#At this point my games Whitney HAS to be into it with the amount of times he comes back for more- | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

redwineconversation · 10 months

Text

Camille Abily OL Night Systems Interview (February 14, 2023)

Doing this primarily because I thought the discussion about managing returns from injury was interesting. Most likely the last major translation until preseason begins.

This interview dates back from February 2023 so obviously some of the things they discuss are out of date. But as I've said so often in the past, to know this team is to understand them, and this is how you get to that.

CAMILLE ABILY OL NIGHT SYSTEMS INTERVIEW

Journalist: Hello to everybody. Very happy to have you back at OLNS [OL Night Systems]. An OLNS tonight which will be dedicated to football, because I don't really like to refer to it as women's football. I don't really like the term women's sports, I prefer just using football. But we will be talking mostly about the women's team because we are fortunate to have Camille Abily. Hi, Camille.

Abily: Hello.

Journalist: How are you doing, Camille? Everything good?

Abily: All good, thanks.

Journalist: It's a special day today, but I'll get to that later. Before that, we won't break up any couples, because it's Valentine's Day. You'll see his face in a few minutes and it can cause some couples to break up. The guys will swoon, the women will swoon. We'll ease into it with his voice first as he does a preview of what's coming up. It's Jules.

[JULES VOICEOVER SUMMARY OF UPCOMING PROGRAM]

Journalist: There you have it, I got you introduced to his voice. Now the camera will focus on his body. It's Jules who is here with us. Hi, Jules.

Jules: Hi. Good evening, everyone. Was that my Valentine's Day present?

Journalist: It was my Valentine's Day gift, I'm really proud of myself. Even more so because -

[producers play "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston]

Journalist: Yes, thank you to the producers. Jules, you're with us because you've prepared an awesome segment about the team. Camille [Abily], we're going to have a lot of things to talk about. We're looking to look back at the beginning of the season, changes in formations, etc. But before that we're going to have a brief interlude and talk about Alex [Lacazette], because we received the official news.

Jules: Yes, we talked about it in last night's episode, we brought it up with [Hugo] Lloris, the health of Alexandre Lacazette. He came off right before halftime in the game against RC Lens. We'll look at the replay. It was in the extra time at the end of the first half, he came off immediately, asked right away to be substituted. The official news came out yesterday, he will be out for Friday's game against Auxerre. There will be more exams and tests beginning of next week, to determine the length of the Lyon captain's absence. It's definite a point of interest, how will Lyon play without a player who has played every game up to this point? Top scorer, top assist, he was implicated on 21 out of the 43 goals so far, 18 goals scored 5 assists. So for the Auxerre game, we will find an Olympique Lyonnais without Alexandre Lacazette.

Journalist: Camille, I'm going to turn to you now. Handling the injury crisis. Camille, it's true that there are muscular injuries, there are a fair amount of knee injuries, there's been ACL injuries, MCL injuries in the women's league. A few years ago you said it was up to the referees to better protect the players. I think you said that in 2015. Is that statement something you still stand by? Do you think the referees are doing their job, that there are more red [cards] in women's football?

Abily: The red [cards] are starting to appear. That being said, I think that we were particularly hit by this injury crisis, unfortunately it wasn't always because of tackles, it was just wear-and-tear, it was fatigue. It's true that in women's football, the calendar is really packed. The intensity of games has increased as well. So the players' bodies are being put through more. So the players - as you saw, you said it well, there are a lot of players who are being affected by this, be it worldwide or in Europe, but especially international players. So we were also affected by it. We're getting them back little by little. We're getting certain players back, so we're happy about that and we're hoping that we can finally turn the page. Because it was a really difficult period to handle.

Journalist: It's something that we will cover in depth in this segment. We'll talk about the players returning from injury. How do you handle a group like that, when you have players going out on injury, players returning from injury. Is there a real managerial role which comes into play?

Abily: Yeah. You have to know how to handle it. That being said, we're all focused on the same objectives, and I think that - well, we know we have to take care of the players who can't play, obviously, we pay attention them. We have people on the staff as well, notably our physical fitness staff member, Remi [Pullara], who is in charge of rehabilitation. He is really with the [injured] players on a day-to-day basis. For us, we're in contact with them, but we're also focused on the players who can play. So each time they reintegrate the team, we have into account the group, and try to help them get back to their former level as fast as possible.

Journalist: Obviously that affects your choices. Jules, I believe you have something to say about that.

Jules: What I was going to say is that you have a little bit of "luck", and I am putting that in quotation marks, that there wasn't only one player who was injured, there was a little group. So they weren't by themselves. Because if there's only one player who is injured, they're a bit of the black sheep in the family, they're cast aside a bit and it's more complicated to handle. Here, at least you have -

Abily: I would have preferred having less [injured players]. Because when you have half the team out, it's harder.

Jules: But at least for them, it's easier.

Abily: It's easier for them, yeah. It's true, we've seen it before with Griedge [M'Bock] and Ada [Hegerberg] last year, they were injured at the same time and they supported each other. And that helps a lot, the fact that you aren't alone during your rehab, that's for sure. However, for us, if it's just one or two players [who are injured], we'll take it. When they are injured in little groups, it's more difficult to manage their returns. Because when a player has been injured, they've been out for 5-6 months, maybe more, they have to find their previous level again. And for that - we have to follow one player. So we'll give them a little bit of playing time here and there. But when you have 3-4 players like that on the bench [coming back], it's difficult to give them all the playing time they are waiting for to regain their form. So it's harder to handle for the staff.

Journalist: it's a real question of [game] management, and I guess that's where coaching comes into play. Jules, for this program, you also went to get some interviews, and some players had some questions for Camille.

Jules: Yes, there will some surprises coming up. We'll start with a question from someone you know very well. It's pretty simple, but we still want to know the answer.

Le Sommer: Hi, Camille. I have a question for you. What is your best memory as a player at Lyon?

Abily: Well, I think that's a pretty easy answer. It's true, it's something I got to share with Eugenie [Le Sommer], it was the first Champions League in England at Fulham. We won against Potsdam, 2-0.

Journalist: We often talked about that moment.

Abily: Yeah, it's because it's the most significant for me with Lyon. It was the first one, I was coming back from the US so there was that pressure. Spur of the moment you don't think about it because you're playing, but there's a part of you that's aware you were called back to Lyon, Sonia [Bompastor] was as well. And we absolutely wanted to bring that trophy back.

Journalist: So there you have it, Camille Abily's favorite memory. Jules, you prepared a little segment on the season so far. Because we can't do the entire season, you chose four dates. We started off the season in the best way.

Jules: Indeed, right at the beginning of the season, it's end of August with the Trophee des Championnes, a win over Paris Saint-Germain by the smallest of margins. But it's already a trophy to start the season. Last season, it was a season of revenge, that was accomplished with the double D1 Arkema - UWCL, only the Coupe de France was missing but we will talk about that later. So it starts straight away with that win against Paris Saint-Germain, a 1-0 win with a goal from Danielle van de Donk. A few weeks after a "first" trophy, and I'm putting that in quotation marks, the Women's International Champions Cup against Monterrey. So in many ways this was the best way to start the season.

Abily: Yeah it's important, especially against PSG. They're our direct rivals. So it's important. They've had a lot of changes, they've had numerous injuries. But it was important for us to show that we were still there. We won 1-0 but we weren't really in any danger during the game as a whole. We scored pretty quickly so we were pretty much in cruise control. There are games where there's more tension, you feel it's going to be more difficult. There, of course there was a good team opposite us, but I don't remember feeling that stressed because we pretty much controlled the game.

Journalist: They weren't penetrating very well. The finishing was missing, whereas there were chances created on your side.

Abily: There were more chances for us. They had a somewhat sterile ball possession. But it's true they didn't put us under a lot of pressure when they were in the final third. So it's fair to say that we prepared the game really well and obviously having scored quickly, that helped us.

Journalist: We started the season well. And then, Jules, as with every season, there are highs and lows.

[Abily sighs heavily]

Jules: I think you know what I am doing to say. October 19, first day of the group stage in the UWCL.

Abily: It was a slap to the face. That's the only way to put it. It was a slap to the face.

Jules: I was trying to be nice.

Journalist: We try to be fair.

Abily: You can tell the truth.

Journalist: Is that how you saw it [as a slap in the face]?

Abily: It was the first time - well, it was the first time that I experienced that - well not as a player, because when I was with Montpellier we lost 6-0 against Potsdam. But with Lyon, yeah. It was the first time we were that bad. Nothing was working for us.

Jules: And it was for the first time in Lyon's history as well, that they had lost by such a great margin.

Abily: Whether it was the staff or the players, it was the first time that we had been that bad. Despite that, when we came back to 2-1, there was a part of you that was like "maybe there is some hope". And then that third goal off a free kick just killed us.

Jules: It was extra time at the end of the first half, 3-1.

Abily: And there were so many individual errors which made that happen. After that, it was a horrible game from the whole team. No one performed well. That happens. We're lucky, we were able to qualify [for the quarters]. But it's true that because of that game, we were in a more difficult position.

Jules: And the second game, it's the draw against Juventus. The mood for the players and the staff after those games, only one point out of six. Do you start getting stressed, or are you saying there's still a long way to go and remind everyone that, without downplaying the atrocious performance against Arsenal, that there were an enormous amount of players out on injury during that period?

Abily: After Arsenal, no, not stressed, because we had Juventus. Juventus didn't stress me out because if you look at the first leg, we should have won it without a problem. By that I mean we're dominating, we're creating chances, we only managed to put one away. And then we conceded a goal, it's an own goal [Malard did it]. It didn't even come from a chance they created, it came off a corner, the corner was coming in, whatever. And you're like, "this can't be happening." Okay, so we'll win at home then. But I thought we were worse in the return leg, meaning that we drew 0-0, which wasn't good, but we really deserved to win the away game. So for the game against Juventus, first of all, the staff said to themselves "we can't lose this." Because if we lost at Juventus, we were really - sorry for the language - we would have been fucked. So this one [the away game] you're like, okay, that wasn't a good game, we should have won it. You're a little disgusted with the result and you know you have to win at home. And we knew we could win at Arsenal, which we were able to do.

Journalist: Camille, I have a bone to pick. I looked at your career. You were a player, after that a consultant. And at one point you said, "I don't want to experience that kind of stress, I don't want to relive that kind of anxiety." But here I am and I can hear the way you talk, there's stress. There's stress and anxiety and unhappiness.

Abily: Of course.

Journalist: There's a lot of unhappiness. You're back in it.

Abily: It's what happens when you're passionate about it.

Journalist: However, you said -

Abily: I know, I know. I remember when I retired, I said to myself "ah, finally, some time for myself, no more sleepless nights." Because when you're a player at the top level, you fucking think about when you played bad, when you lost. You're replaying the games in your head, the sequences of play. That keeps you up. And then a year later I dipped my toes back in the water, because I did a year with the U-15s at the Academy where if we're honest there is a complete lack of stress. They're really young players. But the stress comes back in the league but it's not comparable at all.

Journalist: It was a transition and that's what you wanted to do.

Abily: Completely. And then I had the opportunity to integrate the [pro] staff with Jean-Luc [Vasseur]. I was the second assistant, I wasn't as close to the top as I am now. I wasn't with the team as much. But yeah, it was starting to come back. And it was the passion for the game.

Journalist: It's passion, passion which brings a fair amount of stress. There was a fair amount of that this season. Jules, you're not going on easy on our guest tonight.

Jules: Not really.

Abily: It's okay, I know which games we didn't play well. But it's okay, I'm smiling, we'll talk about it later. Despite how badly we played, we're still on track to accomplish our objectives [quarterfinals against Chelsea hadn't been played yet].

Journalist: We'll talk about the objectives. But we're going to relive this PSG game. We watched the replays. Jules, tell us about it.

Jules: About 20 shots for Lyon. There was only one real opportunity for PSG, which is when they scored.

Journalist: PSG had six shots, three of which were on goal.

Jules: Exactly. Diani scored a goal right at the end of the game, 87th minute. We were talking about a holdup immediately afterwards. If that isn't the right term, I'm not sure what is, Camille.

Abily: Yeah. There was a lot of frustration regarding that game because you summed it up really well, we were dominating the game. And I think it's the first time we dominated PSG that much.

Jules: Yes.

Abily: And at the end, we lost.

Jules: In recent years.

Abily: The last 3-4 years for sure.

Journalist: I have another statistic here, 95 games at home without losing.

Abily: In any case sometimes it's like that.

Jules: We just have to start again.

Abily: No, what happens after is - what I find frustrating is that it was a game where at a minimum we should have drawn. We shouldn't have lost that game. If we hadn't lost - and we'll talk about it later - but if we hadn't lost, then we really would have held the cards regarding the title. We would have had quite a lead. That being said, the season is long. Just look at what happened afterwards [PSG dropped points against Fleury and Le Havre]. But it's frustrating because as I said, I think it's the game where we had dominated PSG the most, we were better, they really weren't very good and they scored off a free kick.

Journalist: But a league isn't won in September, October, November, Jules.

Jules: Indeed it isn't. So after that first leg, you were second in the league behind Paris Saint-Germain. But it all works out, we'll talk about it in a second. We said, Camille - well it was mainly Timothee Piron, who commentates a lot of the women's games - he said "Don't worry about it, PSG will drop the ball once or twice, we'll get the first place back before the return leg." That's exactly what happened, we'll talk about that too. We've been talking about it since the beginning, you wanted to let go of some of the stress. Are you as stressed as to when you were a player or can't you compare?

Abily: You can't compare. As a player, you have more stress the closer it is to game time. Because you're like "I have to play well, we have to win." With the staff, when you're getting closer to game time, it's more we've done the maximum. We studied the opponent the maximum, we've done our job the best that we can. So the closer you get to game time -

Journalist: You've done our job.

Abily: We've done everything we could to prepare them the best that we could. After you're just - well, after, during the game, when you're a player, you're blowing off the stress whereas when you're on the sidelines, it's harder. At times. There were games where I was really stressed, others I was able to take a step back a bit more. It depends. But I have to work on myself a bit more to relax more.

Journalist: As a coach, you're like I did my job, what happens next is up to the players.

Abily: Exactly.

Journalist: It's not too hard for you to leave it up to others to get the job done?

Abily: We have quality players so it works out. That helps. That helps a lot. No but beyond that, I accepted my retirement, the end of my career went really well. Nothing in the world would make me want to play again. So it's all good.

Journalist: You seem completely zen about it.

Abily: Completely. I only like the 5-v-5s that we do with the club. That's the only thing I like, the rest, leave me out of it.

Jules: And we've both done a lot of the 5-v-5s.

Journalist: We actually have footage of that -

Jules: No, no. Let's not air that.

Journalist: You can find it.

Jules: You could, but I will burn the tapes. And anyway, you had talked about it earlier, but one of the other big moments in the season was the return leg against Juventus, where we qualified. Now you said that within the context of the game, there wasn't anything exceptional. It wasn't the prettiest game. But at the end of the day, there was that qualification for the next round. What stands out for me is the footage from a few minutes after the final whistle, where we saw the numerous injured players - most of them were still injured at the time, we're thinking of Catarina Macario, Griedge M'Bock. Everyone came together and there was a lot of relief, almost a liberation, because we felt that the first half of the season left a lot of scars physically and mentally.

Abily: Yeah, the month of December was really complicated for us.

Jules: There was that game -

Abily: Yeah, and in terms of tension as well. We had to go to Arsenal and get a result. Here against Juventus, it was really tense. If they won we would have been eliminated. And you could see it during the game. We didn't play a good game. So there was relief but as a perfectionist, there was a lot of frustration after that game. We didn't play well, we weren't able to score, win against Juventus - well, it annoys the shit out of me , sorry, that we weren't able to win against Juventus over two legs. We have a team capable of that, even with the injuries we should have at least won one of the two games. And it's a shame with regards to that, we didn't portray a great image of our team. So we finished the year with a lot of difficulty. However things were off to a good start in January.

Journalist: Eight consecutive qualification [for the quarterfinals]. There is a standard when you're wearing that Lyon jersey, and you have that badge.

Abily: It's the minimum. It's true that it's unfortunate because it's not obvious. But it's the minimum when you have the roster that we have, the quality of the infrastructure, and the staff we have as well. We have a big staff. We owe it to ourselves to win and get the qualification.

Journalist: We owe it to ourselves to win. We understand that. We are back on the right track in our timeline, Jules, and that path also correlates to the return of the injured players.

Jules: Yeah, we talked about it in the recap, about the return of the injured players. There are still some players who are out injured, we'll talk about it later. But I wanted to talk about this statistic. In September - October, there were more than 10 players injured. We could have made a second team. And excuse me, but when the injured players are Amel Majri -

Abily: They were all international players.

Jules: Marozsan, Sara Dabritz, Ellie Carpenter.

Abily: Yeah, those were top players.

Jules: It wasn't easy. But now, as you said, things are going a bit better. And it correlates to the return of the players. We'll start with that of Amel Majri. It's a bit symbolic. 471 days out for Amel. That's an eternity. She came back against Soyaux. It's a particular case because there was the knee injury, the pregnancy, it took her a while to come back. She talked to us on OL Night Systems about to manage being a top athlete and pregnancy. She really wanted to come back, she's a true competitor. She's in the top 10 of players most capped [at Lyon], she's one of the top goal scorers. When we see the replays, the return of Amel, it's symbolic. A few weeks later she scored the 8,000th goal for Olympique Lyonnais. That's really something.

Journalist: I have something. 8,000th goal for Lyon. Do you know who scored the 7,000th?

Jules: Well -

Journalist: It's complicated.

Jules: We talked about it last week. It's Bertrand Traore.

Journalist: Who scored the 6,999th?

Jules: I'm blanking. I don't know.

Abily: It's me. The producers told me before going on the show. Olivier Blanc told me.

Journalist: Camille Abily, for 3 hours - we actually had the clock going for this. Anyway, I think it was against Soyaux, and you scored at the 71th minute. You scored the 6,999th goal, and a few hours later, the men play and Traore scored at the 63rd minute. They could have scored earlier, you could have played later, it's complicated I know. Beyond scoring the 6,999th goal, is it important to be in Lyon's history books, Camille?

Abily: At the core it's not a need. When you're a player what you really want is to have accolades. Now after that, when I see the staff here, it's always nice, especially when your career is over. When you see the replays of the goals you scored or stuff like that, it brings back good memories.

Journalist: So the 6,999th goal, it was Camille.

Jules: I'll write it down so that way I will remember it.

Journalist: Going back to it, Amel [Majri] scored the 8,000th goal. A word on Amel, Camille - what did her return bring to Lyon in terms of style of play?

Abily: Amel is a player who has a lot of qualities. She was injured a year ago in October. She was really on a roll in terms of her vision, the qualities she brings, her style of play. Amel knows how to do everything when she is at her top level. So here we're happy to have her back. She hasn't had a huge amount of game time yet, but this international break [February] will allow her to get her rhythm back. And we hope she will be back as soon as possible so she can be a starter again.

Journalist: There were injuries, of course, but she was also the first French player to become a mother while still actively playing. So she was out for 15 months. 15 months away from the field. Jules, why don't you continue.

Jules: Another return from injury, a little bit more recent, and that's Sara Dabritz who came back. She came here from Paris Saint-Germain. She was injured with the [German] National Team [I think Jules is wrong and it happened with Lyon training but that's an aside] and came back in January. And what a return, because she was voted Player of the Month in January. One goal and an assist, we already talked about it, against Soyaux. She scored against Rodez, she also has an assist in the Coupe de France against Montpellier, an assist for Dzsenifer Marozsan, who also came back from injury and we'll talk about that. Sara was a recruit that we felt we had barely seen because she was injured as soon as October.

Abily: Yeah. And what a recruit, what a player. It's true that when you compare it to Amel [Majri], Sara [Dabritz] had a faster return, because obviously she wasn't out as long. So she got her bearings back faster, whether it be physically or technique. And it's true that she had an excellent beginning of January, since she is performing really well, she is scoring and providing assists. So we're happy she's back. We know all her qualities since we knew her well [from PSG], and we're really happy she can help the team.

Jules: She's the first Lyon player to have won Player of the Month in January since Selma Bacha [won Player of the Month] in October and November 2021. So it's been almost an eternity.

Abily: That's insane.

Journalist: I was surprised as well. They've forgotten about Lyon.

Abily: They're jealous.

Journalist: [jokingly] I'm sure it was just an oversight.

Abily: [seriously] No, but seriously. We're champions, and we don't even have any players -

Jules: Since the 2021-2022 season, there were many Players of the Month. And it's Paris Saint-Germain and Bordeaux who have won the most, 7 for Paris Saint-Germain and 5 for Bordeaux. And we're tied behind them with Fleury.

Abily: I think we have so many good players - and it's true - and with Paris [Saint-Germain], you have a few who stand out. The spotlight isn't spread out over as many.

Journalist: We'll say it like this. We have the title as the collective for several months.

Jules: And that explains why the Lyon players didn't rank that highly at the Ballon d'Or.

Abily: Yeah, even if for me it's not normal. It's not normal.

Journalist: We shouldn't provoke Camille.

Abily: No, no, but we should be realistic. Even when I look at The Best from FIFA, I see there are some players that - well, it's complicated to understand why there were no Lyon players when you look at the fact we won the Champions League and the manner in which we did it.

