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hillywooddestiel · 5 years

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The Retreat Chapter 16

Characters: CEO!Bucky x reader

Warnings: fluff, slight angst

Word Count: 1.2k

Description: Y/N Y/L/N: determined business woman, sought after by most businesses, creative visionary for advertising. She has it all. Or so she thinks. Life has a way of kicking you sideways when you least expect it, want it or are in anyway prepared for it. Numerous times. How can Y/N remain from cracking under the pressure when her career isn’t the only thing on the line and everything isn’t all that it seems?

A/N: Missed the update again but I was working so oopsie. My Stranger Things series is actually coming along quite nicely behind the scenes and should be completed soon I hope. Also the gif isn’t the dress I was picturing but close enough eh. Enjoy xx Marvel Masterlist Series Masterlist

Story:

Very suspicious. That’s how I would describe my main feelings right now. I’ve heard nothing from my personal little stalker since the spray paint on my door and it’s freaking me out! It’s been three days of nothing, absolute radio silence. They’ve been really good days too. Bucky and I messaged each other constantly and Wanda kept making a little squeaking sound every single time she heard my phone ping with a notification; now that the girl knows about the situation she wants to know everything that happens. She’s also told me some more about her and Vis ( I still think the name is stupid). They went for coffee in their break time yesterday and it went very well so hopefully their date at the fancy french place will go well too. When they finally book it, that is. It’s weird how invested we are in each other’s personal lives.

The boutique is very high end and I feel rather out out of place. This is somewhere that minor celebrity brides and debutantes some to, not graphic designers from the marketing department of a tech company. I’ll not be able to afford anything here and still have money for rent this month- it was nice of Bucky to book it though. I think I’ll just find something online or maybe there’s a sale rack in here.

“Y/N Y/L/N?” a kind looking young woman stands at the desk by the entrance way. She’s smartly dressed with her hair in a low bun and perfect makeup. She’s the kind of person I aspire to be when I look in the mirror.

“Yes, I’m not too early, am I?”

“Not at all, we actually like our clients to be early so we can better prepare. Can I get you a drink?” ‘Sarah’ according to her name badge offers with a smile. Champagne. She means champagne. Sure, why not?

“Yes please.” I relax a little and gladly let her lead me to some sofas. As I sit down there’s a woman on one of the pedestals in a crystal white gown that just graces the floor. Diamantes adorn her collar bones, shoulders and arms and a silk sash separates the bodice from the flowing skirt. She looks like a goddess of purity with a look of pure joy on her face. An older woman, presumably the mother, stands to her feet with teary eyes and takes her hands. I’ve never understood the whole big deal with wedding dresses and finding the perfect one; it’s just a dress after all. Why does it matter so much that people find the dress? If the person you’re marrying loves you so unconditionally, they won’t care what you’re wearing, all that will matter is that they are getting married to you.

Another woman collects me from the couch and leads me to a changing room complete with three full length mirrors and a little white leather pouffe. There is a range of dresses hung up on the rail already that I guess Bucky must have picked out already for me to try on, or maybe the nice ladies here chose them for me and my little wallet of money. Do I even want to look at the price tags?

“So most of the dresses have simple zip up the side but if you need any help, I’ll be right outside.”

“Thank you.” I nervously smile at Not Sarah before she backs out of the room and leaves me to choose the first poor dress to be put on my body. They are all so beautiful and my non-model figure isn’t going to help show that. I lift the first dress off from the rail, the weight of the navy lace coming as a shock (I have to hold it up with both arms to look at it properly). As Not Sarah said, it’s a simple zip from the middle of the thigh to the ribcage so I need no help putting it on. Wow! It has quite a long train and a tight bodice that pushes my boobs up in a not unflattering way. I look hot! It is, however, not really appropriate for a benefit attended by partners and other professionals. On to the next dress!

Who knew, trying dresses could be so fun? Before I know it, I’ve tried on nearly the whole rack and they all look amazing- in fact, there is only one left. I don’t know how I’ll decide which one I want. Maybe it’ll have to be from the price tags. Carefully running my fingers over the beaded fabric, I lift the last dress from it’s hanger and undo the zipper. The organza skirt is decorated with beads and glitter down to the floor and separated from the matching low cut (but not too low, this is a classy event) top by a sparkling belt. The charmeuse underskirt adds weight and a nice flow to the A-line cut of the dress while not being so heavy as to pull on my back muscles and make me slouch. The ruby red colour is gorgeous to look at and definitely a perfect fit for a fancy benefit. I love it. And to top it all off, it’s an amazing fit for me. I think it’s the one.

“Is everything going okay, in here?” a woman asks politely from outside.

“Yes, thank you.” I shout back, a little preoccupied admiring myself on the mirror in this dress. I spin on the spot, the light catching and bouncing off of the shiny detailing making me feel like the fanciest glitter ball there ever was. Bubbling with glee, I hurry to my bag and fish out my phone to snap a photo for Wanda- she’ll love it. I add lots of red hearts to the message before hitting send and admiring the dress some more. It’s too beautiful and perfect and amazing to pass up, no matter the price (I’m sure I can live off bargain rice for a month). With the dress back on it’s hanger, I exit the dressing room with a beaming smile and head to the front desk to pay hand over a dizzying amount of money.

Sarah is back and greets me with a friendly smile. She takes the dress and hands it over to Not Sarah, whose name turns out to be Sara in a weird coincidence, who then takes it to the back room for safe keeping.

“We’ll deliver the dress to your address on Saturday morning, freshly dry cleaned so there’s no need to worry about that. Is there anything else we can help you with today?”

“No that’s everything, thank you. How much is that going to be then?” I ask a little hesitantly, pulling out my purse from my bag.

“Oh, that’s taken care of already. We’re under instruction to charge and all of your expenses to Mr Barnes’s account.” Wait what?! I can’t believe he would do something so sweet. Well, I can. This is Bucky.

“Um, okay then… Right… Thank you...” I step back from the desk- do I just leave then? I guess I do. Probably looking like an absolute fool, I back out of the boutique and onto the busy sidewalk, getting my phone out to send a text.

-You really didn’t have to pay for the dress you know. Thank you xx -Anything for my girl xx

The Retreat Tags:

@meowchickameow

#bucky x reader #bucky x you #ceo!bucky x reader #ceo!bucky #ceo!marvel #ceo!au #Bucky Barnes #james buchanan barnes #marvel #mcu #marvel au #wanda maximoff #x reader #angst #fluff #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #the retreat

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neshabeingchildish · 5 years

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Poly, Wanna? Ch. 12

Since Tumblr is experiencing things... Idek if anybody will be able to see this. @chenoahchantel @adorkable-blackgirl @henry-p-fart @up-the-tube

I haven’t done this in a while, or for her yet, but I wanted to dedicate this chapter to lil’ mama Lizzie. Thank you for being a lil’ goofball source of goodness on a daily basis. Thanks for the group chat. I’m the oldest human there, but it’s such a good collection of good kiddos.

Home

"Hi. I know that we can't really discuss the nature of the other work for the show but this confessional seat is pretty much where I've been laying down my burdens so that's what's going to happen today. I think I finally realized something about the workforce. One of the reasons that I haven't been able to stay in the labs, that I haven't been able to put up with a lot of the crap that they expect you to put up with.. I feel like it's mundane and not very direct results. Sure something that I work on right now may help somebody one day, but whenever I work here whatever mark that I did, helped someone THAT day. I was having adventures and making a difference in a pretty regular basis and the entire time, I was simply trying to get a paycheck and also help others. Now, the help that I give others is a slow process and the journey includes pompous, pretentious dudes that insist that they're better, smarter, and more experienced than you, therefore, you don't even always get approved to do the work that you COULD do. When I worked here, my supervisor encouraged me to test things out and he admitted that I'm smarter than him. I've been smarter than everyone that I've ever worked under… but Schwoz is the only person who's ever validated that fact. Whenever I worked here, it was like a family. It was a community. Out in my fields of study, it's always a competition and I'm always clipped at the knees while the big name boys get their headstarts, their funding, their approvals, their awards and recognition… but, I'm a grown woman. I have to decide if I wanna push harder and drain myself just to catch up with them, or stay out of the way.

Singing in nightclubs and serving drinks isn't beneath me, but my parents are right about one thing… it isn't what I worked so hard for all of these years. So I could give up on my years of studying and work and just find something that I'm passionate about, or work hard to be the best, even on an unfair playing field.. but in the meantime I will be settling back in here. I just feel so at home…"

Whenever Captain Man and Mr. Feelgood came down the tubes, Charlotte was in the control panel, with Schwoz behind her, talking. "And if I had access to it, my research would make him look like the 20th century scientific charlatan that he is!"

"I support this!" Schwoz cheered.

Henry leaned over the two of them. "What's going on?"

"Charlotte's going to use my resources to stick it to the Man!" Schwoz said.

Captain Man wondered, "What did I do, now?"

"The industry, Ray. You’d be surprised to learn that even in the scientific community, where everyone is there to further humanity with knowledge, truth and solutions, a lot of them are grossly prejudiced and oppressive,” Schwoz said, thinking about his own run ins with American scientists who felt like he knew less because they weren’t familiar with his country or his accent.

“I wouldn’t be surprised that people who went into the kind of work that was advanced at the violation of numerous enslaved African peoples and their descendants, not to mention several Jewish people and other marginalized groups who have been used as lab rats and sometimes still aren’t given viable scientific solutions to their needs,” Captain Man said, with a shrug.

Feelgood raised an eyebrow and wondered, “What have YOU been reading?”

Captain Man answered, “This bizarre story about me that for some reason had all of these science facts in it. I didn’t really get it, but the photos were GREAT!” Feelgood noticed Charlotte hiding a smile and he just HAD to know more, but needed to blow this bubble first and get comfortable.

When he was Henry again, he beckoned to Ray with a hand, “Alright, Dude. Let me see this story you speak of.”

Ray pulled out his phone and showed Henry an archive. It took Henry all of 15 seconds to realize that these were simply scientific and social justice essays that somebody had peppered in numerous photos of “The Most Handsome Man in Swellview EVER” and given titles such as, “Scientific Racism is an Ugly Part of Our Practices, But Ray Manchester is the Opposite of Ugly.” “This is interesting. It seems like the kind of thing to have a niche market of JUST YOU.” Henry told him.

“I follow it,” Charlotte and Schwoz both said. Schwoz with a shrug, as thought he OBVIOUSLY would follow such a thing. Charlotte, with a smile, because Henry knew good and damn well that these were her words. She added, “Along with Miss Shapen, Nurse Cohort, Mrs. Dunlop, YOUR MOM…” She listed off subscribers. “Piper hate follows to put things in the comments like, “I once saw him fuss with a squirrel and taunt it by saying, ‘I’ve got some nuts for you to choke on!’ which, in 3 years’ time is still the top comment on any of the posts.”

Ray groaned, “I would be insulted, but I got several ‘Do you have any nuts for me to choke on?’ messages, so Piper lost again.” He finished with a smile and headed to the auto snacker for a bucket of fries.

“Why would someone do this?” Henry asked, trying to hand Ray his phone back, but eventually gave up because of the huge size of fries and just stuck it in his pocket.

“Maybe, someone knew that there are certain people who would only be willing to receive information from such a source,” Charlotte said.

*Holds up photograph of Ray. “Basically, if you ever want Ray Manchester to pay attention to something, the best way is to put his photo onto it. It started as an experiment, to be honest. I was trying to do a paper on narcissism for a psychology credit, and was using him as a study. But, then, I realized that I could actually get him to LEARN THINGS that I would have had to either accept that he never would or browbeat into him in the past. Now, Ray can recite to you statistics of scientific racism and how the medical field still fails minorities to this day, among other very important topics that his brain might have previously shut out.”

*Ray speaking. “Everything as harmless as poor lighting and unflattering makeup selections while on screen, to things as dangerous as not being able to detect signs of skin cancer in brown skinned patients! Right there, next to my smiling face and luxurious skin!” *Shakes his head. “I can probably trust a makeup artist or a doctor to take care of me, but Charlotte and her really hot mom might not!” *Shakes his head. “This world. It’s ugly. But you know who’s not? This guy.” *Holds up an article with the title: This World, It’s Ugly. But You Know Who’s Not? This Guy, with a photo of a young Ray in a horse sweater. “I don’t know where this person gets all of these photos, (*whispers) but they’re all perfect.”

Jasper and Charlotte had discussed the letters from Henry and she decided that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to read them, but told Jasper that if he felt the need to do so, he should. She and Henry were getting along pretty well and she worried that reading things that she had decided to try to move past might damage that and stir up strife and trauma that she wasn’t interested in. “If I were to say that I’m not curious about what Henry had to say for apparently 467 days, that would be an enormous lie. But, I’m also terrified of what finding out some of that might do to us. Jasper thinks that it needs to be done now, while everything is still new and fresh and it can’t hurt later. But… It can’t hurt later if he just burns them now, either.” *Shrugs her shoulders.

Charlotte still had leave of absence time from the doctor, even though she was fine, thanks to Schwoz. So, whenever Jasper and Henry were away, she was usually making herself pretty much at home and making the space a little more compatible with her. They hadn’t talked moving in together or anything, but… she hadn’t left yet and Jasper kept bringing more of their things over with each night that they spent there. She would chill in the Man Cave with Ray and Schwoz, work on her project that Schwoz was helping out with and back him up whenever the heroes got an alert. But, if Jasper was available, she spent her free time with him. And if the three of them were free, they spent that time together. The only times that she was with Henry alone was at night, when Jasper was bartending, on those nights that Swellview didn’t need their hero.

That was when the conversation came up again, “Are you ever gonna read them?” He wondered. She tensed up at the question, but blinked shortly afterwards and stared at him. He had been giving her a pedicure (since hers hadn’t gotten done at the spa that day) and he still felt bad about that. Plus, he had hella products for that at home. Between the two of them - her holistic healthcare and organic, natural, DIY beauty care, and his high maintenance grooming and wellness… This place was an apothecary, pharmacy, spa, gym… He’d even started making certain that he got handcrafted beers shipped in, since he knew that was what Jasper preferred to drink and he really wanted both of them to kinda… never wanna leave.

“How important is it to you that I read those letters? Are they worth my current peace of mind? Are they worth our current connection?” She asked.

He squeezed her foot affectionately and kissed it, “Nothing is worth that. I just didn’t know it NOT reading them would possibly risk that as well, perhaps?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not crazy about change. Things are already in the process of changing, but this change seems good. Do you think that whatever I read there would be a change for the better? Would it improve what is already happening, in any way? Or, do you just want me to have to know what you were going through while I was going through what I was going through, because I refused to grant you that attention whenever I was going through it?” Her foot was rested against his chest and he was stroking it lovingly, absentmindedly. She pulled it away gently and she shrugged his shoulders. “Well, when you can answer me that, I can answer your question. For right now, the answer is that I don’t want to do it. I can’t see how it would help anything.”

“I respect that.”

“I actually hate it.” - Henry

Jasper got home anywhere from 3-4:30 am, depending on how busy the lounge was or how much cleaning up he had to do. Usually, whenever he got home, Charlotte was asleep. Henry had a habit of waiting up for him. It was hard for him to sleep whenever he didn’t know that Jasp was home safe and staying awake made him less tired than interrupted sleep did. Charlotte sometimes slept in her bed, whenever she wanted to be immersed in her sleeping experience, unbothered and Jasper would join her whenever he got home. (His room was currently where he and Charlotte’s clean, but not folded laundry and other unpacked stuff was being stored. They lived in her room and visited Henry’s as frequently as though it were their own.

His favorite nights were those when Charlotte didn’t necessarily want to be alone and slept in his bed. He still waited up for Jasper, but sometimes, she cuddled against him and went to sleep on him while he waited and played video games or watched something. Whenever Jasper would get home, Henry would be ready for bed and Jasper would generally wash up and come into bed, being the one who got to decide their placement for the night. Would he be in the middle? Would Henry? Would Charlotte? Whatever he chose, Henry was always happy, because they were both still there.

Then there were the times that they were all home at night and got to settle into bed together! Rarely did one of the others suggest just going to their own room tonight, if all of them were there. They just went into Hen’s like it was the most natural thing in the world for all of them to be in bed together, sleeping and cuddled up - some nights just awake, talking in the candlelight until someone fell to sleep first and the other two gushed over them quietly.

Actually, now that Henry thought about it… he had a different type of favorite night. Those nights whenever he had to leave for a mission before anybody went to bed, or when nobody else was there, and he came home, tired, weary, sore, etc… and they were both waiting for him. Either awake and worried because the mission seemed serious, or asleep in his bed, figuring that they would have been alerted if it had been something to worry about.

Whenever he came home from a night of work and soothed away his pain and problems in a hot shower, knowing that within moments he could lay his head on a pillow or a person that he loved very much… ugh. Priceless.

Henry came into the dining room, from sessions in his office, to find Jasper at the table, with his letters, doing something with them. He didn’t want to interrupt… But, he appeared to possibly be destroying them and it was reflexive. “What are you doing?” He snapped. Jasper jumped and was clearly startled and taken back for a moment. Henry noticed, felt terrible, and calmed down. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” Softer, he wondered, “What are you doing, there?”

