#oh well! i had to chop out a ton of things on the list to get it down to 10 (local chiz whiz was kept off the list for r e a s o n s o k)

[deus-ex-mona]

good evening~~ here’s my very cursed(!!!) top 10 list on the most redundant [redacted] anime features off the top of my head~~

debates and disagreements welcome~

10- lxl and basketball

pointless inclusion that was pretty much just an excuse to get chiz to openly thirst over aizo. and to emphasise on just how much better aizo is at sports as compared to his poor sidekick yujiro. just male leads being male leads, ig

i mean, sure, it gave us that beautiful ball e mv, but lxl’s sporty [redacted] anime-induced hobby wasn’t worth much in general.

9- the inclusion of ⅘ of gen 2 tbh

they were pretty much just background extras for the most part, except for ken, who gets bonus moments thanks to being the male lead’s brother. heck, poor kodai doesn’t get much time to shine, despite being the adoring bf of one of the three heroines of the show. mans got more screentime either behind his camera, or as juri love flashbacks during her conversations with the jk trio.

as for the others, arisa got like 5 seconds of screentime (and 4 of them occurred in the sports fest ep, romeo ed included), and kotahina were nerfed to heck and back. they were written to be competitive and stubborn characters, so why were they portrayed to be nothing more than your average caring senpai towards hiyoko? a nd cultural festival w h e r e ? helloooooooooo~~~?

sure, the sports fest ep did give gen 2 in general a chance to show their stuff, but it was clearly more of viewer fanservice for pre-[redacted] anime fans who know and love these characters for who they truly are.

8- aizo’s “trauma reveal”

idk about you, but hiyoko does not need to know about aizo’s trauma. i mean, yeah, i totally get where ken’s coming from. as a scumbag older sibling myself, i, too, get the urge to dump lots of info about my brother to complete strangers. but. it’s just that. hiyori… really didn’t need to go “oh thank god it wasn’t real trauma. now. how can i fix him?���.

she really didn’t need to say that mans. all forms of trauma are valid forms of trauma… if that makes sense. she can’t just decide that someone’s trauma “isn’t real trauma” and then go ahead and liken it to her dislike for squid. and that includes aizo’s trauma with ladies. not cool.

on the bright side, at least aizo’s local idol boo yujiro took his trauma seriously and stood by him even as their manager had a trauma minimising session with his brother. and speaking of yujiro…

7- that someya ‘scandal’

what the heck was that ep 4 someya scandal lmao. it’s never brought up again????? not even by koichiro and tamagoro in the later episodes??? do they even know that there was a scandal about them??? bruh. what was it even there for lol. the gayze???

i mean, yeah, he’s totally the shame of the someya family for going ahead to be the less popular member of a popular idol duo, with said idol-ling being something he had received the head of said someya family’s permission for. but he had debuted without his family’s name anyway so??? does it even matter???

it would’ve actually made sense if it had a call back in a later episode, with, like, the reveal that maybe chizuru or one of the 100000 aizo stans there apparently are had leaked yujiro’s last name online in an attempt to take him down so that aizo can have a solo idol career or something. but no. it’s just never brought up again.

but before we drop the topic of yujiro like how his in-universe popularity dropped to 0 in the adaptations…

6- yujiro arrest reason

this. made. no. sense. either.

did the [redacted] anime throw darts at a dartboard of possible plot ideas to decide how the someya family side plot was going to go?? or was it decided with an online prompt generator?? or was it the result of a game of mad libs with the office crew????

like? lol? who smuggled koichiro into the bar??? and wh o let baby face yujiro into the bar??? and how did none of the staff at the bar question it?

though. wait. how the heck did hiyoko even see enough distinctive features of yujiro’s during the night that she witnessed his police encounter to identify him when they next crossed paths in the classroom? she was looking at him from above from her spot on a flight of stairs in dim lighting. just how good is her eyesight? hello?

5- repurposed yumefan

yeah yeah i k n o w the [redacted] anime staff justified their choice to use yumefan as a song to encourage hiyoko bc “it’s a song about encouraging others” and stuff. but still. yappa saikyou would probably have worked too, since it’s about not wanting to lose to your rivals and aiming to surpass the rest and stuff like that. or they could’ve just. y’know. kept nonfan in their setlist anyway if they wanted to dedicate a song to their friend(?) slash manager, since that song’s mv was the first mv that hiyoko had worked on, and thus, ✨memories✨ are there, y’know?

either way, the [redacted] anime staff saw yumefan, decided “ok it’s for women now” and had it dedicated to hiyoko and got the narumi sisters to cover it as a special ed. much wow. aizo would be proud. and speaking of aizo…

4- yuko in the countdown live

she moved to france in the lxl movie, so what is she doing here in the first place? to watch her estranged son hxld hxnds with some rando onstage? go back to france, yuko.

3- nagisa arc

the main problem i have with nagisa’s arc is how forced it felt tbh. it kinda felt like it was just. shoehorned into the plot? it just. didn’t flow well. like… especially how nagisa was completely written out of the plot after he hopped on that train. lxl had been teasing hiyoko relentlessly about nagisa till he left. then it was just like. he never existed?? excuse???

i mean. i love nagihiyo. don’t get me wrong. it’s just… the way the [redacted] anime staff plotted it into the story felt… off.

look, you see, i think the nagisa plot would’ve worked better as a season closer. like, after all that friendship drama and scandals and stuff, we get a breather in the form of the nagisa visit. he could be visiting for the countdown live, or for a christmas or new year’s visit for all i care, but it’d give the lxl + hiyoko trio, with newly strengthened bonds of friendship after all they’ve been through (thanks chiz), a chance to show off their cooperative skills with the hiyoko makeover sequence and subsequent nagisa encounter. heck, it’d even give nagisa another reason to be wary of lxl, since “aren’t these the dudes from that relationship scandal you were in? you should be more careful around them fr” could be a legit point of concern. plus! it could lead into a post-series uni timeskip or something for that sweet, sweet nagihiyo uni arc crumbs!!

hmmm. well. in the end, i still hate how nagisa’s existence was all but retconned after his episodes. poor lad. he deserves better!!! and speaking of deserving better…

2- the narumi sisters’ appearance

for sena, as she has co-starred with lxl in the past, and since she is still in the industry, it’s no surprise that she’d make an appearance or two. however, the r e a l problem is how she was handled. she was only abruptly thrown into ep 6 to fit in yet another “uwu woe is me im not cute uwu” hiyoko moment in the 24 minutes of terror. plus, those sena-mona moments make no sense whatsoever if you’re a [redacted] anime-only who doesn’t know how lxl and the narumis know each other. viewer fanservice at its finest, ig.

now. mona.

#notmymona

w h o is that girl and why does she have our angel’s name and face? i swear, the only redeeming trait she has is that her character design was done by moge, which is. yeah, much cuter than her lxl movie cameo appearance.

but aside from that. who is she? she has no goals, no ambition, all she does is go “uwu i look up to my sister who i envy… but nvm i’m here to be your relationship therapist so that’s enough about me—”

she doesn’t even get to perform in the [redacted] anime even though there was an entire joint-artiste concert in the last episode. she doesn’t even salt about her nasty encounter with yujiro (which would’ve made for a more interesting topic during her second encounter with hiyoko when they talked about conflicts with friends, instead of being demoted to a bonus manga tbh). she’s so bland, she makes plain spaghetti taste like carbonara.

and speaking of carbonara, we return to lxl for number one, which is…

1- the lxl shower scene (no image bc g o o d l a w d w h y w o u ld i include it)

they are 15. we don’t need that extended shower scene. we don’t need to know that hiyoko has no qualms about barging into the showers for the opposite gender, with said members of the opposite gender being completely nude and uncomfortable when she did so. we just. didn’t need to see any of that.

who was that scene even made for? help???? just how bad did they think their own show was that they felt the need to put in an out of place scene of teen boys showering to pad the runtime?? excuse???

[harrywavycurly]

What You Deserve Part 12: Is This You?

Masterlist: Here

CW: Mentions of death

Tag List: @littlered0000 @saramelaniemoon @ali-r3n @sapphire4082 @sweetmoonlove0214 @eddies-girl-22 @darknesseddiem @peaches-roses-sins @blckburd @comeonatmebruh @daisy-munson @cultish-corner @mrsjellymunson @aol19 @micheledawn1975 @2000babies @marshmallowgem @ang3lc @angelina16torres-blog @transparentenemypenguin @alilstressyandlotdepressy @josephquinnsfreckles @plk-18

A/N: This is going to upset a lot of y’all for possibly two reasons but trust me it hurt my heart to even write it, but I still hope you enjoy✨

“So what did you think of the class?” “It was…good…nice yeah…you looked good…really uhm good…yeah…” “thank you….but I meant did you think it helped you at all?” “Oh right…yes…I did uh…learn some good stuff and I think if I took a few more classes I’d feel a little better about uhm…being home…alone more.” “Well you’re more than welcome to come to the next one or…even just a regular kick boxing class if you’re interested?” “Oh that sounds fun…uh where…are we going? This is-” “where I grew up…” “you grew up here?” “Yup…right…here actually…” “it looks nice…is that the van you’ve been working on?” “Yeah that’s her…she’s nearly done…would you like to go inside?” “Oh uhm yeah yeah…let’s go.”

“This isn’t what I was expecting the inside of this trailer to look like.” “I had it upgraded last year…but something tells me you would’ve liked the way it looked originally…” “how did it look? Not that this isn’t nice…it’s very well done whoever did it-” “I did…I didn’t want anyone else to mess with it…so I just did it when I had time….took me a while but it was worth it.” “You like doing things yourself don’t you?” “Only important things…like this…and the van…” “and Dave…you fixed him yourself.” “Well he’s pretty important isn’t he?” “I think so…but you really grew up here? Was it just you and your parents?” “Me and my dad yeah…Wayne.” “Wayne? That’s a good name for a dad…I like that name.” “It is a good name isn’t it? That’s why I named the garage after him…it felt like a name people would trust leaving their car at…he was a great mechanic…taught me everything I know.” “I agree…naming the garage Wayne’s Auto Shop was a smart choice…that’s a huge reason why I started taking Dave there.” “That makes sense…I think you and him would’ve gotten along really well.” “How long has he uhm….been gone?” “About three years…but uh feel free to take a look around…” “Okay…I have your permission to be nosey?” “Yes…open all the drawers and snoop through all the cabinets you want to sweetheart it’s fine.” “If you say so…”

“Eddie?…Eddie is this…is this you?” “Oh yeah…yeah that’s me and the Hellfire club from high school…you know a few of those kids like that’s…Dustin…and Mike…and Lucas.” “That’s cool and all but is that your hair that’s down to your shoulders?” “Yeah…I used to have long hair for a while until I got tired of wearing it up for work so I just cut it….why do you look like you want to cry?” “You had…this beautiful hair and you just chopped it off?” “I mean I can grow it out again if…you want? I just got tired of it and wanted a change that’s all.” “You’d grow it out for me? Really?” “It’s just hair sweetheart…if you want it long then sure…I’ll let it get long…where did you find this picture anyway?” “In the back bedroom…can I ask…what are we doing here?…really?” “Uh well…I know you don’t feel comfortable being alone at your house…because of William and…I wanted to show you this place because if you want…you could…move in…” “I could move in here?” “If you want? William doesn’t know this place even exists so you’d be perfectly safe…not that you aren’t safe at your house now but I just want you to feel comfortable being alone…so just know this is an option if you want it.” “This is huge Eddie I couldn’t just…move in here…this is your house.” “Baby does it look like anyone lives here?” “No but…this is where you grew up and you probably have tons of memories here and-” “I do…I have lots of great memories of living here…but I took those memories with me when I moved out a long time ago…so now you can come in and make some of your own…in a place that you feel comfortable and safe in…because I know everyone in this park so trust me…you’ll be safe here.” “I’ll think about it…” “okay…that’s totally fine take all the time you need.”

“So…this is the van huh? She’s nice…smells like weed in the back though…” “That’s probably because I used to drive this around to make drug deals at house parties and offered customers the back seat to get high in for an extra fee.” “Ah so you’ve always been a business man then?” “Oh yeah….I’ve always found a way to make a living..now I just do it legally.” “Steven told me you used to be an asshole….is that true?” “I was an angry teenager…I used to be mean to people before they got the chance to be mean to me so yeah…I was an asshole.” “I can’t imagine you being mean on purpose…” “Well good thing you didn’t know me back then sweetheart because I probably would’ve made you cry…Wayne always used to get on my ass about the way I treated girls…” “really? But you’re…you’re so…amazing?” “Now I am…because I finally became the man I was meant to be instead of the one I thought I wanted to be…” “and that’s because of Wayne?” “Yeah…we had a rough few years right before I graduated high school…I used to just yell at him and he’d stand there and take it…and then he’d just hold me while I cried and told him I was sorry…he always used to tell me he knows the man I can be if I’d only stop fighting it…so I just…stopped fighting it.” “Well thank god for Wayne because…I quite like the man you are right now…” “yeah…thank god for Wayne…ready to go sweetheart?” “Yeah…I’m ready…thanks for bringing me here Eddie.” “You’re welcome…thanks for listening.” “Anytime…I like listening to you talk about your dad and your wild high school days.”

[theharpermovieblog]

#HARPERSMOVIECOLLECTION

2024 MOVIE LIST

www.tumblr.com/theharpermovieblog

🎃HALLOWEEN 2024🎃

I re-watched Faces Of Death (1978)

Yeah, that's right, I made this mistake.....again.

A coroner introduces footage of death.

Before the internet and streaming there were video stores. Places where people shopped around and either bought or rented physical copies of movies.

As a child, my parents were pretty lenient with what I could and could not rent. In their eyes, being a fan of horror from an early age wasn't seen as dangerous or as a bad thing. If I wanted to rent "Halloween 4" over and over again, my parents let me. They didn't understand my love for the genre, but they accepted it.

However, there was one movie...one series of movies actually, which I was not allowed to rent. Those films were called "Faces Of Death".

The rumor was that "Faces Of Death" had real death and real murder and real gore. Snuff films. The ultimate in fucked up horror. Kids my age all wanted to see it. Some kids even lied about having seeing it to look cool. It was this crazy Holy Grail of a taboo that made our little immature brains run wild.

So, is the original "Faces Of Death" all it's cracked up to be? Is it as wild as we all thought? Were my parents right to draw the line there? Well....yes and no.

"Faces Of Death" Really is just a clip show of some faked footage, some real surgery footage, some nature footage, and some footage of car accidents and such. But, then there is a ton of real animal cruelty and animal suffering on top of it.

Pretty early on there is footage of dog-fighting and it's heavily upsetting. There is also tribes of people killing and eating animals, which is fine because it's how they survive, but I didn't particularly enjoy watching it. We see a chicken get it's head chopped off on a farm too, which is also upsetting, but necessary for the farm I suppose. Anyway, you get the point. It's sitting through upside down sheep bleeding out, animals being skinned and It's not fun to watch if you ask me.

Simply, It's cheesy footage mixed with upsetting footage and it's a real bore of a downer. I suppose it does have an extremely minor educational value, but that's really pushing the definition of "educational".

This movie is neither enjoyable nor entertaining. In fact, if you find it such, you're probably a bit of a creep.

As a little kid I wanted to rent every one of the "Faces Of Death" films. Today, I'm glad I didn't watch any of them beyond the first. I'm actually upset with myself for re-watching the first one for this list.

Oh hooray, I saw animals slaughtered. Happy fucking Halloween. I need a drink.

[jungshookz]

cee cee i have an idea!!! what about Cool and Cultured bookshop owner! tae and dorky y/n walking past the store everyday and one day goes in and strikes a conversation about a fancy book like catcher in the rye and talks about the symbolism of rye in the book and tae's like :0 das wildly inaccurate but you're kinda cute so here's my number so we can talk more about rye and y/ns like :0

➺ pairing; kim taehyung x reader

➺ genre; wowowow handsome & well-read bookkeeper!taehyung, fluff!!!! the kind of fluff that makes you feel like you’re wrapped up in a warm blanket sipping on a mug of hot chocolate on a nice autumn’s day when the leaves are just starting to turn red and orange, y/n’s kind of a dummy but in a very loveable kind of way, featuring namjoon the (sort of) wingman

➺ wordcount; 6.2k

➺ summary; the catcher in the rye? oh, sure - of course you know that book! it’s about catching loaves of bread, right?

➺ what to expect; “i called it catch her in the eye, joon.”

➺ note; our (first??) drabble of the month as voted by you guys! i finished writing this the day after it was decided that bookkeeper!tae was the winner because that’s how excited i was about him >:-) enjoy! 

                                        »»————-　➴　————-««

“and… open your eyes!” you exclaim, throwing your arms up into the air excitedly as namjoon takes his hands away from his eyes

he blinks owlishly before looking up and-

“you brought me to a bookstore!” he gasps, a smile immediately spreading over his features as he claps his hands together, “oh, this is great! usually, you bring me to those awful rock-climbing places, or that horribly violent paintball gun place, and even when you brought me to the movie theatre the tickets were for that gory r-rated horror movie-”

“okay, let’s not get carried away-” you hold a finger out to shut namjoon up before he can list out moRe reasons as to why you seem more like you hate him instead of love him, “the point is: this time, i brought you to a bookstore!” you smile proudly before crossing your arms

not to toot your own horn or anything but you did a pretty good job with this surprise

you even did tons of research to find the best bookstores in the city!!

which was difficult because namjoon’s been to like.,,. EVERY bookstore in the city

but not this one!

to be fair, it was a long forty-five minute car ride to get here so you understand why he’s never come out here himself

“…this isn’t like… a weird bookstore or anything, right?” namjoon narrows his eyes in suspicion before taking a step back and looking up at the name of the store again

the secret garden

oh!!!!

like the book!!!!

how clever :D

“what do you mean?” you frown, placing your hands on your hips before glancing back up at the name as well

the secret garden

hm

kind of a lame name for a bookstore

“like a…” namjoon trails off before clearing his throat, “you know, like a bookstore that’s actually a sex dungeon or something like that-”

“ew!” you immediately make a face before shaking your head quickly, “wha- why would you even say that?!”

“well, i don’t know!” namjoon holds his hands up in defence, “i’ve never been to this bookstore before-!”

“this is a regular ol’ bookstore, joon. i promise!” you clap your hands on his shoulders before giving him a squeeze, “just the way you like it! old, dusty, and full of nothing but boring books.”

namjoon beams

that’s exactly what he likes to hear

see, today is your seven year friendaversary with namjoon

you guys have known each other since middle school and noW the two of you are in your final year of university which is crazy

and so, for the past seven years, you’ve gone out on this day to celebrate your beautiful friendship because honestly you’ll take whatever excuse to go to a restaurant to try to get free dessert (“yeah, we’re celebrating our anniversary! so, i’ll take three orders of your chocolate lava cake-”)

you guys usually take turns where one year one of you will plan an entire day of fun activities for the other, and then the next year, the other person will do it because that seems like a relatively fair system

last year, namjoon took you to this cute pottery place and you ended up making these adorable matching friendship mugs

they’re both a little lopsided but that’s just part of their charm!!

namjoon painted his a beige-brown and you painted yours a BRIGHT purple and then you traded mugs (so that when he comes over to your apartment, he has his mug, and when you go over to his apartment, you have your mug!)

he also insisted that you guys carve your guys’ initials on the bottom of yours and draw a heart around it which you thought was a little much but you are… very fond of namjoon so you’d jump off a cliff if he asked you to

admittedly, most of the things that you’ve planned during your years have been catered to your own personal desires so you’ve been a little unfair but namjoon’s always been too much of a sweetheart to say anything about it

and for the most part, he’s a pretty good sport even though it’s blatantly obvious that he’d rather chop a toe off than spend the afternoon doing your chosen activity

the last time it was your turn two years ago, you took him to a go-cart track and spent the entire two hours practically driving circles around him because he was driving like ten kilometres an hour

the only reason why he wasn’t driving like one is supposed to drive on a go-cart track (i.e. like a maniac) is because he was worried that if he went too fast he’d get a ticket or something

and kim namjoon does not get speeding tickets

not on the real road and most certainly not on a man-made road either!

for the record, he definitely didn’t appreciate you calling him a slowpoke and telling him to eat my dust, bitch! and he still brings it up from time to time whenever he wants to guilt you into doing something with him (“i’m not switching muffins with you. it’s not my fault you don’t like yours!” “…hey, remember that time you called me a slowpoke and told me to-”  “take the muffin.”)

anyways

he’s glad that this is just a normal bookstore and that he doesn’t have to worry about whether or not one of your activities is going to end in him losing a limb for the first time

what a wonderful way to end the day!!

actually, you guys still have to grab dinner after this where you’ll try to squeeze as many free desserts out of the restaurant as possible as per usual so this is a wonderful way to almost end the day

the little bell hanging above the door chimes as the two of you step in and almost immediately you’re greeted with the warm smell of what you’re pretty sure is hot chocolate??

“i love this place already.” namjoon breathes out, his jaw dropping in awe, “i wanna live here!”

“okay, keep it in your pants-” the door starts to shut and you nudge namjoon forward to keep from getting your butt nipped by the door

you don’t even get a chance to say anything else before namjoon suddenly darts off

so much for keeping it in his pants

you pause when you get a good look at the place

huh

for some reason you feel like a lot of instagram pictures have been taken here

it’s obviously an antique place but it’s like one of those trendy antique places

a brass chandelier hangs from the ceiling, the (fake) candles casting a golden glow over the entire store

there’s a spiral staircase that curls up to the second floor

the walls are covered with floor to ceiling shelves stacked with, duh, books, but even for what you thought would just be a dusty old bookstore… it’s pretty nice in here!

there’s even an archway in the centre of the place that leads to what looks like a pretty cozy reading space for customers which is a nice touch

and there are people sipping on mugs of hot chocolate too!!!

you can’t help but wonder if you need to be reading a book in order to get a mug of cocoa

you like the hot chocolate part but you’re not as excited about the reading part

“y/n, come on!” you look over to see namjoon - who already has three books cradled in his arms - waving you over enthusiastically, “check it out! it’s a vintage boxed set of the chronicle of narnia series! and they’re leatherbound-“ he practically moans before nudging you towards it, “help me take it out?”

“narnia?” you snort, tilting your head so you can look at the titles pressed into the spine of the book, “isn’t narnia, like… for kids?”

the last time you read the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe was when you had to read it for a book report in like the fourth grade

you glance over your shoulder to look at namjoon who now has an unimpressed frown on his face

“what??”

“…you insult me.” he sniffles, “just help!”

you roll your eyes playfully before turning back to pull the thick set out of the shelf and-

“hello!”

“-!”

the sudden sound of a stranger’s voice nearly makes you drop the set but you manage to prop the edge of the box back up onto the shelf before it falls and breaks all the bones in your foot

you turn to look at whoever-

oh my

hello indeed

“welcome to the secret garden.” he smiles kindly, tilting his head at you, “did you need any help with that, miss?”

oh good god

his voice makes you feel like you’re wading through a river of warm caramel

and you’d happily let yourself drown in that river

two seconds go by where you don’t respond at all and instead you continue staring at mr. caramel with very obvious hubba-hubba eyes

“i think we’re good, thank you!” namjoon clears his throat, elbowing your back gently before offering a smile of his own

“oh, alright! well, my name’s taehyung,” taehyung reaches up to adjust his glasses, “please let me know if you need assistance of any kind - i’ll just be up at the front. if you’re just here to relax and read, i’d be happy to whip up two mugs of hot chocolate for the two of you!”

“awesome! thank you.” namjoon nods all while you continue smiling at taehyung dazedly

he waits until taehyung disappears before turning back and looking at you

“…what’s wrong with you?”

