#important sketches to go along with the last painting

[whatsk-poppinhomies]

Pairing : Hwang Hyunjin x F!Reader & Lee Felix x F!Reader TW : For Hyunjin : reader has a broken leg ; reader gets hit by a passenger van ; mentions of blood ; Hyunjin isn't really an asshole, he's just upset ; it's really fluffy at the end though ; For Felix : reader gets stabbed ; reader is in the hospital ; reader gets stitches ; Word Count : For Hyunjin : 2.9k For Felix : 5.8k (In total 8.7k) Request : @slayhyunjin wants the Hyunlix version of this and that is what they will get!! A/N : I hope you enjoy this and I'm sorry for making you wait so long for it : ' (( WENT ALL IN ON THE FELIX ONE! PLEASE ENJOY!!!

Hyunjin

He was on a mini tour, at least, that’s what you called it when he had to perform concerts closer to home. He was still gone, but he was in the country and it meant that he’d be home sooner which was always exciting. It was the one thing, the only thing you loved about when he went away… The moment he’d come back and it was like he had been gone for an eternity instead of just a couple months. 

You loved surprising him when he came home too, saving up all the money you made at your work to buy him little things to add to his art room. New paint sets, a new canvas, new sketch pads and pencils. Anything that would make him happy, and he always got excited over the smallest things, but seeing the way his eyes would sparkle when he saw the new materials on his desk made the wait for him worth it. 

This particular trip you had saved up enough money to buy him a brand new watercolor paint set, something that you knew he had his eyes on for a while. Luckily the art store was only a couple blocks away and you enjoyed the walk from the apartment to the shop, always stopping by the little cafe on your way there to get an iced americano, it made you feel closer to him when drinking his favorite drink and picking up his favorite things. 

Spring time was your favorite time to walk, the scents of fresh flowers blooming and new leaves budding on the trees. It also meant the occasional rain that you were always prepared for, your umbrella hanging from your wrist as you walked along fairly busy sidewalks. 

You had been in the store when it started raining, and you were planning on waiting it out close to the entrance like everyone else was, but this particular storm decided to last much longer than you had planned, so you ventured out. It’s not that the rain bothered you, it was more so that you didn’t want the set that you had bought to be potentially ruined. 

It was crazy how things can go from being so perfect so fucked in a matter of seconds. First you’re walking across the street because the crosswalk light tells you it’s okay, and the next you’re being hit by a passenger van that didn’t even have the common decency to stop and make sure you were okay. At least they didn’t continue straight through and just completely run you over. They had simply gone over your leg which was still excruciatingly painful, but it definitely could have been worse. 

Now, a lot of people might be wondering, why not call Hyunjin and let him know what happened?! And while it’s a very good question, you knew how he was. God, his heart was so big, his love for you was so strong, he’d try to get home to you so fast that he’d probably make the journey on foot if there wasn’t a flight that would get him to the nearest airport available right then and there. Not just that, but he’d stop at nothing to find whoever it was that hurt you, he’d track them down to the ends of the planet just to yell at them for hurting his love. 

He was busy, you didn’t want to bother him with the silly little accident, and what was important was the fact that somehow, by some miracle, the watercolor set had survived. After going to the hospital and getting your leg casted up and making sure that nothing else was broken during the accident, you got to go back home and place the set in the center of his desk with the giant bow on it, anticipating the moment that he finally came home and saw it. 

What you realized while trying to perfectly set up the watercolor set and make it look pretty was that it was a pain in the ass to try to walk on your cast, although the doctor had already strongly advised you not to do that… You thought that it was just a general thing he had to say to everyone. No wonder they were so hell bent on making sure you had someone at home to help you around the house the first couple of days. You couldn’t do shit. 

A surprise visit home, that’s what he was planning. He had been talking to the guys about it for a solid week, and now it was the day. He stood at the front door, taking a deep breath before letting himself in, only to be met with the apartment in such a state of disarray that he had to do a double take to make sure he was heading into the right apartment. 

Following the double take he saw you on the couch, that’s how he was 100% sure he was at the right place, but it didn’t make any sense. There were bowls of food and empty cups and take-out bags everywhere around you, and you were just laying on the couch all cozied up like you didn’t care. When he first met you, you were so organized, so clean, and not to the point of needing everything to be absolutely perfect but you surely weren’t like this. Maybe it was an act, and maybe the house looked like this every time he went on tour. The only reason it looked so clean when he came back all the other times was because he had told you he was coming. 

“It’s… It’s such a mess…” He muttered to himself as he stepped deeper into the apartment, his heart sinking as he thought about how he almost left Kkami in your care. “There’s just… Mess everywhere…” He continued to talk to himself as he continued to look around. It looked like there hadn’t been any sort of cleaning done in weeks. This is the house that he lived in… He just couldn’t believe it. 

You had been sleeping so soundly, but he tripped over one of your crutches, causing it to fall over and hit the floor, the sudden noise causing you to jolt awake. “Hyunjin! You’re home! You wouldn’t believe the week I had.” You said, your smile bright as you looked at him over the back of the couch. How could you still be so cheerful when surrounded by such filth? You must be used to it… But he wasn’t. He couldn’t live like this, and he surely couldn’t be with someone who regularly lived like this, who pretended to be someone they clearly weren’t when around him. 

“I was just leaving.” He rushed the words out as he walked back towards the door. “I can’t be here… It’s just… Disgusting… I have to go.” He excused as he quickly walked out, accidentally slamming the door behind him. That was the irony of it though, the fact that your crutches had been the item that he tripped on, yet his mind had been so fogged by the filth that he didn’t even think to question what they were doing there. He didn’t even second guess their presence considering everything else looked so out of place. 

Truthfully, he wasn’t even mad… He was just upset. The person that he saw today in his apartment was not the person that he had fallen in love with, and surely not the person that he imagined a future with. It’s not that he expected you to be his maid while he was working either, he knew that you worked, you were just as busy a person as he was, but he just thought that maybe you’d want the house to be kept a little clean… That’s the type of person you made it seem like you were… He was upset that he had been wrong. 

Your blanket had somehow managed to get wrapped around you while you were napping on the couch, it made it impossible to kick it off in time for you to get up or for him to even see the cast around your leg. Of course, it would have been nice if he would have just let you explain, but you could understand his irritation. 

As you looked around the house, you finally took in just how unsightly it was. It looked like there had been parties going on since he left and you hadn’t cleaned up after any of them. It was disgusting, you hated it, and you yourself would have been just as upset if you walked into your house and seen it looking like this. 

“Shit…. Shit!” You hissed, unwrapping yourself from the blanket before trying to get up. It hurt, but nothing would hurt worse than Hyunjin leaving you, so you dealt with it, gritting your teeth to muffle your cries of pain as you started to clean up, trying your best to shift the weight off your bad leg, but it was almost impossible considering the mess that you had to avoid to get to the garbage can. 

You weren’t even sure how so much shit had accumulated, but there were pizza boxes stacked up on the coffee table beside the carry–out bags, and there were the discarded plastic bags piling around you from when you’d get out the shower and just rip them off and place them to the side, promising yourself that you’d throw them away later. 

Damp towels laid on the floor beside the dirty clothes hamper, towels from when you’d pull them from off your head, tossing them and hoping they’d make it in only for them to land everywhere but where you wanted. Again, you had promised to get to it, but you never had. It truly was disgusting, and even though your leg felt like it was on the verge of falling off right now just from walking on it, it shouldn’t be an excuse for how disgusting the house had gotten. 

Aside from walking… Everything else was also a pain in the ass. You couldn’t bend over to grab things off the floor, although you were trying your best, but the gravitational pull of the earth had different ideas and you ended up falling face first to the floor, managing to bust your lip and bloody your nose in the process. It wasn’t bad enough that everything was a mess, but now you were just as bad off as the apartment. 

What’s worse is that you couldn’t even get up. There was nothing close enough to give you the leverage that you needed, and your good leg was in just about as much pain as the broken one from you trying to catch your fall and landing right on your knee. Your phone was somewhere amongst the pile of garbage on the coffee table and you couldn’t even crawl over there to get it, you were left on the floor, and you felt that that’s where you belonged, alongside all the garbage that you had created. 

Hyunjin was quick to realize that he had been wrong… Not about you, but about the situation. Not as quick as he wished he had been, but he was back at the dorms and he couldn’t stop beating himself up about the way he had left you. He hadn’t been rude, not exactly, not the way other people would have been… But he wasn’t exactly nice either. 

He had gone back to the dorms, and the rest of the guys were still back at the hotel in the city they had just performed in. He felt more lonely than ever and he knew that he needed to talk to you to apologize for the way he had been acting, so he texted you. He would have gone back to the apartment, but he was so nervous about how you’d react to him suddenly showing back up that he felt it would be better if he just texted you first to ask if he could come back. 

There was no response, and that made sense… Obviously you’d be mad at him for walking out the way he did… And now he was playing back those moments in his head, the moments that led up to him walking out… And he couldn’t stop thinking about the crutches that he had tripped over. Why were they even there? They hadn’t been there when he left… But if something had happened to you that would require you to need them… You would have told him about it… Right? 

But what if you hadn’t told him about it… And something really bad happened… And that’s why you weren’t answering his texts. He hoped that wasn’t what was wrong… For the first time since being with you he was hoping that you were just mad at him and ignoring him. At least in that case you would still be okay. That didn’t stop him from panicking though. He called a cab and waited impatiently outside for them to pull up, not even waiting for the car to come to a complete stop before climbing in the back and giving the driver the address. 

As soon as he got to the building he ran up the stairs, bursting through the front door and it felt like he was about to die, his heart breaking when he saw you laying in the middle of the floor. You looked absolutely lifeless, a puddle of blood on the floor next to your face, and the cast that wrapped from your foot up to your mid thigh explained everything. “Help… Please…” Your voice weakly called from the middle of the floor, and the only reason any sound of relief came from his lips is because you weren’t dead. 

“I’m here…” He whimpered, already crying as he rushed over to you and helped you off the floor, his arms wrapped tightly around your waist to help support you as walked you back over to the couch. “I’m so sorry for leaving you, my love… I didn’t even wait to hear your reason… I just left…” He was full of shame and guilt as he looked at you, the blood that had trickled from your nose now dried on your upper lip and your bottom lip busted open from where it hit the floor. “One second… let me get something…” 

He rushed off the couch and to the kitchen, grabbing a towel and soaking it in cold water before running back and lightly wiping away the blood. “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have let it get this bad. I would have been the same way… It just hurt so bad to walk and… I hate the crutches, they hurt my arms and… I’m sorry.” You mumbled, and he quickly pulled you into a hug, lightly pushing against the back of your head to muffle your words against his shoulder. 

“I don’t care about the apartment, love… I care about you.” He whispered, repeatedly kissing the top of your head as he said the words. “Now… Tell me what happened… Please.” 

You were right… Hyunjin had gone from crying profusely when he heard about the accident, his head shaking as he apologized over and over for not being there for you, although you repeatedly told him that you were the one that didn’t tell him. As soon as the tears stopped flowing though, he was angry, angry at the driver who so carelessly injured and could have potentially stolen away his love. He was so angry in fact, that he planned on having management go to every store with a security camera and demand the footage from the day that it happened so they could track down the person who did it. 

After he had calmed down as much as he could, he called the guys to let them all know he wouldn’t be able to come back for the rest of the concerts, explaining to them that you needed him more than they did, and no, you couldn’t get him to change his mind, and none of the guys tried to get him to change his mind either. You were now stuck with a slightly overbearing and overly apologetic Hyunjin who didn’t leave your side at all. 

“Why were you walking around down that way though? Your work isn’t down there…” He mused one evening, still unable to get over what had happened and trying his best to piece it all together although you had explained everything to him. You sighed softly, suggesting for him to check the art room, and he gently moved your leg from off his lap as he ran to the room, his squeal of excitement loud enough for not only you, but probably the neighbors on all sides of you to hear as well. “You almost got killed to get me this?!” He called from the room, and you giggled lightly. 

“It’s the one you wanted, right?” You called back, as he came out from around the corner of the door, tears in his eyes as he clutched the box against his chest, his head nodding fast in response to your question. “Then it was worth it… I’m glad you like it, babe.” 

“I don’t deserve your love!” You cried out as he rushed back over to the couch where you were resting, leaning over the back to catch your lips in a deep kiss. “I’m gonna paint your cast and make it look so pretty… You’ll be my canvas until it gets taken off.” 

Felix

“You really can’t go with me this time?” Felix asked as he stood just off to the side of the TSA line at the airport. He had been asking the question since he found out he and the guys were going to Australia for a couple tour dates. Sadly your work schedule wouldn’t allow it to be done, and as much as you asked and practically begged for even three days off, they just couldn’t do it. You shook your head before kissing his lips softly, then doing the same to each of his cheeks, a salty taste clinging to your own lips from the tears that he had shed on the way to the airport. “I’m gonna miss you, angel… Be safe, remember to lock the doors, and look both ways before crossing the street… And don’t talk to strangers and don’t walk down alleys at night and-” 

“Lixie…” You whispered, cutting him off for the sole purpose of, you knew he was stalling. He hated leaving you, and you hated when he left, but neither of you really had a choice in the matter. “You’re gonna miss your flight…” You reminded him, and he looked down at his phone that was open to his boarding pass, his bottom lip jutted out. 

“So what if I did? Then I’d get to stay with you… Is that so bad?” He retorted and you truly wished it was that easy, but the both of you knew that it wasn’t, and the way that he said wasn’t the way that it would play out. 

“The company would be pissed at both of us… And they’d just send you out on the next flight…” You explained, although he already knew that that’s what would happen. It didn’t stop him from wishfully thinking though. “Go on… I’ll be right here waiting for you when you get back. I’ll even have a big sign with your name on it… If management lets me.” 

He chuckled, although the sound was more sad than anything else and he pulled you into his arms, squeezing you tightly as he took a deep breath of you, holding it in his lungs as if he was going to carry it with him the whole time. “Always wait for me, okay? I’ll always wait for you… I love you… I already miss you… Fuck… I have to go… I love you so much… So so much…” He continued to profess his love as he walked backwards into the line, his eyes squeezing shut every couple of seconds as tears rolled down his cheeks once more. 

Every night he’d call you before you went to work, the joys of working the evening shift, and most of the call would be him just telling you that he loves you and how much he misses you and how much he wishes you were there with him. You’d tell him that it was going to be okay, that you’d be together soon and that you loved him too. The calls usually left you both crying, and you’d have to tell him that you’d be late for work if the call continued. Then he’d call you every night after work, asking you how your day went and once again telling you that he loved you, how he wanted so badly to be laying next to you in his hotel bed, holding onto you and burying his face in your hair, the smell of your shampoo filling his nose and helping him sleep better. He needed you, and you needed him too, it was only two weeks until he came back… It would be okay. 

“It’s getting dark out, are you sure you don’t want me to drive you home?” Your boss asked as she stood at the door, leaning against it to hold it open for you. “I don’t mind it, I don’t want you walking out here by yourself.” 

You hummed softly, shaking your head as you walked past her, adjusting your purse on your shoulder as you paused just outside the door. “I’ll be okay, I walk home all the time. I’ll see you tomorrow, drive safely.” You said cheerfully, anticipating the call that would come from Felix as soon as you got home. 

The walk was always pleasant, the summer breeze that came with the hidden sun always felt nice when he blew around you, taking a deep breath and letting the fresh air fill your lungs… Until it didn’t. The breath that you tried to take now burned, the pain in your side wasn’t too bad, not until you tried to breath again and you couldn’t, it felt like your lungs were on fire. 

“You need to be more aware of your surroundings, angel. You could get hurt.” You remembered Felixs words from a time not too long ago when you had started to walk across the street before the traffic had even stopped, so happy just being with him that you didn’t even take the time to look around. The words rang true as you finally looked down, noticing the knife that was still plunged into your side. 

It was crazy how it didn’t start really hurting until you looked at it, and then, as if the world had been on mute for a couple minutes, all of the sound came back and you could hear bystanders screaming as they rushed over to you. “It’s okay! We’ve called an ambulance and the police! It’s okay! Just hold on!” You didn’t know who this person was, he simply caught you before you collapsed onto the ground, gently lowering you down, using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the blood from your mouth every time you opened it. The taste of copper was nauseating and you couldn’t help but retch when it would coat your tongue. “No no… Don’t do that… It’ll make it worse!” 

The knife still hadn’t been pulled out yet, and you remembered reading somewhere that if it had been pulled out immediately that you would have bled to death… But god, the pain was worse than whatever death could possibly feel like. “The ambulance is on its way! Someone caught her! They’re waiting for the police!” You could faintly hear a woman scream, but the sound of your breathing, if you could even call it that, was much louder in your ears. The rattle of your lungs and the heavy wheezing was so annoying, but sadly you couldn’t mute that sound considering it was coming from you. 

There wasn’t much that you could do, there wasn’t anything you could do really… Just laying there, listening to the rattle and the commotion and the distant sirens that you knew were coming for you. All you could do was dive into your own mind, try to think of something, anything to make this moment just a little more bearable. Felix. He was the only thing you could think of. The way his smile brightened even the darkest nights, the way he’d come back home after performing and you’d have the honor of wiping off his makeup, kissing along his cheeks as his perfect freckles reappeared from under the makeup. The way his hair would drip onto your face after a shower when he’d climb on top of you, his fingers tickling your sides as he smothered you with kisses. He was your happy place, he always would be, and even if you died right now, there was no heaven that would ever be better than the one you got to live on earth when you were with him. 

“Woman in custody after random stabbing near Yangjae-daero. Eyewitnesses say that the woman was a crazed fan, screaming that the victim “didn’t deserve to be with him.” Although the “him” in question was never specified. The victim is currently in the hospital with no update on her condition just yet…”

Bangchan shook his head as he read over the report, tossing his phone to the side and running his hands over his face. “I never thought that people would go this far. It’s ridiculous, it’s scary. We need to keep our girls safe.” He said, and Felix nodded his head in agreement, having been the first one to read the news. He hated that it was so close to your place of work, and he tried his best to call you and text you, but he was sure that right now you were being questioned by police about what you saw and heard. 

“She’s probably so scared…” Felix murmured, checking his phone once more, but there were still no texts from you. “I don’t want her walking home by herself anymore… God, what if it had been her?” And while he wasn’t even 100% sure it wasn’t you, he wanted to believe you were okay, so he did. He filled his mind with every single scenario other than the one where you were the victim. 

“Try not to worry too much, we’ll be going home tomorrow morning and you’ll be with her.” Chan said, but Felix felt it was quite hypocritical since his girlfriend had been texting him the entire time while Felix was getting nothing but silence from you. “Just try to get some sleep, okay?” 

And he tried, he tried his best, but he couldn’t get even a wink of sleep without hearing your voice before bed, so many nights spent just laying on the hotel pillow that brought him no comfort since it didn’t smell like you, but he’d hear your voice, his phone on speaker but the volume low so that if he closed his eyes it sounded like you were really right there. He needed that, he needed you to call him, he needed you. 

He wasn’t even close to falling asleep, it had been 4 hours, and the vibration from under his pillow had him rolling over onto his stomach to look at the screen that was so blinding in the darkness. You finally texted him though, he felt like he could finally breathe, at least a little bit. “Sorry for worrying you. Don’t worry, I’m fine. These cops had more questions than I thought they would.” 

“It’s okay, I just needed to be sure you’re okay. Did you get home? Make sure to lock the doors, and if you need to go to work or anywhere, text Chans or Changbins girlfriends, they’d be happy to help you.” He knew you wouldn’t though, even though you’d be much safer if you did, you hated burdening people and putting them out of the way even if it meant you’d be safe. “Try to get some rest, it’s so late. I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you.” He texted and your response came quickly, telling him that you loved him too, that you hoped he slept well and had sweet dreams, and now that he knew you were okay, he knew that he’d be okay. 

It had completely slipped his mind to let you know he was coming home the next day, he had finally gotten to sleep at 4am and he had to wake up at 6am to get to the airport by 7. A 10 hour flight, and he hoped he’d be able to sleep a little bit on the plane before he got to you, he didn’t want to be exhausted when he finally saw you. 

By the time he landed in the afternoon his stomach was full of butterflies, his smile unwavering as he thought about how it would feel to hold you in his arms again. Of course you weren’t going to be at the airport waiting for him, you didn’t know he was coming home early. Nobody knew, but after the report, all of the guys wanted to go home to be with their girlfriends, there had never been such panic felt by Felix as the guys raced through the airport to get to the cars to go to see their girls. Felix felt the same way though, and while he hated comparing his emotions to anyone else's, his panic was far greater considering you had been so close. 

Now, Felix loved a clean house as much as the next person, but he didn’t like it to be so clean that it felt like a sin to even walk across the floors. He liked things clean, but he still wanted the house to feel like it was lived in, he wanted it to feel like a home, which is why when he walked through the front door and saw your hoodie balled up on the bench instead of hung in the closet he felt nothing but warmth in his heart. It was your favorite hoodie, it was his hoodie, and seeing it on the bench meant that he’d be seeing you soon. 

At least, that’s what he thought, but when he walked further into the house he still didn’t find you, but he did find a mess. Dishes still sat in the sink, begging to be washed. Your lounge clothes were discarded carelessly on the floor in the bedroom, not even brought to the dirty clothes hamper beside the washing machine, and speaking of the washer, the clothes that were in there had gone sour from being left to sit dampened in the bin for so long. There was a very big difference between a house being lived in, and a house just being dirty, and right now, the house felt dirty. 

“Look…” He started the text, trying his best to sound as understanding as possible while also getting his point across. “I know you’ve seen some shit, but that doesn’t mean you can just let the house fall apart. I mean… Leaving dirty dishes in the sink? Leaving wet clothes in the washer? That could cause vermin… It could cause mold to build up in the washer and in the clothes. I thought you knew better… I thought you were better than that. I love you, but I’m not gonna pretend I’m not annoyed right now. I’ll stay at the dorms right now… And I’ll come back home tomorrow to help you with some stuff but… I don’t want to come back home and see the house like this. It’s kind of upsetting.”

Why didn’t you tell Felix about being stabbed… He wouldn’t have texted you that if he knew… He would be sitting in the hospital with you right now and comforting you. Well, there were a lot of reasons actually… But the main one was that you knew he’d blame himself for what happened. You thought that you’d be out of the hospital and at least able to do a little bit before he got home, you never thought he’d come back home early, and the most shocking part was the fact that all of the guys did. 

It was a miracle that you were still alive, a little bit higher and the damage would have been way worse… At least that’s what the doctor said. It was also a miracle that you were being let out of the hospital only two days after getting major lung surgery, props to the surgeons and the amazing medical equipment that’s out now. Still, it’s not like you could really do much, there was actually more that you couldn’t do rather than what you could do. You just needed to keep your activity levels at a low and then you’d be totally fine. It’s not like you were running a marathon, you were just gonna go home and clean the house so that Felix wouldn’t be disappointed in you. Perfectly fine. 

