#jimalim

Hey @jimalim... I know it's been FOREVER but I have not forgotten about this, and I happen to have some time today, so, here are a few thoughts:

I think the first few days, maybe the first week, they don't do anything apart from figuring out their new life (finding the apartment and getting a job and working on their cover story and waiting for news or orders from the OCS and planning out Ava's training). But as they get settled, I love the idea of the two of them finding... not quite hobbies, but small activities to do in their downtime, that they enjoy?

a) Ava takes swimming lessons at the public pool, and when the class ends she keeps going to the pool, because she finds out that she loves the water - floating makes her feel free, strangely, weightless and peaceful ; she likes the burn in her muscles when she swims laps ; and she LOVES organizing cannonball contests with all the little kids she met in swimming class, and splashing everyone, even (especially?) when it ends with Bea scolding her and then wrapping her in a huge fluffy towel and offering to dry her hair.

b) Beatrice goes to the public library at least twice a week. She stays there for an hour or so, perusing the shelves, pulling out books that she's curious about, reading in the quiet room, in one of the comfy armchairs. She also brings back books for Ava - Ava gives her very broad directions, like "i want to read about mushrooms" or "get me the most romantic story they have" (that request makes Bea unreasonably nervous), and Beatrice loves trying to find the perfect pick for Ava - she misses research! - and loves Ava's delighted reaction every time.

c) They both start going to the farmer's market that takes place every Saturday morning in the town square. Ava chats up all the vendors, learns their names and their entire family history ; she makes friends with an old shepherd selling goat cheese, and with the woman who sells honey, and always comes back with gifts, and gossip. Beatrice wanders through the fruits and vegetable stalls, internally making their weekly meal plan as she goes, and allowing the purchase of small treats (fresh strawberries, a still-warm brioche, the most beautiful tomatoes) that she pretends are only for Ava's sake, though she enjoys them just as much as Ava.

d) They take turns cooking. I know a lot of people believe that Beatrice can't cook - not me! I think she can cook very well, she has all the technical skills, and she's used to it too, since meal preparation was part of the collective life at the convent. But she doesn't take a lot of pleasure in cooking - it's just a necessary chore for her. Ava, on the other hand, LOVES cooking, because it's so new, and it reminds her of Mary, in Matteo's restaurant. She's very enthusiastic, and creative, which sometimes leads to utter disaster, and sometimes to absolute masterpieces that she is completely unable to recreate.

favorite color: blue

currently reading: Beach Read by Emily Henry (so fun and sexy!) and Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly (Kim is a badass labor journalist, and i'm just digging into her first book!) Plus always bughead fanfic when I find the time - I just caught up on @satelliteinasupernova's masterpiece A Perpetual Estrangement and @sullypants' delightful WIP Local Girls.

last song: i believe it was Love You For A Long Time by Maggie Rogers, very typical of me

last series: Jeff and i *just* finished The Bear the other day, and I recently finished season 2 of Bridgerton, and caught up on All American: Homecoming.

last movie: i watched Moneyball with Jeff, as part of an ongoing series of me watching every baseball movie he loves

currently working on: planning a wedding, writing right back where we started from chapter 5, and i'm sort of doing some preliminary brainstorming re: writing installment #2 of my if it feels like a home series, which will take place in the three months immediately following the events of if it feels like a home.

Thank you! What a lovely prompt <3

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It’s the first day of summer, but the weather has been shit all day, and Fatin has been consequently grumpy ever since she woke up this morning. She hates summer storms. She hates the rain, the sound of it, incessant, discordant, inescapable, against the window panes, against the roof. She hates the humidity that seeps into the air, makes her feel weighted and uncomfortable in her own skin. She hates how dark it gets, how clouds swallow the sunlight. But most of all - and that’s something she hasn’t really admitted to anyone, not even Leah - she hates thunder and lightning, the explosion of loud noises, over her head, the threat of electricity, deadly and unpredictable. 

Leah has given her some space, sensing her mood, and Fatin is grateful for it. They always know when the other needs to be alone ; the island taught them how important it is to be able to get away from the attention, however loving and well-intentioned, of other people. So Fatin has spent the whole day hauled up in the living-room, on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, complaining to no one that Los Angeles isn’t even supposed to get storms, and checking the weather app every so often, just in case a miracle happened and the sky went back to the vast blue expanse she knows and loves. Leah came in to check on her at lunchtime, dropped a quick kiss on the top of Fatin’s hair, and then left her alone.

But now it’s late afternoon, and Fatin misses her. It still catches her off guard sometimes, how much she relies on Leah, how enmeshed, entangled, the two of them are, like bushes of roses that grew too close to each other. It’s not that she can’t be away from her, it’s just that she doesn’t want to. It’s only been a day, not even a full day, but Fatin misses the way Leah looks at her, eyes glinting, when she thinks Fatin is cute. She misses the way Leah mindlessly pushes strands of hair away from her eyes when she reads. She misses the way Leah averts her gaze when Fatin compliments her, always a little bashful, even after all this time. And, maybe, she’s kinda sick of moping around on her own, and she knows that being near her girlfriend is the best antidote to a bad case of moodiness. 