Jasper’s hands shook a little and he set a letter down in a stack, face down and said with a low voice, “Organizing these for Charlotte.”

“What do you mean organizing? They were dated and in order. Did you like drop the stack, or something?”

“No, Henry. I didn’t. I thought that you said these belonged to us, now?”

“I did. They do. I’m just curious.”

“If you must know, I’ve separated them into categories. These are angry. These are sad. These are blunt and realistic. These are the ones that are the sweetest. They’re going into this scrapbook that I’m making for Charlotte. These other ones are going to be possibly shelved, possibly explored at her convenience. She’ll likely want to get into a certain headspace, cleanse them of their energy and ground herself before attempting to look at them. I don’t want her triggered whenever she tries to!” His voice got louder as he explained, until he was almost yelling. He rolled his eyes at Henry and began to collect his stuff.

“Where are you going?”

“Where you aren’t gonna come fussing at me just because Charlotte’s not around.”

“That’s not what I… Jasper, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like I was fussing. Thank you for doing this. It’s so thoughtful and sweet. Charlotte is lucky to have you.”

“Yep,” Jasper said, angrily and kept going.

“Where is she, anyway?”

“In the Man Cave. Go spin this however you need to.”

“I’m not…” Henry rubbed his eyes, frustrated as Jasper went into his room and slammed the door.

“I can only guess that he recently read Day 273 recently…”

*Jasper taking deep breaths and clenching the air in front of his face to strengthen and center himself, then clears his throat. “Day 273. Dear Charlotte, I feel like I shouldn’t write that I love you anymore. I feel like I maybe should stop this altogether. Jasper and I are getting closer than I expected and it is starting to scare the hell out of me. I found myself wishing that I had you around to talk to about it. I found myself questioning if I was moving on from you and wondering if I should. Jasper is great. He’s everything right in the world and he seems to be really into me. I wish that I could love him, but I feel like I’d be betraying you again. Which… That’s hella stupid, right? We’re fucking. That’s betrayal, right? Or, is it okay, because I never really had feelings for him? He told me that he loves me recently. I told him that I love him too. I didn’t mean it like that, but I didn’t really wanna get into it. I would feel so much better if I thought that I could have your blessing. I know that it hurts him the way that I never quite let him in, but I can’t help it. It always feels like he’s trying to take your place, but I don’t want anybody else to take that place. Not even Jasper. I care about him, but… He’s just not you, never will be, and I don’t know if I could ever see him the way he wants me to, because I don’t know how low that would be of a blow to you. He said that you’ve cut him out now, too. I guess after 3 months of fucking your ex he felt obliged to share that info with you. I already feel like you probably hate me more. If you didn’t feel some type of way about it, you wouldn’t have blocked him. You still care! And knowing that, I just… I can’t move on. I’m not gonna say that I love you anymore. But, I know that you care..” *Slams down the paper into the “blunt and realistic” stack.

Henry came to the Man Cave and Charlotte was looking at her phone, and seemingly about to go - wrapping things up with Schwoz. “Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?” He wondered.

She sighed and shook her head, “I’m sorry, Henry. I have to go see about Jasper.”

“I figured. I just wanted to say…”

“Say it on the way, Dude. Booty Bear is having a meltdown. What happened?”

“I think it's the letters. One in particular…” Henry said and ran a hand through his hair. “There was a time, about six months in when I was thinking about giving me and Jasper an actual try and I wrote to you about it, but basically decided not to.”

“This is why I don’t really understand WHY those letters ever had to leave your goddamn possession!” She fumed and shook her head as they got on the elevator. “Why would ever hand him something like that?”

“I figured it was better for it to happen now than it come out later somehow and what happened with you happened with him, or with both of you. I… am trying to hard to get everything out in the open and clarified and comprehended. We can’t ever become, if we don’t deal with the shit.” He fought to not cry. The last time he cried when he didn’t have a right, it only pissed her off. He shook his head and whispered, “I almost fucking died. I still have scars from that night. I still have nightmares sometimes. And, even though I was hostage for all those hours and ultimately had to fucking kill someone…”He clenched his fists, “That wasn’t the worst part of the night.” He started laughing and turned to face the wall, because he knew that the tears were coming.

“Hen…”

“No. Sorry… I just… Go, um… Go make sure he’s okay. Tell him I’m sorry and I love him, K?” She rubbed Henry’s chest and nodded, then pulled him in for a hug. The elevator doors opened and Jasper was standing there. He slumped his shoulders and sighed. Charlotte patted Henry on the back and got off to check on Jasper. Henry went back down.

“I coulda done without seeing that today,” Jasper admitted.

“Yeah. I coulda done without you actually reading those stupid letters, but Henry said something that made me… give pause. I’ve been thinking that this was so important to him because I never let him tell me how he felt. Do you think maybe it’s so important to him because now that he’s said it, he doesn’t want it to seem like secrets that he’s keeping from us? He doesn’t want another night like that night… and I never knew how bad it had been for him. I never gave him a chance to speak. I was so done that I didn’t even think about what he’d been through. I didn’t even weigh it out against what I was feeling. I was so hurt…”

“You had every right to be hurt. You had every right to feel how you felt and do what you did, Charlotte. And, you’ve had no real reason to give him another chance, but here we are, seemingly doing just that. We’re… in a relationship with him. You realize that, right? It’s like the one that I had with him, where shit is really not spoken about and a little unclear, but we all know good and goddamned well that it’s a thing that’s happening. I just… Do you think that I’m here because he wants you and he knows he has to have me as part of the package? Do you think that he… Do you think that he could ever love me anywhere near the level that he loves you?” Jasper’s eyes were watery.

“Yeah. I think that he does love you that much. I think that those letters are a part of his past. I think that how he hurt you is a part of your past. I think that my anger at him is a part of my past. They’re parts that we have to fucking figure out, J. But… They’re the past, still. He told me himself he’s sorry and he loves you. Look. Let’s do this… Let’s… take those letters that both of you have been obsessed with for the past couple of weeks and let’s just… figure out at least those parts together. The three of us. How does that sound?”

“You said that you didn’t want to do that. You didn’t want to stir up any bad emotions. I don’t want you to do that for me, Charlotte.”

“Well… I don’t want to do it, but I know that I have to. For us.”

He took her into a hug. “You’re always gonna love me, even if it turns out that he doesn’t, right? And if I feel heartbroken by that, you won’t be mad and me and will know that it doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay. Thank you. Henry snapped at me tonight and I just… I’d already been transported to that time with the letters and hearing him speak to me harshly just took me deeper in. He can’t talk to me like that.”

“He sure can’t and I’m gonna give him a piece of my mind about it, too! Then, we’re all gonna detox, okay?” Jasper nodded. She kissed him on the cheek and texted Henry.

Come home now. We all gotta talk.

#Poly Wanna #Nesha HD Fics #henry danger #henry hart #charlotte page #jasper dunlop #hd ot3

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talltalesandbedtimestories · 4 years

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A View To A Winchester (Part 9)

Series Page

Summary: Julie’s starting a new life after divorce in a home with a very nice view.

A Dean X OFC story. I got this idea staring out the view of my home office window and thinking how nice it would be to have Dean Winchester to ogle.

Section Word Count: 4,982

Section Content: fluff, flirting, arousing, kissing, R-rated language, drinking, Suit!Dean, Dean’s heavy foot, Dean singing

~~~~~

On Wednesday, Julie and Kelly had a late work lunch at one of their favorite little spots off Market Street. The gyros there were fantastic. The restaurant’s tiny back patio, wedged tight and cramped amid the other brick buildings, was quirky enough to be a distraction from the daily doldrums of the downtown banking atmosphere. A thick aroma of spices and grease drifted out from the kitchen’s open window off the patio. An occasional pot clanged or the cook barked out a loud directive to someone.

“If I have to sit through one more of Leslie’s Zoom presentations about balance sheet protocol,” Kelly was still ranting about the meeting that made them have to wait for dolmades and spicy hummus.

Julie’s phone vibrated on her lunch tray atop the iron latticed table, shaking her silverware. She swiped away, still semi listening to Kelly, and dipped her gyro in the tzatziki sauce ordered on the side.

Hey, Jules.

Julie grinned at the screen and tapped. Hey, Dean. She chomped down on the gyro before the sauce made a mess. It was hard to grin and chew, but she found it difficult to not have a smile on her face most of this week. And the reason for her glee could be traced back to him.

“Oh. It’s him again.” Kelly shoveled more hummus into her mouth with a pita chip. A hand curtained her chewing and simultaneous commentary. “He’s like clockwork.” She tipped a wrist to stare at her smartwatch. “Yep. 1:30. He’s probably got an alarm on his phone to message you at this time every day.”

Julie couldn’t argue the fact that the man seemed to have a routine. He’d texted her every day since Saturday night. And it always seemed to start after 1:00.

“Aw, crap.” Kelly rose and grabbed her tray. “I’ve got to get that transaction detail report straightened out before the end of day. Shannon has dance practice tonight, I can’t stay late to finish it. Damn Leslie.”

Julie was about to get up.

“Finish lunch. I’ll see you back in the office.” Kelly nodded to Julie’s phone. “Give you two some privacy. No sexting.”

Julie shook her head and waved, then focused on his text.

I made a reservation at Makenzie’s for Friday. I hope seven is good.

Seven is perfect. Makenzie’s is kind of formal, though.

Yeah, as I was told by the hostess over the phone. No jeans. Suit jacket required.

You good with that?

What, you don’t think I own a jacket? I clean up pretty good.

I have no doubt about that.

His retort only took a couple seconds to display. But I can be pretty dirty, too.

Julie bit her lip and checked over her shoulder to make sure she was still the only person on the patio. The narrow interior of the restaurant was bubbling, not boiling, with activity. An overcast threat hanging in the sky over most of that day kept all the patrons inside. All but Julie.

Not gonna bite? Dean continued.

How dirty?

As filthy as you want.

They had skirted towards the edge of this type of texting all week. Kelly hadn’t been that far off in her deduction. Dangling innuendos had promised to plunge into descriptions of hundreds of sexual acts and favors. It never went over the edge, though. And that had driven Julie insane with thoughts of Dean doing everything she could think of to her.

Daydreaming had sidelined and confused any ability to respond. It was a minute before Dean typed back. Sorry, I didn’t even think to ask if you were busy working before laying it all out there.

Hey, at least you haven’t sent me any NSFW pics.

Hold on.... Dean punctuated the text with a wink emoji.

No! Dean!

She tapped the screen off and dropped the phone like a hot potato. Chewing on a mouthful of lamb gyro with her eyes shut wasn’t enough to distract her from the buzz a minute later. She swallowed, heart racing, and an itchy finger went to see what he’d sent.

It took a second to process what she was looking at. Baby Dean?

He’d taken a picture of a picture… a polaroid to be exact. The muted colors dated the photo by decades. As did the mint green shag carpet under a naked toddler, mooning the picture taker.

You were a cute baby.

Yeah? How about that ass?

Julie giggled. Chubby cheeks. With a hint of diaper rash.

Well, I can tell you that the rash has cleared up. Cheeks are still a nice handful, though.

I guess I’ll have to find out for myself, won’t I?

Sure as hell hope so. The bubbles hopped for a bit before he finally dropped another line. You alone right now?

Julie swallowed. Yeah.

I’ve been thinking about you. A lot. I’m getting a little worried.

The idea that she could be occupying this man’s thoughts as much as he was hers heated up her skin. A pulse in her core made her shift in the patio chair. He was going to turn her into a puddle just in time to return to work. She’d be slick the entire walk back if she didn’t stop in the restaurant’s bathroom and clean herself up.

I doubt you’re thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about you.

You’re making it hard for me to fall asleep.

She smiled and inserted a raised hand emoji.

And, when I do get to sleep, I’m waking up in the afternoon… after dreaming about you.

Dean’s texts had become confessional-like the past week. Perhaps the anonymity of messaging made him more comfortable to express things he wouldn’t in person or verbally? It had always been that way with her preferred method of communication. But, the weak spots in this man’s wall were weathered and flaking away in random spots, with no rhyme or reason.

She inserted a raised hand emoji again. Except I have to get up early for work. Why haven’t you come over to see me then, if I’m taking up all this time?

Told you the other night, I don’t trust myself to stop once things get past a certain point.

That did it. Her flood gates had officially opened down below.

He continued. So, consider this a warning. I won’t likely adhere to that three-date rule before I have my way with you. I never have followed rules that don’t make sense much.

Julie grinned. We’ll get you off on a technicality. We can say we’ve already had three dates. Dinner on the patio. The cake we shared at your place. Bourbon and pie at mine.

You’ll get me off? Surprised emoji.

Julie giggled, then reddened when she turned and noticed a twink busboy cleaning up the only other table on the patio. She straightened up in her seat and tried to act how she thought a forty-year-old woman should in public.

Can’t wait. Dean offered a wink emoji. Listen, I’ll be away for a couple days. But back in time for our date. I won’t miss it.

I’ve been told I can slap you if you do.

Sweetheart, you can even spank me if I do.

~~~~~

“Dammit, Leslie.” That was Julie’s response to the distant doorbell ring drifting up the stairs to her bedroom. She was gliding on lipstick when the sound made her hand jump. The berry red careened over the lip liner she had spent minutes applying with the utmost precision.

Her nose wrinkled at the current state of her mouth. She cursed and grabbed her phone, dialing Dean’s number. Her stomach knotted up tight.

“Hey.” The one word greeting from Dean melted her insides. She hadn’t heard that deep voice, or the gritty undertone, in almost a week.

“H-hey.” She frowned at her mirrored reflection. The foundation did nothing to hide the red heat blooming over her skin. “Is that you at the door?”

“Yeah. Are you alright?” His voice held concern. “Don’t tell me you aren’t coming out and I have to break the door down?”

She laughed. God, why is that such a turn on? “No. I’m just running late. Work took longer than I expected… I had back to back meetings all day.”

“Take your time, I’ll wait in the car.”

“Makenzie’s might not wait, though, if we’re late.”

“Let me worry about the reservations. You go get dolled up, doll.”

It was an antiquated and condescending term by today’s standards. Yet, hearing that endearment from his mouth made her grin like a schoolgirl. “Okay.”

“Let me know when you’re coming down.” He ended the call.

It took another fifteen minutes on Julie’s end to get “dolled up.” Her indecision annoyed her since she’d gotten home. Nothing had gone as planned the entire day. Plus, the little black dress she thought she’d wear had a grease stain on it upon closer inspection. She had to go with a flowy black skirt and off the shoulder, three-quarter, scarlet red sleeve top. The combo hit her at the waist in what she considered an unflattering manner. A belt only seemed to make it worse so she kept accessories to a minimum.

She raised her hands in defeat at the top to toe look in the full-length mirror. At least she had some confidence in her choice to slip on a pair of classy black heels. She traipsed down the stairs. Upon a second check, everything she needed for the evening was in her clutch. A meditative inhale and exhale with closed eyes prepared her to see Dean. Finally ready, she walked out the front door and locked up behind her.

The Impala idled in the driveway. Rays from the setting sun hung low in the sky and sparked off the car’s blacktop. Baby was literally glowing. The white halo effect obscured much of Julie’s view around the car. She walked down the path to the driveway, dropping keys into her clutch.

A squeak and slam of the front door rattled in her ears. “Hey. I thought you were going to let me know when you came down.” She heard his voice. “Was going to do the proper date thing and meet you at the front door.” His figure emerged from the light and bounded up the two path steps like he was the lightest thing ever to stand on two feet. She halted at the sight.

She noticed the brown dress boots first as they settled on the concrete. Their beautiful worn quality juxtaposed the slim tan khakis immodestly advertising the pronounced curve of his bowlegs. Her gaze dared to travel upwards. Her breath hitched. The man was wearing a well-tailored navy-blue blazer. The jacket enunciated every damn syllable of his perfect torso, from the ever so slight taper of his waist to the broadness and sharp angles of his shoulders, to the forearms and biceps straining against the fabric. A pale blue button-down shirt, with a micro checkered pattern peeked out from under the fastened blazer. He dared to leave two of the top shirt buttons undone. The sharp, crisp collar rested around his muscled neck. His hair was parted in a more formal style. He’d even taken a razor to his scruff and was clean shaven. But every other aspect was the enticing and irresistible Dean Winchester she had been blessed to experience.

He strolled up with a grin plastered on his face. “Worth the wait.” He added, upon similar ogling of her figure. He had the audacity to produce a jaw clench under those smooth cheeks along with everything else he was throwing at her.

Her mouth opened, its interior the only dry thing about her body at that moment. She squeaked out, “Thanks.”

He nodded to the car. “Come on and meet my girl.”

Julie smiled and followed him down the path. Her gaze held on the curve of his ass, wrapped in khaki, teasing her from under the hem of his blazer. A waft of his cologne breezed past. Jesus, is that scent called ‘Fuck Me Right Here And Now’?

He opened and held the passenger side door. His fingers clenched the door’s frame, a bit tighter, when she skirted past him. “You smell nice.”

