#xandersbogaerts

👋 - someone waves at your character. what do they do?

She smiles first, then waves back!

✌️ - are there any gestures or touches that your character shares with a friend/team/loved one that are a type of code between them?

She and Madison link their pinkies together when walking; and if they're trying to get through a crowded space together, they'll hold hands so as not to lose each other.  Obviously that's not really a code, but it's what they do.  They can read each other super easily, so nine times out of ten they can tell what the other is thinking or feeling just by looking at them; they don't always have to say or do something.

🤲 - is your character better at receiving touch or giving it? under what circumstances?

Feels a bit hard to say, but overall I think she's better at giving it.   When people need it, she's right there.  She likes to use touch as a sign of reassurance, to let the other person know she's there.  A touch on their arm or shoulder, a cupping of their cheek, etc.  If Madison is feeling under the weather, she'll stroke her hair or rub her head until she falls asleep.   If Ben is having an off day, she'll just hold him.  On the flipside, more often than not I would say that she craves physical comfort, even something as small as letting her lean on you if she's exhausted.  On the regular, she loves being hugged.  There can be times where being touched heightens her anxiety, and she might avoid it, because she feels a lot.  So if she's going through something, there's a possibility that even a comforting touch might cause her to break, and she would try hard not to let that happen, unless she feels safe enough.

👍 - what (if any) is a good, safe touch for your character?

ruby: favourite pre-2000 song? – That’s the Way Love Goes by Janet Jackson.

burgundy: how often do you make your bed? what do your favourite bedsheets look like?  – WEEKENDS ONLY.  I have the time to do it weekly, and I used to, but I kind of stopped caring.  Now that I’ll be home I should probably get back into that habit, though.  My favorite bedsheets are pale blue with a floral pattern.  All of my other bedsheets are plain, solid colors, so I need to get some more soon because I enjoy patterns.

red ochre: are you inclined to watch a tv series if a lot of people on the internet are talking about it? – It depends, but most of the time I’m the exact opposite.  The more people talk about something, the less I want to watch it.  Hype fatigue is a real thing for me.  I like to enjoy something in my own time, on my own time and terms, without other voices in my ear.

scarlet: think of your favourite genre. what kind of media in that genre do you prefer - books, films, or tv series? – I’m not sure if I have a favorite genre, though I absolutely, unabashedly adore romance and I’m still hoping for the perfect romance novel with no cliched bullshit.  In general, I tend to gravitate toward fiction more than non-, and if I think of it that way instead of getting super specific, I would say I find most enjoyment in books.  I love seeing things come to life in the forms of movies and TV series–there’s nothing like seeing a face you like play a character you like–but getting lost in books is something else entirely.  It’s beautiful.

carmine: do you prefer having or not having a schedule?  – I like having a flexible schedule, or the freedom to set one for myself.  Unless I’m in a mood, I’m generally productive, and I don’t like to be told what I should do and when unless it applies to my job where it HAS to be that way.  So I guess I’m in between?

persian red: answer with a picture of your dream holiday destination.

strawberry: what album would you love to have on vinyl? – Hadestown OBCR.

Favorite character ok honestly i love all three girls and i refuse 2 choose between them

Second favorite character jake

Least favorite character xavier

The character I’m most like whitey i’m old and tired

Favorite pairing jeyton

Least favorite pairing karen/dan

Favorite moment brooke and peyton tag teaming taking down derek fuc that dude

Rating out of 10 7/10

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Favorite character lore

Second favorite character jess

Least favorite character christopher

The character I’m most like luke i’m old and tired

Favorite pairing java junkies

Least favorite pairing christopher lore

Favorite moment the entire high school graduation

8. What gif trend do you hate?

THE DESATURATED NO COLOR NO CONTRAST TREND LET IT DIE!!! LET THE COLOR BACK INTO Y’ALLS LIFE!!!!!!

