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'In the autumn of 2021, Christopher Nolan knew just where to find Cillian Murphy. The director flew to Ireland with a document in his hand luggage, Hollywood’s equivalent of the nuclear football. It was a script for his top-secret new film, printed, apparently, on red paper. “Which is supposedly photocopy-proof,” Murphy explained. He wasn’t surprised by the in-person visit. The two had worked together on five previous films, and every Nolan script, Murphy said, had been dropped off by Nolan or one of his family members. “So, like, it’s been his mum who’s delivered the script to me before. Or his brother; he’ll go away and come back in three hours. Part of it has to do with keeping the story secret before it goes out. But part of it has to do with tradition. They’ve always done it this way, so why stop now? It does add a ritual to it, which I really appreciate. It suits me.”

Murphy met Nolan at his Dublin hotel room – and Nolan left him to read. He read and read and read. All 197 pages; the rarest kind of script, written in the first-person point of view of the film’s protagonist, J Robert Oppenheimer. All action, all incidence, swirling around this character – a big-brained, psychologically complex giant of world history. Murphy had never played a lead in a Nolan film before, but had committed to this role as soon as Nolan told him about it, before he’d even seen a page of the script. “He’d already called me and said he wanted me to play the part. And I had said yes, because I always say yes to him.” The afternoon ran out. “And he doesn’t have a phone or anything,” Murphy said. “But he knew instinctively when to come back.” Nolan in command of time, as ever. They spent the rest of the evening together, and then Murphy took the DART train home, and got to work.

The result was one of the most watched and most acclaimed films of 2023 – a nearly billion-dollar blockbuster about a tormented genius (and, yes, the father of the atomic bomb). The performance affirmed for many what has been quietly known for some time: that Cillian Murphy is, or at least was, one of the most underrated actors in all of Hollywood. In small potent roles in those other Nolan movies. As a shapeshifting bit player and lead in dozens of films and plays over the past three decades. And, of course, across 10 years and six seasons of Peaky Blinders – the hit series that made him truly known globally. “Some years ago,” Christopher Nolan said, “I made what was probably a mistake in some moment of drunken sincerity of telling him he’s the best actor of his generation. And so now he gets to show that to the rest of the world so everybody can realise that.”

Part of the reason that Murphy still felt like something of a secret until recently is that he lives, breathes and resides at a remove from the noise. This is by design. In 2015, Murphy returned home to Ireland from London, already some distance from Hollywood proper, to a quiet hamlet on the Irish Sea – not exactly off the grid, but one ring further outside the blast radius of his industry.

One evening this winter, I took the DART down the coast from Dublin city centre to Monkstown to have dinner with Murphy. We met at a restaurant where, he told me, “I have a usual table, would you believe it?” He sat there comfortably for most of the night, bouncing, leaning forwards, his floppy rocker-dad hair swept casually across his forehead, his famously light eyes drawing in passersby like two pockets of quicksand.

Murphy and his wife of 20 years, artist Yvonne McGuinness, live by the sea with their two teenage sons. In Ireland, the abundance of their creative existence is all around them. The art galleries all seem to be filled with work by his family members. The music on the radio is curated by friends – or Murphy himself. There are occasional pints with his elder Irish actor idols, Brendan Gleeson and Stephen Rea.

Life here for Murphy is filled with, well, life. His boys are approaching exit velocity. There are exams. Chores. Errands. He and his youngest were flying out in the morning to attend a football match in Liverpool. “I would’ve taken you elsewhere for some Guinness,” Murphy said, “except I have to drive to drop my boy off at a party tonight.” The brand of busyness felt quite far from the bubbles that typically cocoon the leading men in the film industry.

“I have a couple of friends who are actors, but a majority of them are not,” Murphy said. “The majority of my buddies are not in the business. I also love not working. And I think for me a lot of research as an actor is just fucking living, and, you know, having a normal life doing regular things and just being able to observe, and be, in that sort of lovely flow of humanity. If you can’t do that because you’re going from film festival to movie set to promotions… I mean that’s The Bubble. I’m not saying that makes you any better or less as an actor, but it’s just a world that I couldn’t exist in. I find it would be very limiting on what you can experience as a human being, you know?”

Cillian Murphy, at least on that weekend last winter, seemed to me to have something so deeply figured out that I spent the month after our time together unable to shake the experience of being in the presence of someone living so much the way that so many other actors – so many artists, so many people – claim to want to live. Away from it all, but in highest demand. Delivering Oscar-worthy performances while also seeming convincingly content to disappear for a long while, at any point, no questions. The stabilising forces at home seemed to work as an anchor point from which Murphy could go off and wander as an artist. “He has this rare blend of humility with this supercharge of creativity,” Emily Blunt said. “He’s just a lovely, sane person. He’s so, so sane. And yet he’s got such wildness in him in the parts that he’s able to play.”

He was the first of his friends to have kids, and thus will be the first with an empty nest. More time for films. (Maybe.) More time for music. (Certainly.) More time to go on runs at night, when the lights streaking by make him feel like he’s going faster. Even more time for sleep: “I sleep a lot. I do 10-hour sleeps.” He seemed immune to the need to be in the mix – of fame, of fashion, of free dinners, the titillating offerings of a scene. A lot of actors age out of that compulsion, but the thing is, Murphy’s not old. Forty-seven. At the height of his powers, entering his prime. Not exiting the industry, but just floating lightly beside it until called upon, which he often is, and will be more now than ever.

He tries to do one movie a year, preferably not in the summer, when he likes to spend most of his time on the west coast of Ireland, doing nothing much but finding new music for his radio programme on BBC Radio 6 Music or walking his black Lab, Scout. He is perfectly happy to be “unemployed” while he waits for the right new film to come his way. “There could’ve been a situation when Chris called me up that I was doing something else,” he said. “And that would’ve been the worst of all scenarios.”

In this way, Murphy seems to adhere to his version of Michael Pollan’s adage about healthy eating: “Make movies. Not too many. Mostly with Christopher Nolan.” Imagine the discipline, the confidence, the peace of mind, to not worry about missing an opportunity, a lunch, a party, a fork in the road back in one of the frothier Hollywood hubs, but rather to stroll along emerald shores, as the days stretch out until 10pm, knowing that they know you – and that, ultimately, they know where to find you.

In Monkstown. Probably at his table. Looking present. Clear-eyed. Like any local, but with more moisture in his skin. At dinner, he asked me just once not to put something in the piece: a nuanced take he shared on a local establishment. Nothing so dangerous as an unwelcome opinion in a small town. No truer sign of someone “just fucking living” there. The dream.

Nolan had first seen Murphy in 2003, in a promotional image for 28 Days Later that had run in the San Francisco Chronicle. “I was looking to cast Batman, looking for some actors to screen test, and I was just very struck by his eyes, his appearance, everything about him – wanted to find out more,” Nolan told me. “When I met him, he didn’t strike me as necessarily right for Batman. But there was just a vibe – there are people you meet in your life who you just want to stay connected with, work with; you try to find ways to create together.” So Nolan put him on camera just to see what happened. “He first performed as Bruce Wayne, and I saw the crew stop and pay attention in a way that I had never seen before, and really have never seen since. And it was this electricity just coming off the guy, it was an incredible energy. And so I called some executives, and they were impressed enough with him that they let me cast him as Scarecrow. Those Batman villains at the time had only ever been played by huge stars – Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So it’s just a testament to his raw talent.”

Batman Begins was the first of his smaller roles in Nolan’s three Batman movies, Inception, and Dunkirk. “I hope he won’t mind me saying, but when I first worked with him, he was all pure instinct, and the technical side of acting wasn’t something that had registered as important with him. We would literally put a mark down and he would just walk right over it,” Nolan said, laughing. But over two decades, “as I saw him develop his technical facility, it did not in any way distract or diminish the instinctive nature of his performance.”

For the lead in Oppenheimer, Murphy prepared at home for six months, focusing first on the voice and the silhouette (in other words, shedding weight to reflect the skin and bones of a world-renowned physicist who subsisted primarily on martinis and cigarettes during his years developing the bomb). On set, as the days of filming wore on in the New Mexico desert, the significance of what Murphy was up to started to spread across the set among the cast and crew “like a rumour,” Nolan said. “I remember the same thing with Heath Ledger on The Dark Knight.”

Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s beleaguered wife, Kitty, first got to know Murphy well on A Quiet Place Part II. “Cillian’s really kidnapping to be in a scene with. He pulls you into this vibrational vortex,” she told me. “He loves a party. But when he’s working, he’s intensely focused, and won’t socialise very much at all. Certainly not on Oppenheimer; I mean, he didn’t have anything left in the tank to say one word to someone at the end of the day.”

Matt Damon told me that when they were shooting out in the middle of New Mexico, he and Blunt and the rest of the cast would go down and eat at this one little café. “It was like a mess tent,” he said. “And Cillian was invited every night, but never made it once.”

Murphy was back in his room, preserving his energy, prepping for the next day, minding the Oppenheimer silhouette.

“OK, he’s losing weight, he can’t eat at night, you know he’s miserable,” Damon said. “But you know he’s doing what’s best for the movie that you all want to be as good as possible, and so you’re cheering him on. But at dinner you’re sitting there and you’re all shaking your heads, going, ‘Man, this is brutal.’

“The one thing that he would allow himself, his one luxury, is that he would take a bath at night. I mean he would allow himself literally a few almonds or something. And then sit in his bath with his script and just work. By himself, every night.”

The performance is so big, but so much of it is invisible to the audience, in the concentrated intensity of the interpretation. The nucleus towards which so many elements subtly draw us, closer to his character. Just one example: if it were period-accurate, Murphy said, everyone would be smoking and wearing hats, but he’s the only one doing either: “It’s emphatic, but subliminally so.” The author Kai Bird, who co-wrote American Prometheus, the monumental biography of Oppenheimer on which the film is based, spent a day at the Los Alamos set, watching Murphy play the scene where Oppenheimer talks to his team of scientists about the bomb while someone drops marbles into a fishbowl and a brandy glass. “At one point during a break, he approached wearing his baggy brown suit and turquoise belt, and I raised my arms and shouted, ‘Dr Oppenheimer, Dr Oppenheimer, I’ve been waiting decades to meet you!’ ” Bird said. “He especially captured the voice and Oppie’s intensity.” (At one point during our conversation, Bird asked me to confirm: “Those are his blue eyes, right? Or is he wearing lenses?”)

The film was released on Barbenheimer weekend, just after the SAG-AFTRA strike began, and despite enjoying some lighter time with Blunt, Damon and the cast, Murphy was relieved to cut short the promotion of the film. “I think it’s a broken model,” he said of red carpet interviews and junkets. Outdated and a drag for actors. “The model is – everybody is so bored.” Look what happened when they went on strike, he said. It all stopped. But the fact that the film was good, and Barbie was good, two at the same time, with people going crazy – it just shows you don’t need it. “Same was the case with Peaky Blinders. The first three seasons, there was no advertising, a tiny show on BBC Two. It just caught fire because people talked to each other about it.”

Murphy’s reticence in many interviews is palpable. “It’s like Joanne Woodward said,” he told me. “ ‘Acting is like sex – do it, don’t talk about it.’ ” Although I wouldn’t characterise his disposition on, say, late-night TV as gruff, he’s basically just incapable of going full phoney. He is, in other words, reacting the same way you might to being asked the same question for the hundredth time in a week. I’m curious to watch him suffer through his first Oscar campaign, where answering the same questions about his performance is essentially the point, for several months.

“People always used to say to me, ‘He has reservations’ or ‘He’s a difficult interviewee,’ ” Murphy said. “Not really! I love talking about work, about art. What I struggle with, and find unnecessary and unhelpful about what I want to do, is: ‘Tell me about yourself…’ ”

Nonetheless: He grew up in Cork. Went to a Catholic school better suited for a certain kind of athletic boy than an artistic soul. “I always fucking hated team sports. I like watching them. But I was terrible at them,” he said. That classic system for schooling was not good for him, “emotionally and psychologically,” he said. “But at least it gave me something to push against.”

Murphy played in a successful band with his brother, half-heartedly entered the local university as a law student. While at school in Cork, he stumbled into a performance of A Clockwork Orange and fell in with the stage scene there. He hadn’t trained in any way, but he got the first role he ever auditioned for, in Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs, which travelled around the UK, Europe and Canada, and transformed his life. “It all happened to me in one month, in August ’96: we got offered a record deal, I failed my law exams, I got the part in Disco Pigs, and I met my wife,” he said. “I now look back and go, Oh, shit, I didn’t know then how important all these things were – the sort of domino effect that they would have on my life.” I asked Murphy, who has said in the past that he identifies as an atheist, if such a confluence ever made him wonder if there was indeed a higher power organising all of this. “Ohhh,” he said. “I love the chaos and the randomness. I love the beauty of the unexpected.”

That winter weekend, while walking around Dublin on a bit of a Joycean ramble, we passed a bookshop. “This was my favourite bookshop when I first moved up to Dublin. I didn’t have any money and I was living with my mother-in-law. And I would come in here and get a coffee for 50p, but then they would, like, refill it, you know? So, I’d sit in there all day and just read plays and then put them back on the shelves, and then go home and my mother-in-law would feed me dinner,” he said. “Just to educate myself. To catch up. ’Cause I didn’t go to drama school, so I’d read all the plays I should’ve read if I went to drama school. I’d ask all these writers and directors to tell me all the plays that I must read.”

“Theatre is the key to Cillian,” director Danny Boyle told me. “Weirdly, given that he is such an extraordinary film actor.” It’s the ability, from the theatre, to travel the great distance of an extreme character arc. “Everybody talks about his dreamy Paul Newman eyes. And all that’s to his advantage, of course, because behind is this capacity, this reach that he has into volcanic energy.” (The other key to Cillian, Boyle said, is that he’s a bloody Irishman: “He’s one of the great, great exports, and the homeland clearly nourishes him constantly.”) Boyle cast Murphy in 2002’s 28 Days Later, the first film of Murphy’s that made him known. It led, in its way, to the Nolan partnership, as well to working with Boyle again on 2007’s Sunshine. “When we did 28 Days Later, he was really just starting off,” Boyle said. “By the time he came back for Sunshine, he was a seriously accomplished actor.”

In the noughties, Murphy was working frequently. Some of the movies were better than others. “Many of my films I haven’t seen,” he said. “I know that Johnny Depp would always say that, but it’s actually true. Generally the ones I haven’t seen are the ones I hear are not good.”

I asked him if he’d seen Oppenheimer.

“Yes, I’ve seen Oppenheimer…” he said, rolling his eyes.

When Nolan finished the film, Murphy, his wife and his younger son flew to Los Angeles to watch it for the first time in Nolan’s private screening room. “It’s pretty nice…” Murphy said, trying to balance obvious enthusiasm with not giving too much away. “You know, he shows film prints there. The sound is extraordinary.” How many seats? “Uh, I’d say maybe 50?” So, Murphy did see this film of his – in perhaps the most dialled-in home cinema known to man.

In the summer of 2005, just a couple of months after Batman Begins came out, Murphy was back in cinemas with Wes Craven’s Red Eye. It was villain season. And the two roles, in close quarters, seemed to coalesce around a feeling: that guy creeps me out. When casually canvassing people about what they think of when they think of Murphy, I was shocked by the imprint that Red Eye had on an American of a certain age.

“Oh, I know, it’s crazy!” Murphy said. “I think it’s the duality of it. It’s why I wanted to play it. That two thing. The nice guy and the bad guy in one. The only reason it appealed to me is you could do that –” he snapped his fingers “– that turn, you know?”

“They say the nicest people sometimes make the best villains,” Rachel McAdams said, recalling her time with Murphy on the cramped aeroplane set of Red Eye. “We’d listen to music and gab away while doing the crossword puzzle, which he brought every day and would graciously let me chime in on... I think the number one question I got about Cillian way back then was whether or not he wore contact lenses.”

“I love Rachel McAdams and we had fun making it,” Murphy said. “But I don’t think it’s a good movie. It’s a good B movie.”

During that same stretch, Murphy starred in Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, one of the best films he’s made, and one that Murphy is uniquely proud of. It’s a period epic that tells the story of a crew of Irish friends who find themselves fighting first the British, in the Irish War of Independence, and then one another in the Irish Civil War. The film is lush, harrowing, relentless and transporting. Murphy has a face that sits cosily at home in any decade of the 20th century. He is at his most vital in the ’20s, the ’30s, the ’40s – and that’s one of the factors that works so convincingly in Oppenheimer. Matt Damon, for better or worse, looks like Matt Damon. Emily Blunt, again for better or worse, looks like Emily Blunt. Whereas Cillian Murphy looks like a scientist from 1945.

Murphy and his filmmakers have run this play several ways in recent years. In Anthropoid (2016), as a Czechoslovakian resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Prague. In Free Fire (2016), as an IRA member caught up in an arms deal gone horribly wrong. In Dunkirk (2017), as a British “shivering soldier” suffering from PTSD. And, of course, in Peaky Blinders (2013–2022), as a First World War hero turned gangster in 1920s Birmingham. With that face, he can play every side of the die of the embroiled conflicts of pre- and post-war Europe. “Cillian’s always laughing about how he’s perpetually playing people who are traumatised,” Blunt said. “There must be something about his face that sort of entices those kinds of offers.”

In the first frame of Anthropoid that Murphy appears in, a moonbeam strikes his cheekbone like it’s a plane of alabaster, and the question immediately pops to mind: are you a Nazi or the resistance? Are you the good guy or the bad guy – or both, that “two thing”? The stable and the wild. The duality. The pull within.

In Dublin, we found ourselves walking through busy streets, beneath abundant winter sunshine and caustic seagulls. We were approached by fans at a shocking clip – but also by sisters of friends.

“I’m not a stalker…” one said, politely.

“Oh, hi, Oona!”

I asked him if he’d sensed that his life had palpably changed in any way since last summer, given that a billion pounds’ worth of people saw him in practically every frame of one of the biggest films of all time. “To me, it always seems to go in waves,” he said. “When Peaky was at its kind of apex, you’d feel a different energy around, walking around, a little bit like I do now – but then it settles down again. It kind of comes in waves. And then you don’t have something in the cinema for ages, and people forget about it. So. It seems to be like that, and you sort of ride that, and then things go back to normal.”

With all due respect to the Peaky hive, this film did seem to go especially wide.

“Yes,” he said, laughing. “But you’d be surprised. Peaky is still the thing I get asked most about in the world.”

As if on cue, Murphy was approached by a fan on the street, who asked for a photo.

“Oh, I don’t do photos,” he said to the disappointed lad, who nonetheless got 20 seconds of Murphy’s time to chat.

“Once I started doing that,” he said, “it changed my life. I just think it’s better to say hello, and have a little conversation. I tell that to a lot of people, you know, actor friends of mine, and they’re just like, I feel so bad. But you don’t need a photo record of everywhere you’ve been in a day.”

“There is a culty, effervescent kind of wonder about Cillian,” said Blunt. “I think for someone as interior as he is, this level of kinetic fame is, like, horrifying for him. If anyone is not built for fame, it’s Cillian.”

To make it up to that fan, I asked Murphy what the status is of a potential Peaky Blinders film. “There is no status, as of now,” he says. “So I have no update. But I’ve always said I’m open to it if there’s more story. I do love how the show ended. And I love the ambiguity of it. And I’m really proud of what we did. But I’m always open to a good script.”

We passed some young people in dark dresses and heels, absolutely the worse for wear. “Look at these guys, out from the night before,” Murphy said, smiling. I asked him if he had his days of partying in Dublin, in London. “I mean, I did, but it was with my friends. I was never part of any scene – or went to, like, acting clubs. I would never go to the premiere... The idea of going to a premiere that isn’t your own, seems to me like…”

We passed Trinity College, an occasion to discuss the breakout Irish series Normal People and its breakout Irish star Paul Mescal. “He is the real deal. He is like a true movie star. They don’t come along that often. But,” Murphy said, serving the lightest and rarest touch of pride and swagger, “luckily, they seem mostly to come from Ireland.

“It’s a good time,” he added, “to be an Irish actor, it seems.”

We stopped in at the Kerlin Gallery to see the show of his sister-in-law, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. She and Murphy’s wife were friends in graduate school in London, and Murphy’s brother met her while visiting Cillian there. This is his scene. He walked around admiring the pieces, which he’d heard about at family functions but not yet seen in person.

“Now this work immediately appeals to me,” he said, “because you can feel it’s pushing at big, big themes, and to me, that’s what I’ve always loved. I don’t really go for pure entertainment. I love when it makes you feel a little bit fucked up. Not in a horror-genre way, but in a psychological, existential way. That’s what I love in all the work that I enjoy and the work that I try to make.”

Murphy executive-produced the last three seasons of Peaky Blinders, but had been looking for a first film to produce. He secured the rights to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, a Booker Prize finalist, and one night on the set of Oppenheimer, while they were just sitting there in the desert, Damon told him about Damon and Ben Affleck’s then unannounced new company, Artists Equity, whose novel financial model is based on profit sharing with the crew. Murphy sent them the book and Artists Equity ultimately financed the film. “Normally, you’re trying to put together all these different entities, and then you have all these points of view on the edit,” Murphy said. “This was just those guys.”

Small Things Like These centres on an average man about Murphy’s age in a small town in County Wexford, who, one Christmas, stumbles upon a horrifying secret in the local convent – the Magdalene Laundries, which from the 18th century to the 1990s held thousands of girls and women prisoner in Church workhouses. I asked Murphy if, with his new power, it was important to him to tell Irish stories. Not especially, he said. The only criterion was: what’s the best story for right now? “Still,” he said, “it’s a good time to be looking at that story, because we have distance from what happened with the Church and everything. But yet I don’t think we’ve still fully addressed it. So, if you can make something that’s entertaining and moving, but also asks a few questions about who we are as a nation, and who we were as a nation, and how far we’ve come – then that’s great. But, again, they should happen after you’ve gone and had a reasonably entertaining evening at the cinema.”

Murphy joked at one point that he spent the actors’ strike at home “eating cheese,” but what he really did was spend the strike editing Small Things and overseeing “all the lovely stuff that we actors never get a look in on.” (His production company, Big Things Films, would’ve been called Small Things Films, he said, except that Small Things suggests “a lack of ambition, perhaps.”) Small Things will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival this month.

One film a year, control, restraint, a hand firmly on the wheel.

Murphy has a natural propensity to an analogue lifestyle that works well with Nolan, who doesn’t use email or have a smartphone. “I aspire to that life,” Murphy said. “I was just clearing stuff off my phone, but have to keep the apps for music and music discovery.

“I still have all my CDs and DVDs and Blu-Rays,” he went on. “I cannot get rid of them. I did get rid of my VHS, though. I just left them on the street because nobody wanted them. I went and brought them to a library and was like, Look at this pretentious collection of art films! and they were like, No thanks, man…”

I asked him if he saw the viral TikTok of Nolan showing a zoomer how best to project Oppenheimer. He started laughing. “My son showed me that. A clash of cultures.”

Working with Nolan can feel like a much-desired retrenchment from modern life. “When I’m on a Chris set, it does feel a little bit like a private, intimate laboratory,” Murphy said. “Even though he works at a tremendous pace, there’s always room for curiosity and finding things out, and that’s what making art should be about, you know? There’s no phones – but also no announcement: everybody just knows. And there’s no chairs. Because he doesn’t sit down. Sometimes a film set can be like a picnic. Everyone’s got their chairs and their snacks and everyone’s texting and showing each other fucking, you know, emojis or whatever, memes – which I do know,” he said, referring obliquely to the meme of Cillian Murphy not knowing what a meme is. “But why?”

Do you know what Nolan is doing next? I asked him.

“Nooo. But, like, I didn’t know that he was writing Oppenheimer. We don’t stay in touch that way.”

It’s like Mission: Impossible. Do the hard thing together, then sever communication. “Chris is the smartest person I’ve ever met,” added Murphy. “Not just the director stuff, but everything else.”

Nolan had told me that he’d wanted to give Murphy the role that he would be dogged by forever – that he would spend the rest of his career trying to crawl out from under. “And,” he said, “I think I’ve done it.”

When I put it to Murphy, he took a beat: “There’s a big, big body of work that I think people that know know.” I think it was his modest way of saying: I’ve got a few others too.

Murphy told me he’d heard that “one of the Sydneys” – Lumet or Pollack – once said that it takes 30 years to make an actor. He believed that. “I’m 27 years,” he said. “So I’m close.”

After Nolan hand-delivered the Oppenheimer script to Murphy and left him to read in that Dublin hotel room, he made his way to the Hugh Lane Gallery, and, more specifically, to the Francis Bacon studio there, a perfect preservation of the impossibly messy London studio where the Irish-born painter had lived and worked for much of his life. Murphy and Nolan share a love of Bacon – a towering figure of the 20th century, born in its first decade, dead in its last. Besides the reassembled studio, the museum has several paintings by Bacon – some finished, some unfinished. In all instances, though, the portraits of people – ghoulishly distorted figures – are rendered unsparingly. Never perfect representations. Never straight impressions. But rather an artist’s interpretation of another being, reconfigured into a stark image. You can see what might appeal to both a director of a biopic and his leading man.

That winter weekend, I made the same journey across the River Liffey that Nolan did, past a poster for Oppenheimer in a Tower Records window, past the Garden of Remembrance (for all who gave their lives for Irish freedom), and met Murphy at the museum. He had on a black puffer jacket, a black hoodie, and a pair of black Ray-Bans with that starburst that movie-star lenses do when subjected to a flash on a red carpet. He removed them inside and took the well-worn path back to the Bacons. “Most people don’t know about this place,” he said. “It’s kind of like a little secret. But I just come here when I have time to spare in town.”

