Obsessive Editing - Cancer Crew Preference
Ian:
“What are you working on, babe?” you ask tiredly, hugging Ian’s neck from behind. He barely acknowledges you, seemingly lost in the process of whatever video he’s got open on his desktop.
“Just ten more minutes, I promise,” Ian tells you absently, almost like he’s got an automatic response programmed into his head. He’s been at this for over two hours, and you’ve pretty much decided that Ian’s just being irrationally obsessive about editing these clips. You don’t know what triggers it, but sometimes, he’ll just down at his computer and decide that a certain video has to be absolutely perfect, then proceeding to nearly drive himself crazy trying to get everything to be just so.
“You’re gonna go blind if you sit here all night in a dark room with a bright computer screen blaring in your face like this.” You know you sound like one of those tech-safety pamphlets that soccer moms get in the mail from their kids’ elementary schools, but you don’t care at this point. You know that Ian wants to go to sleep just as bad as you want him to, and you also know that he’s going to go insane if he keeps readjusting everything until the sun comes up.
“I just gotta get these frames to line up, and then I’ll get in bed. Seriously, baby, I mean it.” Ian never looks away from the computer once while he says all of that, and you just sigh and kiss his temple.
“You’ll do a better job if you look at it with fresh eyes in the morning,” you say gently, dead set on coaxing him away from his desk. Maybe providing him with an excuse to stop will do the trick.
Finally, Ian stops his incessant mouse-clicking and reaches up to touch your arm. “Maybe you’re right,” he says slowly, still staring into his computer screen. “I am pretty tired. This is driving me nuts anyway.”
You cheer silently as you watch Ian save his work and shut off the monitor, satisfied when he goes off to brush his teeth. You crawl back into your bed and wait for him to come out of the bathroom, eyes already growing heavy. Ian greets you with a kiss when he comes back, curling up beside you. He scoots closer and slings his arm around your waist, kissing you hair a couple of times before he murmurs goodnight.
“Gonna finish that video first thing,” Ian mumbles decisively, but you can tell that he’s already half asleep. “Love you, baby.”
“Love you, too,” you murmur back, happy to be falling asleep with Ian beside you.
Joji:
“You still up, Jo?” you ask, rubbing your eyes as you pad into the living room. Joji’s sitting there on the couch in his pajamas, laptop balanced on his legs with a soda in his hand. He looks startled when he turns to you.
“Hey, babe, yeah,” he says quickly, blinking a few times. He glances back at his laptop and then looks sheepish. “Is it really almost three a.m.?”
You nod, still groggy from having been asleep. Joji said that he would be in bed in half an hour when you went to sleep at eleven, so you brushed your teeth and got in bed without thinking much of it. You only came to see where he was after you woke up and noticed that he hadn’t so much as touched his side of the bed.
“Yeah,” you say, recoiling from the glaring light of his laptop screen as you come to sit beside him. Joji puts his arm around you and lets you curl into his side, now back to working on his project again. You watch him click and drag things around the screen for a few seconds before asking, “What are you working on?”
“Just this thing me and the guys did a while back,” he tells you, obviously distracted.
“You should come to bed with me, baby. You’ve been working on this since before I first went to sleep.” You look up at Joji to see his reaction, but there’s none to be found. He’s still staring at his editing software and splicing clips together.
“Yeah, I know, but I’m almost done,” he says, and you know that’s a lie. When Joji gets on one of his perfectionist kicks, he’s never done with whatever he’s obsessing over.
“Come on, I’m serious.” You pull Joji’s hand away from the laptop and sit up, intent on getting him in bed. You knows that he’s exhausted from everything he’s done today, and even so, it’s not good for anybody to be awake and staring at their computer until the sun rises.
Joji starts to protest, but you just give him a stern look and tug on his hand. “Come to bed, Jo,” you say, and you’re not asking this time.
“Fine.” Joji caves, but you can also tell that he’s just as exhausted as you assumed he was. He clicks a few things and then shuts his laptop, abandoning it on the coffee table without any resistance.
Joji goes off to brush his teeth, and you crawl back in bed, more than ready to get back to sleep. When he pulls back the covers and gets in bed, Joji pulls you against his chest and whispers goodnight, settling himself in. You nudge him. “Where’s my kiss?”
“Sorry baby,” he murmurs, tipping his head down to kiss you. You smile and bury your face in his chest, already half asleep again.
Max:
Max is glued to his computer, obsessively splicing clips and cutting scenes together for a video he and Chad made a couple of days ago. He’s been in and out of the kitchen every so often, refilling his mug of tea and murmuring to himself that you don’t quite understand. You wouldn’t be worried under the usual circumstances (Max is a notorious perfectionist, and it’s not uncommon for him to zone into editing a video for an hour or two at a time), except, well… Max has been at this for way longer than usual- four hours, to be exact- and you’d be lying to yourself if you said that you weren’t starting to worry about him a little. He hasn’t eaten or drank anything except tea in all of that time, and you’re pretty sure he hasn’t gone to the bathroom in a while, either.
Maybe you should check on him to, you know… make sure he’s still all there and everything.
You go into the kitchen first, though, deciding that maybe it’s time Max put down some solid food. You make him up a sandwich, throwing some chips on the plate beside it, and trek to the bedroom to see if Max is even still conscious in there.
All of the lights of are off when you walk in, and Max is right where you thought he’d be- sat in front of his desk clicking away on his computer, completely out of reality. The monitor’s glow is nearly blinding, even from the doorway, and you know that that can’t be doing any good for Max’s eyes. Besides, he looks jittery, what with the way he’s bouncing his leg up and down and chewing on his thumbnail.
“Max,” you say, trying to get his attention. “I brought you some food.”
Max snaps out of whatever trance he was in before, whipping his head sideways to look at you. “Thanks, love,” he says, but he sounds distracted, turning back to his screen not a second after the words leave his lips.
“Baby, seriously,” you say, flipping on the light. You walk further into the room and set the plate of food down beside Max’s mug of tea, touching his shoulder. Max looks up at you, blinking against the sudden brightness of the room. He looks like a wreck, all red-eyed and pale.
“I’m almost done, babe, I promise.” Max starts clicking on the mouse again, dragging frames around and adding things here and there.
“You’ve been at this forever, Max,” you plead, exasperated. “Please just take a break for a few minutes. Eat the sandwich I made you, drink some water. You look exhausted.”
Max finally stops working, sighing and turning his chair towards you. He rubs at his eyes and then looks over at the plate of food that you brought for him. “Maybe I should eat,” he says slowly. Max picks up the sandwich, takes a bite, and then smiles at you softly. “Thanks for taking care of me.”
You smile, moving his hair off of his face. “Anytime, Martin Scorsese.”
