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songtoyou · 3 years

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Tempting Fate - Part Five

Paring: Tommy Shelby x Reader

Warnings: Nothing major, but there is lots of smoking, particularly marijuana.

Word Count: 2,098

Story Summary: Tommy is not a believer in fate or destiny. However, a new resident in Small Heath will question his beliefs and push his boundaries outside his comfort zone.

A/N: Remember, this story takes place during season two of the show. May Carleton makes an appearance in this chapter. Once again, I included Romani phrases in this chapter. I found the phrase online and hope it is correct. If it isn’t, then I am profoundly sorry and do not wish to offend anyone. That is never my intent. Remember, there is no Grace or Greta in this fic. They do not exist in the realm of this alternate universe.

Please do not post any of my fics to other sites without my permission.

Tag list: @owenniasstars

You did not know what you and Tommy were to each other. The terms “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” didn’t seem right as it was too mundane and basic. However, you and Tommy had grown a little be closer after you both apologized for miscommunicating with one another. Tommy would often walk you home at night after work and stay the night. It became routine for you to wake up next to him in the morning, which was nice and comforting.

For Tommy, being with you was nothing he had ever experienced before. Before the war, he would go on dates every once in a while, but nothing ever lasted longer than a week or two. After the war, it was all one-night stands or nights spent at whore houses. However, with you, it was all new for him. There was something about being with you that Tommy could not quite describe the feeling until Polly coaxed it out of him.

“Safe. Thomas, you feel safe for the first in a long time. Being with this girl will change your life for the better. She is good for you. The two of you will balance one another, her lightness with your darkness. However, there is a darkness in her as well, just as I can see the light in you, my dear nephew. But make no mistake, it is still in you to do some good in this world. Let her help,” Polly explained one day while Tommy was in his office.

Leaning back in his chair, Tommy could nothing but agree with his aunt, “I know that Pol. Part of me is terrified.” He went on to tell Aunt Polly that he didn’t want to “ruin” you or get you hurt, but Polly waved him off.

“Tommy, she can take care of herself. As a gypsy, she has seen things in her life, just like you. Remember, you said it yourself. She is you. And you are her. You are each other’s match.”

One thing about being connected to Tommy was that people around Small Heath treated you differently. The women smiled at you more, while the men tipped their hats to you and greeted you with “mam” or “miss.” It was all new to you.

Even the male patrons at the bar treated you differently. No longer did they affectionately give you a hard time or joke around with you. They maintained their distance but were respectful. You particularly noticed how the men made sure to act accordingly around you whenever Tommy stopped by The Garrison. It was the same when John and Arthur were around.

You were in the back room of the bar when Esme stopped by one afternoon. She greeted you with a hug and kiss on the cheek. “Let’s go for a walk down by the Cut, yeah,” Esme suggested. “It is slow out there. I am sure Harry could give you a break.”

“Okay. Let me finish up these last few glasses, then we can head out,” You replied to the woman who was quickly becoming your best friend. You were thankful to have Esme around. She was another person you could confide in. Esme reminded you of your sisters back home and how much you missed them. You pushed the homesick feeling aside and finished cleaning the last bar glass. Wiping your hands on your apron, Esme followed you to the front of the bar.

You told Harry that you were taking your break. “Harry, I won’t be gone too long, okay.”

“Take your time, dear. I don’t think I’ll be expecting a rush anytime soon,” said Harry wiping down the tables.

While the two you walked arm-in-arm, Esme asked how you were holding up now that you were considered Tommy’s “girl” and all. “I’m not his girl, Esme,” you laughed off your friend’s accusation.

Esme rolled her eyes. “Don’t act naïve now, my dear friend. You are Tommy’s girl. Everyone knows it. He better be treating you right. If he doesn’t, I’ll cut his balls right off.”

“So, far so good. He has been very…I don’t know…” you began but stopped to try to collect your thoughts.

“What?” Esme asked.

“It is like there are two sides to Tommy, you know: public Tommy and private Tommy,” you began to explain. “In public, Tommy is always guarded, which I get. He has to be with what he does. However, when it is the two of us alone, he is something else. He is so sweet and gentle. He smiles more too. And laughs. Tommy has the cutest laugh I have ever heard. So delightful to the ears.”

Esme smiled at her friend and said, “I have never once heard Tommy laugh. Didn’t even know he could do such a thing.”

“So, when are you and John any closer to expanding your family? Lord knows you both like the activity that goes with procreation.”

“Not yet. But hopefully soon. The kids are looking forward to having another brother or sister in the mix. I’m lucky, you know. I was worried that John’s children wouldn’t accept when we got married. I was worried that I would never be able to live up to Martha as a wife or mother,” Esme revealed to you as the two of you finally reached the Cut.

Sitting on a box crate, Esme sat down beside you. She pulled out a rolled cannabis cigarette and began to light it. Coughing out a puff, she passed the joint over to you. “John loves you very much, Esme. The kids adore you. Why wouldn’t they? You are so much fun, so sweet, caring, and they will always have your back. Kids have pure hearts. They can sense when someone is a good person, and you fit the bill. You’re special, my dear. Everyone is lucky to grace your presence sees what a wonderful woman you are.”

Blushing, Esme looked down at her feet. “You could give John a run for his money with the way you can talk a woman up.”

You chuckled and took in a puff. The effects of the rolled cannabis were setting in and making you feel relax and calm. It was a nice feeling. The two of you sat in comfortable silence while passing the joint back and forth.

You and Esme turned heads when commotion came from Charlie’s Yard. “I wonder what is going on over there?” you wondered aloud and handed Esme the joint. “I’m going to go check it out. You want to come along?”

“Nah, I better get back to the house,” said Esme and stubbed out the joint and put it in her pocket. “See you later.”

You waved goodbye and walked over to Charlie’s. You saw him and Curly with Pyramus. Instantly, you saw the horse was agitated. You picked up your speed to reach the horse.

“Hey, what is going on? Is he okay?” you asked, concerned for Pyramus’s well-being.

Charlie told you that they were getting Pyramus ready for transport, but the horse was not up for it.

“I told you it wasn’t a good idea,” Curly mumbled. “He doesn’t want to leave, Charlie.”

Charlie merely sighed, “Curly, the horse will be fine. He is stubborn as usual, like his owner.”

“May I?” you asked Charlie. When he gave you an okay, you reached out to Pyramus and began rubbing his muzzle. “It’s okay, boy. You’re going to okay. Rum tum bi Salama (Go in peace),” you said to Pyramus softly. “Si tut bocklo? (Are you hungry?)”

You turned to Curly and asked he had any treats for Pyramus. “It might help him calm down. He loves apples or carrots,” you told him.

“I might have some around. I’ll be back,” said Curly and left to retrieve the treats.

You continued to pet Pyramus, which seemed to help calm him for the time being. It only got better when Curly returned with an apple, which you began to cut up for Pyramus to eat. “He seems to be more relaxed.”

All of a sudden, an extra pair of footsteps could be heard approaching. You could make out Tommy’s voice not too far, but there was another voice with him. A feminine voice. One you had not heard before. You quickly turned around to see Tommy walking with a beautiful woman. From the looks of her clothes, you could tell she was wealthy.

When Tommy saw you with Pyramus, he smiled at you and introduced you to the woman, May Carleton. She would be the one to train Pyramus. You shook her hand and offered a ‘hello.’ She went up the horse and began petting him along with you.

You told her that Pyramus tended to respond well with treats when stressed. May smiled at you. “He is a beautiful horse. Overly sweet, but he will make a good racehorse,” May remarked and turned back to Tommy. “The timeline you want the horse ready for Epsom is not much, but I can get him ready.”

You didn’t care for how May only referred to Pyramus as “the horse.” It was like she only viewed him as a job and not one of God’s best creatures. You looked over at Pyramus, and he was happily chomping away at his apple. He was too innocent for a life as a racehorse. The last thing you wanted was for Pyramus to be broken. You could feel the panic start to rise in your chest and your breath start to quicken. You didn’t know if it was anxiety or the joint you just smoked making you feel that way.

“Tommy,” you spoke up and got his attention. You motioned with your hand for him to follow, which he obliged. When the two of you were away from the others, you spoke your concerns. “How much do you know about this May Carleton? Is she trustworthy? What are her methods for training a horse?” you went on, but Tommy silenced you by placing a kiss on your lips.

When Tommy retreated, he cupped your face and looked at you with adoring eyes. “Pyramus will be taken care of, I promise. I would not send him away if I didn’t know that he would be treated well. May’s family has a long history of training racehorses. She knows what she is doing.”

You breathed a sigh of relief at Tommy’s reassurance. Now you felt silly. “I’m sorry for worrying. You probably think I’m childish,” you expressed quietly, looking down at the ground.

Tommy touched your chin to make you look at him directly. His blue eyes always left you breathless. You could drown in them if you stared too long. No amount of alcohol, cannabis, opium, or other drugs could compare to Tommy Shelby’s effects on you. He was addicting. He was handsome. He was dangerous. He was cruel. He was scary. He could also be kind and sweet-tempered. Tommy Shelby was an enigma. He would become a stain on your existence one way or another, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

“Sijoukar,” you said suddenly.

When Tommy asked who, you scoffed. “May. She is pretty. Don’t you think?”

“Hadn’t noticed.”

“Liar,” you teased. “Even I can admit she is gorgeous. It’s okay. I don’t mind if you think other women are attractive. It is part of human nature.”

With a smirk, Tommy wrapped his arms around you and gave you one last deep kiss. “You better get back to work. I’ll see you late tonight, and I’ll walk you home, yeah.”

He walked you towards the exit with his hand in yours. You waved goodbye to Curly and Charlie and gave a polite nod to May. You didn’t miss the brief look of disappointment on May’s face when she saw you and Tommy walk past her hand-in-hand. You smirked when you passed the woman.

“I’ll tell you what, how about after a couple of weeks, we go visit Pyramus? See how he is doing and all. You and me, together,” suggested Tommy as you both neared the Yard’s exit.

“Really?” you asked, bewildered at Tommy’s idea.

“Why not? It would be our first adventure together. What do you say?”

“I like that idea. Oh, think of a fun and trouble we could get into. I don’t think the world is ready for us, Mr. Shelby,” you laughed and wrapped your arms around Tommy’s shoulders.

Again, kissing you on the lips, Tommy leaned into your ear to whisper, “We are going to set the world on fire, love. You and me, love.”

#tommy shelby #tommy shelby x reader #peaky blinders #peaky blinders fic

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gypsydanger01 · 4 years

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THE STORM - Part six

Fandom: The Boys (Amazon prime tv series)

Pairing: Black Noir x Reader

Disclaimer: I don’t own The Boys, only my OC characters and certain pieces of au plot.

Comments, reviews, constructive criticism, and other requests are always more than welcome!

Posting new chapters every Wednesday and Friday!

Getting to know you

While a certain member of the Seven entertained violent thoughts at the upper levels, Sarah sat at her desk filing papers. To be honest, she was studying more than she was doing her job, but there wasn’t much of a workload anyway. Keeping her textbook laid flat against her knees, she quickly went through the lines of text before typing away at her computer for a few minutes.

Martha was perched on her desk reading through some folders.

“You do know you’re not fooling anyone, right?”

Sarah sighed and finished the paragraph she was reading on molecular recognition.

“I know,” she conceded, before defending herself. “At least I’m doing something constructive.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and shot, “Look at Sierra, over there.”

Her friend moved naturally, looking over at the clock while noticing the young woman taking a string of selfies with her coffee. Martha grimaced, shaking her head.

“No girl, just no.”

“I know.”

“Someone needs to tell her, she won’t stop.”

Sarah laughed, “She’ll learn someday.”

Checking the clock herself, she found herself growing hot. She pressed her sweaty palms into the wood surface of her desk, letting her legs stretch out underneath it. Her fingers twitched slightly, and she masked her unease by bringing her hand back to her mouse, clicking away at the screen.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Sarah made a noncommittal sound, not letting her eyes move away from the screen in front of her.

“You look...” Martha trailed off before finding the right word, “squeamish.”

“Well that sounds lovely. Just what I like to hear.”

Martha sighed, her eyes narrowing at her friend. “You know I worry. You sure everything’s okay?”

The sight of Black Noir occupying her couch was seared into her mind. She could no longer hide. She could only face it and be smart about the information she disclosed.

Her friend was still watching her, and Sarah finally pushed away from the desk.

She pushed her glasses back up and, pinching the bridge of her nose, she bowed her head down.

With her hair falling around her face in soft curls, she murmured, “I’ve made a contact.”

Martha immediately put her papers down and turned to fully face her. “What do you mean?”

“Someone reached out. It’s dangerous, but it could be very rewarding.”

“Who is it?”

Sarah looked around and brought her hands back to the keyboard.

“I really can’t say.”

At Martha’s pointed look, she further explained. “I really can’t tell you. It’s someone—,” she wasn’t sure how she could describe Black Noir without giving it away. “It’s just someone really high up. Lots of info.”

“Oh my gosh, it’s B.N. isn’t it? You said he made contact.”

Sarah shrugged. “Maybe.”

Martha stared at her for a few moments before accepting her friend’s silence.

“Just be careful, okay?”

Sarah nodded, “You know I am.”

Her friend shook her head. “I know you are, but we’re getting closer. Things could get hot.”

The room grew even louder and more boisterous as lunch time rolled around. Sarah proceeded to close the files she’d been working on.

“Oh, and you’ll have to tell me all the deets, understood?”

The young woman laughed, wondering deep down if she’d be able to tell her anything at all. The dead don’t speak.

“I’m ready for lunch, let’s go find Annika.”

The hours after lunch were spent worrying and suffocating that same preoccupation with fool-proof schemes. It was an endless cycle, really. Every time she found a flaw in her set of questions, it sent her spiraling into self-doubt. Could she truly pull this off?

She was more and more convinced that he hadn’t been sent by Vought, simply because he was a trained assassin who didn’t need these long and ambiguous methods to extract the information he needed. He was more than capable of inflicting mind-blowing amounts of pain. And pain always loosened the tongue.

So maybe he wasn’t doing this for Vought. Maybe his fixation and stalkerish tendencies towards her could be chalked up as misguided and genuine. In that case, he was still a dangerous wild card since she wasn’t who he thought she was. If he’s truly loyal to the company, her identity might prove to be an issue.

And so, it went on and on. She went through potential questions she could ask, and questions she should steer clear of. She recalled all the tips and tricks Mallory had taught her, from the phrasing of the questions, to the body language she should maintain. The goal was to ask a series of common questions and sparsely slip an inquisitive one into the mix. But would this work on him?

She’d have to work much slower to access some, if any, information.

Most of all, she was afraid of her body giving her away: her fast heartbeat and shallow breathing, paired with the subtle interrogation could give it all away. And this terrified her.

Sarah watched the clock tick closer and closer to five o’clock with increasing dread.

When it arrived, she waved over to Martha, gathered her things and walked out the door with as much confidence as physically possible.

In his living quarters, Black Noir stood in front of a mirror. He remembered Sarah’s reaction. The woman apparently concealed it well, but he’d caught onto her fear, her state of agitation and turmoil. Was it because of his dark appearance, or was it something deeper, a reaction to the violence he represented? He tilted his head to the side. Or did it have to do with her file, something she’s hiding?

The tall man couldn’t think of any way to convince her of his good intentions towards her. All he could do was respect her boundaries and listen to her; hope she’d accept him.

He usually avoided the mirror in his room, not really needing it for any aesthetic reason. He wore the same armored suit every day and was almost always covered from head to toe in tough black material. And yet now, he stood tall in front of it and took in the sight. He was closed-off, impenetrable, dangerous and stealthy. He appreciated the simplicity of the reinforced suit. It wasn’t flashy like the ones his teammates wore. And it didn’t convey any light-hearted or patriotic meaning. It was functional and allowed him to blend into the shadows and kill. His skull-like mask was the last thing many men saw before he proceeded in tearing them apart. Seeing it in daylight had nothing on witnessing it come out of the shadows at night. Like a nightmare taking form right before their eyes.

And now Sarah had witnessed a small violence on his part, the skull he hid behind and the strength he possessed. It was perfectly normal for her to be afraid.

But the knife, a small part of him reminded. Yes, that was a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. But he’d take his time, god knows he could be patient. Especially if it was for her. The mysterious Sarah Burns.

As eight o ‘clock crept closer, Sarah could be found in her kitchen, finishing up her dinner. The creamy pasta she’d made sat heavy in her stomach, the knowledge of her impending doom adding an extra ton. After quickly washing the dishes, she sat at the table and scrolled through the memes Martha had sent her. When she realized they revolved around Homelander, she grew interested. There was no way the Seven’s leader would accept this, and the inner conflict it would produce was the perfect cover for her plan to proceed.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Sitting still, she tensed, ready to whip up and out of her chair. A dark clothed hand came up and over her shoulder moving towards her cell phone.

She almost jumped out of her skin as her mind thought of the worst possible outcome of having his hand so close to her neck. And yet, he simply leaned over and promptly pressed the heart icon below one of the memes. He liked the meme.

Sarah opened her mouth to speak and closed it a few times. He finally retreated from his spot hovering over her and went to stand at a respectful distance, his back to the wall.

She spun around and stood up, her heart still clogging her throat.

“Jesus Christ,” she hissed, eyes wide and a hand raised to her chest.

He simply watched her with that magnetic gaze she couldn’t seem to escape. She picked at the hem of her shirt, not knowing how to proceed. How had he even entered the house?

His gaze settled on the small notebook she’d left on the table for their upcoming meeting. He moved slowly and gave her wide birth as he took it up into his hands. He flipped to a blank page and wrote.

Are you afraid, he paused before adding, of me?

He passed the notebook to her. She took it hesitantly, and once she read his message, her eyes kept flicking from the page to his mask. You could snap me like a twig. She was indeed very much afraid.

“No,” she answered, with a slight shake of her head.

He tilted his head slightly to the left before raising his hand to his chest. He lightly tapped right over his heart. Sarah initially didn’t understand the meaning of the gesture, but soon realized he was referring to her heartbeat.

She brushed it aside, “Oh...” You probably have a dozen different instruments of death concealed in your suit. “That’s nothing, I’m just jumpy, I guess.”

She hummed, looking for a way to grow her confidence and gain control of the situation.

“Plus, you kind of came out of nowhere. In my house.”

He was still, unsure of how his sudden appearance would pan out. He almost wanted to hit himself for not thinking it through.

“How did you even get in here? I know everything was locked.”

He shrugged, almost imperceptibly, before offering his hand. She passed him the notebook and pen.

Trade secret. If I told you, I’d have to kill you :)

Her heart almost stopped cold before she regained composure. If it weren’t for the smiley face he’d added towards the end, she might have died right then and there. And she laughed, she actually laughed. Maybe it was the tension, or the insane fact that Black Noir was in her home, attempting to crack a joke.

“I guess I don’t really need to know,” she surmised with a small smile.

He nodded before adding more to the page.

Your day?

“How was my day?

He nodded, captivated by the fluid movements her hands naturally made as she spoke. He’d noticed it immediately the first night he’d seen her at the gala. Over the next week of watching her, he’d quickly filed it as one of her mannerisms.

“I can’t complain. Honestly, I don’t really like that job, it’s more something to keep the bills payed until I get the position I want.”

