mindful(l)

the tumblr of Cate (she/her) who likes naps, sandwiches, and many fannish things. Header art by @polarcell

[siriaeve]

The Echo Chamber (2026): "Leo and Ava chase each other—coming close, drifting apart, and searching for their way back. They cannot let go, nor break free. Through the rooms, Ava’s voice echoes across time, carrying to the surface what endures—and what can no longer be held back."

[siriaeve]

if you give a doc a cookie

For @astronomical-light the Incorrigible.

Jess had always been the smart one in their marriage. Hell, she’d been the smart one before their marriage. She’d taken pity on Jack’s pathetic self, coming in morning after morning to the diner where she worked, buying breakfasts his bank account couldn’t technically afford only to sit and stare at her and saying stupid things like, “Boy, howdy, yesirree,” when she asked him if his hash browns were good before flushing bright red.

One morning Jess had refilled his coffee and said, sounding more amused than Jack probably figured he’d deserved, “My shift ends at noon. You’re going to meet me outside then and we’ll go for a walk in the park, okay?”

“Okay,” Jack had said, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt with it, and he thought maybe he’d fully fallen for her there and then, sitting at the counter in a run-down diner in a town both of them longed to get away from. She’d been his first serious girlfriend, and she’d been the one to ask him out. Jack had never had an issue with that, rolled his eyes at the guys who gave him shit for it, because had they seen Jess? Had they heard her laugh, or listened to her talk about her plans for opening her own place? Point of fucking pride that she’d asked him.

But she’d asked him, and Jack’s romantic history since her wasn’t what you’d call extensive, and now here he was at 50 faced with a dilemma: he wanted to ask Robby out, and he didn’t have the first clue how to do it. He knew that the dating world had changed sharply over the last 20 years. There were apps, and rules about what emojis had secret double meanings, and whole new sexualities were now a thing.

And while Jack liked to think he wasn’t totally out of touch—he spent too many hours of each week in the company of Parker Ellis and John Shen for that to be true—he’d been out of commission for most of this century, and that definitely wasn’t true for Robby. (Last week, Jack had been standing in line in the cafeteria behind two NICU nurses while one told the other that she’d had a three-day fling with Dr. Robinavitch from the ED a couple of years ago and that the beard rash had been worth it.)

What if Jack asked Robby out and what he said was the equivalent of turning around to someone in 2000 and asking if they wanted to go steady at the sock hop?

What if Jack asked Robby out, and midway through he started talking about bees again, for some godforsaken reason?

“Let’s say hypothetically,” Jack said while he and Parker were charting at neighbouring computers, “and this isn’t about me, really—“

“Who are you trying to convince here?” Parker said.

“Hypothetically,” Jack said, “if someone was thinking about asking another person out, and they didn’t know the likely success rate but they were trying to be optimistic about it, even if they didn’t know whether they should be optimistic because of, uh, factors”—did Robby even go for guys? Jack didn’t know. Jack barely even knew that he went for guys—“like in that kind of scenario—“

“Is there a question in here somewhere?”

“Asking someone out in 2026,” Jack said, shifting awkwardly in his computer chair. “Like… how?”

"This job does like to surprise me," Parker said with a soft sigh. "Okay. Hypothetically? You're overthinking this. I don't know who this is about, and I do not want to know, but I still know that you're overthinking this. Keep it classic, keep it simple, give them options and an out. Gestures tend to backfire, but if you really need to do one, same parameters apply. Classic, simple, stick to things you know they like."

"Okay," Jack said nodding slowly. Parameters were things he could work within; structure he liked. Classic, okay; simple, he could do; and sure, why not try for a gesture, because didn't Robby deserve someone making a gesture for his sake?

It took him another couple of days to decide what to do, but once Jack figured it out—again standing in line in the cafeteria, this time behind Robby and Dana, while Robby pointed at the sad, dry little hockey pucks that were being audaciously sold as Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies, $2.75 and saying how much he missed the brown butter ones his grandmother used to make—Jack was locked the fuck in.

(He got his practical advice from Parker, but his up-to-date slang from Chen.)

Jack called up his sister and said, "Yes, Stacey, I know it seems unusual for me to ask you how to make brown butter chocolate chip cookies from scratch at 7:45am on a Wednesday morning, I know I don't bake, but have you considered that it's super important for my future happiness? Yes, I did try looking on the internet but do you know how many recipes out there are just really shittily written?"

