#even worse i finished this super late on WEDNESDAY and waited a day to post bc i was like idk if i like this i'm gonna sleep on it.

[andredsen]

my jinafire fang vote picks...if you can believe it i didn't realize the results were going to be released yesterday BUT luckily all my faves ended up winning LFG!!!

#monster high #monster high fang vote #even worse i finished this super late on WEDNESDAY and waited a day to post bc i was like idk if i like this i'm gonna sleep on it. #& ended up looking like a fool... #my art #jinafire long #mh fanart #“hit the slay button” but it's “hit the chromatic aberration button”

[hecticcheer]

Hyponatremia (unfinished T/M/A fic)

Fiveish months ago I tried to write a fic based on this scenario post I made. I’m super definitely never gonna finish it, and, it just kinda trails off at the end? Also it’s very rough. Features some American measurements in brackets that I’m too lazy to convert, if that gives you an idea. But I figured I’d post it anyway on one-slice-of-cake>no-cake principle.

As for the plot... uh. Jon has a headache; Martin tries to help, but makes it worse. For *checks notes* ~4200 words. If it has one saving grace, it’s that you can mmmmostly understand it without prior knowledge of T/M/A? Long as you know Martin’s living in the Archives to hide from an evil worm monster, you should be good.

--

As usual, Jon was the first person to join Martin down in the Archives that morning, sometime between seven and eight. And, no more unusually, Martin had twelve-plus hours of nervous energy to work off, and nobody to shed it on but his boss. “Morning. Sleep well? Tim said you still had some work to do when we left for the pub, but I didn’t see you when I got back so you can’t have made too late a night of it.” (Jon shook his head.) “Shame you couldn’t join us, by the way. Elena and Clarisse and them destroyed us on geography, and Sasha says you’re pretty good on maps and that. Maybe you could’ve saved us.”

“Doubt it,” said Jon. Martin waited for him to add more to that thought, but instead he just sort of stood there. Pinched one nostril shut and inhaled experimentally through the other. Trying to figure out which one was clogged, maybe? Tim said Jon’d said he had a headache; maybe it was a sinus thing. Not that this was exactly reliable intel. On pub-quiz Wednesday Tim always regaled him and Sasha with Jon’s latest excuses not to join them. They were always bad, but some were so bad Martin suspected they weren’t so much Jon’s lies as Tim’s lies about Jon’s lies. Probably not a great idea to mention this one, then. He’d stick to the first excuse Jon had allegedly given:

“Did you finish what you were working on?”

Jon closed his eyes, for a bit longer than the average blink, but not long enough to count as a proper wince. “Not even close.”

“Oh. What… was it?”

“Cabinet of statements from 2003. Or at least, nominally from 2003, though by my count less than a third of them actually date from that year.”

“Yikes. Need any help? Extra pair of hands, or.”

“Not right now.”

“2003,” Martin mused—“are you still looking for Mr. McKenzie’s statement?”

A short, but hearty sigh. Enunciated, practically. He didn’t open his mouth until afterward, but Martin could see his nostrils flare around it. “No. Three days ago, when I started to look through the cabinets marked 2003, I was looking for Mr. McKenzie’s statement. Now I just want to find out which statements in there I can’t send straight to the discredited section.”

Jon stood in the open doorway to his office by this point, hand on the knob as if to remind Martin of his eagerness to close it behind him. Even so Martin tried to peer past him into the office, looking for a discard pile of statements he might offer to shuttle away himself. This was pretty hard to do surreptitiously, though. He’d hoped his eyes would land at once on the tallest pile, at which time he could point to it and say, Are those the discredited ones, then? But from his vantage point all the piles on Jon’s desk seemed taller than usual.

“Right,” Martin said instead; “good luck.” He smiled weakly and returned his gaze to Jon, meaning to restore eye contact before he remembered how seldom Jon looked at people’s faces anyway. At this moment both his eyes were covered by the hand not on the doorknob. It would’ve been weird, he figured, to just duck out now while Jon couldn’t even see him, so Martin told himself to wait until he opened his eyes and only then back off.

But then Jon just stayed like that, for ages, with his fingers on one temple and his thumb on the other, blocking all possibility of sight. Eventually Martin felt like he had no choice but to say, “Are you alright?—or, I mean, how’s your head, by the way? Tim said….”

“It’s fine.”

“Ssssso it—doesn’t still hurt, then?”

“I’m fine, Martin. Thank you,” Jon said, but in one of the least thankful-sounding tones of voice he had. And then he closed the door, without even waiting for Martin to back up.

—

“Thought you might like coffee this morning instead of tea. It’s got more caffeine, and, that’s supposed to help, right? Plus I remembered what you said on your birthday about tea having tannins just like wine does. Of course, for all I know coffee might too—”

“It does.”

“Oh. Well… maybe the caffeine’ll cancel it out and you’ll break even? Or, I don’t know, maybe if you already have a headache they can’t trigger one.”

Jon’s answering Hm sounded pessimistic. Sure enough, as soon as Martin had finished his sentence he said, “I’m not that lucky.”

“Probably not,” Martin agreed with a laugh. “Still, least it’s hydration. Though caffeine’s a diuretic, so if I recall correctly you only get about half, volume-wise. That mug’s about… [twelve ounces,] I’d say? So it probably counts as about [six toward your sixty-four].”

“Yes, yes,” replied Jon, picking up his bottle of water and shaking it. When he set it down again, one look confirmed what Martin had suspected from the sound it made—it was nearly empty.

“Oh hey, look at that! Looks like you’re doing a pretty good job even without…” he trailed off, realizing too late that the most logical end to that sentence was my help, and that that was a pretty pompous way to refer to a coffee he was pretty sure Jon didn’t even want. So instead he said, “I’ll go refill that for you.” And before Jon could look up Martin scurried off to the break room with it.

The water dispenser should’ve been changed yesterday. When the water got this low it took ages to fill even a mug, much less a tall bottle like this one. It startled as a trickle, and by about halfway up the bottle slowed to a glorified drip. In his mind he pleaded with the water spout not to make so much noise; promised it he’d put in a new one as soon as he’d returned Jon’s water to him, mouthed encouragements to it. Not much farther, just to the top of the M, come on, you can do it. (The bottle was an Institute freebie, with Magnus Institute inscribed on it in black-bordered green letters. Martin had one just like it somewhere in his flat. Worm bait now, he supposed.)

By the time he brought it back Jon’s eyes were on the statement in his hands. Skimming, by the looks of it, rather than either actually reading or pretending to.

Martin endeavored to set down his refilled water audibly, but not painfully loudly. But Jon’s answering “Thank you” took him so much by surprise that at the last moment his wrist jerked and the bottle fell over.

“Ah! Sorry, sorry.” It had a lid, so, not an actual disaster? Jon did snarl at him though, or at least at the noise. His hands flew up as if to cover his ears, but he seemed to reject that idea halfway through. Just closed his fists around thin air, then leant his temple on one of them and sighed through his nose. “Sorry,” Martin said again. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Jon’s emphatic blink seemed to stand in for a nod.

“Anyway, here’s a further [sixteen ounces] for you, looks like, or thereabouts,” ventured Martin, patting the side of the water bottle with one hand while holding it down with the other so it definitely wouldn’t topple again. “I’ll just leave you to it then.”

“Mm.”

“Good luck.”

—

After his stunt with the water bottle Martin had too much distrusted himself to risk making another big noise with the door, so he’d left it with its tongue sticking out rather than latching it. This meant he made almost no sound when he entered again. The first thing he noticed was that the water in Jon’s bottle still reached the top of the M. It still sat in the same place, too—not out of Jon’s reach but far enough away (Martin had told himself at the time) not to seem an imposition on his space. Almost definitely not where one would set it if one intended to pick it up again soon. His coffee seemed to have fared a bit better though. Half empty, one might say. Optimistically.

The second thing he noticed was Jon himself, who sat with his elbows on the desk, his chin on the heels of his palms, and his fingers arranged around his eyes like fence posts. Like a child peeking out at something they’re too scared to look at directly—except that his eyes were closed.

Martin snuck back to the other side of the door and knocked on it, gently. “Hey, uh, Jon?”

He didn’t look up, and opened his eyes for only a second before shutting them again. But he did drop his hands, threaded his fingers together and set them on the table, and bit his lip. “What, Martin.”

“Er—well, I know you said you’d given up looking for Marcus McKenzie’s statement, but I just realized I never asked if you’d thought to look in the discredited section. I mean, from what he said on the phone it didn’t sound like he took his dad’s statement all that seriously, so, maybe Gertrude put it in there, as, like, corroborating evidence that it wasn’t paranormal, and McKenzie senior’s statement just got misfiled?”

“Martin, I invented the discredited section.”

“Oh.”

“Anything else you wanted to say?”

“Oh, uh, nothing important. Just wondered if you’d like me to take that mug away.”

Instead of responding verbally, Jon picked up the mug and made what seemed a valiant effort to drink a little more of the coffee inside it. From what Martin could tell, he barely managed not to grimace in disgust.

“Do you like coffee? I’m not a big fan of it either, to be honest. Oh, well. If you can’t force that down you’ve still got plenty of water there, I see. Besides, it’ll wash out the taste.” (With an actual heh heh, which came out more like a small dog panting than like human laughter.)

Dramatic, snarly sigh from Jon. “Think I’ll pass. It seems to make it worse, if anything.”

“Oh. Sorry about that; must be those pesky tannins. I’ll just take your cup now then.”

But Jon only tightened his grip on it. “Water, I meant. The coffee’s fine. Not exactly my favorite beverage in the world, but, you were right. It’s a good idea.”

“Oh. Thanks, I’m glad you.” Martin smiled, then frowned. “Wait, water makes it worse?”

“Seems to.”

“Really? Are you sure it wasn’t just—too cold, or something.”

His laugh sounded bitter, hollow—theatrically so, in fact. A perfect Ha ha ha, except he didn’t say those words, didn’t enunciate them like Sasha sometimes did when Tim made a bad joke. He just made the exact sounds they were invented to transcribe. “No, Martin. I haven’t just been giving myself a brain freeze every time I.”

“…Right, of course not. Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” For a few silent seconds Martin picked at a notch in his thumbnail, carved there earlier this morning by a stubborn paperclip. Part of him wanted to tear the nail off and have done, but he knew it would bleed if he did. Nothing to clip it with in the Archives, obviously. “Are you sure you won’t try again? This water’s quite tepid, actually, since I got it literally from the bottom of the barrel—”

“Martin—”

“Sorry, sorry. Just thought it was worth—”

“Don’t you have something better to do.”

“Er… no, actually. Pretty much finished with everything, at the momen…t. Though if you’d like to give me another assignment I’d be happy to—yeah. Do that, for you. Or I mean, for the sake of the Archives; I don’t mean it’d just be, like, busy work. Not accusing you of that or anything.”

“Are you comfortable leaving the Archives?”

For half a second Martin heard this as a hint—an offer? a threat?—that Jon meant to have him transferred to another department. Then he wondered if Jon was hinting it was time Martin found somewhere else to live. “What, like, permanently?”

“No—just as long as it takes to track down and interview Georgie Barker about her role in the statement Ms. King gave us.”

“Oh. Yeah, I think so, uh. Thank you for asking? I mean, Prentiss said she was done with me, right. At least, me personally. And she already knows I’m here, so it’s not like.”

Jon replied shortly, “Yes.”

“I’d like to listen to Ms. King’s statement first, though, if that’s alright. What’d you say it was about? The Cambridge Military Hospital?”

Another short, emphatic, nose-directed sigh. Couldn’t be too stuffed-up then, Martin guessed. “Technically, yes, though Ms. King insists the building itself had nothing to do with it.”

“Huh. What was it about, then?”

“She alleges that a woman she hired to help film one of her ghost stories peeled the skin off her arm.”

“Oh my god! I mean, did you—was she okay? Did she show you her arm? Did it seem to have—you know—skin?”

“Her own arm, not Ms. King’s.”

“Oh.” Martin sighed for himself now, though with relief rather than exasperation. Managed a tiny laugh, as well. “Okay, well, that’s. Creepy as hell, but, not nearly as bad as.”

“Mm. Nor nearly as verifiable as your version.”

“T…rue, no, I guess not. Anyway do you have the tape? I’d like to listen myself, if that’s.”

Jon pointed to a small stack of tapes on the bookshelf to Martin’s right. Sure enough, the top one had M. King, 0161704 sharpied across the label on its side. “Ah! Found it. Thanks.” He had a tape player squirreled away already; on another day he might’ve pretended otherwise, but for the moment he was too relieved not to have to make a pest of himself by asking to borrow one to worry whether the absence of that request might make Jon suspicious.

Besides, Jon seemed pretty… absorbed in himself, this morning. By the time Martin turned to face him again one of Jon’s hands had crept back up to his face, where its fingers now seemed to comb the hairs of his left eyebrow. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Jon do that before, plus doubted the hairs in question needed his help to lie flat. Jon’s eyebrows had always struck him as quite neat. Plus Martin had tried that with his own eyebrows plenty of times before the mirror in his youth, and knew it didn’t work very well even if you licked your finger—which Martin assumed Jon hadn’t. So he figured he should file this behavior in the same box as the earlier fist-clenching-to-avoid-covering-ears thing. As, like, headache-soothing for people who don’t want to look weak. Or unprofessional, or something to that effect.

This gave him a sense of foreboding when he thought too hard about it. But Martin needed so badly to keep this job, now that his flat wasn’t safe anymore. It seemed wiser not to look directly at abstract threats like that. If he could make Jon feel better then it wouldn’t matter, right? Or at least could be put off til next time.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Don’t recall saying I was,” Jon muttered.

Martin winced. He had said he was alright—Martin was certain. When he’d first come in that morning, he’d said he was fine when Martin asked, and then he’d closed the door. Didn’t seem worth correcting him over it, though. So Martin just said, “Try to drink something while I’m gone, yeah? Kool-Aid, for all I care, just. You really don’t look like you’re feeling all that well. And any kind of drink other than alcohol should—oh.”

He looked up, hearing Jon swallow what sounded like a lot more than the tiny sip of coffee he’d managed before.

“Well. Great. Thank you for obliging me.”

Jon continued to gulp down water, while staring right at Martin. He paused in swallowing to breathe, but even then did not remove the mouth of the bottle from his own mouth. When he tried to resume drinking it made him cough instead, and even then he didn’t set it down.

“O-okay, well, I’m sure that’s plenty, don’t—?” Hurt yourself, Martin wanted to say, but feared that would sound patronizing. The bottle was more than half empty now. Jon paused for air again. “For god’s sake, Jon, stop—that looks like it hurts—you don’t have to—?”

At last he slammed the empty bottle on his desk—more loudly than could possibly be comfortable for a man with a headache. Leant his elbow on the table, and between pants huffed a laugh and said, “Care to refill it for me?”

On a sort of autopilot Martin chirped, “Uh—sure! No problem I’ll just,” and rushed off with it to the break room. This refill took much less time, since he’d remembered to change out the thingy. But it still took long enough that by the time he got back he worried, “You’re not going to chug this one too, are you?”

