they do their warmup stretches. “I doubt he’ll be able to stay mad at you for much longer.”

“You might be wrong for once,” she smiles sadly, facing down to stare numbly ahead as she reaches for her toes.

Once she and Harry had parted (or more accurately, when Harry had left her standing ashamed in the hallway), Cici had found her sitting on the floor beside her locker, a somber expression painted all over her face.

“I messed up,” is all she had mustered up in that moment of fragility, dejected eyes having fallen into her lap. And Cici –– who had already passed an equally, if not more, crestfallen boy on her way to find Y/n –– was readily equipped with her words of enthusiasm, even if she was quite disappointed in the turnout of the day. “You made one mistake –– it doesn’t make you a bad person.” Doesn’t it, though?

Cici scoffs as she tightens her ponytail. “I am many things, but I am never wrong,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone –– almost arrogantly, if you ask Y/n –– before standing up and brushing the wrinkles from her skirt. “It’s not in my vocabulary.”

“But it’s in mine, apparently,” her lips curve down.

“I didn’t mean it like–”

“I know.” She rises to her feet. “It was a stupid decision and I wish I could redo it, but I can’t now. He can barely stand to be in the same room as me for more than a class period. He hasn’t dropped by the Home Ec. Room in who knows how long, and I haven’t been able to make a decent pumpkin pie since. Me? Screw up a pie? That doesn’t happen! This weekend I typed out twenty-seven texts that I never sent. Twenty-seven, Cici! Who does something like that?! All saying the same thing, that I like him so much that it makes my heart go crazy, and how it hurts that he might think otherwise because I’m going to this stupid dance with someone who’s not Harry and it fucking sucks!”

It leaves her chest to heave heavily, and her lungs to feel completely depleted of any oxygen. With an outburst like that, she’s managed to surprise herself. And while conversations amongst the other cheerleaders continue, it feels like she’s once again in the spotlight as the heat creeps up her neck and settles on her forehead and the apples of her cheeks.

Cici stands in front of her, eyes rounded in astonishment and mouth hung open wide. Her eyes quickly dart down at her arm.

“You’ve never cussed before, I literally just got chills!”

A smile slowly reemerges. “It felt good,” she admits, and she breathes out in relief as her shoulders feel lifted from at least a portion of the weight that had been set upon them. “I’ve been holding that one in.”

“No, that was totally clear.”

A restful silence falls upon them, and Y/n makes it an opportunity to reflect on the upcoming days. She needs to fix this and salvage whatever she can before they permanently fall apart. Hating to sound dramatic, but she has a strong feeling that if they can’t recover from this, then it could be over for good.

And that’s just not in the cards.

“I’m going to tell him.”

***

Tuesday November 25, 2008

“Got any plans for Thanksgiving?” Maxxie asks him.

Harry lets out a heavy sigh, staring down at his jumbled pile of flashcards on his desk. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking about it constantly because it had been toying with his mind for the better part of the weekend. “You could say that, I guess.”

The answer, in all its vague glory brings about an amused grin from the boy across from him. Maxxie leans over the table and goes as far to lift his hips off the chair just invade his personal space. “What was that tone?” he gawks, wiping the cards off the surface of the table.

“Well...” he starts off timidly (a bit of annoyance mixed in because he’s going to have to clean up the mess later), and a small burp erupts from the back of his throat as a sign of his mild discomfort. “I was sort of...maybe...actually invited to...” but the tail of the sentence is nearly undecipherable to the human ear.

Maxxie squints his blue eyes across from him. “What was that? I didn’t quite catch all of it.”

Blowing out the air from his lungs, Harry’s head falls back so all he has to focus on are the dull cracks in the ceiling. Part of him still doesn’t believe it, or rather hadn’t thought it an admissible option given the recent events. He pokes his inner cheek outwards before letting out a tired groan. “We’re spending it with Y/n’s family, okay? There, I said it.”

“You’re bluffing!”

Harry whistles out a breath. “Not today, mate,” he chortles, rubbing the base of his palm against his left eye. “Jeremy literally asked my mum the day after...well, you know.”

“Are you going to be able to manage it?” there’s a weariness in Maxxie’s voice.

But honestly, Harry doesn’t know. Yes, he’s still broken up about the whole thing. Yet, the hardest part is being next to her and feeling as though he’s missed every chance that he’s had at being hers. Because he’s sure it’ll take him a long time before he’s over her, and that’s what hurts the most.

***

On Day 6, Pattern D finds itself at ten in the morning, the third class of the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break. To Y/n it’ll be the first class she has with Harry, meaning another chance to get things straightened out between them. Now that their positions are reversed, she feels even worse about having treated him so harshly the month before when there had been a hefty cloak of uncertainty to keep things understandably complicated.

Just as Mr. Daughtry’s door comes into sight, her path is intercepted by a body suddenly appearing before her.

“Hey, you!” Jasper greets her with a bright grin. There’s a moment of clumsiness when she predicts his fluid movements based on how his arm extends and fingers point in her direction as they rise to the height of her shoulder. In a slight panic, she twists arounds, pretending to fish for a pencil from the side pouch of her backpack. Luckily (for him) he’s able to stop himself from proceeding, and he shrugs the action off as he stretches that same arm over his head. With a skittish laugh he continues. “I feel like I haven’t seen much of you this week.”

“I’ve just been busy,” she mumbles, hugging her grey math notebook close to her chin. She can’t help but wonder if he isn’t late to some class, or club meeting, or some discussion about hair accessories (the latter causes her to snigger to herself).

Jasper simply nods, pulling slightly on the knot of his tie. “So, I told my mom about the formal and she’s super stoked that we’re going together,” he blushes. “I mean, I’m really happy you said yes.”

Meanwhile, the metallic taste of blood starts to fill her mouth the longer she keeps her tongue trapped between her teeth. “Yeah...” she struggles to find her voice. The right thing to do would be to come clean, to be straightforward with him and give him the honest answer he had deserved from the beginning.

Blowing the air from her nostrils, she parts her lips as they wrap around the words. “Jasper, I actually need to talk to you about that...”

“Karan! What’s up, man?”

She forces an unbothered appearance in front of Jasper’s friend –– Karan –– as they start a whole conversation of their own.

This is something she’s found to dislike very much, how Jasper always seems to forget that his friends aren’t her friends...well, at least none that she particularly like enough to call by such an intimate name. It bothers her because she doesn’t know if she can walk away or if this boy has any intention of including her or even continuing with what they’d started only minutes before.

She taps her foot contempt, not even caring if either find her actions to be tactless. All Jasper does is shoot half a smile before carrying on talking about the latest scandal to hit the tenth grade.

“I should really get to class,” she meddles in the momentary pause between speakers. “See you around.”

Before Jasper can send her off with a proper goodbye, she turns around and keeps en route for the classroom. As soon as she’s about to cross under the arch, she collides with another body, notebook falling from her hands and falling open-faced on the floor.

“’m sorry,” the other rushes out, his voice all too recognizable to her ears. Harry quickly picks up the notebook and holds it out for her to take, but all she notices is how his eyes remain low and unwilling to look at her.

“Thank you,” she whispers. He gives her a nod in response before signaling for her to go enter ahead of him. But she stays in glued in place. “Do you think we can...”

“There might be a pop quiz, I heard,” he interrupts, his hand finding the small of her back to gently prod her into the room. Despite it being nothing more than a graze of his fingers over her sweater, she still feels jolts of electricity run up her spine and tickle the back of neck.

With their arrival being just a minute or so before roll call, the only available seats are towards the very rear, two desks grouped together and pushed in the far-right corner of the room. His hand falls back to his side, the absence of his touch leaving her colder than she had just been. It makes her frown, and as they make their way to the back, the space between them only grows.

For her, this has to be the most difficult consequence to deal with.

“Alright, since everyone is settled in,” Mr. Daughtry starts, uncapping a blue dry erase marker. “Let’s go over last night’s homework.” And he ponders down at the reference notes on the podium, before the shrill squeaks of the marker against the whiteboard slowly begin to reveal an equation.

Beside her, Harry opens up his notebook, each homework problem neatly organized (this includes all the work he’d done to solve them) over two pages. She looks straight ahead, slightly squinting so she can decipher the correct answers on the board. “How is it 43?” she asks under her breath, staring down at problem #5.

“It was a negative two, not positive...which would mean b becomes positive in the expression,” he answers. He orients his notes towards her. “Right there,” he points to it with tip of his pencil. He leans in a little closer, elbow coming to rest on the table as his head tilts in her direction. Her heart goes crazy as he goes on to explain the steps of the equation. It’s the first time in days he’s willingly talked to her, even if it is about schoolwork. But she forces herself to shake off the feeling for the time being, if only to prevent herself from messing this up.

“How’d I even...” And she cross checks with his work, brows curling inward. “Oh, I’m such dummy. I didn’t even notice that!” she shakes her head and rubs her eraser over the page.

He looks at her for the first time today with a prelude of the softest smile. “You’re not.”

She offers him a toothy grin as she settles back down. Every now and again will she sneak an admiring gaze.

