#;;it turns out I do put career before men | resources

[det-andrewmoore]

Andrew Moore ♦ 40 ♦ Law Enforcement ♦

Detective Inspector - Former professional footballer

Ruthlessness is a virtue on the pitch and if I want to be candid, I think it's the same in life. You have to be ruthless out there.

We all have this earliest memory which never leaves our mind. To some, it’s the first day at school, a particularly nice day or, more often, a small fright. Either way, those memories usually date back to the age of 3 to 6 years old.

Andrew didn’t have a memory predating the day he woke up in a hospital. He had been in a coma for months and neither the doctors or the police, despite their best efforts, could figure out how that boy wound up shipped in a box, or where he came from at all. Whoever had put him in there had left absolutely no traces behind them, and soon, he was placed in an orphanage. To the social workers’ surprise, the boy was well spoken, polite and had received an education. He was adopted by a British businessman and his wife, and his life only began then.

He spent the end of his childhood in Cornwall in the south west of Britain, and displayed an interest for football, a sport he’d played in his former life. If he also had spent countless hours riding horses and fencing, those were hobbies he wasn’t exposed to, and therefore never found himself drawn to. If his father would have preferred his son took over the business, a scout for Queens Park Rangers decided otherwise. By the time he was 15, Andrew would spend more time on the pitch than he did in classrooms, and he debuted his professional career by the time he turned 17.

Soon enough, he shone too bright for his club and his goal, like many other players before him, had always been the Premiere league. His dream came true when he wound up playing for Arsenal FC from the age of 23 until the age of 31. Andrew was a born leader, having often found himself the designated team captain in his teams and he could have seen himself turning toward coaching in about a few years.

But life wasn’t only rainbows and butterflies, and even the most successful men had their demons. If he made it a point to keep himself in good shape, and always encouraged his team mates and now his players of doing the same, Andrew wasn’t as strong psychologically speaking. He had his vices : he slept around, a fear of abandonment keeping him from ever trusting anyone enough for longer company, and he found enjoyment in gambling : sometimes, he was successful, some others... not so much. He spent a fortune paying back the Red Rose Casino yet couldn’t stop himself from going back. His career came to an abrupt end when he and a Liverpool defender accidentally bumped heads while defending the ball. The concussion put him in the hospital, and the short term effects from that were all unpleasant but one was simply confusing. He wasn't sure what it was he remembered, but for the first time in his whole life, he was getting bribes of his childhood back. Andrew tried to get back on the pitch, but migraines settled in, and there rarely is a week without them, up to current day. It was around then he figured he wouldn't be the sort to sit back and become an antique, waiting for sky sports to call him for a weekly consultant gig. Fuck that. Besides, he wanted to figure out what the hell it was with those childhood memories of his. They were blurry, incomplete, and perhaps it was all a red herring, but there was something fishy about them.

Saying goodbye to his first career wasn't easy, but he embraced his new one with open arms. Passing the exams to become detective wasn't precisely easy, as he only ever lived for football, but he was a stubborn, dedicated man, and he made do. The MET Police's resources might help him connect the dots, and in the meanwhile, he's just glad to be keeping London civilians safe. God knows the town needs it.

+ / -  decisive, pragmatic, federator, charming, insecure, secretive, ruthless, severe

Over the course of his career, Andrew has played as a midfielder and taken the role of captain. He was known for being rather aggressive on the pitch, and a handful of yellow cards were given to him as such. He earned himself one red card during a match against Tottenham during which he infamously lost his cool.

Andrew has a distinctive burn mark on his hand, which dates back from before his adoption. He doesn’t remember where it comes from, and will come up with a different story to explain it each time he’s asked about it.

He bought a house in Kensington, London not too far from Hyde Park, the train station or the Arsenal stadium, and he has invested some of his money in businesses of his neighborhood, which keeps his wallet steady enough. Unfortunately, he had to sell a few properties because of his debt to the Jabberwocks.

Each of his houses has a garden attached to it : Andrew finds solace putting his hands in the dirt and making sure each and every plant gets everything it needs to thrive. His garden is a place sacred to him and one he cherishes more than any other possession. He puts a lot of thought and time into it.

Although he only ever played in England, he had a lot of French teammates and a French manager, and he learned Spanish in school. As a result, he's near fluent in all three languages.

FC : John Krasinski

[uncloseted]

Guys my age (17) are so immature and only want sex. I know I sound cliche but I’ve been through a lot and bc of that I feel really mature for my age. Recently I met a guy who’s older, and I’m literally falling in love. He just gets me. He’s more than ten years older than me, but I really like him. He helps me sm with my issues. He knows my age and doesn’t want to do anything sexual with me, at least till I’m 18. I lie to my mom every time I go on a date with him that it’s a boy my age.

I don’t feel like a victim. I reached out first. I initiated. I really, really want to stay with him.

But i don’t want it to end badly, because I’ve heard similar stories where the guy ends up showing abusive tendencies as the relationship goes on. I’ve already been through enough. So please, advise me to the best of your ability. Should I stay with him, the man that makes me very, very happy? Or should I end it, even though I don’t want to?

The reason I’m asking your advice on my situation is because I literally have no one to talk to about it irl. If I tell my therapist she’ll tell my mom, I told one friend already and he was super weirded out by the age gap (which I understand)- but no one gets it. If my mom finds out she’ll just yell at me.

I think there's a lot of context that's needed to be able to understand what this relationship is like and how much potential it has to be damaging. How did you meet? Was he specifically looking for someone significantly younger than him? Why didn't he stop talking to you entirely when he found out how old you are? How soon do you turn 18? Why isn't he dating someone his own age? Is he intimidated by women his own age? Has he dated people significantly younger than himself before? What does he feel like he's getting from this relationship with you, given that it's a non-sexual relationship? Does he want someone who will idealize him and do whatever he says? Does he have the same view of the relationship that you do, or does he view you as being friends/having a sibling relationship? And think about your own motivations in this relationship, as well. Are you using this relationship to work through feelings you have about guys your own age, or about other older men in your life? Does he represent a sense of stability to you? Do you like him because he has resources that you don't have access to?

Age gap relationships have a lot of potential for an unequal power dynamic. Even if they don't realize it as it's happening, the younger partner may be pressured into acting the way the older partner wants them to and doing what the older partner wants them to under the guise of the older partner wanting them to "be mature". The younger partner may not feel like they can talk about their day-to-day, age-appropriate concerns for fear of boring their partner or seeming like a child. The younger partner may not have the life experience to be able to tell that what the older partner is doing is unusual, inappropriate or dangerous, putting them in a vulnerable situation.

And even if none of that is true of a given relationship, age gaps come with pretty big logistical issues. A 30 year old usually has a career and is ready to settle down a little bit. Maybe they want to get married or start a family. A 17 year old is just about to go into the real world for the first time. They're not usually ready to get married and start a family, and even if they think they are, when they get older, they may regret losing those years of freedom and experimentation. A 17 year old can't even go to a bar in a lot of countries, whereas a 30 year old has been doing that for a decade. A 30 year old probably doesn't want to hang out with their 17 year old partner's friends, or go to their high school/university events with them. Those things don't seem like a big deal at first, but those little mismatches in lifestyle add up quickly.

With your situation in particular, a big thing that gives me pause is that you say you've "been through a lot" and that he "helps you with your issues". People who have experienced trauma are particularly vulnerable to being taken advantage of, and they're often targets of people who are looking to control their partner. I think for any person that's experienced trauma, it's important to work through a significant portion of it before entering into a relationship with someone else. But I think that's especially true when it comes to relationships that already have an element to them that has the potential to traumatize them further.

Ultimately, what you do is up to you. I generally try not to tell people what to do since no matter how detailed people are, I never really have the full story. Personally, I do think you should proceed with caution. I would talk to your therapist about this- it varies a bit from state to state and country to country, but most places have provisions in place to protect the confidentiality of teenagers in therapy sessions. Therapists are only mandated to report if there is a sexual relationship going on, which you say that there isn't. Check the laws where you are, but I think your therapist can be a valuable resource in helping you work through your feelings and figure out what to do next.

[dragonblinded]

ooc tag drop pt. two

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Merging multiple species into society

( Don’t forget to come see my on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord )

Across the landing field the ground crews were in frantic motion. Landing pads that had been used as temporary supply dumps were cleared, refugees and civilians were moved up for transport off world, and for the first time in seven months the Galaxian base commander braided his face tentacles.

From his office overlooking the entire compound, Commander Zavar kept watch of the progress from the corner of his eye while his main focus was on the mirror in front of him. Carefully observing his reflection he intertwined the several dozen chest length tentacles that grew just beneath his jaw into elegant patterns.

He hadn’t bothered to for the last few months as the braiding of tentacles was meant to show a sign of respect. A Galaxian with unbraided tentacles was essentially stating that whomever they spoke with they held them in low regard. Zavar hadn’t braided them for some time as he felt no need to show signs of respect to anyone under his command.

It had been months since the landing base was established with the intent to use it as a jumping off point in new offensives. When Zavar had been given command he felt that he would be helping bring an end to this bloody conflict by maintaining such a crucial facility. Yet just as the offensive was about to begin their enemies decided to launch a massive counter offensive on an entirely different continent. In short order the manpower which had been set aside for the Galaxian offensive was pulled away to mount a rapid defense and halt this no enemy offensive.  

One by one troop ships stopped coming to his base and requested materials became increasingly diverted to other theaters of the war until finally this once crucial launching point became nothing more than a gas station for passing supply ships.

He grimaced as he made a wrong twist while braiding remembering his degrading morale and the effect it had on those under him. The drive that had once fueled Zavar was sapped away by months of repetitive supply transfers and paperwork, and this soon turned to ever laxening of base discipline among the work crews. When Zavar’s second in command came to him with information that several of the crews had taken an abandoned storage building and had turned it into an entertainment club of sorts, all he did at the time was put on his military cap and take a walk over to it for a drink himself.

That had all changed last night when in the middle of darkness moon Zavar had received an offworld communication from central command. After weeks of careful negotiation the human government they had agreed to join the war effort on the Galaxian side. A substantial force of at least four of their divisions had already arrived in system and would be sending down a battalion of 500 soldiers to further secure and expand Zavar’s base.

Within moment of the calls end Zavar had ordered all of his crews to standby and began issuing orders with renewed fire. As Zavar finished braiding his tentacles and looked out across his base he saw all of the landing pads had been cleared, and with moments to spare.

A loud rumbling could be heard and Zavar could feel the room slowly vibrating as he looked to the clouded skies.

Breaching through the murky grey clouds that had covered the sky for weeks Zavar saw a human landing craft. It was a bulky black mass of metal with a design reminiscent of an overweight bird Zavar thought as it slowly descended towards the base. He was slightly disappointed in the lacking design aesthetics of the human craft, but he had remembered that these transports were designed for carrying large amounts of troops to safe areas rather than enemy held landings. Zavar watched it for a few moments more before leaving his office and making for the landing pads.

It was a short ride from his office to landing pad three were Zavar met his second in command already waiting with a small detachment of honor guard. He exited the vehicle just as the landing craft set down sending gusts of wind out from the engines as they slowly died down.

As Zavar took his place at the head of the honor guard the loading door of the transport popped open with a loud thud and began to lower.

He had heard stories of humans before, how they were great warriors of the highest caliber, that their reflexes were heightened to such a level in the heat of battle they could see an enemy from miles away, that they could lose limbs and heal after a period of time only to forge new ones and return for more combat; truly these beings would bring a swift end to this war.

The ramp finally touched the surface of the landing pad and Zavar could finally see inside of the transport. What he saw rather surprised him however…..

At the top of the ramp stood several ranks of human soldiers dressed in combat gear, but at the head of them was a uniformed Kliptec; their serpent body draped across the decking of the craft.

Zavar cast a side long glance at his second who looked as dumb founded as Zavar was feeling before looking back at the Kliptec. Their upper body was humanoid in shape, yet they bore more hallmarks of a reptile. Scaled skin, slit like eyes, sharpened fingers, and in place of feet was a roughly six foot long tail.

As the Kliptec slithered down the ramp towards Zavar and the front ranks of humans followed Zavar was greeted by further confusion. Mixed in with the humans soldiers Zavar noted several other species not native to the human worlds.

A Draxic casually stomped forward with the ranks appearing to carry some form of heavy weapon casually over their shoulder, a Flinchestet with a communication device glided across the decking as if its limbs could not be bothered to touch the floor, a Valmorian with a red cross painted across their helmet stood alongside a Combra whose face had been ritually scared for the coming battles; but most surprising of all was the towering figure at the very back of the transport.

A hive warrior drone draped in the uniform of humanity. It held no weapon between its claws but Zavar was positive it would have no need of such a device to rip through the lot of them. Some of the honor guard made let out whimper of fear and one even went so far as to start to bring their weapon to bear.

With only a look Zavar’s second command was at the guard’s side and snatched the weapon from his hands in a single motion.

“Be. Calm.” Those two words were all he said to the guard before returning to his place next to Zavar, the weapon he had taken from the guard clutched at his side.

His men looked at their commander with silent awe as they saw Zavar look unphased at the sudden turn of events. Instead of humanity’s reinforcements they appeared to have been given a cavalcade of species that had once fought against humanity. In truth Zavar was deeply concerned about this development, but the one thing keeping him from panicking was his observations of the actual human soldiers present.

Their eyes lacked a sense of fear one would normally experience when coming upon something, or someone, so unnatural to themselves. They were alert and disciplined which was all that Zavar needed to know to reassure him that things were as they should be.

The Kliptec finally slithered in front of Zavar and gave a crisp salute which Zavar returned with a bow of comradery.

“Lt. Colonel Reginal Seth of the 17th Engineer battalion.” the Kliptec said.

“Base Commander Zavar Hatsval,” Zavar replied as he motion to his second, “and my second Xixvil Nog, of the Galaxian expeditionary force.”

“I must admit,” Zavar began as the column of forces began marching past the trio, “when I heard we were getting human reinforcements I was not expecting this.”

Reginal’s sighed and rolled his eyes as if he had heard that same statement a thousand times before.

“Our military allows anyone to enlist so long as they were born within our borders.” he stated as he turned to see his soldiers march by to the storage facilities. “It is an efficient system to use every natural resource available to your advantage, so why limit to a single species military?”

“We do not ask others to fight in our stead.” Xixvil spoke as he watched several humans walk by.

“And how has that turned out for you here?” Reginal said as his serpent mouth twisted to a half grin. “Because from where I am it looks like we’re here to fight in your stead.”

Xixvil’s mouth dropped open in shock before morphing into one of anger while Reginal continued smirking. Zavar thought he was about to see his second lash out when the hive drone he had seen before marched over to them.

It stood easily twice as high as a Galaxian and three times as high as the human soldiers around it. Its collection of eyes were constantly darting around randomly as if trying to observe everything at once while it hovered over the trio. It slowly opened its mouth to reveal rows of sharpened teeth as it surprised Zavar once again.  

“Dro…..go…..where?”

In all of his life in the Galaxian military he had never heard of a hive drone capable of speech. In the past the Galaxian’s had fought several wars with the Hive and at every encounter the drone warrior caste was found to be near mindless killing machines without a queen’s control. To hear one speak in a language he could understand, let alone in broken sentences was enough to end the careers of several Galaxian biologists.

“Report to Sgt Morris, Dro.” Reginal said as if the tower beast of flesh and chitin before him was just another average soldier.

The drone’s eyes stopped twitching for a moment as if concentrating before continuing “Morris…..yes…find…Morris….going….now…sir.” It tilted a blade like appendage which took a moment for Zavar to realize it was saluting Reginal which the Kliptec swiftly returned.

“Carry on Dro.”

With that the drone shambled off after the majority of humans who had left the landing zone leaving only a few behind to begin unloading the battalion’s equipment. Reginal turned to them and handed them a data pad. “Once our gear is unloaded we will begin expanding the landing fields by three additional pads. After that we’ll start reinforcing the outer perimeter walls and compound infrastructure.”

Zavar took the data pad and began going over the details while Xixvil continued to watch Dro walk away.

“I do not mean to be rude, but why did you call that drone “Dro”?” Xixvil asked once the drone was far enough away.

Reginal shrugged, an oddly human gesture for such an alien being, before answering “That’s his name; Dro Harris.”

“It was my understanding that hive drones lacked the capacity to develop individuality.” Xixvil continued as he watched the drone in the distance stop in front of a humanoid looking figure before following them into a storage bay.

“Normally they aren’t able to, but humans have this strange ability to impart personalities into beings should they stay around them long enough.”

Both Zavar and Xixvil looked at Reginal dumbfounded.

“Are you serious?” they asked, to which Reginal simply nodded.

“One of his parents fought in the human hive wars and took an egg back as a trophy. Turns out it hatched and they decided to raise him as their son.”

“I can’t imagine humans reacted well to a hive drone in their midst.”

To their surprised Reginal shook his head. “From what he’s told me he used to be a successful actor before he enlisted; he was popular in fast food commercials.”

“Now I know you are making things up.” Zavar cut in, unable to believe what he was hearing.

“Humans do weird things like this all the time,” Reginal said, “they act distant at first but once they warm up to you the majority of them will welcome you with open arms and treat you like kin.”

He stretched out his arms so Zavar and Xixvil could get a good look at him.

“People assume humans are barbaric isolationist xenophiles, and while it is true there are some of them out there they do not make up the entirety of humanity.”

“There are humans that will sit down with complete strangers and within an hour be closer than brothers with them, humans that will drop everything to come help you even when there is no benefit to themselves, humans that will check up on you just to see if you are alright.”

“It’s weird but at times it’s almost as if humanity has been sick of just knowing only humans and will throw themselves at anything different just so they can experience something new, something exotic and exciting.”

Reginal looked at the two Galaxians as they took in what he had to say and shook his head. He gave a quick salute and then slithered after his men as the heavy equipment began rolling off the transport leaving the Galaxians in the dust.  

[knockknockchicagopd]

❛ BLACK JACKET WITH WHITE LETTERS ❜

❚❙ REQUEST BY ANON: Would I be able to request prompt 16 “You're mine. I don't share”. With Hank voight where they go to one of those police events and she works in his unit and they are a couple with her being younger and they dont have to be in police uniform so she wears a really nice dress and as he introduces her and talks to other people he knows, some of the men check her out and try flirt with her and he notices. Could there be a bit of smut if not that's cool to ❤❤

❚❙ HANK VOIGHT MASTERLIST.

❚❙ WORDS: about 3k.

❚❙ Warnings: swearing, unprotected sex.

❚❙ A/N: this writing hasn’t been edited, you may find some grammar mistakes, I’m sorry about that. If you find a description about body or a word out of place, or something that makes you feel uncomfortable / unrepresented, let me know by a private message and I will change it delighted.

❚❙ GIF credits: to my amazing @sonsofeorl.

❚❙ General tag list: @melblacc @rebelwrites @skyofficialxx @sesamepancakes @scarletsoldierrr @mondefantastique @that-chick212 @enbyamaro @inlovewith3 @ocetevasgirl @destynelseclipsa @miahelen @jadakiss13 @mcgreads @graniairish @teller258316 @i-love-scott-mccall @tclaerh. Hank Voight tag list: @sophie-writes. If you wanna be added to my tag list, send my a message! ⚡

Fortunately, it's been a quiet day, otherwise, you couldn't deal with a Districts event like the Commanders call them. A meeting that reunites every officer, inspector, detective, and whoever who wears ‘the blue uniform’; including special agents from the FBI. These last ones are the kind of man who pushes you out of your good mood with all that quackery about serving the whole country, the unlimited resources, the missions. Every time you hear a fed talking about how passionate and exciting their jobs are, you just want to punch their faces. Mostly, they're behind a desk while cops like you are protecting the streets of Chicago in the firing line. But, as Burgess and Upton said, it's time to have some fun. And anything else.

Since you don't have to wear that horrible uniform you use at official events, you have chosen a breathtaking black silk dress that fits your anatomy to perfection, falling from your chest, with a spaghetti strap neckline, to your ankles. And a pair of skyscraper highlights on the same color, with the small difference that the heels are tremendously golden. Your back is almost bare, being crossed by four fine strips, knowing it's going to give Hank some trouble. Oh, you're going to have so much fun tonight. You are very sure.

The soft make-up delights your cute, but lethal, outfit on point ready to leave Kim's house accompanied by your friends. You've arranged to meet at the party with the rest of the Unit since your future husband and Antonio needed to be from the start of the event, which means the three of you are going to earn more than some gazes by assisting alone, with no male figures by your sides. As if you need some kind of protection. Men (...).

Stepping out from your car and giving the keys to the parking attendant, who seems he's having a heart attack after watching you walk with so much cockiness and sensuality, you come into the party. The look you exchange with Kim and Hailey as soon as you check the reaction of the assistants, makes you draw a triumphant smile while raising your chin in some kind of greeting. You aren't going to stop now, leading your steps straight to your partners. Ruzek chokes on champagne with his eyes over Burgess, while Hank looks at you over the edge of his glass of bourbon taking a sip.

“You should work like that every day”. Antonio opines welcoming the three of you in his arms.

“I second that, brother”. Jay quickly adds making a toast with his cup of red wine.

“Bet you'd be the one who wouldn't work”. Hailey replies palming his chest, making you giggle.

In the meantime they continue arguing about the dress code, a strong arm gets placed around your lower back to push you somewhat closer, letting his hand fall over your hipbone. You know exactly what it means. Hank isn't the kind of jealous man, who needs to mark his territory like a dog. But you know that sometimes he feels insecure because of the age gap. He trusts you blindly, that's a fact, but he's human; he has fears and you understand it. Putting your left hand on the back of his neck, you caress his scalp almost unnoticeably, tilting your head to leave a gentle kiss on his cheek earning a satisfied grin from him.

“You look really beautiful tonight”. He whispers, watching you sideways as if it's a secret between you two.

“Thank you, Sergeant. I always try to do my best”.

Hank chuckles against his glass about to have a last sip till emptying it. Taking it from his hand, you pull yourself away to go to the bar and ask for two more drinks. You're thirsty and too sober to be a Friday night. Checking some emails on your phone while the bartender serves your order, you can't help but listen to some backtalk about your career. A couple of suited men combed as politicians and wrapped on a strong scent that throws your stomach. You try to ignore them until they're close enough from your position to offer you a hand in a formal greeting.

“Johnson and Derrick. FBI”.

The blonde one looks like a senior official, while the other looks like a newbie. Turning towards both, you come into the forced polite mood to stretch his hand firmly.

“(Y/L/N), Intelligence Unit, gentlemen. A pleasure”.

“The pleasure is ours, detective”.

“Special agent”. You correct him inevitably, even if it sounds arrogant.

“Special agent, of course”. Johnson replies with a nod of his chin. “I've read your file lately. I have no words to describe it. Graduated with excellent grades in Yale, two years in the Army, another undercover in a Cartel… And you also know how to fly a helicopter”.

“If you weren't from the FBI, I could think you've been stalking me like one of your serial killers, sir”. The sarcasm in your tone of voice earns your Unit's attention, very focused on the conversation between the feds and you.

“Who catches a monster without becoming one, right?”

The man introduces a hand under his jacket to offer you his business card. But you don't take it, just looking at it for a second before raising your eyes towards his.

“In your academy shows you to have the big balls to disrespect a Sergeant or a Chief, by trying to steal their officers in front of their faces? Because mine shows us to serve and protect the citizens”.

His gesture changes suddenly in a sight, hearing some chuckles behind you coming from Hailey and Kim. Raising both eyebrows as you don't get any reply back, you just nod before grabbing the two drinks you have asked for when they interrupted you. Coming back to your friends, you can't help but wrinkle your nose in a gesture of disgust earning more giggles from your partners. But it doesn't seem funny for Hank, who you know he's killing them in thousands of ways inside his head.

As the night passes, you notice Agent Johnson's eyes on you with no shame, starting to make you feel uncomfortable. Although you would be delighted to embarrass him in front of everyone, he has had enough from you. But this doesn't end there. Excusing yourself, you step to the terrace almost emptied to have some fresh air, knowing he's going to follow you. Maybe, to insist a little more. He was so interested in recruiting you to miss the chance.

And as you thought, he's that predictable. You don't turn because of his steps coming closer, but because he pretends to clear his throat to claim your attention. Crossing your arms over your chest, you tilt your head to a side feigning curiosity with a forced smile showing up on your lips.

“I would like to apologize for my behavior. In my profession isn't habitual to find agents of your characteristics”.

“For sure, sir. It doesn't matter”.

“You could have an extraordinary career in the FBI”.

“I already have it where I am. I don't need schedules, cheap suits, and an earpiece to succeed”.

“I understand your relationship interferes in your decision, but you do—”.

“I'm sorry, you said what? Did you…? Oh, god, I can't fucking believe it”. You can't help but laugh shaking your head. “I don't have any relationship as soon as I wear my badge, sir. And you are starting to cross a line you don't want to cross. Believe me”.

“Ma'am, don't misunderstand my words, nor my intentions. I just think ma—”.

“Nobody asked you to think, Johnson”.

Raising your eyes over his shoulders, you can see your boyfriend sipping his glass of whisky, joining the talk as he tries to keep calm. You know Hank to perfection. If he wasn't your boss, he would have punched him already.

“If you continue pissing off my agent, we're gonna have a problem”.

The man just nods, alternating his gaze between the two of you. Seems that he has admitted his defeat.

“Beautiful and lethal. You're a son of a bitch with so much luck, Voight. Take care of this diamond. Or she will end up wearing a blue jacket with yellow letters”.

“Uh-huh”. He replies as you continue remaining silent.

Passing your boss away back to the party, leaving you alone, you can't hide the proud smile that turns your gesture into a funnier one. Taking short steps towards him, you steal the glass from his hand to drink from it under his attentive brown eyes.

“Blue isn't my color. Not at all. I'm more into black”. You whisper referring to the jackets you are used to wearing in the Chicago department.

“Hm…”

“Imagine having your badge hanging from your neck all day like a collar. Do I look like a dog? I prefer to have it on my belt. And I'm already used to the disgusting watered coffee we make in the twenty-one”. As you continue giving him more reasons, your forefinger traces a path up from his chest to his nape. “And I have so much fun driving my Dodge all around Chicago”.

“Anything else you wanna add?”

“Hm… no. Actually, not. That's all, sir”. You reply puckering your lips, pulling yourself away some inches with a playful aura wrapping you both.

“Now lemme tell you something here”. Hank says then, leaning over your ear. “You're mine, I don't share”.

His voice and his characteristic raspy voice gives you some chills down your spine bone. Biting your bottom lip unconsciously while he stands up, you know the party is over for you and it's time to go home. Holding your hand and taking back his glass of whisky, you walk inside to say your goodbyes before leaving the fancy place straight to the underground parking. You are not going to lie saying you don't love his dominant mood when the occasion demands it.

As soon as you reach your car, you can notice sideways Hank making sure you're totally alone. He doesn't usually take risks of being seen in public too lovey-dovey, but it's not about it this time and you can't wait for him to go ahead with his intentions. Of course, he doesn't make you wait for too long to push your back to the copilot door, attacking your neck in the meantime his hands grab your hips stealing you a low gasp. Hank makes himself between your legs, urging you to surround his waist with one of them to close the distance that separates you, feeling the need he has to mark his territory, as rarely he shows.

“Take me home”. You almost beg closing your eyes as his teeth are nailed on your most sensitive spot, earning a soft grunt that vibrates your body.

“I'm gonna take you here, sweetheart. Any problem?”

“Hell, no, sergeant”.

“Get in the car. Now”.

You don't complain, taking it as an order when he takes two steps back releasing your body and opening the back door for you. And the next minute passes too fast, rolling up your dress as Hank undoes his belt and unzips his pants. In just a sigh he's deep-buried between your legs. It's the first time you take this kind of risk, almost in public, and the horniness it produces is driving you crazy. With your lips almost touching the others, you moan uninhibited every time his hands on your lower back urge you to keep swinging your hips, sitting on his lap.

The way his eyes memorize every gesture drawn on your face has you breathless. It's a sensation you can't describe. Hank has some kind of power over you that you haven't experienced before, even if you think you're indomitable he always manages to make whatever he wants with you. And you know it. You let him do it. Just like right now, marking his territory with desirous bites and wet kisses all around your exposed throat. The most visible part of your body. He doesn't need to prove anything. He isn't the kind of man who needs to call out any other man who dares to lay his eyes on you. Everybody in this damn city knows you're more than his pupil and they're too scared to say hi, although there's always an exception to the rule. In this case, the FBI agents acting like carrion birds.

The mist clouds the windows, as the heat concentrated on your bodies makes you sweat slightly. Hank takes the control turning you under his body against the seat in a position that puts you to see the stars. Every move of his pelvis is accurate, hitting your g-spot, satisfied with how good his name sounds getting drowned between pleased moans once and again. With every push to your body, his dick is dug deeper through your tight wetness making him grunt into your ear, feeling more delighted than never before. And everything is because of the way you had to reply to that FBI agent in front of everyone, showing him how clear you have your preferences; not only because of your relationship, as Johnson pointed out. But because everybody in Chicago is aware that there's no better boss in law enforcement. There's no better Unit than the Intelligence one from the police department of your hometown.

As your legs get wrapped around his waist to pull him closer, one of his arms surrounds your middle back while his free hand flies straight to your throat. Keeping your eyes closed, the suffocating sensation within your lower belly continues growing with every thrust that steals the air from your lungs and races your heart over its possibilities. You're close. So close that your mind is a total blank, just focused on the way only he can make you feel. So good, so desired, so full of life. He knows it, he takes it in advantage. And he enjoys it more than anything.

“Oh, fuck…” Hank got you almost in tears because of the pleasure, traveling your hands to the back of his neck, nailing your nails there. “God… I'm gonna… Fuck, Hank, don't stop, please… Don't stop”.

“I won't, my love�� Not till you give me what I want”.

His voice always plays dirty with your mind. The way he has to drag every syllable on his tongue with that husky voice that puts you to tremble, as he continues burying his hard dick inside you with no mercy, speeding up as soon as he feels your legs clung to his body slightly shaking. Because of the fewer insecurities he has about your relationship, he feels proud whenever he makes you reach that sweet sensation of the orgasm taking control of your anatomy. He doesn't care if he has to use his hands, his tongue… whatever. It's not only about sex between the two of you, of course not. But making you cum screaming out his name is an every-day-goal.

And you don't make him wait for too long, arching your back when a lash of heat hits your spine and the grenade inside your lower belly explodes. Your gasps fill up your car, while he continues fucking you harder than seconds before not showing any compassion to your exhausted body, looking for your lips to devours them desperately. His tongue starts a fight for dominance, winning over yours like every single time, in the meantime his fingers grips tightly your throat. Instinctively, you swing your hips in sync, provoking every move to go deeper among your shaky legs.

Hank can't hold it anymore, digging his cock to the limits of your guts, almost hitting your soul with a last strong lung. His warm seed fills you up completely, keeping pushing his body against yours, pressing both to the seat with his hands now placed on the headrest. It feels like a whole set of fireworks. Your moans complement his delighted growls to perfection.

“Don't move, please”. You beg with a thin voice thread, at the same time he rests his forehead on yours.

The two of you can barely breathe, trying to recover after an intense session of your favorite cardio workout. From nowhere, you can't help but giggle in unison. You can't believe you just fucked inside your car and with the risk of being caught in the act. A sergeant and one of his special agents. Even if it's your free night and you're in an established relationship, he's still your boss.

“I would miss working with you”.

“Huh?”

“If I get the FBI's offer”. You mumble, leaving clumsy kisses all around his face. “You're the best cop Chicago has”.

“You don't have to butter me up for a second round”.

Shaking your head briefly and laughing, you caress his scalp so gently as he sinks his face into your sweaty neck.

“Now you said so… maybe I have the fantasy of being bent over your desk”.

“Maybe?”

“Yeah, just… maybe”.

“Then maybe I could bring you to my office, before going home. There's some paperwork to attend to”.