“No,” said Jon, eyes and hands both busy now with a statement hitherto hidden by his elbow. He did not reach out a hand to take the bottle from Martin.

“Okay, I’ll just. Leave this here then. See you after the, uh. Yeah.”

—

And lo, it was as he had feared. Chugging [sixteen ounces] of water did indeed make his headache worse. By ten it seemed to count turning the page of a statement as an exertion worth pounding over. True, by lunch time it seemed to have backed off a bit—until he sat back down at his desk with his fork and plate. On his way to the microwave he’d thought he must be on the mend: his head throbbed a little harder than when he’d been seated, but not so much he’d have noticed the difference had he not set out to pay attention to it. Some food, maybe an ibuprofen or two and he’d be fixed, he’d told himself.

Once he got to the break room, though, he noticed something else odd. His limbs were weak. His knees seemed made of jelly, and wobbled beneath him every time he shifted his weight; his arms were steady enough, but when he set down the pizza box on the counter after retrieving it from the fridge he felt a surge of relief, which he hardly understood until he’d transferred a slice from the no-onion half onto a plate and picked up the latter to put it in the microwave. Even these tiny movements made his arms, neck and chest ache like they do when you hold your breath too long. He leant his elbows against the counter and gulped down air until his mouth felt so dry he couldn’t bear to keep it open. Wondered if he should sit down; he felt a bit dizzy. But he had less than 30 seconds left to wait for the microwave, which he figured couldn’t hurt him.

It didn’t, but the walk back to his office did a bit. Moving his legs’ sluggish muscles made his whole body ache—again like it does when you run too long and have to stop for breath. He figured it must be in a similar spirit that his head waited til he’d sat down to unleash its onslaught. Before leaving his desk he’d grown used to thinking of his heart beat’s faint buzzy shocks like the second hand on a clock, criticizing him under its breath from where it watched behind his eyes. This was… a great deal worse than that. He tried to time the beats against the ticking of his wrist watch, but couldn’t seem to focus on that and breathe at the same time. They were fast, though, at least at first. His heart rate did seem to calm down fairly quickly, but he could swear it never got all the way back down to its earlier rate—at least not before his attention shifted from the speed to just. How much it hurt.

Was that what made his slice of pizza so tasteless? When he cut his first bite, on its way to his mouth he thought he caught a whiff of the red onions with which its tip must have shared space, and only his horror of Tim asking What was wrong with that part, then? when he brought the otherwise-empty plate back to the sink stopped him from scraping that bite off his fork and trying again higher up the slice. But when he finally forced himself to eat it? Nothing. No onion taste, thank god, but everything else too seemed… muted. Hardly worth how the exertion of chewing made his head hammer after each swallow. Jon knew the taste of food was hardly the point of eating it, but? In the absence of everything he normally liked about cheese and meat and bread and vegetables, the fact the cheese squelched in his mouth made him wish he’d never left his bed. The way leaves of soggy spinach flapped over the sides of even his neatly-cut rectangles. His stomach tightened in revulsion, so that in his throat he could feel each swallowed lump shifting from foot to foot, waiting to be let in. Not to mention how the effort of cutting it shook the whole damn table.

He told himself he could skip the crust. If Tim asked about it, Jon’d just tell him it’d gone stale. Just get through the… other part, the crumb, the filling. Between throbs the ache in his tired jaw merged with the one behind his eyes. Why didn’t it always hurt to chew? Did the pleasure of tasting food give you enough endorphins to cancel it out? Would everyone have this problem all the time if we had to live on, say, dry toast?

Right, okay, close enough. Ibuprofen now. No, you idiot—other drawer. In the fantasy versions he’d rehearsed of this moment he clapped four of them from his palm into his mouth at once, and swallowed them dry. But his blister pack turned out to have only three left. Which was fine! Just fine. Better, probably, after so little lunch.

Also, dry-swallowing was kind of a misnomer? He’d never really thought about it before, but. Turned out it would only work if your so-called “dry” mouth had spit in it. As it was the pills stuck to his tongue, leaving streaks of spicy burnt-orange when he tried to claw them back toward his throat with his teeth. When they got far back enough on his tongue he had to concentrate not to gag, and they still stuck—even when he turned his nose to face the ceiling and thumped on his chin with his hand (which, ouch)—at that point he gave up and unscrewed his water. Allowed as little of it in his mouth as would let him swallow these damn things, and wash their stains off his tongue. And it still made his head throb harder.

Jon imagined shooting whoever next told him to stay hydrated. He derived little joy from the fantasy, though; couldn’t not think of the loud, sharp noise it would make.

Returning the plate could wait, he decided; not like it would attract worms in the thirty minutes it’d take for the pills to kick in. Meanwhile he’d just… keep sorting. He took a statement off the top of the pile in front of him and blinked at it over and over, until his vision resolved into a shape he told himself hurt marginally less than the others. 9720406, Nathaniel Thorp. Christ, 1972? “Misfiled” was practically an understatement for that one. And here he’d thought Gertrude had kept that part of the century in relative good order. Still, he stuck it on the all other years pile and reached for another. 0130111, David Laylow. Nope—still not 2003. 0002610, Jennifer Wong. 0910203, Lisa Jones. 0081711, Donald Gately. 0100912, Lawrence Mortimer. 0152101, Uzma Rashid. Ha!—0030707, Seymour… Backsides. Wait a minute. Hadn’t he seen a prank statement with that name before lunch? He grabbed a stack off the 2003 pile and found… Rashid, Mortimer, Gately. Had he switched the—? Look in the unsorted pile again, he told himself. Under where he’d found Mr. Backsides’ tale he uncovered statements 0031212, 0032504, 0031809, and so on. Great. After Seymour he must’ve got mixed up. There was no more unsorted pile—not on his desk, anyway. He’d have to pull some more out of the… open filing cabinet which stood across the room with its tongue stuck out at him. Yeah, well, that could wait too. For now he’d just. Check his email.

#a shifty tract #to be clear hyponatremia is uh. too little sodium in blood. it is the 'eat more salt' ailment #it's very common w/ dehydration so any diuretic (i.e. med that makes you pee more) can cause it? #my plan here was to have martin complain to tim and sasha that he Broke Jon and when he mentions jon said water made it worse ('god why #('didn't i just believe him?') tim as the only Sports Guy in the archives recognizes ah-ha! electrolytes! #and either get him himself or tell martin to get him some trail mix and sports drink #and have jon drag his feet since every other suggestion his coworkers have given him over the last few days of headache &c. has been Garbage #but eventually cave out of pure frustration--enjoy the taste of salty raisin and stale pretzel so much he grins til his face hurts-- #and figure out it must be 'cause he switched adhd meds recently #(...tho apparently it's rare for them to have this effect BUT THEY CAN! i have two data points) #nonsearchable tma tag

[empyreanwritings]

Just a Little Complicated

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader (Florist AU)

Word Count: 2.4k

Warnings: mentions of losing a parent

A/N: Y’all, I actually managed to write a one shot, are you proud of me? Please be proud of me LOL! This is written for @marquiswrites​ 100 followers challenge! I am super duper late, and for that I really am sorry. You probably have already reached another milestone by the time I’ve posted this. But yeah, go give them a follow cause they deserve it!

Feedback is always welcomed and appreciated (: x

Sweat stuck to the back of Steve's shirt. He cursed himself for not getting a car already, but he didn't anticipate the southern heat being so brutal. The last thing he wanted was to go into places covered in sweat and ask for a job, but he had no choice. He couldn't afford to live off what the government deemed enough for a veteran to live on; he wasn't going to go off on that tangent, but it really was ridiculous. He almost gave his life for a country, and they acted like enough money to survive comfortably was a nuisance.

Many places gave him the same response when he asked if they were hiring: "Thank you for your service, but we just don't have an open spot!" Some of the managers hid their disdain for his lack of perfect hygiene. Not all of them, though. He could see the judgement in their eyes when he came in sweaty with a service dog in tow.

He was more than capable of handling any job, but he couldn't stop others from having their judgement. He was used to it back in the city.

But he refused to make a fuss about it here.

The last place he tried for the day was a small flower shop on the corner of the street. The entire shop window was filled with flowers of every color, and the windowsill was painted mint green. It contrasted greatly against the brick exterior, but Steve liked the way it looked; it had a quirky charm that many of the snooty "antique" shops didn't have.

And when he saw the bright yellow door with the name "Mama June's" written above it, he was sold.

Organization didn't exist in the shop, that was apparent the moment he stepped into it. Flowers, vases, and ribbons were scattered in groups throughout the different counters and containers. It reminded him of a wildflower field - chaotic yet oddly appealing.

An elderly woman rounded the corner, dirt covering her hands and arms. She let out a small 'Oh!' when she saw Steve before brushing her hands against her apron and offering one to him.

"You're not my daily lunch delivery!" She chuckled. "I'm June. Haven't seen you around these parts before - stayin' or passin' through?"

"Staying, hopefully." His smile made her smile in return, and the corners of her eyes wrinkled in the endearing way Steve always loved seeing in his own grandmother. "Steve Rogers, ma'am. It's nice to meet you."

She swatted his arm gently. "Don't you ma'am me, mister! I ain't that old yet!"

June - or Mama June, as she liked to be called - a whole foot shorter than Steve, but she acted like she was the tallest person in the room. Her round face showed her age in the way she wrinkled by her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Steve remembered something his mom used to say, "I don't get why women want to hide their laugh lines! It shows they lived a happy life!" And June clearly felt the same way.

She filled up a water bowl for Dodger and placed it down by his feet, which Steve quickly thanked her for. The poor boy wasn't used to this level of heat either.

"What can I do for ya?"

"I was hoping to see if you were hiring, ma-" She shot him a look that warned him not to finish his word, and he cleared his throat. "Mama June."

"Mhm, that's what I thought you were going to say," she hummed. "You ever work for a florist before?"

He shook his head, already preparing himself for the rejection. The closest he ever got to be a florist was helping pick out the flowers for his mother's funeral. It wasn't exactly his favorite memory.

"Well," she pretended to look around the empty shop and let out a dramatic sigh, "As you can see, we're pretty busy! I don't need much help up front, but I could use the help on delivery days. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - that work?"

"Anything works for me. Thank you." He wanted to hug the woman for giving him a chance, but she would have probably kneed him. She was feisty.

The bells on the front door clanged as someone walked in, pulling their attention away from each other. June was just about the greet the new guest, but she was already being interrupted.

"Mama, you know you are supposed to be watching your cholesterol!" You scolded June as you set down a take-out container on the front counter. "My mother would turn over in her grave if she knew I was letting you eat the diner's burgers."

You sighed when June waved your comment off, and Steve let out a chuckle. The two of you must have known each other for a long time. The way you moved around the shop made it seem like you knew the layout like the back of your hand.

"And who is this?" Your eyes turned towards Steve, and he wasn't sure how to breathe when he noticed how they sparkled. Despite sweat and the grease stains on your diner dress, you were easily the most beautiful woman he'd ever met. And it wasn't until your eyebrows practically raised to your hairline that he realized he was too busy staring to introduce himself.

"This is my new helper!" June replied for him. "Steve's gonna help me around here on delivery days."

You gasped in mock surprise. "You're actually letting someone help you? Has Hell frozen over?"

"Stop it. I'm never to turn away someone in need, and my back has been actin' up." You whipped around, but June held her hand up. "Don't give me that look! I'm fine! I just can't be liftin' boxes the way I used to."

You shook your head, strands of your hair falling out of your bun. Concern was written all over your face. Steve couldn't help but wonder if you knew something about June that no one else did. Maybe she was sick, or just had poor health in general. Either way, he knew he was going to have to look out for the old woman when you weren't around.

You chewed on your bottom lip and finally turned back towards Steve after a beat.

"You take care of her," you said with a hint of warning in your tone. "I bring lunch every day at noon, so feel free to give a call before then to give me your order."

Steve smiled and nodded. "Thank you."

He was partially embarrassed 'Thank you' was the only thing he managed to say in your presence. Time overseas hadn't done much to help his charm when it came to women. Not that he would have instantly started flirting with you - he had manners - but still. He would have liked to appear smoother.

You left the shop almost as quickly as you entered it. June let out a laugh when she realized Steve had been staring at the door for a solid minute after you walked out. He wasn't discreet at all.

"I'll see you Wednesday, Steve," she nudged his side with her elbow, "Unless I see you at the diner before then!"

Her comment made her burst into another fit of laughter, and she grabbed her meal and headed towards the back before he could defend himself. He looked down at Dodger and shook his head. At least he didn't know how obvious his owner was.

Steve settled into working with June easily after that day. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he'd be there at six in the morning to unload the boxes from the delivery truck. It was a lot more work than he expected it to be, but he enjoyed it. He loved being able to stay busy and feel like someone needed him.

Working in the morning gave him enough time to avoid the southern heat that always came by ten. He was thankful to have the cool AC to unpack the boxes in because he wasn't sure he'd make it the first week if June made him unpack them all outside. He'd probably end up worse than an ice cream cone melted on the sidewalk - and he had seen a few of those in the few weeks he worked.

But the best part about working had been you.

Every day you came in at noon, not a minute before or after. June said you had a thing about always being on time, and you never explained why. She had her theories about how you missed saying goodbye to your mom because you were late, but you refused to confirm whether that was true or not. And Steve didn't know you well enough to ask.

Throughout the weeks, though, he spent as much time as he could getting to know you. Some days were tougher than others; you didn't always like answering the questions he wanted to ask you, but other days, you were generous.

He learned the basics: your favorite color, the one movie that made you cry even after you've watched it several times, and what kind of toppings you liked on your pizza. And you liked asking him the deeper questions. What made him join the army? If he could go anywhere in the world, where would he go? Why did he prefer New York style pizza over deep dish?

The deep-dish debate lasted for an hour, and you only stopped arguing because your lunch break was over.

"I'll learn to forgive your poor taste in pizza if you tell me what your favorite flower is," he said one day when you didn't have to rush back to the diner.

You shrugged your shoulders and pretended like telling him your favorite flower was the worst thing he could ever make you do. "Aren't you the flower man now? I know June's been giving you some of her tips in flower arranging magic! You should be able to figure out what kind of flower I like the most."

It was a challenge, he realized later on. You could have told him what your favorite flower was and never thought about it again, but you wanted to test him. You wanted to see if he actually paid attention to the things you told him during your one-hour visits. Of course, Oblivious Steve had to be told by June that was what you were doing.

He made it his mission to make sure you left with one flower whenever he worked after that.

You'd come in with the styrofoam takeout containers, and he would wait for you by the front counter with a single flower in his hand. Every day he worked.

The first time he did it, you crinkled your nose at the sight of the single red rose.

"Roses are apology flowers," you tutted. "Are you trying to say you've cheated on me before we've even gone on a date, Rogers?"

The tips of his ears turned bright red in the moment, and it was something you and June laughed about for the rest of the week. You knew exactly what you were doing to him, but you didn't plan on stopping any time.

You were actually curious how long he'd hold out just to find what kind of flower you loved.

Most guys would have given up by the second try; you wondered if Steve Rogers was going to be like most guys.