His big sister was a fucking saint, that's what she was, because she only mocked him a little while she talked him through what ingredients he'd need and then gave him extremely precise directions that included the importance of doing test batches. "These things always take some trial and error when you're trying to figure out a new set-up," Stacey said, and Jack's first couple of batches were indeed kind of iffy. One was too dense, one was weirdly lumpy, but then he figured out the best ingredients ratio and mixing time, and after that it was just a matter of working out the ideal diameter and whether he wanted it to be heart-shaped or not (maybe he shouldn't play his hand too soon, he decided) and the best serving options.

But by Friday night, he pulled out of his oven what he was pretty sure was the platonic ideal of Robby Cookies: size, mouthfeel, proportion of chocolate chips to dough, the works. He sent Stacey a photo of him giving a thumbs up in front of a tray of cooling cookies with the caption Batch 9B is a hit.

You're lucky you're cute, Stacey wrote back.

Recipe nailed down, Jack invited Robby over to watch the game the next afternoon. He showered, he shaved with unusual care, he put on the nice green sweater his niece had given him for his birthday. He lit the fire in the living room because there was a definite cold snap in the air, and when Robby showed up he made a little noise of surprise as he looked around the room and at Jack's sweater and said, "Getting festive early, Abbot."

"Start as you mean to go on or whatever," Jack said, and even he didn't know what that meant because he was fucking amped. "Uh, snacks. You want snacks? I got snacks."

"Sure," Robby said, sounding amused as he followed Jack into the kitchen, "a snack's fine," but then the noise that he let out when he bit into the cookie Jack gave him sounded anything but amused—it sounded obscene. It wasn't just a noise, it was a groan. Michael Robinavitch had groaned because of something that Jack had baked, and if maybe that wasn't the biggest achievement of Jack's life, it was definitely up there. "Fuck, you made these yourself? These are really good."

And then there came the point where Jack could really have derailed everything, because he looked at Robby—at Robby's mouth, which he'd just used to moan right there in Jack's kitchen—and said, somewhat desperately, "Wanna bang?", before realising what he'd just said aloud and putting his head in his hands.

There was a long silence.

"Did you just," Robby said, eventually, carefully, "give me a cookie and then proposition me?"

"I was going to ask you out," Jack said weakly. "On a date."

"But you said 'Wanna bang' instead?"

Jack nodded, and when there was more silence he risked looking over at Robby to see that he was eating the rest of the cookie with a thoughtful look on his face. "There brown sugar in these?"

Jack nodded again.

"Did you learn how to make brown sugar chocolate chip cookies just because you knew I liked them?"

Jack nodded a third time, felt his cheeks heat.

"The cookies are really fucking good," Robby said, swiping a stray crumb from his lower lip. "But you should know you'd have had me just from a 'wanna bang.'"

Jack's jaw dropped. "You're kidding."

"Nope," Robby said, and grinned at Jack and leaned toward him and kissed him and okay, okay, Jack thought as his eyes drifted closed, as he clutched at Robby's hips—okay, so Jack wasn't the smart one this time around, either, but did it matter when success tasted this sweet?

[sheafrotherdon]

THREE??

262!

[scribeherself]

the absolute devastating intimacy of a forehead rest. when you are both just so tired from existing in a world that demands you to be a rigid, functional individual, and you finally collapse into each other and just lean your forehead against theirs, or against their shoulder. it’s the physical equivalent of dropping your shields. it’s saying i am entirely heavy right now, and i am trusting you to bear a piece of that weight. and the most beautiful part is that the other person doesn’t even flinch. they just adjust their stance, tuck you a little closer, and absorb the impact. we were designed to divide the burden of being alive.

[tinicky]

Random woman on the streets asked Nicky to hold her baby for a second to tie her shoe. Joe's brain immediately stopped functioning.

[belladonnabedlam]

Okay. I was on my beloved AO3 and I saw something that made me do a double take. So, now I really want to know…

What is your AO3 user ID?

I’m an OG user 5 digits or less

Six figures baby!

I’m in the millions…

Remaining time: 2 days 22 hours

I’m so curious to see how long people have been on AO3! I know some people have been on there since beta/invite only, but I would love to see what the number is on tumblr!

[siriaeve]

For @sheafrotherdon

Robby will admit that he was initially sceptical at Jack's therapist's suggestion that he replace his work with the TEMS team with joining a book club. Jack had found golf too boring to keep up for more than a few weeks, and his clubs had sat gathering dust in his hall closet for literal years until he'd finally gotten rid of them when he moved in with Robby. If hitting something really hard with a stick was too dull for a guy who needed movement, purpose, adrenaline, Robby couldn't see Jack being super engaged by a stack of thick paperbacks.

But Jack had been surprising Robby for more than a decade now, so of course it turned out that he loved being part of the Reading the Classics book group at the local library. "Turns out that not having to write papers about them takes the pressure off," Jack says, when he comes home on Saturday morning with his library books under one arm and a bag full of farmer's market produce under the other. "Who knew?"