Journalist: So we'll just say the team is so strong that it masks the individuals. We'll stick with that to stay positive. Let's continue with the list.

Jules: Another return was Dzenifer Marozsan. She was absent 235 days. She too suffered an ACL injury. It was a little bit the fashion trend at Lyon. She came back in the Champions League game against Zurich, she came on and played about 15 minutes. And then little by little you managed her game time, she was a starter against Juventus in a slightly hybrid role, left winger, No. 10, we'll talk more about this 4-4-2 which is starting to reappear. She scored against Rodez on a corner. Now not to sound redundant, we know Dzsenifer Marozsan, she's been here in 2016, she's won five Champions Leagues, she can be seen as one of the leaders in the locker room. She made a brief detour via OL Reign. And we felt as though her return has changed a lot of things.

Abily: Yeah. It's true that like with Amel [Majri], she needed a bit of time to get her rhythm back. She was out seven, seven and a half months. So it was a little less than Amel, Amel was twice that. But she got her fitness level back up really quickly, her technical skills, she just has those. So Maro, it wasn't really difficult. It was more gathering the information, executing a little bit faster. That's the hardest thing to get back. As the games went on she got better and better. And now, since January - well at the end of December, she got better with more playing time. But it's true that since January, she's scoring, she's getting others to score. She's really interesting.

Jules: We saw her brace against Rodez and her magnificent goal against Montpellier thanks to an assist by Sara Dabritz. The number of injured players is going down and the team is becoming stronger.

Journalist: We were talking about ACLs a minute ago. There is more and more contact but there is also the amount of games played, the packed calendar. Do you think we will see more and more of this in the upcoming years?

Abily: I'm afraid so. I'm afraid that will happen. That being said the players are often called up with their national teams. And - well, we're happy for them, because we like having international players. But then they travel a lot, they're going to Australia, so it's a long flight, there's jet lag. How much vacation time can they have? It always comes down to that, really. It's true that for us, the French players were called up pretty quickly before the Euros. They didn't have a big break. And it was difficult. They really needed a breather. We tried to give them a break [over Christmas], Lyon really tried to do that. So that was good. They had almost 15 days off. Even if they had a program to follow, just having that time off allowed them to breathe a little. And I hope that will allow us to finish the season without too many injuries.

Journalist: Indeed, there are definitely some injuries that can be linked to a lack of a break, to tiredness. We're going to continue because the list isn't finished. You got a lot of players back from injury, Camille.

Jules: And the last one, she came back against Rodez. Ellie Carpenter came back. She was out for 259 days. She was injured in the Champions League final, we can still see the images in our head. She collapsed. She tried coming back on, but unfortunately that wasn't enough. It's not the same position, there were a lot of injuries in the midfield, here it's a right back. You had Alice Sombath who was playing there, it's not her usual position. We have the regular stater back, someone who is important to the Lyon group, someone who came back against Rodez. Once again, it's a good news, especially because it means there are choices now for the starting lineup.

Abily: Finally. Finally, because - well it's good when there were these injuries, the young [academy] players were able to step up, that's part of sports at the top level. But it's true with the big games coming up, especially the Champions League, experienced players are important. So it's good to have choices. Ellie [Carpenter], it's the same as with the others, she did her first minutes. She's still in the gradual phrase, meaning she will gradually get more playing time. And confidence, because it's also about that: get your bearings back, get your confidence back so you can play more freely.

Journalist: All that, all those returns. Obviously this will influence tactical choices, which didn't go unnoticed by Jules.

Jules: Yeah, indeed, after having chatted with Timothee Piron, he was telling me about the 4-4-2 diamond that you had envisioned in the preseason. You worked on it and then it was dropped.

Journalist: I want to elaborate a little on that, Jules. I know you want to press on this. Camille, why didn't it work out in the beginning of the season?

Abily: Because of all the injuries.

Journalist: Because of all the injuries?

Abily: Yeah, the injured players made it so that - well, when you have so many good players, you have to have the best conditions in place for them on the field. And as such, we lost Sara Dabritz really quickly, who as we can see really excels in that 4-4-2 diamond. Maro[zsan] wasn't back yet. So for the midfield, we just had a lack of midfielders available. So to use the 4-4-2 - we also had offensive players who performing well in the 4-3-3, so that's why. But since the beginning of the year, we had the idea of being able to evolve in both formations, to have that possibility of creating doubt with the opponent and also if we had to make tactical changes during a game, that's important as well.

Journalist: I've definitely lost Jules to the coaching staff, because I think that's Jules' analysis.

Jules: Indeed. We've seen with the return of the players - we talked about Dzenifer Marozsan, Sara Dabritz, even Lindsey Horan, who was absent a little bit after having gotten hurt with her National Team. She was even called up when she had been injured, but that's another story. We saw a 4-4-2 in place for the last four games. There's Maro as a No. 10, there's a mixture between Lindsey, Sara and Damaris, even Amandine Henry. So there -

Abily: Yeah, there's a lot of competition. There's also Danielle van de Donk as well. Amel [Majri] will reintegrate as well. So there's a lot of competition.

Jules: Ines Benyahia as well.

Abily: She showed some interesting things as well. So it's true there are choices, but it's also about making sure the team is the best it can be and as competitive as possible.

Journalist: It's interesting. There are the players who have earned their place as starters, there's a hierarchy in place, but you have to start from scratch.

Abily: Yeah. It's also about managing the team as well. You have to prove you have confidence in the players by giving them playing time, but then you have to take into account the team chemistry as well. And then we really make it so that the team is the best they can be for every game. So it's also about which player is in form as well.

Journalist: And it's going to come up again in the weeks to come.

Jules: Yes, because we can't forget about Griedge M'Bock, who is injured, Catarina Macario, or even Ada Hegerberg. Mikael [OLPlay journalist] went to film the training session earlier, he did a little segment on Ada who is working on her rehab with Remi [Pullara], who is in charge of rehabilitation with Lyon. Ada had already been out for a long time a few years ago. She had an exceptional 2021-2022 season. There was the special in the Champions League, assist from Selma Bacha for an Ada Hegerberg header. She's going through rehab again. We'll remind people again, Ada Hegerberg won the first Ballon d'Or for women. It goes without saying but Lyon will look far different when she returns.

Abily: For sure. A forward who scores as much as Ada [Hegerberg], who has the mentality she does... We saw it when she came back last year from a long injury, she was able to get back to a top level really quickly. We know that when a player is out that isn't easy. But she has that mentality and will to score goals. Ada, she is our goal scorer, even if we have other players who are capable of scoring. But it's true that with Ada, that's her real strength.

Jules: Remi is obviously making her work hard because we can see on the screen that Ada [Hegerberg] is looking a bit tired. You were talking earlier about a lack of efficiency at the beginning of the season. Catarina Macario, Ada Hegerberg, Sara Dabritz, Dzsenifer Marozsan. That's a lot of goal scorers who were out.

Abily: Of course. And we're already scoring more, you can see it. We have quality in front of goal again, which we were lacking in the first half of the season in certain games. For now, since January at least, we're off to a good start. With the returns of those players, Ada, with their technical qualities and their ability to score goals, that will do us a lot of good, obviously.

Journalist: Are certain players too eager to come back, and you have to force them to take things slower? Or is it okay?

Abily: No, they're good. They're players who have a lot of maturity, who are capable of analyzing things. And they know full well what's best for them, for their bodies. So it's really discussions they have with the medical staff, with the physical fitness trainers to come back at the best time and not skip any steps. But they have to take the necessary time without delaying it indefinitely, because after a while if they can come back, they need to come back. But no, they're really mature, and they know what they want.

Journalist: And their form at the moment, Jules, how is it?

Jules: Well, it's going pretty well. 2023 is working out pretty well for Camille Abily and Sonia Bompastor's players. Five games, five wins. 20 goals scored, 0 conceded, because we talk a lot about the attack, but we need to highlight the defensive solidarity. Back to the first place in the D1 Arkema after the 4-4 draw between Fleury and Paris Saint-Germain and a [Lyon] win against Montpellier. And a qualification through to the quarterfinals in the Coupe de France. Everything is going well.

Journalist: I know that tactically you're really focused on the offense, but the clean-sheets must feel good, too.

Abily: It's part of our objectives. We conceded too many goals in the first half of the season. And it's true that Sonia [Bompastor], who is a former defender, was more annoyed by it than I was. No, but it was actually a really important thing for us. And I think one of our strengths last year was how we defended, recover the ball quickly and high so that we could throw ourselves forward. We scored a lot of goals like that. We need to keep that. I'll add that our ball possession and transitioning is improving as well.

Journalist: And we got the first place back, the qualification for the next round in the Coupe de France. Mentally, that is all doing a lot of good.

Abily: Yes, it's all good. It's true that it was a gift. We need to be honest about that, the fact that Fleury was able to draw with PSG was a gift. I watched the game, it was a real gift, Paris [Saint-Germain] should have won 100 times over. But it's like that.

Journalist: it's as we said before, the standing wasn't going to last. That's what you were saying. One has to take advantages of another's misfortune.

Abily: What's is good that -

Jules: - anyone can lose.

Abily: You just have to look at earlier in the season, the game against Guincamp [Lyon drew 0-0]. I still find it difficult to swallow. We should have won 100 times over, we didn't score, we were talking about efficiency earlier. But it's good. But what's especially good is that after the bad result for Paris [Saint-Germain], we were able to beat Montpellier at home. And that was important actually to get back that first place, because that way we held the cards in our hands.

Journalist: Holding the cards in our hards. We're going to continue with questions for Camille.

Jules: Yes, with another person who wants to ask a question. Here you are going to use your imagination and football analysis. But we're not worried for you.

Staff member: Camille, I have a quick question for you. You're the poster child for pretty football. How would you describe the characteristics of your favorite footballer?

Abily: It's okay, it's not too hard.

Journalist: You can't list 10 qualities, you have to pick four.

Jules: Four?

Abily: I'll pick the three most important and go from there. First of all, football intelligence. Before even being technical, it's positioning, it's the ability to create uncertainty for the opponent by your positioning. And with football intelligence comes the knowledge of how to create a good pass, at the right place and at the right time. For that you do need the technical qualities, because without that it's difficult. And the last thing for me, which I think is important, is the mental aspect. It's maybe not a pure football quality but still. We see it now that - well I guess before, but even more so now, the mental aspect is so important, it's so important go hard, never give up. And with the young players especially, it's an important message.

Journalist: We'll talk about it in a few minutes, this idea of transmitting ideas. A word on that mentality, of being able to have that winning mentality as well, that's important too.

Abily: Of course. Completely. That's - it's the hatred of losing. When I talk about mentality, it's that. The hatred of losing. People often ask me - I hate losing more than I appreciate winning. I will do anything to not be in the losing position. It's about that. I lost the ball, that's a failure, I need to win it back. You have to push yourself over and over.

Journalist: When we talk to players who have won championships, they all have that trait in common. You celebrate the win one night, it's over and done with, but it takes longer to recover from a loss.

Abily: It takes longer. Even now when I am seeing the replays, it bothers me.

Journalist: Camille, Camille, we didn't want to offend you. Jules, you see what you did? No, but that's interesting. We're going to talk a little bit about what's coming up.

[Discussion about the upcoming schedules]

#all good love stories start in the rain #Camille Abily

0 notes

nerdzzone · 3 years

Text

Only For A Moment: October + November [part one]

Summary: A series of shorter one shots from Chris and Whitney’s life together throughout the pandemic. Some happy times, some harder times, some fluff and some things a little more sexy - they work through it all as they try to get settled in their new and blossoming relationship.

Chris Evans x OFC

18+

Part of the Once Bitten/More Hearts series

Only For A Moment: September

Note: I was originally going to post this as one longer one shot, but I’ve split it into two. I haven’t finished writing the last part of the series yet and I’ve had a really bad and busy week so I haven’t had much time to work on it. It’s planned out, I just need to write it, but posting November as two parts gives me more time to finish it.

Thank you to everyone who has read and commented on this story. The support has been amazing!

-----

October 2020

"Hey," I greeted Chris as I poked my head around the door of his office. "Are you busy? Can I talk to you for a sec?"

He put down the script he was reading - something for a project he'd be starting as soon as the pandemic allowed - and nodded his head.

"Sure, what's up?"

I moved into the room, feeling strangely nervous about what I was about to ask.

"How would you feel," I started. "About me going to New York for a weekend for work?"

He raised his eyebrows, seemingly surprised by my inquiry and I rushed to assure him a bit more.

"They sent all the protocols that would be followed along with the job offer and it seems like it would be as safe as it possibly could be these days and I would drive up, not fly, so that would cut down on the chance of exposure a bit too," I assured him. "But I know that there's always a risk at the moment and it affects you and Gray too so I won't go if you're at all concerned."

Chris was smiling by the time I finished my long explanation and I felt a glimmer of hope that he wouldn't shoot down the idea immediately. I missed working and while Chris at least had 'A Starting Point' to focus on and various scripts to read through, I'd been completely out of work for months and I was ready to get back into it.

"Whitney, you don't need to convince me," he assured me. "I trust you. If you think it's safe and you want to do it then go for it."

"Okay, thank you," I let out a breath of relief. "I really do want to do it. I miss working."

"I know what you mean," he agreed. "What's the project?"

I couldn't hold back my grin as I answered that question.

"I get to go hang out with your friends," I informed him. "It's a promo shoot for Sebastian and Mackie's new show."

"Aw, man! That's great," Chris laughed. "Would you mind if I tagged along? I won't get in the way, I'll stay out of the photo shoot, but it would be nice to have a change of scenery."

"You wouldn't be allowed to come to the photo shoot at all," I warned him. "That was part of the protocol - no guests - and I don't know how many places are open there right now, there might not be much for you to do."

"I can keep myself entertained," he shrugged before flashing me a smirk. "We can leave Grayson with my mom, it'll be nice to have an adults only weekend."

"That would be nice," I agreed, matching his smirk as I followed his train of thought. We did fairly well making sure we got some quality time together, but we had to be quiet and quick and we always had the threat of Grayson interrupting in the back of our minds. "It's just a one day shoot so we'd have the Sunday together too."

"That's great," Chris grinned. "It'll be nice to get away."

"It will," I agreed, walking around his desk to lean down and capture his lips in a kiss. "Our first romantic getaway."

He slid his arm around my hips to keep me close as he smiled up at me.

"I can't wait."

November 2020

Leaving Grayson was harder than I anticipated. Considering I used to leave him with Chris every other week, I thought leaving him for a weekend would be easy, but I was a weepy mess. I held it together in front of Grayson so that he didn't get upset too - even though he was completely unbothered as he skipped off into Lisa's house - but once we got in the car, I let a few tears slip.

Of course, Chris teased me about it, but there was something in the way that he slipped his hand in mine and squeezed it reassuringly that told me he was feeling it too. We’d all adjusted to our new normal and Chris and I had really embraced having Gray by our side all the time so while two days was not a ridiculous amount of time to be apart, it felt like a momentous occasion. However, after giving ourselves a few minutes to wallow in the sadness, we agreed to do our best to push those feelings aside. We deserved a weekend away. No matter how much we loved him, parenting twenty-four/seven for almost ten months was hard work especially while trying to build our new relationship.

By the time we arrived in Manhattan in the early evening, our melancholy mood had shifted. The drive, spent playing silly little car games like ‘I Spy’ and singing cheesy duets, had put us in a wonderful mood and kicked off our weekend nicely. It was a fairly long drive though so I let Chris check in while I scampered off to use the restroom in the lobby. He had the keys by the time I found him again and when we got up the room, I was shocked. It was a fancy hotel - Marvel did tend to be quite generous when it came to accommodations - but it wasn't until we walked into the room that I realized we had the penthouse suite.

"Holy shit," I gasped, looking around at the luxurious space and amazing view out over Central Park. "This has to be a mistake, there's no way Marvel would pay for this!"

"No, they wouldn't," Chris smirked as he dropped our bags and moved over to the bottle of champagne that was already chilling in an ice bucket. "But I would."

"What?" I giggled. "What are you talking about? We already had a reservation booked in my name."

"Yeah, and I upgraded it," he grinned. "I just paid the difference between the room Marvel booked and this one."

He popped the champagne and poured it for us before coming to join me at the window and handing me a glass.

"You didn't have to do that, Chris. This is a pretty nice hotel, I'm sure whatever room they booked would have been fine."

"Oh yeah, it would have been fine," he shrugged. "But fine isn't what I'm aiming for this weekend and since we can't do much outside of this hotel anyway, the least I can do is make sure we have a good room."

I was looking forward to getting back to work, but suddenly I wished that I didn't have to as the idea of a romantic weekend hidden away in our gorgeous suite seemed like the best thing in the world. But, I knew we wouldn't have come without an excuse, so I tried to focus on being grateful for the time that we did have together.

Slipping my arm around his waist and stretching up on my toes, I pulled him in for a kiss, trying to convey my gratitude and excitement for the weekend.

"Well, I can think of several things we can do in this room that will keep us very busy," I teased once our lips parted again. "We better get started now or we might run out of time..."

Chris chuckled as he took a sip of his champagne, but shook his head.

"Not yet, Winnie," he denied me, despite his raspy voice. "Why don't you take that champagne and run yourself a nice bath while I order us some room service?"

I felt a frown slide onto my face and I would have been embarrassed at my childish pout had I not been so confused about him turning me down.

"Why?" I asked. "I would have thought you'd be raring to go now that we can finally enjoy ourselves with no interruptions..."

"I am but I want to enjoy it,” Chris informed me, leaning down to nip at my neck before letting his lips hover next to my ear. "I want you relaxed and well-fed so I can take my time while I make you scream my name over and over and over."

His low voice sent shivers down my spine as his plan for the night sent a wave of arousal through me. My mouth suddenly felt dry and my brain forgot how to make words as I choked out an 'okay' and took myself off to the bathroom to do as he'd instructed.

When I wandered out into the living room area of our suite almost forty-five minutes later, I was thoroughly relaxed. Wrapped in a very fluffy white bathrobe that was at least two sizes too big for me, I announced my entrance with a contented sigh. Chris looked up at the sound and let out a laugh.

"What?" I giggled, striking a pose as I had a good idea what he found amusing. "They only had one size."

"You look adorable," he grinned at me. "C'mere, let me top up your drink."

I did as he asked, walking over to where he was sitting and noticed the cart full of food that was next to him. He'd ordered my favourite - mac 'n' cheese - and I felt a rush of love for him when I saw it. A lot of people had teased me over the years, insisting that it was more of a child's dish - something not refined enough for an adult’s palate - but it had always been one of my top choices and I was touched that he'd remembered.

He'd ordered a steak for himself and we both eagerly tucked into our meals, eating until we were almost painfully full and just barely saving enough room for the peanut butter cheesecake that he'd ordered for dessert. That was another favourite of mine and I got a stern warning from Chris - as I moaned through every mouthful - that I needed to control myself until we'd had a chance to digest our large meal. I bit back a smirk, almost tempted to continue my noises of pleasure just to antagonize him, but I reluctantly decided to behave.

After we ate, we curled up on the couch with something meaningless on the TV as we recovered from the large meal. We were half-watching it, half just basking in the contentment of our full stomachs until Chris eventually decided that we'd waited long enough.

My feet were draped over his lap as we lounged and I felt his hands slowly move from lazy stroking the tops of my feet to higher up my ankle. At first, I didn't pay much attention as I mindlessly scrolled through my phone, but as his hand trailed higher up my leg, his intentions became more clear. I fought to keep a straight face as I continued to ignore him even as his hand slid up to my knee. He kept it there for a few moments, rubbing his thumb against my skin, but he quickly lost his patience as I continued playing it cool. Letting out a soft growl, he returned his hands to my feet and with a swift tug, he moved me down the couch.

"Chris!" I giggled as my head slipped from the arm of the couch onto the cushion where my bum had been moments before. "What are you doing?"

"You were ignoring me," he smirked. "So, I took matters into my own hands."

"Maybe I was reading something important," I teased. "You're so rude."

He pulled again, moving my hips up onto his lap.

"I'm rude? We're on a romantic getaway and you're starin’ at your phone."

"Well, maybe you weren't being very interesting."

He chuckled at that, but shook his head.

"You're such a brat," he scolded. "Maybe I should just flip you over and teach you a lesson."

He moved a hand down and pinched my bum to emphasize his point and I gasped as a wave of intrigue flooded through me. Using the back of the couch for leverage, I pulled myself up until I was sitting on his lap, but the positioning was a bit awkward so I shifted and straddled him instead.

"I'm not sure if a spanking from you would be much of a punishment..."

My words made his eyes darken as his hands rubbed up and down my thighs.

"Oh, really?" He questioned and I nodded with a smile. "Well, that is very interesting information to have."

"I'm surprised you haven't brought it up before," I teased. "Since you're such an ass man."

"Shut up," Chris chuckled before forcing me to do so by pressing my lips against his.

It started off as a sweet, playful kiss, but the mood of anticipation between us quickly transitioned it into something more.

His hands moved from my thighs up to my hips as I let mine slide behind him - one rubbing the soft hairs on his neck as the other held the back of his head, keeping it firmly against my own. Our lips parted, letting our tongues bump and glide against each other and I felt a fire started to burn inside of me already.