But even after you rejected the lilies and chrysanthemums and sunflowers, he still kept trying. He reminded you, in the most teasing way possible, he worked with a florist and had an endless supply of different flowers. He swore he'd find the one to make you swoon eventually.

When June came to you one morning and asked you to be nice to the man, you playfully rolled your eyes and reminded her that no good love story started out easy. You hadn't realized the words left your lips until June's eyes started to sparkle and she gave you the secret smile that reminded you of your mother. Steve Rogers made you think about love - something you hadn't thought about since your mother passed away.

Hell really must have frozen over then.

The next day Steve worked, after your conversation with June, your heart sunk when you realized there wasn't a flower in his hand. His focus was on an inventory sheet, which was a part of his job, but you expected him to take a break for his usual time with you. You thought that maybe he grew tired of trying to woo you.

Maybe it was too difficult.

Maybe you were too difficult.

But then he held his hands out and told you to wait in your spot, and you couldn't stop the grin from spreading across your face when he pulled a white box from behind the counter. It was small, probably didn't hold more than the bud of a flower or several flowers. And it had a black ribbon wrapped haphazardly around it.

You made a mental note to remind June to teach the poor man how to wrap ribbons around boxes and vases. He may have only unloaded the delivery trucks, but he deserved to learn the basic stuff.

You gasped when you opened the box and saw the Black Dahlia. How he managed to guess was one thing, but how he even managed to get the flower was another. You knew June didn't carry them in her shop because of how rare and expensive they were, which meant he went to a lot of trouble to make sure he had it for this moment. He went through a lot of trouble for you.

"How-"

"Mama June told me a good florist never reveals his secrets," Steve teased.

"You know, these flowers are supposed to represent betrayal and negative emotions. It's why a lot of florists don't like to use them in bouquets; it takes away their magic," you said with a small smile, your focus still on the flower sitting in your hand.

Steve shrugged. "I think there's magic that, don't you? Finding the beauty in the things that people say are bad."

"Are you saying I'm bad, Steve Rogers?" You murmured, not at all taking offense.

"Not bad, darling, just a little complicated."

#marquiswrites100challenge #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers one shot #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers x fem!reader #steve rogers au #florist au

[kikiyakno]

✧ Little Star

Date → Some day during the week prior to the Masquerade event. Feb 2021 Setting → Kian’s Grandparent’s Home. Santa Monica, California Triggers  → None, but does include descriptors of fish cutting so if that’s not your cup of tea... Mentioned  → Yi Jae-Sang , Seong Sunwoo , Brandon Kelly, Song Minjoon , Maverick Maxwell, Yong Chul Synopsis  →  ★ Stars are born when large gas clouds collapse under gravity.

The invitation was weird, it was random, it definitely was fishier than whatever fish it was Kian’s grandmother was scaling on the cutting board, but Kian held the weirdrandomandveryfishy invitation close to his chest. This was it. This was exactly the shimmering gold ticket his family and their restaurant needed that would definitely turn everything around.

Except…Gyeonggi Grill was having no part of it.

Just about every eatery in Pico was on board, even the ones Kian didn’t particularly think should be serving food (looking at you Pete’s Palace) and the ones he personally considered to be competition. There was no haste in the flood of Facebook posts on his feed of businesses confirming and promoting their attendance in response to the mysterious invite. It was hard not to feel the clamoring excitement over a party at an art museum. The more he refreshed pages, the more he heard about people talking of it between deliveries, the more Kian felt that this was possibly the shining light for Gijis to be seen again. They would sign up, get paid for it, and best of all to serve new people ~rich people~ to ultimately bring business back in. 

This big chance and his grandparents were radio silent. Kian couldn’t understand.

“Momo,” Kian whined loudly to his grandmother with a soft bounce on his heel. Even with his call the older woman didn’t look up from her work and feed into his melodramatic call. He huffed, the lack of response making his brows deepen further in frustration. “Momo, everyone who’s anyone will be there. They’re paying vendors to be there. This went out to a ton of people, probably everyone we know! Seriously! Everyone’s talking about it. This isn’t just something someone planned on the block, yakno. It’s a huge deal.” 

The pressed enunciations of his words make Kian stop to take a breath. In consideration, he defaulted to speaking in Korean when he was at home and not surrounded by any of his friends. His grandparents had never requested that he do so, but on his own Kian decided that it was a  respectful gesture. Just because English was his preferred language, forcing them to speak it with him didn’t seem fair. It takes him seconds to catch his breath before Kian starts up again.

“This party is exactly what we need, Momo. We can serve…..we can serve the soy garlic chicken! And you know people absolutely love our fried chicken. They talk about how good it is all the time! You know normal chicken places in America don’t double fry. And when they try, it sucks. That’s what makes ours so good! We can stand out with that! Guaranteed!” 

His grandma still didn’t respond, head down and much busier in her re-work of separating scales from the fish. However, there was a soft smile that had made a way to her face now. The passion and sincerity in his voice tickled her ears, especially when a little twist of the accent Kian had arrived at her doorstep with slipped free. Her grandson spoke with fire but not the kind that sought to burn others. He also spoke awfully fast. Which wasn’t too out of the norm for her grandson. Years ago she noticed Jae, Sunwoo, and Kian all shared that oddity.

The lull in the room pressed in on Kian and he broke through it with a giant huff. He waited still, watching her work the knife with expertise. He bit his lip to stop the clench of his jaw and the tightness from impatience building in his throat.

 “Mo—“ “Do you want to cut the fish? It’s your favorite before I clean it.” 

Cut short mid breath, Kian blinked wide at the knife being placed aside for him. She still didn’t look at him, but stepped aside for him to join her. The words sitting on his tongue blew away on a sigh, obediently setting the invite away and beelining to the sink to wash his hands. He steps beside her to take the knife as he starts cutting through the skin. The silence lingers on, aside from the edge of the knife occasionally drags against the cutting board. Kian works as asked, but fast. His cuts are clean and precise despite having his conversation stalled.

“You aren’t listening to me.” He says in an undertone, looking down at his work as he goes.  “I am, Ki-Hyun. I am listening.” Her voice is fond and silvery. Kian knew he was doing his cutting well. “Then why aren’t we joining everyone? Why aren’t we preparing for the event, Momo. We can serve food there.”  “...” “They will give us money. They pay, it won’t be free yakno.” “...” “A lot of people will be there. A lot of people who will love our food like they used to.” “...” “Maybe it’ll be enough money to help us catch up, Momo.”  “Kiki, please slow down and watch your cut.” “Please stop ignoring what I am saying.” Kian’s voice rises a few notches from his soft mutter. He pauses his cutting, noting how his clean work had suffered as he had tried to discuss. He evaluates briefly if his volume had gone too high to be seen as disrespectful, or if he could go on. Soon after he disregards his worry. He was tired of making these pleas and not getting answers. “Why are we not participating? Why aren’t we going?”

The sharpness in his tone takes her by surprise, but she is no stranger to determination. She can’t fight the look on her grandson’s face anymore, sighing herself before she gingerly responds.“...We can’t afford to close an entire day, Ki-Hyun. That’s a day’s business lost.” 

“They’ll pay twice that! Maybe triple than what we make in a day!” 

“We can’t guarantee that, Ki.”

“I can! It’s all over Facebook! Twitter! Other businesses saying they’ll be there and got paid! Remember when I made those accounts for us? People have tagged us—ah, mentioned us! They want to know if we’ll be there.” His voice brightens, contrasting her modulated one. His falters down instantly, however, seeing how her eyes widen then dampen in gentle confusion. Social media was still an entirely new world language for her. “Customers that are going to the party are asking about our food being there. They want us to be there too, Momo.” He defines for her with warmth. Kian can see her understand with his explanation, but she looks away from him before he can see a different turmoil in her eyes.

“We can’t gamble on something everyone else sees as lucrative. And...it would have to be more than a day to prepare for such a large number of people…that means we would have to close for longer to accommodate. Everyone on our staff would have to work longer.”

“Right, and then I’ll get Jae and DaeDae and Mason, and some of my new friends to help us all out and make things easier. And-and Minjoon loves being in the kitchen. If not, him and Chul have networks online too! I know they’d be super happy to help us find the hands we need. Maverick likes food trucks and stuff, he could talk to people! Oh, and Brandon might could help us with clothes and let us borrow something nice to go in!”

“Ki-Hyun.”

“He would find you a really nice dress. Remember I told you that’s what he does, yakno? He’s really good at it. Remember he called me from out of town? He was in a Fashion Show out of state! People love his stuff!” 

“Ki-Hyun.”

“And you know Jae would probably take off all his jobs to help. DaeDae would help too. Buuttt he’s the only one we might have to pay with food, so—” “Ki-Hyun.” Kian stops. Moreso to take a breath than to listen.

“Ki-Hyun, we don’t even have enough in our inventory right now to do so.”

“Yes we do, we—” “Kiki.” 

Kian blinked wide, and she simply shook her head against it. He hadn’t even finished! Each idea of his was shot down in seconds.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. These weren’t answers they were excuses. He didn’t notice how his hands had started trembling or how an ill taste of bitterness wrapped around his tongue. 

“Maybe if you stopped preparing that sweet chili wing combo every Monday and Wednesday night, we would have enough.”

“Kian!” 

“Momo, if Sunwoo was going to come back he would’ve by now. I told you that. But you still do that every night for two days a week. It’s been a month. That’s four weeks. Combos come with six pieces, but you give him two extra. So that’s about thirty-two pieces of meat we’ve had to throw out in the last month because of one person that could’ve fed five or more people.”

Kian knew he had crossed a line and he could see it in her face. He braced for anything, but she only fired right back at him.“And I will keep making what I want for him because those are his nights he works late. It’s too late and dangerous for him to stop anywhere else!”  

“You don’t get it. He doesn’t CARE!” Exploding, Kian lets knife go to drop onto the table as his world suddenly blurs. “He doesn’t care! He-He doesn’t care and he won’t come back! They aren’t coming back. Cause they don’t care. They don’t care. And YOU don’t care!” Kian steps back, immediately remorseful but a throaty sob obstructs his apology. The busy pattern on his grandma’s shirt melds into one in the watery world. “You don’t care! You won’t let me help. You don’t think I know we’re behind! I work because I know we’re in trouble. But you and Grandpa keep...trying to HIDE it and not make me worry. But that just makes it worse! I worry anyways! I’m 27 now and you’re getting older, but I see you work every single day. Then you come home, tired, but then for ME you pretend we’re doing okay when we’re not. We’re NOT!! No matter what we do it’s not enough. I keep working and working and working and working but it’s just not enough! It’s not enough for you to stop pretending like I can’t help! It’s not enough for my friends to feeling like they don’t have to baby me and take care of me and pay for me to eat all the time! It’s not enough for me to ever see you stop working, or rest well at night, or for us to think about taking road trips like we used to or flying away on vacation!” Kian stops to wipe his face with his sleeves in a rush, face wet as though he had been standing in rain. He pushes his face into them to have his cry, only to feel his chest heave in harder when in the brief darkness he only imagines the glittering, serene lights of Paris. He shuts his eyes tighter and tears his face away in a hurry, feeling the accumulation of months of his world caving in on itself finally collapsing on top of him. 

“I-I’m tired, halmeoni. I’m tired of us pretending. This is our one chance and you say no! Why are you giving it up so easily? Why are you giving up?! Wh-wh-why am I the only one who cares? N-N-No one cares! No one cares but me!”

Kian feels like he’s going to give way again before strong arms pull him close from behind. He breaks regardless, knowing now that at some point his Grandfather had come into the room. At this point Kian’s grief commanded his outburst.

“I’m sorry i’m not Kyung-soo. I’m sorry i’m not good like Kyung-soo so you could finally rest and have plenty of money and friends and nice clothes like he does. If I wasn’t here your family would love you and send you the money you need and you wouldn’t be dealing with this. They won’t even help you because of me. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry we can’t be happy and enjoy things like normal people. I’m so—!”

Kian felt warm hands take his cheeks and his body be squeezed harder. Momo had been hushing him and only at her touch had he quieted. He didn’t know how long she had been trying to, but his Grandfather’s face was buried heavy into his shoulder. Momo smiled, relieved to see that she had gotten through to him, but Kian could finally see her face was just as wet—and tired—as his. As familiar as she was to determination, her heart ached to see overwhelming frustration cripple the brightest heart she knew. She could be angry, she could be upset, but while Kian said one thing, she heard another. Hopes, wishes, blame, and shame but most of all that passion and sincerity.  Yes, it hurt to be the one hit by his fire this time, but this detonation of Kian’s was different than all the others she seen before it. She swiped over his cheeks with her thumbs, still working on a smile despite her own tears.

"Don’t let go of any of those dreams of yours, little one. We will figure this out just like we’ve figured out everything else. Keep hoping. It’ll be alright. I promise.”

#— self para. #[ :) ]

[chappedandfadedvds]

Nov 6th, Friday 20:18

JANAAAAAA!“ A parade of voices outscreaming themselves erupted at the new little video screen popping up on their online chat, as the familiar face of their abroad living friend appeared. 

She looked hilarious, wide eyed, absolutely overwhelmed, and even leaning away from her camera, as she laughed: „Good god, guys. I thought Jens was the boy, or better man, of the day. Not me.“

„Well we were just discussing our rescue mission to get you back home from still Trump Country.“ Luca said conspiratorial, as she whispered at short distance into her mic, making her sound a little asmr-ish and that much better.

„Also we can see or talk to Jens every day, we already sang him happy birthday, so you are more special.“ Robbe added, sticking his tounge out, as Sander grinned, raising his thumb in support. Jens rolled his eyes at them, giving them his middlefinger in return.

„Fuck you guys.“ He added without meaning it in the slightest. It was his birthday party chat, but he really didn’t mind their taunting, calling him an old man, leaving Milan and Senne to stick up to him. The real friends here in the group, Jens would make sure to remember that.

„So how is my birthday boy today?“ Jana asked smiling brightly as she looked as beautiful as ever, her hair a little shorter. He liked it, it looked very good on her. He wondered if she would ever leave his heart, and if they would have found each other again, hadn’t she moved away. 

Jens had Lucas now though, and the thought that he may not even had considered the boy, was unimaginable. Or worse he could have nonetheless fallen for him, while being with Jana... A  much scarier thought reminding him of his end with Britt, something he definitely didn’t need to revisit. So he smiled at her and kept it short: „Pretty great actually, I thought I would hate not having a party, but I really enjoy celebrating in bed in my comfy home clothes.“

I also got kissed by the prettiest boy on earth and slept like a baby for the first time in weeks.

Jens never said it out loud, but he couldn’t help his smile from growing, as did his heart in his chest planning to escape, just thinking about the morning. Both of them awake once the alarm went off, staying in bed another couple of minutes in a lazy cudlle, pecking kisses at heach other. God it was too cheesy and he loved every moment of it. Lucas had changed clothes, just as fast as Jens, as the boy had hurried out of the house to get home, while Jens panicked to get everything done on his agenda. They had spent a little too long in bed. 

Jens would welcome the stress back every morning, if Lucas would promise to show up on his doorstep every time the clock struck midnight. 

„Jens?“ Aaron asked amused, waving his hand in front of the camera to get his attention back. He may have drifted off there a bit.

