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padfootagain · 11 months

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Something Good (VII)

Chapter 7 : The Auditions

Hello!! Here is a new chapter for my Ben Barnes series! Things are slowly getting better between these two idiots and we learn a little more about reader’s ex-husband…

I hope you enjoy this new part. Tell me what you think!

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Pairing: Ben Barnes x Reader

Warnings: none! Slow burn, professor AU.

Summary: Coming out of a divorce and trying to get used to being a single mom, while teaching your classes at University, you thought your life could not get more complicated than it already is. But when you are asked to take care of the theatre club with the colleague that you really can’t get along with, you realize that everything can still get ten times more complicated in your life. And when you start actually liking Professor Barnes, the troubles only grow exponentially…

Word Count: 3651

You stared at Liam with a blank expression. You could barely believe what you were hearing…

Your daughter was with her grandmother for the weekend, which allowed you and your ex-husband a moment alone. And God knew you needed one right now…

“I told you three times that I was not available last Friday because I was at work. The babysitter called me to get Sally because you didn’t show and you didn’t answer your phone. IT WAS OUR BABYSITTER! HOW CAN YOU NOT ANSWER YOUR PHONE!”

“I WAS BUSY!”

“SO WAS I!”

He rolled his eyes.

Things were getting out of hand in this fight. Shouts were exchanged, and mean comments were joining the fray too, words that they would regret, eventually…

“Oh, come on! You were having some… theatre club thing… as if it could be more important than me meeting up with my CEO.”

“My job is as important as yours, Liam.”

“I’m not saying it’s not important.”

“That is exactly what you’re saying! Because this is part of my job, okay? I don’t care if you don’t like the project I’m leading, I honestly couldn’t give less of a fuck about your opinion on the matter. The fact is that I asked you to get Sally because I was busy, attending an event that happens ONCE a year, and you couldn’t show up!”

“What are you insinuating? That I’m a bad father?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying!”

He stared at you, quiet. It was chilly now in your ex’s garden.

You were at his place, in his garden. It was a nice place, small but quiet. You would have enjoyed it, had you not been shouting at him.

The sun was setting already. You had been arguing for almost an hour now, and the more time passed, the angrier you got.

Because after all this time, he still didn’t get it. The reason why you left, the reason why you fell out of love, the reason you asked for a divorce…

He still didn’t get it.

“You don’t mean that,” he shook his head, clearly hurt. “I’m a good dad!”

“You’re never here. How much of a father does that make you?” you spat, your words harsher than you wanted them to be, but you meant them all the same. And he knew it. And it hurt so bad…

“You still don’t get it,” you went on, on the verge of tears now. “I don’t know how to explain it to you anymore. You’re never here. You never show…”

“Because you’re so perfect…”

“Of course, I’m not perfect! But at least, I’m here! I’m trying! I’m doing everything I can, and you don’t! You just… get lost into your job, and you leave us both behind, and you don’t change! That’s why I left!”

“I know…”

“Then why can’t you just… do something about it? Because losing me was one thing, but losing your daughter will be another…”

“What are you saying? Is that a threat?”

“Of course not. But she’s sad when you don’t spend time with her. She’s sad when you leave her for hours with your secretary instead of taking care of her. And one day, she will be old enough to hold grudges. And then what do you think will happen?”

You shook your head, angry tears blurring your vision, but you didn’t let them fall. You clenched your fists instead.

“You were a good man before this bloody job! You truly were. I don’t recognize you anymore… And Sally… you’re right, I’m not a perfect mother. But I’m the one who takes care of her every day. I’m asking you to spend one weekend with her every two weeks. Why do I feel like it’s asking too much from you? Why can’t I count on you to pick her up once at the babysitter? Why, Liam?”

He nodded, looking down at the tip of his shoes. He could hardly deny that he had fucked up…

“Alright, I get it. It was my fault…”

“I can’t trust you with anything these days…”

“Of course, you can. I’ll always be here for you.”

But you shook your head.

“I don’t need you to be here for me. I need you to be here for Sally.”

“You’re my wife, of course, I’m here for you…”

“Ex-wife.”

He clenched his jaw.

“I’m your ex-wife, Liam. It’s been a year…”

“I know…”

“Just… be here when I need you to take care of Sally. Please. She needs a father as much as she needs a mother. And these days… you’re not… you’re not doing things right.”

“I love her. I love you both.”

“I know. But you need to get your shit together. Because it can’t work if I’m the only one making sacrifices. It has already failed…”

“I know…”

“Don’t let me down anymore. Please. I can’t raise our child on my own…”

“I understand. I’ll make more efforts.”

You didn’t know if you were convinced by his words or not. You weren’t sure whether he was sincere or not, if he truly meant it or was simply reassuring you. You didn’t know. These days, you were too lost to know anything for certainty…

“Do you want to stay for diner?” he asked with a soothing tone that you recognized. He always used it when you fought. But that was before, when you were together, when you were married…

… and you weren’t anymore.

“No, thank you. I’ve got some work to do.”

“Busy? October… that’s always a busy time for you, right?”

“Yeah… I’ve got a lecture to prepare for Tuesday morning, and I need to work on some stuff for the theatre club too. You know, the one that’s not important enough…”

“Please, don’t… I’m sorry I said that.”

He was raising a soothing hand, one that called for a truce. You were too tired not to give it to him.

“Anyway… yeah, I’m very busy these days. I’ve got to work tonight, and try to get some sleep before picking up Sally tomorrow.”

“Do you want me to pick her up?”

“No, we’ve planned to paint in the afternoon. She was excited about that. I’ll get her, don’t worry. I’m pretty excited about it too, actually.”

He nodded, slowly, silently… half lost in thought.

“The auditions for the theatre club are this Friday evening. Can you get Sally on Friday?”

“Friday?”

“Yes, this Friday.”

“I…”

But he felt that it would be a mistake to refuse. After all… it was just a drink with a few colleagues, it could be useful to meet people who would help him in his firm but… it wasn’t that big of a deal.

He nodded.

“I’ll get her at seven.”

“Thank you.”

He walked with you to his front door, bid you a safe drive and a good night, asked you to send him a text to make sure you were safely home.

And as he watched you climb inside your old, tired car, he cursed himself under his breath. Because he was trying to get over you. But you were the love of his life. A tiny voice in his head kept on telling him that he would get you back, eventually. He needed to listen to you a little more, that was all. You were right, he’d make more room for Sally and you in his busy schedule. After all, he didn’t have a choice.

After all, he was still in love with you…

You kept an eye on your phone throughout the evening, but all seemed to be fine. You received no phone call from your babysitter, or from your ex-husband. You were relieved, although you couldn’t truly relax. You were too used not to rely on Liam anymore to fully trust him again.

You clapped for the performance of the last girl who was auditioning tonight. You had settled in the large theatre on the campus, made of dim lights, red seats and a wooden stage. There was, after all, a whole course available for students to study acting if they wished. But the purpose of the club was not so much to teach in a classical way acting techniques and theories, with a diploma available at the end of years of courses. Instead, it was fun, and relaxed. Just a fun side-project students could get involved in outside of their traditional courses.

It was fun. If anything had come out from this evening to you, it was the benevolent energy of the group. It wasn’t so much about being serious and focused as it was about enjoying art and a nice moment together. And you liked it. A lot.

It was surprising, though. The more you watched Ben interacting with students, the more you realised that your first image of him as uptight and strict was wrong. He was warm and welcoming, friendly even. As he talked in front of the whole group, standing on that stage, you found that he belonged up there. He had enough charisma for it.

You focused on Nathaniel as he leaned forward to talk to you. He was sitting behind you and Ben with the rest of the students already registered for the club.

“Y/N, should we decide now on who we’re gonna keep with us?”

“We should talk about it together first. What do you think, Ben?”

You turned to your colleague, who kept on taking notes on every performance. He nodded.

“Yes, we should talk about it. If it’s fine with all of you though, it could be nice to talk about it now, while we still clearly remember every performance. Will it be too late for you if we take another thirty minutes to do that?” he added, his question aimed solely at you.

You shook your head with a smile.

“My evening is all free. I can stay.”

“Alright… is it good for everyone if we do this now?” he asked his students sitting behind him, and everyone nodded.

You went to tell the people who had auditioned to wait outside for a while to learn whether or not they could join. About fifteen students had come to the auditions. According to Ben, it was coherent with the previous years. Only four spots were available this year though.

“Alright, what do you think?” you asked the group, once you were alone.

Ben started going through his notes while the conversation got going, and you compared the different performances. You couldn’t refrain a smile. Maybe he wasn’t as strict with the students as you had imagined, but he was still annoyingly organized. The type to plan every detail. You shook your head, amused.

It took a little less than forty minutes for all of you to agree on four people, and David was sent to call back the students to let Ben announce the results.

You all lingered in the large theatre to talk to the students who had been accepted in the club, but also those you had rejected, taking your time to explain to them why you had taken this decision. And Ben did notice your kind tone, the soothing value of your voice as you talked to the disappointed students. After all, you weren’t as messy as he thought you were. You were planning things out for the club, thinking about ways to adapt the three plays you had selected. He was expecting you to be all over the place, but you were focused tonight. And you were kind to the students, which was the most important part of this, really. You hadn’t quite discovered what the club meant to these students, but you would do so soon enough. And Ben would have been lying if he had pretended that he didn’t think you capable of handling it all. He was almost happy you were his partner on this project…

… almost.

But time was flying by, and soon only the members of the club remained. It was time for one last important task to tackle.

“Alright, we need to decide which play we’ll perform this year, so… everyone grabs a piece of paper and a pen, and we vote!” you said with enthusiasm, taking a piece of paper yourself.

You hesitated for a moment. After all, it was silly not to vote for the musical that you had proposed in the first place. You were certain that Ben would never stop bragging about this if he won… but then again, as you wrote down Moulin Rouge! on your piece of paper, you were overexcited at the idea of working on this play.

And Ben should have written down Hamilton on his piece of paper, because it would have meant victory for him. Sweet revenge. And yet… when he rested his pen on the paper, he wrote down Moulin Rouge! instead. Maybe it was because a few weeks had passed, and he was calmer again. Maybe it was simply because he genuinely wanted to work on this musical. No matter the reason, he realized that he wouldn’t be disappointed if you won.

You gathered all the pieces of paper in your palms, and let Ben count the results.

And saying that you were surprised was rather an understatement.

Because you thought they would want to perform Hamilton, it was probably the most popular one among the students, for sure. But as Ben was counting the last votes, it was clear that you were not going to work on this musical at all.

Instead, the results were almost unanimously in favour of…

“Moulin Rouge!”

Ben and you exchanged a surprised glance, but the students were overexcited, and were already asking you many questions… to which you had no answer.

“So, how are we going to get a band for this? Because we need a band, right?”

“And can we add more songs? Or choose some songs that were not in the musical to begin with?”

“And how are we going to decide who plays who? Should we do like… some singing try-outs?”

“How are we going to manage the set though? Maybe we can recreate the elephant… that would be awesome!”

“Alright, alright, alright, calm down!” Ben laughed, interjecting in the messy conversations that shook the small group. “We have plenty of time to think about all of these questions. But tonight, it is… almost ten o’clock. Which means that it’s way too late for my old brain to function at full speed and solve all your problems. So, let’s call it a night, and we’ll see about all these questions of yours when we start training, next Thursday, at noon. Go on, get out of here! It’s late, and I want to go to bed at a decent hour like the old man I am!”

All laughed, and obeyed their teacher, chatting merrily as they walked out of the theatre. You heaved a relieved sigh, lingering for a moment longer in the room while Ben was turning off the lights and checking the backdoor. He had the keys to the building, and the two of you were in charge of closing the theatre for the night.

“Well, it went quite well, I reckon. Don’t you think so?” you asked Ben as he reappeared by your side, bending over the front-row seats to grab his jacket and his bag.

“Yeah, it did go quite well,” he answered with a grin. “Our new recruits seem good enough, and motivated, which is probably the most important part. And everyone seems excited about this project.”

“I’m sorry you couldn’t get the satisfaction of having your musical chosen over mine,” you joked, teasing him, and he shook his head with a chuckle as you climbed the stairs towards the main exit of the building.

“Well, I did propose Moulin Rouge! as well, technically…”

“But so did I.”

“Then, I guess it makes us even.”

You walked out with shivers running through your body. The air was becoming to grow colder as September had ended. It was the beginning of October, the air was chilly under the stars. The campus was quiet so late at night, although there were lights lighting the pathways and the buildings. It was quiet, with only the murmur of the wind in the trees and the distant cars passing by.

“What should we prepare for next week, then?” you asked, tightening your jacket around your cold frame, waiting for Ben to finish locking the door.

“I reckon that next Thursday is going to be more about planning, deciding what we want to do with this project, where we want to take the story and the production… I don’t think we’ll get much more done than just… deciding what to do. We need to settle on the songs we want to play, how we’re going to get the music… technical details that are going to shape the project.”

“Do you want to talk about it together before Thursday?”

“I don’t know… I don’t think it’s necessary to be honest.”

You were walking together towards the south of the campus, both of you aiming your steps towards the parking lot, your cars waiting for you there.

It was strange to walk down an empty path, to be alone with Ben on this path you took every day surrounded by busy people. Instead, now, it was quiet, calm, and your pace was leisurely. Maybe it was because you were tired. You didn’t dare think that it might be because you weren’t in a hurry to reach the car and stop this conversation…

“We should, however, talk about London,” Ben added. “It’s only a few weeks away, we should talk about how we’re going to get there, if we travel together… stuff like that.”

You nodded, an amused smile on your lips. It was teasing, but a little fond too.

“You really do enjoy planning everything in advance, don’t you?” you joked.

But your smile faltered when you saw Ben wincing.

“Sorry about that.”

You frowned at him. He was looking away now, and his voice was uncertain. It lacked the confidence you had heard during the evening, the warmth and charisma he had showed on stage.

“I wasn’t criticizing you, just teasing,” you clarified.

“Right… sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize.”

He nodded, but remained quiet.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t.”

He buried his hands in the pockets of his brown coat.

“We’re not in a hurry for that, you’re right. We can talk about it later.”

“No, you’re right. We should plan things out. We’re going to have a lot to do once we’re there, it’s better if we know where we’re staying, how we’re going there… the technical, boring details.”

He smiled again, although it was a little shy still.

“Do you have anything planned on Thursday afternoon?” you asked him. “After the club?”

But Ben shook his head.

“Then… maybe we can take some time to talk about London then. What do you think?” you proposed, and Ben nodded. You recognized gratefulness on his features, but didn’t really understand why it was there at all.

“That would be perfect.”

You had finally reached Ben’s car. The parking lot felt lonely, bathed in a yellow, almost orange light coming from the lampposts set across the empty space. You lingered by Ben’s side a moment more, before you would reach your own car, on the other side of the parking lot.

“I had fun today. I think I’m starting to understand why you like this club so much,” you told him with a smile on your lips.

He hated the thought that crossed his mind as he looked at you like this, smiling at him, bathed in golden light…

“It’s a lot of fun. And… it’s important,” he answered, a little sterner again. “These kids… they take it more seriously than you might think at first. They have a nice time, but they also… I don’t know. I think they enjoy the feeling of belonging they find there. It’s important to me that this feeling remains. I mean… I hope the play goes well, that we give a nice performance at the end of the year but… it’s not what is most important, really. It’s just a mean to an end, at the end of the day.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we fuck it up, we might not keep the club alive. And these kids… they want to come back. College is wonderful, but it’s tough as well. They need it, I think. They need the… catharsis effect of acting. They need the friendships they’re building in the group too. And well, you’ll discover soon enough that we’ll be half-teacher, half-shrink for the rest of the year with these kids.”

“Really?”

“When Daniel broke up with his boyfriend last year… Dear God… he cried on my shoulder for two hours,” Ben chuckled, and you soon joined him. “I don’t know… it’s a different relationship we have with them. In a full class, it’s more difficult to create a bond. It’s easier in a club.”

He frowned when he caught you smiling up at him in silence, staring.

“What?”

“Nothing,” you shook yourself out of your thought, nervously chuckling. “Just… you’re surprising.”

“In a good way?”

“For now, yes.”

You exchanged a smile, before you would turn towards your own car, parked right on the opposite side of the parking lot.

“See you next week, Ben! Have a nice weekend!”

“Thanks. You too!”

You waved at him, making his smile broaden, before you would turn around for good.

You didn’t notice that Ben remained in his car, watching you as you crossed the empty space. It was late, after all. He didn’t start his car before you were safely locked inside your own, and that he was certain that nothing bad would happen to you tonight.

***********

Taglist : @reg-arcturus-black

#ben barnes #ben barnes x reader #ben barnes x y/n #ben barnes x you #ben barnes fanfic #ben barnes fanfiction #ben barnes fic #ben barnes series #series #fanfic #fanfiction #writing

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anoether-life · 13 days

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14.04.1935

It is a bit ironic that one of the first posts to be published on this blog is about Emmy's death, which was today 89 years ago (and similarly the last post will be on her birthday). This will probably also be the longest post since in addition to general information about her death I will also add parts of memorial speeches and letters from her colleagues. But let us start with details about her death first.

