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batsplat · 17 days ago

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your sampras/agassi post was life changing... my god

(said post) thank you!! I'm really pleased by the pick up that post has gotten - I don't post much about tennis on here, but it always has and always will be my number one sport and this rivalry is one that's very dear to my heart. incidentally, I got a similar ask prompting a write up of the henin/clijsters rivalry, so when I find the time I'll talk about them in similar depth too. now there's a rivalry that definitely deserves more attention that it gets

but speaking of agassi/sampras, while I have you here... there's one particular match from 1994 I only very briefly alluded to that does also speak rather nicely to the themes of that rivalry. it's the final of key biscayne (aka miami), played at a time when sampras is the dominant world number one and agassi is still on just the single slam. the reason why this match is so notable is that it could very easily not have happened. sampras was struggling with health issues at that point of his career - and before the match was scheduled to start, agassi came upon him lying prone on the locker room floor with severe stomach pain

sampras was not ready to start the match at the scheduled start time. by rights, it should have been agassi's win via walkover. the tournament directors requested that agassi agree to a delay of the match - it's particularly awkward to have to cancel a final, after all, with thousands of spectators present to see the big match (x)

On March 20, when Agassi entered the locker room before the final, he witnessed a very unusual scene: Sampras was lying on the ground, suffering from a stomach ache. There was no way Sampras could be ready to start the final on time, which would make Agassi the Miami champion. However, the world No 1 thought he would be able to play if Agassi agreed to delay the final by an hour. Agassi agreed. “It’s not about winning the tournament; it’s about taking pride in what you do,” Agassi explained later, according to The New York Times. “If I couldn’t beat Pete healthy, I didn’t deserve to win the tournament.”

delaying it by A WHOLE HOUR is just objectively extremely generous from agassi - though of course the expectation was that sampras surely wouldn't be particularly competitive anyway. sampras got an IV drip that managed to at least get him back on his feet and ready to take to the court. so at last, after all the fuss and delay, they manage to get the match started. here's agassi in his autobiography describing the delay:

After dispatching Becker, I’m in the final. My opponent? Pete. As always, Pete. The match is slated for national TV. Brad and I are both keyed up as we walk into the locker room, only to find Pete lying on the ground. A doctor and a trainer are leaning over him. The tournament director hovers in the background. Pete brings his knees up to his chest and groans. Food poisoning, the doctor says. Brad whispers to me, Guess you just won Key Biscayne. The director takes Brad and me aside and asks if we’d be willing to give Pete time to recover. I feel Brad stiffen. I know what he wants me to say. But I tell the director, Give Pete all the time he needs. The director sighs and puts his hand on my arm. Thank you, he says. We’ve got fourteen thousand people out there. Plus the network. Brad and I lounge around the locker room, flipping channels on the TV, making phone calls. I dial Brooke, who’s auditioning for Grease on Broadway. Otherwise, she’d be here. Brad shoots me an evil glare. Relax, I tell him, Pete probably won’t get better. The doctor gives Pete an IV, then props him on his feet. Pete wobbles, a newborn colt. He’ll never make it. The tournament director comes to us. Pete’s ready, he says. Fucking A, Brad says. So are we. Should be a short night, I tell Brad.

now, I reckon by now you should be able to guess where this is going. you can find the full match on youtube (samprasfan1987 one of the absolute goats of historical tennis match youtube), though unfortunately only with german commentary. here's three minute highlights with truly horrendous quality:

youtube

and I'd recommend it as a match to experience in its entirety. it's........ it's not the best match you'll ever see. it's not the best match those two have played. it's certainly a match those two have played. but, y'know, the thing about tennis is that sometimes it just isn't the best matches that are the most compelling... sometimes it's the matches where both players are fighting their demons. sometimes it's compelling to watch the demons win