[smiting-finger]

alive, and back on my usual nonsense

So after getting preoccupied with other things and temporarily falling off the face of the planet (for like an entire year ಥωಥ), I was thinking about the kdrama Mr. Queen (which I've been meaning to watch), and the Chinese novel it was based on (太子妃升职记, which I read a few years ago and very much enjoyed), and this popped out--

Wei Wuxian’s first thought is that there seem to be an awful lot of female voices around, for a bedroom inhabited by two men. Did he drink too much last night? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s overindulged on a trip to the town and woken up in a strange place the next morning, but that kind of problem has been cropping up a lot less frequently now that he has Lan Zhan around to ferry him home.

(Sometimes literally, on his back. His broad, strong--)

But perhaps Lan Zhan had gotten drunk, too? In which case, Wei Wuxian should consider them lucky to have woken up surrounded by people, rather than chickens, rabbits or, notably, on one occasion, mounds of resentful cabbages.

The chatter around him continues, pitched high with youth and - is that anxiety? It's interspersed with the odd interjection from what sounds like one (calmer, if more exasperated) older woman and a man. Probably not a nunnery, he decides. Perhaps the back rooms of a pleasure house? Although, if that’s the case, this amount of excitement over a mere two men is honestly a little excessive.

He reaches out tentatively, but pats all the way across the mattress to the edge without finding his usual bedfellow. A much less tentative venture towards the other side produces similar results.

Hm.

Wei Wuxian cracks open an eye and heaves himself upright, absent-mindedly scratching at his (unusually soft - as much as he hates to admit it, maybe Nie Huaisang has a point about drinking less and training more) side and squinting into the too-bright light until the person-shaped blur in front of him sharpens into focus.

“Niang niang!” a complete stranger cries tearfully, clutching at the sleeve of his other arm. “You’re awake! Thank Heavens, you’re awake! Physician Liu, quick, quick!”

A cushion is produced from somewhere and thrust expectantly between Wei Wuxian and the elderly man sitting at his bedside.

He sighs. It’s probably not worth fighting.

Wei Wuxian smacks his upturned wrist onto the unusually lavish brocade and is only a little surprised when it’s covered by a cloth before the physician reaches to take it.

(Do they think he’s diseased?)

((Is he diseased?!))

(((Is that why Lan Zhan isn’t here?)))

He looks at the row of young girls (+ 1 matron) kneeling along the wall to his left, dressed identically to the first and also now beginning to prostrate themselves and wail about “Niang niang!” and blessings and deserving to die.

Not a pleasure house, then.

He looks around at the rest of the richly-furnished room and its intricately-carved wooden furniture, the wealth of jade carvings and the obscene amount of gold that's gilding … everything (so shiny). The opulence of it all would put even Jin Guangshan to shame.

So, not a nunnery either.

He looks down at the small hands, delicate wrists and - he clutches one abruptly just to make sure his eyes aren’t deceiving him - breasts of the body that he certainly was not inhabiting yesterday.

“Well,” he says aloud, unable to stop himself from wincing at the high, soft voice that emerges despite fully expecting it. “It’s not the first time this has happened.”

===

Two days, one diagnosis of shock-induced memory loss and some discreet enquiries (as well as some indiscreet enquiries) later, this is what he knows about his situation:

He’s the main consort (unfavoured) of the crown prince of whatever place he’s landed in;

Three days ago, following a disagreement with one Consort Yun (favoured, main competitor for husband’s affections);

In the course of this disagreement, both women somehow fell into a palace lake and mostly-drowned;

Consort Yun (admittedly quite pretty) was revived at the scene, but Wei Wuxian took a full day to “miraculously” recover;

Angered by the unseemly behaviour of her daughters-in-law, particularly upon learning that the Crown Princess’s first act upon waking was to stumble upon a chance meeting between the Crown Prince and Consort Yun in one of the pleasure gardens and bodily throw herself between them (a tactical error on Wei Wuxian’s part. He’d been trying to throw himself over the battlements to freedom, but he’d gotten lost and scaled the wrong wall), the Empress (Crown Prince’s political opponent, not particularly fond of either consort) grounded both of them to their respective residences for a month, with no visitors allowed.

Which brings him to his current position, feeding the fish in his personal pond as an excuse to be alone. Not truly alone - he shoots a pointed glance at the maids watching anxiously from the other side of the courtyard - because he’s apparently a “suicide risk” now (and honestly, yes, he’d meant to throw himself off that roof, but he hadn’t meant to die - it’s simply that this new body’s cultivation level is not what he’s come to expect even from Mo Xuanyu’s modest abilities), but alone enough to start planning his next move.

Direct escape is out - he didn’t have a plan for what to do once he’d gotten out anyway, and honestly he’s better-resourced for finding out how he got here in the Palace than anywhere else, so it’s no great loss.

“What do you think, Master Fish?” Wei Wuxian asks a gold and black spotted koi with particularly sage-looking whiskers. “Shall I just stay here for the time being?”

It’s not a terrible place to be for the time being, he must admit, throwing more food into the water and watching the fish swarm. Being grounded, he’s at no risk from the Crown Prince’s amorous attentions for a month (a salute of gratitude to the Empress for the inadvertent protection). And thanks to Consort Yun and her voluptuous figure (and if the Crown Prince is more partial to that than the Zhao Feiyan style of willowy fragility that Wei Wuxian seems to have inherited, who can honestly blame him?), he’s at no great risk from them after that, either (a salute of gratitude to the unknowing sister-in-arms, taking one - and hopefully a great many more after that - for the team).

According to his maid (sleeve-clutcher extraordinaire, who even now is boring two holes into his skull with her woeful gaze from across the way while he does nothing more suspicious than scatter another handful of feed towards some latercomer fish), the body he’s inhabiting comes from a powerful military lineage. In particular, her father is (was?) a powerful general who currently commands more than half the nation’s military forces and has the absolute trust of the Emperor. So that more or less keeps him safe from the machinations of the majority of the nest of vipers in this palatial cesspit.

That just leaves the Empress, who - if his servants and the smuggled letters from the Original Goods’s mother (a salute of gratitude to the worthy woman for spelling it out so that even such an interloper as he can understand) are anything to go by - would definitely kill him to damage the Crown Prince’s political standing or throw any sort of roadblock in the way of him from becoming Emperor.

Less immediately - if his secret informants are anything to go by (a salute of gratitude to the resourceful host for cultivating such a valuable resource if not her dantian) - it also leaves the Crown Prince, who, upon cementing his power as Emperor, would also definitely kill his current Crown Princess in order to wedge his beloved Consort Yun into the Empress role.

Really, the only road to any sort of security for someone in his position is to raise the next Imperial heir, outlive the Original Goods’s faithless husband and become the Empress Dowager.

Hopefully Wei Wuxian will be long gone by then, but if leaving means the Original Goods will return (from … Mo Xuanyu’s body? The Ether? Or???) - well, he doesn’t want to repay her hospitality by leaving her house in a mess, so to speak. So he’ll try to set her on that career path, if he can.

But that’s an aspirational goal. First, he has to not-die before he can find out how to get himself home.

And find out how to get himself home.

If getting himself home is even possible.

Wei Wuxian dumps the rest of the fish food in the water and yells.

(It startles the maids, the fish and the poor eunuch the Crown Prince has sent as a spy into falling out of the tree he’s been hiding in and into the prickly bushes below.)

===

The problem with “staying for the time being” is … well, how interminably boring it is. The approved list of hobbies for an Imperial consort seems to consist of: eating (but not too much), sleeping (but not too much), embroidery (which he can’t do), reading (but only texts on female virtue and the occasional terrible novel), playing music (but not the flute), conversing with his maids (who are very sweet, but are all like, 12) and walking in the gardens (which he’s not allowed to do).

Honestly, it’s no wonder all the consorts turn to scheming and murder.

It only takes a week of confinement for him to snap and sneak himself out for a nighttime adventure, setting off to explore the grounds and see … a night-blooming flower, a ghost, a rat, he’ll take pretty much anything at this point.

In the end, he finds none of these things, but the walking is still pretty nice, and he even hears the faint sounds of a guqin wafting over from one of the other consorts’ residences. (He should probably learn who lives where at some point, but it’s not exactly a priority. What’s he going to do with the information when he can only visit during the nighttime? Peep?) When Wei Wuxian wanders closer, the notes resolve themselves into the familiar strains of Flowing Waters, and his breath catches on a sudden surge of longing to hear the same song, played by a different set of fingers.

(First played on a familiar guqin and then, later, accompanied by soft humming between soft, worn sheets, played across the edges of Wei Wuxian’s ribs, along the dip of his spine, and finally lower, into--)

((Is Lan Zhan thinking about him?))

(((Is Lan Zhan looking for him?)))

Stumbling blindly on, he’s so caught up in missing Lan Zhan that he misses the first few stanzas of the next piece, and it isn’t until the music starts to rise in a familiar refrain that he freezes.

He knows that song.

He’s one of the only two people who know that song, which is in fact how he got caught out the last time he found himself in a farce of an identity charade, by the only other person who knows that song, who must be - who must be -

Lan Zhan, his blood sings in his ears as he takes off in a dead run towards the source of the playing. Up ahead of him, small courtyard glows softly with the light of the only burning lamp in their vicinity. Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan-

He scrambles up the wall with the ease of a lifetime’s practice, using bloody-minded determination to make up for the lack of muscle memory.

“Lan Zhan,” he yelps, forgetting to whisper in his excitement as he flings himself over the top and into the branches of a convenient, wall-side tree. “Lan Zhan, it’s me, I-”

This is, naturally, when his foot slips. He manages to catch hold of a branch, but his tender hands and puny wrists, unused to holding up anything heavier than a chicken leg, fail to maintain their hold through his weight, and he tumbles down the trunk into a sad puddle of fabric on the ground.

“Lan Zhan,” he gasps, fighting to untangle himself from the ridiculous train that, admittedly, made a considerable contribution to cushioning his fall. He clambers up onto his hands and knees--

--and looks straight into the wide-eyed stare of Consort Yun.

===

“I cannot believe,” Wei Wuxian growls, palming the ample softness of one exposed breast with one hand, while shoving the other deeper into the many (too many) layers of fabric between them and between Lan Zhan’s splayed legs, “that after everything that’s happened, you’re still taller than me.”

Lan Zhan huffs a laugh that turns quickly into a moan, and Wei Wuxian swallows it, smothers Lan Zhan’s gasping breaths with his own parted lips and sucks them greedily down even as he coaxes out more with twisting fingers here, another tug to Lan Zhan’s poor, abused nipple there.

He slides his fingers back between slick folds and then upwards again, pushing in and out in a few languid strokes before curling them to make Lan Zhan arch harder against the wall behind him, tilt his head back and expose a beautifully vulnerable stretch of neck to Wei Wuxian's teeth.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan murmurs, and his voice is different, the shape of his lips is different, but the way Wei Wuxian’s name fits inside his mouth (tender, beloved), the way he tucks the flyaway strands of hair behind Wei Wuxian’s ear, the look in his eyes when their gazes meet (warm, open, knowing) are the same, same, same.

===

===

I am entirely too lazy to write the rest of it, but afterwards they regroup and it turns out LWJ has been in this world for exactly one more day than WWX, having woken up in Consort Yun’s body when she was “revived”. Consort Yun is the daughter of a high-ranking Minister in the Treasury or something, so Lan Zhan been using his new position as the daughter of a ~scholarly family~ to build a reputation for being really into Buddhist scripture, and eventually he’s going to request to be allowed to go to a nearby Temple to attain some virtuous brownie points for the Imperial family via prayer as his penitence.

That there’s also an elderly monk living there who’s got a reputation for being super good with the divine mysteries and spiritual lore about curses and whatnot is totally immaterial, if Lan Zhan happens to run into that guy, it’ll be a total coincidence, yeah.

So WWX also starts on the divine penitence route, and if everyone thinks it’s because the Crown Princess refuses to be outdone by Consort Yun, then even better, and two weeks into confinement they wear the Empress down into letting them make the trip, and when they get there, turns out the monk is Nie Huaisang.

(NHS: “OH THANK GOD, I’ve done the research but the lynchpin of this mess is definitely somewhere in the Palace and I could not for the life of me figure out a way to get in.”

WWX: “That's nice, but seriously, how come you got to stay a man?”

NHS: “My friend, I may be a man, but my balls are currently swinging somewhere around my ankles.”

WWX: “...show me.”

And LWJ is like “NO.” except WWX can tell by the look in his eye that he sort of wants to see, too).

So they return to the Palace and WWX whirls into one of their morning audiences with the Empress, distraught about a ~dream from the ancestors~ where they warned him about disrupted ley lines or accumulated resentment or an offended minor god that needs investigation by someone, and “How convenient, because we met just the guy!” And the Empress looks like she was Done Five Years Ago, but the Empress Dowager, who’s old and doddery, is like “oh no, you must bring him!” and the Empress mutters “to fucking what, offend some major gods and really do the job properly?” and that’s how they find out the Empress is Jiang Cheng.

In the meantime, the confinement edict expires and WWX+LWJ are allowed to return to their regular programming, which means that as the legal wife, WWX can continuously summon LWJ to his residence for increasingly tenuous and spurious reasons. The best thing is, it’s not even out of character for the Crown Princess, who used to regularly summon Consort Yun to subject her to not-so-veiled barbs and petty torments. So WWX summons LWJ, and then immediately expels both their entourages from the room, instructing that no one is to enter on pain of death.

So LWJ’s maids are gnashing their teeth helplessly while all sorts of piteous moans, pained gasps and the occasional scream emanate from behind the closed door, and when their mistress finally emerges there are no marks on her body, but she’s weak-kneed and having trouble walking straight, so who knows what kind of terrible tortures the Crown Princess has visited upon her.

The Crown Prince obviously hears about this, so he bursts in one day without warning, only to find the two sitting together, the Crown princess’s arms around Consort Yun’s waist, her cheek pillowed on one heaving bosom, and although she’s smiling besottedly at him now, he could have sworn that he felt killing intent being directed at him only a second ago? And to tell the truth, he’s not really in love Consort Yun either, it’s all an act to keep the two consorts (and their families) pitted in a power struggle against each other until he can finally outmanoeuvre the Empress and cement his position as heir to the throne (and also to protect his actual favourite, a third consort who’s a nondescript nobody with no political backing). So the fact that “It was all a misunderstanding, we’re friends now,” his Crown Princess says sweetly (and did she … rub her cheek against his Consort’s chest? Must be his imagination) is not the worst thing (at least neither of them/their families can be enlisted by the Empress in support of her son, and if they’re caught up with Being Besties, then at least they’re not bullying his actual favourite), but for some reason he still feels kind of … threatened? Like someone���s making moves on his wife, which is absurd because they’re both his wives, but the vibes he gets from the first one in particular are kind of … off?

In any case, the crew solve the mystery, find the lynchpin object (which turns out to be a jade dildo belonging to one of the Emperor’s favoured consorts because of course it is), and wake up in their real bodies, in their real world, to a very apologetic hermit-inventor-cultivator whose property they stumbled onto while pursuing a resentful beast. Turns out they triggered the glamour/enchantment/psychic maze world he created as a security system because, “I just didn’t want to risk people getting into my stuff, you know? I’ve got some things that could be very dangerous in the wrong hands”. WWX is like “oh yeah, for sure” and JC is like “WHAT DO YOU MEAN FOR SURE? HOW IS THIS AN UNDERSTANDABLE RESPONSE, IF YOU’RE AFRAID PEOPLE WILL TOUCH YOUR SHIT THEN JUST ENCHANT SOME FUCKING WARRIOR GOLEMS LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.”

[maxwell-grant]

Would you consider Hugo Strange a pulp villain?

Yes. And I would argue that he didn't really stop being one even after his revival.

"Professor Hugo Strange, the most dangerous man in the world! Scientist, philosopher and a criminal genius - little is known of him, yet this man is undoubtly the greatest organizer of crime in the world! - Bruce Wayne, Detective Comics #36

Hugo Strange was created with the intention of being Batman's arch-enemy right from the start, introduced as such by Bruce when he figures out he's responsible for the G-man assassination, pretty explicitly intended to be Batman's Moriarty and with even an equivalent demise. He was big enough to tower over his henchmen and fistfight Batman, he had a uniquely deformed skull, he was both a charismatic but threatening crimelord as well as a mad scientist plotting to TAKE OVER THE WORLD, and I've heard before the argument that the Monster Men were taken from a Doc Savage novel released earlier the same year called The World's Fair Goblin that revolves around a giant mutated man doing crimes under command by the story's villain

That poor devil, Maximus, was a Fair visitor himself, once. He was given injections of thyroxine and adrenalin—and changed rapidly into a pituitary giant. But, in the experiment, his will power was destroyed. Now he only follows the directions of that masked devil who has him hypnotized

He said, "The Man of Tomorrow stuff was merely publicity to draw the Fair crowds—and a shield to cover your own experiments. But the masked surgeon cashed in on it. Obviously he is mad enough to really believe a superman can be created." - The World's Fair Goblin

(Considering Lester Dent had taken potshots at Superman explicitly in "Whisker of Hercules", it's not unlikely that this is an explicit reference)

Although there's really no overlap in the stories besides that, as The World's Fair Goblin only had one giant where as Hugo mutated a couple dozen mentally ill patients to create monsters and then used them to go on mass murdering rampages, because Batman has always been over-the-top. But, yeah, original form Hugo was a pretty cut and dry pulp villain, like most of Batman's villains who debuted prior to 1940. Which is part of why he only had about 3 appearences before they killed him off.

By this point, Batman was in the process of moving away from his pulp knock-off origins into more of his own character, with the introduction of Robin and Dick Tracy cartoon villains that would set the tone for the rest of Batman in the Golden Age, and with the debut of Joker and Catwoman in Batman #1, Hugo was already obsolete as an arch-enemy, and was killed off the following appearence.

Of course, if you know Hugo Strange, you likely already know this, and that he was then revived in the 70s by Marshall Rogers with a brilliant take that stuck to the character's origins as a brilliant crimelord and scientific genius, but also added to him a specifically twisted psychological bent of being obsessed with Batman and becoming Batman, a villain of unshakeable will and even a twisted sense of honor and ethics, refusing to divulge Batman's secret identity even while beaten to death.

And from that moment onwards Hugo would go on to have some of the most consistently brilliant appearences out of any Batman villain (at least until the 2010s) and would secure himself as a mainstay, albeit a very obscure one, figure of Batman, the kind of villain whose plots can range from Born Again-esque subtle destructions of a person's life to a rampage of mutant kaijus on downtown Gotham, and like many of the best Batman villains, it all comes back to a central obsession and psychological edge upon Batman, and the weaponizing and destruction of anything that stands in his way.

You could argue Hugo Strange used to be a cut and dry pulp villain who was eventually reimagined as a Batman Villain, and it would even be somewhat fitting of his in-universe trajectory as a man who started out a career as a figure of prestige and respect, effortlessly able to blend in society, until his repeated encounters with Batman and, most importantly, his gradually increasing obsession with becoming Batman, gradually destroyed him until he's no longer the one ruling the madhouse, but instead trapped in it.

But the reason why I'd argue Hugo Strange is still a Pulp Villain is because his reinventions didn't shed away what he used to be, they merely returned him to his true origins. Because Hugo, you see, is not just a Mad Scientist or Mad Psychologist, Batman's got those by the dozens. Hugo is of a particularly nasty kind of Pulp Villain, who came to existence around the same time as the Mad Scientist if not slightly earlier, an archetype Jess Nevins has named The Evil Surgeon

Medicine has arguably thrown up more serial killers than all the other professions put together, with nursing a close second - Herbert Kinnel, former chairman of the British Medical Association

The Evil Surgeon came to existence as a pop culture archetype in the late 19th century, as the result of serial killers like Jack the Ripper and H.H Holmes making the news, with Doctor Quartz from Nick Carter being first and foremost among these, as the main arch-enemy of the most published character worldwide at the time.

He would be followed years later by H.G Wells's Doctor Moreau, and the likes of Dr Caresco and Professor Tornada, the stars of novels created by André Couvreur, who was himself a medical doctor and used these novels to both condemn the characters as well as give serious consideration to the ideas they explored, and depicted Dr Caresco's over-the-top exploits harkening back to stories about Marquis de Sade (the origin of the term "sadist"). These would be followed by characters like Grigorii Trirodov, Dr Cornelius Kramm, Dr Gogol from Mad Love, currently the most famous example of this seems to be Hannibal Lecter. And Hugo has been operating much more along the lines of those characters in the last decades, than the typical mad scientists he was once designed in reference to.

Of course there's a massive overlap between the two and room to dispute whether they even constitute separate archetypes, they practically came to existence together following the footsteps of Victor Frankenstein, who really isn't a true example of a Mad Scientist in the original novel, and wasn't even a real doctor, but Frankenstein's reputation undeniably is the oldest cultural touchstone we can point to as an influence in the archetype, even if said archetype would only truly take form in pulp magazines and serials.

What I'd argue defines the Evil Surgeon as an archetype specifically, is that they are specifically centered around the violation and destruction of the human body and function more as murderers with budgets, than supervillains in labcoats. Mad Scientists are generally more centered around plots closer to sci-fi/fantasy inventions like sentient robots and immortality potions used for large scale global domination, where as Evil Surgeons are more preoccupied with wielding psychology and torture and criminal resources to get away with destroying minds on more individual scales, or turning cities into slaughterhouses for them to work in.

They aren't quite full blown slasher villains, like Zsasz or Professor Pyg, instead they usually tend to be quite good at passing off as respectable, mentally sound figures of moral standing, and usually possess a sense of purpose towards their work, a goal they are working for by piling corpses atop each other and moving resources to achieve, even if said goal is a purely selfish fulfillment of their own desires. It's quite common for these characters to acquire large bases for them to operate in, even islands specifically.

In Caresco Surhomme, Caresco has taken control of the Pacific island of Eucrasia. Caresco applies his surgical methods to the inhabitants of the island, altering them to better do their jobs. The captain of the plane which brings outsiders to Eucrasia is a limbless trunk with telescopic vision. Even the island itself is in the shape of a human body. The natives of Eucrasia are addicted to various sensual pleasures and generally submit to Caresco’s rule, for fear that he will castrate them or worse.

On Eucrasia, Caresco makes use of “omnium,” a mysterious and unexplained power source, to create: a machine capable of stripping the years from human bodies and reversing the aging process, a fast underground train system, food pills, omnium-powered diving suits, and so on. Caresco is given to such things as collecting the spleens of all those he operates on - Jess Nevins, The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes

So, yes, I absolutely would argue Hugo Strange is still a Pulp Villain. Pulp villains do come in many different forms other than the Fu Manchus and Fantomases that are most commonly imitated, pulp was the breeding ground of the supervillain as a concept after all, where they got to star in their own magazines time and time again. Hugo started off as a fairly generic one, and when he's written poorly, he tends to be brought onboard of a story purely because it calls for a mad scientist.

But Strange came back from death as something much, much worse than just a crimelord and mad scientist, a much more rare and much nastier type of villain that, much like Hugo himself, may lie dormant, but refuses to stay dead for long.

"Quincy. My servant. My friend," Hugo said. "We don't have much time."

Quincy was crying again, with joy. "How, master, how did you-?"

The therapy, Quincy realized. The hypnosis. The drugs.

"Stay with me master, please!" Quincy tried to grab hold a phantom hand.

"I cannot." Strange said, looking benevolently down at Quincy, stroking his hair with a touch the prisoner couldn't feel. "But there is one last service you can perform me."

"Anything, Hugo, please."

"First, remove the sheet from your bed, Quincy. And tie it to the light-fixture on the ceiling."

[writerpeach]

Roommates: Part One

IZ*ONE Hyewon X Male Reader

7813 words

Categories: smut, oral sex,  detective! hyewon

18+

---

Read on AFF

Read on AO3

"Please come in."

The second meeting with Detective Kwon was eight days after the first. Thankfully, you were there under much more pleasant terms, trading being led in handcuffs to roaming freely, greeted with smiles, and offered coffee.

Instead of being tossed inside a windowless cold room, you were meeting Detective Kwon in her personal office, quite the inverse of scenery. Greeting you with a welcoming smile instead of threats, she offered a seat and you sat down, scanning the awards on her walls, the various cabinets, and files as you spotted a small piglet plush resting on one, not bothering to mention it. 

You felt comfortable. You weren’t being yelled at or questioned, and you certainly weren’t fearing for your life or freedom. The detective engaged in polite conversation, her friendly tone putting you at ease as she inquired how you were handling the change of being on the opposite side of crime.

Detective Kwon had been promoted due to your cooperation, earning the rank of Chief Superintendent. Changing into a more supervisor role allowed her to command her team more efficiently but still allowed herself to do what she was best at, getting information out of uncooperative suspects in any way she knew how.

Eunbi had a different look since you last saw her, chopping her hair short which gave her a more youthful and vibrant look. 

“You look good, detective,” you complimented, earning a blush from the sharply-dressed woman across the desk. 

“Thank you. You know, we really owe a lot to you,” she said in earnest. 

“I didn’t do much, detective. It turns out you can be a very convincing woman.”

“You gave us valuable information that would have taken us weeks to find.”

Shuffling around papers and organizing a dossier Eunbi looked up and her expression softened.

“But we still have a lot of work to do to take down your former boss. The Goda clan is in shambles. We’ve made several arrests lately, we have them on the run.” 

“That’s wonderful to hear. To tell the truth, I was never comfortable with some of the things I saw during my time as a clan member. It still keeps me up at night.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What you’re doing has been very helpful, we couldn’t have done this without you.”

“If that asshole gets locked up then it’ll be more than worth it.” 

“Now, there are still a few high ranking members we don’t know the location of,” Eunbi said and slid three pictures across the desk, two men you recognized and one you didn’t. 

“Is there anything about them you can tell us?”

You studied their pictures before speaking. ”Never met this guy. These two were the boss’s right- hand men. When he needed someone taken out, a business shaken down for protection money or anything else that he didn’t want to dirty his hands for he used them as his errand boys.”

“Do you have their names?”

“Afraid not. I was too low down the totem pole to really know them.”

“That’s fine, we’ll work with what we have and I’ll make sure our investigation team makes this their priority. It might take longer but we’ll find these thugs.” 

Eunbi smiled. It was different talking to her like this, cooperating with her, and not being threatened to spend the rest of your life behind bars. 

“How are you holding up? This can’t be easy.”

“Like I said, some sleepless nights. A lot of looking behind my shoulder, thinking someone I swore loyalty to is coming after me. This is all I’ve known for most of my life, so being on the other side of things is hard to get used to.” 

“That’s understandable. The monitoring app we installed on your phone tracks your location with pinpoint accuracy as long as you allow us to. If you ever end up in trouble you know how to activate it right?”

“I do, thanks, Detective. Let’s hope I never have to.” 

“Yes, let’s hope. The sooner we can get these scumbags off the streets, the better we’ll all be.” 

There was a sudden knock on the door that broke the tension.

“Come in!” Eunbi said. 

The door gently swung open and in walked a petite girl, blue mixed into her dark bobbed hairstyle. “Sorry to barge in, boss.” 

“It’s quite alright, Detective Miyawaki. You wouldn’t interrupt without a good reason.” 

“We’ve got new leads on potential suspects. A stolen vehicle was spotted downtown in an abandoned warehouse, it appears it was used in last month’s weapon smuggling ring that was shut down.” 

“And you’re sure they’re still there?” 

“According to our surveillance, no cars have been in or out of the warehouse all day. There could be underground tunnels but that’s highly unlikely given the layout of the building .” 

“Excellent work, Detective. Put out an APB immediately.” 

“Right away, boss.” 

The young girl bowed politely and left the room.

“We’re getting closer with each day thanks to you,” she said with a mild sense of relief in her voice.

“You have a good team here it seems.” 

“It gets pretty stressful but they’re wonderful and I couldn’t do my job without them. Between forensics, our investigation team, and our computer analysts, there's about twelve of us working non-stop.”

“Impressive.” 

“Now, I do need to talk to you about the security detail we promised you.” 

“What about it?” 

“As you can tell, we’re swamped. We need all the men and women we have working around the clock. At this moment we don’t have the resources to monitor who may be looking to harm you. We’re looking into a third-party security service to protect you but getting approval at a time like this is no easy task.”

“That’s really quite alright. I don’t leave my house much these days, and I have cameras all over my house.”

“No, it’s not, it was part of our terms and I won’t fall back on it. I can offer you an alternative, your safety is a necessity not just as part of our case against the Goda clan.” 

“An alternative?”

“Yes,” she responded, pushing a button on the black phone on her desk. “Detective Kang, can you come to my office, please?” 

Seconds after the door opened, and in walked an incredibly attractive woman with purple-dyed hair tied in a loose ponytail, dressed formally in a white shirt and gray jacket and almost as busty as Detective Kwon. She took a seat in the wooden chair next to you.

“This is the guy, Detective Kang.”

“Ah, so you’re the reason why we’re putting all these jackoffs in prison? It’s very nice to meet you,” she said, extending her hand and shaking yours gently. 

“Nice to meet you too, Detective.”

“Oh, you can just call me Hyewon,” she said with a shy smile.

“You see Detective Hyewon is the second-best detective here. She works really hard, she’ll be sure to surpass me soon.”

“That’s not likely boss. Nobody can interrogate like you can.”

Eunbi proudly smiled and quickly changed the subject. “Now, while we’re unable to offer you the protection we promised, we have an offer that’s a bit unorthodox.” 

“How so?” you said with a puzzled look. 

Hyewon spoke up. “We can’t monitor you 24/7 at this time but in lieu, I can offer you a safe place to stay.”

You furrowed an eyebrow in confusion.

“As I said, it’s a bit unorthodox but given the situation, we believe it’s a good compromise,” Eunbi said. 

“You see, I have a spare bedroom that’s just collecting dust. Equipped with the latest home automation, reinforced windows, and a 24/7 monitoring system. My house is very secure and located away from all major parts of the city.“

“That’s a generous offer but I don’t need a babysitter.” 

Eunbi laughed. “We’re not saying you do. These men are out for blood and we don’t know who might show up to confront you. Like you said you don’t get out much and Hyewon can do most of her investigative work from home. It’s a temporary solution, you shouldn’t be there for more than a month.”

“Along with my elite detective skills I spent two years in culinary school, I can cook as well as I can catch criminals,” Hyewon added nonchalantly.

“We won’t force you to live there of course, but you would be safer than at your own home.”

The two detectives looked at you, anticipating your answer. You gave it a moment to ponder over. 

“I’ll give it a shot.” 

“Thank you. Your safety is our number one priority.” 

✦✦

Moving to a new place even temporarily with someone who was a complete stranger was a bit awkward, to say the least. You only brought essential items over to Hyewon’s place, surprised by how large it was and grateful for two separate bathrooms. 

It was an understatement to say it was strange living with a beautiful woman you had just met. It took an entire week to adjust to the complicated situation, but each day that passed you both opened up little by little. It turns out Hyewon wasn’t lying, she was a fantastic cook and you had a multitude of things you shared in common. 

The first week went by quicker than expected. Awkward exchanges of quiet good mornings gradually turned into full conversations, sharing stories of being on opposing sides. 

Hyewon had plenty of tales to share of her short two year career - ranging from month-long investigations to chasing after suspects, to seeing a dead body for the first time. Hyewon shared the unexpected frustrations of being considered the prettiest woman in the station and having to prove that she wasn’t hired for just a pretty face.

After helping her clean up the intricate feast that was a most delicious breakfast, she took a seat on one of the kitchen island stools, refilling her coffee.

“I have to head into the office today to help out our team with some investigations. I’ll be working late most likely. You have both of our numbers if you need anything though, okay?”

“I’m not a puppy, I can survive one night,” you teased.

“I know, I wasn’t insinuating you were...” Hyewon replied as her awkwardness returned, her embarrassment strangely cute.

“The fridge is full of groceries but I didn’t have time to cook anything, sorry.” 

“Don’t be. I’m not that bad a cook myself, It’ll be fine. I’ll hold down the fort.”

“Okay. Call if you need anything.” 

✦✦

Hyewon’s spacious two-bedroom house felt rather lonely without her in it. You caught yourself talking a little too much to her living room virtual assistant, the eerily human voice being the only human contact you had that night meant it was time for something else. 

Heading to the fridge to grab a soda you conducted your own investigation of your own, having free rein of the house you gave every room except her bedroom a look, well decorated with light red and pinks everywhere.