***

“Harry!” she calls after him. In the short period of time she’d taken to pack her things, he had already fled the room by the time she looked up. It took squeezing her way through two bulky juniors from their class to quickly find his mop of brown curls in the crowded corridor.

At the sound of his name, he begrudgingly comes to a stop. He sighs and scratches the back of his head, his internal monologue arguing that he should continue forward. The decision is to be outweighed by a greater influence.

“Hi,” Y/n says in a bit of a wheeze.

“Hi,” he returns, nodding. He watches as those around them disperse in their difference directions, until the hallway soon becomes barren during this first lunch period. “What’s going on?” he asks simply.

She absentmindedly goes to mess with a loose strand of hair. “I was just...” she snivels (allergy season can be a real nuisance). “Wanted to say that I’m really looking forward to Thursday.”

“Oh,” his mouth forms an o with his lips. He glances to the floor and wriggles his feet as though pebbles were buried in his shoes. “Yeah, I think my mum’s bringing trifle or some kind of dessert.”

“That’s sweet of her,” she affirms. “Are you excited?”

Harry looks up, noticing the hope embedded in her eyes. “It could be fun,” he says evenly. “Your dad seems pretty keen on watching the Packers game together. Mason, too, I guess.”

“Mason hasn’t stopped talking about it,” she admits shyly, but can’t help but giggle at the thought of her brother. “You know, he told his teacher that you were his best friend.”

It’s Harry’s turn to laugh. “Really?” Y/n nods enthusiastically. “He’s a cool kid. Tell him I’m honored.”

“You can always tell him on Thursday.”

Harry smiles. “I will.”

***

Thursday November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving Day has never been more stressful for Y/n. Not only has she been baking since last night (did someone say four different flavors of pie and three fall-themed cookies, and a carrot cake bigger than her dad’s head?) but she must have changed her outfit at least nine times in the last half hour. The Styles’ are expected to arrive at around 5pm, which means she only has another forty-five minutes to come up with the perfect ensemble. Earlier in the afternoon, it had just occurred to her that she hasn’t met Anne nor Gemma, and she’d be dishonest if she said she wasn’t ultra-nervous about it.

Gosh, how her stomach feels so full of air.

She wishes she could be as carefree as Mason because all he’s been fretting over is which boardgame to play with Harry after dinner and which Disney movie he’s going to have running on the laptop whilst Jeremy slaves away to the television at approximately 8pm.

“Do you think Harry likes Monopoly or Connect Four?” the little boy asks. She tears her attention from her cookie display to look down at her brother who’s holding two boxes up for her to examine.

“But, Mase,” she giggles, wiping her hands on her apron. “You don’t know how to play Monopoly.”

Mason looks at the box in his right hand and eyes it carefully. He gives her a signal of understanding before trotting off back into the living room to set up. Shaking her head, she continues setting up the cookies along the three-tier server. Hopefully, it’ll be enough to impress their guests. “It’ll be fine,” she tells herself.

***

The doorbell rings, and almost instantly does it cause alarm within Y/n.

“Oh my god!” she panics, running around the kitchen to quadruple check that everything is exactly as it should be. “Dad! Dad! Did you–”

“Yes.”

“How about the–”

“Yes.”

“Okay but what about–”

“Y/n,” Jeremy says sternly from the foyer. She closes her eyes as she listens to the bottom rim of the door brush along the mat. “Welcome! Nice to see you again, Anne. Harry, ready for that Packers game? Oh, hello! I don’t think I’ve met you yet?”

Her eyes widen, he must be talking to Gemma! Harry had told her stories about how close they are since Anne’s job requires a lot of traveling. Oh gosh, she must hate her for having done what she did to her brother. She knows this because she would absolutely despise anyone who would ever dare to hurt Mason. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she breathes unevenly and braces herself over the counter.

“Not to validate anything your father says,” Olivia sneaks up from behind, “but you really do need to relax.” She takes a good look at her daughter. “Weren’t you wearing the brown sweater?”

But before Y/n has the chance to answer, three new faces enter from the side, her heart skipping over multiple beats as she becomes tightlipped.

“Hello!” Olivia greets them. “We’re so happy to have you join us! I’m Olivia, by the way.”

Harry’s sister nudges him from behind. “Oh, um...” he looks behind him. “This is my mum Anne, and my sister Gemma.”

“So nice to meet you,” Anne smiles, and she extends a hand to Olivia, Gemma does the same. “You have such beautiful home. Are those chrysanths you have along the walkway? They’re absolutely stunning!”

Olivia covers a hand over her heart. “I like you already,” she sobs playfully. “Finally, someone who gets it! Two kids and neither of them share a love for gardening.”

“You can say that again,” Anne returns. The two share a laugh, and Olivia leads them into the dining room to continue on with their chat.

It leaves Y/n with Harry and Gemma, and she isn’t even sure where Jeremy might have wandered off to now. Harry whispers something into Gemma’s ear, and she rolls her eyes before shoving her elbow into his side. Y/n can’t help but wonder what he’s saying. Is it about her? Has he found something wrong? Stop this! She reaches behind her and pinches herself. Relax.

Taking a bold step forward, she strikes up conversation. “Hi, I’m Y/n.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Gemma replies, a warm aura radiating from her being.

Y/n tilts her head. “Good things, I hope.”

“Well,” the older girl starts, sending a smirk at her brother and sniggering when his eyes widen in realization. “This one never stops talking about you.”

Harry gasps, “Now wait just a minute.” But as soon as he’s about to come up with a rebuttal, he’s immediately attacked from behind with a hug. Short arms lock his legs together, and if it weren’t for his sister standing there for support, he would have most definitely fallen over. “There he is!”

“Harry!” Mason giggles, reaching his arms above his head, a notorious signal for Harry to lift him up. “Did you miss me?”

“Duh!” Harry teases. “How can I not miss my bestest mate?”

***

Dinner goes better than either she or Harry can expect. Their families seem to have taken well with one another, Anne and Olivia having already formed that instant bond over maternal care and green thumbs. Jeremy is shocked to hear that Gemma is interested in programming herself, and he’s even more impressed to learn that she’s in the process of building her own website. As for Mason, well...it’s a little hard not to fall in love this boy when all he pours out into the world is happiness, and maybe a little bit of cupcake frosting.

A seating arrangement had predetermined their positions at the table (thanks to Olivia and her brilliant mind). As it had happened, Y/n and Harry are seated beside each other, their chairs closer than usual with the extra chair on his other side. Although, it became apparent throughout dinner of the gap –– while not visible to the human eye –– that remains between them.

Y/n doesn’t understand why that is, especially since they’d seemed to be on better terms on Tuesday. While they hadn’t eaten lunch together, he did sit next to her during Spanish class so they could work on the conjugation exercise together. Sure, it hadn’t been the most romantic thing they could have done, but it was a start, right? But now she feels bothered that the extent of their communication today has been polite smiles and requests to pass whatever dish the other is closest to.

Deciding she’s had enough of this, she turns to him. “I’m really glad you’re here,” she whispers to him.

“It is the holidays, so...” he keeps his answer elusively.

She has to play it back in her mind to determine if there’s any underlying meaning behind it. Pushing around the remains of her pumpkin pie she speaks up again. “Are you still mad at me?”

He takes his time before answering, mulling over the words carefully. Yet, there’s no intelligible way to organize them to make it sound any better. “It’s not that simple.”

And that manages to stir something within her. “It’s either yes or no.”

“Y/n,” he warns, not wanting to cause a scene in front of their families. “Now’s just not the time to talk about it.”

She scoffs, shaking her head and willing herself not to cry. “It’s never the time with you.” And she excuses herself from the table.

***

Giving himself one last glance in the mirror, he wraps his hand around the copper knob. He takes a long breath as he prepares himself to rejoin everyone and pretend that he doesn’t wish he could be anywhere else today. For majority of the day, he had thought he’d moved on from the rejection. However, the more time he spends with her, the more those feelings regress him back to those open wounds. Despite how much he likes watching football with Jeremy and playing Connect Four with Mason, he can’t help but get distracted whenever she comes over and asks thoughtful questions about the game. And that distraction causes him to remember how difficult it’s been to keep up this charade.

When he opens the door, he’s immediately met with her figure looking up at him with doe-like eyes. His jaw clenches as he tries to ignore how the pout on her plump lips makes a part of him go a little crazy. What’s worse is that he shouldn’t feel this way, not right now at least. Not when he’s trying to stay mad for a little while longer.

“Please,” she starts off faintly, looking all too small as she stands before him. His expression softens only the smallest amount that she isn’t sure if maybe it was just a twitch. “Can we just talk?” She can see it in his eyes, the answer that’s about to roll off his tongue so blatantly obvious. And before he has a chance to decline, she latches onto his hand and starts to walk him towards the stairs. They’re careful not to draw attention to themselves as they practically tiptoe through the dining area where Anne and Olivia continue to share embarrassing stories from when both Harry and Y/n were much younger.

The grip she has on him while she leads him up the steps surprises him. Her soft hand squeezes his so tightly that his palms start to sweat from the sheer pressure (and maybe from a bubbling sense of nervousness that’s brewing inside). “Is this really necessary...” he hears himself muttering out loud, even though he’s expecting no answer in return. Although, he may have just felt just the smallest bit of added compression around his fingers as they round the corner.