She smiled, all intelligence drained from her brain. Only instinct and arousal remained. “You too.” The bench seat dipped when she sat. A coil poked from under the massive cushion into an ass cheek. Once she got situated, he closed the door with a firm click and wandered around the large corners of the vehicle. It seemed like an eternity. Her hand searched for an expected belt up by her shoulder. When Dean finally joined her in the interior, she got a better idea of the expansiveness. They were feet away from each other and he dangled his legs open in a comfortable posture. He smiled. “What are you doing?”

“Seat belt?” she questioned.

“Oh.” He scooted over and dug a hand into the cushion crevice by her ass. His stare held hers. Fingers took their time in their search and his other hand swiped over her waist. He grazed the curve of her hip and whispered, “Lap belts.”

She swallowed and heard the click.

His hands retreated, but his stare didn’t. “There. Not goin’ anywhere.” He moved back to his original position. “Ready?” He didn’t wait for an answer and shifted into reverse, rolling down the driveway.

She was going to ask if he was going to put on his own seatbelt, then realized Dean Winchester probably didn’t. She filed that away for a discussion for another time if… If what? You think you might be able to convince this man to wear a seatbelt? His hands caressed the gears and steering wheel like Baby was a well-known lover. I’m getting jealous of a car.

“I’m gonna have to go a little faster than I was intending, if we want to make it in time for our reservation.” He launched up the neighborhood lane.

Julie reacted to the push and pull of the direction change. “It’s ten of seven.” She offered. “Twenty minutes to get there, when there isn’t traffic.”

The right side of his mouth arched up. “Trust me.”

~~~~~

Dean was none too pleased about the valet service that was a requirement at Makenzie’s. “Don’t get a mark on her.” He narrowed his eyes at the young man with the high-pitched voice that he had to relinquish Baby over to.

They had made it in time for the reservation, with a minute to spare. The entire ride was a blur of landscape and roadway. Julie had struggled to find some part of the car to clutch during those nine heart stopping minutes.

The dinner had gone by in a blur as well. His company was wonderful, easy and unassuming. And his presence hypnotized her across the candlelight and white cotton cloth draping their table. He laughed at the salad placed in front of him prior to the main course, with its curled carrots and frisee lettuce, calling it rabbit food. But there was nothing but reverence and admiration for the large glass of ale, massive t-bone, baked potato, and green beans. He moaned quite a bit during dinner, smirking every time. He knew exactly what he was doing.

The one weird coincidence had been meeting the talkative dog walker from the park from a couple weeks ago. Ina was their water pourer, along with the three other servers it took for the entire meal. She smiled and reintroduced herself to Julie. Her face was taken aback by Dean, as Julie was now getting used to that reaction. They chit chatted a bit here and there throughout the meal. Dean offered her a killer smile, but not much else in terms of information.

She noted the stares and gazes that followed the man strolling behind her as they left. When Baby rolled up beside them Dean opened the door for Julie again and stuffed a bill in the kid’s hand. “I’ll be back if there’s a scratch.” He threatened. Julie frowned at the fear on the boy’s face. But she didn’t pay him much thought after that. The two glasses of wine had mellowed her. The fire in her core continued to get stoked by Dean, however.

Dean appeared comfy and content sliding into the driver’s seat, with his unbuttoned blazer and his collar a tad askew. He’d downed a good two pints over the last hour and a half. “That was nice.” He commented as he drove out of the parking lot. The streetlights glowed above them in the dark.

Julie nodded. “It was. Thank you.”

“Night’s not over. May not want to thank me just yet.” He shifted in his seat taking the turn out into the avenue. He drove at a respectable speed now, adhering to the limit. Restaurants littering the streets lit up Julie’s view from the passenger window. Her eyes returned to stare at him, though. Blue light danced over the contours and slopes of his face and that devastating figure. He looked straight out of a noir film.

At a red light, he leaned over, flipping open the glove box with a tap and rifling through it with his fingers. He pulled out a cassette tape, punched the compartment closed, then eased the tape into the player. He immediately hit the rewind button.

“So, that crash course in classic rock...” His fingers turned the dial up as he took the ramp onto the highway. “Let’s see what we’ve got here to school you on.” He rolled down his window, the night air blowing into the car as his speed picked up for the merge. He cocked his head quick to the left to gauge his opportunity to change lanes and slid over with ease. His finger pressed the play button, then hovered over the volume in wait. Eyes narrowed in anticipation. He gave her a quick glance and grinned before his eyes went back to the highway in front of them.

Julie watched his smile light up in the grey. The volume went up even more. Strums from an acoustic guitar filled the cabin. He bellowed over the rush of wind and the music. “Ah, yes. This, young lady, is Led Zeppelin.” She grinned at his use of the word young. “Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham. And, just so you know, on any given day, this,” he pointed to the tape player, “is probably my favorite song.”

His fingers tapped on the curves of the steering wheel to the rhythm. Large in diameter with narrow bars, the Impala’s steering wheel was wrapped in an old school leather cover. Julie remembered watching her dad wrap the steering wheel of his Mustang when she was little with a similar one. People who took that kind of time with their car loved them on a whole other level. Dean loved his car.

His head bobbed and he mouthed the lyrics in silence. And it was beautiful to behold.

*** For now I smell the rain

And with it pain

And it's headed my way

Ah, sometimes I grow so tired

He pointed to the tape deck again and raised his brows for emphasis. “Here’s Page coming in with the electric guitar.” He hopped a bit in his seat, driving down the road without a care.

But I know I've got one thing I got to do

Ramble on

And now's the time, the time is now

To sing my song

I'm goin' 'round the world, I got to find my girl

He flashed a glance over at her after that line and smiled, wrecking her again.

And though our health we drank a thousand times

It's time to ramble on

A guitar solo took him somewhere else. As the lyrics continued and Julie listened with more intent, she heard mention of Mordor and Gollum. She wanted to ask him about the “Lord of the Rings” reference but didn’t want to break the spell and complete bliss he was under.

Ain't nothing I can do, no

I guess I keep on rambling

I'm gonna, yeah, yeah, yeah

Sing my song (I gotta find my baby)

With a sudden and unexpected tug, he grabbed at her hand in the shadows. He leaned over and brushed his lips over her knuckles, then settled with his hold on her, tight and secure, back on the bench between them. With one hand on the wheel, he drove and fearlessly started to sing along. It wasn’t in tune, but it was pure and flowed with an ease of having done it a thousand times. He tapped her hand into the cushion.

I gotta ramble on, sing my song

Gotta work my way around the world baby, baby

Ramble on, yeah

Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, my baby

The track faded out and Dean turned to stare at her reaction. “What’d you think? Awesome right?” He nodded.

“Awesome.” She repeated and ran her thumb along a callous on his hand.

He squeezed back at the gesture, then retreated from the hold. The stereo volume went down. Hands switched on the wheel so he could roll up the window. “Sorry, I get a little carried away when it comes to Zeppelin.”

She shook her head. “Don’t ever apologize for allowing yourself to enjoy something that much.” She smiled. “The performance wasn’t bad.”

“Being sweet. Performance sucked.” Dean cleared his throat and gripped the wheel with both hands. “Only a couple constants in my life. No matter what, I could always just pop in a tape and drive.” He stared hard at the road.

Julie sat with him in comfortable silence for another song. He provided no commentary or details on the tune. They were both along for the melody and the drive. A cowboy riding his sturdy, trusty steed. Julie grinned to herself. He took a familiar exit ramp off the highway. She knew they’d be home soon. Home. Mine? His? Any effect the wine had mellowing her disappeared in a moment. The reality of what might be transpiring the rest of the night sped up her heart. The few bars of a well-known song began.

Julie giggled. “Journey? Is that classic rock? Cause I know Journey.”

Dean smiled and seesawed with his hand. “Debatable. A guilty pleasure, and very catchy. I’ve found this song on every jukebox in every bar I’ve stepped into. It caters to the lowest common denominator.”

“Drunks with no taste in music?”

He grinned. “People wanting to have a good time and forget their troubles. And, you know you’re going to hear this multiple times if you do a pub crawl.”

Julie nodded. “Plenty of experience with bars in my college years so I’m very well versed in Journey.”

He raised a brow and turned the volume back up. “Oh, yeah?”

She tapped fingers on her skirt to the beat. “Yep. Who hasn’t sung this offkey with hundreds of random strangers?”

They hummed along for the first couple verses. By the time the midnight train was going anywhere, Julie got the nerve to sing along with Steve Perry. Dean smiled in appreciation and then accompanied her when things went on and on, and on, and on. He let go of the wheel on a straight stretch of road to air guitar before turning into the neighborhood. A late-night dog walker that Julie recognized got an earful of them both belting out Don’t Stop Believin’ as Dean swerved past. The song, on cue, faded out when Dean pulled into her driveway.

Dean turned off Baby’s engine. “Definitely better when you sing it with someone.” His smile was stuck on full blast as Julie was sure hers was.

She nodded to the front door. “Coming in?”

“Oh, you know I am.” He grinned ear to ear now. Julie grabbed the door handle. “Ah, wait.” He ejected himself out of the car and jogged around the Impala. From the other side of the open door, he watched Julie rise from her seat. “Trying to score as many brownie points as I can.”

“We already had dessert at the restaurant. Still hungry?” Julie took the lead.

He shook his head, closing the car door, then following her up the path. “You’re dangling the carrot right in front of me with these comments.” He added.

She stopped abrupt in the path and stared over her shoulder. His pace broke and she definitely caught him checking out her ass that time. “Really? Coming from you? Dangling the carrot?” She grinned.

His shoulder tipped up.

She sighed. After what felt like forever fumbling, she unlocked the door and gained entry. Julie dropped her bag and keys on the telephone table. Without being asked, Dean peeled off his suit jacket and hung it on a hook by the door. He scooted past her in the hallway and wandered into the living room. Fingers worked at the cuff buttons on his shirt. Julie swallowed. Jesus, he’s not wasting any time. Getting right to work. “D-do you want some bourbon?”

He turned, rolling up a sleeve so it hit just under his elbow. “Sure.”

“Be right back.” This is happening.

She expected him splayed out on the couch when she returned with the two glasses. Instead, he stood peeking out the curtains into the backyard. He turned to her. “You really do have a nice view into my yard.” His outstretched hand grabbed the glass and toasted hers before sipping.

He’d gone full Dean, rolling up both sleeves, untucking and unbuttoning the checkered shirt to reveal a white tank. “You should see the view from my office.” She stated, paying more attention to his tongue licking his bourbon coated lips rather than heeding what spilled out of hers.

“Okay.” He agreed.

“Hm?”

“Well, I turned down a tour the first time it was offered.”

“Okay.” She took a sip and debated where to start.

Dean smiled. “Taste of bourbon growing on you?”

“I like it with you.” God, cheese much?

He began to walk toward her, forcing her to make a decision on her indecision.

She tapped her heels on the wood floor. Hugging the back of the armchair she waved a hand in the air. “I think you’ve seen most of the first floor already.”

He nodded and pointed past her. “Kitchen, dining room, and bathroom are that way.”

“Down the hall past the bathroom is the guest room.”

He smiled. “Brigida uses that when she stays over?”

“Yep.”

His gaze lifted to the ceiling. “So, your office is upstairs? And, your bedroom?” That grin and those eyes were telepathically transmitting nasty notions into Julie’s brain.

“Uh-huh.”

He downed the rest of the bourbon with a dramatic flair in one slow gulp, showcasing his Adam’s apple. It took only one long stride for him to stand in front of her. “Gonna finish your drink?”

A small sip was all she could manage, leaving some bourbon. His warm fingers wrapped around her grip. Prying the glass from her hand, he then finished her pour and placed their glasses on a side table. “After you.” He motioned to the stairs, a softer smile on his lips now.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Her heels echoed up the steps to the first landing. She clung to the rail for dear life and continued upwards. The creaking floorboards under his boots, close behind, amplified in her buzzing ears. One of her table lamps had timed on hours ago at the top of the stairs in the spacious landing.

He inspected the surroundings in the warm light and met her in the middle of the floor atop a circular area rug.

“This is kind of my little loft. Closet over there.” She cleared her throat. “Behind you is my office slash other guest room.”

Dean did a quick 180 and strolled through the darkened doorway. In a second, he’d found the light switch. “Ah. Wow, it really is very... officey.” She smiled at the description and wandered in behind him. He looked with his hands as well as his eyes, touching the spine of random books on the bookshelf and tapping a key or two on the keyboard. When the lock screen appeared, he tisked. “Not gonna make it easy for me to snoop with a password.” He strolled over to the large cork board mounted on the wall, filled with photos.

Julie provided an explanation without being asked. “That has been with me for the past twenty or so years. Not much has changed on it since the turn of the century.”

His eyes squinted and he leaned in closer, ducking and rising to take in all of the randomness of her younger years. Concert ticket stubs and postcards scattered amid celebrity crush pinups, childhood moments and class photos. He smiled and pointed at one picture. “That you?”

Julie walked to his right and confirmed. “Yep.”

“A bowl haircut, huh?” He chuckled.

“I was six. Not like I had much say.”

“You were a cute kid.”

She was about to thank him when he turned to the windows with the shades drawn. “So, the view is pretty great from here?”

“It is.”

He leaned against the front of one couch cushion, then propped a knee upon it. He grabbed at one of the strings and pulled. He frowned at the darkness revealed. “Can’t see much now.”

“You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

Dean released the cord. The shade dropped back in position. Without warning, he eased from the couch lean and shuffled over to halt inches in front of her. Big hands cupped under her chin and tilted her face up and up. So damn tall. She had no choice but to meet his stare. His words came out serious and slow. “I’m going to kiss you now, Julie.”

~~~~~

*** Lyrics are from "Ramble On" by Led Zeppelin - co-written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant

Part 10

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lostinfic · 5 years

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5. New York, Fall

Summary: Travel writer/photojournalist AU, slow burn, mutual pining, angst, fluff and adventures around the world.

Pairing: Alec Hardy x Hannah Baxter Rating: Mature Word count: 1.6k

Prologue | Chap. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Ao3

Hannah was too fond of clothing and accessories to be a minimalist packer. She kept her wardrobe well organized, divided by climates and types of activities, but used creativity to select the right clothes. It was an art. One that began with a theme, a story she wanted her pictures to tell. (She’d once packed only retro-inspired clothes for a long weekend in Paris during which she visited movie-famous locations.) And since, on a cruise, hauling a heavy suitcase around wasn’t an issue, she may have gone a little overboard (pun intended) with the nautical theme: white and navy stripes, tiny anchors, big anchors, sailor collars, mermaids...

“I have nothing to wear,” she whined, dumping half her suitcase on the floor of her cabin.

The ship would dock in Manhattan soon, and she still hadn’t found the perfect outfit to go to Hardy’s photography exhibition. Something that looked irresistible yet like she hadn’t made an effort at all. Not like she worked in a theme park.

The whole thing was ridiculous anyway. Her contract with the cruise line gave her a choice among four destinations and ten dates— she could have gone to Alaska!— but she’d chosen a place she’d already visited on somewhat inconvenient dates in October, just on the off chance she might run into him. He didn’t even know she was going to be there. She couldn’t decide whether to tell him. Whether she wanted to see him again. She didn’t usually keep in touch with people she met abroad. The moments they shared were perfect as they were. Meeting again just wouldn’t be the same. Why ruin a perfectly good memory?

But Alec…

She’d said before she wanted a man who would challenge her, but parachuting or strange foods was what she had in mind, not ethical dilemmas.

At least she had a fantastic leather jacket.

The World Press Photo event took place in Brooklyn whereas the ship docked on the west side of Manhattan. It didn’t look that far on the map but, once again, she’d underestimated distances in America. Google Maps informed her it was an hour-long public transport journey to the building where the conference took place. They docked at 10am, and she had to be back on board by 4pm. What kind of cruise stays only six hours in New York but stays overnight in Nova Scotia?

She was familiar with the subway from previous visits, and seamlessly joined the crowd on the platform. She wore her headphones even if her music barely pierced the metal grinding of the old subway cars. She tapped her feet, at first to the beat of Lana Del Rey, but then out of nervousness. What would she even say to him? Oh, hi, funny meeting you here.

By the time she walked out of the subway station, her skin was clammy and smelled of rust and other people’s sweat. An autumnal breeze refreshed her and chased dead leaves around her feet.

She washed her hands and face, sprayed some perfume on her neck and shook her hair for volume. With a sigh, she blew a strand off her face.

Beside the door, a banner announced: “Alec Hardy, a retrospective”. A black and white portrait of him, with a hand tugging back his hair and an annoyed look on his face, told visitors he didn’t appreciate having the viewfinder turned on him. The lights and shadows in the picture revealed his physical flaws: the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, freckles on his cheeks and nose, even some greying hair at his temples and in his beard. She only ever used black and white to hide a too-red face or unflattering light. He didn’t hide anything, and the photo was stunning.

She read the short biography next to it. Forty-two years old, ten years older than her. She filed the information away. Everything else she knew from looking him up already.

In the high-ceilinged, white room, his photographs, in various sizes, lined the walls and hung from the ceiling to create corridors.

Hannah scanned the crowd of art students, photography enthusiasts and other conference attendees with lanyards around their necks. She didn’t see him, and couldn’t tell which of relief or disappointment swelled in her chest.

