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dulcewrites · 6 months

Text

New Traditions

Pairing: Rhett Abbott x afab!reader

Summary: As the first holiday season in your new home approaches, Rhett and you start new traditions and make promises (wc: 3k)

Warnings/Fic notes: mentions of unhappy childhoods (reader and Rhett probably needed more hugs as kids). Allusions to a rich!reader. Me using decorating as smokescreen for a character study lol. Daddy issues galore. The Christmas music is very self indulgent on my part too. Allusions/mentions to 18+ content

A/N: *Mariah Carey whistle note* ITS TIMEEEEEE. Lmao hiii, I hope you all are doing well. It has been a minute since I have written for a fandom outside of hotd so please bear with me on that front. I eventually want to take request soon (for Rhett, some tgm characters, and Calvin Evans) so my inbox is always open if y’all are interested - just shoot me something. If you read anything you like please reblog, like, and or comment. Also let me know when y’all put your decorations up (if you celebrate anything). I’m a staunch first weekend of December girlie myself ❤️

Masterlist

As pathetic as it sounds out loud, Rhett had grown accustomed to having the rug pulled out from under him. He had a looming and painful history with differentiating the cards life dealt him and what he deserves; over time, they began to blur together. At a certain point, he just resigned himself to life just being sort of... eh. Reminding himself that though things could be better, they could also be much, much worse.

It would all combinate in this hazy, syrupy snapshot of moments that ran together. At least, that is what he thought till he met you.

He thinks you would not understand it if he told you - that you are one of those people that is easy to love, while people like him took work to want. Hard work. Something that would be likened to the type of manual labor a Wyoming, farm grown boy like him is used to doing day in and day out. If he dared to express it, you would give him a good-natured laugh and shake your head like you always did when he said something self-deprecating.

"What kind of women do you take me for, Abbott," followed by a playful eye roll. "The type that settles?"

Rhett supposes that was the conundrum with you. Because the statement is not wrong; nothing about you gave off the impression you would settle for anything. That could come from a life of having almost everything at your fingertips. But the questions still tickle his tongue and doubts still makes his brain hazy.

It has only compounded since the two of you moved in together.

It was you who posed the suggestion, a shy smile on your lips. Despite the skepticism and disappointment from your parents, it did not feel right for you to sell your grandmother's ranch, the one your father grew up on, after she passed. You insisted on keeping it yourself, clearly having a soft spot for the house you would visit whenever you had the chance to.

Our home, you called it.

Your baking kits in the kitchen, his horses in the stable, and various clothes in the closets. He should feel reassured by this all… and yet… he waits for the other shoe to drop. For the rug to once again be pulled out from under him. Everything is so warm and new, and he worries about the day it slips through his fingers like sand.

Words in general, and expressing this specifically, does not come easy for him. Though loving you comes as easy as breathing for him. Rhett puts all that stuffing emotions and feelings away to good use as he tries to focus on the present. The only thing that manages to keep his mind clear is keeping his hands busy. So, he tries to make up for it in any way he can. The pale wall color your grandma insisted on keeping but reminded you of a sterile hospital? Painted to something more vibrant. The light fixtures in the kitchen that you said were ‘far too phallic to enjoy a meal under’? Well, those new ones are the best money could buy.

He just finished the building that rocking chair you got for the porch when you stick your head out of the house to call him in for dinner, eyes alight with something he could not put his finger on.

Dinner was silent, too silent for you, who always could spark up a conversation with anyone. A tiny sense of dread sets in, and he can’t help but think it maybe something he did… or did not do.

“The chicken is good,” he tries to start any kind of conversation or joy behind the eyes, but all he gets is an empty smile.

The unnerving quietness carries on for a few of minutes, but you suddenly drop your fork on the plate with a clank.

“Did y'all go all out for Christmas?”

Along with the noise the fork made, the question startled Rhett. He blinks blankly utterly confused by how it went from silence to that.

“What?”

“Oh, sorry,” your lips downturn into an embarrassed frown. “I should not have assumed y’all even celebrate it. I guess I just assumed with your mom and all.”

“No, we do celebrate,” he shakes head.

“So, did you go all out? When did you guys put the decorations out?”

Rhett shifts in his seat uncomfortably. Much like everything else that comes to his family, it is never linear or easy. He doesn’t know how to explain how one year they just stopped decorating; gifts and midnight mass were seen as hassles not the usual. Everything that the holidays stood for: family, love, gratefulness, togetherness was the antithesis of them. The joy and warmth of the holidays was sucked from the house and never came back till Amy was old enough to know what Christmas was - till Rebecca and his ma teamed up one day to make a fuss about the house being cold and sterile. What they meant is that Royal was cold… and sterile.

Rhett can still remember the look of disbelief in Rebecca’s eyes when Perry didn’t back her up on the matter. It was a look Rhett had seen from when he was a teen till the last day, he saw Becca. He still gets a rotten taste in his mouth thinking about he never got to tell her how much she meant to him. But that would also mean admitting that often his biggest advocate was a woman basically forced into the family versus the people he shared actual blood with.

Slight embarrassment burns his mouth like a hot iron down his thoat.

With a tight throat, Rhett shrugs. “It changed every year,” he lies. Then shakes his head. “It wasn’t a big deal really.”

Almost as abruptly as you stopped eating, you get up from the kitchen table. He just about calls out to see if you are ok, but you come back in the dining area carrying a picture.

“When I was cleaning out the garage, I found this.”

Rhett leans over, and he can’t help the slow grin that settles on his face. At first, he didn’t recognize the faces in the picture but then he saw a familiar crooked, mischievous smile, but this time on a younger girl. A little you. Decked out in a red, poofy dress and tiny white fur shawl. Shiny black saddle shoes that gleam even in the old photo.

“My baby as a baby,” he whispers.

Rhett continues to scan the photo. Behind you was two older people, and he can only assume they are your parents. They are exactly how he thought they would be and nothing like he thought at the same time. Your mom casually glamourous in green, your dad in a suit far too done up just for family dinner with a heavy hand on your shoulder. You wear her eyes but his nose. Right behind the three of you, a heavily decorated banister and in the foreground a Christmas tree so large that Rhett thinks it has to be a safety hazard.

You do not seem as happy or in awe of the relic as him, in fact you look sick at the sight.

“That was taken before they sat me down to tell me they were getting a divorce.”

Rhett’s heart sinks a little at the as the way your mouth juts out in bitterness.

“Looking back on it, I should have known. Dad was never home, mom was detached, probably depressed. Ya know, I remember them specifically saying that nothing would change, and naive little me not only believe that but wanted it. Not realizing something was just… off. But I guess most nine-year-old’s can’t tell the difference.”

He supposed it was easier for him to paint a rosier picture of your parents, for his sake and yours. Maybe winters in Texas were better than ones he experienced, maybe life was better. He has seen pictures of house, the compound, you grew up on. But now hearing what you are saying made pity take over the normal envy.

Rhett reaches out to grab your hand, and squeezes. “M’ sorry.”

You wave your free hand nonchalantly thought the casualness does not meet your eyes fully.

“No use crying over spilt milk,” you sigh. “I just saw the picture and tried to rack my brain for the last time we were all together for the holidays. After that one, it was one year with mama, the next with dad. And I don't think we ever decorated the house together. That was my caregiver, Jodie's job. Made me curious other people’s traditions I guess."

Rhett fiddles with the rings on your fingers while chewing on the fleshy part on the inside of his cheek.

“Maybe we can make our own,” he mutters softly. “Startin’ this year.”

You look up through your lashes, eyes fluttering away from the picture that sat on the table.

“Really?”

He nods. If that is what you want, he’d do it for you. Like he would do anything for you. Your gaze goes out the window across from the table. The leaves on the trees already began to change and fall to the ground. Going from green to various shades of red, purple, and brown. The season already has changed; heat melting away as the temperature dropped and cool breeze set in.

Your spirit noticeably lightens. “Do you think we can get a real tree? Mamma always said it was too much of hassle to get a real one.”

Rhett holds up his hand and extends his pinky. “As long as there is mistletoe in the house.”

Under new light fixtures, and with the sun grazing the ground as it sets, the two of you made your first promise.

Investments are important.

Your father told you so all your life. To the giant painting he bought for the Tennessee house (the one you later realized was a Degas), the stocks he bought for you for your fifteenth birthday, or his insistence you go to his alma mater. All investments that he expected payoff for. Your father will always be the smartest businessman you know, and he still managed to be so clueless with everything else.

People are not investments. Not really, at least. Not in the way your father looked at it. You can put money and effort into something, but it is never a guarantee it will work out that way. And you can’t just leave when things do not go your way. Your poor father never seemed to understand that, and you think it broke your grandma’s heart in the process.

And maybe you are no better than him. As a child, you admittedly reaped the benefits your parents offered you, almost to a fault. They would often laugh at your ability to move on to the next thing without so much as a blink of an eye. Onto the next toy, the next piece of clothing, the next makeup item. How can you criticize behavior you gave into yourself?

“You’re a reformed brat,” Jennie, your old debutant buddy turned psychologist said over the phone. “Give yourself some grace. At least you want better yourself now.”

So, you gave yourself just that. You didn’t sell your grandma’s place for the equity or whatever bullshit your dad mentioned. You didn’t Amelia County leave though your mom offered to set you up with her in New York. And God… you’re letting your fall - fall so deeply in love with Rhett, despite the voice in your head that tells you not to.