We looked at Bacons. Bacons everywhere. We talked about the Bacon biography that came out in 2021. “I love the work,” Murphy said, “but just the life. That kind of unique relentlessness that he had as an artist.” I asked if he read actor biographies. “When I was starting out,” he said. “I always worry, though, reading them – because I can’t remember what I did last week... I often wonder about the self-mythologising.”

We peered in on the studio itself, every cigarette butt and crate of champagne archived and put in its place. “Chaos for me breeds images,” Bacon had said.

Do you have a room in your house that looks like this? I asked.

Murphy laughed. “No, I do have a man room, a man cave. But it’s incredibly tidy.”

In another room of the museum, we sat before a looped TV special on Bacon from 1985, an hour-long interview with presenter Melvyn Bragg, where the great painter spits off charisma and wisdom in pithy responses to the biggest questions an artist can be asked, all while wearing a perfect black leather jacket. We sat there quietly together, until Murphy interjected: “It’s kind of mesmerising, isn’t it?”

Before I’d arrived in Dublin, Nolan had told me that Murphy’s career tends to make sense if you think of him more as an artist than an actor – as you would a painter or a musician. That his filmography isn’t a line going up or down so much as filled with distinct periods of development. It helps explain the approach to the work. How patient and restrained. How clear the point of view. An act of accretion rather than explosiveness and volatility. So unshaken by the things that rock the boat for so many actors. It’s the clarity. The authenticity. The answer to the question: when you’re tested again and again, what is there? Who is there? Here is a man – a 47-year-old who could play 27 with the right light and 67 with the right make-up – who is probably going to win the Oscar for best actor, but whose mind couldn’t be farther from the chatter of his industry and the noise, the noise. At one point, I asked him if he feels like he’s uniquely well-positioned to play roles of middle age – if Oppenheimer feels like the first film of what could be the strongest stretch of his career.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “I really haven’t thought about it.”

Here, then, was another thing Murphy had seemingly figured out – consciously or not. Almost all religions, coaches, gurus, and enlightened friends tend to offer the same advice: don’t lose yourself in the past, don’t fixate on the future, but focus six inches in front of your nose, and on the Now that you can control. “I really am kind of like, pathologically unsentimental about things,” Murphy said. “I just move forward very quickly.” The past wasn’t a problem because he couldn’t remember it – or wouldn’t romanticise it. The future wasn’t a concern because he didn’t like to plan too far out. And so: the one film on the horizon; the one song on the radio or the one painting on the wall. He was, in this way, an authentic presentist. Or, less abstractly, just a good listener, a good seer, a good scene partner, a good person to have dinner with.

There, in the museum, we sat and we sat, watching the Bacon interview as though there was nowhere else to be (because there really wasn’t) and nothing else to think about (what more was there than how an artist’s life might be lived?).

Murphy broke the silence. “Did you ever hear this theory that [Brian] Eno has? About the farmers and the cowboys? There’s two types of artist – there’s the farmers and the cowboys. The farmers, like in his studio for example,” he said, gesturing to Bacon on the screen. “He’s mostly kind of doing the same thing, refining and refining and refining the same thing. And the cowboys, who go off, they’re like prospectors, that go off and do mad work. Eno puts himself in the second bracket, ’cause he’s such an innovator, with the music and the production and all of that. Or somebody like Bowie, constantly reinventing. Neither one is better, it’s just a different way of making work.”

Which do you fall into? I asked.

“Definitely the cowboy, I think. But there are actors that just play similar parts, versions of themselves all the time. Again, I don’t think either one is better.”

Do you think that sometimes an actor falls into the other category by accident, when their public persona intersects with – or eclipses – the work? I asked.

“Perhaps. Yeah. I’m sure that’s the case. Yeah.”

He sat back and sank into the film again, giggling at some of the things that Bacon said and did. “There’s a few things he says that I always think apply to our work,” he said. “ ‘The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.’ ” Provocative movies. Provocative performances. No easy answers – but perhaps a few new questions.

Don’t give it all away. Don’t even give most of it away. Retrench. Be clear. With yourself, but not necessarily with others. Let the fame wave pass. Live by the sea.

He said it again: “Deepen the mystery. That’s it, isn’t it?”'

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afairytalestray · 1 year

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@storyweaverofgondor‘s Cats-pril day 14: rock ‘n’ roll. This was actually one of the first things I wrote for this event, so I’m very happy to finally get to share it! Also on Ao3 here.

Mungojerrie greeted the day by whacking his head off the top of his bunk yet again. He let out an angry grumble. Bunk beds sucked. Buses sucked. Bunk beds on buses double sucked squared. Being on the road was not all it was cracked up to be at all. But it was “all part of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle”, apparently. He loved playing music, and being in a band with his best friends. He loved performing, and concerts, and the roar of the crowds… just not being on tour.

He gave his phone a quick glance. He had a whole bunch of notifications, but none of them were the messages he really wanted. Unsurprising, but still disappointing. He flomped back onto his pillow. When he, Tugger, Teazer, and Bomba had started playing together, they had never expected to actually get big. Now it seemed like everyone knew who they were! It was mad that when he turned on the radio, there was a very real chance he’d hear himself! That was awesome, and when the label had suggested a tour, Jerrie had thought it’d be great. It was, mostly, he just hadn’t thought he’d get so homesick.

Well, kind of homesick. The only family he really had was Teazer, and she was here with him. That was awesome, but damn did he miss Coricopat. Jerrie loved Cori with every fibre of his being, but Everlasting, he was so awful at checking his phone. His wonderful boyfriend was forever getting his head stuck in the astral plane or whatever, and forgetting that the thing needed to charge. This was normally not a problem. He was used to it. They lived together, so he got to see and speak to Cori all the time, to plonk his head in his lap while he was meditating, and feel the glorious scratch of his claws on his scalp. The fact that Cori was a trained masseuse was an added bonus, Jerrie just loved feeling close to him.

Teazer and Bomba didn’t get it at all. Teazer was living her best single life, and Bomba’s girlfriend Demeter was their travelling makeup artist, so was always nearby. Tugger got it, kind of. His boyfriend Misto was a principal dancer at the National Ballet, so their schedules often clashed, but Misto was half decent at checking his phone. Jerrie couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous when he saw Tugger glued to his screen.

But there was no point in getting moody about it. Cori loved him, this he knew, and that meant everything. Jerrie hopped down from his bunk, and padded to the front of the bus. They had been driving through the night to get to their next tour stop; where that was, Jerrie had long since lost track. He had no doubt it would be nice enough. Peering through the windscreen, he saw they were approaching a city he didn’t recognise.

“Be there in 20,” the driver told him. Jerrie plastered a grin over his face and went to get dressed.

He was slightly happier by the time their bus rolled to a stop. Bomba had informed him that they were stopping for a week here - a few nights of work and then a few days break - so they got to stay in a hotel that didn’t have wheels and had proper beds! Jerrie couldn’t wait. He hopped off the bus with a new spring in his step, and took a deep breath of fresh, not-bus air.

“Mungojerrie.”

Eh? Jerrie heard his name, and spun round. He knew that voice! Only one Cat ever full-named him. He gave a bellow of delight and charged forwards, launching himself onto Coricopat, who was walking up the street towards him. Cori let out that soft little laugh Jerrie adored so much, and Jerrie kissed him all over his beautiful face for several minutes.

“Corks! What are you doing here? I missed you! How’d you know we were here?” Jerrie gasped.

“Is it so astonishing that I know your tour schedule, Jerrie?” Cori hummed, leaning into the very tight hug Jerrie was now trapping him in.

“I don’t know my tour schedule!”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Cori laughed quietly.

“But like, what are you doing here? Did the physic powers tell you that I missed you, or was it the gazillion messages on your phone?”

“I missed you and I wanted to see you,” Cori said simply. “I knew you had a few days off here, and I thought you might want to spend them together. Did I not tell you this?”

“No!” Jerrie squawked.

“Oh, I must have forgotten to respond to your messages. I thought I had. I’m here now, does this suit you?”

“OF COURSE IT DOES!” Jerrie picked him up and twirled him around, before kissing him again. Everlasting, he loved this Cat so much. How did he always know exactly what Jerrie needed? Sure, he could be better at answering his phone, but Jerrie wouldn’t trade him for the world.

#coricojerrie #cats-pril2023 #cats-prilday14 #Mungojerrie #tuggoffelees #demelurina #Coricopat #the rum tum tugger #Bombalurina #rumpleteazer #cats the musical

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newmusicradionetwork · 4 months

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Leo Sawikin Joins Jon McLaughlin Holiday Tour This December

The former front man of the indie band The Chordaes wrote this uplifting song about the joys of coming home again and seeing your surroundings with a fresh pair of eyes after being away for a long period of time. “I wrote the song last year on my first solo trip to Europe, “ says Sawikin. “I took the train from Rome to Barcelona, stopping in several cities along the way. The wonder of it all really allowed me to step outside of my head and just be alive to what was around me. I felt a bit reborn and excited to bring this new perspective, new pieces of myself really, home to New York City.” The song, featured on Americana Highways today, said, “Leo Sawikin carries us to the heights of splendor of celebrating ones place in the thriving metropolis and glorious cultural mecca that calls people home from all around the globe.” Sawikin will bring these songs and more when he joins Jon McLaughlin of his 10-city 2023 Holiday Tour beginning December 4 in Atlanta (all dates listed below). Sawikin’s self-described style of “indie folk pop with a dreamy shimmer” is apparent in the three singles he’s already this year beginning with the May 5 release of “Hold On” which Earmilk calls “a “…masterpiece.” And said the song “…takes listeners on an emotional rollercoaster that they won’t soon forget. The song showcases Leo Sawikin’s innate talent and ability to craft introspective and relatable songs.” His August 22 release of “The Same Mistakes” had Celeb Mix saying the songs is “…a low-slung, softly gleaming guitar topped by Sawikin’s oh-so evocative voice, at once tender and wistful…rolls into a delicious, throbbing rhythm, swaying on gentle undulations. Slowly building, the tune takes on a glowing wall of sound, full of enveloping resonance and gorgeous, shimmering coloration.” Neufutur hailed Sawikin’s vocals on “Don’t Pass It By,” released October 13, as “…a deeply felt, attentive, and highly musical performance… That falsetto note during the song’s chorus puts a graceful touch on an already elegant performance…” Sawikin released his debut album Row Me Away in 2021 during Covid. American Songwriter said of the album’s first single, “Golden Days,” “We’re in contemplative times, and ‘old soul’ Leo Sawikin followed the path paved by pop music’s classic songwriters, effectively capturing the longing for the simplicity of the past on his debut single…” He released two other tracks, “A Whole World Waiting” and “Born Too Late,” that scored indie radio spins in the U.S. and the UK. Sawikin sees the lockdown era as a creative dividing line between Row Me Away and the exciting new material he wrote for his upcoming album. Whereas the music on Row Me Awaywas steeped in a sense of anxiety and dread, the new songs are about learning to live and find peace in the moment, even in the face of an uncertain future. Musically, Sawikin says that he wanted to approach the sessions with Phil Ek differently from both his 2021 solo work and his time with The Chordaes. “I’m always trying to develop and explore new musical possibilities for myself,” he says. “For one, I wanted to do a record that showcased my chord voicings in a way that was much more up front than I had in the past. And on previous recordings, I worked with a full backing band, but this time Phil encouraged me to do all the guitar parts myself and to come up with and play all the keyboard parts as well. It was quite a challenge, but I feel like there’s more of me on these new tracks, and that we really were able to distill the songs to their essence. Now, I’m just looking forward to seeing how people respond!” Website Instagram X YouTube Spotify Read the full article

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mirawritesstuff · 7 months

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Writing Practice #2

Writing Practice: Pick a line from one of your favorite songs, and identify the main emotion. Now write a character who is feeling that emotion and hears the song. Try to describe the type of music in such a beautiful way that you will make the reader yearn to hear the song as well.

The Line: “Tell you you’re the greatest, but once you turn they hate us” - Enemy by Imagine Dragons

The Emotions: Bitterness - Anger and disappointment at being treated unfairly; resentment

This little apartment was the bane of my existence. It was drab and dark, with boards covering the windows. Pipes ran up the walls and across the ceiling. One wall was solid brick; no paint or wall paper. And the other walls had cheap, ugly wallpaper that looked decades old. It was even peeling off the wall. It was located in an old city block on the outskirts of the main city. The buildings here were mostly abandoned by this time, home only to the outcasts and criminals now. It wasn’t my choice to live in this little hole, if I had it my way I’d be living it up like I used to in the lavish castle at the center of the city. The gorgeous castle that was an incredible mix of ancient architecture and modern technology (that I helped pioneer - mind you).

I used to be the Monarch’s precious little inventor. I was her genius, her prodigy. She loved and adored me; as long as I did as she wanted. I made weapons of mass destruction so we could keep control over the world. Over time, I developed my own thoughts and opinions. I thought, maybe, we could keep control by earning loyalty instead of instilling fear. Apparently this was the wrong opinion to have in the Monarch’s court. I would later learn that the fear was for fun, they liked punishing people; the Court liked seeing the suffering of the people.

But I didn’t quiet myself down, but maybe I should have. I kept mentioning different ways how I thought we could done things differently. The more I spoke, the more they realized how dangerous I could be. If I spoke to the people, I could raise a revolution, I could lead to the downfall of the Monarch and her court. They accused me of treason and thus began my fall from grace. I guess they didn’t need me anymore - I had given them enough.

They manipulated the media to be against me. They said I had gone off the deep end, and even staged a fucking terrorist attack and blamed it on me. I was an outcast now, pushed to the lowest rungs of society. All because they didn’t want the very intelligence they used to love to turn against them, I was a threat to them now. So they figured it would be best to get rid of me and turn the people against me.

I turn on the beaten up radio that I had jerryrigged so that I could have something other than the silence around me to listen to. I know I’m brilliant but even I was surprised at how this thing worked. After a few minutes of tuning, it finally picks up a radio station and a song I had never heard starts playing; and the more I listened, the more the song resonated with me. Now, I’ll be honest, I’ve never been one to identify genres or musical instruments, but it sounded a bit like it had some distorted instruments in the back ground, that added a depth to the song that kept me captivated, and despite the heavy subject of the lyrics the music felt a little calming in a strange way.

Though what kept me listening wasn’t the instruments - it was the lyrics. All the emotions I had been feeling the past year - the resentment and bitterness - it was portrayed perfectly in the lyrics of the song. For the first time in a long time, I felt seen. I felt understood. Oddly enough, relief spread through me. If there was someone out there who felt the same emotions as I do, maybe all is not lost. At this point in my life I felt like there were enemies all around me; but maybe there are allies among the public as well.

The revolution is finally coming.

#writeblr #writing #writing practice #creative writing #imagine dragons #fantasy #short story

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sinceileftyoublog · 1 year

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King Tuff Live Preview: 3/31, Empty Bottle, Chicago

Photo by Wyndham Garnett

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For his fifth full-length album and first in 5 years, amidst the uncertainty of a just-starting global pandemic, L.A.-via-Vermont fuzz rocker King Tuff decided to make a record to remind himself “that life is magical.” The result, January’s Smalltown Stardust (Sub Pop), is a far cry from the drawn-out, languid psychedelia of 2018′s The Other, Kyle Thomas opting for more specific references to nature, places, and objects that mean something to him. It’s his best record yet.

Of course, it helps when making an album during a global pandemic, if your housemate is Sasami Ashworth (aka SASAMI), who served the role of co-pilot, producing, writing, and singing along Thomas. Her airy voice is the perfect foil to Thomas’ deadpan sneer-cum-croon, immediately apparent on songs like “Tell Me” and “How I Love”. More important, her presence and curatorial ear seems to have refined Thomas’ singing and songwriting. “How I Love”, a song Thomas admits was tough for someone normally “lost in nothing but noise for so many years,” obscured by guitars, is an immediate Beatles-esque standout. “The Bandits of Blue Sky” starts with lo-fi drum fills and turns into a 70s AM radio piano rocker rife with orchestral synths, Thomas cinematically delivering a tall tale about a ghost roaming the streets. And the layers of saxophone, vocals, and clattering percussion propel “Always Find Me”, a heady tune where Thomas describes himself as “a loser lost in my headphones,” as are we in witnessing the expanse of the music.

Even if you’re not a spiritual person, it’s easy to dive right into Thomas’ joyous expressions of his own spirituality. On “Portrait Of God”, he asks, “Have you ever tried to imagine the shape of God?”, his jubilant singing and Steely Dan guitar leads paying tribute to our ability to find meaning in the natural world, art, and love. “Stars align, the planets dance, life happens in between,” he declares on the gentle “Pebbles In A Stream”, a mystical ode to love both romantic and platonic. Best, everyone can relate to the concept of the title track, album title, and album as a whole: Whether you’re remembering Route 91 in your small town or the sounds of the city you grew up in, “smalltown stardust” is that intangible feeling you get from nostalgia, a little melancholic, mostly wistful. This retro rocker captures it well.

King Tuff plays tonight at Empty Bottle. NYC rock band Tchotchke, who released an equally retro, supremely catchy self-titled album last year, goes on at 10 PM. Sorry, Jamie Lee Curtis.

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#live picks #king tuff #empty bottle #sub pop #tchotchke #emily tooraen #smalltown stardust #wyndham garnett #sub pop records #the other #kyle thomas #sasami ashworth #sasami #the beatles #steely dan #jamie lee curtis

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hazelsmom · 1 year

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I've never had a rela with my biological father. I'm 35 now, so it doesn't bother me at all, I've got an amazing step dad and wonderful mother, and from what I know about this man who's DNA I have, I'm not missing much. I've met him less than a handful of times. I was 13 years old the first time. I had been told another man, also not in my life, was my father. He was in prison, so my mom just put that away in her mind, it didn't matter. Until he started calling us from prison and sending me letters. He never said anything about not being my dad, which he knew, but my mom didn't want him to have contact with me. Apparently he's trouble. He's the Tommy Lee to her Pam Anderson. So, she told me the truth. That one night, she was fighting with her boyfriend, the man I'd been told was my father. She went out, and ran in to his cousin. He has a Trans Am and was older. Mom was 15 and wild. He took her for a ride in the Trans Am. The Scorpions playing in the stereo while they were in the backseat, making me. She was 16 when I was born. Trans Am guy took off immediately. Apparently there was a DNA test involved, so he definitely knew. But didn't care, apparently. Oh well.

Back to 13 year old me. Mom told me the truth and asked if I wanted to meet this man. And I did. Now. I knew in my heart this wasn't going to be some big fairy tale. He wasn't gonna whisk me away from my tragic life and make everything okay. He wasn't gonna be rich. He wasn't gonna buy me a car. But idk. I was curious. I knew he still lived in that same small town in Mississippi, so that told me a lot about him. My grandma was living in Mississippi at the time, so we went for a visit, and then Mom and I drove to that small town I was born in. We left it when I was 6, I have very vague memories of it. We met at a Waffle House. I sat with my back to the door, and Mom facing the door. I watched her face, and knew when he walked in. He brought his mother. She stayed in the car. We had lunch, and it was awkward. Here's the man. This man who is half of me. I have half of his DNA in me. We look nothing alike. I look like my mother, which he comments on. He never left this shitty, small town. He doesn't have the Trans Am anymore. He lives part time with his mother, and part of the time in a trailer with his girlfriend, who just had a kid. So I have a sibling I still to this day know nothing about, other than they would be in their 20s by now. We have awkward small talk. I immediately know this man will never pursue a relationship with me, so if I let it die, it will die. I'm gonna let it die. We get in my mom's car, I don't remember where we were going or why he rode with us, but he was up front with my mom. She stopped to go in to a store, leaning us alone. There's a copy of Undertow by Tool in the tape player of my mom's car playing. He doesn't like it. He comments that my mom listens to some "death metal type shit." I tell him the tape is mine, actually, and it's Tool, and it's not death metal. I had just started getting in to my own taste in music and Tool changed my life. I ask him what he listens to. He tells me his favorite band is Cypress Hill, and he just likes "whatever is on the radio." So, I didn't get my love of music from you, huh? Did I get ANYTHING from this man? I look like my mother, everyone has always said that. I have her eyes. Her face. I thought baby pictures of her were of me when I was little. I see nothing of myself in this man. He is perfectly content in his small town life, he has no interest in music. I live in a fairly large city, and music is the most important thing in my life at that time. Mom used to punish me by taking away my books and my CDs. Neither of those things matter to him. He tells me he doesn't think he's ever read a book. He likes wrestling and drinking, those are his hobbies. Going to a shitty bar in town. That's what he does for fun. His life is so far from mine, we have nothing in common. I still wonder, is there any part of me that came from him? Mom doesn't even know. To her, this is a guy she went on a date with years ago. Once. They didn't go out again. To her, he's a one night stand.

But I knew at lunch. I knew immediately. He didn't come here to meet me. He came here to see my mom. He'd remembered what she was like at 16. Young and beautiful and wild. He hoped she was still like that. She wasn't, though. She's still beautiful, but she's tired. She'd been raising me alone for 13 years. She had my brother, too, when I was 8, and he broke her. My brother was a difficult child. She got post partum psychosis and no one knew or cared, but she luckily didn't kill him or me and was able to pull herself out and be my mom again. But she's worked physical jobs to support us. Mostly waiting tables. She's not a fun, wild, 16 year old from a big city forced to move to that small town and looking to rebel anymore. She's a mother, who loves her children and doesn't want to be here, but did it for me. He sees this, too. But it doesn't stop him from trying. He tries to talk about THAT NIGHT. While the product of that night is still sitting right there. He's trying to remind her of fun times. She's not interested. She's not that person anymore and hasn't been since he abandoned her with a baby. But he doesn't care. This man, my father, who has just told me about his girlfriend who has just given birth to another child he'll likely abandon in a few years, is desperately trying to hit on my mother. In front of me. The child he never met, who came all the way from Tennessee to be at that Waffle House.

We leave and head back to my grandma's house. The ride was quiet. I knew I'd likely never see him again, and feeling a bit guilty that I didn't want to. Shouldn't I want to have a relationship with my father? Should I feel bad that he didn't like me? Why am I not enough for him? But I don't feel bad. I shared his DNA, but he wasn't a father and never would be, though he would go on to have more children with different women. There was just something sad about him. But he wasn't smart enough to understand it, and would turn to drugs later. Last I heard of him, he'd stolen everything he could from the wife he had that forced him to reach out to his kids. He found me on social media when I was like 21, and reached out. But it was clear he didn't want to, but his new wife wanted him to, so he did it to shut her up. He sent me a message. Hoping I wouldn't respond. But I did. I told him basically thanks, but no thanks. I'm fine. I have my mom, and she married a man who accepts me as his own. This angered him. Especially because this man is Hispanic, and an immigrant. He doesn't like people that aren't like him, straight white males. I guess it triggers something in him. He sends me back messages saying things about my attitude, and how I should be more grateful. He also uses a slur against my step father, which angers me. Here's this man, who knows nothing about me, calling me ungrateful and insulting the man who did what he couldn't. A man who has loved and cared for a little girl that wasn't his. A little girl who quickly entered her life long struggle with depression and mental illness not long after he met my mother. And he still stuck around. So I was not so nice in my response. I basically tell him to never speak to me again, and to go ahead and consider himself not my father. I don't need him in my life. I don't want him in my life. I know he doesn't give a shit about me, and the only reason he ever reached out was because he wanted to see if he still has a chance with my mom, and now because his new wife wanted him to. I was mean. I told him he should be more focused on getting new teeth for his wife. Which was mean, I know that now. But I was young and angry. Still struggling with my mental health. Again, I've angered him. He CALLS me to say mean things. Back then, Facebook still displayed your phone number publicly. He left a message. I listened to it, and heard his voice calling me a brat and he can't believe any child of his would talk to her father like that. All I can think is he is right, I'd never talk to my step dad like that.

And that's the last time I heard from him. I have at least one half brother I know about. I know there's others, but this is the only one I know. He doesn't know any others, either. Our father actually married his mom. Who was best friends with my mom. He stayed married his mother and stuck around for a while. My brother has memories of our father. He misses him. He wants him to come back. I think how sad that is. How lucky I am to have my step dad. How I hope one day my brother is able to move on, and see our dad for who he is. It hurts my heart when my brother messages me to ask if I've heard from our dad, because it appears no one has in a very long time, and he is worried. He knows family members that I don't. Our father is apparently missing. No one knows where he is, not since he stole from the wife who forced him to reach out and went on a drug bender. He may be dead. In jail. Who knows? It hurts me that my brother is concerned and is looking for him. But it doesn't hurt me that my father is missing. I don't feel anything about that. I still get messages from my brother sometimes, he asks if I've heard from our dad, and I haven't, of course. I tell my brother look. He knows how to find me. I'm not hard to find. I have an uncommon name. All he would need to do is search my name, and one or more of my social media pages would appear. Even though I have a new last name he doesn't know about, he could still find me. There's zero chance he doesn't use the internet. There's zero chance he doesn't know how Facebook works. If he wanted to find me, he could do so easily. But he hasn't. Not in 15 years. Doesn't he understand, this man doesn't want to be our father? He doesn't. He thinks one day he will want to be our father. I can't bring myself to break his heart. He's very nice. He looks like him. We have a few things in common, but not much. If weren't half siblings, we'd likely never be friends. We talk about meeting up someday, both knowing that will never happen. Maybe someday we'll just so happen to be in the same state. Maybe someday our father will get curious and reach out again, but I doubt it.