After the initial recovery from Emmy's uterine surgery on April 10 went rather well for the first few days, on April 14 her condition suddenly worsened. One of the doctors, Dr. James L. Lichards, described it to Marion Edwards Park (the president of Bryn Mawr College) in a letter from April 24 as follows:

At operation the pelvic tumor was found to be a large ovarian cyst the size of a large cantaloupe. [...] During the early morning of her fourth post-operative day she developed a circulatory collapse from which she seemed to rally under treatment. At noon on that day she suddenly lapsed from consciousness to complete coma with loss of reflexes and a rise of temperature from 102 degrees to 108 degrees. Dr. David Riesman, who saw her in consultation, was of the opinion that, as a part of Dr. Noether’s general circulatory collapse, a blood vessel had ruptured in the region of the vital centers in her head which had caused her sudden relapse at a time when she seemed to be rallying. From that point, Dr. Noether rapidly failed in spite of every effort to save her.

According to Dr. Brooke M. Anspach, another one of Emmy's doctors, it was in fact very likely that Emmy would have died in the near future, if not from complications with this surgery. In her letter to Marion Park from April 15 she states it as follows:

If it is any comfort I may tell you that we have every reason to believe that the outcome was impossible to avoid. Dr. Noether evidently had some unrecognizable disability which would have made itself suddenly manifest without any more exciting cause than her usual routine of work. Unfortunately we see every once in awhile one of our friends apparently in good health suddenly stricken; it would have been the same with her some time. Without doubt the operative procedure hastened it but of course the operation was necessary and if the tumor had not been removed it alone would have been sufficient to have cause her death.

Emmy's death came as a shock to everyone, especially since Bryn Mawr, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Princeton were in deep talks to transform Emmy's temporary appointment at Bryn Mawr into a permanent position. Marion Park held a smaller funeral service at her home with some of Emmy's friends and colleagues on April 17 and there was a larger memorial service in Goodhart Hall, Bryn Mawr College, on April 26, 1935.

There are two memorial accounts I would like to highlight here, the first of which is from a letter by Albert Einstein to the New York Times, which was printed in the Times on May 3, 1935:

In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began. [...] Her unselfish, significant work over a period of many years was rewarded by new rulers of Germany with a dismissal, which cost her the means of maintaining her simple life and the opportunity to carry on her mathematical studies.

The second one is from an obituary printed in the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin from May 1935:

Professor Brauer, in speaking recently of Miss Noether’s powerful influence professionally and personally among the young scholars who surrounded her in Göttingen, said that they were called the Noether family, and that when she had to leave Göttingen, she dreamed of building again somewhere what was destroyed then. We realize now with pride and thankfulness that we saw the beginning of a new ‘Noether family’ here. To Miss Noether her work was as inevitable and natural as breathing. A background for living taken for granted; but that work was only the core of her relation to students. She lived with them and for them in a perfectly unselfconscious way. She looked on the world with direct friendliness and unfeigned interest, and she wanted them to do the same. Mathematical meetings at the University of Pennsylvania, at Princeton, at New York, began to watch for the little group, slowly growing, which always brought something of the freshness and buoyance of its leader.

After Emmy's body was cremated, her ashes were placed under the walkway around the cloisters of M. Carey Thomas Library at Bryn Mawr College.

#emmy noether

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laxmiree · 1 year

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[CN] 5th Anniversary - Lucien (Roast!)

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT!! ⚠️

This post contains a detailed spoiler for a story that has not been released in EN yet! Feel free to notify me if there are any mistakes in the translation~

T/N: 吐槽大会, or can be translated as Roast! is a comedy talk-show in China that’s inspired by Comedy Central Roast. Basically, it’s a show where the people invited take turns in roasting each other based on the topic provided.

In the game itself, you can choose which roast you can give to him (and you get a chance to choose another option lol) and whether to oppose or agree with his roast.

Translation under the cut!

Microphone: Welcome to Roast! Everyone is welcome to participate~

[Topic 1- Work]

Microphone: The topic of today's roast is…

Microphone: His/Her Work~

MC: I'll go first~

MC: In my heart, he is...

[Option A: Dedicated Scientist]

MC: According to "I don’t actually know what I'm talking about" data, 99 out of every 100 scientists love to work non-stop without sleep or food.

(T/N: 废寝忘食 is an idiom meaning to skip one's sleep and meals/ to be completely wrapped up in one's work)

MC: However, Professor Lucien relied on his extremely high physical fitness to work without eating and sleeping at all!

MC: Won't this unavoidably attract resentment from other scientists?

MC: So for the sake of the future of the scientific community, I advise him to keep a low profile in the future, eat and sleep on time, to give his colleagues some psychological balance~

Lucien: This lady appears to have a point that I didn’t consider too well before.

Lucien: But rather than maintaining the psychological balance between colleagues for the future of the scientific community-

Lucien: What I care more about is your opinion.

Lucien: I'll try to change these bad habits in the future, so that you don't have a chance to criticize me about them anymore.

Lucien: Anything else?

[Option B: “Picky” Consultant]

MC: My program consultant is very serious about the program content.

MC: And even for a small idea, he will ask me to go to the library to look up information, discuss it face-to-face in a coffee shop, or meet in the park to collect local cultural material.

MC: After a long time, I finally realized that-

MC: Did he use the program as a way of creating opportunities to meet each other?

Lucien: This student's realization seems to take longer than I thought.

Lucien: In fact, my role as your "program consultant" is not the only one filled with deliberate and subtle motives.

Lucien: In one way or another, I have hidden some selfishness in every other aspect of my life.

Lucien: But judging by how long it takes for you to realize it, I guess it will take another long time for you to discover "them".

Lucien: Anything else?

MC: My rant is over.

Lucien: Although the Great Producer often says that I’m very committed to my work, it seems that… you are no different from me.

Lucien: And sometimes when we travel overseas, you have to take your laptop with you so that you can "be on call" 24 hours a day.

Lucien: This makes you seem a little "busier" than me.

[Option A: Agree With Him]

MC: ヾ(⁠=⁠^▽⁠^⁠=⁠)ﾉ

Lucien: Since the Great Producer has admitted it, let's supervise each other in the future.

Lucien: If someone 'violated' first, you have to punish the other person to do one thing for you, okay?

Lucien: Don't worry… It’s not a trap. it's more like a mutual motivation.

[Option B: Oppose him]

MC: (⁰⁠ Д⁠ ⁠⁰⁠ ⁠*)ﾉ

Lucien: Hmm... You don't think so? Do you still think that I'm more likely to forget to eat and sleep?

Lucien: To an extent, it seems to be the case.

Lucien: But by nature, it seems to be the same.

Lucien: No matter the extent, it still has an impact on our health, doesn't it?

Lucien: So, why don't we encourage each other to free up more space for the two of us?

MC: Anything else?

Lucien: Some time ago, I accidentally saw your plans for next year's vacation.

Lucien: It seems like there is not enough time left for me?

Lucien: As your program consultant, should I increase my efficiency to shorten the duration of the program?

[Option A: Agree with him]

MC: ヾ(⁠=⁠^▽⁠^⁠=⁠)ﾉ

Lucien: Since Miss Producer also wants to have a lot of vacation days...

Lucien: Then I will not fail to meet this high expectation, and strive to give you more time to rest.

[Option B: Oppose him]

MC: (⁰⁠ Д⁠ ⁠⁰⁠ ⁠*)ﾉ

Lucien: Oh? Did I make a mistake...

Lucien: You said 80% of your time is reserved for me?

Lucien: But if you only schedule five days of annual leave a year, we only have four days.

Lucien: For such a greedy me, it seems far from enough.

MC: Anything else?

Lucien: My rant is over.

[Topic 2: His/Her Life]

Microphone: The topic of today's roast is…

Microphone: His/her life~

MC: In my heart, he is...

[Option A: Movie buff]

MC: A scientist who likes to watch movies-

MC: No matter how busy he is at work, he will spare some time as much as possible to watch movies.

MC: And after watching it, he will also carefully search the relevant information, from the shot analysis to the director's creative process.

MC: I seem to be less professional than him even though I’m the professional TV and film producer….

Lucien: Watching movies is a good hobby for me, but I started to develop the habit of looking up related information after I became your program consultant.

Lucien: After all, in addition to providing professional knowledge and insight, I also need to know something about the journey behind the scenes of the creators,

Lucien: I need to understand all aspects of the great producer's life so that I can help in the best way I can.

Lucien: Anything else?

[Option B: Tea Connoisseur]

MC: He likes tea very much, to what extent?

MC: To the extent that I can smell a faint scent of tea when I pass by him,

MC: And when I open the storage cabinet, I will find hundreds of tea bags, and there is an increasing number of them…

MC: I didn't know that Professor Lucien also had a "childlike" hobby of collecting things he likes.

Lucien: Rather than collecting, it is more that I'm going to let it settle over time to have a better and richer tea flavor.

Lucien: And I've always had a small plan in mind- that every few years, you could taste the "time" with me.

Lucien: Anything else?

MC: My rant is over.

Lucien: My little girl often has many whimsical ideas, for example, she likes to decorate our home according to the four seasons,

Lucien: Or create some unexpected surprises from time to time, so there is nothing worth "rant" in life.

Lucien: I’m very satisfied and I like it very much.

[Option A: Agree With Him]

MC: ヾ(⁠=⁠^▽⁠^⁠=⁠)ﾉ

Lucien: Hmm. Seems like I've motivated you even more with this speech.

Lucien: Then… Just continue to let me be lucky enough to sit back and enjoy them in the future.

[Option B: Oppose him]

MC: (⁰⁠ Д⁠ ⁠⁰⁠ ⁠*)ﾉ

Lucien: Are you saying that I bring you more surprises?

Lucien: At this point, none of us should be modest with each other.

Lucien: Instead, we should be happy that we can bring joy, surprise, and happiness to each other.

MC: Anything else?

Lucien: But also because I’m greedy enough to have more.

Lucien: Every minute and every second in the future, I will continue to welcome every surprise you bring to me with anticipation.

[Option A: Agree with him]

MC: ヾ(⁠=⁠^▽⁠^⁠=⁠)ﾉ

Lucien: But in such a beautiful thing, you can't be the only person who gives.

Lucien: So, although I don't have the same unimaginable creativity as you.

Lucien: I still want to bring you what I consider to be “surprises”.

[Option B: Oppose him]

MC: (⁰⁠ Д⁠ ⁠⁰⁠ ⁠*)ﾉ

Lucien: Oh? What's with the sudden reluctance…?

Lucien: It seems that you also like to secretly “play bad”.

Lucien: So what do I have to do to make your "surprise package" endlessly renewed?

MC: Anything else?

Lucien: My rant is over.

[Topic 3: About him/her]

Microphone: The topic of today's roast is…

Microphone: About him/her

MC: I’ll go first~

MC: In my heart, he is...

[Option A: Genius]

MC: I have to say that he is a "genius" in every sense of the word, and I hardly ever see anything he is not good at!

MC: Wait, why don't I start doing a study on Professor Lucien?

MC: For example—[In such a perfect genius, how many things is he not good at?]?

Lucien: I think I have a lot of things I'm not good at.

Lucien: For example, I always forget to take good care of myself and then I don't know what to do when you are "angry".

Lucien: Or, each time a new emotion arises because of you, there is some self-exploration that I’m not good with.

Lucien: But I seem to be making progress, like now - the latter has gradually become something I'm good at.

Lucien: Anything else?

[Option B: A sly fox]

MC: On the surface, he is the gentle and elegant Professor Lucien, but in private he is a sly ‘fox’!

MC: Not only does he often ‘trap’ me, but he also likes to secretly tease me.

MC: Even though I was alert and vigilant, I still couldn't prevent his schemes!

Lucien: Then perhaps this is the "animal" natural behavior in the face of someone he likes.

Lucien: Uncontrollably approaching, trying to attract the other person's attention.

Lucien: All this just because he wants to be closer to the other person.

Lucien: Anything else?

MC: My rant is over.

Lucien: You are the bravest girl I have ever met, and the one who always brings hope.

Lucien: So more than wanting to roast or ridicule you... I just want to say that I'm glad to have met you like this.

[Option A: Agree With Him]

MC: (shyly) ヾ(⁠=⁠^▽⁠^⁠=⁠)ﾉ

Lucien: I really like your smile at this moment. It has been forever framed in my heart.

[Oppose him]

MC: (⁰⁠ Д⁠ ⁠⁰⁠ ⁠*)ﾉ

Lucien: Are you saying that I made you braver?

Lucien: But I don’t think that’s very accurate. Rather, I would say that-

Lucien: It is love that has made us what we are now.

MC: Anything else?

Lucien: So, please stay by my side more often.

Lucien: Although it sounds a bit selfish, one can't help but instinctively move closer to warmth.

Lucien: And I’m no exception.

[Option A: Agree With Him]

MC: ヾ(⁠=⁠^▽⁠^⁠=⁠)ﾉ

Lucien: Now that you've agreed to it, why don't you start "fulfilling" it in every aspect of our lives?

Lucien: For example - with every scenery we see, every delicious food we eat, and every warmth as we hug each other when we get home.

[Oppose him]

MC: (⁰⁠ Д⁠ ⁠⁰⁠ ⁠*)ﾉ

Lucien: If you feel that staying in the same place is too stagnant, how about following in each other's footsteps and moving forward?

Lucien: Let every unknown part of the future leave traces that belong to us.

#roast never sounds this wholesome #njjdf such a cute mini story thoo #mlqc lucien #mlqc cn #mr love queen's choice #mr. love queen's choice #mlqc spoiler #mlqc translations #mlqc

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soranihimawari · 2 years

Text

Two and a half Minutes

Pairing: university grad students Kuroo & reader

Rating: 🔞—mdni (themes)// KTA->KTF (angst to fluff)

Word count: 4.2K

Warnings: Kuroo’s ignorance makes him more of an ass; learning to be and do better

Today’s not a day to be late, at least according to the old maids living on your floor. You would think the one time you needed to show up post graduation rehearsal you’d have multiple alarms set, you figured you would make up the time with the way you drive. Then again, when you spent a majority of the last two semesters earning your keep as a librarian’s assistant in the restoration department, time is no consequence to you. Until you meet the rest of the academic staff in the rafter-wings of the auditorium. You were a little dishelved, but lucky for you, your self-proclaimed academic rival is there with his backup speech handy. He was a slick talker who could easily appease the annoyed brow of a doctorate candidate and their mentor with a simple smile; he was also one of the few who could match you in terms of tactical brilliance as proven by the language arts committee he helped formulate in the last year. You sighed, smoothing out your toga, your cap held in the white knuckled grip of your hands. More often than not, lately you’ve been keeping to yourself, trying to not let this years candidates’ comments of your humble origins bruise your already exhausted ego.

“And there they are,” his mockingjay voice says.

“Good mornin’,” you force the words out with a silken annunciation from your village town.

“My my,” the professor to his left says with a clapping motion. “Seems like we won’t hear my cadidate’s speech after all. Pity.”

“I was so looking forward to it too, but what can I do? Our valedictorian showed up with minutes to spare,” one sore jab wouldn’t deal the final blow of an already bleeding corpse.

“Mx YN,” the dean of your school greets you. She was an older woman with half-moon spectacles dangling high on her nose; encouraging letters of recommendation from previous professors landed on her desk with copies of your thesis in the fine arts multiple times.

“Ma’am,” you extend her salutations well-earned. The professor sponsor for your rival retreats a bit while the pupil stands side by side with you.

“I’m looking forward to hearing you speak,” the department head warnmly states. She grips your shoulder with a finality of pride in her otherwise stone face before she calls out another professor’s name who calls her over about an opinion on roses this time of year.

“Congratulations on not making a compete ass of yourself in front of her,” you hear your fellow graduate say. The grip on your cap had loosened some time ago, but now you wished it were a hammer and nail to pin his tongue against the podium. Violence wasn’t necessarily frowned upon here yet considering you could mince this man-child with words beyond his comprehension, you digress.

“Funny, I was about to the same thing,” the lilt in your voice made him do a double-take before you walked on to find your seat among the presenters for the ceremony.

A few minutes later, when you turn to look over your shoulder, you see him talk to another colleague who stares past him to study you. You break the eye-contact when you choose to fiddle with the doctorate cap before placing it upon your head. There is a chime playing overhead as the family snd friends who chose to be a part of the ceremony to cheer their loved ones on began to file in and find their appointed seats. Since there were two valedictorians this semester, you were expecting to see a slew of your rival’s family members and teammates. It’s not an everyday occurrence one well-known athlete graduates with a doctorate of sports administration.

