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path-of-my-childhood · 3 years

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Musicians On Musicians: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift

By: Patrick Doyle for Rolling Stone Date: November 13th 2020

On songwriting secrets, making albums at home, and what they’ve learned during the pandemic.

Taylor Swift arrived early to Paul McCartney’s London office in October, “mask on, brimming with excitement.” “I mostly work from home these days,” she writes about that day, “and today feels like a rare school field trip that you actually want to go on.”

Swift showed up without a team, doing her own hair and makeup. In addition to being two of the most famous pop songwriters in the world, Swift and McCartney have spent the past year on similar journeys. McCartney, isolated at home in the U.K., recorded McCartney III. Like his first solo album, in 1970, he played nearly all of the instruments himself, resulting in some of his most wildly ambitious songs in a long time. Swift also took some new chances, writing over email with the National’s Aaron Dessner and recording the raw Folklore, which abandons arena pop entirely in favor of rich character songs. It’s the bestselling album of 2020.

Swift listened to McCartney III as she prepared for today’s conversation; McCartney delved into Folkore. Before the photo shoot, Swift caught up with his daughters Mary (who would be photographing them) and Stella (who designed Swift’s clothes; the two are close friends). “I’ve met Paul a few times, mostly onstage at parties, but we’ll get to that later,” Swift writes. “Soon he walks in with his wife, Nancy. They’re a sunny and playful pair, and I immediately feel like this will be a good day. During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. We walk into his office for a chat, and after I make a nervous request, Paul is kind enough to handwrite my favorite lyric of his and sign it. He makes a joke about me selling it, and I laugh because it’s something I know I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. That’s around the time when we start talking about music.”

Taylor Swift: I think it’s important to note that if this year had gone the way that we thought it was going to go, you and I would have played Glastonbury this year, and instead, you and I both made albums in isolation.

Paul McCartney: Yeah!

Swift: And I remember thinking it would have been so much fun because the times that I’ve run into you, I correlate with being some of the most fun nights of my life. I was at a party with you, when everybody just started playing music. And it was Dave Grohl playing, and you...

McCartney: You were playing one of his songs, weren’t you?

Swift: Yes, I was playing his song called “Best of You,” but I was playing it on piano, and he didn’t recognize it until about halfway through. I just remember thinking, “Are you the catalyst for the most fun times ever?” Is it your willingness to get up and play music that makes everyone feel like this is a thing that can happen tonight?

McCartney: I mean, I think it’s a bit of everything, isn’t it? I’ll tell you who was very... Reese Witherspoon was like, “Are you going to sing?” I said “Oh, I don’t know.” She said, “You’ve got to, yeah!” She’s bossing me around. So I said, “Whoa,” so it’s a bit of that.

Swift: I love that person, because the party does not turn musical without that person.

McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.

Swift: If nobody says, “Can you guys play music?” we’re not going to invite ourselves up onstage at whatever living-room party it is.

McCartney: I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing “Let It Be,” and I’m thinking, “I can do that better.” So I said, “Come on, move over, Woody.” So we’re both playing it. It was really nice... I love people like Dan Aykroyd, who’s just full of energy and he loves his music so much, but he’s not necessarily a musician, but he just wanders around the room, just saying, “You got to get up, got to get up, do some stuff.”

Swift: I listened to your new record. And I loved a lot of things about it, but it really did feel like kind of a flex to write, produce, and play every instrument on every track. To me, that’s like flexing a muscle and saying, “I can do all this on my own if I have to.”

McCartney: Well, I don’t think like that, I must admit. I just picked up some of these instruments over the years. We had a piano at home that my dad played, so I picked around on that. I wrote the melody to “When I’m 64” when I was, you know, a teenager.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: When the Beatles went to Hamburg, there were always drum kits knocking around, so when there was a quiet moment, I’d say, “Do you mind if I have a knock around?” So I was able to practice, you know, without practicing. That’s why I play right-handed. Guitar was just the first instrument I got. Guitar turned to bass; it also turned into ukulele, mandolin. Suddenly, it’s like, “Wow,” but it’s really only two or three instruments.

Swift: Well, I think that’s downplaying it a little bit. In my mind, it came with a visual of you being in the country, kind of absorbing the sort of do-it-yourself [quality] that has had to come with the quarantine and this pandemic. I found that I’ve adapted a do-it-yourself mentality to a lot of things in my career that I used to outsource. I’m just wondering what a day of recording in the pandemic looked like for you.

McCartney: Well, I’m very lucky because I have a studio that’s, like, 20 minutes away from where I live. We were in lockdown on a farm, a sheep farm with my daughter Mary and her four kids and her husband. So I had four of my grandkids, I had Mary, who’s a great cook, so I would just drive myself to the studio. And there were two other guys that could come in and we’d be very careful and distanced and everything: my engineer Steve, and then my equipment guy Keith. So the three of us made the record, and I just started off. I had to do a little bit of film music - I had to do an instrumental for a film thing - so I did that. And I just kept going, and that turned into the opening track on the album. I would just come in, say, “Oh, yeah, what are we gonna do?” [Then] have some sort of idea, and start doing it. Normally, I’d start with the instrument I wrote it on, either piano or guitar, and then probably add some drums and then a bit of bass till it started to sound like a record, and then just gradually layer it all up. It was fun.

Swift: That’s so cool.

McCartney: What about yours? You’re playing guitar and piano on yours.

Swift: Yeah, on some of it, but a lot of it was made with Aaron Dessner, who’s in a band called the National that I really love. And I had met him at a concert a year before, and I had a conversation with him, asking him how he writes. It’s my favorite thing to ask people who I’m a fan of. And he had an interesting answer. He said, “All the band members live in different parts of the world. So I make tracks. And I send them to our lead singer, Matt, and he writes the top line.” I just remember thinking, “That is really efficient.” And I kind of stored it in my brain as a future idea for a project. You know, how you have these ideas... “Maybe one day I’ll do this.” I always had in my head: “Maybe one day I’ll work with Aaron Dessner.”

So when lockdown happened, I was in L.A., and we kind of got stuck there. It’s not a terrible place to be stuck. We were there for four months maybe, and during that time, I sent an email to Aaron Dessner and I said, “Do you think you would want to work during this time? Because my brain is all scrambled, and I need to make something, even if we’re just kind of making songs that we don’t know what will happen...”

McCartney: Yeah, that was the thing. You could do stuff - you didn’t really worry it was going to turn into anything.

Swift: Yeah, and it turned out he had been writing instrumental tracks to keep from absolutely going crazy during the pandemic as well, so he sends me this file of probably 30 instrumentals, and the first one I opened ended up being a song called “Cardigan,” and it really happened rapid-fire like that. He’d send me a track; he’d make new tracks, add to the folder; I would write the entire top line for a song, and he wouldn’t know what the song would be about, what it was going to be called, where I was going to put the chorus. I had originally thought, “Maybe I’ll make an album in the next year, and put it out in January or something,” but it ended up being done and we put it out in July. And I just thought there are no rules anymore, because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, “How will this song sound in a stadium? How will this song sound on radio?” If you take away all the parameters, what do you make? And I guess the answer is Folklore.

McCartney: And it’s more music for yourself than music that’s got to go do a job. My thing was similar to that: After having done this little bit of film music, I had a lot of stuff that I had been working on, but I’d said, “I’m just going home now,” and it’d be left half-finished. So I just started saying, “Well, what about that? I never finished that.” So we’d pull it out, and we said, “Oh, well, this could be good.” And because it didn’t have to amount to anything, I would say, “Ah, I really want to do tape loops. I don’t care if they fit on this song, I just want to do some.” So I go and make some tape loops, and put them in the song, just really trying to do stuff that I fancy.

I had no idea it would end up as an album; I may have been a bit less indulgent, but if a track was eight minutes long, to tell you the truth, what I thought was, “I’ll be taking it home tonight, Mary will be cooking, the grandkids will all be there running around, and someone, maybe Simon, Mary’s husband, is going to say, ‘What did you do today?’ And I’m going to go, ‘Oh,’ and then get my phone and play it for them.” So this became the ritual.

Swift: That’s the coziest thing I’ve ever heard.

McCartney: Well, it’s like eight minutes long, and I said, “I hate it when I’m playing someone something and it finishes after three minutes.” I kind of like that it just [continues] on.

Swift: You want to stay in the zone.

McCartney: It just keeps going on. I would just come home, “Well, what did you do today?” “Oh, well, I did this. I’m halfway through this,” or, “We finished this.”

Swift: I was wondering about the numerology element to McCartney III. McCartney I, II, and III have all come out on years with zeroes.

McCartney: Ends of decades.

Swift: Was that important?

McCartney: Yeah, well, this was being done in 2020, and I didn’t really think about it. I think everyone expected great things of 2020. “It’s gonna be great! Look at that number! 2020! Auspicious!” Then suddenly Covid hit, and it was like, “That’s gonna be auspicious all right, but maybe for the wrong reasons.” Someone said to me, “Well, you put out McCartney right after the Beatles broke up, and that was 1970, and then you did McCartney II in 1980.” And I said, “Oh, I’m going to release this in 2020 just for whatever you call it, the numerology...”

Swift: The numerology, the kind of look, the symbolism. I love numbers. Numbers kind of rule my whole world. The numbers 13... 89 is a big one. I have a few others that I find...

McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.

Swift: Yeah, it’s lucky for me. It’s my birthday. It’s all these weird coincidences of good things that have happened. Now, when I see it places, I look at it as a sign that things are going the way they’re supposed to. They may not be good now, they could be painful now, but things are on a track. I don’t know, I love the numerology.

McCartney: It’s spooky, Taylor. It’s very spooky. Now wait a minute: Where’d you get 89?

Swift: That’s when I was born, in 1989, and so I see it in different places and I just think it’s...

McCartney: No, it’s good. I like that, where certain things you attach yourself to, and you get a good feeling off them. I think that’s great.

Swift: Yeah, one of my favorite artists, Bon Iver, he has this thing with the number 22. But I was also wondering: You have always kind of seeked out a band or a communal atmosphere with like, you know, the Beatles and Wings, and then Egypt Station. I thought it was interesting when I realized you had made a record with no one else. I just wondered, did that feel natural?

McCartney: It’s one of the things I’ve done. Like with McCartney, because the Beatles had broken up, there was no alternative but to get a drum kit at home, get a guitar, get an amp, get a bass, and just make something for myself. So on that album, which I didn’t really expect to do very well, I don’t think it did. But people sort of say, “I like that. It was a very casual album.” It didn’t really have to mean anything. So I’ve done that, the play-everything-myself thing. And then I discovered synths and stuff, and sequencers, so I had a few of those at home. I just thought I’m going to play around with this and record it, so that became McCartney II. But it’s a thing I do. Certain people can do it. Stevie Wonder can do it. Stevie Winwood, I believe, has done it. So there are certain people quite like that.

When you’re working with someone else, you have to worry about their variances. Whereas your own variance, you kind of know it. It’s just something I’ve grown to like. Once you can do it, it becomes a little bit addictive. I actually made some records under the name the Fireman.

Swift: Love a pseudonym.

McCartney: Yeah, for the fun! But, you know, let’s face it, you crave fame and attention when you’re young. And I just remembered the other day, I was the guy in the Beatles that would write to journalists and say [speaks in a formal voice]: “We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us]... We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I. If you mention us in your newspaper...” You know, I was always, like, craving the attention.

Swift: The hustle! That’s so great, though.

McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.

Swift: Yeah, I think, when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you. And that’s when it’s really fun to create fake names and write under them.

McCartney: Do you ever do that?

Swift: Oh, yeah.

McCartney: Oh, yeah? Oh, well, we didn’t know that! Is that a widely known fact?

Swift: I think it is now, but it wasn’t. I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males. I wrote this song called “This Is What You Came For” that Rihanna ended up singing. And nobody knew for a while. I remembered always hearing that when Prince wrote “Manic Monday,” they didn’t reveal it for a couple of months.

McCartney: Yeah, it also proves you can do something without the fame tag. I did something for Peter and Gordon; my girlfriend’s brother and his mate were in a band called Peter and Gordon. And I used to write under the name Bernard Webb.

Swift: [Laughs.] That’s a good one! I love it.

McCartney: As Americans call it, Ber-nard Webb. I did the Fireman thing. I worked with a producer, a guy called Youth, who’s this real cool dude. We got along great. He did a mix for me early on, and we got friendly. I would just go into the studio, and he would say, “Hey, what about this groove?” and he’d just made me have a little groove going. He’d say, “You ought to put some bass on it. Put some drums on it.” I’d just spend the whole day putting stuff on it. And we’d make these tracks, and nobody knew who Fireman was for a while. We must have sold all of 15 copies.

Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

McCartney: And we didn’t mind, you know?

Swift: I think it’s so cool that you do projects that are just for you. Because I went with my family to see you in concert in 2010 or 2011, and the thing I took away from the show most was that it was the most selfless set list I had ever seen. It was completely geared toward what it would thrill us to hear. It had new stuff, but it had every hit we wanted to hear, every song we’d ever cried to, every song people had gotten married to, or been brokenhearted to. And I just remembered thinking, “I’ve got to remember that,” that you do that set list for your fans.

McCartney: You do that, do you?

Swift: I do now. I think that learning that lesson from you taught me at a really important stage in my career that if people want to hear “Love Story” and “Shake It Off,” and I’ve played them 300 million times, play them the 300-millionth-and-first time. I think there are times to be selfish in your career, and times to be selfless, and sometimes they line up.

McCartney: I always remembered going to concerts as a kid, completely before the Beatles, and I really hoped they would play the ones I loved. And if they didn’t, it was kind of disappointing. I had no money, and the family wasn’t wealthy. So this would be a big deal for me, to save up for months to afford the concert ticket.

Swift: Yeah, it feels like a bond. It feels like that person on the stage has given something, and it makes you as a crowd want to give even more back, in terms of applause, in terms of dedication. And I just remembered feeling that bond in the crowd, and thinking, “He’s up there playing these Beatles songs, my dad is crying, my mom is trying to figure out how to work her phone because her hands are shaking so much.” Because seeing the excitement course through not only me, but my family and the entire crowd in Nashville, it just was really special. I love learning lessons and not having to learn them the hard way. Like learning nice lessons I really value.

McCartney: Well, that’s great, and I’m glad that set you on that path. I understand people who don’t want to do that, and if you do, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a jukebox show.” I hear what they’re saying. But I think it’s a bit of a cheat, because the people who come to our shows have spent a lot of money. We can afford to go to a couple of shows and it doesn’t make much difference. But a lot of ordinary working folks... it’s a big event in their life, and so I try and deliver. I also, like you say, try and put in a few weirdos.

Swift: That’s the best. I want to hear current things, too, to update me on where the artist is. I was wondering about lyrics, and where you were lyrically when you were making this record. Because when I was making Folklore, I went lyrically in a total direction of escapism and romanticism. And I wrote songs imagining I was, like, a pioneer woman in a forbidden love affair [laughs]. I was completely...

McCartney: Was this “I want to give you a child”? Is that one of the lines?

Swift: Oh, that’s a song called “Peace.”

McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.

Swift: “Peace” is actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.

McCartney: So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?

Swift: Oh, absolutely.

McCartney: They have to, don’t they?

Swift: But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture - the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song “Peace” is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could ever hope for under the circumstances.

McCartney: Yeah, it was very important to us to try and keep their feet on the ground amongst the craziness.

Swift: She went to a regular school...

McCartney: Yeah, she did.

Swift: And you would go trick-or-treating with them, wearing masks.

McCartney: All of them did, yeah. It was important, but it worked pretty well, because when they kind of reached adulthood, they would meet other kids who might have gone to private schools, who were a little less grounded.

And they could be the budding mothers to [kids]. I remember Mary had a friend, Orlando. Not Bloom. She used to really counsel him. And it’s ’cause she’d gone through that. Obviously, they got made fun of, my kids. They’d come in the classroom and somebody would sing, “Na na na na,” you know, one of the songs. And they’d have to handle that. They’d have to front it out.

Swift: Did that give you a lot of anxiety when you had kids, when you felt like all this pressure that’s been put on me is spilling over onto them, that they didn’t sign up for it? Was that hard for you?

McCartney: Yeah, a little bit, but it wasn’t like it is now. You know, we were just living a kind of semi-hippie life, where we withdrew from a lot of stuff. The kids would be doing all the ordinary things, and their school friends would be coming up to the house and having parties, and it was just great. I remember one lovely evening when it was Stella’s birthday, and she brought a bunch of school kids up. And, you know, they’d all ignore me. It happens very quickly. At first they’re like, “Oh, yeah, he’s like a famous guy,” and then it’s like [yawns]. I like that. I go in the other room and suddenly I hear this music going on. And one of the kids, his name was Luke, and he’s doing break dancing.

Swift: Ohhh!

McCartney: He was a really good break dancer, so all the kids are hanging out. That allowed them to be kind of normal with those kids. The other thing is, I don’t live fancy. I really don’t. Sometimes it’s a little bit of an embarrassment, if I’ve got someone coming to visit me, or who I know…

Swift: Cares about that stuff?

McCartney: Who’s got a nice big house, you know. Quincy Jones came to see me and I’m, like, making him a veggie burger or something. I’m doing some cooking. This was after I’d lost Linda, in between there. But the point I’m making is that I’m very consciously thinking, “Oh, God, Quincy’s got to be thinking, ‘What is this guy on? He hasn’t got big things going on. It’s not a fancy house at all. And we’re eating in the kitchen! He’s not even got the dining room going,’” you know?

Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.

McCartney: But that’s me. I’m awkward like that. That’s my kind of thing. Maybe I should have, like, a big stately home. Maybe I should get a staff. But I think I couldn’t do that. I’d be so embarrassed. I’d want to walk around dressed as I want to walk around, or naked, if I wanted to.

Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.

McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.

Swift: I remember what I wanted to know about, which is lyrics. Like, when you’re in this kind of strange, unparalleled time, and you’re making this record, are lyrics first? Or is it when you get a little melodic idea?

McCartney: It was a bit of both. As it kind of always is with me. There’s no fixed way. People used to ask me and John, “Well, who does the words, who does the music?” I used to say, “We both do both.” We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up. I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics - for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings “Find My Way,” a song from “McCartney III”]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll just be inspired by something. I had a little book which was all about the constellations and the stars and the orbits of Venus and...

Swift: Oh, I know that song - “The Kiss of Venus”?

McCartney: Yeah, “The Kiss of Venus.” And I just thought, “That’s a nice phrase.” So I was actually just taking phrases out of the book, harmonic sounds. And the book is talking about the maths of the universe, and how when things orbit around each other, and if you trace all the patterns, it becomes like a lotus flower.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: It’s very magical.

Swift: That is magical. I definitely relate to needing to find magical things in this very not-magical time, needing to read more books and learn to sew, and watch movies that take place hundreds of years ago. In a time where, if you look at the news, you just want to have a panic attack - I really relate to the idea that you are thinking about stars and constellations.

McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?

Swift: Yes. I was reading so much more than I ever did, and watching so many more films.

McCartney: What stuff were you reading?

Swift: I was reading, you know, books like Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I highly recommend, and books that dealt with times past, a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I was also using words I always wanted to use - kind of bigger, flowerier, prettier words, like “epiphany,” in songs. I always thought, “Well, that’ll never track on pop radio,” but when I was making this record, I thought, “What tracks? Nothing makes sense anymore. If there’s chaos everywhere, why don’t I just use the damn word I want to use in the song?”

McCartney: Exactly. So you’d see the word in a book and think, “I love that word”?

Swift: Yeah, I have favorite words, like “elegies” and “epiphany” and “divorcée,” and just words that I think sound beautiful, and I have lists and lists of them.

McCartney: How about “marzipan”?

Swift: Love “marzipan.”

McCartney: The other day, I was remembering when we wrote “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: “kaleidoscope.”

Swift: “Kaleidoscope” is one of mine! I have a song on 1989, a song called “Welcome to New York,” that I put the word “kaleidoscope” in just because I’m obsessed with the word.

McCartney: I think a love of words is a great thing, particularly if you’re going to try to write a lyric, and for me, it’s like, “What is this going to say to that person?” I often feel like I’m writing to someone who is not doing so well. So I’m trying to write songs that might help. Not in a goody-goody, crusading kind of way, but just thinking there have been so many times in my life when I’ve heard a song and felt so much better. I think that’s the angle I want, that inspirational thing.

I remember once, a friend of mine from Liverpool, we were teenagers and we were going to a fairground. He was a schoolmate, and we had these jackets that had a little fleck in the material, which was the cool thing at the time.

Swift: We should have done matching jackets for this photo shoot.

McCartney: Find me a fleck, I’m in. But we went to the fair, and I just remember - this is what happens with songs - there was this girl at the fair. This is just a little Liverpool fair - it was in a place called Sefton Park - and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house - I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, “What can we do?” So we put on the Elvis song “All Shook Up.” By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, “That’s powerful.”

Swift: That really is powerful.

McCartney: I love that, when people stop me in the street and say, “Oh, I was going through an illness and I listened to a lot of your stuff, and I’m better now and it got me through,” or kids will say, “It got me through exams.” You know, they’re studying, they’re going crazy, but they put your music on. I’m sure it happens with a lot of your fans. It inspires them, you know?

Swift: Yeah, I definitely think about that as a goal. There’s so much stress everywhere you turn that I kind of wanted to make an album that felt sort of like a hug, or like your favorite sweater that makes you feel like you want to put it on.

McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?

Swift: Like a good cardigan, a good, worn-in cardigan. Or something that makes you reminisce on your childhood. I think sadness can be cozy. It can obviously be traumatic and stressful, too, but I kind of was trying to lean into sadness that feels like somehow enveloping in not such a scary way - like nostalgia and whimsy incorporated into a feeling like you’re not all right. Because I don’t think anybody was really feeling like they were in their prime this year. Isolation can mean escaping into your imagination in a way that’s kind of nice.

McCartney: I think a lot of people have found that. I would say to people, “I feel a bit guilty about saying I’m actually enjoying this quarantine thing,” and people go, “Yeah, I know, don’t say it to anyone.” A lot of people are really suffering.

Swift: Because there’s a lot in life that’s arbitrary. Completely and totally arbitrary. And [the quarantine] is really shining a light on that, and also a lot of things we have that we outsource that you can actually do yourself.

McCartney: I love that. This is why I said I live simply. That’s, like, at the core of it. With so many things, something goes wrong and you go, “Oh, I’ll get somebody to fix that.” And then it’s like, “No, let me have a look at it...”

Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.

McCartney: “Maybe I can put that picture up.” It’s not rocket science. The period after the Beatles, when we went to live in Scotland on a really - talk about dumpy - little farm. I mean, I see pictures of it now and I’m not ashamed, but I’m almost ashamed. Because it’s like, “God, nobody’s cleaned up around here.”

But it was really a relief. Because when I was with the Beatles, we’d formed Apple Records, and if I wanted a Christmas tree, someone would just buy it. And I thought, after a while, “No, you know what? I really would like to go and buy our Christmas tree. Because that’s what everyone does.” So you go down - “I’ll have that one” - and you carried it back. I mean, it’s little, but it’s huge at the same time.

I needed a table in Scotland and I was looking through a catalog and I thought, “I could make one. I did woodwork in school, so I know what a dovetail joint is.” So I just figured it out. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, and I’m whittling away at this wood and I made this little joint. There was no nail technology - it was glue. And I was scared to put it together. I said, “It’s not going to fit,” but one day, I got my woodwork glue and thought, “There’s no going back.” But it turned out to be a real nice little table I was very proud of. It was that sense of achievement.

The weird thing was, Stella went up to Scotland recently and I said, “Isn’t it there?” and she said, “No.” Anyway, I searched for it. Nobody remembered it. Somebody said, “Well, there’s a pile of wood in the corner of one of the barns, maybe that’s it. Maybe they used it for firewood.” I said, “No, it’s not firewood.” Anyway, we found it, and do you know how joyous that was for me? I was like, “You found my table?!” Somebody might say that’s a bit boring.

Swift: No, it’s cool!

McCartney: But it was a real sort of great thing for me to be able to do stuff for yourself. You were talking about sewing. I mean normally, in your position, you’ve got any amount of tailors.

Swift: Well, there’s been a bit of a baby boom recently; several of my friends have gotten pregnant.

McCartney: Oh, yeah, you’re at the age.

Swift: And I was just thinking, “I really want to spend time with my hands, making something for their children.” So I made this really cool flying-squirrel stuffed animal that I sent to one of my friends. I sent a teddy bear to another one, and I started making these little silk baby blankets with embroidery. It’s gotten pretty fancy. And I’ve been painting a lot.

McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?