“i’m good, thank you…” you whisper your very delayed response and namjoon moves his head so that he’s blocking your view when you lean back a little to try to look at taehyung sitting behind the front counter, “holy moly. i’d let him explore my secret garden-”

“oh, now look who can’t keep it in their pants-“

“hey, you should look at this as a good thing!” you grunt as you adjust the hefty box in your arms, “now i’ll willingly drive you back here… whenever you want.”

namjoon’s eyes immediately light up

                                         »»————-　➴　————-««

you and namjoon end up returning to the bookstore about two weeks later

last time, namjoon wanted to stay longer (and so did you, honestly) buT you were pretty close to losing your dinner reservations and you weren’t about to give up your free chocolate lava cake just to stare at the cute bookkeeper from afar like a creep

so you had to leave!

namjoon ended up leaving with the boxed set and a couple other books so suffice to say, he was pretty happy

and when you suggested visiting the bookstore again this week… well, namjoon had to jump on that opportunity, didn’t he??

you?? offering to take him to a bookstore?? again??

you’re obviously only using him as an excuse to go into the bookstore so you can spend hours watching taehyung like a weirdo but he’ll take it

namjoon hums happily as he takes a sip of his hot chocolate before licking a little bit of whipped cream off his top lip

he wonders if taehyung would be willing to share the recipe to it because this is honestly the best hot chocolate he’s ever had

namjoon looks up from his book when he hears you let out a sigh for the tenth time in the last two minutes

oh god

look at you!

“oh… and he’s good with kids, too?” you sigh blissfully as you prop your elbow up on the arm of the sofa chair before leaning your cheek against your fist

you watch fondly as taehyung gets down on one knee, holding two fists out for a little girl

she taps his right hand shyly before quickly wrapping her arms back around her mom’s leg, peeking at him from behind it shyly 

taehyung flips his wrist around and uncurls his fingers to reveal a single caramel, his face lighting up briefly as she takes it from his open palm into her little hand 

“i don’t know why you can’t just go up and talk to him-” namjoon snorts at how lovestruck you look before peering around the corner of the archway to look at taehyung too, “it’s not a big deal. he’s really nice!”

“i can’t just go up and talk to him. are you kidding me?” you frown, shaking your head, “what am i supposed to say??”

“tell him you need help finding a book!” namjoon states as if it’s the most obvious thing in the entire world (because it is) before slapping the book on his lap shut, “just out of curiosity - what book would you ask him to help you find?”

you lean back against the sofa chair before twisting your lips in thought

hm

book?

what book…

what was the last book you read…?

ooh!

“esio trot!” you perk up, namjoon’s eyebrows knitting together in confusion because he has no idea what just came out of your mouth-

“esio- oh my god, esio trot as in the roald dahl children’s novel??” namjoon frowns, “no! you can’t go up to taehyung and ask him to help you find esio friggin’ trot-”

“okay, you don’t see me making fun of you for buying what you bought last week, mr. chronicles of narnia-”

“you did make fun of me!” namjoon gawks, “in fact, you’re still making fun of me for it-” he waves his hand to cease the conversation, “listen to me. from the very few times that i’ve spoken to taehyung, it’s clear that he’s… cultured, you know?”

“cultured… like yogurt.” you joke, slapping your own knee gently, “get it?? because yogurt is cultured? cultured yogurt??”

namjoon resists the urge to roll his eyes

see?

this is exactly what he’s talking about

“…yes, y/n. i get it. anyways, as i was saying- taehyung is just very…” namjoon kisses his teeth as he tries to think of how to phrase his words, “…well-read… intelligent… scholarly… refined…”

you tilt your head in curiosity as namjoon continues listing out a bunch of snooty sounding adjectives

wait a minute

“are you-” you scoff, straightening up in your seat, “are you calling me dumb??”

hey!!

you’re not dumb!!!

it’s not like books are super complicated to figure out or anything

all you have to do is read what’s inside of it and you certainly know how to read!!!

and sure, sometimes you still don’t know if receive is spelt receive or recieve or if business is spelt buisness or biusness, but that doesn’t mean that you’re dumb!!

“no, no, i’m not calling you dumb!” namjoon shakes his head quickly, “i’m just saying that if you had a choice, you would choose a movie over a book-”

“well, yeah - obviously i would choose a movie over a book.” you snort, “why would i waste eight hours reading tiny little words on stiff white pages when i could be watching a movie that compresses the entire story in a convenient one hour and a half??”

“i’m your friend, and i don’t want to watch you make a fool of yourself!” namjoon argues, “because if you do, then you’ll be too embarrassed to ever come back here again, which means that i’ll never be able to come back here again-”

“what’s stopping you from coming here by yourself?”

“because every time i tell you that i’m going to the bookstore, you’re going to ask me a bunch of taehyung related questions when i get back-”

okay

that’s a fair point

that sounds like something you would do for sure

“alright, fine!” you huff before crossing your arms, “what book do you suggest i go up there and ask him to help me find?”

namjoon twists his lips in thought

hm…

“catch her in the eye!” you chirp, folding your hands behind you book as you smile brightly at taehyung

namjoon feels his own face flush at how confidently you just said that and he immediately slaps a hand over his mouth to keep himself from screaMING

he told you to ask taehyung to help you find the catcher in the rye

NOT CATCH HER IN THE EYE

“the catcher in the rye?” taehyung nods, “sure! of course i can help you find the catcher in the rye.” he returns a smile as he steps out from behind the counter, “follow me, please!”

you shoot namjoon a big thumbs up and a faT grin as you pass by the entrance of the archway and he gives you a weak one in return before turning back and slumping against the couch

oh boy

…he’s never going to come back to this beautiful bookstore, is he?

“you were here about two weeks ago, weren’t you?” taehyung asks as he looks over his shoulder, the two of you trotting up the spiral staircase, “with your… boyfriend, right? you guys bought the boxed narnia set.”

“hm? oh!” you let out a little laugh, “yes, that was us, but joon- namjoon’s just my friend. um, that day was actually our seven-year friendaversary and he’s a real dork for books so i thought it’d be nice to bring him here-”

it’s in that moment that you suddenly hear namjoon’s voice in your head reminding you that you’re supposed to act like yoU like reading too

“i mean-” you clear your throat, “i, too, really like books, so i- you know, it was a mutually pleasant experience for the both of us t-to be here-” you chuckle nervously

hopefully you were able to save your own ass there

that was a close call!!

you trail behind taehyung as the two of you weave in and out of the bookshelves

you didn’t get a chance to come up to the second floor last week

but it’s surprisingly nice up here!!  

there’s a lone sofa chair in the corner with a little coffee table sitting next to it

very nice for customers who prefer to read alone

“ah, well, that’s very thoughtful of you!” taehyung nods before suddenly pausing, “i’m so sorry-” he spins around and you nearly bump into his chest but you manage to stop yourself just in time, “i just realised i never got your name.”

“y/n. i’m- i’m y/n.” you stick your hand out quickly for him to shake

you feel a little zap! travel from your fingertips to the rest of your body as soon as taehyung takes your hand in his

he gives you a gentle shake before squeezing your hand lightly and then letting go, “well, it’s very nice to meet you, y/n. now, give me a second to find the catcher in the rye for you…”

taehyung turns to thumb through the books on the shelf and you feel your heart flutter in your chest as how pretty he looks from the side

wowie

you can’t help but take your bottom lip in between your teeth as you continue to admire taehyung’s features from the soft swoosh of his hair to the rosy pink of his lips

how can one man be so pretty?

“ah- here we are!” taehyung pulls a book out of the shelf and you quickly snap yourself out of your daze, “the catcher in the rye… a novel by j.d. salinger.” he hands it to you and you take it before blinking down at the cover

…the catcher in the rye?

what happened to catch her in the eye???

“it’s a great book.” taehyung hums, “have you read it before?”

“oh, i… i have!” you scoff, making a face, “duh, of course i have. i mean, it’s… you know, it’s such a… um, a powerful novel…” you clear your throat before reaching up to scratch the back of your neck, “i mean, the last time i read it was actually in… high school… so… you know, i’ve forgotten most of the details but i figured it’d be nice to get a refresher, you know?”

(you never read this in high school.)

((you just made namjoon summarise the entire book to you in the form of a poorly drawn stickman comic and even then you still didn’t fully understand the story.))

“absolutely! there’s nothing wrong with revisiting old friend from the past,” taehyung chuckles lightly, “in fact, i was reading animal farm the other day- what kind of literature do you typically read?”

you press your lips together tightly

oh god

namjoon didn’t prepare you for additional questions  

literature??

quick!

what kind of literature do you typically read??

…

tell him you read all kinds of literature!

that sounds like a legitimate answer, right?

“i... read… all-”

you’re cut off by the sound of a bell chiming from below and you let out a breath of relief when taehyung scurries past you to peer over the balcony

“i’ll be right there!” he holds a finger up at the customer waiting by the front counter before spinning around to face you again, “was there anything else you needed, y/n?”

“wha- i-” you stammer, unable to come up with a non-creepy reason to keep him up here with you, “no! no, this was-” you give the front cover a hearty slap, “this was all i needed-”

“perfect!” taehyung claps his hands together, “well, let me know. you know where i am!”  

he disappears down the staircase before you even get a chance to thank him

the smell of his cologne lingers in the air as you make your way down the staircase and you can’t help but beat yourself up over how your interaction with taehyung went

it wasn’t a bad interaction or anything

in fact, you think you did a pretty good job at acting like a bookworm!!

it’s just that…

you don’t think it was a particularly memorable interaction for taehyung

that was just a typical customer interaction for him

you were supposed to charm him!!!

impress him!!

sweep him off his feet!!!

tickle his brain!!

“hey, buddy…” namjoon coos as you plop back down on the sofa chair, “how… did it go?”

he’s afraid to hear your answer because it certainly looks like it didn’t go super well

damnit

he knows this moment is about you but now he’s thinking about how he’ll probably never be able to taste this delicious hot chocolate ever again

“got the book.” you grumble, tossing it onto the coffee table before shaking your head, “i called it catch her in the eye, joon.”

“yeah, i… uh, i heard you.” namjoon nods understandingly, crossing one leg over the other before leaning back against the couch, “i don’t think he heard you say that, though! i mean, he knew what you were looking for right away.”

namjoon knows you well enough to see that you’re currently spiralling down a self-pity hole right now

oh boy

“hey, you know what’ll make you feel better?” he leans forward to give your knee a comforting squeeze

“what?”

“how about i buy this for you so you can read it and fully impress taehyung next time with your newfound knowledge-“ namjoon points to the book you’ve abandoned on the table, “and then we can go for chocolate lava cake!”

your eyes widen slightly

“free chocolate lava cake?”

“no, not free-“ namjoon snorts, getting up from the couch before reaching back to pick up his bag, “i mean, i’ll pay for it. my treat! so, yeah. i guess it’s kinda free for you.”

“that sounds nice!” your frown is almost instantaneously replaced by a grin, “if i get more free things from you just for being sad, i’m going to be sad more often-”

“what?? no! do not pretend to be sad just to get me to pay for things-”

taehyung glances over from the front counter when he hears a twinkly laugh and he can’t help but smile lightly at the sight of you giggling away in the sofa chair

your nose scrunches slightly as you let out a little snort and he presses his lips together to keep himself from beaming too wide

y/n, huh? cute.

                                          »»————-　➴　————-««

(taehyung can’t stop thinking about you and your absurdly cute face.)

                                         »»————-　➴　————-««

it’s another two weeks later that you come back to the secret garden - but this time, you come alone.

and to be honest, you… don’t know if this was a good idea or not

because joon was with you for the last two times and you were definitely using him as a security blanket so now you feel like you’re about to dive into the deep end of the pool without any floaties

you were going to ask if he wanted to come with you but you felt like this was something that you had to do alone

you swallow thickly as you tuck your car keys into your pocket

namjoon can’t be your bookworm wingman forever, right?

the store is almost suspiciously quiet as you step in, the little bell ringing above your head as per usual

your classes ended a little later today which is why you weren’t able to come in the afternoon

pluS you had to find a way to get namjoon to go home without you without raising any eyebrows so that sucked up a little more of your time

you were going to tell him that you were going to stay on campus to study at the library but even you couldn’t believe that

so you told him that you had a group project to work on which was why you couldn’t have dinner with him tonight!

you jump in surprise when the door suddenly slams shut behind you from the breeze

it’s a little chillier now that it’s november but it’s nice that you get to wear cozy cardigans and snuggly sweaters now

“i’ll be right there!”

you hear taehyung’s voice ring out from the second floor and you swallow your nerves as you stand up a little straighter

fake it till you make it, right?

i love books

i love books so much

i love books so much that i would fuck a book if i could!

...okay, maybe not that one.

you glance around the store - there doesn’t seem to be anyone else here

which makes sense because the sign says that the store closes at 7pm on weekdays and it’s…

6:50

wow

so you’RE the asshole who comes into the place ten minutes before closing time

good one!

“so sorry for the wait, i was just-” taehyung pauses on the steps, his face immediately lighting up when he sees you, “oh, y/n!”

“hi!” you chirp before reaching up to scratch the back of your neck, “sorry i came ten minutes before you’re supposed to close… i wanted to come earlier, but i had a thing…”

“oh, don’t even worry about it!” taehyung snorts, tossing the dirty rag over his shoulder, “i was just doing some dusting…”

you feel your mouth go drY as soon as you notice what he’s wearing

he’s wearing a henley tee (except all the buttons are undone and aLso he has his sleeves pushed up to his elbows), dark wash jeans, and a pair of tattered black converse sneakers

it’s just the casualness of it all that makes it so sexy

“so, what can i help you with tonight?” taehyung tosses the rag onto the counter before pushing his glasses back down from the top of his head

he adjusts them slightly before blinking at you and you find it awfully cute that his doe eyes now look a little bigger through the thick lenses

what can he help you with tonight?

…yeah, what can he help you with tonight?

the downside of not telling namjoon about your solo mission is the fact that namjoon’s usually the one who plans every little detail out for you

and you just came here on a whim

you don’t have a plan

you don’t have a plan at all!

your plan was to just come to the bookstore to see taehyung because you wanted to see taehyung

“i…”

“oh, by the way-” taehyung perks up suddenly, “how was your little trip down memory lane with the catcher in the rye?”

the catcher in the rye?

the catcher in the rye!!!

ah! yes!!

that’s definitely something to talk about!

…wait a second

you-

you didn’t read the book

oh god

you had two weeks to read the book and you didn’t read the book

almost immediately you feel your anxiety sPike back up and you can’t help but scold yourself for not bringing namjoon along with you

if namjoon was here, you’d just get him to say all the main points and you’d stand right next to him throwing in the occasional ‘yes, very good point!’ and ‘of course, i completely agree’ every now and then!

“the catcher in the rye!” you blurt out, suddenly aware that you haven’t spoken in like ten seconds, “i- yes! the book was- it was great. i thoroughly enjoyed it. i would definitely read it again!”

“hey, that’s great!” taehyung laughs lightly, “you know- i mean, i have to ask because i always ask this question to people who’ve read it- what do you think the main theme of it is?” taehyung hums, “because i’ve always thought it focused a lot on alienation, you know? i mean, a loss of innocence is obviously another theme, what, with holden wanting to be sheltered from the harshness of adult life- i really think it can actually be seen as some kind of social commentary… like a critique of the superficiality in society-”

“of course, i completely agree!” you nod furiously, “those are very good points-”

“i’m sorry, i’m probably sucking up all the oxygen in the room-” taehyung smiles sheepishly before shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, “so what do you think?”

if there was ever a moment for a black hole to appear in the floor and swallow you whole… you’d want for it to happen right now.

actually, you’d want it for it to happen whilst you were driving to the bookstore so that you wouldn’t have even gotten the chance to say hi to taehyung

“i think… well, i… first of all, i agree completely with everything that you just said about aliens and… you know, a loss of innocence and how hard adult life is…” you stumble over your words, your face beginning to flush from how idiotic you probably sound, “i just… i have to talk about my favourite part in the book! you know, the part where holden- holden, that’s the name that you just mentioned- he… he does such a great job at catching those loaves of bread. i thought that part was hilarious.”

you clear your throat at the end of your mini-review

taehyung’s eyes flicker slightly and for a second you think you’re in danger of being called out for obviously noT having read the book but…

he nods slowly and brings his hand up to stroke his chin thoughtfully, “i mean… yeah. i completely agree! that part always gets me! why don’t you go on? i’m interested in hearing more of your thoughts.”  

oh

oh!

hey, would you look at that??

phEW

maybe you’re better at improvising than you thought you were

now knowing that you’re on the right track gives you a booST of confidence and you give yourself a mental pat on the back

you can’t wait to tell namjoon about this

he’s going to be so proud of you!!

you grin before nodding enthusiastically, “of course! i have a lot of thoughts to share on the book. i mean, i personally think it was an interesting choice on the author’s part to choose rye as the main ingredient, because he had… so many other options that he could’ve gone with! and also - did he go with light rye or dark rye?? because throughout the entire novel, he never actually specifies what kind of rye bread he’s referring to-”

taehyung leans back against the counter and crosses his arms, smiling politely as he continues to listen to your rye bread rant

it’s obvious that you definitely didn’t read the book but he was genuinely curious as to what you would be able to pull out of your ass which was why he asked you to go on

he doesn’t think anyone’s ever gone into a full-blown ramble about how the catcher in the rye is actually a narrative on the benefits on rye bread for lil ol’ him before

but, for the record… 

it’s really cute how much effort you’re putting into your analysis to try to impress him

“i’m sorry, i need to- i need to interrupt you-” taehyung giggles, cutting you off right as you’re about to dive into a discussion about the number of loaves holden caught in the novel, “as much as i would love to hear more… everything that’s coming out of your mouth is wildly inaccurate, y/n.”

what

...

oh my god.

“wh-” your throat goes dry and you choke a little, “what?”

“be honest- did you read the book?” taehyung asks flat-out and you feel your cheeks burning up again

uh-oh

“i…”

okay

forget it

you can’t do this anymore!

it’s too stressful!!!!

“…no.” you press your lips together before shooting taehyung a sheepish grin, “there’s no catching loaves of bread in the novel, is there?”

“not even one loaf.”

“oh, god-” you groan quietly, reaching up to cover your hot face with your hands at the realisation that you just very confidently ranted about the importance of rye bread in this novel for the past five minutes, “not even one?!”

mortifying!

absolutely mortifying!!!!

well

it’s time to tell namjoon to find a new favourite bookstore because you are nevER bringing him back here agai-

“hey, it’s totally fine!” taehyung laughs lightly, stepping closer to you so that he can pry your hands away from your flushed face, “i actually think it’s really impressive how long you can go talking about bread-”

“you let me- you knew that i hadn’t read the book yet you let me continue talking about bread-?!” you gawk, taehyung now bursting into a full-blown chortle as he throws his head back, “how could you??”

“i couldn’t help it!!” taehyung wheezes, reaching up to flick a stray tear away, “i’m sorry! i’m sorry, really, i am-”

even when he’s laughing at you, your stomach can’t help but feel fluttery

“you’re lucky you’re pretty-” you snort, shaking your head gently, “otherwise i would be way more mad at you…”

taehyung’s laughs dwindle down into light chuckles and you swallow thickly when he takes a small step closer

“you’re lucky you’re pretty.” he retorts playfully, reaching over to move a strand of hair away from your eyes with his pinky finger, “otherwise i wouldn’t have let you talk my ear off about bread for five whole minutes…”

...he thinks you’re pretty?

“oh yeah?” you challenge, reaching over to jab your finger into his chest

taehyung reaches up to wrap his fingers around your wrist before offering you a particularly boyish smirk, “mm, yeah.”

you don’t miss the way his eyes flicker down to your lips for a split second and you know it’s way too soon but you really want him to just lean down and kiss you…

“hey, do you like dessert?” taehyung pulls away suddenly before turning to make his way behind the counter

“de- dessert?” you ask dumbly, still a little dazed from... that

what was that?!

“mhm!” tae leans down slightly and flips a couple of switches underneath the counter, the chandelier light shutting off first before the other little lights begin to switch off as well, “there’s a little diner about a block away that makes really good strawberry cheesecakes.”

“i love dessert!” you nod, “and strawberry cheesecake sounds really yummy.”

“good! in that case, would you be interested in sharing a slice of cheesecake with me and perhaps delving deeper into your rye-based analysis?” taehyung teases as he grabs his coat off the back of his chair, his keys jingling in his hands

you snort lightly

“i would love to share a slice of cheesecake with you but i refuse to embarrass myself further, so we’re going to have to find something else to talk about-”

taehyung holds the door open for you and you immediately shiver as you step out, the chilly air a stark contrast from the warmth of tae’s cozy store

you jolt in surprise when taehyung reaches down and slips his fingers in between yours (which he later explains he only did because his hand was cold and definitely noT because he just really really wanted to hold your hand) before beginning to tug you along next to him

“well, we can talk about the fact that you thought the name of the book was catch her in the eye-”

“i knew you heard me! i knew it!!”

help me help you make your wishes come tru (aka send me a request)

why don’t you explore the rest of the library while you’re here? 

or perhaps you want something shorter to read?

[enha-woodzies]

➸ CHAPTER 5 | " ILLICIT AFFAIRS "

starring: enhypen ft. i-land daniel

pairing: jungwon x fem!reader x sunghoon

genres: royal au, romance, angst, slowburn, 18th century setting

word count: 1.8k

taglist: @serendipitysung @angeljungwon @en-sun @affectionaterainoflove @renkiv @softforjungwoo @jislix @fluffi @gyeraniee @stxrryemxlys

[ PREV. CHAPTER ] | [ M. LIST ] | [ NEXT CHAPTER ]

“The morning sun has come, and the evening moon is gone. Dearlings, I am elated to apprise you of the events at the debutantes’ ball that occurred as of late, and must I warn you, they're not for the feeble spirits!

The ton is abuzz with the most beefy tale as Northumberland’s jewel among the lovely rocks, Miss Y//n Park, has earned herself a ticket to glory! She danced with the most favored noblemen in the ton and surely, she went home with a hearty grace as she'll most likely expect an abundant roster of suitors in the following days.

Not only was she offered a dance by our dear second-born, Lord Yang, but she also had the privilege and pleasure to be twirled around the court by the most charming, Lord Lee, and the ever coveted nobleman among the ton, Lord Park, the next-in-line Duke of Northumberland!

Where's the beef you might ask? Well, it seems to me that these men are blindfoldedly playing fire with each other.

Not only does Lord Lee has women wrapped easily around his fingers, he has men too! With a sly steal of Miss Y/n’s hand from Lord Yang last night, he certainly left the chap earnestly plotting for a segue of intrusion- and Lord Yang intriguingly delivered!

With the timing in its most opportune, Lord Yang managed to finally dance with the young miss, in private! Ooh! This is new! My senses told me they spent their waltz in the Queen’s library, alone! How in the world did they let this happen to the ton’s jewel unchaperoned? That is something the Daily Tattle is unfortunately unable to unearth, but the mystery will continue to haunt us for long. Do take note: the more you hide in careful secret, the more people will know and hear about it.

What happened next will have you either boggled, or enchanted! The young lord abruptly rushed out the room before the music even ended! Should that be counted as a waltz at all? Before you ask about the enchanting part, Miss Y/n was seen dashing out the room moments later in tears and evident heartache. What do you think happened in the mere minutes of alone time in that large 4-cornered room?

But come now, enchanting stories aren't as they are without a knight in shining armor. In fact, in our young miss’ case, her knight wasn't clad in shining, silver sheath, but in magnificent and elegant, vintage red tailcoat draped over a loose white jabot shirt that’s cleanly tucked into the black, satin knee breeches, finished off with a pair of shiny Hessian boots. With skin as white almost akin to snow, it complemented perfectly with his ravishing fit. The beautiful marquess certainly dressed himself valiantly for the seasonal occasion. With that stunning presence, anyone would surely presume he went to the ball looking like a duke in careful search of a duchess.

