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#a fun way to keep track of the time spent is by looping the song and using the lastfmstreak feature for evil :] /j
blurglesmurfklaine · 1 year
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Stick Season (7/14)
Summary: After Finn dies, Kurt leaves everything he knows behind without a trace. His hometown, his family, his boyfriend. When his dad has a medical scare, he returns to Lima, one year after breaking Blaine’s heart with no explanation.
Tropes/Genres: Angst, Reconciliation, Grief, Alcoholism, Mentions of Major Character Death, Mental Health
A/N: I almost didn't post today, but the community and seeing everyone have such fun with their fics inspired me to keep going!! Be sure to check out the contributions to the Klaine Valentine's challenge from @wowbright @rockitmans and @calliopemelpomeneene! These are just a few I've seen on my dash, and certainly not all of them, but I promise you really great and fun things are being written this Valentines season!
Track 11: Halloween (also linking this tiktok live version becaus OH MY GOD) // Day 7: Annie’s Song
Words: 304
It’s a grainy video, and not long either, so it keeps looping in the player of his phone over and over again, not unlike the last moments Blaine spent with Kurt replay in his mind constantly.
Blaine’s been doing better—he thinks he’s been doing better—since starting medication. His therapist said it would be a few weeks before he felt the full effects of the medicine, but seeing one low resolution video on Kurt’s snapchat story has shot Blaine straight back to day one.
It looks like he’s at a party. Somewhere dimly lit and loud. He’d check Kurt’s snap map location, but the last time he’d done that, he’d caught a glimpse of Kurt’s bitmoji all the way down in New Orleans, probably having the time of his life while Blaine lay in the wreckage of him.
He’d clicked on it and accidentally swiped up, likely sending a notification that he was in the thread or typing. When Blaine tried to look at the map again a few days later, no sign of Kurt. Looking up his location was of course the quickest way to scare off someone who wanted to stay hidden.
What he wouldn’t give to be able to face Kurt and say, Come home. Come let me love you. Come love me again.
Blaine swipes out of Kurt’s story, deciding not to torture himself anymore. As he closes to the main menu of the app, it gives him a different notification. 
Memories from October, 2 Years Ago!
Blaine doesn’t have to open them. He remembers all too well. It was Halloween, and they’d dressed up as Sonny and Cher, which was an absolute hit at the yearly New Directions party.
It might not be Halloween anymore, but the ghost of Kurt still knows how to haunt the fuck out of Blaine.
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fudgecake-charlie · 2 years
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For the jukebox night Spotify Wrapped special! This might be a little rushed, I’m trying to keep these around 1-1.5 hours. I remembered this old piece I did of False with this same song about a year ago and forgot how much I adored the music video!!
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demonicheadcanons · 3 years
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Obey Me Brothers + Little Affections
AN: Keep thinking about the little things each brother would do to express affection. Some warm fluffy stuff because we all need it. Enjoy!!
The hair drying one on Lucifer’s sparked this entire thing thanks
Lucifer
- Washing and drying your hair. You know if you get your hair washed at a hairdressers and they just. Go to town with a towel drying your hair? He finds it hilarious and loves doing that. You’ll hear him chuckle, unable to see him because your face is covered by the towel. He’s softer towards the end but initially when trying to get most of the excess water his only concern is not actually hurting you. He’s also genuinely trying to help, just having a little fun with it at the same time.
- Continuing on from this, Lucifer will ruffle your hair. If it doesn’t really upset you, he loves to make a mess of it, and he grins at you, your hair sticking out every which way.
- The second his brothers aren’t around, he seems to canonically love holding your hand under the guise of keeping track of you or comforting you. Its partially true - the MC gets into trouble easily, so its good to keep a hand on them. However, the comforting affect goes both ways.
- Sharing information with you implies a close bond (or at the very least, a strong curiosity, like when he hints at where Mammon’s card is / when he talks about the album) and it means Luci cares about you a lot. He likes to talk about his interests and introduce you to things he cares a lot about. A lot of the time this comes in the form of music, because it’s something he’s able to enjoy whilst still doing his work.
- Doing origami or other paper crafts together? Really relaxes him. It’s so peacefully intimate and cosy. You sit together at his desk, work documents hidden out of sight for now, and make whatever you can out of colourful little bits of paper. He likes making flowers, although he’d never say it out loud, but he makes you countless crowns with paper flowers of all different kinds. You walk in one day when he’s taking a break from work and he’s got paper cranes lining the entire length of his desk. He calls you over and puts one on your head for absolutely no reason before acting like it never happened.
- If no one else is around and he’s feeling a bit daft, he’ll sweep you up into his arms with no warning and just hold you like that, staring directly into your eyes with a daring and loving smile on his face. This happens most when it’s late at night and all the coffee he’s had is starting to wear off and he feels a little more relaxed and open. He’ll carry you to his room to cuddle, too, if you don’t have anywhere else you need to be. Just pray none of his brothers encounter you two because he’ll set you down on your feet immediately and he won’t help you up if you fall.
[[Other Brothers under the read more]]
Mammon
- Fist bumps!!! He passes you and holds his fist out, and pouts if you don’t immediately bump your hand into his. Do the snail or turkey thing once and he falls in love with it. Lucifer, tired and stressed after a lot of work, decides for once to go along with giving him a fist bump because he’s too tired and no one else is around, and Mammon does the snail thing. The look on Luci’s face is worth everything that happened after. But when its you, Mammon just smiles and beams at you. He’s really happy.
- Sitting so close together that you can’t possibly move without disturbing the other. Sides fully pressed together even if he doesn’t have an arm around you or your hand in his. He likes the constant contact, it’s healing. So heavily invested in whatever you’re watching that the two of you simply don’t realise how close you are until the episode ends and you realise you’re leaning your full weight against him and his face is red but he’s smiling so softly you can’t bring yourself to move.
- You’ll have to start the habit, but, tackle hugs. You see him in the distance somewhere and sprint over and tackle him full force. He’ll act mad at first, especially if he trips and falls over or he’d been talking with someone else, but he holds onto you tightly and his face is beautifully flushed. After a while he’ll do it too, although he’s a lot gentler, but if you hear him call your name you need to turn around quickly and hold your arms out. He’ll lift you up into the air and twirl you around once or twice before just, going on with his day as normal. You hear his laughter as he walks away, bright and bubbly and confident, exactly as he should be.
- The absence of insults is important for Mammon. He’ll tolerate it if it’s every now and then but he’ll really notice if you’re always kind to him, he pays attention and holds tightly on to every compliment you give him. When he feels low he finds you and holds you in his arms, fingers playing with the loops in your jeans, as he recites off every nice thing you’ve said to him, hoping you’ll reaffirm them. Did you mean it when you said he was one of the most caring people you’d ever met? When you said his eyes made you feel at home?
- He likes feeding the crows with you. It’s something he does without telling anyone, but one day he takes you out along with him and the crows take a liking to you instantly. He likes how you look with his crows standing proud and confident on your arm, your hair a mess from their flapping wings as you laugh and try to get the last bits of food out from the bag.
- If you style his hair and put random accessories in it - anything from silly plastic hair clips to flowers to feathers - he’ll keep them in all day. He doesn’t care who sees because his MC spent their time doing this for him, and he’s happy to tell anyone who dares criticise him.
Leviathan
- He’s awkward with any affection at first, but he actually builds up to quick tight hugs when he’s really happy. If he’s incredibly excited - just won tickets for something, or some idol liked his comments - expect to be tackled in a hug. He gets flustered after, but if you hold tightly onto him he won’t let go immediately.
- If they even vaguely relate to his own interests, Levi will try hard to be invested in anything you really enjoy. For example, he’ll watch your favourite shows with you or try and read things you enjoy, etc.
- At the same time, Levi will share his interests with you. It’s not something he can really avoid doing as it’s ingrained in him to ramble about his special interests, but it will come in seemingly smaller forms - for example, he’ll hand you his headphones one day, blushing, and ask what you think of this song, or he’ll show you a paragraph in a TSL book that has particularly good rhythm or evokes a lot of emotion. If he lends you his books or DVDs it’s practically a proposal.
- You two have full conversations with Henry as he swims about in his tank. About silly and pointless things or very serious topics, from jokingly scolding him to venting about the future and about school and such. It warms Levi’s heart.
- Horn pats. When he’s in his demon form, pull him down to your level and pat his horns. He’s so flustered he can’t move the first few times, but one day he’ll start coming up to you and asking you if you want to do it. He likes being able to be in his demon form, and likes that you’re comfortable with him even when he doesn’t look as human.
- When he’s very comfortable with you, he likes to wrap you up in surprise hugs and laughs if you try to squirm your way out of his grip, a brilliant mischievous glow in his eyes, any self-consciousness long forgotten.
Satan
- I’ve said this before on another post but Satan likes to pet your hair and run his thumbs over your palms, pressing into them gently like he’s touching the pads on the paws of a cat. He traces circles and presses kisses into your palm and over each finger tip and knuckle, like it’s his own form of worship.
- It takes a long time to build up the confidence to do so but I can see him like. Playfully nipping at your skin if he presses light kisses against your shoulders or neck. If it makes you laugh or blush he smiles against your skin.
- If you fall asleep somewhere he’s the first person to go get a blanket to throw over you - he’d rather just let you sleep if you’re somewhere safe instead of disturbing you to lift you elsewhere, and risking waking you up. Occasionally he’ll kneel down beside you and stay there with a book until you wake up, and he’s fallen asleep like that once or twice.
- Just. Talking. Laying down together and going from topic to topic, saying whatever crosses your minds with no filters and no judgement. Letting time pass by with the comfort of the other, laying on your back in the planetarium or library or in his room, wherever there aren’t books piled up. No responsibilities except to listen to the other, and every now and then you laugh and he feels like maybe this could be home.
Asmodeus
- Sharing things, whatever it is. Food, clothes, jewellery. Taking a necklace off and putting it on him because “this would go so well with your outfit,” or holding out your fork and telling him to try some of your food, it tastes heavenly. Perfume, as well, is a must - he wants the two of you to smell the same.
- Like Mammon, he likes to have some kind of contact with you at all time - holding hands, an arm across your shoulders, anything. But the main point of contact he truly adores is if he has his hands on the skin of your stomach or back, even in the most innocent way possible. If his arms are around you and you’re comfortable with it, he’ll tuck his hands under your shirt and trace shapes against your hips, stomach, back, lower ribcage. Wherever he can. It’s something he’ll do absentmindedly without everything thinking about it, and it recharges him when he’s low on energy.
- He actually really likes working alongside you, whether it’s school work or something related to a part time job, or a potential business idea. He’s smarter than anyone would give him credit for and he loves how you look when you’re deep in thought, trying to solve something, and how your eyes light up as you figure it all out. He’s not one to just give you the answer to things, so if he knows something and you don’t he likes to hint at it like it’s a game. When you guess the answer right he presses a kiss to the tip of your nose and beams at you.
- Late night phone calls where you talk about whatever’s keeping you awake. He doesn’t mind who’s calling who, he wants to ramble or listen to you at any given moment and he’ll give up his sleep if it means you can get something that’s bothering you off your chest. Similarly, there is no greater comfort for him than getting to complain to you about something or other, something that’s genuinely bothering him and that’s stuck in his head. He feels like it only disappears when you take a hold of it for him for a little bit.
Beelzebub
- Sharing food, obviously, means a lot to him. Feed him bites of your food, give him anything you don’t want, and he’ll love it. He especially loves if you share food that’s important to you in some way, and you’ll find him giving you little bites of his food too the closer you two get. It means a lot to him when people embrace the fact that he eats so much, instead of scolding him for it or making jokes about it.
- He really likes holding hands. Your hands are so small in his and yet you trust him not to injure them as you pull him along. He feels possessive sometimes but isn’t outwardly affectionate enough to do anything about it, and the last thing he wants is to make you uncomfortable. It’s the perfect thing for him.
- Stacking random things on the other. Sitting cross-legged in a park, pulling daisies out of the lawn that’s about to be mowed anyway and gently placing them into each other’s hair, on the other’s shoulders and laps. If you’re laying in his bed he’ll take random light objects off his night stand and place them on top of you. There’s no purpose and no intention, and yet it makes him smile and gives him butterflies, and he laughs if you glare jokingly up at him but let him continue.
- Run your hands through his hair, down the sides of his face, under his jaw. Anywhere. He melts in an instant, mouth slightly open as you poke his cheeks or tickle his neck and shoulders with feather light touches.
Belphegor
- Nap. On. Him. Any time, any where. Snuggle up to him, lean your head against his shoulder or bury your face into his neck or lay down on his lap and just rest. He blushes every time and it takes him a second to recover. Sometimes he’ll angle himself so he can lean against you two and he’ll fall asleep as well.
- He likes those kind of monkey hugs where you wrap your entire body around him and he can bury his face in your neck and hold on as tight as he wants. He’ll walk around like that until you get to the attic and he can throw you into his pile of pillows and blankets, and he flops down on top of you and clings onto you again, trying to hide his face because he’s smiling so wide his cheeks hurt.
- He loves playful, back and forth banter. He’ll tease you constantly, loves if you pout at him, loves it more if you retort with something and keep it running for a while before the two of you start laughing.
- Being childish. He’ll stick out his tongue at you or pull a sudden face and he expects you to do it back immediately. If you don’t he’ll poke and tickle you, telling you how disappointed and hurt he is.
- Headbumps! But not too hard. Gently bump your head against his shoulder to get his attention and he’ll pat it. Bonus points if you nuzzle into his hands then - he’s hard to fluster but you can hear him swallow as he starts to go red. You’ll immediately have all of his attention to yourself.
- Belphie is the king of silent conversations. The tiniest gestures, nods, tilts of the head. He can pick up on all of them, knows exactly what you’re trying to say without you saying it, to the point where sometimes you won’t even realise you’re not talking aloud.
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Musicians On Musicians: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift
By: Patrick Doyle for Rolling Stone Date: November 13th 2020
On songwriting secrets, making albums at home, and what they’ve learned during the pandemic.
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Taylor Swift arrived early to Paul McCartney’s London office in October, “mask on, brimming with excitement.” “I mostly work from home these days,” she writes about that day, “and today feels like a rare school field trip that you actually want to go on.”
Swift showed up without a team, doing her own hair and makeup. In addition to being two of the most famous pop songwriters in the world, Swift and McCartney have spent the past year on similar journeys. McCartney, isolated at home in the U.K., recorded McCartney III. Like his first solo album, in 1970, he played nearly all of the instruments himself, resulting in some of his most wildly ambitious songs in a long time. Swift also took some new chances, writing over email with the National’s Aaron Dessner and recording the raw Folklore, which abandons arena pop entirely in favor of rich character songs. It’s the bestselling album of 2020.
Swift listened to McCartney III as she prepared for today’s conversation; McCartney delved into Folkore. Before the photo shoot, Swift caught up with his daughters Mary (who would be photographing them) and Stella (who designed Swift’s clothes; the two are close friends). “I’ve met Paul a few times, mostly onstage at parties, but we’ll get to that later,” Swift writes. “Soon he walks in with his wife, Nancy. They’re a sunny and playful pair, and I immediately feel like this will be a good day. During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. We walk into his office for a chat, and after I make a nervous request, Paul is kind enough to handwrite my favorite lyric of his and sign it. He makes a joke about me selling it, and I laugh because it’s something I know I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. That’s around the time when we start talking about music.”
Taylor Swift: I think it’s important to note that if this year had gone the way that we thought it was going to go, you and I would have played Glastonbury this year, and instead, you and I both made albums in isolation.
Paul McCartney: Yeah!
Swift: And I remember thinking it would have been so much fun because the times that I’ve run into you, I correlate with being some of the most fun nights of my life. I was at a party with you, when everybody just started playing music. And it was Dave Grohl playing, and you...
McCartney: You were playing one of his songs, weren’t you?
Swift: Yes, I was playing his song called “Best of You,” but I was playing it on piano, and he didn’t recognize it until about halfway through. I just remember thinking, “Are you the catalyst for the most fun times ever?” Is it your willingness to get up and play music that makes everyone feel like this is a thing that can happen tonight?
McCartney: I mean, I think it’s a bit of everything, isn’t it? I’ll tell you who was very... Reese Witherspoon was like, “Are you going to sing?” I said “Oh, I don’t know.” She said, “You’ve got to, yeah!” She’s bossing me around. So I said, “Whoa,” so it’s a bit of that.
Swift: I love that person, because the party does not turn musical without that person.
McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.
Swift: If nobody says, “Can you guys play music?” we’re not going to invite ourselves up onstage at whatever living-room party it is.
McCartney: I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing “Let It Be,” and I’m thinking, “I can do that better.” So I said, “Come on, move over, Woody.” So we’re both playing it. It was really nice... I love people like Dan Aykroyd, who’s just full of energy and he loves his music so much, but he’s not necessarily a musician, but he just wanders around the room, just saying, “You got to get up, got to get up, do some stuff.”
Swift: I listened to your new record. And I loved a lot of things about it, but it really did feel like kind of a flex to write, produce, and play every instrument on every track. To me, that’s like flexing a muscle and saying, “I can do all this on my own if I have to.”
McCartney: Well, I don’t think like that, I must admit. I just picked up some of these instruments over the years. We had a piano at home that my dad played, so I picked around on that. I wrote the melody to “When I’m 64” when I was, you know, a teenager.
Swift: Wow.
McCartney: When the Beatles went to Hamburg, there were always drum kits knocking around, so when there was a quiet moment, I’d say, “Do you mind if I have a knock around?” So I was able to practice, you know, without practicing. That’s why I play right-handed. Guitar was just the first instrument I got. Guitar turned to bass; it also turned into ukulele, mandolin. Suddenly, it’s like, “Wow,” but it’s really only two or three instruments.
Swift: Well, I think that’s downplaying it a little bit. In my mind, it came with a visual of you being in the country, kind of absorbing the sort of do-it-yourself [quality] that has had to come with the quarantine and this pandemic. I found that I’ve adapted a do-it-yourself mentality to a lot of things in my career that I used to outsource.  I’m just wondering what a day of recording in the pandemic looked like for you.
McCartney: Well, I’m very lucky because I have a studio that’s, like, 20 minutes away from where I live. We were in lockdown on a farm, a sheep farm with my daughter Mary and her four kids and her husband. So I had four of my grandkids, I had Mary, who’s a great cook, so I would just drive myself to the studio. And there were two other guys that could come in and we’d be very careful and distanced and everything: my engineer Steve, and then my equipment guy Keith. So the three of us made the record, and I just started off. I had to do a little bit of film music - I had to do an instrumental for a film thing - so I did that. And I just kept going, and that turned into the opening track on the album. I would just come in, say, “Oh, yeah, what are we gonna do?” [Then] have some sort of idea, and start doing it. Normally, I’d start with the instrument I wrote it on, either piano or guitar, and then probably add some drums and then a bit of bass till it started to sound like a record, and then just gradually layer it all up. It was fun.
Swift: That’s so cool.
McCartney: What about yours? You’re playing guitar and piano on yours.
Swift: Yeah, on some of it, but a lot of it was made with Aaron Dessner, who’s in a band called the National that I really love. And I had met him at a concert a year before, and I had a conversation with him, asking him how he writes. It’s my favorite thing to ask people who I’m a fan of. And he had an interesting answer. He said, “All the band members live in different parts of the world. So I make tracks. And I send them to our lead singer, Matt, and he writes the top line.” I just remember thinking, “That is really efficient.” And I kind of stored it in my brain as a future idea for a project. You know, how you have these ideas... “Maybe one day I’ll do this.” I always had in my head: “Maybe one day I’ll work with Aaron Dessner.”
So when lockdown happened, I was in L.A., and we kind of got stuck there. It’s not a terrible place to be stuck. We were there for four months maybe, and during that time, I sent an email to Aaron Dessner and I said, “Do you think you would want to work during this time? Because my brain is all scrambled, and I need to make something, even if we’re just kind of making songs that we don’t know what will happen...”
McCartney: Yeah, that was the thing. You could do stuff -  you didn’t really worry it was going to turn into anything.
Swift: Yeah, and it turned out he had been writing instrumental tracks to keep from absolutely going crazy during the pandemic as well, so he sends me this file of probably 30 instrumentals, and the first one I opened ended up being a song called “Cardigan,” and it really happened rapid-fire like that. He’d send me a track; he’d make new tracks, add to the folder; I would write the entire top line for a song, and he wouldn’t know what the song would be about, what it was going to be called, where I was going to put the chorus. I had originally thought, “Maybe I’ll make an album in the next year, and put it out in January or something,” but it ended up being done and we put it out in July. And I just thought there are no rules anymore, because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, “How will this song sound in a stadium? How will this song sound on radio?” If you take away all the parameters, what do you make? And I guess the answer is Folklore.
McCartney: And it’s more music for yourself than music that’s got to go do a job. My thing was similar to that: After having done this little bit of film music, I had a lot of stuff that I had been working on, but I’d said, “I’m just going home now,” and it’d be left half-finished. So I just started saying, “Well, what about that? I never finished that.” So we’d pull it out, and we said, “Oh, well, this could be good.” And because it didn’t have to amount to anything, I would say, “Ah, I really want to do tape loops. I don’t care if they fit on this song, I just want to do some.” So I go and make some tape loops, and put them in the song, just really trying to do stuff that I fancy.
I had no idea it would end up as an album; I may have been a bit less indulgent, but if a track was eight minutes long, to tell you the truth, what I thought was, “I’ll be taking it home tonight, Mary will be cooking, the grandkids will all be there running around, and someone, maybe Simon, Mary’s husband, is going to say, ‘What did you do today?’ And I’m going to go, ‘Oh,’ and then get my phone and play it for them.” So this became the ritual.
Swift: That’s the coziest thing I’ve ever heard.
McCartney: Well, it’s like eight minutes long, and I said, “I hate it when I’m playing someone something and it finishes after three minutes.” I kind of like that it just [continues] on.
Swift: You want to stay in the zone.
McCartney: It just keeps going on. I would just come home, “Well, what did you do today?” “Oh, well, I did this. I’m halfway through this,” or, “We finished this.”
Swift: I was wondering about the numerology element to McCartney III. McCartney I, II, and III have all come out on years with zeroes.
McCartney: Ends of decades.
Swift: Was that important?
McCartney: Yeah, well, this was being done in 2020, and I didn’t really think about it. I think everyone expected great things of 2020. “It’s gonna be great! Look at that number! 2020! Auspicious!” Then suddenly Covid hit, and it was like, “That’s gonna be auspicious all right, but maybe for the wrong reasons.” Someone said to me, “Well, you put out McCartney right after the Beatles broke up, and that was 1970, and then you did McCartney II in 1980.” And I said, “Oh, I’m going to release this in 2020 just for whatever you call it, the numerology...”