The exhibition began with Alec’s early work on the streets of Glasgow in the 90s: poverty, union strikes, and the punk scene. Domestic moments caught through dusty windows, spike-haired lovers in a park, and children playing among burning rubbish bins. She smiled at a self-portrait, his reflection in a broken mirror, an old Leica covered half his face, wire-frame glasses and smoke from a hand-rolled cigarette covered the other half.

Political protests and revolts followed. From Ireland to South Africa. He’d been right in the eye of it, among the armed men, the bleeding noses and mouths shouting for justice. In the rage and lust.

Hannah walked from one to the other, heart beating fast as if watching an action movie. How many times had he been threatened? Held at gunpoint? Kicked and punched? He really made a habit of putting himself in danger’s way. His recklessness scared her, in a good way.

His later work shifted away from the action towards the devastation left in their wake. Destroyed villages, grieving families, scarred men, empty-eyed women. More children featured in his photos. She recognized Pulau Kesuma: a pile of discarded monogrammed hotel towels among flowers, new fishing gear left to rust, an old fisherman with the sea etched on his skin. With every picture, Hannah’s heart grew heavier. By the last photo, tears threatened to ruin her mascara. And yet, something in the way he showcased sunlight gave her hope.

Hannah rounded a corner and gasped: there was a photo of her. Taken at night, darkness hid her face, but she recognized her leg kicking an arch of bioluminescent plankton. She raised her cell phone to take a picture of it and share it on social media, but changed her mind. She looked at it closer. She wasn’t used to seeing herself through someone else’s camera. An image over which she had no control. A moment of unstaged spontaneity. She wasn’t used to feeling humbled. She watched other people’s reaction to it. They didn’t know what it meant.

The picture of her was part of a special section dedicated to his more artistic work. Random snapshots he’d never dedicated an entire series to before now. Breathtaking landscapes, powerful oceans, a colorful Indian wedding, elephants in Thailand, coal-smeared Congolese children smiling bright, several photos of a baby girl. Through his lens, even the streets of London became poetic. And she thought that pain and misery did not diminish the beauty of the world, if anything, the fact that people endured and kept laughing and creating, was all the more wondrous because of it.

She went around the room a second time, always on the lookout for Hardy. She did a double-take at every brown-haired or bearded man, only to be disappointed. Before she knew it, she’d spent more time there than at the Louvre. She lingered in the building for as long as she could, visited the other exhibitions, but had to get back to the port soon. She decided to leave a message in the guest book, leaving it up to fate whether he would see it.

Outside the building, golden sunshine trickled between fiery leaves and alighted every raindrop falling across its beams. Umbrellas bloomed and children laughed, and Hannah was keenly aware that each person around her had their own story, their own unique perspective on life.

Like light shining through a prism, daily life was dissolved into millions of shades by the people experiencing it.

Hannah walked two subway stations farther, fascinated by the city thrumming with life around her.

To capture that variety, she used to write in-depth articles about encounters with one person. She’d gradually abandoned those in favor of shorter pieces for the attention-deficient social media users, and marketing disguised as personal anecdotes. Perhaps she should do that again.

She smiled at the young latina woman walking her dog, but only received a wary look in return.

This strange hyper-awareness followed her on board the cruise ship, but morphed into introspection once alone in her cabin. Seeing Hardy’s journey made her consider her own.

When asked why she started traveling, she always told the same story. She, Ben and Erin formed an inseparable trio of best friends in secondary school. They dreamed of backpacking through Europe. Once in uni, they kept postponing their plans for all sorts of reasons. Unfortunately, Erin died abruptly during their second year. Realizing how short and unpredictable life is, Hannah had packed her bags and left England.

It was a nice story, but it wasn’t the whole truth. She never said how her friend died, that she left even before the funeral, that she stayed too long in Amsterdam to numb her guilt, that there was a reason she didn’t keep in touch with the people she met while traveling.

The rocking waves failed to lull her to sleep. She nearly called Hardy twice, but her longing scared her. Her emotions felt too close to the surface, too easy to bruise.

She wrote all night and deleted the file in the morning.

They docked in Boston next. She filled a travel mug with black coffee and headed off the boat with the firm intention of being her former, professional self. She hadn’t even posted on Instagram yesterday. It really was for the best that she hadn’t encountered Hardy. They had shared a moment in Asia and that was the end of it. She had to focus on rebuilding her reputation after what happened with Elite Travelers.

Outside the cruise terminal, where buses awaited passengers for day tours, the marketing liaison waved her over. Before she’d even said hi to him, someone else called her name.

“Baxter!”

Her heart melted.

#Hardy x Hannah #Teninch fic #Broadchurch #Secret Diary of a call girl #travelers AU #lostinfic writes stuff

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johndeakink · 6 years

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High Fashion (Queen x Reader)

Queen x Reader (One Shot)

A/N: A One Shot requested by two of my favourite blogs! I decided to combine both of them into a short story set in the mid to late 70′s, I had A LOT of fun writing this and my requests are open for more suggestions, I am here for everyone’s fluff needs! Contains some swearing but other than that it’s 100% a good wholesome time!

“For the Queen writing requests could you write about Roger and Freddie on a fashion trip? Maybe just choosing outfits for shows or thinking ‘Brian or deaky will like this’. ❤️(I’m a sucker for fluff��)”

“You should definitely write a one-shot about fooling around with Freddie and trying on some outfits or trying to find a look for Roger. 😉”

Words: 1157

“Darling where in the hell did you drag that out from?” Freddie screamed, you were wearing a large pink, sparkly feather boa. He joined you and took the part hanging loose and wrapped it around himself, intertwining the two of you. He was already wearing an oversized fur coat that eventually went to Roger, whose current attire consisted of a pair of lime green jeans, a Beatles t-shirt and a sombrero. Everyone was excitedly combing through rails tightly packed with simultaneously stylish and wildly unfashionable clothes.

“What do you think of this love?” Freddie turned to you with a pair of sunglasses on that had a large pair of toucans attached to each side, he pouted and pretended to be posing for a photo, always trying to make you smile.

Your close friend Freddie was the epitome of decadence, even when he didn’t have two pennies to rub together, he had always acted like he had money to his name even when you met him all those years ago in the days of musty pub gigs, back when him and Roger would sell things at their market stall to make ends meet. Even now though, when the success of Queen was snowballing, you were back at your old stomping grounds. A small second-hand shop tucked away in Kensington was your favourite place to go and spend hours trying on clothes. Their strange, seemingly never-ending collection of items meant you had wasted hours picking out pieces for each other, it was the perfect getaway for the band.

“Oh Deacy! You’ll love this!” Freddie eagerly pulled out the hanger, it was a patchwork short-sleeved shirt with various swirling designs. Before he could protest a pile of clothing suggestions from him and Roger were heaved into John’s arms.

“Can someone help me find some clogs in a size nine?” Brian called from the next room. He was unsuccessfully sorting through a mixture of shoes on a funky rack, pairs placed inside triangle shaped shelves on the wall.

“Oh darling, not the clogs again.” Freddie followed you through the beaded curtain and slouched in a large ornate leather chair that showed its age. The back room in the shop had an assortment of chairs and a sofa, racks of shoes as far as the eye could see, and a few changing rooms. John was in and out of the booth with the shirts Freddie insisted he try on, one was black with sequins that garnered positive reviews, others not so much.

“I am not wearing this on stage.” John didn’t even give Freddie a chance to comment as he slid the curtain back, but he was right. The tartan, knee length shorts were not achieving anything expect shared giggling from you and Freddie, the unimpressed expression from John prompted Freddie to stop further taunting, as much as it killed him not to. “What about this?” Roger had found you to show you a very unflattering shirt which was black and had a zebra print on the collar and cuffs. When he saw the grimace on everyone’s face though he immediately left without saying another word. “Are you sure he can actually see what clothes he’s putting on?” You queried him, rummaging through more boxes of shoes stacked below the rack, you passed him a pair and he shook his head. He could only look disappointed. “He can’t see a bloody thing, Y/N. That’s probably why.” Brian chuckled. Freddie’s face lit up, which could only result in absolute chaos. “Maybe we should pick something out for him for the next show.” He leapt out of the battered armchair he was spread in and grabbed you by the hand. You made your way through a few separate rooms, collecting trousers, shirts and coats to compare. The shop was a labyrinth of rooms, but all shared the same characteristics, dimly lit, adorned with amazing pictures of bands and abstract pictures, and more clothes you could shake a stick at. Freddie let out a screech from a different room and you knew he had found something good. He was waiting for you, the biggest shit eating grin you had ever witnessed. Freddie was holding up bedazzled leather jacket, jet black but covered in silver studs along the ends of the sleeves and zipper. “It’s not that outrageous.” You mentioned. “Darling, you haven’t seen anything yet, just you wait!” You had to believe that something else was going on, just as quickly he rushed back to the rest of the band who were still looking at the shoes and accessories. “Rog, we’ve got a really good jacket for you!” Freddie hurriedly scrunched the jacket into Roger’s hands and motioned him to the small changing booth. John had made a reappearance wearing a pair of flare jeans he had picked out. “Why do I need to put a jacket on in a changing room?” “Because it’s more fun that way, make an entrance dear!” Freddie giggled. When Roger walked out, he was stretching his arms out, feeling quite pleased with himself. The leather jacket was a little on the tight side but suited him otherwise. “Not bad, Rog.” Brian commented, met with a nod from the drummer. “Take a look in the mirror darling.” Roger stepped forward, approaching a mirror across the room. It was only then that Freddie’s master plan was unveiled, on the back of the jacket, the phrase ‘Sexy Bitch’ was written out in large silver studs. There was a small pause before John spoke. “It’s very you, Roger.” Deacy was stifling a laugh, which he played off by coughing. Freddie however was much less subtle, almost on the verge of crying from laughter, setting you off in the process. When Roger demanded to know what was so funny it only made things worse. “I think I look good in it!” You and Freddie were in each other’s arms, screaming the shop down every time he turned around to look back at the mirror, brandishing the slogan studded on the back. Even Brian was struggling to keep his cool, his fingers strategically placed over a growing smile. Finally, Roger took the jacket off heatedly and threw it at Brian. “Care to explain?” The guitarist obliged, holding it up by the shoulders and swinging it around, ‘Sexy Bitch’ proudly visible for all to see. The blonde’s face was an absolute picture, his eyebrows dropped and whole face fell. This was the last push Brian needed, exploding into a fit of snickering. Eventually you had all recovered emotionally and went to pay for the items you wanted, Brian had insisted on another pair of clogs, justifying that ‘it’s okay because these ones are a different shade of white’. Roger however hung back and met you outside after he bought his selection of items, when you were walking back home you noticed a line of silver studs in Roger’s bag, and a sheepish look on his face. Realising then that you had befriended four of London’s biggest fashion queens.

#queen fic #queen x reader #freddie mercury #roger taylor #brian may #john deacon #high fashion

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golockhart · 6 years

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Is love losing its soul in the digital age?

by Firmin DeBrabander

A young couple posing for an Instagram photo. Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock.com

Instagram users have taken to issuing “weekiversary posts,” where they diligently mark the duration of their romances. An article in The New York Times explained how weekiversary posts have the unintended – or very much intended – consequence of shaming people who are not in love.

The article also noted that this phenomenon makes some doubt the intensity of their own relationship. They wonder why their partners are not similarly starry-eyed and gushing online. Some even admitted that this phenomenon prompted them to stay in relationships longer than they should have: they go on celebrating their weekiversaries, just to keep up appearances.

In truth, this could apply to any of the social media platforms, where people increasingly feel the need to act their lives in real time in a public format, documenting every event and incident, no matter how remarkable or mundane.

As a philosopher researching the topic of privacy, I found myself thinking about the brave new culture of digital sharing.

What does it say about love, that many are compelled to live their romances aloud, in detailed fashion?

Why display your love?

On one hand, there is nothing new here. Most of us seek the approval of others – even before our own, sometimes. Others’ approval, or their envy, makes our joy sweeter.

Philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau recognized something like this when he distinguished between “amour de soi” and “amour propre” – two different forms of self love. The former is love that is instinctual and not self-reflective. Rousseau sees it in presocial man, who is unconcerned with what other people think of him. Largely, he loves himself unconditionally, without judgment.

Society, which complicates our lives irredeemably, introduces amour propre. This is self-love mediated through the eyes and opinions of others. Amour propre, in Rousseau’s view, is deeply flawed. It is hollow, flimsy, if not downright fraudulent. The opinions and judgment of others change rapidly and do not make for a firm foundation for honest, enduring, confident self-love and any emotions related to or rooted in it.

This suggests an unflattering view of weekiversary posts. Are they just one’s way of satiating the need for amour propre – meeting the approval, and stoking the envy of online witnesses? Are they for one’s lover at all? Or, are they for public affirmation?

Curating our life stories

Is there a more positive way to make sense of weekiversary posts?

Social media is a way to give a narrative structure to our lives. Johnny Silvercloud/Flickr.com, CC BY-SA

Philosopher Paul Ricoeur argued that humans have an inherent need to view their lives in a narrative fashion. This is a prime way in which a person makes sense of his or her world.

Specifically, one aims to project a narrative structure onto life, and give it a beginning, a climax and, hopefully, a fitting conclusion. The individual also wishes to situate his life story within a greater narrative, be it social, historical or cosmic.

Social media, I believe, gives us newfound powers to curate the story of our lives, and if need be, change characters, dominant plot lines or background themes, how and when we like. In documenting everyday events and occurrences, we could even elevate them and lend them a degree of significance.

So, it might seem perfectly natural that people would like to narrate their budding romances.

I am now long and happily married, but I remember how first love is both exhilarating and confusing. It’s a mess of emotions to work out and understand. Among the many mixed messages issued by family, society and the media, it is often difficult to know how best to navigate romance and determine if you are doing things right – or if you have found “the one.”

In fact, I sought to get a handle on it all by writing down my many thoughts. This helped give me clarity. It objectified my thoughts – I literally projected them on paper before me, and could better understand which were more resonant, powerful and pressing.

Love and insecurity

Social media, on the other hand, is not designed for introspection or soul-searching: Posts must be relatively short, eye-catching and declarative. Twitter emissions only tolerate 280 characters.

Ambiguity has no place there. Social media isn’t the place to hash through a host of conflicting emotions. You are either in love, or you are not – and if you are in love, why declare it if it isn’t blissful?

As Facebook discovered, negative posts tend to lose followers – and many people want to keep up their viewership. The legal scholar Bernard Harcourt argues that social media sharing evokes the great American tradition of entrepreneurship. From this perspective, in issuing weekiversary posts, individuals are creating an identity and a story – they are generating a brand that they can market widely.

It’s hard to see how this phenomenon contributes to or makes for lasting and fulfilling relationships. If, for example, as Ricoeur says, social media effusions are an attempt to elevate the mundane, the simple, the everyday, and lend it special meaning, it begs the question: Why might one feel the need to do this repeatedly, persistently?

I would argue that it betrays an air of insecurity. After all, at some point, all the affirmation one needs should come from your lover.

True love

There is an understandable need for young lovers to pronounce their joy in public. But love, when it matures, does not live publicly.

Love is a largely private emotion. michael rababy/Flickr.com, CC BY-NC-ND

Loving couples are not necessarily easy to pick out in public. I think of my parents, and my in-laws, married for nearly 50 years. They can sit with each other in comfortable silence for long periods of time. They can also communicate with each other without saying a word.

Love is largely a private relationship, and demands intimacy. Only in intimacy does the inherent ambiguity or complexity of love emerge. Only in intimacy are you and your partner fully seen and known, with all your shortcomings or contradictions – and they are forgiven.

It is in these intimate moments that lovers learn to tolerate ambiguity, negotiate differences and endure.

About The Author:

Firmin DeBrabander is Professor of Philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art

This article is republished from our content partners at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

#thought #Digital Media #valentines day 2019

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amostexcellentblog · 6 years

Note

IYO, which Golden Age stars had the most interesting "will make degrading cameo for food" phases?

Sorry this is so late, but whoa boy that’s a loaded question. Honestly, a lot of silent and classic Hollywood stars had money troubles in their later years because residuals weren’t really a thing until the 50s. Before the television market nobody thought there was a way to consistently make money on old movies so everyone was content to be paid upfront. Then add on a lot of stars grew accustomed to lavish lifestyles and never learned responsible spending and most of them had some degree of financial difficulties after their careers declined. Some of them had a sense of humor about it, for others it was humiliating and there can be a vague sense of exploitation about the whole thing that makes some fans reluctant to talk about these periods.

We should probably begin with Orson Welles, who made what was/is considered the greatest movie of all time, and yet had to take some pretty demeaning work to pay the bills. Like, he really did do a frozen peas commercial. That’s not something the writers of The Critic made up. It exists, it’s on youtube!

