#I would love to pull out this one artist on art station as an example | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kaibacorpintern · 3 years

Text

the wound

word count: ~2500

summary: kaiba has some pointed thoughts about yuugi’s recent cooking injury. platonic rivalshipping. post-DSOD

a/n: a woman has too many unfinished one-shots in her google drive so i’m making time to finish them instead of overthinking them (and never finishing them.) yes this is about cooking and yuugi and kaiba and depression. yes i have already written about this. whatever man. enjoy.

++++

Same time as usual. Two in the afternoon, on Saturdays. Same place as usual. The picnic table under the massive oak in the park, two blocks away from the Kame Game Shop and twenty minutes by subway from the station under the Kaiba Corp tower. Seto took the subway mostly out of scientific interest, taking a professional curiosity in the world Atem had wanted to live in, and because Atem had told him to enjoy it. What had he seen here, in the faded orange seats and bright pastel advertisements and the quiet scattering of human-not-Puzzle bodies? What had he felt, as the subway swayed around the curve in the tunnel, unseen in the darkness and known only by its momentum, making everyone sway with it? Hands curled around handrails and books. Fingers on phones. The train burst into daylight. The side of that girl’s head against the glass, watching Domino slide by with an equally glassy look in her eyes. Two layers between her and the city. Missing someone? Or just bored of life?

He slunk off the subway, unnoticed and unknown, in an immaculate white hoodie and aviators, stainless steel water bottle dangling from one hand. Yuugi was waiting for him at the park entrance, as usual, wearing some kind of fashionable belted dark purple romper, with the usual tote bag full of games hanging from one hand. On the other hand, something unusual: his fingers stuck out from a half-formed mitten of gauze, giving his slender hand a clumsy, snub-nosed silhouette. He was having trouble holding his iced tea, thumb and fingers alligator-clamped around the lid. Someone had drawn a pair of flowers in pink marker across the back of the mitten, a bumper sticker of cheerful admonition: 🌺 BE CAREFUL! 🌺 Not Yuugi’s handwriting.

“Hey,” Yuugi said. “How’re you doing? You sleeping better?”

Seto pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head, over his bangs, crown-like.

“On and off,” he said, which was true. His nights were now vast, tossing oceans of insomnia between shores of just good-enough sleep. Last night he’d simply given up trying to swim and instead, for the first time in years, read a book for amusement instead of education. Some sci-fi novel Yuugi had mentioned and Seto bought on a lark from the bookstore in the subway station. Most of his amusement came from correcting the bad science in the margins, until he woke up at dawn with his glasses bent and his bed linens blotted like calico cats with black ink. “What happened to your hand?”

“Oh, this?” Yuugi said, lifting his mitten-hand. “So, I was making a ceviche yesterday…”

He told the story as they walked through the park to the oak tree: the protagonist was a ripe avocado, its tough, disingenuous alligator hide concealing a soft, buttery-green flesh. The arc of the conflict: avocado against knife, a natural antagonist. The climax: the knife, ignorant of its own bluntness and made arrogant by the shine of its own steel, slid off its trajectory like a failing rocket and plunged at speed through plant skin and plant flesh straight into human skin and human flesh. The resolution: two identical cuts, a half-opened avocado and a half-opened hand. Man versus fruit.

"There was so much blood Otogi almost fainted," Yuugi said, thumping the tote bag onto the wooden table and straddling the bench sideways. "So we went to the ER and they stitched me up, and then when we got back home I finished making the ceviche. What game? You pick."

"Hive," Seto said. He couldn’t stop looking at his bandaged hand. It drew his attention like a glitch on a screen, an inescapable aberration. “Does it bother you?”

“I mean, it hurts, but whatever, you know?” Yuugi said, digging into his tote bag for the drawstring bag of wooden tokens. He spilled them onto the table in a clattering cascade of wood against wood. They rapidly sorted them out. “It’s not my first cooking accident.”

Seto raised his eyebrows. It was a testament to the amount of time they’d been spending together lately - every Saturday afternoon for a handful of hours, until he made some excuse to leave, and Yuugi accepted it not because he was gullible but because he knew Seto had a battery and it ran low - that he didn’t even need to ask a question, and Yuugi simply provided an answer, with examples.

“So, here, I was frying onion rings for Jounouchi, and I splattered hot oil all over my arm,” Yuugi said, lifting his hand and pointing out a haphazard constellation of white scars over his forearm. “Then here - I was baking cookies for Shizuka’s birthday and touched the tray fresh out of the oven with my bare hand, like a moron, I dueled Jounouchi after and drawing my cards was like, ow - ” he waggled his fingertips - “and this one is another burn - ” a long white ink-stroke across his wrist - “from when I was making ramen for Anzu, ‘cause she was home from New York. And this one - ”

More interesting than how and what were who. This burn for Honda’s birthday barbecue, that cut for Otogi’s game night. A violent kiss between blade and fingers behind a frothy veil of soapy water, cleaning up after a movie night. Another spray of oil splatters, frying tempura for his mother. A lot of meals for her, his grandfather, Jounouchi. Every scar Yuugi showed him had a name attached, almost all of them below the elbows, as though collected there for easy reference. Seto frowned as Yuugi's fingers flew over this map of friendships and family, their routes landmarked by midnight breakfasts, lazy brunches, beautifully-wrapped bento boxes. Something about it tasted sour to him, his tongue held tight and bitten between his teeth. All of his own scars had only one name.

“You probably think I’m a klutz,” Yuugi said, with a sheepish smile, sliding one of the wooden tokens into place around their hive.

“I told you to stop doing that,” Seto said briskly. “I’m not some dumpster for all your insecurities. You think you’re a klutz. You have no idea what I think.”

“I - ” Yuugi started, and huffed, with another smile, his chosen defense against causing offense. “Sorry, force of habit - ”

“Forget it. You don’t ever cook for yourself?”

“Duh. Of course I do. And I eat what I make with everyone else. It’s not like I make a pizza for all my friends and just sit there watching them while they eat it,” Yuugi said. “But I like cooking for people. I love... nourishing them. Knowing they’re not going to go to bed hungry or anything, and I can make something for them that makes them feel good.”

Seto tapped a wooden token on the table, under the guise of thinking about the game but really thinking about the kind of friends Yuugi made, and how he made them. Jounouchi. Honda. Atem. Himself.

“Did you ever cook for Atem?” he said, because he couldn’t help it, and braced against the soft look that came his way, with a default smile, a pre-emptive look, I'm fine. this didn’t hurt me smile.

“Yeah,” Yuugi said. “I did.”

Like what? Did he like it? Did he help cook or did he just watch? Just the two of you or with everyone else? Tell me. What did you nourish him with? What do you think he’s eating now? I ate pomegranates when I was there. Bread and honey and figs and garlic and beer. Nothing I ate makes me spend six months with the living and six months with the dead so instead I trade off day and night. Sometimes I leave for a few minutes, mid-afternoon, and I can hear my own name clattering through me as Mokuba calls me back. Seto kept all these comments to himself. There was only so greedy he could get with Yuugi’s grief; only so much he could share of his own.

He slid his wooden token into place around the honeycomb of pieces. Yuugi swiftly countered. Seto lapsed back into thought.

Yuugi took a quiet slurp of his iced tea, gave it a shake, rattling the ice until it settled, and took another, watching ducks paddle into the reeds at the edge of the pond and paddle out, a portrait of calm patience. It had taken him some time to get comfortable with Seto’s long silences. In concession, Seto made the effort to shorten them.

It was the kind of day where stepping into the shade made a difference. The air was darker and cooler under the trees and the flowering bushes that lined the park paths, while the rest of the earth baked in a cloudless dry heat. Seto made his move and pushed the sleeves of his sweatshirt up to his elbows.

“How about I cook for you sometime?” Yuugi said brightly, nudging another wooden token against the others with a single fingertip.

Seto scowled, not at the suggestion but at the way his thoughts splintered apart, like two halves of a wooden log split by an axe. He had no doubt Yuugi would pull out the stops for him, slave and sweat for hours over some seventeen-course feast of modern art finger foods. Or maybe something cozy that made him feel like he was just nineteen instead of nineteen and exhausted. Whatever it was, Yuugi would put in the effort. But.

“No,” he said, and made sure to clarify this refusal before the clouds finished gathering over Yuugi’s face in a dejected overcast grey: “I don’t need one of your scars named after me.”

“I - what?” Yuugi said, flashing him an uneven, sideways smile, and Seto felt a flicker of irritation. Atem would’ve understood immediately. But, in fairness to Yuugi, he was being a little obtuse.

“You have a way of suffering for your friends,” he explained. “And I think part of you likes it.”

Yuugi straightened up in his seat, suddenly electric.

“What the hell? It’s just cooking,” he said, with a stormy flash of lightning in his violet eyes. “You’re reading into this way too much. I cook because it’s fun and artistic and I like feeding people, not because I like… self-flagellating or something. Seriously, you can’t just spout off - ”

“You misunderstand me,” Seto countered. “There’s no reason to… hurt yourself on my behalf. If you want to eat together, I’d rather go to that kitschy little ice cream place down the block and get a fucking waffle cone. I don’t want you unable to duel because you burned your hand trying to pan-fry a steak for me.”

Yuugi opened his mouth, brows furrowing together… and scoffed, a surprisingly affectionate sound. He rolled his eyes around the park, his gaze swinging across the sunlit grass, and looked back at Seto.

“Okay. First of all, I've mastered the art of the pan-fried steak, and you should try it,” he said. “Second of all, what makes you think you’re not someone worth suffering for?”

Seto snorted, masking his inwards flinch. Mokuba already suffered enough, thank you. And for what? A ghost of a brother. A black hole, a perpetual collapsing. Things went in and they crossed the event horizon and the pressure squeezed them for eternity without ever letting them reach the center and nothing ever came back out, as much as it wanted to. The scientific term for such distortion of effort, stretched to an immeasurable length without breaking, was spaghettification. Even a black hole needs to eat!

He slid one of his tokens back and forth with his fingertip, short, scraping jerks of wood against wood, thinking.

“Direct attack on my life points,” he muttered.

“Yeah, you also got me pretty good,” Yuugi chuffed. “Let’s call it even. But relax. It’s just cooking. I love the process, and I love the result, and I love doing stuff for my friends. It’s not some big… metaphorical… symbol of something. This - " he lifted his mittened hand - "doesn't mean anything except I mishandled a knife. It’s not like… you and Duel Disks.”

But Seto also loved the process and the result and more than once he'd injured himself, machining parts or fiddling with wires that, like all wild living things, bit back in fear of his touch. He splayed his hand over the table, watching blood drip onto his work station, knowing he should get up, clean it, bandage it. But it was only two in the morning and there was work to do.

“The Duel Disk is a symbol of Kaiba Corp’s future,” he said, closing his hand into a fist. "I know what you've done for your friends. I’ve seen it. Doesn't that merit the same... mythology?"

Yuugi gave him a funny look, half skeptical, half knowing.

"That’s nice of you, thank you," he said, and an uncomfortable blush crawled up Seto’s neck. Sometimes he did understand. “Are you sure you don't want me to cook for you?”

Seto opened his mouth, closed it, folded his arms on the table. He felt like he was trying to explain the feeling of the color blue, or the arguments for why numbers do or don’t exist, or what it was like to dream. Well, you see, the last time I saw Atem, he told me - correction: the last time as in the most recent link in a chain of time, not the last time as in the end of the line, because he also told me we’d see each other again - he told me to enjoy this, and you know me, I never do what I’m told. And I can’t do what he told me to do because he was my friend, and if friendship is just getting caught in a great sticky web of small cuts and large cuts and burns and bruises and tears and suffering because they’re here and suffering because they’re not, then just go ahead and let the spider drink me up and dump what’s left of me in the dirt. I am so sick and tired of pain. Mine. Yours. Ours.

But he did enjoy these afternoons. He was enjoying the process of making this: he had more with Yuugi now than he ever had before. He reached across the table and took Yuugi’s bandaged hand between his own hands, running his thumb carefully over the inked warning. Yuugi's hand relaxed in his. Yes, Yuugi was wrong. It was the same as Duel Disks. In any act of creation there was pain, there was power, and there was glory. What difference was there between a hologram of a dragon and a steaming bowl of soup? Both nourished something. Both were an answer to hunger. Discovering an emptiness and filling it.

“Okay,” he said, releasing Yuugi’s hand. “Alright. Cook for me.”

“Yeah?!” Yuugi said, with rising excitement, beaming. “What should I make? What do you like?”

“Make me a steak,” Seto said, smiling. It felt good to see Yuugi smile. His hypothesis neatly undermined. See? It’s not all damage. “No. Surprise me.”

#fanfiction #intern memo #rivalshipping #a lite snack... once i've written up a few more i'll cross post to AO3 #okay good Night i am. wiped the fuck out

73 notes · View notes

stereostevie · 3 years

Link

“I sacrificed the quality of my life to help people experience something that had been unreachable before then,” Grammy winner says in rare interview

In the late Nineties, the story of popular music became the story of Ms. Lauryn Hill. She first rose to fame as an actress and a member of the Fugees, whose second and final album, 1996’s The Score, remains one of that decade’s biggest albums. Then, at just 22 years old, Hill took a huge leap and decided to go solo. Released in 1998, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill filled clubs, radio stations, and MTV with her smooth voice and biting rhymes. Hill herself became as big as her music, appreciated in the fashion world and sought after by movie executives for roles she would eventually decline.

Miseducation took home five Grammy Awards and led to a huge tour. But by the early 2000s, Ms. Hill left behind the fame and the industry almost entirely. She has never released another studio album; her last full-length release was MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 from 2002, where she performed new songs in an acoustic style to a largely tepid reception.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill lives on. More than 20 years after its release, it is still regarded as one of the best albums ever made, landing at Number 10 on Rolling Stone’s voter-based 500 Greatest Albums of All Time List this past fall. Many of her songs continue to permeate culture, like the single “Ex-Factor,” which has been sampled or interpolated on major hits by Drake and Cardi B. Beyond that, the album’s impact on multiple generations of musicians is unmistakeable. Everyone from Rihanna to St. Vincent has cited Hill as having heavily influenced their own music.

The years that followed Miseducation have been complicated. After the album’s release, some of Hill’s collaborators filed a lawsuit claiming she did not properly credit them for their contributions; that suit was settled out of court three years later on undisclosed terms. In 2012, she was charged with tax fraud, and went on to serve three months in prison. More recently, she has found herself back on the road more frequently, sporadically releasing music but mostly basking in the collective love and power of Miseducation through special performances of the album.

For the latest episode of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums podcast, Ms. Hill granted a rare interview on the making of Miseducation as well as what happened after. Over e-mail, she spoke candidly about protecting her family and the little support she had after her first album cycle ended. Excerpts from the interview can be heard in the podcast episode, available on Amazon Music, along with tales from several of the musicians who were part of those sessions, like “Commissioner Gordon” Williams, Lenesha Randolph, and Vada Nobles. Ms. Hill’s written responses are here in full.

When you began recording Miseducation, you were 22 and already experiencing immense success with the Fugees. What were you hoping to prove with this album? As far as proving myself goes, I think that’s a larger and more involved story best told at a later time, but I will say that the success of the Fugees absolutely set up The Miseducation to be as big and as well received as it was. When I decided that I wanted to try a solo project I was met with incredible resistance and discouragement from a number of places that should have been supportive, so that had a motivating factor, but it was less about proving myself and more about creating something I wanted to see and hear exist in the world. There were ideas, notions and concepts that I wanted to exist, I set off in a particular direction and kept going. Initially, I intended to work with other producers and artists but found that what I wanted to say and hear may have been too idiosyncratic at the time to just explain it and have someone else try to make it. It had to be made in a more custom manner. The team of people who would ultimately be involved, we all witnessed as it took form. It was unique and exciting.

You’ve said you found yourself especially creative during your pregnancy. How did that experience shape you as a songwriter?

It’s a wild thing to say but I was left alone during my pregnancies for the most part. It was like all of the people with all of their demands had to check themselves when I was pregnant. The resulting peace may have contributed to that sense of feeling more creative. I was pregnant with my first child during the making of The Miseducation and the situation was complicated, so I was motivated to find more stability and safety for myself and for my child, that definitely pushed me to disregard what appeared as limitations. If I struggled to fight for myself, I had someone else to fight for. This also introduced my first son’s father, Rohan Marley, into the picture, who at that time, was a protective presence. If there were people or forces attempting to prevent me from creating, he played a role in helping to keep that at bay.

During those times especially, I always wanted to be a motivator of positive change. It’s in all of my lyrics, that desire to see my community get out of its own way, identify and confront internal and external obstacles, and experience the heights of Love and self-Love that provoke transformation. I sang from that place and chose to share the joy and ecstasy of it, as well as the disappointments, entanglements and life lessons that I had learned at that point. I basically started out as a young sage lol.

When you look back on it now, is Miseducation the album you intended it to be? I’ve always been pretty critical of myself artistically, so of course there are things I hear that could have been done differently, but the LOVE in the album, the passion, its intention is, to me, undeniable. I think my intention was simply to make something that made my foremothers and forefathers in music and social and political struggle know that someone received what they’d sacrificed to give us, and to let my peers know that we could walk in that truth, proudly and confidently. At that time, I felt like it was a duty or responsibility to do so. I saw the economic and educational gaps in black communities and although I was super young myself, I used that platform to help bridge those gaps and introduce concepts and information that “we” needed even if “we” didn’t know “we” wanted it yet. Of course I’m referring to the proverbial “we.” These things had an enormous value to me and I cherished them from a very young age.

I also think the album stood apart from the types and cliches that were supposed to be acceptable at that time. I challenged the norm and introduced a new standard. I believe The Miseducation did that and I believe I still do this — defy convention when the convention is questionable. I had to move faster and with greater intention though than the dysfunctional norms that were well-established and fully funded then. I was apparently perceived by some as making trouble and being disruptive rather than appreciated for introducing solutions and options to people who hadn’t had them, for exposing beauty where oppression once reigned, and demonstrating how well these different cultural paradigms could work together. The warp speed I had to move at in order to defy the norm put me and my family under a hyper-accelerated, hyper-tense, and unfortunately under-appreciated pace. I sacrificed the quality of my life to help people experience something that had been unreachable before then. When I saw people struggle to appreciate what that took, I had to pull back and make sure I and my family were safe and good. I’m still doing that.

This album permeated culture in a way that few albums have before it existed and made you a massive star. How were you handling the public gaze at the time? There were definitely things I enjoyed about stardom, but there were definitely things I didn’t enjoy. I think most people appreciate being recognized and appreciated for their work and sacrifice. That, to me, is a given, but living a real life is essential for anyone trying to stay connected to reality and continue making things that truly affect people. This becomes increasingly harder to do in the “space” people try to place “stars” in.

The pedestal, to me, is as much about containment and control as it is adulation. Finding balance, clarity and sobriety can be very hard for some to maintain. For example, being yes’d to death isn’t good, and people fear stardom can only result in this, but if the actual answer is yes, being told no just to not appear a yes-man is silly. Never being told no if the answer is no by people afraid to disappoint will obviously also distort the mirror in which we view ourselves. On the other hand, a person with a vision can be way ahead, so people may say no with conviction and resist what they fear only to find out later that they were absolutely wrong.

The idea of artist as public property, I also always had a problem with that. I agreed to share my art, I’m not agreeing necessarily to share myself. The entitlement that people often feel, like they somehow own you, or own a piece of you, can be incredibly dangerous. I chafe under any kind of control like that and resist expectations that suggest I should somehow dumb-down and be predictable to make people feel comfortable rather than authentically express myself. I also resist unrealistic expectations placed on me by people who would never place those same requirements on themselves. I can be as diplomatic and as patient as I possibly can be. I can’t, however, sell myself short through constant self-deprecation and shrinking.

“The entitlement that people often feel, like they somehow own you, or own a piece of you, can be incredibly dangerous.”

Is there a version of “Lauryn Hill” that you feel people expected of you, and how did that compare to how you saw yourself? Absolutely, which I touched upon in the answers before this one. Life is life, to be lived, experienced and enjoyed with all of its dynamism and color. If you do something well that people enjoy, often they want the same experience over and over. A real person can be stifled and their growth completely stunted trying to do this without balance. It’s not a fair thing to ask of anyone. We all have to grow, we all have to express ourselves with as much fullness and integrity as we can manage. The celebrity is often treated like a sacrifice, the fatted calf, then boxed in and harshly judged for very normal and natural responses to abnormal circumstances.

I saw someone lambasted once for discussing episodes of anxiety before going on stage, as if anxiety was only a condition of the non-famous. It was absurd, like someone with a record out can’t get a common cold. Someone in love with the art doesn’t not experience fear or anxiety, they just do their best to transcend it or work beyond it so that the art or the passion can be made manifest. Some days are better than others. For some people it gets easier, for some it doesn’t. The unfairness, the harshness was excessive to me. I didn’t like how I was being treated at a certain point. I just wasn’t being treated well and definitely not in accordance with someone who’d contributed what I had. I had a ton of jealousy and competitiveness to contend with. That can exhaust or frustrate your efforts to make anything besides primal scream music, 😊.

Provoking that kind of aggravation was probably intentional. You have to find reasons to still do it, when you’re exposed to the ugly. People often think it’s ok to project whatever they want to on someone they perceive as having “it all” or “having so/too much.” Hero worship can be an excuse for not taking care of your own sh#t. The flip side of that adulation can turn severely ugly, aggressive, and hostile if people make another person responsible for their sense of self-worth. You can either take that abuse or say no to it. After subjecting myself to it for years, I started to say no, and then no turned into hell no, then hell no turned into f#ck no…you get my point. 😊

If you could talk to yourself at 22 now, what would you say? I’d share the things I do now with my 22-year-old self. If I had known what I know now, things would probably have unfolded differently. I would have continued to invest in people but I would have made sure I had people with the love, strength, and integrity around me to really keep their eye on the prize and my well-being. The world is full of seduction and if they can’t seduce you, they go after the people you love or depend on in some way. I would have with greater understanding tried to do more to insulate myself and my loved ones from that kind of attack.

youtube

Looking back on that period of your life, do you have any regrets?

I have some periods of woe, some periods of sorrow and great pain, yes, but regret is tough because I ended up with a clarity I might not have been able to achieve any other way. I would have done a few things differently though if I could go back. I would have done my best to shield myself so that I could better shield my children. I would have rejected the manipulation, unfair force and pressure put on me much earlier. I would have benefitted from having more awareness about the dangers of fame. I would have been more communicative with everyone truly involved with The Miseducation and fought hard for the importance of candid expression. I would have demanded what I needed and removed people antagonistic to that sooner than I did.

You have released music since Miseducation and have continued to play live. Do you ever foresee releasing another full-length studio album? The wild thing is no one from my label has ever called me and asked how can we help you make another album, EVER…EVER. Did I say ever? Ever! With The Miseducation, there was no precedent. I was, for the most part, free to explore, experiment and express. After The Miseducation, there were scores of tentacled obstructionists, politics, repressing agendas, unrealistic expectations, and saboteurs EVERYWHERE. People had included me in their own narratives of THEIR successes as it pertained to my album, and if this contradicted my experience, I was considered an enemy.

Artist suppression is definitely a thing. I won’t go too much into it here, but where there should have been overwhelming support, there wasn’t any. I began touring because I needed the creative outlet and to support myself and my family. People were more interested in breaking me or using me to battery-power whatever they had going on than to support my creativity. I create at the speed and flow of my inspiration, which doesn’t always work in a traditional system. I have always had to custom build what I’ve needed in order to get things done. The lack of respect and willingness to understand what that is, or what I need to be productive and healthy, doesn’t really sit well with me. When no one takes the time to understand, but only takes the time to count the money the fruit of this process produces, things can easily turn bad. Mistreatment, abuse, and neglect happen. I wrote an album about systemic racism and how it represses and stunts growth and harms (all of my albums have probably addressed systemic racism to some degree), before this was something this generation openly talked about. I was called crazy. Now…over a decade later, we hear this as part of the mainstream chorus. Ok, so chalk some of it up to leadership and how that works — I was clearly ahead, but you also have to acknowledge the blatant denial that went down with that. The public abuse and ostracizing while suppressing and copying what I had done, (I protested) with still no real acknowledgement that all of that even happened, is a lot.

“I wrote an album about systemic racism… before this was something this generation openly talked about. I was called crazy.”

I continue to tour and share with audiences all over the world, but I also full-time work on the trauma, stifling, and stunting that came with all of that and how my family and I were affected. In many ways, we’re living now, making up for years where we couldn’t be as free as we should have been able to. I had to break through a ton of unjust resistance, greed, fear and just plain human ugliness. Little else can rival freedom for me. If being a superstar means living a repressed life where people will only work with you or invest in your work if they can manipulate and control you, then I’m not sure how important music gets made without some tragic set of events following. I don’t subscribe to that.

Lastly, I appreciate the people who were moved by this body of work, which really represented a lifetime — up to that point — of love, experience, wisdom, family and community investment in me, the summation of my experience from relationships, my dreams, inspirations, aspirations and God’s ever-present grace and Love in my life through the lens of my 20-something but wise-sage existence, lol. I dreamed big, I didn’t think of limits, I really only thought of the creative possibilities and addressing the needs as I saw them at that time. I also had the support of a community of talented artists, thinkers, and doers, friends and family around me. Their primary efforts (THEN) seemed to be to help clear a path and to help protect. However, when you effectively create something powerful enough to move the bulls#t out of the way, all kinds of forces and energies may not like that. They may seek to corrupt and discourage, to disrupt and distract, to divide, and sabotage…but we bore witness to the fact that this happened — a young, black woman through hip-hop culture, a legacy of soul, Spirit and an appreciation for education and educating others communicated love and timeless and necessary messages to the world.

The music business can be an industry of entanglements, where a small number of people are expected to be responsible for a very large number of people. It’s hard to find fairness in a situation like that. Now, I look for as much equity and fairness as possible. I appreciate being loved for my contributions to music, but it’s important to be loved for who you are as a person just as much, and that can be a delicate but extremely important balance to achieve. Experiencing that is important to me.