„Sorry, what?“

„Milan said, you have to come by tomorrow because he is not gonna have you spent a birthday without getting a cake and blowing out a candle with a party hat on.“ Senne provided as an explanation, but the only thing happning in Jens’s brain was the image of Lucas last night. Fuck this boy was taking over his mind way too fast.

„Eh sure. Though I think I have to bring Lotte, my mom is busy tomorrow. Children under 12 do not fall under the lockdown guidelines, so should be safe. That’s okay for you?“ Jens asked looking at the little screen showing all members of the flatshare in a tangled mess on Zoenne’s bed.

„Yeah I think that’s fine. It’s not like we have to make it toddlersafe.“ Milan said already looking excited of having the little girl over too. Until now, they only ever had visited the flatshare one time back in February and only for an hour or two, usually they met at Jens’s place.

„Shit Babe, that means we have to finish his present today.“ Robbe exclaimed a bit too panicked for it to be a joke. His boyfriends eyes widned, as he looked at Robbe in shock. „Jens, is it too late to say it is for christmas?“ 

„Pretty much, yes, it better be amazing, or I’ll cancel this friendship.“

„Oh I forgot, fuck!“ Luca suddelnly loudly announced getting off of her chair and stumbling out of frame her voice still being picked up by the mic: „Let me just turn the speaker on.... Wait...wait... Okay! I know it is not the best time given election. Yikes! But we are all together in chat since Jana moved, soooo.“

One note was all that was needed for the group to immediatly loose it.

„You are not playing Miley Cyrus now!“

„Hell yea, I am!“ Luca replied to Moyo’s absolutely horrorfied face, before starting to sing the lyrics: 

„I hopped off the plane at LAX

With a dream and my cardigan

Welcome to the land of fame excess,

Whoa, am I gonna fit in?“

Milan joining in instantly as if he had waited his whole life for this moment. Sander following suit, next to Robbe fishing for his phone. He was definitely going to record his boyfriend for leverage. Or because it was Sander singing, to Robbe even Sander breathing was worthy of adoration.

By the time they reached the jay-z line leading up to the chorus, they all had giving up their resistance and begun to sing whole heartedly, between giggles, dancing and messing up on words and notes. Any music teacher listening in would let them all fail class. No questions asked.

„Yeah it's a party in the USA“

Ending in a big crecsendo before all 11 voices fell silent, as they looked at each other and proceeded to burst into laughter.

„I miss you guys sooo much.“ Jana cried, hugging her laptop. All they saw was a black screen for a long minute, before she sat back, grinning: „Though I am dating this super hot guy from Geography. Like he is an absolutely idiot, but he is very cute and super gorgeous looking.“

„So American Jens?“ Yasmina said as dry and confident, that Jens was pretty sure she meant it. At least a little. Much to their friends’s amusement.

„Ey! This is my birthday, you can’t be mean on my birthday.“ He pretended to be offended, yet smirked at her, as soon as her lips curled up into a big smile, her eyebrows risen up high. 

„She’s got a point though, bro.“ Moyo laughed, lucky that he wasn’t near enough to be hit by Jens, who raised his hands.

„Alright, alright. I definitely gonna have to find new friends now, that’s for sure.“

„No! You are a cute idiot, our cute idiot.“ Zoe chimed in, absolutely delighted and Jens couldn’t really ever be mad at that girl, so he sighed, accepting his fate. It wasn’t exactly that they were very off anyway, he supposed.

„Well whatever, I actually wanted to let you know that I decided to apply to University in Antwerp, Brussel, Utrecht and Rotterdam, so hopefully I can move back next summer. I talked to my mom, and she isn’t the biggest fan of her daughter being so far away, but she knows how I hated moving here. I guess she feels guilty and I’m gonna take full adventage of that.“

An amount of variations of „seriously“ to „are you joking?“ Filled the chat to a point it all merged into a single distorted sound for a good couple of minutes. Jens joining right in. They all wanted her back, especially the girls.

It was Amber who than took the conversation over, completely leading them onto a new topic, one that Jens should have seen coming, but kinda hoped wouldn’t be turned into a big deal. But obviously it, would be, as Jana had seen their insta posts and the last vlog from wednesday.

„That means you get to meet Lucas! That would be so cool, he is also from Utrecht, maybe he could help you out with it. We should invite him for the next time.“

„Oh right, tell me all about him, I’m ready. Someone’s dating him? Because if not I’m calling dips.“

Jens had to use everything in him, to keep himself from snorting, laughing or commenting, giving away any knowledge he possesed. But having his ex lusting after the boy he kissed last night, was the funniest shit ever.

No one seemed to notice though, as they all went full in, describing everything they knew about the poor absent dutch boy. Not able to defend himself. 

Jens leaned back and enjoyed every second of it.

Best birthday so far.

#week 2 #wtfock #skam #vds #jens stoffels #lucas van der heijden #chapped and faded #the group together again #i loved wtfock down and their dynamic

[shaydeoffical]

Bright as a Diamond. Hitoshi Shinsou x Fem Reader: Chapter Four

Summary: When (Y/N)’s co-worker decided to send a picture of her making a diamond to the paper, her life was over. Gemstone based quirks weren’t all that rare, but being able to make a diamond put a target on her back. After years of hiding in the city, it’s time to hide in the countryside with her Uncle Shota Aizawa and his more than ‘roommate’ Hizashi Yamada. With the promise of training her to be self-sufficient, she’s ready to learn.

Chapter Three: 

https://ambershaydeoffical.tumblr.com/post/611141904327983104/bright-as-a-diamond-hitoshi-shinsou-x-fem-reader

Chapter Five: https://ambershaydeoffical.tumblr.com/post/612522066443436032/bright-as-a-diamond-hitoshi-shinsou-x-fem-reader

Monday

   My alarm was a few minutes from going off, so I sat in silence, waiting for it to cry out that I had to move. The new mattress was firm enough; I didn't sink but soft enough that it supported my curves. Still, I couldn't fight off the nightmares.

   With the first siren, I had shut down the machine. Grasping my compact, I dabbed concealer under my eyes and applied the thinnest layer of blush I could get by with. Pushing my hair up into a tight bun, I was happy with my minimal look.

   Grabbing my phone, I nearly dropped it to the floor—two thousand unread emails on my school account. My lips formed into an o, and I remembered that I had been the main topic of the Wednesday paper, of course, someone would leak my email.  

   As I scanned the emails, most were for charity auctions. Wanting me to demonstrate how my quirk works, then offer the highest bidder one of my perfect diamonds. Others were from geologists wishing to study how I create crystals from nothing but my body. A few were from people spilling their life story and asking for my help. The list went on and on and on.

   "Shota?" I called my uncle, stumbling, from my room. He was in his sleeping bag on the kitchen floor.

   "Hmm?" he glanced up.

   "Someone leaked my university email." I whimpered, pursing my lips together. "How am I supposed to see what my professors post. People know my school now. Like- I-"

   "Calm down." Shota sat up and took my phone. "Go finish getting ready, and I'll fix it."

   "Yes, sir." I went back to my room, pulled on my tighter pencil skirt, then I remembered. Then I put on a purple blouse and a cute blazer. Of course, the jewelry I wore mattered, so I put the necklace my dad made me under my shirt and placed a simple chain to be visible. Then I positioned some magnetic gold studs and put a gold anklet on over my pantyhose. Before leaving my room, I created ruby, emerald, and a diamond to top it off. With the gems in my hand, I crushed them into fine sand then added them to my jar.

   After that, I brushed my teeth, put on honey inspired perfume, and emptied my bladder. Nothing was going to hold me back from making a sale today. Of course, I preferred being in the background, but I could still rock the front line and make some sales.

   When I was back in the living room, Shota handed me my phone, and as he said, all the spam was gone. "Wow, thank you so much," I beamed, scrolling through my inbox, checking to see if my teachers had any important messages.

   "Breakfast," Hizashi yelled. When I entered the kitchen, there sat none other then Shinso. He was at one end of the table, and Shota took the other. With my nose upturned, I sat across from Hizashi and served myself.

   "Good morning," Shinso greeted me, offering me the dish filled with rice.

   "Hmph," I took the dish and plopped out a portion. "Thank you."  

   "So you were raised with manors," Shinso smirked, then raised a brow.

   "It's too early," I warned, popping my fingers and a rouge opal hitting the table. "Shit."

   "Does that happen often?" Hizashi picked up the dime-sized oval and held it to the light. "It's huge."

   "You're embarrassing me," I reached for the stone, but he kept it arms length. "Let me handle it."

   "This is beautiful, we need to have it made into something. Wow, Shota did you know-"

   "Please give it back." Tears were close to spilling over, but I held it back.  The heads of the table were silently watching. God, they were looking at me. I didn't want Shinso to know. I did-

   "This would look great on my guitar." Hizashi was still in his own mind. I couldn't breathe. Why?

   Trembling, I stood from the table and grabbed my phone. I couldn't glance at any of them, having looked like enough of a brat. "Ya know what, keep it. It will look super cool, just never tell anyone where it came from." I winced but kept walking to the door. I needed to change the wrap on my feet. "I'm going to be late."

   "I was going to drive you," Shota interjected, sitting up.

   "No, thank you. I'm leaving with enough time to make it. Thanks for breakfast." I hadn't eaten more than a few bites, but it didn't matter.

   Leaving like this meant I couldn't make lunch or pack a pocketbook for my money. I had a ten in my pocket and a hankie for the rest of the day. Picking up my bike, I hurdled off the porch getting a good first push. I hadn't gotten much taller since I was fourteen, so the seat was still in a decent position.

   Halfway to the main road, I was low on the breath but kept going. Tears had been free-flowing since I shut the door, but I refused to wipe them away. My quirk was dangerous, my quirk was valuable, my quirk was a double-edged sword. It's not that I cared that Hizashi loved my opal. I was ready to kill myself for losing control and making it. Putting myself in danger was the issue.  

   If that happened in public, I'd be in a huge mess. Hell, it already had happened and had been made public. Now I was in the same position as my father, but maybe even worse. Nothing was worse than the world, knowing my secret.

   I must have been a site when I hit the main road. Tears flowing thicker than sweat. Dressed to kill, while pleading a children's bicycle. As long as no one tried to talk to me, I'd calm down before I had to make a good first impression.

   The nice thing about the jewelry industry is they didn't want me to make jewels. Well, not my personal store, they were more interested in keeping the demand high and supply scarce.  In fact, the article published about me probably hurt some of our customers.  We specialized in ethically sourced gems and offering natures best. I was not nature, I was something else.

   When I finally got to the store, I had five minutes before I was to clock in. I ran into the bathroom and splashed water on my face. My phone buzzed, and a picture of my bike was sent to my phone.

   The number was unknown, so I ignored it. Preceding out of the bathroom with caution, I was meet with my coworker from my last job.  Kira Nara, the boy who blew my quirk out of the closet. He was older than me by around seven years, divorced, and easy enough to get along with.

   "What are you doing here?" I shuffled from one foot to the other, feeling a slight squish. If I could catch a break for even one moment, that would be nice…

   "I transferred too," he grabbed my hand and bowed. "I felt so bad over the whole picture thing, that I wanted to move in solidarity. We are in this together." I could see the black hair on his head was thinning, probably a mix of age and stress. "The shop back home was such a mess after you left. News reports kept dropping by, and all these companies asking for donations. The boss thought it would be good if I came with you."    

   "In other words, since you spilled the beans, everyone wanted to talk to you as well." Kicking the carpet slightly, I pulled my hand free. "Alright, let's make the best of this."

   "So you forgive me?" He lifted from his potion, hanging to every word I could utter.

   "Yes, you didn't know. Just don't do it again." I was too soft for my own good. Still, I couldn't cause a riot within the workplace. "So have you meet the boss yet?"

   "I am the manager," he gushed, gesturing to his name badge.

   "Oh. So will I get to meet the head manger?" I asked, stepping behind the counter and finding my case key taped on the side of the safe.

   "At some point, he mainly works the busy hours. Really they didn't need this position, but they felt loyal to our branch. It works in our favor." Kira pressed a hand against the case, and it took everything in me not to slap him upside the head. His large hands left an imprint that I would need to wipe down later, no doubt.

   "Okay, so it's going to be quiet. That's good, more time for homework." I walked over to the stool and started to pull up my e-books. Kira had already put the display out, and I knew that was all I needed to do till a customer strolled in.

   "So did you move somewhere around town?" Kira slid down to where I sat, adding more fingerprints.

   "Something like that," I nodded, scrolling to the next page of my book. "Did you relocate?"

   "I did. You should come by and see the place. It overlooks the ocean and has an indoor pool. You love to swim, don't you?" He pulled up a chair and sat across from me.  It never mattered when acted like this in the back, but now he was blocking the display. Sure there were no customers yet, but it didn't look very professional.

   What are you thinking, (Y/n), you're his only friend in this city? Of course, he's nervous and just trying to settle in. Not everyone is as familiar as yourself with running the front of the shop.

   "Yes, I love swimming. But it's hardly the season for that anymore." Pushing my phone back into my pocket, I smiled. "So do they allow pets. I'm sure you brought your puppy with you. A German Shepard mix, right?"

   "Of course, I brought Miso." He lit up with my full attention. "Did your mother come with you?"

   "Uh, no." I clamed up, trying to refocus the conversation. "I'm so much closer to the university through. It's exciting."

   "Oh yea, I'm sure you're doing well in your classes. You're so intelligent and dedicated, you must be at the top of the class."

   "Don't flatter me, I'm doing well but not that well. I'd be doing better if my mom wasn't so sick." I rolled my tongue over my teeth and started to think about my next training session.

   "It's a quirk related illness, right?" He pried.

   "Something like that. Oh, a customer," an older lady walked in. I cursed for not having the glass spotless. But tended to her needs regardless.

   True to my word, I made a sale on my first day. A fifty dollar glass bead bracelet with customizable charms. She was in love with the birthstone charms and got one for each of her grandchildren.  I was able to explain the properties of the birthstones and offer her a wide array of cuts for the gems.

   My body rushed with emotions, as the lady stepped outside. The simple sale reminding me how much I enjoyed sharing my passion for stones. That was the only customer for the rest of the shift. As I was part-time, and Kira had been promoted to manager, I was able to call it a day.

   Kira had talked my ear off all day, but I did find time to study when he took his lunch break. With so much left to read, I put the audio text reader on and listened to my lesson on the way home. Of course, their big hill that was a bitch to walk up this morning, but fun to glide down now. Using that momentum, to make it the side road to lead home.

   My tummy rumbled, and I was more than ready to eat a horse. I used my ten to buy a few snacks at the convince store that was now secured on the handlebars. I smiled, seeing the small ranch house, and pedaled down the driveway.  

   When I got my shoes off, I realized that I had opened my wounds, and now my blood was dried to my socks. Cursing under my breath, I decided to rip them off quickly. With the first one-off, I curled into my side and breathed through the pain.

   Hips bleeding. Bruises up and down. Sleeping on my back for relief. Neck cramps.