He wrote, PhD student. Applied Physiology

“That’s correct,” she confirmed. “Why am I not surprised you know that?”

I know some things. Not everything.

He wanted to apologize for making her uncomfortable but ultimately found it too difficult to actually write down. He wasn’t accustomed to apologizing; he’d never actually needed to. Not out loud, or on paper.

She accepted the quiet confession. “That’s okay. I’m not all that interesting, and there’s nothing to hide.”

They both knew it was a lie, but Black Noir understood her need to protect herself. She’d share the truth with him once he’d won her trust.

“How was your day?”

He straightened and thought of how to approach this question. Thinking on his toes, he went with the easiest, most believable story.

Meetings, promotional event. He added for emphasis. Boring. I slept.

There was no way he could tell her he’d spent most of the day fantasizing her ex-boyfriend’s murder, only to have it executed a few hours ago.

She laughed lightly, “Who knew, I thought you’d be off on some top-secret mission.”

Her hopes were crushed when he answered with a simple shake of the head. She hummed. He leaned against the wall, ever observant of the woman facing him.

“Oh, you can sit. Here let me—”

She got up to pull a chair out for him, but he stopped her with a raised hand. He crossed over to her side of the table and angled the chair she’d been previously occupying before abruptly standing and knocking it out of the way. She slowly sat and let him push her in. He calmly took a seat in front of her.

“Thank you”

I have manners :)

She nodded, “Yes, you do.”

She squirmed under his stare, under the black mask she was starting to grow accustomed to.

Sarah broke the silence, “I wanted to thank you for the other day. I could’ve handled it, but I’m glad you intervened.”

He watched her and she continued, “It was a bad relationship, and seeing him really threw me off balance. Then you showed up, and I was just…,” she trailed off.

He reached out and briefly touched her hand before sharply retrieving it. It was what he’d seen other people do in society, or in the movies he watched in the privacy of his living quarters. As he understood, it was meant as a way to show affection and give comfort. But were they at a stage where he could do that? He honestly didn’t know.

He jotted down a line, I understand

“And thank you for the gifts, I mean, the flowers and the earrings—they’re all so beautiful but you really don’t have to go through all that trouble.”

I want to

She smiled reading the words. She leaned back in her chair and took him all in. Who was this man? The Black Noir she’d gathered intel on for Mallory was nothing like the man sitting in front of her. Well, maybe that was extreme, she had seen proof of his deadly work. And yet, she was not seeing the ferocious, sinister monster she’d come to imagine over the years.

He was a more complex sort of enigma, one that was maybe as complicated as her own. While she needed to maintain her guard around him, she found herself slightly relaxing in his presence. There were multiple layers to this man, and maybe she could appeal to the human, well-mannered side of him.

They spent the rest of the next hour exchanging questions. They mostly revolved around their likes and dislikes, jumping from books to foods, and finally to movies. She quickly realized he was well cultured on cinema, especially war and action movies which he clearly enjoyed.

“Hmm, how about Tears of the Sun?”

He nodded. A favorite.

“Black Hawk Down?”

The large man nodded with enthusiasm.

“What about Saving Private Ryan.”

He snorted. Don’t insult me

“What’s your favorite movie ever? Like the perfect mix of action, shooting and humor.”

He thought for a few seconds before deciding. Die Hard

When he pushed the notebook towards her for her to read, he emphasized his point by tapping on it and sitting back, arms crossed.

“Well, I like what I see. Yippee kay ye, am I right?” she said with mirth. “Yeah, I think that’s Bruce Willis’s best movie.”

He was glad she liked it as well. Early that morning, he’d made a rapid search on the Internet before having to attend meetings. He searched, “How do you know your first date is going well.” He wasn’t quite sure if it was an official date, but in his mind, it was as close to it as it could get. His search gave a wide range of answers. After reading through a bunch of them, he gathered that for it to go well they needed to click. There had to be a spark, whatever that meant.

More precisely, there had to be common topics, common likes and dislikes. The conversation should come easy, and awkward silences should be avoided at all costs because, while they might not disturb him, they may be uncomfortable for her. And while they’d gotten off to a rough start, things were now going quite smoothly.

Sarah thought long and hard, “What about Pearl Harbor? It isn’t as action-packed but it’s still a really good historical war movie.”

She nodded, and shyly added, “Well, if you’d like to, you could come over and watch it. Actually, we could watch Die Hard one time, and Pearl Harbor another.”

He watched her, the way she was so self-conscious. Sarah constantly touched her cheeks, her curly hair, her neck. If only she could see herself the way he saw her.

He wrote. I would like that

Checking her watch, she barely contained a yawn.

“I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s just late for me,” she assured.

I’ll go

“No, it’s okay, really.”

He shook his head. I don’t need sleep. You do

I’ll be back for those movies

Sarah smiled, “All right.”

Black Noir rose to his full height and she watched him with a twinge of fascination. Who even was this man?

When can I see you

“Well, tomorrow night I’m going out with my friend, but we can definitely schedule Die Hard for the night after. Eight pm?”

I’ll be here.

She walked him to the door and leaned against the wood. The doorway seemed smaller as he walked through. He clicked the switch turning her porch lights out and quickly jotted a few lines down.

Turn them on when I leave. Safer

She nodded with a small smile. How could someone as dangerous as him be so concerned with her well-being, she didn’t know, but she found herself liking it regardless.

He quickly scribbled something down before shutting the notebook and handing it back over.

Facing her, he raised a hand as if he were about to wave. His hand twisted into a thumbs up before he took his leave. Walking away, he crossed under a single streetlight before disappearing into an alley.

She stayed there for a few more seconds, just peering into the darkness. Heeding his advice, she shut the door and switched the porch lights back on. Retreating further into her home, she flipped through the pages looking for his last note. It was a small smiley face he’d doodled on the edge of the page.

She steeled herself against feeling anything but contempt. She reminded herself of the danger he could pose to her. But as much as she wanted to suppress it, she couldn’t help the small smile on her face as she fell asleep.

Giulia

PART 7

Tag list: @ateliefloresdaprimavera @ellejo @dust-bun @coco724 @proximio-5 @damiminator

Let me know if you want to be tagged!! Or you can like this post and I’ll add you :)

#the boys #black noir #black noir x oc #the boys amazon #the boys tv #the boys season 2 #the boys black noir #fanfiction #oc story

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chaos-and-sparkles · 4 years

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Percabeth Wedding Headcanons

They considered not getting married as a fuck you to Hera, but decided a better fuck you would be to not let her rule their lives.

Annabeth wore a white suit with a blue tie and Percy wore a black suit with a grey tie.

There was a huge fight over who got to be whose bride's/groom's bitches. Eventually Tyson was Percy's best man, with Jason, Frank, Hazel, Nico and Leo in his crew.

Annabeth's maid of honour was Thalia, with Reyna, Piper, Magnus, Clarisse, Rachel and the Stoll brothers in hers.

Chiron officiated. Estelle was flower girl. Grover was ring bearer, and he began chewing the cushion halfway through the ceremony, while sobbing the most.

Coach Hedge held his club up threateningly, but his eyes were suspiciously moist too.

Calypso was the next big crier, sitting with her arms crossed stubbornly in a white vintage T-shirt and faded jeans, tears seeping out through the corners of her eyes.

Almost all the gods came.

Aphrodite was jumping up and down and cooing over them, giving Percy looks that made him turn bright red. She looked exactly like Annabeth to him now.

Apollo was sprawled in a front seat that he was not supposed to be in, and had dragged Will and Meg with him, Will smiling awkwardly while Meg chatted with Artemis about how annoying Apollo was.

Hermes appeared to Percy in the dressing room ("Do you gods have NO respect for privacy?") because he 'had a message for him.’ A message from him, George and Martha, for once, wishing him good luck. They chatted, and then Percy asked if he'd met Annabeth too, but Hermes stiffened and left.

Afterwards tho he and Annabeth came face to face during the reception, and it was awkward and silent. It ended with both of them in tears about Luke, but it was healing for them both. Hermes gave her her dagger back, and Annabeth was surprised and asked how he got it back from Tartarus. Hermes said Bob had found it and sent it up, and was on the lookout for her laptop too -

But he didn't get to finish, because Annabeth hugged him hard, and after initial shock he hugged her back.

The tension between Athena and Poseidon was palpable, and they were seated as far apart as possible.

Poseidon thumped Annabeth on the back so hard she almost toppled into the lake, booming "I should have known! My son and I seem to have yet another thing in common - a love for queens among women." And Percy turned red again. Poseidon gave Percy a huge hug, and went on to meet Sally Jackson. Poseidon took his son marrying a daughter of his rival better than Athena did, though.

When Annabeth and Athena met, there was some tension. It was difficult for Athena to admit she was harsh and unfair with what she said to Annabeth in HOO, and to apologize, but Percy put his hand on Annabeth's shoulder and stood behind her, even when Athena turned her piercing gaze on him and asked that she talk to Annabeth alone. He only went when Annabeth asked him to.

Athena told Annabeth she was proud of her, and added that there was a chance she might be as great, and even greater, than Daedalus. Annabeth knew this was her best attempt at showing affection, and appreciated it.

Athena then accosted Percy, on his way back with drinks, and gave him a once over and humphed. Percy didn't flinch or show any signs of being intimidated, and she raised and eyebrow and finally said, "I will admit, Perseus Jackson, that I did not think you a good choice for my daughter. I still have my doubts... However you have proved yourself more than worthy, and so I gave you permission to marry her. But make no mistake - if you hurt her, I will crack your skull open and extract every brain cell you have left, until you are a drooling, gibbering mess." Percy replied, "If I hurt Annabeth, she'll break every bone in my body before you even get to me. So I don't think you have to worry about that." They parted on fair terms.

Artemis met Percy and Annabeth together, and they had a short conversation about the merits of being turned into a Jackalope, vs the merits of being married. "Life as a Jackalope is more enjoyable than it would seem. However, you have chosen your bane, and against all odds, I hold hope for you both." she concluded.

Hestia was tending the flames when Percy and Annabeth went to meet her, both respecting her as the most helpful goddess of legit all time. She smiled and simply said, "Hope is stronger than ever now, Percy Jackson, for you now build a new and loving home - a rarer place than you would expect."

Mr. D insisted on making a speech, and making it out to Perry Jorganesson and Annie Bell.

The only god not present was Zeus. In fact, he'd banned the gods from going when it became clear that everyone wanted to go, but the gods' respect for him after the way he handled the HOO fiasco was in negative numbers so every single one of them sneaked out of Olympus. Even those who normally wouldn’t have gone went to spite him.

Hades and Persephone went as a couple. Hades sniffed and smirked, saying only that he was glad Percy was 'not my son's type, or I'd have to deal with you' (but he low key ships Percabeth). Persephone though, smiled radiantly and was one coo away from fangirl squealing. Before they left, Hades gave them a note from Bob.

"Bob saw two stars already. They were next to him in Tartarus. Bob says hello." Percy and Annebth sobbed for fiat that, holding each other tightly. They made a point of mapping every single constellation that night. They almost cried again when they saw the Huntress above them.

Hephaestus's eyes twinkled, and he said, "I see that trap in Waterland worked after all - even if not in the way I'd intended."

Ares just grunted that Annabeth had a better weapon (the dragon fang sword) than the last time he saw her, and took his sunglasses off to glare at Percy. "Now there are TWO goddesses who'll kill me if I snuff you out."

The highlight though was Hera waltzing in, smiling smugly like she'd set up the whole thing, and eating a slice of cake, turning a seashell-and-flower arrangement into a cow because it 'looked better, and brought back memories'. She left soon enough, but not before the cow had left a warm gift.

Grover gave his blessing as Lord of the Wild, Rachel gave hers as the Oracle, and the gods fully expected Percabeth to ask for one of their blessings next, but instead the two turned to Sally Jackson and asked for her blessing as the 'supreme goddess'.

The ceremony was in the pavilion, and the reception was around the canoe lake at twilight. The trees around the canoe lake were hung with fairy lights, and Juniper and the dryads had ensured that the sweetest, most fragrant flowers grew. Seashells decorated the venue. Calypso had brought moonlace that began to glow and smell even more beautiful as night began to fall. The Hecate cabin had enchanted sparkling butterflies to flutter around them both after it got dark. The naiads sang in voices nearly as beautiful as the sirens, although lighter and airier. The pegasi flew in formation.

Bessie the Ophiotaurus as well as the Hippocampi were in attendance.

Percy and Annabeth did their first dance underwater, and kissed before resurfacing. Everyone looked around for the dance floor, but couldn't see a thing, when they realized - the lake was the dance floor. Percy had managed to magic the lake, with favours from the naiads and Poseidon, into a liquid dance floor that rippled different colours with each step.

Their wedding day had been on the last day of camp, with the whole camp invited, so with nightfall came the camp traditions, but even better.

There was the fireworks display of course, but with Leo's help it was doubly glorious and even began to tell Percabeth's story. Annabeth looked like she'd die when it began showing the Thrill Ride of Love part of the story, because "It doesn't matter if we're married Percy! It's still embarrassing!"

Camp fire was even more cheerful, what with the gods and mortals allowed in for the first time, and of course Piper+Leo and the Stoll brothers played pranks - it was funnier than it would have been because their pranks overlapped and backfired on each other instead.

Instead of wedding bands, Percabeth were married with camp beads - an owl and a trident artistically intertwined in a silver thread carved heart, designed by Rachel. Hazel summoned the silver and some jewels to embellish them - and this time, she knew, somehow, that they weren’t cursed.

Of course the cake and all food and drink was blue, as well as the flowers, the wedding party's outfits, and (on Annabeth's request as a surprise for Percy) the guests’ clothes. Aphrodite went super overboard with that, and even Artemis succumbed to a small blue flower and fang accessory in her hair.

As soon as the dancing and music ended (as soon as they could get the mic away from Apollo), the activity underway was Capture the Flag with Percy and Annabeth leading opposite teams composed of their bridal parties+friends. Coach Hedge and the Hermes, Ares, Aphrodite and part of the Apollo cabins along with a bunch of minor god cabins went on Annabeth's team, and Will, Meg, and the rest in Percy's. The gods sat it out (some had to be physically restrained) as did Grover, the nature spirits, animals and mortals (Rachel had to be dissuaded from entering armed with plastic hairbrushes and improv lighter-and-spray flamethrowers).

Nobody won. Instead of crossing over the boundary line when they met with each other's flags in hand, Percy and Annabeth started making out. Clarisse could be heard grumbling about it later.

Grover and Thalia stayed back long after everyone had left, and the four of them spent time together until four in the morning.

BTW Annabeth proposed to Percy right before he was about to propose to her. They both looked at each other in surprise for a solid minute, and then burst out laughing. It was impossible to tell who said yes, or if any of them did, but they didn't need to.

They’d both gone to Tyson for the engagement rings. Tyson was confused at first, but promised to keep their secret from each other.

Grover on the other end of the link just stopped mid conversation with the Council of Cloven Elders and Dionysus, and bleated loudly in relief, "FREAKING FINALLY." out of nowhere, and while everyone looked bewildered, Dionysus though just took a sip of diet coke and rolled his eyes, sighing, "Took them long enough."

They proposed to each other on Percy's birthday. Annabeth had baked another blue cupcake ("I'm getting better at it, too!") and they were cuddling/play fighting/sprawling on the sofa late at night in Sally's apartment, talking. They sat with their legs crossed together, devouring the cupcake with their fingers, talking about their plans.

Annabeth mentioned that she'd designed this new building for New Rome that she was SO excited to build (Reyna had contracted her as New Rome's architect), and asked if Percy wanted to see the design. Percy agreed, and she retrieved a roll of paper. Annabeth began to explain enthusiastically, and, pointing at the center of the design, said, "And this is my favourite part." Percy leaned in further to see what she was pointing at - at the heart of the temple, where the altar should be, was a blue-silver ring with a wave design over the words "will you marry me?"

Annabeth looked almost anxiously at Percy, but he looked blank. Finally, Percy uncapped Riptide, which she hadn't noticed was poised in his hand as if he was going to point or correct something on the sheet, and instead of expanding into a sword, it remained a ball pen - with a simple silver ring etched with the words "Wise Girl" around its tip.

They stared at each other, stumped, before exploding in laughter.

Sally and Paul came running from the next room, Estelle copying them and giggling in Paul's arms, worried that it was a monster attack. When instead they saw Percy and Annabeth laughing and hugging, each wearing a ring on fingers covered in blue frosting and looking as if they couldn't quite believe it, Sally burst into tears right there and had to explain to her concerned kids, laughing, that these were happy tears because secretly she still couldn't believe that they had all found their happiness and it was something she'd only dared to dream of because it was everything she ever wanted for her son and she was happy to and oh how long had she waited and worked and hoped for a happy ending for all of them but never really expected it and this was too much -

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rockislandadultreads · 3 years

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Dark Academia Books: aesthetically pleasing recommendations

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

A story about a dangerously curious young undergraduate whose rebelliousness leads her to discover a shocking secret involving an exclusive circle of students . . . and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige. You are in the house and the house is in the woods. You are in the house and the house is in you . . . Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises its graduates a future of sublime power and prestige, and that they can become anything or anyone they desire. Among this year’s incoming class is Ines, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, pills, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. The school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves and their place within the formidable black iron gates of Catherine. For Ines, Catherine is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had, and her serious, timid roommate, Baby, soon becomes an unlikely friend. Yet the House’s strange protocols make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when Baby’s obsessive desire for acceptance ends in tragedy, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda that is connected to a secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.

The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter

Intricate, superbly written, often scathingly funny - a brilliantly crafted tapestry of ambition, family secrets, murder, integrity tested, and justice has gone terribly wrong. An extraordinary fiction debut: a large, stirring novel of suspense that is, at the same time, a work of brilliantly astute social observation. The Emperor of Ocean Park is set in two privileged worlds: the upper crust African American society of the eastern seaboard--old families who summer on Martha's Vineyard--and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school. It tells the story of a complex family with a single, seductive link to the shadowlands of crime. The Emperor of the title, Judge Oliver Garland, has just died, suddenly. A brilliant legal mind, conservative and famously controversial, Judge Garland made more enemies than friends. Many years before, he'd earned a judge's highest prize: a Supreme Court nomination. But in a scene of bitter humiliation, televised across the country, his nomination collapsed in scandal. The humbling defeat became a private agony, one from which he never recovered. But now the Judge's death raises, even more, questions--and it seems to be leading to a second, even more, terrible scandal. Could Oliver Garland have been murdered? He has left a strange message for his son Talcott, a professor of law at a great university, entrusting him with "the arrangements"--a mysterious puzzle that only Tal can unlock, and only by unearthing the ambiguities of his father's past. When another man is found dead, and then another, Talcott--wry, straight-arrow, almost too self-aware to be a man of action--must risk his career, his marriage, and even his life, following the clues his father left him.

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers. Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong. Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

#dark academia #books to read #fiction #reading recommendations #recommended reading #book recs #tbr #booklr #booklist #mysteries #mystery #mystery books

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kingofdirtandnothing · 4 years

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@wemultitudinous Death Week Day Two

“To the groom.”

John raises his glass, and hears the toast echo around the room. The next line only comes smoothly because John has spent the last week making himself repeat it over and over again, until his voice doesn’t catch. “To the bride.”

