#<- will be changing that tag at some point

[noxitsnox]

hyun-ju as a mother — headcanons

hyun-ju x gn!reader who has a daughter

summary: the relationship between her and her step-daughter.

tags: fluff!!!, hyun-ju is literally the sweetest so there's just this

a/n: reader's daughter is like 6/7-ish. d/n is daughter name 😔. also, idk if kids talk like this, pls spare me. not proof read.

first thing i wanna say is she'd be like the greatest mother, your daughter would love her.

she absolutely wanted to make a good impression on your daughter and when she, a few months into the relationship, first met her the anxiety was eating her up.

the three of you went to a park one afternoon and the kid liked her instantly.

hyun-ju was so sweet and she even helped her catch some little bug to train at home.

from that day she never stopped asking about hyun-ju and whenever you'd go on a date alone with her d/n lived it like the biggest betrayal.

one day, d/n got a fever while at school but you couldn't leave work so you asked hyun-ju to go pick her up- you made her one of the emergency contacts anyway.

formally she didn't live with you, but practically she spent more time at your place than at her own house so she had the key to the front door.

as soon as they got home hyun-ju helped the child change into some warm pjs and then she made her some soup, the same one her mom used to give her when she was sick as a kid.

the rest of the day was spent on the couch, between naps and disney movies.

'the brave' has just ended for the third time in a row. at this point hyun-ju knew all the lines of the movie by heart. "can you turn it on again?" d/n asked, half asleep. hyun-ju giggled reaching for the remote on the coffee table. "again? you must really love it, uh?" d/n nodded. "i like it because merida is like you."

you arrived home not much later only to find them both asleep on the couch, the movie still running on th tv. you smiled while covering them up with a blanket.

this sight of your two girls gave you the courage to ask hyun-ju to come live with you.

from the day hyun-ju moved in her and d/n became inseparable, there was never a moment when the little girl left her alone.

by the second week after the move, hyun-ju knew perfectly the name of all of d/n stuffed animals.

every afternoon there was either a tea party or a fashion show and your daughter would spend at least an hour doing the make up for the both of you before letting you partecipate at either of them.

d/n eventually found out that hyun-ju was in the military and she thought it was so cool.

and so playing soldiers became another typical game at your home.

when there was at school the 'bring your parents to school' day and she asked hyun-ju to go and talk in front of her class.

"you have to come and talk about the military! i need to show them that i have the coolest mom!"

that night hyun-ju cried tears of joy.

and she also confessed to you that she was a little bit afraid of doing too much, that she realized that d/n was not her actual daughter and that she didn't want to make it seem as if she was trying to take your place.

but you were quick to reassure her. telling her that the three of you are a family and that if d/n trust and loves her to the point of viewing her as a mom you couldn't help but feel happy.

[cheapshrimpysheep]

Hiii!! is it okay if I request a comfort(?) scenario/headcanons with Vil, Idia, Malleus and Lilia where a female protagonist feels self-conscious about having stretch marks and/or cellulite, thanks (Sorry if it's not spelled well, English is not my native language)

COMMENTS: So... even though I myself am a woman, I genuinely never saw stretch marks or cellulite as something bad or ugly, and I still don't. So maybe making the characters share the same vision as me would be accurate? The only exception to complete indifference is Vil, but not in the way you might be thinking.

Btw, I didn't see any point in writing this in a context other than an already advanced relationship given the topic. Fortunately, the 4 characters are 18 years or older so it doesn't end up being... you know, too weird.

I explain at the end why I couldn't write anything for Malleus or Lilia. But despite that, I hope you and all like what I managed to write. ❤️

CHARACTERS: Vil Schoenheit / Idia Shroud

TAGS: Fluff; Fem!Reader; Comfort; In a Relationship; Suggestive(?)

WORD COUNT: An average of 580 words per character

CONTEXT: I don't think it would make sense for two people to have this kind of intimate conversation outside of a romantic or even sexual relationship. So in that situation, he and you would be in a relationship.

This was an insecurity of yours from the beginning. After all, your boyfriend was none other than Vil Schoenheit. It would be worrying enough if he were a normal model, but he's not only a super model but one of the biggest in all of Twisted Wonderland.

He had already noticed that since you started dating you seemed more worried and less confident about your appearance and that was when he said to you:

“I am the one who needs to be perfect, not you. If I wanted to date a model I could do it, but my standards in romantic relationships are others. Different from some of my colleagues in this field. I will always help you to further improve your image if you wish and feel comfortable with it. Please don't see this as me wanting you to change your appearance, but as an attempt to make you as beautiful on the outside as you are on the inside.” He pauses for a second. “However, for some reason, there's something that bothers me about the possibility of making you start living the same lifestyle as me.”

But he would only get the answer to why that bothered him later.

“The truth is: you are my escape. I don't feel the pressure to be perfect with you because... you know I'm not and yet you look at me with more admiration than anyone else. You are my escape from the superficial and futile parts of my professional life. When you live in these types of environments, you start to lose track of what really matters and what really does you good. Thinking about you being swallowed up by this... and losing your genuine smile... because of me... I can't allow it! Please know that no opinion about your appearance matters other than your own. And it wasn't just that that made me fall in love.”

This may have made you feel more comfortable and confident about your appearance again, but as the relationship became more serious and you became more intimate, eventually your problem with stretch marks and cellulite began to affect your mood again.

At home, Vil had massage sessions from time to time not only to help him relax but also for other healthy effects it had on his body. He thought that now that he was dating you, maybe it would be interesting for him to buy massage products and for you to start having these sessions with each other.

“You deserve a massage probably even more than I do.” He tells you, referring to the hardships you go through with Grim and the others.

And that's when he realizes from your hesitation that something about your appearance has bothered you again. He asks you to tell him and that you can trust him. After all, if you couldn't, what kind of boyfriend would he be? And you end up talking about your stretch marks and cellulite.

“I see.” He says understandingly. “I've never had them myself, but I've met many women in the beauty industry who talk about it to each other. Not to mention the advertisements for products for it. Do you remember what I told you when we first started dating and you felt less confident about your appearance? I am the one who needs to be perfect, not you. Furthermore, from what I understand, these marks are usually found on areas around the stomach, hips, breasts, and thighs.” He looks at you seductively. “You don't really think I would have any kind of criticism if you gave me the honor of seeing these parts of your body, do you? Why don't you let me give you that massage? I'll show you what I truly find beautiful about you.”

At first you didn't even think about it. It was only when the relationship started to get more serious and you started to sleep together from time to time that you started to worry.

Especially when Idia started having less of a problem walking around you shirtless. And giving hints about how he would like to see you wearing his shirts, without pants.

One day he says he wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room, but instead of asking why you hide your body so much, he asks if you still don't consider him worthy of seeing his girlfriend comfortably sexy.

“You never hid the fact that you like to see me shirtless.” He says while playing some game on the computer. “I also want to see you like that. Not necessarily shirtless, that's another level, but like, you know I don't like to embody the confident handsome guy who likes to walk around with little clothing on." His hair starts to turn hot pink.” But... I like how you look at me when I do. And what you say. Which I never understood ‘cause I don't even have good physics. But you do! You would be that character that every player simps for.” He sinks into his chair. “But I understand, getting that kind of look from me is disgusting...”

You may have your insecurities, but he has them too. And finally you feel the need and the comfort enough to reveal to him that that isn’t the problem, that you would also like him to find you hot as you find him and that the problem is your marks.

“What marks? Like scars? Don't tell me you have cool battle scars, like doesn't that make a person even sexier?”

You say you're not talking about scars, but stretch marks and cellulite.

“... Yah... sorry, I think I rolled a natural 1 in intelligence for this. What was that again?”

You say they are marks, irregularities and dimples in the skin and that he can search them on the internet. He does that.

“It says that these are natural things that don't do any harm. But they can impact self-image.” He researches a little more. “Wait! Are you trying to tell me that you find these strips and irregularities ugly enough to the point that you have to hide them? THIS?” He smiles mockingly “Oh no! How horrible! Your skin looks like... skin! What a tragedy!”

He will be very happy if you can laugh with him.

“As if I would even notice that. It says here that these marks are usually found on areas around the stomach, hips, breasts, and thighs. Do you really think that if I saw these parts of your body it would be little stripes and dimples that would catch my attention?” The pink in his hair becomes more intense. “I may be a shut-in but don't lump me in with those worms who define their standards based on adult videos. I can assure you that's not what you'll have to worry about if you take your clothes off in front of me.”

He finally looks at you with a seductive look and smiles confidently when he sees that you are flustered.

I really really really tried to imagine scenarios with Malleus or Lilia, but I couldn't think of anything very meaningful.

Malleus wouldn't understand the problem even if you tried to explain it to him because... it doesn't make sense to him. They're just marks. He also has marks, like, on his forehead. Is there something wrong with this?

And Lilia would just laugh for you thinking this is a problem and just tell you to forget about it.

They wouldn't understand, because it wouldn't make any difference to them at all. And that's it.

With Vil and Idia I was able to think of something because they are, like, from this generation, and because one is in the beauty industry and the other is, probably, chronically online, they can see where your insecurity comes from. But for someone like Malleus or Lilia, this type of insecurity has no basis whatsoever. I really don't know what to write with them.

Sorry. 🥺

If you dropped in here out of the blue and want to read more from me, you can find it in my pinned post: INDEX

[gloryofdawn]

Also, as someone who probably has literally over a thousand hours into FATE, it has a few other issues that prevent it from being "universal:"

1) There is very little progression. I have a character in a FATE game who has matured in some very serious ways since its beginning. I cannot mechanically reflect these changes with the refresh and skill points I have without him no longer being good at the things he needs to be good at to both continue filling his role in the game and continue being who he is as a character.

2) Stunts don't cover everything, and even the FATE variants that allow for superpowers/magic/etc can require some serious contortion to be able to do anything in the way a universal RPG would claim to

3) It's very easy for a few gamist issues to derail the narrative. In multiple games I've played in and run, a character putting their Athletics skill at four or five made most combats basically impossible to lose by conventional methods of violence, and it gets really narratively unsatisfying when a character loses multiple combats because someone said mean words to them. This is also true of other skills, depending on your system and setting, though they cause problems in other ways (e.g. Using Dresden FATE, a character with a high discipline becomes nigh on immune to the special mental abilities of the setpiece monster for your campaign, requiring you to either tune it to their discipline and kill the fuck out of the other players, not do so and let the character no sell those abilities and maybe the whole fight, or inflate the monster's refresh to give it other capabilities that can threaten that character [except now Athletics is usually a problem again])

4) I tend to find that specializing in one facet of the gameplay causes you to just not be able to participate in others, which is balanced on the face of everything, but ultimately leads to your combat focused players not engaging in investigation or social encounters, your social players feeling like they can't contribute in combat, and your investigative players wishing they could do anything other than make tags after the Looking Around portion of an encounter is done.

5) This isn't immediately an issue in universality, but GOD do I hate the skill pyramid and FATE dice, and I feel like they feed into the above issue. Having skills be, on average, rated from 0-5 with a possible variance of +/-4 on the dice means that overcoming challenges even a single step higher than your skill becomes a matter of luck rather than stats. I understand that this is the point and purpose of Fate Points, but I think that's a problem rather than the solution. If you have a 1 or a 2 in a skill, you have to cross your fingers and hope to beat anything more than the most basic difficulty to create a tag, largely making these ranks of skills worthless against all but the most basic challenges as, again, your GM has to balance against the people who specialized in this shit. This comes around to damaging the universality of the game because at a certain point, if you want your character to be able to do more than two or three things reliably, FATE cannot be the system for you.

I used to really like FATE. Then I was in FATE games for a very, very long time and really got to learn how the system works. I no longer like FATE.

So what about FATE? How is it not universal as an RPG?

The biggest non-universal dimension of FATE – at least in its modern incarnations – is that it has a very strong set of baked-in assumptions about the relationship between players and player characters.

This is something I've talked about in the past; to somewhat oversimplify, there are roughly four ways for a player in a tabletop RPG to relate to their character:

The Isekai Stance: I am my character, and my character is me. I'll have my character do whatever I myself would do if I happened to be, for example, an elf wizard.

The Actor Stance: I'm an actor, and my character is my role. I'll have my character do what I feel it would be psychologically realistic for them to do under the circumstances.

The Storyteller Stance: I'm a narrator telling a story, and my character is the co-protagonist of that story. I'll have my character do whatever I feel would make for the most interesting story.

The Gamer Stance: I'm a person playing a game, and my character is my playing-piece. I'll do whatever it takes to win.

This generally isn't a useful way to classify either players or games; games typically have weak baked-in assumptions about which stance their players will adopt, and to the extent that these assumptions are present, a game may make different default assumptions for different parts of play. A common set of assumptions is actor mode outside of combat and gamer mode in combat, for example.

FATE is, of course, an exception to the rule, in that it has very strong baked-in assumptions about what stance players will adopt toward their characters, and further assumes that play will occur at least mostly in this mode. The Fate Point economy that forms the core of the gameplay loop 100% assumes that you're going to be playing in storyteller nearly all of the time – the types of decisions it's asking players to make on a moment-by-moment basis are frequently straight up unintelligible from any other perspective.

This is a big part of why suggesting FATE because it can "do anything" can go over like a lead balloon: the folks making this suggestion aren't taking into account the possibility that a given group's players may not vibe with the system's assumptions about how players relate to their characters. Storyteller-mode-all-the-time is actually a fairly uncommon group play style, and it often seems that FATE fans don't realise this!

[masterfuldoodler]

ok idea. what if we gave stories a free pass for one or two plot holes. "this story thread had a big hole in it" ok good to know, that must not be the main point of the story since it's got plot holes. they must have put their attention on what they thought was the important part. time to look closer at the other parts

[cherrixpie]

NEMESIS

part one of five

↬ you were supposed to steer clear of mattheo riddle. shame that he was just so intriguing.

↬ sfw; wc: 5.6k; cw: mentions of blood and death; tags: enemies to lovers; gryffindor!reader, muggleborn!reader

if you'd like to be added to the taglist, leave a comment! 💕

The minute Snape set foot in the defense against the dark arts classroom, all whispers and conversations between students fell silent. His cloak billowed out in his wake as he approached the front, glaring at any student who dared look up at him. His hard eyes wandered over the rows and narrowed when they reached the table you and Hermoine sat at, next to you two free seats. Harry and Ron were late, and you gnawed at your lower lip in worry. Their last subject had been divination, which neither you nor Hermoine had taken, and you hadn't seen them since breakfast. Judging by his scowl, Snape would skin them for being late.

When Snape walked up to the chalk board, turning his back to the class, Hermoine leaned over and breathed in your ear: “Nott and Riddle aren't here yet either.” She was right. As your gaze brushed over the Slytherins on the other side of the room, you spotted two empty seats next to Malfoy that were usually occupied by Theodore Nott and Mattheo Riddle. Not that you missed the two, but their absence made anxiety curl in your stomach. Could it be linked to Harry’s and Ron’s nonattendance?

“Eyes on front,” Snape’s voice bellowed through the classroom and you flinched, returning your focus to the lesson. But just as you pulled out your parchment, quill and ink to copy the notes from the chalk board, the door burst open and all heads turned in a singular motion. The four missing boys stood in the entrance, albeit standing in pairs demonstrating visible hostility.

All of them looked like they had just fought a rabid pack of grindelows. Hair disheveled, some of their noses bleeding, Riddle’s knuckles were leaking blood and a purple bruise formed on Harry’s right cheek, Ron’s face was littered in cuts. Nott looked the least brutalized out of all of them, and the most annoyed. Everyone was staring, you and Hermoine included. The four of them heaved as if they had ran all the way up here, and Ron held his book back with both hands that seemed to be dissolving in real time, his face as red with fury when Malfoys voice drawled through the room. “My, my, Weasley, that bag must've been worth more than your mum!”

Before Ron could throw an insult back at him, Snape’s voice cut through the room, almost shaking with ire. “You're late. Twenty points from Gryffindor. Sit down!”

“What?” Ron asked in indignation and Snape's lips curled. “But, Professor, they were just as late as-”

“Sit down, Weasley, before I take fifty points from your house,” said Snape coolly and Harry pulled Ron along the rows to your table. Riddle and Nott sat down on their seats, just as the two slumped down next to you. The commotion was silenced by one look from Snape who now proceeded to scribble down the effects of the counter-curse you would learn today. Half your attention on your notes, you leaned over to the boys, just like Hermoine, with a questioning look. “What the hell happened?”

“Riddle fucking happened,” spat Ron under his breath. “He-” Suddenly, he broke off and looked at Harry, as though it had just dawned on him that Harry might not like to share whatever Riddle had said or done. Harry rolled his eyes. “He started talking shit about my parents.”

“He did not,” whispered Hermoine in shock, though you weren't quite sure why she was so surprised. Harry and Riddle had gotten into fights before. One time, they were started by Riddle going on about Harry’s dead parents, the other because Harry provoked him using his parentage.

It was a tale as old as time, and though you thought it was objectively worse of Riddle to be insulting Harry’s parents than the other way around, it didn't change the fact that a brawl between the two was a near monthly occurrence, with their friends joining in. Sometimes, they were each backed up by all their male housemates of their grade (last year, the whole male seventh year population of Gryffindor and Slytherin had to do detention together and it certainly didn't warm them up to each other), sometimes it was just Ron and Nott, sometimes it was one v one.

Harry shrugged her indignation off, he seemed less furious than Ron who was positively shaking with rage. “Whatever. I was just stupid to go off again, I should know his tricks by now.” Ron looked like he wanted to reply something, but just then, a shadow loomed over you and Snape's voice drawled. “Do you want to share anything with the class, Potter?”

Neither of you four spoke, and Snape seemed to take it as an invitation to inflict further punishment upon you. His spiteful eyes trailed over the four of you as he sneered. “I think I will put an end to this chit chat. Potter, you go and sit with Mr. Malfoy. Hermoine, over there with Miss Parkinson; Weasley, with Mr. Nott and you,” his eyes glanced over you swiftly, “go sit with Mr. Riddle. Go.” You hastily stuffed your quill and parchment into your bag, smiled at Hermoine, who gave you a worried look, and walked over to Riddle with a hammering heart. With him. God protect you.

Mattheo Riddle lounged in his chair as if it were a throne, his posture a calculated mix of arrogance and nonchalance that made him look untouchable, even in disarray. The faint trickle of dried blood at his temple and the faint purpling of a bruise along his jawline should have diminished him, but instead, they only sharpened his edge. His tie hung loosely around his neck, the top buttons of his shirt undone, revealing a glimpse of pale skin marred by faint scars-trophies from fights he never seemed to avoid.

He didn't glance up as you approached, but the lazy, almost wolfish curve of his mouth suggested he knew you weee there. Something about the way his dark curls fell over his brow, paired with the faint metallic glint of the blood on his knuckles, made him seem both reckless and untamed, like a storm that brewed until it would inevitably destroy everything in its path.

Your anxiety only worsened when Riddle raised his head lazily and looked at your approaching figure. He had a cut on his nose that was still bleeding, and his eyes brushed over you with unmistakable disdain. Slowly, blood seeped down his hand and onto his parchment. You stared at the red dots as you stood in front of him, unsure what to do, frozen under his heavy stare. Until he scoffed and averted his eyes. “Merlin, you’re as slow as you are annoying. What's wrong, scared I'll bite? Don’t worry, sitting next to me won’t tarnish your perfect little Gryffindor reputation. Sit.”

Without a word, you finally managed to move your feet and rounded the table to sit down on the chair next to him with the utmost care, as if the slightest motion could tip him off. Was it riddiculous? Possibly. Were you keen on taking chances? No. You sat in silence as you got out your ink and quill and started scribbling on your parchment, head ducked over the paper and hair falling, thankfully, between the two of you like a curtain. A whole hour of sitting next to the ticking time bomb Mattheo Riddle. You were glad that your fingers weren't shaking as they flew over the parchment, leaving a trail of ink in their wake.

You couldn't have been more thankful for the silence, but Riddle seemed bored. You heard him shift in his chair, bounce his leg, and then, you heard his voice.

“Didn't think you Gryffindors scared so easily. Or is that just you?” Though you were sure he had noticed, Snape made no efforts to discipline Riddle for his insubordination. Of course not. But you knew, if you talked back at him, you would earn another ten points being taken from your house. And in any case, you weren't one to be provoked easily, and you weren't about to risk him hearing your voice shake, as it may have, if you'd opened your mouth. So you scribbled on in silence as Snape got up to demonstrate the wand movement.

“You're quiet for once,” whispered Riddle’s voice, closer than you expected, and you couldn't suppress the little flinch away from him. He chuckled darkly. “What happened?” he asked with the unmistakable sound of a predator circling its prey. “Lost your nerve, princess?”

When you looked up, away from him, your eyes met Hermoine who looked concerned. Barely moving, you shook your head and forced a smile upon your lips. This would be a long hour. You could tell from the tone in his voice that he would have his proper fun, would toy with you. Every instinct told you to fire back, but you called yourself to discipline. This was not the time. And if you would have been willing to start a fight, it would be highly unwise to take on Mattheo Riddle.