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Bette Davis famously placed an ad in Variety asking for work when parts dried up. She spent most of the 60s starring in horror movies of declining quality, primarily because she needed money to support he family, but also because she was desperate to work. By the 70s though the Hag Horror fad had passed and she became even more desperate. A 1971 film Bunny O'Hare had her playing an elderly woman who dresses up as a hippie to rob banks on a motorcyle, it was so bad she sued the studio claiming it had damaged her future employment prospects. During this time she also filmed 4 sitcom pilots, and not good ones either. they were for Aaron Spelling, the man behind “Jiggle-TV” (although Davis herself did not jiggle, she still had some pride). The tv show Feud treated this as a sort of tragic time where the woman who once sued Jack Warner for better scripts was so desperate for work she stopped caring about quality. I look at it more as Davis realized that no matter how much dreck she did the public would always consider her a Hollywood Legend, so she was free to stop worrying about her image and just take whatever paid work she could get while playing the movie queen in interviews.

Another low point was the Disney-sequel Return From Witch Mountain in 1978 where she and Christopher Lee (who took the part just to work with her) played the villains intent on using mind control devices on two super-powered alien kids. To say Davis’s character was as flat as cardboard is an insult to cardboard. She finally got a decent script in the 1980s with The Whales of August opposite Lillian Gish, so she was able to remind everyone how good she could be a few years before her death. Not every star would be so lucky.

Joan Crawford, who must be discussed alongside Davis by Hollywood law, has become, along with Welles, the poster-child for late career humiliation. Like Davis, Crawford spent the 60s doing low budget horror shlock, but somehow her movies always seemed shlockier. She teamed up with William Castle twice, for his Strait-Jacket he let her act like the movie queen she’d once been and she took full advantage. She demanded a limo to drive her to set each day, a role be given to a vice-president of Pepsi (she was on the board) and refused to let him be fired even when it became obvious he couldn’t remember his lines. She insisted on portraying her character as in her 40s despite turning 60 the year it came out, and also played the character as a 20-something in flashbacks. The air conditioning on set was cranked obscenely high because she believed cold air kept her skin from wrinkling.

In 1968 Crawford guest starred on The Lucy Show as a version of herself who liked being out of the public eye (Ha!). Lucille Ball by this point was a terror to work with and she bullied Crawford relentlessly over everything from her dancing to her drinking (which of course just made Crawford drink more). Later that year her daughter Christina was hospitalized, meaning she wouldn’t be able to film her scenes for the daytime soap opera she was in. Crawford, 64 years old, convinced the producers to let her fill in. And they said yes, so for four whole episodes Crawford appeared as a 24 year old girl. And on top of that, she was so drunk she could barely remember her lines. A year later Crawford had what I think is her most interesting TV role. For Rod Serling’s Night Gallery she played a ruthless, blind heiress who will stop at nothing to be able to see. It’s a standard Serling morality play right down to the ironic twist. What so fascinates me is that it marked the professional debut of one Steven Spielberg, although by his own admission he shot the thing like a European art film and had it taken away in editing so it could be re-worked into something presentable on network TV. So you have Crawford, who started her career in the silent era, came to embody the studio system, and remained a movie star into the 1960s, being directed by Spielberg, one of the key directors of the New Hollywood era who went on to create the era of the blockbuster tentpole we live in today. It’s such a fascinating meeting in the middle moment of the woman who ebodied the first half of Hollywood’s history, and the man who embodied its second half.

From there she went on to her final film, 1970′s Trog. She played a scientist investigating a ape-cave man hybrid believed to be the missing link. She was so drunk she had to use cue-cards to read her lines. The movie was so low-budget she had to wear her own clothes and change in an old van. Roger Ebert once said that the difference between Crawford and Davis was that Crawford would agree to make Trog. He wasn’t wrong. She made a handful of TV appearances after that, but then the tabloids published some unflattering pap photos. In the 1930s when she’d been the most beautiful woman in Hollywood she famously told an interviewer “I never go out of my house unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star, if people want the girl next door they can go next door.” Decades later she lived up to her words, convinced she could no longer look like the glamorous movie queen she cancelled her public appearances and spent the last years of her life in Norma Desmond-like isolation. She died in her New York apartment in 1977 with only her maid and a loyal fan by her side.

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This is getting long, but I have to mention Aldo Ray, a big macho man action hero of the 1950s who made a porno in 1979 and spent the 1980s working mostly with cult exploitation filmmaker Fred Olen Ray (no relation). Ray Milland was a hunky leading man in the 40s, spent the 1970s alternating between genuine A-list hits like Love Story and shlock like Frogs and The Thing With Two Heads where he played a racist whose head is grafted onto a black man. Yeah:

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Bela Lugosi’s fall from grace has been much covered. He had a huge hit with Dracula but feuded with the studio and soon found himself confined to B-level shlock, eventually finding himself a member of Ed Wood’s stock company. Fan still debate if Wood was exploiting him or helping him. Boris Karloff fared better. He made plenty of low budget dreck for Roger Corman, but he also endeared himself to younger audiences, most notably in How the Grinch Stole Christmas and went out on a high note with Peter Bogdanovich’s directorial debut Targets.

Lastly, we must speak of Veronica Lake. She was a glamour queen of the 40s, famous for her hair style where her long blonde locks were styled to cover one eye, studio publicists dubber her “The Peek-a-Boo Girl.” She made one genuine 4-star must-see classic, Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels, and some well regarded noirs and comedies, but she was washed up by the 1950s. She was discovered working a a waitress in the 1960s and subsequently told her story on the talk show circuit and later in an autobiography. She decided to use the money she’d earned from various public appearances to produce a comeback vehicle. For some reason, perhaps known only to her, she decided the best movie to relaunch her career was Flesh Feast. A no budget Grade-Z catastrophe where she played a mad scientist developing a breed of flesh eating maggots while moonlighting for an underground organization of escaped Nazis in possession of Hitler’s body. She is charged with reanimating their Führer so they can take over the world. Turns out though, Lake is only doing this to avenge her mother who was subjected to Nazi experiments in the concentration camps. Once old Adolf is alive and kicking again, she throws her flesh eating maggots in his face and laughs maniacally as he dies a second, painful death. Honestly, Lakes delivery of the line “Don’t you like my little maggots?” deserves to go down as one of the all-time camptastic line readings in the history of cinema. But seriously, this movie raises so many questions I can’t even start. Like, if she just agreed to star I could understand, but she was a producer on this, she went all-in on this project, why? Why this of all things?

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#Joan Crawford #bette davis #Veronica Lake #Orson Welles #ray milland #boris karloff #bela lugosi

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tabloidtoc · 4 years

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Globe, October 26

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Jeffrey Epstein’s madam Ghislaine Maxwell’s love letters to Prince Andrew

Page 2: Up Front & Personal -- Melanie Griffith looks alarmingly skinny in L.A., Machine Gun Kelly hangs out the passenger side of his ride in West Hollywood, Cynthia Nixon

Page 3: Pierce Brosnan takes it easy in Hawaii, pot-puffing rapper Snoop Dogg looks mighty mellow while playing DJ at a California concert, Jennifer Garner hits the beach in Malibu

Page 4: Rod Stewart’s wife Penny Lancaster didn’t think she was sexy after pigging out during the pandemic and having a hormone- and booze-fueled breakdown -- Penny says she and Rod treated lockdown like a grand vacation until she resolved to change her ways after seeing an unflattering selfie, Kim Kardashian is desperate to dump husband Kanye West but she is thinking with her head not her heart as she negotiates a pre-divorce deal to carve up their $3 billion fortune and she aims to avoid a dirty public divorce war over their fortune and their daughters North and Chicago and sons Saint and Psalm and Kim has all the paperwork ready to go but Kanye is burying his head in the sand and refusing to sit down and mediate -- Kim knows the moment she pulls the trigger all hell will break loose so she’s content to sit it out in the hope Kanye comes to his senses and makes this as amicable as possible after six years of marriage

Page 5: Warning signs are blinking for Katie Holmes’ red-hot romance with Emilio Vitolo Jr. because his mom doesn’t like their romance -- Emilio upset his mother by dumping his fiancee just hours before pictures of him canoodling with Katie surfaced and his mom thinks she brought him up better than that and she didn’t like how Emilio handled this at all, Mariah Carey never did the horizontal mambo with former fiance James Packer and when asked why Packer wasn’t mentioned in her memoir she said if it was a relationship that mattered it’s in the book but if not it didn’t occur and said they didn’t have a physical relationship

Page 6: Whoopi Goldberg is riding roughshod on The View and her co-hosts are whining she’s a self-obsessed and money-grubbing pain tyrant -- Whoopi’s disenchanted with her role on the show and that’s become a problem for everybody -- she’s nailing the political commentaries but she’s been badgering the other ladies to step up and quit expecting her to be The View’s political know-it-all

Page 7: Despairing Lisa Marie Presley wants to spend her final days at Graceland and then be buried next to her father and son -- since her only son Benjamin Keough committed suicide Lisa Marie is still beside herself with grief and she’s losing the will to go on -- her liver problems have roared back and she faces almost certain death if the vital organ fails

Page 8: Dolly Parton is ready to splurge $2 million for a total head-to-toe cosmetic surgery makeover in a grand last hurrah before her 75th birthday in January and she intends to wow the world with her new younger look while she parades her just released holiday album and new Netflix movie -- Dolly can’t wait for people to get a load of her and they’ll never believe her age

Page 9: Tommy Lee swears he’s been sober for a year but says before his last rehab stint he was swilling two gallons of vodka a day, blabbermouth talk show star Sharon Osbourne boasts that even after 38 years of marriage she and husband Ozzy Osbourne still do it at least twice a week, Led Zeppelin’s rockers are feeling like they’re in paradise after winning a long lawsuit claiming they stole the beginning of their monster 1971 hit Stairway to Heaven -- the band was accused of stealing the guitar opening for the tune from the song Taurus by the late Randy Wolfe of the band Spirit and the lawyer for Wolfe’s estate grumbles the band won on a legal technicality and Zeppelin rockers are the biggest art thieves of all times

Page 10: A bitter feud that’s ripped apart the family of the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin could end after his niece Rebecca Lobie extended an olive branch to his pregnant daughter Bindi Irwin -- the two had been at odds since Rebecca left her gig as managing director of the family’s Australia Zoo in 2015 and now Rebecca hopes to mend ways with her cousins Robert Irwin and Bindi, Sadie Robertson reveals she developed an eating disorder when she was body-shamed after competing on Dancing with the Stars in 2014, Ghostbusters star Rick Moranis was socked and knocked to the ground in a cowardly sneak attack by a thug while taking a 7:30 a.m. walk in the Big Apple and he suffered head and back and hip pain and was checked at a hospital before heading to a police station to report the vicious attack that was caught on video

Page 11: Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle are about to get clobbered with a whopping megabucks tax bill if they stay in the U.S. for too much longer because any foreigner who spends at least 183 days in the country is liable for federal and California state taxes and that means if they’re still here after the first week of November the taxman will be sending the pair who are worth an estimated $26 million a massive tab, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have snubbed his grandma Queen Elizabeth’s annual Christmas get-together for the second year in a row even though at age 94 this will likely be her last holiday season -- Harry and Meghan are not ready to leave their cushy life in Montecito and at this stage they are really enjoying their new life in California and their new home

Page 12: Celebrity Buzz -- Colin Hanks stocks up on supplies in West Hollywood (picture), Rumer Willis is in kinky online snaps leaving little to the imagination in an image from her aptly named Bondage photo series the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore wears nothing but thigh high boots and black rope binding her nude body, Kylie Jenner has taken obnoxious to a whole new level when she proudly shared online snaps of her two-year-old daughter Stormi wearing a $12,000 Hermes backpack to start at-home preschool, Kathie Lee Gifford’s daughter Cassidy Gifford brought her husband Ben Wierda for a Celebrity Family Feud taping but his game show debut ended up showcasing that his snug-crotched khakis outlined too much below-the-belt junk

Page 13: Kate Moss in London (picture), Chiwetel Ejiofor shoots the heist flick Lockdown in London (picture), Gwen Stefani gets into the Halloween spirit in L.A. (picture), Drew Barrymore says she is terrible at keeping things but she does have the red cowboy hat she wore in E.T.

Page 14: Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli’s daughter Olivia Jade’s boyfriend Jackson Guthy who is the son of cosmetics magnate Victoria Jackson and direct-marketing mogul Bill Guthy was arrested for DUI in Santa Monica, Justin Bieber and bride Hailey Bieber made it through a whole year of marriage and made a splashy display of the milestone on social media, Fashion Verdict -- Arica Himmel 8/10, Katherine Waterston 4/10, Alessandra Ambrosio 3/10, Josie Canseco 9/10, Maisie Williams 2/10

Page 16: Following the heart-breaking crash of a two-year romance Reba McEntire is sporting a loving glow bouncing back into the arms of CSI: Miami hunk Rex Linn -- the two had their first date in January and have been virtual dating during the COVID-19 lockdown -- she said it’s just great getting to talk to somebody who she finds very interesting and funny and smart and who is interested in her too plus he’s very into her music and she’s into his career

Page 17: Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas have agreed to a trial separation after their sizzling affair was chilled by work-forced separation -- the pair were red hot until Ben split to film in Ireland and his long-distance calls with an eight-hour time difference to Ana turned into bicker-fests because they’ve both been getting defensive and bickering over even trivial things and frustrated with the small window they’ve got to talk and the connection isn’t great and they end up hanging up on each other -- Ana’s tired of being stuck in that big house of his alone in Los Angeles and she feels like the hired help doing chores and walking dogs so they agreed to take a few weeks of chilling out and see where they are after that, beloved TV icon Regis Philbin spent his final desperate months wallowing in gloom over the pandemic; according to Kathie Lee Gifford Regis couldn’t perform anywhere and he couldn’t be Regis for people and it broke his heart

Page 19: 10 Things You Don’t Know About Sara Gilbert, Pretty Woman boosted Jason Alexander’s career but the 1990 blockbuster had its downside because he was known around the world as the a-hole who tried to rape Julia Roberts and women would say mean things to him and punch him and he even got spit on by one woman, devastated Chrissy Teigen had a tragic miscarriage of a baby boy she’d named Jack -- the mom of two and wife of John Legend has been hospitalized in L.A. after experiencing complications and weeks before the miscarriage she was treated with Botox to relieve really bad pregnancy headaches

Page 20: True Crime

Page 24: Cover Story -- Ghislaine Maxwell’s love letters put Prince Andrew on the spot -- murdered sex predator Jeffrey Epstein’s accused madam Ghislaine is burying Prince Andrew under an avalanche of love letters proclaiming she’ll defend the disgraced British royal and begging for him to return her loyalty and affection -- now being held in a New York federal jail as she awaits trial on sex trafficking charges related to the late billionaire pervert Ghislaine writes Andrew most days saying how badly she fells about what he’s gone through and urging them to get through this nightmare together -- Andrew’s made some terrible decisions but even he knows it would be suicide to make any contact with Ghislaine and he needs to keep his distance and hope she stops writing these letters

Page 26: Health Report

Page 38: Real Life

Page 40: John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono is telling friends she’s knocking on heaven’s door -- the ailing 87-year-old is confined to a wheelchair and needs round-the-clock care and she’s been privately confiding she’s on her way out sparking worry and confusion -- the question swirls does she really think her days are numbered or is she just fishing for sympathy and attention and premature eulogies from VIPs all over the world

Page 44: Straight Talk -- After living through a nightmare of false prosecution and imprisonment and persecution for a murder of her roommate Amanda Knox has been sucked into the criminal cult world of NXIVM whose kinky leader Keith Raniere has been convicted of sex trafficking children

Page 45: Kirstie Alley is set to chuck hectic Hollywood for the quiet life on a farm with a down-to-earth country guy -- Kansas-born Kirstie has been quarantining in Wichita for the past seven months and now realizes how little she misses Hollywood and how much she loves living a more simple laid-back life so she’s decided to buy a farm and has sold her 21-bedroom in Maine which has been her second home for the past 30 years so she can move to the country

Page 47: Hollywood Flashback -- Al Pacino in 1983′s Scarface, Bizarre But True

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bloomsoftly · 7 years

Note

Hello there, can I ask for a #11, wintershock pleaseeeee???? :)

whoops, my fingers slipped.

no but for real, i’m not even going to apologize for the length of this one. i think it’s my favorite wintershock one-shot i’ve ever written. i hope you love it too. ❤️ ❤️

Darcy was exploring a lively Bucharest market the first time she saw him. He was haggling with a merchant over the price of some type of fruit, which wasn’t out of the ordinary here. But what drew her eye was that he kept shifting anytime someone walked by him, like he couldn’t stand to have his back unprotected. Maybe too many world disasters had left her paranoid, but she had a weird feeling about him. And then he turned and caught her staring, and she was swept up in an entirely different kind of feeling.

She felt bad about the staring, she really did, but the man was the most attractive male specimen she’d seen in months—hell, maybe years, or even her entire lifetime. He had a cap pulled low over his face, but she felt his piercing stare all the way across the marketplace. It sent pleasant shivers skittering down her spine, and she decided that even if he was trouble, she wouldn’t mind a helping. Or two, or three. She grinned at him, partly in apology and partly because it was impossible not to try and see what a smile would look like on that face.

But instead of returning the gesture, the frown lines around his mouth deepened even further, and he turned back to the vendor. His thumbs hooked around the straps of his backpack as he moved, hitching it protectively up his spine. Darcy shrugged and turned back to her perusal of the handmade jewelry. She couldn’t be everyone’s type, she supposed. Some sabbatical this was turning out to be.