You replay your, in your opinion, embarrassing meeting. Bursting into tears in the middle of a grocery store was not the romantic story you want to tell others. But he came up to you to say that though he only spoke to her a handful of times when she would stay in her vacation home in Wabang, he knew your grandmother was a good woman and would be missed.

A blubbery mess of grief right next to the meat aisle spiraled into decorating your grandmother's house together - your house.

With Frank Sinatra’s version of ‘Let it Snow’ playing in the background, a rush of giddiness takes over. Jodie always said you had an eye for pretty things.

"A little excited, no," Rhett eyes copious amounts of bags you brought into the house. “It’s not even December yet.”

You survey the bags and boxes laid out. So, you went slightly overboard. Like driving out of town to the nearest big city to do some more shopping. Some habits die hard.

"This is just the starter stuff," you pull reams of garland out of the bag. “Just wait till they start selling the trees. Oh! And I got ingredients to teach you how to make sugar cookies from scratch.”

Rhett is silent for a moment, and you wonder if it is too much too fast. Your mother always said that enthusiasm, especially around men, should be tempered and demure. No one likes a girl that acts like a dog with a bone, sweetheart.

“Do.. do you think we can invite Amy over for the cookies thing,” his cobalt eyes soften at the mention of his niece. “I think she would like that.”

“Of course.”

You knew how important it was to Rhett for things to stay good with Amy. Her reception of the move was the only one he seemed to care about. You could not help but think the rest of Rhett’s family was skeptical about his decision. Cecilia was always kind towards you, and she was mostly receptive to the idea, but you assume it must hurt to see her baby venture out. Something about her reminded you of your own mother. Two women clearly used to the short end of the stick, and had to find ways to deal with it. While your mother found salvation in travel and extravagant parties, Cecilia found hers in faith.

Perry was well… Perry, about the whole thing. Just based on how he handled the news, and small tidbits you picked up from Rhett, it seemed like Perry was upset about Rhett making a choice just for himself. A luxury that the eldest son had a premium on for some time.

But you think it was the patriarch of the family who took it the hardest. It may be the reality of having two less hands around 24/7 like Rhett says, but you tend to think it is something deeper with Royal. Anger, sadness, pride - all of them??? You don’t know.

But what you do know is that family tension is something both you and Rhett know far too well.

After unpacking the bags and boxes you got, the smoky coos of Frank Sinatra transition into the pop Christmas playlist you put together. You don’t remember when the bottle of red wine came out, whether it was between Britney singing about what she wants for Christmas that year or Mariah singing about a holy night. It might have been after you insisted the two of you try your hand at diy decorations. But Rhett rolled his eyes when you talked about getting glasses, taking swings straight from the bottle instead.

“I don’t know how you drink this shit,” he wrinkled his nose, but he takes another hit.

“Just like you enjoy your watery beer,” you retake the bottle from him to have some more yourself.

“Last time I checked,” he expertly ties red and green ribbon into pretty bows and knots. “You were there with me, drinkin’ said watery beer.”

You bite your lip as you watch his brows furrow, and he pokes his tongue out sweetly as he ties meticulously.

“You’re quite good at that.”

“‘M good with ropes too.”

It could be the red wine, which always made your insides warm and fuzzy. Or if could just be the Rhett of it all. Him indulging this perhaps silly childhood wound of yours in full earnest.

“Hmmm,” you shuffle closer to him. The two of you might a makeshift area on the living room floor of pillows and blankets. An almost sickly-sweet peppermint candle ablaze on the table, and the fireplace crackling nearby.

“Royal used to make me secure the lines and pull logs. Kinda got good at it.”

By this time, you’re stuck at his side, suddenly a little fixated on hair on his neck that trickles up to his jaw and cheeks. You like him like this; hair falling from behind where it is tucked behind his ears. Scruffy and soft.

“Maybe you can show me how good you are.”

Rhett’s attention still doesn’t stray from the ribbons he cuts and ties, a task he is clearly taking seriously, but he nods in agreement. You roll your eyes slightly at how oblivious he can be.

“On me, Rhett,” you spell it out for him. “You can use the ropes on me.”

He stops and turns with a look of wanton, wetting his lips for a moment.

“Yeah,” he asks, the inflection at the end of the question breathy and soft.

You nuzzle your nose into area right under his ear with a hum, kissing the skin there and taking in the smell of his cologne. A woodsy scent with sprites of magnolia and cedar. It was one that consumed the bedroom and your mind. You spent much of your formative years pretending to hate the idea of being desired or wanted - chasteness an idea drilled into your head since you were a little girl and told by the ladies of your church that the only thing worse than being ungodly is being ‘fast’. Then you spent college overcorrecting to the point of farce. Letting the guys you knew had little regard for how you felt at the end of it make decisions for you. Emotionally, mentally, and sexually.

Your first time with Rhett was a hodgepodge of giggle and sighs only to be heard by vast emptiness of the home you do sit in now. His boots and jeans askew on the floor. You eccentric grandma’s knick knacks watching you two. Most notably, the cat clock that reflected in the moonlight, the one Rhett insisted you keep when he moved in. After him eating you out until you cried, and a night that ended in you making a trip to the local pharmacy for a Plan B, you honestly expected a series of awkward moments that would single-handedly ruin the small town bliss you experienced for the first time. And yet, in the morning, his lips turned up in a shy smile and he asked if you had bacon in the fridge.

You didn’t realize how badly you were under water and needed to breathe until you came to Wabang. Your lips work their way up his jaw til you reach the corner of his mouth.

“Let’s make it another tradition.”

#rhett abbott x female reader #rhett abbott x reader #rhett abbott #outer range imagine #outer range #rhett abbott x you #rhett abbott smut #outer range fic #black!reader #lewis pullman

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sun-havenn · 10 months

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I just found you and I am so happy about it. I've been obsessed with the game for about two months, but there is so little fan content compared to some other titles, so seeing someone do imagines and headcanons is super nice!

May I request prompt 51 „Are you trying to seduce me?“ - „Depends. Are you seducable?“ with Wesley? Please don’t feel like you have to or anything though; I'm just super happy to see more stuff around in general

Of course!!! I have to admit I'm not super close with Wesley yet in my own game, but I hope I did him justice!

After months in Nel'Vari, the elven city began to feel like a second home. It was a gorgeous place that still felt magical. You remained amazed by the crops, the plants, the fish, the animal, and certainly it's people.

Most had been happy to invite you in, if not just curious about who managed to find the elven city. A few people were hesitant, and a small handful seemed simply irritated by your existence.

One of those people was Wesley. It had been hard, especially since he was Elder Gorwin's assistant. You wanted him to like you. Elder Gorwin liked you, so why shouldn't his assistant?

Only recently, he'd started warming up to you, after Nivara's final lesson and you were glad for it. At first, you'd just wanted to be liked, but once he seemed to accept you in Nel'Vari, you began to like him, too. He was interesting, and while his values were what made him distrusting of you, the more you got to know him, the more they made sense and the more you could appreciate them.

Slowly, you became closer. You'd even call the two of you friends, especially since you found out how much he loves honey and you started bringing him fresh honey from your farm. Perhaps he would call you a friend, too.

Lately, you were beginning to doubt your feelings for Wesley were strickly platonically. You looked forward to every visit. So much so that you were more in Nel'Vari than in Sun haven, despite your work there piling up.

It was difficult to stay away, even though days in Nel'Vari were often slower. You liked seeing Wesley when you ran errands, and you liked to have the option to search him up for a chat or a shared drink in the tavern.

It was difficult to be away from him, because somehow, your mind always returned to him.

It was distracting and confusing, especially since you'd finally bumped your way up to 'friend'. Could you ever be more to him?

You began to think that you would like to be more than friends when you were farming, and your mind drifted to Wesley. Specifically to kissing Wesley. It was a thought that made you blush, and the possibility of Wesley kissing you made your head spin and your heart ache.

You wanted to kiss him, if only to see if it felt right. Your friendship was still so delicate, that the thought of flirting with Wesley made your heart pound and your palms sweat. But you knew it was up to him. Waiting for Wesley would mean waiting forever, and you could not spend so much time in uncertainty.

You could hardly say you had a 'plan', unless you called getting kinda drunk and trying to flirt a plan.

It was late one fall evening when you collected a few fresh pots of honey and flew to Nel'Vari. With confidence you didn't feel, you walked up to the tavern and ordered two honeydews. You finished one and took the second one to Wesley's table.

"I thought you were going to ignore me tonight," he said when you joined him.

"you're not that lucky," you said, offering him a smile. "But you're a little lucky. I brought you honey."

When you placed multiple jars on the table, his eyes got big. "Is there some sort of special occasion I forgot?" He asked, looking at the jars. You had to admit you'd outdone yourself. For Wesley, you always made the jars look nice, but this time you'd spent a couple of hours attaching flowers to the jar and infusing them with your own mana so they'd stay fresh.

"No, I just wanted to do something nice," you pushed the jars over to him, taking a long sip of your honeybrew before looking at him again.

Wesley truly looked amazing. His hair was a rich green, no matter the weather always clean and tamed. He smiled very little, but his features looked exceptional anyway. "Y/', You're looking at me funny."

You smiled, despite the nerves you' d felt coming in the tavern. It was just Wesley. You were friends. You liked him. He liked you. "I'm just looking at you, silly," he made a 'hmp' noise, but that wasn't enough for you. "I like looking at you."