#black women #fame #hip-hop #lauryn hill #ms. lauryn hill #music #music industry #r&b #robert glasper #rollingstone #soul #the fugees #the miseducation of lauryn hill

6 notes · View notes

evie26blog · 4 years

Text

Inspirational Artist Links: Performance Art Responses

Electric Stimulus to Face, by Daito Manabe

Manabe’s electric stimulus to the face experiment was really interesting to me. I think that this video demonstrates that although we are all unique, we are all biologically the same. Yes, we vary genetically with different conditions and so on, but our bodies function the same way. Four different people had the electrodes placed in the same spots and each one of their nerves reacted the same way to the stimuli. This point was made even more clear by the way that he synced all four videos perfectly with each other. You can watch all four people have the exact same response to the same stimuli at the same time.

Alter Bahnhof, by Janet Cardiff

When I read this description of this video it got me really excited. It was more anticlimactic than I was expecting and I think that it would be more impactful to experience firsthand. For me, the slow movement through the station failed to grab my interest and I continuously found myself getting distracted. I do believe that the concept is fascinating and I wish that I had the opportunity to experience this piece the way that it was intended to be experienced.

Bike Lanes, by Casey Neistat

I must admit that the first time Neistat ran into the construction equipment I laughed harder than I should have. It wasn’t funny to me because he was possibly injured but because I knew what he was trying to say. If he was going to get a ticket for biking outside of the designated lane when it was unsafe to do so, then he was going to plow through obstacles that were placed in those lanes. His witty, sarcastic response to an unfair ticket was pure gold in my opinion.

Legend & Queen, by Candace Breitz

What really stood out to me about these videos was the different ways that people reacted to the music. You could tell when someone was truly moved by the lyrics and when others couldn’t think of the words but still moved with the rhythm. These videos showed that music affects us all differently while bringing us together at the same time. I especially liked the way that Breitz laid out the videos. By filming thirty people’s individual reactions to the same song and then displaying them all together, the viewer is more inclined to move their focus from the entire group to then each individual over the course of an hour.

Meat Joy, by Carolee Schneemann

This video did not resonate with me at all. I understand that Schneemann’s purpose behind this piece was to fight the social norm at the time but I had a hard time identifying what those norms were. This video is more than twice as old as I am and I think that the older it gets; the more meaning is lost on younger generations. I do think that it would be interesting to watch the video with someone that lived in Paris during that time to see what their reaction would be and maybe gain some insight.

Vanessa Beecroft Interview & VB40, by Vanessa Beecroft

Beecroft’s use of the female figure as an art form is inspiring. She uses a controlled environment to display these women in a way that forces to viewer to appreciate their form. The models aren’t allowed to speak or act in any way and they can only move once tired. Each position of the body is considered art, which I think is beautiful. Beecroft uses mostly nude models to evoke a sense of discomfort in the audience; she wants them to feel unsure of how to approach her work. VB40 resonated with me because it shows these women that are all nude except for red tights and heels. To me, the nude part represented vulnerability but the bold color of the tights and the heels said power. I think that Beecroft was trying to demonstrate a woman’s ability to be both vulnerable and powerful at the same time.

The Astonished, by Bill Viola

This video resonated with me in the sense that it shows that not everyone experiences sadness and grief in the same way. Working as a CVT and helping with euthanasia almost daily, I constantly have to remind myself that everyone goes through these emotions differently. This concept has made me a more understanding person and has helped me to not jump to judgement so easily. I think that this may be the message that Viola is trying to get through to the viewers. Grief and sadness are experienced differently by everyone and there is beauty in that.

Staging, by Maria Hassabi

What resonated with me the most about this video is Hassabi’s use of space and movement. The slow movement of the performers allows the viewer to take in every detail of the body’s movements and how the environment effects the overall piece. In the video, she said that viewers reported feeling either a sense of meditation or tension. I think that for Hassabi, she gets a profound feeling of connection to her surroundings and the people performing with her. While I do appreciate her message behind the performances, I feel that I would be a viewer that experienced tension. Something about watching someone slowly move along on the floor as if no one were around would be unsettling to me.

Talking Tongues, by Lisa Steele

This video was very interesting to watch. I found the subject matter compelling and loved how Steele herself played the role. Domestic abuse is an extremely important issue and Steele’s video brings awareness to the fact that most people don’t want to deal with it. She portrays a woman that has tried multiple times to escape her abusive husband and no matter how many times she reaches out for help, she is always sent back to him. I find this video as a plea to listen to those that come forward and ask for help in these situations because not all of them will be able to share their stories as a survivor as Steele did.

Perimeter of Square, by Bruce Nauman

This video failed to resonate with me. As I watched it, I was having a hard time deciphering what Nauman was trying to get across to the viewer. I actually ended up looking the video up in order to get some insight. Nauman was demonstrating many themes but the ones that I noticed the most were repetition, body awareness and minimalism. He synced his body movements to the tempo of a metronome, which requires awareness of one’s body. I definitely think that Nauman accomplished what he wanted to in this video but it simply failed to pique my interest.

Punk Prayer, by Pussy Riot

The message behind this video resonated with me more than the delivery. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in the conditions that these women described in their song. In this sense, I do believe that it is important to shed light on these issues and to try and make a difference. What did not resonate with me is the fact that they did this within a church. I’m not a very religious person and no longer practice but I was brought up in the Catholic church and still hold a great deal of respect for religion. I found their performance disrespectful but I suspect that the group intended to upset people by choosing a church as their setting.

Cut Piece, by Yoko Ono

What resonated the most with me about this video was when the woman speaking throughout the video said that either way, whether or not anyone had cut the dress, it would have said something. The message would have been different if no one actually came up and cut Ono’s dress. As time went on, people started to get more comfortable with the idea of cutting pieces of her dress away and therefore people started taking larger pieces off. To me, this is an example of mankind’s herd like tendencies; one person may do something that is considered taboo but when more people follow suit, it becomes an accepted behavior.

Interior Scroll, Carolee Schneemann

This piece was intriguing to me because of Schneemann’s use of the female body. It evokes a sense of great respect for the female body as a place of creation. The photographs that show Schneemann painting herself with mud depict a oneness with nature and recognition that life comes from women. In the photographs where Schneemann is seen slowly pulling a scroll from her vagina, I believe that she is trying to say that women hold a great amount within themselves. There are so many traits that make up a woman: wisdom, strength, empathy, etc. Life on Earth would not exist without us and that is why this series of photos resonated with me.

Bound Mouth & Foot, by Kate Wingard

I really liked Wingard’s message behind this piece. I think that the use of terms that would be hurtful to a person brings awareness to the mental and emotional damage we can do to one another. I especially appreciated the way that she completely removed the word “shame” by literally stomping on it until it was unrecognizable. For me this was a message to squash the negativity that others throw at you and never let it take hold.

Wholesome, by Megan Carnrite

I found this video really interesting. What resonated with me was the idea that life will continuously throw things at us and we handle them the best we can. Whether we successfully handle a situation (swallowing) or if it becomes too much and we let things slide (food falling from Carnrite’s mouth), we are all expected to keep up the appearance that nothing ever phased us. I think that this was a beautiful metaphor for the everyday struggles of life.

Roll of a Woman, by Javid Rezvani

I found this video extremely funny. The viewer’s first reaction is that the woman is talking about sex and they continue this narrative throughout the video; even after the true topic, the fact that women do indeed poop, is revealed. I found that this witty approach could be used for so many aspects of our lives. There are so many different facets of our lives that we may know occur as humans but we never think about it happening in someone else’s life. It’s as if the artist is saying, “hey, we are all more alike than we think. Stop thinking we aren’t”.

How to Earn a Glass of Water, by Dallas Scott

I think that this video showed a great deal of human restraint. Scott demonstrated an amazing amount of willpower to be able to sit under lamps that were probably hot for just under three and a half hours, waiting for a glass of water to melt. Other species would not have demonstrated such restraint and would have left in search of an easier source of water. While I found the video a great example of a human’s will, it did fail to resonate with me on an inspirational level.

Can Knot, by Alexandra Gutierrez

I think that the message that Gutierrez is trying to portray is how we deal with life’s struggles. In most cases, they are not clearly defined as a single issue but rather are intertwined. As we struggle to pull them apart, we may attempt to put the others to the side in order to focus on one issue. This may work for awhile but eventually we’ll pull on something that pulls everything else to the surface and we are met with another knotted mess of problems. This video resonated with me because it resembled how I have dealt with issues in my past and I think that many people have experienced this as well.

1 note · View note

skookworks · 4 years

Text

Gallery – Half Hour Sketches 31 to 60

From last year, the second set of thirty daily/half hour sketches. Do you have any favorites?

#gallery-0-6 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-6 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-6 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-6 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Story Seed #45 A Bad Seed Blooms

Karren was always a difficult child. Demanding, clingy, prone to throwing tantrums when she didn’t get her way. Dealing with her on a daily basis was enough to convince her parents that they didn’t want to have another child. Yes she was often charming. Yes she was usually very entertaining and she could seem very loving but, damn, she was awfully narcissistic.

When Karren was eight, her mother became pregnant (their contraception method failed) and her parents decided that they’d keep the baby. Karren would adapt, she’d have to. Right? And for a while it seemed like Karren would. She was delighted by the idea of having a sibling. She had fun playing nursemaid and helper to her mother and she revelled in the appreciation that her parents showed her for her new attitude.

The baby came, a little sister. Karren played doting big sister, giving cuddles, helping with bottles and rocking her to sleep. But, her parents had less attention for her and got crankier form lack of sleep, the old Karren resurfaced. She was jealous of the baby, angry that it just wouldn’t behave. Her play became meaner and rougher. One morning her mother caught her holding a pillow over the baby’s face. She wasn’t trying to kill the baby, she was just trying to make it stop crying, she didn’t know what she was doing, did she?

Her parents made arrangements to send Karren to a boarding school. Until she could depart her parents never left her alone with the baby and they locked her room at night.

Two days before Karren was to depart her mother took her and the baby to run errands. Karren had been behaving. She seemed contrite. Maybe safe? As they returned to the house their car was blocked in by a pair of black SUVs and armed men pulled them from the vehicle.

Karren’s parents were comfortably upper middle class. Karren’s grandfather, her father’s father, was rich and had made a lot of enemies getting that way. The kidnappers were in the employ of a Russian gangster that Grandfather had doublecrossed.

Karren, her mother and her little sister are taken to a remote location. Karen’s mother is forced to record a ransom plea. Karren pouts, Karren yells, Karren is not a cooperative hostage. The kidnappers beat her, tie her up, cut off one of her little fingers and send it with the ransom demand.

Karren’s father is in shock and desperate. Grandfather is disappointed. His son was always a weak thing. Grandfather harrumphs and takes charge. He has his security chief put together a team to rescue the kidnapped mother and her girls. But Grandfather didn’t get rich by giving a shit about anyone but himself. The team is to rescue the family if it’s convenient but it’s more important to him that they kill as many of the Russians as they can. The “girls” are expendable.

And Karren? Karren is very, very mad. Her parents could be boring. Her parents could be strict. Her parents often spoiled her fun. But they’d never hit her. They’d never hurt her. And now these smelly men have dared to hurt HER and threaten HER mother and HER little sister?

Karren is clever. Karren will get out of her bounds. Karren will make them all very, very sorry.

Recommendation

I am behind on my newsletters. I have a virtual stack of them waiting to be read and, at the moment, I can’t remember which ones I’ve already recommended. So this week I’m recommending a youtube channel: Cartoonist Kayfabe. Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor are veteran comics creators and they regular post a lot of videos about comics. I’ll let them introduce themselves –

Local News

I don’t have heroes. When I was a kid I kept discovering that the folks my history classes promoted as role models were often pretty horrible people. Even the ones the weren’t horrible were usually … human. That is, they weren’t necessarily nice, they weren’t always faithful and they often did things that were sloppy and stupid. As a kid, I was looking for perfect heroes to model myself after and real humans just kept failing provide me with the examples I wanted.

As I grew up I came to admire the people who stood up, who took action to make the world a better place, regardless of whether they were also shitty spouses, terrible parents or lousy friend. Rather, I’ve learned to admire the noble actions they took and accept that the rest of their lives and behaviors were probably pretty messy.

I’ve been following and reading Warren Ellis‘s work since I encountered his columns at 9th Art back in the 90s. I posted some art in the Remake/Remodel challenges in the FreakAngels forums. I found a lot of interesting newsletters (and was inspired to do this one) because he recommended them. I don’t get many regular comics these days but I did pay attention to what he had coming out next. I mostly heard about that when I read his latest newsletter. I only heard about the controversy when he posted his last one. This essay gives the pertinent details with links to more info.

Of all the bad actors who have come in to light in the last few years, Ellis is the first one whose work really matters to me. After a few days passage I’m still … I don’t know. I believe the women. You don’t get 30 or more artists to agree on something unless there is truth there. And they’ve got the emails. (And being a whistleblower is never about money unless you’re already rich and famous. Being a poor whistleblower means you, at best, become a famous and poor whistleblower. Anyone who thinks that someone calls out injustice for fame and glory and wealth is someone who doesn’t actually care about injustice.)

I admire his work. I’m sorry he’s behaved poorly and kind of relieved that he didn’t behave worse. I sympathize more with the women who had to put up with his shit than with him for what’s happening now. What struck me, in his statement, was this –

“I have never considered myself famous or powerful, to the point where I’ve made a lot of bad jokes about it for twenty-odd years.”

It’s a reminder to me that our perceptions of ourselves are often off the mark. You might think that someone in Ellis’ position, who has had the accomplishments and influence that he’s had, would have a better perception of his place in the world. But most of us don’t. Most of us hear our internal dialogues, our fears and our doubts, much louder than the feedback we get from the outside. We rarely perceive ourselves accurately.

It’s a reminder that I/we have much more power in the world than I/we think I/we do. It’s a reminder to be more aware, to think before speaking and acting. It’s a reminder to talk more about perceptions and expectations even when doing that seems like it’s going to kill the flow of an interaction. I may think things are hunky dory but the person I’m with might just be being polite.

I don’t think I’m currently in a position of power. In previous jobs I have been a supervisor and an assistant manager and a manager. As I moved up in responsibility I became conscious of having a responsibility to model “professional” behavior. Getting wasted and flirting with one’s coworkers isn’t a good look for the boss. Now I’m just one mail carrier in a station of about a hundred other carriers. I go to work. I don’t really socialize. I just want to put the hours in so I can get paid and go home and draw. Do I have power? Of course I do. I’m an older white guy who, to the new hires at least, probably seems like I’ve been around forever. Postal carriers have a union. Carriers advance by seniority. There’s a culture of not ratting on your fellow carrier when they misbehave. So I maybe could fuck with the new hires and get away with it. I’m pretty sure that veteran carriers already do that.

I have gotten tired. I have withdrawn. But I’m not dead. It’s time to pay a little more attention at work and in the world. I am not a hero. But I do have power and I can take a few noble actions now and then.

Tuesday Night Party Club #25 Gallery - Half Hour Sketches 31 to 60 From last year, the second set of thirty daily/half hour sketches.

1 note · View note

missbrightsky · 4 years

Text

Velaris National Park

Fics Masterlist

Chapter 1

Green light filtered through the canopy, patches of gold peppering the road ahead. Rolled down windows allowed the late spring air weave through the car, carrying the scent of growing things and warmth to wrap around us.

Elain had some 2000s pop station pouring from the speakers, all of us belting out the familiar words to our audience of Mother Nature. Nesta had called shotgun at the beginning, leaving me to have the back seat to stretch out, propping my feet on the bag that held our borrowed tent.

It was May in Prythian, warm and good and green. I had just graduated from my master’s program in Art History, my whole future stretching out ahead of me. Elain had insisted we celebrate but all of us were in educational debt and couldn’t afford to fly anywhere. Ever the florist, she found a state park a few hours away that boasted the largest collection of wildflowers in the country, one especially that bloomed once every three years. And because Elain was always lucky, this year was one of the few that it blooms in full.

A few days after graduation, she managed to wrangle Nesta away from the publishing house and me away from my couch and stuffed us all into her 2005 Honda.

Velaris National Park

Turn off 5 miles

Elain’s singing broke off mid-verse, a squeal replacing the lyrics as she pointed out the sign. I could only smile at her excitement; camping was never really our family’s thing, but her happiness was too infectious. At least I had managed to throw my sketchbook and watercolor pencils into my bag before she dragged me out the door. It had been a while since I had done some wildlife sketching, there was not a lot of green space or biodiversity in the city.

She turned down the music while Nesta and I straightened in our seats, ready to hop out of the car and get blood flowing back into our legs.

Even Nesta who normally tolerated Elain’s antics had a ghost of a smile playing around her lips, the fresh air loosening her iron grip on her emotions.

Elain slowed the car, turning right before the massive stone wall that announced the entrance to the park, gravel crunching under the tires.

The rough road weaved with the terrain, up and down and curving around hills and patches of meadows that peaked through the trees. We even rumbled over a wooden bridge that spanned the banks of a sparkling stream, the water throwing shimmering rainbows into the air.

A low log cabin-like building greeted us, its small parking lot only holding a Jeep with the park logo on the side and another car.

Elain turned the car off and all of us popped our doors open, slightly stumbling as our legs reacclimated to moving. Small groans slipped out of our mouths as we stretched feeling back into our lower halves, taking in the new environment.

A small sign in the window informed us of the park’s office hours and the emergency phone line. Elain pushed in first, a petite ding announcing our arrival.

The inside was a simple, square room, half the room stocked with souvenirs and anything campers may need in a pinch. A long, low counter ran along the back wall with an open doorway hinting at the back room. This was where a perky blonde emerged, greeting them with a bright smile. Her long hair was braided down her back, a forest green polo stamped with the logo somehow accented her curves instead of looking dorky and too stiff.

“Hi! Welcome to Velaris National Park. I’m Mor, what can I help y’all with today?”

“Hello! I’m Elain and these are my sisters Nesta and Feyre,” she gestured to each of us in turn, we all shook her hand, surprised to find it calloused and strong.

“How long do y’all plan on staying?”

“Two nights, please. And if you can point out on a map where the Starfall flower will be blooming?”

Mor laughed, a grin splitting her mouth. “I should’ve guessed, this is some of our busiest weeks of the year. Well, you’re in luck, we have only a few campsites left. Any preference to where?”

“None at all, we’re not too picky.”

“Perfect, how about y’all take site 20. It’s near the trailheads and not too far from the bathrooms.”

Elain turned to confirm with us, we each nodded back. Our lack of experience had us indifferent to where we camped, as long as it wasn’t out in the middle of nowhere.

Elain and Mor exchanged money and maps, paying for our spot and pointing out the major landmarks of the park.

“We do allow fires, as long as they’re in the designated fire pits. Please use the trash cans we have all along the park, anyone caught littering can be fined up to 200 dollars along with not being allowed to revisit the park. No glass or alcohol on park grounds. If y’all need anything, please don’t hesitate to call up to here the main office, and the numbers for our rangers are on the maps, along with the emergency line. Further into the park, cell service can get a little spotty, but as long as you stay near the trails, our rangers can spot you if you get into trouble. A little tip, don’t feed the wildlife, we have them on a diet,” she finished with a laugh and a wink. We laughed along with her, it was easy to feel a friendship forming with the bright woman.

“Well if that’s all y’all need, just keep following the road and you’ll see the signs pointing out the campsite. Parking gets a bit limited so try not to double park.”

We thanked her and headed out to pile back into the car.

As we were pulling out and getting back onto the road, I spotted one of the rangers on top of a horse.

The animal was tall, taller than any of the horses I had ever encountered before, and blacker than the deepest night sky. Its rider was sitting perfectly still, used to having to blend into the background.

I stifled a gasp. The ranger was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. I was too far away to see the color of his eyes, but they peeked through the leaves, boring into mine. His shoulders were broad, covered with a khaki shirt, he gripped the horse with powerful legs clad in dark green pants that were tucked into wore brown boots.

Our car soon turned a corner, breaking my gaze from his, banishing me of the spell he had cast.

More gorgeous forest passed us by, feeding my artist's mind with texture and light and color. Maybe this trip would replenish my weary mind after years of rigorous study. I loved every minute of my classes, but it left little free time for drawing and painting.

Wooden signs ticked up, eventually indicating where our sight was. Once again parking, we exited the car and took in the scenery.

We were to share a small common area with a few other campers, picnic tables and grills dotting the grassy area. Two cars were already parked there, brightly colored tents peeking out from the bushes that gave each sight a bit of privacy. Under a massive oak tree, there was a ring of rocks that held gray and black ashes from prior fires, stumps surrounding it for us to sit and enjoy the company.

I grabbed the tent from the backseat and slung my pack over my shoulder, leading the way to the small clearing that would be our home for the next few days. It was simply packed dirt, slightly raised from the rest of the ground so that if it rained, our tent would not get flooded.

I had never set up a tent before but with the instructions from the bag combined with the store owners’ tips, it was soon popped up in no time. Maybe only slightly leaning to the left but that would be a problem for later.

Nesta had pulled out our coolers of food, prepping sandwiches for a late lunch. Elain was already off in the surrounding area, making notes of the greenery and wildflowers that grew nearby. It was not the elusive Starfall but it did not take much for her to get wrapped up in flora.

Satisfied at my work, I tossed our bags into the tent and zipped it up. We could unpack after a bit of exploring.

Joining Nesta at the table, I swiped one of the completed sandwiches, ignoring her protest to wait for Elain. She was the one who refused to stop for lunch so she would just have to get the next one.

My fingers itched to start drawing the massive oak tree, its complex branches and multicolored leaves begging to be noticed and put onto paper. My stomach, however, told me it can wait.

Nesta somehow pulled Elain away from a blue flower, convincing her that it won’t disappear in the next 15 minutes.

“So, what’s first on the agenda, sis?” I asked her.

“Well it is getting a little late so I don’t want to go too far before it gets dark, but I thought we could start with one of the short trails!” Elain radiated energy, feeding off the teeming forest around us.

I smiled back at her, excited to start cataloging the world around us. We finished off the sandwiches and repacked the coolers into the car. One thing we all learned from watching TV was to not let wild animals get into a camper’s stash of food.

A quick trip into the tent had us changed into t-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes with light jackets tied to our waists. Even with Prythian warming up, the nights could still get a bit cool.

Elain consulted the map Mor gave us, confidently leading us to the first trailhead. It was only two miles long and would introduce us to the wildlife we could see in the park.

Every few hundred feet, plastic signs would pop up, listing fun facts about the park and giving an example of some of its inhabitants. Some would show a burst of color followed by the flower’s common name, scientific name and any medicinal or historical facts about it. Others would tell you how to spot an animal camouflaged in the surrounding foliage.

We all talked and joked with each other, with no tension that usually accompanied us when we got together. Nesta told us a story about an author that tried to sneak in her friends’ manuscript that turned out to be an awful rendition of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. By the end, all of us were in stitches and barely able to walk, clinging onto tree trunks and each other in an attempt to stay upright.

Just as the sky was glowing orange and pink, the trail delivered us back to the beginning of the campsites, all we had to do was follow the gravel road back to ours.

The smell of meat and potatoes set our stomachs growling, the sandwiches from earlier long gone from the hike and laughter.

The other campers that were out earlier had returned.

“Howdy!” one of the men shouted at us waving his arm. He looked to be in his late fifties with combed back salt and pepper hair, sporting cargo pants and a navy long sleeve to ward off any wayward cool breezes.

We all gave back nervous smiles, unsure of who our neighbors were.

“Kevin,” a voice scolded, “you can’t just yell at unsuspecting young girls.” The source of the admonishment appeared from the bushes.

“Sorry about my husband, he’s just excited to have more company,” a man apologized. He also looked to be in his fifties, a bit shorter than Mike but leaner. Dark brown skin was covered in matching cargo pants, but a faded Prythian U sweatshirt covered his torso.

“I’m Raymond, this is our third night at the park.”

We tried not to look too relieved as we shook his hand. All of us had experience taking care of ourselves but we were in the middle of a national park with the other nearest humans about 50 yards down the road.

Kevin looked appropriately sheepish as he came to greet us. “Sorry about that, I am excited to have more company. The couple that’s over there just keeps glaring at us and avoids us like the plague.” His words were playful enough but there was a deeper sadness buried in his eyes as if he was used to this sort of treatment.

“Well it’s awesome to meet you,” Elain gushed, ever the social butterfly. “I’m Elain and these are my sisters, Nesta and Feyre. We’re here in celebration of Feyre graduating!”

“Congratulations! Where from?” Raymond asked.

“Well you’re actually wearing my college right now,” I replied with a smile. There were tons of people who went to Pryth U but it was always fun to meet someone who graduated there in the past.

I fell into conversation with Ray, who insisted on using the shorter version of his name about the campus and how much it has changed from when he was there. He was an engineering major but still asked me a million questions about the art history department and why I wanted to get my masters there. Elain roped Kevin into a debate about botany and the best soil for growing tulips in. It sounded like he was also in the flower business and was here to see the blooming of Starfalls.

Nesta was never one to make easy friends and opted to start our dinner, taking over the grill next to Kevin’s. Tonight was burgers with potato chips and then s’mores for dessert that would be roasted over the campfire.

Dinner was full of lively conversation under the night sky. We were far enough away from the city’s light pollution that we were able to make out constellations that we had only read about and see the dusting of galaxies that spanned the sky.

“And that’s when the professor realized he had designed a system that looked exactly like a dick!” We burst out laughing at the end of Ray’s story from his time in college, even Nesta couldn’t keep her giggles contained at the raunchy tale.

Our cheeks were rosy from the fire that crackled happily before us, the smell of burnt marshmallow filling the air. As perfect as Nesta was at everything, it took her a few tries to get the timing and distance right for roasting.

“Sounds like I missed a hell of a tale,” the new midnight voice sent shivers down my spine.

“Ah! Rhys! I was wondering when you would show up,” Kevin greeted the newcomer. “Where are Cas and Az?”

The figure stepped into the ring of light and perched on an open stump beside Feyre. I forced myself not to freeze and stare at him. It was the same man I saw on top of the horse.

Closer up I could see how his dark hair shone blue in the firelight, no longer hidden beneath the Mountie hat he wore earlier.

He shifted his body to angle slightly towards me, catching my eyes with his. They were so blue they seemed to be an impossible violet, sparking with hidden laughter at an inside joke. “They’re right behind me,” he said without breaking eye contact with me.

I forced my eyes to drop to the page I was intermittently sketching on. I was lucky that I had started a new outline of the stream we passed on the way in instead of still having the sketch of him on his horse open. Hopefully the blush that was already on my cheeks hid the new blood that was rushing there.