When Pansy Parkinson sniggered next to Hermoine, she averted her gaze and rolled her eyes, and you, too, looked back down onto the parchment. You should take notes on the wand movement. You would have, if it hadn't been for Riddle, leaning in once more. You were sure that, on the other side of the curtain, he was almost brushing your hair with his lips. It was silly, but his proximity made you blush. “Go on,” he prodded, “say something Gryffindor-y and self-righteous. Isn't that you speciality?”

“You will now pair up with your desk partners,” Snape’s voice sounded through the classroom, “and practice this jinx. If it has the intended effect, it should merely push your partner away a few feet. Finnigan, I would book an appointment in the hospital wing, I wouldn't trust Longbottom not to throw you out the window. If I see anyone taking advantage of this opportunity to right a perceived wrong,” he sneered, looking particularly at Harry and Ron who both scowled back, “they shall feel my wrath.”

Oh god. You had naively forgotten that this might happen. Let Riddle hex you? You should probably just hex yourself and be done with it. You sent him a quick glance as you rose from your seat and Snape piled up all desks at the wall to make space. If you hadn't known better, you could have thought that he was bored. But you saw the glint in his eyes as he met your gaze with his brown eyes. For a strange second, it flashed through your mind that he had surprisingly pretty eyes for- well, someone who's father was he-who-must-not-be-named.

“Try not to embarrass yourself,” he drawled mockingly and that irked you more than any of his comments had. You were very proud of your academic achievements, and you couldn't help but glare at the floor when you averted your eyes. You’d show him. Riddle whistled under his breath as you stood upright and raised your wand the proper way. “Look at you, all brave and noble, even in the face of the ‘Dark Lord’s Son’”

He was mocking you, and you found yourself wishing he'd just get in with hexing you instead. “If you're just going to yap all day, I'll do it first,” you said coolly, making him laugh. It was a strange sound, because you had never heard someone laugh so devoid of any warmth. Maybe nobody had ever taught him that laughs were supposed to signal happiness.

“Go on, sweetheart,” he said in a low voice. “Show me all about the ‘bravery’ you lot talk about.”

Gripping your wand tighter, you understood it as an encouragement to use the spell on him first. You could just say the incarnation. Just swing your wand. You could do it. “Discedo!” Your pronunciation was perfect, your aim was right, the movement of your wand mirrored Snape's as you concentrated hard. And, to your silent triumph, Riddle was nearly knocked off his feet as he was pushed back and stumbled a few feet, dangerously close to the fireplace. Just as described, you had done it correctly and for some strange reason, you awaited his praise.

Even more surprising was that you received it. “Nice one, princess,” Riddle called and walzed back to you with a lazy grin as if he hadn't just nearly crushed into a burning fire. If you thought about it, you weren't even sure he'd mind that. You'd watched him dislocate his arm in a brawl and crack it back in place without so much as a wince or a frown. Sometimes you thought he couldn't feel pain, but that was impossible. Maybe he liked it. It would suit him, you thought.

Over your spiraling thoughts, you nearly missed the almost gentle way he pulled his wand out of his pocket, much more tender than you had ever seen him regard a living being. You suppressed the urge to take a step back when he pointed it at you, determined not to show fear. Also, you were already in enough danger to smash into the wall behind you as it was. “Your friends seem worried,” Riddle grinned and you were momentarily distracted as you caught Harry’s frown and Hermoine's worried expression. Ron was too busy being pushed around the room by Nott who seemed bored out of his mind.

“Do you ever stop talking?” you snapped and were surprised by your own daring. “Just cast the damn jinx and get it over with!” Riddle raised his brows and you could have slapped yourself. Great idea, challenging him when he was pointing a wand at you and you were not allowed to use yours. Riddle seemed mostly amused, though, twirling his wand around in his hand as if he was contemplating something. Probably, how hard he would smash you into that wall. If Mattheo Riddle was good at one thing, it was cursing people.

Finally, he raised his hand, not even mouthing the spell, that show-off. You shielded yourself for the impact of the wall, but suddenly, a force, not unlike a giant hand or a strong gust of wind, pushed you, not backwards- but forward. Instead of crashing into the wall, you found yourself stumbling helplessly into the arms of Mattheo Riddle himself, who caught you, circled one arm around your waist and gave you the most innocent of expressions. “Oops, my bad, princess.”

For some reason, you blushed. Maybe because he was so close to you you could have wiped the dried blood off his face. Or maybe it was the hand on your waist, encircled by your arm, touching his. His hands felt larger than you had expected and he buried his fingers in your robes, crooking his head at you with a sly grin. No doubt, he was trying to measure your reaction, read it off your face in all damming detail. If it hadn't been the classroom, you would have looked like you were about to kiss. His relaxed smirk was infuriating. "Come on, princess, you know you can't resist me."

Shaking him off, you took a few steps back, legs tingling from the jinx. No way that hadn't been intentional. You should probably be angry, but you were more so glad you hadn't crashed into a wall. But just when you were about to raise your wand once more, Snape’s harsh “WANDS DOWN” had you retract. You all were dismissed with one wave of his hand and you hurried over to your book bag. You had never wanted to escape a room this quickly.

To your annoyance, Riddle leaned down for his bag right alongside you and you made haste to bring some distance between the two of you. Again, your caution seemed to be of his amusement, because he chuckled coolly. “What, afraid you’ll catch something? 'M not contagious.” Without an answer, you pushed past him, making a beeline towards the doors and were the first one out. Only when you had walked two corridors, you could take a moment to breathe out.

“You’re alive!” called Ron in mock surprise when you joined the others in the common room a few minutes later. Laughing, albeit weakly, you slumped down into the seat next to him by the fire. Harry and Hermoine looked up and Hermoine’s eyes scanned your form as if she was looking for signs of harm. “Blimey,” sighed Ron, “I thought for sure he'd jinx you into next week.”

“Me too,” you said, rubbing your temples. The frown on Hermoine's face deepened. “It's not funny,” she suddenly snapped, catching all of you by surprise with her fervor. “This could have ended badly! And what do we learn from that?” She asked sternly and Ron raised his hands in surrender. “No talking in class.”

“It's alright, Hermoine,” you said, smiling at her. It was touching how protective your friends were. “Riddle didn't do anything to me, did he? And I was part of that conversation, it's as much my fault as it is Ron's.”

“You should be worried about me, Hermoine!” Ron chimed in and rubbed his shoulder that seemed to be sore. “Do you have any idea into how many bookshelves and walls I crashed today? Nott’s a real piece of shit, I didn't even get to jinx him back!”

“Well, Pansy Parkinson didn't even have time to raise her wand at me,” said Hermoine with an air of superiority, and Ron rolled his eyes. “Well, she isn't much of an academic weapon, is she? Other than you.” Hermoine, who had just looked determined to snap at him once more, seemed somewhat dumbfounded by the sudden complement. To your surprise, she even seemed to blush a little in the dim light of the fireplace.

“Why was Riddle even looming over you like that?” Harry asked through the silence. “I mean… what were you talking about?” Ron and Hermoine, both a little red in the face, turned to look at you as well.

“He talked, I didn't,” you shrugged, for some reason feeling like you had to vindicate yourself. “He was a real chatterbox, I think he just wanted to get a rise out of me.” And he had, you suddenly realized. Damn.

“You handled yourself really well,” said Hermoine and Ron nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” he grinned, “If you could've only pushed Riddle a few feet further back, you'd have set him on fire, how cool would that have been?” He laughed at the idea and even Hermoine smiled a little.

“Wouldn't want to kick off his tragic backstory villain arc,” you grinned and Ron snorted. “Lost case, I'm telling you.”

Shaking your head with a small smile, you watched Ron combust with laughter. Both Harry and Hermoine chuckled, but mostly at Ron’s amusement over his own joke. After that, the conversation trailed off towards school work. Harry and Ron were indignant at Hermoine for already conceptualizing NEWT revision tables when it hadn't even snowed yet, with Ron promising her that he would not touch a textbook until they had beaten the Slytherins at the next quidditch game, the first of the season. When they started to bicker as usual, you started to drown their voices out and you gazed into the fire, lost in thought.

The first time you'd seen Mattheo Riddle had been on your first day in Hogwarts. You'd been scared and jumpy the whole time, the castle intimidated you, the magic astounded you, but at the same time, you felt like an outsider, unworthy of such a royal institution. When you'd been waiting for the hat to call your name, you'd been half expecting to be forgotten, a confirmation that you just weren't good enough. Your worries had been momentarily shunted to the back of your head when another name was called, “Riddle, Mattheo”, and a collective whisper, in its entirety as loud as a yell, had rolled over the hall.

At that point, you had never heard the name Riddle, nor had you the name Voldemort. Blissfully unaware, you'd never even heard of the wizarding war before, the dark times. The only time you'd been in touch with magic before was in diagon alley, but you'd met barely any wizards before. Maybe you had been the only student in the gaggle of them who didn't know what dark a legacy he carried.

What you did notice was more so the way he carried himself. Even at the young age of eleven, he had a kind of untouchable confidence about him. He seemed to be entirely detached from the nerves that coiled so prominently in your belly. Only regarding his fellow, whispering students and the professor with a defiant look, he planted the hat upon his head that disappeared almost in it's entirety inside it. In retrospective, you had wondered why the hat hadn't immediately shouted out Slytherin, seeing as Riddle was one through and through, and the house’s founder’s heir on top of that.

After a while - the whispers had turned into a steady, ever growing buzzing of curious and hostile voices. Safe to say you had been beyond confused and had leaned over to ask the girl next to you why everyone was reacting like this- the name had sounded utterly inoffensive to your innocent ears. But before you could ask her, the hat shouted out “SLYTHERIN” and the boy ripped it off abruptly to stomp over to the Slytherin table, glaring at anyone he passed. They whispered behind his back, and back then, you'd thought 'how can they do this? He hasn't done anything!’. You hated making people feel unwelcome. Of course, you'd learn that Riddle was an expert in that regard himself.

When you now thought back to that, you wondered wether he could have been saved from whatever pipeline he was currently diving into, getting into fights, supposedly even torturing people and, though you took those rumors with a grain of salt, even killing student’s pets. But maybe he'd always been as detached and dark as he was now. At your first Halloween feast in Hogwarts, the evening a troll had sent the school into a panic, he'd caught your eye. As students around him shrieked in fear and stumbled over their own feet trying to escape, he had been eating cake and watching the panicked students as if they were unconvincing extras in a mildly interesting stage play. He'd even grinned, shoving his hands into his pockets, as if it was all beneath him.

Then, in second year, everyone had assumed him to be Slytherin’s heir. It didn't seem to bother him very much, maybe he was even proud. Like all the muggleborns, you'd done your very best to steer clear of him, but your friendship to Harry made it harder since they were constantly at each other’s throats. You'd cried once when you overheard him tell his friends that “at least the monster had good taste”, you'd always wanted everyone to like you and though you had already accepted that some people simply wouldn't, it hurt that anyone could be reveling in the idea of you or your friends being attacked by a monster.

Not that he was any kinder to his own friends, or at least outwardly he wasn't. When Malfoy had gotten attacked by buckbeak in third year, he'd simply watched and laughed, something thirteen year old you found utterly disgusting, even though you detested Malfoy.

As unlikely as it sounded, fourth year was the first time you talked to him- or rather, bickered with him. When Harry had been fighting the Hungarian Horntail and you and Hermoine had been at the edge of your seats, frozen with fear and worry, the Slytherins had come along and Riddle had made a comment about how he would be far more entertained if the Tournament would have some death in it again. For a moment, you'd forgotten how scared you were of him.

Though you weren't what people would call “heroic” or “brave”, in spite of your house, you tended to lose your temper when it came to your friends. That day, you had, when you'd shot around to shriek at Riddle what the fuck was wrong with him, aghast how he could even say something like that. But just when Riddle's eyes flickered over you as if he'd just noticed you for the first time (he probably had), Harry got the egg and you were distracted from him. In spite of what he had said, though, when Harry turned up after the third task with Cedric's body, he'd been pale as a sheet as he stared down at the dead boy. Not so happy that a champion was dead now, after all.

Fifth year was when he started to pick on you. It was also the year he started getting into fights. Actual fights. Of course, there had been smaller brawls before, immature duels, but there was an edge to him when he returned to Hogwarts that year. He was more serious, and most importantly, more angry. A student laughing too loud was enough to set him off on a bad day, and once he was, there would be blood. A lot of it. It became a weekly occurrence to see him walking into classrooms with a bloodied shirt or nose, or cuts and bruises on his face and hands. Fifth year was when even some of the teachers started getting scared of him.

Other than any other year, Riddle had stayed in Hogwarts for the Holidays in sixth year. It only stood out to you because most people went home to see their families, wanting to be close in times of uncertainty. And because of that one morning, when you'd taken a walk around the black lake and spotted him, standing in the cold without so much as a cloak and staring into space with a distant expression. It was the first time in years he'd looked human, and you had found yourself staring until he turned his head and snapped at you.

In seventh year, you had been assigned to prefect patrols with each other for a few disastrous days. Each night, you'd stumbled into your common room, burned out from the stress it caused you to be near him. To be subjected to his cunning comments that drove you over the edge, with him having a front seat. It was probably good fun for him. Out of pure boredom, he had amused himself with you. And he'd won, kind of, when you begged McGonnagall to reassign you after a mere week, which she did. Maybe you had been imagining things, but he had been strangely more hostile to you since then, as if it had actually bothered him.

Now, in your eighth and final year, staring mindlessly into the flames, you found yourself wondering wether he'd ever had a chance to be anything else than he was right now. Or rather, anyone else. With him, you found yourself thinking of him as a thing rather than a person more often than you'd liked to admit. Maybe because he didn't seem very human. If the times and environments had been different, maybe he'd have been, too. But, you reminded yourself, he was still him, and you were still you.

Maybe some diety had listened to your tired sermon the previous night, or maybe it was mere coincidence. It could also be your stupidity. But the next day, you found yourself assigned detention with Riddle himself. You had to recognize that pulling your wand at Malfoy and him in full sight of any professor who might turn the corner was a little stupid, but the others somehow never got caught doing it. You, on the other hand…

You had been on your way to the library after dinner the next day, on your own since your friends were already on their way to the common room. Maybe some backup would’ve been good, but you were quite glad none of them heard the words that left Malfoy’s mouth when he passed you in the halls, talking loudly to Riddle. “Granger may be smart, but brains won't save her when the Dark Lord finally catches up to her.” Your head had shot up from the parchment you had been buried in and you stuffed it into your bag, accelerating your steps, a white hot anger stirring inside you. But Malfoy wasn't finished yet. “Honestly,” he drawled, gesticulating vaguely, “It'd be poetic, wouldn't it? The little mudblood trying to stand up to a Death Eater and getting exactly what she deserves.”

He didn't have the chance to say anything further, because your newly learned discedo jinx made him stumble backwards and knock into the wall. Before he could even realize what happened, you sent a silent disarming charm his way and his wand flew in another direction. You were momentarily stunned by your own skill as you watched Malfoy's face go red with anger, but when he leaped from the wall, you pointed your wand at his chest, rage burning inside you and wiping away any concerns about school rules that you followed so adamantly other days.

Malfoy opened his mouth, no doubt to insult you, but you got ahead of him. “You think saying something cruel makes you clever, Malfoy?” you spat at him. “You're really proud of being a terrible person, are you?” Malfoy broke out into a cackle that was silenced by your wand now pressing into his chest. You felt tempted to bombarda maxima his head off, and the fact that you did scared you a little, but it couldn't quell the fire in your chest.

“Wh- do something!” Draco hissed nervously at Riddle who was watching the scene, just like the small crowd that had assembled around you.

A wild laugh escaped you. “You fucking coward. Do you think saying stuff like that is funny? No wonder no one respects you!”

An utterly unexpected sound made both you and Malfoy freeze, though the latter didn't have much of a choice, with your wand still pointed at his chest. Riddle was laughing. Well, not really. It was more of a chuckle. His eyes were locked on you, shimmering with… intrigue? Aghast, you stared at him and your anger welled up once more. This was funny to him, yes? Well, if he didn't have anyone to stand up for, sucks for him. But your healthy dose of respect for Mattheo Riddle made you bite back the reply, merely purse your lips together and turn back to Malfoy, who seemed to have found his voice again.

“It's only a matter of time before the Dark Lord wipes out your little group of do-gooders,” he snarled in your face. “Should be quite the spectacle.”

“Crawl in a hole and die, Malfoy,” you growled, starting to feel a little stupid with your wand pointed at him purposelessly.

“Let's end this party here, princess, don't you think?”

His voice had you turn around slowly. Riddle's wand was pointed lazily at you, as if he were merely twirling it in his fingers. But you knew better. Every movement was deliberate. His wand was pointed at you on purpose. He exuded the aura of a calm before the storm, a small smile danced around his lips. He had this way of making everything into his entertainment. But you wouldn't lie, his wand and his eyes had a definite shiver run up your spine.

“What on earth is going on here?”

You shot around when Professor McGonnagall’s voice bellowed through the hallway and jumped back. The scene she saw was not ideal, with both Mattheo's and your wand pulled as if you were about to duel. Which was strictly forbidden in an uncontrolled environment like this. Not that you'd ever be stupid enough to duel Mattheo Riddle. When the Professor approached, you saw her heaving chest and dread filled your stomach, you wished desperately to be anywhere but here. It was important to you to be liked by teachers, especially McGonnagall, who you’d always looked up to.

“I don't want to believe this,” said Professor McGonnagall, enraged. “Miss y/n, Mr Riddle, detention.” She turned to you and wrinkled her nose. “This is disappointing. I would've expected better from you, especially.”

Mattheo knew he should have been groaning about the detention, but he was busy wondered why you didn't try to defend yourself. Try to tell McGonnagall how Malfoy had provoked you. A crowd of eyewitnesses could have confirmed the story, and McGonnagall surely wouldn't take kindly to threats against her favorite student. But when he looked back at you, the look on your face surprised him. You looked absolutely mortified, he wondered for a second if you would start to cry. But you merely lowered your head and pulled your wand away. McGonnagall gave you a sinister glare. By the look on your face, she could just as well have hit you with the cruciatus curse.

“Pathetic,” whispered Malfoy in his ear, but he couldn't quite agree. It was intriguing. Why did it matter so much to you what fucking McGonnagall thought? He realized, of course, that he was more indifferent of teacher’s perceptions of him than other students, but you looked as if you were facing the death penalty.

Seemingly unable to watch this trainwreck further, a Hufflepuff sixth year spoke up on your behalf. “Please, Professor, Malfoy said some awful things about Hermoine Granger.” Malfoy's grin faltered when McGonnagall looked at him, a wave of affirming murmurs confirming the story to her. “The detention will be extended to you as well, then,” she said coolly and strode off, still positively fuming. Mattheo wanted to catch you before you could slip away, though he wasn't sure what for. Maybe he could tease you, rile you up, that was always good fun. And more than that, he wanted to find out why you had reacted so strongly to McGonnagall’s words.

But you were gone, had made a break for it when McGonnagall had left, no trace of you left. When they kept walking, he drowned out Draco's rants as he thought back to your face when McGonnagall had caught you coming close to jinxing Malfoy (which he found to be hotter than he ever thought he would). There was quite the lioness hidden in you, when provoked. His previous quips at you had usually been met with faux indifference and even fear. Good to know even you, sweet, goody-two-shoes you had a darker side about you. He wouldn't deny that he felt tempted to see it again.

[utilitycaster]

something that struck me from some of the really good tags on this post (specifically the "tall kings") one is that most arguments against the gods or for the benefit of Predathos rely on real-world metaphors that just...don't really fit very well, and it might just be that this isn't something for which one can draw a real world metaphor, but might actually have to conceive a world that is fundamentally different than ours. The gods aren't tall kings; "destroying the throne" does not mean a coup. It means their deaths; and yes, to state the obvious a coup against a monarchy frequently involves assassinating the monarch, but it's telling that the language is carefully skirting around that. You cannot destroy the throne or remove the crown or have the gods step down in any peaceful manner; both the Matron and Arch Heart agree this only happens if the threat of Predathos is unleashed.

And Predathos. Setting aside the connotations of assigning the idea of wild deer to sentient beings, the "reintroduction of the natural predator" metaphor collapses on several points. The first is that equating "became deities, who, as the post linked above points out and per general lore, are explicitly not able to run rampant anymore". The second is that Predathos is not a wolf that once lived on Exandria but is just as foreign to the world as the gods themselves. While I reject the metaphor entirely for the initial reasons stated, it is worth keeping in mind that if you do need it as a scaffolding on which to hang foreign concepts, Predathos is less the wolf population and more a family of tigers or cheetahs: just as much an invasive species, with an impact on the environment

I think these are two major issues that need to be addressed in any conversation:

Predathos has been adopted and mythologized by several party members who are actually much more concerned about the titans, who are dead. Killing the gods will not bring back the titans. I feel this metaphor is sort of falling into that same trap; this is not a return of something native to this world.

On some level, while I understand the use of real-world metaphors to comprehend a fantasy world from a lens of familiarity - I do this as well! - I think if we cannot have a discussion that starts with "what if Predathos is in fact the embodiment of a cosmic, unending, merciless hunger that cannot be changed and cannot be swayed and can only be sealed, killed, or given free rein" we cannot have a discussion at all. I think it's necessary to acknowledge we're talking about a game that gives you a space to explore an idea as if it were physical, and which might not be able to be told within the bounds of real-world experience.