You ubered home considering the fact that Felix was annoyed with you and the last thing you needed was an apologetic clingy boyfriend to spend the entire car ride home belittling himself for saying such things to you. It’s not like he knew what happened, and it was his honest reaction, and to be fair, he had a point. Nothing he said in the text was wrong, and it wasn’t like he was vicious, he just didn’t want mice or roaches to take over and he didn’t want to deal with mold. Nobody wanted that, you didn’t want that. His annoyance was valid, and you didn’t want him to feel guilty over something he had no idea about. 

And to be quite honest, the uber driver's face was priceless when he had asked you why you were in the hospital and you nonchalantly told him you got stabbed and had to have lung surgery. If laughing wasn’t on the list of things to do, you would have cracked up, but truthfully, it was painful to laugh. Breathing in itself was still quite painful, and it was crazy how you had to retrain yourself on how to breathe so that you weren’t in as much pain. 

Walking into your home was like a breath of fresh air, except you couldn’t take that deep breath and instead you had to do a little sniff and just walking up the front stairs had you winded and you had to take a five minute breather on the couch before actually starting any chores. Crazy enough, the dishes, although they were your least favorite chore to do, they had been the easiest. There was no heavy lifting involved, there was no bending over… You finally found a reason to love doing the dishes. 

While you were working in the kitchen, you had restarted the load of laundry that had been sitting in the washer, and it was just about done thankfully. All you had to do was switch the clothes into the drier and then you’d be able to take a little break. It was supposed to be quick and easy, and for the most part it was… Until that one last fucking sock at the bottom of the basin caught your eye. Everything, every bone in your body, your mind, your heart, everything was telling you to just leave it… But you couldn’t, and you stretched over the side of the basin, and you felt the tear, but in the moment you didn’t care because you were victorious, you had got that sock and you threw it in the drier and now you could rest. 

Except you… you couldn’t rest… Because the warm trickle that ran down your side finally caught your full attention, and when you looked down at your shirt you could see the dark red stain that completely soaked through the fabric. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if you didn’t start instantly panicking… But who wouldn’t panic when their stitches from a surgery like yours busted open? And there was so much blood… So much… You started hyperventilating and that hurt even more and you ended up getting light headed and falling to the floor. You truly felt like you were dying, and you knew that you needed to get to the hospital and sure… You could have called an ambulance, you could have called Felix… But he was upset with you and now there was blood all over the floor and for some foolish reason you thought he’d be mad about that, so you called the only other person you could think of. 

Chans girlfriend was like a sister to you, and you quickly called her, and luckily she thought the same way about you and immediately picked up. You could hear the other guys in the background, you could even hear Felix… But you were more focused on the sound of Chans girlfriends voice, finding in it some will to keep from fainting at the sight of all the blood on the floor and the warmth that continued to pour down your side. “Hey, what’s going on? Do you need to be picked up from work?” She sounded so cheerful, her and Chan truly were a perfect match. 

“No… I need… Hospital… Can you take me?” You gasped out, and the silence coming from her end was deafening. If it weren’t for the sound of the other guys goofing off in the background you would have just assumed she had hung up. “Please… Bleeding… I’m bleeding… Really bad…” 

“Y-Yeah… Do you want me to bring him?” You knew exactly who she was talking about, but she was smart, she knew that there was a reason that you hadn’t called him, and whatever that reason was, you most likely didn’t want her to say his name to catch his attention… But she still wanted to be sure. 

“Just you… Please… Hurry…” You mumbled, and it felt like you had used the last bit of energy to say those four words. Your arm fell limp at your side and you didn’t even end the call, it felt like the room was fading in and out and this… this feeling… it was way worse than being stabbed initially. At least then the knife held everything in. Now it seemed like you were bleeding out and you couldn’t even breathe without getting lightheaded. It was the absolute worst. 

Chans girlfriend had rushed out of the dorms so fast, even Chan had no idea what was going on, and he had texted her non stop questioning where she went and what was wrong, but she hadn’t answered. With everything that was going on, it made him uneasy, and now Felix was the one telling him it would be okay, that is, until she walked back into the dorms. She was a completely different person, her eyes almost shell shocked, she looked like she had seen a ghost. 

“What happened?” Chan had immediately rushed over to her, and she only shook her head, and Felix could see the tears in her eyes as she looked at him and then back to Chan, motioning for him to follow her into one of the empty rooms. It’s not that Felix was nosy, but the way she had looked at him had him questioning what the hell she had seen, and why she hadn’t looked at the other guys the same way. “What?!” Everyone froze when they heard Chans scream, and then the rushed out shushes from his girlfriend. “Why didn’t she say anything?! He doesn’t know! Is she okay?! Oh fuck!” There was a panic in his voice, a certain fear that no one had ever heard from their leader before. It was concerning, but everyone was frozen in their seats, stunned into silence as they listened to the conversation, which was more like Chans screaming and his girlfriend's incomprehensible whispers. “Well I can’t just not tell him! You know how he is! For fucks sake, what if she dies?! How do you think he’d feel?! I’m telling him!” 

Everyone else pretended to go back to whatever it was they were doing beforehand once Chan came out from the room, everyone but Felix who had his eyes glued to Chan and his girlfriend who walked out behind him. They were both looking directly at him too, and it only made him more confused when they stopped right in front of him and now he was being motioned to follow them into the empty room. Why was this so secretive? 

“You should sit…” Chan started once he had gotten Felix into his room, and that only confused him more as he slowly lowered down onto Chans bed. “Do you know… Fuck… How am I even supposed to tell him this?!” He looked back to his girlfriend who was leaning against the door, sniffling so quietly that Felix hadn’t even been aware that she was crying until now. 

“Tell me what? Just say it!” Felix demanded, growing impatient with the back and forth of it all, and the urgency in their tones had him on edge and his knee was bouncing so fast that it was shaking the entire frame of the mattress. Clearly it was something important and it was meant for him… “Just spit it out!” 

“Y/N is in the hospital.” Chans girlfriend blurted out and that was the first shot, it was more like a gut punch, it was unexpected, and while it was definitely concerning… It didn’t explain what Chan had said earlier when he thought no one was listening. “She was bleeding a lot and… Her stitches from the lung surgery… They ripped and… She was trying to do the laundry I guess… There was blood everywhere and… She was unconscious when I got to the house and I called an ambulance and followed them there but they wouldn’t let me in…” 

Lung surgery… There was nothing wrong with your lungs, at least there hadn’t been when he had left for Australia. “She… She didn’t say anything… About that…” Felix stammered, his heart going a mile a minute and his mind reeling as he thought about what to do… What he could do. He felt helpless, there truly was nothing he could do right now to help you. “Why…. Why would she need lung surgery…. What happened?” 

Chans girlfriend sighed as her head fell forward, her eyes sticking to the ground now. “She was the one… From the news report…” It took a couple seconds for him to finally get it, but once it clicked, he felt like he couldn’t breathe. “She shouldn’t have been trying to do chores… Why would she do that? She’s crazy… That stuff could have waited until you got home to help her.” 

It was his fault… Everything was his fault. His legs were shaking as he got up off the bed, and he almost fell forward, he would have fallen to the floor if Chan hadn’t been there to catch him. “Hey… Hey look… There’s nothing you can do right now… Just stay here, rest… I’m sure the hospital will call when they fix things… You’re not okay right now… Just lay down.” Chan urged, pushing him back onto the bed, and he couldn’t even get up, it felt like there was a thousand pounds against his chest, holding him against the mattress. 

“It’s my fault… It’s all my fault… Mine…” Felix muttered to himself through tears, rolling over and curling up into a ball on Chans bed, violent sobs shaking his entire body. “I’m gonna lose her… I’m gonna… She’s gonna be gone… I can’t… I can’t live… Not without her… I can’t do anything… I need her, hyung… I really do…” He stammered, and the only thing Chan could do, the only thing anyone could do was try to console him, and they did their best, but he only got quiet when he cried himself to the point of exhaustion, his puffy eyes closing as his sobs turned to hiccups, then to shaky slumbered breaths. 

“Damn… I’m back here again…” You muttered as your eyes opened to the familiar white walls of the hospital room. “Wanna go home… I’m ready to go home…” And you tried to move, but a familiar, yet strangely unfamiliar pain hit your side as you tried to get up, and when you looked down, you saw the long tube protruding from your side in the exact same spot that your stitches once were. “Now what the fuck is this?” 

“Ma’am…” The doctor that had been standing in your room waiting for you to wake up finally walked over and sternly motioned for you to lay down. “Do you remember me?” Of course you did, it was the same doctor that had so happily discharged you before, and you quickly nodded your head before pointing questioningly to the lung that was poking out of your lung. “Well, you went against every single rule that was written for you to follow, and you tore your stitches, every single layer, and then during your panicked hyperventilation episode, you managed to inhale a lot of blood and now it needs to be drained.” 

“I’m sensing sarcasm…” You mumbled, falling back against the bed since you had no other choice but to lay there. “So how long do I have to stay this time?” You asked, and the doctor rolled his eyes at your sassiness, tapping his pen against the clipboard that he was holding. 

“Considering your lack of self regard and the fact that we have to make sure your lungs are properly drained and then we have to stitch you up again… It’ll probably be a good week before you’re out of here. Now… You said that you’d have someone there who knew what was going on when you got home… Why did the person who brought you in seem so confused? Did you lie just to get out of here?” 

You sheepishly scratched the back of your head and then your face crinkled up as you nodded your head. “But, I was gonna tell my boyfriend! He just got home before me and the house was kind of a mess and I completely forgot about the laundry… You know… Getting stabbed kinda makes you forget about daily chores. I tried to do the laundry when I got home and then… Bam… Stitches popped. I blame the sock.” 

“The sock? You blame the sock?” The doctor repeated, completely exasperated by your sense of disconcern for what was going on. “You could have just explained to your boyfriend that… you know… you got stabbed.” He mocked you, placing his clipboard under his arm as he shook his head. “I’m gonna assume your boyfriend is the dark haired freckled boy who has been loyally sitting on the floor by your door and crying his eyes out… Does that sound like him?” You pursed your lips, nodding your head slowly. “I’m gonna let him in now, okay?” 

You barely recognized him when he walked in, his head hung low and his hair curtaining his face, but when the door shut behind him, he looked up at you, his eyes immediately focusing in on the tube in your side and then he was bawling once more. “Yah, why are you crying? I’m still alive and… painfully, still breathing!” You tried to laugh, but ended up hurting yourself in the process, wincing when the vibration of your chest caused the tube to shift. 

“How are you still so happy?” Felix questioned, not even coming close to your hospital bed which was actually really upsetting considering the one thing that would probably heal you better than any surgery was one of his hugs and maybe one of his kisses. “Is it the morphine? Do you not feel anything?” He looked at the IV drip that was connected to your arm and then back at your face that was smiling so brightly, he’d think that you were in any normal bed just waking up from a nap… 

“No, silly… It’s because you’re here.” You simply explained, holding your arms out to him. “Where’s my hug at? I’ve waited so long for one of your hugs, and you’re just gonna stand there and stare at me?” You pouted, looking down at the tube and letting out a quick sigh, it would have been longer and way more sassy if your lungs could have handled it, but they couldn’t, so a short bit of sass was all you could give right now. “I know I look like a lab experiment right now… but… A hug would be really nice.” 

“You’re like this… because of me… And you still want a hug? You still want me close to you?” He quizzed, and your eyebrows lowered as you looked at him with such shock, your eyes looking around the room before landing back on him. 

“Babe, I don’t know what you’re talking about right now, I just want a hug and maybe some kisses if you feel so inclined to give me them.” You motioned your arms out to him once more, a little more forcefully this time. “I’ll let you have a couple bites of my flavorless jello if you give me a hug… Please?” 

He chuckled, although it sounded way more sad than usual as he finally walked over to you, carefully maneuvering his arms around the tube as he rested his forehead against yours. “You didn’t tell me…” He murmured, pressing a kiss to your nose before pulling back. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“Because I knew that you’d blame yourself…” You brushed his hair away from his face before lightly poking his freckles and smiling to yourself. “You’re still doing that right now though… Which is silly. I’m the one that decided to do the laundry even though the doctor told me not to. That’s not your fault.” 

“You didn’t tell me you got stabbed, angel. I wouldn’t have gotten so worked up about the house if I knew that… And you could have told me to go fuck myself after I sent that text.” He scoffed softly as he finally, carefully, sat down on the edge of the bed. “We’re suing her… The whole company is… And we’re gonna make sure you and the other girls have body guards at all times. Nothing like this will ever happen again…” He took a deep breath, and then pursed his lips apologetically as he let it out slowly through his nose and you snorted softly.

“Don’t feel guilty for being able to breathe better than me, breathe deeply for me since I can’t right now…” You joked and he rolled his eyes, his head falling back as he groaned loudly, but you could hear his laughter although he was trying his best to hide it. 

“God, you really are something else…” He murmured once he had calmed down, looking over at you with the softest eyes that held the whole universe in them, although you could only see your reflection in his pupils, but to him, you were his entire universe. “They tried to send my angel back home… I’ll never let that happen… I won’t let you go. If you go, I go… I love you too much to live without you here beside me.” 

You sniffled softly, biting your bottom lip to try to hide the fact that you were on the verge of tears. “Damn…” You choked out before clearing your throat. “I love you too, Lixie… Don’t make me cry though… Makes it hard to breathe…” His eyes widened, and you knew he was on the brink of beginning to apologize again, and you knew that if he did he wouldn’t stop so you cut him off before he could begin. “You think we got time for like… a quickie before the doctor comes in to check on me?” 

“WHAT?!” He shrieked, his cheeks burning a bright red as he glanced at the door and then back at you. “You’re crazy… God I love you so much…” He chuckled as he shook his head, leaning in to kiss you softly as he pet his hands over your hair. “Maybe at night though… I missed you a lot… You know…” 

#stray kids #skz #stray kids x reader #stray kids x you #skz x reader #skz x you #dad!skz #dad!stray kids #skz imagines #skz scenarios #skz headcanons #skz fic #skz drabble #stray kids imagine #stray kids headcanons #stray kids scenarios #stray kids fic #stray kids drabble #stray kids angst #skz angst #hwang hyunjin #hyunjin x reader #hyunjin x you #hyunjin angst #lee felix #lee felix x reader #lee felix x you #lee felix angst

[bettyfrommars]

nightmare!eddie x reader

a Nightmare Factory blurb

I had several smut blurb requests to do with Eddie working his magic to give us a wet dream, including one from the lovely @jo-harrington that I will probably do something with separately, and it's literally all I could think about today, so I spit this out.

18+ONLY, somnophilia, smut, unprotected sex, squirting, reader receiving oral, pet names. Okay so, this is somnophilia because reader is actually asleep, but it's also...a dream. This is a consensual relationship, and they've been together for a while at this point (for those following the story, this is a time jump). It's a wet dream, but there is also evidence that they really had intercourse. wc: 1.3k

masterlist

authors note: I've decided we are going to jump around a bit in theis series because the non-linear way is more fun, I think. I still have a Headless Horseman Eddie coming soon, but this one felt very important xoxoxox

-------

Eddie got to work early that day and threw a sheepish grin down the hall at Kevin before plopping down in his chair for the group safety meeting to do with falling from extreme heights in dreams.  

He hadn’t been able to see you in weeks and—my god—he missed you so much it made his heart hurt.  

You’d been keeping your nightmare boyfriend a secret from your family and friends, but it was hard not to mention Eddie when you’d made sure his face was a fixture in your life.  It started out as a few sketches when you first woke up, trying to keep his image fresh, but then it progressed to paintings and even a few sculptures.  You had a whole journal full of notes and different ways Eddie had appeared to you, dating back to before you ever knew who or what he was.  

“Last night, he came to me as ghostly whispers that swam in my head, and sang to me a haunting melody.”

You weren’t afraid of anything anymore, especially not your nightmares.  Being chased by a masked killer? It was just Eddie, strolling by to say hello.  A glimpse of a shadow monster behind you when you stood at the bathroom mirror? It’s just Eddie, coming around on his way to another job.  A clawed hand grabs your ankle from under the bed? Of course, it’s Eddie—-he wants to tell you a story about something that happened at work before he forgets.

Two months ago, things had become more intimate between the two of you.  There had been some yearning kisses before that, a bit of hand holding, but it was always a gamble because he said he didn’t want to mess up and get “taken off your route” completely, as if he were delivering newspapers or soliciting magazine subscriptions.

That afternoon, you took a nap, and woke up in the throws of a wet dream so fierce, you were barely able to touch yourself before you were cumming so hard it made you shake.  When the wave subsided, you rolled over and looked at the ceiling with a smile spreading across your face: “Eddieee, was that you?”

You took that as a sign that he would return that night, and so you slept naked, ready to tempt him.  The anticipation made it hard for you to drift off to sleep at first, but it wasn’t long before you felt his calloused hands moving up your thighs.

“Fuck, I’ve missed you so much, sweetheart,” Eddie whispered, waiting for you to acknowledge him.  “Did you miss me?”

You moaned, still half asleep, but cognizant of his presence in your dream.  

Your lower back bucked off the bed when his tongue sank between your legs, making your cunt throb.

“Damn, I love how wet you get for me,” he kissed your inner thigh and ran his nose along your slit, darting his tongue into your aching hole. His tongue was…longer than you remembered, and you could feel it fill you up and twist inside of you like a big snake on the run.

You whimpered and twitched, making him smile against your engorged pussy as it dripped for him and only him.

“You came so hard for me earlier today,” his whispers were far away but also right at your ear.  One mouth sucked at your nipples and licked them while the other latched onto your core—as if there were two of him.  “I need to taste it this time.”

Under your closed lids, your eyes moved from side to side and your jaw went slack as a long groan escaped.

You were close, and Eddie knew it.

He could feel your arousal bloom in his mouth, and he rutted it in the air of the celestial sphere the two of you were existing in.  

Your whole body stiffened as you came, gasping, hips bucking up to meet his mouth, to let him suck every last drop from you.

“God, I’m so crazy about you,” he mumbled against your slit as he lapped you up, licking all the way back and teasing there a little bit. 

You could feel your eyes fluttering open and you worried that you were waking up, “no no no no…” you repeated, becoming aware of the infinite blackness around you.

You saw Eddie’s head pop up from between your legs. “Do you want me to stop?”

“Eddie,” you breathed, relieved. You wanted to put your arms around him, to spread your legs wider so that he could be inside of you, but your limbs had minimal strength. “Where are we this time?”

It looked like you were floating in a dark night sky surrounded by a sea of bright, blinking stars. It felt like you were on your bed back in your room, but there was not a trace of anything familiar.  

With a grin still wet from your gift, he crawled up on top of you to plant a few sweet kisses on your face.  “We’re in the same astral plane with the rest of the soul suckers and the sex demons.  I’m doing my best to lay low, so the head Incubus doesn’t know I’m here.”  

Talking to your boyfriend and kissing him was great but you were suddenly hit with another blast of horniness so strong it made you clench.

“I need you, Eddie,” you whined against his mouth, finally able to move your hands up to undo his belt.  “Inside of me this time.”

His clothes were off in a split second, as if he’d never been wearing any to begin with. Your hole gripped at nothing when the tip of his hard length rubbed against it.  

“That’s it —fuck—just like that,” he held your hips up and sank in deep as your eyes fell closed again.  You drifted in and out of the astral plane as he made you his with long, slow strokes first, hitting that perfect spot inside each time.

You chanted his name as he worked his fingers in the right spot, just like you'd taught him to the last time you were together.  "You're doing so good, baby," you hushed. At one point, you felt like you were being lifted off the bed—becoming weightless—while he kept a steady pace.  

He hesitated abruptly, pausing there, and you managed to open your heavy eyelids to look at him. 

His expression was a serious one. “I’m about to cum, baby, but I wanted to tell you that I think I…I think I…”

But he couldn’t finish the sentence and your head rolled back as he continued, cursing at how good it felt.  

Your second orgasm hit with a sense of release you’d never felt before, and you cried out, trembling, as sunburst exploded at your core and a velvet whip cracked.

“You’re cumming…all over me…oh my god,” and the sight of your release spraying onto his cock made Eddie pour himself into you on the spot, stuttering as your walls milked him, each of you babbling incoherent words of worship to the other.

In the aftermath, he took you in his arms from behind to spoon you close.  He could feel your breathing change, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before you left dreamland through the magical door.  

“I think…” he started again, brushing his lips on the shell of your ear.  “I think I’m in love with you.”

—---

You took your time waking up, guiding yourself through another orgasm as the remnants of the dream lingered.  As always, you tried to hold onto the feeling of him for as long as possible, gasping his name as you came again, and your head lolled from side to side on the pillow.  

Once you were fully awake, the all too familiar sadness set in; the realization that he wasn’t really there, with you, like you wanted him to be.  

Your spirits soon lifted when you felt his seed drip down your leg on your way to the bathroom, elated at the realization that you had successfully kept a piece of him with you. 

One day, you’d figure out a way to keep all of him.

#Eddie Munson fic #eddiemunsonseries #eddie munson fanfic #the nightmare factory #nightmare!eddie #somnophilia #Eddie munson smut #stranger things smut #smut #eddie munson x afab reader

[angellayercake]

"The return of DOM COPIA" pleeeeease (trying not to sound absolutely desperate) ♡

I think we are all a little desperate for dom copia Ibi it's ok!

NSFW below the read more

Somehow you had forgotten exactly how big he was but as you knelt between his legs throat full you had ample time to remember. Keep still had been his last instruction to you as he tucked his chair under the table trapping you in place but simple as it seemed the more time passed the harder it became. Your knees were becoming sore, thighs beginning to cramp, a crick would surely develop in your neck before long and yet you push through it all to obey his order.

His tracksuit is soft where your forearms rest on his thick thighs your tight grip the only thing keeping you grounded. Breathing took concentration between his thick length and spit spilling from the corners of your mouth. You fight the urge to swallow, even that going against what he asked but you are fighting a losing battle with your natural instincts. It happens without your say so, swallowing slow and hard, squeezing down his length and you feel the jolt of his reaction.

The clatter of his paintbrush falling to the table above you makes you flinch and you watch wide eyed as he is gloved hands reach for you. He grabs your hair, pulling you off his cock roughly, leaving you coughing and gasping for breath as you drool on your chin. He pushes his chair back tugging you along with him until he can glare down at you. His face is only partially painted the thick white paint covering most of his face and the beginnings of the black shapes sketched but not filled in. He looks more menacing like this with only half his transformation complete.

'I told you not to move cara mia,' his fist tightens, your scalp beginning to burn as he tips your face up towards his.

'I'm sorry Papa,' you rasp, voice already broken by him.

'You understand how important my Papal paint is, si?' His voice is low and menacing. He squeezes your cheeks with the hand not tangled in your hair forcing your mouth open and pushing his thumb into your mouth stopping you from replying. 'If you force me to make a mistake you will regret it.'