   Gritting my teeth, I pulled off the other and put on my house shoes. Scampering to the tub, I washed off all the sweat from my bike ride and the blood from my feet. Mixing in epsom salt to the water, I leaned back and enjoyed a moment alone. The water was hot as I could stand it, and I twirled in the water and imagined it like a hug.

   A knock on the door broke my train of thought. "(Y/n), can we talk?" It was Hizashi.

   "Can you hear me?" I asked, pulling the curtain back so my voice would travel further.

   "Yes. I wanted to apologize for this morning. Shota told me why it upset you. I'd never seen your quirk in action, and I was blindsided at how cool it was." I could imagine his frown from my position.

   "I'd make you a hundred opals, but I can't risk it. Even with my cover blown, I can't have people tracing them back to me." I popped a bubble as it drifted by. "No matter how awesome or cool, I have to pretend it doesn't exist. I forgive you, and I'm sorry I have made it such a big deal. I lost control of my quirk for a moment and made things awkward between us."

   "We're all good now?"

   "Yes, we're good. We get along too well not be on excellent terms," relief washed over me as I sunk back into the water.

   "Rock on." He cheered, taping the wall before heading' off.

   Once my bath was done, I changed into my pj's early and made a quick sandwich before I went for a nap. After eating, I curled into bed and stared at my phone. The center's number was preloaded, but I couldn't find it in my heart to press call. Instead, I covered my face and closed my eyes, it would be better tomorrow.  

#shinsou x reader #shinsou hitoshi #bright as a diamond #ambershaydeoffical #x reader #my hero #my hero academia #bnha #boku no hero academia #enemies to friends to lovers #multi chapter #present mic #erasermic #bnha x reader

[xseildnasterces]

king.

Its Halloween, All Hallows Eve, All Saints Eve, Samhain* (*the original) or whatever you want to call it… and my plans got cancelled. Never mind, the situation cannot be helped, but even still it put me on a bit of a downer. We are due storms tonight, even worse than those last night, so perhaps getting a train back from Virginia on my own late at night isn’t the best idea anyway. So instead of exploring the streets of Arlington, I will cozy up on the sofa with some hot chocolate and watch a Halloween film. I’m exhausted anyway, and have been consistently for the last couple of weeks. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I am just completely and utterly shattered. All the time. I also had my flu jab yesterday and my arm aches so much right now I can’t explain. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t lay on it, and when I did finally get to sleep I was waking up constantly because I couldn’t get comfortable or because I’d rolled onto my arm. It feels like a tonne wait that I am dragging around me with me and making things pretty inconvenient. Other than that I also have an ongoing issue with my right hand. I don’t know what it is and I do really need to get it checked out because it’s causing me a lot of pain and making doing anything incredibly difficult. H and I have training today (for three hours!!!) – I hope it’s not too boring, but at least it gets us out of the office for a while, and then we will go for lunch. I also need to make my first trip to a US post office, so I’ll see what that experience is like later today. I was so sure today was Wednesday, so finding out its actually Thursday has been a super wonderful feeling. I cannot wait for the weekend. I cannot wait for no alarms and I cannot wait to just be lazy, relax, and do nothing but catch up on TV and read. I am still in love with my new book. I’m about 60% through and I’m pretty sure it will be finished this weekend. Every few pages I find myself tearing up, but oh my what a wonderful story. I love it so very much. I love the emotions and how much it pulls me in and doesn’t want me to put it down.

A and I have been talking a lot more recently which has been nice. Only via WhatsApp but the times have been working out quite well. When I am getting ready for bed she is usually getting up so we usually have around an hour to chat and message. I know it wont last, but I’ll take it as it is right now. We’ve had some really nice chats and she’s actually spoke to me about things which has been nice. God knows what is going on over there considering she’s spent the last two weeks in Dhaka because her husbands mum was having surgery. Things have been a bit and down and I have no idea how she’s coping. I’m worried about a few things but right now there is nothing we can do. She got everyone’s hopes up the other day when she asked dad if he could MOT her car for her in a few months. My dad was messaging me all excited because he thought she was coming home. I, correctly, assumed it was too good to be true so messaged her and asked. Of course she said she just wanted it MOT’s because dad had told her it was starting to get rusty from not being run often enough, so she only really wanted it MOT doing so that she knew the car was still okay… so dad was then distraught.

Its my mums last day at work tomorrow before she starts her new job next week. I’m so glad that she will no longer be getting up at 4am because it really isn’t good for her health one bit! But I know she will be sad because she will leave her best friend and I know they will miss each other a lot. I guess it will be the same as for me and J, although I am so very lucky that we message pretty much every day so although I miss seeing him every day and having a laugh, and tea and everything else, I am glad he kept to his word and stayed in touch – something that I am super grateful for.

[Blog Title: King - Lauren Aquilina].

#life #thoughts #thought #feelings #feeling #love #me #personal #diary #lauren aquilina #king #life update #update #writing #post #blog

[josiewinters1999]

SuperWho x Avengers x OFC in Tribal!AU

Summary: Post Infinity War, the remaining Avengers need a safe place to regroup, what better place to do it than the ancient lost city hidden deep in the Gallifreyan forest?

Chapter 2: Day 1 pt1

Words:  5020

Contains:  Mentions of alcohol/drug abuse, IW spoilers, mentions of death, angst

A/N: So sorry to anyone who was interested in this for being so late. I really have no excuse lol. Anyhow here it is. I’m hoping this chapter gives more insight to the characters backgrounds and prior relationships. Also thank you guys SO MUCH for all the support. I have never got more support for anything I’ve written here. I hope you guys enjoy these and are actually reading them. :)

Laying in his warm bed, Steve stares up at the ceiling. Sunlight begins to pour into the apartment bedroom through the window to Steve’s left. He turns his head to his nightstand, also on his left. The digital clock read that it’s currently 6 am. Typically, Steve would be up already but he’d been staring at the blank beige ceiling for over an hour, deep in thought, or lack thereof, he isn’t sure yet.

Wrapped in the crisp, soft, white, sheets next to him was a snoring body. The figure is sprawled across the remaining space in the bed, still wearing party clothes from the previous night. Her golden blond hair is frizzy and wild not only from sleep but her adventurous night. The red lipstick she wore stained her pillow case, and her eyeliner and mascara run down her face.

Steve looks over to the woman and sighs. How long was she going to do this? It’s no secret his girlfriend has a problem but he always hoped each time would be the last, only to be disappointed when it wasn’t.

Again and again he’d have to drag her out of trouble or bring her home before she got into it. Willie had a wild streak, that was for damn sure, and it only has gotten worse over the course of her and Steve’s relationship.

Glancing back at the ceiling, the super soldier let his mind wander. Images of her before their relationship flood his mind. Every time she entered a room, he’d swoon. Something about that lanky, London accented, time traveling alien held his attention hostage. He practically prayed the woman would just acknowledge his existence.

Then, after a few months of begging every force in the universe, she was suddenly fawning over him. The sudden change was something that should have sent up red flags in Steve’s head. He realizes that now, but at the time, he was in ecstasy. They started dating almost immediately, according to Willie’s wishes.

It all went downhill from there.

Steve’s heart clenches at the thought. Is it him? Is he to blame for Willie’s behavior? The guilt consumes him night and day but that pain is nothing compared to seeing his best gal come home a complete wreck most nights.

A rustle next to him pulls him from his thoughts. He darts his head to see Willie beginning to stir for the first time since she got home. She flips over, facing Steve with closed eyes and tired features.

A moan passes her blurry red lips as the light hits her closed eyelids. She mumbles something intelligible and Steve throws the blankets off him to shut the curtain. After throwing the fabric shut, he looks back to see Willie quiet once more.

He stands at the window for a moment, watching her in her deep sleep. He looks back at the clock, hoping it might tell him what the next thing to do should be. In addition to the time, it reads Wednesday.

Despite her impaired senses, Willie can sense someone is watching her. She slowly and carefully opens her eyes, being cautious of her pounding headache. When they are opened, all she sees is a blurry room and a tall figure by the window. It’s a figure she instantly recognizes and she is at ease.

An urge in her body arises and she lifts herself up to go tend to it. Throwing off the blankets to go to the bathroom, Willie stands. She wobbles for a bit before regaining her balance. A concerned voice behind her calls to her, “Willie,” Steve practically begs.

Anger surges through her in an instant, the hangover taking control, and she clenches one hand, raising the other to stop his speaking. Marching off to the bathroom, she leaves Steve alone.

He sighs, his shoulders sinking with his heart as he stands there in his empty bedroom listening to the movement in the bathroom just on the other side of the door.

He doesn’t move from his spot during the whole sequence, only waits patiently for Willie to finish. The doorknob jiggles and he looks to it instantly. Stepping out, Willie gives him one quick look with her sunken in eyes, and briskly trots out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen.

The super soldier waits a little longer before following her. Upon entering their kitchen, Steve watches with a cautious look as Willie brews a cup of coffee and lights a cigarette. Her hand lowers the zippo lighter back onto the counter and she takes a drag, her shoulders releasing some tension as she exhales the smoke.

Steve takes in a quiet breath to speak but is cut off in an instant, “Don’t.” His girlfriend’s voice was cold and harsh, unlike how her voice was last night. Last night it was hot and fluid, influenced by all the substances she had consumed.

He turns his head down, gritting his teeth. His own anger was growing and his patience was wearing thin. “We’re talking. Whether you want to or not, we’re talking about last night.”

Willie sharply twists her body to lean against the counter, her cigarette still between her thin fingers, “And what exactly is there to talk about? Huh? I went out. So what?” she shrugs, her voice and gaze both weak and full of power at the same time.

“Went out?” Steve repeats, scoffing at the absurdity.

Waving a hand in dismissal, Willie turns back away from him and to her coffee, “I can take care of my damn self, Steve. I don’t need you to babysit me.” Spitting over her shoulder, she adds, “What I do on my own is none of your concern and I suggest you let me do what I do.”

Seeing red, Steve marches closer to her but not quite all the way. “How is none of this my concern?” he shouts. “It was a Tuesday night and you decided it would be a good idea to go get drunk. Again. You’re supposed to be getting better, Willie. It only seems like you’re getting worse.”

Willie bites her lip, secretly knowing Steve is right but not wanting to admit it, in fear he’ll take away her only coping mechanism. “Not only did I have to drag you off the street slobbering drunk and ready to fight, I found something last night,” Steve states matter-of-factly.

“What?” the Gallifreyan asks, already knowing the answer.

Steve raises his voice slightly, “You know what.” He pauses as she shakes her head, “Really? Cocaine. You brought cocaine into our home? You told me you were clean.”

Willie smacks the counter with her free hand, “And I was.” She clenches her fist, trying not to explode, “I was clean.”

With a quiet voice, Steve scoffs, shaking his head, “Why should I believe anything you say? You’ve lied to me about everything. The drinking, the drugs, the cheating, everything. And I forgave you-”

“Don’t you dare get all high and mighty with me, Rogers”

Steve steps forward more, even closer to her but still not all the way, “I forgave you on one condition every time.” His voice turns sad and full of hurt, eyes becoming glassy, “That you tell me why you do all this.” He very slowly reaches his hand forward to touch Willie’s shoulder, “I just want to help you, doll. I hate seeing the woman I love be so hurt. I-”

Willie swiftly and forcefully pushes his hand away, fury in her eyes as she looks him dead in the face for truly the first time that morning, “Why I do anything is none. Of. Your. Damn. Business.”

Shocked, the super soldier watches her as she glares him down. Her own eyes are starting to form tears. The skin around them is both black with makeup and red with sorrow. The sight makes Steve’s heart shatter.

Before any tears fall, Willie storms out of the kitchen and onto the terrace outside their apartment. Steve wants to rush after her but is too paralyzed with emotion to move.

***

Day 1

Steve watches Willie talk, her voice clear and authoritative. Her rosy lips move, a thin layer of sweat forming on her skin. It was glowing and her eyes are bright. Steve is lost, soaking up the view of her like he’s seeing her for the first time and falling in love all over again.

He stands in a circle at the edge of the clearing with Thor, Okoye, and a few Asgardians. All of them listening to Willie’s instructions as she prepares them to collect firewood.

As she speaks, Steve is miles away, thinking about everything and nothing at the same time, “So the main thing you need to do when we go out here is stay quiet and stay hidden. This land isn’t forgiving and you will be killed if the wrong thing spots you.” She looks at every face in the crowd, stopping at Steve’s when she is met with his vacant look.

She lifts her eyebrow, confused, “You alright there, Stevie?”

He shakes his head, bringing himself to reality, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Nodding, she turns back to the others, her eyes being the last thing to leave him, “So is everyone on the same page?” She pauses, watching the people before her mumble affirmatively. “Good,” she responds, “Sam is watching the others, let’s go get some firewood.”

Pushing past them, she marches toward the silver treeline. The others follow her, Steve being the last to join them.

The woods was different than the clearing. The clearing was bright and blaring with sunlight while the forest was dark and a little cooler. However, not even the thick canopy could completely cut through the immense heat of the planet.

The air was more humid though, not as unforgivingly dry as it was in the clearing. That humidity gave way to life. Steve could hear the twittering of birds in the distance and the scuttling of small animals up trees. In addition, the plants at his feet filled his lungs with life. It was hard to concentrate on the task at hand with all this new information around him.

He looks ahead and sees the others gathering small silver logs and large sticks from the ground. Hearing a loud noise above him, Steve looks up instinctively. He sees Willie climbing the trees, picking bulbs off the branches and shoving them into her pockets.

Feeling eyes on her, she looks down to see Steve watching her. She points ahead, indicating he should be searching for tinder. He just stands motionless, unable to move. Sighing to herself, she climbs quickly down to the lowest branch of the tree. Willie then hugs the trunk with all four limbs and slides down it like a firepole.

Reaching the ground with a cloud of red dust flying up, she walks angrily up to Steve. She whispers loudly, “Go get wood.”

He silently nods, not speaking, and goes about the work she assigned him.

***

“Are you sure you can’t come in today?” the voice over the phone calls, “We could use some help training these new recruits.”

Looking over his shoulder to the bathroom door, Steve can hear vomiting and sobs through the wood. “Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s just Willie’s really sick and I want to be here to keep an eye on her.”

Steve hears a sigh over the line, “Sick. Sure.” There’s a long pause and Steve’s stomach twists with anxiety, “Steve, you can’t keep covering for her. Everyone knows she’s pulling you down.”

Muscles clenching, Steve scorns, “You better watch what you say about my girl there. She’s going through a rough time.”

The voice on the phone laughs, “A rough time that’s lasted for the past year.”

The Captain glances back at the door, “We’re working on it.”

“Work on it faster. This is the last time I’m gonna let you do this. Get your woman under control or I’m gonna take this to Director Fury.”

“He’d never get rid of me,” Steve retorts rather cockily.

“Not you, her.” and with that, the phone hangs up, a long tone conveying to Steve that the conversation was over. He slams the headset down, angry at their audacity.

The grunting and sobbing from the bathroom start to slow and quiet. Steve begins to worry and pads his way across the carpet to the bathroom door. He stops at it, listening. The only noise is the running sink. He knocks gently, calling his girlfriend’s name, “Willie? Doll, are you okay?”