I came to terms with my father a long time ago. But new technology has brought new fears, and I find myself thinking of him more and more. I think about getting my DNA looked at. I know nothing of this side of me, and what if there is something I should know? But part of me worries I'll do that, and one day, someone comes knocking on the door, they got a familial DNA match for a cold case they've been working. My father was involved. Or my half sibling I know nothing about. And I have to tell them I can't be of any help, and know a person I'm related to is out there escaping justice. This is something that keeps me from doing this. Am I protecting this hypothetical family member? I honestly wouldn't be surprised to find out they were involved in an old cold case, but do I want to help the police find them? I like to think I'd tell them if I knew where he was, but would I? I believe I would. I'd hate to think of a mother, missing her child, never getting justice, and I don't help when I could. Besides, this man is nothing to me, just a guy my mom had a one night stand with 35 years ago. I feel bad sometimes that I am glad he stayed away from me. I don't think my life would have been any better with him in it, and perhaps worse. But I do still wonder sometimes, is there any part of me that's like this man? Did I get ANYTHING from my father? Surely I did. Surely I am not just a clone of my mother. I'd like to know what part of me came from him. Is it something I hate about myself? Or like? Did my tendency to have addiction issues come from him? Or my mom? She struggled before. But she beat hers. I haven't. And don't know how I will. I think that's what my father gave me. And I hate it and I hate him for it. I don't want to be like him.

#fathers #deadbeats #deadbeat dad #random thoughts #genetic testing #dna test #daddy issues #drug usage #addiction

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missjoolee · 2 years

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I love the Way you Make it Sound

It was 2 am when the phone rang out, guitar riffs rousing Julie from sleep. For a moment she is confused, not recognizing her surroundings, but as the seconds pass, she remembers settling in to sleep at this hotel in NYC. Her confusion morphs as she registers the ringtone. Why would Luke be calling her so late? They had spoken shortly before she went to sleep, and he was out with the guys. Picking up her phone she realizes it's a video call. So she sits up and flips on the lamp next to her bed as she swipes to answer. The call connects, and in the seconds before the video engages, she asks

"Luke, is everything alright?"

She wipes sleep from her eyes and catches a glimpse of the top of Luke's head as the camera begins bouncing around and then she sees Reggie, his cheeks rosy pink, looking away at something.

"Reggie, what is going on?"

He doesn't react to her, but does begin to whoop at something off camera. Did they somehow butt dial her?

"REGGIE!"

That gets his attention. His smile drops for a second.

"Oh no. Heeeeeeeey Julie!" He picks the phone up to properly look at it. At her. "Crap, you were definitely sleeping. I'm so sorry! We've been trying to keep him from calling you for the last half hour and now that he's up, I was hoping... Actually, I'm not surprised he called you for this."

"Reggie," an edge slips into her tone. "Is everything... Is <em>he</em> okay?"

A voice starts speaking over the sound system where the guys are at and she thinks she hears Luke's name.

"Yeah. Alex and I just forgot that drunk karaoke Luke is also a needy sap. Which, with you gone right now... He's very clingy." He winces, before sighing, "Well, since you are awake, might as well just let you watch."

And with that, the camera flips away, now showing a stage with several tables surrounding it. And right in the middle of the spotlight is Luke. She can hear the strum of a guitar before Luke begins singing. And Julie can tell from the tight quality of his voice, he's probably been crying somewhat recently.

There's something that I can't quite explain I'm so in love with you (I love you, Julie) You'll never take that away And if I've said it a hundred times before Expect a thousand more You'll never take that away

(I miss yooou *sniffles*)

Well expect me to be Calling you to see If you're OK when I'm not around Asking "if you love me" (Here, Julie can see a giant smile overtake his face. Which makes a goofy grin break out on hers.) I love the way you make it sound Calling you to see Do I try too hard to make you smile? To make us smile

I will keep calling you to see If you're sleeping, are you dreaming If you're dreaming, are you dreaming of me I can't believe you actually picked me

(Julie, I love you so much) I thought that the world had lost it's sway It's so hard sometimes Then I fell in love with you Then came you And you took that away It's not so difficult The world is not so difficult

You take away the old Show me the new And I feel like I can fly when I stand next to you So while I'm on this phone A hundred miles from home I'll take the words you gave me and send them back to you

I only want to see If you're OK when I'm not around Asking "if you love me" I love the way you make it sound Calling you to see Do I try too hard to make you smile? To make us smile (Jules, I love you!)

As he goes back into the chorus, the camera flips back to Reggie. A smirk sitting comfortably on his face.

"Jules, I don't know if you missed it," his voice is raised to be heard over the music and the crowd around him, "but I think Luke might love you."

Julie joins him in giggling about all of Luke's interjections. Alex's head pokes into the frame. He waves at her but he has a drink in his hand so it's a gentle movement so he doesn't spill.

"Hey, Julie," he manages right before the crowd around them burst into applause as the last notes of the song play out.

One final "I love you, Julie!" rings out through the mic and laughter can be heard now that the back track is no longer competing to be heard. A moment later, Luke is bouncing up to the table and the camera waves all over the place before settling onto his bright smile. which only gets brighter once his gaze settles on her.

"JULIE!"

Julie can't help giggling again at the enthusiasm he laces into her name, "Hey, Luke. You killed it," she says fondly.

"Anything for you, Jules." His eyes rove around the screen, like he's memorizing her face for the umpteenth time. "I miss you."

"I miss you too, babe." She covers her mouth as a yawn hits her suddenly. "But I need to go back to sleep. I'll call you when we are done with the shoot tomorrow, okay?"

His grumpy face fast replaces the smile at that. Looking all the more ridiculous in his inebriated state. "You promise?"

"I promise. I love you, Luke."

The bright smile is back in place. "And I love you."

With that, Julie hangs up and turns off the lamp. She snuggles into her pillows, her smile refusing to leave in spite of the ache from being separated, drifting back to sleep.

---------------

The next day a video of Luke's karaoke performance goes viral after a twitter user posts it with the caption “damn. find you a man that loves you this much. how do i become julie?” and then the band gets tagged in a retweet.

When the media outlets took over the coverage and asked for a statement, the guitarist responded with, "I think I was pretty clear in the video. I love Julie Molina. Nothing more to it."

Alex and Reggie rolled their eyes at that. Julie smiled. They all know that, given the chance, Luke would go more into it. Just not to TMZ.

65 notes · View notes

borathae · 2 years

Text

↳ Index [Chapter 01 - Oolong]

Warnings: short mentions of car accidents & memory loss but it’s nothing major, a lil bit of creepiness but again nothing major

Wordcount: 8.1k

a/n: and so it begins, one of the softest, most comforting stories i have ever written :(

Three years ago you were living a different life. You have no memory of this life, but you were told that you were.

You were living in the big city, where people didn’t know you and millions of stories lived out collectively at the same place and the same time. You had a job at one of Korea's biggest banks, something along the lines of director of finances. At least that’s what they told you in the hospital.

You had a big apartment, so big that your mouth fell open when you returned to it once your rehab was over.

You also had lots of friends, so you were told, but in the countless months you spent in the hospital just two of them visited you. Strange for someone with supposedly dozens and dozens of friends. At least with the memory loss you didn’t feel heartbroken about the fact that the majority of them didn’t want to see you. You couldn’t really blame them either. You can’t even imagine how you would have reacted if you had gotten a call that your friend was in a car accident and that the chances of survival were at twenty percent. You did however survive, waking up after two months in a coma, totally confused and unable to remember your own name.

Walking was hard at first, actually, everything was hard at first. Your fingers weren’t used to holding things anymore and even breathing was hard on some days.

But with time and the loving care of your nurses, you learned to be human again. The doctors called you a miracle and that you must have been given a second chance by the universe.

And so you took that second chance and decided to leave your past life behind. You left the big city to instead move into the little cottage on the countryside, which your grandparents had apparently left you. You quit your job, knowing fully well they wouldn’t have taken you back either way and with just the essentials stuffed into a little moving van started the journey to your new life just one month after being released.

That was already three years ago and there wasn’t a moment you regret your decision. With your savings you bought a little tea shop and turned it into your new profession. Nowadays it is the most popular tea shop - slash bakery - in your town. With a population of around 800 people it is probably not hard to become popular, especially because you were the only tea shop in your village, but you were proud of your achievement nonetheless. Just last spring you were even able to expand your business and hire your first ever employee.

The former is currently sweeping the floor clean when you enter the tea shop, a happy melody is on his lips and his body is swaying in a little dance.

“Good morning Hoseok. You seem cheerful today”, you greet the red-haired man.

He stops dancing to bow his head, sending you a bright smile.

“Good morning ma’am. I am really happy today, thank you for asking. How about you ma’am?” he says loudly, pronouncing every syllable with care.

“How often do I have to tell you to talk casually to me?” you chuckle fondly, making Hoseok blush in embarrassment.

“Ah, I always forget, forgive me, force of habit”, he confesses, scratching the back of his neck.

“No worries”, you assure him to which he visibly relaxes his shoulders, “tell me, is Jimin here already?”

Hoseok shrugs his shoulders. “I haven’t checked the kitchen yet. I just came here and started cleaning right away.”

“Alright, thank you. I’ll go check on him then.”

“Yes ma’am”, Hoseok nods obediently before continuing his work.

You smile fondly. He will never change.

When you enter the kitchen, it already smells like freshly baked goods and upbeat music plays softly through the old radio on the counter. Jimin is kneading a ball of bright green dough when you pat his shoulder in greeting.

“Oh!” he startles, jumping at the contact.

“It’s just me. Don’t worry”, you laugh at the shocked expression on his round face when he turns.

His face relaxes, the frown turning into his signature smile.

“You startled me, wow”, he chuckles, “Glad you came however, I wanted to talk to you either way.”

“Talk to me? Did something happen?” you ask, tilting your head to the side.

“We ran out of strawberries last night and I only realised after having kneaded the dough”, he explains, pointing at the green rice dough he worked on previously.

“Don’t worry, I called the Kims this morning. They will deliver fresh fruits at around lunch time today.”

“Oh that is terribly late though”, he mumbles, scratching his chin. Pieces of dough stuck to his skin.

“Then how about you fill the pies with something else today?” you suggest, cleaning off his chin with gentle fingers, “we still have some raspberries in the freezer.”

Jimin thinks for a moment, grabbing his chin again. New dough sticks to his skin, almost making you chuckle. How endearing.

“Maybe this could work. The taste would be different of course, but I could replace the vanilla with marzipan and then top the pies off with some almonds”, his eyes light up, “this could actually work. Thank you, I was already giving up.”

You brush the dough away one more time, making him lower his eyes in bashfulness.

“Glad I could help. Those pies sound delicious.”

He smiles brightly, his eyes turning into little crescent moons.

“Then back to work I would say. I have so much to do”, he sings excitedly, skipping back to the freezer room.

“Have fun baking. I’ll be in the front if you need me”, you call after him and leave the kitchen to finally get ready for today.

The day starts off calm as always. Your regulars visit you to get a cup of Hoseok’s town-famous vanilla oolong. Mrs Oh and her small, fragile husband come at exactly nine twenty, sitting down on the small, round table in the corner of the bakery. Like always they talk loudly about the weather and how it will soon be winter, yes even in summer it will soon be winter in their eyes, and share a glass of water from which they both drink for a good hour. Once Mrs Oh and her husband left with a loaf of fresh rye bread, the town’s mayor struts through the door, fixing his colourful tie before greeting you with a loud “hello the mayor’s here”. You ask him “Mister Mayor, are you late for work again?” to which he laughs and shakes his head. Like always he tells you “the telly kept me up last night and my alarm clock is broken” and then gets a big paper cup of Hoseok’s town-famous vanilla oolong. He’ll comment on Hoseok’s hair colour, “where do you get dye like this?” and then strut out of the tea shop to make his way to the town hall. At exactly ten minutes before twelve the elementary teacher Miss Jang and her daughter Sooha get their three strawberry pies - today they are raspberry pies - and Sooha gets her warm milk with honey. And just like that the morning at the bakery comes to an end.

Hoseok puts his jeans jacket on, fixing the collar. He looks at the mirror on the wall, brushing through his hair. Jimin comes out a moment later, apron left in the kitchen and instead a grey, long coat sits on his shoulders. He joins Hoseok by the mirror, checking his face for any traces of flour. Then they both turn to you, both of them smiling brightly.

“You want to join us boss?” Hoseok asks.

“We want to try old Mister Choi’s new mussel soup today”, Jimin says.

“You guys go without me today, the Kims will arrive in around ten minutes and I need to welcome them”, you tell them, to which both pout in distaste.

“Should we get some takeout for you?” Hoseok asks, to which you dismiss him with a wave of your hand.

“I’m okay guys, don’t worry about me and enjoy your lunch break.”

“Yes ma’am thank you ma'am”, Hoseok says, nodding obediently.

You watch the two men leave the shop. Jimin is hitting Hoseok's arm gently, scolding him for being so formal with you to which the latter mumbles a quiet “can’t help it.”

Chuckling fondly to yourself, you finish cleaning the last tables and as you rinse your cleaning rag, you can already hear the shrill horn of the Kims’ truck.

You raise your head, watching a turquoise truck pull up in front of the café and then two men get out. They are waving at you through the windows the moment they lay eyes on you.

“Taehyung, Namjoon hello, you look good today”, you greet them.

“You too”, Taehyung smiles before his straw hat slips down to his nose, “the new apron looks pretty”, he says, fixing the hat with a boyish grin.

“Doesn’t it? Hoseok sewed new aprons for us. I think the bees go lovely with the season”, you explain.

“True, true. Bees are very summery”, Taehyung agrees, nodding his head so vigorously that his straw hat slips down to his nose a second time.

As he is busy fixing his hat once again, you turn your attention to Namjoon. He is rummaging around in the back of the truck, back hunched and grunts of exhaustion leaving him.

“Do you need help?” you offer to which Namjoon raises his head. He looks over the rim of the trucks railing, the lenses of his round glasses smeared with dirt as always.

“I’m good”, he says, eyes wandering over to Taehyung.

“Taehyung! Stop fumblin’ wit' your hat and help me, will ya?” he orders to which Taehyung straightens up in an instant.

He nods obediently, holding his hat to prevent it from slipping down a third time.

“Comin’ hyung!”

You follow Taehyung to the rear end of the truck, watching the two men unload the eight boxes of fresh fruit.

“I expected the three of you today. Where’s Seokjin?”

“Milka gave birth and he is helpin’ with the delivery”, Namjoon explains.

“Finally, I was scared the old cow doesn’t wanna let go of her baby”, Taehyung jokes.

“Wow congrats”, you look at Taehyung, “you already have a name for the baby?”

“Yes of course”, Taehyung jumps from the truck, cleaning his hands on his dungarees, “Schoki, which means chocolate in German, because he is gon’ be just as brown as chocolate”, he explains proudly.

“What a name. Milka and Schoki, one could think you are a chocolate factory”, you chuckle.

“Right? The little rascal is gon' ruin our image with all those silly names”, Namjoon says, ruffling through Taehyung's hair fondly.

The latter complains with a loud whine, face covered behind the knocked down hat.

“Stop babyin’ me hyung, I’m only a year younger than you.”

“At heart you’ll always stay my little baby brother”, Namjoon ruffles Taehyung's hair some more, which only makes Taehyung pout just that harder.

He had just fixed his hat and now it’s all tilted again.

“You two, I swear to heavens”, you chuckle, watching their cute antics with fond eyes.

Namjoon jumps off the truck as well, picking up two boxes. He peeks at you over the boxes.

“Where d'you want us to put them?”

“Oh yeah right! The deliveries, I totally forgot. Put them in the freezer room like always. Thank you”, you tell them, opening the doors for them.

Once all the boxes are stored in the kitchen, it is already time for the two brothers to leave again. You aren’t the only customer they need to attend to today. Their farm is highly successful. The bakeries and restaurants from neighbouring towns also rely on their high-quality produce and the day of deliveries has only started for them.

“I’ll tell Seokjin you said hi”, Namjoon says after having rolled the windows down.

“Thank you, I’ll come visit you guys soon, promise. I want to meet Schoki”, you tell them.

“Yes please do”, Taehyung calls from the driver's seat, head peeking from behind Namjoon.

“I promise. See you guys”, you smile.

“See you”, they say in unison, rolling up their windows and then Taehyung finally drives off.

One hour later Jimin and Hoseok come back from their lunch break, both carrying a take-out for you despite you telling them not to worry about you. They never listen. Once you ate your food, because neither Jimin nor Hoseok would let you go back to work on an empty stomach, you join Hoseok at the counter, ready to serve the many afternoon customers. Most of the customers you get in the afternoon are tourists. As your little town is surrounded by mountains and many hiking trails, tourists are a daily occurrence in your tea shop. Today a group of loudly chatting Europeans came over to buy two sandwiches each.”We need the calories if we want to reach the mountain top”, one of them told you. “That’s the right mindset”, you agree and wish them luck on their hike. Later in the evening you can watch them strut past the tea shop, faces heated from the walk.

At exactly six thirty you close the shop like always. Jimin is the first to leave, driving home with his old, squeaking bike whilst whistling a happy melody. Hoseok is the next to leave, but not before bowing deeply at you and wishing you a good night. You scold him for being so formal, which makes him blush and stutter a cute apology. Once Hoseok is gone as well, you lock the doors and begin your way home.

The tea shop isn’t that far away from your cottage, just a few hills up and down and then you can already see the small river making its way through the weeping willows and your house right at the riverbed.

Like always, your little black cat Levi is waiting for you by the door, meowing loudly and circling your legs until you pick him up.

“Hello Levi, I missed you too. Did you have a lovely day?” you ask, hugging him to your chest.

He meows loudly, wiggling vehemently.

“Fine I’m already putting you down. Geez”, you murmur.

Levi shakes himself, looks up at you with his grey eyes and meows loudly.

“You are acting as if I didn’t feed you in the morning. Come on, I’ll give you your dinner”, you say, walking to the kitchen to give your poor starving boy some food.

Two hours later you are in bed, ready to end the day with Levi by your feet and the book, you had read mere seconds earlier, on the bedside table.

“Good night Levi”, you tell him, turning off your lights and snuggling into your pillow.

Three years ago your life was totally different. Nowadays, your life has a routine. You know what you were going to do at a specific time of your day and you know who you were going to meet where and when. To some it may seem boring, but to you it is perfect. Simple and yet never boring.

The sun wakes you the next morning. Levi is cuddled to your chest, purring quietly. You roll onto your back, careful not to wake him and listen to the first birds singing their songs.

“Good morning Levi”, you say, stretching your arms above your head and sitting up afterwards.

Levi raises his head, hissing a cute complaint for waking him before he jumps to his feet and crawls into your lap.

“Someone is cuddly today”, you chuckle, stroking his soft fur, “come let’s get breakfast.”

His ears twitch at that and a moment later he is off the bed and struts to his empty bowl. He likes chicken the most, it’s making his tail wag the quickest and his little meows sound just that much cuter. Whilst Levi is eating his breakfast, you make yourself a big cup of black tea and make your way to your sunroom afterwards. Levi follows you of course. He does not want to miss out on whatever you plan on doing.

“Wow, look how nice it is today”, you gush, watching the green leaves of the willows dance in the breeze. You pull the rocking chair, which has previously stood next to the bookshelf, into the middle of the sunroom and sit down on it afterwards.

The sun is surprisingly warm for the time of the year. The blanket, you had wanted to throw over your legs to keep yourself warm, lays forgotten on the couch. Levi will make it his' later when you are gone for work.

You close your eyes and sigh happily, leaning back in your rocking chair.

“The weather is getting warmer again, Levi. Isn’t that great? Soon we will be able to have breakfast outside.”

Levi raises his little head and looks up at you for a moment until lying down to sleep again.

“I love the sun so much. Wouldn’t you agree Levi?” you ask, looking down at him.

The cat’s ears twitch, but other than that he doesn’t move an inch.

“I knew you would say that”, you smile fondly. You take a sip of your tea and lean back again, closing your eyes once more.

“Moments like this with you are what life is all about”, you sigh, smiling to yourself.

You sit like this for quite some time, rocking back and forth in your rocking chair whilst listening to the birds sing outside and drinking your tea. You would have probably continued doing exactly that when a sudden object hadn’t blocked the sun so rudely.

You peel your eyes open to see who robbed you of your precious peace. A big, grey truck with the words “Jeon’s Rice & Moving Service” parks on the other side of the river, blocking the sunlight from you. The car doors open and three men get out. Two are dressed in grey uniforms, their shoulders broad and their arms big. The Jeon brothers, you know them. The third guy however must be their client. He is dressed completely in black and is significantly smaller than the other guys.

“Huh?” you straighten up, eyes glued to the three men.

They are talking for a moment, looking at a clipboard, which the smaller man is holding. Soon they seem to come to a conclusion and get to work in an instant.

“This can’t be”, you mumble, watching them carry furniture into the old cottage across the river from you.

“Look Levi, someone is finally moving into the Old House”, you tell him, not even expecting an answer from him.

The Old House has been empty ever since you moved here. It probably has been empty for a long time before that, but you never really asked for how long. You just knew that everyone in town simply called it “the Old House”. The paint had started to come off the bricks and dark ivy covered everything else. The windows looked rotten, definitely letting in the hot air in summer and the freezing winds in winter. You are also pretty sure that the black-tiled roof has holes all over. The inside you had never seen, but you aren’t particularly sad about that. Looking at the outside of the Old House is enough for you to imagine the inside state of it.

The broker must have either made an amazing offer or the buyer must be crazy. You aren’t really able to explain the miracle unfolding in front of your eyes otherwise.

You are definitely going to pay the new, and probably crazy, neighbour a visit after work. You would love to do it right now, but you are already running terribly late.

“Take watch for me Levi, I’ll be back soon. I expect updates”, you tell him, getting up to leave the house.

Levi simply meows and then goes back to sleep.

You can’t help yourself from stopping in front of the house when you pass by it, waiting for someone to come outside. One of the moving people comes out first. The younger brother, he is a few years younger than you, his cheeks puffy and his eyes as big as those of a deer. He looks at you, confused for a moment.

“Oh? Noona, good day. What are you doing here?” he asks, head tilting to the side.

“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just trying to figure out who would be crazy enough to buy the Old House.”

He laughs, clearly amused.

“Not me if you’re wondering. I’m just here to help him move. You know he called my father last night and asked for our help.”

“I never thought I’d see the day where your dad’s weird moving business actually has customers.”

He snorts, “yeah me neither, he made me and hyung drive all the way to Daegu.”

“So he is a city guy...what does a guy from the city want with such a rundown house?” you wonder out loud.

He shrugs his shoulders, resting his hand on his hips.

“Don’t ask me, I’m just doing my job”, he grins playfully.

“Of course you are, sorry I asked”, you give him a quick apologetic smile, which he dismisses with a wave of his hand.

“Don’t worry about it noona.”

“Jeon Jungkook!” someone yells from the inside and a moment later his older brother appears at the door frame, “stop chatting up the neighbours and help us unload. Father doesn’t pay you for talking! Good morning ___!”

“Morning Junghyun!”

“I’m coming hyung, sorry!” Jungkook calls before he turns to you. He is blushing with a boyish grin on his face, “sorry noona, I have to go again. Duty’s calling.”

“Sure I have to go to work anyways. It was nice talking to you Jungkook, greet your parents from me will ‘ya?” you send him a friendly smile, which he returns happily.

“I will. Have a nice day. Bye bye”, he waves at you and a moment later storms off into the direction of the house.

You arrive at the tea shop at the same time Hoseok does on his Vespa. He gets off hurriedly when he sees you, not even giving himself time to take off his helmet before he already bows at you, greeting you loudly.

“Good morning ma’am. I’m sorry I’m late, my dog threw up all over my carpet this morning and I had to clean everything up!”

“It’s okay I’m late too, don’t worry about it. I hope Mikey’s okay though.”

Hoseok takes off his helmet, ruffling through his hair to fix it and nods. “He is fine, the rascal just ate his food too fast and got a belly ache. It’s his own fault.”

“You can sing me a song of that, Levi’s the same”, you chuckle fondly.

Hoseok joins you, holding the door open for you. Once inside, he helps you get out of your coat and hangs it up on the coat hanger next to his jeans jacket.

“But why are you late ma’am? It’s not like you to run late”, Hoseok asks, joining you behind the counter after he flipped the sign to open on the door.

“The most peculiar thing happened to me this morning. You won’t believe me when I tell you, but someone moved into the Old House.”

Hoseoks eyes grow big, “What? The Old House? Who in their right mind would move into that?”

“Apparently some guy from the city.”

“Someone from the city? Why would someone from the city want to live in the Old House?” Hoseok mumbles, clearly thinking out loud. Suddenly his face lights up, as if he had an idea, “what if he doesn’t even want to live here, but instead he wants to turn the Old House into a bed and breakfast or something. Or a pension or a hotel?”

You shudder at the thought.

“Don’t say that, just imagining that gives me goosebumps.”

“Why? It would be amazing for our business.”

“Yes of course, but-“, you lower your voice just slightly, making Hoseok lean closer, “-imagine all the ruckus I would have to go through each and every day. And all the people who would stare at me when I’m in my sunroom. No thank you.”

Hoseok gasps, hiding his mouth behind his hands.

“I didn’t even think of that”, he whispers, “oh no, that wouldn’t be good. I’m sorry that I even suggested that ma’am”, he says loudly, bowing at an almost ninety degree angle.

You laugh, pulling Hoseok up by his shoulder.

“You rascal, how often do I have to tell you to stop being so formal with me?” you chuckle, nudging his arm gently.

“Ah, I did it again. I’m really trying to change that, but it’s just so hard. I feel like I would insult you if I started being informal with you”, he blushes, scratching the tip of his nose shyly.

“It’s been almost a year since you started working here. Don’t worry, you won’t insult me”, you pat his shoulder, “you can loosen up.”

“Okay thank you ma’am. I mean! Thank you boss.”

You scoff in amusement, “okay that’s fine for now”, you chuckle, shaking your head.