You followed the statement with a big sip from your beverage, daring a glance at him over the edge of your cup. He was blushing. Welsey was actually blushing because of you.

Something fluttered in your stomach, and your breath caught for a moment. You had to tear your eyes away from him. "Well, I..." he tried to regain composure, but so did you.

"Need another drink? I'm buying." You took your empty cup and got ready to go to Slate.

Half mumbling, he accepted. When you joined him again, your hands were sweaty, and Wesley' s cheeks were still tinted. You wondered if that's a good sign.

"I've been meaning to ask you," you started, fingers tightening around your drink. "Have you ever dated someone? With being the next Elder and stuff."

He looked a little shocked, which was clear in the way his voice raised. "What kind of question is that? If you must know, I've always been incredibly busy. Too busy to worry myself with dating."

"Come on," you tried, attempting your best charm. "I can hardly believe no one's ever wanted to date you."

"Well, I don't- it's not like I go around to ask people that. Besides, I've never liked someone enough to care."

"Alright, Wes, you can calm down, it was just a question," you chuckled nervously. Was it obvious you were nervous? "I just ask because I know someone who's interested in... Dating you."

"Whoever told you that, you can tell them I'm not," he said, waving your story away. Had he really not understood what you meant? You thought you'd been clear in the way you spoke and looked and acted. "You're looking funny at me again." he said, at, which you gave him another look that you hoped explained the situation.

It took a long moment, but at, last, his eyes widened. "Oh, you're talking-you mean that you are-" he stopped for a moment. "Y/n, are you trying to seduce me?"

You laughed softly at the way he said it, some of your nerves dying. "Depends. Are you seductable?"

His face heated again, the blush spreading to the tips of his ears. "I- Well, no, but... Maybe for you, I'll make an exception."

You forgot how to breathe for a moment. That was a yes. At least a yes for you. Somehow, you hadn't expected it.

"That's... Great news," you smiled, uncertain what to do next. We're you supposed to ask him on a date? Just kiss him, maybe? No, you were both too flushed for it. "I'm sorry, I'm obviously thrilled, just a little unsure of what to do next. My wildest dreams never even made it to this point."

"You've been dreaming about me?"

"Daydreaming, yeah," you admitted, feeling strangely vulnerable admitting it. "Why do you think I've been in Nel'Vari so much? I just want to see you every day."

When you dated to glance up at him, he looked at loss for words. You felt the same, and opted for a shy smile.

"I'd certainly like to see you even more, too," he said softly, looking down at his hands. "Maybe you could come to my house tomorrow? We could enjoy these honeys together."

You felt a smile creep on your face. There was no stopping it, Wesley just asked you out. Wesley liked you the way you liked him. "It's a date."

#sun haven #sun haven imagine #sun haven wesley

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ewanmitchellcrumbs · 2 months

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Late to the party (?), but I get that fandom feels dead. Not trying to be preachy or patronizing, I swear, I sometimes think that people have so much going on, life happens and they move away to different interests.

The hope is that they come back at least once new trailers/ posters are released. Not to mention, the HotD fan experience is not always enjoyable because of the incessant attacks on various people/ fans of specific characters by people with zero chill.

For your stuff, if you only choose to post on Ao3, that would be understandable. Fwiw, I created my blog to interact with you because it was a fun, chill vibe ( and for the sake of our favorite scammer monk, Genyen 😋). I hope that you stay on ♥️ it’s always nice to pop back in and chat with friends here.

If you leave, I will miss you. There’s maybe just a few blogs here I check in the HotD fandom.

Personally, I’m trying to read more HotD / Ewanverse content but I understand that it’s not fully holding my interest at the current moment and that is okay. I’ll get back to it eventually 🥰

P.S: lol. Called it @ ewan being a Pisces. He really does have that crybaby Pisces face haahahahhahahaha 🥺🥹🥺🥹

It’s so good to hear from you! I have missed you 💕

Fandom is quiet, but I’m not resentful of anyone for that. Interests change, people are busy, etc.

For me, I’ve been struggling to see where I fit for a long while. I’ve been doubting my own writing, wondering if it’s something people even want to read. That self doubt coupled with feeling like I never have the time or motivation to write has made me get into my own head a little bit. It feels fast paced here, that if you’re not keeping up with the regular churn of output that some writers seem to have then you will be forgotten about and left behind.

I have expressed my thoughts on the matter and been accused of hating on x reader fics and smut, which seems ridiculous to me. The fics I write which don’t have OCs I would classify as x reader, even though they’re written in third person. Almost everything I write has an element of smut. The majority of what I reblog are really well written x reader fics that contain smut, so I’m not sure how that conclusion has been drawn. The reading comprehension on this site is astonishing sometimes!

My issue is mine and mine alone, but I have chatted with friends on here and Discord and an outside perspective has been really helpful to help get my head on straight. I have shaken up how I write - currently I sit at the same desk I work at, on my laptop, to write. The fact that it feels like work I think makes it feel like a chore, so I’m less inclined to want to. I’ve gotten a tablet, so I can write where ever and jot down ideas as and when they come to me. I’m also trying to not pressure myself - I am not a content farm, so it doesn’t matter how often I post fics. People will read them, or they won’t, what matters is that I feel proud of what I’ve written.

Sorry for the long ramble! But never apologise for being absent. Fandom should feel low pressure for writers and readers alike. I’m glad you’re doing okay and I love you!

#asked and answered #lovely moots 💕

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amrv-5 · 7 months

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HI ⭐️! (loved Droughtland, would love to hear commentary) :)

HELLO and THANK YOU FOR THE ASK and I'm SO GLAD YOU LIKED IT I loved WRITING IT ARGHH!!!! Also tagging in @catgrub who asked the same just a few minutes later -- HELLO and THANK YOU ZANE!!! Since there were two recs for Droughtland I feel like the extreme length of the following Commentary can be excused.

(For context: I realized I've got 0 idea of how to do a Director's Commentary except for ones I've seen where directors just rewatch their own movie and speak overtop of it, so, I did the same except with reading and typing. This is my read-along author commentary on Droughtland, arranged in chronological order--feel free to look at it with the OG, or not, it should stand alone just fine. Or ignore it entirely. My god it's fucking long, so sorry. Anyway, onwards.)

Okay close reading. Okay commentary. Engaging on this journey together yaaaay.

[Iowa, 1962]

Okay, from the first line, we’re invoking concerns of location, identity, belonging, otherness—Radar struggling to adjust to home because he senses he’s been changed by his experiences in a way that makes him incompatible with the life he used to lead. He’s good at his job, we sense that he’s well-respected, but he’s undeniably not entirely present. Everything he does, sees, thinks, remembers, ends up in service of the Project, which I think I’ve (maybe not obviously or even all that consciously) tried to imply has an element of spiritual or religious calling to it, given that we’re introduced to it in a church.

And retrospectively enjoying the complexity of Radar running the line between escapism and catharsis in his writing at the end of this first section. He misses the people he was close to, that much is clear, and writing is a way to feel close to them. And yet he’s also mentally returning over and over again to a war. A theme I’ve played with in the background of my BeejHawk fics, and more centrally in Droughtland, is one I sort of cribbed from Michael Herr’s Dispatches: Who are you after the most defining event of your life has ended?

[Iowa, 1952]

...And who are you when you KNOW the most defining event of your life has ended? That’s not to say the War Was A Good Experience and One To Reminisce Over. In fact the war being experientially horrific only complicates this idea more. I’m fascinated by how somebody goes about the rest of their life knowing with near-certainty that anything / everything they experience will likely never be as impactful on their sense of self and arc of life than a single past event. Anyway, this ends up concerning Radar greatly, who moves from that Defining Event—Drafted Into the Korean War—back to the rhythms of family and farm life, where he expects himself to be content with the life he’d always assumed he’d have. Actually I’ve read more and realized I had him state that concern textually, rendering this redundant. Ah well. Moving on.

Okay, something else—Radar and writing and fiction and voice. I wanted to get across very clearly that the driving force of his writing is a direct desire to communicate—his first attempt at beginning the book takes the form of an introduction (“My name is Radar O’Reilly”), and he states that writing lets a fellow talk to people who aren’t around. The silent implication being, then, that he’s got no-one real to talk to. Another important set of questions getting kicked around in this piece: Why do we write? Is writing still communication if it’s never shared?

I wanted to play with the idea specifically of writing in relation to loneliness. If you’ve got nobody to talk to, or no way to express yourself meaningfully, or nobody who is interested in understanding you, it makes a lot of sense to sink into the realm of the creative, which we see Radar do here very explicitly. He doesn’t have any close connections, really, or at least not ones he thinks he can explain his new sense of self to, so he turns to writing. Summoning the last people who really understood how he felt, in some ways, writing to communicate with people who are dead or gone from him. Making some record of himself, his experiences, the way he sees the world—an attestation of self, or something, in direct defiance of a landscape and life that feels flat, uncaring, inaccessible—he starts writing alone in a field.

[Iowa, 1959]

Next—mm, field fire section, which was my favorite to write. I’m clearly and obviously soft for rural concerns. I know it’s been pointed out that my voice is significantly different in this fic than in my others, and I’ll admit that I did dip into the author-voice I usually reserve for my personal fictionalizations of family histories, which largely concern, go figure, rural American questions of identity, place, belonging, family, fulfillment, etc. And yet the usual Vonnegut-y sensibilities aren’t wholly gone—the idea of Radar being a volunteer fireman was lifted both from Vonnegut’s life AND volunteer firefighters' positioning in his work as bastions of selfless humanity and civic duty. I like the idea of a latently lonely Radar doing all these very quiet upright civically-minded things. Frequently good people are dealt bad hands, and aren’t cared for by their communities, and still go on doing good anyway.