because of course sampras can't do the decent thing and just roll over and die. he just HAS to come out swinging, clearly rattling agassi with how he can actually somehow play proper tennis in his condition. this match is such a fun little case study of what an absolute bitch it is to play a physically diminished opponent. the spectators, the commentator, you the viewer, and agassi himself - everyone knows that agassi SHOULD be winning this match. of course he should!! sampras was lying on the FLOOR an hour ago, he's had to IV his way back to his feet, agassi is giving him the "newborn colt" descriptors. and this kind of set-up does run the risk of making you feel like it's a lose-lose situation. if you win, you only won because your opponent was off your game. if you lose, then you're a fucking moron who couldn't even put away the weakest version of your rival

and it's clearly affecting agassi, who plays poorly at the start of the match. he quickly goes down 2-5*, double break to sampras, not finding his rhythm and reeling off a litany of cheap errors as sampras ticks up his games with typical metronomic efficiency. agassi might be making sampras' life easier, but sampras certainly isn't playing like a man who'd lain stricken with agony a short while earlier. then, however, agassi rallies - finds his game, loosens up, probably because he was already down on the scoreboard. the worst case scenario was already happening. the momentum switches quickly and it looks like sampras might be ailing physically after all. agassi still isn't playing his best - but he takes it to sampras, cleans up the error count a little and takes five consecutive games to win the first set 7-5. which, well. a physically healthy sampras generally does not get broken three service games in a row. not with his serve

so going into the second set, it looks like... well, maybe sampras had only about half an hour of decent tennis in him. now he's run out of steam, it's basically game over, right? agassi can cruise home to take the match and the title - probably shouldn't have let the first set get so spooky, but all's well that ends well. spectators got their show, agassi doesn't fall apart against a guy who might keel over any minute

except... except. first set to agassi, and the pressure's once again on him... once again, he's the guy who's supposed to be winning. sampras is down, might be out - he has no reason not to swing freely in a match he probably should be losing. and unfortunately for agassi, there's no guarantee sampras might not recover again physically somewhat after all. energy levels can wax and wane - if you're trying to manage some kind of physical issue, you might be struggling for a while before suddenly clicking back into gear again. agassi has the momentum, sampras has nothing to lose

you know what happens next. sampras gets better and better. agassi gives up a cheap break early in the second - by the third, sampras does manage to find a strong level. it's basically one way traffic. sampras takes the victory. agassi takes another blow

or, as the washington post would put it in a true all timer sports headline:

lovely

here is sampras' description of that episode:

Meanwhile, in a development I kept secret from everyone, I was battling physical problems of my own, although they were paltry compared to Tim’s. For more than a year, I had been struggling with bouts of nausea and an inability, at times, to keep food or even water down. The situation started sometime in 1993, and was so aggravated by the spring of 1994 that I was unable to make the start time for the final of the important Key Biscayne tournament, in which I was to play Andre Agassi. In a gesture I still appreciate, Andre agreed to postpone the scheduled 1 P.M. start of the final for an hour, while I took an intravenous glucose drip. I had been throwing up all morning, which I blamed on the pasta dinner I’d had the night before. The IV did the job, rehydrating me, and I went on to win the final in three sets. At the time, I wanted to believe that the episodes were somehow related to dehydration.

and his immediate post-match comments:

“I woke up at 7 feeling nauseated, heaving and gagging; I didn’t think I’d be able to go out and play,” Sampras added. “But I feel a lot better now. As the match wore on, the adrenaline started kicking in and I started to think I could win when the chips are down. That sort of showed me I’ve got guts.”

guts that were nearly spilling out of him at one point, one might note

and on agassi's side:

“Once he got in front, he started serving big, and that was it,” Agassi commented. “Part of me was saying there was no way he could stay out there for three sets…. I was wrong.” During the trophy ceremony, tournament founder Butch Bucholz thanked Agassi for his sportsmanship, and the runner-up received a standing ovation from the crowd.