After watching a couple hours of tv and making a quick meal you decided to sleep early. In the morning Eunbi wanted you to come in and sign a few affidavits and you wanted to be fully prepared for that process. 

When you woke up that morning something felt different. You didn’t quite know what time it was, but judging through the light shining through the sheer black curtains of your room it had to be at least 6 a.m. 

As you struggled to adjust to consciousness, you couldn’t help realize the obvious weight and pressure on your body. Your vision cleared, and the unmistakable purple hair snuggled against your chest belonged to a feminine figure that could only belong to one woman. Hyewon. 

While you enjoyed the comforting warmth of her body, you weren't sure what she was doing on top of you. She felt your movements and stirred awake and you were about to get your answer. 

Hyewon lifted her head off of your chest, realizing where she was but not looking any less confused. 

"Good morning?" you said, just as confused as her. 

"H-hi…” she sleepily said. “I can explain…I think..."

"Take your time," you said.

Hyewon gathered herself and laid down beside you flat on her stomach. 

"We had a late night and we didn't get much done yesterday. Our leads ended up as dead ends, so I didn't get home until around 2 am."

"Sounds rough."

"I washed up and going to my own bed seemed so lonely, and your door was open and well...your bed looked so welcoming and inviting. I only laid down for a few minutes but I guess I fell asleep and ended up on top of you and so here we are."

“Sure was an interesting way to wake up.” 

"I'm so sorry,” she said as she buried her face in her hands.

“It’s not that big of a deal, Hyewon. It’s all cleared up now so I understand. I’m just sorry I woke you.” 

"You didn't wake me. Well, part of you did but.."

She hesitated. "I felt something poking me when I was on top of you," Hyewon blushed. 

"Oh god. Now I'm the one who should be sorry."

Hyewon giggled. "Is this the famous morning wood I've heard about? There's nothing to be sorry for..."

"Have you not-" 

"Had sex before? I'm not a virgin, I've just never slept with a man before.”

“I see. Do you not like men?”

“I”m not against sleeping with men, I just haven’t had good experiences. Women are gentle and their skin is so soft and they smell amazing.”

“All of that is definitely true.” 

“I’m just picky I guess. Meanwhile, Eunbi will sleep with anyone who will put their head between her thighs.”

“I bet that’s a very long line of people.”

“It is. I was at the top of it.”

“You were?”

“She...she was my first. I’ve only slept with a few women after her, and we still fool around from time to time when work doesn’t keep us busy.” 

“And here I thought my morning wood was over.”

Hyewon blushed and covered her mouth, hiding against the mattress.

"I'm really sorry, I-" 

"There's nothing to be sorry for. It happens…” you said embarrassed. 

“I just like having someone to talk to in the morning,” Hyewon said. 

“I do too.”

“Would you be okay…” she hesitated. 

“With sharing the bed? I don’t mind.” you interrupted. “It’s plenty big for two people.”

“No I-I mean if y-you don’t want-” 

“I don’t mind at all, Hyewon.” 

Hyewon paused. “I probably snore though. And some days I’d have to get up before you do, I’d hate to wake you. “

“I’m a really heavy sleeper,” you said, trying to deflect her excuses. 

“If you really don’t mind, then I’ll sleep here too. My room does get rather lonely…”

Sharing a smile, the thought of sharing a bed with Hyewon made your sudden arrangement more enjoyable. 

“I can sleep away from you or put the pillow on the other side of the bed.”

“No, that’s not necessary. Just sleep how you always do.” 

“Okay,” you agreed, settling your agreement.  

If Hyewon snored in her sleep, you never once heard her. Keeping things casual, you told each other good night and good morning, sometimes both and sometimes neither depending on if your schedules met up. 

Hyewon’s sleep attire went from long sleeve pajamas and pants, and as she became more comfortable with the situation she herself became more comfortable and more casual. 

Ditching pajama pants for shorts, long sleeves to tank-tops, and eventually settling on oversized shirts enough to cover her up. Except for the time it didn't and you got a glimpse of her cute butt and the black pair of boyshorts underwear she didn’t know she was showing off. 

You had reached the third week of living with Hyewon, and you were as comfortable with her as being in your own skin. Sharing a bed wasn’t as complicated as you thought, although there certainly were moments where a leg brushed up against your own and vice versa. Avoiding physical contact completely was impossible though and you didn’t think much about it.

“Good morning,” Hyewon sat as she sat up, yawning widely and stretching her arms high up. You turned your head to the side to greet her. 

“Morning. Heading into work today?” you asked sleepily. 

Hyewon shook her head and messy violet hair went everywhere. “Eunbi has a bunch of interrogations scheduled, so unless she needs me for something I’m staying here.” 

“A nice relaxing morning then.” 

“Mhmm. Want breakfast?” she asked, throwing her side of the covers off and standing up, doing a quick stretching routine.

“Breakfast sounds great.” 

Lifting your head up you realized you weren’t the only thing that had woken up, gritting your teeth and laying your head back down. 

“I’ll...meet you at the table.” 

“Morning wood again?” she teased.

“Yeah...You know too much about me now.” 

 You were more than thankful the blankets weren’t thin. You waited for Hyewon to leave the room so you could make a beeline for the bathroom, but instead, you saw the wheels turning in her head. 

“Do you want me to help?” she asked as innocently as she had just asked about breakfast. You nearly choked. 

“Help…? You repeated, making sure you weren’t hearing things. 

“You’re always hard in the morning. I’ve felt it poking me in the back, and I know how annoying it must be to wake up throbbing like that.” 

“H-hyewon I-”

“It’s not a big deal,” she smiled as she threw herself at the covers. 

You still couldn’t believe it.

“I’ve jerked off a guy before. He finished in like twenty seconds so I never got to enjoy it.” 

“You’re that good, huh?”

“I’m definitely not,” she laughed. 

She tossed the covers off, leaving the sight of you pitching a tent through your boxers in plain sight. 

“You poor thing,” she said as she stared at the huge bulge poking through your underwear.      She took a breath as she grabbed the top of your boxers and slowly pulled them down, revealing your needy cock that throbbed as it was released. 

Her eyes went wide. “You’re really big,” she said, not wasting time as she wrapped her slim fingers around your length, forming a tight fist and began slowly stroking. 

You moaned at her touch. Her hand was cold which brought a different yet pleasurable type of sensation. “Hard like a rock,” she smiled as she continued pumping and you quickly began leaking all over her fingers. For someone inexperienced, it felt good, but you’d have to try really hard to screw up a handjob.

Hyewon looked at the clear liquid coating her fingers with a curious look.

“So much precum,” she said innocently as she licked one of her fingers clean, waiting a second to form an opinion. 

“It tastes good.” 

“The real thing tastes better.”

She blushed. Tightening her grip, she quickened her strokes as she settled on a rhythm and looked up.

“Does this feel good?” 

“It feels great.” 

Hyewon’s innocent eyes as she jerked you off was such a bold contrast. The last woman who had touched you was Eunbi, a master of teasing and anticipation. Hyewon’s straight to the point was a nice change.

“How long does it usually take?” she asked, genuinely curious. 

“To cum?” 

“Yes.” 

“It depends on a lot of things. Who’s doing it, what they’re doing, how they’re doing it…”

“Am I not doing a good job? You didn’t cum yet,” she said, feeling concerned.

“No, you’re doing great. There’s not a lot of stimulation with a handjob, so unless you really know what you’re doing it’s gonna take a while.”

“Anything I can do to make it feel better?” 

“Do you have any lube?” Hyewon shook her head disappointed.

“That’s fine. You can spit on it.” 

Hyewon listened and did as told, letting saliva drip out of her mouth she spat multiple times on your cock. The friction felt better instantly. 

“Anything else?” 

You were already at this point, might as well up the ante.

“You could uh. Take your shirt off?” You said, testing her reaction. You waited nervously. 

Hyewon thankfully didn’t seem to mind. She grabbed the hem of her large black overshirt and lifted it over her head. There wasn’t a bra on underneath to cover up her pale chest. She had the same pair of underwear you had seen that one time. Her breasts were big, not as big as Eunbi, but still sizable and the perfect shape with perfect pink nipples. Her stomach was toned and tight, Hyewon’s body was downright delicious. 

“Holy shit.” 

Hyewon smiled. “You like my body?” 

“I do, you're pretty hot, Hyewon."

She smiled and kept stroking and you couldn’t peel your eyes off her delicious tits. So large and round, you wanted to dive in immediately but didn't want to get greedy. 

After just a few minutes you felt your abdomen tightening, subconsciously fucking into Hyewon’s fist, drooling at her newly exposed tits. 

“Fuck, I’m close,” you moaned, leaking even more.

“You’re going to cum?” 

“Y-yes,” you replied. 

Hyewon gripped harder and stroked fasted, encouraging your release with her eyes focused on your cock, anticipating your release. You were almost there, staring at her beautiful tits bouncing in time with her strokes, waiting for your climax to arrive. With a forceful grunt, you exploded in her hand, hips jerking and groaning loudly as you released and coated her fingers with your hot seed. She kept pumping until you were drained, keeping notice of your sensitivity as she winded down her movements to a halt. 

She looked on in surprise as her fingers were covered in your stickiness. She grabbed a tissue to clean herself off, but not without giving one of her messy fingers a sample. 

“You’re right, the real thing does taste better.” she smiled. “Now let’s get some food in us.” 

✦✦

There was a surprising lack of awkwardness around the table as Hyewon served breakfast. Scrambled eggs, both sausage, and bacon cooked to perfection as per your request. She knew you needed a little extra energy after draining your stamina. 

“How is the case proceeding? Any closer?” you asked, not wanting the conversation to steer towards what had just happened. 

“Things are complicated. We’re finding it harder to apprehend the suspects we need, they’re on the move constantly. They know we’re onto them but we don’t have the resources to send more teams.” 

“They own so many businesses they could practically hide anywhere in the city, sadly,” you said.

“This is so frustrating,” she said. “But we have to move forward, taking any steps we can. I’m going to be spending a lot of time at the office next week.” 

“I’ll take care of the house, it’ll be in tiptop shape.” 

Hyewon nodded. “You’ll also have to take care of morning wood on your own, mister,” she teased.

“Back to the old ways then,” you sadly said.

Hyewon paused as she finished her eggs, chewing carefully as she formed a thought. 

“I feel bad. Although, you know I kind of liked it.”

“Liked what?”

“I... liked jerking you off. Feeling how hard you were, hearing you moan when I touched you. I felt something...seeing you throbbing when I made you cum.” 

Hyewon’s typical blank expression morphed into a deadly smirk. 

“I can see why Eunbi likes her job so much. That feeling of control is just...intoxicating.” 

“Do you like taking control, Hyewon?” you asked. 

“In my job absolutely not. But in the bedroom...I don’t know yet. Maybe.” 

“We’ll have to do some investigating then.” 

“Guess we will.” 

✦✦

 You didn't see much of Hyewon that week as expected. Your sleep schedules never synced and you ended up fast asleep alone before her, usually waking up to an empty bed. 

"Long day?" 

"Long week."

Hyewon didn't follow up on the conversation that night, drifting away to sleep. Over the weeks of becoming familiar with each other, you had gotten closer with Hyewon, both figuratively and literally. There was something that was never spoken about but you often woke up with an arm or leg draped over your body, or her chest pinned to your back. You certainly didn't mind the welcome intimacy. 

During a rather peaceful sleep, you felt something jolt you up. 

"Were you asleep?" she asked. 

"No, I wasn't," you lied. 

"I can't sleep," she frowned. 

"Too much on your mind?

"I guess. What do you do when you can't sleep?"

"I lay there for a few minutes and try to relax. If it doesn't work warm milk usually does the trick," you said. 

"We're out of milk," she pouted. "Any other ideas?" 

"Honestly when I really can't sleep I just jerk off. Puts me out like a light."

Hyewon felt her cheeks flushed as she hid her head in her hands. 

"I can leave the room if you want..." you said. 

"What for?" 

"So you can…you know."

"Touch myself?” She said innocently. “I've never given myself an orgasm. I just let Eunbi do everything for me."

"I see," you said as you formed an idea. 

"Can't you just do what Eunbi does to yourself?" 

"I don't think it would be the same."

"Well, I'm out of ideas then. Unless you want to call her in the middle of the night."

"She'd kill me."

Hyewon huffed in frustration. You were fresh out of ideas and sympathized with her. Looking over her it was kind of cute how frustrated she was, bundled up neck-deep under the covers as she watched the ceiling fan, trying to do anything to fall back asleep.

She turned onto her side, her doe eyes facing you. “Can you help me?” 

“Help you what?” 

“Help me fall asleep…”

“How do you want me to do that?”

“Ah, don’t make me say it.” 

You smiled. “Do you want me to give you an orgasm, Hyewon?”

“Y-yes... If you don’t mind...” 

“Not at all.” 

You threw the covers and sat up, making your way to her position. Hyewon had on a black cotton t-shirt which you lifted up enough to see her hips. Her underwear was pink and lacy, covering up just enough of her skin to still be sexy enough. 

“Can I take these off?” you asked. She nodded and lifted her butt. You grabbed the top of her cute underwear and began to slowly pull it off her hips, peeling it off her body and down her smooth long legs.

Hyewon nervously kept her legs locked together, but after seeking her approval you spread her thighs and revealed her beautiful pink pussy. Kissing up her inner thighs you heard her gasp as your lips made contact with her soft warm skin. 

“Your body is so amazing,” you said as you planted more wet kisses on her pale thighs. 

“T-thank you. It’s not as nice as Eunbi, I wish I had her figure,” she said sadly.”

“It’s not a competition. I’m sure you have things Eunbi is jealous of.” 

“I-I guess so.” 

Not wanting her to be down on herself anymore you interrupted her and licked up and down her thighs, painting them with long swipes of your tongue. She whimpered. 

“O-oh, fuck…” 

Making your way in between them, you kissed her center before running a finger through her folds, watching the way she looked.

“You’re wet.” 

“I-I can’t help it...” 

You started warming her up by licking up her pink slit, giving yourself the first taste of her pussy, and inhaling her aroma. You explored her folds with your tongue, cleaning off her juices until you reached her clit. You blew a puff of hot air against it and she whined. 

“You have such a pretty pussy,” you said, and before she could respond you swirled around her hardened clit, running circular patterns along it before taking it into your mouth and sucking.

“Ahh!” she moaned. You continued to eat her out, tasting her juices and licking everything up as her warm thighs wrapped around your head. 

Buried against her crotch you went wild, tasting all of Hyewon’s delicious sensitive pussy, suckling on her clit wildly as she squirmed and moaned. 

“Fuck, you’re so good at that. No wonder Eunbi likes you.”

You kept the pressure on her clit, suckling hard and you brought a finger inside her cunt, and then another, curling them and finding her spot immediately. Hyewon’s hips bucked as she moaned loud, as you licked and sucked everything that leaked out between her luscious legs, feeling her body trembling and reacting to everything you did. 

“Oh god, oh god! I’m going to cum!”

Looking up straight at her buried in between her heavenly thighs, you licked and sucked up her clit, and Hyewon came almost right away, making a mess on your face. 

Slowly removing yourself from her pussy and licking your lips, helping her ride out her orgasm, caressing her thighs as she came down from her high, panting, and still seeing stars. 

“Hol- wow. You’re really good with your mouth.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep now?”

“I will...but I don’t want you to go without returning the favor.”

“I’ll be fine,” you said. 

“You made me feel so good though, I just want to do the same,” Hyewon protested

“I don’t want to keep you up.” 

“You won’t.” 

“I can just go jerk off in the bathroom, it’s no big deal.”

“You don’t need to do that. After what you just did for me I want to help you too,” she said.

“Besides, I’m already half-naked,” she said as she pulled her shirt off, letting you see her wonderful full breasts for the second time. 

“Now I’m fully naked.” 

You felt the throbbing in your crotch as your eyes focused on every inch of her body. 

“You don’t have to get naked to give me a handjob.” 

“A handjob? You deserve much more than a handjob.” 

“What do you have in mind?” 

“I want us to both be tired at the end of this,” she smirked. 

You had established Hyewon as the innocent and naive type, and while you were mostly spot-on seeing this side of her changed that. 

Hyewon gestured for you to lay down and you took her former position, adjusting the pillows to your liking. Taking a kneeling position, you spread your legs for her, the anticipation high already.

She lingered there for a moment. Her face stayed blank, the same way it had the first time you met her. It gave you the chance to admire her face, her pretty brown eyes, her cute nose, and cherry red lips, lips that you didn’t realize were so plump and kissable. 

“Are you going to keep your shirt on? It’s only fair I see you naked too isn’t it?” she asked. 

She had a point. Grabbing the collar of your shirt, you lifted it over your head and tossed it off the bed, 

“Now we’re talking,” she said, biting her lip. “You have a really nice body as well.” 

Staring just a little longer than you expected, Hyewon’s view went to your crotch. 

“What do you want me to do?” she asked. 

“You’ve never given a blowjob before?” 

She shook her head disappointingly. “Jerking off that one guy is the only experience I’ve had with men. And now, you.” 

“Just do what you did that one morning, but add your tongue and lips. Be careful with your teeth though.” 

She nodded in acknowledgment. “I've seen porn. Just suck it right? Like a popsicle?”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “There’s more to it than that, but yeah.”

“What do I do to get you hard?” she asked. 

“Well, I’m halfway there, just rub it through my boxers.” 

She followed your instructions, using her hands to create friction through your crotch awkwardly. It was cute how clueless she was about this. 

Hyewon’s eyes opened wider and within a matter of seconds before a bulge had formed.

“That didn’t take long,” she smiled and knew how to do the rest. Tugging your boxers down, she left you in the same state of undress as her, your cock twitching as it was freed to meet her. 

She did the same thing she did before, albeit with more confidence this time, wrapping her cold hand around your shaft and keeping a tight grip. Using smooth movements she stroked slowly, the now-familiar pumping motions becoming more natural. 

Using the earlier example a bit too literal, licking up and down one side of your shaft like it was an actual popsicle. It looked awkward but didn’t stop from feeling good. She did this on all sides, and you directed her to move her tongue lower, helping her figure it out one step at a time. 

“You’re getting it,” you praised her, as she continued lathering up your shaft. 

“Go lower,” you told her and she got the message, licking your balls with shallow swipes of her tongue, causing you to groan. 

“They’re sensitive right?” she asked. 

“Very, so you have to be careful,” you replied. Hyewon nodded cutely.

“Put your lips around the tip, start out gently. That’s the part that feels the best.” 

Licking a little more she traveled up until her mouth found the tip of your cock, eyeing your length. When she was ready she licked her lips and wrapped them around your swollen tip, hollowing her cheeks as she started sucking gently. You let out a deep breath and a moan immediately, the softness of her plump lips indescribable as they surrounded your cock. 

“Like this?” She asked as she carefully sucked, trying to keep her teeth out of the way as she drew out your pleasure. 

“Yes, that’s perfect. Feels so good already.” 

Feeling proud, Hyewon took more inside her mouth, almost reaching the middle of your shaft as she activated her gag reflex. 

“Don’t take it all at once,” you warned. She looked so damn pretty giving you head. Innocent Hyewon with her lips all over your dick, it was a wonderful sight, even the first few inches inside her mouth felt absolute heaven. She got used to it little by little, knowing where her limits were as she bobbed her head up and down, keeping her eyes dead centered on you. 

“Your lips feel amazing. You’re a natural at this,” you praised, the warmth of her wet mouth driving you insane. Maybe it was the porn videos, or maybe she just had a gifted talent, but what she was doing to you felt so fucking good. Her lips were perfect for giving head, their plumpness sucking the life out of your cock as her throat made loud slurping sounds, infinity pleasing to your ears. 

“You can use your tongue too,” you suggested, and after a moment you felt her wet tongue splashing against your underside, causing even more pleasure.

“Fuck.” 

You leaned back against the pillows, closing your eyes and listening to Hyewon’s mouth slurping your dick, her warm lips doing their work. You’d have to train her to deepthroat at some point, but if she was already this good at sucking you off you were in for a treat. 

Hyewon took you rather deep, gagging herself a few times before pulling her mouth off and stopped, stroking your length. 

“You okay?” you asked.

“Mhm. I don’t want you to cum yet.”

She had a determined look in her eyes and you could tell she wasn’t ready for things to end. 

“I want us to feel good. At the same time,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’ve never felt a dick inside me. That changes tonight,” she said, growing more confident. 

“Not even a toy?” 

“No. Eunbi doesn’t want to use them, she thinks I’m not ready yet. But I am.” 

“If you say you’re ready then you’re ready.” 

“I am.” 

With her expression determined she and straddled your lap, giving you even more time to stare at her naked body. 

With her warm thighs on each side of your waist, Hyewon grabbed hold of your cock and lined it up with her entrance. Her pussy was so pink, just as pretty as she was and plenty wet. She carefully lifted herself up, and with very delicate movements she lowered herself onto your cock, both of you gasping as she was penetrated for the very first time. 

“Shit,” she moaned, the new sensations so overwhelming to her. 

“Take your time,” you said, watching carefully and caressing her thighs. She sank down a little deeper, gritting her teeth as a mixture of pain and pleasure hit her all at once. Her pussy squeezed your shaft tight, almost painfully so even guided by her intense wetness. 

“How’s it feel?” you asked. She looked unsure.

“I-I don’t know yet.” 

Hyewon moved her hips back up until she was almost empty, moving back down and you watched as the tip of your cock disappeared inside.

Giving her time to adjust, you let her do everything, only taking you as deep as she felt comfortable with. 

“You’re so fucking big. I feel so stretched already,” 

“So tight, Hyewon. You feel amazing.” 

“That’s good right?” she asked. 

“Yes. You’re even tighter than Eunbi,” you admitted, not that you would tell anyone else that. 

Hyewon braced herself by holding on to your chest, carefully trying to position herself. Once she slowly adjusted, her hips began moving, and she began riding you. 

“So damn big,” she repeated. “Eunbi must love this.” 

She moved slowly at first, hips gently moving up and down, letting herself feel that intoxicating stretch. The pain had subsided and she only felt pleasure, moaning softly already. Her walls tightened more and more as she took you deeper inside her, leaving a trail of slick covering your cock to aid in penetration. 

“You feel really good inside me,” she said, at first not letting more than half of your shaft inside her pussy, trying to control her breathing. 

Hyewon carefully found a rhythm, riding with a slow but constant pace, her tits gently bouncing with every movement. You couldn’t stop staring, mesmerized by the way they jiggled, adding to your arousal. 

“You really like my tits don’t you?” she asked.

“Of course. They’re perfect.” 

“You can touch them if you want,” she said. 

“Oh I’ll do more than just touch,” you replied, and she beamed, giving the go-ahead. Running your hands up her tight body and feeling her soft pale skin you grabbed a handful of them, groping them as you felt her tight pussy lips squeezing your cock. You didn’t need to compare them to anyone else, they were perfect as is - soft, heavy, and delicious. 

She rode a little faster, moaning louder as you buried yourself in her scrumptious tits, sucking on her tits and feasting on them, being careful to not overstimulate Hyewon. 

“You’re so wet, Hyewon,” you said, watching her slowly fall apart. She replied in groans and moans, taking as much inside as she could, relaxing herself.  

“I’m going to feel this in the morning,” she said, lips curling as she pushed herself all the way down, impaling her pussy to the hilt. 

“Oh god!” she moaned as she bounced up and down, riding faster with all of you inside her tight cunt. You wanted to feel all of her body, wandering your hands around her delicate soft skin as you settled on her ass. Plump and tight, you squeezed it, still letting her do the work. 

“Fuck, oh fuck! I think I’m going to cum!” 

“Then cum for me, Hyewon.’

“I-I will!” she said, louder than expected. Bouncing her ass on your cock she leaned backward, supporting herself on your thighs as she exerted more energy in her hips. 

“Oh fuck yes, I’m gon-” 

Not even able to finish her sentence, her body lost control as she came violently, rolling her hips as her tight pussy pulsated around your cock and you felt a wave of juices drowning your cock. Her pace slows down significantly, trying to ride out the first orgasm she’s had that wasn’t a woman's fingers or tongue and the pleasure is so intoxicating to her that she might pass out. 

“H-holy shit,” she said, as she looked up for the first time in several seconds, almost embarrassed by how loud she was. Her eyes were fully glazed over after her orgasm and her pussy felt even tighter and wet around you, but she had just enough strength to keep her hips moving. 

“You need to cum too,” she said, regaining her senses as her whole body leaned forward, pressing herself against your body and you unexpectedly felt her soft lips against yours. 

“That’s for making me feel so good,” she smiled, running a hand through her hands, returning to her past pace.

“Now I want this pussy to return the favor.” 

With a tired gaze on her face, she bounced again on your cock as you kept your hands around her waist, feeling the sweat misting across her perfect skin. You wanted to freeze the moment in time. The way she moaned with every thrust with that pretty voice, how wet and tight she was, the way her supple breasts bounced deliciously, it was all incredibly arousing and yet too much at the same time. 

“I’m gonna cum too,” you blurted out, words becoming difficult to use. Her eyes lit up. 

“Good. I wanna see how much you can fill me up.” 

Her lewd words and the way her wet pink flesh squeezed your cock made it impossible to hold on, giving a few more thrusts as you buried yourself in Hyewon’s tight pussy. Lustfully staring into each other's eyes, you throbbed inside her and groaned her name loudly as you began filling her hole up, shaking as you emptied wave after wave of plentiful thick seed deep into her cunt. 

Once her tight pussy milked you of everything, giving Hyewon every last drop she collapsed on top of you, the warmth of her hot sweaty body and her weight comforting yours. 

“It’s so warm,” she said, gasping and panting in your ears. She rested there for what felt like hours as you both tried to breathe normally again. Heaving panting filling the room as Hyewon used your chest for leverage and gingerly lifted herself off of your cock, decoupling your tangled bodies. 

You watched together as the mess you left inside her slowly leaked out of her pussy, a steady thick stream of hot cum the was the evidence of the intense pleasure she had given you, dripping down her thighs and splashing against the bedsheets. 

Hyewon’s chest is still heaving, her purple hair out of place as she tried to catch a deep breath. She looked at your depleted cock and the combined juices still left on it and instinctively grabbed and took it back into her mouth, sliding it down her mouth as much as she could to clean it off, before using her tongue to do the rest.

“I’m going to need to taste a lot more of this.” 

With her stamina used up, she crashed, her skin kissing yours as her wonderful breasts pressed against your chest as if she were using your body as a pillow. 

“That was amazing.” 

“Are you okay? You rode my dick so well.” 

“I...I’m good. I could use a shower, but I can barely move.”

 “Probably be worse in the morning.” 

“Then I’ll deal with it in the morning,” she said. Her final words before she drifted off, tired, her naked body still rested on yours. It wouldn’t take before you followed, sharing one of the most peaceful nights in some time. 

You woke up restful and full of energy for once, Hyewon was surprised to see you wake up a few minutes after she did. 

“You’re up! Good morning,” she sweetly said.

“Good morning, “ you replied. 

“Sorry if I snored.”

“I didn’t hear you if you did.”

“Are you heading into the office?” 

“Yes. There’s been a big break and we have the advantage for once. Eunbi needs the whole team to be there.” 

“Want breakfast?” she asked, not bothering to put on pants yet.

“I do, but I have everything I need to eat right in front of me,” you boldly said.

Hyewon blushed. “You’re feisty this morning.” 

“When do you have to be there?” 

“In about an hour.”

“An hour is a lot of time,” you said.

“I know that look…”

"I don't know what you mean by that." 

"I'm sure you don’t…" she said as she plopped on the bed on her stomach, bare feet up in the air. 

“I wouldn’t mind one for the road. It’d keep me in a good mood all day.”

“Don’t want you to be late though.” 

“I do have to still shower and get ready, but I’m sure Eunbi won’t mind if I'm a few minutes late...”

“We’d save some time if we just went straight for the shower.” 

Hyewon looked flustered.

“And water,” you added. 

Hyewon pondered, sitting up. “My shower is rather big, so you’ve sold me,” she said, removing what little clothes she had left on and gestured to you to follow her, not that you needed any instructions to. 

She liked the water as hot as it would go. Her body was beautiful naked, but as water flowed down her chest and onto her flushed skin, matting her dyed hair to her gorgeous features. it enhanced her naked body even more. Hyewon came on your cock as you fucked her from behind and pressed her against the cold shower tile and she finished you off on her tits, carefully away from the water to make sure you got a chance to savor your handiwork. 

Drying her hair off and deciding on what to wear, Hyewon’s phone rang. 

“Detective Kang speaking.” 

“Yes, boss. He’s right here.” 

“Understood. We’ll both be there.”

Tossing her phone onto the bed she took a seat and finished dressing as you waited for her explanation. 

“We’ve made an arrest on one of the Goda clan’s lieutenants and we have a potential lead on the patriarch. Eunbi wants you to be there to give any assistance and make sure he doesn’t escape.” 

“Why me?” 

“You know the way they operated and any potential backdoors they might exploit. We’re looking for any and every advantage we can use. Your knowledge of their operations will be a powerful ally at this point.” 

“I’ll do what I can, I can’t promise I’ll be useful.” 

“That’s all we’re asking. Now let’s get going, I’ll let Eunbi know we’re on the way.” 

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “Angel Wings.”

Setting up for some other stuff really quick, don’t worry I am going to finish the krill arc, I just needed to jump away from it really quick. Hope you enjoy today’s story :)

“I am not willing to take unnecessary risks.”

“We don’t have enough men to cover all that area.”

“We will do what has to be done.”

“With all due respect, Admiral, do you understand how big space is?” There was a silence in the room, twenty or so men and women stood around a large dark table. All around them on the walls light up star maps and ship configurations glowed blue in the dim holographic light. On the table before them a star map had been laid out casting shadows upon the faces of men and women.

Admiral Vir was sitting partially facing admiral Massie who was half standing, his heavy frame leaning palms flat against the table.

The two stared very intensely  at each other, the older man trying to dominate the younger with the sheer intensity of his presence. It was rather unfortunate for him that after two years of almost continual active service in space, Admiral vir was used to being stared down by Adaptids, Starborn, Drev warriors, and --on occasion-- space dragons, so this rather portly man in a funny hat was unlikely to get a rise out of him.

“You better watch your tone, boy.” The man hissed quietly

Admiral Vir looked back at him unblinking, “This is the 41st century Admiral, and that superiority bullshit isn’t going to stack up to experience, so I will watch my tone when you sit down and realize that what you are suggesting, not only puts our entire fleet, and all of the fleets of the GA at risk, but it's also based on outdated military naval strategy from a thousand years ago that does not take into consideration that space is, in fact, three dimensional.”

The men and women about the table shifted awkwardly in their seats, unsure how to proceed.

To some degree superiority DID fly, especially within the Office of Galactic Intelligence, where Admiral Massie was head officer, but out there, among the stars, where Admiral Vir had spent nearly 90% of his career, the ability to question your superiors could be a matter of life and death.

In the end it was Admiral Kelly, a strong political supporter of Admiral Vir, and his long time ally who leaned forward in her seat, “I think Admiral Vir does have a point. He is, after all our resident expert in galactic warfare.” She looked around the table, “I don’t see anyone else here who has been involved in a pitched space battled?”

There was murmuring and the shuffling of feet.

She Adjusted her cup of coffee lightly where it sat on the desk, “In fact the only person here who has ever flown a ship, being me, would have no idea how to go about galactic combat, so Admiral Vir, please proceed.”

Admiral Vir stood and nodded to Kelly before taking his stand at the head of the table.

“As I was saying earlier, putting warp gates too far out near the border of the system is inadvisable and extremely risky. Even if those warp gates were to be accessed through a security code on the ship itself, I wouldn’t trust that someone wouldn’t be able to hack them. Which is why I suggest keeping the warp gates towards the center of the GA system, but not near planets themselves. There are only a few ships galaxy wide that can approach a planet unknown and unseen, those being the major command vessels used with most GA species. All other ships would require access to a warp gate, or be forced to do multiple warps before reaching the system giving viewers enough time to ready for an attack. My suggestion is, instead of trying to protect the entire GA system, we make hub nexuses around the most important sites, planets, colonies, stations, and warp gates. Then we station smaller military vessels around those areas to keep enemies out. If we were trying to cover the entire area, the only people who might be able to show up in time to defend against an entire arriving fleet are myself and a select few others. If that were to happen we might be completely taken out in one fell swoop. No, better to reinforce likely areas of attack, defend and use the warp gates for what really matters, and allow ships like mine to free float and provide support when needed.”