[Iowa, 1963]

Reading on—and the arrival of BeejHawk. It’s been long enough by this point that Radar’s sort of been subsumed by the Project. We see that tendency in him as he anticipates seeing ‘Dr. Pierce’ and meets Hawkeye instead.

And then—AH! At last! The title is Droughtland, obviously, and that’s a multivalent image, but here’s at least one moment and facet of relief: Sometimes, he thought, a fellow just needed words. Words and words and words like rain on a drought. And the good doctors Pierce and Hunnicutt had always known how to talk up a storm.

As much as it’s a relief, it’s also destabilizing to suddenly have people notice him after so long living almost entirely within himself—Hawkeye calling him Radar shocks him into silence—wow, I’m realizing belatedly just HOW MUCH this fic is about loneliness, actually. Funny the things you can catch on a reread. His name is important, that’s all, and Hawkeye would understand that.

Meanwhile BeejHawk as a unit are very clearly sensing something wrong—not wrong, maybe, but not all right, either. Radar’s Restaurant Allegory is key here as he admits that ‘enjoyment’ is absolutely meaningless in the context of his life—it doesn’t matter if you like the restaurant if it’s the only option. It’s not that he likes or dislikes it—it’s that forming and expressing an opinion would be pointless. This is a stand-in for his opinion on life, which Hawkeye finds distressing, though I think he’d agree with Radar to a degree on his related idea that happiness, delight, joy are intentional practices more than consistent feelings (another idea cribbed from elsewhere: Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, which I am coming to realize sunk way more deeply into my psyche at age 19 than I thought. I may elaborate someday if there’s ever an interest in Parker Creative Nonfiction because the story’s sort of ???, but also, maybe not).

Anyway, Hawk at last manages to drag a bit of real sentiment out of Radar: writing, and the Project, where so much of his internal life is focused (Hawk makes a Lot’s wife joke, because of course he does, but also I like him invoking a story where somebody looks backward on something terrible and suffers for their inability to turn away).

And from here Radar takes the plunge and finally gives all that lonely writing an audience. Terrifying, but it pays off—Hawk affirms that he’s very good (important to me that Radar’s very good as a writer coming from outside a formal academic context. Everybody has the potential to create resonant art, and I wanted to be clear that Radar’s interest in something like the Iowa Writer’s Workshop isn’t the need to be Validated by the Institution or to Escape some sort of poorly-informed or condescending vision of Rural Nonintellectualism (bad themes!!! I hate them!!! NOT at play here, or at least consciously attempted to subvert) but as an extension of the desire for artistic community. To be seen and heard, instead of all the silent listening he’s been doing for years.)

The tradeoff of communicating, by the way—Hawk is a good listener, and picks up on a number of things maybe Radar wasn’t even aware he was revealing in his work—loneliness, vague dissatisfaction, a focus on finding interior fulfillment when the external world fails to provide. Scary, destabilizing, embarrassing… but eventually very, very good. For Radar, at least, who’s suddenly feeling like he’s allowed to want something.

Moving on. Hawkeye’s reaction to learning he’s a part of Radar’s Project. Obviously he’s worried about how he’s going to come across. I think it’s a very scary thing to be the object of cameras, of writerly gaze, all of it, because it creates an image that exists entirely outside the object's control. How horrifying/enticing/awful/fascinating it’s got to be to be able to find out how you exist in another person’s mind… and when that image was formed in the lowest years of your life… of course Hawk’s apprehensive. And clearly it rattles him—but maybe in the way any really, really resonant art rattles us, based on his next-morning response.

Hawk comes downstairs and we get this baffling little kiss scene, which I’ll be honest I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant when I was writing, only that it felt right. But now I’m thinking it’s clearly an exchange of seeing—Hawk feels he’s been thoroughly Seen in Radar’s work, for better or worse, and comes downstairs to communicate in this abstract way that he sees Radar, too—and affirms what he sees.

So we end with these moments, finally, of communication and understanding and connection. Very obviously there’s the Hawk-Radar connection, which is so intense and emotive it’s basically psychic (what's good writing if not successfully communicating an idea or image with all original emotive force and vividness from one mind to another?). There’s also Beej, who isn’t Hawk’s brand of incidentally clairvoyant, but is all around a very bright, kind, warm person who’s able to give Radar the sort of horrendously necessary everyday sort of conversation and care that makes life bearable, the kind it’s so easy to take for granted when you’re experiencing it regularly. And then there’s BJ stepping in to hold Hawk even if he doesn’t fully understand what’s transpired between Hawk and Radar, because he knows Hawk and knows that he needs a second of support, which is sort of psychic in its own way.

And that's the end. So, overall, I’d say the thing is very directly related to the title—drought of the soul which is only starting to lift by the end of the piece. One storm doesn’t solve a drought, after all—you need consistent rain, and time for ecological repair. And still the first few drops of rain after a dry spell feel awfully good.

#THANK YOU BOTH FOR THE ASK!!!!!!#and. i'm soooo sorry for the length of this I was having Fun. do not feel obligated to Actually read it it's Excessively Detailed #anyway. ouuugh #droughtland #fic commentary

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sniffanimal · 6 months

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people talked about Yumi and the Nightmare Painter "predicting" the AI art debacle, and I think that's a completely fair read of it, but I do think you're missing some alternatives if you read it like that and leave it there. (Mild-moderate spoilers)

First and foremost, "can robots make really art" is not a new idea.

So it was merely a timely connection, not groundbreaking, to be pedantic.

That said, I think it's interesting to look at YatNP through the lens of being about Media™️ and capitalism. Specifically like, clickbait/franchise media. And, le gasp! I think this is both nuanced in the text And I honestly don't think this was Brandon Sanderson's intention in the slightest. He's a known Marvel/Star Wars fan and is one of the most prolific fantasy authors out there. But I also don't think he writes stuff just to shit out a book for money, and I think that's part of his intention there.

Let's start with Painter's relationship to art. Painter is someone who draws the same thing every day for work because it gets the job done, then goes home to consume his dramas on TV every day. Sure, he's extremely skilled, but has no desire to continue creating because it doesn't make him any better at his job.

As someone who has done lowbrow underpriced commissions just because they put food on the table, not because content wise I was passionate about it: relatable.

There's something to be said about how his primary focus with art is on utility and consumption. Draw bamboo for work, come home and watch the new show. Rinse repeat. This, combined with the fact that his storyline is the more "modern" one, gives the impression that IRL present day people are flattened by capitalism when it comes to creating art. Furthermore, engagement with art becomes flattened into passive viewing (slightly contrasted with Yumi's experience with the Dramas on TV, how she becomes so passionate about the story).

Now, moving on to Yumi's experience with art. For her, creativity was taught to be narrowly crammed into one medium, but she was able to bring her own passion and creativity into it. Her art is fully about the process of creation (with 1% awe of the stacks). Creating the stacks is what brings the spirits forward (and in Painter's case, the focus and intent of the paintings is what brings the Nightmares forward, though that isn't understood as easily at the beginning). When she is contrasted with the Machine(s), there's this feeling that the machine is creating something blasphemous, as it just shits out the same piece over and over again and gets the spirits attention nonetheless. While this could be read as an indictment of AI art, I think you could also read it as content farms, or artists who create what's popular for attention* and not what they're passionate about, or big budget franchises chasing money and not visions. Make the same cookie-cutter content, get the clicks. Get the clicks, get money. The same energy that drove the Machine (capitalism), is the same energy that shrouded Painter's world in darkness and made his work rote and unfulfilling. You can also see this in the disillusionment he felt upon discovering the Dreamwatch team was entirely built on Nepotism from rich families. Realizing the only people who get to succeed in his field were people who had money to begin with.

Lastly, how they engaged with each other's Mediums of Choice was cool, I think it was fun to see them learn the value in each other's creations despite not understanding them initially.

this was a little all over the place but I just wanted to talk about how while it's easy to say "this is about AI art", I think it's first and foremost about people. And capitalism (I know the AI art debate has a lot to do with anti-capitalism, but I think YatNP's story goes deeper than just 'computers don't make real Art').

What do you think? am I super off-base here, Do I need to go back to Anti-Cappitalism 101 class? Or am I cooking? Is there another interesting read you have on it? Do you want me to talk about my Transgender read of the story?

* Nuance note: yes I know artists draw popular things to get attention so they get a bigger following and therefore money. I'm a freelance artist myself. this isn't negativity directed towards the artists for doing this, it's directed at the fact we have to do it in the first place. Until I stopped full time freelancing and got a stable job, I never realized just how freeing it is to just draw what I'm passionate about instead of trying to draw appealing things for an audience. Getting the freedom to do that felt like Painter's mural of Yumi, something drawn for the sake of art alone and not for an end goal in service to an audience.