Alexander and Eliza’s wedding is a big affair. The room is overflowing with smiling faces and white roses, Angelica and Peggy sitting to their sister’s left, faces radiant with joy. But the pair of them had nothing on Eliza Schuyler.

Eliza Hamilton. And her groom, who kept lifting their laced hands to press kisses to her knuckles. Alexander’s voice had trembled as he recited his vows. John had never heard it so full of emotion.

Everyone in the room was watching him. John had been silent for too long. He swallows, turning a watery smile on his best friend. (That was the only word he was allowed to have for him now.) “When I met Alex, I could have never pictured him getting married.” There’s little ripples of laughter through the room. “The world was his oyster, you know?” Jesus, he didn’t even realize that innuendo when he wrote this down.

“And I never could have pictured him marrying someone like Eliza.” A loaded truth. Because John had built up a few drunken kisses and lack of personal boundaries into a cotton candy fairy tale. That he would be the one standing across from Alex. Not the one giving him away. Reality saw fit to rain on his cotton candy until all he had left was a sticky mess that only he could see and feel.

“But these two, they defied the odds.” Eliza’s soft, kind smile burrows into his chest, another razor sharp piece in the broken chandelier mess of his heart. She was a good woman. She was sweet, and it was obvious how much she loved Alexander.

It didn’t stop John from having to physically bite down on his tongue when the priest asked if there were any objections.

“Their love is something special. And Eliza, she’s extra special. Because she proved to be the one person in this world who would be enough for our Alexander.” John never would be. And our feels bitter and untrue on his tongue.

John raises his glass, and avoids the worried set of Alex’s brow where he’s trying to watch him without being obvious about it.

“To being enough.”

---

He calls his father a week after the wedding, and asks him if there’s still an opening at the firm for him. Henry Laurens is surprised, to say the least, but pleased. Even more so when John asks him if Martha Manning is still single.

John doesn’t say anything to his friends until his final Friday in New York, over drinks. He spins a story about an ailing aunt and needing to head back home for a couple months. And how it’s not worth the expense to keep his apartment here. He could just get another one when he moved back.

Alex watches him from across the table as Lafayette mourns the lost opportunity of a going away party. It’s obvious he knows, John can see that urge to call bullshit building behind Alex’s dark eyes, but he’s got Eliza’s hand in his and her head on his shoulder and he doesn’t say anything.

John doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that he doesn’t say anything.

He moves back to Charleston on a Saturday. At church on Sunday morning, Martha sits next to him. They’re engaged in the spring, a brand new start. John gets so drunk at his bachelor party that Hercules has to lift him bodily into bed while Lafayette takes off his shoes.

John wakes the morning of his wedding day clutching Alex’s RSVP form, marked ‘no’. There’s a single line beneath in Alex’s scrawled handwriting. Can’t get out of work, sorry. Congrats.

By the time Philip is born, all that broken glass in John’s chest has been swept up into a manageable pile. He doesn’t accidentally walk through it as much anymore. They send a dozen roses to Eliza and one of those little baskets full of baby soaps and blankets, and it’s signed with all our love, John and Martha.

John becomes Congressman Laurens, because it’s the next step his father lays out for him, to prepare him to take his senate seat in a few years. He spends more time in Washington than he does at home, though Martha sends him ultrasound pictures and they talk every night before bed.

Sometimes, Francis isn’t even gone from the bed before Martha calls. Sometimes John’s aide, with ambition in his eyes, will start kissing a path down John’s chest until he has to beg off from the call early.

He has no illusions about what this is. Francis doesn’t need money, he’s from just as old money as John is. But not as well renowned. So John puts in a good word for him where he can. Shakes hands. Fucks him bent over hotel beds and pretends like the silence doesn’t eat at him.

Francis gets a cushy job with a Republican think tank. John’s daughter is born, and her name is Frances. Message received. Along with a dozen roses from the Hamiltons. The card is signed in Eliza’s hand.

John gets smarter after that. He only hires escorts, and only pays in cash. He becomes the youngest senator in South Carolina history at forty years old. Alexander Hamilton becomes the youngest Secretary of the Treasury in US history. They walk the same halls sometimes. That pile of broken glass in his chest gets swept into a corner.

When Maria Reynolds happens, John gets blindsided by the press. When they ask him for comment, the words that leave his mouth are Alexander should know better and it’s fucking awful that’s what he thinks. Not of his poor wife which has been echoed so many times in the halls it might as well be carved into the walls. Only that Alex should know better. That he should be more careful.

When Philip Hamilton dies, John packs a bag. He’s not invited. He goes anyway. He stands in the back of the church by himself. When Eliza screams as they lower the casket into the ground, all those broken glass shards in his chest are scattered everywhere again.

John spends a weekend trying to figure out what to do. What line to cross. In the end, he slips a letter beneath Alexander’s door, hand written. Telling him that he would always be there for him. That all Alexander had to do was call. That he loved him.

Eliza burns the letter while Alex is out on one of his walks.

John goes home. He spends the rest of his career fighting for equal rights and educational prospects for low income families, somehow managing to buoy up his votes on the bluer side of South Carolina when he alienates his father’s constituents.

The headaches start not long after he gets glasses. John doesn’t think too much about it. He’s sixty five years old. Wearing magnifying glasses on your face is bound to give you headaches. He tells Martha and Frances not to worry too much. Then he wakes up in the emergency room with Martha holding his hand, her face blotchy with tears.

A little fainting spell. No big deal. They just want to run an MRI to be sure.

When they sit in the doctor’s office a week later, there’s no talk of options. Only of comfort. And time. Three months. When he tells his frail, eighty eight year old mother, she screams just like Eliza Hamilton did.

Losing a child was universal.

Getting his affairs in order is easy. He’s had a lawyer on retainer since he joined Congress. He’s only got his wife and daughter. The majority go to them, though he still kicks a decent amount to a smattering of nonprofits he’s always cared about. An arts program for inner city schools. A program that gave overnight bags to kids being thrust into the foster system. An orphanage in New York.

The lawyer asks if he wants him to hold any letters. Selfishly, there’s one name that comes to mind first. Though he still writes a three page letter to Frances, and a short, but loving page to Martha. One to his mother. And the last, to be delivered to Alexander Hamilton’s office.

John’s handwriting hasn’t started to fail yet, thank god. He’s got a few more weeks before his motor skills go. But the letters shake on the page all the same.

Alexander,

I’m guessing by now the news has gotten to you. If not, I’m sorry. I didn’t throw this on you, but it’s not like I have any more chances to put it off. You don’t have to go to the funeral. That’s a long flight just to sit in a room and listen to people you don’t know talk about someone you used to know.

Somehow, I think you’d still know me. I’d like to think I’m the same person. That you are too. That maybe if we would have just sat down for drinks sometime, that things could have went back to what they were.

Because they never changed for me. I love you as much today as I did at nineteen.

I don’t want you to think that this is some kind of revenge, or a final fuck you. It’s nothing like that. I made my peace with not being enough a long time ago. I don’t blame you, I never hated you. You’ve always been it for me.

I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. Without telling you that I love you.

Yours forever, John Laurens

#ch: laurens #wemultitudinous | alexander #wemultitudinous #death week #death tw #queued #long post

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archivedsardoniicxsouks · 4 years

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20 for Danny and Nate?

send me a number and a character/pairing for a drabble! -- nla

Little talks Nathan & Danny @mirrcrxball

They'd touched on plenty of it before with the way they interacted in the bedroom or even in a private setting. Nathan had the pleasure of seeing a side of Danny he could see wasn't something the blond did all the time and he was honored for the privilege. He tried to communicate his appreciation for the other male every time they were together whether it was with words of praise and love or with comforting touches. Still, he wanted to figure out a better way to care for and satisfy Danny's needs -- all of them. So he decided to bring up the conversation, make it into a whole day of them just away from the city and away from the responsibilities that came with being there. He hoped the separation allowed them to have an open conversation about needs and preferences -- one they should have probably had a while ago. However, Nathan didn't think either of them had been prepared for the way their friendship turned into something more.. or the way they both just fell into roles and, in turn, fell deeper in love than they had expected.

He wouldn't change any of that for the world. But now that they'd established they wanted to be long-term partners.. the conversation needed to be had. Nate would be supportive and understanding when it came down to it, no matter whether or not Danny wanted to follow through with any of this specific type of dynamic -- he was never one to want to push anyone's boundaries in that way or to shove his own preferences onto them.

He'd arranged for them to drive to Cape Cod then take a boat out to Martha's Vineyard where he'd booked an average-sized but cozy home for them near the beach. He even had his own little gift for Danny at the very bottom of the basket they'd packed, it was a thin, white gold chain with a heart-shaped pendant words "Nathan's baby boy" engraved in the back and their initials in the front -- he was going to get him a collar but that would have to wait depending on how this conversation played out. They'd spent most of the day wandering along the beach, Nate's dogs playing around in the sand and water occasionally. But it was nearing sunset now and Nate had just started up a bonfire on the beach; the pups were laying together next to one of the beach chairs they'd brought along and Danny was walking toward the water. Nate smiled as he came up behind the blond and wrapped his arms around him, nuzzling into his neck and placing a kiss on the skin. "Baby boy.. come sit with me by the fire.. there's some stuff I wanna walk to you about." and he let Danny stand there for a bit, arms still around the male's body and hands rubbing up and down his stomach.

After a few moments they walked over and Nate chose to sit on the blanket instead of the chair so they could be closer to the fire. He wrapped his arms around Danny again and pulled him closer. "I care about you more than I've cared about anyone or anything in my life." he started, he'd been nervous beforehand but was great at ignoring it.. right now, though, everything felt right to him -- he could only hope Danny was feeling the same way. "And I want to be able to protect you and give you everything you need so this.." a kiss to his temple, "--and this.." a hand over his heart. "..can be happy and satisfied." He smiled as he pulled away to look at the blond again. "I want you to know, even if you decide you don't like what I'm going to bring up, I'll be here and still wanting to care for you and love you."

He'd tried to summarize everything as best as possible but it was a lot. "I want you to know I have you, always, no matter what. This would only change certain things if you want it to, like titles in the bedroom.. behavior in the home.. But right now I want to focus more on what you want from this if we do it? I want you to establish a safe-word or we can keep going with the color system we have going now.. I want you to let me know if there's somethin' I should be doin' more of.. or I'm doing too much of. And if anything I mentioned earlier is not something you like.. we don't have to do that part of it, it's okay to not take on every aspect of the role of a little, babe.." he paused and added, "--just so you know though, I enjoy getting to spoil you and hold you and have you lay on top of me at night so you can fall asleep.. I love getting to feed you.. honestly, I'd help you shower or bathe if you let me.. you deserve to be taken care of.. to not have to think and I can do that for you.. or.. er.. keep doin' it for you, just with a little more clarity on our roles." he smiled a bit then reached for the basket and pulled it closer.

A look at Danny after he pulled the small, black box from the basket. "I also want you to wear somethin' representing us.. all the time but... that's up to you and how you feel about that." he smiled and handed Danny the box, "--either way though, I got it for you and I want you to have it.. even if you're not planning or wanting to wear it around all the time." some of the nerves were coming back but he just smoothed his hand over Danny's arm and the tension went away a little. A smile as he looked into Danny's eyes and waited. -- it was a lot, he knew it was.. he just hoped it wouldn't push him away.

#Nathan|Danny;;#mirrcrxball #(( my heart also hope this is alright <33 ))#Nathan|Danny: drabbles;;

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superlepato · 5 years

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With Love from Memory Lane

I want to thank @benalras for correcting my grammar so I would be able to post the chapter today. I was going to actually post it yesterday, but I wasn’t ready.

You can say Hi in AO3 too.

I think I’m the only weirdo that is still posting stuff for the @harringroveweekoflove

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2

Chapter 3

The next day was charged with excitement and expectations. Everyone knew where they belonged and today they were going to act upon it. Should Billy raise his chin? When would be the right time to posture? Would he be able to growl? He had so many questions that he didn’t ask his father, afraid of ruining the good time they were having, so he let them die in his throat at the moment.

His next worry was Stevie. He hadn’t seen him yesterday after the lecture. How were things between them? Would they change?

Billy went directly to his new locker. As the majority of things in high school, these were set according to the students' labels. The alphas lockers were first, betas (the majority) took the rest of the place, and in case that there were any omegas that year they would be located at the near end since they were a minority and were easy to accommodate that way.

The first class, Language Arts, was one of the classes that didn’t require separating the students by their designation. Stevie would definitely be there; maybe they could sit together.

He was indeed there, sitting next to the window close to the last row.

“Hey! My dad gave more money today. If we put it together with yours we could buy a pile of candy.” He was already imaging a pile of Laffy Taffy, Bubble Yum, and Jelly Belly. Maybe if there was something left they could buy a chocolate cigarette at the store after school.

Stevie was the one that bought most of the candies since his allowance was bigger and more consistent. If they put it together they could buy at least two candies from each of the brands they sold at school but Stevie didn’t share his enthusiasm.

“Dad didn’t give me any money today.” He grumbled on his desk, laying on his arms.

That was weird, one of the things Stevie was well known for was his parents’ money. What they didn’t know at the moment was that it would take three months for his parents to give him his allowance again.

In years to come, he will develop a theory of what must have happened in that strange period of time where Stevie came in a weird mood and without snacks. And also, what could have happened to Hannah.

It was universal knowledge that an alpha couple could only have an alpha kid, maybe a beta one if recessive genes came into collation. Still, they would never be able to have an omega child. Which Steve, unfortunately, ended up being -- only to accidentally prove the blatant infidelity of Mrs. Harrington. Steve just became collateral damage.

Billy could only imagine the fight that had to have been unleashed in that house after Steve showed them his test and schedule that needed to be signed.

Billy doesn’t know what kind of agreement they came up with, but the fact was the Harringtons didn’t divorce and still lived in the house. Well... they still stopped by the house when they were in town.

Frederick Harrington never denied Steve, never disowned him or physically hurt him after the events, but something changed after that day. The time he spent at work went on to the point of spending days or even weeks without setting foot in the house. His relationship with Steve started becoming uncomfortable, cold and denaturalized. Understandable to a point if you consider that Steve’s presence reminded him of that infidelity and the fact that he raised a bastard all this time.

Martha Harrington was kind of a mystery. Nobody knew much about her past. She just showed up (a few times over the years she would share bits of her past with a glass of wine in her hand ). She wasn’t emotionally open, just a hard working woman even before meeting who would then become her husband, which might be why many of the adults at the time were surprised that she even had the time to have an affair.

He supposed that she did care for her son in her own way. But still, Billy wasn’t going to forget or forgive them easily for how they neglected Steve.

Those first weeks of school Billy took the lead and persuaded Stevie to play.

If the Harringtons home was chaos, the school wasn’t much better. You see, Billy wasn’t the only one that cared about displaying the proper behavior according to your designation. A few weeks after the start of school, you could see the attempts of several classmates to establish dominance over others and ensure a good position in the hierarchy of the classroom, and Stevie became an easy target as a result.

People weren’t prone to ignore the fact that Steve was the only male omega in the classroom, so a bit of taunt was to be expected. That was what he thought at the time, and why he didn’t intervene at that moment, mostly because he agreed with most of the things that were said.

I was a little bigoted shit, and again, I’m sorry, Steve.

They were playing basketball during recess and Stevie fell, scraping his knee. Not a big deal, it wasn’t the first time that any of them hurt a part of their body. He was wrong, because when the homeroom teacher found out, all of them were lectured on how they shouldn’t play so roughly with an omega, to the point of quoting the saying “you don’t touch an omega even with the petal of a rose”, which he always thought was a stupid thing to say. Anyway, that crap ended up hurting Stevie more than any other game of basketball.

The teacher’s good intentions backfired after that day. Stevie wasn’t allowed to play with them, nobody wanted to be responsible for “hurting” an omega. Steve would end up being by himself all grumpy during recess until a teacher encouraged him to play with the omega girls.

Billy and Stevie would play together at Stevie’s home like always as if nothing had changed in their little world. They would still play outside and wrestle in the bathtub but Stevie never cried or decided to stop playing with him over a bruise or a scrape, and even though he knew that Steve was equally tough as any other kid, the boundaries were set, what happened at home stayed at home and what happened at school stayed at school.

Anyway, the teacher’s solution would never be permanent. First, because Steve didn’t have anything in common with those girls apart for their designation, and second, the “solution” only brought another problem -- Stevie was baptized with a new nickname after his new found fragility.

Stevie Queenie. It wasn’t a secret that Billy called Steve “Stevie” (it was that Steve called him Silly Billy), but he was the only one allowed to do that. After the taunting and some weak nicknames, that was the one that stuck in everyone’s minds.

Steve didn’t allow him to call him Stevie again after that.

One of the bigger problems at school was the fact that Billy didn’t do anything to defend him for a while, especially because for once Steve fought back. Maybe it was that Billy didn’t intervene, or how annoying and persistent the other could get, but Steve grew a backbone out of it.

One day, Steve just had enough of it.

It happened during recess. Billy was working on his homework so he would have less things to do at home. He tuned out the noise, so he didn’t know how it actually started. But basically, what happened was that a group of boys were talking about collectible cards or something, and that lead to what someone’s cousin said, which then led to that cousin’s job. This ended with them touching the topic of the future jobs they were going to have as adults, and then Michael told Andrew that he couldn’t be a professional football player because they were mostly alphas, the betas players weren’t as famous or popular to count. That lead to how betas would always marry other betas, until David, Jason or Mark (the name changed every time the story was told) said that the only omega that Andrew could have was Steve. Immediately, a series of eww’s, nooo’s and giggles exploded.

Billy doesn’t know how much of it Steve heard, but he did, and he proved it when he stood up from his seat and punched Andrew in the face, pushed Michael off his seat, and probably would have done the same with the rest of the group if Jason hadn’t stopped him.

Billy stood up when he saw Steve struggling and Jason about to do something while holding him. The teacher wasn’t there at the moment, so the fight easily went out of hand, and it didn’t stop until Jason was crushed under the two-door metal locker they used to store school supplies.

The only reason why the Millers didn’t take that incident to a whole new level was because legally confronting the Harringtons would’ve been unsuccessful, and because it would have to be made public that their son was being an asshole with a bunch of other kids to the only male omega in town (and were too cowardly to take full responsibility and do more than pointing fingers at each other), and also because Jason wasn’t seriously injured.

Everyone got a warning, the teachers got scared, and Steve wasn’t talking to him for a reason he couldn’t understand --I mean, I defended him, why was I having the silent treatment?

#stranger things #steve harrington #billy hargrove #harringrove #omega steve harrington #alpha billy hargrove #a/b/o au #my writing #with love from memory lane #first kiss au #harringroveweekoflove

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lady-divine-writes · 5 years

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Kurtbastian fic - “Alone Where the Roads Don’t Travel - Chapter 1” (Rated M)

Kurt, a boy who doesn't believe in magic or fairy tales, will grow up to discover that he is full of magic. And as for fairy tales? His life practically is one.

Notes: I have been working on this story for a while now. Years, as a matter of fact, using the prompts from @kurtoberfest. I apologize that, even though this is a Halloween story, it won't be complete by Halloween. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Read on AO3.