12. What is the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever giffed?

i gif’d ster/ek once that’s pretty embarrassing tbh 

32. What is your favorite tool/adjustment layer in Photoshop

PHOTO FILTER Y’ALL IT SAVES ME SO MUCH

34. A set that took you a long time/was really hard but you’re really proud of how it came out 

literally all of my video game edits tbh they all tOOK SO LONG but esp the most recent i’m very proud of that one

37. What sets if any do you have planned to make in the future

i have at least (4) gleggie sets planned but i am So Lazy

38. What are you really excited to gif that isn’t out yet

supergirl season 2 and izombie season 3 tbh i love giffing those shows

42. How is your gif folder organized? Is it organized at all?

lmao nah not @ all i literally only organize my screencaps before i gif

45. Ever gotten hate over a set

“So, happy birthday, Steve,” Harper murmured, nudging her feet against the floor to set the porch bench swinging. “Quite the patriotic baby, weren’t you?”

“Should’ve known how I’d turn out, I guess, yeah,” he laughed, twisting around to face her. “D’you know, this is the first time in, let’s see, at least 72 years that I’ve had a proper celebration?” he added wryly.

“Yeah, I mean….” Harper blushed, glancing over at him in case she’d overstepped. He didn’t seem to be bothered. “What are the extra two years for, though? Bucky and all of them never put on anything for you?”

“Nope, not with everything that was going on. The first year I’m not sure anybody noticed, except to rush me to about a million performances to capitalize on the extra levels of patriotism. The year after that it was a matter of Go Stevie! Let’s have tomorrow’s coffee portions today!”

She chuckled at that. “Well, birthday boy, did we do you justice?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Yeah, you did.”

She sighed and leaned her head back to rest carefully on his arm, stretched across the back of the seat.

“I played on this swingset with Harper before we could even talk, I think,” Heather mused, spinning in her seat and nudging Bucky’s legs playfully.

“Can’t say I remember that far back,” he said in a low voice. Heather looked up in alarm, afraid she’d pushed a button she shouldn’t have. What a bad subject to bring up, she realized. Goddammit.

Before she could worry too much, he continued, “But it’s funny you should say that. I don’t think”—he gave a short, exasperated sigh—“especially not now, but regardless—I don’t think I have too many memories of being small that don’t involve Steve somehow. We didn’t have playsets or anything, god no, but I’m certain we were running up and down those sidewalks almost as soon as we could walk.”

“Sidewalks, swingsets, I think it’s all the same for kids, you know? We spent just as much time staring at blades of grass, I’m sure,” she answered.

“Mmm,” he said softly. “I feel like Stevie and me should feel a lot older than you guys, with everyone telling us we’re what, 93 or some shit? But mostly it just feels like we all got thrown into this new adventure together somehow. New friends, different time. Same life. Kind of. I don’t know. I don’t feel like a grandpa, Heather.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re not,” she assured him quickly. She propelled herself off the side of the swingset, her too-small seat flung sideways toward him so he could lay a hand on his arm. “We’re your new adventure, and you’re ours.”

Harper and Steve silently watched their friends on the swings. “God, I knew Heather was still a kid at heart,” she said after a minute. “She always did love that playset.”

“She’s not the only one,” Steve answered. Bucky and Heather’s arms were now linked, and Bucky was pushing off from the ground so the pair of them rocked and twisted around in their seats. "I haven't seen Bucky this playful since we were basically kids. God, you two really have been good for him. For both of us," he added, nudging her gently with his shoulder. "I know found you guys a while ago, but in the past few weeks, Harper, you've just..." he paused. "God, I don't know. I had all this regret, that I should have landed the plane and lived somehow, that I could have been more use alive back then than today. Finding you, and finding Bucky again, now I'm questioning that thinking for the first time."

She smiled up at him, her bare skin covered in goosebumps as she tried to discreetly rub her arms in the now-cool air.

"You okay?" he asked, bemused and concerned all in the same breath.

"Yeah, I'm fine, I'm totally--" she began, then paused, shivering involuntarily. "Nah, fuck it, I'm freezing out here. But I don't wanna go in. I'm too invested in whatever's happening over there." She nodded towards the swing set. Heather and Bucky had stopped swinging, but were now holding on to each other’s swings to hang closer together. She couldn’t suppress a small giggle.

Steve laughed. "If you say so," he answered, not protesting in the least. As he spoke, he was already removing his leather jacket. "Here, this, uh, should be plenty big enough for you."