“Jesus, it’s like a wedding party,” you mutter under your breath as you see his parent, aunt, and brother settle down in the front row; the teammates who were able to make it sat in the row behind them in their ‘signing suits.’ You don’t remember hearing his brogued shoes approach you, so you jump a little in your seat when he appears in your blindside.

“Everyone’s made it on my end,” he says with a jovial tone. The five seats reserved for your family and friends remained empty. It’s been what? Seven years of schooling altogether at this infernal institution and he still decides to be ignorant of self-made successes like yourself? How dare he, your thoughts are unnecessary filled with rude comments and childish taunts.

The ceremony commencement announcements are made and he settles into his own seat. The professors go through their introductions and trite speeches extending their congratulations to the family and finally the graduates. To your right, you pretend you don’t see the curious stare of your classmate. He nods and smiles to his parents who wave at him from their spot, his teammates’ holler for his attention too, slightly embarrassing him; but his eyes eventually land back on the empty seats reserved for you. Why on earth would no one want to come to celebrate this milestone with you? Was your family not as caring as his, he wonders. Or was it you were disowned because you chose not to buy into the corporations your family owned? Your life outside of this institution were little to no concern for him, yet the enigma that is you has gripped his curiosity like a vice.

You hear him make a comment before he nudges you to approach the podium. Your speech you’ve memorized countless times, so with not much ado, you set your hands aside post-adjustment of the microphone. The teleprompter just has brackets around [[VALEDICTORIAN SPEECH]] and your voice seemed to have had a mind of it’s own. Your inflections come out when you pronounce certain words but you power through it with an air of professionalism your rival never tires of. It’s like an illusionists’ greatest trick. You end your speech with a thank you and with the hardest hurdle cleared, you wait for the names to be called.

Three hours of your day was all it takes for you to receive the graduate paper; the real diploma will take about another month to be shipped out to your residence. You asked your bookskeeper if you could use their mailbox seeing as you have yet to close on a new apartment contract.

You arrive at the reception hall without your toga, but you do wear your doctoral cap; conveniently it matches your high waisted suit pants and pearlized satin top. It was the nicest set of clothes you owned and since you rarely wore it out anyway, it was a safe choice for an after party like this. You interact and mingle with others who value your opinions on impudent subject matters, perhaps being fed into a lion’s den would have been easier than keeping up appearances with those who could afford to make trillions of donations like they were buying favors from the pope.

Alas peace was a lie you think when a catering waiter approaches you with a mimosa flute. You easily snag one and replace its spot with the empty one. You sip it carefully while contemplating when or if your rival’s family will force him to talk to you. Luckily, you didn’t have to wait very long; his fellow teammate decides to intercept you from being pulled into another conversation about Euclidean Geometry, how its laws of tessellations inspired Byzantine tiles.

“You sure do know how to capture my attention,” you tease, enjoying the bitter liquid making its way to your stomach. “Now how can I help you? PLease don’t tell me you’re here to set me up with—”

“Morisuke!” Another jovial rebel comes bounding up to you two. He shrugs his shoulders with a grumpy expression at his former kouhai while glancing back at you; perhaps he was going to ask you out to dinner, not that you would have refused because of the company he keeps. Friends of said rival or not, Morisuke was actually quite bold.

“Yamamoto, I swear,” you hear him curse his friend under his breath. If these two are here with you, then that means the thorn in your side wasn’t too far behind either.

“To hell with this,” you say, drowning the rest of your tongue with the cocktail. “Thank you for your time gentlemen, but it seems I have to go.”

Noir hair floats by yards ahead of you, probably doing a complicated equation to see the path of least resistance to reach you. The suit he wears is pristine and is a more adult version of his high school one, sans blazer. Rolled up sleeves and a neat double Windsor knotted tie show off his family’s style paired with the glitz of gifted cufflinks and classy watch. Compared to you who screams economic efficiency, his entire ensemble screams charmed life. Not saying he didn’t work hard, far from it, but the way he presents himself as a self-righteous know it irked you to no end. Your subconscious newsfeed decidedly reminds you with bold letters of today’s date and how it ought to be the least time you see the man, so you might as well extend an olive branch of sorts. You stand still, much to the surprise of those who knew of your accumulated hatred of your salutatorian. His parents who had split when he was younger kindly push him on the path toward you regardless of him moving on his own or not. The two friends who came to the ceremony stand a little off to the side behind you should you or their friend hurl insulting words, much like scorekeepers of a tennis match.

“Come to say goodbye?” He asks, peering up and down like a creature about to pounce on its dinner. Golden eyes known to charm women and men into his bed at all hours of the night seem to alight in watching your stone face soften into a relaxed blaze of fury.

“Oh and I thought you were scolded for playing nice with me today,” you raise a glass at his father who seemed to have extended his congratulations with a wave. His mother and father have finally reached a point of amnesty in their separate lives, from afar, their body language reads as amicable friends and co-parents to a doctor in business administration.

“Mm,” he takes a half step forward before eerily smiling at you when you raise your head higher to see his irses dilate a little more. He wants to pick at your mindset, but when reality had sunk in when he sat next to you during the commencement ceremony, he realized he was unfairly biased toward you. In your speech you make a mention of not remembering anything beyond second year of middle school. Perhaps the news of a massive storm surge taking out a few seaside residences one and a half decade ago finally gave him some crumbs of information.

A hell of a time to find out the person whom you’ve shared a majority of classes with was bitter for reasons beyond his control. Times of being angry arguing tooth and nail during classes could have been spent healing, turning over a new leaf as one professor’s adoptive proverb states.

You straighten your posture a bit via rolling your shoulders back, without much else, you say one of the most damning things you could think of: “Thank you for being my academic rival these past seven years; thank you for reminding me everyday how much you disliked seeing my name on the projects with the highest marks; for kicking me out of the library when I told you I had lost power in my apartment; for not even bothering to ask me why I have travel arrangements every March fifteenth to and I quote, ‘go on sabbatical to the shore line.’ And how I still endured your scrutiny when you boasted about being selected for a permanent spot in your fellowship. So yes, I suppose you can summarize what I just stated as, ‘come to say goodbye?’”

You shoulder-check him when you gracefully walk past him when he had nothing else to rebuttal with. He wanted to make a joke, but you being hardwired to take anything he says as a challenge reared its head at him and hurled a whirlwind of damage to his inflated ego. He turns to look at Morisuke and Yamamoto who just shake their heads agreeing they didn’t know you had been a great actor atop of your already serious demeanor. Sauntering off back to their corner, the saludetorian is called out for freezing by his best friend: “so yn finally told you off? I’m not surprised.”

“Kenma,” Yamamoto says with a Buddhist-like face. “Can’t you see how our old scheming captain is off his game.”

“People aren’t games,” Morisuke contributes this fact and the graduate’s father sort of chuckles.

“What’s so funny?” His son asks him.

“You, son,” his father begins. “Have a lot left to learn.”

The older man with graying streaks in his hair extends his arm politely to his ex-wife who sheds a little more light about the skeleton in your closet. She cryptically tells the lads to look up the landslide disaster that was covered in the news from when they were in junior high.

You were found outside the hall sitting on an abandoned ottoman, your head tilted back looking up at the fluorescent lights with a serene expression on your face. Your rival’s parents were always a source of well-intended comfort, after all they were the ones who frequented the stores you helped digitize the city ledgers. Always respectful toward your elders was a trait taught to you since you were young, so when the familiar voices belonging to them say your name, you stand to greet them.

“Congratulations, dear,” his mom says, squeezing your bicep a little.

“Thank you,” two words were said with the least animosity you had in you. It’s not entirely their fault their son was a dumbass, an insult was too soft by your standards.

Polite small talk with them was fun: his mom talks about her job overseas while his father updates you about how his aging parents are faring in the mountain city. You express you didn’t want to take too much of their time, bidding them farewell and safe passage on their way to the hotel they rented for the evening. Figuring you should do the same, you’re about to head outside to the reception lobby when you are nearly tackled by a familiar set of arms—the watch and fabric were a dead giveaway and much to your chagrin, you hear him say your name. One hell of an olive branch, your mind thinks as you try to squirm your way out of his hold.

“Stay still, f’me, I just wanna talk,” he instructs, readjusting his tightening hold on you. You fool yourself into calming down, but unfortunately, your body begins to think otherwise: your breathing is picking up again and you’re two minutes away from an apparent panic attack. “Hey, hey, it’s just me, ok?”

He releases you the second he notices the distress he might have caused. You stumble forward, hunched over where he had held you and even if you think he didn’t do it on purpose, he still doesn’t have access to that part of you yet. Morisuke, Yamamoto, and a blonde boy you’ve seen off and on make their presence known shortly thereafter seeing their friend with arms raised claiming innocence versus you who raises one arm in defense the other still holding your ribs together, your lungs finally returning to a homeostatic level.

“Don’t touch me!” your voice is lightning in a bottle. Your eyes are wildly displaced and you take a step back. You look terrified before brushing off the wrinkles in your outfit then you blow out a raspberry before lowering your arms to your side; he does the same, still mumbling an apology— he knew of panic attacks and anxiety attacks, but he hasn’t seen one happen by something he did.

“I won’t,” he demurely stated. “I’m not sure what—”

“Previous trauma caused by drowning,” you heard Kenma read aloud. It was an excerpt from an article that was published while you were in the children’s hospital the night after the landslide that claimed a few key people in your life. “Victims of the town near the epicenter were identified by relatives, but only three percent of those affected were claimed… surname tiles unclaimed were as follows.”

Your family name is among them as Kenma reads the rest aloud.

“Five seats in the commencement ceremony remained empty for a reason,” you state the fact again, no tears, just facts. You apologize for the stark commotion, shrugging your shoulders before disappearing into the warm night. It takes a few minutes for you to simmer down; you take a seat at a bench across the promenade. Your phone in your pocket lights up with a nickname of “do not engage” as the contact, the notification counter breaks over fifty at this point. Uttering a bitter goodbye to the illuminated ballroom building, you ready yourself to stand and begin the walk back to your dorm.

Meanwhile, back at the reception, Morisuke and Yamamoto said they were going to head to the men’s room then heading back inside for an hour or two more. Kenma locks his phone after sending the link to his best friend’s phone though the ebony blessed haired child was busy trying to rectify his major faux pax.

“Mx YN isn’t going to forgive you so easily,” Kenma scoffs. “Just because you toed the line with them before doesn’t give you the right to charge into that hellscape.”

“I know I fucked up, but,” he angrily hangs up the line. “Why did no one tell me this?”

“Kuroo, for a newly graduated doctor you’re not very bright,” his friend scolds him. Then, he playfully knocks his forehead with a closed fist. “YN values knowledge as a protective measure; you do it for the fun of outsmarting people and or for the flare. Seven years of attending university and not once did you think to ask yn about how she’s doing outside of class?”

“No, because I thought yn was fine,” he pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Loneliness pushes you to do many things,” Kenma states. “And I know empty eyes when I see them. YN may be the same age as you, but they’ve come to expect more from people like you. Do better, idiot.”

“…how?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

Kenma leaves to turn back inside when he sees Yamamoto wave him over; the old setter fills the other two in. Morisuke chuckles when he picks up another hour devour this time asking an impossibly loaded question: “if this is how they are when yn��s past is found out, I can’t wait until he realizes he’s hopelessly devoted to yn.”

“Seriously? That’s where your mind jumps to when Kenma here sheds some damning information about yn?” Yamamoto is extraordinarily boisterous about this private matter.

“Kuroo needed to hear it from someone and sadly, even yn had to be reminded,” Kenma stands by his decision. “Whether yn told him or not, it needed to be acknowledged for context. They’re the most irritating people to be around when in the same room, but they do exude the confidence to keep each other inline.”

“What makes you say that?” Morisuke inquires, benevolence beseeches his words. His former teammates lean back to see their old captain pace worriedly with his phone attached to his ear. Kenma’s lips purse into a definite smile like he’s finally figured out the last difficulty in a puzzle rune game.

Two weeks later, you take your belongings from your dorm room and pack them into a suitcase. Your favorite novels were already shipped to your new flat earlier that week. The bookkeeper still keeps an eye out for your graduate degree in their personal mailbox on your behalf. Exchanging a few words of gratitude, you are granted well wishes for your future endeavors, not once pondering over the reception incident. If you did, you would be doing a great disservice to the frightened amber eyes of a rival who, judging by his reaction, heard the news story about the phenomena for the first time. He probably didn’t think anything of it; thought of the news reporters on the tv as ‘boring real life news’ before a prime time quiz show made its scheduled debut. His eyes constrict and relax when his friend reads the in memoriam part, but when his mouth opens and closes like a fish struggling to breathe, he sees you stand albeit a bit proudly. He hears you say something, but the blood in his ears pushes your words away and he watches you disappear into the night.

Contrary to popular belief, one would think he had adjusted to the news well. How wrong they were. For the first seventy two hours post graduation, Kuroo spends his time researching more about the incident. He’s appalled to why he didn’t ask any of the adults in his life about this sooner or how come his mother gently guides him to meet you in the freshman orientation—he thought you lied when you said your guardians couldn’t make the trip out here, only to realize you were telling the truth for a very different reason. Your affinity for wearing three-quarter sleeved clothing to hide surgical chest scars forces his heart to fall to his shoes. His snide jokes in a class once landed him with a warning from the professor, but you raised your hand to propose a counter argument thus creating the outline for the rivalry whether accidental or not.

Does it explain why he faces your door now? No. He must be out of his god -damned mind to be here, his brain thinks. In the group chat he has with his closest friends, most of which reply with a single ‘f’ for respect, Kenma replies privately.

The butcher paper the florist sold his bouquet in crinkles in his hands. He’s trembling with nerves even now when he faces the closed door. Not knowing where to begin to apologize for ignorant and rude behavior is beyond him, but not even attempting the attempt is more an act of cowardice. So, he raises a hand to knock upon your door. You hear the call to the door, but when you look through the viewfinder, you say nothing. Instead you hold your breath to see if he would knock again—he does, multiple times in fact. Your neighbors pass by starting the rumors that your well known ire is here to pour out his soul to you to start up again; though he waves them off to get some version of privacy, he takes a deep breath before touching his forehead to the door. You press a curious ear to it on your end.

“Of course yn isn’t here,” he scoffs.

He sounds…sad? Disappointed? You hear the rustling of the paper and a sniffle. Is he allergic to the pollen of the flower, but bought them anyways? You shake you head wondering if he new or if this is a newer development, but you wait.

“If you’re not here, then I’ll apologize to the last thing you probably saw,” he continues, pressing his head into the doorframe this time. “I’m sorry for being a righteous ass to you; you never really opened up and told me off until that summer course in second year, remember? You got so angry about me doodling all over your notes only for you and I to be paired up as lab partners in the fall. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you when you said you were going on a date; my ex thought it was funny to see if I could crash your date; I’m sorry I used you for my personal entertainment when things didn’t go well at home. I’m here to say sorry and I’m sorry I missed you. We could have been friends, and instead I squandered my opportunity to not only make my arch nemesis a friend, but maybe something more?”

You subconsciously unlock your door and he stands back a bit. He brings the flowers up to his face to hide his expression. You pull the bouquet out of his hands, thanking him for the gesture.

“Despite you being the bane of my existence,” he winced at that. “You still have a long way to go before we even become acquaintances. Go home Kuroo Tetsuro, it’s late.”

You’re about to close the door and trash the flowers, yet his hand reaches the doorknob first. You can feel him hover above you, a pointed look of dejection scribed on his features.

“So that’s it then?” his breath fans the baby hairs in the back of your neck.

“…”

You walk further inside, your back rigid in not turning around to face him. He sees and hears the flowers fall into the trash can and hears you tell him to leave.

“Yn?”

You’re in the kitchen after he closes the door.

“Go away,” your voice is cold.

“Not happening,” he is bold, approaching you with a smirk. “Olive branch?”

His arms are open to you, and he turns his head to one side, signaling you to come accept some form of human company. Even if he’s the scum of the earth in your rueful eyes, you could kick him in the groin if necessary.

“Thirty seconds.”

“Two and a half minutes, non-negotiable.”

“Fine.”

You mentally prepare yourself to embrace an enemy. Your steps are quiet and calculated, yet when the amendment is for a minute and half you bow your head in defeat when you stare up at him. Kuroo has this anxious disposition and he breathes a sigh of relief when he feels your arms hit his torso. You’re surprisingly warm and softer to the touch when his hands graze past your upper arms. His cheek smooshes gently against the cotton Candy texture of your hair. He holds you there and pats your back whispering a, “you’re not going to hug me back are you?”

“…?”

You let him hold your tired self for longer than the allotted time. You don’t forgive his words, nor his actions he learns. Rather, you give him a haunting blessing:

“In this house, you’re on thin ice. Move my heart with good deeds and I’ll consider taking up your offer from freshman all-nighter week.”

“Oh ho?”

“High tea at the fanciest coffee house and pastry in Ropppengi.”

