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motownfiction · 1 year

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the spoon end of a slurpee straw

When Lucy gets back home, she’s impressed to find that Will has already made good headway in preparing for Elenore’s birthday party tonight. The streamers are up, the balloons are tied around the chairs, and the snacks and drinks are on the table, waiting to be opened. Right now, Will sits in the corner of their basement apartment, filling bags of party favors. Lucy stands over him and grins.

“Are you making party favors for adults?” she asks.

Will looks up and smiles at her.

“Sort of,” he says.

“Explain yourself.”

“So, yes, the only guests at this party are other adults … and my sisters, but I’m pretty sure they were all born twenty, so by that logic, Claire is thirty-two.”

“You’ve said.”

“Right. But then I thought … just because we’re all technically adults doesn’t mean we’re not in need of party favors. So I picked up some bags and threw candy in ‘em.”

“Mmm-hmm. Sam asked you to do that, didn’t he?”

“Well, he said it was a joke, but then he dared me.”

Lucy laughs. She bends down to where Will sits and kisses him for a second or two … long enough to distract him from the treat bags and long enough to distract her from the grade she’s been obsessing over on the whole trip home.

“Where’s Elenore?” Lucy asks.

“Your parents took her to get a Frosty,” Will says. “I don’t know why I let them if she’s just going to have cake at the party.”

“It’s OK,” Lucy says. “It’s her birthday-ish. She understands.”

“She’s three years old.”

“Yeah. She’s three years old, not a jackass. Believe me. She understands.”

Will smiles and goes back to filling the treat bags with little packages of Skittles. Lucy wanders over to the bookshelf and wonders what her first book of the summer should be, besides The Madwoman in the Attic. Maybe she’ll put that one off. Something in her gut makes it seem scary, and for a second, she isn’t really sure why.

“Hey, did you get that paper back?” Will asks.

Lucy’s heart drops again.

She remembers now.

“Um, yeah,” she says. “I went with Mariam to Dr. Fine’s office. We … we got them.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Will says. “How’d you do? 100? 101?”

“You can’t get 101, Will.”

“That’s not true. You got 101 on your paper about … oh, what was it, last year … that poem about how learning is dangerous.”

“Alexander Pope. And that was an intro class. My professor didn’t expect anybody to be good. He didn’t even know about my parents.”

“Well, either way. How’d you do on this one? I know how excited you were while you were writing it.”

Lucy feels like she could throw up, right there, all over the birthday party decorations. She was excited as she wrote that paper. She learned all about the size of the needles they had to use in late Victorian blood transfusions, and how their large size evoked more penile imagery than the relatively small needles they use today. She spent hours annotating every little thing Freud said about latent and manifest content and even more hours trying to “translate” Kristeva to ordinary vernacular. Lucy worked harder on that single paper than she’d ever worked on an assignment in her life, and in 1976, she turned in a diorama about the United States Constitution with fully lit sparklers to her third-grade teacher. She hangs her head. What a time that had been. What a different girl she had been … the kind of girl who wouldn’t have dreamt of getting a 93%, even in her scariest nightmares.

In a way, she knows she’s being maudlin about this.

But in another way, she’s humiliated and angry and doesn’t know how she’s going to make it through her daughter’s birthday party without thinking about this … failure.

“Right,” Lucy finally says. “Well … I definitely learned a lot.”

Will furrows his brow and stands up to meet Lucy in the middle of the room. She feels her skin grow cold. Great. He knows something’s wrong. Will always knows when something is not right.

“What does that mean?” he asks. “Oh, man. Did you get a B?”

Lucy’s pretty sure her eyes pop right out of her head like a cartoon character. It takes every mature fiber in her body not to fall to her knees right now (but damn, if there’s not a part of her that wants to).

“No!” she hisses. “How could you even say that?”

“I don’t know!” Will says. “You’re not answering the question, which means you don’t want to … which, for a normal person, would mean you failed. But you’re you. So I wondered if you got a B.”

“Stop saying it! You’re going to put it out into the universe!”

“That’s not how this works! Either you tell me what you got on the paper, or I keep guessing, which you don’t seem to want me to do!”

Lucy sighs. She puts her hands on her hips and waits a long time, almost convincing herself that if she’s silent long enough, she’ll somehow change her grade.

“OK, fine,” she says. “If you want to know what I got, I’ll tell you what I got. Mariam and I picked up our papers today. She got a 94. And I … I got a 93.”

Will looks at Lucy like he’s not sure how he’s supposed to feel. Lucy can’t blame him. The logical part of her – the real part of her, the part of her that usually takes the lead – knows that she is being ridiculous. But the part of her that’s scared, that’s underdeveloped, that’s more childish than her three-year-old daughter has ever been … that part just can’t seem to shut up.

“Is that … is that bad?” Will finally asks.

“It’s an A minus, Will,” Lucy snaps. “Of course it’s fucking bad. It’s poison. If I apply to some place like Yale or even NYU with a grade like that … they’ll laugh me out of the room.”

“Well, OK, we haven’t talked about Yale or NYU,” Will says, unsurprisingly focused on the wrong thing. “But I … it’s one paper, right?”

“Technically. But it’s the most advanced paper I’ve written to date. And if I blew it this badly, right out of the gate, with only a year and a half until I’m supposed to send out applications for a master’s degree … how am I ever supposed to make it? How is anyone supposed to look at me and say, ‘Yeah, I can see her becoming a professor?’”

“I think you’re thinking about 20,000 leagues into the future.”

“Life’s about the future, Will. It’s about doing things right now to make sure that tomorrow doesn’t suck. And if I’m still an A minus student by December of this year, then my tomorrow is going to suck like the spoon end of a Slurpee straw.”

Will puts his hands on Lucy’s shoulders and kisses her – firm and with purpose, the best kind of kiss, especially from Will. When he lets go, Lucy fights with her own grin.

“Great,” she says. “I’m the kind of woman who needs her husband to kiss her and calm her down. I might as well drop out of school and change my last name to O’Connor because that’s what I’m worth.”

“I’m gonna try not to be offended by that,” Will says. “Look, I know you’re upset. But I also know that you know you’re overdoing it.”

Lucy sighs. She hates that he’s right.

“OK, so maybe I am,” she says. “But why do I do that?”

“I don’t know,” Will says. “I guess that’s something you have to figure out. But can you promise me something? Please?”

“Sure.”

“Can you at least pretend like you’ve got it figured out at Elenore’s party? She picks up on people’s moods, and I know you don’t want her to have a bad time.”

Lucy exhales again. Even standing in the midst of all these party decorations, she keeps almost forgetting that tonight is Elenore’s birthday party. But she can’t forget. She can’t let herself get swept up in an A minus. She doesn’t want Elenore to learn from her this way. She doesn’t want Elenore to become obsessed with perfect grades; doesn’t want Elenore to hate her reflection in the mirror; doesn’t want Elenore to use her grades to compensate for hating her reflection in the mirror. Elenore doesn’t deserve any of that. Lucy swallows hard and nods.

“I know,” she says. “Consider me temporarily cured.”

Will kisses Lucy again, a little quicker this time.

“Good,” he says.

They hear the front door swing open above them, and Elenore’s excited footsteps run inside. Lucy hears Mary call out, “Elenore! I think your mommy’s home!” and hears John follow it up with, “Go get her!”

And in those few seconds of Elenore running down the basement stairs and into her mother’s arms, Lucy forgets all about the A minus in the front seat of her car. For these few seconds, Elenore is all that matters. Elenore is all that will ever matter.

“Hi, Mommy!” Elenore says, and Lucy smiles as her own parents descend the stairs behind her.

“Hi, Elenore,” Lucy says. “Did you have a good Frosty?”

“Grandma didn’t let me eat at all. ‘Cause of the cake.”

“Sounds like Grandma was thinking. Cake is pretty special, you know. And cake is extra special for you this year. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you get two birthday cakes!”

“I do! I do!”

Elenore laughs for no reason other than being three years old. She jumps on her mother to hug her and pummels her to the ground. Lucy laughs and laughs. Behind her head, Will laughs, too. It’s the perfect day, and she can’t remember why she felt so strange when she pulled into the driveway ten minutes ago.

“So, Luce,” John says as the laughter dies down. “Did you get back that Dracula paper?”

Lucy bolts up from the ground and looks at her father, face whiter than a sheet.

Right.

She looks over her shoulder at Will, who’s pleading for her to play it cool.

Looks like this is going to be much harder than it needs to be.

#drabble #food #writeblr #ch: lucy callaghan #ch: will o'connor #ch: elenore o'connor #ch: mary callaghan #ch: john callaghan #ship: c'est la vie say the old folks #year: 1987 #series: first of may

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loverscrossmp3 · 2 years

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sobbing at this girl’s in my lit mag class annotations on my poem. she wrote “i love this line!!! made me smile & i had to take a breather because it’s so good!!!” and expected me to be okay what

#like she FULLY delved into it annotated just about every stanza i’m crying #i’m so unnecessarily excited about this but she’s so nice!!! and it was a little workshop thing so i was with some other girls too and they #were!!! so!!! kind!!!!!#and then my teacher (english and lit mag teacher are the same) was just agdkshshs one of the girls was just saying how good it was and then #my teacher was like “i know! i hate her! i hate her but i love her’ screamingbsjss i was blushing so hard why are writers so nice what did #i do to deserve this dkshshs he #oh!! and then (backstory: poem is basically inspired/about my sister who’s away at uni rn so it’s a bit… sad…. angsty) and at the very end #she goes ‘nothing to annotate here… but definitely think you should text your sister <3’ like???? this is my first time talking to you i’m #sorry i dumped all that on you but for you to give me advice???? i’ll cry stop it. and THEN she gave me her number at the end bc she wanted #to know if she was right in her analysis. like yes! you were! more than right frankly! basically just stepped into my brain and walked #around a bit of exactly what i was thinking of when i wrote??? like i’m not even exaggerating she got EVERYTHING #anyways enough of me. i love when girls are nice <3 reminds me how good the world is <3 how good humans can be <3 #someone shut her (liv) up!#if u read this whole thing i’m smooching u thru the phone rn

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tiramisiyu · 3 years

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【未定事件簿】 Tears of Themis: A Love Poem to Skadi - Event Story 1-08, Winter and Allie

Translation Masterlist | Themis Event Masterlist

Story: 1-1 / 1-2 / 1-3 / 1-4 / 1-5 / 1-6 / 1-7 / 1-8

Slightly overdue - sorry about that!

To sum this part up, the truth behind the “haunted mansion” was a tragic love story that surpassed the bounds of death. See below for full translation!

Outside the Unknown Room

After finishing the scout around the basement’s four rooms, we finally arrived to the deepest part of this level.

Xia Yan: The room is locked.

Zuo Ran: Do we need to look for the keys?

Xia Yan: No. The lock on this door is mechanism-based; it’s not opened by a key.

Xia Yan: We need to follow an order to successively shift the mechanisms in order to open this lock.

Lu Jinghe: Could we straight-up take it apart?

Xia Yan: No, these kinds of locks all have protective systems. Once the opening method is incorrect, or it’s broken by force…

Xia Yan: It’s very likely that it’ll directly go the opposite way, deadlocking itself. Then we’ll never be able to open it again.

