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piracytheorist · 4 years ago

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A Kiss for Good Luck (13/16)

Summary: So this is the story of one born lucky, and one born unlucky. Fate will keep making them cross paths, but is it to bring them together, or to test them? Captain Swan AU.

A/N: With this chapter, two more and the epilogue left, I decided to post them day by day! You can expect the next and final updates on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday :D

Rating: T (make sure you’re okay with the warnings on AO3)

Word count for this chapter: 3.6k (51k in total) AO3

Read from the beginning: Tumblr | AO3

Chapter 13: Emma Swan, May 25th – June 22nd 2016

Emma smiles wide as she watches Killian go to the end of the now huge line to the airport checkpoint. He went back just to give her a kiss, and a part of her is delighted to realize she adores this hopelessly romantic side of him.

He doesn't turn to look at her, but the place is too crowded anyway, and she decides to go back, grab a coffee and wait to watch his plane leave. Instead, Killian's flight is delayed for a few hours. She texts him about it, whether he wants to cross back and join her, but he simply tells her to not worry and go back home.

It sours her mood a little; it may be a bit late in the day, but there's no reason for him to spend all this time alone, and if she judges by the plain tone of his message he doesn't even want to chat until he leaves.

Odd. First he gives up being first in a long line just to kiss her, then he doesn't even want to talk to her.

Perhaps he just wants to rest or sleep until his flight leaves. Emma tries to ignore the insistent little voice in her head that has never truly disappeared since Neal left her.

She turns the radio on while in her car and catches a blues station. The slow music and the complete lack of traffic back to her place calm her thoughts.

She stays up, checking on Killian's flight until it departs, hoping it doesn't mean a thing that Killian himself didn't tell her that his plane was finally leaving.

The next day is easy, checking off a few good cases, and in the evening she meets Ruby for a few drinks.

“So,” Ruby says with a meaningful look, “how was your week?”

Emma sighs happily, and it's with Ruby's smile turning warmer that she remembers she actually had a fantastic time. She's worrying too much.

“It was great. It felt... right, you know? I was a bit scared, but the moment we met at the airport made everything else not matter. He was here, and we could really enjoy our time together...”

Ruby's nodding enthusiastically. “And? How was it?”

“It was... warm and fuzzy...” Emma gives a good look at Ruby, suddenly realizing what she's asking about. “I told you we weren't ready for that.”

“Even after the whole week?”

“I mean, I spent most of my nights looking at my bedroom door and wondering whether I should go and ask him... but it wasn't just me.”

“I admire your patience. And his. And how about him? What do you think it was like for him?”

“I'm not sure, honestly.” Her face falls.

“What happened?”

“Up until the last day, I could swear it was as good for him as it was for me. I mean, he came, right? He chose to. And he looked happy to be here, with me. But a few hours before he had to leave, he seemed restless and anxious.”

“Because he was leaving?”

“I don't know. I...” She sighs. “He hasn't contacted me to let me know he's arrived safely. But I checked Messenger a few hours ago and it said he's been active today.”

“Did you send him a text about it? It would be weird for him to just forget but sometimes it just happens.”

“Should I send one, you think?”

“Yeah. Maybe he was really busy today. What did you say his job is?”

“His father has a boat rental, and sometimes he takes passengers on cruises.”

“Well, tourist season is kinda starting. Send him a message. But, you know, try to not sound desperate.”

“Ugh. I feel as if I'm in a teenage rom-com.”

She sends her message. Early the next morning, she sees his reply; a plain “Aye, I was busy, sorry for not letting you know,” and compared to his message from before his flight right above that, she can't help wondering.

She didn't have a cell phone as a teenager, and she hadn't allowed herself anything longer than one-night stands after Neal, so it's the first time in her life she has to look at her phone and keep telling herself to not call first.

She takes walks by the sea, seeing the yachts and boats and thinking of Killian. He mentioned how it had been his choice to work on his father's boats, how he loved that job where there's always a view of the sea.

Having practically grown up in Boston, Emma knows well the feelings that endless blue can bring. For Killian, they must be even stronger. The feeling of freedom and calmness and strength at the same time...

She knows he's facing his own issues, he's been open to her about them. His lonely adolescence, his grief, his drinking problem.

She decides to take a walk there every day, to remind herself to give Killian the same space that the sea gives him. Maybe he's out there at the same time, looking at the sea the same way she does.

He manages to call her within a week, though due to his bad connection, they don't share video this time. Or the next. Or the next.

“Remember how I told you I felt I was in a rom-com?” she tells Ruby when they meet one day for coffee. “I hope that at least I'm the protagonist and not the third wheel.”

“What's going on?”

“I worry too much about his calls. We used to talk every day, from five minutes to whole hours on end. And now he's just too busy, or his connection is bad, or his camera isn't working and I'm not seeing his face. But he keeps calling me back, not as often, and not as much, and he doesn't even say as much as he used to, but he's initiating calls on his part. Sometimes he doesn't reply when I call him...” She covers her face with her hands.

Ruby is patiently waiting for more, and Emma isn't sure which more to choose. Killian had trusted her with his history about getting involved with a married woman and she's not ready to betray that just to provide a possible proof that he may be cheating on her.

“We decided to take things slow,” Emma said. “We weren't shy on kisses while he was here, but it didn't go further than that. Do you think he may not consider it cheating, if...”

“If he didn't consider it cheating – if he even is cheating on you – he wouldn't be hiding like that. And taking things slow is different than having an open relationship.”

“I don't know.”

“Emma, if he didn't see it so seriously, would he have come all this way just to spend a week with you? While respecting your wish to not get intimate?”

“He said that's what he wanted as well.”

“So what, is his masculinity so fragile that instead of respecting your wishes, he would fake not being ready for sex? Is he that kind of person?”

Emma is silent.

“You do realize it would take a deep kind of crazy to only want to get laid, then come all this way and agree to not get laid.”

Fair point. “I just wish I knew what it was that tipped him that way. It's... you know, on his last day here, we were talking about our first kisses, and we realized we actually were each other's first kiss.”

“What? You're serious?”

“I know, of all people, right? And I have an inkling he might have been freaked out by that.”

“How did it happen?”

“It was a game of spin the bottle. It was as innocent as it could get at eleven.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“Yeah. When he was still here, though. I mean, at first he laughed, just as I did, then his face fell, and I asked him if he felt weird about it, and he said no, just that he didn't want to leave. Ugh.” She hangs her head. “That's not a rom-com. That's a soap opera.”

“Maybe he's going through something? Problems with work, family?”

“He hasn't mentioned anything. He said he hasn't talked to his fathers in a while. But, he's shared more serious stuff with me. If something was upsetting him so much... I can't imagine how serious something must be for him to not want to share it with me. And I don't know how much time to give him. Will I sound desperate? Like a stalker? If I take too long, will I seem insensitive?”

“I'm sorry, honey.”

“He's calling me, Ruby. He's not trying to cut off, and he's not trying to appease me either. I'm sure he knows I can hear that he's hiding something. What am I meant to make out from that?”

“Maybe confront him with the fact that you know something is up. Just put it on the table. Say that he doesn't have to explain it to you if it doesn't involve or concern you, just to stop pretending there's no elephant in the room.”

“Sounds simple enough, I guess.” She sighs. “Perhaps it was too early? We've only known each other for seven months.”

“Too early for what? You're not engaged or something. You can work things out.”

Emma nods. “Thank you. Sorry for unloading all that on you.”

“That's what friends are for.” She takes her hands in hers. “I've got lots to talk about, if you want a distraction.”

Emma has had a wonky fortune in her life; she's glad she happened to meet Ruby during one of the good times.

The next day, while she's still growing the courage to confront Killian about acknowledging at least that there's something going on, Ingrid calls her. She's joined by Elsa, who excitedly tells Emma she wants to join Ingrid in her next trip to Boston that summer – they will, of course, stay in a hotel close by so she won't be a bother.

“Maybe we'll go somewhere nice all three of us,” Emma says. “I actually bought a lottery ticket and I have a good feeling about it.”

“Oh, if you have a good feeling about it,” Ingrid says, then turns to Elsa. “You cannot imagine how lucky she was as a teenager.” She then bursts into chatter in Norwegian, and even if Emma could understand more than a few words here and there, she would still be lost in thought.

She was indeed quite lucky as a teen. In fact, the luckiest day of her life, as she'd described it to Killian, had been just the beginning of five great years.

Until her first trip to England, where she met the pirate boy.

Wait...

“Emma?”

She starts, looking back at her camera.

“Sorry, dear, I got carried away,” Ingrid says.

“We will try to use more English when we're there,” Elsa says with an apologetic smile.

“No, it's alright. Ingrid, can you remind me when you actually got your first visa? I mean, in the recent years.”

“Uh, a few days before I contacted you. The first time.”

“Do you remember how many days?”

Ingrid huffs in thought, but turns to her with a smile. “Such sudden curiosity. I'm not sure exactly, three? Four? Less than a week, for sure.”

Too close to the day she kissed that stranger at the club... the only one she didn't see around when the police was asking for witnesses, if they saw who shot that man at the hand and killed his lover.

“Emma?”

Emma takes a deep breath and does her hardest to fake a smile. “Nothing. It's... something about work.”

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. Nothing to worry about. When do you think about visiting?”

After a short chat, Ingrid gets the message and leaves Emma with her thoughts. Emma's hands are shaking; the lottery results will be out in two days and they can't come fast enough.

She runs out, resorting to buying a scratch ticket from a nearby kiosk. She scratches it and stares at it, nearly frozen.

Five dollars.

Emma looks around, looks at the sky, then at her phone. Her weather app clearly shows rain, but there's not a single cloud in the sky.

She is lucky. Things have been going quite well for her. Suddenly so, in fact. Just a month or so ago, she would be getting splashed by cars and losing spare change and...

And then Killian visited her.

She walks slowly back to her apartment, and somehow it doesn't come as a surprise that thunder rumbles outside right as she closes her door.

She sits on her couch, watching the rain pour outside her window.

She had a serving of quite a bad luck the first eleven years of her life. Then she met Killian at that birthday party, they shared an innocent kiss, and that very same evening Ingrid told her she would be adopting her.

Shortly after that Killian's mother died, his father left them, and his brother passed too a few years later.

She stands up, pacing around her living room.

He lived in London at the time. At the exact time she visited for Halloween, that fateful year, that she was left alone and Killian... was adopted? He had mentioned being almost too old to be adopted.

He said it hadn't been him at that party, but he didn't sound convincing, and at the time Emma brushed it off, but... if it really had been him...

Then the night of the shooting at the club. She doesn't remember that stranger's face, but their kiss was too close to him getting shot and Ingrid's visa getting accepted.

A shiver runs down her spine as she remembers the screams of that night. The screams of a man who got shot in the hand... a hand that Killian doesn't have.

Emma's nearly gasping for breath, her hands shaking again as she forces herself to sit back down at the couch.

After that, it was some good years for her, and Killian was lost in his grief, alcohol, and a bad relationship later on.

Then they met at the concert, where right after their kiss, she dropped her phone, cracking its screen.

She looks at it now. The crack is still there, but something tells her getting a new phone screen – or a whole new phone – won't be a problem a few days from now.

She feels a weight set on her shoulders as she goes back to Killian trying to convince her it wasn't him at the Halloween party.

He knows. Somehow, he does, though she doubts he found out much earlier than the moment they realized they were each other's first kiss.

And second.

The weight becomes a sudden void; the pirate boy's look nearly haunted her for years; fifteen years later, she felt a similar sensation at the way Killian looked at her in the concert.

It was the same look, by the same person.

She shakes her head. It's silly. Can it truly be, that they brought good and bad luck to each other, just by kissing?

Then she remembers how he left, when there was no-one in front of him at the queue, to get back to her and give her a last kiss, and didn't come back to join her when his flight was being delayed, because he knew there would be kissing involved if he did.

Tears fill her eyes. He left his luck with her.

And things have been going well for her. How has he been... when both times he got unlucky, people he loved died?

She keeps looking at her phone, wondering if she should call Killian about it, ask him if everything's okay.

Instead, she picks it up and starts looking for the cheapest flight to England she can afford, as soon as possible.

She can't tell Killian; he'll try to stop her, pretend that he's not in Brighton, that he'll be busy...

She finds the envelope with which he'd sent her her Christmas present; she'd kept it in case she'd want to surprise him with a gift back. The return address doesn't include the apartment number, but surprising him in the building entrance will have to do.

She books a flight for three days from now, and of course is not surprised to earn two thousand dollars at the lottery, nor to be promoted to a business class seat thanks to travel miles.

She's grown used to really enjoying flights, but this time she's too nervous to sit back and relax.

He figured out everything before she did. All he had to do was time their kisses right, then leave with his luck on his side. Forever.

But he didn't. He wouldn't. Emma may not know him that long, but she doesn't think he's capable of that. And that's why she's in this plane now.

There's a small part of her that wonders what she's going to do when she comes back. Will Killian actually let her leave without his luck? Will he follow her back? Will they just spend all their money in the effort to be the most selfless one?

She sighs in frustration. That's not something she took into consideration when she agreed to start such a long-distance relationship.

As her luck would have it, everything goes better than smoothly, and courtesy of having slept on her comfortable seat, she doesn't even feel tired from the trip.

It's just starting to get dark when she arrives in Brighton, and she contemplates going straight for her hotel and 'confronting' Killian the next day. But her note with Killian's address on it is right inside her jacket pocket when she gets in the cab, and she can't help herself. The moment she approaches his apartment block, someone happens to exit and smiles to her as he holds the door open for her.

Of course he would. She settles herself and her holdall on the stairs, sends one 'Hey, call me when you see this' to Killian, and waits.

After a couple of hours she starts wondering whether she really is all that lucky, or if it was all in her imagination. The stairs aren't too comfortable and she's slowly getting bored. There's only so much Candy Crush she can handle.

Her eyes look up every single time she sees someone even approach the entrance from outside, and again, everyone who enters or exits simply smiles at her and goes on their way.

She's about ready to give up and head for her hotel when he finally appears. He's looking down, his visibly longer hair falling in front of his face as he takes a bit too long to open the door. She contemplates going to open it herself, but he makes it and starts for the stairs, stopping at the first step and looking up slowly.

His slow reflexes, his slightly staggering step, his tired, sad face...

He was out drinking.

Coming like this was a horrible idea.

“Killian...” she says, making sure her voice sounds worried and not judgmental.

He just stares at her, looking confused and very tired.

“I know this looks weird,” she says. “I've had some time to think and... I'm not stalking you.”

“Wha-” he starts. “How...”

“I'm sorry.” She toys with her hands nervously. “I should have let you know earlier. It was...” Not just impulsive. “Very impulsive. But I would've come soon anyway.”

“How did you know where...” His voice trails off, but she gets the point.

“The gift you sent me for Christmas. The package had your address on it.”

He blinks slowly, and she's not sure he's registering everything she's saying. “Come upstairs,” he says eventually, starting to walk up the steps.

“Wait, really?” She stands up and grabs her bag. “I've booked a hotel-”

“You can take the bed,” he interrupts her. “It's got clean sheets.”

“Killian-”

He gives her a stern look that shuts her up. He's clearly not in the mood for more than just getting to a bed. “Just come.”

