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its-time-to-write · 9 months

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i know now it’ll pass - ch. 5

I think these last two chapters are my favorite🥲 Lmk with you all think of the series bc I crave validation!!! No such thing as too many comments🥺🥺

still miss you

It’s the worst. You’re working in Manchester of all places, and you really wish that you were somewhere else. But they paid the most and offered housing and were able to hire you within two and a half weeks of your breakup. Higgins wrote a glowing letter of recommendation, and just like that, you were gone.

You’re going to miss your flat, you realize. You don’t even know who bought it. Doesn’t matter. They were willing to pay twice what it was worth as long as they were the offer you accepted.

It’s good that Jamie won’t see you around. Won’t have any lingering reminders. It’s good that you’re the one who ended things, because he won’t be able to blame himself for it. (He probably still will, you think, but you put that thought in a tiny box and put it on a shelf far away.)

Jamie doesn’t see you, but you see him. You see him in photos on the wall and hear him in the local voices and wish you could have just accepted his love for a little while longer.

You watch every single one of his games and cheer when he makes a goal. Or a pass. Or anything, really. He’s started running like Roy Kent did at Chelsea, like he’s angry at the grass. At least his anger is channeled into something productive.

Your new flat faces the sun, and you’re on the steps all the time. It’s not standard housing, it’s a real actual flat that Man City bought for you. It’s not big but it’s clean and yours and has a real, actual garden in the back. You think that you can manage this until you meet your neighbors and realize you’re really and truly fucked and the universe hates you.

You met the husband, Simon, on one of your sleepless nights. It was still relatively early, just 1:30, but you could tell that you weren’t going to get much sleep. Dr. Sharon transferred you to someone in Manchester, but now you were awake for different reasons. Jamie’s face kept haunting you so you kept your eyes wide open. Some mornings you’d wake up under the weighted blanket and think that it was him, in your groggy haze. Then you’d blink a couple times and remember that you’d broken up.

So you don’t sleep much. And now you’re on the porch with a cup of the tea Jamie’s mum recommended so long ago, the strong smell steaming into the air. As you sit down on your chair (you have a chair now) you hear a soft voice say, “Lovely night, isn’t it?” You nod and look over to see your neighbor sitting on his chair as well on the lawn.

“Sometimes I like to come out here and look at the stars,” he continues. “Can’t always see very many of them, but the fresh air is nice. I’m Simon, by the way.”

You nod again, give him your name, and sip your tea.

“Is that Sleep Plus by Twinings?” he asks. “I only ask because my wife swears by it. Has a cuppa every single night, so I’m well-acquainted with the smell.”

You smile. “Yeah, it is. A friend gave it to me. Said his mum loved it too. I have trouble sleeping, so…”

Simon nods. “Georgie, that’s my wife, used to have the same problem. Too many things on her mind, she said. But she’s been alright ever since we’ve been married. She says that it wasn’t really a chemical problem in her brain, but more the fact that she was always worried. Took me years to show her I wasn’t someone she needed to be worried around. But, I proved myself and here we are.” He chuckles fondly. “She’s upstairs snoring loud as can be.”

You sit in silence a while longer before Simon gets up and says, “Lovely to meet you. I’ll have Georgie invite you ‘round for tea sometime.”

Tea with your neighbors sounds wonderful until you walk into their flat and see pictures of Georgie’s son on the walls and on tables and on the fridge and in basically every possible space she can find. Simon mentions how he researched creative things to do with photographs because it “helps Georgie when she misses him,” and you know for an absolute fact that the universe has a personal hatred for you.

It has to, because why else would you have unwittingly gotten a flat right next to Jamie’s parents?

You force yourself to behave as normally as possible and thank them for a lovely meal. Georgie grabs your arm on the way out and says you ought to come over again some time. She hugs you and tells you she didn’t have a sparkle in her eyes at your age, either. She knows what it’s like and maybe you can have tea together tomorrow night, just the two of you. Talk about it and maybe you don’t have to struggle as much as she did.

You don’t smile at her, but she doesn’t mind. Georgie reaches out a hand to wipe away a tear and says, “Oh love. It’ll be alright. You’re not alone all the way out here. I miss my son something terrible and I can see you’re missing someone too. You’ve already made me feel better and I hope I can help you the way you’ve helped me. Good to have someone young around here.”

She’s smiling, and you realize she and Jamie have the same soft eyes.

Georgie hugs you tight again before you can bolt out the door. “You’re not alone, sweetheart,” she whispers. “You’ll be alright.”

—

Simon and Georgie are a godsend. Sure, you have to suffer their son staring down at you from his various portraits in the house, but you can talk to them. They’re like parents with the way Georgie hugs you and Simon is always bringing over excess baked goods. They’re always available to talk and listen, to laugh and sometimes, to cry.

Georgie tells you about her ex-husband one nights and it’s enough to make you sob. You tell her about your ex-boyfriend (the bad one) through gasps while she rubs your back and murmurs, “I’m right here, love.”

“How were you able to be with Simon?” you ask once you’ve calmed down. “I just can’t understand that. I’ve tried, I really have, but I was just waiting for him to get tired of me. And I’m not positive he ever would have.”

Georgie thinks for a moment. “I think I finally realized that James was not the standard for all men. He and Simon were very different, and Simon always showed me he respected me as a person. It took years of that, but here we are.” She laughs. “He’s a very patient man. Not many would put up with me and my Jamie.”

Jamie was patient. And funny. And the exact opposite of your ex. He’s confident with a touch of arrogance, but it’s the kind of confidence that’s contagious as opposed to oppressive. He’s sweet and thoughtful, and does things without expecting something in return. He likes to make you smile just for the sake of it, and you like to do the same.

You’re shaken from your reverie by Georgie saying, “That reminds me, Jamie’s coming into town this weekend. You should come over to meet him.”

She and Simon share a not-so-subtle glance that means you should date our son and become our actual daughter-in-law because you’re basically already ours, and that’s when you decide you’re going to be horribly ill.

“I’d love to,” you say out loud. “I’ll check my calendar.”

Table of Contents

#jamie tartt x reader #jamie tartt fanfiction #jamie tartt imagine #jamie tartt x y/n #jamie tartt x you #jamie tartt #ted lasso

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uomo-accattivante · 3 years

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Excellent article about bringing a re-make of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage to fruition, and the twenty-year friendship that Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain share:

There were days on the shoot for “Scenes From a Marriage,” a five-episode limited series that premieres Sept. 12 on HBO, when Oscar Isaac resented the crew.

The problem wasn’t the crew members themselves, he told me on a video call in March. But the work required of him and his co-star, Jessica Chastain, was so unsparingly intimate — “And difficult!” Chastain added from a neighboring Zoom window — that every time a camera operator or a makeup artist appeared, it felt like an intrusion.

On his other projects, Isaac had felt comfortably distant from the characters and their circumstances — interplanetary intrigue, rogue A.I. But “Scenes” surveys monogamy and parenthood, familiar territory. Sometimes Isaac would film a bedtime scene with his onscreen child (Lily Jane) and then go home and tuck his own child into the same model of bed as the one used onset, accessorized with the same bunny lamp, and not know exactly where art ended and life began.

“It was just a lot,” he said.

Chastain agreed, though she put it more strongly. “I mean, I cried every day for four months,” she said.

Isaac, 42, and Chastain, 44, have known each other since their days at the Juilliard School. And they have channeled two decades of friendship, admiration and a shared and obsessional devotion to craft into what Michael Ellenberg, one of the series’s executive producers, called “five hours of naked, raw performance.” (That nudity is metaphorical, mostly.)

“For me it definitely felt incredibly personal,” Chastain said on the call in the spring, about a month after filming had ended. “That’s why I don’t know if I have another one like this in me. Yeah, I can’t decide that. I can’t even talk about it without. …” She turned away from the screen. (It was one of several times during the call that I felt as if I were intruding, too.)

The original “Scenes From a Marriage,” created by Ingmar Bergman, debuted on Swedish television in 1973. Bergman’s first television series, its six episodes trace the dissolution of a middle-class marriage. Starring Liv Ullmann, Bergman’s ex, it drew on his own past relationships, though not always directly.

“When it comes to Bergman, the relationship between autobiography and fiction is extremely complicated,” said Jan Holmberg, the chief executive of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

A sensation in Sweden, it was seen by most of the adult population. And yes, sure, correlation does not imply causation, but after its debut, Swedish divorce were rumored to have doubled. Holmberg remembers watching a rerun as a 10-year-old.

“It was a rude awakening to adult life,” he said.

The writer and director Hagai Levi saw it as a teenager, on Israeli public television, during a stint on a kibbutz. “I was shocked,” he said. The series taught him that a television series could be radical, that it could be art. When he created “BeTipul,” the Israeli precursor to “In Treatment,” he used “Scenes” as proof of the concept “that two people can talk for an hour and it can work,” Levi said. (Strangely, “Scenes” also inspired the prime-time soap “Dallas.”)

So when Daniel Bergman, Ingmar Bergman’s youngest son, approached Levi about a remake, he was immediately interested.

But the project languished, in part because loving a show isn’t reason enough to adapt it. Divorce is common now — in Sweden, and elsewhere — and the relationship politics of the original series, in which the male character deserts his wife and young children for an academic post, haven’t aged particularly well.

Then about two years ago, Levi had a revelation. He would swap the gender roles. A woman who leaves her marriage and child in pursuit of freedom (with a very hot Israeli entrepreneur in place of a visiting professorship) might still provoke conversation and interest.

So the Marianne and Johan of the original became Mira and Jonathan, with a Boston suburb (re-created in a warehouse just north of New York City), stepping in for the Stockholm of the original. Jonathan remains an academic though Mira, a lawyer in the original, is now a businesswoman who out-earns him.

Casting began in early 2020. After Isaac met with Levi, he wrote to Chastain to tell her about the project. She wasn’t available. The producers cast Michelle Williams. But the pandemic reshuffled everyone’s schedules. When production was ready to resume, Williams was no longer free. Chastain was. “That was for me the most amazing miracle,” Levi said.

Isaac and Chastain met in the early 2000s at Juilliard. He was in his first year; she, in her third. He first saw her in a scene from a classical tragedy, slapping men in the face as Helen of Troy. He was friendly with her then-boyfriend, and they soon became friends themselves, bonding through the shared trauma of an acting curriculum designed to break its students down and then build them back up again. Isaac remembered her as “a real force of nature and solid, completely solid, with an incredible amount of integrity,” he said.

In the next window, Chastain blushed. “He was super talented,” she said. “But talented in a way that wasn’t expected, that’s challenging and pushing against constructs and ideas.” She introduced him to her manager, and they celebrated each other’s early successes and went to each other’s premieres. (A few of those photos are used in “Scenes From a Marriage” as set dressing.)

In 2013, Chastain was cast in J.C. Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year,”opposite Javier Bardem. When Bardem dropped out, Chastain campaigned for Isaac to have the role. Weeks before shooting, they began to meet, fleshing out the back story of their characters — a husband and wife trying to corner the heating oil market in 1981 New York — the details of the marriage, business, life.

It was their first time working together, and each felt a bond that went deeper than a parallel education and approach. “Something connects us that’s stronger than any ideas of character or story or any of that,” Isaac said. “There’s something else that’s more about like, a shared existence.”

Chandor noticed how they would support each other on set, and challenge each other, too, giving each other the freedom to take the characters’ relationship to dark and dangerous places. “They have this innate trust with each other,” Chandor said.

That trust eliminated the need for actorly tricks or shortcuts, in part because they know each other’s tricks too well. Their motto, Isaac said, was, “Let’s figure this [expletive] out together and see what’s the most honest thing we can do.”

Moni Yakim, Juilliard’s celebrated movement instructor, has followed their careers closely and he noted what he called the “magnetism and spiritual connection” that they suggested onscreen in the film.

“It’s a kind of chemistry,” Yakim said. “They can read each other’s mind and you as an audience, you can sense it.”

Telepathy takes work. When they knew that shooting “Scenes From a Marriage” could begin, Chastain bought a copy of “All About Us,” a guided journal for couples, and filled in her sections in character as Mira. Isaac brought it home and showed it to his wife, the filmmaker Elvira Lind.

“She was like, ‘You finally found your match,’” Isaac recalled. “’Someone that is as big of a nerd as you are.’”

The actors rehearsed, with Levi and on their own, talking their way through each long scene, helping each other through the anguished parts. When production had to halt for two weeks, they rehearsed then, too.

Watching these actors work reminded Amy Herzog, a writer and executive producer on the series, of race horses in full gallop. “These are two people who have so much training and skill,” she said. “Because it’s an athletic feat, what they were being asked to do.”

But training and skill and the “All About Us” book hadn’t really prepared them for the emotional impact of actually shooting “Scenes From a Marriage.” Both actors normally compartmentalize when they work, putting up psychic partitions between their roles and themselves. But this time, the partitions weren’t up to code.

“I knew I was in trouble the very first week,” Chastain said.

She couldn’t hide how the scripts affected her, especially from someone who knows her as well as Isaac does. “I just felt so exposed,” she said. “This to me, more than anything I’ve ever worked on, was definitely the most open I’ve ever been.”

“It felt so dangerous,” she said.

I visited the set in February (after multiple Covid-19 tests and health screenings) during a final day of filming. It was the quietest set I had ever seen: The atmosphere was subdued, reverent almost, a crew and a studio space stripped down to only what two actors would need to do the most passionate and demanding work of their careers.

Isaac didn’t know if he would watch the completed series. “It really is the first time ever, where I’ve done something where I’m totally fine never seeing this thing,” he said. “Because I’ve really lived through it. And in some ways I don’t want whatever they decide to put together to change my experience of it, which was just so intense.”

The cameras captured that intensity. Though Chastain isn’t Mira and Isaac isn’t Jonathan, each drew on personal experience — their parents’ marriages, past relationships — in ways they never had. Sometimes work on the show felt like acting, and sometimes the work wasn’t even conscious. There’s a scene in the harrowing fourth episode in which they both lie crumpled on the floor, an identical stress vein bulging in each forehead.

“It’s my go-to move, the throbbing forehead vein,” Isaac said on a follow-up video call last month. Chastain riffed on the joke: “That was our third year at Juilliard, the throb.”

By then, it had been five months since the shoot wrapped. Life had returned to something like normal. Jokes were possible again. Both of them seemed looser, more relaxed. (Isaac had already poured himself one tequila shot and was ready for another.) No one cried.

Chastain had watched the show with her husband. And Isaac, despite his initial reluctance, had watched it, too. It didn’t seem to have changed his experience.

“I’ve never done anything like it,” he said. “And I can’t imagine doing anything like it again.”

###

#oscar isaac #jessica chastain #scenes from a marriage #hagai levi #michelle williams #elvira lind #behind the scenes #article

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earnestly-endlessly · 3 years

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*flies in like magneto* can i get some exes to lovers™?

Do I have some exes to lovers fics for you? Yes I certainly do. It seems that the cherik fandom loves some exes to lovers cherik and I don't blame anyone because this ship really calls for all the angst. I hope you enjoy this list.

Exes to Lovers AU

Bound – FuryRed

Summary: Is there anything worse than someone else’s wedding? Well, perhaps your sister’s wedding- where the groom just has to invite his boss and that man just happens to be your ex-boyfriend; a person you had an extremely passionate and tumultuous relationship with that ended badly.

Charles hadn’t seen Erik for a year by the time Raven had told him about the wedding. He wasn’t looking forward to the occasion, particularly when Raven explained that they would be celebrating the event with a two-week extravaganza at a luxury hotel, meaning that Charles would be forced to spend a whole fortnight with the man who he’d given everything to; the man who had ultimately broken his heart…

Preheat to 350 (just for you remix) – ikeracity

Summary: Charles realizes he's in love with Erik. But there's one tiny little problem: he just broke up with Erik.

Thread Through a Needle – Black_Betty

Summary: Erik and Charles are broken up. Neither of them want to be.

Carry Me Anew (Frost & Darkholme Remix) – kianspo

Summary: While working as a model for Raven and Emma's clothing line, Erik experiences a strong attraction to his shoot partner. These things happen, except Erik has a boyfriend, who does not take this at all well.

Linger like a tattoo kiss – ikeracity

Summary: Six months apart gives Erik a lot of time to think about what he really wants.

(Erik's POV from Carry Me Anew (Frost & Darkholme Remix) by kianspo)

Symphysis – ikeracity

Summary: After Charles and Erik broke up four months ago, Charles convinced himself he'd never see Erik again. But life has a funny way of bringing people back together.

Call/Response – phalangine

Summary: Charles and Erik have a real conversation for the first time since breaking up. Charles is looking to avoid confrontation. Erik is not.

Regression Therapy – Fantine_Black

Summary: O, God, he’d made a terrible mistake. Whatever he’d expected to find here, Erik was still Erik, a man he’d moved continents to avoid. In retrospect, that felt like a rather good idea…

Four years after Charles walked away from Professor Lehnsherr, the two meet again for a drink.

Because things are better the second time round, aren't they?

Forever is Only a Drunk Dial Away – bettysofia

Summary: Charles is sad and drunk and stalking Erik's Instagram.

Shop Space – Caradee

Summary: Charles and Erik break up but still meet at their favorite coffee shop and manage a completely friendly relationship. The kids who work the coffee shop don't understand it, Charles' overprotective twin brother doesn't understand it, and even Charles doesn't understand it. Then, Erik shows up with a new date, someone who seems to be everything that Charles is not.

How will the Professor handle the surprising heartbreak that comes seeing Erik with someone else?

Mutant House at Dead Kings College – mabyn

Summary: When it comes to romance, Charles has terrible timing.

Can You Feel My Heart – FuryRed

Summary: Erik Lehnsherr hates Charles Xavier.

It’s as true as the words written on the wall in the bathroom at the university that Erik attends. Erik sees them one day- accompanied by a crude drawing of Erik and Charles glaring at each other- and recognises the truth of the sentence, and smiles.

He hates Charles.

Probably…

Believe (One More Time) – luninosity

Summary: For the prompt, Charles and Erik dated during college and had a bitter break-up right before graduation. It's five years later and they both meet again at their class's reunion for a weekend. Someone was even stupid enough to have them room with each other for the weekend...

Old Flame Burning – TurtleTotem

Summary: It's ridiculous for Charles to dread meeting the best man at his sister's wedding, just because he shares a name with Charles's ex. It's not as though it could possibly be the same Erik.

Don’t speak to the bartender – Wild_Imagination

Summary: Logan is a bartender, it's a gloomy evening, and in his bar there's someone with a broken heart. But this is not a movie.

Right?

Somewhere I’m Going & Have Never Been Before – Yahtzee

Summary: In late December 1984, Charles falls victim to the terrible pandemic sweeping across the globe. He's sick, probably dying, and utterly alone in an isolated cabin...until he's not.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland – TurtleTotem

Summary: Charles hasn't seen Erik since their devastating breakup ten years ago. He's certainly the last person he expects to run into at a Christmas lights display.

Lean On Me – SpiritsFlame

Summary: Ten years ago, Charles and Erik split up, dividing their six kids between them. None of them expect them to meet at summer camp. And no one could have predicted the results.

It was a yellow umbrella spring – ikeracity

Summary: Three years after Charles left for Oxford, Erik discovers that Charles is coming back to New York.