This of course also doesn't address the ongoing issue of "whether or not Bells Hells actions towards Predathos and the outcome ends up being in the moral right, the road to get here was structurally unsound and the party did not go in with the intent of doing anything specific whatsoever and indeed faltered for the most part when asked by the main villain what they wanted." Again, I don't care if Bells Hells are heroes or villains or something in between, but they don't seem to be anything or have any shared intention as a group, which I've discussed already here. But if you do want to argue that releasing Predathos could be good, I think it's necessary to have a coherent argument there, and be able to address "what if it's really fucking bad" if we're moving into the realm of the speculative. "What if this change that comes at the end of mass death might be better for the world but I have no proof" is not a very convincing argument. It is, in fact, one of the only ones Bells Hells has made a compelling case against.

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

The MOMENT I laid eyes on that rollbar I thought "Huh! How Caterham-like!", lol. Turns out I know my favorite car well.

Funnily enough, the Caterham Seven has been given a sleeker body before, by Caterham themselves no less, and this new year marks 21 years since that happened. And given the result was named Caterham 21, and specifically because Caterham had been making Sevens for 21 years by then, this would be a very funny coincidence if I hadn't planned it.

Okay, there is to say the name may also have been influenced by the goal of making something like the legendary Lotus Eleven racecar...

...but enough dwelling, let's get you a picture of what this thing looks like!

Oh, what's that there?

But that's my blogpost on it I wrote eight years ago, on the news section (bafflingly) of automotive publication Car Throttle!

"Wait, you wrote published automotive articles eight years ago?"

Well, not really.

See, Car Throttle did have an articles section, but at heart it was a car-centered social media platform. There were larger, more structured posts in the "Blog" community, and the editors sometimes picked the better ones and shared them in the Official Featured Articles Of The Staff Whose Job It Is To Do This section. And a couple of my posts were picked, which at my then tender age of [too young for unsupervised internet networking] was an inconceivable honor.

But then at some point they decided, I believe to quote the chief, their attempt "to make the Facebook for cars" was ill-conceived, because "the Facebook for cars was already Facebook", and the platform pivoted to just being a news outlet. And, infuriatingly, pretending they never were a social to begin with. Forget preserving the posts, we weren't even given a tool, a deadline, a warning for archival. Posting ability was removed and everything was just hidden and hushed away slowly and gradually enough to frogboil away all attention before deleting all those posts I and countless others poured heart and soul into.

Except the Editor's Picks - a layout change could make those look like proper articles and pad their offerings. Clicking the author name leads to a cryptic "Forum" section. No mention of upvotes -embarrassing memories- but the comments are there, they make it look like a visited website. Who's this blank circle? Can't click the username. Who are they tagging? Page wasn't found. How do all these commenters seemingly know each other? Good luck googling them. Now visit our shop.

So, in the spirit of fuck that, here is that article remastered for Tumblr - a platform that, for all its ills, refuses to shut its doors in the face of all sense and all the internet rowing against its model of a free, unalgorithmic feed where all forms of content are welcome.

Fair warning: you'll need to be up to speed with the story of the Seven itself. Here's the link again - last chance!

Caterham did something other than the Seven? Yep. This is the 1994-1999 Caterham 21, the only other production Caterham. It was pretty much a more comfortable, everyday-use Seven.

What's with that crazy silver look? That's the aluminum prototype. The production version was made out of fiberglass, and looked like this:

Hold up… Why do those taillights look familiar? Well, you know how it is with small sportscars... and when the design team cruised the motorway looking for lights that would suit the design...

And the parts sharing doesn't end there either.

And what about the interior? Was it comfortable? More than the Seven, of course (in the end, that was its goal): It had more creature comforts, such as proper doors, actual glass windows (which, as a trade-off, didn’t roll down), a dashboard that actually looks like the product of design work, and a soft-top you closed rather than assembled. Though comfort was still one of its weaker points.

Why so? Isn’t it a lot wider? Where did all the extra width go? Well…

Yes, this is for real. You could have a football match on those sills.

Engine-wise? UK car industry experts are waiting for me to say it - and indeed, the almost stereotypical Rover K-series engine (found from the Land Rover Freelander to the FSO Polonez and a wealth of little British sportscars in between) was offered either as a 1.6 (offering 1or as a 1.8.

Oh, yeah, and it had one of those cool forward-opening bonnets, since the whole front was a single piece so good luck with any other way.

Any specs? Plenty.

The 115hp 1.6 reached 60mph (for yankees, that's the same) in 6.4 seconds and carried on to 118 (for non-yankees, that's 190km/h). That's a pretty low top speed, but these cars were always oriented towards acceleration and lower-speed roads. If you wanted more though, the 1.6 Supersport upped the power to 138, lowered the 0-60 to 5.8 and reached 131 (210km/h). The 1.8 started at 122hp but its Supersport variant developed 138... and the Supersport R 190, rocketing to 60 in 4.5 seconds. But those are very rare.

How was the sound? Better than a Viper’s. At least, according to Mike Rutherford from this Men and Motors segment from 1998. If you want to spare yourself some ear-piercing music, skip to 2 minutes for the bold claim and some chatting with Jez Coates (Caterham’s technical director) about how they managed that.

How did that power get to the wheels? As standard, it had the Ford Type 9 transmission, the one you’d find in a MKIII Capri or a Sierra, though a Caterham-made six-speed gearbox was offered as an option. It also had a limited-slip differential, of course.

So, how was it like to drive? Probably better than the Seven: the chassis was 50% stiffer, the wheels were further apart and the suspension was tweaked for a better ride. And while it was bigger and heavier than the Seven it was based on, we’re still talking about less than 4 meters and 1500 pounds (for Europeans, that's about 1800 euros at today's exchange- wait no).

Oh, and then there was the GTO, a racing version with the Seven R500's 1.8l engine. Some specs? 230 hp, 0-100 in 3,8 seconds, and all in 1994.

And, as if it wasn’t mad enough already, it later received the Levante’s V8 - supercharged to 500 hp! In a car that weighs not much more than that in kilograms!

Wow, what a cool car! How come it failed to replace the Seven? That was never its goal! The production was already meant to be limited to 200 cars a year. Which of course, multiplied by the five years it was sold-

Lightnings strike. Thunders echo. Typhoons blow. Lotuses handle. But their quest to revive the Seven's ethos called for much more than coasting on that fact of life. They pushed aluminium manufacturing itself to new bounds to create a chassis less Seven tier rigid and more seven times that. The engineers' pursuit of lightness was so absurd that their own electric window mechanisms were lighter than their supplier's manual ones. The result was a beautiful mid-engined sportscar with proper development budget about as light as the 21 and only £200 more than its base version, which it beat in 0-60, top speed and being preassembled. Yeah.

It was the raw British performers' iPod. Compact, light, capable, yet refined, simple and comfortable to use... a great enough product to push its brand away from the edge of hasbeendom and towards a new renaissance, ushering in a boom of its category... which was really more a boom of just itself, given how few other real beneficiaries there were.

Sure, you could buy a Morgan if your tophat stayed on during sex. You could buy a TVR if your views on ergonomics aligned with The Joker's. You could even buy a Creative Nomad Jukebox. But then, you'd still probably want a car with a radio to plug it into. So, while yearly Elise production, targeting 750, peaked at 5000 (or, spot the theme, seven times that), not 50 Caterham 21s were ever produced. Of which just two were Supersport Rs. I told you they were rare.

But that still doesn't explain it, does it? Sure, the Elise might've made it redundant at best and even stolen its spotlight when first showcased in '95, but the 21 still had a full year when the Elise was but a rumor, so surely, at least for the briefest while, there was room to shine for the idea of a plusher take on the cheap, basic British sportscar recipe, ri-

Yep. The 1989, or 1990 depending on your address, Mazda Miata. The iPod of the British sportscar. And no, I'm not refuting my first use of this analogy. The original concept behind the Miata was putting the ethos of the traditional British roadster in a package so usable the everyman could have it not just as their weekend car but as their only car. The original concept behind the Elise was updated because of pesky regulations to, ugh, have doors. We are talking about two very different levels of commitment there - and by extension two very different breadths of potential customers. To clarify: the uproarious success of the Elise led to the production of a whole 55 thousand between its every variant when production stopped in 2021. That's half of all cars Lotus ever made in its seven decades. In 2016, Mazda produced its millionth Miata.

Yeah.

And sure, the 21 was much lighter and faster than the Miata, but those who wanted that enough to both pay a £3k premium and put up with an unreliable, temperamental handmade British car, but not enough to go for the even lighter and faster Seven were evidently... not enough.

Which is a shame, really, isn't it? However much I may love the Seven's looks, I'm not blind to them being... let's use "polarizing". To have something not just more conventionally attractive, but also much more approachable (you know, things like knowing you won't have to frantically fiddle with two dozen buttons if it starts to drizzle) could, for the right person, not just make the proposition more appealing, but be what pushes it into the reign of justifiability.

Right, it sucks for those people! Now that it’s a rarity, prices must be sky-high… Well, you’re about to be pleasantly surprised: those Caterhams you saw above are actually up for sale, and with prices that rival used Sevens, too!

Okay, that was eight years ago, but from what I've been able to tell any time a 21's gone on sale since then the price has closer to the first figure than the second - when not lower still!

And that's the end of the article, engagement prompts aside. That transition from small edits to a whole new section was pretty jarring, eh. Writer improves after third of life. More at 7.

Anyhow, here's your first post of the year - and here's to one more year here on Tumblr, making the kind of content every other social platform welcomes as merrily as the plague.

Thank you all for sticking around for it. Means a lot.

Scoperta, 2024, by Camal Studio. A sports car based on the Caterham Seven is to be offered by Turin-based design studio. The cars will cost €150,000

[gyuswhore]

Cherry Picker [1]

«« "Do me a favour and forget your mouth guard next time. Let the puck punch you in the mouth if I can't." »» 

Choi Seungcheol x reader | part of the winter with you collab hosted by @camandemstudios!

Part 1: 19k | Part 2

warnings: Hockey player! Seungcheol, figure skater! reader, *deep breath* ENEMIES TO LOVERS, angst, fluff, smut [MINORS DNI], toxic friends, cheol has anger issues, kkuma appearance, @miniseokminnies makes also makes a fluffy appearance, injuries, mentions of blood, smut tags in the next part

synopsis: Cherry Picking [ice hockey]: a manoeuver in which a player, the floater, literally loafs (spends time in idleness) or casually skates behind the opposing team's unsuspecting defencemen while they are in their attacking zone. There wasn't much you counted on in life; just your skates, your drive and how it felt to win. And of course, your local ice rink, that is now being colonised by an obnoxious hockey team in all their big, loud, stinking glory. Neither does it help that one particular red donned specimen forgets to leave his cherry picking on the ice.

[a/n] (it's a long one but PLEASE read) : ITS HERE FINALLY this was an extremely bumpy ride and I wouldn't have finished it without all of my friends who quite literally kept me going. I know I made an update saying this was gonna end up being 20k max but it turns out my yap-itis is for life </33

the posting schedule for this fic is going to be a little less predictable, I will try to get part 2 out asap but I do not currently have a date for you.

big thank you to @highvern for betaing and making me feel better about this fic, @amourcheol for talking me out of meltdowns multiple times and for giving me some really good scene pointers, @ugh-yoongi for being so patient w me and explaining how ice hockey works with so much patience. ty to @the-boy-meets-evil @tusswrites @lovetaroandtaemin for also proof reading for me 🥹

HUGE thank you to everyone at @camandemstudios who agreed to be part of this collab and being part of the journey as we grow 🫶 please check out the collab masterlist linked above, there's already so many amazing fics posted ready for you to read <33

that being said, I know more about figure skating than I do about hockey, but even so there are defo some inconsistencies in terms of accuracies in this, please bear with me 🫶 remember to reblog or send me an ask telling me your thoughts, id love to hear what you guys think 🥹 masterlist

“CAN I HELP YOU?”

“I’m sorry,” you gravel out. 

“Sorry isn’t gonna give back my hour and thirteen minutes.” 

The strap of your gym bag cuts into your bare shoulder where the collar had slipped, the tight threading sure to leave a scratch by the time this is bound to be done. You’d managed to avoid coach Carroll’s morning cornering for a couple months, going above and beyond by showing up to the icy rink before she could even pull up in the parking lot in her blaring red Porsche, let alone before her ten minute meditations in her cream coloured seats. 

“There was an accident on the highway. Truck tipped over.”

“It’s eight in the morning,” Carroll points.

“Illegal truck, I guess.” 

Teeth to tongue, you know you’ve done it. 

She’s in her usual tracksuit, green today, that contrasts her bright red hair in its tight curls. Her glasses are her sensible Ralph Laurens, eyes piercing through the tinted lens as she holds her chin in her hands. Silent, calculating. 

“Fine. Change.” 

Your legs want to give out before you can even get your skates on. 

There were many things Isabella Carroll was good at. The industry would have one of them be a good coach; one of the most expensive, the one that squeezed the life out of her students to inject into the golds, silvers and bronzes they would then bring her on an equally diamond encrusted platter. 

She has also mastered the art of impeccable dressing downs. 

The fact she chose to skip out on verbally humiliating you meant you’d managed to strike that cord. She might be leaving in the next 45 minutes, but she has a very particular way of stretching the minutes into years. 

Like a whipped horse, you scurry into the locker rooms, skin crawling. Your gym bag is positively launched into your designated locker, shoes kicked off as you attempt to stick your right foot into your skates, narrowly missing your heel as it grazes right past the toe pick. 

You slow down after that, not needing a scar on your heel to match the large one on the side of your calf. 

By the time you jog back out, unzipping your jacket to throw onto one of the benches, coach is on the ice, following Marina who zips around on the other end of the rink in her step routine. 

It’s difficult to not rush through your warmups when you’re already late, your splits hardly pushed out as you pray all that running around in the desolate locker rooms was enough to stretch everything out. 

There’s a crash on the illuminated ice as you slip off your skate guards, Marina already practising her Salchows. “You’re in the air for enough time, why can’t you rotate?!” 

Right blade first, you step into the cold encircling, gliding into the centre to begin making your usual rounds around the circumference.

There’s a positive screech of your name from across the ice, wind blowing in your hair as you turn to look. “Do I need to hire someone to hold up your free leg? Fix it, girl!”  

Holding your left leg more taut, you attempt to transition into a jump and spin. You fail, landing on both feet. Somehow, falling on your ass felt like a better conclusion to that arc. 

“Wonderfully executed! Let’s try both hands on the ice too next time, really complete the contemporary finish,” coach hollers out to you as she continues to follow Marina at the same time. 

Trying again, you manage to land on your outer left blade. You receive no comment. 

You try the jump again, pushing into a sit spin. 

The momentum is enough to begin the familiar slack in your scalp, your bun loosening its grip on your hair. Biting your tongue would be dangerous right now, but you would if you could, especially considering the ramifications of your hair coming undone in front of her. 

The crouch as you spin burns your thighs like you’re being branded, pulling yourself back up as you finish abruptly. Still no comment, the unintelligible string of nagging coming from the other side of the rink. 

Marina stands hands on her hips, breathing so heavily she’s nearly heaving. Her blonde hair is loosening far worse than yours, strands framing her face. Coach Carroll waves her hands and shakes her head so quickly you wonder how her glasses haven’t flown off. You didn’t get to see what cardinal sin Marina committed to warrant this reaction, but you feel better knowing she’s exhausted enough to let her insults swim past. 

Ten seconds is enough to catch your breath, moving to do something busy enough to avoid another being screamed at across the ice, again. 

By the end of the remaining forty five minutes, you realised your punishment was also punishing Marina. Coach Carroll remained tailing Marina as you attempted to do everything that would please her, far away from her. Not a direction, praise or neutral comment in sight or sound, sealed with her always expected retorts. 

She leaves without a word, leaving you scrambling to the benches for a seat. Putting your skate guards on is torture, your legs refusing to pull up to reach them. You hardly notice Marina slam down into the seat beside you to mimic you slumped down and head lolled back, eyes closed to the bright ceiling. 

“These skates are gonna kill me,” you whine once you’ve caught your breath, unlacing them to inspect the blistering damage. 

“They’re brand new, what did you expect?” she retorts, moving to sit up straighter. Of course, you were grappling at straws expecting anything akin to sympathy from Marina. 

It was your misfortune that the day you had to break in your skates was the day you’d be late, your heavily bandaged foot still aching as you sit idle. 

Your lungs are still burning when you pull yourself back up, knees buckling the absolute slightest bit as you attempt to take the first baby step back onto the ice. 

“We need to get back to it,” Marina says, and you have half a mind to bite that you were up before her. 

She’s faster at slipping off her skate guards though, and you watch her back as she glides back onto the ice. You follow suit, trailing her as you speak. 

“Hey, I’m sorry Carroll was on your ass because of me. My alarm didn’t go off this morning, I overslept.”

She turns to look at you, ghost of a smile on her face. “Time to go old school I guess, I think my brother left behind his old alarm clock from college.”

“I guess—”

“Besides, I needed that. Wouldn’t have known my Salchows were sucky otherwise.”

She doesn’t let you respond and you’re left to watch as she takes off to warm herself back up. 

Strange as it was, you’ve found her behaviour simply doesn’t affect you anymore, choosing to take her as she was. She pushed you to be better, to work harder. Even now, as your ankle burns and your hip screams, you brace yourself into another axel entry, trying your hardest to keep up with Marina. 

It’s another couple hours when Marina leaves for her second appointment with her personal trainer, leaving you alone. 

It’s less crowded now, despite the head count going from two to one, but you appreciate the alleviation as you continue to practise for the rest of the morning. The rink feels more vast and your hip has stopped its incessant aches. 

Having finished a run through of your routine without music, you move towards the sound booth to turn on the tail end of your track, skating back to the echoing rink to brace yourself for the next four agonising minutes. 

You’ve adjusted your starting position about ten times by the time the silence of the song restarting settles. And then it begins, soft piano as you push yourself off into the throngs of this hellsent routine. 

It’s muscle memory by now, but your stomach lurches before you push into a jump anyway. There isn’t much time to ponder when you’re midair, tight yet contorted, trying to land on the right side of the blade. But there’s a phantom pain in your right ankle, right when you’re at the point of your arc, and you feel the all too dreaded panic flood in. 

You land on both feet, less than ideal but with no one to watch the fail, it was better than falling on your ass. There’s been worse outcomes, so there’s little you can do but continue into the step sequence. 

Trying to shake off that bout of panic, you briefly wonder if the music suddenly had more bass than you’d last checked. Perhaps you just hadn’t been practising like you should, but you make a mental note mid-spin to listen to the track again later tonight for any tidbits you’d missed. 

Your heartbeat is trying to accommodate more air than you can let it, especially as you feel the pulse in your ears quicken as you approach your final jump sequence. The music is louder yet muffled all the same, there’s an incessant banging that you can’t figure out is from your head or a corrupted music file. But you find that sweet spot, deciphering through the ruckus in your brain, and you jump. 

It happens again, the strange ache in your ankle that should be long gone, and just like that, all that panic you shook off in the interim comes hurtling back. The world’s gone silent, blaringly so, and for some heaven known reason, you’ve closed your eyes.

You aren’t so lucky this time round, landing directly on your back with a spectacular crash, the ice cutting cold through your thermals as you slide in the direction of your epic fall. Eyelids opening, they’re met with the spotlighted ceiling, head cushioned by the hard plane of ice beneath you. 

The pain in your ankle’s escaped like a fugitive, done it’s damaged and left you crumpled on the floor. The adrenaline is rushing just enough to keep you from identifying any other awakened aches, but you have a sneaking feeling your hip is going to hate you after this. 

You’re still laying flat on the ice when you realise you're laying in mostly silence. Your music is off, and has been since you came to on the floor. The banging, you realise, wasn’t just in your head either. The unmistakable reverberation of the locker rooms is loud and assuming, noises rattling all the way out onto the echoing rink. 

It takes the strength of a village to pull yourself up, but you do it anyhow, ignoring the blatant protests of your mind and soul as you squint across the rink to the sound booth. 

As you skate towards the gate, you assume it’s Hansol trying to get your attention by disrupting you mid session, but the figure shuffling into view is telling you otherwise. 

It isn’t anyone you know, clearer as you grow closer to the gate. It’s obvious he’s the culprit that turned off your music, your laptop shut and the wire to the speakers disconnected from the port. 

You stare at it pointedly as you grapple for your skate guards. 

The man does nothing but remain with his hands in the pockets of his bright red hoodie, hovering over your laptop as he watches you struggle with your skates. SVT stitched onto the back in black. He’s as blank faced as ever, a stark contrast to your heavy breathing as you come round. 

Standing up straight, you dart between your laptop and this person, waiting for an explanation that seems to be lost in the void. You’re still heaving slightly, scowl forming on your face as this strange man offers you nothing.

“Um, did you—”

“Yeah. It’s four,” he responds, like it was supposed to explain enough. 

“And that means…?”

“We have the rink reserved.”

“But it’s Monday,” you respond. It sounds stupid, but it meant something. The rink was reserved on the weekdays for coach Carroll’s mentees, the weekends for the public. 