She smells the alcohol off of him when he steps closer to her and she wonders whether she should comment on it. Maybe she can ask, somehow, there must have been something that pushed him over.

His apartment looks tidy and smells clean. He sets himself down on the couch, taking off his brace and shoes.

“Is something wrong?” Emma says. “You're...” She pauses. How can she say it?

“Relapsing,” he says plainly. “Why is everyone avoiding that word?”

“Are you okay?”

He shrugs. “Not much to say. I'm tired.”

So hopefully, nothing horrible happened to him or his family.

“I'm sorry,” Emma says again. “I should have let you know I'm coming. I... I'd thought I could surprise you...” What else can she say to excuse such a sudden visit?

Killian lets out a cold, soulless laugh. “Lucky me,” he says, then lies down, eyes closing and breath quickly getting deeper.

His words pull at her heart, confirming that he knows of their mingled fates. She approaches him, kneeling down next to him and touching his hair. It's only been a month and she's already missed feeling how soft his hair is. How she'd love to keep brushing her fingers through it, and not just tonight.

A soft snore comes from him, and she leans forward to leave a kiss on his forehead.

#Emma Swan #Captain Swan #captain swan ff #cs ff #ouat ff #akfgl #captain swan movie marathon #piracytheorist writes

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itsblosseybitch · 5 years ago

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The Reel Dunne (Griffin Dunne interview from INTERVIEW magazine, October 1988

Hollywood Wunderkind Griffin Dunne eloped at 18, produced a movie at 23, and has been acting all along. Victoria Hamburg stopped by to catch up.

When Griffin Dunne was 23 and managing a concession stand at Radio City Music Hall, he followed the cultural cues of his native L.A. and, with a couple of close friends, optioned a story for a movie. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary for a Hollywood-wise L.A. youth. What was not ordinary, however, was that the story--Ann Beattie’s novel Chilly Scenes of Winter--was actually made into a film, starring John Heard, and released by United Artists.

Chilly Scenes of Winter marked the emergence of the young Griffin Dunne as an actor and leading producer of American films. Son of writer Dominick Dunne (and brother of the tragically murdered Dominique Dunne), Griffin moved to Manhattan after high school to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Over the years, his film credits have grown to include An American Werewolf in London, Johnny Dangerously, Almost You, After Hours, and Who’s That Girl, and in his role as a producer, he has been equally canny. Along with his longtime partner, Amy Robinson, he has produced John Sayles’ Baby It’s You and co-produced Martin Scorsese’s After Hours.

This season, Dunne’s dual career is in full swing. He produced Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty, which was released in September, and is currently producing Lasse Hallstrom’s (My Life As A Dog) first American film, Once Around. He stars in Dorris Dorrie’s controversial second film, Me and Him, playing the part of a middle-aged man with two problems--a midlife crisis and a penis that talks (distributors have decided the film is too controversial for America, and it is being released in Europe this month). Dunne will also appear in the HBO movie Lip Service alongside Paul Dooley.

Dunne is as funny and charming off-screen as he is on. Dark, intense, and boyishly handsome, he is a natural storyteller, whose enthusiasm is contagious. Victoria Hamburg found him at home, in his West Village penthouse overlooking the Hudson. The apartment is airy and sunlit, with oversize windows, a fireplace for the winter, and a terrace with real grass for the summer. It is the perfect refuge from the hustle of the city streets and the madness of the entertainment world on which Griffin Dunne clearly thrives.

VICTORIA HAMBURG: I’ve been having my own private Griffin Dunne Film Festival. I looked at After Hours, An American Werewolf in London, Almost You, and Who’s That Girl. The movies that you’ve produced have more social commentary and a greater basis in reality than the movies you star in. The ones you act in are more like myths or fables about the dilemmas of modern man.

GRIFFIN DUNNE: It’s funny--as a producer, you think about material for material’s sake. You look for really rich characters and movies that have something to say. It’s much easier for me to find movies to produce than to act in. You have more control over material, and there are wider choices.

VH: What’s this film you were doing in Boston?

GD: It’s called Lip Service. It was just a great piece of writing by a guy named Howard Porter. He wrote Boy’s Life. It was on Broadway a while ago. David Mamet executive-produced this film and asked me if I’d be in it with Paul Dooley. William H. Macy, who’s an actor, directed it. [OP NOTE: There’s a misprint in this article, where’s he’s referred to as W.C. Macy. Or maybe Griffin was trying to be funny and make a reference to W.C. Fields]. It’s his first film. He did an incredible job, and it was great to work with a director who was an actor. It’s about these two talk-show hosts on one of those morning shows like Hey, Wake Up, L.A. It’s called Sunny Side Up. It’s been run for ten years by a kind of boring, staid broadcaster who’s like a Walter Cronkite of the morning circuit. They want to spruce up the ratings, so they bring in a sort of Regis Philbin type, and that’s me. It’s Regis and Walter on this morning show, and they’re two very different people. I idolize him, but he hates me. I’m always trying to get him to be my friend. There’s something very touching about it. It’s also very sad, because the public taste being what it is, I blow him out of the water. I’m so filled with energy and kooky ideas. I’m always looking for the lowest common denominator in human behavior, and people love it. They just lap it up. Dooley’s character gets fired.

Anyway, in this movie, for the first time I play a guy who is completely happy. He has a vicious mean streak, and then it’s gone, and he’s the happiest person on earth. I had a great time, because I usually play people with a tremendous number of problems. This guy hasn’t a clue of the problems he has, because he never listens. He never hears a word he’s saying. Somebody will be talking to him and he’ll interrupt them to ask, “How’s my hair? Do you think I’m attractive?” or some terribly vain question.

VH: Do you think that it takes being oblivious like that to be a happy guy?

GD: Yeah, basically, I mean, to not have a clue about anybody else’s suffering or even what color shirt they’re wearing is a different version of happiness. I’ve seen people without any sort of self-doubt. They just amaze me.

VH: When you were talking earlier, I was thinking you sound like somebody who doesn’t suffer from self-doubt.

GD: Who doesn’t have self-doubt at some point?

VH: Well, I know, but it doesn’t seem to paralyze you in any way.

GD: No, it doesn’t paralyze me. It’s a fleeting thought, but it was nice to play somebody so completely confident and ebullient in everything that he’s doing. The guy I played just had no problem offending somebody, because he had no idea he was offending them. Terrible hurt would cross someone’s face and he would just go right on talking. It was endlessly interesting.

VH: It seems as if we’ve reached a point where there’s a new Hollywood. There are people who are our age, in their late twenties, mid-thirties, who are now in a position of making decisions in the studios. Are they doing it differently? Is something going to happen that’s different from the way that people have been making movies in the past?

GD: Probably not. Even though movies are making more money than ever, they are still based on the star system. And the star system is getting stronger and stronger. Having name value is becoming more and more important. People are taking fewer and fewer chances. What I’ve noticed is that it’s getting to be taken for granted that this is the way to go. Even the smaller outfits have now figured out ways to hire major stars with name value. I think part of the problem with film is that the good movies--with interesting stories and actors--are not huge weekend movies. They’re competing against star vehicles with rotten scripts and one charismatic star that make the big kill for two or three weekends and then gradually dwindle away. The movies that don’t fall into that category are racing quicker than ever for the video stores. All this means that they’ve yet to figure out long-run releases. And the attitude is getting to be more and more--even among my peers--”I’ll wait for it on cable.” People look at small or interesting or intimate movies as the kind they’d prefer to see at home on their television sets rather than at a theater. Movies are considered failures much sooner than ever before. The failure rate has really sped up, and the success rate is much further down the line because now you have to look at the videocassette sales and rentals.

VH: I think it’s incredibly frustrating for all the people who go out and kill themselves for six years to get a project to finally happen, who risk everything they’ve got and go out on a limb for it, and then, even if it’s reasonably successful, it’ll probably run for only two or three weeks and end up in the video store, and who’s ever going to look at it then?

GD: It’s extremely frustrating. It’s like they spend six years to make the videocassette.

VH: Right. Whereas if you’re writing a book, even if nobody buys it, it will still be there somehow in a more lasting way.

GD: You notice how books and videocassettes are almost the same size...

VH: How did you feel when you were making Who’s That Girl and people kept calling it “the Madonna movie”?

GD: I assumed they would. She is an extraordinarily huge star, and a great deal of commotion happens around her when she’s out in public.

VH: How did the filming go?

GD: It was pretty wild. I guess I didn’t really expect it to be. I remember there was a marathon race on a Sunday. We were shooting in Manhattan. Here are these people who are nearing the end of a twenty-six-mile run. They could have placed respectably, but they pulled over to the side to watch the shooting and let the other runners go on. By the time they got to where we were shooting on Fifth Avenue, they had been running twenty miles. They took a breather to watch the shooting, to watch Madonna getting in and out of a cab. They just threw it all away to watch this. Everybody had a camera when we were working on that picture. Cabs would drive by, and little old ladies would pull out lenses longer than their entire frames and just whack off a few pictures. It was a bit of a carnival atmosphere.

VH: Which do you prefer, acting or producing?

GD: I don’t know. Acting is what I originally wanted to do. That’s really what I’m supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, the business of being an actor is a lot more disheartening than the business of being a producer. As an actor, you’re beholden to the material and the taste of other people who are developing projects that you may or may not get in. As a producer, you come up with the idea. Everything that my partner, Amy Robinson, and I have done, we’ve thought of and developed. The script for After Hours came from a student at Columbia University.

VH: You get offered a lot of roles that you turn down--if you kept getting parts that you wanted to do, would you end up acting instead of producing?

GD: It depends how far along I am in the producing. I’ve lately had a painful decision to make. I’ve turned down work because I’ve been too far into producing a picture. It wasn’t easy to do.

VH: Do you feel you naturally lean toward acting?

GD: I’ve always leaned toward acting. I’m very good at working on stories, casting, and crewing up, but when the movie’s being shot, there’s always the frustration I feel watching other actors working. That goes away once the film’s finished shooting. It’s almost the reverse of what I feel as an actor. There’s a certain relief that, once I’ve finished shooting, I can be in the editing room or in the screening room, watching the rough cuts develop and watching the picture just get better and better.

VH: Have you ever wanted to direct?

GD: Yeah, I think about that more and more.

VH: The relationships between an actor and a director and between a producer and a director are very different.

GD: The relationship between an actor and a producer is, in fact, one of total opposites. As producer--particularly during shooting--your job is to worry and to predict what horrible things will happen. You worry about time, scheduling, and logistics. You have to fall into a certain logic that does not come to me naturally.

VH: I always think it’s a combination of being the baby sitter, the whip-cracker, and the pacifier. In a way, all the things that you do make you feel like you have no control. On the other hand, you realize that ultimately you do have the control.

GD: What you’re doing is watching other people create and have a fantastic time. Amy and I have always worked with directors who have respected our opinion and relied on us heavily for story development, casting, and the creative part. But once the movie is going, it’s just this big monster rolling along that you have to keep in check. It’s much less creative. I mean, you can look at dailies and say, “Gee, it looks a little dark in that scene” and “Why does she have that expression on her face?” but it’s pretty much out of your control, with the exception of the ultimate ability to slow down or speed up the process. And sometimes even that’s questionable. But as an actor, your entire job is not to worry. Your job is to help others, create an atmosphere where you can be totally spontaneous, get lost in the part, and develop intense relationships with people. When I’m acting and things are going well, I have an extremely good time.

VH: It sounds like the acting and producing provide a perfect balance for you.

GD: Yes. Absolutely. I remember when I produced my first movie, Chilly Scenes of Winter. I was a desperately hungry actor who lived and died by my last audition and what people thought of me as I walked out of an office. That’s what most people think when they’re starting out. It’s an unnatural environment when you go in and read and show your personality to someone and they say yes or no. It takes awhile to get the hang of that. I was not good at it. I would clam up and freeze at auditions. I could not be free. So producing a movie was entirely liberating. There I was, in a casting room, auditioning actors whom I not only admired but envied, wishing I was in their position. I was 23 at the time, and I remember being in this office in Los Angeles, in Culver City, pre-screening the actors before the director, Joan Micklin Silver, met them. Bringing in all these actors I’ve admired my whole life and interviewing them, I thought, This is crazy. They thought it was pretty crazy, too. They thought, How old is he? But I did see how the audition process worked, and I thought, This is not so threatening.

VH: I’ve always thought of you as the boy wonder. I mean, there you were, producing a feature film. That’s not easy, but you were at the point where you and Amy could convince somebody to give you the money to do it. How did you manage that?

GD: We also had a third partner, Mark Metcalf. All three of us were actors. Mark was probably the most successful of the three of us, because he had produced Animal House [He also played Niedermeyer in the film]. We had a really good book by Ann Beattie, and people wanted it.

VH: How did you convince Joan that she should let you guys do it?

GD: She came to us. She wanted to make the movie.

VH: But you didn’t know anything about line-producing, right?

GD: No. For a year before we actually got it off the ground, we interviewed everyone. We called people right up out of the DGA [Directors’ Guild of America] book and said, “We’re doing this movie. Would you talk to us? Will you tell us about line-producing? Will you tell us what this means? Will you tell us what gross and net are?” We knew nothing, but we found that complete strangers were willing to share their knowledge and expertise with us. So we learned a certain amount the year before we actually met Joan. All we knew was that we wanted to make this movie, and we had the material. Several times, people said, “We’ll make this movie, but you three have to go.” And we said, “No, we come with it and you’ll have to go.” We pulled it off, and they let us do it. We had a production manager, a man named Paul Helmick, who was close to 70 years old [laughs]; he was Howard Hawks’ first assistant director, and he had incredible stories about the movie business. We learned a lot from him. We were the producers, but he knew the nuts and bolts--who to get on the crew and what the hourly wages were and all that.

VH: What would you say was the most important thing that you learned from doing the movie?

GD: Well, because I was so young, I sort of learned how the world works. I learned how decisions were made and business was run. The business section of the newspaper became interesting to me: why people were fired and hired. Just the decision-making process, and people taking responsibility for their decisions.

VH: You grew up in Los Angeles, didn’t you?

GD: Yes.

VH: So you must have had some sense of how it all worked. Your father was in the business.

GD: Yeah. I knew my movies. I loved movies. But I didn’t know anything about the details of making a movie. Casting was an instinctual process to me. Amy and Mark weren’t from the movie business. They grew up loving movies, and that’s what the three of us had in common. Being from Los Angeles and having parents in the business was not really helpful. I could talk to my father about what I was doing and the problems I was having, and he would understand what I was saying, but he wasn’t in production then. He was extremely supportive of me, just as Amy’s and Mark’s parents were supportive of them.

VH: Did you ever have moments where you were totally terrified because you didn’t know what you were doing?

GD: You know, I really didn’t. I was having such a good time. Nobody ever once said, “You’re a fraud. You’re 23 years old. Who are you to tell me this?” I knew the material. I knew I had a tremendous love and conviction for this book and for the script that Joan wrote and for Joan as a director. I didn’t really have any doubt in my ability.

VH: You and Amy have been producing together for such a long time. How does that work? Is there a role that she plays and a role that you play?

GD: I guess so. We bounce off each other very well. Whoever calls us knows they’re going to get both of us on the phone, and we’ve figured out how to talk without talking at the same time, so that we build on each other’s thoughts. We finish each other’s sentences.

