#yes i was looping new year's day by taylor swift | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sequinsmile-x · 2 years

Text

The Penthouse of Your Heart

All they wanted was a weekend away just the two of them, but as always life wasn't quite as simple as that.

-x-

A birthday fic for my bestie @aubreyprc . Thanks for always making me laugh, leading me astray and loving Taylor Swift just as much (if not more) than I do. I will forever be your 'mum friend' and pull you back from doing something a little too insane.

Excited to get drunk with you at New Year xo

-x-

Words: 4.5k

Warnings: None!

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

“You almost ready to go, Em?”

Emily turns to look at her boyfriend, smiling at the sight of him in the doorway to his bedroom, leaning against the doorframe. He looked exceptionally handsome in his polo shirt and jeans, the rare sight of him in causal wear never failing to make her heart beat a little faster.

“Almost,” she replies, haphazardly folding one of her dresses that now lived in his closet before going to place it in her bag, “It’s only a four hour drive, honey. We’ll be ok.”

“Yes,” he says, walking across the room and taking the dress from her before folding it correctly and putting it in her bag for her, “But as soon as we hit Manhattan you know we’ll be stuck in traffic.” He raises an eyebrow at her as he puts his hand out for the blouse she was now holding, and she sighs as she hands it over, watching as he folds it and packs it for her. “Can’t believe I fell in love with a woman who can’t fold clothes.”

“Why would I need to when I have you to do it for me?” She asks, kissing his cheek and pulling away to zip up her bag. “At least you got here after I packed all the lingerie, I wanted that to be a surprise.”

Emily feels a sense of accomplishment as he swallows thickly, his hands on her hips as he pulls her into his embrace, her arms automatically looping around his neck.

“All of the lingerie?” He asks, and she smiles, biting at her lower lip as she hums in response. “How much are we talking?”

“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see,” she snuggles into him, sighing contentedly as he wraps his arms tighter around her as her head rests on his chest, “I can’t believe the team didn’t say anything about the fact we both have the same weekend off.”

Aaron runs a hand up and down her back, “Dave seemed suspicious, but kept his thoughts to himself for once,” he kisses her forehead, “Of course, when they find out we’re together he’ll claim he’s known the whole time.”

It had been almost a year since their friendship had become more. A desperate first kiss inside her hotel room after too close a call with an unsub was the first step they took, and they had walked hand in hand ever since. Their friendship deepened after he made her promise to tell him when she was having bad days, and she kept that promise. So, after they became a couple the team didn’t seem to notice that they were spending a lot of time together and that Jack was incredibly comfortable around Emily.

Keeping it a secret had been practical at first, whilst they found their footing together, but as time went on they realised they enjoyed having something to themselves, a rarity in both of their lives. Jack and Jessica knew, as did Elizabeth, but the team did not. They both knew it was only a matter of time until they had to tell them. They couldn’t advance with their discussions of living together, even though she practically lived at his apartment anyway, or marriage until their friends knew about them.

Emily in particular was worried, aware that secrets had almost torn them apart in the past, but she also didn’t regret anything. The 11 months she’d had solidifying her relationship with the man she loves without outside interference was not something she could ever feel guilty about

“What did you tell them you’re doing again?” Emily asks, leaning back but keeping her arms around his neck, her fingers trailing through the short hair at the back of his head.

“That I’m taking Jack away for the weekend,” he replies, his hands on her hips as he pulls her closer.

She nods, smiling up at him, “I settled on telling them that I was spending the time with my mother.”

“What, no ‘sin to win’ weekend this time?” He asks, his eyebrow raised.

She laughs as she shakes her head, “No, this creates much fewer follow-up questions,” her smile widens, “And it means everyone gives me a wide berth for a couple of days because they think I’ll be in a bad mood.”

Aaron shakes his head at her, leaning in to stamp a quick kiss against her lips, “Hopefully I can make sure you’re in a good mood.” She hums, a teasing sparkle in her eye as she kisses him.

“Maybe, we’ll see if you’re up to it.” He narrows his eyes, all but growling as he pulls her impossibly closer, kissing her again with more force this time, leaving her breathless when he pulls away, “I might be in a great mood on Monday at this rate,” he kisses her again. She chuckles, her hand shifting to idly play with the collar of his polo shirt, “Excellent even.”

Aaron smiles at her, the dimples carved out in his cheeks in a way that always makes her stomach swoop.

“Come on sweetheart,” he says, reaching for her hand and squeezing it, “We should get going.”

___

“Are you sure I can’t convince you to let me at least pay half?” Emily asks, turning to look from the view of Central Park to her boyfriend, her arm wrapping around his waist as he joins her by the window, “I know this place is expensive.”

Aaron smiles at her, shaking his head as he does so. It was a conversation they’d had multiple times since they’d decided to come to New York together for a weekend away. He wanted to treat her, to spoil her even though she didn’t need it. So much of their time was dedicated to doing things for other people, that he wanted to make sure they had this. Some rare time just the two of them, something they could look back on and hold on to when real life got in the way. He leans down and kisses her, his arms snaking around her back, pulling her closer.

“Consider it an early anniversary present,” he murmurs against her lips, kissing her again, “Don’t worry about the money, Em. I wanted to do this.”

She playfully narrows her eyes at him and makes a mental note to try again later, knowing she could convince him of just about anything when she was naked, or about to be naked, but for now, she lets it go. She leans into his side, her head against his shoulder.

“Don’t think even for a second this gets out of you getting me a real gift next month when it’s actually our anniversary,” she jokes, trying to move away from him as he briefly tickles her, his fingers teasingly digging into her ribs.

“Don’t worry sweetheart,” he replies, thinking of the jewellery he’d already bought her, the necklace from Tiffany’s that he’d purchased instead of the ring he’d had his eye on, talking himself out of it at the last minute. People had to know about them before he proposed, he knew that, and they’d have to have the conversation with their friends, their defacto family, that they’d been avoiding for almost a year now. “I wouldn’t dare.”

She hums as she tilts her head to kiss his jaw, her lips against the rough of the stubble that had just started to form. She’d asked him to leave his razor at home for the weekend having persuaded him to let his beard grow out for the couple of days that they were away.

“What do you want to do first?” She asks, smiling at him, “There's a nice Italian just a block or so from here.”

He chuckles, “Of course you know that.”

She raises an eyebrow at him, a smirk forming across her face. “Honey, I’m the daughter of a US Ambassador, it can’t surprise you that I’ve stayed at the Ritz-Carlton before.”

His response is cut off by a knock at the door, and they both furrow their brows as they look towards it and then back at each other.

“Did you order room service?” He asks, and she shakes her head in response. Aaron disentangles himself from her and walks towards the door across their suite. He looks through the peephole and sees the man from the desk who had checked them in just a couple of hours previously. He opens the door, and watches as the other man swallow thickly, his name badge displaying his name as Tony, and Aaron meets his eyes. “Can I help you?”

“Sorry to disturb you, Agent Hotchner,” Tony says, clearing his throat, looking past him to see Emily walking over too, standing just behind Aaron, “It’s just…we saw on your credentials when you checked in that you work for the FBI?” Aaron furrows his brows, “Yes,” he replies, standing aside slightly so Emily is more involved in the conversation, “We both are.”

Tony nods, “Great,” he says, nodding slightly, “Good. We need your help with something.”

“We’re on vaca-”

Emily puts her hand on Aaron’s arm and squeezes slightly, cutting off what she was sure would be a tirade of some sort. “What do you need our help with?”

Tony clears his throat again, letting them both know he was nervous, something that just seemed to be part of his disposition.

“We found a body in one of the rooms, we think the guy has been murdered.”

___

“The Ritz-Carlton? That’s a bit fancy for a father/son weekend away in the city isn’t it Hotch?”

Aaron sighs at Derek’s words, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tries to hide his frustration, his plans of a peaceful weekend with the woman he loved disappearing through his fingers like sand.

“I just thought I’d treat him,” he replies, hoping it puts an end to that part of the conversation, “The guy from the desk, Tony, said that the guy who was checked into the room where the victim was found is from DC, so can you and one of the others just go check out his place, I’ve asked Tony to send Garcia the details.”

“Of course,” Derek replies, “Why have you got involved in this?”

Aaron chuckles under his breath, asking himself the same question, “Apparently they want to keep this as quiet as they can to keep the hotel’s reputation upstanding,” he says, and Derek laughs down the phone, “The New York field office are doing everything here, and they’ve asked that we do the DC side of things.”

“No problem, boss,” Derek says, “Want us to call Prentiss? Get her involved?”

Aaron looks up at that exact moment, the sound of the bathroom door opening drawing his attention away from the call. He’s briefly speechless at the sight of his girlfriend in just her underwear, her hair and make-up ready for the dinner they were on their way to, as she does up one of her earrings. She winks at him, a sly smile on her face that lets him know she knew exactly what she was doing. She walks across the room to the closet where she’d hung up some of her clothes, and his eyes follow her.

“Hotch?”

Aaron clears his throat, remembering he was on the phone as quickly as he had forgotten.

“No, no need to bother Prentiss,” he replies, his finger to his lips to keep his girlfriend quiet as her eyes narrow at the mention of her name, and he smiles at her.

“You sure? She’d jump at the chance to get out of spending time with her mother.”

“I’m sure, she told me she was looking forward to it.”

Emily flips him off from across the room, making his smile get wider as he half-listens to Derek.

“Ok, as long as you’re sure,” Derek replies, “You go have fun with Jack, we’ve got it from here.”

“Thanks, Morgan.”

Aaron hangs up the phone and slips it into his jacket pocket, straightening the collar of it and his shirt. “Are you sure I don’t need a tie?”

Emily rolls her eyes at him as she tugs her dress down over her underwear, turning silently to indicate that she wanted him to up the zip for her. He closes the distance between them and does just that, gently pushing her hair out of the way.

“Yes, Aaron, I’m sure you don’t need a tie,” she turns to face him when he’s zipped up her dress, her arms looping around his neck. She looks him up and down, biting her lower lip as her eyes meet his, “You look very handsome.”

He smiles at her, his hands finding their way to her lower back, the dip there that he swore was made for him.

“And you look gorgeous,” he replies, kissing her, “Although, I did also enjoy the view before you put the dress on.”

“Well,” she says, kissing him again before moving away, grabbing her purse from the table she’d left it on, “You’ll get another chance to see that after I’ve eaten.”

Aaron nods and leads her out of their suite and towards the elevators, it’s only when they are standing there waiting, her arm linked through one of his, that she speaks again.

“Aaron?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“If I really was with my mother, you’d call me to rescue me, right?”

Aaron laughs, and turns his head to kiss her temple, “In a heartbeat,” he replies, leading her into the elevator as the doors open, “You’d be the first person I’d call.”

___

Emily isn’t sure what’s woken her up at first. She groans slightly as she burrows further into the comfortable bed, the mattress she wishes they could take home with them enough to make her almost drift back to sleep, and then she realises she’s alone.

She’d fallen asleep wrapped up in Aaron’s arms, sated and pressed up against him, their clothes spread out across the room in a way she knew she’d have to pick up in the morning so she could look at the housekeeper in the eye. She reaches over to his side of the bed and feels the sheets are cool, indicating he’d been gone a little while, and she realises that was what had awoken her.

They rarely spent a night apart these days, even sneaking into each other's rooms on cases, their initial rule of never doing that lasting not even the first case they’d worked together as a couple almost a year ago. She knew they lived together in everything except name, she spent most of her time at his place, a lot of her clothes were there, her favourite ornaments making their way over too. Spread in amongst the things that belonged to the Hotchners, their lives blending together.

They’d discussed it, knowing they couldn’t officially take that step until they stopped hiding their relationship. Not just from the practical side of things, she was highly aware Penelope would spot the official change of address form seconds after she submitted it, but in every other way too. She knew this phase of their relationship, the secret, the clandestine nature of it, was drawing to a close, and she was excited. She wanted to talk to her friends about the man she loves and wanted to move forward with him.

She just had to get past the fear of their reaction. She knew some of it was her and Aaron’s fault, that the length of time they had kept their relationship a secret would add to the sting for the team, but she didn’t regret it.

She imagined it would be like ripping off a bandaid, short but sharp indignation from the people they loved.

Emily stretches as she sits up, the chill of the room making her shiver as the sheet falls from her chest, exposing her naked skin. She stands and pulls on Aaron’s shirt, seeking him out, wanting nothing more than to fall asleep wrapped up in him again.

She finds him easily, in the living room section of the suite. He was sitting in an armchair that he’d turned to look out over the park and the city, wearing his pyjamas he must have pulled on in the dark to not disturb her, given away by the fact his t-shirt was inside out. He turns to look at her as he hears the door from the bedroom opening, and he smiles at her.

“Sorry,” he says softly, turning to look back out the window, “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“It’s ok,” she replies, her words partially lost to a yawn as she walks across the room, her footsteps quiet against the soft carpet, “What time is it?”

“2 am,” he says looking at his watch. He shifts in the armchair to make room for her as she climbs into his lap, curled up with her side pressed into his chest, her leg over the arm of the chair. He wraps one arm around her to steady her, and his other hand rests on her thigh. She rests her head on his shoulder and he turns his head to breathe her in, his eyes closed as he smells her hair, the scent of her shampoo always enough to calm him. “I’m ok.”

She smiles, looking up at him, “I didn’t say anything.”

He cups her cheek, holding her in place as he kisses her forehead, “You didn’t have to.”

It was something they both treasured, that they knew each other so well. So intimately. They were able to have conversations without saying anything at all. They knew when to push and when to let the other work things through.

She turns her head to kiss the palm of his hand, “Want to talk about it?”

Aaron smiles, turning to look back out at the view, the lights of the city reflected in his eyes, “I didn’t even hesitate.”

She creases her brows, unsure what he was talking about, “What do you mean?”

“Earlier on,” he says, clearing his throat, “Once we had the field office and the team involved I didn’t hesitate to just carry on with our plans,” he explains, his lips pressed together as he looks at her, “I just wanted to spend time with you. I didn’t even consider offering to help.”

She sighs as it clicks in her mind, “Aaron-”

“I just…I feel bad sometimes. That I can do this for you, that I didn’t even think about it, but I couldn’t for Haley. When we were together…I probably would have ordered her room service and worked the case until it was done.”

“Honey,” she says gently, cupping his cheek to make him look at her, smiling when he squeezes her thigh in response, “Things are different now, hell I would have probably worked it too a few years ago. But we’ve both learnt from what we’ve gone through. There’s a time to work, and there’s a time to let others do it.”

He laughs humourlessly, “It’s a lesson I learnt too late to do right by Haley.”

“Hey, no,” she says firmly, her soft smile slipping from her face, “I won’t let you speak about yourself like that. You’re raising her son in the way she wanted, you’re doing everything she asked and more. You’ve done right by her, Aaron. And I’ll fight anyone who tries to say anything different.”

He smiles at her, “Even me?”

“Especially you.”

Aaron nods, resting his forehead against hers, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she replies, “now, let's go back to bed, it’s fucking freezing out here.”

___

Dave and Derek exchange an exasperated look over the phone on the desk, both of them sighing as Tony, the desk clerk from the hotel, nervously lost track of his train of thought once again.

“We just need confirmation of the last time you saw the suspect,” Dave says, with more patience than Derek was currently capable of. They had the guy in custody, the weapon had still been in the trunk of his car, but they just wanted as much detail as possible before they interviewed him

“Right, um, It was about 5 pm I think, he wasn’t due to check out for another couple of days.”

“Are you sure?” Derek asks, closing his eyes and shaking his head as there is silence again.

“Yes,” Tony says, “I’m sure. I told Agent Hotchner all of this anyway, and his girlfriend.”

“Well, Agent Hotchner isn’t working….” Derek drifts off looking at Dave who just sat up straighter in his chair, his interest finally piqued.

“Did you say, girlfriend?” Dave asks, his eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah, he had his girlfriend with him.”

Dave and Derek look at each other again, wry smiles spreading across both of their faces, “What did she look like?”

“Oh she was beautiful,” Tony says, the most confident he’d sounded throughout their entire conversation, “Tall, brunette. I think she said she was an agent too.”

Derek feels like the air has been sucked out of the room, and he sees the shock on Dave’s face too, both of them clearly thinking the same thing.

“What was her name, Tony?” Derek asks, “Do you remember?”

“Oh god, it was…Agent Prince, I think?” He says, sounding unsure, “No wait, Agent Printis?”

Dave smirks at Derek over the phone, “Agent Prentiss?”

“Yes!” Tony exclaims, “That was it. Agent Prentiss.”

The room falls into brief silence as Dave and Derek stare at each other.

“Son of a bitch.”

___

Sunday afternoon comes around far too quickly, and Emily sighs as she waits for Aaron to finish checking out.

He smiles at her, his arm around her waist as they wait at the desk, “You ok, sweetheart?”