Swift: Acrylic or oil. Whenever I do watercolor, all I paint is flowers. When I have oil, I really like to do landscapes. I always kind of return to painting a lonely little cottage on a hill.

McCartney: It’s a bit of a romantic dream. I agree with you, though, I think you’ve got to have dreams, particularly this year. You’ve got to have something to escape to. When you say “escapism,” it sounds like a dirty word, but this year, it definitely wasn’t. And in the books you’re reading, you’ve gone into that world. That’s, I think, a great thing. Then you come back out. I normally will read a lot before I go to bed. So I’ll come back out, then I’ll go to sleep, so I think it really is nice to have those dreams that can be fantasies or stuff you want to achieve.

Swift: You’re creating characters. This was the first album where I ever created characters, or wrote about the life of a real-life person. There’s a song called “The Last Great American Dynasty” that’s about this real-life heiress who lived just an absolutely chaotic, hectic...

McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?

Swift: She’s a real person. Who lived in the house that I live in.

McCartney: She’s a real person? I listened to that and I thought, “Who is this?”

Swift: Her name was Rebekah Harkness. And she lived in the house that I ended up buying in Rhode Island. That’s how I learned about her. But she was a woman who was very, very talked about, and everything she did was scandalous. I found a connection in that. But I also was thinking about how you write “Eleanor Rigby” and go into that whole story about what all these people in this town are doing and how their lives intersect, and I hadn’t really done that in a very long time with my music. It had always been so microscope personal.

McCartney: Yeah, ’cause you were writing breakup songs like they were going out of style.

Swift: I was, before my luck changed [laughs]. I still write breakup songs. I love a good breakup song. Because somewhere in the world, I always have a friend going through a breakup, and that will make me write one.

McCartney: Yeah, this goes back to this thing of me and John: When you’ve got a formula, break it. I don’t have a formula. It’s the mood I’m in. So I love the idea of writing a character. And, you know, trying to think, “What am I basing this on?” So “Eleanor Rigby” was based on old ladies I knew as a kid. For some reason or other, I got great relationships with a couple of local old ladies. I was thinking the other day, I don’t know how I met them, it wasn’t like they were family. I’d just run into them, and I’d do their shopping for them.

Swift: That’s amazing.

McCartney: It just felt good to me. I would sit and talk, and they’d have amazing stories. That’s what I liked. They would have stories from the wartime - because I was born actually in the war - and so these old ladies, they were participating in the war. This one lady I used to sort of just hang out with, she had a crystal radio that I found very magical. In the war, a lot of people made their own radios - you’d make them out of crystals [sings “The Twilight Zone” theme].

Swift: How did I not know this? That sounds like something I would have tried to learn about.

McCartney: It’s interesting, because there is a lot of parallels with the virus and lockdowns and wartime. It happened to everyone. Like, this isn’t HIV, or SARS, or Avian flu, which happened to others, generally. This has happened to everyone, all around the world. That’s the defining thing about this particular virus. And, you know, my parents... it happened to everyone in Britain, including the queen and Churchill. War happened. So they were all part of this thing, and they all had to figure out a way through it. So you figured out Folklore. I figured out McCartney III.

Swift: And a lot of people have been baking sourdough bread. Whatever gets you through!

McCartney: Some people used to make radios. And they’d take a crystal - we should look it up, but it actually is a crystal. I thought, “Oh, no, they just called it a crystal radio,” but it’s actually crystals like we know and love.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: And somehow they get the radio waves - this crystal attracts them - they tune it in, and that’s how they used to get their news. Back to “Eleanor Rigby,” so I would think of her and think of what she’s doing and then just try to get lyrical, just try to bring poetry into it, words you love, just try to get images like “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” and Father McKenzie “is darning his socks in the night.” You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, “preparing his Bible,” which would have been more obvious. But “darning his socks” kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy. And that’s the magic of songs, you know. It’s a black hole, and then you start doing this process, and then there’s this beautiful little flower that you’ve just made. So it is very like embroidery, making something.

Swift: Making a table.

McCartney: Making a table.

Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.

McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.

Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.

McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”

Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.

McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!

Swift: One thing I just find so cool about you is that you really do seem to have the joy of it, still, just no matter what. You seem to have the purest sense of joy of playing an instrument and making music, and that’s just the best, I think.

McCartney: Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?

Swift: We’re really lucky.

McCartney: I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but with me, it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve ended up as a musician.”

Swift: Yeah, I can’t believe it’s my job.

McCartney: I must tell you a story I told Mary the other day, which is just one of my favorite little sort of Beatles stories. We were in a terrible, big blizzard, going from London to Liverpool, which we always did. We’d be working in London and then drive back in the van, just the four of us with our roadie, who would be driving. And this was a blizzard. You couldn’t see the road. At one point, it slid off and it went down an embankment. So it was “Ahhh,” a bunch of yelling. We ended up at the bottom. It didn’t flip, luckily, but so there we are, and then it’s like, “Oh, how are we going to get back up? We’re in a van. It’s snowing, and there’s no way.” We’re all standing around in a little circle, and thinking, “What are we going to do?” And one of us said, “Well, something will happen.” And I thought that was just the greatest. I love that, that’s a philosophy.

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: And it did. We sort of went up the bank, we thumbed a lift, we got the lorry driver to take us, and Mal, our roadie, sorted the van and everything. So that was kind of our career. And I suppose that’s like how I ended up being a musician and a songwriter: “Something will happen.”

Swift: That’s the best.

McCartney: It’s so stupid it’s brilliant. It’s great if you’re ever in that sort of panic attack: “Oh, my God,” or, “Ahhh, what am I going to do?”

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: All right then, thanks for doing this, and this was, you know, a lot of fun.

Swift: You’re the best. This was so awesome. Those were some quality stories!

#this just might be the longest post I have ever posted #I have so much work so I'll read and edit later #taylor swift #paul mccartney #Rolling Stone magazine #interview #folklore era

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sgt-paul · 3 years

Photo

MUSICIANS ON MUSICIANS: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift

❝ During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. ❞

interview below the cut:

Paul McCartney: Yeah!

McCartney: You were playing one of his songs, weren’t you?

McCartney: I mean, I think it’s a bit of everything, isn’t it? I’ll tell you who was very … Reese Witherspoon was like, “Are you going to sing?” I said “Oh, I don’t know.” She said, “You’ve got to, yeah!” She’s bossing me around. So I said, “Whoa,” so it’s a bit of that.

Swift: I love that person, because the party does not turn musical without that person.

McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.

Swift: If nobody says, “Can you guys play music?” we’re not going to invite ourselves up onstage at whatever living-room party it is.

McCartney: I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing “Let It Be,” and I’m thinking, “I can do that better.” So I said, “Come on, move over, Woody.” So we’re both playing it. It was really nice.… I love people like Dan Aykroyd, who’s just full of energy and he loves his music so much, but he’s not necessarily a musician, but he just wanders around the room, just saying, “You got to get up, got to get up, do some stuff.”

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: Well, I’m very lucky because I have a studio that’s, like, 20 minutes away from where I live. We were in lockdown on a farm, a sheep farm with my daughter Mary and her four kids and her husband. So I had four of my grandkids, I had Mary, who’s a great cook, so I would just drive myself to the studio. And there were two other guys that could come in and we’d be very careful and distanced and everything: my engineer Steve, and then my equipment guy Keith. So the three of us made the record, and I just started off. I had to do a little bit of film music — I had to do an instrumental for a film thing — so I did that. And I just kept going, and that turned into the opening track on the album. I would just come in, say, “Oh, yeah, what are we gonna do?” [Then] have some sort of idea, and start doing it. Normally, I’d start with the instrument I wrote it on, either piano or guitar, and then probably add some drums and then a bit of bass till it started to sound like a record, and then just gradually layer it all up. It was fun.

Swift: That’s so cool.

McCartney: What about yours? You’re playing guitar and piano on yours.

Swift: Yeah, on some of it, but a lot of it was made with Aaron Dessner, who’s in a band called the National that I really love. And I had met him at a concert a year before, and I had a conversation with him, asking him how he writes. It’s my favorite thing to ask people who I’m a fan of. And he had an interesting answer. He said, “All the band members live in different parts of the world. So I make tracks. And I send them to our lead singer, Matt, and he writes the top line.” I just remember thinking, “That is really efficient.” And I kind of stored it in my brain as a future idea for a project. You know, how you have these ideas… “Maybe one day I’ll do this.” I always had in my head: “Maybe one day I’ll work with Aaron Dessner.”

McCartney: Yeah, that was the thing. You could do stuff — you didn’t really worry it was going to turn into anything.

Swift: That’s the coziest thing I’ve ever heard.

McCartney: Well, it’s like eight minutes long, and I said, “I hate it when I’m playing someone something and it finishes after three minutes.” I kind of like that it just [continues] on.

Swift: You want to stay in the zone.

McCartney: It just keeps going on. I would just come home, “Well, what did you do today?” “Oh, well, I did this. I’m halfway through this,” or, “We finished this.”

Swift: I was wondering about the numerology element to McCartney III. McCartney I, II, and III have all come out on years with zeroes.

McCartney: Ends of decades.

Swift: Was that important?

Swift: The numerology, the kind of look, the symbolism. I love numbers. Numbers kind of rule my whole world. The numbers 13 … 89 is a big one. I have a few others that I find…

McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.

McCartney: It’s spooky, Taylor. It’s very spooky. Now wait a minute: Where’d you get 89?

Swift: That’s when I was born, in 1989, and so I see it in different places and I just think it’s…

McCartney: No, it’s good. I like that, where certain things you attach yourself to, and you get a good feeling off them. I think that’s great.

Swift: Love a pseudonym.

McCartney: Yeah, for the fun! But, you know, let’s face it, you crave fame and attention when you’re young. And I just remembered the other day, I was the guy in the Beatles that would write to journalists and say [speaks in a formal voice]: “We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us].… We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I. If you mention us in your newspaper…” You know, I was always, like, craving the attention.

Swift: The hustle! That’s so great, though.

McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.

McCartney: Do you ever do that?

Swift: Oh, yeah.

McCartney: Oh, yeah? Oh, well, we didn’t know that! Is that a widely known fact?

Swift: [Laughs.] That’s a good one! I love it.

Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

McCartney: And we didn’t mind, you know?

McCartney: You do that, do you?

McCartney: Well, that’s great, and I’m glad that set you on that path. I understand people who don’t want to do that, and if you do, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a jukebox show.” I hear what they’re saying. But I think it’s a bit of a cheat, because the people who come to our shows have spent a lot of money. We can afford to go to a couple of shows and it doesn’t make much difference. But a lot of ordinary working folks … it’s a big event in their life, and so I try and deliver. I also, like you say, try and put in a few weirdos.

McCartney: Was this “I want to give you a child”? Is that one of the lines?

Swift: Oh, that’s a song called “Peace.”

McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.

McCartney: So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?

Swift: Oh, absolutely.

McCartney: They have to, don’t they?

Swift: But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture — the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song “Peace” is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could ever hope for under the circumstances.

McCartney: Yeah, it was very important to us to try and keep their feet on the ground amongst the craziness.

Swift: She went to a regular school .…

McCartney: Yeah, she did.

Swift: And you would go trick-or-treating with them, wearing masks.

Swift: Ohhh!

Swift: Cares about that stuff?

Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.

Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.

McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.

McCartney: It was a bit of both. As it kind of always is with me. There’s no fixed way. People used to ask me and John, “Well, who does the words, who does the music?” I used to say, “We both do both.” We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up. I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics — for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings “Find My Way,” a song from “McCartney III”]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll just be inspired by something. I had a little book which was all about the constellations and the stars and the orbits of Venus and.…

Swift: Oh, I know that song — “The Kiss of Venus”?

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: It’s very magical.

Swift: That is magical. I definitely relate to needing to find magical things in this very not-magical time, needing to read more books and learn to sew, and watch movies that take place hundreds of years ago. In a time where, if you look at the news, you just want to have a panic attack — I really relate to the idea that you are thinking about stars and constellations.

McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?

Swift: Yes. I was reading so much more than I ever did, and watching so many more films.

McCartney: What stuff were you reading?

Swift: I was reading, you know, books like Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I highly recommend, and books that dealt with times past, a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I was also using words I always wanted to use — kind of bigger, flowerier, prettier words, like “epiphany,” in songs. I always thought, “Well, that’ll never track on pop radio,” but when I was making this record, I thought, “What tracks? Nothing makes sense anymore. If there’s chaos everywhere, why don’t I just use the damn word I want to use in the song?”

McCartney: Exactly. So you’d see the word in a book and think, “I love that word”?

Swift: Yeah, I have favorite words, like “elegies” and “epiphany” and “divorcée,” and just words that I think sound beautiful, and I have lists and lists of them.

McCartney: How about “marzipan”?

Swift: Love “marzipan.”

McCartney: The other day, I was remembering when we wrote “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: “kaleidoscope.”

Swift: “Kaleidoscope” is one of mine! I have a song on 1989, a song called “Welcome to New York,” that I put the word “kaleidoscope” in just because I’m obsessed with the word.

Swift: We should have done matching jackets for this photo shoot.

McCartney: Find me a fleck, I’m in. But we went to the fair, and I just remember — this is what happens with songs — there was this girl at the fair. This is just a little Liverpool fair — it was in a place called Sefton Park — and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house — I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, “What can we do?” So we put on the Elvis song “All Shook Up.” By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, “That’s powerful.”

Swift: That really is powerful.

McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?

Swift: Like a good cardigan, a good, worn-in cardigan. Or something that makes you reminisce on your childhood. I think sadness can be cozy. It can obviously be traumatic and stressful, too, but I kind of was trying to lean into sadness that feels like somehow enveloping in not such a scary way — like nostalgia and whimsy incorporated into a feeling like you’re not all right. Because I don’t think anybody was really feeling like they were in their prime this year. Isolation can mean escaping into your imagination in a way that’s kind of nice.

Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.

McCartney: “Maybe I can put that picture up.” It’s not rocket science. The period after the Beatles, when we went to live in Scotland on a really — talk about dumpy — little farm. I mean, I see pictures of it now and I’m not ashamed, but I’m almost ashamed. Because it’s like, “God, nobody’s cleaned up around here.”

But it was really a relief. Because when I was with the Beatles, we’d formed Apple Records, and if I wanted a Christmas tree, someone would just buy it. And I thought, after a while, “No, you know what? I really would like to go and buy our Christmas tree. Because that’s what everyone does.” So you go down — “I’ll have that one” — and you carried it back. I mean, it’s little, but it’s huge at the same time.

I needed a table in Scotland and I was looking through a catalog and I thought, “I could make one. I did woodwork in school, so I know what a dovetail joint is.” So I just figured it out. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, and I’m whittling away at this wood and I made this little joint. There was no nail technology — it was glue. And I was scared to put it together. I said, “It’s not going to fit,” but one day, I got my woodwork glue and thought, “There’s no going back.” But it turned out to be a real nice little table I was very proud of. It was that sense of achievement.

Swift: No, it’s cool!

McCartney: But it was a real sort of great thing for me to be able to do stuff for yourself. You were talking about sewing. I mean normally, in your position, you’ve got any amount of tailors.

Swift: Well, there’s been a bit of a baby boom recently; several of my friends have gotten pregnant.

McCartney: Oh, yeah, you’re at the age.

McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?

Swift: Acrylic or oil. Whenever I do watercolor, all I paint is flowers. When I have oil, I really like to do landscapes. I always kind of return to painting a lonely little cottage on a hill.

McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?

Swift: She’s a real person. Who lived in the house that I live in.

McCartney: She’s a real person? I listened to that and I thought, “Who is this?”

McCartney: Yeah, ’cause you were writing breakup songs like they were going out of style.

Swift: That’s amazing.

McCartney: It just felt good to me. I would sit and talk, and they’d have amazing stories. That’s what I liked. They would have stories from the wartime — because I was born actually in the war — and so these old ladies, they were participating in the war. This one lady I used to sort of just hang out with, she had a crystal radio that I found very magical. In the war, a lot of people made their own radios — you’d make them out of crystals [sings “The Twilight Zone” theme].

Swift: How did I not know this? That sounds like something I would have tried to learn about.

McCartney: It’s interesting, because there is a lot of parallels with the virus and lockdowns and wartime. It happened to everyone. Like, this isn’t HIV, or SARS, or Avian flu, which happened to others, generally. This has happened to everyone, all around the world. That’s the defining thing about this particular virus. And, you know, my parents … it happened to everyone in Britain, including the queen and Churchill. War happened. So they were all part of this thing, and they all had to figure out a way through it. So you figured out Folklore. I figured out McCartney III.

Swift: And a lot of people have been baking sourdough bread. Whatever gets you through!

McCartney: Some people used to make radios. And they’d take a crystal — we should look it up, but it actually is a crystal. I thought, “Oh, no, they just called it a crystal radio,” but it’s actually crystals like we know and love.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: And somehow they get the radio waves — this crystal attracts them — they tune it in, and that’s how they used to get their news. Back to “Eleanor Rigby,” so I would think of her and think of what she’s doing and then just try to get lyrical, just try to bring poetry into it, words you love, just try to get images like “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” and Father McKenzie “is darning his socks in the night.” You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, “preparing his Bible,” which would have been more obvious. But “darning his socks” kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy. And that’s the magic of songs, you know. It’s a black hole, and then you start doing this process, and then there’s this beautiful little flower that you’ve just made. So it is very like embroidery, making something.

Swift: Making a table.

McCartney: Making a table.

Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.

McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.

Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.

McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”

Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.

McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!

McCartney: Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?

Swift: We’re really lucky.

McCartney: I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but with me, it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve ended up as a musician.”

Swift: Yeah, I can’t believe it’s my job.

Swift: “Something will happen.”

Swift: That’s the best.

McCartney: It’s so stupid it’s brilliant. It’s great if you’re ever in that sort of panic attack: “Oh, my God,” or, “Ahhh, what am I going to do?”

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: All right then, thanks for doing this, and this was, you know, a lot of fun.

Swift: You’re the best. This was so awesome. Those were some quality stories!

#paul mccartney #old paul #taylor swift #*m #💖#grandpaul #silver stubble #(aahh king)#(I LOVE HIM SO MUCH F*CK OFF EVERYONE)#(the thumbs lads. its always about the thumbs)

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lwt28brave · 3 years

Text

be warned: long post. really long post. mostly because i wanted to get this out of my system.

i know no one asked but since i saw @/berlinini sharing why she doesn't like h... here's my take. i've been in this fandom for seven, almost eight, years. i was a larrie for most of them and... i didn't like harry for most of them either.

yes, i am stupid. this isn't some "oh, it took me so long to see something was wrong", it's mostly a "it took me so long to realize what exactly was wrong and to admit i needed to move on".

and i feel like it's important to speak about this because new fans are being pulled into larry, shamed if they don't want to stan harry too, told that louis isn't enough by himself, that he and his art are linked to harry styles and that's how it works. you see it in youtube comments of react channels and under louis own videos with people who discover him from projects. they're fighting tooth and nail to keep that connection alive, grasping at straws to make people believe there's (still) something there.

now, don't get me wrong. i've noticed the shift too. i've noticed there's a lot more of solo louies joining the fandom, i've noticed that he's being related to h and 1D less and less and i'm happy and proud. i still feel like a lot of larries need to open their eyes (i know some of them are harries in disguise, but, judging by my interactions, i also feel like there's lots of smaller accounts that are mostly louies stuck in the same mindset i was).

i still remember where i was when i first heard the rumors about harry, columbia and how much they were paying for him (mind you, this was before everything that happened in 2015, and it turned out to be true). i had no intention to watch dunkirk, i didn't care about the movie or the promo unless louis mentioned it on a interview. i found sign of the times boring. i didn't enjoy hs1 at all. i didn't like the content he was releasing and even back then i felt like he was too distant, out of touch with reality, performative...

to be honest, while there were a few larrie blogs i checked i mostly talked about it with a few friends who are part of the fandom too, and sticked to reading fics or getting excited about ""proof"" in a small circle.

and this small circle can tell you i would never bite my tongue with them about harry and how i felt about his decisions, and about louis career and the sabotage that was going on.

but i never tied the two. sometimes i would ask myself if i wasn't being too harsh on harry, if all of it was part of his public image, if it was true he was a victim of the contracts too, someone in the closet with no options, and i tried to look "past it". while i enjoyed fine line more than hs1 some of the songs weren't for me either (and it took me six months to listen to it). and it was uneasy for me to see him getting so much recognition when he didn't seem thankful, or even interested in what he was putting out, too busy trying to achieve new levels of fame. and every new thing i find out about him makes me dislike him even more. there's no authenticity, no self-respect, no gratitude, only greediness. empty stay at home t-shirts and data-mining BLM and looking like he's giving an eulogy after winning a Grammy (and only thanking the people who paid for it).

with quarantine i fell back into the fandom and made new larrie friends, and i found myself not kinda believing the "proof" they were excited about, or like i was just checking in for the tabloid drama of it all, too obsessed to let go. but in my mind it didn't make sense, and it didn't feel right, for louis, the louis that i saw, to be dating harry styles™️. sometimes i told myself it was fine if i didn't really like him because louis loved him and it was his personal decision not mine.

i feel like i've been a good judge of character since the beginning, in my case. i picked louis back in 2015 and i'll never regret that decision. i don't think i could ever stop supporting him. but i was so tangled in the idea, had dedicated so much time and energy to larry and that long-suffering, star-crossed soulmate fantasy we built that i wasn't thinking clearly.

i don't think i was actively hurting louis, personally (i never interacted with anyone about larry in other social media platforms, i purchased, supported, tried to promote and streamed his music and only his). in everything but my reading habits i was practically a solo louie already, but yet i was pushing this idea of a relationship that would be really toxic for him, were it to be true.

right now i'm at a point where i feel like i've finally opened my eyes. if they were together, it's obvious they're not anymore. and it's obvious that harry styles is both a blank canvas for sony and the azoffs and someone who doesn't care about what he has to give up for fame. he stopped caring about louis (or anyone who can't either help his career or push his image of the month) in any shape or form, a long time ago.

he surrounds himself with people that don't respect louis neither as a musician nor as a person, and i don't think he does, either. they're not in the same place (mentally and physically, they seem to be unable to be in the same continent for long periods of time). i think i've always known, i just wasn't ready to let go of this fixation i had dedicated so many years to (mostly, fanfiction), and right now i'm pretty firm on my beliefs.

if anyone wants to come and tell me that louis will never be as famous as harry, or that i'm wrong in how i perceive people... go ahead. i don't care. i don't want that level of fame for louis if it comes at that price, and i don't think he wants that either.

i've been here for the highs and the lows of louis career, and i can say i am proud of how his fanbase is growing organically right now, and how he owns his past instead of renouncing it, but he doesn't allow it to define him either. i see a consistency, a hard-working, warm-hearted person, even in the face of everything that has happened.

i see someone worth my time (and my money, which i'm more protective of 😂). i never saw that in harry, not even during the early days.

#harry styles hate #ex-harrie #ex-larrie #fandom discourse #azoff #sony

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lovingremus · 3 years

Text

Youtuber Sirius part 2

Because a few asked for it :)

Read part 1 here!

This is set in the future (roughly August 2021) so who knows how things are then really, BUT in this blissful fantasy world, people have been super dedicated to getting the virus under control the whole year and the travel bans etc. are lifted so this can happen!!

CW the pandemic (& long-distance relationship if you don’t like to read about that <3)

It’s been over a year of twelve-hour daily phone calls and video chats. Birthdays and holidays celebrated over Zoom or FaceTime. Hundreds of “I love you” and “wish you were here” changed over the phone.

It’s been over a year of getting to know every detail of the other, a year of sharing secrets and dreams. It’s been over a year of laughter and ever-growing love, but also yearning and tears and words of comfort whispered into the speaker in the middle of the night, when the heartache of not being able to be together got too much for either of them.

But they have found ways to feel closer to each other. Sirius orders Remus a rose delivery on the door every Friday, sends him almost weekly packages filled with lovely gifts (usually a bunch of his own clothes—Remus rarely wears anything else these days, because oh god they smell like Sirius and it’s SO good). Remus still writes music for Sirius’s videos, and a half of his other songs are about him.

It’s been a while since Sirius hit forty million subscribers on his channel and a couple of months since Remus published his first full album on Spotify. They have both been guests at late-night shows via video calls. Several articles have been written about them, both as individuals as well as a couple.

So, Sirius and Remus are doing alright, but missing each other more than anything. Still, they both understand it’s more important to be patient and wait until the situation calms down rather than carelessly run to each other. Travelling abroad is out of the question right now. So they wait, and wait, and wait. It will all be worth it, they keep saying, you’re worth the wait.