Second chances are wonderful things.

My heart above my head – annejumps

Summary: Emma thinks her coworker Erik and her friend and fellow telepath Charles should get together. No one expects things to get so intense so quickly.

The Edge of What Doesn’t End – populuxe

Summary: When a mysterious object appears on the moon, Moira MacTaggert calls in two experts with very specific mutations to investigate.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, after years of breaking up and getting back together again, those two experts have finally broken up for good—and they’re the last people in the world who should be stuck together on a spaceship.

Exit Wounds – LemonadeGarden

Summary: It's been eight months since Charles and Erik had a fight that broke apart their marriage. When a mutant rights protest goes awry and Charles begins to get sick, past memories and present obstacles begin to blur the lines of their ideological differences.

Alternatively: Charles and Erik learn how to fall in love again in troubled times.

Note: Unfinished

11 Days, 8 Hours and 12 Minutes (or Bruises, Stupidity and Anger Management) – ximeria

Summary: For six months, Erik and Charles have been the disgustingly happy couple of the school. Considering their pigheadedness and general communication skills (or lack thereof), things are bound to go boom at some point.

Moon Song – ikeracity

Summary: Werewolf AU. When Charles is captured by hunters, Erik and his pack go after him. It turns out there might be some room for redemption left for both of them after all.

I will Never Stop Loving You – swoopswoop

Summary: Erik and Charles split up three years ago but Erik never really got over it and then one day when the man who walked out of his life three years ago is walking down the street towards him, Erik sees an opportunity to mend fences.

Please leave your message after the tone – ikeracity

Summary: Spending his evening getting shitfaced and pining over Erik seems like a totally productive use of Charles's time. Luckily, it turns out to be a better idea than it sounds.

When the Spell Breaks – kianspo

Summary: Erik, a high-profile lawyer with a successful career, meets a 21-year-old grad student in a bar, and within a few short months marries him. He and Charles are blissfully happy, until Erik's boss runs a background check on Charles and discovers he's been cheating on Erik. Charles denies everything, as there was no affair, but Erik doesn't believe him and throws him out. As Charles tries to figure out how to survive and stay at school that he can no longer afford and makes a lot of bad if not plain dangerous choices, Erik has to fight his own battle of discovering the truth and winning Charles back.

We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven (the things you love don’t last remix) – hllfire

Summary: Charles hands Erik the signed divorce papers, but Erik has changed his mind. Too late, it seems. All he can do is go forward with the divorce.

A year later, Charles comes back, and Erik can't help but wanting to see him. The only problem is things don't go like Erik had planned.

Suddenly There’ll Be a Blizzard (Let it Snow Remix) – kianspo

Summary: Charles was never at his best while jetlagged, but locking himself out in a snowstorm while barely dressed might be a new low. The last thing he expected was to be rescued by his high school nemesis, the man he hadn't seen in over ten years, who might have broken his heart for good once upon a time.

Write this number down (you can call it anytime) – pocky_slash

Summary: When Erik upsets his children, they have a habit of running away from home--and straight to Charles' school for cookies and consolation. Charles doesn't mind the visitors, but as they appear more and more frequently, he realizes that sooner or later, he and Erik are going to have to talk about what happened on the beach and what it means for their future and the future of Erik's children.

All we do is break up (and make up) – Stuckyl0v3r

Summary: "So instead of making the most out of this next months, because you don't know where either of you is going to end up, you decided to stay away from each other to get used to the feeling?" Hank summed up, stopping in front of the class. Charles nodded his head confidently and beamed at him, but somehow his smile didn't reach his eyes.

"Yes, something like that."

Well, that was the most idiotic plan Hank's ever heard.

Three wheels of cheese and a Great White – ximeria

Summary: Charles and Erik were friends with benefits in college.

They went their separate ways and 18 years later, they run into each other in New York.

The sex was never a problem back in college - and sex was all it had been. But now Erik is a divorced father and Charles has admitted to himself he needs more than just sex in a relationship. So in their usual round-about way they try to navigate becoming friends after so many years. The whole quest is aided by Raven, Edie, Wanda and Pietro (and a large number of shark jokes).

#cherik #cherik fic recs #fic recs #asks #earnestly answers #exes to lovers #ex boyfriends

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unhealthyfanobsession · 3 years

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Omg I love all your drabbles they are so amazing and brilliant I can’t believe you do that for free! What a blessing you are!! I was wondering whether there would be a part four to the vacation au and if not could you do maybe more jealous Cassian but in your lawyer au I’m obsessed but honestly anything you write has me happy!

This is so sweet I am so glad you’re loving the drabbles! I did a second part to the vacation AU a couple days ago so I’m going to go with Jealous Cassian in the lawyer AU. I already *kind* of did this but I’ve been doing jealousy light lately and this time we are cranking it up to 100. This one is kinda long and pretty angsty and I think I definitely need to smoosh all these lawyer drabbles into a mini story that follows Nessian from meeting while studying for the bar exam and then through snippets of their careers so maybe that’s what I’ll do next.

Actually facing Nesta in court was an extreme rarity. All of her non pro Bono work was strictly solicitor. Drafting contracts and negotiating deals in different chic board rooms with little glass bottles of Perrier and complimentary latte carts trolling the halls.

Nesta thought that she didn’t want to litigate. She thought that people didn’t like her and because of that she was a bad advocate. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Watching Nesta fight for something that she believed in, truly believed in, was the closest thing to a religious experience Cassian had ever known.

“And I would urge you to consider in your decision, your honour, the fact that even if it should apply in this case, the very law my learned friend is attempting to uphold is currently under review by the Supreme Court and may soon be overturned on the basis of being unconstitutional as well as unconscionable.” Nesta took a pregnant pause.

“If that happens. If this law is overturned, as you well know, it will not be retroactively helpful to my client. My client who was born here. My client who grew up in Queens. My client who can draw you a map of which bodegas has the best coffee vs the best sandwiches and their proximity to the nearest train, and if that doesn’t qualify her as an American, and a New Yorker, then I don’t know what does.” The judge smiled a little at that. It was a calculated risk, the emotional appeal. But Judge Miluski was already on Nesta’s side and she was a born and bread New Yorker and she had the rare distinction of being a member of the judiciary with a sense of humour. “If this law is overturned, which we both know is highly likely, then my client will be sent to another country, a country she has never even been to, not because she did anything wrong, but because this trial happened a few weeks too-”

Nesta trailed off, eyes caught at the quietly opening gallery door. A man stepped in. Tall and thin and… greasy. Hair slicked back with so much product Cassian didn’t think he’d feel it if he hit him on the head with a hammer. Which he desperately wanted to do. That brutish, violent, raised in foster homes in Harlem side of him that even a legal education and a closet full of Armani suits could never quite polish out of him lit on fire at the sight of this creep. This asshole who was wearing fucking asics with his $4000 suit. And no tie. Top three buttons of a pinstripe white shirt unbuttoned. What a fucking rube.

Except that this guy. THIS fucking guy, made Nesta lose her train of thought. This guy who walked into court late and had yet to drag his eyes up from Nesta’s ass, had distracted her. Caused her to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and smile a little. This shy, light, cutesy little smile that absolutely did not belong on Nesta Archeron’s face.

When Nesta smiled it was a sly, knowing, victorious thing that curled across her lips and set Cassian’s heart hammering in his chest.

This… this was insanity.

The man smirked, deep and arrogant, as he stood at the back of the courtroom, hands slid into his pockets. Not even respectful enough of the proceedings to sit down.

Nesta gathered herself quickly. The whole mess over in under 20 seconds, but Cassian noticed it. Even as Nesta went on and cited the law and the competing jurisprudence and the ethics and the constitution, he couldn’t focus. All he could think about was that little smile.

Cassian said his final piece, the judge ruled, as they both knew she would, in Nesta’s favor, and it was all over.

Nesta didn’t even gloat like she usually would have. She just stuck her hand out, the absolute picture of professionalism, and shook his.

“Good working with you, Counseler.” She said, as if he hadn’t pulled her around the side of a building and pushed her body up against a brick wall the other day, moulding her into him as they fought over this case. Discussed their future. Their passions.

She’d rejected his invitation to dinner, but she always did. It was a part of the game. A game that Cassian was determined to win.

“Who’s the tech bro?” The sneakers with the suit and the unbuttoned shirt and the general shitty attitude all pointed to that being the only reasonable profession.

“Babe,” the slimy man in question pushed past the swinging waist high half door that separated the gallery and the space where counsel’s desks sat. “Let’s go.” He wrapped and arm too tightly around Nesta’s waist and pulled on her a little.

Cassian curled his fists into his palms so hard his nails bit imprints into the skin of his palms. Babe? Telling her when to leave? The pulling? No.

“I’m Cassian.” He held out his hand. “ADA. What firm do you work for? Haven’t seen you around.”

“Tomas.” The man scoffed, “And I’m not a lawyer. Not interested in all that gibberish you’re type is always spewing. Sounds like pure nonsense to me. I’m a tech investor.”

Yeah. That sounded about right. No actual skills. Not an engineer or developer or even a business manager. Just an idiot with a trust fund throwing money at whatever looked cool.

“Well, Tomas. Do you know why they call that big exam full of all that gibberish you hate the bar exam?” The weasel just raised his eyebrows. “It’s because once you pass it, then you are an attorney. And allowed to cross past this BAR.” Cassian pushed Tomas back out the little half door again. “Which separates the civilians in the gallery from the lawyers making their cases. So maybe learn how to show a little respect.” Cassian scoffed, flicking his eyes to Nesta, “In a few different areas of your life.”

“What the fuck, bro?” Tomas rolled his eyes. “This is why I fucking hate going to your lawyer parties and shit. Jackasses like this.”

“Tomas, please.” Nesta placed a hand on his chest, Cassian tensed, and that seemed to calm Tomas down. Not Nesta’s touch, but another man’s jealousy.

“Why don’t you bring the car around. I have to work out a court date for another matter with Cassian but I’ll be right out.”

“Yeah, ok.” Tomas glared, keeping eye contact with Cassian as he kissed Nesta’s cheek, hand travelling too far down her back. “Hurry though.”

“Of course.” Nesta smiled that same tiny little smile that made her look like a doll on a shelf and Cassian wanted to scream.

“What the fuck are you doing with a piece of shit like that?” Cassian minced no words as he turned to face Nesta.

“Excuse me?”

“Pretty straight forward question, Nes.”

“You… you don’t know him. He’s not like that once you get to know him.”

“Sure he’s not,” Cassian scoffed.

“What is your problem?”

“My problem is that your boyfriend, who I’ve never heard of or seen before today despite knowing you for years, had a chance to see you in court. Had a chance to watch you all fired up and passionate and brilliant and instead he walked in late, stared at your ass instead of listening to what you were saying, and then shoved his way up here and pulled at you to leave like you were some kind of toy he didn’t mind tearing the arm off of.”

Nesta blinked. Huffed out a breath. “We’ve been on again off again for a while. That’s why you haven’t seen him before. And he just doesn’t like lawyer stuff that’s why he’s like that in here ok? Not that it’s any of your business.”

“So you’re dating someone who not only doesn’t recognize how brilliant you are but won’t even let you talk about your job?” That was wrong. That was so wrong. That was… why Nesta was so intense with him. Why she debated and fought and talked for hours. Because she couldnt do it at home.

“Why do you even care, Cassian? Let’s just set a date and-”

“Fuck you, Nesta.” Her jaw fell open. “Fuck you for even asking me that. You know why I care. You can’t play dumb with me like I assume you do with him.”

“You don’t know anything about my relationship!” Nesta defended a little too vehemently.

“I know you can’t yell at him about his take on immigration laws,” Cassian stepped closer to her. “I know you can’t get a little tipsy off your favorite Malbec and go on a rambling tirade about the corrupt judiciary and your twenty three- or twenty five depending on the night- reasons why voting for judges completely undermines the integrity of the legal system.”

The was almost no space between them as Cassian looked down, gently set his hand under Nesta’s chin and raised her gaze to meet his. Burning with anger and passion and barely concealed desire. “I know that he didn’t understand why you were crying when RBG died. Because he doesn’t care about how appointing Supreme Court judges works or what that meant for the future of the court. And because I know that you weren’t with him that night. You were with me. Just like election night in 2016. And the Kavanaugh trials. And when the travel ban came into effect. You found me. Because I get it, and I care about your thoughts on all of those things. I’m devastated by them too. You were with me, Nes. And don’t you dare pretend that doesn’t mean anything.”

“It does,” Nesta let her cheek sink into his palm. “It means everything Cassian, but…”

“But we fight,” he smiled. “We bicker and yell and cross ideologies and disagree on all the little things. But not the big things, Nes. Never on the big things. We disagree on how to change the world, not what we want to change in it. Isn’t that what matters?”

Nesta swallowed. “I can’t risk losing you.” She said quietly. “I need you. For all of those reasons, I need you to be in my life and if we… I hurt the people I love, Cassian. So if I let myself love you, I would only hurt you. And I can’t bear the thought of hurting you.”

“So you date him.” Realization was an arrow sailing into Cassian’s chest. “Because you won’t hurt him. Because you could never actually love him.”

Nesta swallowed. “See? See how awful I am?”

Cassian moved his hand to her back, pulled her into his chest. “Go,” he whispered. “Go do whatever you need to do. I’ll be here. And I’ll be waiting for you to realize that I’m not going anywhere. That I can take it. Whatever you want to throw at me, I can take it, Nes.”

#nessian #nessian fanfiction #nesta archeron #acosf #cassian #nesta and cassian #a court of thorns and roses #sarah j maas #a court of silver flames #a court of mist and fury #acotar

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ijustwant2write · 4 years

Text

Brought Together-George Weasley x Reader

(GIF credit to @tanrininsonteki)

(I’ve written loads about Fred, George needed some love too!)

Summary: Who ever gets over the death of their brother? The death of their son? A friend? (Y/N) and the twins were always together, as if joined at the hip (or hips rather). But once the trio became a duo, one person had to become stronger than the other, pushing down their emotions and feelings to help the person they loved; because when things are put in perspective, it’s so obvious who their soulmate should be.

Characters: George Weasley x Reader, Weasley family x Reader (platonic), mentions of Fred Weasley

Meanings: (Y/N)=Your name

Warnings: Lots and lots of fluff, death, mourning, suppressed feelings/emotions

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

My body was numb. Whether it was from exhaustion, shock, trauma, fear or the wounds scattered across my body, it didn’t matter to me, I couldn’t bring myself to move. With my knees hunched up to my chest, my hand tightly gripped onto my wand, showing how much I was shaking. A shadow cast over me, but I didn’t move my head. In my peripheral vision, I saw someone sit next to me, gently taking my wand away before I snapped it in half.

“You haven’t moved. It’s over now (Y/N).”

George saddled up to me, slowly put an arm around my shoulders. I leaned into him, letting him rest his chin on top of my head. My hand grabbed his free one, guiding it to wrap it around my waist, pulling him close for a hug. It felt relieving to have human contact, to feel someone else’s heartbeat, knowing that they were alive here with me. There was too much blood, too much crying, too many friends lying dead or unconscious on the stone floor. Although fear had been pulsing through my body throughout the entire time we were fighting, my mind wouldn’t accept the concept of anyone dying; yet here I sat, having watch the life drained away from one of my best friends.

“George?” I suddenly gasped, pulling away from him.

His eyes widened at my movement.“What?”

“You’re here, aren’t you? George, please don’t tell me I’m imagining you?!” my voice raised as I panicked, and George tried to shush me. I was disrupting the first sign of peace.

“Yes, yes, (Y/N) I’m here. I’m real,” tears started rolling down his cheeks, but he attempted a smile,“I’m not leaving you. I won’t ever leave you.”

I groaned as I picked up another box, feeling the pain in my back. At ‘Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes’, we were re-stocking for the beginning of the Christmas season, changing around the shop to give it a fresh look. George was rolling up his sleeves, stepping back from the display he created. I approached him, standing with my arms crossed as I admired his work.

“I like it.” I simply said.

“Just like?” George nudged me with his elbow.

I smiled, rolling my eyes.“You know what I meant.”

“Come on, I’ll help you with the last boxes.”

“You don’t have to George. Have a break.”

He walked past me.“Nonsense. We’ve got places to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Drinks after work of course. Seeing as it’s just us today, I thought we could head to the Three Broomsticks, like we used to.”

I blushed, happy that he turned away from me to not see it. Following after him, I tried not to stare too much as he decided how we should set out the certain product. When he was engulfed in his work, something that he was so passionate about, it was like I was seeing the old George, the cheeky chap from school (not that he wasn’t cheeky anymore). These small moments were captured in my memories, pushing back the old, terrible ones. He deserved to be happy, especially when all he wanted to do was make other people laugh with the jokes and pranks they sold.

We managed to finish the new displays within the next hour, meaning it was time for us to relax with a good drink. It wasn’t going to be a night of getting drunk, just two...friends enjoying each other’s company. Wrapping up warm, George locked up, holding out his arm to me as we hurried to the pub, wanting to be out of the cold as soon as possible. Once at the Three Broomsticks, we were easily able to find a table, being served instantly as it wasn’t busy, only a few locals filled the space.

“Actually,” George started after setting his drink down,“I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

There was that blush again. It seemed that words didn’t want to form.“Hm?”

“Well, obviously you’re always welcome round mine. But I was wondering if you wanted to come over for Christmas? Not the actual day cause I know you’ll be with your family, but just before-”

“Yes.”

“What?”

He chuckled.“That didn’t take much persuasion, did it?”

“I love your family. You didn’t even need to ask. But you sounded nervous.”

“Did I?”

I nodded, taking a sip of my drink.

“W-well, I...I don’t know what you’re talking about.” he looked everywhere except in my direction.“You ever seen me nervous?”

I giggled.“You don’t remember asking me to the Yule Ball-”

He waved his hands dismissively, which only made me laugh harder.“We said to never speak of that again, remember?”

I shrugged, a grin still on my face.“I still think it was more cute than nervous.”

Now it was his turn to tease me.“You think I’m cute?”

“Thought, I thought the whole idea was cute. But you can’t deny that it wasn’t a good night.”

“No, that was fun.” we were both in thought.“You looked beautiful in that dress.”

I waited for a snarky remark, but nothing came.“But?”

“What do you mean, ‘but’?”

“Oh, usually you just...never mind.”

“Anyway,” George cleared his throat,“you know mum wouldn’t take no for an answer, so you’ll have to pack a bag to stay a few nights.”

I laughed.“I would expect nothing less. Gosh, what to get all you Weasley’s for Christmas?”

“Don’t be daft. You don’t need to get everyone presents.”

“Of course I do!”

“Tell you what, why don’t we join up for presents? Buy them together.”

“You know what George, that’s probably the best idea you’ve had for a while.” I smirked.

He scoffed a laugh.“Right, I know I offered to buy the drinks, but that stops now!”

We had a few weeks before my time at the Weasley’s, meaning we were able to think and buy everyone’s presents. During lunch breaks or on days off, we would scour the shops, coming out of them with bags and bags hanging off our arms. I was always excited to see my second family, and Christmas was a fun, special time of year for everyone. The night before we were set to visit them, I stayed with George as we had to set off early the next morning. It was lovely when we stayed with each other.