She hums in response, leaning into his side, “Just thinking about how much I hate flying commercial.”

Aaron kisses her, putting everything into it he knows she wouldn’t say. This weekend had been needed by them both, a chance to recharge before they returned to their often very chaotic lives.

“We’ll do something again soon,” he says and she raises an eyebrow at him, both of them very aware that wasn’t true, that they’d likely be another year down the line before they got uninterrupted time like this, “Well…we’ll try.”

Emily chuckles and nods, “Maybe next time we’ll bring Jack along, I missed him.”

He’s always surprised by how she’s always able to make him fall even more in love with her. Her love for his son was one of the many things that constantly blew him away.

“That would be nice, if you’re happy to go to DisneyWorld, he’s insistent on going at some point.”

Emily grimaces slightly but smiles at him, “Well, he’s the only person on the planet who I’d endure that for.”

Any further conversation is cut off by Tony’s appearance, “Ready to check out Agent Hotchner?”

“Yes please,” he says, handing over the key.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed your stay, and thank you again for your help. And your discretion.” Aaron nods in response, “Of course.”

“I spoke to a couple of members of your team actually,” Tony says mindlessly as he types on the keyboard in front of him, “They were very nice.”

Emily and Aaron exchange a slightly nervous sideways glance, not having considered Tony speaking to the team. Derek had texted Aaron to let him know the case was resolved and they’d thought about it very little beyond that.

“Glad to hear it,” Aaron replies smiling tightly at the other man.

“They were surprised to know you were here with someone,” Tony says, smiling back at them, “I didn’t realise you worked with the team too Agent Prentiss.”

Aaron and Emily look at each other, both of their hearts dropping into their stomachs.

“Shit.”

___

“We should just run away.”

Aaron sighs and reaches out for his girlfriend's hand, briefly squeezing it as the elevator ascends to the BAU’s floor, “Em-”

“Just take Jack. Jessica too, if she wants to come. Change our names, fake our deaths,” She rambles, her uncharacteristic nerves on full display whilst it was still just the two of them, “I’ve done it before.”

“Em,” he says more firmly this time, gaining her attention, “It will be fine, ok?” She looks disbelievingly at him, and he sighs again, “They might be annoyed at first, but they’ll get over it, ok?” And I’ll be here.”

She groans but nods as the elevator doors open, and she drops his hand. As they step out onto the floor Penelope greets them, a smirk on her face Emily was sure would be visible from out of space.

“Peaches, Bossman,” she says, her delight clear as she looks back and forth between the two of them, “You’re needed in the conference room.”

Emily presses her tongue into her cheek and clears her throat, “Can we get a coffee first?”

Penelope shakes her head, “Afraid not, it’s pretty urgent.”

She walks away without further comment, and Emily and Aaron exchange a quick look before they follow her.

Neither of them is surprised to find the entire team sitting around the conference room, their expressions ranging from amused to confused, with a little bit of irritation thrown into the mix. Aaron closes the door behind them and indicates towards a chair for Emily to sit down, sitting in the one next to her once she has done so.

“Let's get this over with,” Aaron says, in full Hotch mode, making Emily smile, “I’m sure you have questions-”

“Damn right we have questions.”

“How could you keep this from us?”

“I knew it.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Why was it a secret?”

Aaron holds his hand up as they all speak up at once, their questions all overlapping, the room immediately falling into silence again.

“I know it must have been a shock,” Aaron says, “And that certainly isn’t how we wanted you to find out, but yes, Emily and I are together.”

Emily feels him place his hand on her thigh under the table and she smiles at him before looking at the rest of the team.

“I’m sorry we kept it from you,” she says, specifically looking at JJ and Penelope, not missing the hurt she could see on their faces.

“How long have you been together?” JJ asks, and Emily opens her mouth to answer but is cut off by Dave, a smug look on his face.

“I’d say about…4 months,” Dave says, looking pleased with himself, “I saw them together on a weekend with Jack, and they seemed, in retrospect closer than usual.”

Emily narrows her eyes at the older man, “You think you know everything, Rossi.”

“I do know everything, and I can’t say I was surprised by what Tony said.”

Derek rolls his eyes at the same time Emily does, well aware that he had been as shocked as he had.

Emily places her hand over Aaron’s on her leg and links their fingers, the slight squeeze he gives her all the permission she needs.

“Shut the fuck up, Dave,” she says, peeling some laughter out of her friends, “We’ve been together for almost a year.”

The room falls into silence, the team’s expressions becoming serious again, and Emily braces herself for another round of questioning.

“What?”

-x-

Tag list:

@ssa-sparks , @lukeclvez, @lyds102, @glockleveledatyourcrotch, @hotchnissenthusiast, @danadeservesadrink, @ssamorganhotchner, @emilyprentissisgod, @notagentprentiss, @freesiasandfics, @emilyshotchniss, @thecharmingart, @paulitalblond, @hancydrewfan, @camille093, @whitecrossgirl, @moonlight-2-6, @rawr-jess, @florenceremingtonthethird, @jareauswife, @ms-black-a, @sneetchestoo, @aubreyprc, @zipzapboingg, @psychopath-at-heart, @criminalmindsgonewrong, @fionaloover, @kinqslcys, @prentissinred, @ccmattis22, @denvivale317, @thrindis, @hotchsguccitie, @cmfouatslota77, @alexblakegf, @aliensaurusrex

Join my tag list here!

#hotchniss #hotchniss fanfic #hotchniss fanfiction #aaron x emily #aaron hotchner x emily prentiss #hotch x prentiss #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fanfiction #emily prentiss #emily prentiss fanfiction

46 notes · View notes

anadrenalineslut · 1 year

Note

i'm astonished by how quickly swifties accept the idea of taylor dating matty healy considering the shit he said about her in 2014?

like yes people grow and change but we know taylor remembers shit like that. we know 2014 was the beginning of the bad years for her, and i just

even if he's grown and changed, the shit he said contributed to that.

plus i don't know any self-respecting human who would date a man who said the thought of dating them and being in a relationship with them was 'emasculating'.

also i just find it funny that his wikipedia page says they're in a relationship, but hers says it's unconfirmed.

you know, you have given me a good perspective. i wouldn't say I was quick to believe it the news though, anon, I was very much in the "jaylor never broke up" camp until we got those fan* pics of them holding hands.

i am so unsure of what to believe but at the end of the day, I feel it is my duty as a mainly taylor swift blog to denounce my space from any sort of racism and I would not feel okay if I spoke out against the notion of them being a couple without at the very least making it well known that I do not accept her actions if they are being portrayed accurately by the media.

i have always tried my hardest to make sure my politics are not performative and I think it is important to make sure your online followers know that you do not tolerate isms of any sort. that is why I am erring on the side of caution and treating this news as legitimate because if it's not, I will more than happily delete my critiques of Taylor and Matt together. but if it is, I need to make it clear that I do not support racism.

that being said, the collab with ice spice threw me for a fucking loop. what i know about taylor pre pandemic, she wasn't publically racist even unintentionally. like truly nothing she had done up until that point can be construed as racist... since then... eh. still cannot get over the carolina thing, nor working with lana del racist. that is why I feel like its my duty to my friends on this blog to let them know I will not financially support taylor if she is actually as bad as they are saying she is, does that make sense?

but like... working with ice spice and releasing a video and physical copies... that makes me feel like this entire thing has been a huge pr stunt... but then you're losing me? but it does reference a surprisingly large number of gaylor songs... but then she was at the concert in january and he said those things in february... maybe they got permission from ice spice to do those things???? but why and why would ice spice go along with it ???? .... but then the photo of joe with a second cardigan in his hand and the you're not sorry SS after that.... the planned pap photos... but then again fans were the ones who took the hand holding photos and why would joe be okay with taylor doing that in the media... unless he's not? in which case all signs lead to a break up.... but maybe he is???? idk we dont know, and nothing about you're losing me makes any sense from anything we know about midnights the album....

you're losing me and sweet nothing on the same album? are we sure about that? did we listen to sweet nothing ? its wild to me because it implies that you're losing me is a vault track but that means before midnights... but then they were good after that.... and then they weren't.... and like, idk, why would taylor include the words "i wouldnt marry me either" when she released lavender haze where she says "no deal, that 1950s shit they want from me" like.... the entirety of LH is about rejecting marriage as a norm and now we learn she actually wanted to marry joe all along and he was the bad guy the entire time? idk...

none of it makes any sense to me... this entire first half of the tour has been the definition of fucking chaos... which leads me to believe pr stunt?.... but idk what would be the point.... she'd have to literally come out and be like "sike joe and i are still dating, yall weirdos for real, matt and i are just besties" but like idk they were holding hands... i guess theoretically taylor could be seen holding hands with a guy platonically but... knowing what they had been saying about it beforehand why would joe want that to happen platonically ???? idk i just cant imagine joe specifically being alright with his girlfriend being linked to someone else... but then again, she was linked to karlie for the duration of their six year relationship so maybe... he just wouldnt give a shit?.... which like maybe he just doesnt care about taylor as much she did for him... which fine but like idk...

im still left with ice spice and i have no idea what to think about that. like i just cannot come up with a good conclusion that isnt racism at play honestly. i wish i could see a good alternative theory for why she is doing all of this but I just do not see any. thats why after those pics came out, I finally came around to the death of jaylor and the birth of this hellscape im in currently.

but idk please tell me ur thoughts on what u think is going on anon because idk none of it makes any sense to me.

#not to mention its giving me tolerate it vibes and that is definitely not about joe i dont think #anon love #ask and you shall receive #taylor swift

7 notes · View notes

jackredfieldwasmyjacob · 1 year

Text

this is part 2 of my extremely long lore update of my missing month in tumblr. here's part 1 <3

i'll also put this one behind the cut just in case

26. we start when this extremely important event happened !!!

THEY'RE PLAYING 'MÚSICA LIGERA' IN THE SUPERMARKET

[there is a lyric in música ligera [go listen to it. or else] that goes 'la música de fondo en los supermercados' so 'the background music at the supermarkets']

27. when spring officially started and suddenly life was bearable once again

28. the sequel.

bomb the ucm [yes. i tweeted the exact same thing]

24 nearly 25 years old and i just learned how to sign stuff with the electronic certificate. i want to shoot my foot i can't do this anymore

the thing is today i've been 3 hours calling the same 4 fucking numbers every 10 minutes only for them to tell me 'hahah everything you did last week is useless lol. but don't worry the deadline is thursday you still have time :)' [this was on a tuesday btw]

the world if the digital certificate and autofirma didn't exist

so yeah. everything i did on march 15th was useless. lol. i sent proof of my physical deposit of the application and they told me i couldn't <3. in the end i had to sign it digitally through a different administrative process and lol. i hate bureoucracy so fucking much.

28. i do love taylor swift but yeah

the eras tour: bellodrama tour:

-without ana mena -with ana mena

-52728€ tickets -22€ tickets

-she doesn't sing 'las 12' -she sings 'las 12'

the choice is yours

29. it's time for the 'hole in the bedroom' arc <3

[pic 1]

today my bedroom disappears

it wasn't a joke

[pic 2]

do you like my new setup?

SO. i honestly can't remember if i said this here but idk almost a month ago now i guess some of my floorplanks strated to lift. out of nowhere. so we called people to look into it and there was a water leak. so they had to dismantle my bed (you can see the frame in the lighter floorboards lol) and now i sleep in the attic; a room my dad has always used to hoard stuff <3 yesterday they filled the hole so that's nice, but now they have to slash the floor and for that they need all of the furniture gone. my house is basically just a long hallway so there just isn't enough space. it's gonna be fun :) oh and also we've decided to paint the room while we're at it. so i'll probably won't be able to sleep here for at least a month i imagine. this is my current setup btw, i'm writing this from here:

30. this one's a preamble of what's to come. i'm so sorry.

me: existing at any moment

my brain: i think it's time to play 'me he pillao x ti' on a loop

[now it's doing the same but with 'un clásico' <3]

31. ANA MENA WORLD DOMINATION DAY

i'll do the small tweets first and then go in chronological through pics 5, 6, and 7

GOOD DAY

the way i know for a fact that 'me he pillao x ti' would've appeared on skam españa s2 if the show had been made now

if i am already annoying with ana mena the day i fall for someone i'll be incredibly unbearable i want y'all to know it

i want ana mena to know she's changed lives today

[pic 6]

the pause in the first listen of bellodrama to listen on loop to 'me he pillao x ti' is so real actually

no words with 'un millón de lunas'

MENAmoro [i fall in love]... her mind

ana mena has made me want to go out and party for the first time in my life i can't

[pic 7]

why all songs in bellodrama have their titles with the first letter capitalized Like This except Tomorrow god Will Say? what is she trying to tell us

reply to the tweet: atheist legend

[pic 8]

i didn't choose to be anamenista i only was lucky

ana mena you gave us everything

ana mena you are the pop artist of this generation. you are everything and you are summer and the sun and margaritas. you give everything and you're the best.

i love you ana mena

32. i went back to working on my fantasy book :)

i am gonna try working on my fantasy book after more than half a year. wish me luck.

665 words #slay

33. i know you missed me talking about fictional shows that don't even exist but here you go

i need there to exist some kind of glee españa specifically so a character can sing this song to their crush and i can finish losing my mind

33. this is the last ana mena post I SWEAR

(chronologically)

half of the views are mine

the way i hadn't listened to it before the album dropped and now i'm OBSESSED

34. la caixa incident

can someone explain to me how la caixa, a catalan business, is telling me to send them documents in english for the scholarship??

so yeah. the sent me an email telling me they needed some documents in english i had sent them in spanish (which lol) and after doing so proceeded to accept my application :) apparently it's a pretty fucking good scholarship so i'm a bit hopeful i'll be able to make it <3

35. places i've been to in spain!

i know i have to visit the north more i know

36. my most listened to songs in march 💀

37. MANDATORY MEMORIAS DE IDHÚN TWEET THAT IS SCARILY ACCURATE TO MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

i am fascinated with the fact that one day laura gallego wrote three fat ass books projecting herself into a unicorn girlie that's involved with two dudes without knowing that with them she would forever change the brain chemicals of a new generation of spanish writers

38. and that's it :)

PEOPLE I GOT BACK MY TUMBLR ACCOUNT WE WON

#this one's shorter i swear

16 notes · View notes

girlkisser13 · 1 month

Text

new year’s day

"please don't ever become a stranger" "whose laugh i could recognize anywhere"

pairings: francesca bridgerton x fem!reader

warnings/tags: a lot of angst. i apologize in advance.

summary: you reunite with francesca after she gets married to lord kilmartin, with a husband of your own.

the night was ablaze with laughter and the golden glow of countless candles. the grand ballroom of buckingham palace seemed to pulse with the energy of the new year celebration. it was a gathering of london’s most distinguished, a display of wealth, beauty, and power under the watchful eye of the queen. the bridgertons were there, as was expected, and francesca stood among them, adorned in a gown of deep sapphire blue, her hair swept up with delicate pearls. to anyone who might have looked upon her, she would have seemed the perfect image of a contented wife, her hand resting lightly on her husband’s arm.

yet beneath the polished veneer, francesca’s heart was racing, her pulse quickening with every second. her eyes were wide, darting through the crowd. she had heard her husband, lord kilmartin, mention that his friend was in attendance tonight, and with him, his new bride. and so, when you entered the room, francesca’s world came to a standstill.

there you were, your beauty no less arresting than it had been the last time she saw you. francesca’s breath caught in her throat, her heart a wild fluttering thing. you looked radiant in your evening gown, your arm looped elegantly through the man beside you. for a moment, she felt as though she were back in bath, the years falling away, leaving only you and her in a sun-drenched meadow. but as she blinked, the memory faded, leaving behind the cold truth of your absence.

she could not tear her eyes away. there was fear in her heart, yes, but more than that, there was an undeniable thrill at the sight of you. how long had she yearned for this moment, imagined it, dreamt of it? and yet, now that it had come, she found herself rooted to the spot, unable to move, to speak. her hands trembled slightly, and she clasped them together to still them.

"francesca?" lord kilmartin’s voice was low, questioning. he looked at her with concern. "are you well?"

"yes, yes," francesca murmured, forcing a smile. "i am quite well." but her eyes betrayed her, flicking back to where you stood, surrounded by a group of guests. she could see the warmth of your smile, the ease with which you held yourself, and a pang of something sharp twisted in her chest. she knew it was foolish, but she could not help the jealousy that flared. why had you moved on? how could you have forgotten her that easily?

"ah, there he is," he said suddenly, steering her toward you. "a good friend of mine. i shall introduce you."

francesca’s heart lurched. she was not ready to face you, not like this. but her husband was already leading her across the room, his hand at the small of her back. and then, there you were, directly in front of her, closer than you had been in what felt like a lifetime. francesca’s heart pounded in her ears. you were so close that she could reach out and touch you, yet you felt a world away.