VH: Do you do good cop/bad cop?

GD: Yeah. It depends who the person is. There are certain people she gets along better with and others I get along better with. People get treated well, so there hasn’t been any real tension on our sets coming from the production. Basically we’re both good cops. But we use that good cop/bad cop routine.

VH: How does she feel when you go off to be in a movie? Does she produce things without you?

GD: The day-to-day stuff is a lot of phone work, you know. Producing is all about talking on the phone. When I’m off acting, Amy is doing the day-to-day work in the office. We talk every day. It’s like I’m in foreign land, acting with complete strangers. I’ll call her, and she’ll fill me in on what’s going on. Then, if I have a few hours left in me, I’ll knock off about eight or nine phone calls. So I’m still doing my work. I never fall out of contact.

VH: You sound driven.

GD: Well, it is a driven thing. Amy is a very driven person, and sometimes I have to work hard to catch up with her if I’m doing two jobs. It’s a lot of work. I’m getting tired just talking about it. [laughs]

VH: I’m always interested in people who are able to make movies in New York. Do you and Amy feel pressure to do something in L.A.? Sometimes L.A. seems like a private club to me: you have to do time there or you have to have been a member.

GD: No, I don’t think so. I mean, the reason we’re doing well is because of the material. We choose to live in New York. We have to go to Los Angeles an awful lot for any number of reasons--to meet writers or talk to the studio about financing--but there’s been no pressure on us to move to Los Angeles. In fact, I think it would be a little stifling, because we could fall into that club atmosphere you’re talking about. A good deal of the time there is spent talking about “Have you read this script that was just submitted that all the agencies are reading? Did you get on top of this? Did you get on top of that?” And it’s a cyclical effect. You start buying something based on word of mouth and who’s attached to it--basically for all the wrong reasons. I think this distance gives us a little perspective on what the story is.

VH: How did you find the script for Running on Empty?

GD: Amy and I had been interested in radicals--the real hardened ones, the ones who had been living underground and thought that they were still fighting a revolution, who surfaced only to kill a bunch of people for a political idea that grew out of the ‘60s and had somehow gone terribly wrong. I had absolutely no sympathy for them. I understood where their politics originated, but I felt that they were in a complete dream world. They were the same criminals that sell drugs, or blow away cops to rob a bank, for no political reason. The idea that they thought there would be some kind of public uprising over killing a couple of security guards was delusion at its highest. We talked about making a movie on this subject, and then we came across an article about the custody procedure involving kids whose parents were radicals--two boys, 11 and 9. They were younger than the characters in our movie. Their parents were found with a cache of weapons, fighting to overthrow the government so that we would all be free. They were a lot harder than the characters in our film, but we were struck by the family aspect of the story. We went to Naomi Phoner [author of Running on Empty] with the article and talked about the origins of the parents and their political beliefs. We concentrated on the case of blowing up a napalm plant in the early ‘70s. Their pictures were plastered in every post office in the United States and they were on the Ten Most Wanted list. What effect would that have on their children?

VH: When I read articles about these people, there’s always something about them that makes you feel as if they could have been friends of yours in college. There’s something very ordinary about the people who did those things.

GD: Yes, but living on the run for so long, living underground where there’s a network of people that can help you--that’s got to warp your idea of society, because you have ostensibly left society to lead this kind of life. The society you’re trying to overthrow is very different from the one you have in mind once you’ve been underground for a few years.

VH: Did you actually try to contact people who were underground?

GD: Yeah, we spoke to a few people--they were hardly on anyone’s Ten Most Wanted list, but they had a lot to hide from. Naomi had some friends from college, in fact--former SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] higher-ups who were no longer wanted by the law.

VH: How did Sidney Lumet become the director?

GD: He read the script. We were at Lorimar, and Sidney had a contract at Lorimar. We had thought of Sidney quite a bit before we seriously approached directors. He read it and contacted us and told us how much he loved it.

VH: It seems like a good time to make a movie like Running On Empty. Here we are, with the Presidential elections before us...[laughs]

GD: When we were testing Running on Empty, we would show it to college kids. Researchers would ask them about their knowledge of ‘60s radicals, and they would talk about Jane Fonda. I guess they thought she was an SDS student or something and that she lived in the underground. There was very little awareness about the people who were trying to end the Vietnam War.

VH: How much does giving people something to think about have to do with your decisions about what movies you produce?

GD: We assume that other people will be interested in thinking about what we think about. What initially attracted us to Running On Empty was not so much making a political statement. What really drew us to the story were the family and the conflicts in the family. The movie is a sort of extreme exaggeration of what happens to boys or girls when they hit a certain age, when they look at their parents and they’re not parents anymore. They’re human beings with a lot of problems, and they become aware of what it took to raise them. It’s the first feeling that a kid might have of compassion toward his parents, of a sense of even feeling wiser somehow. That’s what attracted me to Running On Empty. It’s that story of looking at your parents and feeling in a funny way stronger than them. You suddenly have this knowledge that the decisions you make can hurt them. If you don’t want to hurt them, you make the proper adjustments. The alternative is to grow up and hurt them because you’ve got to live your own life. This movie is about all the complexities that go on in a family. Maybe there will be disappointment for a lot of politically minded people who think they might find an answer in this movie. It comes out in a much more family-oriented way.

VH: Your parents are remarkable people. I remember reading the story that your father wrote about your sister’s death and the murder trial that followed it. I particularly remember the description of your mother. I’ve always thought that she was unbelievably courageous.

GD: My mother’s an extraordinary person. She’s the strongest person I know.

[Ellen Griffin Dunne founded Justice for Homicide Victims in 1984 to support victims of homicide with legal and financial assistance, as well as counseling and referrals. In 1989, a year after this interview was conducted, Ellen was recognized for her advocacy work by then-President George H.W. Bush. Ellen also suffered from multiple sclerosis starting in the early ‘80s. She passed away in 1997. Justice for Homicide Victims is still operating today.]

VH: Do you think being raised by people like that allows you to try things that other people wouldn’t ordinarily try?

GD: It sure helps. I grew up in a very supportive environment. My parents were not easily shocked by the decisions I made. I was sort of a handful; I got into a lot of trouble when I was growing up. They never succumbed to total despair when I fucked up. I think that’s an important lesson for parents. I grew up with the confidence of knowing that my parents always thought I was going to come out O.K. They always thought I was going to make it, whatever I did.

VH: Did you have any heroes?

GD: I grew up idolizing people all the time. It’s harder and harder to find idols, but for as long as I can remember, I was always a worshiper of other people.

VH: Who?

GD: I was only 9 years old, but I had this obsession with John F. Kennedy. I was convinced I would someday know this guy and we’d become really good friends. [laughs] I called his wife Mrs. Kennedy, and I’d call him Mr. Kennedy whenever I talked about him. I used to write him letters--nothing very political, just to tell him that it was my birthday last week, and my brother did this, and that things kind of stank around the house but that I’d work it out. I would get letters back from his secretary saying that Mr. Kennedy had received my letter, and that was perfectly fine. I remember we used to go to church every Sunday, one day I just put my foot down and refused to go. I just said “I’m not going.” Big fights. They went to church and left me locked in my room. When they came back, my brother and sister and the whole family were glowing. John F. Kennedy and his wife had gone to church that day, and they sat right behind my parents!

VH: Don’t you think they made it up?

GD: Well, even as I’m telling you, I find it just incredible.

VH: Were you a gullible child?

GD: I was always gullible. But I can’t believe they’d be that cruel. I used to lie for years afterward--with the conviction of a total liar who believed it--about the time I went to church and John and Jackie were sitting behind me. Even telling you this, the lie seems true. I turned around, saying, “Hi, Mr. Kennedy, I’m Griffin Dunne. I wrote you these letters.” “Oh yes, Griffin. Oh yes, I got your letters. Just wait until after the service. We’ll talk.” And then as soon as the service was over, he tapped me on the shoulder, and I climbed over the pew. I’m between him and Jackie, and he says, “Have you met my wife?” “Oh, hi, Mrs. Kennedy. Nice to meet you.” He says, “Go on, about those letters.” And we were talking as we were walking outside, and we became friends in that moment. Anyway, he was my major hero. It’s been downhill ever since.

VH: Were you raised a Catholic?

GD: Yes.

VH: Has that had any lasting effect on you?

GD: Well, I think there’s something very Catholic about that fantasy. I was raised a Catholic, and it helped me in being an actor in plenty of ways. I hated church. I always thought those priests gave rather weak performances. I think that’s sort of how I became an actor--an early fantasy was if I were a priest, I’d do a much better job. When I became an altar boy, I became the church-clown altar boy and would bring the priest the wrong vestments.

VH: On purpose?

GD: No, it just worked out that way, but I got laughs.

VH: I’m half Catholic and half Jewish. I think that what I get from being Catholic is that I’m always guilty about something I did that I shouldn’t have done. And what I get from being Jewish is that I’m always guilty about something I should have done that I didn’t do. I heard the other day that the movie you were in that Doris Dorrie directed was banned in this country. I have a feeling this isn’t true, but this movie has a controversial reputation. What’s going on here?

GD: Well, I think it’s probably a “European” movie in that it’s going to open in Europe.

VH: What’s this movie about?

GD: It’s a sensitive tale. It’s about this guy whose penis starts talking to him and it just totally freaks him out. You never see it, so I don’t know why it’s banned. It’s based on a book called Two by Alberto Moravia. It’s a very typical tale, about this guy who’s an architect. He’s at the brink of having some kind of boredom breakdown--he’s married and he has a kid and feels trapped. His penis starts talking to him, screaming at him to wake up and enjoy life. You never see it. It’s all in his mind. It’s basically me talking to myself the whole movie and talking to women and the people in my office. I’m a very ambitious guy in the movie who starts to get ahead through the power of the seduction. He’s a philanderer, very Italian, both cocky and confused at the same time. He has all these desires of getting ahead and finding the perfect woman. I thought the part had a certain kind of charm to it. It might be banned because the movie turns out to look like one of those Ralph Steadman drawings with the back of people’s heads blown out, you know, like a shotgun went off in their mouth. Everybody’s totally distorted, and weird shit is coming out of their mouths. Everybody is very unattractive in a funny way. It’s not as funny as people thought it would be. It’s a much harder movie.

[This last part is interesting to read, because as someone who has watched Me and Him, there’s no animation in the movie whatsoever. I wonder if that was the original plan for the film but it got scrapped for the final product for whatever reason, probably due to budget constraints. I know there’s a ‘70s film based on Moravia’s book as well. My friends over at The Projection Booth did a podcast on this movie, and Doris Dorrie was interviewed and I don’t remember a word being breathed about any animation sequences, so this is the first I’ve heard about this. Griffin is not a big fan of this movie (neither am I) so he hasn’t talked much about it since, and he said he didn’t want to be interviewed about it for the podcast.]

VH: Her other movie, Men, seemed to be about how people of the opposite sex don’t really like each other.

GD: Yeah. I hadn’t thought that at the time, but I definitely think that now. It’s a battle of the sexes, but it’s a battle over which is the uglier sex. There’s nothing terribly crude about it, sexually. Emotionally, it’s very crude. But being directed by a woman on something as intimate as this is a little like playing the part of a dog and being directed by a cat about how you’d feel about being a fire hydrant. You know, the dog’s going to look at this cat and go, “What the fuck do you know about a fire hydrant?” How would you know how I’d feel about sex? Both of us sort of drew a blank. We had no idea what the other was talking about. It was a totally non-communicative experience. I did my job and she did her job. There really weren’t many ways we could help each other out.

VH: Do you think that people genuinely believe that the sexes basically don’t like each other?

GD: No, I think they do like each other, and I think that was what we disagreed on. As much as we would verbalize it and have many discussions, it always boiled down to the point that cruelty between the sexes was different. We disagreed on that. The movie is about how the two sexes dislike each other intensely, which was not, I felt, in the script.

VH: What are you doing next?

GD: Starting a movie with Lasse Hallstrom, who did My Life As A Dog. Amy and I are going to produce a movie. I’m going to be in it. Small part. Nice part. It’s a story, set in Massachusetts, about an Italian-American from a big, close family, whose sisters have all been married. She’s the eldest and the last one to get married. Everybody’s encouraging her to finally get married to this guy she’s been with for six years, and this guy turns out to be a real wimp. He finally admits to her, “I’m never going to marry you.” She’s devastated, and she goes off.

VH: That’s not you, is it?

GD: Hell, no. That is a wimp. So she goes off, and she meets a man who’s close to her father’s age. He’s a very outgoing, tough businessman, who is rich. He sort of tries to buy his way into the family emotionally and financially. While they’re happy for the daughter, the family doesn’t like the man. It’s a battle of the patriarchs and how the man gets caught in the middle. The family never can quite let the husband into their hearts. It’s very painful and it’s very funny. It’s a brilliant script. It’s written from the heart by a woman named Malia Scotch Marmont [This is a misprint. Her name is Malia Scotch Marmo, and she’s also been credited as a writer for Hook and Madeline], who was at a Columbia student. We found the script through the Sundance Institute.

VH: What do you play?

GD: I play the brother-in-law. He’s a guy who is heavily influenced by this very outgoing businessman and starts to take on his mannerisms, much to the discomfort of his wife, who dislikes him. I’m the only one who thinks he’s a pretty good guy. It’s going to be a great movie. I’ve been in Boston with Lasse. He’s from Sweden. I’m showing him the difference between Italian-Americans from Massachusetts and Italian-Americans from New York.

[The movie that Dunne is talking about would be released as Once Around in 1991, starring Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfuss as the leads. Interestingly enough, Dunne would end up playing that very wimp boyfriend in the movie. The brother-in-law would be played by Tim Guinee].

VH: What’s the difference?

GD: Well, as far as I can tell, the Italian-Americans from Massachusetts are more Yankee at heart. They really are closer to the family, the Mayflower, and they sort of cling to that. They feel a little more American than the New York Italians, like they got there first. The dialects are obviously very different. But we’re trying to make those differences clear to Lasse.

VH: This is his first movie in English?

GD: Yeah. It’s set in a very particular region of the United States. We can help him with the research and the regional differences, but when it comes to the matter of the heart, that’s his job and that’s where he will shine.

VH: If you could do anything you want, what would you do?

GD: I would have the kind of life where I could bury myself in work for an intense period of a year and then leave work for six months and travel somewhere, maybe live in a completely different area of the world and soak up whatever differences and experiences I might gather there and revitalize myself, then do it all over again. I’d have the kind of control of being able to walk away from something I’ve created that will be there when I get back.

VH: When we were talking about family and relationships, I wondered how come you’ve never been married.

GD: Oh, I have been. I have been. I’ve never mentioned it. Everybody who knows me knows that I’ve been married, but I’ve never talked about it before. It hardly deserves this sort of melancholy face I have on right now.

VH: You’re smiling. [laughs]

GD: Yeah. That kind of melancholy. I was married, when I was 18, to a girl who was maybe 19, whom I had met in high school. She was the daughter of the--at the time--head of a film studio. She was very, very beautiful and probably still is. I have no idea. I haven’t seen her since.

VH: Since you married her?