This man and his big brown eyes gaze directly into your soul as he responds, “And that means…?” 

You’re sweaty and tired, your feet ache with about five new blisters from the last time you checked, and you’re sure you need to get your hip checked out. Perhaps that’s why there’s this unreasonable surge of irritation that rises in the back of your head, irrational and half blinding. 

“That means—”

“Seungcheol! Get your ass in the locker room before I drag you in there myself.” The voice that rings out is heavy and has you flinching, the man’s order echoing from somewhere in the tunnel that leads to the locker rooms. 

The man you assume is named Seungcheol begins to walk away from you without a word or gesture, and you can only blink at his retreating back. 

“Hey! Do you mind not touching my stuff next time round?” you call out as a last ditch attempt to have the last word. He turns his head to you, eyebrows raised and a smirk of mild disbelief growing on his face. Nothing is said as his head turns back to the front, strutting into the tunnel.

He lets you have your last word as he walks away, your gaze the same shade of crimson as his retreating form. 

“AND THEN—THESE—HUGE dudes with fucking botox or fillers in their shoulders storm out—”

Your vent is interrupted by Lorelai who’s burst out laughing mid bite of her sandwich, “What?”

“Botox!” she muffles a shriek through a full mouth.

“They were shoulder pads or something, you get it!” 

The air in the outside seating of this cafe is stellar, the perfect in between you wait for all year. The parasol above you is enough so you don’t have to squint your eyes in the late afternoon sun, the wind perfectly paced in a breeze. Your own sandwich remains untouched, the bread gone stale as you pick at the corner of the crust. 

“Apologies,” she yips. “So you're saying we’re being partially colonised by hockey players?”

“I don’t know! Was it a one time thing, a weekly thing? It can’t be a weekly thing, Monday afternoons are routine practice days.” 

“The routine you’ve been practising for the past year and a half?” 

“I can’t afford getting rusty.” 

Lorelai drops her head like she’s had enough, “Maybe these hockey jocks are a blessing.”

“What?”

“Nothing! Hey, do you want cake, they have cheesecake, I could get some!” 

“Lorry!”

“Okay,” she huffs, dropping back into her seat with blown cheeks. “I’m sorry.” 

Lorelai has a sense of humour that took you more than enough time to decipher, but that wasn’t nearly the first thing you noticed about her. She was beautiful, even more so with the sun gracing her like a loving embrace. The highlights in her otherwise dark hair make the hazel of her eyes pop like two perfectly welcoming cliffs to jump off from. She was the definition of spunk and valour, yet graceful in everything she does. Even now, as she picks up her smoked turkey on honey oat, complete with every fixing and condiment on earth, you question how she can wrench her mouth open to take a reasonable bite; but she does, not a crumb out of place. 

“I have to share a rink with dudes whose hockey sticks are gonna make craters in the ice, why are you not mourning with me?”

“Pretty sure your toe picks do the same thing.”

“Lorelai!” 

“Not the government name!” she wails as though woefully wounded. 

“You’re impossible.”

“Carroll didn’t hate me for no reason.” She smiles in her pride. 

Lorelai’s competitive skating career came to an end sometime last year before the Grand Prix, a decision she announced gracefully with the words BITE ME etched with sharpie on her brand new competition skates. It was difficult to erase the mental image of the scarlet of Carrol’s face when Lorelai marched in with her hair chopped so short it’d be impossible to pull into a bun, marked skates in hand and a mask of determined rebellion on her face. Of course, the whole ordeal could’ve been an email, but it simply wouldn’t have been Lorelai. 

“It’s not like you were trying very hard to please her,” you grumble, nibbling on a fry. 

“Why would I try pleasing that woman?”

“For one thing, your sponsors were paying a bucketload so you could have her.”

“I didn’t want Carroll as a coach. Ever. I wanted Jameson. The only reason they put me with Carroll was because they were putting you and Marina with her.” Her voice is hard, eyebrows raised the slightest bit. 

“What does Jameson offer that Carroll doesn’t?!”

“Oh! I don’t know, let’s see,” she raises her voice as her sarcasm begins to simmer with a lethal edge. “Maybe the fact that an hour training with Jameson doesn’t feel like the subjected wrath of a world war two dictator!”

“Carroll is not that bad!”

“God, you become more like Marina everyday.”

You frown, “What does that mean?”

“It means—!” Lorelai pauses to close her eyes, and you can almost hear her counting in her head. “It means nothing. Eat your sandwich before the bread starts molding.”

“Ew.”

Lorelai smirks. “Bite me.”

You attempt to channel some of that Lorelai energy when you get to the rink past noon on a weekday. You hope you’re reasonable in your hope that Hansol will be in his office as you walk towards the door. 

Three rapt knocks before you hear a muffled voice telling you to come in. The door creaks when you open it. Loudly, might you add. 

“How long is it gonna sing every time I come in here?” you grimace. 

Hansol looks at you from behind his laptop with a tight smile. “For as long as I keep forgetting to oil the hinges.”

Hansol, for as young and qualified as he is, is only the rink manager because his family owns the place. Having graduated the year before with a shiny new law degree, he opted to take a break from moving forward with his career to “slow down” as he put it. The rink was as slow as it could get for him, betting the only important thing on his laptop screen currently was solitaire. 

“Did you also forget that I have the rink during the day on weekdays? 

“Ah. You’ve encountered the hockey team.”

“Yes. They turned off my music mid routine.”

“They're only here till the renovations in their home rink are done, we’re the only other rink in town that’s closed to the public on weekdays.” 

“But they’re cutting into my practice time?” you add, brows furrowed. 

Hansol opens his mouth before closing it again, eyebrows raised. “You clock in here five days a week, ten hours a day.”

“And?”

Hansol huffs out a breath. “Listen, I know you and the other skaters like having the rink to yourselves, and I’d be happy if it was always just you guys. Trust me, these jocks are impossible to clean up after, let alone deal with. Between the launch pad calibre noise and the stupid plastic barriers I have to put up on the railings, I’d love for it to just be you guys. But the only times you officially have the rinks booked is in the mornings when you’re training with coach Carrol, the rest of the week is technically up for grabs.”

“Let me book the rest of the slots then.”

“SVT’s already booked most of the remaining hours.” Hansol’s voice is sympathetic, but his words seemed final. You aren’t sure how bad your face was contorted, because suddenly he’s adding, “But hey, you can look at the leftover hours if they work for you.”

He pulls out the roster on a tablet before handing it to you. It only takes you a minute to scroll before you realise the only viable options were past 10 PM. The rink closed at 11. 

You sigh, shoulders visibly sagging as you let out a bated breath of tension. “It’s fine.” You hand the tablet back to Hansol. “I’ll figure it out.”

Turning on your heel, you make a move to leave the premises. Hansol calls out your name. 

“I’m sorry. Really.” 

You muster a smile, one that you cannot feel the slightest bit. “It’s alright.”

“Only a few months.”

Something in your smile sours, and you nod absentmindedly. “Only a few months.” 

THERE WERE OTHER WAYS the universe could have let it happen, someplace where you might have forgiven yourself. Someplace you had reason to be. 

You were accustomed to physical exertion, how could you not be when you were what you were, but hiking on an incline was never something you fancied yourself with. Gyms and coaches and paved running trails are nothing like rocky terrains and steep mountain paths with no guide but a mobile map. 

The semi finals had passed you by, handing you a gold medal along the way as you thrust yourself into bliss. It was a job well done, so much so that you allowed yourself a weekend of something other than skating rinks and training sessions. So many nights that you can hardly remember, yet flash like lightning under your eyelids. Where you sobbed into your pillow and cursed yourself for ever having the gall to take a step back, to be so arrogant and blustering to announce yourself away from the thing that should’ve mattered the most. 

It only took one tiny crater in the path to twist your ankle so hard you crumple to the ground with a scream you cannot remember. More hands than you have holding on to your searing ankle, like they were holding it together with nothing but their palms and fingers. Lorelai was talking, and talking and talking, but all you could hear was the roaring question in your mind. 

Why did you bring me here? 

Six weeks. 

You watched with your own eyes as the Grand Prix final shuttered away on a reel, like you were watching a movie from an age you could not visit. 

Six weeks. 

Marina sat beside your bed and said words you’d never forget. 

“I’m sorry, but…this is your own fault.”

Six weeks. 

Lorelai wept, and said the same words for an entirely different reason. 

“I’m sorry. This is my fault, it was my idea.” 

Six weeks. 

Carroll kept face, but you could see past the mask. A sigh that said more than any words of reassurance. Disappointed but not surprised. 

Six weeks you were bedridden with an ankle that refused to support your weight on the surface area of your bare foot, let alone on the 3/16th of an inch on a blade. 

Bedrest, meds, physical therapy, and still. The ache in your ankle follows you like a ghost haunting you of your worst mistake. 

It was your fault. You chose to put whimsy above everything you laboured for, for years and years. You chose to look past your shortcomings like they would not become your achilles heel. You chose to get on that trail. You chose to walk out on crutches.

You, who could land a jump on a fraction of an inch of steel, could now barely stand on her own two feet. 

You’d decided on that day, that you were as pathetic as they come.

IT WAS THE MOST natural decision to drag Lorelai out of where she rotted in bed to come with you to the rink. 

“You want me to fight them?” She’s wearing her Winnie the Pooh fuzzy pyjama pants and a university hoodie on top, her short hair concealed in the hood she’s pulled up. “They are hockey players. We are twigs!” 

“Lorry. Have you ever thrown a punch in your life?” you ask her as you pull your hair back into a loose bind. 

“No?” 

“Then why on earth would I ask you to fight goblins triple our size?” 

Her mouth is gaping in disbelief. “Why am I here then?” 

“You,” you start, grabbing your skates and moving out of the locker rooms. “Are gonna sit pretty in that sound booth and make sure nobody touches my laptop.”

“…you realise Hansol has security cameras right?”

“Are you planning on robbing my laptop?”

“No. Although it does have nice specs.” 

You ignore her as you walk towards the benches. “That stupid hockey team needs to know I have reinforcements of my own.”

Lorelai stands there, brows furrowed and in clothes that drown her. She glances down at her outfit and then back up at you. She deadpans, “This is the most unthreatening I have ever looked.”

“Just—” You stand up too quickly and feel yourself wobble. The railing is hardly a foot away, your hand moving over to grab it. Except your palms feel nothing but the flat of something smooth and hard, fingers bumping into the feeling of something unfamiliar. 

You manage to find your balance with a yelp, immediately snapping up to see where you missed the railing. The railing was still there, perfectly within arms reach. There’s a glare in your vision, like looking through a screen. Higher and higher, you realise quickly that you’ve been looking through a clear barrier so high up you can hardly find where it ends in its erect standing. 

Lorelai speaks up first, her voice resonating loudly, “Isn’t that supposed to be on the other side of the railing. Stupid, stupid Hansol.” 

It looks like it stretches throughout the circumference of the rink, wrapping whoever’s inside in a giant plastic fish bowl. 

There’s a clench in your jaw you can’t control, something a little more than annoyance building in your senses. It should be an easy thing to ignore, especially regarding its practically invisible nature, but its presence is all you can think about, even as you step your right blade onto the ice. 

Skating towards the middle of the rink, you feel claustrophobic. 

“Woah! You look like a zoo animal,” Lorealai adds unnecessarily. 

“Just play the track,” you grumble. 

“There should be a don’t tap on the glass sign,” she says, voice muffled as yells from the benches. “You already look like a weasel, can’t have confused people in the stands.” 

“Lorry!” 

“What?” she yells, her voice muffled as she yells from the benches. 

You curse the plastic that cages you as you yell louder, “Play the track!” 

Lorelai nods and makes a noise of understanding, and you watch her as she disappears into the sound booth. 

Taking your starting position, you wait for the quiet lull of the track before the beginning of the unmistakable piano; the low tremor in the beginning existing to prepare you to jump into the routine. You stand there with your arms out like a swan, waiting for your cue that won't seem to arrive. 

You almost yell out at Lorelai again before you suddenly hear the resonating shrill of the piano notes, startling yourself out of your first push. It’s fine, you’ll recover. You’re distracted by your staggered start and it’s enough to have you miss your first jump. It’s fine. You’ll recover. 

By the time the four minutes are up, you’ve missed two of your five jumps, a spin gone wrong, and nearly crashed into the plastic barrier. Not to mention, the aches in your body are enough to seem impossible to geographically pinpoint. 

It’s pointed, the way you make a beeline for the benches, refusing to look at Lorelai. You can almost imagine her expression, the poker face she has when she’s trying to think of ways to structure her next words nicely. 

“What was that?” she deadpans, voice a little far away. Your body hurts enough to take your focus away from her. 

“I don’t know.” 

“I thought your ankle was fine now?” she asks. 

You grit your teeth. “It is.” Lies. The way it was hurting you right now was making sure to remind you of that. 

“You know, you did pick back up a lot earlier than we thought—”

“I said I’m fine, Lorry,” you snap. “Now can you please play the track again.” 

You finally look up, and she looks like she wants to say something. But you’re on the ice before she can. 

You adapt to the excess muffle of the plastic barriers, ears straining to hear the beginning of the piano before you jump into the choreography smoother than last time. This time round, it’s better. The pain in your ankle and the budding one in your hip is apparent, but it’s suddenly easier to drown it out. Focusing on the music, keeping your centre of gravity, pushing into your jumps and spins with enough vigour to hold to what you are. 

Another four minutes pass and it’s over. Immediately, you swing over to the soundbooth to find Lorelai, only to find her joined by an extra set of people.

Impossibly, your blood runs cold. 

There’s a sneaking suspicion you know who it is despite the two men having their backs turned to you, especially judging by the obnoxious red jackets they have on. SVT. You can hear Lorelai speak indecipherably, her voice stern. 

“And you are?” one of them asks. You don’t recognise him, but you do the other one. The one who turned your music off the first day him and his team stepped foot in here. 

“Lorelai!” she yells it for no reason. 

“Gilmore?” The one you recognise snorts. Seungcheol, that’s what they called him the last time you saw him in the sound booth. 

“I’m worse,” she states. 

“Lorry?” you interrupt, arms crossed and gaze directed at her. 

“Lorry?” The one you don’t recognise says. “Like a truck?” 

“You think you’re funny?” Lorelai takes a step towards him, a fair attempt to look threatening if it weren’t for her very unthreatening attire. 

“Oh look at her pyjamas! It’s Pooh bear, Cheol,” he exclaims. That seems to irritate him. 

“Can you replay the track, please, I have to smooth things over,” you intervene. In your mind, ignoring their presence in your space was the best solution, refusing to give them a way to merge into your lane. 

“Woah, we have the rink booked today,” Seungcheol stops you. “4:30.”

Snapping around to find the clock on the adjacent wall, you read the time. “4:17. You can wait.”

He raises his eyebrows. “And thirteen minutes makes what difference?”

“You said 4:30. It is not 4:30 yet.”

The other one thumps him on the back, all smiles. “We can wait, right, Cheol? Besides, we have to put our skates on.” 

His gaze is hard and doesn’t leave yours. “Fine.” 

You break away first to find Lorelai still in the same position, staring at the exchange. You ignore the two men that stand there and address her, “Play the track.”

Before the music begins, you glance back to the benches where the two men have seated themselves, apparently strapping in to watch you. You dig your nails into your palm to reign yourself back in. No point in getting upset. 

The piano begins, and you're determined to not mess up. Especially not right now. 

It goes well for all of 45 seconds, you're hitting the right beats, you feel like water. But then the first jump comes along and you see a flash of red from the stands. An irrational feeling hits you as you push into the first jump, it’s enough to make you stumble when you land. You manage to not fall, but it’s obvious you’ve messed up. 

Somewhere beyond the music you hear a distinct, “Solid 4!”

It distracts you again, and you miss a move. Somehow your second jump ends up worse, and you feel your bottom hit the hard ice. 

“8 point 5! Nice!”

It doesn’t take long for you to realise what they’re doing, anger crashing into you like a flash flood. Scoring your falls? You’re determined to make the next jump combination. You make it fine, but your quad Salchow turns into a triple. The oafs are too shallow to notice, so you hear no jeer. 

But you know that you messed up the only quad in your entire program. 

The last jump goes from a triple axel to a double, and you want to break something. 

The song ends, and you know you have another nine minutes left to yourself, but all you can think about is getting out of the vicinity as soon as possible. Away from all of the eyes that are trained on your hunched form. 

There’s nothing you know about Seungcheol, and yet, the thought of him even looking at you right now is unbearable. Twice you fell, countless times you failed. 

Lorelai says nothing while you pack up, and nothing as you leave the rink. 

“CHOI SEUNGCHEOL, CENTER,” LORELAI reads aloud from your bed with her mouth still full of salt ‘n vinegar chips. 

“Perfect, he already thinks he’s the center of the universe,” you grumble from your position on the floor of the bedroom. Your foam roller feels like heaven under your calves, but the position is beginning to cramp. 

“Surprised you haven’t heard of him, he’s half a celebrity.” 

You turn to her, “I have two gold medals and five podiums for every major skating event.”

“Do I ask for your autograph?”

“He’s not special.”

“Hm. His skill and popularity would beg to differ.”

“Why are you so hellbent on liking him?” 

“Because he’s cute,” she grins wide. “Although the other one was cuter, very angel-like. And he liked my Pooh Bear trousers. Can’t find his name on the team roster though.”

“He was wearing the same stupid jacket—”

You’re cut off by a gasp, a loud one at that. “He coaches the babies!” 

Her face is contorted into something between an “aw” and a sob. 

Lorelai’s phone is dropped dramatically on the bed as she thrashes on your made (now unmade) bed. You swipe the phone and read. His picture is there, the name Yoon Jeonghan, Junior League Coach.

“Good for him.”

“He just got five times hotter,” she states like she’s out of breath. 

“Give it another meeting and he’ll give you five other reasons to hate him.”

“God, you’re so negative,” she huffs. 

“They’re hogging my rink!”

“It is not your rink.”

“It’s as good as!”

“Whatever.” Lorelai rolls her eyes and sets back on the bed, no doubt searching the man up by name. 

“Ow!” you yelp as you stand up from the ground, ankle twisting slightly in the process. 

Lorelai jumps. “What?”

“Nothing,” you mumble quickly, hoping she’d drop it. But she catches your lingering stare on your bad ankle. 

“It’s still hurting, isn’t it?”

“I just twisted it weird,” you defend, walking to pack up your foam rollers. 

You’re met with silence, but you know she’s thinking. Lorelai speaks, “Maybe you should skip out on the shelter today.”

You snort, “Why would I do that?”

Once, sometimes twice a week, you’d volunteer at the local pet shelter. It wasn’t hard work, mostly taking the bigger, more energetic dogs for their runs because it seemed you were the only one who could keep up with their stamina. And now Lorelai is trying to take that away from you. 

“I saw how you struggled at the rink today, there’s not a day you don’t rest. Like, actually rest.”

“That has nothing to do with me struggling!” you retort. 

“What is it then?” she asks, sitting up straighter, defiance in her gaze. “What is it that’s making you skate like you bought your first pair yesterday?”

The irritation is growing into something hotter, her defiance pushing you into a corner. 

“I know what you want to hear from me.” Your voice is shaky. “I’m not going to say it.”

“Because it’s not true? Or because you’ve been convinced it’s not?” 

You know what she’s talking about, and you know you’ve been avoiding the topic like it’s the plague. The ache in your ankle comes alive, and in that moment, you cannot tell if you’re imagining it or not. 

“Convinced by who?” you snap, shoving the box of foam rollers under your desk. 

“Does that have to come from me too?” 

“Lorry, I don’t know what you want from me!” 

“I—”

There’s a knock on your door, loud and demanding. Wrenching it open, you find Marina behind it. 

She has a frown on her face. “You’re still here? I thought you were running with the dogs today?”

“It’s none of your business if she goes or not, Marina.” Lorelai’s tongue drips with venom most commonly reserved for her most hated people. 

Marina, still in her workout clothes and duffel bag, furrows her eyebrows. “Who shoved a pole up your ass?” 

“I’m leaving in five,” you hiss, before making a motion to close the door. 

When you turn around, Lorelai is still on your bed, hands in fists like she’s holding herself back. There’s more behind her eyes than you could even consider unravelling. 

She leaves before you. 

THE ENTIRE WAY TO the rink was just one constant string of prayer. 

All of them go unanswered when you walk in to find the rink full of hockey players in red and black gear. 

The only thing you can do is curse under your breath, only watching frozen in your tracks as a million players skate across the rink passing and yelling at each other. No one you recognise, their helmets and gear eluding any semblance of individuality. 

Where you stand, a little ways away from the plastic screen and the benches, a dark circular puck suddenly slams directly into the boundary at eye level. On instinct, you flinch at the loud bang, half expecting to get hit. 

When you open your eyes, somebody’s skating up to the boundary, and you lock eyes through the cage of his helmet. 

Your blood is suddenly charged with something electric, fingers curling into fists on instinct. 

Suddenly, all that rings in your ears is the distinct jeers of numbers over the muffle of plastic as you continue to fall, and fall, and fall on the cold, unforgiving ice. The amusement in your failure, the joy in your defeat. 

Spinning on your heel, you stalk to Hansol’s office. 