"You've got depths," Robby said, and smacked a kiss on his cheek and put their lunch plates on the table. "I knew that."

Jack may not have to write essays about what he's reading, but Robby still gets feedback about the books all the same. Dickens isn't a huge hit; Jack turns to the last page in A Christmas Carol and says that eh, he prefers the Muppet version. He works his way through Dracula and his eyebrows keep rising over the tops of his readers and he'll reach over every so often to where Robby is sitting on the other side of the couch and pat blindly at his arm and say, "Listen to this", and he'll read aloud some passage that will have Robby agreeing that yes, Bram Stoker probably needed therapy.

"Or at least some way of coming to terms with the whole repressed gay thing," Jack says, shaking his head. "Were we ever that bad?"

"Well," Robby says, "I don't remember either of us ever scaling the walls of the Pitt like—" and laughs when Jack tackles him, and smiles while kisses him until Robby's entirely lost track of the game he was supposedly watching, and Jack's book lies forgotten on the living room floor.

But Pride and Prejudice is the first book club selection to really grab Jack's interest. Robby gets home from a shift one evening to find Jack stirring a stew pot with one hand and with the other holding up the book while he reads intently.

"Hey," Robby says as he drops his keys in the bowl by the door and shucks off his shoes.

"Darcy is a punk," Jack says, and it kind of goes from there.

Robby has a vague sense of the book's story-line because he sat through that one movie version of it when he was still with Janey. "Oh, it's really not good as an adaptation," she said, reaching for another tissue, "but it does make me misty. Hands!" For Jack, though, it's all new and he revels in it. He says "Shh!" if Robby tries to interrupt him before the end of a chapter, and one night Robby is brushing his teeth in the bathroom and jumps a mile when Jack shouts, "Wickham did what? She's a fucking kid! Jesus Christ."

When he gets near the end, Jack holes up in bed to finish it all in one go. He's got the book, the notebook where he scribbles down things to bring up at the book club meeting, and a large cup of coffee. He's wearing a faded old band t-shirt, he's got his glasses on, and his curls are all askew from where he keeps tugging at them. Robby is pretty fucking fond of him.

Robby sits next to him, laptop propped up against his knees and working through a backlog of admin paperwork. Every so often, he lets himself look over at Jack's profile as a reward. Jack caught up in something is always a beautiful sight.

After a while, Robby decides he needs a refill on his coffee. "You want one too?"

"Wait, what the fuck, Darcy was at Lydia's wedding?" Jack hisses in response, "And it was a secret? What?"

"I'll bring you another coffee," Robby says.

Robby makes them both coffees and sandwiches, and when he carries the tray into the bedroom, Jack looks up at him wide-eyed and says, "What the fuck is Lady Catherine doing at Longbourn?"

"You're going to have to find out and tell me," Robby says, and that's very much what happens. He gets a fits-and-starts recounting of the denouement of Pride and Prejudice that culminates in Jack doing a fist pump and saying, "Yes! That's what I'm talking about!"

"Happy ending?" Robby asks, and Jack looks over at him and smiles, curls gilt in the late afternoon sunlight and hazel eyes bright, and takes Robby's hand in his and holds it tight and says, "Yeah, definitely. Yes."

[unicorndeathrace]

Who died and made you the headcanon peer review committee.

[unicorndeathrace]

Jsyk I have bruised ribs and it hurts to laugh rn stop being so funny

(don't stop)

[qedart]

Trying to shake the persisting art block with a brand new AU (for me at least) - Restaurant AU. 

Head/Exec Chef Robby and his Sous Chef Jack like to get in a bit early to get the ball rolling on service prep. It gives them a little bit of time to just decompress and spend some time together before the controlled chaos of the night gets well and truly underway.

(Alternatively, I give these two a whole other universe to play in and they end up in another high-pressure, ulcer-inducing work environment). 

[imoriginalvisual]

Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian but it’s Toxic by Britney Spears

[gallusrostromegalus]

I’m gonna propose something: if your combat/ass-kicking sequence can’t fit to a top 40 female-vocalist Banger like “Toxic” or “Mama Mia” or “I Need a Hero” you’re not Doing It Right.

[fatsexybitch]

At this point its starting to feel like Editors are using 140-150bpm as a standard for action sequences, and I cant say I hate it.

