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otonymous · 5 years

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Served (MLQC Victor) - Chapter 4: Lady In Red

Description: Victor whips it out…(exactly what remains to be seen) Warnings: N/A Word Count: 1722 words (~9 mins of “will they or won’t they?!”) AO3: read here Author’s Notes: If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking around for this crazy ride! Hope you all enjoy this chapter 😊

Jump to other chapters: Chapter 1| Chapter 2| Chapter 3| Chapter 5

All characters & Mr Love: Queen’s Choice owned by Elex

You: Sorry again about tonight. I had no idea we’d be interrupted twice.

Victor: Thrice.

You: Oh right, the delivery man.

Victor: You’re quite popular.

You: Come on, the delivery guy doesn’t count!

Victor: No, but the sender of the package does. How do you know Kiro?

You: That’s...a long story. Why, are you a fan? Want me to get you an autograph?

Victor: What makes you think I don’t already have one?

You: Never mind then. By the way, tonight’s dinner doesn’t count. Let me take you out for a proper meal, one that isn’t burnt beyond recognition. I’ll treat you to whatever you want!

Victor: ...

After a solid two minutes, the ellipses were finally replaced by words.

Victor: Friday after work. I’ll pick you up at your office.

You: Ok! See you then.

Just when you begin to worry about whether or not your account balance can contend with Victor’s upscale tastes, a notification sounds on your phone.

Victor: Don’t be late. Victor: And keep Thursday evening free.

You: Why Thursday evening?

Victor: Just do it.

You: But what are we doing?

Victor: Must you ask so many questions?

You: Must you be so secretive?

God. Victor will be Victor. Rolling your eyes, you relent, thumbs flying across the onscreen keyboard:

You: Fine. Will there be anything else, Your Royal Highness?

Suddenly, your phone rings — “Victor Li, LFG CEO” displayed on the screen.

“Hel—“

“Don’t get cheeky.”

The line cuts before you have a chance to respond. Even still, you swear you sensed a smile in the deep bass of his voice.

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Carpets so plush you felt the give in the textile as you walked. The sweet, subtle scent of fresh jasmine in the air. Soft light inviting as it glanced off buttery leather ottomans, highlighting luxe fabrics and elegant hues hung with care on racks like so many pieces of art.

Your palms had started to sweat as soon as you stepped foot in that designer boutique. Surely Victor knows your company isn’t doing THAT well!

“Victor, why are we here?” Speaking in a hushed tone, you glance up at him, telling yourself the flutter in your stomach was due to the impending damage to your credit card and not how handsome this dictator looked in profile.

But before he can respond, a saleslady rushes over, smiling from ear to ear. “Hello Mr Li! We’ve been expecting you. The dresses have been set aside as you’ve requested, if you and the lady would please follow me. May I get you anything to drink?”

As soon as you enter a dressing room the size of your apartment, you are greeted by your bewildered expression reflecting off a wall of mirrors. And to the side, a rack of dresses — all of impeccable taste, all carrying price tags with an impossible number of zeroes.

Waiting till the saleslady was out of ear shot, you hiss from behind the door as you pull your blouse over your head. “Seriously Victor, what’s going on? Why am I trying on dresses I could never afford in this lifetime? Wait…don’t tell me…of course! It all makes sense now!”

Seated in a velvet settee on the other side of the door, Victor takes a sip of his espresso, the corners of his lips tugging up into an amused smile. “What makes sense?”

Adjusting the straps of a silk dress onto your shoulders, you reach for the zipper on the side as you say,

“You know, I’ll be your model for tonight. But I warn you, I don’t exactly have Chik’s physique, so the next time you want to buy a girl a dress, you ought to bring her here yourself. All the same, I can’t say I don’t understand you wanting to give your girlfriend a surprise.”

Smile transforms into a frown as espresso flows down the wrong tube, Victor coughing so violently you open the door just wide enough to poke your head out to ensure the man was still alive.

“How can anyone be so thick in the head?” His eyes flash with annoyance.

“What, am I wrong? The tabloids had pictures of the two of you together at the Loveland City Film Festival—”

“Which was sponsored in large part by LFG. As CEO, of course I had to make an appearance on opening night.”