In your blinding anger, you take a wrong turn, looking up to realise you’ve walked into the locker rooms. You’re one step into the men's locker room when you come back to your senses, startling yourself once again as you spin back from where you came, only you’ve been caught. 

For all the luck you’ve received in this life, it seems to opt out at that exact moment as you hear the unmistakable noise of a herd of ogres walking in, the glare of red on the walls surrounding them. Frozen in your spot, you can only grip the straps of your duffel bag harder, tense up like you were preparing for impact. When they turn the corner, the brilliant idea of simply walking towards the women’s locker rooms befalls you. But it’s too late. 

Seungcheol saunters into the hallway, leading the pack. 

His helmet is in his hands instead of on his head, revealing a sopping mop of hair drenched in what you can only imagine is sweat. He’s laughing at his teammate who’s making futile attempts to escape his own helmet, not noticing you in the way. 

Until he does. His smile fades immediately, eyebrows raised as he registers you in the doorway. You feel his gaze on you for a few silent moments, his teammates shushing at the shift in the air. Seungcheol opens his mouth, and you already know all that’s going to leave it is dung. “Didn’t realise the rink had a vacancy. Do I need to show you my ID to take a shower?”

A rustle of chortles and chuckles flitter from the group. “Go ahead. I don’t need an ID to tell you need a shower.”

Somebody ooh’s, despite it not being your best work. You suppose it was your delivery that did it. Deciding to continue riding that high, you simply turn towards the women’s locker rooms, refusing to give Seungcheol the luxury of your eyes on him.

Hurtling into the women’s locker room, you throw your duffel bag somewhere you’ll regret and crumple into one of the seats. You count to ten, attempting to take the image of Seungcheol out of your brain. 

It was difficult to rile you up to this extent, a trait you needed to possess if you were to be coached by Carroll in any capacity. There was so much you heard from her mouth, swallowing it like a prescribed pill and nothing more. Take what you were given, because it was given by the best, bought for you by the best.

Yet for some reason, Seungcheol manages to irk you in ways you previously have never encountered. Irritating people come and go, but you doubt you could place him as something as simple as just irritating. His presence felt like an intrusion, his air was thick like a concentrated gas. Everything he’s said to you so far has come from nothing but disdain and condescension, his haughty personality the only takeaway when he enters a room. 

You’re still in your outdoor shoes and jacket by the time twenty minutes are over, coming to a conclusion as you get up from the empty, soulless locker room. Hansol is in his office when you make the formality knock before barging in. His head is on the desk, like he’s asleep. It takes him a second, by he lifts his forehead from the papers on the tabletop to regard you at the door. You hear him sigh. 

“The hockey team’s done. It’s two.”

“I wanna book a slot.”

“The rink’s empty you don’t—”

“Let me book the slot, Hansol.”

“For fuck’s sake, you’re turning out worse than those baboons,” he curses before setting his forehead back onto the table. “Write it on the sticky note, I’ll put it in the schedule.”

“Now. I wanna book a slot for right now,” you grit. 

Hansol whips his head up again, eyes wide like he’s holding himself back, nodding furiously as he pulls his keyboard towards himself with an unnecessarily aggressive tug. “Fine. 2:16 till closing. Enter. Print. Here.”

He hands you the printed receipt of your slot, ripping it from the printer tray as he does it. You take it from him in the same vigour, hardly a thank you as you spin on your heels and walk out the door. You stop for a minute, turning back around to yell into the office. 

“Go home if you’re just gonna nap on your desk!” 

Not waiting for a response, you stalk towards the locker rooms. Within minutes you’ve tugged on your skates, laptop and shoes in each hand as you emerge out the tunnel to the rink. 

The ice is empty, mostly. Placing your laptop in the sound booth and your shoes under the benches, you step foot on the ice. They’re there, on the other end, sitting on the cold ice with their jerseys still on, eating what looks like cups of dippin dots. 

Seungcheol and Jeonghan, you remember from Lorelai’s squealing, either don’t notice you on the ice, or simply choose not to. Because it’s easy as you skate up to them, gaining speed from across the rink, you slide to a stop, sending a perfect spray of ice from your skates, directly into their ice cream cups. 

Seungcheol’s full spoon hangs mid air, halfway to his mouth, now garnished with ice shavings. 

“Thought you’d have the respect to keep the dippin dots out of this,” Jeonghan comments, disbelief in his eyes as he looks up at you. 

“Ice is booked.” 

“What time?” Seungcheol asks. Your gaze flickers to the left side of his face, a nasty bruise blooming purple and blue that you hadn’t noticed before. 

“2:16. It’s nearly fifteen minutes past.”

“You’re only one person.” He’s significantly more annoyed than when you saw him outside the locker rooms just minutes ago. 

“And?”

“And…you have about 97% of the rink to yourself.”

You raise your brows, hands on your hips. “But I booked 100% of it. So I’m gonna need that plane of ice you’re currently sitting on.” 

“What if I don’t move?” Seungcheol presses. It’s menacing, the way he looks at you, like he’s a lion only waiting to be provoked. Maybe he’s already halfway there, because it sure looks like it. 

“We’ll find out another day,” Jeonghan sings before you can snap back, grabbing onto the collar of Seungcheol’s red and white jersey to yank him up. He continues to glare as he obliges with his friend’s tugs, nearly as angry as you are. “Let’s go, sport.”

You watch as they walk to the exit of the ice, realising they’re wearing their shoes instead of their skates. 

Jeonghan calls from the benches, right before he and Seungcheol move out of view. “Trash those for us, would you?” 

Their half eaten dippin dots cups, with the ice now melting on them remains on the floor of the rink. Once again, the unexplainable urge to kick something befalls you, hearing them laugh and talk from far away as they exit the rink behind their long gone teammates. 

You give in, swinging a leg over to kick the cups and spoons, dippin dots and plastic scattering across the ice. It’s another sprawl of mess you’ll have to clean up, but it feels good to ruin something of his, no matter how inconsequential. The empty rink encourages you, needing to scream so loud the plastic barriers crack and break. You know it’s impossible, but that doesn’t stop the urge. 

You channel it into the most aggressive warmups on ice you’ve ever done. Your spins are faster, your jumps higher. But this also means you crash heavier, fall harder. It’s then, sitting on the bench to take a break, breathing so heavy you can hardly sip your water, you find an unmistakable headline on your browser home page. 

Everything stops. 

!HOT TOPIC! 

SEAT AT RISK FOR SVT HOCKEY TEAM’S SHINING STAR? Read All About It Here! 

!HOT TOPIC! 

SEAT AT RISK FOR SVT HOCKEY TEAM’S SHINING STAR? Read All About It Here! 

Choi Seungcheol’s seat for next season at risk? Insider reports that the hot headed center may be at risk of contract termination due to recent controversy. The hockey player, renowned for his aggressive playing tendencies, seems to be taking his temperament outside of the rink. Multiple games played by SVT have been subject to eventful halves and quarters, the center seen getting violent in the benches with opposing team members, and sometimes even team members of his own! While his short temper has always been a recurring subject in the news, his skills as a player have always remained top notch—we do wonder if he even has to try! The tables seem to turn a little differently this time around, because it looks that SVT higher ups have been fed up with the increasing reports of Choi’s aggressive behaviour. Insider sources report that talks of a contract termination may be coming into order. While he has proven to be an effective player on the ice, it seems as though it won’t be saving him from this particular ramification! 

Stay tuned, hockey fanatics, as we bring you more updates on Choi’s sticky situation! 

BEFORE EVERYTHING, BEFORE YOUR ankle, before it began to feel like your world was crumbling at your feet, came the scar on your leg. 

In hindsight, it feels like it was the very thing that set the ball rolling, the beginning of your demise. 

Coach Carroll was only on her first handful of sessions with you, Lorelai and Marina, all of you still learning her quirks and expectations as a coach. 

It happened when you were on the sidelines, hanging over the boundary as Lorelai handed you a water bottle from the benches. Marina was practicing her routine, taking up most of the ice as Coach followed on the side. It seemed unclear, to this day, whether you’d drifted inwards on the ice as you sipped from the bottle, unaware. But when you felt the hot searing pain in your calf, there were only two people on the scene. 

Marina skated past, her free leg in the air, meeting your calf as she skated past, effectively slicing into your leg in a deep gash. Blood was wiped off the ice, your leg bandaged and wrapped. Not without Coach and her comments, of course. 

You heard her berate Marina from the other room, for moving closer to the boundary than what was required for her routine, heard the way she gave her the blame. And then she round up on you. 

“Idiot! No reason to be on the ice when you aren’t practicing, did you want it to be your ankles too?!” 

It was the first time you realised that Carroll was beyond your perception of the word demanding, her gaze remained in a high place, no regard for what it took to get there. Even if it meant destroying her skaters. 

Marina apologised. “I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t see you there, I would’ve dropped my leg—”

“It’s okay, Marina. Really,” you smiled through the still aching wound. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

She smiled a little too, “Lesson learned, I guess. Don’t loiter on the ice.” 

It was difficult to keep the smile from fading as you heard her say that.

“What shit apology is that?!” Lorelai yelled as soon as you mentioned it to her later. You cringe as you realise what slipped, and to whom it slipped to. 

“It’s the best I’m gonna get from her, Lorry. Honestly, I don’t care.”

“You’re out of service for a week till that slice heals and that’s all she has to give you?” 

Lorelai is breathing heavily, mostly because she’s been practicing her triple axels for her routine, but also because she’s extensively heated for you. You watch her from the benches. 

“Lorry,” you sigh. 

“Listen, I wanna win too but—”

“Are you trying to say she did it on purpose?” you ask. 

“No! Let me finish, woman,” she snaps. “I wanna win, you wanna win. We’re doing everything we can because we want to win—”

“So this was a subconscious attack?” you interject. 

“Fuck this, I’m leaving,” Lorelai begins to skate backwards and away, leaving you on the bench. 

“NO! Wait, okay, I’m sorry I won’t interrupt.”

“Too late.”

“Lorry! Lorelai!”

It wasn’t until you were back in your shared apartment, Marina out doing whatever while Lorelai hijacked your bed that she got to finish her sentence. She was rubbing ointment on a bruise while you changed the  bandage on your calf. 

“Her need to win is ruining her. And it’s like she’s taking us down with her. I know she doesn’t mean it like that, doesn’t want to hurt us. But she thinks this kind of hurt is good, if it’s the kind of hurt that pushes you to win.”

You cringed at the sight of the wound, still red and ugly. 

“She might not have meant to hurt your leg, but—don’t loiter on the ice? Really?”

“She only meant it as a reminder.”

“Exactly! You don’t need that reminder because I think you’ve learned better than anyone else to not stay on the rink when someone is practising. A couple weeks ago she made some stupid comment because I left the gym early. Nothing inherently rude, she’s never actually rude. But it was pointed anyway. I’ve been up since six in the morning I think I deserve slacking off a little, it was nearly midnight for fuck’s sake!” 

Cleaning the wound was taking everything you had, the need to hiss at the contact of the wet cloth was near abominable. 

“Her…her perception’s a little warped. But her heart’s in the right place!”

Lorelai had rolled her eyes, screwing the cap of her ointment tube back on with unnecessary force. “I never said it wasn’t, just—stop defending her! I’m sorry but half the reason she continues to act like this is because you listen to her.”

At that moment, you felt a little offended. Of course, Marina had her moments where she’d say something a little less than healthy, especially coming from a friend. But you’d always thought you handled it better than most. 

You met Marina when you were still only splotchy faced preteens, during a competition where she came second and you came third. She’d been skating for longer, so it was expected, but you also couldn’t conceal your surprise when you’d found the state of her later on. You were ecstatic simply because you managed to make it to the podium, but it seemed Marina’s tears held another thought process for her. 

You found her crying in the locker rooms later on, her coach who looked like she…should’ve been comforting her, but it was more like a stern talking to, to suck it up and work harder next time round. 

When you tried to help her, out came words you felt oh so strange coming from a stranger. “What do you know? You came third!”

It hurt. Possibly the first genuine stab of the feeling you’d ever felt. In the following weeks, when Marina apologised and you’d begun to build a friendship, you felt something peculiar. Practice sessions on the ice became harder, your two hour sessions were suddenly extending to four, sometimes five hours a day. All of it, your own doing. 

It was subconscious when it was happening, the silent tug of You came third! What you first considered an achievement became an intermediate step. 

If there was anywhere that you’d pinpoint the shift, from when figure skating went from fun to a responsibility, you’d pick that exact moment. When someone congratulated you later on, it wasn’t a big smile and a thank you.

“I only came third.”

Your calf healed and all that was left was a scar, but there in the discolouration of your skin, also lay a realisation. 

SEUNGCHEOL HOSTS ABSOLUTELY ZERO thoughts in his mind as he shoves the collar of his hoodie over his head. Slamming the door shut on the rest of his red SVT paraphernalia, he makes quick work of his hair, shoes on and out the door within the minute. Jeonghan is still fast asleep when he leaves, mouth open and drooling onto his pillow when Seungcheol walks into his room to let him know he’s leaving. 

Jeonghan might tag along to practice for the fun of it despite leaving his competitive hockey career behind him, but his distaste for 6 AM practice remains forever unchanged. He’d see him later though, on the rink lingering once the sun is higher in the sky and Jeonghan deems it less of a sin to be awake. 

Seungcheol leaves without a response from his friend. 

By the time he gets to the rink, most of the team has already geared up. The locker room is splotched with red, moving towards the back of the room to get to his own locker. They weren’t assigned, but he liked to have his claim. He had one in the old rink, the one locker everyone knew was his. And now he has one here, despite the temporary nature of the ordeal. The rest of the boys know to steer clear, as does he for the others who have their lucky spots. 

Mingyu bumps into his shoulder when Seungcheol is looking down, immediately whipping around to bow a full ninety degrees. He’s laughing as he apologises, not really sorry, but Seungcheol is too exhausted to humour him too much. 

He’d been up playing games all night, under the covers in the dark, his phone brightness up too high and his eyes too wide open. He could feel the regret when his alarm blared while it was still dark outside, his eyelids stuck together, refusing to open. It cost him fifteen minutes of warming up, but he’d make it somehow. 

Seungcheol can hear coach Mason’s booming voice from outside, moving closer and closer to hustle the rest of the boys out onto the rink. He shoves his foot into his skates, making sure all that’s left is to lace them up. 

“Look alive, boys! I want you on the ice within the minute,” he booms into the locker room. 

Seungcheol doesn’t look up. When he gets up to leave the locker rooms, his hockey stick and helmet in hand, he’s the last straggling few to leave. Chan earns himself a hard thump on the back from Coach as he scurries out. 

There’s a hand on Seungcheol’s chest as he’s about to exit, Coach stopping him from leaving. 

He looks up, expecting a hard look from Mason, ready to hear a mildly violent threat about being late to call time again. Except Seungcheol finds him with his own gaze on the floor. 

“Rink manager said I could use his office. We should talk there.”

Seungcheol could’ve said he knows what this was going to be about. The game last weekend had less than ideal results, not because they didn’t win, but more so because of the WWE level brawl that went down in the benches during one of the intermissions. 

He tenses, but it was more like he was squaring up. His shoulders are hard, his grip on his hockey stick tighter. Of course, he wasn’t about to swing at his coach, but one could say it was simply a subconscious response. 

The entire walk to the office, Seungcheol thinks of new ways Coach could address his issue. But the gist was always simple. 

Choi, stop fucking fighting. 

He’d usually just rip Seungcheol a new one in front of the boys, berate him and verbally throttle him in the hopes that he’d keep his anger under check. But as they turn towards the door to the office, Seungcheol has to remind himself that this was a first. Being led aside, like he was being led into some formal meeting. 

A plea deal, perhaps?

Choi, what is it going to take?

The office is barren, hardly looks like it’s used with how sparse the equipment is. The amount of dark brown gives it enough warmth to not make it look like some sick form of solitary confinement. That doesn't stop Seungcheol from feeling a hint of pity for whoever has to work here. There’s no nameplate. 

Coach doesn’t take a seat, opting to lean against the table in front of him instead. His arms are folded, and he’s not looking him in the eye. A crawl of suspicion creeps up Seungcheol’s neck, as though in an attempt to ambush him. 

It’s silent in the room as he waits for Coach to speak, refusing to be the one to break it. 

When he does speak, it’s not in his usual Coach voice. Without the built in bass and tremors he was born with. 

“There’s no easy way to break this,” he starts, eyes drifting up to somewhere on the barren walls. “But I’m gonna try my darndest.”

Finally, he feels Coach’s gaze lock with Seungcheol’s expecting pair. 

“They wanna drop you.”

“What?”

Coach squeezes his eyes shut, like he’s recalibrating. “Your contract is up by the end of the season. And the tie wearers and the shoe shiners don't wanna re-sign you.”

Seungcheol’s eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean don’t wanna re-sign me, on what grounds?!”

“You’re temperament—”

“I’ve scored at least two goals for every game you’ve put me in, I’m your most consistent player!”

“They have no qualms with you when you’re on the ice.”

Seungcheol knows where this is going. He knows what knocked up alley this is turning to and he hates it. “Which is all that should matter.”

“In most cases.”

“Is this about last weekend? You didn’t hear him, he deserved more than a broken fucking nose—”

“I didn’t need to hear him, because I know. I know he’s a jackass, I know they’re all jackasses! They know that too. You need to learn to let things go, let them chirp—”

“He was coming on to my mother!” Seungcheol bellows, now properly angry. He remembers the guy’s name, Jason or something. 

“His coach came onto my entire bloodline when we were young, this is Kim’s strategy! You’re playing right into their hands like a dog! For fuck’s sake, Choi! Punching someone in the chiclets isn’t always the answer!” Coach Mason is shaking his hands in front of him like some violent prayer. 

Seungcheol drops his hockey stick and helmet, mouth open as he huffs and puffs. He wants to pace, wants to point his fingers at Coach and make a few threats of his own. 

“Just—”

Seungcheol rounds up on him. “Seungkwan punched a guy in the mouth. Wonwoo kicked one in the balls.”

“Seungcheol. This is becoming nearly. Every. Single. Game. Not the occasional tousle we can pull people out of. You can’t keep sending people to the hospital, it’s a wonder nobody's pressed charges yet!”

“So that’s it? I’m being punished because some dick runs his mouth?” 

“This is about you, Seungcheol. You need to get a fucking grip. You’ve started picking at your own teammates, shoving Mingyu around—seriously?”

Seungcheol’s mouth opens but nothing leaves it. He ends up gaping like a fish. 

For all that it was worth, for everything he’d been through, Seungcheol always assumed his seat was safe. Always assumed he’d have the position he does. Because he showed results, won them nearly every game and put up a damn good fight in the ones they didn’t. 

Seungcheol knew he was an asset, but not for one minute, stop to realise that this was all

conditional. 

For everything he did for this team, for every fiber of his being he poured into its chalice, they were spitting it all right back into his face. Chewed and warped and rid of anything worth salvaging. 

The red in his chest, back, stomach, spelling out the unmistakable letters of his team. The red in his helmet that rests beside the red in his hockey stick. 

“Listen, as much of a pain in the ass you are, you’re good fucking player. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s all that matters. But it’s not up to me, so we need to work around that. They’re worried about the repercussions of your behaviour. And you are gonna make sure you keep yourself in check.” 

Coach walks closer, finger digging into Seungcheol’s chest through his jersey. “I want no more fights, no more kicking and punching and swearing no matter how much that motherfucker deserves it, I don’t care. Do whatever it takes. God knows I’ll never forgive you if you make me agree to those prissy hands in suits.”

Coach left Seungcheol in the barren office, stepping over his stick and helmet as he exited the room, leaving him alone. His fingers flex under his gloves, like he’s trying to remind himself to stay in the moment. His exhales are stronger than his inhales, his vision blurring as the desk turns into two, and then disappears for a second. 

He can hear the distinct sound of the puck slamming into hockey sticks. Practice had started. By the time Seungcheol walks out, he’s the last person to go through the mandatory drills. 

The rink is mostly empty as the team gears up for a practice match, leaving Seungcheol enough reign to slam into every puck like he had some personal vendetta against every last one. It’s one after the other, sent directly into the open net, waiting. 

Practice goes fine, as good as it could go with the scrambled eggs that had become of Seungcheol’s mental state. He found himself whipping his head around to Jun when he fumbled an assist, face scrunched under his helmet as he prepared to send him to hell in a handbasket. 

He sees Jun physically tense up in defense, and the insult (for once) dies on Seungcheol’s tongue. 

“Just—keep up, alright,” he says instead. His tone is empty, and on a downward slope. 

If anyone finds it odd, they don’t say. 

It’s a couple more hours of passes, assists and hollers across the ice, regrouping the teams every so often to keep the rotation consistent. 

Over here, everyone is in red, everyone is on his side. The bleachers are empty, devoid of spectators to watch him lose his cool on anything. But he thinks of the way Jun recoiled, like he was preparing for the worst of his teammate’s words. He and Jun are friends. 

Somewhere amidst his thoughts, the puck flies directly into Seungcheol’s face, banging into the cage of his helmet with a noise that resonates across the rink. He’s startled enough to skate back a little, not before hearing another resounding thwack! from next to him. The puck rebounded from his helmet and hit the plastic barrier with a noise that had everyone looking over. 