Lord Park and Miss Y/n surprisingly became one of the ball’s highlights as they graced the Royal Court with the most heart-stopping, corset-itching, tantalizing waltz. All the while their faces are almost an inch apart from each other, a brooding identity was found hiding in the crowded corner of the hall! Under the bright gleam of the grand chandeliers, our dearest second-born, Lord Yang, was seen eyeing the two with such stare that even the buffy slice of vanilla cake on Lord Sunoo’s plate could almost melt in a blink of an eye!

Among the splendid tales told by yours truly, which tea do you think tastes like sweet ecstasy of oddity and fervor? It is the ton's tradition to portend the lady’s endgame by the person whom she had her last waltz with. From one man to another, should these prophecies dictate Miss Y/n Park’s fate?

Well, don't turn your heads away now! The story's just begun.”

The mid-morning sunrays peek through the large leaves and busty trunks of the hibernating redwood trees lining in disarray. Y/n is just about to plummet into her habitual readings in the Kielder forest and the autumnal breeze is keeping up with her bubbly morning approach, fortunately.

The sounds of the birds chirping and the dead leaves crunching under her shoes creep up through her puff sleeves making her tingle in giddiness and enthusiasm. She deeply inhales the aromatic forest and lets out a giggle in the process. With jumpy leaps and crispy leaves echoing in her every move, the young lady surely knows where she's going in this partly mysterious forest that is most often open only to men and men alone.

Somewhere deep in the evergreen woods, Y/n has built a fortress of her own for whenever she needs to run away from the seldom, mundane life in the manor. At the heart of Northumberland's famous Kielder Forest, lies a small, whimsical looking fort made up of translucent voile casually hanging on a tree branch. One of her lady maids helped her out with the fabric one time and it still stood prettily among the chaotic scenes that go around in the forest today.

She enters her slightly sheer fort and sits down on a pillow that she stole away from the comforts of her bedroom. Flipping the olden pages of the aged Jane Austen book she borrowed from a boy several years back, she heaves a sigh at the sight of a dead Catalpa flower resting on a particular page accompanied by a little, worn out parchment dating back to when she was a tiny ten-year-old lassie. She reads,

Her eyes drifted over the page to where the note and the old flower were situated. The pads of her fingers graze over the certain phrases that were underlined by the book's owner that says, “I cannot make speeches. If l loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.一 You hear nothing but truth from me.一”

She suddenly feels a gush of nostalgia and loneliness upon muttering the words she had ultimately carved in her tongue way back; reciting each word with fervor while she bask herself under the brightly-lit moonlight in their garden. How can children of ten gobble up such emotions at once? So much for a pair of hopeless romantic hearts from the distant years of ten, screaming disagreements and would later huddle on a sprawled out table cloth on the flowery fields, exchanging sentimental poesies and stolen stares.

She relives the brief moments they both shared last night in the Queen’s library, and ponders on how one could be so adjacent to the changing of tides in the sea; promptly, and mostly without warning.

“Well, well, well. If it isn't the feelings I've been trying to avoid.” She whispers to the autumn air. Unfortunately, her pondering truncates as snaps of twigs and crisps off dried leaves echoes in her corner. She hastily crawls out her hand-made canopy and brushes away any pieces of tiny crumpled leaves off her dress.

“What are you doi-”

“Who are you?” She cuts off the startled chap cladded in ragged clothing, apparently embodying that of a mainland farm boy.

“Greetings, your ladyship. I come in peace and I am just here to fetch the chopped woods I’ve laboured a day prior for the farm.” The chap with a very odd accent replies with both hands hanging mid-air. “You are fully aware that you shouldn't be in this place, especially unchaperoned, right?” He continues.

“I am fully aware. But such matters shouldn't concern you.”

“Indeed, my apologies. Furthermore, I will respect your unspoken wishes if it is truly your desire to keep your whereabouts hidden from your townspeople. My lady.”

Y/n relaxes from her bold stance as she found a hint of kindness from the odd stranger. Surprisingly, she extends her hand out to the stranger for a greeting.

“Please. Call me Y/n instead.” The boy looks at her open palm for half a minute before shaking it, looking as equally surprised as the young miss with the sudden gesture.

“You live pretty far from the town, huh?”

“I do. Life's utterly chaotic over on your end?”

“Oh, you don't have the slightest idea.” They both share laughters and inside jokes of their own livelihood that made the young miss settle her shoulders down comfortably.

“I'm Jake Sim. Just Jake Sim. Apparently, my name was originally Jaeyun, but the farm folks got used with Jake and so did I. They said it sounds more Australian.”

“Why would they associate your name with something Australian?” Y/n grew more curious as it was, after all, the first time she's ever been with a person that's not of Northumberland's proper.

“I grew up in Australia.”

“That's curious. How did an Australian boy land among the ragged farms of Europe?”

“It's complicated. The story involves a lot of conspiracies so it's definitely not for your ears. Some other time, maybe?” Y/n smirks at the sudden brazenness from her newly found acquaintance.

“Is this an Australian thing where we shift from acquaintanceship to something more?” She teases.

“Certainly, if you're down to it on your next Kielder visit?”

“For sure. But as for now, I must take my leave. My presence is very much needed for the promenade scheduled for me today.” Y/n half-covers her mouth as if reaching out for a whisper, hissing the last sentence.

“Ah! Rich people things that I could never.” The chap could only roll his eyes at the fancy thought.

“See you soon, Just Jake Sim!”

“Where have you been, princess?” The young miss scoffs at the marquess upon arriving at the town’s park, with a hand immediately sliding through Lord Park’s arm.

“Down with the flirtatious remarks now, aren't we? I went to promenade with myself, Your ever handsome Grace.” Sunghoon smirks at her tiny, playful whispers against his shoulders. They go around and about, traipsing along the cemented pavements as they give away acknowledging nods and polite smiles to whomever wants their brief attention.

The ton is still in amazed shock at the possibility of these two ending up with a ring on a finger. Everyone was subtly betting for Jungwon but as a result of his loss, a much better gent carried his girl off the floor. Something he let himself do, out of cowardice perhaps, or out of pride.

“Remind me the point of all this?” Y/n carefully whispers to Sunghoon.

“To make your man jealous and spit out his genuine sentiments in the process, as well as an advantage for me as we get to keep the marriage-minded mothers of the ton at bay. Now, all we have to do is smile, nod, and appear madly in love with each other if this is to work. Is it clear enough for you?” He jerks a brow at her paired with the most charming smirk he could ever expose.

“Crystal.”

*send me an ask or a message if you wish to be added on this series' taglist!

ㅡ © ENHA-WOODZIES, 2021

[thotsforvillainrights]

~Christmas with You~

(It’s days after Christmas as usual I haven’t active or slept  properly yet but I’ve been focused on my store lol. I hadn’t been super on my writing game in a hot minute so I decided to write how your partner would treat you during the holidays. This features EVERY single villain I write for from the list located in my bio IN ORDER. Also I apologize if you don’t celebrate Christmas and this doesn’t apply to you. I hope you still had a great holiday anyway, and I love you!)

~Toga💉-She begins her present shopping early because she wants to find you something that she’s sure you’ll like! Eventually she ends up buying a ton of things, but none of them satisfy her and she’s worried you won’t like any of them even though you will. So finally she settles on making you something instead. She will stay up all night long pushing herself to put together the perfect gift for you and will literally fall apart if you don’t like it. But I’m sure she won’t have to worry about anything like that.

~Dabi🔥-Hates the holidays. He tells you they hold some pretty shitty childhood memories for him and he’s honestly all for avoiding even just the thought of Christmas, but of course he looks at you and that changes. He’s really willing to try and take part in a little holiday cheer just for you even if it’s stupid to him. Call it cheesy, but when he celebrates with you it helps take away from the old bad thoughts. It gives him a chance to replace the bad memories with good ones. So he’ll bake some shitty cookies with you, and poorly wrap presents even if he knows that you know what he got for you. Of course he’s not opposed to a mistletoe kiss or two (or three). You help put the cheer in the holiday for him.

~Overhaul🥀-Hates Christmas. It’s not the holiday, it’s just how many people are buzzing around up until that point. So he gets ALL of his shopping done early. And and all emergencies are to be handled by his men (ex: in case he forgot something on the list). The number one thing he takes super seriously is you seeing your presents. You better hope he doesn’t catch you sneaking around the tree. He will lock you in the bedroom until the day of Christmas itself before he lets you open any of them early...even on Christmas eve

~Shigaraki🤚-Literally wakes you up super early on the morning of just so you can watch a movie with him in a fluffy throw blanket with the hum of his electric heater nearby. He loves this season with you more than any other because he can use the cold weather as an excuse to cuddle with you. “Oh well you know I’m kinda small here so I don’t produce a lot of body heat. You should come closer.” Aside from that, he loves the way you celebrate. You make it up to him for not having a childhood at all. Surprisingly enough, he loves doing all the little things with you.

~Tengai🏳-Doesn’t see a point in the holidays and never really supported it before. Now don’t get me wrong, he’s no scrooge. He would rather spend his time the way he usually did around this time of the year: working at charity spots and donation centers. When you find out he spends every holiday season serving food to people less fortunate it makes your heart soar. So if you have the time to join him, then by all means please do so. Help him spread a little peace this season

~Deidoro🍺-Being someone that knows a LOT about different drinks out there, he has never in his life heard about eggnog. It throws you for a loop at first and you laugh at him as he watches you in confusion. “Wait...you’re being serious about this???” So you have to sit him down, make it for him, and let him try it. I mean, how could he be the one person to not know about this when its alcohol related? Well let’s just say that not only does it stick, but Sakaki has been downing eggnog at the Hassaikai Christmas party all night, and now he’s trying to literally eat you in the bathroom while you’re washing your face. It’s ridiculous

~Nemouto✔-This man is 100% proposing to you on Christmas night after a long date with you. For someone that talks about feelings being pointless, he sure does have a lot of love for you. He pays attention to the details and the moods around him. This time was a boost in your happiness and it signaled the perfect time for him to pop the question to you. Add in all those romantic light attractions, and the snow with the carolers etc. Its free romance that he can ride on and use to his advantage. Catch him getting on one knee in the snow after you two are leaving a light show in the city.

~Setsuno💔-Holidays are depressing to say the least. To him, Christmas and Valentines day were the worst 2 days to be alone out of any day of the year. Well WERE until you came into his life. He stares at you unwrapping presents under the tree while he sips some cocoa and he thinks about how lucky he was that you came into his life. Little moments like these help tie together the ideal that holidays aren’t so bad. Thanks to you, he no longer has to fight back tears of sadness in the dead of night as the snow falls against his window and sticks until it melts. Now he has to fight tears of joy blurring his eyes while you two lounge on the couch and try to get through a holiday movie without falling asleep on each other

~Compress🎭-Will do any and everything with you during this day. I mean he’s going to go all out for you on any day of the year, but this one is a little different. So bring in those matching Santa hats, and roll out the gingerbread house kits. Compress is down for it all. It’s not just for you, but all for the sake of letting loose for once during the year and allowing himself to relax as a civilian instead of a villain on the run. He’d rather spend time building a gingerbread house than trekking through the cold forest with the sounds of sirens in the background getting near. 

~Twice👬-This man gets a new ugly Christmas sweater like every year since 7 years ago. The only difference is now he can celebrate with you and his friends instead of celebrating with himself and his clones, alone somewhere in a storage unit. And yes: he’s the number one person to force the league into a Christmas party because he knows you’ll have fun hanging out with him and everyone else (since usually he keeps you away for protection). He’s also the most likely to make everyone engage in secret Santa with each other. Jin is also the one most likely to burn through Christmas movie marathons like it’s nothing at all to him. He runs on peppermint hot cocoa, and marshmallows so don’t challenge him at all

~Kurogiri☁️-Usually he wouldn’t think twice to celebrate it. It doesn’t bother him, but he’s not really focused on being cheerful when there’s work to be done instead. You have to be the one to help him slow down and enjoy the tiny things here and there. He’ll help you string up lights, decorations, and the tree. Believe me, he does an amazing job on it all because he doesn’t half-ass his work in any kind of way whatsoever. He’s also kinda in love with the Christmas sweater/vest combo you got for him (and he’s secretly wanting to brag about it). He’s not one for the sweets like the ribbon candy, or the candy canes but he’ll blow through holiday food that you cook or order. Most of all, he’s invested in seeing you smile 

~AFO💀-Christmas is just another excuse for him to spoil you. However, you have to step up and let him know it’s more than just gift giving that he needs to do. Where you would love some quality time with him, he’s more about giving you 1,000′s of dollars of gifts and handling work that needs to be done. But who can say no to those eyes of yours huh? (Don’t answer that. Just know he’s not one to deny you). He’s not really into the holidays but he treats it like a big important date night between the two of you. He’ll go above and beyond to ensure things runs smoothly. You’ll have to introduce him to ‘stay at home’ dates for once. If not

~Stain🔪- Isn’t down for it until you mention the tradition that some people go out and chop a real tree. For some odd reason, he’s attached to the idea of chopping a tree down. At first you thought you’d successfully got him into the Christmas spirit, but it just turns out he was eager to use a blade for big business for the first time. Either way, you shrugged it off and rode with it. And boy was that a mistake to make...You were shivering out there. Stain had you in the forest for at least an hour now while he hunted down the perfect tree. You swore to yourself that you’d be getting a fake one next year

~Muscular💪-”Celebrate Christmas? Okay, why tho?” You maybe could convince him by disguising it as a romantic time but he’s not big on romance either. You entice him with gift giving. More importantly the idea of hiding his gifts and not letting him see a single one till Christmas day. THAT is how you get him into the holiday. Be warned though, he’s mostly taking part in the other celebrations because he’s wanting those presents so badly.  

~Mustard☣-You’ll be lucky if you can get him to go Christmas shopping with him, let alone celebrate. No offense against the holiday itself but Mustard doesn’t celebrate ANY day. He doesn’t even like to celebrate his own birthday! He seems to be a bit more bitter around the holidays and the cheer isn’t helping. “C’mon don’t be a scrooooooge!” You poke at his cheek while he’s scrolling through his phone on the couch. “Y/N for the last time, kindly piss off.” He glares at you before turning his attention to his phone again. At this point you’ll either have to risk getting put under from annoying him too much, or you’ll have to find another way to convince him to loosen up. Good luck with it

~Spinner🦎-10/10 best person to spend Christmas with. He’s more into it than you are. As soon as December 1st hits, he’s putting up decorations. In fact, he put up the tree a week before Thanksgiving. The holidays remind him of when he was little and he sat in his mom’s lap while she sewed a Christmas tree quilt. Or when he and his sibling would have snowball fights in the backyard (despite his aversion to cold weather due to his quirk). Shuichi will sit down and write out a holiday movie watch list and watch a different Christmas almost every single day with you if you’d allow it. He’s the first to bake cookies, and the first to start buying gifts early. Most of all, he’s happy to spend this time with you. (Oh be prepared for those walks in the park to admire the Christmas lights)

~Katsukame🗿-Big guy is a lot more cheerful than you know, but he knows nothing about Christmas so you gotta show him all those old fashioned traditions. But please don’t tell him to deck the halls because he will pull a ‘Rappa’ move and punch holes in the hallway walls. Aside from that, he’s pretty open to Christmas cookies, and even decorating. But I have to say he draws the line at singing door to door at people’s houses because he hates to sing. He doesn’t even like to hum lol 

~Rappa👊-Hell yeah he’s gonna spend it with you! The big guy is literally sold on just about anything involving you (well as long as he doesn’t have to wear a stuffy suit for it). His excitement stems mostly from his curiosity. He never had a bad childhood but he still can’t remember much of the holidays back then. So who needs old memories when you can make new ones! At least that’s his reasoning after all lol. 

~Hawks🦅-This guy is the WORST at giving you presents. I mean his gifts are amazing, but he always slips up and tells you what they are too soon. In fact, he will buy you something and ask if you wanna see it within the next five minutes afterward. Its gotten to the point where you have to beg him almost to stop letting wanting you to open stuff. He can’t help it though! Keigo just loves spoiling you, and holidays are the exception where he can go crazy with his saved money.

~Magne🕶-She has this crazy secret collection that she finally busted out once you’ve gotten close enough to you in the relationship. Her secret collection ended up being a MASSIVE set of sweaters (specifically Christmas themed) While she’s beaming proudly about how she has a different sweater for every day in December, your jaw is almost on the floor. “Mag...don’t...don’t these cost like 50 bucks each? How long have you been collecting these?!” Anyway, you should expect an ugly Christmas sweater party with the League at least once this December 

~Tabe🍡-Forget celebrating the other stuff that comes with Christmas, you already know what he’s excited about...All that yummy yummy food!!! Oh God (if it applies) take him to your family (or friends) for Christmas and watch his face as he enters to see that table full of food. Oh man, he’s going to do his best to be respectful but on the inside he wants to destroy all of the food on that table. Oh and don’t worry about the whole baking cookies for Santa because Tabe is most likely going to eat them...and drink the milk too

~Hojo💎-He starts present shopping in late October, early November so that way he has everything he needs to get for you (which is a lot). He hides your presents at the base so you have no idea where to find them. Thanks to the base being an underground labyrinth, you’ll never see those gifts until Christmas eve (just one), and Christmas day (the rest of them). Hojo goes along with whatever you do to celebrate the holidays. He’s just perfect husband material to be honest. Not too rough around the edges, but willing to beat a man to death if his job calls for it. Who knew he’d be the most willing to celebrate the holidays with you.

~Chronostasis🔫-He will literally defy anyone that stood in the way of spending this holiday with you. That includes his own best friend/boss. Overhauls knows this, and he’s comes to respect your relationship so he purposefully doesn’t schedule Hari to work on Christmas (but he still pays him for the full day since he’s still his friend). Hari will absolutely kill anyone that got in the way of your cheer. Even if you were one of those people that believed in Christmas magic, he would support you. The world is tough, and it shows no mercy so little things like joy during the holiday meant a lot more than anyone could know in your household. He loves to see you happy so if that means celebrating with you, then he’s going to do it. Besides...he secretly likes Christmas himself

~Mimic💰-Literally loves to talk about how unnecessary it is while he’s also excited for it as well. Like he’ll talk down about decorating while he’s decorating. If you try to step between him he’s gonna tell you to: “Back off, you’re messing up my artistic flow here. Go sit on the couch. Make yourself useful and unwrap the candy cane boxes for the tree.” You can see by the way he steps back and puts his hands on his hips to admire his handy-work that he’s taken a bit of pride in things here. 

~Pops🇯🇵-The old man will take part in the celebration with you because he absolutely adores both you AND the holiday itself as well. He might mix in a few older traditions like Elf on a Shelf, and making a popcorn line to go around the tree. Most importantly you can look forward to opening one gift early as per tradition on Christmas eve. Pops is thankful every single year he gets to spend with you. 

~Giran👏-Christmas presents from him are on lock. You see he developed this tactic after brainstorming some ideas. He’s always buying you anything and everything but he realizes that it takes away from his Christmas gift pool. To combat this, he decided to cutdown on his generosity in the months of September, October, and November. That way, it’ll give him some time to get you a bunch of stuff on Christmas that you DONT already own. Or at least some stuff you don’t already need. 

~Geten❄-Of course he’s number one at hiding how he feels about you. Or maybe more along the line of being a total Tsundere, but believe me he loves you. If that means celebrating this holiday with you then he’s willing to endure it. His grumpy face is getting harder and harder to hide from you. Sometimes you can just barely catch a glimpse of his content smile while you guys build a snowman together. Wanna have some real fun with him? Challenge him to a snow building competition. With his quirk at play you’ll surely lose no matter what, but isn’t it fun to see him bragging his ass off about how he ran circles around your ‘shitty snow project’? 

~Slice💋-She doesn’t hate the holiday, but she DESPISES the cold weather. A lot of her clothes are shorter and sexier by far. Summer is her number one time of the year. Besides, winter dries her skin out, and she hates being under wraps of a thick jacket etc. She can’t even wear her open toed heels!!! Besides that, she’s down for celebrating indoors if you want to. Christmas movies, hot cocoa, and a few make-out sessions are her forte. That’s the best way to do Christmas in her opinion

~Nine🌪-Bake cookies? Sure. Volunteer at shelters? Absolutely. Hang lights around the house/apartment? Yes baby, anything for you. I mean Nine is a ‘yes’ man all year round, but he’s especially willing to agree to things during this time of year. He’s completely whipped for you and there’s nothing wrong with that. He celebrates however you’d like him to do so. There is just one thing he wants to do that he suggested first and that’s either driving slowly through fancy neighborhoods to see their lights up, or going to a Christmas themed petting zoo and feeding carrots to the reindeer. Let’s say he’s a child at heart during this time of year

~Chimera🐺-Literally sees no purpose in celebrating it at all. He’ll do the stuff you want but he’s going to complain the whole way. The only thing he’s big on is saving up his cash and getting you something. The only thing that matters to him is making you happy during the entirety of your relationship (which he hopes is the rest of your lives together). The rest of the stuff he’s just grumbling and putting up with so he can see your smile. 

~Mummy🥋-Christmas? For what? Well okay then, if you say so. Really doesn’t get the point but hey, why not. He’s got nothing better to do. He’s never really celebrated it, His family never really celebrated it either so he’s a little interested in how you get down for it. His favorite thing he developed was this odd present wrapping competition with you. You should already know how good he is at wrapping things due to his quirk (I’m sure he’s shown you how good he is at binding and wrapping stuff before). Add a little competition into anything and he’s ready to do it. Baking competition, Caroling competition, Decorating competition. He’ll even challenge you to who can cuddle each other better. Whatever floats his boat I guess lol

~Gentle Criminal☕-He wants to travel during the holidays with you and he wants to vlog it all. Only if you’re okay with it of course! If you give him the ‘okay’ then he’s whisking you away somewhere overseas for a more extravagant vacation. He ends up spending so much time with you and having so much fun that he stop recording like 3 days in. His reasoning behind travelling is that snow must be so much more fun elsewhere, so of course the rest of the holidays must be as well. In all reality he just wants to make sure you have a fun Christmas. Travelling during it and experiencing different places and cultures are a fun new way to experience the holiday. 

~La Brava📸-Handy with the tech, but mostly with the camera. She amasses an entire compilation of you throughout the day and she’ll stay up all night stitching it together. The day after Christmas comes and she sits you down on the couch to watch it with her. Honestly she’s the sweetest and most dedicated partner that anyone could ask for. The way she treats you makes you thankful not just for spending Christmas with her, but for spending any day of the year with her. 

[wing-dingy]

Hey there! So I said I was half tempted to post some mk fanfics, so i did *nervous jazz hands*

Basically just some subscorp, fluff with very little plot, basically Hanzo has a restless night and decides to drop by the Lin Kuei temple for some comfort in his lover, Kuai Liang. Also includes Hanzo feeding Kuai, because Kuai is such a workaholoic that when he has time to eat he forgets to. I’m a sucker for lovers taking care of each other 🥺😭 like literally the file name for this fic was “oops all fluff” lmao

Oh, and a few puns because back when I rped as Kuai, I had this whole thing going on where he makes more puns than he should be allowed to and i got too attached to it as a hc lol

well hope y’all enjoy cuz all i want is some gotdamn happy subscorp

     Kuai Liang took a deep sigh as he laid back in the snow. Far past midnight, many of the students fast asleep, but not the Grandmaster himself. No, instead he was laying in the snow, bare of any clothes save for his briefs. His clothes were neatly folded in a pile by him as he laid, now closing his eyes. The thoughts were vanishing, nothing but emptiness in his mind. It was a new form of meditation he had picked up, becoming one with the snow. It was always when the ice began to coat his body as he let go of himself and his grip on the world that he knew he had succeeded in his meditation session.