"I know you only clean this place up when I come round, just admit it!" I giggled as we laid in bed facing the other, discarded chocolate wrappings scattered between us.

George laughed with me, rolling onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. As we calmed down, I bundled up into a tight ball, feeling a slight chill, which George noticed. He said nothing as he leaned his upper body off of the bed, grabbing a blanket from who knows where before wrapping it around me. My gaze remained on him as he tucked me in, enjoying the small amount of attention. Feeling hands on me made butterflies emerge in my stomach, and the caring side to him was the sweetest thing I had ever seen.

"I will admit, I did buy that blanket just for you. You complained about being cold enough to drive me mad." he smirked.

I clutched onto the soft fabric."Well, if you're going to speak to me like that, then I guess I'll just leave."

He tucked his arms beneath his head, closing his eyes slowly."Go on then. See you later."

When neither of us moved, we tried to contain our laughter, both failing miserably as our cackles rang out in his bedroom. It was like our sleepovers we had when we were much younger, they stopped as we...changed at a certain age.

“Are you sure everyone will like their presents?" I wondered.

He sighed lightly."We've been over this. You could pick up a weed from our own garden and they would fawn over it. It's not the gift they want, it's you."

My mouth open, prepared to protest against him as he teased me again, but I was stuck for words."George...that's a lovely thing to say."

His head lolled to face me, his face scrunching up in disgust."I take it back."

"No!" I quickly said."You can't pretend you didn't say that!"

"Say what?" he teased.

"George!"

Carrying everyone’s presents in our arms, George and I prepared ourselves for the onslaught of hugs and kisses we would be attacked with before we could even set down any of the presents or our bags. We were still a few steps away from the door when it was fiercely pulled open, Molly squealing and throwing her arms up in joy.

“Oh, you’re here! Arthur, they’re here!” she was beaming.

She hastily took the presents from George’s arms, impatiently ushering him inside as Arthur (who was a bit more reserved) took my presents, before I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek as a greeting. Once all of our belongings were set down, proper hugs were given, just as bone crushing as they usually were.

“Oh, it’s so lovely to have you over dear.” Molly gushed.

“Mum, she was here a month ago.” George said.

“Well, it wouldn’t matter if it was just a day, I would miss her the same amount.”

I smiled at her.“Thank you Molly. See George, maybe you should be as kind as your mum.”

“I see you everyday, that’s almost too much for me.”

“Well, Ginny and Harry should be arriving tonight, Ron is already here, I think Hermione is supposed to be coming tonight too, but I’m not sure when, Bill and Fleur-”

Molly continued explaining the plan for the next couple of days, but I was distracted by George talking to his dad. Their voices were hushed, they kept side glancing at us as they spoke, before a shy smile emerged on George’s face. I somehow went back to Molly’s explanation, pretending that I had heard everything she said. Politely nodding, I was relieved that she started asking me about myself, changing the topic of conversation, even though my mind was occupied with someone else.

Everyone had arrived as the evening came, squeezing into the house and around the long table. As we sat down to eat, I noticed an empty chair besides George, realising who should have been there. My breath got caught in my throat at the sight, not hearing George call my name until he placed his hand on top of mine.

“You OK?” he whispered.

“Um...” my head slowly turned to face him.“Yeah, sorry. I’m fine.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? What I mean is, it’s weird to think he’s...he’s not here.”

I squeezed his hand, but before I could say anything, Arthur stood, preparing to make a speech. Keeping my hand in George’s, I listened just like everyone else, trying to push away the flashes of Fred filling my mind.

“Well, I know it’s a bit early to be celebrating Christmas, but we know that you all have your own plans for this year, now that you’re grown up. But it is important to ensure that we get together, especially during this season about love, giving gifts, drinking, eating, and spending time with family and friends, because...because you never know what the future holds. And I think...no, I know that the last year has taught us all that.”

People were either getting teary eyes, already crying, or had a solemn look on their faces. Glances towards the empty seat were common. I didn’t wince as George’s grip tightened, strongly pinching my skin. Keeping my head down, I suppressed any tears, taking in a deep breath as Arthur managed to carry on.

“I just want you all to know, that I love you, your mother and I love you. And for those extended family, (Y/N), Harry, Hermione, Fleur, Audrey, we love you just as much. You’re our family too. We need to make every moment count, make every moment special. So, with that being said, let’s have some fun tonight!”

We raised our glasses, clinking them all together before drinking. I took a big gulp, and then another as the chatter built up again. Once we were done with food and the conversations afterwards, we were going to start playing games, lifting up the atmosphere in the room. Before it started, I excused myself, not that anyone took much notice. Scurrying upstairs, I tried to slow down my breathing as I shut myself in my designated room, covering my mouth to silence my cries. I collapsed back onto the bed, head in my hands as I felt tears try to stream down my face. My shoulders shook as I forced myself to make no noise. The door opened, causing me to flinch back, even though it was George.

“(Y/N)? Why are you crying?” he panicked, immediately kneeling in front of me.

I shook my head that was back hiding in my hands.

“Hey, come on, you can talk to me. Did someone say something?”

I sniffled, looking away from him.“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be crying, it’s not fair.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just seeing Fred’s chair...without him in it, it was heartbreaking. And, and I know you and your family have to deal with that every day for the rest of your lives but...but I miss him so much George!”

“It’s alright. Hey, I’m here.” he moved to sit beside me, holding my close.

“I’ve always wanted to make sure you were happy, and I knew that if I started crying like this then it would make things worse. He was your twin brother. What right do I have to be like this?”

“Listen to yourself,” he softly said, gently pushing me away so that I would look him in the eyes,“you’ve never mourned properly. You heard my dad downstairs, you’re family. Fred loved you, you loved him, we were the best of friends us three! The fact that you’ve not let out all of this makes me worried. It’s not healthy.”

“I know, I just couldn’t stand to see you upset anymore. I wanted to make you happy.”

“You do make me happy (Y/N). You make me extremely happy by just being with me, by just being you. You’re right, all those times I saw your smile, I smiled. Making you laugh is one of the best things in the world, and the fact that I can see you everyday, well, I couldn’t ask for anything more. I just wished that you had been able to talk to me about this, you know I’m always here for you.”

“I should have, I realised that now. But when you would start to let everything out to me, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, I felt like I was adding to your trauma and making it about myself. And after relentless weeks of nightmares, nightmares that involved you dying alongside Fred, it would all disappear from my mind once I saw you.”

His hand pushed away the hair stuck to my wet face, sadly smiling.“I understand. Promise me that you’ll tell me about these sort of things?”

I nodded.“I promise. I’m sorry that I didn’t speak to you sooner.”

“Don’t apologise. You have nothing to apologise for.”

Strangely, we both leaned in towards each other, quickly kissing. We didn’t pull away a lot, kissing once again, though this one was firmer and more confident. It wasn’t leading to anything, it was something we both wanted but knew tonight wasn’t the right time to go too deep into this. After a few seconds apart, I couldn’t help it, I had to kiss him again.

“My dad asked about us earlier. After hearing that we bought presents together and stayed with each other, he was wondering if something had finally happened.”

“Glad he’s not the only one wanting something to happen between us.”

“We’ll definitely talk about this tomorrow. But just so you know, I enjoyed that.” George said.

“I did too.” I mumbled, suddenly becoming shy.“And thank you for always being there George. I will get better at expressing my feelings in the moment.”

“I just hope you know that it doesn’t matter how you’re feeling; happy, sad, excited, annoyed, you can tell me anything. And also, if Fred was here, he would have certainly burst in and ruined the moment.”

I giggled.“You’re not wrong there. Perhaps he’s watching down on us know, wishing he could have put some sort of plan into action to embarrass us.”

“I bet he is. But I know he would have also been happy.”

“And we’ll be happy too. We are happy.”

“Yes, now that I’ve got you, I’m going to cherish every moment, just as dad said to.”

I hugged him close.“Don’t ever leave me George.”

“I won’t, not ever.”

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a-lockman5 · 3 years

Text

Things were different now Pt. 3 - Happy to Help {Devi and Paxton}

A/n: as usual, I don’t own these characters, but I love them. This continues to follow the timeline I initially wrote so it does not coincide with season 2 at all. Paxton is a 17 year old with feelings, not a 10 year old before puberty… I hate proofreading so if it’s awful, apologies. Umm… so sorry it’s a year late.. and honestly, I kinda hate parts of it, but here we are nonetheless. Hope you like it!

Warnings: fluff, angst, phobias, I think that’s it.

Part one, Part two

Don’t forget to check out my Masterlist!

“Hey, baby,” Ben greeted her in a sing-song voice.

“Morning, Ben,” Devi replied as Ben laid a kiss to her cheek, and took the seat next to her.

“Why didn’t you come by for breakfast this morning?” he asked.

Devi felt her eyes grow wide momentarily. She had been going to Ben’s for breakfast before school all last week, telling her mom they were studying. It wasn’t a formal date though, and she hadn’t thought to plan an excuse. “Uh…” she scrambled, feeling the room close in as people filled the desks behind and on her other side. “I’m not feeling well,” she lied. “I overslept.”

She averted her gaze from Ben to dig a pencil out of her backpack from where it sat on the floor to her right. When she tried to unzip her pencil holder though, it got stuck and she flung it, one-handed, onto the floor. As she reached down to grab it, the person sitting next to her reached down to help too, and when she looked up, Paxton was grinning back at her.

“Morning, Vishwakumar. Long time, no see.”

Devi tried to swallow past a large lump in her throat. “Morning, Paxton,” she returned hesitantly, noting his hair was still damp and that it added curl to his hair that usually he used product to tame.

Devi had her first swim lesson with Paxton that morning before school. It’s not that she was hiding it from Ben, her boyfriend. It was just that she didn’t feel ready to tell him about it… so yeah, she was hiding it from him. Not because of Paxton though! She was hiding it because of her.

Not even Devi’s mom knew how afraid she was of being in the water since her paralysis was triggered. Prior to that, she loved swimming. It was the only sport she was at all inclined to and she even considered trying out for team sophomore year until she went crazy and lost her legs.

She tried to move past it. Well, kind of. Her physical therapist thought aquatic therapy may help strengthen and facilitate the functional return of her legs. Instead, it resulted in her screaming and hyperventilating in Dan’s arms as he struggled to get her back to the lift out of the pool. Devi begged Dan not to tell her mom about her newfound fear and promised she would discuss it with Dr. Ryan. Her physical therapist agreed, and Devi never mentioned it to anyone again. Until Paxton.

“You want to swim?” He repeated back, puzzled as they sat on the couch in the garage. “I’ve seen you swim.”

“When?”

“Your freshman year…” he trailed off as realization dawned on him.

Devi didn’t know Paxton had any idea who she was until she propositioned him at the beginning of school this year. He remembered her from the year before? He remembered her before she lost her legs?

“Yeah… I haven’t been able to since…”

“So when you fell in the pool at Gross’s party…?” Paxton filled the silence for her.

“I’m really glad you pulled me out otherwise it would have gotten way more embarrassing,” she admitted.

She saw his jaw clench before his next question, “Why didn’t your friends help you?”

“Um…” she took a deep breath to muster the courage up to tell him, “they don’t know… nobody knows.”

And then he gave her that same deep, calculated look. The look he gave her when they were in his car so many weeks ago. The look he gave her before they kissed. Before he kissed her.

He agreed instantly after that. And things went mildly well that morning. She wasn’t able to get in the water, so instead, she sat next to the edge of the pool and watched Paxton swim for awhile and then they talked.

She was surprised by how patient Paxton had been with her especially since she dragged him out of bed earlier than necessary. He told her it was a process though, and he agreed to help her through it. Her heart felt full when he said that. She probably would have read too far into it in the past, but things were different now.

Devi knew she would have to tell Ben eventually that she was spending so much time with Paxton, but she just didn’t want him to overreact. He knew how much she had pined for Paxton before they started dating, and even though she and Paxton were friends only now, it wouldn’t change the threat he posed in her boyfriend’s mind.

you and PHY seem awfully chummy - Fab

Devi looked over her shoulder at her friends after reading Fabiola’s text message. Both Fab and Eleanor were giving her pretty pointed looks, and Devi just responded with a grimace and raised eyebrows. This whole friends thing sounded so easy with Paxton when they were sitting on his couch in the middle of the night. No one else was around, no one could pass judgment. Things were going to be a little harder in practice.

Fortunately, class was pretty uneventful. Mr. Shapiro started a new unit, they went over the lesson, and they were dismissed. Devi gathered her things quickly and hurried out of the room without waiting for her friends, her boyfriend, or Paxton. Of course, Paxton was her friend, so she didn’t know why she listed him in his own category.

“Hey,” the object of her musings appeared beside her locker.

Devi jumped at the sound of his voice, but managed to somewhat recover. “Hey, what’s good, playa?”

Paxton smirked at her with warm eyes. “Just wanted to check on you now that it’s been a couple hours.”

“Oh! Honestly, I feel good. Watching you actually helps me calm down,” she said before realizing how it sounded. “I mean, not that I just watch you, but I mean, watching you swim… it’s nice to see how you glide through the water… it’s like a white noise machine.”

“Right,” Paxton replied slowly after a beat. “Well you should come by today after school. I have an idea.”

She nodded as he walked away down the hall. Before Devi’s imagination could get the better of her though, her friends replaced Paxton in her line of vision.

“What is going on?” Fabiola asked bluntly.

“Yeah, are you and Paxton hooking up behind Ben’s back?”

“What? Of course not!” Devi was outraged. How could they think she would do that? “Paxton is my friend.”

“Since when?”

“Yeah, last thing we knew, you went there for dinner for his sister and it got hella weird,” Eleanor added. “What gives?”

Devi had not shared the one on one conversations she and Paxton had with her friends. Sure, the initial apology after dinner would probably be okay. Having a drink with Paxton in the garage at 2 o’clock in the morning after catching him in his underwear with an erection? No, there was no good way to relay that encounter.

“Um..” Devi hesitated. She couldn’t tell them the truth now after hiding her fear for so long, and then telling Paxton before telling them. They’d think she was a bad friend. “I’m tutoring him,” she lied. “Yeah, he’s got to get his grades up to meet the minimum for Stanford swimming to offer him a scholarship so I’m helping him.”

“Does Ben know?” Eleanor asked as Devi’s phone pinged in her pocket.

She pulled her phone out and read the message from Paxton, don’t forget to bring your suit ;), and she felt her cheeks heat up. “No,” she told Eleanor absentmindedly. “No, he doesn’t know.”

“Well, are you going to tell him?” Fabiola prodded.

Devi shook herself out of her daze and really heard her friends’ questions. “No, not right now. You guys know he would freak out if he knew Paxton and I were spending time together no matter how platonic. I’ll tell him eventually but everything is still so new, I don’t want to wreck it.”

Her friends’ judgment was evident, but Devi couldn’t let that bother her. Paxton was helping her confront one of her deepest fears, and she didn’t need to feel guilty about that. Instead, she chose to focus on making the most of her time with Paxton and enjoying their friendship while hopefully ridding her of her phobia.

Devi knocked briefly before letting herself into the Hall-Yoshida garage. It was empty and so she dropped her bag and plopped down onto the couch. It was almost funny, Devi thought. Things were so different now. A few months ago, she was terrified entering this space. She’d freaked, cut her leg open and bolted. Even the last time she’d been here, she’d tried to quietly reflect and calm her nerves after having one of her sexual fantasies manifest in the form of actually seeing Paxton Hall-Yoshida in his underwear with a boner. Now, she just comes right in and —

“Make yourself at home,” Paxton’s voice broke her from her thoughts.

She intended to make a sarcastic retort, but was caught off guard by him being in swim trunks already, and not the tight spandex trunks he wore for the swim team. No, these were normal, red and black trunks. They were entirely less revealing, outside of showing off his muscled chest, but they weren’t a uniform. Something about Paxton being voluntarily half naked and not bleeding from the hand had Devi looking at him dumbly from across the room.

“Devi, you good?” He asked cautiously, coming to sit next to her.

Her gaze trailed down from his collarbone to his pecs, to his abs, to his… her eyes grew wide as she realized she was openly ogling him. She snapped her eyes back to his to find him grinning at her.

“Everything okay?” He asked again. She nodded dumbly in response. “Good. Why don’t you go change? I have an idea that may work to start.”

“Okay, I’ll go change in the bathroom and meet you back here?”

“Nah, just come out to the back yard.”

Completely disrobed in the bathroom, Devi had another decision to make. Two suits. She brought two bathing suits with her both that morning and in the afternoon. She hadn’t even bothered to change before class that morning because just entering the aquatic center was enough to bring her near hyperventilation. She couldn’t do that again, and to be fair, if Paxton had a pool, it was news to Devi. And she asked him to help her swim. If that’s what she really wanted, then she needed to trust Paxton and let him help her. That meant she had to choose: black, Speedo one-piece or bubble gum pink bikini?

“Why’d you even bring both, Devi?” She asked her reflection.

She wasn’t sure she was ready to answer that question. She knew things were different now. She was dating Ben, and Paxton was her friend. That was her choice… it was just a much easier choice to make when she and Paxton weren’t speaking to each other. If she was honest, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Paxton since their middle of the night encounter last week. He was right when he said they had come a long way. She had come a long way, becoming more comfortable around him, and seeing him on an equal level versus the Adonis pedestal she placed him on in the past. Then he became real.

Paxton became more than the unattainable sex god that riddled her darkest fantasies. He became someone she could talk with, laugh with, open up to. He became her friend. Her friend that was still a sex god that riddled her darkest fantasies… these were the thoughts that had her leaning toward the far more revealing bikini for their lesson that afternoon.

She had a boyfriend though, a boyfriend she very much liked. Sure, she and Ben were unkind to each other in the past. He had routinely referred to her by a boy’s name, called her unfuckable, and yeah, he started the rumor that she faked her paralysis freshman year. She played her own role in their antagonistic relationship though, and all that was behind them anyway. Ever since his party, Ben had been much nicer to her. Of course, that was including when he tried to kiss her while still dating Shira… but obviously, that was because he had feelings for her that when he was sober, he wasn’t ready to confront yet. He had been there for her like no one else had. He deserved a good girlfriend. That was Devi’s last thought on the subject before donning the black athletic one piece.

The first thing Devi saw when she stepped onto the patio made her heart catch in her throat. A hot tub. It was too big. It was too much. Too much. She couldn’t get in a hot tub. It was already way too hot, Devi thought, feeling the air get thicker around her. Her throat felt constricted and she wondered how anyone was as able to breathe in these conditions. It felt impossible.

“Devi! Are you okay?” She heard Paxton ask faintly.

Her head began shaking back and forth frantically, but she didn’t feel like she was the one controlling it. Instead, it was moving of its own accord, and her voice didn’t sound like her own when she said, “I can’t get in the hot tub.”

Two strong hands grasped her waist and physically turned her so her back was to the offending item. It was then she saw Paxton. His eyes searched hers desperately before a hand came to cradle her face. She immediately felt herself relax into his touch just enough that she could take a breath.

“Hey, you’re okay. I got you,” he cooed. “I know you’re not ready for that, and that’s okay. Just take a deep breath.”