“What was all that laughing about? I hope someone was making fun of Rhys,” another male voice called out as he came into view. He was tall and even more well-muscled than the man beside me but had his dark hair pulled into a low bun on the nape of his neck and his eyes glowed amber.

Rhys broke his stare at me to twist to the man, “No, I was telling them about the time you got stuck in what you thought was quicksand but turned out to be just a massive mud pit,” he shot back. The group laughed at the retort, including me while trying to shake off my embarrassment.

He pouted at the memory, “Aw com’on, you promised you would stop bringing that up.”

“Never in your dreams, brother.”

“Cas, come sit by me and have a s’more, I’m sure you thought you were right at the time,” Kevin teased, offering a marshmallow already speared on a stick. Cas threw one more sulky look at Rhys and walked over to where Kevin and Nesta were sitting. Nesta sized up the addition, bracing herself for interaction.

Cas saw her reaction, immediately forgetting his brother’s teasing. There was a new opponent to spare with. He aimed a feral grin at her, spurring her to narrow her eyes at his assessment.

A final figure, presumably Az, emerged from the dark, almost as if melting from it. He nodded a polite greeting to the group opting to stand near Ray and Elain. It took no time at all for her sister to draw him into a conversation about what all she can see at the park and if she was allowed to take any wildflower clippings home to preserve.

I turned back to my book, darkening the path the water took over, around and through the stones on the creek bed. The weight of Rhys’s gaze settled over me, making me tighten my grip on the pencil.

“You’re a good artist,” he remarked.

I smiled slightly in his direction. “I would hope so, I staked most of my career on it.”

“You do this professionally?”

“Well, I hope so someday,” I admitted, “I just graduated with a master’s in art history.”

“Really? Congrats. What’s next for you?”

He finally succeeded in pulling me away from the drawing, meeting his gaze again, looking for any sign of mockery at my chosen path. Most heard the words “art history” and assumed I would become a starving artist or elementary art school teacher.

There was no trace of judgment in his face, only open curiosity.

“In my dreams, I would open up my own studio, maybe a few galleries. For now, I’ve applied to a few museums as a curator and I have an interview with one of them next week.”

“I hope it goes well, anyone who can draw that well must know a thing or two about Picasso.”

I barked a laugh at his statement, “I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong you are,” giggling my way through the sentence. “You won’t believe the number of students I met who couldn’t tell the difference between Picasso and their own ass.”

His eyes flashed with surprise, followed by laughter rich and clear as a bell spilling from his mouth. “I can believe it, I’ve met my fair share of idiots in this world.”

“I bet, being a park ranger must set you up for a whole slew of idiots who watched one episode of Bear Grylls and thinks they can survive out here with nothing more than their wits.”

His face jokingly darkened, “Do. Not. Get. Me. Started.”

“Please, start,” my sketch was now long forgotten, pulled into his expressive voice and body. He wove the tale of a couple that thought they could go all Naked and Afraid only 20 feet off the trail, managing to get as far as cutting down a few trees to start a shelter before another camper contacted them and they were able to stop them from scarring any more people.

My cheeks hurt from the constant smiling and laughter, unable to stop myself from leaning closer to catch every detail.

By the end of his story, our knees were brushing each other every few seconds, both of us catching our breath. He paused at the end, taking the small bubble we had trapped ourselves in.

His eyes dipped to brush my lips before meeting mine again. My breath caught in my throat at the intensity of his gaze, heat blooming across my cheeks and down my neck. Our shared air was sweet with chocolate and heavy with anticipation…

A hiss startled us apart.

Across the fire, Nesta looked to be about two seconds away from slapping Cas, fury twisting her face into a knot. Cas looked like he was the cat that got the cream, lazily reclining against the stump, looking up into her wrathful face.

“And that’s our queue,” Rhys muttered under his breath. “It was wonderful to talk with you. I’ll see you around the park.”

I blinked a few times, mentally shaking myself out of the trance he put me in. “Uh, yeah sure, see you around.”

“Cas, Az,” his voice was sharp, “We need to go to the next campsite. Thank you for the s’mores and have a good evening everyone.” He pulled his brothers away, retreating into the dark. From the blackness came the sound of a sharp slap and angry words being whispered.

Everyone exchanged awkward looks at their departure. Nesta was still fuming, glaring at the direction they disappeared in. Feyre and Elain knew better that the question her on what Cas said, knowing it would only infuriate her more.

“It’s been a long day, and we have a lot of hiking tomorrow,” I broke through the tension, “I’m off to bed.” Elain and Nesta got up to join me, bidding Kevin and Raymond good night and that they’ll see them for breakfast.

Elain and I exchanged worried looks behind Nesta’s back, but it would be better to let her sleep it off. She was quick to anger but given time, could squash it back down.

We all climbed into the tent, leaving our shoes by the door. It was colder away from the fire, so we didn’t waste time layering on warmer clothes and crawling into our respective sleeping bags.

I fell asleep with purple eyes burning behind my eyelids, chasing me through my fitful dreams.

Next Chapter

#acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #sjm #sjmaas #sjm books #sjmaas books #feyre #feyre x rhysand #rhysand #cassian #azriel #morrigan #amren

1 note · View note

inexpensiveprogress · 4 years

Text

Paul Nash at Avebury

Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles. The Village of Avebury in Wiltshire was built around them and now bisect the circle with a High Street. Avebury contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. Constructed over several hundred years in the Third Millennium BC, during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge (a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument.

Paul Nash - Avebury, 1936

When England was converted to Christianity, Avebury was considered a non-Christian monument. At some point in the early 14th century, villagers began to demolish the monument by pulling down the large standing stones and burying them in ready-dug pits at the side. During the toppling of the stones, one of them (which was 3 metres tall and weighed 13 tons), collapsed on top of one of the men pulling it down, fracturing his pelvis and breaking his neck, crushing him to death. Trapped in the hole that had been dug for the falling stone he was found by archaeologists in 1938. They found that he had been carrying a leather pouch, in which was found three silver coins dated to around 1320–25, as well as a pair of iron scissors and a lancet.

In the latter part of the 17th and then the 18th centuries, destruction at Avebury reached its peak. The majority of the standing stones that had been a part of the monument for thousands of years were smashed up to be used as building material for the local area. This was achieved in a method that involved lighting a fire to heat the sarsen, then pouring cold water on it to create weaknesses in the rock, and finally smashing at these weak points with a sledgehammer.

In the 1920s Marconi wanted to build a radio station on the hills above Avebury and the Air Ministry wanted to close Wayland Smithy area with standing stones as a bombing range in the 1930s . †

Paul Nash - Avebury, Personage, 1933

In July 1933 the ailing Nash went on holiday to Marlborough with his friend Ruth Clark. From there they made a day trip to nearby Avebury. ‡

Paul Nash - Avebury Stone (Double Exposure), 1933

The epiphany that Paul Nash had to use he standing stones artistically, seems to have come with an interest in the Neolithic period in publishing with the British Public. It is an era where Paganism has become popular, as many alternative religions did after the First World War. In trying to make sense of the carnage and brutality of the War the public looked for ancient wisdom and this maybe why we have to tolerate people smothering themselves over Stonehenge every solstice.

In these paintings and photographs Nash was also documenting an interest that other artists such as Henry Moore had in the primitive. Moore looked towards early Peruvian pottery and flints for organic shapes and old works made by early man. These monuments are the few examples of art that survive. Even in the medieval period the only arts to survive in Britain of the common man would be the carvings of bench-ends in churches, pottery or other folk art.

Paul Nash - Landscape of the Megaliths, 1934

Margaret Nash said this was Paul’s first painting of the Avebury stones, which he saw in August 1933. Nash himself gave the following description of Avebury in ‘Picture History’ The preoccupation of the stones has always been a separate pursuit and interest aside from that of object personages. My interest began with the discovery of Avebury megaliths when I was staying at Marlborough in the Summer of 1933. The great stones were then in their wild state, so to speak. Some were half covered by the grass, others stood up in the cornfields were entangled and overgrown in the copses, some were buried under the turf. But they were always wonderful and disquieting, and, as I saw them then, I shall always remember them . . . Their colouring and pattern, their patina of golden lichen, all enhanced their strange forms and mystical significance. Thereafter, I hunted stones, by the seashore, on the downs, in the furrows. ♣

Paul Nash - The Nest of Wild Stones, 1937

I found my first nest of wild stones on looking closely into a drawing I had made of some bleached objects on the Swanage Downs. It lay just below the level of my consciousness, slightly out of focus. But there was no mistaking its lineaments a moment later when I moved the dry thoughts to one side. ♠

Below Paul Nash writes of the effect of Avebury on his work. That he wasn’t only painting the stones themselves but placing ordinary stones he found in a picture as if they were large monuments.

In most instances, the pictures coming out of this preoccupation were concerned with stones seen solely as objects in relation to the landscape. But later certain stone personages evolved, such as the stone birds in the ‘Nest of Wild Stones’ and the more ‘abstract’ forms in ‘Encounter in the Afternoon’. ♣

Many of these works may be down to another external influence, Eileen Agar. Nash had met and fallen in love with Agar, who was a surrealist artist and using stones and found objects in her works around the same time.

Paul Nash - Photograph of Stones in his Studio, 1936

Paul Nash - Encounter in the Afternoon, 1936

Paul Nash - Landscape of Bleached Objects, 1934

Paul Nash - Circle Of The Monoliths, 1937-8

In the painting above (Circle of the Monoliths) is the stepped hill what is likely Silbury Hill. The construction of the hill in the Late Neolithic period was originally stepped, then filled in. Silbury Hill is very close to Avebury.

When the artist Paul Nash first visited Avebury in 1933 he was amazed by the scale of Silbury Hill and by the ancient circle of megaliths, the great glacial boulders that had been dragged from the Downs in prehistoric times. ♥

Paul Nash - Silbury Hill, 1938

Paul Nash - Silbury Hill, c1937

All Nash’s other statements about Avebury and stones are much more direct, it is almost as if he contrived to intellectualise his ideas simply to be provocative, but in face the Landscape of the Megaliths Nash does resolve the equation. The picture shows the adventure of stones receding away from the spectator, in the foreground in the convolvulus curls round a snake which rises upwards. ♦

Paul Nash - Avebury Stone, 1933

The stones at Avebury come up again when Nash was asked to illustrate a cover to the magazine Countrygoing. Though I think it was commissioned in 1938 it was published in 1945.

A Paul Nash Cover to Countrygoing, 1945

Paul Nash - Circle Of The Monoliths, 1937-8

Above is the finished painting of Circle Of The Monoliths. Below is the study for the work that was found painted on the back of The Two Serpents c 1937.

Paul Nash - Circle of the Monoliths, 1937-1938

Nash’s abstraction of stones in the 1930s went on with his distortions of landscapes, found stones and the real Neolithic stones. In we see Mên-an-Tol and the stone ring there placed in the top right corner in front of more found stones. To the right is a grid that can only be echoing Encounter in the Afternoon and Circle Of The Monoliths.

Paul Nash - Nocturnal Landscape, 1938

Below we see the same Avebury stone used on the cover to Countrygoing with the wedge shaped cut in the side.

Paul Nash - Druid Landscape, 1938

Initially, using a No.1A pocket Kodak series 2 camera, Nash captured images so that he could refer to them in the creation of his paintings. Increasingly, however, he saw his photographs, not as aids or sketches, but as artworks in their own right.

Here Nash depicts one of the Avebury Sentinels, and his choice of subject matter is characteristic. Nash was always interested in landscapes and aspects of the natural world, not for their historical or aesthetic interest per se, but more because he thought that certain places as he called them (see Biography) had about them a mystical importance, a genius loci; which lent the place, the stone, the tree, an importance which transcended its apparent properties. As he wrote there are places whose relationship of parts creates a mystery, an enchantment. It is this mystery, this enchantment, which Nash tries to capture in his photographs. ◊

Paul Nash - Avebury, Sentinel, 1933

Some of the quote below may be a repeat of what has been read about Nash, but I featured it for the Convolvulus park that features in Landscape of the Megaliths. In the background of the watercolour and lithograph below are two hills, both likely to be a Neolithic Sidbury Hill and how it looks today.

Last summer I walked in a field near Avebury where two rough monoliths stand up … miraculously patterned with black and orange lichen, remnants of the avenue of stones which led to the Great Circle. In the hedge, at hand, the white trumpet of a convolvulus turns from its spiral stem, following the sun. In my art I would solve such an equation Paul Nash, “Contribution to Unit One”, in Andrew Causey (ed.), Paul Nash: Writings on Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 107–110.

Paul Nash - Landscape of the Megaliths - Watercolour, 1937

Some time ago I made a blog post on Paul Nash and the process of colour layers used to make the lithograph below.

Paul Nash - Landscape of the Megaliths - Lithograph, 1937

The photographs below are dated 1942 by the Tate. I don’t know is Nash went back to Avebury or if they are catalogued wrongly. But I thought it was worth including them with the car by the roadside.

Paul Nash - Avebury, 1942

Paul Nash - Avebury, Sentinel, 1942

Paul Nash - Avebury, Sentinel, 1944

Paul Nash - Avebury, 1944

† Joanne Parker - Written on Stone: The Cultural Reception of British Prehistoric, 2009 ‡ David Boyd Haycock - Paul Nash, p54, 2002 ♠ Andrew Causey - Paul Nash: Writings on Art - Page 142 ♣ Paul Nash - Paintings and Watercolours Exhibition Catalogue, Tate, 1975 ♥ Julius Bryant - The English Grand Tour, p16, 2005 ♦ Paul Nash, Places, South Bank Centre, 1989 ◊ Art Republic

#Paul Nash #neolithic #Avebury

4 notes · View notes

deckspair · 4 years

Text

May’s Musical Director’s Commentary

Hey guys! I'm May. You might remember me as "the one who did those nifty chatlogs and the roster page" or "the one who did all the music" or "that one mod who never said anything." Los and Mints agreed to let me write up this "director's commentary" on the music I did for DECK. There's no secret lore tidbits in here or anything, but if you liked my music you might find this an interesting glimpse into the process.

A Note On Sampling

Sampling is the practice of using preexisting audio to make new music. When I talk about what I've sampled here, I'm only going to mention particularly interesting cases. Almost all of the music I've done for DECK features audio from Free Wave Samples, so I figure that's not really worth mentioning except here. It's the other stuff that's interesting. EarthBound was an influence on my decision to pull in a bunch of audio from outside sources. I've always admired that game's use of sampling.

The First Chatlog

The chatlogs have consistently been pretty fun to do. I knew from the start that I didn't want to edit this together by hand, so I wrote a Processing sketch to render the video. It's not the most elegant thing in the world, and adding new features is a massive pain, but it's a lot easier than putting these together any other way. All I have to do is swap out the script and background shader and write a new song and I can just let the program churn away rendering a new video. (Of course, fiddling with the shader until it looks presentable takes so long that it kind of eats into the time savings.)

There's not much to say about this one. The typing sounds were graciously provided by Mints. Those with careful ears might notice the instrument playing the chords in other chatlog songs.

The Second Chatlog

One of the only interesting things about this one: the melody is actually a musical cryptogram! What it spells out is an exercise for the reader. ;) The miscellaneous background sounds are all distorted versions of stuff I recorded myself one day when my film teacher let me wander the halls with a microphone. Film school has its perks.

Rio Hachimitsu's BDA

Doing the first body drop music was pretty intimidating. The body discovery music in Danganronpa has a particular instantly recognizable quality to it. If I wanted to go for that style, I'd have to get it down perfectly. (Otherwise I'd come off as a cheap imitation.) So I decided to be original. After school PSAs would be proud.

The melody here is probably pretty familiar to you all by now. Every BDA has used some variation of this melody because I'm a sucker for leitmotif. The melody itself is a slightly modified version of the Dies Irae. (Yes, I know I'm very pretentious, but being pretentious is fun.) This is also the first instance of what I call the "death rattle." I put that strange scraping sound into every BDA and execution for consistency's sake. You can see it as the moment the soul leaves the deceased's body or the moment the onlookers realize somebody's just died... or something. The really fun part is what it is - it's a bell tree! Yknow, those tinkly whimsical things. It's just been reversed and slowed down and drenched in reverb. It's fun how malleable audio is.

Minnie Minami's EXE

This was fun! Despite being a film student for a while, I've never had to write music to sync up with a video before. (I still haven't - I'm pretty sure the video was edited to match up with the music and not vice versa.) The overall tone of this one was pretty obvious. Of course a ringleader's execution would be accompanied by messed up circus music. Anything else just wouldn't be right. There's not really much else to say about it other than that it includes samples from my toy accordion and slide whistle.

Sampled:

An old recording of Auld Lang Syne

Yasu Kozakura's BDA

The body drop's usage of mirrors really hit me in the art gut, so I figured the BDA jingle should have something to do with mirrors. This is why the melody plays forwards and backwards simultaneously, because mirrors. (Some call that kind of thing a "crab canon.")

My incredibly good and quality cat piano is also in here. A stretched out meow recorded from it forms the basis of the background chord.

NANIKO's EXE

For this one, I gave the video editor three different tracks, one for each "segment" of the execution. I did this as a cop-out because I didn't want to have to try to sync my music up with the video - this way, the editor could mash it all together.

The segment with the mirrors was an exercise in what's called "phase music", where two lines drift out of sync with each other, creating different rhythmic textures over the course of the song. (Piano Phase and Clapping Music, both by Steve Reich, are two classic examples of the form.) For some reason, echoey piano lines phasing in and out of sync feel mirror-y to me. They also form a nice musical callback to the BDA.

Sampled:

Me switching frequencies on the radio

Sayuri Nishi's BDA

Shoutout to Free Wave Samples for having a heartbeat sound. I didn't want to try to make that sound myself with drums.

Kosuke Nakamura's EXE

This execution is significant because it's the first non-video one. Execution art wasn't my department, so I'm not going to speak on how that change affected the artists, but I found it liberating to be able to follow the more general emotional arc of the execution rather than being tethered to the pacing of a video.

When I asked Angela for guidance on where to go musically, we came to the conclusion that the proper genre would be "Tom and Jerry noir." That description alone is why I loved doing music for DECK - where else do you get the opportunity to write something with that as guidance? The most natural interpretation in my view was a song that starts out jazzy and segues into slapstick-esque classical to mirror the transition from the safety of noir to being mauled by a giant robot cat.

Also, the Slack notification sound is in there, since Los suggested a social media notification sound in the background somewhere. (Slack's basically social media for tech dorks, right?)

Sampled:

Slack

Tom and Jerry

The Missing BDAs

Unfortunately, I got preoccupied and neglected to do BDA music for the deaths in Chapter 4. Generally, there's not many interesting things to say about stuff that doesn't exist. The plan was to sample Pomp and Circumstance for Law N... but I didn't. Sorry, Froggy. I didn't have any other plans for this one.

Ukiyo-Maemi's EXE

This one relies so much on sampling it almost makes me feel bad. I got so much mileage out of the clanging percussion and the spooky background sounds that it's basically cheating.

Sampled:

My lovely girlfriend 💕

OFF

Akira Akatsuki's BDA

I was in a very percussion-heavy mood when I wrote this. (Can you tell?) Listening to the FLCL soundtrack had me jonesing for some dramatic cymbals.

Sampled:

Earthbound

Genko Junshu's BDA

Junshu's body was found in the Navigation Station. This called to mind sonar beeps and garbled radio messages and such. This is another one that wouldn't be nearly as interesting without the sampling. Hopefully this is transformative enough to not get me labeled a hack.

Sampled:

Earthbound

Law Kiyuu's EXE

This execution actually freaked me the hell out the first time I read it. Freaked me out for like a week - something about the combination of incredible writing and the subject matter. It honestly felt calculated to scare me specifically.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this one. I wanted to write something as unsettling as the execution it was accompanying. The intro is supposed to represent Law thinking he's already dead. Next comes his terror (evoked with the hilariously dissonant Altered scale), and then the final spooky arrhythmic section is supposed to be him being cut apart. (Note that part of the music drifts out of sync with itself to represent Law, uh, going to pieces.) The return of the piano is supposed to evoke the flashback section. That kind of piano sound always sounds spooky and/or sentimental to me.

Not much else to say now that I've dissected (heh) basically all of the decisions I've made for this one. I'm really proud of Law's execution song - it might be my favorite out of all the ones I've done for DECK.

Sampled:

Earthbound

Persona 2: Innocent Sin

The Doug Theme

Death Note

"It's a Long Way to Tipperary"

gamer butt song

Frogbot's EXE

The original plan for this one was start this one off with a hocket-y medley of all the previous body drops and executions. However, it would have been really tedious to export then import all the relevant instruments, so I didn't do that. Instead I remixed the typical BDA theme. It's supposed to convey the shift from FrogBot's reign of despair to the triumph of getting them executed. I realized part of the way through that this segment was far too triumphant given how many people died and the fact that the submarine is about to explode, so then I just ended it by lingering on a diminished chord. I'm not a very subtle person. Frogbot's execution lacks the death rattle 'cause there's no horrifying realization that one of your classmates is dead. (Exercise for the reader: find where I hid the Flintstones theme in this song. Good luck.)

Conclusion

DECK was a lot of fun to work on. I wrote some extremely messy code, made some sick as hell videos, and wrote some pretty baller music. I got to see some wonderful artists do their work, and I got to skim some pretty intense roleplaying. Thank you to everyone who said nice things about my music and to the mods for being really cool dudes. Special thanks to Mints and Los for letting me put this long-winded rant on their blog, and thank you for reading this whole thing.

See you on the flip side, y'all.

#music

2 notes · View notes

sweetiepie08 · 5 years

Text

Musician with Poison Tears (Chapter 8)

Miguel Rivera’s been fascinated by the story of the legendary ghost, the Musician with Poison Tears, since he was a kid. He’s always wanted to know the full story behind the weeping specter that haunts the train station with its invisible guitar. Now 18, the travels to Mexico City to try to observe the ghost from afar and get some clues about its origin. Who knows? He might even get a song out of it.

This story is based on the art and ghost!au created by @melcecilia14. Go check out her artwork here, here, here, and here. It’s really awesome.

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10. Epilogue.

Bonus.

When they arrived at the train station, Abel and Rosa asked if he wanted them to go in. He thanked them, but decided he wanted to go in alone. I’m the one who messed things up. I should be the one to fix it.

Over the last few days, Miguel had grown used to being greeted by ghostly guitar music and Héctor calling his name. Today, he was met with only the rumbling bustle of the train station. Instead, Miguel scanned the crowd, hoping to see the ghost’s transparent head or floating feet. “Héctor?” he called. A few living men turned and glanced at him before shrugging and moving on, but no ghosts.

Suddenly, he felt something cold whoosh by him. He turned to his left to see Héctor materialize right before his eyes. The ghost gave the glass doors a determined look. He sped toward them, phased through, then rematerialized back inside. Héctor let out a frustrated huff and geared up to try again.

“Héctor?” Miguel tried again. “Ghost Héctor? What are you doing?”

The ghost looked up and his eyes widened when he saw who called his name. A trickle of blood at his lips suddenly disappeared. “Miguel!” He rushed forward and threw his arms around his friend. “I am so sorry, Miguel.”

“You’re sorry?” Miguel asked. A cold tingling enveloped him under the ghost’s attempt at an embrace.

“When I saw you were gone, I was afraid I scared you away, but then I started thinking about how awful you felt when I looked into your soul. I spent all night trying to get out and find you but…”

“Héctor, it’s okay. I’m okay,” Miguel said, hearing himself imitate his father’s comforting tones. “I actually came here to apologize to you.”

“Apologize?”

“For not believing you and…” he swallowed, “for not telling you everything.”

“What are you talking about, Miguel?”

He moved toward a bench by the windows. “You might want to sit down if you can. There’s a lot to go over.”

“Okay, you’re starting to worry me with that face,” Héctor said with a nervous laugh as he perched on the bench beside Miguel. “What’s going on?”

Miguel let out a heavy breath and looked at the floor. He wanted to stare at the tiles for the whole confession, but he heard his mother’s voice in his head. Look them in the eyes. It doesn’t count unless you look them in the eyes. He looked up. “First of all, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about being Ernesto’s music partner, and I’m sorry I didn’t believe you wrote your songs.”

“What changed your mind?

“My cousins and I did some research,” he explained. “We found old newspaper ads from Ernesto’s first tour and for every ad up until he left Mexico City, there’s a Héctor listed right next to his name. But that’s not all. You know that songbook I told you about? They’ve actually compared the writing in it with samples of his and it didn’t match. They even compared it with examples of his handwriting from the time the book was written, but it still wasn’t a match. There’s a lot of people who think he lied about writing the songs. I never believed it, but now, with you claiming you wrote them, when you have nothing to gain by it and weren’t even alive when he was famous… it just makes too much sense.”

He went quite for a short moment. “If you knew this already, why did it take you a day to believe me?”

A lump formed in Miguel’s throat. He knew the answer, but it seemed so stupid compared to what the ghost had to go through all these years.

“Because I wasn’t ready,” he admitted. The shame pulled his eyes away. “I’ve looked up to de la Cruz practically my whole life. You see, a long time ago, my great-great grandfather abandoned his family to pursue his dream of becoming a famous musician. He never came back. Ever since then, my entire family hated music. They think music is what tore our family apart. But, I just can’t help it. I love music. It just… The way it makes me feel… When I hear a great song or I play my guitar, my imagination goes wild and I feel a fire in my chest. Not like heartburn or something, but more like… the sun is coming from inside me.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Héctor answered. “It is your passion, a part of you.”

Miguel’s face lit up. “Yeah, and that rush you get when performing, or that feeling when you finally find the right note or the right word… With music, I can say things I can’t say any other way. There’s nothing like it.”

“You are an artist, Miguel.” Warmth radiated from Héctor’s smile. “That is why you feel this way. You can’t help being a musician."

“Well, my family doesn’t want me to be a musician,” Miguel huffed, crossing his arms. “That’s why I idealized de la Cruz so much. I’d hear his songs or watch his interviews and I’d think, ‘He gets it. He would understand how I’m feeling.’ Sometimes, before my cousins found out, I’d think he was the only person in the world who would support my dream. When it became clear he was just a liar and a thief, even when the evidence was staring me in the face, I couldn’t accept it.”