"old friend!" lord kilmartin’s voice was jovial. "it has been too long, my lord."

"indeed it has," your husband replied with a smile. he gestured to you. "may i introduce my wife?"

francesca’s breath hitched as you inclined your head in acknowledgment, your smile warm and polite. yet, despite your proximity, despite your introduction, you did not look at her. you addressed your words to lord kilmartin, your eyes never straying in francesca’s direction. "a pleasure to meet you, my lord," you said softly.

"and you must meet my wife," he said, oblivious to the tension crackling between you and francesca. she opened her mouth to speak, but the words caught in her throat. "francesca bridgerton," she stammered, then corrected herself hastily, "kilmartin. francesca kilmartin." her face flushed with embarrassment.

your husband smiled softly in acknowledgment before saying, "my love, we must pay our respects to the queen," glancing at the gathering of nobles clustered around her majesty.

still, you did not look at her. instead, a smile touched your lips as you nodded at your husband, the expression practiced and serene, yet francesca could see the guarded light in your eyes. it was as if you had erected a wall so high that no one, least of all francesca, could ever hope to scale it.

francesca's heart ached at the sound of your voice, at the way you stood so close yet felt so far. she had hoped, at least, for a glance. a sign that she was not forgotten. but as you turned to leave, your gaze passed over her as though she were a stranger.

how could you be so indifferent? she wondered, watching you disappear into the crowd. she had not expected this. she had prepared for anger, for bitterness, but not for this cold indifference, as though all those afternoons in bath had meant nothing.

francesca's mind reeled, memories flooding her like a torrent. she was back in bath, lying in the grass beside you, her head resting in your lap. you were weaving flowers into a crown, your fingers deft and gentle. the sun was warm on her face, the air filled with the scent of blossoms. you were laughing about something inconsequential, the sound of your joy as natural as breathing.

"are you frightened of your debut?" you had asked, glancing down at her with a soft smile.

francesca shook her head, her eyes sparkling. "not in the least. besides, i could never make more of a muddle of things than eloise."

you laughed, the sound like music. "sometimes," you said softly, "i wish i could just marry you."

francesca’s breath caught in her throat, and she looked up at you, startled by the sincerity in your eyes. a nervous giggle escaped her lips. "you are jesting," she said, although her heart wished it were true.

you shook your head, your expression earnest. "no, francesca, i mean it. if only things were different."

her cheeks flushed a deep crimson at your words, her heart fluttering with an emotion she dared not name. she averted her gaze, suddenly shy under your earnest stare. "what makes you so sure i will be married in my first season out?" she asked, trying to sound lighthearted.

you smiled softly, your voice tender. "any man would be a fool not to marry the francesca bridgerton," you said simply.

her face grew even hotter at your compliment, and she looked away, the blush spreading to the tips of her ears. no one else made her feel this way— so cherished, so seen.

you placed the completed daisy crown on her head, your fingers lingering in her hair. "promise me something, francesca," you said softly, your tone suddenly solemn.

she looked up at you, meeting your gaze. "anything," she whispered.

"when you do marry, do not become a stranger," you implored, your eyes searching hers. "let us always remain friends, no matter what."

she swallowed, her heart tightening at the thought of a future where you might no longer be by her side. she nodded, her voice barely audible. "i promise. we will always be friends, no matter what."

you smiled then, a sad, knowing smile, and brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead.

but as she stood at the ball now, the memory of that promise filled her with an aching guilt. she had broken it. the moment you had begged her to run away with you, before her debut into society, she had shattered your bond. she could still see the desperation in your eyes, the way you had reached for her hands, pleading with a love so pure it terrified her.

"francesca," you had said, voice trembling with emotion, "please, come with me. we can start a new life together, away from all of this. i love you. i cannot bear the thought of losing you."

her heart had ached at your words, but fear had taken root, whispering of scandal and disgrace, of the ruin it would bring to both your families. she had needed to sever the tie that bound you to her, to say something so cruel it would force you to let her go.

"i never loved you," she had said, her voice as cold as the winter’s night. "this— whatever this is— has been nothing more than a folly of youth. our families would be destroyed if they knew. this has to end now, for both our sakes."

she had watched the light in your eyes flicker and die, replaced by a pain so deep it mirrored the agony in her own heart. for a moment, you had stood there, stunned, as if you could not believe what you had heard. and then, slowly, you had let her hands fall from yours, the weight of her rejection settling heavily between you.

"i loathe you," you had whispered, your voice hollow and devoid of the warmth she had once known. "i wish never to see you or hear your voice ever again, not in this life or the next."

she had stood rigidly, willing herself to hold back the tears that threatened to spill, nodding as though she agreed. "it is better this way," she had said, trying to convince herself as much as you. "you will see, in time, that this was for the best."

you had turned and walked away, and francesca had watched you go, each step tearing at her soul. she had told herself she was doing the right thing, protecting you both from the scandal that would surely come. but as the days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, she had come to realize the true depth of her loss.

the memory faded, leaving behind a hollow ache. francesca blinked, snapping back to the present at the sound of her husband's voice. "francesca, my love, are you certain you are well?" he asked, concern etched on his brow.

"yes," she said quickly, forcing a smile. "i am perfectly fine." but her voice shook, and she could not bring herself to meet his gaze. she was afraid he would see the truth in her eyes. the truth that her heart still belonged to someone else.

and then she heard it, the sound that broke through her façade, the sound of your laughter. it was a laugh she would recognize anywhere, bright and clear, a laugh that once had been reserved for her. she turned to see you speaking with your husband. you laughed at something he said, a light, melodic sound.

hearing you laugh, knowing that you could still find joy without her. it felt as though someone had cruelly torn her heart from her chest and trampled upon it with reckless abandon. how she had longed to make you laugh again, to hear that sound when the two of you were alone and happy.

"excuse me," she mumbled to her husband, her voice thick with emotion. she did not wait for his response, fleeing from the stifling warmth of the ballroom, pushing through the heavy velvet curtains into the cool night air.

she stood on the terrace, the moonlight casting a silver sheen over the manicured gardens below. her breath came in shaky gasps as she tried to compose herself, the tears she had held back now spilling freely down her cheeks. the laughter, the memories, all of it was too much. it was as if the past had come rushing back to her, dragging her under its weight.

as she cried quietly in the cool night air, she heard the faint sound of footsteps behind her. looking up, she saw you, your figure partially hidden by the shadows. for a moment, hope flickered in her chest, believing you had come to her, that perhaps, even now, there was a chance to mend what had been broken.

but then you turned, as if you had been about to leave.

her voice, tremulous and fragile, broke the silence. "please," she called out, your name trembling on her lips, “do not leave.”

you hesitated, your back still to her. slowly, you turned and walked toward her, the distance between you both a chasm filled with words unspoken and promises broken. sven as you stood before her, you would not look her in the eyes, your gaze fixed on some point in the distance.

"i heard you crying," you said softly, your voice carrying the familiar gentleness that had once brought her so much comfort. "i wanted to see if you were well."

"i am quite well," she lied, voice barely above a whisper. she studied your face, searching for any sign of the love that once existed between you, finding only the reflection of her own pain.

she thought about the way your eyes used to shine when you watched her play the piano, the way they softened whenever you smiled. now, they were veiled, guarded, as though the brightness she had once adored had been extinguished.

you nodded, your expression unreadable. "i am glad to hear that," you said. you turned to leave, and with every step you took, francesca felt her heart shatter anew.

"will you at least look at me?" she asked, her voice breaking, the vulnerability she had kept hidden for so long spilling over.

you paused but did not turn back. "i do not believe i can," you replied, your voice heavy with sorrow. "do you not recall? i loathe you.” and with that, you walked away, leaving francesca alone under the starry sky.

the weight of your absence pressed down on her, a tangible pain that left her breathless. she had thought time would dull the ache, that marriage and duty would fill the void you had left. but now, as she stood in the shadow of her choices, she realized that no title, no alliance, would ever replace the love she had lost.

#bridgerton #bridgerton fandom #bridgerton fanfiction #bridgerton fic #francesca bridgerton #francesca bridgerton fanfiction #francesca bridgerton fic #francesca bridgerton x reader #francesca bridgerton x you #francesca bridgerton imagine #francesca bridgerton smut #taylor swift #reputation #new year’s day #spotify #Spotify

40 notes · View notes

tangerinehc · 2 years

Text

keiji likes taylor swift and here's why (a little drabble)

it is not a secret that keiji akaashi, editor of a shounen manga is a dedicated taylor swift fan. the reason is very simple, he loves poetry, and he is fluent in various languajes.

he discover taylor when she was promoting the speak now tour in 2011, and fell in love with the way she wrote those lyrics.

that same year he met bokuto, and even if they met in the volleyball club, a few evenings later, when the guys in the club decided they wanted to go to a karaoke, he fell in love with koutaro. "enchanted" was on loop inside his head for the rest of his high school years, but he never confessed to koutaro.

it wasn't until 1989 was release that he understood the importance of taylor swift's music in his life. the free love of "new romantics", the need to hide of "i know places", the iconic "style" or the anxiety of "out of the woods", the poetry of that album and the story and character taylor was exploring was his graduating tesis from tokyo university.

so, when keiji is having a burnout and he can't help udai with the direction of his manga, he always goes back to taylor swift's lyrics to find the way to help the mangaka...

then in 2017, "look what you made me do" was upload on youtube and he knew blondie was back, and bokuto told him, "we should listen the new album togheter"...

10th of november of 2017, reputation is released, and that was the moment he knew, he needed to tell his friend the feelings he's been hiding all this time, but not that night, he was going to way a bit, right?

new year's day, with "new year's day" in the background was the moment keiji confessed to koutaro. in the middle of new year's party organized by fukurodani's vbc old team. they knew keiji was a swiftie, and they knew she had this song, but they never though he would confess his feelings that night. the beggining of 2018, and whole new world for koutaro and keiji...

then lover, folklore and evermore, and also his boyfriend motivated him to write his own poetry, his own stories. sometimes he shares them in tumblr, and even some little one piece or gintama fanfic in archive of our own (he spent lockdown writing these amazing stories).

and now he's is waiting midnights and listening bokuto complaining about not having the re-recording of reputation o karma before a completely new album (yes bokuto believes in the theory of karma)

JUST LOOK AT THIS PICTURE, HE'S WAITING FOR MIDNIGHTS

#akaashi keiji #bokuto kotaro #bokuaka #taylor swift #headcanon #drabble #haikyuu!!#haikyuu headcanons

21 notes · View notes

path-of-my-childhood · 4 years

Text

Musicians On Musicians: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul McCartney: Yeah!

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

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

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

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

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

McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.

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

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

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

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

Swift: Wow.

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

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

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

Swift: That’s so cool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swift: You want to stay in the zone.

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

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

McCartney: Ends of decades.

Swift: Was that important?

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

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

McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swift: Love a pseudonym.

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

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

McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.

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

McCartney: Do you ever do that?

Swift: Oh, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

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

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

McCartney: You do that, do you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.

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

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

Swift: Oh, absolutely.

McCartney: They have to, don’t they?

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

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

Swift: She went to a regular school...

McCartney: Yeah, she did.

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

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

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

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

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

Swift: Ohhh!

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

Swift: Cares about that stuff?

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

Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.

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

Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.

McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.

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

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

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

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

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: It’s very magical.

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

McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?

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

McCartney: What stuff were you reading?

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

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

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

McCartney: How about “marzipan”?

Swift: Love “marzipan.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swift: That really is powerful.

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

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

McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?

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

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

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

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

Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.

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

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

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

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

Swift: No, it’s cool!

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

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

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

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

McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?

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

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

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

McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swift: That’s amazing.

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

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

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

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

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

Swift: Wow.

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

Swift: Making a table.

McCartney: Making a table.

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

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

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

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

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

McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!

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

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

Swift: We’re really lucky.

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

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

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

Swift: “Something will happen.”

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

Swift: That’s the best.

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

Swift: “Something will happen.”

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

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

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

1K notes · View notes

islesnucks · 4 years

Note

hi bae can i request a barzy blurb based on dress by taylor swift? ty 🥺

a taylor swift song inspired barzy fic? hell yeah that’s like my two favorite things in the word together

requests are open so go send something if you feel like

also this turned out a bit longer than I expected

I DON'T WANT YOU LIKE A BEST FRIEND - MAT BARZAL X READER

Word Count: 1.9 k

Warning: none

Summary: after Mat introduces you as his best friend and it affects you more than it should, you end up confessing your feelings for him

Masterlist

Add yourself to my taglist!

His words hadn’t left your mind the whole night, they were on loop, replaying over and over in your brain. ‘This is Y/N, one of my best friends.’ That’s how Mat had introduced you when you arrived at his family’s friend’s wedding, to which he had invited you as he’s plus one.

You knew you and Mat were just friends, you have been for a long time, and it surely wasn’t the first time he introduced you like that. Maybe this time hit differently because you had just come to terms with the undeniable fact that you had fallen for your best friend, no matter how cliché that sounded.

You couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when it happened. It just happened slowly without you even realizing. Suddenly seeing him hit on random girls at the bar made you feel sick. Suddenly his hand on your lower back guiding you through a crowded room felt different. Suddenly your name coming from his lips made the world stop. You didn’t know what turned the switch in your brain from platonic to romantic love and made you look at him with new eyes, but once you realized it there was no going back and the thought of Mat and you becoming something more was always there painfully present in the back of your head.

“Y/N?” you heard Mat call you, bringing you back to reality. You looked at him still a bit lost in your thoughts. ”Are you okay?” he asked with his eyes stuck on the windshield as he drove you home after the wedding had ended.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“I don’t know. You’ve been a little off all night.” He noticed, he obviously did. Because he’s Mat, he’s your best friend, he’s one of the most attentive guys you know and he knows you better than you know yourself sometimes. So he obviously noticed, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t keep on pretending.

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.” you replied failing to sound as confident as you wanted to. Mat didn’t say anything and the car fell back into silence.

You looked outside the window, trying to distract yourself and calm down. You weren’t far away from your place, in just a few minutes you’d be in your apartment. Mat had noticed something but he didn’t know what it was, so you could send him a text explaining you had a headache or something to get him off your back and just move on.

At least that was the plan but then Mat turned off the car and got out of it with you. You thought he was walking you to the building door like he had done many times, nothing strange. However he walked into the building with you and got into the elevator.

That’s when you started to suspect something was happening. You looked over at him confused and he just smiled at you, like nothing was going on. So maybe he was just walking you to the door. You decided not to think too much into it because if you did your heart would start racing and would notice your nerves, the last thing you needed was to give him more reasons to believe something was going on.

As you opened the door Mat was quick to walk into your apartment and you watched him with furrowed brows as he took a seat on your couch, casually like there was nothing weird with it.

“Excuse me? Can I help you with something?” you asked, stepping in front of him.

“I know something’s up Y/N. You barely talked today and you didn’t cry, I’ve seen you cry at stupid commercials and you didn’t cry at a wedding.”

You rolled your eyes walking away from him because you knew you couldn’t lie to his face, he’d notice. “I’m fine Mat I promised I just had a headache.”

“No you didn’t. When you have a headache you massage your head and you get sleepy, that’s not what happened today. It’s more like you were gone.” You hated how much he knew you, it would be harder to convince him but that didn’t mean you wouldn’t try.

“Well I’m sorry I don’t always have the same gestures Sherlock.” you replied, irritation was clear in your tone. Mat let out a deep sigh and got up. It wasn’t his intention to argue and he could see you were getting mad, he just wanted to know what was going on.

“Y/N I know you-” he started to say as he approached you but you were tired of hearing that speech.

“Can we not do this right now? I’m tired Mat, I just wanna go to bed.” you said with a defeated look, lowering your town. He looked at you for a minute and decided to push his stubbornness aside. He knew he was right, he’d bet a million dollars on it, but he also knew you were exhausted, he could see it in your face.

Mat walked till he was in front of you, inches away, and suddenly wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into his chest. He held you tight as one hand went up to your hair to stroke it. You were surprised at first but then he felt you relax in his embrace. He placed a kiss on top of your head as he balanced slightly from one side to the other, keeping his face buried in your hair.

“You don’t have to tell me what’s going on okay? Because I know something happened, don’t even try to pretend it didn’t. I just wanna know if it’s something I did, that’s all I need to know because I can’t leave you here alone knowing I may have done something to upset you.”

His voice was soft as he spoke against you. Tears started to build up in your eyes and you tried to push them away as you debated what your next move would be.

If you told him it wasn’t about him he'd leave and you could move on pretending nothing happened and dealing with your unresolved feelings. If you told him the truth you didn’t know what would happen. However you knew that regardless of how he felt about you he’d be nice to you. The man was hugging you tight about his chest, refusing you to leave until you told him it wasn’t his fault because he wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing he did anything to hurt you.