Swift: The numerology, the kind of look, the symbolism. I love numbers. Numbers kind of rule my whole world. The numbers 13... 89 is a big one. I have a few others that I find...
McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.
Swift: Yeah, it’s lucky for me. It’s my birthday. It’s all these weird coincidences of good things that have happened. Now, when I see it places, I look at it as a sign that things are going the way they’re supposed to. They may not be good now, they could be painful now, but things are on a track. I don’t know, I love the numerology.
McCartney: It’s spooky, Taylor. It’s very spooky. Now wait a minute: Where’d you get 89?
Swift: That’s when I was born, in 1989, and so I see it in different places and I just think it’s...
McCartney: No, it’s good. I like that, where certain things you attach yourself to, and you get a good feeling off them. I think that’s great.
Swift: Yeah, one of my favorite artists, Bon Iver, he has this thing with the number 22. But I was also wondering: You have always kind of seeked out a band or a communal atmosphere with like, you know, the Beatles and Wings, and then Egypt Station. I thought it was interesting when I realized you had made a record with no one else. I just wondered, did that feel natural?
McCartney: It’s one of the things I’ve done. Like with McCartney, because the Beatles had broken up, there was no alternative but to get a drum kit at home, get a guitar, get an amp, get a bass, and just make something for myself. So on that album, which I didn’t really expect to do very well, I don’t think it did. But people sort of say, “I like that. It was a very casual album.” It didn’t really have to mean anything. So I’ve done that, the play-everything-myself thing. And then I discovered synths and stuff, and sequencers, so I had a few of those at home. I just thought I’m going to play around with this and record it, so that became McCartney II. But it’s a thing I do. Certain people can do it. Stevie Wonder can do it. Stevie Winwood, I believe, has done it. So there are certain people quite like that.
When you’re working with someone else, you have to worry about their variances. Whereas your own variance, you kind of know it. It’s just something I’ve grown to like. Once you can do it, it becomes a little bit addictive. I actually made some records under the name the Fireman.
Swift: Love a pseudonym.
McCartney: Yeah, for the fun! But, you know, let’s face it, you crave fame and attention when you’re young. And I just remembered the other day, I was the guy in the Beatles that would write to journalists and say [speaks in a formal voice]: “We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us]... We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I. If you mention us in your newspaper...” You know, I was always, like, craving the attention.
Swift: The hustle! That’s so great, though.
McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.
Swift: Yeah, I think, when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you. And that’s when it’s really fun to create fake names and write under them.
McCartney: Do you ever do that?
Swift: Oh, yeah.
McCartney: Oh, yeah? Oh, well, we didn’t know that! Is that a widely known fact?
Swift: I think it is now, but it wasn’t. I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males. I wrote this song called “This Is What You Came For” that Rihanna ended up singing. And nobody knew for a while. I remembered always hearing that when Prince wrote “Manic Monday,” they didn’t reveal it for a couple of months.
McCartney: Yeah, it also proves you can do something without the fame tag. I did something for Peter and Gordon; my girlfriend’s brother and his mate were in a band called Peter and Gordon. And I used to write under the name Bernard Webb.
Swift: [Laughs.] That’s a good one! I love it.
McCartney: As Americans call it, Ber-nard Webb. I did the Fireman thing. I worked with a producer, a guy called Youth, who’s this real cool dude. We got along great. He did a mix for me early on, and we got friendly. I would just go into the studio, and he would say, “Hey, what about this groove?” and he’d just made me have a little groove going. He’d say, “You ought to put some bass on it. Put some drums on it.” I’d just spend the whole day putting stuff on it. And we’d make these tracks, and nobody knew who Fireman was for a while. We must have sold all of 15 copies.
Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.
McCartney: And we didn’t mind, you know?
Swift: I think it’s so cool that you do projects that are just for you. Because I went with my family to see you in concert in 2010 or 2011, and the thing I took away from the show most was that it was the most selfless set list I had ever seen. It was completely geared toward what it would thrill us to hear. It had new stuff, but it had every hit we wanted to hear, every song we’d ever cried to, every song people had gotten married to, or been brokenhearted to. And I just remembered thinking, “I’ve got to remember that,” that you do that set list for your fans.
McCartney: You do that, do you?
Swift: I do now. I think that learning that lesson from you taught me at a really important stage in my career that if people want to hear “Love Story” and “Shake It Off,” and I’ve played them 300 million times, play them the 300-millionth-and-first time. I think there are times to be selfish in your career, and times to be selfless, and sometimes they line up.
McCartney: I always remembered going to concerts as a kid, completely before the Beatles, and I really hoped they would play the ones I loved. And if they didn’t, it was kind of disappointing. I had no money, and the family wasn’t wealthy. So this would be a big deal for me, to save up for months to afford the concert ticket.
Swift: Yeah, it feels like a bond. It feels like that person on the stage has given something, and it makes you as a crowd want to give even more back, in terms of applause, in terms of dedication. And I just remembered feeling that bond in the crowd, and thinking, “He’s up there playing these Beatles songs, my dad is crying, my mom is trying to figure out how to work her phone because her hands are shaking so much.” Because seeing the excitement course through not only me, but my family and the entire crowd in Nashville, it just was really special. I love learning lessons and not having to learn them the hard way. Like learning nice lessons I really value.
McCartney: Well, that’s great, and I’m glad that set you on that path. I understand people who don’t want to do that, and if you do, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a jukebox show.” I hear what they’re saying. But I think it’s a bit of a cheat, because the people who come to our shows have spent a lot of money. We can afford to go to a couple of shows and it doesn’t make much difference. But a lot of ordinary working folks... it’s a big event in their life, and so I try and deliver. I also, like you say, try and put in a few weirdos.
Swift: That’s the best. I want to hear current things, too, to update me on where the artist is. I was wondering about lyrics, and where you were lyrically when you were making this record. Because when I was making Folklore, I went lyrically in a total direction of escapism and romanticism. And I wrote songs imagining I was, like, a pioneer woman in a forbidden love affair [laughs]. I was completely...
McCartney: Was this “I want to give you a child”? Is that one of the lines?
Swift: Oh, that’s a song called “Peace.”
McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.
Swift: “Peace” is actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.
McCartney: So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?
Swift: Oh, absolutely.
McCartney: They have to, don’t they?
Swift: But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture - the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song “Peace” is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could ever hope for under the circumstances.
McCartney: Yeah, it was very important to us to try and keep their feet on the ground amongst the craziness.
Swift: She went to a regular school...
McCartney: Yeah, she did.
Swift: And you would go trick-or-treating with them, wearing masks.
McCartney: All of them did, yeah. It was important, but it worked pretty well, because when they kind of reached adulthood, they would meet other kids who might have gone to private schools, who were a little less grounded.
And they could be the budding mothers to [kids]. I remember Mary had a friend, Orlando. Not Bloom. She used to really counsel him. And it’s ’cause she’d gone through that. Obviously, they got made fun of, my kids. They’d come in the classroom and somebody would sing, “Na na na na,” you know, one of the songs. And they’d have to handle that. They’d have to front it out.
Swift: Did that give you a lot of anxiety when you had kids, when you felt like all this pressure that’s been put on me is spilling over onto them, that they didn’t sign up for it? Was that hard for you?
McCartney: Yeah, a little bit, but it wasn’t like it is now. You know, we were just living a kind of semi-hippie life, where we withdrew from a lot of stuff. The kids would be doing all the ordinary things, and their school friends would be coming up to the house and having parties, and it was just great. I remember one lovely evening when it was Stella’s birthday, and she brought a bunch of school kids up. And, you know, they’d all ignore me. It happens very quickly. At first they’re like, “Oh, yeah, he’s like a famous guy,” and then it’s like [yawns]. I like that. I go in the other room and suddenly I hear this music going on. And one of the kids, his name was Luke, and he’s doing break dancing.
Swift: Ohhh!
McCartney: He was a really good break dancer, so all the kids are hanging out. That allowed them to be kind of normal with those kids. The other thing is, I don’t live fancy. I really don’t. Sometimes it’s a little bit of an embarrassment, if I’ve got someone coming to visit me, or who I know…
Swift: Cares about that stuff?
McCartney: Who’s got a nice big house, you know. Quincy Jones came to see me and I’m, like, making him a veggie burger or something. I’m doing some cooking. This was after I’d lost Linda, in between there. But the point I’m making is that I’m very consciously thinking, “Oh, God, Quincy’s got to be thinking, ‘What is this guy on? He hasn’t got big things going on. It’s not a fancy house at all. And we’re eating in the kitchen! He’s not even got the dining room going,’” you know?
Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.
McCartney: But that’s me. I’m awkward like that. That’s my kind of thing. Maybe I should have, like, a big stately home. Maybe I should get a staff. But I think I couldn’t do that. I’d be so embarrassed. I’d want to walk around dressed as I want to walk around, or naked, if I wanted to.
Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.
McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.
Swift: I remember what I wanted to know about, which is lyrics. Like, when you’re in this kind of strange, unparalleled time, and you’re making this record, are lyrics first? Or is it when you get a little melodic idea?
McCartney: It was a bit of both. As it kind of always is with me. There’s no fixed way. People used to ask me and John, “Well, who does the words, who does the music?” I used to say, “We both do both.” We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up. I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics - for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings “Find My Way,” a song from “McCartney III”]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll just be inspired by something. I had a little book which was all about the constellations and the stars and the orbits of Venus and...
Swift: Oh, I know that song - “The Kiss of Venus”?
McCartney: Yeah, “The Kiss of Venus.” And I just thought, “That’s a nice phrase.” So I was actually just taking phrases out of the book, harmonic sounds. And the book is talking about the maths of the universe, and how when things orbit around each other, and if you trace all the patterns, it becomes like a lotus flower.
Swift: Wow.
McCartney: It’s very magical.
Swift: That is magical. I definitely relate to needing to find magical things in this very not-magical time, needing to read more books and learn to sew, and watch movies that take place hundreds of years ago. In a time where, if you look at the news, you just want to have a panic attack - I really relate to the idea that you are thinking about stars and constellations.
McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?
Swift: Yes. I was reading so much more than I ever did, and watching so many more films.
McCartney: What stuff were you reading?
Swift: I was reading, you know, books like Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I highly recommend, and books that dealt with times past, a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I was also using words I always wanted to use - kind of bigger, flowerier, prettier words, like “epiphany,” in songs. I always thought, “Well, that’ll never track on pop radio,” but when I was making this record, I thought, “What tracks? Nothing makes sense anymore. If there’s chaos everywhere, why don’t I just use the damn word I want to use in the song?”
McCartney: Exactly. So you’d see the word in a book and think, “I love that word”?
Swift: Yeah, I have favorite words, like “elegies” and “epiphany” and “divorcée,” and just words that I think sound beautiful, and I have lists and lists of them.
McCartney: How about “marzipan”?
Swift: Love “marzipan.”
McCartney: The other day, I was remembering when we wrote “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: “kaleidoscope.”
Swift: “Kaleidoscope” is one of mine! I have a song on 1989, a song called “Welcome to New York,” that I put the word “kaleidoscope” in just because I’m obsessed with the word.
McCartney: I think a love of words is a great thing, particularly if you’re going to try to write a lyric, and for me, it’s like, “What is this going to say to that person?” I often feel like I’m writing to someone who is not doing so well. So I’m trying to write songs that might help. Not in a goody-goody, crusading kind of way, but just thinking there have been so many times in my life when I’ve heard a song and felt so much better. I think that’s the angle I want, that inspirational thing.
I remember once, a friend of mine from Liverpool, we were teenagers and we were going to a fairground. He was a schoolmate, and we had these jackets that had a little fleck in the material, which was the cool thing at the time.
Swift: We should have done matching jackets for this photo shoot.
McCartney: Find me a fleck, I’m in. But we went to the fair, and I just remember - this is what happens with songs - there was this girl at the fair. This is just a little Liverpool fair - it was in a place called Sefton Park - and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house - I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, “What can we do?” So we put on the Elvis song “All Shook Up.” By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, “That’s powerful.”
Swift: That really is powerful.
McCartney: I love that, when people stop me in the street and say, “Oh, I was going through an illness and I listened to a lot of your stuff, and I’m better now and it got me through,” or kids will say, “It got me through exams.” You know, they’re studying, they’re going crazy, but they put your music on. I’m sure it happens with a lot of your fans. It inspires them, you know?
Swift: Yeah, I definitely think about that as a goal. There’s so much stress everywhere you turn that I kind of wanted to make an album that felt sort of like a hug, or like your favorite sweater that makes you feel like you want to put it on.
McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?
Swift: Like a good cardigan, a good, worn-in cardigan. Or something that makes you reminisce on your childhood. I think sadness can be cozy. It can obviously be traumatic and stressful, too, but I kind of was trying to lean into sadness that feels like somehow enveloping in not such a scary way - like nostalgia and whimsy incorporated into a feeling like you’re not all right. Because I don’t think anybody was really feeling like they were in their prime this year. Isolation can mean escaping into your imagination in a way that’s kind of nice.
McCartney: I think a lot of people have found that. I would say to people, “I feel a bit guilty about saying I’m actually enjoying this quarantine thing,” and people go, “Yeah, I know, don’t say it to anyone.” A lot of people are really suffering.
Swift: Because there’s a lot in life that’s arbitrary. Completely and totally arbitrary. And [the quarantine] is really shining a light on that, and also a lot of things we have that we outsource that you can actually do yourself.
McCartney: I love that. This is why I said I live simply. That’s, like, at the core of it. With so many things, something goes wrong and you go, “Oh, I’ll get somebody to fix that.” And then it’s like, “No, let me have a look at it...”
Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.
McCartney: “Maybe I can put that picture up.” It’s not rocket science. The period after the Beatles, when we went to live in Scotland on a really - talk about dumpy - little farm. I mean, I see pictures of it now and I’m not ashamed, but I’m almost ashamed. Because it’s like, “God, nobody’s cleaned up around here.”
But it was really a relief. Because when I was with the Beatles, we’d formed Apple Records, and if I wanted a Christmas tree, someone would just buy it. And I thought, after a while, “No, you know what? I really would like to go and buy our Christmas tree. Because that’s what everyone does.” So you go down - “I’ll have that one” - and you carried it back. I mean, it’s little, but it’s huge at the same time.
I needed a table in Scotland and I was looking through a catalog and I thought, “I could make one. I did woodwork in school, so I know what a dovetail joint is.” So I just figured it out. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, and I’m whittling away at this wood and I made this little joint. There was no nail technology - it was glue. And I was scared to put it together. I said, “It’s not going to fit,” but one day, I got my woodwork glue and thought, “There’s no going back.” But it turned out to be a real nice little table I was very proud of. It was that sense of achievement.
The weird thing was, Stella went up to Scotland recently and I said, “Isn’t it there?” and she said, “No.” Anyway, I searched for it. Nobody remembered it. Somebody said, “Well, there’s a pile of wood in the corner of one of the barns, maybe that’s it. Maybe they used it for firewood.” I said, “No, it’s not firewood.” Anyway, we found it, and do you know how joyous that was for me? I was like, “You found my table?!” Somebody might say that’s a bit boring.
Swift: No, it’s cool!
McCartney: But it was a real sort of great thing for me to be able to do stuff for yourself. You were talking about sewing. I mean normally, in your position, you’ve got any amount of tailors.
Swift: Well, there’s been a bit of a baby boom recently; several of my friends have gotten pregnant.
McCartney: Oh, yeah, you’re at the age.
Swift: And I was just thinking, “I really want to spend time with my hands, making something for their children.” So I made this really cool flying-squirrel stuffed animal that I sent to one of my friends. I sent a teddy bear to another one, and I started making these little silk baby blankets with embroidery. It’s gotten pretty fancy. And I’ve been painting a lot.
McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?
Swift: Acrylic or oil. Whenever I do watercolor, all I paint is flowers. When I have oil, I really like to do landscapes. I always kind of return to painting a lonely little cottage on a hill.
McCartney: It’s a bit of a romantic dream. I agree with you, though, I think you’ve got to have dreams, particularly this year. You’ve got to have something to escape to. When you say “escapism,” it sounds like a dirty word, but this year, it definitely wasn’t. And in the books you’re reading, you’ve gone into that world. That’s, I think, a great thing. Then you come back out. I normally will read a lot before I go to bed. So I’ll come back out, then I’ll go to sleep, so I think it really is nice to have those dreams that can be fantasies or stuff you want to achieve.
Swift: You’re creating characters. This was the first album where I ever created characters, or wrote about the life of a real-life person. There’s a song called “The Last Great American Dynasty” that’s about this real-life heiress who lived just an absolutely chaotic, hectic...
McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?
Swift: She’s a real person. Who lived in the house that I live in.
McCartney: She’s a real person? I listened to that and I thought, “Who is this?”
Swift: Her name was Rebekah Harkness. And she lived in the house that I ended up buying in Rhode Island. That’s how I learned about her. But she was a woman who was very, very talked about, and everything she did was scandalous. I found a connection in that. But I also was thinking about how you write “Eleanor Rigby” and go into that whole story about what all these people in this town are doing and how their lives intersect, and I hadn’t really done that in a very long time with my music. It had always been so microscope personal.
McCartney: Yeah, ’cause you were writing breakup songs like they were going out of style.
Swift: I was, before my luck changed [laughs]. I still write breakup songs. I love a good breakup song. Because somewhere in the world, I always have a friend going through a breakup, and that will make me write one.
McCartney: Yeah, this goes back to this thing of me and John: When you’ve got a formula, break it. I don’t have a formula. It’s the mood I’m in. So I love the idea of writing a character. And, you know, trying to think, “What am I basing this on?” So “Eleanor Rigby” was based on old ladies I knew as a kid. For some reason or other, I got great relationships with a couple of local old ladies. I was thinking the other day, I don’t know how I met them, it wasn’t like they were family. I’d just run into them, and I’d do their shopping for them.
Swift: That’s amazing.
McCartney: It just felt good to me. I would sit and talk, and they’d have amazing stories. That’s what I liked. They would have stories from the wartime - because I was born actually in the war - and so these old ladies, they were participating in the war. This one lady I used to sort of just hang out with, she had a crystal radio that I found very magical. In the war, a lot of people made their own radios - you’d make them out of crystals [sings “The Twilight Zone” theme].
Swift: How did I not know this? That sounds like something I would have tried to learn about.
McCartney: It’s interesting, because there is a lot of parallels with the virus and lockdowns and wartime. It happened to everyone. Like, this isn’t HIV, or SARS, or Avian flu, which happened to others, generally. This has happened to everyone, all around the world. That’s the defining thing about this particular virus. And, you know, my parents... it happened to everyone in Britain, including the queen and Churchill. War happened. So they were all part of this thing, and they all had to figure out a way through it. So you figured out Folklore. I figured out McCartney III.
Swift: And a lot of people have been baking sourdough bread. Whatever gets you through!
McCartney: Some people used to make radios. And they’d take a crystal - we should look it up, but it actually is a crystal. I thought, “Oh, no, they just called it a crystal radio,” but it’s actually crystals like we know and love.
Swift: Wow.
McCartney: And somehow they get the radio waves - this crystal attracts them - they tune it in, and that’s how they used to get their news. Back to “Eleanor Rigby,” so I would think of her and think of what she’s doing and then just try to get lyrical, just try to bring poetry into it, words you love, just try to get images like “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” and Father McKenzie “is darning his socks in the night.” You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, “preparing his Bible,” which would have been more obvious. But “darning his socks” kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy. And that’s the magic of songs, you know. It’s a black hole, and then you start doing this process, and then there’s this beautiful little flower that you’ve just made. So it is very like embroidery, making something.
Swift: Making a table.
McCartney: Making a table.
Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.
McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.
Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.
McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”
Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.
McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!
Swift: One thing I just find so cool about you is that you really do seem to have the joy of it, still, just no matter what. You seem to have the purest sense of joy of playing an instrument and making music, and that’s just the best, I think.
McCartney: Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?
Swift: We’re really lucky.
McCartney: I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but with me, it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve ended up as a musician.”
Swift: Yeah, I can’t believe it’s my job.
McCartney: I must tell you a story I told Mary the other day, which is just one of my favorite little sort of Beatles stories. We were in a terrible, big blizzard, going from London to Liverpool, which we always did. We’d be working in London and then drive back in the van, just the four of us with our roadie, who would be driving. And this was a blizzard. You couldn’t see the road. At one point, it slid off and it went down an embankment. So it was “Ahhh,” a bunch of yelling. We ended up at the bottom. It didn’t flip, luckily, but so there we are, and then it’s like, “Oh, how are we going to get back up? We’re in a van. It’s snowing, and there’s no way.” We’re all standing around in a little circle, and thinking, “What are we going to do?” And one of us said, “Well, something will happen.” And I thought that was just the greatest. I love that, that’s a philosophy.
Swift: “Something will happen.”
McCartney: And it did. We sort of went up the bank, we thumbed a lift, we got the lorry driver to take us, and Mal, our roadie, sorted the van and everything. So that was kind of our career. And I suppose that’s like how I ended up being a musician and a songwriter: “Something will happen.”
Swift: That’s the best.
McCartney: It’s so stupid it’s brilliant. It’s great if you’re ever in that sort of panic attack: “Oh, my God,” or, “Ahhh, what am I going to do?”
Swift: “Something will happen.”
McCartney: All right then, thanks for doing this, and this was, you know, a lot of fun.
Swift: You’re the best. This was so awesome. Those were some quality stories!
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dameronology · 3 years
Text
cold coffee in the morning {poe dameron}
summary: aka the one where you and poe can't seem to work out your commitment issues, and also the one where c3po is the unsung hero (based loosely on the song by ed sheeran)
warnings: language, brief innuendos
enjoy! idk why i'm writing this at 3am but we mooooove
- jazz xx
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Poe Dameron had never needed another person before - then he met you, and the idea of ever existing as an independent being for the rest of his living years had suddenly seemed like the most unappealing thing since Luke Skywalker's blue-milk cheesecake. The way you'd whirlwhinded into his life with your gorgeous smile and contagious laugh had knocked the usually-suave pilot completely and utterly onto the floor. Bruised ass aside, he wasn't mad about it. He was happy to have you in his life in whatever way you'd let him.
And what way that was exactly, he didn't know.