GD: Yeah, I married her and then I never saw her again. [laughs] Didn’t work out. We got married in Tijuana sort of on a dare. When I was 17 we crossed the border to go to Tijuana, and the highway patrol pulled us over, and they knew for some reason we were going to get married. They brought us into the office and tried to talk us out of it. It was a humiliating experience because she was older and the highway patrol cop was sort of hitting on her. I mean, she was really gorgeous--there was just something about her; she exuded a real intense sexuality. I was madly in love with her, as anyone who ever laid eyes on her was. So the highway patrolman is hitting on my wife-to-be, and the other guy has got me in a room, telling me that I should hold off and not marry that piece in the other room for a couple of years, until I know what I’m doing. I was in such a rage that when I turned 18--on my birthday--we got in a car and went right back to Tijuana and got married.

VH: And how long were you married?

GD: A whopping one year. I came back to--we were going to keep it a secret--the apartment we had gotten. I carried her across the threshold of this apartment that had no furniture in it and the phone was ringing, so I dropped her on the wood floor and got the phone--

VH: What a guy.

GD: Well, you see, she was voluptuous, so she weighed a ton. I got the phone, and it was my father, and he was saying “So, how are you?” I said, “Fine.” “Anything new?” I went, “No, no.” He said, “I just came back from the most beautiful wedding I think I’ve ever been in my whole life. This boy--Oh, God, he must have been your age, maybe a little older. But he and that bride, my God. You know the parents--very dear old friends. Your mother and I, when you get married, that’s how we want to do it. Everything was done just right.” And I thought, Why is he telling me this? Why did he happen to go to this beautiful wedding of a peer of mine, and why is he telling me about it? He must know. This is a sign. So I just murmured, “Well, it’s a little late for that.” He said, “What?” I said, “We just married this afternoon in Tijuana.” He roared with laughter. And I was silent. And he said, “Now wait a minute.” He had this kind of chilly tone. “I can’t tell if you’re joking with me now or what.” I said, “No, no. We really did.” And he said, in the coolest voice I have ever heard, “I think you had better come over here right now.” We went over, and both he and my mother were freaked out. I finally got a divorce--not because of that but because it didn’t work out.

VH: Did she get remarried to an aluminum-siding salesman and have six kids and end up living in Kansas?

GD: No, actually she is married to Fabian. I haven’t been married since then. It will happen. But when it does, the highway patrol won’t be involved. It will be a simple, private family affair.

[All evidence indicates that Griffin’s first wife was Kate Netter Forte. I actually read about this on the website whodatedwho but since that website is a dubious source, I mentally filed that under the ‘Unsubstantiated’ category and didn’t look into it any further. Kate’s father was producer Douglas Netter, and it’s reported that she met the former teen idol Fabian on the set of the film Disco Fever, where she played a character named Jill. She’s in about the halfway point of the film. Forte was married to Fabian from 1980 to 1990. She was the president of Harpo films for 18 years before being let go in 2013. Some of the films she helped produce include Tuesdays with Morrie and The Great Debaters.]

[Victoria Hamburg is a producer who helped produce the Keanu Reeves film Johnny Mnemonic (1995), directed by Robert Longo]

#griffin dunne #long read #long reads #interview magazine #1980s #vintage magazine #victoria hamburg #an american werewolf in london #after hours 1985 #this is us #chilly scenes of winter #baby it's you #running on empty

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foreveralwaysanauthor · 5 years ago

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Christmas Eve Miracle

Christmas Season Prompts Day 7

December 14th – Snowed In ☃️

Pairing – Mack and Brady

(I’m sorry I’m late! I had no time yesterday or today to write this out and had to make do on short time, but I hope everything pans out alright. Mack’s behavior is based on my sister, Honey, who is gonna kill me for even saying she inspired something I wrote, but I’m tired and don’t give a flying fladoodle what she says rn)

I believe we shall start this story the same way many of these begin.

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, really, it was only 6:43, but given the sun had already set, it was pretty dark. Snow fell from the sky in thick flakes, floating up over the windshield of Brady’s rental car, a 2017 Rogue. Mack and Brady were on their way through the town of Tilton, New Hampshire to Mack’s Uncle’s house on the edge of Lake Winnisquam in Sanbornton. A week prior, the couple had left their home in San Clemente, California, boarded a plane in Santa Ana, landed in the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport and were staying in a hotel in Concord.

The GPS told them that the ride from the hotel to Mack’s Uncle’s house would only be about a half hour, but the GPS hadn’t accounted for black ice, thick snow, and a very pregnant and very irritable Mack who was a week away from her due date of December 31st and didn’t feel like going out in the snow. Mack had been excited to visit with her relatives, but, as it was a very snowy Christmas Eve, she found herself not wanting to leave the safety of the hotel room.

The idea of Brady driving on snowy roads was torture on Mack. At least she knew how to handle slippery, icy roads. The only knowledge Brady had of handling wet roads was when it rained in California, he had no prior experience on roads splotched with sheets of black ice, a substance nearly invisible to the human eye.

As Mack took another deep breath to calm herself, Brady glanced at her in concern. “Are you alright, honey?”

Mack nodded, leaning her head against the cool window. “I just want to get to the house party and get it over with. We shouldn’t have left the hotel with the roads this bad.”

“Well, if it means anything, the GPS says we’re only about six minutes away,” Brady claimed, watching a car go by. They were in, what Brady assumed, the center of Tilton, but he couldn’t be sure due to how few people dared to go out in the middle of the storm.

“The GPS doesn’t count for me telling you to slow down because of ice.” Hearing that, Brady eased his foot back onto the brake pedal, watching his speedometer go from twenty-five to almost fifteen. “Thank you,” Mack mumbled from the passenger seat.

“Of course,” Brady said softly, turning on the Mozart CD they had brought with them. Mack had insisted on bringing it as not only did it calm her and the baby down, she had read that classical music was great for babies and small children to listen to as it would aid in their mental growth. Once the music started, Mack relaxed into her seat and closed her eyes, trying to keep calm while Brady drove. Brady would glance occasionally at Mack just to make sure she was doing alright, but after a while, he remained focused on the road, the timer on the GPS showing them getting closer by the minute.

“Brady,” Mack said softly, sitting up as best she could, “pull over.”

Brady watched his wife with concern as he kept going down the road. “Why? Are you alright?”

“Just pull over!” Mack insisted, one hand on her stomach and the other on the handle of the door.

Without another thought, Brady threw the blinker on and pulled to the side of the road, a streetlight and a road sign for a nearby lodge being the only things allowing light into the vehicle. As the car was parked, Mack had unbuckled her seatbelt, opened her door and stepped out, leaning her top half into the car and lightly touching where she had been sitting.

“Mack, what’s wrong?” Brady asked, unbuckling himself and preparing to jump out of the car.

Mack’s expression was enough to trigger a reaction in Brady, but her words caused him to start acting. “I think my water broke.”

Brady reached for his phone, his immediate reaction being to call the hospital, but Mack stopped him. “Brady, we can reach the hospital just fine, I don’t need an ambulance. Just let me get back in and we’ll go. We’ve got this.”

Brady seemed to relax a small bit as Mack’s calm attitude seemed to radiate into him as well. “Okay. Okay. We can do this.”

Mack slid herself into the car once more and shut the door. Brady re-buckled himself and shifted the car back into Drive. As he pushed the gas pedal, however, both of them realized he had stopped the car on a patch of ice. They wouldn’t be going anywhere unless Brady tried to get out and push, but even that might not help unless Mack could get behind the wheel to steer the car, which she couldn’t as her bump prevented her from sitting at the wheel.

Brady huffed in agitation before pulling his phone out once more, dialing Mack’s Uncle’s number. “Hey,” Brady said as Mack’s Uncle answered. “I know the party started already, but Mack and I are still in Tilton. I think we’re stopped by a digital marketing place, but I’m not sure. The sign’s covered in snow... Well, we’re stuck on ice and her water just broke.” A moment of silence passed before Brady screeched anxiously into the phone, “YES, the baby’s coming! What else could that mean?!”

Mack yanked the phone from Brady’s hands and talked with her uncle for a minute. “We’re going to try to find a hotel or something to stay in because I am not giving birth in some rental car in the cold when I could at least have a couch or something… Yeah, take your time. Keep the party going before you come out; I don’t want to ruin the night for you guys. I’ll probably still be in labor. Just call Brady when you get here, okay?... If anything happens, we’ll call... Love you too, bye.”

Brady climbed out of the car after Mack handed him his phone back, telling Mack to stay there and he would go find somewhere for them to stay. Mack watched as he ran off into the cold, disappearing into the white haze that consumed the area. She turned the key backwards until it clicked off into radio only mode so the car wouldn’t lose any gas just sitting there, turning the CD back on and turning it up so she could try to relax. Minutes passed and the song changed more than once before Brady appeared, helping her out of the car and over to a nearby campground that had agreed to let them stay in one of the cabins.

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Two and a half hours went by. Anxiety was high. Crying and worried comments had come from mostly Brady by that point, but Mack still hadn’t given birth and the relatives they had called, still hadn’t showed up. Thankfully, one of the people who owned the campground, was also a mother of five and could easily handle Mack giving birth. The woman was able to help Mack with all necessary things, except for the one thing almost every mother needed: epidural.

By the time the fifth hour rolled around, Mack had begun pushing. Brady had been told by Mack to stay in the living room so he could see if their relatives had shown up yet, but all he could see was snow and the occasional headlight from those brave few that dared to go out. Snow had mounted up and, from what Brady could see, it was maybe up to eight inches, collectively.

Mack’s screams of pain echoed through the small cabin, making Brady flinch. He hated hearing her in pain, but she had told him to leave the room as his anxiety was making her more and more angry at him. He had seen the look in her eyes and had feared for his life, so he chose to listen to her and wait in the other room. The power had gone out about twenty minutes ago as the radio told them a big rig had jackknifed and taken out a few power lines just a little bit further down than where Mack and Brady had left the car.

A few minutes later, Mack’s screams were replaced by a small voice crying and Brady had dropped everything he’d been holding onto the couch and dashed for the bedroom, seeing the owner woman place the little one into a towel and rest it on Mack’s chest.

She looked up at the two of them as Brady sat behind Mack and looked over her and their new baby. “Congratulations, darlings. She’s beautiful.”

“She?” the parents echoed.

The woman glanced at them before realization dawned on her face. “You didn’t know the gender, did you?”

“No,” Mack whispered, her voice sounding scratchy and hoarse. “We wanted to be surprised.”

Brady smiled as the baby girl gurgled in her little towel. “I told you it was going to be my princess.”

Mack smiled dazedly up at Brady before watching her little girl again. “You did. Well, king of the castle, what are you naming our princess?”

Brady’s smile broadened as he spoke, “I know we already said Kaya would be her middle name if our baby was a girl, but for the first name, I like the idea of mixing our parents names. So, Makaela is your mom and Luana is mine so… how about Makana?”

“Makana…” Mack said softly as she took in the fact that she had brought this wonderful little human into their lives. “Makana Kaya Birch. I like that.”

#Dani’sChristmasChallenge2019

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lifeinahole27 · 6 years ago

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CS ff: “On the Two” (Chapter 9/9) (au)

Summary: He’s one bad trip from ending up in AA, and she’s one performance away from a solid job and moving closer to home. Their paths were unlikely to cross until Camp Hope brought them together. How and why they meet and intertwine is against the odds, and definitely against the rules, but will that really stand in their way? A Dirty Dancing inspired modern au.

Rating: E

Content Warnings: Borderline alcoholism, very brief mentions of past relationships, mentions of the loss of a limb - this fic is primarily tame but I’ll do my best to tag anything that might need tags.

Chapter Specific Warnings: Mentions of sex.

A/N: I cannot express my full gratitude that you’ve read this whole fic. I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed it and I can’t wait to see what I produce for the next one! Much love and appreciation for all of you reading this! <3

Catch it on FFN & Ao3! Or find the previous chapters here on Tumblr!

There’s something to be said for having a girlfriend who dances. Emma’s definitely agile, and while she’s incredibly fit she’s still soft in all the right places. By now, Killian knows she sleeps in next to nothing and eats junk food as much as possible, with her snacks as fruits and vegetables in order to mislead people into believing she’s some kind of health nut. These are all things he knew before the summer at Camp Hope ended and life after began.

Thankfully, the list of things he knows about Emma just keeps getting longer.

“Not on the one, darling,” he murmurs against her ear, his hand resting on her stomach with her back against his chest. He tenses his fingers momentarily so she chortles in his hold. She’s ticklish, he’s discovered, and has exploited this fact many times over now. And when she’s not on a deadline, it’s so easy to derail any kind of attempt at dance rehearsals.

This studio is different than the one at camp. For one, there’s no issue with the heating and air conditioning, which is good considering it’s been snowing for three and a half days and shows no signs of stopping. But they’re cozy inside the studio space with hours to spare thanks to it being so close to the holidays.

Another difference in the studios is that this one is downstairs from Emma and Ruby’s apartment. The living space had come first, when they’d found the perfect apartment with just the right amount of space and the perfect price tag.

Downstairs, there’d been an empty retail rental big enough to be a studio. It had taken time, and some help from David and Snow (their way of making amends for what they later claimed was a huge oversight in their judgement), but they’re preparing to do a Grand Opening ceremony in two weeks to mark the official start of business. They’ve taken on a few private clients, but soon they’ll have classes and lessons of all kinds. They’ve even found a couple more teachers interested in employment.

With the two women on holiday break from the hotel’s entertainment schedule, Ruby drove up to Storybrooke to spend some time with Granny and Mulan. Already, she’s been able to go see her family and girlfriend more than expected since moving out of Boston.

That leaves the apartment free for Emma and Killian to spend their own time together. Today, with the snow continuing to thwart any plans they may have made, they’re down in the studio. The front of the building is all windows, and looks in at the space where Ruby or Emma will hold classes for groups of people. There are two slightly smaller spaces, however, and one of them is windowless, a line of mirrors against one wall, and a solid door so no one can peek in.

It’s not that anyone would be doing so today, of all days. Again, with the studio closed and the place to themselves, there’s no chance anyone will walk in on them. That’s a good thing, too, when Emma promptly abandons the steps to slide down Killian’s body, taking his sweatpants down as she goes. Thankfully, they’re near enough the wall that he leans forward, bracing his left forearm on the mirrored surface and reaching down to rest his hand on the back of her neck just as she engulfs him in one slick slide.

He had no idea the sex could get better, but he’s never claimed to know everything.

Afterwards, when they’re both satisfied and sprawled on the floor, Emma bundles up one of their shirts for Killian to use as a pillow before resting her cheek on his chest. Her breath ruffles the hair that’s slowly growing back, and he feels the way she smiles as she must notice the same thing. With wispy touches, she traces along his chest, around a nipple, and down his stomach. Her body starts shaking with mirth as Killian groans. It’s been five minutes, and yet his body already wants to start again. She’s brilliant at eliciting such a response from him.

“Darling, we need a bed if you wish to go for another round. And water. I need to rehydrate after that.”

She chuckles out loud this time, lifting herself to a sitting position next to him with one hand resting on his stomach. “Good idea. Maybe some food, too. Oh! D’you wanna make pancakes?”

“Whatever your heart desires, love.”

She grins, her eyes crinkling up as she does. Her hair is an absolute tangle, the last of the sweat still drying at her temples, but she looks even more beautiful every time he looks at her. “Come on, sailor.” She stands up, holding out a hand to help him up.