“Can we go?” Kurt chants, kicking his feet as his father slips the last rain boot over his sneakered foot. “Can we go? Can we go yet? Can we go? Can we can we can we can we …?”

“Hold on, kiddo!” Burt laughs, wrangling his barely bundled seven-year-old son as the boy tries to scurry out of his parents’ grasp. “We’ve got all afternoon to pick our pumpkins. But there’s a few things we’ve gotta talk about first.”

“Aw, all right!” Kurt groans, surrendering to his mom’s fussing over his gloves while his father fastens the jute toggles on his grey wool coat. “Just don’t make it too wordy. We’re burning daylight.”

Elizabeth looks over at her husband and snickers. “Now who does that sound like?”

“Your father,” Burt answers quickly, and receives a smack on the thigh for his remark.

“Okay, love,” Elizabeth says, returning to her little boy. “The rules are look before you leap. There could be slick patches of mud and uneven ground. I don’t want you slipping and twisting an ankle.”

“I know,” Kurt grumbles, though he definitely did not know. This pumpkin patch isn’t the same roadside stand they usually go to. That stand closed down, completely out of the blue. Not a single member of the Hummel clan understood why since the place had an advertisement printed in The Lima News yesterday. But they pulled up to it – or to the spot where it had been – and the whole stand is gone.

Vanished without a trace.

And not just the stand, but the field beyond, which was usually filled to bursting with pumpkins, squash, corn, bell peppers, and every other vegetable that sprouts during the fall, lay fallow.

Unsown.

It was as if the stand - the same stand his parents had been going to since they were children, the same stand their local news station visited at the beginning of October the way they did every year - had never existed.

They were about to go home and regroup, look for another stand nearby, when they stumbled across this place. Admittedly, Kurt’s parents weren’t too thrilled to stop here. For one thing, this whole place seemed deserted, run by a single old man at the entrance - stooped in posture, haggard in appearance, with one clouded eye and a head of stringy white hairs starting midway past his crown and ending above the knob of his neck. When he looked at Kurt, Kurt felt it, like a hand grabbing his heart, and not from the man’s clear eye, but from the milky white one, moving through Kurt as if the man were taking a peek inside him.

Looking through him at his very soul.

And Kurt felt transparent. Like cellophane.

He had a voice like broken glass, and a laugh that sounded like cats being skinned alive.

Kurt was glad he only had to hear it once.

But as unsettling as that man was, even that didn’t dissuade Kurt.

Kurt’s parents shared many a significant look during the decision making process. But Kurt insisted. It was three days before Halloween. They were running out of time. He wanted a pumpkin, preferably not one bought at The Home Depot or the supermarket since where’s the fun in that? And this place, with its air of rustic mystique, seemed like the perfect place to find one.

They tried to talk Kurt out of it, but his little mind was made up, and his parents, the way most well-meaning parents are, didn’t want to disappoint him, even if a question of safety was involved.

“If you find a pumpkin you like, don’t pick it up,” his father adds. “These are going to be bigger than the ones we usually get. Call me over, and I’ll help you.”

“Yeah, yeah …”

“But most importantly, stay where you can see us,” Elizabeth stresses, wrapping her own too long red cashmere scarf around Kurt’s neck and tying it in front. “If you can’t see us, we probably can’t see you.”

“I know, Mommy,” Kurt says, burying his nose in the knot and breathing in to catch a whiff of his mother’s perfume.

“And don’t go near the trees,” she warns in a slightly lower voice, as if the trees, standing at the boundary of the field over a hundred yards away, might be listening.

Kurt turns to look at them – tall, dark sentries of greying bark standing guard before an even darker wood. There’s a silence about them. A steadfastness. A chill wind blows, fluttering the vines along the ground, but it doesn’t seem to budge the leaves on those trees. That does make them appear a tad bit ominous, but other than that, they’re just trees. It’s a forest. Outside of fairy tales, Kurt has never known a forest to be scary.

And even though he’s only all of seven-years-old, Kurt doesn’t believe in fairy tales.

“Why not?” he asks.

“Because it’s getting dark,” his mother says, “and it’s getting cold. I wouldn’t want you to get lost.”

Kurt nods. That seems fair. That’s definitely a mom thing to say. But there’s something in the tone of her voice, in the hardness of her inflection that niggles at him. It’s not a cruel hardness. It’s more of a veil, hiding how she really feels.

As if her reason for him not going near the trees goes deeper than ‘it’s dark and it’s cold’.

“Okay,” he agrees. There isn’t any reason for him to go near the trees anyway. Today is about picking out pumpkins with his mom and dad. It’s not for exploring by himself. After this, they’re making cookies and candied apples and cider, then spending the whole night carving jack ‘o lanterns while watching scary(ish) movies. He doesn’t want to do a single thing that might derail their plans by a single minute.

Considering the way his folks have been talking – late at night after he’s in bed, when they think he can’t hear – he’s beginning to believe they might not be celebrating Halloween this way much longer. Like his parents think he’s getting too old or something.

Whatever their reason is, it seems to make them sad, so as soon as he can, he’s going to reassure them that there’s no reason at all to stop.

Kurt intends on celebrating Halloween forever and ever.

Once Elizabeth has her son properly shielded against the cold, the three set off into the pumpkin patch, weeding through the vines, meandering amongst the squash, on the search for the family of pumpkins that will adorn their doorstep, their dining room table, and the hearth in front of the fireplace.

“Do you see one you want yet, kiddo?” Kurt’s father asks, glancing periodically over his shoulder as they walk farther in. The ground begins to slope and it spurs Kurt ahead, but he does his best to stay within comfortable talking distance of his dad.

“I don’t know.” Kurt carefully examines one gourd, then the next. The ones in this particular section are misshapen, grotesque, knobby. Those are the kinds of pumpkins his father likes – the ones he can turn into goblins and trolls with a few masterful slices of his carving tools.

The ones he can decimate with his sledgehammer the second Halloween is over.

But Kurt likes the picturesque pumpkins – the ones without dents or growths; round and evenly segmented, almost unnaturally so, like he’s seen in Simply Living magazine.

The ones that match his mother’s decorating aesthetic.

His mother has already chosen her pumpkin and taken it back to their SUV. Kurt wishes she could have ventured with them longer, but she gets so tired nowadays – out of breath during the shortest of walks. They no longer go on treks to the park, or strolls to the market. She sleeps in later, goes to bed earlier, stares off into the distance for long periods, and cries with no explanation as to why.

There’s something going on. Something wrong. Like the forest.

And just like the forest, no one will tell him what it is that they really fear.

A rustle of leaves and a small whimper draw Kurt and Burt’s attentions away from the pumpkins and up to the top of the hill, beyond which they can’t see, but where their SUV is parked. Burt looks at his son, then past him at the forest, a wealth of thoughts scrolling behind his tired eyes.

“I … think I should go check on your mother,” he says, body turned halfway up the hill, quietly debating if he should make his son come with. Or waiting for Kurt to offer. But Kurt is only seven. He doesn’t know that’s what his father wants him to do.

He doesn’t know what’s going on.

Burt sees his own fear reflected in his son’s eyes as they begin to widen, and he smiles to soothe him. This is supposed to be a good day. That’s what he and Elizabeth had wanted. A fun afternoon filled with pleasant memories.

They’ll be needing more of these during the oncoming months. Best not to sabotage this one.

He doesn’t want to frighten his son over nothing.

“I’ll only be a minute,” Burt says. “You keep looking, but … stay here. Don’t go any farther without me.”

“I won’t,” Kurt says, relief curling into a smile that lifts his red cheeks. “I promise.”

“Good.” Another whimper and Burt’s steps quicken. “I’ll just be …” He doesn’t finish his sentence. He’s up and over the hill in the space of ten steps when Kurt could have sworn it took them twenty to get down there. No matter. Eyes on the prize, he tells himself as he returns to the pumpkins. He needs to find one so perfect that it’ll take his parents’ minds off of whatever it is they’re worried about. A pumpkin so perfect, it’ll make that forest seem less scary. A pumpkin so perfect, it could end hunger, bring about world peace, and win him a spot on the cover of next year’s Martha Stewart Living.

Kurt chuckles to himself. Alright. That might be overdoing it a little.

He’ll settle for … a pumpkin so perfect, it could cure cancer.

“Hello.”

Kurt’s gaze snaps up at the sound of a voice that’s not his father’s, not his mother’s, and definitely not the man from the entrance. Standing in front of him a little ways away is a boy about his age, bearing a wide smile of straight, white teeth. He has brown hair like Kurt’s, and green eyes that are not. That’s important for Kurt to note because sometimes he’ll see images of himself that he swears are other people, but they’re not. They’re just him.

But this boy is definitely not him.

For one thing, he’s not as wrapped up as Kurt. The coat he’s wearing looks much more elegant than Kurt’s for a plain old Tuesday afternoon. It looks like the kind of coat one would wear to the theater, or to church.

Or to a funeral.

How can he walk through this muddy field of pumpkins and not worry about getting that expensive coat filthy?

Kurt definitely has questions for this boy’s mother.

Kurt glances curiously side to side.

Where is this boy’s mother?

The boy with the green eyes smirks.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Uh … nothing,” Kurt says. “It’s just … I thought my parents and I were the only ones here.”

“It’s a big place,” the boy says, shrugging one shoulder. “It’s easy to miss people, even when they’re right in front of you.”

“I guess so.”

“My name’s Sebastian, by the way,” the boy says. “Not that you’re asking or anything.”

“Sorry,” Kurt apologizes since Sebastian sounds mildly offended. “Mine’s Kurt.”

Sebastian nods. “So … you lookin’ for a pumpkin?”

Kurt scans the field around him, rows of pumpkins stretching as far as the eye can see … and nothing else. “Yup. That’s what I’m doin’.”

“Well, these pumpkins here are nice and all,” Sebastian remarks, toeing a gourd at his feet, “but I think the best pumpkins are over there.” He gestures toward the far side of the patch, closer to the line of trees. Kurt’s eyes follow, momentarily forgetting his parents’ warning as the thought of a pumpkin more perfect than the ones he can already see occupies his brain.

The pumpkin that could solve his problems.

“Why do you think that?” Kurt asks.

“No one goes over there. Nobody’s stomped on them or smushed them. And the ground’s dry, so they’re not moldy and soft. Every single one is better than the next.”

“Really?” Kurt says. Martha Stewart Living, here I come.

“A-ha. If you come with me, I’ll show you.”

The boy reaches out a hand. On impulse, Kurt does the same. He extends his small arm, and a strange sensation overtakes his body – electricity crackling from his skin to Sebastian’s, arching between them in strings of thin blue light. Kurt can’t seem to make his legs move, but he feels himself being carried forward. There’s a power inside him, one he’s felt before but that he does his best not to recognize, but it’s never done anything like this before. This is bigger than him, stronger than him. Whatever this is, it’s both his and borrowed from this boy with the green eyes, whose heart, from five feet away, Kurt can hear in his ears, beating at the same rhythm as his own.

“Come with me,” Sebastian says, reaching but avoiding Kurt’s touch as if he can’t take Kurt’s hand alone.

He needs Kurt to take his instead.

And Kurt tries, but the more he reaches forward, the farther the boy moves away. Kurt’s feet, which could easily solve the problem by lifting off the ground, seem to have grown roots. They tug him backwards, his heels creating furrows in the dirt from the strength of his resistance.

“Come on, Kurt,” Sebastian pleads, sounding inexplicably desperate. “Only a few more inches …”

“I’m … grrr … trying,” Kurt says, but he can’t reach any farther. He can’t make his arm stretch those last few inches. A distant warning rings in his ears that sounds like his mother’s voice calling his name, but Kurt ignores it … only for a few more seconds, he thinks, so he can reach Sebastian and take his hand. He needs to take Sebastian’s hand. Looking for the perfect pumpkin is no longer his goal.

Touching Sebastian is.

And like everything else going on around him, every look he can’t decipher, every secret whispered in his presence but out of his earshot, he doesn’t know why.

But he’s certain he’ll understand when he finally takes Sebastian’s hand and this is over.

“Kurt!” his mother cries. “Don’t, Kurt! Don’t take another step! Please!”

Kurt hesitates, and with that hesitation, he and Sebastian slip farther apart. The distance between them widens until Kurt knows he won’t be able to reach Sebastian, not even if he manages to break free of whatever’s wound around his ankles and takes a flying leap. Sebastian flexes his fingers, and the electricity grows brighter. A single fork breaks free from the rest and spits forward, pricking Kurt’s finger. Heat spirals up his arm, leaving a trail of fire behind. It becomes too heavy to lift and drops back to his side, but before it does, before his fingers break the connection between himself and Sebastian, that electricity zips through Kurt’s chest … and pierces his heart.

A sad smile lifts Sebastian’s lips.

“Kurt!” Elizabeth wraps her arms around him, tries to scoop him up. She falters, falls forward, but Burt catches them. She makes do with his help, Kurt’s father hugging them both as if their lives depended on it. “What were you doing!?”

“I was … I was looking for pumpkins!” Kurt scrunches his nose, confused as to why his mom and dad look so frightened, why they’re hugging him so tightly. “I wasn’t going to go into the forest! Honest!”

“But you were!” Elizabeth cries, burying her head in Kurt’s neck. “You were nearly there!”

“No,” Kurt argues, not because he’s in the habit of disagreeing with his mother, but because she had to be mistaken. He would never disobey her. And even if he’d wanted to, there was no way. He’d inched forward a step or two, but after that, he couldn’t move. “I was just going to look for the good pumpkins, with Sebastian.”

“Who … who’s Sebastian, love?” Elizabeth sniffles, her tears drying in an instant at the mention of a name. “Where is he?”

“He’s right there …” Kurt turns to point and notices for the first time where they are. A foot in front of him stand the foreboding line of trees that guard the woods. Standing this close to them, Kurt can understand a little better his mother’s fears. It’s not even so much the trees, but the darkness beyond them that takes his breath away. Kurt isn’t a stranger to forests. Where they live in Lima, Ohio, there are many forests, lining the outskirts of every park, and almost every property. But they usually have a warm, welcoming feeling to them. A serenity that’s inviting and safe.

These woods are dark. That’s the only word Kurt can think of to describe them. Darker than dark. A darkness so overwhelming, it becomes a void. Not a single shadow can he see, not a silhouette. A wolf could be crouching out in the open a few feet within and he would never see the creature. Not until it opened its eyes and bared its teeth.

Not until it was ready to strike.

And that was another thing.

More mysterious than how Kurt might have made his way to the forest’s edge with no recollection of it, Sebastian, with his green eyes and white teeth, was nowhere to be seen.

“But … he was here. He was right here,” Kurt mutters in confusion. “I … I swear. I’m not lying.”

Burt and Elizabeth exchange a look.

“Don’t worry. We believe you, kiddo,” Burt says, mussing his son’s hair.

“You don’t think …?” Elizabeth starts, but Burt nods. It’s not what he thinks, it’s what he saw. He felt it in the ground beneath his feet, the way it shifted uncomfortably. The vines had begun to grow around them, climbing up the hillside to warn them. The sky itself had summoned them, grey clouds closing in overhead, sparking to get their attention. Then they saw their son, gliding across the ground as if floating, wrapped in a cloak of blue lightning.

The only thing they didn’t see was another boy. To their eyes, there was no one else in sight.

But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.

It means he wasn’t meant for them to see.

If what Kurt says is true, and Burt has no doubt it is, he has found them.

And he means to take their son.

Elizabeth hugs Kurt tighter as Burt turns her towards their SUV.

“I think we’d better go,” he says. “Now.”

#kurtbastian #sebkurt #sekurt #frankie writes

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sirrobin126 · 6 years

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This is going to be long as hell.

Okay, so ages ago @thiievesandbeggars gave me a massive ship hc ask meme thing and I’ve finally done it, after adding bits and pieces every so often while I was studying. Most of it is going to be under a cut because it is, honestly, hella long.

Also, yeah its for Mionel in case you somehow didn’t guess that already.

Affection:

Who likes to cuddle?

Martha’s a very affectionate person and quite a touchy person. She doesn’t hide that or hold herself back when she cares for someone. Lionel is…new…to the concept of selflessly giving physical affection that leaves him vulnerable. That being said, although he doesn’t initiate cuddles to begin with, he is very into them when they happen. Martha can often find herself glancing at the clock on the wall and like half-regretting starting a Lionel hug when she had things to do that day. But she never really regrets it because he hugs like he hasn’t touched another person in years, even if they were together that morning. Martha swears up and down she saw him wipe a tear away once after an extended cuddle period but Lionel insists he just had a bit of kryptonite in his eye.

Who is the little spoon?

Martha, she is little and likes being the little spoon. She was used to it with Jonathan, who of course was a big strong loving protector man, and she just feels safe and comforted that way. I wanted to be cheeky and say Lionel, but I feel like he’s just too into looking at Martha, too set on protecting her from the outside world, and too uncomfortable being that vulnerable to turn his back on her.

Who struggles to keep their hands to themself?

Look, from the very moment they decided that maybe they could become a thing, and Martha indicated that she was open to a real relationship with him Lionel had to physically restrain himself from immediately pulling her close to him and kissing her like the world was ending. Every so often when they’re together Lionel will just get this wave of, ‘this is her, she’s here, there she is!’ and if they’re somewhere where it’s not ideal to start making out he will be in a state of absolute suffering and hold her hand, or touch her waist or trace his finger over her shoulders, because, there she is, with him.

Who gets naughty in the most inappropriate of places?

I mean, Lionel is a very dirty old man, with a very varied sexual history, and a very skewed sense of “the appropriate” (see: naked at work and fucking Lex’s girlfriend). He wouldn’t do anything that made Martha uncomfortable, but he does linger at the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.

How long can they cuddle until one becomes uncomfortable?

Like I said, a Lionel cuddle is difficult to start, and even more difficult to end. He’s not like, good, at judging how regular humans interact with each other, and he is not great at being a reasonable person. It’s fine when they’re sitting on the couch both reading or whatever and cuddling, but it’s not quite as fine when Martha has to get to the farmer’s market in five minutes but she just heard Lionel calmly exhale and felt his shoulders drop in relaxation which he never does and damn that’s nice but also if I don’t leave right now Helen McGregor is going to get to those good Rutabagas and take them all like she always does.

Who gives the most kisses?

They both like to, but if we’re talking not necessarily sexual kisses, its Martha. She kisses when she sees him. She kisses when she leaves. She kisses when she has to get up and go to another room. She kisses when she just feels a swell of affection or emotion come over her. Lionel loves this, because its not like she’s trying to get anything from him, or trying to make him do anything, she was just doing something and thought she’d let him know that she cares about him and then move on. Its not a super familiar feeling for him so he is disproportionally charmed by it.

What is their favourite non-sexual activity?

Probably discussing life philosophies and morality, or at least, that’s what they seem to spend a lot of time doing. They also like going to the theatre (Martha likes musicals, Lionel likes the opera, and they’ll both watch plays quite happily). Also book club. (Their book club is only the two of them, they alternate who gets to choose the book, they have a lot of variety)

Where is their favourite place to cuddle?

I wanna be cheesy and say the garden where they had that first convo but like, if Lionel has the choice between being outside and not being outside, he will choose the latter. So, I imagine they’ve set up a joint study for them both so they can both work on their individual stuff and still be together, and there’s like a bookcase and a nice couch where they can sit when they’re not working.