She still felt like she was gulping for air, but her body melted into his as he pulled her in for a hug. They just stood like that until she could regain control of her breathing. When she did, Paxton gently released her and Devi was honestly surprised by how disappointed she was to not be in his arms any longer.

“You good?” He asked cautiously. She nodded sheepishly. “Cool. Let’s get away from this so you can see what I have set up for you.”

She nodded again and let him take her hand to lead her deeper into the backyard. When she saw it, she couldn’t believe the relief that flooded her.

“A slip n slide?” She huffed out.

“A slip n slide!” He dropped her hand to raise his arms victoriously. “I looked up some stuff about phobias and I think it’ll help. It’s called exposure treatment. We’ll start slow and work your way up.”

“You researched phobias?”

“Well, yeah,” he nodded. “And I’ll be here for you the whole time.”

Devi felt herself smile. Paxton really took the time to try to figure out how to help her. No throwing her in the deep end of the pool, but actually holding her hand through this. Being by her side while they figured it out together. She couldn’t believe how lucky she felt to have him in her life at that moment.

It wasn’t a very fancy slip n side, most likely he’d had it in the shed since he and Becca were kids. It was still in good shape though and he’d placed it over a decline at the end that allowed for pooling of water. He had the hose running and ready, but when they stepped up to the start, it became infinitely more intimidating.

As though he could sense her apprehension, Paxton said, “how about I go first, and then you can try?”

She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat in order to respond. When she wasn’t successful, she nodded. Paxton gave her a weak grin, and reached out to squeeze her shoulder. It was probably a measure of reassurance, and it worked for a moment, but the minute his touch was gone, her nerves settled in again.

“Okay, so you want to get a running start so you go faster through the slide,” he told her, taking four to five steps back. “You ready?”

“Ready,” she choked out after a beat of silence.

Paxton took off, and dove smoothly onto the track. Devi felt her anxiety melt away as he slid down the track on his stomach. It was almost like watching his perfect strokes through the water, and something about watching him made her forget her fear. Then he crashed into the small wading pool at the end of the slide, and just like that Devi’s breath was stuck in her throat again, and it felt like a bucket of ice water was dumped over her head.

When Paxton stood up, he immediately sought her gaze for eye contact. Just as quickly, he seemed to notice how her panic rose again.

“Devi,” he called down to her. “You can do this, okay? Don’t think about the water, just focus on me.” She could feel how wide her eyes were and her mouth was starting to dry out as it hung open, but Paxton’s encouragement started to wear her down when he said, “Come to me, Devi. I got you.”

She took a steadying breath and barely nodded before stepping a few paces back like Paxton had. Paxton continued to cheer her on and beckon her to his open arms as she fought her body to cooperate with her. Finally, after another deep breath, Devi let out a guttural scream, her war cry, and ran toward the slide. She slid onto her stomach much like Paxton had and did not have the good sense to close her mouth until it was filled with hose water. It got her choked up again and it was difficult to catch her breath, but just as quickly as she started, she was plunged into the wading pool. Before she had a chance to panic-swallow more water, Paxton’s strong arms hauled her to a standing position and she collided with his chest in a tight hug.

“You did it!” He whispered triumphantly. “You did great, I’m so proud of you.”

“I did it,” she breathed, arms clutched tightly around his shoulders as though he would disappear if she let go. “I did it,” she repeated, a tear slipping down her cheek.

Devi and Paxton worked with the slip n slide for three more weeks, and it was amazing how quickly she was improving. Each time, Paxton was there to catch her at the end of the slide, and she grew more confident with each trip.

“So do you have plans this weekend?” Paxton asked, passing her a towel.

“Probably just studying for the history test,” she replied, drying her hair gently.

“With Gross?”

They hadn’t talked about Ben at all during their sessions. She had also skirted the issue of spending so much time with Paxton by telling her boyfriend that she’d been assigned a new student to tutor. She didn’t tell him it was Paxton. Things had been calm the last few weeks despite how crazy the first months of the semester had been. If she was honest, she hadn’t spent much time with or thought much about Ben that week at all. Things were going so well with Paxton and their sessions that she spent most of her time looking forward to the next time she’d be in his backyard in her bathing suit.

“Uh.. I don’t know. Probably him, Fab, and Eleanor, I guess,” she told him. “Or by myself. I don’t really have anything planned.”

“Would you…” he trailed off quietly before finding his voice again. “Would you maybe want to study here… with me?”

Devi felt herself smile. “Sure, I mean, my friends think I’m tutoring you anyway so that would make sense.”

“What?”

She breathed through another smile at how his brow furrowed, but rolled her eyes at herself before answering him. “I had to have a reason for why we’re talking so much more at school… so I told them I was tutoring you.”

Paxton’s head dropped as he huffed out a laugh. “You’re really good at lying, huh?”

“No! I just… get nervous about how people will react to stuff so sometimes it’s just easier to say something else.”

He nodded. “Well, you better tutor me then. ‘Cause if I fail this test, your whole story falls apart,” he said taking a step closer to her.

“Maybe you just don’t listen to me,” she grinned.

He took another step forward, this time into her personal space. “Impossible,” he countered, “have you met you?”

Devi’s smile grew before she realized how close Paxton really was to her. It wasn’t his actual proximity. They’d been closer physically than ever in these recent weeks, but something felt different that time. She could feel the heat radiating off of him and there was electricity in the air. He seemed to feel it too, and shook himself free before taking the towel back from her. That only allowed him to take in the full view of her from top to bottom, forcing Devi to close her eyes so she didn’t feel the full force of his gaze.

She heard Paxton swallow, then clear his throat, and then he took a step back. Devi chose then to meet his gaze, and found the same calculating look she’d now seen a total of three times. He had a depth she hadn’t previously credited him with. Now that she’d seen it, it was hard to ignore.

“Uh.. yeah, I think we could study together.”

Paxton grinned crookedly at her. “Cool,” he licked his lips before changing the subject. “Why don’t you go ahead and change, and then I’ll take you home.”

“That’s okay, I can I walk.” Devi said quickly. “I mean, I’d like to walk. Helps me clear my head.”

“Oh.. okay.”

Devi didn’t feel like she took another breath until she was shut in the bathroom of the Hall-Yoshida residence. Was Paxton really flirting with her? Did he really check her out like she thought he had? She’d been so wrong about so many of their encounters in the past, but… he did kiss her. Paxton Hall Yoshida was her first kiss and it was only a couple months ago. Maybe he really liked her. Maybe they —

A text message on her phone cut off her internal rambling. When she read it, her breath caught in her throat again:

Why are you at Paxton’s?

Fuck. Ben.

How could she forget about Ben? Here she was going down the Paxton rabbit hole again when she had Ben, her actual boyfriend. Things were different now though. She wasn’t sure exactly when they changed, but she knew they had.

She quickly typed out a response and then changed into her dry clothes.

***

“So Paxton is the student you’re tutoring?

“Uh.. yeah, kinda,” Devi told Ben. “Paxton is my friend, but I am helping him study.” It wasn’t technically a lie anymore now that they’d made plans for Saturday.

“Anything else you want to tell me?”

“What are you accusing me of, Ben?”

“Obviously, I’m the only one committed to this relationship. You’re still just drooling over some dick that wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.”

Devi scoffed, as the wind left her sails. She knew Ben would be hurt, and she expected him to be jealous that she was spending time with Paxton. She didn’t expect him to say Paxton wouldn’t want anything to do with her. She didn’t expect him to imply that she wasn’t good enough for Paxton. Like Ben was doing her some great, big favor by dating her. Once a UN, always a UN, she guessed.

“You know, I came here ready to explain myself, ready to apologize. Maybe you’re right though. Maybe you’re the only one committed to this relationship. God knows, I don’t want to be in a relationship where it’s okay to talk to me like that.”

Ben’s eyes widened, and Devi watched the color drain from his face. “No, Devi, I didn’t mean” —

“You didn’t mean to, not accuse me of cheating on you, but instead, accuse me of so desperately wanting to cheat on you that I would be the lap dog to a different guy?”

Devi really thought Ben deserved an explanation. That was why she went to his house. She realized though, she didn’t owe him anything. Ben had been the constant ignition to Devi’s insecurities. She thought that would stop when they became boyfriend and girlfriend, but no. Instead, he wanted to keep them together by making her feel unwanted by anyone else. She knew better though.

“Devi” —

“You are seriously the textbook ‘nice guy,’ aren’t you?” She air quoted. “Well, I don’t need any of that. I think we’re done here.”

Ben is canceled.

Devi felt oddly satisfied when she sent the text to Fabiola and Eleanor. She thought she would feel guilty after their encounter, but honestly, she felt liberated. Ben had been there for her when no one else was, and he showed that he cared about her. Still, when confronted with the idea that she may want to spend time with someone else, he immediately turned on her. Red flag. Big red flag.

Her friends immediately made plans to have a sleepover at Eleanor’s the following night. They wanted all the details. When Devi happily supplied them, they encouraged her as enthusiastically as she expected.

“Yes, girl,” Eleanor cried, giving her snaps when she told them she wouldn’t let Ben talk to her that way.

“You’re a strong, independent woman, and you don’t need some small little white boy trying to keep you down,” Fabiola bolstered.

“Thanks, guys. That brings me to my next problem though.” And for the first time, she told her friends about when she and Paxton kissed, how her mom had yelled at them the next day and called Paxton stupid, and how he’d left her a voicemail because he’d come to see her while she was in Malibu with her family. They were shocked to say the least.

“So what’s your problem?”

“Wondering exactly how long the pole is that Paxton would touch you with?” Eleanor asked suggestively.

Nope, that is definitely not the issue, Devi thought as she recalled seeing Paxton in his underwear. No, she knew exactly how big a tent that pole could support. The question was, was she misinterpreting their relationship?

“No… I mean, do you think he could like me?”

“Well, he definitely liked you enough to kiss you, but you also chose Ben over him,” Fabiola recapped. “That’s a tough blow.”

“But he wants to spend time with Devi anyway,” Eleanor argued. “I mean, you guys have study sessions almost every afternoon.”

“Right,” Devi trailed off as she considered her encounters with Paxton since she and Ben started dating. How he’d been respectful of her relationship, never once putting Ben down or asking why she had decided to go out with him. She thought about what a good friend he’d been of late with their sessions. She thought about how close she felt to him, and how she wasn’t exaggerating their closeness like she had at the beginning of the school year. She didn’t need to dress up or fabricate the things he said or did to her anymore. Everything was really happening.

“Do you want us to come tomorrow and assess the situation?”

Devi considered Eleanor’s offer, but finally shook her head. “No, I think this is one I have to sort out myself.”

***

“Alright, who coined the term ‘Cold War’ in the British press in October 1954?” Devi asked, looking up at her companion.

“I don’t know… Russia?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No, George Orwell. You’re right, my reputation as a nerd and the best tutor in school is on the line.”

“Shut up, this stuff’s hard. We’re not all Devi Vishwakumar,” he bumped her with his elbow.

“You’re smart too though. How did you know all that stuff about Hinduism or phobias?”

“That’s different. That’s interesting stuff.”

Devi felt her cheeks heat up, and chose to stare at her textbook. Would Paxton find those things interesting if they weren’t directly related to her? Was it his way of saying that she was interesting or important to him? She chanced a glance toward him to see him was also very deliberately staring at his book. She briefly wondered why before he looked up sharply and slapped his knee.

“I guess we have a lot to get through then if we’re going to save your rep. Better get to it.”

“Yeah… for sure,” she said slowly before continuing to quiz him.

A couple hours, some poptarts and pizza rolls later, they had significantly improved Paxton’s knowledge of the subject matter. They both were thrilled with his progress.

“Okay, let’s come full circle,” Devi said. “Who coined the term ‘Cold War?’”

“George Orwell… in the British press… in 1954,” he finished sitting back in his chair confidently.

“Yes! Good job, dude. You picked up on this stuff, no problem!” She smiled.

“Well, you’re a good teacher,” he smiled back, leaning forward.

“You’re a good student,” she told him, biting her bottom lip and leaning forward towards him.

Paxton glanced at her lips briefly before licking his own. She thought, this was it. He was going to kiss her. Instead, Paxton blinked, his eyes staying closed a little longer than normal, and sighed before scooting his chair away from the table.

“Uh.. my parents won’t be home from work for a few hours, and Becca is at a friend’s house if you want to hangout some more,” he suggested, rubbing the back of his neck. “We could drag the slip n slide out?”

Devi smiled. “Umm… I think I’m ready for the next challenge.”

“Yeah?” Paxton asked disbelievingly. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I want to try.”

“Alright,” he smiled with a nod. “I’ll get changed and we’ll head out there.”

Once Devi was closed in the bathroom again, she pulled her suit out of her bag. Pink bikini, don’t fail me now.

After a quick change, and plucking any stray hairs, Devi opened the bathroom door to see Paxton waiting on the other side. Her confidence faltered as he took in her appearance. His brow nearly disappeared into his hairline, and she noticed him swallow before exhaling slowly.

“Is this okay?” She asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, totally okay,” he responded, finally meeting her eye. “I, uh, wanted to walk you out so we could avoid as strong a reaction as last time… We’re in this together, right?”

She nodded, appreciating his support. Together.

It seemed like such a good idea before. Before she was standing in front of a large container filled with water. Water that she would have to submerge herself in.

Already drowning in her own fear, Devi didn’t hear Paxton talking to her until she felt him take her hand.

“Hey, Devi,” he called, waving his other hand in her face. “Can you hear me?”

She blinked longer than usual to clear her head before finding his gaze again. “Yeah, sorry. I was just spiraling.”

“Listen, you don’t have to do this right now. There’s no pressure, okay?”

“I know,” she nodded, licking her lips apprehensively. “I want to do this. You won’t leave me, right?”

He smiled. “We’re in this together, Vishwakumar.”

With that, she carefully made her way up the steps, and stepped into the hot water. Paxton held her hand the whole way. The best part of using the hot tub? The heat further distracted her from her fear that she didn’t even realize Paxton was touching her for a moment. It wasn’t until she was sitting down and should have been relaxing that her anxiety began to spike again.

“Hey, breathe, okay? I’m right here,” Paxton’s hand slipped from hers to wrap around her shoulders.

Without thinking, without meaning to, Devi dropped her head into the crook of Paxton’s neck. Her arms clung to his waist desperately, willing her breathing to level out. She felt Paxton’s other arm come around to encircle her, and it had the very calming effect she assumed he intended. As her breathing returned to a normal pace, Devi found she felt almost sleepy. She felt warm, not because of the water, but inside. It was like her body was humming, like everything was fuzzy. She let out a deep sigh of relief, and felt Paxton shift slightly against her.

“Are you okay?” He whispered. She wondered if he could feel how peaceful things were in that moment. No, he probably just wanted to make sure she hadn’t passed out.

“Yeah,” she breathed. “This helps.”

“Yeah? Like watching me helps?”

“I can’t explain it, and I know it doesn’t make any sense especially because I’m such a disaster when we talk,” she rambled before taking a steadying breath, “but watching you, touching you, calms me down.”

Paxton took a shaky breath, and Devi pulled back slightly to look at him. His eyes were closed, cheeks flushed. She loved seeing him like this. Vulnerable, as though she affected him as much as he affected her. This time, she thought, I’ll kiss him.

Before Devi could lean forward, Paxton abruptly put space between them. One hand remained on her shoulder, but his head was hanging his eyes were closed.

“Devi,” he started before letting out a long sigh, “I am trying so hard. I mean, I love spending time with you and I want to be here for you. I want to be a good friend to you, but you’re killing me.”

“What?”

“You have a boyfriend,” he replied emphatically. “I don’t really know why, but you do. And all this,” he gestured between them, “feels a lot like cheating, and I’m not down for it.”

“Oh, no, no, no, no,” the words came tumbling out, “no, no, no. No, that’s on me. Paxton” —

“Devi, I like you,” he cut her off. “Not in the ‘I want to reinstate our sex agreement’ way, but like, I really like you. I hate studying! But you make it fun. I love the way you spit out that first five thoughts that pop into your head at any given moment. I love that you trust me to tell me your deepest fear that no one else knows, and I love that we’ve been able to work through it together. I don’t know if I can do this anymore though.”

“Sorry I didn’t interrupt, you really seemed like you were on a roll, but,” she paused to take another deep breath, “I don’t… have a boyfriend anymore.”

“What?”

“Things are different now. I broke up with Ben two days ago, and… I really like you too. I never wanted just sex from you. I just never thought we’d be here right now.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend?”

She shook her head, shyly looking down at the water. Her bottom lip found it’s way between her teeth, barely suppressing her smile. She felt his hand slip from her shoulder and snake it’s way around her waist. She looked up as he pulled her body into his so close that their breath mingled.

“Should we make another toast?” She asked nervously.

His forehead pressed against hers as he laughed. When he regained his composure, he looked in her eyes warmly. “Later.”

And for the second time, Paxton Hall-Yoshida’s lips were on hers, and it. was. electric. Somehow, it was even better than the first time. She felt everything else melt away, and it was just the two of them floating through space. Nothing else mattered for that moment. She wasn’t sure when she ended up in his lap, but she wound her arms around his neck all the same before her hands found his curly hair. Under other circumstances, she may have worried that her own hair had become so frizzy that he wouldn’t find her attractive. She realized though, she didn’t have to worry about that. No, as Paxton gripped her hips tighter, she knew very well that he was attracted to her.

This was everything she ever wanted, except it was better. Paxton’s hand came up to cradle her face as his tongue massaged hers in a way that made her spine tingle. Devi was so engrossed in having the greatest moment of her life, she didn’t hear the back door open.

“Wooooo!” Becca hollered as they jumped apart. “Finally!”

“Becca, get out of here!” Paxton yelled, splashing his sister. She laughed, making a comment about being safe as she went back inside.

“So… your sister’s home,” Devi said. They sat awkwardly for a moment before both breaking into a fit of laughter.

“Yeah, mood ruined, I guess.”

“Well, I know one thing: this is the happiest I’ve felt in any body of water in a year.”

He huffed out a laugh, eyes finding his lap before meeting her gaze again. “Happy to help.”

<< Part 2

#never have i ever #devi vishwakumar #paxton hall yoshida #daxton #nhie #paxton x devi #devi x paxton #never have i ever netflix #writing

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kingstylesdaily · 3 years

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What the 2021 Grammy Awards Will Look Like

Artists including Billie Eilish, BTS, and Taylor Swift will perform in a circle of five stages with masked crew at the center — in a ceremony that first-time showrunner Ben Winston calls “part Grammys, part Abbey Road studio session”

Ben Winston is exhausted. The television producer, who moved from the U.K. to Los Angeles six years ago to start The Late Late Show With James Corden, is a week away from executive-producing his first Grammys telecast. “I literally had two hours of sleep last night,” he tells Rolling Stone via Zoom.

On Sunday, March 7th, the Recording Academy revealed a slate of performing artists for March 14th’s 63rd Annual Grammy Awards that includes Billie Eilish, BTS, Taylor Swift, Cardi B, and Harry Styles. But while those names are on the lineup, Winston knows nothing about live TV is ever set in stone — especially in the time of a pandemic —so he’s been spending his days double- and triple-checking plans, waking up at 4:30 a.m. dry-eyed and restless. He’s worked to make a show “with heart,” he says — one that “doesn’t feel isolated, quiet, or alone.” He also had to take extra steps to ensure the three-and-a-half hour show, which will not take place at the Grammys’ usual home of the Staples Center, is Covid-safe for performers and attendees. Despite all that, he appears remarkably enthusiastic and alert.