“You’re on, yn.”

You nod against his chest once more before pushing him off of you with a curse: “smooth talking bastard.”

“You like it though.”

“Alright that’s it. Out you go.”

“Aww, and here I thought I was laying the groundwork for you and I to be civil.”

Your expression changes as you cross your arms and point to the door. He surrenders, residing in your genkan for a moment. An epiphany of sorts shifts his heart a bit; he wants to prove to you people can change. He wants to try, at least for you.

Kuroo leaves then, sneaking a glance at the bronze highlight the lamp on the entrance to the front door illuminates your figure. You shake your head muttering a barely audible, ‘unbelievable.’ He doesn’t know he’s checking you out (having a whole Nicholas Sparks moment in fantasyland there) until you tell him to quit staring and go home. Kuroo and you have a long way to go before becoming anything other than rivals, but coffee connoisseurs seem like a good place to start.

#🌻— flying around collecting pollen—queue #sora after hours #haikyuu x reader #kuroo x reader #uni!gradstudent au #🔞—mdni #🔞: MA themes #psychological & physical triggers for surviving landslides

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kardions · 2 years

Text

Cutting Corners, part 2 (ffxiv write: day 5)

the sequel!

3pm, lecture hall, end of class.

“Thaliak, a moment, please,” the professor called out.

Students milled about, collected their belongings, chattered amongst themselves and exited the lecture hall. Many gave pause to glance at Braedyn as they slowly made their way to the front of the room to meet with the instructor. Many glances were made through fluttering eyelashes and flushed faces, while others were made with contorted grimaces.

The Elezen, formally known as Thaliak, had an infamous reputation at The Studium for being one of the brightest minds in attendance but never applying any of their natural intelligence. Their peers both loved and loathed them; jealous they could never hope to have a fraction of their scholarly aptitude but also appreciative of when Thaliak offered assistance with coursework. Braedyn—Thaliak—, however, had many reservations about the title bestowed upon them. He approached his professor; they were the only two present in the lecture hall now.

“Listen, Dr. Logios, I’m sorry about the freak out earlier. It’s just… I don’t want my friends thinking that I think I’m superior because of my residency and stuff,” Braedyn started. “The ‘Thaliak’ thing is super embarrassing and alienates me from my peers, y’know?”

The tall, mid-50s Elezen woman with silver hair tied into a bun adjusted her glasses. “Unfortunately, the fate of this Star does not care for the opinion of our ‘friends’, Thaliak. I know your research has revealed this to you.” She sat at her desk and gave them a knowing look.

Braedyn sighed and placed themself on a desk opposite Dr. Logios, legs crossed. “Yeah, and it sucks. But you’ve gotta understand that I’m still young and just wanna have fun! I always do the work I’m give—”

“The fate of this Star does not care for your ‘fun’.” The professor’s biting words stung with every syllable.

Braedyn knew that he couldn’t waste time being a person—the Final Days were upon all of mankind. Being the one to discover that the Star would be met with such a volatile fate held an unbearable weight that he wanted to rid himself of. Nobody ever asked them how they fared, nor how they came to the conclusion that an apocalypse was imminent. No, instead, the Sharlayan scholars did as they always did when new or contradictory information was revealed: scrutinise. Those same scholars claimed they were “studying” and “hypothesising”.

Braedyn sighed. “Leave me alone, dude. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I don’t want to preserve Sharlayan or Elpis. I just want to exist, okay?”

“I can understand your conflicting dichotomy bu–”

“No! You don’t understand! You put the weight of the world on my shoulders and expected me to agree to playing hero. I can’t do this anymore!,” Braedyn shouted. “I’m not your puppet! Let me study on my own terms!”

Dr. Logios sighed, shoulders finally relaxing. She carefully removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose before speaking. “Do you know why you were given the title of ‘Thaliak’, Braedyn?”

The young Elezen’s ears twitched upon hearing their name. “To assert dominance by stripping me of my original identity and forming me to your will?,” he teased. Dr. Logios was not amused; she cocked an eyebrow. “Okay, no, I don’t. When you chose me to be your assistant and student resident you, and the other Forum members, kinda just unanimously thrust ‘Thaliak’ upon me.”

“The title is derived from the words ‘thal’ and ‘iak’. Their etymology leads us to believe they mean ‘perhaps’ and ‘medicine’, respectively. You are an enigma, child, so ‘perhaps’ seemed fitting. As for ‘iak’: we noticed you have a natural aptitude towards healing magicks,” Dr. Logios explained. “We noticed your potential and have bestowed upon you the honour of being one of The Twelve.”

Braedyn’s back straightened and they furrowed their brows, head tilted slightly. He never realised how much his professor, and her colleagues, actually cared about him—or his research contributions, at least. Knowing that his value was contingent on his academic contributions didn’t sit well with Braedyn. However, holding a seat on The Twelve’s Council was encouraging, to say the least.

“Tell me, again, about The Twelve. I was briefed, but, uh… yeah, that explanation was brief, heh,” they responded.

Dr. Logios nodded. “Of course. You have the right to know. The Twelve’s Council—better known as ‘The Twelve’—are Twelve individuals (a.n. Nald’Thal will be explained later) who have showcased exceptional aptitude to a pillar or facet of mankind. For example, you have been crowned ‘Thaliak’ for your contributions to medicine, medical research and the scholarly arts. Similarly, your colleague ‘Byregot’ has developed new methods for building and crafting products that will sustain future generations.”

“And Nophica has figured out progressive methods of agriculture, right?”

“Please do give her more credit, but yes, that is correct,” Dr. Logios responded curtly. “And you do remember when the first Council meeting will be held, correct? And you will be in attendance?”

Braedyn’s visage broke out in a nervous smile. They did not remember, or rather, did not care to remember when the meeting would commence. He was actually hoping to avoid the aforementioned meeting and conduct personal research in Elpis. Sitting in a stuffy room, at a round table, with strangers, did not appeal to Braedyn. They would much rather prefer to be surrounded by prototype Concepts and the ethereal flora of Elpis.

“Yeah, totally.” He waved a hand nonchalantly, signifying that he did not want to be pressed further. “I remember when it’s gonna happen.”

This was not a complete lie. While Braedyn did not care to remember when the Council meeting would commence, their superior memory retention betrayed them; they knew the meeting would be held in four days’ time. He purposefully avoided his superior’s question of attendance and hoped she would not notice this tactical evasion.

“Thaliak, I’m a Forum member and researcher by trade. Listening and debating are my lifeblood. Please answer my question about your attendance. Please stop cutting corners—and dodging behind them while you’re at it.”

“Fuck. She caught me,” they thought to themself.

#kardions #ffxiv oc #fantasy #final fantasy 14 #my wrtitng #ffxiv viera #final fantasy xiv #warrior of light #wol #dark academia aesthetic #dark academia #italian fashion #free wrting #ffxiv wol #ffxiv #wrtieblr #creative wrting #wrtiers

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massimowines · 2 years

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HAPPY LAST DAY OF JUNE, I just wanted to take a moment and thank, from the very bottom of my heart, those few friends, family, mentors, colleagues, Professors, and collaborators during the most challenging times in my life have not turned their back on me. They know who they are, few but extraordinary ones. True friends are people who are there for you during life's up and down moments. They are genuinely happy when you succeed and will be there for you when you ask them for help. Real friends make you feel loved, comfortable, and supported, unlike fake friends. The only relationships that predicted health and happiness at older ages were friendships, not family relationships.

I’m naturally a people-pleaser: Saying no can be particularly difficult. Unfortunately, such tendencies can lead to patterns of self-neglect and self-sacrifice that are detrimental to my mental health. False friends leave you in times of trouble. Eliminated those fake friends who seemed natural and honest when you had something and disappeared when you had nothing. If they talk about other people with you, they will talk about you with other people. Pretend to be poor in reality, and you’ll notice a decrease in your friends' list and requests. Many so-called well-wishers surround you during your good times, but there’ll be only a very few around you during bad times. Money and power attract friends. But it’s not you they’re friends with – just your money and power. Only affection brings genuine friends.

Fake friends are around when they think you’re cool. True friends are around even when they think you’re a fool. Don’t be sad or afraid when you start losing friends, be glad you’re getting rid of the fake ones. Stay true to yourself. We sometimes wish for the prosperity of someone secretly praying for our downfall. I now feel more wholesome, more vital, mentally fit, and more self-confident with no self-doubt about which kind of projects I want to work on, with whom I want to collaborate creatively, who I want to be friends, and who I want to fall in love with, finally. I only have compassion and empathy for all those people who found themselves temporarily in A position of power, especially those whose decisions about people happen to have a significant influence on the permanent lifestyle of a specific individual, like an individual cannot find a job for months and is almost on the verge of becoming homeless and those people that could make a huge difference into this person’s life decide to trust their ego and wrongly misjudge them inflicting an ocean full of prejudices only by looking and observing their social media accounts, but without ever meeting that individual in person so that a real sense of character or work-ethic could be formed. To those, I say: they should have never been promoted to those positions

Other ones that want to forcefully make you play “ THE FAMOUS GAME” until you arrive and then “YOU WILL CALL THE SHOTS,” please change and let’s play a different game. Understandably, an individual might get sick, tired, bored, and annoyed from playing the same game repeatedly for 15-20 years, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is more than understandable that the person might feel drained and mentally exhausted and the desire for a different game is more than usual. We are not talking about 5-10 years; We are talking about 15-20, which is a big difference in evaluating the individual’s experience, expertise, struggles, and hustles. Please don’t judge people by their social media accounts or YouTube channel videos, or dancing techniques; I understand many humans in recent years have started to feel closer and closer and share more qualities and attributes with Intelligent artificial machines in all areas of their lives. Still, I want to remindyou that everyone on this planet perceives the world of social media differently. You’ll never find two people with the same opinion about social media. Otherwise, all their posts would be identical; such phenomena still don’t exist. For all these reasons just mentioned above, please try to open your mind just a tiny bit and attempt To comprehend that there are phenomenal and genuinely worthwhile: doctors, professors, firefighters, politicians, priests, lawyers, teachers, janitors, etc............................… and all other professions of this world that are way more than their social media accounts and their posts and that maybe some of them perceive posting as another creative art or activity, 15 minutes of being artistic during a hard and long day of multiple cancer surgeries or infinite amount of given lectures, an art form that requires way less time commitment or hard work than pottery, juggling or rhythmic gymnastics. With these thoughts, I wish everyone’s a safe and fun 4th and let this 4th be a moment where We can reflect on how much independent reasoning and brainstorming impact our creative or work choices. Any of us can do it. Being more mindful and open-minded can genuinely do wonders in peoples’ lives. Making a decision, even if it is only once a month to take 5 minutes away during a day from the same-old toxic phone call or discussion and dedicate those 5 minutes to meet with that individual whose Social media is all over the place, at times weird and awkward; we might discover that in person, they could enlighten us and enrich us for years to come and that maybe the opinions we form about people inside the virtual world should start adopting a different weight, perhaps a much lighter weight in the actual living and breathing world where there oxygen still exists all around us and real oceans can still get you dripping wet. Maybe, the virtual world could be only that, VIRTUAL, and we can collectively diminish the amount of power We constantly give away ti that world and without even being fully conscious or fully aware We let it dictate and run our lives in reality.

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bllsbailey · 4 months

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Dissent in Colorado Case on Trump Lays Out Roadmap for SCOTUS to Overturn Decision

We've seen a lot of reaction to the Colorado Supreme Court decision to boot former President Donald Trump off the primary ballot, including from Trump's fellow candidates for the GOP nomination. The Trump team blasted the decision. Even Chris Christie — not a fan of Trump — said he disagreed in principle with taking away the right of the people to choose. Vivek Ramaswamy said he would remove his name from the ballot if Trump was not added back on.

Trump Team Blasts Political and 'Deeply Undemocratic' Colorado Decision Taking Away Rights of Voters

WATCH: Even Chris Christie Is Casting the Stink Eye on Court Keeping Trump off Ballot

Ramaswamy Vows to Withdraw From CO Primary If Trump Isn’t on the Ballot, Demands Rivals Pledge the Same

I wrote about how George Washington Law professor Jonathan Turley called it "anti-democratic."

SEE: Jonathan Turley Rips Apart the Colorado Decision Booting Trump Off the Ballot

The Colorado Republicans said they would try to get around all this by going to a caucus process, as my colleague Jerry Wilson noted and my colleague Jennifer Van Laar further explained.

Ron DeSantis Joins Calls Against Donald Trump’s Removal From Colorado Primary Ballot

Go Ahead and Take Trump Off the Primary Ballots, Activist Judges: We'll Just Use Caucuses to Nominate Him

Even though the Colorado Supreme Court justices were all appointed by Democratic governors, it was still a 4-3 decision. The decision has been stayed pending an appeal to SCOTUS by Jan. 4, with the primary deadline to have the names in being Jan. 5.

There were three written dissents in the case, but the dissent that is catching everyone's eye is the dissent from Justice Carlos Samour. Some have termed it a "roadmap" for the SCOTUS to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court.

Samour excoriated the majority for a decision that "flies in the face of the due process doctrine.”

One of the main points of contention is who or what body has the power to enforce or carry out Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says individuals who engaged in an insurrection may not hold office. Section 5 of the same amendment says Congress has the power to pass laws to enforce section 3. In Samour’s dissent, he argues Congress passed a law in 1870 allowing for both civil and criminal enforcement of Section 3, though the law was repealed and replaced in 1948. The new law, 18 U.S.C § 2383, says an individual can be banned from holding office if they are charged and convicted under the law. Trump has not been charged under said statute, as pointed out by Samour.

So if Trump hasn't been charged, much less convicted, under that statute that applies, he cannot be removed on this basis, according to Samour. There are other questions about whether or not this provision would even apply to Trump as the president — the trial court was of the opinion it did not apply to him. But you don't have to get to that if they haven't even charged him under 18 U.S.C § 2383, according to Samour.

Colorado lawyer "Jarvis" laid out an analysis of Samour's opinion in an interesting thread you can read that our friends at our sister site Twitchy noted. He, too, thinks that this will be where SCOTUS jumps off from when they make their decision on the matter.

This analysis renders a lot of the other questions irrelevant. Did Trump engage in an insurrection? Does Section 3 apply to the President? Should Trump be off the ballot nationwide or just in states like Colorado that found that he engaged in an insurrection? None of that matters. The only thing that matters is that Congress followed the 14th Amendment and established a procedure for barring someone from office for engaging in an insurrection, and that procedure was not followed here.

Samour also explained it was a recipe for chaos if you went down the road the majority was pursuing.

Samour went on to argue that allowing states to decide individually whether to allow Trump's candidacy "risked chaos in the country." The justice conjured visions of state governments divided on the legitimacy of a victorious presidential candidate. "This can't possibly be the outcome the framers intended," Samour argued.

We'll find out shortly whether the Supreme Court takes it up, but Samour's dissent makes far more sense than the decision by the majority that steals the right of millions to elect the candidate of their choice.

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adventuresinclientservice · 1 year

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Call it what you will, as long as you don’t call it a job.

I care not a whit about knitting, but I am a fan of Martin McDonough’s serene, sad, and amusing movie, The Banshees of Inishirin, so when I saw an obit on Delia Barry, the person who knit the sweaters adorning Colin Farrell’s character, I was drawn to reading further.

Barry’s not a colleague or friend, she didn’t work in advertising, so there’s not much I could say by way of tribute. The movie more than the person attracted me to the story, with the story ending in her revealing quote:

“Because you get older, it doesn’t mean that you’re not useful anymore. There’s a lot we can do, if we want to.”

An obit for the Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, someone I would have overlooked had he not co-starred with Julie Christie in Sarah Polley’s film, Away from Her, also caught my eye for much the same reason:

“When you’re in our 80s you can still have your best idea tomorrow. Retirement is never an issue. Retire from what?”

Retire indeed.

I’ve written many times before about not packing it in, here, here, here, here, and, finally, here. I’m flogging to death the point I want to make about age and accomplishment: a legion of advertising opinions to the contrary, there absolutely is no correlation between how old you are and how capable you are.

If anything, with the passage of time comes wisdom and experience, institutional memory and method, all accumulating in skill that’s hard to measure but easy to appreciate when deployed in service of solving a problem or settling client turbulence.

Besides being no longer among the living, what do Barry and Pinsent -- two people with nothing in common -- have in common?

Both were creators. Both operated essentially as independent contractors. Both had a sense of inner drive, something Barry might call a “want to.”

Anything else?

If I weren’t making my customary Sunday evening pizza run, I would have missed Shankar Vedantam’s Hidden Brain discussion on PBS, about having a sense of purpose.

According to Vedantam, purpose,

“buffers us against the challenges we will all confront at various stages of our lives. It provides a measure of stability in uncertain times.”

Vedantam’s guest, Cornell University Psychology Professor Anthony Burrow thinks of purpose, “as a sense, a perceptible sense that life has a sense of direction.” He distills purpose to its essence:

“do you have a reason for living?”