“But what about all the gossip sites saying you took her to Saint-Tropez for a romantic getaway a few months ago?”

“And you believe that garbage?”

“I…I suppose not. So…if not Chik, then…”

Suddenly nervous to see the expectation in his gaze as it searched your own, you retreat back into the dressing room, voice trailing off as you lean against the door.

A revelation had floated in the depths of your subconscious for a while since you’ve known Victor, surfacing periodically with every instance of hard-won praise, every disguised gesture of kindness…every moment when your heart ached to find him studying you with the softest eyes when he thought you were unaware.

But he was Victor Li, the man with the most financial clout in Loveland City. The prodigy of the business world who built an entire empire with his own two hands, all before the age of thirty. Tall, dark and handsome, Victor was considered a highly coveted prize by young and beautiful socialites and celebrities the world over.

He was also the man who held the fate of your company in his grasp.

The idea of you and Victor together was just too unbelievable, and you suddenly felt uncomfortable under the spotlight of his attention, wishing the man had lectured you instead.

For you were used to his sass and sarcasm. What you hadn’t anticipated was…his affection.

To your relief, Victor doesn’t press the issue, waiting patiently as you parade in and out of the dressing room until you emerge in elegant crimson. And it isn’t until you catch his reflection in the mirror — staring intently at the curve of your exposed back — that your cheeks warm to match the shade draped across your body.

Victor swallows, throat bobbing as he nods at you. Then, summoning the saleslady with the slight raise of one hand, he says without ever taking his eyes off you, “We’ll take this one.”

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The drive to your apartment was silent but lacked the usual ease you felt with Victor in his car. The dress he bought for you — cooly whipping out his black card without even so much as glancing at the price tag — sat heavy on your lap, weighed down by the implications of the evening’s events.

In accepting his gift, you couldn’t help but think you were crossing the line from something that was purely professional into…what? Just what was it that Victor wanted from you? It was difficult to know, because the man was hardly forthcoming with his thoughts when it extended to anything beyond matters of business.

But then again, what of your desires?

You snuck a glance at him. Features looking like they were chiseled from stone, Victor’s eyes were trained on the road, large hands soft as they rested on the steering wheel. And as his chest rose and fell slowly beneath his seat belt, the rhythm of your own breath unconsciously matched his, that is, until the gentle flex of his forearms — visible with the sleeves of his dress shirt folded up neatly to the elbows — made it race once more.

You knew what you wanted. You just knew better than to ask for the impossible to happen.

“Goodnight, Victor. Thanks for the lift.”

“Wait.” He lays his hand on top of yours, the electricity of his touch rendering you still in the midst of unbuckling your seat belt. Your breath catches in your throat.

Then slowly…slowly…the features of his face draw close, notes of cedar wood and pine warmed by the heat of his body to drift in enveloping currents until all you could focus on was the impossible length of his eyelashes — how had you not noticed them before?

Just when the proximity makes you think to close your eyes, Victor reaches behind you to retrieve an elegantly wrapped gift box from the back seat.

“Wait until you’re home to open it.” Breath brushing against the shell of your ear, you fight to suppress a shiver of pleasure, biting down hard on the inside of your cheek.

Then, over as soon as it began, Victor drew away, the air around you suddenly cooler for want of his warm body.

“Also…you looked stunning. Ahem. In that dress.”

Hand paused on the car door, you were rendered speechless for the second time that night. Glancing at Victor, you were relieved to see him staring straight ahead; it embarrassed you to know that one little comment could bring so much heat to your face.

“Thank you…Victor.”

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Victor’s voice stayed with you long after his car pulled away into the night. Still you stood, hands splayed against your apartment window as you willed your heart to calm.

For there on your coffee table, lying amidst mounds of tissue paper and an open gift box, were a gorgeous pair of red-soled stilettos and fine stockings. But what touched you most were ink and paper, Victor’s thoughts conveyed in fine cursive:

“Shoes and stockings to replace the broken and torn. I had meant to give them to you as thanks for dinner that night but, as you know full well, was denied the opportunity. Please accept the dress as an apology for the tardiness of my token of appreciation.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, the final line:

“Wear all three to dinner on Friday.”