Here’s what viewers next Sunday can expect from music’s biggest night, according to Winston: a multi-stage, audience-free show that highlights the year’s creative triumphs, social justice movements, as well as Covid-19’s impact on the arts. Winston hints at several “unbelievably powerful” performances on the slate, adding that the Grammys “absolutely are acknowledging what’s happened” in the country in the last year.

Winston, who in 2018 co-produced Bruno Mars’ well-received live show at the Apollo for CBS, also wanted to highlight independent venues, which are the “lifeblood of this industry” and a launchpad for emerging musicians — so the Grammys will feature guest spots from owners and workers of iconic American venues, including L.A.’s Troubadour and Hotel Café, N.Y.’s Apollo, and Nashville’s Station Inn. “I drive past the Troubadour on my way home from work every night,” Winston says. “It’s a significant thing for me when I look at it all boarded up. I always think, ‘When those boards come down, this will be over.’ That will be the sign. That will be the day where it’s like, ‘We got through this.'” Winston realized from his conversations with venues that many of them put on their last shows on March 14th, 2020, meaning the Grammys will mark the one-year anniversary of the shutdown.

Employees will come on camera to “tell us a little bit about their venue” and present some of the awards. “So, you’ve got, like, a bartender at a beautiful, independent venue — and she’s giving out Album of the Year to these megastars,” he explains. His goal is to acknowledge the people who work tirelessly to keep these stomping grounds afloat and have recently lost their jobs. “Those venues are made up by the bartender and the security guard, the manager, the box office person, and the cleaner at the end of the night.” He hopes to remind people of the importance of supporting local venues again when it’s safe to do so.

Originally, the Grammys were scheduled for January 31st, but organizers announced a move to March right after the new year. Winston says he felt American morale was at a low point in January — between political insurrection, an impeachment trial, and Covid-19 running rampant in Los Angeles — and it “didn’t feel right” to put the show on in the middle of that. The Recording Academy and CBS, which exclusively airs the annual show, both supported his decision to postpone. “I can now do everything that I wanted to do in my best-case scenario for this year,” he says of Sunday’s show.

Sunday’s location is an undisclosed building in Los Angeles, but Winston teases that the new venue is “massive,” “magical,” and “the biggest building I’ve ever been in indoors.” “I don’t want it to look like I’m criticizing Staples, because it’s the most amazing venue,” he emphasizes, sharing that he’s open to bringing the Grammys back to the arena in the future if they ask him to. While he does believe that Staples is a safe place, he says he wanted to go above and beyond to make even the most-skeptical participants feel undoubtedly safe.

A team of Covid safety officers oversaw the production set-up, and artists will enter the stage from different directions to minimize contact. Each artist also has their own backstage area. The space “allowed us to build an entire world,” he says.

The show will involve five stages of the same size and shape, four of which are for performances and one of which is for presenters. Stages are organized in a circle, facing one another, and crew members will work from the middle of the set. “People will perform while the other three or four artists on their stages watch, applaud, and enjoy. As soon as that one finishes, the next one goes, the next one goes, and the next one goes. Every 45 minutes, you change out those stages, and you bring another four megastars into the room,” says Winston, who was partly inspired for the “part-Grammys, part-Abbey Road studio session” setup by British shows he watched as a child, including Jools Holland and TFI Friday.

It’s going to be a “bespoke night of music that I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to repeat,” Winston says. “It’s about taking a camera into a room, and making an amazing musical moment by filming it quite simply and elegantly.” Performances, which started being planned in April 2020, will be a mix of live and pre-recorded — a fully live show would involve too many crew members moving sets and risking close contact — but the whole thing is intended to feel completely live. (Winston challenges viewers to try and guess which sets are pre-recorded; he designed them to be difficult to tell.)

To help plan the sprawling, immersive show, Winston brought in a suite of collaborators including co-executive producer Jesse Collins, who produced The Weeknd’s Super Bowl halftime show; co-executive producer Raj Kapoor, who handled creative direction for various artists on the last seven Grammys and produced Vegas residencies for the likes of the Backstreet Boys and Mariah Carey; producer Fatima Robinson, whose expansive background in creative direction and choreography landed her the Black Eyed Peas’ 2011 halftime show and Kendrick Lamar’s 2016 Grammy performance; producer Misty Buckley, who handled production design for Kacey Musgraves’ 2020 Christmas show; talent executive Patrick Menton from Dick Clark Productions; Corden collaborator Josie Cliff; and Super Bowl halftime, Olympic ceremony, Oscars, and Emmys director Hamish Hamilton, who Winston describes as a “legend” he’s admired since he was 14 years old. (David Wild, who has written for the Grammys since 2001 and became a producer in 2016, is the only person returning to his role.) Winston also points out that artists were heavily involved in designing their own performances.

Rather than have cameras pan over empty seats and an awkwardly small stage, the production team decided to reinvent the visual format with the five-stage setup. The pandemic’s limitations, coupled with the advantages of new faces coming in with fresh perspectives, helped them refrain from thinking in terms of what the Grammys had done before, he said.

For the most part, Covid-19 didn’t force too many changes. It did give Winston a lot of anxiety.

“There’s been so much uncertainty with what you’re allowed to do,” he says. Changing international quarantine rules made him question whether certain performers could fly in, while health guidance keeps fluctuating: “Every time my computer or phone dings, my first instinct is, ‘Oh, God, what’s gone wrong?’ I don’t know if that’s ever been my mentality before.”

While all the performers are confirmed and currently Covid-free, “you never know, one of their girlfriends could have Covid and have to quarantine, it’s all just bonkers,” Winston says. “There’s one artist that may, in the end, not be able to make it here due to rules of the country they’re currently in. There’s one immigration issue that we’ve got left.”

The show does not have replacements on hand if anyone pulls out — it’ll just cut that performance out.

Above all, Winston wants the 2021 Grammys to focus attention off of dire times. “I want people to be able to watch the 2021 Grammys in 2040 and go, ‘Wow, what an amazing show that was,’ and not go, ‘Oh, that was the Covid year, that’s why they had to do that,'” he says. “I think that’s what we could achieve if we get it right on Sunday.”

via RollingStone.com

#kingstylesdaily #Harry Styles #hs: grammys 2021 #March 2021

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janekfan · 3 years

Note

You need to back off + Please come home for some angsty Jmart?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29122362

Prompts are getting filled! Slowly but surely! :D

I hope you like it ^^

Jon woke himself coughing with the realization that what he’d hoped were allergies the day before was now full blown body aches, chills and a productive hacking cough. Reaching out for comfort, he encountered only cold sheets and he shut his throbbing eyes tightly against sudden tears, too emotional. Needy. Sick. Not that he wasn’t needy when he was well either, but.

Martin wasn’t here.

Jon gripped a handful of bedclothes, curling on his side in the space where Martin should be and wasn’t. He thought of warm hands and soft kisses testing his temperature and gentle tutting. Martin would fuss over him terribly, plying him with medicine and perfectly steeped tea with honey and lemon for his sore throat. He would want for nothing, of that he was certain, but.

Martin wasn’t here.

And it was Jon’s fault.

No. Not entirely. He was away for the long weekend for an international conference.

But the shouting match they’d had before he left was very much Jon’s fault.

It figured that he would chase him away. Jon was miserable and ungrateful on his best days and like a dog with a bone on his worst. Why couldn’t he just let things go? Why did he have to push and question and needle Martin like that when he knew his partner needed time to think? Was already anxious about being away for so long? Jon certainly knew how to pick the best time for a row. Impeccable timing as usual, god damn him. Another fit crept its way through his tight chest, up his throat, painfully forcing itself free, and he stifled himself in a pillow.

He wanted Martin.

He had no right to, but he wanted him just the same.

After allowing himself just a few moments to wallow in misery, he forced himself up, driving the heels of both hands against his eyelids. It was a cold. It’d been going around the university and he was always early to catch whatever pathogens his students carried with them. He’d been run down and tired the last week and not from finals apparently. He shuffled awkwardly to the bathroom, limping heavily on his bad leg, absently trying to massage the deep ache left over from the worms all those years ago. He let the water run for a moment, get as hot as he could stand it, and with Martin’s voice in the back of his head, resigned himself to the use of the shower stool he’d insisted on. Sagging forward, Jon let the pounding pressure beat heavy against his back, breathing in the steam in the hopes it would loosen the knots tied thick and rigid around his lungs. Washing up took everything he had left and he wanted nothing more than to collapse back into bed and curl up around Martin’s pillow. Instead he slipped on his favorite of Martin’s jumpers over his pyjamas and took up his cane and made himself tea with honey and lemon and forced himself to drink it even though it tasted wrong. Struggling through the foil of the blister pack exhausted him further but he dutifully downed the tablets with the dregs of his cold cup of subpar tea. Dizzy, nauseated, the room spun around him wildly and he swallowed it down with a sob, laying his hot face against the cool surface of the dining table.

He wanted Martin.

Martin asked him to please not call unless there was an emergency. This wasn’t that. This was some sort of bug and Jon was an adult and he could take care of himself. He shivered. Teeth chattering in his skull and against his better judgement he fumbled for his cell with numb fingers. He thumbed it awake, blinking at the blinding glare. Recents. Martin. Messages. Jon scrolled through them, lingering on his responses. It wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t enough and Martin had asked him. Asked him not to contact him. For emergencies only. This wasn’t an emergency. It wasn’t. The screen went dark. The tears slipped over the bridge of his nose, tracing the faint scar there left by some fear or another so long ago and Jon chose to be selfish.

What else was new?

“Jon.” Measured, but not cold like he feared so much it would be but focused enough to cut him off before he could even think to apologize. “You need to back off. I’ve asked for some space and I would appreciate it if you would let me focus on this conference. I’ll be back soon. We can talk then.” He paused and with it, so did Jon’s heart. “I love you.”

“I, I love you.” But he’d already hung up and Jon didn’t blame him.

Shivering with chills, Jon dragged his sorry self back into bed, curling into the duvet and closing his eyes against the woozy rolling of his stomach. The tea wasn’t sitting well and Jon found himself panting, shallow and fast, concentrating on keeping himself together and willing himself to sleep though that plan didn’t seem to be working. Salt flooded his tongue and he lurched for the bin beside the bedside, dry heaving painfully. Sweat poured down his face, dripped off his chin.

It wasn’t an emergency.

It wasn’t.

He coughed, wincing and lifting a trembling hand to his throat and pressing against Daisy’s remnant souvenir, imagining the hurt there. A mewling whimper carried on an uneven breath escaped the cage of his fingers. Restless sleep crashed over him, was dragged away from him, uncomfortable, hot and cold somehow simultaneously. Jon picked up his phone repeatedly to call, to text. But he needed to let Martin have this. He wasn’t like him. He needed time and Jon needed to be patient no matter how ill he was feeling, no matter how much he wanted Martin’s reassuring voice. And it was his fault he couldn’t have it.

Jon couldn’t remember a time in his life where he felt this poorly; not even starved for statements, or scarred by numerous fears. Sleep hadn’t been forthcoming after he lurched awake to be sick again and he hadn’t had the forethought to put anything he might need on the bedside table. Objectively, he knew when he ran fevers they had a tendency to spike at night and that if he could just get up to fetch some medicine he would feel better. Subjectively, he was convinced his legs wouldn’t hold him, that he was dying here alone and when Martin returned for his things he would find his body. Panic built and built and built in his chest, cutting off his ability to breathe, stealing the air around him as surely as Crew had when he dropped him effortlessly, eternally through the void and before he knew it his fingers were acting without express permission.

Insistent buzzing next to his ear dragged Martin up from the depths and he groaned in irritation when the rectangle of light blinded him momentarily. He sighed when he could finally see the caller and he supposed Jon had waited as long as he could before giving in and ringing him again. The man was not known for his patience, after all. Martin glanced at his still sleeping roommate, a paramedic out of Brussels, and slipped out of bed to take the call in the hallway.

“Jon.” The frustration was warranted but melted away into concern when his only answer was a strangled, hitching gasp.

“I, I’m s’sorry.”

“Jon, darling, what’s wrong?”

“Y’you want space and, and m’sorry, but I--” A sudden explosive cough caught him off guard; it sounded painful and tight.

“Jon, I need you to listen to me.”

“I’m sorry.” His hoarse whisper didn’t hide the wheeze on his breath. “Shouldn’have called, m’sorry.”

“It’s alright, sweetheart. Tell me what’s wrong.” Martin clutched his phone, voice calm and steady, hundreds of miles away from where Jon was falling apart.

“P’please?”

“What, Jon?” He was openly crying; big, ugly sobs in between each shuddering syllable, and Martin was almost at a total loss, murmuring sweet things through the line in an attempt to calm him, until his hiccuping slowed and he asked again and he answered, sad and small.

“Please? Come h’home?”

“Jon?” Tim let himself into the flat, speaking soft and low, lest Jon was asleep. “Martin told me you aren’t feeling so hot.” He pushed forward to the bedroom, sympathy welling up at the sight of Jon curled up so small, face hidden in his sweat-damp pillow. “Hey, bud.”

“Tim.” Raspy and rough, like he’d been chewing on rocks, he finished his identification on a weak cough.

“The one, the only.” When he laid the backs of his fingers against his temple, Tim hissed through his teeth at the blazing, dry heat of his skin.

“M’sorry…” the ghost of an exhale, shaky and slurred, and Jon managed somehow to pry heavy lashes apart to reveal unfocused eyes glassy with fever. Tim stroked messy curls away from his face, heart clenching when he groaned low in his throat, before deep brown rolled back and dislodged more tears.

“Let’s get you taken care of, okay?” But first, a quick status update for Martin, who had called him nearly in tears himself.

“How is he? Are you taking him to A&E?” Tim could almost see the way he was clinging to his phone.

“I don’t think so. Gonna get some water and medicine into him and see how that goes.”

“Tim? Is he okay?”

“He’s sick, looks like the flu and he’s likely been down with it a couple of days.”

“God, he tried to call me and I--”

“Gonna cut you off right there, Marto. This isn’t anyone’s fault. It just happens.”

“I was so upset with him--”

“And I’m sure he earned it. When he’s well again you can talk it out.”

“Tim.” Trembling,

“I’ll make certain he’s alright until you get home. I’ve got him, Martin.” While on the phone, Tim gathered up supplies, thankful that Jon lived with someone with brains enough to keep a stocked medicine cabinet complete with a fancy ear thermometer with disposable covers. Because Martin. Jon didn’t so much as twitch this time. 39.4. “Okay, buddy. Up you come now.”

“Nng…”

“Mhm,” Tim hummed good naturedly, holding the glass of water to chapped lips and going slow. “Good?” He took the unintelligible noise as a yes, allowing him a few more careful sips before slipping the capsules onto his tongue. “There we go. We’ll see how that sits.” He divested Jon of the wash worn wool keeping in all the heat, soothing him wordlessly when he tried in vain to keep it. A clean set of pyjamas would make him feel better and he let the relatively cool air of the room wick away the moisture left from a cursory damp flannel.

“...Tim?”

“Hey, sleeping beauty.”

“Why’m’I in...in my pants…?”

“Did your best to sweat through the last set, here.” Tim helped guide loose limbs through the appropriate holes.

“S’cold…” punctuating his statement with a full body shiver, Jon slumped forward into Tim’s chest. “M’Martin’s cross.” Nodding, Tim gathered him up to deposit him on the sofa so he could change the bedclothes. “S’my fault…”

“When he comes home, you can apologize. Get him his favorite takeaway, yeah?” Jon listened intently, watery gaze fixed to Tim’s. “Put up those books of yours he’s always tripping over.”

“He, he. He’s coming home?” Lower lip trembling, Jon sounded too hopeful for this to be the distance of a long weekend.

“Oh, you daft fool, of course he is, of course.” He let Jon cry himself out on his shoulder. “He loves you, just needed some space, you know he likes space to get his thoughts in order. Of course he’s coming back.” Gentle and soft, Tim kept up his reassurances and hoped he’d forget that particular fear. Jon was too used to abandonment and all too accepting that he was the cause of it. That he was unlovable. “Alright, dry your eyes now.” Tim thumbed away matching saltwater tracks after settling him back on the couch cushions. “There we are.” Lord, he looked exhausted, the very textbook image of a bad flu with sore, red rimmed eyes limned with bruises. “Back in a tick, love.”

Clean, cool sheets, Jon tucked between them, kettle cooling off the hob, Tim set himself up on Martin’s side of the bed, getting another read, 38.1, and sending a quick update text before tapping open his most recent gaming obsession. The conference ended tomorrow morning and Martin would be home the same evening. With the next day off, Tim could wait that long. Jon’s burn-scarred hand snaked from under the blankets to grip his joggers.

“Hullo.” Tim tugged his fingers through messy curls. “Feeling a little better, champ?”

“Yeah…” It was still early hours and Jon needed all the sleep he could get.

“Sip on this.” And fluids. Tim levered him up, helping him hold the lukewarm mug of tea in shaky hands and laying him in his lap where he could knead out the knots tying up his shoulder blades until he sank deep.

Familiar voices hummed around him like moths just out of reach, melting together, drifting apart, slipping through his fingers. A door opened, closed, and Jon thought for a moment the Distortion must have him until a familiar palm pressed itself against his forehead. Martin’s face materialized in front of him and blurred just as quickly when tears filled his eyes. Wildly, he dove for him, not thinking about the edge of the mattress and collapsing into him when his legs gave way.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright, you’re alright, love.” Jon pushed his face into Martin’s neck, body numb with relief. “Shh, shh, shhh.”

“M’m’sorry, so sorry.”

“I know.” Martin curled around him, holding him firmly, tightly, running his hand up and down the shallow seam of his spine. Jon didn’t deserve this, he didn’t deserve how good Martin was to him. And he, he didn’t--

“I d’don’t unders’stand.”

“Understand what?” Jon couldn’t look at him for fear of what he might see, hiding instead in Martin’s jumper. He shouldn’t have said anything at all. “Why I came home?” He didn’t speak, shook harder, swallowed with difficulty past the cloying clot of emotion in his throat. “Oh, love. You’re not well and everything’s a little mixed up right now.” Lightly, softly, Martin kissed his temple. “I’ll always come home.” Jon felt needy and childish, choosing to believe Martin and taking comfort in it, in the chaste press of his lips against any skin he could reach. “Back in bed now, you’re burning up. Tea?” Nodding once, Jon couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth again, worried that he’d destroy this tentative peace and so, so grateful to have Martin home and the next time he opened his eyes it was to Martin climbing into bed in his pyjamas, tea already on the nightstand.

“Will you tell me about the conference?” Jon accepted the open arms as the offer they were, fitting himself like a puzzle piece against his side, sick and sweaty and lulled by the soothing rumble of Martin’s voice beneath his ear.

There were other things to talk about, but for now, the two of them, here and now, were enough.