#badger rants #yumi and the nightmare painter

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worldsbiggestnerd101 · 2 months

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i will forever be grateful that the mascot horror of my choosing - welcome home - is not a video game or even a show, but is, in fact, an interactive website with many secret elements that hide the horror. look what happened to fnaf, to tadc, hell, even poppy playtime now that chapter 3 isn’t complete and utter sludge. like, can you imagine how much worse the welcome home fandom would be if we also had over saturated content farms to deal with?

i was into tadc for a week or two (hyperfixation go brrrrr) and part of the reason i lost interest was because of the fucking content farms. tadc isn’t just an indie animated show with horror elements now, it’s something content farms milk to hell and back! i’ve found my little siblings watching shitty tadc content farm videos! can you imagine what would’ve happened if welcome home was executed in any other format other than its current website? the characters are perfect in terms of color and designs for content farm exploitation. it would’ve absolutely wrecked welcome home as a whole and it would’ve never taken off in the way it did if it’d been in a game or show or anything other than its website.

i keep going back to tadc but it’s just the perfect example of content-farm-ification. tadc lost relevance after, what, a month? sure, it’ll likely skyrocket back up into tumblr’s trending whenever episode 2 drops, but compare tadc’s 40k tag followers to welcome home’s ever climbing 1.2 million tag followers. the welcome home tag absolutely just blew up and kept blowing up after its initial rise to fame in march 2023, but tadc’s tag is still similar in followers to the number it had back in october. i blame it on the fucking content farms. sure, tadc has millions of views of youtube, but how relevant is it really?

sure, the welcome home fandom is generally regarded as shitty thanks to all the fucking idiots who couldn’t listen to clown’s guidelines on nsfw content for the few months before they created a tag for that specifically and because of all the weird as fuck aus people have created, but at least we’re not that. at least we don’t have content farms like fucking lankybox completely sucking the enjoyment out of our media of choice and over saturating the search results we get when looking up the names of our hyperfixes.

i cannot stress enough how grateful i am that welcome home’s main way of being interacted with is its website. lankybox and all other content farms can’t milk that. what small child would want to watch them aimlessly click around the website and try to find all the secrets? how is that marketable? how can you make putting in letter combinations into the url and clicking on everything pops up something to scream at your camera about? answer: you can’t. that’s what’s so great about it. there is almost no possible way anyone under age, what, ten? would want to watch someone interact with the website and uncover its lore which makes it practically useless to every single content farm out there.

so, yeah. once again, thank you clown for making your funny little puppet show horror project a silly website with its own secrets and codes rather than a video game. thank you for executing mascot horror in such a great way that content farms have simply not found a way to milk it in the almost year since its initial explosion in popularity. don’t forget to wave up high!

#em rambles #welcome home #seriously i’m so thankful that it’s virtually uncontentfarmable because i really would’ve contemplated ending it if i saw my little sibling #watching shitty lankybox videos on welcome home #long post #mascot horror #content farms

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multifandomenjoyerr · 3 months

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Atp your milking trends like hazbin hotel and tadc lol.

The aggression— 💀 where did that even come from? I don't milk trends it's just unfortunate timing that certain fandom suddenly gets alot of recognition and I happen to be apart of that fandom. Have you SEEN my ABC list dude? That's alot of fandoms even for me to remember lmao

Also I made like one helluva boss post and the ones I posted in the past are privated or deleted so it's not like I suddenly hopped onto the train to get a few likes and reblogs. I've been a fan ever since the pilot aired so ive BEEN here 😭 same for amazing digital circus. I don't get what you mean, but thanks for the ask- sorry you feel that way. I don't want to milk trends and I'm hoping I don't come off that way—

Remember: milking content is content farming where someone spams a certain media, grabs an attention puller from someone from that fandom so they can get a like/view/share/etc. When someone posts that specific media because it's what they generally enjoy:/ ps, I love you blogs who only post something you're hyperfixated/interested in! You're amazing /p

#Uhh okay then #sfw agere #sfw blog #multifandomenjoyerr

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femboyhunting · 5 months

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Mickie gives me cuteness aggression. Every time i see him i get the sudden urge to rip this throat out with my teeth ❤️ Can you tell me more about himb

He will absolutely kick your ass though so you best behave. He started working out just to be able to kick ass better.

So I'm pretty bad at coming up with stuff off the top of my head so please do feel free to ask if you have anything specific you want to know about him.

He's a really good dancer.

He started a band that he called For Profit Orphan Farm, because that's what he calls the orphanage. He also sometimes calls Bailey a for profit orphan farmer. On the topic of Bailey, He also has a drawing he made of Bailey he made pinned to a dart board. Throws darts at it.

He and Bailey have kind of a weird complicated relationship that's only gotten more weird and complicated over the years. It started off as entirely adversarial at first, Mikie hated Bailey's guts. Then eventually he figured that considering how much power and influence Bailey has, it would be in his best interest to get on his good side. So he decided he'd work to gain Bailey's trust then when he had it he'd betray him and take over. He didn't really change his additude but he did work to make it obvious he was an invaluable asset. Bailey ended up having to rescue him a few times and each time he'd give him a chunk of extra money in his weekly orphan fee. After all money is the only thing Bailey gives a shit about. They're not "friendly", Mikie even acts openly antagonistic and insulting towards him sometimes but it's almost joking? They almost sort of have something of a banter going? He plays pranks on him sometimes. Mikie would never admit it to anyone or even himself, but he sort of wants to impress Bailey, prove he's more than just another orphan. It's impossible to know what he truly feels for Bailey, even less so what Bailey feels for Mikie.

Mikie hasn't actually been in the orphanage since he was a child, instead he came to the orphanage in his mid teens after his parents lost custody. At that time he was a total loner with a bad additude but Robin really brought him out of his shell. Robin was his first friend at the orphanage, perseverating to try to be his friend even on those first days when Mikie kept telling him he was annoying and to scram. Mikie doesn't talk about his parents, he actually doesn't remember them or his childhood before the orphanage much aside from vague feelings and snippets. And he doesn't really care to, he's perfectly content to act like his time before the orphanage doesn't exist at all.

He's a delinquent that likes to cause trouble in school. Essentially harmless stuff. Well other than pepper spraying people. But to be fair those people were Whitney and his pack of friends. Mikie maintains that if you don't start none there won't be none, and it's not his fault Whitney keeps running back over and over again to get his ass kicked. He also intervenes when he sees students getting bullied and is generally kind of scrappy and rarely runs from a fight. So he's in fights a lot. Which means he's in detention a lot. You'd think his obvious status as a delinquent would mean he's probably getting shit grades but he's actually doing surprisingly well, like he actually gets good grades. He's the worst at math, unsurprisingly. River likes him since he volunteers at the soup kitchen occasionally. River thought he was another rude asshole kid at first but Mikies always been earnest and worked hard and proved himself to be ultimately a kind person even if he's a bit rough around the edges. So River bumps up his grade even though he really shouldn't.

He doesn't really know how to draw, he's not a good artist.

He's kinda in a thruple with Kylar and Sydney. (Well technically Mikie is seeing like a bunch of different men but Ky and Sydney are the only ones he thinks of as his actual boyfriends he actually loves.) Which was a whole goddamn mess to set up and frankly is still more or less a goddamn mess. They're kind of competitive and snippy to eachother. Ky is more openly antagonistic and Syd is just sarcastic and teasing. And while Mikie does think it's kind of very super hot when boys fight over him (he feels really guilty for this) he does genuinely care deeply for both of them and wants them to get along. He also tries to get Ky and Robin to hang out. Mikie worries about Ky, thinks he could really use a friend. Though it's probably kinda dumb to keep trying to get Kylar to get along with people Mikies been inside of but oh well Mikies never had very good judgement when it comes to relationships.

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rotzaprachim · 2 years

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the great depression is like. such a specific interesting period to look at as represented in american literature because i think to an extent books are almost afraid of it, and it brings up these apocalyptically disturbing issues of capitalist destruction, climate destruction, violent racism, nativism, isolationism, antisemitism, agricultural disfunction, wealth inequality and the (so called) *hypothetical* space of what economic disaster means in real time for ordinary people (notice how the us now flinches from considering economic issues *significant* enough reason to be considered a *refugee). and the 30′s aren’t like the 1920′s, or the 50′s, or even now the 80′s or 90′s in that they can’t be so easily commodified into a saleable aesthetic of *the past* by certain groups and actors or consumed as pure nostalgia (something that, of course, requires stripping the above decades of almost everything that happened in them.) one on hand it’s because it’s perhaps harder to find sale-able aesthetic items in an era whose *aesthetic* if defined in terms of iconic images is marked by depravation, and ingenuity in the fact of depravation: dresses cut from flour sacks, yellowed photos of migrant workers, model-t’s and worn-out buster browns. but who wants to buy the dust bowl? all this accounts for why i think there’s this odd lost decade from the greater portion of american middle-brow literature and filmmaking and straight up pop culture reminiscence of a period that inarguably changed the us. it’s interesting.

i say on one hand because on the other, it really struck me how much of the american rendition of *cottagecore* and *getting back to nature/the farm* seems to me to dwell on some of those aesthetics of this period, removed from all context. there’s a lot of similar-silhouetted dresses, with extensive indie natural fibers fabric replacing the flour sacks that were the only thing many people could afford to dress their daughters in, and there’s washing your baby in a bucket, which looks nice, even though you do have running water. there’s an overall technological level that seems about 1930′s to me, and a focus on the kind of aesthetic sides of gardening, *farming*, washing clothes by hand and canning foods in mason jars that ignores the fact those were survival mechanisms for many people, that none of them ever stopped but changed with technology, that every aspect of food production is nuanced, messy, and dependent on extraordinarily complex factors of cost and terroir that make accessibility and sustainability contingent on a great number of local factors that don’t make such aesthetic instagram content. there are biscuit cutters and wringers for laundry and sometimes chickens, but there isn’t making saurkraut in 5-gallon plastic ace hardware buckets, or working in community college greenhouses to revive indigenous plants or food ways, or heritage seed banks, or butchering meat on plastic tarps, or replacing your ground beef with vegan replacements because that’s how you choose to decrease your environmental impact in a city of sixteen million people. and i think it’s interesting, because of the mobius strip of a (white, anglo, wealthy) turning away from so many of the exact issues that caused this aesthetic in the first place at the expense of an obliteration of historical understanding at a time when we have so much to learn from the past and for the present. you can try to sell the great depression, but how do you make money off of migrant workers, farmers watching land go dry with drought, hungry children, and climate refugees? how do you sell the dust bowl?