Skating up to where the puck fell back onto the ice, he looks up to where it hit the barrier. 

Through the plastic he sees…you. You're staring at the same spot he is, where there’s a slight mark from the force of the rubber. 

And then your eyes drift up, locking with his own. 

Like every other person he’s around, he watches you tense up. But it’s laced with something more than just bracing for impact. 

It’s apprehension, your form turbulent and agitated. It’s all he can see when you spin on your heels and walk away in the opposite direction from him. 

The all too familiar irritation sparks in the back of Seungcheol’s mind, as it does when you’re around. All he does is slam his stick into the ice with force, pushing the puck back into the middle of the rink. 

They’re nearly done by that point, and he finds that Jeonghan has graced himself in the benches. He’s wearing his old jersey, likely because he doesn’t want Coach to notice him and accuse him of distracting his players. 

Jeonghan would’ve gotten away with it anyway. 

Seungcheol tells him to wait up, walking towards the locker room with the rest of the rest of the team to wash up. He finds some reprieve in Seungkwan’s attempts at fumbling with his helmet, letting out a laugh as he fights with it. Looking up as they take the turn towards the locker rooms as a group, he somehow finds himself in your presence, again. 

It’s the same thing, like you’ve been connected to a faulty circuit and you’re trying not to show it. You look like you want to say something but all Seungcheol can do is send a snarky remark of his own. 

Even as you walk away after the ordeal, he feels anything but settled. 

It’s like the world has it out for him, because as he opts to stalk back to where Jeonghan was, forgoing a shower, there’s only another calamity waiting for him. 

Jeonghan is in the rink, sitting on the ice with two cups of what looks like dippin dots. He looks up when he hears his treads on the ice, having taken his skates off already. Seungcheol crumples to the ground and on the ice next to his friend. 

The first words he utters are the only ones that’ve been on his mind all day. “They want to drop me.”

Jeonghan only grimaces in response, only running his hands through his hair as he sighs loudly. “I know. I heard.”

Seungcheol perks up, head lifting from the ice. “...How?”

That’s how Seungcheol has Jeonghan’s phone so close to his face he’s hardly an inch away from the screen. He reads and reads and reads. And his blood boils and boils and boils. 

!HOT TOPIC! 

SEAT AT RISK FOR SVT HOCKEY TEAM’S SHINING STAR? Read All About It Here! 

Choi Seungcheol’s seat for next season at risk? Insider reports that the hot headed centre may be at risk of contract termination due to recent controversy. The hockey player, renowned for his aggressive playing tendencies, seems to be taking his temperament outside of the rink. Multiple games played by SVT have been subject to eventful halves and quarters, the center seen getting violent in the benches with opposing team members, and sometimes even team members of his own! While his short temper has always been a recurring subject in the news, his skills as a player have always remained top notch—we do wonder if he even has to try! The tables seem to turn a little differently this time around though, because it looks that SVT higher ups have been fed up with the increasing reports of Choi’s aggressive behaviour. Insider sources report that talks of a contract termination may be coming into order. While he has proven to be an effective player on the ice, it seems as though it won’t be saving him from this particular ramification! 

Stay tuned, hockey fanatics, as we bring you more updates on Choi’s sticky situation! 

Of course, to add to the absolute media pandemonium, you had shown up on the rink itself after Seungcheol had to read through the entirety of that stupid article. Jeonghan was smart to pull him away from the situation before he wrapped both his hands around your neck in an ultimatum. 

The way you stood there, hip popped like you owned the damn place, face haughty and demanding. You stood while they sat, looking down at Seungcheol like he was some pesky ant. There was nothing he would’ve rather done in that moment than swing his leg clean across your ankles, and watch in delight as you crash onto the ice in front of him. 

“What the fuck is her problem?” he grits as soon as he’s in the locker rooms. Collecting his things to leave and take a shower at home. 

Jeonghan walks behind him, hands in his pocket in idleness as he watches his friend pack up. He’s humming a tune that’s possibly too familiar to Seungcheol. “Hm. She does seem a little wound too tight.”

“Wound too tight?! I’ve seen her thrice just today and every single time she looks like she wants to skin my fucking hide!”

Jeonghan only snorts. “Thing two isn’t any better. She’s cute though.”

Seungcheol whips around. “Who gets that territorial over a sound booth?!”

“Down, boy,” Jeonghan soothes, half in jest. “Surprised she isn’t here today either.”

“Yeah, you’d like to see her.”

“I would, actually, yes. What was her name?”

“Something to do with a train or a bus or something—”

“Lorry! Right,” Jeonghan furrows his brows. “I don’t think that’s her real name.”

Seungcheol throws his duffle bag over his shoulder as he motions he’s done. “I don’t think anyone who actually loves their child would name them after a bus.”

Jeonghan halts in his steps. “My dead dog’s name was Lorry.”

Seungcheol is extra nice for the rest of the way home. 

SEUNGCHEOL CAN'T SLEEP.

His dreams are full of voices, of every single teammate he’s ever had. The junior league, his high school team, up to his college team, and finally, his team right now. 

They’re all murmuring like they were paid to do it, uttering the same things, over and over. He doesn’t belong here, they don’t want him here, he doesn’t deserve what he has. 

And with the way his heart is racing when he jolts awake, cold sweat and all, he realises he’s kicked his blanket off of him sometime during the night. He looks over to his alarm clock that glares bright in the dark of his room; 5:08 AM.

He doesn’t need to be up, but it seems his own subconscious has given him a good enough scare to make sure every last essence of sleep escapes him. He lays on his back, catching his breath like he just ran a marathon. 

Seungcheol hasn’t woken up from a nightmare like this since middle school, one that knocks the breath from his lungs and fills his head with all the horrible things in the world. With every moment that passes after that conversation with Coach Mason, his ordeal becomes increasingly real. 

In that moment, laying in his bedroom, staring blankly at the dark ceiling above, he wonders if he’s made the right choice to come this far. 

With all the confidence he’s exuded, the thought is downright terrifying. 

Seungcheol was a difficult child. Too much energy, too much to say, too much to do. His parents didn’t know the first thing about hockey, just that it involved enough hitting and running and practice to let their son let out all that pent up energy, so maybe, just maybe, he’d sit still and do his homework. While they attempted to sign him up at the local rink, he was already zooming out towards the benches to see the fabled giant block of ice his parents told him about. 

And there it was, just like in the movies, a giant expanse of ice that made him shiver even in his thick Winnie The Pooh puffer vest. There’s sounds, loud ones, of deep clacks that echo across the rink. It seems to be coming from the dozens of people skating on the rink, decked out in red gear. 

SVT, he reads on their jerseys. 

His mother chides him for straying when they finally find him near the gate, watching the team practice. The rink manager is there as well, showing his parents around. 

“The SVT’s practice here and have a junior league too, but I’m afraid it’s full. But our coach is great too, I’m sure he’ll do well.”

Seungcheol’s parents didn’t mind, but he wanted those jerseys, wanted his name in red splashed across his back as he glided across the ice. 

It didn’t take long for his coach and his parents to realise that putting him in a helmet was a good idea. He was smoking the rest of the kids from day one, his balance on the ice better than any other his age, his hold on a hockey stick like second nature, his aim as he hit his first puck, dazzling. 

As he got older, entering his preteen and teen years, he had another realisation. That he was as horrible at school as he was good at hockey. 

“Perhaps you should take a break from hockey,” his high school guidance counsellor had said. His grades were displayed in front of her like a case study, the hopeless clear in her intermittent sighs and the occasional purse of her lips. “Utilise that time to fix at least one of your grades. Pour all your eggs in one basket.”

The thought was absurd. No, he would not be dropping hockey when it was the only thing that pushed him to wake up in the morning. 

He’d felt the tremble of irritation rise in himself, sitting there in that office. It angered him, made him feel like his success was measured by a criteria not made for him. He had said nothing as he slipped out of chair and left the room. 

The day before his graduation, sweat dripping onto the ice as he sent free pucks into the net, he was missing more than he was getting in. It was making him more mad than it should, hands shaking with fury as he berated himself for not being able to succeed in something so simple.

His last puck was before him, and he swung his stick harder than ever and watched as it flew directly into the net. The sound is louder than usual, resonating across the rink. Seungcheol looked down at the detached pieces in his hand and quickly realised that he’d effectively broken his hockey stick.

It wasn’t expensive, so the quality wasn’t nearly what it should be, wasn’t nearly as durable. But this was new to him. He’d never broken a stick before. 

Anger. Perhaps that was what he'd forgone, perhaps that was what he needed. To get on his knees from his back, to get on his feet from his knees. 

When he graduated the next day, Seungcheol knew what he was going to do with his life. Finally had an answer for the infinite questions about his future. 

Hockey. Seungcheol was going to play hockey for the rest of his life. He was going to get into SVT, he was going to become the best player they’ve ever had. He was going to make more money than what he would have as a doctor or a lawyer or whatever else the entire world wanted him to do instead. 

Seungcheol was going to be on the ice wearing red if it’s the last thing he does. 

That’s what pushes him out of bed at 8:45 in the morning, his dream that was once in his hands now flitting through the gaps of his fingers. 

The anger that pushed him here, was now pushing him out. 

He packs his things and leaves the house, welcoming the cold of the outdoors. 

There’s the distinct sound of blade cutting through ice when he gets nearer to the rink itself, a shout of a shrill voice he can’t decipher. Official practice doesn’t start for another couple hours, and he doesn’t remember Coach Mason cutting the pitch in his voice for anything ever. There’s only one other person that could possibly be gracing the rink.

Seungcheol finds three people on the rink. The bright red curly mop of hair catches his eye first, her arms folded over her green puffer jacket, apprehension in her entire posture. He assumes this is your coach. 

There’s a blonde one breathing heavily as she straightens out of a spin, listening to the coach as she shakes her head violently as she speaks. 

Seungcheol finds you a little ways away from the pair, practising jumps. 

He doesn’t emerge into the benches, remaining in the shadows where he wouldn’t be so blaringly obvious. There’s no reason for him to hide, but he doesn’t think of this as hiding. 

Seungcheol watches for the next few minutes, watches you make most of your jumps, fall for some. Your coach shouts for particular names for jumps, something about axels and lutz’ that he can’t tell the difference from when put into action. At least he thinks that’s what you’re doing. 

And then he hears it as your coach moves closer to the barriers. “What’s gotten into you? Keep acting this stupid and I’ll excuse myself from the job, I have better people to coach.”

Her tone, her words, the sharp edge of her tongue, it’s all triggering a very specific part of Seunghceol’s brain. 

“Is it your ankle? Because if it is, then I’m here to tell you to get out of your own head. Your ankle is fine, you wouldn’t be able to get on the ice at all if it wasn’t.” 

There it comes. Those words aren’t directed towards Seungcheol, nor could they apply to him in any capacity. But the way this coach is speaking is making him irrationally angry. 

“Are you gonna keep pretending you have a handicap? Because if you are then I have no work here.”

“I’m sorry.” 

For whatever reason, the sound of you apologising makes the fire rage doubly. It’s enough to blur his vision, enough to make him question what on earth this coach could have on you to let her speak to you in that way. 

The choice words are already in his head as he claps back in his own head, like he was the one at the receiving end. 

He doesn’t stay, disappearing even further into the tunnel to where the locker rooms are. He doesn’t understand why he’s huffing and puffing as much as he is. All that occupies him is what possible reasons you could have to just take it lying down. 

Seungcheol’s phone vibrates in his pocket, slipping it out to realise it’s Jeonghan. 

He picks up, and barely has time to say hello before his voice perks up from the other line. “Where are you?” He sounds like he just woke up. 

“I’m at the rink.”

“Why is your angry voice on?”

“My angry voice is not—” he begins to grit, seething, but closes his eyes and takes a moment. “I’m not mad.”

“Do I need to sing?”

“No, you do not have to sing—”

“Everything is honey—”

“Jeonghan, stop!”

“—everywhere I see—”

Seungcheol hangs up before he can go on. To his utmost irritation, he feels significantly calmer. 

The rink is devoid of your red headed coach when Seungcheol makes his way there after a few minutes. The blonde one is nowhere to be seen, leaving you alone in the rink as you skated across the expanse. He only watches as you land the couple attempts at jumps, the ice breaking ground in a spray every time you put pressure on your blades. 

Seungcheol is just standing there, blank faced with an empty head. His mind was quiet for the first time since he’d woken up that morning. 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing there, standing idle as he follows your figure around the rink like a fixation point. 

The sound is more consistent, less of the loud jabs of hockey sticks meeting the ice, more constant lines of scraping as you migrate across the rink. The speakers boom no sound, but the musicality in the noise of the ice is enough to imagine a rhythm. 

No part of him desires getting on the ice to oust you out, no part of him wants to touch his hockey stick that sits in the locker room. He doesn’t need extra practice, not with hockey at least. 

And when you notice him, unmoving in the benches, he watches as something hard overcomes your expression. You skate over, and he keeps his gaze fixated on the ice.

Skating up to the gate, he sees in his peripheral vision as you slip on your skate guards, stepping out into the real world. 

“You don’t have the rink booked, I checked,” you huff, moving to find your things on the other set of benches. 

Seungcheol’s jaw tenses. “I don’t want the rink right now.”

“And yet the ghost loiters.”

“I’m here to tell you to start filling in the stupid craters your skates make in the ice. The guys keep tripping.” 

“You big hockey thugs getting defeated by a toe pick?” 

Seungcheol turns to finally look at you, and you look nothing as graceful as you did on the ice. He wants to scoff. 

You continue, “I have to deal with your stupid barriers fucking up my sound system. I think your guys can deal with a couple digs in the ice.” 

“Great, we’ll just lose a couple teeth, who really gives a fuck.” 

“If this is about giving fucks,” you get up from your water break, leaving the bench. “Do me a favour and forget your mouth guard next time. Let the puck punch you in the mouth if I can't."

Seungcheol’s entire being is ablaze. He reshuffles his footing. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“My problem?” you repeat, voice moving a pitch higher. “My fucking problem is that you and your overgrown posse of baboons drop in here out of the blue and then act like you own the damn place!”

“Right, because it’s your name on the fucking lease. Excuse us for trespassing on public property!”

You’re yelling. Seungcheol is yelling. It’s either that or the hollow of the rink is now carrying your voices farther out. 

“I’ve had enough of you acting like you don’t take up this entire fucking space!” Your arms wave wildly, gesturing to the large area of the rink. “You’re everywhere, all the fucking time, it’s sickening!”

“Everywhere, huh?” He takes a step closer to you. And then another. He revels in the sight of your face turning a splotchy red. “Thought I was only a bother on the ice? Where else have I been plaguing you in mystic hallucinations?”

Seungcheol’s eyes give away nothing but provocation. He knows he didn’t start this, but in the true essence of who he is, he would be the one to end it. 

It’s clear you’re taken aback. At this moment, he’s the closest he’s ever been to you. But it’s for nothing if it isn’t to press on you further, to tower over you and your outburst. 

“Get your head out of the gutter, you brute.”

“Then is it not me taking up all your space?” he asks. “Because there’s three feet of air between us, and yet the least in our very short time together.”

He watches as you take a small step back.

“So where else have I been any closer, so consistently, if it wasn’t part of your imagination?”

There’s a certain kind of venom in your stare, in the sneer that lifts your mouth, enough to ensure that it’d render him six feet deep. But he lives in reality, so he deems it safe to take another step closer. 

“You’re a screw up,” you almost whisper. Appalled and scandalised. 

“So I’ve been told,” Seungcheol breathed. “But something tells me we’re not so different in that department.”

“You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I know that I’m all you can think about,” he says, eyebrows raised. “That feels like a lot. You’d agree, because everywhere, all the fucking time is a lot.” 

Seungcheol has hardly finished his sentence before he feels the light breeze of you gathering your few things, shouldering him hard and walking away from him. Into the tunnel, into the locker rooms, into hell, wherever it was that you ended up by the close of the day. 

He isn’t afraid to admit that he stumbled.

LORELAI HAD MADE IT quite clear that any figure skating talk was off the table, and talk surrounding Marina even more so. You tried not to point out the obvious predicament, but the fact that you lived with Marina did not affect her demand. 

Miraculously, not talking about skating or Marina was the most free you’d felt in ages. It was mildly embarrassing in the beginning, when on a run with Lorealai who was also helping out at the dog shelter, because you realised all you talked about was, maybe not Marina, but definitely a lot of skating. 

You slow down a little to give Kkuma a couple minutes to breathe, but Lorealai is still running at her pace with her significantly more energetic husky, Bennie. 

“Stay there, I’ll catch up!” she yells over her shoulder as she takes the left around the block to circle back. 

You oblige, moving to a walking pace as Lorelai appears from behind you after a couple minutes. She slows to a jog and loiters around you for a minute, you increase your speed to match hers. 

“Jeonghan…” she pauses to take a breath. But your interest is piqued, especially if she was talking about the same Jeonghan you were thinking about. “Jeonghan invited me to the game this weekend.”

Hold. 

“What?” you snap.

“Game. This weekend,” she huffs, still breathing heavily. 

“Like, a hockey game?” you ask, brows furrowed. 

“No, for disney on ice,” she announces. “They’re doing beauty and the beast, Jeonghan’s the beauty, Seungcheol is the beast. It’s a whole production, really. Real good stuff.”

You can only roll your eyes at the elaborate sarcasm. She continues, “Of course, it's a hockey game! What else do they do at that rink all day?”

“Gosh, sorry,” you frown. “Since when do you talk to Jeonghan?”

She looks over, wicked smile on her face. “Since I found him on Instagram.”

“You followed him?”

“No, why would I do that? Bumped into him at the gym a while ago, and we went out for coffee afterwards.”

Nothing of the ordeal is making sense, your brows still knit together and your mouth downturned in confusion. 

“Catch you in a minute!” she yelps as she takes off into a run again, Bennie right next to her as she circles round again. 

The few minutes that it’s just you and tiny Kkuma are flooded with questions. How did she just bump into Jeonghan? Lorelai hardly goes to the gym. Asking her to come to the hockey game? 

And then worst of all. 

Are they dating? 

By the time Lorelai is back, she’s out of breath again, and fully unequipped to answer all of the questions you shoot at her like rapid fire. 

“Why were you at the gym? He’s a junior league coach, he’s not even gonna be playing!”

“God!” she groans, heaving. “Slow…down.”

“Fine!” You stop in your tracks entirely, to which Lorelai is happy to oblige as she crouches with her hand on her knees. Bennie tugs at her leash, the big bounding ball of fluff ready to race the winds again. 

You count to ten, hands on your hips as Kkuma lets out a small, confused yip now that you’re completely idle on the track. 

“Talk.” 

With an all too dramatic flip of her short hair, she pulls herself up and into an explanation. “I couldn’t tell you because we weren’t talking when it all happened.”

It’s true, it did take a while for you to go back to normal after that run in with Marina in your bedroom. You suppose it won’t be happening again with the new no-Marina-talk rule, since she seemed to be quite the common factor in many of your rifts over the years. 

“I went to the gym to blow off some steam—don’t look like that, I’m being serious!” 

You make an attempt at fixing your face as she continues. 

“He saw me first and came up to say hi. Went our separate ways but once we finished up he asked if I wanted to grab a coffee since we were both done working out.” 

“And you said yes?”

“I said yes. Because he is cute, and I had been stalking his very public Instagram and it was just the perfect opportunity!” 

“So you’re dating?” you ask sharply. 

“I don’t know.”

“He asked you to the game?” you point out. 

“Well, yes, but he hasn’t asked me asked me.” Somewhere in her voice there’s the tiniest hint of disappointment. “Besides, he said to bring you as well.”

“Fuck no.”

“Come ooon! Jeonghan’s gonna be in the benches and I don’t know anyone else there!” she whines. 

“Hey, we should switch dogs!” you announce as you yank Bennie’s leash out of Lorelai’s hands, stuffing  Kkuma’s leash into her free hand. 

You take off into a sprint, and Bennie is happy to keep up with you as you quite literally run away from the situation. Lorelai is yelling your name, her annoyance abundant. 

Ignoring her is easy. Just the thought of walking into one of those games is enough to force a scoff, to watch your rink inhabited with like minded buffoonery as they ruin the bleachers and the ice. 

By the time you make it back, the hilarity of the situation hasn’t left you. And it seems neither has Lorelai, who remains standing with Kkuma at her feet, waiting to trap you. 

It’s the easiest thing to do, to turn right back around and circle the other way. 

“You can’t run away from me forever!” she shouts behind you as you disappear again. 

Maybe you couldn’t, but you wouldn’t go down without a fight. 

“You can’t run away from Seungcheol forever! Quit pretending like you aren’t dying to fall into those giant arms!” Lorelai has a very specific talent of injecting all the drama in the world in the tone of her voice. She’s sure to utilize that skill as she hollers after you. 

That seems to do it for you, slowing down, half ready to whip around and holler a profanity or two right back. 

You’re more triggered than usual, but mostly because all the jab does is remind you of the last time you saw him. The arrogance in his demeanor, the way he belittled you with just his eyes, the shadow of his towering frame, caging you like a lost animal. 