You were friends; close, close friends. Bonded for life through your shared goofy humour and seemingly-endless banter. Then you did things that friends didn't normally do - at least not in Poe's experience - and you would act like it was nothing. As if your nights spent together and the whispers you lost between the sheets meant as much to you as the things you did for your other friends, like stopping Finn from tripping on his shoe laces or picking up R2-D2 when he toppled over. It was as though every-time you crossed that line, you immediately regretted it; then, a few days later, you'd decide that you missed Poe, and you'd repeat the same mistake again and again, like you were trapped in a time loop of love and pain.
The feeling would stay with Poe for days; your hands tangled in his hair, his skin against yours, laughter rippling through clashing teeth and soft lips. The way you fell beside each other, sharing highs and secrets and inside jokes; the way you would reference one of your late night talks in shared conversations with friends, and his brown eyes would flick to the ground, cheeks burning red at the fact you'd remembered. It made his heart-rate pick up and palms sweaty.
And sometimes, just sometimes, it would make up for the way you'd leave in the morning; the way he'd arise to find a you-size hole in his bed and heart, and a cup of half-finished caff on the side. With his brain tinged with the remains of a hangover from the previous night, he'd pour the cold beverage down the sink and go about his day.
Poe did manage to catch you one morning; he'd purposely set his alarm so that he would stir earlier than you and rest assured, you were still dead to the world when he came around. The sun outside was still rising, the sky a dull pink-and-blue, the day fresh with hope and brimming with potential for heartbreak. It felt unnatural to see you quiet and peaceful, and not running your mouth and poking fun at anyone who would listen. There was a reason that C3PO avoided you like the plague - it wasn't his fault he was an easy target.
"You watching me sleep, creep?" You murmured.
"Just enjoying the view." Poe replied. He rolled over, crossing his arms behind his head. "You're usually gone by the time I'm awake."
You peeled one eye open, your one-eyed glare enough to send a shiver down his spine. "Don't be passive aggressive, Poe. Just say it."
"Isn't it a little early to be so feisty?"
"Isn't it a little early to make back-handed comments?" You shot back.
"Sorry. I was trying to find a way to bring up such a touchy subject."
You reached across to squeeze his check. "And you did a great job, curly."
"Alright, that's enough of that." He swatted your hand away. "I did want to talk to you about it, though."
"What is there to talk about?" You sat up, brow furrowing.
"You're confusing." Poe began. "During the day, we're friends. At night, you can't keep your hands off of me."
"It's kind of sexy and mysterious." You tried to joke.
"Sexy and mysterious is tiring."
"Sexy and mysterious is also late for work." You quipped.
You rolled out of bed, reaching for your strewn clothes. Without thinking, you pulled one of Poe's shirts over your head, grabbing your boots and socks. So many of his clothes had just snuck their way into your wardrobe - all of your friends had noticed it, but none of them commented on it. Everybody knew that there was something going on between you, but they were wise enough than to point it out. There had been one new guy who tried to ask, but he'd quickly been shut down.
"I'll see you tonight?" You asked, tugging on Poe's your jacket.
His brown eyes lingered on the floor for a moment, before flicking towards you, holding your gaze in a chokehold. "I don't think we should do this again."
You wavered for a moment, a wave of guilt clouding your judgement for a moment. This had never been about feelings - at least not for you. It had just a bit of fun; a bit of fooling around with a hot pilot. You hadn't meant to get in so deep, or get to a point where you were dismissing his feelings in favour of your own. It was more of a survival instinct than anything - breaking his heart to save your own.
That was it: lack of trust, presence of fear. All things that stopped you taking the full plunge, simply for the worry of letting him hurt you - or worst, you hurting him. Maybe it was a little late to start worrying about the latter. That ship had sailed a long time ago. Maybe it had sunk too.
"Poe-" you began, before pausing. "I have a lot going on in my life. I just don't have room for anything real right now."
"I thought the same." He was still staring right at you. "So I made room."
"It's not that simple." You reminded him. "It's not like...decluttering a room. I can't just Marie Kondo that shit and declare my love for you."
Poe froze at the mention of the L-word. It had been an elephant in the room for a long, long time - but it was outdone by the presence of bigger elephants. Like the ongoing war, and the fact that mortality had never seemed so fucking relevant. It was something you wanted to put a pin in for later, but later wasn't something that was guaranteed these days.
"Fine." He shrugged. "Good talk."
--
The guilt weighed on your brain for days, like a lead hat made of bullshit and regret.
You hadn't realised how much of a hole Poe Dameron left in your life until he was gone -- it was massive, like someone had broken into your home and ripped out two of the walls during a harsh winter storm. Everything felt a little colder and more confusing, and the amount of times you'd had to resist temptation to find him and beg for forgiveness was astounding.
The only reason you hadn't done so was because you knew what you would have to do. Give into your feelings, and let yourself become fully and entirely his. Let him into your life and into your heart. All the bullshit you'd spewed about not having room had been just that: bullshit. You didn't need to make room for him in your heart when he, entirely and wholly, was your heart. And he'd taken a little bit of it with him when he walked away - well, when you'd walked away.
Is this how it felt to be the villain?
"Is everything okay, master?" The sound of your favourite droid brought you back to the present. "You're being uncharacteristically quiet. On average, you've usually said 356 words by 9AM."
"You keep count?" You glanced up from your paperwork, eyebrow quirked. "I'm fine. Just tired."
"Eight of ten times that you've said that, you haven't been fine-"
"- just give it a rest, Threepio." You cut him off. "Please?"
"If there's anything I can help with, let me know." He replied. "A droid's logic can be surprisingly helpful."
"I'm fine but thank-" you stopped in your tracks, pondering for a moment.
Logic. That was certainly something you lacked - the part of your brain that was supposed to be rational was too busy thinking about hot pilots.
"Master?"
"Sorry." You blinked. "Maybe I'll have your input on something."
"Please, go on."
"I love someone and he loves me." You said. "It's just very complicated."
"If a problem can be reduced down to seven words, I would not class that as a problem." Threepio said. "I would say a problem is at least thirty words or more."
You thinned your eyes at him. "What are you saying, goldilocks?"
"Perhaps, your problem is only a problem because you think it is." He replied. "When you lay things out and look at them logically, it can make more sense."
"Logic isn't my strong-point. You know that better than anyone."
"You love Master Dameron and he loves you-"
"- I never mentioned names."
"My apologies." Threepio said. "I was simply reading the room."
"Right."
"Remove your emotions, and those are the facts." He continued.
It was bad enough when Poe was right, but it was even worse when C3PO was. But, for all his theatrics and whining, he was right. Decisions made with logic rather than emotion always had a better outcome. It was plain and simple: you and Poe loved one another. Everything else - your fear and his dismissiveness and your collective confusion - only existed because you let it. But your feelings for each other? That was something you couldn't help.
"Right - thanks." You murmured. "I'll be right back."
You quickly stood up, tossing aside your datapad and immediately exiting the room. The base was small, and Poe was never that far away, even when the room was on the furthest side of the base. It was also your favourite place in the entire camp; it was covered in photos of you and him and your friends, and it was always warm. The mixture of sentimental clutter and little knick-knacks, paired with the gentle smell of his aftershave clinging to the sheets and clothes scattered around, made it feel like an actual home.
You didn't bother knocking - that formality had gone out the window long ago. Instead, you took a deep breath and gently opened the door. There was no certainty that he would even be in - you could only hope. The chances of him being anywhere else were pretty slim.
They'd worked in your favour today, because Poe was stood by his coffee machine, a towel wrapped around his waist. His hair was wild and curly and there were still drops of water on his back.
He turned around when he saw you, brow furrowing. Mostly because he had never seen you so breathless and sweaty, but also because he hadn't expected you to ever talk to him again. He'd always known you to stick by your decisions - he normally admired your stubbornness, but as of recent, it had been fucking exhausting.
"Hi-"
"- I love you." You suddenly blurted. "Hi."
"I-" Poe paused, putting down his coffee. "What?"
"I love you. More than anything in the world, ever." You shrugged. "That terrifies me, but I can deal with fear."
"You can. You're pretty bad-ass." He casually nodded.
"Right." You smiled. "I'm sorry it took me so long to say that."
"Hey, it's okay." He gently smiled. "Come here."
You met half way across the room, bodies colliding in a tight hug. His warm, post-shower skin felt like heaven against yours, large hands dragging up and down your back. He consumed everyone one of your senses at once, but mostly, he consumed your ability to think. Your brain was so over-loaded with feelings that the rest of it completely broke down and malfunctioned - kind of like the time you spilt coffee on BB-8.
"I love you too, by the way." Poe gently murmured. You let out a small chuckle.
"I know." You smiled.
"What made you say it now?"
"Threepio said something about logic." You muttered. "The only logical thing for two people who love each other to do is be together, right?"
"I mean, I can think of other things-"
"- Poe!" You whacked his shoulder.
It was though you had untangled your feelings, and the only thing left was a line that went straight from him to you.
"You're right." Poe said. "Thank you for realising it."
You smiled, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. "Thank you for being patient."
"It's worth it." He couldn't help but grin. "Do you want some caff? It's still warm."
tags: @anetteaneta @poestardust @marvelinsanity
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sgt-paul · 3 years
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MUSICIANS ON MUSICIANS: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift
© Mary McCartney
❝ During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. ❞
interview below the cut:
Taylor Swift arrived early to Paul McCartney’s London office in October, “mask on, brimming with excitement.” “I mostly work from home these days,” she writes about that day, “and today feels like a rare school field trip that you actually want to go on.”
Swift showed up without a team, doing her own hair and makeup. In addition to being two of the most famous pop songwriters in the world, Swift and McCartney have spent the past year on similar journeys. McCartney, isolated at home in the U.K., recorded McCartney III. Like his first solo album, in 1970, he played nearly all of the instruments himself, resulting in some of his most wildly ambitious songs in a long time. Swift also took some new chances, writing over email with the National’s Aaron Dessner and recording the raw Folklore, which abandons arena pop entirely in favor of rich character songs. It’s the bestselling album of 2020.
Swift listened to McCartney III as she prepared for today’s conversation; McCartney delved into Folkore. Before the photo shoot, Swift caught up with his daughters Mary (who would be photographing them) and Stella (who designed Swift’s clothes; the two are close friends). “I’ve met Paul a few times, mostly onstage at parties, but we’ll get to that later,” Swift writes. “Soon he walks in with his wife, Nancy. They’re a sunny and playful pair, and I immediately feel like this will be a good day. During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. We walk into his office for a chat, and after I make a nervous request, Paul is kind enough to handwrite my favorite lyric of his and sign it. He makes a joke about me selling it, and I laugh because it’s something I know I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. That’s around the time when we start talking about music.”
Taylor Swift: I think it’s important to note that if this year had gone the way that we thought it was going to go, you and I would have played Glastonbury this year, and instead, you and I both made albums in isolation.
Paul McCartney: Yeah!
Swift: And I remember thinking it would have been so much fun because the times that I’ve run into you, I correlate with being some of the most fun nights of my life. I was at a party with you, when everybody just started playing music. And it was Dave Grohl playing, and you…
McCartney: You were playing one of his songs, weren’t you?
Swift: Yes, I was playing his song called “Best of You,” but I was playing it on piano, and he didn’t recognize it until about halfway through. I just remember thinking, “Are you the catalyst for the most fun times ever?” Is it your willingness to get up and play music that makes everyone feel like this is a thing that can happen tonight?
McCartney: I mean, I think it’s a bit of everything, isn’t it? I’ll tell you who was very … Reese Witherspoon was like, “Are you going to sing?” I said “Oh, I don’t know.” She said, “You’ve got to, yeah!” She’s bossing me around. So I said, “Whoa,” so it’s a bit of that.
Swift: I love that person, because the party does not turn musical without that person.
McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.
Swift: If nobody says, “Can you guys play music?” we’re not going to invite ourselves up onstage at whatever living-room party it is.
McCartney: I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing “Let It Be,” and I’m thinking, “I can do that better.” So I said, “Come on, move over, Woody.” So we’re both playing it. It was really nice.… I love people like Dan Aykroyd, who’s just full of energy and he loves his music so much, but he’s not necessarily a musician, but he just wanders around the room, just saying, “You got to get up, got to get up, do some stuff.”
Swift: I listened to your new record. And I loved a lot of things about it, but it really did feel like kind of a flex to write, produce, and play every instrument on every track. To me, that’s like flexing a muscle and saying, “I can do all this on my own if I have to.”
McCartney: Well, I don’t think like that, I must admit. I just picked up some of these instruments over the years. We had a piano at home that my dad played, so I picked around on that. I wrote the melody to “When I’m 64” when I was, you know, a teenager.
Swift: Wow.
McCartney: When the Beatles went to Hamburg, there were always drum kits knocking around, so when there was a quiet moment, I’d say, “Do you mind if I have a knock around?” So I was able to practice, you know, without practicing. That’s why I play right-handed. Guitar was just the first instrument I got. Guitar turned to bass; it also turned into ukulele, mandolin. Suddenly, it’s like, “Wow,” but it’s really only two or three instruments.
Swift: Well, I think that’s downplaying it a little bit. In my mind, it came with a visual of you being in the country, kind of absorbing the sort of do-it-yourself [quality] that has had to come with the quarantine and this pandemic. I found that I’ve adapted a do-it-yourself mentality to a lot of things in my career that I used to outsource.  I’m just wondering what a day of recording in the pandemic looked like for you.
McCartney: Well, I’m very lucky because I have a studio that’s, like, 20 minutes away from where I live. We were in lockdown on a farm, a sheep farm with my daughter Mary and her four kids and her husband. So I had four of my grandkids, I had Mary, who’s a great cook, so I would just drive myself to the studio. And there were two other guys that could come in and we’d be very careful and distanced and everything: my engineer Steve, and then my equipment guy Keith. So the three of us made the record, and I just started off. I had to do a little bit of film music — I had to do an instrumental for a film thing — so I did that. And I just kept going, and that turned into the opening track on the album. I would just come in, say, “Oh, yeah, what are we gonna do?” [Then] have some sort of idea, and start doing it. Normally, I’d start with the instrument I wrote it on, either piano or guitar, and then probably add some drums and then a bit of bass till it started to sound like a record, and then just gradually layer it all up. It was fun.
Swift: That’s so cool.
McCartney: What about yours? You’re playing guitar and piano on yours.
Swift: Yeah, on some of it, but a lot of it was made with Aaron Dessner, who’s in a band called the National that I really love. And I had met him at a concert a year before, and I had a conversation with him, asking him how he writes. It’s my favorite thing to ask people who I’m a fan of. And he had an interesting answer. He said, “All the band members live in different parts of the world. So I make tracks. And I send them to our lead singer, Matt, and he writes the top line.” I just remember thinking, “That is really efficient.” And I kind of stored it in my brain as a future idea for a project. You know, how you have these ideas… “Maybe one day I’ll do this.” I always had in my head: “Maybe one day I’ll work with Aaron Dessner.”
So when lockdown happened, I was in L.A., and we kind of got stuck there. It’s not a terrible place to be stuck. We were there for four months maybe, and during that time, I sent an email to Aaron Dessner and I said, “Do you think you would want to work during this time? Because my brain is all scrambled, and I need to make something, even if we’re just kind of making songs that we don’t know what will happen…”
McCartney: Yeah, that was the thing. You could do stuff — you didn’t really worry it was going to turn into anything.
Swift: Yeah, and it turned out he had been writing instrumental tracks to keep from absolutely going crazy during the pandemic as well, so he sends me this file of probably 30 instrumentals, and the first one I opened ended up being a song called “Cardigan,” and it really happened rapid-fire like that. He’d send me a track; he’d make new tracks, add to the folder; I would write the entire top line for a song, and he wouldn’t know what the song would be about, what it was going to be called, where I was going to put the chorus. I had originally thought, “Maybe I’ll make an album in the next year, and put it out in January or something,” but it ended up being done and we put it out in July. And I just thought there are no rules anymore, because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, “How will this song sound in a stadium? How will this song sound on radio?” If you take away all the parameters, what do you make? And I guess the answer is Folklore.
McCartney: And it’s more music for yourself than music that’s got to go do a job. My thing was similar to that: After having done this little bit of film music, I had a lot of stuff that I had been working on, but I’d said, “I’m just going home now,” and it’d be left half-finished. So I just started saying, “Well, what about that? I never finished that.” So we’d pull it out, and we said, “Oh, well, this could be good.” And because it didn’t have to amount to anything, I would say, “Ah, I really want to do tape loops. I don’t care if they fit on this song, I just want to do some.” So I go and make some tape loops, and put them in the song, just really trying to do stuff that I fancy.
I had no idea it would end up as an album; I may have been a bit less indulgent, but if a track was eight minutes long, to tell you the truth, what I thought was, “I’ll be taking it home tonight, Mary will be cooking, the grandkids will all be there running around, and someone, maybe Simon, Mary’s husband, is going to say, ‘What did you do today?’ And I’m going to go, ‘Oh,’ and then get my phone and play it for them.” So this became the ritual.
Swift: That’s the coziest thing I’ve ever heard.
McCartney: Well, it’s like eight minutes long, and I said, “I hate it when I’m playing someone something and it finishes after three minutes.” I kind of like that it just [continues] on.
Swift: You want to stay in the zone.
McCartney: It just keeps going on. I would just come home, “Well, what did you do today?” “Oh, well, I did this. I’m halfway through this,” or, “We finished this.”
Swift: I was wondering about the numerology element to McCartney III. McCartney I, II, and III have all come out on years with zeroes.
McCartney: Ends of decades.
Swift: Was that important?
McCartney: Yeah, well, this was being done in 2020, and I didn’t really think about it. I think everyone expected great things of 2020. “It’s gonna be great! Look at that number! 2020! Auspicious!” Then suddenly Covid hit, and it was like, “That’s gonna be auspicious all right, but maybe for the wrong reasons.” Someone said to me, “Well, you put out McCartney right after the Beatles broke up, and that was 1970, and then you did McCartney II in 1980.” And I said, “Oh, I’m going to release this in 2020 just for whatever you call it, the numerology.…”
Swift: The numerology, the kind of look, the symbolism. I love numbers. Numbers kind of rule my whole world. The numbers 13  … 89 is a big one. I have a few others that I find…
McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.
Swift: Yeah, it’s lucky for me. It’s my birthday. It’s all these weird coincidences of good things that have happened. Now, when I see it places, I look at it as a sign that things are going the way they’re supposed to. They may not be good now, they could be painful now, but things are on a track. I don’t know, I love the numerology.
McCartney: It’s spooky, Taylor. It’s very spooky. Now wait a minute: Where’d you get 89?
Swift: That’s when I was born, in 1989, and so I see it in different places and I just think it’s…
McCartney: No, it’s good. I like that, where certain things you attach yourself to, and you get a good feeling off them. I think that’s great.
Swift: Yeah, one of my favorite artists, Bon Iver, he has this thing with the number 22. But I was also wondering: You have always kind of seeked out a band or a communal atmosphere with like, you know, the Beatles and Wings, and then Egypt Station. I thought it was interesting when I realized you had made a record with no one else. I just wondered, did that feel natural?
McCartney: It’s one of the things I’ve done. Like with McCartney, because the Beatles had broken up, there was no alternative but to get a drum kit at home, get a guitar, get an amp, get a bass, and just make something for myself. So on that album, which I didn’t really expect to do very well, I don’t think it did. But people sort of say, “I like that. It was a very casual album.” It didn’t really have to mean anything. So I’ve done that, the play-everything-myself thing. And then I discovered synths and stuff, and sequencers, so I had a few of those at home. I just thought I’m going to play around with this and record it, so that became McCartney II. But it’s a thing I do. Certain people can do it. Stevie Wonder can do it. Stevie Winwood, I believe, has done it. So there are certain people quite like that.
When you’re working with someone else, you have to worry about their variances. Whereas your own variance, you kind of know it. It’s just something I’ve grown to like. Once you can do it, it becomes a little bit addictive. I actually made some records under the name the Fireman.
Swift: Love a pseudonym.
McCartney: Yeah, for the fun! But, you know, let’s face it, you crave fame and attention when you’re young. And I just remembered the other day, I was the guy in the Beatles that would write to journalists and say [speaks in a formal voice]: “We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us].… We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I. If you mention us in your newspaper…” You know, I was always, like, craving the attention.
Swift: The hustle! That’s so great, though.
McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.
Swift: Yeah, I think, when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you. And that’s when it’s really fun to create fake names and write under them.
McCartney: Do you ever do that?
Swift: Oh, yeah.
McCartney: Oh, yeah? Oh, well, we didn’t know that! Is that a widely known fact?
Swift: I think it is now, but it wasn’t. I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males. I wrote this song called “This Is What You Came For” that Rihanna ended up singing. And nobody knew for a while. I remembered always hearing that when Prince wrote “Manic Monday,” they didn’t reveal it for a couple of months.
McCartney: Yeah, it also proves you can do something without the fame tag. I did something for Peter and Gordon; my girlfriend’s brother and his mate were in a band called Peter and Gordon. And I used to write under the name Bernard Webb.
Swift: [Laughs.] That’s a good one! I love it.
McCartney: As Americans call it, Ber-nard Webb. I did the Fireman thing. I worked with a producer, a guy called Youth, who’s this real cool dude. We got along great. He did a mix for me early on, and we got friendly. I would just go into the studio, and he would say, “Hey, what about this groove?” and he’d just made me have a little groove going. He’d say, “You ought to put some bass on it. Put some drums on it.” I’d just spend the whole day putting stuff on it. And we’d make these tracks, and nobody knew who Fireman was for a while. We must have sold all of 15 copies.
Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.
McCartney: And we didn’t mind, you know?
Swift: I think it’s so cool that you do projects that are just for you. Because I went with my family to see you in concert in 2010 or 2011, and the thing I took away from the show most was that it was the most selfless set list I had ever seen. It was completely geared toward what it would thrill us to hear. It had new stuff, but it had every hit we wanted to hear, every song we’d ever cried to, every song people had gotten married to, or been brokenhearted to. And I just remembered thinking, “I’ve got to remember that,” that you do that set list for your fans.
McCartney: You do that, do you?
Swift: I do now. I think that learning that lesson from you taught me at a really important stage in my career that if people want to hear “Love Story” and “Shake It Off,” and I’ve played them 300 million times, play them the 300-millionth-and-first time. I think there are times to be selfish in your career, and times to be selfless, and sometimes they line up.
McCartney: I always remembered going to concerts as a kid, completely before the Beatles, and I really hoped they would play the ones I loved. And if they didn’t, it was kind of disappointing. I had no money, and the family wasn’t wealthy. So this would be a big deal for me, to save up for months to afford the concert ticket.