#face down in decolletage #part threeeee #wip #tag games #asks #copia x reader #papa emeritus iv x reader

[nostalgebraist]

state of the book

(Attention conservation notice: long, kinda navel-gazey. There are some specifics at the start and end.)

There are 7 chapters remaining in Almost Nowhere.

I'm about halfway through writing the first of those. The current plan is to post that first chapter when I'm done with it, and then stop with the serial updates until I've written all of the remaining six. Then, I'll post those all at once.

----

When I got near enough to the end of writing Floornight, it got frustrating to write in a new way.

The fact that I wasn't just done already was agonizing. Once the finish line got close enough for me to see, the remaining distance felt like it was taunting me.

How did I react? I let it go on for a little while, and then one evening I said "you know what, fuck it, let's get this over with." And I sat down and wrote the last two chapters.

I wrote them with the attitude of a checked-out high school senior racing through his last homework assignment. I wrote them unusually fast, with less "quality control" than usual, and with less passion for the story itself than for the idea of just getting it over with already.

----

When I got near enough to the end of writing The Northern Caves, it got frustrating to write in a new way.

The fact that I wasn't just done already was agonizing. Etc, etc.

I let it go on for a little while, and then one evening I said "you know what, fuck it, let's get this over with."

And I sat down and wrote the last five chapters, in one evening. Unusually fast, with less "quality control" than usual, etc., etc.

I often drink a bit when I'm writing, but I drank more than usual that evening. A checked-out senior, already mentally on summer break. Fuck it. Just get it over with.

----

I have now reached this point of ending-related frustration with Almost Nowhere.

I'm not going to do the "fuck it, let's end this tonight" thing a third time, though.

The endings of my earlier 2 novels were, uh ... not ideal, in a lot of ways. Some of those are related to plot and structure, and can't really be blamed on the way I kind of gave up 90% of the way though.

But there's a weird, sudden, desultory, incompletely sketched feel to those endings that I'm sure was a result of the way they were produced. It wasn't some necessary implication of the broader construction. It was just that I gave up.

And I can just ... not do that. And get a better last part of the book out of it. And then it'll be there, forever, in its better state.

----

(I think this frustration largely stems from serial writing?

Thanks to the peak-end rule [among other factors], endings are pretty important. But the further you go in a serial, the more constrained you are.

No matter how much you plan ahead, there's always some maneuvering room, some opportunities to be creative on the fly, to surprise and delight yourself.

This decreases monotonically as you get further along. You feel less and less like you're creating something in the big, exciting, easily romanticized sense of that word, and more and more like you're doing the yeoman work of painting in fine details between pre-established lines and keyframes.

The upside risk declines faster than the downside risk. In the middle of a serial, you can always fantasize about how great the remaining parts will be -- great in ways you might not ever have expected! And you're not wrong: there ARE things you'll only invent later, which you'll feel proud of, and will be unable to imagining lacking once you've made their acquaintance.

As you near the end, this potential goes away. But there is still the need to paint in between those sketchy lines and keyframes. If you do this very well, the result will be simply as you have imagined it -- not superior to your current vision, in some heretofore-unimagined manner, but only what you already have in mind, ably executed. However, there is still the possibility of severe failure: those painted details could go very wrong indeed. There is a ceiling, now -- but there is still no floor.

That's why I have trouble with endings, I think. But it's no excuse for not doing them well. It's hard, but many things are hard. I simply need to not give up.)

----

Long story short, I really want to be done with the book!! This is eating away at me, every day.

Unfortunately, this year continues to be mildly cursed as far as writing is concerned.

I'm finally (I think? fingers crossed??) coming out of the depressive funk that has afflicted me for most of the year.

In its place, the new problem is that I'm sleeping terribly. I've been sleeping terribly, consistently, for at least a few weeks now.

At first it was due to the sun rising earlier. We blacked out the bedroom windows again, but now my circadian rhythm is all messed up, giving the problem its own momentum even after the removal of the initial stimulus. Presumably it'll improve over time.

(Maybe the sleep deprivation actually helped with the depression? That has been known to happen.)

So I'm in this kind of weird state w/r/t the book.

I have a strong emotional motivation to go as quickly as possible.

I also have a strong emotional motivation to "stick the landing," and not feel like I'm giving up 90% of the way through.

I keep finding myself in states where I can't easily produce writing that feels like "sticking the landing," and certainly can't produce it very quickly.

(Probably I need to just take better care of myself, in all sorts of ways, and then the other problems would work themselves out.

That goes against all the instincts I learned in school, of course: you get the final projects and exams over with first, and you "take care of yourself" after -- not the other way around, silly! But I have not been in school for a long time, and should start acting like it.)

Just to be clear, I'm not posting this out of a desire for people to tell me that it's #valid for me to take as long as I need, and to reassure me that I don't need to rush for my (tiny) readership. I believe that all already, and appreciate it. But the impetus to go fast is coming from me, not from any idea about my audience.

----

Some qualitative statistics.

I keep track of (chapters written / time) and also (words written / time).

Both of these have their flaws, but I think the latter is more meaningful overall. Mere verbosity is no virtue, but one does need to write more words when there's a lot that needs to happen, and chapters very in eventfulness.

My average words-per-time rate over the "third act" of AN has been about 60% what it was during the fast period in 2022, when I wrote most of the "second act."

For what it's worth -- which is disputable -- that slower rate is still faster than my average rate over the entirety of TNC. But of course TNC was a lot less wordy.

(I don't know how I expected to write the whole book in 2022. Well, I do, but it involved absurdly optimistic assumptions about the "third act." The conceit was a useful kick in the ass, though.)

A somewhat optimistic extrapolation, using this rate and the average chapter word count in "act 3," says I will take around 5-6 months to write the remaining 7 chapters.

5-6 months is ... actually not that big a hiatus, by my standards! (That says more about "my standards" than anything, but still.)

It does feel absurdly long, though, emotionally. Emotionally, I feel like I ought to be done, like, next week. Come on, it's so close, just "get it over with" --

On a practical level, I'm a little worried about the size of the planned 6-chapter final block. Less from the length of the pause involved, and more due to the possibility of losing momentum... I guess. Maybe I'm spoiled by the immediate feedback of serial release.

I guess I could shrink the size of the final bunch and push out serial release for long. None of that will matter in the long run anyway, for "archival readers." The current plan feels structurally right, though.

----

I set aside the entirety of the past weekend for writing. I worked as hard as I could, and got ~5000 words of the next chapter. It still feels less than half done, honestly.

I was aware that the words were coming less easily than usual, due to my sleep debt.

On Monday evening, after sleeping very badly, I tried to continue, and did write a bit more. I quickly had to admit, though, that I was simply too tired for my brain to make words of the desired quality at any usable rate. So I stopped.

I have a strong emotional motivation to go as quickly as possible. "As quickly as possible" is currently pretty slow. I'll do what I can to improve that.

#almost nowhere

[chronic-ghost]

Chapter 10 of Recovery Road

chapter rating: E (18+)

pairing: dieter bravo x f!reader

word count: 31K (part 1: 14K + part 2: 17K)

chapter summary: how they find each other again . . . and everything else

chapter warnings/tags: discussions of mental health, medication discussions, therapy (so much therapy), everything about theater and theatre production is nothing but fake lies, and yes lots of smut

a/n: there's a longer, sappy-er reblog coming but i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who came along with me on this journey. this wouldn't have been possible without you and i hope to see you again soon!

▲ Series Masterlist | Previous | Part 2 + Epilogue

▲ AO3 Link (posted there as a single chapter if you like to read it all at once)

▲ Taglist Form

“Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.” - Jane Austen, Persuasion 

SEPTEMBER 

“And so we can see that with the abstract paintings, color theory, as well as a fundamental understanding of color under light, is more important than ever. We can have a more immediate reaction to abstract art precisely because it digs at our unconscious thought. We see what we want to see and that can give us perspective on our own lives as well as that of the artist.” 

One hand jumps up from the back of the crowd. 

“Yes?”

“Is it true that Van Gogh ate yellow paint because he thought it would make him happier?”

You nod. “He did. But Van Gogh was a deeply disturbed man and while many of his best works come from his Yellow period, art historians have debated for decades about whether or not the madness was worth the beauty.”

The same boy in the back, blonde, lanky, frowns out of frustration, not boredom. 

“So he ate yellow paint and then painted yellow things?” 

“It could be said that he wanted to literally take what he was feeling inside and put it on the canvas.” 

Another boy, bigger than the first and clearly used to all eyes on him, snickers. He points to a frame at the end of the salon wall. 

“So, what, the artist who did that one wanted to get their blood all over everything?” 

You cross your arms, unphased by yet another teenage smartass. “What does color theory tell us about the color red?”

“It’s associated with anger,” a young girl at the front says with confidence. “Or more often, love. Intense emotions.”

The same jokester in the back chuckles, louder this time. “Wow, so that guy must have really been in luuuurve to paint that.” He pinches the waist of a girl next to him and she wriggles away, giggling. 

“Actually,” you say, straightening up, “I had just come out of a horrific break up and was trying to process grief, trauma, and heartbreak unlike anything I’d experienced before.” 

That successfully manages to silence them all. It usually does.

“You painted that, miss?” The girl at the front asks again, her eyes wide in awe. 

You smile at her. You remember being her age, fourteen, and thinking the world of art, theater was all so exciting. 

“I did. Am I a vain bitch for putting my own paintings in my gallery? Probably, but for some reason, people like to buy them and I’m not going to turn down an opportunity to fund another kitchen renovation in my home.” 

There’s a surprised chuckle amongst the students. Nothing endeared you faster to teenagers by some light cursing. 

“What other paintings are yours, miss?” The blonde boy asks, eyes suddenly leaping from wall to wall, trying to spot similar brush strokes. You don’t miss when the girl looks at him, her cheeks red. 

“Miss Lorraine only has a handful of her paintings in this gallery.” Marie steps forward from around one of the salon walls, her trusty iPad clutched against her chest. “If you are really interested in her work, I highly recommend going to see her charcoal sketches upfront. But this is the end of the tour. Your teacher has given you fifteen more minutes to view any last pieces or purchase a souvenir, but then it’s back on the bus. ” 

The gaggle of high school students disperses, an excitement buzzing as a few surge towards the charcoal exhibit. 

You roll your eyes, as bodies flow around you, and flick your best friend of the past ten years on her earlobe.

“That was supposed to be a secret.” 

“Oh, whatever.” Marie bats your hand away. “It’s honestly some of your best work. You should be proud.” 

“This is meant to be a business, not a housing facility for my ego.”

“Well, the second your ego starts to suck money out of this place, I’ll let you know.” She taps her iPad with her stylus. “Speaking of which, Andrew should be by in about ten minutes to discuss that piece he wants for his new show.” 

You groan, falling behind Marie as she leads you to the front desk, where some of the students are purchasing posters of the art they liked. You watch as the sales girl rings up a few posters and some postcards, as Marie continues to scroll through her tablet, always thinking of the next thing, the next move. 

“This had better be the last one,” you sigh, particularly pleased when you see someone buy a postcard of your red painting. “Why am I starting to think this damn show is going to be the death of me?”

Marie scoffs as she leans forward onto the corner of the sales counter, your bark always worse than your bite. “If you’re so concerned, think about what the notoriety of designing a set for an off-broadway production will do for this gallery.” 

“Does it always have to come back to this dump?” You smile at her, knowing you are the only one who is allowed to tease her precious child. 

“Duh.” Marie sticks out her tongue at you. 

Despite the absolute horror you felt about starting your own gallery three years ago, you can’t say it hasn’t been a success. A reasonably-priced gallery in Brooklyn, you worked to showcase small local artists who needed a leg-up in the industry. Not that breaking into the art world yourself had come easy, but with your old connections in Hollywood and Marie’s in the music scene, you recognized the sheer number of doors open and available to the both of you. The community received the opening of the gallery better than expected, given that it was occasionally used as a center and study hall. It was small, quiet, and unassuming, but it was yours. Yours and Marie’s. You wouldn’t be here without her. Quite literally.

“Once you’re done sulking, we have a meeting with a local council member about expanding the property at two, then that new artist from the Bronx is coming by to measure his space.” She scrolls through your day, with the sharp eye of someone who never missed a beat. You told her she didn’t have to wear that crisp white shirt and pleated black pants, but she rolled her eyes at that: “I’m going to be thirty-three in two weeks. I cannot wear plaid shirts to work every day.”

Same old Marie. Using any small excuse to dress up. Unlike her, you had zero compunctions against wearing old concert shirts and paint-splattered jeans to “the office”. Except, you conceded, on days like this where it was tour after tour, client after client. You attempted something “professional” for her sake, but these heels pinched your feet and the emerald green top seemed to draw the eye of every teenage boy who walked by you. 

“Ah, shoot,” Marie says suddenly, standing up right from her iPad. She glances at her watch. “Andrew asked to see a print of King Square and I totally forgot to grab it.”

“Want me to get it?”

She waves you away. “Nah, mingle. I’ll be out in a second.”

You smile as she struts away. Again you wonder what you possibly did to earn a friend like her, what you did to earn her devotion for a decade of friendship. It was as if the universe had been steering you away from all other friendships, keeping you a friend-virgin, until you met Marie. The One. The girl, now woman, who had saved your life more times than you could count, even before she became the manager of the gallery. You hoped to spend the rest of your life proving to her that she had chosen well. 

The class of teenagers has thinned. Only a few remain to chat with friends, or check out one last piece they might have missed, a plastic bag with a rolled-up poster in their hands. The noise in the gallery dulls, as the patter of feet against the wood grain and the sound of eager voices falls away. You hear the front door swing close and the room goes silent. You inhale, the saw-dust smell of the space always soothing to you, even before you turned it into a gallery.

This place felt like a destination, a culmination, a breakthrough after so many dark nights. You poured your heart and soul and nearly every dime you had into building this space and its community. You could wander through the salon walls, easily identifying the artwork done from different points in your life, what each of them meant to you, by the colors or mediums used. You experimented a lot after rehab, trying every creative outlet you could find until something stuck. Hell, you even attempted cross-stitching – Marie still laughed herself silly every time it was brought up. 

Early on, you processed a lot through clay, through sculpture. It wasn’t very good, but it gave you somewhere to put your rage, your frustration, those hot emotions that made you want to squish warm goo. You could never make bowls or vases – instead just absurd creations with teeth and wide eyes. 

Next came the paintings that covered entire walls. You’d come home after spending hours in a rented workspace, covered in paint, hot and tired and teary, but relieved. The scratchy ball in your chest loosened after those hours of working yourself into exhaustion. That was also around the time when you had started to process decade old feelings and memories regarding your parents with your therapist. It all went hand in hand. 

It was only recently that you’d turned to charcoal and your canvases shrunk. There was something hypnotic about charcoal as a medium, the stark contrast of black and white, of the delicate shading required to give depth and offer light, the way it stuck to your palms, your forearms as if the subject you sketched lingered on you. 

You turn a corner and are welcomed by the sketchings of dozens of artists who also worked in charcoal. The exhibit is called The After Effects of Flame and the artists had completely risen to the challenge. The soft paper, the light etching, it makes the space beautiful, quiet, warm. 

But your eyes fall to a single piece across the room, your heart thrumming in your chest. 

He had shown up in your work in prior years, of course, as much as you tried to swallow him and the memories down. A flash of the curve of his chin, the sharp angle of his nose, the endless brown of his eyes – they were there as you sorted through the cracked pieces of your life in rehab and continued on in therapy. As you moved on from that night in the hospital. 

As you moved away from him.

But you still found slivers of him, splinters that dug into your skin against the wood grain. Marie said it wasn’t noticeable, that only you saw those flashes because of what you had been through, what he had meant to you. But he was there, inside you somewhere, after ten years, and he became a different sort of ache. What he had been to you was never clear, never given structure or form, and perhaps that was why closure had been so hard to find: there was no road map to moving past whatever Dieter Bravo had meant to you. What he had become. What he still, in the fitful state between dreaming and awake, was to you. 

He wasn’t haunting you; you had never known a silent ghost. But he lingered, like the remnants of last night’s perfume or the body warmth of a loved one after they’ve left the bed. You saw him in everyone and in everything and, simply put, Dieter wasn’t going away. 

Much like with grief, you learn to hold this part of you that held him and let the memories, the good and the bad, pass over you without judgment. 

The world is hard enough on you as it is, your therapist told you, don’t add to it by beating yourself up.

So you let him stop by, hang around if he wanted to. He kept you company as you sketched and drew and created in a way you had never experienced as an actress. This is what you were meant to do. It just took you twenty-two years and a decade of heartbreak to get here. 

You stepped closer to the centerpiece of the exhibit. 

A simple sketch, nothing outwardly advanced or difficult, but it is detailed. Thoughtful, introspective. It comes from an image that appears to you in the morning light of your empty bed, or as you fade into the welcoming arms of sleep. It feels like it should be a memory, but if it is, you don’t know when or where it sits in your history. Sometimes, it doesn’t even feel real. Other times, it’s too real, the added weight in your bed almost palpable – you can smell him in the air, you could reach out and touch the curve of his shoulder – and you blink, the image is gone and you’re alone. Your outstretched hand floats through empty air, the tears stinging so sharply in your throat you can’t breathe for a moment. 

To anyone else, the sketch is that of a man, naked, sleeping partially on his stomach, partially on his side, turned away from the viewer. His arm curls beneath his head, under the pillow, and the sheet slips low on his hips, the turn of the light dictating whether or not the exposure is playful or sensual. The waves of his hair fan out across the pillow, tuck around the back of his neck in a way that begs to be teased, tugged on. To everyone else, it’s a loving image of relaxation, of peace, of quiet, joy. 

To you, it’s the image of Dieter that visits you most frequently.

You stand before it now and try to find that solace, that imaginary morning where domesticity dripped into your bed with him, the tension it takes from your bones. But you can’t find it. The day is coming up again, the first blush of fall breathing down the New York streets, and like a thready hangnail you forget to cut, you find pain with every movement. 

He sits, melancholic, in your heart. I know, darling, I know. 

Unconsciously, you rub a hand up your shoulder, unease mounting. You rub again, and something catches in the corner of your eye.

Someone is still here. 

Tan coat nearly the same color as the floorboards, the man somehow blended in amongst the cream paper of the charcoal sketches. His knee-length coat looks expensive, the white Converse do not. His head is tilted back, looking up, inspecting one of the pieces. 

Okay, yes, you saw him in passing on the streets – a flash there, a blur here – but this is getting ridiculous. 

You stare, immobile and silent, at the dark curls that catch against his collar. At the broad shoulders that curl inwards. This is not a ghost, a specter. This is not a haunting. He even stands, holds his weight, just like – no, no, this is just desperation, you’re overworked and tired and – 

Oh, fuck, the black rings –

“Darling!”

Your head snaps to the front of the gallery, seconds before you are nearly tackled to the ground by your friend and long-time benefactor Andrew Young. He had started to go gray at twenty-five, and never to be outdone by the ravages of time, he dyed his entire head silver. It’s been this color for years, blinding and shining, the only thing he changed was how it was styled. Nearly forty, he’s shaved the sides and let the top grow long. It flops in his face as he pulls back, grinning from ear to ear. 

“This looks fantastic!” He beams around your latest exhibit. “Baby girl, I am so proud of you!” 

You drag out a smile, your lips catching on your teeth, the buzzing in the back of your mind at a low hum.

“T-thank you, Andrew. I– uh,” you blink up at him, “sorry, it’s been a day and I haven’t eaten. I’m just a little dizzy.”

Andrew frowns and throws an arm over you. “You work too hard – has anyone told you that? And that, quite frankly, I simply cannot have. You see, I can’t do the set without you, and then I can’t do blocking and stage production, and then the damn thing itself is off the rails. Do you see my problem?” The designs you had been planning are back in your office, some initial sketches drawn up and laid out based on Andrew’s requests over the phone. You smile, settle, that gnawing sense of panic easing. Andrew watches you visibly relax in his arms and he taps your nose with a bright blue nail. “Besides, it’s up to you, you New York native, to help me show my star a good time around town.”

He steps back, arm thrown out wide, and your heart plummets. 

You know who he is before he turns that thick head of hair, before you see that aquiline nose in his profile, before you are swallowed up by those endless, warm brown eyes that flicker in the corners of your heart. 

“My dear, I’d like you to meet –,”

“Natalie?”

The noise is barely human, a punched out groan from a hit that maybe broke a rib, popped an organ loose. 

The gallery has gone silent, or maybe it’s just you’re so suddenly stuffed full of memories, of rage and joy, grief and giddiness, that there’s no room for any sound. 

He’s not a ghost, not a haunting, but he is pale, the whites of his eyes bright and round and staring. 

He is not the Dieter that curls up against your neck at three in the morning when you can’t sleep, no, this one’s different. The lines marking his eyes are deeper, more pronounced – laugh lines, you remember, he’s clearly laughed a lot in the time that he’s been gone. His beard is speckled with gray, here and there, drawing your gaze to that lovely bare spot where the hair refuses to grow. His hair is longer, unkempt, and wild, and in his ear sits a small silver ring. This is not the Dieter you remember. 

He’s older and so are you. 

The coffee cup drops from his loose fingers and splatters against the ground, light brown liquid splashing everywhere. It rolls towards his shoes, but he doesn’t move. Neither do you. You couldn’t, really, even if you wanted to. 

To cope, in the beginning, in the cold, sick days in the hospital, you told yourself that he had died. That’s why he left you, why he abandoned you to get the drugs out of your system alone. To get him out of your system. It was childish and petty and completely irrational, but it soothed you in a way that made living manageable. You could walk around those long white hallways, talk, eat, exist without a giant gaping bloody hole in your chest. 

Consciously, you knew he was out there, somewhere, but in all the chunks inside of you that made up his lingering presence, the old idea, the old comfort, embedded itself. 

Seeing him now, seeing him ten years older, it’s like he had come back from the dead. You could not have made up a more surreal dream.

“Oh, hey, Andrew, I got your print and I –,”

Marie stiffens the instant she sees who’s in your line of sight. Her mouth drops open and the poster joins the spilled coffee on the ground.

“Holy fucking shit.”

Andrew’s perfectly manicured eyebrows eject into his hair. “What? You’ve met before?”

“W-we . . .” the rest of the sentence dies in your mouth, catches fire and turns to ash. “We – I . . .”

“We used to . . .” his voice is raspy, deep, as though scraping through a wet crevice. “We used to work together.”

It doesn’t sting, the casual distance in his words, because he’s right. All of you met a decade ago for work.

Marie swallows as her eyes slide to you. 

His have traced every line of your body, once, twice, and three times over. They stay on the bridge of your nose, the crook of your neck, the arch of your cheek. He’s not looked at Marie once. Given the circumstances of your last meeting, perhaps it should have been you to appear as a ghost from beyond the grave. 