You hated it. Despised it. Despised him. His disgusting innuendos, the all so misleading innocence on his face as he cornered you with both his body and his words. 

Lorelai could deal you whatever card there was tied up her sleeve, but getting you anywhere near the rink for the game this weekend was going to require more than just dessert bribes and sweet talking. Dragging you by the ankles could be a possibility, but all for naught when you dig your nails in anyway. 

It was impossible. Not doable. Non-existent in the cards of your destiny. A repelling force. 

So why, would one ask, were you decked out in the most  heinous red scarf with the letters SVT stitched on like a warning, sitting in the bleachers and looking down at the same rink you practice your spins and jumps in everyday? 

Neither you or Lorelai could answer that question, both your stories as blurry as fog as to how either of you managed to get you in that fabled seat. 

You could see the exact place you and Seungcheol had your last showdown, the opposing team in black now occupying that side of the benches. The thought puts you in an impossibly sour mood. It’s not like Lorelai could say anything about it, half because she knows you’re one snide remark away from jumping into the merch table, and half because she was too busy making heart eyes at Jeonghan who’s just spotted her in her seat. 

“I’ll be back,” she informs haphazardly as she positively bounds down the steps to the end of the bleachers, where Jeonghan waits for her. The people in their seats shuffle, annoyed at the overenthusiastic fan who practically slides down in front of their legs towards the railing. But Lorelai couldn’t care less, not with what stood beyond that very railing. 

Tearing your eyes away from the lovebirds, you take in the hustle and bustle of the pregame happenings, most of the bleachers in disarray as they humour the merch stands and the food stalls. The rink smells different because of it, both the added number of food trucks and drink stands, but also with the amount of people that occupy the expanse. 

The only times you see the rink this packed is when you’re too wracked with nerves to notice anything other than your own two feet. Hands wringing and head spinning, the chaos of the world is nothing against the pandemonium in your mind. You’re usually wearing a sparkly dress that glitters even from the very last row of bleachers, hair taut and makeup caked on like a layer of icing. 

Taking your time, you let your eyes flit over all that you forgo the other times. The stands are a mix of red and black, and so are the benches and ice that are occupied by men in full hockey gear. 

You’re too high up to make out the names on the back of all those jerseys, let alone a face underneath the already concealing helmets. The problem is forgotten when you feel the weight of two hands slam against your folded arms, tugging you out of your seat like it was stolen property. 

“Jeonghan said we could sit closer to the benches downstairs!” Lorelai is frantic, like this wasn’t a matter of reserved seats but the last plane to leave hell itself. 

“Lor—” Finishing a sentence when she’s in this state is a luxury you learn quickly to live without, because all that concerns her right now is getting closer to the man that seems to have enraptured her like never before. 

It’s disgusting. But you follow her anyway, down the steps that you nearly eat shit on, gracefully of course, because what figure skater doesn’t fall with an epic crash worthy of an Expendables cameo. You stabilise yourself enough to get to the seats Lorelai is talking about, and sure enough, Jeonghan would barely have to get on his tiptoes to hoist himself into the bleachers altogether. You question the safety of the context but decide that it wasn’t your problem if someone decided to pounce on one of the players. 

Besides, you’d be lying if you said you wouldn’t revel in the absolute scene of Seungcheol getting jumped by an over-passionate fan. You’re suddenly very grateful for the front row seats. 

There’s a bucket of chicken tenders and fries in your lap out of nowhere, matching the one in Lorelai’s hands. “Also Jeonghan?” you hum as you inspect the sauce options. 

“Mhm, he’s friends with the vendor outside,” she grins. 

You narrow your eyes at the revelation, finding it utmost strange how close he seems to be with nearly everyone. “Why is he on the benches, again?” you ask. 

“Because—” she draws before you cut her off. 

“Friends with the coach?”

“How’d you know?!” she exclaims. Her attention is diverted as the speakers suddenly boom with something other than generic pop music. So is yours, when you hear a deep baritone of a commentator’s voice carries throughout the rink. 

The shuffle around you is suddenly doubling in speed, everyone getting into their seats. You look over in front of you, where the benches are in an equally panicked shuffle. You spot Jeonghan easily, mostly because he’s one of the few in the vicinity without a helmet or what looks like a giant space suit. The next thing you note is the person he’s talking to, his back turned to you, but familiar all the same. 

CHOI, 95, reads his jersey. Automatically, your jaw clenches.  “Don’t look over there!” Lorelai chides, grabbing your jaw and moving it to force you to rip your eyes away from him. 

“Lorelai, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but unlike your boy toy, he’s actually gonna be on the ice,” you verbalise through clenched teeth. 

“Don’t look at the ice,” she blurts. 

Rolling your eyes, you only listen as she realises what she’s said. “Okay, um, look at Jeon instead! Or Kim, or Boo, just. For god’s sake, there’s fifty other players on the ice, just don’t let one of them ruin your night!” 

“I’m fine,” you grumble, sinking into your seat. 

It isn’t long before your eyes trail over anyway, and Seungcheol still doesn’t have his helmet on. You can see his face now, and he looks like he’s mad at Jeonghan about something. 

Inevitably, your mind wanders to the fated article that somehow made its way into your recommended, the certainty it put in you that Seungcheol didn’t stand a chance in his team anymore. It seemed true enough, his anger, that he continues to display, seemed to be his default emotional setting. 

Your hockey knowledge was subpar at best, but one thing you did know was the aggression factor of the sport. Of all the things that could cut his career clean down the middle, this was the last of your guesses.  

Even now, as you watch him absentmindedly point and jerk like his supposed friend had managed to bring him something that was personally offensive, it’s all connecting too well. 

But when you snap into reality, you realise very quickly that he was pointing…at you. 

Seungcheol is mad that Jeonghan (effectively) brought you to the match. 

A chortle of disbelief is quick to make itself known, wanting to yell across the throng that you were every bit as upset that he was in your vicinity too. It also brings you satisfaction, a pure grain of hope, that maybe this would be enough for him to completely fuck up on the ice today. 

You say a quick amen before the baritone of the commentator makes itself known again. The echo is too much for you to decipher what’s going on, but you have your answer when you watch the reds and the blacks form what looks like a line across the width of the rink, right in the center. 

You don’t register when the puck landed, or if it was always there, just that the loud clacks and bangs are in tandem with the cheer from the crowds. The puck is an impossible commodity to keep up with, even with just your eyes. It appears for a moment before it’s lost again, shooting around in your peripheral vision like a pesky fly you can never get a hold of. 

“What is happening?” you whisper to yourself. 

Lorelai answers anyway, snorting, “Fuck if I know.”

The numbers on the lit screens are doing nothing to help out your predicament, too much happening for you to even begin to deconstruct. You choose to lay back and enjoy your chicken tenders and fries, complimenting the sauce choices to Lorelai along the way, who continues to calibrate her attention on the man that remains in the benches. Jeonghan looks over periodically to send her a wave and a blinding smile. 

You’ve made a good enough dent in your chicken and fries bucket by the time it’s intermission, about ready for a drink by now. Lorelai makes herself useful and runs down to get you both something, mostly because Jeonghan was now more focused on the team that’s huddled around one another, another man you assume is their coach huddled right with them. 

The scores are 2-2, as provided by the person behind you who was apparently sick of your placid obliviousness. It did feel slightly awkward to be the only person not as excited to be front and center, so you remind yourself to thank him profusely. 

Your attention drifts back to the benches, inevitably as you’ve been so unfortunately placed to be able to breathe down the player’s necks. They’ve dispersed from their huddle, but are not yet on the ice. They’re sitting down, catching their breaths, drinking from water bottles. On the other side, the opposing team, a sea of black and white flooding their own end of the benches. It’s a sinking colour, not an ounce of depth in the shade. It’s taking over the benches. 

Except it’s the players that are moving, like they’re diffusing into the scarlet territory. 

You watch, as one player in black moves his mouth, speaking, upturned and eyebrows cocked. It’s clear he’s gone well past enemy lines, the front lines suddenly at attention. There’s not much you can make out, nothing much besides the very haughty expression on the player’s face. His eyes are covered by the sweaty mop on his head, but you don’t need to see them to find the malice that infiltrates his entire stance.

The scene, where both sides seem to be closing in on each other, has you automatically sitting up straighter. The air is going static, especially as you realise the player's mouth is moving faster as he jabs at — Seungcheol. 

They’re fighting, only verbally for now, but it’s undeniable the way the heat grows by the second. All you can see is the back of Seugncheol’s jersey as he begins to step back from the ordeal, like he was fighting the urge to take a step forward instead. 

Jeonghan’s hand is on Seungcheol’s elbow, and one glance at the rest of the players on this side shows every last one on edge. Their coach is nowhere to be seen. 

But he doesn’t stop talking, still standing in their territory. He yells something loud enough to hear the pitch of his voice, but not nearly enough to understand what he’s saying. 

You could see it on the player’s face. Hook, line and sinker. 

It happens so suddenly. Seungcheol surges forward like a dart, something flies out and hits the player square in the face. 

Seungcheol had spat his mouth guard into his face. 

You gasp out loud as you register what’s happening. The player removes his hand from his face, and for some reason, emerges grinning. 

Seungcheol swings first, his fist rising and coming down on his cheek with a sound you can hear. You feel nauseous. 

It’s pandemonium. You can see Jeonghan practically on top of Seungcheol, a number of other players attempting to get him off the man he continues to grab and shake up like a fugitive. The other player is throwing his own punches.

For one, horrifying moment, the force of the punch pushes Seungcheol’s face towards the stands enough to let you get an eyeful. All you see is red, beyond just his jersey. His mouth is full of blood, the front of his jersey dripped with it, his knuckles clustered with it. 

The hand clasped around your mouth is your own, eyes blown in horror. 

All around you, the world has their phones out like it was some show meant just for them, like this was exactly what they came here for. 

It’s sickening. Sickening. 

You brave another look, and they’ve been yanked off of one another. Seungcheol is being pushed down the tunnel and away from sight. Jeonghan has his hands clutched around Seungcheol like he’s nearly ready for another outbreak, his face grim. 

Your eyes keep away from Seungcheol’s face on purpose.  “Goodness, what is going on, I could barely get through the crowd,” Lorelai’s irritated voice infiltrates your ears, and you’re immediately brought back down to earth. 

Arms full of more snacks and drinks, it only takes her one look at your rattled self to know. 

“What happened?”

“I…they were…fighting. I don’t know, it just—Seungcheol was throwing punches and there was…blood, so much blood.”

She’s gotten a grip on your hand, her fingers warm under your cold, shivering ones. “Do you wanna leave?” she asks slowly. 

One look over her shoulder is enough to tell you it’d be impossible. Everyone was too excited to care to cater to two people going in the opposite direction of the action. So you tell her there was no point, and you attempt to calm your racing heart as she sits next to you. 

Snagging one of the packs from her mountain of snacks, you rip it open and let the sickly sweet smell infiltrate your nostrils. Popping one of the confections in your mouth, it’s hard to not make a face. It’s the sourest thing you could’ve picked, the tartness enough to distract you from the outside world. Eyes scrunched closed, you swallow the rush of saliva to ask Lorelai what the fuck she brought.

You chortle, and it has Lorelai looking over. “Whoops! That one’s mine.”

She snags the bag from your loosened grip, replacing it with a tamer bag of original flavoured potato chips. The chips are trying, but there’s not much you can do besides wait for the residues of the godawful candy to subside. 

The ordeal seems to have calmed you the slightest bit, finally able to turn back to the ice. The rink is back to being occupied, players from both ends pouring onto the ice. You note a minor shoulder shove at the gate, but look away like it’d stop the calamity from intensifying. 

The game ensues as normal, but you note the blatant absence of CHOI in the sea of red and white jerseys. You don’t mention it, and neither does Lorelai. 

You’re about to burst by the time the finals moments are upon the game, the overtime minutes beginning to tick as the crowd grows restless by the second. With the little you’ve managed to grasp, you’re sure that SVT is only one goal away from the overtake. It’s making you nervous, like you’re waiting for your own score to be announced after a free skate. 

The puck is a mere percentage easier to navigate after a couple hours of keeping after it; it skips between players you’re beginning to recognise from the back of their jersey. Kim, Boo, Wen, Kim, Lee. The opposing team intercepts for a moment, and you find yourself letting out an irritated shake of the shoulders. Back to Kim, Lee, Lee, and then, right into the net. 

The jittering crowd suddenly went so silent you could hear a pin drop. 

And then the world around you erupts. It’s impossible to classify the sound as cheers when racketeers off your entire being like an unearthly sound, the stands on their feet hollering and screaming and yelling at their players that are fighting to keep their new overtake in the final seconds before the game officially ends. 

And when it does, you’re sure you need to get your ears checked out. 

Looking over, you catch Lorelai’s eye, and you can’t help but laugh. A delightful laugh that releases itself in the midst of the chaos of red, scarlet and cherry. Somebody’s thrown a red blanket over you, another has begun to hand out congratulatory cherry lollipops (you pass, but Lorealai would be damned if she did), people are hugging each other so tight and you get the inkling they’ve only met each other today. 

The ice is one giant dogpile, red on red as they suffocate one another in celebration. 

Perhaps you didn’t realise how important the game actually was, or maybe every game is like this, loud, proud and exultant. You find yourself imagining how they feel. 

The lost feeling of bouquets and flowers whisked in your direction, stuffed animals and hundreds of other things that scream adoration as your performance comes to a close. It’s a physical manifestation of an adoring crowd, as though making it tangible makes it a little more real. 

The rush, you can feel it resonate off of the scarlet side of the benches, and it’s enough for you to realise that yes, this was an important match. For them anyway. 

The way out of the rink is reasonably packed, but you manage to squeeze through the doors and towards where Lorelai had parked with fewer than expected obstruction. “Thought you might wait to see Jeonghan before we leave,” you hum as you walk to the parking spot. 

“I was going to, but he’s probably dealing with what happened,” she utters slowly. A flash of red at the mention, gone as soon as it came. Lorelai adds with a little extra pep to her voice, “It’s okay! I’ll send him a text, we were planning on dinner tomorrow anyway.”

The side eye you send is met with a light shove. “This one seems serious. Dragging me here for his sake and now dinner with him?”

Lorelai was infamous for taking it excruciatingly slow, the time between the talking stage and the first date stretching for months. She claims it’s to make sure she's not roping herself into something she’d regret, which you’ll admit has seemed to work out in her favour. Her last relationship lasted years before Josh had to move away. 

Jeonghan seems to have her under some warped spell, because Lorelai was hurtling into this relationship like a too compressed cannon ball. There was nothing you knew about Jeonghan other than his friendship with Seungcheol, his position as junior league coach and his habit of loitering on the ice; which means there wasn’t much opinion to be had on the whole conquest. Regardless, you decide to caution her some other day, when she’s not glowing and over the moon like a robust teenager. 

Slipping into the passenger seat, you slump like never before, already dreaming about the bedrotting session you’re about to have; glorious enough for the books. 

“Do you wanna grab food and rot on the couch?” she asks. 

“You’re still hungry after all that?” you huff, your mouth still flavoured with artificial sweetness paired with the savoury of the chicken and fries. You pull out your phone for the first time in nearly three hours, the home screen alarming full of missed notifications. Text messages, mentions and phone calls. For whatever reason, you swipe right past and open your browser. 

“It’ll take about an hour till we’re settled, should be hungry enough by then,” she comments, a gentle growl coming from beneath you as the engine comes to life. 

Somewhere between the lines of the seatbelt sign pinging, and the radio blaring itself into the space, you’ve read a headline that’s enough to halt your world. 

“There’s this new Chinese place that opened nearby here. Or this Persian restaurant but it’s like 20 minutes in the other direction. Or do we just do soup—”

“Lorelai.”

She turns to look at you in the passenger seat, seatbelt alarm still dinging as you remain with your seatbelt off as she pulls out of the parking space, like the official soundtrack to your doom. She brakes, hard. Lorelai is always Lorry with you, her full name only ever when you’re feigning irritation. 

There’s nothing irritating about the situation, but everything is wrong with it. 

It’s like you were in the benches, taking punches while simultaneously throwing a few yourself. You’re out of breath still seated, your skin tingles like a million arachnids crawling under your skin under your layers. You’re in the eddy of a horrifying whirlpool, that’s pulling you down, down, down, down, down, down—

!HOT TOPIC!

FIGURE SKATER OR FIGURINE? NOTHING GRACEFUL ABOUT Y/N L/N’S FALL FROM THE PINNACLE OF THE SKATING WORLD. Read from the Source!

From a pocket princess, to a rising star. From a rising star to the top of the world. From the top of the world to… a bottomless hell? How did Y/N L/N end up here? 

It’s nothing new that L/N’s presence was notable during the flashy ISU Grand Prix held in Beijing last year, the podium notably shuffled as a result. The skater’s ankle injury was never awarded a career ending title, but with the way her comeback remains as foggy as it did since the initial announcement, one must begin to wonder if we’ll ever see L/N on the competitive ice again. 

Or perhaps she’s simply lost her spark? 

Trusted sources report that L/N’s sponsors are growing weary of her extended vacation, and are just about ready to pull the rug! In addition, sources also report her floundering lack of consistency in practice sessions on the ice, her condition beyond someone as onerous as even Isabella Carroll to manoeuvre into success. Talk about futile! 

Now, we’re all hoping that our glittering gold medalist is only a victim of mindless chatter, however, we must concede, neither we nor our sources are holding on to too much hope. 

Keep on the lookout for more updates from us on our fallen (?) star!

[a/n]: hehehehehe remember to reblog and tell me your thoughts

[nuwanders]

Wip Wednesday...

tagged today and at various points over the last few weeks by @dirty-bosmer @lucien-lachance and @moriche . Thanks all! :^)

a bit of art for a change because i haven't updated any of my writing wips in a while :/

im making a card for a friend whose birthday is this weekend, jayvik are some of his faves and the homoerotic sino-soviet propaganda inspiration relates to an old in-joke of ours..... i swear it's not as random as it seems :')

tagging @creaking-skull @ervona @wispstalk @connortheconceded

and @blackfeathercourt @stormbeyondreality @falmerbrook @kiir-do-faal-rahhe no pressure ❤️

reference under the cut

[paperstorm]

(I'm so sorry if this posts twice, I had it queued but tumblr seems to have eaten it) Thanks for the tags @annoyingcloudearthquake @rangersoup @thisbuildinghasfeelings and @carlos-in-glasses! Here is a snippet from Somewhere in a Song, chapter posting tomorrow :)

It takes Carlos a moment, as he steps into the main part of the theater from a side entrance, to notice he isn’t alone. TK is sitting at the edge of the stage in the middle, with his legs hanging over the sides, purple Converse on his feet and black jeans despite the summer heat outside.

“Oh,” Carlos says in surprise, from yards away where he’s standing in the aisle between rows of red velvet chairs.

“Hey.” TK nods at him in greeting. His hands are tucked underneath his thighs and Carlos looks around quickly, wondering if TK’s bandmates are here as well. He thought he spotted Marjan back in the lobby of the hotel, but now he’s wondering if it wasn’t her. He only saw the woman from the back.

“Where’s the rest of your crew?” TK asks, echoing the question Carlos hadn’t gotten around to asking.

“Back at the hotel. Relaxing.”

TK nods again.

“What are you doing here?”

Raising an eyebrow, TK combatively asks, “What are you doing here?”

Carlos bites back a sigh.

Before he can reply, TK gives him an answer. “We’ve never been at this venue before. The last time we were here, we played some rinky-dink place across town.”

Their eyes meet and their gaze holds for a long moment. Carlos steps forward, walking further toward the stage. He climbs the five steps up the side of it and turns so he can take in the seemingly endless rows of seating from the vantage point he’ll have tonight when they perform on this stage.

“I like to get to know a place before I play it,” TK continues with a casual shrug. He looks around, leaning back on his hands and head tipping back to look up at the high vaulted ceiling, intricately painted in gold and red and orange. “Especially these old historical theaters. Get a feel for the bones of it, a feel for …”

He trails off and Carlos finds himself desperately curious to hear the end of the sentence, because it sounds so much like exactly what he was doing five minutes ago. TK looks over at him, and then quickly looks away.

“Never mind,” he says, with a laugh and a roll of his eyes. “Did you want the stage for something? I can head out.”

“A feel for what?” Carlos asks.

TK licks his lips. He’s wearing glittery earrings today and they sparkle in the overhead lights. His head turns again, blinking at Carlos, green eyes searching his face. Whatever he’s looking for, he must find, because softly he says, “For the artists who were here before me. Jazz bands or opera singers or – I don’t know, fucking … tap dancers.”

Carlos chuckles and watches as just a glimmer of a smile changes the shape of TK’s face before he’s gazing back out into the empty auditorium.

“Maybe it’s stupid,” TK says with a shrug. There’s an edge to his voice that suggests he’s daring Carlos to make fun of him and see what happens. “But I like to think everyone who gets to perform in a place like this leaves a mark on it. Like they’re all still here, somehow, and after tonight we’ll be here too, cheering on the next act that comes through.”

“It’s not stupid.”

Silence settles between them for another moment, and then TK asks, “So, what are you doing here?”

“Same thing, basically,” Carlos tells him honestly.