She sniffles, calling to him from the floor in front of the toilet. “I’m fine babe,” her voice cracks through the sobs. She was speaking much gentler now.

Steve reaches to the knob and begins to turn it, “I’m coming in.” He pushes the white wood slab open, finding Willie collapsed on the floor, supporting herself on the tub next to the toilet.

“Sweetie,” he sighs. Shutting off the sink, Steve walks up to her, kneeling next to her. He pushes back the hair on her pale forehead and feels her skin with the back of his hand. She was at a normal human temperature, not particularly healthy for something like her.

Willie is too weak to protest Steve’s touches, despite her urge to scream. She allows him to pick her up, something he grunts doing, and carry her to their bed.

He places her upright against the cushions and pillows, sitting comfortably on top of the freshly made bed. He sits at her knees, his warm hand on her arm and his kind eyes staring worriedly at her.

“I wish you’d talk to me. I really do. I don’t want to hurt you, you have to know that by now,” he squeezes her forearm gently, “It’s been a whole year doll. Can’t you tell me anything?”

Willie turns her head from her lap to his eyes, the fire starting to regrow inside her. “You wouldn’t understand,” she spits.

Scooting closer to her, Steve grabs her hand in his other one, “But I want to, doll. Every night, I lay down next to the strongest woman I’ve ever known, just to hear her cry herself to sleep. There’s got to be a reason.”

The tears start falling down Willie’s face again, “What if I told you the reason would make you hate me?” she sobs.

“Honey,” he whines, “nothing you tell me could do that. I love you. Nothing is gonna change that. I promise.”

Instead of a speech, Steve is faced with sobs from his girlfriend, mixed with occasional muttering in her native tongue. Standing up, he walks around the bed to get in with her. She instantly grabs his shirt and buries herself into his shoulder.

***

By the time they got back, tents had been claimed, with the exception of the ones those who were chosen to venture into the woods would be assigned. As the new members of camp unpacked and made their new living spaces home, it was clear this new land was going to take getting used to, just by the looks on the people’s faces.

All the tents were lined up in two rows, each facing each other. This designated the center of camp. Willie had approached it, set down her armful of wood, and watched as her helpers did the same.

The fire had been started soon. It was almost like Steve had blinked and the pile of wood was ablaze. It reminded Steve just how good Willie was in her element. She was a primitive, always was, always will be. The sooner he realizes this the better.

Steve stands at the flame’s edge, staring into its light. With the fire and the suns above, blazing heat surrounded Steve on all sides, making his new long hair suddenly very uncomfortable.

Willie walks up, unbeknownst to him. She shakes some red dust from her hands, wiping them on her tactical pants. Her loud sigh indicates her presence and Steve glances halfway to the side, watching her boots as they make their way next to his. When she finally stops, he goes back to gazing at the fire.

“Suns are going down. High Priestess and her people should be here soon,” she explains in her familiar London accent. She crosses her arms, only about a foot away from Steve as he stands tall and erect.

He nods once, acknowledging her statement. He debates saying something regarding their status but remains deathly silent as she continues, “They’re bringing food and plan to for a couple more nights but we’re going to have to figure something out. The city can’t support this many people on the rations it has. Not forever.”

Steve only grunts, acknowledging her again. “I think we’ll need to set up some hunting and gathering groups and go out into the woods in shifts, but we won’t worry about that tonight. What do you think?”

Feeling rather insolent, he remains completely still and quiet, not even a grunt or nod. She waits patiently however, for his answer. After a long enough pause to indicate he has nothing to say, she turns her body towards him, “Steve.”

He gives no response. “This isn’t a fucking game Steve,” Willie can practically feel her blood pressure rise as she raises a straight hand to point toward one of the lines of tents, “These people will die if they aren’t taken care of and you’re going to stand here and act like a petulant child because we have history.”

Putting her arm down, she steps closer to Steve, lowering her voice just for him to hear over the crackle of the fire, “I know you feel guilty because you let half the universe die, but don’t make the same mistake twice.” And with an angry huff, she marches off.

***

Laying on his chest, Willie soaks up his warmth. Living outside her intended habitat took its toll on her body. The slightly higher body temperature of a human being was the best cure for her lack of two suns.

A protective arm around his best girl, and a hand placed over hers, Steve relishes in the feeling of her scarred skin on his. Her long gold hair splayed across his bed and her legs entwined with his is exactly how Steve wants to die.

Willie rubs Steve’s hand with her thumb, him returning the affection with his own thumb. They sat in silence like this for quite a time, enjoying the feeling of each other despite the looming problems that still need to be addressed.

“Steve?” Willie asks, her voice echoing through Steve’s chest. He hums lightly in response, craning his neck to watch her speak.

“If you could go back home, would you?” she asks, “If you could undo every bad thing that’s ever happened to you and just start over, would you?” Her voice is filled with distress and frustration.

He raises the elbow of the arm behind her head and begins to pet her wavy hair, “Like, go back to the war and not enlist?”

She hums and he sighs, “Of course not.” He feels her body tense as her brows furrow, “But why? Wouldn’t you like to go back and just be at home with all your friends? Don’t you just want to make all your problems disappear?”

Rubbing her arm with his thumb he leans into her, “If I never had enlisted and none of this ever happened, I’d have been some lonely skinny kid in Brooklyn. I probably would have died from TB or of an asthma attack in my studio apartment. I never would have been frozen and,” he places a gentle kiss to her hair before whispering, “I never would have met you, doll. All the trouble and pain in the world would be worth it for my best girl.”

There is a pause and just from the feeling of her stirring on his chest, Steve can tell Willie is trying not to cry. “I know you miss home, Willie. You say you don’t but you aren’t kidding me. Maybe I don’t quite understand how complicated your childhood was but I know just from the way your eyes light up, you miss being there.”

He wraps his free arm around her shoulders, “But no matter happens, I want you to know I’m here, honey. I’m not going anywhere.”

Without another word, Willie stretches up to Steve’s level, kissing him softly and thankfully. When they pull away, he looks into her teary eyes with pure adoration, “I love you.”

***

A few hours pass with Willie marching from tent to tent, checking to make sure everything was in order and answering any questions from her new citizens. Already, Steve can tell she is going to make a better leader than he could have ever imagined. Had someone told him three years ago his drunk girlfriend could do any of this, he would have laughed.

The daylight begins to dim and murmurs of hungry people can be heard from every direction. As Steve walks towards the fire once more to loiter, he hears an Asgardian child chant for his mother.

“Mother,” he calls, “There’s red people in the trees.”

This catches Steve’s attention and before he can even a breath to call for Willie, he sees her dashing past him to greet the said ‘red people’ at the entrance to the clearing.

His curiosity getting the better of him, Steve follows after her at a light jogging pace. Reaching the tree line to the east of camp, he is met by a group of strange looking people that can only be described as Gallifreyan.

Their skin is a medium red tan, like clay. Their hair is dark brown and with some wave in its texture. They wear their hair in varying styles, most of them revolving around braids of some sort. Many of the people, particularly the ones farther back from the front of the group, wear their hair braided tightly against the sides of their heads with the rest on top tied neatly at the back.

The clothing they wear varies as well. Most of their ensembles were simple, long red tunics with lacing down the sides, black and silver designs along the hem, and no shoes. Some wore straight legged pants of the same red color paired with either no shirt or an almost poncho looking drapery on their torsos.

However, the woman at the head of this gathering stands out amongst them. For starters, she is older. Steve wasn’t quite sure how old, but she looks to be in her forties or fifties. Her hair was in an intricate low updo on her back. It lay on her long draping robe with its large open sleeves and many more silver adornments than those of her followers. A long fabric belt cinched the robe at her waist; black with white symbols imbedded into it.

Looking briefly to Willie for comparison, it suddenly is clear to Steve just how much her people look like her. It’s all there in her face. From her narrow eyes, thick brows, long straight nose, and high cheekbones, it’s there. Other than the colors that make up her physique, she blends in perfectly with her native counterparts.

Willie speaks with the woman in  her native tongue, words flying faster than Steve has ever heard her speak in his life. Typically, when she speaks, her words come out at a leisurely pace, slow and thought out. Watching her speak with this native practically makes Steve’s head spin.

It isn’t until Steve looks back to the woman that he realizes that everyone there has their eyes plastered to him. The woman, Willie, and the congregation in the woods all stare at him. Some of their looks are of confusion, but others are full of awe.

The woman, with her red hands folded neatly inside her sleeves, turns to Willie with a smile, muttering something to her while looking out the corner of her eye to Steve. After she finishes with Willie, she turns back to Steve and begins talking to him.

Not being able to comprehend a single word, Steve’s eyes widen ever so slightly in panic as he looks frantically to Willie for answers. Rubbing her face with her hand, she sighs, “She’s asking your name. Just point to yourself and say it, no need to confuse her.”

Doing what he’s told, Steve gestures to himself with both hands, “Steve Rogers.” The second he utters his name, the crowd gasps lightly, whispers doing their best to repeat it.

The woman grins brighter, looking to Willie once more before saying something. Steve stutters, “Wh-what’s she saying?” his insecurities he thought he left in the 40s coming back.

Remaining eye contact with the woman as she keeps speaking, Willie translates, “She’s saying that she’s never seen a man with white skin before,” there is a small pause as the woman speaks, “that you look like me,” another pause, “and that she didn’t know humans would be so intriguing.”

Steve furrows his brow, “What’s that supposed to mean?” Rolling her eyes, Willie pushes Steve back, “I have no clue Steve, I was just repeating. Now get out of the way, The High Priestess doesn’t have all night.”

Backing him up against a tree, Willie rushes back to the woman, leading her by the arm into the camp. Her followers go after her, passing Steve on the way. They give him many looks as they walk past, each of them carrying enough food for ten people.

He manages to step away and meet everyone else in camp as they watch the Gallifreyans walk to the fire. A crowd has formed to watch the natives as they walk in, following Willie’s lead. The man Willie had come with, Sam Winchester, runs to meet them. From a distance, Steve can see them exchange words and Sam bends his top half slightly forward in a bow to the High Priestess. She nods her head with a smile and Willie cups her hands around her mouth to scream.

“Alright everyone,” she shouts, “This is how this is gonna work.” Grabbing Sam by the shoulders, she guides him in front of one of the Gallifreyans with food. A man wearing a red triangular poncho with black embellishments and fringe paired with red pants made of a similar material to buckskin stands ahead of him. The man holds a silver wooden bowl filled with some type of food.

Staring at Sam’s large build with awe, his mouth gapes open. Willie opens up to the crowd, showing Sam off, “You’re gonna get in a line. Then, when it’s your turn, you’re gonna walk up like this,” she pushes Sam a little closer, “and say these words, ‘G’dyejnah moschash.’” There is a small pause as she makes sure that the information is received before she continues, “‘G’dyejnah moschash.’ After you say that, you’re gonna bow.” She looks to Sam, who stands uncomfortably still. Willie reaches forward and smacks his arm, urging him to do as she said.

Mumbling the words Willie had instructed, he once again bends his front half forward slightly. The man with the bowl smiles, muttering the words back and hands Sam a piece from the contents of the container in his arm.

Willie drags Sam to the side and replaces him, “Line starts here.”

In that instant, Steve is swarmed by the hungry crowd rushing to get in line. When he fully comprehends what is going on, he follows in line with them, standing about three people behind Tony Stark.

The line slowly creeps forward, the setting suns making the heat slightly less intense. Looking down, Steve sees that every person standing in the line with them is covered in red dust from the knee down. Peering around the line, he can see Willie at the front. She herself is coated from the waist down, completely submerged in her home, both figuratively and literally.

Once at the front, Steve walks up to a young woman with her own bowl, the High Priestess and Willie watching intently just off her shoulder. He nervously steps up, catching a side glance at Willie. She stands erect, arms folded behind her back; a sharp contrast to the High Priestess, with her arms folded in front.

He takes another cautious step, the woman smiling lightly while she clutches her silver bowl. Doing his best to recall the proper words, he stutters, “G-g’degnuh moe-shush.” He stands still for a moment before bowing suddenly, almost forgetting to do so. The young woman smiles and hands him something. He walks away, going to join the congregation forming at the fire.

Steve looks down at the item in his hands. It was a golden colored bread wrap of sorts, and upon further inspection, it seems to contain a thin sliver of meat and a collection of red leaves within it. It seems strange but the rumble in Steve’s stomach told him not to question it.

He begins making his way to the fire to sit, being met with Bruce Banner wave a hand to him and shouting his name, “Steve, come sit with us!” Not wanting to decline the offer and seem, he walks to Bruce. He sits with Thor, Tony, Pepper, and Natasha.

“Pop a squat with me big fella,” Natasha says syly. Steve forces a grin and sits cross legged in the dust beside her. “Rough night, huh?” she chuckles.

“The first of many I’m afraid,” Thor answers, holding his half eaten bread wrap. Tony groans, “If this gets any worse, I’m gonna say something to Willie. I mean, what is she doing having us out here in tents?”

“She’s doing her best, Tony, let her be,” defends Steve.

The billionaire scoffs, “That’s rich coming from you, Rogers. You’d stick your neck out for that drunk if it was the last thing you did. Just because she’s your girlfriend doesn’t mean-”

Steve interrupts him, his voice blank and devoid of all emotion, “We aren’t together anymore.”

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[2019withhelo]

April 15-19:

Monday after ASB everyone was tired. Lucky us week of prayer begins so you what that means !! Shorter biology period :). I remember on Monday the speaker was really funny with a good message. Band got me on my low and if I play lux spiritus one more time I’m throwing hands. Art class goes well and I get a lot of work done on my patterns piece. Lunch? I think it was just emi, sona, and I. I forgot what we talked about but I know we laughed a lot. In geometry we spend the whole class eating popcorn and looking at ASB pictures. Bokov really turned the sharpness up to 50+ on all the pictures. He also deleted the pictures of abel and I so thank you for that. History and English were a blur. After school emi, sona, and I head to Starbucks to do “school work”. I didn’t even open up my backpack. Our talk definetly stuck with me. I bring up the topic that has been on my mind a lot lately: “what can I do these last two years to live my full high school experience?”. A lot of other things too: high school advice, Brenden, what we would do if we had three wishes, how I wish I could back in time and delete those two damned videos, how we need real coaches, how sona and I are going to make friends this summer ?, and much more. Good laughs and a good talk with some real gems :’).

Track practice was us just doing a plank and then everyone on their own. While my mom and I wait for hec to finish LEGO I show her the ASB pictures bokov took. She had a lot to say. “Your posture is terrible” “why did julia only do one pose?” “What was she wearing !!!” (Aka becca). At home hec and I finish the spongebob movie and honestly a 10/10 no matter how many times I see it. Emi didn’t appreciate me sending the most iconic parts of the movie ;(. I make a mistake and take a very old melatonin.

Tuesday: I wake up at 3 am with the worst nausea I’ve ever had. But, no matter how bad I felt, I was not gonna throw up. I run to the bathroom and try my best to feel better. Then I drink water and it goes away for a little bit, but it still was so bad. I wake up for flute choir feeling fine and then I get worse during pe. During study hall I take a full hour nap and wake up worse than I was. By bible class I couldn’t take it anymore and called my dad and went home. I slept until 4 and then slept from like 6 to 8. Then I fell asleep at 9:30 :). It’s a super power.