“I see, but you understand there are more musicians in the world than him, ones who share your drive to create.”

“Like you.” Miguel could hardly believe it. He was finally having the kind of conversations he hoped to have one day. He always wanted someone, another musician, who shared his passion, who would understand. Who’d have thought he’d find that in a hundred-year-old ghost?

Then he remembered. He wasn’t here to talk music. He was here on business. “I’ve always wanted someone to talk about this stuff with, but I’m afraid there’s more to tell.”

“Okay, uh, you look serious again…”

Miguel swallowed. There’s no good way to do this. “Héctor, do you remember much about how you died?”

“Let’s see…” He closed his eyes to concentrate. When he opened them again, they glowed white. “I was walking to the train station when I felt a pain in my stomach. I remember falling to my knees, but after some time, the pain passed and I felt fine again. I got up and kept walking. I made it to the station but no one could see me or talk to me. It took me a while to accept it, but eventually I realized I was dead and I was a ghost.” The light went out of his eyes and he turned back to Miguel. “That’s all I remember.”

“What about before? You said Ernesto was there and he gave you a toast.”

“He did, that’s true.”

“Do you remember what he said?”

“You mean that he would move heaven and earth for me?” Héctor answered bitterly. “Instead, all he did was steal my music and try to erase my existence.”

Miguel nodded slowly. Now came the hard part. “Yeah, well, the thing is, Ernesto de la Cruz wasn’t just famous for his music. He also starred in a lot of films.” Does he know what films are? No time to explain, just move on. He quickly pulled up a video on his phone. “In one of them, there’s a character who says something very similar and, look.” He turned the phone so that Héctor could see it.

I would move heaven and earth for you mi amigo. Salud!

Gah! Poison!

As he heard the clip play out, Miguel looked away, hoping to give the ghost some semblance of privacy. He wasn’t sure what the proper protocol was when telling someone they may have been murdered. Would Héctor want privacy? Would he want to talk about it or be left alone? Would he even understand what Miguel was trying to show him?

“Poison?”

Miguel looked back.

The tears on the ghost’s face dried in an instant. “He poisoned me…”

“There’s no way to be sure-”

“No I can be sure.” Héctor’s voice remained quiet. “I remember now, wondering what could have caused my death, if it was something I ate or drank. Now I know. That drink was the last thing I had before I died. Come to think of it, he hid the glasses while he poured it. I thought nothing of it. I never imagined…” His face melted into rage and he rose up toward the ceiling. “How could he do that to me?!”

Miguel opened his mouth then shut it again. What could he say? What was there to say?

The lights flickered rapidly as Héctor continued his tirade. “We were friends! Our whole lives! I never saw my family again! I’ve been trapped here for over a century! All for a few songs? Was that all my life was worth to him?”

“Héctor? Maybe you should…”

“He took my songs! He took my future, my life, my family! He took everything from me!”

The florescent lights overhead burst and the smell of smoke filled the train station. Miguel thought he could feel a sharp shard prick him as it fell. The people around them muttered frantically and the station staff hurried to try to fix the problem.

“Héctor?” Miguel tried again.

The ghost looked down at Miguel. The rage on his face faded and he descended back down to earth, deflated. “I’m sorry, Miguel.”

“No, don’t be. If there were ever a time to blow-up the lights…”

“It’s my fault,” Héctor said. He slumped on the bench, hunched over, eyes toward the floor. “I should have seen Ernesto for what he was. I should have left him sooner. In fact, I never should have left my family at all.”

“It’s not your fault.” Miguel tried to put a hand on Héctor’s back but it went right through. Instead, he held his hand where the specter’s body began and let the cold nip at his hand. “You said you and Ernesto were friends for your whole lives. You should have been able to trust him. He’s the one who betrayed you.”

Héctor looked up. A weak smile tugged at his lip, then disappeared.

“Have you noticed you stopped crying?”

“It seems I have,” the ghost said as he put a hand to his cheek. “Poison tequila, right? I guess, in some way, I always knew.”

“So, no more uncontrollable crying, no more bleeding from the mouth,” Miguel said with an attempt at a smile. “Those must be good signs, right?”

“Maybe,” Héctor looked down at his transparent hands and flexed his fingers. “I know now who I am and why I’m here.”

“But something’s still wrong.”

“Of course there is!” He rose up off the bench. “I just found out my best friend murdered me! I spent a century tapped here! Is this all there is for me?” He sighed and deflated, lowering himself back down again. “I always thought, once I remembered my past, I’d cross over. At least then, I’d get to see my family again. I could tell them how sorry I was that I left, that I stayed away so long. I never came back to them. They never knew I was dead. Do they think I abandoned them? That I didn’t love them enough to come home? They must hate me…”

“Héctor…”

“If I could just see them again, I could tell them that all I wanted was to come home. Every day on that tour, I wished I could be home with them.” He closed his eyes and clutched his hands at his chest. “I love them so much, Miguel. I love them so much that it hurts. I used to never feel anything before but now, it hurts just knowing I may never see them again.”

Miguel chewed his lip as he thought. Héctor had his memories back, at least the important ones, but it still wasn’t enough. Something still had to happen, but what? Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together. “You will,” he said firmly.

Héctor looked up. “What?”

“We’re going to make that happen.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re going to figure out whatever it takes to get you to the afterlife.” He tried to put his hand on Héctor’s shoulder, but it phased through. He accepted the cold tingles on his hand and he continued. “You’re going to see your family again and I’m not going to give up until that happens.”

Héctor flashed a weak smile, but it quickly dissolved. “But when I first met you, you said you had to go home at the end of the week. How much time do you have left? The days run together in here so…”

“I don’t have to go home.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m staying with my grandparents and I’m going to live with them while I go to university. I’m coming back in a few months so I might as well just stay. I’m sure they won’t mind.”

“But…”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s settled. I’m staying in Mexico City.”

A familiar scolding tone sounded from behind him. “What do you mean you’re staying?”

Miguel turned to see his cousins standing behind him. Rosa hand her arms crossed and glared at him in a way that reminded him of Abuelita’s stories about Mamá Imelda. “Rosa?” Miguel said with a shaky laugh. “I thought you guys were outside.”

“We saw the lights flickering and got concerned,” Abel answered. He didn’t look as mad as his sister, but he was giving Miguel a sorry-but-I’m-siding-with-her kind of look.

“Oh yeah, well there’s good news,” Miguel piped up, hoping to add some levity to the situation. “Héctor remembered his death and he was definitely murdered by de la Cruz.” He paused and cringed as he heard what he just said. “I realize that doesn’t sound like good news now that I’ve said it out loud but…”

“Forget it,” Rosa snapped. She softened her glare as she turned her attention to Héctor. “I’m glad you’re getting your memories back, but we need to talk to Miguel real quick.”

Rosa grabbed his hand and pulled him away leaving Héctor floating by the bench. “What’s this about staying in Mexico City?” Rosa said, once they were out of the ghost’s earshot. “Our family expects us back in Santa Cecelia in 2 days.”

“I know but I can’t just leave anymore,” Miguel replied. “Héctor needs my help.”

“With what?” Rosa snapped in a hushed tone. “He remembers his past and he’s still here. What more can we do?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll figure something out. I promised him.”

“You promised Abuelita, remember?”

“It’s just a little bit longer.”

“It’s just a little bit now,” Abel cut in, “but then it’ll be a little bit more and a little bit more until you never come home.”

“You don’t know that,” Miguel argued. What was with them? He was only going to stay a few extra days or weeks. Sure, didn’t know exactly how much longer he’d be here, but it wasn’t like…

“Remember Mamá Coco?”

Miguel’s blood went cold as soon as those words left Rosa’s lips.

“Rosa…” Abel said in a warning tone.

She ignored him and pressed on. “Remember how, toward the end, she used to stare at the door and say she was waiting for her Papa to come home? Remember how painful that was for Abuelita to watch? You want to leave her like that? Staring at the door, hoping that maybe one day you’ll walk though it? Maybe it’ll be little Coco waiting for you.”

Her words sent a sharp pain through his heart. “That’s a low blow, Rosa. I’m not going to be like him. I’m coming back, just not now.”

“Maybe you won’t be like him and maybe you will. That’s up to you,” Rosa said sternly with a steady stare. “But if you don’t want to be like him, you need to start by keeping your promises. You can’t just say you’re coming home, you need to do it and you need to do it when you promised you would.”

“Miguel, go home.”

Miguel turned to see Héctor hovering just over his shoulder. “Héctor, I…”

“It sounds like you have an important promise to keep,” he continued.

“Helping you is important.” Miguel felt a lump form in his throat. How could Héctor be saying this? He’d been alone for a hundred years. Was he really willing to go back to that again?

“Miguel, all I want is to see my family again,” Héctor said softly. “I can’t keep you from seeing yours. You might think you’ll never run out of chances to be with them, but the fact is you will, and you never know when that day will come.”

Miguel blinked back the tears forming in the rims of his eyes. “I can’t leave you.”

Héctor smiled and floated down to Miguel’s eye level. “I’ll be alright,” he said, putting a hand on Miguel’s shoulder. “It’s only a few months. I’ve lasted this long, haven’t I?”

“But-”

“Miguel, you’ve already helped me more than I can ever repay. Go, see your family. I’ll be alright.”

Miguel leapt forward and put his arms around his friend as best as he could. “I’m coming back for you. I won’t let you be all alone again, I promise. I’ll help you cross over. You’ll see your family again, whatever it takes.”

Cold tingling enveloped him again as Héctor returned the hug. “I believe you, Miguel. Thank you for all you’ve done.” He released the hug and placed his hands on Miguel’s shoulders. The warmth in his smile far outweighed his freezing touch. “Now go. You can’t keep your family waiting.”

#coco #coco fanfiction #ghost au #ghost hector #hector rivera #miguel rivera #rosa rivera #abel rivera #sweetiepie08 #mwpt #coco ghost au #ghost au coco #sweetiepie writes #sweetiepie fanfiction

39 notes · View notes

fightevilandthengetblownup · 5 years

Text

Something borrowed, Something blue... (Part 1 - Bakery!AU)

—-

She wasn’t sure what he would think when he saw it, but she hoped he wouldn’t be upset. It had just screamed at her the moment she stumbled across it, and she knew exactly where it should go. Starting just above her knee and winding its way around her thigh to her hip bone, the stencil marks looked thick and jagged compared to the fine lines and dots it would eventually form into.

“Man, this is goin’ to be a hell of a night for me isn’t it?” The grumbled whine from the other brought a smile on her lips as Jo looked over her shoulder at the other blond.

Rolling her eyes, Jo let out a small laugh as she watched Ash massage his hands with a scowl. “Oh yeah, because this is goin’ to be a walk in the park for me too.”

“Bitch, please, you know you love it when I stick it to you; clearly you’re goin’ to be having a blast.”

“Yeah, and you’re going to get the practice and images for your portfolio - seems like a good day for you too.”

“Only cause I get you all bare legged around me for the night, chickadee.” Ash’s smile twisted into a friendly leer at that, though both of them laughed in unison after a moment. Giving the meat of her thigh a friendly tap, the other reached across her leg to flick the switch on the machine on before he turned his gaze back to her leg, joking look gone and replaced with the serious look she knew was his focussed face. Ash had left the building and Dr Badass, #1 tattoo artist on the West Coast, was in.

Rolling back so she was in the right position as the man started to press the needle into her skin with the high pitched buzzing beginning to fill the air.

Jo lay her head back and almost dozed off as the man’s hands and needle worked over the next seven hours. Occasionally they would pause to allow either of them to stretch, go to the bathroom or get a drink as the hours stretched on.

It was almost midnight before the artist finally put down his gun and wiped over her bare skin with the cleaning pad. Jo’s thigh and hip was aching, and Ash made his own groans of pain as he cracked his knuckles.

“Hello?” The voice came calling from the adjoining bakery, and Jo quickly moved to cover her bare bottom half with the blanket she’d been using to stay warm throughout.

“In here, my man.” Ash called back, peeling off his gloves and starting the steps to pack away his machine and the various ink pots he’d used for the design that night. “Bloody pushy bitch made me do this thing in one freaking sitting.”

“This that secret tattoo I’ve heard nothing about?” The question came as the dark haired man made his way into the tattoo parlor. Moving his way across to the tattoo bed, Jo found herself grinning widely into the kiss he delivered along with the plastic bag of Chinese takeout for the pair.

Jo nodded as she ran her hand through his hair and shifted in her spot to stretch out her leg muscles.

“That’d be it, Joey just showed up one day with this little design and begged me to tag her with it-” Ash replied as he rolled across the few feet of space between the pair and his work station, spinning about and holding out a paper to the other man. “Pretty beautiful piece'a work to get to play with. Going to look mint on Instagram and my portfolio. Just make sure you angle your ass enough when I take the photo, aye darlin’?”

Jo shifted awkwardly as her boyfriend took the design from the other, before turning to give her childhood friend access to apply the necessary serum and then bandage to her hip and thigh.

“Where…where did you get this?” Jack’s voice shook slightly as he looked at the page, and Jo could see the tattoo artist freeze before spinning and sliding his way through the door into the bakery without a word. If she’d been able to see his face, she knew he would have been biting down on his knuckle to avoid speaking. “Jo? Did you-?”

“Find a real beautiful piece in one of your old folders and talked Ash into expanding from American traditional and Japanese to do some fine-line grey work? Yep, yes I did.”

Jo looked up through her hair at the other, not sure what the almost vacant and frozen look on his face meant. They’d been dating for two years, sure, but she hadn’t seen that look since the University mixer eight months ago when he’d frozen up at some question from some patron about when he was doing another exhibit or something. She did remember the silence and the cold responses she had gotten from him until they got home when she’d said he was doing her wall again at the patron’s insistence about where his next work was being displayed. Jo bit her lip hoping that she wouldn’t get the same cold response when he saw her leg.

“You found my sketches? And thought to get one..” Jack’s face was pulled into a closed off frown, brows creased only slightly and the rest of his face blank except for the swirl of colour from light to dark in his eyes she knew came from him focussing really hard on what to say next. “You got my artwork put on you without asking me?”

“I didn’t think it’d be a big deal.” She mumbled the words out, arms crossing under her chest as she looked away from him. Pushing to her feet and letting the blanket drop down, the blonde moved towards her folded pair of sweatpants and underwear to get dressed again now the bandages were in place without looking back at him. “I’ve always wanted a fine line styled one, and something about that just… Spoke to me. Said ‘Jo, I need to be on your body’ or something like that.”

Once she’d gotten her underwear back on, she jumped at the hand on her unbandaged hip as she span to look up at him. His eyes were dark blue - moody, pensive, aroused or quietly angry; but she couldn’t quite tell which one.

“Show me.” The growled words made her want to smirk but she fought it down - aroused or angry it was then - before she peeled the edge of her bandage off to display the design in its entirety, the band of her underwear pulled high over the very top of her hip bone.

Ash had done an amazing job, like always.

While her rib tattoos were highly saturated in their coloring with vibrant depths in the primary colours of the American Traditional style, and their thick borders and shading added contrast and depth that she’d loved and found her own artist appreciated regularly with his fingertips or lips, this design was the complete opposite.

Shades of grey, from inky black depths to almost nonexistent white highlights that accentuated the skin gaps of the petals, we’re all that made up the design. The thin but deliberate lines flowed together, dots and fading shading used in equal measure to add depths to the folds and turns of the design. The flowers spread and bloomed across her thigh and hip, her own skin filling in the petals like they were blooming from inside her rather than pressed upon her surface. It had been a simple sketch of a group of flowers, from the date in the bottom corner Jo figured sometime before whatever fame he had achieved in the art world from her Googling of him before they’d begun dating, but there had been a soul and life in them. And with Ash’s deft hand and skill, they seemed to grow even more organically from her skin than the paper as if they had always been there. Just below the surface.

His hand twitched towards her, and his finger hovered just above her raised skin as if he was following the lines of his own work like he remembered it, before he reached to smooth the bandage back into place at the clunking sound of the spinning chair drawing nearer to return.

“So, what do you think? Something I should expand more into?” The blond man asked as he span his way back into the parlor, three plates from the bakery and several utensils in his hand as he rolled into sight.

The dating pair nodded, Jo pulling her sweatpants on while Jack rubbed at the back of his neck awkwardly.

“You did a great job, Ash, and I’ll make sure to wear my cutest thong when the swelling goes down for your photo.” The blonde quipped back, winking across at her friend.

“You are an angel of the highest order, mamacitta, I’ll see about getting you included when Inked is coming for that photoshoot next month.” Ash replied, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her cheek with a grin before he moved to start dishing out the Kung Pao Chicken and fried rice on his plate.

“Photoshoot?”

“Ash is gettin’ featured in some bigshot magazine again. They like to get examples of old work and new work of his for it to give a real, longterm work.” Jo replied, piling her and the other’s plate high with dinner and stuffing a prawn cracker in her mouth. Biting down and letting the cracker disolve on her tongue, she found herself smiling at the appreciative look from the other as he sat down on the tattoo bench beside her. “I already agreed to getting my sides photographed as part of his older work-”

“And now you get to be part of my new work too.” The mulleted artist smirked, slurping up one of the Singapore noodles straight from the container. “It’ll be on the 15th, so make sure you get someone in to fill that time for you.”

Jo nodded her head, not really thinking on it as she began to wolf down her own meal. Tattooing, especially for that long, always made her ravenous as Ash had a strict no-eating policy when he was working. Something about it distracting him from the ‘art’, but she thought it was more that he just got jealous she could stuff her face and he couldn’t without having to go through the sanitisation again.

Jack bumped her knee however, raising an eyebrow at her as he questioned quietly, “Don’t you have that tail for that week? About the wedding and the cake and the bakery?”

That got a groan from her as Jo tipped her head to the side, resting on Jack’s shoulder in exhaustion. “Oh god, that’s true… Ah well, they can just wait for an hour or two while we shoot or something.”

“That or they’ll include it, show off your body in two magazines, aye?” The eyebrow waggle from the tattooer got a tired sounding laugh from her, and she could feel the other’s shoulder shake from his own silent laughter. “Promise we’ll keep her covered up some, Jack.”

“That’s her choice,” The other responded, tucking into his own late-night dinner with them. Jo could see a splatter of paint on the back of his neck from where she was, clearly having spent the night on his own working on his own artwork. “Though I think Rolling Stone may actually appreciate getting a half-dressed show by tagging along too.”

“It’s not like it’s a cover story - that’s your sister, not me, hun.” Jo ribbed back, chewing thoughtfully over her chicken as Ash span away to get some beers from his fridge.

The second week of the next month was something she was dead nervous about. It wasn’t like it was the first article her bakery had been featured in, nor was it the first time she had been interviewed personally - but those had always been for small local or state publications. Or the odd collumn in the society pages when she’d accompanied her step-dad to a reunion special, or been caught on camera out with the brunette sister of Jack’s in the last two years.

But this time it was a large, international even magazine coming to speak with her. A reporter was planned to follow her about for the week to write a feature story as part of the ongoing coverage about the wedding in six months time. The wedding was due to be Kardashian Level Big according to Shada, whatever that meant, and Jo had somehow been sucked into the epicentre of it almost as much as the bride herself.

It had started with an innocent offer to bake the cake. Something Jo would have done for any of her friend’s upon hearing of their engagement - something Jo had done before when Dean’d been engaged to Lisa six years ago (not that it lasted) and when Sam told her that he and Jessica were finally getting married last year. So when Shada had bounced her way into the back of the bakery three months earlier to show off the glittering diamond on her hand, the words had come out with genuine intent and happiness for the other woman. An innocent and wellmeaning offer which was still well meant and innocent enough; but had somehow been the start of the whole cycle of crazy the blonde was now preparing for.

Two weeks after the engagement announcement, Jo had found herself being swept up into a hug and answering ‘yes’ to her boyfriend’s sister’s request for her to be one of her bridesmaids. Shada had said she would have wanted her for a maid-of-honour (though Jo wasn’t sure how to tell her that wasn’t the correct term) but given Jo was already helping “so much” with the wedding cake that the sweet girl did not want to add any extra duties on top of her. Jo wasn’t aware how much that was a blessing at the time, but she did now. Three weeks after that, the engagement party happened.

Since then, it had been non-stop for Jo. It was as if a paparazzi bomb had gone off in front of the bakery given how frequently the bride and her pose came by to speak with her, not to mention all of the other typical wedding activities she had been dragged along to. It had taken all of her willpower not to drop out of it after Shada had tearfully confessed one night while Jack was reading a bedtime story to Billy that if it weren’t for Jo, she would think the whole thing might just be a sham for the show’s publicity. A lot of wine bottles were finished that night while the two women talked, letting the younger one vent about how out of control it had gotten and how much she loved her fiance’s patience with it all. Jo had dragged the bride’s brother to the bedroom after Shada had left, and thanked him for his own patience until it was almost dawn.

It had been last month that she had received the call from some reporter - a Chuck something-or-other - about her being part of a six-month series following along those involved in the monstrostity that was coming of the event and an “inside view to the love story of the year” from the deadpanned description the reporter had given her over the phone. Jo had laughed so much at that that she’d found herself agreeing before she knew what was happening. Her month would be the second month of the series; however she had already been featured and introduced in the story that had been released that very week. Story one had been a shallow interview with each of the bridal party about the happy couple, and a feature on the gianormous ring. Month two would be following Jo around as a bridesmaid and the baker for the event. She had heard month four’s topic would be some monstrosity about the bridesmaids shopping and fittings which would start during her week follow-around and expanded on later with the rest of the bridesmaids that she was not looking forward to.

Jack’s laugh distracted her from her thoughts though as Jo accepted a longneck from Ash. “You’re my cover girl though, pretty sure they’ll decide to make you one too if they spot the tattoo shoot.” His fingers stroked through her hair as Jo plucked his egg roll from his plate with a smile. “I’m sure it will all be fine, Jo.”

“I’m sure you think it will be.” Mumbling around the stolen egg roll, the three slowly demolished the food and the topic moved on to Ash’s work and the upcoming University art display for the other’s senior classes. It was almost one thirty before the three finally packed up and headed their separate ways home. Thankfully it was a Sunday morning which meant the bakery would be closed and the tattoo shop would not open until midday.

As Jo and Jack reached his town house and got ready for bed, the blonde baker found herself turning back and forth in the mirror of the bathroom with a smile on her face. The bandage covered her most recent work, but she could visualise the soft and dark greys of the work underneath as she looked at it beside her other pieces. It was positioned below the American Traditional styled piece dedicated to her father branded across her ribs, the bright red and bold roses surrounding the chrome’d motorbike would tie-in with the roses blooming across her hip; while the grey tones would mesh with the silver of the bikes design nicely. She could tell the love her childhood friend had put into both pieces - the love of his work, the love of the art and skill, and the love for her - would would stare back at her every time she saw each piece for the rest of her life.

Turning the other way, Jo found herself stroking the bare skin of the other hip wonderingly as to how to find a piece to tie in with the roses and guitar on that side of her ribs - a dedication to her son - but also match the new grey work. Perhaps she could talk her artist into making her a custom piece this time, perhaps even featuring an anchor, eagle and globe for her son’s father. She shook her head at that thought. That would require talking to someone about him, and as she felt the telltale pricking at her eyes, she knew that was a conversation she was still not ready for.

Brushing her teeth quickly to divert her thoughts, the baker found herself cuddling into the small spoon position when she returned to the bed, Jack’s arms wrapping tightly across her waist. The last thing she thought as his warm breath brushed against the back of her neck and Jo found herself snuggling back into his warmth was that she was so lucky to have a second go around.

Over the next three weeks Jo found herself smiling every time she remembered the new design on her leg, be it when she’d catch a sight of it in the shower, or when Ash would make a joke about getting her undressed again, or when Jack’s lips would press against it once it was healed enough. She always loved getting new work done and Dean made a joke each time she got one done that she experienced some kind of natural high from them. Jo snarked back that he’d understand it if he wasn’t such a bitch that he was scared of a little needle.

As Monday rolled around, the baker found herself in the kitchen decorating a tray of mojito flavoured cupcakes with a lime infused buttercream and pearlescent green candy balls and candied lime peel when she was interrupted.

“Hey Jo, there’s some guy here for you.” Sam’s voice snapped her out of her routine of swirling the icing with a jolt. The taller man had the good decency to look apologetic as she set her piping bag down as he moved over to start taking over the decorating duties. Jo still wasn’t sure why he still worked for her. He had finished his law degree the previous year, but he’d yet to move into permanent employment in the field - taking over some of the work from Ash now that the parlor was up and running in the last eighteen months, but making no comment to Jo about when he’d be handing over his apron for a suit. She wasn’t sure what she would do when he finally did though. Probably cry at him until he changed his mind, but that was something for Future Jo to worry about. “Looks kind of sketchy but said something about trailing you?”

“That’d be the reporter, remember? That thing for Stone about Shada’s wedding.”

“That’s this week?”

Jo laughed at the apprehensive tone to the other’s voice and the way Sam’s hands dropped the piping bag to start straightening his denim apron and pat at his manbun self-conciously. “Yes, that’s this week so don’t forget to actually look cute for once in your life.”

“Hey! I am always cute,” Sam replied, tugging the name badge - the same Sam-I-Am written in faded ink over and over - to sit jauntily angled before he reached out to tweak her nose. Jo laughed nasally as he let go with a smile. “Where as you’ll have to remember to get your beauty rest and not just screw your boyfriend until sunrise every night.”

“Excuse me?” The unfamiliar voice interrupted the pair, both jerking in surprise and straightening up as if they were twelve and thirteen again and Ellen had overheard them discussing something they shouldn’t be. Jo blinked her eyes a few times as she finally located where the voice had come from - a man with dark hair, scruffy beard and a somewhat bemused smirk, slightly disheveled clothes and an average height with a messenger bag slung across his front and a dictaphone in one hand standing in the open door to the front of the bakery beside Ash - and found herself blushing at the fact that was the first recorded words to her week long interview. “Uh, I’m here for Rolling Stone?”

“Chuck Shurley, right? Yes, yes, nice to meet you - I’m Jo! Jo Harvelle.” The baker slipped quickly into her usual friendly greeting, brushing her hand off of the nervous sweat starting in her palm on her thigh as she rushed across the room to shake the other’s hand. Jerking her head behind her at the taller man as he turned his attention back to the cupcakes, Jo found herself glaring at her friend sharply. “And that’s Sam Winchester, and he’s going to shut the fuck up right now, aren’t you Sammy?”