“Now, why does this feel awfully familiar? But I seem to remember being fully clothed the first time we did this.”

At mention of their disastrous first meeting, Emma throws her head back and laughs. He smiles as he watches her, taking in the relaxed stance despite her total lack of clothing. He lines up the images in his mind of that first memory of her hovering over him, her face pinched in annoyance, her lips pursed as she tried to coax him off the ground. How long ago that night feels compared to where they are now.

With one more bracing breath, Killian sits up, taking her offered hand and helping to gather their clothes. They’ll clean later, top to bottom, as they did with the camp studio. For now, however, he wants to make her some hot chocolate and help her with the pancakes. They slide on only what’s necessary, and then Killian sends her on her way up the back entrance while he gathers the rest of their discarded clothing. He pauses before he shuts off the lights, looking at the man that stands in the mirror and smiling. If he could go back to May and let his past self in on the secret, he may have been less reluctant to go to camp, even if it all seems surreal.

He never figured dancing would become something he did on the side. To his surprise, Regina had followed through with the offer to sign Killian on as a part-time entertainer, even after she learned that he was a total amateur, taught only in the weeks leading up to their performance. Twice now, he’s danced on their performing nights, once with Emma and once with Ruby. They’ve even started teaching him a few new dances that they’ll start using after the New Year begins so he has more than a single Mambo in his repertoire.

It was all a whirlwind after the summer ended at Camp Hope. He and Emma had a week in the city together before she and Ruby began hunting for a new apartment. He helped any way he could, but mostly he was happy to be able to take Emma out on dates after their initial return. When she officially relocated to Portland, he weighed his options for a couple weeks before deciding it was also time for a change of scenery for him.

But instead of moving to Portland with Emma, he went further. One weekend in October before the hotel job officially began, when she was tied up with planning meetings with Ruby and Regina, Killian drove to Storybrooke. He took David and Snow out to dinner, and informed them he wanted to move to town, and that he’d like to offer his services for maintaining the camp.

It was awkward, at first, with David. Somehow, the entire time they talked, Killian was sure the man was going to forbid him from seeing Emma, like Killian was a suitor for David’s princess daughter, but the demand never came. The dinner helped to smooth over the last rough edges from the incident over the summer, and it helped that they got to see how dedicated he was to helping around the camp – that he intended on staying in Emma’s life.

After seeing what Killian could still do as far as repairs and maintenance to the cabins, the tension eased even further. When the spring hits, Killian will go to camp again to help Marco, their lead wood-worker, to make some renovations. He’s discovered that he works wonderfully with the older man, even if his adult son, August, can be a bit much sometimes.

Killian shakes his thoughts free, finally extinguishing the lights and locking up the studio before jogging up the steps. He heads straight to Emma’s room to drop their clothes and tie on his robe, smiling for what feels like the millionth time today when he sees Emma’s missing from the hook.

The pancakes end up taking a little longer than he or Emma intended, primarily because she looks too tempting in her robe, standing there mixing batter as she hums along to whatever song is playing from the radio in the kitchen. He presses up close behind her, finding a spot just above her ear as he inhales.

“Something smells delicious.”

“I haven’t even started cooking them, yet.”

“I’m not talking about the pancakes,” he says, moving forward to nuzzle the side of her face.

Her smile grows, and she spins around to kiss him, then – fiercely and fondly all in the same move – until she breaks away. Her eyes search his face as her hands rub up to his shoulders and back down.

“What?” There’s something there behind her expression, but she doesn’t look sad or upset, so he knows the answer can’t be bad.

“I’m just… happy. Still surprises me sometimes.”

With a sweeping look of his own, he gives her a small smile. “Aye, love. Me too.”

She leans up, then, kissing him again, letting it quickly morph from a tender moment to one filled with passion. She has him backed up against the table in no time, one hurried “To hell with the pancakes,” thrown out for good measure as she takes control of the kiss. Their robes are pushed off to the side, dropped to the floor like their clothes were earlier, and they truly put the kitchen table to the ultimate test of how much weight and activity can take place on top of it without collapsing.

Killian makes a mental note to thoroughly clean the kitchen when they’re done, as well.

With one kind of appetite filled once more, they finally get down to the business of making their very late second breakfast. The rest of the day is spent on the couch in their pajamas, fuzzy blankets wrapped around the both of them as they catch up on whatever is on her Netflix queue.

It’s been six months since they met, and five since things took a turn for romance, but Killian’s mind wanders away to what comes next. It’s those thoughts of the future that follow him into his dreams, and he wonders what kind of ring Emma might like best.

-x-

“Killian’s going to ask me to marry him,” Emma says quietly into her phone. The screeching response is loud to her own ears, so she’s glad she’s sitting in the living room and far away from the man in question, soundly sleeping in her bed.

It takes Ruby just a couple seconds to calm down again before she starts her line of questions. “Wait, did you talk to him about it? How do you know this?”

“So, Killian talks in his sleep. Not often, and most of the time it’s total nonsense, but I was just dozing off last night when he grabbed my hand and asked me what kind of ring I want him to get. Completely asleep, dead to the world, and he just told me he wants to marry me.”

He never talked when they were sleeping together at the camp. It wasn’t until about a month of actually dating him that he first babbled some words at her as she was waking up to make breakfast at his apartment. Last night was the clearest he’s ever spoken to her in his sleep, though, as if the message defied being garbled by sleep.

Once, the very thought of getting married would cause her chest to constrict in panic. Now, however, she has that feeling you get when you’re trying not to laugh while speaking. As it is, she can’t fight the blissful smile stretching across her whole face.

“And what kind of ring should I tell him to get when he asks?”

“His subconscious has already ruined part of the mystery. Let it be a surprise. I trust you to know what I like.” “And you’re not freaking out?” “You know, I would’ve a couple months ago. Probably right after we slept together I still would’ve run away. But now,” she pauses, trying to think of the best way to describe how she’s feeling. She wants to run, all right, straight down an aisle with Killian waiting for her at the end of it.

“Now it’s just right?” Ruby finishes for her.

“Exactly. Okay. Merry Christmas and all that, in case I don’t talk to you tomorrow. Send my best to Mulan, and tell Granny thanks for the cookies. We have been steadily working our way through them since we opened the package.”

“We already finished ours, honestly. And same to you and Killian. You guys coming up tomorrow or Christmas Day?”

“Tomorrow, as long as the roads are clear. I think the snow was due to stop last night.”

“Good. Drive carefully. Try not to have sex on everything.”

“Too late,” Emma says. Chortling as Ruby starts squawking again on the other line. “Okay, bye!” She ends the call before she gets hearing damage in her ear, still chuckling to herself as she stands up from the ball she’d curled up into on the couch. With a long stretch and yawn, Emma makes her way back to the bedroom where Killian is still sleeping.

She tilts her head as she looks at him from the doorway, his face eased of any expression, his breathing soft and even. His brace and prosthetic are sitting on a shelf she installed especially for him, and his hand rests on the spot she vacated in her need to bubble over with her secret just a bit ago.

Once, Emma found Killian sleeping on the side of a trail, and the thought of that shared memory from the day before makes her snort. The noise causes Killian to stir, and he blinks his eyes open to search for her.

“Coming back t’ bed, love?”

“Yeah, be right there,” she tells him, turning once to go use the bathroom and get a glass of water before she curls up with Killian again. She knows that with the late hours they kept the night before and all their strenuous activity, they’re likely to stay in bed all morning if they can. It is Christmas Eve-Eve, and they have nowhere to be today.

There’s still a nervous flutter in her belly as she climbs back into the bed, back into the sleepy embrace Killian bestows upon her after she’s situated under the covers. She rests with her head on his shoulder, his arm loosely wrapped around her back, and thinks about how much life has changed since this time last year. For one, her bed was definitely empty. And for another, her bed was in Boston, her heart locked away, her future uncertain.

Now she’s snuggled to a man that helped her move this bed into this very room, with her heart next to his, and she’s happier than she ever imagined she could be. And now, apparently, he wants to marry her. It takes a lot of effort to not let the giddy laughter erupt once more, and she focuses instead on the other developments that have taken place to get her mind off the elephant in the unconsciousness.

When she moved to Portland, Emma wasn’t sure what was going to happen with her relationship with Killian. They’d barely made it past a third date before she and Ruby signed a lease for this place, so there was a lot she and Killian hadn’t been able to discuss yet. She knew she loved him, and that he loved her. And that alone was a shock, still. Of all things Emma was expecting from camp this year, falling in love in such a short period of time was not one of them.

Though they hadn’t been together long, that didn’t make Emma any less sure of her emotions. She kind of figured when she was willing to invite him to her cabin that night after their performance that it had to be something bigger than a one night stand.

And then came the end of camp. Killian and Liam both stuck around after all the guests checked out to help out any way they could. Killian explained later that he felt he owed it to David and Snow for not decking him on the spot, and he wanted to give them back something for all they gave to him. Even after the studio was cleaned and locked up for the season, and her car packed to the brim with all their gear, he still stuck around.

There were several jobs that Killian was perfectly fit for, given his background in building things, and he helped Leroy make some repairs, helped Marco fix up some of the furniture in a cabin where he hadn’t had time to update it yet, and he helped David with anything the man even hinted at needing help with. Sure, they snarked their way through any and every job they did together, but Emma could see at the end of their clean-up week that David was fighting smiles when Killian made a joke.

When she moved, Killian took the initiative to go make solid amends with her brother and sister-in-law. She was busy with rehearsals for an upcoming show at the hotel, but Killian assured her he would be fine, that he would backtrack and spend the night in Portland with her after dinner was completed. It was still nerve-wracking to wait around for news of that dinner, however. Almost worse than waiting for Regina when she and Ruby went to sign their contracts.

Of course, he surprised her in the best way possible when he told her he was moving to Storybrooke.

“I don’t ever want to make you choose between visiting me, and visiting your family. So I’m moving to where they are. David and Snow have even offered to lease out their old loft to me until I find a place of my own.”

The loft was a first home on their own for all of them, at one point or another. After Ruth passed away and David and Snow moved out to her old farmhouse, no one could see fit to let go of the apartment, so they sublet it during the summer months and kept it, just in case. And now, full circle, Killian was living in it. Because they hadn’t really talked about the future or what comes next between them, he’s just been nestled there until further notice.

It does make it really handy when she has a week off and she can hop up to see the Nolans. She stays with Killian and gets to see everyone for days on end, which is just about the most settled she’s felt since Ruth first took her in.

Killian mumbles in his sleep, turning to press his nose against her forehead, barely kissing the skin before he falls back to sleep once more. Emma wonders if they ever truly relaxed at camp, given how much more comfortable they seem to be now that it’s all said and done. Not that it really matters, since it all worked out, but she wonders what she would’ve done had her family truly banished her. She wouldn’t have let them. She shouldn’t have left like she did – especially without giving Killian a way to contact her – but she would’ve made sure it all worked out this way no matter what.

Her boyfriend’s budding friendship with her family is all just a bonus. As is her own slow-building relationship with Liam. Just as Killian experienced pushback with David, Emma had some problems getting along with Liam right off the bat. She’s pretty sure he was just looking out for Killian, but it took a heated conversation to turn it around. He’d been touting how he waited to start courting Tink until after camp was finished and they had time to get to know each other.

In one instance, it was a lovely lunch at Killian’s apartment in Boston right after she moved to Portland. In the next, the brothers were angrily talking over one another about morals and propriety and she thinks there was something about disrespect? She lost track quickly. She just remembers standing up between the two of them and telling them to both shut the hell up so they could talk it out like adults or take it out back like children.

It took some extra rum and whiskey, and another beer for her, but they hashed it all out that night. Liam is, as she guessed, incredibly protective of his younger brother. And changes had taken place really fast in their lives. She was the force that was taking Killian away from Liam, though she didn’t know that at the time. When Killian moved, she made a promise to Liam that she would keep on Killian to call and FaceTime with his brother, but she’s never had to remind him once in the last couple months.

It helps that Liam comes up to Storybrooke once or twice a month on the weekends to visit Tink, so that the brothers don’t ever feel truly separated. And it also helps that Liam has seen the full turn-around in Killian from the beginning of the summer. Now, when Killian has a glass of rum, he stops at one. Full bottles are not a rarity anymore. In fact, since he moved, she’s pretty sure the same bottle of rum has been in his liquor stash.

After spending most of the morning doing absolutely nothing, Emma finally shoos Killian out of bed so she can get her laundry done and pack for the week they’re staying in Storybrooke. He helps by cleaning almost the entire apartment while she works on her task, helping to load up her laundry basket when it’s all done and bring it down the hall to her bedroom.

They make dinner together, a simple meal of spaghetti since there’s nothing left in the fridge. They make hot cocoa again after they’ve cleaned up from their meal, settling on the couch to watch Christmas movies until bedtime. She’s a little sad that the apartment is mostly bare of decorations. They put up a few small ones, but no tree this year.

First, neither she nor Ruby will be home to enjoy it on Christmas day, so what was the point. And second, it didn’t fit in the storage space located outside their door, so Emma reluctantly kept it in Storybrooke this year. So while the urge to decorate simmers in her right this very minute, it’s not like she even can. She tides herself over with a reminder that there will be a tree at David and Snow’s place, and she’ll appreciate that one to the fullest.

The drive up the coast is about what Emma was expecting it would be. Enough of the snow has melted down that it’s not treacherous, but it’s not a quick and easy drive, either. Because of this, they end up arriving at the town line about an hour and a half beyond what they were hoping for.

“We’ll just come straight out to the farmhouse,” Emma says to Snow on the phone.

“No, honey, go to the loft and settle in a bit. We can wait. Dinner’s not for hours, still. We understand.”

Even though she protests one more time that she wants to see them, and sooner rather than later, Snow still insists they go do what they need to at the loft first. Maybe if she wasn’t so tired from the constant vigilance on the trip up, she would’ve caught the note in Snow’s voice letting her know something was up.

But because she is that exhausted from the drive, she’s still completely blown away when Killian shoulders open the door to the apartment and they’re greeted with a puff of warm air and the scent of cinnamon instead of the chilled exterior they were expecting to come back to.

The whole place is decorated like Snow and David used to, with lights hanging from the exposed beams and railing of the loft above. The lamps suspended above the breakfast bar have tinsel wrapped around them, and the lights switched to red and green – something that used to absolutely delight Emma when she used to come over around the holidays. The one winter she was living here, they did the same thing, and that’s probably exactly why they did all this now.

“Surprise!” Snow says as she rounds the tree – Emma’s tree – set up in the corner by the bathroom, placing an ornament and sprucing as she goes. Her sister-in-law beams as she looks at Emma’s wonderment, and she finally remembers to close her mouth and push Killian through the door when David snorts from upstairs.

“We thought we’d give you a true Storybrooke welcome,” her brother says as he comes down the stairs, grabbing Emma’s suitcase and moving it to the side so he can shut the door behind the two of them. He helps Emma with her coat, taking Killian’s as well and hanging them on the hooks by the door. Only then does Emma remember how to function, to slip off her snow boots and take off her hat and gloves, stashing them in the appropriate places, only vaguely aware of Killian doing the same beside her.