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Thank you so much for reading! Check out more of my work here! 📚

#mlqc #mr love queen's choice #love and producer #mlqc victor #mlqc li zeyan #mlqc fanfic #mlqc fic #mlqc smut #fanfiction #my writing #elex

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whnvr · 4 years

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Brain Drain

Ah yes, hello. It is once again time to drain these brains of mine. A couple of more thoughts on this ‘Morning Pages’ process. Firstly, I’ve decided to take the Artist’s Way wording to heart and think of this as a non-negotiable exercise and, at least for the time being, I am going to do the full 1500 words as a block before I move onto anything else in my day. I’m still going to take the approach of retroactively editing them before I sleep in order to be more formatted, but the main body of text will be done first as, based on yesterday, I think this will focus me far more than spreading the writing out. Secondly, the more I think about it the more experimental I realise this entire process is for me. It’s probably best thought of as a heavily modified and specified version of the ‘Artist’s Way’ approach, as one of the stipulations offered up by Julia Cameron is that these are to be for your eyes and your eyes alone - even then going so far as to suggest that these should be sealed away in an envelope so that even the practitioner does not read them. So in that sense I am both taking a more documentative, methodical approach to the process and I am altering the formula by hosting these in a public forum. I understand that privacy helps to remove any filtering one may do but I also believe that the potential for these to be read comes with its own benefits. To that end this feels like an experiment of being creatively candid in public which is simulatenously exciting and daunting given that it runs so counter to the common approach of creating behind closed doors. I’d love to explore these ideas further as this journal progresses and see how my relationship with creativity changes due to these factors. So, I guess I’ll start by taking the measure of my day, as I am very much enjoying the ‘touching base’ element of these Morning Pages. I definitely feel a lot more blocked than I did yesterday, and it seems as though there’s somewhat of a hump to get over when I do these within the first 500 words or so before I get into a state of flow with it - this was true of yesterday also. Maybe that is one of the possible benefits of this exercise, that 'ramping-up-to-flow’ stage is one I likely experience whenever I sit down to create and the Brain Drain may be a way of me overcoming that before I come to do any of the actual creative work of my day. It seems as though forcing myself to do all 1500 words yesterday put me into the same sort of flow-state I gain from working on a really successful piece of music, and then today I am once again reset back into that familiar place of being 'blocked’, which even now I am slowly working through and unpicking purely by writing these words. Looking back on previous creative work this would seem to make an awful lot of sense. How much more demotivating it is to have to wake up and untease the same blocked feeling each morning on projects that I care deeply about and am heavily invested in than it is to instead get that part of the process out of the way on an off the cuff exercise like Brain Drain each morning. Maybe attempting to ease such a block through the work we care about is where all feelings of 'I’ve lost it’ and 'this project is hard now. Therefore how much better it must be to work through those blocks in a format that we’re not quite so invested in. Even right now there is a part of me that is very much resisting this process. It is an anxiety that masks itself as restlessness and tells me to 'go and watch a film, Aaron. Why put yourself through something so hard?’. As it is the creative enemy I have decided to call this my personal Antagonizer. Other thoughts of the Antagonizer, or the 'me’ that feels uncomfortable and uncreative: - 'Go and make a milkshake Aaron. Don’t do this. It’s 30 degrees outside today. You really need to just cool down.’ - 'Get up and walk around. You really need to release some of this tension that you’re feeling.’ - 'Go and talk to a family member. Telling them about what you want to write would be much easier than simply writing it’. That’s right Antagonizer, I WILL use your criticism in order to help me hit this wordcount. Checkmate. Yesterday has taught me that past this feeling is where enjoyment and flow lie if I can only push through it. I imagine some days will be significantly harder than others, and I imagine that I will even have days where 1500 words won’t begin to scratch the surface of this block, but I would so much rather try to push through this block writing whatever comes to mind over-and-above pushing through this block attempting to create whatever passes for a masterpiece in my world. On to next steps then. I would like to select a new artist to listen to today as I get on with other work. This would also be a good opportunity to show off a little of how I organise my inspiration, despite how embarrassingly over-elaborate it is.