“Uh, Andrew, do you mind if we give Dieter and Natalie some time alone to –,”

“No!” You both bark, a sufficient reason to tear your gaze away from the other. 

He sounds genuinely frightened. Your stomach twists. Your gaze flickers to the spill at Dieter’s feet. 

“Marie, would you get some towels for that?” She nods, completely forgetting the print and nearly sprinting for the bathroom. You swallow, set your shoulders, and turn to Andrew. “I’ve got the designs in my office. If you’d – if you’d both – like to–,”

“Natalie.” He tries again and you flinch as though his voice is a physical force that has pressed roughly against an internal bruise. At his side his hands clench over and over, mouth opening and closing, brow furrowed as if he’s scrambling through every word he knows and can’t find the right one.

Your chest suddenly squeezes so tightly you have to put a hand over your sternum to keep your ribs from collapsing into your spine. You can feel the blush breakout across your cheeks, down your chest, and you’re so confused as to why, a hot bloom of anger overwhelms everything else. 

Andrew’s eyebrows are in danger of falling off his forehead. Dieter still hasn’t looked away. 

“Okay, what am I missing here?”

“We dated.” You say. You keep your gaze on Andrew, knowing your knees would buckle if you look anywhere else. “While we worked together. We dated about ten years ago on the set of one of our movies. But,” you swallow, your knees shaking in these stupid fucking slacks, “that was a long time a-ago.” Your voice cracks and you hate it. You want to hear him say your name again, just to make sure he got it right.

“Are you sure you don’t want a second?” You nod. “Then, uh, let’s see this design.”

Dieter doesn’t follow you and Andrew. Small miracles, you suppose. As you walk Andrew through the designs, you can see out the clear office door that Dieter had taken off that rich tan coat and is using it to soak up the spill. You can’t tell by the twist in his mouth if he’s regretting that particular decision, or regretting something else, but Marie appears a moment later with a rag. His expression changes as she hands it to him, softens, that wind-swept, knocked-back-on-his-ass surprise creeping into the opening of his mouth. She says something to him – her back is to you – and his mouth flatlines. He nods and Marie turns on her heel towards the office. 

You avert your eyes from her and look back at Andrew.

“So what do you think?” 

He grins, completely obvious to the exchange outside, as he shuffles through a few papers. “As always, darling, you’ve managed to somehow crawl into my brain and recreate exactly what I’ve been looking for.” 

You won’t be designing the actual set pieces, but more of the backdrop, what the audience will see through the open windows and around stairs. Most productions use lights to fill in their backdrop, but Andrew described wanting to make the stage feel as claustrophobic as possible. “Nothing breathes in here,” he had said over the phone. “We need something sturdier than lights.” 

You have never felt claustrophobic in your office, but staring at Dieter, an older Dieter, a different Dieter, absurdly scrubbing your gallery floor spotless, the walls nestle tighter, the air stagnant and stale. You feel like you’re seeing the entire place with new eyes and you realize how dingy it is. You can’t look Marie in the eye as she opens the office door. 

“How goes it in here?” She says, surprisingly breathless. 

“Fantastic!” Andrew claps his hands together. “The theater has given us access to the space starting Monday, so I’d like to get to building this as soon as possible. The back lot is huge so I’m hoping to do all painting onsite.”

You nod, the request somewhat expected – Andrew was a bit of a micromanager. 

Behind you, Marie is humming with unfocused energy, but only in a way you can pick up on after ten years of knowing her. To Andrew, she calmly asks,

“Would you like us to bring out those other pieces you won at the fundraiser? We can have them loaded up, if you’d like.”

Andrew’s eyes widen. “Oh god, yes, please. I’m so sorry – I told you I’d pick those up weeks ago! I’ll go get the car.” 

Marie’s gaze latches onto you as he jogs past her. 

“What do you want me to do with . . .” 

You can’t find him through the window, but the floor is spotless. 

You shake your head, that slightly dizzy feeling returning. “Go help Andrew. I’ll . . .” you shrug. “Actually, I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do.”

“Are you sure? You don’t have to be alone with him if you don’t want to.”

You feel your back muscles tighten. “No, no – I want – I mean, it’s fine. If I’m going to help Andrew with the designs, then we’ll have to see each other, right?”

Her look is apprehensive but she gives in. “Alright. I’ll be just a minute.”

The second the door closes, you push your palms into your eyes and groan. What the fuck is happening?

You spot him again in the charcoal exhibit, as if this is the area he is confined to. He holds his coat over his arm, the bottom half of it damp and a different color, as he slowly roves from piece to piece. He’s on the opposite side of the room from your contribution, but a part of you wants to yank it down and shove it under the floorboards. A very large part of you.

“Dieter,” you say, hands up, but your voice startles him anyway. His stark white t-shirt matches his converse, and you vaguely think, he’s going to be cold without a jacket. 

He physically steps back the closer you come. You don’t know if that hurts or if you feel relieved.

“Andrew went to get the car,” you say, your focus going in and out as you stare at his earring. “He has some paintings he won at an auction here and he hasn’t picked them up so Marie is bringing them out to the curb to load up.”

“Oh. Okay.” 

“Yeah.” You lose track of the earring as you meet his gaze. Terror, in his eyes. Concern, worry. 

Sadness. Yeah, you definitely know that one. 

Without a single coherent thought in your head, you head for the front doors, feeling him fall in step behind you. 

You can almost hear the storm brewing in his head.

“Natalie, wait.” 

Just in front of the glass doors, you stop. On the other side, Marie and another backend worker load wrapped canvases into a Black Escalade. Even without the faint howl of wind, it looks cold outside. 

He stands in front of you, older after ten years, but no less beautiful. He’s thickened over the years, more solid, an oak instead of a stretchy willow. The thought of what it would be like to wrap yourself around his chest, feel the warmth of his stomach against yours, comes crashing down on you. The inclination is to yank it back, submerge it, but you don’t do that anymore. 

You look into his eyes and the old ache hums. You thought it was gone, despite the many times you think about him, the many versions of him that live in your memory. But it’s there. You’ve missed him.

“Look, I’m sorry – for, um, the surprise visit.” Voice low and quiet, like trying to pass on a secret, his thumb spins through his rings distractedly. “Andrew said he had some errands to run around the city a-and the names didn’t register with me . . . a-after all this time.” He swallows, glancing at your shoulder for a second before finding your eyes again. “Had I known it was yours, I would have . . . I’d . . .” 

“You’d what?” You want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Shake him until he speaks, until he explains himself for showing up and cracking your world in half. 

His mouth crumbles, stricken with regret, and he shakes his head. “I – I –,”

Someone taps on the glass beside you and it’s your turn to jump ten feet in the air. Marie waves to you and Dieter, her arms wrapped around her chest to stave off the cold. On the street, Andrew gets into the Escalade as the worker heads for the warehouse around back. 

“For what it’s worth, it was really, really good to see you.”

Your head snaps back to him. No stutter, no unease. Confidence. This is what he feels. This is what he means to say. 

And then Dieter Bravo smiles at you. Genuinely, gently, full of wonder. He is . . . relieved.

You nod, dumbstruck, as he pushes through the glass doors and you’re following him before you know what you’re doing. The air has a bite to it, the threat of winter swirling in the gray clouds above the city streets. A particularly rough gust of wind barrels down and Marie staggers into you. Wrapping her up in your arms, you watch as he climbs into the Escalade and the passenger window rolls down.

Of course Andrew hired a driver. He leans out, his silver flop fluttering in the wind. 

“We’re having a party tomorrow, my place. A little kick-off party before production and rehearsals begin. You two should come.” 

You can’t see Dieter behind the tinted glass but you know for a fact he just tensed up. Beside you, Marie is shivering, the little thing.

“Maybe, you know? We’ve got a lot to do around the gallery before the weekend,” you say as you rub her shoulders. “It’s kind of a bad time.”

“Well, the art director is going to be there, so it might be nice to get to know him before we get started.” Andrew shrugs, seriously, unaware of the consequences of his simple request. 

Nothing about this feels like a good idea. You nod. “Lemme get Marie here back inside before her lips go blue. I’ll text you tonight about it.” 

You both step back from the curb as the Escalade eases its way into New York traffic. Your eyes stay pinned to the window until you can no longer see it in the distance. Holding her close, you kiss Marie’s cold forehead. 

“C’mon, Frosty, I think we both deserve the biggest cup of coffee our Kerig can make.” 

The hum of the potter’s wheel is loud in your concrete basement. Cold air curls in from the small open window at ground level, chilling the floor and the walls. It stings your bare toes just a bit to keep you awake and focused, your arms and hands already chilled by wet clay. You pump the wheel a bit faster as you try to thin the edge of this bowl – or what may be a bowl. This rarely ever works out, but at least the concentration forces out everything else in your brain. And, as an added bonus, the sound of the wheel also blocks the incessant buzzing of your phone.

Andrew and Marie had not stopped trying to call or text you since the gallery closed. Marie was not above simply barging into your brownstone if you had been quiet for too long, but this was a special case and she knew it. 

Hands wet, back aching from your hunched position, fingers as steady as they’ll ever be, you smooth the rippling clay as it spins. You pump the pedal steadily – too fast and the clay will spin off, but too slow and you’re basically playing with playdough. 

To your enormous surprise, the clay curves, molds between your finger tips. With every rotation, there comes a clear, distinct solid edge to this unfinished ceramic. 

Yes! Okay, just a little bit to round things out and –

Your phone alarm goes off, you jump, and the maybe-bowl deflates into a pile of squishy goo. 

“Damn it,” you mutter, even though you have only yourself to blame. You set this alarm because you needed two extra minutes to clean off before accepting the incoming Facetime. 

You just finish rinsing clay out of your nails when you hear the familiar chimes from your phone. Switching between your phone and a dry rag, you accept the call and smile into the face of a sixty-five year old woman. Blue tips on the edges of her gray hair, oversized cat-wing glasses, Dr. Carla Holstein always reminded you of Ms. Frizzle’s evil twin sister, in appearance only.

“Natalie, how the fuck are you doing?” 

Her non-existent brain-to-mouth filter was one of the things that initially endeared you to her. Talking to a shrink about your childhood trauma felt less embarrassing when the woman taking notes had electric blue nails. 

“I’d say I’m good, doc,” you smirk at her as you head up the wooden stairs of your basement, “but then I probably wouldn’t be calling you.”

“It’s like you only wanna talk about the bad things with your therapist,” she shakes her head mockingly. “As if I wouldn’t appreciate you calling with good news.” 

You chuckle as you drop onto the floor of the living room, mindful of any furniture that might get smeared with errant clay from you overalls. “I’ll save those for our weekly meetings, alright?”

“Which brings me to my next question – what the fuck is going on? You haven’t made an emergency appointment in years. What gives?” 

You set your phone up against a stack of books on the wooden table you lugged here all the way from 42nd street. Frowning, you lean against the redbrick fireplace, in a home you decorated with ugly little trinkets and overused furniture. Tidy and messy, this place holds everything that over-spilled from your brain, a place that feels like what the inside of your heart might look like, if you could see it.

“Seriously, Natalie, what is it? You’re kinda freakin’ me out.” 

“It’s Dieter.” 

Those perfectly drawn on eyebrows arch into that silvery hairline. “What? He called you?”

“He showed up at the gallery this morning.” A motormouth when left unchecked, Carla is a fantastic therapist, first and foremost. She knows exactly when to shut up and let everything pour out of you. And you hated when she did that. You scrubbed your face with your hands, groaning. “Not like that, but he’s the lead role in Andrew’s new production. I don’t know how the fuck he even found out about the part in the first place, but he swears he didn’t know that Andrew and I know each other. I know it wasn’t an intentional ambush but . . .”

“But it still feels like one?” You nod, your bottom lip snagged between your teeth.  

“It’s just . . . it doesn’t feel real, you know? Like, what are the fucking chances that everything has to line up perfectly in the universe for him to come stumbling into my gallery after ten years?”

I really thought I’d never see him again. 

“Was he actually stumbling? Is he sober?”

“No to the stumbling part, but I have no idea. I mean, I don’t think Andrew would hire someone so coked out they couldn’t remember their lines . . . but he was always so good at hiding it.”

The desperate anger in your voice makes you cringe. Even after all these years, you hate when you confess something you didn’t mean to. Dieter’s ability to mask how high or drunk he was used to scare you. Like you were never quite sure which version of him you were going to get. But then again, you were also so high and drunk you never really cared. Which was entirely the point.

“Well, that’s his shit to work out,” Carla scoffs. “I wanna talk about you. What did you feel at the time?”

“Nervous. Shocked. Surprised. Angry.” 

“Talk to me about the anger.” 

“I’m angry that I couldn’t think of a single fucking thing to say to him. Not even a good ol’ ‘fuck you’ or a ‘hello’. I’m angry that he’s back in my life in a way where I’ll have to see him again and again. And I’m fucking pissed that after all these years, after all this work, I see my ex for thirty minutes and I’m running scared to my therapist.”

Carla’s face softens. If you were in person with her, this would be the part where she lowers her clipboard and looks at you with warmth you are barely accustomed to. 

“But did you run for a drink?”

“No.”

“Did you run to the nearest street corner and pick up a bag of coke?”

“No.” 

“Then the process is working. The tools we built to manage your anxiety, to find healthy outlets for your emotions, they held up under scrutiny. You can be pissed all you want but you should also be fucking proud as hell.” 

Something hot and sharp threatens to choke you, your cheeks flushing. The word “pride” and you in the same sentence always fucking did that to you. You cough, clearing your throat.

“Okay, then what do I do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how do I act around him? Do I treat him like a stranger? A friend? Can I be his friend? Should I?”

“Is that what you want? Don’t forget you always get to set the boundaries of any relationship you have. He doesn’t get to decide that for you.” 

Your toes squeeze into the plush forest green carpet beneath you, thumb pressed into your palm. 

“I . . . don’t know.” The truth of what you want sears the back of your throat, a vomit-burn on your tongue, but you keep it to yourself. “But I shouldn’t be around him, at the very least, right? Isn’t rule number one for ex-addicts to keep away from contacts in their past lives?”

“Sure,” Carla nods sagely. “Old friends can bring back old patterns. But are you saying that because you are genuinely concerned about what would happen if you reconnect or because you feel like it’s what’s expected of you as a recovering addict?”

You bite your lip harder. “I don’t know, Carla. It just seems stupid to willingly let someone like Dieter back into my life.”

“And I’m saying you don’t have to. This is a hard case because not only is he an ex, but he was also your dealer and fellow addict.” Carla leans into the camera – this is the part where she put away her clipboard entirely. “But whether or not you let Dieter back in is irrelevant. I want you to go through life with the security in yourself that your past doesn’t have to own you. You have come so far and done so well. You’re on medication and in therapy. You’ve built a great life for yourself, in spite of everything. There will always be temptations, cravings to go back, and I’m not saying you should be overconfident and assume nothing can go wrong, because it absolutely can. But you are not the old Natalie anymore, have faith in yourself. You get to decide your life.”

Once again, you are reminded of all the people who let you forget that. The anger, the hurt, decades in the making, it’s still there. But its bite is no longer cruel. 

You nod. “Thank you, Carla. I needed to hear that.”

“I know that,” she smirks. “I’m a damn good therapist.” 

“As if you’d let me forget.”

You thank her and end the call. With a sigh you lean back, staring into your living room. Back then, you grew spikes to keep back a world intent on consuming you. Dieter had been the only one to not mind the spikes, even mold around them. 

If he’s still a fuckhead, I’m gonna kick his ass.

Your stomach makes a displeased noise, irritated at being empty for so long, so you stand, taking your phone with you as you head for the kitchen.

You bring up his contact and type out your message:

Hey Andrew! Would love to come to your party. What time?

Marie did not want to go to the party for a variety of reasons.

Too busy at the gallery. Invoicing. Nothing to wear. Straight up tired. 

All valid reasons. Except they weren’t and it was bullshit and you made her go anyway. 

Groaning all the way on the subway, she won’t even look at you as the elevator doors open to Andrew’s hallway. She’s gone uncharacteristically silent as you near the party. This is not her usual “I’d rather be in my Snuggie” scowl, but something else. Her eyes are sharp, hard. 

“What?” You bump her with your elbow. “You look like you’re plotting murder.”

“Maybe I am.”

You still and she does too. It’s like you can see inside her brain. “This is about Dieter?”

“Andrew’s a good guy,” she huffs, waving at the shut door. “He doesn’t deserve Dieter’s drama and bullshit . . . and neither do you.” 

About a foot shorter than you, Marie carries enough spitfire to fill someone twice her size. You’ve never actually seen her in a fight, but you really don’t want to. Her cold pink nose from the wind outside does nothing to deter her rage.

“If it makes you feel any better, I was cleared by my therapist to be around him.” 

She harumphs. 

“Look, if I can make this much progress, this much change, shouldn’t we give him the benefit of the doubt? Maybe he can too?” 

Her scowl deepens, but the murderous glint in her eyes fade as she knocks on Andrew’s door. “You are too nice for your own good.”

You mock-gasp. “You take that back!”

Just like every other party you’ve ever been to hosted by Andrew, the vibe is intimate, warm, and friendly. You run into and greet a few of the costume designers and lighting techs he’s used in the past, ones you’ve met before by way of just hanging around Andrew during rehearsals. Andrew is very fond of adopting creatives like pets and if he likes your work, chances are he’ll use you again – something uncommon in the industry, but very welcome to those whose paychecks are never steady. However, you notice how small the gathering is. You’ve seen this open-floor plan apartment full of people, partygoers nearly stacked on top of each other during Halloween parties or on New Years Eve. But this production team is a fraction of that size. 

Private. That was the other word Andrew mentioned over the phone for the backdrop design. He wanted the space to feel private, as though you were staring into something that was none of your business. 

That feeling doesn’t persist here. Here, everyone is welcome. 

Everyone, including –

“So, are you going to tell me what the fuck is up with you and him, or am I going to have to think up a very elaborate con to get you to confess?” Andrew snakes an arm over your shoulder, a glass of sparkling water in his hand. His green eyes are full of mischief, the faint lines around his eyes crinkled with glee, as he watches for any change in your expression. Dieter sits on a chair across the room from you, leaning in to listen to a story a man on the center couch cushion is animatedly telling with his hands. To his right, and nearly touching Dieter, is a blonde, beautiful, twenty-year old actress who everyone is telling you will be on Broadway any day now. You know someone told her your name, but you can’t remember it. You swat away your annoyance.

“C’mon, I’ve never seen you look at someone like that. I’m dying to know –,”

“Is he sober?” Your frown falls on Andrew who takes a step back, his own thick eyebrows scrunched together.

“Who, Dieter?”

“No, the man on the moon.”

Andrew shrugs, the lilac pullover he wears looking soft enough to eat. “As far as I know, yeah. We met when Toby and I went to that yoga retreat in Oregon last year. It was a substance-free commune so unless he was getting drunk off the atmosphere –,”

“You’ve known him for a year?” You gape at him. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why would I tell you about some actor guy I met out on a co-op in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere? I didn’t know you knew him! We didn’t reconnect until I asked him to come read for the part.”

“And why did you ask him?”

“I . . . dunno,” Andrew says, clearly ruffled. “I liked his vibe. Matched what I had in my head for the role of Sam. And he’s got the best puppy dog eyes of anyone I’ve ever seen.” 

It’s not like you can disagree so you turn away from him, scowl on the verge of pouting. 

“Oh, no, the conversation does not end here, not after you’ve given me the third degree. Who the fuck was this guy to you?”

Across the room, the blonde’s knee knocks against Dieter’s and something acidic like bile claws the back of your stomach. You take the cup of water from Andrew, other hand digging into your purse.

“We dated. It didn’t end well. In fact, just watch Recovery Road – kinda says the whole thing.” You know Andrew doesn’t deserve your ire and you’ll apologize with coffee and a biscuit from his favorite bakery, but right now, if you don’t leave right now, you’re liable to pop something. “I heard it even won an Oscar.”

It’s stupid and childish and wrong to get jealous every time he talks to a woman. 

Okay, notice the thought. Observe it. And let it go. 

You inhale, the orange ring immolating the paper around the tobacco, and exhale smoke over the railing of Andrew’s balcony. It’s a nice balcony, as far as metal balconies go in New York. It’s private, sturdy, and a perfect place to contemplate the insanity of your own life. The sunset bleeds rapturous colors, bright and loud, across the city, light reflecting like stars in the glass windows of the buildings. The sight and the smoke is enough to ease the burden in your chest, just for a moment.

It’s not like you are even really jealous. You know that feeling and this isn’t it. The pain is farther away than the immediate nip of jealousy. You follow the feeling, careful not to nick yourself too hard on old memories as you use your toolbox to sort through the undulating waves of feeling. 

But therein lies the problem. You remember.

You remember when that girl curled up next to Dieter, eyes full of adoration, used to be you. 

You tap the ash against the metal railing, feeling terribly sorry for yourself, when the door to the balcony slides back. A few people had come and gone, shared a smoke, then went back inside. You know you are probably being a party pooper, gazing alone and wistful at the sunset, and you promise yourself this is the last one. It’s officially getting cold the lower the sun falls. But then you turn to the person who just came outside. 

“Ah, shit.” He blinks at you as the noise from the party inside is muffled behind the closing door.  “I mean, uh. Hi. Um. I didn’t know . . . look, I’ll just come back later –,”

“Andrew says you’re sober. Have been for at least a year. Is that true?”

Maybe you should have just brought a police hat and badge if you were going to grill everyone like this. You lean your hips back against the rail, the burn of the smoke forcing you to breathe slowly. 

The autumn wind tugs at his hair, threatens to pull that black sweater out of his pants, as he stares, a lighter and a packet of cigarettes in his clenched fists. 

“Um, yeah. He’s right. I’m . . . I’m sober. Have been, for a while.” 

You nod, reeling in that invisible electric fence you kept him at the edge of. He senses it and hesitantly, cautiously, he takes a few steps forward and joins you at the railing, but at least two arms lengths away. Eying you, he taps out a cigarette and lights it. He smokes, a full inhale and exhale, before continuing.

“Going on about ten years now.” 

The way he says it knots your stomach. His tone of voice. You know exactly what he means. How could you not?

You sip slowly, unable to look at him. 

“You haven’t had a drop of alcohol or smoked a single joint in ten years?”

He shrugs. “Doc says weed’s actually good for unfucking my brain.” He swallows and props himself up against the railing. “But, uh, I did go to therapy in rehab again and for the first time, I continued going after I got out. Turns out risk taking behaviors and mood swings are not things normal people experience. Looked lot at my anxiety around self-acceptance too. Triggers included feelings of inadequacy. I even got a new syndrome named after me in the DSM. Baffled my therapist for months.” 

“Really?” You stand up right, mouth parted. 