There was silence about the room as the other men and women nodded.

Admiral Massie glowered at him from the other side of the table.

Admiral Vir ignored him.

He played politics, but only so far as not playing was playing. He wasn’t looking to move up in the ranks, and he wasn’t looking to make enemies. Everyone in UNSC command knew and understood that he had only one goal, and that was to keep his people alive and well. While his unsheathed interactions with some of the other Admirals made him unpopular, particularly within the ranks of some of the older generations, it was hard to deny that he did his job well.

Then again he and Admiral Massie had been at each other’s throats since the start of Vir’s command.

Massie was a planetary isolationist and had opposed joining the GA since the beginning, while Admiral Vir was a staunch supporter of intergalactic cooperation and alliance. Admiral Massie was under the impression that Admiral Vir had romanticised the idea of extraterrestrial life to the detriment of earth itself, and Admiral Vir thought Admiral Massie was a pompous jack-off with more interest in his political career than he was in the lives of his men.

Both of them may have been right to a certain degree.

Either way the other admirals, while being somewhere middling on the spectrum, tended to lean towards agreeing with Admiral Vir when it came to discussions about planetary defence. He was, after all, the only one with personal experience in the area, and they didn’t really have time for Massie and his superiority complex.

It was for many of these reasons, that their meeting eventually steered itself towards a discussion on isolationism versus GA involvement.

“It isn’t our job to deal with THEIR problems. We lose trillions of dollars every year to the defence of alien species, and for what? What can they do for us that we cannot do for yourself as a much lower cost.”

“If it weren’t for our intervention, Admiral, the entire GA system would be overrun with Burg, and we would be next.” Admiral Vir cut in gently pounding his fist against the table for emphasis.

“Not if we fortify our own strongholds.” The man continued to argue.

Admiral Vir felt his skin going hot under the collar, but took a deep breath to calm himself, “You forget about the over ten human colonies that exist within GA airspace. This may have been an argument two years ago, but with those colonies in existence as of now, we cannot abandon them for an isolationist principle. Furthermore, we need the cooperation of the GA in order to buy and sell the materials needed to keep the economies of those colonies running. Without them we don’t have the resources, the time or the labor to be isolationists.” He relaxed back into his seat and allowed the other Admirals to jump in with their two cents.

He would have liked to stay quiet and just listen, buthe found he was actually a poor hand at keeping his mouth shut when someone was saying things that could be potentially harmful to the good of humanity.

He was only partially paying attention when a soft voice came in over his shoulder, “Admiral.”

He turned to look, finding a smartly dressed young lieutenant waiting at his side.

“The UN President is almost done with her address, and you’re up next.”

He nodded and took to his feet quietly excusing himself from the table as he followed her down the hallway. The automated catwalk whirred to life, and the two of them stood next to each other as they were carried off down the long hallway. On either side of them rain slashed against the windows in great sheets. The sky overhead was dark and overcast,and the green of the lawn was soaked in great frothing puddles.

He reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out his note cars glancing them over once more before putting them back in his pocket.

At the end of the catwalk two marines were waiting for him.

Ramirez grinned at him and Maverick raised an eyebrow as he stepped off the catwalk, “That’s a lovely expression.:” Maverick commented, “Are the Admirals not playing nice.”

He snorted slightly, “Most of them, but there are a few who just don’t seem to understand how space works, but I guess thant can be expected when you spend your entire career behind a desk.”

The two Marines nodded and fell into step beside him as he made his way towards the outer lawn where the press conferences were being held. A massive black tent had been erected just outside on the lawn, and the sky overhead was soon to grow dark. In the distance he could see the glowing neon of advertising signs hovering over the highway. Those same bright neon lights lit up the tent itself, and projected inflated pictures of the UN President onto the walls as she spoke.

Secret Service agents milled about on the lawn in the rain their jackets soaked and spitting water in a glistening halo of white. Even from here he could see the little strips of clear white tubing that marked their earpieces.

“A shit day to give an address.” He muttered as he was led towards the back entrance, taking a seat by the door as they waited for the president to finish. Rain continued to drum loudly on the tent and the windows at his side. The door was slightly cracked open, so he could just hear the sound of her voice over the pouring rain.

Off on the other side of the room Maverick was watching the address on her implant through her eyes were glazed with boredom.

Ramirez didn’t even pretend to pay attention and was, instead playing holographic paddle ball on his device.

Admiral Vir smiled a little and shook his head at the antics of some of his favorite marines before pulling out his notecards again and giving them a once over. This was becoming more common as his position became more and more political. When he was younger he would have balked at the idea of getting involved in politics, but somehow he had found himself to be the lynchpin holding intergalactic relations together, which turned out to be a very political position to have.

As it seemed his enthusiasm for joining the GA was not shared by everyone, and if if wasn’t for his popularity, and ability to hold their enemies at bay, talks and interaction with the GA might not have gone nearly as far as they had. The thought that he might be the only thing holding intergalactic relations together was nauseating. He was sure that wasn’t entirely the case, by now people understood that in order to have colonies, they had to have cooperation, but that didn’t mean he still wasn’t an important part of all this.

It was his fault after all, and he would probably be blamed if things went south.

Outside cheering rose up, and he lifted his head and stood as the UN president was ushered back inside on a wave of applause.

Most of the secret service agents went with her, but security still stayed behind as he stepped past her and up to the lectern. WHen he had said tent earlier, he had not fully grasped the size of the place. It might as well have been an indoor auditorium with places to sit at the back and large projection screens.

A dim blue light fell over him from the side, and he tried not to look at how own awkward figure as he appeared on screen. Cameras flashed below him as reporters vied for the front seat. He set his notecards on the lectern  and began to speak.

His heart hammered and his leg wobbled nervously, but that was common for him these days.

He was a decent public speaker, or was becoming proficient, but that still didn’t stop his nerves.

“The GA has asked me to take the time and announce that they have begun peace talks with the Lumin and the alien species known as the Mikes, who contacted us through long distance laser transmission just last week. The conferences will be held on the GA hub, and life updates will be broadcast to the GA website for the duration of those talks. As someone who has been active on the intergalactic stage since the beginning, I urge you all to-” His eyes drifted over the crowd as he continued with his speech, discussing the importance of voting for their representatives as a new election period was coming up. He stressed also the importance of a couple of economic bills which might strengthen their political report with the Tesraki. He had practiced this speech hundreds of times, and so the words flowed from his mouth with no real issue as he stared down into the crowd. He scanned his eyes over their faces, some of them smiling, some of them concentrated, and others downright annoyed with the words coming from his mouth.

He would have estimated that the ratio of pleased to displeased was three to one, though that percentage was still pretty high 33.3% wasn’t nothing.

He continued to scan the crowd eyes trailing up and towards the center of the crowd where a strange sort of commotion had started. The people parted, and as they did it was like watching a dog run through a field of grass where the stocks began to bend sideways under their weight.

His eyes tracked down to the source of the disruption even as he was speaking.

And found a figure dressed in a heavy black raincoat, face covered.

His voice was just beginning to trail off as the man or woman lifted their head and raised their arm.

Water dripped from the ceramic barrel, and the screaming began just as a loud CRACK erupted in the room.

And then he was plowed into the ground by what felt to be a speeding freight train. THe wind was knocked out of him as he landed on his back. His ears erupted into squealing static which drowned out the sound of secret service men running into the crowd and people screaming. The muzzle flash had left spots in his vision.

Was he hit?

He gasped for air unable to breath for two horrible seconds as the breath came flooding back to him. When his hearing came back the chaos was almost deafening enough to leave his ears ringing again.

A figure knelt in front of him.

Someone else Dived to his side as security flooded onto the stage with them.

Maverick grabbed his shoulder, “Are you hit.”

He looked down at himself, and his pristine grey uniform looking for a spot of red.

He ran his hands over his body, “I…. I don’t think so.” But if the bullet hadn’t thrown him to the ground than what….

He looked up to see Ramirez still kneeling in front of him. He must have seen it coming and tackled Adam to the ground before the shot was fired.

But something…. Something was wrong.

Adam crawled into a kneeling position and grabbed Ramirez by the shoulders. The other man hadn’t moved.’

Frantically he began to look Ramirez over, “Ramirez! Are you hit?”

The other man raised his head and his eyes were glassy, “I….I don’t know.”

The crowd had tightened around them, and he waved security off as he looked his friend over. As he scooted forward, grabbing Ramirez by the back of his uniform, he felt something wet and sticky against his hand.

He drew back…. Only to find his hand drenched in blood.

“SHIT! SOMEONE GET A DOCTOR!”

Ramirez swayed, and Adam caught him around the shoulders gently lowering him to the ground, “Woah, just, relax alright, you’re going to be ok. HE’S BEEN SHOT!”

Ramirez grunted still staring glassily into space.

“Help me roll him.: his voice was tight and strangled, as Maverick grabbed Ramirez by the shoulder and rolled him into his side. Adam could see the blood now, a large stain on his lower mid back.

He pulled up the shirt just to see the bullet hole oozing dark red, already smearing over the other man’s tanned skin, “Shit, shit, shit, Ramirez….. ANGEL!”

Angel grunted, “If you wanted my shirt off, you could have just asked nicely.”

“Is he going into shock?”

“I dont know I’m not a fucking doctor. Just keep him awake. Keep him talking!”

Adam ripped off his uniform jacket, wadding it into a tight ball which he pressed against the oozing wound. Maverick had pulled off her jacket and rolled it under Ramirez’s head. He groaned in pain as Adam applied pressure.

“It's alright, buddy, you're going to be alright, just hang in there.”

“That looks like it went through his kidney.” Maverick muttered.

“Shut up and keep him talking!”

Maverick nodded and patted Angel on the cheek, growing annoyed he wasn’t responding and then lightly slapping him. His eyes fluttered open, “Ow.”

“Stay awake damn it.”

“Bossy.” Angel muttered.

Just then a crack medical team burst through the line shooing everyone out of their way as they did. Adam backed up hands out speared with blood and as he let the professionals take over.

He listened to them talk, heard words coming out of their mouths but didn’t understand what they were saying. He was grabbed by the shoulder and urged to go inside where it was safe, but he shook them off vision fixed on his friend lolling helplessly on the ground, covered in blood.

The men and women removed  his bloodied uniform jacket and pulled a blue cylinder from somewhere. It was shoved into the wound and a button was depressed. There was a sharp hissing noise and Angel groaned in pain, though when they withdrew the cylinder he was no longer bleeding.

Adam was dragged back as men rushed forward with a stretcher transferring his injured friend onto it and hurriedly dragging him away. Adam was waylaid by the security detail that dragged him into a safe room as everyone tried to figure out what had happened.

Angel’s blood began to dry on his hands.

The shooter hadn’t gotten far, and when detained it had been pretty clear that that bullet wasn’t just meant for the marine.

It had been meant for Adam himself.

Even though he knew that was likely the truth, that revelation still came to him as a shock, and his skin grew clammy and cold with the realization.

Angel had saved his life, and taken the bullet that was meant for him.

***

This realization still haunted him hours later as he sat in the waiting room at Mercy Core Hospital heavily guarded by a crack SWAT team and a small military garrison. He stared down at his hands, at the blood that had turned brown and was now flaking off in his hands and onto the waiting room floor. Blood stained the white shirt he wore underneath, and his tie hung loose and undone around his shoulders.

The commotion of footsteps out the door and he lifted his head towards the voices. He tried to understand what they were saying but, somehow, couldn’t. He chalked it up to his brain just not functioning correctly until the door burst inward and a short dark-haired woman burst into the room followed by a grey haired older woman, and a young girl.

They looked too much like Angel to be anyone but his family, and as they walked in Adam stood sharply nearly knocking his chair over in his haste. He realized now why he couldn't’ understand them before, they were speaking Spanish.

The middling woman’s eyes fell on him instantly and she rushed forward grabbing him by the wrists, “What, what happened, what do you know, is my son ok.”

He hadn’t truly grasped what had happened until just now, and fought hard to bite back the tears as he gave her the details, “He was shot, the doctors had to bring him into surgery about an hour ago…” Her eyes went wide with horror and shock, his throat squeezed tight causing his voice to rise in pitch though he tried to fight it down.

“He...he has the best medical care you could ask for…. Our ship doctor arrived…. Arrived on scene thirty minutes ago…. He… hes the best surgeon in the-galaxy.” He could barely speak now, his throat thick as if it was stuffed with cotton.

She put her hands over her mouth and turned in a distressed circle.

His eyes fell on the older grey haired woman and her eyes pierced into him like she could read his sole like a book.

He had heard enough stories about this woman to know who she was immediately.

Angel’s Abuela, the family matriarch.

Adam shrunk under the intensity of her gaze

Mother and, what must have been Angel’s younger sister were sitting together hugging each other for comfort. Adam stood awkwardly hands at his sides not wanting to intrude on grief that was…. Not his own, grief that was, in fact, caused by him.

It was his fault.

Angel had taken that bullet for him.

He should have been in that operating room. He bit the inside of his cheek took a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling, willing the tears to absorb back into his eye.

The older woman was still watching him, and as he watched she walked over, and touched his arm gently, “What happened.” He opened his mouth to say he already told her but the expression she gave him made it pretty clear he had not given enough details, “I was giving an address to the crowd just outside UNSC headquarters. I was about halfway through when there was a disturbance in the crowd. I saw someone pull a gun, and then Angel tackled me to the floor just as it fired. We didn’t know who had been hit at first but, he…. It looked like it got him in the lower mid back….. I I tried to stop the bleeding but I… and then the paramedics came…. And I…. I…. I’m so sorry.” his voice hitched but he bit it back with gargantuan effort, “It should be me in there not him.”

He turned to look down at his feet 

But then the hand came and touched his arm again, “It wasn’t your fault, boy. That’s just our Angel.”

And with those words he couldn’t fight it back, and warm hot tears began spilling down his face and onto his shirt. His vision blurred and he could barely see, but he felt arms wrap around him patting him on the back as the old woman’s voice came softly, “There there, he’s going to be alright, our Angel is strong. He’s going to be ok.”

He didn’t try to pull away from the old woman.

Her arms were warm and comforting, and he desperately wanted to believe her.

.

[adenei]

Ch. 1 - How to Win a Witch in 10 Days

AO3 | FFN

Summary: “She’s going to find some unsuspecting wizard, get him to fall for her, and then do all the things that turn men away to get him to break things off! Won’t it be the best way to see what witches do that drives men crazy?” But what happens when the man in question is a blast from Lily Evans's past? A Jily Magical AU based on the romantic comedy "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days."

Thursday, Pt. 1

Lily Evans sits down at her desk. It’s a typical Thursday morning at the office of Witch Weekly for the ‘How To’ columnist. Parchment is strewn about everywhere due to a hasty departure the night before, but with a flick of her wand, the papers arrange themselves into neat piles. Satisfied with the restored order, she turns to her magical typewriter and the most recent article that lies next to it: How To Make the Transition from Hogwarts Graduate to Adult.

She smiles at her hard work and hopes that this time Amelia will go for her pitch. A new batch of Hogwarts students graduated last week, and this was the type of information she would have loved to have when she finished her education three years ago. Being a Muggleborn made the transition into life as an independent witch more difficult. There aren’t many resources to help young adults find their way in magical society, and even though she met with Professor McGonagall numerous times about her future, the meetings weren’t as helpful as Lily preferred.

Perhaps this is why Lily lives in a small flat in muggle London and commutes to the office via taxi or apparition to Diagon Alley every day, depending on her mood. She tucks the article safely into a desk drawer before setting about her first task of the day: coming up with new ideas for future articles. Grabbing a blank piece of parchment, Lily begins brainstorming as more how to article ideas begin flitting through her mind.

Lily always knew she wanted to be a writer. The excitement she felt after securing a job at the highly respected go-to magazine for witches was only to be rivaled with receiving her Hogwarts letter at the age of eleven. At least, that’s how she used to feel. Now, she’s stuck in a perpetual wheel of pushing out article after article on how to incorporate the newest beauty, fashion, and health trends that flow into the magical world faster than a Cornish Pixie prison break.

Lily shakes her head as she writes down another idea: How To Secure an Interview for the Job of Your Dreams. She’s sick of all the superficial fluff she’s been writing for the past two years. It’s time for something more.

“Morning!” Alice chirps as she passes Lily’s cubicle.

“Good morning!” Lily gives Alice a warm smile in return.

Alice Fortescue is one of her closest colleagues and friends at the publishing company. That’s the one perk of this job, working with some amazing people.

“Amelia called a staff meeting in thirty minutes. Have you seen Marlene?”

Lily feels as if a bludger has knocked the wind out of her. She was so preoccupied this morning that she didn’t realize her best friend of ten years wasn’t at her desk.

“No, she hasn’t shown up yet,” Lily worries.

Marlene has recently been dumped—again—and she is never one to take a break-up lightly, even if said relationship only lasted a few weeks.

Alice sighs. “I’ll get the coffee, you floo to her place?”

Lily nods and grabs her bag, following Alice toward the exit. She digs a knut out of her purse and places it into the slot before grabbing a handful of floo powder. It’s common courtesy to donate money to replace the office’s stock if you use it for anything other than transportation to or from your residence.

She tosses the powder into the fireplace and steps into the green flames, announcing Marlene’s address in a clear, firm voice. Lily prepares herself for the sensation of the ground dropping out from below her as she free falls into the imaginary slide that transports her where she needs to go. The trip is short, and within seconds she is stepping out of the fireplace into Marlene’s flat.

“Marly? You here?” Lily calls.

Her best friend tiptoes out of the kitchen, still in her dressing gown. She’s carrying a cup of tea close to her face to hide her puffy eyes.

“Oh, Marly, I’m so sorry,” Lily reaches out to comfort her friend with a hug.

Lily takes the cup of tea from her hands and steers Marlene to her bedroom. “I know how hard break-ups can be, but we’ve got a staff meeting in twenty minutes, and I’m not going to let you lose your job over another lousy guy.”

Lily doesn’t notice Marlene crawling back into bed as she busies herself with sifting through outfits in her friend’s closet.

“But what we had was special, Lil! I really thought he was different! He could have been the one!”

“How long were you seeing him?” Lily asks, trying to recall any details of Marlene’s latest fling.

“Only a week,” she pouts.

Lily freezes midway through pulling a dress from the closet. She knows this is Marlene’s M.O. but Lily still can’t help but feel frustrated.

“Marly, really—”

“Don’t! I know what you’re thinking, but he was special, I’m telling you! We even had sex and everything. It was magical. I cried…”

“You what? Marly, tell me it was just a glisten of tears,” Lily wills her friend to say it isn’t as bad as she thinks.

“Oh no, I full-on bawled,” Marlene responds, not even attempting to lie, “told him I loved him, too.”

Lily wishes her best friend is kidding but they have been friends long enough for Lily to know that she’s not. With a silent sigh, Lily switches gears. She realizes she can’t take the sympathetic route anymore. No, Marlene needs tough love. She strolls over to the bed with the outfit in hand and plops down.

“Marlene, I know you’re a hopeless romantic looking for your Prince Charming, but in order to find him, you’re going to have to put yourself together and get back out there. You’re not going to find him wallowing in bed all day. Now come on, you’ve got fifteen minutes to get dressed so we can get to work and not piss off Amelia. Alice is out getting coffee right now.”

Lily yanks back the bedspread, forcing Marlene to get up, albeit begrudgingly.

There, one potential crisis averted for the day.

Ten minutes later, Lily floos back to the office after ensuring Marlene goes first. They run into Alice on their way back to their desks, and there’s just enough time for Alice to dole out the coffees before grabbing their notes and heading down the hall to their boss’s extravagant office.

Amelia Bones is the no-nonsense editor-in-chief of Witch Weekly, who is well respected by her staff. Her office is spacious yet welcoming and not at all like what one might expect. Where a conference table and chairs should be, Amelia has sofas and squashy chairs, similar to the Gryffindor common room. When the writers meet to go over stories for upcoming publications, they gather there. The three girls barely make it in time, taking their seats on the sofa nearest Ms. Bones. It’s the only empty spot left.

Amelia clears her throat. It’s all she needs to do to command the attention of her staff. “Alright, let’s get started everyone. We need to go over assignments for the July issue. Dorcas, what are you thinking this month?”

Dorcas, the office suck-up, bounces up and down in her seat as she lays out her laundry list of articles. “I’ve got an exposé on gilly water with an exclusive interview from a mermaid who says it will help keep you thin, but I haven’t come up with a title yet. And Traveling by Portkey: What to Pack and Not to Pack. Then, I’ve also got an interview set up with Madam Malkin, who details the latest robe trends. Oh! And I almost forgot about my outline of A Look Into a Day in the Life of The Hobgoblins!”

Lily needs to remember to keep her face passive as Dorcas prattles on. Does she do anything besides work? Who has time for four articles? She has to suppress the eye roll that’s threatening when she catches Alice’s glance. It’s evident her friend is sharing the same thoughts.

“Wonderful, wonderful. Lily, what’s our resident How To girl have in store for us this month?”

Here goes nothing…

“Well, actually, I’ve been working on this piece that I think will be a great spin on the How To article. It’s about helping recent Hogwarts graduates find their footing after they finish their seventh year.”

She gauges the room for reception and notices blank stares coming from the entire writing team. Fighting to keep her facial expression passive, Lily chances a glance at her boss, whose opinion is the one that matters most. There’s an uncomfortable churn in her stomach as a result.

Amelia clicks her tongue in a disapproving tone. “Lily, Lily, Lily. How many times do I have to tell you that most of our clientele are in their twenties and thirties? No one is going to want to read something like that! That’s what they have parents and families for! Besides, aren’t the Hogwarts professors supposed to help the young ones with their career choices? That’s not our wheelhouse.”

“But—”

Lily wants to bring up the Muggleborn perspective, but Amelia doesn’t give her the chance.

“Lily, your job is to write the How To column for Witch Weekly, not to help recent grads find their place in this world. I hired you to write fun, upbeat stories that will help witches in all aspects of their lives, and that is what I expect.” Lily’s shoulders droop in disappointment as Amelia wastes no time moving on to her next victim. “Marlene?”

“Oh, um, I—I’m still thinking—” Marlene stutters.

Lily notices Amelia’s hard stare and speaks up on her friend’s behalf.

“Amelia, Marlene’s going through a rough time right now. She got dumped.”

“Oh, no. I’m so sorry, Marlene,” Amelia sympathizes as the rest of the group murmurs their respects to her unfortunate news.

Marlene grimaces as she explains, “Yes, I’m sorry, Amelia. I’ve been taking things a bit hard and haven’t really been eating. It’s just hard to move on when I thought he was—” she hiccups and Lily can tell she’s stifling a sob, “the one.”

“Hmm, yes, that is a predicament, isn’t it?” Amelia agrees before perking up. “Write about it.”

“What?”

“You can make an article out of that, can’t you?” Amelia asks the question as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“N-no! I can’t write about my personal life!” Marlene argues.

“If she won’t, I will,” Dorcas chimes in. She sounds too eager at the prospect of taking on a fifth article.

Amelia’s eyebrows crease as she ponders Dorcas’s proposition. Lily is horrified that Amelia is even considering this and decides to step in.

“Or I can!”

“What?” Marlene looks at her with wide eyes as Amelia trains her narrow gaze on Lily.

“How?” her boss wants to know.

“Well, I—I wouldn’t write about the break-up, per se, since that wouldn’t be a good How To article, but what if I turned it into something different?”

Lily is grasping at straws, trying to come up with something that would prevent her friend’s dirty laundry from being hung out to dry. She finds herself stuttering and stalling until suddenly, an idea pops in her head.

“What if I wrote the opposite of getting dumped? Well, it wouldn’t exactly be the opposite, but I’d find a guy and do all the classic things that women do that drive men away. Instead of trying to win the guy over, I’ll get him to dump me instead. Then readers will know what to do and what not to do.”

Lily watches her boss for any indication that she approves. Amelia’s pensive look quickly turns to a conspiring smile as she points her quill at Lily with a gleam in her eyes.

“That’s brilliant, Lily, absolutely brilliant! You think you can find a man, win him over and get him to dump you?”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Lily doesn’t appreciate her boss’s insinuation that she’d be easy to break up with, but if it gets Amelia off Marlene’s back, she’ll take it.

“I can see it now. We’ll call it How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days.”

Lily is relieved, having succeeded in giving Marlene extra time to come up with a story, but the timeframe concerns her.

“Um, Amelia...why ten days?”

“Because we have to publish in eleven.”

She says this as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And it’s only after Lily processes Amelia’s words that she realizes how impossible it all seems. She hasn’t dated anyone in a while. No one is even on her radar to date.

Looks like my Thursday is now going to be spent looking for an unsuspecting suitor.

Lily stifles a sigh as she attempts to focus on the rest of the meeting, but her mind has other plans. She fixates on whether or not she’ll be able to pull this off. It seems impossible, but she has no choice. She has to at least try.

As they exit the meeting, Lily, Alice, and Marlene are trailing behind Amelia, who is on her way to fetch her next appointment.

“If I’m going to pull this off, I need to find a guy tonight,” Lily expresses to her friends.

“Don’t worry, we’ll help!” Alice reassures her. “Let’s go to that swanky bar after work. The prospect of this article calls for a finer crowd.”

“Abbott's?” Lily shoots an incredulous look at her friend.

At first, she wants to protest, but Alice has a point. Lily needs to dupe a guy who’s not just out for a one-night stand, and there are no promises that she’ll be able to find that at the Leaky. No, she needs to glam up and go all-out to find a guy. One that shows promise, but not too much promise because she can’t let herself fall for him anyway.

Her thoughts are cut off as Alice and Marlene both stop, causing her to stumble into them. She looks up to see the source of their delay. Amelia has reached her destination, which happens to be directly in front of them as she greets two women. Lily isn’t quite sure why they didn’t swerve and continue around them.

“...Ah, Narcissa, Andromeda, it’s so nice to meet you! Come with me to my office so we can discuss the ads for this issue. I’m hoping you can help us spice up our pages through your clientele.” Amelia turns and sees Lily and her colleagues standing there. A friendly smile crosses her face as the three realize they’ve been caught eavesdropping and scurry to get back to their cubicles.

Lily returns the smile and looks to the two women to see the blonde eyeing her, a sense of intrigue dancing in her eyes. She wonders what that’s about.

“Aren’t you the How To girl?” the blonde asks.

Lily’s not sure what she’s expecting the woman to say, but it’s not that. It takes her a moment to respond.

“Um, yes. It’s Lily, Lily Evans. Nice to meet you.”

Lily doesn’t bother to extend a polite hand because of the blonde’s now scrutinizing gaze. She’s ready to turn and walk away before the awkward conversation can continue, but Amelia stops in her tracks.

“Yes! Lily is wonderful, isn’t she? She’s just about to start on her newest article: How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. Doesn’t it sound exciting?”

The darker haired woman raises an eyebrow. “It does. What does that entail?”

Lily opens her mouth to speak, but Amelia cuts her off again. “She’s going to find some unsuspecting wizard, get him to fall for her, and then do all the things that turn men away to get him to break things off! Won’t it be the best way to see what witches do that drives men crazy?”

“That does sound interesting,” the blonde responds.

“Yes, fascinating,” agrees the brunette in a bored tone.

Lily doesn’t appreciate their judgemental stares and chooses to dismiss herself. “Thanks. It was nice meeting you,” she lies as she continues on toward her office.

The day is young, but she no longer has time to waste. She needs to develop her plan before setting out to find a wizard later in the evening. This is turning out to be the most peculiar assignment yet, but if Lily can pull it off, then maybe Amelia will give her a chance on the other articles she has in her queue.

You’ve got this, Evans. Now get to work.

[tealin]

Observation Hill

To see the post in its original format, please visit twirlynoodle.com/blog

There is no mistaking Observation Hill when you arrive at McMurdo, if you know anything about it.  It is a distinct cone, right at the end of the peninsula – even if you've never seen a picture of it, its name alone tells you it's a prime lookout, and sticking out into McMurdo sound as it does, it has clear views in every direction.

I had seen pictures of it, but I was still surprised how it loomed over the station.  Unlike the vastly larger Mt Erebus, it is visible from everywhere; whether you're eating in the Galley or crawling back to bed from the Crary lab in the wee hours, it's always looking over your shoulder.

Though not apparent in the above photo, it is clearly visible in person that there is a large cross mounted nearly at the peak of the hill.  Visitors especially from the States might assume it is just another expression of religious devotion – Christ died on a cross on a hill, so hilltop crosses are not unusual in a country which puts great stock in expressions of Christianity – but this is not another one of those things, in fact it isn't even American.  This cross was erected in January 1913 by the surviving men of the Terra Nova Expedition, as a memorial to Captain Scott and the other members of his party who died out on the Ross Ice Shelf on their way home from the South Pole.

Before the ship arrived it was decided among us to urge the erection of a cross on Observation Hill to the memory of the Polar Party.  On the arrival of the ship the carpenter immediately set to work to make a great cross of jarrah wood [an Australian hardwood].  There was some discussion as to the inscription, it being urged that there should be some quotation from the Bible because "the women think a lot of these things."  But I was glad to see the concluding line of Tennyson's "Ulysses" adopted: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."  

... Observation Hill was clearly the place for it, it knew them all so well. Three of them were Discovery men who lived three years under its shadow: they had seen it time after time as they came back from hard journeys on the Barrier: Observation Hill and Castle Rock were the two which had always welcomed them in.  It commanded McMurdo Sound on one side, where they had lived: and the Barrier on the other, where they had died.  No more fitting pedestal, a pedestal which in itself is nearly 1000 feet high, could have been found. 

(Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, pp.565-7)

The establishment of the cross took two days: the first, to hack a hole in the volcanic rock in which to mount it, and the second to carry up the pieces and erect them.  

It stands nine feet out of the rocks, and many feet into the ground, and I do not believe it will ever move.  When it was up, facing out over the Barrier, we gave three cheers and one more.   (ibid., p.567)

106 years later, there is a hiking trail up Observation Hill.  I had intended to make a pilgrimage since the moment I arrived, but with everything else going on, and the ongoing challenge to get enough sleep, it wasn't until quite late in my visit that I finally made it.

My first attempt was on a relatively fine day, when I thought I could get some good views. The trailhead was clearly marked on the station map, but when I got there I couldn't find a way to reach it without crossing a fuel pipeline, and I had a dim recollection from orientation that this was a big no-no.  I wandered about looking for access until I started getting a headache from the fumes, and gave up.

The next opportunity came a few days later, after I'd found out from a veteran that it was OK just to step over the pipeline there.  It was a thickly cloudy day, and hazy by Antarctic standards, so I wouldn't get as good a view, but that did mean I could look forward to having the hill to myself.  So I stepped over the pipeline and started up.

It looks like a terribly steep climb from the bottom, but once on the slope it's not so bad, and is far less slippery than the gravel slope of Arrival Heights.  Partway up I passed a mountain rescue class, but beyond that the trail was entirely mine.

Like the rest of Ross Island, Observation Hill is volcanic in origin – in fact it was once a small volcano of its own.  Unlike the subglacial volcano that is now Castle Rock, which grew cylindrically through a hole it melted in the ice, Observation Hill must have been uncovered in its later years  at least, because it has the classic cone shape made by molten rock running down the outside.  It is a lighter colour than much of the rest of the exposed rock in the area, and in places, it gives a really good impression of being sedimentary rather than igneous.

While the climb was not as physically intense as I had feared, it did still make me very warm, and I had two pauses, not to catch my breath but to cool down.  One was to watch the rescue class, the other was when, somewhere near the top, I lost the trail, and examined the terrain for a while to guess which side would be least fall-off-able.  I chose the wrong one, it turns out – I didn't fall off, but I did have to pick my way over some bare rock and came out above the cross, which is mounted in a pocket of rubble just off the peak.

It's hard to tell from the photo but it is in fact quite large – I am an average sized female and I  stood well under the crossbar.  The inscription is still there, but over a century of blizzards have battered it, and some parts are just barely decipherable.