On Spotify I keep a folder of artists who I’m either interest in, inspired by, are important pieces of musical history, examples of current artists who are doing what they do incredibly successfully, or artists that I feel would be generally useful to experience. For each artist, I will create a playlist, and in each playlist, I will save that artist’s entire discography chronologically. I will then slowly work my way through each of the artist’s discographies, deleting what I’ve listened to and categorising songs that jump out to me either in terms of whether I love, like, or dislike them, the emotional qualities that I want to emulate in my own music, or the technical qualities that stand out as exemplary within each song. This allows me to simultaneously build a picture of what my musical tastes are, keep an accurate record of my listening history, and create song palettes for different emotional qualities that I wish to put into my own work.

(Above: the technical qualities of music that I have categorised. This forms up a reference library that I can use to further refine these qualities when I’m working on my own music)Here are the criteria I use to define each of these categories. Idea: the concept behind a piece. Narrative: the story told. Lyrics: how ideas are expressed through words. Mood: the emotionality of a piece. Expression: how ideas are framed and delivered through the articulation of the music. Musicality: the use of harmony, rhythm, and theory to communicate those ideas. Rhythm: the measure, speed, flow, and cadence of a piece. Timbre: the overall texture, tone, and sonic palette of a piece. Structure: the flow of a piece over time. Mix: how the timbre has been arranged as an ensemble. Master: how the piece has been polished. Delivery: the title, artwork, context, presentation, and moving image that contain the piece.

(Above: the emotional qualities of music that I have categorised as a reference library for how artists that I look up to achieve specific emotional qualities in their work). These are decidedly more abstract and are generally more subject to the songs themselves that are being added. For reference, here’s the current list of artists who’s work I want to study, all at various stages of listened to, completed, or not listened to at all: - Labelle - Car Seat Headrest - Snail Mail - Japanese Breakfast - Let’s Eat Grandma - Soccer Mommy - LCD Soundsystem - Big Thief - Have a Nice Life - Beebadoobee - Animanaguchi - 100gecs - Courtney Barnett - Chromonicci - Owsey - Dark Cat - Valentine - SOPHIE - Kamasi Washington - Prince - Aurora - Massive Attack - Haywyre - Maths Time Joy - Counting Crows - Jack Strauber - Blossom Calderone - Goldfrapp - Janelle Monae - Meteorologist - Easyfun - Saint Lewis - Julian Gray - Jade Cicada - Blake Skowron - 92Elm - Maxime - Stereo Cube - Chuck Sutton - Gemi - Queen - Laxcity - Duumu - Oh Wonder - Galamatias - Umru - Underscores - Brockhampton - Fleece - i Monster - Deaton Chris Anthony - Amy Winehouse - The Beatles - Sumthin Sumthin - Radiohead - Flume - Knapsack - Dodie Here are the artists who’s discographies I have completed via this approach: - Sidney Gish - M.I.A - In Love With a Ghost - Bowie - Pink Floyd - Baird - Rudimental - Iglooghost - Madeon - Porter Robinson - 100gecs I use a similar system alongside this over on Pinterest for visual work in order to better inform my visual style and aesthetic sensibilities. Here is how I define my visual observation: Interior & Exterior, the space of dwelling.

Colour, of which idiosyncrasy and primary colours are a main focus.

Tone, subtler than colour. An intangible quality communicated by shifting hues and gradiated layers.

Mood, the way an image feels.

Looks, clothes, & apparel: personal artistic image and identity.

Desolation, a quality not currently present in my own work, but one that I often observe and love within other work, as well as in storytelling and other environments.

Layout, the way things are arranged in relation to one another within a space.

Idea, the concept behind a thing.

Texture, the tactile quality of visual elements.

Form, the shape and bounds of a thing.

Presentation, the context a thing is placed within.

Render, the quality imparted by computer generated imagery.

Type, how words are displayed.

Pattern, the use of repetition.

As you can see, how I define sound and visual art share a fairly common language between them. Anyway, I divert. I’m going to select SOPHIE as the next discography to tear through and I am also going to continue working through the UE4 Beginner learning path, though before either of these I have some university paperwork/admin stuff to finish so I’d best crack on with that. Toodles!

#25.6.2020

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