“No.” And there’s that Dieter grin. After a decade, it blooms across his face without any hesitation. Your heartbeat pounds rough against your throat for a second. But then his expression grows heavy. “But, uh, I was serious about the therapy part. It’s helped with the depression and anxiety attacks.” 

You roll your cigarette between your forefinger and thumb as another wind blows by. You nip at your lower lip. 

“Personally, I found Buspar was really good at keeping me from wanting to claw my skin off. Anxiety’s never been better.”

His eyebrows jump and he shuffles a bit closer. 

“Oh, yeah? Used to give me the worst headaches, but we fucked around with the dosage and it helped.”

You nod, remembering those weeks of trial and error. You don’t know what to say, what else to admit. His gaze flutters up your shoulder to the side of your jaw and he leans forward with you.

“Did they, uh, put you on Campral too? Wish they had that the first time I went to rehab.”

You shift your weight as you glance over your shoulder. “Yeah. Makes coming to shit like this easier. I, um, don’t feel so overwhelmed to fight the urges, you know?”

“Yeah. I fuckin’ do.” 

You blame the catch in your breath on a particular rough gust of smoke. He taps out that cigarette and eagerly lights another one. Yours is barely holding on. He must think of something, remember a joke, because he smirks again. 

“They also tried to put me on Metoprolol, but I told them to fuck off.”

You frown at him. “What’s that for?”

Dieter shakes his head, barely containing the smile on his face. “Fucking blood pressure medication. You turn forty-five and they wanna put you on Centrum fucking Silver.”

“Centrum? Isn’t that for –?”

His look dares you to tease him for it, all low eyes and curling lips, but you can’t swallow the fit of giggles. You snort, which makes him laugh, and then you do too. 

You laugh with him, until you remember you shouldn’t. You swallow your giggles, sipping more fervently on your cigarette, hoping your abrupt end wasn’t too obvious. 

But if Dieter notices, he doesn’t say. He watches the city skyline, contemplative.

“But of all that, therapy seems to be the thing that sticks the best.” 

You groan, smacking your palm against the railing, hunching your shoulders. “God, doesn’t that fucking suck? The one thing that actually helps is talking about your stupid fucking feelings?” 

“Yeah,” he chuckles, “yeah, it really does.”

Grinning, you flick your cigarette into the concrete pot Andrew has specifically out here for that sort of thing and go to light another one, but your packet is empty. You both stare at the empty box and then each other. 

Dieter pulls on his cigarette, with a big inhale. “Well, I guess you, um, gotta go back –,”

Your past does not own you. You decide what you want. 

“Do you wanna get lunch sometime?” That is not how you should have asked that question. His eyes go wide and he’s consumed by a coughing fit. You realize your mistake only seconds too late. “That’s not a line, I swear–,”

He bats your concern away, eyes watering, shaking his head. 

“No, I know–,” he croaks. “Yes, I’d like — to catch up. No – I didn’t think it was – a line.” 

He barely gets his breathing right, your own hands knotted together, as the balcony door opens for a second time. 

“There you are!” Marie tsks. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere and –,” 

She frowns at the hunched-over coughing man in the shadows. He tries to smile at her, cheeks red, eyes wet. 

“Hi, Marie, how are–,”

“Andrew wants to make a speech.” She talks like she didn’t hear him. “Come on.” 

She all but takes you by the scruff of your neck and hauls you back inside. You wave over your shoulder to Dieter and realize you don’t have his number anymore. Haven’t had it for years. You no longer have any way of contacting him, even if you wanted to.

As speeches go, Andrew was always very good at them. Short, sweet, and to the point. He thanks everyone for coming as he stands on his dining room table, thanks the caterers and the staff. You stand in the corner with Marie, chatting with the art director you finally met until Andrew started his speech. You focus entirely on Andrew, resolutely not searching the crowd or the balcony, as he continues to welcome everyone to New York, cracking a few jokes here and there. But then the perfunctory part of his speech is over, when something thoughtful comes over his face. 

“I know you’ve all got better things to do than listen to me rant and rave, but I know each of you personally, and I’d like to say I’m so happy you’re in my life. I’d like to think everyone touches each other’s lives for a purpose. Not to sound utilitarian, because those purposes can be healing an emotional wound, or filling a hole you didn’t know was there. Or, in Jack’s case, the best damn audio technician I’ve ever seen. Thanks, Jack.” He holds up his glass as the crowd laughs. Andrew smiles and shifts his weight. He had never done any sort of acting himself, always more content to be the conductor of the chaos, but you always think he would have done well. He has a presence and it’s comforting. “Every day we interact with each other in ways that we can’t foresee and leave lasting consequences we can’t explain. That’s what’s at the heart of this story, this play we’re about to create. The effects we have on each other, how those chance meetings can have lasting consequences.” He grins across the crowd, to where you know his husband, Toby, stands. “How love is the only thing that matters in this fucking world. I really hope you remember that as we start production. If nothing we do matters, then love is the most important thing we’ll ever do.” He holds his glass high and everyone follows. “To love.”

“To love,” the chorus chants.

You’ve never been good at sitting still but this is getting ridiculous. Beneath the table, your toes curl and uncurl in your boots, rubbing blisters with your thick socks. Your teeth nibble the thinnest piece of skin behind your lip, chomping constantly like an uneasy horse chewing at its bit. You stare at the menu and read absolutely nothing. It could be written in French for all that you retain. 

This is such a dumb fucking idea. 

The restaurant is nice. Too nice for something like this. They have glass cups and plates that clink together when stacked on top of each other. The lighting feels low, even for the middle of the day. The paneled wooden walls are too stuffy, too old money. When you asked Andrew for a brunch suggestion, you never should have trusted the recommendation of someone whose idea of loungewear is a pair of hot pink Puma track pants. You loosen your grip on the leather-bound menu out of fear of breaking it in half. 

“This is so weird.” 

Your eyes snap across the table to your lunch companion. Sunglasses pushed up and nestled inside his long hair, Dieter distractedly tugs at his earring, frowning at the cream-colored menu. Everything about this is wrong. The location. The vibe. The white fucking table cloth. The fact that he’s here, sitting with you, like this is some chat with a business acquaintance –

“This is so fucking weird,” he says again, slowly. “Not a single thing on this menu looks good.”

He pauses for a moment, letting it settle, before he grins up at you. With a sigh, all the air rushes out of your chest. You smile back.

“There’s this really good hot dog cart down the road.”

He snaps his menu shut with glee. “Lead the fucking way.”

Ten minutes later, Dieter groans into a steaming chili cheese dog. You’ve found a concrete bench overlooking a small nearby park. It’s Saturday so the park is full of children and their parents, dogs and their owners. It’s . . . normal. 

“Holy shit, this is good.” He licks melted cheese off the space between his thumb and forefinger and goes back in for seconds.

You suck a drop of chili off your thumb and grin. “Found this place when Marie and I first moved here. We lived just down the road and Tony with his cart became our guardian angel. And even now, even though I live across town, I’ll still come by just for his hot dogs.”

The man, round as he was tall, waves over his shoulder, heat rising from his chunky yellow cart, and you both wave back. 

“Can Tony adopt me? Please? I clean the dishes every time, I swear.” 

You chuckle as Dieter continues to slurp every errant stream of meat juice careening down his wrist. 

“I think his other kids would object, but you can try.” 

He chews slowly, suddenly thoughtful, glancing over the cold autumn air at the vendor. “You told me once you felt like it was hard to make friends. Guess that’s not the case anymore.”

He glances at you and you finish off your hot dog in two bites, your mouth dry. You shrug. “I do a lot of things now that I didn’t back then.” 

He nods – rather, moves his head up and down rigidly – and finishes his lunch as well. You hand him a napkin and he takes it gratefully.

“But, uh, speaking of friends, how’s Heidi? Do you still keep in touch?” 

Dieter’s eyes light up. He tosses away the napkin as he takes out his phone. “They just adopted another little kid.” He scrolls through his pictures before handing it off to you.

And once again you’re struck with the weight of memories that had been at the bottom of the box for years. Heidi’s older too, her hair now completely sheared off, cut shorter even than Dieter’s, but she’s smiling. She and another woman hold up a boy who looks to be about six, while two others, another boy and a girl, sit in front of the couch. All of them smile up happily for the camera. It tugs at a soft place inside of you. 

The thing that’s been circling your mind for days lifts its head out of the churning mixture of your thoughts, sniffing the air, knowing it’s almost time. 

“Oh wow! He’s adorable!” You grin genuinely. 

Dieter smirks as he closes his phone. “Carlos. Heidi asked me to help him practice his Spanish, but I’m pretty sure he knows more English than I do.” 

“So they’re happy?”

His brown eyes fall on you like autumn leaves and your toes curl again. “Yeah, they’re happy.” 

“And Mark? Do you still keep up with him?”

Dieter glances away, biting his lip. “Um, no, actually. It’s kind of hard to hang out with someone after you’ve punched them in the face and called them a liar while being so coked out you’re hallucinating.” He picks at a callus on his palm. “Wouldn’t be the first time I lost a friend because I did dumb shit while I was high.”

You nod, the shame and embarrassment all too familiar. Plus, every memory you have of that hotel you handle with radiation tongs and chemical-resistant gloves. 

“But, uh, what about you?” He leans back against the bench, hands in his lap. Behind him, children run and scream in the cool sunlight. “Were you and Marie always friends, even back then?”

“That’s a complicated question.” You sigh and tuck your hands up into your jacket pocket, matching his position on the bench. His legs sprawl out far longer than yours. “I wanted to be her friend back then, and I tried, but then things got . . . intense, with you, and the drugs, and I stopped responding to her calls and texts. For weeks at a time.” His gaze flickers to you as you talk, between your face and your pockets. “But she was also there for me . . . afterwards. She says Heidi called her and told her what happened and she immediately came to the hospital. She just fucking forgave me. Forgave all the shitty things I had done to her, just like that. To this day, she doesn’t hold it over me and I don’t know why but I’m so grateful for her . . .” Your voice cracks and you squeeze your eyes shut for a second. You can feel the wind on your cheeks, your unspilled tears sitting in your eyes. 

You have to get this thing off your chest.

“Dieter, I’m so sorry.” With a gasp to stifle your tears, you turn to him to look him in the eyes. “For the first two years of my rehab, I thought about writing to you, or calling you. Just to say how sorry I was. I had no idea what it was like on the other side of sobriety, how every day is a such a fucking struggle, and I rubbed that in your face, over and over again until you snapped. I’m so sorry.” 

He studies you for a moment, arms crossed, dark eyes almost black in the thin light. You can hear children yelling and shrieking with glee. Faint, distant. He taps his teeth together twice before finding his answer, his jaw tight.

“That’s not why I snapped and you know it.” 

His voice holds like iron in the wispy wind. Everything blurs around you but not that. Not him. He shakes his head gently, eyes falling to the scarf around your neck. 

“And please don’t apologize to me. I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it.” 

He meets your eyes and you swear they’re damp. A shade brighter than they were before. You stare at each other, on that park bench in Brooklyn, on a cold autumn day, for a long, long time.

You have to ask it now. You can’t avoid it any longer.

“You wanna get coffee?” You pass the tremble in your hands off as a shiver. He nods, still chewing on his mouth, and you gather your trash. 

It slips out of you as casually as you slip your napkins into the trash bin. 

“How’s Chloe?”

You barely have turned around when his hand seizes your upper arm. His grip is almost too tight, his eyes wide and manic.

“Oh, shit.” He blinks as though he’d been slapped. “Natalie, I never told you – I didn’t even think – fuck –,”

“What, Dieter?” You want to pull away, but the touch around your arm is warm, thick. You peer up at him from furrowed eyebrows. “What didn’t you tell me?”

He swallows.

“The baby – it’s not – it wasn’t mine.” 

Your entire body goes slack as your mouth drops open. The hold he has on you is welcomed; the entire park is in danger of spinning sideways. 

Somehow he has the good sense to pull you both back onto the bench. Your knees buckle the second you move and you all but collapse into the concrete. Dieter releases you and rubs his hands together, leaning forward on his elbows, eyes still wide and blank. 

“How do I say this?” He murmurs and that old hurt turns to panic, to anger. 

“How to say what, Dieter?” You snap, hotly. “Just start at the beginning. Please.”

He shakes his head, tongue up against his molars, finally turning to look at you. “Chloe and I got divorced. Years ago.” He takes a steadying breath, thumbnail absent-mindedly against the black ring on his third finger on his left hand, as if to remind himself what was there. This is why no one over the age of twenty-five needs to wear this many rings, Dieter!

“Look, Chloe and I – our marriage was shit from the get-go. I didn’t want to admit it back then, but it’s true,” he says, still soothing himself with gentle strokes. “I used Chloe, like all the people in my life, like a crutch and she felt it. I was smothering her and she couldn’t get far enough away from me, even halfway around the world. She started seeing someone in Portugal and I think she was happy there. I hope so. But, uh, she didn’t want it to get to the papers that she’d cheated on her movie-star husband and got knocked up as a result, so she passed the baby off as mine. We were about seven months in when she finally told me. I don’t know if she could tell I was coming apart at the seams or she was finally ready to be happy, but she confessed. And I confessed to her – the drugs, the affair with you – all of it. I think I just wanted it to be over, done. We weren’t going to come back from something like that and I think we were both okay with it.” He stops spinning the ring and, against all expectations, grins. “This is probably kind of fucked up of me but we kept in touch for a while. She married the baby’s dad about a month after we divorced. He’s actually a really nice guy. I was even invited to the wedding, if you can imagine.” 

There must be something wrong with your hearing. He’s stopped speaking but there’s a high pitched whine nestled between your ears. 

“So you don’t . . . you aren’t . . .”

“No, I don’t have some ten year old kid running around out there,” he huffs, shaking his head. “And no, I’m not a father. Or a husband. Not anymore.” 

You say the first thing you think of. 

“Dee, that’s fucking crazy.” His old nickname slips out while your brain is offline. “That’s, like, soap opera levels of insane. That’s . . . I can’t believe . . .” 

With a massive inhale, where you can see the hot steam of breath enter into his mouth and nostrils, he sits back, hands limp in his lap. 

“I don’t blame her, you know. After what I had done, to her, to you, I didn’t have the right to be angry that she cheated on me. In some fucked up way, it made sense and it wasn’t just my paranoid, druggy brain telling me something was off. I was never a good husband, was never going to be a good father. When I think about it, the kindest thing she ever did was agree to leave me, even when that seemed impossible.” 

His massive palms smooth across his thighs, his soft hair tugged on by the wind. His fingertips stop just short of touching yours, inches from your own lap. 

“Natalie, I’m sorry I never reached out after that night. Or even years later. I lost hours of sleep thinking about what I was going to say to you if you ever let me see you again. I had all these grand plans of finding you and showing you how sorry I was. But then,” he swallows, “I realized what damage that would do and I . . . I thought it would be better if we just never saw each other again.” 

Your ribs expand out into your chest, just once, just enough for it to hurt, before everything settles.

“I didn’t try and find you for the same reasons. I wanted to, though.”

If that counts for anything.

Back then, Dieter always had a fascination with your hands. Holding them, inspecting them, drawing invisible artwork across your palms and over your veins. He even sketched them on notebook paper and post-it notes from time to time, when you sat still long enough to let him. 

You can see it in his eyes that he wants to touch you, to hold your hand, but he doesn’t. Instead, he puts his own back into his pockets. 

Anxiety churns in your stomach. There’s more he wants to say and so do you, but for now, you’re content to let the confessions of the day settle. 

It’s funny, the little things that you pull together in your mind to create an image of someone. You didn’t think of it often, but when you did, you tried to imagine him happy, with his wife and child. And now you know that’s all they were, imaginings. You wonder if you thought about it more than he did. 

The label of father for Dieter was gone, after ten long, insufferable years. You had no idea what would take its place.

“Can I ask you something?” 

When you look at him, the intensity in his gaze is lifted. Something lighter has taken its place.

“Sure.”

“Why were they called The Sixers?” 

The whiplash between conversation topics is colder and sharper than the air around you. You suddenly remember you’re in a park full of children with Dieter Bravo inches from you.

You grin at him.

“Because it sounds like the sex-ers. Like sex-havers but said fast.”

That press of skin, the dimple on his right cheek, deepens and he smiles. “Nick came up with that one, didn’t he?”

You giggle. “Yeah, but the rest of them signed off on it.”

He nods, eyebrows arching as he shrugs. “But I actually meant why are they called The Sixers when there’s only five of them?”

Not once, after a decade, after millions of memories you shifted through, pulled out and examined and held up to the light – after shifting weight and blame and shame, putting your entire life under scrutiny – after sobriety and founding the gallery and finding Marie as the best friend in your whole world – 

Not once, had you ever stopped to consider that. 

It starts low in your stomach, expanding rapidly, arching up your spine, pulling your lips open, your head back until it bursts out of your mouth so absurdly loud, you clap a hand over your lips to keep from drawing attention.

You laugh so hard, you cry. 

Dieter is bent over, howling alongside you.

When he orders your coffee, he remembers how you take it.

“Cream, no sugar, right?” He smiles as he hands you the steaming cup.

What else of you still lives inside of him? You hesitate to wonder.

You nod, thanking him, and follow him down the street. 

A brisk evening settles between the high rises and rows of brownstones. The air has a mean bite to it now, a chill that nips at the bone. But you don’t really notice it. Not with his warm shoulder pressed up against yours, the warm styrofoam keeping your fingers from numbing. You’d brought up Andrew and the discussion quickly turned to the play. Dieter gestures wildly, chatting about this role, something so different from Hollywood.

Not that he had done much in the way of the public eye after Recovery Road. Smaller stuff, indie films, a few local LA plays. Then when all that became insufferable, he wrote a few treatments for some films, scripts to movies that never saw the light of day, and sold off the rights of those scripts to keep himself busy. He even directed a short film or two, but still felt a restlessness you were all too familiar with.

“So when Andrew called, I got the next flight out. This is the first part I’ve been excited about in years.” 

You smile at him as you sip your coffee. “I’m really glad to hear that. Andrew’s a great director, I think you’ll have fun with him.”

As you led him near and nearer to your street, the conversation wove between artistic inclinations, production management, set design, character work – things you thought you’d forgotten about for the most part, but came back all too easily. You laughed easily too. 

You were laughing when you stopped in front of your brownstone, but then instantly sobered when you saw who was waiting for you on the steps. Which was intentional because she absolutely had a set of keys.

“Oh, uh, hey, Marie.” 

“Dieter.” But she’s looking at you, her jaw set and eyes blazing. “I just came by to get those invoices. Did I interrupt something?”

The back of your neck warms and you put more space between your shoulder and his. “No, i-it’s fine. Dieter was just walking me home. The invoices are in my kitchen.”

The chill of the air settles around you, tapping against the bubble you’d found yourself in after the park. You have him at arm’s length and you don’t know whether to shake his hand or give him a hug. You go with neither.

“It was good catching up. I’ll see you Monday?” 

He nods, grinning in that silly way that makes him look like a fourteen year old dumbass. “For sure. See you Monday.”

It’s not the way you wanted your afternoon with him to go, but in honesty, it was probably the best way it could have gone. Dieter waves at Marie as he heads back the way you came, towards the subway station. 

He’s not entirely out of earshot when Marie turns on you.

“So, what the fuck was that?”

You don’t meet her eyes as you fumble for your keys, your fingers numb from the cold. The door to your brownstone creaks as you stumble inside, as if irritated with you that you’re letting all the warm air out. 

“What are you talking about? We were just catching up.” 

She’s hot on your heels as you slide off your jacket, almost running for the kitchen. 

“You don’t just catch up with someone like Dieter Bravo. He knows all your weaknesses, Nat.” 

You scowl as you toss your purse onto the kitchen island. You face off with her, your hands on your hips. “And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means he’s your blindspot,” she says, carefully watching your face. “Always has been. He’s not just some guy and you know it. He broke your fucking heart.” 

It had been all smiles and laughing and remembering the good this afternoon. But she isn’t wrong. She rarely was. 

She can see the understanding cross over your face. 

“Where’s his wife anyway? Chloe?”

“They’re divorced, okay?”

Marie’s mouth falls open in disgust and you cringe. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned that. 

“So he’s back in your life for five minutes, single, and you’re getting coffee with him?” 

“I didn’t know he was single when I asked him — you know what, it’s fine. I asked if he wanted to get lunch and that turned into coffee and we spent a lot of time talking about the play. That’s it.”  

She crosses her arms, reading every line in your body for secrets, as if he might have slipped you a bag of Oxy. You stare back. You have done nothing wrong and neither did he. 

(You store away the fact that this was the first time you hung out with Dieter Bravo in a capacity that didn’t have you both hiding in shadows, ready to examine later alone in bed.)

“And you can honestly say you didn’t feel anything for him?” Marie arches an eyebrow, waiting for your stony face to crack. “No flicker? Nothing after ten years of radio silence?

“It’s not like it was before,” you answer as honestly as you can. “Even if it was, I can’t imagine he feels anything but guilt over me, which isn’t a great starting point for a relationship. You saw his face in the gallery – he looked petrified, not in love.”

When she nods, it stings, just a bit. She eyes the paperwork, knowing the income and good word coming from Andrew’s production would benefit the gallery for years to come. And of course she knew – she was the one who came up with it. Would she have said yes if she knew Dieter was attached to it? Would you have?

“Are you going to see him again?” 

You wave a sweeping hand at the invoices, as if to show how the gallery and Andrew’s show are completely intertwined. 

“I have to, right?” 

Marie frowns at you, angry but not at you, and then her face softens, all fight gone, and she goes around the island to hug you. This is what saved you. This is what kept you going. 

“I know my boundaries, Marie,” you say to the crook of her neck, unwilling to look her in the eyes while you say this. “And I know what happened in the past. I’m not going to make the same mistakes.” 

She kisses your cheek. “Good because I really can’t run the gallery by myself.”

You laugh, pulling apart, and you shuffle the invoices together. “Yeah, who would you have to cart all this paperwork around?” 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Bright and early.”

You wave her goodbye from your porch, locking the door after her. 

You want to google his name and “divorce” to see if it’s true. If anything he told you today was real. You want to curl up in bed, with your head under the sheets and try and piece his life without you together. But you don’t. 

That was the thing with Dieter. You want things, but you can’t have them. You have this indescribable urge, but it must be tempered. The obsession is lesser, a blindspot more than anything, now that you know your next hit and how you felt about him had been horrifically tied up into one, incessant, painful need. It would never be as bad, you assure yourself because now that you don’t have that overwhelming urge to get high; whatever you would be feeling is just good plain old human brain chemicals. And if you survived being coked out for nearly a year straight, you’d probably survive your own stupid emotions. 

You would survive Dieter Bravo. All you have to do now is be his friend.