Mo Yi: Then if we obtain something like this lock’s design blueprint, would you be able to find the order to open this?

Xia Yan: I can.

MC: (Blueprint… but where do we find it… wait, have we forgotten something?)

MC: Right! “Allie’s Winter”! “The final guide”!

MC: The deepest part of this mansion’s underground should be where the truth is, as Johnny said.

Mo Yi: I remember it was said before that we needed to restore the picture on the top of the box and finish scouting the four rooms for the box to open.

MC: Correct, and we’ve now already finished scouting the rooms. What we still need is the restored picture…

Zuo Ran: Then it’s probably needed for us to place the collected gem shards back into it.

After speaking, Zuo Ran took the lead, embedding the red gem shards in his hands back onto the box.

The remaining few followed right behind, fitting the collected gem shards of various colours onto it, one by one.

The moment the last shard fell into place, the inside of “Allie’s Winter” made a mechanical activation sound.

Right after, the box lid opened, and two sheepskin scrolls appeared in front of us.

MC: This is…?

Xia Yan: Let me see…

Xia Yan: This one is the personal letter from the designer of “Allie’s Winter”.

Xia Yan: This one…

Xia Yan: I feel like it’s the blueprint for something, but all the components’ pictures have been drawn overlapping on each other…

Xia Yan: Plus, the annotations on the side are in Akkadian. There’s a lot of parts that I can’t decipher.

Lu Jinghe: This blueprint should be the blueprint for this mechanism lock.

Lu Jinghe looked at the mechanism lock on the door, then looked at the blueprint Xia Yan was holding.

Mo Yi: Are you sure? These things piled together do not look like the parts of a lock.

Lu Jinghe: I’m sure. I once saw this sort of overlapping art style from Teacher – it’s a really unpopular thing.

Lu Jinghe: Last century, it once got popular for a period of time within a small range of people, but because it was not used much, it became eliminated very quickly.

Lu Jinghe: If one didn’t specialize in the study of art or design, they probably wouldn’t understand it.

Lu Jinghe: I can help take apart the overlapping components on this blueprint, but the annotations on the side…

Zuo Ran: Let me see.

Zuo Ran took the blueprint, sweeping his gaze roughly over the contents of the sheet.

Zuo Ran: I can decipher most of the content… but some of it…

Zuo Ran: Mo Yi, look at these translated phrases. Are they the names of some sort of medical instruments?

Zuo Ran: It seems like, due to insufficient materials, this designer took apart the components of some medical instruments and used them.

Mo Yi: I’ll try.

MC: Everyone looks so professional…

MC: I also really want to help… but what can I do…

Xia Yan: You can help me open the lock.

Xia Yan: Locks like this typically require two or more people to open it together.

MC: Okay!

Under the aid of Zuo Ran and Mo Yi, Lu Jinghe disassembled the parts very quickly, getting the general blueprint of a mechanism lock.

I then followed Xia Yan’s instructions, working with him, carefully solving the mechanism lock.

A long while after, after a crisp “click” sound, the room’s door opened.

The moment the door opened, what appeared in front of us were two coffins, standing side by side, as well as a tombstone, standing quietly tall and upright.

Inside the Unknown Room

MC: This, this is…

Xia Yan: That’s right, they’re the coffins of Miss Allie and Winter.

Xia Yan quietly approached the two coffins, seriously and carefully examining them up and down several times.

At the end, he pointed at the tiny letters carved on the coffin covers, smiling softly at me.

MC: Sure enough… in that fire, Miss Allie had already…

Lu Jinghe: Don’t you want to hear the complete story between Miss Allie and Winter?

I hadn’t finished talking, but Lu Jinghe, one step ahead of me, cut me short.

He lowered his body slightly, his dark pupils full of smiles and warmth.

Lu Jinghe: Earlier, you used the items and clues left behind in the mansion to deduce all of what happened once in here.

Lu Jinghe: Those are innumerable tiny, fine “points”. It’s only when these points are joined up into a line…

Lu Jinghe: We can most truly and most objectively restore their life.

Mo Yi: This is also the largest esteem and certainty to them, as well as this mansion.

MC: …

Not far away, Zuo Ran nodded at me.

I suddenly remembered the love letters that belonged to Allie and Winter that I’d seen, and immediately let out a deep breath.

MC: Then where should we start?

Xia Yan: …

Mo Yi: …

Zuo Ran: …

Lu Jinghe: …

Lu Jinghe: Then I’ll start it off.

Lu Jinghe cleared his throat and slowly opened his mouth.

Lu Jinghe: This mansion was built approximately 100 years ago. The owner of the mansion was Laste Modero.

Lu Jinghe: He had only one daughter named Allie. He loved this daughter very much.

Lu Jinghe: Laste was extremely rich and made an extensive range of friends. He believed in the Cult of Rebirth, and even held a key position in the religion.

Lu Jinghe: This mansion of his, called the Manor of Hermes, was often used as the gathering site for believers.

Zuo Ran: Simultaneously, Laste’s daughter, Allie, was childhood friends with the butler’s son Winter, and the two grew up together.

Zuo Ran: They could not avoid adoring each other, and finally came together.

Zuo Ran: But this relationship was full of the unknown. For one, Mr. Laste did not agree to his daughter being with the butler’s son.

Zuo Ran: On the other hand, Miss Allie…

MC: She was afflicted with… mania.

Xia Yan: To cure his daughter of her illness, Laste found very many doctors and cured patients one after another, inquiring them for effective methods.

Xia Yan: But regretfully, these methods were ineffective on Allie. Under these conditions with no results…

MC: Laste chose to pray to the church, using the method of “washing away her sins” to save his daughter’s life.

Lu Jinghe: The church dropped an “oracle”, dispatching a divine envoy by the name of Geruide to help Allie wash away her sins.

MC: But truthfully, the command that this Geruide received from the church was to seize the inheritance rights of the Modero family’s riches after Allie’s death.

Mo Yi: Geruide disguised himself as a doctor and arrived at the mansion, performing treatments on Allie that lacked any procedure.

Mo Yi: These treatments aggravated Allie’s illness more. If near the beginning, she was able to maintain a state of clarity for a period of time per day…

Mo Yi: In the end, Allie had fallen completely into insanity.

MC: …

Zuo Ran: Winter, who saw all of this, decided to take Allie away from this mansion.

Zuo Ran: He created a plan that he believed would make them able to completely break away from the mansion, which was…

MC: Setting fire to the mansion.

MC: But before he had finished his preparations, Geruide decided to carry out a lobotomy on Allie, and found many experimental subjects.

Zuo Ran: Winter, who found out about this information and witnessed the miserable conditions of the experimental subjects decided to put his plan in action in advance, to bring Allie away immediately.

Xia Yan: But Winter’s plans were still found out by Laste. He worked with the police director, wanting to wait for an opportunity to throw Winter into jail.

MC: So the day that Winter decided to act on was…

Lu Jinghe: It probably was the day that Allie underwent surgery. Don’t forget, that blood pentagram was unfinished.

MC: Then after, it was Winter who set fire in the mansion…

Xia Yan: No, I think the person who set the fire wasn’t Winter.

MC: ???

Xia Yan: The oil buckets that Winter bought to set the fire were not opened. Plus, based on the burned state of the mansion’s first floor…

Xia Yan: The fire started from the kitchen and spread to the various rooms of the first floor, particularly the splits in the mansion paths.

Xia Yan: But the fire did not burn to the second floor or above. These aren’t the results of a gasoline fire.

MC: Then who set the fire?

Zuo Ran: I think… it was probably Allie.

MC: !!!

Zuo Ran: We also found fire experiment records in her room. Those records were probably taken away by her deliberately.

Xia Yan: If it were Allie, then that would make sense.

Xia Yan: I think that the situation that day was… Winter followed his plan, preparing to start the fire, but he was caught red-handed by Laste.

Xia Yan: The two grappled, startling Allie awake. Maybe at that moment, Allie regained a portion of her reason.

Xia Yan: She saw Winter, covered in wounds from her father, and remembered that fire experiment report…

Xia Yan: She then obtained an open flame from the kitchen, lit the kitchen ablaze first, which then spread to the whole first floor.

Xia Yan: The fire blocked off all paths to escape outside, leaving just the main door, and Allie left this opportunity to Winter.

Zuo Ran: Allie and Winter promised that both would persist in living, and would meet after the fire was extinguished.

Zuo Ran: But when Winter returned to the mansion as promised, all that awaited him was just Allie’s ice-cold body and the left message on the wall of the raid shelter room.

MC: So the marks left on that wall were Allie’s!

Mo Yi: It was probably left by her due to the simultaneous effects of asphyxia and mania in the raid shelter room.

Zuo Ran: That’s right.

Xia Yan: Winter created a coffin for Allie and kept this coffin in the deepest area.

Xia Yan lightly patted that coffin that was clearly somewhat old.

Xia Yan: And he himself settled in the mansion, silently protecting the person he loved, until death.

Xia Yan: Sometimes, to scare off those adventurers who intruded on the mansion in vain, he could only dress up as a ghost to scare off those people…

Xia Yan: Plus, he still had the wounds from his fight, so he already looked somewhat savage, so his fearsome power became stronger when he dressed up as a ghost.

Xia Yan: As time passed, the “haunted” legend of the Manor of Hermes spread.

MC: …

This was the truth of the “Haunted Mansion”.

This was no stirring legend. It was no more than the story of two people in a maelstrom, clinging to and saving each other…

And in the end, only one person was left, guarding on his own.

MC: Then what about Winter’s coffin? Who made it?

MC: And the mechanism lock on the door – who did all this?

Mo Yi: Probably Winter himself.

Mo Yi: I just examined it – though the lock on the door is designed so that it’s very hard to open from the outside, it’s very easy to open from the inside.

MC: But why did Winter…

Zuo Ran: Do you still remember the last sentence on Winter’s suicide note?

Zuo Ran: “I will protect you until the end of time”… and on the back of the mechanism lock blueprint, there is a row of identical words.

Zuo Ran: Winter might have… decided to lock himself into this room at the end of his life, locking himself into the coffin he made himself.

MC: How could it be… like this…

I didn’t know why, but I inexplicably felt somewhat suffocated.

Is this their ending? Soundlessly, wordlessly falling into sleep in this dark place, devoid of sunlight?

Lu Jinghe: Before us, there should’ve been other people to come in here.

Lu Jinghe: It’s very obvious that this tombstone was erected by people who came after.

Xia Yan: It’s not just the tombstone. “Allie’s Winter” was also made by people after to commemorate them, while simultaneously protecting this mansion.

Xia Yan handed the sheepskin scroll that was originally placed in “Allie’s Winter” to me.

Xia Yan: Based on what’s written on this note, the creator of “Allie’s Winter” accidentally obtained the mechanism lock’s blueprint.

Xia Yan: After he got an understanding of what happened in this mansion and entered this room, he decided to continue protecting Winter and Allie’s peace.

Xia Yan: So he set up door locks for the other rooms in the basement, then integrated the essentials of the unlocking parts into “Allie’s Winter”.

Xia Yan: Based on his wishes, “Allie’s Winter” could only circulate between few people who had received approval.