All of us have goals – complete that Brief, write that copy, design that layout, analyze those bids – but purpose is something else, something deeper, something more meaningful and motivating. Even if it means taking a risk, it could be what propels you to strike out on your own, alter a career path, experiment with the unfamiliar, abandon the expected, or pursue whatever ambition drives you.

More than anything else, a sense of purpose is what I suspect fueled Delia Barry to keep knitting sweaters and Gordon Poinset to keep taking roles long after it’s past time for a final curtain call. They didn’t do it for others and they didn’t do it for money; they did it for themselves.

I could have stayed in my lucrative President’s position, holding on for as long as I could, but I knew this is not where my purpose resides. I left my job, opened my practice, wrote a book, became a speaker and executive coach, all in service of a vocation, a mission, a calling.

Call it what you will, as long as you don’t call it a job.

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crestfalien · 2 years

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Guest Lecturer

8 May 2022.

National University of Singapore, her alma mater as well as her work place for the past years, was seen busy with the bustling of students here and there. Some were having their break on the park, sitting on the bench or on the grass while reading their books and previous class’s notes with their friends or alone, some were talking and joking around with their own circle, letting out the stress in their head after hours of lecture.

The lecturers were seen busy as well in the meeting room, discussing a sudden matter that one of them suggested earlier and being scheduled as well in their agenda of the first half of the year; guest lectures. Mostly, the guest lecturers were chosen from their successful alumni and it became one of their best programs each academic year.

“It’s wise to say that the agenda of the guest lecture became a very expected program in our faculty. What do you think about it, Miss Adelaidine?” asked the head of the faculty, Earon Hawt. “Yes, I do agree. Our students showed bigger enthusiasm in each guest lecture that we held. The number of attendees increased significantly each year and I think we can proceed with more lectures for this year.” Fransesca answered.

The proud looks from her three closest friends who were now also her colleagues could be seen as they saw how the head of the faculty even trusted her for this particular project. Yes, everyone knew that Fransesca Adelaidine was one of the senior professors in the institution. One of the most respected professors in the country as well, in terms of the art and design field.

She became what she’s today because of her hard work for the past years. She did it to provide all the needs for her daughter and without realizing it, she achieved what most people wanted to achieve. She achieved what she never thought she could.

“Do we have the lists of the possible guest lecturers for the first half of the year, Miss Adelaidine?” “I believe that Miss Erickson is in charge of that matter, Sir.”

Miss Erickson then stood up and handed the head of the faculty the list of names she’s been researching out from the alumni list. Then, the copies were sent as links to everyone’s email in which all of the lecturers started to skim the names. Her heart stopped when Fransesca saw the name of the man she’s been avoiding to discuss, meet, or remind of.

“In my opinion, Mr Clayton Nicholas Kingsley should be the first to be announced and invited. His popularity in the architecture business field became super well-known these days across the United States and I’ve confirmed the news of his return to Singapore along with his wife, who’s also a successful businesswoman, though not an alumni of this university. I believe that inviting him would attract more students.” Erickson stated in front of everyone.

Soon, not only Fransesca’s smile that was seen dropped from her face, but the other three; Naira, Estelle, and Rachel. They realized the professor’s sudden facial expression change when they also saw and heard the name being mentioned in the room. It was inevitable, in terms of professionality of work. And they knew how hard Fransesca tried to stay calm and okay in this kind of situation she never expected to be in.

“He also taught students back in the days at Nanyang Technological University. I believe he's been your lecturer in the past, Miss Adelaidine?” asked the old man, in which Fransesca awkwardly nodded to. “Yes, Sir. He’s my lecturer, along with three other lecturers here. With all of his achievements past and present, I think it’s wise to invite the man as a guest lecture here. It would be a delight for us to have him around and for the students as well.” Fransesca replied.

When nobody noticed, she lowered her head and sighed while turning off the microphone in front of her. Not wanting anyone to hear what she just did. It was hard for her to hear this name. He realized, no matter how hard she tried to avoid him, having him in the same small country would be a hard one as well. The social circle and the profession they were in, it’s impossible. The similarities they both were in became the disaster itself.

“Miss Adelaidine, are you okay?”

The lass quickly changed her sitting position and smiled at the head of the faculty. “Yes, I’m okay. Sorry, Sir.” she replied quickly after turning her microphone on again. “You look pale. If you feel unwell, we can postpone the meeting or send you the summary of today’s meeting?” he proposed, in which Fransesca shook her head as a reply.

“No, thank you. I’m okay. Let’s proceed to the next discussion of the other candidates for the guest lecturers.” Fransesca flashed a smile on her face to every lecturer in the room, trying to reassure them that she’s okay and nothing should be worried about her.

“So, you’re in with Clayton Nicholas Kingsley as the guest lecturer?” “He’s more than qualified to be chosen. Yes, Sir.”

Though her heart wanted to say no, she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Fransesca knew that she shouldn’t mix her personal problems with work and if it’s the only way, then so be it. Nothing that she can do over this matter.

The next thing they did was to screen and discuss the other names on the list. Whether they’re eligible and capable of being a guest lecturer or not for their regular agenda. It wasn’t easy, but Fransesca did her best to stay calm and okay for the rest of the meeting; before she was found breaking down in tears back in the restroom by her three friends, soon after the meeting ended.

The heart never lies, indeed.

END OF GUEST LECTURER.

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notanotherinfjblog · 3 years

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The types as strangers I wish I had known (version 4)

Previous versions: One, two, three

INTJ: She was the first person to show me kindness in a new place. Moving across the country all alone in the middle of a pandemic is not exactly the ideal start of your first real job. So she took it all on herself to take me by the hand, to organise all the things that I had no clue about. She gave me a little tour around the workplace, recommended me places to eat once the pandemic is over, asked me about how I was settling in, remembered little things I mentioned. She was the only person not working from home when I first arrived and so it was just the two of us. She was quiet and reserved as most people here seem to be, and she was awkward in every way when interacting with me. But she tried so hard and maybe it’s just me projecting, but she said her son was in the very same situation as me right now, and it felt like she tried to help me in the way she couldn’t help her son, like she wanted to take me under her wing, but not make it awkward, and then actually making it slightly awkward in doing so. Her heart just felt warm and so did mine when I said thank you.

ENTJ: Everyone knows the classic character of a self-righteous doctor in a hospital show. You know that one. The one that everyone thinks may be hard-working and clever, but heartless and uncaring and egocentric, but a few episodes down the line you start to see that there is more going on underneath the rude attitude. I’ve always believed this to be a stereotypical depiction that is more of a caricature until I met her. She was a doctor at a hospital I stayed in, and damn, she was just like that. She stormed into the rooms, rolled her eyes at a patient whose German was bad, even though she had a thick accent herself, couldn’t be bothered to commit to polite standards of communication like saying hello or thanks, and she didn’t care to wait for just a second when a nurse was in her way and pushed her aside instead. Especially two young nurses were exasperated with her and complained about her as soon as she stormed out of the room. They really made me feel like I had gotten myself into a hospital show as a patient, it was fantastic. And I have to say, even though this young doctor had all of these flaws, she was the only one that actually talked to the patients and explained what was going on, hell she even talked to that woman’s daughter on the phone for a few minutes because the woman didn’t understand the language. Just like on tv, she may have been rude, but at least she seemed like a good doctor.

INTP: My university department held a conference and I was responsible for making sure that all these professors and PhD students didn’t die from their coffee cravings, so I spent most of my time running around with giant coffee cans. And I have to admit, among all the scientists that were roaming the halls, I couldn’t help but stare at him. He was a PhD student from the Netherlands and there was just something about him that did not fit in. You know how professors are often a bit eccentric or strange by normal standards (which explains why we had to explain to an unspeakable amount of them how a coffee can works), so you’d imagine he’d fit right in. But he didn’t. He was his own universe. While everyone was networking, he was studying the research posters in silence. Not because he was too shy, he seemed very comfortable in his own skin. He just didn’t seem to care all that much about other people. I got to listen to a few talks and as he sat in front of me, I saw him play a video game. At an international conference. With professors and colleagues sitting behind him. And he still managed to ask intelligent questions about the talk afterwards. No idea how. Part of me wished I could have talked to him, not because he was cute though he was, but rather because I really could not tell you what kind of person he was. Was he a good person? A bad one? Probably something in-between. But I don’t think my opinion would have fazed him all that much, since to me, he seemed like the kind of person that valued his own opinion on himself the most, and I think that’s a good thing that he’s got there.

ENTP: I had just moved to a different city in a completely different part of the country, and I had just gotten back from my first walk around town. Sounds exciting, but I got back to this unfamiliar flat that I was supposed to call home now and I was panicking. So I stepped out on the balcony hoping the cold air and the stars above could calm my nerves. But it wasn‘t them that did. I stood there in the dark and saw an elderly couple in the parking lot. The woman was in a very similar mental state as me. She was running around their car and was talking about all the things they still had to take care of and things they‘d need, but had forgotten, and her voice got higher and shakier with every word. And then her husband just went and hugged her. She kissed him goodbye three times and every time she did, he let out a little laugh, calm and gentle. He pat her on the back and said that everything was going to be okay, that they would see each other again tomorrow. She kissed him goodbye one last time before she drove away, and I stood there alone in the dark and thanked the universe that I was there at the right time to hear this old man‘s words. For some reason he always seems to appear every time I‘m feeling low and strikes up a little chat with me. And every time he leaves, I have already forgotten what I was sad about.

INFJ: I think everyone pursuing an academic career has this one hero, this one scientist that lit the spark in their heart to dedicate their life to science just like them. I know I have one. So when I started an internship at his lab with one of his colleagues, I didn‘t really expect to meet him. I had seen him around once in a while, yes, but who was I to approach a stranger to tell him what his work meant to me? But then came the plenary meeting that was meant to get more people of the lab to get to know one another - and he approached me. He sat down next to me, asked me about my academic past and future, asked about my current project with his colleague. And I still can‘t believe it. Only a little girl singing in the church choir who is suddenly approached by Beyoncé can hope to imagine what it felt like. He was an internationally renowned scientist, he would have had every reason to look down on the rest of us. Many of them certainly do. But here he was, talking to a little intern from abroad. He was such a genuinely nice person, was sweet and slightly awkward, he even mirrored my weird head nodding that I always do when all the words have left me. He felt like a kindred spirit. I didn‘t tell him what these few minutes talking to him meant to me though part of me wishes that I did, yet still he invited me to the meetings of his research team even though I was not a part of it. And when I came and sat down, he turned around, smiled at me and turned away again, and I can‘t tell you how insane it feels that all of this actually happened.

ENFJ: I’ve written about him before and I will write about him forever. I remember the day our eyes first met in that crowded school corridor almost half of my life ago. I don’t know why neither of us could look away that day, why neither of us could ever look away again from this day on. Somehow our eyes always found each other. I remember the snowy day at the train station so many years later, how he stood there alone in the cold and how he slowly walked towards me, his eyes glued to his feet that abruptly stopped right next to mine. And yet he stayed silent. As did I. So we stood there for an hour waiting for our train, quickly averting our eyes every time they came close to meeting. I remember him looking back at me over his shoulder once we got off the train. He seemed quite flustered that I was about to find out that he had parked his car right next to mine and so he fled. Both of us kept parking our cars next to each other, even when we didn’t see each other for months. But I could never follow him out. He was my own personal mystery. I spent countless nights staring at the ceiling wondering what it was, this strange thing that was going on between us, this little secret that we shared, and I wondered who he really was inside, not who he pretended to be in front of his friends. He was like an island in their midst, always a bit detached, always tucked away behind a smile. Soon twelve years will have passed and still we’ve never spoken a word, but somehow these dark brown eyes still feel more familiar than my own, these eyes that always seemed to look right into my soul. I could have stared at them my whole life. I honestly have no idea what it is that is tying me to him, what it is that I felt back then and what I’m feeling right now. Maybe I’ll never know. I haven’t seen him in three years, but I know our paths will cross again some day. I can feel it in my bones. This story is not over yet. Maybe then we’ll finally be ready to meet properly. Maybe then we’ll finally be able to speak.

INFP: I happened to stand at the window when I saw the new postman approach our letterbox, and so I watched him throw letters and magazines inside - and stop. He moved his head closer to the box and a frown appeared on his face. He backed off, wanted to leave, came back again and didn’t seem to know what he was supposed to do. So he rang the doorbell. As I opened the door, there he was, shy and with slight panic in his eyes. “I’m so sorry”, he said. “There is a sign on your letterbox that you don’t want advertisements, but I saw that too late and I had already thrown it in. I’m terribly sorry. I can’t get it out of the box and so I thought, I should ask if that’s alright.” And my heart just went awwww, that’s adorable. I smiled at him and told him that it was absolutely fine. He seemed so relieved. So he went away and I closed the door.

ENFP: This is for the man with the kind, but heartbreakingly sad eyes who sometimes sits in front of the train station silently begging for money. This is for the grandparents who spent their train ride trying to teach their little grandchildren the numbers from one to five. This is for the old woman who always kneels down in the middle of the train station with her forehead pressed to the ground, keeping still for hours, enduring the devastation of thousands of people passing by without stopping. This is for the woman who knelt down next to a homeless man, who took his hand and asked how she could help him. This is for the man who made faces at the little boy sitting next to him on the train to make him laugh. This is for the anger I felt when I saw the distraught face of a 10-year-old boy coming out of the movie „1917“ at the cinema with his father. This is for the happy little puppy who lives next to the bakery where I usually grab my lunch. This is for the twenty people who decided to all speak a foreign language during a meeting with each other just because I was there too, a total stranger they had never even seen before who is bad at their native language. This is for the creep that asked me in the middle of the street at night to accompany him. This is for the two teenagers who went to buy sandwiches and coffee for a homeless woman. This is for the families I often see sitting at the train stations, sometimes with a baby in their arms, holding a sign saying „Syrian family. We are hungry, help us please.“ This is for the man who yelled at his girlfriend because she gave them some money. This is for the people who play music during everyone‘s morning commute on the train. This is for all the people who approached me speaking in French and started to laugh when I apologised for not being very good at it. This is for Paris, in all its beauty and all its ugliness. This is for humanity, in all its beauty and ugliness.

ISTJ: He was sitting alone on the train, looking out of the window while listening to something with headphones. He was a tall guy in his mid-20s, one with a full beard, long brown hair in a neat ponytail, and a t-shirt of some rock band that I had never heard of. So, I was sitting there, three meters away, minding my own business, when I suddenly heard a giggle. The entire car of the train had been quiet all this time as it usually is, so I looked up and saw this guy trying to contain his laughter. He pressed the lips together, scratched his nose in order to inconspicuously cover his mouth. I don’t know where this sudden burst of laughter came from. Maybe he was listening to an audio book and reached a funny part. Maybe he was listening to a voice message of a funny friend. Maybe he just had a very amusing thought, I don’t know. But I’ve always had a soft spot for people who randomly start laughing in public and get embarrassed about it cause it’s always, always adorable.

ESTJ: She was a PhD student at my university and she was the one who mainly organised the conference that the above mentioned INTP was attending, too. And even though she didn‘t get tired of complaining about how much work this all was, how typical it was of her boss to volunteer to hold the conference at our university and then not lifting a single finger, she was like a fish in the water, not out of it. She observed everything and everyone, immediately recognised little problems or things that could become a problem, she was constantly running around checking everything, and she kept so many things in mind, it was impressive. One of the attendees sat in a wheelchair and as soon as she noticed, she made us rebuild the entire cafeteria immediately so that everything was reachable for her. And in all the running around, all the obligatory smalltalk, all the stress, she still found the time to stand with us student helpers and joke around.

ISFJ: It was 6pm on a Friday afternoon when all of Paris was trying to get home in the middle of a train strike, so the trains that did run were even more crowded than usual. I did not enjoy sharing 5 square metres with almost 40 other people. But then he entered the train and stood right next to me, leaning against the doors without moving, looking like an intellectual in gangster clothes. We were surrounded by noise of people talking and of rails screaming, by strangers breathing onto our skin, and he just stood there unfazed by it all. He radiated calmness like I‘ve never seen anyone do before. Soon it reached me too, filled me up and left no place for any distress or anxiety. He was like an island in the storm that grew and grew and grew until all of the 40 people around him were safe. I felt safe. I don‘t think he has even the faintest clue about how special he is, but I feel like it has been a privilege to have crossed paths with him.

ESFJ: Did you ever meet someone who, on first glance, looks like the perfect example of a jock, just a short guy with bigger arms than he’s tall? But then you look again, take a closer look at him and you realise that his face has goodness written all over it. He may be horribly bad at grammar for a linguistics student and he may be a bit too sensitive for his own good, but he never made it a secret of how much of a sweetheart he really is. And in situations like these, when he talks about how emotional he got as a tutor when his student told him about a dying grandfather because he felt responsible for the student’s wellbeing, in situations like these, when he approaches my friend after a class to apologise for his harsh criticism of her presentation and to tell her that he didn’t mean it that way, to which she gets all confused because she didn’t take the slightest offence to anything he has ever said in his entire life and he mumbles that he may have to stop beating himself up about stuff like this, I just want to give him a hug and never let go.