Remus has watched all of Sirius’s videos. It wasn’t even hard, after all, almost like getting absorbed into a good series. He couldn’t stop watching as soon as he’d started, skipping sleep to the point Sirius threatened to make all his videos private until Remus took a nap (this happened quite a few times). Remus could definitely understand people’s obsession, even more so as he was wildly in love, and watching Sirius’s videos brought him so much comfort, a way to spend time with him during the long hours Sirius was asleep or otherwise not available.

He watches Sirius’s London vlog every day. Seeing him walk along those familiar streets is comforting and heartbreaking at the same time. And he had been so close, about twenty feet from him that night, based on the restaurant clip on the video.

Remus doesn’t remember seeing him and feels horribly guilty for it. He can’t believe they have ever been so close, in the same room, breathing the same air. He might have even brushed past his shoulder as he had exited—he had touched someone. Had it been him? Remus couldn’t tell, and neither could Sirius, who had been engaged in a conversation with someone by the time Remus was leaving the stage.

It’s been over a year, and at the end of the summer, their time finally comes. The cases are way down almost all around the world, many restrictions have been lifted. And while it’s still very important to stay safe and careful, they can start planning. They decide to meet in London, where it all started, they both get tested, and as soon as the results come back as negative, the plan is a go. Soon, they’ll be together for a whole month.

They’ll have to quarantine for two weeks as soon as Sirius arrives, which at this point is the opposite of a problem to them. Remus doesn’t go to the airport—he could be circled by fans, which is a horrifying thought, to be honest. Not only does Remus fear a bunch of strangers breathing all over him, no matter how kind their intentions would be, he still isn’t used to being recognised like that. And to avoid that happening to Sirius either, they decide not to publicly tell about the trip until they’re safe and secure at Remus’s house.

Sirius is a mess for the whole ten-hour long flight, not even dreaming of getting any sleep. He’s excited to the point he feels nauseous, he’s fidgeting with the bracelets that Remus made and sent him for his birthday.

Remus has moved houses, leaving behind his small flat and upgrading to a nice three-bedroom apartment. His dream is to have Sirius moving in with him one beautiful day. He’s waiting outside of his home now, switching between pacing back and forth, and sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree, because his legs are like jelly and just won’t carry. He almost faints when Sirius texts he’s only a few blocks away, and soon enough he sees a taxi at the end of the street. It pulls over. The backdoor opens. And there he is.

They don’t waste a second. Sirius runs toward Remus, pulling his mask down as Remus does the same to his own. They crash against each other, hugging so tight they can barely breathe. After a minute, Sirius pulls back just enough to grab Remus’s head between his hands and pull him into a hard kiss. Remus lets him, answering eagerly. They stay like this for a long time.

Later, Sirius posts an Instagram story of the two of them; Remus relaxed against his shoulder on a sofa, both smiling so happily. And the internet goes wild.

Sirius quickly puts up a few question boxes on his story, asking for video ideas and questions. They answer a bunch of them right away, and Sirius posts many cute videos of Remus grinning and blushing and hiding behind decorative pillows, and then they decide to continue later. Sirius has a massive jet lag, and Remus is just as exhausted from just feeling so much, so they go to bed early. Though not much sleeping happens until much later.

The following days are the happiest of their lives. There’s so much to talk about, whenever their lips aren’t occupied by other activities. There are so many things they want to do, even very ordinary things. Actually have a dinner date. Actually watch a movie together.

Nothing is more wonderful than hearing Remus play his guitar and sing right in front of him again, and this time, it’s only for Sirius. He plays all of the sweetest love songs, and Sirius cries and laughs and sings along.

Nothing is more wonderful than to hear Sirius talk to his camera in a low voice when he thinks Remus is asleep, telling the viewers about their day, saying such lovely things about him, and then turning back to stroking Remus’s hair as he quickly closes his eyes and pretends to be completely unaware.

Nothing is more wonderful than being able to kiss, to touch, to hear the other’s voice without the line rattling, see the other’s face from angles that don’t really show on their videos.

They film several videos over the days—a few Q&As, quarantine vlogs and a video where they switch occupations for a day, Remus learning how to handle the camera while Sirius picks up the guitar and attempts to write a song. All of them become very popular, and everybody seems to be very happy for them.

When the quarantine is over and they are allowed to go outside, they take long walks and attend low-risk outdoor events and have picnics at a park. They spend nights cooking and playing games, just doing domestic couple stuff, hoping it never ends.

It’s all so much better than either of them ever dared to wish for. They are impatient for the next time they’ll be able to meet even long before Sirius has to leave in the first place. But that dreadful day draws mercilessly closer, and they take the last week off social media, just focusing on each other.

Work becomes secondary, but the majority of their fans seem to understand. They both are more than deserving of a break, and are just too busy being in love anyway.

#wolfstar #wolfstar headcanon #remus lupin #sirius black #sirius x remus #remus x sirius #wolfstar fanfiction #my post

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royallyprincesslilly · 4 years

Text

Title: Quarantine: A Love Story {19}

Chris Evans x Reader Series

Warning: Flashback, TRIGGERING CONTENT, Violence, Heavy Cursing, Heavy Angst, Fluff, PLENTY OF WORDS, Plot

**Mention of PHYSICAL ABUSE {ONE HIT}

DO NOT READ IF MENTIONS OF THIS ARE UNCOMFORTABLE

Words: 7.7k

I hope you guys enjoy this. If you enjoyed this LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG.

