#no wonder i have a mental breakdown whenever i try to write him jesus christ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

littlespoonevan · 7 years

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broadcast the boom, boom, boom (Preview)

so here’s a lil sneak peek at the beginning of the Never Been Kissed au!!! I’m hoping it’ll be finished by saturday/sunday but for now, here’s the first scene. i hope you like it!!!! <3

Isak would like the record to show he never actually signed up to be a part of the uni newspaper. After an ill-fated decision at one of Eva’s parties where he’d drunkenly stashed the boys’ weed in her living room when the cops showed up, Sana had cornered him in their biology lecture and blackmailed him into joining Vilde’s editorial team.

It’s been six months since then and Isak is still stuck here. (At least he’s managed to rope Jonas in too in the interim.)

Right now, they’re in a meeting. It’s the beginning of January and the beginning of the second semester and Vilde’s high pitched voice is getting significantly more shrill as different people on the team suggest ideas for stories. He doesn’t really get why she cares so much. The newspaper isn’t anything special – Blindernbladet is a fortnightly editorial that you’re more likely to see clogging bins on campus and abandoned in lecture halls than anywhere else.

But Vilde runs the office as if they’re working for the fucking VG.

“Do you not understand how important this is?” Vilde snaps at some first year that had suggested they do a story on the new menu options in the student centre.

Vilde turns to the room at large, eyes wide and mouth set in a firm line. “Our funding is going to be cut if we don’t start drawing in readers. We need hard hitting stories.” She smacks her hand on the table to emphasise her point though it’s somewhat hampered by the way it clearly makes her palm sting.

“Why don’t we do an exposé then?” Noora, their resident social affairs writer along with Jonas, suggests.

“Yes!” Vilde exclaims, pointing her pen at Noora with a gleam in her eyes. “Good. This is what we need. What about?”

“Youth culture?” Eva offers as a follow up.

“We could do interviews with students?” Sana chimes in. “From different courses and year groups to get the wider perspectives.”

Vilde nods fervently, dismissing everyone to their posts while she holds Sana, Noora, Eva and Chris back. Isak suppresses the urge to roll his eyes and retreats to the safety of his desk. He usually covers the science section with Sana but since she’s currently preoccupied he fucks around on the internet, messaging Jonas – who’s sitting on the opposite side of the room at his own desk – on Facebook.

Eventually he does actually start doing his work, skimming through the list of article ideas he and Sana had brainstormed earlier before Vilde had called a meeting. Selecting one at random, he opens his browser again and starts researching. A couple of hours later he’s neck deep in notes and half-formed paragraph plans when Vilde suddenly appears behind his computer screen, flanked by the girls.

“Hei, Isak!” she says far too enthusiastically. “Do you mind chatting in my office?”

Vilde’s “office” is a tiny box room with a glass wall that allows her to monitor the entire editing room while also separating her from the rest of floor and boosting her air of importance. Deciding it’s easier not to argue, he dutifully stands up and follows the girls into her room, dropping into the seat in front of her desk that she gestures to.

Vilde sits in her own chair on the other side of the desk with the girls taking up residence on either side of her once again. She looks like a mob boss. A mob boss with a pink bow in her hair. “So we’ve been discussing the exposé idea in more depth and we realised that interviewing university students may not be the way to go.”

“Okay…?” Isak says. He doesn’t really understand why he’s the one that’s being let in on this project.

“Popularity, cliques, those kinds of things don’t really impact you in university, you know,” Vilde continues matter-of-factly. “The campus and the courses are far too big to allow it to even be an issue.”

Isak agrees. He doesn’t think he’s heard the word popular since he started uni. No one gives a shit in college; everyone has their own friends and their own parties to go to and that’s enough. He privately thinks they’d have a better chance of exposing binge-drinking or drug use or something than they would some non-existent social hierarchy but Vilde clearly already has a plan in mind.

“Therefore we realised we need to go back to the source,” she continues, pausing dramatically as she bores her eyes into Isak’s. “High school.”

Isak just stares at her, still waiting for her to get to the point of her little spiel.

“We can all agree that the competition in high school can lead to a very toxic environment,” she says primly and the uncomfortable look on her face suggests she’s remembering the girls’ own difficulties with Sara, Ingrid and the Pepsi Max girls back when they were at Nissen.

“When we were in high school it was too difficult for us to look at the broader picture objectively. But now that we’ve been gone for a few years we have a wonderful opportunity to really delve into how this social hierarchy works and how it impacts on students’ mental health.” Vilde looks to the girls for approval when she pauses and they all nod meaningfully at Isak, making noises of agreement.