After that, her only goal is to hug David and Snow. She starts with her brother, as he’s closest, and then to Snow who is painstakingly placing tinsel on the tree, making sure each and every strand looks perfect. “We were going to wait,” Snow explains, opening her arms and accepting the tight hug Emma gives her. “But we also wanted to surprise you once the drive kept getting longer and longer. We had plenty of time.”

There are even two stockings hung from screws in the brick wall, hung with twine so they rest just at the height they’d be at if there was a fireplace and mantel here. Hers is old and worn – the one that Ruth made for her when she first came to live with the Nolans – but Emma can see that the purple thread that spells her name has been refreshed with some glittery yarn accents. And now, one adorned with Killian’s name hangs next to it. She sees that he’s finally moved, as well, his fingers gliding along the delicately embroidered red.

“Look inside,” Snow urges, going to stand with David as the other two stand in awe of their stockings.

Killian casts one glance Emma’s way, lifting his eyebrow in question and she shrugs in response. In unison, they reach into the stockings and pull out small items wrapped in tissue paper. The item from hers feels like fragility, and she’s not mistaken when she unwraps the milky glass of a hand-blown ornament shaped like a swan. It’s likely by someone in town, and Emma makes a mental note to ask who so she can thank them in person, but her gaze is caught by Killian’s ornament.

It’s clearly one made by Marco, the handcrafted carving too detailed and precise to be done by anyone else, and she thinks it’s just a tall ship until Killian laughs once, finding the little pirate flag attached. Clearly, Marco had wheedled Killian’s love of ships and pirates out of her boyfriend at some point during their work together. She imagines he must’ve spent weeks working on this one ornament and adds a second trip to their thank-you-tour for the days following Christmas.

“Thank you,” Emma says as she turns to David and Snow. “For all of this.” She gestures to the apartment in whole, from tree to lights to stockings.

“We just thought it would be nice for your first Christmas back to feel as close to home as possible.”

She just barely stops herself from crying, but it’s a close thing. And now, with the ornaments, it’s not just Emma’s first Christmas, but both of theirs.

That night, Emma watches the lights stretch and twinkle as her eyes grow heavy. She and Killian are wrapped around each other, the blankets tightly tucked around them to keep out the December chill. She stares at everything they kept lit, watching some strands cycle through their programmed flashing and dancing.

Knowing that Killian is likely to ask her a very important question soon, Emma lets herself daydream about what a future with him will look like beyond the new year, or even the next one to come. If she squints just the right way, the loft transforms into somewhere bigger, and theirs. With rooms to fill with decorations and no landlords. She sees little shoes lined up by the ones they would keep at the door, and a little girl balanced on Killian’s feet as they dance together in the living room.

The image is so startlingly clear that Emma almost declares that they start trying right now, but she settles for slowly coaxing Killian back to full wakefulness, initiating lovemaking so sweet that her heart almost bursts with happiness somewhere in the middle, let alone the end that leaves her sweaty and panting and satisfied but craving, as always. He gives her everything she asks for and more, only letting himself chase release when he feels she’s been thoroughly pleased, and he kisses her tenderly after they’ve both cleaned up and crawled back into bed, whispering his love and merry wishes as they both drift off together.

A few days after the most perfect Christmas Emma could’ve ever imagined, she gets roped into making breakfast with Snow while David and Killian go out in search of more hot chocolate packets. When they come back, it might be her imagination but David’s eyes look a little misty. If Snow notices at all, she doesn’t say anything, and David must not share with her over the next couple months, because her sister-in-law is notoriously terrible at keeping secrets.

In the end, Killian hands her a ring of a different kind first, to a grand Victorian that she used to admire every time she drove by it, close to the water and large enough for her own practice space and a workshop for Killian. The other ring comes later, when they’re lying in bed together a year to the date after their first performance. Their future unfolds in the facets and sparkle, in the way Emma says yes after she slides to kneel on the floor in front of him.

Their first dance as husband and wife is definitely not a Mambo.

#cs ff #cs ff au #captain swan ff #captain swan au #sarah writes ff #cs multichap

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anjuseervi · 2 years ago

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Why You Would Want a GPS Rental

In some cases, you may need a GPS unit while driving in the United States, internationally, hiking, camping, biking, motorcycling, or boating. You may own a vehicle that is not equipped with GPS or the vehicle you rent may not come equipped with this feature. Renting a GPS unit will give you the ability to enjoy the features of the device without the high cost of purchasing the unit when needed for a short amount of time or for one holiday.

Occasions comes up possibly once or twice per year that you will be traveling for business or pleasure and you could use a GPS unit for those times only and during the rest of the year you would not need the device. This is one reason it is better to rent to than to buy. The times you need a GPS unit would be when traveling in unfamiliar areas, states, or countries. Becoming lost is not a fun thing to do which can happen if you are relying on an atlas to find your way. Many streets may not be listed on the maps, as they are new streets or country roads that were never included on the atlas.

Many people will use a GPS rental for business trips, family vacations, road trips, new cab drivers, new delivery drivers, family that may be visiting for the first time, and families relocating to a new city.

The best reason to rent instead of purchase is that you will receive the latest mapping on the unit as the rental companies have to keep their equipment up to date along with all the newest features such as locating restaurants or gas stations that are nearest to your location.

The second reason you may consider a GPS rental is that you only prefer a handheld device with information regarding the location you wish to enjoy while camping, backpacking, treasure hunting, bicycling and more. If you are visiting the US, renting a GPS unit in the states is a good idea. If you are visiting the UK and wish to rent a unit with two-way GPS radios and GPS, locate ability so you can explore adventures such as snowmobiling or skiing you will also be able to find the perfect GPS rental.

A GPS rental gives you the opportunity to use a unit for a short period of time without the cost as well as receive units with the mapping you need for a specific area or the other features you may need such as two way GPS radios in case of an emergency.

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sportswriterdad · 4 years ago

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I have covered nine Super Bowls. Here are some my favorite experiences

With the Super Bowl looming, this feels timely...

I’ve reported from nine Super Bowls in my life. Here are nine stories — some journalism-based, some not — about what it was like to cover each one of them:

Super Bowl XXXVI: I stayed in Baton Rouge with the friend of a friend, and my fiancé (now my wife) donated her frequent flier miles to get me from Boston to Louisiana and back again. The thinking? I might not have the chance to do this ever again. Ho ho ho. After the end of the game and my stories had been filed, that’s when I started a tradition of grabbing a beer from the workroom and enjoying it on the field, once everything was done—something I’ve done just about every Super Bowl when things were complete with different colleagues over the years. I also grabbed some confetti. Anyway, I drove the hour-plus back to Baton Rouge from New Orleans at about 2 a.m. I remember thinking that if something happened—car trouble, whatever—I’d be in serious trouble, broken down by the side of the road on a Louisiana highway is no way to die. But I made it.

Super Bowl XXXVIII: Stayed in Houston with two other reporters at a Holiday Inn. Went to the Super Bowl party that week, which was held in the Houston Aquarium. (Without irony, they served sushi. In an aquarium.) Another great Super Bowl, one where I learned that I had to have multiple stories ready to go on deadline, because no matter what you think of the Patriots, they always make in interesting in the end. Had a discount flight back to Boston the following Tuesday evening. It was strange being in the host city for the Super Bowl after everyone else had gone home. I watched the celebration going on in Boston in a hotel room in Houston.

Super Bowl XXXIX: I was sick. Really sick. Had a case of the flu the week before the game, and I thought I had shaken it off, but it got worse when I got to Jacksonville. (What didn’t help things was the fact that my flight into Tallahassee was delayed, and I landed at about 2 a.m. The only rental car place that was open was Dollar, and I got one of their last cars, and drove the two-plus hours to Jacksonville. Got in at about 5 a.m. To this day, that’s why Dollar remains my default rental car option.) Anyway, I had a media hotel room, so I could ride the shuttle back and forth, but I got really sick on Saturday. I remember drinking Gatorade and chugging DayQuil, and being generally miserable much of the night. Walking into the stadium, I heard a band playing “Carry On My Wayward Son” and thinking, Man, that’s a really good Kansas cover band. Ten seconds later, the song ends, and I hear the lead singer say, “Thank you very much! We are Kansas!”

Super Bowl LII: The desert was really nice. Sold a ton of books that week—turns out when you write a book about the Patriots being awesome and they go 18-0 out of the gate, a lot of people will buy it. Who knew? One of my Super Bowl routines was to go from the press box to the media workroom at the start of the fourth quarter. (It can be a dicey proposition waiting for the elevator to get to the postgame interview area.) As it became apparent the Giants were going to beat the Patriots, multiple New York radio guys were cheering in the media workroom. Afterward, when we got to the interview area, a colleague looked at me, waited a beat and said, “Well, you sold a lot of books, right?”

Super Bowl LVI: Indy was a really underrated Super Bowl city. Good food, decent weather for early February, and super hospitable. The media party was at the Indy 500 track. I remain convinced that if Rob Gronkowski was fully healthy for the game, they would have beaten the Giants. After the game, I was standing at Wes Welker’s podium. Felt absolutely gutted for the guy. Had red eyes, and was answering everything with one or two sentences. Awful. But he talked—I give him lot of credit for that.

Super Bowl LXIX: This was still bananas. I remember sitting in the auxiliary—outside—press box, and yelling in surprise at a colleague after Malcolm Butler picked off Russell Wilson. Anyway, you know how I said before that you always had to keep two or three stories going when it comes to a Super Bowl finish involving the Patriots? On my old laptop, I had two different game stories set to go when the clock hit zero. BTW, that stadium? I always thought it had a faint smell of cinnamon. And the field had some of the squishiest turf I’ve ever stepped on. We stayed up all night writing, and the next morning, we went to the Super Bowl MVP press conference on no sleep. When I covered the team, I liked to sit relatively close to the front so guys could recognize you. At Brady’s presser, I think I was the only recognizable face in the front row. He looked right at me for the first question. Showing up every day has its perks, I always tell you reporters. That was one instance where it paid off.

(Oh, and another thing: I rode the media duckboat in the parade a few days later--see above for visual evidence. To be honest, as a media member, I prefer to stay in the background, but it was the only way we’d get player access that day. You gotta do what you gotta do.)

Super Bowl LI: Another crazy one. I wrote about the finish in depth here. But my favorite behind-the-scenes journalism tidbit from this one was probably the fact that my literary agent and I had been going back and forth all season long about the fact that there was probably a book with this team. After the game ended, me and my colleagues spent the night writing and writing and writing. He texted me at some point in the early morning hours saying, “Yeah. There’s a book there.” I started writing the outline on the way home, he sold it quickly to St. Martin’s Press, and it was on the bookshelves six-plus months later. I’ll always have a soft spot for my first book, but “Drive For Five” might ultimately be my favorite book.

Super Bowl LII: Never been that cold in my life. All week. It was a dry cold, which made it almost painful to try and endure. I remember our hotel was right across the parking lot from the Mall of America, where the media center was. The first day, I looked out my window, and it was something like a five-minute walk. I will make this. I am hale and hearty and a New Englander who eats 20-degree temperatures for breakfast. I got about two minutes in, muttered “(Bleep) this,” and rode the shuttle the rest of the week. The Patriots lost, but I remember the looks on the faces of the Philly fans. So happy. That’s what it must have been like to have covered the Cardinals in the 2004 World Series.

Super Bowl LIII: Stayed at a house in the Atlanta suburbs all week. Ate Chick-Fil-A or Publix subs almost every day when I wasn’t scrounging food in the media center. I regret nothing. Rode the subway back and forth, and had a blast. Great people in Atlanta. On Saturday, I walked through the campus at Georgia Tech—saw the baseball field and a “GRONK DRINKS FOR FREE” sign in front of a fraternity. After the Patriots’ won, I congratulated Cordarrelle Patterson, one of my favorite quotes that year, in the locker room after the game. “Couldn’t have done it without you, man” he replied. OK. Not sure if that’ll be my last Super Bowl, but if it was, I like to think I was present for the football version of Michael Jordan beating Bryon Russell in Game 6 — that 29-yarder from Brady to Gronkowski in the fourth quarter was the exclamation point on the dynasty, as far as I’m concerned.

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rent2way · 3 years ago

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Lightweight, robust Digital two-way radio. Packed with functionality, the Hytera PD562 portable digital radio impresses with its safety features and flexibility to support for both digital and analog communications, ideal for manufacturing, events and hospitality environments.

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yahoonewsphotos · 7 years ago

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Victims of the Manhattan bike path attack

One of the dead was a mother of young sons from Belgium. Five had traveled from Argentina to New York with a tight-knit group of classmates to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their graduation.

The other victims were Americans: One a new college graduate working as a software engineer, the other a doting son who had recently lost nearly 100 pounds and was getting a bike ride in between meetings at his World Trade Center job.

Those killed in the New York bike path attack reflect a city that is a melting pot, a magnet for international visitors and a business and technology capital.

“They saw New York as a special place to be,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio, “and we now and forever will consider them New Yorkers.”

The victims were mowed down by a rental truck Tuesday afternoon near the World Trade Center. Police called it a terrorist attack, saying the driver was an Uzbek immigrant who “did it in the name of ISIS.”

The largest group of victims came from Rosario, Argentina, the country’s third-largest city and the hometown of international soccer star Lionel Messi and guerrilla leader Che Guevara. They had made the trip courtesy of one of their well-heeled friends, who was also among those who perished.

“It hurts us to think that these are people who walked the same school halls as we did or that studied in our same classrooms,” said Agustin Riccardi, a senior at the victims’ alma mater.

President Mauricio Macri said in Buenos Aires that the attack “hit all Argentines hard.”

On Wednesday, friends and relatives began remembering the victims — and recounting the circumstances that led them to New York.

___

ARGENTINA: A GROUP OF FRIENDS

Three decades had passed since their 1987 graduation from the Polytechnic School of Rosario, Argentina. But the Argentine victims of Tuesday’s truck attack, most of them architects, had remained close friends, getting together several times a year.

The five dead were among a group of 10 friends marking their graduation with a tour of New York and Boston, where a survivor of the group lived.

They had gone on a bike ride through Central Park on Tuesday before turning south, to lower Manhattan.

“They were pedaling in lines of two, chatting, laughing, enjoying the ride. My husband was the last one in the line, when he felt a speeding car, and then the truck that zoomed by” at high speed, Cecilia Piedrabuena, the wife of survivor Ariel Benvenuto, told an Argentine radio station. “The truck took away his friends, and he saw them all scattered on the ground.”

One victim, Hernan Diego Mendoza, was an architect and father of three who designed the home of his close friend, Estanislao Beas.

“The news destroyed my wife and I,” Beas said. “We had a tight bond. We cared for him so much. It’s incredible that this happened to him and that he was there at that time.”

Another friend, Cesar Lagostino, attended a candlelight vigil for the victims Wednesday evening outside the school. He remembered Mendoza as an honest and generous person, “among those who deserve to stay in this world.”

The Argentine foreign ministry identified the other victims as Ariel Erlij, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damian Pagnucco and Hernan Ferruchi.

The reunion trip was partially financed by Erlij, the chief executive of Ivanar, an Argentine steel products manufacturing company, according to Argentina’s La Nacion newspaper.

Another classmate , Martin Ludovico Marro, of Newton, Massachusetts, near Boston, was being treated at a Manhattan hospital.