I'm sure agassi felt better getting a standing ovation for having been made a fool of

and that's the problem, isn't it, hinted at by agassi's own line - playing a diminished opponent forces you to think far far more than you should be. it increases the stakes. it makes you feel like you should be winning. it saps at your concentration. it requires you to resist feeling any sympathy or even pity for your opponent when they're struggling. it makes you wonder if you should be taking advantage of your opponent's condition, make them move around the court more, prolong the points, change your style of play to better suit the situation. it makes you wary of celebrating too much, partly out of respect and partly out of a sense of dignity, messes with your motivation levels. makes you think too much about how people are reacting to the match when you should be focusing on how you're playing it. it makes you try and peer into the future - wondering when their level might drop off, if you just need to hold out until their legs give way... all these extra considerations, eating away at your concentration and mental strength. on the flip side, it can make everything easier for the struggling player: they know they only have limited options to pull off the win, they know they probably shouldn't be winning, so they can opt for simplicity over turmoil

it's a universal dynamic in tennis, happens to the best of us - but this specific scenario does also feel like it just happens to be perfect for this specific rivalry. as always, pete; as always, denying andre. sampras, who could swing freely and fight as hard as he dared and show his guts and emerge victorious. agassi, plagued by doubts, second guessing himself as he lets his inevitable rival inevitably snatch away another victory. from right under his nose. after having been lying prone on the locker room floor in front of agassi's own eyes

as ever, of course, agassi himself puts it best:

But Pete does it again. He sends his evil twin onto the court. This is not the Pete who was curled in a ball on the locker-room floor. This is not the Pete who was getting an IV and wobbling in circles. This Pete is in the prime of life, serving at warp speed, barely breaking a sweat. He’s playing his best tennis, unbeatable, and he jumps out to a 5–1 lead. Now I’m angry. I feel as if I found a wounded bird, brought it home, and nursed it back to health, only to have it try to peck my eyes out. I fight back and win the set. Surely I’ve withstood the only attack Pete can mount. He can’t possibly have anything left. But in the second set he’s even better. And in the third he’s a freak. He wins the best-of-three match. I burst into the locker room. Brad is waiting for me, seething. He says again that if he’d been in my place, he’d have forced Pete to forfeit. He’d have demanded that the director fork over the winner’s check. That’s not me, I tell Brad. I don’t want to win like that. Besides, if I can’t beat a guy who’s poisoned, lying on the ground, I don’t deserve it. Brad abruptly stops talking. His eyes get big. He nods. He can’t argue with that. He respects my principles, he says, even though he doesn’t agree. We walk out of the stadium together like Bogart and Claude Rains at the end of Casablanca. The beginning of a beautiful friendship. A vital new member of the team.

such an impressive act of sportsmanship. so completely unrewarded. god, I LOVE the wounded bird trying to peck agassi's eyes out description. can you IMAGINE how annoying that must be if you're agassi? what a thorn in your side this one guy must be? what does it TAKE to put this bloke away? doesn't even have the decency to lose when he's needing an IV drip to take to the court. always, always, ALWAYS catching agassi by surprise. in their first slam final when agassi should've been the favourite, in that 2001 uso quarterfinal when agassi was in far better form, in their last ever slam final and match... even here, when sampras should have been a shell of himself. somehow sampras finds something, somehow he has an evil doppelgaenger to send out in his stead. no wonder he kept scrambling agassi's brain. what a nightmare to deal with

#//#friends and family fear she's probably going to need a tennis tag #batsplat responds #challengerers #racquet tag

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mrhaitch · 5 months ago

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Hello Mr. Haitch, how are you ? I reckon that since you're an author married to an another wonderful author, you may be familiar with the self-doubt and overall bleh feeling that comes with writing and not really finding pleasure or purpose in it anymore. My question is : how do you deal with that ? I don't see myself as a writer but I still try to nurture this hobby, it's just been hard when everything I write ends up feeling flat at best, unreadable at worst. I don't really have writer pals or readers who give me feedback and I was a bit sad to realise that even when sharing my writing on online spaces where there are no stakes, it still feels like a race to notes and interactions. How can I keep pushing past this ? How do I improve when no one gives me feedback ?

I'm doing well, thank you anon.

Yes this is all familiar to me, and it's something I'm presently overcoming myself (I think it's been over two years since I managed to complete something).

I think there's a few different things here to address so I'll take them each in turn.