Who is more likely to playfully grope the other?

Lionel. Although, I don’t know if playful is always the right word to describe it. Cause that implies that its just a joke, and while he may play it off like that, if Martha took him up on it he would be immediately dtf, like just, on a moment’s notice.

How often do they get time to themselves?

Not often, which is why they have to find spaces they can be in. They both have jobs that are really intense on their time, although Lionel has a bit more freedom in that regard because he can choose to take days off at a time if he wants (and go stalk a teenager to find out what they know about aliens). But even though they’re officially a thing now, Lionel still keeps a little bit of distance from her working life to avoid giving her detractors any more ammunition to throw at her about being in the pocket of big business, which, is so absolutely not true that it’s laughable. Martha may try to find compromises and may treat business v politely, but if they tried to manipulate her into going against the people’s best interest she would shut that shit down quick smart. If anything, big business (Lionel) is subject to her demands way more. But, she’s concerned about what they would say, so Lionel doesn’t turn up to her work anymore than anyone else’s spouses (despite his natural tendency to butt in and interfere everywhere he can).

Family:

Do your muses plan on having children/or have children?

No. No, no. Even though they’re a pairing of the man who can’t help but have children, and the woman who wants to adopt every sad looking child that walks past her, they’re both past the point where they can spend another eighteen years raising a child. Also they have very different ideas on what having children is for, you know: love and support vs power struggles and passing on a legacy.

If so, how many children do your muses want/have?

Martha has one, Lionel has had four that we know of.

Who is the favorite parent?

Martha is everyone’s favourite parent. I mean, come on.

Who is the authoritative parent?

Authoritative or authoritarian?

Who is more likely to allow the children to have a day off school?

Martha is tough but fair int his department, she’ll always want Clark to go to school, but she will take into account how tough things can be for him sometimes and cut him some slack. Lionel is more of the Spartan method, if you can sneak out of school and not get caught, go for it, excellent. If you get caught though, he won’t swoop into to save you unless it going to negatively affect the Luthor reputation.

Who lets the children indulge in sweets and junk food when the other isn’t around?

Martha isn’t constantly baking for nothing you know.

Who turns up to extra curricular activities to support their children?

Support or brag? Lionel turns up to Lex’s chess matches the same way Lucius turns up to Draco’s quidditch. Because he thinks he has some skill at it and wants to reap the benefits of that in a place where he can be recognised for his son’s achievements. He’s a bad dad.

Who goes to parent teacher interviews?

I mean Lionel went to them but goddamn, someone trying to tell him how to raise his kids? That did not go down very well. He did listen though in case there was anything there he needed to throw back in Lex’s face when he was thirty during an unrelated argument. He is not a good father.

During middle school, Martha of course was like, deep in the pta, and she ooooowns the fucking bake sale/school fete. Alice from down the road tried to take the crown a few years into Martha’s rule. This would have been fine with Martha if Alice had been nice about it when she decided that she was going to take care of the bulk of the organising and give Martha “a little stall for your cookies and things”. But Alice wasn’t nice about it, and Alice hadn’t communicated with her and had ignored Martha’s further questions. So it just couldn’t be helped that Martha made her stall bigger than the allotted space, because her question about space was never answered. She couldn’t help if it was decorated to the nines, more than any other stall (Jonathan spent a sleepless night glueing, and hammering and painting the stall’s wooden beams). She couldn’t help if she baked her fucking ass off and made confectionary creations the population of Smallville had never even heard of. She also couldn’t help that when she arrived at the fete, Alice’s organisation skills were poorer than average and Martha happened to have on speed dial every bouncy castle, entertainer and activity provider, with whom she already had a good relationship. She couldn’t help that everyone referred it to as Martha’s event. She couldn’t help that Alice was so embarrassed that she didn’t even show her face at the next pta meeting and meekly accepted whatever job Martha deigned to give to her the next year, which Martha gave her with a polite smile and excellent line of communication of course.

Martha later told Lionel that story when they were working together, as a metaphor for a business thing she was trying to argue with him about. Martha was a little embarrassed of it when telling it, but Lionel had to be excused after hearing how Martha absolutely destroyed her competitor and could be found running cold water over his face in his private bathroom before he could even think about facing her again.

Disagreements:

Who is more likely to raise their voice?

Lionel is the more dramatic and emotional one so obvs him, when like, the mildest inconvenience happens to him, he stubs his toe and threatens the doorframe. But when Martha raises her voice, shit’s gotten real, and you best go over exactly what you’ve done to push her to the edge.

Who threatens to leave but never actually does?

Lionel’s not usually one for empty threats but goddamn he knows nothing better is ever going to happen in his life than Martha Kent. He’ll bluster and give his speeches and talk about how his philosophical point of view is right and correct and other opinions?? Never heard of them?? and he’ll say I might as well leave but he doesn’t even touch the door handle.

Who actually keeps their word and leaves?

Martha. She’s not one to go over the top, she’s not one to overreact, so if she says she’s going to leave, things have probably reached a real breaking point. She’s probably thought it all out and considered it inside before you ever hear about it.

Who trashes the house?

Depends whose house they’re at, neither of them would trash the others stuff. I can see Lionel’s office just littered with paper and shit that he’s torn up in frustration. But Martha’s more likely to turn to the oven and angrily bake for about 24 hours until she calms down so the house is just covered in passive aggressive cupcakes that Lionel won’t eat out of spite.

How often do they argue/disagree?

Not actually that often. The points I made above are honestly rare cases with them. Like, when it comes to bickering then yeah, all the time, you can’t have two such different people, who are also very clever, together, and not expect half their conversations to be a debate of some kind. But those kinds of debates are playful, they’re not the end of the world and they’re also littered with Lionel making puppy dog eyes at Martha that she won’t concede his point and Martha loudly wondering how a man who is so smart can be so goddamn stubborn and single-minded. If it’s something important that Martha feels strongly about then Lionel will usually defer to her opinion and do his best to fight for whatever it is she wants, but Lionel’s an opinionated guy too so when their fundamental views of the world clash that’s when there are teething problems.

Who is the first to apologise?

Martha is the first to apologise if she thinks he was really hurt by the things she said. Lionel is the first to apologise if he’s had a little time to let her viewpoint sit with him and he’s come around to it. Which is a privilege he bestows on Martha and Martha alone. He’s never apologised first to anyone else in his life unless he had a motive behind it. Lionel also apologises biggest and with flowers, whereas Martha’s is more of a frank face-to-face thing that acknowledges his feelings but doesn’t budge on her beliefs. Lionel would rather forget the whole argument and move along without getting into it.

Sex:

Who is on top? Who is on the bottom?

Bold of you to assume either of them would limit themselves to one position or the other. If you asked Lionel he’d say he was a top, if you asked Martha she would tell you that it was a very inappropriate question and she wasn’t going to answer. In her head she would say top as well. In reality they do much more sharing of both positions.

Who has the strangest desires?

Look, the strangest desire between either of them is that Martha looked at a smarmy, arrogant, casually ruthless, workaholic mess of a man who had done his level best to build his company at the explicit detriment of her town and neighbours and still went “Oh fuck, he’s hot.”

Any kinks?

Have you see Lionel? You take one look at that man and tell me he doesn’t deserve to be kinkshamed just for the general way he is. Lionel has both a praise kink and a love of being threatened. He likes a bit of ruffage, he likes to be tied up, he likes to tie people up. He’s not averse to hair pulling, he likes potentially dangerous settings, and anything with the threat of being caught thrown into it. He’s a dirty old man.

Who’s dominant in bed?

In general, Lionel, because he’s got that whole ‘I am the deciding factor in the events of this world and master of the universe’ thing going on that he’s pretty committed to. With a lot of partners he’s very dominant, but if you know how to play Lionel he can switch to sub so fast you get whiplash. You just have to be able to follow through with your dominance or Lionel gets very smarmy and condescending and generally becomes an arrogant nightmare to deal with. Martha and Lionel don’t play into a lot of the dominance dynamics tho, it’s not usually been Martha’s speed.

Is head ever in the equation?

If I ever publish my fanfiction you’ll know it is.

If so, who is better at performing it?

Lionel has had, a lot, of practice.

Ever had sex in public?

Lionel definitely has. But the closest the two of them came together was when they got drunk and made out in the coat room of a very important fancy party that Martha was super nervous about. Also on Lionel’s private plane, which Martha considers public but Lionel doesn’t.

Who moans the most?

Martha is very vocal, to Lionel’s absolute delight. Lionel moans too but he’s a bit more of a talker, to the surprise of no-one ever.

Who leaves the most marks?

Martha's got longer nails, so she occasionally leaves claw marks down his back which Lionel is very into. Lionel can give hickeys like a goddamn teenager, and he’s a territorial show off, but he doesn’t do it often because he’s above that thank you very much.

Who screams the loudest?

You better believe he’s doing his absolute best at all times to make her scream.

Who is the more experienced of the two?

Come on, he’s been a serial philanderer and an absolute horndog for decades. She had flings before, but honestly, Martha’s been with the same man since she was in her early twenties.

Do they ‘fuck’ or ‘make love’?

They would both scoff if they ever heard that question asked, and each would assume the answer to be obvious. However, for Martha, this is a lot more adventurous and wild than she’s used to so she considers it the former. For Lionel, he doesn’t usually get this intense level of intimate romantic connection during sex so he definitely considers it the latter. They think they’re on the same wavelength.

Rough or soft?

Depends what they feel like. When rough, Martha gets to play into that dangerous aura Lionel’s got going for him, when soft, Lionel gets to consider what an angel she is at least once per second.

How long do they usually last?

Hey, I’m not going to say anything, but they are getting up in years.

Is protection used?

God, you know, for a man so cautious and meticulous in his planning, so paranoid and careful, he sure does have a lot of illegitimate children.

Does it ever get boring?

No, how could it when the whole relationship always feels new. They only have a certain amount of time together, and they’ve lived without each other for so many years that every word, every feeling, every touch is as exciting as ever. Also, Lionel voice: Martha Kent is a beautiful angel and I should be shot if I ever don’t think that in her presence.

Where is the strangest place they’d have sex?

The plane was pretty strange for Martha. Lionel’s giving it a while before mentioning any other strange places he would be into. His office for one, and also he has this thing about maybe churches, but he’s not going to push it.

Sleeping:

Who snores?

Lionel used to, but he got a very expensive operation to stop that because goddamit no ones gonna think he’s not perfect all the time. Martha snores but only after she’s been drinking, something Lionel found out about the first time he had to put her to bed drunk, because she’s so tiny but she was so difficult to move and he found it equal parts hilarious and adorable.

Do they share a bed or sleep separately?

Oh my god, if you think Lionel is going to ever not sleep in the same bed as Martha when he has the opportunity then you do not know Lionel Luthor.

If they sleep together, do they cozy up together or lay far apart?

Lionel likes to think of himself as a solid oak tree, lying there while Martha curls around him, which is true, sometimes. Lionel can also be classified as a bit of clinging vine, wrapping his arms around her as they falls asleep.

Who talks in their sleep?

Lionel is really bad for it. No-one has told him that he sleep talks, which he does, badly, but usually he falls asleep after everyone else so unless you wake up before him you don’t hear it. He will mutter anything from non-sensical sentences, to entire monologues and have fights with opponents about the stupidest thing. He doesn’t know he does it, he wakes up mad at people for dream reasons but he doesn’t know that he was actually fighting them. Martha mentions it off-handedly one day that he said something funny in his sleep and Lionel is just like ??? w hat. And Martha’s like, yeah you know, you were talking about this thing. And Lionel just, fucking, goes into this spiral of have I been giving away my plans for years? What is this betrayal of my own body?

What do they wear to bed?

Well, according to the comic, Lionel defs sleeps shirtless, if not entirely naked (This is the hill I will die on). I think he sleeps in nothing but expensive silky boxers, or silk pyjama pants. I think Martha wears cute patterned pyjamas.

Are either of your muses insomniacs?

Lionel has the most trouble sleeping, but he kind of ignored that it was a problem and started to think of it as a feature of his superhuman personality. He just started kind of working instead of sleeping and called it a day. He convinced himself that he had moved beyond regular sleep patterns and went to sleep late and woke up early every day, not quite connecting it with the giant crashes he would have every so often that he would put down to substance or alcohol related reasons, not considering that the crashes happened to coincide when work was particularly stressful and big deals were getting done. This was because his stress got worse than normal during those periods and his body had to finally give up and crash. Lionel just figured it was a product of business and that it would make him stronger, because he is an idiot with no capacity for self-reflection. As he got well into his 50s, he started sleeping in more because he still had trouble falling asleep but because his business was so stable and set up he just decided that as CEO he got to have later mornings than everyone else. That allowed him to finally get the amount of sleep regular people do, and also it feeds into his superiority complex and vanity that he is allowed to do something his employees can’t.

Can sleeping pills be found by the bedside?

Martha was kind of horrified by Lionel’s terrible sleep patterns and the fact that he didn’t seem to see a problem with it, so she originally gave him some herbal remedies and tried to get him to like meditate and stuff, but when she realised that wasn’t going to work, she had him go to the doctor. So now he has a pill he can take if he’s having a particularly bad night, but they often sit untouched in Lionel’s bedside drawer because what, he’s going to sleep when he has work to do? I think not.

Who wakes up with bed hair?

Martha. It’s not like ridiculously bad, but its certainly a lot more wavy and unruly than when she combs and straightens it for the day. She doesn’t mind spending a little bit of her morning doing her hair, she doesn’t wear a lot of makeup or jewellery so doing her hair is kind of a nice morning ritual that she can spend time on now that she doesn’t have to be out in the field at a godforsaken hour anymore.

Lionel’s haircare routine happens at night, because he wants to wake up and essentially be ready to go. That wild look his hair has is actually carefully cultivated to look like that, and is helped by a humidifier he keeps in the bedroom, and the silk sheets and pillowcase he has is as much for his hair as his body. He also has a leave in conditioner and oil for his beard. Unfortunately when he has short hair it’s significantly harder to tame and so he will wake up with a few stubborn cowlicks that stick straight out from his head that he either has to leave like that or wrestle with (depending whether he is good or evil at that point)

Who wakes up first?

Martha, she’s been living on a farm for nearly forty years, and she’s got her morning “get ready and make breakfast” rituals set in. She just feels more ready to face the day when she’s had an early morning, like there are so many more hours of sunlight in which to get things done and be productive. When she sleeps in she always feels like she’s missed out on something.

Who prepares breakfast in bed for the other?

Martha was always used to making breakfast while Jonathan was setting up for the day, and she likes cooking so she continues to do it. The first time she made breakfast in bed she made two plates of food and brought them back up and they sat in bed and ate them and although Lionel winced he didn’t say anything about food that might get on the silk sheets. So she does it sometimes and every time Lionel is very thankful and charmed but also like, these are very expensive silk.

Lionel has before made a big production out of breakfast in bed tho, like on Martha’s birthday he had a very fancy breakfast made at an upscale restaurant at Metropolis and transported to Smallville and brought it up to her on an eating tray that sat on a mini-table and there was a rose on it and a very nice looking, suspiciously present, cloth napkin that went over her legs (and the silk bedsheets). The most surprising thing of all was that he managed to wake up before her and set it up. Of course, he just didn’t sleep the night before but he’s not going to tell Martha that, and anyone else who helped is sworn to secrecy. He thinks it was a perfect surprise but Martha did wake up whilst people were still downstairs and Lionel was furiously whispering trying to get everything together, but she was kind enough to pretend to be asleep and wake up astounded at Lionel’s entrance.

What is their favourite sleeping position?

Lionel is him on his back with Martha curled up next his chest. Martha’s is on her side as the little spoon, with Lionel’s arm over her.

Who hogs the sheets?

Asleep and half-asleep Martha is nowhere near as patient and considerate as awake Martha, so if she gets cold during the night she will just pull as many blankets, or a Lionel, towards her as she needs. Similarly, if she is too warm, she will have no hesitation to throw the blankets off her and either pile them on Lionel or throw them on the floor.

Do they set an alarm each night?

Martha doesn’t anymore but Lionel does, his alarm clock is a radio that plays a Metropolis news channel for him to wake up to and immediately get the latest news and information about whats going on that he will need for the business day, even on the weekends.

Can a television be found in their bedroom?

Lionel hates watching television in the living room so there’s no way he has it in his bedroom. He’s a big fucking snob and he definitely thinks he’s better than tv. He hates that there are some things he kind of likes to watch (discovered in the long hours fixing clocks and setting up charities in his guest house at the mansion). He considers these quiz shows and murder mysteries beneath him, but if Martha’s watching he’ll act like he has no choice but to sit down next to her and watch as well. The only thing he watches voluntarily are the news and maybe nature documentaries, if he’s had a few drinks. He can’t watch history or science documentaries because he just becomes the embodiment of the “i know more than you” meme. Drunk Lionel is definitely the type to talk to his tv.

He’s also the biggest hypocrite about plebeian interests because he is an internet hound. He’ll turn his nose up at people that get all their info or entertainment from the news, but you try and pry that phone out of his hand, and see what happens. He’s always checking for updates and alerts on his phone and computer.

Who has nightmares?

Martha has always had a pretty standard mix of good and bad dreams. After Jonathan died they got worse, and often it was dreams that didn’t seem like nightmares at the time. But, just at the point in the dream where she was talking with Jonathan, or they were working the farm together, or they were having their anniversary dinner and he apologised for being late, she would wake up and for a moment she would still be in the world of the dream before remembering. Every time it was like losing him over again. It was the hardest immediately after his death. Then, as time went on and she started seeing Lionel, she found that although she kept having these dreams, it wasn’t as crushing to wake up from. She started seeing it more as Jonathan still watching over her, coming to visit her while asleep, joking about whatever was going on in her life and bitching about whatever thing Lionel had just done. Martha is still torn between thinking that it’s just her subconscious finding a way to work through problems she’s having, and really believing that Jonathan has found a way to still be with her.

Who has ridiculous dreams?

Lionel’s dreams are hectic as hell. He’s always late, he’s always chasing something, and he always has shit to collect. He’s had a lot of fucked up shit happen in his life, the feelings from which he’s repressed the fuck out of, so his subconscious feeds him a cocktail of high octane emotional anxiety. However, because his brain is a dick, it associates these emotions with the most whack scenarios that Lionel will never take seriously. How exactly is he supposed to connect the guilt and fear born of real serious actions and behaviours, to the fact that in his dream he and Richard Nixon have to collect every VHS copy of Jane Fonda’s original workout series and goddamit they’re already behind schedule! He has tried to induce lucid dreaming before, so he can make use of sleep time instead of wasting it like everybody else, but part of the process included keeping a dream journal, and after the fifth time he had to write down that he tried to get Darth Vader’s autograph (despite never having seen a Star Wars film) he just got too paranoid that someone was going to read about his stupid dream cycle and somehow use it against him. He burnt the book. Lionel also doesn’t have nightmares often, his regular dreams are stressful enough, but when does they are pretty goddamn harrowing, so, on par, he’s mostly okay with the ridiculous stuff most of the time.

Who sprawls out and takes up most of the bed?