Maybe it was the wine you had drank. Maybe it was because you were emotionally exhausted and unable to think clearly. Or maybe because you were tired of pretending. You didn’t know the reason why you decided to be honest and tell him how you truly felt, but you did that.

“You introduced me as your best friend today, that’s why I was off the whole day, I just kept thinking about it.” you mumbled against his chest, breaking the silence.

“Did you want me to introduce you differently?” He pulled away a little to be able to look you in the face, but his arms were still around you.

“Yes- I mean no. I-” You stumbled on your words, trying to find the right way to explain everything. “What you did was fine, I am your best friend, that’s right.”

“Then why did it upset you?” You rested your head face against his chest again, not having the courage to look him in the face as you confessed what you were about to confess.

“Cause I don't want you like a best friend Mat. I haven’t for a while now and I just don’t know how to deal with this. It’s not your fault, I don’t know what happened or when or how. I have these feelings for you and I guessed it hurt a bit to hear you calling me your best friend, even though that’s exactly what I am.”

After you spoke the room went silent again and you started panicking. You looked up at Mat who was already looking down at you and all you could see was shock. Suddenly your worst fear was real, you had screwed up your friendship with him. It was over. You felt the familiar knot in your throat and tears blurred your vision.

“Sorry ignore everything I said. Just forget it okay?” you said as you freed yourself from his embrace. Still no reaction whatsoever from him. “Shit. Shit. Shit. I feel so stupid.”

“Y/N.” he said, but you were too distracted pacing around the room and rambling to hear him.

“You know I even spent hours shopping for the perfect dress that would magically make you see me as more than your friend, do you know how stupid that sound? What am I? 15 years old?”

“Y/N listen-” he tried again but there was no getting to you, you were too lost in your own jabber. It was like once you started you couldn’t stop and you’d surely later regret all you were confessing.

“I’m an idiot. I really thought you could maybe by some miracle feel the same and-”

“Y/N!” he said now in a much louder tone so you would hear him and place his hands on your sides to stop you. You were surprised, not even realizing he had approached you at some point.

“Please stop.” he added now on a lower more tender tone, it almost sounded like a plea.

Now that you looked at him the initial shock had been replaced by something you couldn’t make out. His face was unreadable as he stated leaning in and before you could even question what was going on his lips were on yours.

You were surprised at first, eyes wide open not being to process what was going on. But once the initial shock was over you kissed him back. It’s embarrassing how many times you had thought what kissing him would be like, but it turned out to be even better than you could have imagined. His lips caressed yours gently, even a bit shily. Your hands met on the back of his neck and his slid down your sides to your waist, pulling you closer.

Then a thought found its way into your brain.

“Wait.” you mumbled against his lips and he instantly pulled away. “I need to know you’re not doing this out of pity.”

He chuckled letting his head fall back before answering. “I’m doing this because I also don’t want you like a best friend. Because you do look amazing in that dress. Because I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long now. Because-”

Your smile grew wider with every word and your cheeks turned red. You could tell he planned to keep on going, and you were surely going to ask him to tell you the rest later, but now there was only one thing you wanted.

“Ok, ok. I get it. We can go back to kissing now.” you said making him laugh, already tugging him closer by his neck and his laughs died in your lips.

hope you liked it! likes and reblogs are always appreciated!

taglist: @glassdanse @2manytabsopen @tazeboes @barbienoturbby @sweetlittlegingy @petey-patty @mcsteamylove98 @ttylfedora @chieflawyerpastatoad @iwantahockeyhimbo @cherrymaybank

#mat barzal #Mathew barzal #mat barzal imagine #Mathew barzal imagine #mat barzal x reader #mat barzal fic #mat barzal imagines #mathew barzal x reader #mathew barzal fic #mathew barzal imagines #nhl #nhl imagines #nhl fic #hockey #hockey imagines #hockey fic #mat barzal fluff #mathew barzal fluff

456 notes · View notes

sgt-paul · 4 years

Photo

MUSICIANS ON MUSICIANS: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift

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

interview below the cut:

Paul McCartney: Yeah!

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

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

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

McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.

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

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

Swift: Wow.

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

Swift: That’s so cool.

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

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

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

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

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

Swift: You want to stay in the zone.

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

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

McCartney: Ends of decades.

Swift: Was that important?

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

McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.

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

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

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

Swift: Love a pseudonym.

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

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

McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.

McCartney: Do you ever do that?

Swift: Oh, yeah.

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

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

Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

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

McCartney: You do that, do you?

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

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

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

McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.

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

Swift: Oh, absolutely.

McCartney: They have to, don’t they?

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

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

Swift: She went to a regular school .…

McCartney: Yeah, she did.

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

Swift: Ohhh!

Swift: Cares about that stuff?

Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.

Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.

McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.

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

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

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: It’s very magical.

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

McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?

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

McCartney: What stuff were you reading?

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

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

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

McCartney: How about “marzipan”?

Swift: Love “marzipan.”

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

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

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

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

Swift: That really is powerful.

McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?

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

Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.

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

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

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

Swift: No, it’s cool!

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

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

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

McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?

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

McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?

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

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

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

Swift: That’s amazing.

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

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

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

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

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

Swift: Wow.

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

Swift: Making a table.

McCartney: Making a table.

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

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

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

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

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

McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!

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

Swift: We’re really lucky.

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

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

Swift: “Something will happen.”

Swift: That’s the best.

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

Swift: “Something will happen.”

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

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

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

594 notes · View notes

boldlyvoid · 3 years

Text

Amoreena | Chapter sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

main summary: Heaven is a real place and it's located exactly 14.6 miles away from the FBI, Quantico Headquarters. Off behind a small park, under a fantastical willow tree surrounded by wildflowers, in every colour young minds can imagine.

Don't forget, heaven also comes with angels.

Chapter Summary/Warnings: Amoreena meets Jo, Jo shares her experience with the foster homes (tw self-harm and child abuse), and Spencer shares his shitty childhood with her. They bond, he loves her more than he thought possible, his dreams of a big happy family are coming true.

word count: 4.8k

from the beginning <3

His phone is ringing at 7:50 and all he does is groan, forgetting Y/N’s agreement with Amoreena. His wife reached over his face and towards the phone, picking up with an overly cheerful tone for a pregnant woman who was up until 3 am.

“Hello sweet girl, how was your sleep?”

“Ugh,” she makes a weird face as the morning nausea kicks in and she tries to swallow it down. “Yeah? Oh, I’m so glad, dad and I are just waking up. We have another big surprise for you today… I know honey there’s always a lot going on, but this one is a good one I promise!”

“Can I go talk to her?” Spencer asks, “alone?”

“Dad’s going to come and see you while mommy has a shower, okay? I love you too, bye,” she smiles as she hangs up and passes the phone back to him.

They kiss quickly before separating, Spencer throws on the same clothes from the beach last night before heading down the hall towards Amoreena’s room. He knocks quietly before entering, seeing her sitting in a queen bed with 2 cats.

“Taylor let Olivia and Benjamin stay in here last night, she said they usually sleep in here anyway!” She was whispering, but it was still loud for her this early.

He sat on the edge of her bed and gave her a big hug, “how was your night?”

“Really amazing, Dad, Taylor is my best friend now,” she’s completely serious, “I hope mom’s not too upset about that, I guess we could share her…”

“That’s a nice thought, are you good at sharing?”

“I think so,” she nods with a serious face.

“Good, because there’s a new person who’s coming to live with us. She’s going to be kind of sad for a while and I’ll be spending a lot of time with her too,” he watches her face as she listens, confused but fine with it.

“Who is she?”

“Did your mom tell you how she made you?”

She nods, “she said sometimes people with penises donate sperm to help people have babies, and you were the one who donated for me,” she gives him a run down so seriously that it makes him laugh like the 7-year-old.

“Yeah, exactly, well I also helped 2 other families make babies,” he says softly, petting her hair as she understands what that means.

“So I have more siblings?”

“Yep, 2 sisters and a brother,” he smiles as she starts to bounce with excitement. “Josephine is 12, almost 13, and she’s coming to live with us.”

“Where is her mom?” She asks, he knew she would.

“Her mom and dad were in an accident, they died and she looked for me because she didn’t want to be alone anymore,” he knows it’s a hard topic, and that she understands death after losing her gg, but it’s still hard.

“Oh, that’s sad,” she frowns, moving in to hug him again, she keeps her head pressed to his shoulder. “I hope she’s okay, is she here now too?”

“She is, but I’m not sure if she’s awake yet, she’s a teenager and they sometimes sleep in longer than you would, like when Henry was over and slept until noon,” he has all his kids profiled in his minds and it’s actually more helpful than a hindrance.

“Does she like Taylor?”

He knew that one was coming too, “she’s a huge fan, she cried meeting her just like mom.”

“Is she going to call my mom her mom now?”

“I don’t think so, would that upset you?” He’s worried for the answer, he had the same jealous tendencies growing up. Hell, he still has them.

“No, she needs a mom, I would be very sad without mine, I know she needs one too,” she looked at him like it was a stupid question because of course, all kids need a mom and her mom happened to be the best.

“That’s really nice of you, she knows all about you and she’s really excited to move in with us, maybe you can help her decorate her room?” He isn’t sure what Jo will think, but he knows it would be good for bonding.

“Can we see if she’s awake? Wait, she’s a she right? Miss Kennedy said sometimes people look like girls but they don’t like to feel like girls, so we use they,” Amoreena was so worried about being a good sister he didn’t know why he worried so much.

“Well, I’m not sure, Jo hasn’t told me but you can ask?”

She shot right out of bed, still in her dress from last night as she ran to the door, “come on, what room is it?”

“Right there, knock nicely,” he says as he joins her in the hall, pointing to the room across from her.

She knocked 3 times, hearing a small ‘yeah?’ From the other side before opening it, “good morning!” Amoreena cheered.

“Amoreena!” Jo smiled as she got out of bed and ran over to her. She dropped to her knees so they’d be the same height and wrapped her up in her arms.

They hugged like this was a reunion and not an introduction, they held on to one another so tightly they both squeezed their eyes shut and held their breath. He knew that kind of hug, that was a hug you gave when you deeply loved the person you were hugging.

It made him want to cry, again.

Jo pulled back from her and Amoreena immediately held her face in her hands, observing her. “Yep, you’re my sister,” she smiled as she saw her nose.

That same perfect little button that was slightly angled towards the sky, she booped it lightly. Jo booped her right back.

“I am, it’s pretty cool getting to share a dad with you cause now I get to meet Taylor Swift, how the heck did we get so lucky?” Jo talks to her like she’s used to being around kids, finding the wonder in every word and saying the whole sentence with enthusiasm.

She turns to him, both his girls making the same face as they looked at him in the doorway, “how did you meet Taylor, dad?”

“You remember Uncle Dave? He came over for the barbecue and talked to poppy bob about winemaking all night?”

“Yeah, he’s Italian,” Amoreena remembered his funny accent and how she called him Mario.

“His daughter is Taylor’s friend, so Taylor sent me an email asking to meet you,” he couldn’t help but smile as she did.

“So you guys really are knights at the FBI, huh?”

“Yeah, but my armour got too rusty so now I’m going to guard the princess only, no more battles for me,” he was happy to make it magical, to turn the terribleness of it all into something she could be proud of.

He feels cold hands reaching under the back of his shirt then as he jumps, Y/N is wrapping her arms around him and pressing her cheek to his back, “your armour is fine, it just needs some polish.”

“They’re kinda gross, you’ll have to get used to that,” Amoreena says, pressing her lips together awkwardly as she looks at Jo.

“It’s nice though, it makes you feel like love is real,” Jo smiled back, “not many kids have happy families.”

“You do now, okay?” Amoreena took her cheeks in her hands again, something she must have learned from Y/N. “My family is your family and we are the best family, you’re going to have so much fun with us, can I help you decorate your room?”

Jo cried, laughing lightly as she nodded, “that would be cool, maybe we can get bunk beds for random sleepovers?”

Amoreena shot her eyes to her mom, “can we?”

“That would be cool,” Y/N agreed, “we’ll go to Ikea on Friday when I’m not working, okay?”

“And this weekend we can buy some paint for your room?” Spencer added, “you guys can plan all week together.”

“Yes!” Amoreena cheered, hugging Jo again.

Jo held her gently, resting her cheek against the top of Amoreena’s head with a small smile. She looked genuinely happy, peaceful like she belonged somewhere again.

Right then Amoreena’s eyes are darting right to him, “It’s fathers day!” She screams, way too loud for 8 am in someone else’s home. Thank god Taylor was on the other side of the mansion.

“Oh my god,” Amoreena smacked her forehead with her little hand, “I was so carried away with the wedding I didn’t pack your present, dad! I’m so sorry.”

“I’ve got you covered little miss,” Y/N smiled at her, “It’s in my purse!”

Amoreena pushed past them in the doorway and ran to their room in search of said purse. Probably emptying it out on the bed and making a huge mess, but it was fine.

Y/N took a moment to kiss his cheek, “good morning, happy father’s day.”

“Thank you,” he blushed, turning to face her and hold her close, “I can feel you staring Jo, come here.”

She comes skipping right over, wrapping her arms around them both and resting her head on Spencer’s side. For a 12-year-old she was tall, a lot taller than Henry was, that’s for sure.

“Hey!” Amoreena butts in, “let me in,” she pushed into the middle of the hug to steal all the warmth, “happy father’s day, dad.”

“Happy father’s day,” Jo added with a soft smile, “thank you for everything.”

“Yeah, you’re the best dad in the world, Jo you should see how he reads with his mind, he doesn’t even need to look at the books at bedtime,” Amoreena bragged, pulling back from all of them then.

Spencer wiped the tears from his face and pretended he wasn’t crying, overwhelmed by love just like he told Jo to expect. “I love you guys, I’m so glad I helped make you both, you’re the best kids a dad could ask for.”

“Here,” Amoreena hands him a wrapped present.

It’s a handmade book, blue construction paper bound with green ribbon in little loops and covered in a thin layer of tissue paper from the present he got her last week. He carefully removes the tissue and hands it back to her, “do you still want it for dresses?”

“Sure,” she takes it with a smile, “I wrote this for you after a dream I had, Miss Kennedy helped me write it all and reword it a bit. But it’s all from my brain.”

“Spencer’s little women,” he reads and then his heartbeat almost stops when he sees the bottom, “by Amoreena Reid.”

“We can go sit in the living room while you read it to us?” Y/N offered, taking the girl's hands and leading them all down the hallway.

Taylor’s house was full of floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing them to watch the sunrise over the ocean as they cuddled up on the couch as a family. Him and his little women.

“Once upon a time, there was a kingdom ruled by a beautiful princess who had a broken heart. She promised to hide away from the townspeople until she gathered all the pieces again,” Spencer read the first sentence and knew he wouldn’t be able to make it through the whole book.

“You know, I think it would be better if you read this to me Amoreena,” he asks her gently, “I want to know it from your voice first.”

“Okay,” she bounces up from where she cuddled into her mother to take the book from his hand, sitting straight as she got ready to read.

“Slowly, but surely, the pieces came back to her one by one as the people felt the need to search for her, they missed seeing her smile as she ruled alongside her parents, the king and queen until her heart was fixed.

A little girl, Lady Amoreena, arrived like a gift. A fairy godmother handing a small child to the princess to raise and love forever and ever, they were best friends more than anything.

But the princess’s baby girl made it her mission to fix the rest of her heart as she grew up seeing her mom frown, questing for princes and kings, even another princess to come and fill that last missing spot of her heart. To make their family love grew as the cracks from where they separated were healed.

She set off on her daily adventure, running off past the gates on the way to the willow tree, excited to see what wonders the pond of youth brought to her this time. Surprised to find a knight, his broken and rusty armour fallen on the ground, he was wrapped in weeds, he had been trapped for too long to remember.

Amoreena cut the vines off him with her sword, “you’re free now, sir knight.”

“How can I ever repay you?” The kind man with the same nose as her asked.

“Meet the princess, tell her about your battles, make her laugh and you can stay with us,” she gives him one final quest. His last ever duty.

The princess smiles as soon as they meet. He wins her over without even trying, he completes their family and makes all the cracks in her heart fuse back together. Gold light shines from her as she’s healed, completed by the love of a family she never knew she needed.

The love didn’t end there… the knight and the princess knew lady Amoreena would be like her mom when she grew up. The possibility of a sad and broken heart as she got older, so they made her 8 more siblings, her group of sisters to keep her company during the happily ever after part.

“Sir Spencer, where are all your little women?” The king of the land asked, seeing the knight and the princess all alone on the path, old and slow as they walked.

“Down by the pond, it’s story day!”

He knew that’s where they’d always be, at their pond with a book, braiding each other's hair, weaving flower crowns and chasing each other through the wildflowers that replaced the vines that once held him down.