Motivation - Loss of motivation is inevitable. All love affairs have peaks and troughs, creative ones doubly so. Accepting that what you're feeling now will pass in time can help, but it's not a cure. When I feel like a failure I try to remember something Neil Gaiman talked about a few years back: writing is a lot like trying to get to the top of a mountain, with every word being a single step closer or another foot surmounted. If you find there's a time you can't write, you're not going backwards, you're just standing in place. Sometimes you have to in order to catch your breath. Forgive yourself for taking a breather - and try to figure out why you need it.

Writing in isolation - This has been my own experience, to tell the truth. I hold a Masters degree in Creative Writing and sat through many hours of workshops, but even then it still felt like I was writing alone - that somehow the conversations that took place in those groups were competitive and unconstructive; everyone eyeing each other, asking 'do you like me? do you like my work? is this okay?'. Writing can be lonely, especially with that first draft where you're writing with the door closed, just figuring out the story one line at a time. You can experience several lifetimes in the space of an hour and occasionally emerge from your writing place, puffy faced and wild-eyed, feeling like you have to tell someone what you just witnessed, but find people give you a quizzical look and fail to understand. Working with others, sharing with others, especially people who do understand can be a wonderful balm for such extended (and sometimes necessary) solitude - but it can have it's own problems. Sometimes you internalise the expectations and tastes of others in such a way that proves more of a hindrance then a help. Which brings me to-

Writing for a social media profile - I've done this myself some times and fell into the same trap you describe: second guessing my work for the sake of a theoretical audience, interpreting a lack of engagement as a sign of my own failures or short-comings as a writer. Even when I published for the first time, and then again for a second, I have only met one person who read my work and it was only because they were published in the same anthology. The relationship between artist and audience is difficult, fraught might be a better word, and one that deserves its own post. Sometimes the audience feels they're owed something by the artist, sometimes the artist senses that expectation and subjects their work to censure to adapt it to what they think the audience wants from them. In the end you've got a work that satisfies no one. Social media can help you find an audience - but it's also a medium built around habit, dependency, and engagement. It's not a true reflection of your worth, but rather how closely what you produce as an artist best fits that platforms algorithms and business models. And, here I'm flirting with arrogance a bit, you should never really concern yourself with what everyone might think.

As for advice, here's the best I've got: find whatever it is that brings you to the page and keeps you there. If trying to satisfy the expectations of others isn't helping, then focus on what you want. How would you tell this story, if you were the only person to ever read it? How would you excite yourself, challenge yourself, enlighten yourself?

Beyond that I'd suggest reading a lot and reading widely. Feed the creative compost heap that dwells in the darker, mustier corners of your mind, and see what weird and wonderful things take root.

And if you want something to prime the engine, watch this short interview with Ray Bradbury towards the end of his life. It always cheers me up:

youtube

#mr.haitch #pseudowho #mr haitch #mrhaitch #mrhaitch answers you too #pseudowho answers you

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scoopertrouper · 2 years ago

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If you’re still taking Stancy prompts, Nancy wondering what Steve is up to while they keep their distance in s3 is always my jam. Love love love your Nancy and Steve.

my first prompt fill!

i have to be honest, i don’t know if this is really what you were looking for? like, i admit there’s altogether more jonathan than probably anyone wants to see. but alas, i banged this out in like four hours last night and this is where my brainworm took me. thanks for prompting!

also, if you want to get a more exact idea of the kind of headspace i was in writing this, you’ll just want to listen to tswift’s death by a thousand cuts on one long, endless loop.

2,200-ish words under the cut.

-*-*-*

the only thing we share [is this small town]

She sees him sometimes.

Not on purpose. Definitely not on purpose, but Hawkins has a population smaller than the enrollments of some state colleges. It’s kind of inevitable that their paths will cross more than occasionally.

And it’s not that Nancy's avoiding him, exactly. It’s more that every time she gets a glance at him even in passing, it’s impossible not to recall the sad way he’d stared down at her the last time they’d really spoken to each other, resigned to an outcome she wasn’t even sure she herself had reconciled with yet.