     Sometime into his meditation, he heard in the distance the sounds of snow crunching. Someone was approaching. He opened his eyes and sat up to prepare himself for a potential visitor. But when he looked around, he saw nobody, only the footsteps. Perhaps just a student wondering, looking for something to do to tire themselves out. He laid back down, then closed his eyes after a few thoughtful blinks. And there they were again, the footsteps, snow crunching and packing under the weight of somebody approaching near. Next he heard the slow scraping of metal, and that was when he rolled over and stood up to face his visitor.

    “Your hearing hasn’t failed you quite yet,” Hanzo teased as he sheathed his katana. He was without his armor, just casual clothes as it was late, but he still carried his weapons on him, just in case. “But still, that was too close.”

    Kuai smiled sweetly as he faced Hanzo. “Hearing is one of the most important senses. These ears will never fail me. But I felt my timing was amusingly dramatic no?” The cryomancer stepped forward to Hanzo, arms open. Of course Hanzo opened his arms and they united in a tight hug, cold and warmth meeting, fulfilling the temperatures each other craved. “It is wonderful to see you again, Hanzo. But why are you here? It is quite late.”

    “I was having another restless night, I wanted to see you...” Hanzo let go of Kuai just slightly, just enough to see his face while still holding him. “Why were you laying in the snow? Is your cryomancy not enough to keep you cool?”

    “I was meditating.” Kuai answered. "You are free to try it with me, if you're interested."

     Hanzo looked down at the snow, then back up at Kuai. "I worry I may melt the snow."

     "You are quite hot, you make even me melt." Kuai winked at him, causing Hanzo to blush lightly.

     "Is that another pun of yours?"

     Kuai had an awful cheeky smile. "Perhaps.” The cryomancer let go of Hanzo to retrieve his clothes he left on the ground and began to at least put on the pants. Sweat pants, just to emphasize it was the Grandmaster’s leisurely hours.

     “You can still meditate if you please,” Hanzo offered.

    “And what would the fun be in having to pretend you’re not here with me? I would much rather spend time with you.” Kuai took a hold of Hanzo’s hand, once again the cold meeting hot, and out in the snow it caused a subtle steam from their strong hands holding each other. Then Kuai gently pulled Hanzo guiding him towards the doors. “Come inside with me, I will prepare you some tea.”

    “Perhaps I can make you some food, too.”

    “You needn’t, Hanzo. Not if it is making you go out of your way.”

    “I want to feed you, my snowflake. I know you forget to eat sometimes when you get so caught up between work and your own personal time.”

    “A fair point.”

    “When was the last time you had eaten?” Although it sounded like Hanzo was scolding Kuai, he really wasn’t. He wasn’t mad at all with Kuai, it was just his worry for Kuai’s well being coming out in how he naturally expresses it.

    “Lunch time, about… 6 hours ago.”

    “Do you not feel hungry?”

    “I suppose I do now that you mention it. I suppose I can’t ever say no to your cooking, I do enjoy it.”

    “Good,” Hanzo huffed.

    Inside the temple was much warmer, something the Grandmaster always made sure of every night for his students. While he was a cryomancer himself, and he understood some of his students were also cryomancers, there were plenty that were not. The nightfall’s cold would be far too bothersome if they tried to endure it in their sleep, and a warrior without proper rest is a vulnerable one. It was even warm enough for Hanzo to notice, giving him a cozy vibe, which he didn’t mind at all given he tends to like it warmer… Except for when holding Kuai.

    Kuai took Hanzo around to the temple’s large kitchen, and let go of his hand just to begin preparing to boil the water for their tea. In the meanwhile, Hanzo looked around at the options of foods to work with for him and his lover. Something meaty, of course, since there were tons of meat stored and ready for cooking. Much of the Lin Kuei’s diet consisted of meat, it was easiest to obtain, as animals were more abundant than anything agricultural. What they did have besides meat was always received by the Special Forces to help them maintain at least some semblance of a balanced diet. Very nice of them.

    “What do you plan on making, Hanzo?” Kuai asked.

    “I am thinking of kushiyaki. It should be quick enough to prepare,” Hanzo answered as he began to pull some meat, labeled ‘game’, out of the fridge.

    Kuai loved hearing Hanzo’s Japanese. He could literally just be listing various foods in their Japanese names and Kuai would be head over heels for his lover’s mother tongue. “What is kushiyaki, dear?”

    “Kushiyaki is like the yakitori, except that it can include non-poultry meats on it. Usually it is only meat on it, but I suppose some vegetables would benefit us.” It probably didn’t count as kushiyaki then, rather than a regular grilled kebab.

    “Would you like some help preparing the meat?” Kuai asked, already drawing a knife from a drawer. “I can hardly cook, but I am quite skilled in cutting.”

    Hanzo nodded. “I would appreciate that.”

    And together they chopped the meat into cubes and rectangles. They cut off enough for five skewers, part of Hanzo’s plan. Of course, this was unnoticed by Kuai Liang until Hanzo had already flavoured and spiced them and began to put them on the skewers. “Hanzo, we may have to make another one to even the amount.”

    “No, my love. I am only going to have one, maybe two. I want you to eat the rest so you are eating enough.”

    “Hanzo,” Kuai muttered as he felt the love and care from his love. “Are you sure?”

    “I am.” Hanzo set down some bell peppers and carrots on the counter in front of Kuai’s cutting board. “Now please, help me chop the vegetables. You seem to have quite an abundance of peppers.”

    Kuai took a few peppers, and with a new knife began to cut them. “General Blade warned us the harvest would be plentiful that shipment.”

    “You do know if you ever need produce, I can supply you with some, right? My temple has a garden with plenty of vegetables.”

    “Indeed, but I do not want to take from your supply for ours.”

    “Our clans are allies, Kuai. We must help each other.”

    “I cannot disagree with that, but I do want you to take care of your clan.”

    “Just as I take care of you?” Hanzo teased as he leaned in to kiss Kuai’s cheek, then continued on to set up the grilling process of their food.

    “I have no idea what you are talking about.” Despite how deadpan his tone was, he was very clearly joking. “But of yourself, what made you so restless tonight?”

    Hanzo closed his eyes for a moment and sighed deeply. “Nightmares, I suppose.”

    Kuai frowned with deep sorrow for Hanzo. “I am sorry to hear that.” He knew that they both suffered deeply from trauma, from all the fighting, protecting Earthrealm, their past feud, their own hardships through life and death as revenant and wraith, and their losses through time. They really had gone through it all, and then some. Nightmares were just a side effect of the trauma, one they both suffered from, sometimes together. “Did you need to talk about it?”

    Hanzo thought about talking about it, but shook his head. “Not this time, thank you.”

    “Very well then.” Kuai gave Hanzo a tight hug from behind and sighed. “Regardless, I am always happy to be here to help you, and I am glad you have come over here for comfort. I will always welcome you here, my love.”

    “Thank you, my snowflake…” Hanzo did straighten himself from his vulnerable position, and instead began to help Kuai put the meat and vegetables onto the skewers so they could grill them.

    “I almost dare to ask if you can cook those yourself, but alas you had already set up the grill.”

    “You seem to have an affinity for my hellfires cooking your food.”

    Kuai smiled. “It leaves a taste of love.”

    “You are a sap.” But of course, it was one of the traits Hanzo loved about Kuai.

    As their food cooked, the tea had successfully boiled. Kuai began to place the chamomile tea bags in, to turn it into tea. That was when a horrible pun came to mind. “Hanzo, how do you make holy water?”

    “I would not know.”

    “You boil the hell out of it.” That cheeky smirk again that showed the self-proclaimed pun-master was proud of another crack of a joke. Of course, it was always adorable, the way Kuai actually thought these puns were humorous.

    Typically Hanzo didn’t like puns, they were cheesy and cheap, but Kuai was the only person allowed to make puns. He shook his head with a small touch of a smile. “You are adorable, Kuai.”

    “I take pride in being the only one allowed to make puns around you.”

    “Good. Though I still would not have thought of you to be the one to make such jokes.”

    “Cage may have had a slight influence.” Kuai Liang gently touched along Hanzo’s forearm with his cold finger tips. “It’s easy to make puns when you’re as cool as I am.”

    Hanzo huffed a small snicker. “You are certainly cooler than Johnny Cage, I will give you that. ”

    “How generous of you, Hanzo.”

    “I can say plenty more nice things about you, my dear snowflake.”

    “And I, about you.” While the chamomile tea was finishing boiling into the water, Kuai grabbed a lemon from the fridge to chop it in half. A strong squeeze poured lemon juice right out of the lemon and into the tea kettle where it boiled into the tea, then back into the fridge it went when it was no longer of use. Next was the honey, which he had to retrieve from a jar within the pantry. As he set the jar down, he looked over at Hanzo. “You know,” Already Hnazo knew a pun was about to come, it was that damn set up. “I’m not sure if honey is needed in this, since you’re already ‘sweet’ enough.”

     Okay, that pun may have got Hanzo blushing lightly again. “Yes… Well… Not as sweet as you.” Oh Hanzo, bashful at sweet praises, just as he had been with his wife a very long time ago. He tried to carry on, returning to the task at hand. He took the skewers off the grill and set them down onto a plate. With the tea finishing just in time, Kuai poured them both a cup, and the settled at one of the kitchen’s islands to consume.

    Together they ate and drank their teas, discussing their lives and what they had been up to. Kuai had plenty of new stories about his dragons, and the ghosts he’d been noticing at the temple. Hanzo spoke of his students, the gardens’ new blooms, and a new training regiment he had started. But what they both had in common was missing each other. Kuai could fly over on his dragon any time, Hanzo could hellport any time, but alas it was about their scheduling. They missed each other deeply, they missed each other’s quips, touches, shared pain and healing and comfort, each other’s languages of love. All of it. They were both Grandmasters of their own clans just wanting to forget about the world to be with each other.

     Which eventually led Hanzo and Kuai in front of the door of the Grandmaster's bedroom. Initially it had just been to walk him there, and Hanzo had planned on leaving to return to his own temple, but Kuai pulled Hanzo in as he entered his room. "You should stay the night here, Hanzo. I think the both of us could use a night together."

     "I should return to my temple, I do not want to be leaving my students without word of where I am."

     "My dear, they know of our love, and they know you have slept here before. They will take the hint in the morning when you return."

     "I suppose. I just worry if something is going to happen while I am gone."

     Now Kuai realized what Hanzo's nightmares were about, what caused his restlessness. He was having nightmares of losing his clan once again. He was having those traumatic memories of losing them before. Kuai Liang sighed. "I will not force you to stay here or there. But I promise you, they will be okay. I understand your fears, as a Grandmaster myself. When I leave, I get worried my clan will be attacked and slain. We worry because we care, and we care for them as deeply as we should be. But alongside care, we must provide them with trust. We must be able to trust that they can fight for themselves and protect each other, should they be attacked. I know your students will be safe, because they have been taught by the greatest warrior I have ever fought in my whole life. Nobody compares to you, Hanzo.” Hanzo reflected on Kuai’s words. Funny, he felt the same way, that Kuai was his toughest opponent, so surely the Lin Kuei must be great, too. “And as well, Hanzo, I’m unsure if you noticed but one of my students is at your temple for the night. We’re not the only ones visiting each other. Should anything go wrong, I’m more than certain she’d come home to alert us.”

     “I was unaware of your student staying at my temple. That does help to know, I suppose... But you are correct in your words, I need to give them trust that they can protect themselves.” Hanzo looked at Kuai’s large bed, noticing one more blanket on the bed than before, and a rather thick one, too. A significant difference that warmed his heart. It meant Kuai was seeking warmth in his sleep, attempting to reach the same warmth of the pyromancer. “It seems I should sleep with you tonight anyway,” He noted as he lifted the blanket.

     “I find myself sleeping better with a bit of warmth, it reminds me of you,” Kuai confessed as he sat down on his own bed.

     “I find myself needing at least a fan on when I sleep,” Hanzo also confessed. “The cold grounds me when I start to get too nervous.”

     “We truly do complete each other.”

     Hanzo began to start taking off his own clothes, as well as leaving behind his weapons all onto a neat pile on the floor close to the bed, so Hanzo may retrieve them in the morning. Then he got in bed with Kuai, and as he got comfortable Kuai was already holding him, admiring the natural warmth of Hanzo rather than the blanket.

     “Do you feel well enough to sleep again, Hanzo?” Kauai asked.

     Hanzo nodded. “I think I do.”

     “Good, I’m glad.” Kauai closed his eyes with a sigh, and started to feel himself drift to sleep. “Sleep well, Hanzo. Wake me up if you need anything, I won’t mind.”

     “And I hope you sleep well, too.” Hanzo hesitantly closed his own eyes. And together, in each other’s arms, in each other’s elements, they both fell asleep together.

[rocksandrobots]

Of Rocks and Robots Ch. 37 - Happy Birthday!

"What if we gave her some jewelry?" Varian asked. "Like a necklace and some matching earrings?"

Hiro shot the idea down. "Naw, she already has a whole jewelry box full of that stuff and she hardly ever wears it."

The two boys were standing in the lunch line at the cafeteria discussing what to get Aunt Cass for her birthday.

"Hmmm...what about a new cookbook, then?"

Once again Hiro turned the idea down. "Can't she just look up recipes on her phone?"

"Well then.. I don't know. Why don't you come up with something?" Varian huffed as he grabbed an apple off the bar.

"Ooookay. What about… something sentimental, like a hand made card?" Hiro suggested.

"That's lame."

"Is not. Listen, she'll cry her eyes out over it. Trust me."

"Oh come on, we're not four year-olds. We got money now, let's actually buy her something nice."

The two teens stopped in front of the salad bar where the head lunch lady was busy cutting up vegetables. They continued their debate while they waited on the container holding the salad to be refilled.

"Like what?" Hiro asked. "She hasn't said what she wanted, and I'm sure if there was anything she did want she could just go out and buy it herself."

Varian crossed his arms and cupped his chin in thought. Then his eyes fell on the elderly lunch lady, who was still busy preparing the salad.

"Hey Miss Itamae, I don't suppose you could give us any womanly insight into what a lady turning 37 might want for her birthday?"

The grumpy cafeteria worker didn't answer. She just glared at them both as she deftly sliced a head of lettuce in two. Then went back to cutting up more vegetables with practiced precision.  

"You're sparkling conversation is delightful as always Miss Itamae." Hiro said deadpan.

"Hey, wait, no, that's it!" Varian nudged him excitedly. "We'll buy Aunt Cass some new kitchen knives!" He then turned back to the lunch lady with a smug smile. "Thank you for the idea, Miss Itamae. You're always so helpful."

The insincerity dripped from his voice like honey and Miss Itamae only pursed her lips in irritation as she began to chop the lettuce even more fiercely.

Hiro rolled his eyes. The, quite literally, unspoken feud between them and the head lunch lady had only ramped up these last two weeks. True, she had been a little too gleeful when she pulled out the pan of leftover Monday's Mystery Meatloaf to give them, after handing the last hot ham sandwich to Karmi right before them, but Varian antagonizing the woman with his phony politeness probably didn't help matters.

"Aunt Cass literally has several sets of chef knives. I think she, like, collects them at this point."

"Well what if we just expanded her collection then? Does she have a machete yet? Or perhaps one of those big butcher axes?"

Hiro narrowed his eyes at the other boy. "Are you serious? What would she want with a machete?"

Varian shrugged.

"Yeah, no." Hiro continued. "I doubt we could even legally buy one."

"Really? Man, you can't do anything in America." Varian sighed.

Hiro gave Varian another irritated look of disbelief, but before he could say anything else a voice shouted out to them.

"Clear the way! Look out!" Fred yelled.

He was barreling right towards them on a pair of roller skates; careening out of control.

He couldn't stop and both boys had to quickly scramble out the way. Miss Itamae was not so fortunate.

Fred hit the salad bar and toppled over the edge, sending the vegetables flying everywhere and knocking over the poor woman.

"Ooops. Hehe… my bad." Fred said sheepishly as the lunch lady stood back up with a salad bowl on top of her head, lettuce stuck in her hair net and a slice of tomato dripping off her nose.

Miss Itamae stared at him with flame in her eyes and seethed with gritted teeth. Fred tried to helpfully brush off the bits of vegetables that sat on her shoulders, but this only made her even more angry.

She hissed at him and Fred scurried back over the railing as quickly as possible before ducking down on the other side of the bar. He cautiously peaked his head up just long enough to watch the cafeteria lady storm off in a huff; presumably to go get a broom.

"Are those Gogo's skates?" Hiro asked once the lunch lady had left.

"Uh, yeah." Fred admitted guiltily.

"Does she know that you have them?" Varian asked.

Fred dodged the question "Ummm… maybe?"

"Do we even want to know what's going on?" Hiro asked in a weary manner.

"Hiro, as your friend," Fred said as he placed a bracing hand upon the other teen's shoulder, "I feel it's my sworn d- woah, duty to protect you. The less the two of you know the better." And with that solemn proclamation the skates gave out from under him and Fred flopped to the ground.

"In other words she doesn't know, and when she finds out she's going to kill you." Varian confirmed.

"'Kill' is such a strong word, ya know." Fred strained as he gripped the bar and hoisted himself back up.

Varian and Hiro exchanged confused glances and just shrugged.

Hiro sighed and decided to set the matter aside. "Well, Varian and I were just discussing what to get Aunt Cass for her birthday. Got any ideas?"

Fred hummed in thought as he gave the matter some consideration. "Well mom always wants to be taken out to some new fancy restaurant on her birthdays."

"Hey now there's an idea," Varian enthused. "We cook dinner for her!"

"Oh no, you are not fixing any more weird Coronian recipes." Hiro replied.

"Hey, my cooking isn't weird. Besides all you know how to make is cereal."

"Yeah, I'm not a chef, neither of us are."

Varian pouted at that but before he could respond Hiro continued on. "Look, why don't we take her out? It's something she doesn't get to do often and we could both split the bill, deal?"

"Well alright," Varian agreed, "at least it'll save us from having to do the dishes."

"Great!" Fred cheered. "I even know of a place you can take her. Mom loves it."

Just then Gogo burst through the cafeteria doors.

"Hey! Give me back my blades!" She yelled.

"Uh oh." Fred said and clumsily skated away as Gogo furiously ran after him.

"Come on, we better make sure she doesn't actually murder him." Hiro sighed as he started to run after them.

Varian followed, but paused long enough to cheekily wave goodbye to Miss Itamae, who had just finished cleaning up Fred's mess and was back to chopping vegetables once more.

"See ya, Miss Itamae."

The woman never answered back. Instead she just scowled at him as she menacingly held up her knife before slamming it back down hard upon a head of lettuce, severing it in two.

Varian gulped as he backed away and hurried out the door after his friends. Maybe they were pushing the little old woman too hard, he thought.

                                                  ------------------------

"Are you sure it's not under Hamada?" Hiro asked the maître d' who stood at the front of the restaurant's door. "Then try Templeton."

No such luck.

"Hey, tell them to check under Quirinson." Varian nudged him.

Hiro, Varian, and Aunt Cass stood in line at the Aragosta; the fine dining place that Fred had helped them make reservations for. Only the host was having trouble finding said reservations.

"Okay, how about Quirinson?"

The host shook his head.

"Frederickson?" Hiro squeaked hopefully. The matradee frowned.

Hiro sighed in resignation as Aunt Cass gently scooted the boys out of the way of the other guests who were also waiting to get in.

"Hey, it's okay." She encouraged, "So they lost the reservations. It happens. We can go someplace else and still have tons of fun. How about karaoke instead?"

"Let me check back with Fred first, before we decide to leave." Hiro said as he pulled out his phone.

The phone went straight to voicemail and Hiro hung up in irritation. Things weren't going as planned.

Just then Krei, of all people, walked up next to them on the sidewalk. He was also on his cell phone and didn't seem to notice them.

"But mother, I had these reservations for weeks!" He complained. "Yes I know your annual fundraising event for Helpers Helping the Helpless is important…. Yes I understand that the juggling seals canceled last minute... but surely you could just hire a new act? Why, Judy, my secretary, she can juggle fire for ya, I mean how hard can it be if a dumb seal can do it, right?" He frowned as he listened to the other end of the call, and then sighed deeply, "Alright, you win, as always. Love you too, mother." And with that he hung up.

That's when Keri noticed their little group.  

"Oh, uh, hi Cass. Intern. Intern's new cousin-brother-whatever... Fancy meeting you here."

He gave an awkward grin and rocked back and forth on his heels, like a school boy accidentally running into his crush at the mall.  

Aunt Cass gave an equally awkward smile. "Hi, Alistair. Trouble with your date?" She joked.

"Oh well, you know mom. Lovely woman, but can't not take charge when there's a crisis." He nervously chuckled. "So what brings you to Aragosta's?"

"We're taking Aunt Cass out for her birthday." Varian replied.

"Oh, it's your birthday!? And here I didn't bring you a gift. Well, happy birthday, Cass. You look great tonight."

Aunt Cass blushed, "Oh well, thank you, but unfortunately the restaurant's lost our reservations, sooo…"

"So it looks like we'll just have to go elsewhere." Hiro interrupted. He gave Krei a hard glare as he tried to quickly shuffle away his aunt. "Bye, Krei."

"Oh now wait a minute," Keri stopped them, "You lost a reservation, and I got a table waiting for me that I'm not going to use anymore. Why not take my spot on the list?"

"Oh, that's nice of you Alistair, but-"

"No buts, I insist. Call it a birthday present."

Keri gave his most charming smile and Aunt Cass looked at the two boys questioningly. Varian enthusiastically nodded yes, while Hiro silently pleaded 'no' to her.

"Weeelll, if you insist." She agreed.

"Wonderful! I'll go square it with the matradee." And with that he hurried off to speak with the host.

"Aunt Cass, why?" Hiro whined as soon as the businessman was out of ear shot.

"Why not?" Varian spoke up. "He's giving us a free table. Just cause you don't like the gu-"

"Boys, boys," Aunt Cass interceded before an argument broke out. "Look, I know Alistair can be a little… hmm.. difficult to get along with sometimes, but he means well and this is a nice gesture. It'd be rude to turn it down."

With that final word Krei returned.

"You're all set. Table number five, and just tell the waiter to put the meal on my tab."

"We were going to pay." Hiro grumbled.

"Oh that's so cute," Krei laughed, "you boys, wanting to do something nice for your aunt. But seriously though, you'll have to take out a loan just to afford the hors d'oeuvres."

Varian raised a worried eyebrow while Hiro only gave an annoyed huff.

"Look this is my treat. Dinner is on me." Keri continued, "Just give the host up there my last name."

He then gave another awkward smile and waved goodbye before turning to leave.

Aunt Cass frowned and Hiro's stomach dropped as he realized what she was about to do. He tried to say no. He tried to speak reason with his aunt, but before he could stop her she was already calling after Krei.

"Oh, won't you join us?" She asked.

"Naw, I couldn't." He sheepishly kicked the ground.

"Good." Hiro said, but was completely ignored as Keri immediately followed up with a, "But if you insist."

He and Aunt Cass shared a smile as they stared into each other's eyes transfixed and Hiro could only let out groan.

                                                 ------------------------

The lavish interior of the eatery was adorned with Tuscan columns, high vaulted ceilings, and expensive oil paintings that hung upon the walls depicting the ocean. The restaurant was known for its seafood and so there were also aquariums everywhere you looked, tucked away in the most unlikely of places.

Varian couldn't help but curiously stare at one particular aquarium lodged into the center of one of the columns. It didn't look like the most efficient place to house costly and rare tropical sea life to him, but hey, he wasn't a millionaire restaurateur, so what did he know?

The little party was seated near said column at a table covered in white linen and with gold plated cutlery already laid out upon it. They were then given menus bound in black leather by the waiter who was dressed to the nines in a tuxedo, complete with a bow tie.

Varian self consciously looked down at his own plain button down shirt and grey vest and felt hopelessly underdressed in comparison. This place was far more ostentatious than he had been unexpecting.