Xia Yan: All these past years, those who have obtained this box have used their own methods to protect this place.

MC: …

Mo Yi: So, don’t feel sad for Winter and Allie.

I didn’t know when, but Mo Yi was already standing by my side.

Mo Yi: Their story will still continue, after surpassing the boundaries of life and time.

Mo Yi: Though this place does not see the light of day, every person who has protected this place before has brought them the brightest light.

MC: …

As if compelled by an otherworldly force, I walked towards the tombstone standing upright on the side.

On it, the story of Allie and Winter was recorded word by word, and at the end of the story, the tombstone carver carved that phrase onto it.

That phrase that had appeared in Allie’s love letter, as well as in Winter’s suicide note:

“You are the bright day and the dark night, fresh flowers and sunlight – you are all of goodness and hope.”

“My lover, perhaps there will come one day that time, as well as life and death, will separate us.”

“But the sole matter that I love you will always, always…”

#tears of themis #tears of themis translations #weiding shijian bu #未定事件簿 #better late than never ayy #xia yan #lu jinghe #zuo ran #mo yi #tot translation #mihoyo sure loves their tragic love stories huh

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writingsbychlo · 4 years

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Imagine thomas tutoring a classmate with a difficult subject like.... poetry cus lets be honest it is not that easy to understand what a poem means espically if the teacher wants you to understand it how they do

so Thomas is lowkey amazing at English Lit

it’s his secret little passion, he loves to read and write

so when he sees that the cute girl who sits behind him is struggling?

he jumps at the chance to help you out

you’re just not getting the point of annotating poems

and there is no way there is anything similar with these two poems

so he says you can meet in the library after class and he can help you

so you accept, of course, because the cute guy who sits in front of you wants to help you out!! he wants to spend time with you after class!!

queue cute little blushes from you both as hands brush

both of you looking at each other all nervously and shyly

he thinks it’s really cute how you tuck your hair behind your ear

and you think it’s really cute how into poetry he is secretly

a few weeks pass, and you’ve been meeting up like three times a week

he’s been going over everything with you

from the beats, to the annotations, to the hiding meanings

you could have a degree in poetry by now

so when you finally get the hang of it? he’s over the moon.

“so, what you’re saying, is that ‘ozymandias’ and ‘bayonet rifle’ actually relate because they’re both about the rise and fall of power, but in two totally different eras and..”

he tunes out after he realises you've got this because his favourite girl is just sitting here talking about poetry with him and he’s so soft?

and when he nods to tell you that you’ve got it you’re so happy

your smile lights up his world, he’s so proud of you

he is really sad at the end of the day when you’re both leaving though

and that you won’t need any more sessions after this

you’re both kind of lingering hoping the other will make a move because YOU DON’T KNOW HOW THE OTHER FEELS DAMN IT

so when neither of you does anything you just sigh and thank him

and then you give him a little kiss to his cheek before you’re gone

and he’s so soft and in love!!

you’re both so sad because you’d been loving getting to know him

when you took your breaks you both talked so much

you felt like he knew everything about you, and like you knew him

so now it’s over? you were gutted

the next week in english lit, you take a seat next to him

baby is so nervous!! and you lean over with a new poem

“I was wondering if you could help me study this poem?”

he looks at his and his eyebrows raise at you

“but we’re not studying love? we’re studying war and power.”

IT WAS THE BIGGEST FUCKING HINT

THE POEM IS LITERALLY CALLED ‘I love you’

you take this as a pretty big hint that he’s not into you now

“right, yeah, my bad.”

you just leave the paper out and you’re quiet for the rest of the lesson

and you’re playing with the end of your pen

which he now knows is one of your tells about feeling nervous/awkward

and he doesn’t understand why, and he wants to ask if you’re okay

but when the class ends you bolt like you’re gone so fast

and you left the poem behind and he’s kinda sad you’re gone

his pal Newt comes over so they can walk to their lunch break together

and Newt sees the poem and is like “what’s this?”

“just some poem (Y/N) wanted me to study with her, she didn’t realise we were only studying war & power, I guess.”

Newt takes one look at it and smacks his friend upside the head

“you’re so bloody thick. she was trying to tell you she’s into you.”

“what?”

“read the poem, you moron! she was trying to tell you in a cute nerdy way that she likes you! I don’t even want to know what you said to the poor girl.”

Thomas is like oh my god oh my god oh my god

“I need to go.”

“yeah, I think you do.”

he’s racing through the corridors to find you, he’s so flustered

you’re at your locker just swapping out books and looking sad

when you close your locker he’s just standing there

“holy hell, thomas! you scared the life out of me!��

“I’m sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

the two of you are just standing there awkwardly

he’s holding the poem in his hands and you’re embarrassed

you reach out to take it back assuming that's why he’s here

but he holds onto it real tight, now you're both just gripping the paper

he is suddenly nervous again and he’s all choked up and frozen

so he takes his pen and leans the paper against the lockers

he writes a single word before holding it up to you, pointing at the title

the word ‘too’ has just been scrawled next to it and he’s blushing

it takes you a second but then you realise it says ‘I Love You too”

and you look at him with your eyebrows raised and a soft smile

“I’m just really stupid around pretty girls.”

he eventually manages to speak and that’s what he says??? he wishes the floor would actually just swallow him whole

but then you giggle a little and he’s smiling

“I think it’s cute.”

“I think you’re cute.”

Thoams is wondering why he can’t just shut his damn mouth and stop embarrassing himself but you’re smiling so that must be good?? right?

“Bloody kiss her already, shank!”

You can’t help but laugh at the blond boy who looks exasperated

and deciding that he couldn't’ be any more embarrassed now

Thomas does just that and puts a nervous hand on your cheek

your noses nuzzle together for a second before he finally kisses you

and he’s so happy as you kiss him back

you have to break apart because you’re both smiling so much

but it was the first of many kisses you both shared

throughout high school, and college

and on your wedding day, Thomas read that same poem to you as his vows, on the same piece of paper he had kept all those years

soft bby tommy just loves his girl and poetry thx

#Anonymous

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dreamycastaway · 5 years

Text

it is the hour

summary:

“Youcanalwayscrashatmyplaceifyouneedto,” Martin said, forcing the words out of his mouth fast enough that he couldn’t think better of it and offer to call his boss a cab instead.

“What?”

Martin took a deep breath. “I said, ‘you can always crash at my place if you need to.’” It took all of Martin’s willpower not to close his eyes. Instead, he watched Jon’s face, waiting for the shorter man to make up his mind.

Shout out to @lime-pigeon for the concept!

I'm dreamycastaway over on ao3 also, this fic is posted there under the same title as this post. no links because tumblr doesnt like them i guess

Martin hadn’t known when the event “Boys’ Night” had appeared in the office calendar – no one in the Archive had seemed to know. Tim denied having created it, and no one had bothered to ask the Head Archivist if he’d done it, as no one believed that the phrase “Boys’ Night” had even been in his vocabulary prior to its appearance on the calendar.

Tim had, of course, asked Sasha if she had set it up, but she said she hadn’t. Martin had gingerly approached her later to ask her if she minded not being invited. She’d said no, and actually, she thought it was rather thoughtful that whoever had planned it had remembered she would be attending a friend’s rehearsal dinner that night. Martin had been unable to delete the event, and as attempts by any of the rest of the Archive staff had proven similarly futile, they had eventually stopped trying.

None of them knew for sure if they were bound to the events on the office calendar, but Tim’s attempts to ditch staff meetings had been strangely unsuccessful since they had started working in the Archive, and Martin had felt a sneaking suspicion that any of them trying to get out of this wouldn’t do them much good. Sure enough, on the fateful evening marked for “Boys’ Night”, Martin found himself sitting in a softly lit booth in a small pub, ordering chips and drinks alongside Tim and Jon.

Martin had been nervous all day. He was nervous all day most days, but this had given him something to fixate on. As opposed to his typical diffuse anxiety, which floated like a prickly fog over everything, this had been a hailstorm targeted on the approaching evening out. Was it going to be awkward? Was he going to be too tall and big to fit in some tiny booth at some random pub? Was Jon going to go back to work afterwards? Martin knew he had been overworking himself, but it would be different to see it himself, to see that resigned and frightened look on Jon’s face as he mumbled something about there being ‘more to be done.’ What if someone got sick? What if it turned out Jon hated him in a social setting? The onslaught of concerns had played ceaselessly on a cruel loop since Martin had woken up that morning.

But now that he was here, the whole thing felt surprisingly fine. Good, even. They’d asked Martin to pick the location, so he’d been able to pick a homey spot just a few blocks from his flat. Tim had hit on the hostess, who had brought them their new schmaltz fries “to try”, with a wink at Tim that indicated to Martin that the huge basket of chips would probably be free. And while Jon still looked tired and unapproachable, he wasn’t quite as hunched over as usual, wasn’t acting quite as defensive as he typically did. Martin felt strongly that this qualified as the Archivist loosening up, and had to prevent himself from smiling as he watched Jon listen to Tim tell a story about a kayaking trip without looking over his shoulder even once.

“Another round?” Tim asked jovially as he finished his story, and Martin was surprised to see Jon tip forward his empty glass in agreement.

“Oh, sure,” Martin said, moving to stand and walk with Tim to the bar.

“Don’t worry, I got it,” Tim said, picking up all three glasses almost effortlessly and walking towards the bar. Martin realized why Tim had been so courteous as he watched him lean easily on the old wood bar to flirt with the dark-haired bartender, who seemed to be eating him up.

Jon let out a short, good-natured laugh from the other side of the booth. “Figures Tim would be able to find a handsome date, even at an office function,” he said.

Martin looked back at Jon, trying not to let disappointment creep into his expression as he realized that his pale complexion and squishy figure were about as different from the lanky, tan, “handsome” bartender as possible. He frowned before he could stop himself.

Jon grimaced. “I’m sorry, probably not the type of commentary you want from your boss.” He paused, and when he continued speaking his voice was softer and sadder. “I guess I forgot about work for a moment.” The way he said it made it sound as if he thought it was a bad thing that he’d managed to forget about work, and Martin felt his heart sink.

“No, no, it’s not that …” Martin hadn’t been sure where this sentence had been going when he started it, and he still wasn’t sure now, as Jon raised an eyebrow and waited for Martin to finish his clarification. “Well, it’s more …” He was starting to wonder how he had managed to let a three-line conversation go so cataclysmically wrong when Tim plopped back down next to Jon with their drinks.

“Sorry, guys! Here you go,” Tim said. Martin breathed an almost imperceptible sigh of relief as the conversation turned to the most important architectural landmarks in London, hoping that his awkwardness had been forgotten. They continued on like this for some time: Jon consistently surprised his coworkers by being up for another round, Tim continued regaling them with stories of his adventurous vacations while Jon occasionally interjected with a bit of trivia about a location or historical figure Tim mentioned. The more Martin drank the warmer and softer the light felt, and he was happy to mostly watch and listen.

Eventually, the last of the sunlight faded and the street lights went on, and still they sat there, drinking and talking. Tim asked if they were up for one last round, deciding not to wait for their answer before heading off to the bar. When he came back, he was holding just two drinks.