It doesn’t make her feel good, and after the past year, she’s more than sick of seeking out reasons to feel bad.

So she doesn’t avoid him, but she also doesn’t not hide behind aisles in Melvald’s when she sees him pass by. And if they happen to be walking along the same side of Main Street at the same time, it just so happens that she’ll remember several urgent reasons why she needs to cross the road right away.

But that’s not avoiding. It can’t be, because Nancy doesn’t avoid. She barrels, head on, right into even the most fraught situations, because at the end of the day she has nothing without her resolute confidence in the fact that she is right.

She is right, and nothing – not Department of Energy hacks, nor the assholes at the Hawkins Post who make a sport of changing up their sandwich orders and the way they take their coffee every other day (“See if you can solve this, Nancy Drew…”) – can shake that certainty.

(Except sometimes – sometimes/especially when she sees Steve – a creeping sense of wrong begins to slither its way in, wraps icy tendrils of doubt around her carefully guarded resolve and squeezes. Hard.

But before it can do too much damage, before it can cause the kinds of hairline fissures that turn into cracks that end in endless interdimensional bloodshed, she turns away. Takes Jonathan’s hand, and looks into his eyes, and remembers why they’re the only two people in the world who could possibly get each other. Even when she can’t understand why he hovers in uncomfortable silence while those dickheads laugh at her. Even when he doesn’t get why she just can’t stop pushing, because a job’s a job and maybe if she let up a little they wouldn’t laugh at her so much.

None of that matters, because she and Jonathan…they just make sense. The photographer and the journalist. Shared goals. Shared trauma. Right? Right.

And so the ground steadies beneath her feet, and her breathing eases, and she sinks back into the safe surety of her belief.)

Most of the time, not-avoiding-Steve also facilitates not-thinking-about-Steve, which is easier now that he hasn’t been around town much lately. She’d heard via the grapevine – amid some derisive tittering that had irked her for reasons she preferred not to examine – that he’d gotten a job at the ice cream parlor at Starcourt, and that he wasn’t headed to college after the summer was over, because he didn’t get into a single school, can you believe it?

The guilt was suffocating. She puts it out of her mind.

So it’s a blessing in disguise that Jonathan’s aversion to crowds and hypercommercialism means that Nancy hasn’t spent as much time at Starcourt as she’d planned to once she heard they were putting in a Gap. Because less time at Starcourt meant less time not-avoiding Steve (and less time – and money – spent stress shopping).

In fact, Nancy’s been lured into such a false sense of security that she never sees the stupid commercial coming.

It’s evening, and still boiling outside, and she and Jonathan are languishing on his beat-up couch after a long day spent toiling in the darkroom (him) and chasing down a specific kind of pastrami on rye with grain mustard available only from the sole deli in Hawkins, which just happens to be about as far across town as you can get on foot (her, of course).

Nancy is the kind of mentally exhausted that means that while she’s valiantly trying to pay attention to CBS Evening News (she likes to flip back and forth between all the major network shows), she’s actually staring off into space as Dan Rather covers a TWA flight hijacking that she knows she should care more about.

The jingle of the commercial doesn’t even penetrate the fog until Jonathan scoffs.

“Christ,” he mumbles. “They’re still playing this shit on TV?”

“Huh?” Nancy grunts before she can stop herself, rousing from her stupor. (It’s only now that she realizes she’s been doodling daisies where she usually takes careful notes on each story’s lead-in.)

“The Starcourt commercial,” Jonathan says, nudging her with his shoulder. “It’s been open for, like, a month. When’re they gonna give it a rest?”

“Oh.” Nancy gets with the program, and laughs perfunctorily at the cheesy stock footage that’s eaten more airtime over the past six months than she’d ever thought city council would have the budget for. (Huh. Maybe there’s a story there.) “I kind of forgot about it.”

“Maybe…we could check it out soon,” Jonathan says, eyeing her almost cautiously. “See if it’s as awful as it looks.”

Nancy does a double-take before she can stop herself.