Our position and the fact that I was wearing nothing, but a bathrobe meant that there was nothing between us other than Chris' jeans. I was pressed bare against him which became apparent when he used his firm grip to pull me even closer towards him. A gasp fell from my lips at the friction the denim caused and Chris pulled back to grin at me.

"Does that feel good?" He pressed my hips forward again as he asked the question and my eyes fluttered shut as I nodded. "Then keep going."

He titled his chin to capture my lips in another kiss as he loosened his grip on me, but his instructions had been clear. Taking matters into my own hands, I started rocking my hips slowly against his enjoying the sparks I felt every time I rubbed against him. I could feel him harden, the bulge underneath me growing bigger with every pass of my hips, and the feeling had me moaning into his mouth. I almost stood up - I almost pulled myself off of his lap and dragged him to the bedroom as my body craved him and wanted him inside me - but I remembered what he'd said. He wanted to wait, to take it slow and savour the experience so, with a smirk to myself, I continued my actions with the knowledge of his growing arousal only adding to my pleasure.

As if Chris could read my mind or feel my misguided sense of control, he tightened his grip again and pressed me even harder against him. I moaned at the sensation, pulling my mouth from his as my head fell backwards. I tried to find something to focus on, something to help me regain a morsel of self-control, but nothing in the room could distract from the pressure that was building quickly as the rough material dragged against my clit. A part of me was embarrassed to be rubbing myself against him like this, but with each thrust of my hips, a much bigger part of me grew too desperate to care.

Taking advantage of my exposed neck, Chris latched his lips onto the skin, nipping and sucking gently before tracing kisses up until his mouth was beside my ear.

"You're almost there, aren't you?" His voice was low and the way my fingers dug into the back of his neck was all the answer I could muster as his hands forced my body to keep up the steady rhythm. "I bet you're almost soakin’ right through my pants. You're so needy. Go on, Winnie, take what you want."

A whimper fell from my lips as his words sent shivers down my spine. My movements, supported by his hands, became even more frantic as I felt my release building to a peak and after a few more shifts against him, I let out a strangled moan as I crashed over the edge.

Chris continued his mumbled words of encouragement as his hands continued to force me to move until I melted against him and let my head flop onto his shoulder. My breath against his neck drew goosebumps up on his skin and I placed a soft kiss on them as I fought to control my breathing.

"How're you feeling?"

I sighed softly in response to Chris' question, fighting to make my brain function enough to form words.

"Wonderful," I purred into his ear after taking a moment to compose myself. "But I'm really dying to have you inside me..."

Without another word, Chris used his grip on my hips to lift me off his lap and onto my feet. My legs felt shaky from the strength of my recent orgasm, but they held me up as I stared down at Chris, a bit stunned by the fast movement. He looked up at me for a brief moment before raising an eyebrow and nodding his head towards our bedroom.

"Do you need me to carry you?" He questioned, his tone laced with sarcasm as he clearly noticed the quiver in my legs. "Or can you walk?"

I giggled and playfully rolled my eyes, but turned towards the bedroom. Trying to regain some semblance of power in the situation, I undid the robe that was still tied around my waist and let it fall to the floor. The action left me completely naked as I walked away and I heard a growl of approval from Chris followed by the sound of him jumping to his feet behind me. I scampered off with him hot on my heels, but he caught me in his grasp when I was a few feet past our bedroom door.

He easily lifted me off the ground and I let out a squeal as he tossed me onto the bed.

"Wow," I giggled as I flopped onto my back, leaning up on my elbows to look at him. "That was a graceful landing, real sexy."

Chris smirked as he pulled his shirt over his head.

"You're always sexy," he insisted, moving to the bed and crawling over me. "I can't get enough of you."

Before I could respond, his mouth was back on mine. I smiled against his lips and took a moment to run my hands over his toned muscles, but quickly moved them down to the belt on his jeans as I was eager to get things moving. Almost immediately, he pulled away with that damn smirk still on his face.

"Not so fast," he warned. "I said we were going to take our time."

"We already did," I whined. "Please, Chris, I want you so bad."

He dipped his head and kissed along my jaw until his lips hovered by my ear.

"And you'll have me," he assured me. "Eventually."

I let out a groan of frustration, but as he trailed his kisses lower until they reached my chest, the groan became one of pleasure. A hand slid up my side until it was level with his head and while his mouth captured one nipple, his fingers pinched the other. I gasped and arched my back up towards him, desperate to be as close to him as possible.

His actions started off soft. His fingers and lips worked in a gentle, almost teasing way that had me almost ready to whine for more, but just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, he increased the pressure. His fingers pinched and tweaked one as he nipped the other and the sensation had my hips pressing up against him almost of their own volition. He chuckled as I lifted a leg to hook it over his hip, pulling him down in an attempt to find any friction as he moved to rest his chin between my breasts.

"You're so impatient," he teased. "I'm not gonna fuck you yet."

His voice was thick and rough from his own aroused state and it only made me more desperate.

"Please, Chris..." I whined. "Why not?"

Chris let his teeth graze against my skin briefly before moving further down my body, my question apparently going unanswered. He kissed his way over my stomach, an affectionate smile appearing on his face as he watched the muscles under his mouth quiver and twitch from his actions. It appeared he was intent on taking his sweet time and I really was about to start begging again when he finally settled between my thighs, pulling my legs to rest over his shoulders.

A snarky comment about him taking so long was on the tip of my tongue, but any attitude I was feeling disappeared as he pressed his tongue against me, licking upwards until he settled against my clit. I couldn't hold back the moans and gasps that poured from my lips from the sensation and for a moment, I worried I was being too loud. However, from the way Chris' fingers dug into my ass to lift me higher against his mouth, he seemed to find it encouraging.

He was focused and determined, his lazy mood from moments earlier seemingly gone and I wasn't complaining as I was already practically dripping on to the bed with need. He knew my body almost better than I did and the way his lips were locked on just the right spot, sucking with just the right pressure was driving me wild.

In a few mere minutes, I was already teetering on the edge, but when I gasped out a warning to Chris, he instantly pulled away.

I lifted my head as I let out a growl and scowled down at him - the cocky smirk on his face only adding to my annoyance.

"What the hell, Chris," I huffed. "Keep going!"

He kissed my thigh as I felt an almost painful ache between my legs.

"Patience, Winnie," he warned me. "You need a lesson in patience."

The overwhelming feeling I felt in response to that comment was frustration, but there was a hint of intrigue as well. I was at his mercy, being teased and toyed with until he decided otherwise and I'd be lying if that knowledge didn't turn me on even more.

"Do you-" I gasped as he blew against the wet place his mouth had been moments before. "Do you want me to beg?"

"It wouldn't hurt," he grinned. "But there is something appealing about the thought of seeing how long I can keep you like this..."

That idea filled me with dread. As enticing as my helplessness in this scenario was, the thought of it lasting more than a few minutes seemed painfully cruel.

"No, please don't," I pleaded. "Please touch me, Chris. Please, please. I need it so bad."

He groaned, letting his forehead rest against my thigh for a moment before looking up to meet my eyes.

"The way you say my name when you're like this drives me crazy."

He moved his hand to flick his thumb over my clit and his name fell from my lips again as a desperate whimper. That seemed to be all he needed to hear as he quickly attached his mouth back to that sweet spot.

Instantly, my hands shot to grip his head as mine fell back against the pillows. He held down my hips that were pushing up towards him, desperate to increase the friction, but it didn't matter. I was so close already, so worked up from his previous actions, that it took no time at all for the pressure he'd built up inside me to boil over as I finally found my release.

As always, he coaxed me through it, only moving back when he was sure my orgasm had faded. By the time it was done, my chest was heaving and Chris dragged himself off the bed, giving me a moment to catch my breath as he rid himself of his jeans and boxers. I smiled at the sight, but I was in a daze. My whole body felt like jelly from the two amazing orgasms I'd just received, but that didn't stop me from the moment of clarity that hit just as he was climbing back over me.

"Wait! Condom."

Chris cursed under his breath before hopping off the bed and quickly rifling through his bag. He found one - which I knew he would as I'd reminded him several times to pack them so we wouldn’t be caught without them in a moment like this - and returned to the bed.

"Hurry," I panted. "I need you."

A quiet growl rumbled from Chris' chest as he quickly tore open the condom wrapper and put it on. I was still sensitive from our previous activities, but as soon as he was on top of me again, I was pressing up towards him. He filled me with an almost insatiable need and it seemed his patience was also thin after being so hard for so long as he slid inside me with impressive speed.

I groaned from the sensation of him filling me so quickly, but any discomfort quickly shifted into pleasure as he rocked his hips against mine. My fingers dug into his shoulders as my legs wrapped around his waist pulling him closer as he quickly established a steady rhythm. As much as he wanted to take his time, his restraint was clearly waning as he kept up a vigorous pace. My over sensitive state and his purposefully angled thrusts, hitting all the right nerves with just the right pressure, had me writing beneath him as I basked in the sensation.

Chris was always rather vocal, but as his moans, grunts and whispers of filthy commentary grew louder and more unrestrained it became clear that he was also edging closer and closer to his peak. His hips snapped with more ferocity and all I could do was hold onto him tightly, giving him all the control and riding the waves of pleasure he was causing.

“I’m close,” he groaned, his voice strained as his breath hit my neck.

Unable to form words, I made a noise that I hoped would convey my agreement and his movements seemed to become even more pointed and more deliberate. With every thrust, he made sure to rub against every sensitive spot inside me and moments later, I felt my release hit me. It felt like every muscle in my body tensed as I quivered and clenched around him, a sound leaving my mouth that was so lustful and unrestrained that I could hardly believe it was coming from me. He gasped out a moan of his own from the sensation of me coming around him and quickened his pace through my orgasm until eventually he stilled, the sound of his pleasure echoing through my ears.

Once we had both recovered, Chris rolled off of me, pulling the condom off and disposing of it in the garbage can next to the bed before he settled on his back, chest heaving from exertion.

I let out a happy sigh as I curled into his side and his arm wrapped around me, pulling me close.

"That was amazing," I smiled, placing a kiss against his chest.

He chuckled, squeezing me even tighter as he answered.

"See? Patience. It makes everything better."

I nipped at the skin underneath my mouth.

"Shut up."

He leaned down to place a kiss on the top of my head and I smiled.

"I love you," he practically whispered in the darkness. "I'm so glad we get this weekend together."

"Me too," I agreed. "I love you too."

He squeezed me closer again as we laid there curled up in each other, basking in our post-orgasmic glow.

No one had ever made me feel the way that Chris did. I’d never felt as safe with anyone, I’d never felt so able to let my guard down, and the physical aspect of our relationship clearly benefited greatly from the closeness that we shared. It was an amazing feeling to know that we were so in tune with each other and that there was so much room to explore the things that made us feel good and, despite being fully satisfied for the time being, I couldn't help but let my mind wander to other things I would be interested in delving into as I drifted off to sleep.

November [part two]

Tags: @maggotzombie @moonlacebeam @mizzzpink @zaylaugh @flowery-mess @flowerjewels @njrronaldo7 @hockeychick10 @partypoison00 @theladybiers @sidepieces @firoozehmoon @patzammit @sparkledfirecracker @mytbel0st @chvntelle-99 @mjey12

#chris evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fan fiction #chris evans fanfic #chris evans smut #chris evans fic #once bitten/more hearts #only for a moment

95 notes · View notes

starryeyes-darkestnights · 3 years

Text

Show Must Go On

Part 6 of We Dance Together Now

An O’Knutzy au where Leo and Logan are still playing for the Lions, but Finn is a musician/grad student they met by chance on a roadie in Montreal.

Read Part 5 here:

Part 5 - Gold Rush

I also stuck this up on AO3, my username there is the same :)

As always, these beautiful characters and their world belong to the incredible @lumosinlove ! Her work is amazing, and I’m so happy to get to play with some of the people and places she’s created <3

The songs I referenced in here are Show Must Go On- Queen (briefly), I Wanna Dance With Somebody- Whitney Houston, and Ocean Eyes- Billie Eilish.

I hope you like it!!!

@sunflowerfox87 thanks for requesting to be tagged in updates! :)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Logan

Logan stood nervously in front of the door to Finn and Leo’s apartment, wishing for the hundredth time that day that he hadn’t given in to Leo’s badgering to come by before Finn’s show tonight.

He was not looking forward to dealing with the consequences of his spiral last night. But he also didn’t want things to stay messed up between them, the way they had been that morning.

What he did want, was to pretend the whole thing had never happened. So, he’d spent his day searching for reasons to delay coming over, prolonging the amount of time he could spend not dealing with it.

But eventually he had run out of excuses, so now he was here. He could hear laughter coming from inside. That seemed like a good sign. He reached up and knocked before he could talk himself out of it, listening to the familiar sound of footsteps crossing the entryway.

Then Leo was there, smiling and holding open the door, still in the sweats he wore home from practise.

“Hey Tremz, come on in.”

Logan never been good at faking smiles, so he just nodded down at Leo’s legs, “Nice pants. You should have told me it was dress-down day at the Burrow.”

Leo just gave him a sarcastic look. “Ha ha. Very funny. I’m on my way to get changed now. Finn’s in the kitchen. Eat something if you’re hungry. I’ll be right back.”

He seemed like his usual self. That made Logan feel a bit better. Maybe he’d overreacted. Maybe everything was fine.

Leo left for his room, and Logan headed over to where Finn was finishing up the dishes in the kitchen.

“Hey, Fish.” He took a seat at the island, hoping he sounded normal too.

Finn turned at the greeting, his face lighting up when he caught sight of Logan.

“Lo! Hey. You’re here. How were the kids?”

Part of Logan’s procrastination that afternoon had involved volunteering to spend several hours playing a pickup game with the Dumais kids and their friends at the outdoor rink near their house- something he liked, but certainly wouldn’t have brushed off Leo and Finn for any other day.

“They’re good. Katie’s getting pretty cocky on the ice. I think she’s gonna end up as a captain one day.”

“Ah. Good for her.”

“Yeah.”

An awkward silence fell. Finn fidgeted with a dish towel, smiling nervously at him. Finn was never nervous.

Ok, so things were definitely not fine. Logan felt guilty as he remembered the laughter he had heard through the door. He didn’t want to be the cause of another ruined evening.

Leo reappeared at the other end of the kitchen island. “Do you want a drink, Tremz?”

“I’m sorry.” Logan blurted out.

Leo and Finn both looked surprised at his apology.

“Sorry… for what, exactly?” asked Leo, looking confused.

Logan was already regretting saying anything. But he was committed now. “Uh… for this morning. And last night, I guess. I was in a weird ass mood, and I didn’t mean to be weird to you guys too. I’m good now, though, so Finn, you can stop being all nervous around me. I don’t want to fuck up the evening. This is stupid.”

Finn jumped in to reassure him. “What? No, Logan, no, we were all weird this morning, don’t worry about that. That’s not what…”

He stopped suddenly, and shot a glance at Leo, looking even more nervous than he had a few moments before. Leo nodded back, subtly, but Logan caught it.

Now he was confused. What the hell was that?

He watched as Finn took the few steps around the island to stand next to Leo, who was looking at Logan with careful eyes.

“Tremz, we wanted to talk to you about something, if that’s ok?”

It was an innocuous question, but something in Leo’s voice put Logan on hyper alert. He jerked his attention to Finn, who was looking nervously up at Leo. He felt a chill go straight through his chest and settle in the pit of his stomach.

Oh.

He forced his eyes down to where their fingers were touching on the countertop.

Shit.

He stood up quickly, his chair screeching loudly as it slid back on the tiles. He couldn’t look away from their hands.

Leo followed his gaze down and yanked his arm back toward himself. “Lo…”

“Non.” He interrupted, “Non. Désolé. It’s good. That’s good, I- I am happy for you guys.” He swung his eyes wildly around the room, looking for an escape. He needed to leave, to get out, but Leo and Finn were standing between him and the front door.

He backed up a few steps, nearly tripping on the chair he didn’t remember knocking over as he remembered the balcony door. He grabbed for it, yanking it open and rushing out, sliding it closed behind himself.

He slid down the wall next to the door. Out of sight. Déjà vu. Just like that morning.

He was dizzy.

Breathe, Logan. He sucked in the fresh air. Once. Twice. Three times.

He tried to let the evening breeze calm him. He was making this into a scene again. He needed to pull it together before it became a thing.

He tried to reason with himself. You saw this coming. You know how well they fit together. You’ve suspected it since Ilvermorny.

He had even thought he would be ok with it.

He hadn’t known it would feel like this, though.

Just get it together. Make it through the night. That’s all you have to do. You can do it.

He gave himself to the count of 5 to compose himself, and then stood and slid the door back open. He stayed where he was, though, and waited for them to join him. He could do this, but he couldn’t do it inside, where he couldn’t breathe.

When Leo and Finn came, neither of them stood between him and the door, and Logan was grateful.

“Lo…” Leo’s voice was hesitant. “You didn’t let us finish.”

“Oui, je sais, I’m sorry, I was just surprised.” He plastered a smile on his face. “But, uh, congratulations?”

Finn shook his head. “That’s not really what we wanted to talk to you about. Or, I mean, it is, but that’s not all of it.”

It seemed to Logan like that first bombshell was more than enough information for the day, but he didn’t want to make this worse, so he went along with it anyway. “Ok. What else?”

Leo took back over, speaking slowly, like he was considering each word before he said it. “So… this afternoon, Finn and I talked, and we realized that maybe this—” He gestured between the three of them. “Us. Isn’t what we thought it was.”

Logan wasn’t following. Finn noticed and tried to explain.

“I told Leo, or, well, I guess I didn’t tell him, I kind of just sang at him, but it mostly got the point across, and—”

“Finn.” Leo cut him off, gently.

Finn flushed. “Right. Sorry. The point,” his voice softened, “is that I made him aware that the feelings I had for him were more than just friendship. Which you figured out. But we also talked about the fact that… well, we know you feel the same way about him too.”

Finn’s voice was gentle, cautious but his words cut through Logan anyway. He felt the panic start to rise again. Fuck.

“What are you talking about?” Logan knew his words were sharper than they needed to be, but he couldn’t bring himself to temper them.

“Logan, it’s ok. I promise. That’s how I feel about you too.” Leo rushed, all of his previous caution gone. “And it’s how I feel about Finn, and I also know that’s how you feel about Finn. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other, and I’ve been looking at you both the same way. You just didn’t notice. None of us noticed.”

Logan was frozen in place, his eyes zigzagging wildly between the two men standing across from him.

They knew. They knew.

“What the fuck?”

He couldn’t deny it. He didn’t know if he wanted to deny it.

“Leo. Finn. What the fuck??”

Finn took a step forward, wide brown eyes completely unguarded as they locked onto Logan’s. His vulnerability sent Logan’s heart spinning. “We wanted to talk to you. We wanted to see if you wanted this too. If there was a way, if there was any way, that we could make this work. All of us. Do you think there could be?”

All of us. Logan hadn’t known that was a thing that could happen. But now that the idea was in front of him, it felt right. Like it had been right all along. His heart soared. Of course he wanted it too. With every fibre of his being, he wanted it. They liked him. They wanted him.

He could never have them.

Reality came crashing down around him.

He forced himself to answer Finn’s question.

“It doesn’t matter what I want, Finn. I can’t—” He looked at Leo. He would understand. “Leo. It can’t work out like this.”

“It can, Logan. As long as we are all on the same page, it can.”

Leo didn’t understand. Suddenly Logan felt very alone. His temper flared.

“You know it’s not that easy, Leo.” He snapped. “It doesn’t work like that! It can’t work like that. We are in the NHL, Nut! The NHL. We’ve worked our whole lives for this, and you’ve seen how people are. Look at what happened to Cap!”

Leo hadn’t been there at All-Stars after everything that happened to Sirius and Loops. He didn’t see how bad it got, how many phone calls Sirius had to take from Coach, how scared he was that entire weekend. Logan had taken his phone and deleted every social media app he had, but he had still been bombarded with hate from hockey fans and, worse, from people within the league itself.

Leo’s voice was firmer now. “Exactly, Logan. Look at Sirius. At his example. He is our captain. He is our gay captain, who is still very much playing in the NHL. And not just playing. He’s leading the league.”

“That is the POINT, Nut! He is the captain. He is arguably the best player in the league right now. And there were still that many people trying to kick him out! This is my second season. You’re a rookie. Do you really think people are going to go to bat for us like they did for him? For the two newest, youngest players on the team? We are expendable!”

He had thought about this. About the impossibility of it all. From the moment he had recognized his feelings for Leo, he had known it would never work.

He waited for Leo to get it now, to agree. But instead, Leo just moved to lean against the wall next to him, keeping a few feet between them. His voice was gentle when he replied.

“Yes, Logan. I do think they would go to bat for us. I know Sirius would. Coach would. Alice would. I’m not saying we should do anything publicly, but behind the scenes, you know that they would work to help protect us in the case that anything ever came out in the future.”

He shifted, turning so that he could look Logan in the eye for what he said next. “It was never going to be easy for people like us, Tremz. I’m terrified too. I never meant to be in this position either, but we are, and… what happened with Sirius…” He shook his head, his gaze dropping. It was still hard for him to think about too, Logan realized. “…what happened with Sirius showed us that the people who matter, the people we need to have our backs, will. We are allowed to live, Logan.”

Logan had never wanted something to be true so badly. He ran over Leo’s words in his mind. We are allowed to live.