-:-

The next time she saw him, it was at a market across town. It might be more appropriate to say that he saw her, actually; she was hunting through a bin of plums, trying to find the ripe, sweet ones that she loved so much. She was minding her business, trying to remember any advice her mom had given her on testing ripeness, when a quiet voice at her shoulder said, “Not that one. It isn’t ripe.” The softly-spoken English startled her so badly she jumped, dropping the plum. A quick hand darted out to catch it as it fell, putting it back in the bin.

It was the beautiful man from before. She’d never forget that face.

“Excuse me?” she asked, finally finding her voice. Up close, she could see that his eyes were an electric blue. They bored into her, as if he was dissecting her character, ripping it apart and reassembling the pieces. It was a strange sensation to have, standing over a table of fruit.

He must’ve liked something he saw, because he blinked and his whole posture just seemed to…settle. Stepping in—and wow, that mix of leather and mint was intoxicatingly attractive, making her head swim—he jerked his chin toward the vendor and murmured near her ear, “That plum wasn’t ripe. And the vendor in this market always overprices his produce.”

He took a step away and paused, clearly expecting her to join him. Zipping up her wallet, she smiled apologetically at the vendor—who was clearly muttering unflattering things under his breath about the stranger—and stepped away from the table. Oh, what the hell. If she got murdered for this, at least it would be by the hottest guy she’d ever seen, she thought, and immediately grimaced. The stranger eyed her curiously, like she was a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out.

“So,” she said, smiling broadly, appreciating the way his eyes flickered down to her mouth for the briefest of moments, “where to?”

-:-

They were on their seventh date, and she couldn’t keep it in any longer. She considered them dates, at least—they were at a table for two in a pretty little bistro, lightly flirting and generally having a good time—but she wasn’t sure James would put it in those terms. It was hard to know with him, really. She thought of this as the seventh date, but in truth she’d seen him every day since he’d ‘saved’ her from the vendor with the overpriced plums. She hadn’t been seeking him out, at first. He always seemed to find her anyway, though, and after a while they made sure to find each other. And now days had turned into weeks, which had turned into several months, and the longer she went without saying anything, the more dishonest she felt.

“Please don’t run away,” she said, drawing his eyes immediately back to her from where he’d been watching the people pass by on the sidewalk, “but I can’t keep pretending I don’t know, and I want you to know that you can trust me.” He stiffened, and she knew that his fingers immediately went to grip the straps of his backpack protectively, even if she couldn’t see them under the table. It was what he always did when he wanted to run.

He eyed her from across the table, frozen in place and skittish, but didn’t get up to leave. She took it as permission to continue. With a heavy sigh, she put her hands palm-up on the table in front of her—a reminder, she hoped, that she had nothing to hide—and wet her lips with her tongue. This had the potential to change everything. She memorized every little detail of his face, just in case she never saw him again after this.

“You’re Bucky Barnes, aren’t you?” She rushed through it as quickly as she could without raising her voice; she knew he wouldn’t want to draw any extra attention. And sure enough, he was halfway out of his chair before she’d even finished the question. Tears burned her eyes. At the same time, though, a weight had been removed from her chest, and she couldn’t regret setting it out in the open.

He caught the glimmer—or at least saw something in her face—and paused, still half-standing. James—Bucky, she realized, now she could think of him by his name—stared at her, frantically searching her expression for something. What, she didn’t know, but she kept it open anyway. He’d been a master at reading her ever since they met.

When he sat back down, the breath whooshed out of her lungs and she felt dizzy. Darcy hadn’t let herself think about this as a possible outcome, and the relief went rushing through her. “Not here,” he said, picking at the little white tablecloth. He looked away, gesturing for the waiter, then glanced back at her. “Come to my apartment.” Part of her wondered if this was an elaborate plan to get her out of public and then silence her, but the vulnerability that flickered in his gaze stopped that thought right in its tracks.

“Okay,” she said, mustering up a smile for his sake, ignoring the fluttering in her stomach. Wondering how everything was going to change, she repeated, “Okay.”

Later, after he’d told her everything—well, not everything, but enough that she could guess—he asked her how she’d known. “I was a political science major, once upon a time,” she said, “and I know almost everything there is to know about Steve Rogers.” She trailed off at the end, seeing the way he flinched at his best friend’s name.

Tears glimmered in his eyes when he cut his gaze back to hers, or perhaps it was a trick of the light. “I’m not that man anymore,” he whispered, flinching away as if he expected to be struck down for saying it out loud.

“I know,” she said, startling his gaze back to hers. Reaching over, she lightly pressed her hand against his. “But I like who you are now.”

For a moment she wondered if she’d made a mistake in initiating physical contact, but then his hand slowly turned underneath hers, and he squeezed back.

-:-

Two months later, an old grainy photo of him was shown on TV, in connection to some kind of catastrophe at the UN. When he walked into her little apartment, bearing coffee and the covrigi from that vendor they loved, she was beyond grateful to see him whole and unharmed. “Have you seen?” she asked, not wasting a second.

“Yes,” he admitted, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear. She’d never been happier that he’d allowed her to convince him to shave and sport a man bun; he looked nothing like the picture plastered all over the news. Then his words sank in, and she marveled at the wonder of it. He’d seen the news, and she knew he’d thought about running. And yet here he was, with her, bringing breakfast as planned. Her heart surged with emotion, and she smiled at him.

He smiled back, tentatively, like he didn’t know what he’d done to deserve it. “I think it’s time to contact your best friend,” she suggested, ripping off the band-aid.

Bucky froze, then nodded. “You’re right,” he said, setting the coffee down on the table. He reached for his backpack, and she wondered what she’d said wrong.

“So how do we go about finding him?” she asked, rushing through the question, catching him before he could leave. “For someone who wears such an eye-catching outfit, he doesn’t seem that easy to pin down.”

Still frozen in place, he said nothing. Waving a hand in front of his face, she prompted, “Bucky? Everything okay?”

Clearing his throat, he asked, “You’re coming with me?” She watched as he mouthed the words again silently, like he couldn’t quite believe it.

“Of course,” she said, smiling at him tenderly. “Who else is gonna keep you out of trouble?”

She didn’t even see him move; one second he was stock still, staring at her, and in the next his mouth was on hers, his hands were in her hair, and his heart was in her hands. It was messy and emotional and perfect. And when his lips parted she didn’t hesitate to follow suit, opening up to him. Their tongues slid against each other in a desperate, perfect harmony. She didn’t ever want to let him go.

“I’m sorry,” he groaned, breaking the kiss and taking a hesitant step back. She blinked, reaching for him before she even understood the words. Her hand landed on his shoulder, and he didn’t move away.

She was still panting, and it took a second for her to gather the breath necessary to ask, “Why?” Confusion coated the single syllable, made even worse by the fact that she was staring at the evidence of her kiss on his mouth. Of desire on his face, obvious in the flush of his cheeks and the brightness of his eyes.

Gesturing with his metal arm, he said, “Look at me, doll. I’m a half a man. Are you sure you wanna be with someone as damaged as me?”

That didn’t deserve an answer with words, so she didn’t give him any. She answered with her mouth instead. It was a demanding, passionate kiss, where she poured out her heart and soul and received his in return. He was grasping her by the end of it, the strength of his hold at direct odds with his offer to let her go.

“You’re not a half of anything, James Buchanan Barnes,” she growled, staring him right in the eye. “And I don’t want to be with anyone but you.”

His whole body relaxed at her words and his face softened. He pressed the lightest of kisses to her forehead in apology, and whispered against her hair, “I don’t think I could let you go now anyway, Darce. One day, I’m gonna be the man you deserve.”

“To start,” she said, leaning back to make eye contact, “let’s go find the brave fool you call your best friend. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can get to our happy ending.”

“First thing we’re gonna do,” he said, dragging her to the table with a chuckle, “is eat our breakfast, doll.”

send me a kiss prompt!

#wintershock #darcy x bucky #darcyland #writing prompt #kiss prompt #hollyspacey #reply

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engl699readingjournal-blog · 7 years

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Mateja was from Nürnberg and had been scouted as a model in her mid-teens. Like most slim male models with androgynous faces and slender figures, her entire career had been from the very beginning sculpted by her agency as informed by the archetypes she could already be placed into, prefabricated and predestined, as laid out for her as the clothing items themselves. She had done H&M campaigns in effete floral blouses, clad in bell-bottom pants and donning Quentin-Crisp-esque scarves and broad-brimmed hats, round sunglasses, ethereal photoshoots standing in meadows, wreathed in lavender. Tresses intertwined with leaves and open shirts slipping off of pale bony shoulders, a glamorous pastoral in which a certain suspended belief in the existence of masculinity was engineered by an industry presently dominated by Andreja Pejić pre-transition. At the height of Mateja’s career, the industry had only just realized that androgyny was lucrative, apparently, because even before I had met her I knew her. Pictures of her crossed my Tumblr dashboard from time to time. She blended in with the other thousands of models being styled exactly as she was, but she was there nonetheless, a part of this bizarre vision someone was curating, the ultra-wispy waifish male model clothed in these strange Little Lord Fauntleroy outfits as if he had himself been dressed by some Victorian nanny, given dissolute-1920s-schoolboy floppy haircuts. At one point I felt like a day couldn’t pass by without me seeing someone reblog a picture of one of these models in a sheer button down that showcased his ribs and collarbones, one blue eye peeking at the camera because the other was covered by the hair flop, a boater hat perched on top of that, cultivating the kind of gossamer construct Thomas Mann might have chased through Venice in a 1913 fantasy. Spindly hands, hollow cheeks, emphasized undereye circles that reiterated the eternal toxic marriage between the anemic image and the marketable queer one. The only way to be androgynous: rail thin, white as Christmas in Finland, consumptive. Models were scouted, packaged this way, then disposed of once they had aged out of the fey aesthetic. Something about seeing them years later on Instagram, sloppy, weird, greasy, chainsmoking, partying, was satisfying, the shedding of the artificial skin and the assumption of the unmarketable identity, the inundation of the Instagram account with memes instead of photoshoot outtakes, the gaining of weight and the growing of patchy beards, the eschewing of the sheer blouse in favor of kitschy t-shirts with stock photos of European-Union-themed nail art silkscreened across the front. High-waters paired with dirty running shoes. If Thomas Mann had seen them all now he may never have written Der Tod in Venedig. This is what his Tadzio would become? A smelly Prenzlauer Berg hipster in Dahmer glasses? Good.

Mateja was of a slightly different variety of industry pariahs, though. Once she left her representing agency, she grew her hair out, started wearing PVC skirts over black leotards, changed her name, started her own modeling agency for trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, and otherwise non-cisgender people. That was how we met. “The agency is called Das Modell,” she said as we sat at Südblock, casually inhaling an entire Flammkuchen while we talked about her work. “With two L’s. You know, like a concept, a theory, not like a person. And das, because it’s neutrisch. So is das Model, but the meanings are not quite the same.” I thought about the song by Kraftwerk and its rudimentary lyrics – “she is a model and she’s looking good / I’d like to take her home, that’s understood” – and how I had seen the German title of that song spelled both ways, with and without the extra L at the end. Of course, obsessed with all things robotic and scientific as they were, it would have made sense if the same wordplay had been intended there. “I just got sick of many things in this mainstream fashion industry,” she went on. “I left this agency because I told them I was not a male and they didn’t know what to do about that. They wanted to make me like Andreja, but I wasn’t like her. She knew she was a woman for many years, you know. She just didn’t come out because she knew she could make more money as a male model who looked like a woman than she could doing the same thing but identifying as a woman. Her whole career was relying on this one difference. I told them I was not this. They had no use for me. So I started my own agency.”

We had done a few photoshoots, all of which involved me in all black with my silver-blond hair, gaunt face, and crooked left ear front-and-center. I was not shaping up to be a Tadzio. I was 5’6”, my personal brand of androgyny was more evocative of clear and present illness than of foppish wastrel, my head was the size of a jovian planet, I had tattoos that I didn’t feel like showing, I wore drapey clothing that managed to convey the suggestion that I had a body somewhere without actually having to show it. My hair, which had held the same side-part for my entire life, would not do anything except lay exactly the way it wanted to. Mateja had been putting me in all-black turtlenecks for our shoots because they apparently emphasized my jawline. I hated turtlenecks enthusiastically, but I liked Mateja, so I endured. By the time we were halfway through one of our photoshoots, a roll of film in an empty room at the Neue Schule für Fotografie, filled with cracked mirrors that refracted the late-afternoon sunlight across the distinctly DDR parquet flooring, I was ready to shave my hair off and go around for the next months wearing a scarf-wig, Little Edie in Grey Gardens style, clad in a monk’s robe. I had seen myself standing in every unflattering angle I could possibly achieve in every cracked mirror that shot beams of Minority Report lighting across my face and washed out my nose. I sat on a dinosaur of a desk that had been pushed to the wall while Mateja changed a film roll, squinting out at the sunset over a particularly dingy part of Mitte. I had shown up to the photoshoot with only the clothes I was wearing, an attempt to avoid the bringing-up of a tight black turtleneck. The shirt I had chosen had a band collar and was loose. She did not express disapproval of it, but it was most likely not what she would have chosen, either.

“I think what we concentrate on the most is your face and your hands,” Mateja said. She began to take photos of me as I sat on the desk. “These are your best features.” My hands? They were German Expressionist monstrosities disproportionate to the rest of my body, but I did like them. My face, though? At times I was at peace with it, at other times I wanted to take my fingernails and gore it into unrecognizability. I had strong bone structure because I was sick, not because I was effortlessly beautiful like the Tadzios. None of this would have been interesting to Mateja, who simply commented on how good I was at sitting still and catching the best light with the slightest inclinations of my head. I was just trying to hide that damn ear.

Later that summer, Mateja asked me if I was interested in doing a group photo series for a fashion publication called Achtung, shot by a Köln-based photographer named Eva, centered around Mateja’s fashion endeavor and showcasing some of the agency’s talent. As it happened, the photoshoot was to be the day Sam and I left Berlin for our overnight through-the-whole-Czech-Republic odyssey to Vienna. “Eva says she wants to do some shots of us individually, then as groups, just in the apartment, then at night to go out and photograph us at some bars,” Mateja said. “I explained to her and the magazine what we expected of pronouns, proper language, things like this. They told us to bring several pieces of clothing that we feel the most comfortable in, our favorite things to wear.” I agreed to the daytime photoshoot, noting that I would not make the evening half of the project because I had a bus to catch with a friend.

It was July and a massive heat-wave was preparing to seize all of Germany by the throat and hold it fast all the way until the end of August. It was already smoldering in Bavaria and Austria, but had not yet crept up to Berlin. I could still comfortably spend a day outdoors in black shitkicker Docs, heavy black knee-socks, black schoolboy shorts, a white collared button-down, a crust punk neckerchief, and a black blazer with the lapels covered in buttons and brooches, inspired by Rik Mayall’s moody anarchist character from The Young Ones. In Berlin nobody looks twice if you wear the same outfit for a month. It felt only right that this should be the ensemble I brought along.

I think I was the most difficult to style. In attendance were Mateja, a young transwoman from München named Kim, Mateja’s genderqueer roommate whose name I don’t remember, a model and fashion designer named Leni with a look and backstory very similar to Mateja’s, and myself. The two stylists from the magazine looked at what I was wearing, evaluated my face, and made an executive decision: turtlenecks. Put him in turtlenecks. I wanted to scream. My foray into modeling was shaping up to be one backless infinite wardrobe filled with Hermès turtlenecks. “These make your face look incredible,” said the stylists to me in German. “Much more masculine jawline.” I didn’t want a masculine jawline. “Was für ein Gesicht,” Eva said as she snapped photos.

Exactly none of the clothes I was put into were clothes I would wear in any setting ever. Giant 1970s flared pants with platform-heel boots and turtlenecks, awful leather pants and Gucci jean jackets and turtlenecks, everything shot from the front to avoid acknowledging that Sam and I had cut my hair the night before with what could have been a chainsaw and a cheese knife, the crooked ear front-and-center again. I wanted to demand to know why my own clothes didn’t suffice. No, it wasn’t sleek, but neither was punk, neither was queer. I thought about the crust punks who hung out around Warschauer Straße with their dogs and their witty cardboard signs, about the squatters who tromped around Kreuzberg in their boots and bandannas. Did the people from this magazine know nothing about this?

After the main shoot began wrapping up, I got back into my clothes while Mateja and everyone else suited up for their night out, choosing other clothes to bring along for wardrobe changes. Mateja’s first outfit was a slim-cut suit with no shirt underneath, and Leni put on a matching ensemble. Together they put on music and danced while Eva snapped photos, them waiting for it to get dark enough for phase two, me waiting for the right time to leave. They moved like cats, tossing their hair about and embracing each other. I stood to the side, watching and holding my backpack which held enough CLIF bars to last Sam and I through our entire Austrian trek in the coming 36 hours. At some point Eva noticed me, my buttons, my boots, and called me over to snap a picture of me, just standing there, still holding my backpack, in front of this wall, dance music still blaring. Somewhere out there that picture exists. Months later, when Mateja met up with me to give me a hard copy of the magazine, she sighed and simply said, “I don’t know if I’m happy with this series. Eva did very well shooting us, but I think the magazine missed the point.”