Once they’re in her room, she’s sure to close the door this time around. If she’s learned anything from the numerous times they’ve been interrupted, it’s that one can never be too sure around her family –– or anyone really. She debates whether to take it all the way with caution, standing frozen as she stares down at the lock with hesitancy.

“Are you planning on keeping me hostage or something?” he chuckles lightly, plopping down on her bed, having already accepted his defeat. He combs his fingers through his hair a couple times before allowing himself the chance to relax.

She exhales fully and closes her eyes. “If that’s what it takes.” With the lock pinched securely between her fingers, the faintest sound erupts within the space. Click. “Then, yes.” Rotating on her heel, she presses her back up against the door, hand still loosely grasping the handle as she tilts her head back. She keeps her eyes low at first, but as seconds on the clock begin to outnumber them, she has no choice but to have them ascend.

He raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

“I’m so sorry, Harry,” she says shakily, whatever confidence she had absorbed seems to have fizzled out. But she can’t back down now, not when the opportunity is right in front of her. “I knew you were going to ask me, and I swear I was going to wait but then Jasper completely caught me off guard and then everyone was watching and I just...I just didn’t...I just didn’t think. It was stupid and I know that’s not an excuse, but I just want things to go back to normal.” She crosses her arms over her chest, a twinge of embarrassment filling her as her own words repeat through her ears.

He shifts uncomfortably. All the feelings he’d been trying to avoid are being unlocked, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. It’s not even that he’s mad (he’s found it impossible to harvest any ill-feelings for the girl in front him), it’s more that he’s dreading whatever might come out of her mouth because he isn’t sure he can handle another rejection. “We don’t have to talk about it, really. We’re fine,” he says as neutrally as he can.

“No, Harry. We’re not. And you know it.”

He knows she’s right, no matter how much he wants to deny it for the sake of saving his own heart. But now that she’s locked him in, he has no choice but to confront the issue. “Look, whatever might have been between us, I’ll get over it, okay? I’ll be fine. I don’t want you to feel–”

“No!” she almost screams, and she marches right to where his knees bend off the side of the mattress with her lips pursed in a newfound determination. “That’s the complete opposite of what I want to happen.”

His green eyes are fixed on her. “What do you mean?” he whispers. But she shakes her head, as though regretting the words to come out of her mouth. Because now they implicate her of the thing she’s been dying to say, and there’s no coming back once it’s said.

Not even thinking, he places his hands on her waist to bring her closer. She still refuses to look at him, her arms further wrapping around her vulnerable self. There’s something in the way her bottom lip moves in the slightest matter that intrigues him. And now he just needs to know. “Hey, look at me,” and he gently cups her cheek to encourage her. “What?”

She stays quiet as she tries to get her breathing back to a normal pace, but the feeling of his stare causes a sweat to form down her back. “I don’t want you to be over us.”

With that, she finally looks forward.

It’s about time one of them be brave.

“I don’t want you to be over me,” she says in the most delicate manner. “I don’t want you to get over me because...” She uncrosses her arms, only to have them wrap around his neck as she settles between his open legs. “Because I don’t want to have to get over you.”

Their eyes meet, and she lets her forehead fall against his. The tips of their noses nudge against each other. A sigh of pure bliss fights its way out of him. He pulls her even closer, thumbs rubbing small circles into the plush of her hips. Her heart beats erratically, as does his as they bask in the echo of a declaration. Two pairs of lips pull up into benevolent smiles before finally coming together.

Eight letters.

There are eight letters to be remained unsaid (until another time).

***

#president!harry #harry styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles smut #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fluff #harry styles drabble #harry styles drabbles #harry styles au #one direction #one direction imagine #one direction fanfiction #one direction fanfic #one direction preferences #writing

145 notes · View notes

goodmythicalshipping · 5 years ago

Text

Hey y’all, I just wanted to elaborate a little on my last response post [ X ] since I feel like some people may interpret it the wrong way and by no means do I mean to attack anyone on here:

While I very much enjoy the R&L community I’ve found here on Tumblr, you must realize that my presence on this site takes work. Voluntary work. It is literally the first thing I do every weekday and is often the only thing that will get me to wake up in the morning, since their channels upload at 6AM EST every day and my body appears to reject any early morning alertness.

That being said, there’s a lot to be done each morning, in that making .GIFs takes a lot of time and energy - especially when it premieres after I’ve just woken up. Not only that, I do not make my content using some random internet .GIF generator. Oh no, I use Adobe Photoshop CC 2017... and my laptop is a Macbook built in 2010 with the approximate processing power of a 1920s typewriter... so you can imagine how that goes sometimes.

On top of that, all of these .GIFs must be completed before I go into work at 9AM, for which I leave my apartment 30 minutes prior. Often times, depending on how my computer decides to act on that particular day, making .GIFs can take up to an hour and a half depending on the episode.

I’m not saying this to complain about what I do, because again it is voluntary and I don’t have to do this forever, but just realize: I am one person. I work a full-time job Monday through Friday. I do not have the time to dedicate my whole life to this when they upload every single day to multiple channels and platforms (Facebook, Instagram etc.), nor do I have the capacity to remember references from each and every single episode since there are now almost 1,700 of them over the course of 14 years. And that’s JUST the main episodes (excluding the extended format from Season 13).

I also have a bunch of things on my plate at essentially all times. I work, I maintain relationships, I have errands to run, I have evening/weekend plans, and then of course there’s my inner demons that sometimes come out as a result of the stress of all of the above. Tumblr also used to be a place I frequented A LOT more a few years ago, often times to escape the stress or sadness I was feeling at the time. So naturally, I still associate this website with those negative feelings I was having and try to stay off of it as much as I see fit. I don’t want to become that sad person again who was addicted to a single website as a means of escaping underlying personal problems.

And not every single episode is worth watching, in my opinion. I’m just going to go ahead and say that now because it’s true: some episodes are really boring and don’t leave me with a lot of material to convert into .GIFs. When that happens, it’s disappointing for everyone. I’ve frequently seen them re-use material for the show and sometimes, admittedly, it feels like they’ve run out of ideas. But again, they’ve been doing this for 14 years now. What more can they do than their best at this point? They have a whole team to run with multiple other ventures (Smosh, Mythical Society, touring, writing books etc.).

In summary, not every episode is gonna be a winner in my book, so whenever I need to take a break from here for whatever personal reason, I always know I’m taking the risk of missing a good episode. But it’s always a 50/50 chance...

Why am I telling you all this? Well, mainly out of my own anxiety lol. But also because I care, and I always try to do the right thing and tell you in advance if I’m not available so that you’re not left wondering where I went. Hypothetically, I could just drop everything and say “deuces” and never come back, but I see how much you guys love what I do and that pushes me to keep at it. Again, it also helps me kickstart my morning routine, so it’s not all bad!

And if there is a day where I’m not here, lucky for you there are MULTIPLE R&L related blogs on this site that have been doing this for even longer than I have! I only started this blog in November 2018, which isn’t that long ago. So there’s never truly going to be a day you will not have content, even after I’ve retired this blog.

I know this was a lot and also probably completely unnecessary because I know how understanding you all are, but I hope this puts things into perspective. Making .GIFs is not my life’s work or passion, but instead a nice hobby I’ve picked up. I will always prioritize my own needs before this, and I simply just wish for you to understand that. Keep being your Mythical best. :)

#SAGE HAS FEELINGS #i promise i'm not evil #and i'm sorry if it came off that way #long post #me

19 notes · View notes

seungcheolsbodyharness · 5 years ago

Text

Title: Ceremonies and Celebrations

wc: 7.2k

Summary: Soonyoung proposed to you on your birthday. This is everything that comes next.

If you haven’t read Pacts and Promises please read that first, here, this is not a one shot. thank u

a/n: Happy very belated birthday to the loml @jungkooksxo, this is her very late present (just like P&P was last year ;_;) I hope you like it kimothy 💕💕💕💕💕💕

You say yes. Over and over, with tears in your eyes, you tell Soonyoung that yes, you’ll marry him. You’ve never wanted anything more. He slips the ring onto your finger and it’s perfect, he’s perfect, you’ve never been so happy, you can’t stop the tears.

To think that only a year ago, you’d never known if you’d be allowed to love him like this. You’re so grateful he insisted on carrying out that ridiculous pact, and he laughs when you tell him so. He’s standing now, holding your face in his hands and kissing you all over, wiping away your tears.

“I’ve loved you since before I knew what that meant.” he tells you, wrapping one arm around your waist and swaying with you slowly to the music still playing on his phone. His voice is soft, a little broken from his own tears that have been shed. “I’ve always known that you were what I wanted. You - you told me the reason you hated the pact was because you were worried I wouldn’t love you back and - and that was why I was pushing it so hard. I wanted to tell you so badly.”

You laugh, a little watery, and press a kiss into his neck. “I’m glad we made it here. I love you.”

He returns the sentiment and you continue swaying together there in the lantern light of the gazebo.