“You said it’d take a literal alien invasion to get you to set foot inside that mall.” And with the bizarro turn their lives have taken over the past year, she can’t be entirely certain he’d been joking.

Jonathan shifts, and scratches the back of his head.

“Well – they do have a bookstore,” he says, defensive. “And, like, I know this internship hasn’t been what you were hoping, so it might be nice to –” His jaw drops before he can finish the thought. “Holy shit, is that Steve Harrington?”

Nancy’s head whips around so fast she almost hears a crack. And yeah, that is Steve Harrington. In vivid technicolor, standing behind a cash register next to a vaguely familiar-looking redhead with a tousled bob – Nancy’s pretty sure she’s seen her around school before.

She recognizes the discomfort in his face all too well – it had stared across the table at her every time she’d tried to quiz him on SAT vocabulary words last summer.

Only then, he hadn’t been wearing a hideous polyester sailor costume.

“That’s new,” Jonathan says, the ill-disguised laughter in his voice so uncharacteristic that Nancy’s head whips back around again. She’s going to need a chiropractor by the time this commercial ends. “I guess we definitely gotta check out Starcourt now.”

She rolls her eyes, and relaxes the fist she’d clenched around her pencil during the seven seconds – max – that Steve had been on screen. Jonathan doesn’t seem to have noticed her tension, and she’s grateful.

“What’s so interesting about watching Steve scoop overpriced ice cream?” she deflects skeptically, sinking further into the couch, wincing as she hits a spring. Now Jonathan’s the one who double-takes.

“Um. Nancy. It’s King Steve.” She doesn’t love the way he says that. “Dressed like a stand-in for The Village People. Slinging banana splits. What isn’t interesting about that?”

“It’s just a job,” Nancy retorts, face heating. “D’you think it’s funny that I run around buying lunch and pouring coffee for a bunch of dipshits who wouldn’t know a good above-the-fold if it hit them with a two-by-four?”

“Of course not, Jesus!” Jonathan sputters helplessly, shoulders hiking up to his ears. “I just meant – I didn’t – of course I don’t think that’s funny.” His mouth flattens. “I think it’s really shitty. You’re right, I shouldn’t make fun of anyone’s job. We don’t have to go to Starcourt. I just thought it’d be something we could do together.”

He looks deflated, and all at once, Nancy feels like shit. Jonathan was so serious all the time, and usually she liked when he let that go a little bit and dropped his guard. But she’s ruined it by getting defensive, and she doesn't even totally understand why.

“No, I’m sorry,” she backtracks, grabbing his hand and linking their fingers. It’s warm, as familiar as her own at this point. “It’s just…been a shit day. I overreacted.” She just has to work harder. Make them see how serious she is about this. Make them see how good she is at this.

All at once, she’s acutely ashamed of how lax and distracted she’s been, scrawling stupid pictures all over her notepad when she should be working. Improving her craft. Showing everyone that she belongs in that newsroom. Showing them that she’s right.

In return, Jonathan’s smile is strained, but it seems genuine enough. He squeezes her hand, with a strength that still surprises her sometimes.

“Things’ll get better. You’ll see. You’re brilliant. They’ll figure it out. Eventually.” He ducks his head, then looks up again, a little more relaxed. “Speaking of ice cream…I think Mom brought some Rocky Road home last night. Two spoons?”

Nancy nods, accepting the peace offering for what it is (even though she prefers strawberry).

“Yeah…that sounds good.” He leaves to clatter around in the kitchen, and she turns back to the TV, suppressing the urge to chew on the end of her pencil (what serious journalist walks around with bit-up erasers?).

Against her will, Steve’s face plays on a rewind loop in her mind’s eye.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but he’d looked miserable, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t stage fright (he used to preen whenever the yearbook photographers were in his general vicinity. It was equal parts endearing and annoying).

Had he really not gotten into any colleges? (None of her business.) His dad probably hadn’t taken that well. (Really none of her business.)

She should’ve tried to help him more, after the whole…incident. He’d been insanely concussed, and that couldn’t have helped with the whole college essays and applications thing. He’d already been having a hard enough time with it all.