Soon your tea shop routine starts. Mrs Oh and her husband visit you like always, later the mayor and around lunch break Miss Jang and Sooha. Hoseok, Jimin and you go to the old Choi for lunch and open the tea shop two hours later again, ready to welcome your afternoon guests. The afternoon is surprisingly busy today, it is as if the entire town decided to go for a cup of tea, even Hoseok, who normally never breaks a sweat, has to stop at one point to wipe his forehead on the sleeve of his flannel. For some reason everyone in town seemed to have noticed what was going on at the Old House, you had lost count of how many times you had the same conversation about the crazy city guy and the fear that he would turn the Old House into a hotel. People in this town apparently all think alike, but that’s their charm after all.

Hoseok and Jimin leave the tea shop before you, like they always do, but not before Jimin didn’t give you a big box of leftover cookies to greet your new neighbour with. “Maybe that will sway him not to ruin our town”, he said and then drove off with his squeaky bike. Hoseok drives off five minutes later, telling you to act crazy so the city guy thinks people in this town are bad for hotel business. You told him that you will try it with a smile on your lips. You close up afterwards, making your way home.

When you are close enough to actually see the Old House, you notice the moving van had already left for the day. So they must have finished the work already, hopefully your neighbour is still here and didn’t go back to the city for the night.

Wait. You stop, watching the lights flicker on inside. There is electricity in this house?

“So it isn’t all rotten in there”, you mumble, starting to walk up the hill until you reach the fence gate. It is open and you take it as your invitation to officially set foot on the property.

You look around the garden when you walk through it. The trees are tall and old, shielding off most of the stars and painting the scrubs in a dark shadow. It is a lot colder underneath the trees than outside on the road, making you shiver. If this property wouldn’t be that creepy, you would find walking here a lot nicer.

“Huh?” you gasp once you arrive at the front door, “it’s opened?” Should you just enter? No, that would be trespassing, he doesn’t even know you yet and neither do you. What if he owns a machete and starts stabbing you when you burst into his house like that? You shiver at the thought, thinking about turning on your heels and just running away.

“No, get yourself together. We aren’t in the movies here”, you mumble, tightening your fingers on the cookie box. You press on the door bell with all your might, only to scream up in total horror when bright bolts of lightning cut through the air the moment you press the rusty doorbell.

A loud yell rings from inside as well when all of the lights go out in a reaction to your little accident. You can hear heavy footsteps scurry around, mixing with very graphic and angry cursing.

This is so embarrassing, you just want to turn around and run away, but before you can leave your neighbour to figure out on his own what had caused the bypass, the front door opens swiftly.

“Who’s there? I heard you scream”, a deep and very angry voice growls. A white light from a headlamp blinds you, making you squint your eyes. You can’t see anything other than that stupid light.

"Y-you?"

“H-hello sir. I’m your neighbour, sorry for interrupting your work, but I just came here to welcome you to the village”, you stutter, shielding your eyes from the light.

Silence then a quiet cough as he clears his throat.

“Did you cause the short? You didn’t press the doorbell did you?” he straight up ignores you, still shining the blinding light directly into your eyes.

“Uhm, would it be possible for you to turn those lights off? They really hurt my eyes”, you ignore his questions for the sake of your eyes.

“Oh, my bad. Sure”, he says a lot calmer and turns the lights off.

You blink, trying to adjust to the new darkness. When you finally get rid of the annoying blue dots in your eyes, you look at him, expecting to finally see his face.

However, all you see is a figure lingering in the shadows, shielding its face from the street lamps behind his door. All you can clearly see are long, pale fingers grasping the wood, the fingernails dirty from working and the nail beds bitten bloody. He doesn’t say anything, just keeps on staring at you in silence.

“I have cookies.”

The fingers leave the door and soon a pale arm appears. It is covered in dirt and dust.

“Thank you”, he murmurs, grasping the box of cookies most tenderly.

And then the hand disappears inside again.

This is creepy. Far too creepy for you to want to stay any longer.

“Uhm, okay. Anyways, welcome to the village and I hope you’ll be able to fix the issue. Feel free to send me the bill if the damage is a lot bigger. Sorry again for the short.”

He hums deeply, his shadowy head nodding.

“Okay, uhm”, you take a step back, “I’ll be going then”, you get down the three stairs, “Good night”, you say, walking down the path with your back turned to the road and your eyes fixed on the door. He is still staring at you from the darkness, not moving an inch.

Only when you are finally on the road and have closed the fence door behind you, do you turn around, starting to sprint down the hill to the safety of your house.

You stop running when you reach your door, already tasting blood in your mouth from panting. With shaky fingers you somehow manage to open your door, not even opening it completely before you slip inside and throw it closed again. You lock it quickly, checking twice if you actually did and only then do you feel yourself starting to relax. You shudder, hugging yourself.

“What the actual hell was that?” you mumble, rushing into the living room to close all your blinds. Levi is meowing by your feet, complaining about having to starve the entire day, but you don’t pay him any attention, you just want to make sure everything is closed and nobody can look into your house.

“Levi the scariest thing just happened to me”, you pick him up, snuggling his small body to your chest. He starts to lick your face, purring quietly, “I just wanted to welcome the neighbour and he just stared at me. He acted like he was the next new horror movie antagonist.”

Levi tilts his head to the side, listening to you intently.

“It gave me the creeps, look”, you show him your arm, “I still have goosebumps because of it.”

Levi meows, wiggling in your arms. It makes you giggle and instantly feel better.

“I know Levi, I know you were worried about me. But mommy’s here now, don’t worry about me anymore”, you coo, hugging him tighter to your body, “let’s go feed you and then cuddle in the bed. Mommy really needs that tonight.”

The Old House greets you the next morning, standing against the sun cold and menacingly and casting long, creepy shadows. You clutch your tea cup tighter, swallowing loudly.

“Is it just me or is the Old House smirking at me in a taunting way?” you ask Levi. He looks up from his food for a moment, meows once and then goes back to eating his chicken far too quickly.

“That’s it, I’m not drinking my tea in the sunroom today”, you decide, closing the doors to it and pulling the thick curtains in front of them.

Your living room is good too, the sofa is really comfortable and you can watch Levi eat his breakfast, which is good too. Yes everything is better than sitting in a room entirely made out of glass and getting watched by the Old House.

Which still doesn’t save you from having to pass it on your way to work, the aspect of it already making you shiver. If walking past it wasn’t scary enough, a cold wind starts howling the moment you are directly in front of the Old House. The wood creaks, the windows rattle and the long grasses dance like a wild sea in the storm. You shiver, quickening your steps.

“Hey ___!” a male voice suddenly cuts through the wind, making your blood freeze in your veins.

Oh god, is this your neighbour? Did he see you? Is he running up to you? You don’t dare to turn around, but you can hear his footsteps coming closer. You can’t move, you can’t run away. It is like you are frozen on the spot. He could straight up murder you and you wouldn’t be able to move. Is this how you are going to die? In broad daylight on your way to work? Murdered by your creepy neighbour, what a wonderful way to go.

“Good morning Miss”, he stops running, now leaning against the fence with his arms. You can see his shadow in the corners of your eyes and yet you can’t move.

“If you are going to kill me, just do it already”, you stutter, sweating even though you were freezing cold.

“Kill you?” he breaks into loud, heartfelt laughter, “why would I want to kill you?”

Surprised by his reaction, and sweet laugh, your body suddenly works again. You turn to stare at him in a mixture of shock and confusion. Your confusion only grows when you finally get a good look at his face. You had expected to see a monster. Fallen-in cheeks, blue chapped lips and murderous, bloodshot eyes. But instead a man your age smiles back at you. Cheeks puffy and glowing in the sunlight, lips pink and pouty and his dark brown eyes sparkle in friendliness.

“Now I’m confused”, you can’t stop your mouth from falling open. How is that possible? How does he look so normal, handsome even, but act so creepy?

“You probably expected a creep because of how I acted last night, right?” he chuckles, tilting his head to the side.

“Honestly I did”, you confess, still wary. Maybe this is his plan, get you to trust him with his cute smile and then bash your head in when you aren’t looking. He wouldn’t be the first serial killer using his charms to lure naïve women to their demise.

“I think I owe you an apology for how I acted last night. I couldn’t sleep because of how embarrassed by my behaviour I was. I promise you I am not a serial killer”, he smiles, lowering his head.

“This is exactly something a serial killer would say.”

He chuckles, scratching his neck.

“I’m not helping myself here”, he looks at you shyly, “the truth is, I am really scared of social interactions, especially unplanned ones and when you stood at my doorstep last night my brain kind of shut off. Not an excuse to be a total creep, but I hope I at least could ease your nerves a little.”

You study his face for a moment. As much as you try to find any evil in his eyes, you can’t. Maybe he is actually telling the truth right now.

“Maybe. I don’t know yet”, you say finally.

“Good enough for me”, he sends you a shy smile, “I’m Min Yoongi by the way, but you can call me Yoongi if you want to”, he says, offering you his hand to shake.

You don’t accept it, bowing your head instead.

“Hello”, you send him an unsure smile.

“Hey”, he grins, “and you are? I don’t think you’ve told me your name yet.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m ___.”

“___?” he repeats.

You nod.

“What a beautiful name”, he smiles again, brushing strands of his blond hair out of his face.

“Thank you.”

For a moment neither one of you knows what to say. Yoongi just simply lets his eyes travel over your face, while you grow more restless with every passing second spent in silence.

“Anyways I’ll go now-“, “I tried your cookies and-“, you say at the same time.

“Oh sorry”, Yoongi chuckles, scratching the tip of his nose with his little finger. It leaves a stain of dirt behind.

“Sorry”, you mumble.

“You first”, Yoongi says, pointing his hand at you.

“O-okay. Uhm, I think I’ll be going now or else I’ll be late to work.”

“Of course. Gosh, silly me is keeping you up. Sorry.”

“No worries.”

You would normally ask him what he had wanted to tell you, but he is studying your face again with that weird almost longing sparkle in his eyes and it is starting to creep you out.

You take a step back, clearing your throat.

“It was nice talking to you. Have a nice day”, you say quickly.

Yoongi nods his head, smiling again.

“The honour was all mine”, he pauses for a moment, “___”, he says quietly.

“Good morning ma'am!” Hoseok greets you loudly, stopping his task of sweeping the ground in front of the tea shop to bow at you. He had watched you walk down the narrow street for quite a while now, wondering why you looked so uneasy. He was worried, imagining the worst possible scenario in that overthinking head of his’. What if Levi died under unknown circumstances? What if you dropped your favourite mug? What if the Old House will actually be turned into a hotel?

“Morning Hoseok”, you mumble, forcing a quick smile to your face and entering the tea shop afterwards.

It is not that Hoseok annoys you, but rather you are far too lost in your own thoughts to function. The neighbour, Min Yoongi, told you that you can trust him, but why do you still feel so creeped out by him? Is it the way he said your name once he found out? He sounded so charmed by your name, it makes you feel weird.

“Boss? Are you okay?” Hoseok follows you inside, having abandoned the broom outside next to the ficus trees.

“Hm?” you look up at him, raising an eyebrow in confusion, “what do you mean?”

“You look really worried. Is the Old House actually going to be a hotel?”

At that Jimin looks up from the table as well, getting to his feet to join Hoseok in front of the counter.

“What’s the matter boss? You okay?” he asks.

“Of course I am okay, it’s sweet you are so worried about me, but I’m okay”, you dismiss them, turning around to get the water cookers ready.

“Is the Old House getting turned into a hotel?” Jimin asks.

Hoseok looks at Jimin then at you, swallowing in worry.

“No of course not”, you send them a reassuring smile, “it is just a guy, Min Yoongi, who moved here. I think, at least.”

They both visibly relax.

“It is just that he is giving me weird vibes. Last night when I wanted to give him the cookies I accidentally caused a short and when he opened the door he scolded me, understandably, but-“

Hoseok gasps before even knowing the big reveal.

“-but then he kind of froze and creeped back into the shadows and didn’t even say a word like a total weirdo”, you shudder.

“Ooooh creepy”, Hoseok whispers, slightly scared.

“This is just like a documentary I watched a few weeks ago. A young, handsome man moved into an empty house across the street from a woman and then weird things started to happen. Her flower beds had footsteps all over them, her windows were smeared as if someone had pressed their face against the glass and weird love letters started appearing at her doorstep. Turns out the new neighbour was actually a serial killer, who escaped from an asylum. He fell in love with the woman and wanted her all to himself and when she refused, he skinned her alive and wore her face as a mask. But the man was never found, he fled before the police could catch him and has been missing ever since”, Jimin says mindlessly.

Both you and Hoseok complain with a loud whine, grabbing each other in fear.

“What the hell? Why are you telling me that?” you almost yell at him, scared to the bones.

“Seriously bro, why would you say that?” Hoseok whines, close to tears.

“I don’t know”, Jimin shrugs his shoulders, “it just kind of reminded me of the documentary.”

Hoseok tightens his arms around you, your own fingers clutching his shirt. Jimin studies your faces before breaking into loud laughter.

“I’m just messing with you guys. There was no documentary, I made it all up”, he wheezes, “you should see your faces, it’s hilarious”, he cackles, holding his stomach.

“Jimiiiin”, Hoseok whines, hitting Jimin repeatedly with a rag, “don’t. say. things. like. that. It’s not funny.”

Jimins laughter grows.

“I could fire you over that Park Jimin! If your cakes weren’t so damn delicious you would be out the door by now”, you hiss, only making Jimin laugh harder.

He sends you a quick finger heart before hugging you, rocking you from side to side.

“Sorry boss, please don’t be angry at me”, he sings sweetly.

You wiggle out of his arms, giving his chest a nudge.

“Go to work and deliver the best cakes I have ever tasted and maybe I won’t be angry with you anymore”, you tell him, earning a thumbs-up from him.

“I will boss, I won’t disappoint”, he says, storming off into the kitchen before Hoseok can throw the rag at his face.

“Don’t come back out for the rest of the day, rascal!” Hoseok calls after him, pouting.

The door swings closed, Jimin's giggles are still echoing through the tea shop.

“I swear to heavens this man just gave me the biggest fright”, you mumble, clutching your chest where your heart is racing.

“Same, I was so scared”, Hoseok whines, leaning onto the counter with his elbows to catch his breath. He looks at you, still worried slightly, “what are you going to do about that Min Yoongi dude though? What if he still turns out to be a creep?”

You shrug your shoulders, “I don’t know, we’ll see how everything will develop. Maybe he is actually nice and was just nervous to see me last night. I mean come on, everyone's a little weird when meeting new people. Can you still remember when you were even too scared to look into my eyes for the first two months of working here?”

Hoseok blushes, “don’t remind me boss, I was so weird back then.”

“See? And now you aren’t anymore, you just needed a little time to warm up to Jimin and me. Maybe my neighbour is the same and he is actually a pretty sweet guy.”

“I really hope he is”, Hoseok mumbles, turning his attention to today’s first customers afterwards.

Hoseok and Jimin wait for you tonight, both of them seeming still worried about you. Even Jimin, who had joked so cruelly about the whole situation, seems uneasy now that night has come. He watches you with hawk-like eyes when you lock the tea shop doors, following you to Hoseok, who is waiting by his Vespa for you and Jimin.

“Boss, I want to drive you home today”, Hoseok says confidently.

“What? Ah no-“, you shake your head, “-you don’t need to do that, I’m totally okay.”

“No, I really want to drive you home today and make sure that you are home safely”, he insists, already handing you his helmet.

“That’s a good idea hyung”, Jimin says, pushing you to Hoseok's Vespa by your shoulders.

“Guys come on”, you complain only to be silenced by Jimin putting the helmet on your head and fastening the chin strap.

“Seriously?” you ask him, cocking up an eyebrow at him.

He nods confidently.

“Yes”, he smiles innocently, acting cute on purpose, “please let Hoseok drive you home today boss, I’ll sleep so much better if you do. And you know how bad my cakes taste if I had a bad night’s sleep. Do you really want to sell disgusting cakes tomorrow?”

“I see, emotional blackmail”, you click your tongue, “fine, I’ll let Hoseok drive me home”, you give in with a loud sigh, climbing on the Vespa behind Hoseok and wrapping your arms around his middle.

Hoseok and Jimin exchange a proud look, probably giving each other that weird mental high-five they always do.

“See you tomorrow boss”, Jimin says, nudging your arm one last time.

“See you tomor-woah”, you squeal, tightening your arms around Hoseok when he suddenly drives off without warning.

Hoseok is probably the worst Vespa driver you have ever had the honour to drive with. It is not that he doesn’t know what he is doing, but he is driving like a maniac, speeding up and down the narrow roads as if they were highways. At some points you were scared he might even crash into one of the many house walls, but somehow he always manages to steer away in the last moment.

Your knees are wobbly once he arrives at your house and your heart is racing so quickly, one could have believed you ran a marathon. You get off, having to hold onto Hoseok's arms in order not to fall down.

“Where did you learn to drive?” you pant, making Hoseok blush.

“Why? I had everything under control don’t worry”, he mumbles.

“You weren’t even wearing a helmet, you could have died. You drove like a madman.”

“Hey boss, don’t worry. I honestly had everything under control”, he pats your arm, “I’ll come pick you up tomorrow.”

“Please don’t, I'd rather get murdered by my neighbour than having to drive with you again.”

“Hey”, Hoseok whines, pouting, “don’t say that boss, it’s making me sad.”

“Sorry”, you send him a quick smile, “still, you don’t need to do that Hobi, it’s such a big detour for you.”

Hoseok shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t care, your safety is far more important than me having to get up ten minutes earlier than usual.”

“You are so sweet, did I tell you that lately?” you give his cheek a soft pinch, making him blush again, “fine if it makes you feel better I’ll drive with you tomorrow again.”

“Yay”, Hoseok bursts in happiness, smiling so brightly it could be considered blinding, “see you tomorrow then. And don’t forget to lock the doors tonight.”

“I won’t, thank you for driving me. Sleep tight.”

“Good night boss”, Hoseoks smiles, putting on his helmet and getting on his Vespa. He gives you a quick wave and then he already off, driving off into the night like a madman.

#yoongi romance #yoongi fluff #yoongi fanfic #yoongi fanfiction #yoongi x reader #yoongi x you #bts romance #bts fluff #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts x reader #bts x you #bangtan romance #bangtan fluff #bangtan fanfic #bangtan fanfiction #bangtan x reader #bangtan x you #fanfic: only yesterday

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tarosin · 3 years

Text

The great adventures of y/n, Tommy, Jack and Tubbo

Requested:yes/no

Pairing: Platonic jack/tommy/tubbo/reader

Summary: another day another adventure

Content warning: cursing / I didn't proof read

An: reader has bright unnatural hair I wrote a lot, I can't figure out how to add read more on mobile I'm sorry

The music you were currently listening to was interrupted by the discord group notifying you that you have a new message.

Tommy: Y/N HOW BUSY ARE YOU TUBBO HAS COME TO VISIT AND JACK IS HERE

y/n: I mean I've currently got hair dye on but it’s being washed off and dried in around 20 minutes, why?

y/n: WAIT TUBBO?!?!

tubbo: oh yeah I forgot to tell you

y/n: how did you forget you know what nevermind, I’m glad you’re here :]

jack: we should be here in an hour so you have plenty of time to get ready

tubbo: what colour dye y/n

y/n: you’ll see soon enough as apparently, you’re all showing up at my house

Tommy: I suggest you wear comfortable shoes

y/n: I am terrified

Tommy: you have nothing to fear... for now

•••

luckily it had only taken you just over 40 minutes to get ready giving you roughly 20 minutes to prepare for the adventure ahead. or so you thought, as soon as you sat down ready to check your phone the sound of Tommy and tubbo laughing could be heard from your room, jack sent a message “hey we got here extremely early I’m sorry there’s no rush the others have been distracted by dreams music :)”

grabbing a backpack from next to your bed you had quickly chucked your phone and purse into the bag unsure as to what you’re going to need today.

•••

as soon as you opened the door you were met with an ecstatic tubbo who instantly pulled you into a hug unable to contain their excitement of seeing their friend

“I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN AGES YOUVE CHANGED SO MUCH LOOK AT YOUR HAIR”

“I look exactly the same”

“Now I’m no genius y/n but last time we spoke you didn’t have unnatural hair”

you paused for a moment as tubbo had a point the last time you and tubbo were on face time your hair was classed as a natural colour however today as a fuck you to your school which didn’t allow unnatural hair you decided to dye it your favourite colour.

“you raise a fair point now if you don’t mind releasing me from your grasp I have to lock the door so no one gets in”

•••

“Tommy unlock the door let tubbo and y/n in”

“Y/N YOU'RE HERE- HOLY SHIT YOUR HAIR! JACK ARE YOU SEEING THIS”

“Hello to you too Tommy”

“well if we weren’t going to get noticed at the shopping centre earlier y/ns bright fucking hair will definitely cause people to notice us”

“oh I’m sorry I didn’t expect to be going shopping with a bunch of Minecraft streamers today”

“don’t you stream Minecraft?”

“This isn’t about me jack”

the trip to the shops was surprisingly relaxing y/n sat at the front listening to jack sing along to songs playing on the radio, however, it was clear the boys had something they weren’t telling y/n which became evident through Tommy and tubbo bickering in the back of the car about who was going to tell them. it was a relatively short journey due to the fact you lived close to the city centre

•••

“let’s go shopping boys” Tommy practically yelled to everyone, tubbo held his phone in your direction then looked towards you, nodding at him you grabbed his phone and began recording

“I'm vlogging”

Tommy walked over “YEAHHHHH”

walking past cex you had to put up with Tommy making sex jokes until you made it to game, you stood holding back your laugh as you filmed Tommy and tubbo fighting about who’s paying whilst jack went off to buy a Minecraft squishy and mug despite everyone’s arguments against it. soon enough fans came over asking for photos with you all once the group of fans left jack took over recording for tubbo whilst you went off to quickly buy some games that you could play on stream.

•••

“want a wig bro? jack!”

the four of you walked into the shop, you couldn’t help but stand in awe looking at all the bright colours already questioning what colour to dye your hair next the sound of Tommy and jack being amazed pulled you out of your thoughts

“Gogy goggles, I’m actually buying them”

“i wan’t a pair”

“no, you’re getting a wig jack”

“I don’t want a wig I want George”

“y/n has bright hair and they’re not complaining”

“what do you have against people with colourful hair jack hmm?”

•••

“I'm not happy”

“you look lovely jack”

“we’re getting so many looks”

tubbo stopped everyone to ‘fix’ jacks wig which resulted in everyone laughing once you had finally stopped laughing you noticed tubbo had walked off and you were convinced jack had randomly decided to record strangers until you saw tubbo going up and down escalators

“oh there he goes again”

“pov you’re thinking about bees”

“where to next boys?”

Tommy pointed towards the lift

“Is this a lift for us”

Tommy noticed the safety sign and automatically made comments about it

“keeping us all safe is what I would say if I wasn’t carrying a knife”

“oh same Tommy”

“look you can see me”

taking that as an invitation to join the vlog you stood behind tubbo and pointed at the sign again and looked at Tommy and jack

“keeping us all safe is what I would say if we weren’t about to do this-“

the three of you went to jump up and down

“NO”

the four of you quietly left the lift however you were convinced that the public heard Tommy comment on having a knife and you threatening to jump as once the lift opened everyone was staring at you but it could also be due to the fact you had brightly coloured hair and somehow convinced jack to keep the wig on, you all spent a long time trying to convince Tommy to get a new outfit, eventually you went into another shop a certain keyboard caught your eye

“I’ve found my home, ill stay here at the gamer bunker”

you decided now was the perfect time to sneak off to buy the keyboard that had caught your eye, once tubbo noticed it was too late you stood holding the bag with your purchase leaving you stood in the middle of the shop defending your purchase to him claiming that it was a business expense and not just because you thought it looked cool.

“you told me you wanted to save your money”

“it lights up tubbo and it fits the vibe of my room”

Tommy placed his arm on your head treating you as an armrest as you were shorter than him and he knew it annoyed you

“they have a point tubbo it lights up”

once the recording ended you made your way back to the car

“say y/n you wouldn’t mind if me Tommy and jack stayed the night as tomorrow we were thinking-“

“sure thing”

“YESSSSSS”

•••

the next day you were woken up at 9 am by Tommy stood at the foot of your bed

“hi y/n”

“WHAT THE FUCK- oh hi Tommy Jesus christ do you know how horrifying that was to wake up to”

“Sorry bout that but if I didn’t wake you up now you’d only wake up in the afternoon and we need to go soon I’ll leave you to get ready”

you noticed a note was next to a jumper on the floor ‘hi, thanks for letting us stay the night I really liked your hoodie so I decided to wear it today here’s mine in exchange- Tubbo :D’

normally you’d be concerned that someone stole your hoodie as you live with your parents however today was an exception once you were all ready you set off jack pulled into a McDonald's drive-through so you could all get breakfast

“nice hoodie y/n”

“Thanks, someone took mine and decided to make a trade”

“you’re welcome”

the journey was quiet again you sat next to tubbo in the back Tommy sat at the front screaming at jack and trying to distract him and people around you decided to took a picture with tubbo who now had his arm wrapped around you as it was rather cold in the car and posted it to Twitter ‘@ ranboosaysstuff wish you were here :D’ less than a minute later you received 2 notifications ‘ranboosaysstuff replied to your tweet: same’ ‘ ranboosaysstuff has tweeted: *the spongebob gif*’

•••

soon enough you all arrived at mint golf to say you we’re excited would be an understatement

“can I get the shortest club you have”

you stood hiding your face in the jumper tubbo left you whilst you laughed a few minutes later you received a call from ranboo the others said they’d sort everything for you whilst you answered

“what’s up tall one”

“stay safe okay”

“ranboo it’s mini-golf I’m not fighting criminals”

“yes but I know how clumsy you are”

“first of all rude second of all fuck you third of all jealousy isn’t a good look on you” you managed to say through laughter

“jokes aside please come to the UK boo”

“oh sure I’ll go book a plane ticket now” *ranboo ended the call*

ranboo made jokes like that before however this time sounded a lot more serious and you had no idea why he called you so you made a mental note to call him again later. once with friends again you were met with Tommy telling the worker all about you all

“yeah we’re big on the influencing”

“What on earth did I walk in on”

“no time to explain let’s go golf”

you were handed a club and a ball and were dragged away by jack

•••

tubbo joked about getting a hole on one as soon as it was his go, you bet £10 with jack he wouldn't

“hand over the money y/n”

you looked at Tommy who was now recording you handing jack the money “so today we have learnt to not underestimate your friends and that gambling is bad. you lose your money to a tall bald guy”

to put it politely you and Tommy found out that mini golf is not your calling in life

“ill stick to streaming“

“you’re both losing by the way”

“yeah well- why and how does tubbo have soup”

tubbo stood cradling the soup as though it was a child

“Some things I can’t explain to you”

you stood tilting your head to the side questioning where the hell he got soup from

“eh”

“soups like a small child I take care of it as if it was my own”

you couldn’t contain your laughter at this point the confused faces of your friends alongside tubbos happiness of soup sent you over the edge so you decided to just sit down before you fall as your knees were already weak from laughing too much

“where did you get the soup from”

“I manifested it”

•••

after a few solid minutes of arguing over soup you and Tommy dropping the phone you all continued with bowling.