ISTP: I saw her on the metro during rush hour in Paris, and I immediately noticed her to be different. Everyone else always only stares at their phones or into space, everyone else always look like a tired zombie. She was not a zombie. She was leaning against the doors, shaking her leg in the rhythm of the music she was listening to. She was short and skinny, and not even her punk boots could hide that, but there was such a confidence shining out of her, a confidence in who she was that made her look like a giant. She looked like she‘s probably had it rather rough in life, but it didn‘t break her. She rose to the adversity, rose in spite of it all. She seemed to be capable of so many things. Intelligent enough to go into science if she ever wanted to, vicious enough to end someone who ever dared to cross her, warm enough to love deeply and with all her heart if she let it.

ESTP: It was a hot day and far hotter than a September afternoon ever should be. I was stuck in a traffic jam in the city, melting in my car as were so many others, waiting for that red light to finally turn green. And then he came, a young guy in an ugly shirt and with a hat on his head. He started to cross the street, but then stopped right there in the middle. And he started to juggle. In the middle of a traffic jam on a Friday afternoon, he juggled. Just before his green light turned to red, he bowed down to the cars a few times, and then jumped to the sidewalk and left. Thanks, mate, you enigmatic juggling traffic hero.

ISFP: I met him at a wedding. He was a bald man in his 70s with thick horn glasses and probably the most intimidating person I’ve ever met. Not because he was mean, but because he was so confident in himself and so observant. His gaze constantly changed direction. He took everything in that happened around him, he didn’t miss a single thing that was going on, and still he was calm and sure of himself that everyone at our table felt like they had to impress him in some way. Just by looking at him you knew he must have lived an extraordinary life and he really did. He liked talking about himself. He talked about living in the American desert, on a mediterranean island, in a Buddhist monastery, and on a cruise ship. He talked about the smell of the desert at night, about the taste of oranges picked from a tree. He talked about the people he met, about professors and musicians, about cooks and monks. He talked about how much his village loved him. But he also liked listening to others talk about their own lives. It was obvious that he treated life as an experience, as a journey that cannot be planned or imagined, only lived. When we said goodbye, he looked me right in the eye and told me that he thinks it’s great what I’m doing with my life and that he’s looking forward to meeting me again some day. It felt a bit like receiving praise from a deity.

ESFP: He was a nurse in the accident and emergency department at the hospital and the first person to talk to me while I was waiting in front of an examination room. He was only passing by with a colleague, but he stopped the conversation when he saw me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Aw, sugarmouse, what happened to you?”, was the first thing he said to me. You know, if an unknown man in his 50s is coming towards you and calls you “sugarmouse”, you’re usually not exactly happy, but he was just an overwhelmingly non-threatening guy that called all of the nurses and doctors by kitschy nicknames and radiated warmth wherever he went. He had noticed that I was nervous, and so he came to me and tried to gently put my mind at ease and I was really grateful for it.

#writing this took 3 years #nothing happens during a pandemic but all the more important this kind of testimony to these people feels to me #esfj has actually become a friend of mine by now #isfp is part of my family now since it was his brother's and my mother's wedding #and the enfj guy is the same as in the first version of this post that i wrote 5 years ago #i don't know where he is now or what he's doing but i really hope that his life is filled with love and happiness #i just think it's strange that after graduating i never saw 98% of the people i went to school with again #but the two people i did meet again dozens of times? were enfj and his little brother #sometimes it felt like a conspiracy of the universe and we were just too stupid #every time i think about how we had eye contact while driving past each other twice i think i‘m going insane #mbti #myers-briggs #types as #strangers i wish i had known #intj #entj #intp #entp #infj #enfj #infp #enfp #istj #estj #isfj #esfj #istp #estp #isfp #esfp

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alynnl · 2 years

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Cyrus’s Backstory Pre-Chapter 1

Pure headcanon, but I felt like this was the most logical course of action, when it comes to a background for our professor. Long post ahead!

Family Life

He was born to Bertram Albright (professor at one of Atlasdam’s public schools in a middle class section of town) and Kayla Conner-Albright (daughter of a detective, writer of mystery novels,) and was an only child.

There was a bright spark of fire in his hands when he was born (the same as all his ancestors) so it was clear he would be blessed with Alephan’s gift of magic.

From early on, Cyrus showed interest in his father’s studies and forays into grading his students’ work, as well as finding all the clues in his mother’s books. He picked up reading rather quickly.

Overall his home life was a stable, healthy environment that fostered Cyrus’s curiosity and made him want to learn all he could about the world in and out of Atlasdam as soon as he could speak, read and write.

His parents both doted on him in equal measures, but Cyrus ultimately spent more time with his mother as his father’s work took up a lot of his time. Cyrus understood the importance of his father’s duties, and treasured the time he spent with his small, but close-knit family (with his grandparents and rather eccentric, independent researcher aunt Stella paying him regular visits.)

Interest in Learning

Along with his immediate family encouraging him, Cyrus’s early tutors in reading, writing, history, mathematics and magical studies recognized his potential for greatness. There were times his teachers pushed Cyrus to his limits, so he learned the hard lesson of pacing one’s self. It ended up paying off in the end.

Even as he grew into his teenage years and began to form his own interests and opinions, Cyrus made time for holidays, birthdays and other gatherings with his relatives. In true scholarly fashion, he managed to study during these festivities as well.

(It was when he was around 14 that he really started to form his world views about sharing knowledge rather than keeping it all to himself, when he helped a struggling classmate from a single-parent home catch up to their peers and pass a magical demonstration test of sorts. This will be covered in another post.)

At first there were questions about whether or not Cyrus would find a study partner (scholar code for romantic partner,) but Bertram made a playful joke at one New Years’ dinner that his son would end up married to his studies the same way his aunt Stella is.

When Cyrus confirmed his father’s suspicions in a rather serious, yet nervous manner (fearing just a moment that he’d stepped out of the norm,) Kayla, Bertram and Stella were actually ecstatic, and hopeful that he’d go on to study at a university and not settle for less.

Taking his family’s word rather seriously, Cyrus went on to get letters of recommendation from his professors, hoping he would follow in their footsteps as well as his father’s.

Higher Studies

Cyrus ended up moving away at age 20 when he was accepted to one of Atlasdam’s premier schools (just one step below the Royal Academy that was reserved for the king and his inner circle.) He would spend long hours researching in his dormitory, often burning the midnight oil.

In between his deep dives into history and language, Cyrus always made time to read through his mother’s published novels and unpublished manuscripts she sent him. He would send excited letters home going in detail about which clues he was able to find and whether he could figure out who the culprits were, their motivations, and whether the detective would have solved the cases faster had they done something different in the course of the story.

Over time, Cyrus would meet and sometimes befriend other scholars. Odette was one of his most trusted colleagues. If there was anything more between them, Cyrus remained completely oblivious to it.

A World Changed

At age 22 when he was still deep within his studies, he heard news of the Fall of Hornburg. He mourned the kingdom’s loss privately after the bells in all of Atlasdam’s towers tolled, for he’d wanted to visit the place in the Highlands for the longest time and learn all he could about their society that functioned without the use of magic. His studies suffered temporarily in his state of grief, but Odette snapped him out of his funk - stating the simple fact that much of Hornburg’s history and language still lives on in Altasdam’s many archives.

This gave Cyrus his epiphany, that if he did not want Hornburg to fade into obscurity, he would have to pass on what knowledge they had of it to others. He had a pull to know, and to teach.

At age 25, he went on to graduate from university. Cyrus then proved himself in both a written exam and a performance test of his magic, landing his position as professor in the Royal Academy after impressing the royal family and the headmaster who preceded Yvon. Cyrus was extremely proud of this position, since being a tutor to the crown princess and her relatives was a surefire way to shape the future of Atlasdam (and maybe even the world.) He wanted to do his part to make her into a fair, just ruler who would carry on his values of passing knowledge onto those willing and eager to obtain it.

Yvon became headmaster two years after Cyrus attained his position and the two of them would butt heads in academic discussion. Cyrus would always try to keep his conduct professional, even if he had rather unprofessional opinions about the headmaster in charge of him and other researchers. This state of affairs continued until Cyrus’s chapter 1 in-game where a troubling rumor gave Yvon a golden opportunity to send Cyrus away on sabbatical, but then the professor used it as a chance to find one of the more important missing tomes from the Archives.

Little did he know his journey into a world of knowledge would lead to all manner of danger, but also hope in the form of seven capable travelers who would stay by his side until Journey’s End.

#Cyrus Albright #backstory headcanon #pure speculation #Octopath Traveler #Cyrus lore #artistic license taken #The thing that has sat on my Google Docs for a while #enjoy #Yvon (derogatory)

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adenei · 3 years

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Ch. 1 - How to Win a Witch in 10 Days

AO3 | FFN

Summary: “She’s going to find some unsuspecting wizard, get him to fall for her, and then do all the things that turn men away to get him to break things off! Won’t it be the best way to see what witches do that drives men crazy?” But what happens when the man in question is a blast from Lily Evans's past? A Jily Magical AU based on the romantic comedy "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days."

Thursday, Pt. 1

Lily Evans sits down at her desk. It’s a typical Thursday morning at the office of Witch Weekly for the ‘How To’ columnist. Parchment is strewn about everywhere due to a hasty departure the night before, but with a flick of her wand, the papers arrange themselves into neat piles. Satisfied with the restored order, she turns to her magical typewriter and the most recent article that lies next to it: How To Make the Transition from Hogwarts Graduate to Adult.

She smiles at her hard work and hopes that this time Amelia will go for her pitch. A new batch of Hogwarts students graduated last week, and this was the type of information she would have loved to have when she finished her education three years ago. Being a Muggleborn made the transition into life as an independent witch more difficult. There aren’t many resources to help young adults find their way in magical society, and even though she met with Professor McGonagall numerous times about her future, the meetings weren’t as helpful as Lily preferred.

Perhaps this is why Lily lives in a small flat in muggle London and commutes to the office via taxi or apparition to Diagon Alley every day, depending on her mood. She tucks the article safely into a desk drawer before setting about her first task of the day: coming up with new ideas for future articles. Grabbing a blank piece of parchment, Lily begins brainstorming as more how to article ideas begin flitting through her mind.

Lily always knew she wanted to be a writer. The excitement she felt after securing a job at the highly respected go-to magazine for witches was only to be rivaled with receiving her Hogwarts letter at the age of eleven. At least, that’s how she used to feel. Now, she’s stuck in a perpetual wheel of pushing out article after article on how to incorporate the newest beauty, fashion, and health trends that flow into the magical world faster than a Cornish Pixie prison break.

Lily shakes her head as she writes down another idea: How To Secure an Interview for the Job of Your Dreams. She’s sick of all the superficial fluff she’s been writing for the past two years. It’s time for something more.

“Morning!” Alice chirps as she passes Lily’s cubicle.

“Good morning!” Lily gives Alice a warm smile in return.

Alice Fortescue is one of her closest colleagues and friends at the publishing company. That’s the one perk of this job, working with some amazing people.

“Amelia called a staff meeting in thirty minutes. Have you seen Marlene?”

Lily feels as if a bludger has knocked the wind out of her. She was so preoccupied this morning that she didn’t realize her best friend of ten years wasn’t at her desk.

“No, she hasn’t shown up yet,” Lily worries.

Marlene has recently been dumped—again—and she is never one to take a break-up lightly, even if said relationship only lasted a few weeks.

Alice sighs. “I’ll get the coffee, you floo to her place?”

Lily nods and grabs her bag, following Alice toward the exit. She digs a knut out of her purse and places it into the slot before grabbing a handful of floo powder. It’s common courtesy to donate money to replace the office’s stock if you use it for anything other than transportation to or from your residence.

She tosses the powder into the fireplace and steps into the green flames, announcing Marlene’s address in a clear, firm voice. Lily prepares herself for the sensation of the ground dropping out from below her as she free falls into the imaginary slide that transports her where she needs to go. The trip is short, and within seconds she is stepping out of the fireplace into Marlene’s flat.

“Marly? You here?” Lily calls.

Her best friend tiptoes out of the kitchen, still in her dressing gown. She’s carrying a cup of tea close to her face to hide her puffy eyes.

“Oh, Marly, I’m so sorry,” Lily reaches out to comfort her friend with a hug.

Lily takes the cup of tea from her hands and steers Marlene to her bedroom. “I know how hard break-ups can be, but we’ve got a staff meeting in twenty minutes, and I’m not going to let you lose your job over another lousy guy.”

Lily doesn’t notice Marlene crawling back into bed as she busies herself with sifting through outfits in her friend’s closet.

“But what we had was special, Lil! I really thought he was different! He could have been the one!”

“How long were you seeing him?” Lily asks, trying to recall any details of Marlene’s latest fling.

“Only a week,” she pouts.

Lily freezes midway through pulling a dress from the closet. She knows this is Marlene’s M.O. but Lily still can’t help but feel frustrated.

“Marly, really—”

“Don’t! I know what you’re thinking, but he was special, I’m telling you! We even had sex and everything. It was magical. I cried…”

“You what? Marly, tell me it was just a glisten of tears,” Lily wills her friend to say it isn’t as bad as she thinks.

“Oh no, I full-on bawled,” Marlene responds, not even attempting to lie, “told him I loved him, too.”

Lily wishes her best friend is kidding but they have been friends long enough for Lily to know that she’s not. With a silent sigh, Lily switches gears. She realizes she can’t take the sympathetic route anymore. No, Marlene needs tough love. She strolls over to the bed with the outfit in hand and plops down.

“Marlene, I know you’re a hopeless romantic looking for your Prince Charming, but in order to find him, you’re going to have to put yourself together and get back out there. You’re not going to find him wallowing in bed all day. Now come on, you’ve got fifteen minutes to get dressed so we can get to work and not piss off Amelia. Alice is out getting coffee right now.”

Lily yanks back the bedspread, forcing Marlene to get up, albeit begrudgingly.

There, one potential crisis averted for the day.

Ten minutes later, Lily floos back to the office after ensuring Marlene goes first. They run into Alice on their way back to their desks, and there’s just enough time for Alice to dole out the coffees before grabbing their notes and heading down the hall to their boss’s extravagant office.

Amelia Bones is the no-nonsense editor-in-chief of Witch Weekly, who is well respected by her staff. Her office is spacious yet welcoming and not at all like what one might expect. Where a conference table and chairs should be, Amelia has sofas and squashy chairs, similar to the Gryffindor common room. When the writers meet to go over stories for upcoming publications, they gather there. The three girls barely make it in time, taking their seats on the sofa nearest Ms. Bones. It’s the only empty spot left.

Amelia clears her throat. It’s all she needs to do to command the attention of her staff. “Alright, let’s get started everyone. We need to go over assignments for the July issue. Dorcas, what are you thinking this month?”

Dorcas, the office suck-up, bounces up and down in her seat as she lays out her laundry list of articles. “I’ve got an exposé on gilly water with an exclusive interview from a mermaid who says it will help keep you thin, but I haven’t come up with a title yet. And Traveling by Portkey: What to Pack and Not to Pack. Then, I’ve also got an interview set up with Madam Malkin, who details the latest robe trends. Oh! And I almost forgot about my outline of A Look Into a Day in the Life of The Hobgoblins!”

Lily needs to remember to keep her face passive as Dorcas prattles on. Does she do anything besides work? Who has time for four articles? She has to suppress the eye roll that’s threatening when she catches Alice’s glance. It’s evident her friend is sharing the same thoughts.

“Wonderful, wonderful. Lily, what’s our resident How To girl have in store for us this month?”

Here goes nothing…

“Well, actually, I’ve been working on this piece that I think will be a great spin on the How To article. It’s about helping recent Hogwarts graduates find their footing after they finish their seventh year.”

She gauges the room for reception and notices blank stares coming from the entire writing team. Fighting to keep her facial expression passive, Lily chances a glance at her boss, whose opinion is the one that matters most. There’s an uncomfortable churn in her stomach as a result.

Amelia clicks her tongue in a disapproving tone. “Lily, Lily, Lily. How many times do I have to tell you that most of our clientele are in their twenties and thirties? No one is going to want to read something like that! That’s what they have parents and families for! Besides, aren’t the Hogwarts professors supposed to help the young ones with their career choices? That’s not our wheelhouse.”

“But—”

Lily wants to bring up the Muggleborn perspective, but Amelia doesn’t give her the chance.

“Lily, your job is to write the How To column for Witch Weekly, not to help recent grads find their place in this world. I hired you to write fun, upbeat stories that will help witches in all aspects of their lives, and that is what I expect.” Lily’s shoulders droop in disappointment as Amelia wastes no time moving on to her next victim. “Marlene?”