As always, thank you for reading!!! ❤️❤️

***Loosely Edited/Proofread***

Previous Chapters: Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q5 | Q6 | Q7 | Q8 | Q9 | Q10 | Q11 | Q12 | Q13 | Q14 | Q15 | Q16 | Q17 | Q18 |

~~~~~~~~~~~

-Chris-

“No. No. Stop. No!”

Those were the sounds that stirred him from his sleep. Normally he was dead to the world, but since quarantine began, he was a lite sleeper. With you beside him, he found himself somewhere in the middle. He turned his head around to face you; the sleep still fogging his vision.

“Please, stop. Stop. No. Noo!”

You were whining now. There was no way this was a good dream; it was a nightmare. You were lying on your back with the sheet stretched across your breasts. Suddenly you began thrashing from side to side. This was more than a nightmare. He jumped into action, springing to his knees from his laying position on his stomach. As he was about to touch you, you flailed your legs out, kicking the sheet off of your body. Your scream was gut-wrenching and piercing. So much so that he could hear the animals in the shrubbery surrounding the cabin stir and rustles through the foliage.

“Y/N!”

Your arms flung out, and you began physically trying to fight him. He tried to grab hold of your arms to still your body, but you were surprisingly strong—stronger than he’d realized. As he dodged your nails and an onslaught of blows, he grabbed your biceps and held you to the bed.

“Y/N!”

That was when your whimpers began as you continued to thrash. Tears rolled down the sides of your face, and his heart sank. He hated seeing you cry.

“Y/N, wake up!”

Your body stilled, then your eyes flew open. You didn’t look at him, though. You stared straight up into the ceiling with them wide as if you’d seen the most terrifying thing in the world.

“Y/N?”

Cautiously he released your arms. You didn’t move to get up. You didn’t begin to speak either. You laid there staring at the ceiling with tears streaming down your face. Your whimpers increased, and he noticed your body move as if someone were holding you down while you were trying to get up. You shook as he’d never seen anyone shake. It was an immobilized shake.

He was beginning to freak out and was ready to call Scott at this point. He’d never seen you like this, and he didn’t know what to do. The only logical thing to him was to try to shake you. It was evident to him now that you were not awake, you must have been in a weird in-between state of a dream and a sleepwalking episode. He didn’t even know you sleepwalked.

“Y/N. Wake up. Come on, baby, wake up.”

Through his soft coaxing and gentle shakes, you didn’t move. That was when your mouth opened. It looked like a scream, and it should have been loud, but it was silent. There was terror in your eyes; he recognized it. He’d seen something similar to it before.

“Fuck. Y/N, wake up!”

Your body lurched, and you bolted upright, and seconds later, sprang off the bed. You darted across the room to the window and nearly ran right into it. He was on his feet in seconds to wrap his arms around your bare midsection pulling you back and away before you injured yourself.

You screamed again.

“No, no, no! Don’t touch me. Please don’t hurt me. Please, please, please!”

He held you still, though you tried to fight your way free. Something in him said, don’t let go.

“Shh, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’d never hurt you.”

His grip around your midsection tightened, and the two of you sank to the floor. The shake of your body was intense. You shivered like a naked woman in the forest at the height of a winter storm. You rambled and repeated the same thing. “Please don’t hurt me.” The only thing he thought to do was something his mother did for him when he was a little boy when he was inconsolable. He sang to you. he sang the only thing he could think you’d like—A Whole New World from Aladdin, one of your favorites.

With his back pressed to the cool window, he held you to his chest. When you shook uncontrollably, he squeezed tighter. When your shaking decreased, he still held you tight. The fire of your tears that streamed on him continued for what felt like hours. He didn’t bother talking. He just held you and allowed you to continue to ramble the same phrase. When you stopped, he took it as a good sign, but a few minutes later, you began again. Still, he sang, refusing to stop. By the time your body stopped shaking, and your whimpers stopped, he was hoarse, but he didn’t care.

As quickly as this episode began, you pulled away from him. Instead of protesting, he let you do as you wished. Without even looking back to him, you walked out of the bedroom, grabbing your robe off the floor in the process. He sat there, stunned, speechless, and completely confused as to what the hell just happened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Y/N-

-Seven Years Ago-

“I’m never going to let you go. Ever. I love you too much.”

Theo’s voice was thick with emotion, but it was also filled with something else—possession or closer to obsession. Theo’s hand at the nape of your neck tangled in your hair was forceful and spoke of possession. You’d never been afraid of him before, but something said you should be. Over the last few weeks, his actions had gotten more and more erratic. He was late coming home, kept his phone close to him at all times. He even locked himself in the bathrooms when he used it or showered and was more controlling than usual. Every time you confronted him about things, he simply said he had a lot going on at work and was under a lot of stress. You tried to be the perfect girlfriend, you kept the apartment clean, cooked his dinner, held it down at home, and set the sheets on fire, all the while working full time and keeping your life in order.

Theo brought his hand around to your throat, held it gently, and pulled you to him to claim your lips. The way he kissed you was almost like the way he’d kissed you at the beginning of your relationship—almost. A few hours later, you were in bed with him, plowing away, making your eyes roll to the back of your head, and your nails sink into his skin. The next morning, he was gone before you woke, leaving a simple note in his wake.

The routine continued like this for weeks. Every time you brought up his weird behavior, he’d tell you how much he loved you, hold you possessively, and put it on you in a way that had you completely mentally fucked for the rest of the day. Then the next day, he’d bring home a gift—a sparkling gift. You knew how MO but dumb and in love and all that.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Theo’s kiss on your stomach paused then he looked at you.

“What do you mean?”

“Tomorrow is the day. That means ten or so more hours to run for the hills,” you teased.

“Is that what you want?”

You stretched and tucked the pillow under your head more. Theo rolled on top of you, wrapped his hands around your wrist, and pressed them to the bed.

“I’ve already told you. You’re mine. I’m not letting you go anywhere.”

“I didn’t say I was going; I said you could run for the hills,” you corrected.

“Never.” His eyes bore into you in a way that made goosebumps flare up all over your skin. You bit your bottom lip.

“You don’t have to worry, baby. I love you. You’re perfect. We’re perfect together. I want this.”

Theo stared into your eyes then kissed you passionately. Before things got heavy, Theo pulled away. “This time tomorrow, we’re one day closer to becoming a family.”

You smiled at the warmth you felt.

The next day you were both seated in your doctor’s office talking about your options for starting a family. Theo was very open about the fact that he was practically shooting blanks. To some, that would have been a deal-breaker or even a reason to skip protection, but for you—it was neither. You were religious with protection and never really thought you wanted kids. When he brought up wanting them with you, you were stunned, but you couldn’t help but feel flattered and even more enamored with him.

You listened to the doctor talk about the invitro process, what to expect, and the steps. As he spoke, Theo looked as if he was paying the utmost attention to everything the doctor said. An hour later, you’d made a plan and scheduled the appointment that would change your entire life. Four weeks.

-Week One-

Your entire world flipped on a Tuesday night. You’d gone away for business for the weekend on a long trip. You were away for six days making plans for your future together. You planned to come back two days early to surprise Theo. When you arrived at your apartment, the glow of light in the windows was strange to you. Theo should have been asleep; it was after midnight. You pushed it to the side but decided it was the perfect opportunity to surprise and seduce him.

Quietly you walked inside and heard slow, sultry music. You placed your bag on the floor and quietly walked through the apartment. The music played through the entire apartment thanks to the surround sound system. Even if you took heavy steps, you wouldn’t be heard. Once you looked through the living room, dining, kitchen, and office and saw no Theo, you knew he was upstairs. As you passed the dining room again, you saw a finished bottle of wine but no glass.

Moving up the stairs, you began taking off your jacket, preparing to take everything else off. As you approached your bedroom door, you began on the buttons to your blouse. When you swung open the door, you expected to see Theo in your bed, either asleep or watching some stupid game on tv. Instead, what you saw had your stomach falling to the floor.

Theo’s bare ass was facing you with one leg braced on your bed and the other planted on the wooden floor. Everything was silent in your head for a few moments before the sounds of the room filled your ears. a woman’s obnoxious moans filled the room and blended with Theo’s pants and grunts. He was thrusting into her from behind with reckless abandon. You didn’t know how long you stood there watching your fiancé fuck another woman right before your eyes.

Inside your head, a whole spiel played. You dashed across the room, grabbed your heavy-duty, old-time scissors, and approached at the same time Theo turned. From there, you did the only natural thing, snipped off his dick. Blood spurted everywhere as he screamed bloody murder. Once the woman realized what had happened, she began screaming too. Your response to that was only natural too. You swung out and slashed her face. The two of them dropped to the ground writing in agony as you watched.

When you shook your head and came back to reality, neither of them knew you were standing there. You were sure you hadn’t made a sound, but she was the one to turn and notice you. Her shriek and panic brought Theo’s eyes to you. The terror that flashed across his face was classic. That was when you moved. Quickly you ran down the stairs, grabbed your jacket and your bag, and ran out of the apartment. You could hear Theo’s shouts behind you in the house, but you didn’t stop. Once inside your car, you sat there in complete shock. Before you could put the keys into the ignition, there was Theo dick swinging pounding on the window.

“Open the door, baby. Let me explain. Please. It’s not what it looks like.”

You drove off three seconds later. You fully expected to move on from there and never look back, but love was a funny thing. It often made fools of the smartest of women. You were no exception. Two weeks later, after countless attempts of apologizing, pleading, bargaining, and begging, you took him back. He was on his best behavior for a week. He sat through your arguing, the death glares you gave him, and your questioning. You could tell he hated every second of it, but you didn’t care.

Then your life flipped again. He was late coming home from work, and you were ready to claw his eyes out. You’d tried to keep your mind off of the possibility of what he was doing. You tried to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was working late and lost track of time. You tried and, for the most part, was successful. That was until he came home. He was clearly drunk. You could smell the Gin coming off of him. He smelled like he’d bathed in it rather than water. He reeked. Maybe you wouldn’t have exploded if he’d come in with an apology, but he came in singing some stupid bar song that set you off.

Still, you gritted your teeth and continued working in your office. When he came into your office and had the nerve to come around to kiss you, you smelled the perfume that mingled with the alcohol. You saw red. You’d had enough and didn’t bite your tongue letting him know how pissed you were. It was like oil and fire. Once you spat your venom, he was triggered and went off on you. he criticized you for how you’d been behaving the last few weeks, compared you to a prison warden, and even insinuated that you were insecure. That made you even angrier, and when he had the audacity to say you should focus your attention on fucking him better than she did to make him stay, you blew up. Your hand swung out and connected hard with his cheek. You’d never slapped someone so hard.

The house was silent. Theo’s face was turned from you in the position your hand left him in. you didn’t predict what came next. Theo swung around and connected his own closed fist hit to your face. The force of the blow sent you falling to the floor knocking over a lap in the process. Everything was hazy, but you made out Theo climbing on top of you to slap you twice before he wrapped his hands around your throat. Everything went black then.

When you woke up, you didn’t know what where you were or what had happened. The only thing you knew was that your head was pounding as if you were in the middle of a beat down circle, and everyone was pounding hammers on your skull rather than rattling you with punches and kicks. It took you several long minutes to open your eyes and even more time for your vision to steady. Once it did, you saw a huge bouquet on the pillow beside you. The pain was indescribable, but you managed to sit up against the headboard.

All around you, there were flowers of every color and classification--reds, yellows, pinks, oranges, purples, and even whites. Every few seconds, your vision blurred then returned to normal. For the life of you, you couldn’t remember anything from the last few days. It was blank. Theo walked into the room, carrying two more bouquets and a sheepish look on his face. He began to ask for something, but you interrupted him, asking what happened. From there, his disposition changed. He said you were robbed, said he came home, and you were passed out on the floor beaten with everything disheveled. You couldn’t remember, so you went with it. He even took you down to the police station to file a report.

The next two weeks passed in a haze. Your brain just didn’t want to function properly. The more you tried to remember what happened, the more the memories eluded you. It frustrated you beyond belief, but Theo never let you dwell on it too much. While he was the perfect boyfriend, you saw cracks in his demeanor. He was more controlling than usual and was even more glued to his phone. Sometimes the things he said always gave you a feeling that there was a hidden meaning. The night you found him staring at you in the dark was the night you felt the first official stirs of fear.

-December 2013-

It was ten o’clock when your memories came back. The lamp in the living room dropped and shattered, creating the loudest sound you’d ever heard—or so you thought. In seconds you were transported back to that night. You stood there in terror, watching it all play out like it was the first time. The more you remembered, the more your body shook. The more you saw, the more fear filled you. Once you remembered him hitting you and climbing on top of you, everything stopped.

A boiling rage that you’d never felt before filled you and battled with the immense fear you felt. He’d hit you, and it wasn’t a tiny slap or an accident. He’d punched you, then climbed on top of you to continue to hit you. When it all came back to you, you stood there with his eyes on you. It was like he knew you remembered.

“Y/N--,” he slowly began as he took cautions steps to you.

You stepped back.

“Okay, hold on. Baby.”

You took a few more steps back, not daring to take your eyes off of him.

“Don’t, baby—okay. It was an accident.”

“Accident?”

“Yes, an accident.”

Your back bumped into the wall. “Accident? Theo, you punched me!”

“I didn’t mean to. You just kept shouting and accusing me, and I got angry and snapped. I didn’t mean to.”

The more he spoke, the more scared you became. The more fear you felt, the angrier you became. They were now warring powerfully within you.

“You didn’t mean to?!”

Your shout boomed off the walls. You saw his intention, and before he actually moved, you sprang into action, running to the kitchen for a weapon. Once you touched a knife, Theo was there turning you, yanking it from your hand to clatter on the floor. He held your throat and squeezed.

“Jesus, Y/N. Why do you have to be like that? Now I’m angry.” His second hand joined the first, and his grip tightened.

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to happen. You can’t hold it against me. You can’t hate me for it. I don’t know what I’ll do if you hate me, dewdrop. You got me so angry. You shouldn’t make me angry like that. I can’t—I can’t control--.”

He sounded erratic and crazy, and the way he looked at you told you just how far gone he was.

“Don’t leave me. No, you won’t leave me. You will stay. Won’t you, Y/N? You will stay with me. Stay and have our baby. You’re mine, all mine. Do you hear me?”

His voice became more forceful. His grip became more forceful and dangerous. Feeling your windpipes closing, you gasped for air, trying to not blackout.

“Tell me you’re all mine. Tell me you won’t go. Tell me!”

You opened your mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Tell me!”

Theo released your throat, but only a little. You took a slow deep raspy breath, one that hurt.

“Tell me, or I swear I’ll kill myself and I’ll take you with me so we’ll be together forever. Tell me, or I swear I’ll use this knife.”

“I’m yours,” you forced out.

“What?”

“I’m—yours.”

“And you won’t leave.”

Theo stared in your eyes, and from the look in there, you knew he was serious. He would kill you and then himself.

“I won’t—leave.”

Theo released your throat and clung to you, holding you tightly. You didn’t dare move.

You had to go on as if it was business as usual. The rest of the night, you watched him. As you served your dinner and sat across from him, he looked normal. He looked like he hadn’t beaten the shit out of you a few weeks ago or that he hadn’t threatened to kill you and himself if you didn’t stay. You didn’t know who he was. You doubted you ever did. Theo went on telling trivial stories of work or things with his friends and even reminiscing on memories of the two of you. The entire time you couldn’t eat, you just sat there until he forced you to but not with words—only looks.

You didn’t sleep that night, or the next, or the next. You doubted he did either. He forced you to sleep beside him as if nothing had happened. Forced you to carry on with your life as you’d planned. He expected you to go through with the embryo implantation. He expected you to fall in line. Terror made you comply. Intelligence made you pretend to comply. You played the role he wanted—the happy fiancée, the soon to be mother. You played the hell out of the role. The night before the procedure, Theo made a mistake. He brought you gifts, roses, chocolates, wine, all your favorites. You knew his endgame. He wanted sex. This was his MO. He always thought this was the way. There was no way in hell you would do that, so you did the only smart thing—drugged him.

You watched as he drank his rum. Watched as he had one, two, and three all back to back. Unbeknownst to him, you’d roofied them all. Only you didn’t plan on using this to have your way with him. When the time came, he resisted the effects of the drug. You could see the drowsiness in his eyes and guessed his body was feeling heavy thanks to the lethargic way he moved, but still, he persisted in pursuing you. When he backed you onto the bed and proceeded to kiss along your neck, collar, and chest, you cringed in a way that usually would have shown him you were not feeling it. In his current state, you doubted he cared.

For what felt like an eternity boiled down to a few terrifying minutes where Theo continued trying to strip you and lay his affections on you. When you felt the full weight of his body drop to yours, you paused and waited to see if he would pick back up. Five seconds passed, no movement, then ten, and twenty. When you couldn’t take it anymore, you shoved his body off of yours and sprang from the bed to bang back into the wardrobe. You looked down at him, fearing the loud clatter would have stirred him. It hadn’t.

Thinking you were home free, you rushed out of the door and frantically tried to get down the stairs. As you took the first few steps, you felt a hand grab your hair and pull you back. There was Theo—an angry but sluggish Theo.

“Where’re you going, dewdrop?”

At this moment, your voice not to work. Instead, you tried to yank yourself from him. The pain at your scalp was intense. He refused to let go.

“Where—are you—going?”

He wobbled and lost his balance for a moment. That reprieve had his hand loosen in your hair. You turned and dashed down the stairs. Every one you took, you heard his sloppy thuds behind you. When you were halfway down, he felt him shove you down the remaining. You slid, tumbled, banged, and screamed all the way to the bottom of the stairs. The pain in your body said stay down, but you could guess what was in store for you.

Gathering what was left of your strength. You picked yourself up, limped to the hooks beside the door, grabbed your bag, and your keys, and bolted out the door.

“Y/N!”

He sounded furious. As he screamed, you felt the fire of his words as if it were the flames of hell at your back. Once outside, you ignored the pain in your ankle, your leg, back, ribs, and head and pushed forward. As soon as you got to your car, you opened it and jumped inside to press the lock button in the knick of time. Theo banged and pounded on the glass.

“Open the door, baby.” He sounded drunk.

“Come on, let’s go inside and talk about this.”

You didn’t. When he realized you wouldn’t, he banged the glass harder, shattering it. As he reached inside, you pressed your foot on the gas. The sudden movement of the car jolted him enough to send his body more onto the vehicle. That change of his body had the side of your car bumping into him as you sped down the street like a thief in the darkness of night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Present Day-

Taking a deep breath as if you hadn’t had one in centuries, you gasped and panted, pulling yourself from the memories. From behind the trees, you could see the faintest streaks of pink, yellow, and purple. The sun would be rising soon. You stared at the sky for a few moments and allowed the peacefulness in it to work on the tension inside of you. As you stared at the sky, you remembered what just happened, and you cringed. Looking to your left, you laid your eyes on a very still Chris who was staring right back at you.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” You flinched and immediately pressed your hands to your face hoping to hide your tear-streaked, puffy-eyed state. “What the fuck, Chris!”

You wiped your cheeks and sniffled, but you didn’t look at him right away.

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew I was here. I didn’t want to leave you alone. It didn’t feel right. I was worried. I’m sorry,” Chris rushed out.

You weren’t angry. You were embarrassed. No one knew about this or had ever seen you like this. No-one except your family and Scott, but he only knew the gist of things. He’d seen you at the height of your worst. You had no idea how you could face him.

“Y/N,” Chris softly began. A few seconds after he spoke, you felt his hand touch your knee. You flinched.

“Don’t touch me!” The second you said the words, you automatically felt like an asshole.

“All right, I’ll stay over here. I’m sorry.”

You groaned. Did he have to be so sweet right now? A few minutes passed in silence with your head turned to the right. You felt shame, fear, sadness, regret, and a deep yearning for the woman you used to be. You fought back the tears that wanted freedom and tried to get past this vulnerability you hadn’t felt in years. Taking another deep breath, you bit down onto your bottom lip. You didn’t want to breakdown any further. He was probably thinking you were a nutcase and wondering why he even wanted to get you into bed, you thought.

Almost an hour passed before you slowly turned to look at him. He was staring out into the trees, sitting there as patiently as ever. He didn’t look to be in a hurry, but he looked like his thoughts were far away. You could guess what he was thinking.

“Aren’t you going to ask?”

With his head still facing forward, he answered. “Nope.”

The answer stumped you for a few seconds.

“Why?”

“Because, if it’s something you want me to know Y/N, you’ll tell me. If it’s not, you won’t. I’m not here to make you do anything you don’t want to do. I’m not here to force you to do things, test you, lie to you, or hurt you. I don’t want to do any of those things. I’ve told you that,” Chris said with his eyes still forward. As he said the last sentence, he looked at you.

You were able to hold his gaze for a few seconds before you scrunched your face and pressed your forehead to your knees that were bent underneath you. After another few minutes, you took another deep breath. For the last few weeks, he’d been trying to prove that. Since you became intimate, you’d gotten the vibe that he really wasn’t the asshole you’d pegged him as. He was a good guy on the surface and possibly an even better one underneath all the bullshit he projected as his true self. Ms. Lisa was right, you thought. Realizing it had your heart skipping a beat.

“You have to come out and see the changed world if you want to move forward. You’ve been at a standstill pretending nothing had happed, and you hadn’t gone through trauma. You know the first step, babygirl.”

Then, your father’s words were harsh though you knew he spoke them with love. When he’d spoken them, you weren’t ready to hear them, let alone face what they truly meant. Were you now?

“The only way to know if you’re ready is to take the leap. See how it feels.”

Your dropped your head back and stared at the sky while taking a few calming breaths.

“My last relationship was—less than ideal,” you began while keeping your eyes glued above. You searched for the right words to follow up with, and minutes passed before you found them. It almost seemed like too much to tell him everything. It felt like if you did, then you’d be bare before him. Your walls would be gone, and he would have unadulterated access to your very core. He could then do what he chose. You’d made that mistake before.

“His name was Theo. I moved to Connecticut for him.” You scoffed at that little fact. You couldn’t believe you’d done it and had since regretted it tenfold.

“We um—we moved quickly looking back. At the time, it seemed normal. We got a house together, lived together, did everything together. Um—he um--.”

You struggled to find the right words. You didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t spin you like a stupid victim. Groaning, you decided to give up.

“Long story short, he turned out to be a liar.” You sighed out and rubbed your forehead.

“I’m sorry.”

You scoffed and looked away.

“I mean it. I know a lot of people throw those words around all the time, but I mean them. You didn’t deserve that at all.”

Deserve, you thought as you looked back to him.

“You deserved so much better,” Chris filled in.

You almost laughed hearing him say what you deserved. You then remembered his words in his room. It was then you made the decision to talk about it.

“We were planning on having a family. Our wedding was coming up, and we began the process of in vitro,” you began.

You could feel his shock, and you knew you had his undivided attention.

“He’d been acting weird for a while, and I noticed, but I didn’t bring it up. I just pushed it to the side and ignored it. I didn’t think he would ever do anything behind my back because of everything we had going on. So, I was the perfect girlfriend, cooked, cleaned—everything. One night he came home really late after weeks and weeks of me suspecting something was going on. I was pissed, and I confronted him. we screamed and argued, and he--.” You looked back to the sky, closed your eyes, and took a deep breath. “He hit me,” you finished.

“Son of a bitch,” Chris grumbled.

“I was dazed. I couldn’t even get up. He—he climbed on top of me and kept hitting me. I blacked out and woke up, but I didn’t remember what happened. He told me we were robbed, and I was attacked by robbers. He even went as far as to bring me to the police station to file a report.”

You paused, trying to get over the fresh wave of emotion that washed over you.

“For weeks, I couldn’t remember, and he went on like life was normal, and he was innocent. Day after day, night after night. When I remembered I freaked out and ran to the kitchen for a knife, he was behind me and grabbed my throat, swore he’d kill me, then kill himself, he—he made me promise I wouldn’t leave him, made me believe he would kill me.”

The heat beside you intensified. You would have chanced a glance at him, but you were too chicken shit to do it.

“For the next few weeks, he was controlling and terrifying. I barely slept. If he slept with me, he locked the door from the inside and kept a key on him. He kept tabs on me at all times. I felt like—a prisoner. One night I managed to drug his drinks, and he passed out. I made a run for it, but he woke up, chased me, and pushed me down the stairs when he couldn’t stop me. I barely got away that night, and I haven’t looked back since.”

The silence was heavy. It felt like the pressure in the air was just compressing right on top of your head.

Chris didn’t speak right away. He didn’t speak for countless long minutes. When you chanced a look at him, his jaw was tightly clenched, and his eyes looked dark, almost black. That was alarming for you considering how blue they usually were.

“I’m--,” Chris began before you cut him off.

“—Please don’t say you’re sorry. It’ll drive me bat shit, and I don’t know if I can handle going even crazier than I am right now, and I doubt you’d be able to look at me the same ever again. Although, I already suspect we’re there,” you ranted.

Silence returned.

“I was going to say I’m furious at what you’ve had to go through.”

Your head snapped to him.

“I never knew—never even fathomed, and now that I do—a lot makes sense,” Chris began. He audibly sighed, and as he did, his shoulders sank.

“I don’t need your pity, Chris.” You made a move to get up and walk away, but he was there to stop you before you got to the doors leading inside.

“I don’t see anything to pity. Jesus, Y/N. I’ve always thought you were the strongest woman. When I see you, I am always in awe of you. You’re so damn smart, so funny, and unapologetically real. I’m amazed. I don’t pity you, not one bit.”

As he spoke, his hands said a lot more. He lifted them and waved them around for emphasis but what you really paid attention to was how many times he reached out for you. Every time he did reach out, he stopped himself by balling his fists to then lowers his hands then do it all again. You took notice of how much you actually wanted him to touch you. You were a mess.

Groaning, you turned your back to him, looked back to the trees, and wove your fingers on top of your head. On one side, you wanted to leave, go back to the guesthouse, and bury yourself under the blankets for a day or two, all the while ignoring everything that happened. There was even a side of that side that wanted to pack up and go back to Boston and forget the lines you’d crossed during this quarantine. The other side wanted you to just give in to someone comforting you, someone being there for you who seemed to not want anything from you besides intimacy and a chance.

“I understand,” Chris began. You spun around to face him again.

“You understand what?”

“You being afraid to let me in.”

“I’m not afraid,” you quickly countered.

“Yeah, you are. You’re terrified, it shows. I’m terrified, and though I’ve been good at hiding it the last three years, I know it shows now. I understand, Y/N.”

You sighed and sat on the bench and dropped your forehead into your hands. The silence between you stretched again. You didn’t pay attention to it, though. You were miles away in your own head.

“Y/N,” Chris softly began.

When you looked up, he sank to the wooden deck in front of you. His bare legs showed the strength in his limbs. While he was slim, he wasn’t puny. He was surprisingly strong.

“I don’t want to play any games here, or pretend like I feel less than I do or want less than I do.”

“What do you want?”

Chris swallowed so hard you saw his Adam’s Apple bob. He didn’t speak all at once; he just stared into your eyes.

“I want you.”

They were pretty words; you thought as you looked away.

“You’ve had me.”

Chris closed the space between you. He grasped your hand with one of his and used his other hand to cup your jaw, so you were looking into his eyes.

“This isn’t about sex. I want you.” The way he emphasized the word, dropping his tone lower, making his voice deeper had your belly doing somersaults. You lowered your eyes, unable to hold his gaze any longer.

“You only think that because of this quarantine and sex bubble,” you whispered, your voice overcome with unexpected emotion.

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. This has nothing to do with quarantine or this supposed sex bubble, whatever the hell that is.”

It was your turn to give him a “yeah right” look. Chris rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw.

“I will admit that if it hadn’t been for quarantine, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the courage to tell you any of this or be this way with you. I would have still kept my distance because of--,” he took a breath, stroked your fingers, then continued.

“I wanted you three years ago, two years ago, Christmas, New Year, last week, last night, tonight. I want you, Y/N.”

You studied him for a few moments longer. The heat and intensity you found there had you entwining your fingers with his.

“I guess the question is—do you want me?”

You opened your mouth to speak, but Chris spoke again.

“Really want me Y/N, not sex, not attention, not a distraction, or a pass time. Me.”

The vulnerability you saw in him made you want to pull him closer, all the while pushing him further away. You didn’t know what you were searching for in his eyes, but you searched them all the same. It was the moment of truth. It was time for your first real romantic decision since leaving Connecticut and Theo. With everyone else, you didn’t have to do this; you didn’t think to or want to. You wanted to now. Not only did your body want him, but you wanted him, and it wasn’t your body doing the talking right now.

You scooted off the bench and into the welcoming space on his lap. By doing this, it made him drop to the deck as you straddled him and wrapped your arms around his neck.