“tubbo get out of the way of my dream ball”

you stood recording jack cheering him on tubbo had different plans and kicked the ball away resulting in jack giving up and copying what you had been doing most of the rounds, after missing the hole 3 times each go, picking up the ball and placing it in the hole however again he missed

“you can’t be serious”

“golf isn’t for everyone big man”

Tommy took the phone from you to record “pov you’re me golfing”

•••

“how do we get across there”

“probably the bridge”

Tommy pulled to rope moving the bridge across the gap

“Why thank you, Tommy, wouldn’t have been able to do it without you”

you laughed

“you're extremely welcome y/n it was extremely easy because I’m a big muscly man”

golf was finally going well till you hit the ball a bit too hard causing it to go over the fence tubbo was able to get the ball back

“I’ve been watching a lot of doctor shows” you stood amazed at how far you made the ball go

“see the issue is its mini golf. if this was regular golf I'd have got a hole in one I'm telling you”

•••

“I'm never being in your vlog again”

jack looked at you and tubbo who was now laughing at you pretending to worship the can of soup in the hole

“Tommy please come back”

the rest of the game was chaos, you kept missing the hole then claiming to rage quit golf tubbo and Tommy kept making jokes jack left his drink somewhere then had to go back and find it, no one had been paying attention to you which allowed you to take the score sheet and make it so you had won the game eventually he game was over you had declared yourself the champion of golf despite the fact everyone was better than you including Tommy

•••

the journey back was chaos you called ranboo who claimed he only called you to plan a video/stream with you however it was clear that wasn’t the reason tubbo whispered to you so no one could hear

“I think he wants to be here with us I think he’s jealous”

you laughed and nodded

“of course”

eventually, you all made it back to yours, ranboo said goodbye to everyone then ended the call now it was time for you to say your goodbyes. since your love language was physical touch you hugged everyone. As you walked into your house Tommy yelled “Y/N HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT PLANES”

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a03bkdk · 3 years

Text

no quirks bkdk fic rec list (p 2)

thirsty gay wingman fic by lalazee

((smut-14130-1/1))

Oct 11, 2019 "Thinkin abt besties-since-birth BkDk goin to college together, Dk begrudgingly bein Bkg's wingman w/chicks & lamenting his big gay crush. One nite, Bkg cant get laid, hes drunk in a shitty mood, so Dk propositions him, which turns into the best night ever & the WORST consequences."

My tweet got 366 likes & 66 reblogs, so that was more than enough reason to write about it.

romeo and romeo by supercrunch

((10473-1/1))

There’s a nasally howl from the neighbour’s place. Izuku looks up – it’s the very loud, very blond guy living in the unit opposite. They’re technically in separate blocks but their balconies are close enough they can see into each other’s living rooms. He’s dancing around in his pyjamas. Yodelling at the top of his lungs off-key, swinging his Pomeranian around by the armpits like a furry ragdoll. “You’re a dog! You’re a fluffy little yellow dog and you’re a pain in the ass but you’re still my favourite shit-stain, yeah!”

Izuku bursts out laughing. The neighbour’s head whips around. He yelps when he sees him, tossing the dog on the couch and scrambling out of view to hide in the hall.

Izuku drops the watering can and runs back inside to find his phone.Small Might: Guys. I've decided i have a crush on my neighbour.

(quarantine baking: a balcony romance)

mechanical bull by warschach

((smut-27573-1/1))

Katsuki has a track record of bad choices, it's a condition, but Izuku might be the one choice that's right.

battle of the bands by roadtripwithlucifer

((smut-168158-26/26))

'The rules are simple. Battle of the Bands. Local bands send in a single track to the radio station, and ten tracks are selected. Over the coming month, the songs play on the station and listeners vote on the top five. The top 5 play a live concert as part of a music festival, then the top 3 at a larger, indoor venue. The top two have the honor of opening on the first stop of All Might’s retirement tour – here. In Izuku’s home town. And finally, the winner gets the ultimate prize. Getting to spend the rest of the tour, forty cities, across the country as All Might’s opener. Three months. Same tour bus. Shoulder to shoulder with the greatest musicians the world has ever known.'Izuku Midoriya is a broke college student presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. But winning isn't gonna be easy, especially when one band's aggressive blonde frontman seems to be dead-set on making Izuku's life a living hell.

oh my god! they were roomates! by phatye

((smut-79108-57/57))

“Don’t go through my shit, and if there’s a tie on the door, then fuck off!” Katsuki growled. “...what?” he asked. Katsuki glared at him. “This is fucking college, and I plan on getting laid a lot! I don’t need some nerd cockblocking me! And what is with all the fucking toys here!” Katsuki had moved over to his shelves. “Are you a fucking child or something?!” This was not what he was expecting.

shades of blue by young_crone

((smut-22525-1/1))

Echoes filtered down the white hall as he descended the stairs toward the locker rooms, reverberating from the pool. A whistle, the sound of breaking water. He swiped the towel over his face, paused. The sliver of cerulean catching the sinking sun pouring through the skylights, the red and white lane buoys, the burn of chlorine.Izuku ran a hand through his curls, snagging on a knot. The clock on the wall reminded him how late it was. A minute wouldn't hurt. He worried his lip. Just a glimpse.

k-9 by warschach

((smut- 18304-1/1))

Izuku takes in a stray on one rainy night, except it's not a dog, it's a dog shifter who goes by the name, Katsuki. After the initial wave of panic and embarrassment, Izuku thinks his new pet/roommate is pretty cute.

sucker punch by warschach

((smut-41551-1/1))

But, whatever, Disney Boy over there was—

Prettying up real damn good that Katsuki got kind of distracted—totally understandable, like god those CGI pine eyes—and didn’t see the straight path he made for the metal trash bin in the center of the area until he was tipping forward and waist deep in discarded bottles, plates, balled up tissues sticky with he prayed was chocolate ice cream and nacho cheese.

Mina howled behind the gate. “Look, Katsuki returned to his home.”

(or Katsuki works security at Six Flags and moonlights as a derby dude and continuously looks uncool around Izuku)

may I take your order, dipshit? by supercrunch

((6373-1/1))

So, like, maybe Bakugou wasn’t really the best choice for this whole pizza delivery shindig.

(Midoriya in love, Bakugou in denial, and way, way too much cheese.

A BakuDeku romance in thirty minutes or less. )

raise me so high (your sins become my pedestal) by stardust_painter

((smut-10804-2/2))

After his boyfriend cheats on him, Izuku wants to do something stupid. The question is how stupid does he want to be.

The answer is very stupid apparently.

eye for an eye or whatever by tobiyos

((smut-4049-1/1))

“I’ll make it up to you!” Izuku says brightly, lifting his head from Katsuki’s lap.

Katsuki’s eyes narrow but he isn’t still pushing Izuku away so. Progress. “Fuck are you gonna do to make it up to me?”

“Hmm…” Izuku says quietly, tapping at his chin. “Oh! You’re still a virgin, right?”

Katsuki chokes on his own spit and promptly renews his efforts of pushing Izuku away by the forehead. “Fuck off,” he wheezes, “get out of my room.”

leap of faith by ladyofsnails

((28771-4/4))

Midoriya Izuku is just a random kid who loves art, analyzes everything, and is obsessed with the (in)famous hero Mighty Spider. He's got a loving mother, a great uncle, and maybe not too many friends that aren't those two but he's working on it.

And then a random cute boy shows up at his school, a spider bites him, he meets his hero under the worst possible conditions, and it all goes to hell. Now he's got villains on his tail, a promise to keep to a dead guy, and a washed-up hobo as his mentor.

Here goes nothing.

green is the warmest color by gloriousporpoise

((smut-12287-2/2))

“Woah, someone call the fire department,” Eijirou says, elbowing Katsuki squarely in the ribs. “That guy is smokin.’”

“I literally hate you.”

Here’s the thing, though. Eijirou’s a certified dumbass, but his current observation isn’t even a little bit wrong, much to Katsuki’s displeasure.

“Think you can get his number?”

Or, Bakugou is a painter without a muse.

you and i collide by ethereals

((smut-20442-9/9))

And not that Bakugou’s the type to sexualize a potentially dead body; especially one that he just accidentally murdered, but the man has some pretty solid DSL’s. He would hit it, with more than just his car.

in which rich fratboy! bakugou is a badass who accidentally hits poor med student!izuku with his car and chaos ensues therefore.

97.6 FM by jamjars

((smut-32249-3/3))

Izuku can’t stop listening to the radio host with the deep voice who sounds like he’s stuck in 2010. It’s a harmless crush. That is until he starts calling into the show under the pseudonym Deku.

Or Radio Host! Baugou x Listener! Midoriya

give me that sweet love by xsxuxgxax

((smut-32768-9/9))

Things Katsuki needs to excel at: be hot, be clever and pretend to be nice, let Izuku kiss him publicly, let Izuku fuck him privately…

(sugar baby katsuki and sugar daddy izuku pretty much)

dance with me by astralchaos

((30161-10/10))

Mina pulled up a video of a young man, seemingly teen, dancing to a popular new hit, and Izuku felt his heart drop to his stomach. His skin prickled and felt clammy as he started sweating nervously, not daring to move or make a noise. His eyes were glued to the screen but he didn’t see anything – his brain was too busy going into overdrive and freaking out.

Because Mina was showing him a video of himself. The one he uploaded last night.

How on Earth did she find this? He had barely a few thousand views, he wasn’t popular, and it’s not like he was even any good, especially compared to her or Kacchan–

“That move was sexy as hell,” Kacchan said, and that was when Izuku realized that his childhood friend – his longtime crush – also leaned in to watch the video Mina was showing him.

puppies puppies by Esselle

((15491-2/2))

"So after doing all that," Katsuki says, "you're just going to settle here? Tatting up wannabe bad boys?"

"You think all guys who have a lot of tattoos are wannabes?" Midoriya asks, so smoothly that it throws Katsuki.

"Wh—no, I mean—maybe!" Katsuki says. "You'd know best, wouldn't you? Are you a bad boy?"

The words are out of his mouth before he even realizes it, and he regrets them immediately. There's a figurative list of things that one should never do, and probably high up on it is asking dark-haired sailors with ocean green eyes and black swirls of ink all across their barely concealed muscles if they are bad boys.

Katsuki thinks he has everything he needs in life: a successful pet shop, an occasionally reliable assistant, and the unconditional love of the twenty puppies he’s raising for adoption. But when the tattoo parlor next door hires Midoriya Izuku, a hot sailor with an affinity for dogs, it makes Katsuki wonder if he might need something more.

Like… a piece of that ass. Maybe. He’s figuring it the hell out as he goes.

im gonna make a part 3 later ergaegrggjnjuvuh

#in case you missed it #i adore warchach #bakudeku #bakudeku fics #bakudeku fic recs #bkdk #bkdk fics #bkdk fic recs #izuku mydoria #bakugou katsuki #yeahhhh

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master-sass-blast · 3 years

Text

Care and Trust: Chapter One.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

Summary: "The shockwave hits second.

You’re strolling through Avatar Korra park, out on your lunch break. It’s a beautiful, late winter day; with the sun shining high up in the sky, it’s warm enough that you aren’t shivering like a frightened kitten as you amble along the plaza.

Several people gasp, and you look up in time to see a fireball pluming up over the docks.

And then the shockwave hits.

It hits your chest like an armadillo tiger; the explosion roars through the air, making your ears hurt. You go down, grunting when you hit the snow-covered knoll behind you.

You stand with a groan, brush yourself off, then start booking it to the nearest hospital.

Shit like this always demands all hands on deck."

AKA Plot Finally Happens.

Pairing(s): Lin Beifong x Reader.

Rating: T.

Word count: 2.1k.

The shockwave hits second.

(But, as they say, all good things must come to an end.)

Several people gasp, and you look up in time to see a fireball pluming up over the docks.

And then the shockwave hits.

It hits your chest like an armadillo tiger; the explosion roars through the air, making your ears hurt. You go down, grunting when you hit the snow-covered knoll behind you.

Cries pierce the air. Screams of panic, exclamations of disbelief, exhortations to call the police.

Yeah, you think as you eye the thick, black smoke that belches into the air, something tells me they didn’t miss that.

You stand with a groan, brush yourself off, then start booking it to the nearest hospital.

Shit like this always demands all hands on deck.

***

As predicted, the injury count is high.

You run the halls of Yue General, triaging the more serious patients until things slow enough that you can start checking the ones not actively dying. It’s a non-stop frenzy of gauze, saline, and bandage wraps until you can see the blue glow of your healing whenever you close your eyes.

By the end of it, your feet are practically dead and it’s nearly four in the morning.

You drag yourself onto one of the trams and let the teeth-shaking rattle keep you awake until you’re on your block. You count your steps until you make it to the front door, then let out a sigh of relief when you step into the building lobby.

“Elevator Out of Service. Please Use Stairs.”

You stare at the placard in front of the elevator bay in disbelief, then groan. Fuck my life.

***

The climb up to your floor is agony.

You’re huffing and puffing by the time you make it to your apartment door. You lean against it as you slot the key into the lock, then push inside.

Some distant, responsible part of you manages to turn the deadbolt before your brain shuts off entirely. You kick off your shoes, drop your purse on the ground, then shuffle over to the couch and flop down face first on it.

When you lift your head again, sunlight’s streaming through your living room window.

“Fuck.” You wince, then peel yourself gingerly off the couch. You cringe as your body protests, and rub your hand over the back of your aching neck. You glance at the clock, but the gurgle your stomach makes is more than enough to tell you that it’s past lunch time.

You sit up, then frown when you get a whiff of yourself. Antiseptic and B.O. Not a good combination on anyone.

You need a shower. And food. And a good round of stretching.

Nice, long, hot shower. You smile as you shuffle towards the bathroom. And then take out. Narook’s. With extra squid ink noodles. Your stomach rumbles again. And maybe Golden King’s… mmm, extra summer rolls… with sweet and sour dipping sauce. Yum.

***

You feel more human after showering. You change into sweats and a loose shirt, put in delivery orders at Narook’s and Golden King’s, then flip on your radio before dropping down onto your sofa.

It’s too early in the day for mystery shows, but the disc jockey’s still playing music requests. Smooth jazz --something with a rolling beat and brass--pipes out of the speakers, swirling around your apartment until the mental grime of the previous day starts to fade.

You sink back into your couch and hum along. You sigh and stretch, relish in the ache in your legs as tension leeches from your sore muscles.

The radio hums, then crackles. “We interrupt this broadcast for an announcement from the Republic City Police Department.”

You roll your eyes as an announcer rattles off a report about the explosion yesterday --site is secure, no risk of further fire or explosion, the city police are hard work, stay clear of the site, blah blah blah--then relax when your music starts playing again. Thanks for telling us what we already know. You close your eyes and let yourself drift. Why do they always shove that into every single press release? ‘We’re working hard to serve Republic City and ensure the safety of her citizens--’

Lin.

You gasp and bolt upright; she would’ve attended the scene. Hell, for all you know, she was one of the responding officers.

It’s probable, given her propensity for “hands on police work,” for not staying above the grime and grunge her officers have to work on.

Hell, it’s even likely. Given what you know about Lin, you’d be solid money that she’d rather work the explosion site than deal with the panicking politicians.

Is she okay? You chew on your lower lip as the thought circles your mind like water in the bathtub drain, swirling down and down into blackness.

You blink, and then your phone’s in your hand, and there’s hold music in your ear as the operator makes the connection. You gulp and palm your phone once the music stops and the ringing starts. Please don’t let this be a mistake, please don’t let this be a mistake, please don’t let this be a fucking mistake…

“Chief Beifong’s office. This is her assistant, Ryu, speaking. The Chief is not available at this time, but I can take your message and deliver it to her later.”

You blink at the sound of her assistant’s voice. “Uh… hi…” You swallow, then rattle off your name and callback number before Ryu can hang up on you. “I’m a, uh, friend of Lin’s. I was just calling because --y’know--the explosion--”

“I’m sorry, but the Chief cannot comment on an ongoing investigation--”

“I’m not calling about that,” you interject, pinching the bridge of your nose. “I’m her friend; I just want to be sure she’s okay.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and when Ryu speaks again, she almost sounds… pleased? “Chief Beifong’s not in right now --but I’ll have her call you back as soon as she’s available.”

“Is she hurt?” you blurt before she hangs up on you.

Another pause. “As far as I know, no.”

“Okay.” You nod, gulp, then nod again. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Have a nice day.”

You eke out something similar, then put your phone back on the hook when the line goes dead. Your heart thuds uncomfortably hard in your chest, and you have to blink a few times before your brain starts working again.

You head back to your couch and jazz --but long gone is your relaxed, exhaustion induced stupor. Anxiety claws at your chest, threatening to snap your ribs and leave you bleeding. You inhale deeply through your nose, then force yourself to let it out slowly so your body calms down. She’ll be fine. She’s got, what, thirty years on the force? This is old hat for her. She’ll keep herself safe.

Still, if you spend the next couple hours watching your phone, that’s no one’s business but yours.

***

Your phone rings around seven in the evening --right as you’re shovelling leftovers from lunch into your mouth.

Go figure.

You half-scramble, half-try-to-not-choke over to the phone; you pick up the phone, try to swallow, then tuck the food in your cheek like a hamster when it’s apparent you’ve got too much in your mouth to swallow. Mom always said I ate like a pack of polar bear dogs. “Heffo?”

There’s a dry huff of laughter on the other end of the line. “I take it I caught you at a good time.”

“Lin!” You cover your mouth with one hand (even though she can’t see you) and alternate between chewing and swallowing. “I --I was ea’in ‘inner.”

“Sounds like you decided to do it all at once.” She chuckles when you grumble, then moves on. “My secretary said you called?”

“Yeah, around lunch time,” you say as you finally get your mouth clear.

“Where I’m presuming you had your mouth full of that meal, too.”

“Fuck you.” You grin when she laughs, then lean against the wall and cradle the receiver against your shoulder. “I just… wanted to check on you. With the explosion and all.”

“You heard about that.”

“The whole city heard it, Lin.” You sigh. “I worked the triage team at Yue General until four in the morning.”

“Shit.” Lin groans, and you can hear the creak of her leather office chair as she sits. “I thought you only did massage therapy?”

“They call everyone who passed a healing course when stuff like this happens,” you explain. “Besides, I had to pass an intensive injury treatment course to get my rehabilitation certification. I’m licensed to assist surgery teams, if need arises.”

Lin hums. “That’s a nice feather in your cap.”

“It pays the bills.” You manage a smile when she lets out a huff of laughter, but the anxiety that’s been circling your brain descends to your stomach. You swallow, then ask, “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” When you don’t respond right away, her voice softens. “I’m fine. A little banged up, but nothing that won’t heal. I wasn’t there when the explosion went off.”

“Okay,” you murmur. You let out a shaky breath, then mentally kick yourself to stop acting like a worried girlfriend, dammit. “Well, if something doesn’t heal, you know where to find me.”

Lin grunts, then chuckles when you laugh. “Get some rest, kid.”

“Already am. You should do the same.” You roll your eyes when she starts grumbling again --about overtime and press conferences and departmental cooperation with the city’s fire brigade--then say, “Call me when you want to keep me up all night again,” and hang up before she can react.

It’s easy to picture her reaction. Open-mouthed, wide-eyed, with that hint of a grin that she hides by smirking.

You bite your lower lip; something warm and smooth settles in your lower gut. You laugh quietly to yourself, then turn and head back for the sofa. Alright, leftovers. It’s just you and me.

***

You’re in the midst of changing the sheets on your massage table when there’s a knock on the door. “Come in.”

The latch clicks, the door swings open, and the receptionist for the Northern Moon Physical Therapy Facility pokes her head into your “office” (which is really just the room you work out of, but it’s yours, and that’s what counts). “A call came in for you.”

You straighten, frowning. “Me?”

She nods. “A request for on-site treatment.” She looks down at the slip of paper in her hand and recites the information from the call. “Republic City Police Department, at one this afternoon. Long session booking. A woman named Ryu called it in.”

Your heart sinks into your shoes. Fucking dammit. “And my other appointments…”

“We’re redistributing them to the other therapists. It was an urgent request.”

Shit.

You sigh, then nod and grab your carry bag off a nearby office chair. “Let me pack up, and I’ll catch one of the trams.”

“They’re sending a car for you.” The receptionist smiles politely, then steps back and starts making her way back down the hall. “It’ll be here in fifteen minutes!”

You run your tongue over your teeth and do what you can to tamp down the aggravation simmering in your stomach. Well, on the bright side, I don’t have to carry the table the entire way.

***

Ryu meets you in the parking garage attached to the police department. She’s sleek, dressed in an impeccably pressed navy blue suit, and there’s not a hair out of place on her head.

In your loose slacks, pale periwinkle blouse, and slapdash braid, you can’t help but feel a bit… frumpy.

She shakes your hand --she’s got a strong, professional handshake--then escorts you through the garage. “Thank you for coming.” She opens a heavy metal door stamped with the police department’s emblem for you. “I’ll take you up to Chief Beifong’s office.”

Your jaw flexes as you follow her down a hall with an immaculately polished slate tile floor. “How’s she been? What kind of pain has she been in?”

Ryu looks at you over her shoulder for a long moment. Her eyes narrow contemplatively, but she turns back around before you can make anything of her expression. “I’ve been asked to let Chief Beifong explain things to you directly.”

Yeah, that tracks. You shift the strap of your carry bag onto your shoulder, then watch the floor counter as the elevator slowly rattles upwards.

#sass writes #lin beifong x reader #this one got cut into multiple pieces due to length #also we have plot now!#five fics into the series dslfjdlfkjdslfkjdslfj #legend of korra #the hands that heal

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leverage-commentary · 3 years

Text

Leverage Season 3, Episode 4, The Scheherezade Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

John: From left to right on your radio dial this is John Rogers, executive producer.

Aldis: This is DJ Chocolate Skittles, also known as Aldis Hodge.

Chris: And this is Chris Downey, executive producer and writer of this episode, The Scheherazade Job.

John: Aldis has very kindly decided to join us for this commentary since he was-

Aldis: Hello!

John: He did a lot of work on this episode. This one rode-

Chris: Oh yeah

John: This was one of those ones where you're just like, ‘This actor's gonna be working his ass off for this.’

Aldis: Oh joy.

John: Well Chris, why don't you tell us the origin of this episode?

Chris: Ah well the origin came from a- my friend here to the left, Aldis, back in season one we were just talking about you know things we like to do in our spare time and Aldis mentioned that he loved the violin, he’d been studying it, it was the closest thing to the human voice for an instrument.

Aldis: Yes.

Chris: And coincidentally my wife is a violinist and at the time I said to you, ‘I'm gonna find a way in an episode of Leverage to have you play the violin’ and what did you say to me?

Aldis: I think I said, ‘Do it.’

[Laughter]

Chris: And then you laughed at me.

Aldis: Yeah, we were shooting what was that, the season finale?

Chris: Might've been the season finale

Aldis: That was- yeah, Pasadena?

John: Yup

Aldis: Yeah, yeah, I remember that conversation.

Chris: And this is Martha Boles, terrific actress from Los Angeles.

John: This is interesting actually, we had a- when we were setting up the bad guy here, we had an interesting conversation about- and this is one of those things you talk about in television. Should the reporter be white or not?

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah. We were looking at casting and we were like, no it should be a black reporter working with that. And then we got some, you know, feedback that's like, well now it's a white crew of criminals, apparently missing Aldis’s presence, helping out a black reporter.

Aldis: Don’t worry, they miss me all the time.

John: It's one of those- it’s tricky, it's one of those things where one of the reasons we kinda were leery of doing international crimes, first season and second season. And you kinda- because it's always a minefield, it just is. And now in third season, everyone’s comfortable and everyone knows the show well enough that you can kinda try to swing outside the box. I think Chris did a great job taking this outside the box for the first time on the show.

Chris: Yeah it was- it was interesting cause most- I think we talked about this, most episodes start with the bad guy and we kinda work our way from there. We kinda talk about ‘what's the bad guy, what does he want, what is his weaknesses’. And this is one of those episodes that started with a big idea late in the episode which was the orchestra heist, and we kinda worked from there to kind of try and figure out whose our bad guy? And that's- we decided- we hadn't done an African kleptocrat, we wanted to do that for a long time, and this seemed like a good opportunity to do that.