#TMA #The Magnus Archives #Jon Sims #Martin Blackwood #Tim Stoker #Jmart #JonMartin #sickfic #fever #flu #vomiting #panic #insecure jon #fight #argument #not pictured #love #caretaking

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anotheruserwithnoname · 3 years

Text

In defence of Star Trek: Lower Decks

Probably the greatest sins of Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard is that they made so many people default to hating Star Trek: Lower Decks. Which is a shame because the animated series, which just ended its second season, is arguably the best Star Trek of the last 16 years.

Yes, Lower Decks is obviously Trek’s answer to The Orville. Yes, Lower Decks’ canonicity is a matter of debate (the idea of Quark marketing a Deep Space Nine model with a choice of Jadzia or Ezri Dax action figures is cute, and I enjoyed the gag involving the villain from Skin of Evil, but still it’s hard to take that seriously). But it still feels more like Star Trek than anything seen since at least 2005. All the characters have names and personalities (and surprisingly deep back stories) - something Discovery and Picard lacks; I couldn’t name the bridge crew of Discovery beyond a couple of people to save my life. And when LD brings in legacy characters, they’re true to their original selves. The show has been called a love letter to classic Trek - and I believe it.

There was an episode a few weeks ago that moved the focus off of the USS Cerritos and focused instead on a Klingon officer and a Vulcan officer serving on other ships. In 22 minutes they did more to establish the characters, backstory and motivations of those two individuals than Discovery has managed to do with some of its characters in 3 seasons.So much so there are calls for Ma’ah and T’Lyn to have their own spin-offs (the former would actually fulfil a longstanding Trek fandom wish to have a Klingon-centric series. I’d watch it if it’s done with the same care and attention as Lower Decks). Sonya Gomez, a TNG legacy character who returns in Season 2, is also given great development in her one episode and we also meet some of her own crew - there’s a third potential spinoff right there. And I’m not even starting on Riker’s Titan getting its own show.

But so many canon liberties have been taken with Discovery and Picard, coupled with outright poor writing (Discovery showed promise as S3 started as it dropped the shackles of being a prequel, but it fell off a cliff before the season ended; Picard I did like when it began, but it has not aged well at all, and yes I know this is subjective) that many fans dismissed Lower Decks totally out of hand. Which is a shame. The newest animated show, Prodigy, is likely to run into the same problem, though as it’s aimed at young viewers - Lower Decks “taint” anywhere near a kid’s show - there’s a pun there anyone who watched it a few weeks ago will get - it may get a bit more benefit of the doubt.

I might write up a more detailed discussion of Lower Decks Season 2 later. But for now I’ll just say if you’ve been avoiding it because a) it’s made by the same production regime making Discovery and Picard; b) it’s a cartoon; c) it’s a comedy and d) it’s got that Cal-Arts animated style that I’m not a fan of either - give it a try. Especially if you enjoy The Orville since this is actually an animated dramedy. Plus, I don’t recall there being any references to Discovery in it and while Picard gets the occasional shoutout (and Riker has appeared a few times), the show is set well before the mcguffin that triggered the events of the Picard series.

PS: Just for the record, I have no plans to watch the new seasons of Discovery and Picard and Strange New Worlds doesn’t really appeal (I liked Discovery’s sequel episode to The Cage but otherwise too many liberties with established characters and settings). If Prodigy gets a Canadian broadcast I’ll check it out.

#star trek: lower decks

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rushingheadlong · 3 years

Photo

POP IN THE SUPERMARKET

Conveyer rock - is it all a hype? Colin Irwin looks at pre-packed pop and talks to the men behind new bands Queen (left) and Merlin

Hype. An ugly, unpleasant word frequently recurring in rock circles.

Up in the boardroom of a vast record company the fat cigar brigade are scratching heads. Binn and Batman have come up with another surefire hit and they want somebody fresh to market it. They ponder a few names and finally decide on one with slight but clear sexual connotations - suggestively camp.

Name settled, they work on the people who will be in this new band. They might be able to find a ready-made group to fit the bill but better to mould their own. There's a singer who has been around for a few years.

He's not great but he knows how to throw himself around a stage, has a hairy chest and can hit the high notes. Give him a new name and he'll do. Somebody knows a lead guitarist who can play a bit and looks good. They can advertise for the others.

They'll work out a sensational stage act, rig them up in some flash gear, buy them the best equipment and arrange a string of appearances in some influential venues. Plunge a few thousand quid in launching them with advertising and posters and "They'll be the biggest thing since sliced bread," chief fat cigar tells his underlings.

Session musicians are employed to record the single and being a Binn and Batman special the radio stations label it "chart bound" and play it twenty five times a day. Seeing the glossy photos in the bop mags the kids gather up their pennies and buy it.

VOILA, stars are born - or manufactured. An extreme form of hype.

There's also a cliché commonly used in the business about people who have been around for many years and finally make it. It's called talent-will-out. An idealist phrase but there is still a popular belief that if a band is truly talented enough it will win through in the end.

Yet even the greatest band in the world need a bit of pushing in the first place. When a record becomes a hit it's not always that easy to distinguish between hype and talent-will-out.

If a record company spends astronomical sums of money promoting a band, is it hype? Or is it a legitimate and necessary weapon in the music business? The argument is that the BBC's ever-tightening playlist and the effects on the industry of the three-day week have made it harder than ever for a new group to make it - talent or no. Without a big money machine behind it there isn't a hope.

The situation is illustrated by two energetic new bands, who both look like breaking.

Big money has been spent on Queen and Merlin, who have had new singles released during the last month.

Queen's record, "Seven Seas Of Rhye," is already moving swiftly up the chart, while Merlin's "Let Me Put My Spell On You," is doing well enough to suggest it might follow suit.

There is no suggestion that either band is a manufactured or manipulated product in the sense of the Monkees. They play the music on their own records entirely themselves and they are both hard at work on the road.

Yet the question arises as to whether they would be doing quite so well without the resources of big companies behind them.

In the case of Queen it's Trident Audio Productions and EMI and for Merlin it's Cookaway Productions and CBS.

The one common factor is that money and backing has been provided because the companies have a solid, unshakeable belief in the artists they are promoting. They are indignant about any suggestion of a put-on or that there has been any attempt to con the public.

Listen to Merlin's producer Roger Greenaway for half-an-hour and there is no doubting his faith in their ability. "They are going to break, I know they are. I'm convinced the record will be a hit."

Nobody's saying exactly how much it has cost to launch either band. "Over a period of months between £5,000 and £10,000" has been spent on marketing Queen by EMI while the figure for Merlin is even vaguer. "A bit, but not a vast amount. Not a fortune by any means."

"Seven Seas Of Rhye" is Queen's second single and was recorded as part of the album "Queen 2" which has just been released. Things started to move for them about a year ago when they recorded their first album for Trident, who have a distribution contract with EMI.

An advance was paid to them to help with the immediate costs of putting them on the road.

Review copies of the album - about 400 of them - were sent out to everyone who might conceivably have any influence on the record buying public, from discos to the national press. Copies were personally distributed to radio and TV producers and extensive advertising space was bought in the trade papers.

The launch for Queen was more concentrated than most artist are entitled to expect.

Trident were completely behind them from the start and found them their American producer Jack Nelson. EMI promotions men Ronnie Fowler and John Bagnall decided they had a product with an exceptional chance of success and they went all out to exploit it to the full.

Says Fowler: "Every record we release we work to a pattern of promotion. When I went round with the album it was normal procedure. It becomes un-normal when people start phoning you - that's when you put more effort into it."

Bagnall adds: "It became obvious after a week or so that it wasn't standard promotion that was necessary. We did a more complete promotion job than usual on Queen because we thought they were going to make it.

"They're all good-looking guys and I did a round of teeny papers and all the girls in the office swooned over them. Brian, the lead guitarist, had made his own guitar and a couple of the nationals picked up on that. It was good, gossipy stuff."

Queen's publicity machine was working from all angles because they were also getting external promotion from Tony Brainsby's promotion office.

He had been involved with them from the time they had been trying to get record producers interested. The intensity of it all paid off when they were invited to do a spot on the Old Grey Whistle Test. Radio Luxembourg latched upon the single "Keep Yourself Alive" and played it regularly.

Their first tour, supporting Mott the Hoople, got the full works. Local press was saturated with releases about this new band which was shortly coming to their town, elaborate displays were arranged at the front of the house on the night of the concert, local disc-jockeys were informed, and window displays were made in about 200 local record shops.

"Trident and EMI committed themselves right from the start to this band, to make sure they had a PA which was better than other bands had and to make sure they had the right clothes. Some of their outfits cost £150 each," said Bagnall. "Spending money on a band isn't hype. It wasn't being flash or extravagant for the sake of building an image. It was making sure that everything else was as good as their music."

Not so far removed from the attitude towards Merlin, although it has been on a smaller scale in this case.

The first Merlin tour, still underway, is rigorous. They are playing ballrooms and colleges all over the country on a lengthy round.

An ambitious project for a new, unknown band, but it has already been successful in that it has launched them as a name people now know. A full-page advertisement was bought in the MM. That's the sort of treatment you might get if you're Bowie, or Ferry, or even Mick Ronson. But Merlin?

They have only been in existence in their present form since last May.

They emerged as a result of discussions between Alan Love and Derek Chick about the possibility of forming a band with definite commercial appeal and a glamorous stage act. The idea reached fruition via a band called Madrigal, who had for some time been working the same circuit as Mud before "Crazy" broke for them.

Madrigal disbanded but reformed with the same drummer and bass player, and Love as singer and Chick as manager. A couple more young musicians were found to join them and Chick started the usual hustling to get them going.

In due course they came to the attention of Cookaway, and Roger Greenaway was hastily summoned to take a look at them. He had already seen Madrigal and when he saw the new model he immediately saw a big future for them.

Greenaway says: "I'd been looking for a group of this type for three years - a young under-20s group who can present a good act. There's a lot more showmanship attached to bands now. I wanted an act with a slightly different approach. I was in New York producing the Drifters and I came back especially to hear them."

He quickly took them into a studio to see how they reacted there and among the tracks they recorded was "Let Me Put My Spell On You" which had been written by Greenaway in collaboration with Tony Macaulay. Like Queen, the best equipment and some fancy costumes were bought for them and the launching process was put into operation.

My own experience of the Merlin project was a couple of weeks ago at Reading Top Rank - a bizarre mixture of precocious boppers, ageing teds, and stern-looking heavies.

Posters and pictures of the group were plastered all over the place and by the time they eventually appeared late in the evening you had been informed quite thoroughly that Merlin had made a record called "Let Me Put My Spell On You."

Greenaway says of Love: "He's got star quality and he's a great charmer. The guitar player Jamie Moses has got a terrific potential too. I've worked with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones but for me this guy at 18 is a better player than Jimmy Page was at the same age. He's the sort of player guys can follow - like Jet Harris - he had an incredible following with the guys."

He likens the Merlin launch to a military operation. The career of the group has been minutely planned since October. Accepting that it is almost impossible to get airplay for a new band on the BBC they decided the best way to break them was through a solid mass of live dates.

The dates were booked, once again the best equipment, including a light show, was bought for them, and distinctive stage costumes especially designed.

"By the time the tour has ended they will be a really tight band. We are getting support in the regions and you can break a record if you can get regional radio stations and disco plays. I believe this record is a hit and the signs are there. This is a ten-year job as far as I'm concerned."

Not that big money backing is any guarantee of success.

One of the biggest projects of this type was the launching of young Darren Burn as Britain's answer to Donny Osmond. To their eternal credit the record-buying public didn't apparently want an answer to Mr Osmond and the campaign failed.

The pop supermarket is not a new trend. The attractively packaged mass-produced record has been a part of the industry for a long time. The early releases of Love Affair, White Plains and Edison Lighthouse for example spring to mind.

The whole thing is justified for the makers by the fact that they still become hits, thus proving there is a demand for made-to-order records. If the public is willing - or gullible enough - to pay 50p for music created in the boardroom. Well it must be OK.

The Merlin single is blatantly, unashamedly aimed at being a big hit - that seems to have been the one criterion in making it. It has all the ingredients and as the whole thing has been done with concentrated professionalism it will probably be a hit.

Back to Roger Greenaway: "I don't want to present this as a Monkees type of image. It's not a manufactured group in any way - these guys have all been in other bands.

"What Merlin are about is success - reaching people. It's so wrong for opposing people to criticise. If Chinn and Chapman go out to reach a particular market at the thing they do best, and they reach them, then they're doing their job. They've filled a gap.

"When this record happens it'll be called hype but we haven't hyped anybody. Not a vast amount of money has been spent on them. It would be silly to have a tour like this without some sort of advertising. All the money that has been spent on them so far has been towards getting them on the road.

"It's expensive but it's minimal if you think of it as a along term thing."

It may be unfair to associate Queen with the pop supermarket. The group themselves were apprehensive about appearing on Top Of The Pops and the prospect of a hit record.

They have always regarded themselves as an album band and were concerned about being connected with the chart groups. The fact remains that they have been on the receiving end of a giant campaign to create a best-selling single and album.

The first album had sold far better than they had anticipated and there was great excitement around Trident and EMI as the second one was being made. Manager Jack Nelson came in virtually every day to play new tracks as they were completed and many discussions followed on which one should be released as a single.

A special meeting was held between Bagnall, Fowler, marketing manager Paul Watts and a few others to discuss the approach to the release of "Queen 2."

"We talked about the possibility of boxing the album, and other various publicity and posters needed to produce an album we were convinced was going to be one of the biggest of the year. We set a high target for it. 'Seven Seas' isn't a housewives' record so with the daily shows like Edmonds, Blackburn and Hamilton, there's no chance of getting it played, we knew that from the start. But the weekend shows - Rosko, Henry, and D.L.T. - they all flipped over it. I took the records round personally because I felt so strongly about it."

The prime plug, however, is Top Of The Pops. If a record gets exposure on that there is a more than even chance that it will become a hit. He played it to the show's Robin Nash and a couple of days later Nash phoned him and asked him where Queen were. Later he rang back and invited Queen to do a session.

The band weren't too sure whether they wanted to do it but eventually agreed although even then they didn't know until the last minute whether it would be used because they were half expecting a David Bowie film to arrive and take it's place. But in the end Queen were shown and "Seven Seas Of Rhye" moved dramatically from there.

"A lot of people have invested an awful lot of time and money in this band but not as a hype," says Bagnall. "The only truth in the music business is that if a band isn't good, no amount of money will get them to make it."

Greenaway may be right that Merlin are one of the most exciting bands to merge since the Beatles. Fowler might be right that Queen are one of the best since the Who. But big business still remains one of the sadder aspects of the music industry today.

----------

Huge thanks to the anon who brought this to my attention, since I’ve been looking for a copy of this article for ages now!

Credit for the original scans goes to @Chrised90751298 over on twitter, though I stitched it back together into a single image for ease of posting over there. Open the image in a new tab to see the full-size version!

#queen band #queen #queenband #merlin band #long post //#text

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blue-bird-kny · 3 years

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Day 10: All I Want For Christmas

A 3am post? me? never. Well sometimes I let time pass me by, but what are we going to do. Enjoy this round of secret Santa and have a wonderful night~Amanda

Reblogs always appreciated~

Warning: None

( 1.2k+ words)

↳{In which Tanjiro was lucky enough to pull his crush as his secret Santa recipient, but ends up overthinking the whole ordeal}

“Gather round’ everyone! Come on let's get this started” you yelled grabbing the attention of all those around you. Together in one room stood all nine hashira’s and your four closest friends, a feat in itself working around all their complicated schedules, all waiting to reach into the bucket you held, the box they all excitedly (almost all of them anyway) placed there names in to be selected for this years Secret Santa game. You shook the box a couple times, mixing the papers into shaggy clusters, passing it around for each hand to reach in a grab one.

Everyone’s reaction was unpredictable and different, you could tell by the subtle distressed dips in some faces or grateful shake of others that this year's pool was sure to produce some great laughs. The last slip lay tucked away in a corner, reading “Muichiro”, just your luck you received the one person you didn’t know as well as the others. “Happy shopping and please no gifts that can harm your recipients this year” you reminded, everyone's eyes falling on Shinobu who sat unabashedly grinning, the memory of poor Zenitsu, who she gifted a box filled with a concoction that exploded in his face when he opened it last year, still fresh in everyone's mind. “Oh hush, I did give him a wonderful gift after so no harm done, right Zenitsu?” Shinobu looked over at the younger man who only shook his head in agreement- you weren’t convinced.

Of the entire bunch, not a single soul stressed the gift exchange more than the Kamado son. He had prayed that he’d receive you, his crush, as his person however when he pulled your name, his heart sunk because “What was a good enough gift?”. Later that night, he lay in bed pondering all the things he could buy or make for you, something that you’d look at and feel his warmth, wordlessly accepting his confession and living that happily ever after he craved. “Maybe jewelry? Or a new haori?” he racked his brain for the perfect gift to no avail, nothing felt right. Tanjiro had a week to sort this whole ordeal he’d created in his own mind out, but little did he know that the perfect gift was right under his nose.

You, on the other hand, were in a similar situation as your close friend, however for a different reason. “Ugh what does he like?! I’ve never seen him do anything really, he sorta just is always around, floating like a ghost?” you complained, tearing off a few of your own hairs out. You weren’t sure who to ask exactly nor did you want to show up with an irrelevant, thoughtless present. In the midst of your simultaneous mental breakdowns, neither of you noticed each other's presence quickly approaching, until you collided into each other in an abrupt halt of thoughts. “I'm sorry” you both yelled, instantly checking to make sure the other didn’t happen to get hurt.

After assessing and confirming that you didn’t break the boys nose, an idea dawned on you, “Hey Tanjiro you spend lots of time with the hashira’s, what would Muichiro want for Christmas?” you asked innocently, hoping to get some idea of a decent gift, however you didn’t expect the man to take the simple question into an entire other level. “Why does she want to get him a gift? Is she getting him something special?” Tanjiro scrambled, not acknowledging the possibility that your question was related to the whole root of his own dilemma- the Secret Santa exchange.

“Um well, he likes being outside and isn’t very active” was all he could respond, admittedly sounding more dejected than he had mere moments ago. Your mind filled with ideas miraculously, grateful for this lead “Thank you!” you yelled running off to purchase something. “Sure” Tanjiro answered to himself quietly as he watched your form recede in the distance. His depressed mode lasted only a second before he slapped himself back into reality, his literal palms leaving a dull tingling in his cheeks, “I have to find her the best gift, whatever it takes”

A week passed far faster than Tanjiro hoped, all 14 of you gathered in one room again, this time carrying packaged presents and wearing jovial smiles. As expected, some of the gifts exchanged were hilarious and the pairings could not have been more perfect had you planned it; Shinobu had pull Sanemi and the whole room erupted in a fit of laughter as he unwrapped the double sided octopus, one side pink with a smile and the other blue with a frown, the toy complete with a book on how to manage anger issues- the color of his face almost matched that of the pink octopus. Next, Uzui presented his gift to Obanai, a set of designer face masks to replace his ‘stuffy bandages’, a gift you all knew he secretly appreciated. Another odd pairing was Rengoku and Nezuko, the older man gifting her with a new hair clip and an assortment of little goods because he felt the small things matched her perfectly.