Free, healed and happy. Spencer and his little women healed the princess, allowing her to take the role as Queen, like her grandma always wanted for her.”

“There isn’t a 'the end'?” Y/N’s voice questions lightly as Spencer cries too hard to even respond.

She was the most amazing child in the whole world and he didn’t know what he did to deserve her. He wrapped her up in his arms and held her so tight she was smacking his arm to let her go with a laugh, “I want to add more to it when I’m older, like GG’s book.”

“You can write one for all your sisters,” Y/N smiles at her softly, “you know, gg only wrote Amoreena because you came to her in a dream?”

She nodded, “that’s why I started writing this book for dad because I had a dream about him reading to all of us, he was so old it was funny.”

“How old?” He asks, remembering his reflection from his own dream.

“Like poppy, you had a white beard!”

“What did we talk about?” He doesn’t know why he wants to know so badly but he’s desperate to know if their dream was the same.

“It was story day, you and mom were late, but you said, ‘I’d never miss a Saturday with my little women,’” she smiles, “I’m so glad you’re my dad.”

She holds him back just as tight this time, snuggling into his chest as he breathes her in. His first little baby, even if she was the middle kid now, she was his baby, he couldn’t even imagine holding someone even smaller than her soon.

—

They take a quick trip to target in the morning, needing to get some things for Jo and Y/N really, really wanted chocolate-covered cranberries, making sure he knew that she would kill him if he didn’t bring them back to her. Finally having those pregnancy mood swings he was expecting.

Jo is quick to pick out some summer clothes and a bathing suit for the day as well as toiletries and anything else she wanted because Spencer said so. He was going to spoil her because he didn’t know what else to do. This is what he wanted from his dad, someone to see something, think of him and just get it to make him smile.

She saw some purple bedding that she liked, so it ended up in the cart. And then she needed some new pillow, and some fitted sheets… oh and those curtains are nice… and before they knew it they had $300 worth of things for her bedroom in the back of Y/N’s car.

Jo pressed her lips together awkwardly as they sat in the front seats of the car, he looked over at her and smiled, making her laugh, “this is the best father’s day.”

“I’m supposed to be getting you gifts today!”

“You are a gift, Jo,” he doesn’t mean to get sappy, but he can’t help the love he feels for her already.

“Drive before I cry, dude,” she turns to look out the window. “Are we going to have a 'ground rules and behaviour' speech like all the foster parents do? I have a feeling you have no idea what you’re doing.”

He starts the car then, pulling out of the lot and starting the 40-minute car ride back with her, “how do they normally set the rules in the foster homes?”

“They pay for my phone bill with the money provided for me each month and they sometimes get me the groceries I want for lunches and stuff but they mostly kept the money for themselves. I’m only allowed on the internet for an hour a day, homework has to be done in front of their eyes at the kitchen table, no food after 7 pm, lights off and no walking around by 9,” she gave the rundown and it made Spencer’s stomach turn.

“I will pay for your phone bill, you don't need to worry about that. We can even get you a new one when we get home. Y/N has great internet and every streaming service available, you don’t have a time limit here. Just promise me you’ll go outside sometimes?” He reaches a hand out to hold her’s while driving, letting her know he means what is coming next.

“I trust you have a way of life you’re used to, and I’m not going to change that on you, if you want to share things with me and be open and honest, I’m always here and I will never judge you. I don’t want you to ever feel like you need to hide things from me. And that being said, I trust you enough to use the internet safely, and not hack anything without good reason anymore?”

Derek was right, it’s surprisingly easy to be a dad. All you have to do is love them and be there for them.

“Okay, then I think you should know,” she takes a deep breath and a pause. “I’m pretty sure I like girls too, I never got to tell my mom that but I’m sure she knew, and I’m kind of scared to put my bathing suit on when I get home.”

“First of all, I’m proud of you,” he squeezes her hand 3 times, and she does it right back with a smile. “Secondly, why? Did you not get one you liked? I was fine buying any of them for you.”

“I have a lot of scars on my legs, and I don’t want to scare Amoreena,” she’s really ashamed of herself and Spencer understands it.

He rolls his sleeve up and extends his arm for her to see his very faded track marks, “I was drugged on a case once, I had an addiction after. The scars fade over time, but I also haven’t shown Amoreena my bare arms yet.”

“Mine are pretty faded now too, it’s been a few months, they look more like stretch marks,” she smiled at his honesty, feeling safer with him.

“If she asks, you can say it was from a cat at the foster home. She’ll think about Cinderella and the evil stepmother's cat, and then completely forget why she asked,” he assures her, knowing Amoreena like the back of his hand now.

“Lucifer,” Jo smiles, “I was like her as a kid too, always making up stories and finding new movies to be obsessed with. I have ADHD, by the way, but I’m un-medicated cause my last foster home didn’t listen to the school’s diagnosis,” she says it like it’s not a big deal.

His blood starts to boil at the thought of someone not taking care of her, “excuse me?”

“Yeah, and when I asked for a therapist they said no to that too, I was ‘fine’ apparently and they settled for a dead parents support group so that Colin could have a coffee while I sat there,” she’s oblivious to how terrible it is.

“Make me a list of all the things you want, I mean everything down to the most niche interest or therapy technique that you’ve researched and I will help you with whatever it is,” Spencer is furious at the conditioning she’s experienced to think this is okay.

“You don’t have to, dad, I’m okay now,” she lies and he can tell.

“You don’t have to be, believe me, I cry almost every night to Y/N about things I thought I had recovered from. If you want to talk to someone because you think it will help, or if you want medicine because you feel like it’ll help you focus better or just be happier, I’m here to help you get that.”

She goes quiet, staring at their hands where he’s still squeezing her palm. She rubs her thumb along the skin softly, “did your mom ever hurt you?”

“Only when she wasn’t really there in her own mind,” he presses his lips together right after, he’s never told anyone about it.

“Did your dad?”

“Emotionally, but he wasn’t there long enough to lay a hand on me.”

She nods at the response, “my dad was evil, I think he killed my mom in that ‘accident’, but on purpose.”

“I thought my dad was a murderer once too, but it was actually my dad’s friend,” he isn’t sure why he’s telling her everything, but she deserved to know.

“There was a pedophile in our town who killed this boy, Riley, and my mom told him about a man who was watching me like I was next. And Riley’s dad killed him, but I was so young my mind tried to think it was my dad who did it all.”

“Your old job must have really messed you up inside too, huh?�� She tries to laugh it off, scared of his past but intrigued at the same time, he just nods at her observation.

“I have a friend, her name is Penelope, her parents died when she was a little bit older than you. She snuck out and they went to look for her, and they were in a car crash,” he makes sure she’s comfortable, her hand is still in his and her thumb is still moving over his skin.

“Like you, she got into hacking, the FBI had to hire her because she was so good she became a threat, you’d really like her,” he says, turning to look at her quickly, he loves the smile on her face.

“I’d love to meet her,” she smiled, “thank you, I wish you could have always been my dad.”

It breaks his heart a little, “well, you have me forever now.”

—

“Two questions,” Y/N’s voice approaches as she walks towards the trunk of her car.

Jo and Spencer are digging through all the shopping bags trying to find all the things that she needs for the afternoon, leaving the rest for the ride home.

“Here,” Spencer hands her the chocolate-covered cranberries, “king-sized bag.”

“I love you,” she smiles as she takes it, “the second question, how are the suitcases going to fit in there now? We have two kids to bring home, they’re going to be squished.”

“I don’t mind,” Jo smiles, “one time they didn’t have room for me in a car so I sat in the trunk for 15 minutes.”

Spencer wrapped her up in his arms, “every time you tell me a story about what has happened to you, I want to kill someone.”

She laughs, holding him back gently, “believe me, I was an asshole to them, they got what they deserved.”

“What did you do?” Y/N worries about what she’s capable of, Spencer can tell.

“I called the tax people and said they have been claiming foster kids as dependents and now they might have tax fraud charges coming their way,” she seemed very proud of herself. “I would never hurt someone, but I have no problem getting them in trouble.”

Y/N extended her fist, bumping it off Jo’s with a smile, “as you should! Now, come on, let’s go get ready for the beach.”

Jo skipped inside with Y/N, their arms linked as they did so. Spencer couldn’t believe this was his life now. He closed the trunk with a slam, picking up the bag of things he set aside before joining them inside.

“Surprise!!!!” Amoreena screamed as soon as he walked through the door.

There was a hand-drawn Happy Father’s Day banner hanging from the staircase and purple balloons all over the place.

“Happy father’s day!!!” They all cheered for him, even Taylor’s mom was there now, smiling at the display of affection.

Amoreena and Jo came running up to him, wrapping their arms around him and holding him close, nothing felt real. “Can you pinch me?” He asked them with a small smile.

He didn’t think they’d do it, but even Y/N walked over and started pinching him all over. Amoreena pinched his leg, Jo pinched his belly button and Y/N, she pinched his cute little butt as she pressed a kiss to his blushing cheek. “You’re very real, so are we.”

“I love you guys,” Spencer reminds them, holding them all as close as he can for just a moment, “okay, enough sappiness, let’s go to the beach!”

Amoreena and Y/N are already in their swimsuits under their sundresses, Jo, on the other hand, picked out some trunks and a tank-style swim top, hiding her scares just enough that she felt comfortable getting in the sand and building a castle with Amoreena.

Y/N laid on the towel beside Spencer in the shade, Taylor and her mom were playing scrabble on the picnic table, her dad was cooking up burgers on the grill. It was serene, it was perfect, they were a little family and it made absolutely no sense to him how it all worked out so well, but he wouldn’t change any of it.

“Look how big it is after lunch,” Y/N grabbed his attention, sticking her belly out as far as it could go, “I’m going to get so huge again, at least this time I’ll be the biggest when it’s cold out.”

“Are you comfortable? Do you need more sunscreen or water?” Spencer worried, making her smile as she pushed her sunglasses up and turned to him.

“I am fantastic, thank you, cutie.”

He leans in to kiss her gently, but she wraps her arms around him and pulls him down on top of her. Kissing him like she just rescued him from the sea and hasn’t seen him for years.

When he finally pulls away, he doesn’t go far. Just sitting up as he brushes her hair off her face, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she reminds him with another soft smile.

“I missed mother’s day with you by only a few days, but you should know you’re the best mother in the whole world,” he whispered, wanting to share his day with her because, without her, he wouldn’t be a father.

She pulls him into another kiss, hands resting on his cheeks as she breathes in deeply through her nose. It’s like she’s taking the soul out of his body, he's a part of her now forever and always. He never wants to be anywhere else.

tag list: @shemarmooresfedora @spencers-dria @spookyspence @reidsfish @manuosorioh @mochionly @samuel-de-champagne-problems @jswessie187

@k-k0129

#spencer reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #spencer reid self insert #spencer reid request #criminal minds smut #criminal minds imagine #amoreena

96 notes · View notes

imaginethathaikyuu · 3 years

Text

tis the damn season

atsumu miya x fem reader

the first fic in a series i like to call “Me Writing Whatever The Hell I Want” (a working title) hope u like it or dont idk im not ur boss!!!!!!!!!!

synopsis: Running away was easy when you were chasing hazy dreams of a big city that was destined to be yours, when your rear-view mirror showed nothing but your hole in the wall hometown. But now it’s all waiting tables and failing auditions. You were still running, but somehow, these winding roads always lead you back to Miya Atsumu - a man you’ve loved and left, until you return home for the holidays.

tags: friends to lovers, exes to lovers, angst without a happy ending, established pre-relationship, friends with benefits, reader lives in Undisclosed Big City lmao who has celebrity dreams, atsumu is ur good ole southern boy (sort of), canon divergent, not edited, light nsfw, beginnings of sex but isn’t very detailed

word count: 4220

song inspo (tis the damn season by taylor swift)

i won’t ask you to wait if you don’t ask me to stay…

. . .

The soundtrack of this early morning replayed in your head as you made a hazy drive to the neighborhood’s hardware store, cutting left onto the correct street and forcing the car’s back tire over the curb you couldn’t miss.

The replay of events looping in your mind? A whirring, then a splashing, then your father’s booming voice shouting curse words at anyone who could hear them. Your name was laced in there somewhere with demands for you to get to the kitchen, and you couldn’t tumble down the stairs fast enough to see what in the hell was going on.

It was your first day home for the holidays, and already it was a catastrophe.

Somehow your dad had busted a pipe underneath the kitchen sink and a strong stream of water was spraying halfway across the room because of it - your feet landed in a shallow pool when you finally reached the first floor. You didn’t have time to think of any questions before the man at fault, who was on his knees with his head hidden under the sink relentlessly trying to turn the water off, sent you out the door with more shouts, telling you to go to Miya’s Hardware and buy… something.

“A connector?” You were talking to yourself, thinking out loud as you finally parked, but it didn’t help you remember. All you could do was walk inside the store and hope someone knew what you needed.

It’d been years since you had been in this shop, but it looked just the same as when you were following your dad through its isles. You didn’t even bother browsing now, though - you went straight to the back of the store to the counter, expecting to see a familiar, perhaps older, face eager to help you.

That isn’t what you found.

“Well, hey stranger.”

That voice rang in your ears like you’d just heard it through a megaphone pointed directly at you. Something about it was so warm, but it left you with a shiver down your spine and goosebump ridden skin. You could feel the hair on the back of your neck standing up, and you hadn’t even turned in the direction the words came from.

But you didn’t have to look in order to know just who it was. “Atsumu.”

“What in the hell are you doing back in town?” His voice rang with excited confusion; it carried the same inflection as anyone who’s happy to see you. Like nearly forgotten family members at a reunion before it all goes to hell, or the way the tone of your father’s voice changes when you tell him you’re doing well and mean it. People don’t speak that way often.

He pulled you in for a hug and you gladly reciprocated, already forgetting that you were supposed to be in a hurry.

“Home for the holidays. How have you been?”

“I’ve been alright,” he replied. “I’ve missed you.”

His voice felt more like home than your four bedroom walls did, the charming drawl and depth in his words immediately reeling you in. It was familiar. You had spent a long time trying to forget about that familiarity; too long learning how to straighten out your words and lose any hint of the small town you came from. But Atsumu - he sounded like the epitome of this place.

He didn’t give you time to reply, for one reason or another; instead he decided to push you back by your shoulders and get a good look at you. Up and down and up again, likely noticing every change you had made to your appearance in your time away.

“Are you still wearing your pajamas, or is this a new… trend?”

You looked down at yourself, “Shit,” and closed your jacket tight over the old graphic t-shirt you wore, but nothing could cover your pink polka-dotted pants. And you’d have been hit in the face with embarrassment if the image of your dad and the broken sink and a flooded kitchen didn’t smack you first. “Shit, no, um… I need something to fix a broken sink. Are you… do you work here now?”

“I do - and you’re gonna need to be more specific.”

“I don’t know, Atsumu,” you laughed, slowly realizing the bizarreness of what you were about to tell him. “I woke up to my dad shouting and water shooting out from under the sink, literally flooding the kitchen. He told me to get a part for the pipe… a connector, or a couple, or something - I don’t know.”

“...A coupler?”

“Yes!”

“...He didn’t happen to tell you what size to get, did he?”

The look on your face must have been a good enough answer for him, because he took off into a random aisle and left you wondering just how many sizes of couplers there could be.

“This one will probably do the job,” he said as his path rounded the counter. “If it doesn’t, then, I can ignore the return policy for you. Just this once, though.”

“Thanks, ‘Tsumu.” You made your payment and he slid your product over the counter as his elbows landed on it, leaning down to make himself comfortable. Like he thought he’d be there awhile.

“How long are you gonna be in town?”

“Two weeks. Why do you ask?” You knew why - you just wanted to hear him say it.

“We should catch up.”

He was grinning and shrugging and fidgeting with his fingers, just like he always did, and you would never turn down any offer he made you.

“We should. I’ve got to get home, but are you free tonight?”

“We close at six,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” you said, meaning every word. You wondered if he knew that.

“So will I,” he replied, and then you made your way out before you convinced yourself to stay.

It’d been three years since you last spoke to Atsumu. In that time, you had done a lot that felt like nothing, living in a different city that felt worlds bigger than this town - that city was a place you had once convinced yourself was all yours. You had pulled off running away effortlessly.

But it didn’t matter how much time goes by between your meetings with Atsumu. There was something there that you could never shake, the hold you had on each other was anchor tight. Ten years could pass and you would speak to each other like it had only been one day. You’d have world ending fights and one of you would always come crawling back, letting the other win as long as it meant things would go back to normal.

You couldn’t describe it. You never tried, you didn’t need to. The unspoken acts between the two of you didn’t need to be explained. It was something akin to a best friend with all the benefits included and most of the strings attached - confusing and nerve wracking but still so comforting.

Atsumu was the closest thing to home you had in this town, and somehow every road always leads back to him. With a few detours on your part, of course, because you just couldn’t stay away too long. Even moving across the country didn’t change that - not like you thought it would.