“Oh, um, I—I’m still thinking—” Marlene stutters.

Lily notices Amelia’s hard stare and speaks up on her friend’s behalf.

“Amelia, Marlene’s going through a rough time right now. She got dumped.”

“Oh, no. I’m so sorry, Marlene,” Amelia sympathizes as the rest of the group murmurs their respects to her unfortunate news.

Marlene grimaces as she explains, “Yes, I’m sorry, Amelia. I’ve been taking things a bit hard and haven’t really been eating. It’s just hard to move on when I thought he was—” she hiccups and Lily can tell she’s stifling a sob, “the one.”

“Hmm, yes, that is a predicament, isn’t it?” Amelia agrees before perking up. “Write about it.”

“What?”

“You can make an article out of that, can’t you?” Amelia asks the question as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“N-no! I can’t write about my personal life!” Marlene argues.

“If she won’t, I will,” Dorcas chimes in. She sounds too eager at the prospect of taking on a fifth article.

Amelia’s eyebrows crease as she ponders Dorcas’s proposition. Lily is horrified that Amelia is even considering this and decides to step in.

“Or I can!”

“What?” Marlene looks at her with wide eyes as Amelia trains her narrow gaze on Lily.

“How?” her boss wants to know.

“Well, I—I wouldn’t write about the break-up, per se, since that wouldn’t be a good How To article, but what if I turned it into something different?”

Lily is grasping at straws, trying to come up with something that would prevent her friend’s dirty laundry from being hung out to dry. She finds herself stuttering and stalling until suddenly, an idea pops in her head.

“What if I wrote the opposite of getting dumped? Well, it wouldn’t exactly be the opposite, but I’d find a guy and do all the classic things that women do that drive men away. Instead of trying to win the guy over, I’ll get him to dump me instead. Then readers will know what to do and what not to do.”

Lily watches her boss for any indication that she approves. Amelia’s pensive look quickly turns to a conspiring smile as she points her quill at Lily with a gleam in her eyes.

“That’s brilliant, Lily, absolutely brilliant! You think you can find a man, win him over and get him to dump you?”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Lily doesn’t appreciate her boss’s insinuation that she’d be easy to break up with, but if it gets Amelia off Marlene’s back, she’ll take it.

“I can see it now. We’ll call it How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days.”

Lily is relieved, having succeeded in giving Marlene extra time to come up with a story, but the timeframe concerns her.

“Um, Amelia...why ten days?”

“Because we have to publish in eleven.”

She says this as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And it’s only after Lily processes Amelia’s words that she realizes how impossible it all seems. She hasn’t dated anyone in a while. No one is even on her radar to date.

Looks like my Thursday is now going to be spent looking for an unsuspecting suitor.

Lily stifles a sigh as she attempts to focus on the rest of the meeting, but her mind has other plans. She fixates on whether or not she’ll be able to pull this off. It seems impossible, but she has no choice. She has to at least try.

As they exit the meeting, Lily, Alice, and Marlene are trailing behind Amelia, who is on her way to fetch her next appointment.

“If I’m going to pull this off, I need to find a guy tonight,” Lily expresses to her friends.

“Don’t worry, we’ll help!” Alice reassures her. “Let’s go to that swanky bar after work. The prospect of this article calls for a finer crowd.”

“Abbott's?” Lily shoots an incredulous look at her friend.

At first, she wants to protest, but Alice has a point. Lily needs to dupe a guy who’s not just out for a one-night stand, and there are no promises that she’ll be able to find that at the Leaky. No, she needs to glam up and go all-out to find a guy. One that shows promise, but not too much promise because she can’t let herself fall for him anyway.

Her thoughts are cut off as Alice and Marlene both stop, causing her to stumble into them. She looks up to see the source of their delay. Amelia has reached her destination, which happens to be directly in front of them as she greets two women. Lily isn’t quite sure why they didn’t swerve and continue around them.

“...Ah, Narcissa, Andromeda, it’s so nice to meet you! Come with me to my office so we can discuss the ads for this issue. I’m hoping you can help us spice up our pages through your clientele.” Amelia turns and sees Lily and her colleagues standing there. A friendly smile crosses her face as the three realize they’ve been caught eavesdropping and scurry to get back to their cubicles.

Lily returns the smile and looks to the two women to see the blonde eyeing her, a sense of intrigue dancing in her eyes. She wonders what that’s about.

“Aren’t you the How To girl?” the blonde asks.

Lily’s not sure what she’s expecting the woman to say, but it’s not that. It takes her a moment to respond.

“Um, yes. It’s Lily, Lily Evans. Nice to meet you.”

Lily doesn’t bother to extend a polite hand because of the blonde’s now scrutinizing gaze. She’s ready to turn and walk away before the awkward conversation can continue, but Amelia stops in her tracks.

“Yes! Lily is wonderful, isn’t she? She’s just about to start on her newest article: How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. Doesn’t it sound exciting?”

The darker haired woman raises an eyebrow. “It does. What does that entail?”

Lily opens her mouth to speak, but Amelia cuts her off again. “She’s going to find some unsuspecting wizard, get him to fall for her, and then do all the things that turn men away to get him to break things off! Won’t it be the best way to see what witches do that drives men crazy?”

“That does sound interesting,” the blonde responds.

“Yes, fascinating,” agrees the brunette in a bored tone.

Lily doesn’t appreciate their judgemental stares and chooses to dismiss herself. “Thanks. It was nice meeting you,” she lies as she continues on toward her office.

The day is young, but she no longer has time to waste. She needs to develop her plan before setting out to find a wizard later in the evening. This is turning out to be the most peculiar assignment yet, but if Lily can pull it off, then maybe Amelia will give her a chance on the other articles she has in her queue.

You’ve got this, Evans. Now get to work.

#jily fic #jily #lily evans #magical au #james potter #jily fanfiction #jily romcom #based on how to lose a guy in 10 days

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scapegrace74-blog · 3 years

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Ginger Snap

A/N I was driving down the highway today and saw the license plate “I PieGuy”. By the time I got home, this story was half-born in my head. I have no idea where it might go, but it’s taking up valuable shelf space in there, so I’m birthing it onto paper. Modern AU. Silly fluff. Claire POV. First person, which I never write, so watch out for stray pronouns.

The shriek of the fire alarm was the final straw. I’d just stepped out of the kitchen for a minute, but that was all it took for calamity to strike. Opening the oven door in a panic, billows of smoke engulfed me before I slammed it shut again.

“Shit. Shitshitshit. Shit!”

Waving a damp dish towel back and forth like a flag of surrender above my head caused the head-splitting siren to finally desist. I blew a rogue curl off my sweaty brow and gave myself a pep talk.

“Time to woman up,” I sighed before donning the oven gloves and cautiously cracking the door once again. More smoke escaped, smelling of burnt pastry and ruined hopes. Once it cleared I could see the charred carcasses of what were supposed to be vol au vent shells. I carefully extracted them from the oven and dropped the cooking sheet with a clatter onto the quartz countertop.

“Dinner is D.O.A, Doctor Beauchamp. Now what the fuck am I going to do?”

***

Thirty minutes were spent cleaning the evidence of yet another cooking fiasco and ventilating our flat by opening every available window to let in the moist Edinburgh breeze. I now had less than four hours before Frank and three other members of the university faculty would be descending, expecting a home-cooked meal and polite chitchat. I was in no position to offer either.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage the evening, I typed “sophisticated home catering in Edinburgh” and started dialing. The first four numbers yielded either an answering machine or the news (unsurprising) that at least two days’ advanced notice were required to book their services. Nearly resigned to ordering in Italian and facing Frank’s wrath, a woman’s voice with a thick Scottish brogue picked up at the fifth business I called.

“Ye’ve reached Ginger Snap, this is Jenny speaking. How may I help ye t’day?”

I poured out my tale of culinary woe, laying it on a bit thick, but I was truly desperate by this point.

“Aye, we’ve a chef available this afternoon. What sort of menu were ye planning?” she asked.

“Really? Oh my god, you’re a lifesaver!”

I gave Jenny the number of guests and a broad idea of what I’d hoped to serve, although I was in no position to be choosy.

“Never ye fear, Ms. Beauchamp. We’ll pick up the necessary items and our chef will be at yer flat by four. Tha’ should leave jus’ enough time tae have everything ready fer six.”

Thanking her profusely and not even inquiring about the charge, I stood triumphant in the middle of my immaculate yet useless kitchen. Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner?

***

The buzzer rang as I was re-arranging the decorative objects atop our sideboard. I was aiming for the artless sophistication featured in Frank’s favourite design magazines, but instead I lined up each item in order of descending size, or grouped them by historical era. A second buzz had me trotting to the intercom where a male voice crackled.

“This is James Fraser o’ Ginger Snap Catering. Can ye let me in?”

I stuck my head into the hallway to find four organic cotton tote bags bursting with produce at my doorstep. Footsteps pounded down the stairs, where I assumed the chef had retreated to collect more supplies. I brought the first load into the kitchen where I began to unpack foodstuffs the likes of which I’d never seen. Not knowing what else to do to be helpful, I began sorting them; green leafy things here, round crispy things there.

“Hallo?” the same voice called from where I’d left the door ajar. Wiping my hands nervously against my slacks, I went to greet him.

Standing in the doorframe, almost filling it with his immense size, was a young man who seemed more suited to a stag hunt or a rugby pitch than haute cuisine. He had loose tawny curls, two days’ worth of stubble and wore a faded grey henley, dark wash jeans that clung to his muscular legs and utilitarian workman’s boots.

“Claire Beauchamp?” he interrupted my visual inventory.

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Sorry. Pleased to meet you.”

Something funny happened when our hands met in a firm shake. A tachycardic blip, my internal medicine professor would have called it. There was no time to analyze this response, however, as he was already on the move.

“James Fraser, at yer service. I’d normally spend more time getting to know ye and yer style of entertaining, but we’re short on time, so let’s get straight to it, aye?”

I gave the chef a hasty tour of our kitchen, stumbling over the names of various implements and opening the wrong cupboard when looking for my saucepans. I blushed as he raised an expressive eyebrow, but shook it off. I was paying for his cooking proficiency, not his opinion on my lack of domestic competence.

“I ken ye spoke tae Jenny about yer menu, but I took a few liberties at the market, based on what looked freshest. I recommend starting with a simple salad o’ nettle and radish, garnished with a wee round of goat cheese and rye crumbs. Loin o’ lamb with new potatoes and pancetta fer yer main. An’ a simple rhubarb custard fer dessert. There’s none with food allergies, aye?”

“Aye,” I replied, then corrected “umm, no, rather,” at his concerned look. “Are you sure you can manage all that in only,” I glanced at my wristwatch “ninety minutes? It seems like an awful lot of work.”

“Och, tis no’ much. Lamb cooks swiftly, ye ken. Tis why I choose it over pork or poultry.”

My saviour rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, preparing to wash his hands and get down to work. There was probably something else I should be doing elsewhere in the flat to prepare, but I didn’t want to appear completely useless to this unflappable man.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

He looked dubious and seemed prepared to politely decline, but then his expression shifted.

“Aye. Ye can wash the tatties an’ chop the rhubarb while I dress the lamb, if ye dinna mind,” he suggested.

“Scrubbing in and wielding a knife happen to be two of the only transferrable job skills I bring to cooking,” I joked, taking my turn in front of the massive Belfast sink.

He emitted a low Scottish grunt of amusement before we each settled into companionable silence, focusing on our respective duties. I glanced over at him surreptitiously, envying the ease with which he moved from task to task, lean and nimble hands working alchemy where I only succeeded in producing dross.

“Ye’re a doctor, then?” he asked after my chopped rhubarb had been set on the stovetop to stew and the lamb was marinating in a bath of lemon and fresh herbs.

“Umm, well, I was. My partner and I moved here from Boston, where I trained as a surgeon. I haven’t yet obtained my license to practice here in the UK, so I’m afraid I’m just a culinary liability for the moment.”

It was a current source of strife in my relationship with Frank. He liked the idea of me keeping house, entertaining and eventually settling down to raise a family. I chaffed at this unfamiliar routine. But until I passed my licensing exams, it was rather a moot point.

“I’m sure ye’re far more than that,” he replied solemnly, before breaking into a sneaky grin. “I’ve ne’er seen stalks of rhubarb cut quite sae... uniform. Ye’d have a fine career in quality control, if ye wished.”

I faked throwing a dish towel at him while we both laughed.

“What about you, Mr. Fraser? How did you get into the catering business?” It wasn’t polite conversation. I was really quite curious to know more about him.

“I’ll tell ye, but only if ye call me Jamie.” At my nod, he continued, “twas my Mam. She was always a great cook, but then my Da passed suddenly and she with three bairns under the age of ten tae raise. She needed tae work. We moved tae Edinburgh an’ she laboured day and night tae save enough tae start her own catering business. Since I was a lad, when I wasna in school I was in her kitchen, watching and learning all the while.”

His striking face took on a faraway expression, and I knew he was remembering those days with a mixture of wistfulness and love. I recognized the look from my own reflection, when I thought about my dead parents. Without realizing it, I lay my palm over his forearm where it had stilled above my butcher’s block. His eyes were the same hue as midsummer blueberries, and they regarded me with silent inquiry.

A timer made us both jump, my hand falling to my side. What was I thinking, touching this stranger who I was paying to cook dinner for my boyfriend’s guests? I really needed to find a hobby, so my mind didn’t latch onto any feeble excuse for stimulation.

Brushing my hands against my thighs, I quickly excused myself and left to get properly dressed for dinner. Only thirty minutes remained before Frank and his colleagues were due to arrive.

I spent more time than was strictly necessary away from the kitchen, afraid I’d made things awkward with Jamie. By the time I finally returned, he was plating the lamb and putting the custard in the refrigerator to set. I tried to think of something to say that would re-establish the fluent rapport from earlier on.

“I’ve opened the wine tae let it breathe,” Jamie said without looking at me. I wished there was a similar process for blundering Englishwomen.

“Jamie, I really don’t know how to...”

The sound of the front door opening interrupted me and Frank’s nasal voice rang out from the entryway.

“Claire, we’re here!”

“Fuck!” I exclaimed. Jamie tipped his head sideways in question. “I never had time to explain to my partner that I hired your services. That’s the dean of his faculty out there, and...” I broke off, looking frantically around the room as though a trap door would suddenly materialize. Quick on his feet, Jamie understood the situation immediately. The kitchen windows were still open after my earlier catastrophe. With surprising grace for one so large, he slid through the opening and onto the fire escape.

“Bon appetit, Claire Beauchamp,” the ginger chef wished from outside, a mischievous smirk lighting his whole countenance.

I stood, mouth open in shock, as he gave an abbreviated bow before scampering down the metal ladder just as Frank entered the kitchen behind me.

“This smells delicious, darling. We really are going to make a chef out of you yet.”

#my writing #outlander

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route22ny · 3 years

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Don’t throw out that mask yet

by Dr Valerie Parkas and Dr Beverly Forsyth

States across the country are actively removing mask mandates as localities open up for spring return to office, summer socializing and fall schooling. Concurrently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has loosened mask recommendations for individuals fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in both indoor and outdoor settings.

Should masks be forgotten? Scrapped? Burned with glee, as some have suggested?

On the contrary: Masks should remain with us, becoming part of our everyday lives even as the COVID-19 pandemic, science willing, subsides. We should never fully return to our maskless society where only health care providers donned a mask, because judicious use of masks will continue to save lives. While mask-wearing in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a contentious political issue at times, for many Asian countries, it has been part of the culture for a long time and was easily adopted during the pandemic. Masks are a simple, low-tech and inexpensive yet effective measure to protect against respiratory pathogens and have been shown to protect both the wearer and those around them.

Just as we all adjust to common-sense public health interventions that initially feel at best inconvenient and at worst an insult to our self-efficacy, we eventually see the value of preventive measures that save lives. We all agree to wear seat belts; understand that helmets protect football players, bicycle riders and skiers; wash our hands to prevent transmissible illnesses, and agreeably struggle to open up medication bottles because the safety locks protect children.

We are now accustomed to wearing masks and to seeing others wearing masks. The frequency of mask-wearing may be different for different people, but masks ought to remain with us. If they do, they will continue to save lives.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, will remain a global infection for the foreseeable future. We will not likely reach herd immunity: Vaccination confidence is not universal, global vaccine rollouts are struggling and have not been rapid enough, and the virus continues to mutate, producing variants that may eventually lessen the effectiveness of current vaccines. The designation as an acute pandemic will give rise to a more permanent situation — an endemic virus, one that ebbs and flows, perhaps in a seasonal pattern similar to influenza, but one that will never fully disappear from our landscape.

To avoid larger outbreaks, we will need to take precautions when levels are high in our own communities, when we choose to go to crowded indoor venues, when we travel to areas having escalating cases of infection, or when a new variant becomes common. Although mask-wearing will likely be our individual choice, many of us will and should choose to do so — and because masks protect both the wearer and those around the wearer, we may want others to wear a mask in those same circumstances.