“Who’s cut off?” Martin asked. John raised an eyebrow and waited, expectantly.

“Oh, no one, I’m just headed out,” Tim said with a grin, nodding towards where the bartender was putting his coat on. “I closed out your tabs; this last one’s on me,” Tim said, flashing Martin a wink as he handed him and Jon their cards back. “See ya Monday!”

“See you Monday, Tim,” Jon said. Martin just nodded as he felt a flush rise in his face, and hoped desperately that Jon hadn’t noticed Tim’s wink. He brought his glass up to his lips to try and hide his blush, not even bothering to look at what Tim had brought him. He didn’t put his glass down until he’d finished what he thought based on the taste must be some kind of whiskey cocktail.

“Martin, you wouldn’t happen to have a book with you?” Jon asked as Martin put his glass down. The timing was so exact that Martin knew that Jon must have been watching him, waiting for him to finish. He could feel himself blushing again, and with no way to hide it, was forced to resort to hoping Jon would assume it was the liquor. He nodded and reached into his satchel, fishing out his hardcover collection of Romantic poetry.

While this was normally the type of thing he wouldn’t own up to carrying with him at all times, the alcohol had taken hold just enough that he pushed the worn-down volume towards Jon without thinking much of it. It seems Jon didn’t think much of it either, as he opened it to a random page and plucked the lavender out of his cocktail. He dried the stems off carefully, sipping his drink as he placed the flowers between the pages of Martin’s book, seemingly without reading any of the printed text or Martin’s annotations. Martin watched, confusion weighing on his brow, as the other man finished his drink and delicately closed the book. He handed it back to Martin, who placed it gingerly in his satchel, being careful not to crush the bit of lavender stem Jon had left sticking out from the pages.

“Sorry,” Jon mumbled. “It’s just … something I do. Sometimes. I hope it’s okay.” He was by no means slurring his speech, and someone who had never heard his normal way of speaking might not have even thought him to be drunk. But to Martin, who spent his days at the office hanging on to every punctuated word and purposeful pause that came out of Jon’s mouth, the difference was obvious, and potentially concerning. “If the flowers bother you, we can throw them out. It’s just a French lavender and I thought, well, it might be nice to save it, you know, I mean, as a memento,” as the Archivist continued babbling, Martin adjusted his previous assessment: the difference was obvious, and definitely concerning.

“Jon, Jon,” Martin said, realizing that his words were also slow and sloppy. He still didn’t fully understand what Jon had been doing with his book of poems, but decided it probably wasn’t that big a deal. “It’s fine, it’s completely fine.”

Jon smiled at this, a real smile, not a smirk or that expression he sometimes made that was supposed to be a smile but was really just him sort of pursing his lips, and Martin felt himself grin before he could stop himself. He hadn’t seen Jon genuinely smile since they’d all changed departments. They sat like that for a moment, smiling at each other in the soft light for no real reason at all.

“Last call! We’re closing in fifteen minutes,” the hostess’ voice rang out, breaking through their haze.

“Oh, we should go,” Martin said, not wanting to be the table that prevented them from closing up the pub for the night. Jon nodded, and got clumsily to his feet. Martin waved goodnight to the hostess as they stepped out the door into the cool nighttime. A fine mist hung in the air; the promise of rain later that night.

“Jon, are you going to be okay getting home?”

Jon looked up at Martin, blinking slowly. “Oh. I’m, uh, sure I’ll be fine,” he looked around, seemingly disoriented. “I think the night bus in my neighborhood should still be running by the time I get back there.”

“Are you sure?”

Jon paused. Martin figured Jon must be really drunk; sober Jon would respond to any query that questioned his competence harshly and immediately.

“Youcanalwayscrashatmyplaceifyouneedto,” Martin said, forcing the words out of his mouth fast enough that he couldn’t think better of it and offer to call his boss a cab instead.

“What?”

“I, uh, wouldn’t want to impose on you like that,” Jon said.

“It’s really no trouble, Jon,” Martin said, recognizing the script they were following. They both knew neither of them could acknowledge outright that Jon should stay at Martin’s, even though they both knew that’s what was going to happen at the end of this conversational dance.

“I mean, only if you’re sure. I’m sure I can get back to my place.”

“It’s already getting late; I only live a few blocks away.”

“You can kick me out early tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to disrupt your Saturday.”

“I don’t have any plans tomorrow morning.”

“Okay, well. Only if you’re sure it’s not going to bother you.”

“I’m sure, Jon.”

A silence hung between them for a moment. “Okay,” Jon sighed. “Okay. Thank you, Martin.”

“This way, then,” Martin said, gesturing down the street. The walk would normally only take Martin three or four minutes, but given that Jon’s legs were shorter than his and they were both a little off balance, he figured that tonight it would take too long to pass the trip in silence.

“So, what were you doing with that flower?”

Jon looked away. “Oh, I, uh … my grandmother taught me how to press flowers. She tended to take them as souvenirs from places we went.” He paused. Martin waited. “We didn’t do things together too often. It’s just … one of my only fond memories of childhood, and … I don’t have many occasions to do it anymore.”

Martin wasn’t sure how to react to Jon’s statement – like much of what Jon said, it contained both something Martin found incredibly endearing and also a deep-rooted sadness, and Martin, per usual, wasn’t sure which to react to. He desperately wanted to envelop Jon in a hug, whisper something kind into his ear. But Jon seemed embarrassed talking about it at all, and Martin knew he was already pushing his luck tonight.

“That’s lovely, Jon,” Martin said, trying and failing to use the tone of voice a colleague would use, as opposed to someone more familiar. Jon smiled, a soft, clumsy smile that made Martin almost drop the keys to his building. Who would have thought he’d be such a cute drunk? Martin thought as he fumbled with the key in the lock of the front door. He led Jon down the carpeted hallway, and opened the door to his small flat.

“Well, this is it,” Martin said as he closed the door behind Jon. “I’m sorry it’s not more impressive,” he said, letting out an embarrassed laugh.

“Martin, it’s fine. I know how it is to live on an Institute salary,” Jon said. He paused, as if waiting for someone to say something. “Do you have roommates?”

“What? No, I, it’s just me. Why do you … oh.” Martin grimaced at himself as he realized he’d left the bedroom television on. All day. “No, it’s just the television, I can turn it off.”

Jon followed Martin as he walked from the combination kitchen-entryway into the bedroom. Aside from the small bathroom, the apartment was only the two rooms.

“I, uh, don’t have a couch,” Martin said as he looked around for the TV remote. “So you can, um, have the bed, and I’ll sleep in the armchair.”

“What?”

“I know, I know, ‘how do you entertain without a couch, Martin,’ well, to be honest –”

“Oh! No, sorry, no, I wasn’t going to … I just,” Jon shifted on his feet. “I don’t feel right making you sleep in the chair.”

Martin clicked the power button on the remote, plunging the room into silence, save for the rain pattering on the window. If he was going to write a poem about this moment (which he most certainly wasn’t, he told himself) he would have said that the silence was symbolic of Jon rejecting his hospitality.

“I mean, I fall asleep in my chair all the time in the office, and this one looks much more comfortable than mine,” Jon said with an awkward laugh. “I can take the chair, it’s fine.” Martin just continued to stare at him, which seemed to make Jon think he needed to keep talking. “Besides I couldn’t possibly sleep in your bed in my work clothes … I’m being trouble enough.”

Martin looked at his boss in disbelief. “Well, you won’t be sleeping in your work clothes,” he said as he shoved a clean set of pajamas into Jon’s arms. The smell of fabric softener hung in the air around them as Jon slowly took the bundle of fabric from Martin, looking shocked. Martin looked down. “I’m sure they’ll be big on you, but … hopefully it’s okay for one night.”

“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Jon murmured, holding on to Martin’s pajamas as if they might not be real. He paused. “You don’t have to do all this, you know.”

Martin breathed the kind of exasperated breath schoolteachers make at students who seem to be purposefully refusing to grasp a concept. “I know that, Jon. I want to do this.”

They stood there for what felt like ages, as if they were both waiting for the other to acknowledge the implications of the exchange they’d just had.

“Okay, well, you can go ahead and wash up first?” Martin asked, having decided they were both too drunk to have any sort of serious conversation tonight.

“Oh, um, yes,” Jon said, in a way that Martin could have sworn sounded disappointed. He shuffled into the bathroom and closed the door gently. Martin quickly changed into his own pajamas, and sat pointedly in the chair to prevent Jon from trying to take it from him.

When Jon reemerged, Martin’s pajamas hanging too-loose over his frame, he looked as all his recent sleepless nights had suddenly come crashing down on him. Martin gestured pointedly towards the bed, maintaining his stubborn position in the armchair. Jon opened his mouth, presumably to protest, but all that came out was a quiet “thank you.”

He was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

As Martin looked at Jon from behind his own heavy eyelids, he felt tears well up in the corners of his eyes. Something about seeing Jon in hisclothes, in his bed made the smaller man look so vulnerable, and so stupidly exhausted. The mask of bitterness and skepticism was gone from Jon’s face, and he just looked troubled, plagued by the kind of ever-present worry Martin knew so well. Martin’s desire to crawl into bed alongside him and hold the other man in his arms and just let him rest felt like a horrible full-body ache, and Martin knew he was in too deep. He knew that this feeling would get him in trouble someday, and yet … something about Jon meant he couldn’t just let it go.

Martin reached into his satchel for a tissue to wipe the tears off his face, and felt his hand brush against his book of poems. He pulled it out of his bag – he knew he wasn’t going to get much sleep that night; he’d always been terrible at sleeping sitting up. He flipped open the volume without anything specific in mind, but the book opened to the page containing Jon’s pressed lavender. Jon was right, Martin thought, the purple flowers were beautiful. He held one of the stems carefully up to his nose, and breathed in the floral scent that had been lingering on Jon’s breath all night, that now lingered on the pages of his poetry book.

He set the lavender sprigs gently on the table next to him, making a note to return them to the book when he was done reading. As he listened to the rain come down against his windowpanes, he read and reread the poem Jon’s lavender had been on, turning the lines over in his mind:

It is the hour – when lover’s vows Seem sweet in every whisper’d word; And gentle winds and waters near, Make music to the lonely ear.

#the magnus archives #tma #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #dreamy writes #long post #alcohol #alcohol cw

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kuvvydraws · 5 years

Text

Gabriel (Good Omens) x Reader

The Chicken That Finally Crossed The Fucking Road

Chapter 2

Having someone move in with you within a day was an adventure, and one you wouldn’t want to partake in ever again.

The easy part was the talk with your landlady, and the woman was happy that you were no longer living on your own with how dangerous London was for young people like you, gullible and vulnerable; her words, not yours. Her husband, on the other hand, found heavily immoral that your roommate was a man and that you both were single, and he made sure his opinion was listened by the whole neighbourhood.

One would say that dealing with the people responsible of your housing was the difficult part. It was a difficult part indeed, just not the only one.

Dealing with Gabriel was a Whole Thing on its own.

You know those old people that have a hard time coping with technology and new stuff and just complain when nothing goes their way? That was Gabriel. While eager to learn, he behaved like every object was invented yesterday and everyone in the world got together in a secret meeting to learn how to handle it just so hey could spite him. You were sure he believed all the blenders from all the kitchens in the world were out there to get him. At least he was polite about it.