Harper's heart skipped in her chest as she saw what he was doing. "You're giving me your jacket?" she asked, her voice higher pitched than usual as she hugged herself and grinned. This was exactly the sort of thing Steve would do, of course; she didn't know why she was so surprised and suddenly elated at the gesture.

"Of course I am. Can't have you spectating our friends' budding relationship in discomfort," he retorted, feigning indifference, but badly. As soon as the jacket was tucked around her shoulders he replaced his arm in its position behind her, but this time he deliberately rested it on her shoulders, drawing her close. Harper sighed, heart still leaping, as she let her head rest in a nook beneath his shoulder, hardly even noticing what was happening across the yard anymore.

"I like the sound of that," Bucky had answered Heather, sinking into her touch surprisingly easily. "Bucky Barnes's adventures in the future," he announced, with a hand gesture and a dramatic flair. He stared off into the yard and smiled sadly. "I just had to take...a detour...to get here, I guess."

"....oh. I guess you can put it that way." Heather's brow furrowed and she looked up at his face to gauge his tone. He didn't look happy, for sure, but the tortured expression of a few weeks ago was hardly there. She was suddenly overcome with pride. It had been barely over a month since he had been sleeping in Harper's bedroom, crying in the corner with despair and confusion at Disney movies. He'd never be okay, not completely, and she knew that. But he was getting close.

"Do you think Bucky will ever be...okay?" Harper said quietly, biting her lip and huddling close into Steve.

He paused for a while before answering. "I...I don't know. Sometimes I don't think I'll be okay, and I haven't gone through a fraction of what he has." He sighed. "I just hid under some ice for a while. I was safe. The right people found me. And if I can't be okay, what does that mean for him?"

Harper all but whispered back, “But you can be okay. I know you can.”

Heather shivered in the cooling air, huddling closer to Bucky’s swing. When he stayed silent, she took his arm again, but this time followed it down to his right hand, which she took in both of hers. His skin was reassuringly warm, and he slowlgrasped her hand in return, closing his eyes and letting out a breath. She let go of the swing, and they sat there in silence, tethered by their touching hands and the hopes and thoughts that each imagined was being communicated, somehow, in the strength of the grip.

Harper let her eyes droop, the heavy warmth of Steve’s arm giving her a sense of comfort and safety she couldn’t remember feeling for a very long while. The shapes of their friends could no longer be made out across the shadowy lawn, which was just as well. Before letting sleep take her completely, she managed a few sentences.

Heather sat on the floor of her room, small piles of miscellaneous possessions surrounding her. The last few weeks of school always resulted in a messier-than-usual bedroom, but recent events had shattered her already-low resolve to keep anything in its place. Her current task involved sorting through a box of old art supplies, including a jumble of mostly-empty acrylic paint tubes. It escaped her why she hadn’t just thrown them away before.

Sighing, she pushed her hair back and started sorting, hoping to salvage at least a few of her least-used colors. Most were flung directly into the trash, but in the end, basically untouched, blue, white, black, and red remained.

Harper’s phone buzzed insistently in her pocket. She pulled it out with a sigh, not even looking at who it was. Nobody but her parents actually called her, usually, and she couldn’t think what they would want right now, so it was with slight surprise that she heard Heather’s excited voice.

“Harper! Come over! Now! I found something and you have to see!” When Harper didn’t immediately answer the barrage of exclamations, she said, “I have an idea,” as if to explain.

“What...you…um. What is it?”

“You’ll figure it out. Just come see.” With that, Heather hung up, leaving Harper standing still and confused in the middle of the sidewalk, and for all the question mark strings she texted to Heather as she walked, she was not any less confused when she got to the house ten minutes later.

Soon enough, she was standing in Heather’s room staring at the small pile of paints on the floor.

“Paint? You want me to paint something? No, you want us to paint something?” Heather was shaking her head and miming hints at her friend, who was chuckling exasperatedly. Neither of them was sure when this had become a game of charades. Heather pointed again at Harper, nodding outside. “You want me to paint something outside! Or at my house? Bucky? You want to paint with him? Heather, I thought Steve was the artistic one….”