Martha is the most active sleeper. Lionel’s a bad sleep talker in the first hour of sleep and closer to when he wakes up, but for the rest of it he’s dead to the world. He has such a tough time getting to sleep that when he’s in that rem cycle he is fucking out of it. Martha is a lighter sleeper and so she’s more likely to spread out or roll over or push Lionel closer to the edge and leaving him with a little sliver of space and she’ll have most of the bed for her own even tho she’s usually right up next to Lionel and the rest of the bed is untouched territory.

Who makes the bed?

Martha, or Lionel’s cleaner. It depends whose house they’re at and whether Martha managed to get to it before the cleaner could. Martha hates making any more work for the cleaners, and anything she can do herself she does. She begrudgingly acknowledges that in a place the size of the Luthor Mansion a cleaner is probably a good idea, but she feels very bad if she’s not doing her best to do all the stuff she can to reduce the cleaner’s work. Lionel does not understand, because he’s paying for someone to perform that service and that’s their job that they’re getting paid to do. Also, he probably wouldn’t care if the bed was made or not, unless it was for like the express purpose of taking someone to bed and having the room all done up nice and impressive. Otherwise it’s like, I could be working.

What time is bed time?

For Martha, bedtime used to be 9:30pm, only now she’s has a very bad influence on her time, and her work starts later, so there’s no set bed time anymore. She and Lionel will stay up much later than they should, but can you blame them.

Who’s the grumpiest when they wake up?

Lionel, defs, he’s the grumpiest in general so the very idea of having to sleep makes him mad.

Work:

Who is the busiest?

Lionel is a workaholic with a huge number of interests and schemes that he needs to keep an eye on. He’s always got at least three things he’s actively working on in his head whenever he’s doing a single task. He also makes a habit of physically going out to places and doing things that a CEO doesn’t need to do. He could just delegate it to people while he sits in his office, but Lionel spends as much time out of the Luthorcorp building as he does in it. Martha finds her work very rewarding, and she works hard to help the people of her state and community, but she’s been around a bit now and knows the importance of a home life balance in addition to work. Lionel’s still unfamiliar with the concept.

Who rakes in the highest income?

Look, I’m gonna give you three guesses.

Are any of your muses unemployed?

Nah, are you kidding me. Lionel goes weird if he’s not employed, boy starts fixing clocks and bringing out his multitude of very random but inexplicably mastered hobbies. Catch him in the studio painting full size realistic portraits and recording his one man jazz album as he asks you to pick a card to show off his excellent sleight of hand. Martha is also now reluctant to retire or leave her job, because she really feels like she can make a difference where she is. Also, she’s good at it.

Who takes the most sick days?

Ironically, Lionel. Like he’s the biggest workaholic and works works works forever. But he’s also an obsessive fuck who needs to take off days at a time to figure out why this teenager that his son is tangentially friends with is in a specific place and what they know about aliens. He also needs to very dramatically show up in places where people don’t expect him (when he could have easily sent an email) to complete his enigmatic image.

Who is more likely to turn up late to work?

Lionel. He owns the company. He’s always been able to decide when turning up to the office is less important than intimidating or seducing someone somewhere else.

Who sucks up to their boss?

;) ;) ;)

What are their jobs?

Lionel is the CEO of LuthorCorp, Martha is a Kansas State Senator

Who stresses the most?

God, they’re both stressers, Martha when she’s worrying about Clark and whether people are in danger or emotional turmoil, she’s very empathetic and cognoscente of the different things people are going through. On the other hand tho, Lionel’s body has known no moment of relaxation in his life, he gets massages not as a luxury but as a necessity or he’d snap like a brittle toffee next time someone brought him news he didn’t like.

Do your muses enjoy or despise their careers/occupations?

They enjoy them for the most part, there’s always stress and frustrations that come with it, and Lionel’s job does have an inexplicably high risk of the CEO being hurled across various rooms, but ultimately, Martha’s in a position to affect change and put her education to good and effective use, and Lionel is his own boss and has power, money and influence on his side.

Are your muses financially stable?

They’d better hope so because Lionel is not going back to a lower Momme count on his sheets, he’s earned it dammit.

Home:

Who does the washing, takes out the trash, does the ironing?

Lionel hires a lot of people to do the jobs he doesn’t want to. Pretty much all housekeeping in the Luthor Mansion is handled by staff, to Martha’s embarrassment. Like, she understands that this is a contract and people get paid to clean and do housekeeping but she can’t stand the idea of making more work for them so she always keeps anything she’s doing at the mansion pretty tidy so as not be like Lionel and just leave things around, knowing they’ll be put straight for him. She won’t hear of him hiring anyone for the Kent farm or the place in Metropolis tho. And she has gotten him to do housework before, just by being matter of fact about it. She was baking once and noticed that the bin was full so she asked him to take out the trash like it was an everyday occurrence (you know, like regular people) and Lionel was halfway to the garbage bins outside, holding a trash bag before he stopped and was like ‘wait - I have people for this’.

Who does the cooking?

Martha is a happy baker, a stress baker, an angry baker, a bored baker, the woman likes to bake and she is damn good at it. She’s also just an excellent cook in general so she does a lot of cooking for the two of them. Of course, she doesn’t do it all the time because she has a demanding job that often causes her to stay late at the office, so Lionel’s chef also does a good part of the cooking.

Who is more likely to burn the house down just trying?

Lionel is lucky not to be banned from her kitchen without supervision. He treats cooking like a battle and the kitchen like a chemistry set. He got very pissed that cooking wasn’t something he was immediately good at, even though the first time he tried he was attempting stuff way too advanced for someone who probably hadn’t set foot in his own kitchen since 1983. After he failed the first few times he read a hell of a lot of books and did a lot of thorough research (you know, like a normal person) and made it his obsessive priority to get good. Yet, he still doesn’t have the magic touch Martha does and he won’t believe her that she just does what feels right. He could be a cordon blue chef by now and Martha ‘the recipe is more of a guideline’ Kent’s food would still come out better.

Who is messier?

Lionel, because he has the luxury of being messy and knowing that it will all be put straight by the time he comes back to it, but all his important and classified stuff is sorted and locked up of course. He’s not necessarily a naturally messy person tho, and if he didn’t have someone picking up after him he would get a lot neater quick smart because he doesn’t like living in a chaotic environment even tho he himself embodies chaos. Martha knows there is more important things in life than spending a lot of time cleaning up, and she has the patience to put things back as she uses them instead of rushing off to do something else immediately. She tries to tell Lionel its more efficient that way but he just can nOt expend those extra few seconds to clean up after a task, he has a new thing on his mind and he needs to get to it.

Who leaves their dirty clothes on the floor?

Lionel may be messy, but hell if his suits are going to pay the price for that. They’re going to be handled well and treated like the precious materials they are.

Who is the prankster around the house?

Martha, just because she can get away with it. Lionel never suspects her, she’s the one person he has a complete blind spot to when it comes to expecting tricks or betrayal, so she’s the one person who can get one over on him just by pretending to be in earnest. Of course he reacts in the most betrayed and offended fashion. One time Martha made him that fake food, like eggs and chips that actually turn out to be peach yoghurt and apples and Lionel eats it and just, gives her the most puppy dog hurt, lost expression. But Martha won’t acknowledge that it was a trick. She’ll just be like, no I just think you need to eat more fruit, even though it was obviously meant to look like eggs and chips. She catches him playing a very sad song on the piano later when she’s in earshot.

Who loses the car keys when it comes time to go somewhere?

Martha will and then she’ll get flustered and have to retrace her steps from when she came home and then find them beside the spice rack, or under a couch cushion. She eventually finds a bowl to put her keys in and puts it on an accent table near the door so that she won’t have this problem anymore. She has to train herself to put it there everyday but soon enough it becomes routine. Lionel, who has very different connotations for sets of keys in a bowl, does a small double take every time he sees it for the first little while, he doesn’t tell Martha why. Lionel never loses his keys because he has a driver to take care of that for him.

Who mows the lawn?

Lionel has mowed the lawn exactly once. Martha made a passing comment about the classic housewife looking at the hot young gardener or pool boy trope, and Lionel kept teasing her about it. Eventually, when the latest housekeepers were on vacation, he took the opportunity to make the joke a reality and Martha sat, sipping a cocktail and laughing as Lionel, in jeans, with a flannel tied around his waist and no shirt on mowed the lawn. She enjoyed herself and he was very happy about that but mowing the lawn was the most boring experience of his life. He didn’t think to bring headphones for music or radio, and the noise was too loud to hear himself think. He just kept looking over at Martha the whole time to stop himself going haywire with the repetitive work. Martha tipped him $20.

Who answers the telephone?

Lionel is constantly getting called, and constantly answering the phone. If its not Martha’s cell, its usually safe to assume that its for Lionel, as different people are trying to reach him at different places. Martha doesn’t really like talking on the phone, she likes talking to people in person and always gets nervous something is going to get miscommunicated over phone conversations.

Who takes the longest to shower?

Are you kidding me, that man needs a hell of a lot of time to apply every cream, shampoo, conditioner, and then aftershave that he has, in the correct order, for maximum aesthetic and image. He has a waterproof radio in there and Martha bought him a set of shower pens so he would stop running out every few seconds to write something down and then getting back in. His shower set up now looks like another office, if its a waterproof shower gadget, Lionel probably has it.

Miscellaneous:

Is money a problem?

Nope.

How many cars do they own?

Martha doesn’t know, and she doesn’t really want to know. She only needs one and if he even thinks about buying her another one she’s donating however much he’s going to spend to every charity within a fifty mile radius. Lionel has twelve.

Do they own their home or do they rent?

They own their various places. Martha after having paid off the mortgage with Jonathan over about thirty years, Lionel just buys things when it strikes him.

Do they live in the city or in the country?

They move between places, because Smallville is Martha’s home base, and Lionel has a lot of history and investments in the town so they do still stay at the manor, and the farm, even though both of their jobs are based more in Metropolis, so they also spend quite a bit of time at Lionel’s apartment in the city.

Do they enjoy their surroundings?

They’re both city kids at heart but Martha loves her home, and she feels protective and defensive about her town.

What’s their song?

Not in-universe but: ‘Two less lonely people in the world’ (all Air Supply songs are Mionel songs, I don’t make the rules, don’t @ me)

Of course, if you actually asked them then, ’Salut d’amour’ Lionel would tell you, ‘La Fleur Que Tu M’avais Jetée’, he’d think to himself. Martha’s would be a lot less symbolic, it would be something that reminded her of a time with Lionel, something playing on the radio early on in their relationship, or song in a musical they went to see that Martha saw him enjoying and thought about how handsome he looked when smiling.

What do they do when they’re away from each other?

Lionel pines something awful. He is insufferable to be around when Martha is out of town on business. Martha texts him all the time tho, because she likes to comment on things she sees and the people that she meets. When Lionel’s away on business he emails practically every hour, you’ve seen that man’s emails, always about five when one would do. Martha is better about the separation than Lionel, except at night. She really hates sleeping alone, whereas Lionel is really used to it so it doesn’t bother him as much.

Where did they first meet?

So many years ago in the front of Jonathan Kent’s pick up truck. Nobody would have known it at the time, but they would both have one of the most profound impacts on the other’s life.

How did they first meet?

In a high octane situation where both of them were worried about whether the boys in their arms would be okay.

Who spends the most money when out shopping?

Lionel has expensive taste. And he likes to buy expensive things. If there’s two versions of the same thing he wants to buy, but one is $1000 dollars more expensive, well, say hello to your new fancy toaster Mr Luthor, it has 8 toast slots and 100 settings and you’ll never use it but, by god, you own it.

Who’s more likely to flash their assets?

Is this a trick question? The man’s a compulsive show off.

Who finds it amusing when the other trips over?

Martha. Not because she’s mean, or because she finds people hurting themselves funny. If he actually hurt himself she wouldn’t laugh. But like, it’s Lionel Luthor. He’s not supposed to trip, and if he does, he looks at the floor like its been plotting this very moment for months and he’s going to revenge himself upon it. Lets face it, that’s funny.

Who pays the bills?

Much to Martha’s chagrin, she does have to concede that its kind of nice not to be worrying about how she’s gonna stretch the account month to month, but she doesn’t let him pay for everything, and gets very uncomfortable when he buys too expensive things. Lionel just gets frustrated that she won’t let him pay for more, he has all this money damn it, how else is supposed to show his love? Open and honest communication? Bah, unnacceptable.

Do they have any fears for their future?

Yes, like, absolutely. They both know how quickly shit could go downhill if there isn’t someone (Clark) combatting the threats trying to take the city and town down all the time.

Who’s more likely to surprise the other with a fancy dinner?

Lionel, by a mile. He likes doing fancy rich people things, and he’s good at showing affection via buying shit, so this is kind of like a romantic and thoughtful version of saying I love you, with money. He just likes to see her happy and treated like a queen. He would buy her a goddamn throne to sit on if he ever thought she’d accept that.

Who uses up all of the hot water?

One of these people is rich and has been inconsiderate for a very long time, one has not. I’ll let you work it out. (For real tho, Lionel has a back up water heater for sure)

Who’s the tallest?

Okay well this isn’t a hc, more of just a fact that Lionel is taller and Martha is tiny and its adorable.

Who’s more likely to just randomly hop into the shower with the other?

Martha. Lionel, of course, has entered other people’s showers, but usually as he’s in the process of seducing (and probably having another illegitimate child with) them, so the first time she popped in the shower and actually started, you know, showering, he was caught off guard. Like, um, you- you know I’m in here right. He quickly understood the value of such intimacy, but he still does tend to get handsy.

Who wanders around in their underwear?

Lbr, everyone at the Luthor mansion has seen more of Lionel than they ever should have. If he’s fixating on a thing sometimes he doesn’t get dressed before working on it, meaning that at particularly stressful times you could often walk into a room and see Lionel in just a robe and boxers (if you’re lucky), speaking orders into a phone. Of course, he wouldn’t be caught dead like that for an outsider to see, only family and staff (who all have some, probably illegal, non-disclosure agreements binding them), and he would demand to be notified immediately if the mansion was getting a visitor so he could put on a suit that costs more than their house.

Who sings the loudest when singing along to the radio?

Martha, she’ll chuck on music as she’s working on stuff and have fun with it. Lionel doesn’t sing to the radio, but he does conduct an invisible orchestra when he’s listening to his records.

What do they tease each other about?

Lionel teases her about her farm habits and vocab she’s picked up over the years, she teases him about how he doesn’t understand how regular people live. He teases her for how she never sees the plot twist coming in a tv show, and she teases him about how paranoid he got the time the waitress gave him his coffee and he seriously considered it might be poisoned because, and she quotes “Her smile was off, she smiled at me funny.” “Lionel stop looking at her. I can see you using your peripheral vision. Oh my god, put the cup down before they ask us to leave.”

Who is more likely to cringe at the other’s fashion sense at times?

Oh my god, Lionel has the widest fashion sense possible, any time Lionel is not dressed in a three piece suit and overcoat he is wearing something disastrous. Like, credit to the man that he found a look that both works for him and is socially appropriate in the workforce, but his non-thousand-dollar-suit fashion sense can be daggy as fuck. Like, have you seen that man not in suits? His comfortable clothes are terrible sweaters and bad pants (Pls don’t get me started on John Glover’s own terrible pants). If Lionel wasn’t oppressed by the world’s sense of what is appropriate fashion, he would be unstoppable. Flare trousers? Collars as high as they will go? Does it make me look like a dramatic fuck, check, then yes.

Lionel is 0-100, he is either dressed to fucking destroy in suits that cost more than your house, or he looks like the middle class dopey dad from a bad 90s sitcom. And if Lionel wasn’t so concerned about how people perceive him and how his look affects other’s attitudes he would channel that instinct for thousand dollar clothes into something truly hideous and I would be living.

Do they have mutual friends?

No, they come from a very different circle of friends. They also have very different experiences of “friends”. For one thing Martha’s friends aren’t usually considering a plot to kill her in the back of their minds when they see each other.

Who crushed first?

Lionel has been gone since the day he first set eyes on her, he just didn’t know it at the time.

Any alcohol or substance related problems?

Lionel drinks more than he should, and he’s done a lot of stuff during his life. He was a high flying businessman in the eighties so you do the math. He also smoked well into the nineties until he quit, not because of all the health PSAs, but because he didn’t like that his craving for a cigarette kept taking him away from work (also someone jokey said the tobacco controlled him once and that spun around in his head until he couldn’t take it). Lionel liked to do addictive things to prove to himself how strong he was when he kicked it, which was honestly playing with fire because he has a very obsessive personality but, fuck, you try and explain that logically to him. Good luck.

LuthorCorp buildings also now have very draconian smoking rules, not because of health and safety or government requirements but because Lionel is petty and full of spite and he better not see you light up, and better not smell so much as a whiff of tobacco on you. He was presented with a conscientious business owner award from the Metropolis anti-smoking lobby which of course he accepted graciously with lots of platitudes about civic duty and moral compasses, and inwardly mocking every person applauding him. His picture hangs at their office which he enjoys immensely.

Who is more likely to stumble home, drunk, at 3am?

That’s neither of their style really, they prefer to drink in the house rather than go anywhere. If anyone’s drunk at 3am its probably Lionel in the study with a half finished bottle of whiskey dictating his ideas for his novel into a tape recorder, or shouting the correct answers at the contestants on wheel of fortune. His novel ideas are incomprehensible, but his WoF answers are usually correct. Once he even rang into the station when the host gave a false answer and forced them to issue a correction. He had no recollection of this event the next morning.

Who swears the most?

Lionel. I think Lionel went through a phase of being like, swearing is beneath me, it is only for those of a low and uncouth vocabulary, and I shan’t be one to use it. But then like, he just has too much anger and too much spite to be able to contain in polite words, and so I think he absolutely swears a lot to himself in private because shit goes wrong and he is not about that, but he still contained it when talking to people so they wouldn’t think he’d lost control.

Martha had to curb any swearing in the house because she had a very fast, smart child with sensitive (if not super at that point) hearing who could pick up and parrot anything she said back at her. They never heard the end of it the day Jonathan broke his wrist fixing the barn roof and quite understandably swore black and blue. Clark ran around the house for days after, cussing up a storm and it took a concerted effort to get him to stop.

#lionel luthor #mionel #my fic #ask meme #thiievesandbeggars

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silvermarmoset · 6 years

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Clara Oswald’s Wardrobe: The Eleventh Doctor Years

Yeah. You read it right. I’m back, bitches.

After a brief sojourn (like...two years) into not covering such fascinating topics as Martha’s elegance, Rose’s scrappy jeans, and River Song’s backwards-forwards style routine, I’m back to discuss Doctor Who and costume design, because we all have things we’re good at and mine is yelling about hemlines! So while we all mourn Bill Potts—please come back to the show, Pearl Mackie, I beg you honest-to-god—let’s throw in a flashback to a long time ago, and play around with CLARA OSWIN OSWALD.

One nasty bit that’s kept me from getting to this post earlier is that Clara’s series 7 arc, thanks to the fragmenting-into-ten-thousand-tiny-pieces bit, is a little hard to view from a “character/costume” perspective. Do I count Oswin as part of her, despite significant differences between "our” Clara and Souffle Girl, or do I view their costume choices separately? What about the Clara from “The Snowmen”? What about the one who ran after Tom Baker in a terrible incident of green-screen-enabled acid reflux?