In Rosario, a minute of silence was observed at the high school earlier Wednesday, and the light-blue and white Argentina flag was flown at half-staff.

Only days earlier, before flying to the U.S., they had posed for a group photo, all of them wearing T-shirts with the word “Libre,” or “Free” — meaning free from any responsibilities, said Piedrabuena, the wife of survivor Ariel Benvenuto.

___

BELGIUM: ANN-LAURE DECADT

Ann-Laure Decadt, 31, the mother of a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old son, had traveled with her relatives to New York from a rural town in Belgium.

Decadt belonged to a prominent family that owns a venerable animal feed business in Staden, a town of 11,000 some 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Brussels.

The family said in a statement that “she was riding a bike and apparently was surprised by a vehicle that came from behind.” Her husband and children had not traveled with her. Other family members escaped injury.

Decadt grew up in the town and was active in its social scene, taking part in the youth council and village fairs, said Staden’s mayor, Francesco Vanderjeugd.

“Ann-Laure meant so much to us in town,” he said. “It is an attack in New York, but also one on our community.”

Flags flew at half-staff in the village, and a condolence register was opened at the community center Wednesday — All Saints’ Day, when Belgium traditionally remembers the dead.

Johan Verstervete, a friend of the family, said: “We knew her as a very spontaneous person, very dynamic, loving her family and her children.”

Vanderjeugd said he was delighted when he first heard that Decadt was going to New York. He even sent the family a message saying: “Wow, you’ll have a great time there, with Halloween and the New York marathon and all.”

“And then,” he said, “this happens.”

___

NEW JERSEY: DARREN DRAKE

Darren Drake, a 32-year-old project manager for Moody’s Investors Service at the World Trade Center, had recently lost a lot of weight — 93 pounds — after undergoing lap band surgery. He was out for a bike ride between meetings when the truck hit and killed him.

“While other people would take cigarette or coffee breaks, he would go out and ride the bike for 15 to 20 minutes,” his father, Jimmy Drake, told NJ.com.

Drake, a voracious reader who enjoyed listening to audio books, used to serve on the school board in New Milford, in northern New Jersey, where he was a native and lived with his parents. He had a master’s degree in business administration and was working toward a second master’s degree, at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Stevens’ president, Nariman Farvardin, said in a message to the university community that Drake’s death was “a heartbreaking loss for the Stevens community.”

Jimmy Drake told NorthJersey.com he and his son were close. They went hunting and fishing together, and Jimmy drove Darren every day to the terminal in suburban Hoboken so he could catch a train to his job in the city.

He sobbed as he recounted seeing his son’s body at the morgue.

“Just picture that face. He really looked like he was having a nice dream,” he said.

He called the Uzbek immigrant suspected in the attack a “psycho” but said he’s “not angry at all.”

“I’m hurt,” he said. “I’m absolutely hurt.”

___

NEW YORK CITY: NICHOLAS CLEVES

Nicholas Cleves, 23, died not far from his home in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. He was a software engineer and web developer.

Online profiles show he went to Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York City and graduated last year from Skidmore College with a degree in computer science. He had been working as a software engineer for the Unified Digital Group.

Cleves described himself on his Facebook page as a “nerdy white boy.” The most recent photo posted there showed him posing with some friends next to a Darth Vader figure at a Star Wars exhibit.

“Our hearts go out to Nicholas’s mother, Monica Missio, who is a member of the Skidmore class of 1981, the other members of his family, and his closest friends,” Skidmore President Philip A. Glotzbach wrote on the school’s website.

Outlining his aspirations on LinkedIn, Cleves wrote that he was “searching for ways in which technology can be used to make positive impacts on our everyday lives.”

Alex Silverstein, who hired Cleves as a Unified Digital Group intern during his senior year in college, wrote a glowing recommendation on LinkedIn.

“I immediately recognized his intelligence and desire to know more about everything,” Silverstein wrote. “He is great with customers — polite, considerate, and patient. This is extremely useful emotional intelligence that you can’t put a price on.” (AP)

Photos from top: Cecilia Piedrabuena/AFP/Getty Images (5), Social media via Reuters (2), LREI Alumni via Facebook

See more photos of the victims of the Manhattan bike path attack and our other slideshows on Yahoo News.

#manhattan #bike path attack #new york city #argentina #photography #photojournalism #belgium #islamic state #isis

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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Modern life too much for you? Maybe a tiny box in the woods is the cure.

By Lavanya Ramanathan, Washington Post, December 28, 2017

To commune with ourselves, we must trek two hours to Stanardsville, a town on the edge of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains whose population has stairstepped down over the years to 384 people, a country store and this wooded plot, which, before 20 tiny houses arrived this fall, was an RV campground called Heavenly Acres.

The heavenly part is debatable. On the second official day of winter, the tract is a colorless bog, surrounded by tall, barren trees and covered with a blanket of dead leaves. But this, promises Getaway--a start-up that offers these rental not-cabins and this not-camping not far from major cities--is where we may rejuvenate our very souls.

As our car crunches up the gravel driveway, we pass a charcoal-gray box on wheels. A sign proclaims it “Lenore.” It is a carbon copy of Lillian, Hank, Felix and Shirley, which is the tiny house we have been assigned, we learn in a succinct text from the company that also feeds us an entry code.

But Lenore sends the first ripple of excitement through the car. Tinys have a way of doing that.

In Getaway’s soft, wooded marketing photos, tinys such as Lenore are imbued with symbolism. Inside, couples slice avocados together. A multiethnic gaggle of cool kids in beanies convenes at a fire pit. Young women plant themselves in large picture windows overlooking the forest with hardcover books you can only assume are by Zadie Smith or Audre Lorde. In one image, a woman simply contorts herself in a display of yogic bliss.

The savvy emphasis on escape and disconnectedness and repose has resonated among the millennials Getaway aims to reach. In each of its markets, outside New York, Boston and Washington, Getaway’s houses are booked solid on weekends, and in early 2017, the company, founded by two Harvard graduates, raised $15 million in venture capital funding, which suggests that a tiny house campground may soon be coming to a forest near you.

Despite its name, Getaway does not sell the sort of wild weekend vacation you might experience in Cancun or the food-focused travels you might have in Portugal.

Instead, it presents a dire vision of urban life, and then offers itself as the antidote. It evokes the Japanese practice of forest bathing, and disconnection, and a little curative isolation. It encourages you to use your tiny, at the rate of just over $160 a night, to finish your novel--because you obviously never have time to work on it otherwise--and insists that you remove yourself from a list of stressors conveniently noted in a Getaway pamphlet. These include: work, email, texts and competition.

We punch in the code and crack open Shirley like a safe and begin to poke around. I plop down on the large, soft platform bed. (“Memory foam?” I announce giddily.) I pore over the copious literature, which informs guests, among other things, that the absence of mirrors is intentional. Because only monsters think about their pores when they’re supposed to be out here like Henry David Thoreau. (Need a reminder? There’s a copy of “Walden” on the bookshelf.)

We scan the kitchen, which comes with two plates, two mugs, a pan and not a single wine glass. And we encounter the wooden box where you really, really, really should lock away your cellphone, source of so much pain and FOMO.

But just in case you can’t part with it, they’ve conveniently provided absolutely no WiFi.

“Idiot,” you think. “This is called camping.”

Not exactly. Now, in tiny houses that no one will acknowledge are honestly just what we used to call cabins, it’s called “escaping.”

Just what are we running from?

For the suburban families that have made “Tiny House Hunters” an HGTV hit, tiny houses are an alternate reality, an incredible stretch of the imagination.

“How could anyone live with so little?” is the obvious question.

Having only recently moved up from a series of 350-square-foot tiny houses called studio apartments, I know what it’s like to live with no doors.

So I can’t dismiss the popular fascination with tiny houses--little wooden temples to minimalism that on average clock in at just over 200 square feet and can be had for about $50,000--as a misguided fad. Adorable wooden cottages on wheels have exploded in popularity not because people wanted to downsize, but because they were downsized.

We struggle “our whole lives to work hard enough so we can relax,” says Amy Turnbull, president of the American Tiny House Association, a relatively recent creation (founded in 2015) with 400 members nationwide. “What has changed is that millennials and the housing crisis of 2008 have shown us we ain’t got time for that. Security is a myth. Housing is beyond the reach of many. We have student loan debt. So, what’s the point?”

It’s no wonder that the tiny house, off the grid in fact and in spirit, appeals.

“Initially people were like, that’s so cute, I want one,” Turnbull says. But the tiny house movement has been mired in municipal wrangling and shunned by communities that won’t abide what ultimately are temporary homes. In many areas, they are illegal, she says.

And so “you can’t live in them full time,” Turnbull says with some exasperation. “That’s the problem.”

But Getaway, and other tiny house rentals, such as Caravan in Portland, Ore., or Austin’s Tiny Homes Hotel, can give you a taste of the tiny-house life.

In an early marketing video, one of Getaway’s founders spoke of tiny houses as yet another millennial reaction to their parents’ whole lives. “The form is wrong, the function is wrong,” chief executive Jon Staff intoned as a camera panned over beige dream homes in some nameless suburbia.

Millennials have been blamed for the death of really important American institutions, like paper napkins and J. Crew and promiscuity.

But what if we’ve got it all wrong? What if it’s the American institutions that are secretly killing millennials, or at least filling them with an existential dread that quietly eats away at their insides like acid reflux?

“You can make a case that millennials are stressed out. They feel stressed out by their phones,” says Jean M. Twenge, a psychologist who studies generational differences and is the author of “Generation Me.”

“Technology just feels so demanding, all the time,” Twenge says. “And as people have spent more time interacting with digital media, they spend less time interacting with each other face-to-face.”

If their parents’ little boxes are another institution that has to go, maybe, Getaway seems to posit, the answer is a littler box. Maybe the answer is in “Walden.”

“The irony here is that what Thoreau did was move to Walden Pond to get away from society. Arguably, life in a village at that time and life at Walden Pond wasn’t that different,” Twenge notes. “Compare that to life with a phone in modern times.”

It’s ridiculous, but I expect to feel some instant woodsiness that never materializes. Even though I play Bon Iver on the Bluetooth radio, and then take the provided torch outside to our fire pit and sprinkle the (provided) firestarter over the (provided) logs, and light our first campfire and make some (provided) s’mores.

Instead, we sit outside and poke at our baby fire, which is as formidable as a burning candle, and drink wine until it begins to rain.

Later, I sleep like the dead.

#Getaway houses #tiny house rentals

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nightmare-afton-cosplay · 5 years ago

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Tourist Towns Say, ‘Please Stay Away,’ During Coronavirus Lockdowns

Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Resort towns rely on visitors as their economic lifeblood, but as the new coronavirus pandemic rages, many are asking nonresidents to stay away.

More than 12,000 residents of Cape Cod, Mass., signed a petition this week asking authorities to turn away visitors and nonresident homeowners from the two bridges that are the only roads in to the Boston-area summertime playland.

“It’s a stay-at-home order for a reason,” said Beth Hickman of South Yarmouth, who started the petition, in a local talk-radio interview Thursday. “It’s not about going to your second home because it’s a vacation.”

From Sedona, Ariz., to the Florida Keys, tourist spots across the country are trying to figure out ways to keep outsiders from bringing the new coronavirus with them. In some cases, that means taking aggressive steps like banning people who own second homes from their own property. In other cases, it means shutting down key access points. Full-time residents in these communities say their health-care systems weren’t built to handle pandemics and shutting out visitors is the only way to avoid disaster.

Pamela Wilkes, a retired health-care executive who lives in Albany, N.Y., but who owns a second home on the Cape, said the petition is outrageous. “My thought is I’m a taxpayer of Massachusetts,” she said. “I substantially support local business.”

But other nonresident homeowners say they understand and plan to stay away.

“There are 70- and 80-year-old retirees down there that are sort of our best friends,” said Tom Chamberlain, an insurance agent in Bridgewater, Mass., whose family has had a home on the Cape since the 1960s. “I think people shouldn’t be going down there to use up the resources and also infect them.”

Massachusetts officials said in a statement that they have no plans to set up roadblocks on the bridges for now. Visitors from out of state are asked via electronic signs all over the Cape to self-quarantine for 14 days.

The Island of North Haven, Maine, adopted a resolution last month strongly urging outsiders except those providing essential services not to come to the island in Penobscot Bay, reversing what had been a ban on outsiders coming to the island of 355 permanent residents. The island has a clinic, but no hospital.

Tourist boards and mayors of South Lake Tahoe, Calif.; Sedona, Ariz.; and Moab, Utah, are all discouraging visitors and asking or even ordering hotels and short-term rentals to stop booking.

The Florida Keys last week banned visitors but not property owners from the chain of islands. The Outer Banks of North Carolina banned both visitors and nonresident homeowners as of mid-March. Both areas have set up roadblocks to enforce the bans.

Dorothy Hester, public information officer for Dare County, which includes the Outer Banks, said law enforcement is sticking to the restrictions despite homeowners trying to gain access.

The county of 36,000 permanent residents has just one hospital with 24 beds and no intensive-care unit, she said. In the summer, when the population swells to 300,000, “they see things like a fish hook in the finger,” she said. More serious cases are transported by helicopter to trauma centers that can be hours away by car.

Dare County officials on Thursday reported three cases of Covid-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus.

The right to travel isn’t explicit in the Constitution, but judges have invoked it to strike down laws like those passed in California to stop migration during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, said Rick Su, a law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill. The rights are more limited in a time of emergency. It is unlikely that a court would have time to rule on any challenge since the situation is so fluid and fast-moving, he said.

Cape Cod has 214,000 permanent residents and about twice as many in the summer, according to the local Chamber of Commerce. The hook-shaped cape, which is technically a man-made island because of a canal, has two hospitals with 354 beds and capacity to ramp up to 500, according to Cape Cod Healthcare. The system has 116 ICU beds and 80 ventilators, a spokeswoman said.

The state is reporting 283 cases of Covid-19 in Barnstable County, which includes the Cape.

Cape Cod’s Ms. Hickman, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, said in her radio interview that she decided to start the petition when she saw New York license plates at the grocery store or the beach. Normally, visitors and nonresident property owners don’t arrive on the island for another month or so, she said.

“I think it’s a fear response,” said Olaf Valli, who owns a surf shop in Wellfleet and grew up on the Cape but spends part of each week with his family in New Jersey. “We’re fighting a microscopic thing that we don’t have much understanding of. It’s easy to point the finger and blame anything that’s not familiar.”

The post Tourist Towns Say, ‘Please Stay Away,’ During Coronavirus Lockdowns appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/tourist-towns-say-please-stay-away-during-coronavirus-lockdowns/

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massmurdera · 7 years ago

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Best/Worst of 2017

Objectively speaking, 2017 was a tire fire of a year in America and I knew that going in. I’ll leave out the Trump bullshit and how I feel. Americans/people like being outraged, but it gets old to wake up every day in a panic. I did when Deflategate was happening to Tom Brady, but that had no real-world implications. Everyday, I was waking up to check Twitter to see what bad shit was happening. I think I did a solid job cutting it out as best I could and not letting it make me go mad.

It was a mostly boring year and then it picked up towards the very end. I might not feel good about America and where we’re I think we’ heading while holding out hope that this ends soon (I’m naïve and think we’re completely/totally fucked) but I guess I feel all right about where I’m going and how I feel about those close to me in my life. I’m controlling what I can control. Things could be better, but I’m all right.