Swift: Yeah, it feels like a bond. It feels like that person on the stage has given something, and it makes you as a crowd want to give even more back, in terms of applause, in terms of dedication. And I just remembered feeling that bond in the crowd, and thinking, “He’s up there playing these Beatles songs, my dad is crying, my mom is trying to figure out how to work her phone because her hands are shaking so much.” Because seeing the excitement course through not only me, but my family and the entire crowd in Nashville, it just was really special. I love learning lessons and not having to learn them the hard way. Like learning nice lessons I really value.
McCartney: Well, that’s great, and I’m glad that set you on that path. I understand people who don’t want to do that, and if you do, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a jukebox show.” I hear what they’re saying. But I think it’s a bit of a cheat, because the people who come to our shows have spent a lot of money. We can afford to go to a couple of shows and it doesn’t make much difference. But a lot of ordinary working folks … it’s a big event in their life, and so I try and deliver. I also, like you say, try and put in a few weirdos.
Swift: That’s the best. I want to hear current things, too, to update me on where the artist is. I was wondering about lyrics, and where you were lyrically when you were making this record. Because when I was making Folklore, I went lyrically in a total direction of escapism and romanticism. And I wrote songs imagining I was, like, a pioneer woman in a forbidden love affair [laughs]. I was completely …
McCartney: Was this “I want to give you a child”? Is that one of the lines?
Swift: Oh, that’s a song called “Peace.”
McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.
Swift: “Peace” is actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.
McCartney: So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?
Swift: Oh, absolutely.
McCartney: They have to, don’t they?
Swift: But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture — the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song “Peace” is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could ever hope for under the circumstances.
McCartney: Yeah, it was very important to us to try and keep their feet on the ground amongst the craziness.
Swift: She went to a regular school .…
McCartney: Yeah, she did.
Swift: And you would go trick-or-treating with them, wearing masks.
McCartney: All of them did, yeah. It was important, but it worked pretty well, because when they kind of reached adulthood, they would meet other kids who might have gone to private schools, who were a little less grounded.
And they could be the budding mothers to [kids]. I remember Mary had a friend, Orlando. Not Bloom. She used to really counsel him. And it’s ’cause she’d gone through that. Obviously, they got made fun of, my kids. They’d come in the classroom and somebody would sing, “Na na na na,” you know, one of the songs. And they’d have to handle that. They’d have to front it out.
Swift: Did that give you a lot of anxiety when you had kids, when you felt like all this pressure that’s been put on me is spilling over onto them, that they didn’t sign up for it? Was that hard for you?
McCartney: Yeah, a little bit, but it wasn’t like it is now. You know, we were just living a kind of semi-hippie life, where we withdrew from a lot of stuff. The kids would be doing all the ordinary things, and their school friends would be coming up to the house and having parties, and it was just great. I remember one lovely evening when it was Stella’s birthday, and she brought a bunch of school kids up. And, you know, they’d all ignore me. It happens very quickly. At first they’re like, “Oh, yeah, he’s like a famous guy,” and then it’s like [yawns]. I like that. I go in the other room and suddenly I hear this music going on. And one of the kids, his name was Luke, and he’s doing break dancing.
Swift: Ohhh!
McCartney: He was a really good break dancer, so all the kids are hanging out. That allowed them to be kind of normal with those kids. The other thing is, I don’t live fancy. I really don’t. Sometimes it’s a little bit of an embarrassment, if I’ve got someone coming to visit me, or who I know…
Swift: Cares about that stuff?
McCartney: Who’s got a nice big house, you know. Quincy Jones came to see me and I’m, like, making him a veggie burger or something. I’m doing some cooking. This was after I’d lost Linda, in between there. But the point I’m making is that I’m very consciously thinking, “Oh, God, Quincy’s got to be thinking, ‘What is this guy on? He hasn’t got big things going on. It’s not a fancy house at all. And we’re eating in the kitchen! He’s not even got the dining room going,’” you know?
Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.
McCartney: But that’s me. I’m awkward like that. That’s my kind of thing. Maybe I should have, like, a big stately home. Maybe I should get a staff. But I think I couldn’t do that. I’d be so embarrassed. I’d want to walk around dressed as I want to walk around, or naked, if I wanted to.
Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.
McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.
Swift: I remember what I wanted to know about, which is lyrics. Like, when you’re in this kind of strange, unparalleled time, and you’re making this record, are lyrics first? Or is it when you get a little melodic idea?
McCartney: It was a bit of both. As it kind of always is with me. There’s no fixed way. People used to ask me and John, “Well, who does the words, who does the music?” I used to say, “We both do both.” We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up. I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics — for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings “Find My Way,” a song from “McCartney III”]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll just be inspired by something. I had a little book which was all about the constellations and the stars and the orbits of Venus and.…
Swift: Oh, I know that song — “The Kiss of Venus”?
McCartney: Yeah, “The Kiss of Venus.” And I just thought, “That’s a nice phrase.” So I was actually just taking phrases out of the book, harmonic sounds. And the book is talking about the maths of the universe, and how when things orbit around each other, and if you trace all the patterns, it becomes like a lotus flower.
Swift: Wow.
McCartney: It’s very magical.
Swift: That is magical. I definitely relate to needing to find magical things in this very not-magical time, needing to read more books and learn to sew, and watch movies that take place hundreds of years ago. In a time where, if you look at the news, you just want to have a panic attack — I really relate to the idea that you are thinking about stars and constellations.
McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?
Swift: Yes. I was reading so much more than I ever did, and watching so many more films.
McCartney: What stuff were you reading?
Swift: I was reading, you know, books like Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I highly recommend, and books that dealt with times past, a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I was also using words I always wanted to use — kind of bigger, flowerier, prettier words, like “epiphany,” in songs. I always thought, “Well, that’ll never track on pop radio,” but when I was making this record, I thought, “What tracks? Nothing makes sense anymore. If there’s chaos everywhere, why don’t I just use the damn word I want to use in the song?”
McCartney: Exactly. So you’d see the word in a book and think, “I love that word”?
Swift: Yeah, I have favorite words, like “elegies” and “epiphany” and “divorcée,” and just words that I think sound beautiful, and I have lists and lists of them.
McCartney: How about “marzipan”?
Swift: Love “marzipan.”
McCartney: The other day, I was remembering when we wrote “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: “kaleidoscope.”
Swift: “Kaleidoscope” is one of mine! I have a song on 1989, a song called “Welcome to New York,” that I put the word “kaleidoscope” in just because I’m obsessed with the word.
McCartney: I think a love of words is a great thing, particularly if you’re going to try to write a lyric, and for me, it’s like, “What is this going to say to that person?” I often feel like I’m writing to someone who is not doing so well. So I’m trying to write songs that might help. Not in a goody-goody, crusading kind of way, but just thinking there have been so many times in my life when I’ve heard a song and felt so much better. I think that’s the angle I want, that inspirational thing.
I remember once, a friend of mine from Liverpool, we were teenagers and we were going to a fairground. He was a schoolmate, and we had these jackets that had a little fleck in the material, which was the cool thing at the time.
Swift: We should have done matching jackets for this photo shoot.
McCartney: Find me a fleck, I’m in. But we went to the fair, and I just remember — this is what happens with songs — there was this girl at the fair. This is just a little Liverpool fair — it was in a place called Sefton Park — and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house — I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, “What can we do?” So we put on the Elvis song “All Shook Up.” By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, “That’s powerful.”
Swift: That really is powerful.
McCartney: I love that, when people stop me in the street and say, “Oh, I was going through an illness and I listened to a lot of your stuff, and I’m better now and it got me through,” or kids will say, “It got me through exams.” You know, they’re studying, they’re going crazy, but they put your music on. I’m sure it happens with a lot of your fans. It inspires them, you know?
Swift: Yeah, I definitely think about that as a goal. There’s so much stress everywhere you turn that I kind of wanted to make an album that felt sort of like a hug, or like your favorite sweater that makes you feel like you want to put it on.
McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?
Swift: Like a good cardigan, a good, worn-in cardigan. Or something that makes you reminisce on your childhood. I think sadness can be cozy. It can obviously be traumatic and stressful, too, but I kind of was trying to lean into sadness that feels like somehow enveloping in not such a scary way — like nostalgia and whimsy incorporated into a feeling like you’re not all right. Because I don’t think anybody was really feeling like they were in their prime this year. Isolation can mean escaping into your imagination in a way that’s kind of nice.
McCartney: I think a lot of people have found that. I would say to people, “I feel a bit guilty about saying I’m actually enjoying this quarantine thing,” and people go, “Yeah, I know, don’t say it to anyone.” A lot of people are really suffering.
Swift: Because there’s a lot in life that’s arbitrary. Completely and totally arbitrary. And [the quarantine] is really shining a light on that, and also a lot of things we have that we outsource that you can actually do yourself.
McCartney: I love that. This is why I said I live simply. That’s, like, at the core of it. With so many things, something goes wrong and you go, “Oh, I’ll get somebody to fix that.” And then it’s like, “No, let me have a look at it.…”
Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.
McCartney: “Maybe I can put that picture up.” It’s not rocket science. The period after the Beatles, when we went to live in Scotland on a really — talk about dumpy — little farm. I mean, I see pictures of it now and I’m not ashamed, but I’m almost ashamed. Because it’s like, “God, nobody’s cleaned up around here.”
But it was really a relief. Because when I was with the Beatles, we’d formed Apple Records, and if I wanted a Christmas tree, someone would just buy it. And I thought, after a while, “No, you know what? I really would like to go and buy our Christmas tree. Because that’s what everyone does.” So you go down — “I’ll have that one” — and you carried it back. I mean, it’s little, but it’s huge at the same time.
I needed a table in Scotland and I was looking through a catalog and I thought, “I could make one. I did woodwork in school, so I know what a dovetail joint is.” So I just figured it out. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, and I’m whittling away at this wood and I made this little joint. There was no nail technology — it was glue. And I was scared to put it together. I said, “It’s not going to fit,” but one day, I got my woodwork glue and thought, “There’s no going back.” But it turned out to be a real nice little table I was very proud of. It was that sense of achievement.
The weird thing was, Stella went up to Scotland recently and I said, “Isn’t it there?” and she said, “No.” Anyway, I searched for it. Nobody remembered it. Somebody said, “Well, there’s a pile of wood in the corner of one of the barns, maybe that’s it. Maybe they used it for firewood.” I said, “No, it’s not firewood.” Anyway, we found it, and do you know how joyous that was for me? I was like, “You found my table?!” Somebody might say that’s a bit boring.
Swift: No, it’s cool!
McCartney: But it was a real sort of great thing for me to be able to do stuff for yourself. You were talking about sewing. I mean normally, in your position, you’ve got any amount of tailors.
Swift: Well, there’s been a bit of a baby boom recently; several of my friends have gotten pregnant.
McCartney: Oh, yeah, you’re at the age.
Swift: And I was just thinking, “I really want to spend time with my hands, making something for their children.” So I made this really cool flying-squirrel stuffed animal that I sent to one of my friends. I sent a teddy bear to another one, and I started making these little silk baby blankets with embroidery. It’s gotten pretty fancy. And I’ve been painting a lot.
McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?
Swift: Acrylic or oil. Whenever I do watercolor, all I paint is flowers. When I have oil, I really like to do landscapes. I always kind of return to painting a lonely little cottage on a hill.
McCartney: It’s a bit of a romantic dream. I agree with you, though, I think you’ve got to have dreams, particularly this year. You’ve got to have something to escape to. When you say “escapism,” it sounds like a dirty word, but this year, it definitely wasn’t. And in the books you’re reading, you’ve gone into that world. That’s, I think, a great thing. Then you come back out. I normally will read a lot before I go to bed. So I’ll come back out, then I’ll go to sleep, so I think it really is nice to have those dreams that can be fantasies or stuff you want to achieve.
Swift: You’re creating characters. This was the first album where I ever created characters, or wrote about the life of a real-life person. There’s a song called “The Last Great American Dynasty” that’s about this real-life heiress who lived just an absolutely chaotic, hectic…
McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?
Swift: She’s a real person. Who lived in the house that I live in.
McCartney: She’s a real person? I listened to that and I thought, “Who is this?”
Swift: Her name was Rebekah Harkness. And she lived in the house that I ended up buying in Rhode Island. That’s how I learned about her. But she was a woman who was very, very talked about, and everything she did was scandalous. I found a connection in that. But I also was thinking about how you write “Eleanor Rigby” and go into that whole story about what all these people in this town are doing and how their lives intersect, and I hadn’t really done that in a very long time with my music. It had always been so microscope personal.
McCartney: Yeah, ’cause you were writing breakup songs like they were going out of style.
Swift: I was, before my luck changed [laughs]. I still write breakup songs. I love a good breakup song. Because somewhere in the world, I always have a friend going through a breakup, and that will make me write one.
McCartney: Yeah, this goes back to this thing of me and John: When you’ve got a formula, break it. I don’t have a formula. It’s the mood I’m in. So I love the idea of writing a character. And, you know, trying to think, “What am I basing this on?” So “Eleanor Rigby” was based on old ladies I knew as a kid. For some reason or other, I got great relationships with a couple of local old ladies. I was thinking the other day, I don’t know how I met them, it wasn’t like they were family. I’d just run into them, and I’d do their shopping for them.
Swift: That’s amazing.
McCartney: It just felt good to me. I would sit and talk, and they’d have amazing stories. That’s what I liked. They would have stories from the wartime — because I was born actually in the war — and so these old ladies, they were participating in the war. This one lady I used to sort of just hang out with, she had a crystal radio that I found very magical. In the war, a lot of people made their own radios — you’d make them out of crystals [sings “The Twilight Zone” theme].
Swift: How did I not know this? That sounds like something I would have tried to learn about.
McCartney: It’s interesting, because there is a lot of parallels with the virus and lockdowns and wartime. It happened to everyone. Like, this isn’t HIV, or SARS, or Avian flu, which happened to others, generally. This has happened to everyone, all around the world. That’s the defining thing about this particular virus. And, you know, my parents … it happened to everyone in Britain, including the queen and Churchill. War happened. So they were all part of this thing, and they all had to figure out a way through it. So you figured out Folklore. I figured out McCartney III.
Swift: And a lot of people have been baking sourdough bread. Whatever gets you through!
McCartney: Some people used to make radios. And they’d take a crystal — we should look it up, but it actually is a crystal. I thought, “Oh, no, they just called it a crystal radio,” but it’s actually crystals like we know and love.
Swift: Wow.
McCartney: And somehow they get the radio waves — this crystal attracts them — they tune it in, and that’s how they used to get their news. Back to “Eleanor Rigby,” so I would think of her and think of what she’s doing and then just try to get lyrical, just try to bring poetry into it, words you love, just try to get images like “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” and Father McKenzie “is darning his socks in the night.” You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, “preparing his Bible,” which would have been more obvious. But “darning his socks” kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy. And that’s the magic of songs, you know. It’s a black hole, and then you start doing this process, and then there’s this beautiful little flower that you’ve just made. So it is very like embroidery, making something.
Swift: Making a table.
McCartney: Making a table.
Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.
McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.
Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.
McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”
Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.
McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!
Swift: One thing I just find so cool about you is that you really do seem to have the joy of it, still, just no matter what. You seem to have the purest sense of joy of playing an instrument and making music, and that’s just the best, I think.
McCartney: Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?
Swift: We’re really lucky.
McCartney: I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but with me, it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve ended up as a musician.”
Swift: Yeah, I can’t believe it’s my job.
McCartney: I must tell you a story I told Mary the other day, which is just one of my favorite little sort of Beatles stories. We were in a terrible, big blizzard, going from London to Liverpool, which we always did. We’d be working in London and then drive back in the van, just the four of us with our roadie, who would be driving. And this was a blizzard. You couldn’t see the road. At one point, it slid off and it went down an embankment. So it was “Ahhh,” a bunch of yelling. We ended up at the bottom. It didn’t flip, luckily, but so there we are, and then it’s like, “Oh, how are we going to get back up? We’re in a van. It’s snowing, and there’s no way.” We’re all standing around in a little circle, and thinking, “What are we going to do?” And one of us said, “Well, something will happen.” And I thought that was just the greatest. I love that, that’s a philosophy.
Swift: “Something will happen.”
McCartney: And it did. We sort of went up the bank, we thumbed a lift, we got the lorry driver to take us, and Mal, our roadie, sorted the van and everything. So that was kind of our career. And I suppose that’s like how I ended up being a musician and a songwriter: “Something will happen.”
Swift: That’s the best.
McCartney: It’s so stupid it’s brilliant. It’s great if you’re ever in that sort of panic attack: “Oh, my God,” or, “Ahhh, what am I going to do?”
Swift: “Something will happen.”
McCartney: All right then, thanks for doing this, and this was, you know, a lot of fun.
Swift: You’re the best. This was so awesome. Those were some quality stories!
592 notes · View notes
hornyforyall · 4 years
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Naruto, Sasuke, Shikamaru Soulmate AU! Headcanons
A new series! I’ve made a bunch of different soulmate HCs for different characters and I hope y’all like these cuz I spent a while picking out and researching different soulmate AUs! 
Also another note! I’ve decided to do the 7 minutes in heaven (7MIH) oneshots because it seems like a lot of people liked the idea so hopefully I’ll start posting some of those this weekend!
Feel free to request some characters for soulmate AUs or 7 MIH if you want! Have a nice day everyone!! -Masy :)
Naruto
AU: There is a counter on your wrist and every time you pass your soulmate it goes up
His whole life Naruto thought his counter was broken because it never went up.
He got made fun of a lot as a kid for always having a zero on his counter, but he got used to it 
He started to lose hope in even having a soulmate but Iruka always told him that they probably didn’t live in Konoha  
One day he was on his way to get some ramen when he realized he forgot his wallet so he ran back to get it
Walking back towards to Ichiraku Ramen he glances down at his wrist just in time to see the counter move from two to three
“THREE??”
He starts walking backwards the way he came and it rolls over to four
He shoots his head up and looks around but there’s so many people, it could be anyone. So he does the only thing that comes to mind
“HEYYY! I’VE PASSED BY MY SOULMATE FOUR TIMES FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE WHERE THE HECK ARE YOU?”
Everybody turns to look at Naruto and several people glance down at their wrists but nobody moves towards him
He sighs and everyone goes back to what they were doing, he begins to resume walking to Ichiraku Ramen when someone grabs his hand
Turning around he sees you smile and hold up your wrist and then walk past him, the number rolls from four up to five
Sasuke
AU: Songs sung by your soulmate are stuck in your head.
Having a soulmate was by far the most annoying thing to ever happen to Sasuke
It was like you were nocturnal or something because as he tries to fall asleep all he hears is you singing 
And it wasn’t that you were a bad singer, in fact he thought you were a rather good one, it’s just that it was so distracting to him
He wants to maintain this stoic outward appearance but that's hard to do when he’s constantly hearing you sing Fergalicious in his head
Sometimes he would absentmindedly start singing with you and Naruto would tease him for singing
“Wow Sasuke, I didn’t know you liked pop music! You really know every word to that song!”
And then he would hear it, you singing while he walks past a shop
Immediately he back tracks and walks into the shop and right up to you, confused and flustered you would just stare at him
“If you don’t stop singing (insert your favourite song) 24/7 I might break my head open”
And then he just walks away leaving you to chase after him upon realizing he’s your soulmate
Shikamaru
AU: If you haven’t met your soulmate but have been in the same vicinity of each other (like passing each other on a street or in the same building), that day will keep repeating until you find each other.
“What a drag”
Honestly Shikamaru has always dreaded being in the same location as his soulmate, he wants to meet them but Konhana is such a big place and there’s so many people and ugh it would take forever to find you and he’d probably be trapped in a loop for the rest of his life
When he woke up and realized he was in a loop he debated just going back to bed, but instead he figured he would be able to find the other person who looked like they were looking for their soulmate
He was wrong
It had been four days of going through the same routine and he couldn’t find anyone that looked out of place
Losing hope quickly he decided to just do the next best thing and flop down on the ground and cloud gaze
Closing his eyes and basking in the warm of the sun he laid in the grass for an hour when he suddenly felt a person looming over him
He opened his eyes and you were standing above him, a smirk plastered across your face and your arms crossed 
“Found you”
Shikamaru tries to act all annoyed by the whole situation but he can’t help the grin that stretches across his face
“Took you long enough”
438 notes · View notes
rataltouille · 3 years
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BONFIRE, BONFIRE!: A COLLECTION OF FLASH FICTION + POETRY
so i’ve decided to compile all twenty [these will be split into two so that the post isn’t super long] of the writing pieces i’ve done for my random celebration into one post so that it’s easier to read / access share!! you can also find it here, all put into one work, on wattpad, because i feel nostalgic about that website and decided to just post it!!
NOTE: i know that this shouldn't need to be said, but these 20 pieces belong to me so please don’t copy/repurpose it for your writing!! i plan on using these somewhere in my own writing and either way they’re stuff i’ve written so don’t use them!!
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1. cooking + destructive + purple from @andiwriteunderthemoon [also i kind of cheated with this prompt and asked my sis @dreamscanbenightmarestoo for ideas and so the base idea’s from her!!]
I didn’t mean to set my house on fire, alright?
Let me set the scene: I’m sitting in my room, watching the infomercials that blur together, and suddenly there’s a bright purple flash on the glitching screen: /grapes/. They’re shiny, plump, and oh? A recipe for fine wine? Don’t mind if I do. So I pop into my kitchen and cut the grapes, dice them up, finally using the knife after years of not cooking— /mother, are you proud of me now?/— and stick the soft, luminescent fluid into a glass bottle. Following each step of the recipe.
The recipe didn’t mention an explosion.
Destruction rained around my house like a meteor shower. The bubbles from the fluid, frisking up at contact with metal, swam across my shoes and into the living room. It touched the TV, which still flashed the recipe, which I was still cursing at. And then, you know, it burnt up. The couch scorched first, I think. So that was fun. I later realised that I’d used my reserve of petroleum, which I’d put in my kitchen cabinet, instead of vinegar. I think I’ve got to move back in with my mother again.