Lord. Her feet don’t even hit the floor.

So after a lot of debate, I’m counting them, albeit shyly, and without extending to them the same connective layer I generally use between a character’s costume choices. They’re a part of Clara, so I can’t ignore them, but I won’t assume every choice they make extends to our Clara. After all, discussing all those Claras would just be impossible, wouldn’t it?

I know. Great segue, right? Join us, pals, for a new edition of The Companion’s Wardrobe.

When we first meet Oswin, I’m falling over myself because I love her so much. Ok, no, not really. But it’s hard to fend off the charm of this first outfit—it’s a mix of Pure Sex, Geeky Cool Kid, and Perky Sixties Air Stewardess that knocks together a couple diverse style types and leaves us unsure what her whole deal is. There’s the cheeky red dress with the asymmetrical neckline, the rose she tucks behind her ear, the sci-fi tool belt and watch, the youthful-chic sneaker-heels. It goes together, but what ties these into a cohesive character?

Uh, yeah, Os, and if you’re gonna sass me the whole post you can do it in a more productive fashion. What these posts do is analyze—not assume what the designers meant, ever, but take what we know from the dress, delete from our brains our own metas and conjectures and far-flung notions, fling whether we think it’s pretty out the window except for that one rose tyler outfit. it deserved to be sassed, and try to embrace this as Character Translated Into Dress™ (while of course letting insignificant details slide because not EVERYTHING ties into your analysis, dumbass). We’re being told something, here, or else it’s just shitty costume design.

Which is always perfectly possible.

But no, Oswin’s dress is aiming for something: perfection. Everything about this dress is right, but it’s also TOO much. Too clean. Too fun. She’s polished and pretty and happy and comfortable—and none of it could possibly be real, with a Dalek just outside the door. While most of the wrecked passengers we’ve seen in past under-siege dramas have looked a little wrecked, with a dusty spacesuit or a tattered hairstyle to prove it, Oswin’s perfect bouncy curls and scratch-free outfit signal us far before the Doctor does that something is off.

Besides the perfection of this outfit, unstained by real life’s messes, there are other hints of what Oswin’s got going for her. The bright red, like a warning signal, should hit us over the head: every other companion is a mish-mash of different hues and patterns, while Oswin reads like a stop sign. The heeled sneakers I love so much are almost kid-like, if not innocent—as is much of Oswin’s made-up life, as she calls her mum and lounges in her chair. She reads as both red-hot “NO” and a perfect, happy, straight-out-of-Pushing-Daisies “yes.”

It’s no wonder we didn’t know what to make of her the first time she showed up. She was popping into every different direction, and somehow making it work.

The next time we see her, the costumes hit us over the head with how this is the same character. Because guess what? The Lady in Red is back.

Same hair, same low neckline, but a subtler shade of red this time, all over.

I honestly don’t have a lot to say about this outfit (though it’s INCREDIBLY beautiful), except that red immediately marks Clara out as bold, and vivid, and a little bit larger than life. Remember how Rose dipped into dark reds slowly, after growing out of the safer pinks she got from Jackie? Clara’s already there, wearing blood red all over, inciting the Doctor to do something.

Until she isn’t. Count me confused.

I’ve got no answers why her bland young charge picks up her red, or why Clara suddenly wears something that departs so drastically from everything she’s coded into her dress previously. Sure, she’s in “disguise,” but isn’t she closer to her true accent now? Why align herself color-wise with the ice monsters? Why ricochet between blue/green and red to further this split personality deal?

I got no answers. Sorry, lads.

Modern Clara’s still got a touch of that “come on!” red, but it’s minimized. She’s wearing one of those light, tiny-pattern, floaty-fabric things that were SO EVERYWHERE in 2013, but that’s all we get from her. She’s a mystery, dressed in whatever’s currently in fashion, flaunting past a gravestone.

But the lady in red is never gone for long.

This is our first time with Proper Clara, and it lays out the elements of Clara’s personal aesthetic that we’ll see for quite some time. Little, adventuresome boots; black tights; a flimsy little dress with a subtle pattern; a big coat, comfortable and practical. The flying bird necklace is lovely. The skirt has the high-low hem of many skirts from this year; we’ll see one like it again. Aside from the visual shout-out to Dalek Oswin in the red dress/short boots combo, all this aligns with what little we know of Clara at this point—she’s competent at whatever she sets her mind to, she’s young, she's both adventuresome and fashionable; she’s very tidy and put-together.

I’d argue her look is still way more put-together than most normal people achieve—think of Rose’s slapdash jeans or Martha’s tank tops—but if I bite the inside of my cheeks and take deep breaths I can accept this as an outfit most TV costume designers would claim is normal, in the same impeccably-dressed “normal” vein of Iris West. It’s pretty, it’s contemporary, but it doesn’t tell me anything much.

[this briefly-seen outfit, with its cardigan and vintage-y blouse, marks Clara as a sort of pretty-librarian type, though again this look is very in with then-contemporary style.]

Which gets to the root of a problem I have with many of Clara’s outfits in Series 7. Clara is frequently accused of being “boring”—and I firmly believe this has loads to do with the way she dresses, divorced from any opinion on the writing or the plot at this point. Jenna Coleman is an engaging actress, but a lot of the costumes from this era give us a cute, ordinary woman at the expense of furthering her arc in a particular direction.

There are clues, of course. From the quality of her clothes, she’s somewhere in the middle-class range—not quite as effortlessly classy as soon-to-be doctor Martha, but not quite at Rose’s level of street style either. Clara probably reads The Guardian. Those boots aren’t cheap.

Her outfit is very well put together, though it doesn’t push any boundaries of style. Clara is always tied into contemporary fashion, from this point onwards, with her boots and jacket bringing a little frisson of tough to counter the femininity of the dress and bag. The bag’s a sharp, bossy red, and all together it kind of gives us who Clara thinks she is: perfectly turned out, girlish and flirty, tough enough to deal with a crisis, with just a small splash of opinionated red on the side.

There’s red, again, in the flashback. (side note: how young is her dad????)

“Cold War” mixes it up, though this is still Clara: there’s the slightly flared skirt we’ve seen in the past two looks, and the tough jacket firmly in evidence. I love the buttons up the front, though, and the icy shimmer is a nice departure—a little more glam than we’ve seen before from Clara. Considering Clara thought she was heading to Las Vegas, we can see what she thinks is appropriate for a night out right now: that vaguely-retro 1950s look Taylor Swift started, with a strong streak of cute, but nothing your grandmum would hate. (Amy would have had that skirt at least 6 inches shorter and narrower.) She’s girly and tough.

“Hide” runs along the same lines. (also, bless all these full-costume promo pics.) The gentle cardigan look is back, and aside from the heels it’s all quite demure. It also looks great for the spooky tone of this episode! Incidentally, this is Clara’s third blue outfit in a row, leading me to wonder when we abandoned the vivid red Claras of earlier for these calm, cool, inward-looking young ladies. It’s almost a visual rebuke to the Doctor for seeing her only as the red adventuresses of earlier—those girls were red, sir, but this one is blue, so get your head together and consider the color symbolism.

Oh. Or fuck me for trying, I guess. That works too. Who needs consistency, am I right?

Aside from me throwing myself out the window because the red keeps coming back but I can’t figure out WHY, this dress is a lot like Clara’s others. Her favorite pair of boots is back, and it’s quite buttoned-up and modest, if a little shorter than before. And the tightrope of bold-but-girly continues to be Clara’s calling card, with the minimal jewelry keeping her just on this side of not-too-dressed-up.

It’s telling that she stands out in this episode, though: she’s in stark opposition to the cold blues worn by the Doctor and his TARDIS, a visible antagonist as these two question and frighten her about her right to belong.

“The Crimson Horror” gives us two great Clara looks, which is great because holy shit look what they did to this skirt.

I can’t quite explain what happened here, because for all the world it looks like they took apart a 1910s-style hobble skirt and threw in a gradient underskirt for the solid reason of Why The Hell Not, but I love it despite it being bonkers-levels of historically inaccurate.

Then there’s this.

I LOVE THIS TOO, but character-wise I really have to grit my teeth because I don’t get why Clara, ordinary girl from the twenty-first as she seems to be, would have either the knowledge or the inclination to dress her hair in the elaborate fashions of the period. But it’s a spot-on perfect dress, with none of the historic bumbling Rose managed on her first try. It lacks the super-puff sleeves of the 1890s, but I can live with it because of those fantastic little V’s down the front. It’s perfect.

We’re back in red for “Nightmare in Silver,” and everything’s very much Normal Clara: the little heeled shoes, the slightly flared skirt, the tights and the tough jacket and the trim little collar. With stronger fabric choices, she looks more in control than ever; she’s developed slightly away from the girlishness of those high-low skirts, though that girly quality is still there in the short skirt. Her arc has not been consistently signaled so far in either silhouette or color choices, but this outfit marks Clara as being more in command than ever before.

In the finale, she’s in same silhouette as last time, but new shoes (Clara seemingly adores footwear that combines heels, boots, and little oxford-y things into one package). Compared to her first modern outfit, she’s much more visually controlled—dark-hued, geometrically patterned, no more flounce or flutter. The color scheme is much more similar to the blue/green of the governess outfit, and red’s completely vanished—she couldn’t be farther from the saucy little barmaid act in “The Snowmen.” And yet by the end of the episode, she’s shattered into her—and into a girl with spikes on her jacket, and a girl dressed like Sarah Jane Smith, and a girl and a girl and a girl and a girl.......

I can’t explain this. I’d love to say that Clara coalesces into a firm costume arc over the season, but I can’t find a clear arc without pushing my designer’s brain to untenable conclusions. Through costume, I watched Martha grow from a confident student to a warrior; I watched Rose grow from a thoughtless girl to a brave woman. River developed in ways that suggested where she was going and where she came from, despite the challenges of a plotline her costume designers couldn’t plan for. Series 7 Clara stretches my brain, and I still come up empty. Where was all that red going? Can a change so slight as “pretty girlish” to “a little less so” count as an arc? Did someone not tell Howard Burden the plot, so he couldn’t plan a clearer costume progression? What happened here????

Thankfully, Clara’s not done growing yet, though. Onto the specials!

Clara begins "The Day of the Doctor” in, again, red. I quietly scream because red can be such a dramatic and weighty color and I hate seeing it just pop up for reasons I can’t make sense of. Clara ignores my protests and hops into her adventure.

This outfit’s perfectly within the same realm as Clara’s previous gigs: heeled boots, check; black tights, check; small-print non-geometric pattern on lightweight fabric, all present sir; cheeky red and tough black jacket, reporting for duty. This outfit could have shown up any point in Series 7 and I would have accepted it. Clara’s working as a schoolteacher now (a very chic one), and the whole outfit reads as saucy and cute and just a little badass.

And then “Time of the Doctor.” Oh, I love the “Time of the Doctor” costumes. This is great. This is when Clara starts making sense.

Clara gets two outfits in this: the cheeky yellow-sweater one, and the red-plaid-skirty one. They’re both very twee and pseudo-vintage and Britishy, which is very much in Clara’s realm so far, but they take what Clara’s already had and push it—heartily, extremely, and in a way it’ll never recover from—into bold new territory.

Clara’s style has shifted in this episode. With the proud geometric plaid, the bright red hue, and the overall sharper fit, Clara has absolutely moved on from the girlishness from “The Rings of Akhaten” into something far more confident and controlled. There are significant details: the little infinity-symbols of her cardigan, the spikes on her necklace and bracelets, and the old-fashioned lace on her blouse make an unusual combo that finally distinguishes her from an H&M commercial. It’s strong and decisive, a little bit bossy, with boldness winning out over cute. Fashionable? Yeah! Modern? Always! But powerful, too, taking up the screen with tight shapes and controlled blocks of color.

The yellow sweater and leather skirt hit the same notes. The feminine flutter of early Series 7 is truly gone; without changing Clara’s style completely, the smack-you-in-the-face mustard sweater and the edge of the leather angle her away from “feminine adventuress” into “adventurer femme.” The priorities shift. It’s the signal of where Clara is going from here—into deeper, darker territory.

So, what do we take from this? Though Clara started out as a bit of a cipher—thanks to red dresses leading us in one direction, and then cute little floral pattern outfits taking us in another—over Series 7 Clara gradually came together as a bolder, more in-command character, and even started to develop a style of her own that verged beyond the norm. Where could that take us in Series 8? How will her costumes change to interact with an entirely new Doctor? Will I ever get to see that bird pendant necklace again? (yes.) Who knows! I’ll have to write a post about it!

Whatever happens, it’s going to be an awfully big adventure.

[Got thoughts & questions? Come at me! I love talking about costume, and anyway I had to edit this post extensively to even get it to post, so I couldn’t even mention things people might wonder about. LORD I LOVE COSTUME DESIGN SO MUCH.]

#UGH THIS TOOK SO LONG I HOPE IT'S GOOD #PLEASE READ+REBLOG IM DYING #dw costume design #clara oswald #doctor who #dw series 7 #dw series 8 #costume design #costume analysis #clara #doctor who costuming #companion's wardrobe #dw #dw meta #doctor who meta

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bitchofdarkness · 3 years

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I'm rewatching Castle, because I didn't really know what to watch while eating and suddenly, I remembered why it was such a hardship to last to the final episode.

Jfc, his mom, Martha Rodgers is such a toxic, stupid character and I effing hate her.

Why, you may ask? Well, she's constantly belittling her son and his work. She acts like she's such a hot ✨cutie✨ that's entitled to do so. She takes his money and his living space, invades his privacy and is just so effing gross with her lovers everywhere...like, Lady, your son and granddaughter don't need to see, hear or know about your sexcapades. Good for you that you have them, but jfc, keep it to yourself and/or your friends, but not your family in such detail.

Rick let's her broke, untalented ass live with him and gives her money to use. And still, she wants more and is mean to him in thanks. She ignores the boundaries he sets up, she tells him he doesn't have a real job (writing bestsellers for a living is hard and/or you have to be really lucky they take off) constantly and at the same time claims his talent is all thanks to her. I mean, make up your damn mind biatch?!

He obviously had a lot of luck in his life (being a white male does help immensely), but his mom contributed nothing to it. (Other than the horror story's of his youth) He does seem like a egocentric prick, but come on, if your own mother practically calls you a loser all the time (who's also claiming it's his fault her career didn't take off thanks to the pregnancy), even though you make big money with your books, someone needs to be on his side and balance out the blows he takes. And he does take them, every frigging time.

He could be a real asshole to her that sets her on the street and ignores her existence (God knows, I would do that so fast), if his egocentric narcissistic façade was anything other than a façade that is. (I still eyeroll hard when he does praise himself so much it get's embarressing and cringy) I don't think he ever had a chance at learning how to love himself in a healthy way. His only parent is eccentric and self-absorbed and the people he got to know in life were pretty similar to her.

It really does make me sad to watch them(mother, "friends", his daughter too, though she's more reasonable and mostly right) tear into him all the time, because he is a clumsy dumbass in truth who actually does manage to act tough in a way people don't see through.

Anyway, I hate Martha Rodgers something fierce. They didn't need to make her character so over the top bitchy and self-centered, but here we are...

I'm definitely not continuing to watch this fright train again. I like Beckett and Castle's bickering/banter a lot and how well they work together (there's a theme to my favorite ship's and they're banter, enemies-to-friends-to-lover's, teamwork), but that is just not worth the rest. I'd rather rewatch Bones. (I love crime series, sue me.)

True Detective is the only one where I don't ship anyone and just enjoy watching over and over again. Lmao.

#personal #rant #castle #anti martha rodgers #caskett #this got random

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xtruss · 4 years

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This Physicist is Trying to Make Sense of the Brain’s Tangled Networks

— By Kelly Servick, Staff Writer at Science | April 11, 2019 | Sciencemag.Org

Danielle Bassett with a representation of the brain's structural connections, created in her lab from MRI data.

At age 16, Danielle Bassett spent most of her day at the piano, trying to train her fingers and ignoring a throbbing pain in her forearms. She hoped to pursue a career in music and had been assigning herself relentless practice sessions. But the more she rehearsed Johannes Brahms's feverish Rhapsody in B Minor on her family's Steinway, the clearer it became that something was wrong. Finally, a surgeon confirmed it: Stress fractures would force her to give up the instrument for a year.

"What was left in my life was rather bleak," Bassett says. Her home-schooled upbringing in rural central Pennsylvania had instilled a love of math, science, and the arts. But by 17, discouraged by her parents from attending college and disheartened at her loss of skill while away from the keys, she expected that responsibilities as a housewife and mother would soon eclipse any hopes of a career. "I wasn't happy with that plan," she says.

Instead, Bassett catapulted herself into a life of research in a largely uncharted scientific field now known as network neuroscience. A Ph.D. physicist and a MacArthur fellow by age 32, she has pioneered the use of concepts from physics and math to describe the dynamic connections in the human brain. "She's now the doyenne of network science," says theoretical neuroscientist Karl Friston of University College London. "She came from a formal physics background but was … confronted with some of the deepest questions in neuroscience."

Now 37, Bassett runs a lab at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) that tackles a whiplash-inducing variety of questions. A sampling from one morning's worth of meetings: Do our brains navigate words in written text the way they navigate physical space? Does the structure of college students' brains interact with the structure of their social networks to influence their ability to abstain from alcohol? Does the network of connections in the mouse brain predict how a disease-causing protein will spread?

Other projects focus on a theme that has captivated her since her childhood passion for books and the piano: learning and mastery. Bassett wants to find ways to optimize learning by using networks to represent both the brain and the material it learns.

"If you came to most thinking scientists, who try to be conservative and skeptical and cautious, and you spelled out to them what Dani's research program was going to be, they'd question anybody's sanity who was going to bite off that big of a chunk of science," says Steven Schiff, a neurosurgeon at Pennsylvania State University in State College and an admirer of Bassett's work.

But Bassett routinely disregards disciplinary boundaries and follows her curiosity with abandon. "What I think is beautiful about network science," she says, "is that you can use it to derive very simple intuitions about really complex systems that … just look like a big hairball."

That bid to simplify one of nature's gnarliest hairballs—our 86-billion-neuron organ of thought—into a set of mathematical equations has been hard for some neuroscientists to get behind. Network science is "a new way of looking at the brain," says Martha Shenton, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "This is an advance in science—I do believe that—but it remains to be seen how much information it's going to give us." And whether Bassett's toolbox of equations can make reliable predictions that inform treatments, such as targeted stimulation for brain disorders, is still unknown.

But neuroscience is hungry for theory, says cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California (UC), Santa Barbara. "There's an uneasiness that I think is widespread that we're not quite capturing the framework … to understand how neurons generate behavior, mind, and all this," he says.

Bassett is part of a generation of physicists and mathematicians who are betting on new theories to capture the brain's higher-order organization. "They [have] the math to back them up … and that just brings tremendous power to the biological scene," Gazzaniga says. "The great advances in science come from trespassing," he adds, paraphrasing pioneering psychologist Wolfgang Köhler. "And Dani is a trespasser."