#i think there's processes at work here more nuanced than straightforward capitalist branding and saleability though #because it's not like we've seen a whole sale social return of the aesthetics of the 30's #(for us rn it's like the 80's which is hysterical because in the 80's it was the 50's. ohhh the passage of time)#like there aren't 30's style dresses on every hanger in target per se #but there's a markeability in terms of the image themselves of what is seen as desireable #the entire cottagecore trend works by people making money off of the most advanced social media and techology and algorithms through the #IMAGE of a more desirable off the grid kind of life and i think the lens through which that life is presented has a distinct 30's american #hue.#like specific people are making money off the image of this #i'm just really focused on image here i think it's fascinating to use IMAGES of this period at the same time i think it occupies an odd #negative black whole space in american popular memory

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sissytobitch10seconds · 8 months

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Birdsong: Hollow Moon

Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows Summary: Jesper likes taking little odd jobs, they let him meet new people. Very pretty people, that he likes collecting. Despite the fact that he already has four of them waiting for him back home, he can't help but flirt with the woman that just walked into his friend's bar. Warnings: implied unhealthy relationships, implied ableism, alcohol, and implied sexual content Word Count: 6,388 Ship(s): Nina Zenik/Jesper Fahey/Kaz Brekker/Wylan Van Eck/Inej Ghafa/Matthias Helvar

Archive link!

A/N: I edited and got this ready to be uploaded on the same day that I'm posting it so if there are typos and spelling errors please be kind to me because I wasn't able to spend as much time on it as I wanted. I hope that you guys enjoy this installment! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Jesper Fahey had been taking odd jobs for as long as he could remember. Back when he was living with his father, across the country from where he was now, he had always signed up to do whatever had sounded interesting. Several of the farmhands that were the same age as him at that time had dedicated jobs that they had to check on every day, but Colm understood that wasn’t right for his son. Jesper was allowed to drift from job to job as long as he completed the tasks correctly and on time. It was what had worked best for him, which is why his schooling had struggled so much before he had the supporte he needed from his partners.

Jesper’s favorite job was working with the local theater near where he lived. It was the first place that he had managed to secure a job while trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life now that he was no longer twenty miles from the nearest other living person. Poppy was the child of a family friend of theirs and had taken him in, but had also pushed him towards the theater.

He liked acting well enough, but memorizing the lines under the more strict directors that wouldn’t let him improvise was dull so he had to make sure that he avoided them. That limited the amount of acting jobs that he was allowed to take, but he was good when it came to the props as well. The stage crew was always so light that he was allowed to drift from job to job to job while completing about half of each. Sometimes he would leave them and someone else would come and pick them up, sometimes he found himself scrambling to get them finished the night before they had to be used. He liked the rush-rush-rush and changing nature of the theater jobs. It was alway something different and new, never the same show and rarely ever with the same premise.

He had a soft spot for the specific theater that he had been working in not just because it was the first place that really let him thrive as an adult, but also because it was the job that he had when he met Matthias. The other man had just barely moved from Denmark and was struggling to speak English, let alone hold down a job that required him to decipher the language through reading as well. Jesper had been a wonderful conversationalist and helped him adapt to a culture that he didn’t really understand.

They had both been rather lost in the big city, Jesper having grown up on a farm and the new place that Matthias lived being so different than his last one. It didn’t take long before they became as thick as thieves, and then only a week after that was when they had shared their first kiss. Things had been a little complicated in the moment since Jesper was also navigating the relationship that was beginning to develop between him and his two best friends in the entire world.

Tonight brought him a job that he was enjoying at least a little bit, though he was excited for it to end. A friend of his owned a bar close to the one that his boyfriend ran, so Jesper had agreed to be a stand in bartender during the interim of the last one quitting and the owner being able to hire a new one. He hadn’t anticipated that quitting to happen directly when Inej was getting back from the shows that she had been doing in Germany, which made him a little antsy to get back to his home.

They had all finished moving into the estate that he and Wylan had cleared out, which meant that they were all finally back together. It was a bit of a steep learning curve but they each had their own rooms and space so that they could be away from each other when they needed it. Still, of course, they were living together which meant that they had to learn and work around the new quirks of every person in the house.

Jesper had tended a bar before, usually at the Crow Club after Kaz asked him to with those puppy dog eyes that he just couldn’t ignore. Kaz was better at begging with his eyes than Matthias’ dog Djel, which was saying something.

This establishment was different than Kaz’s in the aesthetic and the types of people that it attracted. The layout had tables scattered around the main floor, all of them the same color of dark cherry wood with a different numbers of chairs littered around them. They were all stocked with a bowl in the center that could be filled with peanuts, fries, or chips depending on what they ordered. The walls were lined with booths that had red coverings and silver outlines, along with a couple of tasteful art pieces. There were also TVs littered around the space, pointed in different direction so that people could catch the news or a variety of sports games playing on the cable channels that the bar paid for. The bar itself had the three regular flavors of juice that were mixed into cocktails, as well as the soda gun. The rows and rows of alcohol behind him were kept in place with a thin clear plastic band so that he could see the label for when someone asked for something specific. In front of him were a couple of stools for people to sit on, which Jesper half hated despite his general love for people and communication.

He had been serving drinks to people for the better part of two hours and was growing bored with it. He wished that he could switch the TV to something else to distract him from the growing pile of texts in his pocket. Inej and Wylan were being bad influences on each other and encouraging him to skip out on the rest of his job and come home early so that he could spend time with them. Inej had only been back home for a couple of days so having her around them was relatively novel again, which made the fact that he was away from her during that returning honeymoon period all the more annoying.

The people milling around the bar were still far and few between for how early it was in the night. He’d see a much larger surge in the crowd leaning towards midnight, when the bar closed. His friend owned one of those places where working people were supposed to come after they got dinner with their friends to get a drink before they returned to the monotony of their lives. That meant that he was making a lot of whisky and not a lot of the cocktails that he enjoyed making.

He had recently been experimenting with his recipe’s on Matthias’ behalf to try and find him a non-alcoholic version of the drink that he had gotten at The Blue Jay when he and Kaz had met up a business partner a few weeks ago.

Despite the time, things seemed like they were about to get a lot more interest as a big group entered into the bar. There were two men and four women from what Jesper could see. He didn’t like to assume that kind of thing more than he had to, but he also liked to looked for the stereotypical dramas that played out in a lot of people’s lives. He was always open to being corrected, but speculating about what was happening in groups he wasn’t a part of was one of the only things that kept him sane during the monotony of this kind of job.

Jesper continued to work on the drinks that had been ordered from him, keeping his eye on the group as they found one of the booths towards the back of the bar that was big enough to fit everyone. They were discussing something between themselves, obviously already very close based on the way that they were knocking against each other and grabbing things out of each other’s hands.

It reminded him of being back home with his partners, which made his heart ache. He didn’t realize how much being out of the house at night just a few days after Inej came back home was going to be tearing him up, but it was.

He tried to distract himself as he focused on making the drink that he had been sipping on himself for the last hour. He made a point of not drinking when he was at work even if Kaz could very easily coerce him into having a drink or two when they were having date nights, but he would allow himself one if he fucked up a cocktail in a very slight way. It felt like a shame to waste alcohol and juice just because he had accidentally messed up the ratio away from the vodka.

“Barkeep!” a sultry voice from behind him said. It was rich and deep in a way that would have made a wonderful second alto if she was singing, and entrenched in a very nice accent.

“Yes?” he asked, a smirk playing over his lips as he turned around to face her. She had the looks to match the voice that she had, absolutely gorgeous and very obvious that she was somewhat aware of that.

She had long brown hair that was curled around the side of her face and woven intricately back into a bun on the back of her head. Her jawline was just sharp enough to be accentuated with a tiny bit of bronzer but still soft enough that it highlighted the beautiful plumpness of her body. She had a smokey eyeshadow and perfect catwing eyeliner to bring out the pop of her gray-blue eyes and a matching plumb lipstick. She was wearing a black suit jacket with nothing underneath other than a red lace bra that clung to her skin in just the right way, flush but not squishing anything. Jesper could see the sneaking curve of a feather tattoo resting above her heart, hidden mostly but still visible enough to be tantalizing.

“You’re not the regular bartender,” she commented when he turned around fully.

Jesper pouted at that, tilting his head to the side, “Sorry to disappoint.”

“I don’t think that you could disappoint me if you tried, darling,” she replied easily as she folded her arms on the edge of the bar and leaned forward.