2. running + quiet + sky blue from @kryskakikomi [i have no idea what this is i drafted this in a fever dream state]
Summer crawled up his skin like a worm. He was seated at his dining table, crosswording his way through the sticky morning, when it struck him that the humidity was new. He’d been caught in summer before, of course, but this year was different. His parents had whisked away to their hometown, and he still didn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to go. He loved their home— he could have been running on beach sand and waves could have cruised over his feet, and his face would reflect sky blue under palm trees. Instead he sat doodling and scratching at cement walls in a quiet that nagged at his ears, grappling his flesh like a fishing hook, reeling him in. Boredom, him sister told him, before she also left for someone’s home. What would you know? he whispered once the door latched from the outside. Maybe /she’d/ like to sit on the same wooden chair, all the pink paint worn out, and scratch out squares of empty text until the pen poked through the other hand. He scoffed. At least he knew the number of scars on the wood; he could hold that over her when his parents returned.
3. hallucinate + hazy + violet from @chloeswords [i wanted to write something dreamy and ethereal but everytime i look at your url i’m reminded of church mud and indirectly my religious trauma so here we are 🤡]
We hold the book in our arms and chant for God. We don’t know what he looks like. They say that he’s sharp, never pixelating or blurring or showing through, like a hazy image would. No, children, our family says, he will come clothed in gold and velvet— the colour a deep and rich crimson, or chartreuse. And of course, he weaves a violet into his hair. Because he is just that humble. Just that gentle. Loving.
We’ve almost understood now. Pray, clasp our palms together into a transient equinox, and pray. Maybe he will shine down on us. Maybe we will speak so loud and chant so long that our lips will chap. Maybe we’ll simply hallucinate him to salve our bones. Our family says, he will bless you. And so he will.
4. halcyon + pluviophile + beige from anon [i was yearning for cats i am a cat person i love cats]
I remember my life before I moved to London,
Those halcyon days that I spent scooping up cat litter and brushing warm fur,
Being a mother to beige and white and black little felines.
They keep better company than humans.
Now I’m a self-proclaimed businesswoman, artist, influencer, pluviophile,
Even when I’ve barely stepped foot outside during the rain,
[But it needs to be said that when it rains in London, it pours].
I think I’d like to open a cat cafe;
I’m rich enough to pull it off.
5. sing + vulnerable + olive green from @occiidens [this was actually super fun to write because it’s a break from the typically unhinged stories i gravitate towards]
You watch from the highest hill of your town, hand wrapped around the serrated wood of a red oak tree. The bark pokes into your flesh, drawing blood that shouldn’t have been taken from you. You scowl. Just another thing that lives to cause you pain.
Three storeys down is a young man, short and smiling and lovely. He has dark skin and darker hair, walking with the stride of a deer, and he’s smiling; the joy reflects onto your face, even though you can’t hear him. He wears a cotton shirt, the olive green stark against the fire-blue sky. You call out, sing his name, three times in a row.
When he finally looks up, squinting as you silhouette under the sun, the smile widens. A wave. You’re suddenly overcome with embarrassment. Your palm digs into the bark until the wound is freshly dug again, the skin supple and vulnerable. You want to wave, but your hands would look so awkward, and the blood wouldn't help. So you turn on your heel and run— why are you so awkward?— and the grass around you is brighter. This is now a tomorrow issue, you conclude. You’re still smiling.
6. dislocate + ostentatious + blood red from @oasis-of-you [this got really unhinged really fast. TW: body horror]
If you take a turn at Finn Avenue,
Rogue your way down a blood red river,
[It’s not actual blood, do not worry. The colour’s a pigment and it’s saturated enough to give you the texture, the touch, the taste of blood, but I repeat, it isn’t true blood. You might think that it’s ostentatious of us to make you cross a river like that, but you’ll understand why.]
And if can stick your fingers inside the fluid,
You’ll find a bone.
Don’t pull it out fully! Only observe.
[This is a real bone, most likely animal. We may be ominous, but we don’t hurt humans. Not yet.]
So what do you do now? You want passage into a better world.
You came here because you saw the brochure, the flyer,
Radiant Idyll, home for love, but you also saw the jutting anatomy that leads to the city. The pictures were rather clear.
Why do you look so surprised? We’ve put this on the brochure— don’t you ever read the fine print?— to avoid this exact situation. That you would cross a body, a skeleton, pooled over in a fluid that we don’t name, but it’s probably alive.
It’s watching you right now.
So what do you do now?
Hurry up, unhinge your arm, dislocate the elbow, drop it into the blood, forgive me, false blood, and pay for your passage.
Oh! Excellent; that’s record time. We do hope you enjoy your stay!
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1. @noteaboy [i’ve interpreted your url as ”note, a boy”]
There’s an orange tree. It’s spring, and there’s an orange tree, and it brims with fruit and citrus perfume. Point your lens flare downwards, and note, a boy. A young man, perhaps, because he combs his hair, uptight and firm, and he wears a tie. A long suit. He doesn’t look up, because his hand holds a book. /He/ holds the book, not the hands— tenderness doesn’t translate through anatomy, I’ve taught you this before. He’s waiting for someone. There’s only the rustle of leaves. He drops the book onto the lap of the tree, crushing the apple that had fallen down. Orange, not apple. Take note better. You only have one chance to get this right.
2. @eatingjupiter [your url is so beautiful omg]
The goddess had said this before she died: you need to watch over him. He needs your sentry to survive. The goddess’ words weren’t heeded. Little baby Jupiter tottered on lava as him parents small-talked with their kingdom. Well, it must have been small talk, because nothing seemed to happen afterwards other than his mother’s face collapsing in agony, anger, annoyance. He knew not to touch them then. He’d fly off into the sun one day, but if his hands were but and charred, he wouldn’t survive even a third of the journey.
The prophecy was simple: the firstborn to the kingdom will metamorph into a celestial, purify themselves so that only stardust remains. Live in the sky forever. The astrologers were baffled; you don’t just become a star. They should have heeded the goddess.
Jupiter was sixteen when he expanded and collapsed all at once. He still lives, they say, and the astrologers /were/ right, in a way: people just don’t become stars. They become almost empty space. Nobody knows if his hands were burnt when they left earth’s orbit forever.
3. @laughtracksonata [your name gave me slight horror vibes idk why!!]
Hahaha. The Horror Movie (don’t ask me for a name, I’m not good with those), with its cymbal crashing and plastic sounds, it’s so loud and scary that it hurts, father. Please turn it off.
Father doesn't listen. I shiver on the couch. The screen flickers like radio static and reflects off our wide eyes. What kind of a home is this anyway? I don’t want to fucking listen to a laugh track or a horror VHS tape or watch the bass crescendo as the serial killer jumpscares the watcher. I don’t think that having hour pupils glued to the same blood-splattered movie, with the same recording looping in his eardrums will help him. He laughs along, sometimes. It’s scary. Father needs a new hobby.
PART TWO COMING SOON!!
anyway this got REALLY long so i’m posting the third prompt group, the one based on songs, as a second part in some time. i hope you enjoy this, and PLEASE do boost!! i spent a lot of time writing these pieces and am pretty proud of them :’)
general taglist: @lovingyou-is @guulabjamuns @andiwriteunderthemoon @coffeeandcalligraphy @melonmilk @silentlylostwriter @charles-joseph-writes @eklavvya @eowynandfaramir @bitterwitchwrites @laughtracksonata @whatwordsdidnttouch @indeliblewrites @thenataliawrites @summersguilt @illimani-gibberish @sarahkelsiwrites @writing-in-delirium @shaelinwrites @sienna-writes @chewingthescenery @jennawritesstories @chloeswords @aelenko @keira-is-writing @cherylinanika @infinitely-empty-pages @jmtwrites @august-iswriting @freedelusionbanana @beetleblue88 @mistercaleb @iwannawritepls @hanwatchingmovies @mortallynuttyqueen @idratherliveinnarnia @maisulli @thegreyboywrites @ahowlinwolf @ravens-and-rivers @oasis-of-you @yanittawrites @chazza-writes-sometimes @skyfirewrites @lovebenders @treybriggsthewriter @themidnxghtwriter @ash-karter @queen-devasena @a-procrastination-addict @gaymityblight @beyondthebracken @madmaxst26 @adielwrites @moonpixxel @hollow-knight-dnd @keep-looking-here @overlap @ashleygarciawrites @ryns-ramblings​ @wordsbynathan @novaemlynlewis​ @sophiewritingstuff​ @howdy-writes​ @occiidens​ @nsanelyawkward​ @viawrites-andacts​
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mascwhump · 3 years
Text
Chapter 4: Sharp Edges
Here ya go.
TW: blood, mild gore, stabbing, drugs?, starvation
Tag list: @whatwasmyprevioususername @milk-carton-whump @whumpasaurus101 @whatwhumpcomments @mnmlover2002 @ashintheairlikesnow
-
The only way Charlie was able to keep track of time was through the meals he was given, and the lighting in his room.
For breakfast, it was a slice of toast, two slices of bacon, and a glass of orange juice. For lunch, a ham and cheese sandwich, a glass of water, and a multivitamin. For dinner, a bowl of chicken noodle soup and carrot sticks, or a plate of pot roast and mashed potatoes, and a glass of water.
The lights would turn off a few hours after dinner, and be relit just before breakfast. Only one light near the door remained on, providing just enough light to see. One day, he asked Basil the time.
"I'm not allowed to say," he answered.
So, Charlie made up his own time. Breakfast was at 7 AM, Lunch at Noon, Dinner at 5 PM, and the lights shut off at 10 PM. They would turn on again at 6 AM. He had no idea how accurate this was, but keeping time was one thing that allowed him to keep control.
He continued to find new ways to pass the time. Now healed, he was able to do more rigorous exercise. He'd do a circuit of push ups, sit ups, jumping jacks, planks, and whatever else he thought of that he could do with his arms chained. He'd also sing softly to himself. The silence was deafening at times. He often sang "i'll wait for you" by Saint Slumber - a song on Crow's playlist.
He wondered about the team, about what they were doing. He hoped that Deke was alright - he wasn't there when Mallory showed him the video of the team being released. He must've gotten out before the soldiers got to him. That's what he hoped, at least.
A lot of time was spent reminiscing. There were a lot of good times with the team, especially when they got to hang out as friends while on leave. Once, Adrian brought home a used poker set after venturing into town. They all got drunk and played until morning. Another time, it had snowed, and Ethan insisted on using a riot shield they had stolen on one of their previous missions to go sledding. They walked through the woods to find a good hill, and took turns. Crow just watched. He claimed he was too big for the "sled", and said he was having fun  just watching his friends eat shit at the bottom of the hill.
At dinner one night, Basil brought in a thin mat and a mint green blanket. Charlie wasn't outwardly grateful, but he secretly appreciated it. Sleeping on the cold tile floor was doing a number to his back. The mat couldn't have been more than an inch thick, but anything would be better than the tile. The blanket was equally welcomed - the sweatpants he was given hardly did anything to keep him warm.
He wasn't sure if Basil had brought it on his own accord, or if Mallory instructed him to give it to him. He assumed the latter; Basil surely wouldn't do anything without prior approval. The kid looked like he would cry if Charlie even looked at him wrong.
The next day, Basil came in to bring breakfast; only, he didn't have any food with him.
"I'm sorry, they didn't have a tray for you. I still came to let you use the restroom," Basil said.
Charlie thought it was strange. Did they forget to make his meal, or was something else going on? Maybe they ran out of food. He didn't mind too much, because he wasn't really hungry, anyway. Basil left and Charlie thought about how many others might be there.
Time passed, and Charlie’s stomach was growling. Basil would bring lunch soon, he thought. But soon the lights shut off for the night. There wasn’t anything he could do besides go to sleep.
Morning came. Charlie woke up to the sound of the door opening. He was about to say something snarky to Basil, questioning why he wasn’t fed, when he realized it wasn’t him in the room.
Mallory stood in the middle of the room, holding a duffel bag. Charlie stood up and approached him, getting as close as he could until the chains stopped him about 3 feet away.
“So you’re going to starve me now?” He spat.
“Basil has been assigned to other duties,” Mallory said, setting the bag on the floor.
“And that means I don’t get to eat?”
Mallory stepped closer to Charlie, leaving just inches between them.
“Firstly, food is a privilege. You’re lucky I allow you any food at all. Secondly,” he growled, “you do not speak to me that way.”
“I’ll speak however I want,” Charlie hissed.
Mallory shoved him back, causing him to fall to the ground. He was a lot stronger than he looked. Charlie propped himself up on his hands and watched him retrieve something from the bag. He pulled out a some sort of chain contraption with three loops.
“I’m releasing you from the wall, but the moment you do anything stupid, you lose that privilege. And I’ll make the chains even shorter,” Mallory said.
Charlie only nodded. Mallory seemed to accept that as an acceptable response, and motioned for Charlie to stand up. He walked behind him and Charlie could hear keys jingling.
“Do not move until I put these on,” Mallory ordered.
The first cuff of the chain was free. Charlie felt relief as the metal fell from his wrist. A thought arose from the back of his mind to fight when the other cuff was off. He knew it was stupid, and that the chances of him even getting close to escaping were one in a billion.
He did it anyway.
As soon as the other cuff came off, he whipped around. He managed to land a punch to Mallory’s jaw, and a kick to his shin. But a sharp pain in his abdomen stopped him in his tracks. He began to look down before he was thrown onto his back. Mallory stood over him, holding his hand to his cheek.
“I’m not stupid, Charlie.”
The handle of a knife was sticking out of Charlie’s chest, just below his sternum. In shock, he lied there, unmoving. Every breath made the pain worse. He watched as Mallory circled around him. He could taste blood in his mouth.
Mallory then leaned down and gripped the handle of the knife, looking directly into Charlie’s eyes as he pulled it out. Charlie screamed, his hands flying to the wound and putting pressure on it. He rolled over in pain.
“How long should I let you suffer before I give you your little miracle drug?”
Charlie ignored him. He was too focused on not dying. There was no way the knife hadn’t gone through his stomach or liver. Blood poured out onto his hands and the floor. He whimpered as he applied more pressure. It felt like hours had passed before he felt the needle poke his arm.
Soon, the pain flipped into ecstasy. He rolled back onto his back and stared at the ceiling while the serum worked. Mallory stared in amazement as the wound seemed to magically heal, leaving no scar. It was a few more minutes until the high came down. Charlie was left dazed on the floor, covered in blood.
“Go take a bath,” Mallory said as he turned to leave, “and clean this up. If there’s one spot of blood on the floor when I come back...”
He left the room after picking up the duffel bag and Charlie sat up. There was a pain in his abdomen, like a bruise. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was. He got to his feet and walked into the bathroom. He turned on the faucet and got in the bathtub, scrubbing away the blood on his body and hands.
After the bath, he used a towel to wipe up the blood from the floor. It took a few rinses of the towel in the sink to get it perfectly clean. He didn’t leave anything behind.
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unholyhelbig · 3 years
Note
How about part two to the workplace Au you just did? Loved the first one!
A/N: Sure thing! I’m glad you guys liked the first one so much (You can read it here)
Request more prompts here | Read on ao3! 
Chloe could read the discomfort on Beca Mitchell’s face as soon as she unzipped the bag that she had picked up from the dry cleaners. She was struck with the instant scent of lavender detergent, fanning her hand over the outfit like she was picking the next lucky number for the lottery.
Beca had her hand on her chin, a flash of red made her head spin. She was in sweatpants and a grease-stained shirt. She figured that if she had ignored the date on the bottom of the flyer long enough, maybe Chloe would just forget.
No such luck.
“How did you find my apartment?” She asked, clinging to the door.
“It was in your file.”
“I feel like this is slightly illegal.”
“Slightly,” Chloe pushed her way through the door and looked around the apartment. It was kept in a shockingly messy state. Beca presented herself as someone who dotted every ‘I’ and crossed every ‘T’. At least, that’s how she was at work. But there was a leaning tower of pizza boxes and a couple of record sleeves strewn across the room. “You’re not even close to ready.”
“I forgot,” She let the door swing closed “what if we just ignore this PR bullshit and watch a movie instead. Technically I’m still socializing.”
Chloe turned on her heel and scanned Beca up and down. She hugged the bag close to her. “It would look horrible for me to ditch a party I planned.”
“Then you go. I’ll keep watch here.”
“Beca,”
The coder flopped down onto the pile of blankets at the far end of the sofa. She crossed her socked feet and waved her hand in the air as if asking Chloe to continue. For the first time tonight, she noticed the makeup and the slim fitted dress that hugged every inch of the woman’s curves. The black material made the sharp disdain in her eyes glow even further.
But goddamn it, if she wasn’t absolutely captivating. And she smelled lie oranges. Beca had half the mind to stealthy survey her fingers for any trace of a ring. She hadn’t done so in the office, but there was no man to be seen in them. She had blown her chance, she figured, by being her authentic self.
“Red isn’t my color.” She stared at the dress. It had a plunging neckline and would make her look pale. She wasn’t working with much, Chloe was kidding herself. She was also here three full hours before the dreaded thing was supposed to start.
“Just give it a shot. You promised.”
“Wrong. I considered.”
Chloe tossed the bag at her. The fabric was nice, soft against her fingers. She stared at the slight bit of lace and the little bag of gold jewelry that the woman had attached. A few rings and a necklace tipped with a triangle that practically pointed at her cleavage.
“Alright, whatever. I’ll shower.”
She hoisted herself from the couch and tried not to stare too long at the look of triumph on Chloe’s face. It was equally as infuriating as it was attractive. She grabbed a towel from the pile of unfolded clothes on the other end of the sofa and vanished into the back hallway.
Chloe stood like a statue until she heard the water running. Then her curiosity got the better of her and she started to glace around the space; the walls were slathered in charcoal grey and a few album covers were framed and tacked up. Beca had a record player and an extensive library of music. It seemed to be the only tidy thing in here.
She walked over to the couch and picked up one of the blankets. It smelled like detergent and whatever musk Beca radiated herself. She started absently folding, chewing the inside of her lip, so deep in thought that she hadn’t even realized that the shower had shut off and Beca padded into the room in nothing but a towel, still soaked to the bone.
She cleared her throat “Did you clean up?”  
“It’s a nervous habit,” Chloe turned and tried not to let her breath catch. The employee usually stuck with baggy sweatpants and even baggier shirts. They didn’t’ have a dress code at work and she border-lined pajamas with her outfit choices. But Beca? Beca had a figure. “You ready?”
“I’m at your mercy.” She grumbled, “But no eyeliner.”
“oh, come on.”
“You’re not getting close to my eye with a pencil, forget it.” She crossed her arms over her chest, not letting the towel slip in the slightest “Fine. But I’m doing it. Stop pouting.”
Chloe begged to differ. She didn’t pout. She didn’t’ want to push it any further though, so she nodded and grasped the dress before letting Beca lead the way to her room.
           Beca tugged uncomfortably at the hem of her dress as they exited the car. It had hiked up as soon as she sat down, but at that point, she didn’t’ care. The weather had taken a turn to the colder side and she just wanted feeling in her legs. A light dusting of snow had forced their driver to flick on the wipers and move closer to the glass to see past the haze of headlights.
Chloe grasped at her wrist absently, forcing her to stop shifting the fabric. Her hand was warm enough to shock her into complying, but not without a glare. They looked like quite the pair; Beca was almost the same height as Chloe with the heels that were supplied, and she stood out horridly. Red like blood on the snow after a fresh hunt.
The company had spared no expense with the carpet, purple like their logo and leading into a lavish lobby in a hotel that Beca had never been in. She was sure they would throw her out if she walked in and asked to use the bathroom with fancy soap. But when Chloe was at her side, looping her arm through her own, she could pass instantly.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Chloe read the blush on the woman’s cheeks “I’m sure if I weren’t holding onto you, you’d be face down on the floor by now. Take it slow.”
“You sound like a stage mom.”
“In that case,” she frowned “You’re a horrible student.”
Beca scoffed but was secretly thankful for the human crutch. Chloe had an easy way of walking about her, she pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin, and acted like she owned the whole building. It was one foot in front of the other, and Beca wobbled on the first few, but eventually evened out. Maybe the stance was a tactical thing- to keep the balance.
They walked through the doors and Beca instantly felt her legs wobble at the direct warmth. There was a clothed table by the entrance, lined with identical masks. Chloe plucked a red one off the table and passed Beca a black one, looking at her expectantly.
“The whole purpose of this is for you to get comfortable being around people. Maybe you can do that if they can’t see the top half of your face.” She spoke with ease as she knotted her own mask. And she had to admit, even though this was utterly stupid, she wouldn’t have recognized Chloe in a crowd. Not if she hadn’t spent the last four hours with her.
She fastened her own mask and took Chloe’s outstretched hand, begrudgingly but thankful at the same time; the ballroom was equally as impressive, violet lights on an installed dance floor and clothed tables with little favors and plates. It looked like a wedding for bank robbers, but Beca couldn’t help letting her mouth prop open.
“Shocked?” Chloe asked, scanning the décor “I do know how to throw a hell of a party.”
“The last party I went to was not this classy.” Beca breathed “We did have bongs made out of apples though, so I’m going to need you to step up your game.”
Chloe smiled, it looked brighter under her mask. She leads them towards a table in the corner and plucked two flutes of champagne from the passing waiter. Alcohol. That was something that Beca wasn’t opposed to. She finished it in two long gulps.
She hovered awkwardly by as the woman who had dragged her here in the first place spoke with a couple of people that she wouldn’t have recognized even if they were shrouded by masks. They shouted over the music; a man in a snazzy looking suit questioned her presence.
“This is one of the most talented coders we have!” Chloe shouted over the sound of the base “Almost single-handedly created the VPN.”
“You’re impressive!” He called out to her “Such a pretty date too!”
Chloe just laughed and Beca thanked him over the bass. He squeezed Chloe’s shoulder before vanishing into the crowd. She leaned close then, her breath hot against Beca’s collarbone, and that familiar floral scent clouded her lungs and judgment. “See, that wasn’t so hard. You’re a natural. Want to dance?”
She did not, in fact, want to dance. But Chloe pulled her onto the floor almost as smoothly as the champagne glasses. Beca was glad that she had swallowed it so quickly. It made the idea of dancing seem more appealing. And Chloe did have good taste in music.
They worked themselves into the crowd and Beca let the sound flow through her. She ignored all of the people, for the most part. Chloe was painfully obvious behind her, grinding close, running her hands across the dress that she had picked out. Beca felt like she was back in college- and she had to admit, she was having fun.
She lost track of how many songs they had danced to, but eventually, the DJ lowered the music and spoke into the microphone. “Alright folks, we having fun? I hope so! I want to interrupt your masquerade for just a moment.”  
There were a few groans from the crowd, but none of them sincere.
“Now, I know you’re all being secretive about your identities tonight. But I want to pull the one and only Chloe Beale onto the stage. Y’all okay with that?”