“I don’t want to lie, Leo. I don’t want to hide. That’s not who I am.”

“We don’t have to. We can tell the people who matter, Lo. It’s nobody else’s business. It’s only about what makes us comfortable. What makes us happy. Neither of us are ever going to push you into anything you don’t want, or that you aren’t ready for. I just don’t ever want you to think that you can’t have what will make you happy. You deserve to be happy. Whether it’s with us or not.”

Logan listened to the kindness in Leo’s voice, and felt the fight drain out of him. He was so tired of constantly battling against himself. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. That fire that always burned inside him had fizzled out, leaving him with nothing but the feelings he had been trying to push away for months. Feelings for the two people who were standing right in front of him, right now, telling him that they wanted him too. That he could have them, too. That he could have this, and his career, and it could work.

He wanted to believe it.

He looked up at Leo, beside him. At Finn, standing quietly across from him. He tried to imagine walking away from them right now. It made him feel sick.

Finn spoke into the silence. “Logan, I can’t pretend to understand what your job is like. And I won’t try. But I do need you to know that I am here, and I’m not going anywhere, no matter what you decide to do. I’ll always be here, in whatever capacity you need.”

Logan’s throat tightened at Finn’s words and suddenly he knew that he was done. It was over. He was going to trust them. Relief flooded through him as he accepted it.

He didn’t want to talk anymore, but he knew they needed to hear him say it. So he pulled together as much composure as he could and tried his best.

“I didn’t want to want you. I tried so hard not to want you. I told myself so many times that I could do it, that I could keep my feelings under control.” His voice was shaky. He looked at Leo. At Finn. “But you took over everything. Everything.”

He breathed out the next words as he felt himself moving closer to Finn. “I don’t want to fight it anymore. I can’t- I just want—” He hoped they could understand what he was trying to say.

It seemed that they did, because suddenly they were both right in front of him, and one of his hands was behind Finn’s neck, and the other was desperately reaching out for Leo and finally- finally- he stopped fighting against himself.

He pulled Finn to him, and then Finn’s lips were on his lips, and Leo’s were on his jaw, and all of his senses were lit up like a lightning storm. In that moment, his entire world was just that apartment, that balcony, those boys. He let himself get lost in the feeling of it all, pulling away from Finn to connect with Leo, pulling away from Leo to let them connect with each other. Everything was so bright.

It felt like forever, and not long enough, when they finally took a moment to catch their breath. Logan let his eyes roam over their tangled forms from where he was still wrapped around Leo, and let out a quiet, wonder-filled laugh. Leo turned to him and tilted his head in question, his chest still heaving where Finn was resting against it. Logan just leaned in and kissed him again, gently this time. He leaned their foreheads together and touched his fingertips to Leo’s lips. “Quand je t'embrasse… je vois des couleurs.”

Leo’s shining blue eyes softened at that, and Logan felt his grip tighten around his waist before Finn, never a fan of being left out, started to complain. “Hey! Don’t speak French. That looked cute. I want to hear the cute things! What did he say?”

Logan laughed, and Leo grinned at him mischievously before turning back to Finn. “Logan’s vision goes all technicolour when he kisses us.”

Logan’s jaw dropped mid-laugh. “Nutty! That is not what I said! It was much nicer when I said it. You make it sound like a bad Austin Powers scene.” He pouted.

Finn laughed back and ran a thumb along Logan’s lower lip, erasing the pout. “Well, if you would speak English in the first place, you wouldn’t have to rely on a faulty translator.”

It was Leo’s turn to protest. “Hey! I’m not faulty!” He paused, fighting back a smirk. “I’m freestyling.”

“Oh, fuck off!” Logan laughed and gave him a shove. Leo was just reaching out to retaliate when Finn’s phone interrupted, suddenly blasting Show Must Go On at an absolutely obnoxious volume.

All three of them startled, Leo and Logan freezing with Logan’s hand still twisted in the shoulder of Leo’s shirt. Finn frantically spun around, looking for the source of the music.

He finally spotted his phone on an end table and scooped it up, silencing it with a relieved sigh before looking over to where Logan was staring at him incredulously.

“… what?” He looked a little suspicious as he tucked his phone back into his pocket.

“What do you mean, ‘what’? Was that an alarm?? Why don’t you have beeps like a normal person?? Merde, Harz, you scared the shit out of us.”

“It’s Finn, Lo. He used a song to start this party, of course he’s going to use one to end it.” Leo’s voice was playful. Finn wrinkled his nose at them.

“Beeps are boring.” He crossed his arms defensively. “Music is more fun. And it’s my reminder that I have a show tonight. Hence—” He swept his arms dramatically out over the balcony railing and bowed to an imaginary crowd, “—'Show Must Go On’.” He spun back to smile brightly at the two of them. “It’s perfect. You’re just a hater.”

Leo laughed, but Logan was still stuck on what Leo had said.

“Hold on, Nut, back up. You said he used a song to start this party? Finn said he sang things at you. Can I know the story?” He wanted to know how they had gotten up the nerve to set this in motion.

“Oh,” Leo turned to Finn, who nodded even though he suddenly looked uncharacteristically self-conscious, “I kind of walked in on Finn playing a song about us this afternoon. When I got back from practise.”

“A song about us? Like, he wrote it? About us?” That was not what he expected. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it- after all, he hadn’t exactly been his best self around Finn recently.

“Ya, that was pretty much my reaction while I listened, too. That’s what finally made us talk about all of this. It’s a beautiful song. Prettier than either of us, that’s for sure.” He teased

“Hey, speak for yourself, I am very pretty.” Logan retorted reflexively, but he was distracted.

He had been watching Finn as Leo talked, and he noticed him doing the thing he always did when they brought up his music, twisting his hands together and looking anywhere but at them- looking, in fact, like he would rather be doing anything else than talking about his music. He’d never asked him about it before, but he’d always wondered.

“Finn?”

“Hmm?” Finn looked up, a smile returning like it had never left.

“Why do you do that? Look away when we talk about your music?”

“Oh. Umm…” Finn looked surprised, his eyes going wide before darting back down again. He opened his mouth as if to continue, but closed it again without speaking.

Logan felt Leo’s hand tighten around his shoulder, but he ignored the gentle warning and barrelled on.

“You’re good, Finn. Like, really good. As in, you could do this as a career, good. So why are you so shy when we say that?”

Finn didn’t look back up, and when he replied, his voice was small, and quiet. Not at all like Finn.

“I can’t, actually.” He scuffed his shoe against a mark on the balcony floor.

Logan tilted his head, puzzled. “Can’t what?” He prodded gently.

Finn took a breath and looked back up a Logan, his jaw set. “I can’t do music professionally. I tried. That’s why I moved to Gryffindor. I spent the first few years here only going to school part-time, and spending as much time as I could just writing, and practising, and playing any venue that would have me. I have knocked on every single record label door in this city. Multiple times. They don’t want me. And it took me a long time to understand that. So, I gave that dream up. Now I just play for fun. For me.”

Logan was stunned. “Finn, I’m sorry, I—”

Finn cut him off, his expression softening. “No, Lo, you don’t have anything to be sorry for. I should have told you guys that before. It’s not like it’s a big secret. I just… it’s hard. It’s hard to hear people say nice things about my music when I know it’s not good enough. You know? So I don’t always like talking about it. And it’s also… I mean, you’re both professional athletes. I’m so proud of you guys all the time, because you know what it’s like to work hard for what you want and to actually achieve it. And I didn’t want you to think less of me because I couldn’t do that.”

“Finn…” Leo started to reach out, but pulled his hand back. “I am so sorry if we’ve ever done anything to give you the impression that we would ever judge you. I promise, nothing you’ve ever said to us, today or any other day, could ever make me think less of you.”

Finn chuckled a bit, still looking at the ground. “I know. Logically, I know that. But sometimes it takes my heart a while to catch up to my brain.” He studied them for a moment before continuing. “I am really glad that you like my songs though. That makes me happy.”

“Like them?” Leo scoffed. “Finn, I threw away every rule I’d given myself and kissed you after you sang to me. I more than like your music.”

Finn actually laughed then, finally, and stepped toward them. Logan watched him reach out for their hands and slide their fingers together. He rubbed his thumb along the edge of Finn’s calloused fingers, imaging the guitar strings underneath them.

“That means a lot. Really. It took me a while to be able to write again after I finally realized it wasn’t going to happen.” He chewed his lip as he considered his words. “I was in a pretty dark place. It was Molly, actually, at the Burrow, who convinced me to let the music pull me out of it. And she was right, of course. Once I stopped trying to think of every lyric as a job application, I was able to actually enjoy it again, to remember why I loved it in the first place. It’s how I sort out my thoughts when everything is too messy in my head.”

Something shook loose in Logan’s memory then. “Wait… that song. The one you played the first night we came to see you here. There was a line… ‘I remember nights when art didn’t feel like work’. You said it was about moving to Gryffindor but… is this what it was actually about? Is that what you felt like?”

Finn looked surprised. “You remember that?”

“Yes. I also remember telling you that I liked that song and wanted to download it, so you should have known I would remember it.” he teased.

Finn grinned at him. “I thought you were just being nice. And yes, that is what that song was about. But, if it’s ok, I don’t really want to talk about it anymore right now.” His expression grew mischievous as he pulled himself closer to Logan, and to Leo. “I have two beautiful, perfect men standing on my balcony that I would very much like to—”

His phone blared from his pocket again.

“No!” Finn yanked it out of his pocket, silenced it, and threw it grumpily onto the chair cushion. “Rude. How did that go by so fast?”

Leo laughed, reaching his hands above his head for a lazy stretch before pulling Finn’s head in for a hug. “So, is that our siren call? Do we have to head out now?”

Finn sighed, deeply and dramatically. “Yes. The time has come, my friends. It’s to the plank we go.”

“Oh, shut up,” Logan grinned, ruffling Finn’s hair. “You love the Burrow.”

“I would love it more if it wasn’t interrupting this.”

“We have all night to do more of this.” Leo reminded him. “Lo and I have the day off tomorrow, and you don’t have class on the weekends.”

“That’s true.” Finn perked up. “You always were the smart one, Marigold. Ok, let’s go!”

Finn ducked out of Leo’s reach as the younger boy tried to retaliate against the nickname Finn only ever used to annoy him. The two of them were laughing now, but Logan felt his anxiety start to rise up at the thought of leaving the apartment, of going into a public space.

He reached out an arm to catch Finn on his way through the door. “Wait. Just… one second.”

Finn and Leo both stopped, looking at him curiously. He suddenly felt self-conscious.

“Um, before we go, can we just… can we agree that this is just between us? Just for now?”

Leo moved to stand directly in front of him, right next to Finn. He waited until Logan met his eyes, and then held them, steady.

“Logan. Of course. We told you we have no intention of doing anything you aren’t ready for and we meant it. And you’re not alone. I don’t think either of us is ready for this to be between anyone but us right now either.”

Finn nodded his agreement. “For everyone else, we are just three best friends, going to a coffee shop to watch a show and drink some liquid sugar. It’s us, Logan. You’re safe with us. I promise.” He grinned and shoved Logans hat down over his eyes. “Now seriously. Let’s go before I kiss one of you again and miss my start time.”

---

Finn

It was the longest show of Finn’s life. He tried his best to be in the moment, but all he could think of was how badly he wanted to be back at the apartment, with the two men he absolutely could not look at the entire time he played.

He had glanced over when he had finished his set-up, taking a moment before starting to just remind himself that they were real, that all of this was real.

Leo had been laughing at something Logan said, and Logan was watching him from across the table with a look that tugged at Finn’s heartstrings. He would never get over it- these two athletes with their strong postures and broad shoulders, their open smiles, and beautiful eyes. One so kind, and steady, and sure, the other so wild and passionate. And they wanted him. It was insane. Leo had noticed Finn watching and sent him a smile that made his heart skip, and Finn knew if he wanted to get through the set, he couldn’t look over again. It was a weird moment for him, as he remembered how awful it had been the first time he’d thought that exact thing, in this same place, at the first show they had ever come to see him play. This time he had a much happier reason to avoid looking their way.

Finn worked his way through the setlist he had rehearsed, trying his best to be present and give the audience his best. It was an easy enough set, all cover songs he had played a hundred times before. He decided at the last minute to throw in a new cover of one of his favourite Eagles songs, taking a quick glance to see that Leo caught the joke. He did, and Finn watched him lean over to explain it to Logan before he had to look away.

For once, the boys were ready to go immediately after he finished cleaning up. He stuck around long enough to give Molly a hug, feeling particularly sentimental toward her after that afternoon, and then they were all piled into his car and blasting Leo’s 90s pop playlist with the windows down.

Finn felt lighter than he had in a very long time. The weight of his secrets was finally off his shoulders, and the knowledge that when they got home he could kiss the boys currently screaming along to Christina Aguilera in the passenger seats of his car eclipsed all his other worries.

They managed to keep it together for the entire walk up from the parking lot, but as soon as the door shut behind them, Logan had Finn pinned up against it. Leo linked back up to the Bluetooth system and Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody blared through the apartment. Finn laughed into Logan’s mouth when he heard it, pushing him forward into the living room and shoving the coffee table out of the way as Leo danced up behind them.

Leo grabbed Logan’s hands and drew him in for his own kiss, dipping him low and spinning around to twirl him away and pull Finn in. The air was electric as they moved: spinning and touching and kissing and jumping. Too full of dizzy energy to stay in one spot for more than the amount of time it took to pull in close and explode apart. They were sweating and panting and laughing in the dim lighting, reveling in each other’s touch as they danced together in a way they’d never been able to before.

At one point, Finn had tried to step back from the chaos, to let Leo and Logan have a moment while he tried to take it all in. But Leo had reeled him back in close instead, pulling Logan in to sandwich him from the other side.

“We dance together now.” he had said, voice low and confident in their ears.

His words had lit Finn up, set his mind reeling with everything that had happened in the past 12 hours, with the feeling of having both boys there in his arms. He didn’t think he would ever be calm again.

But as the night wore on the energy gradually shifted, and by the time Ocean Eyes came up on the playlist, Finn was finally slowing down. Logan was next, dropping his head to Finn’s shoulder, and then Leo wrapped his long arms around both of them, swaying together as the lyrics washed over them. They were quiet together then, just breathing in each other’s presence. Finn buried his face in Logan’s dark curls, and felt Logan reaching for Leo’s hand. Leo had his chin resting on Finn’s head, and Finn had never felt more right than he did in that moment. He sang along quietly to the lyrics, relishing the way Logan sank further into him as he did.

As the final notes played out, Leo pulled away long enough to switch off his phone. They collapsed together on the couch then, somehow even more wound together than they had been before. Finn wasn’t sure he ever wanted to be farther apart from them than this, ever again.

---

Leo

The three of them sat in silence for a few moments, hands roaming and fingers tangling together as they settled down. Leo couldn’t stop pressing kisses to Finn’s temple.

It was Logan who eventually broke their silence, sighing contentedly from where he was burrowed low in between them.

“I like this apartment.” His voice was soft as his fingertips traced shapes on Leo’s leg.

Leo caught Finn’s eye before the two of them looked over at him.

“You do?” Finn asked.

“Ya.” He paused for moment, looking thoughtful. “It reminds me of the woods, back home.”

That made Finn smile. “Lo, we don’t have so much as a potted plant in here.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Logan looked a little embarrassed then. “I meant like, mentally. I don’t know. It’s kind of stupid, actually. Never mind.”

Leo pulled Logan a little tighter. “Hey, no. Keep going. We want to know.”

“We do.” Finn agreed, running a finger down the length of Logan’s nose before leaning down to kiss the tip of it. “Please tell us?”

Logan rolled his eyes, but he was smiling again now. He shoved himself up to actually sit properly on the couch between them. “I just… at home, when I’m hiking or camping, it’s just quiet.”

Finn turned to fully face Logan, his arms wrapped around his legs and chin resting on his knees. Leo leaned against his end of the couch as they listened to Logan talk.

Logan continued. “It’s just you, you know? There are no other voices around to get in your head, nothing to worry about or stress over, and it’s… free, I guess. I’m free in the woods” He paused for a moment, looking like he was trying to decide whether to say more. Leo ran a reassuring hand down his arm and wove their fingers together.

Logan smiled down to where they connected, took a breath, and continued, “It’s the only place where I didn’t have to pretend. Where I could let myself feel all of the things I needed to feel. Admit things to myself that I never could have when there were other people around. Other reminders of the real world, you know?” He looked up at Leo. “It’s the place where I finally accepted that what I felt for you was much, much different than what I was supposed to feel for a teammate. It’s a safe place.”

Leo was looking at Logan. This impossibly beautiful boy. Logan was looking back at him, evergreen eyes open and unguarded. It made Leo’s stomach flip. He reached out for Logan then, and pulled him close.

Finn spoke up, quietly, from where he still sat. “And that’s what you feel when you’re here?”

Logan nodded. “Ya. That’s how I feel when I’m here.”

Leo watched Finn melt, sliding down the couch to hug Logan from the other side. “That makes me so happy. I want this to always be that place for you.” He whispered, twining his fingers with Leo’s where they rested on Logan’s chest.

“You’re that place for us, Lo.” Leo pressed their hands firmly against Logan’s heartbeat. “You make us feel safe too.”

After a moment, Logan cleared his throat and spoke again.

“Those woods are also the first place I accidentally drunk-peed on a skunk.”

That pulled a surprised, and probably highly unattractive, snort out of Leo.

Finn pulled back to look at Logan incredulously, “I’m sorry, the FIRST time?!?”

Logan just grinned in response.

“Please tell me that’s a real story.”

“It is.”

“Tell it to us, right now!” Finn demanded gleefully.

Logan laughed again as he leaned back into the couch cushions to start his story. Leo took a second to just take it all in. Logan, care-free and laughing. Finn, eyes glowing with delighted anticipation.

He sent out a silent thank you to whatever part of the universe had worked its magic in the last 24 hours, and settled in to listen, arms wrapped around both of the boys.

His boys.

---

#lumosinlove #sweater weather lumosinlove #Coast To Coast #o'knutzy

85 notes · View notes

cjsinkythoughts · 3 years

Text

Erased From the Stars: Chapter 2

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 4254

Series Warnings: Toxic Relationships, Cheating, Physical Abuse, Underage Drinking, Drug Use (marijuana), Motor Vehicle Accident, Cursing

Chapter Warnings: Cursing, Mentions of Sex, Cocky Bucky, Nervous Bucky, Bucky Bucky

A/N: I actually have ideas for this story, so I’m cranking it out! I definitely wasn’t expecting to post today, but here we are! This chapter has a lot of dialogue and some of Reader’s thoughts, but not much action, yet. We’re kind of still getting in the roll of things, it still being the first week of college and all that. We do get to meet Bucky, though! Next chapter we’ll meet mostly everyone else, and there will be more things happening other than classes and work. I kinda feel like I’m rushing these first few chapters, so I’m sorry about that, but it’s mostly introductions and setting up the story and I’m the type of person who likes writing the climax and only the climax. So this is steady growth for me.

I do want to point out the series warnings, just in case! I don’t want anyone feeling uncomfortable or being triggered while reading this so please take those seriously as it will happen later on in the story! Thank you!

Once again, this isn’t beta’d so please excuse any mistakes! Thank you for reading and please enjoy!

Erased From the Stars Masterlist

cjsinkythoughts’ Masterlist

You woke up in a much better mood on Tuesday, having gotten more sleep than the previous night, especially considering how tired you were when you got home past midnight from working at Shield. You crashed as soon as your head hit the pillow.

You took your time getting ready and eating breakfast, saying bye to Christine and the kids, leaving first that time since your Public Speaking class started before Kayla’s preschool did.

Which you were late to.

Of course as soon as you let your guard down, thinking you’d be fine since your first day was fine, you weren’t fine.

Fortunately, you were only a few minutes late and didn’t miss anything, since today would be another day of going over rules and course requirements for the two new classes you had.

Public Speaking was the worst. You’re older - and only - sister, Kimberly, convinced you to take the class after saying it was one of her favorites. Of course, you forgot that you and Kim were very different people. For starting at 9:05, it was too early of a class, especially when the whole point was, you know, public speaking. You hadn’t done anything yet, but one glance at the plans your professor had for the semester and you were dreading it already.

Your next class was a US History lecture, which started fifteen minutes after Public Speaking. You were again late because you severely underestimated how far the buildings were and your professor let you out a bit later than you anticipated.

You practically threw all your stuff into your bag the moment he dismissed you and sprinted out.

Arriving, you tried slipping in as silently as possible, but the door slammed shut, rather loudly, making you cringe. You felt yourself heat up as several pairs of eyes snapped towards you, but luckily the professor, Coulson you remembered, was just gathering papers and hadn’t started yet. Ignoring your peers - none of whom you knew and you weren’t sure if that made it worse or not - you shuffled over to the nearest empty seat a few rows down and to the right. You were surprised and extremely grateful to find it was an aisle seat.

Pulling out your laptop, you huffed when it wouldn’t turn on. You hadn’t used it in your previous class, meaning it was dead before, but you could’ve sworn you plugged it in last night. Whatever. You were fine with pen and paper.

“Aw shit.” You resisted the urge to smack your head on the table as you dug through your bag. Seriously?! You forgot to pack a pen?! That couldn’t have been your only pen, right?!