Well at least he had put more effort into his outfit than Hiro, who's idea of dressing up was to wear his black cargo shorts instead of his usual tan ones. Not that the other boy cared in the slightest. Hiro wasn't the least bit embarrassed about standing out in high society. He was too busy giving Krei the stink eye as the businessman flirted with Aunt Cass.

Varian rolled his eyes in dismissal of Hiro's petty disapproval of their aunt's choice in men and opened the menu. What he saw made his jaw drop.

"Ninety dollars for lobster!?" He sputtered. "Who pays nearly a hundred bucks for freakin' lobster?" He hissed at Hiro under his breath.

Hiro only shrugged, "Yeah, lobster is expensive. So what?"

"But it's lobster." Varian reiterated.

Hiro only stared at him blankly.

"You live right next to the ocean." Varian explained. "You can literally just walk down to the docks and catch yourself one to eat."

"Yeah, but who wants to do that."

"I would. I would much rather catch it and cook it myself than pay a hundred dollars for a lobster ." The disdain in his voice was evident.

"Yeah, but you're weird." Hiro quipped.

Varian gave him a hard look of annoyance, but Hiro only smugly smiled back; knowing full well that Varian wouldn't jump him in such an esteemed establishment with Aunt Cass right there looking on.

Varian grumbled under his breath and went back to looking at the menu. He was going to find at least one thing on here that didn't seem like a colossal waste of money, he swore it.

Back home, seafood was one of cheapest meats you buy at the market. Freshwater or salt, it didn't matter, anyone could catch a fish. Shellfish in particular were deemed low class.

In fact boiled lobster tail was one of the few proteins he could eat in prison. Every once in a while the chef would feed it to them as a 'treat'. But that was only because no one else in the castle wanted it.

He shook the memory away as he tried to calm himself. Never again was he going back to gruel and stale bread; and if he wanted a lobster for dinner, he was sure as heck going to fix it himself the way he liked it and not have to beg for it from anybody!

Aunt Cass and Keri, however, did not notice Varian and Hiro's discussion involving lobsters. They were completely engrossed with each other, giggling over some in-joke that only they two shared. Hiro had gone back to sulking while eyeing the adults disapprovingly.

The tension was only dispersed when the waiter returned to take their orders. Krei rattled off a ridiculously intricate and flamboyant entrée as a suggestion and Aunt Cass agreed to try it. Hiro ordered the most expensive thing he could find on the menu, just to spite Keri, and Varian chose the steak.

"Well it looks like it'll be a while before dinner arrives, so I'm just going to go powder my nose. Be right back." Aunt Cass excused herself.

As soon as she was out of sight Hiro lunged at Keri.

He grabbed the older man by the shirt collar and held up his fork up menacingly.

"Okay, spill it Keri! What are you up to?" He ordered.

"Nothing." The man insisted. "Can't a guy do something nice for once?"

"Not when the guy is you he can't." Hiro said. "Aunt Cass dumped you, remember? It's over."

"Wait, they used to date?" Varian asked, clueless as to what was happening.

"One date," Keri corrected, "and no I'm not trying to get back together with your aunt. Honest."

Hiro eyed him suspiciously and Keri met his gaze steadily. Finally, Hiro relented and let go of the other guy's shirt.

"Then what do you want?" He asked, confused.

"I want your aunt to have a good birthday. Nothing more. So can we please just have a nice dinner without any more threats, or revenge plots hatched by disgruntled employees, or any other weird superhero-y stuff going on?"

Hiro reluctantly sat back down in silent agreement and that was when Aunt Cass returned. Soon thereafter the food arrived and dinner proceeded smoothly for the rest of the night.

                                                 ------------------------

"I tell ya work has been a nightmare since production started on this new phone line." Keri complained. "I'm at the office everyday it seems like."

"Oh I hear you," Aunt Cass agreed. "The Luck Cat has been swamped for weeks now. I haven't had a day off in almost a month."

Dinner was over and the little group stood outside waiting on their rides. The two boys looked on as the adults chatted. Aunt Cass and Keri had barely stopped conversing with each other the whole night and even Varian was starting to feel just a little left out.

But he had little right to be. When did Aunt Cass get the chance to just hang out with people her age and have fun? By her own admission she was usually either at work all day or taking care of them.

"Sounds like you could use a break." Keri said. "Oooh, crazy idea, I got a membership to a spa retreat up in Napa. They got hot springs and a killer buffet. I'm too busy to go right now, but I can schedule you a trip. You could bring a friend and have a weekend off. What do you say."

"Weeell I don't know... I mean it's tempting, don't get me wrong, but I got the café to take care of and who'll look after the boys?" Aunt Cass said.

"Well surely they're old enough to be on their own for a few days, and I can be on hand if they need anything."

"We can manage the café if you want to go to Aunt Cass." Varian chimed in, happy to help.

Hiro nudged him the ribs, hard.

Aunt Cass pouted and then forlornly shook her head.

"You sure?" Keri asked. "Cause it's no trouble to me. It's the least I can do after.. well, after what happened last time."

Aunt Cass raised an eyebrow and Keri held his hands up defensively.

"I'm not trying to ask you out again. Honest. I know that ship has sailed, and I also know that it was my fault. I just would like to apologize that's all."

"Oh Alistair, you don't need to buy me expensive things just to say 'I'm sorry'. "Aunt Cass smiled warmly at him before continuing on. "But the answer is still no. I just can't right now, not with everything that's going on."

"Well alright, but if you change your mind just give my secretary, Judy, a call. She'll arrange everything." And with that Keri handed Aunt Cass a business card and got into his limo which had just pulled up.

He waved goodbye to everyone before driving away.

                                                 ------------------------

"I think you should have taken Keri up on his offer." Varian said as they returned to the Luck Cat.

"Why, just so he can try and weasel his way back into Aunt Cass's life?" Hiro grumbled under his breath.

However, Aunt Cass heard him anyways. "Hey now, I can take care of myself, thank you very much." She admonished him. "But no, I'm not going. There's too much to do around here."

"Oh come on, I can look after the café for a few days." Varian insisted.

"And who's going to look after you?" Aunt Cass asked.

Varian looked hurt by that reply. "We can take care of ourselves."

"Oh like how you took care of my toaster?"

"That was an accident, and I put out the fire."

"Umm hmm, and the alarm clock?"

"I fixed it, and it works even better now."

"..and the dishwasher."

Varian opened his mouth to argue but then shut again quickly as he really had no excuse for that particular mishap. They were still finding pieces of broken china to this day.

Hiro snickered at their argument as he reached down under the counter to grab a donut.

The food he had ordered at the restaurant was some weird seafood monstrosity made of jellyfish, kelp, fish eggs, squid tentacles and other unidentifiable fishy bits and bobs. Rich people were weird, was all he had thought as he picked at his meal all night. He was still half starved.

"Oh laugh it up, mister 'I never wash a dish'." Varian shot back.

"I've cleaned dirty dishes before." Hiro said with his mouth full.

"Boys…" Aunt Cass groaned, ending their argument. "Look, I know things have been stressful these last few weeks, what with finals, and the café being busy… and well, everything else, but we can get through this if we stick together, as a family, and not have anymore petty squabbles."

She wrapped an arm around Varian's shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze as she smiled.

The 'everything else'  comment didn't go unnoticed by the two teens. Ever since Varian had come to live with them life had been turned upside down inside the Hamada home, in more ways than one, and while everyone was trying their best to adjust, there was still clearly friction over minor things, like chores and little mishaps here and there.

"That's why you should Aunt Cass." Varian insisted. "Finals end next week for us, but the café is still going to be busy no matter what. Why not let me and Hiro run the Luck Cat for a weekend? We can get along for just two days, surely."

"And we can call Chief Cruz if anything goes wrong." Hiro piped in.

Aunt Cass raised an eyebrow "I thought you didn't want me to go?"

"I just don't think you should fool with Keri, but of course, I'm all for you taking a break. Varian's right, you deserve a rest and a few days' of fun."

"Well, I mean, I could ask Tracy what she's up to next weekend, I guess…gee I haven't seen Trace in awhile..." Aunt Cass said as she mulled over their proposal.

"Who's Tracy?" Varian asked.

"She's Aunt Cass's roommate from college." Hiro answered.

"Ah…" Varian nodded in realization, but as soon as he was done Aunt Cass snapped out of her wishful reprieve.

"Oh no, I couldn't. It's too last minute. Besides I can still have fun here with you two." She flashed them a huge grin before walking upstairs.

Hiro ran after her, with Varian following behind. "Well in that case, you can open your presents then." He said.

"More presents?" She asked with a smile as she sat in her favorite comfy chair in the living room.

"Yup!" Hiro said as Varian brought out a gift bag that was hidden in his room, and Baymax, having heard his humans return home, came down the stairs carrying a wrapped box with a bow on top.

"Oh boys, you shouldn't have." She said.

"For you Aunt Cass. Happy Birthday." Baymax said in his usual clipped voice.

"Honey Lemon, Gogo, and Wasabi helped me pick something out for you."

"Oh how nice of them." Aunt Cass exclaimed as she opened up the gift. It was a cute apron with a matching headband and dish towel. In the pocket of the apron was a little booklet of printed recipes that Baymax had downloaded.

"See I told you that a cookbook was a good idea." Varian whispered to Hiro. The other boy shushed him.

"Oh thank you Baymax. I love it." Aunt Cass said as she flipped through the book. As she was reading Mochi, curled up in her lap.

"Do you have a birthday gift for me too, Mochi." She cooed at the cat as she scratched under its chin. The cat of course gave no answer other than a purr.

"I doubt he does, but I think Ruddiger made you something." Varian said in all seriousness.

With that the raccoon popped his head up over the top of the chair, startling Aunt Cass. The forest creature gave her an affectionate nuzzle, causing her to laugh, before jumping down and running off.

Only to immediately return dragging something along the ground with it's mouth.

Once the raccoon had made it back to the chair, it turned around and lifted the thing up with it's paws, as if offering it to her.

It was a plate, and on the plate was an apple inside a cupcake liner with whipped cream swirled on top and a single lighted candle stuck in the center.

"Ooooh how adorable!" She laughed.

"Make a wish!" Varian insisted.

She did and blew out the single candle easily.

"An apple cupcake; oh how did you ever come up with such a clever idea?" She asked of Varian.

"Oh I didn't. It was all Ruddiger. I saw him in the kitchen earlier today putting it together."

This gave Aunt Cass pause. Raccoons were smart, true, but the idea of one actually cooking was ridiculous. But the sheer earnestness of Varian's comment left her confused as to if he was pulling her leg or not.

Ruddiger for his part, looked as proud as he could be, for a raccoon, as he crawled up Varian's back and perched himself on the boy's arm.  

"I guess he figured you'd enjoy the same stuff he likes. Oh and don't worry I rescued the cool whip can from him before he could eat the rest."

Aunt Cass tried very hard to keep the smile on her face as the news of the wild creature rummaging in her food stores, again, was made known. She gave a tense laugh, "Well I hope the kitchen is clean by tomorrow before the rush."

The implication in her voice was not lost on Varian. "Already done."  He chirped and Aunt Cass sighed in relief.

"There's one more present." Hiro said as he took the gift bag from Varian. "It's from the both of us."

A lump formed in Aunt Cass's throat as she pulled out the gift. It was a framed photograph, of all three of them hugging.

"I had Baymax snap the photo earlier so you wouldn't notice and had prints made." Hiro explained.

"And I bought the frame so you could hang it up." Varian added.

She couldn't stop the tears from flowing as she choked back her gratitude. Instead she excitedly jumped up and ran around the room looking for the perfect place to put it. T'was a difficult task as she already had so many photos scattered throughout the home.

Finally she decided to hang it up on the wall next to the staircase, right alongside an earlier family portrait, this one depicting Tadashi as a young kid and Hiro not much older than a baby.

"I love it." She finally said through her tears, as she stepped back to admire it. "It's the best birthday present I've ever gotten."

The two boys walked over to join her and she wrapped them in a hug that mirrored the one in the picture.

                                                 ------------------------

Hiro carried the tray full of dishes into the cafe's back kitchen. He placed the heavy load onto the counter and let out a sigh. He then took a moment to gather himself before heading back out into the fray.

The Lucky Cat was packed today; more so than usual. He had volunteered to help out now that his final project was done ahead of schedule, only for them to get slammed with a bus load of tourists in the first 10 mins of opening, on top of the  regular customers who usually ate breakfast there.

No good deed goes unpunished; he dryly thought.

Just then Aunt Cass walked into the kitchen as well.

"Phew, it's like a madhouse out there. Have you seen Varian this morning? I know I told him he could have the day off, but I might have to ask him for a rain check on that."

Hiro shook his head. The other boy had left before sunrise, leaving only a text that he was going down to the pier. For what reason though, Hiro could only guess.

He didn't have to wonder for long however, for Varian returned at that moment.

"I didn't!" He sang as he burst through the back door carrying a small wooden crate in one hand.

"Did what?" Hiro asked.

"I caught a lobster." Varian eagerly replied. "See?" And with that he held up the fisherman's trap close to Hiro, who jumped back when a claw emerged from between the gaps in the wooden planks and snapped at him.

Unfortunately there wasn't anywhere to run to and so Hiro wound up crawling onto the counter to escape the creepy creature that Varian teased him with.

Hiro wasn't the only one in the household who didn't care for the lobster either. Ruddiger popped out of the storage cabinet he had been hiding in and crawled up upon Hiro's shoulder and hissed at the invading new animal.

This did not make Hiro any more

comfortable.

Varian though was blissfully grinning ear to ear, too proud of his accomplishment to notice or care about their disapproval.

"I caught him this morning. He's got to be at least 16, no 17, pounds! I've never seen one so big. He barely fits into my homemade fishing crate."

"That's great sweetie," Aunt Cass said with a strained smile, "what are you going to do with him? Have lobster thermidor for supper?"

Varian's smile deflated somewhat as he sheepishly tried to explain to Aunt Cass the circumstances that he found himself in.

"Well that was the plan when I went out fishing this morning, buuut, I kind of, sort of, named him."

And with that admission he hugged the crate as if cuddling a kitten.

This proved to be a bad idea though. As the lobster did not like to be cuddled. It turned its claws to snap at Varian instead who dropped the crate in surprise. The fishing trapped shattered and broke apart upon hitting the ground, freeing the creature inside. Then before anyone could stop it, the overgrown crustacean scurried out the swinging doors and into the café.

"Lorenzo!" Varian called out after it as he ran to catch it once more.

Both Hiro and Aunt Cass stood there dumbstruck as the screams of customers and loud clattering noises, that sounded suspiciously like china breaking, could be heard through the other side of the door.

Hiro snagged a weary sidelong glance at his aunt wondering what she might do. All she did was just stand there, wide eyed, unblinking, with shocked dread upon her face.

The clean up of this mess was going to be a nightmare. She'd probably have to spend hours refunding customers, apologizing profusely to them, and practically begging them not to give her a bad rating online.

Hiro took pity on her, and fished out Keri's business card and her phone out of her purse which was hung up on the coat rack by the back door.

"Here," he said as he handed the phone and card to her, "maybe you should take up that offer." Then he also ran back into the café to help Varian catch the wayward lobster.

On his way out the door he heard Aunt Cass say over the phone, "Hello, is this Judy? Hi I was calling back about the spa…"

[msatlantathickdream]

Greetings to you! On this Mirror Manic Money Making MANIFESTATION MONDAY!! October 11, 2021.

So,I am doing some adjustments to my pages especially my Facebook “the beast”account. I have been studying this beast and its algorithm for awhile now, and I have taken notice how it has affected my following too.

Most of the individuals on my FB (ms.atlantathickdream) are people from the lifestyle, some are my Spiritual folks, and then there is the actual bread breaking-money spending consumer of mine. Men who were either on my adult streaming platforms and found me on the “beast” or men who just stumbled upon me from scrolling. 

The majority of these people are also on my Instagram(ms.atlantathickdream)-the cousin of the beast(FB). When IG was created,the app probably suggested that they follow me there since they were also on my FB page too. Many of them clicked “add friend” only to increase how many friends that appeared on their profile...some of them were NEVER interested in my work...my energy, and were most definitely not considering doing paid business with me. So..this explains a lot...or does it??!!

Yes and NO--it does not explain why when I was doing FREE live positive vibe motivational FB post I had a decent amount of people participating in engagement(but barely did I receive any paid private booking consultations for readings and intimacy/confidence coaching). And when I chose to show up to do my live “Chitty Chats” dishing on my “End of The Day Thoughts”..people showed up for those..I guess to hear me run my mouth or to see what the fuck I was wearing and what I’ve been up to---oh---and to see if I’d possibly bust out and do a little TWERK/dance break for them.

See---after yesterdays lesson...I begun drastically trimming my FB “friends list”. Yesterday evening, I got in my feeling’s kinda deep about my Raphael the Masculine post, where I shared my snippets of me acting as my Masculine side. I did it for (drama therapy) healing, comedy reasons and creative expressive purposes too..shit-to showcase my acting talents! I also later posted the same thing on my YouTube channel (atlthickdream) and my Twitter (atl_thickdream) but I chose to premiere it first on the beast(FB). I even went so far as tagging certain random “friends” in the comments (like some people do me,who want me to support their post)...well-that was a fail...the views on the post was low. 

Now THAT was the final straw for me because as a (for profit) content Creator and a expressive being---the ability to do multiple creativity post is important. I felt (unsupported and misunderstood) YUP-boxed in..but the thing about me when I feel that way I take gasoline and light that bitch up!  

Yes I was somewhat “hurt” that people I tagged-most had not taken the time to engage with my post, but I see them popping up on MY timeline. Yes I was also somewhat “hurt” that someone who has met me in person, a Spiritual “friend” commented “huh” then “chiillee”. Why was I hurt? Because as a Artist and a Creative being who has struggled with people in her personal life accepting all sides of ME-I’ve been doing tons of inner work and healing that I’ve shared and allowed others to witness my growth...plus shared my career desires privately to some as well (some close individuals who happened to be tagged on the post too). So you fucking right...I was feeling some way last night. This was another shake I needed to get myself out of spaces where I am not understood and genuinely supported. 

Last night I started removing people until my eyes got heavy. And soon as I hit the floor this morning, I started back up again reducing my “friends list”. I dedicated my day or however long it took me to chop down the beast list. After almost an hour of removing people-the BEAST bites back and restricts my account!!! The beast disabled me from unfriending on my OWN PROFILE!! Wow!! Yall..this is crazyyy..I know...but a TRUE STORY! I waited a few hours to see if the block would reset...nope! The feature was not restored! The beast was not having that action..the beast trying to keep me down and tied down to what it thinks is my “friends”! What the hell people?! I did message the help center on “the beast” but of course no response at all. 

Listen Dear Reader--its not like “the beast” doesn’t know that I am Public Figure it owns the cousin IG..where I am listed as a Public Figure there AND I have several like pages&a FANPAGE on Facebook too..so it knows I am there for business not leisure. Shit..I feel bad for the people who actual try to downsize their pages on the only day of the week they had off..they would be screwed. 

Lastly, I want you the reader to know this...I do also believe that I have been shadow banned slightly on IG because I have been out networking and folks had major difficulty finding my page and on another occasion my bestie couldn’t find my IG even when she searched me. I had to DM her in order for her to get directly linked to me. I wouldn’t be surprised this is what is going on with the beast/FB because I rarely post on it. And these two apps are known for making the self promotion job of Colored sexy creatives difficult (to be seen and heard).  

Anyway...I’ll continue to reduce my list on FB, once this feature is restored. I shall WIN against the BEAST! Followers can follow me still but I will not answer “friend” request. 

Hugs to you,

~Dream~

[sirpoley]

On the Four Table Legs of Traveller, Leg 1: Mortgages

Mongoose Traveller's starship mortgage-payment-system is the most brilliant game mechanic I've ever encountered, as a DM. It's also the first rule I'd ignore if I wasn't consciously trying to play the game exactly how it's described in the book.

A Bit of Background

I've been involved in two Traveller campaigns in the past as a player (both with the same DM), and am currently DMing a third. All of them are using Mongoose's first edition. I've never played any other edition of traveller, and know almost nothing about the history of the game. I don't know which mechanics are unique to this edition of Traveller and which have been around for decades.

In the campaigns in which I was a player, I think the DM was continually frustrated with the rules of the game. He wanted to run a tight, story-focused campaign and picked up Traveller assuming it would be, essentially, D&D in space. For his second campaign, he chopped out huge chunks of the ruleset and replaced it with homebrew ones, removing space travel and Traveller's quirky character creation entirely. This worked for the game he wanted to run (he's an extraordinarily talented DM), but I think we all came away feeling pretty lukewarm about the actual rules.

Bored out of my mind in lockdown, desperate for anything to shake up the daily routine, I picked up the copy of Traveller that had been sitting on my bookshelf, untouched, and skimmed through it. In a mood of "I'll humour this weird rulebook," I followed the random subsector creation chapter to the letter, creating a surprisingly-well fleshed out chunk of space to play around in.

It was then that I realized I'd never actually played Traveller. So I dragged my partner along in an experiment: let's play Traveller, exactly how it is described in the book, no matter how flat-out insane the rules seem to be. I will only consider houseruling or changing a rule once we've both figured out what it's for. I learned a ton in this experiment, so, during my kid's naps (oh, right, I have a daughter now, that's where I disappeared to, Internet), I'll write about what I've learned.

(The Carlia Subsector. Not pictured: along with this map is a LONG word document describing the atmosphere, gravity, population, tech level, cultural quirks, government, etc. of the main world in each of these systems, plus a huge table of the price of dozens of trade goods on each planet. These, it turns out, are crucial game aids. I'll get into them later.)

Traveller, I've learned, is a table held up by four legs: Finances, Character Creation, Patrons, and Random Encounters. If you remove any of these legs, the rest of the game stops working. Following them, as described, gives you a rip-roaring swashbuckling adventure of fighting pirates, escaping bounty hunters, smuggling, jailbreaks, and all that good stuff you want in a campaign—but it happens spontaneously. I'll get into it more in detail, but for now, we're going to talk about finances in Traveller.

Yes, the Game Is About Mortgage Payments

The central driving mechanic of Traveller is making mortgage payments for your starship. The assumption is that the player characters are part-owners of an FTL-capable starship that's more expensive than any one person, or any ten people, could ever afford outright. The game (thankfully) provides a quick way to calculate your starship's mortgage payments (something like the value of the ship/240 per month), and for all of the example ships in the book, gives them to you pre-calculated. In the case of my solo campaign, my partner owed the bank a whopping 500,000 credits a month for her Corsair. For scale, that's the exact same price as the single most powerful gun in the game (the "Fusion Gun, Man Portable"), owed monthly. In D&D terms, she had to raise the equivalent of a +5 Longsword every. Single. Month.

(In addition to mortgage payments are smaller fees: life support (i.e., food and water), crew salaries, fuel, and ship maintenance, but the mortgage is by far the largest single expense, so that's what I'll focus on).

I started my partner out with a fueled up and fully-crewed ship (we used pre-generated NPC stats from the middle of the book for her crew, plus an NPC who was generated during her character creation, which I'll get into later). Character creation started her with 10,000 credits, and I told her she had until the end of the month to multiply that by fifty times.

Debt Leads to Trade

The fastest way by far in Traveller to make money is to interact with the very well fleshed-out trade rules. Each spaceship has a certain amount of tons of cargo it can carry, and each world has a list of trade goods for sale at various prices. So the clear way to raise that 500 grand was to speculatively buy trade goods, pick up passengers and freight, deliver mail, and so on. These rules are generous; by stacking modifiers, it's possible to reliably quadruple your principal every time you reach a new planet (which happens every week).

I think my old DM severely nerfed the trade rules (he also didn't enforce mortgage payments, leaving them on the cutting room floor like D&D's Encumbrance rules) due to this seemingly-unbalanced generosity. Again: the best gun in the game is 500,000 credits—so how on earth can a system that lets you make hundreds, even millions, of credits by trading stand?