“How did you get past the ice and shards?”

Chris’s smile started small but then spread into a full one. “I’ve always seen through the ice.”

You couldn’t help but snort out. He was so goddamn cocky, and you loved it. You both slowly moved to each other, never breaking eye contact. When you were but centimeters apart, Chris stopped. You knew he was giving you control to decide what you do, and where you go from there. When your lips pressed to his, neither of you moved at first. After a few seconds, it was you that teased his lips to kiss him sensually. When you felt his tongue swirl around yours, you moaned. From there, it was a chain reaction, one that was inevitable when the two of you got close like this.

Before either of you could get too carried away, you pulled away and rested your forehead on his. Both of you panted, trying to catch your breath.

“Slow and steady,” Chris whispered.

Your eyes met his. You nodded your agreement.

“Slow and steady.”

He smiled and kissed your lips once, twice, and a third time before he stood with you in his arms. It always amazed you that he was this strong. You were by no means stick and bones. You had shape, curves, and an ass. Nevertheless, he always handled you as if you weighed as much as a down pillow. Chris walked inside the cabin, passing the box you’d brought with you.

“Wait.”

You grabbed it and held it out to him. “What is this?”

Chris grinned. “You haven't opened it yet?”

“I wasn’t sure if I should,” you admitted. You’d debated it for days, and it was driving you insane.

“It’s yours. You absolutely should have opened it.”

“What is it?”

Chris walked into the bedroom and laid you on top of the mattress before he dropped onto the bed beside you. You sat up, slid to the headboard, and fiddled with the box.

“It’s not going to open itself.”

You took a deep breath and untied the pretty yellow bow-tied ribbon that was artistically tied around the box. You glanced at him again before you flipped the top off of the box. When you did, there was a simple notecard in your favorite color—yellow.

“You are beauty; you are grace.” As you read the words, your fingertips traced over the embossed letters. You bit your bottom lip and chanced looking at him. Chris attentively sat there patiently waiting for you to lift the notecard.

When you did, laying on top of its cotton bed was a necklace that housed some impressive diamonds all across the chain. When your eyes got to the charm, your jaw dropped. A pair of golden wings rested on the cotton. The intricate design of the wings had you lifting the box closer to your eyes to get a better look. You were not disappointed. It was breathtaking and clearly expensive. While the chain housed smaller diamonds, the wings had much larger ones.

“Wow.”

You traced your fingertips across it then flipped it over. There you saw engravement. “She flies by her own wings.”

You looked back at him but didn’t speak.

“Do you remember that time Scott and everybody took you out to celebrate that major project you landed? You thought it was just going to be a one-time thing, but it led you to being the reoccurring talent for that Broadway production company. I remember opening night we all went and bam your poster, header, and designs were everywhere in Time’s Square. Do you remember that?”

His smile was so wide you couldn’t help but smile and nod.

“We were all so excited and so damn proud. I was so proud of you. I remember just thinking nothing, and no one would stand in your way from getting where you wanted to. I thought you were—incredible.” He shook his head as if snapping himself out of the memory.

“I had this in my pocket the entire night. We were at the show, then dinner and walking around the city. I held on to it, trying to find the right time to give it to you, but—the right time never presented itself. So—I’ve held onto it this whole time.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Wow, that sounds pretty pathetic now,” he said, chuckling to himself.

“No, stop. It doesn’t sound pathetic. It sounds sweet. You’re sweet. This is so beautiful.”

“Do you like it?”

Nodding your head, you stared at the present some more.

“I really, really like it. Thank you.”

“There’s more.”

“Oh, is there?”

Chris nodded and nudged his head to the box. Sensing his meaning, you lifted the bed of cotton to see a beautiful diamond and gold charm bracelet.

“So promise rings are a thing, but I also know a ring of any sort might have you run for the hills even if it was just a promise ring,” Chris began. You laughed and shook your head.

“You’re not funny, Christopher!”

“I am, and you know it. Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted—I thought a bracelet would be an acceptable replacement.”

“So, it’s a promise bracelet?”

He nodded and slid closer to you. “It’s simple. You have a cabin charm for here, the beach charm for the beach, but after our last night on the beach, it’s for that.”

You softly smiled and bit your bottom lip. “And you have the fingers crossed charm for these promises. I will not hurt you; I will not disrespect you. I promise I can be the man you deserve.”

“Chris, this wasn’t necessary.”

“It was. Words are cheap, actions speak. I want this to speak. I want you to look at it and know. I’m in.”

His words echoed in your head as you let them marinate. He was in. you stretched your wrist out to him and held out the bracelet. Chris smiled, took the jewelry, and fastened it around your wrist.

“It looks good on you.”

“Eh—diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”

You smiled and leaned to him to press your lips to him. “Thank you; I love them.”

“Let me put the necklace on.”

You turned to him and let him clasp it. When he finished, you turned to him and felt the baby’s fist-sized pendant. “How does it look?”

Chris looked far away while he stared at the necklace.

“Chris.”

“Like it’s home.”

The man was going to be the death of you. Death by butterflies in the stomach. It was a thing; you were sure of it. You were turning into a puddle of lukewarm water, and it was an unfamiliar feeling.

“Let’s watch the sunset,” you suggested.

Chris slinked up the bed to you, then laid down under the covers at the same time your head found its place on his chest. Chris wrapped his arm around your shoulder, and the two of you, in perfect silence and relaxed comfort, watched one of the most beautiful sunrises that you could remember.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tag List:

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***There are a few that are bold that I tried to tag but your @ wasn’t coming up. I’m not sure why. I’m sorry.***

#quarantine: a love story fic #q19 #chris evans #chris evans fanfiction #angst fanfic #slow burn fanfic #chris evans x reader #chris evans x you #chris evans x black reader #black fanfiction #quarantine fanfic #chris evans smut

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madtomedgar · 4 years

Text

more su she meta (kill! me!!)

i love comparing jiang cheng and su minshan because they are so so so similar and it’s great.

but the reasons everyone loves jiang cheng and hates su minshan are:

1) in the show, jiang cheng has a hotter actor and a better wardrobe, and fandoms in general will excuse just about anything for beauty (look sometimes you just want to see the sexy person fuck up their life and other people’s lives sexily and that’s fine!)

2) jiang cheng has much more screen-time devoted specifically to his designer baggage. su she is seen only through lan wangji or wei wuxian’s eyes, and they could not care less about his interiority if you paid them. characters who get more narrative exploration tend to be more sympathetic

3) su she is from a disadvantaged background and society hates poor people and specifically class jumpers! so people (not me, but other people) have more sympathy for the poor little rich boy who struggles to fill the diamond-soled shoes he was born into and feel like he deserves the powerful role he was handed, much more than they sympathize with the person who struggled to build themselves up to the level of their heroes and despite all their hard work fell just short of greatness largely because they didn’t have access to the wealth and status from a young age required for greatness. We don’t, by and large, as a society, sympathize with people who want more than they have! we don’t sympathize with someone who is rejected by their heroes, because we’ve been trained to sympathize with the heroes. and it’s much more comforting to look at that and go “lol loser. couldn’t be me” than to acknowledge that that’s... how it might go for you if you met the person at the top of your field who you idolized.

4) we don’t actually like growth or redemption in stories, despite how much people talk about it. we want the bad to end badly and the good to end well. su she fucks up really badly as a lan disciple and then commits the unforgivable narrative sin of a) surviving and b) not spending the rest of his life walking on his knees in the desert. he learns from his mistake and tries to take something good with him and do something positive in the world despite having fucked up really badly. he founds his own sect, (in the show) becomes incredibly proficient in a wide variety of techniques (it’s not every cultivator who can keep lan wangji that busy for that long! he improves a lot!), blends them in new and creative ways to make them his own. he goes from being a coward and a traitor to a brave and loyal person over the course of his life. he goes from being third rate to being so proficient with musical cultivation that he can fool lan qiren and disable him using it.

i do think that, if the lans had been willing to make public amends with him to the point where they recognized moling su as a... sister? daughter? surrogate? sect, that he wouldn’t be so hung up about it. but tell me you wouldn’t be hung up about it if, in your thirties, the person who fired you when you were 19 because you did something stupid because you were 19 was still publicly bashing you in your own industry/field to employers/funders, when you had grown and matured and had a pretty impressive resume to show for it!

His trajectory reminds me of that thing about Oprah getting fired from CNN or whichever network when she was in her early 20s and then going on to become Oprah. Getting fired was a learning experience. But it’s easier to see him as the whiny pathetic traitor who sucks at everything he does that he was when he was a teenager.

Like. In terms of character development, I would actually say that comparatively, Su She has much more positive development over the course of the show than Jiang Cheng, who seems to have entrenched his bad habits and gone whole-hog with the self-isolating during the time-skip. And that’s legit! I’m entrenching my bad habits in quarantine! But I think people read Su She’s betrayal of his sect forward in the same way they read Jin Guangyao’s crime spree backwards.

#untamed stuff

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tthael · 3 years

Note

I really admire so many things about your writing - the introspection and deep meaning, the realistic and sensitive way that you handle topics. Do you have any recs for fav media/books/tv shows/fanfics ? I guess I'm curious if there are any you think might have similar qualities/themes?

This is a tough one because basically everything I consume gets picked apart and reused in some way. However, I’ll give it a shot:

The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. There’s quite a lot I like about Zusak’s use of language and have since 2007 when I read The Book Thief for the first time, and there’s something very cinematic and magical about I Am the Messenger (particularly in the chapter with the young track runner).

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. He’s most commonly known for Cloud Atlas, but he has an ongoing theme of vampires and cannibalism reappearing in his work (I just read Slade House for the first time while I was in quarantine) and there’s something deeply satisfying about the way that all of the disparate pieces come to fruition at the climax of The Bone Clocks. Not a perfect book, but deeply satisfying.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. Again, she’s most commonly known for The Poisonwood Bible, but I liked that well enough to read The Lacuna in 2013, and I completely hated it for the first half of the book until finally something clicked in my brain and I activated the literary critic within, who doesn’t care so much about whether they enjoy something and more cares about how well something is done. The description of US American rationing during World War II really got me onto the novel’s side, if that makes sense; and I do love a good family epic, and while this only focuses on one protagonist instead of generations of them, it’s interesting in a similar way to The Bone Clocks where you see everything start to snowball together.

Literally anything by Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher. I particularly recommend The Raven and The Reindeer, which I read shortly after being diagnosed with my chronic illness and really helped me to understand the irrelevance of shame. There’s something very satisfying about saying “a reindeer doesn’t care if it smells bad, so I’m going to lean into that particular apathy and not allow a bully to take me down over it.” Something comforting about taking shelter in the animal and in survival, when you and your body are in one place and working on the same side, and it’s your brain that’s ready to give up first but your body will keep dragging you through because that’s what it does. Certain lines in Indelicate were inspired by her adaptation of Tam Lin in Jackalope Wives and other Stories (https://www.amazon.com/Jackalope-Wives-Other-Stories-Kingfisher-ebook/dp/B071946RLN). Lots of her short stories are available at this link for free: http://www.redwombatstudio.com/portfolio/writing/short-stories/

TV’s a little harder to unpack, since I don’t always think in terms of visual media, I tend to default to words first. Recently I’ve been enjoying New Amsterdam on NBC--it’s nice to see the radical socialist doctor doing his damnedest to secure the right thing--and Call the Midwife--similar reasons. There’s a lot about meeting someone where they are in both shows that I appreciate.

There’s also a lot of music that inspires my writing so I’ll have to dedicate a post specifically to that in my methods and materials.

Fanfic, though! Lots of my favorites, lots of genres. Here we go:

we are all stardust by synergenic (Losseflame) (https://archiveofourown.org/works/5682496) Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, pairing Finn/Poe Dameron. Sexually explicit, but also leans a lot into physicality. You can probably see the influence on the very first chapter of Indelicate when Eddie’s waking up in pain and Richie’s at his bedside. It’s very much inspired by a similar sickbed scene here.

If They Haven’t Learned Your Name by silentwalrus (https://archiveofourown.org/works/6329503) Captain America/Marvel Cinematic Universe Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes. The holy grail of Steve/Bucky fanfiction. If you want independent character exploration, this is the place to go. Natasha shaving her head? Yes. Sam pleading with Steve to keep his shit together while thirty Koren grandmothers assume they are American celebrities? Yes. Bucky defiantly hunting down his sense of self while bingeing romance novels in a space ship? Yes. Pay particular attention to the Sam chapters, because they’re a beautiful way of defining Steve’s characterization from an outside perspective, and I’m trying to do the same with Eddie looking at Richie in Indelicate.

An Ever-Fixed Mark by AMarguerite (https://archiveofourown.org/works/8523001) Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen) Elizabeth Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam, Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy. Soulmark AU. This is one of my longtime favorite fanfictions and what it taught me was cause and effect. The characters move the plot forward based on their assumptions and decisions. Definitely very helpful when I was writing TTHAEL by the seat of my pants.

You Can Keep Holding On by NorthernSparrow (https://archiveofourown.org/works/7233709) Supernatural Dean Winchester/Castiel. Sexually explicit. A lot of the summary I can give here is spoilers, but if you read this one through, you’ll be able to see the inspiration for the “Can you tell me where I can get another Eddie Kaspbrak?” scene in Indelicate.

Work of All Saints by antistar_e (kaikamahine) (https://archiveofourown.org/works/15006644) Coco (2017) Imelda Rivera/Héctor Rivera/Ernesto de la Cruz. Sexually mature. Oh my GOD this is a beautiful coming-of-age story set in turn-of-the-century Oaxaca, this is the best complete expansion of canon that I’ve ever seen; the author takes the pieces and runs with them and it is WONDERFUL.

Lycanthropic Studies by Eiiri (https://archiveofourown.org/series/575263) Harry Potter, Remus Lupin/Sirius Black canon-divergence AU. I very much enjoy the meditation on lycanthropy as a chronic illness and I sometimes reread this for comfort. Particularly early on Remus has a rant about how he’s sick and he’s always sick and his life doesn’t stop for it, despite holidays and birthdays he still has to deal with the consequences of his illness and take the devastating medication, and there’s a lot about that that speaks to me. I haven’t kept up with the series for some time, though.

Careful Truths by SassySnowperson (https://archiveofourown.org/works/12111966) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Bodhi Rook/Luke Skywalker canon-divergence AU. Sexually explicit. Honestly identity p!rn fics are a good inspiration for that third-person limited perspective I’ve been working on in Indelicate. Also I love love LOVE Bodhi Rook. It’s fun watching him run in circles trying to conceal his identity from Luke while completely oblivious to Luke doing exactly the same thing.

Stammtisch by chaya (https://archiveofourown.org/works/15060152) Critical Role: Season 2, Caleb Widogast/Mollymauk Tealeaf, AU. Sexually explicit. Long before Caleb actually leveled up enough to cast Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion, chaya speculated about what kind of spaces he might create for each of his friends. I think it’s a very good resource for really condensing characterization down into lots of images and concepts and deciding what other characters know about them. The idea of making space for someone else is something that I lean into a lot when I write Ben, who’s the kind of man who will set himself on fire to keep those he loves warm, and even though Critical Role has far more material than even IT for determining characterization, and even though this particular moment has already occurred in canon--it’s just a wonderful homey story, and has the kind of found family vibes I like for the Losers as well.

I know that’s a lot to unpack there, but all of those fics are very good and I recommend reading any assortment that appeals to you. (Work of All Saints in particular you don’t have to be familiar with the source material beyond the basic premise; it stands on its own.) Thank you for asking, and thank you for reading!

#nocturnalpinkcat #my fic #indelicate #now what i'm gonna say may sound indelicate #nwigsmsi #things that happen after eddie lives #tthael #fic recs #book recs

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anonymous0writer · 4 years

Text

Dial Tones II JJ Maybank

Author: @anonymous0writer

Warnings: Alcohol use. Some bad self image. All characters have been made 18+ and for this, I imagined them in college and living on their own.

Requested: Yes!

“Omg I would love it if you wrote for the obx cast! You are such a talented writer! And you are definitely not annoying anyone with the spamming. You are filling the void during this quarantine ❤️ could I also request a songfic for JJ x reader based off 3 AM by Halsey?”

A/N: I love Halsey, and these songfics are giving me life. Ugh, I love writing based off songs sm. Also, anon, you are an angel! <3

This is really sad, like super sad I was like shit, girl you need help when writing, and the reader has kinda a lot of issues, but I was going off the lyrics.

Song lyrics look like this

Darling, I just left the bar And I've misplaced all my credit cards My self preservation and all of my reservations Are sitting and contemplatin' what to do with me, do with me

You stumble, blinded by the alcohol surging in your veins. Your hands dart out, catching your fall as you lean against the brick wall of the bar. The rough building material scratches at your hands. You take a deep breath, smiling like a fool due the one thing and one thing only. The heavy intake of sharp alcohol. Tomorrow you’d be in a world of hurt, but your brain was too muddled and everything seemed too light for you to worry about it.

At the back of your mind hung the memories and words you tried to push away so desperately. The words that made you tip the shot back a little farther. There was nothing in particular, but every relationship, every emotion hinged onto them were enough to make you want to pass out drunk.

A sob rises in your throat, but you swallow it down, your vision going blurry. The shapes of cars speeding past and the silhouettes of people blur, the edges bleeding like water to ink.

The pads of your fingers scrape against the brick, making them go raw as you stumble along the wall, fighting the sobs and the storm of feelings catching up to you. This was the exact thing you tried to hold back, but the laughs turned into cries so easily it was hard to tell which one was which.

Think I took it way too far And I'm stumbling drunk, getting in a car

You fumbled for the keys to your car, tears burning at the back of your eyes. Swallowing the lump in your throat, you wince as the car’s light flashes and cut into the fog of your brain, searing through your thoughts. You took it too far this time. Drunk too much, drowned your storm of thoughts and feelings in the deeper pit. You had fallen off the edge too many times and here you were, fumbling to get the car door open just to sit in it and cry.

Of course you took it too far. Isn’t that what you always did?

My insecurities are hurting me Someone, please come and flirt with me I really need a mirror that'll come along and tell me that I'm fine

You glared, eyebrows slanting over your eyes. Nasty thoughts relating to your body or personality attacked, burning your skin as they hit. They were like mosquitoes, nasty and just there to feed. And of course, you could only stop a few until you gave up, waking up the next morning with the aftermath marring your skin.

The mirror stared back at you, your twin glittering in the light. The girl was glaring back, equally mad about the way you looked. About the way your hips curved in the dress, and the way your stomach popped out, dress doing nothing to smooth over it.

You closed your eyes, feet curling into the carpet as you twisted around, refusing to continue searching for imperfections. You just needed to get to the club, see your friends and find a half drunk man to flirt with to forget the girl in the mirror.

I do it every time I keep on hanging on the line Ignoring every warning sign Come on and make me feel alright again

“No, don’t do it,” Kiara shook her head, watching you with saddened eyes as your phone was clutched in your hand. His familiar name and face was waiting to be summoned as your finger hovered over the call button.

Your jaw flickered as you debated. The few shots in your system said hell yes, the broken part of yourself asked to hear his words in a small voice as the sober you screamed not to. It wasn’t smart, that was sure, but you couldn't help the need to hear the gruffness of his voice when he woke up, or the softness of his voice when he was tired, or the smirk in his words as he eyed you. You felt the need to hear his voice and picture him as he talked to you, only for him to hang up too soon and a hollow feeling pooling in the cavity of your chest.

You didn’t even process it as your finger pressed on the screen and the call was dialing, waiting on the edge of your seat to see if he’d even pick up.

You ignored Kiara’s cry of protest and Sarah’s huff of pity. You didn’t want to see the look on their faces as he hung up and left you worse than before. You didn’t want to feel the way Sarah slid her arm over your shoulders and pulled you close. You didn’t want to hear the soft words from Kie’s mouth, telling you to move on and find another one. Because if you found someone else, they’d just do what every other man did. Love and leave. Love and leave. It was a vicious circle, but it was easier to fall back into the routine of drunk calling him instead of having your hope rise as you found another. So you ignored the warning signs.

You snapped back as the dial tone rang into your ear, stark and buzzing. He let it run through.

'Cause it's 3am And I'm calling everybody that I know And here we go again While I'm running through the numbers in my phone

You were seated in your bed, hair messy and clothes in disarray from the constant tossing and turning as your brain wouldn’t turn off. So you restored into what you always did. Call. Phone in front of you, screen glaring its ugly light to illuminate your face. Hands shaking as they reached for the next number. Which you paid attention to. You’d always call, still in your thoughts or exhausted when you ran through the list of numbers. But you were always alert when your finger passed over his number.

Your eyes stared so hard at the ten digits they swum across the screen. You blinked, eyelashes brushing against your pale cheeks. Your fingers reached for the call button, hands trembling like they always did this late.

The pad of your finger touched the number. Your room swelled with the ring of the dial tone, and you held your breath. Hoping.

I need it digital 'Cause, baby, when it's physical I end up alone, end up alone

“Hello?” His voice broke through the calm of your room, making your eyes dart to the screen. He had picked up.

“Hi,” Your voice rose and broke, the quiver of your hands seeping into your voice.

“Y/N.”

His voice sounded tired and disappointed. He wasn’t happy to see you calling- not like the way your heart rose when it showed he picked up. Your face fell, heart crashing into your stomach, the remainder of your barely intact heart falling to pieces, joining the graveyard of the others. You swallowed, emotions bubbling in you so fast it made you dizzy.

“I’m sorry,” You words were whispered, barely carrying through the phone meeting his ear. “I’m so sorry.”

By now you didn’t even know what you were apologizing for. Forcing him away? Calling him repeatedly? When you were drunk? When you were plagued with your own mind? For begin so easy to break? For giving him a broken heart? For not being able to love yourself no matter what anyone thought? For letting your thoughts kill you slowly? For scaring him off? No matter what it was, you were sorry.

“Stop.” He begged, and your glassy eyes snapped to the phone. Your trembling hands clenched the sheets. “Please stop. Don’t do this again.”

Another ‘sorry’ escaped your lips.

“Stop crying, Y/N. Pick yourself up. Move on. Take care of yourself and get help.” The familiar soothe of his words easing your mind and heart. Your thoughts dropped, recoiling away into the corners of your mind. Your lips parted but no words came spilling.

“You need to help yourself. You have to stop throwing yourself into relationships when you’re so broken. Y/N, please.”

Your eyes fluttered closed and you took in his words, letting them soak into your skin, soothing the burns of your destructive thoughts, holding up the broken parts of your heart and making you warm. The power of his voice was enough to allow you to sleep. But his voice faded and he hung up. The call ended, leaving you laying on your back, blankets surrounding you in a halo, eyes staring at your ceiling blankly. Breathes pulling and exiting your chest, making a soft hum in the dead quiet of your darkened room.

Loving someone in the real light. Physically, mentally- that was hard. Digitally was easier, allowing you to have some distance. Phone calls and texts allowed you to not throw your shit on them. No matter what you did. No matter the calls or the hugs- you always ended up in your room, breathing shallow and wall the only thing entertaining. You always ended up alone.

Every night I wanna live in color through a white-blue screen I got a technicolor vision going vivid in my white-blue jeans I know it's complicated 'cause everyone that I've dated Says they hate it 'cause they don't know what to do with me, do with me

Nights were the best and worst. Early nights, where you danced your feet sore, sang your throat raw and drank your brain fuzzy. But late nights were the opposite. Staring the ceiling until your eyes unfocused, listening to the stuffy silence, the dial tone ringing in your ears along with the countless calls not taken.

But tonight was a good night. Kie and Sarah were with you, laughter and fun in higher doses than the alcohol. You three were crammed into the dance floor, the music so loud it was practically pulsing through the floor, making the vibrations shiver in your bones.

The lights of the club were alive and bright, the colors flashing and moving to the beat of the music, casting shadows and lights across your skin. Red and blue and then purple danced across your body, chased by the slashes of orange and the dots of yellow.

You loved living like this, the beat of the music in your bones, the colors of the lights flashing across your skin in wild patterns. When you danced with your best friends, laughter loud and smiles true bright.

But you usually weren’t like this. You liked the calm of the take out sitting on your balcony and staring at the city. You were complicated and what you liked changed all the time. You would want to stay out all night for a second, and the next you’d want to curl up in bed and watch movies. Your mind flipped and switched constantly, confusing the boys in your life. You were complicated. And they hated it. Hated the way you changed your mind and were so broken. And they made sure you knew it. They didn’t know what to do with your changing mind and dark thoughts and broken heart. So they did what the last one did. Left.

I need it digital 'Cause baby when it's physical I end up alone

You smiled softly, your tears drying and the edges of your mouth tilting up. You sniffle and listen to the video over, hands easing in their constant shaking. You closed your eyes, listening to the hum of his laugh and the crinkle of his eyes as he grinned. You opened your eyes again, watching the clip with a bittersweet taste on your tongue.

The camera flipped and dropped as his arms encircled your waist, pulling you into his lap as you giggled.

“JJ!” Your voice was high and bursting with joy. His face was lost into the crook of your neck, and when he looked up, his eyes found the camera.

Your breath shortened at the light hitting his eyes and lighting up the cerulean color. His eyes were beautiful.

The boy reached forward, “Are you taping me, baby?” You giggled and tried to wiggle out of his grip.

You jumped up, and the boy pouted. “Where you goin’, pretty girl?”

“I have your gift!” You grinned, and the camera showed off JJ, his hair somewhat tamed and his lips tugging into a grin.

The camera flashed as you quickly got the small, gray box. You shoved the small gift into his hands and urged him to open it.

“Open it, J!” You urged, the camera still focused on him and his anticipated reaction. You held your breath as his quick hands worked on the ribbon. It came undone, falling to the floor as the boy eased the box open.

In it lay a shark tooth necklace, carefully coiled. JJ’s grin widens, splitting across his face and you clap your hands, the camera shaking.

“Do you like it?” You ask as his fingers undo the tight coil and play with the beads. His eyes flicker up to meet yours.

“Of course. I love it.” He grins and loops the necklace around his neck.

You close your eyes as the video continues, loud laughter and admiration from the blue eyed boy playing loudly. You soak in the loud laughter of a happier time. You wonder briefly if he still wears the necklace, or if he even still has it. You’d given it to him after he admitted how ‘badass a shark tooth would look’ around his neck.

You open your eyes, a small tear trickling from your eye and making a small river down the plain of your cheek. Your eyes find the video, where it stops on JJ’s face, grin wide and teeth flashing, eyes lit by the sunlight and a new necklace worn proudly around his throat.

You stare at it, marveling over that time.

He really was everything.

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longitud-de-onda · 4 years

Text

Porque el querer causa pena, pena que no tiene fin

pairing; mad sad genius (we never got a name) x reader summary; you can love someone with all your heart, but nothing compares to the madness that exists in their absence rating; t warnings; language, a bit of alcohol, angst, it isn’t specifically covid-19 but it is a pandemic science fiction story, so the quarantine and other situations are taken to the extreme which could be potentially triggering depending on how you’re handling the quarantine. word count; 3.0k a/n; this is fanfic for ngozi anyanwu’s for all the lovesick mad sad geniuses which aside from pedro’s amazing performance, is a brilliant monologue. we’re taking the title from the rosalía song (maldición, cap. 10: cordura) that helped inspire this.

You met him at an art gallery. It was your own show, and you were standing in the corner drinking wine from a clear plastic cup, the edge of which was sharp against your lips. You held a paper plate with five almonds, a mozzarella and tomato crostini, and a mini chocolate cupcake carefully balanced in your other hand.

He was standing in front of your favorite piece. No one else was. Probably because the gallery owner told you it wasn’t the sort of work that would stop anyone. That out of all the work in your collection, it was the type that belonged in the back, where it would be found by the people who cared enough to wander there, whose interest would likely be piqued enough for them to enjoy it. It hurt to hang it up on the back wall and not up in the front where you wanted it.

But he hadn’t stopped at everything else. He had walked into the gallery minutes before, giving every painting a quick glance before settling on the one in front of which he was standing. He had been there for almost five minutes before you decided to walk up next to him.

He looked over upon seeing you approach and your heart stopped. He was the most beautiful person you had ever seen. His smile reached his eyes and you found yourself falling into them. You almost asked him if he would model for you.

You didn’t paint portraits.

“This one is beautiful,” he told you.

You smiled and took a sip of your wine. You didn’t need convincing that it was beautiful. That much you already knew. It was the one piece you were confident beyond belief about.

“What do you like about it?” you asked, jutting your chin up at the painting in question.

“The artist seems to have cared. You can see the brushstrokes. They’re more detailed than the others. Someone only spends that much time on something they really care about.”