So Fatin goes to find Leah. It’s not much of an investigation, because she knows very well where Leah is: where she always is, when it rains. On the little wooden porch that gives onto the backyard of their house, perched at the top of the stairs, gazing outside. Barefoot, Fatin pads out of the living-room, and past the sliding door, and finds Leah exactly where she knew she’d be. The rain is falling like sheets of water, drowning the flowers of their garden, transforming the ground into a minefield of puddles and mud. Leah is wearing shorts, and a flannel shirt, left open over her tank-top, and those ugly sandals Fatin refuses to call anything but a fashion crime against humanity ; her hair is tied up in a messy bun, leaving the back of her neck bare and looking very kissable, and she’s cradling a cup of steaming tea in her hands - peppermint, if Fatin’s nose isn’t mistaken. At the sound of Fatin coming out, Leah turns around slightly, and smiles. 

“Hey,“ she says.

“Hey,” Fatin says, and there’s a question in that single word. Leah answers by patting the spot next to her on the stairs. Fatin plops down beside her, and promptly steals the cup from Leah’s hands, taking a long sip of peppermint tea.

“Did you come here just to steal my tea?” Leah asks, with a playful little smile at the corner of her lips.

“I came to check if you needed company,” Fatin lies, expertly. She gestures in front of them, at the drenched backyard, the rain, the dark, low clouds. “It’s kind of a depressing view. I thought I’d cheer you up.”

“Uh huh,” Leah says, not sounding super convinced. She takes the cup back, drinks, then puts it down by her feet, so she can sling one arm around Fatin’s back. Fatin presses herself into Leah’s side, and rests her cheek against Leah’s shoulder. She inhales the smell of Leah, mixed in with the smell of wet earth and damp wood. “Were you lonely?” Leah asks.

Fatin hums, and places her left hand on Leah’s thigh, just above the knee. Leah’s bare skin is warm, and smooth, and familiar under her fingers. Leah’s arm tightens around her back, her hand curling on Fatin’s hip. 

“I wouldn’t use the word “depressing” to describe the view, you know,” Leah says. 

“Yeah, sorry, let me find another adjective. How about bleak? Oh, or gloomy. Yeah, gloomy is a good fit, I think.”

Leah laughs, and Fatin smiles at the sound. There’s no better feeling that making Leah laugh - for a moment, it even makes the storm disappear. 

“I’m serious,” Leah insists. “Look.” She points in front of them, with the hand not currently holding Fatin’s waist. “Look at the way the water falls, like a barely visible curtain, like we’re seeing the whole world through a veil, and everything is a bit hazy, a bit blurred, a bit softened. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Fatin turns her head slightly, just enough that she can press a light kiss to the side of Leah's neck. “Baby, I know beautiful, I see you every day. A few tons of water pouring down from the sky ain’t it, believe me.” 

She feels the way Leah’s breathing stutters, a minuscule change, but enough to make Fatin grin. She can’t see Leah’s face right now, but she’d be willing to bet that her cheeks are redder than before. “You think you’re such a charmer,” Leah mutters, but there’s a smile in her voice. 

“And you’re such a goddamn poet every time it so much as drizzles,” Fatin replies, affectionately. But she peers outside, at the downpour, and tries to look at it through Leah’s eyes, to see the beauty of it. Her efforts are interrupted by a terrifying flash of blinding white light that startles her, followed by the loud rumble of thunder. Instinctively, Fatin curls up into Leah’s warm body, fingers tightening around her thigh.

“I don’t like that part much,” she admits.

Leah’s free hand comes to rest atop Fatin’s, her thumb rubbing slow circles on the soft skin of her wrist. “But sometimes there’s beauty in scary things too, don’t you think? Even in the things we don’t understand, the things that are too big and dangerous for us to comprehend.” She rests her cheek against the top of Fatin’s head. “Like love,” she adds, softly. 

The rain keeps hitting the ground, torrential, endless. Another flash of light, another roar. But this time Fatin focuses on how safe she feels in Leah’s arms, despite the storm, how warm and loved, and she thinks, maybe, that Leah has a point. Maybe there is something majestic, beautiful, in the spectacle of the elements, when it’s shared with the person you call home. 

yeah! so Dot agrees to live with Fatin post rescue but she doesn't realize that Leah is also living with them so she gets a front row seat of leatin being idiots about their feelings

“Why would we need three beds, Dorothy?”

“Well where is Leah gonna sleep?”

“In my bed, obviously.  She's had trouble sleeping since we got back.”

“Doesn't that seem a little gay to you?”

“Okay just because you're the definition of an REI catalog doesn't mean you get to decide when things are gay or not.”

Hello friend! YES — when we get a trailer (deliberately saying when and not if!) we’ll drop something shouting about it. OITW Season 2 Episode 0. We’ve been a little too starved for content to hold out until the actual show drops :) It is also really kind of you to think we have the restraint to keep it to 20 minutes though. Very, very kind lol

AHH thank you so much! I appreciate this so so much. I always worry I'm too intense in fandom or not palatable because i'm not "nice" or whatever. But being able to talk about creative processes and nerding out about that...it feels good to be able to do that. And to be recognized for that 💖

hope the bechloe memories were positive ones because lol HEHE

Alanna, thank you for the ask!

Better Off Dead: why did you last laugh so hard it reduced you to tears? — When I heard about TROS spoilers after the premiere and found out the dumb af leaks from the summer were true.

Can’t Buy Me Love: what’s something frivolous you are/have saved up money to buy? — I’m a penny-pincher and a miser, I don’t like to buy anything unless I absolutely have to. But, man, this Christmas season was a time of impulse buying frivolous things — I got some things at Paris Disneyland that count as frivolous (like, keychain of Kylo Ren and his lightsaber that I won’t ever use as a keychain and just keep as a room ornament), and I also pre-ordered a bunch of merch from @elithien’s store since TROS left a Reylo-shaped hole in my heart.