This is why you were anxious. Next morning, you swore you’d get up early and triple check to make sure you had everything.

You quietly threw your bag to the ground and slumped in your seat, your arms crossed. That meant you couldn’t even doodle! You had to sit there for over an hour and listen to this guy talk about another syllabus. Joy.

Suddenly, something hit you in the back of your head. You rubbed where it hit and looked down at your feet, eyebrows knitting together at the scrunched up ball of paper sitting there. “Psst.” Another hit to the head made you whip around, glaring at the culprit.

“What?” You hissed before faltering. Damn. Now that was one hell of a specimen.

Steel blue eyes crinkled at the corner as pink lips pulled up into an entertained grin, pearly whites on display. Sharp jawline covered with light scruff. Fluffy chestnut hair styled with the perfect amount of gel fell a little past his ears, with a single pesky strand falling in his eyes. The white shirt he was wearing was loose with a low collar, a leather jacket thrown over it. You could see the combat boots from underneath the table. He was a pretty boy, yeah, but you hung out with (*cough cough* dated) enough guys dressed like him in high school to know his game.

“Need a pen?” He offered in a whisper, holding up the said object.

“Uhm…yes?”

He smirked, leaning forwards in his chair, closer to you. “I’ll let you have it on one condition.” You raised an eyebrow, giving him a pointed look. “Just a name, babygirl. Yours, specifically.”

You rolled your eyes, glancing around the room to see if you were disturbing anybody. Not seeing anyone paying attention to you two, you turned back to him. “Y/N.”

“Bucky.” He introduced himself, reaching over to shake your hand. You took it, a bit hesitant, blinking when you felt something fall into your palm once he pulled back. The pen.

“I, uh, thanks.”

He winked at you, leaning back in his chair, hands linked behind his head. “No problem, doll.”

You turned back to the lecture, holding in your scoff at his pet name, hating the fact that it nearly made you smile. He was definitely a fuckboy and you told yourself before college that you wouldn’t play around with them anymore.

So you tuned him out of your mind for the rest of the lecture and, thank God, you had to rush out of class once it ended because you had to work in half an hour, not even letting the blue eyed pretty boy say a word in your direction.

You worked for the rest of the day, Russo’s for lunch, a few hours break to look over school stuff and have dinner with your family, before Shield from 9 to 1. It was fine. Long, but nothing you weren’t used to already. You really enjoyed both your jobs and you got lucky with your bosses.

Joe and Anthony were brothers who took over Russo’s for their parents. The pizzeria had been in their family for generations, and they gladly took on the tradition. They had kids of their own and dealt with their school, so they were very understanding - almost parental - to you.

Phillips had started Shield after retiring from the Army, wanting to settle down with a place to drink, smoke, and play poker with his buddies. He was stern, but that was to be expected. He always told you, “you can take the man out of the Army, but you can’t take the Army out of the man.” Despite him being strict, though, he was reasonable, and had taken a liken to you since the moment you stepped foot in the bar.

And not only did you like your jobs, the money wasn’t too bad either.

But, despite that, you were still human, and having two back-to-back college classes and then working two jobs for over eight hours was draining.

You made sure everything was ready for the next day before you left for Shield, that way you could just get home, change, and sleep. Tuesday might’ve been a rough starting day, but you’d learn for Thursday, and Wednesday’s morning was definitely better.

Peter even texted you his coffee order, telling you he’d probably be late. You chuckled to yourself when you got the text at breakfast. You totally called it.

In his defense, he really was running late, and you could tell just by looking at him. One shoe untied, hair messy like he just rolled out of bed, sweater haphazardly thrown on like it was an afterthought, which it probably was.

“You,” he puffed, sinking into his chair and taking the coffee cup you held out. “Are my savior and I’ll love you until the end of time.”

You chuckled, shaking your head. “And you, my friend, are so much more chaotic than I thought. What’d you do? Stay up until three last night?”

He shrugged, shooting you an innocent smile while his cheeks turned red. “I got caught up binge watching Clone Wars.”

“Of course you did. Here’s the notes you missed so far.”

He gave you an adoring smile. “Did I tell you I love you?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sap. Hurry and copy them down so I don’t miss anything.”

********************

It was when you were checking your things Wednesday night when you realized you had an extra pen. It took you a moment to remember the blue eyed pretty boy from Coulson’s History lecture, but when you did you groaned.

Your dating record in high school was pretty bad. Not that you would really call it dating. But Whitney was right when she said it was you wanting attention. It wasn’t easy being the middle of seven. But you dealt with it and now that you were across the country from your family - who you loved but Jesus Christ did you need a break - you didn’t need to act out to seek attention.

You were an adult. Meaning you wouldn’t goof off with guys like that anymore. Meaning you didn’t even want to talk to guys like that anymore.

Meaning you were severely regretting taking his stupid pen.

Maybe he wouldn’t notice if you didn’t give it back. Yeah. Maybe you could just ignore him and he won’t even remember that he let you borrow it.

Those were your hopes as you walked into your US History lecture, taking the seat you had on Tuesday.

“On time today? Glad to see we’re learning.” And there go your hopes, crashing straight into the floor, shattering into millions of tiny pieces. Going for ‘not interested’, you quirked an eyebrow, twisting your head as a bag landed on the table next to your open laptop, a body falling into the seat beside you. The leather jacket was replaced with a denim one, his black button up tighter around his chest than Tuesday’s white t-shirt. “And you charged your computer! Very nice, doll.”

You shrugged, going back to your doodling. “Time management’s always been a bit of an issue for me.”

“Ah. Gotchu, gotchu. I’ve got a pal like that too. A couple of them, actually.” He chuckled. “Is that why you high-tailed outta here Tuesday?”

“I’ve got work right after this class.” You answered shortly.

He leaned his elbow on the table, his legs spread as he turned fully to, a slight smirk on his face. “I haven’t seen you ‘round campus before. You new here? A freshman? You don’t look like it.”

You hummed. “Maybe. It’s a big campus.”

“Which you don’t live on.”

Frowning at the question that he said more like a statement, you moved your head back to him. “I don’t?”

He shook his head, setting his cheek in his palm. “Nope. I know everyone who lives on campus.”

A bit distracted due to Professor Coulson just walking in and announcing the lesson for the day, you hummed and shut your notebook and set up a page on your laptop for notes. “Everyone, huh?”

He nodded with a click of his tongue. “I get around.”

There it was. “Oh? A party animal?”

“I wouldn’t say that. My friends and I are just outgoing. We enjoy life.”

“Enjoy life or enjoy getting into girl’s pants?”

He hissed, shaking his hand like he burned it. “Ouch, doll. That stung. For your information, quite a few people in my group are goin’ steady. And we’re of mixed genders and sexualities. It’s not always girls’ pants.”

You raised an eyebrow, turning to him while still trying to pay attention. “For you or your group.”

“Does it matter?” He shrugged. “Would it bother you if I did fuck guys? ‘Cause I have experimented and it’s not half bad.”

“Nope.” You popped the ‘p’, shaking your head. “You do you, pal. Or…do whoever you want to. Now if you don’t mind, I’m trying to-”

He nodded. “Right, right. Yeah. Sorry. Just…listen. I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m not gonna force you to do anything, you know. Yeah, sure, I’ve seen a few beds around campus, but I’ve got female friends who I don’t sleep with. What if I just wanna be friends with you, huh doll?”

“Just friends?”

“Yup.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Okay. How many of these so-called female friends you don’t sleep with single?”

He chuckled, running a hand through his hair. “The list gets smaller, but yeah.”

“How about single straight female friends?”

He paused at that, eyebrows scrunched up. After a moment you clicked your tongue with a slight smirk, facing your computer and typing the notes Coulson was writing on the projector. “Hold on, hold on. Yes, I’ve got a few of them. Listen, babygirl, you’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be.”

You scoffed. “Don’t call me ‘babygirl’ and we’ll see where that gets you.”

“Okay, okay. That’s fair. What? Don’t you believe that guys and girls can be friends with nothing between ‘em?”

“Yeah, I do. Just not guys like you.”

He frowned, eyes narrowing. “Well that’s not fair. You don’t even know me!”

“Mister Barnes.” Bucky winced at the teacher’s annoyed shout, before throwing Coulson a dashing grin.

“Hey, Phil! How was your summer, man? You still goin’ out with that cellist?”

The professor raised his eyebrows, unamused. “Is there something you’d like to share with the class?”

“Oh yeah! Thanks for the reminder, Phil!” Bucky stood up and cleared his throat. “Yo! First football game of the season is next Friday! It’s gonna be a blast! Watch out for number 41! Handsome devil’s gonna score the winning touchdown! Avengers assemble, am I right?!”

Coulson gave him an unamused look as the room cheered, making you laugh behind your hand. Bucky fell back into his seat, shooting you a wink as Coulson calmed down the room.

“You’re a football player?”

“Fullback, yes ma’am. Co-captain of the team, in fact.” He smugly leaned his seat onto the back two legs, setting his feet up on the desk.

Unbelievable. Why were you always attracted to these idiots? A player in both senses of the word. “There it is.”

He blinked, his chair falling forwards with a ‘thud’ that made Coulson shot him a warning glare. Bucky smiled innocently, before shifting his chair so he was turned towards you again, the smile turning upside down. “There what is?”

“That cocky, conceited air you fill the room with. Attention is what you live for. I should’ve guessed you were a jock too. I’m surprised you’re not wearing a letterman jacket or something just to make sure everyone knows who you are.”

His frown deepened. “Look, doll. I dunno what you think you know about me, or what you’ve heard-”

“I’ve never heard about you before you lent me a pen Tuesday. Which I appreciate and here it is back, by the way. But I know your type. I’ve been down that road. So excuse me for trying not to make the same mistake twice.”

He stared at the pen you set down by his bag, before his gaze flitted back to you, but you wouldn’t meet those pretty eyes of his. “Fine. Sue me for trying to get to know the new girl.”

“This is a mainly freshman class. Half the girls in here are new.”

“Yeah, but they’re chattering away with the posse they’ve already discovered.” He nodded over across the room. Your eyes scanned the lecture hall to find that he was right. Most girls were giggling and whispering to each other, no doubt freshman straight from high school. The others were most likely maturing sophomores. “And, hey, if you want extra reassurance I’m not trying to get you in my bed; I don’t fuck with freshman. Nothing against you or anything, just…straight outta high school and all that? Not really my jam.”

You eyed him, before shrugging and looking down to make sure you got the notes Coulson was starting to talk about. “Yeah, well, too bad I’m not straight out of high school, then.”

He tilted his head, an eyebrow raising in curiosity. “So you’re not a freshman. I didn’t think you were.”

“No, I am. But I took a year break between high school and college. But if you didn’t think I was a freshman, that reassurance doesn’t really work, now does it.” He opened his mouth to defend himself, but you continued, not wanting excuses. “What about you? You’re definitely not a freshman.”

“Nah. I’m a junior. I studied abroad for a semester last year and there were mishaps my freshman year, so I’ve got a few classes to make up. My friend had this class last year, so I just took all his notes. Coulson never changes his lectures. Pretty sure he doesn’t even change the tests.” You hummed, pretending you were barely listening when you really heard every word loud and clear. Bucky huffed, reaching out to grab your wrist gently, making you stop typing and look up to meet his eyes. “Can we start over? Please. I don’t know what type of guys you used to know or whatever and, yeah, I’ll admit I started the conversation like an idiot, but I promise I’m not that bad.”

Pursing your lips, you scanned his features, taking in the pleading eyes and the pouty lips. Clearing your throat, you took your hands off the keyboard, straightened a bit, and turned to him, holding out your hand, your full name falling from your lips.

The beam he gave you had you severely doubting your initial thoughts about him, his larger, calloused hand taking your eagerly. “James Barnes. Everyone calls me Bucky.”

You nodded, before starting to type again. “What are you studying?”

“Mechanical engineering.”

You paused, not expecting that answer. Maybe you were wrong - majorly wrong. “Really?”

“Yeah. I dunno. Technology’s always interested me and I like fixing cars and stuff; I work at an auto shop actually. I dunno what I’m gonna do with it yet, but it feels like a step in the right direction, ya know?”

“I’m afraid not.” You shook your head. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

He chuckled, drumming his fingers against the table. “That’s alright, doll. I don’t think anyone does. They just think they do.”

“That’s…very true, actually.”

He grinned, running a hand through his hair again, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “I told you: I’m not an idiot all the time. I swear.” That made you laugh.

Bucky talked to you throughout the rest of the class, never going above a whisper as he babbled about his other classes and how one of his friends, Sam, tripped down the stairs that morning. You were almost annoyed at him, but he was a very good conversationalist and he wasn’t distracting you too badly. There weren’t any awkward pauses while he stumbled around for something to talk about and if he wasn’t talking, it was a comfortable silence filled with Coulson’s voice, pen scribbling on paper, and the clicking of computer keys. He never pushed you for responses, either, only asking a couple questions, like where you worked and what other classes you had.

“Sorry if I’m bothering you.” He said a few minutes before class was over. “I’m just bored.”

“No. You’re fine.” Honestly, besides a few flirty comments and that pet name ‘doll’ popping up here and there, he wasn’t as bad as you were thinking.

He went quiet for a moment before clearing his throat, almost nervously. Your forehead creased as you snuck a glance at him. He licked his lips, a hand combing through his locks, scratching the back of his head. You wondered why he did that so often.

“So, uh, there’s this cabin in the woods by the lake about half an hour away…” His eyes widened at the weird look you shot him. “Oh fuck, that sounds so bad. No, no. It’s not - I’m not a serial killer or anything. My friend owns it. Well, technically his dad does, but it’s his. Anyways, he always throws a party the first weekend of a new semester. On Saturday. Noon to midnight. If you’d wanna come.”

You quirked an eyebrow, packing up your stuff as Coulson dismissed class early. “You’re asking me to go to your friend’s cabin in the woods-?”

He shook his head with a little laugh. “It sounds so sketchy. I promise it’s legit, though. Honest. You can ask anyone. It’s Tony Stark’s party. He holds one every-”

“You’re friends with Tony Stark?”

He nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. We’re in the same circle. I know how it sounds, but-”

“I’m working.” You cut him off, finding it amusing how he rambled. Who knew a fuckboy could get so nervous about asking a girl to a party. “But if you give me the address I’ll see if I can get some time off.”

“That’d be awesome. Yeah, yeah. Here.” He quickly grabbed the post-it note you handed to him and scribbled the address down. “It’d be really cool if you could make it.”

“I’ll try. Cross my heart.” You smiled, taking the paper from him. “I do have to go, though-”

“Oh right. Yeah. Work. I’ll see you this weekend, then. Maybe.” He grinned.

You bit your lip, nodding. “Maybe.”

As he started walking out, you looked down to grab your bag, the pen left on the table catching your attention. “Hey!” You called after him, making him turn around, walking backwards with that grin still on his lips. You lifted the writing utensil to show him. “Your pen!”

He shook his head. “Keep it! I don’t take notes in this class anyways!” He shot you a wink, before spinning on his heel, his hands in his pockets, whistling some random tune, without a care in the world.

**********************

“There she is! So?! How’s school been?! I wanna know!”

You grinned at Whitney as she bounced in, looking at you excitedly while going to wash her hands. “You’re working early today. It’s only 3.”

She shrugged. “They wanted me in before dinner rush tonight. Don’t dodge the question!”

“It’s been fine. I’ve met a couple people, doodled a few things, ignored syllabus talk - the usual.”

She sniggered, moving her eyebrows. “Any cute guys so far?” You thought back to your History lecture and Bucky, who confused the hell out of you. Whitney’s squeal pulled you out of your thoughts. “That’s a yes! Tell me about him immediately!”

“It’s not a ‘yes’. There’s nothing to tell.”

“But he is hot, right?”

You rolled your eyes, but your lips pulled up at the corners. “He’s…very easy on the eyes.”

Whitney gave an excited squeak, quickly drying her hands and putting on gloves before sliding up to you. “So? Tell me all about him.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“Bull.” She called out. “What’s his name?”

You huffed, focusing on the pizza you were making. “Bucky.”

She tried it out on her tongue before nodding. “Cute, cute. How old is he?”

“He’s a junior, so I’m guessing 20. Maybe 21 if his birthday was in the past week.”

Whitney hounded on you for every detail of your conversation, which you told her with some exception, leaving out the pen and some of the random stuff he told you. “So he’s a fuckboy?”

“Oh yeah. No doubt.”

“But he’s a charming fuckboy?”

“Mhmm.”

“And he’s not a dick?”

“So far.”

“So…he’s your type.”

You scoffed, giving her a look. “I don’t have a ‘type’.”

She gave you a bemused expression back. “Honey, it’s not a secret you like the charismatic guys that every girl swoons over. You just don’t swoon over them and that’s what makes you different.”

You scowled. “I don’t swoon over them because they don’t deserve my effort. And no. I don’t have a thing for them. I just…tend to get their attention more than other guys.”

“Because you don’t swoon over them.”

“Whitney-”

“Okay, okay. What happened next?”

You shrugged. “Nothing. He just sorta…talked the entire class. He did invite me to a party on Saturday though-”

“Oh my God! You have to go! College parties are the best! You’ll have so much fun!” She stopped to give you a serious look, pointing a finger towards you. “You’re going, right?”

“I dunno. Maybe. I’ve got to ask Phillips if I can get time off and I-I dunno if I even want to go.”

Whitney groaned, throwing her hands in the air and letting her head fall back. “This is the first party of your college life! There shouldn’t be any doubt!”

“Apparently Tony Stark is the one throwing it-”

“Are you fucking - you can’t not go!”

You snickered, Whitney’s persistence amusing you. “Again. It depends on Phillips. We’ll see. I promise.”

“At least tell me you got this guy’s number.”

“Nope.”

Whitney glared at you. “You are the absolute worst person to try getting drama out of, you know that? You’re not interested at all in this guy?”

You shrugged, turning to throw the pizza in. “Maybe. I wanna try out this whole friend thing first. Tommy’s the first real guy friend I’ve had since middle school and that’s mostly because he’s gay and we barely even talk outside work. I’ve never just…let myself take a break from dating before.”

A sigh came from the other girl, who reluctantly nodded. “That’s good, actually. Take a mental break. I respect that. But please, for the love of God, please try to have fun.”

You smirked, nodding. “I’ve told you, Whit. I know how to have fun. Don’t worry; if I do go to that party, I’ll have enough for both of us.”

“Yes! I have to live college through you now, so it’s your responsibility!”

You mockingly saluted. “I won’t let you down, babe.”

64 notes · View notes

hd-wireless · 4 years

Text

📻🎶 H/D Wireless 2020 - Weekly Wrap-up #5

Well here it is! We’re all done and the band has left the stage and the stadium lights have been turned on. We want to thank everyone for their involvement, support, and especially for your cheering!

We’ll be posting the full anonymous set list tomorrow, and then a week after we’ll be posting the set list with all the performers too!

But for now, please treat yourself to all of our creations from week 5!

🎙️ Check out the Playlists:

Youtube

Spotify

🎶 H/D Wireless Art 🎶

📻 Time to Get Out (T)

🎵 Song prompt: My House - PVRIS

🎵 Summary: A few years post-war, Pansy convinces Draco to go on a night out at a muggle club. They run into some familiar faces.

🎶 H/D Wireless Art and Fic 🎶

📻 That Sweet Sweet Craving (E, 33.2k)

🎵 Song prompt: Bleeding Out by Imagine Dragons

🎵 Summary: Harry is miserable living a lie because he thinks being a gay role model is wrong. Fake dates raising money for a charity that ends up putting him in a situation he had never expected. Draco Malfoy appears back in his life by some odd chance trying to flip his world upside down and he isn't sure it's a good thing. Malfoy always worked that way to him. Mental health issues, sex, escaping, and that sweet sweet craving of happiness.

🎶 H/D Wireless Fic 🎶

📻 What Will We Do With a Drunken Harry? (E, 4.9k)

🎵 Song prompt: "Drunken Sailor" by The Irish Rovers

🎵 Summary: A victorious Quidditch match, a claimed Quidditch Cup, and a wild House party can mean only one thing. Will the aftermath lead to one excruciating hangover in the morning, or will it perhaps lead to something more?

📻 Though Your World Is Changing, I Will Be The Same (E, 15.9k)

🎵 Song prompt: Slave To Love by Bryan Ferry

🎵 Summary: “I shower after work,” Harry had told him once when Draco had asked what cologne had such longevity as to be effective after a full day of gruelling Auror work.

“For me?” Draco had asked. Teased, just a little. There had been a smile lingering on the edges of his consciousness, threatening to traipse onto his mouth.

“For Ginny,” Harry had said, voice flat. “She hates it when I come back sweaty and crackling with other people’s hexes. Did you know magic has a smell? I didn’t until she told me.”

–

It's all fun and games, till somebody falls in love. Given his luck, it's obviously Draco who has to go and do it.

📻 I Can't Help Falling in Love with You (NR, 4.8k)

🎵 Song prompt: I can't help falling in love with you - Elvis Presley

🎵 Summary: Harry stood up and set his hand out to Draco. “Dance?”

“I didn’t know you danced, Potter.”

“Hm, I’ve danced a lot in my time," Harry replied smugly.

“How do I know you won’t step on my feet?”

“You don’t, but I think the risk will be worth it.”