That was when you fell in love with him. Thirty-three words. That was all it took.

Your first date was dinner after the gallery closed for the night and he dragged you out to his favorite burger joint because he said you deserved it after opening an exhibition. After wolfing down more than enough food and splitting a tub of fries, you spilled out onto the streets in a pile of laughter and joy and you’ll never forget the look on his face when you asked for his number.

Your second date was a night you’ll never forget. He had taken two days to contact you after the first night, and you had begun to worry you would never hear from him again, but he called you and said he wanted to meet you at 6pm the next day and to dress nicely. You showed up where he told you too and he was there with that goddamn smile.

He took you to a Chinese restaurant and said I’d take you somewhere nicer but I don’t think you’re that kind of woman. And you would have slapped any other guy in the face but he looked so earnest and he was right about you. It was like he could read you like a book. And when you laughed he’d sometimes stop laughing with you just to stare with a certain reverence that made you question what you did to deserve the sort of man who looked at you that way.

He took you past all the big theaters showing musicals and stopped at one tucked away with a modest set of doors but the grandest entry hall you had ever seen. You let him lead the way as he took you through the doors into the auditorium and you walked down the aisles to seats near the front.

You didn’t know what you had done to let him know you loved comedies, but he had picked out the perfect play. By the time it was over your stomach hurt from laughing so hard and your eyes held the watery ring around them from your tears. You hit the cool night air just as it started raining, and any other time you would have run for cover but with him and his smile next to you, you didn’t give a shit.

The aimless wandering that night was your favorite part. You were doubled over laughing as he told you the parts of the play he liked, and the parts he didn’t.

“She was a fucking genius and a poet, you know?” he said.

“Who?”

“The playwright.”

“What? Why?” you asked.

“She wrote a play about another fucking genius,” he said. “And despite it being the funniest shit ever made, it still had all those deep-ass lines. You know, like, ‘If you got one friend when you die then most people never have something like you.”

And he didn’t know why you started giggling until you calmed yourself enough to tell him what the real quote was in between fits of laughter. He had that look from earlier that night on his face. The one where it was like he didn’t even know you could see him. He gazed at you like he could see you. Not just on the surface, but underneath everything too. Like he could see every thought that went through your head and took the time to hold every one and appreciate it before letting it go.

He leaned down to kiss you and you tilted your head up to meet him and you wondered how you hadn’t kissed him before. Why you didn’t when you said goodbye your first night. Why you didn’t when you were getting to know him over a burger. Why you didn’t let him kiss you that first fucking moment when you fell in love, right there, after he told you about your own goddamn brush strokes.

You fell in love all over again the following weekend when he took you to his favorite spot in the park, a large grassy hill overlooking all the kids playing below and you spread out a blanket and ate sandwiches that he had put into little ziploc bags. You told him that he should have packed some wine and he said baby, we didn’t need any alcohol our first two dates and you flushed and told him about the wine you had at the gallery and he laughed.

“I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to walk up to you without it,” you protested when he jokingly expressed mild disappointment.

“If you hadn’t walked up, I probably would have shouted ‘where’s the fucking artist, I need to talk to her!’ by the end of the night,” he said, and you found yourself laughing again.

“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened at one of my exhibits,” you said.

You met him every morning before work to go out for coffee, even if it meant waking up an extra hour early because he’s a morning person. You had his coffee order memorized by the third day.

He invited you to his apartment one day and you found yourself laughing over home videos of him as a kid late into the night. When you said goodbye, your heart yearned to stay. To take one of his shirts and wear it as you curled up next to him in bed. Instead, you kissed him good night.

After dinner one evening, you brought him to your place and showed him the little studio you had in the most well-lit room. He spent almost an hour exploring it, asking you questions about every little thing, the brand of paints you liked best, the angle you preferred to set your easel, your favorite tools, your favorite color, and telling you how honored he was to be in the workplace of a genius.

You didn’t tell him he was the smartest person you had ever met.

You didn’t tell him that he was the genius out of the two of you. That he could talk about his work and you could listen for hours to his voice but not understand a single word he said. That he would talk like no one was listening and then say the most serious shit. The sort of thing that made you rethink life, and by the time you had escaped from your thoughts he was already on another topic, rambling about the multitudes of things he loved. He saw the beauty in everything.

How the hell could a man like him love you?

He was the sort of person you would hear about in movies. The type to never stop dreaming. Someone watching the two of you would think you both mad. He had his head in the clouds and you would watch from below in awe as if his brain was firing off fireworks, and then you would speak about anything and he would give you that smile and that goddamn look that drove you crazy.

Your entire life he was there, living his own life without ever having met you, and you often wondered how many times you had almost met. You lived in the same city, surely there must have been times. Hundreds if not thousands of moments in which your paths nearly crossed. Whether what kept you from meeting was a mere 3 feet of distance in a crowd or a mere 3 minutes of time and space in which one of you was running late or early to something along which way you would have found him.

But you were lucky to have met him when you did. Gotten to share the brief moments while they lasted. That was before the virus hit.

You were sitting on his kitchen counter, covered in acrylic paint he had bought at the grocery store as the two of you detailed messy renditions of Van Gogh’s work on his cabinet doors, and he had wrapped his dirty hands around your waist, leaving two purple handprints on your painting shirt, and pulled you into a kiss. And this one was different. It was deeper, searching for more. There was more heat and passion. Your whole relationship, months of it, had been slow and beautiful and intimate, but there were times where it was more like friendship then romance and neither of you minded as you walked along the fine line between the two, happy with the state of things as they were. But you had loved him since the first day and you didn’t mind the idea of, one day, collapsing naked and sweaty into bed with him instead of snuggling up against his side as he wrapped you in his arms like he usually did when you did decide to spend the night.

But that was for another day. You broke apart after minutes to return to your project. By the end of the night you were screwing the doors back in and he was admiring everything. If you were being honest, he was completely helpless when it came to handiwork. Couldn’t hammer a nail, tighten a screw, sand some wood, or even recreate a decent Starry Starry Night, but that didn’t matter. Because his kitchen looked vibrant and beautiful and the art reminded you of all the ideas you could see swirling in his head. The fucking genius.

The reports had started to come in by then, but it wasn’t until the following morning that you realized how serious everything had gotten. Schools announced that day that they were closing. He called to tell you he was working from home. You got the call that evening that you would be too.

A week later and you had met with him once, in the park. It was a long trek for both of you, living on opposite sides of the city. But the brief kisses, kind words, and soft touches on the waist, thighs, arms, neck, jaw, nose, back, anything? Those were all worth it.

The following day you learned you couldn’t leave your neighborhood. You video-chatted with him in tears. If only you had let yourself follow the thoughts of moving in with him instead of stamping them out as soon as they started to take root in your head. If only you had let him spend the night one more time. So you wouldn’t be clinging to his fading smell on the t-shirt you stole from his closet.

It was like your whole world cut out when the strikes started. No internet. No cell service. No connection. The postal service was all but gone, and you had no way of connecting with him. Your only source of news was the newspaper, three times a week, delivered to your doorstep. And your neighbor who got it every day and would shout to you the important things.

You wished you had photos of him framed around the house.

Then when you did, the sight of him staring at you from every corner of your apartment was enough to drive you mad with longing that you took them all down.

When the government got the strikes under control, they started to introduce the plans for rolling out the internet services again. Things had become grim. You spent every night dreaming of him, but you were starting to forget his face. Did his nose curve that much? Were the creases around his eyes that deep? Was his shabby beard that full? Did he have dimples, or were you just making that up?

You would stare at the photos on your phone, desperately trying to commit him to memory. Remember how he looked when the man in the photo came to life in three dimensions. How did he walk? How did he wave his hands?

By that time, life was different. You didn’t make art anymore. What was once your life had been shoved into your studio room, the light turned off, and the tubes of paint left to dry up. Your apartment didn’t smell like clay and charcoal and linseed oil anymore. You didn’t have it in you to keep painting. You went to the grocery store once every fourteen days, grabbing produce and frozen goods, bottles of alcohol and some cleaning supplies before handing over your newly minted ration card to receive the staples. Rice, pasta, beans, eggs, flour, sugar, a couple bags of dried fruit, a bottle of milk. It wasn’t so bad when you lived on your own, but you felt bad for the mothers and fathers in line behind you, knowing that their children might be too picky to even eat the food they were lucky to get.

The introduction of connectivity services was a slow process. Neighborhood by neighborhood across the country so as not to overwhelm the systems. There were new rules. It was only to be used for three things: education, work, and essential communication between legal family members.

Your finger hovered over the call button next to his name hundreds of times, but you could never press it out of fear that someone would be watching or listening. You knew that when you walked the streets they were. It was likely the same for your phone now too.

One day in a drunken fit of anger and yearning and the craze of love, you deleted all the photos on your phone, hoping that maybe without them you could forget how much you missed him.

You tried to forget him. But every night you dreamt of his slowly warping face. You wondered if he was doing the same.

Sometimes you would watch the DVDs you had and try to replace his image in your head with the actors. Sometimes it would work and weeks would go by with only dreams of the movies. But it would always lose its effectiveness. Usually around the time that you remembered that he was probably your soulmate and you didn’t get enough time.

In every single one of the possibilities of your lives together that you daydreamed about for hours every day, there was never enough time. But this reality was the worst. You were sure of that.

You had read every book in your house. Read every poem you could get your hands on, even the ones you had risked your life for in searching them on the internet, carefully saving pdfs and screenshots and printing them out on the dwindling paper in your apartment. Words didn’t do the same thing they used to anymore. They didn’t bring joy and excitement and escape. You stopped reading them.

You talked with your neighbor for the first time in a month. It seemed that almost everyone had stopped reading books. You wondered if people stopped doing other things too.

The world before was starting to blur around the edges. You couldn’t remember if the path you liked to walk in the park had such an erratic course or if it was more subtle than you could remember. What did you like to do on the weekends? There was a place, a building, that you liked to go to. You couldn’t remember what it was called or what was inside, but you remember the feeling of standing there. The musty smell and the awe and the sensation that you were staring out at all of humanity. And you had no idea what the fuck it was.

You weren’t sure how much of the world before you had forgotten. But you couldn’t shake him from your memory. You wished you could.

When you weren’t working you were cooking or eating or sleeping. And when you weren’t doing that, it constituted the dangerous time where you didn’t have anything to do and nothing to interest you.

And every fucking thing you did, be that making pasta or lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, made you think of him. You had loved him as you’d never loved anyone before. And you never told him. Did he even know that you loved him? Did he know that you knew he loved you back?

You would close your eyes and the only thing you were sure of in your mind’s image of him was that goddamn smile.

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thekillerssluts · 3 years

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We’ve Got A File On You: Win Butler

In a year when a lot of our plans have been on hold, Win Butler has been busy. In April, the Arcade Fire ringleader let us know that the band had been working on music shortly before lockdown, and then he let us hear some of it. Last week, on the night of the election, the band debuted a new song called “Generation A.” Apparently, Butler was one of the people who found quarantine more inspiring than suffocating. Just a couple weeks ago, he amended his previous hints with the update that he’s written “two or three” Arcade Fire albums thanks to having to stay still all year long.

It seems like there’ll be a whole lot of new Arcade Fire goings-on to parse sometime on the horizon, but that isn’t the reason Butler and I got on the phone one recent October afternoon. Butler’s not quite ready to talk about forthcoming music yet, aside from saying this era of writing gives him flashbacks to that which preceded The Suburbs and promising “The new shit is about some of the best shit we’ve ever done” as we say goodbye.

In the meantime, there have been some milestones this year: The Suburbs turned 10; Butler turned 40. There is, of course, a whole lot of rich Arcade Fire history between their early ’00s origins and now. There are too many high-profile collabs to dig through, too many pop culture crossovers to cover, in just one conversation. But before Arcade Fire’s next chapter begins, while we both had a moment of quiet at home in the year 2020, Butler and I took some time to dig back through highlights and surprises from across his career.

Appearing In Bill & Ted Face The Music (2020)

How did this happen?

WIN BUTLER: They were filming in New Orleans. I’m kind of the exact age where Bill & Ted really has a soft spot in my worldview. [Laughs] That was just like, yeah, of course I want to be in the Future Council. That’s the part I was born to play. No, it’s funny, it was just one of these random things that come through the email. Usually, it’s, “Nope, nope, nope, nope.” But this was, “Tell me when, tell me where, I’ll be there.” It was on soundstages. When we were filming it, Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe was back there, and he sort of disappeared at some point. I got to bring my son, who’s six. He was hanging out and we were talking to Keanu about Canada and punk bands back in the day. It was a pretty sweet hang. It was a bright spot in 2020, let me put it that way.

You say you get these emails — is that random stuff they want Arcade Fire to do, or there’ve been other cameos you turned down?

BUTLER: Oh, no, it’s mostly random licensing or stuff that goes to the junk box. But every once in a while, it’s like, “Hey, that sounds like a nice way to spend the day.” I started out in film. I went to Sarah Lawrence College in New York around 2000. I had really wanted to go to film school, and I could never get in. [Laughs] Initially, the song “The Suburbs” was an idea I had for a film and it seemed easier to make a song than a film.

The Suburbs (2010)

That was a convenient segue. The Suburbs just turned 10. I was wondering if you have gone back and revisited it much amidst that anniversary.

BUTLER: The whole experience of Funeral was such a rollercoaster. We were on the road so long. We didn’t have much of a break going into the second record. For The Suburbs, Régine and I — I don’t think we saw anyone for a year straight before we even started demoing or anything for that record.

It was a time in my life… I don’t know, I was in my late twenties, and there were all these details of my childhood in Houston. You know, I moved to Canada when I was 19. [Houston] almost felt like this other life I had. I would close my eyes and imagine riding my bike through town and trying to find the edges of my memory. There was kind of all this emotion that came up through that, and I wanted to capture it. It’s funny, as a songwriter, most of the time I feel like my mind is living in the near future. You’re listening for these little signals in the air. This was almost inhabiting the emotional space of these memories but thinking about it as the future.

When you say it like that, I’m curious if the album feels different to you now that you’re a father yourself and another 10 years down the line. Like another layer to that refracted youth, sort of?

BUTLER: Totally. In a way, I feel like the last year has been a parallel to that year before The Suburbs. Then I was kind of a hermit by choice, and this has more been the world conspiring to make me a hermit, but it has been a really introspective. In a sense, the material that we’ve been working on feels the same way, this hybrid of your emotional landscape and the future.

It’s almost seasonal, like a trade wind that blows in once in a while. I remember we played with Neil Young when he was still doing the Bridge School Benefit and hearing him sing “Old Man” as an old man, almost like he wrote the song when he was 22 to sing when he was 80. I think there’s an element on that Suburbs record that’s like that as well.

Winning The Grammy For Album Of The Year (2011)

Obviously that was a huge turning point for Arcade Fire because you won the Grammy the following year. As a suburban indie fan at the time, I had no real grasp on how big certain bands were. From where I was, it was pretty trippy that you guys won that.

BUTLER: I mean, tell me about it. It was definitely pretty trippy.

There are very, very early moments of you guys getting linked up with some iconic artists. Arcade Fire got plenty of respect from the beginning. But at the same time, the Grammys is something different. That’s a moment of mainstream insurgency. Ten years on, you’re one of the big indie bands of your generation, but also one of the only rock bands to get to that level in recent times.

BUTLER: I don’t know it was the best record that year, but it was definitely the best record nominated that year. I mean, we were up against a Lady Gaga remix record and like, Katy Perry. We weren’t up against a great Eminem record, we were up against a not-that-great Eminem record. In a certain sense, I was like, “Well, I think we should win.” [Laughs] I think we had the best record.

I remember in high school Radiohead and Bj��rk were the two [new artists I loved]. I bought The Bends the day it came out, I bought Homogenic the day it came out. And then everything else I listened to was artists that had broken up 20 years earlier. I remember watching the Grammys the year OK Computer was nominated and it didn’t win, and I was just like, “Oh, that thing must not mean anything then.” I remember Dylan won, and it’s a really great Dylan record, but objectively OK Computer was the best record. So if that didn’t win, then what the hell does that thing mean? After that, I didn’t think about the Grammys that much. It wasn’t on my list of my dreams of my career and what I could accomplish and what I wanted to do.

For me, I was looking more at a band like the Cure or New Order, these bands that were really just artistic entities but you would hear them at a pharmacy once in a while. Like, I’d hear “Bizarre Love Triangle” come on in the pharmacy in Houston and just be like, “Is this from outer space? What the fuck is this?” My dreams for our band was to do for other people what those bands did for me, which was just throw me a fucking lifeline. Because I was just like, “What is this world, and where are my people, and how can I feel OK existing?” My grandfather played in big bands and played with Louis Armstrong, and he bought me a guitar when I was 15. I held on to that thing — if I didn’t have that I don’t think I would’ve made it out of high school. It literally saved my life. I don’t think I could exist without that.

For me, the Grammy thing was strangely moving. Even up until the moment we won, I just felt like an interloper. Even when we won, people looked at us like aliens. Like, “Who? What?” You know, I’m a competitive person. It was really exciting. Cool, awesome, the universe makes sense for one second. It’s interesting, I didn’t expect it to mean anything until we won, and then it meant something.

David Bowie (2005, 2013, Throughout)

I alluded to this earlier but: The Grammys were like an industry stamp of approval. From the beginning, however, you guys were embraced by a lot of elder artists — particularly artists who were influences on the band. One I wanted to talk about was David Bowie. He was a very early supporter; you performed together in 2005, which turned into a live EP. Then he shows up on “Reflektor” in 2013. Somewhere around 2015, you talked about how you’d come to regard him as this professor-type character in your life. He came to your first New York show, right?

BUTLER: Our first headlining show, when we played at the Bowery, Bowie and David Byrne came to that show.

Wow, no pressure huh.

BUTLER: It sort of set the table. Like, “Well, I guess this is how it’s going to be right out of the gate.” [Laughs] It’s funny, I have a photo of David in my studio that I look at when I’m working sometimes. It’s just him in a dressing room with one of those kind of Hollywood mirrors behind him. He really… I don’t know, he felt some sort of spiritual connection with us. It wasn’t like he wanted anything from us. I just think he wanted to say, “Hey guys, you’re going on the right path, keep going.”

I was emailing him over all those years. I don’t know if you have anyone close to you that’s died and you go back and read those emails, it’s really these strange digital fragments of someone you care about. After he sang on “Reflektor,” Régine and I bought him a painting in Haiti as a thank you gift. We were supposed to mail it to him and we got busy and forgot about it, and in the interim he passed. I knew he wasn’t well, but I didn’t know he was dying. Maybe a couple months later I remembered the painting and I dug it out and it was a painting of a black star. A voodoo painting of a black star with rays coming out of it.

I didn’t know anything about his record being Blackstar or anything like that. Now it’s on the wall of my bedroom. Shit like that sometimes happens in my life. I take it for what it is. I don’t know exactly what that means and I just feel grateful… I don’t know man. Even just how inspiring, what he put into his art even in death. He’s someone I think about at least on a weekly basis.

Backing Up Mick Jagger On SNL (2012), Playing With The Rolling Stones (2013)

Obviously that was an ongoing relationship, and you’ve worked with David Byrne too, and you referenced playing with Neil Young. Still: Being onstage with the Rolling Stones seems particularly daunting.

BUTLER: We were Mick’s backing band on SNL. SNL is maybe one of my favorite American institutions. I don’t know if it’s the Canadian thing since Lorne [Michaels] is Canadian. The first time we did it, it was just like, “This dude is my friend.” I don’t know if Lorne’s kids like Arcade Fire or something. But I was in New York randomly and he was like, “Mick’s doing a thing,” and I said, “We do a pretty amazing cover of ‘The Last Time,’” and he said “Come on down, let’s do it.” Then we’re Mick’s backing band. I don’t know, pretty fucking cool.

What is Mick Jagger like to work with?

BUTLER: Mick is like: As soon as the light goes on, he’s a different person. When he turns it on, it’s like this muscle memory — like if you were with the greatest ballet dancer ever, and you say go and this energy comes out of him that is so practiced. It’s someone who’s an absolute master, after practicing something for decades and decades and decades. That was pretty amazing to see. You’re chatting with someone, we’re at the piano and we’re talking about an arrangement, “OK, let’s do a run,” and then, “Boom! Shit!” There he is.

It’s this other level. I feel like people at that level, music’s not something they’re fucking around with. [Laughs] Music is a spirit. You hear something, and if it strikes a chord with you, it connects something at your deepest core. People like that, when you see them do their thing, it really is this other plane. It’s not this show thing. It’s more of a possession. You can hear it in the music.

I feel like I’ve listened to more music during COVID than any time since I was like, 18. I had this moment when I was listening to these amazing records from the 1950s. You can hear the room. It’s almost like audio VR — you can hear the drummer here and the bass player over here. There’s a sense of space, particularly to that older music. It’s a snapshot. If you hear “La Bamba,” right now, that is what it is. It’s a spirit captured on vinyl, on a piece of tape. It’s alive within that.

With people like Mick, they’re a little bit closer to the spirit of rock ’n’ roll — a literal spirit, not a figurative spirit. Bowie was the same. When he played with us in Central Park, the second he hit the stage he’s illuminated. You’re like, “Oh, shit, that’s what it is.” He’s a human when you’re talking to him and as soon as he’s in it, he’s touched by another thing.

SNL (2007-Present)

I’m glad you brought SNL up, because you’ve been on it a bunch of times, but you’re also one of the musical acts they’ve brought into skits. Like, they actually wrote a game show around you. How does that work? Did they write that sketch with you guys, or you walked in and they’re like, “Hey, by the way…”

BUTLER: I can’t remember, I think we’ve been six or seven times. We’ve been there for a couple different casts at this point. The Lonely Island dudes, those are so my dudes. In another life, I would’ve been in Lonely Island, that would’ve been my dream to just fuck around with my friends; when we were first writing music we were kinda joking around because you’re too insecure to try. A lot of times [at SNL], we’ve played for the staff when we’re there, because you get so fired up to play one or two songs and you’re playing live so your endorphins are running so we just sort of keep playing afterwards. I feel like they appreciate that, it kinda feels like you’re on the same team or something.

I was backstage at SNL once last year, and it is pretty crazy to see it all from the inside like that.

BUTLER: It’s so crazy. They write it all that fucking week, and then to see the differences between the dress rehearsal and the live show. They do a little meeting in Lorne’s office. They’ve done the dress rehearsal and it’s still this tiny office and every cameraman and every cast member is crammed in this little office and Lorne’s like, “Make it a blue light instead of a green light at minute 23, and change this word to this word, I don’t think that’s funny, change that, OK, go,” and everyone’s got pencils writing this down. It’s still fucking that. And you know, it hits and misses sometimes, but they’re doing it.

How long did you have to work on your De Niro impression for that skit?

BUTLER: It’s actually more of a Billy Baldwin impersonation, but it seemed to work for De Niro as well. [Laughs] My only real impression is I can look exactly like Billy Baldwin if I want to. If there’s any casting directors reading this and you need a Billy Baldwin impersonator, I’m your man.

LCD Soundsystem’s Goodbye Show (2011)

You’re the one who ended up serendipitously coining the title of the live album.

BUTLER: [Laughs] That is true. That was genuine. He was being a little talky.

I moved to New York before I moved to Montreal, and I would go to the city and go to shows and I didn’t see one fucking thing that was good in the whole year. I was like, “Wait, I thought New York was the shit, where is it?” All I saw was bad, very industry bands. I couldn’t find anything, I wasn’t cool enough to figure out what was going on. There’s very few bands that I really think of, like bands of my generation where I heard them and thought “These are my people.” For me it was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD, and Wolf Parade. When I heard those bands, I thought, “These are my fellow pilgrims.” It was art, DIY, no bullshit, just trying to make something great that communicates to people. It’s real and emotional.

James is really just one of us. He’s just such a great engineer and really into the way things sound and really passionate about details. It’s rare to meet people like that. James was working with us when Bowie came in, when we were in Electric Lady. James had never met Bowie before. The first 7” he ever bought was “Fame.” We’re in this studio, and the last time Bowie was there he had cut “Fame” with John Lennon, in the same studio. We were all like, “This is the right place to be.”

James is just a man after my own heart. We did a tour with them on Neon Bible. We were playing to a thousand people in Salt Like City and I was like, “Man, in a couple years a lot more people are going to wish they were at this show.” What a fucking great live band.

Scoring Her (2013)

What kind of headspace did you have to get into for this vs. making an album?

BUTLER: Spike [Jonze] came to a bunch of our early shows on Funeral. The second I met him he was just immediately one of my best friends. He thinks about the world the same way. Even though we work in different mediums he was someone I knew I’d be working with in some capacity. I was visiting LA and I was staying with Spike just randomly one time, in the early days of him working on the script for Her. I was reading the script and immediately thinking about how it could sound, and I was like, “Well, we should fucking do the score to this movie.”

When you’re working on a record, it’s so rigid, what works on a song and what doesn’t work on a song. It can be so limiting in a way. Within the band, there’s so many different talents and color palettes and things people bring to the table, so it was cool to do something where the boss is the picture. It doesn’t matter how anyone feels about a piece, if it’s working for Spike, if it’s working in harmony with the picture, that’s what the boss is — the emotionality of the picture. It’s not about you, it’s in service to this bigger thing. It was a cool opportunity for all of us to use different aspects of things we do, and to work with Owen [Pallett], who had done a lot of strings on our records. It uses a totally different part of your brain.

Do you want to do more of that kind of work, or was it this specific story from Spike that spoke to you?

BUTLER: I can say pretty confidently that I’ll work with Spike in the future. It definitely takes a lot of energy. It’s definitely something I’m interested in, but I feel like while I’ve got the juice it’s good to spend as much energy writing songs as we can. It’s pretty fucking hard to make a record, believe it or not.

Future’s “Might As Well” Sampling “Owl” From Her(2017)

Are you a big Future fan?

BUTLER: I love Future. There’s something in the rhythm of the thing he does that actually reminds me of some music from Haiti, in this really deep, subtle way I can’t put my finger on. There’s something almost mystical in the way he sounds, and I thought that was really cool that they sampled that soundtrack. His shit does sound like the future still. I think it’s pretty special.

The Reach Of ”Wake Up” (2004-Present)

This song has had this big pop-culture reach over the years. U2 used it as their walk-on music in the ‘00s. It was used in the trailer for another Spike movie, Where The Wild Things Are. Macy Gray and John Legend both covered it. Microsoft ripped it off for a commercial. It was used in a commercial for LA’s bid for the Olympics.

BUTLER: That Microsoft money went to Haiti, by the way. They did rip it off. [Laughs] Thank you Microsoft.

As far as I know that’s far from an exhaustive list, too. It’s just one of those songs that’s gone out and become a part of the atmosphere. Even a lot of big bands don’t necessarily have a song like that. What do you think it is about “Wake Up” that’s registered in so many different contexts?

BUTLER: From the time we wrote that song to now, the biggest difference in my life is I’ve traveled the world and I’ve been able to play music in all these different cultures and feel the ways different countries feel music. Not only listening to the music in other countries but seeing how they feel the music I play.

I remember around The Suburbs we played in rural Haiti. It was our first time playing in a place where nobody in the audience had any of the reference points of the music we played. We were playing in the mountains, there were people walking in barefoot to the concert. We were playing these songs we had been touring the world with, and the energy from the crowd was so different. The things they responded to, the things they felt, it actually fundamentally changed the way I heard my own music. It made me start to think about music not just from my own perspective but culturally how people hear it and feel it.

I think the one thing that kind of transcends everything across all cultures is melody. Régine was playing that melody on piano in our rehearsal room. I hear it like it was yesterday. It was like, “That’s the shit.” [Laughs] Being present and being in the room, hearing something and really giving yourself to it, just singing that shit like it really meant it and feeling the power of that melody and trying to push it until it breaks. That’s something I think about, just how great it is to have people to play music with. To say it like you mean it.