The Announcement

The first call you make is to your parents, sort of - you don’t tell them that the two of you are engaged, because you want to see their faces. Soonyoung suggests just telling them it’s been a while since all of you have gotten together, and that you want to see them as soon as you can. Plans are made for the following weekend, and Soonyoung’s parents agree as well, and you’re so excited.

This does, of course, require some elusive tactics on your part - you don’t want to not wear the ring, but you fear that if someone sees it the news will get out before you can go out to see your parents. You want nothing more than to take pictures of it and tell the whole world how much you love your fiance, how excited you are to be with him for the rest of your life. Soonyoung understands of course, and reminds you with a kiss that it’s only a few days. You’ll be able to shout it from the rooftops soon enough. It takes everything in you to not refer to him as your fiance in every breath, but you manage, and soon enough you and Soonyoung are pulling into the driveway of your parents’ home. His parents’ car is already there, and you know now that this is it.

Your mother greets you at the door, and you think of the ring nestled in your pocket. Everyone is seated in the living room, and you all hug and greet each other, and once things are caught up, Soonyoung’s mother expresses her suspicions that there’s an ulterior motive to this meeting.

You and Soonyoung both blush, and both laugh. “Actually,” you start, reaching into your pocket and slipping the ring onto your finger, “there is something we wanted to tell all of you.”

“Oh my god, you’re pregnant.” your mother gasps, which makes his mother gasp, both of them covering their mouths with their hands.

“What? Mom, no.” You laugh. You pull your hand from your pocket, angled down to show off the ring. “We - we’re getting married.”

Your mothers gasp collectively this time, reaching out to their respective husbands who seem unsurprised. Happy, but by no means shocked.

“Was it the ring you showed me?” Soonyoung’s father asks, smile small and knowing. Soonyoung nods, his own smile a mirror.

You stand and walk over to show the ring to them up close, but instead you’re pulled into a tight hug as your mother and his stand as well, wrapping you in their arms, both of them crying. You’re overcome with the need to cry as well. You’re so lucky to have this much love in your life.

“Tell us everything.” Soonyoung’s mother begs when they release you, holding your hand up to her eyes.

You and Soonyoung meet eyes, and share a tender smile. “You tell them. You planned it all.” you say. He presses a kiss to the top of your head and begins the story.

Later that night, you’re alone with your father in the kitchen - making snacks to bring back out to everyone else.

“You didn’t seem that surprised.” You say, pouring popcorn into a bowl. “Neither you or Mr. Kwon did.”

He chuckles. “Well, Soonyoung did ask my permission about a month ago.”

“You gave it, I’m assuming.”

He shakes his head. “I told him he didn’t need it. Our families have always been close, and I love him like my son already, and the permission that mattered most was yours.”

“Oh.” you smile softly and reach out to hug him. “Thank you, dad.” You step back, but something sticks out. “But why was mom so surprised then?”

“Oh, that.” He smirks. “Soonyoung came out to visit last month, and we - him, his father and I - went to dinner so he could discuss his plan to ask you. He had a ring picked out, and when we both expressed support, we all agreed to keep mum about it. Your mothers are both…excitable. We worried they might spill the surprise.”

You laugh. That does sound like them. “Well, it all worked out in the end, huh?”

Your father nods and takes the bowl of popcorn from you, leading you back into the festivities. The moment you’re back your mother smiles, broad and full of joy, pulling you down to sit beside her and patting your leg. “I can’t wait to go dress shopping with you.”

You smile, even though you’re sure the experience will be equal parts stress and magic, and Soonyoung’s mother makes sure to say she’ll be there too.

“Of course.” You lean your head onto your mother’s shoulder. “I need both of you to be there.”

Soonyoung smiles at you from across the room where he’s sitting on the couch, and mouths the words “I love you.”

the party, first of many

Your parents insist on it. You and Soonyoung both try to insist otherwise - engagement parties aren’t a must, and neither is a full on photoshoot. The important people in your lives know you’re engaged, and that’s what matters to you. The party really isn’t necessary.

“Then think of it more like a family reunion.” Soonyoung’s mother tells you. “But with twice the family and all your important friends. We can do a pot luck if it will make you more comfortable.”

“Plus,” your mother adds, “think of the guest list as a trial run for the one for the wedding. We won’t tell anyone it’s an ‘engagement celebration’ so anyone who doesn’t make the cut won’t feel slighted.” She turns to your father and smiles. “That’s what we did.”

Your eyes widen and your parents laugh. “That’s a really good idea, actually.”

You and Soonyoung head home the next day, heads reeling a little, tasked only with creating a guest list and showing up on the day of.

The two of you spend every night for a week or so - or more - poring over your contact lists, on the phone with your parents with questions about which relatives the family was still cool with and who was absolutely not going to be invited.

It’s exhausting, but once it was over you felt a distinct sense of relief. Your parents sent out invitations, carefully inviting everyone to “an evening of family and friends, please bring a covered dish” instead of mentioning your relationship with Soonyoung. The friends you’d alerted ahead of time had asked if it was an engagement party, but were easily appeased with the promise of good food and an open bar.

The night comes three months into the engagement, and it’s easily the most stressed you’ve ever been. Even though the night isn’t dedicated to you and Soonyoung, it doesn’t stop all of your older relatives coming up to you and poking and prodding at the two of you to answer questions about the upcoming wedding - sometimes literally. Your parents, thankfully, seemed to always be able to tell when things were going too far; one of them would magically appear to sweep a relative or three away so you and Soonyoung could breathe.

Looking back, it was a good night. A great night, overall - being surrounded by people who love you, eating good food and hearing people congratulate you and Soonyoung on your love. Things could certainly have been worse, but a lot of your family knew and liked each other already.

Maybe planning the wedding wouldn’t be so hard.

Planning

November - 18 months to go

With the not-an-engagement-party out of the way, the pressure is on to begin the real planning. Soonyoung agrees that a summer and a winter wedding are both off the table - weather too much of an extreme to be considered. That leaves spring and fall, both seasons beautiful in their own rights. Picking fall seems to be the better option, as it gives you a full year to really plan with it being mid-fall now, but you and Soonyoung are both enticed by the idea of getting married when the world is in full bloom.

If anything, you rationalize, it gives you more time to plan and make sure everything will be perfect. You pick a Saturday in early May, and now comes the task of hiring a planner. You and Soonyoung are both too busy to try and plan anything yourselves, and you know that Seungcheol and his husband had done nothing but sing the praises of the one they’d hired. You make a note to get her name from them when they come over for dinner the following week and shoot a text to your mom as Soonyoung does the same. It’ll be a long engagement - nearly two years - but it’ll be worth it.

“I’m excited.” you tell him, smiling as you lean into him on your couch. “We have a date. This is real.”

“Hey now.” he chides playfully, “It’s been real the whole time. Even if we didn’t get married for three years, it’d be real.”

“I know,” you laugh. “It just - setting a date makes everything feel so…solid.”

Soonyoung rubs your arm and nods. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

The first meeting with the planner goes spectacularly. She really understands the vision you’ve crafted in your head - and in numerous pinterest boards - and already has suggestions for venues and catering and florists.

Maybe planning the wedding wouldn’t be so hard with her on your side.

January - 16 months to go

You get a call from your planner early one Monday morning, telling you she wants to take you and your fiancé out on Saturday to look at some possible venues. She’s only selected ones available for your date, so there’s no issue of running into a scheduling conflict. All you and Soonyoung have to do is show up and say yes.

You meet up with her early Saturday morning, everyone with coffee in hand, and pile into her company SUV before hitting the road. She has a good number of places she thinks are good options, and the first few are right here in the city.

The first two are immediate “no”s. There’s just something about the spaces that even thinking about them dressed up just for you doesn’t feel right. You finish the tours and politely thank the managers before heading off to the third.

This is your first positive option - a botanical garden on the outskirts of the city that you and Soonyoung have been to before, and you’re surprised neither of you thought of it before. The idea of getting married here excites you both, especially when the event manager shows you pictures from previous weddings. It’s definitely a strong contender and when you leave you’re feeling much more hopeful than you were before.

The last two options are out of the city - hotels tucked away in smaller towns with sprawling lawns and beautiful gardens during the warmer months. The first is charming but possibly a bit small, and would require having their own team cater the festivities. You’re not against the idea, but you don’t want to miss out on anything by locking yourself down.

The second, however, is like something out of a dream.

Pulling up to the hotel itself feels like you’ve wandered onto the set of a movie. You can’t explain it - everything is beautiful even covered in snow, and as you’re lead through the gardens along the path you get more and more excited, squeezing Soonyoung’s hand and smiling at him brightly. The manager leads you out to the place most commonly used for the ceremony, and you can see why - the gazebo looks out onto a beautiful lake that must be even more beautiful in springtime. When you head back inside for coffee and a more detailed explanation of the packages available, you know you’re already sold. The pictures they show you both of previous events only proves to cement the choice in your mind.

You turn to Soonyoung and by the look on his face, you know you’re in agreement. He turns to the event manager and says, “We’ll take it. We’d love nothing more than to get married here.”

April - 13 months to go

“Why are there so many fucking types of font and paper for invitations? And for save the dates? Are save the dates really necessary?”