But what could she have done? The thing with Jonathan had been so new, and every time she chanced a look at Steve, he was already staring back, hurt scrawled plainly all over his face.

It would be better now, though, right? A lot of time has passed. She’s firmly settled into her new relationship, and Steve is – Steve knows how to rebound. He’s always been good at that, on the court and in life.

Maybe she should go visit him. Not – not to laugh at him, but just to see how he’s doing.

Would that girl be there? The coworker? She’s cute, in a “probably listens to too much Depeche Mode” kind of way. So not Steve’s type. (Nancy, why would that matter?)

But they had been standing kind of close in the commercial. Maybe they’re friends?

Nancy snorts. Steve didn’t have female friends, except for maybe Carol, and that was mostly vis a vis that shit-for-brains Tommy. In fact, after he cut the two of them out, Steve didn’t seem to have many real friends. Or any. At all. He’d focused all his attentions on Nancy.

She swallows past the tightness in her throat. Anyway. This girl. Definitely – definitely not a friend. Maybe a friendly coworker. Or…

Nancy glares at the whites of her knuckles. None of her business.

It really isn’t. After all, she has Jonathan, and Steve has, well…whoever he wants, really. That’s never been an issue for him, not even after he’d been officially “dethroned”. Girls still lined up at his locker for crumbs of his attention, right smack dab where Nancy used to wait for him in between classes. She assumes that in that regard, not much has changed besides the venue.

In fact, she can see it pretty clearly: Steve, raking a hand through his thick hair every time a pretty girl happens to make her way into Scoops Ahoy. Drumming deft fingers against the glass of the freezer. Handing out free scoops of ice cream like they’re not gonna eventually come out of his check.

Suggesting that they stick around until he’s off-shift so they can catch a movie or – or – something else.

The pencil snaps. Startled, she stares down at her hand, where the two jagged pieces haphazardly dangle, connected by little more than a few bare slivers of wood. What the fuck?

She’s got pretty much no time to figure out what the hell just happened, though, because Jonathan picks that moment to come back into the living room, a carton with two spoons balanced in his grip.

“Sorry that took a sec,” he apologizes, and Nancy shoves the pencil’s remains in between the couch cushions before he can notice. “Will left eggs in the pan again, and I told him he’s gotta wash them out, like, right away or it’s a pain in the ass to scrub them off later –”

“It’s okay,” Nancy cuts in, unsettled by the stinging in her palm as he flops back down beside her. Despite the heat, he curls an arm around her shoulders. It’s light, and wiry, and she tells herself she prefers it that way.

“Dan’s kind of boring tonight,” Jonathan tuts, leaning back. “Wanna see what Tom’s up to?”

Nancy nods, curling into his side and scooping a spoonful of ice cream out of the container crammed between them. It’s creamy, and deliciously sweet on her tongue.

It’s just right.

(It has to be.)

#stancy #stancy fic #steve harrington #nancy wheeler #my stuff #prompt fill

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kaija-rayne-author · 24 days ago

Text

I'm doing a series of reviews as I play Dragon Age Veilguard. One or two posts a day, whenever I can play.

This is installment one.

Can't remember if I mentioned that a lovely person gave me a copy of DAV. And I'm so very grateful I can play close to release. So I can do an unbiased review series.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It's fantastic. I'm also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I'm on media blackout while I play this, so I'm only getting second-hand info on how awful it is right now in the DA Fandom. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Though, every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking 'have you bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?' My guess is nope.

I'm seven hours in. (2 in CC so 5 playtime.)

Spoilers for DAV. Dragon Age Veilguard

Also, this is all my off the cuff writing. I haven't the time, energy, or desire to edit them.

Five hours in... I can confidently say welp, it's a game. It is indeed a video game.

I don't hate it? Most of it? Can't say I love it, either.

Background and environment folks did a fantastic job. And I was pretty sure they would. That part feels like Dragon Age. Except for the floaty spaceship thing in Minrathous. Intentionally not saying what it's supposed to be, because they do tell you.

Baddy design is as bad as I feared. If not actually worse.

