who: @lucent-luca
when: weekend of sep 24-26
where: courtyard or somethin outside along those lines
Sav had the skateboard she had gotten for herself (rather than continuing to use one of Marcello’s) tucked under one of her arms, a very specific mission in mind. Sure, she was getting better, and yes, she had tried to get Marcello to teach her, but they hadn’t gotten very far. They usually either ended up bickering (neither of them had much patience), or...well....got distracted in another way. So she was going to find Luca, take him up on the offer he made. The teaching her to skate offer, not the other ones he had attempted. She had asked around until someone knew where he was, since she didn’t have his number or anything, spotting him sitting down outside, going to drop herself next to him, a grin flashed at the male. “Okay, I’ll bite,” she said in lieu of any proper greeting. “Help teach me to skate. Relying on Marcello isn’t working out too well, and I actually do want to learn.”
His head pops up at the sound of footsteps entering the office along with soft chatter and laughter, one of the voices sounding too familiar for him not to recognize who it belongs to. Luca should be heading home along with the rest of the interns and everyone else in the company, really, but he wants to be the first to finish the assignment-- as usual. When the owner of the voices-- and the shuffling feet-- come into view, a look of indifference replaces the scowl that was on his face. “I didn’t know it was bring your pet to work day,” he says, leaning back on the ergonomic chair he’d claimed as his own. “Hell, I didn’t know they even allowed dogs in the building.”
The stares he was getting would have bothered him if he was there to make friends, but fortunately for him, he wasn’t. Friends were the furthest thing in Luca Im’s mind, and he really couldn’t care less about what his peers in his internship group thought about him. But if he had to guess, he was certain it would be the same old thoughts most people usually had about him when they first meet him: a strange snobby Asian kid who didn’t speak English. The last part wasn’t entirely true-- he could hold his ground in an English conversation with most people, but seeing as he was more fluent in French, and his supervising officer didn’t mind talking to him in the language, he decided he could just play to his strengths. He would need to do that, if he was going to be the top intern. Luca wasn’t entirely certain yet if such a thing could exist in the office he chose to render his services at, but he was definitely not about to let that get in the way of him getting a high mark in his class.
Unfortunately for him, even after discussing with his superior that he could work better by himself, he was given a pair for their first project. And he didn’t know if it was intentional, but he was paired with the only other Asian person in the group, and while others would mind-- see it as an act of prejudice (what, do they think Asian kids can only work with Asian kids?!)--, Luca didn’t. In fact, he was going to be paired up with somebody, he was glad to be with the one other person in the group who didn’t insist on getting-to-know-you’s like the rest of them. Still, he would have preferred to just work on things on his own. “Alors,” he began, not pausing to consider if the girl even knew how to speak French. Luca pulled the chair beside her and sat down, placing his notebook on the table in front of them to show her a page. “Avez-vous des idées pour le projet? Parce que j'en ai beaucoup.”
ok i'm gonna write this from luca's pov because ~reasons~ agfdjkg but you'll find out!! i hope... if i manage to put my thoughts into words
The droning of the woman on the television starts to grate on Luca, and if it is already irritating him when he’s the one watching the show, he can only imagine how his sister seated in the dining room feels, hunching over some papers as she tries to solve one math problem after the other.
Fridays for Luca usually means leisure as their mother isn’t around, but it is always a different story for his younger sister. Finn would have been doing the exact same thing as Sofia, too, had he not been away on some international competition, and Luca thinks how lucky his mother is that she could just leave them on a Friday evening and not worry about a secret party, or a night out on the town. If she even worries. But despite initially wanting to watch the show, he looks around for the remote and turns the tv off so he could let his sister study in peace.
But the sudden lack of background noise seems to have disrupted her concentration, and her head snaps up and she looks at her brother with furrowed brows. "Why did you turn it off? Weren't you watching that?" she says in German, preferring still to use their mother tongue despite having lived in France for more than a year now.