OCTOBER

A sharp chill had descended over the city, bringing with it an explosion of color. A consolation prize for the painful nip in the air. It was too early in the season for snow, or anything to prevent the wind from being so cruel, so everyone had to bustle from one structure to the next, careful to avoid the cold that hounded them like dogs. Teeth clenched, hands clutching scarves, the streets were filled with scowls and pink cheeks, raw knuckles and frozen ears. The crowds moved faster, eager to get where they’re going, out of this cold, out of this wind that pressed unsuspecting bodies together with the force of it. It made getting out of bed, leaving the cozy warmth of duvets and covers, planting your feet on the freezing wood, almost a monumentally impossible task. Especially for those who hated mornings anyway. 

As much as you tried – really, truly, desperately tried as you sorted through the mosaic of your life, shining up as much as you could – you simply could not turn yourself into a morning person. Yawning widely, you stirred the cup of terrible coffee aimlessly, as if with enough glaring it would not only taste better, but startle you awake. 

No such luck. 

“Hey, miss, where would you like us to put these?” 

You grimace as you choke down the black sludge, pointing the workman to a far wall at the back of the stage. Six in the morning and you already know it was going to be a long day. There are supplies to organize, materials to sort out, work to delegate, but you can’t seem to climb out of that sleepy haze. It had been a while since you’d been on the set of a production but if you don’t plant your feet now, you are liable to get swept up into the chaos. 

You shake your head and blink. Focus. 

Your designs had mapped out six separate moveable pieces of extra thick balsa wood. Attached to wheels, stage hands could rearrange the pieces as needed, depending on the scene. The “walls” are light enough for Andrew’s skeleton crew, but with some shadows and shading, you could give them depth and visual weight. You just had to build the damn things first, but Andrew assured you that all of his stagehands are basically master carpenters. By the confused but eager looks on their faces, you doubt that’s entirely true. Maybe by the end of this you’ll all be master carpenters. 

Smiling to yourself, you go to help them unpack the planks of wood, but freeze when you hear Andrew’s voice unexpectedly. Assuming he’d come by when most of the work is nearly done, you poke your head around the thick black curtains. 

Andrew stands facing the house, his arms wide and mobile. You smirk at the Lululemon sweats – his version of dressing down – as he addresses the small crowd in front of him. It’s the cast, you realize, only about seven of them and in the center is, of course, Dieter, with dark circles under his eyes. He’d never been a morning person either. He has his arms crossed over a thin black shirt and he’s focused entirely on Andrew, thick brows furrowed. 

And focused entirely on him, is Emily (you finally remember her name), the cute blonde twenty-something. 

Friends help friends get dates, right? Maybe this would be a good first step.

Getting Dieter Bravo laid.

Lunch arrives well past noon, leaving everyone tired, hungry, and a little irritable. Cast and crew go off into their separate corners, looking for peace and quiet and somewhere the pounding of hammers isn’t audible. 

You’re deciding between a ham or turkey sandwich when he sidles up next to you. His plate is half a sandwich, three strawberries, and four cookies. Good to see his voracious sweet tooth hadn’t dulled even a little bit. 

You glance over your shoulder. Emily sits on the edge of the stage, munching on a bag of chips and reading over her script. With your elbow, you nudge Dieter and he turns to look. 

“She likes you,” you grin. 

He frowns, glancing back between you and the girl on stage. “Who? Emily?”

“Duh. She has eyes, doesn’t she?” 

Dieter’s mouth goes tight and he turns back to the craft’s table, suddenly interested in adding something healthy to his plate. 

“She flirts with everyone. Besides, I’m kind of out of practice.”

“What do you mean?”

He picks at a melon, noses through the box of chips. “Rehab makes dating kinda hard. Unless . . .” he pauses and puts down his plate, “unless you’ve figured out the secret to dating in rehab.”

Your neck heats again. “Um, no, definitely not. It’s been a while, for me too.”

“How long is a while?” His eyes darken as he asks. 

You are completely baffled at how quickly this conversation spiraled out of your control. 

“Dieter – I – it’s been – you —,” 

He spares you and bites the corner of his cheek. He glances over to Emily as she swings a long, bare leg over the edge of the stage. 

“I’m not sleeping with her.” You nod, dumbstruck by this complete and total opposite reaction you thought he’d have. He works his jaw before looking back at you. “Her or anyone else. Okay?”

Andrew calls the cast to the stage to review blocking before the buzz saws start up again, so Dieter is pulled away before you can sputter incoherent consonants at him. He leaves his plate with you.

“Don’t let anyone steal my cookies,” he says very seriously before wiping his hands on his jeans and heading back to work. 

What you said is true. You didn’t date anyone in rehab, the practice actually rather forbidden, and didn’t really have the inclination once you got out. It had been years before you actually tried to date anyone, but most of them ended after the first awkward hug goodbye or when he tried to put his hand up your skirt at dinner. 

You hadn’t been a nun this whole time – you weren’t a fucking saint – but there hadn’t been anyone, anyone who really mattered in, years. For the first time, that struck you as odd. There wasn’t time, you reason with yourself as you watch him cross the stage on Andrew’s direction and jot notes in his script, his hair sticking up in all directions as if a cat’s tongue had licked him up the back of his neck. With moving to New York and starting the gallery and then running it, expanding it, there just simply wasn’t time to find something to fill that giant, gaping hole in your life. A hole you didn’t seem to mind or even notice, until Dieter came back. 

Okay, maybe, friends didn’t need to help friends pick up dates. He didn’t seem interested anyway. 

You pick up his plate, careful to not spill his precious sweets, only vaguely aware that his first inclination after loading up his lunch was to come find you.

🤍 Next: Part 2 + Epilogue

#dieter bravo #dieter bravo x f!reader #dieter bravo x you #dieter bravo fanfiction #dieter bravo x reader #the bubble fanfic #the bubble fic #the bubble fanfiction #the bubble 2016 #dieter bravo/f!reader #dieter bravo/you #dieter bravo/reader #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal characters

[highabovethecloudssomewhere]

tips/resources that taught me how to Art as an Adult - a masterlist

Four years ago I decided that “I’m too old to learn how to draw” is a pointless lie I’d believed for too long and you’re never too old to learn something new. I still definitely consider myself a novice and a learner but I’m at a very happy place with my art and I’m having a ton of fun so I thought I’d pass along the tips/resources that helped me get started and kept me motivated. 

I’ll get into resources under the cut, but here are personal tips I lined up for myself that helped during the early stages of frustration and wanting to give up. obviously they won’t work for everyone, but they really kept me going

fill 14 sketchbooks. if you still want to give up after that you can (I’m currently at 13 sketchbooks and could not imagine ever letting it go)

what specifically do you want to be able to draw? For me my goal has always been characters and cats. I’ve added things to it here and there, but starting out overwhelmed with how much you don’t know isn’t great. find a handful of things you really want to draw and see where it takes you.

get yourself a sketchbook fancy enough that you feel cool as heck but cheap enough that you don’t mind absolutely destroying it. Personally, I love EXCEED bullet journals. the dotted paper keeps me from being too picky but are less intrusive than lined paper. From my experience, EXCEED bullet journals takes acrylic and ink like a champ, and they’ve got nice covers that just make you “feel” cool. confidence is important!

acrylic paint and post-it notes are great ways to cover mistakes. I personally love anything that makes my sketchbooks feel “sketchbooky” so this is super fun. 

it is okay to “waste”/”ruin” pages. one time I was in “I’m a failure” artblock and so I poured black coffee onto my sketchbook. (it was gonna get dumped out anyway and I was Very frustrated with my art.) then when the pages dried I just kept right along using it. taught me a lot about not being perfect. sketchbooks are about learning and love, not about perfection.

try drawing in pen. seriously, draw in pen. it’s scary as frick to not be able to go back on mistakes but that’s what the post-it acrylic-paint tip is for, and it’ll help with all sorts of stuff like lineweight and line confidence. it takes some of the stress off too because, you screw up? oh well! Try again! it encourages “try again” over “meticulously nitpick until it’s perfect” and has done wonders for me. I started out my first two sketchbooks in pencil before making the switch and I’ve never gone back. 

(also sketching in highlighter and lining with pen is super fun and cool and satisfying!)

the first page doesn’t matter. I usually just use the first page of the sketchbook to write my favorite songs at the time and then do the same thing on the last page. first page jitters begone. 

(starting in the middle of the sketchbook also gets rid of those jitters pretty nicely. I tried this a couple times and personally still prefer the linear front-to-back but it was fun for a while.)

picking a color theme for your sketchbook can make it feel more “sketchbooky” too. I usually go with blue or orange- blue acrylic paint, blue post-it notes, those cheap blue BIC pens, etc. I like this bc it makes the sketchbook feel like a sketchbook and is very satisfying.

And figure out why you’re doing it. I did it because I always wanted to make cool art and draw my characters, but if you’re doing it for a career then obviously the path to that looks much different. Don’t compare yourself to others. Be inspired by people who are better than you. Acknowledge where you need to grow and where you’re strongest. Lean into those strengths. Adapt to those weaknesses. Be proud of being a beginner- you won’t be one for long. 

Now: some of my favorite creatives and resources!

///

CREATORS:

"Kasey Golden" Mostly traditional art, mostly watercolor, cartoonist, art challenges

"DrawingWiffWaffles" Mostly traditional art, alcohol markers & pens, semi-realism

"LavenderTowne" Digital art, art tips/tutorials, cartoonist

"ABD Illustrates" Digital art, speedpaints, semi-realism

"Proko" (or "Stan Prokopenko") Realism, anatomy tutorials, free complete "Anatomy For Artists" series- basically as hogwild as you can get learning hyper-realistic anatomy

"Ethan Becker" Digital art, ex-DreamWorks employee, tips/tutorials, "Perfect Practice"

"Sinix Design" Digital art, anatomy tips/tutorials, general tips/tutorials, realist

"Oliver's Antics" Digital and traditional art, tips/tutorials, speedpaints, semi-realistic style

“Nerdforge” Traditional art, painting, metalwork, woodwork, bookbinding, building, seriously these people do everything they’re incredible

///

FOR GESTURE DRAWING:

Line of Action Gesture drawing, figure drawing, optional timed practice sessions

AdorkaStock fantastic line of unique reference poses

 ///

Aaand that’s about all I’ve got! there are so many resources out there and so many amazing artists to be inspired by. just have fun with art! art is freedom. be proud to be a beginner and be excited for how you’ll grow. I hope these tips are helpful for someone out there! <3 

Here’s my first digital artwork (April 2019) up against my latest (August 2022)

April 2019:

August 2022:

best of luck to you all. I believe in each and every one of you. <3 happy drawing!

#art #resources #cloud rambles #masterlist #obviously this isn't TOTALLY comprehensive #but I've been talking to a lot of friends lately who preemptively give up on art bc they're 'too old' #and I just felt like making this #i believe in all of us

[corrodedparadox]

wow looking at your rat king thing, you improved SO MUCH in the last two years. what did you feel helped you improve?

There’s a handful of things I would say but the main one was switching from a screenless tablet to an iPad!! Obviously iPads are kinda pricey so I can’t recommend it for everyone, but I genuinely feel like switching from a screenless tablet (I used to use Huion) to screened one REALLY helped me get a better grasp of everything, along with procreate just having an easier layout to use compared to the other programs I used (SAI and CSP) which made me less afraid to mess around with brushes and other fun things like halftone textures and chromatic abbreviations, ect ect . Definitely play around with brushes!! While a different brush won’t suddenly make you the Best Artist Ever, finding a brush that works well with your style/art process can help a TON (almost all my brushes are from @/thedawner brush packs, I highly recommend their brushes!! Lots of free packs too, I use the bonobo chalk as my main painting brush)

The other big thing is references!! I rarely used any references until like last year, I’ve been taking my own pose/expression/ect references (yes that means looking at a weird picture of you for like an hour to get the pose right but you get used to it) and going on walks to get nice landscape shots for my work (all my giant ass floating fish drawings are based on images I personally took), but if you don’t wanna do that websites like unsplash, Pexels, and pixabay are great for royalty free (VERY IMPORTANT, I have seen LOTS of artists end up in legal battles because they just used a random photo they got off Google that ended up being copyrighted) pictures and vectors to help get ya started.

The last major big thing is my drawing process in general!! I was hardwired to believe you HAD to do art in the steps of sketch, lineart, color, then shading all on separate layers. Don’t be afraid to use what process works for you! When I threw lineart out the window and started painting all on one layer it became WAY easier for me to block out shapes (highly recommend doing greyscale paint studies, it helps SOO much with more coherent color pallets and lighting) and really helps the entire work fell connected rather than a character that feels poorly overlaid on a separately drawn background.

Don’t be afraid to fuck around! Its art! It’s supposed to be messy and weird! Merge your layers! Use 30 different brushes because you feel like it!! Have fun and mess around with the process and see where it takes you!!!

#there’s two other attributes which was finally getting art classes that were more geared towards developing my style rather than the basics #and my brain fully developing at 25. I wish this was a lie but I feel like my brain can just suddenly understand anatomy better #ask #long post #behold my text wall

[thebawdybaldurian]

Going to be dumping a bunch of post-epilogue scraps that I scribbled down during the 3.5 days I had no power or heat. They’ll eventually get made into chapters of The Tale of the Tadpoles, which I’ll be resuming writing now that I can play through the game again for scene inspiration. Tried to add as much background to the unwritten or important parts of these little bits. I hope you enjoy! I ruined my pants writing it!

Summary and Background: Tav and Astarion enjoy a little afternoon dom and aftercare session, as they navigate their unexpected pregnancy with Halsin.

Tav and Astarion (unascended) have been married for several years, living in Tav’s cottage in the Lower City. Astarion exerts a little control over his wife in the form of gentle task domming, helping her maintain her busy and chaotic life with the Forgetten Realms equivalent of neurodivergency. Halsin is their occasional third when he comes to visit the city. During one of his surprise visits, right after a stressful and tight book deadline, Tav forgets her monthly moon blood tincture, leaving her vulnerable to pregnancy. The married couple do not want children, but want to speak with Halsin before making any final decisions. They have acquired a special pair of rings that allow Astarion to be outside during the day, though transferring his sunlight affliction to his lover. They changed the deed on Cazador’s palace, turning it into a refugee sanctuary for tieflings, called the Elturel Enclave. Astarion maintains an atelier for his tailoring and clothing making, an anniversary gift from Tav.

Content Warning: soft/task domming, pregnancy kink, spanking, anal and vaginal licking and fingering, anal sex, multiple orgasms, cum tasting, dirty talk, aftercare, oral sex, tickling, PIV sex, allusion to possible abortion.

The Hither Thither staff Tav had acquired proved as useful as their blood bond rings. Astarion avoided using the rings when he could, instead utilizing the magical portals to travel between his atelier and their cottage during the day. It was a slow day in the shop and he wanted to check in on his newly pregnant wife and feeling a little frisky. Aside from his cravings for normal food, his sympathy pregnancy was making him even more amorous along with her. He locked the front door of the shop and turned the sign around before heading towards the little closet in the back room. The portal to their cottage was inside, providing quick entry into the hallway between the bath and bedroom. He locked the closet door before stepping though, giving them a little extra security if his shop were ever burgled. The entire bottom floor was quiet, Tav either up in the loft or out somewhere.

He climbed the ladder to the loft, seeing her standing in front of an easel. “Hello love,” he finished his climb and strolled towards her as she glanced back from her painting.

“Hi,” she beamed at him. “Done at the shop already?”

“I thought I’d check in on you,” he embraced her from behind, kissing his favorite spot on her neck. “What’s this you’re working on?” He eyed her new project with a raised brow.

She’d transferred one of her sketches from their figure drawing session last month onto a canvas and was applying a thick base layer of paint to it. In the sketch, Halsin was posed pressed against Astarion’s back, his hands lingering just above his half-hard cock. He remembered the moment in his mind, his cock stirring at it. He slid his hands down her sides, hovering just above her cunt like in the image.

“I do think I am going to turn some of the sketches into an erotic art book…but I wanted to do a few paintings for an exhibition as well. It could be a release party for it,” she brushed a large smear of paint across the canvas.

“Another hugely ambitious project already?” He teased her, glancing back at her still messy desk, the result of her furious book deadline last month and the cause of her unexpected pregnancy. “Are you sure that’s a good idea considering your new…condition?” He slipped his fingers under the hem of her shirt, caressing her warm belly. He wondered how long it would be before she began to show.

“Well, it’s not like I’m going to be an invalid,” she smiled. “Just pregnant. Besides, this is probably when it happened. That day.”

“You think so?” He let his fingers tease under the waist of her trousers now, which she shifted her hips against, hoping he’d move a little lower, her own loins stirring at the memory.

“I believe the night ended with me upside down, full of both your cum,” she giggled a little, grasping the arm that lingered in her pants.

She wanted him to move his hand lower and he knew it. Instead, he moved the hand still on her stomach to the back of her neck, gently resting it there, looking back at the desk again. It was his little signal that he wanted to begin a scene with her. If she wasn’t feeling it, she would just ignore the signal and go about her day. If she was into it, she would obey. She stood up a little straighter and put her brush and palette down. “Am I in trouble?” She asked in a pouted tone.

“Your desk is still a mess,” he whispered in her ear. “And yet you’ve started this new project.”

“But…I wanted to,” she purred. “I’m so horny now that you and Halsin put a baby in me.”

“That’s no excuse,” he grinned, pulling her back a little, towards her desk.

“Are you going to punish me?” She practically begged. She was already throbbing inside.

“That depends,” he finally removed both his hands from her, leaving her standing at attention. “I want you to bend over your desk and I’m going to spank you for every item that doesn’t belong there and you could’ve easily put away.”

“Of course, love,” she nodded obediently, biting her lip in excitement.

She strode over to her desk, putting her hands on it and pressing her ass out a little. “Bare-assed?” She asked with a grin as he approached her.

He nodded at her with his own grin, watching as she unbuttoned her trousers, sliding them and her underpants past her ass. She moved down onto her elbows, sticking her ass out even more. “Look at you,” he slid his hand across the warm, smooth skin of her round backside. Her cunt already glistened hungrily for him. He teased a finger into the wetness, sucking it off his finger. “What would you have done if I hadn’t come home? You’re practically dripping already.”

“Probably fucked myself in my reading chair,” she looked back at him seductively, her hips swaying, begging for him to touch her again. “Or popped in on the shop for a little fun.”

“You wouldn’t wait for me to come home?” He teased her again, using two fingers this time.

“No,” she sighed. “I can’t wait.”

If her cunt could’ve sucked up his fingers, they would have, she was so hungry for him. He gave her ass a light slap.

“You need to be patient, love,” he stroked the slightly pink skin. “You could’ve waited until you finished cleaning your desk before starting a new project, yes?”

“Yes,” she pouted, pressing her ass out even further.

“And why didn’t you?” He teased a slick finger along her asshole, making it pucker.

“Because it was boring. Because I want instant gratification from doing something I like.”

“Good girl, you’re beginning to learn,” he grinned, slipping a finger in each of her holes, making her let out a little moan. She pushed her hips back against his fingers, greedily trying to take more inside her. “Now, let’s see,” he grinned, pulling his fingers out as she whimpered. “These plates of crusts and crumbs could’ve been taken down to the kitchen.” He slapped her ass a little harder, brushing his fingers across the stinging skin after. “The same with these wine glasses, they’ll need to be soaked.” Another sharp slap across her other cheek. She arched her back, biting hard into her lip, a long trail of honey running down her thigh. He loved how much she loved this.

He unbuttoned his pants, an excited breath squeaking out of her. He looked over the desk again, wanting to tease her a little more before getting his cock involved. “These books,” he stacked them one on top of the other. “The bookshelf is right next to your desk, dear.” Another sharp slap across her pale cheeks. “Nail enamel, old lyre strings, an empty tincture bottle and a half-empty one of body oil. My, my, Tav, you’ve been a very bad girl.” Four slaps across her ass, two per cheek.

“Fuck!” she grunted at the last slap, a long string of honey dangling from her sex. He knelt so he could catch it in his mouth, slurping his tongue against her lips as she trembled.

“You like being bad, don’t you?” He teased his fingers in her again, making her arch her back even more. He kissed every inch of her reddened skin, the coolness of his lips easing the sting. “It excites you.”

“I do like being bad,” she cooed, her hips wiggling slightly against his fingers. “It does excite me.”

“Good. The first step is admitting it,” he grinned, fingering her a little more, finally pulling his throbbing cock out of his pants with his free hand. He teased the head against her slick entrance, sliding the wetness up to her asshole. “You offered me this to forget about the mess, didn’t you?” He grinned, seeing the tight hole pucker at him again.

“I suppose I did,” she looked back at him hungrily. She didn’t particularly love anal herself, but she would welcome him however he wanted.

“Well then,” he added another finger inside her ass, warming her up for his thicker cock, lubricating it with some of her honey and the convenient bottle of oil she’d left. He spread her legs further apart, teasing his cock against her again before probing it in just a little. She clenched a little in anticipation, holding in her breath. “Relax, love,” he didn’t push any further yet. “Let that breath out.”

She did, letting her breath out slowly, looking into his loving eyes. She knew he would never cause her any pain in pursuit of his own pleasure. She inhaled deeply and then let it out slowly as he eased a little deeper into her tight hole. “Good girl,” he praised her, satisfied with this depth for now, sliding slowly in and out of her.

“Gods,” she trembled, gripping her fingers into the desk. It wasn’t as pleasurable as him inside her cunt, but the fullness of him inside her was a sensation of its own.

Each slow thrust she eased a little more, allowing him more of her depth, until his balls finally met her thighs. “Fuck, you’re so tight,” he quivered against her as she took all his cock. He leaned against her, circling his hips inside her, the hand not guiding her hips rubbing across her clit.

“I need you,” she whimpered as he eased back to thrusting against her, her clit pounding. “I need you to fill every inch of me.”

“I’m going to fill you so full of cum, you’ll taste it in your throat,” he increased his pace a little, still being as gentle with her as possible.

“Yes, please, oh fuck,” she writhed against his hand on her clit, a short little climax squeezing out of her as he fucked her ass.

“You feel so good,” he moaned, his balls slapping gently against her soaked cunt.

“Please,” she breathed heavily, her climax flushing across her face. “I want to watch your cock fuck my ass.”

He smiled and eased out of her completely, her asshole gaping and still hungry for him. She grinned happily, kicking off her trousers, flipping over, and sitting on the edge of the desk so he could lift her hips. She gripped the edge with her fingers as he did, taking a sloppy kiss from his lips as he leaned over her. “Do you need a break? Water?” His tongue engulfed hers. He also knew her asshole didn’t offer much to her own pleasure and wanted to make sure she was still enjoying herself.

“Mmm,” she kissed his mouth again, leaning back and bracing herself. “I want to taste you in my throat,” she grinned, splaying her stockinged legs widely.