The names – above of the worst of the blowing grit – are still legible.  This gave me one of those moments which always seems to come by surprise.  I have lived most of my life, and certainly all of my career, in close proximity with fictional characters, who demand to be believed in, either out of escapist necessity or professional duty.  Most of the time I am off in my own little world, and the fact that that little world is now a historical moment in Antarctica does not, necessarily, make it more real, in relation to my literal present reality, than any movie I've worked on.  I know these guys were real, I have seen film footage of them, and read their handwriting, and, some of them, even met members of their families!  But when I'm up to my elbows in the work, it's easy to give it the part of my brain that suspends disbelief on a production.  Suddenly something will come along that jolts me back to their reality: in this case, a name carved on a physical object by someone who knew them personally.

At the same time, this physical object impressed upon me again just how much time separates their reality and mine.  Originally the cross was painted white, with the incised letters filled in black.  Only a little of the white paint remains in the deepest recesses of what are quite shallow letters, now.  In 1960, when Silas Wright returned and was photographed up here, the wood had already been scoured clean.  His visit was 47 years after the cross was put in place, and 49 years before mine.  The same imagination that conflates historical realities with fictional ones can make those years evaporate, but that is still a lot of years, and erosion, unlike imagination, doesn't lie.

Cherry may have believed that the cross would never move, but it has in fact blown down twice, once in the winter of 1974 and again in 1993.  Its restoration in 1994 was a significant effort: a new concrete "boot" was made for it at Scott Base and delivered to the site by helicopter, and the cross itself was relayed up the hill by teams of helpers.  (You can see photos of the event here, p.44)  I cannot say how moving it is to see such an outlay of resources and enthusiasm by people who never met the Polar Party, to perpetuate their memory.

The cross isn't the only thing to see at the top of Observation Hill, of course – there is everything else.  It turned out to be the perfect way to end my tour of Terra Nova landmarks, not only because it was the last bit of home territory the Terra Nova men themselves visited, but because I could see nearly everywhere I'd been from up here.

As you can see, it was not the greatest day for landscape photography, what with the matte light and the taller mountains being covered with cloud.  But I had not come up here to take pictures.  The sombre atmosphere befitted what I had come to do, which was to remember these men and thank The Powers That Be for the blessings that had been showered upon me in the last few weeks.

The cross faces south, towards their last camp, and the Pole.  This is, of course, a thoughtful and fitting aspect of the memorial.  It also gives the impression of a beacon, a light in a window, a lighthouse on a headland, guiding them home. The men who erected it knew the men were dead.  They are still dead.  We all know this.  But they are still out there somewhere, and it is not impossible to imagine some small irrational part of the human psyche wanting, in some small way, to show them the way back, and call them back by name.

Minna Bluff was covered in cloud, so I couldn't use it as a bellwether, but the wind started to pick up and was colder than before, so I thought I should start heading down again.  The correct trail was obvious from this end, and I poked along it for a little way before everything caught up with me and I sat down to have a little cry.

The cross is a historical artefact, and while it is not as plum or as complex as the huts, it still requires conservation.  Alarmed by the degree of erosion on the lettering, the Antarctic Heritage Trust has devised a shell to protect it from the worst of the winter winds.  That will do something, but it has already lost a lot.  When I was up there, I wondered why it hadn't ever been repainted, as the paint would go a long way to protecting it, and when the paint wore off it could just get repainted instead of eating further and further into the wood.  The raw timber is more harmonious with the environment, and I like it better aesthetically that way, as do many others I'm sure – the white cross with black letters in Debenham's photo from 1913 is very stark and artificial in such a magnificent landscape.  But it would last a lot longer.

On the other hand, generations of Antarcticans now have the cross as a touchstone, not only as their link to the history (not everyone gets to visit Cape Evans)  but as a landmark in their own experience of Antarctica.  It was personally important to the men who painted it white and put it up, but it is also personally important to hundreds, if not thousands, of people since then, who have never seen it white and don't know that's how it started, and might see the repainting as a travesty.  If it were to be conserved, to what extent would that go?  Would the letters be re-carved deeper, obliterating what remains of Davies' original work?  At what point does conservation end and adulteration begin?

The alternative is to take down the original and keep it somewhere out of the weather – Scott Base perhaps – and replace it with a replica.  Jarrah is still available, the letters could be carved afresh, it could be the bare wood everyone has known and loved for the last fifty years at least, and the original could be saved from the effects of weather once and for all.  But doesn't this defeat the intent of the original in some way, and make it – dare I say – a Disneyland version?  Do we owe more to history to keep it as it is and let the elements wear it down, or to preserve it as long as possible and do whatever might be necessary to extend the experience and historical understanding of a place, if not its authenticity?

These are all questions that curators and conservators have been grappling with for years, so I leave it to them to make the decisions.  I am grateful to have seen the original, and to have a moment to myself up there to reflect on these things, and more.  I hope, whatever happens with it in the future, Observation Hill is not de-crossed entirely.  How else will they find the way home?

[hellyeahheroes]

Harvey Richards and Lateef Ade "L.A." Williams have a lot in common. They both grew up reading comics with aspirations to work in the industry one day. They both ultimately nabbed roles on the editorial staff of DC Comics in the 1990s.

And they are both Black men who say they never achieved their full potential at DC Comics because of their race.

There are differences in their stories — notably, the time periods. Williams exited his role as an assistant editor in 2000 after six years without a promotion, while Richards spent 22 years at the comics giant with just one promotion before he was fired in December 2019.

But the similarities that cut across those two decades are striking and speak to how little has changed for Black editorial staffers at DC Comics and in the comics industry at large.

Richards was the only Black staffer in the main DC editorial department at the time of his exit in 2019, which included about 15 people, he said. He added that DC had since hired a Black assistant editor. DC declined to comment on personnel matters.

DC, which is home to Batman, Superman, and other iconic characters, is much larger than its comics editorial department, with around 200 employees on the publishing side. But the small team of editors shape the comics and characters that inspire lucrative movies, video games, TV shows, and merchandise.

"You need [Black] editors to help nurture talent to foster diverse characters," Richards said.

Besides being the only Black editorial staffer at the time of his exit, Richards felt stymied in his own career, he said. In his 22 years at the company, he was only promoted once. He began as an assistant editor and 12 years later, in 2009, he was promoted to associate editor.

L.A. Williams can relate.

"My personality and work style is different than Harvey's, who is different from every other name I could rattle off," Williams said. "But no matter how different our work styles or personalities are, the reality is that every one of our stories ended up the same. When it keeps happening year after year, person after person, you have to ask yourself what all of these people have in common."

A Latinx former assistant editor, who exited in 1999 after five years without a promotion, shared similar concerns with Business Insider about a lack of a career path forward at DC and a sense that her work was undervalued.

The stories of these three former DC editors are also similar to that of Charles Beacham, a former Marvel editor who spoke with Business Insider in July. Beacham was one of two Black editorial staffers Marvel had employed in the last five years and quit in 2017 because he felt his voice wasn't heard.

For Richards, there were many instances during his time at DC when he felt he was treated unfairly. He recalled specific instances with Paul Levitz, the DC publisher at the time, like when Levitz told Richards he had "grammar problems," and when Levitz told him "some people think you deserve this" when Richards won an award. Richards was never promoted while Levitz was publisher and president.

Williams also described a confrontation with Levitz, in which Levitz told Williams that he would never be promoted as long as he was publisher.

In response to a request for comment, Levitz said: "I'm not going to comment on decades old incidents. I'm proud of the increasing diversity at DC in my time as an executive there, and while we didn't achieve an ideal balance, I think much changed for the better."

Since Richards' departure, DC has taken some steps to promote diversity and inclusion.

Two women — Marie Javins and Michele Wells — were named interim editors-in-chief after recent layoffs. DC recently hired former Activision Blizzard exec Daniel Cherry, who is Black, as its new senior vice president and general manager, overseeing marketing, sales, and more for the company.

DC is also reviving Milestone, a division of DC that focused on Black characters like Static Shock and was founded in 1993 by four Black men. It ceased operations in 1997 but will return in February.

But for Richards and Williams, it's essential to have Black voices on the editorial front to help inspire change and champion a diverse set of voices and characters.

For Williams, comics were his life. He had written his senior thesis in Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts on the history of Black characters in superhero comics.

So when he got a job at DC Comics in 1994, it was a dream come true. But he faced roadblocks that previewed Richards' own experiences in the coming years.

Williams, 51, recalled an instance in 2000 when some assistant editors were given a monthly comic to edit on their own by then-executive-editor Mike Carlin, who is now a DC Entertainment creative director. Williams said the assistant editors of color were set up to fail and given comics that were doomed from the start.

But Williams turned his assigned book, "Impulse," starring a Flash sidekick that had been hurting in sales, into a success.

Carlin wasn't happy. Williams said Carlin cursed him out for getting veteran comics creator Walt Simonson to draw two issues of the comic, and "wasting his time on Impulse when he should be drawing other characters like Superman."

Carlin did not return a request for comment. DC declined to provide a comment on his behalf.

That sense of not being valued even when he succeeded was a hallmark of Williams' time at DC, he said.

After a white associate editor was fired, Carlin offered Williams to take over that editor's books, which included one of DC's best-selling comics at the time, "Wonder Woman."

Williams remembered vividly what Carlin told him: "I've had my doubts about you, but you've delivered. Everything is always on time, it sells, and critics like it."

"I thanked him for my promotion," Williams said. "And he interrupted me and said it didn't come with a promotion. I feel so stupid now, but at the time I was so confused and asked why it wouldn't come with a promotion."

More than two decades later, Williams said the answer was obvious to him.

Williams' DC career ended just as Richards' was just getting started.

Richards, 48, moved from Akron, Ohio, to New York City in 1995 and began his comics career with an internship at the original Milestone, which then shut down in 1997. His Milestone connections eventually led him to DC, where he started in the mailroom and then became an assistant editor.

"I was living my dream at this point," Richards said.

In 2001, after four years as an assistant editor, Richards was offered the chance to work on the Superman titles. It wouldn't have been a promotion, but a chance to prove himself (the chain generally went like this: assistant editor, associate editor, editor, group editor, and executive editor).

But Richards was given what he said was the "unusual" task to write about what he "could bring to the Superman books." Paul Levitz, then the EVP and publisher of DC, told Richards he had "grammar problems" after he completed the assignment, Richards said.

"After that, Levitz made up his mind about me," Richards said. "I felt he already had because most people are promoted after four years. But after that, it was over, even if I got a good review or worked on good projects or got company awards for going above and beyond."

Richards won two such awards, called "Carrots," which were given by DC's parent company, Warner Bros. After he won the second time, Levitz handed it to him and said "some people think you deserve this," Richards said.

Richards was finally promoted to associate editor in 2009, 12 years after he was hired, when Diane Nelson took over as president of DC Entertainment.

Richards' time at DC came to an end in December.

He had been put on zero-tolerance probation in August of last year. The document Richards provided Business Insider outlined "poor time management skills and an inability to meet deadlines." Richards said he was being overworked.

The day after he returned to the office from Thanksgiving break last year, he was let go with a six-month severance and told he "no longer fit company standards."

He's still looking for work while honing his digital art skills. He said a potential employer asked him why he was only promoted once in all that time at DC.

"It wasn't because of my work performance," Richards said. "I feel like they blacklisted me."

19 years earlier, Williams had left DC with similar sentiments.

After a confrontation over Williams using the likeness of the Alabama governor in an issue of "Impulse," Williams said Levitz told him: "As long as I am publisher of DC Comics, you will never be promoted. You're welcome to stay here in the role of assistant editor for as long as you like."

Williams thought the timing of the dispute — shortly after he had filed a racial-discrimination complaint with human resources against Carlin — was suspect. He quit shortly after.

"I naively thought that as long as I do good work, the comics sell, and the critics like them, I'm going to do well," he said. "As a Black man in America, I knew I wouldn't be able to make as many mistakes as others. But I thought the solution was, work harder and do better."

Their experiences highlight why editors of color are so important, Richards said. They can help "realize a creator's vision" and promote more diversity in comics. He lamented that he never got that opportunity. And Black editors in senior positions could provide a source of support for ones in assistant or associate roles, he said.

"Ideas came down, they didn't go up," he said. "And I didn't have anyone above me advocating for me."

He hopes the recent shakeup at DC affords marginalized groups more opportunities and he sees more women in comics than ever before. Jessica Chen, who is Asian American, was promoted from associate editor to editor last year, for example. But Richards also noted there is still a lack of Black women in the industry.

"Change is going to come," he said. "It has to."

A harrowing look into DC’s history of racism which, among other things, made Lateef Williams, an editor who helped Impulse book avoid cancellation, to quit.

-Admin

[biot08]

Preaching to the choir

*long, long before the events of the ARR, before her adventuring career:*

Rayford Portier was reaching the end of recounting the things that he wished to bring to Ser Vauban’s attention regarding the current state of everything he had felt affected the little fort in Coerthas. There was much; despite the lack of importance of the family’s name, the fort was still a critical outpost in the Dragonsong war, and the patrol routes that left it regularly covered a large area. He had mentioned the need for certain supplies, had brought in letters that would need to be distributed, and the skywatcher’s early reports for the upcoming season. But at last, he found he could finally no longer avoid the news he was not looking forward to relaying. “…and, ah, your father sends word of one last bit of business.”

He did not continue talking. Zoissette had spent much of the meeting busying herself with the watch schedule, her pen scribbling names into slots. She was paying attention, and the break in the flow of Rayford’s speech did not go unnoticed. Her writing slowed as she finished writing one last name for now, and she gently stuck the feathers of her quill into her mouth before slowly looking up with a head tilt. Rayford simply fixed her with a steady gaze. She reached over, and placed the pen back into its ink pot, and she sat up.

“The Inquisition intends to make an appearance at the closing of the next moon.”

The two looked at each other. Zoissette drew a long breath in and then let it out slow. She leaned forward, and clasped her hands tightly together on the desk. She had been at the fort for a bit over five seasons. During that time, she had seen and participated in several skirmishes. She had taken care of her people as best as she was able with the meager budget a lesser house could spare. The fort was important enough to be manned, but not at all glamourous. It was sticks duty. There would be no chance for young up and comings to make their name out here, mostly rebuffing scouting parties. It was a duty that was tolerated as necessary, but not celebrated, and gaining the trust of the soldiers and support staff had required simply showing up and doing the work. No speeches. No lectures. No preaching. Just showing up, and showing that she was simply there to do the job. And certainly no delusions of power (she didn’t have), delusions of holiness (she didn’t feel), nor displays of extravagance (she wouldn’t waste precious resources on).

She could feel it all fraying and coming apart under the heavy hand of the Holy See.

When she spoke, she drew out her words, enunciating fully, as though care of word indicated holiness of intent. “Have they said what cause of heresy they suspect?”

“None, ser. They claim this to be a routine visit. It has been some time since they have come out this way. Apparently, to hear your father retell it, they merely think now to be an opportune time. The astrologians believe this to be a point of a longer lull than usual in the fighting. The Holy See wishes to make an appearance. Do a few interviews. Make sure all is well, and when they find that it is, take the opportunity to… remind the soldiers who they fight for, and what they fight against.”

Rayford’s tone was politely neutral. It always was. A skill he practiced as he lived. Zoissette was pretty sure his idea of raising his voice was inflecting his syllables differently.

“I… see. Well, I doubt they will find anything here,” Zoissette said. There was an unspoken ‘I hope’ there. She was new yet, but not stupid. Heretics, if they were present, would certainly go to pains to keep themselves hidden.

“May I be free with my words, ser?”

“Always, Rayford. Always and particularly now.”

“The men and women will need to be told, but you should be careful with how you handle them in the coming weeks. This will be a delicate time. Many of them have had run ins with the Inquisition over their lives. All of them will have seen the Inquistion’s work at a distance. The work may be necessary, but it is often brutal, and even the most innocent and pious sort of man may see a hollow shadow behind him in the mirror when he hears that the inquisitors will be calling.”

Zoissette buried her face in her hands. “I know.”

~~~

The Sergeant at Arms stood over the practice pit, watching lancers and archers coordinate their attacks on the training dummies at the far end of the area. He was an old hyur, with gray grizzled hair and a scar on half his face. He had lost an ear and his good looks to a dragon early in his career, and like as not would be at the fort supervising others rather than being out on patrol. He did not care for that, but his experience was valuable, and he had the rare enough knack of teaching.

Zoissette liked him. He tolerated her. She knew that, and appreciated it for what it was.

He was now frowning at the news. Zoissette often would just stop in long enough to do turnover with him and then be on her way without getting in his, but this time, she lingered, watching him mull over the news, and wanting to be present should he have something to say about it.

He looked over at her, expression dark, and lowered his voice.

“Do they suspect heresy here, madam?”

She hated being called madam, but she let him get away with it. Again. Good teacher. Rare knack. And he didn’t let the others do it, so a minor loss for a better gain.

“No. Routine visit, they say. Just want to conduct interviews and remind us of our duties.”

The man’s scowl deepened, and he pointed at a pair of trainees that had slowed their advance. Once they were startled back into action, he turned to Zoissette.

“Ill news. Almost be easier if they had announced they had found heretics and were performing their investigation. Then my soldiers would have focus. They would not trust each other for a bit, sure, but I can work with that. As it is, they will be jumping at every shadow, jumping over each other to ‘prove’ their piousness. Discipline’ll improve, sure. Moral, though? It’s going to plummet. The next month is going to be hell.”

Zoissette sighed, and nodded. “I know.”

The two continued to discuss the realities of the situation and how to try to work through it, and then both returned their attention to their respective duties.

~~~

Zoissette was in the fort’s library. The fort was small, but it did have its library, and a reasonable selection of books. She was hoping to find a treatise on pole arm tactics.

Instead, as she turned away from the shelves empty-handed, she found one of the maids standing there, eyes downcast and hands folded in front of her. The woman was obviously in distress.

Odd. Usually the house staff would go to Rayford if they needed something.

“Esmerelda?”

“Y-yes madam. Knight! Knight ser. Ser. Yes, yes ser,” the woman stammered.

“Hey hey hey. Deep breath in, let it out slow, you’re okay, we’re okay.”

“Yes. Of course, ser. Yes ser. Begging your pardon, ser…”

The woman’s voice trailed off, becoming small. Zoissette clasped her hands behind her, and gave the woman her full attention. She suspected.

She was right.

“Ser, do we… do we have heretics, here, ser?”

Zoissette shook her head. “Not that I know. Look, it’s… it’s just a routine visit. Nothing to worry about. They say they just-“

The woman swallowed, hard, and stared at the floor. Zoissette fell silent, to let the woman have space to speak.

“My… my apologies, ser. This is hard for me. I … I am a good and pious woman, ser. I know I have nothing to fear from the Inquisition, ser. I know it. I … I KNOW it, ser. But… I want you to know it too, ser.”

Zoissette inwardly had to admit, that usually Rayford was the bridge between her and the staff, much as the Sergeant at Arms was the bridge between her and the non-noble soldiers. But this woman was clearly in distress, and it fell to her to be present. Zoissette nodded, and put a hand on the maid’s shoulder.

“Of course. I have never had cause to suspect.”

“I… I apologize, ser.. I just… it’s just… I came to House Vauban because I could no longer stand to stay at my previous house, ser. They found… they found heretics among the staff, ser. They… they chose to make an example of them, ser.”

The woman took several deep breaths, steadying her nerves, and then all of a sudden, her expression went dead, and her body seemed to fold in on itself.

“They put them to the sword in the courtyard, ser. I thought several of them my friends, ser. They ended it quickly, thank the Fury for small mercies, but… I am no soldier, ser. I am just house staff. I had seen death before of course. We all have. But this was different. I did not handle it gracefully. In the days and moons afterward, I could not see the courtyard without seeing … them. So I left, ser. Your family was kind enough to take me on, ser. It can be hard for a commoner to find good work if they leave their priors like I did, but yours took me on, and I am grateful, but…”

The woman’s voice trailed off. Zoissette tried a smile she hoped was reassuring and squeezed the maid’s shoulder. The maid looked up at Zoissette’s hand, and reached her own up, to touch it.

“I know I am out of line, ser. And I know the Inquisition is necessary ser. But I cannot forget that day, ser. I am a good and pious woman, I promise ser. I just… I just need you to know that.”

“I know,” said Zoissette.

~~~

“We’ve got a problem,” said Ser Jervoix.

Vauban was a minor house, and the fort was not an important one, but sometimes the other minor houses would pass around their knights, both as a show of mutual support and a way to expand the experience of their officer corps. The fort was not a prestigious outpost, and the work was not exactly easy, but it still had to be done. And that was how Zoissette had come to have another visiting noble who helped her. She had only been there for a season, and would only stay for another. She had been surly at first, but had steadily grown used to the situation, and while she was not a friend, she was at least reasonable to work with. So while Zoissette handled matters closer to the fort, being the face of the family, Gilda Jervoix had been leading patrols and managing the remote camp.

That she had come back early said much. That her first sentence was that said more. Zoissette nodded and gestured to the table nearby. The two sat, and Zoissette poured them both a cup of the customary mulled wine.

“One of our men spooked at the news of the Inquisition coming,” said Gilda. “When he went, several others abandoned their posts also.”

Zoissette groaned. “Heretics after all?”

“I am sure the Inquisition will suspect so, but no. I don’t think so. I spoke with the men. It took some asking around, and a bribe or two, but I learned much. The man who first ran was in a village that had unknowingly harbored heretics. They were apparently sneaking into an abandoned house using a tunnel system of some sort.”

“I think I recall hearing this news from my father. It’s one of those inspiring stories they like to tell. The heretics were found out because they were stealing from the villagers under cover of night. When the villagers investigated, they stumbled upon the heretics’ stash, finding both their stolen items and some draconic artifacts. Rather than handle the situation themselves, they pretended to ignore it. Notified the Inquisition.”

“I heard the same story, right. The Inquisition swept in, burned the heretics, and held the people of the town up as model citizens.”

“I feel like that story must be at least ten years old. What’s that have to do with our missing man?”

“That story is a just a little older than your guess. Older than I remembered, to be honest. Sixteen years ago, it made quite an impression on a certain eight year old who watched the house next to his get burned to the ground… with the people still inside.”

Zoissette sat back in her chair and stared at the ceiling, and groaned.

“As for the others, I think they were already skittish. If a man who was declared such a holy example from his youth feared the inquisition…”

“…what hope could they have. Yeah.”

Gilda looked at her drink.

“I know the work the Inquisition does is necessary. There are those who would tear down Ishgard, and do the same to us, if not worse. But should we not be better than them? Should we not be so… brutal?”

“I know,” said Zoissette.

“More may flee in the coming weeks. Maybe not permanently - I got news from one of the other holdings, in fact, that our man had been spotted on the road -to- Ishgard. I think he was merely hoping to not be here while the Inquisition is. Hard to say. But with him and the others gone… our patrols are thinner now. It’s going to be hard to fill out schedules. Like I said… we’ve got a problem.”

“I know,” Zoissette repeated, feeling a sinking weight in her chest.

~~~

Zoissette greeted the Inquistor at the door with a salute.

“Greetings, with all due respect from House Vauban. It is our privilege to host you at our holdings. Please, come in.”

The inquisitor walked into the fort, looking around, taking stock of his surroundings. He wore a coat, lined thick with sumptuous fabrics. Gold chains littered the outside of it, and various rosaries and other symbols of his holy office. His presence was unmistakeable, and he seemed fit to try to fill the space with himself.

He smiled warmly at Zoissette.

“Ah, Madam Vauban, Ser Knight. Thank you for receiving me.”

“Of course. We have prepared a meal for you, of course, that you may have at your leisure. If you are tired after your journey, our house servant, Rayford Portier, has already prepared a room for you. He is at your disposal for the duration of your stay, as, of course, am I.”

The inquisitor nodded, a faint smile on his face. “Of course, of course. Thank you, Madam Vauban. I trust that you, of course, understand the importance of our work out here. I will need to see your books, of course, so that I can schedule interviews with the people. I do not think I will find anything, but often you can find hidden truths that point, if not at a person, at least elsewhere. Diligence is the price we pay, and we will pay it in full.”

“I know,” said Vauban.

“And it is the hope of the Holy See that the men will find the site of one of us visiting even such a distant outpost will be inspiring. We care for them, after all, one and all. They will surely look upon this as a momentous occasion, as their purity is seen for the truth of itself, and be bolstered by knowing their own holiness demonstrated. Our purpose is for the glory of Ishgard, you know.”

“I know,” said Vauban.

“Good, good. Of course you do. All is well for now, then. I think I shall retire for the evening. I have been traveling all day, and we can start our work early, and fresh, tomorrow morning. This is good work that we will do, Madam Vauban,” the inquisitor said, offering Vauban a smile.

Zoissette returned the smile, but her eyes were cold, and her smile was brittle.

“I know,” she said.

[wherevermyway]

bittersweet lullabies // binchan // oneshot // 16+

❄ part of yuki’s favourites! ❄

pairing: bang chan x seo changbin rating: mature! 16+ warnings/tags: angst, friends-to-enemies, enemies-to-lovers, symphony AU, implied sexual content (seriously, it’s barely even there and probably very easily missable), alcohol, referenced underage drinking, past seo changbin x jung wooyoung (ateez). word count: 15,000 also on AO3

originally posted: 07 february 2021

Several years ago, Bang Chan and Seo Changbin were best friends in middle school. They quickly became rivals in high school, starting not long after Changbin got the lead first chair for the viola section, something Chan had also been vying for. When Changbin became valedictorian, they got into a heated argument and Changbin swore he would never talk to Chan again.

After university, they both received offers to work in the same symphonic orchestra. When they run into each other for the first time in four years, conflicting emotions bloom, tensions arise, and it all comes to an apex when Changbin storms off into the Seattle rain, and Chan can’t let him go, not after the guilt he had after all of these years.

disclaimer: this is a work of fiction! any reference to persons in this work of fiction are purely coincidental. the characters referenced from Stray Kids are  interpretations loosely based on their personalities in the group and do  not represent the real people behind the personas. if this, or any of  the content included in the warnings above make you uncomfortable,  please stop reading now.

“I earned this, Chan!” A voice shouted in a cold, empty hallway. “Do you understand how many sleepless nights I pulled to get here? The sacrifices I’ve made?” There was a loud clattering against metal lockers that echoed against the linoleum flooring and the bland drywall. Papers fell, scattering about the floor as the overhead lighting flickered, illuminating two young men dangerously close to one another.

A scoff came from the slightly taller, blonde man. “Do you think I didn’t work hard?” He slapped his hand against the metal locker behind the brunette man leaning up against them. “I tried so hard, had the same grades as you, the same SAT score, and yet you somehow got valedictorian? What’s your secret, Changbin?”

“Can you leave me alone, dude?” The smaller man gave the blonde a shove, and attempted to storm away, before he was tugged back by the wrist. “Come on, man, they could only pick one person for valedictorian. You still get a speech, now let me leave. I’ve got stuff to take care of.”

Chan, the blonde, shook his head, looking down to the floor. “You really think I only want a stupid fucking speech? I didn’t want to be salutatorian; I don’t want to play second fiddle to you for one more goddamned thing.” He looked back up to the brunette, Changbin, and his eyes were glistening and tinted red. “I just wanted this one thing, to be better than you at something for once. You got lead first chair for orchestra. You got lead tenor for All-State. You’ve always been better than me, and this just proves it and it hurts.”

The two of them exchanged a painful glance, but said nothing. Changbin tugged his arm away, glaring at the other man, pity hidden behind his stare. If this were some sort of coming-of-age, poorly-written Hollywood dramedy, this would be the part where they would make out against the lockers. He would ruffle his hands through Chan’s hair, tell him some cheesy line, like “fuck what everyone else thinks, I may be valedictorian, but you’re the top of the class in my heart”.

However, this was real life. Nothing worked like the movies.

“What’s done is done, Chan,” the brunette sighed, rubbing his wrist. “Grow up and get over it. I’m tired of doing this shit with you every time I earn something and you throw a fucking fit and get jealous.” Changbin turned away, stepping on some of the discarded papers as he quickly walked away, down the corridor. “Don’t ever talk to me again,” he shouted, his voice firm and bouncing against the hard surfaces, echoing loudly in the emptiness.

Chan shook his head and let a tear slide down his face. “I miss the old us.” He remorsefully whispered to himself, dropping to his knees and collecting up the papers he dropped when he shoved the younger man into the lockers. He missed his former best friend, lamenting over how much he let his competitive nature ruin their friendship, the only friendship that really mattered to him.

Four years after Chan and Changbin graduated high school, they still found themselves thinking about each other as they graduated from university. Changbin had somehow completed a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in four years during his time at Yale, and Chan finally got his coveted valedictorian title at Dartmouth. They may have hated each other, not speaking at all in four years, but they were polite enough to give each other half-hearted congratulatory messages on social media for university graduation.

Everyone did it, right? It was the thing to do for birthdays and graduations, like some unspoken rule. Perhaps it would bring them closer, start the path of building up the bridge back to friendship that they had burned years ago. It was unlikely, but he’d never know if he never tried.

Chan wondered how much Changbin had changed in the previous four years. He had typed up an apology that spanned several pages of text, had it saved in his message drafts for weeks, but never built up the courage to send it. The overwhelming guilt and shame for treating his former best friend so poorly would never allow him to send that message.

Changbin appeared to be happy for once, losing himself in his studies and performances, happy and in love with his fiancé Jung Wooyoung, a classmate of theirs that also ended up at Yale. Everything seemed to be going well for him; Changbin had just accepted a job with some renowned symphonic orchestra that he was moving cross-country for.

Perhaps they would never mend, and this was fate telling Chan to move on.

Changbin saw Chan’s polite “congrats, man” timeline post, and couldn’t help but scoff at how insincere it came off to him. He had stalked Chan’s profile for the entire four years they didn’t speak to each other, seeing some bad drunken frat party photos, reading interesting concepts he proposed about the transformational theories in music, and watched a couple of short-lived relationships bloom and subsequently fizzle out within only a couple of months. Chan was always chaotic, and Changbin kind of missed that unpredictable nature about him. Someday he’d reach out, he figured, but that day wasn’t today.

It had been a couple of months since graduation. Changbin had a stressful time planning a move cross-country that his now former fiancé didn’t support. Fuck it, he figured, a career with the symphonic orchestra in Seattle was worth it. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, something that was incredibly selective, that he was invited to be a part of, and he deserved it. Wooyoung was halfway out of the door, anyway. They were always picture-perfect online, but Wooyoung stopped putting in any effort into the relationship well over a year ago, something about “focusing” on some technical project that he’d likely never complete.

Wooyoung never completed anything, and when Changbin broke off their engagement, the younger man simply shrugged it off.

It didn’t matter. Out with the old, in with the new. Whatever it took to convince Changbin to stay sane, to feel like he hadn’t wasted three years on someone not worth his time. He didn’t resent Wooyoung, but their relationship felt like it was lacking from beginning to end. Maybe he would find someone that would light a spark within him on the other side of the continent.

From the week he spent in Seattle during his interview and audition, Changbin deemed that Seattle was far superior to Connecticut, anyways: something about its dreamy, rainy, “chronically sipping lukewarm earl grey tea while listening to chill synthwave” vibe excited him. It was something completely different than what he was used to, and it was going to be drastically different than the uptight nature that the east coast gave off.

Connecticut was vivacissimo. Seattle was andante . It was time for something calming and slow paced for once in his life.

It only took Changbin an hour to bring in everything from his car and settle into his new apartment. The human resources team was kind enough to help him find a cozy, furnished apartment that was a short walk away from work. It was nestled in the bustling Capitol Hill neighbourhood, and he knew he was going to love sitting inside and watching people scurry about from his third-floor balcony. He had a few days to settle in before he would show up for orientation, and he couldn’t wait to explore the area.

For now, though, he would unpack a bit, then sleep. A week and a half of driving cross-country, while beautiful, was exhausting. Three thousand miles. Constant playlist shuffling. Talk radio while driving through Illinois and Wisconsin to hear asinine political commentary. Getting carsick and vomiting where I-90 met I-35 in Minnesota. Nearly breaking down close to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Almost hitting a coyote in Montana. Seeing the sunrise as he drove over a mountain pass as he approached the Idaho state border. The thrill of finally approaching Seattle and getting lost as he made a wrong turn, somehow ending up in Tacoma. It was an adventurous trip, but it sapped the life from him.