[homestuckphobia]

I agree wholeheartedly with every point above but I watched this first with the sound off because I forgot that was an option and what struck me most is how efficient Luke's lightsaber style is. Almost every flourish he makes and all of what, 2 entire spins?, is defensive to better parry blaster fire while nearly every offensive swing he makes is basically a head or chest level kill shot. If I had to make a guess about his character I'd say this vintage twink has probably Seen Some Shit and maybe comes from a background where resources are scarce and help is far away so if you get in a fight you have to end it before it starts or you're dead meat

[screamting]

deeply want a time travel fic where Luke visits the old republic and the Jedi are like “that’s not a dueling style” and luke is like “yea am not doing much dueling tbh”

[ghostalservice]

Turning the Page

by @ghostalservice and @siriaeve Chapters: 3/3 Fandom: The Librarian (Movies), The Librarians (TV 2014), Southland (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sammy Bryant/Flynn Carsen Characters: Sammy Bryant, Flynn Carsen Additional Tags: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, New York City, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, queer awakenings, Research, Magic, Sammy Bryant deserves better than the LAPD Summary:

Sammy Bryant has a Guard Card. Flynn Carsen has a Library Card. They’re both looking for a change.

(a Librarians/Southland crossover)

[naimsreid]

alright, let's settle this. what's the most annoying group of uni students?

PhD students

Business majors

Med/pre-med students

Law/pre-law students

STEM majors

English majors

Film majors

other option

OP button (don't click on this one pls)

Voting ended onJul 18

[sheafrotherdon]

When things get hard, Jack’s therapist has a habit of reminding him that going back to basics is smart, thoughtful, and kind. Jack’s rarely in the mood to hear it, but he gets it—gets that he has to do the ordinary shit, like drink enough water, if he wants to do the more complicated stuff, like figure out his fucking life. But it’s beyond irritating to have to care about putting actual meals in his face rather than inhaling a bag of Doritos before he crashes into bed at night.  Annoying, if he’s honest.

There’s a chance the annoyance is displaced, he grants, but fuck it, he’s feeling his feelings.

Thing is, when Jack looks at Robby, when he sees him trying to find calm and quiet inside himself, enough to get through a shift now his sabbatical’s done, he wants to pass on the advice. Drink some fucking water, man. Go take a leak. Eat more than a protein bar. Does Robby even know what sleep is?  The man has his own therapist now, one who’s stuck with it despite Robby’s no-doubt pugilistic attitude, and Jack’s pretty sure the ‘back to basics’ stuff is the kind of thing all therapists cover as a matter of rote. Still, Robby doesn’t seem to be doing any of it. It makes Jack want to climb the walls.

So he does something about it. Makes a point of buying Robby a really great water bottle, with all the mod cons water bottles offer these days, and sticks a label on it that says “use me, you dipshit.” (A similar bottle shows up two days later with a label that says “physician, heal thyself.” Fucking smartass.) Jack starts making himself a meal before he comes on shift, just so that he can put the leftovers in a plastic box and hand it to Robby before he leaves for the night. Robby starts showing up with breakfast in a to-go bag, shoving it in Jack’s hands and holding up a finger when Jack tries to protest.

Jack hates that he doesn’t say anything when Robby holds up that finger, but he’s learned it’s futile to argue, and he was done with being “tsk!”d when he was about nine.

Jack leaves sandwiches in the staff-room fridge, and Robby starts leaving salads, and Jack starts feeling better about the way Robby looks—better fed, more rested, like he’s not about to collapse, dehydrated; like he’s taking care of himself. He enjoys the salads, too, a meal he would never, ever make for himself because of all the faff involved, the ingredients, the fucking choices when it comes to dressing.  He’s happy to let Robby do the thinking.

Shifts being what they are, there’s a stretch of three days where they’re both out of the ED, and Jack texts Robby on day two, asks if he wants to go to a game, and they eat more hotdogs than anyone should, and beer is not technically the way to take care of the resulting thirst, but whatever.  Robby hoots when there’s a double play and Jack looks over at him, at the way he seems more whole, reaches out to pat his knee out of deep-felt satisfaction, and then just leaves his hand there for reasons that he doesn’t care to delve into too deeply.

Robby looks back at him. “You okay?”

Jack gives him a nod. “I think I am.”

The smile Robby gives him is some kind of pleased-as-punch and maybe even a little smug. He covers Jack’s hand with his own, and then they’re just sitting there, holding hands, watching three shitty pitches in a row, and Jack bumps his shoulder against Robby’s, and Robby bumps his shoulder back.

[raccoonboywrites]

Reblog this and say one nice thing about prev

Trying to inject some positivity

[noah-wyles]

the cast and crew celebrating their emmy nominations on the set of season three ✨

[noah-wyles]

[cosmonautroger]

Lee Sangsoo, Siamese Cat