“Sure thing, boss!” The cheery response made her want to growl but her eyes focussed on the silver recording device the only thing stopping her.

Directing the man back out into the main area of the bakery, Jo led the other over to one of the empty tables as Ash began warming up the coffee machine for the day and getting the bakery ready for customers in the next hour.

“So, uh… How is this, um, going to be going this week?” Jo asked stiltedly, her hands twitching awkwardly around eachother on the tabletop as the man across from her slung his messenger bag off and set the silver recording device down and pulled out a battered looking notebook. “I mean, I know that Thursday we’re doing some bridesmaid shopping or something, and I emailed you about the appointment for the parlor next door tomorrow - but other than that, what, uh, exactly are you intending to do this week?”

Chuck tumbed through his notebook without looking up at her until he got to whatever page he was intending to start on before he finally looked across at her. Jo felt a little like a deer in the headlights as the reporter pulled out a pen and stared across at her.

“Those are two specific outtings, yes, but for the most part I’ll just be trailing you about on a day-to-day basis, asking questions and possibly interviewing friends as well.” He cleared his throat a little awkwardly, and as if summoned by the awkwardness, Ash appeared with two glasses, a glass bottle of water and two coffees for the pair of them. Jo fought down the urge to kiss him as she began to almost inhale the caffienated liquid, not even reacting to the wink he shot her. Bloody psychic friends, knowing her inside and out. Chuck too drank from his own coffee before he jotted something down in his notepad she couldn’t see. “If you’ve got the chance to do a demonstration of the cake, or just one of the teirs of what is sure to be the monstrosity- I mean, extravagantly beautiful cake, then I know that’d be really important for the piece-”

“I can definitely bake up a teir or two of the amazing masterpiece for the wedding of the year-”

“With photos? Of the creative process required for such an… exciting event.”

“Yes, you can photograph the process.”

“Excellent.”

Both trailed off quietly, however the slight awkwardness had faded as both smirked a little. Jo found herself having to bite the inside of her cheek.

“Off record-”

“Okay, off the record.”

“-You’re not looking forward to covering this are you?” Jo asked politely, hiding her smile behind her mug.

The reporter appeared to pause for a moment, eyes darting away as if trying to decide the best, most diplomatic response, before he looked back at her with his own self-depricating smile. “That obvious huh?” Chuck let out a small chuckle. “Usually I’m touring with bands and such or doing some investigative articles, not.. a fake socialite turned celebrity’s wedding.”

“I read that article on ‘A week in the life of a YouTube something-or-other’ a few months ago actually.” Jo replied, smiling congenially across at the other. “And my boyfriend was a fan of your introspective into the decline of alternative music festivals.”

“Can we go back on the record?”

“Sure?”

“Brilliant. Let’s start with some basic questions, aye?” The awkwardness was fully gone as both relaxed back into their seats and the man looked down at his pages as if deciding where to start. “So, your name is Joanna Beth Harvelle-”

“But I go by Jo.”

“Jo, then.” He scribbled a note down. “Your mom and dad’s names?”

“Ellen and William Harvelle.”

“And you’ve got a step-father, right?”

“Yeah, Bobby Singer - you’ve probably got down to chat with him sometime anyways.” Jo replied almost boredly as they made their way through the basic questions.

“He’s the director on the bride’s TV show correct? Is that how you met the blushing bride?”

“Nah, she’s actually my boyfriend’s sister, so I knew her before she was cast. Not that that had anything to do with either-” Jo was quick to add, shifting to sit upright a bit more, rather than relaxing as she realised she needed to be careful to definitely paint her friend in the best light now they were back on record. “-I didn’t actually know Bobby was working on the project, or that Shada was an aspiring actress actually, until after they started filming.”

“Speaking of your boyfriend - he’s Jack Grey, correct?”

“Yes, he’s a lecturer at Cornish in the arts programs.”

The reporter nodded along with her words, jotting down something as he flicked a look up to her face that made Jo flush. “He was a big name in the art circuit a while back, wasn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t know really, not really my scene and I didn’t know him back then.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Just over two years now.” Jo smiled thinking back on how quickly the time had seemed to go, dipping her teaspoon and stirring her coffee absent mindedly as she fell into the easy responses to the easier question.

“And before that you were married, correct?”

The question caught he off guard, spoon clattering loudly against the side of the cup as her eyes widened. She could hear the sound of coughing from behind her somewhere and the hissing sound of the milk frother being turned to full without any milk jug underneath it. She could see the curious look from the reporter and the quick movement of his pen as he wrote down something as he stared back at her. She could feel the heat leaving her cheeks and her stomach twisting around on itself, and her throat catching as if suddenly parched of any moisture.

“Uh..what?”

“You were married before, making you the only married bridal party member. A, uh, William Mark Reynolds correct?” Chuck appeared to look quickly between her face and his notes, frowning slightly. “A captain in the marines, killed in action in Afghanistan five and a half years ago. Awarded a Medal of Honor for-”

“For disobeying orders to rescue civillians from an occupied ISIL facility, and for blocking the escaping civillians path from the combatants with his own body.” She replied almost mechanically, the words combing back to her from the visit by the Marine officer sent to break the news to her. Jo found her stomach twisting again tightly as it had then, however at that time it had hurt doubly from the pressure of their boy inside growing. Shaking her head, she blinked across at the other man with a tight smile. “My husband lost his life in the line of duty, and gave twenty-three people their’s back. That’s all I have to say on that.”

“Would you mind if, should it suit the article, we include the photo of your receiving the award on his behalf?” The photo in question was pushed across to her on the reporter’s phone, and Jo bit back an inappropriate laugh at how different she looked in it to now. Haunted and sallow, sunken eyes and limp hair, and the crisp black dress not hiding at all the protrouding stomach she had at the time of the ceremony. It was the time she had started baking, and within a year had the bakery up and running and a smile back on her face after months of the same blank look in the image.

Jo shook her head, pushing the phone back across the table to the other. “I’d prefer you don’t, and I’m sure you’ll have more interesting things to include than that too much.”

“That’s true, I’ll see what I can do to ensure not to spend too much time on it.” The genuine smile she received in return as well as the softness in his tone helped to smooth the tightness in her at the line of questioning, as Chuck clicked his phone screen back to black before turning his attention back to his notes. “Anyway, you have a son?”

“Billy - William Dean, but we call him Billy. He’s almost five.”

“And you’re the owner of this fantastic bakery, correct?”

“Yes, this is my other baby!” Jo laughed, the tightness disappearing in full as the topic turned back to easier topics.

From there, the questions moved through to how long she had been baking, when the bakery had opened and what had inspired her ‘unique’ choice in name. How she came to meet Shada and her fiance Ian - which Jo felt uniquely qualified to provide an indepth telling of the pairs first meeting in the very kitchen behind them. Chuck laughed at her retelling the story, and both agreed to take some photos of the space and possibly even re-create the “life changing coffee” as Jo dubbed it on the other woman’s behalf. How the bride had asked her to be part of the bridal party, how Jack would be participating in the wedding - “He’s going to be walking his sister down the aisle, and is the last of the groomsmen” - and how she had found the wedding arrangements thus far.

As the hour reached the time for the bakery to open for trading, the reporter simply shrugged his bag back upon his shoulder, tucked away his notepad and brought out a professional camera to begin taking candid photos of the bakery and it’s workers. Jo herself headed back into the kitchen to begin on a new load of pastries for the day as Sam returned to the front of house and Ash began to flit between the coffee machine and his parlor. The rest of the day passed relatively easily, with Chuck almost an invisible presence as the trio moved through their usual patterns of the day. Jo almost forgot to cut him a slice of the quiche lorraine they were having for lunch that day with how unobtrusive he was.

Occasionally, she’d be drawn into a line of questioning about the business and her personal life, as well as to reflect on the bride herself, but for the most part Chuck appeared content to follow her around quietly other than to ask where he could charge his phone and dictaphone. Ash would bring him in a coffee at the same times he would deliver Jo her own, and she heard them have a slight discussion at one point about her and his friendship. She was exceptionally happy to hear Ash never once mentioned the knife collection Jo’d begun collecting as a child, as she doubted that would run well.

So far as her work, the day had been an almost mindless blur of rushing about the kitchen space preparing to get ahead of herself for the hours off she would be taking the next day. Sam handled customers like the pro he was, sweet talking everyone and keeping a smooth transition of items from the back to front without any input from her; while she knew in the adjoining space, Ash would be drinking beer, spinning on his chair and smashing out the prep work for the week’s tattoos ahead of him and preparing for the photoshoot the next day - occasionally Jo could hear him stop to help with barista duties given the tattoo parlor was not open Monday’s or Tuesday’s typically; as well as the odd conversation between all three men working in the building alongside her.

Just before midday, Chuck and Sam had entered the kitchen and set up some kind of rig to capture her in motion with a slow exposure system for stills as well as a video camera for the video miniseries that would accompany the piece. Jo barely thought of it as she continued to work like a madwoman to pump out tray upon tray of brownies, ice racks full of different cupcakes and pile cakes high with fruit and garnishes. She was just glad she’d had the foresight not to agree to any weddings or functions that weekend. Brownies filled with hazelnuts, Nutella spread and drizzled with white chocolate slipped into the fridge beside raspberry cupcakes, poppy seed muffins, dark chocolate tortes, fruit pies and savory quiches and pies. So far as Jo was concerned, the day was like any other with the constant battle to bake ahead of her needs and the scent of chocolate, berries and baking bread filling her nose; cocoa and flour dusting her hair, brushing her cheeks and coating her hands as always.

It wasn’t until it hit four in the afternoon that Jo was reminded that the reporter was slinking about when she’d been greeted by her dark haired man with a wide grin and kiss as usual as he made his way into the back kitchen. She had her arms around his neck, one hand in his hair and the other tugging him into her by his scarf as he brushed her cheek clear of a white streak of flour when the sound of repeated camera shutters disturbed her from her usual greeting.

“Uh… Some privacy?” Jo pulled back from the other to look towards the reporter, camera still out and snapping candid movements as the pair didn’t step back from one another.

There was another few shutter sounds before the man lowered the camera back to the bench and pulled out his dictaphone instead. “Sorry Jo, privacy is for next week. Hi, Chuck Shurley, big big fan of your watercolor period.” The reporter made his way over, hand held out for the other to shake as he smiled in that same self-depricating way Jo had come to know as his bemused look over the last nine hours. “The sunflower segment was a phenomenal series.”

“Oh.. Oh, thanks. Yeah, uh, they definitely were, um, some of my work. Yep.” Jo looked on as the same cold, almost indifferent look swept over his boyfriend’s face as he shook hands with the other man, his other arm staying firmly wrapped around her waist. Jack’s eyes darted about and she could see his jaw muscle clench for a moment. “Nice to meet you, Chuck. I, uh, hope Jo hasn’t caused you too many problems so far today.”

“Hey!” She let out an outraged cry, hand tugging at his scarf playfully angry as she looked up at him. The sound of the camera clicking caught her off guard again as the pair had smiled and smirked at one another before the playful looks dropped from their faces at the sound. Jo coughed awkwardly before turning back to her cupcake work while Jack stepped back a few feet to pick up one of the brownies laid out on a tray ready to be moved out front or stored into the fridge for the next day.

“So, Jack Grey, you’re Shada’s older brother, right?”

“Yes, Shada’s my little sister.” Jack slumped back against the counter top as Jo turned her attention back to her current work. She wasn’t sure what the tone in his voice or the slightly cool attitude he was putting off was about, but figured the reporter would inevitably want to interview him now or in future and was taking advantage of the opportunity as it presented itself. “Our parents were Eleanor and Michael Grey, they have since passed away before you get to those questions.”

The lemon and honey infused cupcakes she was currently working on, a pale golden yellow batter that had come out of the oven right before they moved from a light gold to a warm brown color on the top, were testers for the wedding cake she’d be trialling later in the week itself. She had to decide over the next day to decide on the best icing for the mix - whether she went for the basil and lemon infused buttercream that she moved towards the mixer to whip up, or if she brought in the purple theme for the outer decoration by swirling blueberries or blackberries into the buttercream too.

“Thanks for confirming, uh.. So, were your parents creatives too? To have had both a prolific artist and a rising star actress in the family, it would beg the question.”

“Our mother was a dental assistant and our father was an accountant. So no. They weren’t particularly creative people.”

“In that case, as the first of the artists in the family - how do you think your sister is handling her rise to fame?” Chuck’s question sounded weird, and the tones of both men sounded off to her; however Jo simply spared a quick glance towards the pair over her shoulder as she moved to start working on the berry coulis. Neither seemed particularly odd, Jack seemed to be appreciating his brownie as much as always and the reporter was simply flipping through his notebook with the dictaphone beside them. “It’s so similar to your own rise to prominance too. Straight out of the last few years of study, picked up by a renowned name in the industry and flashed into the public sphere.”

“My sister is very mature for her age.” The words were practically growled out, and as Jo stirred about the berry mix in the saucepan over the hob, she chanced another look behind her. Jack’s arms were crossed firmly across his chest, and that cold look was back. Peculiar. “Shada also has the benefit of being surrounded by people who want the best for her, and have had their own experiences, as you say, with the problems of popularity and attention. People who will help keep her on the right path.”

“Ah. Yes. Not going to see her follow your footsteps then?”

That caught her attention, back straightening and ears pricked but made no move to look around to see what was happening. It was quiet for a moment before Jo found herself getting a kiss on the cheek and a pat on her hip before Jack mumbled something about ‘catching up with her later’ and leaving. Very, very peculiar.

Finishing off the coulis and moving back towards her station, setting the hot pan down on a cooling pad to be used once it had dropped down in temperature. The buttercream was almost finished whipping in the mixer as Jo switched that off as well. Spooning half the basil, lemon buttercream into a medium, petal nozzel piping bag; she began piping in a rose around the top of half the cupcakes as she waited for the berry mix to cool.

She could hear the man rustling about in his bag behind her, flipping pages back and forth, feet shuffling loudly on the concrete floor, and the click of the back of the dictaphone being slid open for more batteries again.

“What was that all about?” Jo found herself asking while the other’s recording device was not recording every word she said. “Off record, what was that all about?”

“Your boyfriend is a bit of an enigma in the art world, if you didn’t know. He was huge for a while there, people were saying he was going to be the next classics master, first one in generations.” Chuck replied, fitting the batteries back into his recorder, but not turning it back on yet as he moved over to watch what she was doing. A snap of his camera came as she added the last petal to the cupcake in her hand. “And then seemingly overnight, he just dropped off the radar after torching his studio. Burnt over a million dollars of artwork some have valued the loss at.”

Jo’s brow shot up, not having dug much further than just that he’d had an exhibit that went around the world some ten years earlier than her meeting him, as she looked across at the other. “Really?”

“He was set to be huge. But none of his work has been seen since then.”

“Huh, guess I shouldn’t have got him to keep painting over his work out front then, aye?” Jo laughed a little to herself, shaking her head as she picked up another cupcake.

The icing on that one was ruined however when she heard the clattering of the reporter’s notebook to the floor surprised her. Jerking around, she looked at the other in confusion.

“Wait..that…that mural out in the main room?” Chuck appeared to struggle to get the words out, staring at her wide eyed. “Is that a Jack Grey?”

Jo nodded her head with another laugh, quirking her lips up as she sat the piping bag and cupcake down on her work station. Brushing her hands off on her apron, she reached across to the top of the work bench for her phone. “Yeah, that’s I think the tenth one I’ve got him to do? I’ve got photos of some of the other’s on here somewhere too.”

For the next thirty minutes the pair stood together flicking through the somewhat unartful photos Jo had snapped of each of her murals over the last two years - from a wall full of flowers with secret faces in the centres, to a black-and-white labyrinth maze, to a stylised sketchy portrait of her and her son that was done to celebrate Billy’s birthday, to a wall full of swirling colours making designs and shapes within itself that was hard to define but had made Jo smile for two whole months - while the dictaphone remained off and Jo answered off record questions about the other’s work in the last two years. Both sides were surprised as they talked, one that the artist was still making art, the other that it was a surprise for him to be doing so.

Once the coulis was cooled down, Jo poured it in lines around the star nozzel piping bag before filling the centre with the remaining buttercream. The swirls were a mix of purple and white atop the other half of the cupcakes by the time Ash and Sam made their way into the kitchen after tidying down the store front and closing up.

“So, we’ll meet back here tomorrow for the… uh?” Chuck looked a little helplessly at the trio as he flicked back and forth through the notebook, now with extra sheets of paper stuck in at all kinds of angles, including napkins and baking paper when they couldn’t locate normal paper.

“Inked magazine shoot next door.” Ash supplied generously, thumbs stuck through his belt as he relaxed back next to Jo, staring hungrily at the rack of cupcakes for the next day. Moving quickly, Jo shoved the rack of her wedding-tester cupcakes into the fridge as Sam added the last two trays of brownies and a slab of cinnamon buns in after her. The fridge was more full than she normally allowed it to get; with premade elements such as the cupcakes and brownies, as well as trays of unbaked bread, buns and rolls ready to be thrown in the oven throughout the next day so there would be freshly baked items as well. The pout that graced the other’s face as he brushed a hand through his long back hair made Jo smirk. “Got this nightmare getting done sometime around lunch, but I’ll be needing her all day. You know, emotional support.”

“What a liar, Ash, you don’t have emotions!”

“Ugh, the pain, the hurt, you break my heart, girlie.” The mulleted tattooer held his hands up to his heart, clutching in fake pain as he stared back at her. Jo wiped a fake tear from her own eye in response, giving an exagerated sniff, before getting caught up in a hug by the other blond. Squealling as her feet left the ground, she wasn’t even surprised to hear the click of the camera at this point, nor the laughter from the other men watching. As Ash sat her back down on the ground, she elbowed him in the ribs gently. “Anyway, Jo’s going to be out of the kitchen all day with me and the guys from Inked, as well as Garth, Gordon, Creedy and Tamara - just so you know Jo and don’t yell at me-”

“Really? You’ve got Gordon coming?”

“Get over it Jo, it was three crappy dates and him texting that he was seeing someone else.” Jo was interrupted in her whining about the man coming and being a part of the shoot by Sam, shaking his hair out of his manbun now that the food was away and the day was over. He reached out a clapped a hand on her shoulder with a smile. “Don’t worry though, I’m going to make sure to burn all of his coffees and add a ton of sugar.”

“But he’s keto at the moment for the next comp-ooooh.” Jo grinned widely in response at the other, rolling her eyes at the mischief that Sam would inevitably get up to tomorrow. He and the other man had never gotten along well, and Jo was almost certain he’d been involved somehow in scaring the other away three years ago when Jo and Gordon had begun to strike up a flirtation when he’d been visiting a lot to discuss his next work with Ash. However it could have been Billy that scared the other off, and the blonde couldn’t help but smile thinking how much better off she was now than three or even four years earlier.

Finishing the last bit of tidying up and confirming the time for ten am the next day, Jo bid goodbye to the other’s before heading back to Jack’s townhouse to get started on dinner and hand over duties with her mom. The night went by quietly - Billy had behaved himself at childcare and for the two hours Ellen watched over him in the evening before Jo and Jack both made it home, Jack’s cold mood seemed to have disappeared completely if the flowers were any indication, and the trio spent a normal night playing games on the rug in front of the television before Jack took Billy for his bedtime story.

As the pair finally retired for bed after two episodes of Good Omens and half a bottle of red wine each, Jo found herself curling into her spot in the crook of the other’s neck and asking quietly, “Did you really torch a whole pile of your paintings?”

She could feel him stiffen for a moment before his arms wrapped around her again tightly. Jack’s voice was just as quiet, as if it was said softly enough it would remain a secret, just between the two of them. “Yeah, my manager was not happy but fuck him.” His fingers stroked through her hair gently as Jo snuggled in closer again. “He was the one that pushed me to pump out crap, he didn’t deserve a single cent of commision from it and I was… exhausted. Physically and creatively. The news said it was the whole studio, but really it was just a few canvases. I was done.”

She hummed in response, curling her fingers around his shoulders as she hugged into his chest, breathing deeply. It was intoxicating, the smell of oil paints, mens deoderant and that underlying scent she’d come to associate with home. Nodding her head against his chest, cheek pressed against the thin, soft sleep tshirt fabric, Jo could appreciate the other’s past as much as she hoped he would hers one day. Not today though, she’d thought on it enough already today, more than she had in over two years; and she didn’t want to go digging around in that box of memories again. “I’m glad you did it then, otherwise you wouldn’t be here now.”

“Exactly, what’s a bit of arson to make everything right, huh.” The words rumbled in his chest and made her smile as they shared a few kisses before rolling about to get to sleep. She would have rolled on top of him, but Ash had made her promise not to get any hickeys and to get a good nights sleep before she’d left the bakery.

And a good nights sleep she got.

Jo rolled into the bakery the next morning, Billy’s hand held tightly in hers since she wouldn’t be in the kitchen unable to watch him that day, and quickly grabbed up the plate of cinnamon buns that Sam had already baked that morning from the kitchen before taking the young boy through to the tatto parlor where there were the starts of the shoot were getting underway. There were lighting rigs, and cameras everywhere. There were cords all over the floors, and Billy was very careful when stepping over them to her relief and pride as they made their way through to where Ash was nursing a beer already.

“Just starting, or didn’t you stop?” Jo asked quietly as she moved Billy to sit up on the tatto bench beside his favourite ‘uncle’. She tore one of the buns in half, handing one half to each of her blond men with a smile.

Ash shook his head as he bit down into the fluffy, cinnamon infused bun before looking at her in surprise at the hidden apple chunks. “Didn’t stop. Saw that beauty round on Elm Street, god Pamela is a goddess, you know?”

Jo raised a brow back at her friend, and almost snorted at the same look on her son’s face towards the tattoo artist though without the knowing leer she knew she was delivering alongside it.

“Uncle Ash, a person can’t be a god,” Billy’s voice cut over whatever Jo had thought to say, biting down on the laugh his words made her want to do.

“You’d be mostly right there, buddy, but when you’re older, you and I are going to have a chat about how all women are goddesses - its just us guys that don’t get any magic powers.” Ash smirked back at the kid, spinning around in his chair before tapping the boy’s nose with one finger. Billy scrunched up his face, looking disbelievingly at the other before dropping it and tucking into his own half of a bun.

The tattoo artist was called away after a few minutes of companionable silence between the trio while eating their belated breakfast buns. A moment after the tattooer left with his unfortunate mullet, the mother and son were joined by her shadow for the week.

“Morning Chuck, didn’t scare you off yesterday did I?”

“Very nearly.” The reporter replied, digging his dictaphone out again and clicking the power button as he’d done the day before. Jo barely acknowledged it now, used to it already. Chuck brushed his hands off, rubbing them together from the cold outside before he spotted the curious face looking at him from Jo’s other side. “Uh, hi there kiddo. I’m, um, Chuck. And you must be Billy.”

“Yep!” The chirpped response from the cinnamon covered boy came with a wide toothy smile, before he held out a sticky hand to the older man. Jack must have been teaching him the manners Jo never bothered to. “You’re the person doing the story on Aunty Shaday?”

“That he is, kiddo. He’s going to be following Mommy around for the rest of the week, so you’ll be on your best behavior wont you?”

“Yessum Mommy.”

“Good boy. Now, did you want to go see if Uncle Sammy would make you a hot cocoa?” Jo asked quietly, running a hand over her boy’s hair as he looked around the place as if he were bored. “And later, Sammy might even get you to help out with decorating some cupcakes if you ask him real nicely.” It wasn’t uncommon on non-baking days for Billy to come into the shop and spend an afternoon icing monstrosities of cakes and sugar cookies under the watchful eye of Sam or Jo. Today however, Sam had roped Jessica into coming in to help out under the guise of practice-parenting so Jo knew there was nothing to worry about with a real nurse on hand for once should anything go wrong.

The young boy disappeared with a squeal back into the bakery, and Jo could hear his excited rambling at the younger couple about cocoa and cupcakes over the din of the photo shoot starting up. The man beside her chuckled a little, flicking open his notebook again and jotting down a few notes.

“Oh, in case you wanted to know, those two works up there-” Jo jerked her head across to the two sketch arts that Jack had done before they’d started dating for Ash’s studio, smirk forming as she saw the clearly not-a-morning-person reporter look about blearily. “-Are two more of Jack’s. A tattoo-parlor-warming present for Ash.”

“Really?” Chuck appeared to squint at the artworks for a moment, before snapping photos with his camera and settling back down again, coffee in hand. Clearly Sam had already taken good care of him that morning. “Any more priceless pieces about this place that my friends in the art community would gag over?”

“I mean, when we get into the photos, you might find another.” Jo smirked wider still at the confused look on the other’s face before her happy demeanor dropped slightly at the arrival of the other ‘models’.

Tamara and Creedy were decent enough people, always tipped Sam for their drinks when they had been by, and Jo figured that Creedy would be getting used for an ‘in action’ tattoo shot from the choice of button up shirt that he usually never wore. Tamara on the other hand had a beautiful Japanese style koi across her shoulder and back that Jo figured was going to be her contribution to the photoshoot. The one Jo found herself rolling her eyes over was when she caught the eye of and shared a nod with Gordon Walker. She was fairly certain he was another Japanese style, a greyscale-styled dragon that from what she remembered and could see poking out from under his t-shirt sleeve wound around his entire sleeve and across his chest. That one would be a pleasure for the photographer to cover today.

“So, who’s got what? What is this whole thing about?” The reporter’s question brought her attention back from following the well-defined sleeve tattoo’s progress around the parlor as Jo blinked back at the other with a shrug. “As much as I’ve followed musicians to their sessions before, a, uh, photo shoot for tattoos hasn’t been on my list of articles so far.”

“And a wedding cake has?”

“Touche.”

Jo laughed a little in response, as she wiped her hands off on her jeans awkwardly. The other three models were getting dragged through the rigmarole of styling as first timers, and the baker knew she would be going through the same process soon enough but given hers would be the only one requiring practically no clothing, there was no point her moving towards the wardrobe discussion. Ash had made a joke about using a sheet when he’d suggested the idea to her first, but looking around Jo knew that perhaps it wasn’t quite as much of a joke as she had thought it was.