I remember singing that song in Montreal, in these lofts. Most of our early fans, the first time we played that song, they were like “Fuck this shit, I want the acoustic shit.” People were so negative. I remember a lot of early fans didn’t come to our shows after that because we were suddenly screaming at the top of our lungs and playing electric guitars. It was like, “Everyone here hates this, that means we must be going in the right direction.” [Laughs] But yeah, don’t be discouraged if people hate something. It doesn’t mean shit.

https://www.stereogum.com/2105395/win-butler-interview-spike-jonze-arcade-fire-snl-mick-jagger-david-bowie/interviews/weve-got-a-file-on-you/

#Arcade Fire #Win Butler #interview

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makeupbychio · 4 years

Text

Wildflower // C.H

(credits to the owner of the picture)

Pairing : Calum Hood x Female Reader.

Warnings : Smut, things are getting hot and heavy so take a seat. Swearing and fluff.

Words : 2.5k.

Inspired by : Wildflower by 5sos, duh. And Calum’s pink hair and also a Bad Bunny’s song called A Tu Merced and his videos that he’s been posting with his girlfriend.

a/n : I wrote this today so all mistakes are mine. Feedback is more than welcome. Love y’all and stay at home if you can, stay safe and take care.

"Calum what have you been doing this quarantine?" Calum read the sticker question on his Instagram story while he did the video for the answer.

"Well, not too much to be honest" he said with his raspy morning voice and with his notorious aussie accent. "I'm watching tons of tv shows that I left in the middle, taking the sun, believe it or not baking a lot so also exercise so at the end of this I'm not a ball so yeah".

"Do you have in mind your next hair color?" the question said. He was using a cap since he is recording the videos in the patio. It was a sunny day and people could noticed the glow the sun and maybe another thing was making on his skin. "Actually I did something the other day, I had another color and yesterday I changed it to this one I don't think you guys want to see it" he said removing the cap pointing at his blonde hair.

He answered a couple of questions related to the upcoming album releasing soon and then he said goodbye. "K' guys I'm gonna start my day, hope everyone is okay and please stay home. Love ya' and take care".

He didn't mean it to film this video for his social media and he had in mind to keep it to himself but he wanted to change that and posting anyways since everyone is doing something to show that we are in this together and just to goof around. He is always been so quiet when it comes to big things happening around the world and fans didn't like that about them sometimes.

The previous week he was so bored and had no idea what to do next. You and Calum already had breakfast and exercised early in the morning. It was hot outside so you bring up with the idea to be in the pool. He agreed and went upstairs with you to change into your swim suits.

You and Calum have always been a hot couple but keep it reserved to yourselves even when there is no surprise for the rest of the world even when you try to hide it. You were wearing a tiny red bikini that always drives Calum crazy. He had to control himself for not ripping it off, he wanted to enjoy the moment with you.

"Damn mama, you know how much I love you and thank God for this bikini" he said almost frustrated and kissed your neck before he asked you to help him with the sunscreen on his toned back. Then as he was laying on the grass you also applied the product on the back of his legs. You laughed when you remembered that time when last summer he was laying on his stomach all naked taking the sun and helped him with the sunscreen too for his thighs and ass.

After a long time in the sun when it was burning so much you both went to the pool and enjoyed there with music in the background.

"K' time to get out?" Calum asked you while your legs were laced on his waist and your arms around his neck. You nodded at him and with the same position he hold you with his strong arms out the pool. If it is a cold day he would do the same but in the jacuzzi.

During the last weeks you have been listening to Bad Bunny's new album. It is a hot album like he said in an interview that his mom asked him to go to church on sundays. You have been teaching spanish to Calum since you listen to latin artists and know perfectly the language.

You both are always goofing around so he was next to you dancing in the grass. 'La Santa' was playing in the back in the big speakers so you had a whole party for two. He hugged you from behind while you sang the lyrics and when the song ended he lifted you again to sit in the glass table he has in the shadows. He sit in the comfy chair and you take a sit on his lap, both still with wet hair from previous the swimming.

"Ugh, can we take a picture like this, please?" he asked you and let you know he is been dying to freeze this moment with you like this on his lap and your famous bikini. He took more than one and when he checked them he is mesmerized at your natural beauty and gorgeous body. He sent the pictures to you and you teased him how needy he is today.

You took his face in your hands to give him a peck. "What are you thinking, handsome?" you asked him knowing him perfectly he had something.

"I saw a meme about please do not cut your bangs during the quarantine and I was thinking what if I dyed my hair?" he said. You laughed at his childish idea and told him that he is doing exactly the opposite what the meme he saw said.

"And what color do you have in mind?" you said brushing his little curls with your fingers.

"Mmm I don't know why I had a pink tint upstairs" he said thinking while he rested his head on your boobs, still holding your waist.

"Now you have my attention" you said at him. He gave a little kiss to your exposed breast before he stood up to go find the tint.

Once he came back with everything he needed. You offered him to help him.

But, before you could start, 'A Tu Merced' started playing and Calum knows how much you love this one. The song basically says how she has he wrapped around her finger, that is why in the song Bad Bunny sings that he would do anything she asked him.

Calum started filming with his phone with the front camera as he left his phone in the glass table pointing at the back of the patio where you two started dancing closer since it is a little bit slow song, he tried his best and followed your hips while he sang in your ear the chorus of the song in spanish, and when he lost the rhythm he sit again and you came closer to hug him from behind and you buried your head on his neck and kissed his temple. He was fast again to put you back on his lap. "God, I love you baby. Can we spend all of our mornings like this?" he asked while he devised your lips and kissed you. You shifted yourself better to straddle him so you were blocking the view so his phone was recording your back and when Calum grabbed your ass firmly with both hands. Both of you forgot about the phone and got lost in your make out session while the songs keeps playing. Calum took advantage of what he had in front now that you looked taller on his lap and kissed your exposed skin closer to his mouth then he moved his hands up to the side of your boobs where the straps of your bikini rounded your chest. You groaned because the difference of temperature of his hot hands and the cold of his chains against you compared to the coldness of your clothed skin because of the damp bikini.

You kissed him on the lips interlacing your arms around his neck but broke the next move when the song ended and you came back to reality. “Cal, is still recording or you stopped the video?” you asked him referring to what he started what should be how you dyed his hair. Not that you wanted to do a sex tape with him, at least not in the back of the house.

“Fuck” he jumped and stopped the video immediately. You hid your red face on his neck and laughing at how you both were a mess. You protested at him to not see the video now, you were still embarrassed but he did it anyways and praised you at how amazing and hot you looked on top of him.

“You should keep the video, ya’ know if you miss me on tour” you winked at him and you felt his bulge against your clothed sex. He suggested to move on to dye his hair before he make love to you right there.

You know he is not going to show the video to anyone and you kinda liked the take from that angle when you saw it.

Now, without distractions Calum was recording the process for his new hair color. “Day one thousand of quarantine, we are going to dye my hair” he said to the camera like youtubers doing a tutorial. He introduced you and you started doing what he wanted so you put the gloves and dyed his hair, the video was really funny and his final reaction of the result was hilarious. He was in the bathroom looking at the mirror still with the towel around his neck. “Don’t try this at home, I look like Nicki Minaj but in a bad way” he joked.

During the rest of the day you couldn’t stop running your fingers through his pink hair. It looks amazing on him even when you miss the black curls and even more his afro and you let him know that he looks so handsome.

Once he finished a live stream with Luke (but hiding his hair with the hoodie) on Instagram he went upstairs to get ready for bed. He looked so cuddly with his white cream hoodie and just boxers. He gave you a look, open wide eyes when he found you were wearing the empathy hoodie that he found the last week, and your black lace panties.

“I think I’m going to make this my wallpaper” he pointed at you his phone and the photo he chose. It was the exact moment of his hands on grabbing your ass and the rest was your back with little drops of sweat and water. You hid your red face and laugh on his neck at how shameless he is. "What?! We are staying at home just the two of us, it is not like someone or the guys are going to see your beautiful curves as my background" he said but definitely when the quarantine ended in a future he forgot to change the wallpaper so everyone he knows saw it, even the paps or fans when he walked in the streets and were holding his phone unlocked and cameras did catch what picture he has.

"You are playing a dangerous game, Hood" you looked at him daring him that this game can be played by two.

"Uh yeah?" he bit his lower lip and put down his phone on the nightstand as he got closer, his hands have been always curious so he dug them under his hoodie that you were wearing and for his surprise of your bare chest already. He positioned himself on top of you as you melted into the mattress. He supported his right arm by your side while the left one lifted the green hoodie to show your breasts. He licked all the way up from your stomach to your nipples, you moaned at his warm breath against your skin and arched your back when he played with your nipples. You managed to take off your hoodie so he could continue with his way now kissing your neck where he left hickeys and later you are going to notice that he left in your breasts too.

"I'm going to choose a turtleneck sweater if I want to facetime my family tomorrow" you said thinking of your next move. Got it. "What if we end what we started earlier in the pool?" you asked him with a playful grin.

"What do you have in mind? you know I'm all yours, baby girl" he said lifting his brows making you laugh.

"Ya' know like a hotter video than we did accidentally before I dyed your hair" you could feel how he got even harder against your panties and you love that you have that effect on him. You and Calum are very open mind when it comes to your privacy, it is another topic that he plays an angel role in public.

"Oh my goodness baby girl you are already the death of me" he jumped off the bed to settle his phone so the view were your bodies but from your left side so both of you can see your figures. He took off his clothes and turned off the lights so the moon light is illuminating your bodies.

You were thinking to take care of him but he had other idea. He let you know that tonight was all for you and he wanted to hear you calling out his name with no shame.

After the first round and you both were breathing hardly enjoying and waiting for your waves of pleasure after reaching your highs to pass. "Are you down for another round?" he asked you kissing your chain he gave you for Valentines day. You admired him and softly brushed his pink hair backwards, you got a little bit of the tint in your fingertips since he is so sweaty. Calum was looking down at you too, taking his time looking your features amazed of your beauty and your curves he was touching carefully, god he loves you so much. Despite your or his previous relationships, he talks for himself that you are the only who make him feel like this.

"What are you looking?" you grinned at him after his admiration.

"Nothing baby, I just love you so fucking much" he said putting your hair off your face.

"I love you too" you said, it was the most honest and tender moment you exchanged.

He was going down again to make love to you twice that night. When his fingers landed close your pussy you jumped because you were still so sensitive. He started kissing you from head to toe before he ate you out, king of oral sex. And when again you reached your orgasm and his name left your mouth loud and clear.

He went up to kiss your skin and give attention to your side boob tattoo. It is a wildflower tattoo, not to big but when that piece of your skin is exposed it caught everyone attention.

"My wildflower" he said in a lusty voice like if he was eating his favorite meal when he kissed your tattoo. And that’s it, that’s how he got the inspiration for the song, plus he is going to have his pink hair for a couple of days that you let him clear that you love it. And he just posted on his account a short video when you dyed his hair because the rest of the video and pictures and the video from the previous night it is just for you and him.

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thejosh1980 · 3 years

Text

I was lookin' back to see if she was lookin' back...

Yesterday Alex, Mum and I celebrated...

It's been one year since Alex and I arrived at Mum's place in Ocean Shores, NSW Australia.

If you've read my earlier blogs in 2020, you'll know that we had a lot of trouble getting home. Between the government and airlines, at one point it looked like we'd never get here; we were stranded. I was living in constant worry, stress and hopelessness - in fact, we all were: Alex's family in Germany and Mum's family down under.

Our July 2020 flights were cancelled or rescheduled many times, and eventually we decided to buy new, more expensive flights, on another airline through an agency, which gave us some assurances we'd be on the flight. Our new flights booked and confirmed for early September.

We flew Frankfurt to Adelaide, which was not our original plan. Adelaide had no COVID, and the chance of getting on a flight and getting into the country was higher than say, Brisbane, or Sydney. We could quarantine in Adelaide for 2 weeks and then fly on to Brisbane, which is closer to Ocean Shores.

That was like.... so last year...

This area where we now live is known as the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, and when we arrived at Mum's there was no COVID in the area. We are only about 35 minutes south of the Queensland border, about 8 hours north of the big smoke, Sydney.

Now, a year on, COVID has arrived here.

It's been biting at the heals of tourists and essential workers travelling north since Sydney went into lockdown a couple of months ago.

It's not our idea of a good time.

Right now it's school holidays, which is meant to be 2 weeks of families holidaying in caravan parks and hotels, an essential part of this tourist attraction mecca. Byron Bay, Brunswick Heads, and surrounds are usually very popular places; so popular that most locals complain about how busy it gets here during the holidays. You just can't get a parking sport anywhere!

The Northern Rivers was locked down for about 6 weeks through August into September because cases from Sydney were getting into regional NSW. These regional areas affected by COVID weren't near here, but they made a blanket rule for everywhere outside of Sydney, just to be on the safe side.

Honestly, I don't blame them for the rule, regional outback Australia can't cope with COVID, there's few hospitals, beds, or COVID experience in the scrub and farm land.

Anyhow, I digress...

After those 6 weeks or so in lockdown, they lifted the restrictions here in the northern rivers (and other areas of NSW).

And now, after 2 weeks, lockdown is back on...

There are a couple of cases in the area. Snap lockdowns are the government's preferred method of containing outbreaks. Lockdown areas wherever cases pop up for a week or two (or longer) to limit exposure.

It reminds me constantly that life can change quickly at any time. I have decided I will not waste time once this current lockdown has ended (who knows when that will be). I will visit friends, family, and musicians who live close by. I want to see as many folks as quickly as possible, before another lockdown kicks in.

Besides the boring, never ending tale of COVID, there have been a few things happening this past year...

Alex has been working consistently in the real estate industry since her temporary visa kicked in late last year.

Her first job was a few more miles away than any of us locals would consider driving, and the position wasn't as enjoyable or rewarding as she had first hoped. She really dived in the deep end, and while she didn't drown, she probably needed a few swimming lessons before the attempt. It was a life lesson, one she took on board, and when a new job came up closer to home, she nailed the interview (as she always does), and hasn't looked back.

The 2nd job is less than half the distance away, strictly 9 to 5 and in a company which she enjoys. There's a strong company structure, good work ethic, and entertaining colleagues. Her supervisors, colleagues, and managers are all very supportive; I think she'll be sitting tight on this one for a while.

Alex has also found her creative side again, scrap book journalling, instant camera photography, and some kind of couples diary/journal/photo book too. It's become an almost nightly affair of focusing, creating, and having something to show for it fairly quickly. She's very proud of her work, and it's something she does just for herself. I don't expect you'll get a chance to see a photo of what she's done, and she likes it like that.

I had a bit of work late in 2020 and early 2021, nothing special really, but wait until the premier!! It's interesting to think that some day soon I'll be able to go to the cinema and see my ugly mug on the big screen (even if it will most likely be out of focus). I'll be on Netflix too.

Having the opportunity to be an extra on film and TV was a real boost for my confidence after being off stage for so long. I felt creative, met some great people, made some friends, and had a few bucks in my pocket. Happy days.

By jumping into an industry I hadn't been in before right after arriving here, it reminded me that Australia has a lot to offer. I found myself comparing Germany and Australia, and Australia often feels like it comes up short. This was a chance to prove to myself that there are adventures awaiting here down under.

So, I decided to go back to school.

The last time I was in a class room was in 1998!! I am studying a Diploma of Counselling, and am currently half way through my studies. I've found it very challenging, but have passed every assessment so far, and gained some handy skills too. I have a good connection with my teachers, and I really enjoy the company of my classmates; some of which I can even call friends.

I chose counselling for a few reasons, but the first step was really just a process of elimination. Besides being a freelance professional musician for several years in Germany, I had worked in offices, shops, warehouses, kindergartens and various other jobs. While I could go back into IT or something similar, I wanted to use this opportunity to try something new.

I had my fair share of mental health issues in the past (and present). I thought maybe those experiences could help me connect with folks who need support as well. When looking at course options, the counselling course stood out. So now I'm making a mid life crisis gamble that I'll pass the course, and feel confident and knowledgeable enough to take on the role that many others have taken on for me over the years.

The course has helped me find a routine too, one that I didn't know I needed, until it happened. When you're jobless and unfocused, the mind wanders, the days pass. Now my mind is focused on study, and I feel better for it.

Up until the lockdown hit, we were in class 3 days a week and then I'd study from home 1 to 3 days a week. When lockdown hit, we had to go online. However, being on the computer so much has worn me out, and I really start to enjoy those rare days where I am not looking at a screen!

To be honest, it's been challenging every step of the way, and I even thought about quitting several times in the past few months. However, my confidence has steadily risen to each challenge and I felt better for it.

That's the kind of vicious circle I enjoy.

In July I had my first live show in 13 months! In fact, to date I've only had 3 since the pandemic started! Fingers crossed I can cross the border next month and add a 4th.

I was approached by Cherry Divine to play guitar for her. It's a relatively easy gig for me. The songs are fun rockabilly tunes, Cherry sings great, and she already has a band and gigs. I'm helping her write a few songs too, for her next album. I can't thank her enough for sparkin' the fire in me to keep music alive in my life; for a while there I thought it was all a thing of the past.

With the spark has come the possibility of “The Josh” solo band coming together. While the band isn't moving at any great speed (the recent 2nd lockdown kicked in right as I was about to arrange a rehearsal), I'm finally eager to get a band together. I miss playing live, and I miss having musicians in my life. I miss the spontaneity of a show, life on the road, and crowd reactions.

I've even started to write some new material, and get those ideas on “tape”, well, on the computer. Slow and steady, between studying, family, pets and surfing, music is coming back into my life, and it feels good.

Our family unit here is doing well. Alex and I have been under mum's roof and mum's care for a year now. There are some ups and downs, but mostly I'd say they're ups... The house is big enough to give all of us space, all of us get time outside of the house (except during lockdown, I was mostly stuck at home, but that's OK for me)...

Last night we couldn't go out for dinner, but we did have take away from the local Indian which was really good, and a special treat for us, we don't eat out often.

Alex and I plan to get away every 5-6 months for a visit to somewhere we haven't been. In March we were on the “Sunshine Coast” and checked out Australia Zoo, and in June we went south to the mid north coast to pick up BB Junior.

It's nice to get out and explore. A bit hard to do at the moment, with the restrictions, but we've agreed another trip away (before Christmas if possible) is in order. Those trips are part of the reason why I came home, to see some of Australia, and I'm lucky I get to make those experiences with Alex.

It's also nice to get away from it all. I know we live in a beautiful spot near the ocean, but here, at home, there's the computers, the life and routine, and getting away keeps us fresh and focused on each other. It's definitely something I look forward to!

Speaking of BB Junior, he's almost 7 months old now, and a real character. While he's not the easiest cat to train, I've been getting a few tricks out of him, and he enjoys his time outside, with his harness and long lead. He visits his cousin each week for play time, Charlie, who is another ragdoll of a family friend who loves to play chase all day long with Junior. Alex adores Junior, and Junior adores Alex; they can't wait to cuddle when she comes home from work. He's very vocal too, so even when everyone is at work, I have someone to talk to!

Losing our little boy Mijo was a real difficult experience. I know I've written about him before, but he deserves a mention here, as he was a big part of our first year here. He was full of character and strength, he and I bonded very quickly and not a day goes by I don't think of him. He also brought Alex and I closer together. When she chose him for me, and when he passed, and all points in between, he brought us closer.

I've been focused on sport a fair bit since getting back and settling in. I bought a RowErg, also known as a rowing machine, and I row about twice a week, in addition to riding my bicycle about twice a week. I try to surf every chance I get, which unfortunately ends up being only a few times a month. It's my goal to do something sporty to get my heart rate up every day, and of late, usually I get there too. I don't really do it for any other reason than I love to snack and I can't snack if I don't do sport!

A benefit of my sport/snack workout routine is it helps me stay calm and focused and connected with those I ride and surf with.

I haven't asked Mum how she's feeling about having her middle aged son and his wife living with her recently. Maybe I should, but do I really wanna know the answer? Well, I think she's OK with it. After all, we drive her wherever she wishes! I suspect it goes a little deeper than that, and in all honesty, we enjoy each other's company.

Since Alex and I have been here, I'd like to think Mum has been living a little bit fuller life. I don't think her eyesight has deteriorated much in the past year, but we've been able to provide her with support, eyes to read the small print, driving and help with google, or something around the house. When Mum was diagnosed with celiac disease earlier this year, Alex took her shopping to check over the ingredients of Mum's favourite food, and when needed, found alternatives. It definitely made the transition to gluten free a little easier on Mum and it was a load off my mind that we were around to help her through that phase.

Winter 2021 was over before it even started. I forgot how warm this part of the world is, and I don't know why I own so many jackets! Returning from Europe, where I was wearing a jacket daily for about 9 months of the year, here it feels like, if it's really needed, and I mean if you're desperate, you might need one for 9 weeks of the year. I think the heater was on a handful of times, and the sun was shining just about every day.

I tell ya, it's some kind of paradise here.

It's been a bit difficult keeping up with our European friends and family. I sometimes find it hard to find the time to be proactive to contact the 20, 30 or more friends I'd like to keep in touch with regularly. I know our lives keep on keepin' on, but time passes by so quickly too, and next thing you know it's been 4 months since I last contacted you!

Sorry about that!

Don't take it personally, and I'll get back to you, eventually!

My overall mental health has improved over the year, I'd say it's become quite stable since I started the course. I mean, can't you tell? I write less and less in this blog, because I have less and less to process. I'm not sure if it's the fact there's a lot of self reflection that is inherently a part of doing that kind of mental health course, or if it's the routine of being a student or the new friends I've made and classmates I study with.

It could be that it's taken a year to come to terms with being back here, cause when I first arrived I felt uncomfortable, depressed and worn out... There were a lot of questions; is this a mid life crisis? What am I doing here? Will I ever feel good again? Is my music career over? What am I going to do now? Is Alex OK? Is Mum OK?

My journalling, blogging, and support from friends and family has helped a lot too this past year. Processing my thoughts in words, by clarifying and reflecting, has helped a lot. I've been trying to care for myself a bit more now and then too, I think people call it self care, sometimes I call it sport! Alex has helped me to recognise my achievements, however big or small, and focus less on what I haven't done.

I'm not perfect, but definitely improving.

I was hoping that Alex and I would be in a position to start looking at buying our own house around this time, a year in, but unfortunately, with one of us being a student and the ever rising cost of housing, we have to sit tight on that idea for a while longer. Sorry Mum, you're stuck with us.

There's been many smaller things happen during our first year here. Lots of moments of gratitude, love and support. There's some stuff we've forgotten, or that has been overtaken by something bigger. All in all, I'd say it's been a real rollercoaster home coming!

We're still here, a year on, still going strong, making motions, taking chances, being in love, talking shit, laughing, smiling, misbehaving and focusing... What more could we ask for?

Thank you for reading, for your support and love. I love you too.

Josh

#covid pandemic #1 year celebration #reflection #family life #relationships

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spookysanta · 4 years

Text

online - five. (g.d.)

Summary: everyone warned him about talking to this girl online. but he can’t help but want to fall for her... now he has to meet her. what happens when they finally get together in person?

Pairing: Grayson Dolan x Reader

WARNINGS: as usual, sexy thoughts, nothing major

click here for part one, part two, part three, part four.

UNEDITED

i hope y’all are doing well during this time of quarantine. if you need someone to talk to, i’m always here! :)

He woke up before she did, thankfully. He knew she would be totally asleep after being up in the middle of the night, and lucky for him, she’s a heavy sleeper. So he got the chance to make himself some coffee, run to the store, and have his workout (not necessarily in that order) before going back to his bedroom to wake her. “Honey.” He soothingly rubbed her back to wake her gently.

“No.” she grumbled sleepily. He knew she wasn’t a morning person but that was his clarification. She tried to shake his hand off her but to no avail. “Stop.”

“C’mon, baby. You’ve got to get up.”

“Go away.”

“Fine. I guess you don’t want toaster strudel for breakfast.”

If there’s one thing that she loves to eat for breakfast, he’s learned, it’s toaster strudel. More specifically, the apple flavor. She told him early on in their “conversations” together that she ate them every day and could never get tired of it.

Her eyes opened. “You did not.”

“Oh, I did.” He retorted. “Now get your ass up.”

She sat up, finally. “Alright. You win.”

He moved out of the way so that she could get up, moving quickly to the guest room to get her toiletries. Then she ran back through his room and into his bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. When she was done, she emerged in Grayson’s room where he was sat on the bed scrolling through his phone (as he’s prone to do when he’s waiting for her).

“Took you long enough.” He muttered as he stood, going up to her and snaking his arms around her waist. “You’re so pretty.”

“Seriously?” she asked. “I just woke up.”

“Shut up and let me be mushy.” He took her hand and led her out of his bedroom and into the kitchen. There were grocery bags scattered across the countertops and very clearly she could see the toaster strudel label peeking through the clear plastic. “I also bought you some bacon and eggs, since you still eat animals.”

She wanted to melt. He really does care about her, doesn’t he? “Grayson you didn’t have to do this.”

“I wanted to, don’t worry.” He ushered her to the breakfast bar to sit while he began to prepare her breakfast. “So…I was thinking today we go somewhere special.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” He beat two eggs in a bowl as he talked, sprinkling in cheddar cheese. “Maybe we could go somewhere fun…maybe they’ve got rides…and maybe, just maybe, they just opened a Jurassic World ride that someone has been dying to try.” He shrugged as he poured the eggs in a hot pan. “Just a thought.”

Yes, she was excited that he suggested taking her to Universal Studios Hollywood, duh. Who wouldn’t be? But she was way too busy watching him cook for her—shirtless—to even register the idea. She was way more concerned with the thought of her bent over this counter with him behind her as he wrapped a hand around her throat—

“Hello?”

He snapped her out of her trance. “What?”

Too early, (Y/N). It’s too early in the morning for you to have these sinful thoughts, said one part of her conscience. Remember, teddy bears, waterfalls...

“You zoned out there for a bit.” He plated her breakfast, then set it in front of her. “Does that mean you don’t want to go to Universal today?”

“Yes, I’d love to.” She finally realized that she finally had the opportunity to go to Universal Studios, ride every ride there, and eat fatty and expensive amusement park food until she got a stomachache. He came around to where she was sitting and kissed her forehead before sitting in the seat next to her. He picked up one of the pieces of toaster strudel he made for her and took a big bite, wiping his fingers off on a napkin. “Grayson—”

“You can’t be mean to me today, baby. I’m taking you to check off your bucket list so really, you should be thanking me, hm?” he cocked an eyebrow at her.

“You know what? You’re absolutely right. Thank you, Grayson.” she tried to make it sound as sarcastic and unnerving as possible.

“I’ll take it.” He leaned over and peppered kisses on her brown cheek. “Alright, baby, I’m going to go shower and change. You finish up here, and we’ll get going around one, okay?”

“Okay.”

***

She had to remind herself that she needed to keep her thoughts to a minimum. She wasn’t entirely sure how that would happen because he was so gorgeous and he was so strong—she did not forget how effortlessly he picked her up last night to carry her to bed, and she certainly didn’t forget the tightness in his grip around her waist as they slept.

But even with how strong he was, and how dominating he seemed, he was still so gentle with her. He made sure to talk to her as if he were telling secrets, and he made sure to touch her gently, almost as if she were a porcelain doll.

She could tell that she meant a lot to him by the way that he kisses her forehead and cheeks, but why in the hell has he not kissed her yet? She knows that they both like each other in that way, and he already told her that he wanted her as his girlfriend, so what is he waiting for?

The (not) couple finished getting ready and was out the door before one o’clock—much to his pleasure. She begged him to let her play her music on his auxiliary because she’d just downloaded a song that she had to play. So naturally, he said yes, especially when she gave him the puppy dog eyes. When she played it she couldn’t help but get giddy inside because the song was so good (honestly her favorite at the moment), and they were going to Universal Studios Hollywood, and on top of it all, she was with him and he looked absolutely radiant.