With every gift exchanged and chuckle shared, Tanjiro grew worried as he knew his time would be coming soo. “Muichiro-san it's a gadget that sprays these scents into any open space you place it in, it's supposed to help you relax and sleep” you explained handing the diffuser to the shorter man and, to your content, he was fascinated with it. “We'll, it's just me, who pulled my name?” you asked, circling around only to be met only with shaking heads, “It's me” Tanjiro confessed, handing over a single small red box which you opened feverishly, awing at the earrings that lay inside. “Their beautiful” you muttered speechless, “well there is a couple more” Tanjiro admitted; alas you were gifted with boxes of hair pins, beauty products, chocolates, anything Tanjiro saw at the market that made him think of you he bought- which is difficult when you were all thought of.

“Jeez talk about making us look bad” Uzui remarked for the sidelines earning him a distressed gaze from Tanjiro, “Just teasing, lover boy” he assured. “Lover boy?” you didn’t have time to process the nickname for Shinobu ushered the night along, the festive party in full swing with foods and music and best of all sake. “Tanjiro, I sorta feel bad you got me so much” you said, pulling the boy to a quiet corner, “Well… I wanted to get you the perfect gifts so I went a little overboard” “ A little?” “Oh be quiet” you two shared a laugh, your bodies falling closer together. “You know there was one thing I really wanted” you started nervously, the small shot of sake you took acting as liquid courage. Tanjiro clung to your next words until he froze, shocked as you finished, “You. All I wanted for christmas was you”.

It was as if the party around him settled to a dull background hum because you liked him….YOU liked HIM. He was over the moon at your confession, all that time spent looking for the perfect gift and you were interested in only him. In a flurry of excitement and full content, Tanjro reached over and placed a crooked kiss on your lips, stunning you. “I..ugh… sorry, got carried away” he scratched the back of his neck nervously after he pulled away, “Nope, I really liked it” you told him, gripping his collar to bring him in for another, more comfortable kiss.

Holiday Event Masterlist

#fluffy feelings holiday event #demon slayer x reader #kny xreader #tanjiro kamado x reader #tanjiro x reader #tanjiro fluff #tanjiro x reader fluff

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 3 years

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Cross the Ocean

A/N: Requested by @starry--skies. Sidenote: this may be a good story for a sequel sometime.

Summary: Neal once told you he would cross the ocean to be with you, but when you know he’s in danger, you’ll cross the ocean yourself to save him.

Word Count: 2,955

How could an apartment feel so cold and empty when the same number of people dwelled in its walls? You supposed it had been long enough that all the signs of him had faded. Spare clothes, returned to June, because there was no one else to return them to; the extra toothbrush trashed because no one was using it, anyway, and why have it take up more space? The linens could only go unwashed for so long, the last flowers he had offered died months ago, and his necklace was sitting in your jewelry box, unseen, because it hurt too much to wear it.

The same number of people lived in it, true. But Neal hadn’t needed to live there to leave his mark, and now that mark was gone, jumped on a plane without a goodbye, just like him.

~~~ Cross the Ocean ~~~

“Don’t go,” you said, unprompted, staring across the room to the dark shadows covering the wall.

You could feel his movement as Neal picked up his head. “Where would I go?” He asked, confused, sleepiness adorably muddling his voice.

You shrugged halfheartedly, already regretting having said it out loud. He felt your shoulders under his arm and tightened his warm hold on you, tugging you closer to the heat of his chest.

“Just don’t go,” you said again, hugging yourself comfortingly.

The idea that the man beside you could leave – had a history of leaving – without a trace left you feeling cold already. You were a cautious person, but loving someone the way you suspected you were growing to love Neal made you want to let down your guard. It was scary, like taking off the Kevlar vest to assuage someone with a gun; you were reasonably certain that you were safe, but you were also making yourself vulnerable to massive injury.

Neal moved his hand slowly, probably just so you would know that he hadn’t fallen asleep. He didn’t answer right away. The silence and the stroking of your arm sent mixed messages and you had just about settled on reading it as pity, and almost curled up tighter and moved away. Did he think you were clingy? Did he think it was pitiful that you expected him to stay with you? Maybe you had misread everything.

His hand stopped moving and he moved again, just enough to press his lips to your forehead. “Y/N,” he said, softly, his voice clearer. Thinking on it had woken him up more. “I don’t plan to go anywhere. Definitely not anywhere you can’t follow.”

Whew. There was a softness and delicateness to the way he talked to you, but it sure didn’t sound like pity or exasperation. More like… empathy, and maybe apology, for your evident insecurity and any role that his past played in it.

“I guess I just – I keep thinking one day I’ll wake up and you’ll be an ocean away.” Without me, you wanted to add, but figured it was implied. And unnecessary, probably, since he had done it to Kate before, or close enough. He had likely learned the kind of damage that did to a relationship.

Neal resumed his gentle stroking of your arm. “Oceans aren’t a big deal. We’ve got cruises and airplanes now,” he reassured with a playful bit of teasing. More seriously, but very simply and matter-of-factly, he continued, “And if someday we wake up an ocean apart, I’d cross the ocean.”

~~~ Cross the Ocean ~~~

It was easy to be bitter and easy to resent. In the beginning, you had been insecure, nervous that he would leave overnight when an opportunity arose. How could you not? Neal tried to leave forever without so much as a goodbye to anyone, only stopped by a bomb and a lost love. It had irked you then, and it scared you when your rapport deepened. He had fake documents ready to go, an agreed-upon rendezvous point with Mozzie planned for any given time. Neal worked hard to assure you he loved you. You weren’t sure he ever managed to convince you there was no chance of his leaving, but you at least had confidence that he would say goodbye, give you a chance to have closure.

No such luck. Part of you knew it wasn’t out of lack of desire, but rather lack of opportunity. The other part wanted it to shut up. Love him as you did, you knew Neal’s situation was a product of his own choices. He made his bed, and he should have lied in it, but for the family he had found in the city who loved him too much to let him rot in the pocket of a man who’d use him as a tool and throw him back in prison the second he stopped being useful – or, worse, leave him to die when it became too much trouble.

Whenever you embraced the anger, because the sorrow was too overwhelming, you resented Neal for all his stupid choices. Keeping the painting, pulling those stunts on the aerial tramway, and baiting Kramer for months with constant near-misses that could’ve been avoided if he had just stopped breaking the law. It was such a simple solution. And you were angry. The last six months of your relationship had been rocky, because the anger wasn’t new, it wasn’t just because he had gone away. It was because he kept compromising himself, and his coworkers and friends by extension, and yourself by association.

Holding onto anger was never your forte when it came to Neal, though. Sooner or later, usually within a couple of days, you would see or hear or do something that would remind you of the man, and you’d be hit with a wall of all the good memories, all the things he did that made you feel pride and adoration and contentment. Then came the longing and loss, and finally, the blame. The blame that you had just failed to pin on Neal himself, so you embraced the bitterness instead.

Peter had one job and instead, he turned Neal loose. Gave him the green light to run. At least if Neal had gone with Kramer, there was the chance of a happy ending. There was a reasonable chance that, with the WCCD at his back, Kramer wouldn’t be able to keep Neal past the two years left on his original sentence, and when it was over he could have come home. Peter had ruined any chance of that, his silent gesture telling Neal that there was no alternative and that he had the approval of his family here. Most importantly, that nod was a goodbye, and acceptance, and an “I love you, so I’m letting you be free”. You’d never begrudged Neal his close relationship with Peter but you felt cheated that, on top of ruining any slight chance of your partner returning to you, he got to say goodbye while you were left blindsided and heartbroken.

The first time you resorted to bitterness to cope, it lasted several weeks. You avoided Peter and dodged his team. They were worried, and El reached out, but you politely assured her you were fine and just didn’t want to see any of them. She respected your wishes and must have told her husband because he, Diana, and Clinton all stopped trying to find you. Neal’s friends were like salt in your wounds, even the ones who hadn’t told him to go. It was too deep and too fresh to handle the reminders. Hell, you could still barely handle your own apartment. You really didn’t know how deeply in love you were until Neal was gone.

It took longer, but the bitterness and betrayal ran its course and became exhausting, as well. Finally, you cycled back into sadness and mourning, which took so much out of you but demanded so little. Roses made you cry because you thought of the roses Neal would give you. So did your favorite dress, which was only your favorite because it was his favorite, too. Tiny things that you could expect to encounter at least once every few days would make you feel hopeless. You were grieving, as if he had died. Knowing he was alive and well didn’t soothe the pain because the permanence of his decision to flee the authorities put him so out of your reach, he might as well have died.

Every run through the stages hurt a little bit less, wound up a little bit shorter. You were healing, you knew, but the ache in your heart persisted. Learning to function again, learning to be prosperous and content without him, was an option, no matter how impossible it seemed on some days. On those days, you weren’t sure you even wanted to. Neal had earned such a place in your life and in your heart, and even when the things he did made you see red, you still knew in both heart and mind that he loved you and was yours. Some little piece of you wanted to still be his, so that you could keep that connection, that last thing you had of him.

That little piece was such an asshole.

~~~ Cross the Ocean ~~~

A deep delve into your professional life helped keep you occupied so you didn’t think too hard. It wasn’t the healthiest way of processing a breakup, no matter how messy or devastating said breakup was. Still, it was better to be productive and helpful than to let yourself continue spiraling and cycling through destructive emotions and patterns. The summer passed agonizingly slowly but when you looked back, it was like the blink of an eye. Suddenly it had been a whole season since you had last seen Neal. The romantic side of you wanted to say that it hurt just as much as it had before, but… it didn’t.

You felt awful thinking it, and then awful for feeling awful for having a life after him. Neal was gone. He had no choice about leaving New York, but he did have a choice about how, and he chose the route that left no possibility of a reunion. Why the hell should you wait around for him, wishing you kept hurting for a man who clearly was more interested in his freedom than in recovering what you had together?

Going home the day you had that thought, you looked at the button for the 21st floor and for the first time in a long time, you actually thought about just poking your head in and seeing how Neal’s other friends were doing, and then you realized the anger was running out. You didn’t have the energy or the will to keep deliberately resenting Neal or Peter.

~~~ Cross the Ocean ~~~

By August, you could look back on everything and understand the decisions that were made. You didn’t agree with them, but you understood the desperation fueling them and the fear that Neal must have felt. The moment Neal’s handler, whoever that was, tied his hands and threw him aside, the man was as good as dead, just in a matter of time. Kramer wasn’t above that. If he were free – even just by flight – Neal could protect himself. You could forgive him for leaving, but you weren’t sure he was forgiven for leaving without even a phone call to you as he booked it to the airport.

Later that month, though, your personal grievances didn’t seem to matter all that much. A man approached you while you were at work. You thought he was the man you’d asked to come answer some questions, but no – you were the one being questioned. He was cynical, evasive, and exacting, and clearly after information on Neal.

As soon as he left, you went to the twenty-first floor and beelined for Peter’s office, ignoring the tentative, sympathetic greetings from familiar faces. Peter glanced up when you entered and then did a shocked double-take. It was the first time you had voluntarily approached him in months, after all.

Peter stood up so quickly his chair legs scraped loudly on the floor. “Y/N,” he said right away, but then obviously had no idea where he was trying to go, unable to figure out what to say. You could see the sympathy and sorrow on his face. Not only did you lose your partner, and Peter had lost his friend, but the other agent had encouraged your partner to leave. He knew from your avoidance that you blamed him, at least partially.

With a wave of your hand, you dismissed it. Nothing Peter could say would fix the situation. You knew what he had done was in Neal’s best interests, weighing his wellbeing over your feelings. Where Neal wasn’t forgiven, Peter was, finally, and the avoidance that remained was just about trying to distance yourself from reminders of your blue-eyed artist.

“Someone just came asking questions about Neal,” you said, crossing your arms and peering across the office at Peter. “Agent Collins. He said he’s just tying up loose ends, but he’s not, is he?”

Peter’s openmouthed surprise turned into a grim purse of his lips. He shook his head, looking frustrated, and gestured for you to close the door. You did, and leaned back against it. “He’s the bureau’s version of a bounty hunter,” the agent confided, putting his fists down on his desk and leaning onto it. “Neal was almost commutated, then slipped out under their noses. It makes them look bad. They want to get him back.”

You didn’t miss that Peter was using pronouns that excluded himself, but didn’t comment. It was no surprise – he’d made his stance clear when he encouraged Neal to go. “Why now?” You demanded. “It’s been months, surely the trail’s cold.”

“Best guess?” Peter hazarded, sighing deeply. “They’ve spent this time trying to find him other ways. Now they’re realizing that Neal’s better than they thought and all they want to do is make an example out of him.”

Oh, hell no. “Like they haven’t already?” You asked snidely. Peter tilted his head aside, not explicitly agreeing but getting his point across all the same.

The bureau had your trust – for the most part. When it came to their treatment of Neal, your eyes had been opened to how even organizations seeking justice could be completely unjust in their treatment of people who lacked recourse. Neal was frequently put in life-threatening situations with no training and no choice in the matter except to be put back in prison. Enough people knew Neal was working with the FBI for Sing Sing to be a life-threatening situation, in and of itself. Neal was nothing but a tool to them because he lacked the normal resources of walking away or pursuing litigation.

You looked aside, glowering at the drab office wall. “It gets worse,” Peter wearily told you. “Collins is looking for a win. And at this point, a dead fugitive is just as good of an example as an incarcerated one.”

“Not happening,” you refused furiously. “What the hell happened to proportionality?” Neal may have pissed some people off, Robin Hood-ing from the one percent, but he was never violent. Sending a bounty hunter after him with permission to kill was wildly inappropriate and inhumane.

“I’m afraid proportionality isn’t the first thing on the mind,” Peter warned as you stalked further into his office, toward his desk.

“We have to warn him,” you mumbled, more to yourself than to Peter. Neal was “run at any time” paranoid, not “stay away from windows” paranoid.

“Yes,” Peter nodded, “But we can’t. We don’t know where he is. There is no way of telling him.” The agent wasn’t giving up or resigning himself to being useless. As much as there was disappointment and worry in his face, there was also stubbornness.

“So we find him,” you quietly suggested. “No one knows him better than we do.”

“Y/N.” Peter dropped his voice to match your volume and spoke with a soft, concerned tone. “You have to understand, finding Neal and not turning him in, much less tipping him off about Collins, is outside the law.”

“The law is apparently saying it’s okay to murder a man who has, at worst, taken money that isn’t his.” You fervently stated. That wasn’t your first concern, Neal was, but you needed Peter to know that you weren’t just in this because you were in love with the man in question. There was a principle at stake, and a moral obligation. “The equivalent of chopping off a pickpocket’s hand, coming from the government that supposedly despises cruelty and injustice. I won’t support that, and I sure as hell won’t stand by and let it be done to someone I love.”

While you had been talking, Peter had slowly started to smile. It was the smile he used to always give to Neal when he was proud, when your boyfriend would remind him that Neal was a kind person with a good, loving soul. Having it directed at you reminded you far too much of the smile Neal always gave back and your chest tightened – not just at the memory, but at the decision which meant you were bound to see it again.

“I knew you were going to say that,” Peter admitted with a small, relieved grin, like the shared challenge and conspiracy were washing all the sourness and distance under the bridge. You really thought that maybe it was. His confidence in you and his commitment to your boyfriend reassured you that you weren’t losing your mind and you weren’t alone, no matter how lonely you’d been feeling. “I just need you to understand what you’re putting at stake.”

“Wherever he is, when we find him, I’m coming. No matter what.”

#lawmen and conmen #white collar #white collar x reader #reader insert #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #fanfic #oneshot #cross the ocean #requested #angst #sad #breakup #tw: abandonment #grief

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beenjen · 3 years

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It’s been quite a bit since I really had a life update, I had to scroll back through, because I couldn’t remember what was said/not. I’m using my phone, so fair warning I can’t do that fancy ‘click here if you want my 10 mile post or just keep strolling’ trick.

Easiest up is the house. We refied which I did post about and I’m such an accounting nerd I have my amortization schedule all printed out. I’m so excited to mark off each month, then the extra interest off the back side. It gives me this little happy inside that I just go with because so much lately is BS - get your joy where you can 💪

We did get the new couch -

It’s a couch. It reclines and is leather so all the spaghetti sauce can be wiped off, chocolate fingerprints won’t matter as much, and there you go.

We also are redoing the laundry room. My brother and sister-in-law are redoing their kitchen and are giving me their old cabinets. The excitement level rivals the amortization table. That space is super snug and in houses, such as ours, built in the 60s, storage wasn’t a thing. Being creative for a pantry, places to tuck things away, has been a challenge, and redoing this space - Oh giggity. To start, we took off the hinged door, and installed a sliding door - now you don’t have to battle the door, and shoot fire and save matches you guys, it’s been a game changer. Here’s before we cleaned up the packing mostly -

It’ll tuck in behind the other door, easy to conceal with company and when the light is on, great night light. I wish we had done this AGES ago! User friendly? My name is Jennifer.

Onto weight/fitness... let’s see, I posted my boss new weights. I’ve been strength training, still eating clean, have gained 5ish pounds give or take, but lost a pants size. It’s a personal growth moment where I’m really not looking at the scale so much as how clothes fit, how my body feels, and it’s pivotal. It’s probably the most mentally healthy I’ve been about my weight and food EVER. I even started a new insta that is just fitness/food based so that it’s separate. I don’t want to be that person who changes their site and is suddenly trying to sell you essential oils. So original is family, new is self goals and gains. I was so excited when one of the fitness plus trainers from Apple fitness liked my post the other day. I fan girled out.

Work. Oh let’s see. My schedule has changed 7 times in 2 weeks. It’s absolutely absurd. One of the providers I work with was finally able to suss out what has been behind all this change and bringing us all back in 100% abruptly, and are you ready? It was ME. My productivity was 25% higher than everyone else’s. Instead of talking with us individually, seeing what was going on, educating if need be, they added another tier of management and are doing an in-depth chart audit (still not communicated to us), to see where the difference comes in.

Not one time has anyone said a word to us. It’s all been very hush hush and was an overheard conversation. So, essentially, I was an overachiever? It makes absolutely no sense, and since it is government work, that explanation is probably the true one. BUT, they did unload some job responsibilities to the physicians, and I was working myself to the bone, working through lunch, pulling overtime, and now, I just won’t anymore. I’ll still take the best care of my patients because that’s who I am, it is still insanity though.

Family life is rolling along. My moms cancer markers took a bump, they feel it’s slight and because of her oral chemo, and they updated a CT scan and all looks well, it’ll be monitored and I guess that’s where that is. My dads PSA is on the rise again, so surveillance screening for him too and it just hardly seems fair? I’ve toyed with taking a leave of absence from work, because a) fuck those crazy bastards, and b) spend time with my folks while I have them. I’m leaning more and more towards taking a month and just saying screw it all. I need a damn break.

Hubs and kiddos are doing good. I’ve struggled finding nighttime books that Jamis likes that are series versus just one off books, and finally landed on Ralph the mouse. He’s really enjoying them and I love that time we get time together. Working so much more lately has left me feeling separated and this is something we both look forward too. Also, we bought the ninetendo switch as his Christmas, and we take a couple hours over the weekend during Lilith’s nap time to 3 player the new Mario. He really digs it. We still try to get outdoors, sometimes though, the one on one time is important, and this is how we can fit it in.

Here’s my yoga -

Pigeon. You can do reclined on your back or bent knee, hips level and folded over your bent leg. Helps with back pain, pelvic pain, booty flexibility.