An Uncommon Education

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Bassett—a slight figure with short hair that persistently sneaks in front of her right eye—stands before her class with a large, gilded-edged volume of Claudius Ptolemy. The course teaches undergraduate and graduate students to represent the brain as a network—a set of "nodes" joined by pairwise connections, or "edges." Depending on the study, researchers might define nodes as individual neurons or larger brain regions. And they might draw edges between nodes that are physically connected by neural fibers or that tend to be active at the same time. The approach formalizes a basic premise of neuroscience: that our thoughts, sensations, and experiences emerge as the brain's connected components interact.

But first, Ptolemy. Bassett, in a characteristically composed and formal tone, reads aloud from the second century Greek astronomer's famous treatise, The Almagest: "It is proper to try and fit as far as possible the simpler hypothesis to the movements of the heavens; and if this does not succeed, then any hypothesis possible." He was addressing apparent contradictions in his geocentric explanation of planetary motion. His theory, we now know, was destined to fall apart. But his message was a good one, Bassett tells the class: Strive for the simplest hypothesis.

Bassett's penchant for quoting the ancients reflects her unusual education. Her mother, Holly Perry, who home-schooled her 11 children, says her goal was "to teach them how to teach themselves anything they wanted to learn." Bassett was a natural autodidact. "When she decided that something interested her, she kind of couldn't stop until she knew everything there was about it," Perry says.

Danielle Bassett at 12, wearing garb dictated by her family's religion.

Bassett's twin brother, Perry Zurn, a philosopher at American University in Washington, D.C., describes their home schooling as research. They would choose a topic and build a constellation of projects around it, with little regard for where those projects fell among traditional school subjects.

Perry's insistence that her children prioritize primary texts stuck with Bassett. Reading antiquated, alien-sounding prose jolts the mind into "a much bigger space," she says. The twins now describe their education as "really wonderful" and "really fantastic." But their parents' conservative Christianity shaped what they could aspire to. "Because we both grew up being understood as female … we were actively discouraged from going to college," says Zurn, who is transgender.

After Bassett's hiatus from the piano, her father allowed her to attend nursing school. "He had finally given me a little bit of room, and I figured I should take it," she says. (Her father, John Perry, contends that he never discouraged his children from college or careers, though he says he "felt that being a good wife and mother was a high calling.")

An isolated childhood made the move to traditional school jarring for Bassett. "It took a long time to feel like I could laugh at the right times when somebody told a joke," she says. And nursing school was a bad fit. Confrontations with sickness and dying left her drained.

After a year and a half, she definitively broke with her family's expectations. She dropped out of nursing school and applied to Penn State to study physics. "I just wanted to do something that is clean and formal," she says, "and also, just with books."

Thinking in Graphs

An hour into Bassett's Tuesday class, the students whip out their laptops and become subjects in one of her latest studies about learning. Their screens display a cloud of about 50 concepts she has selected from the course, such as prediction, network, behavior, and neurological disease. They draw lines to connect related words and phrases, stretching the lines to put distance between dissimilar concepts. Bassett will compare the structure of the maps at different points in the course, gauge the influence of class readings and lectures, and look for correlations between network structure and test scores.

The work seems miles away from Bassett's physics degree. But underlying that study—and nearly every other project in her lab—is a branch of math called graph theory. The approach, with roots in the 18th century, describes the structure of networks of discrete, interacting parts, be they friends linked on social media or grains in a sand pile.

Researchers first calculate the relationships between all nodes in a network: in the simplest case, either a zero (not connected) or a one (connected). Then, they ask questions about the features of the network: Is it a sparse web or a dense jungle of connections? Do certain nodes have an unusually large number of connections? Do nodes tend to organize themselves into tight-knit modules that mostly talk among themselves?

In the 1990s, a few researchers started to create such graphs to describe the layout of animal nervous systems. A graph for the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans could include all the connections among the 302 neurons that determine how the tiny worm wiggles through life. The brains of mammals were far too large and complex to map neuron by neuron, so researchers analyzed the connections between dozens of broad areas in the monkey and cat cortex according to the flow of tracer molecules along neurons.

"We worked in complete obscurity," neuroscientist Olaf Sporns says of the field that would become network neuroscience. Sporns, now at Indiana University in Bloomington, was among the first to use graph theory to analyze connections in the human brain. Few data sets were available, he says. But he and his collaborators hoped the approach could help explain how the brain's structure gives rise to thought and awareness.

By the mid-2000s, applications of graph theory were getting more ambitious. Neuropsychiatrist Edward Bullmore's group at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom used it to analyze human brain activity recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique that can indicate which regions are active in unison.

"It was a very exciting period, when [we] began to … explore these previously unmeasured properties of human brain networks," Bullmore says. "It was around that time when Dani started in the lab." Bullmore was one of Bassett's four advisers in a Ph.D. program sponsored by Cambridge and the U.S. National Institutes of Health. She took off running with graph theory, Bullmore recalls, stretching its uses to new types of brain data.

In one study, Bassett analyzed MRI data from people with and without schizophrenia. The condition seems to arise from broadly disorganized brain activity, not a defect in any one region. Bassett and colleagues showed that graph theory offered a new way to describe that disorganization. Brains with schizophrenia showed more random patterns of connectivity than healthy ones, and their hubs—the most highly connected regions—were less likely to be in the frontal cortex, the area that exerts executive control over the brain. That finding aligned with some of the symptoms of schizophrenia: deficits in executive functions such as planning, decision-making, and regulating behavior. But it didn't explain them.

And some neuroscientists were unimpressed by early results from network science. Graphs of brain networks were "obviously a radical simplification of the nervous system," Bullmore says. "The main criticism has always been, ‘Isn't this too simple to be meaningful, given the complexity of the system we're trying to understand?’"

Bassett saw a different limitation to graph theory. "It's great for characterizing the structure of something," she says, "but not necessarily what the thing does." A graph is static, but an active brain flows between connectivity patterns. So, as Bassett moved to her postdoc at UC Santa Barbara, she added another type of analysis to her study of networks: dynamical systems theory, a way of modeling how network structure changes. "Dani has excelled at bringing time into the game," Sporns says.

In a key experiment, Bassett studied people as they learned to tap their fingers quickly in a specific order by reading sequences of notes on a staff. The sequences weren't exactly Brahms rhapsodies; each was just 12 notes long. But participants took time to master them. During three training sessions, they lay in an fMRI scanner and practiced their finger work.

Bassett's group captured changes over time in the sets of brain areas that preferentially conversed with each other while participants learned. The researchers created a mathematical measure of overall "flexibility"—how likely regions were to change their "module allegiance" and sync up with a different set of partners. A brain's flexibility during a practice session, the researchers found, predicted how much faster the person would be able to play the note sequences in the next session.

The research, published in 2011, hinted that measurable, predictable features of the brain's configuration can prime it for learning. That "started to get a lot of people's attention," Bassett says, including representatives of the MacArthur Fellows Program, who pointed to the work in selecting Bassett for the 2014 award. Bassett, who was just getting her lab at UPenn off the ground, found herself in the academic spotlight. Her parents, who had separated when she was 18, cheered her on.

Healthy Ambition

Bassett is now a hub in a lively network—a role that doesn't always suit her. On an endless circuit of invited talks, she seeks solitude in her hotel room. She shies away from group interactions, preferring one-on-one communication with trainees and collaborators.

But some of those pairwise connections have had far-reaching effects. In 2013, on a bench overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara, she and mechanical engineer Fabio Pasqualetti, then a fellow postdoc, realized they shared an ambition. They wondered whether network science could go beyond describing the brain to offering ways to change it. Pasqualetti studies control theory, a branch of engineering that uses sensors and feedback to guide the behavior of a system, whether that's an electrical grid or a fighter jet. Was it possible, he and Bassett wondered, to apply principles of control theory to brain networks?

In their initial study, published in 2015, Bassett and Pasqualetti modeled brain structure with data from an MRI-based technique that traces the diffusion of water through the brain to identify regions connected by bundles of neuronal fibers. By feeding that information into an equation from control theory, they identified areas of the brain that, when active, might help it shift into various other states. "It was a big jump, honestly, to make the assumption that this thing could work," says Pasqualetti, now at UC Riverside.

"It's a very important contribution," computational neuroscientist Marco Zorzi of the University of Padua in Italy says of the paper. Scientists are already experimenting with zapping the brain to improve various conditions, including severe depression and disability after stroke. But the approach, which often relies on magnetic stimulation of the scalp, involves trial and error. Control theory could help researchers decide where in the brain to stimulate, and at which intensities, to reliably steer it into a healthier state.

Still, Zorzi says, "It's not ready yet." To develop stimulation protocols based on control theory, "we just need much more theoretical work," he says. That work should include studying how many points of stimulation are necessary to induce a desired brain state, he adds.

Bassett and her team are now refining their control theory approach and using it to predict the spreading patterns of activity in epileptic seizures. The results, they hope, will show how doctors could place seizure-stifling electrical implants more precisely or slice out less brain tissue during surgery.

Before any clinical trials, Bassett and colleagues will also have to defend the work against a familiar charge: that it oversimplifies the brain. Signals don't pass predictably along every connection between neurons. Some get amplified; others run into gating mechanisms that inhibit them, and equations from control theory don't fully capture those details. "That makes the control problem enormously difficult," says Schiff, a former epilepsy surgeon who studies control theory. "That's an enormous frontier that we're just starting to crack into."

In response, Bassett channels Ptolemy. "Physicists … start with relatively simple models, and then they expand those models as it becomes necessary," she says. "If there's more than a few parameters, it's very difficult to understand why something happens."

Degrees of Freedom

On the drive home from class, Bassett's 4-year-old son, Simeon, recounts his day care exploits from the back seat of the car and dictates the playlist.

When Bassett entered college, she swore she would never be a wife or mother. On campus, she found that the homemaker role her family had insisted on was, at times, discouraged. But she met Lee Bassett, a fellow physics student whom she married in 2006. Both now teach at UPenn, and the first of their two children was born in 2011.

That evening, after bedtime reading (The Berenstain Bears for Simeon and the children's fantasy novel Mossflower for Silas), Bassett pops open a can of cherry-flavored sour beer and brings out one of her own favorites: British philosopher Joseph Glanvill's 17th century volume The Vanity of Dogmatizing. In it, Glanvill marvels at humanity's ignorance of the natural world and condemns blind faith in both science and religion. Bassett has peppered its margins with notes.

Down the hall in the living room sits a Steinway grand piano, testimony to her continuing love of music. It's the only purchase Bassett has made so far with her $625,000 MacArthur award; for now, her lab is not hurting for funding. But the unspent money means freedom. If an idea sparks her imagination and funders won't get behind her, she plans to chase it anyway.

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bewitching-elizabeth-olsen · 7 years

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Press: Elizabeth Olsen: a superstar for our times

EVENING STANDARD – With her indie flicks and blockbuster roles, Elizabeth Olsen has cultivated the kind of career most actresses dream of. She tells Tiffanie Darke about her famous sisters, her fears for America and how she plans to build her empire

It’s a sweltering day downtown in the Bowery, the sort of humid August heat when it feels like Manhattan is melting. Boys in artful sarongs and beards cruise the sidewalk, girls in high-waisted cut-offs and snapbacks lean against open-air bars. It’s noon, and no one dares move too fast.

But Elizabeth Olsen is not hot. In fact, she says she has frostbite in her fingers. Wearing black Calvin Klein jeans she picked up for $20 in a vintage store, slim black ankle boots and an oversized Altuzarra blouse, she’s been in air-conditioned TV studios doing interviews all morning and needs to defrost. She has asked that we meet in Il Buco, a rustic Italian restaurant with the sort of premium paysan menu you’d recognise from places such as the River Cafe. This, she confides, is her favourite restaurant in New York: ‘My sisters have been bringing me here for my birthday since I was 15.’

Ah yes — her sisters. Mary-Kate and Ashley, the button-cute Disney twins who grew up in the full glare of the public eye, then reinvented themselves as fiercely private fashion entrepreneurs (their label, The Row, is as hot as ever, and they now own high-end concept boutiques in New York and LA). Elizabeth — or Lizzie as she introduces herself — shares their delicate features: blonde locks, Bambi eyes and symmetrical porcelain face. But what’s intriguing about this sister is that she can turn those looks to power.

Six years after she burst on to the scene with a critically acclaimed performance in the indie flick Martha Marcy May Marlene, her carefully chosen roles have included Scarlet Witch in the unstoppable Marvel franchise, Avengers; Audrey Williams, Hank Williams’ wife and manager in the biopic I Saw the Light; and most recently, FBI agent Jane Banner in Wind River, a harrowing story of rape and murder set on a Wyoming Native American reservation, directed by Oscar-nominated Taylor Sheridan.

This is the kind of career about which most actors dream: balancing respected low-budget independents with blockbuster international fame. Olsen, it becomes clear, possesses an acute understanding of how to make the business work for her. Doing films like Avengers ‘allows you to sell a film to investors’, she explains, as she helps herself to black kale salad and slivers of pata negra. ‘It gives you recognition in an international market. You then have more freedom of investors for independent films.’ At 28 she has also finally launched herself on social media, having created an Instagram account last year. Under the guidance of her friend, the comedian and actress Aubrey Plaza, she is using it to simultaneously cultivate her fan base and poke fun at herself (check out Olsen’s ‘Feed me Friday’ posts featuring unflattering paparazzi shots of her eating). But she also has an eye on the prize. Any aspiring actor who wants to pick up a commercial deal needs a sizeable social media following. And those commercial deals give you exactly the sort of fame you need to get those independent film projects off the ground. ‘That’s why George Clooney does Nespresso,’ she explains. So far Olsen has cameoed for Miu Miu, but now she’s ready for something more: ‘People want to be a part of something that’s giving back to something else. I would like to be a part of that because it’s something that I would be proud of. But it’s also something that would help me as an actor trying to get films made.’

In this way Olsen is classic New Hollywood — clever, independent, well behaved, working the system. And like every good millennial, she is also strong on activism. ‘It’s horrible to think how the rest of the world is viewing the United States right now. You don’t really know how to fix it as an individual because you can’t. What is cool about what’s happening right now, however, is that while people have always talked about causes that they are interested in, now they are actually actively a part of them.’

Research for her role in Wind River has only made her more socially aware. ‘I ended up visiting the rape treatment centre in Santa Monica. It’s an amazing facility, for adults and minors. I was like, “What could I actually do?”’ Volunteers run the playroom, so Olsen went through a training course. When she finished filming, she returned to volunteer and now makes it a habit every Tuesday. ‘Going and playing cards with a bunch of really sweet people and just making them feel like a kid when they’re going through a traumatic experience — that to me is something I can walk away and be happy with… You make connections. If you go at the same time every week you see the same people. I see the same people every week when I’m in town. It’s a beautiful community… It’s really an incredible, supportive place. I love being a part of it.’

It’s no surprise that Wind River led her down other paths. Based on the true stories of the writer and director Taylor Sheridan following the years he lived on a reservation, it shines a light on the loophole in American law that lets those who commit a crime on a reservation (an area of land managed by a Native American tribe, rather than the state government) walk away free if they are not charged within the boundary lines. Given the limited police resources for investigating crimes within these vast jurisdictions, there are numerous undocumented cases of missing Native American girls. No national register exists to account for them. ‘It’s just another example of how we’ve screwed over this group of people from the beginning of this country,’ says Olsen.

We’re chatting easily now; this is usually the point at which the interviewer attempts to find out if her celebrity is going to divulge any details of who she is dating/fancying/breaking up with. Olsen has been linked to a few leading men in the past, including Tom Hiddleston and singer-songwriter Robbie Arnett. But I can’t quite bring myself to ask. The thing I liked most about Wind River was the absence of a romantic play. With Jeremy Renner — a local hunter whose own missing daughter and broken marriage haunt his every move — taking the title role opposite Olsen, you would expect the actress’s FBI agent to step in as romantic saviour. But she doesn’t. There is no love affair concluding the movie.

‘Taylor had to fight people on it,’ says Olsen. ‘Because some people want that to happen. They think that it’s going to make it a better movie or more people would want to see it. Which was one of the reasons I loved the script. It’s just a man and a woman having a partnership trying to figure out how to provide justice for this young girl.’ These are exactly the kinds of roles women want now. ‘The women in his film end up being the strongest. They’re the ones that fight for their life the hardest. He wanted the women to be the survivors.’

The waiter, who has now begun to suspect that pretty blonde ‘Lizzie’ might be someone more important than a walk-in, is bringing offerings of oozing burrata to the table. It’s becoming clear why this is an Olsen family favourite — the deli round the corner, I’m told, is ‘insane’. Olsen says when she was at film school in New York (she studied at Tisch School of the Arts) she shopped there all the time. Then she remembers Pesantissimo in Primrose Hill, where she lived for a time while filming Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2014, and used as a pit stop off-licence as it had ‘amazing wine’. ‘If I could live in any city, I would want to live in London,’ she says. She was put up there by the Marvel team and hung out with her friends the Taylor-Johnsons, exploring as much of the city as she could by foot. ‘People from London thought I was insane walking from Primrose Hill to Shoreditch along the canal. I ended up having to stop and get blister pads.’

I can imagine this. Despite her commercial and industry nous, Olsen is not a conventional starlet. She insists she hates the red carpet and finds fashion confounding and difficult — ‘It’s not my comfort zone,’ she shudders. A recent trip to the Paris couture shows was different. ‘I went to a Dior show and ended up getting to wear a look to the premiere in New York. I felt great that night just because I felt like I was in something that I love. Sometimes when I’m not in something that I love I cry on the way to the premiere and I’m posing with my shoulders as far back as they go. Then I look at the photos and I’m like, “It did look nice. Why was I crying?”’ Another revelation for her was this shoot for ES at The Whitby Hotel. ‘The photographer was great, we were in a cool hotel, it was a really great atmosphere. We had a great time. Like genuinely — I ended up getting in a bathtub at the end of it and got my hair wet. It was just fun.’

She has recently bought a house in the Hollywood Hills, which she is renovating while she rents with a friend. Much of her family lives in LA; her parents, Jarnette, a personal manager, and David, a property developer and mortgage banker, divorced in the mid-Nineties and she has a brother and two half siblings: ‘We have weekly family get-togethers, either my dad cooking at my place or the occasional Valley sushi spot. Sometimes it feels like a lot of things to fit in but it’s good we do it.’ While in New York, though, she is enjoying catching up with Mary-Kate and Ashley: ‘I just had dinner with Ashley when the premiere was happening. She was very sweet to come with me to the after-party.’ She clearly adores them. ‘I just think they’re brilliant women. [On their shops] they’re like, “I like this. I like this world. I like art, I like architecture, I like photography, I like fashion,” and they’ve made it into a company… I’ll go visit them at the office and sit in a meeting if I’m in and out of town. They’ll be talking about piping or buttons [and] they have taught me about art.’

Like many switched-on young women, Olsen sees herself in the round. The movie career she describes as a ‘part-time job’. On top of that she is also a reluctant fashion muse, fledgling brand ambassador and, most recently, rape crisis volunteer. It might be a lot to handle, but it also means that in these more uncertain times, if one thing goes wrong, there’s plenty more to fall back on. New Hollywood, indeed.

‘Wind River’ opens in cinemas on 8 September

Gallery Links:

Studio Photoshoots > 2017 > Session 030

Press: Elizabeth Olsen: a superstar for our times was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

#Elizabeth Olsen #Lizzy Olsen #Avengers #Scarlet Witch #Wanda Maximoff #Marvel

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