Having him moving in was a poltergeist experience. He had no problem with the flat’s layout, and you, expecting some snide comment from his rich ass about your minuscule place of residence, felt much more at ease. The issue with his wardrobe was a bit more pressing. He had nothing but the clothing he was wearing the day you two had met, and that was more like a Trojan costume for a thematic party than anything else. It did match his old fashioned aura, and reinforced that feeling you had about him not belonging to any era in history, but that was about it.

“Oh, the wardrobe shall be no problem at all” he said pleasantly. The very next day, when you came from work, he had his closet filled with the most expensive, most comfortable outfits you had seen in your whole life. Bitch clearly had in his possession a money tree.

He wanted, he had told you just after settling in, the whole commoner experience. If you translate that into poor dialect, it meant that you had to accompany him to get every piece of the top notch technology available at the market. He was slightly familiar with cell phones and tablets, but computers turned out to be far trickier for him.

He said he desired to start from point zero and you had no idea, at first, about what that implied. After seeing him fumble with the keyboard of his shiny new smartphone, you concluded that the guy didn’t even know what YouTube was. You wished you’d had a camera at hand when you had showed him, because his expression was priceless.

A puppy with a new squeaky toy wouldn’t had been more excited.

He also had the tendency to call you ‘human’ or ‘mortal’ instead of your name. You found this to be hilarious. He would add some dumb adjectives in front of it and seriously, it was like watching a pair of too sweet teens figuring out nicknames fused in one big, clueless businessman. His favourite so far was calling you ‘tiny’. Kind of unfair, yet very fair at the same time, since the top of your head barely brushed his shoulder.

Cohabitating with Gabriel was easy, unsurprisingly. The moment he had learnt how the vacuum and the mop worked, your stress about the house being indecent midweek flew out of the window. Gabriel found great pleasure in organizing things. You had agreed on a common budget for food too, instead of separating the shelves inside the fridge and he had classified all the groceries by alphabetical and nutritional order. Of course, to be functional, you two now had to cook together.

Gabriel had obvious issues with food. It was clear that he did not enjoy eating. The cooking process was another talk altogether though. It implied following established steps, times and measurements, and he had even bought a colourful apron for, what he said, was the proper attitude and mind set for cooking.

That sentence, coming from the mouth of a man that hadn’t known what a whisk was three minutes prior, made you cry in laughter. *

You were incredibly useful, Gabriel discovered. Not only willing to provide with all the bothersome necessities his body now had, but with living quarters and explanations about what happened around him.

It had been a long time since Gabriel had had to stay on Earth for more than a few hours, and the world had evolved in ways he couldn’t always comprehend. Things were faster, noisier or more silent, everywhere he went was crowded with people and the air smelled weird, congested his nose and, in some occasions, when he was too close to the back of a car of bus, it irritated his eyes.

He was still getting used to the body, to the sensations and nerves and strange inner reactions and noises it would make. Being so far from divinity had also taken a toll on him, and due the forced tiredness he had to lay down on a bed -his bed now- and sleep. He wasn’t sure he liked sleeping. He didn’t dislike it per se, but he was aware that his surrounding were not part the real world, and that time was a mockery. He would remember moments of his angelic existence, mostly, but also dreamed with new, made up, things. He wasn’t sure he was comfortable with that.

He didn’t sleep every night, and would spent his time reading or watching videos. You had books all over the flat, as if a library had exploded in the centre of the room. Some were in English, some were not. Those fascinated Gabriel. He could guess the general intentions when in a conversation with someone no matter the language, but reading was another matter. You also had no preference about topics, and the novels, encyclopaedias, dictionaries and collections of poems would mixt with the astronomy, art and engineering books right under the pot of that thick leaved plant you had growing near the windows. After thoroughly dusting the area, Gabriel found the mess didn’t bother him that much.

The nights he did sleep were not always good. He would wake up covered in cold sweat, a scream choked inside his throat and his body painfully taut or trembling uncontrollably. He tried to be silent. As an Archangel, he feared nothing, and no stupid machination the human world would make him stutter. The pictures of Hell affected him differently though. So he kept quiet. He took a shower every time, scrubbing hard, and by the time he was done and on his way to rest on the ugly couch at the living room, the light of the kitchen would already be lit.

You sat with him every time, at his left so you wouldn’t obstruct the view from the window, and handed him a mug with tea. He never looked at you, and you never spoke a word.

Gabriel tried to keep his body strong, now more than ever. His lack of celestial influence was no excuse to grow soft, and he had created an exercise routine. He woke up at sunrise everyday and went for a run, and then followed some exercises before showering. You usually emerged from your room at that time, clad in pyjamas, shoved you feet in some ugly and ragged trainers Gabriel refused to even look at, put on a jacket and went to the coffee shop on the opposite side of the street to fetch some coffee. You always brought the same tea for yourself, claiming you had a delicate stomach at such an early time, but Gabriel’s beverage changed everyday. He was starting to pick some favourites.

You went to work daily, too, and returned very late in the evening. Your shifts were scheduled oddly, and you spent the majority of the day out. Gabriel was social by nature, and, while his purpose on Earth was to learn, he had to do it from real experience, not only books. So he took his tablet -you had bought him a protector for it decorated with a pair of what humans thought were angel wings, and Gabriel didn’t now if to laugh or to cringe, although he thanked you nonetheless-, a notebook, some far too expensive pen and a book, and went outside to read or take annotations on particular behaviours.

He was always home by the time you arrived, exhausted, from work. *

You groaned, every step of the stair high as a mountain. You lived on the last floor, the fifth, in the building. You just climbed up to the first one. Life was a terrible thing. By the time you reached upstairs, you were panting like a congested fifteen-year old bulldog, and you bag-pack weighted a ton of bricks.

You crossed the doorway, kicked your shoes to one side -Gabriel would had your head for it-, the bag to the other, and face planted on the couch, the armrest digging sharply in your stomach. Gabriel, sitting straight as a broomstick on the other side of the cushions yet looking incredibly comfortable at the same time, gave you a sideways glance before returning to his book briefly to dogear it. On his lap rested his faithful notebook.

“I see you have returned. How was work today?”

He was like a therapist at his hour. He let you ramble while going to close the door. It’s not like he could understand you, your face buried in the fabric as it was, you socked feet on the air. This time, you just grunted. It’s been a lot like that recently.

“I’m in severe pain at this very moment” you whined, not daring to move a muscle “. And I’m hungry too.”

Your arms were heavy, and so were your legs, like you had attached weights to them and then went to win a marathon. Existing was a bit too much right now; for some reason, the restaurant you worked at had gotten surprisingly popular in a very short time, and the clients wouldn’t top coming. You were stressed every second of it, now not having time to even joke or chat with your co-workers between servings. Everyone but the manager was jumpy, and grumpy and the bad mood in the atmosphere increased with each passing day. The cooks at the back would bark at you waiters for being two seconds too late, and today you had slipped with something -you swore it had been that damned child from table seven throwing a spoon full of ice-cream at your feet- and landed heavily on your wrist. You hadn’t twisted it by pure luck, but it still ached, and an ugly, throbbing, purplish mark had found its home in the area.

You saw Gabriel’s white crocs pass in front of your face -the best fucking purchase you had convinced someone to make- and he handed you a kitchen towel with ice. He was a businessman in his own house too, dressed sharp and elegantly. A month after becoming roomies and you hadn’t seen him in pyjamas yet. You drew the line at some point though, and it was located at the exact time you had noticed he would wear formal shoes even inside. Getting him to discard his scarf and coat hadn’t been that hard.

Gabriel claimed the crocs were the ugliest thing he had the disgrace to glaze upon. You had agreed wholeheartedly. They were too white and the creator had decided to sprinkle holographic glitter on them too. They were positively horrid. And you had been dying to see Gabriel wear them.

Poor Gabriel, bless his soul, had obliged. He had forced you to buy what he considered the most atrocious thing in the store besides his new shoes. It was socks. Fluffy, sprinkled with pancakes and the face of the Grinch -of all things to put with pancakes- all over and you had fell in love. You only put them inside the house, and Gabriel cringed every time he would mistakenly look at your feet now. For someone with Gabriel’s sense of style, your mere existence was abhorrent. It was not that your fashion inclinations were all over the place, it was that you had sold them for a chewed corn chip at the flea market on a Sunday afternoon. He had seen you in pyjamas, in teared pants, in shirts with corny messages and in those puke inducing socks, among other atrocities.

Right now, bent over the sofa, you were wearing what Gabriel believed to be your best clothes. You had an oversized hoodie -you had thousands of those, Gabriel believed- from which neck protruded the white collar of a dress shirt, your previously pleaded pants, now wrinkled, still maintained the ironed fold somehow, but your socks showed now two holes, one each, at the front part. You would have to throw them out again. You destroyed a pair every two weeks and Gabriel was sure half of your income was sorely designated to acquire socks.

He cleared his throat and you sent him your deadliest glare. Gabriel stood there, unaffected, hands comfortably resting in the pockets of his pants. On the crook of his elbow hung his apron. “It’s dinner time” he said “. Go change, we have soup tonight. I’ve bought onions, and eggs and bread.”

You had told him about your mom’s recipe a week ago. Gabriel, a big hater of anything more solid that jelly, had discovered the metaphorical Garden of Wonders in soup. He loved soup. He locked eyes with you and made a show of putting his apron on. You grunted again and stood, heading tiredly to your room to change. You would shower after dinner.

Cooking was methodical -Gabriel wasn’t very fond of physical contact and you always kept enough distance as not to make him uncomfortable- and an actual approach at conversation. You did get some commentary on anecdotes that happened today while Gabriel chopped veggies with a surgeon’s accuracy. He always pointed that he wanted to listen, learn about what people did with their dull lives and whatnot.

Gabriel made sure to have time to listen to you. He never, ever, made you feel dumb for mispronouncing a word and would always give you helpful tips with grammar. You appreciated it immensely. You would be reading, wouldn’t understand a term and he gladly explained it to you, or spelled a word you didn’t catch right from TV and, in short, let you ramble and corrected your grammar whenever you had a question about anything.

You were so fucking grateful for having him.

You weren’t anxious or self-conscious about your language skills around him. You didn’t have to be on guard 24/7 because of judgement and you didn’t have to worry about him laughing at you behind your back. He was far too good for that. Had he not been a snarky, rich bitch, you would’ve thought him an angel of sorts.

Angel or not, you thought looking at him, he’s dumb as fuck.

The aforementioned angel had just taken a huge bite out of a red onion and now his eyes were, quote-unquote, ‘leaking’. His face was getting very red.

You ran to get him a glass of water. *

Gabriel thought he would feel lonely here on Earth, or bored. He had a lot of labours up in Heaven, very important duties. He was sure Michael was now taking care of them, but he felt kind of bad for relying so much on her. Upstairs decision or not, Michael had her own duties too. He hoped Sandalphon was helping her.

As an Archangel, he was basically the representative for the Higher Powers among the other, lesser angels. He was to assign protocols, check the security and make sure that everything in Heaven, from the upper spheres to the organization and distribution of newly arrived souls ran smoothly. He was very good at his job and took pride in its effectiveness.