You just barely missed the turn into your driveway, being so distracted by your thoughts. So much was rushing back, so much that shouldn’t be - it isn’t a big deal, it’s just Atsumu, but it felt grand, like this was some massive reunion.

But it wasn’t. You were only here to celebrate Christmas with your family. You weren’t even planning on seeing Atsumu, let alone meeting up with him or rekindling any kind of flame that was once there.

And it was such a rush that you couldn’t even question why he was working at his father’s store - or why he was even in this town at all. What happened to the dreams he was chasing?

For what felt like the first time in your life, you had questions for him. But you’d have to wait all day to ask them.

. . .

You were thankful to come home to a dry floor and a calmer father - he finally figured out how to turn the water off and decided to fix the pipe later. You knew he’d inevitably be paying someone more qualified to repair it, but your mind had no space for that problem.

You were still trying to figure out how you’d meander the night with Atsumu by the time he was picking you up, and when the two of you arrived at his home you still hadn’t found your answer.

Easing into this would be best, and once alcohol was introduced to the equation it would turn into a slippery slope.

Nothing was hard with Atsumu. You knew that - that’s why you couldn’t figure out why you were having such a hard time talking to him.

A lot had changed. Not between the two of you, not exactly. You were right back where you were three years ago: on his couch, sitting too close to him, laughing at something he had said that was only funny because he said it.

But your lives had changed. Your worlds had changed. His mind had very obviously changed, and because of it all, you couldn’t keep pretending that the two of you were teenagers again.

You had to bite the bullet and ask the question that was on your mind, completely knowing that he could throw a hard hitting question back at you.

It came out more effortlessly and lighthearted than you expected. “So… what happened to playing volleyball?”

Atsumu scoffed. “You still remember that pipe dream? Nothing happened, it was just childish.”

You didn’t like his answer, so you pressed him. You worked up the courage to start this conversation, so you were going to get to the bottom of things. “You said you wanted to catch up - I know you, Atsumu. You get what you want and you wanted to play volleyball. You were going to be a pro, you were good.”

“I know you know me,” he said, and the smirk on his lips didn’t go unnoticed by you. “I wanted to get drunk and chat, not start up a fucking therapy session.”

You sat patient and waiting, eyes on him, refusing to go without the answer to your question. You were teasing, really, eyeing him up and grinning as you watched him struggle. The problem was: you didn’t expect the answer you’d get.

“I - I had the chance.” There was a scratch in his throat that wasn’t caused by the whiskey he’d just swallowed. “I was being scouted and playing my ass off and there were talks of being on an Olympic team one day, but… shit happens, and that’s it.”

“What shit, Atsumu? You didn’t just give up, did you? Were you scared or something?”

You didn’t realize how close you were to him until his hand came down to rest on your knee, and both of you focused on that touch as his next thoughts became words. “Dad got sick. And ‘Samu had just opened the restaurant, and… there were bills to pay and the store to run. Even though I wasn’t his preference, Dad had no choice and left the legacy of Miya’s Hardware to me, so - that’s where I am.”

“Oh. I… I had no idea - I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine. You were already long gone by then - don’t say sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” you said, and you hugged him without thinking, but he hugged you back all the same. “I’m sorry, ‘Tsumu.”

“It’s okay,” he told you, but you didn’t feel okay. You were sure he didn’t, either. “It’s not your fault.”

You pulled away from him just enough to look at his face, and you hadn’t noticed the distance in his eyes until just then. As you looked at him, you realized it was only familiar to now. It wasn’t there years ago, when you got to look into those eyes every day.

“I should’ve been there for you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, but his words were dangling on an edge. He didn’t quite mean them. “You were off in your own dream. I got through it.”

You only nodded. You weren’t sure what else to say after that.

As Atsumu sat back against the couch, he brought you with him, tucking you under his arm against his chest. His lips on your forehead made you close your eyes and for a second, it was like you were both nineteen again. You could’ve been, if time would only slow down or freeze or go back - what wouldn’t you give for that?

“I’m done talking about me,” he mumbled. “I wanna hear about your life now.”

You laughed, but quiet, “My life’s been fine.”

“Only fine?”

“You don’t see me on the big screen, do you?”

He laughed this time. “Not yet. One day, though. Have you gotten used to the city yet?”

“Oh… I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it, but… it does feel like home now. It’s so different from living here.”

“I bet.”

“I try not to romanticize it, but - I don’t know. It feels good, even if it’s not what I thought it’d be. The lights are pretty bright. Blinding compared to here.”

His response was a nod, and that was it. If he had any questions or comments, he held them back.

A break in the silence came soon, though. “You know,” he said, quiet, with a small laugh that was humorless, “I’m not as good at getting what I want as you think I am.”

“That’s not true,” you replied, and you were setting up an argument you weren’t ready to make. “You got me.”

“Did I?”

“What do you mean?”

Silence lingered, and after too long you sat up and looked at him, and that got him to talk.

“Nothing,” he insisted. He pulled you closer with two fingers holding your chin, and you didn’t resist. “Nothing, baby. Let’s just… just be quiet for a while.”

There wasn’t time for you to say anything else. His lips were on yours the moment he got his last word out. And even though you expected him to kiss you, it still made you gasp.

You couldn’t describe how much you missed kissing someone you wanted to, and Astumu’s kiss was like finding home. His lips were like candy, sweeter than sugar; his bite was a freezing shock that always pulled a giggle and a whisper of his name out of you. He knew how to kiss you, slow and deep with a hand on your jaw to keep you there, never leaving you wanting more because he gave everything you could ever need.

It didn’t take long for his kisses to trail down your neck, or for his shirt to come off, or for your back to land on the couch. You had already reached euphoria just seeing him hovering over you, eyes soft and hair askew; you didn’t need anything but this. You’d never want anything but this.

You did what you always did - trailed your hand down his torso, over his golden skin, stopping just after every freckle or scar or mark. This time, you were looking for something new. You didn’t find anything. You didn’t stop until your hand landed on his waist, and there, you squeezed -

“Stop, you little shit,” and he laughed, right along with you. A real and genuine laugh - you hadn’t heard that song in a long time. “Why do you always do that?”

Finally he moved down to press his chest against yours, his hips locking in place between your legs. A perfect combination.

“Why do you always give me the chance?” You were still laughing, not able to get over the cute sight. Atsumu was always so ticklish there, right on his waist, and when you made that discovery you swore you’d never forget it. And he sure as hell wished you would have. “You’re so cute. I’ve missed that smile.”

“I’ve missed you,” he replied. Somehow you just knew that he meant it.

“Don’t. I’m here.”

“You’re here,” he repeated. Like he was reassuring himself.

You took the initiative to unbutton your shirt yourself, so that there was no way for him to think that you wanted this to stop there. It couldn’t, not when you had him this close. And his eyes followed the popping buttons like stalking prey.

“And you’re still the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Fucking hell.”

You cringed - you couldn’t help the feeling in your gut when he gave you those sweet words. You knew he meant them in some way; you knew Atsumu wouldn’t lie to you. He’s never told you anything just for the sake of it. But how many times, in the last three years, had someone done just that? Told you just what you wanted to hear so they could get inside you? It was vile the first time. The second, it made you ache. But now, you’re used to it. Nobody means what they say. You’re used to it.

And Atsumu could snatch up any girl he wanted. A girl who’s used to blinding lights and expensive wine and lying - or a girl who would stay with him, who wouldn’t push his buttons, who would be effortless in her charm and wit and beauty.

You couldn’t put yourself in either category.

“You haven’t seen many, then.”

“Why would I even need to when I’ve got you? You’re a fucking dream. All I ever think about.”

You shook your head, not even noticing you were doing it. Atsumu wouldn’t have it.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Not when you know what you do to me. You’ve got my heart beating out of my chest, for fuck’s sake - it has been since you walked into the store.”

You never knew him to be so open with his feelings, or maybe you had just gotten used to being lied to. You weren’t sure and you didn’t care - all you could think about was kissing him, so you pulled him in, and you were sure he would devour you. You’d have no problem with that.

It was desperate when you said, “I need you.”

And reassuring when he replied, “I’m right here.”

He wasn’t close enough. You didn’t think he ever could be. And it was right then, when you were swimming in desperation, that you realized you shouldn’t have been doing this. It would only make leaving even harder. Doing it the first time was hell, letting him watch you leave and be okay with it. You hated yourself for wishing he wasn’t. And you were drowning.

You hated yourself for leaving.

You hated yourself more for coming back.

And you didn’t want to be there, all of a sudden, despite the ache in between your thighs and the addicting warmth he had you trapped in. You didn’t want to be there and you didn’t want to leave, either - you only wanted something easy, but you’d never have it. Not here, and not in the city, and not with Atsumu.

You felt him freeze, felt things shift. You hadn’t even noticed the way your energy had completely dropped.

“Something wrong?” He moved up to hold your face. He noticed the tears in your eyes before you did.

It was hard to look at him but you held his gaze, and his touch hurt more than it healed but you yearned for it. The concern on his face was genuine, the gentle strokes of his thumb on your cheek weren’t forced, and it all was making your stomach turn.

He cared for you - obviously he did - but not enough to ask you to stay. Not enough to find trouble in letting you leave him. So maybe you shouldn’t have a problem with it, either.

“No,” you said through a sore throat and a locked jaw. “Sorry, just…”

“We don’t have to do this,” he told you. “We can just talk - I want to talk. If it’s too much -”

“It’s okay,” you said. You tried to mean it as much as, “I miss you, Atsumu. I want you - touch me, I miss you.”

“I know,” and he was wiping the tears off of your cheeks as he kissed your lips, “I’ll take care of you, baby, just let me. Stop thinking so much. Let me take care of you like I always do, yeah? You want me to help you feel good?”

You always had a problem with that - thinking too much. He never hesitated to call you out on it. You nodded your head, strong and fast, like you were trying to knock the thoughts right out of it.

“Please, ‘Tsumu.” You were crying for him, pulling him closer. “Need you. Make it better, please.”

“I’d do anything,” he said. “You gotta quit crying, baby. You’re acting like our first time again.”

You laughed at that, wiping your own tears and knocking his hands away. “God, that was so embarrassing.”

“It was cute.”

“It wasn’t.”

“It was kinda hot, too.”

“Atsumu!”

It was his deep grin that made you relax again, and so did another blissful kiss that took your breath in a way that you enjoyed.

“You can cry, baby,” he said, popping buttons on both of your pants, “as long as it’s because of how good I’m making you feel. That’s what you need, pretty girl. Let me show you how much I’ve been missing you - get these pants off, baby, let me see you.”

He didn’t give you the chance to cry any more, at least not in an emotional sense. Your mind was stripped with your body, filled with nothing but him, no space between the two of you left for insecurities or questions.

It wasn’t until he coaxed you into his bedroom that those things had the chance to creep back.

Atsumu was out cold, cuddled into your chest and holding on tight to your waist, after smothering you in soft kisses and sweet sleepy words. You were comfortable there, warm and safe and content, but the pit in your stomach only grew. You watched him sleep, his mouth slightly open and eyes softly closed, and you wanted to reach down and kiss him but you resisted.

It was late and you should be asleep but you couldn’t rest. You couldn’t stop loathing yourself long enough to close your eyes, and the more you thought, the harder it got to breathe. Your throat was sore again. Your eyes were watering again. And every word you wanted to say to Atsumu was tumbling out of your mouth and falling onto sleeping ears.

“Why didn’t you ask me to stay?”

He didn’t stir. It was still rumbling breaths and the whir of the air conditioner filling the silence.

“Everyone else did. But you. Why… You of all people should know I’m just as worthless there as I am here - I’ll never make it - I’ve changed everything and still…”

You sucked a hard breath into your lungs to stop a wracking sob, just barely holding it in.

“I just ended up here again. With you. I’m so alone without you but I can’t - fuck.”

It didn’t even matter what you were trying to say anymore, because you had no clue. You didn’t know why you couldn’t just stay with him regardless of his choice to let you go, but something in you made you run. Maybe it was worthless pride or a childish desire to be something more - you didn’t know.

You didn’t belong in any industry you dreamed of working in. You weren’t born to be a star. You should know by now - should accept your failure and come back home for more than just one night.

But you couldn’t.

There was still a chance, wasn’t there?

A chance to belong somewhere.

A chance to be led home.

A chance to make it. Would you die trying?

You would leave in the morning. And you wouldn’t ask Atsumu to wait for you as he started getting ready for the day. And Atsumu wouldn’t ask you to ditch your own plotted destiny just to stay with him.

But this would happen again. Every time you would swear it off and every time, you would travel roads that take you right back to this town, this bed, these arms.

Running away would never get easier, but this is all it would ever be with him. He would never stop you leaving - and you would never ask him to.

. . .

...so i’ll go back to LA

#i researched how to fix pipes for this #by research i mean i went to hope depot dot com and looked at Pipes #my friend actually busted his sink pipe the other day exactly like i wrote and our other friend (who works at lowes) said he needs a Coupler #in conclusion i dont know how sinks or pipes work. do not perceive me or my writing.#miya atsumu #atsumu miya #atsumu x reader #miya atsumu x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu imagines #i forget what other tags i need to use lmao

45 notes · View notes

snlhostharry · 4 years

Text

crooked love

harry x reader

1.5k words

you and harry are broken up, he lives down the block and something has you up at three in the morning.

a/n: yes this is based on I wish you would by Taylor Swift, yes everyday I think about what would’ve happened if harry had pulled the car over <3

It’s way too early to be awake. You’re not quite sure what time it is, but it’s early enough that the sun shows no signs of rising to signal the morning. You have to go to work in a few hours, but you can’t sleep. Something is keeping you awake, something keeps drawing you towards your bedroom window. You lean against the headboard and let out a sigh, you’re mind drawing back to the one thing you don’t want to think about. It’s one of those nights where you lie awake and let yourself think too much about all the mistakes that you’ve made, the things you didn’t say, and the things that you did.

You refuse to believe that Harry Styles is your one that got away. Mostly because it’s cliche, to have some celebrity be your one that you regret letting walk right out of the door (he actually got into his car and drove away but still), the whole thing sounds like an over-romanticized version of a story told in some books and fantasies by fangirls. It’s also to avoid the truth, the truth that if he came to your door right now and said that he wanted you back you would say yes, you would forget everything and you would say that you were sorry. There’s so many things to apologize for, there are so many things to say but the words die on the tip of your tongue, and the thought of texting or calling leaves your fingers paralyzed.

He did say, “Maybe one day you’ll call me, and tell me that you're sorry too,” in his song. You think the song is beautiful, but you can’t listen to it anymore. Instead your content just staring out the window at what you’ve discovered is three am, thinking about how he bought that house just down the block from your apartment, thinking about what he must be doing right now.

You look down at the street, the morning fog hovering just above the road, the streetlights barely illuminate the grass on either side. It all looks haunted, just like you are, because if you look down at the sidewalk you can see him still standing there. Like a ghost, the memory of that moment stays with you, even though it's been a year, and even though there have been other guys since then. There’s just something about the kind of emotion contained in that moment, the kind of love that makes you fall so hard and fast, that pushes every button, so much so that there’s only one possible way it can end: in flames. The kind of raw emotion carried in the way that you screamed at him, and he stood there taking it until he just couldn’t anymore.

“You never loved me!” You scream. The force of your anger could shake the streetlights if you allowed it to, if you had enough power to show him. “You forgot about me like it was nothing, all you cared about was your career, and who you were going to be seen with.”

“I love you,” He says, the eerie calmness in his voice counteracting the abject emotion in yours. At the time you’d taken that to mean that he didn’t care about you, that you loved him more than he could ever love you, that here you were again stuck wounded out in the cold. Everyone could see you bleeding, he could see you bleeding. “I love you, now. I don’t know what I can do to make you believe that.”

“You should’ve been here!” You tell him, “That’s how you show me! You show me by being here, instead of out somewhere with some girl instead of just calling me.” He doesn’t say anything, “All I see is that I mean nothing to you.”

“Are you just going to keep yelling at me?” He asks, his voice harsh. “Can we have a conversation? Can I come in?”

You cross your arms, “No.”

“y/n-”

“No. I am so angry with you right now, if I let you in I might just kill you and hide the body.”

He throws his arms in the air in frustration, “Fine! If you’re not even going to try to listen to me, then I’m going to go home.”

“Then go home, or go out or do whatever you want.”

He looks at you and shakes his head. You don’t move to go in, you stand there, watching him get into his car and at last watching him leave. The anger rising in your chest destroys all taste of reason, in hindsight you shouldn’t have let him leave like that. You shouldn’t have let him think that you hated him so much that you would never speak to him again.

Time keeps marching on. You stand at the window now, but somehow you're also still standing on the sidewalk watching his car drive down the road and disappear into oblivion. This has been a ritual the last couple of days, you waking up with a strange kind of sleeplessness, staring out at the street stuck between two moments that are in complete juxtaposition to one another. There was a week where he would call you everyday, sometimes twice a day, and you always hung up. You wish now that you would’ve picked up the phone.