Many people in our families and communities live with chronic illnesses or may be on long-term medications that suppress their immune systems, putting them at risk for both a worse outcome from COVID-19 and a less robust immune response from the vaccine. Because the vaccine may not fully protect these populations, they may decide to wear a mask more often than most. And again to protect our most vulnerable friends, families and colleagues, we might all opt to be a part of the collective response to protect them and wear masks as well. As our society has come to understand the benefits of wearing masks, many of us will also wear a mask when other respiratory viruses are active in our community. Unlike COVID-19, which can be transmitted when people are asymptomatic, influenza and other common respiratory viruses are most contagious when a person is symptomatic. It makes sense to wear a mask when a person has nasal congestion, sore throat, fever or other symptoms consistent with a respiratory illness. This common practice in other countries should now become common practice in the United States.

The 2020-2021 flu season in the United States was very mild. The CDC influenza surveillance site reports that the influenza hospitalization rate this year has been 0.8 per 100,000, one-tenth the rate reported at the same time during 2011-2012, which was the lowest recorded rate on record. The data on influenza during the period that intersects with the COVID-19 pandemic is stark and deserves reflection and attention from all. The reason for our mild flu season is multipronged and includes mask-wearing, decreased gathering and increased uptake of influenza vaccination. Of these, masking is a simple intervention that clearly contributed to lower rates of influenza this year.

Do not throw out your cloth masks or stop buying your surgical masks. They will still save lives.

Parkas and Forsyth are associate professors of medicine and infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where they are co-directors of infection prevention for the medical and graduate students.

This article appeared in the New York Daily News, May 18, 2021

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-masks-must-not-disappear-yet-20210518-r57rppgusbcobn5dd6d3lls5ra-story.html

#covid-19 pandemic #public health #cdc guidance #to mask or not to mask #get vaxxed

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boop-le-snoot · 3 years

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masterpost • main masterlist • taglist & faq

previously on...

Chapter 3 is finally here. Sorcerers need their shopping done, too. Beyonce/Wong platonic ship (joking)! And finally some action, more witchy stuff. Bucky whump because I have a saviour complex. Stucky cuteness moment. Some blood/gore in this chapter.

My insides clenched, seeing the yellow and blue notice taped to my door - the building manager rarely left notes, so whatever it was, it wasn't going to be good. I had managed to wind myself up into an anxious frenzy by the time I had gone inside and locked my door behind me, immediately thinking I would have to exhaust myself by turning to magic to keep a roof over my head.

For once, the news turned out to be positive: a neighbor was being evicted and turned in to the police for stealing packages. The building manager urged the tenants to report any missing items and apply for a refund when possible, apologizing for the inconvenience. I wondered what prompted this, basically unheard of in NYC, act of kindness as my altar stared at me with mocking amusement, pointing out the obvious by its mere presence.

Grinning to myself, I texted Odette - predictably, she was happy for me, happy that my protection spell had turned out strong and steady, and added a few tips of her own for my spell to stay that way. It felt like I'd grown invisible wings, those days, with all the possibilities open - and never once did I let myself entertain a thought of getting back at an enemy of the past for longer than five seconds.

Sure, it was perfectly human to consider making the cheating ex go bankrupt or make sure the college professor, that failed a couple of students each semester as a 'reality check', trips and face-plants at least once a day... I mean, who wouldn't experience a malicious sort of joy from petty revenge?

But I found my powers were best applied with a positive result in mind. My friend's cat was the first test rat- I mean, living creature I had practiced my healing spells on. The eleven year old kitty was struggling and both me and my friend loved the critter dearly - so the short, but tiring spell I performed yielded exactly the results I was expecting. Odette said something about genuine love backing up the magic, and- well, Dumbledore much?

On humans, it turned out, it wasn't nearly as simple. I didn't know what I had expected would happen after performing nothing short of a whole improv-performace type of ritual right in front of my very puzzled but hopeful friend with chronic asthma, but it wasn't the sheer exhaustion that ran bone-deep and left me bedridden for a whole day.

Odette visited my dingy apartment with her signature enormous purse full of vials she spoon-fed me and trinkets she strategically placed in and around my immediate sleeping area. "There, there," the woman patted my head as I pitifully moaned at the ear-splitting headache. "The first one is always the most challenging. After all, if it would be easy, everyone would do it."

I understood that. But at the same time, it felt unfair that no good deed went unpunished. I told Odette so, raising my voice to the best of my ability as she rummaged around my kitchen.

"Nothing in this world comes out of thin air, whatever you decide to give has to be taken from somewhere," she explained patiently. "People like us are considered hedge witches. We do solitary work and draw most of our energy from the Earth, from mother Nature. We cannot perform miracles, however, the cost of our spells are very low," I felt an immediate peak of interest at the simple yet effective explaination she gave me. "We remain mostly human. Gaia* is kind and generous to the ones who pay respect," Odette continued over the clatter of pans and pots. "There are other kinds of witches - who take from other people, who take from the dead. But taking something by force always leaves scars and taking something from the dead means bringing a piece of them back to places it should not be."

I pondered the words as Odette brought the kettle to a boil, the whistling shriek piercing through my skull like a sharp projectile. "What about Voodoo practitioners?" I couldn't hold back my curiosity.

Odette cleared her throat. "What is left of them is mostly not human. Their gifts are great but the costs are greater. They can live far, far longer than the average witch but their souls will know no peace, just like the souls of the dead they anchor to themselves over time," Odette entered the room with a bowl of tangy, creamy liquid that smelled like pumpkin soup. "We do not bestow any judgement upon our brothers and sisters but it is our duty to inform the young." She cast a pointed glance towards me, passing me the soup and a wooden spoon I didn't know I had. "This should help you recover. Take tomorrow off if needs be."

She left shortly afterwards and I hadn't much strength than to use the bathroom, wash the rune-engraved spoon and curl up in my bed, only waking up when the meager light shone over my face from the window. Sleepy and fog-tinted, the early morning NYC was damp and windy as I stuck my head out of the window to soak my sleep-heated head in the cool air.

As uneventful as the day at the café was, I still wasn't up to 100% energy-wise, but the long walk from Jeremy's to Odette's was pleasantly invigorating. I didn't find the cold autumn moisture displeasing; the small raindrops kept me awake and alert. Odette nodded in muted pleasure as I clocked in and returned the special spoon back to her. The runes on it were interesting; I had taken a picture of them for research purposes, fully intending to craft myself something similar.

"Odette has taken on an apprentice," Wong's voice had me take in several deep breaths in preparation for the inevitable fuck-fest on my patience. "She has been avoiding me. And the girl is painfully slow."

I didn't hear the answer of Wong's companion over the rustling of the boxes I was hastily shoving in their places before the Asian man's temper grew foul. More foul. Ugh. The sharp ding of the bell had me yelling a, "Just a second please, I'll be right with you," while trying to keep my tone polite.

Wong's sour face and a list of items required greeted me as I flew out of the backrooms, noticing the locked doors of Odette's office on my way out. Wong's companion stood at the far end of the store - his robes quite different from the ones I'd seen people of their kind wear, his lithe, tall figure seeming strangely familiar. I squinted my eyes at his back. "Is this all you need?" I waved the list around, increasing the volume of my voice.

The tall man turned around and I could only gape. He, in turn, also froze, the stern, unfriendly expression losing heat and giving way to perplexed wonder. "I had placed an order, for sorcerer Strange," Tony's boyfriend eyed me somewhat sheepishly under Wong's concerned gaze.

I nodded, eyeing Wong in turn, letting satisfaction nestle a warm ball in my chest. Stephen's look of displeasure had turned onto his... Colleague. By the time I finished retrieving Strange's order and packing up the items on Wong's list, the Asian man had left, leaving Stephen to sheepishly pretend to examine the books on the furthest shelf. I waved the paper bags as he took long strides towards me, his fancy, large necklace glimmering under the lights.

"So, how long have you been working here?" Sorcerer Strange asked after I told him the total.

The cash register beeped loudly, coins clattering on the desk as I counted out his change. "Some time now," I shrugged noncommittally. I felt his magnetic eyes gloss over my adornments, the star necklace, the various rings; I could practically feel him coming to his own conclusions. "Long enough for your colleague to get an attitude with me," I had to make sure he knew I would be taking no bullshit from him - or anyone else, for that matter. Odette's opinion on his kind was firm and I was heavily inclined to agree.

"Hmm, I see," Strange was equally as keen on hiding his curiosity. It was a funny thing, really, that we, being adults that we were, treated this encounter like some sort of a dirty secret. "Don't take it personally. Wong is like that with everyone," The man briefly scratched his beard with a gloved hand before pocketing his change and picking up the bags. "Except Beyoncè, maybe," the wink he threw me was positively mischievous as it caught me off-guard, giving him a fox-like appearance.

I sighed as the door shut behind him. Pretty white boys - the ultimate human disasters.

I had no time to dwell on them, however, as something - or someone, hit downtown with all the malicious intentions to wreak havoc on the innocent civilians calmly going about their day. Mutants and people who knew Odette came in hordes, scrapes and bruises and strange wounds that required imminent healing.

My boss was no rookie, she dutifully accepted each and every single soul, looking worse for wear with each minute. Not being able to withstand seeing her drain herself, I simply took over the simplest tasks - and she said nothing, just gave me a nod, instructed to use whatever I needed and write it down somewhere along with the name of the person who required the healing.

As the battle raged, the crowds thinned but the ones who managed to come to Odette's spouted more serious wounds, obviously a result of them fighting back. Mutants covered head to toe with coats and hats and robes, for me to swallow my shock when they undressed - horns, tails and weird skin textures were on the far end of the normal. I dutifully extracted small pieces of information from each and every person I treated.

Yes, the Avengers were winning. No, there aren't many people hurt, most of the damage is cosmetic. Yes, the villain of the week is as stupid as usual. It was like a mantra. Odette poked her head into the spare room every now and then, her eagle eyes briefly scanning over me to make sure I wasn't exterting myself.

As I applied the healing salve to a tiny, pink-skinned woman, bandaging up her hands, my boss entered and closed the door behind her, setting down on the creaky chair with a loud thud. "Just got the news, the Avengers apprehended the terrorist," she sighed long and slow. "We've done all we could, the next few days I'll be handling house calls so you'll be here on your own. I'll probably see you in a few days, don't hesitate to give me a call if something comes up," Odette seemed to be barely standing up, yet when she tore off a few pieces of her jewelry and chucked them into a big tin can under the sink, the glossy sheen in her eyes melted away.

"Okay," I mumbled under the watchful eyes of the mutant woman. "Will there be more people coming in today?"

"No," the woman in front of me snorted. "SHIELD is prowling the streets. They are not fond of us, they always say we intervene unnecessarily even though we willingly do their dirty work so our children could be safe," the bitter, harsh tone took me off-guard.

I had to admit, there was reason behind her words. "Will you be able to get home safely? I have a puffy coat and a hat you can borrow." Figuring an expensive taxi ride would be a better alternative to something terrible happening to the woman, I offered her my winter clothes.

She smiled at me, razor blade teeth and large, red eyes the kindest I'd ever seen on a person. In the end, she took the clothes, promising to bring them back in a few days and Odette gave me a parka that was too small for her frame - despite it smelling like someone's grandma's attic, I found it to be quite lovely vintage. The puffy knitted scarf she added felt like warmth and safety - she had to have knitted it herself, for I knew, handmade items carried a significant amount of energy in them.

The shop was eerily quiet as I cleaned and scrubbed the stained, dirty floors and disposed of the bloody clothes and bandages in the tiny, odd fireplace in Odette's office - that was a thing most peculiar, it burned everything I put in it, but had no chimney, no place for the smoke to exit. Magic.

Something banged loudly against the entrance door. I let out a startled shriek, broomstick falling out of my hand and adding to the sudden cacophony of noise as the figure behind the stained glass slowly slid down the door, a deep, male voice groaning something incomprehensible loud enough for me to hear.

Grabbing a large serrated knife we used for mincing the bones of small animals, I made quiet steps towards the door, seeing a large, obviously humanoid figure helplessly lean on the door. The man's arm glinted chrome black and gunmetal grey in the low light. "Sargent Barnes? Bucky?" I whisper-shouted, carefully plying open the door.

He lifted his head, blood dripping down from it, his face looked like someone went to town on it with a meat mullet, his eyes were unfocused and couldn't keep a straight line. His flesh arm leaned heavily on the door frame, the prosthetic hanging limply, dragging his whole body to its side. It must've weigh a ton.

"Я должен найти капитана Роджерса," he whispered.

I didn't understand Russian at all but I could make out the name of his boyfriend. Which made sense. Bucky looked severely concussed - I idly wondered what exactly they had been fighting, what could have given a freaking super-soldier such a brain-leaking injury. "Sargent Barnes, follow me," I put on my big girl shoes and used my momma bear voice, towing the man behind me.

He, too, weighed a ton, as I stumbled, helping him into the chair in the spare room that became my healing station for today. The longer I looked at Bucky, the less lucid he grew, eyes falling shut as he murmured something in jagged Russian, slurring his words.

There was no time to think about the consequences of exposure of my witchcraft; mortar and pestle, herbs and salves flying everywhere, I assembled a healing spell and memorized the according ritual in what felt like record time. He was bleeding all over the chair, fresh crimson blood pouring out of his nose and mouth and it was all I could see.

I hadn't known true terror until the blood that poured out turned black. Whatever it was in him, it was poisonous - my protection charms grew hot, scalding as they left marks on my skin; powering through the pain and unable to turn my eyes off the convulsing Barnes, I finished the chant just as the flow of vile, tar-like liquid suddenly ceased. It pooled around his feet, dripped down the armrests and matted his long hair. It reeked, too, of copper and putrid meat.

Bucky had passed out somewhere mid-spell, the slow, steady breathing bringing me my own sense of calm. To say that I was drained would be an understatement - my vision swam and my world spun on it's axis as I unlocked Odette's office to messily rummage through a cabinet for the emergency tonic I knew she kept there. I chugged the vial, an avalanche of almost anxious, jittery energy hit me like a freight train - exactly what I needed.

I bought myself a couple hours of time. Cleaning up the sludge around Bucky's feet and removing the outer parts of his gear was easy as he remained as relaxed as a cooked spaghetti noodle. The amount of weapons he had on him was impressive, but those weren't what I was looking for - his phone. It was dead, so I plugged it in, waiting for the 5% to show and bringing it to his fingertips, hoping he used the print recognition instead of the password option... And I lucked out.

"Hello, this is Star, I found a Bucky. Tell Dr. Strange to come get him, he knows where I am." I texted the "Stevie ❤️" contact, my inner fangirl self squealing at the dorky name of his boyfriend's contact in Bucky's phone. Shortly afterwards, I went ahead and snapped a picture of myself next to sleeping Bucky, figuring out some actual proof wouldn't do any harm in this bizarre situation.

The answer didn't let me wait long. "10 minutes" came the first text, and shortly afterwards - "Is Bucky okay??????". I had to snort at the amount of question marks before honestly replying "He will be ☺️" and putting the phone back in Bucky's pocket. I cleaned up and attempted to lift Bucky up, succeeding in waking him up into a half-lucid state, probably courtesy of decades of training and whatnot, to at least drag him to the front of the store. I wasn't particularly comfortable with strangers seeing the backrooms.

Bucky leaned with his back against the counter, ass flat on the floor and a towel with a cold compress pressed to his head when the doors all but flew open, revealing Captain Rogers, still in uniform and Stephen Strange, arguing with his boyfriend, both still suited up and bloody and grimy.

"Uhh," I blinked owlishly, causing the men to stop bickering and stare first at me, then at Bucky. "I think he hit his head," I offered weakly, backing up slightly at the amount of burning eyes staring at me.

"Shortcake, that you?" Tony's eyebrows rose as he surveyed the bodega, the items on the shelves, the black and red blood stains on my previously pristine, yellow shirt.

"Now is not the time, Tony. Go with Rogers, make sure the medical is prepared for Barnes and disable his arm," Strange barked out authoritatively, shooting me a puzzled but compassionate look. "The portal is open. I'll talk to Star, find out what happened." He advanced towards me as Captain picked up Bucky bridal-style as tenderly as he could while making sure the compress stayed on.

"Keep that tone fo the bedroom," Tony's voice was more than displeased as he shot me and Strange a hurt look, but followed Steve into the golden circle right outside the door before it sparked shut.

"Now, now, what happened here?" The sorcerer's voice lowered into a soothing drawl as I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding. My shoulders sagged, fingers twitching with anxious energy. The man extended a gloved hand, briefly squeezing my shoulder. "It's alright, take your time."

Damn, did I look that bad?

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#bun writes #practical alchemy #tony stark x reader x stephen strange #tony stark x reader #Stephen Strange x reader

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