Shaking her head, Jo pointed towards the other three, giving a slight wave to Tamara when she noticed her. “So those three over there are the other models - Tamara the lady will be displaying her back piece and likely have a few different poses to try out for it. Gordon, the one smirking over here,” she found herself smiling back nicely but nothing more than a short nod in response to the subject of her conversations look, “will be getting his arm and chest photographed so usually they’ll go for a standing shot. Probably Ash next to him, maybe near the window or by the Insta-wall. And Creedy is the other one, but Ash’ll actually be tattooing him today while they photograph the process - ah yes, there goes his shirt.” As she was talking the older man stripped off his shirt and moved over to the tattoo artist to look at whatever piece they were demonstrating today.

“They use an A-shooter and B-shooter. For the most part, the B will be with Ash and Creedy doing the step by step to see about getting some in action shots; while the A team will be doing photos with Tamara, Gordon and myself.”

“And what are you getting photographed today?” Chuck was noting down as she spoke, however for the most part it appeared to be on a blank page at the back of his book while she’d been describing the process of the day, before he flicked back to the section she knew was about her article. She spotted the words ‘cute little kid, very smart, takes after father - investigate’ before he looked up at her and Jo pretended she hadn’t been looking at his work. He raised a brow, pen poised over the paper.

“I’ll be the American traditional and Ash’s new exploration into fine line greys.” Jo replied with a smile, and bit back a laugh at the blank look as the reporter jotted the words down without comprehension. “Uh, either side of my ribs are two old school styled tattoos to show his main bread-and-butter style, while Tamara and Gordon will be the Japanese section Ash’s been getting a name for. And then my thigh is the fine line style - all the rage right now, and one of the first one’s he’s done. Creedy’ll probably be getting a smaller one on his forearm for the B-shoot.”

“Ah, if the photos end up any good-”

“I’m sure you’ll need to speak with Inked, but they will probably allow use of some of their photos. Or possibly your own. Go have a chat with the art director over there.” Jo waved her hand in the direction towards the crowd of magazine workers milling about and smiled as Chuck gave a nod and disappeared.

Hopping up onto the spare tattoo bench, Jo kicked her feet in the air a little as she pulled out her phone to check over her emails while she waited to be told where she’d next be needed. She could go check up on Jessica and Billy, but she didn’t want to come off as hovering and figured the other woman would appreciate being given the chance to really give motherhood a trial. Maybe she shouldn’t have given Billy a sugary bun for breakfast, but that was all part of the fun of babysitters. Flicking through the emails, she saw some were work related about orders and shipments of ingredients, some where the junk like her old school asking for alumni to return to ‘inspire’ the teens or silly forward emails from her mom. There was six from Shada and her collection of bridesmaids and wedding planner reminding everyone that the bridesmaid shopping would be in two days time, and Jo opened up a response to remind them all to look ‘extra pretty and put together’ as the Stone reporter would be tagging along when there was a bump to her knee distracting her mid sentence.

“Hey darling,” The deep voice caught her attention, and Jo barely restrained herself from the childish desire to jerk her knee away from the man’s hand. Looking up, she raised a brow up at Gordon with a frown. “How’ve you been? Did I see your little brat running about earlier?”

“Walker. Yes you did see Billy earlier, he’s currently with Sam’s fiance working on his icing skills out back.”

“I notice you didn’t answer how you are, Joanna.”

“I’m spectacular, actually.” Jo gritted the words out, turning her gaze back down to her phone and tapping out the end of her email before tucking it away. The amused look on the other’s face rubbed her the wrong way. Forcing herself to not rise to the bait, Jo smiled sickeningly sweetly back at him. “I’ve been extremely busy actually, was on Sugar RUSH last year and did pretty well, I’m being a bridesmaid for a big wedding later in the year, and my boyfriend and I are enjoying our time with Billy.”

“So you finally found someone to replace the big macho man, huh?” Gordon’s face twisted into a smirk as he leant on the bench beside her. “Gone for another military boy like Daddy?”

Jo grit her teeth, sneering back at the other, not dignifying his questioning with an answer.

“From the silence I’m going to assume he is. Did you end up with another William this time around - because if you did, darling, that’s just more than a little sad. Nobody’s going to live up to the last one. What could top a Medal of Honor, aye? Selfless sacrificing war hero leaving his mourning widow knock-”

He didn’t get to finish the rest of his theorising before Jo’s fist was thrown straight into his smug, shit talking mouth with a snarl. As he jerked his head back to the side, her other fist threw out towards where his mouth now was. Her ears were pounding and Jo felt herself rearing back to throw a third one before she was tackled to the side by something warm and heavy.

“Hey, hey now chickadee, gorgeous, mamacitta…” The words managed to sink through her anger as the rush of adrenaline left her shaky and numb as she glared across at the now furiously snarling man, held back from following through again by the warm, tight grip of her best friend. Ash had a harsh hold around her arms, pulling her back and away from the other. "Baby girl, you need to calm down."

As she felt herself calming down again, Jo realised the noise around the room had suddenly dipped, and glancing over the top of her friend’s shoulder, she could see eyes focussed right on her from every corner. She bit down a sneer at the furious look on the bleeding man’s face though.

“You calm now, mama?” Ash asked quietly in her ear, hands rubbing her arms carefully, not quite removing the pressure in case she made a move to go again. Too many fist fights, too many bar fights, and too many screaming fits after it happened had taught him never to trust if she looked calm that she was calm.

Jo nodded her head before he finally released her, cracking her aching fist as she attempted to avoid looking at anyone else but Ash. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good.”

“Good, good. We’re all good here people, let’s get back focussed hey?” The call came out from the tattooer as he looked over his shoulder towards the rest of the room. With a nod from him, the magazine workers went back to preparing for the shoot, while Tamara and Creedy both turned back to discussing one of the portfolio books Ash had out. Gordon only remained standing as quietly as he had before, eyes focussed on the pair of them before he get drawn away by one of the photo assistants.

“Hey, maybe you should suggest they use the bleeding for aesthetics or something.” Jo mumbled the words out as Ash finally stepped back from her, a smile growing on his face at her comment. Nodding, he rushed over towards the creative team with a lot of gesticulation and ‘framing’ hands towards Gordon. A flurry of movement followed shortly after and it appeared the A-shoot had begun.

There was a cough behind her, and the blonde wasn’t surprised at all to see the dark haired reporter popping up at her elbow unnoticed.

“So, a friend of yours?”

“Nah, just some asshole I dated once or twice. However, he loves a good tattoo so...”

“Ah.” Chuck’s voice was soft as he spoke, silve dictaphone held in hand as always, “Well, looks like you’ve helped crack an idea for the photo story at least.”

Looking over, Gordon was already shucking off his t-shirt and had begun moving into position, the focus arm to camera, muscles tightened and flexed to show off the elegant curves of the dragon onto his chest, while his other hand was fisted up as if hitting his own jaw right where Jo had landed her blows. As her eyes caught his, the dark heat of anger shining through towards her, Jo knew she’d just gotten them their best shot of the day for one of the twelve page feature article and spread for the other.

“I’m truly a creative genius, did you not learn that yesterday?” She qupped back, turning to sit back down on the tattoo bench, facing away from where the shoot had gotten underway and facing towards the B-shoot starting with Ash and Creedy. “Well, you’ll grasp that tomorrow when we work on the preliminary design for Shada’s wedding cake.”

“Ah yes, the cake, let’s talk cake while we’re waiting for your call shall we?”

“Well, it’s-” Jo paused for a second, tilting her head at the other as he began to fumble for his notebook to start taking notes alongside the dictaphone he passed her to hold this time. “You, uh, don’t really know what questions to ask or words for a food-focussed article do you?”

“Absolutely not. That’s why I defer to the professionals.” There was a cheeky smile that made him look five years younger and almost what Jo would consider as cute. Perhaps she’d have to find a single friend sometime soon if she was going to be stuck with his presence for the next six months.

Laughing, Jo waited for a nod from him that he was ready to start before begininng to speak and basically ask his own questions for him. They covered the type of cake - a chiffon sponge cake despite the bride’s claims that she wanted a genoise, what she didnt know wouldn’t hurt her - and then a small interlude where Jo expanded on the different types of sponge and why she had selected one of the simpler, more All-American sponge varities for the event. Then the flavor profile of just why Jo had selected honey (”to add the sweetness in a natural form and symbolic to make each day after sweeter”), lemon (”supposed to be for eternal love, but I just love me some honey-lemon mix”) and basil (”given how unique the couple are, it suits to add a touch of the unexpected to the cake”) for the main flavorings. And as the morning moved to afternoon, Jo began to explain aloud her concept for wrapping the layers in fondant and then incorporating the main color scheme of the wedding into a mottled, artistic style with swirls and paint splashes - “perhaps even some gold leaf just to add the sparkle I know Shada loves” - when the pair were finally approached for Jo’s turn under the camera lens.

They had seemingly talked all the way through Gordon’s photos and leaving, as well as Tamara’s shoot which Jo felt a little deflated not to get to see the beautiful koi again since she’d seen the initial concept art. Even Creedy was now being photographed with a finished fine line deer design held on display on his forearm, the geometric lines behind and around it showing the extremely clear vision Ash had during the design and application.

It looked like they were almost finished and one of the makeup artists came over to start working on Jo’s face and hair. They usually only applied something light and a little bit of drama to the eye in order to avoid detracting from the artwork that was the real focus of the shoot. Jo barely contained the eyeroll as Chuck began snapping candidly with his camera again. He leant over to the make up artist for a second and Jo didn’t bother to hide the roll of her eyes as the woman started applying a red lipstick on top of the basic makeup.

“So, little miss punchy, let us proceed without any more mishaps shall we?” The words came from the director of the shoot as he approached with Ash at his side, a smirk on the mulleted man’s face as he shrugged at Jo’s exasperated look. “Firstly, we’ll want a topless shot for each traditional on your ribs, I’m sure you’ve seen enough photos to know what we need. Then, black tank top and thong for the fine line; and then possibly we’ll do a full body with a bit of design on a chair to get your thigh and ribs in the one shot. Capeesh?”

Jo blinked a few times before nodding sharply at the impatient noise from the director. “Yep, capeesh.” Shrugging a shoulder at Ash as the pushy director moved off, the blonde shrugged out of the flannel shirt she had worn that day and made her way towards the well lit window and red brick wall corner that would be used for the rib photos. It took another ten minutes before the director and crew had decided that they had the lighting right and were ready before she slipped her tank top off as well and covered her chest with her hands. “Did you want left or right first?”

From there the three different poses were easy enough - left side of the ribs with the sunlight practically blurring her face in white and her arm tugging to cover herself creating larger curves to her front than she’d even had when breastfeeding Billy, the right side had her hair glowing down her back in stark contrast to the saturation of the tattoo; and then her black tank top and flannel both thrown back on for her thigh to be focussed as she practically hovered rather than sat on the tattoo bench in the best lighting. All pretty standard poses and moves that Jo had seen in the publication before, and had watched from the back corners the last three features done on her friend. Perhaps though, thinking on it, she wouldn’t remind Ellen or Bobby to go searching out that copy of Inked compared to Ash’s previous moments.

She had heard the gasp from the dark haired reporter when her fine line design had been first revealled, and the slight gape to his face as they wrapped up the photographing of it made Jo want to laugh. “I told you, Chuck, that you might get excited by one of the designs.”

“You got a freaking Jack Grey on your leg!”

“Have had more than on my leg you know...” Jo winked at the reporter as she shimmied back into her jeans and joked around with Ash about how uncomfortable it was to hold that pose, the director approached the trio with a pleased look.

“And we’ll do that last set up now."

Puffing her cheeks out a little, Jo looked up at her friend. “Can you go make sure that Billy doesn’t try to come in here if we’re doing that freaking sheet idea of yours?”

“Of course, I’ll make sure he’s very much busy for the next half hour.” Ash smirked, slapping her on the butt cheek as he headed off, calling behind him, “Damn stupid kid, ruining all my fun!”

Laughing, Jo moved towards the stylists and behind the privacy screen Ash would pull open for his more uncomfortable clients. Or those getting something done that would be uncomfortable for anyone to glance through and see. She was directed to strip, laughing with the older stylist woman as they both grumbled about stretchmarks, and then wrapped in a black robe to move back onto the set spot.

They had seeming settled on one of the tattoo chairs with a high back and open sides, and sitting normally Jo was surprised when the director shouted and gesticulated until she turned around, chest pressed against the worn, soft leather and legs thrown to either side of the backrest. Her arms folded across the top of the back and she tilted her head across at the director questioningly. She got a thumbs up in response while the rest of the team ran about, adjusting lighting and the odd pot plant in the background. Got to have those pot plants.

Another gesture and Jo shrugged the robe off and resettled quickly, tilting a hip here on command so her muscles pulled the designs more flatteringly. She had her head resting on her arms for the most part, hair pulled to her far side away from camera. After five minutes, she was motioned to sit up a little straighter. To twist her head like that. To turn her head like that. To hold one hand up to her face. To rest both elbows on the back of the chair. On and on it went until finally she was told they’d gotten what they wanted, and shrugging the robe back on before getting up; Jo was glad that was the end of her day following that asshole’s instructions.

Returning behind the screen, the blonde redressed quickly before moving out of the space to go round into the bakery kitchen to see what her boy had been up to throughout the morning.

Billy was sat on a stool at the bench beside Jessica, both had what looked like powdered sugar in their hair and the odd splatter of food coloring but otherwise appeared unharmed. That couldn’t be said for the workspace itself. There was flour, sugar and cocoa everywhere, and Jo found her eyes blowing wide as she took in the damage.

A hand on her hip didn’t even surprise her as Ash joined her, a coffee being pushed into her hands and the hand guiding her to sit down on one of the only clean stools in the space. Caffiene was amazing and would fix everything, she thought to herself looking around the space. It looked a lot worse than it was, and she figured that she could have the space spotless again within half an hour once she was suitably caffienated.

The sound of a camera shutter barely registered to her as she smiled across at Billy babbling about what he and Jessica had been up to that morning. Something about making cookies in the shape of bones and body parts, and that they were going to be reassembling a cookie monster or something. Jessica looked surprisingly unaffected after four hours alone with the noisy preschooler, and Jo figured that if she was enjoying herself so much it meant that the baker could get ahead of herself to prepare for her day off on Thursday as well.

However before cleaning and preparation and the cookie decorating could get underway, Jo quickly had the two and a half of them working to tidy and clean down the surface with only the slightest whining from the young boy while a tray of sausage rolls baked in the oven for the groups lunch.

When the oven dinged that lunch was ready, the kitchen was back to spotless, and Jo was even in the midst of teaching Billy and Jessica alike the importance of mise en place before she put a hold on the lesson for the flaky puff pastry wrapped sausages, with stewed apples mixed into the pork sausage mix along with dried thyme and fennel seeds making them moist and slightly sweeter. Shortly after they were plated up, one for Billy, one for Jessica, one for Jo, one for Chuck, one for Ash and one for Sam placed in the warming tray to await his opportunity to come in and eat when Ash would hand over for him.

As the five sank into stools around the kitchen, Jo ran over her plan for the rest of the day to check if it suited the other’s and whether or not the reporter needed anything more exciting than watching her preparing cookie trays for the freezer or rolling puff pastry every twenty minutes, or creating tubs worth of various buttercreams ahead of time. Chuck shrugged, and gave no feedback other than he was sure the morning had given him plenty of content for his article and that he’d be back the next day for the start on the wedding cake photos themselves. Jessica had laughed at Jo’s concern she might want to head off to relax on her day off from the hospital, and waved off the suggestion she go home rather than finish her monster anatomy cookies with Billy.

The rest of the afternoon passed by quietly, or as quietly as a busy bakery with buzzing alarms and a squealling almost-five year old and two women singing along loudly to whatever song would come on the radio could be.

Much as the night before, when Jo got home there were smiles, talk of the day’s activities (”some dick started a ruckus during the life drawing class in the morning which threw the entire day off”), babbling excitedly from Billy, a bedtime story and kisses as the night turned to morning and Jo once again fell asleep wrapped up in two warm arms.

---

#AU stories #Bakery AU

1 note · View note

lostsummerdayz · 5 years

Text

Otakon 2019 In Review - The Language of Cosplay and Music

The legacy of famed artist, Nujabes, bridges two nations and two cultures together many years later

By. Nay Holland

Hello and good morning! Good afternoon! Good evening! Wherever you are reading this across all of the seven seas, or in the comfort of your own home, Lost Summer Dayz is here to bring you an exclusive report! A report none other than Otakon itself! This was my second time attending Otakon, with my first being way back in 2012, when it was still held in Baltimore.

There were several firsts for me the past weekend. It was my first time ever being inside Washington instead of passing through. Secondly, it was my first time attending the convention within the Washington venue. As such, I was coming into this convention, excited on what it would hold for me. For several reasons. Did Otakon live up to my hype that I had built up for it in my mind? We’ll find out now!

Our Otakon 2019 story begins earlier within the month of July, contrary to the day of travel. I had first heard the news of Otakon via a suggestion of the group I am affiliated with, the Geeks of the Round Table. What made me dead set on wanting to attend the event, however, were two major reasons.

The first reason was the Tribute to Nujabes concert and the chance to see quite possibly one of my favorite Japanese artists, MINMI. The second reason was to also meet my actual muse for getting me into Japanese music, Taku Takahashi. Everything else would have been a bonus, and the entire experience was indeed a giant love letter to the culture. But! I am getting way ahead of myself here!

Nessa and Leon from Pokemon Sword and Shield credit: bunsonbunscosplay

Knowing this, I’ve purchased the tickets to Otakon and VIP for the concert, and twiddled my thumbs waiting for this eventful weekend to arrive. Sure enough, on Thursday, July 25th, the morning did come. Meeting up with my fellow cohorts, we embarked on our bus ride to the event! At least, we would have, had the bus not arrived an hour late, thus making the trip a six hour trek. (The ride back was way more palatable, thankfully!)

The moment we arrived at Union Station we were greeted by panhandlers.

It was at that moment I realized, we never truly left New York after all.

Okay, so, D.C is different enough from NYC, but within the first thirty minutes of us walking to our hotel, I felt a sense of familiarity from the city. Aside from the White House that loomed in the distance, I grew accustomed to the city streets. It was just like walking through New York, but smaller. We’ve arrived at our hotel and once settled in, I departed to pick up my badge.

This was the main reason why I wanted to arrive at the con the day before the official first day. Thursday is considered to be “Day 0”, yet with the amount of staff assisting attendees, the abundance of cosplayers both inside and surrounding the venue, and the overall hustle bustle, one could easily assume that this was “Day 1” instead. There was so much activity that I stayed around for a few minutes after I had picked up my badge, just to take in the atmosphere. It was truly the calm before the storm.

Day 1, Friday. The gates were let wide open and Otakon commenced!

The Nujabes concert wasn’t until 8 and I had to be on the line by at most, 7, so I had about a good twelve or so hours to take in the Otakon experience. One of the first things I did was head to the game room, as per routine for any convention.

Ran by the lovely people at Tokyo Attack, the lineup for the arcade portion of the game room ranged from Gundam VS, to Dance Rush, DDR, Pump It Up, Sound Voltex, Nostalgia, Pop’n, Chunithm, BeatStream, and others. There wasn’t a IIDX machine once again, but with a star studded cast of niche Japanese rhythm games, I couldn’t complain.

I literally couldn’t believe they had IDZ. First time EVER seeing it in person!

At two, there was a Tekken tournament that I did participate in, that deserves a mention briefly!

Oh boy, here comes Nay a.k.a “Cereal K.” plugging in his Tekken experience at any event he goes to again!

Alisa from Tekken credit: sugarc0maa

In my defense, it wasn’t the main reason why I came to Otakon! Remember when I said “bonus”? This was the “bonus” albeit, I didn’t get too far in the tournament itself. I was one win away from top eight if that's any consolation, but, overall all who I played against were really good and I enjoyed my time hanging with my good friends in both the Tekken scene and the Otakon staff!

Annie from League of Legends credit: gbudnyjr

With still more time to kill before the Nujabes concert, I took more pictures of cosplayers throughout the convention. You’ll see pictures of them throughout the article spread across all three days, with their information underneath for you guys to check out! Part of the magic in attending conventions are the cosplayers. I’ve said this in my Castle Point article if you’d like to hear more of my thoughts, but, in a large scale convention like Otakon, you’ll never know who you might end up meeting.

One particular cosplayer however deserves a special mention. What started out as asking for a photo of her cosplay, due to the overall rarity of seeing a Tekken cosplay aside from the Alisa cosplayer in the tournament earlier that day, ended with a kindled friendship over the course of the weekend. Known as Kawaii Kiki Cosplay on Instagram and Facebook, Kiki has been cosplaying since 2013, yet has been attending Otakon since roughly 2009. I was able to sit down with her briefly to have a conversation as she was open and friendly to share her story with me.

Straight from the DMV area herself, her cosplay ventures began in 2013, when a Sailor Moon group cosplay was in need of a replacement senshi. She answered the call, and the rest was history. Being a graduate of the Art Institute, she’s able to utilize her academic knowledge into her cosplay for optimal effectiveness. For example, when I first met her on Friday she was cosplaying Asuka from Tekken. Being recently introduced to the Tekken series, she was able to capture the character well. As we spoke several attendees exclaimed in excitement as they, too, asked for her photo. It was these reactions, that made the cosplay worth it.

“Cosplay for me, is like one in costume wearing a Disney Princess outfit in Disney world for kids. I want my cosplay to enact a similar excitement for those who see me. I want to make others happy with who I’m cosplaying as,” she reflects.

It isn’t about how much you know about your cosplay, but rather, how much you are able to bring joy to others for wearing said cosplay.

There are some personal favorites that Kiki has in her arsenal, such as another Asuka cosplay she wore for the second day of Otakon. This Asuka was from Evangelion, with the outfit made to appear similar to Asuka’s Eva 02. Lastly, she carried around a stuffed version of the iconic Pen Pen along with her. Perhaps her most favorite cosplay and convention experience was her appearance in Blizzcon last year, when she cosplayed as Leah from Diablo 3. The excitement of being around those who enjoy the same medium as her, while also cosplaying as an important character from said game, was enough to enhance the experience for her.

If any of you guys reading this have the chance, please give her some love! She’s a really amazing cosplayer and woman to hang around with and it was my pleasure to talk with her. Follow her at Kawaii Kiki Cosplay!

To round up Day 1, we have the Tribute to Nujabes concert. From the beginning, the message was clear. It was not just an ode to a legendary man, but an ode to hip hop.

The MC EyeQ blessed the stage, following Maryland’s own Substantial, then Shing02.

Seeing Substantial and Shing02 live, performing songs that I had listened to since my high school years gave me a sense of euphoria. At the time, over ten years ago when I was a sophomore in high school, I would listen to Nujabes during my lunch breaks in school. This was back during a time when I still used the pen and paper to write. Lyrics, fiction, whatever came to mind. Listening to the backdrops that Nujabes laid out, with rappers such as Substantial and Shing02, who would bless that very stage, tuned out life’s many inconsistencies at the time.

Coping with my grandmother’s passing, failing classes due to woes back at home, and overall trying to get a grasp of my existence. His music, along with the lyrics of everyone on that stage, helped me get through high school. To see them live and perform was what my teenage self would have wanted. I felt like I was fifteen again.

youtube

Being the opening act, EyeQ shuts it down while backed by DJ Okawari beats.

And then there was the final set. Adorned in an intricately designed kimono with long flowing hair comparable to a goddess herself, Minmi emerged basked in light. She took to the stage singing Shiki no Uta, the original ED to Samurai Champloo, and as the song ended, she shed her garment to reveal a flowing yellow tracksuit.

This was her way of saying “The gloves are coming off.” She had our attention, and we were under her spell for the next hour.

Performing some of her hits including Sumertime!!!, Hibiscus, and one of her recent singles, #Yacchaitai. Following these songs, the scene shifted once more as she pulled up a piano and started singing slower ballads. These included a cover of Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You,” Who’s Theme, and Sha Na Na. The last song was all the more powerful considering that Sha Na Na, originally a Dancehall classic, was sung in a ballad.

I’ve been a huge fan of MINMI for almost as long as I’ve been a fan of Nujabes and those who had graced the stage. She brings special mention because for a while, during my college years, I was growing accustomed to a new phase in my life. A new scenery in college, new friends, old ones moving from the city, long lasting relationships coming to a close, and overall I felt alone.

I first heard of MINMI through Samurai Champloo and a dear friend of mine who was unable to make it to Otakon with me, Devin Harris, had got me into her outside of the anime.

There’s this Japanese used book store called Book Off where I was able to find used CDs of hers, and since then I’ve been hooked. My knowledge of the Japanese language is limited, but, even through her music I could sense the energy and influence that Western music had on her. It was a different type of energy she brought with her, even hearing her as guest vocals on songs such as m-flo’s “Lotta Love.”

youtube

MINMI performing her cover of Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You”

She can bring out the energy, but also allow her audience to cool down as well. She can be the hype of the party as well as the emotional support. Dedicating her final songs to the tragedy at Kyoto Animation, she made me feel a wide range of emotions. Very few musicians I’ve had the pleasure of listening to, have had the range that MINMI has.

For me to be able to have a chance to see her live was a treat. For me to meet her after the concert and tell her these things and more, was the icing on the cake.

Day 2 began with meeting quite possibly my biggest influence in Japanese music, Taku Takahashi. You may notice a pattern at this point, with Nujabes, Substantial, Shing02, and MINMI all being music of my adolescence, and Taku does not break away from this mold. Being a third of the trio of talented artists known as m-flo, m-flo as a group exposed me to music I would have never known existed outside of New York.

I was just thirteen at the time during middle school. I already felt like an outcast because my, then, budding tastes in anime and “nerd culture” caused me to be the odd one out. I was into DDR at the time, so I would join several online communities where we would talk about music from DDR. M-flo was one of the groups brought up. While technically not being in DDR at the time, their songs were featured in beatmania IIDX, a rhythm game I mentioned earlier. When IIDX was in its infancy, it was possible to link a IIDX machine and a DDR machine, known as “Club Versions,” to allow players to play IIDX songs on DDR machines. This was how I found out about m-flo.