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arazialotis · 7 years

Text

Austin Nights - Part 5

Pairing: Single!Jensen × Reader

Word Count: About 3500

Summary: The reader lives in Austin and unknowingly runs into Jensen at a bonfire and sparks fly. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Obviously I intend no hate or ill wishes to him or his family. This is purely just for writing and wasting my time.

This is purely for a hobby and my enjoyment. Maybe some of you will enjoy it too. I am by no means a writer so I apologize in advance for any mistakes or grammatical/spelling errors. I appreciate any feedback or suggestions!

----

When Jensen had said he would be in touch, you actually assumed it would be him. However, you felt like you had talked with his marketing and security team more than him in the last three weeks. (Yes, you promised him two but the school had asked for three in order to find a substitute counselor for such a long period of time.) If you had to go over your social media privacy settings one more time, you might begin pulling your hair out. It was driving you bonkers to say the least. Honestly, you didn’t care what people did and didn’t know about you or what could possibly happen if someone came across an unflattering photo, god forbid. But it was all to maintain Jensen’s image and you were determined to keep it up as much as you could.

All that behind you now, you were waiting in an airport terminal with boarding passes and passport in hand. The $3 fedora from Target rest atop your head being your constant companion for any traveling adventure. Angie hardly let you go and if she had a valid passport she would have definitely come with you.

“Take a picture with Jared for me.” She demanded. “No, call me with him, wait make sure it is a video call!” She had instructed you.

Thinking about it now, you were super nervous and unsure why. With Jensen it came and happened so naturally. With Jared it seemed like you needed to meet an expectation, you were dating his best friend, you needed to live up to his standard and make a good impression. Regardless, there was no turning back now as you boarded the plane.

Customs were quick and easy. You couldn't remember who told you but someone had once explained getting into Canada was fairly easy, it was coming back when you would run into problems. Jensen had texted you earlier explaining a car would meet you there. However, you tried to make it clear that you would be fine with a cab. Regardless, coming down the escalator you saw a man dressed in black holding a sign with your name. You rolled your eyes and tucked your hair up into your hat, trying to disguise yourself. You said you were taking a cab so that’s what you were going to do, you thought. As soon as you hit the floor you b-lined for the opposite direction of the driver, trying to make it outside before noticed.

You cringed as you heard, “Ms. Y/L/N, Ms. Y/L/N!” being called throughout the lobby.

You forcefully froze yourself as not to run out the doors. You turned around putting a smile on as the man caught up to you. “Oh, wow. This was unexpected, I didn’t see you.” You lied through a smile.

The man saw through your act. “He told me you might try to avoid me.”

“I’m just very independent, that’s all.” You tried to ration.

“Can I grab your luggage?” He smiled, not sure if he was amused or offended.

“Independent.” You said slowly again.

“Right, of course. We’re out this way.” He directed.

You followed willingly but played a bit of tug-o-war for the honors of loading the luggage into the car. He eventually won and opened the door for you. Driving down the highway you looked out the window taking in the new views and cityscape.

“So, are we heading to Jay’s apartment?” You asked.

“Mr. Ackles requested that I take you to the studio and I’ll drop your luggage off at his residence afterwards.” He responded.

“Well, I could wait at Mr. Ackles’ apartment until he arrives so I could freshen up and rest from a day of travel.” You suggested with a bit of attitude.

“If need be, you can in the trailer, it has more than enough accommodations.”

You sighed not getting your way. The longer you traveled down the highway the more anxious you became and started to fiddle with your fingers. When you arrived to the studio it looked as you expected. A gated entrance, factory warehouses which contained sets. You had to check in with security, including having your picture taken, your bag searched through, and you were required to wear a visitor’s badge. It was honestly more of a process than customs had been. Upon arriving at Jay’s trailer, the driver introduced you to a personal assistant named Marcus.

“Marcus will escort you around the studio and help you with anything you need. I’ll drop your luggage to Mr. Ackles’ apartment.” The driver explained again.

“Really, I’ll be fine, I don’t need a PA.” You tried to argue.

“Even if you don’t, it’s a security requirement.”

“Because I am such a threat.” You tried to joke, but the driver must have lost his patience dealing with your antics.

So you were left alone with Marcus, who immediately started asking want you wanted to drink or eat or needed.

“Just need to freshen up.” You explained.

“Right, of course.” He unlocked the trailer for you. “I’ll be right out here if you need anything.”

As you entered you were certain your jaw fell to the floor. It had more luxury than your own apartment and was probably equal in size. Okay, so you were exaggerating, but not by much. You cautiously explored around, opening cupboards, looking at the rooms, probably breaching all kinds of security protocols. You did find a small bathroom and freshened up as well as applying some makeup that you had kept in your travel bag. Being unsure of what to do, you sat on a couch, and just sat, hoping Jensen would come join you soon. After about an hour, you couldn’t stand it anymore and went outside to find Marcus, sitting literally right there.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you could have come in.” You apologized.

“No, it's okay, I wouldn’t have anyways. Can I get you something?” He asked.

“Actually, I was wondering where Jensen is?” You asked.

“They’re working on set right now, needing to get a few scenes done before the end of the day.” He explained but caught hint of your frown. “But I can see if it is an open set, we could go watch them.” He suggested.

“Would you?” You asked relieved. “That would be amazing.” You liked him a lot better than the driver.

Marcus responded to a text on his phone. “Yeah, we can definitely sneak in.”

Marcus led you to a golf cart and drove around the studio until entering a warehouse. You were at the set of the bunker with a full crew and the cast running lines. You stood in the back as not to be a distraction.

“It looks like a skeleton compared to what’s on TV.” You whispered to Marcus.

“Yeah, it’s amazing what we’re able to do.” He whispered back.

You heard Jensen’s voice over the set. Your heart dropped and your cheeks flushed seeing him as something familiar in this strange world. It had only been three weeks but you desperately wanted to run up and hug him. You bounced in place a little in order to contain your excitement. Throughout the scene you watched him. He was so focused and involved it really felt like Dean Winchester was in the room.

They quickly reset the scene. It amazed you how quickly he slipped out of character, joking around with Jared, and how fast he got back into the scene. Things were heating up in the scene and you jumped startled when Jensen slammed his hand down on the table. He was attempting to be furious but caught a glance of you out of the corner of his eye and smiled. He looked back down at the table attempting to furrow his brow again but he couldn’t help to grin like a child.

“Cut,” He yelled. “I need a cut.” He repeated.

A bell rang and someone yelled “15 minutes” as he ran over to you. He picked you up into a hug and spun you around, planting a kiss on your cheek. You laughed as he placed you back down on the ground.

“God, I missed you.” He confessed.

“You can’t cut a scene for me, they’ll hate me.” You whispered concerned.

“What? No. Besides I hear you are making friends already.” He joked.

“Who said that, the hitman or the babysitter?” You whispered again not wanting Marcus to hear.

“Someone is concerned you are either a flight risk or a security threat.” Jensen smiled only imagining how you acted earlier.

“He should realize I’m both, tattletale” You joked. “I was trying to be friendly, really.” You tried to convince him.

“Oh, no doubt.” Jensen said not believing it for a second.

You caught a glimpse of Jared heading over and nuzzled Jensen attempting to hide in his shoulder. He reassuringly rubbed your back and you turned around ready to make a good impression.

“So this is who’ve you been hiding for what, seven months now?” Jared asked Jensen. “I can see why.” He reached out to shake your hand as your cheeks set on fire.

“Down boy.” Jensen lightheartedly nudged Jared, to which Jared patted Jay’s chest.

“So, Jensen has literally shared no information with me about you…” Jared started.

“Not true.” Jay interrupted.

“So quick, give me the spark notes.” Jared continued.

“Um… really just a small town girl, living in a lonely world.” You started giving you a second to think causing both of them to smile. “Bachelors of social work from U of T, passionate for social justice and raising mental health awareness, guidance counselor at a middle school, and in love with this guy right here…” You nudged Jensen and froze, did you just say love?

“Y/N is all about AFK, uses the message a lot with her students.” Jensen interrupted sensing you had froze.

“Very cool.” Jared added.

“Other than that I like exploring new and weird places and some people would say I am stubborn.” You looked at Jensen who shook his head denying. “But I’d love to chat more over a beer sometime and get to know you.”

“Of course, we should totally go out tonight after we are finished with the set.” Jared suggested. Jay cleared his throat. “I guess Jensen can come too.” Jared added. You laughed nervously. Jared was called from across the set. “It was great meeting you, looking forward to tonight.” He winked and bounded across the room.

You immediately hid your face in Jensen’s chest again and he wrapped his arms around you. “Was that okay?” You asked in a muffled voice.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Jensen asked you. “I love you and so I know Jared will too. Just be yourself okay?” You nodded. “So I gotta get back to it if we are ever going to make it out of here tonight.”

You finally left the shelter of him. “Can I stay and watch? I’ll try not to be a distraction.”

“That’s impossible, you’re always a distraction in my head. But maybe I can turn the distraction into a muse.” He winked at you and left to follow Jared.

Marcus appeared next to you again with a drink holder filled with four different coffee creations. “I didn’t know what you would like so I am hoping one of these will work.” When you looked at him confused. He continued. “I just thought after a long day of travel, and with the time change…”

“I guess we’ll just have to drink them all then.” You suggested taking one and giving another to him and silently toasting.

It took them two hours to finish up the two scenes. During cuts Jensen would flirt at you with his eyes to which you would return with a silly face. It was another 30 minutes before they were cleaned up and officially released. Marcus finally left your side when Jensen took over again and walked you to his trailer.

“So what did you think?” He asked you.

“I don’t know… It was weird.” You confessed.

“What? Weird how?” He questioned.

“I don’t know how to explain it… it’s just like so much goes into it for something that is only going to be on the screen for two minutes and you literally become a different person out there.” You tried to put to words. “I’ve just never experienced anything like it.”

He opened the trailer door and let you in.

“I don’t think it would be any different if I watched you work though. I’ve never seen you in action.” He commented.

“Except I wouldn’t be able to get any work done, all the girls would be lined up at the door to gush over you.” You joked.

“Nah, I’m too outdated for them. I’m sure it’s all Harry Styles this, J Biebs that.” Jensen played off.

You simply rolled your eyes in response as he did not realize how much he still had it going on.

“Hey, what’s this?” Jensen pointed to a wrapped package on the counter.

“A present.” You said a bit nervous about how he would react to it.

“A present?” He repeated and started opening it up.

“Yeah, it’s just something stupid…”

Upon opening, Jensen laughed and crinkled his nose. It was a small Texas longhorn stuffed animal that you had picked up before leaving the Austin airport.

“It’s so you won’t get lonely when I leave.” You explained embarrassed.

He pulled you closer, pinning you between him and the counter. “I love it.” He said sincerely. “Expect I’m never letting you leave.” He said before starting to kiss your neck and his hands went for your waist.

You started to laugh. “Oh my gosh! Jared’s probably waiting for us.”

“He can wait and extra 15 minutes.” Jensen’s tone turned animal.

Well, 15 minutes later you both were heading out. You self-consciously ran your fingers through your hair and adjusted your clothing to make sure everything was in place. You met up with Jared who had his classic beanie on and was ready to leave.

“What took you so long, diva?” He asked Jensen.

Jensen gave him a perky grin and raised his eyebrows. You nudged him with your elbow. Apparently it took him longer to get out of character than you thought.

“So, Jared, do you have any suggestions for tonight?” You asked trying to redirect the conversation.

“Uh, Gastown is pretty cute. Think she’d like it down there?” Jared asked Jay.

He nodded his head and with a serious tone mocked Jared. “Oh, yes, very cute.”

“I’m up for anything. We could share a cab, or hop on the metro?” You suggested.

“It’ll be easier just to get a driver.” Jensen said.

You shook your head no with exaggerated playful anxiety written on your face.

“Listen, you’ve got full reign in Austin, up here things are just a little different. You’ll get used to it though.” Jensen tried to encourage you.

“What’s wrong with the driver?” Jared asked confused.

“I think he’s listed me as at least a code 4 security concern.” You admitted.

“Nice!” Jared laughed and high fived you. “We should sneak her in tomorrow just to mess with them.” He suggested.

“Regardless, the more we are out in public together, the more we chance depriving Angie the promise of outing us.” Jensen said as the driver pulled up.

You squished in-between the middle of them not wanting to sit up front. “Oh, have you not checked twitter today?” You asked him.

“Even if he did, he literally is only following 4 people and therefore misses everything.” Jared teased.

You pulled up Angie’s tweet on your phone as Jensen and Jared playfully bickered about technology. Angie had taken a photo of you at the terminal posing with your suitcase, foot pop and all. ‘My bestie @Y/N is headed up to VC. Any guesses on who she is going to see? ;)’ You had been avoiding your phone all day with the amount of responses. Ever since she initially posted the first photo of you and Jay, her account had blown up. With this second tweet yours was going out of control as well. Jay took your phone to see what was going on.

“Oh, we are taking care of this right now.” Jay said. He took his own phone out to take a selfie.

“Ahh! No!” You leaned closer to Jared. “I’m all jet-lagged and gross from traveling.” Jared pushed you back to Jay. “Fine, fine.” You finally agreed.

“Okay, how do you get this thing to work?” Jensen asked causing you to laugh. He snapped the picture then, loving the way your eyes lit up and smile brightened when he caused you to laugh.

“Jensen, we have to do a real one.” You complained cheerfully.

“Alright, but I am keeping that one for the photo album.” He joked again and took another photo. When he looked to see how it turned out, he reared his head back laughing. At the last second you had puckered your lips and crossed your eyes.

“You guys are impossible.” Jared said taking Jensen’s phone ready to take another picture. “I’m uploading this one either way so make it count. 3… 2…”

Jensen kissed your temple and held the other side of you head, pressing you closer to him. You squinted your eyes shut with a playful and ecstatic smile.

Jensen took it back. “Yeah, that's a cute one.” He commented typing up a tweet.

“Yes, all your cuteness is making me nauseous.” Jared said sarcastically.

“We try and keep the PDA to a minimum.” You defended.

“Right, Jensen told me how you met.” Jared argued.

“It doesn’t count if no one is around.” You tried to convince him.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s just a bitter old man.” Jensen told you.

“You mean free and unchained.” Jared corrected.

“I meant exactly what I said.” Jay stood firm. “Here, what do you think?” He handed you his phone.

‘@bluehairdontcare, Thanks for sending @Y/N up, she’s safe and sound, but no promises on when/if she’ll return.’

You handed the phone back to him. “Here goes nothing.” You said as he posted it.

You felt your phone vibrate and a few seconds later vibrate again and again. You took it out to see the notifications piling on and quickly texted Angie. ‘Going on a tech break for a bit. Contact the prepaid if you need me.’

‘Got it! I still expect a video chat with Jared by the end of the week.’ She responded.

‘Of course.’ ‘Eat up all this attention while you can.’

‘Can I be your press secretary??’ She asked.

‘Haha, absolutely.’ ‘Love you Ang Xx’

‘Love you too Xxx.’

With that you shut your phone off entirely. As you entered the Gastown district, you leaned over Jensen to get a better look. The driver pulled up to a pub called the Black Frog and the three of you got out together. You looked around the brick streets, brick buildings, and quaint street lamps.

“Screw you guys, I’m hanging out down here tomorrow while you’re on set.” You joked.

“I thought you’d like it,” Jared said and held open the door for you. “Come one.”

Jensen grabbed your hand and led you through to a small pub with a wooden floor. There was an open high top which you guys grabbed up. You ordered some poutine as well to accompany the beer. Chatting with both of them came naturally. Occasionally there was a inside joke that left you guessing, but overall things flowed smoothing, it was probably the second drink helping you along. You talked Pearl Jam, other music updates, and guilty listening pleasures with Jared. You explained how your biggest passion was your work and empowering the kids, sitting through the ups and downs with them, hormonal swings and all. They talked a bit about their industry and the show, but you tried to divert the topics so it wouldn’t feel so much like an interview to them.

After about the third yawn within two minutes Jensen spoke up. “Alright, it’s time to get you some sleep.”

You didn’t protest beginning to feel pretty exhausted. You parted ways from Jared after making tentative plans for tomorrow. Having a window seat this time, you spent it gazing at the city lights before leaning your head against Jay’s shoulder and slipping into sleep. When you finally reached his apartment he could hardly wake you.

“Come on girl.” Jensen cooed.

He held you up as you made the way through the lobby and elevator. He sung softly to you on your way into his apartment. You tried to take in the details but they seemed quite hazy. Jensen helped slip your jeans off and tucked you into bed. He came along side you in just his briefs. He stroked your hair as you drifted back to sleep.

“So, love, huh?” Jay asked picking out what you had said to Jared earlier.

“Mmhmm” You hummed softly with your eyes closed.

He kissed your forehead and pulled you close against him. “Glad to finally know you feel the same.”