You and Soonyoung are seated in the bakery near your apartment, looking through stationary samples your planner had given you from her stationer of choice. There were so many, and the choice wasn’t made any easier when she reminded you that any sample could be changed to suit your color scheme and personal style. This seemed like it would be an easy choice right up until you’d been handed the binder.

You sigh as you flip slowly through the samples, Soonyoung’s head resting on your shoulder. “This is a big decision though, Soonie. Once we pick these, all the stationary will be taken care of - save the dates, invites, seating cards, menus, thank yous, everything. So much will be done just by picking…something.”

He huffs and takes a bite of the cookie he’s been picking at throughout this whole process, holding it up for you to bite at as well. You chew and flip to the next page and your whole face lights up.

“Soonie,” you say, voice full of excitement that causes him to lift his head from your shoulder to look at you directly. You tap the page, smiling at him wildly, “This one, Soonie, but in our colors. Wouldn’t it be perfect?”

Soonyoung squints down at the binder, reaching out to touch the cardstock as he surveys the design of it all, and nods. “The font, though - remember that font from the beginning we really liked? This style but that font, and our colors?” He slides the binder to his side of the table to flip back - making sure to use a thumb to mark the place that had excited you so much - until he found the set he’d been talking about. He’s right, when you look at it - it all seems perfect in your mind’s eye.

You take two sticky notes off the pad you’d brought along, writing ‘font’ on one and ‘style’ on another, sticking them on the pages you’d selected and closing the binder. You both sigh with relief, sagging back in your seats.

Setting your date so far out had seemed like a fine idea at first, until you realized it meant prolonging when you could actually sit down to plan and arrange certain things.

One step down - hundreds more to go.

June - 11 months to go

Dress shopping is much less magical than you ever hoped it would be.

You’re up early on a Saturday after a rough week at work and you’d much rather be back at home, snuggled and sleeping in Soonyoung’s arms. But you have numerous people coming into the city today just to come along on this experience with you, and you have appointments at bridal salons, so you can’t just cancel.

You have everyone meet you at the first store and they all look significantly more excited than you feel - but you’re hopeful that as the day goes on and you try on dresses, that will change. You’re not expecting to cry today, but who knows.

You spend the day in a flurry of white and cream and eggshell, even a few pinks on the palest end of the spectrum, but nothing is right. Every dress is beautiful - even the ones that end up not being beautiful on you - but none of them are giving you that feeling. Not a single dress has given you the sensation that you absolutely had to have it, none of them had made you sad to take it off.

Everyone had assured you it was more than normal to not fine The Dress in your first day. It was an important decision after all, one that much like your decision to marry Soonyoung would follow you for the rest of your life. You knew this might happen, but you can’t help but lose hope.

You’re at the last shop of the day when the salesperson helping you comes into the dressing room, a few new dresses folded over their arms. They smile at you soothingly, knowing already how frustrated the day has made you.

“I’ve brought you a few wild cards.” They say, helping you out of what you thought would be your last dress today. “If you’re too tired to try them on, I understand, of course. But I think you’ll like them.”

You take a deep breath and rub your temples. What’s a few more dresses. You nod and roll your shoulders, giving the go-ahead for for them to suit you up, so to speak.

Immediately the vibe changes. The material isn’t really any different from any of the dresses you’d put on earlier, but the moment it’s settled onto your body you know. There’s a very high chance you will leave this store having put a payment down on this dress.

The salesperson walks back out with you, taking care to make sure you didn’t trip over the hem. The moment your party sees you there are gasps, and screams, an “oh my god” or two and when you see yourself in the full length mirror, there are tears in your eyes. Turning carefully to face everyone, you can see that you’re not the only one.

“This is it.” you say, unable to keep yourself from laughing even through the tears. “This is the one, right? I’m not crazy, am I?”

“No!” comes the immediate response. Your mother and Soonyoung’s are both crying rather loudly, holding each other on the couch. You open your arms and they come toward you, careful to keep from crying onto the dress as they hug you. It’s only a matter of moments before your friends join, and you’re all standing there laughing and crying. They pull away from you and the salesperson holds a box of tissues out to you, smiling brightly.

“I take it this is the one, then?” they say, even though they seem to already know the answer.

“Yes.” you say, wiping tears from your face. “This is my dress. Absolutely.”

They nod and help you down off the pedestal and back towards the dressing room. You confide that you don’t want to take it off and they laugh. “That’s usually a good sign.” They help you out of it and put it back on the hanger, taking note of the serial number. “But one day you’ll be able to wear it whenever you want, and more importantly you’ll wear it to marry the love of your life. Isn’t that such a wonderful thing to look forward to?”

You start crying all over again. They’re unphased, handing you the tissues once more and saying that they’ll give you a minute to get dressed before finishing the appointment. You stand there, alone, surrounded by tulle and organza, tears flowing freely for a minute before you take a few deep breaths to steady yourself. You wipe your eyes and put your regular clothes back on, heading out to meet with everyone else.

You give your size and your phone number and whatever information they’ll need to contact you, and when you take out your checkbook out, you’re assured the dress has already been paid for. You turn incredulously to your mother, who instantly points to Soonyoung’s, who points back to yours. They look at each other and laugh, only telling you not to worry about it. You frown, telling them that you’d budgeted for this, you could pay for it. Both your parents and Soonyoung were already helping with wedding expenses, so you hadn’t anticipated this as well.

You’re overwhelmingly grateful for them. You wish you could do more than thank them.

When you express as much, they smile and tell you that you just have to make sure you and Soonyoung stay as happy together as you always have. That’s all they can ask for.

You don’t cry again, no matter what anyone says. You absolutely do not cry - your eyes are naturally very wet.

Later, when you’re home and tucked into Soonyoung’s arms, you tell him how lucky the two of you are - not only to have each other, but to have families who love you and have the means to help you.

“I take it dress shopping went well, then?” he asks, tucking a loose piece of hair behind your ear. You nod and lay your head against his chest.

“I can’t wait for you to see it.” You say thoughtfully. “I think you’ll cry.”

He hums, and then laughs. You look up at him, eyebrows quirked in a question mark, and he explains. “I was gonna say something cheesy like ‘you could come down the aisle in a potato sack and I’d probably cry’ but then I actually like, imagined it, and I couldn’t help but laugh. So I think as long as your dress isn’t a potato sack, I’ll probably cry.”

You laugh with him when you imagine it as well, hitting him playfully.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

October - 7 Months To Go

With the dress secured, things seem to move along much easier. The guest list is finalized, save the dates are sent, a photographer, a caterer and a florist are all hired, bridesmaid dresses are ordered with as little fuss as can be managed. Hotel rooms are reserved, the bridal suite in particular, more and more appointments are made for things that can only be done in the few months before the wedding.

There had been a little snag with the photographer - Soonyoung’s friend Minghao, upon hearing you were looking for photographers, had been politely miffed that you hadn’t called him. It was his profession, after all, and you were his friends. You promised that he was of course your first choice, but you wanted him to be there as a guest, not to work.

“Also, you’re in the wedding party.” Soonyoung had reminded him. “So it would be a little difficult for you to shoot it.” Minghao’s ears had gone only slightly red at this, but he did offer up some names that hadn’t been in your planner’s list.

“They’re really good but need exposure, so you’ll get a better deal. Plus I’ll be able to check in with them if need be.”

You and Soonyoung ponder over whether it’s a good idea to hire someone who hasn’t done a wedding before, even with Minghao’s promise of checking in, but after meeting with one of them and doing some test shots, you agree that she’s who you want to hire and give her name to your planner.

January - Four Months to go

Soonyoung’s not really used to being the center of attention, but this is of course the case when the time comes for tux fittings. He’s having his made just for the wedding, and it’s nothing like the experience he’s had renting in the past.

He stands in a small dressing room while older men take his measurements and adjust his body this way and that to account for the way his body needs to move on the day of. They get him into a model in one of the colors that he’s chosen - something to align with the color scheme of the wedding. It’s a spring wedding and while Soonyoung looks fantastic in black, you and he had agreed something lighter would be nice.

He goes out to show the people he’s brought along - Seungcheol and Minghao are here, as well as Junhui, Seungkwan and of course the best men, Seokmin and Jihoon. Only missing are Chan and Wonwoo.

The response is, as expected, lots of annoyingly loud wolf whistles and hollers as he steps out. They’re not wrong, of course - he looks good and it’ll only look better when the suit is fitted just for him. Minghao stands to get a closer inspection and takes a few photos with his phone, showing the others before showing Soonyoung as well. The suit photographs well, apparently, something Soonyoung hadn’t particularly been worried about but is definitely a plus.

His jacket gets passed around to see if the color suits more than just Soonyoung - even though they’ll only be wearing the pants and not matching Soonyoung entirely. It’s quickly decided that this will be what he wears, followed by picking out ties and a shirt to match, and deciding after some discussion for the groomsmen to wear something different from Soonyoung. Matching ties and shoes with Soonyoung would suffice as long as all the party had the same look, with the addition of vests for the best men. Deciding those could be rented elsewhere, Soonyoung’s suit and the ties are all ordered and it’s off to lunch before they set out for the rentals. Normally Soonyoung would trust his friends to do this themselves, but you had requested he go along to be sure things were all the same and everyone was happy.