“What’s this?” he asked over the blaring vocals.

“Oh my gosh, it’s called “when the party’s over” by Billie Eilish. Do you listen to her?”

“No, not really. It’s a bit sad, don’t you think?” he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and saw her completely engulfed in the music.

“Yes, that’s the point.” She replied. “Isn’t it great?”

“It’s alright.” He shrugged.

“Alright? Gray, did you not hear what I heard? The vocals? The harmonies? The piano? C’mon, baby, you’re joking, right?”

Wait.

What’d she just say?

“Say that again.” Thankfully, they were stopped at a red light. He looked directly at her.

“Say what?”

“You just called me “baby”.”

Her eyes widened. She didn’t even realize she said that! “Oh, did I?”

“Yes, you did. And I want to hear you say it again…please.”

He needed to get himself under control because if she plans to call him “baby” all day long, then it’s going to be a long ass day.

“Okay…well, baby, I’m very excited to go to Universal with you today!”

He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I’m excited, too. Trust me.”

“You do know now I have to put you on to more amazing music, right?”

He rolled his eyes. “If you must.”

***

The short car ride felt like an eternity to him. Not because he didn’t love having her around, because it’s very apparent that he did; it’s just the damn music would not end. Her music choice was…different. Not in a bad way, he thinks. It’s just not what he listens to and he almost had to plead for her to play Tame Impala before he earned a headache before their day even began.

He’s gained a new respect for Flo Milli, he’ll admit—but not to (Y/N), because then he’ll never hear the end of it.

When they pulled into the parking lot, he sat back in his seat, killing the engine and taking out his phone.

“Hey,” she piped up. “what are you doing?”

“I’m sending you your ticket. Shush.”

She couldn’t help it, and not that she wanted to, but she took her hand and raised it to his head, running her fingers through his hair. His body stiffened at the sudden contact, then relaxed when she felt him scratch his scalp carefully. There was something about the way his hair felt; almost too soft for it to be there. She wasn’t the “hair-smelling” type, but judging by the softness of it, she could tell he took good care of it and it had to have smelled good. She ran her hand through the longer tufts of hair at toward the front of his head, following the span of his scalp to the back of his head, and scratching at the nape of his neck. She soon found herself twirling the hair around her fingers, pulling on the strands accidentally.

He sucked in a breath, saying “ow” but not really meaning it.

“Oops! Sorry.”

Now here’s the issue between the two of them: they want each other. Not just with cute dates and kisses and snuggles, but in the most intimate way possible. But she’s not going to tell him that, and he definitely won’t tell her, because the list of things in his mind that he wants to do her is vast and vivid; he doesn’t want to break her before she’s ready to be broken.

Moreover, he doesn’t want her to see him as a distraction once she leaves. Once she leaves, she has to go back to school and study her ass off, and she won’t have time to call him every hour and tell him how much she misses him. She won’t be able to snuggle him, kiss him, or run her fingers through his hair. And that could be problematic for the both of them.

She’ll admit that she’s the type to fall hard and fast, so yes, the chance of her falling for him is going to be sky high; but that doesn’t mean she won’t do what it takes for thing they’ve got going to be successful and, most importantly, to keep him around.

He put his phone in the pocket of his hoodie, opening the car door. “C’mon.”

***

Of course, they had a blast. She rode rides that she’d only seen in the commercials or on the internet, and he got to witness her joy firsthand. That was his favorite part—besides trying deep-fried Oreos and sharing a glass of butterbeer with her. They walked hand-in-hand back to the car when she sighed contentedly. “Thank you for today.” She wrapped her other arm around his bicep. “You have no idea how much fun I had.”

He chuckled, kissing her head as though it were his job. “I think I have an idea…but you deserved it, okay? Don’t thank me.”

As they approached the car, his mind began to race (more than it already does when he’s around her). You know what? He thought, fuck it.

“Well, I still appreciate it.”

He stopped in his tracks, gently pulling away from her and taking her hands in his.

Her eyebrows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“So here’s the deal.” He spoke lowly. “All day, I’ve been wondering about what things could be.”

“In regard to…?”

“Us.” He nodded between the two of them to clarify.

“Right. Okay.”

“And I like you. And you like me. So why can’t we try?”

“Grayson, what’s gonna happen when I go back?”

“I—I’m not sure. But we don’t have to think about that right now, okay?” he let out a breath, cupping her jaw with his hands, rubbing his thumbs along her cheekbones. “I just can’t keep looking at you and not kiss you.”

Her heart fluttered again.

Or maybe this time, it actually stopped. She doesn’t know (or care) either way.

Without a second thought, she said, “So kiss me.”

“Huh?”

“Kiss me.”

He nodded, leaning down to her, his eyes locked on her lips. Why was he so nervous? He generally doesn’t act this way. But she was just so perfect, so beautiful—he had to take things slowly so as not to hurt her or break her like he thinks he could (potentially). Their lips brush, and finally, they meet. Her hands wrap around his forearms, and everything that her mind was clouded with was melted away instantly. She sighed into the kiss, relishing in the feeling.

When they pulled apart, he put his forehead against hers, unable and unwilling to hide his grin.

“Ready to go?” he asked her, not wanting to let her go for even a moment.

“Yeah.”

#grayson dolan #online #online fic #online series #grayson bailey dolan #dolan twins #grayson dolan x reader #grayson dolan x black reader #grayson dolan x black girl #grayson dolan smut

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siempre-pedro · 4 years

Text

Put Your Head On My Shoulder

Pedro Pascal x Reader

Summary: Everything is blissful when Pedro asks you to be his dance partner for a dance lesson he has to take for a new role, until you catch a contagious illness and have to cancel. Pedro finds a way to still dance with you and confess his feelings.

Word Count: 2.2k

A/N: I’m obsessed with those songs but in another room videos/audio! I wrote this inspired by Paul Anka’s song...but in another room. I recommend listening to it while you read.

Requests are OPEN

A gentle knock of your apartment door interrupted your glamorous dinner one Monday night. You folded the corner of your magazine and took one final bite of your Lucky Charms before getting up to answer it “Coming,” you shout, your mouth sill full of cereal.

Once you open the door, you swallow your food as fast as you can, not wanting to embarrass yourself in front of your hot neighbor. You’d known Pedro for years, he had moved in next to you and sent over a plate of baked goods and a note apologizing in advance for any noise. Both of you were smitten since that day. “Did I interrupt you again?” Pedro asks, grimacing at his awful timing.

“Nah I only got to the who wore it best section this time,” you chuckle, leaning on the cold door frame and tugging your knit sweater up on your shoulder. Pedro ran his fingers through his messy brown hair and then cooly put it in his front pocket “What do you need?”

“A favor,” he responds simply, “when was the last time you danced?” You squint your Y/E/C colored eyes and your lips pucker in thought.

“Senior prom. Why?”

“I signed on to do a project, and I have to learn how to waltz,” he explains, a pink tint rising to his tanned skin. You smile softly and cross your arms over your chest, motioning him to continue. “I found a class on Friday in Midtown, will you please be my partner?”

“Why me?” you ask, trying to hide a giddy smile that was threatening to make an appearance. The man of your dreams was inviting you out and all you do was stand there and look like an idiot! He looked so nervous and precious, standing there fidgeting on his spot.

“You know I have two left feet, I trust you not to laugh at me too much,” he laughs. That was fair, he did, hen he invited you to a friends wedding you got to experience that first hand. “Please, Y/N. I need you,” he begs looks at you with pleading eyes.

“Fine, fine, fine,” you agree “Friday.”

He sighs in relief and pulls his hands from his pockets “You are my savior, Y/N. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ll see pick you up at 5 and we’ll take the Subway, yeah?” He plans excitedly, almost bouncing. You bit back a girly laugh and did your best to keep your calm composure.

“I’ll see you then.”

Except you wouldn’t. Tuesday and come and gone and when Wednesday came you woke up with the worst headache of your life. Your neck was so stiff it felt like you were tied to a board, and after some back and forth with yourself, you made an appointment and thankfully, they were able to see you right away. Pedro was texting you nonstop for updates and made silly jokes to calm you. Some made you giggle and others made you groan from second-hand embarrassment.

Those jokes didn’t help when your doctor stood in front of you, his clipboard under his arm, and his eyes looking stern down at you. The older looking man takes a deep breath before giving you the diagnosis “Its meningitis,” he tells you bluntly.

You blink a couple of times, cocking your head as far as it could go without it hurting…which wasn’t that far at all “Meningitis?” you repeat confused, you’d never heard of that before.

The doctor leans against the old counter and uses his free hand to press against the back of his neck “You have an infection that’s causing swelling of the membrane covering your brain and spinal cord, ” he begins to explain, and this is where your daydreams came to a rough stop “It’s highly contagious and often deadly, seizures, brain damage, hearing loss.”

Your eyes widened at the amount of emphasis he used in ‘highly’ “Oh,” was all you could say. Fuck now you were afraid you were going to die! You couldn’t tell Pedro you liked him if you were dead. “H-how bad is my case?” you ask meekly, your eyebrows turning upwards in worry.

“Thankfully we caught it early and the infection is only bacterial, I’ll be giving you the best antibiotics I can and you should come out of this with no side effects,” he tells you, taking his clipboard from his arm to start writing down a prescription. Here comes another kicker “You need to be quarantined for at least a week, no face to face interaction with other people.”

“I have a date Friday,” you say without thinking about what you just blurted out. The doctor looks up from his clipboard and gave you a look that said ‘are you serious?’

“Do you want them to get infected?”

“No.”

He laughs “Then stay home and rest. I’ll supply you with a few masks to get home, then no going out. You go to the pharmacy and go home. Got it?”

You smile at him “I do. Thank you, Doc.”

Telling Pedro you couldn’t go dancing with him may have been the hardest thing you’d ever have to do. You imagined it was going to crush him as bad as it did you. You lean back in your seat on the train, passengers saw your blue medical mask and creating a bubble around you, at least you were alone-ish. Sliding your phone out of your pocket you begin to text him ‘I’m on my way back.’

He replies almost instantly ‘How’d it go? Are you ok?’

‘I have meningitis. A brain infection basically.’

‘Jesus Christ. Are you going to live???’

‘lol yeah. I have to be quarantined for at least a week. I’m HIGHLY contagious. I can’t go with you Friday, I’m so sorry Pedro.’

Pedro’s quick responses ceased. You were constantly checking your phone every few seconds to see if he texted back. You watched your screen intensely, no pop-up messages were appearing, and when it did it was just an Instagram notification that gave you false hope. It took the actor 7 minutes to finally respond.

‘Fuck. Please don’t worry Y/N, I just really want you to get better! I’ll go to that bodega down the street and get you a few things so you don’t starve and stuff.’

Fuck this guy for taking care of you, fuck him for being sweet and nice and everything you wanted him to be. Too bad you were breaking both your hearts, you think. No Pedro was fine you assumed, just helping out a friend.

When you got back to your apartment you found two grey plastic grocery bags filled with Gatorade, semi-healthy snacks, and Tylenol you assumed. On the bag was a neon yellow sticky note ‘I hope I got you everything you needed. I’ll see you in a few days : ) – Pedro’ it read. You smiled softly to yourself and picked up the bags, ready for the lonely week ahead.

Thursday you were in the worst pain of your life, it was like that scene if Ferris Beuller’s Day Off when Cameron was in bed telling Ferris that he was dying, unable to move. That was you, 80s music and all as you laid hopelessly in your bed, surrounded by clear bottles of Gatorade and snacks that Pedro provided. Pedro himself was only adding to your pain, his constant texts asking how you were and trying to make you feel somewhat better was backfiring, you still felt terrible about the dance class. In the evening Pedro would knock on your door, leaving your mail in front of the doorstep. Too bad you couldn’t move to get it.

Friday you were able to accomplish getting out of bed and slowly moving around your apartment. You were leaning on your kitchen counter, chicken noodle soup near boil in a silver pot in front of you. You checked the clock on your microwave ‘4:58’ it read in glowing blue letters, Pedro would be leaving at any moment. That is if he was really going of course.

He was, the door to his apartment closed loudly and a light giggle rang through the walls. You stood stiff, that was a female voice. You rushed to grab a medical mask in the living room, tugging on your gray oversized sweater and a good excuse in your mind.

Your door opened in a rush and you stood in the hallway, the speed of everything got Pedro and the woman’s attention. God she was beautiful, tall and bronzed with silky long black hair, if they needed a new Miss Universe it would’ve been her. She was your foil, you were there in sweatpants and your hair greasy hair pulled up into a high bun, a blue medical mask covering your frown but they couldn’t conceal your dark bags. “Y/n,” Pedro speaks cautiously like a man in a relationship getting caught with another woman. The tall skyscraper of a woman scans you up and down disapprovingly and you didn’t miss her taking a step back when you coughed. “This is Katerina. Kat this is Y/n.”

“Hi,” she sighs, and you simply wave at her before crossing your arms over your chest defensively. Katerina, you hated the way he said her name with that accent of his. Your heart was shattered, would rather dance with her. Your mind quickly flashed to him leaning in to kiss her while they danced, their bodies pressed together.

“What are you doing outside?” he asks you with concern.

You bit your quivering lower lip and replied in a faltering tone “I just came to get my mail.”

Pedro’s dark brown eyes look at you sympathetically “Do you need it right now?”

The tears started to form in your eyes, she probably thought you were ridden with disease “N-no.”

“Please go rest, I promise to bring it to you tonight,” he pleads.

“Pedro we need to go, the Uber’s out front,” Katerina interjects.

You didn’t say anything as he offers a guilty smile before walking off with her. Once their figures disappear down the hall you take in a sharp breath, tears falling down your cheeks. Why did you have to get sick? Why did it have to be contagious? Why did he choose her? You were so angry and jealous and it going to the window in your bedroom to watch him help her into the Uber fueled the angry green fire in your soul.

Later that night you sat on your couch brooding, that night’s rerun of Entertainment Tonight providing background noise as you angrily flipped through Vogue. Pedro would be back any moment, and you were just waiting to hear Katerina’s obnoxious giggles. Soon enough Pedro’s front door opened and shut, no exchanges of words or laughter could be heard. Maybe he did come home alone and you were worrying for nothing.

Music started to play from the apartment next to you, the 50s song you recognized from your father's collection and that one all the kids were into these days. Why was he playing it this loud? You could hear Paul Anka’s voice over Kevin Frasiers on the tv, the bass gently thumping the wall behind you.

Your phone started to ring, Pedro’s name and goofy face popped up “Pedro you’re going to have to pay another fine if you keep it this loud,” you say playfully as you answer it.

“How are you feeling?” He asks lowly.

“Better.”

“Good, stand up,” he instructs.

“W-why?”

“Do his for me Y/N, please,” he sighs.

You shrug and oblige, putting your magazine to the side and standing up in the middle of your apartment “Now what?” you inquire.

“Can you hear the music?”

“How can I not… I’m sorry, yes, yes I can,” you laugh.

“Good, now close your eyes and imagine I’m with you…we’re dancing,” he tells you and you do what he says. You smile and start slowly swaying to the song “I really wish you were with me tonight.”

“You didn’t like what’s her name as a partner?”

Pedro chuckles and closes his eyes “No she was fine. I just wish it was you… my first choice.”

“First choice?” you question.

“You’re always my first choice, Y/N.”

‘put your head on my shoulder’ you cock your head to the side and imagine your putting your head in the crook of his neck, the smell of his cologne bringing a sense of comfort. “I didn’t mean to get sick,” you confess.

“I know, I know… I’m not upset at you or anything. I just had bigger plans for this evening,” he admits, a pink tint rising to his cheeks.

“Which are?” you hum.

“I wanted to tell you that I liked you. More than a friend.” Your eyes open and you snap out of the fantasy, your heart ready to burst from your chest.

“Pedro,” you breathed, wishing he could see the blissful smile. “I’ve liked you since you moved in.”

There’s a silence on both ends, the romantic song filling the void but soon he speaks “Once your better you’ll dance with me?” he wonders.

“I promise,” you say, and the fatigue sets in, “I-I’m getting tired, I did too much today”

Pedro hums in contentment “Go to sleep, I’ll bring your mail and slide it under the door. Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Goodnight Pedro,” you whisper. As you hang up the song ends, your eyes look at the wall that divided your apartments and smiled all the way to your bed.

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal imagine #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x you #pedro pascal fanfic #pedro pascal fluff

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letterboxd · 3 years

Photo

Lonesome Cruiser.

Blockbuster composer Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL, talks to Gemma Gracewood about composing for titans, his pride in Dutch cinema, friendship with George Miller and longing for Olivia Newton-John. Plus: his Letterboxd Life in Film and why he’s selling his prized collection of recording gear.

It has been a spectacular spring for Tom Holkenborg, the Dutch musician also known as Junkie XL, who has crafted the scores for multiplex fare such as Mad Max: Fury Road, Deadpool, Terminator: Dark Fate, Sonic the Hedgehog and the upcoming zombie banger Army of the Dead. Only weeks apart, two blockbusters landed on screens with his sonic stamp all over them: Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong and Zack Snyder’s re-realized Justice League.

Thankfully, the Godzilla vs. Kong score was complete by the time the Justice League telephone rang. Holkenborg—who had lost the Justice League gig along with Snyder the first time around—knew the Snyder cut was coming; he had closely watched the growing calls for it online. “Zack and I already started talking in 2019. He’s like, ‘What if we were to finish this? What would it take?’ Those conversations turned to ‘Well, how many recording days potentially do you need and how much of an orchestra do you potentially need?’ Finally, somewhere in April 2020, that’s when that phone call came: ‘Okay, light’s green, start tomorrow, and start running until it’s done because it’s four and a half hours’.”

Ray Fisher as Cyborg in ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’.

Holkenborg approaches the titanic task of blockbuster film scoring with an engineer’s mindset: “Building a fantastic, huge house with 20 bedrooms and the dance hall and the kitchen… You’re not going to start by building the third bathroom for the third guest room, right?” Once he has identified the scenes that are most important to his directors—for Snyder, they included the introduction of Cyborg, three fight set-pieces, and a scene of The Flash running that comes towards the end of the film—the composer identifies instrumental “colors” in order to build a theme around each character. Then he holds some of those colors back, theorizing that “if you want like an, ‘Oh!’ experience by looking at a painting that has a huge amount of bright yellow in it, it’s way more successful to see fifteen paintings in front of it, where yellow is absent.”

The Godzilla vs. Kong score satisfies Holkenborg’s life-long love of both characters. “I don’t have a preference for either one. I love them both for various different reasons.” Their respective histories fascinate him: Godzilla as a way to make sense of Japan’s nuclear fall-out, and Kong as a gigantic spectacle that ended up attracting the sympathies of the audiences he was supposed to scare. Even when the science makes no sense (“what the fuck are plasma boosters, anyway?!”), Holkenborg is still happy to wax lyrical about the emotional depth of Kong’s stories, the elaborate concepts of the Godzilla-verse, and his musical approach to the pair—dark, moving brass for Godzilla, with synthesized elements “because he is a half-synthesized animal”, and a more organic, complex orchestration for Kong, featuring “one of the world’s bigger bass drums”.

Adam Wingard’s ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’.

All of this seat-shaking bombast is composed on an “insanely massive sound system” in Holkenborg’s small home studio (though he reassures pandemic-stricken film lovers that he has recently seen both Godzilla vs. Kong and Justice League on his laptop—and “really enjoyed watching it like that”). The process, he says, was “pretty intense”, but only in terms of the sheer amount of score needed. Composing in quarantine was not much different from his usual workflow. “I’m a pretty lonesome cruiser anyway. Composing, by nature, is like a solo exercise—obviously with assistance.”

Like many creatives (Bong Joon-ho recently told a film studies class that he is up at 5:00am most days to watch a movie), Holkenborg is an early riser, waking by 4:00am. “I’m super sharp between like 4 or 5:00am and 9:00am, so I like to do a lot of creative work in that slot.” He takes care of business until mid-afternoon, when another creative spurt happens. “And then I have another batch of calls usually to make, and then around 8:30pm, I’m going to retire for the rest of the day and just chill out a little bit and watch stuff that I want to see, read things that I want to read. Right now I’m studying Portuguese.” By 10:30pm, he’s asleep. “And then at three o’clock I get up.” (Needless to say, Holkenborg’s children are no longer small.)

The pandemic simplified a lot of things for a lot of people: for Holkenborg, it has been a moment to tidy up the physical side of his work. In November last year, he opened an online shop to divest the bulk of his gear—synths, pedals, guitars, drum machines and much more—that he has been collecting since the late 1970s. When friends told him he’d regret it, he disagreed. “At some point I’m going to die. I can’t take them to the afterlife. I also found out I don’t need them. I love to have them around, but I don’t need them.”

Tom Holkenborg with the bass drum used in the ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ score.

It certainly solves the question of what he’d take if his house was on fire. “The hard drives with sounds and music over the last 40 years, 45 years, that’s hard to replace. So, that would be it. I’m just thinking about things that are absolutely irreplaceable and there are not that many, really.” Alas, it’s bad news for that bass drum. “I can’t take that with me when the house is on fire. Unfortunately, it’s going to make the house burn longer.”

Anyone who has interviewed or spent time with Holkenborg will agree: he may be a lonesome cruiser, but he is also personable, funny, loves to settle in for a chat. As he lights his second or third cigarette in readiness for his Life in Film questionnaire, I’m curious about his relationships with the esteemed filmmakers he has worked with—who include his mentor, Hans Zimmer, directors Sir Peter Jackson, Tim Miller, Robert Rodriguez and, especially, Fury Road’s George Miller.

The story of how Holkenborg scored Mad Max: Fury Road bears retelling: that George Miller did not want a soundtrack (“he was convinced that the orchestration of sounds of the cars would be enough to carry the whole movie”), that Holkenborg was only brought in to create a little something for the Coma-Doof Warrior’s flame-throwing guitar, that they hit it off, the job grew, and grew, into a score that covers almost the entire film.

The Coma-Doof Warrior in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015).

What is his best memory of Fury Road? “Well, obviously, when I saw the movie for the first time and I was like ‘what the hell am I looking at?’,” he laughs. “What I mostly look back on is the friendship that I developed with George and the film school one-on-one that I got admitted to, while being paid at the same time, to study with somebody like him. We would talk all night about all kinds of things and nothing, because that really defines our relationship so much—a joint interest in so many different things.”

Happily, Holkenborg and Miller are working together again, on Three Thousand Years of Longing. “It’s really great to be in that process with him again. It’s just like about pricking each other with a little needle. It’s like, ‘Oh, why are you saying that?’ We do that with each other to keep each other sharp. ‘Oh, but if you’re doing this, I’m going to be doing that.’ And then, ‘Oh, if you’re doing that, I’m going to be doing this.’ So it’s really interesting.”

What is your favorite Godzilla film?

Tom Holkenborg: 1989’s Godzilla vs. Biollante. It’s a very obscure one where he’s basically fighting a giant rose. Let’s not look for the logic there.

Why has that particular Godzilla captured your heart? It’s so corny. Yeah. Mothra vs. Godzilla is also great. Mothra looks like a very bad Arabian carpet that was imported through customs and it got delivered by FedEx completely ruined and then laid outside for like four weeks in the rain.

‘Godzilla vs. Biollante’ (ゴジラvsビオランテ, 1989).

What is the first film you remember seeing in a cinema? Bambi. I was six years old, yeah.

And is there a film you have fond memories of watching with your family—a movie that became a family favorite? Not, like, a family favorite because our opinions were too diverse for that, but the next movie that became very important to me when I was a little older was Saturday Night Fever. I thought the soundtrack was, like, groundbreaking, mind-blowingly insane. It’s not necessarily those three massive beats of the Bee Gees on there, but all these other really alternative, left-field tracks by bands like Kool & the Gang. And the way that that darker disco music played against that really dark movie about what it’s like to live in New York and become a competitive dancer, it’s incredible. And still, today, it’s one of the movies where film music and the film itself had so much impact on me, even though it’s not a traditional film score in that sense. It’s incredible.

What is the film that made you want to work in movies, given that you also have a whole musical career separate from movies? (Enjoy Junkie XL’s early 2000s remix of Elvis Presley’s ‘A Little Less Conversation’.) For me, the move from a traditional artist into film scoring was a very slow gradual process. There’s not one movie that pushed me over the cliff. It’s just, like, all the great movies that were made. And I still have a list of obscure movies, classic movies that I need to see.

Yesterday I saw the weirdest of all, but I do want to share this: the original, uncut R-rated version of Caligula, [from] 1979. He [director Tinto Brass] was notoriously brutal and he organized orgies and had terrible torturing techniques. But it’s really weird, there’s Shakespearean actors in there, and then it goes to full-on porn sections. It’s really weird. The music is incredible. You can find it online. You will not find it anywhere [else]. I can just imagine what this must have felt like in 1979 when the film came out. Suspiria, that’s another one. It’s just like, how weird was that thing?

What is your favorite blockbuster that you did not compose? Ben-Hur. I’ve seen that one at least 20 times.

What’s your all-time comfort re-watch? The movie I’ve seen the most is Blade Runner. It’s just, like, it’s a nice world you’re stepping into, that fantasy. It’s not necessarily because I have memories [of] that movie that brings me back to a certain time period, it’s not that. It’s just that I just love to dwell in it. It feels a little bit like coming home. You can use it as comfort food, you can use it as, “I’m not feeling anything today”, or the opposite. You feel very great and you feel very inspired and it’s like, “Oh, let’s go home and watch that movie again.”

Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line’ (1998).

Hans Zimmer has been an important mentor to you. Do you have a favorite of his scores? Yes, The Thin Red Line. It’s also the filmmaking of Terrence Malick—he forces a composer to think a certain way. He would always say, “It’s too much, make it less, make it smaller, make it this, make it that.” So, A, it’s a very good movie and B, he got Hans into the right place and Hans just over-delivered by doing exactly the right things at the right time and then shining just because of that.

Who is a composer that you have your eye on and what is one of their films that we should watch next? It’s so sad to say, but I mean, let’s call it like a retrospective discovery if you will. I’m so sad that we lost Jóhann Jóhannsson. He was a composer I felt really close to. We started roughly in the same time period making our way in today’s world. Also, Jóhann came from an artist background, even though it was a modern classical background. He made really great records, great experimentation with electronic elements, with classical instruments, and the mix between the two of them—very original way of looking at music. With Denis Villeneuve as his partner in crime the movies that they did were just mind-boggling good, whether it was Sicario or Arrival or Prisoners, and his voice will truly be missed among film composers. So people that are not super familiar with his work, I would definitely check it out.

‘Turks Fruit’ (Turkish Delight, 1973).

What is a must-see Dutch film that we should add to our watchlists? Holland has small cinema, but it has a really rich cinema and a very serious cinema culture. Usually because there’s not enough work in film, people are serious stage performers but then they also act in movies so they understand both really well. And we’ve delivered. There’s a string of actors that make their way to Hollywood or star in well-known series, whether it’s like Game of Thrones, or what we just talked about, Blade Runner. Many directors like Paul Verhoeven, Jan de Bont, the cameraman.

And so a movie that I’d like to pick is an old movie, called Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight) from the 1970s. Rutger Hauer is a younger guy, like, this completely irresponsible guy that starts this relationship with a really beautiful young girl, and they do all these crazy things, they do a lot of drugs and they have a lot of sex. He’s just like a bad influence on her.

Then he finds out she [has] cancer and it’s terminal. And to see him deal with that, and to see him want a change, but also in that change he does a lot of bad stuff at the same time… It was a sensational movie when it came out. And it actually was directed by Paul Verhoeven, one of his earlier films. When you see it, you’re just like, ‘Why am I watching this?’ for the first 45 minutes and then it starts and it’s like, ‘whoa’. So it’s really good, even in retrospect.

Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in ‘Grease’ (1978).

What is the sexiest film you’ve ever seen? When I was super young, it was definitely Grease, with Olivia Newton-John, when she was in her catsuit at the very end of it. I had her picture on my bedroom, above my bed sideways because I was only like ten years old or something. I was so in love with Olivia Newton-John. It wasn’t the film per se, it was her. Yeah, I find, personally, movies from the ’70s to be more sexy, but it has something to do with the super-loose way that people were dressed and people were behaving.

And the other one was later in life: Basic Instinct. Sharon Stone. I’m not talking about like the famous shot, right, where she crosses her legs. I’m not talking about that, but the way that she acts throughout the whole movie. It’s insane. It’s really great.

Are there any films that have scared you? Like, truly terrified you? Yeah, I’m not a big fan because I get sucked up too much in it. The found [footage] horror movies like Paranormal Activity and things like the Japanese version of The Grudge, I cannot watch that stuff. That gets me too much. Because when I watch a film, I cannot watch it with one eye half open, the other one closed, like, ‘Okay, kind of cool, interesting’. I just get sucked into it.

Is there a film that has made you cry like no other? Oh yeah. Multiple. Once Upon a Time in America. The Godfather. Hable con Ella (Talk to Her). Betty Blue.

Thomas Holkenborg, AKA Junkie XL.

These are the films that make you weep? Not like on a regular basis, but I remember those were the ones that I really got hit. I’m talking particularly about the third Godfather. That whole end scene when they get out of the church and then… It’s really well-acted. So many Godfather fans that were dismissive of the film when it came out, in retrospect, ten, fifteen, 20 years later, are like, ‘it’s a really good film’. And I actually think so.

Final question. Is there a film from the past year that you would recommend, that you’ve loved? [Long pause.] The thing is that I watch pretty much a movie a day. So, that’s like three to four hundred movies. It [has] happened so often that I watch a film and then I’m just like an hour and 45 minutes in, it’s like, ‘wait, fuck, I’ve seen this thing before’.

So, we have an app for that… [Laughs.]