Jesper had been working with enough sexually promiscuous and exploitative people for long enough that he could tell the difference between someone trying to hit on him and someone trying to get something out of him. She didn’t want free drinks like the last group of women he had tried to flirt with while bartending had, she was genuinely interesting him.

She sighed as she toyed with a single lock of her hair that had been left out of the updo, winding it around her finger until she released it so that it bounced next to her naturally freckled face. “I do have to actually tell you what we want now, though.”

“Oh, do you come here often?” Jesper asked. He had been washing down the bar, and it felt oh-so-terribly cliche to do so, but he moved his arms out wide with the towel grasped in one hand so that he was lower down and closer to her.

The woman tilted her head to the side as a beautiful little smile toyed at her lips. She was clearly enjoying the attention that she was getting, and he loved giving it to her. “I played a show here last week. Something small and intimate to help drive up nighttime numbers,” she supplied. “A friend of mine recently went through a bad breakup and she liked this place so we decided to come back this evening.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. About your friend, that is,” Jesper pointed with his head back towards the table where the rest of her group was waiting. He knew that she had come in with them because he had gotten a decently long look at them, but he was glad he got to see her much closer than he had before. “I could never be sorry about you coming here again because it meant that I got the pleasure of meeting you.”

A rosy glint took over her cheeks and the catlike smile painted on her plumb-colored lips widened. “I can’t say that I’m particularly sad about what happened to the other bartender either, you’re much nicer than he was.”

“I do try my best for pretty ladies such as yourself. Can’t say that I take great care of the dodgy old men that come to leer at the sports,” he smirked back in reply. He was, of course, at least courteous to all of the patrons that came in so that that bar could keep up its business, but it was more fun to pretend that he wasn’t to her.

“Well, I do feel special,” she tilted her head down towards one shoulder as she did a half-shrug. The gesture was cute and it made Jesper feel warm inside to know that it was directed specifically towards him.

“Good, someone was pretty as you certainly does deserve to feel special,” he smiled. He remembered that he was there as a worker and not another patron, so he did have to work. “Now, what can I get you?”

“Well, the table wants a load of shots while they decide what they want to be drinking all evening. And then I’ll just take some soda water for myself,” she replied, a little bit of a pout taking over her beautiful features.

“Soda water?” Jesper wrinkled his nose. He tried not to judge other people for what they wanted, but it was such a bland drink for a woman that outwardly seemed so rich and complicated. He knew that type of dichotomy did exist in some people but it was also the first time that someone had ordered carbonated water from him while he was tending.

The woman sighed, toying with the strand of hair again as she shifted her weight to her other foot. “Unfortunately, I’m the designated driver so I will not be drinking tonight. Someone has to stay sober enough to make sure that Nikolai and Zoya don’t fall into bed with each other. Again,” she cringed, wrinkling her nose cutely.

Jesper had the impulse to kiss her on the nose for just a moment before he pushed the thought from his mind. He had developed crushes on people very quickly before, but that had mostly faded now that he had four partners of his own waiting for him at home. They kept him busy and fulfilled enough things in his life that he never felt like he had to continue looking for anything else.

He cleared his throat and stood back up. He grabbed one of the shot trays from behind him, a wooden plate with indents for the glasses. He placed ten of the shot glasses down in it while he asked, “How about you tell me your favorite cocktail and I’ll make a virgin?”

“Are you really going to be able to do that?” she asked, eyeing him nervously.

Jesper tried not to be offended. A lot of the other bartenders that he had met were so focused in with the alcohol that they didn’t know what kind of flavors could supplement them when it was removed. He also had no precedent with her, so while he hated people doubting his ability to do his work he couldn’t really fault her for it. So he smiled confidently at her and said, “Yes, I can.”

And, because he had so much trouble being able to contain himself, he said, “One of my boyfriends recently got into vintage cocktails. He doesn’t do very well when it comes to kitchen work and doesn’t want to be getting wasted every night so I’ve been making him virgin cocktails for the better part of two weeks.” It was a bit of a curveball when it came to flirting. Matthias liked to hide the fact that he was polyamorous until he was sure that the relationship was going to lead to something romantic or sexual because his Christian upbringing made him feel so awkward about it. Kaz never flirted with anyone, which was probably for the best. Inej and Wylan usually brought it up towards the end of the first date that they were having with a prospective partner, which didn’t happen very often. Jesper liked to throw it in at the beginning of his flirting so that he could talk about the partners that he adored without it convincing the person that he was pursuing that he was off the market.

She raised her brow at him, “Just had to slip that in there, didn’t you?” Her accent got thicker when she teased him, which he thought was absolutely adorable.

“I thought that it was worth mentioning,” he winked. He was letting the flirting go on a little bit longer than he probably should have as some of the other patrons were nearing the end of their drinks, which usually meant that he’d have an uptick in things that he was supposed to do. Still, he was validating it to himself with the fact that he had brought the shot set and the glasses over with him.

Something that he couldn’t quite read crossed her face as she stood up to her full height. Jesper wondered what kind of heals she was wearing and how tall she would be compared to Inej and Matthias, the extreme end of the spectrum in height out of his polycule. He hadn’t been able to see the bottom half of her outfit when she was walking over to him since he had been trying to distract himself from the heavy heart in his chest.

She glanced back towards the booth where her friends were getting restless before she drilled those piercing eyes back on him. He felt like she was trying to peel him apart so that she could see exactly what made him tick, examining the mechanisms of his heart with the eye of a clockmaker. “You’re not trying to flirt with me so that you can get to one of my friends, right?”

“Darling, if I wanted to flirt with one of those boys over there then I would flirt with them directly,” Jesper said honestly. It amazed him that someone was divinely beautiful as her thought that she would be passed up for the others that she had come into the bar with. While they were generally handsome, none of them held the mystique and grace that she did.

“Really? You’re not trying to make me feel so special and doted on that I get flustered and send someone else to the bar so you can pounce on them?” she asked, eyeing him suspiciously. “Because Nikolai isn’t the type that you should date and David is engaged.”

“Do you think that I’m gay?” Jesper asked, realizing the mistake that he had made. In trying to tell her a little bit more about his romantic life to show that he was interested, he had made the mistake of leaving out the fact that he could be and was interested in her that way. It was a flub that he had made before, and it would not be the last time, he was sure.

She raised her perfectly penciled brow at him as she placed both of her palms flat down on the table. “What else was that line about your boyfriends supposed to do for me?”

“I may have misspoke,” he replied awkwardly. “I was simply trying to come on to you a bit harder, beautiful. You’re a very pretty woman, it’s easy to get tongue tied,” he winked at her.

Her shoulders dropped as she became more relaxed. He wondered how often someone had overlooked her despite her obvious beauty and wit, to try and get to someone that she cared about. She tilted her head to the side again and said, “I’m Nina.”

“Jesper,” he replied as he mirrored her look. “Now what can I get you, before my boss decides that I’ve done a horrible job and you have to spend the next night getting to know a new bartender.”

She laughed at that, her beautiful eyes sparkling. “I’ll take a virgin pina colada if you think that you can make that.”

“What kind of shots would your friends like?” he asked as he got out the class that her served those drinks in.

“Vodka,” she supplied. She moved to one of the stools and got up on it so that she was able to continue to talk with Jesper without being in the way of the other patrons that might need to come and speak with him.

He got out the vodka that they kept for when people didn’t give them a specific brand and then filled up all ten shots easily. He moved the plate up towards her on the bar as he got to work on mixing her drink. “Is this something that you do often?” Nina asked, placing her elbow up on the bar so that she could rest her head on her hand.

Jesper shrugged, glancing at her while trying to focus mostly on his work. “I have a bartending license, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied. “I don’t usually hop from bar to bar to startle people that are used to seeing a certain face back here. Though mine is usually an upgrade.”

“It certainly is for me,” she winked playfully at him.

He felt heat pool in his veins, dripping down from his heart. The longer that he spent time around her, the harder it was to deny. Nina was magnetic.

“Well I’m glad that I can be a bit of change in decor for you. You said that you had played here the other week?” he asked, trying to get to know her better. The flirting in between the conversation was usually his favorite part, but flirting just to flirt got a little boring after some time.

She toyed with the edge of the plate with one hand as she said, “I’m in a band with all of the people I came in with, sort of. Alina, Zoya, and Nikolai are my bandmates but Genya styles us to make sure that we don’t look like a complete disaster.”

He wasn’t able to put the names to faces, but it was nice to be supplied with a bit of information anyway. “I could never imagine you being anything other than immaculate.”

“You’re quite the sweet talker,” she commented. “Not that I’m complaining now that I know you’re not trying to get me involved in yet another relationship drama I can’t even have the fun of being part of.”

“Two of your bandmates sleeping together whenever they’re left drunk or unsupervised does sound stressful,” he nodded. Before he had gotten into his current polycule, it had been a hassle to try and navigate the friends-with-benefits relationships that he tended to become a part of back when he was doing theater full time.

“It’s not quite that,” she rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed at even the memories that were popping up in the back of her mind. “I do love my bandmates and I’m so happy that we’re back together but Nikolai and Zoya having the weird on-again-off-again thing that they do is the least of my worries.”

“Do tell,” he supplied as he finished up with her drink.

She took the glass with her nimble fingers and then smiled. “You better hope that this is good enough for me to want another so that you can find out more of my drama,” she winked. She slipped off of the barstool and disappeared to the back of the bar with what she had ordered.