John: Now also when doing a straight heist, because we were coming at it as a straight heist, we wanted a small highly portable object. The cleaner the object, the cleaner the goal of the heist, the more you can work around the elegance of the heist itself. And when you're staring with an elegant heist, which is the music heist, you have to do something very clean, which was diamonds. And so it all sort of fed into this one storyline.

Chris: Yes, yes.

Aldis: Didn't you want to play the organ? At first I mean that's plain and portable and-

[Laughter]

John: Yes, originally it was a giant Wurlitzer organ.

Aldis: Yeah, just a whole thing.

John: This was a ton of fun, this was a great little fight scene.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Kane had too much fun shooting this.

Chris: He had a lot of fun here. And these gentlemen are Garfield Wedderburn and- yeah, Garfield Wedderburn is the lead goon here; his name is goon.

Aldis: Goon.

[Laughter]

Chris: And there he is doing this- some kind of scary tai chi?

Aldis: That was actually a joke and it just made it on the reel, it was like-

John: You know what? We saw it in the dailies, we were gonna cut out of it but it was like- but the idea he would just scare the shit out of those guys to get them to go. ‘Can your dog do that?’ That was great.

Chris: ‘Can your dog do that?’

John: It is nice every now and then to remind people exactly why everyone on the team is there.

Chris: By the way, I love that you named the dog Megabyte.

Aldis: Megabyte, yeah, yes.

John: That was you, that’s right.

Chris: That was all you.

Aldis: If anybody can get that, Megabyte, yes. Now if one of those days we just see the dog, which will probably be a poofy little yorkie or something like that.

John: Dogs are too expensive; we can't afford them.

Chris: We can't afford them.

Aldis: We can't afford dogs.

Chris: We'll do a virtual dog.

Aldis: A virtual dog, yes.

John: That's sad.

Aldis: The little mechanical one with the batteries? Yeah.

Chris: Sure.

John: Now continuing the original conversation, so we knew we were working backwards towards an African kleptocrat, but how do you find a guy who’s like based in the states, so we’re not flying overseas, we’re not trying to fake a city you can't fake on our budget. And so that led us to the research and- did we find someone who was real, Chris?

Chris: Well, there's no similarities to persons living or dead. But, um-

John: We’d like to say for both legal reasons, and so we don't get shot in the face.

Chris: Yes, please.

John: Oh my god, this guy is real and he's horrible!

Chris: He's real, he's horrible. He's not a classical music fan, that was something we brought to it, to facilitate the story. But he is a very wealthy relative of an African kleptocrat who has a house here in the United States and in Paris and has a Bugatti and all the things you would imagine a kleptocrat would.

John: All the way down, actually, to the fact that the reason he does not fall under the- is not criminalized under some of the kleptocrat laws we have here in the States, with the same plot point we have in the show, which is he's been a friend in the war on terror.

Chris: Yes, yes that’s all true.

John: Which looks like he pretty much turns in political opponents.

Chris: Wow, we certainly don't want to say that he does that, but-

John: But oh come on.

Chris: And here we have-

John: Your name’s on the show, they're gonna kill you. I'm not too worried.

[Laughter]

John: And here's Elisabetta Canalis, the loveliest Elisabetta Canalis.

Aldis: Aldis Hodge was never here, was never here. This actually is the second time we've seen her in the entire arc of this third season. So now the audience is getting another taste of exactly who she is, because she just left us off with blackmail, and now, you know, we're digging into her story. Of course at the end of the show, we get to see that she's not as fair game as she comes up to be.

Chris: Yeah, and we wanted to make her kind of you know sexy and mysterious, and I like this scene cause-

Aldis: Sexy what? Sexy?

Chris: Yeah well she-

John: Well there's no reason we just shoot her legs in every scene.

[Laughter]

Aldis: Exactly, there's no reason to put her in heels and closeups on the face, no! Not at all.

John: This was a nice bit that you came up with: the idea that kind of flirting, sexy, dangerous. And Nate Ford being smart enough to realize it’s a very bad idea.

Chris: I love this, this is one of my favorite flashes.

John: It's one of my favorite zooms, it's a hypothetical zoom, it's something we never usually do.

Chris: I like it because right here she looks so bored,

[Laughter]

Chris: There's something about the insouciance of it, of her.

John: Oh another guy being garotted in front of me.

Chris: Oh stop the tape.

John: It's another Thursday for me.

Chris: And he was- Tim was great at, you know, holding his throat like that.

John: Yeah the- well the sort of implication, again, is again, it’s tricky the team has been playing a lot without ever being taken down themselves. Tim has to carry a lot of the weight acting because he's the one who interacts with Elizabetta the most, to convey the threat she portrays to make sure you take her seriously. And nice diagrams on the glass boards. I always love the glass boards

Aldis: Provided by…?

John: Who drew on that one? I don't think I drew on that one, I wasn't there for that one.

Aldis: Really?

John: No, that handwriting is too good that's not me. Usually- yeah, usually I spew the bullshit that goes up on the glass.

Chris: Now what's nice-

Aldis: And it- oh, sorry, go ahead

Chris: Oh I was gonna say it’s a nice opportunity to get a little bit into Eliot's backstory which we, in the early scene in the bar, he alludes to the fact that knows about these- what goes on in these countries, these Chinese- these child soldiers. And you know I think here you can kinda see this whole- this whole particular case is really, you know, affecting him directly.

John: Yeah it's part of the over the course of the arc, kind of peeling back everybodys past this season. And we gave Eliot you know- we really wanted to sort of reset and remind people for the finale that Eliot, you know Eliot killed people. Eliot was not a good guy and is trying to be a better guy.

Aldis: What I had to say was nowhere near as intuitive as that, but the prior scene a lot of- a lot of times you'll see Sophie wearing that dog tag, it’s blank. It's like a name tag, but it's blank, and that's an ode to the fact that she hasn't given Nate her real name. And it kind plays throughout the entire season so for those of you have paid attention-

John: We actually used it, we actually- the audience doesn't know those dog tags are blank because she doesnt show the dog tags. But when she told us she was doing it we wrote-

Aldis: Did I just give up a secret?

John: No, no, no it’s cool. What happened is: she wears them. And we were like, ‘What are those?’ And she told us dog tags are blank, it's a little private joke. So we wrote it into the show, that's why she gets the blank pendant in episode 13, cause we just thought that was really cool and that's something Gina came up with on her own.

Aldis: It's just gonna be a drinking game every time they spot the dog tags.

John: Sure, there's already a lot of drinking games.

Aldis: There are.

John: There are a lot on the web, you go on there's a lot of drinking games.

Aldis: Every time we say ‘seriously’, drink!

[Laughter]

Aldis: Not that we promote that here, no.

Chris: Not at all.

John: No, I don't do all of these with a beer in my hand.

Chris: No no drinking games.

Aldis: What is that you're drinking John, water?

John: It’s- yes, dark Irish water.

Aldis: Yes.

John: This was a nice again- we started splitting people up so we could- the coverage is a little easier. and it helped us remind- Third season we started taking a lot of the prep that was implied in act 0 of seasons 1 and 2 and moving it into act 1 and act 2 of this season. Where you see them doing the prep and putting together the plan on the fly as they get information.

Chris: Right.

John: Which both makes it more dynamic, and helps us with shooting.

Chris: Yeah, I mean this is a very plan-intensive episode, and you want to try and make the planning side interesting visually.

John: Yeah because there's so much pipe to lay in a believable way to get to that great fourth act. I mean you have to make sure the audience is utterly invested by that point.

Chris: I like this little bit with you guys right here.

Aldis: Me and Kane man, when we get together it's always a party.

Chris: But what's great about you guys is it's not always the bickering brothers, where you're yelling at each other that makes me laugh. It's just the little throwaway things of the two of you together.

Aldis: It's the little things that bring the sparkle to your eye, the little things.

[Laughter]

Chris: And they just the way we did this-

Aldis: This was a funny sequence to shoot.

John: Yeah this was great. This was- what did we name the reporter?

Chris: Guy Hamilton which is an ode to Mel Gibson's character in The Year of Living Dangerously.

[Laughter]

Chris: For all you folks out there keeping score. By the way, I forgot yesterday when we did Gone Fishing Job that you are- your names when you went into the bank and were Brody and Quinn from Jaws.

John: Because you're gonna need a bigger boat.

Chris: This looks great, by the way!

Aldis: I'm pretty sure you need another drink for that.

Chris: Look at that, he's there!

John: I've seen far less convincing stuff on CNN.

[Laughter]

John: I'm fairly sure, yeah

Chris: And there's Giancarlo Esposito fantastic.

John: Friend of Tim, came in and did this for us. Really really great, flew in.

Aldis: His daughters’ actually in the orchestra, they- one plays violin the other plays viola.

John: Oh cool.

Aldis: Yeah, so he had a lot to discuss.

John: I love seeing the evil dude Skype list; I just realized we could see it on there. It’s like ‘Lefou is away. Where is Lefou?’

Chris: Pizza Hut? Why does he have Pizza Hut on Skype?

John: On Skype? That's weird. And who is that lurking behind him?

Chris: Oh lurking behind him is Nnamdi Asomugha who is an all pro cornerback for the Oakland Raiders. Arguably the best cornerback in the NFL.

Aldis: And you have your Raiders ball here, it's perfect.

Chris: And I have my Raiders ball here to prove it.

John: Now how did he wind up on the show?

Chris: Well, you know, like any famous Hollywood story, it started at a hockey game.

[Laughter]

Chris: My- we have a mutual agent, and he invited me to a hockey game and said, ‘This is my friend Nnamdi.’ And although I am a big sports fan, for some reason the best cornerback in the NFL eluded me and I just met him as a guy. And we were chatting and found out he was- he acted and I asked him at the time, his families from Nigeria and I- this was a year ago, and I said, ‘Can you do a good African accent?’ He said, ‘Oh definitely.’ I said, ‘Alright, well if we get a part for, you know a big guy, menacing guy with an African accent I'll call you’. And lo and behold, episode came up and he did a fantastic job.

John: I think his family is from Ethiopia, actually.

Chris: No, I think he’s Nigerian.

John: Nigerian? Oh ok. And here- this is her playing Christie Connelly again.

Chris: Yes, yes.

John: Yes, this is why we started bringing back the- as we realized that they are gonna be roles that the- it also sort of came up as we did our research that con artists tend to settle into certain roles that they've done background on, and also that they've established the credentials to. We mention later actually on another episode that she's like, ‘I got seven years worth of work on this identity’, so she's doing a similar gig, so why not use the same name?

Chris: And let's be honest it's also our nod to James Garner, who was Jimmy Joe Meeker in multiple episodes of the Rockford Files.

John: Yes exactly, also she gets to use her native accent in this.

Chris: Yeah, that’s right!

John: Cause Gina is from New Zealand, not England. Most people- she grew up in England but she was born in New Zealand, and was a child in New Zealand, so she gets to use her kiwi accent here. Very kicky little gold chain going on there.

Chris: And I love this, this is a great kind of subtle sales pitch that she just sells so well.

John: Yeah. And again this is one of those great things in the show, not blowing smoke up our own skirts, but the fun of having great actors is you con, con, con, and then you park it on these little two-person scenes and it's fun, you know, it actually plays.

Chris: And here's- you know I like the idea that we've kind of developed with Hardison’s character that, you know, he's chafing a little bit around the crew, and, kind of, as the youngest member of the crew, kind of like, sees that he’d like to run his own crew someday and kind of expressing that here. I mean how did you approach this Aldis? Was that something that you kinda thought of for the character?

Aldis: I approached it, I stretched, I, uh, did a couple push ups.

John: Well we get a lot of emails from him ‘I should be the lead of the show,’ so it's a similar thing.

[Laughter]

Chris: But I know we had discussions about it not being a typical father/son kind of vibe. Right?

Aldis: Right, right, right. This is- this entire situation was newly presented to me in the script. That's when I found out that I was like, ‘OK, Hardison wants to step up.’ But I think that- I mean, it's a great premise and he is the youngest, so he has the most to learn because he hasn't figured out all of his bad habits just yet.

Chris: Right.

Aldis: And so he can sit back, watch his team, watch how they work, watch the mistakes they make, and then ten season later, hint hint, audience, hint hint-

Chris: Ten seasons when you'll be all of 35.

[Laughter]

Aldis: Exactly.

John: Then you'll be ready to lead the crew.

Aldis: Exactly.

John: Yeah no it's- we really played around with it. It's not father/son it's sort of- it’s really Paper Chase but for crime.

Chris: Yes, yes, very much, I think that's a great way of putting it. And I love, here, too, if I can blow some more smoke up you, that, you know, we play big characters in these cons that are, like, larger than life. I mean, I think, you know, the Ice Man Job character comes to mind-

Aldis: [Mimicking the accent he did] The Ice Man Job.

Chris: When you play a kind of a small reserved guy, all inside, it's such a nice change, and it’s like it adds a vulnerability to these con characters that I think is great.

Aldis: He's very not- he wasn't a meek character, but he's very, very humble.

Chris: Humble that's better.

Aldis: He came from a hard life, he knew how to appreciate what was there, he knows how to prioritize, you know, to put everything else before his own needs. And that's kinda where I felt this character was coming from. He couldn't be too big or else, you know, with all of the skills, his grandeur, he would have done something with that by now; he's a cab driver, so he's gotta be quiet about something.

John: And the- also, this was the first time I think we put- we had talked about the different skills, as you go into every season you talk about like, ‘How do we make sure we focus on the characters? How do we make sure nobody blends in the background?’ And one of the things is reminding everyone- and we did this really in the Jailbreak and especially in this one to set it up, Parker is great at three dimensional heists. Parker rotates objects in three dimensional space. So she's Nate's partner here; he might be able to cook up plans, but she's the one telling him the parameters of those plans with the physical heists.

Aldis: Right.

John: No one is better than her at physical insertion, and that's one of the things we kinda hammered during this season.

Aldis: I think our skills- I mean we’re all necessary to one another, but our skills kinda levy a system of checks and balances-

John: Yeah.

Aldis: The way the government should do it. But we can do one thing and take it only so far and then pass it off, then the next team member polishes it up and takes you to the very next level.

John: What- Chris why don't you talk about how we structured the heist?

Chris: Well you know the- back when we were trying to break the story the initial idea behind it was that there would be two levels of tension in the big act, in the big heist. There would be part of the team breaking in to steal the object, and there would be Hardison on stage sweating out having to play this impossible solo in front of people. And the problem that I was running into was: why did these two things have to happen at the same time? Why now? Why can't they be breaking in on a Wednesday, you know, when Hardison's not scheduled to play this. And John, you said- thought about it for a minute, and you said, ‘Well obviously it's the only time that they can do the heist is when there’s- when the orchestra is playing because that's when they have to turn off the motion detectors.’

Aldis: Because John has stolen from an orchestra before, when they-

[Laughter]

Aldis: He speaks from personal experience.

Chris: And I took a minute and I said, ‘I could kiss you on the mouth.’

[Laughter]

John: That was one of those ‘what's in the Arclight’ days? I contributed almost nothing else to this episode. I was busy off doing the season opener. We were banging these out before the rest of the staff- and I came up with that bit and I'm like, ‘You're gold, go have fun, I’m out.’ I got that, and then we basically- knowing the motion detectors couldn't be beaten and played us back into the other security measures, and created this impossible vault. And that was also fun, we started for the first time throwing stuff at the team where it's like, ‘yeah there's some stuff you just can't beat,’ you know, that you have to go sideways.

Aldis: I’d like to note here that I'm wearing every possible shade of gray that there is known to man.

[Laughter]

John: Why is that? Is that an emotional choice? Is that about his ambivalence about his role in the con? Or is that-?

Aldis: I have no idea

John: Always say- you know what? Do the thing I just did with him, start with ‘obviously’ it's a good way- when you wanna throw up an enormous amount of bullshit just start with ‘Obviously.’

Aldis: Obviously!

John: And then just, people buy it.

Aldis: What we wanted to do was confuse the audience.

John: Oh Scheherezade, exactly how'd you choose Scheherezade?

Chris: Well we needed- we needed a piece that was public domain, as a practical matter, because we have budget constraints in this show. And that ended on a violin solo. And it was- I forgot what the other candidates were, but my wife, I have to give her credit at least a little, fantastic violinist, picked Scheherezade and said, ‘You gotta listen to this.’ And I listened to the last 7 minutes because I knew we needed it to kind of roll out in real time over the course of the heist. And the solo just kinda like dropped me, I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is gonna be fantastic.’ And then when I did a little research on Scheherezade’s story, how she was the wife of a- in the story of the Arabian Nights he killed- every night he married a different wife, and killed them the next morning. And then Scheherezade walked in and figured she'd be finished, but every night she told him a story, and the story kept him on- you know, on the edge of his seat, she never told him the ending and finally after 1001 nights he married her. So I said OK, that’s the first grifter in history’. And that just kinda fit in thematically with the whole episode, and that's when we knew we had to use that piece.

John: And our music guy Joe Deluca putting a lovely little sort of spin, sort of-

Chris: Yeah he had a very nice-

John: -Arabian Nights spin on the score there. Now, you play violin. What did you think when we dropped Scheherezade on your lap?

Aldis: Well I was screaming inside, running for my life.

[Laughter]

Aldis: Jesus I've only been playing just for- not even five years, and when I took the music to my music teacher, she like- lord have mercy, she had a heart attack. She was like- she had been playing professionally for 20 years before she tackled Scheherezade. My other teacher had been playing, also, I believe between 20 and 30 years before she tackled Scheherezade so I had no confidence whatsoever. No, kidding, obviously I was very impressed with the piece. It's a beautiful piece. I love the song and I was actually very open to the challenge. I just wanted to make sure I did it well enough to do the song some justice. Now shooting these scenes being surrounded by actual musicians was awe-inspiring and-

John: Really? You really? Oh.

Aldis: Man, it was terrifying.

Chris: Yeah where did this rank among the scarier things you've done on the show? Where would you put this?

Aldis: This is the top right here.

Chris: This is the top right here.

John: So not running on top of a moving train.

[Laughter]

Aldis: Not at all man.

John: Really? That was fine, but this? This was terrifying.

Aldis: I'm a nut man, I'm a nut. I can do that because-

John: I can tell you as your executive producer with an insurance policy on you, you can do this whenever you want, don't do the train again.

Aldis: I shan't! I shall not.

Chris: And this actor, Michael Winther, fantastic New York stage actor who came in and did an amazing job. It was originally written I think he was Spanish and then I asked Michael-

John: Well you were kinda basing it on Dudamel.

Chris: Exactly it was based on Gustavo Dudamel who was the Venezuelan, kind of, rockstar conductor of the LA Philharmonic.

Aldis: Oh yeah.

Chris: Yeah, and Michael said that he could do German and I thought well there's nothing more intimidating than someone talking to you with a German accent.

Aldis: German accent, yeah.

John: Really?

Chris: And he was just great.

John: Even if it's like ‘I would like some hugs now,’ still it's creepy, it's not- yeah.

[Laughter]

John: Apologies, and now the angry letters from people with a German accent will be coming in.

Aldis: Exactly, you'll be getting a letter from the government.

John: A nice stall, you can't get it too far. And, you know, this again is kinda focusing on how everyone does things. Parker needs paper. Parker needs plans. Parker needs drawings. This is how she thinks. She was trained by an old school thief, and it's cool cause we're kinda hinting at the thing you're gonna find out in episode 5, like how she was trained, you know, trained by an old school thief, she thinks like an old school thief.

Aldis: Yeah

John: And then we do the fun- and this is, when you're constructing something based on a high concept, the fun of it was we have an impossible heist, stuff rolls back from that. Okay if it's impossible, that means we have to see the planning, we have to see the surveillance, we have to see the surveillance to establish to the audience the rules of the heist.

Chris: Right.

John: Cause you had already said, and I will say the first thing you said to me was ‘I wanna do a heist where there's no words.’

Chris: Yes.

John: And I said ‘You're out of your mind and it's unshootable’. I actually utterly dismissed you, and then you came back like, ‘We do it this way.’ And I was like, ‘Alright, that’s slightly less insane.’ But that required the rest of the episode to do an enormous amount of work.

Chris: Yeah, you need to know- once you got to the heist, you need to know exactly what people were doing and why, without any dialogue. And so- and that kinda required that the heist needed to be fairly simple.

John: Yes.

Chris: So, you know, that kinda was a little bit liberating for me, cause once I realized, OK, I drew this corridor, you know, we had to get past this keypad, and then there was a room, we had to blow a hole in the floor, it was like from a to b to c, as long as I made it fairly simple and easy to remember in the planning stages, we could carry it out.

John: And this is also one of the great things about physical production. You actually flew up and scouted this, right?

Chris: Yeah, we did.

John: You adjusted the heist based around the physical location.

Chris: Yeah well, we built this hallway here-

John: Is that a build? I thought it was a-

Chris: This is the hardest working hallway in show business.

John: I thought it was the hallway on the other side of the concert hall?

Chris: No, no.

Aldis: No, me and Chrisitan built it ourselves.

John: Oh that's where Elizabetta was. That's right, there you go.

Chris: That’s right.

John: Yeah, now we're establishing the rules, and a little hint there that Nnamdi is not your ordinary thug.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Yes.

John: Yeah, just that little wince.

Chris: And here, again, you know, it was we had plans in front of Tim that he could actually trace the line and that's exactly where you were going. Those are the plans of the set.

John: Those are the plans for the set?

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Yeah!

John: That’s great!

Chris: I mean that showed him, he could draw- I showed him here's where you draw the hole, that’s where it’s gonna be.

John: Yeah and big props to Bekka Melino and everybody in production design this year. That vault looked gorgeous.

Chris: Yeah, it did.

John: Everything looked gorgeous, you know, set dec.

Chris: I have to give her credit for something else in that too. In the original script, the locker numbers in the vault were numbered; they were just numbered. And she called me up and said, ‘What do you think if we made like some kind of symbol or something for them, and maybe like musical terms?’ And I said, ‘That's fantastic.’ And it kinda helped build the character of Moto as someone who is just, you know, obsessed with music.

Aldis: Appreciates music.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And here's where-

Aldis: This is a tough thing, a tough deal for me. Not me personally, but for Hardison because of the fact that- I mean, this is a big deal trying to walk away from a mission with such reasonable cause.

Chris: Right.

Aldis: Only because of the fact that he's afraid, it's not because his life is endangered, it's simply because he's afraid.

Chris: Did you feel like that was- I mean, but performing without being prepared is like the, sort of, go to nightmare that people have, right?

John: Only if you were pantless could this be worse.

Aldis: Exactly, it's also the fact that if he performs poorly he could mess up the entire heist.

Chris: Yes

Aldis: But he was more afraid of himself performing badly then messing up the heist. And-

John: It's an interesting look into the character, because he's a perfectionist and he tends to- he’s tended to take the path he has in life because he's been able to be good at it.

Aldis: Yes.

Chris: Right.

John: You know, it's always interesting once you're past school and once you're an adult when you try to do things, you try to learn a new skill once you're out of your teens, and you realize ‘Oh, this is very hard.‘

Aldis: Yeah it's like learning violin.

John: Yeah exactly.

Aldis: As an adult, as I am doing now.

John: Really hard. But no, you just couldn't drop Scheherezade on you.

Chris: Here's a great-

John: This is a great shot actually, because we actually never shot this. This was footage of them actually getting into place.

Chris: Yes.

John: From the dailies that we had when we rolled the camera on. And that we wound up assembling together into a shot and then digitally placing the conductor into the middle of it.

Chris: Oh yeah, when we get to the later shot of the conductor there, that was- that’s totally digital. This the- orchestra is Marshall Tuttle is the conductor of the orchestra, it’s a local Portland community college orchestra. And they, you know, I have to give a lot of props to them because they got the music and they had to mock play the piece, but that meant they had to prepare for it, they had to know.

Aldis: Yeah I actually learned from them that day the rest of the piece. I mean all I knew up to that point was the solo. Until they said- and I knew bits and pieces of the other music until they said, ‘Hey, so we actually wanna shoot you playing the, you know, the bit before stuff.’ I’m like, ‘Right now, guys?’

John: Oh yes, a surprise by the way.

Aldis: Surprise!

John: This quick thing, they're gonna pop the camera on you there as you do this thing you just learned how to do.

Aldis: So I was just watching my fellow musicians around me as we shot, I was just watching their fingers and going off of them but hopefully you can’t tell.

John: That's a great little shake, that head shake like, ‘No, let's not get too heavily invested’.

Aldis: That was a real head shake that was ‘I do not wanna shoot this scene right now.’

[Laughter]

John: Could we please stop?

Aldis: None of the trepidation in this is faked, it’s real fear people. Real fear.

[Laughter]

Aldis: I dreaded this more than anything.

Chris: So there was less acting in this than typical episodes because you actually had fear.

Aldis: The fear yes, no acting at all, man, it was not hard to be afraid. At all. Whatsoever.

John: And here's Elizabetta, and it was interesting- I will be totally honest we knew we needed stuff for the finale-

Chris: Yeah.

John: And no idea what we needed it to be yet.

Chris: Right and right. And also to a certain degree, you know, when you have a MacGuffin, you know an item I want you to get, and you struggle as to what it could be, and we did struggle, we argued what is- what's in the envelope? And ultimately it's pretty cool when you don't know what it is.

John: Yeah it's point blank. It’s- yeah.

Chris: And you know we don't want to give anything away, but it did help us in the finale.

John: Yeah, well they've seen it by now, in theory.

Chris: Oh, okay.

John: Usually they watch all the way through and then do the commentaries.

Chris: That’s fine then. So that's fine, I'm not a spoiler.

Aldis: So what was in the envelope, fellows?

John: In the envelope is the evidence that the Italian needs because she's part of the shadowy international intelligence organization that launders money through Moto’s blood diamond accounts.

Chris: Yes.

John: And yeah that's actually- if you do a lot of research in money laundering, we did a lot of money laundering this year.