How long is it going to take you to admit that you’re waiting for him at the window? He has that house down the street, and sometimes you swear you see his new car drive down the street with its windows down. It makes your heart skip a beat everytime because sometimes you convince yourself that it’s not his car, that he’s in his house with some model not even thinking about you in the slightest. Other times, you wish that he would just pull over and knock on your door.

A car passes by the window, the headlights momentarily illuminating your room. You take that as a sign that you should go back to sleep, so you lay down in the bed again, trying to stop your spiralling thoughts. But the room is illuminated again with white headlights and you sit up. A car is pulled over next to the sidewalk, and suddenly the door opens. You grab your phone, ready to call the police to report an intrudenter but when the figure stands under the light of the lamppost you almost drop your phone to the floor.

The next thing you know you’re standing outside the door, hands shaking as you reach for the doorknob. You know exactly what’s behind it, but you think you might be dreaming, or subject to sleep deprivation. Suddenly, your hand is on the doorknob and you finally open it.

Harry Styles looks the same. The same as he did on Instagram last week, the same as he did in his contact photo (him smiling like an idiot on a beach in italy) and the same as he did when he got into the car and drove off, a fact which sends a chill down your spine. What is this? Whos’ to say that even if he is here to say sorry or to ask you to try again that there's even a chance that it would work out this time?

“Hi,” He says semi awkwardly as he stands there.

You lean against the doorframe, “It’s early.”

“I know,” He runs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t know if you would be awake.”

“Funny story,” You say, “I’ve been awake for an hour.”

He half smiles, “So have I.” A pause. “I have to tell you something.”

“You’ve been driving past my house for the past week, with your windows rolled down, yeah?”

“How did you know?”

“Recognised your car,” You say, “From when I drove past your new place.”

“Oh.”

“You wrote a song about me,” You break the silence, “And you bought a house a block away from me.”

“I’ve been thinking about you.”

You cross your arms, “No shit.” You relent, “I’ve been thinking about you too. To the point where I stare at my phone, and I think about calling you.”

“I called a lot.”

“You did,” You say with a sigh. “I’m sorry for screaming at you, you didn’t deserve that.”

“I thought you hated me,” He says.

As much as you’ve selfishy imagined the moment he showed up at your door, and you were able to tell him all of the things you should’ve said that night, standing here with it actually happening throws you for such a loop that you don’t know what to say. “The life you live can be overwhelming,” You tell him, “I was mad because I was confused, and I miss you.” You keep going, “I constantly miss you. I was mad for awhile, and then I started missing you. Then I got mad at myself because I realized I was going to have to spend the rest of my life missing you.”

“And I drove past your house everyday for a month,” He smiles.

“And I was sitting at the window when you pulled up,” His words finally hit you after he says it, “Wait a month?”

He laughs, “Can I come in now?”

“Yes.”

#harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x you #harry styles fic #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles one shot #harry styles fanfic #my writing

211 notes · View notes

thrillridesz · 4 years

Text

all i want for christmas | eric

in part of the deobi secret santa project and dedicated as a gift to @channiewoo ✨ ( i hope you like it >< i tried my best! )

➳ pairing: college student!eric x reader ( ft juyeon, kevin, chanhee and sangyeon with jacob mentions! )

➳ genre: fluff, fantasy, time travel!au, time loop!au, christmas!au, university!au, love triangle!au ( ish? )

➳ warnings: n/a (PG13)

➳ word count: 4.6k

➳ inspo: lotus inn by why don’t we

➳ fic playlist: all i want for christmas - big time rush ft miranda cosgrove | lotus inn - why don’t we | christmassy! - the boyz | you belong with me - taylor swift | crush - david archuleta

a/n : this is my christmas secret santa gift to eri @channiewoo ^^ also hi, i’m your theb secret santa! thank you for being such a sweet person to talk to throughout this month and honestly you really made my first secret santa here on tumblr pretty memorable! i know we’ve just exchanged a few asks here and there but i genuinely did like talking to you though im not the most frequent secret santa anon out there >< i sincerely hope you can forgive me for that. but anyways, i hope you like your gift!!

+ also unedited for now because i really wanted to post this on christmas day... and tags are still not working but i don’t want to delay this any longer

The Christmas spirit could be felt in all corners of the house that night as the sweet aroma of freshly baked cookies and crackling log fire from the fireplace wafted in the air while party guests swayed to the upbeat Christmas music playing on the stereo and chatted merrily amongst themselves. Outside, fine white snow was falling and against the black canvas of the night sky, it made the streets seem almost serene and even beautiful. Looking out, one could easily feel the Christmas mood as neighbours held their own christmas parties and family gatherings. Everywhere they looked, they would see beautifully decorated houses adorned with Christmas wreaths and intricate fairy lights. Sometimes, one would even see the occasional snowmans displayed out in the neighbours’ yards, covered in scarves and hats with the ever familiar carrot nose. From a distance a few doors down, one could also hear singing - a telltale sign of the local group of Christmas carolers making their rounds in the neighbourhood like they did every year.

This was what Christmas is all about - enjoying good food with loved ones, receiving amazing gifts, going door to door caroling and feeling at home with the people you appreciate and cherish while the winter snow falls outside. Yet, Eric felt anything but. In fact, his heart was pounding against his chest as he sipped nervously at his mug of hot apple cider. Around him, the party guests were mingling and laughing at the college Christmas party as they shared funny stories from the year they had, feeling particularly merry. Normally, it would have been easy for him to get in the mood but not this time.

“I don’t get what you’re so nervous about.” Kevin said, shaking his head. “Why can’t you just talk to her?”

“I don’t want to make a fool out of myself. What if I mess up?” He replied despondently, his eyes softening as he glanced at you from across the room.

There you were - decked out in a cute Christmas outfit just standing by the fireplace, your hair falling around your face and framing it, looking more beautiful than he had remembered. The smile on your face made his heart flutter ever so slightly and he could feel his face grow warmer despite having a huge mug of apple cider just in front of him. The santa hat you wore added just that little touch of sweetness and adorableness to you and Eric couldn’t help but feel his heart start to pound in his chest. If you weren’t already stunning to him, you were breathtakingly beautiful to him now. Every little smile or shy glance made his heart beat just a little faster and he reached up to clutch softly as his chest.

“It’s better than not trying at all, Eric.” Kevin pointed out, taking a bite out of his gingerbread cookie. “You ought to have a little bit more faith in yourself.”

Eric sighed in resignation. “It’s so much easier talking about it than actually doing it. Everytime I think about doing it, I chicken out. I just can’t seem to stop fearing about possibly screwing it up, Kev.”

Kevin regarded him with a sympathetic look before patting him reassuringly on the shoulder. “I understand. Look man, if you don’t feel ready then you don’t have to force yourself to talk to her.”

“I promised myself that today would be the day.”

“Yeah, I know you did but still, you don’t have to force yourself. Your face is turning pale from the anxiety.” The latter said, concerned.

“It is?” Eric asked, alarmed as he quickly turned to the window beside him, checking out his reflection. He narrowed his eyes as he reached up to ruffle his hair in an attempt to make it look somewhat better though all it did was make it seem more tousled.

Kevin watched him, chuckling softly. Men in love are truly a different breed.

“Hey, Kev! I nearly forgot, do you want to listen to my newly curated Christmas playlist? I’ve been meaning to ask but I couldn’t find you.” Sangyeon suddenly appeared from behind the duo, with a joyous grin on his face. Kevin gave Eric a questioning look which he waved away.

“I’ll be fine.” He smiled.

“Alright… If you need anything, just call me!” Kevin said, casting him a last fleeting glance as he walked away with Sangyeon.

Holding the mug of hot apple cider close to his chest, Eric leaned against the cold glass panel of the window, staring out listlessly despite the steady pounding of his heart. He shot a furtive glance in your direction and quickly looked away, his cheeks reddening. At this rate, it would not be long before he turned as red as Rudolph’s nose.

“Get a grip, Eric. Why are you being such a wimp?” He chided himself. Looking around, Eric couldn’t help but observe his surroundings wistfully.

Everyone was seemingly in their element - snacking on Christmas snacks, dancing and just having fun. By the boombox, he watched as Hyunjae engaged in conversation with a girl who he did not recognise. The way they were laughing and the way she so flirtatiously slapped him on the shoulder, giggling at something Hyunjae said made Eric feel so deeply envious. Even from where he was, the smitten look on her face was undeniable and he wondered why he couldn’t have been more of a ladies’ man like Hyunjae was. Things would have been so much easier for him. Why is it that whenever it came to you he was suddenly the most awkward person to grace the face of this earth? It just didn’t make sense to him.

Sighing, he took another sip of his hot apple cider, feeling the liquid burn at the back of his throat. Suddenly, he frowned, his eyes narrowing. Who was that?

He had one of the most attractive faces Eric had ever seen - with soft, fine dark hair, a strong build and a warm smile that simply lit up the room. There he was, talking to you and you sliding your hand over his shoulder, not in a seductive or flirtatious way but in a friendly way though it was still enough to spark jealousy in Eric’s heart. He watched intently as you leaned in to whisper something in his year, his smile growing wider at your words.

Eric longed to know what the two of you were talking about, his grip on his mug growing tighter and firmer.

“Lost your chance, buddy.”

Swivelling around, Eric nearly spilled his apple cider as he turned to face a pink haired boy with an upturned nose. He didn’t remember seeing him around but there was something odd about him that Eric couldn’t quite put his finger on. Not to mention, that statement really did rub him off the wrong way.

“Excuse me?” His tone was slightly icy as he furrowed his brows together, frowning at the stranger in front of him.

“Didn’t you want to talk to her?” The boy asked, taking a swig of his hot chocolate, seemingly not noticing the confused look Eric was shooting him.

“Do I know you?”

“Oh right! I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself. How rude of me… I’m Chanhee but you can call me New. Everyone does,” he smiled warmly, “you’re Eric?”

Eric narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Yes? How do you know my name?”

“I just do. I know everyone,” He waved away his question nonchalantly, “I see you have a Christmas sweetheart.”

He tipped his mug in your direction and Eric felt his face grow hotter, annoyance setting in at the same time.

“How is that any of your business?” He snapped, his tone indignant and confrontational.

“I am here to help so watch your tone around me.” New rolled his eyes, looking at him in disdain though there was a twinkle in his eyes as he continued, “I can help you get the girl.”

Eric cast you a sideway glance before turning back to New with a skeptical expression. Whoever this guy was, he was weird, odd. Yet, the proposal he had proposed was a tempting one and despite himself, he felt inclined to listen. Watching you from afar, Eric’s heart sank just a little deeper as the guy you were talking to suddenly reached up to brush your hair away from your face, the both of you looking into each other’s eyes as he did. The irritation and jealousy he felt came back stronger than ever and before he knew it, the words were out of his mouth before he even knew it.

“How can you help?”

At his words, New grinned, drawing a small crystal vial from his pocket. The vial was filled with a mysterious sparkly, glowy pink liquid and smelled distinctively of roasted chestnuts though Eric was almost a thousand percent sure the liquid was not made of any kind of roasted chestnuts in any shape or form. As New popped open the cap, the scent grew even stronger and Eric shot him an alarmed look.

“What is that? A drug?!” Looking around frantically, it felt like nobody was paying the two of them any attention, being too preoccupied with their own conversations. How is nobody noticing this?

“Calm down and don’t get your panties in a twist.” New scoffed, “It’s a time travel potion. Or a time loop potion if you will.”

This guy is actually crazy. Eric almost wanted to laugh out loud at the ridiculousness of it all but barely managed to suppress it.

“Okay…?”

“Yup, I made it myself. Took me like half a year to brew it to perfection but it should work now. I followed each step really closely so there should be no problems.”

“Yeah, sure man. Thanks for wasting my time. If you don’t mind, I’ll be leaving. Thanks for the false hope.” Eric grumbled, taking his leave and not even bothering to consider the chagrined look on New’s face. Mayhaps Christmas is not his time either. He wondered how long this would drag on. When Valentine’s Day rolled around, he chickened out and said ‘next time’. When Halloween rolled around, he chickened out yet again and promised to make a move by Thanksgiving yet when Thanksgiving rolled around, he settled for Christmas. Now…

“Maybe it’s just not meant to be. Maybe I’m just too much of a coward.” He whispered to himself, pushing his way through the crowd of people. As he took yet another sip of his hot apple cider, he couldn’t help but keep his eye on you. The way you were now looping your arms over the guy’s neck and the way he had his large hands on your waist made Eric want to leave the party. If only he had a little bit more faith…

“What time is it anyways?” He murmured to himself, wanting more than anything to leave.

9:04pm. Damn. It wouldn’t be until two hours later for the party to end. Sure, he could always leave early but he would hate to be seen as disrespectful to everyone else especially Jacob, the host of this lovely party.

He stared at the mug of hot apple cider he had in his hand, scrunching up his nose at the taste of it.

Was it just him or did it taste slightly… Off?

Eric gazed at it for a moment before he shook his head. I’m overthinking everything, he thought. However as he stood over the snack table, he felt a sharp pain at the back of his head. It was like having someone slap him at his head before his vision turned blurry. His limbs were beginning to go soft and his mouth dry. What was happening? He blinked rapidly but to no avail. It felt like he was falling in a deep pit…

When he opened his eyes again, everything felt fine. Patting himself lightly on the face, he looked around his surroundings in confusion. Just what was that? Did he imagine all of that? The mug of hot apple cider was still in his hands and the reindeer horns band was still on his head. He was wearing the same clothes and everything had become clear, there were no more blurry visions. The pounding in his head had stopped and it felt like whatever happened earlier was merely a figment of his own imagination.

“Eric…? Eric!”

The voice shook him from his stupor and with a start, he lifted his head to see Kevin regarding him with a questioning look on his face.

“You okay? You zoned out for a minute and I mean, really zoned out.”

“Y-Yeah… Aren’t you supposed to go listen to Sangyeon’s playlist or something?”

Kevin raised an eyebrow.

“What playlist?”

Eric frowned. “Didn’t Sangyeon ask you to listen to his Christmas playlist?”

“Um… No? Even if he has one, he hasn’t asked me yet.”

Eric looked at Kevin with confusion in his eyes. What was going on? Last he remembered, that was exactly what happened. Swivelling around, the confusion got even stronger when he saw you standing all alone at the other corner of the house. Were you not with that guy?

Instantly, he remembered what New had said. “Time travel potion…” He mumbled under his breath, his eyes widening when the realisation dawned upon. No way…

Whipping out his phone, it felt like his heart was about to pound right out of his chest when he saw the time. His throat felt dry and tight as he stared, unable to believe his eyes.

8:46pm.

Eric suddenly recalled the weird taste he had gotten in his cider and instinctively, his hand reached up to cover his mouth. There was no other explanation for this other than the fact that one, that New or was it Kyu guy had not been lying when he spoke of a time travel potion and two, he had slipped him the potion on purpose when he wasn’t looking. He could feel the anger bubble up within him - the nerve of that guy! With pure, unadulterated fury in his eyes, his gaze swept across the room, looking for him. Kevin looked on, thoroughly puzzled.

“...Eric? Are you okay? You’ve got a weird look on your face.” He asked, concerned. “Eric?”

All anger had just dissipated from his being as his sights finally landed on you. There you were, standing all alone at the fireplace with a drink in your hand while your friend danced. The look on your face was one of loneliness and even from a mile away, anyone could tell you looked extremely awkward at having been left alone while she swayed up against Haknyeon, a guy he recognised from his Medieval History module.

From the corner of his eye, he could see the same dark haired guy he had seen approach you ‘earlier’. Following his gaze, Eric could feel his stomach drop as he realised that they were on you. From his body language, it was clear that he was about to make his way over and take his chances with you.

Just then, a voice at the back of his mind whispered softly.

“What are you waiting for?”

Taking a deep breath, Eric squared his shoulders and hurriedly straightened the jacket he was wearing. This is it. This is actually it. He was going to do it. His legs were moving now, one step after another in large strides towards you. The sound of his heart pounding was practically deafening to his ears and he could feel his legs turning into lead, each footstep heavier than the next. Squeezing past the crowd, another voice - this time insistent and panicky - suddenly cried out.

“No, don’t do this! What if you embarrass yourself and make yourself out to be a fool?”

Eric’s face paled. No, this is a mistake. What was he doing?

“Hello?”

Shaking out of his thoughts, Eric almost jumped back in shock at the sight of you just right in front of him. Before he even realised it, he had made his way over. It is now too late to back out. Had he been standing there like an idiot this whole time?

“I-I… Hey!” He squeaked out, his heart almost leaping out of his chest.

“You’re Eric right? Eric Sohn from Professor Kim’s introduction to accounting class?” You asked kindly.