There was one thing, however, he could rely upon to restore his drained energy: his viola.

He took his prized, cherished viola out of its well-maintained case, running his thumb over the chip under his chin rest, and Changbin felt like he could finally breathe a sigh of relief. This viola got him through so many hard times in life, keeping him grounded and sane regardless of how hectic his schedule was from the last half of high school and all throughout university. If he was stressed, he would simply take the viola out of its case and let something flow from him.

As he brought the viola up to his chin, strategically placing his fingers at the end of his bow, he looked out the window taking in the view of the sunset, and aimlessly started playing something. It somehow slowly blended into his part from Lament, which was a duet that he and Chan had performed their junior year of high school.

Perhaps it was because Chan had been invading his thoughts lately, but his improvised practices always turned into Lament . It was a beautiful duet; they had won first place at the state competition for it, earning a perfect score, which was something that was incredibly rare; it helped them pad their resumes to get into Ivy League universities. They practiced for months, starting the summer before their junior year, because they wanted to actually take home an award for it. “We’ll show them,” Chan arrogantly smirked as he puffed out his chest. “We’re better than just some deeper violins stuck in the middle of the orchestra. That’ll teach them all for making fun of us.”

Changbin remembered being nervous about it. The sweat beading on his palms as they waited in the wings of the stage prior to their performance, the pounding of his heart against his ribcage, the sound of the blood rushing between his ears. He was so nervous that he would trip, or he would drop his viola, maybe that everything would go impossibly wrong. However, the minute he and Chan looked at each other as they prepared to start their duet, a sense of calm overtook him, and he lost himself within the music.

Somehow, they managed to make it through the entire performance without faltering. As soon as they were hidden behind the black curtains of the stage, Chan gave Changbin the closest, warmest hug he had ever received in his life.

“I told you we’d do it, man!” Chan excitedly whispered into Changbin’s ear. “You fucking killed it!”

“You did really well, too,” Changbin had shyly whispered back, offering a couple of nervous pats in between Chan’s shoulder blades. He remembered feeling lucky that the backstage area was so dark, because it was very obviously apparent that he was blushing.

He pulled himself from the memory, unable to finish playing his part from the duet, the notes sounding correct, yet feeling dissonant in his heart as he played. His shoulders drooped as he stared off into the skyscrapers far off in the distance. Sure, the relationship he had with Wooyoung was tumultuous, but Changbin wasn’t entirely innocent, either, often daydreaming about Chan during the most inopportune times.

When Wooyoung would dance his fingers against Changbin’s bare flesh in the darkness of their room, he was guilty of letting his mind wander to the what-ifs: what if Chan were there? Would Chan nip at Changbin’s neck with the same passion? How warm would Chan’s breath feel against his earlobe as his teeth dug into the tender flesh? Would he take Changbin in his arms and pepper his skin with soft kisses and haphazard ‘I love you’s as they tangled themselves up in each other?

It was insufferably suffocating, being weighed down by the ghosts of his past as he tried to move forward with his life.

For a long time, Changbin was infatuated with Chan. Starting in seventh grade, he wanted to spend time with only Chan; they would spend their weekends and summer vacations together, text each other until they fell asleep, and they were a part of all of the same extracurricular activities. To most people, all the way up until their junior year, they were essentially brothers that weren’t related by blood.

Nobody could have been closer than them.

One night, not long after they received the results that they had gotten a perfect score on their duet, Chan invited Changbin to a party at their friend’s house. Changbin, being the shy introvert that he was, would have said no otherwise, but he couldn’t bring himself to say no to Chan. There was nothing special or memorable about the house party itself, not until they both drunkenly stumbled into an empty bed together.

They had slept next to each other several times, but this was different. Changbin wrapped his arm around Chan’s chest, tucking his head underneath the elder’s chin, letting himself get lost in the warmth of their embrace. The alcohol convinced him it was a great time to be honest — perhaps a bit too honest.

“Chan,” Changbin had slurred out in a near-whisper. “Can I, uh, tell you something?”

“What’s up, dude?” Chan responded, sleepily rubbing his eyes.

Changbin took in a deep breath, and sat up, staring down at Chan in the dark. “I think…” his voice trailed off and he swallowed audibly, “I think I kinda like you?”

Chan just laughed, patting Changbin’s thigh. “I like you too, dude. It’s why we’re friends.”

“Nah,” the brunette huffed, smelling the stale, cheap beer on his breath and shuddering as he shook his head. “Not like that.”

“What do you mean, then?”

“Like,” a moment passed and Changbin recoiled into himself. “I like you, dude. I wanna take this to the next level. I dunno, man, this shit’s awkward and hard to admit.”

The two of them sat in silence for a while, until Chan sat up and leaned in close to Changbin. “Bin,” he sighed, firmly gripping his junior’s thigh, “I like you, too, but I don’t know. We could, like, seriously fuck up our friendship. I mean, you saw what Seonghwa did to Hongjoong when they went from friends to boyfriends.” He hiccupped and awkwardly chuckled to ease the tension blooming between them. “I don’t wanna ruin what we’ve got, since we’re basically brothers and shit.”

Changbin shook his head. It really was stupid, after all. The alcohol, however, gave him confidence that he didn’t ask for and didn’t need right now. He batted his eyelashes and brought his face in, up close to Chan. “Can I at least kiss you to see how it feels?”

Chan giggled, likely out of nervousness and drunkenness. “I mean, I don’t see why not. But neither you nor I have kissed anyone, ’s probably gonna be weird.”

“I don’t care.” The words left Changbin’s lips as he boldly reached up to Chan’s neck, pulling them closer to each other. It was awkward, painfully obvious that they really didn’t know what they were doing. Their lips were a little too dry for it to feel as magical as Changbin expected. Still, they continued; a tiny spark igniting between the two of them. It may have been awkward, but it didn’t feel wrong.

Chan brought his hand up to Changbin’s soft, brown hair, letting his fingers grip the strands gently. He brought his other hand up to the small of the brunette’s back, pulling him in. They couldn’t quite figure out which side their noses should be on, and when they opened their mouths to let their tongues adventure around, they clashed their teeth together one too many times, causing pain to echo throughout their heads.

Regardless of the awkward nature of their kiss, it was perfect for them. It felt like they kissed each other for hours, eventually rolling around the sheets, fingers skirting around on warm, flushed skin. Changbin didn’t even remember falling asleep, just the comfort of losing himself in Chan’s touch.

The next morning, however, was far from perfect. They were both grossly hungover, and Chan was oddly distant. “I dunno, dude,” he had sleepily grumbled, avoiding looking at Changbin at all, “I still don’t know if this is right.”

Chan was going to say more, but Changbin waved him off in a panic with feigned confidence. “Nah, dude, it was just us being drunk.” He let out a nervous laugh. “Sorry for being weird, I guess I was just a little too curious to have a kiss. Shame our first kisses were while we were drunk, huh?”

“Yeah,” Chan awkwardly smiled, “little weird, but whatever.”

Unsurprisingly, they started having problems not long after that. Chan had started getting irritated with Changbin putting more and more focus into his studies, starting to surpass him academically. Then, Changbin got first chair for the violas in orchestra. He beat out two seniors, and Chan was right behind him. Chan was always right behind him in everything. They were so close, they were like minor seconds in a chord: just two notes right next to each other that sounded uncomfortably dissonant when played together.

When Changbin got stressed, he focused. Conversely, when Chan stressed, he brooded.

“Come on, man,” Chan had whined right after practice one day, “you and I both got that perfect score on our duet. How’d you get lead first chair over me?”

The annoyance of Chan’s constant negative behaviour was draining on Changbin, causing the younger man to grow more and more irritated by the second. “I don’t fucking know, okay?” He snapped while opening his viola’s case. “Someone had to get it, and it was me. Stop taking out your shit on me, man, it’s exhausting.”

Chan frowned in response. “I’m not taking it out on you,” he huffed, “you’re just getting a lot of good shit lately, and it’s not fair.”

“You should have fucking tried harder, then!” Changbin shouted, taking a step towards Chan, clutching the neck of his viola tightly. “You know what’s not fair? What’s not fair is the fact that you’re being a broody sack of shit at me because you’re just not practicing as hard or studying as hard and that’s not my goddamned fault! You need to grow the fuck up, dude.”

Chan scowled and shoved Changbin back in anger, harder than he anticipated. He didn’t expect it to be such a rough shove, but Changbin didn’t always have a good sense of balance. The younger man tumbled backwards, and his viola hit the ground with a thud, a discordant twang coming from the delicate instrument and echoing throughout the room.

The silence that followed the scuffle was deafening. Chan tried to apologize, knowing just how important Changbin’s viola was to him, but he just incoherently sputtered and panicked. Changbin stared up at Chan in horror, blinking away tears that were budding up in his eyelids.

“How could you?”

It was the last thing that Changbin said to Chan for months.

The memories flooding up in Changbin’s head caused a gnawing pain to bloom within his stomach as he stared out the window, the sky now a deep shade of indigo. He sighed, then put his viola back into its case. He thought playing it would make him happy, more comfortable in his new apartment in a new town, but it just made him feel cold and alone. It felt like there was nothing but dissonant chords reverberating inside of him.

Changbin stared down at his viola, hesitating to close the case. The chip from the day it collided against the ground was still there, glaringly obvious as the memory burned itself into his head. He recalled that the musician that repaired his viola offered to fix it up, even though it was just a surface blemish and wouldn’t cause any musical problems. “No,” Changbin had told the man, “it’s right under the chin rest, so I’ll see it every time I go to play it. It’ll remind me to be more cautious.”

Cautious of his instrument, that’s probably what it sounded like to the musician. What Changbin really meant, however, was how he’d be cautious of letting anyone close to him in the future, no matter who it was.

Uncertainty rushed over him, but Changbin was certain of one thing: he needed to get Chan out of his head. Sooner, rather than later. He couldn’t afford to be distracted when he started with the symphony.

Maybe he’d be alone forever.

Monday came quickly, and Changbin was running early. He had left far too early, showing up nearly an hour before he needed to be at the practice hall. He shrugged the nervousness from his shoulders as he made his way to a nearby cafe to grab something caffeinated to help perk him up. Seven in the morning was far too early for his schedule after all of this time off from university.

It was a brief walk, maybe only a couple of minutes to the cafe down the street. Changbin opened the door, inanely scrolling through his emails as he walked through the front door and got in line. There was one email from the conductor, Lee Minho, sent out to everyone earlier that morning, welcoming the new members of the orchestra. Names, ages, instruments, and where they were from.

“What can I get for you?” The barista at the counter politely asked, causing Changbin to look up from his phone, his face flushing in embarrassment.

“Oh, sorry,” he whispered, locking his phone, sliding it into his pocket. “I’ll take a shot in the dark, medium, three shots, please.”

“Your name?”

“Changbin.” He was curious to see how terribly the barista would butcher his name as he tapped his card against the payment terminal. A minute later, he stepped off to the side, grabbing his phone to scroll through the email again. Since he was early, he might as well try and learn who was who and where they sat, what they played.

The wind and brass instruments were first. A new French horn player, a new trombonist, a new bassoonist, a new flautist. He was about to scroll through the percussion and string players when the second barista mumbled something that sounded kind of like his name. He walked up and grabbed the paper cup that was placed on the countertop, eyeing the scribble on the cup that barely resembled his name, rolling his eyes at the attempt.

Changbin took a cautious sip of the hot liquid as he made his way towards the front of the cafe, taking a seat at the window bar, placing his viola case down on the ground and his cup on the table, looking through his email. He didn’t care about the percussion section, but when he got to the strings, he perked up a bit. Two new violinists, two new violists, and a new cellist.

There was another new violist along with him, and Changbin bit his lip in excitement. He wondered who they were, where they were from. Then he saw the name, right under his. He stopped tapping his toes in excitement and his jaw dropped. If he was holding his coffee cup, he would have dropped it in shock.

Viola: Changbin S., 22, Connecticut. B.A., M.M., Music: Yale University.

Viola: Chan B., 23, New Hampshire. B.A., Music Performance: Dartmouth University.

“Holy shit,” Changbin whispered as all of the colour drained from his face. He had to have been hallucinating. There was no way that Chan was actually in Seattle. There had to have been another Chan from Dartmouth that was coming all the way here, right? That it wasn't just some crazy fever dream that Changbin was having?

He sat and stared at the email on his phone until the screen automatically turned off from inactivity. If Chan was seriously going to be in the symphonic orchestra with him, right next to him, what was he going to do? The two of them hadn't said anything more than polite passing phrases over their birthdays or for their graduations over social media, for fuck's sake. What the hell was going to happen when — no, if, it had to stay as an if — the two of them met?

The soft bell of the front door opening made Changbin shake his head, crashing back to reality. He turned his phone over, putting it down on the counter so he didn't have to look at it, and brought his cup back up to his lips. The coffee in the cup was nice, a bit more mellow and mild compared to the coffee he was used to on the east coast, like this was brewed with care and love, not in a hurry for someone just trying to get their fix.

“That's the third symphony,” a quiet voice came up behind Changbin, his ears twitching a bit as he heard something related to music. Perhaps this person was another musician, part of the orchestra? Letting his curiosity get the better of him, he turned his head over his shoulder and actually dropped his cup, spilling the warm liquid all over the table and into his lap. In a rush, he grabbed his phone as he stood and let out a crisp, sharp interjection.

As the coffee cooled in his lap and the barista from earlier approached him with a towel, his brain caught up to the realization that his former best friend-turned-rival, Chan, was right behind him. Before he could fully process what that meant, Changbin found himself madly dashing back to his apartment, phone in one hand, viola case in the other. Reality hit him in the face and burned as much as his scorched legs as he collided into the door of his apartment.

This wasn't a dream.

Changbin was thankful that he was always early to things. After rushing to apply some burn cream to his legs and change into a fresh outfit, he had somehow made it back to the concert hall with fifteen minutes to spare. He gripped the handle to his viola's case tightly, palms sweating as he tried so hard not to panic. Beyond the doors of the practice hall, he knew that Chan was going to be there. Nothing he did could prepare him for that, and he knew it.

He took in a deep breath, and let off a quick exhale as he pushed the door open. The crowd of other players was massive — there had to be nearly a hundred people crowded up in small circles. The newer people were very obvious, awkwardly off to the side in their respective sections. Some people were off in random seats, tuning their instruments. Then, in the middle of the room, he saw someone seated, alone, anxiously scrolling through his phone. It was the same brassy blonde that was in the cafe.

Chan.

Almost as if the energy in the room cooled as Changbin entered, Chan shifted in his seat and aimlessly scanned the room, looking at the other members, until his eyes landed on Changbin, and his lips parted. They stared at each other, seemingly like they were frozen in space and time, that there was no one else around. A conflicting rush of warmth, excitement, and terror washed over Changbin all at once as he stared at his former best friend.

Changbin shook his head, letting his eyes fall to the floor for a moment. “This is going to be fine,” he quietly reassured himself as he walked towards the middle of the room. “You two don't have to look at each other, speak to each other, just be civil. If you're lucky, you won't even have to interact much. Hopefully.”

That was a boldfaced lie, but it helped reassure Changbin in the slightest way possible.

“Hi,” Chan awkwardly whispered as Changbin got close. “Long time, no see, huh?”

He simply couldn't resist looking up at Chan and somehow wrinkling his face up into an uncomfortable grin. “Hi, Chan.” His tone was a bit cold, but what else could he do? They left each other on horrible terms, not even speaking to each other during their high school graduation ceremony. Changbin had given his valedictorian speech, and remembered Chan walking up to the podium, giving him a pitiful expression as they crossed paths.

“Looks like your assigned seat is right next to me.” There's a tapping noise as Chan's fingernail repeatedly strikes the plastic seat next to him. A large, black binder sat atop the chair, with "Changbin S., Viola’ emblazoned on the top of it in silver, serif lettering.

Fate was a cruel bastard.

Changbin stifled a sigh under his breath, placing his viola's case underneath the chair as he grabbed the binder. He sat down in his seat, pretending to rifle through the paperwork. There was simply no way that he could focus, knowing that Chan was right next to him. It was completely awkward and uncomfortable. Changbin could practically feel the warmth of the blonde sitting next to him, even though they were about a foot away from each other.

“We're gonna pretend like all that time together never happened, huh?” Chan's voice was cold, and he tsked as he brought his phone back up to his face. “I really thought four years would've changed you, Bin.”

Changbin slammed the binder shut and leaned into Chan's face. His eyes darted around, knowing that he was getting some strange glances from people that weren't preoccupied, but it didn't matter. “You're the one that refused to grow up and handle things responsibly like an adult. I don't want to hear another fucking passive aggressive word about this from you.” His tone was hushed, but venomous and seething. “You had all this time to apologize, but you never did. I sincerely hope we don't have to interact much, because this two year contract is going to be hell on me if you're here.”

Chan scoffed. “Whatever, dude,” he shook his head and looked back to his phone. “I just wanted to try and be civil, but if you wanna play that game, then you can. Go right ahead.”

This was outrageous. Changbin opened his mouth to say something, but a man with a calm demeanour walked into the room, his presence demanding attention from everyone as they scattered to their seats.

“Good morning, everyone,” his voice boomed throughout the corridor. It was soft, inviting. “Welcome to your first day of the season. If you would kindly find your seats, we'll get started in a few moments.”

Changbin awkwardly fumbled with his binder, resting it on the music stand in front of him, then bent down to pick up his viola's case. He undid the latches, and pulled out the instrument, his eyes fixated on that damned chip under the chin rest. Naturally, after he stared at the chip for longer than necessary, he lifted his eyes up to Chan, who was rubbing his bow against the brick of resin in his hand.

Chan was always delicate with his instrument. He put in so much love when he polished his viola prior to competitions and performances, always lovingly eyed the hairs of his bow as he carefully watched the resin coat each strand. Typically, he would hum some inane melody to himself as he got lost in the process, in the care of what he did.

Today, Chan wasn't humming.

It felt like the energy around him had gone from its usual bright cheerfulness, and turned into a dark, gloomy cloud.

“Please,” the instructor spoke yet again, looking up from his stack of paperwork on the podium, “if you haven't done so, begin tuning your instruments. Hopefully they're all tuned up, but I'm sure some of you have been slacking since we last practiced together, hmm?”

Changbin didn't need to tune his viola, since he tuned it last night in anticipation, but he went along and pretended to tune it with his plastic electric tuner. The light shone green as he kept strumming against the C string. Changbin tried to stare at the light, but he couldn't take his eyes off of Chan. While he wasn't humming, the elder still put in so much tender energy while he cared for his viola.

It had been all this time, but Changbin still felt his abdomen and chest light up with fire when he saw Chan, no matter how much it hurt. It was apparent that Changbin was still so madly in love with him, even after all of these years and all of the emotional torment they had put each other through.

This man was going to be the death of him.

The beginning of the first day with the symphony wasn't eventful. There were some warm-ups and some scales practice, but that was simply to get everyone prepared for the performance season. After all of that, the conductor, Minho, went through each section and asked the new members to introduce themselves. Percussion went first, then woodwinds, brass, strings. Second-to-last was the viola group, and Chan went first.

“Chan,” he said with a smile, his dimple prominently on display, “I'm 23, originally from New York, but I've been in New Hampshire for the past four years thanks to university. I recently graduated, with honours, top of my class, from the music performance faculty at Dartmouth. I hope we all get along well and you'll treat me kindly. Let's have a great season!” He sat down, and his smile faded as Changbin rose.

“Yeah, uh, hello,” Changbin awkwardly stuttered, folding his hands together behind his back. “I'm Changbin, 22, also originally from New York, but I've been in Connecticut for the last four years where I matriculated at Yale. I have a bachelor's and master's in music, specifically: music performance for viola and piano. I've been playing the viola for most of my life, and I hope I will serve everyone well here. Uh,” he paused, awkwardly scratching the back of his head. “Thanks.”

There were a couple of polite chuckles as Changbin sat down. Despite having a penchant for giving well-manicured speeches, he hated giving unprepared introductions. He felt tense enough already, knowing that Chan was right next to him, making him all the more uncomfortable.

The new violinists introduced themselves, and Minho clapped once. “Excellent,” he praised. “Now that introductions are out of the way, please split off into your respective subsections until I'm able to get to each individual group and assess your skills for placements. Those of you that have finished by your lunch break are welcome to leave, unless your principal seat deems otherwise.”

A couple of musicians groaned.

“It's nearly autumn,” Minho said with a soft smile as he adjusted his necktie, “you all know that placement seats, other than principal seats, aren't guaranteed.”

Changbin nervously swallowed. He knew that placements were, yet again, going to be a source of contention for both of them. Chan was top of his class at Dartmouth; Changbin was top of his class at Yale. Both of them were going to be a force to be reckoned with, especially up against other top-class talent.

This orchestra recorded for multiple high-budget films and would perform in the pits of renowned theatrical performances. There were just over a hundred seats in the orchestra, but thousands applied for open spots after contracts ended and spots opened up. It was nerve-wracking, and Changbin wasn't confident that he, for the first time since high school, would be placed in one of the first viola chairs.

“Hey,” a voice perked up as everyone started to shift around and break off into their own groups. “I'm Seungmin,” a young man stood in front of Chan and Changbin, probably about the same age as them. “I'm the principal chair for the viola section. Changbin and Chan, right?” Both of them silently nodded once in affirmation. “Nice, Ivy Leaguers like me. Cornell, graduated last year. Anyway, don't worry too much about placements. Not much you can do until you actually have to perform, and Minho is pretty great about making you feel comfortable if you're nervous. Why not come meet everyone in the section?”

There were polite greetings and less-formal introductions shared, a couple of people made jokes to ease the tension, as to be expected. Seungmin discussed the projected schedule for the season, going over some of the pieces that they would need to practice together and individually. They went over all of the general housekeeping, discussed the placement procedures, and that they were free to go after they were done, since there was no real point in sticking around for the rest of the day.

“Alright, well,” Seungmin stood up as his alarm went off, “lunch starts now, so I'm gonna head off. See ya in an hour; just meet up here and don't be late. For strings, the violin section goes first, then us.”

Changbin looked down to the floor, an uneasy pit growing in his stomach. Part of him knew he should stay and practice, just to get his mind in the right order, but he couldn't pull himself away from the fact that Chan was still there, right next to him.

“Get up,” Chan muttered, lightly tapping Changbin's chair with his foot, startling the brunette to attention. “Look, dude,” he tucked his hands into his pockets and huffed with discontent, “I know we haven't spoken in years, but there's some things I wanna talk to you about before we go in and compete against each other for yet another stupid thing. Come grab lunch with me, alright?”

“I'm not hungry.” Changbin's eyes darted to the side, furrowing his brows in frustration. He just wanted to focus on practicing his piece for placements; there was no time to worry about eating at a time like this.

“No,” an exasperated sigh came from Chan as he folded his arms and rolled his eyes. “You're just nervous and you don't wanna talk to me. Unless you've drastically changed, you do this shit before performances, too. Just come on, it's not gonna be that bad, I promise.”

Changbin wasn't sure why he agreed to this. The two of them sat at a table in the hipster pho shop next to the cafe, awkwardly poking at their warm bowls of noodles and broth as they sat in silence for at least a good five minutes. “So,” the younger man sighed, “what did you want to talk about?”

The blonde sucked his lips in between his teeth and chewed on them for a second before he set his chopsticks down into the bowl and looked up, meeting Changbin's gaze with a hint of nervousness behind his eyes. “Changbin,” he huffed, tilting his head to the side, “all those years ago, I was horrible to you.”

“I know.” The brunette abruptly cut him off, seething through his teeth while he sat back in his chair.

“Bin,” the older man shook his head, his eyes wincing with pain, “dude, I had this big ass draft saved in my messages that I wanted to send to you after we graduated.” He brought an elbow to the table and nestled his head into his palm. “For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to ever send it. I don't know why; it was probably out of embarrassment and cowardice. The way I treated you all that time, over some stupid competitive shit, I'm sorry, Changbin. Honestly, I'm so sorry.”

A tsk left Changbin's lips as he rolled his eyes away, looking at the wall to his side, just for a moment. He leaned in, pressing his arm into the table, mere inches away from Chan. “Yeah, you did a lot of shit, and yeah, I know you’re sorry or whatever. But you know what hurts me the most, Chan?”

Chan nervously swallowed and bit his lip.

“You did all of this shit to me after I kissed you. None of this started until then.” Changbin shook his head in disappointment. “I'm not upset about the way you reacted, not really, at least, but I am upset over the fact that you kissed me back so hard, like you actually wanted me as more than a friend. After all that, you started treating me so horribly, like you had to prove that you were better than me. Like our years of friendship suddenly didn’t matter anymore.”

“Changbin, I just couldn’t—” Chan started, but Changbin sat back and shook his head, speaking up and cutting off the blonde.

“You hurt me.” There were tears budding up in the brunette's eyes. “It's taken you four and a half years to apologize. Chan, I’ve waited for fucking years for this. I wish you would have sent me some bullshit, half-assed stupid text message apology that summer. It would have hurt less than this. All of this time, I thought you hated me. That my best friend wanted nothing to do with me. Nothing else hurts more than that, to have your favourite person in the entire world suddenly hate you, and it’s all because you thought he had feelings for you, too, but he just threw them back in your face and laughed at your pain.”

Changbin stood up and grabbed his phone from off of the table. “I'm not ready to forgive you, Chan. Not after all of this shit. So, please,” a couple of tears rolled down his face as he bit his bottom lip, “just respect me enough to leave me alone for a little while. I need to think about this, about us.”

He stormed off before Chan could attempt to stop him. An overwhelming fear of nervousness took over: partially due to the unsteady ground their relationship was on, and partially due to the fact that his placement exam was going to take place soon, and Changbin was nowhere near the right mental capacity for that.

“Shouldn’t have done this,” Changbin whispered to himself as he wiped the tears from his face, his footsteps hard and heavy against the concrete sidewalk. “Fuck you, Chan.”

“Capriccio,” Minho smiled, his face relaxed and expression warm. He held his clipboard in hand as Changbin eyed the sheets of music in front of him. “Composed by Vieuxtemps. I picked this as the sight reading for today’s placement exams.” The conductor was welcoming enough, but his calm demeanour didn’t ease the nervousness vibrating throughout Changbin’s body.

All those years ago, I was horrible to you. Chan’s apology still sounded so clear in his head, Changbin constantly replaying the memory unwillingly as the notes on the sheet music danced around, tangling itself up into an unintelligible mess.

“Changbin?”

I’m so sorry, Changbin. He was so angry: at Chan, at himself, at the fact that he ran away, that he couldn’t concentrate on the important task at hand in front of him.

“Hey,” Minho’s voice was layered with concern as it pulled Changbin from his thoughts. “Are you feeling alright? It’s just a standard placement exam, nothing to be too nervous over.”

Changbin stood in the empty office, viola carefully cradled in his hands as he blinked his way back into focus, the sheet music suddenly becoming clear and normal. “Sorry,” he shook his head, trying to rid Chan’s voice from the depths of his ears, “I guess I’m just nervous.” Capriccio. It was a piece Changbin had heard, but he had never played it before, as to be expected for sight reading, but the anxiousness in his stomach blossomed like a large black lily of doubt, poking its petals at his ribcage. “How long do I have to look at this?”

“I’ll give you two minutes to look over it,” Minho leaned against the back of his chair and rubbed his chin with his thumb. “Once you’re ready to start playing, I’ll take notes. We’ll do the scales exercise before that, as well as a piece of your choosing. Are you sure you’re ready, Changbin?”

“I’ll be fine,” Changbin huffed, trying to calm the nerves inside of him as he readied his viola. He had to be fine, he had to beat out Chan with this. “Let’s do the scales, then.”

Changbin kept telling himself that had to beat Chan, but he didn’t know exactly why.

“Hey, man!” Seungmin said with excitement as he patted Changbin on the back, right outside of the practice room. “How'd it go?”

Changbin groaned and rolled his eyes, gripping the neck of his viola a bit tighter. “It was alright,” he grumbled, walking to where his case laid on his chair. Chan had gone before him, and was deliberately looking away from Changbin as he approached. As soon as he started shuffling with his case, Chan got up with an exasperated sigh and walked away.

“Are you two,” Seungmin pressed, lowering his voice as he approached Changbin, “do you know each other or something? I'm getting some weird vibes from you both.”

The brunette gritted his teeth as his bottom eyelid twitched. “We were classmates, yeah,” he admits, “back in high school.”

“Oh! That's exciting!”

“No,” Changbin sighed, “I wish it was more interesting than that, but we stopped talking after we both got into different universities”. It wasn't a complete lie, yet it wasn't a complete truth, either. Changbin quickly weighed the options of being honest with Seungmin about how strained their relationship was, and chose to just fake it for the greater morale of the group. They were both too new to start something so petty so early on in the season.

Seungmin grinned as Changbin turned around. “Well, hey,” he bopped his head back and forth to the side, humming a bit, “it's kinda cool when you've got people that know each other and work well together in the same group. Maybe the violas will be a bit stronger this year.”

“We'll see,” Changbin said with a fake smile. Whether he was talking about the group or about his relationship with Chan was uncertain.

It was nearly a full day until placement results were revealed. Both Changbin and Chan got first chair, but they were at the bottom of five. What stung the most, however, was that Chan had beaten Changbin, likely due to nerves.

Changbin was at the bottom of something for the first time in his life, and he didn't know how to handle the whirlwind of emotions raging inside of him.

“Sorry,” Chan whispered as they both stared at the sheet. “At least we're both first chairs, not second, though, yeah?”

He shouldn't have been upset, because these were some of the best performers in the entire country, but Changbin was seething. Fists clenched, teeth gritting, and he was sweating with how infuriated he was at being in the bottom for the first time. Ever. Seos were never anything but first, and this was going to eat at him from the inside out for a long time, especially since he was beaten out by Chan of all people.

“Hey, guys,” Seungmin leaned up against the wall, causing them both to break their gaze at the sheet of paper for a moment. “Congratulations on getting first chairs during your first contract year. Not many people get that.”

Changbin didn't care if “many people” got first chair or not, he was still fixated on the fact that he got beaten out by Chan. He wanted the assistant principal seat, but wasn’t even remotely close to it. So, he determined he’d have to work harder, to set his eyes on the principal seat when placements opened. This step backwards could cost him that opportunity when it came up in the spring, and he hated it.

Chan elbowed Changbin in the side, causing the brunette to snap back to reality.

“What?” The younger man bit back, viscerally reacting as his eyes widened and he bared his teeth. He wanted so desperately to throw Chan up against the wall and yell at him for distracting him right before his placement exam, when he knew he should have just stayed back and practiced. Chan broke his routine and all Changbin could think about during the exam was how angry he was at his former best friend.

“Chill out,” Chan sighed, eyes widening for a brief moment in shock. “Seungmin just asked if the two of us had any plans after practice.”

Seungmin shook his head. “It's cool if you do,” he smiled awkwardly, sensing the tension blooming around them, “a bunch of us, including most of the newbies, are all going out to Vivace. It’s that little bar down the street. Could be a good chance for everyone to get to know each other a bit better. Seems like you two have a head start on that, but now it's time for us to get to know you.”

His voice was sickeningly optimistic. Changbin gritted his teeth together under pursed lips and was about to decline, until Chan spoke up for both of them. “Yeah,” he said in a fake pleasant voice, “Changbin and I are down for that.”

“Don't speak for me,” Changbin said through his teeth, but Chan turned to look at him and frowned.

“Team morale. Be a good player, dude.”

Brooding. Failure. Fucking failure.

Changbin never was one to brood, but he was never one to fail, either. Today was a day of firsts, none of them good. He frowned as he leaned over his glass of warmed cognac, staring down into it in disgust at his reflection. The entire group was bonding with each other, smiling and laughing without a care in the world, and he was being the awkward loner in the corner again, silent and reserved.

“That didn't seriously happen,” a young man with short platinum blonde hair drunkenly giggled. Felix, probably. That's the name that Changbin thought he heard him mention when they all introduced themselves. He was the new French horn player. “Hyunjin, dude, you've gotta stop it with picking up random people in clubs.”