Long post. Now I’m going to sit in the bath and ignore the world xx

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introverted-explorer · 3 years

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Will You Marry Me (For Financial Aid)

Summary:

The fake dating/real feelings college au no one asked for. Based on that text exchange between two friends in college wanting a better FAFSA Application.

Notes: Major credit to @labelma (AKA Leilah) for betaing this and for encouraging me to post it.

I wrote this about a year ago and got distracted by life. Decided I would put it out into the world for other people to enjoy as a little birthday present for myself, enjoy!

David - italicized Patrick - bold Stevie - both

You wouldn’t expect David Rose to be friends with someone like Patrick Brewer. Not only was he a business major, but also a huge sports fan and equally versed in the arts, which David certainly didn’t mind. Patrick was liked by everyone he met and no one really understood how he could be friends with someone as abrasive and standoffish as David. And somehow they were best friends.

Stevie simultaneously regrets, is overly enthused, and is extremely amused by their friendship and takes full credit for the dynamic of their tiny but mighty friend group. She and David had met during orientation their freshman year of college, bonding over their shared disdain for their overly peppy orientation leaders. They quickly became inseparable, spending the majority of their down time together. A few weeks into school Stevie showed up with this average looking guy she had met in her Intro to Business course to their weekly dinner. Patrick had woven his way into their little duo with a few little teasing jabs at David to which David made complaints of an ‘unbalanced social dynamic’ but loved nonetheless.

Nothing has really changed after two years of friendship. They would do pretty much everything together; homework, meals, vacations (thanks to David’s parents), you name it, they were probably doing it together. Even a few classes, obviously with a lot of pushing on Stevie and Patrick’s end and reluctance on David’s. David mostly stuck to his art classes but was convinced that a few business classes would help if he ever wanted to manage a gallery, good business acumen ran in the family after all.

David came from money, but that money was almost never of conversation and often forgotten all together. It only came up when he casually name dropped or mentioned his designer and high end products. That was until they lost it all. Thankfully school and his apartment were already paid for through the year but it left David questioning his very near future plans. He worried if he would be able to finish out his schooling and where he would live once school was over. By some small miracle, his parents and younger sister found themselves moved to a town that they had bought as a joke at the pinnacle of his family’s financial success. Even better was the fact they were now living in the motel that Stevie’s family owned.

After a long night of anxiety and research on financial aid for the next year, he discovered there were certain situations in which he could receive more aid. David never had to worry about filling out a FAFSA application when he still had money, it was never an issue if he received aid or not, but now it was the most important thing for his life to stay somewhat stable. His anxiety got the better of him and decided to decompress with the little bit of the weed he had left.

Once he got a nice buzz going, he grabbed his phone to come up with a plan to get some of that aid. His finger hovered over his conversations with Patrick and Stevie. He thought Stevie would go along with his plan but would ridicule him to no end and decided that Patrick was probably the safer bet in this particular scenario.

Can you marry me?

The rational part of his brain told him Patrick was likely at one of his many clubs or doing homework or maybe even doing something only good people do. But the rational part of his brain was not steering the ship. The part in control kept yelling at him that Patrick was mad at him for coming on like that and he had ruined the friendship with just four words.

I just looked at the financial aid website and it said I cannot get any aid except for unsubsidized loans unless I have a child, get married or turn 24, so I have to get married

It didn’t take long for Patrick to respond. He would do pretty much anything for his friends and it’s not like it was actually a real marriage and could benefit himself.

Yeah, okay. I’ll marry you. I need a better fafsa application too

That certainly wasn’t the response David had expected and certainly not that fast. David was used to people letting him down even though Patrick, and more often than not Stevie, had proven that people won’t always do that.

Wait. Seriously?

Would you really do it?

I’m going to do actual research on this.

‘After I sober’ up David said to his phone after he sent that final text.

Are we doing this?

It would have to happen like lightning fast. I’ve never had to do one of those applications aren’t they due soon?

Patrick knew David was likely either high or drunk, he hadn’t been dealing with the complete upheaval of his life all that well, and figured he would do all of the specific research as he enjoyed it and was painfully aware of the application and financial aid process. He felt the tiniest bit of disbelief pass through his brain as he started looking into this particular part of the process. Whether this was the idea of marrying David or marrying David to benefit their financial aid packages. He never really thought of his best friend like that before but it felt like a tiny part of his brain was saying this was a good thing. He shut that voice down and focused on his research instead.

Okay.

We’d need to get a marriage license which can be up to $300 depending on where we get it, and then we need to file for a marriage certificate.

I’m an ordained minister but idk if I could file my own marriage certificate

During all of the craziness that had been the last hour and asking Patrick to marry him, he totally forgot that Stevie was coming over.

“David?” she called out opening the door and approached his bedroom.

“You smoked without me? You suck.”

David stilled. He had his phone still in his hand and a small smile on his face. As soon as he saw Stevie in the doorway his smile twisted to the side of his face.

“David.”

“Stevie.”

“You never smile like that. What bit of celebrity gossip are you hiding on your phone?” She asked, grabbing the phone from his hands with little protest as David’s reaction time was slowed by his now depleting high.

“What is this?” She paused to read the conversation. “You’re marrying Patrick? And for financial aid? I don’t know if I should be offended you didn’t ask me or not.”

“I thought about it! I thought you would make fun of me for it. I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine. I’m ordained by the way.”

David gave her a confused look questioning her random fact.

“I was bored in high school one day and did it online after I finished the assignment we were doing. It took like 15 minutes and now I can marry people.” She shrugged it off as if it were nothing.

“And you’re telling me this because..” David trailed off trying to follow the conversation.

“Because I can marry you and Patrick if you need me to.”

Finally David was caught up on the conversation. He took his phone back from Stevie wanting to tell Patrick. He couldn’t help the smile that came back on his face as hard as he tried to hide it.

Stevie’s ordained and said she can marry us. So one problem down!

“I like this for you.”

“Like what? There’s nothing to like!” David shrieked.

David went back to his laptop to do further research into the actual benefits of marrying Patrick. Stevie nodded and pulled out her own phone. She figured if David was going to be preoccupied she could at least have some fun.

So I hear you’re going to marry David?

And you’re officiating?

You’re not mad he asked me and not you right? I don't want this to put a strain on our friendship.

Stevie laughed. She had secretly hoped they would end up together. She loved David but she couldn’t ever marry him, not even a staged marriage.

I may have offered my services, yes.

And absolutely not. He’s all yours.

The extra financial aid would have been nice but I could never marry David.

Fake marry.

Okay, fine. Fake marry. Either way I am NOT interested.

She looked back up to see David’s face now buried in his phone. He had to be texting Patrick.

It’s possible that I can get fafsa to pay for an entire apartment!

Where you would live with me obviously

David stopped and looked up at Stevie nervously.

“I think I just asked Patrick to move in with me.”

I mean only if you want. You have no obligations to do that.

You probably don’t. I mean bringing home a girl would be weird or whatever.

Patrick had left his phone playing music on the counter as he made himself dinner. He didn’t think to check it until he was back in front of his computer with his dinner. He opened his messages to see four new messages from David.

He can’t say he’s not surprised to see David spiraling after those first two messages. He still never understood why David thought Patrick would reject him as he had never shown signs of that during their friendship. He felt a certain sadness for his best friend.

Of course I’d live with you.

The thought of living with David didn’t scare him as much as it should. He knows David is high maintenance. He’s shared spaces with him during vacations. It’s not really something that bothers him. If anything he finds David endearing, especially when he’s a little frazzled making this encounter all the more fun.

Think they would go for a nice little two bedroom apartment?

The relief David feels seeing that first response doesn’t last long. He doesn’t know why he feels a sense of sadness when Patrick mentions a two bedroom. They’re friends. A couple of bros getting married. Just for financial aid purposes.

Do you think we could convince them for two baths? I’ve shared a bathroom with you. You don’t have much but what you do is wildly incorrect and I’d rather not ruin our friendship with that.

Marriage is a compromise David. You’ll just have to deal with my incorrect bathroom products.

We’re really doing this.

Yes we are.

Can we talk more about this tomorrow? I need to get some work done tonight.

We can talk about this whenever you want.

Just

Preferably not before 10 AM.

Never. I know you David. Lunch after my class tomorrow? Just us?

Stevie hates that we’re ditching her.

But, yes. Lunch sounds great.

“So you’re marrying Patrick and ditching me to go on dates with him?” Stevie remarked after reading their exchange.

David seemed shocked but hummed shaking his head in some sort of hybrid of no and yes. He stood up and shook his arms out. Stevie knew he was getting flustered proving that this might just be more than just an easy way to get some help with tuition.

#david x patrick #schitt's creek #first fic #there is a second chapter to this #they sorta go on a date?#let me know if I should post it

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fuckyeahstephensondheim · 3 years

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Rick Pender knows his Sondheim from A to Z

If the word “encyclopedia” conjures for you a 26-volume compendium of information ranging from history to science and beyond, you may find the notion of a Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia perplexing. But if you have ever looked at a bookshelf full of book after book about (and occasionally by) the premiere musical theatre composer-lyricist of our era and wished all that information could be synthesized and indexed in one place, maybe the idea of a Sondheim encyclopedia will start to make a little more sense to you. It did to Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, an independent publisher that’s made encyclopedias such as this one of their calling cards, offering tomes on everyone from Marie Curie to Akira Kurasowa. Several years ago, they approached Rick Pender, longtime managing editor of the gone but never forgotten Sondheim Review and now, after years of research, writing, and pandemic-related delays, the The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is finally hitting shelves. I sat down with Rick (via Zoom) to chat about this unique, massive project.

FYSS: I want to really focus on the new book, but we should start with your history with Sondheim and The Sondheim Review. How did you become so enmeshed in this work?

RP: As a teenager, the first LP that I bought was the soundtrack from West Side Story, and I didn't have any clue about who much of anybody was, particularly not Stephen Sondheim. But I loved the lyrics for the songs, especially “Something’s Coming” and “Gee, Officer Krupke.” These are just fabulous lyrics.

Then, of course, in the ‘70s it was hard as time went by not to have some awareness of Sondheim. I saw a wonderful production of Night Music in northeast Ohio, and I again just thought these lyrics are incredible, and I love the music from that particular show. Fast forward a little further in the late ‘80s, I was laid up with some surgery and I knew I was going to be bedridden for a week or two anyway, so I went to the public library and grabbed up a handful of CDs, and in that batch was A Collector's Sondheim, the three-disc set of stuff up through about 1985, and I must have listened to that a hundred times, I swear, because it had material on it that I didn't know anything about like Evening Primrose or Stavisky. So that really opened my eyes.

Later, my son had moved to Chicago. He's a scenic carpenter and a union stagehand. He worked at the Goodman Theatre, and I went to see a production when they were still performing in a theater space at the Art Institute of Chicago, and they had a gift shop there. And lo and behold in the rack I saw a copy of a magazine called The Sondheim Review! I thought, oh my gosh, I've got to subscribe to this! This would have been about 1996, probably, so I subscribed and enjoyed it immediately. A quarterly magazine about just about Stephen Sondheim struck me as kind of amazing.

In 1997-98 the Cincinnati Playhouse did a production of Sweeney Todd in which Pamela Myers, all grown up, played Mrs. Lovett, and so I wrote to the editor of the magazine and said, “Would you like me to review this?” That started me down a path for a couple of years of making fairly regular contributions to the magazine. Then in 2004 that editor retired, and I was asked to become the managing editor, which I did from 2004 to 2016. It went off the rails for some business reasons, but it lasted for 22 years which I think is pretty remarkable.

I tried to sustain it in an alternative form with a website called Everything Sondheim. We put stuff up online for about 18 months, and we published three print issues that look very much like The Sondheim Review, but we were not able to sustain it beyond that.

FYSS: How did the Encyclopedia project originate?

RP: The publisher asked me to write an encyclopedia about Stephen Sondheim! I envisioned that I would be sort of the general editor who coordinated a bunch of writers to put this together, but they said no, we're thinking of you as being the sole author. They had done a couple of other encyclopedias particularly of film directors, and those were all done by one person, so they sent me a contract asking me to generate 300,000 words for this book, and after I regained consciousness, I said all right, I'll give it a try.

It took me about two years – most of 2018 and ‘19 – to generate that content. I sent it off in the fall of ‘19, and then, well, the world stopped because of the pandemic. It was supposed to come out April a year ago, and they had just furloughed a bunch of their editors and everything stalled. But now it's coming out mid-April 2021.

FYSS: What was the research and writing process like?

RP: This project came about in part because the publisher initially approached another writer, Mark Horowitz, who's at the Library of Congress and who had done a Sondheim book of Sondheim on Music. Mark and I had become quite close because he wrote a number of wonderful features about different Sondheim songs for The Sondheim Review. When I heard that that he had put my name out there, I went back to him after I had agreed to do this and said, Mark, could we use some of that material that you wrote for the magazine about those songs? And he said, sure do with them whatever you wish. And I was glad he said that, because they were really long pieces, and I've reduced each of them to about 1500-2000 words, which I thought was probably about the maximum length that people would really want to read in a reference volume.

But other than that, I generated everything else myself. I relied upon plenty of material within the 22 years of back issues of The Sondheim Review. Another great resource was Sondheim's own lyric studies, the two-volume set which provides so much information about the production of shows and that sort of thing.

Of the 131 entries I wrote for this, 18 of them are lengthy pieces about each of the original productions, so again Sondheim's books were certainly useful for that, and other books like Ted Chapin's book about Follies.

I also spent some time in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress, and Mark loaned me a quite a bit of material that he had collected – not archival material but scrapbooks of clippings that he put into ring binders of stuff about Sondheim's shows.

I came back to Cincinnati with about four or five cartons of materials, and I could really dig through that stuff as I was working on these. And then I have, as I'm sure you and lots of other Sondheim fans have, a bookcase with a shelf or two of Sondheim books, and those were all things that I relied upon, too.

I actually generated a list with lots and lots of topics, probably over 200, and I knew that was going to be more than I could do. Eventually, some things were consolidated, like an actor who perhaps performed in just one Sondheim show wasn't going to get a biographical entry, but I would talk about them in the particular show that they were involved in. So, I was able to collapse some of those kinds of things. But as I said, I did end up with 131 entries in the publication, and it turned out to be 636 pages, so that's a big fat reference book.

FYSS: Who is the intended audience for a work like this? RP: The book is really intended to be a reference volume more than a coffee-table book. It does have photography in it, but it's black and white and more meant to be illustrative than to wallow in the glories of Sondheim. There is an extensive bibliography in it, and all the material is really thoroughly sourced so people can find ways to dig into more.

FYSS: Sometimes memories diverge or change over time. Did you come across any contradictions in your research, and how did you resolve them?

RP: I can't say that I can recall anything like that. I relied very heavily on Sondheim's recollections in Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat because he's got a memory like a steel trap. Once in a while I would email him with a question and get very quick response on things. I really used him as my touchstone for making sure of that kind of thing.

I also found that Secrest’s biography was very thoroughly researched, and I could rely on that. But I can't say that I found a lot of discrepancy, and some of those kinds of things were a little too much inside baseball for me to be including in the encyclopedia.

FYSS: For figures with long and broad histories, how did you decide what to include? George Abbott, for example, is the first entry in the book and he worked for nine decades! How important was writing about an individual as they relate to Sondheim vs. who they were more generally?

RP: To use George Abbott as an example, I would say that the first things that I did was to go back to the lyric studies and to the Secrest biography and just look up references to Abbott. I mean, it was George Abbott who said that he wanted more hummable songs from Sondheim, so you know that was certainly an anecdote that was worth including because, of course you know, it becomes a little bit of the lyric in Merrily We Roll Along.

So you know, I would look for those kinds of things, but I also wanted to put Sondheim in context because Abbott was well into his career when he finally directed Forum which, since it was Sondheim's first show as a composer and a lyricist, is significant. That was very much the focus of that entry, but I wanted to lay a foundation in talking about Abbott, about all the things that he had done before that. I mean, he was sort of the Hal Prince of his era in in terms of his engagement in so many different kinds of things – writing plays, directing musicals, doctoring shows, all of that.

FYSS: Did any entries stick out to you as being the hardest to write?

I think the most complicated one to write about probably was Bounce/Road Show because it's got a complicated history, and Sondheim has so much to say about it. And because it's not a show that people know so much about, I wanted to treat it appropriately, but not as expansively as all of that background material might have suggested. So I kind of had to weave my way through that one. It also was a little tough to write about, because how do you write a synopsis of a show that has had several incarnations quite different from one another, and musical material that has changed from one to the other? With shows like that, I particularly tried to resort to the licensed versions of the shows.

FYSS: I haven't had a chance to read the book cover-to-cover yet, but I did read the Follies and the Into the Woods entries to try to get a sense of how you covered individual shows, and both of those are shows that had significant revisions at different times. And I thought you made it very clear what they were and also where to go for a reader who wants to learn more.

RP: Let me say one other thing this is not directly on this topic, but it sort of relates, and that is that in writing an encyclopedia, I didn't want to overlay a lot of my very individual opinions about things, but with each of the show entries I tried to review the critical comments that were made about the show in its original form, perhaps with significant revivals and that sort of thing, and then to source those remarks from critics at those various points in time. And of course, my own objectivity (or lack thereof) had something to do with what I was selecting, but I thought that was a good way to represent the range of opinion without having to make it all my own opinion.

FYSS: Did you feel any responsibility with regards to canonization when you made choices about what to include or exclude? What made the First National Tour of Into the Woods more significant than the Fiasco production, for example? Why do Side by Side by Sondheim & Sondheim on Sondheim get individual entries, but Putting It Together is relegated to the omnibus entry on revues?

RP: I guess that now you are lifting the curtain on some of my own subjectivity with that question. I tried to identify things that were particularly significant. I mean with the revues for instance, several of those shows – you know, particularly Side by Side by Sondheim, the very early ones – they were the ones I think that elevated him in people’s awareness. So, I think that to me was part of what drove that. And then shows that that were early touring productions struck me as being things that maybe needed a little bit more coverage. I think the Fiasco production was a really interesting one, but with the more recent productions of shows I just felt like there's no end to it if I begin to include a lot of that sort of thing.

FYSS: I mean it's so subjective. I'm not the kind of person who clutches my pearls and screams oh my goodness, how could you not talk about this or that. But I was surprised to see in your Follies entry that the Paper Mill Playhouse album was not listed among the recordings, for example. I imagine that once this book hits shelves you're going to be bombarded with people asking about their pet favorites.

RP: Oh, I'm sure, and maybe that will be a reason to do a second edition, which I’m totally ready to do.

The Sondheim Encyclopedia hits bookstore shelves April 15. It’s available wherever you buy books, but Rick has provided a special discount code for readers of Fuck Yeah Stephen Sondheim to receive 30% off when you order directly from the publisher. To order, visit www.rowman.com, call 800-462-6420, and use code RLFANDF30.

Celebrate the launch of The Sondheim Encyclopedia with a free, live online event featuring Rick Pender in conversation with Broadway Nation’s David Armstrong Friday, April 16 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern. More information and register here.

#Stephen Sondheim #Rick Pender #The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia #The Sondheim Review

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