Once they’re inside Soonyoung realizes you were right - the men quickly spread across the store, grabbing things and suggesting them to Soonyoung. He’s quickly overwhelmed and Seokmin notices immediately, quickly instructing everyone to put their things back so Soonyoung could browse the store himself. It was his wedding after all. Soonyoung sags with relief and walks through the racks slowly, grabbing things here and there he thought would look nice but not clash against his suit. Minghao walked with him, not suggesting anything but giving comments when Soonyoung asked his opinion, holding Soonyoung’s phone with the pictures of the suit pulled up.

Eventually they get some of them into a dressing room to try things on and a decision is made, a text put into the groomsmen group chat for Chan and Wonwoo to let them know the details for them to drop by later the upcoming week to make their own arrangements.

Everyone goes home for the night, and Soonyoung comes home to you at the stove, prepping dinner. He wraps his arms around you, resting his head on your shoulder and sighing deeply.

“That bad?” you ask, smiling and pulling one of his hands up to kiss it before setting it back at your waist.

“Not until we got to the rental place.” he squeezes you before letting go so he could press a kiss to your cheek and hop onto the counter. “Suddenly everyone was everywhere and shoving pants in my face until Seokmin was like ‘hey, why don’t we let him pick stuff out since it’s his wedding’. Went much smoother after that. Everyone but Chan and Wonwoo are taken care of. Did you like the pictures I sent?”

“Yeah, babe.” You smile up at him. “Can you grab the milk for me?”

He hops off the counter to do as you ask, pouting. “You’re not gonna tell me I looked good?”

You laugh and take the milk, pouring it into the pan before handing it back to him. “You looked so good, Soonie. You’re gonna look great when it’s all fitted just for you.” You kiss his pout when he leans in, pointedly, before turning back to dinner.

Eating so much cake at 9:30 in the morning was never a good idea, particularly with Soonyoung. Neither of you had eaten anything before the cake, something you regretted almost immediately when the sugar rushing through your systems ended in a crash on your way to a second bakery.

“We have to get lunch, Soonyoung.” you beg, “I can’t stomach ten more bites of cake without actual food in my stomach.”

He agrees and since it’s on the way, you stop at the bakery near your apartment. You’re waiting for your food when you realize something - a bakery. You turn to Soonyoung, whispering excitedly under your breath, “Do you think they do wedding cakes, Soonie?”

His eyes go wide and his mouth drops open. You’d been coming here for years and yet neither of you had ever considered coming here - you knew they made simple cakes, but the focus was on breads and pastries, things made in batches. You go back up to the register, greeted once more by a cashier who knew both you and Soonyoung by name, had worked here almost as long as you had been coming here.

“I have a question.”

“Of course, what’s up?”

“Do you guys do wedding cakes?”

Her eyes go wide, and she thinks for a moment. “Not often, but I’m sure if I tell the owners it’s yours, they’ll be more than happy to.”

You smile brightly - you’d met the owners a few times and they were lovely people who lived in an apartment above the bakery. She steps away to call them and tells you they’ll be down in just a few minutes to talk to you and Soonyoung. She’s smiling, so you’re sure this is going to work out. You and Soonyoung take your food and sit, and he calls the other bakery to say you’d come down with a stomach bug and would call to reschedule.

The owners meet with you a few minutes later, joining you and Soonyoung at your table. They tell you that they can make wedding cakes, and would be more than happy to make yours, but they can only do things that are stylistically on the simple side. You assure them that you don’t want anything spectacular anyway, maybe the icing of each layer a different color, some simple piping. It’s more about the way the cake tastes. You and Soonyoung agree to come in later that week, after work, to have a tasting and talk more about design.

You finish your lunch and head home, and neither you nor Soonyoung can stop smiling. Things are coming together quite nicely - the dinner, the cake, the flowers? All taken care of, now. Your rings have been picked out and ordered, the setlist for the DJ has been started, you’ve both begun writing your vows. Every day more and more pieces come together, every day this vision you and Soonyoung have created becomes more and more real.

March - Two Months to Go

Invitations are sent out, and with only two-ish months to go, things are getting somehow less real. It seems insane that the day you’ve spent so long planning is a little less than eight weeks away - even though the planning has gone surprisingly smooth, and everything is in order, as the date looms closer you feel like you should be getting more and more excited.

You bring it up to Soonyoung one night as you sit together - but separately - writing your vows.

“Soonie, do you feel like…it’s like, as we get closer to getting married, things seem less real. Does that make sense?”

Soonyoung looks up from his notebook and taps his lip with his pen. “No, I get that. I’ve been kind of feeling the same way. I bet it’ll go up til like, right before the wedding, and then everything will feel too real. And then day of it’ll go right back to feeling like a dream.”

You groan, about to say something when your phone chimes - Soonyoung’s does too, from the kitchen. You swipe across the screen, getting up to grab your laptop.

“Three more RSVPs from mom.” you say when Soonyoung moves to check his own phone. “She sent the names to the group chat.”

“Ah, okay.”

More and more RSVPs pour in during the following days and weeks, and it leads to numerous night huddled over a seating chart with both your mothers on the phone to ensure family members would keep the peace.

April - Three Weeks To Go

Your day to day has become little more than check ins and spreadsheets and phone calls with your planner as things get down to the wire. Everything is still going to just to plan, there’s just a lot of details for you and Soonyoung to finalize. It’s tiring and you feel a little bombarded at all ends, but you both know how worth it everything will be. You keep each other sane and at the end of the day, that’s what matters.

You have a bridal shower and after that comes the bachelor and bachelorette parties, which leave you and Soonyoung both monstrously hungover the following morning, asleep until nearly two and feeling like no amount of greasy food or coffee or advil can save you.

May - One Week to Go

Every night before bed, you and Soonyoung practice your waltz. You weren’t graced with his natural abilities, and the last thing you want to do is trip all over your dress and also Soonyoung. It’s a good way to break in your new shoes, as well. He says you’re getting better, and while you’re not sure, you trust him to keep you from looking too foolish.

Three Days to Go

You feel like one giant ball of trembling nerves. What if you mess up? What if you trip down the aisle? What if you forget something important, like the license, or the rings, or someone unexpected shows up?

Soonyoung, bless him, can always tell when you’re letting yourself get too worked up. Even apart, he seems to know just when to text you a picture of some ridiculous shirt his favorite student wore, or how the chocolate chips in his cookie look like a face, or any number of other silly things that remind you how much you love him and how excited you are for the wedding. So excited to marry him.

And when you’re together, he’ll take whatever your holding from your hands and set it down so he can take you into his arms, squeezing you tight and running a hand up and down your back until you relax. “Everything is going to be fine.” He’ll whisper. “At the end of the day, we’re going to be married. That’s all we need to worry about.”

The Day Before

You and Soonyoung drive out to the hotel for the rehearsal dinner, both of you mentioning how strange it’s going to feel spending the night apart for the first time in so long. You’ve relied on each other heavily for the last few weeks, keeping each other comforted and sane. You remind yourself that at this point, everything is essentially out of your hands. Worrying will get you nothing but a bad night’s sleep.

The rehearsal goes smoothly, thankfully, and your planner lets you know that everything is all set for the following day. Her team will be out early the next morning to handle setup and deliveries and all you need to worry about is getting some sleep and saying “I do.” Everything else will be taken care of.

Soonyoung walks you to your room - on the other side of the floor from his - and kisses you goodnight at the door. “We won’t be apart that long.” He tells you, rubbing his thumbs over your cheeks. “We’ll wake up and find our way back to each other right at the perfect moment. I promise I’ll cry when you come down the aisle, okay?”

You laugh and he kisses you again as you go through the door.

“I love you.” you tell him softly as you close the door.

“I love you.” he responds, his back turned to you as he makes his way to his room.

If you make your way into his bed later that night, promises on both your lips to wake early enough that you can slip back to your own room, no one else has to know.

The Wedding

You make it back to your room, unnoticed, with just enough time before your bridal party arrives with breakfast and coffee and mimosas, looking tired from the early hour but so happy to be a part of this day with you. Once the hair and makeup team arrive, there are too many things happening for you to even notice them all so you stop trying. If someone needs your attention specifically, they can ask for it.

You can only imagine that the prep Soonyoung is going through across the floor is much less extensive - he and his party most likely slept much longer and are only getting together now, whereas you’re sitting in a chair with your face half-done, eating one of the pastries left over from breakfast while your hair is brushed and styled to perfection.

In a flash, the time has come. All that’s left is your dress, which your party helps you into and makes sure everything is as it should be. Someone from your planner’s team comes to collect you and, hands shaking, you follow them out of the room and across the hotel to where numerous people are gathered overseeing this and that all for your wedding.

Your party lines up with Soonyoung’s, headed off by the flower girl and the ring bearer, and you can feel yourself already starting to tear up. You’re at the back of the line with your father and he hears you sniffle, looking down at you with kind eyes.

“Don’t cry now, sweetheart.” He whispers, squeezing your hand. “You’ve barely made it to the good part.”

You laugh. “Tell me something funny from you and mom’s wedding.”