📻 Title: Searching For a Place to Hide (T, 12.5k)

🎵 Song prompt: Love Will Keep Us Alive - The Eagles

🎵 Summary: After the war, there were threats against the Malfoys. Needing them kept safe until the trials are over, the Ministry puts them in protective custody but a murder attempt proves there’s a Ministry leak. Desperate, the Ministry decides a safe house is best, but who to trust to keep it secret and keep them safe? Narcissa calls in a life debt, the Minster calls in a favour and Harry Potter wonders why his life continues to hate him.

Along the way, the Malfoys learn how to be a family again, Harry learns that some things are not how he thought and maybe never were, and the touch-starved boys discover that they may be each other's forever answer.

📻 Isolated Thunderstorms and Scattered Showers (T, 21.3k)

🎵 Song prompt: Iris - the GooGoo Dolls

🎵 Summary: Post-war, Harry needs space. Everything is too much all at once, and time and time again, he finds himself pulling the invisibility cloak over his head, just for a bit of peace.

Returning for eighth year is hard, especially when you're considered a war hero, and your name is Harry James Potter. It's just that things go a little wonky when Harry starts following Malfoy, and finds that he can't (or doesn't want to) stop.

📻 Kiss It Better (E, 1.5k)

🎵 Song prompt: Kiss It Better by Rihanna

🎵 Summary: When Harry's injured, Draco knows there's no place he'd rather be than by his side.

📻 (shut up and) dance with me (T, 7.9k)

🎵 Song prompt: Shut Up and Dance - Walk the Moon

🎵 Summary: Four dances Harry and Draco share.

📻 In Love with the Ferret (E, 21.9k)

🎵 Song prompt: I'm Yours by Jason Mraz

🎵 Summary: Harry has never been the most observant bloke. Sometimes to the point of him not realising his feelings for a particular pointy, pale git. And it's not his fault if literally everyone else knows about said feelings except for Harry and the git in question. So it's really not his fault, when faced with the scope of his feelings, he suddenly has a hard time talking to one Draco Malfoy. Or looking him in the eye. Or not being a total weirdo around him.

There's nothing to do but take the advice of his friends and try to woo Draco over dinners with friends, Ministry cases, and an unfortunately named Italian restaurant.

Harry just can't stop the flutter in his chest when he sees Draco smile.

📻 Dance with me? (M, 8.2k)

🎵 Song prompt: I Wanna Dance With Somebody - Whitney Houston

🎵 Summary: Draco had given up on love, until one day sitting outside the usual gaudy cafe he frequented 'people watching' he spotted Harry Potter lurking, a suspicious Draco investigates and a series of events ensue.

📻 The Cupid Incident (E, 12.6k)

🎵 Song prompt: Can't Get You out of My Head - Kylie Minogue

🎵 Summary: Draco gets into the way of a potions attack and can't get Potter out of his head.

📻 Carouse (E, 19.9k)

🎵 Song prompt: Dead by Madison Beer

🎵 Summary: Carouse (verb): To drink plentiful amounts of alcohol and enjoy oneself with others in a noisy, lively way.

Harry finds himself using alcohol in increasingly dangerous ways to cope with the stresses of life. When he is put on leave from work to sort out his issue, he instead falls head first into a lively club scene where he can drink and fuck his worries away. That is, until a certain blond from his past reappears and throws off his entire routine.

Thank you again to everyone who’s sung along with us so far!

We’ll see you again tomorrow for the anonymous masterlist!

#hd wireless #hd wireless 2020 #drarry fest #weekly wrap up #weekly wrap up no 5 #drarry fic #drarry art #drarry fic and art

58 notes · View notes

mooncademia · 4 years

Text

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

pairing ~ idol au!jungkook/reader

genre ~ uhm, fluff!!

summary ~ deep talks and reassuring hugs aren’t the only solutions to cheer your boyfriend up. No, for jeon jungkook, you knew you had to do something more to turn that frown upside down, and lucky for you, you know exactly what to do ;)

word count ~ 1.5k

Author’s note ~ hello everyone! this is my first fic ever posted here, there may be a few grammatical errors (English is not my strongest pursuit) so please bear with me >.< I hope to slowly improve my writing in the future, but till then, please enjoy reading this fun little story I wrote!

“Y/N, you know you don’t have to do this.” Jungkook��your boyfriend—assured you as you leaned over to grab your phone from his desk. You connected the bluetooth to your boyfriend’s very! big! red! speaker! You honestly didn’t understand why Jungkook has an obsession with bluetooth speakers but anyway… that wasn’t the point.

“And you know you don’t have to ask that question every time right?” You said as you gave him a peck on his right cheek with a smile, but Jungkook barely smiled back.

Jeon Jungkook. An idol. In a boy band called BTS. Your boyfriend. Jungkook, beloved by millions of girls and boys all around the world, known as the ‘golden maknae,’ his life has been actively shared across the globe (well, except the fact that he has a girlfriend, lets keep that low-key for now, shh! Dispatch, who?). But despite all the characteristics and known-facts shared on the news media and interviews, no one can understand your boyfriend better than you.

In fact, you knew him too well.

You knew your boyfriend’s hidden vulnerabilities, his darkest emotions as well as memories, and today just happened to be a day where you walked into cold rain when you opened the door to his new studio. Namjoon had warned you about Jungkook’s mood before you entered his studio, something about “making errors on stage?”

And yup, you totally understand why Jungkook will be so upset about this. Because you see, Jungkook could fall down the stairs but still manage to dance for 5 hours straight when he realized there were no broken bones but bruises. But when it comes to performances, his bandmates, and his fans.

It becomes serious.

And it’s not about just singing songs and going on tours, you knew your boyfriend too well for just that. Jungkook loves his fans with all his heart, you could see the passion just exploding in his eyes. He sings songs not because he “just likes singing,” but because he wants to share his message. He wants to touch people’s hearts and give invite his fans into a world where they want to escape from what reality is throwing at them. His message is to teach the world about sensitive topics—like when it comes to self-care or self-love— and to let the world know that the most important person in the world is yourself.

And all of those things are all under the list that you made in your head titled:

“REASONS WHY MY BOYFRIEND IS THE BEST IN THE WORLD”

But even though his heart is all for his fans, bandmates, and music, he becomes very very determined and sensitive in the sense that he wants everything to just be well, perfect. You know this when you see him dance by himself at the dance studio in the middle of the night, reviewing the choreography over and over again. But when it comes to a single mistake, oh ho ho, Jungkook never stops. He reflects, and you mean, REALLY reflects on his mistakes and plays the error again and again in his head, like watching a horrible movie in your head on loop. And when you first dated him, you were in complete shock to see him go full-out to get everything perfect. He goes through the rehearsals countless times to make sure everything is in the correct order and in the correct position. And despite the fact that practicing is not a bad thing, Jungkook sometimes overdoes it and ends up sulking alone in his studio feeling guilty for all the mistakes that he made on a performance. He will list all his mistakes (mentally AND physically) and even bring up past ones to compare. You remembered one time, he wrote all his mistakes on sticky notes, placed them on the wall, and you thought you teleported into an espionage dimension when you entered his room.

However, today, even after you tried to talk to him and listen to his feelings, you could still see the sadness swirling in his dark chocolate brown eyes.

“Music always does the trick, doesn’t it?” You say as you scroll through your playlist on your phone.

Jungkook let out a puff of air through his nose and rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, until you mess it up and let millions of people down.” He scoffed as he flicked his head so his bangs could cover his eyes.

“Just…listen to this, maybe this can lift the mood a bit,” you said. You put down your phone as you clicked on a specific song, hoping the beats could lift the cold/heavy emotions swirling in your boyfriend’s chest.

“Whitney Houston?” Jungkook said as he leans behind on his gaming chair staring at you with his gorgeous puppy eyes when the beat begins. The high-energy music bounces off the walls of Jungkook’s studio, thumping away like a big tantrum, but you loved it and you know he did too.

“Yup!” You squealed. “WHOOOOO~” you screamed trying to match your oh, so perfect harmonization skills with Whitney Houston. You jumped on his couch and started to lip-sync to I Wanna Dance With Somebody. You grabbed a water bottle from the table and pretended to use it as a microphone as you wiggled your hips (just for good measure ;) ) The beat was extravagant, but that wasn’t the reason why you chose this song. You chose this song because it was the song that was played when you screamed “I LOVE YOU” for the first time to Jungkook. You could still remember his eyes blowing 10 times the size when you said those three words, his hug that he pulled you in, and most of all, remembering him repeating those three words back to, casting sweet euphoric emotions to dance in your heart. It was one of the best moments you ever had in your life and it was a memory that will forever be engraved in your heart.

“COME ON!” You shouted through the loud beats, smiling as you reach for Jungkook’s wrist. You could see a small crease forming on Jungkook’s face as you grabbed his hands pulling his body up as you jump around his studio. Jungkook stood up, crossing his arms but you could see a hint of happiness in his eyes.

~Dont-cha wanna dance?!~ you screamed with a bright smile plastered on your face as you use your amazing exaggerated facial expressions to really emphasize your awesome lip-sync abilities, and your oh, so attractive dance moves which consist of numerous amount of hip wiggles, jumping, and body rolls.

Now Jungkook was really smiling and laughing. The wrinkles near his eyes is your everything. He grabs your waist suddenly to pull you closer, making you gasp. You could smell the fresh scent of flowers of his black sweatshirt—maybe it was because of the Downy Adorable Fabric Softener that he uses religiously on his clothes. But as the song continues, you realize that your chest was pinning his and your breathing was heavy from all the silly jumping that you did. His arms were now hovering you as he rested his chin on your head and closed his eyes. You hugged him back, smiling. You guys stood there, swaying your bodies back and forth softly to the beat of the song. And as the Whitney Houston’s voice slowly starts to fade and as the last rhythm comes to an end, your phone jumped to the next song: “I Will Always Love You”

Ah, and you have to admit, this was the best moment. Your boyfriend, your favorite person in the world, your best friend, despite all the tough times you both endured, you both always managed to find the light at the end.

No matter how long it takes, no matter how bummed either of you are, both of you will do everything and anything to make the other person happy—even if that's just a small smile or a warm hug.

Jungkook leans down to whisper a small thank you in your ear, making your cheeks sting with warmness as you smile—your face buried in his chest. Now you both were slow dancing as Whitney Houston’s voice echoes around your boyfriend’s small studio.

“I’m always here for you, you know that right?” You said with your eyes closed, inhaling the fresh detergent smell from Jungkook’s black hoodie.

“I know” Jungkook replied timidly, kissing the top of your head. “Me too”

And you hum a satisfied replied, still smiling.

You both slow dance away as the chorus of the song continues.

Steps short and slow but meaningful.

As if each step slowly added color to your life, reminding you that no matter how hard life is, as long as your love is by your side, you can always make it till the end of the line.

“I love you Y/N” Jungkook tells you, arms still wrapped tightly around you.

You smile. “I love you too, Jungkook-ah”

And that feeling of welcoming warmness pouring back into Jungkook?

Now, THAT'S the best feeling in the world.

A/N: if you actually read the whole fic, i-.. *gives you a BIG virtual hug* Thank you so so much!! Please feel free to message me what you think about this story or leave a message saying whatever you want, I’ll be very happy to message you back! Have a lovely day~~

#jungkook fluff #jungkook #jeon jungkook #jjk #jk #bts fluff #jungkook imagine #bts imagine #jungkook imagines #bts au #jungkook au #jungkook scenario #jungkook dating au #jungkook oneshot #i wanna dance with somebody

136 notes · View notes

bites-kms · 3 years

Text

Can ya feel that? Welcome to Miami

As Will Smith would say, “party in the city where the heat is on, all night, on the beach till the break of dawn: Welcome to Miami"

My quick getaway to Miami was about 4 days and it was exactly the right amount of sun and rainbows I was needing. Thank you Bruno for all your love and welcoming vibes. I’ll be definitely back before you know it! Who knew that after 13 years of friendship a boat, the sun and some Whitney Houston will encounter us in the Caribbean Sea?

BRICKELL

Where business, high-end residential buildings as well as top restaurants and rooftop clubs are. The small Singapore sample of Florida. Beautiful, clean, accesible, Brickell has it all. My highlights? When it comes to food: Quinto la Huella, a sibling location of the one found in Jose Ignacio, Uruguay and Rosetta, the Italian bakery where you get a food comma just by looking at all the goodies. When it comes to shopping, Brickell City Center is the place to go. For an afterhour quick bite, consider North Italia. For a bit of a party scene, try Barsecco, Redbar or Sugar. If the city heat is too much, try getting a day pass at Resortpass.com, and get a pool treat by the Conrad Hotel or check out Brickell Key Park.

SOUTH BEACH

Head to the beach. I repeat: get some vitamin sea. Crystal clear, warm water, with cute little fishes waiting for you to refresh yourself in between sun burns. Kick it off with a delicious açai bowl from Pura Vida and walk down to South Point. Rent a chair, a towel and an umbrella for $13 and enjoy a whole day under the sun. For a beautiful scenery walk, discover the Art Deco District down Ocean Ave. and find a delicious restaurant where to eat. If you are like me and the heat is one of the few things that doesnt make you starve, on the contrary, just makes you crave for something light and fresh, then forget the Cuban and the Mexican stands with never ending Frozen Margarita flow. Go for a Poke bowl at Koa Poke by Collins Ave instead, after discovering all the architecture, and even checking out El Espanol street, known for its restaurants and bars.

WYNDWOOD

Heard about the Brooklyn of Miami? Well, here it is! Industrial city, warehouses, cool, gentrified buildings surrounded by an amazingly curated street art and graffiti, that goes from Bansky to Kobra, making it one of the biggest open air museum of street art in the world. “Throw me to the wolves, and I’ll come back leading the pack”, “The time is always now” and “Staying at your comfort zone will kill you” are some of the anonymous stencils and messages written on the street.

Remember to carry water with you. It is very humid and hot in Miami, specially around this neighborhood since there are little to no trees, hence no shade, and you would want to make a few pit stops to re charge your energy. Try Panther Coffee for some good coffee and drinks or go full in with Astra, the mediterranean rooftop with great salads and wifi. In comparison to NYC, I must confess the service is usually much better in Miami, specially when it comes from Latinxs, but in this case, the service wasn't Astra’s forte.

LITTLE HAVANA

A visit to Miami wont be complete without a walk by Little Havana. Prepare your Spanish since you will have a lot of practice opportunities in Miami, specially en el barrio. Running roosters, boiling steamy streets and street art are there and just make you feel you are in Cuba. Stroll down Domino park, where locals can be found playing that board game and listening to their radios or the iconic plaza that commemorates the Cuban American Soldiers who died and got arrested during the Pig Bay and Missile Crisis, just to name a few. Celebrate this heritage with live music and a delicious happy hour mojitos at La Troval, the iconic cafe/bar by the main street, calle 8. Discover the hidden Cuban artists represented on this neighborhood murals, those featured on the local Walk of Fame and the picturesque unsung heroes that are just hanging there, beating the heat with a smile.

3 notes · View notes

icegoddessrukia · 4 years

Text

Sorry just need to rant about Smallville for a sec

Smallville creators be like... let’s make Clark and Lana (especially Clark) constantly feel guilty and look bad for getting in the way of the Chloe and Clark potential romance even though they’re just hanging out as friends and Chloe has never officially dated Clark, never confessed directly to Clark about what she wants so he doesn’t even know what she’s thinking because he can’t read minds and she rejects him and tells him they should just stay friends whenever he does actually genuinely think about dating her like after the school dance.

Moreover, I like Chloe as a character when she isn’t being ridiculous about romance but seriously...Clark doesn’t owe Chloe anything! She isn’t entitled to him. If their genders were reversed the audience would consider this behavior creepy. The amount of emotional mind games and whiplash she’s given Clark (though Clark has hurt them in other ways for example, the awful Red K incidents that were never properly dealt with, and Lana has too but that’s another rant for another day) makes my own head spin...

And while we’re at it, torture Lana emotionally by making her responsible just by her very existence for every relationship around her breaking up including her biological father and his wife along with her ending her own relationship with Whitney right before his untimely death so she’ll always feel guilty.

Seriously I’ve got to point in this series when Chloe just seems selfish and I find it difficult to feel sympathy for her. She won’t pursue Clark but expects him to not be with anyone else and can’t let Clark be happy with someone else ever... She cares about him so much but can’t even let him be happy even though she knew for years that he had a massive crush on Lana? Not to mention, Lana is also supposed to be Chloe’s close friend. What happened to wanting what’s best for Lana?

I don’t even ship Clana but seriously... Chloe knows he has always liked Lana the most. It’s blatantly obvious every time he interacts with Lana, she will always come first over Chloe or any other girl in their school, Just accept it, let it go, try dating someone else, find a new hobby, maybe move on from the friendship with both of them if it bothers you that much. This is just pathetic. I don’t know if I can take one more episode of Chloe attacking Clark instead of supporting him. All of this could have been just solved if they made Clark and Chloe genuine friends without the stupid petty love triangle.

You don’t see Lana getting upset every time Clark hangs out with Lex or Chloe. Lex doesn’t get infuriated whenever Clark spends time with his other friends and family. And Clark had to endure seeing Lana being with Whitney over and over again as a couple and he never got bitchy with her because of that or stopped being her friend even though it hurt him so much and you could see it in his eyes. What about Pete? He harboured a crush on Chloe at first but he hasn’t constantly raged against Clark or Chloe despite it being obvious that Chloe likes Clark better. This love triangle soap opera situation is a chaotic mess and needs to end.

#smallville criticism #anti-chloe sullivan #smallville #smallville season 2 #liveblogging smallville

9 notes · View notes

vmfx · 3 years

Text

WE DON’T DO THAT HERE.

I just disclosed to all of my co-workers that I have a radio show. They all seem very enthusiastic and extremely positive about it. For that I am very lucky because every day I work with them they usually have nothing good to say. They are the 17 to 25 crowd running on alcoholic fumes, weekend bars, Androids, Yankee games, hanging with “the guys”, and typical basic girls. So it comes as no surprise as to what their mentality is.

When I say they’re enthusiastic, I mean that they light up. They light up with an obvious hard-on because at first they think I’m on a big-name radio station and I play the hottest in Top 40 and pop. “It’s not like that. I dee-jay for a college station” I tell them. But that’s OK. They still think it’s awesome that I play music over the air and emanate their rooms, car stereos, and laptops. Then come the same questions I get asked every week because either someone new discovers what I do or they easily forget and we needlessly re-start the same conversation all over again. Or they’re trolling.

“What time do you go on?” “What music do you play?” “Are you on every week?” “Where is the radio station you DJ at?” “Do you go on the mic and talk?” “How long are you on for?” “Do you take requests?” “Do you do shout-outs?” These are valueless questions I normally don’t answer to because I can’t be bothered with them; questions asked in an obvious kindergarten fascination that I rather not waste my time with and would rather move on without having to focus on such intellectual mediocrity. In fact, the answers to all of these questions can be answered by simply listening to my show. There.

One of my co-workers decides he wants to be funny and impress his friends. He asks me if I ever do my “radio” voice on the air, and then proceeds give it his best attempt at it:

“This…is…Dee Jay _______…on 107.5…FM…WQXZ, New York! Playing…the…hottest hits. Ten. In a row. Non-stop!”

Heads up to no one in particular: it’s nice for people and friends to approach me and be interested in what I do, and I appreciate it. I really do. And then there are those who are into it but then proceed to define me by impersonating their best stereotypical zesty action-packed radio voice, complete with man-made astro-blaster laser sound effects from an action-figure maturity.

Please stop. It’s not funny, you’re not funny, and no one is laughing. That’s not what happens on my show. All I do is play music and be myself as usual. That’s all. It’s not WBLI, Z100, or Now FM if that’s what you were thinking. And since it’s not right to try and define who you think I am to satisfy your piss-poor expectations, I’m sure you wouldn’t like it if I defined your life by pointing out your poor choice of clothing, your lack of real understanding, your never-ending stupidity, why your parents still make your bed, or why you have been dateless all your life.

Another pointless obstacle course I had to go through was that another co-worker tried guessing what music I play on my show in the form of a yes-or-no question-and-answer session. My previous answer of “a lot of music you wouldn’t like or tolerate” and “anything that’s not mainstream” wasn’t good enough for him to comprehend to avoid this altogether. So our little elfin pretend game-show host, who is 23 but looks like he is 11, plays this game with me.

“Now, I’m going to tell you an artist or band name and you tell me if you would play it. Ready?”

“Sure.” I say with some hesitation and an exasperated breath, knowing exactly how this is going to go. Lord help me.

“Metallica.”

“No.”

“Bon Jovi.”

“No.”

“Kid Cudi?”

“No.”

“Whitney Houston?”

“No.”

“Justin Beiber?”

“No.”

“Ozzy?”

“No.”

“Taylor Swift?”

“No.”

“Adele?”

“No.”

“Drake?”

“No.”

“David Bowie?”

“Hmmm…”

“Ahhh! There’s a maybe! “Linkin Park?”

“Stop.”

“Chris Brown?”

“Stop?”

“Rick Astley?”

“NO. Stop.”