Heather sighed. “His arm, Harper. That dumb red star. You haven’t seen him trying to hide it recently? He never picks a tank top when given the choice. Heck, I saw him in a full sweatshirt on the hottest day this week. He needs to stop being ashamed of it, and I think I know how.”  

He sat on the couch across from them, arms resting on his knees as he listened to their proposal. Sure enough, he had an old sweatshirt draped around his shoulders and mostly hiding his left arm. The only hint of anything out of the ordinary were the metallic fingers clasped with his normal ones.

“It’s still going to be metal. It’s still going to be the same arm. You can’t change what it’s done or what it means, no matter how it’s, uh, decorated,” he protested with a grimace, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t see what good this is going to do.”

“C’mon,” Heather pushed. “We’ve seen you covering it up. I saw your face when you were reading up on everything….Maybe we can’t rewrite the past, or erase what they made you do, but you don’t have to spend the rest of your life branded with something you’re ashamed of, Bucky. You don’t deserve that.”

He frowned, but just blinked silently and bit his lip.

“Plus, uh…” Harper interjected, clearing her throat. “Steve will absolutely love it,” she teased.

Bucky couldn’t help but grin and tilted his head back, chuckling. “Ah, well. I guess you’re right. What the hell.” He smiled, chewing on his lip again. “But…c’mere,” he added, slightly sheepishly. He held out his arms with an expectant look, wrapping his arms around both girls as soon as they were close. “Thank you,” he muttered. “I don’t know what I’d do without you two. I mean it.”

After several moments, and after Harper had wiped her eyes hastily and Heather had beamed back at Bucky, pink-cheeked, for just a moment too long, the trio broke apart and made their way to the back porch. Harper had already laid out a smock and a newspaper, Heather’s brushes standing upright in a cup next to the paint tubes.

“Alright, Mister,” Heather said brightly. “Have a seat, relax, and let us work our magic!”

“It is our goal and our duty to make you, Bucky Barnes, into a changed man,” Harper added dramatically. He laughed and sat down in the porch chair.

“Alright, c’mon. Let’s get this done with before I change my mind.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Have your way with me.”

For the most part Harper left the precise lines to Heather, then followed in with a thicker brush and filled in the gaps. Painting the star white was easy enough; there was already a distinct outline to follow. The concentric circles proved more difficult, the first attempt failing when Harper nearly fell backwards off the porch and Heather’s hand (and Bucky’s arm) jerked in alarm. A timely wipe of newspaper and an upturned cup held steady against the metal plates solved the problem quickly enough, but not before Harper, with a squeal, failed to avoid Heather’s vengeful paintbrush and the resulting smudge of blue paint across her nose.

The whole thing took under an hour, Bucky mostly staying still but occasionally stealing glances at his shoulder with a curious smile. Finally, Heather sat back, a smudge of red on her cheek and paintbrush twiddling in her fingers, and sighed happily. “Do the honors?” she asked Harper, who filled in the last gap with her own brush.

“Perfect,” she answered with a grin.

As if on cue, the sound of Steve entering the open front door echoed through the house. Bucky sat up straight at the sound of his voice, and Harper jumped up, running down the hallway to meet him. Heather sat with Bucky, both peering apprehensively around the doorframe.

“So, um, can I ask why your nose is blue?” Steve’s muffled voice could be heard saying.

“Yeah, about that….” Harper’s voice answered. Louder, she called towards the porch. “Can I show him?! Now?”

Smiling, Heather gave Bucky a questioning glance. “Yeah?” she said hesitantly. “Yeah,” he shrugged, raising his eyebrows and returning her smile.

“Come on out!” she yelled back.

Whatever Steve expected, it probably wasn’t this. He stopped short, looking back and forth from Bucky’s freshly painted shoulder to his apprehensive, uncharacteristically hopeful face. Steve opened his mouth, smiled, tried to speak, then just laughed in surprise, a startled hand fluttering between his face and his heart.

“Was this your idea, Buck?” he finally managed.

“Nope. No. Completely these two.” Bucky was on his feet by this point, hands in his pockets and smiling at Steve. Steve shook his head and took a step forward, pulling his friend into a spontaneous hug.