TK looks at him, and again Carlos feels as if he’s being x-rayed by those clear green eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah. That’s what music can do, right? Make you feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself. Bigger than just a song or a show or a moment in time.”

Tagging @theghostofashton @reyesstrand @strandnreyes @eclectic-sassycoweyes @carlos-in-glasses

@bonheur-cafe @actual-sleeping-beauty @herefortarlos @heartstringsduet @alrightbuckaroo

@goodways @lightningboltreader @emsprovisions @freneticfloetry @liminalmemories21

@reasonandfaithinharmony @ladytessa74 @never-blooms @sanjuwrites @orchidscript

@lemonlyman-dotcom @jesuisici33 @kiwichaeng @honeybee-taskforce @hereghostslive

@just-inside-her @firstprince-history-huh @captain-gillian @tellmegoodbye @ironheartwriter

@butchreyes @anactualcaseofthetruth @ditheringmind @thisbuildinghasfeelings @whatsintheboxmh

@irispurpurea @nisbanisba @corsage @chicgeekgirl89 @nancys-braids

@carlossreaders @denizoid @everlastingday

Want to be added or removed from the list? Lmk

[captain-krow-drozdov]

I Offer A Half Finished Sonic Fic Snippet (I Think The Context Helps?? IDK) That I Have Zero Memory Of Writing ✨

One time travel-flavoured chaos control later proved that the timeline hates him actually. "Seriously?" Silver muttered, glaring at the flyer for some celebration he wasn't familiar with that proudly boasted a date nearly twenty years further than when he wanted to be. If Silver's math was correct, then Sonic should be in his early thirties at this point in time, assuming the blue hedgehogs' need for speed hasn't run him into an early grave. Which technically meant he was still in the future. And Blaze hadn't specified when exactly she wanted him to check up on Victory Garden in the future. Alright, change of plans. He will go check on Victory Garden now; that way, he can tell Blaze he's seen the garden in the future, so it will technically not be a lie the next time she asks. Then he'd try travelling the additional twenty years back to play timeline cleanup in the background. Easy as pie! In hindsight, Silver should have known something would go wrong; pie is rather difficult to make, after all. Is that an odd thought to have while staring at his own grave in a garden he had made purely to spite the world of fire he had been born into? Probably.

For The Sake Of My Sanity I Will Only Be Tagging A Handful Of People Cause Yikes

@mrowsters @aro-screams-into-the-void @ambersky0319 @gender-luster @halfagone @nonbinary-disaster + Any Other Poor Writers That Wish To Join

Writing meme

rules: post the last line that you wrote and tag someone for every word in the line.

Tagged by @crows-murder! Given I just finished a chapter...

“Miss O’Neil,” Bishop said blandly, coming to a stop by the fire. “And… friends. I do look forward to the story behind this.”

tmw you're just hangin out by an innocent bonfire in the street and the government gets involved smh

I am not tagging that many people lmfao so: @wasted-and-ready, @punctuated-equilibrium, @technicallysublimechild, @controlledspontaneity, @consultingjedi, @calliopechild, and whoever else wants to take this as a tag <3

[justice-for-jacob]

Justice for Jacob: Jacob Taylor Fix-It Week

From February 10-16, this blog is hosting Jacob Taylor Fix-It Week 2025 to encourage new posts and fanworks about Jacob Taylor!

Why a fix-it week instead of a general appreciation week? Because we all know his writing and storyline in canon are not great. That's where we as a fandom can step in to make things better for him!

Post about Jacob with the tag #JacobFixIt2025 during February 10-16 and we will reblog.

This does not have to be full on fanart, fanfiction, edits/gifsets, mods, etc (though these are of course beloved): even if it's a rec list of Jacob fanworks you like, bullet points of how you'd fix his storyline, or an "I think Jacob would look cool with locs" one liner post, you are welcome here.

Optional themes

You don't need to follow the themes nor post for every theme: these are just inspiration to get your brain going!

Day 1 - Feb 10: Dossier Anything you would change about Jacob's background before we meet him in 2, be it his general background or his Galaxy or Foundation storylines.

Day 2 - Feb 11: Suicide Mission 2 is the main place people meet and form opinions on Jacob. Turn things around for him in the 2 storyline.

Day 3 - Feb 12: Loyalty Mission Racist tropes ahoy. What alternate loyalty mission would you give him?

Day 4 - Feb 13: Wartime Jacob's writing does not fare much better in 3 than 2. Imagine a different approach to the Reaper War for him.

Day 5 - Feb 14: Ships It's Valentine's Day, let's treat the man! Fix a ship of his, launch a boat with someone new, or make him some friends.

Day 6 - Feb 15: Crossovers Bring out your Wakandan Jacobs, Pokémon gym leader Jacobs, Destiny Titan Jacobs, you name it. Andromeda crossovers can come too.

Day 7 - Feb 16: Free day!

Rules

Be positive: No character bashing (this doesn't mean you need to be all hearts and stars about his canon storyline, especially given that this is a fix-it event, but we can be critical of the writing without bashing characters)

Be cool: No bigotry of any kind against real people (warn for fictional bigotry) nor whitewashing

Be polite: Respect your fellow creators and different ships, put NSFW or long content under a cut, tag common triggers

Alternate submission

Since Tumblr tags can get wonky, feel free to also @ tag justice-for-jacob and/or submit a link to your post.

Timing

Mod is on the left of the international date line, meaning that you may see posts about the week starting before it is Feb 10 for you. Please don't feel rushed or think a themed post will be late ❤

Mod also works full time and has other time-intensive hobbies, so if you don't see your post reblogged, mod has probably either not seen your post yet or queued it.

[genderqueerdykes]

(tw: vent, relationship abuse, transphobia)

from 2020-2023, i was in a toxic relationship with a terf. she identified as a (still truscum-y) trans guy when we first got together, but about halfway through she detransitioned and pressured me to detransition as well. i identified as nonbinary at the time and i was scared of not listening to her, so i detransitioned because i thought i was being misogynistic if i didn’t. things just got worse, her transphobia got more radical, and we grew further apart, especially when i started questioning my identity again.

it’s been over a year since we broke up. i’ve started my transition as a trans man, i have her blocked on everything, but i still keep thinking about all the ways she hurt me. it feels like she’s winning. most sources i find on toxic relationships are really heteronormative and rely heavily on gender binaries, so they’ve been no help. do you have any advice on queer toxic relationships and/or unlearning internalized transphobia? thanks so much, no pressure to answer this if you don’t have the spoons

that's terrible, i'm so sorry you went through that. that's a long time to have to deal with someone pressuring you to change how you refer to yourself and how you see yourself. it's okay if someone needs to detransition but they should never force anyone else to just because transitioning like that was wrong for them. i'm so sorry she acted like she knew what was best for you. it's painful to watch someone fall down that rabbit hole and never come back. you want them to be kinder and to love themselves and everyone else, but it's just not the case

whenever people try to tell me that i "don't understand rad feminism", i point to experiences like yours. rad fems tell people that it's literally somehow "misogynistic" for trans men and mascs to transition. they tell people that that trans men and mascs are a danger to women. they tell people that trans men and mascs are confused and don't know any better. they tell trans men and mascs how to think, and they're doing it to everyone else, too. there's never a good reason to call someone misogynistic for transitioning

i would say maybe try to touch base with communities for transmasculine people and trans men. even if you meet a few people you like in the tags here, it's worth it. remind yourself that you weren't wrong, that person just thought she knew what was right for you. she saw something she hated in herself. it has nothing to do with how you should feel about yourself. you'll run into bumps and snags with how you feel about gender, especially your own. it's not a bad sign, it just takes time to get over the shitty things you were taught.

you can't dismantle it all at once, to take time, pace yourself. you were literally being groomed to hate yourself and other people. you need a moment before you can become proud of who you are. someone whittled you down until you were nearly nothing. that's not easy to move on from in a quick fashion. manhood is not evil. manhood is not what's hurting people. men are diverse. men are not a monolith. making blanket statements about men is profiling

i hope that helps some what, good luck, stay safe. i appreciate you for reaching out. it's not easy to deal with or move on from these kinds of things, but be as kind to yourself as you can. there's nothing wrong with transmanhood

[the-sea-called-history02]

How Stray Kids say “I love you” without saying it (maknae line)

Genre: fluff

Warnings: slight cursing

Han Jisung

Adds your favorite songs to his playlists

Music isn’t just this man’s love language. It’s his every language. It’s the oxygen he breaths and the water he drinks. In his mind, your favorite songs are a piece of your soul that he can carry with him no matter where he goes, so he adds your favorite songs to all of his playlists, and will never once hesitate to point that out to anyone in the vicinity. The boys have learned all the words at this point because of how often he plays the songs that remind him of you for them.

Just flat-out says it

Before anyone says that this is a lazy cop-out, just hear me out. Sweet Hannie wouldn’t know subtlety if it walked up to him with a name tag and slapped him upside the face. He wears his whole heart on his sleeve, so I really, truly believe that he wouldn’t be one to let his actions speak louder than his words. Both are equally important in his eyes, so please don’t get annoyed when every other thing out of his mouth is how much he loves you. He’s only a tad obsessed, I promise.

Felix Lee

Cooks with you

Sure, Lix can bake, but have you seen him try to cook? It’s not pretty, but he always has a blast trying, especially when it’s with you. Whether you’re a five star Michelin or burn water, you’re going to create some sort of mess when you two get together. No matter how it turns out, though, Felix will make himself enjoy every bite because it “was made with love.”

Sends you a million TikToks

It could be memes, sad videos, songs he thinks you’ll like, things about your hobbies, prepared to be bombarded with little videos from Felix 24/7. He shares them so you know he’s thinking of you, and it fills him with way too much joy when you find them as entertaining as he does. It just further convinces him that you’re soulmates, and who’s to say he’s wrong?

Kim Seungmin

Writes about you in his journal

His journal is an extension of himself, and is how he processes his insanely hectic life, but he always finds that writing about you feels different. He never has to think about what he’s writing, and the words just flow onto the page. If you manage to catch him in a particularly mushy mood, he might even let you read some of it.

Keeps a nightly routine with you

Ending his day with you is the highlight of it. He can’t wait to take his makeup off while telling you all the dumb shit the boys did that day. On tour, he’ll coordinate a time for you to do it all on FaceTime. Every step, from changing into pajamas to doing face masks, he loves knowing that, no matter how awful his day might have been, he will always be able to bear it because you would be there at the end to make it all worth it.

Yang Jeongin

Coordinates outfits

Listen, to Jeongin, being buck-naked is better than even considering not matching with you. No matter whether you’re even on the same continent, you better bet your best britches that he’ll be checking to make sure you AT LEAST have your couples bracelet on. He also definitely has a Pinterest board of couple outfit ideas.

Compares your hands

No matter how many times he does it, his heart still flutters a bit every time he sees your hands being engulfed by his. Not only is it an excuse to touch his favorite person, but it makes him feel like, in a small way, he can shelter you from the crazy world he lives in, and what kind of monster would you have to be to deny your sweet boy of that?

[beartitled]

Found your art through the STP Reddit and now I have a new TSPUD artist to enjoy!!! Your style is gorgeous :)

Reddit 🤨❔

I don’t have reddit

*sounds of paws tapping on the keyboard*

Aha repost with no permission I see? 🔍🐻‍❄️👓

This ask actually send me on a mini research lmao

I didn’t expect to see like 4 posts on Reddit with ppl posting my comics/sending a screenshot from ?Pinterest? and asking who the author is

That made me chuckle :'D

To be clear, I don’t really mind reposts if a person credits me

Always appreciate ppl askin permission 👍

For the reference: Reblog - a button that looks like this 🔄, shares a post on your page while showing the original author; Repost - when you screenshot/save someone’s art and post it on your page (ideally with credit, but if you’re a meanie you will just post images with no word about og author); Credit - a reference to the author «this art was made by [@author] on [this social media]». Sometimes see ppl mixing up terms 🫡

(Most of the time creators dislike reposts, bc it often leads to art theft)

Since we’re on the topic, specifically what I do have a problem with:

- Don’t use my art for AI training or for NFTs

- Don’t profit off my art (no merch is allowed without my approval, if you want to use my art for commercial purposes, this must be discussed with me in advance)

- Don't pass off my work as your own (here does reposting my art without credit, creating blogs/accounts impersonating me and so on)

- Don’t use my personal projects (this applies to my ocs, any original IPs/content I create: picture books, comics, artbooks, megadrawings etc. At some point in the future I may register a legal copyright for them btw.)

I’m more flexible and forgiving with fandom art, but still would appreciate ppl communicating with me. Fandom comic dubs - are welcomed, just be sure to credit me (tag me and share the final dub too man, I’m always interested). Fandom comic translations - ask permission first please.

This list is a pretty standard for any artist really, if you’re doubting something - feel free to ask 👍

If you see somebody breaking those/potentially breaking those - feel free to notify me 👍

I considered creating “blog rules” or “list of boundaries”, but I’m not sure if it’ll work on my blog 🤔 My header is pretty oversaturated as it is - portfolio, tags, navigation and so on; if I add rules to the pile, something tells me ppl won’t even look at it 💥 + I didn’t have specific issues with anyone yet (as far as I’m aware), I might create a list if something happens, but stayin hopeful for now

There’s certain things that do make me very uncomfortable/are triggering to me. But again didn’t have any specific issues where it was a huge problem + those stuff are highly personal to me to just put publicly. For now, I prefer to resolve issues personally, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle at this point 🫡 Mayhaps in the future it may change, we’ll see

Also some might have noticed that I don’t use any watermarks/signatures on my art, again considered that, but never ended up implementing that 🐻‍❄️ Some part of me just likes lookin at pictures in full HD quality with no watermark 😭 (I have an art signature, but I mostly use it in my mega drawings or if someone specifically asked for a commission lmao)

Sorry for a wall of text on such a sweet ask 💥 Just saw an opportunity to talk and took it lmao

Thank you, I really appreciate your words ❤️💕

Made a doödle of the narrator bois for the old time sake :D

Surprisingly there is a bunch of reposts of my art, with is a bit wild to me (you guys actually like my comics? 🤨 what? 🤨)

Especially never imagined my voices x princesses would get so popular 💥

Oh I see you went under read-more

Come closer

Closer

Just a smol step more

I forgot to draw Smitten’s brows in this specific frame

Now you will never unsee it 😈😈😈

*tiny mischievous bear giggling*

[lol-jackles]

I was pursuing your “Destiel” tag (thank you for posting it for that anon, btw, and bringing it back to my attention), and came across this statement from you:

“As a result, douchy Jensen + going off script = other actors trying to cope. My favorite was 2016 because that was when my girlfriend leaned close to the screen and said, "Jared, blink twice if you're being held against your will". Since then Jared had figured out how to handle these ~unscripted~ moments, but Misha hasn't.”

What was the moment in particular at 2016 JIB that made your girlfriend say that? Or what was Jensen going at that one? Wasn’t Gen at that one, too?

Also, what would you say Jared’s strategy has been in dealing with Jensen (when drunk) on stage at JIB? And why does Jensen seem “meaner” to Jared at JIB than at CE or AHBL cons? Which is closer to thier actual dynamic, do you think?

And I just have to add, it was pretty amusing seeing Misha momentarily (sadly not longer) regret his life choices at, was it 2019 JIB, where he pointed out the Destiel shirt and Jensen yelled about “where is it real?” Do you think Jensen was actually annoyed in this panel? I say yes, but my brother says no.

Jensen seems to keep it together more at JIBs post pandemic, but I was at JIB 13, and he gave off a huge air of just being over the whole thing by his solo Sunday panel. And he and Rich were essentially running out the clock by being loud idiots (my ears still hurt from being near a speaker).

They all claim to love JIB, but they also all seem pretty over it come Sunday.

Sorry that got long. Would love to see your response to any parts.

This was the first time I briefly talked about the infamous Jib con. Back in 2016 I used to think their co/dependent friendship was doomed at the 10-year mark because when one isn’t adjusting to the changing time, then the idolatries friendship can’t last more than 10 years at best.  I listed a few examples (X) from a feminist blog about women ending their female friendships, a woman ending her friendship with a male friend (X) Oliver Broudy’s story of ending his 10-year friendship with a college friend (X).  These friendships ended because one of them was stuck and making more and more demands on the unstuck friend.  We know happened after season 10 wrapped up (X) (X).

Anyways, what got my girlfriend's attention was Jared looking like a tug of war rope between Gen and Jensen and the boys. Regular corporate SPN cons in the U.S are already a male-dominated atmosphere bordering on frat boy shenanigans. At least there are corporate handlers and security to help keep the actors in line, plus alcohol are banned for actors. Jib cons are fan-run with no handlers and alcohol are allowed, and usually there are no actresses because the cost of the extra Jensen/Misha and Jared/Misha panels means some actors are going to get cut out and it’s usually the actresses. Without female colleagues around, the men really rile each other up at Jib cons, it’s part of their bonding and one-upmanship rituals. I think why Gen rarely participated in SPN cons is because she didn't want to be around all that dude energy. But 2016 was different because I think she blamed herself for leaving the 2015 British con early and is still traumatize that she nearly lost Jared few days later, so Gen agreed to let Jared drag bring her to Jib con. Men don’t like wives/girlfriends homing in on their bro times and Jensen was noticeable irritated that Jared’s wife was there and during the closing ceremony Jensen used air quotations marks while talking about Gen’s marriage to Jared who had his arms wrapped around her. He looked peeved at Jensen and then then laughed it off because what else could he do on stage?

(Side note: it’s not easy for men to find male friends and keeping them.  I hated the movie I love you, man because it was too familiar, and Paterson made me uneasy because Adam Driver's character has no male friends and he's more than okay with that because he has a wife.)

Jensen seems "meaner" not just to Jared but to every actor there, especially Misha. At these fan-run conventions, there are no "scripts" (guidelines actually) to follow. Most actors were still going by the guidelines from corporate-run conventions when they're on stage, but not Jensen because it's part of his upmanship as a way to both bond and dominate others. It's a Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman type situation. Maybe Jensen learned this trick from Ryan who used to be his roommate. Misha is not a natural improviser, his guest appearance on Whose Line Is it Anyways shows that, so he's the least apt at handling Jensen's off script moments. Half the time Jensen wasn't actually drunk but acts like it to avoid the inevitable asinine Destiel-loaded questions from the hellers in the audience.

Jared's strategy was about the same at pre-2016 JIB cons and CE cons because he's pretty apt at smoothing things over between Jensen and the fans. At the infamous 2013 New Jersey con a self-claiming bisexual girl tried to ask Jensen a loaded Destiel question and he snapped at her with, “don’t ruin it for everybody” and Jared immediately calmed Jensen down and salvaged the rest of the experience for sane fans.

Stuff like this is closer to their real life dynamic as the Giver and the Taker. If you read the "codependency tag", Jared the Giver cleans up the messes the Taker make. Givers think they're helping but they're actually enabling and don't improve things. Jensen's reputation took a slight hit, and it took a few years for the New Jersey con to be memory-holed. Apparently Jensen didn't learn from this and 3 years later mocked a girl wearing a "Destiel is real" shirt at the 2019 JIB. Misha told Jensen to not “fight with fans” and Jared was gesturing to a fan in the front row as if saying don’t look at me look at him. That may answer your question, Jared stopped trying to calm Jensen down and instead focus on heading off fans who gets too snippy at Jensen, like at a DC con few years back where a girl was trying to look cool but came off sounding hostile towards Jensen, so Jared left the stage and hugged the stuffings out of the girl, deflating her hostile-sounding voice.

I don't think I've seen Jensen's solo panel at JIB13, but he's usually looks like he's watching the clock during his Jared-less panels so that's nothing new. It's been the case for many years and a common complaint by fans, it's why CE stopped having solo J panels early on because Jensen needs a scene partner. It goes back to why Jensen works better as a scene-stealing supporting actor instead of a leading man. How Jensen made Dean Winchester have memorable moments was by putting his focus on the other person.  By using this method, Jensen can stop worrying about how he’s going to say his lines and speak intuitively, this helps make Dean appear truthful to the audience.  It may be why Jensen doesn’t read scripts ahead of time.   Jensen doesn’t go into a scene looking to do a scene, instead he goes in looking to be open and give over to how the other person (in this case, Jared playing Sam) makes him feel.  This method worked great for Jensen when his character has Sam to focus on, and Jensen has Jared to react to.  It’s why Dean’s dying moments with Sam in the barn works so well in the series’ finale.

.

You probably heard of the saying, “acting is reacting”.

A demon’s acting philosophy in The Good Place: “Demons have to learn that Acting Is Reacting.  And Reacting Is Pre-acting. But Pre-acting? Well, that’s just being.”  

While “acting is reacting” gets mocked in the acting community because it’s a trap alot of actors fall into by adjusting their truthful inner life to their assumptions about the text.  Good acting is adjusting the text to your authentic emotion which is the result of the other person.  This where Jensen’s good acting comes from and it’s become his comfort zone and made him a multimillionaire by his mid 30s.  He’s in what my acting coach calls “the truthful contact”, it’s where actors are taught the first stage of authentic acting.  The next stage is “crafting”.  When you’re working solo without a screen partner, your skill at crafting becomes vital.  Crafting means anywhere from ability to endow meaning to objects so they have emotional meaning is important, or effectively get across justifications and point of views.