He hums as the two of you slowly step forward as more people make their way up to the altar. “We were married by a friend of ours, but later we found out he wasn’t actually ordained. He felt so bad - there had been some steps in his renewal that he’d missed, so his license was expired.”

“That’s not funny at all?” you gasp, immediately thinking of your own officiant - your planner had handled that when you had expressed no interest in hiring anyone in particular, and he’d been a lovely man when you’d met him. You were sure everything was fine.

“That’s true.” your father considers. “But you stopped tearing up, and now look. It’s your turn.”

You realize that he’s right. He’d distracted you just long enough that you’d reached the end of the aisle, and you could see Soonyoung standing at the other end waiting for you. People stand on either side of the runner, but Soonyoung is all you can see. He’s smiling that wide grin of his that you love so much, and your heart is so full you’re sure you’ll have to burst with it. The closer you get you can see that he’s already crying and off-handedly you think about the promise he made you the night before.

Soonyoung thanks your father and takes your hand, leading you up into the gazebo where the two of you exchange vows and love and tears, holding each others’ hands so tightly as the officiant reads the poems and passages you selected before the pronouncement is made.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

Soonyoung lifts your veil with shaking hands and you take his face into your own, wiping at his wet cheeks with your thumbs. He leans in and you lean forward and the crowd erupts as your lips touch, but all you can focus on is the man in front of you and how much you love him, how this kiss is the first of many to come in your marriage, the way his hands feel as they wrap around your waist and pull you closer.

You separate and Soonyoung bursts into fresh tears, blubbering as he tells you how beautiful you look. You laugh, wet with your own tears, wiping his cheeks.

“Let’s go have a moment to ourselves, okay, Soonie?”

He nods and you take each others’ hands, walking back down the aisle together. You retrieve a handful of tissues from the planner, who reminds you that the photographer will be around in about ten minutes for pictures on the property before you and your husband head inside for the reception.

You lead Soonyoung down the path to the next gazebo in sight, swinging your hands between you. He takes a seat and you wipe his face, despite his attempts to take the tissues from you to do it himself.

“You shouldn’t have to-” he tries to say, but you tut at him and he stops.

“Let me take care of my husband, Soonyoung.” He beams at your use of the word, pulling you down to kiss you softly.

“I love you.” he whispers. “My wife.”

“I love you too, Soonie.” you whisper back. “I think we should head back.”

He nods and stands, smacking his cheeks a few times - only lightly - as if willing any future swelling and puffiness not to come up.

Photographs are taken and you all head inside where you’re welcomed as the “Brand New Mr. and Mrs. Kwon Soonyoung.”

You have your first dance and then Soonyoung surprises you with a choreographed dance of his own to one of your favorite songs. The whole room laughs, and so do you, and Soonyoung pulls you up to dance with him as the music fades and the DJ calls for everyone to join you on the dance floor.

Everything is perfect. The flowers, the food, the cake, the way the ceremony space had been decorated. You couldn’t ask for anything more. Everything you’ve spent so long planning blooms in perfect fruition and it’s more than you could have ever hoped for.

Everyone’s speeches are moving and perfect and Soonyoung and Seokmin both get through theirs with minimal tears, and even Jihoon recites a poem he’s written just for the two of you, sitting down promptly afterwards as you and Soonyoung cry.

When everything ends, and Soonyoung stands by your side as you say goodbye and thank everyone for coming, it’s perfect.

It’s perfect, he’s perfect, and you’ve never been so happy.

#kwon soonyoung #seventeen #seventeen fanfic #svt soonyoung #svt hoshi #seventeen hoshi #seventeen soonyoung #seventeen imagines #fluff #romance #wedding fic #friends to lovers #seventeen fluff #laffy taffy

94 notes · View notes

harmonizewithechoes · 5 years ago

Text

(This is going to be long sorry I’d put it under a read more but I only ever use this site on mobile anymore please just skip past it if you want I’m only venting)

******************

So my fiancé is leaving for deployment this summer. We had set dates for everything- a farewell party at the armory, the 3 week training he’d be going to beforehand, and then the day he’d be leaving us and officially starting the deployment- but then COVID happened and everything is up in the air. Getting any kind of information from the military is a special kind of hell because it requires a ton of patience to learn breadcrumbs of information that can change at a moments notice. So we now no longer know anything except for approximately when they’re supposed to leave. His training before that-his summer AT training- could be for 3 weeks as planned or could be for 3 or he might only have to do things at his home location and be on call the rest of the time. We have no idea.

My problem with this is it means I have no idea how much time we get to have him at home and that’s stressing me out so much. I’ll spare the details of various stressful things happening involving childcare while he’s gone but just know that not knowing what the plan is really sucks right now. I need to be able to prepare for things. I need lots of information in order to cope. I’m the annoying one constantly asking questions about how things will go (but tbh when it comes to my sons relationship with his dad and the fact that my other half will be in more danger than we had originally thought I think asking questions is justified). I still work a full time job and need to be able to put in for time off in advance if I need to. I can’t just hear about things the week of.

Also I’m super terrified of not having him here with me. I’m super good at keeping the little human alive but I kinda suck at taking care of myself. I’m not proud of it but I’ve relied on him being there to remind me to eat and drink water and stuff. Also I find it very hard to do simple things like take a shower if he’s not here because I’m worried the baby will wake up when I’m in there and can’t hear him. I need another adult around to remind me that I’m a person too. We’ve done shorter intervals before where he’s been gone for a weekend here or there and last summer he was gone for 3 weeks (all for training stuff) but this is bigger. This is a 10 month deployment.

Part of my job as a mom is making sure my son has other people in his corner if I can’t be there for him for some reason. He needs a village. And the only way I can provide that for him is if I ask others to help me do that. And what better time to ask for help than when I have to solo parent for nearly a year? But I’m SO BAD at asking for help. Today my mom (who is primary childcare for my son while I’m working which has been a godsend during this pandemic) was sick and I had to ask my future MIL if she could take care of him today while we both worked and it was so difficult. Even though she adores being with him and offered to take him the minute I told her my mom was sick. Even though she literally lives across the street from us and we moved here specifically so that she can help me out when he’s gone. It’s still hard to ask for help. So how am I supposed to ask for help with things for the next year??

The answer is likely going to be that I just won’t. I won’t ask. I’ll take everything on myself constantly and around November I’ll be on the verge of a mental break and then I’ll be forced to take drastic measures before I fuck something up irreparably. I don’t know how to not just push things until I break. And I don’t want to break again. It took a long time to build myself up again after the last time. I don’t want to do it again.

#personal #sorry its so long #im home alone with a sleeping baby right now and feeling all the anxiety wash over me #next month my mom is having surgery and needs a couple weeks off from childcare to recover #if my fiance is on call then that fine he can watch baby while i work bc apparently im too important to take time off for it #but if hes not?#i have to reach out and ask for help #and idk what to do #we had a plan #the surgery was supposed to be last month and we had a plan for it #but its unfortunately consideres elective bc its not life threatening shes just absolutely miserable rn #stupid covid ruined that too #the governor is now allowing elective procedures again #but its at the worst time #and im not sure what to do #rn im glossing over all the anxiety i feel over the deployment itself and instead focusing on things at home #but trust me that anxiety is there #its always always there #it keeps me up at night

5 notes · View notes

kahayaya · 4 years ago

Text

October 4, 2020

It’s 2:00am and I am currently in Tahoe. Wanted to reflect on my life as of right now. TLDR: life is good right now. I feel happy of where I am at. I went on a trip to Tahoe on the weekend with Kass, Adi, Darren, Hal, Emily, and Jim. I honetly had fun, despite some spontaneous plans being made. We were gonna go jet skiing yesterday but it was crowded and people were drained when we arrived at South of Tahoe. I haven’t been in Tahoe since two and a half years ago. Its crazy to think how my life has past those years since I was last here. I am very proud of myself of where I have arrived in life. Even though life earlier in the year was chaotic and quite an existential crisis. But from those experiences, has brought me to appreciate life. Thinking about this week, life has given me lots of good news. I planned ahead and did my homework ahead of time in order to enjoy Tahoe. While I was here and we were doing nothing, I finished my Software development project 2. This was the project that made me withdraw from last semester’s class. Its funny how the problem with my code was literally a one line. I remember when I was doing this project, I was stuck and made me really stressed. Finishing the project made me feel good that I finished that project. And I am currently way ahead of the course right now.

As for Tahoe experience it was fun. I got to really hang out with new people like Emily, Darren, and Hal. It was fun hanging out with new people. Again I learned that I don’t hold people accountable for them to constantly be “friends” with me. Another thing that I had struggled to learn the past years. Sometimes its alright for people to not always want to hangout. Rather I appreciate the times we do spend out time in the moment and that is something that makes me happy in the current moment of life.