Aldis: Yes we did.

John: You find out that a lot of sort of black ops stuff, and a lot of the governments- there's a reason it's still around. You know governments find it useful, you know, and certain parts of governments find money laundering, international money laundering useful.

Chris: And here we go now we start- we start the clock and the dialogue is about to end pretty quickly.

John: Yeah I think we did like two touches, two clarifying things once we test screened it.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: We did an entire fourth act with just pure music.

Chris: Yeah, this is it here, we go.

John: Yeah this is it. Nnamdi did a great job in this, by the way, I want to say, because he's acting without dialogue and that's hard, you know, for a young actor.

Aldis: It’s like stare at this paper bag and make it interesting.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Chris: And I have to give Brian Gonosey here, our editor, a lot of credit here, too, because this was like editing a music video, because this was- we had to kinda time this stuff to the music, and this was, you know, this- in listening to the piece, you know, in my mind I had punching in numbers for this part, cause I could hear it in my head, and-

Aldis: Now this-

Chris: And now- oh.

Aldis: No, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Chris: Well this is just when you have an all pro quarterback from the NFL on your show, and you have Christian Kane who is a gigantic football fan, you're gonna have him knock him down in full run.

Aldis: Now Christian really took that hit.

Chris: He sure did folks.

John: He hit that wall hard, baby!

Aldis: This man is paid to hit people.

[Laughter]

John: Beth took this hit too.

Aldis: Yeah.

Chris: She did take that hit.

Aldis: She took it like a trooper.

John: Wait where'd- Chris played football for a while, what was he, tailback? What was Chris?

Chris: Well I know, back in high school, yeah.

Aldis: He played in it, and he wrestled, too. Nnamdi is a big guy.

John: Nnamdi is a big guy.

Aldis: He's like 6’ 4” something, 6’ 6”?

Chris: And he wanted to do all his own stunts and we were like, ‘Please, we do not want Al Davis on our ass.’

[Laughter]

John: ‘I'm sorry, did you hurt the greatest quarterback in the NFL in your little pretend show this weekend?’

Chris: He's like, ‘You know what the stunt mans doing? I can do that!’ And we said, ‘We know! Please don’t!’

Aldis: Now the NFL owns Leverage.

John: We’d have a bigger budget, that'd be alright.

[Laughter]

John: And then now down through the floor, this was fun playing around with- thank you Mythbusters, playing around with directional blowouts, and thermite and all the other sort of how to- oh that's a- and Nnamdi won't go down.

Chris: No, he won’t.

John: We were- this- he’s the thug who ate his Wheaties.

Aldis: I think that's a great part about this entire sequence and just the character in general is: cause he finally- somebody gave Eliot a challenge, a real challenge you know. It was kinda like the season finale for the first season.

John: But that guy had technique, you know, that was the thing. What Eliot is facing right now is another dude who kills people professionally.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: You know, and just with power. It's also fun cause it’s- all Eliot/Parker scenes are inherently fun.

Chris: And here, and this was all built around the music. We knew this was gonna- we were gonna build to- there's a giant gong hit here and that was gonna be- that was the whole thing was timed to the explosion and now one of the words ‘boom’.

Aldis: We really blew a hole in a floor and let Nnamdi fall through? He was a trooper, he took it?

John: Yes, please don’t tell the Raiders.

Chris: Please don't tell Al Davis.

Aldis: I'm kidding, guys. Kinda.

John: This was actually shot later, we actually rebuilt the ceiling and then dropped it in later.

Chris: Yeah, it’s great.

John: They did a great job because they- it was like ‘We need you to build that ceiling that we built a couple episodes, but put a hole in it.’ Like, ‘Alright.’ Yeah. And Nate being in the middle of it unexpectedly is a wonderful development.

Chris: Even this, all this all the editing was just timed perfectly to the music as he pulls, Walle is his character, pulls into the corner. And here it is.

John: That's a nice beat, actually, was Sophie- that's a nice choice by Gina, Sophie being totally confident because she knows, she's already in on the hypnosis thing. So she's already ahead of it, and what that was meant to be encouraging.

Chris: Now here it is.

Aldis: [Humming the song]

Chris: And, you know, I have to say my wife, violinist, gives you huge props here for your fingering and your bow work.

Aldis: Thank you. You do realize this song haunted me as I was practicing and preparing for it? It literally was playing in my head when no other sound was on in the room. I painted a picture called The Scheherazade. I painted the notes themselves because I had to get it outta my head. It was-

Chris: That’s great.

John: Where's the painting?

Aldis: It’s still back in Portland waiting for me to get back to it.

John: Nice.

Chris: Now what kind of response did you get from people when this aired?

Aldis: A lot of musicians actually said I did a good job, which I was proud about. I was- I was more concerned about how musicians would take it. Because they know what to look for, and as I watched I was like, ‘Alright,’ you know, cringing, but a lot of them they really, really dug it.

John: Well you always see the flaws in your performance, you know.

Aldis: Yeah of course because I’m looking for it, as the actor. By the way, this scene when Beth has the tear, that wasn't a tear she just had allergies, but played to her strengths and- right there the yeah.

John: It's just the smoke and stuff, the allergies.

Aldis: Very dusty, you know, we just kept it, we kept it. I’m kidding Beth’s a great actress, she did that on her own.

Chris: She’s fantastic. She did that, I mean, that's pretty amazing.

Aldis: Yeah was that her choice there?

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah, that wasn’t in the script.

Chris: And we didn't have a lot of time for that, too, we were really running out of time for that scene and they, boy were they great reacting to it.

Aldis: The boy did it! Uh!

[Laughter]

Aldis: Y'all know what this is! Sexual chocolate!

John: We’re gonna have to make t-shirts now, I hope.

Aldis: We are gonna have to make t-shirts.

Chris: Now in the original script, you got a girl's phone number; we had to cut it for time but there was.

John: Sexy violinists.

Aldis: It's alright, Hardison gets numbers.

Chris: You know, Hardison, we've been trying to hook you up and I'm sorry we ran out of time.

John: Well, you know that's alright, there's- I don't think the fans would like the girl.

Aldis: I think if I ever got hooked up, fans would just murder Hardison because-

John: They would not be happy.

Aldis: They're waiting on Parker.

John: Well also, you know, and what's interesting is: you've kind of changed looks since the first season. You were a very skinny kid when you came in that first season. You turned 21 the night we hired you.

Aldis: Yeah 21, I'm 24 now.

John: Yeah, you put a little man weight on you now.

Aldis: Man weight, shaved the whiskers a little bit, try to give you a little something different each year. Next year I'm gonna come in about 250 pounds.

John: Nice, maybe with a cane cause you can't quite walk, you got the gout.

Aldis: Cankles baby.

John: Rock the gout. This is brutal- just looking for the rematch.

Chris: I love the look.

John: Every time I see this, I try to figure out a way to bring that character back.

Chris: Can we bring him back?

John: Seriously man, that look as he rolls forward is like, I want that rematch.

Chris: You know he makes more money than everyone in- you know, I mean he's- he’ll fly out on a private jet and come do it.

John: Just I gotta figure out something. And then I remember cause it was great, cause- I was actually out of town and then you shot this, and I didn’t see anything until I saw the first cut of this. I didn't see any dailies and so I saw the first cut of this and when he rolled forward that time I'm like ‘Oh! No wait, I know there's no rematch’ but-

Aldis: Yeah.

John: It’s- it was fun it was being able to watch this episode as a fan was a big treat.

Chris: Yeah, and here it was trying to pay off the Scheherezade story by having Nate make up something on the fly.

John: Yeah, it's the- thematically it yeah it starts with a con, it has a heist in the middle, and ends with a con.

Chris: Ends with a con.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And you just the balls- the sheer stones it takes, ‘I have no idea what's in this.’

Chris: Yeah, right?

John: Just absolute sheer stones. To just bet on a sealed deck. We actually talked about that, we had played around with poker episodes and just what kind of- we talked at length- and it's one of those things that will never wind up in the show but we wind up talking in the room, what kind of gambler Nate is. And Nate is a guy who will bet on whole cards he hasn't seen.

Chris: Right, yes.

John: Yeah which is not necessarily the smartest thing in the world, but that’s that guy.

Aldis: He's the kind of guy who loses all his money first at the table, but eventually gains a couple chips back.

John: Yeah, yeah. Or manages to just be luckier than smarter, but smart enough to know he's lucky.

Chris: And I have to say Marcel Davis here played Simian Moto the president, and did an amazing job. I mean he's a local Portland actor.

John: Yeah, really- Portland. Never disappoints, Portland is a great place with great actors.

Chris: Now you can kinda see Gina slipping in there. It was- I know we had a couple of comments.

John: We had ten people on that set!

Chris: It was hard.

John: She's that black shape that kinda moves in with the secret service.

Aldis: I just saw her slip in there, keep your eyes open.

Chris: Keep your eyes open folks. She had- apparently she had a great time assembling this gun.

John: She was kinda rocking out the Helen Mirren in RED there.

Chris: She was.

John: She was really kinda- that was hot. She did- I watched the dailies on that like eight times, come on, she's very good at this. And the gloat, the drag out, the gloat.

Chris: The gloat and the drag away.

John: Very nice and the president. Oh Nnamdi wants to go! Let them go! Let them fight! That drinking game for Enter the Dragon. It’s like every time.

Chris: There we go, another time we’ll bring him back.

Aldis: Let's just send this out to all the Oakland raiders fans and see if they put in a vote, do you want Nnamdi back?

Chris: Do you wanna see Nnamdi back, please?

Aldis: Let's see what happens.

John: Promised by the DVD. Yeah.

Aldis: I feel it'll be promising.

John: And this was a nice set up, and again it was interesting because she had such the upper hand in the first episode, this is the one where Chris really kinda reset that, yeah, Nate Ford is not a patsy.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know he is- there's a reason they’re using him. He's a dangerous guy, and he's become more of a dangerous guy this year because he's acknowledged who he is. Last year this would've played out differently.

Chris: Yeah, no it was- you know, the sequence was flirty, dangerous, a little bit of banter then she puts the screws to him and then he puts the screws to her here.

John: Yeah cause he knows. He knows, he dealt with these types of people, you know, he's not ignorant of exactly how big a game he's playing in right now. Great, great shot. She- this is a 1960s shot, that shot right there, I really love this. And she's got a very classic late 60s look and that was interesting because we used it- we actually called the character the Italian as shorthand because it was an archetype from the 60s, and then when she came on the show we were trying to come up with a name it's like, we're not gonna beat The Italian.

Chris: No no, it’s the best.

John: Just keep it there. And it kinda kept her in the headspace, when we wrote the scripts it kept her in that zone.

Aldis: And when she happened to actually be Italian!

John: We started with that, that was the-

Aldis: Ahhh, ohhh, ahhhh!

John: Did we not explain that to you?

Aldis: Ahhhh!

John: We just happened to get Elisabetta. Yeah, there you go.

Aldis: There go- ahhh!

Chris: And this is a nice kind of close out to, you know we sort of set up earlier that Eliot has some regrets of things that he may have done back when he was a soldier. Things he saw in Africa. And I thought Tim had a nice ad lib here, cause he kinda indicated that it was Eliot's idea to provide money for kids in the community based on them selling the violin.

John: And that's- and yeah it was another thing, too, as we moved into the third season of, why are these people still together. You know the second year they had realized they were family but were not emotionally evolved enough to explain, to acknowledge that. Third year where they are together and you begin to see- you know Hardison sees this as his crime college. And he loves these people, but this is his crime college. You know, Eliot is beginning to see the path to his redemption. You know, Nate is the acknowledgement of his identity. Parker is becoming a human being. You know, everyone has their reason they're there. You know, Sophie's reason to be there is basically, she had come back to run the crew while Nate was in prison. And to be acknowledged as the co-lead. This is a great scene. By the way, you play this wonderfully, this is a big turn here.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Thanks.

Chris: It was- you know this was a tricky reveal here because- and I'll say that on the hypnosis front I consulted with a hypnotist-

[Laughter]

Chris: This is not just me making stuff up out of thin air.

John: I'm the one to make stuff up out of thin air, Chris actually researches shit.

Chris: And in fact, the hypnotist said to me that if somebody had a- was extremely proficient in something at an early age, whether it was athletics or music, that he could put someone in a deep trance state and return them to their ability, that their life experience is kinda what's gotten in the way of their ability, that it's all up there in their head. And that's all that we’re saying here, we’re not saying that he made you- Nate made Hardison able to play, Hardison always knew how to play, it was just cleaning out the cobwebs to get you back.

Aldis: Right.

John: Also Sophie's- Gina's playing that complicitness in a really nice way, which is she went with it, she didn't like it, and she doesn't necessarily like what Nate’s become. Also fun, you had really focused on this is, during the research, the idea that prison is a bad idea for most criminals. Most criminals just go in and become better criminals. It's- they call it crime college, you know, and what tricks had Nate picked up while he was inside.

Chris: And look ultimately that the one of the things that makes Nate able to run this crew from- is that he's not a nice guy. And that he will push any button to get whatever he wants done. And that makes him, I think, a better leader, and a more interesting character than if he's just you know got your back every time you're in trouble.

John: We cannot say this enough: Nate Ford is not a nice man.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Right.

John: But that's what's required in the world that we set up in this show. And that's Scheherezade Job! Amazing job, both of you. I really wanna say this, I came to this as a viewer and this is one of my favorite episodes of the season, and of the entire run.

Aldis: It's one of my favorites.

John: I told the first time I watched this, I told Chris I wish my name was on it. I wish that I had the ‘Written by’ credit.

Chris: And you, you know I made a little comment to you back in season one, and boy did you make me happy.

Aldis: It happened.

John: It’s great.

Aldis: Well thank you man I enjoyed it. The script was one of my best scripts, one of my favorite scripts from the entire three seasons, so.

John: Thanks man.

Chris: Thanks.

John: Alright stay tuned more coming up.

Aldis: Peace.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 3 #Episode 4 #Season 3 Episode 4 #The Scheherazade Job

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marchyslove · 3 years

Text

That Smile

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

It’s our one-year anniversary and I have no idea where he’s taking me. I see a blanket in the back seat, and I know it’s going to be something romantic because that’s how he is. He’s not one of those over-the-top romantics, but he has his moments.

We pull up to a big open park, not many people around but it’s dinner time so no surprise there. He got out, almost sprinted around the car to get the door for me.

*11 months earlier*

“So this is your place.” It’s exactly what you’d expect of someone like him, big, fancy, granite countertops, leather sectional, open spaces, a balcony with a hot tub and some couches. Rich people might not always look rich when you see them out on the street, but once you see where they live, there’s no denying they have money.

“It’s beautiful.”

He scratched the back of his neck nervously, “thanks, I’m not around enough to make it look the way I’d want it to, but I was thinking in the summer I might move some stuff around… make it more home-y.”

I eyed the guitar in the corner, ‘cliché,’ I thought. So many douchebags have guitars on display with no idea how to play them. So I challenged him to it. “you play?” “Yea, I do.” “Are you good?” “I’ve got a couple songs up my sleeve,” he said with a chuckle.

I plopped myself on the couch and pretzeled my legs, staring at him eagerly, “well, by all means, I’d love to hear one.” He didn’t hesitate, walked over and picked up the guitar, he came back and sat right next to me.

“any requests?”

“you know any Clapton? Cliché I know, but I love his music.”

“not cliché at all, anything specific?”

“surprise me.”

In an instant I knew the song, my favorite. When I was younger my mom and I would always listen to 70’s and 80’s radio whenever we were in the car together. Softer, slower music, played later in the day. Then there was bedtime radio that started at 9 at night. It would always start with “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton.

He must’ve noticed the smile on my face, because he started smiling too. “You like this one?”

“Love,” I answered, almost too quickly.

His smile grew.

He had one of those smiles that could make flowers bloom, or make babies stop crying. It wasn’t perfect by any means, even a little crooked, but it made fireworks go off in my stomach.

“It’s a great song, and easy enough to learn cause it’s slower. Not too many different chords.”

“It’s one of my favorites. The lyrics are incredible.”

“Can you sing?”

“Not even a little bit, I’m so bad.” Trying to find something to change the subject I started glancing around the room. My eyes went to the balcony. I got up from the couch and went over to the door. I felt a presence behind me. “We can go out if you want.” So I opened the door and step outside.

The warm, summer breeze felt like a hug. I walked around a bit, glancing at the lights and down at the street below. “Careful,” he said as he took a cautious step towards me. I didn’t realize how much I had been leaning over the edge. “Heights never really scared me.” “Well that’s good, but still… careful.” “I always am.”

I looked up; outside the city the stars were a little more visible. “Beautiful,” I said under my breath. Again, I felt a presence behind me. “You big into astrology?” “Only enough to know my star sign, and that it apparently fits me well. Beyond that, I just like to look at the stars.” “Do you know the names of any of them? Or constellations?”

My confidence grew a little bit. My summers laying outside in the grass playing around with the app on my phone that labeled the stars if you point your camera at the sky were finally about to pay off.

“That one is Sirius. It’s the brightest of them all.” “That’s easy to remember. That’s one of the dippers right?,” he asked, pointing up. “The big dipper, the little dipper is right there, and over there is Ursa Major, its shaped like a bear.” “That means there’s an ursa minor, right?” “Very good work detective,” I teased jokingly, pinching his cheek. He gave a giggle and winked at me. My heart skipped a beat.

“So you know a decent amount about stars?” “I know where they are and how to find them, I don’t know much past that.” “Impressive,” he said as he kissed my cheek.

We walked for a little bit towards the center of the park. He carried the basket; I had the blanket. “I’ve never heard of this place.” “I had to do a bit of research to find it.” “Any reason you chose this park in particular?” “You’ll see.” There’s that smile, after a year I still get the same fireworks when I see it. I glance over at him, and he’s already looking at me. “What are you looking at?” “My girl,” he said with a wink.

He stopped walking abruptly. He looked up at the sky, then around the park. Looking back at the car he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He put down the basket and looked through his phone for something. “Are we stopping here?” “One sec, I have to check.” “What’s the difference between here and 5 feet away?” “You’ll see, but I have to make sure we’re in the right spot.” He put his phone back in his pocket, took 8 steps forward, turned back towards me and grinned, “here.” “Fair enough,” I walked over.

He laid out the blanket, put the basket on it. I hadn’t seen him pack the basket; I actually only saw it for the first time when he picked me up today.

He opened the basket and pulled out a bottle of wine and two glasses. I sat down and started pouring. “Shit, give me one second,” and before I realized what was happening, he was running back towards the car. I took this opportunity to sneak a peak in the basket. Chocolate covered strawberries, little triangle-cut sandwiches, a little bin of grapes, some crackers- “no peaking!,” he yelled as he made his way back to me. “Too late babe.”

He was carrying four pillows and dropped them when he came over. “What are these for?” “Comfort, we might have the blanket, but it won’t be comfortable without the pillows.” “Yea, I guess I could’ve put that together.” “I mean if you had an idea of doing more, the pillows will definitely help,” another wink.

He had all the makings of a douchebag, on the surface level. He has that superiorly confident look to him. The way he walks, he doesn’t think he’s better than anyone, but that’s the vibe you get from him if you judge him solely based on looks. If you saw him on the street you might think he was the biggest fuckboy on the planet, but then you talk to him.

He’s goofy, in the best way. He’s smart. You wouldn’t think it, but he’s better at quick mental math than anyone I’ve met, and he knows geography like he’s traveled the entire world himself. He likes to talk about anything and everything. On our first date we spent an hour talking about different birds we’d both seen, and our favorites. He likes loons because they sound funny, I like bluebirds because of their beautiful color. I didn’t have much interest in birds until that conversation. Now every time I see a bluebird I think of him. My family went on vacation last month and we rented a lake house. Every morning I’d hear the loon calling and think of that smile.

“Hey you, whatcha thinking about?,” he poked my cheek, I snapped out of my zoned out state, “you.” He turned away a little but I saw the blush creeping onto his cheeks. He had pulled everything out of the basket and tossed it to the side. “Grapes?,” he offered, holding one up in front of my mouth, I opened, and he placed it in my mouth gently, like it was fragile. The sun was starting to set, that’s when I realized there were no lights around. All we had was a tiny lantern he had pulled out of the basket. The view we had of the sunset was incredible, I hadn’t kept track of time on the drive here, so I really had no idea how far outside of the city we were. “How much research did you do exactly?” “Alright to be fair I asked a buddy if he knew any romantic spots and after I got him to quit joking about sex, he gave me a few. Then I googled them and found this place.” “It’s beautiful.” “Not as beautiful as you.” “Oh hush-,” he interrupted me with a kiss.

We ate as the sun set, starting the strawberries just as the last bits of golden light dipped below the horizon. He turned on the lantern.

The glow lit up his face, he was really handsome. His skin looked so smooth and he had those long eyelashes that all guys have, it made me jealous. That smile, again. He kissed me, again. He shut the lantern off while we were kissing. He pulled the pillows over and put them behind us, he laid back and spread his arm out. I laid down and put my head on his arm.

He kissed the top of my head, “Sirius,” he pointed toward the star. “Glad you remembered,” I teased. Another wink. He pointed up again, “look.” As I glanced up, there was a light that shot across the sky. “A shooting star. I’ve never seen one,” he was staring in awe. “Make a wish.” “I don’t need to, I have you.” I rolled my eyes, “you are such a cheeseball.”

We laid there pointing out the different stars and constellations. “You’ve been studying,” I glanced up at him. “I wanted to impress you,” he stated, followed by another kiss. I’ve never seen the stars so bright and clear. “Is this why you were so stingy about the spot?” He looked down at me, “I needed to make sure the view was clear so we could see everything.” Like I said, he’s not a huge romantic, but he has his moments. We kept watching the stars in the most comfortable silence. Then, almost as if he let it slip out accidentally, he whispered, “I am so in love with you.” I waited to see if he’d say anything else, but he was quiet, a nervous quiet. “Ditto,” I giggled and glanced up at him. And, without fail, there it was again, that smile.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay be nice! It's my first work, and like I said- I don't consider myself to be much of a writer. I hope you guys like it, I kept thinking about the idea and wanted to give it a shot! I purposely left names and too-specific details out so people can think of whoever they'd like, and hey! feel free to add the person you thought of to the tags if you reblog, I love stuff like that! Maybe I'll write more if people like it enough :)

If you like it please give it a like and reblog, it would be much appreciated!

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dameronology · 3 years

Text

love in the time of p.t.a. meetings {marcus moreno} - 4/5

summary: after a few months of slightly chaotic bliss, you & marcus start to think about the next steps in your relationship. {series masterlist}

warnings: swearing

this is up a little later than i wanted & i do apologise, i once again stayed up all night and i cannot recount a single thing i’ve done. enjoy!

- jazz

Things between you and Marcus quickly fell into a routine.

You kind of had to when you both had kids; their lives needed structure. Depended on it, in fact. It wasn’t long before both of your lives were entangled in more ways than one, mostly for the sake of Missy and Jack having security around them but also because things between you were so good. Neither of you were trying to rush by any means, but when it worked, it worked. You were both good at communicating with each other - not that many issues really cropped up - and you both understood that your children came first. Things progressed easily and naturally, and he made you feel secure enough that you didn’t have to question whether or not it was too good to be true.

Five months had quickly passed and you were both comfortable. Marcus Moreno was your boyfriend and it wasn’t a big deal. Okay, it had been at first - especially the first time he planted a kiss on your lips in front of the minivan brigade - but now? It was normal. It felt like he’d always been there, and you took it as a good sign. You got on well with Missy, especially since she’d witnessed your spat with Carol and started to think the world of you, and Jack...well, he was obsessed with Marcus. You couldn’t blame the kid.

‘Jack! Put the soup down!’

It was another one of those mornings. It was a Sunday, so you didn’t have to worry about getting up early for school or work but you’d been at Marcus’ till late the night before. You and Jack ended up spending a lot of time at his; there was a swimming pool and a big garden for Optimus Prime to run around in, so it tired both of your tiny spawns out, which worked in your favour.

Even when the kid had spent four hours swimming last night, he’d still risen that morning at 6AM like Jesus Christ on the third day. You’d woken to find the kitchen covered in smashed eggs and ham, then your oven had broken and the toilet was blocked again.

You’d been halfway through reversing the problem when you’d heard Jack shuffling in the kitchen. You were stood in the hallway, still in your pyjamas, with a toilet brush in one hand and the other balled up into a fist.

‘Jack, the soup is about to-’

You paused mid-sentence, watching as the bowl he was trying to reach for toppled straight off of the counter. You’d only washed his hair ten minutes ago, and you might as well have not fucking bothered because it was now covered in chunky vegetable soup. And the Chewbacca onesie he loved so much? Trying to peel that off him for the next few hours to wash the Heinz out of it was going to be a whole task in itself. You’d only just been to the laundrette the day before, and you’d gotten to the point in life where having a place with its own washing machine was a sign of success.

‘Mum, there’s soup in my hair.’

‘It’s okay.’ You took a moment to breath. ‘We are not going to cry.’

‘I’m not crying.’

‘Wasn’t talking to you, buddy.’ You rubbed your temples for a moment. ‘C’mon, let’s go hop in the bath.’

So much of parenting was just...stopping to breath. Stopping to take a moment to remind yourself that although your love for your child was unwavering and unconditional, you sometimes felt like screaming. All you’d done for the last five hours was go in circles, cleaning and lecturing and cleaning some more. It made you wish you were at work that day, because at least then you could have conversations with people that weren’t about what cheese they wanted for lunch or what cartoon they wanted to watch.

‘I just had a bath.’ Jack muttered.

‘Yeah well, you need another one.’ You took another deep breath. ‘I’ll be there in a minute-’

‘- I don’t want a bath!’

‘And I don’t want a kid that’s covered in soup!’ You shot back. ‘C’mon, buddy. Just do as I say, please?’