I liked their style of hip hop and how familiar it sounded to me, despite the language barrier. From the beginning, they always had a style to blend Western Hip Hop with a local flavor to call it their own. They were one of the pioneers of the Japanese Hip Hop renaissance period, and I would be introduced during the tail end of it. Just as I was getting into m-flo, they were starting their “m-flo loves” series, in which their next three albums, Astromantic, Beat Space Nine, and Cosmicolor, would feature heavily on collaborators. One of these collaborators as I’ve also mentioned earlier, would be MINMI.

LSD ❤ ☆Taku Takahashi!

I’ve been an m-flo fan for a very long time. Not just as a group, but for their solo careers as well. From the rapper, VERBAL, being a consistent feature on Nujabes’ earlier works as L-Universe, his collaborations with Pharrell, and his fashion career. From the singer, Lisa, with her solo career and independent projects. Lastly, there’s Taku Takahashi himself.

Of the three I resonated with him the most, considering how many works he had become a part of over the years. From his works with House Nation, DJing, collaborations and remixes independently. To his recent features on IIDX and his musical works in anime which includes Panty and Stocking to his most recent being Carole and Tuesday. To list everything that these three had done independently as well as a group, would double the reading length of this article. Needless to say, to have a chance to meet one of the hardest working artists in the business, who started as an inspiration for my music tastes as well as learning more about Japanese culture, made me starstruck. Pun intended.

After meeting him, there was the Nujabes tribute panel to accompany the concert from the night before. Seeing everyone on the panel, most of whom I had met either the night before or a few hours prior and hearing their stories, left me with a deeper understanding on the influence that Nujabes had.

There was also a lot that I’ve learned involving some of the work that went into the songs for Samurai Champloo. Back on the subject of MINMI, the inspiration for “Who’s Theme” was more personal than I had initially thought.

I had always had speculation that “Who’s” was meant to be “Fuu’s,” as the main character in Samurai Champloo was arguably Fuu. Somewhere there was a loss in translation and Fuu was mistaken as Who due to the way Fuu sounds in the native tongue. She mentioned that the song was, indeed, “Fuu’s Theme,” but her inspiration for writing that song was putting herself in the character of Fuu.

There are some minor spoilers for Samurai Champloo here, but, Fuu’s goal in Samurai Champloo was to find a “samurai who smells of sunflowers.” Ultimately, the “sunflower samurai” was Fuu’s father, and the loss of her father was her driving force to find her against all odds.

MINMI read the script of Samurai Champloo and it instilled an emotion inside of her that she could relate to. The feeling of loss, the feeling of separation from one’s family. Feeling what Fuu felt, she used Fuu as a muse to write the song. This brings a new meaning to the song itself, as you can feel the words that are being said by her.

This was a point that everyone at the panel brought up. It was a question I’ve had since middle school, which was finally answered that very day.

“How can I, who does not know Japanese, appreciate the music? How can I, who does not know Korean, influence my musical choice for many years to come?”

Aside from Japanese music, I was also getting into Korean hip hop and R&B at that time as well. Despite the language barriers, when it comes to music, we all have an ability to feel an emotion. Happiness, sadness, it doesn’t matter what language it’s spoken. Music is a language we feel. Nujabes’ ear for music tastes, whether he wanted to go for the urban sound or a more traditional one, was an ear that understood the universal language of emotion. Everyone in that room, be it on the panel or as an attendee, had felt that language spoken to us in one way or another.

Later on that night, everything came full circle. I was able to go to the Otakon rave and see Taku perform his set. Remember when I said that MINMI was a collaborator with m-flo during their “loves” series? He had brought her out as a guest during his set and she performed the song she collaborated with m-flo, “Lotta Love,” live.

A vast majority of the crowd may have been introduced to her that night, but it was an energy that was felt. The music alone was enough to make everyone dance and have a good time, further answering my question. I left that night, no, I left that weekend in a state of content.

While I never had the chance to meet Nujabes when he was alive, he lives in in his music. He lives on in the memories of those he had worked with, those he has influenced, and those who listened to his music. I left D.C with a value that was priceless than any merch. Although the weekend came and went, the memories I made, the people I got to experience, and the stories I got to hear, will resonate with me for the rest of my life. Rest in Power, Jun Seba As a bonus, this was probably the hypest part of the night. Watching Shing02 and all who had performed, perform a cypher to Battlecry backed by Team Red Pro breaking. Blood was left on the stage that evening and it was a massacre of beats and lyrics.

youtube

See you next year, Otakon!

#otakon #otakon2019 #nujabes #journalism #writer #article #anime #convention

1 note · View note

bogwithanlforluck-blog · 6 years

Text

My Friend Tom

DISCLAIMER: Music plays [aaargh, the puns!] a huge part in my personal life and the life of my family. As a result, I have many, many musical thoughts, questions, ideas, etc. to put out there. They are all to come. However, one music topic must take precedence above the others, for reasons I cannot fully articulate. This topic consists of my friend, my very, very good friend, Tom.

Tom actually is an acronym for “Take On Me.” I realize that if this essay ever appears online, or if it ever happens to waft its way into the public somehow, some readers will click off or carry on without reading further. Why? Because they know exactly what “Take On Me” means. It means the a-ha song, “Take On Me.”

Grinches or folks in denial or people who simply don’t like pop will not really understand why a quintessential pop song, played ad nauseumto this very day since its debut in the U.S. in 1984/1985, will warrant any kind of serious discussion. I understand differences in opinion, so those folks can go on their merry way. However, if the rest of people who happen to read this note about my buddy Tom also happen to consider Tom a friend, then please, continue along.

I love radio: I listen to it while driving, and I hear it played in stores, etc. Radio, to me, possesses an otherworldliness that I find hard to describe — its siren-like quality may have something to do with the fact that I have very little control over what plays. So, on a daily basis, as I listen, I have to take what I get. Some days are better than others, let me just say. Some days the radio Gods have tapped into my mental playlist and decided to give it a spin; other days, the radio Gods have gone on a god-awful tangent which sometimes can get funny but usually brings me quite a bit of despair. Yet, that’s a whole other topic.

One consistency about pop radio: at some point during the day, one of those pop stations is going to decide we all need a little Tom. Thank gracious goodness that Tom is out there watching over us.

When this song debuted in the U.S. in the mid-1980s, at the height of the MTV era, I was 14. I loved pop music and pop stars, my favorite band being The Police. I watched MTV before school and after school, and then again, before bed, after I finished studying. I forced my parents to tune in to pop stations while riding in the car; I bought pop cassette tapes; and I watched MTV with friends. I disliked the hook-up I was in because my best friend at the time, Abigail, did not like pop music AT ALL and thought MTV was for, and I quote, “less intelligent people.” She may have had a point, but I was 14, and I wanted my MTV and pop music, and — outside of our hook-up — I pretty much got it.

So sometime in 1984/1985 I heard Tom and probably thought it was quite catchy, but the video had me hooked. To me, the a-ha video, still to this day, qualifies as one of those elusive masterpieces we can only define as Art. The song — well, the song, too, has to go right into the same category. The song is no less than a masterpiece of pop music, with a shut-down-all-arguments upbeat intro, immediately identifiable and immediately uplifting, and never to be forgotten.

I pretty much had all my suspicions about this song’s juggernaut over the human race when I was having lunch one day with my 11-year-old niece, in early 2018. My niece is no stranger to music. In fact, she IS music; lives and breathes it; she is USDNA-certified music. Her mother — my sister — is a former radio disc jockey with an encyclopedic knowledge of country music history, especially women in country music; my sister also knows a good deal about modern singer-songwriters, as she is a popular singer-songwriter, herself. My niece’s father — my brother-in-law — is a music programmer at Sirius (meaning that he is actually one of those radio Gods who gets to decide what on earth we humans are going to listen to day-by-day) who also has an encyclopedic knowledge of rock, blues, etc. My sister and brother-in-law together make a powerhouse of know-your-music and know-what’s-good. So, if they ever had a child — well, there you go.

When she was first born, Bella, my niece, received, thanks to my brother-in-law, a steady diet of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. I thought that was a good move; I think a lot of new dads who are really, really into music start their kids off with Pet Sounds. As Bella grew and became more independent, she went through her Katy Perry phase, sure, but then, as she matured, her genes started firing up, and by age 10, she was a Beatlemaniac with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Beatles. Her love of the Beatles did not waver for over a year; she would not listen to anything else, and she could blow away any 60-something-I-lived-through-it Beatle aficianado in a Beatles’ trivia match. She could not be stopped. I, myself, was delighted to watch this train passing through, because the Beatles — well, you kind of cannot argue with the Beatles. They are like Tom, except exponentially multiplied. I would contend that everyone on this planet can find at least ONE Beatles’ song that he/she likes. Everyone.

After over a year of the Beatle-front battle-line that no other song or rock group could cross, we all kind of gave up trying to suggest songs by other artists to Bella that she might like. I was okay with the prospect that she might travel through the rest of her life in the Yellow Submarine. She had other interests, anyway, outside of music. For example, she had started — rather randomly — a semi-infatuation with Norway; she was Googling Norwegian words and trying to teach herself Norwegian online. If she could translate “Hey Jude” into Norwegian, I thought, well, then, Let It Be.

One day she was visiting Nashville from her home in Queens, and I took her to a local deli which has a New-York-Delicatessen-wannabe vibe. I was very busy chatting away (can you imagine that??) at her when I noticed that she was kind of bopping in her seat with a wide, happy grin, looking like she had just gotten a text from Paul McCartney. I wondered what the deal was — when it hit me. Bella is plugged into the amp of the Universe, and she had caught it before I had: the opening bars of Tom had started up on the deli’s in-store speakers. And she was happily dancing along. Folks, believe me when I say I was floored. I halfway shrieked to her, “You know this song?” Bella: “Yeah.” Me: “You like this song?” Bella: “Yeah. It’s pretty cool.”

??? And here is our miracle: Tom was flitting at the fringes of the Fab Four Fog, telling Bella: “I am your friend. I am fun. I will never play you false.” And Bella, with her innate musical divinity, understood Tom and allowed him to be that friend.

But back to the booth at the deli. Still halfway shrieking, I quickly said, “This song is one of the best pop songs ever. Did you know that the group, a-ha, is NORWEGIAN?”

“I think they’re from Sweden.”

“Uh-uh. Don’t doubt Auntie Julie on her ‘80s pop, Bella. They’re from Norway. I’m going to Google them.”

“Okay.”

“A-HA! They are from Norway! Look:” (Auntie Julie brandishes her phone in Bella’s face. Bella then gets out her phone and pulls up the Wikipedia site.)

“This says that the lead singer, Morten Harket, has a 5-octave vocal range,” Bella informed me.

“Well, that’s obvious,” I replied. Then I added, “That’s an octave more than Freddie Mercury of Queen had, and he could really go up and down the scale.”

We both pondered what I had just said for a moment. Somehow, it seemed slightly irreverent to compare Freddie Mercury unfavorably to anyone, so I added, “But Freddie Mercury had that grit.” And then I gratuitously (VERY GRATUITOUSLY) started to try to convey my meaning by imitating Freddie Mercury singing part of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” In that restaurant, at full volume, I sang, “Momma, life had just begun/But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away,” with a heartrending growl added to the word, “thrown.”

“Oh, he was the greatest.” Over Bella’s shoulder, in the adjoining booth, a stranger — a man with a 5-year-old little boy — couldn’t help himself. Bella’s and my conversation was way too important to ignore, and he had turned to face us and had spoken up.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in on your conversation, but I heard you talking about music and Freddie Mercury, and I couldn’t help but comment.”

In my head I was thinking, delightedly, “Come one, come all.”

“Oh, I understand,” I said to the guy. “This is important stuff.” Because it is.

He replied, “Yeah, I grew up listening to Queen and that guy — Freddie Mercury — he’s legendary. Anyway, I just had to say something; I didn’t want to seem like I was listening in.”

“Hey, I’m happy you did.” Because I was. I felt that Tom was spinning his magic all over the restaurant, even if he had politely tipped his hat to Queen and let us unite ourselves around a whole other band. Tom is generous like that. He’ll put a crowd into a happy mood, and all at once, no matter what walk of life we’ve walked, what road we’ve taken to get to where we are, we hear Tom, and, simply, we feel better.

Meanwhile, the Goddess of music was still pondering the feats of a-ha outside the U.S. via her Wikipedia information. She informed me that the band had achieved a world-wide popularity that the U.S. had never quite grasped (imagine that). We were becoming more and more impressed. However, the basics of the situation remained the same: it all boiled down to Tom: my very, very good friend Tom.

Armed with enthusiasm over our deli experience, Bella and I went home to inform my father and her father about our Tom moment at the restaurant. We played the song for my dad (who claims not to “get” pop music), and I cannot say for sure, but I sensed he caught on at least to Tom’s benevolent spirit, if not also to Harket’s massive vocal range that will never, ever be topped, at least not in a song so damned perfect. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law, who was present at the introduction of Tom to my dad, seemed to approve of our musical love-in at the deli. Then my father, out of the blue, decided that, when my 73-year-old mother returned from work, we — Bella, my mother, and I — should all dance to Tom. That suggestion totally energized my brother-in-law, who was dead-set on taking a video of this ad-libbed dance moment. So, when my mother did arrive from work, dead on her feet, she reluctantly agreed to dance. We turned up the volume on my computer to Tom’s fullest effect, and Bella, my mother, and I, got down. We all danced separately; Tom was a partner for each of us. Tom’s a great dance partner, by the way. If you have no dance ability, no rhythm, no coordination, Tom does not care. Tom just gets you moving with a smile on your face. And he doesn’t charge you an admission price, either.

In sum, this is the story of my friend Tom. I daresay Tom has LOTS of friends, around the world. We are all more than happy to share that friendship. And Tom also had some serious help from other friends in his early years, friends who supplied him with a music video that ranks #2 of all time behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” As I said at the beginning of this little story, music means a lot to not only my family and me, but to the world at large. And I cannot think of a better place to begin future stories/thoughts on/opinions about music than with Tom.

3 notes · View notes

dansphlevels · 6 years

Note

Can I request a soulmate au! But like angsty

This took me longer to write than I intended, but God, I love it.

6:30 Special

Summary: In a world where you and your soulmate both have constellations of dark blue freckles that glow when you’re together, Dan has been waiting for his whole life for it to finally glow. And when it does, he is stood face to face with a man Phil, who looks back in confusion, his own constellation unlit.

Includes: Dan, the workaholic who accidentally ended up managing a small convenience store and spends most of his life there; Phil, the nocturnal painter who believes that art can only properly be made at night and buys a coffee every morning at 6:30 on the dot; and the story of a man who falls hard for someone who could surely never return his feelings.

Length: 8k + epilogue

Themes: unrequited love, soulmates, au, strangers to friends to ?

Dan always wished that finding his soulmate was simple. He wished that their name was written on his forearms, or the moment that they met was shown on a clock that ticked down, like in some of the stories he read. Then maybe he wouldn’t have to be so worried all the time, wouldn’t constantly be looking for people’s marks and checking his own to see if they matched.

Unfortunately for Dan, finding his soulmate was a little more difficult than that. Somewhere on everyone’s body is a little spattering of blue freckles that show what the stars will look like the first time you and your soulmate kiss. Therefore, your soulmate should have the same blue constellation as you do. Then, when you are with your soulmate, the constellations light up, almost as a way of saying ‘I told you so’. There were drawbacks, however. For example, most people liked to keep their constitution a secret. Your constellation was similar to your middle name, in the way that many people found themselves keeping it a secret, just because that’s what felt right. That’s what Dan did. His constellation was five indigo dots at the top of his inner wrist, shaped like an archer’s bow. He covered it with a thick-banded black watch that was loose enough that if his constellation started glowing, he’d see. He lived in a world where love was a secretive thing, a world of stargazers and people who wrapped bandages around their freckle constellations so that they could avoid a possible love. The soulmates system was flawed, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. So Dan waited for the day when he would meet his soulmate for the first time and see his constellation light up like a glowstick. He’d always imagining what it’d be like to find someone with the same pattern as him, two archer’s bows, one on a wrist, the other on a hip, or a shoulder, or something like that. Until Dan actually met his soulmate, he was excited. Until Dan actually met his soulmate, he’d always dreamt of how perfect it would be. Then he met his soulmate, and realized with a start that he was wrong, so wrong, because the day he met his soulmate was the day his heart was broken in a way that just wasn’t repairable.