Another topic that I want to talk about is about nicotine. I know Alex, that if you are reading this is a major clown move on my part. Straightforward, I think I am becoming addicted to nicotine. I understand that I am going through this phase of addiction and I know that I am a fool for doing this. To explain more, I think I am increasing my usage of intaking nicotine. What started off as something I would use only at a party or at Daniel’s place, Has become something of using on the weekends. And I know its getting worse and I am slowly going in to a rabbit hole of this. I wanted to talk to Alex about this but I know the answer is to literally stop buying the device. I plan on just using the rest of what I have and stop. To elaborate my experience on the rampant use of nicotine, I can see why it is hard to quit. I can visually see my receptors being inhibited by the drug and slowly my receptors creating more sites for my dopamine to be released in the synapses to fill me with pleasure. And it is damaging my mind. When Monday comes, I have cravings for nicotine. I resist till Friday night, where I can use it. And I know it will only get worse for me on my habits and my lungs as well. Again Alex I know I am stupid for making this decision but I know what I must do from here on out.

On other news, my brother gave me new news on Friday afternoon. My brother got married to his partner. He was excited to share the news with me and my parents. I am super happy for him. I shared how happy I am and my mom expressed her happiness for him. He invited me to have dinner with her sometime in October or in November, when we are both not busy. He is moving to Pacific Heights with her on Octavia st. I asked him on his decisions and he told me they talked a lot. They discussed about everything, so he knows what he wants. He also told me he wants to have kids. So I assume they will be having kids in the near future. I will be helping him move to his new apartment actually sometime within the.coming weeks to his new apartment. Also they already got the marriage license and they didn’t want any spectacular weddings. So they got it in court. Overall, I am happy that my brother has made the recovery and is progressing with his life after the bad things that happened in his life. Its a positive change and I know things will go well for him as the future comes.

There’s a lot more I want to talk about but I need to go to sleep to go back to SF tomorrow. Life is going very well and again I will update yall on how life will be when I write this.

Weight: ibs 198

I will also stop my keto diet at the ending of October, as I think I will be comfortable with transitioning from there. Let’s get this bread and lets keep going forward.

Chow

1 note · View note

tdotsspot · 4 years ago

Text

2020.....

Wow, it’s been almost TWO years since I've posted anything on here. I’ve thought about it from time to time, but never sat to actually say anything. I just looked at my last two posts....so funny. This is why I'll probably always keep this....just to look back, see where I was, who I was.

But back to 2020 bc HONESTLY this year is the one to go. down. in the mother. fucking. books.

2019 was literally the best year of my life. It was the year I did the most traveling, the year I made the most money...it was like, perfect until the end. I went to Puerto Rico and St Thomas....Atlanta, Boston of course, MARTHA’S VINEYARD FINALLY and even though I've been there 100 times, this was the absolute best. Of course having Dameo was a plus, getting to show him my childhood summers, but Unc let me use the Mercedes which I legit fell in love with, we met Danny Glover which was crazy, I got the brass ring on my first try lol, and we had a lot of good food. LA, was amazing, I miss it so much....NY.....I feel like I’m missing a city, oh yes, dc! That was a fun drunk night.

Late November for Britt’s bday we all went out and that was the first time I was ever real life drunk around his fam, but it was so much fun. The next week....nana passed. It was sad, weird....I hadn’t lost someone in a really long time, and I was there to see some of her last lucid moments. We definitely got closer over the last two years or so since I visited her a good amount, and it made me more sad than I thought. I’m glad I got to have those moments with her, it was cool to get a grandmother again. Made me miss nanny a lot though...

A few weeks later, we found out I was pregnant! It was planned, we were excited although tbh I was kind of freaking out. A baby??? Like a whole ass human? No more weed, liquor, or runny eggs??? HOW SWAY! I don’t think I was ready yet, and a few weeks after that, RIGHT before Christmas, RIGHT before we were going to tell the family, I had a miscarriage. Goodness, I really wasn’t ready for that, at all. Obviously it’s common, but I never thought I’d have one....I was healthy, in a healthy relationship....happy....how the hell did this happen? Unfortunately we already told our moms at that time, partially to help cheer ang, and I knew my mom would be hype as well. I knew it was early, but I told some close friends as well. The pain I felt from that, I just didn't really expect. It was, really sad....I delayed our trip to Boston twice because I really just couldn’t bring myself to leave the bed and sit on a train for 6 hours. I almost canceled altogether but KNOWING NOW THAT THE FUCKING WORLD WAS GOING TO SHUT DOWN, I'm really glad we still went. It was reassuring to get my hugs from my mom, cry it out with her, and see the fam. Except Kendall was such a douche that visit *rolls eyes*. I did get to go see the friends pop up which LEGIT made my whole holiday. As such a huge fan, it was AMAZING, simply, amazing, and I got to enjoy it with my two older cousins and of course, the Dame.

So that brings us to the new year of 2020. 2020 the year I think EVERYONE thought was going to be amazing, and maybe it will be. Maybe everything that’s going on albeit sad, overwhelming, insane....is in fact the year we all really needed. The Amazon was on fire, forever and as someone who truly cares about global warming that was super stressful. We almost had WWIII thanks to good old Trump, but boy oh boy....that was just the tip of the iceberg. A few weeks later AGAIN, I call my dr telling them I still haven’t gotten my period, my boobs hurt, and wtf is going on? She tells me to take another pregnancy test, which I thought was a joke because I JUST had a miscarriage weeks before, and yes we had sex, but we were ‘careful’. COME TO FIND OUT, my ass is pregnant again. I was, very confused...a little upset because I was planning on waiting a bit before trying for real again. I mean we just dealt with so much loss between nana and the miscarriage, I hadn’t even fully processed what my body just went through. I remember angrily buying the test because, those shits aren’t cheap.....peeing with the door open with Dame downstairs, (not at ALL romantic like the first time I told him) and looking down like....wait. “WHAT THE FUCK” about 3 times was said, I explained to dame this indeed does say I’m pregnant, but how??

30 minutes later, the world finds out Kobe Bryant died. There were a lot of emotions that day for sure. Even though I wasn’t a die hard Kobe fan or anything, for some reason this one really made me sad. Maybe because I was currently listening to a book his personal coach wrote; relentless....which is REALLY fucking good.

A week later, I'm confirmed via bloodwork that I am indeed pregnant and it’s time for take two! I didn't get excited until I passed my first trimester, just in case...but now at almost 26 weeks, I’m really excited to meet her. My babygirl! It’s still wild to know I’m about to be a mom, but I’m really pumped for both of us and I know we’ll make great parents.

Ah yes, the mid march, covid 19 hits America. I was supposed to go on a three city tour to the west coast which I was very much looking forward to, before the world stopped. In fact, it was that very weekend, right after we had our ultrasound, the first and only visit Dame was allowed to come in, that everything stopped. A week or so later, a mid level of depression kicked in for me, which lasted about a month. I couldn’t believe that after WEEKS of puking and being dead ass tired, I was finally ready to work again, but I was Essentially unemployed. The west coast gig was a cute check, I had multiple events coming up that got canceled....weddings that got postponed, and all I could think about was I’m about to have a kid with no money. I went almost two entire months without making ANY money....luckily unemployment kicked in and I got a couple of grants I applied for because I really don’t know what I would’ve done. My mom of course was in my corner, and Dame would start working from home, but still fully employed so at least we wouldn’t be homeless. I knew there were hundreds of thousands of people in my boat, if not worse but I couldn’t help but be consumed with not making any money, and my 2020 year essentially being wiped out.

Again, this was supposed to be MY year. Be a parent, make a lot of money, and I felt like I just fell flat on my face, in mud, and was suffocating.

America’s approach to covid was trash, more and more people died...I was worried about my mom and aunts as they're older and more susceptible. This is the longest I've gone without seeing my mom, but thanks to technology! We literally FaceTime every day.

I almost forgot! Red literally almost died. He got attacked by a pit that lives up the street and it was one of the scariest things I ever dealt with. We just came back from a cute little drive, it was absolutely beautiful out, and I just remember parking, letting him out for a walk, looking at a dog running but I couldn’t tell if it was on a leash or not. I then realized nope, this bitch is not on a leash, crossing the street, and watching it whip its head at me and red and sprinting across the street to attack him. I was absolutely terrified. My baby red, is literally getting mangled by a fucking pit by the neck. I’m also pregnant and scared the pit is going to attack me, that my stress is going to cause another miscarriage, and that I’m probably going to watch red die in front of my eyes. I completely blacked out on the woman who was sloppily running to get her dog off of him. Had it been a minute more, max, he would’ve been dead. I still picture it sometimes and it legit makes me so sad, but luckily he pulled through after about a week of healing, and a huge bloody abscess that needed to be drained.

THEN about a month ago now, George Floyd was killed on tape by a cop and it changed the world. Between Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Abery dying and being cooped up for months in the house, major cities went up in flames, literally. It was a revolution that Is still happening which has caused corporate America to shove ‘black lives matter’ down our throats like black people just popped up, shown privileged ass white people who refuse to try and understand, racist fucks that just hate us so much....and the list goes on.

That’s been our year so far! and it about to get shut down again because because aren't taking covid seriously.

Pregnancy has been really interesting though....not at all like what they show on tv and the movies. I’ve been emotional as hell crying over my body changing....constipated af to the point where I now celebrate any time I shit, hella uncomfortable....but I know when we see her face it will indeed all be worth it. Doing this back to back though like Dame envisions....I don’t know man lol. We shall see. She's due in about 3.5 months. Check in before then....

Tdot, out.

4 notes · View notes