TV Funniest go-to show: Desus and Mero Late Night/Politics: John Oliver Favorite TV show (non-Game of Thrones): American Vandal TV SHOW (non-Game of Thrones): 1) Legion 2) Stranger Things 3) Godless 4) Dark 5) Sneaky Pete 6) Mindhunter 7) Marvelous Mrs Maisel 8) Better Call Saul 9) the Deuce 10) Fargo 11) Ozarks 12) 13 Reasons Why 13) Lethal Weapon 14) Riverdale 15) Mr Robot 16) This is Us TV Comedies: 1) American Vandal 2) Big Mouth 3) Nathan for You 4) Rick and Morty 5) GLOW 6) Veep 7) Brockmire 8) Atypical

I’m biased that a family friend of mine co-created American Vandal and his brother is on the show too in a minor role but it REALLY is great. It sounds stupid that older family members scoffed at or were bewildered by, but it’s far smarter social commentary than it appears. It nailed high school so well.

BEST NEW CHARACTERS Funniest: Hormone Monster/Monstress (Big Mouth) Best Jeff Spicoli that should get a spin-off: Dylan and the Wayback Boys (American Vandal) Best Philip Seymour Hoffman: Edward Kemper (Mindhunter) Most fun/crazy role: 1) Aubrey Plaza (Legion) 2) Susan Sarandon (Feud) Perfect role: Marc Maron (GLOW), Nikki Swango (Fargo) Best drunk: Brockmire Sorely Overlooked: Clayne Crawford in Mel Gibson’s role (Lethal Weapon) Star-Making: Katherine Langford (13 Reasons Why); Rachel Brosnahan (Marvelous Mrs Maisel)

DISAPPOINTING FROM GREAT SHOWS: Curb Your Enthusiasm; Fargo; the Americans; Game of Thrones; Silicon Valley; Veep Shows I half-watch but could give up on: Big Little Lies; Feud; Preacher; Runaways; Shameless; the Sinner; SMILF; SNL; This is Us; White Famous WORST Shows: 1) Twin Peaks 2) the Leftovers 3) the Defenders 4) Taboo 5) Top of the Lake Didn’t work but should have: Vice Principals -had moments Absolute Worst: any and all political panel/news shows (Fox News, CNN, MSNBC). Burn them all to the ground.

Still need to watch: American Gods; BoJack Horseman; Brooklyn 99; Carmichael Show; Catastrophe; Good Place; Halt and Catch Fire; Handmaid’s Tale; Master of None; Punisher

Overall: the new shows were damn good, but the established great shows were all letdowns.

MOVIES 5 STARS: CLASSIC: 1) Get Out 4 STARS: 2) Free Fire 3) John Wick II 4) Dunkirk 5) Star Wars 6) Logan 3 ½ stars: Brawl in Cell Block 99; Good Time; Logan Lucky 3 STARS RENTALS: WATCHABLE: Atomic Blonde; Baby Driver, Babysitter, Big Sick; Blade Runner 2049; Fate of the Furious; Okja; Shot Caller, Spiderman, Split; War for Planet of the Apes; Wind River; Wonder Woman 2 STARS-DIDN”T LIKE BUT DECENT PARTS: Girls Trip; Guardians of Galaxy 2; Ingrid Goes West; Lego Batman; War Machine Most boring/dumbest critic favorite: Personal Shopper Cool twist made up for okay movie: Split Coolest soundtrack/score: Good Time, Dunkirk Most Over-the-Top Violent: Brawl in Cell Block 99 Overrated: Baby Driver, Wonder Woman Disappointed: Lego Batman

NEED TO CHECK OUT AFTER I READ BOOK: Lost City of Z; It HAVEN”T SEEN: Call Me By Your Name; Coco; Columbus; Darkest Hour; Disaster Artist; Florida Project; Justice League; Lady Bird; Molly’s Game; mother!; Mudbound; Phantom Thread; the Post; Shape of Water; Thor; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

I’ve got catching up to do. But I think the year in movies wasn’t good.

Best Documentaries: 1) the Defiant Ones 2) Get Me Roger Stone 3) the Keepers 4) Jim & Andy BEST NETFLIX STAND-UP SPECIALS: 1) Dave Chappelle 2) Patton Oswalt 3) Ali Wong 4) Marc Maron 5) Neil Brennan 6) Bill Burr 7) Rory Scovel 8) Mike Birbiglia

Burr’s my favorite comic and seeing him live he is the best comic alive but it didn’t translate live. And he cut out so much of his best stuff. Chappelle might be more natural and have a sense of the moment though. Overplayed controversy -outrage over Chappelle’s jokes. Yeah, I don’t think they actually saw his act and just listened, out of context, to the jokes. He’s still as good as it gets. People just want to be outraged and have things be PC. Comics maybe hype that up, but it’s true. Underrated/Lost moment no one saw: Def Jam 25th Anniversary Special wasn’t good but Chappelle’s 7-minute improv off-the-cuff bit is secretly funnier than anything he did in his 2 specials. I don’t think any other comic alive or ever could have pulled that off as smoothly/naturally.

Worst special: Amy Schumer (like her, but she wasn’t ready to be released and nothing worked: felt like she wanted in on Netflix $ guys like Chappelle/Seinfeld were getting. I get the fairness, but uh, Chappelle’s specials felt like an event.

OTHER SPECIALS (comedy album/non-HBO) SOLID: TJ Miller; Joe DeRosa; Kurt Braunholer; Brian Posehn Didn’t totally work for me but I like them: Jerrod Carmichael, Tiffany Hadish

STILL NEED TO CHECK OUT: Ari Shaffir; Jerry Seinfeld; Brian Regan; Jen Kirkman; Judd Apatow; Hasaan Minaj; Michelle Wolf; Chris Gethard

Just loaded with too much good comedy. It’s never been better with podcasts, Netflix.

Favorite Podcasts: 1) Chapo Trap House 2) Pardon My Take 3) Frotcast 4) Bill Burr 5) Fuck the Chargers 6) Inactives 6) Revisionist History 7) Dollop 8) My Favorite Murder 9) Hound Tall Best Dollop Episodes of the Year: 1) Falling Pilot 2) Falling Pilot 3) Uber 4) Trump 5) Trump part 1 & 2 5) Enron 6) Phantom of the Open Dollop can be hit-or-miss. But the hits? Are as good as podcasting gets for history, comedy, and understanding the times we live in now. They would make for classic movies/docs. but specializes in overlooked, ridiculous stories that may have had massive historical ramifications (Dope Lake, Falling Pilot qualify for that except the ramifications part). Every once in a blue moon, they nail something timely (Enron) or current (Opium; Uber; Trump). They are the calm in the eye of a storm of utter insanity. Best individual episodes: -Bertcast (#217: Dave Anthony/Gareth Reynolds)-funny stand-up stories -Joey Diaz on Rogan/Bertcast -Tom Segura/Bert Kreischer Weight Loss Challenge (Joe Rogan) first episodes of the year)-funny/strangely inspiring. They did another challenge later in the years -Revisionist History-Miss Buchanan’s Period of Adjustment (Brown v Board of Education)-the unintended and disastrous consequences still felt today of why the decision was awful in a way you didn’t consider. It’ devastating to hear -Crabfeast #292 (Gareth Reynolds) talks about being hired to entertain kids birthday parties for 5 years as a side job while trying to make it in comedy. I love stories of failure/struggle at shit jobs Funniest podcast: 600 Dollar Podcast-bummer it ended Frotcast is my next favorite for humor (Best of 2016/2017 episodes are most accessible rather than just being dropped in). Bill Burr always. Best guest on a podcast: James Adomian as Gorka (Chapo Trap House) Best political: Chapo Trap House (and, yes, I am a Grey Wolf) Best Sports: Pardon My Take Best fan hate/schadenfreude: Fuck the Chargers Most underrated: Butterfly Effect (Jon Ronson)-only 6 episodes 3 hours 30 minutes; does what Malcolm Gladwell does but more long-form on the porn industry History: Dollop (over Common Sense/Hardcore History) Best local radio show/podcast: Matty & Nick Overrated/Lukewarm/Forgettable: Crimetown; S-Town; Pod Save America, Larry Wilmore Crimetown and S-Town’ are basically just accents. I didn’t like them the way other people did. Pod Save America is for boring people who don’t listen to podcasts and don’t know or bother for better alternatives. They are inoffensive dudes: it’s VERY basic. I think ‘Lovett or Leave It’ is better depending on the panel. Worst: Missing Richard Simmons Other podcasts I enjoy-Binge Mode, Bodega Boys, Dumb People Town, Emotional Hangs, FOFOP, Handsome Rambler (Hannibal Burress), Lovett or Leave It, We’ll See You in Hell Need to check out more-Crab Feast, Cum Town, In the Dark, Mogul Listen to if they have a good guest -Bertcast, Joe Rogan, WTF, You Made it Weird BEST EVENTS: 1) Pats-Steelers AFC Championship 2) Pats-Texans AFC Divisional 2nd half 3) Chance the Rapper: Boston Calling 4) 1975: Boston Calling 5) Thrice/Circa Survive: House of Blues sadly I couldn’t see Thrice or the stage at all in the mezzanine but I wasn’t mad 5) My Favorite Murder: Wilbur 6) Turnover: Royale 7) Hannibal Burress: Boston Calling 8) Frightened Rabbit: Boston Calling 9) Norm MacDonald @ Wilbur Theatre: Netflix taping 10) watching my friend mosh to Converge while I held his sweatshirt

WORST EVENTS: 1) My cousin at Boston Calling -just a disaster I won’t explain, but it was the probably the most disappointing thing that I experienced all year and shit on my weekend with my friend from LA. I basically had to become a babysitter and ditch my friend. 2) Pats-Texans AFC Championship Game -freezing 0 degree cold January game (expected) in the upper 300-level section and ours was the ONLY one not standing for a playoff game. Sat next to two kids under 8. Then someone brought in a newborn fucking baby that, no hyperbole, could not have been more than a month old. Insane. We snuck into the 200-level section at halftime and it ended up being a fucking party and playoff atmosphere that I wanted, expected, and had enjoyed before. 2) Migos -last minute replacement for Solange: just looked/sounded completely unprepared and they knew it. Crowd didn’t seem to be into it (Boston is mainly white) and didn’t know the lyrics to chant back: when they did so, it failed, and they were laughing it off but knowing it wasn’t a good setting for them. 4) Bon Iver -I liked his new album but doesn’t translate well live and to festivals. Super boring. Watching white people LOSE their shit to lukewarm Kenny G-esque saxophone solos (5 people playing the sax) was ridiculous.

MUSIC 1a) Brian Fallon-’If Your Prayers Don’t Get to Heaven’ 1b) Brian Fallon-’Forget Me Not’ 2) Menzingers-’˜Lookers’ 3) Lorde-’Perfect Places’ 4) Carly Rae Jepsen-’Cut to the Feeling’ 5) Turnover-’Breeze’ 6) Vallis Alps-’Fading’ 7) Kendrick Lamar-Humble’ 7) Calvin Harris/Frank Ocean/Migos-’Slide’ 9) Night Game-’the Outfield’ 10) Kesha-’Praying’

Album: Menzingers-’After the Party’ New Artist: Khalid Late pass: Turnover Late pass song: Lord Huron-’the Night We Met’

WORST POLITICAL: the chaos that comes with Trump-Waking up everyday in anxiety to check what happened on Twitter in America with politics/everything. It was, objectively, a trainwreck tire-fire. There’s too much news (which he obviously likes, even if it’s bad: he likes the attention and is a cable news addict). So, yeah, I don’t want to just be overloaded with it all the time, so fuck you forever. A year’s worth of shit is dumped every week. Thing is, I don’t hate Trump the most. He’s a stooge and he’s only doing everything the Republicans want anyway. It’s just that he’s such a dunce.

Worst music moment: 1) Katy Perry dancing w/ Migos, her music videos 2) Taylor Swift album rollout 3) Eminem’s cringe-y Trump freestyle that sounded as bad as Hamilton

Favorite debacles: Uber, Juicero, Fyre Festival Only because I can’t enjoy the Trump presidency debacles since it’s everyday life. Favorite Online Writer: Drew Magary Best health choice: switching to shoes with arch support -I can’t wear any of the major shoes like Nike anymore. I’ve got super flat feet. I was walking around for 2 months feeling like my foot was broken. I was in agony. Instant relief when I got better shoes. Most Confused thought: How the hell is Martin Shkreli the only evil rich asshole to go to jail? Sweetest/Coolest: Remember, Remember the 5th of November and beyond (super dumb inside joke to only person that might read this BS). I’ll leave it at that. I mean, I totally want to write about it, how awesome/funny it is, a phone call I made to my friend that was 12+ years in the making that he didn't expect. But yeah. I’ll just say it’s really sweet and just not jinx it.

Look ahead 2018 MUSIC: 1) Brian Fallon 2) Thrice 3) Chvrches 4) Wonder Years 5) Arctic Monkeys 6) Carly Rae Jepsen 7) 1975 8) Bruce Springsteen 9) Justin Timberlake NEW HBO: 1) Barry-Bill Hader as an assassin 2) Confederacy 3) Mosaic NEW NETFLIX SHOWS: 1) Maniac 2) Altered Carbon OTHER NEW SHOWS: 1) Corporate 2) the Terror 2) Counterpart 3) the Alienist 4) Waco 5) Good Girls RETURNING TV: 1) True Detective 2) Atlanta SHOWS ENDING: the Americans BOOKS: 1) Stephen King-’the Outsider’ 2) new Game of Thrones? 3) Michelle McNamara Gillian Flynn is overdue for a new book MOVIES: 1) Death of Stalin 2) Incredibles II 3) Soldado: Sicario II 4) Bodied 5) First Man-Chazzelle 6) Where’d You Go Bernadette-Linklater 7) Predator -Shane Black 8) Halloween -David Gordon Green/Danny McBride 9) Widows -Gillian Flynn/Steve McQueen 10) Creed II 11) Deadpool II 12) Hold the Dark 13) Scarface-Coen brothers 14) Black Panther 15) new ‘Cloverfield’ NEW COMEDY SPECIALS: 1) Bill Burr 2) Chris Rock 3)Tom Segura 4) Bert Kreischer, 5) Mike Birbiglia

Biggest bummer: no Game of Thrones until 2019, but I’d rather they not fuck it up

LOOK AHEAD TO 2018: -moving out of parent’ place in 2 weeks while still saving up to buy a house/condos -uh, I just turned 31, so that took forever. I have a decent amount of $ saved up to secure a house, but I want a decent one. -brother’s wedding in April -and bachelor party -cousins getting married and engaged -happening in droves -Pats playoff run and maybe the last best stand in the Belichick-Brady era. Brady could easily play 3 more years, be a top 3-5 QB (he still is the best, most durable/toughest, consistent), break every record, but something to be said about going out on top. -Shows/Tours Hoping to see: Boston Calling, Bill Burr, Brian Fallon, Bert Kreischer, Thrice, Chappelle, Pats -Gaslight Anthem reunion shows for 10-year anniversary of ‘the 59 Sound’ AND hopefully coming back again

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