He had had to find new people to be around daily now, during your absence. Coffee shops and little restaurants were his usual spots to find a loner human willing to share a conversation, no matter the age or gender or whatever -Gabriel wasn’t very sure what gender was, but many humans seemed to believe it was a huge thing or something, and after some well aged people screamed at him for indecency and tried to call him out for his sins, which he did not have, he had decided that it was better to leave some topics untouched.

He had not felt that necessity with you yet. You relied on him when you had doubts and random things to ask about anything and it made him feel so fucking appreciated it was unbelievable. From the simplest of questions regarding his day -you always made a point to ask him about his day, even if his routine was always the same- to you screaming his name so he would come ad watch a cool thing on a video or a show you thought he could be interested in.

Half of the time, Gabriel didn’t know what you were talking about, and you would pause the video and explain the general context to him, which would cause a new landside of questions and, maybe, three hours later, you would return to the original topic. That didn’t happen most of the time but it didn’t seem to bother either of you.

Existence on Earth wasn’t as shabby as he would have thought it to be.

It was kind of... tolerable.

-----------

Chapter 1

#good omens #gabriel (good omens)#gabriel (good omens)/ reader #gabriel/reader #gabriel x reader #reader #the chicken that finally crossed the fucking road #chapter 2

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axiumin · 6 years

Text

Bad Boy | BamBam x Reader

Anonymous said: Hello! Can you do a smut High-school au with Bambam that bad boy rich popular kid in school that spends every night with a lot of different women and girls and has a jacuzzi n shit😂😂 and randomly falling in love with you and then one night you get drunk at a party at his house and you admit your feelings (which you didn’t want to cause you didn’t want to fall for a fuckboy like him) and then you become a bit needy and ask him if you two can go to his room so he locks his room and all begins;))

Hi, anon! Thank you for the request! I made this a college AU instead of high school because I never want to write sexual content for minors. Much of the premise should be the same (though the smut is just implied, sorry!), so I hope you don’t mind the changes.

He was a legend. The whole student populace seemed to know all about BamBam— his parties, his hookups, his bad boy reputation. You never wanted to be just another notch in his bedpost. So why did your heart race every time you locked eyes with him?

Pairing: BamBam x Reader

Genre: Drama, College!AU

Words: 3.5k

He was a legend— or at least his parties were. Once a month, his house turned into a playground for rowdy college students. According to the rumors that fluttered around campus, the parties were a hedonist’s paradise: alcohol flowed like water, the bass from the very expensive sound system could be heard blocks away, and revelry abounded. There was even a jacuzzi.

You had been to a couple of his parties in the past, hovering just at the edge of chaos. You carefully avoided throwing yourself in the fray, yet all you could distinctly remember from the parties was a kaleidoscope of colors and sensations and one hell of a hangover the next morning. Seems all the rumors about the parties were true.

You had to wonder, then, how much truth lie in the rumors about the man himself. Everyone seemed to have some story to tell about him, some whispered tidbit to share idly during a boring lecture.

“I hear BamBam has a modeling contract in Argentina.”

“I hear he has three vacation homes in Hawaii.”

“I hear Apple offered to pay him to listen to Apple Music.”

“I hear the Queen of England once saw him smile and swooned.”

All sorts of outlandish rumors seemed to circulate among the student body, and it was becoming more difficult for you to draw a clear line between what was plausible and what wasn’t. There was actually very little you knew for sure about BamBam. You knew he was in your year, though he either showed up late for his lectures or not at all; you knew that he was a cocky son of a bitch, and people seemed to eat up his smug smirks and dashing eyebrow quirks; and you knew of the trail of destruction BamBam left in the wake of his one-night stands.

For all the rumors about BamBam’s supposed eccentricities, there were just as many rumors about the people he’d hooked up with. They were poor souls, by all accounts, broken-hearted and left yearning for more from a man who refused to be tied down by commitment. You’d caught a fleeting glimpse of Bam at one of his parties, leading a girl in your year up the stairs to his bedroom, secretive smile on his face. You’d seen the girl since— and likely plenty of his other past hook-ups— and she certainly didn’t seem to be irreparably heartbroken, yet you had little reason to doubt that BamBam just wasn’t the kind of guy to commit to a monogamous relationship.

You weren’t exactly looking for a forever partner, yourself, and you certainly weren’t going to sit around and judge other people for their sex lives, yet you privately resolved to never become just another notch in his bedpost. You did not want to be fuel for someone else’s rumors.

So why did you feel the flutter of butterflies in your stomach every time you locked eyes with BamBam over your battered copy of Eugene Onegin?

Your literature course was the only class you shared with BamBam, and it miraculously seemed to be the only class he attended consistently. You found this odd; you hadn’t really pegged him as the literary type, and sure enough, every time you stole a glance at him from across the room, he seemed to be focused on anything but the professor.

More often than not these days, that something ended up being you, and you felt your cheeks grow warm every time you got caught looking at him, too.

It was only three weeks into the semester, and you’d already made eye contact with him more than you ever had with the girl who sat in the seat next to you. (Though, you conceded, that probably didn’t mean much when she very much seemed like the kind of person who only excavated herself from her bed in order to get requisite attendance points from her class— not that you could particularly blame her.)

For the most part, it wasn’t much of a hardship for you to share a class with BamBam. Sure, it was a test of your ability to focus on 19th century Russian literature instead of the enticing gaze that bore into the side of your head every class. But honestly, you’d been planning on working on your willpower and resolution lately, anyway, so might as well get some practice this way.

The problem came when your professor decided to break the class into small discussion groups— students’ choice. Naturally, your classmates gravitated towards their neighbors rather than go through the effort of physically walking around the room.

Which was why you were quite surprised to realize that BamBam had all but dashed across the room to stand in front of you and your somnolent neighbor.

“Do you guys have a third partner?” he asked, eyebrows raised hopefully.

You cast a hesitant glance at the girl next to you, but she just blinked and shrugged drowsily back at you, of no particular help whatsoever. Around you, the other groups had obviously formed and settled in, so you really had no choice but to shrug up at BamBam.

“I guess you’re our third partner.”

BamBam flashed a grateful smile and pulled up a chair. You, BamBam, and your third, very sleep partner (you’d tried asking for her name on the first day of class, but she had just stared blankly at you without saying anything, so you never asked again) sat in awkward silence for a moment before you cleared your throat and spoke.

“So, what did you think of this chapter?” You looked at the girl first, but she didn’t look up from her doodles in her notebook, so you reluctantly turned your gaze to BamBam, who just shrugged.

“It was kind of boring, I guess. I mean it’s a book written as a poem. Not very interesting, is it?” he said with a devil-may-care smirk. He sat slouched back in his chair, his long legs stretching out so far in front of him that you had to be careful not to bump his feet with yours.

You frowned and picked at the corner of your pad of paper. “I dunno,” you said, shrugging and looking down at your copy of the book. Careful annotations lined the margins of the page. “I thought it was pretty interesting, actually.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw BamBam suddenly sit up in his seat a bit, looking a bit surprised. “Oh. Really? I mean, I guess it’s not a bad book.” The words came out awkward and unsure, and you both cringed and averted your eyes to different corners of the room.

Blessedly, you were spared any further interaction when the professor called an end to the breakout discussions. BamBam stayed where he was sitting, though, and you spent the rest of the lecture fastidiously taking notes, if only to avoid his burning gaze. As soon as class was over, you gathered your belongings as quickly as you could and fled the room, worried that if you lingered too long, BamBam might actually try speaking with you again.

As successful as your retreat was, however, it provided only a temporary respite. Your lit professor decided that the breakout discussion groups were apparently a swimming success, and he decided to keep the groups of three active for the rest of the semester. So, the very next day of class, you found yourself once again sitting in a triangle of perfect awkwardness, staring at your book and wishing you’d decided to stay home. Or chosen another major. Or something.

“Uh, so this Eugene guy is kind of awful, right?” Your eyes flashed up to BamBam’s face, surprised to hear him speak. He seemed almost surprised as you were, but he quickly recovered once he realized you were looking at him. “I mean, he acts like he’s better than everyone else, but he’s really just ruining things for everyone, isn’t he?”

Slowly, you nodded. “Yeah, he’s kind of a Byronic hero. Broody, alluring, misunderstood, but also not really good for much in this case. That’s one of the things I like about this book in particular. The Byronic hero isn’t really a hero, you know?”

BamBam nodded slowly. “I know what you mean,” he said, though, really, he didn’t seem very convinced of that. “I guess I can see why you like this book so much. It’s not that bad.” BamBam offered you a smirk, and you found yourself tentatively smiling in return.

The breakout discussions tended not to be so bad after that. BamBam didn’t really have anything particularly profound to offer— and your other group member didn’t really offer anything at all— but it was clear that he actually read the chapters, and he seemed to try to make comments that would earn a smile or a nod from you. He preened and smirked whenever you agreed with him, but even that wasn’t as annoying as it might have been before. If anything, you felt sort of… fond to see him preen like that.

But as soon as each discussion time ended and the lecture resumed, you felt BamBam’s stare on you, heavy and tempting. You never looked back.

For the next couple of weeks, your class continued to use these breakout groups, though it wasn’t until you were almost finished with Eugene Onegin that things really changed.

“I think it’s kind of messed up that this guy thinks he can just play with people’s hearts like that. I mean, just because he’s weirdly desirable doesn’t mean he gets to be a jerk about it,” BamBam blustered. When he finished speaking, he watched you, eagerly waiting for your agreeing nod or comment, but instead you were just baffled.

Was the irony lost on him? Did BamBam not realize that, were rumors to be believed, he was guilty of the same thing he criticized in Onegin? You chewed on your lip for a moment, wondering if it was even worthwhile to bring it up, but BamBam was still watching you with that expectant look on his face.

“It is pretty messed up,” you conceded slowly, gauging his face for a reaction. He just started to smirk again at your agreement. “I think that if we were to think about it in the modern sense, it would be a lot like a guy who’s super popular for kind of the wrong reasons, and he uses this to his advantage when it comes to getting girls he wants. Not because he likes these girls, per se, but because they’re more trophies or things he thinks he deserves because people like him.” As you spoke, you watched the smirk melt off BamBam’s face, but you felt no satisfaction.

“It’s kind of like a fuckboy, don’t you think?” you finished, your gaze never wavering from BamBam. He looked… stricken, you supposed was a word for it. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but before he could come up with anything to say, the professor called the class back together for lecture.

You didn’t feel his gaze on you even once during the lecture.

Once class was called to an end, you sighed and gathered together your belongings. Your notes were remarkably poor; you hadn’t been able to think about anything but the hurt look in BamBam’s eyes all through the rest of class.

You were just about to sling your backpack on your shoulder and shuffle off to your next class, but you were stopped by an almost hesitant voice.

“Hey.” You turned to see BamBam, looking notably less smirky than usual.

“Hey,” you said back carefully, half wondering if he was going to talk about what you said during the discussion. God, you sure hoped not.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, seemingly mulling over his words before he spoke. “I’m hosting another party this Friday. I was hoping I might see you there,” he said, and something about the hopeful uptick of the corner of his mouth made your heart clench.