——

The day Dan met his soulmate, he was working at his job at ‘Murry’s��, the part convenience store, part minimart, by the pharmacy on 7th. He’d started working there as a part-time cashier but was gone the weekend that the other employees went on strike, so he ended up the only employee who wasn’t fired. Dan was promoted to store manager, and two part-time cashiers were hired, but cooperate couldn’t be bothered to rehire the whole staff, so instead they gave Dan a raise and told him to do what had to be done to keep the store afloat. This resulted in most of Dan’s life being spent at said mini-mart, whether behind the cash register, restocking the shelves, or in the back, where he often spent his nights when he had the late shift and early morning shift in secession. That particular day was a Monday, and Dan had turned on the coffee maker, put fresh doughnuts in the display boxes, and sat behind the register, waiting for customers. Phil came in after about an hour. He wore a paint-splattered hoodie and made a beeline for the coffee machine. “Rough night?” Dan asked easily, observing the first time costumer curiously. “Never went to bed,” Phil mumbled, popping a lid on his coffee. “How much are the doughnuts?”“Depends on the type. The price sheet is on the side-” “I’ll get this one,” Phil decided, reached in and pulling out a pink frosted one. “And the coffee.” “Will that be all for you sir?” “Yeah.” Phil came up to the register, close enough that Dan could see the constellation on his cheek. Bright blue freckles, at least a dozen, vaguely forming the shape of a star. Dan’s heart drooped, the way it always did when he saw someone’s constellation and saw that they weren’t soulmates, the fear of being alone much worse than the fear of an ill-suited partner. Dan typed in the items, trying to ignore this. “Oh, that’s neat,” Phil mused, looking at Dan’s watch. “I think your watch’s flashlight just turned on.” Dan looked where he was pointed, and for a moment, he was positive that his heart had actually stopped beating. Because on his inner wrist, right underneath the watch, his constellation was glowing blue. It was a moment he’d dreamed of his whole life. Except for one thing. When he looked up, Phil just looked at him in confusion. The freckles on his cheeks were the same shade as they’d been before. The realization hit Dan like a truck. He’d found his soulmate. This man, Phil, was his soulmate. Dan just wasn’t his. —-Phil came in often. He didn’t sleep at night, apparently, because he was an artist and nighttime was his favorite time to paint. He came in around 6:30, sometimes 7, and got a coffee and sometimes an assorted pastry, always making small talk with Dan as he paid for his items. The first few times, Dan glanced at his watch over and over, checking to see if his constellation was still glowing. It always was. Sometimes, he knew that Phil had just parked outside because his constellation would blink into life, glowing excitedly. He’s here, he’s here! Dan, your soulmate is here! Dan imagined the lights saying. “He’s not my soulmate,” Dan would mutter under his breath, then look up, realizing he’d said it out loud. Yes he is! Yes he is! Look, I’m glowing, I’m glowing! Hug him! Kiss him! Marry him!Dan would chuckle under his breath and busy himself with the cash register or something else. The door would open, the bell jingling merrily, and without looking up, Dan would say “Morning Phil, paint anything new?” Phil, as per usual, made a beeline towards the coffee. “I’m working on a city skyline,” he’d say, or it’d be “a portrait”, “a recreation”, “a study”, “the space station”. Sometimes, he’d tease Dan, asking “How do you always know it’s me?” “This is when you always come,” Dan would say, still pretending to be busy. The blue light glowed happily, and Dan pushed his watch back against his skin, suppressing all of the light but the fine line of light just around the edge of his watch. Phil would get his things, go to pay, and Dan would find himself staring. The blue marks on his cheeks disappeared after a week or two, probably due to concealing foundation. It wasn’t uncommon to use makeup to cover up your constellation, especially for people like Phil who had their marks so blatantly displayed. Even after the marks became hidden, Dan couldn’t help but stare. Phil had the most beautiful blue eyes that Dan wanted to get lost in. But he couldn’t act unprofessional; he couldn’t scare Phil away; he had to stay cool. The light kept glowing. It seemed to get brighter as the time passed. Eventually, Dan gave in and wrapped a part of an ace bandage around it, putting his watch on over it and making a small tear in the fabric so he could still see when the little blue marks were glowing, but it’d be much less noticeable for anyone else. “You seem in a good mood,” Dan noticed one day when Phil hurried in, grabbing a doughnut and biting into it as he rushed to get his coffee, humming and smiling all the while. “My brother got engaged. He called me in the car,” he explained, taking another bite. “His soulmate. He found her.” Dan managed a small smile. “That’s nice. What do you think about soulmates?”He shrugged. “Love isn’t really a priority for me right now. It’s nice, I guess, the whole soulmates thing, but I’m not exactly looking.” “You haven’t found yours then?”Phil made a face, carrying his coffee cup over and placing it on the counter in front of Dan, digging around for his wallet. “Has anyone our age?”“I have,” Dan said before he could stop himself. “Oh. Have you gotten married yet?” “No. We’re not… together.” He tried making a face, messing with the cash register. “Is that all?”“Yeah, make sure to add in the cost of the doughnut. I had a glazed one.” Phil handed him the cash and Dan smiled, accepting it. For some reason, he wanted to lie about the price and have Phil only pay for his coffee, but it’d be futile. Phil had already been coming around for long enough that he knew the prices. “Thanks,” Dan said, perhaps a bit too genuinely. “And have a good day!” “You too, Dan!” Phil picked up his things and waved quickly as he walked out the door. Dan kept smiling until he was gone, then slowly slid to the floor, still smiling painfully. “You too,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Fuck.”——Phil was Dan’s soulmate, but Dan wasn’t Phil’s. It took a while for them to become acquaintances, and a little longer for them to become friends. Dan asked Phil about his job, his paintings, his family. Phil asked him about his life too, so Dan ended up telling him a fairly decent amount about Murry’s, the mini-mart where he practically lived. They went out for drinks once, after Phil had gone on a short family trip and demanded he and Dan catch up. Dan got to the bar first and found himself staring at the hole in the ace bandage, waiting for the light to blink on that signified Phil’s arrival. It did, and a good minute later, Phil was grabbing his shoulders, saying “Rah!” to try and scare him. They sat, they talked, Dan fell, and not just off of the bar stool, though he did that too. The night ended, and they exchanged phone numbers. Just friends. Casual friends. He was one of Dan’s only friends. Dan saw him far more than he saw any of his actual friends. Some nights, they went as far as texting. Hours would pass, and Dan would clean the store, close it, restock it, and fill in the books for the day, all while texting him.From: PhilUndertale?From: DanFinished it. One of my favorite games. Skyrim?From: PhilHaven’t played it. Is it a VR?From: DanYeahI’ll play it for days on end and just not sleep or eat or anythingI love itFrom: PhilI’d probably get seasickFrom: DanIt’s not that badFrom: PhilI’ve got a sensitive stomach! I’m also lactose intolerantFrom: DanSo you can’t have cheese?What about pizza?From: PhilI hate cheeseIt’s fine on pizza thoFrom: DanYou hate cheese???How????And good if you didn’t like pizza I’d have to boycott youFrom: PhilI can’t stand it! It just tastes so horrible!!Dan snorted, and went back to mopping. Dan always restocked the store on Friday nights. It was long and lonely- much less lonely when he Skyped Phil, who of course was also up, painting. Dan set up his iPad where he could see him as he organized and sorted a few boxes of fruit, throwing out the ones that had gone bad. They talked for a while, both accustomed to the night. “Did things ever work out with you and your soulmate?” Phil asked. Dan tried for a smile. “They’re… in progress. Sort of. I don’t know. Any changes with you?”“Nah, my constellation is as unlit as ever. Have I ever shown you it?”“Yeah, it’s shaped kind of like a star, on your cheek? Do you use makeup to cover it up?”“What do you mean?”“When you first started coming into the shop. You had a bunch of blue freckles on your cheek, almost in the shape of the star.” Phil ended up laughing, and explained to Dan that it wasn’t his constellation, it was likely just paint. “But it was there for weeks!” Dan argued. “I’m a nocturnal recluse who stays up all night painting and is addicted to caffeine. How often do you think I shower?” Dan told him, with an utter lack of sincerity, that he was disgusting. But he couldn’t help the flicker of hope welling up inside of him. “So where is your constellation then?” “My ankle. It’s always covered by my socks, look.” Phil tucked his paintbrush behind his ear, accidentally staining a small patch of his forehead a lily pink. Phil brought his foot up, pushing up his pants and rolling down his sock. “It’s right here. See? I think it’s shaped like the big dipper, but-” “It is,” Dan agreed. “Maybe more like the little dipper, actually.” “What’s wrong? You look upset.” “It’s nothing, I just… long day. I’ve hardly gotten a break at all, and I’m tired. Here, I’ll show you mine.” Dan unclipped his watch, trying to ignore his trembling hands. He pulled off the ace bandage, and showed his wrist to Phil on his iPad screen. “Oh, I like yours. It looks like that math symbol, you know? Like, the squiggly brackets things.” “I’d always thought of it as a bow, like the type an archer would use.” “Yeah, I can see that too.” Phil’s ankle was still on display, showing off his constellation of little blue freckles. “Both of ours are pretty similar.” “Yep. But they’re still… they don’t match. The bottom two.” “Yeah. But it’s not like we thought we were soulmates anyways,” Phil said, laughing good-naturedly. —–Your constellation only glows when you are in the physical presence of your soulmate. That’s why Dan could show Phil his over the video message, since it wouldn’t glow. Phil didn’t have to worry about that. According to him, his had never glown. “Do you ever wonder what your soulmate is doing right now?” He asked one Friday night as Dan organized candy bars. No. I know what my soulmate is doing. He’s painting a picture of a dog, and there’s green paint the shade of grass on his nose, and he’s smiling and talking to me openly about his soulmate, who is not me, because our constellations don’t match and I need to accept that they won’t ever match, no matter how hard I wish them to.“Yeah, sometimes.” —–“Morning, Phil,” Dan said from where he was kneeling on the ground, packing in packages of potato crisps. He didn’t have to look up to know it was him. “You’re amazing,” Phil said, heading towards the coffee maker. “But I guess you have that watch to tell you what time I get here every day.” “Or I just say 'hey Phil’ to everyone who walks in here until I get it right,” Dan suggested, while mentally telling his heart to stop racing and his cheeks to go back to their normal shade. “What’d you paint last night?” “An underwater scene,” Phil said as he poured his coffee. “It had fish and these big octopus tentacles wrapping around a coral reef.”“Ohh, tentacles. Kinky.” Phil laughed. “Only to you. You know, you should really look into hiring more employees. It seems like you’re always here.” “That’s because I am,” Dan teased. “And no one wants to work here. Frankly, I don’t blame them. The boss is such an ass.” “Aren’t you the boss?”“Obviously.” Dan scooted past Phil, nudging him lightly. “Don’t worry about it. I make good money. And I have this afternoon off.”“Oh yeah? You doing anything fun?”“Skyrim. Until a week has passed and I’m too dehydrated to move.”“Sounds healthy.” “Oh trust me. This break is just what the doctor ordered.” —————Dan spent the afternoon cleaning his house, his real house, the one he paid rent for and supposedly lived in. He scrubbed it until it shined with polish and he shined with sweat, then looked to the VR controller sitting by his couch.It starred back at him. It could be good to play it for a while, he reasoned. Think about something else. He went over and picked the headset up. He then set it on the counter, swapping it for his keys. ——Dan’s car was some offland, four wheeling, mini-van turned car for a manly man with a spacious backseat perfect for collapsing for him to put things into when he had to run errands for the store. Sometimes, right on Friday night he’d get a call saying there was a problem with this shipment or that shipment and he had to go to the store, coupons in hand, and buy the missing stock. A few times it had happened where the recycling bin in the back of the store was overflowing and it was still a few days until it was picked up, so Dan loaded some of it into his car, taking it to the recycling plant himself. The car was the only one he’d ever had. It was navy and was used when he’d bought it, but reliable and a comforting presence. He’d slept in the back of that car when he was in between apartments and when he first started working as the manager of Murry’s and was afraid that he could be fired if he was caught sleeping in the back of the shop. The point was, he cared for his car. It was already getting dark when he began driving that night, but he and the Navy Machine knew the way. Finally, he got to the field, far enough away from people that there was almost no light pollution. There, he drove until he hit the middle of it, parking the car and turning it off. The headlights turned off, and the true darkness of night was seen. Dan climbed up the hood of his car- another reason why he liked it, it never dented- and laid on top of it, looking up at the sky. The stars were on full display. Hundreds, maybe thousands twinkled above him, the crescent moon shining brightly among them. He exhaled, taking it all in. Almost subconsciously he found himself pulling off his watch and the bandage underneath it, raising his arm to the sky and finding what he called the soulmate stars, the five ones that would align in the shape of a bow on the day he kissed his soulmate for the first time. He found them almost instantly, not far out of place. It made his heart flutter. That meant that he’d either kiss his soulmate for the first time soon, or it’d be at least another decade before it happened. The constellation on his wrist always seemed to gleam a little bit brighter when he was out here, as if it sensed the other stars and wanted to go home.———Phil was telling him a story about how he used to think seahorses were actual underwater horses. His words were always so full of animation and excitement, even at such an ungodly hour of the morning. Dan, on the other hand, was exhausted. He sat amongst a huge pile of various cardboard boxes, and was trying to fold them down to all fit in his car. “…and he raised his hand and said 'Phil doesn’t know what a seahorse is!’ And everyone laughed!” Phil told the story like it was a casual, slightly humorous event, not some horribly traumatic incident like Dan would probably see it as. He was a ball of sunshine, sitting in a well-lit room with his painting project sat next to the computer he Skyped on, always just out of Dan’s view.Phil dipped his large brush into the light blue paint. Dan rubbed his eyes, trying to keep himself awake. “What’re you painting?” He asked once Phil was done with the story. “I don’t know yet. The inspiration hasn’t struck yet.” Phil was a sucker for inspiration. He said that once he got an idea, he kept working on it until he was done, usually with few breaks, if any. He started his paintings as soon as the sun began to droop behind the horizon, and depending on the size and complexity, sometimes finished as late as 5 or 6 in the morning. He ate meals before and after he painted, and then when he was done painting he brushed his teeth, cleaned himself up a bit, and went to Murry’s where Dan worked to get some coffee to make him through the rest of the morning. He had all of his meetings with gallery directors and clients in the morning, then went to bed around noon, or earlier if he could help it. Phil mentioned something about the last time he’d had creators block, and Dan requested he tell the story. “Well, one of the things I do on the side is do digital art for children’s books, and I was supposed to be drawing a fairy…”Dan found himself nodding along to the story, his eyelids becoming heavier and heavier. And then he nodded asleep. ——Dan woke up in the pile of boxes he’d been trying to fold, with his iPad facing him but the screen black. He rubbed his eyes, pulling himself up into a standing position and brushing some of the cardboard scraps away. Turning on the iPad, Dan rolled his eyes, wondering if he’d ever wake up later than 5. He went to the employee bathroom, which was far nicer than the customer bathroom. It was complete with a soft towel set hidden under the sink, scented soap, and a motion control radio that turned on smooth jazz whenever anyone walked in. It was an important touch, which he’d boughten last Christmas. This year, he wanted to get a new sink, preferably one that was deeper so I’d be easier for him to wash his hair in it. Or even better: have a shower installed. He cleaned himself up, put on his uniform, which he had several sets of in his office closet, and was going about the daily tasks when someone began to pound on the door, yelling something through the thick glass. He grabbed a metal spatula and marched towards the door, pushing his shoulders back. He instantly relaxed when he saw who it was, however. Dan went to the door and flicked the lock, opening it halfway. “Phil?”“Dan! You’re up!” “Yeah,” he agreed, not really sure what Phil was doing there before the shop had even opened. “It’s almost 5:30. I have to get it ready for customers.” Phil shifted uncomfortably. “Oh, um, my bad. I just figured since you fell asleep on accident last night…”Dan looked at his feet, willing himself not to blush. He really tried. “Yeah, nah, I don’t set alarms anymore, biological clock or some shit. Thanks though. And, um, sorry about falling asleep on you. I mean, not literally on you, but…” he stopped to breathe in sharply, and offered Phil a small smile. “Thanks though.” “No problem.” Phil was as alert and ready as always, as if he’d been awake for hours. Which of course, he had. “Since I’m here anyway, do you mind if-” Dan checked his watch quickly, still blocking the door with his body. The hole in the bandage glowed an intense blue. “It’s not quite 5:30 yet but… just don’t tell the manager.” Phil laughed lightly, and Dan moved out of the way to let him in. After he was inside, Dan flipped the sign so the store was officially open. Phil, as per usual, made a beeline for the coffee pot. “Sorry, I haven’t put one on yet,” Dan apologized, following after him. “It’s fine. Where is-” Dan opened the cabinet under the machine, pulling out a big bag of ground beans. He worked quickly, scooping them in and filling the machine with water at the same time, then choosing the setting right as the pot gurgled to life. He leant up against the counter, standing opposite of Phil. “What’s that?” He asked, noticing the smear of color on his hand. Phil was already saying “It’s nothing” as Dan was saying “No, show me.” “A color palette,” he explained. “I did a painting. And I was trying to get the right shades of brown, but I’m not sure if I’m doing it justice.” “Brown’s such a boring color,” Dan observed, the coffee machine working beside him. “I don’t think so.” Phil raised his hand, covered part of Dan’s body with it. His eyes flicked between his skin and Dan’s curious look. “I think I did it more justice than I thought.” “That’s good.” Dan paused the machine, pouring the dark liquid into a travel cup and offering it to Phil with still enough space to add cream. “Thanks.”Dan smiled and quickly went back to work, bringing out the pastries to put in the display boxes. “Where do you get those?” “A bakery a few blocks away drops them off every morning.”“I bet they’d get cold after a few hours.”“Not really. The box is insulated, so it keeps them warm.” Phil finished mixing his coffee and sipped it. “It’s good. Do you, uh, want some?”Dan peered out of the glass doors, watching the multicolored sky for a few moments. “Nah. I might get a doughnut though.” He went over to the case, and after much deliberation, decided it was a simple glazed kind of morning. He pulled out one for him and a frosted one with multi-colored sprinkles for Phil, handing it over. “Thanks. I’ll pay now, before I forget-” “Don’t worry about it.” Dan bit into his doughnut, and decided it was definitely a glazed doughnut kind of morning. “5 am special. But don’t think this means you can come early every morning and get free food.” That was Dan the manager talking. Dan the person wanted nothing more than to have Phil come over, every single morning, and have them both indulge in free pastries to their hearts contents. Phil laughed, saying something else but Dan didn’t really hear, all of his attention was focused on the way Phil’s tongue peeked out from between his teeth when he laughed. Dan took another bite of doughnut. To the 5 am special, he thought. —–That was the first time Phil came to the shop when it was closed. The second time happened two weeks later. It was horrid. At this point, Dan knew that he was as good as doomed. Phil kept asking him about his soulmate, why Dan isn’t in a relationship with them, whether Dan thinks it’ll ever happen, if they’re even talking. “I think that the soulmates thing is stupid,” Dan announced one day. “It’s a messy system that has too many issues. I’d rather just be able to fall in love without literally having a literal neon light tell me it’s okay.” Phil told him he thought it was sweet, and a time saver. “I know that I’ll find them one day,” he said over the phone, to which Dan had to actually set his phone down and hit his head against the metal shelving because fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. “And this way I won’t have to waste time with relationships that aren’t worth it.” Like a relationship with Dan. Because Dan was clearly not Phil’s soulmate, therefore a relationship between them would be a waste of time. That happened about a week after the 5 am special discount, and a week after that was when Phil showed up at the door, 11pm Friday night, when Dan had so much left to do. “Phil? What’re you doing here?”“You said you’d be working for so long you might pull an all-nighter,” Phil explained. “And I happen to be the expert at all-nighters. Plus, I don’t really need to paint tonight.” Phil had this horrid idea that he could just come by and help Dan prepare the store for the upcoming week like it was no big deal. He even refused pay. Dan literally wasn’t able to find anyone who would do this job for pay, and here Phil Lester was, with his permanently paint-stained hands and his kind smile offering to do it for free. It was surely against the store’s policies. But Dan found that he just couldn’t say no. Phil was a good worker. They put music on through the store speakers, and danced and hummed along to the familiar songs as they did their work. Dan would give Phil a box and show him where to line the things up on the shelf and how to arrange them in the most aesthetically pleasing way, all the while brushing their hands together and hoping Phil didn’t notice how much Dan was sweating. God, it was horrible. Dan wanted to combust. Phil smiled so much it actually made Dan frustrated. How dare this ray of sun come in and ruin his night of brooding?Phil only drank one cup of coffee, saying any more would disrupt his natural rhythm or some other excuse that made Dan want to hit his head against the wall so he could get a concussion and never have to deal with this warm fluffy feeling ever again. By around 3 in the morning the store had been thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom, the expired food had been thrown out, most of the goods had been restocked, and Dan had even managed to sneak away to his office for an hour to get the paychecks in line for his employees that week. They only got paid for the hours they worked when the store was open, which was one of the big reasons why he usually had no help in the Friday restock. Both of his employees worked part-time, which was less than 30 hours a week. The store was open for over one hundred hours a week. Dan finished up the boring work and shut down the computer, going back outside to where Phil was restocking the soda, singing along quietly to a song. Dan hummed along, alerting Phil to his presence. “You’ve got to love Ed,” Dan commented, stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets. “'Thinking Out Loud’ is one of his best ones.” Phil nodded in agreement, standing and stretching his back. “It’s got a good music video too. He learned how to professionally ballroom dance for it.“ “Oh? Like… this?” Dan tried to mimic slow dancing with an invisible partner, to which Phil responded with one of those damned giggles that made Dan’s dimple show up and his heart pound a little harder. “No, fancier. Let me show you.” Phil walked over, grabbing Dan’s hands in his purposefully, and having them sway side to side. “Yeah, this feels very professional,” Dan observed jokingly. Phil fidgetted with their posture, trying to get their rhythm right. “And there were spins…” He spun Dan outwards, except Dan wasn’t expecting it so their hands disconnected mid spin. “…and, um, solo moves.” Phil swayed on his own, stepping forwards and back and moving his arms like he might have some idea of what he was doing. “And lifts.” “Lifts,” Dan repeated. “Unless you’re talking about a lazy alternative to stairs, I don’t think I want to try.” “At least do the spin with me,” Phil insisted. He took ahold of Dan’s hand, and this time they were a little closer. Phil smelled better than he honestly should have, and Dan probably shouldn’t have taken so much relish in inhaling through his nose, drawing it all in. Phil stepped back, and came in, bringing Dan’s arm over his head so he spun. He spun once around, then was tugged back so quickly he accidentally ran into Phil’s chest. “My bad,” Dan insisted, quietly. 'Thinking Out Loud’ was still playing, at the part where it says 'people fall in love in mysterious ways, maybe it’s a part of a plan. But me I fall in love with you every single day, and I just want to tell you I am…’ Phil didn’t pull away. He held Dan close to him, almost in a hug, but somehow even closer. Dan could feel his chest moved as he breathed. It was 3 am. Dan was tired. Ed Sheeran was playing in the background. All excused Dan used later to explain his actions, to validate them. Phil’s eyes were so blue. It was a color no one, not even him, could ever replicate. They were beautiful. So Dan moved over a little. He and Phil were eye level, and their noses were almost brushing. Then Dan leaned in, until their noses were brushing, and then their lips were too, in a few quiet, soft kisses that felt so right until Dan realized Phil was as solid as a statue, and hadn’t kissed back. Dan pulled away, looking back at those eyes. Phil didn’t meet his gaze. “But Dan,” he said, voice breaking mid-sentence. “What about your soulmate?”——-Dan had the early morning shift the next day, but he called in one of the part-timers and traded shifts with them. Phil had left immediately after the kiss. There wasn’t much work left to do, and everything was too awkward for him to stay. Dan finished up his work so quickly he knew that he didn’t do it up to his standards. The cans weren’t organized right, the 2-liter bottles of soda were crowded instead of in neat rows, but he couldn’t care, he couldn’t care, he couldn’t care. He threw on his coat and sped out to his car, his heart pounding in time with his footsteps. He didn’t know where he was going. Actually, he did. But he didn’t need to. It wasn’t a conscious choice, driving out of the town five above the speed limit the whole way, but the Navy Machine knew where to go and knew how to take the corners. Dan hit the brakes and thundered to a stop, putting the car in park and turning it off as quickly as he was possible, his hands trembling. He hated how he got this way, hated how he could be a manager and a professional and how he could handle everything so well, except for when it came to Phil. When it came to Phil his composure dropped and his mindfulness dropped and all of a sudden his heart was beating loud enough to hear and his hands were all sweaty and trembly, betraying his thoughts.

He clambered up on top of the car, tearing his watch and the fabric bandage off and throwing them to the ground, laying down and raising his wrist towards the sky. His constellation was of an archer’s bow, five little blue dots going in and out gracefully. They matched perfectly with the five corresponding stars in the sky. His freckles, which had been turquoise, began to glow like the stars themselves. They didn’t glow blue like they did whenever Phil was around. Dan didn’t know that it happened, but he knew what it surely meant: he had kissed his soulmate, for the first time, tonight. It would also likely be the last time. Because as much as Dan wanted their constellations to match, Phil had a different arrangement of freckles. He would kiss his soulmate a different night.

Dan laid on the top of his car until he was shivering, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or something else. Finally, he came down, climbing into the drivers seat and falling asleep with the car still off.———He had the afternoon shift, and got there as his part-time employee began to pack up. “Someone came over this morning,” the started, and Dan huffed. Of course Phil came over this morning. Of course he did, of course he did, of course-“They said they were from upper management? They didn’t buy anything, just kind of poked around, looking under shelves and measuring stuff. And they asked to use the bathroom and I let them use the employee one. Sorry about that, but they seemed important and the customer bathroom smelled.” Dan rubbed his eyes, trying to process it. “We had a surprise inspection,” he mumbled. “One of the one day I didn’t finish cleaning, the one morning I wasn’t here.” He shook his head. “Well, thanks for telling me. I’ll go put my uniform on and then you can leave.” “Um actually… I kind of really gotta go.”“You can’t wait one more minute?”He shook his head. Dan looked around the store. There weren’t any customers currently inside, but if one came inside and Dan was in the back, they might steal something. “Thanks!” The employee said, hurrying out from behind the register. “Have a good shift!” Dan looked down. He was technically already in uniform, but his uniform was still dirty from wearing it all day and night yesterday. He peeked out the window and darted into the back, changing into his fresh clothes and running back out. There was one person in the store- an older woman named Meryl who rented out the apartment above it- who bought a large coffee and left. Once she was gone, Dan went over to the soda aisle, reorganizing it the right way as he had failed to do early that morning.—-That night, he went home and slept in his own bed. He came right back the next morning, opening it up promptly at 5:30 and starting up the coffee. He’d lost track of time, and before he knew it he was sweeping the floor and the little bell over the door jingled, alerting someone’s presence. “Dan?” Dan looked up so quickly he almost hurt his neck. “Phil? Why are you here so early, it’s only-”“6:30, on the dot,” he answered. “You would’ve known if you had your watch.” Dan was still so scatterbrained that he didn’t even fully process Phil’s words. “Oh! Um, I’ll get you some coffee then.”“I can get it myself, you don’t have to-”But Dan was already in motion, going over and pouring him a cup of coffee with enough room in the top for cream. He handed it to Phil quickly, almost spilling some.Phil stared at him, shuffling slightly uncomfortably. “Hey.”“Hey.”“I’m sorry about ditching you the other night. I said I’d help out, but I didn’t.”“No, you helped a lot!” Dan hated how he sounded so needy, hated how unprofessional it all was. “Thank you, it was very kind of you. And I’m sorry-” “You don’t have to be sorry,” Phil was saying, but he was looking at Dan’s hand or arm or something, not at his face. His eyes shot up, wide for a moment, then his poker face returned. “It’s fine. No harm, no foul.” He looked at Dan’s hand or wrist or something again, then back up. “Um… could you get me a pastry? I’m going to tie my shoe.”“Sure!” Dan bounded over, opening up the box. “What’re you in the mood for?”“I don’t care,” Phil said behind him, kneeling. “Maybe one of the warmer ones?” Dan chose one out and put it into the paper sleeve, turning around right as Phil finished pulling his sock back up. “Thanks. How much-” “6:30am special,” Dan insisted. “It’s okay. I’ll just pay for it.”——-Dan’s nights were much more boring without Phil. He ordered a new refrigerator for the store. He compared and contrasted produce companies until he ended up switching to a different supplier that would save them 25 cents per carton. He searched online, and considered remodeling the customer bathroom.He looked at his bank account, and paid his own bills. The results: he’d been making a lot of money from working so much overtime, but too much of it was being funneled into his rent, especially considering that he was hardly ever there. So the apartment search was on. Phil stopped coming by every morning. Meryl, the woman living in the apartment above Murry’s, died of a heart attack. Too many large coffees. And, the biggest thing to happen- Dan’s boss came by. “Murry’s is a shit store,” she said. “Over the past five years, we’ve had to shut down over half of our stores, and the ones that are still open are crap. Almost none of them passed the health inspection, there’s too few customers, and we’re losing money.” Dan began to argue, saying that they had loads of customers, but she shook her head. “Frankly, your store is the only one that we could keep open. But I’m retiring. I’m going to sell the remaining properties, and move to a three-story in Michigan.” “I’ll buy it,” Dan said, before he even knew what he was saying. “I’ll buy it from you and keep the store open.” She raised her eyebrows. “You want the place?” In the past month, Dan had already lost his soulmate. He refused to lose his job, the place he devoted so much of his life to, as well. “I want it. We have a new refrigerator coming in, and the bathroom is getting remodeled. I have money saved up, I’ll take it.” She considered this. “It’s not just the store. It’s the whole building, with the apartment above it. You sure you want it?”Dan forced his business side to take over. “I want to have a full inspection done of the whole building, see what repairs need to be made. Then we can negotiate prices.” ——Dan was doing paperwork when his constellation began to glow blue. He’d left his watch and bandage on the ground in the field, and since then hadn’t bothered trying to cover up the freckles that made up his constellation. Ever since that night when his constellation lite up like the stars, they’d turned black, like they’d been burned out. They felt more natural now, like an actual part of Dan’s skin rather than some paint that he couldn’t scrape off. Dan didn’t even think that they could glow anymore. But somehow, as he was filling out the papers, they started flowing blue like nothing had changed. Dan looked up just in time to see Phil slowly pushing the door open, coming in and stopping like he wasn’t really sure where to go. The first thing Dan said was probably dumb. “It’s evening.” Phil looked behind him, checking the sky through the glass doors. “Yep.”“Then… what are you doing?”Phil walked over slowly, his hands in his coat pockets. He shrugged. “I don’t really know.” His eyes latched on the blue glow radiating from the freckles on Dan’s wrist. He hesitantly reached over, flipping his hand so he could see the constellation. Dan watched his expression, trying to figure out what he was thinking. “My mark is different from yours,” Phil observed. “I don’t get it.” Dan sniffed, trying desperately to smile and failing. “There’s nothing to get. You’re my soulmate. I guess… I guess I’m just not yours.” Phil let go and backed up until Dan could see his full body over the counter. He bent over and slowly pulled his pants leg up, shoving his sock down to reveal his little dipper constellation- that was glowing blue. “I noticed it last time I saw you,” he admitted. “I saw yours glow, and when I checked, mine was glowing too.” Dan found himself looking down at his papers, shuffling them and desperately trying to look busy. “Oh, well, um…” “We’re soulmates.” Dan looked up. He smiled. “Phil… that’s not how it works.” He stepped forward. “It is. I’ll prove it to you, you just have to tell me how.” Dan gnawed on his lip. “Fine. But you have to trust me.” “Okay.” Dan tucked the paper away underneath the counter and grabbed Phil’s hand, flipping the OPEN sign and leading him out the door, locking it behind him. He pressed a button on his keys, and a few feet away a large blue car beeped. “Phil… meet the Navy Machine.”——Dan drove too fast, his hands too tight on the wheel and his teeth gritted. Phil sat next to him, in the passenger seat that was never used for holding anything but crates. “Where’ve you been lately?” Dan asked, flipping his blinker on as he made a right turn, almost completely ignoring the stop sign. “I went to an art conference in a city named after me.” Dan gave him a look. “In Philly,” he explained. “I was going to tell you, but then…” He shrugged, and Dan shrugged, trying to act like it was no big deal. “What’ve you been up to?”“I’m buying the store.” Dan said in a monotone. “And the apartment above it. It has some water damage, but nothing too difficult to prepare.” Phil congratulated him, albeit a little awkwardly. “What changes are you going to make?”Dan shrugged. “I’m going to get better staff, for one thing. Maybe increase the salary or benefits so it’s not such a crap place to work.”Phil nodded slightly. “It’s a good idea.”They both fell into a silence as Dan flicked his high beam lights on, no other car in sight. They kept driving for a bit longer until he pulled into a field, driving to the middle and stopping. “We’re here,” Dan mumbled, so quietly Phil practically had to read his lips. Dan turned the car off, climbing out and pulling himself onto the hood, crawling onto the roof of the car and sitting there, waiting for Phil to follow. “Wow,” Phil said, after he was sat next to Dan. His left leg dangled off of the side, and his right leg was bent at the knee, gently pressing against the roof of the car. Dan hummed in agreement. The stars were as bright as ever, and on the cloudless night, the sky was so clear that they covered it, going on endlessly. Phil stared at the stars. Dan stared at Phil. His attention was caught by a small cluster of stars that shined a bit… differently than the others. They formed an imposter Little Dipper in the sky.

Phil rolled down his colorful sock, the constellation on his ankle glowing even brighter than before. Dan looked back and forth between it and the stars in the sky. They were the perfect match. Phil kicked his shoes off, letting them fall to the grass and scooted back. He laid down on the top of the car. “You can see the stars so much clearer here than in the city.”Dan nodded. “That’s why I like it.” He bit his lip, then kicked his own shoes off and moved back to lay next to Phil, staring up at the sky. “I actually know a lot about constellations.”“Yeah?” Phil moved his hand, brushing some of Dan’s fringe aside. “Like what?”His blue eyes were brighter than the stars. “There’s the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, and the Nemean Lion, which is from Greek Mythology,” Dan recited, hardly paying attention to his words. Phil intertwined their hands, giving Dan’s a gentle squeeze. “The Greeks were obsessed with stars.” Phil was smiling. “I can’t blame them. I… I missed you Dan.” Flutter flutter, the sound of moth wings inside of Dan’s chest. “I missed you too,” he admitted. “There’s so much I wanted to talk to you about but couldn’t.”“I know what you mean.” Dan rolled over onto his side, resting his head on his arm. Phil followed suit, so close their knees were touching and Dan could hear each individual breath. Phil’s eyes flicked down a little. “So when I asked you, about your soulmate, and you said you weren’t together…” “It wasn’t a lie,” Dan explained, in that voice that only Phil could ever get out of him. “I knew who it was.” “Me.” Dan smiled. “You’re my soulmate. But our constellations are still different. We kissed that night, remember? They should match.” “Maybe.” Phil brushed his hair out of his eyes. “But Dan… I didn’t kiss back.” A thousand different thoughts went rushing through Dan’s mind at once, questions and information that he’d thought was set in stone, but was actually set in sand. And Phil leaned forwards, he was leaning forward, and Dan knew to do nothing else than to kiss him. His lips were warm and soft, tasting of coffee. They kissed on top of his car, under the stars and the moonlight, until finally they pulled away and found themselves clutched in each others arms, panting and trying to hold it together. “Dan,” Phil said, and was his voice always that deep? “My constellation…”Dan moved just far enough away to look down to Phil’s legs. On his right ankle, his constellation glowed as bright as the stars. “We’re soulmates,” he said, and Dan had never relished the word 'we’ quite so much. “We’re soulmates.” And Dan pulled him into another kiss, almost smiling too widely to do it properly.

Epilogue

Request A Fic / Fic Masterlist

Fun fact: when I went through to edit this, I found out that I misspelled every single ‘constellations’. Every single one. There are over 30.

But genuinely, I love how this story turned out. If you were the one to send in the ask, please let me know how you liked it! And I always love talking and discussing my stories and the universes, so if you have any questions regarding the technicalities of the way soulmates in this story work, let me know and I’d love to discuss!

153 notes · View notes