He grinned devilishly back at her, taking his cock back in his hand. He teased it against her entrance again, coating the head with more of her honey. She watched as he slid every inch back into her slowly. He guided her hips with one hand, returning the other to her clit, returning slowly to his previous pace. They grunted and moaned as he fucked her ass again, the tightness of her hole bringing his climax quickly, his balls vibrating against the desk as he filled her with his seed in one last thrust and groan. He kept himself inside her, looking into her eyes as she trembled, another climax ready if he pressed harder onto her clit. He pressed and rubbed her, ready to feel her muscles clench against him. “Fuck,” she squirmed, her filled asshole joined by a few of his fingers inside her cunt. “Oh fuck. I love you so fucking much,” she writhed, her legs bobbling wildly as she came again, her cries echoing up to the roof, her high pitched breaths following. “Fuck,” she sighed and slumped back against the desk, the top shelf digging her upper back. “You’re amazing.” His softening cock finally slipped out of her ass along with his cum, joining the puddle on the floor underneath them.

“I love you, even sitting among this mess,” he leaned over and kissed her deeply, gently rubbing her thighs. “Was that alright? Can I get you anything?”

“A bigger desk, for more mess,” she laughed, nipping his nose playfully with her teeth. “That was so amazing, love. I’m glad you came home when you did.”

“Me too,” he continued to massage and caress her, starting her aftercare. “I’m going to put you in a bath now and then perhaps we can go desk shopping at dusk, after we clean this all up of course. I’d like some space to be able to do some designing at home. Deal?”

“Deal,” she smiled.

He slid his fingers down her thighs, hooking them at the tops of her stockings, pulling them down her legs so he could get her fully undressed. He kissed her calves, the glistening of her cunt still distracting him. “One more, darling?” He asked, kneeling in front of her, licking his lips. He didn’t take her ass often and was always overly gracious when he did. He also hated seeing all that honey going to waste.

“Really?” She grinned, climbing off the desk, so the shelf wasn’t digging into her back. He almost always managed at least two out of her, three or above if he thought she needed more.

“It’s the time to start pampering you, my sweet, with our little elf growing inside you.” He tickled his fingers up her calves, planting kisses on her knees.

“As long as you still treat me like a dirty little slut from time to time too,” she grinned, planting a leg over his shoulder, offering him full access to her juicy cunt.

“Oh, I intend to breed you every night until you start to show,” he grinned, burying his face between her legs. He lapped up her sweet honey, catching a bit of his salty cum with it. “Do you know how to make salty honey tarts?” He grinned, his sympathy cravings returning again.

“I do,” she giggled as he left sucking kisses around her clit. “Something else you want to sample?” If he didn’t swallow any of the solid cravings he tasted, his stomach would cooperate for the most part.

“Mmmhmm,” he took another generous lap of her cunt.

“Can you…mmm,” she moaned as his mouth engulfed her, taking a handful of his curls in her fingers. “Oh…can you wait until…fuck…until Halsin gets here? Gods damn you. Uh. Fresh honey…tastes best and he..oh he always brings some…ohh.” She braced herself against the desk again as his tongue ravaged her. “Oh, Astarion, fuck, Gods,” she quivered as she came again, squeezing out a last river of honey into his mouth.

“It does taste best. I suppose I can wait,” he smiled up at her, his mouth and chin covered in her. She bent down to kiss him, pulling his face up, tasting a bit of herself on his lips.

“Did I mention that I love you?” She pinched his rosy cheeks. He got so pink when he was excited.

“When you were coming the second time,” he smiled. “Though I never mind when you repeat yourself.”

“I love you for the first one too then,” she kissed his forehead, smoothing the curls she’d mussed as she’d come. “Very ready for that bath now,” she stretched, pulling her shirt over her head. He stood up and pulled at the bow of her cotton bodice, loosening the top so she could slip it off as well. She tossed it onto her desk where she’d left her shirt, knowing he would chastise her for more clutter. Instead he circled his hands around her breasts, cupping them gently.

“Are you tender yet?” He asked, brushing his thumbs across her nipples. “They are already the slightest bit swollen.”

“Oh are you a pregnancy expert now?” her face blushed. They were a little tender.

“I borrowed a book from the nursery while we were at the enclave yesterday,” he planted a little kiss on each excited nub. “Your milk won’t come for a few more months. I’m going to have to make you a whole new wardrobe.”

“Thank you Dr. Ancunin,” She teased and gave him a gentle peck on the cheek.

“Take down your hair so I can wash it,” he requested as she headed towards the ladder to the ground floor. “I’ll get your bath started.”

She climbed down the ladder, padding to the kitchen naked to look for a snack, pulling at her messy braid. He went to the bathroom to start her bath, pulling out some bottles for cleansing her hair, scrubbing her feet, and softening her face. She would be getting a full spa day experience, he decided. He took a moment to wash his cock, the post-cum tenderness gone for it. Given their shared libidos, it would be in use soon enough. He rolled up his sleeves, testing the water temperature of the copper tub with his hand. She lingered in the doorway, chewing on a bit of dried fruit. “You’re spoiling me,” she patted his head lovingly. He was sat on a stool beside the tub, his tray of bottles set out and ready for her.

“No more than you do me,” he gently caressed her leg again.

They loved to bathe one another or together. It was a place to be naked and vulnerable and taken care of. He began to cup water over her skin after she’d climbed in, caressing her softly. He’d learned so much from her own care of him. Being able to do the same for her made him incredibly happy. “Dunk your hair please, my love,” he asked. His strict routines for her, keeping her on task and schedule just scratched that little itch of control that he needed after a lifetime with only compulsions from his master.

He massaged some shampoo into her wet hair, sudsing her copper locks and cleansing her scalp. “Mmm,” she let out a sigh as his fingers tingled her head. “Any more pregnancy facts you can share?” She grinned. She was pleased he was as invested enough in this pregnancy to be both informed and have sympathy symptoms, despite the fact they wouldn’t be keeping the child. They were almost certain Halsin would want to raise it, but they still had to prepare for the possibility.

“You might notice some hair loss,” he replied, motioning for her to dunk her head again to wash away the shampoo. “But you have plenty of it.”

“What if I go completely bald?”

“I will shine up your little head until even I can see my reflection,” he teased, moving on to her facial. He swiped the blue-tinted mask across her skin, leaving it to dry and moved behind the tub to massage her neck and shoulders. She hunched and craned her neck during her work so often, her muscles were always tight here. “You’ll be in here, a lot, between morning sickness and bladder pressure later on. So you’d better help me keep it tidy.”

“But I’ll be pregnant,” she whined playfully.

“You’ll be more emotional…than usual,” he teased, moving down to her feet as she made a face at him. He scrubbed them one at a time, massaging her soles and flexing and pulling her toes a little. “You might feel a little more stiff and sore, so you need to go easy with all your little acrobatics.”

“The wheelbarrow was probably how I got pregnant,” she grinned, the memory of both Halsin and Astarion holding her legs aloft, filling her with cum, making her stir yet again. “What about the extra horniness?”

“Throughout the duration, dear,” he bit into his lip deviously.

“The neighbors will be sure to complain again then,” she laughed as his fingers tickled her foot slightly.

“Are your feet ticklish too?” His smile twisted, his fangs showing even more. He hadn’t tickled her into a fit of giggles for a while.

“No…” she lied, knowing what that smile was thinking. “Don’t you dare.”

He seized on her immediately, tickling her soles with his fingers, making her kick her feet.

Water splashed everywhere, but he didn’t care. She was already getting pulled out of the tub eventually so she could ride him on the floor. The extra horniness was one of his most prominent sympathy symptoms too. He tickled his way up her body, his shirtsleeves soaked. She laughed and thrashed against him, yelling “but my weak pregnancy bladder!”

He relented when he reached her head, pulling her in for a kiss as she caught her breath. She pulled at his shirt, desperate to get it off. “Nine months of this?” She bit her lip as he peeled his wet shirt off, seeing the hunger in her eyes as well. He hurriedly spread a towel out for them as she climbed out of the tub, pressing him to the floor and straddling him. Her wet fingers pawed at his pants, eager for the bulge inside them. He took control of his buttons with a grin.

“Can you wipe the mask off, dear, so I don’t feel like I’m getting fucked by a drow?”

“You wouldn’t fuck Drizzt?” She teased, reaching for a small towel.

“Who wouldn’t?”

“But I am Lolth’s Chosen,” she did her best impression of Minthara’s gravely voice, wiping the mask away. Her skin was bright and radiant underneath, bringing out her freckles a little more. “You’re going to fill me full of your sticky webs and put even more children in me.”

“Alright, I want a divorce,” he joked as he made a face at her. Without even a lick of the tip, as she normally did, she managed his entire length in one quick motion of her head, angling her throat to take what couldn’t fit in her mouth. She pulled her lips slowly back, leaving a long trail of saliva on her chin as she looked up a him.

“I think all the retching has made me lose my gag reflex temporarily,” she grinned. “Still want a divorce?”

He didn’t have time to answer, the moan he made as she swallowed him again sounding more like a second marriage proposal. She sucked him until he was trembling, then climbed back up his body, mounting him without another word. This was a quick and urgent fuck, no prolonged teasing aside from her mouth. Their long, drawn out sessions were great, but sometimes they just needed to fuck. She grinded on him in a dizzying rhythm, her wet hair slapping against her skin. The soaked towels underneath them squished, as his cock swirled around her wet cunt, the wet sounds punctuated by their moans. They spoke and talked dirty during their longer forays, helping him stay present and active with her. These quickies they just listened to their bodies, moans, and breaths. They knew each other too well.

Her sharp, urgent breaths told him she was close, but needed something more, so he thrusted his hips against her a little harder. She squeezed a little more as he slid out of her, keeping his cock engaged and milking his climax closer to hers. Her flurry of swears, meant she was now there, her body going slightly slack as her head swam. Her high pitched cries told him he’d gotten her g-spot too. She collapsed onto his chest as he pulled her hips down, filling her with his seed again with guttural cries. They snuggled happily together despite the cold tile floor, slowing their breaths together. She nuzzled up his neck, reaching his lips for another kiss. “Do you think one thousand orgasms during this entire pregnancy is a reasonable goal?”

“For both or just you?” He grinned. She raised her eyebrow at him like he didn’t need to ask. “With Halsin’s help?” He smirked, pulling her in for another kiss before they dried off and set to work cleaning the messes they’d made. “Very likely.”

#astarion #astarion x tav #ao3 #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #astarion x tav x halsin #daddy Astarion

[markalberding]

Taro Okamoto

Exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum

Taro Okamoto was a prolific avant-garde artist, a trickster who forged his own path and encouraged others to do the same with his famous exclamation-cum-exhortation "art is an explosion". Completely modern in his output, he nonetheless had a deep respect for elements of traditional Japanese culture (Okinawan) and pre-historic art (Japanese Jōmon, Pre-Columbian in Mexico),which formed a basis for his practice and theorizing, for he also wrote on art a great deal, particularly focused on promoting a modern Japanese aesthetic unshackled from the wabi-sabi conventions he felt had dominated Japanese artistic creation for too long. He produced a wide variety of work in different media and placed a great deal of importance on public art.

This exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno was well mounted, the works appearing on the first of three floors in particular being very effectively presented brightly spot lit against black walls and dark carpet, which made his bold, colorful canvases really burst forth. The second and third floors took a more historical and chronological approach, ending with his last canvases in the early 1990's, including one unfinished work. The famous gigantic Myth of Tomorrow mural, painted then somehow "lost" in Mexico City in 1967, then rediscovered in Mexico 30 years later, then restored and mounted in Shibuya station in Tokyo in 2008, is represented by a large scale painted sketch. There are also a few films, one on the making of the famous Tower of the Sun for the 1970 World Expo in Osaka (and there are a couple of models of it as well), and extensive slide shows of photographs he took while researching Okinawan and pre-Columbian arts and culture.

As is often the case, while the sections had good English introductions along with the Japanese, the exhibition texts on the placards accompanying most works were exclusively in Japanese. Yes, this is Japan, and yes, if you attend a comparable exhibition in the United States or the UK, for example, there will not be Japanese explanation anywhere, but English is an international language and particularly for an artist with a global outlook like Okamoto's, one might hope for more English for the exhibition texts. Given that the museum is pretty undeniably overstaffed, with dark-suited individuals standing around doing nothing more than holding a sign or making an unnecessary announcement that someone else is also making 10 yards away (a very common sight here), some of the money used for excess staff could be used to pay a proper translator to do all of the explanatory texts (I don't want to take anyone's [part-time, contract work] job away, but the number of people is pretty ridiculous at some of these institutions). To their credit, they allowed photography, which is very often not the case at large Japanese museums.

Okamoto sold little work during his career, partly because he was in a position which made sales unnecessary, but also because he wanted to have available for display as much of his work as possible, rather than having it secreted away in the homes of collectors. Somewhat ironically for a resolutely non-commercial artist, the gift shop was larger and had a wider range of goods than I think I have ever seen at an exhibition of similar size. I assume the proceeds at least in part go the foundations running the two permanent museums housing his work in the area.

markalberding.com

#taro okamoto #modern art #japanese art #art is an explosion #tokyo metropolitan art museum #sculpture #岡本太郎

[creativeafterdark]

Chapter 9 and 10

Heyo folks taking a @journeythroughjourneytothewest

Had to take a break from book club last week, burn out was very bad. But I've had a week to relax, celebrated my birthday and slept most of the day lol. Let's get back into Journey to the West

First: Chapter 9.

We finally meet our Monk and learn the story of his family!

We don't spend a lot of time learning about them (minus his Dad, gets a thumbs up from me. Kind to all and easy going enough to be like "I got hit by a ball-- oh I'm married now? Okay cool". Like talk about a shotgun wedding), but we do see little bits that remind me of our Monk. He does share his kindness with his Dad, and I genuinely think his anxiety is from his mom. I'll talk about her in a minute because she is a whole other thing.

My one question is... wouldn't other officials notice that Liu Hong, essentially becoming Chen E, had no idea what he was doing??? He went on business trips, did no one recognize he wasn't who he said he was????? I mean you would think anyone who took the exams with him who got positions would be like "uh... that's not him tf??". Or they just did not care. Who knows at this point. Apparently he had Six Eared Macaque level disguise skill, rolled a nat 20 in bullshitery.

Now. Lady Yin. The poor lady went through hell for over 18 years. She had to watch her husband get murdered, had to abandon her baby, and had to play wife to a murderer. Even when her husband came back... I'm not surprised she still ended up passing. That's a lot of guilt (and I'm sure Liu Hong was not kind to her) on her mind for a LONG period of time, nearly two decades. I wish there was a happy ending for the family but I get why it ended how it did, knowing what depression and anxiety can do to people.

Now our baby Monk. Our Xuanzang. I am so proud of him for being as brave as he was. This recently turned 18 year old did everything he could to help his family. Licking his grandma's eyeballs was...a choice. But it was for a good cause so good on him. I can see why he was a good choice as the Scroll Pilgrim.

And as promised, a sketch of Xuanzang

And as a bonus baby Monk with a doggo

But now we move to Chapter 10.

...I legit got annoyed going thru the debate between the fisherman and woodman. Like it went on far longer than it should have. I'm sure there was a profound moment that we're supposed to glean from it but I just wasn't receptive to it. Maybe I'll read it again.

Anyway.

I have been doing some looking into of Chinese historical heroes (I desperately want to read Romance of the three kingdoms, and I need more reading material about folk heroes and heroines) so seeing some references to the stuff I learned made me happy. There was mention of Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang and the painting of The Emporer's Generals on the doors (supposedly the Tang dynasty is where this practice was first used. A few three kingdom folks also get this treatment as door gods, or menshen, along with other important heroes and deities. Makes me wonder if the Emperor essentially deified his Generals and Wei Zheng. How does Heaven handle that?)

Fun fact! In my jttw x mythology story Wukong will work with Asena, mythical wolf mother of the Ashina Clan of Gokturks. Guess which dynasty of China had to deal with them a lot? :)

Anyway.

I've also come to the conclusion that Dragons just like to fuck around and find out. Like, the Dragon King just goes against heaven's orders to spite a very accurate fortune teller, does not even THINK of the consequences, and is surprised Pikachu face when he gets in trouble. Also not sure why he thought appealing to an earthly emporer would save him from THE SUPREME DAOIST DEITY'S JUDGMENT. Like, y'all, I'm beginning to think dragons just don't give a crap or just don't think. Got what he deserved for being dumb. Did the emporer make promises he shouldn't have? No doubt, you don't promise supernatural beings anything because it will make you want to die if they catch wind of you breaking promises, regardless of nationality. Did he deserve what he got? .... I mean historically probably but in the sense of this story, no.

I find the Tang dynasty interesting (because it gave us a certain Empress and had some fun female warriors, like Taizong's sister, who helped her father found the dynasty) and I can definitely thank jttw for getting my attention about it.

I think that's all I have as far as thoughts. And I apologize if my rambles just jumped around too much lol.

Over and out ✌️

#journey to the west #jttw book club #jttw tang sanzang #jttw Xuanzang #xuanzang #slight mention of #jttw x mythology #the more you know

[slytherinshua]

Muse

𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠. . .

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ genre and tags: fluff. y/n is a painter. roughly set in a historical period with royalty lol idk. ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ warnings: crying. kidnapping but not exactly? kisses. ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ pairing: dk x fem!reader. ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ wc: 1.4k

“Stay still or I won’t be able to capture you just right.” You urged, your pencil running over the canvas in quick strokes, placing down the foundation for the painting - the shapes of his figure, the facial features that were most prominent, and the way his clothes hung over his body.

“I’m trying, love.” He giggled, and you scolded him again for moving his face. He assumed his stoic pose again, and you smiled, continuing your sketch.

“I’m almost done with the sketch.” You murmured, tongue poking out slightly from your mouth from your concentration. This was the last painting you planned to do of him, and possibly the most important.

You had gotten the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to present a portfolio piece to the princess along with other artists. If she took a fancy to any of them, you might get a good pay worth out of it for once, and maybe even some commissions.  

Surely, these types of paintings would appeal to her highness? 

You tried your best to make the pose and the colours romantic and eye-catching. And, with Seokmin as your muse, you didn’t have to try too hard. He was already alluring himself.

As long as the public didn’t find out that it was you, Lim Y/n, who painted these, but “Park Woosung”, all should go as planned. Taking on a masculine name was common amongst female painters. It put them on almost the same playing field, and you had seen your friends get successful because of it.

Women weren’t expected to create as sophisticated an art piece as men, and because of that, the art was looked down on and considered “worse” from the very start. An intricate portrait, like you were doing of Seokmin, would sell for less than half the price of a sloppy painting that a man created. 

You looked through your box of paints for the neutral beiges you were looking for to start on the skin. Taking your brush, you painted the first stroke of the oil on the canvas— the colour already bursting out in contrast to the darkness of the background.

“You can relax, but try to keep the pose if you can, love.” You instructed him, peeking out from behind your canvas to give him a smile before turning back to your paint. He hummed softly as you painted away, fiddling with the grapes that he was supposed to be holding as a prop. You forbid him from eating any of them, but he might have snuck one or two of them into his mouth while you were focused on your canvas.

//

You felt like you might throw up your breakfast on the way to the outside grounds where the art display was taking place. You had never been this nervous in your entire life, and a little part of you knew that your future could depend on the events in the next few hours.

Seokmin was right by your side, holding your hand in the carriage for as much comfort as he could give you. All the paintings you had created were perfect in his eyes, and he couldn’t see any way you wouldn’t blow the minds of all the people there to see them. 

As you set up the paintings in the display, you caught sight of the princess laughing and talking with some of the gentlemen in the corner of the courtyard. You could tell by her face that she would be judging harshly, but the way she was talking to everybody here put you at ease slightly. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as you thought.

You held your breath as the princess made her way towards your display, looking over the artwork with a critical eye. Her eyebrows furrowed and then lifted as her lips pursed - making way for a final smile to grace her lips. She barely spared you a glance before looking up, and you watched as her eyes widened enormously. You followed her line of sight nervously. She was looking at Seokmin.

It was like a bunch of alarms went off in your head and you wished you had pulled Seokmin away from her poisonous gaze while you still had the chance. 

But you stood frozen as the princess blabbered on about the paintings looking like nothing compared to the subject, and if she was going to display them she would become a laughing subject. And then she exchanged some secret signal with her guards, and a second later Seokmin was being taken away with them.

You tried to protest and grab onto his arm as he struggled in the arms of guards who were at least a head taller than him. He tried to reach his arm back to you while you ran as fast as you could to keep up, but you barely managed to brush your fingers with his before he was out of sight.

//

You marked that day as the end to your paradise. You never realised how good your life was before. Even if you struggled to earn money, or were ridiculed in the streets, or couldn’t sell a single painting, at least you had Seokmin. And now, you weren’t even allowed that much.

It took you days to process the event. One moment he was with you, the next he was gone. You didn’t hear a single thing regarding him after that. It was quite like he had disappeared from off the planet without a word.

You could only guess that he had been taken to the castle with the princess, but the security for it was unbelievable. There was no way you could get in without a formal invitation, and how would a broke painter like you possibly receive such a thing?

And so, weeks turned into months turned into years and you lived with the loss of Seokmin. A few weeks after the art show, you got a formal invitation to become a painter for the town square, which moved you out of your life of poverty quicker than you could imagine. You could finally be considered a successful painter. Your younger self would’ve been ecstatic, but you barely celebrated the success. It didn’t feel the same without him. 

You wondered what his life was like inside the palace, as you were often stationed just outside it to paint the nobles who walked by. It seemed as if you were so close to Seokmin, yet miles away. You just hoped he was being treated well, though you knew the palace could never give him the happiness that living with you did, and it made your heart ache.

You were sitting on your stool, easel propped upright in front of you like always. You had already finished a few commissions for the day, and were thinking about taking a break for lunch soon. You heard someone approach your spot and sit down on the chair across from you.

“You take commissions, right?” A sweet honey-like voice asked, and you looked up.

“I do. Would you like to be painted, sir?” You answered, eyes pricking with tears. You weren’t quite sure if you were seeing things correctly, or if he was actually sitting in front of you. He nodded, face breaking out in a smile. A tear slipped out, and rolled slowly down your cheek— your vision blurring from the warm tears.

Seokmin panicked and reached forward, wiping away your tears as if it was second nature. He crouched in front of you, clasping your hands in his and rubbing his thumbs over your knuckles slowly. 

“Just take a few deep breaths for me.” He instructed softly and you tried to follow them, breathing in shakily and exhaling as another sob escaped you. 

Seokmin’s brow furrowed and he looked around until he found your glass of water, giving it to you quickly. You drank it and wiped away the rest of your tears, holding onto his hand tighter as if he would leave if you let go.

He pulled you closer until your cheek rested against his chest and his arms hugged you tightly. You were able to smile once you focused on the way his heart was beating in his chest. It was racing just like yours.

“You came back.” You whispered.

He nodded, pressing chaste kisses to your forehead and temple and smoothening back your hair. 

“I won’t leave you again. I promise.”