“It's Cap Hill, baby,” the man with long, black hair half-heartedly whined, martini against his lips. Hyunjin. Second chair cellist. “Sometimes you see someone hot, and you just gotta take them home, y’know? Of course you don’t, you’re too prudish to get fucking laid.”

A laugh bubbled up from the group, but both Chan and Changbin were staying relatively quiet. “Hey,” Chan said in a low voice, leaning against the table that Changbin was resting his elbows on. “You should come participate with everyone.”

“Why?” Changbin rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Nobody here really cares about each other. It's all polite bullshit anyways.”

“Seriously, would you just fucking stop with this mopey shit, dude?” Chan tried to keep his voice down, setting his pint of stout on the table. “Come on, you're not a kid anymore.”

Changbin tilted his head back and sighed. “I never lose, man,” he brought his head back upright, staring down Chan as the alcohol loosened his lips. “You know I've never come in second, much less last, for anything. Let me just be down for once.”

As Chan opened his mouth to retort, another short, young man came up to the table. Jisung, the lead second chair violinist slammed his lager on the table with a wide grin. “What’s up, newbies? We're doing shots. Team bonding, yeah?”

Changbin's lip curled up in disgust, already annoyed by how chipper the other man was. “I don't do shots,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jisung dismissively waved his hand in the air and scoffed. “We get it, you’re pretentious and better than us or whatever. You're doing a shot with us anyways, a'ight? If you're drinking, it ain't optional.”

Seungmin, Felix, and a quiet brunette carried a few small glasses of amber liquid, setting the tiny shot glasses down on the table. “I don't know why you recommended Fireball for this, dude,” Hyunjin grumbled as he shook his head, taking a shot glass from the table and stepping right behind Jisung.

“It's good!” The smaller black-haired man shouted with a wide smile. “I've met nobody that doesn't like this stuff.”

“I hate it,” Changbin grumbled in protest, vaguely recalling memories of getting hammered on the foul liquid during a house party his sophomore year of college. A layer of regret gripped at his ribcage, thinking of the way Wooyoung’s boozy breath lingered on his lips as they made out on the patio of some stranger’s house. The regret clawed at him while he recalled how he looked up at the stars and wished that it was Chan there instead of Wooyoung. “I hate it a lot,” he repeated, unsure if he was still talking about the liquor or if he was talking about the memory creeping into his head.

His quip earned him a finger in the face from the loud young man, pulling him from his lamenting. “Not tonight, you don't. You can hate it after our fifth shot of it. Hate it tomorrow morning. Yeah?”

Everyone grabbed a shot glass, several reaching out in reluctance, and Seungmin puffed his chest out. “Alright,” he proudly said with a triumphant grin, holding his glass in the air, “we're gonna have a great year. Newbies and violists may be outcasts, but we're all a family. Yeah?”

The group let out an affirmative, albeit jumbled, noise.

“On three,” Jisung said with a smirk, then counted to three. All of the men lifted their glasses to their lips and chugged down the cloyingly sweet and uncomfortably spicy cinnamon-flavoured liquor.

“Oh, that's horrid,” Changbin shuddered, nearly dropping the shot glass as he recoiled. Chan nodded his head as he hissed, while Seungmin and Felix scrunched their faces in discomfort.

“You're disgusting, Ji. Let's get more!” The brunette from earlier perked up, the first time Changbin caught him speaking during the gathering. “It's not a good night unless someone pukes before we leave, yeah?”

Jisung slapped his hand on the table and collected the empty glasses from everyone. “Hell yeah, Jeongin, that's my dude!”

It wasn’t until the cool, late summer breeze hit Changbin as he stumbled outside that he realized that that fifth shot of Fireball that Jisung convinced everyone to take was, in fact, not a good idea. He groaned to himself as the cool air gradually revitalized him. “That shit was horrible.”

“Yeah,” Chan's aching voice slurred up from behind him. “You gonna be good getting home, Bin?”

Changbin wouldn't have responded if he was sober. He would have, and should have, just walked away, waved Chan off with an insincerely polite farewell, but the alcohol gave him a slight boost of confidence. He shrugged and sighed. “Probably. I live just down the street, uh,” he brought one hand to his temple as he blinked, eyeing his surroundings, eventually slinging his right arm up and pointed lazily towards the right, “that way. Somewhere.”

“You've never been a good drunk, have you?” Chan sighed, walking up to Changbin and interlocking his arm with the younger man’s, gently pulling him towards the direction he pointed in.

The brunette shook his head a few times and whined. “What're you doing?”

“Making sure you get home in one piece.”

“You dunno where I live, man.”

Chan tugged Changbin’s arm a bit and sighed. “You said this way, so I'm making sure you go that way. Besides, I live over here, too. It's on the way.”

“The Bushnell Apartments.”

The blonde stopped in his tracks and stared down at his drunken compatriot in shock. “How'd you know?”

“What?” The younger man lazily lifted his head up and knitted his brows together in confusion.

“That's where I live, dude.”

“No,” Changbin scoffed, “you big dummy, that's where I live.”

“Wait a minute,” Chan chuckled inwardly, “you live in the same complex as me?”

“Sounds like it, yeah,” Changbin nodded once, bringing his free arm up to rub the back of his neck, “third floor, room 325.”

“Holy shit. I'm in 324. I wondered who was playing music a few weeks ago when I was moving my stuff in.”

Changbin laughed nervously as the realization that Chan lived so close to him, not only in the same apartment complex, but right next door to him, slapped him in the face. “Fate's a real bastard, innit?”

“What?”

As much as Changbin wanted to say something, a look of discomfort quickly washed over his face. “Oh shit,” came out instead of the quip he was planning on, and he quickly, awkwardly dashed to the curb of the sidewalk, violently emptying the contents of his stomach all over the pavement instead.

A drunken laugh came up from behind him as Chan cackled maniacally. “I knew you were a lightweight.”

The next morning, Changbin woke up and even the most ambient of sounds were painfully louder, every light was uncomfortably brighter. He let out a weak whimper, and curled into himself as the world spun around him. “Goddammit,” he grumbled. “Fuck Jisung and fuck last night. I'm never drinking again.”

As if fate was teasing him, taunting him with how unfair it truly was, there was a knock against the door, the faint rapping pulling him out of his daze. He sighed heavily, rolling over onto his back, coming to terms with the fact that he was going to have to get up in a moment. “Be there in a sec,” he attempted to shout in the most decent, cognizant way possible.

It took Changbin a few moments to reorient himself as the walls spun around him. He stumbled his way through his bedroom, out to the front door, not bothering to look through the peephole. Changbin fumbled with his deadbolt for a moment, scolding himself as he realized he forgot to do the chain-link before he passed out at some point earlier that morning. He pulled the door open, instantly regretting leaving his bed as he saw the man at his door.

“Chan?” He rubbed his eyes and grumbled. “How'd you find out where I live?”

“You told me last night, dude.” The taller man offered a plastic bag around his finger, almost as if it were some sort of physical apology. “Figured you could use some of this, especially since you don't remember all of last night, do you?”

Changbin stepped back, opening his door wide. There was no way he had the energy to yell at Chan, not when the man had brought him food as a peace offering. “I'm still upset with you, you know.”

“You told me last night,” Chan shook his head, tutting in feigned irritation as he took a couple of steps into Changbin’s apartment. “Several times, actually.”

The two of them sat on the couch in awkward silence as they ate their lukewarm, greasy diner takeout. Changbin curled up into a ball, clutching his sports drink to his chest as he rolled his face into the couch cushion. “God, I feel like shit,” he whined. “How are you so okay after all of that? You ended up drinking more than me.”

Chan chuckled. “I was part of a frat, dude,” he took a sip of water from his glass, then set it back down on the table. “Beer was an acceptable substitute for water in Sig Ep. Practically its own food group. Ah,” he stuck a finger in the air and his face turned stoic, “unofficially, of course.”

In all honesty, Changbin never realized that Chan had become such a different person after he went to university. He was still caring and kind, but to picture him as a typical frat boy was jarring. “You still got honours and valedictorian after all that shit?”

“Yep,” the older man clasped his hands together, bringing them behind his head as he leaned back into the couch. “Don't know how I did it, though. Talent probably got me far enough.”

“You were always really good at playing the viola, dude.” The compliment was sincere, Changbin rolling his eyes up to catch the profile of his best friend, staring longer than he should’ve.

Chan turned slightly, sucking in some air through his teeth as he looked at Changbin. “Never as good as you.” His voice was low, like there was something hidden deep under his words.

The two of them were quiet again. Changbin couldn’t help but ruminate on Chan’s words, memories of their constant rivalries and the night of their drunken kiss violently replaying over and over in his head. Chan always wanted to beat Changbin out on one thing, and Changbin was afraid it would cause Chan to look down on him as somehow lesser than.

Oh.

A sour, queasy feeling rolled up the back of Changbin’s neck as he realized he had probably treated Chan poorly in everything they competed for when he beat him out. How could he have treated his childhood friend so terribly for something so petty and trivial? Changbin had no other friends, not since he and Wooyoung split up, and the loneliness he felt bubbled up in his chest, commingling with how horrible he felt for the way he had treated Chan after all this time.

He should have apologized, too.

“Hey, Bin,” Chan leaned further into the back of the couch, drawing his arm out against the frame and he stared down at his sickly junior. “If I had reached out to you and apologized, do you think you would’ve forgiven me? We said some horrible shit to each other and, honestly, I never thought we’d see each other again. I’m glad we got to see each other after all this time, but I can’t help but think we’d never talk to each other otherwise.”

Changbin couldn’t help but look away, staring off into the tiny chip on his wall next to his calendar. He chewed on his teeth, unable to resist thinking about all of the stupid, petulant rage he felt over their trivial fights. He brought his thumbnail to his teeth and anxiously nibbled at it, honestly unsure if he would’ve forgiven Chan if they didn’t end up in Seattle together after all this time. “I dunno,” he muttered, words coming out with a slight lisp against his nail. “I think you’re probably right. I mean, we hadn’t talked in four years, why start now? What’s the point of resurfacing old wounds just to tear into them?”

A heavy sigh came from Chan as he looked up towards the ceiling. “I guess you’re right. I figured you had everything going perfectly for you. You graduated with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, were happily engaged, and had just accepted some prestigious job somewhere. You were succeeding and surpassing me in so many ways yet again, and I couldn’t even come to terms with the fact that I—” Chan quickly cut himself off.

Changbin lifted one of his eyebrows at the sudden silence, turning to look at Chan in confusion. “The fact that you what?”

The blonde shook his head, quickly standing up and brushing his shirt off. “I-it’s nothing.”

“Wait,” Changbin reached out to grab Chan’s arm without thinking, loosely grasping at his thin wrist. “Chan, I know it’s been years, but you can tell me anything.”

“No,” Chan shook his head, refusing to look at Changbin. “I promise, it’s not that important right now.” Almost as if he could sense Changbin opening his mouth to protest, Chan spoke up again. “Look, eat the rest of your food and drink a lot of fluids. We can talk about this all later, I just,” Chan offered a quick smile over his shoulder before he tugged his wrist free of Changbin’s grasp and made his way towards the door, “I can’t talk about it right now. Sorry, man.”

Changbin cursed himself for drinking so much the night prior, his hangover preventing him from chasing after Chan. As much as he wanted to know what Chan was about to say, he figured he would just drop it for now, then press for more information later.

Chan’s ‘talk about all of this later’ turned into a lot longer than Changbin expected.

It should have been days, weeks at the most. However, the end of summer resigned itself to Seattle’s torrential autumn rains, the symphony’s first performance of the season came and went, they all worked through their planned Thanksgiving break to finish recording a score for a film with an unbelievably large budget. All of that came and went, and there was still no conversation broader than casual discussion between the two of them.

Every time they passed each other, Changbin’s eyes lingered on the blonde. What was Chan thinking? What was he going to say that caused the energy between them to shift so drastically?

There were polite conversations in passing between Chan and Changbin off and on. Occasionally, they would walk to the practice hall together, but it was by sheer accident, only because they had left their apartments at the same time. Every interaction between them seemed accidental, too pleasantly sterile for what had to have been harbouring beneath the surface.

Autumn bled into winter. Rain turned to sleet, which morphed into snow a few times during January and February. February blended into March. March blossomed into April. More performances, more anxiety, more productions, more nervousness, more expectations, more, more, more. More from the symphony, and less, less, less from Chan.

The sleepless nights brought on by extensive late-night practices were tolerable; tired mornings after these were easily remedied with a few cups of coffee. Conversely, the few times Changbin had gone to bed at a reasonable hour, he found himself tossing and turning, restlessly thinking about Chan, unable to sleep. His heart pounded with nervousness, Changbin swearing he could hear his heartbeat echoing against the beige drywall of his bedroom. He reached his fingertips up and brushed them against the wall behind him, where he assumed Chan was laying on the opposite side, peacefully slumbering away.

So close. So far away. Chan was always right there, but so far out of reach.

I couldn’t even come to terms with the fact that I—

What exactly was Chan going to say on that day? Months had passed, but Changbin could still hear every syllable that came from Chan’s lips, the way that his tongue punctuated each hard consonant with a staccato against his teeth, haunting his dreams. He could picture the moment that Chan’s expression changed, shifted from ease to uncertainty, how his eyelashes twitched when his eyes went wide with fear.

Late one sleepless April night, Changbin had found himself staring upwards yet again, lost in the grooves and valleys of stucco against his ceiling. His nervousness of the upcoming principal seat exam weighed him down, forcing him to sink further and further into his mattress, heavy with doubt. Earlier that day, Chan stepped back, saying he wasn’t interested in fighting for the position, which Changbin read as neither truth nor fiction.

“I just want you to have the best chance possible,” Chan had told him with a seemingly fake smile. “You’re so incredibly talented, Bin. You’ve got the leadership skills, and I support you all the way.”

No. Something about that wasn’t right.

Changbin frowned, knitting his eyebrows together as he bit down on his lips. He tried to recall exactly what the expression was on Chan’s face while he said those words with a layer of insincerity. The insincerity was juxtaposed with honesty and pain, so many conflicting and contrasting things said without words.

Then, it hit him.

You’re so incredibly talented. It sounded so familiar, the layered pain and genuine jealousy.

Never as good as you.

It had been months since Chan told him that, when they were sitting on the couch nursing their hangovers at the beginning of the season. Months had passed, but the words were suddenly so crisp and clear, as if Changbin was right in that moment again.

It wasn’t jealousy. No, it was never jealousy.

In a near panic, Changbin reached out for his phone on his nightstand, bringing it up to his face. The bright light burned his retinas, but it didn’t matter. He started scrolling through Chan’s social media page, down countless months and years, endless photos that started with him in various spots in Seattle, then to his graduation, followed by various frat gatherings and university happenings.

It was like Changbin was travelling backwards in time, seeing several familiar names and faces pop up, partially reliving the moments he had spent over the years angrily scrolling through his timeline on the nights he where Wooyoung was sleeping soundly next to him. Names that caused Changbin’s stomach to tense with varying degrees of jealousy started popping up with each season he travelled through.

Senior year: Son Chaeyoung, five months.

Junior year: Minatozaki Sana, seven months.

Sophomore year: Im Naeyon, three months. Hirai Momo, two months.

Freshman year: Park Jihyo, two months. Yoo Jeongyeon, two months.

Changbin recalled all of the people — all of them women — that Chan had dated, how none of them really seemed like they were serious relationships, that they were maybe friends with benefits at most. The photos Chan had taken with them were all stiff and felt rushed, like he was putting on a show that he was happy with them, when he clearly wasn’t genuinely happy.

It wasn’t jealousy. Of course it wasn’t jealousy.

Chan was hiding something, and Changbin’s heart sunk into his stomach as he found himself staring at the ceiling yet again. All he could find himself thinking about now was a single word ruminating, burning into his head.

Why?

Changbin made sure to leave well in advance prior to the start of the day. He didn’t want to risk running into Chan, not when the principal seat exam was today. He had spent too much time ruminating and worrying over Chan and the what-ifs the night prior, his lack of sleep apparent as his limbs ached with fatigue.

The walk to the practice hall was uneventful; drizzle had languidly fallen from the sky, embedding itself into Changbin’s jacket, temporarily turning the crimson fabric just a few shades darker. After several months, Changbin had gotten used to the nonstop Seattle rain, varying from drizzle to torrential downpours with occasional reprieves of sunshine peppered in throughout the year.

In a way, it was oddly calming. The rain kept people from lingering in the streets too long to chatter, but there was also a stubborn resiliency as people just accepted the downpours. Umbrellas and ponchos were only seen with tourists, people that seemed afraid that the slightest bit of drizzle would cause them to melt. There was an influx of tourists in March, when the cheap cruises up along the coast to Alaska started. With the influx of tourists, there were more and more performances that were crammed into Changbin’s schedule.

Honestly, the transition from March to April seemed so minute, like the drizzle turning to heavy droplets of rain, the rainstorm he constantly found himself in. It was a beautiful time of year, and Changbin hadn’t ever truly appreciated the fact that there were so many varying shades of grey along the spectrum of white to black.

The transition from August to April seemed to be so subtle, too. Within a few months, the barista at the cafe got better with his name, eventually able to speak it with confidence at about February. Changbin assumed she was flirting with him a few times when she passed his cup to him with various doodles and scribbles on them, but he shrugged it off.

Today’s cup holding his shot in the dark had a heart next nestled up to his name. Perhaps it would bring good luck for the principal seat exam.

Practice was uneventful, since the entire group was only together for the first half of the day. As the group disbanded into its respective sections for individualized practice, nerves bubbled up in Changbin’s veins as he steeled himself in preparation for the principal seat exam. Seungmin had wished him the most polite “good luck, man,” he could muster, even though they were both competing against each other.

Changbin had been in the middle of practicing his solo piece when a familiar voice pulled him from his concentration.

“Fantasia Cromatica?” The voice was layered with nervousness and anticipation.

The brunette sighed, trying to bite back his irritation at the loss of his focus. “Yeah,” he turned his head over his shoulder, eyeing the man that approached him. “Surprised you recognized it, Chan.”

Chan’s hand twitched as he lifted it for a brief second, like he was about to reach out to Changbin. “I’ve eyed that piece several times,” he brought his hand up to the back of his neck, awkwardly chuckling as he stood a respectable distance away from the brunette, “it’s intimidating, but it’s such a well-known viola solo. I guess I’m not surprised you picked something without accompaniment with how independent you are.”

It was supposed to be a compliment, but Chan’s words struck a sour chord within Changbin. The younger man shook his head once, eyeing the floor before he turned to look at the blonde. “I’m trying to practice,” his voice came off harsher than he had meant it to. Chan’s expression fell from nervously optimistic to slightly hurt, and Changbin rolled his eyes with a huff as he tried to pedal backwards. “Look,” he started, making awkward eye contact with Chan for a brief moment, “after I’m done with all of this, can we talk? I’ve got some stuff on my mind I wanna discuss with you.”

Chan looked excited for a moment as he nodded rapidly. “Sure,” he bit back a smile, “yeah, I’ll be here.”

“Thanks,” Changbin half-smiled as he turned back to his sheet music.

“Good luck, Changbin,” Chan brought his hand up to the brunette’s shoulder, offering a quick, warm squeeze that didn’t last nearly long enough. The slight touch caused Changbin’s breath to hitch in his throat, all of the air around him turning cool as Chan left.

Somehow, the younger man felt revitalized with the well wishes of his friend still lingering on his shoulder and dancing in his ears.

“So,” Minho greeted Changbin with a warm smile as the brunette entered the room. “You’ve decided to audition for the principal viola seat. After the initial chair placements, I didn’t think you would try, in all honesty.” The auburn-haired man smiled, tipping his wire-rimmed frames down his nose slightly, red pen in his hand.

Shit. Nerves lit up all over Changbin as he started to doubt himself, like he wasn’t supposed to be here.

“I’m glad you did.” Almost as if he could sense Changbin’s nervousness, Minho offered kind words in his usual soft, gentle voice. “Listen, I should be clear about something. I specifically sought out both you and Chan, as well as a few others, for this year’s contract placements. I don’t think you recognized me during the interview process, and I’m surprised you didn’t notice after the season started.”

“What?” The brunette cocked his head to the side, eyelids squinting upward in confusion.

Minho set the clipboard down on his desk, leaning forward as he rested his elbows on the table. He interlaced his fingers together and rested his chin on the backs of his hands. “I used to live on the east coast. I was in New Jersey for a while until I moved to Seattle a couple of years ago for this job. You and Chan performed Lament at the state competition in New York a few years ago. I believe you were both juniors back then, correct?”

Changbin’s throat went dry as he recognized Minho from so long ago, feeling somewhat dumb for not realizing it sooner. All those years ago, he was sitting in between two other judges, wearing the same wire-rimmed glasses as he wore today. “Y-yeah,” he stuttered. “That’s right.”

A smile crept up Minho’s face. “You both earned a perfect score, which was a rarity in and of itself, but what really captured me was how well both of you worked, the way you both blended together so naturally, beaming with raw, unadulterated talent. Such balance can’t be taught, only naturally weaved together by fate.”

Uneasiness came over Changbin in waves, like he was about to be judged far more critically than he anticipated.

“Anyway,” Minho brought his hands to his desk and sat back a bit. “The details of it all aren’t important. Just know that I’m happy that you’re both here. I’ll admit, however, that I was disappointed when Chan told me that he wasn’t interested in auditioning for the principal seat.”

A jolt surged up against the length of Changbin’s spine. “What?” He pressed, taken aback, unsure if what he just heard was accurate. “Chan told you he wasn’t interested?”

Minho nodded once. “He told me that, if given the opportunity, you deserved it more than he did, that he believed you were more talented and had the right leadership skills for the position.”

Changbin knitted his brows together. Nervousness had been replaced with a rush of anger. He initially found it odd that Chan wasn’t going to audition for the seat placement, sure, but the fact that he deliberately told Minho that Changbin was more talented and deserved it? That they didn’t even get to have a fair chance of competition between the two of them?

He felt strangely hurt, like Chan had somehow betrayed him. All for what, a seat placement? Something so trivial, after all these years?

His eyes looked down at his viola, eyeing that familiar chip one more time. The familiar word that echoed against Changbin’s head the night prior was so loud yet again.

Why?

Chan was pacing in the hallway when Changbin emerged from Minho’s office. “Hey!” He perked up with a smile on his face. “How’d it go, dude?”

Changbin shook his head, unable to look at Chan. A scowl curled up his lips as he bared his teeth, briskly walking to where his viola’s case rested. Practice was supposed to be for another hour, but he couldn’t bear another minute of being under the same roof as Chan, in the same claustrophobic space as him, not when he was seething with anger.

“Changbin?” Chan’s voice was closer, but quieter than before. “Was it that bad?”

The brunette’s fingers trembled as he shakily rested his viola in its case, eyeing the chip one last time before he slammed his case shut. He didn’t say anything as he made his way over to the instrument lockers, deciding to leave his viola in the practice hall overnight. Chan trailed behind him, his voice growing more and more concerned as Changbin paced away.

“Dude,” Chan pressed, reaching out to grab Changbin’s wrist as he slammed his locker door shut. “What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

“Why?” Changbin wanted to say so much more, but the single syllable was all he could muster.

Chan winced, shaking his head in confusion. “What are you talking—”

“Why didn’t you audition for the principal seat?” His voice was terse, yet was still draped in a layer of fragility. “No, why did you tell Minho you didn’t deserve it? We’re supposed to be rivals, right? Push each other and make ourselves better, like when we were kids. What the fuck happened?”

“Changbin,” the blonde’s composure dropped with his shoulders, a look of pity washing over his face. “I didn’t mean for it to be like that. I just… I didn’t want you to worry about it.”

“Tch, typical. You know, Chan,” the younger man scoffed, rolling his eyes before he stared down the blonde, “I don’t understand you. I’m not some fragile thing that needs to be protected, not by anyone, not by you. I deserved a fair shot at the principal seat placement, I deserved to compete against you, and you just insult me like I had no chance if you competed.”

Chan curled into himself slightly, hurt by Changbin’s words. “I didn’t realize—”

“Of course you didn’t.” Changbin shook his head and spun on his heel, padding off towards the exit in anger.

After a moment, Chan heard the downpour come through the door as Changbin ran off. He rushed to his locker, grabbing his jacket and his umbrella. “Changbin, wait!”

Seattle rain was never forgiving, especially during spring. The precipitation clattered against the ground at near-torrential speeds, the heavy noise only amplified as it reverberated against the concrete and the walls of nearby buildings.

“Changbin, please,” Chan shouted as the younger man stormed out of the practice hall and into the downpour that enveloped Capitol Hill in a dark haze. He took a few long strides as he chased after the seething brunette.

Changbin spun on his heel, shouting at the top of his lungs as he stared down Chan with wild eyes, his voice barely carrying along the heavy pattering of rain against concrete. “I don’t understand why you keep hiding, Chan! Why did you turn me down all those years ago?”

Chan shook his head, avoiding eye contact as he motioned for Changbin to come back. “Come here, Changbin, get under my umbrella before you get sick.”

“No!” Changbin shrieked in anger, tears streaming down his face as all of the emotions he had bottled up over the years suddenly erupted all at once. “Do you not understand how much I’ve loved you all these years? Ever since we were kids?”

“Bin, please, I—” The blonde’s shoulders sunk down as he recoiled into himself, eyes darting around as he was frozen in place.

“Everything! Everything I did was because of you, Chan!” The words burned as they came up from Changbin’s chest, the black lily of nervousness entangling its petals in between the empty spaces of his ribcage. “I put myself through hell to distract me from you, to get all of these thoughts out of my head, to stop fucking thinking about you for once!”

Chan was quiet, lips parted as he stared at Changbin in disbelief, tears unknowingly spilling from his eyelids.

The brunette refused to relent, shouting over the Seattle rain. “You were the only person that believed in me. You pushed us to do that duet, even though I thought it was stupid. You’re the reason we got the perfect score. You keep saying that I’m so much more talented than you, that you’d never be as good at me, but you’ve always been the one that’s naturally better at all of this.”

A beat passed between them before Changbin let out an anguished, angry shout. He was so tired of all of the pain and anguish he had felt over the years, and letting it all finally explode after so long, like a rubber band wound up too tightly, felt unnaturally liberating. Regardless of how Chan felt about Changbin after all of these years, he could finally let go of his agony, which was equal parts terrifying and relieving.

“Why? Why the fuck did you never apologize to your best friend, Chan? I have been in absolute fucking misery since you and I kissed so long ago and I don’t think you understand how much I wanted you to be there. How you kept creeping into my thoughts, even after all of these years, all I could think about was you.”

The blonde advanced, his face pulled into a downward scowl as his footsteps were heavy against the slick concrete. “It’s because I didn’t want to admit something,” Chan spoke in as low of a voice as he could while he pulled Changbin to his chest. “When you kissed me all those years ago, I was terrified about all of the what-ifs that started rushing around in my head. Like, what if I ruin my friendship? What if you’re not actually into me? What happens when I’m not good enough for you? What if I was actually straight and I was going to cause you nothing but pain after all this time?”

“Chan, stop.” Changbin shook his head, bringing his damp hands to Chan’s clammy face, rubbing away the tears that started spilled over, down his chilled cheeks. “You’re always good enough for me. You’re the only one that’s good enough for me; the only one I ever wanted.”

“What?”

“Listen,” the brunette sighed heavily, trying to ease the tension in his shoulders. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved Wooyoung, but, the thing is…”

Chan watched the expressions on Changbin’s face cross a spectrum from confusion, to anguish, to regret.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you, as horrible as it sounds. Sure, we were drunk when we had that one kiss, but it was the best kiss of my life. Hell,” he hiccuped, trying to swallow back tears, “I thought I lost my chance with you forever after high school. So, I settled. Wooyoung was the only other friend I had, and he was interested in me. I took a shot with him and, yeah, we were fine, but it wasn’t anything spectacular. I was ready to settle for a life of mediocrity until he decided he didn’t want to come to Seattle with me. I was finally free of both of you when I got here. I could leave you both behind.”

Changbin brought his forehead down to Chan’s wet shoulder, the fabric squishing against his skin as he rolled around and sighed. “It’s horrible,” he dropped his hands and clutched at the lapels of the blonde’s jacket, pulling himself closer into the older man’s embrace. “I was so glad to be free of both Wooyoung and the ghost of you. So, when I saw you that day at the cafe, it was like all hell had broken loose; everything came rushing back and I was overwhelmed by the weight of my past. I was forced to reconcile with the one person I hurt the most, the one who hurt me the most, and the one I never thought I would be able to forgive.”

A soft chuckle echoed around Chan’s chest as he rested his cheekbone against Changbin’s sopping wet brown hair. “We can’t escape each other.”

“I guess not,” Changbin quietly relented, releasing Chan’s jacket from his grasp, his arms languidly falling to his side in exhaustion. He was tired of being angry for so long, for harbouring such a deep-seated resentment against his best friend, for being mad at himself for never forgiving Chan after all this time over something so minor. So fucking tired. “I’m sorry, Chan. For all of this shit.”

The tapping of Seattle rain against Chan’s umbrella seemed so muted as the men stood up against each other, lost in their little bubble as the world disappeared around them. Nothing else mattered but being warmed by each other. Chan dropped his hand from Changbin’s back for a moment, then brought his fingers up to the underside of Changbin’s chin.

“Changbin,” his voice was timid as he tilted the younger man’s chin upward, both of them making awkward eye contact for a moment. A few drops of rain fell from Changbin’s hair, mingling against the tears that were rolling down his face, the droplets joining to become something greater, a small river down the valley of his cheek. “Even if you don’t forgive me after all this time, I forgive you. We were both idiots back then. What matters is that we’re here now. We can leave everything behind and move forward — together.”

“Together.” Changbin repeated, his voice cracking in between the syllables. He hated feeling so weak, but he couldn’t help it. All of the emotions from the past few years coming up, burning in his chest as the realization that what he yearned for all this time settled. After all this time, he was finally where he felt comfortable, secure, happy, with no strings attached.

Chan.

His arms were warm, a shelter to protect him from the weakness he was feeling. The happiness in his eyes and the bright smile on his face was Changbin’s sunshine during the overcast, dreary Seattle days.

Chan was home. His home.

The pattering of rain against Chan’s umbrella was suddenly so quiet, a rush of warmth blossomed up from Changbin’s cheeks to the tips of his ears. The black lily of anxiety that rested in between the spaces of his ribcage blossomed from black, to crimson, to a vibrant pink. All of his feelings for Chan became crystal clear, and he couldn’t hold them back any longer.

There was nothing left to lose.

“I love you. Still, after all of this time. I love you so much, Chan.” The words left his lips before he crashed them against Chan’s, much less awkwardly than their kiss so many years ago. His hands reached up to Chan’s blonde locks with a sudden renewed, yearning energy, grasping at the strands and tugging at them as if he would sink into the ground if he let go.

Rain came pouring down all around them as Chan dropped his umbrella, bringing one of his hands down to the small of Changbin’s back, the other hand softly cupping the younger man’s face. “I love you too, Changbin,” he whispered breathlessly as he pulled back for just a split second. Chan brought the brunette closer into his grasp, droplets of rain falling between them, rolling down their faces and in between their lips.

Like Connecticut, Changbin was vivacissimo, as wild as the hustle and bustle of the east coast. Like Seattle, Chan was andante, languid and calming.

Chan was his home, where Changbin belonged all along.

[javier-djarin]

Como Me Duele: Chapter 10

Ship: Javi x Reader

Rating: M

Word Count:  5,490 words

Warnings: Language, Mild Violence

Masterlist

Summary: Someone has taken Javi’s hermosa, and now he’s coming to get her. And he’s bringing hell with him.

A/N: Three more posts left. Which makes me so sad, because I loved writing this fic. Thank you again for all the love and support! Please, please, PLEASE let me know what you think. Please let me know if you want to be on my tag list! Chapter 11 coming soon! Also, there is a lot of Spanish in this one. Most of it is from the show. I apologize in advance. The translations are at the bottom.