Wednesday: I woke up in a bad mood because I was feeling fine :(. My hair was in a terrible, oily mess and lucky me it was class picture day ! I looked like I had just recovered from the black pleague. At school I try finishing up bio hw I had to do while doing the work she assigned in class ! I was a messy mess! The week of prayer talk was okay. Band >:(. Art :). Lunch ?

After school I wait around for hec and his frisbee practice. Caleb sits next to me in the lounge while I watch Danielle Cohn’s pregnacy video. Then I lay down on the couch and watch YouTube. My mom gets to school a little LATER than expected and then we head home. I finally post my ASB pictures.

Thursday: a good day. In pe was play volleyball again and it was actually fun. Sort of. Wop talk was boring. Study hall I work on mrs ursino’s board that was a mess from the last time I did it. In bible we spend ten minutes in the prayer room then we wrote about it on paper. Lunch was a lot of things mixed into one. Geometry is lonely without celeste :( hope she comes back soon. After school Nye pulls me aside and asks if I’m running for ASB. I think it was more of a cry for help then a question. I take the bus home by myself and i enjoyed it a lot. Sometimes I wish I could drive but other times I don’t mind it. I wait for the bus at the library and finish up work. Then I head home listening to some good ass music. The really really precious blasian baby was on the bus. Maybe I’ll talk to the mom one day, she seems like a really kind person.

At home it’s just me. I get nothing done. Mom gets home and then I nap until 8. Anders and Julia do homework and I do their word searches. “ and I WOO”. Julia insists on me starting a YouTube channel because she “can edit” now. I make a grilled cheese for Julia, dad, and I.

[evenstevensranked]

#6: Season 1, Episode 18 - “Movie Madness”

Louis takes a stab at directing a short film in hopes of winning the Sacramento Young Peoples Film Festival and it is absolutely incredible. Not the film, the film is god awful. But Louis’ blatant, unfiltered narcissism -- THAT is something to behold. The subplot follows yet another one of Ren’s attempts to approach Bobby Deaver for the first time but somehow results in some glorious miscommunication between her and recurring character Ivan.

This one opens in history class with a teacher named Todd Zanders who only appears in this one episode. I kinda love this guy and wish we saw more of him. He’s a total hippie and is making the class take “deep, cleansing breaths -- in with the good, out with the bad” when Louis comes running in late and disrupts the peace. Louis is clearly excited about something so Todd pulls the old “why don’t you share with the rest of the class” card, probably hoping that will intimidate Louis and shut him up, but this is Louis Stevens we’re talking about here. Todd technically gave him the floor, so ya know Louis is gonna run with it. He gets up on his chair and announces to everyone that he’s going to be entering his currently non-existent film in the Sacramento Young Peoples Film Festival. 

“I, Louis Stevens, will be entering my film in the Sacramento Young Peoples Film Festival. And after I win first place in the festival and get my million dollar movie deal... I will, sadly, be moving to Beverly Hills to a sprawling ranch home.” -- The narcissism is already in full swing. I love it. I also love that Louis says he’ll be moving to a ranch home because he already stated in Episode 15 that he’s “always liked ranch style!” houses. Good continuity. 

Louis goes on to say he’ll be needing a limo driver, a gardener and even suggests that Todd should be his personal chef. Oh my god. He tells Tawny, Twitty, and Tom to meet him at his house after school to discuss the logistics of the project and its million-dollar plot.

It cuts to the subplot where we meet both Ruby and Bobby for the first time! Ruby is reporting to Ren with her latest gossip column and the two of them end up checking out Bobby Deaver from across the hall. I just gotta include a gif of Bobby’s first appearance because the level of intentional dramatic cheese is hilarious. 

Ren is gushing over Bobby from afar saying things like “He’s so cute. Look at his hair... It’s perfect. Look at his walk! He’s so cool!” and for whatever reason, everyone’s favorite lackey Ivan is within earshot and assumes Ren is crushing on him. He’s flying solo in this episode and I guess this shows us why he’s a hanger-on every other time we see him. Ivan on his own is pretty sad and shy. 

Ivan under the impression that Ren’s compliments are directed at him. 

Ruby inspires Ren to talk to Bobby but warns Ren that she should write down everything she wants to say to him beforehand to ensure their first conversation will be absolutely perfect. We get a bit later on where Ren is in her room trying to come up with an ideal icebreaker and oh my freaking god. This has got to be one of my favorite Ren scenes in the entire series. Good LORD! She imagines how each scenario could play out in her head and I die laughing every time. Two brilliant ideas she comes up with are to walk right up to Bobby and say “Hey, Bobby. Nice belt!” or my personal favorite: “Hey, Bobby! Oh, I wouldn’t try that Salisbury steak if I were you!” The writing on this show is so incredibly random sometimes that it only ever results in greatness. Also “Nice belt!” is so disturbing. She says it in the most suggestive way too. Why are you staring at.. that... region, Ren?! Each ridiculous scenario ends with Bobby making the most irritated and confused face and completely ignoring her... because, I mean... would you know what to say to someone who walks up to you, creepily smiles, and tells you to avoid eating Salisbury steak with no further explanation? 

I just realized that this show often depicts girls as being the first ones to make a move or initiate a relationship, which is kinda cool since we’re pretty much conditioned to sit around and wait. 

After everything, Ren ultimately decides that marching up to him and saying “Hi, Bobby! I have a big crush on you and I just wanted to let you know how I feel!” is the best way to go. 

It cuts to Louis’ room where he’s having that meeting with Tawny, Twitty, and Tom. Once again, we see Louis determined to find his "thing." That’s pretty much what the overall theme of the show originally set out to be. In addition to our lovely bickering siblings, of course. Here, he’s super optimistic that he’s finally found his “thing” in writing/directing. Sweetie!!! Your thing is comedy!! We all know this already!!!! But, still. I really enjoy the idea of Louis constantly searching for something to excel at. He explains to them that “Everyone has their thing. Twitty has his music! You’ve got your poetry! Tom’s got..... his... parents!” HAHA. Poor Tom. 

Louis goes on to brief the gang on the plot of the movie which he describes as “the classic love story about an alien (Tawny) and a cowboy (Twitty).” An instant classic, honestly. Louis truly believes that they’ll “walk in as nobodies, and walk out as stars” after appearing in his movie. Well, everyone except Tom -- who he relegates to the role of his assistant. 

”I see stars.” 

It cuts straight to filming and boy do things really get going now. Louis has transformed part of the living room into a tinfoil explosion, which I’m assuming is supposed to be the inside of a spaceship. (see cover photo.) This episode is FULL of amazing dialogue and quotes from Louis. It’s insane! So, as usual, it’s going to be very difficult for me to not quote every single one. Twitty decided that his cowboy should have giant mutton chop sideburns and speak with an English accent without consulting Louis, Louis gets insulted because “that’s not in the script” -- which Twitty and Tawny haven’t even been given yet. Once they get their scripts, however, they’re confused as to why it’s only one page. Louis, being the informed and gifted director he thinks he is, condescendingly explains “We’re only shooting scene 27 today. We shoot out of order. It’s called filmmaking.” Except everyone knows that films shoot out of order due to the availability and scheduling of the sets/locations and actors, etc. Louis Stevens has only two actors at his indefinite disposal and seemingly one set location. He’s literally shooting out of order for no reason and is completely oblivious. It’s great. 

Louis can’t be bothered with rehearsals, blocking, or any other necessary steps towards making a movie and jumps straight to filming. Tawny is unsure of what he wants her to do because “all that script said was ‘the spaceship lands and the alien looks around.’” Louis has no time for her valid confusion and snaps “THAT’S RIGHT. YOU’RE CONFUSED AND FRUSTRATED. DID YA READ IT?!?!” I love this so much. Louis starts recording and Tawny vents out of character/as herself: “This is ridiculous. I don’t know where I am! I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!” and Louis praises her ‘performance.’ HAHAHAHAHAHA. 

“GENIUS! THAT IS GENIUS! RIGHT ON THE MONEY, BABE! RIGHT ON THE MONEY!”

I’m not even sure how to review the next part of the episode because the performances truly speak for themselves and I gotta stop myself from typing out a transcript of the whole thing, lol. Basically, Louis goes into full meltdown mode. Freaking out over Tawny saying “Hi, Cowboy” instead of “Hello,” Twitty’s unauthorized addition of a gold tooth for his cowboy, and Ren interrupting a scene. “PEOPLE, THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. THIS IS A MOVIE. IT’S MY MOVIE. WHICH I WILL NOT LET YOU MESS UP!” He instructs Twitty and Tawny to meet him outside for a saloon scene. Except Louis doesn’t have saloon money: 

Twitty: “Louis! What is this, man? Where’s the rest of the saloon?!” Louis: “CUT! Twitty, it’s a close-up. No one’s gonna see the saloon!! Let’s try it again. But this time, give me a little more.” Twitty: “More what?!”  Louis: “JUST MORE!!!!!!”

-- Louis Stevens, everyone. The greatest director of our time. 10/10 would recommend. 

We get possibly the greatest line in the whole episode when they start filming and a lawnmower revs up as soon as Louis shouts ‘action.’ He cannot believe the audacity of his neighbor and shouts “WHAT IS THAT? WHAT IS THE NOISE?! WHO MOWS THEIR LAWN ON WEDNESDAY?!?!?!” Things only get worse when the sprinklers randomly turn on too. At this point, Louis is #confirmed crazy. 

“TOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I also love Louis’ little toilet paper roll that serves absolutely no real purpose. 

The next day, they move on to filming the big finale scene where Zenobia the Alien takes off in her spaceship, leaving her cowboy lover behind. Louis originally intended for it to take place during a harsh winter blizzard and assigned Tom the responsibility of making convincing snowflakes. Tom shows up with this: 

“TOM, YOU CHOWDERHEAD! I ASKED FOR SNOWFLAKES, NOT DOILIES!”

Louis has no choice but to ditch the blizzard and changes it to “a blazing desert windstorm in the middle of fall.” Okay. Zenobia’s spaceship is a tiny tinfoil thing way up in the trees and Tawny’s like “......how am I supposed to get up there?!” and Tom arrives with a “harness” that’s actually just a freaking elastic luggage rope as if that’s going to handle Tawny’s weight. But Louis assures her “of course it’s safe!!!” because he had Tom test it on a 20-pound sack of potatoes. Sounds legit. 

Is he gonna add that “blazing desert windstorm” in post, or? 

They start filming and sure enough, the “harness” breaks and Tawny falls a good 8 feet to the ground. Louis couldn’t care less though and the gang is D O N E with him at this point. They all quit the project on the spot, leaving Louis to finish the movie himself. Tom was the last one to quit and it’s pretty sad. Louis immediately looks to Tom as a last resort and expects him to step in and help finish the movie, but Tom flat out says “you’re only nice to me when you want something” and Louis has no remorse like “yeah, so?” -- This is the only part of the episode that kills me. But even so, you can tell that Louis is realizing the error of his ways pretty quickly. 

Louis left sad and deserted. “I CAN FINISH THIS MOVIE BY MYSELF!!! .....It’s my ‘thing’.”

Unfortunately, finishing the movie himself includes having to play every role himself as well. Louis is confident that if he shoots at the right angle and disguises his face and voice, no one will be able to tell the difference: “It’s called Movie Magic.”

Ren: “I’m sorry, little three-eyed girl, but do you know where my brother is?”

It cuts back to the subplot. Remember how Ren wrote a hypothetical note to Bobby just to get her thoughts down? Well, she gave it to Ruby to read and Ruby proceeded to stuff it into Bobby’s history textbook without Ren’s permission. Great job, Ruby. Unsurprisingly, Ren is livid. I would be too. Ren is a mess during history class, sweating the moment when Bobby will take out his book. So she crawls on the ground and tries to sneakily retrieve the note from his backpack. This is pretty funny. Her teacher is the same hippie guy, Todd, and this time he’s making Ren’s class do stretches “for knowledge, focus, and concentration.” Once Ren is spotted on the ground lookin’ like a weirdo, she makes up some bogus excuse that she was “squatting for truth!” HAHAHA.

She’s unable to get the note back in time, but amazingly... the note isn’t even in Bobby’s book! Turns out Ivan and Bobby bumped into each other in the hallway earlier and accidentally swapped books in the process. Therefore, the note was delivered to Ivan. You guys know I love a good miscommunication plot. They never fail to make me laugh. Ivan dramatically approaches her later and says “Ren... It needs to end. The looks in the hall, love notes...” I really love Eric Jungmann’s performance here. He’s pretty hilarious and obliviously arrogant, thinking that Ren is in love with him. One thing I never understood was how Ivan could think the note was written for him though? Because I’m SURE Ren must’ve written Bobby’s name somewhere on there! Unless she was keeping it super mysterious for whatever reason. Anyway, Ivan says “Please, Ren. Don’t speak. I’m gonna walk away now. Try not to watch me.” I love it. That’s the end of the subplot. Much like in Surf’s Up, I wish this miscommunication plot had more layers!! 

Ren just stares at him all ~fake-emotional~ and lets him believe what he wants to believe lol.

CUT TO THE FILM FESTIVAL!!! Which takes place at the real-life Vista Theatre in Los Angeles. (Another filming location I’ve added to my bucket list, tbh.) Louis is clearly anxious while waiting around for the festival to kick off and is kinda dreading the ~big premiere~ of his million-dollar movie. He’s sort of standing there rambling random things off to people like ‘have your people call my people!’ and at one point walks alongside a guy and says “yada, yada, yada... let’s just talk about somethin’!” -- Seinfeld reference, anyone?! Crazy to think that the “Yada Yada” episode first aired a mere 4 years before this at the time. I just thought that line was another awesome, subtle thing to throw in and makes for a cool connection to Louis’ Kramer poster. Of course, Louis Stevens would casually quote Seinfeld! I bet it was an ad-lib, honestly. Shia’s the best.

In the end, Twitty, Tawny, and Tom eventually show up in support of Louis and his movie. Louis apologizes for acting like a jerk and Tom even vows to put  “the snowflake incident” behind them. It’s a nice moment before the premiere of what might be the best worst movie ever made, only in competition with Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. 

Let’s just say, “Three Eyes Wide Shut” premiered to... mixed... reviews from the audience. It's very embarrassing. We never actually see the finished product. They only show us a few scenes, which always bummed me out. So I took it upon myself to edit together what “Three Eyes Wide Shut” might’ve turned out like given everything we saw Louis film. And it’s... something:

The intro alone kills me. You know a movie’s gonna be a doozy when the opening credits are typed in Comic Sans. Notice how at the very end Tom mispronounces his own name?! He definitely says “Tom Griblaowski.” Really weird. 

Needless to say, Louis is absolutely mortified by how awful his movie was. He tries hiding by attempting to blend in with some cardboard cutouts in the lobby, but... you can kinda see him there. 