Well, it turns out, the bank simply taking 95% of your player's earnings every month severely dampens potentially-snowballing nonlinear growth, so my partner and I never saw the kind of wealth explosion that looks inevitable from the rules as written, despite her scraping together everything she could do maximize profits. In all the time we've been playing, despite having already made millions of credits, she actually hasn't been able to buy a gun better than her starting laser pistol, or, in fact, any armour at all. I'll get to why in a moment, because the most important thing about the trade system is that…

Trade Leads to Travel

Garden worlds sell cheap food. High-population worlds buy food for a high price. High-population worlds sell manufactured goods that are in high-demand on non-industrial worlds, and so on. In a quest to maximize profits, the party was locked into a continual tour of the subsector I generated earlier, constantly moving from place to place. Staying put for any length of time meant letting time trickle away (time that could be spent raking in cash for crippling mortgage payments), so that wasn't an option. What wound up happening was that the party went on a self-guided tour of the subsector, stopping in at colourful worlds I'd generated earlier. This happened entirely without me, as DM, having to dangle bait in front of the party the way that I always have to in D&D. Travel is good, because…

Travel Leads to Conflict

I've already spoken at length on the subject of random encounters here, but Traveller really builds the game around random tables in an elegant way. Every time the party jumps from one world to another, there's a chance they'll get waylaid by pirates (the rulebook has a fun, albeit hidden, 'pirate table' that describes different tricks and hijinks that pirates use to attack). 'Pirates' in Traveller are spaceship owners unable to pay their mortgages by legitimate means, so turn to piracy. The fact that the party is always carrying their life savings in trade commodities whenever they travel around makes them a prime target for piracy, and leads to combat with stakes beyond "fight till everyone's dead." The pirates aren't orcs, and don't want to kill the players for no reason. They want to take their cargo and get away as quickly as possible, suffering the least damage as possible, and the players want the opposite. Thus: pre-combat negotiations, tricks, hijinks (my partner, carrying a cargo of "domestic goods," chose to have her crew throw individual toasters out of the cargo bay each in different directions to ensure that the pirates had to engage in lengthy EVA-missions to catch them each, thus allowing her ship to escape without suffering damage).

Traveller's starship battle rules are fun (and integrate into boarding actions that results in player-scale combat), and are triggered primarily just by moving around. Conflict is fun by itself (that's why combat rules are most of the rules in most games), but in this context, have the added advantage, as…

Conflict Leads to Tradeoffs

It became clear to my partner after her first run-in with pirates that her ship and crew were under-gunned. While buying powerful weapons and armour is trivially cheap compared to the amount of money she was raking in through trade (most weapons cap out at a few thousand credits, and she was moving hundreds of thousands a week), actually getting her hands on some was another matter.

Good weapons in Traveller are advanced ones, which have a high-TL (tech level) rating. These weapons are only available on high-TL worlds (each world has a TL rating generated in subsector generation). Making a detour from trading to buy 'adventuring equipment' wound up being an extremely costly endeavour, taking the party weeks out of the way of the most profitable trade route. The closest world in which these weapons exist also outlaws all weapons (various laws are generated procedurally as well) which means engaging in black market smuggling (which is fleshed out in the rules) and risks run-ins with the law.

Compounding this problem was that her Corsair took minor damage in the combat with the pirates, and the nearest world with a shipyard capable of repairing the ship was different from, and out of the way of, the high tech world with fancy fusion guns. Also, getting the ship repaired meant that it would be in drydock for days or even weeks, which incurs an opportunity cost of almost a million credits that could have been made during trade…

Tradeoffs lead to Debt

In her case, she wound up getting her ship repaired, forgoing arming herself and her crew, and skirting dangerously close to bankruptcy kicking her heels as her ship was patched up. There isn't an easy answer to what she 'ought' to have done, which was fun as hell. Further, as a DM, I wasn't annoyed that she was 'messing up the plot' by staying put (or frustrated that she wasn't going to my elaborately-plotted narrative that would occur when she tried to buy black market weapons) because there was no plot. Everything that came about emerged procedurally.

The 'Loop'

The beating heart of a Traveller sandbox campaign is this loop:

Without DM intervention (or Patrons, which are sort of procedurally-generated adventure hooks), this loop can sustain a campaign pretty much indefinitely. What this means as a DM is that any DM-interventions (i.e., adding in pre-written adventure hooks or encounters or whatever) can be attached to any of these steps to allow it to come about during play. It also means that if you don't have any pre-scripted content (to choose an example completely at random, let's just say your hypothetical one-year-old threw your notes in a toilet) you can just sit back and let the loop above take care of providing entertainment.

To bring this back to mortgages, if your players don't have the threat of having their spaceship repossessed by the bank hanging over them like the Doom of Damocles, then the whole system breaks down, and the DM has to do all the heavy lifting of providing character motivation to go explore new planets.

Next, we'll talk about how Traveller's patron system ties into all of this.

[annakie]

A Lot of Words about a Thing

This is a “I’m writing this out so next time someone asks I can just point them to this (or copy/paste) instead of having to type it again” thing.

I’ve been doing Hello Fresh for the last two or three months and I thought I’d talk about the ups and downs of it and if I’m going to keep doing it.  This is not an endorsement (which will be clear when you get to the overall middling scoring), but I will put a link at the bottom so we can both get a deal if you want to try it.

---------------

So anyway, I had been thinking about doing a meal kit for a long time but pulled the trigger on it back in... like Mid-January, I guess? 

the tl;dr of it all is that I like it and I’ll probably keep doing it for awhile, but it’s not for everyone, and is expensive for what it is, especially if you already know how to cook.

Before I started, I made myself sit down and write out a quick list of what I wanted to get out of trying a meal kit experience, so I’ll rate how successful or not each one of those things is.

First of all, I want to also say, I can already cook.  I’m a pretty good cook.  I can follow a recipe and improvise successfully when necessary usually.  One reason why a lot of people do a meal kit is because they need to learn how to cook and that definitely wasn’t me.

Also, they offer a variety of number and portions on meals to try.  I get three meals a week, with two portions a meal, which means I cook Hello Fresh for dinner one night, and usually the next night have the leftovers.  Friday night is usually “Yay You Made It To The Weekend, You Get To Order Takeout” night.  You can order for several more meals a week, and for up to four portions in each meal, if you want.

So on to the reasons why I decided to try HF, with a grading of how I feel about each one after trying.

Reason One: Try Something New

I was super excited at the beginning of the pandemic now working from home full time, because this was a great chance to really start trying some new recipes.  I had fallen into a pretty bad rut for awhile of some of the same frozen type meals or just making super easy things for dinner and sandwiches for lunch pre-pandemic.  Even though my commute was stupid easy I often felt too wiped at the end of the day to make like, real meals.  So when the pandemic hit and I was Home All The Time, for the first couple of months I was buying interesting ingredients (what I could get my hands on at the time) and really digging into making new and interesting things.  Even baking my own bread and bought some new kitchen gadgets like a pressure cooker to expand my repertoire. 

By like... the end of summer... well the good news was that I was still cooking and hadn’t fallen back to a packaged-food routine most of the time (though still some frozen pizzas or bags of pre-made Asian or Italian food you cook on the stovetop mostly for lunch) but also I had more or less found The Ten Things I Make (like Spaghetti, a great chicken and rice dish that is so good and makes about 6 meals worth of leftovers) and I was real tired of like, recipe hunting.  The most work I was then doing was finding new pressure cooker recipes and tbh almost all of what I was making was Chicken In Some Kind of Sauce Over Rice.  I was burned out.

So Hello Fresh... has been great for that.  I have only made the same thing a couple of times and those were only because i loved them so much the first time I wanted that thing again.  For the most part, I have tried just a ton of new things, including some ingredients I’ve never worked with before or really thought I wouldn’t like!  And I did!  I feel like I am often trying something I have never made before.

Reason 1.5: Variety

OK this is hand-in-hand with Something New but also slightly different.

Try Something New would be rated like a 4.5 out of 5 stars.... but some stars are taken away though, because a lot of their recipes are very similar.  For a protein, there’s like, chicken breasts, hamburger meat, pork chops, chicken sausage and pork sausage.  Occasionally steak.  Basically every meal will start with one of those things.... oh and I guess there’s like some fish choices, but I hate fish.  There’s also vegetarian options, which I have only occasionally gotten.  So within the variety, there’s a lot of similarities.

Also there are a lot of same ingredients in their recipes.  I have grated a lot of lemons and limes.  I have chopped up a lot of carrots, green onions, and potatoes (so many potatoes.)  I have consumed more sour cream than I ever have.  I have started looking for ways to add even a little more variety to the things that are often-repeats that they give you.  

But part of that is my fault -- I am mostly selecting items that I know I will like, or can modify to how I like.  There are a lot of veggie and fish-based choices I could pick up most weeks which I avoid. 

And almost everything I’ve ever made... I’d make again.  I save all the recipe cards so that someday when I don’t wanna do HF anymore, I will have all them all handy to make later.  The HF Subreddit also has a lot of resources like how to do their custom spice mixes, very handy.   There’s been maybe 3 things I’ve made which I’d say were Just Okay, but nothing I’d say that was bad.   And some of the ideas in this paragraph I talk about more, further down.

But also on the topic of “Variety” -- since every meal I make has two portions (occasionally I will stretch something to three) -- points are given back because I’m not “Making a huge pot of spaghetti that I eat for five meals in a row.”  So that’s good, even if it means more cooking overall.

So honestly, on Something New overall, I’ll give this like a 3.5 out of 5 stars, correcting up to 4 stars on a curve, since I strike entire categories of their offerings based on my own tastes.  They offer a pretty good variety of meals to select, and part of the problem here is my fault for hating All Seafood and not being thrilled with the vegetarian options (I also don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth without a protein) so there are a lot of meals re-using similar ingredients.   It slides back down to a 3.5 though when you factor in Reasons 3 & 4 below.

Reason Two: Kill Analysis Paralysis

A thing I found increasingly happening by the end of last year was analysis paralysis.  Especially as I started a new job where I’m much, much busier (but happier) in October.  I would find myself staring at the fact that I’d have to make the decision on What To Make For Dinner and dreading it more and more.  It wasn’t really the cooking I hated, but the deciding what to cook, which got me into the lack of variety rut.  More often than I’d like to admit I’d just make a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese or like... just... toast... for dinner because the decision-making part of my brain was tired... or out of spoons as the kids say these days.

This is maybe my favorite part of Hello Fresh overall.  Once every week or two I log onto HF, pick what I’m going to eat like... 5 or 6 weeks in the future, which I can do at a time when I have that decision-making energy, and forget about it.  Every Monday a box shows up on my doorstep, I see what nice things I picked out for myself several weeks ago, and the most I have to decide is which order I will make those things in.

So when it’s a “Make Dinner” day, I don’t have that “shit, I have to make a decision” feeling.  I already know because I pre-planned it back when I wasn’t at the end of a long workday.  It’s one of those small, dumb things that really really helps me mentally in an almost inexplicable way.  And I can feel better about myself because I didn’t eat something dumb for dinner.  And I still allow myself to make easy things for lunch, like a small frozen pizza, a sandwich and some chips, or hey, Kraft Dinner.  And sometimes I do make a big pot of Spaghetti or something that I love and will just have that for lunch every day for a week, and so I don’t have to feel like I’m always cooking.

And on Eat HF Leftovers For Dinner nights, that’s even better, because I have a tasty meal and it just had to get reheated in the microwave or stovetop.  Some meals are easy to half-prepare ahead of time on day one, and just do the last steps on leftover night the next night to have fresher dinner easily.

 Just 5 out of 5 stars here.  This is my favorite part.

Reason Three: Eat More Vegetables.

Uh, yeah, I’m terrible about eating veggies on my own.  The best I can do usually is buy a bag of mixed greens and try to have a side salad with dinner, or buy bags of frozen foods and hope they come with veggies I’d eat. 

So the good thing here, is that when HF sends me vegetables to make, if it’s a veggie I like, I’ll probably make it.

The big problem, though, is that there’s no substitutions.  And I’m still not gonna eat brussell sprouts or, broccoli, or mushrooms. I was a sport and tried making them (except the mushrooms) the first time I got recipes that used them as sides.  And nope... still cant.

But hey, I have done a lot better at eating more fresh green beans, and onions, and carrots, and peppers.  Though sometimes I just snack on the bell pepper instead of cooking it. Still, I call it a win.

I really, really wish I could trade out the side-dish vegetables I know I won’t eat for like, a small side salad, an apple, or hey, even just... carrots!  But nope, no substitutions. =\  I’d score this way better if we could do so.

Still, I’m doing better here, and overall, more vegetables are being eaten.  So, 3 out of 5 stars.

Reason Four: Waste Less Food

The amount of fruit and vegetables I’ve ordered and thrown away over the last year make me cringe.  I would order things with every intention of eating them and then just... not.  Oh yeah I need two lemons, an orange and two limes in case I make ____ recipe!  I need a new bag of baby carrots to snack on and make a side dish and cut into a salad! 

And then I maybe... maybe use half of that before it goes bad.

Probably less.  Because of the Analysis Paralysis and not trying new things.  You run into that problem where you don’t have the ingredients on hand to make a new thing so you can’t make a new thing... but then you buy them but forgot (crucial thing) so the thing still doesn’t get made.  Or you just... don’t plan when you’re gonna make the thing and by the time I’d be like “Oh yeah I should make something with those vegetables” they’d have already turned.

SO... I felt shitty throwing away so much produce, and loaves of bread, and other perishable food that got maybe half-eaten.  So much, for so long.  Yeah, I know I could do better with my meal planning, but it’s been one of those things I always vow to do, and then did not do that thing.

Doing HF has really made me re-evaluate what I buy as groceries, and I have cut way down on ordering unnecessary produce and perishables like bread.  Because I don’t really have to worry about dinner and am allowing myself to do easy lunches that don’t require real “cooking.”  So, overall I am definitely buying and tossing less food.

Also just as another quick note -- what also tends to get tossed out of my HF boxes is a “spicy ingredient”  But in some ways, this works in HF’s favor.  I don’t really like spicy foods.  A small amount of spice is OK but I’d rather just do without it in most things, sorry I’m that white girl.  Most “Spicy” HF meals get spicy by a spice blend, a packet of sriracha / hot sauce, or a jalapeno which they want you to cut up and include.  So whenever I see something that looks good but listed as “spicy”, I can check the ingredient list first and see what makes it spicy, If I think the thing still sounds good without the spicy part, I can order it.  So yeah, I’ll toss spicy ingredients, but that is 100% my choice and it makes things better because it gives me more variety to order those meals and still make it to my own taste.

Oh, and occasionally, the produce is just bad when you get it or not long after.  I haven’t had this problem often, mostly with ginger and garlic.  I do evaluate which meal has the most perishables when I get my box on Mondays and make those first.  Apparently you can call customer service if this happens for a small credit, but I just use pre-diced garlic or powdered ginger when this has happened to me.

So, this would be a 4.5 out of 5 except for... as discussed above... I end up tossing out HF vegetables on occasion I know I hate and won’t eat, and they won’t let me make substitutions. 

But also... cooking for myself... when I make a big batch of something that lasts 4 - 6 portions... more often than I’d like to admit, the last portion or two would never get eaten.  Sometimes I’d TELL myself I’d eat them in a week or so and freeze them only to throw it all away months later.

So let’s call this a 4 out of 5.  Overall, significantly less food waste with HF.

Reason Five: Save Time

I thought that doing HF would mean less prep-work and less time in the kitchen, especially with their easy-to-follow recipes and pre-measured ingredients.

So in that way, yes, time is saved, and it so again takes that mental load off in a lot of ways of not having to make all those pesky decisions.  The materials you’re working with and what you need to do are all Right There for you.  It’s really, nice.

As a side note, like I said I’m a good cook, and I haven’t had any problems following along anything I’ve made, but there were a few things I think are more of a moderate skill level and could be a little challenging for newcomers.  But then, I see people on the HF subreddit all the time saying they learned to cook with no skill and they find the recipes easy so... we’re good there.

However, Saving Time loses points for two big reasons:

First, I’m only making two portions of each meal.  Which, ok... this is my decision.  I could order four portions per meal.  But then... hey that’s taking big points away on the “variety” front. 

The Vegetable Chopping / prep work on a lot of the recipes often takes 10 - 20 minutes, depending on the number of fruits and veggies.  So yay for meeting Goal #3 (more veggies) even if it is balanced out by Goal #5.

And unfortunately, most meals end up taking up more dishes than I’d like to clean up (usually at least a pan and baking sheet, sometimes also a pot.  Plus knife, cutting board, tongs, stirring spoon, maybe a zester, etc.)  So no time is saved on cleanup, either.

Mostly where time is saved is having to pick out recipes and making sure you have/buy all the ingredients.  Not much is saved in the actual cooking.

I do, however, enjoy the time I spent cooking and the knowledge that I’m gonna make something good, so we’ll give it a bit back, there.

As a time saver, I’d give HF a 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Reason Six: Save Money

Y’all, Hello Fresh is expensive.  Honestly the #1 reason I re-evaluate whether I want to keep going with it every few weeks is the cost.  Even though I can afford it.

For basically six meals a week, I’m paying $63 for the food, plus $9 for the shipping.

Which means I’m paying $12 a meal.  For food I make myself.

Not cheap.  A luxury.

Where I don’t feel quite so bad about it is the fact that... for the most part, I am wasting a lot less food.  Except, as mentioned, when I can’t swap out vegetables I hate for something I’d actually eat.

So that makes it irk me even more when I am throwing out vegetables I really hate, because they’re expensive vegetables.

Also that price tag is motivation to make and eat every meal.

Overall, my grocery bills have gone down... honestly pretty significantly.  Because I’m not overbuying food!  Now, they haven’t gone down enough to even out the cost for Hello Fresh... I’m still probably spending about 50% more overall for each dinner now than I was before.

This isn’t a cost savings.  It’s an expense, but one I can afford.  And part of writing out this post is to remind myself to decide when the experience is no longer worth the expense.

1 out of 5 stars.

Reason Seven: Eat Better

I would like to challenge myself to define “Better” because that’s all I wrote down when I made the list.

Healthier?  Eeeehhhhhh.... maybe?  But not much.

Hello Fresh does offer lighter choices, and sometimes I pick those because they look good and are filled with things I will eat!

But I’m just as likely to pick the most calor-ific things on the menu.

HF also adds a lot of Sour Cream to their recipes, and encourage you to salt and butter your food liberally.  I try to cut down on some of this where I think it’s too much.  But sometimes there’s not much to cut out and still have the meal you ordered.

But also I’m not eating any worse calorie-wise than I was before, probably.  And overall I’m eating a lot more “real food” instead of “packaged food” and fast food than I was.... especially pre-pandemic.  And again, I AM eating a lot more vegetables, so.... that’s... better?

If I define better as Tastier, yeah, I’m doing pretty good in that regard, haha. 

So Better as in healthier: 2.5 of 5 stars.

Better as in tastier: 4 out of 5 stars.

Overall Scoring & Tips

Okay, overall that comes out to a 3.18 out of 5, which I’d round up to a 3.5... which is a pretty good score for how I feel about HF overall.  My current plan is to keep doing it until I go back to working in the office again, and re-evaluate.  For now, it works for me.

IF YOU WANT TO TRY IT, this is my referral link, you’ll get $70 off over a month’s worth of meals (so like, $20 or something off 3 boxes and $10 off the last one, something like that. 

I also have four “Free box” codes to give out, PM me if you want one of those.  I don’t think those are compatible with the $70 off link, but it might be a box of completely free food for you?  I don’t know how it works, but this may be the better deal?  PM me.

If you decide to go for it, here’s a few tips:

Every week or two, go in and choose your meals, don’t let HF choose for you unless you really don’t care.

Read the ingredient list and make sure there’s not too much stuff you don’t like coming in a meal.

The extras are pretty expensive and not really worth it.

Plan on each meal taking about 45 minutes to cook from start to finish including chopping vegetables.  Another 10 - 20 with cleanup depending if you have to handwash dishes or not.

Look for ways to make the meal healthier, especially if it encourages you to add more butter and salt near the end.  You probably do NOT need to do so.

Buy a decent pepper.  I love McCormick’s Peppercorn Medley pepper grinder.  Also sea salt grinder is my personal salt preference.

Add some of your own seasonings.  I buy a jar of pre-diced garlic (yes yes I know the criticisms of the stuff but it’s easy) and throw in a half tablespoon or so of that into a lot of recipes.  Also there are a lot of potatoes that they want you to just cook with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Throw some garlic or onion salt on them, or some Lawry’s Seasoning Salt or steak salt of your choice for some variety.

Your basic 2 quart pot, 8 - 12″ frying pan and cookie sheet, plus a cutting board, decent veggie knife, and typical kitchen utensil set are all you need.  However, a decent meat thermometer and a zester that collects the zest as you go are both highly recommended. 

A sieve and very small rice cooker have also been a lifesaver for making good rice that doesn’t get overcooked.

[smokeybrand]

Smokey band Movie Reviews: Wowza

The Suicide Squad is the best film DC has made since The Dark Knight. That’s it. That’s the review. If you want to know why i can say that with unassailable confidence, you can continue reading but from this point on, i am literally just going to gush about this f*cking thing like a straight up school girl.  It’s that good and you should go watch it right now. This is about to be a love letter to the best film I've seen all year, mostly because i haven’t seen any A24 flicks, but this thing is a fantastic consolation for that glaring disappointment.

The Inspired

The writing in this movie is easily the best the DCEU has to offer. I say that knowing there are some people who believe BvS is f*cking Shakespeare and MoS is Hemingway. They’re not. They’re both dogsh*t. The Suicide Squad absolutely is everything the neckbeard fanboys want those films to be. I marvel at how well the events blend, how organically the character interact, how real they feel in a movie with a giant kaiju space starfish as the driving conflict for the plot. It’s f*cking inspired and lays solid ground work for very exceptional aspect of this movie going forward. Your film starts on the page and James Gunn understands that sh*t very well.

The emotion in this movie is palpable. I literally teared up toward the end. That’s rare for me because I'm kind of an emotionless monster but that line, “I’m a superhero!” f*cking gut checked me. Gunn has done that to me three times. “WE are Groot.” "He may have been your father, boy. But he wasn't your daddy." It wasn’t Pete swinging in after the “On your left.” in Endgame but it was close. Dude is too good at that sh*t and it’s weird that Marvel is willing to let him go. They better lock that dude the f*ck up!

Chemistry is everything for an ensemble like this and this cast definitely has that. I bought their interactions without having to suspend my disbelief, not like in other, lesser SKWAD films. I particularly like the relationship between Ratcatcher II and Bloodsport. That sh*t was sweet and brought a legitimate smile to my face.

I mentioned how well this film was written but, aside from the brilliant plot that made all of these misfit killers relevant, the character work really goes a long way to selling this narrative. Like, you absolutely fall in love with Polka Dot Man by the end of this thing. They made Peacemaker an irredeemable bastard. Like, do you know how well you have to develop a character played by John f*cking Cena, for people to hate him? He’s the White people version of The Rock! That’s near impossible but they definitely pull it off. It’s like Gunn watched the first SKWAD, saw what they did with El Diablo and just decided to do that. And when i say “do that’, i mean actually write these f*cking characters as people instead of stereotypes and tropes.

The Great

This is an ensemble film, which means it lives and dies by it’s cast. Well, this motherf*cker is living mas! Not a single character was miscast in this. Not a one. From the supporting characters like Alice Braga’s Sol Soria and Peter Capaldi’s Thinker, to the expendable distraction SKWAD. Loved seeing Jai Courtney’s Captain Boomerang again and i even like Pete Davidson’s Blackguard. I can’t stand Pete Davidson. This cast is MCU levels of excellent but, of course, there are standouts.

Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag does the best work of his career. This dude almost always sucks in the roles he takes on but I'm starting to think that’s because of the direction he’s given because dude kills it as Flag in this. I genuinely liked him this time around. He felt like a real person and not some caricature of whatever the generic US Marine is supposed to be.

Margot Robbie is the live action Harley Quinn. She embodies this character like Ledger did Joker and RDJ did Stark. It’s that good and this version of Harley is easily the best. She feels complete, like she’s finally the Harls in the comics and i love it. This Harleen is who the character should have been from the jump but a lot of that was on Margot. She had to grow into the character, develop her ability because the first time she donned that Puddin’ necklace was rough. She’s come a long way and so has Harley.

I touched on this before but John Cena’s Peacemaker is a f*cking bastard. This casting genius because of the message behind the movie. I’ll get into that later but casting the most All-America motherf*cker to play the villain in a film about US involvement in Sovereign Foreign nations? And for Cena to literally play up his Patriot shtick only to turn out to be an allegory for the sordid reality of America? Bro, this sh*t got over. Cena is outstanding as Peacemaker. This cat really does have the chops to be a movie star. Looking forward to this show they gave him, for sure.

Polka-Dot Man is arguably the best character in this entire film. I love what Gunn wrote for him and absolutely adore how David Dastmalchian gave the character life. He had the best arc in the entire film and i really enjoyed his journey. When he got his moment, i teared up a little bit. Dude deserved that. Dude earned that. For me to have such a visceral reaction to that scene is testament to how well  Dastmalchian did his job!

Listen, i love Idris Elba. I do. Cat has all of the swagger. He’s easily as charismatic as Obama and i dig that. However, he just plays Idris Elba. Like, his Bloodsport is literally just John Luther but, you know, murder prone. That’s not a bad thing, it definitely works, but, if I'm being honest, as a character, he’s the weakest of the lot but that’s how good everyone is in this. Idris f*cking Elba is the weakest character in this cast! What?? It’s not even like he’s bad or anything, he just plays the same dude over and over.

And now we get to my favorite character in this flick, Ratcatcher II. Listen, i have no idea who the f*ck Daniela Melchior is, but she is the absolute heart of this film, the moral compass of this team, and she never shirks away from that challenge. She has outstanding chemistry with Elba and the relationship between their two characters is the sweetest sh*t I've seen in a long time. It reminded me a lot of Logan and Laura. Melchior, if he chooses, can have a great career in Hollywood because she’s a real talent.

The Good

The plot to this thing makes sense. It’s not something as intricate as The Dark Knight but it’s head-and-shoulders better than anything the DCEU has produced and objectively sh*ts on the SKWAD that came before it. Destabilizing a small Latin American nation feels more like something Waller would have theses assholes do, rather than trying to kill a f*cking god with boomerangs and bullets. This movie is everything the first SWKAD attempt wants to be.

The violence and gore in this is ramped up to a eleven. There is a lot of grotesque sh*t in this thing and it starts the second Blackguard gets his face blown off. Like, his entire f*cking face. You see ALL of that sh*t and SO much more. Like, it gets grimy and i appreciated that. A SKWAD film needs that blood. This is a team of remorseless killers. We, as the audience, need to feel that and this flick delivers.

James Gunn can direct his ass off. When they announced he was going to be in charge of this film way back when, i knew it was going to be legit. When they announced t was a hard R, i needed it in my life. We’re talking Guardians with murder. Were talking the quintessential James Gunn vision and what a vision it is. Not only did he direct the f*ck out of this movie, but he wrote it, too! Mans has the only writing credit on this production. This is all him! It’s wild seeing the difference between directors on display. Gunn delivered a film that one could argue is the best of the year while Zack Snyder made f*cking Army of the Dead. The discrepancy between the quality of these two films is why i hate Snyder so much and have all of the love for Gunn.

The imagery in this thing is f*cking top tier. There are shot that are legitimate art It's a weird juxtaposition considering how bloody some of these scenes get but, f*ck, is it gorgeous!

I have to mention the editing. I usually don’t bother because it’s always adequate and, admittedly, it feels only slightly better in this film but it’s competent. It’s better than the first and you really feel that sh*t. Like, i watched the movie in preparation for this one and, oh my god, the difference in an actual team of professional film editors really cut a great film. Who’ have thought letting a f*cking trailer house construct your movie that it would end up feeling like a ton of trailers strung together and be bad?

This movie is overtly political. It has a lot to say about the influence of the US abroad. It doesn’t shy away from the realities of our international policy and really hammers home the reality of what the United States is, rather than the way we portray ourselves to be. This culminates in a struggle between Flag and Peacemaker; Both soldiers to the core but on opposite ends of the American ideal. It’s actually really brilliant and, if you aren’t paying attention, will go over your head. This is how you instill your politics into a film. This is how you execute ideals in a narrative. Gunn has a lot to say and he says it in the loudest way, but with the quietest voice.

The Okay

The only beef i can see people having with this is the exposition dumps. There are a few but they kind of stall the overall flow. I didn’t mind them too much because, by the time we get to them, the film has built up so much good will by being just fantastic.

The Verdict

I f*cking loved this movie, dude. Look how long this list of dope sh*t is. I literally itemized all of the reasons why this flick is so great. I can’t articulate it and more clear. I told you at the very beginning, literally the first thing i wrote, that The Suicide Squad is the best film in the DCEU and i mean that sh*t. Grace Randolph is a f*cking hack. Don’t listen to her incredibly bias opinion. Just f*cking go watch it and decide for yourself! It’s in theaters right now and on HBO max for free.

[birlcholtz]

any bittyholtz headcanons👀

holster knows he’s big ok? and he realizes pretty quick his sophomore year that bitty is Not Great at handling large guys coming at him quickly. so out of consideration for this tiny frosh, who is cute but holster can also tell is scared shitless by ransom and holster being their loud selves, holster tries to be conscious of bitty and respect his space (and also not yell too much around him because who knows what specifically bothers him)

and the great thing about ransom and holster being best bros for so long is that holster doesn’t have to explain what he’s doing to ransom, ransom just kind of matches him and that’s that

and holster is delighted every time bitty opens up a bit more and relaxes a bit more around the team, and when he comes out to ransom and holster holster internally is like oh. oh of COURSE. of course big loud jocks who talk about hooking up with women all the time and check people really hard on the ice bother him. duh holster

but holster would NEVER hurt someone for being gay that’s a huge asshole move and he feels it is Very Important That Bitty Knows That Holster Would Never Hurt Him. why does he feel it’s so important?? that’s a question for later holster isn’t a whole ‘analyze my feelings’ dude

so holster actively makes an effort to be around bitty in a non-threatening way. by a couple of months into spring semester they’re very comfortable around each other, comfortable enough that bitty jokes about their size difference and at one point he literally jumps into holster’s arms (who catches him on instinct) and then holster is like oh my god i’m holding bitty. oh my god he’s so small but so muscular. oh my god his hair smells so nice oh god oh fUCK

there is literally so much more under the cut. (send me ur headcanons for rarepairs/qpps!)

bitty, for his part, was initially very wary of ransom and holster for exactly the reasons holster figured out. it also doesn’t help that ransom dresses like a preppy frat bro and holster dresses like a messy frat bro. they’re both frat bros and bitty takes a long time to warm up to them.

but what does help is the way holster always lets bitty know he’s there before he gets too close (sometimes bitty is in the zone in the kitchen and doesn’t notice things like his teammates entering), and the way he doesn’t friendly-punch bitty like he does ransom. or jack. or shitty. or even lardo honestly nobody’s safe. except bitty is.

holster is also definitely responsible for putting some of bitty’s favorite songs on the kegster playlist and bitty definitely finds out and his heart warms a little more

and once bitty’s come out to ransom and holster and they don’t treat him any differently or weirdly and still profess their love for him when he bakes things without a single no homo, bitty finds himself hanging around with them a little more?

ransom likes to study in the attic without distractions so that means that bitty and holster wind up spending a lot more time together and listen. bitty can’t spend that much time with holster without noticing that the guy is a) extremely tall b) ripped and c) has an excellent jawline. and bitty is only human y’all

when he plays music in the kitchen holster will always dance (and sing along if he knows the words, or enough of the words to get them wrong in a funny way because bitty’s laugh sounds like angels singing and okay yeah holster is smitten)

holster Cannot make pies because he cannot touch pastry, bitty forbids him from trying before he even asks because his hands are too warm and he��ll fuck it all up. (holster, internally, is pleased bitty’s noticed. bitty, internally, is like fuck was that too weird) BUT if holster is in there he usually gets dragged into stirring things or chopping things or handing bitty sticks of butter from the fridge and basically whatever he can do without fucking up the pastry

and a while after that holster is like hang on wait it’s been a while since i realized i had a crush on bitty and it has Not gone away should i like. i don’t know. fucking tell him i’m into guys or something like that?? that would be smart

this is more how they get together than a list of headcanons LMAO i always get distracted and this is so fucking long omg

so he’s like rans. how do i do this. and ransom is like you should blast gettin’ bi from crazy ex girlfriend and holster is like weird. i love it.

other things holster does to subtly let bitty know he’s bi: loudly discuss his plans for going to pride that summer, make a lot of bi puns and hope one of them lands, show bitty funny posts from the lgbtq+ samwell student group on facebook

eventually bitty is like . hm. holster is either a VERY supportive ally. or he is trying to tell me something. and after the 80th bi meme post from the facebook group he’s like holster. hon. are you trying to tell me something

and holster is like YES. I AM BISEXUAL and bitty’s like oh that’s great!! (internally: can i climb him like a tree yet)

and then bitty’s like well thanks for telling me! and holster is like uh yeah! (because listen he’s good at wheeling but he is SO bad at wheeling bitty because this isn’t just someone cute he found at a kegster u know??? it’s BITTY and holster kind of wants to sweep him off his feet but in like. a gentlemanly way that won’t scare him)

when holster relates this interaction to ransom ransom is like oh my fucking god holster you could have told him and holster is like yeah and i did not for some fucking reason???????? ransom. i’m dumb and ransom is like no you just caught feelings

(bitty, to shitty: hey so uh. if a guy aggressively hints he’s into guys for like. a month. and then when i ask him straight out he tells me he’s bi. what does that mean. and shitty’s like i mean i wouldn’t know unless i know the guy?? but i wouldn’t ask u to tell me bc like. hes gotta choose who he’s out to u know and bitty’s like yeah i mean u know him but maybe i’ll ask him who else he’s out to bc i need some advice and shitty is like hell yeah)

the next day, bitty’s like holster are u out to anyone else?? just bc the team seems kinda. hetero. except for me. and holster is like oh yeah rans knows and shitty knows. also johnson. and jack if he’s not stupid because i’ve definitely had guys stay over. but mostly just the guys in the haus yeah

then they go to murder stop ‘n shop and buy baking ingredients. holster carries a metric fuck ton of flour and butter and pretends he doesn’t notice bitty staring at his arms (but he might flex just a little more than necessary)

so bitty’s like EXCELLENT. and then he talks to shitty again and is like IT’S HOLSTER AND I’M SUPER INTO HIM WHAT DO I DO and shitty’s like hooooo boy. and then HE’S like well uh. holster doesn’t like. feel the need to formally come out to people usually like the way he told me was by just telling me about a guy he hooked up with last year with zero context or warning? like i don’t know holster as well as, like, rans, but he definitely wants you specifically to know that he’s bi.

and bitty’s like intriguing. i’m gonna go combust now. and shitty’s like cool catch ya later.

so then bitty decides there’s only one way to find out if holster’s into him. and it’s not asking him, what the fuck?? no obviously not. it’s wearing very short shorts and touching him a lot and watching him to see if he blushes or gets flustered. bitty may not be a blunt or forthright person when it comes to hitting on people but he can at least make it impossible for holster to try and hide any feelings he may or may not have.

so rip holster is what i’m saying. but he also observes how much bitty is still watching him-- usually when bitty is doing something like wearing very short shorts or dancing at a kegster or flinging himself into holster’s lap-- and he’s like HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. because also holster is like way more experienced with like. relationships in general? like he’s familiar with what someone flirting with him looks like. so he’s like alright well if bitty wants to make me suffer i’m going to make him suffer too. (’rans can i borrow your skinny jeans’ ‘is this so you can get back at bitty’ ‘yes it’s important’ ‘yeah sure whatever’)

holster knows he’s jacked, he just has to make sure bitty knows it. he also knows that bitty is comfortable with holster standing pretty close to him now so he’s going to use that to his advantage since holster is also tall as Fuck. (obviously he doesn’t do anything creepy like stand right behind him or smth but like. if they’re talking. holster is gonna get just a little in bitty’s space just so bitty has to look up at him a little. is this partially because bitty has really nice eyelashes? yeah)

basically what i’m saying is once holster decides to get back at bitty all hell breaks loose. literally nobody else in the haus can deal with the sexual tension when they’re in the same room. bitty is now pretty sure that holster is into him. shitty texts bitty saying ‘can you please bone for the love of god’. for good measure shitty also texts holster saying the same thing. he’s so tired but also this is hilarious

like it gets EXTRA. bitty and holster can both bend and snap and they DO. holster intentionally spills water on his t-shirt to make it cling more. when he sits at the kitchen table doing work bitty comes by and leans over his shoulder to see what he’s doing and if he brushes holster’s neck a little as he does it, well, that’s between them. at one point holster and bitty are both standing at the counter washing dishes and holster starts chirping bitty about not being able to reach the top shelf and asks if he wants to stand on a chair and bitty’s like hmm or you could just carry me. and holster almost has a conniption and it gets even worse when they finish washing up and bitty’s like oh great the counter’s all cleared off! and hops up and sits on it and that gets his face a little closer, vertically, to holster, who is suddenly aware that bitty is wearing very short shorts AGAIN, which like, seem to have become his uniform, and that when bitty sits like that holster can barely see those shorts, that’s how tiny they are, and it looks like bitty’s just sitting there in a shirt and nothing else and holster’s brain supplies a LOT of images once he thinks of that and hoo boy.

and holster’s like how can i get back at him. and bitty’s sitting right next to the hanging cabinets so holster grabs some of the plates from the drying rack that look dry enough and goes and stands *right* in front of bitty. like he’s not actually brushing bitty’s legs where they dangle off the counter but if he stepped forward like. half an inch. he would be. and they make eye contact for a second and then, without moving, holster starts putting plates away.

and bitty is like oh my fucking god WHAT else do i have to do (he doesn’t say this out loud) and then when holster’s done putting away the plates and it looks like he’s going to go grab more bitty just. wraps his legs around holster’s waist and pulls him in (and holster is like holy FUCK because he knew bitty’s legs were strong but not THAT STRONG HOLY SHIT) and at this point there’s really nothing else for them to do but make out at the kitchen counter and that’s what they do. (bitty does, in fact, climb that man like a tree)

okay so some actual headcanons lol. you thought you knew bitty was a clothes stealing fiend?? you were wrong. he absolutely is but you just didn’t know how much. does holster still have literally any of his sweatshirts? probably not honestly

the only way bitty will sit on the green couch will be if holster is sitting on the green couch and bitty is sitting in his lap because that way he can avoid any actual contact with the couch

when bitty makes anything with blueberries in it holster steals some but he also feeds bitty some because he’s mushy like that

they continue to go to extreme lengths to try and get each other flustered in public. shitty is so tired.

they share playlists constantly and even more of bitty’s favorites find their way onto the kegster playlist

when bitty moves into the haus holster is in his room c o n s t a n t l y. he just likes the space ok??? there’s lil reminders of bitty everywhere and of course if bitty is there too then that’s just the BEST

the puck bunny halloween costume physically murders adam birkholtz

[sinceileftyoublog]

Gretchen Lieberum Interview: Eerie Nostalgia

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Singer-songwriter Gretchen Lieberum wanted to make an album of standards while totally subverting your preconception of what that sounded like. With This May Only Be A Dream, which came out Friday, she succeeds, in both capturing the magic of old recordings and performance styles while talking full advantage of the time-bending quality of modern production. In BAFTA-winning composer Keefus Ciancia, Lieberum picked the perfect partner. After singing over piano, she sent what were basically demos to Ciancia, who removed the piano, deconstructing and reconstructing the songs to then be rerecorded with session musicians. The result shares the ambition of something like Julia Holter’s version of “Hello Stranger” but over a whole album. Album opener “Come Rain or Come Shine”, which has been recorded by Ray Charles, Billie Holliday, and Chet Baker, combines lurking, fluttering woodwinds with reverb-laden vocals and chaotic orchestration. On “Blue Skies”, a song that you expect to build up with drums, strings, and chorus, like in a climax scene in a Hollywood epic, the strings cut in and out, toying with your perception. While there are some songs that sound familiar, like the Fiona Apple-esque percussive clatter of “Angel Eyes” or the solemn, quiet closer “While We’re Young”, the back-and-forth between subtlety and Technicolor orchestration keeps you on your toes.

A couple months ago, I spoke with Lieberum from her home in L.A. and Ciancia from his in France about how the album was constructed, their approach to recording, and how they would describe the music. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: So this seriously just started with you singing over piano, Gretchen?

Gretchen Lieberum: I have a friend who has a studio in his house. I wanted to do an album of standards for years and years. It’s just an idea I’ve had I couldn’t let go of. I wanted to do an album of these songs but interpreted in an unusual way, not acoustic bass, drums, piano, and that’s it. I’ve known Keefus for years, and he was the only guy I wanted for the job. So I waited years and years, and finally, the timing was right to start working on it. I’d just record vocals with my friend Peter at his studio playing piano, which is great because I do much better in low pressure situations. If I’m in a big fancy studio, I’m like, “Oh god, how much is this costing?” It’s hard for me to be emotional and in the moment. I was just able to go to my friend’s house and record any song that popped into my head or I was feeling. I would send them to Keefus, and he would pick his faves. I think I recorded maybe 25 songs in all, and we ended up with 10.

Keefus Ciancia: The most important part is what Gretchen said--the comfort zone that Gretchen was in where she could get to the feel and heart of the song, comfortably with Peter. He’s an amazing piano player, and they had such a good rhythm that everything I was getting made it so that it was just real. It felt right. That was always fun to be able to open these and also have total separation, pick out Peter’s stuff and start reimagining things, erasing the chords. Gretchen was on fire! She was knocking them out. A lot of great pieces I’ve never heard, too, which I really enjoyed. Maybe that was good for me, too, to not know those standards as well so I wasn’t trapped in the chords. Maybe my lameness of being a hack--I wanted to be a jazz player but I couldn’t do it! [laughs]

GL: That’s what’s so great. I didn’t want a jazz guy to produce it. That’s what ended up happening--he would choose his own chords underneath the melodies that were really interesting and cool.

SILY: Did you know he was gonna remove the piano?

GL: Oh yeah. I know Keefus’s aesthetic and how he works, so I was like, “I’m gonna send you this, have fun, go to town.” I sent him literally zero notes and never knew what I was gonna get back. There’d be a song that’s a stark ballad that would come back with a full orchestra, some of the tempo sped up, some of it slowed down. Different lines chopped up into different places. Quite a few times, I’d take the song and rerecord the vocal to go with what Keefus did, to emotionally match what he created. Sometimes not--the song “Come Rain or Come Shine” was one take I did at Peter’s house and didn’t change at all.

SILY: How did you whittle down from the initial list of 25 songs for this record?

GL: This project was so much about emotion and love and love of these songs. What songs I loved singing and what was inspiring me. I grew up in a house where jazz was constantly playing. My father wasn’t a musician but a huge fan. It was a big part of my life growing up. I was in the jazz band as a singer in high school. These are songs I’ve known my whole life. There were some that I tried that I didn’t feel that I didn’t send to Keefus.

There are a few that aren’t jazz standards, too. We do a Beach Boys song, which is also a song that I love.

SILY: They’re standards nonetheless, independent of genre.

GL: Yes.

SILY: What made you want to release “Come Rain or Come Shine” as the first single and open with it?

GL: It’s just one of my favorites. One of the ones I’m most proud of. It’s indicative of the project as a whole. It’s a standard I approach traditionally from how I’m singing it, but there are these surreal flourishes around it. Also, I mean, what an intro, that [screams] “Ahhh!”

KC: I agree.

SILY: What was the process of getting the session musicians in after Keefus worked on the songs?

KC: Basically, it was kind of known all the way through that once we got these bodies we’d get some more breath and air on it to get more of the quality Gretchen and I love from old 50′s recordings but also taking it somewhere new. That studio is now closed--Vox Studios--such an amazing place that was perfect for that record. It was the first commercial studio in Hollywood through Paramount.

GL: It was the longest continuously running studio in the world, I read.

KC: Someone will move in, I’m sure. Woody [Jackson], who owns it, there was no rebuilding the rooms because they sounded so good from how they were built in the 40′s. The room is amazing, and his engineer Michael Harris is incredible. He was the first one to get his ears on this stuff besides Gretchen and I. To be able to put it in a room, listen through a different system, warm things up for his outboard gear. We had some of our favorite musicians. It wasn’t a ton of folks, but the dream scenario where we had 5 days and a rolling, “Get moving”. The next day, Gretchen sings, then some more people come in.

GL: Jay Bellerose is so damn good. So tasty. He just goes in and does his thing.

KC: His heart breathes all the old jazz but he’s also someone who likes to keep pushing things. I think that was the trick with us--we always want to hear something new. Of course, there are some things that sound great that you should do again, but we all listen to music so much you just want something new. Sometimes, you have to make it yourself.

SILY: The album does sound new even though it has older reference points, both the songs themselves and aesthetically. A lot of older jazz tunes with woodwinds and fluttery strings have something eerie and disorienting about them. Thinking about a track like “Blue Skies”, when the sound cuts in and out. That’s not something you hear on traditional “standards” records. To what extent were you trying to achieve that eerie nostalgia?

GL: I think “eerie nostalgia”’s just our M.O., you know? [laughs]

KC: I like that, eerie nostalgia.

GL: I don’t even think we try. 

SILY: “For All We Know” starts out with quiet plucks of string but ends up a swinging jazz tune, the moment on here that’s the most “traditional.”

GL: Even on that one, it’s funny because our friend David Ralicke, who plays the horns on everything--he’s incredible and has such great taste. But this one, I was like “Keefus, I don’t know.” Keefus was like, “It’s gotta get big. It’s gotta be a party at the end, an explosion!” Ralicke, he sent a bunch of horns. When he sent them in, they were very bright and intense, and I was like, “Oh god, this is a little weird!” Keefus was like, “Don’t worry, I’m gonna make it weird and demented.” It is traditional, but something about the way it’s mixed or the added affects give it that eeriness, which I love.

One thing Keefus often did that was really surprising to me was there were songs I sent as straight ballads, like this one. If you listen to the lyrics, the first half is like, “Who knows what’s gonna happen? Life is so uncertain.” But then it’s like, “Who cares? Tomorrow may never come.” And it’s a celebration. It’s one of my favorite songs now after being most uncertain about it at first. Keefus, you sent me Frank Sinatra, Jr. singing “Black Knight” [as a reference]. It starts as a ballad and explodes, an emotional outburst.

SILY: Is there any other specific track on here you think is a standout?

KC: Each one is such a little episode, that even that was tricky to put in order for the record. It almost would have been interesting to go old school and release 45s, make each one of them a single and B-side. When you hear “Wild Is The Wind”, on my radio, I would make that a single. It’s totally different than the others. It’s not this powerhouse. But if I bought it as a single, I would think it’s a really beautiful single. Same with “Who Knows Where The Time Goes”. That’s on Keefus & Gretchen radio. [laughs]

GL: “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” was the very first song Keefus did. It was the only vocal recorded at my house, with a different friend in my dining room, with a little laptop mic set up. We used that vocal. It’s a pretty special one, and genre-defying. “Wild Is The Wind” fits comfortably in the jazz section. Or not--I don’t know. It’s a weird question. One of the things I hate more than anything is when I’m uploading my music and it asks you to pick a category. I don’t know. I hate picking a category. Nothing feels quite right, and it feels like a mixture of all of these things.