His POV

He sat in a crumpled mess on the sidewalk looking at the suitcase that had been busted open. The blood that pooled around the suitcase had to have been her’s. He felt pain, misery, panic, and rage all at once. He wanted to scream and cry. She was gone, and the last image she had of him was Gabby’s arms around him as she kissed him. He balled his fists in his hair, hating himself even more for hurting her the same way Michael did; the same way Javi promised he’d never do. He had no one. Steve was gone tracking Escobar’s family to God knows where. He had absolutely not one person he could call for help. He gathered her things, gently folding her clothing before carrying the broken suitcase up to their apartment.

Javi set it on the dining table before taking a seat next to it. He could call Berna, unless that’s who took her. He knew Los Pepes were getting nervous the last time, since he was not as forthcoming with information like he was before. He could notify the Embassy, but they’d release it to the press, and then the kidnappers could get spooked and do something unimaginable to her. He banged his fists on the table in rage. The best thing he could do right now was use whatever resources he could find, and bring her home. He would burn Colombia to the ground if he had to, just to make sure she was safe, and he was prepared to do exactly that.

He jumped out of his seat and ran to his Jeep. He was losing precious time, so he sped to the Embassy. His tires squealed as he skid into a parking spot. “Javi,” one of the secretaries said as he blew by them. “Javi, you have a message!”

He stopped. “From who?” He spun to face her, his rage causing him to shake and tremble.

“I think you should go talk to the Ambassador,” she said softly.

Without missing a beat, he turned on his heel, bursting into the Ambassador’s office where Messina was already waiting. “Agent Peña,” Crosby said, “please, have a seat.”

“With all due respect, Ambassador, I need this to be as brief as possible.”

Messina looked at her agent and sighed. “We received a call about 20 minutes ago from Escobar.”

His face turned ghost white. “What did he want?”

“He threatened us. He wants us to pull strings to get his family into Germany. Agent Murphy is there now trying to prevent that.”

Already knowing the answer to his next question, he decided to ask anyway, “What-uh-what leverage does he have? Or did he just call and ask nicely?”

“It seems that he has a Ms. Y/N Y/L/N in his ‘protective custody’ saying when his family is safe, he will return her to us. Apparently she is an American Nurse who was down here volunteering-”

“I know who she is,” he said all too fast. “She’s,” his voice cracked, “she’s my…” the fastest way to get her back was if she was DEA. They protect their own. She may not want anything to do with him once he got her back, but right now her safety was all he cared about. “She’s my wife.”

“Agent Peña, I thought you weren’t married.”

“Recently married, Messina.” He cleared his throat and tried to calm down.

Crosby sat back in his chair and watched Peña. “Well, there’s only one problem. His family is already on a charter back to Colombia. They booked their flight late last night and will be landing here tonight.”

Javi felt his heart race. Escobar was going to kill her, and he knew it. They went after Pablo’s family, so naturally he retaliated. This was exactly why he wanted her in the states, instead of here. “Not to be crass, but how the fuck am I going to get her back?” he said through his teeth.

“We are working with Colonel Martinez to find her,” Crosby said.

“And we’re going to need you to stay here, Agent Peña,” Messina added.

His eyes immediately darted to hers. “No. Court Marshal me, send me home, but do all of that after I break that direct order. I’m going out there to find her.”

“You’re too close to this.”

“Damn right I’m too close to this, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to bring her back to me!” he exclaimed, “And if that motherfucker calls here again, I want to talk to him.”

Messina looked at Crosby for a cue. He was sitting silently, with no expression on his face as he waited for Javi to be done with his tirade. “Look, we don’t negotiate with terrorists. However, we aren’t going to abandon one of our own. Your wife is DEA. We are going to do everything in our power -”

“Please, Ambassador, cut the shit. I know this spiel. We give it to anyone who loses someone. I’m sure they gave this same talk to Mika Camarena when Kiki went missing. I’m going to go out there and find her, either on my own or with help. I’m not waiting for clearance or authorization. Her hours, no minutes are numbered.”

Messina stood up and approached Javi. “When Agent Murphy lands, we will send him in for backup. Whatever you need, let me know. You’ll have it.”

Your POV 

You took a deep breath as you stood outside your apartment complex, nervous about seeing Javi and telling him the news: you were pregnant. You ran various scenarios through your head from best to worst case. You reached out for the doorknob and pushed the door open and slowly climbed the flight of stairs that led to your apartment. You were halfway up the second flight when you saw it. Javi was kissing someone. Her arms were draped over his shoulders and she held onto him like she knew him intimately. It felt like a hot knife was ripping through your body. Memories of Michael's betrayal hit you. It was happening again and this time, you didn't know if you'd survive it. The pain was almost too unbearable. You let out a loud gasp as tears welled in your eyes. He pushed her away. "Shit," he said, eyes wide, "Y/N."

You turned and bolted down the stairs. Maybe if you ran fast enough you'd catch a taxi before he got to you. Tears were blurring your vision by the time you made it outside. You thought of your child, realizing now they would never know the happiness their parents felt; he or she would be raised in a broken home. You heard tires squeal in front of you and two men run at you. You tried backing away, but your legs were already weak from grief. You dropped your suitcase and it burst open. The last thing you remembered was intense pain on the side of your head as you hit the ground.

***

You woke up a few times with a bag over your head. You were groggy and couldn’t really understand what they were saying as you drifted in and out of consciousness. Your head throbbed, obviously from the butt of a gun or something blunt that struck you. “El está loco,” You heard one of them say. “Primero esa bomba, ¿y ahora la novia de un agente de la DEA?”

“Era amigo de Carrillo.  Ese hijo de puta vendrá por ella y traerá el infierno con él,” the other said. 

The first one laughed. “No mierda  Acabamos de firmar nuestras propias órdenes de muerte, Blackie.”

That brought you out of your grogginess. If Blackie was in the car, then the other one had to be La Quica. Or at the very least one of Pablo’s men. Your heart sank. They were going to use you as a bargaining chip. Little did they know, Javi wouldn’t come for her. Michael was right. He only sent her away so he could hook up with local… no, you thought to yourself, there has to be a reason she was there. There was no way he would do that to me. He is going to come for me. Months of living together and love making told you that he loved you too much to betray you. He would find you, even if it killed him. 

His POV

He walked into the usual seedy bar to meet Berna, but this time he didn’t feel dirty about it. He didn’t care if this move cost him his career; he was going to get her back. He pulled his chair out and lit a cigarette. “No tengo ninguna información para ti, pero necesito tu ayuda,” he said. 

Berna sat back and grinned. “¿Que vas a hacer por mi?”

Javi tried to hide his emotions, but his fear and anger were all over his face. “Te pagaré.”

“$50,000,” he replied.

“Trato.”

Berna shook his hand. “Escuché que Blackie y La Quica se la llevaron. Ella está en algún lugar de Bogotá.”

His heart raced. “¿Dónde?”

“Estoy...investigando.”

Javi growled and slammed the table. “En el segundo en que encuentres algo, llámame. Quiero estar ahí.”

He put out his cigarette and left the restaurant. Just as he stepped onto the sidewalk, the phone rang. “Javi,” Steve’s voice rang from the other end. “I just landed. Messina filled me in.”

“I’m on my way,” he said, hanging up the phone. Javi sat in his Jeep for a second, frustrated beyond belief. He spent the entire day looking for leads, clues, anything, but he was coming up short. No one was talking. She was sitting, God knows where, waiting. He couldn’t get the look on her face out of his head. It was pure shock and hurt when she saw Gabby kissing him. He felt a tear roll down his cheek as he started the car. “I’m on my way,” he whispered to himself. 

***

Steve hopped in the Jeep and turned to Javi. “What the fuck, man?” he said, “I’ve only been gone for a day!”

Javi couldn’t turn to look at Steve. He knew if he did, he’d lose it. “I’ve got to find her,” his voice cracked.

“We will,” Steve reassured.

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and sped down the street. “Where are we going?”

Javi didn’t answer, because he didn’t know. He just felt like if he was driving, he was doing something.

“Javi,” Steve sternly said, “Javi, pull over.”

He pulled off to the side and slammed the gear shift into park. “What!” Javi exclaimed.

Steve held his hands up in surrender. “Let’s go back to the apartment, and we will start there.”

“I already tried that,” he said, still looking at the steering wheel.

“Let’s try again. You had to have missed someone,” Steve said, “someone who was in the area.”

Javi froze. He did miss someone. Gabriela. Deep down, he knew she was part of it. She had to have been. Who else would be able to give her his address? “Fuck!” he screamed. 

“What is it?”

He finally turned and looked at his partner...friend. Tears ready to spill over at the edge of his eyelids. “Gabriela,” he croaked. Steve waited patiently for Javi to explain to him who she was. “She’s a prostitute.”

“Jesus, Javi,” he said, running his hand down his face. “What did you do?”

Javi recounted how Gabriela was the one who told him about Martiza, how she’s the reason Carrillo was set up, and how she showed up at his apartment door early this morning. His voice broke so many times when he tried to tell Steve about the last time he saw Y/N’s face, just before she bolted down the stairs. “She has to hate me,” he said, “which is why I have to get her back. I have to save her if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Well, let’s start with this Gabriela. Do you know where to find her?”

He put the car in drive. “I do.”

***

They pulled in and parked on the opposite side of the street from the brothel. Javi’s phone rang before they got out of the car. “Peña,” he answered.

“Javi! I just got your message,” Connie said at the other end.

“You called my wife?” Steve said.

“I had no one else to talk to!” Javi defended, “Steve’s back. We think we’ve found a lead. I can call you back after.”

“Wait, Javi,” she said, “hand the phone to Steve.”

He did so and left the Jeep. He needed some fresh air before heading to interrogate Gabriela. He ran his hand through his hair and leaned against the vehicle, about ready to lose the rest of his mind. Every second he did nothing weighed on him. She had limited time left.

“Steve,” Connie said over the phone, crying. “You have to find her, and soon.”

“I know, Connie. What do you think we’re doing?” he sighed.

“No, you don’t understand. Steve, you can’t tell Javi. Especially now.”

“Tell him what?”

Connie took a deep breath. “Y/N is pregnant.”

“She’s what!” he exclaimed.

“Look, we were all surprised, but that’s why she went back. She came down there to tell Javi. She wanted to do it in person and to surprise him.”

“Oh, Jesus. Fuck! I can’t keep that from him,” he said.

“You have to, Steve. What good is this information going to do him now? Nothing, except drive him more insane. You get my pregnant best friend back. Be careful. I love you.” She hung up the phone, and Steve slammed his head lightly against the headrest. He climbed out of the Jeep and walked around to where Javi was standing. He stared at him with nothing but sorrow in his eyes, knowing what Javi should know.

“What?” Javi said. “What did she say?”

“How about I handle this interrogation?” Steve suggested. 

His hands trembled as he wiped his face. “Okay.” 

They walked into the whorehouse, instantly surrounded by girls promising a good time. Javi cornered one he knew, Vanessa. “¿Gabriela está aquí?”

“Sí, Javi. Ella esta arriba.”

“Gracias,” he added. 

Steve followed Javi through the hallways and up the stairs to Gabriela’s room. He knocked first, but when there wasn’t an answer, he burst in. Steve held back for a minute. She was in the middle of a job. “¡Vete, cabrone!”

The man grabbed his clothes and ran out of the room. Gabriela smiled and made her way over to Javi. “I knew you wouldn’t stay away for long,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck.

He grabbed her wrists, a little too hard. “Cut the shit, Gabby.”

“Javi…”

Steve stepped out of the shadows and grabbed her arm, forcing her to sit in the chair in her room. “Who gave you Javi’s address? No one knew he’d moved apartments.”

“I don’t…”

Javi stormed over to her, pressing her into the seat. “Who, Gabby!”

She started crying. “Lo siento, Javi. Lo siento mucho. Ellos iban a matarme.”

He felt a weight lift. He found his lead. His breathing began to shake as he sat down. “Where did they take her?” Steve asked, pressing the barrel of his gun to her chest.

“I-I don’t know.”

He cocked the gun. “You’re going to have to do better than that. They were going to kill you, but I will.”

“Please, I can find out.”

Javi’s head jerked up and looked at her. “Call them. Now.”

“I can’t just do that.” She started crying harder. “They’re watching you.”

Both Javi and Steve froze. “They have been since Pablo escaped prison. That’s how they knew where to hit you where it hurt.”

“Call them.” Steve pressed harder with the gun. “Now.”

She reached for the phone on the side table next to her. 

Your POV

You woke again, this time with duct tape and rope around your arms and legs. You were blindfolded and strapped to a chair with a terrible headache. You head feet shuffling as they neared you. “Ella tiene una herida en la cabeza desagradable,” the man’s voice said. 

“Limpiarla. Pablo quiere que enviemos un video a la embajada.,” La Quica’s voice said from across the room.

“Nosotros estamos jugando con fuego,” the voice said as he dabbed at her wound with a cloth.

You tried to move away, but he held your head in place. “Estas bien, señorita,” he said, trying to calm you.

You didn’t say anything, but instead let out a small sob. You felt another pair of hands on your face, lifting your chin up to expose your neck. “Tal vez podríamos divertirnos un poco con este después del video.”

“Por favor, no,” you begged.

“Sí. Quiero ver qué te hace tan especial para la DEA.”

“No, por favor. Estoy embarazada.”

La Quica laughed. “Limpiarla.”

His POV

Blackie. She was able to give them Blackie. She told them about Blackie’s girlfriend in Medellín. Javi and Steve walked into the Search Bloc offices to begin mapping out a plan of attack. Steve’s phone rang. “Murphy.”

“It’s Messina,” she said, “keep Peña away from the TV.”

“What happened?”

“She’s on the TV.”

Steve saw Trujillo and Peña talking, as they both rapidly walked into Martinez’s office. “You called about thirty seconds too late.”

Javi stood in shock as he watched the tape that was released this morning by the news. La Quica was laughing in the video, showing them her wounds she sustained. She cried the entire time, pleading for them to let her go. Her beautiful eyes swollen and red. One was bruised. In one final display of dominance, La Quica backhanded her to silence her. Blood dripped from her split cheek and swollen lips. Pablo’s usual reporter, Valeria Velez, was the one on TV with a screencap of his beautiful hermosa in the upper left corner. “Escobar tiene un mensaje para los responsables de mantener a su familia en peligro: Mientras mi familia esté en peligro, la tuya también. Mantener a mi familia seguro, o te enviaré su cabeza en una caja.”

Enraged, Javi grabbed the whiskey glass in front of him and threw it at the TV, shattering the glass and screen completely. Martinez and Trujillo stood back, fearing they would be the next targets. Steve came in and grabbed Javi before he destroyed anything else. “I’m going to kill those motherfuckers,” he said, “every last one of them.”

“I know,” Steve said, “starting with Blackie. Let’s catch this asshole.”

***

They walked out of Blackie’s Girlfriend’s apartment complex, defeated. They were dead. Everyone inside. Javi was almost sure that Blackie fled. He wouldn’t be coming back here, and their lead was a dead end. He punched the side of his Jeep out of frustration. He was growing restless and angry. It’d been three days since she’d been taken, and he hadn’t slept at all. How could he? She was out there, somewhere being tortured. He couldn’t afford to sleep. Steve approached him. “It looks like the work of Los Pepes.”

Javi cursed. Of course. He hadn’t given them that information, which means someone else was. “We have to find Blackie. Get him to talk.” He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“When was the last time you slept?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll drive,” Steve said, taking the keys from him. “Sleep, at least while I drive us back.”

“I can’t sleep. Not until she’s safe.”

Your POV

“Patrón, Los Pepes se están expandiendo. Los Galones están trabajando con ellos ahora. No podemos enfrentarnos a un enemigo tan grande,” you heard La Quica say into the phone. “Sí, sí. Ella está viva. ¿Dónde? Medellín. Sí, Patrón. Gracias. Hasta luego.”

Based on the one-sided conversation you heard, you put together that you were being moved to Medellín. You felt your heart drop. You wanted to scream and cry for Javi, but you knew that would result in Quica beating you. You had no idea how long you’d been trapped here, but you were grateful they hadn’t done anything to you to hurt your child. The worst La Quica did was slap you.

You were no longer worried about yourself, but instead your baby and Javi. You knew this had to be killing Javi. He sent you away for this reason. Tears ran down your cheeks as you silently cried. You should have just called him, but instead you were selfish and wanted to celebrate with him in person. Now, he was out there somewhere looking for you, risking his life to bring you home. 

His POV

They pulled into the Embassy lot as were instantly met by Messina. “We overheard some chatter,” she said.

Javi felt his heart race. “Who?”

“Quica and Escobar. They’re moving ‘precious cargo’ to Medellín tonight. We are stationing teams at the airfields. And setting up blockades at various intersections,” she added, “she won’t leave the city.”

“Messina, a word?” Steve asked.

She nodded and walked away with Steve so they were out of Javi’s earshot. “She’s pregnant.”

Messina crossed her arms. “I’ll communicate that with team leaders to make sure she walks away unharmed and stays out of the crossfire.”

Javi had already walked inside, only to be approached by Stechner, who hopped on the elevator with him. “You’re the last person I want to talk to right now,” he said, “can’t you take the stairs?”

“Remember my warning, Peña? You’re starting to make our new friends nervous. Why didn’t you tell them about Blackie?”

He turned to look at him, annoyed. “They found his family, didn’t they?”

“No thanks to you.”

Javi could feel his muscles tense up. He was already on edge and in desperate need to take his frustrations out on something. Instead, he tried to calm himself. “They go in after her, guns blazing, she could get hurt. Or worse.”

“This is bigger than your girlfriend problems.”

He grabbed him by the shirt collar and slammed him into the elevator wall. “Not for me. I will burn this fucking place to the ground to find her, and if you try to stop me, I’ll take you down with me.”

The elevator door opened and he released him. He walked to his desk. He held the picture of her he kept there, running his fingers over the glass. “Javi,” Steve said behind him, out of breath, “we got him. We fucking got him.”

He set the picture down and turned to him. “Who? Where is he?”

“Blackie.”

***

Javi and Steve were granted access to the interrogation room where they had Blackie. He was sitting there, scared. His hands were tied around his back as he sat in a metal chair looking between the two of them with wide eyes. “Ustedes no me pueden hacer una mierda,” Blackie said, ”De Greiff nos ofreció amnistía.”

“Cierto,” Javi said, leaning back on the table, “Pero tienes que hablar para conseguirlo.”

Blackie smiled. “¿Quieres negociar, gringo? Te voy a dar algo. Algo pequeño.”

Javi leaned forward, bringing his face closer to Blackie’s. “Encontraron residuos explosivos en tus manos. En tu chaqueta, en todas partes. Te culparán por esa bomba.”

His eyes grew wider, realizing he had no bargaining chips left. “No tuve nada que ver con eso.”

Javi rested his gun on his leg. “Lo sabemos. Sabemos que no fue idea tuya. Sabemos que no eres el jefe. No dejes que te culpen por esto. No dejes que te vean como el que mató a todos esos niños inocentes.” 

Steve folded his arms and said, “Ayúdanos y te ayudaremos. Danos a Pablo.”

Blackie shook his head. “No puedo darte Pablo.”

Javi fired a round into Blackie’s leg, and he screamed out in pain. “¡El siguiente es para tu cabeza! ¿Dónde la están reteniendo? ¡Habla, cabrone!”

Crying through the pain, he exclaimed, “¡Yo hablaré! ¡Yo hablaré!” He pushed his gun onto Blackie’s forehead, hard, leaving an imprint in his skin. “La Quica la tiene en una casa segura en Medellín. Sabían que estabas escuchando sus conversaciones, así que la trasladaron anoche.”

Javi grabbed him by the shirt collar and shook him. “¿Dónde in Medellín?”

“Pablo está declarando la guerra a Judy Moncada. Quiere que La Quica junte tanto dinero como pueda. Probablemente esté en movimiento con él.”

Javi looked at Steve. “We need to get to Medellín. Now.” He turned back to Blackie and cocked his gun. 

“Eso es todo lo que sé. Lo prometo.”

Javi put his gun back on safety and returned it to his back, tucking it safely into his belt. He looked down at the floor and saw blood pooling around Blackie’s leg. He felt nothing for the man. “¿La llevaste?”

Blackie breathed through the pain and looked up at Javier. “No tuve elección.”

He used his elbow to send a blow to Blackie’s head, knocking him out cold. Javi stormed out of the room. “Peña,” Steve said, running after him.

Javi didn’t stop.

“Dammit, Javi, wait!”

“I don’t have time to wait. Catch up,” he said over his shoulder.

Steve jogged through the corridor and caught up to him. “We gotta tell Messina. They’re sending their resources to the wrong area.”

“Fine. Go tell her. I’m heading to Medellín now.” 

He let out a loud sigh and followed his partner. “I’ll call her from the road.”

***

Javi and Steve walked into the Medellín office and headed straight for Martinez. “I just got off the phone with Messina,” he said, “I’m letting you take the lead on this, Agent Peña. What do you need?”

He looked around the room at the  map of Medellín on the table. “We are setting up blockades. That fucker isn’t getting out of this city. I want reinforcements here,” he pointed at 10th street, “and here,” he pointed at 32nd street. “Intel suggests these are where his largest stashes are held. If La Quica is gathering money, he’ll go to these.”

Martinez motioned to the map. “We will block intersections so he can only go certain routes out of there. He’ll drive right into our trap.”

His heart was beating so fast, he was sure that the whole room could hear him. “Do not shoot at the car,” he said, “she might,” Javi’s voice cracked, “she might be with him in the car.”

Martinez looked at him. “I cannot make promises, Peña. If he starts firing at my men, they’ve been instructed to take him out.”

“Well, instruct them to take the fight away from the car,” Javi growled, “she’s not going to die in the crossfire.”

Steve slapped Javi on the back. “We’ll get her out of there. She’s going home in one piece.”

Javi sighed. He tried to look at the bright side: they were closer to her than they had been over the last few days. However, he had this sinking feeling in his stomach that his fight to get her home was far from over.

Your POV

You’d been moved so many times over the last several hours that your sense of direction was completely thrown off, not to mention they’d blindfolded you again. This time, though, you’d been thrown into the trunk of the car, and you could hear muffled arguing coming from the cab. You felt the car jerk forward as you tried to wiggle your hands free of the zip ties they used to tie your hands together behind your back. You knew that if you could punch through the tail light, you’d be able to signal for help. You couldn’t even get your feet loose, as they were duct taped together. You did your best to remain calm as you struggled against your restraints, but you suddenly stopped when you heard the car go silent as their phone rang. “Aló. Meirda. ¿Quién es la mierda?” You heard Quica say, “Hijo de puta. ¿Quien es este?”

Your heart raced. Please be Javi, you thought to yourself. You wanted to scream so whoever was on the phone could hear you, but you feared for your life. You knew if you drew any attention to yourself, he’d kill you for certain. 

Quica slammed on the brakes, and you heard them get out. There was gunfire, and so you panicked. You started tugging on your restraints more, only causing your wrists to become raw. You felt the car move as he piled back into the car and hit the gas. You slid forward, narrowly missing another head injury. You heard the phone ring again, and Quica yell something. He took a sharp right turn, and you slid into the side of the trunk, hard. Suddenly everything went black.

His POV

Javi leaned against Trujillo’s Jeep with a phone in his hand. “Now?” Steve nodded. “They’re ready.” He dialed the number he had for La Quica. It rang twice before there was an answer. “Aló.”

“Quica,” Javi said, containing his rage.

 “Aló. Meirda. ¿Quién es la mierda?” He could hear his voice begin to panic.

“Hola, Quica ¿Cómo te va, amigo?” he calmly replied.

“Hijo de puta. ¿Quien es este?” Quica yelled into the receiver.

Javi took a breath before saying, “Cálmate, Quica. No te pongas nervioso. ¿Que pasa, Quica?”

“¿Quién la mierda crees que eres, perra?” Quica replied as he hung up the phone.

Javi looked over to Trujillo. “It wasn’t long enough. Call him again.” They were trying to track his cell signal to find his car from the sky.

He took a deep breath and redialed the number. “Aló,” Quica said into the phone, clearly agitated.

“Quica,” Javi said, “¿Que pasa, Quica?” Quica didn’t answer him. Javi could hear his breathing pick up. “Quica, Quica, Quica,” he added, drawing out Quica’s name to keep him on the phone longer. “¿Qué hora es, Quica? ¿Qué estás haciendo, Quica?”

There was still no answer. “Quica…”

“Bastardo,” Quica said before hanging up.

Javi glanced at Trujillo. “We got him,” he said.

Without missing a beat, Javi and Steve hopped in their Jeep. “Go right,” Javi said. Steve jerked the wheel right. “Perez, cerca de toda la 4ta calle,” he ordered over the radio. “Go straight.”

Steve obediently followed Javi’s directions. “We need to go this way to cut him off.”

A car flew by in front of them. “There! Follow him!” Steve turned right again and gassed the car. Javi could feel his heart racing. He couldn’t see anyone in the backseat of this car, but if they could get La Quica, he was one step closer to bringing her home. “Follow him!” he exclaimed again.

Trujillo came over the radio, “Todas las unidades, prepárate para la obra.”

Javi felt a few tears well in his eyes. He needed to keep a clear head, in case she wasn’t there. He was so close to finding her, and he couldn’t hold in the apprehension any more. “To the right!”

Search Bloc’s team cut off Quica, who slammed on the brakes. He took off running down the street. Javi and Steve did the same and chased after him, guns drawn. Javi fired a few times in the air, causing La Quica to hunker down and stumble a bit, but he kept running. Javi then aimed and hit him in the leg, causing him to go down and drag himself to the end of a ravine, where Search Bloc was waiting for him. Steve beat Javi to La Quica, and punched him several times. Javi pulled him off before landing a few himself. “Peña!” Trujillo exclaimed over the radio, “you better get your ass back up here.”

His heart raced to the point he thought it was going to burst out of his chest. He looked at Steve. “Don’t get your hopes up, Javi,” he said, trying to keep him level headed.

Javi knew he was right. She might not even be up there, but he ran like she was anyway. He ran as fast as he could, ready to scoop her into his arms and never let her go. He ran uphill to the cars that were blocking traffic, and immediately his heart dropped when he saw a group of Search Bloc gathered around the opened trunk. “Trujillo,” he roared.

Trujillo moved everyone out of the way as Javi ran up to the sight. His legs collapsed from under him when he saw her tied, blindfolded, and bleeding in the back of the car. She wasn’t moving, and if she was breathing, it was so faint, he couldn’t see it. He rested his head on the bumper and let out a small whimper. Steve calmly walked up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at his partner before standing. Javi placed his hands under her shoulders and legs, lifting her out of the trunk, and into his lap as he sat on the curb, holding her against him. Finally, he was able to breath again.

Translations

El está loco. Primero esa bomba, ¿y ahora la novia de un agente de la DEA? - He’s crazy. First the bomb, and now a DEA agent’s girl?

Era amigo de Carrillo.  Ese hijo de puta vendrá por ella y traerá el infierno con él.  - He was friends with Carrillo. That motherfucker is going to come for her and bring hell with him.

No mierda  Acabamos de firmar nuestras propias órdenes de muerte, Blackie. - No shit. We just signed our own death warrants, Blackie.

No tengo ninguna información para ti, pero necesito tu ayuda. - I don’t have information, but I need your help.

¿Que vas a hacer por mi? - What are you going to do for me?

Te pagaré. - I’ll pay you.

Trato. - Deal.

Escuché que Blackie y La Quica se la llevaron. Ella está en algún lugar de Bogotá. - I heard that Blackie and La Quica took her. She is somewhere in Bogota.

¿Dónde? - Where?

Estoy...investigando. - I am investigating.

En el segundo en que encuentres algo, llámame. Quiero estar ahí. - The second you find something, call me. I want to be there.

¿Gabriela está aquí? - Is Gabriela here?

Sí, Javi. Ella esta arriba. - Yes, Javi. She’s upstairs.

Gracias. - Thank you.

¡Vete, cabrone! - Get out asshole!

Lo siento, Javi. Lo siento mucho. Ellos iban a matarme. - I’m sorry, Javi. I’m so sorry. They were going to kill me.

Ella tiene una herida en la cabeza desagradable. - She has a terrible head injury.

Limpiarla. Pablo quiere que enviemos un video a la embajada. - Clean her up. Pablo wants us to send a video to the embassy.

Nosotros estamos jugando con fuego. - We are playing with fire.

Estas bien, señorita. - Everything’s fine, ma’am.

Tal vez podríamos divertirnos un poco con este después del video. - Perhaps we could have a little fun with this one after the video.

Sí. Quiero ver qué te hace tan especial para la DEA. - Yes. I want to see what makes you so special to the DEA.

Estoy embarazada. - I’m pregnant.

Escobar tiene un mensaje para los responsables de mantener a su familia en peligro: Mientras mi familia esté en peligro, la tuya también. Mantener a mi familia seguro, o te enviaré su cabeza en una caja. - Escobar has a message for those responsible for keeping his family in danger: While my family is in danger, so is yours. Keep my family safe, or I will send you her head in a box.

Patrón, Los Pepes se están expandiendo. Los Galones están trabajando con ellos ahora. No podemos enfrentarnos a un enemigo tan grande. Sí, sí. Ella está viva. ¿Dónde? Medellín. Sí, Patrón. Gracias. Hasta luego. - Los Pepes are expanding. The Gallons are working with them now. We cannot take on an enemy this large. Yes, yes she is alive. Where? Medellín. Yes, boss. Thanks. See you later.

Ustedes no me pueden hacer una mierda. De Greiff nos ofreció amnistía. - You guys can't do shit to me. De Greiff offered us amnesty.

Cierto. Pero tienes que hablar para conseguirlo. - That's right. But you have to talk to get it.

¿Quieres negociar, gringo? Te voy a dar algo. Algo pequeño. - You want to negotiate, gringo? I’ll give you something. Something small.

Encontraron residuos explosivos en tus manos. En tu chaqueta, en todas partes. Te culparán por esa bomba. - They found explosive residue on your hands. On your jacket, everywhere. They're going to blame you for that bomb.

No tuve nada que ver con eso. - I had nothing to do with that.

Lo sabemos. Sabemos que no fue idea tuya. Sabemos que no eres el jefe. No dejes que te culpen por esto. No dejes que te vean como el que mató a todos esos niños inocentes. - We know that. We know it wasn't your idea. We know you're not the boss. Don't let them blame you for this. Don't let them see you as the one who killed all those innocent children.

Ayúdanos y te ayudaremos. Danos a Pablo. - Help us help you. Give us Pablo.

No puedo darte Pablo. - I can’t give you Pablo.

¡El siguiente es para tu cabeza! ¿Dónde la están reteniendo? ¡Habla, cabrone! - The next one is for your head. Where are they keeping her? Talk, Cabrone!

“¡Yo hablaré! ¡Yo hablaré! La Quica la tiene en una casa segura en Medellín. Sabían que estabas escuchando sus conversaciones, así que la trasladaron anoche. - I'll talk. I'll talk. La Quica has her in a safe house in Medellín. They knew you were listening to their conversations, so they moved her last night.

¿Dónde in Medellín? - Where in Medellín?

Pablo está declarando la guerra a Judy Moncada. Quiere que La Quica junte tanto dinero como pueda. Probablemente esté en movimiento con él. - Pablo is declaring war on Judy Moncada. He wants La Quica to gather as much money as he can. She's probably on the move with him.

Eso es todo lo que sé. Lo prometo. - That’s all I know. I swear!

¿La llevaste? - Did you take her?

No tuve elección. - I had no choice.

Aló. Meirda. ¿Quién es la mierda? - Hello? Shit. Who the fuck is this?

Hola, Quica ¿Cómo te va, amigo? - Hello, Quica. How’s it going, friend?

Hijo de puta. ¿Quien es este? - Motherfucker. Who is this?

Cálmate, Quica. No te pongas nervioso. ¿Que pasa, Quica? - Calm down, Quica. You don’t need to be nervous. What’s up, Quica?

¿Quién la mierda crees que eres, perra? - Who the fuck do you think you are, bitch?

¿Que pasa, Quica? ¿Qué hora es, Quica? ¿Qué estás haciendo, Quica? - What’s up, Quica? What time is it, Quica? What are you doing, Quica?

Bastardo. - Bastard

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[mentalhealthsblog]

Psychological Wellness Maintenance Is Produced Basic

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