“Okay, I think so too,” Isak says uncertainly. “But what are you telling me for? I write for the science section.”

Vilde shares another look with the girls and Isak doesn’t miss the ways Sana is biting back a smirk and Eva is watching him like she’s just waiting for him to explode. Jesus christ, what have they done?

“Well,” Vilde starts hesitantly. “We’ve decided this would be most effective if we had someone on the inside to actually write the article.”

Isak doesn’t speak, waiting for Vilde to elaborate, because he refuses to believe she’s suggesting what he thinks she is.

Then, like ripping a bandage off, she says it. “We want you to enrol in Nissen for the month.”

It takes Isak a second to react, mostly because his brain short-circuits as soon as he hears the word “Nissen”.

“What,” he says flatly. It’s not a question.

Vilde takes a breath, flitting her gaze away from his no-doubt homicidal expression as she stands up. “We’ve already called the principal; you know Chris’ dad is on the board. We’ve discussed it. They will allow you to enrol for the month; they’re very interested in how the article will turn out. They’re hoping it will open the eyes of the students, especially if it’s written by someone close in age to them. The only caveat is that we have to keep all students anonymous, of course.”

She can’t be fucking serious.

“Why do I have to do it?” he snaps. He’s pretty sure there’re plenty of people who’d be happy to avoid uni for a month.

Vilde clears her throat. “We all agree you’re the only person on the team that we trust who could also actually pass as a seventeen year old.”

And that’s just fucking rude.

“I don’t look seventeen!” he insists indignantly.

“Isak, you do have a bit of a baby face,” Noora says gently. And wow, okay, she’s so not getting any food from his shelf whenever she runs out starting from now until the end of eternity.

“We’ve only been gone for three years, won’t all the teachers still recognise me?” he points out, desperately looking for a way out of this.

“The principal will inform your teachers so they don’t make a scene,” Vilde tells him. “Honestly, Isak. This is a great opportunity, we can’t squander it.”

“Vilde, what about my classes?” he asks wearily, deciding to redirect to the real matter at hand. He’s hanging onto his patience by a thread at this point. He’s in his third year of a bio-chem degree; he’s not some fucking first year taking a political science class and only showing up to college when it suits them. He actually takes his education seriously.

“Sana spoke to your professors,” Vilde hastens to explain.

“We may have conflated some details and hacked your email account,” Sana adds, waving a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

Vilde shoots her a look before returning her gaze to Isak with a winning smile “You can take your lectures online for the month and all your labs take place in the evening so you can still go to them after school.”

“So you expect me to double my own workload and make my life a living hell for a month just so you can write some stupid article?” he demands. Honestly, what the fuck kind of parallel universe did he wake up in this morning?

“You’ll be on a reduced timetable,” Sana says exasperatedly. “And taking mostly science classes which will be a walk in the park for you. Besides, like we said, your teachers will be informed. You won’t have to do homework; stop stressing about the academics. We need you to focus on the social side of it. Join the revue, meet people.”

And oh no. No. They can fuck off. He’s not doing that.

“I’m not joining the revue,” he says in horror.

Vilde rolls her eyes. “You don’t actually have to play a role,” she says impatiently. “Join the PR group or paint the set, it doesn’t matter. But get involved.”

“It’ll be the quickest way for you to make friends and get invited to parties,” Chris adds.

“I’ll help you with uni for the month,” Sana sighs like he’s causing her a great inconvenience. “Okay? Whatever you need. Just get us the story.”

Isak wavers, contemplating his options. Would one month really be so terrible? He knows it’s not so much about the workload and more to do with his own experience of high school. High school to him is marked by three major red flags: his father leaving, his mother’s breakdown, and shoving himself ten miles deep in the closet.

He fucking hated himself in high school. His life was a complete train wreck and he’s only just started to actually feel good in himself again. He doesn’t want to go back to that.

“One month, Isak,” Eva says softly. “Just four weeks. And if you write this, you can leave the paper. We won’t try to make you stay.”

The dismayed expression on Vilde’s face says she hadn’t quite agreed to that term but it makes Isak consider it. One month and he could be completely done with all of this. It’s not even that he dislikes the paper at this point; he just feels like it eats up too much of his free time. He barely has a fucking social life because he’s always either researching for articles or researching for his own assignments. But that could all be over by February…

Pushing down the itch of panic beneath his skin, he grits his teeth. “Fine.”

He’s going to regret this.

#evak #isak valtersen #skam #my fics #NBK au

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