moonvoiid:
closed starter . / @surejo ! location: the lemonade stand. time: late morning. muses: ian & jo.
ian is known for many things, but sharing details about his personal life isn’t one of them. what falls into the category of a personal life is different for everybody, and most people would care to interject and say that ian sometimes shares a little more than he should. but when ian says something that others wish he hadn’t, it’s always to generate a specific kind of response.
his real personal life is tucked away in the phone calls that he has with his parents, always looking at the caller id with a carefully neutral expression before he gets up to answer where no one can listen. it’s in his personal projects that he keeps filed away on his pc, that he stays up working on all night and doesn’t even post them online. a lot of his personal life is in his art, which explains the panicked expression on his face when his sketchbook is knocked out of his hands and it lands on an opened page.
the truly horrifying thing about the situation is that it’s an old book, and it happens when he’s walking past the lemonade stand, which is where his ex-girlfriend is working, and said ex-girlfriend is also smiling softly in the drawing that his sketchbook is currently opened on. ian is quick to bend down and retrieve it, ignoring the apology from the stranger who knocked it over.
there’s no hope when he knows that jo has already seen the sketch of herself in his notebook, so ian rushes out with a quick line of defense. “ it’s an old sketchbook, ” he says, looking at her guiltily, “ i ran out of pages in the one i’ve been using and this one had blank ones left. ”
speaking in technicalities, it was still wintertime. yes, getting out of the months most associated with the cold – december, january, february – wasn’t to say they had jumped into spring yet. jo could still feel the presence of winter, of that murderous season that took and took and took and was never fully satisfied. to think, there was a time that jo actually enjoyed the winter – the white blanket, the pine needles, the frozen lakes ( oh, damn those frozen lakes ! ) now, however...
she had spoken to brad about being transferred to the dirty penguin – it was in the works, but she had nothing against standing by the stand, pouring a refreshing drink for the occasional passerby, feeling a certain kinship to lucy from the peanuts ( of course, lucy’s stand provided therapy, whereas this stand provided lemonade )... but it was still brisk, so ‘business’ was still a bit slow. winter ? the worst. that winter/spring limbo that they were currently in ? it followed as a close second.
oh, but the thrill when one (1) person provided patronage ! not necessarily for the sake of monetary gain ( i mean... that helped... but... ) – it was just nice to have something to do other than watch people mosey back and forth, impressed by the new attractions. oh, the disappointment when he began walking away... up until he bumped into someone very familiar.
however, before she registered ian in that brief commotion, she registered the notebook that fell to the ground... and, wow, that was someone even more familiar ! wow, she saw that person in the mirror every morning ! of course, it was a much more flattering take than the mirror ( wasn’t everything to everyone ? ). yes, then she realized it was ian. what an awkward situation !
okay... so what would the better approach be ? joking about him having an obsession ? making a titanic reference ? complimenting it ? pretending nothing happened ? there wasn’t really a guidebook for this – no social script... so she decided to play it safe and boring. “ it’s – yeah, no, it’s, like – i get it. ” said the woman who could barely draw a circle. “ it’s, like, really nice, though – i mean, like, they probably all are. ” oh... oh. “ all of the, like, drawings, like, in general, i mean. ” nice save !