You thought about his gaze burning into you during classes, about the pumping bass and delirium of his parties, about your resolution not to be another one of his hookups.

You thought about the look on his face when you shut him down, condemned him for the same actions he hated in Eugene Onegin.

“I’ll be there,” you said, honestly surprised that your voice didn’t waver.

BamBam perked up, and that familiar damn smirk crept back on his face. “Good. I look forward to it.” With a nod, he turned to walk out the door. He hesitated just in the entryway and cast one glance back at you before he turned and left.

You stood in the middle of the classroom, backpack half slipping off your shoulder, and wondered what you’d just gotten yourself into.

See, you’d gone to his parties before. But somehow, it was entirely different now that he’d personally invited you— and after you’d insulted him, no less. Your already shaky nerves were only rattled further when you finally got close enough to the house to feel the heavy bass. It was early yet, but the party was already in full swing. Not surprising. Few students at your university could pass up the opportunity to turn up like the world was going to end.

The party was exactly like you remembered it to be: loud music, a sea of red solo cups, and the hot press of a crowd of dancing bodies. You barely crossed the threshold before someone pressed a cup of something toxic in your hand. You eyed the drink dubiously, but compared to the throng that awaited you, it was certainly the lesser of two evils. Besides, you had the feeling you’d need the extra courage to get through the night.

You downed the cup in one go, fighting off the instinct to gag against the burn of it in your nose and throat. It was vile, but it did its job well. Almost instantly, you could feel warmth suffusing to your cold, shaky fingers. The muscles of your shoulders relaxed just the tiniest bit, and you let yourself get swept into the crowd of dancers, surrendering to the pulse of the bass.

It was in the midst of the dancefloor that you found BamBam. He was resplendent in all black, moving his body to the music with such ease that it seemed impossible to mistake him for anything but the king of this party. He was such a vision that at first, you thought you’d imagined the glimpse you’d caught of him, but when he locked eyes with you and called out your name, there was no mistaking.

He pushed through the crowd effortlessly, coming to a stop right in front of you. You couldn’t stop dancing for fear of getting jostled by the other partygoers, so you swallowed down your nervousness and looped an arm around BamBam’s shoulders, guiding him to match the movements of your body.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he half-yelled above the sound of the music. He needn’t have yelled, though. Once you were this close to him, it was as though you had some sort of tunnel vision that blocked out anyone and anything else. Somehow, even with the cacophony of music and revelry, all you could see was the strangely vulnerable look in his eyes, the same one from that day in class.

“I said I would,” you replied, and you hoped that he could hear the things you didn’t dare say aloud. The apology, the tentative olive branch.

BamBam peered closely into your face and nodded, and for the first time, you thought he truly understood what you were thinking.

“You did,” he confirmed. “I’m glad you came.” One of his arms came up to wrap around your waist, pulling you in. His other hand cupped your cheek, and suddenly it seemed as though the thumping bass was a mirror to the thumping of your heart.

Your face felt warm and your head light, and you knew for a fact you hadn’t drunk enough alcohol to blame it on that. Instead, you knew the culprit was the treacherous flutter of your stomach, the same feeling that arose every time you locked eyes with BamBam, and every time you felt his gaze on you but didn’t dare return it.

The fluttering was in full force tonight as you danced close to BamBam. He stared at you with that intense, burning gaze he always had. But now, you stared back, and you saw the things you refused to see before: longing, desire, and that vulnerability that made your throat grow tight.

As you looked at him, you felt emotion stirring deep within yourself. You were forced to confront everything you’d felt for BamBam: distrust of his reputation, annoyance at his cockiness, guilt for having hurt him. But you also felt a desire that mirrored his own, curiosity for what kind of a person he truly was under those rumors and that facade, and a startlingly deep longing for something that you couldn’t quite put a name to yet.

Your fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt as your emotions tumbled through your head. The fluttering in your stomach began anew, stronger than ever, and you felt words leave your mouth before you even realized you’d conjured them.

“I want you, BamBam. Even though I know I shouldn’t. I’ve tried to ignore it, but I can’t. I can’t ignore you.”

You were mortified as soon as the words left your mouth. Already, you felt yourself becoming like the people you heard about in the rumors— the past hookups who were so desperate for any part of BamBam they could get. You’d never believed in those particular rumors, but now you couldn’t help but wonder if there was some truth to them.

BamBam was just another Byronic hero. He wasn’t quite normal, never quite fit in the same way other people did. But it was the things that set him apart from others that also drew them in, made him alluring. BamBam was the kind of man who could leave a trail of destruction in his wake, but there would always be someone else falling for his charms, setting themselves up for a fall. You were just the next in line.

You cringed away from the truth of your words, but there was no denying the way your heart fluttered when BamBam lit up. His lips pulled not into his signature smirk, but a bright smile that made his eyes crease, and your face grew warm as he pressed his forehead against yours.

“I’d hoped,” he breathed, and the way he looked at you made you hope, too. “I hoped, but I never thought—.” He shook the thought from his head, pulling away from you to look at you carefully. “Come to my room?” he asked.

“Yes.” The word was steady even if your hands were not.

BamBam easily navigated through the crowd, tugging you along behind him. Anticipation simmered low in your belly, doggedly drowning out the niggling doubt that urged you to turn back. When you finally made it to his room, the door closed behind you, turning the loud music into muffled bass. But rather than helping you clear your thoughts, you found that your brain felt muffled, too.

For a long moment, you stood there, back pressed against the door, wrestling with your thoughts as best you could. BamBam stood in front of you, close enough to touch, but hands resting at his sides, twitching with the desire to reach out and hold you.

You looked at him and saw everything you felt— the desire, the longing, that damnable hope. Your heart hammered against your rib cage, but you felt certainty settle over your shoulders. You wanted this, for better or worse.

You opened your arms to BamBam, and you saw the flicker of relief in his face the moment before he surged forward to catch your lips in a searing kiss. The hot press of his body against yours made your nerve endings light up with anticipation, and you couldn’t help but press even deeper into him.

When BamBam broke the kiss for air, he trailed his mouth along your jaw, pressing against the sensitive patch of skin just under your ear.

“God, I’ve wanted this so badly. Wanted you so badly. I promise I’ll make this good for you, treat you right.” The words were spoken with so much emotion that it felt like a punch to the gut. You could only moan feebly and clutch at the back of his shirt.

Part of you wanted desperately to believe that he would treat you right, that tonight would be the start of something beautiful between the two of you. But the words had come out too smooth, just a bit too practiced, as if they were familiar on his tongue.

You reached behind you and flicked the lock on his door.

This might end in disaster, but damn whatever happened tomorrow. You were ready for tonight.

#got7 #got7 imagines #got7 scenarios #got7 one shots #kpop #kpop imagines #kpop scenarios #kpop one shots #bambam #kunpimook bhuwakul #bambam one shot #bambam request #bambam x reader #bambam au #college au #would you consider this angst?#please let me know

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callmebliss · 5 years

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I’ve never actually read this book. I know it’s a high school standard, but junior and senior year I jumped from Level I to AP English classes, and AP has a whole ‘nother set of lit to go through and therefore unless I went out of my way to read books assigned to other classes (which I did a lot) then I didn’t read it. This one I never got to, and in college courses well of COURSE you’ve read it right? And then I felt like I kind of had the gist of it well enough.

Naturally when I was at the thrift shop and saw this copy sitting there I snagged it.

This morning I opened it to start reading over coffee and

So now I am torn as fuck. I only get one chance to read this for the first time, and reading it with someone else’s notes attached is going to be different than reading the non-annotated text.

I love other people’s annotations and marginalia when I’ve already read a thing, but it skews a first read. My first read of Atwood’s Penelopeiad got skewed that way.

Im going t spend the rest of today with the egg salad but if that Marginalia poem stuck in my head.

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sambarvadai · 2 years

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#17 i'm takin a chance cause i like you a lot

When we entered junior college, we had the opportunity to sign up for a very prestigious, very selective programme called the Humanities Programme (HP). It looked very sexy. A number of my seniors had gone through the programme and it seemed like loads of fun, with many overseas trips, random classroom shenanigans, and a literature syllabus that included cool things like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I talked to my seniors, asked them why they liked it. They said it was cool because of the good networking you got there, and it was also very removed from the rest of the school because it was in a whole other block with its own lecture theatre and weirdly-shaped classrooms. It looked great.

The issue was as follows: HP required taking Literature. Literature had not been kind to me in secondary school. I loved it to absolute bits, taking great pains and delights to annotate my poems and required texts. Even now, they sit on my shelf because I cannot bear to throw them away; they were genuinely good books. I digress. It seemed as if I was doomed to love Lit forever, and Lit was delighted to scorn my essays and poems forever. If I couldn’t keep up with Lit in junior college, my future was as good as done for because, unlike my Secondary Four grades, my A-Levels did determine my entire life trajectory.

Also, if I did get into HP but decided not to take it, then I would be taking someone else’s place. I didn’t want to have that guilt hanging over me, and this was what pushed me to my decision.

In the end, I never applied for HP. I went into science stream. My class wasn’t the most united or the most wholesome or the most anything. We did the job, we were very good, and we were very nice. Every day, I’d log onto Instagram and see my HP friends having the time of their lives, bringing in pancake makers and tie-dyeing their shirts and doing all sorts of fun stuff I’d dreamed of. It wasn’t that I hated science–on the contrary, I was actually doing quite well in science as well. But my class wasn’t fun, and I hated that. Junior college was touted as the time of our lives, when we did all the stupid things and made the best friends we’d ever have for life. Reality sucked. Covid-19 made things even worse. I genuinely didn’t like school a lot more than I’d care to admit.

Now that I’ve graduated, I think I’ve done pretty okay for science, but I still regret that I didn’t try out for HP. So many people I’ve interacted with have expressed shock and surprise that I’m not in HP, what with my logorrhea about random humanities-based factoids or a very weird and bizarre love for Literature in a place where liking Lit is a sign of derangement. I’m pretty sure I’d have done well in HP too, but it’s too late to say.

(Also, very bemusingly, I looked at my Sec 4 transcript the other day. Guess what: I got an A for Literature. Yeah, it was borderline, and it was a 3.6 instead of a 4.0, and it wasn't great, but an A's an A. It's insane how absolutely warped my standards were back then; I'd be so pleased with that grade right now.)

Yesterday, I was talking to T and she told me that it’s good to be selfish sometimes. Getting into a programme means that you’re always going to be taking someone else’s place, and it’s inevitable. There’s no point in being so altruistic if you’re not doing things for yourself, too. Hawkeye (or someone, idk I read this in David Aja and Matt Fraction’s run) once said ‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’ Yeah, if those shots land, they’ll take up precious real estate on the dartboard, and there are fewer darts for other people to pick up. But if you’ve hit that bullseye, then I think it’s okay.

I haven’t explored or thought about how far to take this, but I’m trying to try out for whatever I can. This has translated to me deciding to apply for US universities much later than is strictly advisable, after my teacher said, ‘Let the admission officers do the first decision-making; you don’t want to reject yourself before they reject you.’ I’m going with that policy now. I’m trying things out because the worst that can happen is no, and a recently learned fact of mine is that companies always accept more than they can handle because people will reject the offer, and in the event I am actually denying someone else a seat, I’m trying to justify that by ‘what goes around, comes around’, and some cosmic force will right whatever imbalance I might’ve caused.