This was what I went through a couple of days ago. He was fully aware what I play on-air not only because I told him before but also I sent him the link to my show. But when you’re the department comedian, you need to depend on your co-workers for everyone’s amusement. So you blow right through convenience and force uncomfortable interactions for laughs at someone’s expense. He instead ended up giving me a list of artists I wouldn’t dare touch or even infect our studio’s CD drives, turntables, or computers with. And he knows this.

**********

My show states what I play: “punk, hardcore, female, grrl, electronics, hip-hop, hipster, trendy, art, industrial, breakbeats, experimental, techno, spoken word, rare Seventies, drum and bass, reggae, lo-fi, and even noise”. It also says “no Top 40, no Billboard, no pop, no American Idol, no Nielsen Ratings, no Clear Channel.” Why would I waste my time playing artists that are already being played ad nauseum on pop stations, car commercials, malls, restaurants, movies, and soda ads millions of times over? And why would I have to explain myself to people who clearly don’t deserve it?

It’s simple. On my show I play everything other stations and outlets won’t. Being it’s a college radio station, we don’t get money from corporate sponsors but instead grass-roots community members, students, administration, and other people listening in around the world to donate money to us. That means we are not told what to play, rather we play whatever we want, artists who otherwise have almost zero chance of getting airplay. I can actually educate my listeners by playing Merzbow, Einsturzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, or Aphex Twin instead of brainwashing them. So, why would I waste valuable airtime on artists who already have endless amounts of it?

Another thing: requests. I don’t ask for them and I won’t play them. Why would I jeopardize the show’s good looks if someone asks me to play Nickelback when I play music like Crystal Castles, Cold Cave, The Dead Boys, and Death Grips? Where does some sappy commercial band that millions of people have on their death list have its place on my show? I want my listeners to enjoy my show and support me, not blacklist it and send me death threats.

Even more ridiculous are the dedications. Please. I prevent this from happening. I don’t want my show responsible for some trailer-park love-in somewhere in Alabama which produces five awkward results. Having me to say their subtle Valentine’s messages on-air with “cute” pet names is not cute at all. It makes my show turn into the Ryan Seacrest Hour. When that happens, I’ll fold this show and deny it ever existed.

Yes, I do understand that artists eat and need to keep on going to make a living. Once in a while I get unsolicited messages from bands that have absolutely nothing to do with the music I play. Just pass “GO” and collect your $200. Just because I play “everything” doesn’t mean I will since there are specifics. Even worse, a Dave Matthews’ cover band somewhere in the middle of Long Island, that aspires to be something else they’ll never be and tries to ride (no, suck it like a leach) the wave of popularity by holding actual music instruments while being incapable of writing original material will never make the cut. On another note…

“Check us out! We’re a four-piece homegrown funk-soul-band from somewhere in New Jersey and we’ve been compared to 311 and Smashmouth…”

...and that is where I hit the delete button. I don’t like it when music comes to me, I like it when I come to music unless I ask for it. I don’t like to feel obligated in having to play your music or worse having it forced down my throat Linda Lovelace-style. I don’t want your obsolete already-done jam-funk music and double that if it’s from the late 90’s (because who here thinks the late 90’s was the worst time for new music ever?) I don’t ever want your low-resolution color-copy pixilated artwork with your homemade CD-R with paper decal. In fact, why am I still on MySpace? That was so 2006.

**********

It’s been a month since the start of my on-going show and my co-workers are getting very tiresome. The same questions over and over again and not once has anyone tuned in. Not that I don’t want them to tune in or even care if they listen, but what’s the point in wasting time if people who are interested in something don’t do it? That’s why I decided to no longer talk to them about my show. I’m only wasting my breath, time, and energy. You can’t declare to do something and not do it. That’s how people take points away from you.

And as always, the instant I declare that I will no longer bother in discussing my show anymore, another moron standing right next to me starts asking questions again. “What is your show called?” “What time is it on?” “What number is it?” Perhaps it is best not to have certain people listening in. Even better, it’s best not to converse with them.

#VMFX #writers on Tumblr #personal #LOL #WTF #Long Island #radio #music

1 note · View note

eastendies · 4 years

Note

Would be so interested in an apd!Cal fic. 💓

Aaa I'm glad!! I've been doing more research into it and it would be a lot of fun to write!! ASPD is super fascinating and having a manipulator in a fic could be a lot of fun, plus the conflict between Callum wanting human intimacy vs. being who he is (gay) and not wanting to admit that what he has w Whitney isn't what he should be aiming for and both he and Whitney deserves more + Callum struggling to controlling his lying and learning how to try and construct better relationships??? Has so much potential?? Aaa I'm just ranting, but I loved this anon sm that I wrote a little drabble from the plot that I have planned!!

Warning: Ben WANTS to believe Callum is bad for being a sociopath and so uses kinda mean langauge. I don't believe this and its part of his character at this point in the story!!

___

Callum smiled when Jay left the room, a proper, sunny smile before looking down at the paperwork he was cleaning up like a good little worker bee. The corner's of Ben's eyes stayed concentrated on how the smile faded with a more aged practice, face turning serious as a mask slipped away, supposedly. Ben could see him rifling through them just like he took that paperwork out of the cabinet. How many paper mache masks did the good boy of Walford where with such carefully cut corners and eyeholes? Maybe someday Ben would care enough to ask.

"Got Jay wrapped all around your little finger, don't you?" Ben remarked from his place in the doorway where he still hadn't left, looking at some paper or other that Jay had handed him to look nonchalant. But of course in the corners of his eyes he noticed Callum stand up straighter at him saying something, another smile and a small look of confusion on his face as he sat down in his chair. Maybe just like old Jack from juvie. Making a new personality on the spot. They never talked one on one before.

"I'm sorry?" So confused dolt it was. Ben turned his head to face the uptaker, leaning more against the doorway. Callum gave him a look akin to a confused puppy, wondering what it was getting teased about this time. They hadn't even spoken for a few seconds and Callum was making Ben feel less resolved. But Ben saw what he saw. He knew what those eyes were like, and the fact that the cute face was working on him dug at his skin.

To dismiss the inflated pause, Ben gestured the paper and said, "Must be because of your pretty face, I mean, who can say no to that jawline?" More confusion, it seemed Ben caught him genuinely off guard. This was starting to be way more fun than he thought it'd be.

"I'm--I'm sorry, what?" Callum's solid eyebrows set into his face. Now a bit guarded.

"Relax, it's called a compliment. Unless, of course, it isn't your face that's making him do what you want. Buy you breakfast in the morning, maybe?"

"What?" Now the confusion was fortified by the cobalt steel wall that was Callum's eyes, the straighter posture and tighter grip on the paperwork making it clear that Ben had touched a particular nerve. "Are you accusing me of--"

"Manipulating my best friend? Yeah. Crazy right? Good boy of Walford wouldn't do something, so, well, sociopathic." Callum's face flashed with shock mixed with a veil of hurt, leaning backward in his chair. Ben stood up straighter. "Like making Lola help set up Whitney's stall for a week. Or getting making Jay late for picking me up at the airport. Sound familiar?"

"Are you serious?" Callum his palms with some disbelieving gesture, the steel fortress replaced with a baffled, though highly insulted, man. "You have no right to accuse me of--"

"I think I do, Cal. Can I call you Cal?"

"I don't like--"

"Here's the deal Cal, I'm not afraid of you." More confusion, Callum was done with that blank face, apparently. "And I'm not afraid of people like you."

"And what would that be?" Callum's voice was irritated, snapped, already tired of this conversation. Ben got that a lot.

"Sociopaths. Manipulators. I've met my own share. Spent enough time in prison to be called one. But here's the kicker," And here is where Ben took his turn for his face to lose it's teasing, hiding tone and become more aggressive, a wolf with bared fangs. He moved towards Callum desk, placing his hand on the wood. "You leave my friends out of whatever twisted mind games you're playing. Alright?"

Callum looked up at him with his pretty blue eyes in disbelief, and more than a fair share amount of broiled anger and hurt, before darting up from his chair and staring Ben down.

Callum was tall. A lot taller up close. Ben swallowed.

"First of all, Jay buying me breakfast in the mornings has more to do with the fact that my brother and his girlfriend are living with me, and that tends to bring down a paycheck, not that that's any of your business. I don't know what this is about Jay not being able to pick you up on time but I'm pretty sure Jay can manage his own schedule and that whatever traffic that got backed up had nothing to do with me." Callum put a hand on his chest, "You don't even know me! You're calling me a sociopath because Lola helped Whitney for a week? Because I try to be a nice and polite person to Jay? What's wrong with you?" Hurt flooded Callum's face, and it occurred to Ben that people usually didn't like to be called an unfeeling monster at 17 o'clock on a Tuesday.

"I--"

"No, just," Callum placed his hand in the air, as if commanding Ben to stop. He did. "I just--I can't deal with this today. I have a 2 year anniversary to plan and I'm..." Callum took a step back, giving Ben an exasperated, defeated look as he pushed off from the desk. The silence was deafening. With a shake of his head, the taller man walked out of the room, giving Ben a wide berth as he passed, paperwork left neatly on the desk. As he heard the door close through the walls.

"Callum?" he heard Jay call out. "Ben, what did you do?"

"Why do you assume I did something? Maybe he just can't stand to be around the dead for another eternity." Ben snapped back loudly, jerking his head towards the sound of Jay's voice.

Callum's hurt had sounded...real. Ben looked back at the abandoned desk, swallowing. Maybe he--no, no, he knew what he saw. Callum had to be manipulating him. That's what sociopaths did. That what he had been doing to Jay for months.

Callum Highway was a sociopath and he was going to prove it.

#eastenders #ballum #ben mitchell #callum highway #ee #ben x callum #aspd!au #aspd!callum #sociopathy au #anon #ask #writing #i should write this i knkw but i dont know where to startttt

15 notes · View notes

its-fallinallinshawn · 4 years

Text

Balancing Act - Chapter 1

authors note: thanks for reading!! feedback is always appreciated :)

summary: shawn is on a world tour. whitney just won five more olympic gold medals. their lives seemed to be so individually perfect and most importantly, parallel. their paths haven't crossed in over a year but that was always bound to change when they share a manager.

Warnings: none

WC: 2,676

@briancraigen_: this tour is about to become a whole lot more dangerous, happy to have ya back @whitneymcquinn

@shawnssmile: omg what

@mendesluvr: wait what about camila

@whitneymcquinn: mwhahahahhaah

@smendesbby: WE STAN THIS QUEEN coming to save us from the Shawmila clown show

Let’s go to the bars! Let’s go to the bars!” Brian chanted for what seemed like the millionth time. Whitney laughed at her friend and continued putting the finishing touches on her makeup.

“On a scale of 1-10 how mad do you think Andrew would be if we skipped the concert and just went to the bars before everybody else?” Whitney asked, still preoccupied with getting ready. She smoothed out her strappy creme satin dress and began putting her black shoes on while she awaited Brian’s answer.

“Don’t you two dare. He’d be very mad Whitney Jane.” Andrew interjected, talking about himself in the third person, as he hopped into the tour bus just in time to hear the two 21-year old’s conspiring against him.

Whitney sighed and looked at Brian. They had to go. As much as Whitney did not want to see Shawn, she knew better than to piss Andrew off this early in the tour, especially when she had to spend basically the entirety of the tour with him. Plus, she’d have to see Shawn at some point, might as well be when she looks hot and ready to go out versus in her sweatpants with no makeup. Brian seemed to have a whole other set of reasons for not wanting to attend his best friends show. Whitney hadn’t been around for longer than a week, but she could already tell Shawn’s friends were not liking this new and Camila approved version of Shawn. It wasn’t hard to pick up on considering Brian’s endless supply of jokes about the two, but Whitney was interested to see the dynamic for herself.

“Whit, we’re already late. You look hot, like really hot. You can stop getting ready now. You could have no makeup on and be dressed in a paper bag and I guarantee Shawn would still die when he sees you. Plus, we have to get there before Shawn sings all his songs about you in front of Camila. I wanna see him squirm.” Brian said as he grabbed Whitney’s arm and dragged her out of the tour bus, ignoring the callings of Andrew yelling at them to behave.

Whitney smiled as her and Brian entered the arena. As much as she was dreading seeing Shawn, she was excited to see a lot of other people she hadn’t been able to see in a while. Whitney had been essentially locked inside an old dusty gym training for the past year. Now she was retired, from competitive gymnastics at least, and was ready to have some fun.

“Is that my second mija I see!?” Whitney heard from behind her, immediately recognizing the voice as Shawn’s father, Manny.

Whitney turned around to see the whole of the Mendes family, with the exception of Shawn who was on stage, and none other than Camila Cabello. Whitney sucked in a breath and put on the biggest smile she could muster. She knew she’d meet Camila at some point, but she didn’t think it was gonna be the second she walked into the venue and she was hoping to have a drink in her beforehand.

“Whit, you look beautiful baby. I still cannot believe we weren’t able to make it out to Tokyo.” Karen said, referring to Whitney’s record-breaking performance at the Summer Olympic Games in Japan.

“Lookin more like your momma every day, I swear. She’d be so proud of you. I think she would be maybe the only person that could be prouder of you than us or your father or your brothers. Or Shawn or Brian. Okay never mind, point is you have so many people that are so fricken proud of you and we are somewhere at the top of the list.” Manny smiled as he pulled Whitney in for another hug and kissed the top of her head.

“Manny, stop you’re gonna make me cry!” Whitney laughed as she playfully swatted at him. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this family. When she met them five years ago when Andrew signed her, two months after her mother lost a long battle with ovarian cancer and fresh off a big move to follow her gymnastics coach to his new gym in Toronto, they became her rock. Training in Canada, far away from her family in North Carolina, they became her home away from home and her second family. Their support was what helped her become, as many referred to her as, ‘the greatest of all time’.

“Guys, what the hell? Am I chopped liver?” Brian teased, standing with his hands on his hips, pretending to look pissed off at the fact he was being ignored in the wake of Whitney’s reunion with the Mendes family.

Just as Manny was about to fire one back at Brian about seeing him all the time, Camila interjected, speaking for the first time since Whitney and Brian had appeared. “Wait so are you Brian’s girlfriend or something?” she asked in an enthusiastic tone.

Everybody looked at each other and disappeared into fits of laughter because one, Whitney being Brian’s girlfriend was just an incredulously hilarious thought as the two had been a pair of bickering best friends for years now. Two, because it became very apparent to the group that Camila had really no idea who Whitney was, nevertheless knew her past with Shawn. Aaliyah locked eyes with Whitney as to say something along the lines of ‘Oh boy, wait until she actually finds out who you are’. Whitney continued her nervous laughter and inwardly groaned as she realized this was going to be a long night.

“Oh Camila, this is one of Shawn and Brian’s best friends! Andrew is her manager too and she has trained up in Toronto near us for the past five years or so. I am surprised you don’t know her she’s on just about every cereal box in this country.” Karen giggled, cheeks red with laughter still.

“Only the best damn gymnast this world has ever been graced with. Whit, go get your 10 Olympic gold medals please, I am disrespected for you.” Brian said, not even attempting to hide his distaste for Camila.

Whitney gave him a discreet a look as possible. “I’m sorry about him, just ignore him it gets easy after a while, I promise. I’m Whitney!” she said reaching her hand out to Camila to greet her. Camila slowly accepted as she stole a judgmental glance at the small Olympic rings tattoo placed on the inside of Whitney’s wrist, as to confirm she wasn’t lying about being an Olympian. The awkwardness settled in as Camila’s silence lingered on.

“Well let’s go side stage, then? Yeah?” Brian asked as he handed Whitney a drink and whisked her away, Aaliyah on their heels, desperate to get away from her parents who had been tasked personally by Shawn to make Camila feel more ‘included’ when he wasn’t around. Aaliyah thought if Camila wanted to be more included, she shouldn’t toy with her brothers feelings just to gain some publicity, but as Shawn puts it ‘What does she know?”.

Whitney stood with a smile on her face as she watched Shawn perform. No matter the terms they were on, she would always be mesmerized watching him do what he loved. She couldn’t deny how good he looked either. His muscles looked perfectly sculpted in his white cutoff tee and she couldn’t help but glance at the rings on his fingers that she once was so used to playing with. She had been quite enjoying the show, dancing with Brian and Aaliyah. She had almost forgot why she was so nervous to attend the show to begin with until she heard the first few notes of that oh so familiar song.

“Shawn, what are you doing?” Whitney laughed as she felt the weight of Shawn crash down on her as he playfully flung her onto his enormous bed.

“This. Is. Me. Getting. The. Pretty. Girl. I. Like. Alone.” Shawn smirked, sneaking a kiss in between each word. “And because I have to show you something”. He said as he planted one last kiss on Whitney’s lips before getting off of her and walking across the room to grab his guitar.

“Oh my God! Did I finally get a song written about me you cheeseball?” Whitney teased as she feigned surprise, dramatically putting her hand over her heart. She smiled as she looked up at Shawn. His cheeks slightly pink from the effects of the alcohol he’d been drinking at the party still going on right outside the closed door of his bedroom. His hair slightly unruly from the amount of times he’d been running his hands through it that evening and all Whitney could think about was how much she couldn’t wait to do just that.

“Will you stop checking me out and let me be a sap for a couple minutes.” Shawn smiled as he began strumming his guitar and singing. Whitney’s heart swelled as she watched. She loved when he sang to her and he knew it, which is why he did it often. He couldn’t even count the amount of songs he had written about her over the years.

“What if my dad is right when he says that you’re the one? No, I can’t even argue. I won’t even fight him on it…” The second Whitney heard that line she couldn’t help but tackle the gorgeous boy in front of her in the biggest hug she could manage.

“Hey, I’m not done-“ Whitney interrupted Shawn’s complaint by attaching her mouth to his and swiftly removing the guitar that separated the two. She normally wouldn’t be this bold, but she had a drink or two in her and a beautiful guy with a beautiful voice singing to her that he thought she was the one. What was she supposed to do? Her hands instinctively went into his hair and his down to her waist, wasting no time in moving a little further south and giving her ass a firm squeeze. His tongue swiped across her bottom lip, asking for entrance and Whitney gave it to him almost immediately. Whitney began working her way down Shawn’s neck, nipping at the sensitive skin behind his ear, making sure to whisper how much she wanted him before moving any further down.

“Fuck babe, we gotta lock the door if you’re going to keep doing that.” Shawn moaned as Whitney grinded against him in her straddled position. She felt his warm fingertips lift her shirt over her head and she reattached their lips before her shirt even hit the ground.

“What the fuck guys! Get a room!” a drunk Brian yelled as he barged in on the couple who immediately jumped apart at the sound of Shawn’s bedroom door flying open.

“Dude! This is literally my bedroom, get out!” Shawn yelled as he scrambled to throw a shirt towards Whitney to cover her exposed chest while pushing Brian back into the hallway.

That was two weeks before Whitney had decided she was going to make a comeback for the 2020 Olympic gymnastics team and two weeks before Shawn’s world tour got signed off on. The memory made her sad as she could now see that in that moment, life was looming over them, once again ready to take them both into two totally different directions. But as she looked at Shawn’s shining face up on stage and she remembered her own immense joy every time an Olympic gold medal was placed around her neck and the Star-Spangled Banner played; she knew everything happened for a reason.

“Remember when I walked in on you guys about to fuck because he wrote you this song and you pounced on him? And Camila probably thinks it’s about her!” Brian said teasingly as he nudged Whitney’s side.

“Ewh!! Brian, that’s my brother!” Aaliyah screeched, hands flying to cover her ears.

“Brian, shut up.” Whitney laughed as she rolled her eyes and looked back up at Shawn. Whitney immediately froze as her eyes were met with Shawn’s already boring into her, shock written all over them. Whitney gave a weak smile which seemed to have caught Shawn a bit off guard as he stumbled over his words. He profusely apologized to the crowd, shook his head, tore his eyes away from Whitney, and made sure to not look anywhere near her direction for the remainder of the show.

Whitney sat in the VIP area of the crowded club next to Alessia and Connor. They were basically the only two people on this tour she hadn’t known from many prior visits to come see Shawn on previous tours, but she had become friends with them quickly. Especially Alessia, as they both seemed to be extra thankful to have another girl around all the time. Whitney had been nursing her third vodka water of the night when she felt an awkward tap on her shoulder and an all too familiar clear of the throat. She was met with the sight of a clearly drunk Shawn and blew out a breath in an attempt to clear her slightly fuzzy head and prepare for whatever conversation was coming her way. It might have been the liquid courage, but she felt oddly ready for her first encounter with Shawn.

“Uh, thanks for coming tonight Whit. I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“Yeah I know.”

“What do you mean you know?”

“Because you never fuck up and you fucked up during ‘When You’re Ready’ when we made eye contact.”

Even in the dim light of the club, Whitney could practically see the heat radiating off of Shawn’s cheeks. She almost felt bad for being so blunt right off of the bat, especially with Alessia and Connor intently watching the pair’s interesting encounter. Whitney was almost 100% sure they did not know of her and Shawn’s past with each other by the slack and confused faces they wore as they tried to not make their interest so obvious.

Shawn gulped as he began again, he wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or her southern sass making it harder to recover quickly. He was nervously pondering what to say next when a belligerently drunk Brian slid into the booth.

“Holllllly shit” Brian slurred. “Well look who we have here. Whit, you should ask him where his girrrrrrrlfriend is”.