There were a few shouts from the people around her, followed by applause as Chloe gave Beca’s arm a squeeze and maneuvered her way through the crowd. A woman in an even tighter navy blue dress helped her up the stage and Beca clapped along, lilting her head as she watched, captivated like the rest of the room.
This didn’t’ feel customary, bringing the party planner up to say a few words. Not when it was essentially a giant PR event for a tech company. Beca crossed her arms over her chest as Chloe captivated an entire crowd.
“I’m glad you’re all having fun under the cover of the night,” She lowered her voice dramatically, flashing that brilliant smile. “And we’re so happy to unveil our new VPN, that everyone has been working so hard on.”
It had been months of coding, Beca having to fix so many bugs that the 0’s and 1’s ran circles around her head. Hearing praise from Chloe’s lips made her tingly- or maybe that was the buzzing of her skin after eating cold pizza for breakfast and drinking on a nearly empty stomach.
“We strive for innovation and protection, and our new product can give you just that.” She gripped the podium and waited for a few cheers to settle “When I first started this company in my parent's basement, which doubled as our laundry room, I never imagined this. Thank you, and enjoy the party!”
Beca’s heart had seized in her chest then, as the music started up and the people around her moved with the rhythm once more. She let them bump into her as she mindlessly walked to the edge of the lit-up floor, towards Chloe.
This made sense to her, finally, it made sense. The reason why she was pushing her so hard to interact with other people in the office, why she didn’t have a title on her door. Chloe was the boss. Chloe had seen her ratty apartment and, oh my god, Chloe knows she smokes weed.
The woman in the navy dress talked animatedly to the woman at the side of the stage, nodding and gesturing to the rest of the room. Chloe looked pensive, she mumbled something under her breath and immediately turned towards Beca.
“Dude, what the hell?” She asked, sounding less elegant than she’d hoped.
Chloe shrugged “Stacie from HR wanted to talk to you first but I thought I’d give it a shot.”
“This is literally your party.”
“Yes?”
“Like in your honor. Not something you planned.”
“Well, I did that too.” She shrugged nonchalantly as Beca gaped at her “Look, Beca. I like you, okay? You’re one stubborn girl. And I wanted to spend a night with you, is all. When the report about your lack of social skills happened across my desk, I took a chance.”
She felt her cheeks heat up “You could have just asked me, you know?”
“Would you have said yes?”
“Absolutely not,” She pointed her finger “But only because you’re making me wear a dress. Maybe next time, we could just settle for street tacos or something?”
Chloe laughed, and it was a beautiful sound that mixed so perfectly with the music. “Next time?”
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caitlesshea · 4 years
Text
passed down like folk songs
4 times Nile hears Joe and Nicky tell a fake story of how they met + 1 time she hears them tell the real story.
1.
“We met at university.”
Nile pauses from where she’s sucking down her milkshake through a straw even in New York City winter because Chicago, when she smiles at whatever flowery love story Joe and Nicky are currently telling a bakery owner. 
“How lovely.” The owner says and then smiles at Joe’s humorous turn of events. 
Nile’s glad she made them take her to Max Brenner, even in this weather, because even though they aren’t tourists, she is. And neither one complained when she saw them greedily lap up the hot chocolate. 
She also saw Nicky eyeing a Hug Mug and she grabbed it before he noticed. Even though no one else celebrates Christmas, she does, so they’re all getting gifts.
“He was my English tutor.” Nicky says and Nile snorts, recalling both of their animated stories of their distaste for learning English when they did, hundreds of years ago.
“He was my best student.” 
And, Nile’s back to gagging. 
She loves them, she does. But there’s only so much poetic love she can hear them wax about each other before she tunes it out. 
She should’ve dragged Andy along with her, but her and Quynh opted to stay in their town home they’ve owned since the Industrial Revolution or something, and lord knows where Booker’s fucked off to. 
So, she’s walking around New York in November, so Joe and Nicky can go to their favorite bakery on the other side of the city from where their place is. 
“He really didn’t need any help with English.” Joe teases and Nicky smiles like this is a story they’ve told before. 
“Nope. We’ve been married for eight years now.” Nicky says to the owner, who squeals loudly. 
They end up leaving the bakery with more pastries than they paid for, much to Joe’s delight. 
“Eight years, huh?”
“It has been eight years since our last wedding.” Nicky says and Nile’s eyes bug out of her head.
“Wait, you’re actually married?”
They both stare at her like she’s lost her mind and she doesn’t know why she thought they weren’t.
“We’ve been married for a long time. Different places, different names, different countries.” Joe shrugs and grabs Nicky’s hand as they continue their walk. 
Nile pulls another bit of milkshake through her straw and follows after them. 
2.
“Your friend is very hot.” The woman, Anya, smirks at Nile as she gestures over her shoulder.
“Who?” Nile asks incredulously because for one quick moment she wants to answer with I don’t have friends but she knows that’s not exactly true so she just gapes at Anya with her mouth open. 
Anya, the daughter of their mark, who Nile is supposed to be getting to know, just points rudely towards Joe.
“Are you lovely ladies talking about me?” Joe slides up to Nile and puts an arm over her shoulders.
“No.” Nile says at the exact same time Anya says yes.
Anya smacks Nile’s arm playfully and smirks at Joe.
“I was just telling Nile how attractive you are.” 
Nile stares at Anya wondering when she got so bold and then looks at Joe who’s smiling and blushing, which she didn’t think was possible.
“Why thank you. But I am happily taken.” 
As if summoned by Joe mentioning he’s taken, Nicky comes over and places a hand on the small of Joe’s back as he separates from Nile.
Anya is pouting but Nicky just smiles.
“Were you talking about me, love?”
“I was just about to tell Anya how we met skiing in the Alps on vacation.” Joe turns to look at Anya and continues. “My Nico is not the most coordinated and he got his skis tangled and once we realized he was okay I asked him to join me in the lodge and we had hot coco in front of the fire. He still makes fun of my love for mini marshmallows.” 
Nile smirks at the story, knowing that some of it is probably true and when she turns back to Anya she notices what only can be described as heart eyes.
“That is the sweetest story.” Anya gushes and just as she’s about to go on, her father, their mark, walks up and smiles at her.
“Darling. Who are you friends?” 
As Anya introduces them Nicky turns to her and winks.
Yeah. They’ve definitely told that story before.
3.
“Do you wanna dance?”
Nile turns at the question and comes face to face with the most attractive woman she’s ever seen. 
“I’m Nile.” Nile blurts out unintelligently and the beautiful woman laughs and Nile’s fucked.
“I’m Frankie.” The woman, Frankie, smiles and leans closer to Nile. “Dance with me?”
Nile nods as she finishes her drink and turns in time to catch Joe’s smirk. She rolls her eyes and lets Frankie pull her out to the dance floor.
They’re in London, because Booker needed to be here for something he couldn’t say, but right now Nile doesn’t care. She convinced Joe and Nicky that they needed a night off and they let her drag them to a club. 
She’s forever grateful they agreed. 
She lets Frankie grab her hips and pull them flush together and after a couple of songs Nile feels want like she hasn’t since she died in the desert. 
“Your friends are staring at us.” Frankie whispers in her ear and it pulls Nile out of the moment.
“Huh?”
“Your friends. They’re protective?”
“Oh.” Nile tugs on the belt loops of Frankie’s jeans. “Yeah.”
“Introduce me to them.”
“What?”
“I want to meet your friends.” Nile looks at Frankie incredulously because really? 
“Kiss me.” Nile says instead. 
So Frankie kisses her and Nile ends up dragging her to meet Joe and Nicky. 
“Joe. Nicky. This is Frankie.” Nile introduces them as she steals Nicky’s drink right out of his hand. He scoffs and smiles so she knows he’s not mad.
“How do you know Nile?” Frankie asks them like they didn’t all meet tonight. Nile would find this weird but she’s immortal so what even is her life?
“Nile and I met at work.” Joe answers. “But I brought my husband to a work party and I’m pretty sure he stole my best friend.” 
Nile’s breath catches in her throat. She knows Joe’s telling a story and she knows they’re friends but something about the way he says best friend makes her heart clench. 
“And how did you meet your husband?” Frankie asks as she slides closer to Nile.
Nile assumes she’s being nice, trying to get to know them, but the cynical part of her that has only grown more and more since she became immortal wonders why Frankie is asking all of these questions.
“Oh, it wasn’t much different than this.” Joe gestures to the club and even though Nile knows it’s a lie her eyes still bug out of her head. 
“Really?” Nile squeaks and Joe smiles.
“Yes, although I think it was called a speakeasy. The one we met at had a dress code and everything. Fedoras, suspenders, the whole nine. Nico was very dashing.” 
Nicky smiles at Joe as he kisses him quickly, once, and then turns back to them. 
“He bought me a drink and the rest as they say is history.” 
Nile chuckles and Frankie seems enraptured by them and Nile gets it, she does, but she tugs Frankie back onto the dance floor. 
Later Frankie puts her number in Nile’s burner phone and Nile throws it on the ground and crushes it with her boot.
4.
“Did Dr. Jones tell you I introduced him to his husband?” Luca, the curator at the museum they’re canvassing asks.
“No, I don’t think so.” Nile smirks and Joe rolls his eyes.
“He didn’t introduce us so much as we met when I was helping curate one of the museum exhibits. Nico, as you know, is a photographer and he was hired to take photos before the opening.” Joe smiles like he’s replaying a pleasant memory. 
“Love at first sight?” Nile teases and Joe and Luca laugh.
“Seemed like they couldn’t stand each other at first.” Luca smirks and Nile raises an eyebrow at Joe who just shrugs.
“We figured it out eventually.” Joe turns to her and Nile knows the moment Nicky walks into the room because Joe’s gaze has left Nile and is now focused over her head. 
“Practice makes perfect.” Nile mumbles and Luca smiles at her as Joe leaves them to go stand next to Nicky.
+1
“Hurry up!” Joe calls after them as Nile, Andy, and Quynh cross the street to catch up to them.
Nile pulls her scarf tighter around her neck to keep the chill away. It’s New Years Eve and they’re back in London, because Booker, and they’re trying to beat the crowds out of the city to get back to Copley’s. 
They’re about to jump onto the sidewalk when Nile hears it; tires skidding, a sickening crunch, and Booker’s ear piercing scream. 
“James!” 
That’s new. 
Before Nile can even process what’s happened, the car is speeding away and Joe is trying to grab Booker by the shoulders while Andy and Quynh land on the pavement next to a woman, unconscious on the ground, body twisted in an unnatural way.
“Nile.” Nicky takes her by the shoulders and steers her away from Copley, lying on the ground, blood pooling around him, and the woman, who it looks like he was trying to save. 
Booker is inconsolable and suddenly London makes a lot more sense. 
“Booker.” Nile goes to say as she steps around Nicky and stops in her tracks when she sees the woman.
“Frankie.” Nile falls onto the pavement unconcerned with her jeans getting soaked as she gently touches Frankie’s face. 
She wants to scream, she wants to cry, she wants to blame this universe for all that is unfair. 
Booker’s hiccupping sobs cut through most of her inner turmoil as she turns to Andy and Quynh.
“We need…” Nile clears her throat. “We have to call the police.” 
“Nile.” Nicky’s voice is soft and she turns sharp eyes on him. 
She’s about to argue with him when there’s a loud gasp as Copley shoots awake right into Booker’s arms. 
“Sébastien.” Copley whispers as Booker starts crying in earnest now, mumbling in French, as Joe holds both of them. 
“We have to get off the street.” Nicky says quietly.
“We can’t leave her.” Nile grabs Frankie’s hand, the woman she spent a half a night with, and knows she can’t leave her alone.
“Nile.” Andy tries to placate her.
“No.” Nile stares Andy down. “No.” 
“Frankie.” Copley crawls over to her and Nile’s eyes widen and she’s about to ask how he knows her when Frankie gasps awake and turns to cough up blood.
“Shit.” Frankie says as she grabs her head and watches in abject fascination as her legs heal. 
Nile has just a moment to catch Frankie before she passes out and hits her head on the pavement.
“Now can we get out of here?” Andy asks exasperated and everyone nods as Nile picks Frankie up.
Back at Copley’s, hours later, Frankie listens as Joe and Nicky explain everything to her. 
Nile wants to comfort her, wants to know if this is why she felt drawn to her before, months ago. 
She has so many questions but they can wait until Frankie asks all of hers. Luckily Copley doesn’t have many, and he and Booker are cuddled on the couch together.
“Nicky and I met in the Crusades.” Joe says cheerfully, and Nile’s thrown back to the church almost a year ago when she heard the same story. 
In retrospect, it probably shouldn’t have taken her almost a year to figure it out. 
“We killed each other.” Joe jokes as he winks at Nicky.
“Many times.” Nicky smiles at Joe but Nile can see what she now knows isn’t just an underlying sadness of hurting his love, but the battle he wages within himself, nearly a millennium later, thinking he’s still not worthy, that he’ll never be able to repent for those sins he made outside of Jerusalem. 
“They never get to tell the real story.” Nile says quietly to Andy. 
“Real story?”
“Of how they met. I mean before tonight they maybe told it three times? You and Quynh, Booker, me.”
“Ah. Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“That must be really hard.” 
“They have fun with it.” Andy shrugs as she looks over at Quynh.
“I’ve heard some of the stories.”
“They’re not just stories.” At Nile’s questioning glance Andy continues. “I mean most of the things have happened, they just leave out the part where they already know each other.”
“Huh.” Nile thinks back to all the stories she’s heard them tell of how they met or how they got together and her heart aches that they’ve only been able to share the real version a handful of times.
“You’ll be able to have your own stories someday.” Andy nudges her and she looks over at Frankie.
“We met at a club.” Nile smiles at the memory. 
“Yeah, but tonight is when you really met. And someday they’ll be another to share it with.” 
That makes sense and Nile smiles at the possibilities. 
“So, Copley, are you gonna tell us why you were meeting up with a CIA analyst?” Joe asks Copley and Nile watches both Copley and Booker look at Frankie and then Copley gets up and goes toward his office.
“I was gonna tell everyone tomorrow.” Copley says as he leans against Booker, who pulls him closer to his side. 
Copley drops a file down on the table and Joe and Nicky open it. 
Nicky quickly loses all the color in his cheeks and stares at Frankie with something akin to awe.
“Is this real?” Joe asks and Copley nods.
“She’s a descendant of Nicky’s. We worked together before I left the agency and since I can never let anything go…” Copley trails off. “I got in touch and she said she was interested in her ancestry. I was gonna tell you what I found before I brought her in but well…”
Frankie looks around at everyone and then she makes her way over to Nile. 
“Hi.” Frankie says quietly to Nile as everyone else in the room starts talking over each other.
“Hi.” Nile says as they sway closer together.
“Is this why you never texted me?”
“Yes.” Nile breathes and Frankie smiles. 
“I forgive you.” 
“Oh you do?” Nile teases her and Frankie smirks before turning back to the rest of the room. 
Nicky has a strange look on his face and Frankie turns her questioning gaze to Nile. 
“He’s trying to figure out which one of us to give the shovel talk to.” Nile smirks and Joe laughs with his whole body as Nicky winks. 
“Is he?” Frankie smirks and tugs Nile impossibly closer. 
“Yeah.” Nile breathes against Frankie’s mouth before she closes the distance and kisses her.
“Let’s give him something to talk about.” 
This is a story Nile can’t wait to share.
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h0neyjaehyun · 3 years
Text
☁︎ 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥 ☁︎
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Summary // Its Tali's birthday and her brothers
Characters // Tali Flores + Miguel Flores (ft. NCT127+ Bang Chan + Karma Yoon + Song-ho + Allen.)
Era / Year // February 2017
Word Count //
Italics // English
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"Out of all days...you just had to pick our birthday to model." Tali said shaking her head.
Tali accepted her brothers invitation to model with him in February but didn't know it was going to be on their birthday. She had to leave early so the boys won't stop her from going. She had to tell her manager to tell Nct 127 manager to tell the members she had a schedule today so they won't worry cause they took her phone because of hate comments.(yes ofc we totally love that)
Miguel chuckled at her and put his arm around her shoulders.
"Come on its been awhile and its been awhile since we have spent time together." He pointed out.
She rolled her eyes at him, but did have a point. His modeling career has been off the charts going to different countries to model at points she joins him but they haven't spent a lot of time together properly especially on birthdays, one always seems busy.
"Come on people lets get these twins changed we gotta start." The photographer shouted and people started to scramble.
She has forgotten how this type of modeling was like and its a lot work and longer too. Since usually its more like oh they get two outfits each 5 poses and only one place to stay go while this...this is multiple outfits, different changes, different makeup styles each and places changes.
She mentally groaned remembering all of this, since she sometimes modeled here and there with her brother since he wasn't yet comfortable with other people aka girls. She didn't mind at first but its been awhile since she did this.
After she came out of the dressing room with her outfit that people helped her put on, her brother clapped.
"What?" She raised an eyebrow at him.
"You look great."
"Oh tha-"
"Cause you look just like me." He said with such confidence cutting her off. Tali gave him such a dirty look.
"What?" He said questioning her dirty look.
"Nevermind, I'm just wondering how I'm related to you." She said looking him up and down and walked out of the dressing room. Miguel looked at her with a disbelief look on his face thinking, I forgot how much of a bitch she can be.
While Tali was walking out her manager got gave her the phone. It was Doyoung. She answered.
"Hi Doyoung."
"Hi princess, happy birthday."
"Aw thank you."
"The guys are wondering where you are, we wanna celebrate your birthday."
"Oh.." She quickly looked back at her manager signaling her to come back over. She covered the mic quickly.
"Did you tell the manager to tell the members that I have a schedule?"
"Yeah?"
"Then why is Doyoung calling me where I am."
"Just tell him you are on a schedule all day."
Her manager waved off, Tali huffed and went back to the phone.
"Uh, I'm at a schedule right now sorry."
"I know, but we wanna come over and visit."
"Oh.... I don't know where we are I slept half way here, let me ask if-" She turned to see her brother shaking his head no, she frowned and mouthed okay.
"Sorry. I can't have visitors." She said glaring at Miguel.
"Oh, when can you come back home?"
"I don't know, I'm sorry." Tali said apologetically.
"Oh Tali don't be sorry, we should its your birthday."
"Oh don't worry, I'm not alone its okay I will hopefully see you tonight I have to go, tell the guys I said hi."
"Will do Tali." She ended the call with a pout and turned to her brother.
"Really, I can't bring them?"
"Nope, this is a brother and sister bonding time, its been awhile since we modeled together lets go lazy ass." He said dragging her to the set.
"Yeah yeah, Im comin."
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"Hyung?"
"Yeah?" Doyoung turned to Mark.
"Can we come over?"
Doyoung shook his head, all the members excitement went down drastically.
"Why not?" Taeyong asked quite upset, he wanted to see Talia.
"I don't really know, she just said no visitors allowed." Doyoung slouched in the couch.
"What is she doing anyway?" Haechan whinned.
"She is modeling." Their manager walked in past them to get water.
"Why? She didn't have a schedule for modeling yet." Taeyong said checking her schedule on his phone since she shares it with him because she has different schedules than them its easy to keep track of her so he knows when she gets home.
"She doesn't have it down, it was a favor for a family member, she accepted but she didn't know it was on her birthday she will comeback later don't worry." He waving it off.
The members were taken aback she never talks about her family so never thought she would do something for them especially model.
"Why modeling?" Jaehyun asked his manager.
"Because one of the family members is a model and asked her to model with them, you will see it in Vogue." He said walking off to his room.
The members eyes went big, they didn't think she had a family member that modeled especially one for vogue.
"I wonder how attractive her family is, like think about it." Yuta reasoned.
Everyone nodded Tali was pretty, what about her family?
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"Final one Tali you two get to go home!" The photographer said happily. Tali smiled and so did Miguel.
It was almost dark.
"Happy birthday asshole." Tali said putting him in head lock.
"Happy birthday bitch." As he was about to tackle her on the ground the heard someone clear their throat. They looked up to see four familiar faces.
"Hey guys, what are you doing here." Miguel said while Tali was releasing him from the head lock.
"To say happy brithday to you two idiots." Karma said hugging Talia then Miguel.
"Yeah, questionable why you guys are working on your birthday." Chan said hugging both of them in a tight hug.
"Ask Miguel he dragged me here." Tali said hugging Allen then Song-ho. Song-ho shook his head at her.
"Well, we all wanna hangout for your birthday tonight you two up for that." Allen asked.
"Yeah but what time?" Tali asked wondering if she needs to sneak out.
"Around 1am." Allen said checking his phone.
"Why so late, not that I don't mind honestly probably Tali needs a breather." Miguel said eyeing Tali.
"We are gonnna celebrate at the spot." Song-ho smiled widely with the rest aswell remembering all the memories from there.
"Looks like I'm sneaking out." Tali said with a huff.
"Ooh, like usually." Miguel teasingly messing up her hair.
"I came to drop you off aswell Tali." Chan said grabbing her bag.
"Thank youu~, see you guys later and Allen."
"Yeah?"
"Pick me up at the corner instead."
"Okay."
With that she left with Chan.
"So, you gonna sneak out?" "Yup."
"This reminds me of highschool when you used to sneak out, and you still get all A's, you amaze me Tali." Chan said shaking his head.
"Wow flattery will get you no where Chan." She snickered
"Ah wait don't pull that trick on me." Chan warned her while she laughed.
"Have fun Tali, while you still can."
"Is this why you are actually allowing this to happen?" She raised an eyebow at him.
"Of course, but you know our deal." He said eyeing her.
"Of course of course until I'm 19 or Korean age practically 18. But I can't get drunk either way neither can you, if we do....we will end up in bed with someone." She said eyeing him suspiciously as they got the front entrence to the apartment. He turned to her with a are you kidding me face.
"I have no-" "shhhh, you said that last time and you ended up like that." She cut him off getting out of the car.
"I hate you Tali!" He shouted
"Oh shut up you love me." She said walking in laughing.
She got on the elevator with relief. Just really thinking of all the things that happened in her life good and bad.
She got out of the elevator and went to the 127 dorm since she figured they wanted her there. She opened the door it was dark, she thought they all went to sleep which was her luck to get really until the lights turned on and saw the members.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TALIA" They all yelled running up to her and hugging the life out of her.
"Happy birthday Talia." Haechan said back hugging her.
"Aww thank you guys."
"LETS CELEBRATE!" Johnny yelled
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It was now 12:30 she was back at the dream dorm everyone was asleep and when I'm mean everyone I mean everyone. After Tali showered she saw everyone passed out not one soul awake she didn't party that much as she needed to go.
As usually she managed to actually leave without anyone noticing running down the stairs, and out the door she left.