He turns to her and shrug, muttering something about how it was boring as he stood from the couch and makes his way to the kitchen. Luca thinks about how Sofia must have been annoyed by the sound too and yet, she is concerned about him turning it off, knowing it is a show he likes to follow now and then. This is why he is always secretly worrying about her. The day she starts to think about herself is the day he’ll stop being worried.
Luca inspects the contents of the fridge, lips pursed as he considers what he wants to eat, and after quick deliberation, reaches for an apple.
"Oppa?"
"Hm?" He makes his way over to the table, and hands her his bitten fruit. "Did you want the apple?"
She shakes her head and grabs two sheets of papers, pulling back one of the chairs near her as if asking him to sit. Luca obliges and begins studying the papers, eyebrows furrowed as he tries to make out the writing on it. His sister might be a genius, sure, but she definitely does not have the best penmanship.
"I have to write this paper on this artwork, and I don't understand it. Could you explain it to me?"
His eyebrow shoot up and he looks at her, incredulous. She’s never asked for help before, or if she has, never from him. Why would she, anyway? She was smart-- smarter than both him and Finn combined, and she doesn’t need them-- especially Luca. And yet, she is looking at him expectantly, holding up the pieces of papers in his general direction.
Luca slowly sits on the seat next to her, gingerly takes the papers from her hand, and says, “You don’t..understand...it? You don’t understand?”
“I do, but it’s just-- I trust your opinion on this more than my own. You’ve always been better at this than me, so can you help me? Please, oppa?”
It isn’t true. There is nothing that Luca could think that he would be better at than Sofia, and yet, there she is, asking him for help on something. And this isn’t like their mother, too, who used to ask him questions she knew he couldn’t answer, for his sister could never be cruel.
And so he looks at the artwork and the accompanying text, and begins to speak his thoughts on the matter. Gingerly, at first, worries he might say something wrong despite knowing the artwork quite well. His second statement ends up sounding like a question and he pauses, unsure, waits for her to correct him or tell him she doesn’t need his help after all, but she doesn’t. In fact, she nods her head, seemingly agreeing, and the look on her face tells him she is very interested in what he has to say.
He slowly gains confidence as he watches her listen to him intently, scribbling down on her notebook every now and then again, and he thinks about how it doesn’t even truly matter to him anymore if their mother sees him, because despite knowing full well that she doesn’t need him, Sofia never fails to make him feel that he is wanted.
who: @lucent-luca
when: first week of Feb-ish
where: Cafe on South African campus
If there was someone Rob had been most trying to avoid since New Year’s....Luca definitely was up there. Not that they didn’t like them, all things considered with their entirely different philosophies of life, but...they knew their smug attitude would be almost worse than the disdain and judgement of the majority of their classmates. Rob had inadvertently proved his points, the very things they had been doing their best to argue against ever since the two had met. Call it over-compensating. So when they peeked up from their table in the corner of the cafe to see him, a slight grimace crossed their face, ducking their head back down to resume their work, coffee - with oat milk obviously - in front of them. No such luck though - they heard Luca approaching, letting out a soft sigh before they glanced up at them in defeat. “Yes?” Rob said, tilting their head to one side.
who: @lucent-luca
when: last weekend of january
where: mutual npc bro’s room bc nate hates both his and luca’s roommates rip
Nate handed the blunt he had been smoking over to Luca, snorting a laugh as he pulled out his phone to glance at his text messages, before tucking it back in his pocket, kicking one leg out and slumping further into the couch. His red-rimmed eyes glanced up at Luca, shaking his head. “Nah, mate, you have no idea. I accidentally fucked my exes best friend,” he said as he jumped back into the conversation, some sorta discussion about how much drama girls could be. “I thought I was about to be jumped by the pair of them,” he added, grimacing slightly as he thought about the look on Parker’s face when she had jumped to conclusions about what had happened between him and Ophelia.