From the corner of his eye, he could see the guy from ‘earlier’ approaching, pushing past the crowd and judging from his demeanour… It seemed like the competition was still in the game.

He needed to pull this off.

“Yeah, I am. Y/n right? It’s a pretty cool party, isn’t it?”

“Mhm! Pretty great so far! My friend is over there dancing but I’m not much of a party dancer so here I am,” you smiled and Eric almost forgot what he was about to say.

“I-”

“Hey, how are you guys enjoying the party?”

Eric looked up and his brows furrowed into an annoyed and anxious ‘v’. The dark haired competition merely grinned back at him though there was a certain glint in his eyes which made Eric clench his jaw tightly. It was the sort of gaze that was long enough to send a goading message - game on.

He smiled and extended a hand towards you, completely ignoring Eric. “I’m Juyeon, roommate of Jacob’s. I saw you from afar and thought I’d come say hi.”

You shook his hand, oblivious to the tension between the two guys. “I’m y/n. It’s nice to meet you.”

Juyeon briefly lifted his gaze to Eric and without anyone’s notice but his, he winked slyly.

“Revolting.” Eric thought angrily.

“I heard they have some really cool peppermint treats at the candy table, wanna come?” Juyeon asked and quickly Eric said, “I heard they have a great log cake at the snack bar though. I’ve heard people raving about it!”

You looked at the both of them, seemingly a little disconcerted. “Uh… I…” Juyeon shot Eric a scathing look which he returned with a smug smile.

“Who doesn’t love a good old log cake?” He asked, to which Juyeon rolled his eyes at.

“I mean… I do love peppermint…” You trailed off and Eric turned to you with wide eyes as big as saucers and Juyeon’s lips lifted into a smug smile.

“Excellent choice! I hear they have so many varieties…” Juyeon chattered on, placing his arm over your shoulder, leaving poor Eric speechless and red faced, watching helplessly as the two of you walked away from him. Turning behind you, you had an apologetic look on your face but said nothing.

“That’s too bad. I was rooting for you, you know?”

Eric swivelled around to find New standing behind him yet again, this time chewing on a piece of toffee. The time on his watch was clear as day as the red, glowing digits stared right back at him - 9:04pm. It had come full circle. He had the chance to turn things around but he had failed. Somehow, the nonchalant look in New’s face irritated him but he tried to remain calm. His gaze drifted down to the bulge in the man’s jacket pocket, tracing the faint outline of the tiny vial that contained the potion from earlier.

“At least we know now that I’m legit, right?” He winked at Eric, smirking as he did though it dropped when he saw the look on the latter’s face.

“Why are you-”

“Please, give me one more chance. Please just let me turn back time this one more time.” He pleaded. Eric was not one to plead but this time, he was feeling particularly desperate.

New looked at him like he had just sprouted an extra head before he burst out laughing.

“How’s that for a turn of the tables, Mr ‘thank you for wasting my time’?” He asked, still giggling. Clearly, he was taking much joy in this new dynamic - something Eric didn’t look too pleased about though he was not about to act on it. After all, it was New’s potion that allowed him this one more chance which he had quite unspectacularly let slip from his grasp.

“Alright, I suppose I could let you try this one more time though I’ll definitely be charging for your next usage.” New sighed, whipping out the vial. “I did want you to succeed after all.”

As Eric gulped down his drink, the familiar feeling of dizziness washed over him yet again, along with the looseness in his limbs and before he knew it, he found himself standing right where he was with you standing where you were previously.

This time, Eric squared his shoulders and ran a hand nervously through his hair. There you were yet again, standing by the fireplace with that drink in your hand.

“No hesitation this time,” he whispered to himself before he made his way over. He barely even paid attention to Juyeon coming in from the side as he struck up a conversation.

“Hey, y/n from professor Kim’s introduction to accounting right?”

You turned to him, looking a little surprised before you smiled warmly at him.

“Yeah! Eric, is it? It’s nice to see you here.”

“How’s things going so far at the party?” He asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. His nervousness was getting to him quickly but the thought of messing up yet again reined him back in and his smile stayed on.

You wrinkled your nose as if considering his question before you replied, “Well, it’s going alright so far. I’m not really a party sort of person but I thought I’d make an exception since you know, Jacob’s my friend.”

“I see! I don’t usually mind parties but I do like…” He paused as he saw Juyeon approaching, the gears in his head whirring away and you looked at him curiously.

“Eric…?”

“How about we go get some peppermint? I hear they have a variety here.” He suggested quickly, his eyes darting towards Juyeon’s direction.

You stared at him, looking a little perturbed but then grinned and nodded. “Sure, I love peppermints.”

Before Juyeon could even make his way over, the two of you had walked away, squeezing past the dancing crowd. The bass beat of the music was so resounding throughout the house that it almost seemed as if the walls were vibrating as well. The glitter and lights all around all looked stunning but perhaps a little too stunning as Eric made his way through the crowd with you just right by him. From all sides, people were accidentally bumping into each other and more than once, he almost lost his balance.

As the two of you neared the candy table, Eric realised too late that perhaps pushing past the crowd had been a bad idea and that a smarter way would be to stay out of the dance floor when he felt himself fall forward. Someone’s foot had been there and without looking, he had tripped over and landed with a huge thud on the floor, flat on his belly. His chin collided with the ground and if he had hit it just a little harder, had the impact been just a tad stronger, he might have suffered a serious injury.

Since you were just trailing behind him, his unexpected fall had sent you falling as well. As the both of you crashed against the ground, some members of the crowd audibly gasped as people shuffled out of the way. Though it may have hurt when he fell, Eric’s heart ached much more than the bruise he would no doubt sport on his knees tomorrow. Seeing you sprawled next to him and knowing all of this happened only because of him, he wanted nothing more than to dig a hole right there and then and leap right in.

A few partygoers reached out to help him up and right next to him, Juyeon appeared in front of you, extending a hand with a look of concern. Eric watched as the two of you looked into each other’s eyes and like in a fairytale princess bedtime story, you reached out tentatively to hold onto Juyeon’s hand as his heart fell to the ground with a messy splat.

“Y/n-”

“Are you guys okay?” Juyeon asked though it seemed as if he was only asking you in general.

“Yeah, we’re alright. Thank you.” You said softly, still seemingly a little frazzled.

“Come, let us go get you seated somewhere.”

Eric couldn’t help but simply stand there and look helplessly as the both of you wandered away, his heart feeling like it was about to shatter into pieces. A second chance he was given and he screwed it up and if that wasn’t enough, he was offered yet another shot which went worse than his first. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. Maybe no matter how many times he tried, tonight was just not the night. Or perhaps nothing was ever destined to happen between you two. The jolly christmas music was still playing but he no longer was in the Christmassy spirit anymore.

All he wanted for Christmas was you but it seemed that that didn’t seem so possible anymore, if not impossible.

As the partygoers resumed their dancing, all he could do was plop himself down on the nearby couch and do nothing except nurse not just his fallen pride but also his feelings which never had the chance to express themselves before it got completely shut down.

Grabbing a bottle of ginger ale from a nearby pack, he took a swig and felt the ale burn as it ran down his throat. Usually, he would have loved it but tonight, it just left a bitter taste in his mouth. Keeping his head down, Eric exhaled deeply. He ought to just give up completely.

“Hey, Eric.”

At the sound of your voice, his head snapped up and he gazed up at you with wide eyes. There you were, standing before him and looking down at him as he wallowed in his own feelings. How long have you been standing there? Why were you here?

“Y-y/n?”

You gave him a bashful glance as you sat yourself next to him. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”

“I… I… “ He simply stared at you, his mouth gaping like a fish and looking absolutely flummoxed. “Didn’t Juyeon-”

“I couldn’t possibly leave you alone.” You hurried to say and when he didn’t reply, you continued. ��Do you… Do you mind if I sit here with you?”

It took Eric a second for it to register in his mind what you had just asked of him before he grew flustered just as the joy in him began to spark.

“Do I mind? No! Of course not! You’re welcomed here! Please, sit with me!”

As he chattered on nervously, you couldn’t help but admire the way his eyes would light up whenever he talked and how charming his smile was. He was in the habit of moving his hands around a lot which though some might find annoying, you only found to be endearing. You could feel your heart beating quickly which always happened whenever you were near him, saw him around class or even just at the mere mention of his name.

As you looked into his eyes, you felt yourself clench on tightly to the couch, the excitement in you simply immeasurable. You couldn’t help but smile as you felt the weight of the vial in your pocket. A worthy bargain indeed from the mysterious pink haired boy.

This was all you wanted for Christmas.

141 notes · View notes

bananaofswifts · 4 years

Link

Taylor Swift appears to be waging war over the serial resale of her old master recordings on two fronts. She recently confirmed that she is already underway in the process of re-recording the six albums she made for the Big Machine label, in order to steer her fans (and sync licensing execs) toward the coming alternate versions she’ll control. But now that she’s followed the surprise release of “Folklore” with the very, very surprise release of “Evermore” less than five months later, the thought may occur: If she keeps up this pace, she may have more new albums out on the Republic label than she ever did on Big Machine in a quarter of the time. Flooding the zone to further crowd out the oldies is unlikely to be Swift’s real motivation for giving the world a full-blown “Folklore” sequel this instantaneously: As motivations for prolific activity go, relieving and sublimating quarantine pressure is probably even better than revenge. Anyway, this is not a gift horse to be looked in the mouth. “Evermore,” like its mid-pandemic predecessor, feels like something that’s been labored over — in the best possible way — for years, not something that was written and recorded beginning in August, with the bow said to be put on it only about a week ago. Albums don’t get graded on a curve for how hastily they came together, or shouldn’t be, but this one doesn’t need the handicap. It’d be a jewel even if it’d been in progress forevermore and a day.The closest analog for the relation the new album bears to its predecessor might be one that’d seem ancient to much of Swift’s audience: U2 following “Achtung Baby” with “Zooropa” while still touring behind the previous album. It’s hard to remember now that a whole year and a half separated those two related projects; In that very different era, it seemed like a ridiculously fast follow-up. But the real comparison lies in how U2, having been rewarded for making a pretty gutsy change of pace with “Achtung,” seemed to say: You’re okay with a little experimentation? Let’s see how you like it when we really boil things down to our least commercial impulses, then — while we’ve still got you in the mood.Swift isn’t going avant-garde with “Evermore.” If anything, she’s just stripping things down to even more of an acoustic core, so that the new album often sounds like the folk record that the title of the previous one promised — albeit with nearly subliminal layers of Mellotrons, flutes, French horns and cellos that are so well embedded beneath the profuse finger-picking, you probably won’t notice them till you scour the credits. But it’s taking the risk of “Folklore” one step further by not even offering such an obvious banger (irony intended) as “Cardigan.” Aaron Dessner of the National produced or co-produced about two-thirds of the last record, but he’s on 14 out of 15 tracks here (Jack Antonoff gets the remaining spot), and so the new album is even more all of a piece with his arpeggiated chamber-pop impulses, Warmth amid iciness is a recurring lyrical motif here, and kind of a musical one, too, as Swift’s still increasingly agile vocal acting breathes heat into arrangements that might otherwise seem pretty controlled. At one point Swift sings, “Hey, December, I’m feeling unmoored,” like a woman who might even know she’s going to put her album out a couple of weeks before Christmas. It’s a wintry record — suitable for double-cardigan wearing! — and if you’re among the 99% who have been feeling unmoored, too, then perhaps you are Ready For It. Swift said in announcing the album that she was moving further into fiction songwriting after finding out it was a good fit on much of “Folklore,” a probably inevitable move for someone who’s turning 31 in a few days and appears to have a fairly settled personal life. Which is not to say that there aren’t scores to settle, and a few intriguing tracks whose real-life associations will be speculated upon. But just as the “Betty”/”August” love triangle of mid-year established that modern pop’s most celebrated confessional writer can just make shit up, too, so, here, do we get the narrator of “Dorothea,” a honey in Tupelo who is telling a childhood friend who moved away and became famous that she’s always welcome back in her hometown. (Swift may be doing a bit of empathic wondering in a couple of tracks here how it feels to be at the other end of the telescope.) One time the album takes a turn away from rumination into a pure spirit of fun — while getting dark anyway — is “No Body, No Crime,” a spirited double-murder ballad that may have more than a little inspiration in “Goodbye, Earl.” Since Swift already used the Dixie Chicks for background vocals two albums ago, for this one she brings in two of the sisters from Haim, Danielle and Este, and even uses the latter’s name for one of the characters. Yes, the rock band Haim’s featured appearance is on the only really country-sounding song on the record… there’s one you didn’t see coming, in the 16 hours you had to wonder about it. Yet there are also a handful of songs that clearly represent a Swiftian state of mind. At least, it’s easy to suppose that the love songs that opens the album, “Willow,” is a cousin to the previous record’s “Invisible String” and “Peace,” even if it doesn’t offer quite as many clearly corroborating details about her current relationship as those did. On the sadder side, Swift is apparently determined to run through her entire family tree for heartrending material. On “Lover,” she sang for her stricken mother; on “Folklore,” for her grandfather in wartime. In that tradition the new album offers “Marjorie,” about the beloved grandmother she lost in 2003, when she was 13. (The lyric videos that are being offered online mostly offer static visual loops, but the one for “Marjorie” is an exception, reviving a wealth of stills and home-movie footage of Grandma, who was quite a looker in a miniskirt in her day.) Rue is not something Swift is afraid of here anymore than anywhere else, as she sings, “I should’ve asked you questions / I should’ve asked you how to be / Asked you to write it down for me / Should’ve kept every grocery store receipt / ‘Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me,” lines that will leave a dry eye only in houses that have never known death. The piece de resistance in its poignance is Swift actually resurrecting faint audio clips of Marjorie, who was an opera singer back in the day. It’s almost like ELO’s “Rockaria,” played for weeping instead of a laugh. Swift has not given up, thank God, on the medium that brought her to the dance — the breakup song — but most of them here have more to do with dimming memories and the search for forgiveness, however slowly and incompletely achieved, than feist. But doesn’t Swift know that we like her when she’s angry? She does, and so she delves deep into something like venom just once, but it’s a good one. The ire in “Closure,” a pulsating song about an unwelcome “we can still be friends, right?” letter from an ex, seems so fresh and close to the surface that it would be reasonable to speculate that it is not about a romantic relationship at all, but a professional one she has no intention of ever recalling in a sweet light. Or maybe she does harbor that a disdain for an actual former love with that machinelike a level of intensity. What “Evermore” is full of is narratives that, like the music that accompanies them, really come into focus on second or third listen, usually because of a detail or two that turns her sometimes impressionistic modes completely vivid. “Champagne Problems” is a superb example of her abilities as a storyteller who doesn’t always tell all: She’s playing the role of a woman who quickly ruins a relationship by balking at a marriage proposal the guy had assumed was an easy enough yes that he’d tipped off his nearby family. “Sometimes you just don’t know the answer ‘ Til someone’s on their knees and asks you / ‘She would’ve made such a lovely bride / What a shame she’s fucked in the head’ / They said / But you’ll find the real thing instead / She’ll patch up your tapestry that I shred.” (Swift has doubled the F-bomb quotient this time around, among other expletives, for anyone who may be wondering whether there’s rough wordplay amid Dessner’s delicacy — that would an effing yes.) “‘Tis the Damn Season,” representing a gentler expletive, gives us a character who is willing to settle, or at least share a Christmas-time bed with an ex back in the hometown, till something better comes along. The pleasures here are shared, though not many more fellow artists have broken into her quarantine bubble this time around. Besides Haim’s cameo, Marcus Mumford offers a lovely harmony vocal on “Cowboy Like Me,” which might count as the other country song on the album, and even throws in something Swift never much favored in her Nashville days, a bit of lap steel. Its tale of male and female grifters meeting and maybe — maybe — falling in love is really more determinedly Western than C&W, per se, though. The National itself, as a group, finally gets featured billing on “Coney Island,” with Matt Berninger taking a duet vocal on a track that recalls the previous album’s celebrated Bon Iver collaboration “Exile,” with ex-lovers taking quiet turns deciding who was to blame. (Swift saves the rare laugh line for herself: “We were like the mall before the internet / It was the one place to be.) Don’t worry, legions of new Bon Iver fans: Dessner has not kicked Justin Vernon out of his inner circle just to make room for Berninger. The Bon Iver frontman whose appearance on “Folklore” came as a bit of a shock to some of his fan base actually makes several appearances on this album, and the one that gets him elevated to featured status again, as a duet, the closing “Evermore,” is different from “Exile” in two key ways. Vernon gets to sing in his high register… and he gets the girl. As it turned out, the year 2020 did not involve any such waiting for Swift fans; it’s an embarrassment of stunning albums-ending-in-“ore” that she’s mined out of a locked-down muse.

#taylor swift #evermore #review

130 notes · View notes