Running down the block she saw a black car with 2 people in it who seem like Allen and Song-ho waving at her to jump in...literally.
She ran and jumped over the door and in the back seat as Allen pushed the gas and went to the spot where everyone is waiting. She felt the breeze going through her hair she hasn't felt that in a while. They stopped at a construction site and went up the stairs to see cake, balloons and a fire.
"Finally, I want some cake." Karma said walking next to her looping her arm with hers and pulling her to the cake.
"Okay lets Gooooo."
"Happpy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday Twins, Happy birthday to you."
They all sang. Then they both blew the candles.
"OKAY LETS EAT SOME CAKE." Allen yelled.
(Yes I know the bite for some people/ cultures, but Karma would kill them if they destroyed the cake.)
Song-ho, Karma, Allen and Miguel were drinking while Talia and Chan weren't.
"AY, why you guys not drinking, well Chan, I know why Tali is not." Allen asked quickly clarifying.
"Because I need to drive you and Tali home, and personally I would like to be conscious." Chan said matter a fact tone. Allen rolled his eyes at him so did the others.
"Come one lets go out I'm bored." Tali whined while pulling Chan.
"Okay okay, how about the park like we used too?"
Everyone nodded in agreement.
They were walking some airplaning down the street just goofing around. Tali sat on a swing with Allen looking at her.
"What is it?" Tali asked noticing him staring.
"....do you miss him?"
Tali was taken back.
"Yeah, yeah I do." She whispered but enough for him to hear, she knew who he was talking about.
"Wanna give him some flowers before we go any farther?"
Tali stopped swinging and thought about it for a moment.
"Sure its been awhile."
Allen smiled at her.
"HEY GUYS LETS GO VISIT 'HIM'!"
Everyone turned, knowing exactly who he was talking about. Everyone softened and smiled at the thought of visiting him.
"YEAH SURE." Karma yelled out loud walk towards them with Chan, Miguel and Song-ho.
"You think she is gonna be able to?" Karma whisper to the three boys before they reach Tali and Allen.
"Yeah...." Chan stopped for a second making Karma, Miguel and Song-ho look at him.
"She has to, if she wants to keep that promise."
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crabas-lordes · 3 years
Text
Gen 2 Explanation -- Pokémon Remakes
According to the Games/Anime:
Entei - The Volcano Pokémon, a pure Fire type, unknown gender, 6′11″ tall, weighs 436.5 pounds, represents the flames that burned the Brass Tower, and whenever Entei roars, a volcano erupts somewhere in the world. Entei’s fire is said to be hotter than magma. 
Raikou - The Thunder Pokémon, a pure Electric type, unknown gender, 6′03″ tall, weighs 392.4 pounds, can fly through clouds during thunderstorms, and is distrustful of most humans. It represents the speed of lightning and the lightning that struck Brass Tower. Its barks are like thunder and can send shockwaves through the air and ground. 
Suicune - The Aurora  Pokémon, a pure Water type, unknown gender, 6′07″ tall, weighs 412.3 pounds, can walk across water and purify any murky waters. It travels after the north winds, and is the closest one to Ho-oh and connected to the Unown. Suicune represents the rain that drenched the fires of Brass Tower. 
Ho-oh - The Rainbow Pokémon, a Fire and Flying type, unknown gender, 12′06″ tall, weighs 438.7 pounds, those who bear witness to it are promised eternal happiness. It is has the power to resurrect the dead, and flies the skies in search for a trainer with a pure heart.
Lugia - The Diving Pokémon, a Psychic and Flying type, unknown gender, 17′01″ tall, weighs 476.2 pounds, monitors the Bird Trio. It can create storms, it’s wings are able to produce a 40-day hurricane in a single flap. It is referred to as the Guardian of the Seas and is extremely intelligent. 
Celebi - The Time Travel Pokémon, a Psychic and Grass type, unknown gender, 2′ tall, weighs 11 pounds, known as the Voice of the Forest. Plants flourish in its presence and it has healing powers. It often maintains its current timeline as to prevent time distortions, anomalies, or loops. 
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My Take on Gen 2 Legendaries/Mythicals:
Entei - Entei likes to monitor the nearby volcanoes in the Johto, Kalos, and Kanto regions. Entei has the power to erupt a nearby volcano with a roar at will. Entei is a male in my remakes and has fire hot enough to turn igneous rocks into lava within minutes. Entei cannot verbally or telepathically speak, but can understand body language very well. He is highly intelligent. He likes to lead wild Pokémon to safety and defends towns from erupting volcanoes. Entei is the most independent canine with the Legendary Beasts, and is the middle sibling. 
Raikou - Raikou monitors thunderstorms -- whether natural or caused by Zapdos -- and likes to jump the clouds to travel. Raikou is male in my remakes and can send shockwaves from his bark at will. Raikou doesn’t care much for people, and prefers to stay in the wild. Raikou circulates the regions between Kalos, Johto, and Kanto. Raikou is the oldest of the Legendary Beasts. 
Suicune - Suicune is nomadic, and always searches for watering holes to purify. Suicune is a female in my remakes. Suicune tends to help flourish environments with Celebi and also calls to Ho-oh when she has to. Suicune also monitors both seasons of winter and summer in the regions of Kalos, Johto, and Kanto. Suicune is the youngest of the Legendary Beasts, but very mature. People in small villages see her toward the north where the winds rest, and her howls can be heard on the nights the aurora borealis tears through the skies. 
Ho-oh - Ho-oh is nomadic, but stays in the same three regions as the Legendary Beasts. Ho-oh is a male in my remakes, and now stands at fifteen feet tall and weighs closer to 500 pounds due to his hollow bones. Ho-oh’s fire are as hot as the flames expelled from Moltres. Ho-oh is the father of the Legendary Beasts, having created them from the fall of Brass Tower. Ho-oh can speak telepathically occasionally, only to those he feels worthy. He is intelligent enough to know no-one is pure-hearted, but he wants someone that he knows that would always do the right thing, even in the toughest situations. It is said his tears can heal even the most fatal wounds. Ho-oh is the youngest of the Tower Duo.
Lugia - Lugia is a female in my remakes and always isolates herself. She can create storms at will with her wings, but will be absolutely incapable of that power if her wings are damaged in any way. Her roars are like music and anyone who hears her bellows cannot help but falter in her voice. She speaks telepathically to anyone who deserves it. She is the mother of the Legendary Birds and always monitors their doings. It is believed whenever she bellows a song, she is calling for either Kyogre or Palkia to her aid, or simply, trying to captivate anyone within an ear’s distance. Lugia has many routes within the ocean, but she is only ever seen around the coasts of Johto and Kanto. She is the oldest of the Tower Duo. Even though she is considered female, she is also considered asexual. A fisherman once discovered a metallic, silver egg the size of a basketball. Upon inspection, the egg was indeed made entirely of silver with tracings of Lugia’s DNA. 
Celebi - It is believed that there is more than one Celebi -- wrong. There is only one, but that one Celebi has many alternate universe versions of it due to the vast and branching timeline. This one Celebi is female and is the daughter of Dialga. While Dialga rests and keeps track of the time spent, he left it to Celebi monitor the alternate timelines. Celebi remains in touch with Suicune, often wanting her aid to purify environments. Celebi never leaves the Johto region. She is very sensitive to her environment, and once she’s emotionally attached to someone, she always craves their attention. 
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Disclaimer: These Pokémon remakes are for fun and by no means meant to replace the Pokémon franchise. 
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adastraperfortuna · 3 years
Text
I Played Cyberpunk 2077
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Ultimately, Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s hard to talk about it without acknowledging the backlash that it received around its launch, but the backlash was directly proportional to the amount of marketing that it got. This happens to a lot of games – and frankly, a lot of my favorite games. If I were working at CD Projekt RED and I was responsible for the kind of marketing that resulted in the kind of expectations that they built for themselves, I’d have to take that sort of stuff into deep consideration. But, as someone who bought the game, enjoyed the game, and desperately wants to talk about the game, I’m not sure that it matters. So, to reiterate: Cyberpunk 2077 is good.
There’s so much game to Cyberpunk that it might be easier to start by talking about my favorite part of it that isn’t a game: the photo mode. I’ve joked before about my favorite gameplay loop in Star Citizen being “taking screenshots,” and that’s not my intent here, but some of my favorite games in recent memory have made it easy to look over the memories I made during their runtime. Interspersed within this review will be some of my favorite screenshots that I took – the inclusion of precise controls for things like depth of field, character posing/positioning, and stickers/frames helped to make my screenshot folder feel less like a collection of moments in a game and more like a scrapbook made during the wildest possible trip to the wildest possible city.
And what a city it is. Night City is my favorite setting in a video game in recent memory. It’s not incredibly difficult to make a large environment, but to make a meaningful environment where every location feels lived-in and the streets are dense with things to see and do? That’s a challenge that very few studios have managed to step up to. More than that, Night City feels unique in the landscape of video game cities – whereas a city like Grand Theft Auto V’s Los Santos is rooted in a reality we’re familiar with, Cyberpunk’s retro-futuristic architecture (and overall aesthetic) help lend it a sensibility that we’re unfamiliar with. It really feels like stepping into another world - fully fleshed-out, fully envisioned.
The environment is obviously beautiful and unique, but I was surprised by just how ornate it was. The thought and consideration that went into details as minor as the UIs you’ll encounter in and on everything from car dashboards to PCs and menus both diegetic and otherwise helps the entire world feel diverse, detailed, and cohesive. While everything feels of a kind and everything is working towards the same design goals, the sheer amount of variety was shocking.
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The biggest thing that stuck out to me about Night City itself within just a few hours of playing was how vertically oriented it was. Not just in the “there are tall buildings” sense, though there certainly are tall buildings – I’m talking about the way that Cyberpunk uses verticality to tell stories. The first time that you end up high enough above the skyline to see rooftops will inevitably be during one of your first encounters with Night City’s elite. The hustle and bustle of street life fading away as an elevator climbs up the side of a building and you emerge into a world you aren’t familiar with was astounding. That claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded by monoliths isn’t only alleviated by attending to the rich, though – for similar reasons, my first journey out of the city limits and into the “badlands” will stick with me. Cyberpunk successfully manages its mood and tone by controlling the kind of environments you’ll find yourself in, and while that may seem like a simple, sensible, universal design decision, its consistent application helped ground the world for me in a way that made it feel more real than most of its contemporaries.
Something else that makes Night City feel real is how Cyberpunk implements its setpieces. In a decision that reverberates throughout the rest of the game, CD Projekt was clearly all-in on the notion of immersion and seamless transitions. While it was consistently surprising and exciting to find bombastic moments embedded in the world’s side content (one standout involves Night City’s equivalent of SWAT descending from the sky to stop a robbery in an otherwise non-descript shop downtown), it never took me out of the world. And, on the other end of the experience, the number of memorable, exciting story moments that were located in parts of the city that you had wandered by before helped make the world feel almost fractal, this idea that every building and every corner could house new adventures or heartbreaks.
One thing that did take me out of the experience, unfortunately, were a few of the celebrity (or “celebrity”) cameos. While I think that the core cast was well-cast, with Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand in particular being an inspired choice, the game, unfortunately, wasn’t immune to the tendency to include recognizable faces just because they were recognizable. Grimes plays a role in a forgettable side quest that felt dangerously like it only existed because she wanted to be in the game. There are also an almost concerning number of streamer cameos (“over 50 influencer and streamers from around the world,” according to CD Projekt), and while most of them completely went by me, the few that did hit for me only served to disrupt the world. The only perceived positive here is that most players won’t have any idea who these people are.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing that broke immersion in the game. Due to what I can only assume are particularly harsh memory restrictions imposed by the game’s release on last-generation hardware, the game has some of the most aggressive NPC culling that I’ve ever seen. While NPCs don’t strictly only exist in screen space, it often feels like they do, as simply spinning the camera around can result in an entirely new crowd existing in place of the old one. This is obviously rough when it comes to maintaining immersion in crowded spaces on-foot, but it gets worse when you’re driving. Driving on an empty road, rotating the camera, and finding that three seconds later there was an entire legion of cars waiting for your camera to discover them, far too close to slow down, was always a deadly surprise. It doesn’t help that your cars take a while to slow down.
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Cyberpunk’s approach towards cars in general is interesting. While I certainly had trouble with them when I began playing, I eventually began to get into their groove. If you want to learn how to drive effectively in Cyberpunk, you have to learn how to drift. After the game’s latest substantial patch, the team at CD Projekt finally fixed my largest problem with the game’s driving – the minimap was simply too zoomed-in, making it difficult to begin to make the right decisions on when and how to turn when traveling at speed. Now that that's resolved, however, whipping and spinning through the streets is fun, and the cars feel appropriately weighty. I’ll still occasionally boot up the game just to cruise around its streets and listen to the radio.
Speaking of the radio, did I mention that Cyberpunk 2077 has one of the greatest game soundtracks that I’ve ever heard? The radio is filled with great original songs from some pretty great musicians, but that’s not where the soundtrack’s beauty starts and it certainly isn’t where it ends. The original soundtrack (composed by P.T. Adamczyk, Marcin Przybylowicz, and Paul Leonard-Morgan) was consistently beautiful, moving, and intense. The world feels gritty and grimy but ultimately beautiful and worth saving, and a great deal of that emotion comes from the soundtrack. While the heavy use of industrial synths could’ve lent itself towards music that existed to set tone instead of form lasting memories with memorable melodies, the sparkling backing tones and inspired instrumentation helped keep me humming some of its tracks for months after last hearing them in-game. I’m no musical critic, I don’t know how much I can say about this soundtrack, so I’ll just reiterate: it’s genuinely incredible.
It certainly helps that the encounters that so many of those tunes are backing up are exciting as well. I was expecting middling combat from the company that brought us The Witcher 3, and while the experience wasn’t perfect, it was competitive with (and, in many ways, better than) the closest games to it than I can point to, Eidos Montreal’s recent Deus Ex titles. Gunplay feels tight, shotguns feel explosive, and encounter spaces are diverse and full of alternate paths and interesting cover. My first playthrough was spent primarily as a stealth-focused gunslinger, using my silenced pistol to cover up the mistakes that my feet made when trying to avoid getting caught. Trying to sneak into, around, and through environments helped emphasize how complex the environments actually were. While it’d be easy to run into a wealth of the game’s content with your guns loaded and ready to fire, that may contribute to a perceived lack of depth in the game’s world design. I’m trying to write this without considering what other people have said about the game, but this particular point has been something of a sticking point for me – there are individual, completely optional buildings in Cyberpunk that have more interesting, considered level design than some entire video games, and the experience of evaluating and utilizing them was consistently mechanically engaging and exciting.
The sheer number of abilities that the player has can be almost overwhelming. While leveling does encourage the player to specialize into certain traits, especially when said traits can also serve as skill checks for the dialogue system and some traversal opportunities, every trait houses a bundle of skills that each house a sprawling leveling tree. Far from the kind of “three-path EXP dump” that you’ll find in a great number of AAA titles, Cyberpunk’s leveling experience can be legitimately intimidating. It’s difficult to plan the kind of character you want to play as when you’re trying to project eighty or a hundred hours forward for a character that will be constantly encountering new kinds of challenges. I certainly didn’t begin my playthrough by wanting to be a stealth-focused gunslinger – in fact, I was originally aiming for a melee-focused hacker build. While I was drawn to what I was drawn to, hearing stories from other players about the kind of builds that they ultimately considered to be overpowered made one thing exceedingly clear: Cyberpunk is a game that rewards every kind of play, possibly to its own detriment.
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Cyberpunk’s main story is notably short. I wouldn’t consider this to be a problem, considering the sheer amount of engaging, exciting, heartfelt side content, but it might be the core of the difficulty scaling plateauing so early on. As you progress deeper into the game you’ll find that almost every build, as long as you are willing to commit to something, is more than viable. Look around long enough and you’ll find people saying that every single build is overpowered. For me, that fed into the central power fantasy in an exciting way. By the time that I rolled credits a hundred hours in I was more or less unstoppable, walking into rooms and popping every enemy almost instantly. For others, this was a problem – it can be frustrating to feel like all of your work to become stronger wasn’t met with an appropriate challenge when the time came to put it into practice. This is a difficult problem to solve, and I don’t have a solution. I’ll fondly remember my revolver-toting, enemy-obliterating V, though, so I can’t complain.
Regardless of the scaling, however, the content you play through to arrive at that pinnacle of power was consistently, surprisingly robust. While the differentiation between “gigs” and “side quests” is confusing (word for the wise: gigs are generally shorter and more gameplay-centric missions that are designed by CD Projekt’s “open world” team while the side quests are made by the same team that made the main quests and are generally longer and more narrative-centric), both kinds of side content are lovingly crafted and meaningful. Of the 86 gigs in the game, every single one of them takes place in a unique location with a hand-crafted backstory and (almost always) a wealth of different approaches. These don’t exist separately from the rest of the game’s design philosophy, even if they are made by a separate team, and you’ll often find that decisions made outside of gigs will reverberate into them (and, sometimes, the other way around). I’ve played a great deal of open world games, and never before has the “icon-clearing content” felt this lovingly-crafted and interesting. While the main quests will take you traveling across the map, the side content is what really makes it feel dense and real. You’ll be constantly meeting different kinds of people who are facing different kinds of problems – and, hey, occasionally you’ll be meeting someone who has no problem at all, someone who just wants to make your world a little bit brighter.
It’s surprising, then, that one of the most obvious ways to integrate that kind of content in Cyberpunk is so sparsely-utilized. “Braindances,” sensory playback devices used to replicate experiences as disparate as sex, meditation, and murder, play a critical role in some of the game’s larger quests, but they almost never show up in the side content. You would imagine that the ability to freely transport the player into any kind of situation in a lore-friendly way would’ve been a goldmine for side content, but its use is limited. This isn’t even a complaint, really, I’m just genuinely surprised – I wouldn’t be surprised if they used them more heavily in 2077’s expansions or sequels, because they feel like an untapped goldmine.
Another thing that the game surprisingly lacks is the inclusion of more granular subtitle options. While the game does let you choose the important stuff – whether or not you want CD Projekt’s trademark over-the-head subtitles for random NPCs, what language you want the subtitles to be in, what language you want the audio to be in – it doesn’t include something that I’ve grown to consider a standard: the ability to turn on subtitles for foreign languages only. As the kind of player who avoids subtitles when possible, I went through most of Cyberpunk with them off. Unfortunately, a tremendous number of important cutscenes in the game take place in languages other than English, and I didn’t know that I was supposed to understand what these characters were saying until I was embarrassingly far into one of the prologue’s most important scenes.
NOTE: I was pleasantly surprised to discover after replaying the ending of the game earlier today that they've fixed this issue in a patch. Nice!
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I can only complain about the game’s language support so much, because there’s something important that lies between the player and the story they’re there to experience: a fucking incredible English localization. Ironically, it’s so good that I can’t help but imagine that most players won’t even think about it. It’s easy to notice and talk about an excellent localization when it’s from something like a JRPG, something with a clearly different style from what you’d expect from a work made in English, but never once in my entire playthrough did I even briefly consider the idea that it was natively written in anything other than English. I knew that CD Projekt was a Polish studio, but I just assumed that they wrote in English and localized it backwards. The language is constantly bright and surprising, the jokes land, the characters have memorable quirks, everything feels natural, and the voice acting is legitimately some of the best that I’ve ever heard in a video game. Both versions of the main character’s voice were damn-near instantly iconic for me, landing up there with Commander Shepard in the upper echelon of protagonist VO. I can’t praise it enough.
That said, even if the localization was incredible, it’d be hard to appreciate if the meat of the story wasn’t up-to-snuff. I was ecstatic to discover, then, that Cyberpunk 2077 has an incredible story. Every great story starts with a great cast of characters, and Cyberpunk hit it out of the park with that. The core cast of side characters are some of my favorite characters in years. Judy, Panam, River, and Kerry are all memorable, full, charming people. Kerry Eurodyne in particular is responsible for my favorite scene in a game since the finale of Final Fantasy XV. The quest “Boat Drinks,” the finale of Kerry’s quest line, is quietly emotional and intensely beautiful. He, and the other characters like him, are more than the setting they’re in, and the way that the game slowly chews away at the harsh and bitter exterior that the world has given them as it reaches to their emotional, empathetic core consistently astounds. Night City is a city full of noise, violence, destruction, and decay, but you don’t have to participate in it. You don’t have to make it worse. You can be different, and you can be better. You don’t get there alone, you can’t get there alone, and Cyberpunk is a game that revels in how beautiful the world can be if we are willing to find the light and excitement in the people around us.
Of course, Cyberpunk is a video game, it’s an RPG, and the story is more than a linear progression of memorable moments. Something that struck me while making my way through Cyberpunk’s story was how expertly and tastefully it implemented choice. I’m used to games that give you flashing notifications and blaring alarms whenever you're able to make a decision that matters, so I was initially confused by how Cyberpunk didn’t seem reactive to the things I said and did. The game would give me a few options in conversations, I’d select one of them, and then the story would progress naturally. However, as I continued, I began to notice small things. One character would remember me here, a specific thing I said twenty hours before would be brought up by someone there, an action that I didn’t even know I had the choice to not take was rewarded. The game slowly but surely established a credibility to its choices, a weight to your words, this sense that everything that you were saying, even beyond the tense setpiece moments that you’d expect to matter, would matter. It was only after going online after completing the game that I realized just how different my playthrough could’ve been. While nothing ever reached the level of the kind of divergent choices that The Witcher 2 allowed, there were still large chunks of the game that are entirely missable. Three of the game’s endings can only be unlocked through the completion of (and, in one case, specific actions in) specific quests, and multiple memorable quests were similarly locked behind considerate play. This isn’t really a game that will stop you from doing one thing because you chose to do something else, most of the choice-recognition is simply unlocking new options for the player to take, but it always feels natural and never feels like a game providing you an arbitrary fork in the road just for the sake of making it feel artificially replayable. CD Projekt has already said that they made the choices too subtle in Cyberpunk, but I deeply appreciate the game as it is now – more games should make choices feel more real.