“Brian stop, she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Have you made a habit of making girls fall for you but refusing to put the label on it?” the sassy remark slipped out of Whitney’s mouth almost immediately and she instantly regretted it. Whitney mumbled a quick sorry and hurried to stand from the table but was stopped by a hand reaching across the table and grabbing her arm.

“That’s not fair and you know it.” Shawn said sternly standing up to meet Whitney’s eyes and bringing himself practically nose to nose with her. He knew he was a little too drunk and that he had pulled her a little too close, but he hadn’t smelled her lavender vanilla scent in so long and he just couldn’t help himself.

At this point Alessia and Connor had gone for another round at the bar in order to diffuse the situation, but Brian sat intently, smiling wide. As much as they both had denied it to him, he knew his two best friends wouldn’t be able to stay away from each other for long.

“Can we please just talk sometime, somewhere that’s not here? Preferably when we are both sober?”

“Sure, Shawn. Just let me know when you’re ready.” Whitney smirked as she pushed past Shawn to go join Alessia and Connor at the bar.

#shawn mendes #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes the tour #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes series #shawn mendes x oc #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes fan fiction #aaliyah mendes #brian craigen #gymnastics #summer olympics #olympics #tokyo 2020

18 notes · View notes

arcticdementor · 5 years

Link

When I saw him, he was outside Payne Whitney. Nothing about the tall, gray façade suggests it is the university gym, unless there is a new trend of contractors housing athletics departments in Gothic cathedrals. You wouldn’t guess by looking at the frosted glass panes and arches that the third floor hosts the world’s largest suspended indoor swimming pool. It is a work of art, like the rest of Yale’s buildings.

Marcus was smoking by a bench, his face jaundiced from three packs that day. This is atypical for Yale students—most abstain from smoking. There was no reason for him to smoke so much, just as there was no reason for me to ride around campus on a blue Razor scooter. But Yale students tend to have such quirks. His suit-jacket was dusty and smelled of sweat—he didn’t mind lifting weights in a dress shirt and trousers if that meant more time to read Nietzsche alone at the bar.

When I hugged him, he felt skeletal. I asked if he had eaten today. He assured me that his earthly requirements were limited—no need for anything other than alcohol and cigarettes. “I can buy you a sandwich.” He refused. I insisted. A nice one. Bacon and egg. Or steak and cheese. I was testy now. “GHeav is right there. I’ll be back in six minutes.”

He turned his face towards me, warm with friendliness—and with one sentence, he changed our relationship forever.

“You know I’m rich, right?”

“What?”

“You know I have a trust fund, right? I can buy my own sandwich if I wanted it.”

This is the moment when after three years of friendship, Marcus sat down and told me his life story. His cottages in Norway. Sneaking into the family study. Learning about the cost of hardwoods and hearing his boorish, critical father sulk in 5-star hotel rooms.

Marcus did not act this way out of anxiety, grief, stress, or because he had nobody to tell him his habits will kill him. He lived as a starving writer not out of necessity, but for the aesthetic. Out of some desire to imitate the Bohemian 19th century writers. Out of artistry. Style. Intentional choice.

…

This is a story about an institution and an elite that have lost themselves.

…

Over the past decade, elite colleges have been staging grounds for what Matthew Yglesias has termed the Great Awokening. Dozens of scandals have illustrated a stifling new ideological orthodoxy that is trickling down into the rest of society through HR departments, corporations, churches, foundations, and activist organizations. The nation is becoming polarized and its parts disconnected. The right is evil, and the left is stupid. Or is it the other way around?

The campus “free speech” debate is just a side-effect. So are debates about “diversity” and “inclusion.” The real problems run much deeper. The real problems start with Marcus and me, and the masks we wear for each other.

…

Based on statistics from the class of 2013, approximately 2% of students hailed from the lowest income quintile, while 69% came from the top 20%. How did those poor students fare after graduation? Around 2% of students at Yale move from the bottom to the top quintile. In other words, nearly all of them. You show up poor, and you leave rich. Going to an Ivy League school may be the fastest way to join the upper class.

But this low number of 2% surprised me because when I was at Yale, everybody kept talking about how broke they were.

…

Poor people—actually poor people—don’t talk this way. They tend to stay under the radar because they don’t know the rules of the game. But I bought it—at least when I was a freshman. If they were constantly announcing how broke they were, my assumption was that they must have even less money than I do.

This turned out to be wrong. The reality was that they were invariably from the upper-middle and upper classes. I know this because they eventually told me, like Marcus did. But there were tells. These students didn’t act the way my friends and I did growing up. They didn’t know how much pens or flights or cars were supposed to cost. They couldn’t tell when a restaurant was a good deal.

Pretending to be poor is a lot easier than pretending to be rich—just because there are so many different ways to be poor. But there are still small quirks you have to get right. Social class doesn’t just influence how you walk and talk; it influences how you interact with others. The stereotype is that poor people are improper—but sometimes it is the opposite. They try to do things as they think they are meant to be done. Spending a hundred hours building bat wings for a Halloween costume. Renting a limo for their child’s prom.

But lying about anything is tricky—you risk being found out—so what were these people trying to accomplish by acting broke? And this raises the broader question: why pretend to be of a social class you are not?

…

What about the regular rich? Not the children of billionaires, but the children of millionaires. The common impulse is to emulate the people one or two levels above you—so they might also act poorer than they are. But whereas the super-rich learned purposeful discretion from their parents at weekly dinner table meetings, the regular rich did not. They learned it through mimicry—and with varying degrees of success. The less sophisticated copycats end up brazenly proclaiming that they are “broke” and “upper-middle class.”

For some people, this isn’t an act; they actually believe this. After all, they do seem poor when compared to the hyper-rich. They can’t afford spontaneous Spring Break trips to private Bali islands. They see their prep-school classmates’ Facebook photos and realize that they are one, or maybe two, pegs down from that, and so they use the term “upper-middle class” without really knowing what this term refers to. They have no idea how the actual upper-middle class, the middle class, or the poor really live. Those students never went to their prep school, so for all intents and purposes, they do not exist. Like Krasnoyarsk, Siberia—we know it exists. We can find it on a map. But we don’t need to concern ourselves with it. Often, this is what the real poor are to rich people—they are a theoretical construct that exist somewhere else.

…

In another instance, I was privately discussing with a professor the pros and cons of a Food Stamp reform proposal. After some analysis, I commented on my own experience with the program. His response was complete shock. “You don’t really mean you were on welfare. You just mean you were supported by your parents, right?”

In a world of masks and façades, it is hard to convey the truth.

And this is how I ended up offering a sandwich to a man with hundreds of millions in a foreign bank account.

…

On the surface, there is nothing wrong with haphazard and sometimes warped class signaling. But if you put on a façade for long enough, you end up forgetting that it is a façade. The rich and powerful actually start believing that they are neither of those things. They actually start believing that there is not much difference in status and resources between themselves and the upper-middle class, the middle class—and eventually, between themselves and the actual poor. They forget that they have certain privileges and duties that others do not. They forget that the inside joke was just a joke all along.

…

When these kids grow up, they end up at conferences where everybody lifts their champagne glasses to speeches about how we all need to “tear down the Man!” How we need to usurp conventional power structures.

You hear about these events. They sound good. It’s important to think about how to improve the world. But when you look around at the men and women in their suits and dresses, with their happy, hopeful expressions, you notice that these are the exact same people with the power—they are the Man supposedly causing all those problems that they are giving feel-good speeches about. They are the kids from Harvard-Westlake who never realized they were themselves the elite. They are the people with power who fail to comprehend the meaning of that power. They are abdicating responsibility, and they don’t even know it.

…

There is another reason why people might pretend to be poor. This reason is much more serious than fitting in or avoiding hitmen. The rich and powerful are expected to take responsibility for things, and blamed when they go wrong.

“Check your privilege.” Just about every college student has heard this phrase since 2013. What it means is evasive. But like most memes that strike a chord with people—there is some point to it. The rich have privileges. They therefore also have responsibilities. The responsibilities are not always so fun.

…

Would you want to be the strongest man in the village right at the moment when you failed to use that strength properly and the village is dying and rivals are out for blood? Or would you rather be the average person, eating the normal amount of food, without being hated?

But that was just a thought experiment. Those are people in crises—in a hunter-gatherer village at war. We live in America. Certainly things are different during a stable, prosperous period, in a technologically advanced society. Would you want to be exceptional then?

Not necessarily. The elite are faced with certain hard burdens.

The elite are expected—by everyone else, and by each other—to use their power to make sure society works properly. That is, they are expected to rule benevolently. The reason they are expected to do this is that if they don’t, nobody else can or will. The middle class and the poor do not have the powers and privileges that the rich and elite do, and cannot afford the necessary personal risks. But without active correction towards health and order, society fails.

…

In times of political uncertainty, when things are not going well, elites face more scrutiny, and more internal pressure to find people to blame—whether rightly, or as scapegoats. It becomes a bigger liability to be openly elite.

Further, such times are themselves caused by political dysfunction among the elite, when elite institutions forget how to listen to reason (or have decided not to) and forget how to coordinate towards benevolent rule.

At elite conferences, they wonder how to regain trust, or otherwise deal with the rising atmosphere of populist discontent. They acknowledge that something is deeply wrong. But they dare not lay the blame at their own feet, caused by their own overreaches and dysfunction. Anyone who did would immediately be under suspicion. No longer one of us, but one of them. So, those who might otherwise lead the difficult but necessary elite self-critique instead keep their mouths shut, or they say the wrong thing without ideological, psychological, and social preparation for the consequences and get cast out. Only the true believers incapable of self-critique, the incompetent, and the cynics, remain as voices in the public forum. They talk in circles, never quite able to correct course and come to any new conclusions, except the need to double down on current ideological practices.

…

They say that the recent scandals at Yale had to do with racial and social justice. I don’t think that’s what it was really about. When looking at one or two scandals, it’s easy to buy the story that it is just students organizing and using their rights of free speech and assembly to protest what they see as injustices perpetrated by the university. But when looking at all of the scandals together, another narrative starts to emerge.

And that narrative is much closer to this: members of the ruling class are not sure what to do with themselves—and they are not even sure they want to rule.

…

When people think of universities, they think of their local state school, or else Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. And when they think about Yale, it is often when they are reading about a president, a Supreme Court justice, or the editor of The New Yorker. That’s because Yale graduates play no small part in running the world. It is the school the elite want to send their kids to. It is the school the lower classes assume their kids will never go to.

…

What happens when a school with this position is embarrassed about its role as an international trendsetter? What if instead of doing the hard work to set the tone for responsible rule, it abdicates that responsibility?

…

But the appearance of bottom-up protest politics is always a bit of a false narrative. It would be one thing if the students were polled and a majority said they wanted the name changed, or some other process was used. At least the university could say that it was making decisions based on some objective democratic process, and wasn’t just being pushed around. But this is not what happened. No polls were taken. There was no authoritative process. The school said no for a few months, then caved. If the school were actually confident in its position to resist, it could have easily pushed back on the protests. Instead, it folded on demands from a small number of students willing to make noise. Either the university administrators are spectacularly spineless, or the protests just provided a convenient impetus and excuse to do something they already wanted. We can look at several more incidents and notice a similar trend.

…

What do all of these events have in common? Some had student support. Some did not. Some started as public outrage taken to the street. Some were completely internal. What they had in common was an administration and student body coordinated around an ideology that continually mutated to ensure moral entrepreneurship and a continued supply of purges, as new forms of human behavior or commonplace descriptors became off-limits. Some of this energy was genuine, some cynical.

These were not kids protesting the Vietnam war, or graduate students mobilizing for better pay and medical care. Nobody would have had a gun shoved into their arms and sent across the world if Yale had not fired the professors. Nobody would have lost money if they did not change “Master.” In fact—Yale lost money on these changes in the form of alumni donations and administrative time. Meetings, committees, redone paperwork, and brand new “head of college” plaques. These changes were neither meant to save lives, nor to save money.

But what was the point of it all?

…

Thousands of hours of human effort and labor. And for what? What was it for?

If you ask supporters, they will tell you the cost does not matter so much, because this is about creating an ideal world. Of course the professor should be fired—how dare she stand against the minority student organizations? Of course it’s okay that the Yelp reviews were published—she should never have written them. Of course names should be changed if they hint at or honor the wrong ideology. What does preserving history matter if history is racist? The university is handling things according to its proper ideals of empathy and inclusion.

In short, their point was that this was all to help poor people. Immigrants. People whose parents are from distant, impoverished lands. People of color. Changing “Master,” firing the dean, and firing professors was all for this.

Except this did so little to actually help any of these people that this could not possibly have been the main motivation.

None of this was actually to their benefit, except for the few activists willing to invest time and energy into the game. It is not easy to stay up-to-date with the new, ever-more complex rules about what you are allowed to say to qualify as the bare minimum of sociable and sane. It is cognitively and socially demanding. I had to not just study psychology and computer science, but I had to stay up-to-date with the latest PhD-level critical theory just to have conversations.

…

If words like “Master” are deemed offensive based on questionable linguistic or historical standards, then this means other words and phrases can become offensive at a moment’s notice. Under these rules, only people in the upper ranks who receive constant updates can learn what is acceptable. Everybody else will be left behind.

The people best positioned for this are professors at elite universities. They are ingrained in the culture that makes up these social rules. They get weekly or even daily updates, but even they cannot keep up.

…

A cynical observer might conclude that this is all just revolution as usual; a small clique of agitators seizing more and more power, and purging their enemies by virtue of their superior internal solidarity, a bold and demanding ideology, lukewarm popular moral support, and no real organized opposition. In some ways, that is what’s going on. They have the bold ideology, the ambient support, and no real opposition.

But importantly, they don’t have internal coordination by any means other than adherence to the ideology itself. Even members of the clique are never really safe. Anyone who contradicts the latest consensus version of the constantly mutating ideology, even if they have worked to its benefit or are otherwise obviously on side, gets purged. If you don’t keep up, you get purged.

It doesn’t matter that the ideology is abusive to its own constituents and allies, or that it doesn’t really even serve its formal beneficiaries. All that matters is this: for everyone who gets purged for a slight infraction, there are dozens who learn from this example never to stand up to the ideology, dozens who learn that they can attack with impunity if they use the ideology to do it, and dozens who are vaguely convinced by its rhetoric to be supportive of the next purge. So, on it goes.

This is the nature of coordination via ideology. If you’re organizing out of some common interest, you can have lively debates about what to do, how things work, who’s right and wrong, and even core aspects of your intellectual paradigm. But if your only standard for membership in your power coalition is detailed adherence to your ideology, as is increasingly true for membership in elite circles, then it becomes very hard to correct mistakes, or switch to a different paradigm.

And this helps explain much of the quagmire American elites are stuck in: being unable to speak outside of the current ideology, the only choice is to double down on a failing paradigm. These failures lead to lower elite morale, resulting in the class identity crisis which afflicts so many at Yale. Ironically, the result is an expression of that ideology which is increasingly rigid on ever more minute points of belief and conduct.

…

What is the point of this new ideology? This ideology is filled with inconsistencies and contradictions, because it is not really about ideological rigor. Among other things, it is an elaborate containment system for the theoretical and practical discontent generated by the failures of the system, an absolution from guilt, and a new form of class signaling. Before, to signal you were in the fashionable and powerful crowd, you would show off your country club membership, refined manners, or Gucci handbags. Now, you show how woke you are. To reinforce their new form of structural power, people dismiss the idea that they even have the older, more legible forms of status. They find any reverse-privilege points they can, and if they are cis-white-men, they pose as allies. On an institutional level, the old ways of legitimizing power are gone, and the new motto is this: diversity is legitimacy.

There is a deep comedy to this sort of signaling. Only around 2% of the student body was in the bottom 20% of American society, and yet extremely wealthy Singaporean students who had spent just a few years in America marched in the street and referred to themselves as “people of color.” People’s experiences were ignored when they volunteered information that countered the main narrative, because the surface-level debate wasn’t the point. The point was to signal that you were with the program. Only a select and secret group of student “leaders”—who were already savvy enough to engage comfortably with hierarchy—were invited in to chat with administrators.

Shouting from the rooftops that “They aren’t doing enough!” is much easier than following any traditional system of elite social norms and duties, let alone carefully re-engineering that system to reestablish order in a time of growing crisis.

…

But there is more to selling out that nobody talks about. These jobs are the dream jobs of the middle class. They’re not supposed to be jobs for the sons and daughters of millionaires and billionaires—these kids don’t actually need the money. They want independence from their parents and proof that they can make it on their own—and prestigious work experience—but they have wealth acquired through generations that they can always fall back on. These people are generally as harmless as the middle class—which is to say completely harmless. They keep to themselves. They quietly grow their bank accounts and their 401ks. And just like the real middle class, they don’t want to risk their next promotion through being too outspoken. They have virtually no political power. This mindset is best encapsulated by: “I’ll go with the program. Please leave me alone to be comfortable and quietly make money.”

They effectively become middle class, because there is no longer any socially esteemed notion of upper class. They have a base of power, of f-you money, that they could use to become something greater than just another office worker or businessperson. But there is no script for that, no institutional or ideological support. What would it even mean to be an esteemed, blue-blooded aristocrat in 2019? So they take the easy and safe way.

How else do Yale students give up their responsibility?

They go in the other direction. These are the people who call themselves idealists and say they want to save the world. They feel the weight of responsibility from their social status—but they don’t know how to process and integrate this responsibility into their lives properly. Traditionally, structurally well-organized elite institutions would absorb and direct this benevolent impulse to useful purpose. But our traditional institutions have decayed and lost their credibility, so these idealists start looking for alternatives, and start signalling dissociation from those now-disreputable class markers.

…

Who is winning? This question is an important one. Yale administrators had lofty goals. In an attempt to placate their own biases, the administrators and faculty forgot that they are the ones who are supposed to be teaching. Instead of expelling or suspending the small number of people actively undermining the student body and university as a whole, the university does nothing, or actively accelerates the process. The professors are the ones who leave. The radical clique feels emboldened.

Now we can begin to understand the real problem at Yale. It is not free speech—and it is not non-inclusivity. The standards of reality, and the standards of morality not based solely on being woke, are ousted. That’s because the conventional standards of elite morality, based on responsible use of power—actually responsible, not just a convenient feeling of doing good—are much harder, and based on the very self-consciousness that everyone is trying to avoid.

…

The result is an institution increasingly unable to carry out its own mission, as tuition rises to pay for more administrators, and ideological drama makes it harder and harder to actually teach. And now we are back at the original question. What was the point of Yale? What was the point of going to Yale? What is the point of elite institutions?

Is the point of Yale to promote the humanities and knowledge of the West that is hard to learn anywhere else? This is not the full mission. Donald Kagan and Lee Bass’s year-long history of the West program was cut, due to faculty protesting that it was not multicultural enough, despite having large interest and $20 million in funding.

Is Yale’s vision a futuristic, technocratic university? Is the university divesting from the liberal arts for the purpose of committing to the technology of the future? This isn’t the case, either. Computer science enrollment has increased significantly in the past decade. But Yale’s computer science department is lagging behind other schools. The university has taken steps towards improving the department, but in general shows no signs of a visionary commitment to expanding tech or significantly expanding professorships.

…

Maybe the university has lost every purpose other than giving students a social environment in which to party. If the students aren’t educated or visionary, at least they’re networking and hedonically satisfied.

Except they’re not. It would be one thing if they were happy—but even this is not true. They don’t know what is expected of them, or what they should aspire to be. The lack of expectations creates nihilistic tendencies and existential crises. In 2018, around one quarter of Yale undergraduates said they sought mental health counseling. One quarter of Yale students took the “Happiness and the Good Life” course in 2018 in an attempt to find answers. Students are demanding more mental health resources. A new wellness space was created with bean-bag chairs and colored walls. But the real sources of unhappiness are more systemic. They are rooted in uncertainty about the future.

If Yale students are uncertain about the future and their role in it, what does that say about the rest of society?

…

So what if Yale, and Yale students, are abdicating responsibility? We can all just send our kids to Harvard, or MIT, or move to California and go to a state school. I heard UC Berkeley is pretty good.

But the problems present at Yale are present at every other university, and schools outside of the United States look to elite American universities as role models. If things are broken at elite universities, things are broken, period.

…

Yale is supposed to be using its power and reputation to set standards for excellence, but instead it is abandoning its responsibilities and getting embroiled in controversy after controversy. Yale is not special in this regard—other colleges are also often embroiled in controversies. But the controversies of top colleges matter most because they determine what is acceptable for everybody else.

And what’s happening at Yale reflects a crisis in America’s broader governing class. Unable to effectively respond to the challenges facing them, they instead try to bail out of their own class. The result is an ideology which acts as an escape raft, allowing some of the most privileged young people in the country to present themselves as devoid of power. Institutions like Yale, once meant to direct people in how to use their position for the greater good, are systematically undermined—a vicious cycle which ultimately erodes the country as a whole.

Segments of this class engage in risk-averse managerialism, while others take advantage of the glut to disrupt things and expand personal power. The broader population becomes caught up in these conflicts as these actors attempt to build power bases and mobilize against each other. And like Yale, it seems a safe bet that things will continue and even accelerate until some new vision and stable, non-ideological set of coordination mechanisms are able to establish hegemony and become a new ground for real cooperation.

#natalia dashan #palladium mag #yale #read the whole thing #class #noblesse oblige #doesn't exist without actual nobles

4 notes · View notes