Despite barely knowing anything about Nina, he desperately hoped that she would like what he had made her. Both so that she had something to cheer her up since she seemed to be so upset with the way that her life was going and so that she would come back to talk with him more.

---

Jesper tried to get lost in his work. He made sure that he was focusing on all of the patrons equally instead of keeping his eyes glued on Nina, who was sitting with her friends and sipping on her drink. She had sent the blond man over to the bar so that he could order martinis for the drinking members of the group, but Jesper had made sure to just be professional with him as he was taking the order and preparing it. He wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a test of some sort so that she could confirm that he was focused on her, but he hoped that he had passed it.

Given that it was a weekday, even the large rush of people towards the evening who wanted to pregame before they went clubbing was relatively small. Jesper had to card two teenagers that thought enough makeup and a suit would make them look adult enough to avoid that. He had just finished sending them away, rubbing out the headache that was beginning to form on his temples, when he heard Nina’s voice again.

“You were right, you are rather good at this,” she purred as she set her now empty glass onto the counter. “Would you make me another?”

“Only if you spill your secrets for me, beautiful,” he said teasingly.

She was already positioning herself onto the stool that she had been on before, directly in front of his workspace. “My band is called Shadow and Bone. We’ve been together for four years, but we had to take a huge break in the middle because one of my bandmates got into a relationship that wouldn’t let her play with us. It’s not my place to talk about that, but it meant that we couldn’t even practice, let alone make our own stuff. Each of us went and made our own side bands so that we could continue creating, other than Alina, but it’s left things a little twisted now.”

“Something you’re still untangling?” he asked.

She nodded. “I got very popular with my music, but it isn’t something that can work with the type of music that we play as a group. Just the other day I had someone try to accuse me of changing the sound of our music even though Alina and I switch off singing and all four of us write everything together,” she rolled her eyes.

A mischievous look overtook her face as she said, “If you’re interested in looking me up then my solo work was under the name Heartrender. I wasn’t nearly as good as Nikolai, but he passed on the name of his work to a mutual friend of ours. Have you heard of an artist called Sturmhond?”

She was assuming that he worked in bars more often than he did by asking that, but by some stroke of luck he was actually familiar with the name that she had just given him. “I am. My friend Poppy did a set with him during a drag show she did,” he supplied. He hadn’t been able to attend said show because Wylan and Kaz had both ended up getting a cold and he was the only one that was able to take care of them, but she had told him all about it the next time he was able to show up for rehearsals.

“You know Poppy?” Nina asked, her face illuminating with an excited look. “Small world!”

He chuckled alongside her, basking in the brightness of her warmth. He wished that she could sit by him the entire time that he was working, but he knew that she had come to help comfort her friend through a breakup. Jesper had been around enough broken hearted people and been consumed by it enough himself to know the importance of having support during those times. “Your drink, my dear,” he handed over the finished cocktail that she had ordered.

“Thank you, handsome,” she winked.

---

For the rest of the night, Jesper worked alone. He poured what felt like a thousand glasses of beer and a million shots, until his arms and wrists were sore from the repetitive motion. Nina hadn’t strayed over to the bar again as she continued to nurse the singular refill that she had gotten on her virgin cocktail. He was right about the rush happening closer to midnight, but everyone had already trickled out by the time that they hit eleven.

When they were at the height of the crowd, the owner had slipped behind the bar to help him out. They had worked in tandem with each other, silent but efficient. Jesper was terribly exhausted by the time he finally slipped into the back with a plate of fries and a water to rest up before the last stretch of his shift. He brought his phone out and connected the wireless earbuds that he kept with him in his pocket for when he got overstimulated. He opened Spotify, searching up the band that Nina had given him.

He chose the one that she was in with other people first, clicking on the first song that popped up, obviously their most popular. He could tell that it was her voice crooning to him immediately as the first couple of lines played, “Late at night, when the stars don't look quite right. In the darkness, slowly crawling over my skin. Whispers at the door ‘Let us in, let us in.’ I'm a fool! I've been howling at a hollow moon! There's something burning in the empty room inside of my head. Fill it up with doubt, let it in, let it spread. I won't be sleeping, there's too many monsters in the backyard and I feel them creeping closer, closer, closer. I'm afraid. Is this a bunker or a shallow grave? Either way I'm left holding onto the shovel and rope, digging in the dirt, finding bones, finding ghosts. I won't be sleeping, there's too many monsters in the backyard and I feel them creeping closer, closer, closer. But if I made my bed did I make the demons in it? Set 'em free from my head, did I make the demons in it?”

She sang the chorus over and over again, the notes seeping together and burrowing their way into Jesper’s soul. He had always been a fan of music, which was how he and Wylan had met in the first place. They had been attending the same small music course and immediately hit it off, even if the other had a harder time reading music and instead just memorized a song. He wondered what it would be like if Wylan and Nina performed together, if Jesper would be able to handle it or if it would kill him on the spot.

He favorited her band so that he could come back and check it out later as he searched up the name that she had told him she used for her solo work. It was easier to listen to the more manufactured, pop-leaning stuff while also finishing up the other business than the more raw sounding classical that her band made. He let the songs play in the background as he flicked through the messages that his partners had sent him. He replied to a few and then took a screenshot of the song that he had listened to from Nina and sent it to Wylan so that he could get his boyfriend’s opinion on it.

Almost immediately afterwards he got a text from Matthias, which meant they were like watching one of their medical drama shows while waiting for him to come home. Inej and likely coaxed Kaz into the bath with her, the only person that understood the touch issues he had well enough to have that kind of special intimacy with him.

Jesper felt the fry that he had been eating become lodged in the back of his throat as Matthias informed him that the girl he had been flirting with over Instagram for the better part of the last two weeks also happened to be the woman that he had met at the bar. It really was a small world afterall.

He rushed through the last part of his break so that he could hopefully get back out in the bar before Nina left. He hadn’t want to be so creepy as to obviously check to make sure that she had stuck out the busy part of the night, especially since she would have been there for hours if she had. He made sure to calculate his walk so that he had slipped back into the persona that he used when he was working, suave and smooth, much like acting. He didn’t want it to seem like he was too frantic or desperate to get back to work lest he freak her out.

He had stepped back behind the bar and served two other patrons, switching out with the owner, when Nina finally came back up. The relief that he felt upon knowing that she hadn’t left despite having been huddled in the back corner for hours at that point made him feel a little embarrassed. He ignored it as he looked up to her, waiting for what she had to say.

“I was wondering when you were going to be back,” she smiled as she took the same stance that she had when they had first begun their interaction.

“Sorry for leaving you, baby, but I had to take a quick break,” he explained as he set down the glass that he had just finished cleaning.

“I understand, being that handsome has to take quite the toll on someone,” she winked back in reply, which made his heart flutter. He hadn’t known how Matthias had fallen so hard and so fast for Nina, especially since it had taken him almost a week to get to the point where they could even hold a conversation with each other. Now that she was standing in front of him in all of her smooth, gorgeous, suave glory, he understood.

“If you keep this up then I’m going to fall in love with you,” he grinned. He was telling the truth, of course. If she continued to treat him like he was something special then he was going to fall head over heels for her the same way that Matthias had. He’d be tender smiles down at his phone and one earbud in to loop the sound of her crooning musical voice into his mind while doing mundane tasks.

Nina had the common decency to look a little bashful at that as she shifted awkwardly. “I have to admit that the idea of that doesn’t sound too bad. I came over here to pay my tab but I was also hoping that I could possibly get a way to stay in contact with you?”

Excitement burst through him like fireworks as he leaned forward like he was going to share a secret that no one else was allowed to hear. “If you ask Matthias then he’ll give you everything,” he winked.

She looked a little confused and scared, as if he had found out that she was somehow trying to give him the runaround. He tilted his head back towards the door he that led to the back room, “When I took my break I searched you up and sent one of your songs to my partner who likes music. Turns out that he was with Matthias and we found out that we had been flirting with the same woman. So it sounds like you’re going to fit into our relationship quite well if you’re serious about pursuing us.”

Immediately the panic left her and she laughed. It was louder than the quiet giggles that she had given her before, all rosy tinkling and shaking shoulders. She then shook her head, causing a few of the curls that had come loose from her tight bun to bounce around her beautiful face. “I should have known when you mentioned the cocktails, it’s all Matthias has been talking about lately.”

“He gets like that sometimes,” Jesper agreed. It was endearing how one thing could take over Matthias’ entire personality until he had discovered how it worked or how he could navigate it properly and then moved onto the next thing.

Nina shifted and handed him her card. He processed it for the tab that the table had wracked up and then handed it back to her. She said, “I don’t want to take up all of your time tonight, but I would like to see you again. I’ll ask Matthias for your handle and then we’ll talk more, alright?”

“I think that the both of us would like that very much,” Jesper nodded. Even if he didn’t actually develop a romantic or sexual relationship with Nina, the idea of getting to have someone as wonderful and mysterious as her in his life was very enticing. He leaned across the bar so that he was closer to her, giving her the hint of what he wanted. Jesper asked, “May I kiss you?”

A pretty smile split across her face and she said, “Polite as well as handsome, color me surprised. You may.” She placed one of her hands on his cheek, letting him feel the calloused nature of her hand. She then leaned in and pressed their lips together in a quick, chaste kiss. She smelled like green apples and lavender, mixing together distinctly to make her smell overall sweet. He could taste the vanilla of her lipstick and the pineapple clinging to her tongue from the drinks that he made her throughout their evening of flirting.

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