Your conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. You frowned for a moment - you weren’t expecting anyone. There was no post on Sundays and you hadn’t seen your landlord since the day you’d moved in. Your nosey neighbour knocked sometimes, usually asking about the noise (he didn’t have kids, clearly) and you were this close to telling him to mind his own fucking business.

‘I swear to god, if that’s David again, I am going to shove this can of soup up his - Marcus!’ You almost did a double take when you saw your boyfriend stood at the door - he really chose his times, didn’t he? You hadn’t even had time to put the fucking toilet brush down. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey, baby.’ He greeted you slowly, eyes slowly taking in your appearance (and not in a sexy way). ‘Were you not expecting me?’

‘Shit, did we have plans?’ Your eyes widened.

‘No, but Jack called. He said you’d asked him to ask me to come over, but I realise half way through that sentence that starting with Jack called probably means you had no idea.’ He offered you a goofy smile. ‘He said that the sofa had exploded and that you needed help.’

There was a lot to unpack there. When had Jack done that? More to the point, when had he learnt to use the phone? How had he worked out your phone password? The kid couldn’t do up his own velcro and now he was a Russian hacker, apparently.

‘Oh my god.’ You groaned. ‘I am so sorry. Things have been batshit here this morning and I’m sure he had my best interests in his weird little heart, but he made you come all this way-’

‘- Marcus!’ Speaking of the devil.

Jack pushed past you, wrapping his arms around Marcus’ waist. He leant down to pick him up, lifting him off the ground - albeit at a distance, due to Soupgate.

‘Hey, buddy.’ He greeted him. ‘You been causing trouble again?’

‘Not on purpose.’ Jack replied. ‘Mum says I need another bath.’

‘I think she’s right.’ Marcus said. ‘Why don’t you go pick out some clothes and come back in a minute, yeah?’

‘Okay!’ Seemingly impressed by the newfound trust in him to choose an outfit, Jack wriggled himself back down to the floor, trotting towards his bedroom. Seriously, how did Marcus do that? Perhaps his ability to have authority over your archaic child was another hidden power of his.

‘You look like you need a break, baby.’ He reached out, gently running a hand down your arm.

‘I’m fine, he’s just been a lot today.’ You sighed.

‘You have soup on your shirt and fluff in your hair.’

‘Couch stuffing.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s couch stuffing. Except that was Optimus Prime and not Jack, which makes a nice change.’ You muttered.

‘Look, Missy is at her abuela’s today and she’s been begging for ages to see Jack again.’ He said. ‘What d’you say I drive him over there, you clean up and we hang out? Just us, no kids, no dogs, no stress.’

‘That sounds like a fucking dream.’ You couldn’t help but smile. ‘But Optimus has consumed half the couch and I gotta keep an eye on him-’

‘-we can bring him with us!’ Marcus grinned. ‘He loves the garden.’

‘Are you sure? Because I remember you saying you had work plans today and I don’t want you to cancel them on account for the fact I can’t control my own kid. Or life.’

‘You two come first.’ He said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Three, including Optimus Prime.’

In the time it took Marcus to drive Jack to his mum’s and get back to yours, you were able to clean up. The apartment was still a state, but it hadn’t been properly tidy in...how many days had it been since Jack was born? Because it hadn’t been clean in exactly that many days. You felt a little bad dumping him on Anita when he was still covered in soup, but if anyone was able to wrestle him into the bath and some clean clothes, it was her. You’d met her a few times and she was absolutely lovely, but you had no doubt she could be terrifying when need be. She was the sort of woman you aspired to be.

By midday, you were driving out the city. There was music playing quietly over the radio and you were watching the houses go by; even though it was cold out, you had the heater on and you were bundled up in a leather jacket, Marcus’ scarf snugly around your neck. It smelt faintly of his aftershave, which had become one of your favourite scents over the last five months. The time had gone so quickly. You’d seen each other practically every day since then, and having the kids meant you’d been fallen into being domestic pretty quickly. The simplicity of it all - him and you and getting to this point so easily - was overwhelming in itself.

Your first relationship had been so complicated - so finicky and filled with unnecessary arguments. That should have been a sign early on, but then you’d gotten pregnant with Jack and getting married had seemed like the obvious thing to do. His presence meant you wouldn’t have changed anything, not for the entire fucking world, but it made you a little sad to think about how long you’d wasted on what had clearly been the wrong person. Meanwhile, Marcus’ situation had been entirely different; he’d had the right person the first time around and then he’d lost them. You never felt like a replacement to his wife, or even thought about the notion, really. That had been another part of his life. You were a new part and it didn’t mean he was forgetting the past. The two could co-exist without taking away from each other.

‘You’re deep in thought.’ Marcus observed. He moved one of his hands to rest on your leg, giving it a light squeeze. He did that a lot, usually whenever you were sat beside him at the table or on the sofa. It was just a him thing.

‘Yeah, sorry.’ You tore your gaze away from the window. ‘My brain always goes a little into overdrive when things are quiet.’

He chuckled. ‘What’s on your mind?’

‘You, actually.’ You tangled your fingers with his, thumb brushing over the back of his hand. ‘I was just thinking about lucky I am and how good things are, and how it almost feels too good to be true.’

‘Better believe it, baby.’ He replied. ‘Because it is true.’

‘I know.’ You peered over at him with a smile. ‘It’s just...my only perceptions of relationships were based on the single one I’ve had. Everything was so complicated and exhausting. This is completely different and it’s so nice. And normal. And I don’t know, that sounds stupid-’

‘- it’s not stupid at all.’ Marcus peered over at you, shaking his head. ‘It’s natural to be a little apprehensive after a bad relationship and if there’s anything I can do to help, you just have to tell me. You know that, right?’

Maybe it was the way he said it, or maybe it was just him, but you knew for certain that he meant that. There was sort of a silent agreement now that you were both in this for the long haul. Your mum had always said that you’ll know when you know but you’d always written that off. Mostly because you hadn’t known the first time round. But, now you did. You did know and though you weren’t going to admit that to Marcus, you never doubted him for a second.

‘I do.’ You said. ‘But he’s in the past now - and hopefully it’s where he fucking stays.’

‘I have contacts. I can find him and set Miracle Guy on him.’ Marcus’ grin had returned. ‘Just say the word.’

‘You make a tempting offer.’ You smiled back at him. ‘But the past is the past and I’m ready to...slam the lid on that dumpster.’

‘Do you think he’ll ever want to come back into Jack’s life?’

You pondered for a moment. ‘I don’t think so, but if he did, I dunno if I’d let him. I never wanna be the person who stops someone from seeing their kids but what he did was...it was unforgivable.’

‘You don’t have to make that decision until it actually happens.’ Marcus gently said. ‘And I’ll support whatever you choose.’

He pulled into the drive way of his house - his nice, clean, sofa-stuffing-and-soup free house. Optimus Prime leapt out the car as soon as the door was open, practically tearing past the two of you and down towards the yard. There was a moment of silence and then a splash!

‘Guess he found the pool.’ Marcus commented. ‘At least it’s heated, I s’pose.’

Truth be told, he loved having the three of you at his house. It felt like whatever had been missing before was slowly making an appearance as your relationship progressed. The irony was that you brought nothing but chaos and clutter with you, but that was exactly what made it feel like a home. It was small things; the painting that Jack had done for him at after school club was now hung up up on the fridge, and there was a photo of him and Missy on the fireplace with Optimus Prime. Half of the thousands of blankets of pillows that had been at your place had ended up on his sofa, thanks to the countless sleepovers.

If he could have it his way, Marcus would have you live with here all the time. The energy that you and Jack brought made everything feel complete. He loved the evenings where Missy and Jack would play out in the pool, and you two would sit back inside, complaining about the cold. Then there were the nights where you’d take both the kids back here when he was working late, and he’d come home to find you piled on the couch watching an old movie, with your burnt cooking abandoned on the stove, surrounded by boxes of left over take out. It was the kind of thing that was so simple and so domestic, but it was everything he wanted.

That was probably the flashpoint moment when Marcus Moreno realised he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you. He already knew he loved you - he’d worked that out about three months in, when you’d fallen asleep in one of his shirts whilst trying to wait up for him - but he hadn’t said it. He’d hinted at it and made back-handed comments but he’d barely admitted it to himself, let alone to anyone else. He knew what you and Jack had gone through before and it broke his entire fucking heart. You both deserved someone who stand by you and support you, someone who would embrace you both for the craziness and warm energy you brought everywhere with you. More than ever, he was realising he wanted to be that person who gave it you. After all, you’d made his life so much brighter without even trying.

Snapping out of his trance, Marcus looked over at you. You’d already ditched your shoes and dropped onto the sofa, pulling one of the blankets with you. This was exactly what you needed. A quiet house, your favourite person and a cable knit blanket.

‘Hey, baby?’

You looked over at him, smiling at the name. ‘Yeah?’

‘You know I love you, right?’

You blinked in surprise, sitting up. ‘I know.’

‘You do?’

‘You’ve never said it, but I can tell.’ You nodded, before offering a smile. ‘And I love you too.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner.’ He slowly approached you, dropping onto the sofa beside you and taking your hands in his. ‘I think I just got so caught up in everything and feeling everything that I forgot.’

‘Why are you apologising?’ You couldn’t help but scoff at him, leaning forward to press a kiss to his lips. ‘It’s your actions that say it, Marc. Hearing it is good but you showed it a long time ago.’

‘I know, but really you deserve to hear it everyday.’ He smiled against you, helping you move onto his lap.

‘You do tell me everyday, with the things you do.’ You reminded him. ‘Like meeting me in the parking lot with coffee, or bribing Jack into going to bed early with video messages from your superheroes, or doing my grocery shopping when you know money is short.’

‘Why wouldn’t I do those things?’ Marcus seemed genuinely confused. ‘It’s you.’

‘I love you.’ You repeated the phrase.

‘And I love you.’

He pulled you into another kiss - this time it was a little firmer, not unlike your second declaration of love. Marcus did all those things without thinking, simply out of his intense want for you to just be happy. He was the same with Missy, always doing little things to make her life easier just because. It was just part of who he was, and it made him happy to see his loved ones happy.

With your body pressed against his and your hands tangled in your hair, Marcus realised he didn’t want you to ever leave again. He didn’t want you to have to drive home in the dark at ten because all of your stuff was on the other side of town. You did stay over sometimes, but then you’d have to creep out at 6AM with a sleeping Jack in your arms to get home in time to get ready. He wanted you here all the time. You should have been here all the time.

‘Move in with me?’

He both did and didn’t mean to say it out loud. He did because he wanted you so badly to be a permanent fixture in the house, but he also didn’t because the idea might have been a little absurd. Was it too soon? What if you didn’t want to leave your place? He knew you loved your apartment. It was your home and had been for a long time.

‘What?!’ You suddenly pulled back from the kiss, eyes wide.

‘I mean...if you want to.’ Marcus slowly said. ‘Hell, Missy and I can move to your place if that’s what you want. It might be tight but she loves the dog and I just want to be with you-’

‘- hey!’ You cut him off, planting your hands on his shoulders. ‘You’re rambling again, but that’s besides the point. I would love to live here.’

‘You would?’

‘I would.’ You smiled.

It made sense. Aside from the glaringly obvious fact you wanted to, it was also practical. It was closer to the school, closer to your work and it had a fucking swimming pool. Marcus was already clearly financially secure and moving in wouldn’t mean relying on him, but it would have meant that things for Jack were a lot more stable. Missy loved the company of you both, and it meant she would finally have the dog she wanted so bad.

‘Missy would be okay with it, right?’ You asked.

‘She was the one who put the idea in my head, actually.’ Marcus admitted. ‘I’d thought about it but then she kind of asked in passing why you don’t live here, and I couldn’t give her an answer.’

‘Your kid is smart.’

‘D’you think Jack will-’

‘- I’m going to stop you there.’ You cut him off.

‘Right, I probably don’t need to ask that question.’ He chuckled.

‘Exactly.’ You pressed a kiss to his nose. ‘Don’t forget the dog, either.’

‘How could I? I can literally see him peeing on my lawn right now.’

‘Our lawn.’

Exactly three weeks later - and after a hefty amount of paperwork and hours of sorting through Jack’s endless amounts of crap that he insisted on hoarding - moving day came.

Anita had insisted on having the kids again. They were both excited, but perhaps a little too much. They were probably more likely to get in the way of things if anything. Children, a dog and large boxes? It seemed like a match made in hell. Plus, she had a whole ass training course in her back garden and if that didn’t wear the kid out, then you were definitely going to take him to the Heroics to get tested. The thought alone was enough to tire you out.

You didn’t have too much stuff to move. You’d been half-moved into the damn place before Marcus had even made the formal proposal, so that made things a lot easier. You were keeping your sofa for Jack’s room, but the rest was going to Goodwill. Most of it had come from there in the first place.

‘I think that’s the last box.’ Marcus announced, exiting the bedroom. ‘I didn’t realise that a five year could own so many variations of storm-trooper toys.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ You replied. ‘There’s the original trilogy ones, sequel trilogy ones, dark troopers, shock troopers, clone troopers - and I realise half way through listing them that you don’t care.’

‘I never said that!’ He placed his hands on your waist, pressing a kiss to your forehead. ‘I’m excited to learn.’

‘I’m sure Jack is excited to tell you.’ You grinned.

Then, it faltered slightly with the realisation you were actually leaving this place. You’d never intended for it to be your permanent home, but it had still been the centre of your entire universe for half a decade. Every room told a story; the crayon marks on the bathroom wall, the dents behind the TV from, the crack in the living room mirror. All caused by Jack, naturally. The last five years was contained entirely within these four walls and you got bleary eyed at the idea of it becoming someone else’s.

‘Hey, don’t cry.’ Marcus gently wiped away a tear from your cheek.

‘You know, the rent is still paid till the end of the month so we could revisit the idea of you and Missy living here instead.’ You tearfully smiled.

‘You’re kidding but you know I’ll do it.’ He pressed another kiss to your nose, grip on your arms tightening.

‘It’s okay.’ You moved so that the kiss landed on your mouth instead, capturing his lips in a brief kiss. ‘I knew we were gonna outgrow this place. I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.’

‘I know. Still kinda feels like it all came out of no-where, huh?’ He replied. ‘In the best way.’

‘You’re right. In the best way.’ You firmly nodded. ‘Can you believe I was 23 when I moved into this place? I found it on Craiglist within ten minutes of finding out I was pregnant.’

‘Do you wanna take a minute before we go?’

‘No, it’s fine.’ You shook your head. ‘We should get going.’

The apartment was just that: an apartment. And the house you were going to was just that: a house. But the people you were with? That’s what made it count. It wasn’t about the four walls or the roof over your head, or whether or not it had a big yard and a jacuzzi bath tub (though, that did help). It was about the laughter and warmth inside; the faces in the photos on the wall and the people you came home to after a long day. It was the smell of your burnt cooking and the pizza you’d ordered in place. It was Jack’s toys left in the exact place where someone could trip and it was Missy using all the hot water in the morning so that Marcus’ showers were practically arctic. It was everyday things that reminded you of the people around you; the people that made it home, and how lucky you were to have them.

That was home. And you’d found yours.

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#marcus moreno x reader #marcus moreno imagine #marcus moreno x you #marcus moreno x y/n #marcus moreno imagines #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal character headcanons

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sebstanseabass · 3 years

Text

Afterglow (A Bucky Barnes AU fan fiction) - Chapter 4

Previous chapter links:

Afterglow chapters

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

CHAPTER FOUR

The cab ride towards the White Wolf was much faster and louder than you anticipated. The cab driver's blaring music from the radio was so loud it felt like you were inside a rave. You and Bucky had to yell over the music for you to talk about what has been happening in your lives for the past few months. You couldn't summarize everything in a five-minute cab ride. So far, these were just some milestones you both gathered (well, more of his): while Bucky was in different parts of the world (Greece, Macau, Amsterdam, Monaco, Aruba) managing interrelation business and hosting nightly parties and whatnots, you were just in New York tending to drunkards (and that includes Peter sometimes) and taking photos of whatever products that come your way.

At that moment, you saw your life pass by in black and white, while Bucky's in color -- just a parade of rainbows trailing behind him wherever he goes.

Yet he still found the things you did interesting.

You wondered what the word interesting meant to him. Of course, you didn't bother asking him that. Perhaps he just felt sorry and wanted to make you feel good.

The moment you got out of the cab, you guys took a deep breath, thankful that that awful ride was over. The music floated away as the cab sped up in the streets.

"What a dick." Bucky commented, watching the cab race through the streets. Any more speed, the cab would've flown in the air.

"I know." You snorted. "God, that was an awful ride. I felt like I was at a frat party."

"Funny. You don't look like someone who would go to one." He joked.

"I went once." You defended. "With Parker."

Bucky raised his eyebrows at you and stared. Blue eyes piercing right through you in disbelief. "Okay." You sighed. "I picked his drunk ass up at that party. But I really have been to a party with Parker." You left out that detail of you and Peter making out at that party. That was just between you and Peter and you wouldn't want to include his stepbrother in it. Or perhaps Bucky knew about it. You did just found out they talk to each other almost every night. But as you told Bucky about that party, you received no reaction whatsoever which meant he knew nothing. You felt good about that.

You and Bucky stood in front of the White Wolf, trying to shake out the ringing in your ears. Stupid cab ride. Why you couldn't just walk here was because of Bucky. Apparently, he was still a bit hungover. You wondered what would take him to get fully sober.

You stared at the wolf headstone once more, admiring it for the second time today.

"I commissioned an artist for that." Bucky spoke, poking his finger on his right ear. "Just found him on the subway one day. He was selling some sculptures he's made. Asked him if he could make me one and ta-da!"

"It is beautiful."

"I have others he has made inside." With this, Bucky started to walk towards the inside of his hotel.

The uniformed man greeted you on the steps. You sent him a knowing smile once his eyes landed on yours. He smiled back as you introduced yourselves to each other.

"Is she still in my room?" Bucky asked the uniformed man who you now know goes by the name Leonard.

"Yes, sir." He replied. "She said she'd -- "

"I know what she said." Bucky groaned, remembering what you'd told him earlier. "I'll call you from up there if anything goes wrong, okay Leonard?"

"Yes, sir. I'll be on alert."

You watched the exchange in utter fascination. It was like watching something straight out of an action movie: "I'll be on high alert" "I'll tell you when the coast is clear" "Roger that" "I'll call you when something goes wrong"

The only thing was, this wasn't some action movie though Bucky did have a plan. You just never knew about it until you got in the elevators.

"Here's the plan." He started. "We go in holding hands, I'll introduce you as my girlfriend. Maybe fiancé! When she sees you, tell her you're my fiancé and when she tells you that she slept with me, I'm going to deny and you're going to believe me because as my fiancé, you deeply love me and believe everything I say."

"Ew, it's like I'm a sub."

"Wow, you're a dom?"

"I can be." You winked at him.

"Huh, I honestly thought you're a virgin. You know, that type of 'never been kissed, never been loved' type."

In your head, you started singing the rest of the song. "I'm an angel in the streets and devil in the sheets, Bucky." You joked which he took seriously seeing it on the look on his face. "Anyway, your plan?"

"Right! She'd yell and go nuts until she gives up and then leaves the hotel -- "

"Then we get married and let Peter pay for our honeymoon!" You finished for him with a sarcastic smile on your face.

He smirked. "I like the way you think, Aria. But I don't think Peter's gonna want that."

"What do you mean?"

"W-well, he's not gonna afford it is what I meant."

"You're probably right." You gave him a low chuckle. "You're rich. Pay for our honeymoon." You joked.

"As soon as we get this bitch out of here, yes I will, doll." He scrunched his nose up and winked at you right before the elevator doors opened. Swiftly, Bucky grabbed your hand and intertwined your fingers. "Let's do this."

Hand in hand, you stepped out of the elevator. What stood in front of you was the same woman from earlier this morning. Body still clinging to Bucky's shirt. Faint red lipstick still smeared on some parts outside her lips. Blonde hair still disheveled. If you didn't know any better she was just here in the penthouse, waiting, not moving even a single inch.

You put your hand on Bucky's arm, hiding a faint expression of how big it felt against your skin. "Honey, who is this?"

"I-I don't know!"

The unnamed woman managed to step forward, looking Bucky in the eyes. "What do you mean you don't know? We slept last night!" Then, she looked at you. "Who the hell are you?"

"His fiancé." There was a sly smug tone in your voice. Even on your face.

"Fiancé? He didn't tell me anything about a fucking fiancé!"

"What the hell are you saying?" Bucky yelled. His grip tightened on your hand. "I've never even met you! How did you get in here?"

"We spent the night together, what the hell, Bucky!" She bellowed like a monster, then her voice softened. "I-I told you I love you."

"You're crazy."

"Call security." You said. "Now, Bucky!"

While Bucky grabbed for his phone, the woman pleaded, still trying to convince you that she slept with your fake fiancé. "If he says he doesn't know you," you responded, "then I believe him." Bucky slipped away from you, probably calling Leonard from downstairs. He gave you a knowing look, as if ushering you to unleash some kind of hell on his one-night stand. "You need to go, lady, if you don't want to be banned in every hotel here in New York. Yes, my fiancé can do that. So better get your ass out of here or -- "

"Okay, okay!" She held up her hands, giving up. "I'm out of here! Jesus fucking Christ -- " She mumbled more under her breath as she took of Bucky's clothes, revealing a white tank top underneath. She picked up her heels that were scattered on the living room: one shoe on the couch, the other near a foot of a small table. Picked up some pair of jeans on the carpet before stepping inside the elevator.

"I wish you luck in your fucking marriage." She said, tone filled with rage. Then, she proceeded to flip Bucky one last time before she disappeared behind the elevator doors, eyes boring into Bucky's.

"Okay, she's going down. Tell her to never come here again. Thanks, Lenny." Bucky dropped the phone call and gave you a smile. "And thank you for your performance."

You bowed, like how actors bow after a play ends, and flashed him a smile. "Why, thank you."

"Thanks to you I'm never gonna see that woman again in my life."

You turned your back on him, seeing the place for the first time without a tainted image of the woman. A line of little sculptures near every wall (perhaps the ones he commissioned from that subway artist). Family photos, albums and trophies took up a whole cabinet. You shifted your gaze towards the living room where a nice brown couch sits on top of a beige rug, which faced a huge flat screen television. Two pairs of love seats sat across from each other. A glass table set in the middle. On the back wall was a photograph of Bucky which took the whole space. He wore a neat, well-pressed grey suit, sitting on what seemed like a throne inside a home office, one leg stretched outwards and one leg just resting normally on the floor. He had this head tilt on one side, right hand under his chin, blue eyes looking directly at the camera. On its floor were stacks of magazines, and papers.

Even you couldn't deny how good Bucky looked in the photo but the photograph itself? You knew you could do better than that.

You turned around and found Bucky nowhere. "Bucky?"

He then emerged from what seemed like a kitchen because he was carrying loads of food and trod towards where you were and placed everything on the coffee table. "Yeah?"

"If I wasn't here, what would've you done?"

He shrugged, and opened a yogurt. "Probably stay in your apartment forever."

"Wow," you sat on the couch, watching him devour the food on the table, "seems like you've planned everything out."

"Seems like it, yeah."

"Do you always do this, Bucky?"

"What do you mean?"

"Have sex with girls, then make up a lie to get them out of your life."

"Oh, that was the first time." He replied. "Those three words really freaked me out. I've never heard that come from someone besides my family. Never even told anyone I've loved them, again, except my family."

You nodded in response and looked around the penthouse some more, admiring some paintings, big and small, on the walls. Perhaps some were real, perhaps some were just school ofs. On your right, was a draped curtain covering a whole glass wall that overlooked New York city. Bucky clicked some button somewhere which let the curtains open, letting some of the New York sun inside. From here, one could see the whole view of New York. All its pleasure, glory, grime, and lowliness.

Oh, the things you would give to live in a place like this. If you wanted to take in the beauty of New York, you had to climb up on the fire exit towards the rooftop. And the view from up there wasn't as pretty as this one. All the pretty spots were behind million dollar skyscrapers.

You looked at Bucky once more who leaned against the love seat, then closed his eyes. That same fuzzy image, which you thought you had buried at the back of my mind, resurfaced.

"Bucky?"

He shot straight up. "Yeah?"

"Have we... met each other before?"

A frown formed on his face, his blue eyes meeting yours, his gaze intense; as if he was trying to put a finger on something, on you. But then he gave up, telling you perhaps you'd just seen him somewhere here in New York the last time he was here, bumped into him. Something like that.

You agreed. Maybe that was it.

Again, you pushed that image at the back of your mind, hoping it would never come up while Bucky was still here.

You were about to ask Bucky how long he was planning to stay in New York before partying in every country outside America when your phone rang.

It was Steve. You picked it up immediately. "Hey, Steve. Is everything okay?"

Bucky shot his head towards you, perhaps wondering who this Steve was.

"Hey." He replied. His voice was groggy, like he just woke up. "There's been some misunderstanding with the shipments. They thought I said drop them in the morning. Long story short, the shipments are just outside the pub's door."

"What? They can't do that!"

"They have a lot of deliveries today so they had to. I told them to wait for you but those are impatient bastards. New shipment boys."

You cursed then stood up. "I'm actually not in the apartment right now. I'm somewhere else. Not important. I'm on my way."

"Get there fast, Aria."

"I will, don't worry. Bye, Steve."

Once you got off the phone, you told Bucky the whole situation.

"Let's go then!" He said with much enthusiasm. "Those drinks are no good sitting out there. How else am I going to make you the best drink you'll ever have, darling?"

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes smut #bucky x y/n #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes story #fan fic #fan fiction #bucky barnes fan fiction #thank u so much 4 all the support ily all #chapter 4 yay

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