KC: Gretchen is a huge jazz fan listening for a long time, but jazz records strayed from her and my tastes as it went along. Jazz records went on a different road and started getting not such a punk rock vibe. It was a classy thing, not so underground. That was one thing we were talking about when finishing the record. We think it should be heard by all age groups and invite them to learn these pieces because they might not have the chance to learn them as often. To pick a genre can really be dangerous for all artists because there are a ton of artists that like a ton of different music and can make a ton of different music and change their records as they go. That was big, too: approaching this apart from being a jazz record and bringing in new listeners. Gretchen and I don’t know exaxctly how this works with the tagging on Spotify, but if you put “jazz” on it, does that mean other people will never listen to it?

GL: I don’t think it is a jazz album. It’s an album of standards, but I wouldn’t call it a jazz album.

KC: I like to call it torched songs instead of torch songs.

SILY: What was the overall approach to the sequencing?

GL: I really pulled my hair out. I was crying myself to sleep at night. It was hard. One thing we ended up doing, which was Keefus’s idea, was he felt like the A-side of the record leaned themselves more to samples and surreal electronic elements. Keefus was like, “Once you get sucked into the album, the vibe is very complementary, and you can take people anywhere.” So after the first 4-5 songs, “Wild is the Wind” comes, which is a stripped down ballad. From then, you’re just on the ride.

SILY: What was the inspiration behind the album title?

GL: I had this idea of taking a line from one of the songs as the album title. I went through all the songs and went through some of my favorite lines. At one point, I thought I was gonna call it “How Blue The Sky” which is from the last song, “While We’re Young.” But then I thought “This May Only Be A Dream” felt really good with the dreaminess of this music and the somewhat surreal journey it takes you on. One thing I’m really proud of about the record is it takes you on an emotional journey from start to finish. I know the kids don’t listen to albums anymore. Peter was one of the people I sent it to, and he said, “I feel like I watched a film listening to this album.” That felt right.

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art?

GL: Keefus’s daughter Raven [Violet Ciancia-Vincent] is a really talented visual video artist. She’s the one that directed the video for “Come Rain or Come Shine.” We made a video for the song “Don’t Explain”, and that’s just a still from the video. She layers things like a collage, so there’s a video of me with fireworks on top of it. When I was trying to come up with something to make the cover, I took a bunch of stills from the video, and that one jumped out at me, especially with the title, This May Only Be A Dream. I just thought it really worked beautifully together. The font, to me, is a throwback to the Blue Note covers. I know a lot of people do Blue Note covers, so I wanted to do a little nod to it without fully going there.

SILY: Are you planning on doing any shows?

GL: When we do end up playing live again--Keefus, I should probably talk to you about what the hell you think I should do--but some of it would be laptop-tracked songs with live bass or drums on top of it. That’s possible, right, Keefus?

KC: I would dream of a full-on 10-to-12 piece orchestra. For a special show in Los Angeles, and when everything explodes, a special show in New York and Paris. I think you could get the right band, and it’s all completely playable.

GL: Maybe a keyboard player adding samples.

KC: Do you play, Jordan? Gretchen’s looking for band members.

SILY: I don’t.

GL: Show me ya stuff, kid! [laughs]

SILY: What else is next for you?

GL: My husband [filmmaker Jacob Aaron Estes] ended up doing an alternate video for “Don’t Explain” that we’re gonna release that I’m pretty excited about. The other thing that I do--which is a totally other universe--is my Prince cover band with Maya Rudolph. I hope we start playing again. That would be great. I am glad, though, that I had so much time to focus on my own music. As much as I love doing Princess, it’s not totally me. I want to really focus on this for a while.

KC: I’m doing Pringles commericals. [laughs] I’ve been working on a bunch of shows and some records and a new soundtrack for a show [Made For Love]. I’ve made a lot of music during the last year and a half. There’s some fun stuff coming up. I’ll start a new Unloved record when our band is allowed to fly over here.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading that’s caught your attention?

GL: My mind just went utterly blank. [laughs] Utterly. I’ve been reading a lot of weird dystopian future stuff to distract my anxiety about the dystopian future stuff we’re dealing with in real life. Reading it calms my nerves.

KC: I watched the Bee Gees documentary [How Can You Mend a Broken Heart] the other night on HBO. I thought it was beautiful. They just touch those places, when you hear those voices.

[larryfanficwriter98]

Chapter Seven

*Fake It Until You Make It Real*

Sorry for the twenty days without an update. My good friend Depression is here visiting and she brought her besties Anxiety and Insomnia with her...so it's been a real party over here.

Harry was jumped wildly and spun around with his spatula in his hand ready to attack the person that decided sneaking up on him in the morning while he sang along to TLC ‘No Scrub’ was a good idea. However, when he was able to focus on who the person was, he saw Louis bent over laughing his ass off into his hand to keep from waking the kids that were still sound asleep. Harry glared at the younger man blushing in embarrassment as he turned back to his stove turning over his bacon.

“I could have hit you with my spatula Louis.” Harry complained.

“Oh yes…that would have caused real damage.” Louis teased, “The kids asleep?”

“Passed out still. I think we’re good for a few more minutes.” Harry said stepping away to grab a mug and hand it to Louis, “Electric kettle over there.” Louis took the mug and moved over to the kettle and opened the drawer that had every tea type imaginable. Louis was still shocked Harry had so much tea and was so organized about it. Though the organized part wasn’t as shocking now that he had seen Harry’s entire house, everything had its place and was organized, and it was a drastic difference compared to his own place where nothing was in its proper place because he didn’t remember where that proper place was anymore.

“So, our parents…how are we dealing with that?” Louis asked.

“I’m taking Halloween weekend off; I was thinking we all meet up here. My family and you family, the kids go trick or treating and us adults who want to cook stay here and make a large dinner. What do you think?”

“A large family dinner on Halloween? You’re either really confident or really stupid.”

“Both. What? Don’t think it’s a good idea? Come on this is a nice neighbor. Most of the houses give out the expensive stuff.” Louis laughed as he sipped his tea, “I think it’s a good idea. I always make graveyard pudding cups then let the kids pick out their top like gummy worms or tombstone chocolate models or candied ghosts. Needless to say, I am the favorite house on the block, and I have hot beverages for the parents if it’s cold.” Louis stared at him before he laughed.

“You’re that house huh? Geesh.”

“We’re that house.” Harry said grinning at him, “Can you get the fruit salad out of the fridge? And the smaller bowl beside it.”

“Of course. How long have you been up for?” Louis asked opening the fridge pulling out the large serving bowl of cut up mixed tangerines, kiwis, blueberries, strawberries, and grapes. He set the fruit bowl on the counter then grabbed the smaller bowl that was clear-yellowish color with diced something inside of it.

“About two hours. I’m an early riser most mornings.” Harry explained as he placed the pancakes on a large serving plate and the bacon and sausage on another serving plate then put them in the oven to stay warm. Harry came over to stand beside him and took the smaller bowl and poured the contents on the fruit before stirring, “Don’t get your underwear in a knot it’s a lemon and honey dressing that compliments the fruits with chopped mint. It adds flavor.” Harry said chuckling.

“It adds flavor.” Louis mocked, “You and your fancy cooking and fresh ingredients. You make me sick.” Harry laughed as Louis walked away and headed to the living room to check on the kids. He decided to gently wake them up and let them know breakfast was ready relieved when they woke up in a good mood with growling bellies.

“Go wash your hands, brush your teeth, and empty your bladders if you have to then come right back down.” Louis said gently watch as the groggily headed upstairs, Freddie with his overnight backpack that had his things in it. He headed back into the kitchen and grabbed the finished fruit salad bowl and set it in the middle of the square table.

“I should tell you to not do that and let the kids handle it, but considering Maddie is clumsy in the mornings I’ll let it slide.” Harry said coming up beside him with the two serving plates.

“They can set the table for lunch.” Louis said rolling his eyes playfully before heading back into the kitchen to grab the four plates, two glass and two kids. He set the table, so he and Harry were facing each other, and the kids were facing each other like they did with dinner last night.

“Milk or juice this morning for Freddie?”

“Probably juice the only time he likes to drink milk with his breakfast is when he has cereal.” Harry came up beside him with a pitcher of juice that he poured into the kids’ cups just high enough that it wouldn’t spill over the edge during the grabbing action by children. A few minuets later the kids came down more awake than when they had headed upstairs and sat down at the table with their now filled plates of cut up pancakes, fruit, a bacon strip, and a sausage link. Harry and Louis made their own plates and sat down digging into the delicious food.

****

After breakfast, the kids went on a Scavenger Hunt for something Louis wasn’t allowed to know about. Maddie and Freddie had both dressed up as scavenger hunters for the occasion and were both very adorable in Louis’ opinion. Especially when they pretended the dogs were wild animals they had to escape from. Louis was currently lounging on the couch with his legs in Harry’s lap as he graded some papers, Harry looking over some papers and occasionally rubbing near his shins and ankles.

What are you looking at over there?” Louis asked laying his stack of papers on his stomach to look at Harry.

“Lawyer papers.” Louis sat up keeping his legs in Harry’s lap and moving closer, so his arm rested on Harry’s shoulder.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just want to be prepared…I don’t want to be blindsided by anything because I didn’t read the updated case papers.” Harry explained looking at him with a tired smile, he shifted to better face him with his arm resting on the back of the couch and his other hand resting between his knees, “What about you? How’s grading going?”

“Oh, grading is fine. It’s tiring but it’s fine. Each year is in the same class, so I only have one set of papers to grade since each year is different work.” Louis explained, “So what are they doing anything?” Louis asked when a loud giggle came from upstairs.

“They’re on a scavenger hunt for the ring box. Maddie asked if she could find it yesterday, so I hid it and made it into a treasure hunt for them. It’s an easy distraction and it makes them feel involved in the engagement process. I took a parenting class by parents online a few years ago that has a whole bunch of tips and tricks from other parents who want to and have formed better relationships with their children as they grow up. The one thing they all emphasized on was making the children feel needed and included in everyday lives. Like with setting the table, it makes them feel included in the dinner process. Helps them with responsibilities and such. Some kids it helps with emotion control. I still go back to website from time to time when I need help with Maddie or just to see what new parents are doing or asking about.”

“So, you’re not always perfect.” Louis teased making Harry laugh as he shook his head.

“No not always.” Harry said looking at him with a soft look on his face, “Are you worried about anything? With the court or marriage or anything?”

“I think I’m most worried about what my nonexistent relationship with Freddie’s father might impact your case, but there’s nothing we can do about that. I know logically it affecting your case is very slim, but still. It’s there. I don’t want that to ruin your chances.”

“It won’t. My lawyer even sent me an email explaining that it most likely be brought up by her lawyer as a way to make you look bad, but your relationship with your son and with Maddie will outweigh that by tons. Especially if Maddie talks with my lawyer about you and says she likes you. He has it on recording that she doesn’t like Hannah’s boyfriend.”

“What do you mean by recording?”

“It’s just a standard interview with the child to get their response on things. He asks her a few questions about what she thinks on certain things and uses it as evidence. Hannah’s lawyer done it as well and has the same recording which looks bad for Hannah considering the things she said. He wanted to do the same with Freddie, but I said no. The lawyers can’t question the child without the parent’s permission, but I don’t want Freddie dragged into this. Now when it comes to the custody hearing when we’re married and living together, they may challenge to do so just so the court knows he likes us being married and likes living with Maddie. That kind of stuff. But again, with him being so young he isn’t able to be questioned without our- well your say so.”

“What type of questions? Would I be able to read them before they’re asked?”

“Yes and no…They have to give you the list of questions before hand and get your approval. Anything you disapprove of you can tell them not to answer. However, it has to be done the same day as the meeting. They have to be in the same room to make sure you don’t influence his answers. With him being younger than Maddie they will most likely question him in a playroom setting and with you in the room but not close enough to influence anything. My lawyer is a father himself, if he thinks at any point Freddie isn’t understanding or just isn’t ready, he’ll end the questioning and they’ll scrap it.”

“Then I’m okay with them questioning Freddie closer to the court date. I want him to get…settled with this new arrangement first, but if your lawyer thinks it’ll help and if Freddie is okay with it then I’m okay with it.”

“Louis you don’t have to do that-“

“I know I don’t, but I want to help. It’s why I’m here after all isn’t it.”

“You’re here to marry me and essentially play the role of the at home papa who has routine work hours that means Maddie won’t be home with a nanny. You’re not here to make your son be questioned by lawyers.”

“I’m not making him do anything. We’ll ask him when it get closer to the time and if he doesn’t want to then we don’t allow it. Where did all that making them feel included speech go off to?” Louis teased.

“My wisdom only comes in short bursts on my days off…unfortunately you’re stuck with average Harry at the moment.

“What a shame. Smart Harry is way hotter.” Harry laughed pinching his leg making Louis jump and quickly hit the hand away.

“I’ll tell my lawyer the next time I speak with him that you’re thinking about it. He wants to meet you at some point anyway, I figured next weekend since I’m on nights we can plan for a meeting over breakfast before I go to bed.”

“Sounds good. We’ll plan like a Saturday breakfast meet up and then while you sleep, I can hang out with- damn Zayn gets Freddie…huh I’ll be free this weekend.”

“Lucky you. Whatever are you going to do with a whole weekend of freedom.”

“Well, I am moving soon so I guess I’ll be organizing things. Maybe go down and see my family for a few hours. Get drunk in the comforts of my home. Who knows? I could just laze around naked all weekend.”

“I hate you. God do I hate you.” Louis laughed resting his head in his hand as he stared at Harry, Harry stared at him mirroring him by resting his head on his hand as well. His amused expression turned soft after a few seconds, “How hard would you slap me if I kissed you?”

“Extremely hard.” Louis said chuckling.

“Like a cheek slap or a chest slap?”

“Probably a cheek.”

“Worth it.” Harry said before he was leaning in and pressing his unbelievably soft and very warm lips against Louis’. His hand that had been resting on the back of the couch cupped the side of his face while the hand that had been resting between his knees squeezed just above them. Louis had his hand raised and primed for the slap he had threatened him with only for it to end up curled in the hair on the back of his head instead. When the slap didn’t happen, Harry leaned further in and deepened the kiss while his hand slid into Louis’ hair pulling him in closer. Louis will forever deny that he got hard within ten seconds of snogging, he didn’t care what his body did, it didn’t happen. He would also deny the fact that he so easily complied with being laid down with Harry above him as if they were teenagers. Because that definitely didn’t happen either. Another thing he would deny was how fast snogging led to grinding considering they were in fact adults…not teenagers.

“DADDY! LOUIS! WE FOUND THE TREASURE!” Maddison shouted from upstairs.

“Funny so did I.” Louis laughed and decided making good on his promise was definitely worth it as he slapped Harry on the shoulder.

“That didn’t happen. We are not fucking teenagers.” Louis said as they quickly sat up and adjusted themselves on the sofa to hide their erections that would dispute his teenager claim. Harry turned to the stairs just as Maddie and Freddie came reached the bottom and ran towards them.

“You found it then huh?” Harry asked.

“Yupp.” Maddison said happily as she handed the box to Harry who dramatically turned so Louis’ wouldn’t be able to see the rings as he made a show of opening the case and inspecting the rings.

“Yeah, these are it...see this one is Louis’ because it’s smaller and this one is mine.” Louis watched as Maddie took one of the rings then came over to Louis and he laughed as he watched Maddie kneel upfront of him and grabbing his hand, “Mads I’m suppose to do that.” Harry said.

“Hush daddy I’m busy getting you a husband.” Louis covered his mouth with his other hand to contain his laughter, “Loulou...” she addressed him seriously.

“Yes, my love?” Louis asked.

“Will you marry my daddy?” She asked, big green eyes looking up at Louis who grinned widely.

“I would be honored to marry your daddy.” Louis said watching as she slid a silver ring on his finger with an elegant and simple gold loop, “very beautiful, what do you think?” he asked smiling at her as she tilted her head.

“I think it’s missing a few diamonds.”

“I’m not much of a diamond man I think your daddy did perfectly. Besides diamond rings are for weddings not engagements.”

“Also, the wedding bands are picked together, the engagement rings are simpler design since they aren’t worn long. Especially in this case.” Harry said leaning over to gently pinch Maddie who giggled leaning away from him.

“Okay you’re turn Freddie.” Maddie whispered though they could still hear her loud and clear. Logic of a child. Freddie grabbed a thicker band that was the same design as his but was in rose gold. Louis watched as his son got down on both knees and grabbed Harry’s hand and asked the same question Maddie had asked him but using the term ‘papa’ instead.

“I would love to marry your Papa Freddie.” Harry said grinning when Freddie none too gently pushed the ring on his finger. Harry grinned over at him then leaned over and pressed a very chaste and quick kiss against his lips. Louis grinned pressing his hand against Harry’s cheek before turning to the kids.

“So how about we convince Harry to go to the dog park before the weather gets bad?” Louis suggesting looking over at harry when the kids cheered and started asking loudly and climbing onto Harry’s lap wildly.

“Alright! Alright!” Harry shouted playfully, “We’ll go to the dog park.” He said glaring at Louis.

[thevintagebluebird]

Unpinned - Seared Fish with Creamed Kale and Leeks

Hello everyone - it’s been a minute. And Allan has been frequently playing NPR podcasts out loud. So hey! Welcome to the end of the longest winter ever to exist! We made it! I lost my energy to cook for a while there but I’m slowly getting back into it, usually sans instructions - I also subscribed to the NY Times and so now y’all are getting a newspaper recipe. We’re full adulting now. Buckle up.

Seared Fish with Creamed Kale and Leeks! Ah crap, I’ve just realize this is two NY Times recipes in a row. I promise the next one will be a handwritten recipe straight from my grandma. She just bought me a new safety mandolin and things are about to get LIT in my kitchen as a result. Safely. Anyway.

Verdict: Is the Pintrest photo complete bullshit? Yes. But to be fair, this was a complete struggle meal for me that I did not adequately prepare for and I used freakin’ frozen cod so like what did I expect.

Is it crazy expensive/time consuming/confusing? I classify the NY Times recipes as ‘intermediate’; I found this to have what felt like more steps than necessary, and took a while. It wasn’t too expensive except that kale and leeks are on my shopping list maybe once every five years, and non-frozen fish would’ve been well worth the money.

Does it taste good? YEAH. Way better than it had any right to taste. You’ll understand why later.

Seared Fish with Creamed Kale and Leeks

INGREDIENTS

4 (5- to 6-ounce) Arctic char or other mild fish fillets, such as salmon

Kosher salt and black pepper

1 ½ pounds curly kale

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 large leek (about 1/2 pound), trimmed, white and pale greens quartered lengthwise then thinly sliced

6 large fresh thyme sprigs

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup heavy cream

1 ½ teaspoons Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon chicken or vegetable stock concentrate, like Better Than Bouillion

Cooked white rice or pearl couscous, warmed, for serving

2 tablespoons olive oil

Prepare your fish: Pat the fish dry, then salt the skin side to help draw out moisture. Set on a plate and refrigerate, uncovered.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high. Prepare your kale: Pull the leaves off the stems and tear leaves into bite-size pieces. Wash vigorously, drain, then set aside.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium. Add the leek, thyme and garlic, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring frequently, until soft, about 7 minutes.

Stir in the cream and bring to a boil over high. Continue to cook on high until thickened, about 5 minutes. Using a fine-mesh sieve set over a liquid measuring cup or small bowl, strain the sauce, pressing to extract as much liquid as possible. (You should have about 1/2 cup sauce.) Set aside the solids and return the sauce to the saucepan. Whisk in the mustard and stock concentrate, and season with salt and pepper. Cover and set aside.

Discard the thyme sprigs and stir the cooked leek mixture into cooked rice, if desired. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Once the sauce is done, blanch the kale in the boiling water until just wilted, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a colander to drain and rinse under cold water. Once cool enough to handle, squeeze out the excess liquid. Add to the strained cream, then season with salt and pepper. Cover, and warm over low, stirring occasionally.

Cook the fish: Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high. Pat the fish dry a second time, then season the skin with pepper, and the flesh with salt and pepper. Add to the hot oil, skin-side down, and cook until the skin is crispy and golden, about 3 to 4 minutes. Carefully flip the fish and cook until the outside starts to turn golden, but the thickest part of the fish is still slightly translucent, about 3 minutes.

Divide the rice (if using), creamed kale and fish among plates and serve immediately.

So here’s what you need! Sort of! You’ll notice I have store brand yellow mustard instead of dijon, coconut milk instead of cream, frozen cod instead of fresh char, no fresh thyme, and I forgot to photograph my (brown not white) rice. Like I said, this one was an unprepared-for struggle.

Our beloved, trusty, 15 year old CVS rice cooker. Hasn’t failed me yet. 

My sous chef rushing to help get the dishes unloaded so I can have some space in our new kitchen! It has counters mounted facing each other with just enough room for a Rew and an Allan to get precisely in each other’s way.

Do the ‘ol cold water dethaw on your bland fish. You couldn’t even remember to thaw the fish properly. You probably don’t deserve to be attempting a NY Times recipe. What were you thinking.

Pretend you have any idea how to make kale edible. The stem seems hard so shred the leafy bits off? The smug smile is a lie.

This kale will be edible right?! Definitely not curly, definitely not as much as the recipe called for.

Leeks! I actually LOVE leeks, I just never interacted with them growing up and don’t really understand which parts you’re supposed to chop/cook/eat and which are meant to be tossed. It’s easy with a carrot - cut off the green and eat the orange. But leeks are just ombre gradients of green then suddenly white? We eat it all? Are some parts better than others? How much is TOO much leek? Special appearance in the background by fancy chocolates from Salem.

Pardon my blurry photos, it is way past time for a new phone. They look like veggie clipped toenails. Delicious.

Ok now it’s time to share my real shame: my coconut milk had spoiled. I did not have any cream. I did not have any real milk. I frantically googled different cream replacements, NONE of which I had the ingredients for. So I made this absolute abomination. It is (forgive me): vanilla greek low-fat yogurt whipped into plain almond milk with a little bit of melted butter stirred in. It smelled like frosting gone bad.

OH WELL IN IT GOES. Things got vaguely...creamy. <eyebrow waggle>

Then it tells you to squeeze all the cream out of your beautiful leeks. Easier said than done. This process was messy and resulted in WAY less liquid than I had hoped - if I’d used real cream I would’ve just...added more. Instead I had leek-flavored vanilla greek yogurt almond juice. DO definitely save the leek bits for your rice!

Pour your pathetic amount of leek yogurt juice back into the pan and desecrate it with flippin’ yellow mustard and boullion. Push down the despair. Make sure to do this while hangry at like 9pm.

“Blanche” your kale, aka give it a day at the sauna. Boiling water for just two minutes then squeeze the ever loving heck out of it. Everything you’re cooking for this recipe ends up with tiny portions WHY.

YUM! Go mix your leek leftovers into your rice. Next time maybe just make leek leftovers and rice and skip everything else? At least this time you started the rice first, good job!

Mix the mustard yogurt juice with your wet leaves. How did all those ingredients shrink so damn much? You are so hungry.

Cook your fish. Remember at the very end you were supposed to, y’know, SEASON it. Absolute amatur hour over here.

Your warm wet leaf goo! It actually smells very good. This is my smallest saucepan, if that gives you any sense of what a tiny portion this made. Thank goodness for leeky rice.

Aaaaaaaaand plated! I told you it didn’t look anything like the Pintrest photo. It was promptly inhaled and while I know hunger is the best seasoning, Allan also agreed it was tasty despite him not liking any of the individual ingredients!

Final final verdict: I don’t have a ton of fish/seafood recipes in my repertoire, so I’m keeping this one around for now but would tackle it again with more kale and double the sauce ingredients, as well as, y’know CREAM and FRESH FISH. But for what a Frankenstein’s monster I made of it, it was pretty good!