It helps that the dialogue system backing up some of those choices is dynamic and the cutscene direction backing those scenes up is consistently thrilling. The decision to lock you in first-person for the entire game was an inspired one, and it resulted in a bevy of memorable scenes made possible by those interlocking systems. There are the obvious ones – being locked in a smoky car with a skeptical fixer, getting held at gunpoint by a mechanical gangster with his red eyes inches away from your own and a pistol’s barrel just barely visible as it presses against your forehead, having to choose between firing your weapon and talking down someone with a hostage when in a tense, escalating situation. There are also a million smaller ones, situations where the scale of the world becomes part of the magic. The first time that I sat down in a diner and talked with someone I had to meet or the first time that I rode along through the bustling downtown of Night City as a politician sized me up will stick with me because the perspective of the camera and the pacing of the real-time dialogue interface combine to make almost everything more powerful. There’s so much effort put into it – so many custom animations, so many small touches that you’d only see if you were staring intensely at every frame. All of that effort paid off, and the controversial decision to strip third-person out of the game was ultimately proven to be one of the smartest decisions that CD Projekt has ever made.
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Another decision that helped power an exciting, engaging story was how the game freely manipulates the time and weather during key story moments. It’s a small touch, it’s one that you won’t notice unless you’re looking for it, but every once in a while you’ll walk into a place during a crystal-clear day and come out five minutes later to discover that it’s a cold, windy, rainy night and you have a city to burn. Along with the first-person limitation, this initially feels like something that could only harm immersion, but when it’s backed up by a story that motivating and scenes that thrilling you’d be hard-pressed to notice it outside of the flashes of telling yourself that this scene or that scene is the best that you’ve played in a long time. This also helps avoid a problem that games like the Grand Theft Auto series consistently face – instead of letting scenes happen at any time, compromising direction, or doing something like a timelapse, sacrificing immersion, Cyberpunk manages to always keep you in the action while also presenting the action in its most beautiful and appropriate form. There are moments where it truly feels like it’s meshing the kind of scene direction that’d be at home in a Naughty Dog game, the gameplay of Deus Ex, and the storytelling of the WRPG greats, and in those moments there is nothing else on the market that feels quite like it.
I sure have talked a lot about this game’s story, considering the fact that I have barely brought up its central hook. The early twist (unfortunately spoiled by the game’s marketing), the placement of a rockstar-turned-terrorist-turned-AI-construct firmly in your brain after a heist goes wrong and your best friend dies, helps establish a tone that the rest of the game commits to. Johnny Silverhand starts as an annoying, self-centered asshole with no real appreciation for how dire your situation is, but by the end of the game he had more than won me over. Reeves’s performance was really stellar, and the relationship between him and V is incredibly well-written. More than that, his introduction helps spur on a shift in the way that you engage with the world. The first act is full of hope, aspiration, the belief that you can get to the top if you hustle hard enough and believe. After you hold your dying friend in your arms and are forced to look your own death in the eyes, though, things begin to turn. Maybe the world is fucked up, maybe it’s fucked up beyond belief. But there Johnny is, telling you to fight. Why? Every time you fight, things get worse.
But the game continues to ruminate on this, it continues to put you in situations where fighting not only fails to fix the problem, but it makes it worse. Despite that, it’s positive. For me, at least, Cyberpunk’s worldview slowly came into alignment, and it’s one that I can’t help but love. Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about how important the fight is, how important believing in something is, even if you’re facing impossible odds, even if there’s no happy ending. It’s a story that posits that giving up is the worst ending of all, that your only responsibility is to what’s right and to the ideals that you and the people you love want to live up to. The game uses every story it can tell, every character it can introduce you to, and every encounter it can spin into a narrative to drive that home. And, when the ending comes, it was phenomenal. All of the endings were powerful, effective, and meaningful to me, but I’m more than happy that I went with what I did.
Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s not flawless, but no game is, and at its core it's one of the most fun, beautiful, narratively engaging, and heart-filled games that I’ve ever played. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, and I sincerely hope that everyone who has skipped out on it because of what they’ve heard is able to give it a shot someday. Maybe they’ll love it as much as I do. Wouldn’t that be something?
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thisbrokenmask · 4 years
Text
Moving On
Title: Moving On
Pairing: Yoongi x reader
Genre: Established relationship, fluff
Warnings: N/A
Word Count: 1.7k
Song inspiration: Moving On
A/N: Another one of my submissions for ficswithluv’s Bulletproof Bingo Event, and this one is especially poignant for me as I got the keys to my new apartment today! It’s also my first time living entirely on my own - no fellow students, no partner - so I’m very excited to be taking on this next adventure! 
Also, in case you didn’t notice, I’m a bit soft for Yoongi :) 
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“Is this the last one?” You turn to see Taehyung pointing to the box at his feet and nod in confirmation, watching as he immediately bends down to lift it. He doesn’t mention your lack of sarcastic comment that the last box sat in the middle of the room is clearly the last one, and you try not to frown at how effortlessly he lifts it and turns to take it out of your apartment. You remember how you’d had to slide it across the floor once you’d filled it not even a week ago, but you aren’t about to question your significantly stronger friends when they’re helping you and your boyfriend move. 
Once Taehyung’s footsteps disappear down the hallway towards the elevator of your soon-to-be ex-apartment building, you turn to look around the now-empty room that was formerly your lounge. The TV is no longer on the wall, the wide expanse of blue somehow looking smaller without a flatscreen in the middle of it, and all of your photo frames are securely packed away, their hooks removed from the walls and the holes filled in and painted over. 
Your footsteps echo on the bare wooden floors as you turn to wander towards the kitchen, the rugs you’d used to cushion the floor already rolled up and waiting inside the truck outside. The ghosts of tummy-aching laughter and birthday songs ring in your ears as you try to remember all of the celebrations and movie nights that have happened here over the years. You subconsciously step to the side to avoid the end table that’s no longer there, a short chuckle passing your lips as you realise how deeply this action has seeped into your muscle memory. It’s understandable, given how you’ve lived here for just over three years, but you still can’t help but laugh at yourself. 
The white kitchen cupboards gleam in the sunlight that seeps in through the window above the sink, all of them meticulously wiped clean and emptied. A soft smile graces your face as you remember all the dinners you both cooked here, the glasses of wine you giggled over, even the few times you made love on the floor when the bedroom was just too far away from the front door after a date night. 
“Ready to go?” A pair of arms wraps around your waist and a chin settles on your shoulder as Yoongi whispers in your ear, his deep voice the most sinful ASMR you’ve ever heard. The warmth of his chest against your back helps to soothe the nerves that have been creeping up your spine for the last few days. While you’re glad to be out of the small, cramped apartment that you could barely afford by scraping your earnings together three years ago, you’ve never been good with saying goodbyes, even to places. 
You remember the first night you spent here, the two of you sat on the floor with a few take out containers between you. Boxes sat on the counters above you and took up the floor in the next room, and a mattress was waiting on the floor in the bedroom for when you eventually collapsed into bed together, frameless until later on in the week. Your belongings were threadbare at best, a lot of secondhand pieces making up the most of your possessions, but it was finally your own space. The two of you, together.  
“I think so,” your whispered reply is shaky as you place your hands over his where they rest on your stomach, his hum of amusement rumbling against your shoulders. 
“Don’t tell me now you want to stay?” he teases, turning his hands over to lace his fingers with yours. 
“Definitely not,” you laugh, squeezing his hands in return. “I’m glad to be leaving, really. We’ve outgrown this place and I’m ready to move on.” You nod to yourself, feeling your confidence rise with each word, knowing that you mean them all wholeheartedly. You’ve definitely outgrown this apartment, both of you now making much more money than you’d ever dreamed of three years ago thanks to Yoongi’s growing success in freelance music producing and your own writing career taking off just over a year ago. 
But it’s not just the money. The two of you have gone from strength to strength as a couple, weathering the storms of being broke, missing out on dream jobs, stress-fuelled arguments and late nights spent deciding whether to pay the bills on time or eat more than packet ramen for the foreseeable future. You’re ready to keep moving forward through life with him, already knowing that you’ll stay by his side for as long as he’ll have you. 
The man who lives full time in your heart starts to sway slightly, his hold on you guiding your hips to follow his from side to side. “Yeah?” His nose nuzzles into the spot just below your ear, your breath catching in your throat as he places a gentle kiss to your pulse point. You nod weakly, your confidence slipping at his question. “Then why do you look like you’re going to cry?” 
With a deep breath, you close your eyes and pull your hands from his. You feel him tense slightly, but he relaxes as soon as you guide his hands to the slope of your body between the dip of your waist and the curve of your hips. You finally turn in his arms, looping your arms around his neck, unable to blink back the tears in your eyes despite the smile on your lips. His eyes are watching you carefully, dark and deep and attentive as always, even when the black hair of his fringe threatens to overlap them. It hides his eyebrows, but you know one is cocked slightly to match the lopsided smirk he’s giving you. 
“Because, this is where we grew up, Yoongi,” you tell him, watching as his expression relaxes from a teasing smirk to match your soft-eyed smile. “We went through so much here; the good, the bad, the ugly… the fun.” You pull gently on the hair at the nape of his neck at the memories of the kitchen floor you’d just been reminiscing on and grin, a deep sigh sounding when he closes his eyes and bites his lip before staring straight back at you, pupils dilated. “We’ve got so many memories here,” you continue, looking around at the empty walls and pretending to ignore the way he grips you tighter. “I know it’s not the best apartment, but it was us. This was our home, and I’m going to miss it.” 
Yoongi’s stare softens once more and he internally curses how he knows he’ll never win against you; you hold his heart in your hands and he worships how gently you hold it, never squeezing too hard or letting him feel like you might drop it. 
“I won’t miss it,” he says quietly, catching you off guard as he leans in a little closer.
“No?” He shakes his head. “Why not?”
“Because you’re my home,” he states, as if it were a fact universally acknowledged. “As long as I’m with you, I’m more than happy.” 
“You’re my home, too,” your watery smile threatens to push your tears down your cheeks, but you manage to catch yourself before they do. You smile instead, adoration clear in your eyes as you look up at him. 
Yoongi’s heart beats wildly at the conflicting emotions coursing through his body, wanting to make sweet, reverential love to you, fuck you against the wall until you know nothing but his name, and simply hold you tightly against his chest, all in equal measure. You bewitch, ensnare and captivate his senses all at once, always have done, and he constantly struggles with how he can possibly express how much he loves you. He wants to worship every inch of you and yet feels too inadequate to even gaze upon your body. He wants to wait on you hand and foot and give you anything you want, but also wants to see you thrive in your own spotlight, carving your own path as you go. He’s torn between fierce attraction and heady admiration at every turn, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. 
As his friends have repeatedly said, he’s whipped. 
And guess what? He’s proud of it. 
You’re the woman who has stood by him despite everything, despite all the hardships you easily could have upped and walked away from. You’re the one who comforted him when his own parents refused to recognise his dreams, letting him vent and cry rather than telling him they weren’t worth the pain they caused him. You’re the person who admonished him for wanting to give up on his dreams of music, even when it was barely bringing enough money to the table despite keeping him up all night. You were the first person he wanted to tell when he finally sold a track for a decent amount of money, running home to show you the cheque in person because he could barely believe it himself. 
And here you still are, in his arms, gazing up at him like he’s worth more to you than the whole world, a position he still doesn’t feel like he’s even close to earning. You entered this flat together and you’re leaving together, off to take on new adventures together on stronger legs. Your new apartment is bigger, with enough room for Yoongi to have some proper equipment in a proper studio space while you have your very own writing desk in your new office. You’ve been able to upgrade your bed from a rickety-framed double to a memory foam-topped queen. There’s even more space on the kitchen floor. 
You smile as he lets his forehead rest against yours, both of you closing your eyes as you breathe into the same private space between you. As you feel his hands move around to rest at the base of your back, you feel a new surge of confidence fuelled purely by the love you feel radiating off of your partner. As long as you’re with him, you feel invincible.
“Let’s go,” you say, not moving an inch. 
“Okay,” he whispers back, pulling you closer so that your chests are pressed firmly together. 
A final deep breath, you pull apart. 
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.” 
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If you would like to read any more of my writings, please feel free to check out my masterlist here. 
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earliebirb · 4 years
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stevetony + "one person confesses when they think the other person thinks they're asleep BUT WAIT they're not actually asleep and heard the whole thing"? Thank you so much for your lovely fics, they always make my day and I love your style!! 💕💕💕
AAAAAAAH JEN. You’re too sweet! :(
Thank you so much for the prompt! I adore this prompt. Also, for some reason it turned into another vague college au??? More like vague no powers au with a sprinkle of college, but yeah. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one and I hope I did the prompt justice!
ignorance is (not) bliss
steve/tony, au: college, fluff, getting together, 2074 words 
“Come on, Tony. Let’s go.” 
Steve has an arm around Tony’s waist and one of Tony’s arm slung over his shoulder, guiding him step by step as they trudge their way home. After a few of Tony’s wobbly steps forward, however, it becomes clear that they’re not going to make any significant progress in their homeward journey if they keep going like this.
Steve stops in his tracks and Tony’s body sways into Steve’s. 
Tony looks at him and giggles, blinking languidly. Under the yellow streetlights, drunk and unable to walk in a straight line, he still looks unfairly breathtaking. 
Steve ducks his head, biting his lip to suppress his laughter. He sighs before crouching in front of Tony decisively. 
“Come on, I’ll carry you home.” 
There is a brief silence in which Steve becomes worried that Tony is too drunk to understand what he’s supposed to do, but then he hears the shuffle of Tony’s sneakers on the ground and then he feels Tony’s weight settling over his own body, his arms looping around Steve’s neck from behind. Steve reaches behind him and hooks his arms under Tony’s knees before standing up with a grunt. 
“Hold onto me, okay? Don’t let go,” Steve says, turning his head to the side as far as his head allows to attempt to look at Tony. He can’t actually see Tony’s face, but the man hums contentedly into Steve’s neck and Steve shivers when he feels the cold tip of Tony’s nose brush against his skin. 
“I’m going to take that as a yes.” Steve grins to himself, overcome with fondness. There’s something about drunk, pliant, and half-awake Tony that pulls at his heartstrings and overwhelms him with the need to protect.
He begins walking quietly then, the weight of Tony comforting and warm on his back, dirt and asphalt crunching under his shoes. 
“Did you have fun today?” Tony slurs into his shoulder.
“Yeah, I did,” Steve replies sincerely, his mind recalling the events of the night with a smile. Tony had organized a surprise party at a karaoke bar attended by their small circle of friends. Steve had a surprising amount of fun just watching his friends goof around half drunk, enjoying their terrible renditions of various songs. Tony’s own ear-splitting cover of Highway to Hell is Steve’s personal favorite. 
“Although, I would argue that you ended up having way more fun than I did,” Steve teases. Tony giggles, his breath warm against Steve’s neck. 
“Happy birthday, Steve,” he mumbles sleepily into Steve’s shirt. 
“Thank you, Tony.” 
They spent the next few minutes in companionable silence before Steve attempts to make conversation as he turns the corner of the street. 
“Hey, how much did you actually drink? Can’t remember the last time I saw you this drunk.”
His inquiry is promptly greeted by resounding silence. 
He comes to a stop, glancing back at Tony. “Tony?”
More silence. Without the sound of his walking, he can hear Tony’s steady breathing.
“Out like a light, huh?” Steve says to himself, before lifting Tony further up on his back and resuming the walk home.
“You know, Tony. I really did have a lot of fun today. I always tell you that I don’t like surprises, but I find that I don’t mind them so much… coming from you,” Steve confesses, and he doesn’t know why he’s doing this, pouring his heart out to Tony when the man is clearly not awake. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s 3 AM on a Friday night. The neighborhood is mostly asleep and the way the world is quiet right now makes him feel sort of invincible, gives him the kind of courage to do things he wouldn’t normally do, makes him feel that anything he does right now isn’t quite real and won’t have any permanent consequences. 
So maybe that’s why he continues to say whatever he wants, opening the floodgates for secret confessions his heart longs to say aloud, letting the words flow out without the common sense from his brain there to stop them.
“I loved the surprise party. I loved watching all of you sing your hearts out. Although, I don’t know if we can call most of what we did ‘singing’. Maybe more… passionate screaming.” Steve chuckles.
“But if you want me to be honest? This, right here, is my favorite part of the entire night,” Steve says, relishing the way Tony’s brown curls tickle the side of his neck, his head lolling back and forth on Steve’s shoulder with every step he takes. 
“I would give up even the most amazing, crazy, mind-blowing party if I got to spend a night with you, just the two of us. I really don’t care what we do, just as long as you’re by my side. Hell, you could even slander my favorite TV show and talk my ears off about how scientifically inaccurate it is.” Steve feels his own lips turn up in a helpless smile just at the thought of it, a wave of longing so powerful taking over him and leaving him breathless.
Steve takes a deep breath. 
“The truth is… I’m in love with you, Tony,” he finally says out loud, for the first time ever. The way he is able to express how he has always felt about Tony without any inhibitions feels unbelievably freeing, a lightness filling his limbs, making his steps lighter. He feels untouchable.
“I’ve known this for a while and it’s simultaneously the best and worst feeling in the entire world. Sometimes when I look at you, I feel like I love you so much my heart is going to burst with it.”
He makes it into the elevator of their apartment building, pressing the button for their floor. His own reflection stares back at him from the smooth metal elevator doors as they close. Then his eyes fall on Tony, fast asleep on his back. 
“Some days, it makes it hard to breathe. Other days… On days like today, it leaves me feeling all dopey and happy like I’m on cloud nine,” he says, his voice disconcertingly loud in the small enclosed space. He allows himself a few seconds to lean back against Tony’s warmth and lets his eyes linger on their reflection, indulging in the brief fantasy of them being an actual couple. They look good together. 
The elevator dings. Steve carries Tony out of the elevator and manages to punch in the passcode to Tony’s apartment door—right across from his—with some difficulty, all the while making sure Tony doesn’t slide off his back. He finally makes his way into Tony’s bedroom, knowing the layout of the apartment so well he could probably traverse it in his sleep. Gingerly, he sits down on Tony’s bed, extricating Tony from himself slowly so as not to rouse him from his sleep. His back feels instantly cold from the loss of warmth, his heart bereft. He takes off Tony’s sneakers one by one and tries his best to maneuver his body under the sheets, tucking him in.
Lingering on the bed, Steve leans close to sweep Tony’s brown locks away from his eyes, unwilling to leave just yet. The second he leaves, this magical night comes to an end and Steve has to go back to the reality of days spent in painful, ridiculous pining.
Just as he moves to pull his fingers away from Tony’s face, one of Tony’s hands shoots up to grab his wrist, gripping it tightly. Slowly, Tony opens his eyes.
Steve’s blood freezes in his veins. His heart sinks with dread. 
“Tony?” Steve hopes that this is just some weird bout of sleepwalking, but Tony doesn’t sleepwalk, and from the thoughtful way Tony regards him, Steve knows that Tony is somehow very much awake, which means—
Tony swallows, his eyes wide and alert in a way Steve didn’t think they were capable of being twenty minutes ago. 
“Steve,” he says, the single word carrying too much weight.
Steve moves to pull his wrist away to— 
He doesn’t actually know what he is planning to do but he supposes it’s something along the lines of locking himself in his room, burying his head under a pillow, and sleeping forever and ever.
Tony’s grip is strong and unyielding. He maintains Steve’s gaze with a defiant look in his eyes.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Steve feels lightheaded and when he speaks his words come out in a terrified rush. “You were awake this entire time?”
“Well, I was in and out of it, but yeah. Mostly.”
Steve squeezes his eyes shut, inhaling through his nose. “Did you—”
“Yeah.”
“How much—”
“All of it.”
It feels like eternity before Steve is able to force something coherent out of his throat. “I’m sorry.”
“Steve. Look at me.”
Steve’s eyes remain tightly shut.
“Steve?”
Steve shakes his head vigorously, eyes still closed.
“Steeeve?” Tony calls again.
There is the sound of rustling sheets, like Tony is shifting on the bed.
“If you don’t open your eyes, I’m going to kiss you.”
The wave of pure shock that simple statement sends through his body makes his eyes blink open of their own accord. He flinches with further surprise when he sees that Tony’s face is suddenly much closer than it was before. 
“Tony, I—”
“Is this why you always turn down Natasha’s matchmaking attempts?”
Steve nods slowly, feeling dizzy under Tony’s close scrutiny.
Tony starts to chuckle, resting his forehead on Steve’s shoulder. “God, we’re both idiots.”
“Huh?”
Tony leans back, smiling at him with a tenderness that sends his heart racing.
“Remember that one time you finally decided to go on a date with Sharon?”
Steve nods, thinking back to the night he agreed to go on one date after Natasha’s endless pestering, to at least try, because Sharon had seemed nice and Tony was never going to love him back anyway. 
In retrospect, the whole thing was a terrible mistake because he practically went on the date to get over Tony, which effectively makes him a jerk. Heartache had clouded his judgment, but sweet and nice Sharon deserved so much better than that. Even at the end of their date, when it had been clear to the both of them that things weren’t going to work out between them, she remained unbelievably kind and gracious. 
“You remember how I had skipped all my classes the following day?”
“Yeah?”
“It was because I had a massive hangover. Because the night of your date, I was getting absolutely shitfaced, drinking my feelings away.”
Steve furrows his brow, breath hitching in his throat. “Because—”
“Because I’ve been in love with you since like, forever?” Tony’s tone is deceptively nonchalant, but the nervous way in which he avoids Steve’s eyes betrays his true emotions.
Steve sucks in a deep breath, an overwhelming warmth flooding his chest, his affection for Tony intense and heady like some kind of potent drug rushing through his veins. 
“Well, uh, the Sharon thing didn’t work out anyway,” Steve says, feeling out of breath. Tony’s doe-eyes look up to meet his gaze at the admission.
“Yeah?” 
“During the date, I… couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he confesses, ducking his head bashfully. 
“Well, I’m glad it didn’t work out,” Tony says. When Steve meets his eyes again, Tony is looking at Steve like he just discovered that the secrets of the universe have been swimming in Steve’s eyes all along. 
“Me too.” Steve lets out a shaky breath. “So, uh. It’s late. You should get some sleep. See you tomorrow?”
He stands up, a little unsteady on his feet. 
“Let’s have lunch together? Make it a date?” Tony suggests.
A date, Steve thinks a little dazedly even as he nods. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
Tony’s eyes stay fixated on him as he steps backwards towards Tony’s bedroom door.
“Okay, good night,” Steve says, slowly pulling the door shut. 
“Good night,” Tony replies, snuggling down in his bed. 
Steve shuts the door quietly before resting his forehead on it, the smooth wooden surface cool against his skin. Briefly, he closes his eyes. Then he takes a deep breath and opens the door again abruptly. 
“Actually, one last thing before I go?”
“Yeah?” Tony sits up, looking at him expectantly. 
Steve strides purposefully towards him.
As he bends down to kiss him, he finds that Tony is already surging upwards, meeting him halfway.
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