-----

Click here to Continue to Part 6

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bewitching-elizabeth-olsen · 7 years

Text

Press: Elizabeth Olsen: a superstar for our times

EVENING STANDARD – With her indie flicks and blockbuster roles, Elizabeth Olsen has cultivated the kind of career most actresses dream of. She tells Tiffanie Darke about her famous sisters, her fears for America and how she plans to build her empire

It’s a sweltering day downtown in the Bowery, the sort of humid August heat when it feels like Manhattan is melting. Boys in artful sarongs and beards cruise the sidewalk, girls in high-waisted cut-offs and snapbacks lean against open-air bars. It’s noon, and no one dares move too fast.

But Elizabeth Olsen is not hot. In fact, she says she has frostbite in her fingers. Wearing black Calvin Klein jeans she picked up for $20 in a vintage store, slim black ankle boots and an oversized Altuzarra blouse, she’s been in air-conditioned TV studios doing interviews all morning and needs to defrost. She has asked that we meet in Il Buco, a rustic Italian restaurant with the sort of premium paysan menu you’d recognise from places such as the River Cafe. This, she confides, is her favourite restaurant in New York: ‘My sisters have been bringing me here for my birthday since I was 15.’

Ah yes — her sisters. Mary-Kate and Ashley, the button-cute Disney twins who grew up in the full glare of the public eye, then reinvented themselves as fiercely private fashion entrepreneurs (their label, The Row, is as hot as ever, and they now own high-end concept boutiques in New York and LA). Elizabeth — or Lizzie as she introduces herself — shares their delicate features: blonde locks, Bambi eyes and symmetrical porcelain face. But what’s intriguing about this sister is that she can turn those looks to power.

Six years after she burst on to the scene with a critically acclaimed performance in the indie flick Martha Marcy May Marlene, her carefully chosen roles have included Scarlet Witch in the unstoppable Marvel franchise, Avengers; Audrey Williams, Hank Williams’ wife and manager in the biopic I Saw the Light; and most recently, FBI agent Jane Banner in Wind River, a harrowing story of rape and murder set on a Wyoming Native American reservation, directed by Oscar-nominated Taylor Sheridan.

This is the kind of career about which most actors dream: balancing respected low-budget independents with blockbuster international fame. Olsen, it becomes clear, possesses an acute understanding of how to make the business work for her. Doing films like Avengers ‘allows you to sell a film to investors’, she explains, as she helps herself to black kale salad and slivers of pata negra. ‘It gives you recognition in an international market. You then have more freedom of investors for independent films.’ At 28 she has also finally launched herself on social media, having created an Instagram account last year. Under the guidance of her friend, the comedian and actress Aubrey Plaza, she is using it to simultaneously cultivate her fan base and poke fun at herself (check out Olsen’s ‘Feed me Friday’ posts featuring unflattering paparazzi shots of her eating). But she also has an eye on the prize. Any aspiring actor who wants to pick up a commercial deal needs a sizeable social media following. And those commercial deals give you exactly the sort of fame you need to get those independent film projects off the ground. ‘That’s why George Clooney does Nespresso,’ she explains. So far Olsen has cameoed for Miu Miu, but now she’s ready for something more: ‘People want to be a part of something that’s giving back to something else. I would like to be a part of that because it’s something that I would be proud of. But it’s also something that would help me as an actor trying to get films made.’

In this way Olsen is classic New Hollywood — clever, independent, well behaved, working the system. And like every good millennial, she is also strong on activism. ‘It’s horrible to think how the rest of the world is viewing the United States right now. You don’t really know how to fix it as an individual because you can’t. What is cool about what’s happening right now, however, is that while people have always talked about causes that they are interested in, now they are actually actively a part of them.’

Research for her role in Wind River has only made her more socially aware. ‘I ended up visiting the rape treatment centre in Santa Monica. It’s an amazing facility, for adults and minors. I was like, “What could I actually do?”’ Volunteers run the playroom, so Olsen went through a training course. When she finished filming, she returned to volunteer and now makes it a habit every Tuesday. ‘Going and playing cards with a bunch of really sweet people and just making them feel like a kid when they’re going through a traumatic experience — that to me is something I can walk away and be happy with… You make connections. If you go at the same time every week you see the same people. I see the same people every week when I’m in town. It’s a beautiful community… It’s really an incredible, supportive place. I love being a part of it.’

It’s no surprise that Wind River led her down other paths. Based on the true stories of the writer and director Taylor Sheridan following the years he lived on a reservation, it shines a light on the loophole in American law that lets those who commit a crime on a reservation (an area of land managed by a Native American tribe, rather than the state government) walk away free if they are not charged within the boundary lines. Given the limited police resources for investigating crimes within these vast jurisdictions, there are numerous undocumented cases of missing Native American girls. No national register exists to account for them. ‘It’s just another example of how we’ve screwed over this group of people from the beginning of this country,’ says Olsen.

We’re chatting easily now; this is usually the point at which the interviewer attempts to find out if her celebrity is going to divulge any details of who she is dating/fancying/breaking up with. Olsen has been linked to a few leading men in the past, including Tom Hiddleston and singer-songwriter Robbie Arnett. But I can’t quite bring myself to ask. The thing I liked most about Wind River was the absence of a romantic play. With Jeremy Renner — a local hunter whose own missing daughter and broken marriage haunt his every move — taking the title role opposite Olsen, you would expect the actress’s FBI agent to step in as romantic saviour. But she doesn’t. There is no love affair concluding the movie.

‘Taylor had to fight people on it,’ says Olsen. ‘Because some people want that to happen. They think that it’s going to make it a better movie or more people would want to see it. Which was one of the reasons I loved the script. It’s just a man and a woman having a partnership trying to figure out how to provide justice for this young girl.’ These are exactly the kinds of roles women want now. ‘The women in his film end up being the strongest. They’re the ones that fight for their life the hardest. He wanted the women to be the survivors.’

The waiter, who has now begun to suspect that pretty blonde ‘Lizzie’ might be someone more important than a walk-in, is bringing offerings of oozing burrata to the table. It’s becoming clear why this is an Olsen family favourite — the deli round the corner, I’m told, is ‘insane’. Olsen says when she was at film school in New York (she studied at Tisch School of the Arts) she shopped there all the time. Then she remembers Pesantissimo in Primrose Hill, where she lived for a time while filming Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2014, and used as a pit stop off-licence as it had ‘amazing wine’. ‘If I could live in any city, I would want to live in London,’ she says. She was put up there by the Marvel team and hung out with her friends the Taylor-Johnsons, exploring as much of the city as she could by foot. ‘People from London thought I was insane walking from Primrose Hill to Shoreditch along the canal. I ended up having to stop and get blister pads.’

I can imagine this. Despite her commercial and industry nous, Olsen is not a conventional starlet. She insists she hates the red carpet and finds fashion confounding and difficult — ‘It’s not my comfort zone,’ she shudders. A recent trip to the Paris couture shows was different. ‘I went to a Dior show and ended up getting to wear a look to the premiere in New York. I felt great that night just because I felt like I was in something that I love. Sometimes when I’m not in something that I love I cry on the way to the premiere and I’m posing with my shoulders as far back as they go. Then I look at the photos and I’m like, “It did look nice. Why was I crying?”’ Another revelation for her was this shoot for ES at The Whitby Hotel. ‘The photographer was great, we were in a cool hotel, it was a really great atmosphere. We had a great time. Like genuinely — I ended up getting in a bathtub at the end of it and got my hair wet. It was just fun.’

She has recently bought a house in the Hollywood Hills, which she is renovating while she rents with a friend. Much of her family lives in LA; her parents, Jarnette, a personal manager, and David, a property developer and mortgage banker, divorced in the mid-Nineties and she has a brother and two half siblings: ‘We have weekly family get-togethers, either my dad cooking at my place or the occasional Valley sushi spot. Sometimes it feels like a lot of things to fit in but it’s good we do it.’ While in New York, though, she is enjoying catching up with Mary-Kate and Ashley: ‘I just had dinner with Ashley when the premiere was happening. She was very sweet to come with me to the after-party.’ She clearly adores them. ‘I just think they’re brilliant women. [On their shops] they’re like, “I like this. I like this world. I like art, I like architecture, I like photography, I like fashion,” and they’ve made it into a company… I’ll go visit them at the office and sit in a meeting if I’m in and out of town. They’ll be talking about piping or buttons [and] they have taught me about art.’

Like many switched-on young women, Olsen sees herself in the round. The movie career she describes as a ‘part-time job’. On top of that she is also a reluctant fashion muse, fledgling brand ambassador and, most recently, rape crisis volunteer. It might be a lot to handle, but it also means that in these more uncertain times, if one thing goes wrong, there’s plenty more to fall back on. New Hollywood, indeed.

‘Wind River’ opens in cinemas on 8 September

Gallery Links:

Studio Photoshoots > 2017 > Session 030

Press: Elizabeth Olsen: a superstar for our times was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

#Elizabeth Olsen #Lizzy Olsen #Avengers #Scarlet Witch #Wanda Maximoff #Marvel

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thesinglesjukebox · 8 years

Video

youtube

KATY PERRY FT. SKIP MARLEY - CHAINED TO THE RHYTHM [3.77] Maybe Katy should take her Jamaican Guy and go back to the Private Life.

Thomas Inskeep: Full disclosure: I came into this not expecting to like it, but trying to keep an open mind. But then Katy decided to show off how "woke" she thinks she is. Ooh, we're "all chained to the rhythm," but clearly should be doing more to change the world, just like Katy Perry. Some of us, however, still haven't forgotten the likes of "Ur So Gay." She can claim she's progressive etc. all she wants, but I don't buy it for a minute; Perry will do whatever she thinks will sell sell sell her records. Bizarrely, she seems to think that a cod-reggae beat is the answer in 2017? (Or more accurately, that could be the fault of co-writer Sia, who's predisposed to such notions.) Because you know what's awesome? When white artists show you how much they know about "rhythm" by featuring -- oh, I know! Let's get a member of the Marley family in here! Great idea! Perry's screechy, barely-in-tune voice doesn't help matters, of course. Here's hoping this is the beginning of the end of her career: she's like the Paula Abdul of the '00s/'10s, only without the half-decent songs and pleasant personality. There is no pop star today worse than Katy Perry, full stop. [0]

Cédric Le Merrer: Katy Perry is my mainstream barometer. When she made "I Kissed a Girl," showy but defensive female bisexuality was totally where people were at. When she made trap-pop, it became the new normal. Now Katy Perry is confusedly woke, and you can't tell me that's not the norm in 2017. Her terribly heavy-footed scansion even works in her favor thematically, as she's completely chained to that stomping rhythm. Incapable of taking any liberty from the beat, she moves around like Link wearing his iron boots. So as usual, it's a bit terrible but it also makes things easy for us weak singers wanting an easy song for karaoke, and whatever my reservations, in the end Katy and Max Martin always win me over. [8]

Megan Harrington: Who but Katy Perry would turn three minutes of arena pop into a very, very, extremely literal call for wokeness? Even her obviousness is obvious. Of course she's pivoted away from the lusty pleasure of her early hits and toward a crude attempt at "real" meaning. "Chained to the Rhythm" is, ultimately, not a very good song, but Perry is familiar, even comfortable, in her clunky movements. We'll never know that utopian future but Perry would be there, no matter the sleight of fate's hand. And "Chained to the Rhythm" in a good year is -- unsurprisingly -- the exact same song as "Chained to the Rhythm" in a bad year. She is a coin with only one side. [7]

Claire Biddles: Like a latterday Daft Punk song that's been cloned over and over again until its defining features are completely flattened out, "Chained to the Rhythm" is so insubstantial that I swear it stops existing after it finishes playing. The lyrics are full of self-drags -- she MUST have known asking "Are we tone deaf?" would be used against her in a review -- and there's something particularly desp about the way she references "your favourite song" knowing that this could never be it. [2]

Maxwell Cavaseno: The inexplicable pivot of the cheesiest, most banal to trying to edge upon wokeness is certainly not the career move you'd expect from Katy Perry off-hand but at the same time, it's been brewing. She's moved from the goofiness into a sea of power-ballads of vague ambition and motivation, so to create an anthem meant to parse through a sea of bullshit by feeding vague lines about utopia and what have you is not improbable. And not for nothing, for all Sia's weird reggae mining and her bullshit fake patois voice she built for playing Trojan RiRi, she's only just recently bothered to put an actual Jamaican on a record or get them writers' credit. And so the awkward promo-featuring of Tuff Gong's grandson is maybe a weird gesture for authenticity from someone so unlikely, but I can't be too upset given this surprisingly rare accommodation. If there's anything to say about this in particular that's a flaw, it's that in many ways it feels too calculated, in a way that Katy Perry used to never bother with. As unflattering or at times infuriating as her lack of foresight could be sometimes, there was something to be said for being so brash. [6]

Anthony Easton: When your entire genre is founded, and continually plays, with notions of black authenticity, does it mean anything that Perry plays with patois, and if it doesn't--why does she have Skip Marley, and if it does, does it mean anything that she doesn't fully commit (rhythm instead of riddim). Minus a point for talking about distortion without having any of it at all, plus a point for sneaking the word empire in. [4]

Alfred Soto: My delight at the "distortion" in a dance pop tune is mitigated by Katy Perry's odd stresses; in this case they land on the last syllable, which has the effect of howling when someone digs a high heel into your big toe. A similar travesty happens in the phrase "to the rhy-THM, to the rhy-THM." Still, the gloss suits her: if any performer would revel in being chained to a rhythm, it's Perry, who in some bars sounds like Toni Braxton. [6]

William John: She did not get away with the grating elongation of "unconditionally", so I have no idea how Katy Perry has been permitted to transgress again with such klutzy abandon; once again, we are faced with an extreme case of the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. As to the song's alleged "woke-ness", I proffer no comment save that it's unlikely any slumbering apoliticals will be roused by a track with empty platitudes and such narrow dynamic range. [2]

Will Adams: The trendification of aligning with social justice causes has made it easier than ever for people like Katy "Artist. Activist. Conscious." Perry to market themselves as woke with just a modicum of effort (all while continuing to act as shitty as they always have). The idea that "Chained to the Rhythm" and its vague politics have any potential for significant impact is one of the more insulting concepts the pop machine has lobbed at us in recent memory. But even if Perry had any insight, we'd still have to contend with this torpid mess of recycled Weeknd disco, indulgent Sia-isms, and Perry outdoing the awful scansion on "Unconditionally" a million times over. There's no bite to this, no feeling, and no reason to dandandance. [1]

Katie Gill: American pop music can't be THIS starved for bangers, can it? [3]

Mo Kim: Katy Perry is so bad at being radical that she needed to hire a black reggae artist as a temp for this. [3]

Scott Mildenhall: After all that apocalyptopop a few years ago it's weird that now, with the Doomsday Clock actually closer to midnight than at any point since 1953, Katy Perry doesn't sound that arsed about the walking daymare she's describing. It's not like she's known for her subtlety -- if anything it's like she's trying to undersell the hugely unsubtle "makes you think"-type statements in the lyrics. Weirder still is that "Wide Awake" already did all this without any obvious allusions to infer (and thus better), but at the very least it avoids the weirdest possibility: being completely terrible. As it's akin to an inessential Sébastien Tellier remix, it really isn't that, but it is strangely bloodless. [6]

Katherine St Asaph: One point for every point I'm not giving this: 1. I did not expect Melanie Martinez to be where Katy Perry was positioning herself. 2. If you told me Katy Perry was doing Pleasantville, I would have expected a pinup theme. 2a. Though it's remarkable that the cover art doesn't show her face, and yet still manages to showcase her boobs. 2b. I'm sure Vigilant Citizen is on that photo. God, for the days of obscure cranks. 3. Sia still doesn't do subtext, at all. If she feels zombified, the lyric will have shambling goddamn zombies. 4. Or maybe she does, because this is a subtext-free "Chandelier," down to the isolatable "dance, dance, dance!" and "DRINK!" interjections. 4a. Someone get those ornaments out of her picket fence. Get the lens out too. 4b. Disco balls-and-chains aside, I actually don't think anyone involved was trying to avoid "Slave to the Rhythm." This is the exact kind of tweak-a-word that's Sia's main writing trick, and besides, Katy Perry did "E.T.," she doesn't care. 5. How is Katy Perry one of the few singers who doesn't sound exactly like Sia's demo vocals? Is this a sign of her being a distinctive singer, or too limited to try? 6. I blame Max Martin for the Swedish reggae. Ali Payami probably did the prechorus. 6a. Because they just had to get the funk guitar in somewhere, didn't they? This sounded much better at the Grammys, where it sounded like a more straight-ahead Martin/Payami track. 6b. With a line like "dance to the distortion," would some distortion be too much to ask? 7. I have no idea what Skip Marley is doing here and neither does anyone else. 8. Why does Woke Katy Perry just sound like the late '90s, the time of Fight Club and The Matrix and endless plaints by landfill alternative bands about the pathetic emptiness of our meaningless, consumer-driven lives? Sia was also a product of the '90s; I bet if she released "Chandelier" today that would be called political too. 9. In these days of our Pigmask Putin we're going to see a lot more of these political-shaped but anodyne "protest" songs, aren't we? Please extradite me to wherever it is that I did whatever it was to deserve this. [1]

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#Katy Perry #Skip Marley #Chained to the Rhythm

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