Fun Fact: I was recently binge-watching “That’s So Raven” in preparation for the “Raven’s Home” spin-off, and I was so shocked to discover how many actors they recycled from Even Stevens. Beans, Cynthia Mills, The Asian radio announcer guy, the “Look Smart, Be Smart” instructional tape guy, Beans’ cousin Chris, Mr. Crappizi the school photographer -- the list goes on and on. And if that wasn’t enough... THEY EVEN RECYCLED THESE CARDBOARD CUT-OUTS!!!!!

I DIED LAUGHING AS SOON AS I SAW THIS. Oh my god. I obviously recognized it right away. All of this recycling makes sense though, as both shows were produced by Brookwell/McNamara. But, like... wow. Amazing. After the movie, Twitty and Tom try to make Louis feel better by telling him “You got into the festival, didn’t you?! And they only took the Top 10 entries!” Which would’ve been nice... except Louis explains “Everyone got accepted. There were only 9 entries.” HAHAHAHA. As Twitty and Tom head home, Tawny emerges from the theater and her mind is still reeling from the movie. She’s the only other person on the planet who understood the message Louis was trying to convey which is apparently “feeling like an outsider and wanting to be accepted by your peers.” Yeah, right. 

I always thought it was a nice touch that Tawny wore a green shirt with eyes on it to the premiere of the movie. Definitely feels like a little tribute to Zenobia, lol. 

This is really great though because it sets up Louis and Tawny again nicely. It further establishes that Tawny understands Louis better than anyone else. She got the point of his film when no one else did. She asks if they can watch it again and after they do, all we hear is a sultry voiceover of Tawny saying "I liked it even better the second time" - Oh, God. This always made me really uncomfortable lol. The episode ends with fake “bloopers” from the making of the movie and I can’t deal with it. Interestingly, I watched this episode on TV not too long ago and they cut out Tom's rapid-fire accented quote "Taco burrito, nacho's premio, $1.89 for a limited time, you know what I'm saying?" -- Is that considered offensive or racially insensitive now? I’m assuming. I have no idea but, I thought that was weird and suspicious. 

And that’s it!

I love this episode. So, so much. There’s an aspect to it that is very ahead of its time. Like I mentioned, quality quotes are flying left and right in this one! The humor is ON POINT and the performances are stellar. Especially from Shia! I always say that this is one of the episodes where Louis is at his most ‘Michael Scott.’ There’s just this level of hilariously endearing narcissism that Michael exudes all throughout The Office’s run mixed with that signature dry humor and I get those vibes from Louis so strongly here. It makes me SO HAPPY. I mean, yeah, I usually don’t like it when Louis’ ugly side makes an appearance, but it’s beyond tolerable for me in this one because the plot is just so hysterical. As entertaining as Michael’s narcissism was, it also got him in a lot of trouble as well. Often resulting in very cringe-worthy moments or people resenting him, which we see happen to Louis here. Idk. I just love finding similarities between my favorite shows. This episode also reminds me of when Michael wrote and directed his own terrible movie “Threat Level Midnight.” HAHA. 

I love Ren’s side story, too. It’s one of her stronger/funnier ones for sure. The miscommunication always gets me and the plot is also pretty important because we’re introduced to Bobby and Ruby! I’m ranking this one juuuuust shy of the Top 5 due to it having two separate plots. My Top 5 are all episodes that interweave A and B plots because I feel like Even Stevens just works better that way in general. But, still. That doesn’t take away from how solid this episode is. It literally meets all of my criteria: Personal favorite, quality plotline, quotable dialogue, hilarity, iconicness, overall entertainment value, and there’s even some character development too! So good. 

Thanks for reading!!

Just so y’all know, I actually managed to get “Three Eyes Wide Shut” listed as a legitimate short film on IMDb. I am not kidding. Please feel free to leave a sarcastic review. It’s currently boasting a 6.0. LOL! 

For this episode’s Redbubble design, you can get a reproduction of the Three Eyes Wide Shut theatrical poster!! Omg. This is one of the first things I designed and it’s been sitting in my Redbubble drafts for months. I’m so excited to publish it! haha. The poster can be seen on Louis’ bedroom wall throughout the series! I also made a little “A Louis Stevens Production” design (Comic Sans and poor capitalization and all) with Louis as the MGM Lion, lol. 

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#rank #season 1 #even stevens #louis x tawny #louis and tawny #shia labeouf #louis stevens #ren stevens #tv review #disney channel #tom gribalski #alan twitty #tawny dean #bobby deaver #the office #michael scott #ruby mendel #ivan #that's so raven

[seouliloquy]

another post

my sleeping patterns are horrific. i’m getting like 4 hours of sleep a day, and random 20 minute-1 hour naps if i can but not really.

i’m up at 7am, and i go to work near Gangnam doing this English summer camp thing. pretty much it’s just kids getting dropped off by their parents because they can’t be home alone during the summer vacation and are too young for hagwons. It’s not really teaching, since i’m working in a library not a language learning program. I’m working with a russian lady, another american girl, and 2 Korean women who are all amazing people. All we do is read books and sing songs and color with 7-8 year olds and have snack time and i love it. However, children are noisy, energy draining little monsters. and always sticky or sick! I spent a good half hour just rubbing the back of this poor kid all bundled up in a blanket while waiting for his aunt to pick him up because he came down with a fever - no doubt because kids carry germs all over the place but also going from super hot and humid into freezing cold over air-conditioned places back and forth puts too much stress on the body, for an adult! imagine a growing kid who already naturally has a slightly higher body temperature and runs around a lot.  So this is my day time job Monday to Friday. Immediately after that, i leave at 3 on the dot to get to either Taekwondo in Jamsil, the restaurant near Anam,  Soccer in Bundang and am there until late evening. On mondays I finish teaching my taekwondo classes and then take a one hour lesson until 9:30, get home by 10:30. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday i’m closing the restaurant until 9ish and don’t get home until 9:30 usually cause closing takes forever because customers keep coming even up to 1 minute before kitchen closes and I hate them because I’m stuck wasting my limited 30 minutes to do all my cleanup side work that can’t be done until Kitchen is officially closed or I actually am not busy making food.....making more food and delaying my closing work even further. Then I come home and workout, go for a run, pretend i’m a fitness junkie. Thursdays I work until 9:30 and then go play futsal with my bosses and other dudes until 11:30, I get home around 1am. Saturday I work a double shift at the restaurant, from 11am until 8pm.  Sunday is my only day off, and I usually end up spending it in the early morning doing cleaning and laundry, and then at my professor’s research lab running more experiments because our presentation for the Korean Psychology Association 학회대회 is next week and we needed more/better data to present. I just sit there waiting for the participants to finish their test every hour, and explain how to take the test over and over again (in Korean, which is hard, because the method of the test is confusing to explain even in English! so it’s a bit of a struggle for me making sure they understand the task so they perform the experiment to their best ability and the data is significant. #lifeskills #languageinuse i even had to do my course registration at work, begging my coworkers to cover for me while i yelled at my computer and clicked like a maniac as soon as the clock struck 10:00:00.  Sometimes i remember to eat real food. i’m honestly surprised that i’m not wasting away but oh right instead of a real meal i ate mcdelivery yesterday and drank two liters of chilled tea i made the day before that as a “dinner.”  it’s so hot at night i’m sleeping only in short bursts, and keep having to move positions because i can feel my body heat warming up a part of my bed and it makes me sweat even more. The fan is blowing directly on my body, with the window open, and so is the little trail of smoke from the weird anti-mosquito incense that i know for sure O is going to complain about how our room smells and how it ruined her clothes but is the only thing that keeps them from biting me constantly throughout the night.  Once i came home and passed out right away and didn’t light the incense and woke up at 1am with 8 bites on my thighs and feet and 2 on my FACE.  I still have yet to actually see one of these mosquitos in my home though. Sneaky little fuckers!  I’m exhausted. I better have my tuition by the end of this month because even though i applied for the need-based scholarship again i’m worried they won’t give it to me a third time....despite the fact that my “need” hasn’t changed at all and actually has gotten worse because all the classes I need are in the afternoon/evening which cuts into my working hours!!!! YAY!!!!  i have no idea how i’m going to survive this next semester, to be honest. Soccer class might get moved to Saturday mornings. nothing better than commuting an hour and a half to gyeongido on a saturday morning! and then hopefully i can keep closing the restaurant on saturdays too.   The soccer stuff won’t be as active in the fall (not like last semester, having a match almost every weekend for two months straight) but i don’t want to give up teaching taekwondo (or my free lessons!) and my class schedule will overlap with the shifts at the restaurant too....ugh i dunno. i’m too busy right now to really think about it... This is why most of my tumblr or instagram posts are sporadic and random and usually at like 3 in the morning. cause i can’t sleep. cause i’m overtired, and too hot. and itchy.  have i rescheduled those doctors appointments I was supposed to do in March or gotten my prescriptions refilled, my total blood test and retina examination done? nope. no time to go to the hospital! can’t take off work to go to the hospital! my rheumatologist only works in the mornings! fuck my life!  i really want marshmallows. or a fluff’n’nutter sandwich.  Like dude i’m not even eating unless it’s coffee, tea, water, yogurt, or free at work. and i’m going running and doing HIIT bodyweight training. why aren’t i skinny yet? lol oh right cause stress, and lack of sleep, and empty calories.....heh.....heh....heh....O_____________o

[rinnysega]

I have to go to work in a couple hours, but until then I’m just going to lounge in bed and miss my gf

I had such a great time with her, and I miss her so much already. 

Like when I got to the airport and waited for her, I was so nervous I could hear my heart beating in my chest like a drum. When I saw her, I smiled so wide and she did too and we hugged super hard before I took her hand and led her outside to the parking garage. I was so nervous and distracted being in her presence that I missed my exit on the Freeway and had to take an alternate route to get home. 

We stopped by Trader Joe’s and I picked up some groceries to cook for dinner when we got home. The minute we got inside my apartment was the exact moment that I felt comfortable and less nervous, that everything was right and natural and that we’d be okay. She watched me cook dinner and giggled when I got nervous, and then I helped her dry the dishes when it was over. That night we cuddled in bed for the first time ever and we talked about her flight and omg she was so tired and wanted to sleep so bad but I was so awake and talking nonstop about like everything, that I ended up taking some ZzzQuil just so I could sleep lol 

The next day we went to Universal Studios and we had such a good time. Being with her and doing fun activities was so great, and I was so proud of her when she faced her fears and rode Jurassic Park and the Mummy. I held her hand the whole time, and treated her to lunch for being so brave. After that we got to spend a little time at home to wind down before the comedy show. Ben Schwartz was so funny, it was probably the funniest show I’ve ever seen, and I was in tears laughing and slapped my knee a few times. And seeing Ilona laugh and have a good time was pure magic.

On Monday we lucked out and arrived at Cal Arts just in time for a tour of the building. We met a really sweet girl from Mississippi on the tour named Pamela who wanted to go there for acting, and there was another girl in a wheelchair in our group who broke her leg when she fell down laughing. She was there with her dad, and there were two others from Boston who were all interested in Theatre. I think Ilona was the only perspective student there for Character Animation. We got to see the classrooms, all the areas of study, got questions answered, and saw room A-113 of Pixar fame! When we left, we drove down to Northridge to check out CSUN which is her second option if Cal Arts doesn’t work out, but you never know! It made my day when she said later on that she loved it so much she wanted to apply for Fall of this year rather than Spring 2018. 

When we got back to town we walked to a little pottery place where she painted a princess to look like me and I painted a mermaid to look like her. When we finished, we went to a little Japanese BBQ place where we cooked our own food on the table, and that night we settled into the couch to watch Moulin Rouge. My movie selections are slim since I only took a few with me when I moved. I also chatted with some of my friends while she chatted with some of hers, but just being on the couch together was comforting enough.

On Tuesday we spent the morning cooking breakfast and watched Love is Strange and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Then in the afternoon we went to the movies to see Lego Batman before heading into town to see another comedy show. They called on us in the audience when they asked who was there on a date with their valentine and they used some of our story in the improv they did. After that we headed to a hibachi grill where I had reservations, and we weren’t the only gay couple at the table, bless. That night we went home and she fell asleep on my shoulder while I watched the new This is Us.

On Wednesday we got up early and went to Disneyland!!! I made a seperate post about it earlier so I won’t highlight it here, but trust me that it was the best time I’ve had at Disney. Instead of waiting in line to get a bus to take us back to the parking lot, we walked the 10 minute walk, and the whole way I made her laugh using a dorky voice while we carried the balloon we got between us. 

On Thursday we got brunch and went to DisneyTVA to see Sam Levine. He gave us a tour of the offices, as he does because he’s fantastic (or samtastic!) and Ilona was so nervous before meeting him that she kept telling me “Holy shit, I’m going to forget how to speak English” but she did very well! And she got two Sam hugs that she gushed about on the ride home. But while we were there, he let us sit in on a viewing of two episodes from season 2 with Ryan Shore, Jeff and Mark, and no spoilers, guys, but they were so fantastic that I had to bite my tongue not to talk during it. I wanted to say things out loud like “oh my god” and “awww” and make little comments like “this is so great” but I didn’t want to miss a second. Ilona sat between Sam and Ryan on the couch and I glanced over every now and again to see her having a great time. And yes, there was much laughter. 

We went to see a musical improv show later that night, and one of the characters was a shark named Jeremy, so Jeremy Shark became a running joke with me and her and I’m so glad because it was so great. 

As you guys might know, on Friday we saw the worst rain/thunder storm LA has seen in 20 years, so we didn’t get a chance to do much. We walked down to a cafe for breakfast and we picked up our finished pottery, but then the rain and wind started to pick up so we stayed indoors the rest of the day, enjoying the sound of rain while I RPed with Taylor, she talked to her friends, and we watched a few more movies. I’d planned on us going out to see La La Land and have a good dinner out on the town, but again because of weather, we just stayed inside and ordered a pizza. It was very peaceful.

Saturday was melancholy when we got lunch and I helped her pack up for her trip home. We were both quiet in the car on the way there because we were both trying not to cry. It hurt when I left her at the airport and teared up something fierce on the drive home. I tried to get it off my mind by getting photos printed and look for frames, but going to bed last night was rough. I kept refreshing the flight tracker to see where she was. She was over Canada by the time I fell asleep and early this morning when I woke up to use the bathroom, I checked again to see she was almost to the Swedish coast. 

And now we’re both talking about how much we miss each other, and how we can’t wait to see each other again. My mom makes it worse by calling and asking me all about the trip and it’s like “noooo if I do I’ll cryyyy” lol

I’m just...so in love. Each moment spent with her was a treasure that got better every day. We had a lot of down time, especially in the evenings, when I’d get tired and take a nap while she talked to her friends back home or I’d play some Overwatch while she showered or did the dishes. Either way, the quiet moments were just as meaningful as when we spent time together doing fun activities. Being with her felt so good, and the two of us compliment one another in the best of ways. We communicate, we get each other, we’re opposites and peas in a pod at the same time, it’s hard to explain. I really believe she’s good for me, and from our late night talks when we were in bed together, I believe I’m good for her too.

I can’t wait until the day she moves here for school. It’ll be nice to see her on the regular and watch her make new friends and adjust to a life in a new country. Either way, I want to be by her side and shower her with praise and affection all along the way. Seeing her happy makes me happy.

#looong post about the gf under the cut lol #iloweek