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ skz taglist: @kangtaehyunzzz,, @yeonjuns-bluehair,, @syrxiee2,, @ddenoudepression

#﹒fics 𓈃 ⵌ #dk #dokyeom #seokmin #lee seokmin #svt #seventeen #svt dk #svt dokyeom #svt lee seokmin #svt seokmin #seventeen dk #seventeen dokyeom #seventeen lee seokmin #seventeen seokmin #svt fluff #svt fic #svt dk fluff #svt dk fic #svt dokyeom fluff #svt dokyeom fic #svt seokmin fic #svt seokmin fluff #seventeen fluff #seventeen fic #seventeen dk fluff #seventeen dk fic #seventeen dokyeom fluff #seventeen dokyeom fic #seventeen seokmin fic

[inklessletter]

I absolutely love following along with your art and the process behind it! I'm curious about more behind the scenes stuff, as I have picked up digital art after not having drawn regularly in 10+ years.

When you do your drawings, what steps do you take? Do you use real references? Skeleton sketches? I'd love to know more about how you approach things digitally!

Oooh, first of all, thank you so much @emeraldzephyr! It is such a lovely thing that you decided to pick it up again!

As for how do I organize myself for drawing, every person works with a different procedures and it is important to know what works for you. For me is organization and inspiration.

For me, the most important thing is having references. It is more important than experience, more important than skill and even than inspiration. When you start messing with a blank canvas you need to know first hand where you want to go, or at least, have an idea. I won't likely start drawing without some references pictures. I learnt this when I took classes last year and this is probably the only thing that actually fully stuck.

My main resource for them is Pinterest, and I navigate through it with intent. I also have multiple packs of pictures of models and references that I have purchased in Artstation. Either way, references, to me, are essential and necessary. In Pint for example I have different boards, some for poses or compositions, some other for finishing, some other for colors palettes, or effects, or styles. I may have (and it is likely to be that way) multiple references for a single illustration ("I like the composition of this one, but the color palette of this other one, but the light works incredible in here, and wait, how was exactly the curvature of the nose of Joe Quinn in this perspective...? Shit! Keery's moles!! How were them distributed in the right side of his face? asdfadfs").

So you see, this is the first and the main thing I do. And I am also fattening with pins all my boards anytime I've got the chance (on my way to work, in public transport, waiting in lines, etc.), so I don't run out of ideas.

When it comes to actually drawing, I always make my canvas extra large and fit the main reference there so I don't get it out of sight (probably the one I'm using for composition) and make a first sketch than I later proceed to fix because it is often that I get wrong the proportions or the perspective, and that's okay. I can do five or six layers of sketches and then I do a first lineart that is messy, but it compiles everything that I have from different references. I spend a lot of time with this. Before shit gets serious and you start with colors, it is important for me to be happy with the sketch, or I may work a lot of hours on this particular illustration and you will end up hating it because "fucking shit, that ear is too small, how didn't I see it before!!!! [yes, I have no shame in showing what I think I failed miserably, the next piece was better, and so on. I keep learning everytime. I trust the process in broader aspects of art, not only in piece by piece]).

I create folders for the color process and try to organize the layers in it, first painting them with plain colors in separate layers and then adding layers once the whole illustration is fully coloured, first starting with shading, and then to light.

For me it is really important to play with the different effects of layers, play with opacity, gradients, brushes, tools, etc etc. I always find some effects that I wasn't expecting and the quality of my work will rise up just because I just found something interesting that weren't expecting at all, so, yeah. I play a lot with my software. All the time.

And finally when I am happy with it as a whole, I add a few filters (noise, blurs, etc.) If I want a very specific effect and I don't know how to do it, I have no doubt in stopping for a minute and finding a tutorial that teaches me how to do it (like the flare in this illustration, or the video effect moving color channels in this one). I always keep in mind that I should not get frustrated when I don't know how to do anything because I can always google it and it is a great opportunity to learn something new.

I am so so so sorry if this was too long, and probably it wasn't interesting enough, but that's what I do. And again, I want to make myself clear when I say that there is not a correct way to do things when it comes to art, this is just what works for me. I am no expert, I had to try and fail many many times to find the right approach for me without getting sad or frustrated. I, myself, have reconnected with art not that long ago after a decade, too.

I wish you the best of luck with your reunion with digital art!! Looking forward to seeing your pieces <3

#inklessletter #asks #art process #trust the process #this is the shit i do folks

[terrainofheartfelt]

OH, OH, LIZ!!! any alison and dan hcs? both before and after she left?

stars I think you just get a kick out of putting me in my FEELINGS

(before we get too far along might I direct everyone to S's alison fic because it is IMPORTANT to me <333)

I think dan was a complete mama's boy in the beginning. rufus was still with the band when he was born so during his first few years alison was the parent who was always around. there's that throwaway line in one of the early season where rufus says he had to walk dan to school every day when he was seven -- I think two things happened then: 1) rufus had quit touring because he realized he was missing his kids growing up and 2) that age would have also been when jenny was going to school for an entire day, so that is when alison decided to go back to school, and so she was not around as much as she used to be, and dan was adjusting to that.

that big, oversized brown armchair in the loft living room? that was mom's chair, that's where she would curl up and sketch and listen to records in the evenings, and tiny dan would sit on her lap. she taught him how to read in that chair.

before rufus bought the gallery (with its attached studio space), alison did a lot of painting on the roof. it was a good place for the kids to paint too because making a mess didn't matter.

when the humphreys did buy the gallery and she moved into the studio upstairs, she still had the kids over there to make messes. that one scene in the princess diaries where they throw darts at water balloons that are full of paint? the humphreys soooooooo did that.

nads has put this in a fic and got me thinking about it, but I love the idea of bby dan being his mom's assistant, and taking pride in that, he loved helping her out with stuff.

both alison and rufus were big on letting their kids find their art and feeding it. alison was the first to clock that dan loved storytelling, so when he gravitated to writing she wasn't surprised. In middle school when he told his highschool/college prep counselor he wanted to be a writer, and she told him he should get an education degree instead. dan vented to his mom about it and she got so pissed she started researching prep schools that would make him more competitive in getting into college. and that's how the transfer to st jude's began.

after she left dan was cold for a WHILE. I rewatched the ep where she comes back just the other day and it always kills me how he tears into her because jenny needs her and dad needs her, but he never says what he needs (the eldest daughter jumped out), he tries for a long time not to need her, and finds out he doesn't really. (but, as I've said, the realization that he doesn't need her is one of the things that fuels her leaving. her baby is grown and who is she if she isn't a mom? she runs away to try and find that out)

so the show says dan actually spent his spring break in s1 hanging out with his mom, and jenny is taken to aspen with one of minions so it really is JUST them. so...I have to imagine that there was some sort of detente happening there.

And, canon says she stays the summer looking after the kids while rufus is touring, and I imagine that's the first prolonged time that they have to spend together, and dan is reeling from his breakup and so much has happened since she left that he doesn't really know how to be around her, and nothing is completely fixed by the end of the summer, but it's not as broken as it felt before. (it'll be a while before they find their footing, but this time is what really saves their relationship when things get tough later).

and then he and jenny go to hudson for christmas after jenny has been THROUGH it so she needs Mom more than he does and so dan the eldest daughter sort of just...lets that happen (even though he's broken up with serena like. two more times since he last saw his mom)

and then rufus and lily become a couple and that's AWKWARD bc the kids both really like lily but they know alison doesn't and once again dan doesn't know how to just talk to his mom. he used to have the easiest relationship with her and now he doesn't know what he can or can't say.

dan graduates from high school, and alison's ex-husband is dating his ex rock and roll sweetheart and her ex nemesis, but it's her son's graduation so she still goes, but sits in the back and leaves shortly after the ceremony.

the humphreys kick it in the hamptons at cece's house, but they spend a few days with their mom in hudson, and that's when she properly celebrates dan's graduation. but her kids have an impending rich stepmom, and like how vanessa reacts to the cash and the designer wallet and the hamptons summer plans alison feels WEIRD about it, but unlike vanessa she is not compelled to speak up because what could she even say?

dan we know goes to his mom's for christmas that year, and he's mopey about vanessa and jenny's further from him than ever and his dad just peaced out to telluride with the band? without lily? there was a time when he could talk through ANYTHING with his mom but he has no idea how to get back to that, and alison is too careful around dan now, so she never pushes anymore, but he keeps waiting for her to push :/

and then...the second half of s3 happens, and dan probably says something off hand about visiting jen after she settles in, but the whole summer passes and ~radio silence~ alison worries, but jenny needs her more right now, and she's focused on her.

this is the thing I WONDER about. how does alison hear the milo story? how does jenny? who tells them? certainly not dan. I would bet rufus gives her a call after it's all over, it happens to rufus so fast he probably hadn't worked out what alison did or didn't know until after georgina takes milo away, and then Dan is going through something COMPLETELY different.

interestingly enough, s4 is the first time dan doesn't see his mom at christmas. he decides to stay in new york. alone. maybe he's giving jenny space again? I like to think that alison takes jenny on a trip to florida to visit dan & jen's grandmother, so dan declines because, florida. but maybe also to avoid an interrogation about his summer as a teenage dad? all of 4a is basically about dan denying his grief, and if he had to tell his mom about it, he wouldn't be able to deny it anymore.

in the gap between s4 & s5, dan goes back to hudson mainly to help jenny pack to move to london. and once again, he can hide behind his sister pulling the attention, and mask all he's going through.

he sends her a copy of Inside, and she understands his work well enough not to take the off-handed, one-dimensional portrayal of Amy Hunter personally.

and since we all know canon ends 5 minutes into season 5 episode 22...let's go from there.

Jenny meets Dair the Couple before alison, they stop in in london on their way back from rome. when dan tells alison about his gf, alison calls jenny for the real scoop. jenny doesn't lie, but she tells alison that she should make up her own mind.

but, alison and blair are into like, many similar things. alison loves hitchcock, and art history, and debating the merits of the academy awards, so she starts to like blair almost in spite herself.

and it's that, combined with dan feeling settled in his life for the first time since she left, that lets them really connect again. it's gradual, at first, and never the same as it was, but he's comfortable telling her things now, and she's comfortable asking.

(the only thing they don't talk about is Dan's brother Scott, because that would just be rude. not that alison's the type to hate a kid for existing - she likes serena and eric as people after all, but it's just toooo awkward for all parties involved)

i waffle back and forth on this idea: alison goes back to her maiden name, because she doesn't want to share the same last name as lily. OR, on the other hand, she stubbornly holds on to humphrey even after lily marries rufus, because that's her kids' name damnit, and if it makes lily mad, that's just a bonus.

I don't think alison ever remarries. i think getting married sooo young and losing herself in that keeps her from ever wanting to do it again. (like this alex dude, i think he proposes and she says no). she gives jenny a speech once while she's living in hudson about not getting married too soon and staying in charge of her destiny (which jenny was already gonna but), but she knows that in this respect dan is too like his father to listen. her boy was destined to be a WIFE yk?

thanksgivings belong to the van der humphreys, but alison gets some event around the winter & summer holidays, usually planned around whenever jenny and her partner are in town.

alison makes all sorts of things for dan's babies when they're born (pettily she thinks she can't top lily's resources), but she makes print illustrations to hand and knits blankets and does those sorts of things.

she doesn't go to every book launch, but she's always at her local indie shop on dan's release days to buy a copy, even though he always sends her one anyway.

alison and harold and roman are besties. eleanor is team lily always and forever. but harold and roman find daniel's mother adorable, and she's a treat to talk to about art, even if her taste is, unfortunately, a lot like her son's. too modernist.

#adding a read more because this got LONG #but you know me you can't be surprised #alison humphrey #asks #gg hcs #gg meta #this really just became an alison through the seasons post but i am okay with that #insistonyourcupofstars #ty stars for an excuse to RAMBLE #i've so many thoughts #i am an alison humphrey apologist #i may have more to say but this is long and ya girl is runnin out of steam

[linky-dinks]

"“i need to test out a theory” “..okay?” “i require your help” “how so” “you need to kiss me”"

This :)

Ok uhhh here we go!

Viktor×GN!Reader

“i need to test out a theory” “..okay?” “i require your help” “how so” “you need to kiss me”

The late spring rain patters on the glass doors of your studio. The radio plays some new songs on the local station. Your paintbrush dips into the glob of yellow paint on your palate before dragging along the canvas. You were supposed to head out today to get shopping done, but the weather was just bad enough to deter you, and your in progress painting was neglected.

You hum along to the tunes that you remember until someone starts knocking at your door.

" 's open." You holler and go back to humming, now swinging in time with the beat. 

"Why you leave your door unlocked is beyond me." Viktor says as you hear him push his way in. He drops his bag on a nearby table and you hear several things clatter across the floor, which Viktor curses at. 

"B'cause no one wants to steal from a freak like me." You smile and bend backwards to look at your friend. 

As if to spite you, Viktor grabs one of your empty mugs and puts it in his bag. 

"Looks like there's been a robbery. Shame." He clicks his tongue and shakes his head. 

"Mm. Yes. That mug was my great grandmother's, she was a queen you know, so it's definitely worth all the gold in Piltover." 

Viktor snorts and you crack a grin before setting your brushes down. 

His laugh is what drew you in the first time after all.

You were working in the contemporary wing of the Piltover Arts Museum, installing paintings sent in by some new modern artist. The canvases were all hand-stretched around frames of irregular shapes that made them unwieldy to handle.

You had just gotten done hanging the last piece when a young man walked into the exhibit. He took his time examining every piece and leaned on his crutch when he would roll his ankle or stretch his knee. You kept an eye on him as he moved, ready to answer whatever question he would have. 

You were expecting something along the lines of "How did the artist get such a vibrant blue?" Or "This one is called 'Love Eternal' but there's nothing here?" 

You weren't expecting, "What's your thought on the exhibit?" 

"Excuse me?" You asked.

"Your thoughts? You work here do you not?" 

"I…I do. I think this exhibit it…eccentric." You find the politest way to answer.

He sighs, looks away, then back at you with a smirk, "What a safe answer. But what do you really think?" 

"It's a crock a' shit is what." You state plainly.

And he laughs.

He laughs with his whole body, the sound rings with genuine amusement. 

"Good answer!"

You find yourself smiling, "Okay wise guy, what do you think?"

"I think the artist just wanted to feel self important." 

Now it's your turn to laugh, "I like you, what's your name?"

"Viktor." He holds out his hand and you firmly shake it as you introduce yourself. 

From there the two of you became fast friends. You learned of his position at the academy and your jaw hit the floor when you realized he was one of the Hextech founders. You would listen for hours as he talked through his current progress with his research while you studied his features and sketched them in your book. You would eventually show him your studio where you lived in the commerce district, right above a flower shop run by two wonderful old ladies. And he would complement your paintings and watch as you worked when he needed a quiet place away from the lab. 

You weren't quite sure when the feelings began to develop, but they sure did. You could no longer focus on his words, but rather the movement of his lips. More than once did he visit your dreams, leaving you cold and alone when you awoke. You wanted to tell him about it but…it felt wrong. 

Viktor was your only real friend. As you didn't really find time to meet people between working at the museum and taking sign commissions. He was the only person who seemed to want to know you, who didn't mind your ramblings or off key singing to the radio. It was a friendship you cherished and didn't want to lose. 

"So what brings you all the way out here on such a miserable day?" You ask and place a kettle on the stove.

"I need to test out a theory." He watches you cross the floor. 

"Ohhhkay." You shuffle your current commission out of the way so you can pull out your coffee table to the center of the room.

"I require your help." He accepts the mug of tea you hand him.

"How so?" You plop down on your couch.

Viktor takes a sip then a steadying breath.

"You need to kiss me." 

Tea sputters out of your mouth and you cough violently, "WHAT?"

"I need your help with this theory." He sits next to you, knee brushing yours.

"How does--wh--kiss?! You?" 

"Yes. Me." You notice his hands balling into fists at his sides. 

Your cheeks heat up. You've dreamed about kissing Viktor for a while now, but the way he was asking? He seemed unsure and nervous and--

"Oh what the hell." You grab him by the shoulders and peck him on the lips. 

Your heart flips. You notice Viktor staring at you with his face turning an adorable shade of red. 

"I…I think I've come to a conclusion." He blinks a few times. 

"Please share. I'm dying to know what was going through your head." 

"You…have feelings for me." 

You freeze. 

Viktor leans in close to you, "That's good. Because I don't know what I would do if my own affections weren't reciprocated." 

He cups your cheek with a slender hand and pulls you back in for a longer, slower, gentle kiss. 

[moononmyfloor]

Hi Producer (正好遇见你) Infodump

Disclaimer: I have no idea about the accuracy of the information shared in the drama, I'm merely transcribing for future reference purposes. Proceed with caution!

.

Ep 20-21: Woodblock Printing

"Modern printing technology can print 10000 pictures in an hour. It only takes months to train an operator. With woodblock printing, each block is carved by hand. It takes five years to train a master craftsman. Eight years to replicate 'Along the River in the Qingming Festival'. From planning to finishing, 'The Night Revels of Han Xizai' took 20 years. Though labor-intensive and time consuming, the result is lifelike and cannot be done by machines."

.

Ancient Painting Mounting

Rather than screenshotting I'll link the timestamp as there's a detailed demo segment.

When the recipe of glue hadn't been modified, moldy glue had a high rate of causing cancer. Therefore, many professional framers were diagnosed with occupational hazards like cancer.

.

Traditional Chinese watermark printing

Slowly adapted to the palace, it went from religious uses to secularity.

Shouhuazhai uses the technique of assembled block gonghua prints as foundation and combined it with painting, carving and printing to recreate many renowned paintings.

"The number of color schemes will decide how many blocks are needed. During the sketching process, a celluloid block is used as a trace cover for the original work. A very thin sheet of yanpi paper is put on top of the already sketched celluloid block for second-time sketching.

Edge cutting of Block carving is the second step of the technique. It is to paste the sketched yanpi paper on the woodblock for carving.

Brush printing is the last step of this technique. After the carving of blocks is complete, the carvings are traced into pictures. The paper, ink, and colors used in printing must be the same as the original work. The ratio of paint, water, and glue is very important. To have the same degree of saturation and shades as the original work, they usually have to go through countless trials. 

To comprehensively recreate ancient paintings, the meaning and spirit of the original painting must be captured. This requires more than the honing of skills.

Due to the temperature and humidity, old paintings and replicas must be handled with great care. When the paintings are too big the connecting point will easily split. This step is called "shang qiang," meaning putting it on the wall. "

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Emperor Yongzheng's Twelve Beauties

The drama takes this set of famous paintings as a subject and weaves an elaborate story about how they are based on Emperor Yongzheng's beloved Imperial Consort Dunsu of the Nian family (yes, Hua Fei from Zhenhuan Zhuan/Empresses in the Palace), how she had these likenesses done while sick and in seclusion, to reassure the emperor that she's healthy and happy. She has the original paintings "edited" and replicated as in drawn-over to hide the stains of her blood splattering on one spot from a coughing fit, and has her expression fixed to look smiley etc. This is highly likely pure fiction, from what I've gathered the details about the models of these 12 panels are unknown.

Also, additional meta: The drama did a great job recreating one of those 12 looks, but they made it seem like Lady Nian donned this hair just to pose for this picture, that her regular hair is with a Liangbatou.

In her normal getup in the poster and flashback scene she seems to be wearing a Changshan and a skirt, for the painting she's wearing a pifeng over what seems to be a Changshan tucked under the skirt.

Ref:

This is really nice because this is what the Han noblewomen wore in the era (Manchu women wore a single layer floor length robe with no raised collars, and hair in braided buns), and Lady Nian is Han. But the hair puzzles me. From what I heard Liangbatou is a Manchu-exclusive hairstyle, and ofc a million Qing harem drama predecessors didn't give a damn about mishmashing the stylings disregarding the era and ethnicities, BUT this drama already had the right hair done! Why change it back to something from the future and something she wouldn't wear regardless the time?

More straight-to-the-point documentary segment about what woodblock printing is about from 34:12 onwards here.

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More Hi Producer posts

#cdrama #chinese drama #chinese history #ming dynasty #qing dynasty #woodblock printing #chinese paintings #hi producer #正好遇见你

[mellowshipsu]

Hellooo, could you ship me as well? ☺️ I’m an introverted afab girl. I’m really shy even though I seem kind of like an extrovert when you first meet me. I’m friendly and bubbly and if I’m really close to someone I like being childish with them and vice versa, I also like mothering my friends. I don’t do well with big crowds. I like drawing, reading, listening to history geeks ramble on about history and going for walks in places with as little people as possible. I also love it if I make someone laugh, although sometimes I tend to get a little too sarcastic. As a last thing, I’m the type of person who, after roasting a friend in friendly banter, I start apologizing without even giving them a chance to reply, my anxious mind can’t take the thought of possibly having hurt their feelings 😅. Thank you in advance for the match-up!!!

Oh shy maiden, you remind him of a princess from long ago.

The beautiful maiden was cursed in her sleep by a fae, or supposedly that's how the story goes.

You remind him a bit of himself also, caring for others.

He takes care of a prince and two little ones who act like brothers.

In large crowds that you hate he will always find ya.

He'll whisk you away in his arms, your match is---

Lilia!

(Image by: twisted-rubbish-bin)

He first noticed you eating alone in the cafeteria. Sebek mentioned that you were curious about their fae history and listened intently to Sebek. Oh? Who is better with fae history than this old man? Curious he teleported above you and noticed you were sketching a rather handsome man. He called out to you, surprising you of course before you noticed he was hovering behind you upside down. He mentioned he liked your drawing and asked who it was.

"Oh. Sebek told me about some fae history and he mentioned the Great Fairy Devil - Vanrouge."

Lilia's eyes widened and his heart began to beat faster. Oh! That was him! Of course he was more handsome than the drawing, but he thought you did a pretty good job! He offers to teach you more about fae history, after all who would know more than him? And afterwards your friendship bloomed.

He likes surprising you with gifts of more sketchbooks, pencils, paints, even the rarest mummy brown paint! When you want to walk around, he will accompany you. When he's mischievous he'll move side to side to confuse you, sometimes he'll steal a kiss on the cheek and then chuckle at your blushing face. Lilia enjoys having you to himself, but it's important for you to get along with his son Silver as well! But after he sees how motherly you are towards Silver, Sebek, even Master Malleus, his worries melts away. He's in love with you and maybe one day you two can marry? It's a foolish dream he admits. He's over 500 years old and you are a mortal but... You made him believe he was human and you made him experience his first love.

He at least wants to try. "♬♫♪I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream~!♪♫♬ A princess from long ago sang that song. Perfect for a wedding, don't you think?"

#mellowshipsyuu #mellowshipsyou #mellowshipsu #anonship #twisted wonderland #twisted oc #twst lilia #lilia x reader #lilia vanrouge x reader #lilia vanrouge #oc x canon