In the end, all I want to say to you, and me, is this: take a chance on yourself, dear reader. Don’t throw away your shot.

anbudan, noon xoxo

#noonwords #take a shot #im not throwing away my shot #thoughts #school #hawkeye

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boykeats · 6 years

Note

sometimes i’m shocked by how much erasure queer history really suffers from, and honestly it hurts me inside. weeks after writing essays, annotating poems, etc. all about wilfred owen, in my ap lit class (taught by a former history teacher) i learn that wilfred owen was gay. i know why it isn’t taught at my school, but wow. so much history is lost by erasing gay people and idk but i’m emotional at the moment

to be queer is to inherit a legacy of all the ways in which we have been silenced. so much of our stories are actively, aggressively robbed from us by cowards in positions of power. and when it hits you all in a rush? oh yeah, that hurts to say the least. the grief you’re feeling right now is natural.

but to be queer is also to inherit a legacy of survival. they might not teach about us in schools aside from a footnote or two dipped in prejudice and violence, but that doesn’t change the fact that ultimately queer people are prolific forces of creation and revolution. we’ve always been here, making art, writing poetry, traveling to outer space, inventing the computer, hurling the shot glass at the wall of the bar. our echoes ring out through the whole of history no matter how much anyone tries to stifle us.

in the end, their censorship can’t compare to our strength. we may have to tell our history through word of mouth, and we may have to fight for those histories to be celebrated openly, but they will be celebrated. the fact that wilfred owen changed the landscape of war poetry and became one of the most renowned poets in the whole of england while living as a gay man is an immense accomplishment.

take all the time that you need to process your hurt. one day we will have a world where his importance as a gay man won’t be shuffled off into the dark. until then, keep moving forward knowing that, despite how hard society tries to pretend like we don’t exist, society past and modern would not be one tenth so radiant without us

#ok to reblog

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elahastudies-blog · 6 years

Text

how to: gcse english literature - getting a 9

how to: gcse english literature - getting a 9 (part one)

this time last year i was wondering how i’m going to manage my english literature gcse considering i was among the hundreds of thousands of students across the country in the guinea pig year for the new gcse specification. i ended up getting a 9!!

my high school used the wjec eduqas exam board, this consisted of:

- 18 poems from the anthology

- dr jekyll & mr hyde (robert stevenson)

- romeo and juliet (shakepseare)

- an inspector calls (j.b. priestley)

for all the year 11s out there, best of luck!! and here are some tips on english literature no matter what you’re aiming for:

1. reading and annotations

this one seems a bit obvious but it’s very important…read your set text so you are familiar with the plot or meaning

read the text multiple times!! just by reading it helps to engrave the key ideas as you’re able to develop your ideas more each time

annotations are a very good revision tool as when reading in class you can see the different interpretations and class ideas

colour coding with your annotations helps a lot too - i used to highlight with one colour in class, one colour for very important quotes and one for my home reading - which helped me find the points i needed for further revision.

2. essay planning

i always found it useful to write the question of my essay in the middle of the page and write down as many relevant points as i could without the text.

after i had written down as much as i could from my own knowledge i would open the text and search for points i may have missed.

from this i would review the mind map and a few weeks later use that same question to answer under timed conditions.

3. time condition essays

whether this was in class or at home, timed essays are the best thing one can do - ultimately you’re replicating the real thing.

it allows for you to develop your exam technique so you’re relieved from its stress.

set a timer, put any distractions away and write.

4. use your teachers

they’re there for a reason - now is the year to pester your teachers as much as you can for you only have one chance at this.

during study leave i went to my teacher with the practice essays i had done so she could mark them for me

from doing this i got additional help on where i could improve my essay writing and i could get personal feedback.

5. mocks are for you, not against you

although mocks are a very stressful time period, they’re the biggest learning curves of the whole year.

during mocks i had gotten a 6 in English Lit and getting a 9 seemed like it was never going to happen but i was able to see how my grades may turn out during the exam season

it allowed me to learn and become efficient with my studies.

at the end of the day studying is for our own success, which makes the time used well spent. it’s never too late to bring a small change that may help in the long run.

#studyspo #student #studyblr #english #gcse #a levels #work hard #neat notes #helpful #studygram #elahastudies

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chronotopes · 6 years

Text

book log: a stitch in time by andrew robinson

you guys i’m going to go bullet point by bullet point through all of my ibooks annotations so buckle in if you dare

first of all that first chapter owns my ass. “indulge me if you will i need you as a witness”?? that’s the most. that’s the absolute most. that said, the concept that they Grew Apart after our man bashir, while ... certainly canon compliant.... is a piece of canon i refuse to accept. i have my own canon timeline for these kinds of things

i fucking LOVE pythas lok? i lived for that relationship. in fact the fact that this book is just garak cycling through his exes and the way they were all instrumental to events unfolding on cardassia? in fact i begin now to suspect that gul dukat is the only cardassian from garak’s past whom garak hasn’t fucked AND isn’t related to

i whooped victoriously when garak said he was attracted to pythas. small victories. and then again when garak criticized odo’s uniform.

love that the bamarren parts of the book that don’t involve palandine read like some kind of fucking... edwardian all boys school shit. like am i reading an a.e. housman poem? am i rewatching maurice (1987) dir. james ivory? no i am reading a beta canon epistolary novel about a gay lizard

on that note garak being genuinely into women is something ajr and i disagree on but that’s just like to each his own

garak’s famed volcano dick made me laugh. this book is such a fanfic at times. and then palandine teaches him that IT’S ALL TRUE, ESPECIALLY THE LIES. in fact like ... i didn’t even consider this now but in the garak/palandine stuff at bamarren reads in certain cases like early seasons garashir? but we’ll get to the more concrete parts of alla that later

anyway .... “but i’m also a doctor, garak. and i know which group of people suffers the most. i really won’t take up any more of your time.” he extended his hand, which he rarely did, and i took it. “thank you for the tea.” he turned and went out the door. i stood there for a long moment, deeply upset. i felt trapped within myself, knowing what i had to do to get out but unable even to begin. yes, doctor, it does sound familiar.” WHAT THE FUCK WAS THIS!! (what the fuck was that whole scene!!!)

SPEAKING of doctors, dr parmak is really something. sorry i know a lot of you love him but i hope you realize he’s a rebound of a mighty order. self care is dating an older lizard flavored carbon copy of your ex bf.

this was like finding out that in ds9 beta canon ro laren becomes SECURITY OFFICER and dates QUARK is a similar experience to this. ro laren and kelas parmak: the only thing they have in common is being quark and garak’s doctor and security officer rebounds.

that said ro is her own person! parmak is a fig leaf. a plot device. andrew robinson winking at you from seventeen years ago. a mirror. god!

anyway then two of garak’s three school crushes hook up, and he’s left with pythas who is the best one anyway.

and there’s the fucking insane sequence where garak goes on lots of hikes with a Privileged Federation Twink whom he’s totally dtf as his first spy mission. and at one point, even though garak does hate his guts along with being dtf he thinks he’s “so concerned, so caring. i took another long breath. [...] i looked hans in the eyes and resisted being swallowed by their immeasurable blue depths.” like i’m not saying garak has a type but garak has a type!

i forgot about this but aside from pythas and that bitchy cousin of lukar, among garak’s classmates turn out to be the asshole from the casablanca episode and a relative of tekeny ghemor. it’s some 19th century lit bullshit and i LOVED it! as if this weren’t enough, there are four lights guy is also in this.

we also briefly meet remara, a totally deadly ex gf of kira’s. idk what garak was trying to do with their relationship but i’m totally interested in fanfic about remara being an asshole ex gf of kira’s.

garak’s battles of conscience are great. again very 19th c . i love how miserable he is throughout this book.

OH AND THEN HE AND PYTHAS LIVE IN THE WOODS FOR A MONTH OR SO AND FEEL LIKE.. COMFORTABLE FOR ONCE IN THEIR LIVES... AND PROBABLY HAVE SEX!

ooh and then we get a rlly spooky sequence where we see the wire IN ACTION

the assassin cover professions we’ve seen in this book and in this show are either Lesbian Professions (gardeners, park rangers) or Gay Professions (the fashion industry). what is it with covert operations and the lgbt community.

i SCREAMED about chapter 19 earlier today. but just to go over it once more

garak has a spooky dream about julian burying him alive ! so he hits him up at six in the fucking morning

“doctor forgive me but i need to see you,” i said as calmly as i could. “garak?” “i do apologize but it’s important.”

and then garak hears “another voice in the background. ezri dax. a muffled conversation. the doctor cleared his throat again. “i’ll be right over” he said.” I LOVE THAT EZRI AND JULIAN AREN’T EVEN FUCKING AT THIS POINT BUT AJR COULDN’T RESIST HIGHLIGHTING THE RIVALRY BETWEEN THEM?!

and then julian said “there are more things in heaven and earth horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy” and i died on the spot. they’re IN LOVE?! ajr i thought you wrote garashir as unrequited but what kind of man quotes hamlet talking 2 horatio at his platonic dude friend while he’s run over to his quarters in the middle of the night after said platonic dudefriend has a nightmare?

“i was also convinced that it was all a dream, and i kept asking myself what you were doing there” like what the actual fuck? anyway they talk the wire and it’s a lot. and of course “you not only saved my life you made it possible for me to live it.”

AND THEN OF COURSE “this is my last trip to cardassia. i’m not returning. you were in the dream for a very specific reason. once again, you helped me remember. thank you, julian.” JULIAN! JULIAN!! i’m DYING OF CARDIAC ARREST! (also this scene finally solidified my headcanons for when they break up for the second time.)

anyway then the palandine shit goes down and garak kills his OTHER old school crush (the one that turned out to be a dick)

one of my notes on here, verbatim: “have garak and quark had sex” i asked myself and then immediately wanted to die

the second time garak said that kelas parmak was “so much like you, doctor” i damn near screamed in frustration. don’t try me like this elim!!

and then we get the last julian mirror who’s that sad federation woman who spills her soul to elim and the line “CAREFUL, ELIM. YOU KNOW PERFECTLY WELL THAT THE SUREST WAY TO YOUR HEART IS THROUGH CONVERSATION”

okay and THEN he meets pythas who’s been Permanently Marked By The Horrors Of War and he’s got a gf who saved his life even though he didn’t want to be saved at first.... so like pythas is special because he’s a garak mirror AND a garak boyfriend at the same time!

and pythas was in the grounds trying to warn garak before all the shit went down with palandine. i’m dying scoob

the fact that the epilogue starts with the line “it’s just garak. plain simple garak.” the flashback timeline ends at the point garak meets julian! i hate this it’s so fucking romantic

and then YOU’RE ALWAYS WELCOME DOCTOR..... like idk about the canon status of a lot of these things but i totally buy this novel as a thing that exists that garak sent. which of course is a great jumping off point for post canon cardassia fic. justice is so sweet.

#just katia things #trek talk #and #a really ridiculous entry in #book log '17

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