I totally called it on several points, which gods escaped, for one. The fact that those 'demons' were gonna give me a headache, too. And the whole Solas Varric sitch.

CC is pretty good. Nothing ground breaking, but people should be able to make a character they like? You can make a good redhead.

I like the new codex design. I still preferred DAO for that one. Aaaannnnd I've already caught a couple editing errors in the text.

Extremely thrilled that my non-binary ass can be non-binary.

Yes, you can actually make a (slightly) pudgy character.

That is still not Solas. And you can't try to tell me I'll probably like him once I see him in game, anymore. I don't. He does still move the same, so they got that right. Still has the subtle humour, too, which, since Weekes wrote him, makes sense.

They were right, the characters do look better in game.

AND THAT IS STILL NOT A FUCKING DARKSPAWN.

My youngest kid just glanced at my screen and did a double take with a 'Ma? Why are you playing Fortnite?'

From the mouths of babes. He's right in that Fortnite player age bracket, FWIW. And no, he has no interest in playing Dragon Age. No matter how much they made some of it look like Fortnite.

Not feeling any of the romanceables, yet. But I've only met Neve, Lace, and Bellara. Alas my poor bisexual heart. None of the women do it for me. That may change, it's still very early as per in-game events.

I'm going to stick with it to see if it'll actually catch me up. Because it sadly has not, yet. By an hour in on my first playthrough of DAO, I was head over heels for Alistair. By 1 hour into Awakening, Anders had me. By hour 3 in DA2? Anders and Isabela both had me. By seven hours into DAI? I was very much in love with Solas, though I was playing a guy because I wanted to Romance Dorian first. (Still really loved Dorian.) But yeah, that bloody elf had me first, and I think it was at the first damned scene with him in it. Which is roughly an hour or so in?

I'm intensely curious about the story, and it's why I was so desperate to play it. So unless it somehow utterly offends me, (worse than those not-fucking-darkspawn and what-the-actual-fuck-are-those-demons already have) I'll finish it. Unless I lose interest. It's at least worth playing so far. I don't feel like I wasted the seven hours.

Fighting is reasonably easy to adjust to. And it'll be more fun when I get the hang of it. (For me, I usually don't have a lot of trouble picking up new fighting systems in games.)

Oh, and it took Astarion BG3 half an hour. 🤣

Please no spoilers if anyone responds. As I said, only seven hours in.

In case you're interested, here's my predictions piece.

And here's the second part in my ongoing review as I play series.

#dragon age veilguard #DAV #Veilguard

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fancy-feast-official · 11 months ago

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instead of doing anything normal (like taking ibuprofen for my headache) i just spent the past four hours of my life writing an essay on why manfred von karma is abusive. kind of proud of it ngl.

also i tagged all quotes from the original post i'm talking about to their actual [user].tumblr.com site which has really bright colors fyi. i'll link the tumblr.com/[user] site at the end of the essay if bright colors don't work for you. also if ppl start sending me hate i'm just gonna block them.

In a Tumblr post by Wendy/Jessie Rose Rocket (referred to from here on as Wendy) on their interpretation of Manfred von Karma (MvK) in the Ace Attorney series, they argue that there is little canon evidence that MvK could have ever abused his children.[1] This however, is not the case, as there are various examples which they cite themselves that include traits of emotional abuse, including a hyper-controlling nature, manipulation, and invalidation of the victim’s feelings.

Before I get into the various examples given in the original post which indicate emotional abuse, I will say that I am not going to attack the more personal aspects of this argument, nor do I wish to attack any people who believe that MvK is not an abuser. I only want to look at the facts of his characterization and dissect the argument itself. Ignoring or overwriting the signs of emotional abuse in fictional characters can pose some threat to real people – if they’ll excuse emotional manipulation in fiction, they may be willing to excuse when they themselves are emotionally manipulated. I also think that it is misleading for Wendy to state that they are alright with abuse victims writing MvK as an abuser, before spending several hundred words explaining why they don’t think that MvK is an abuser, and that Ace Attorney fans are wrong in interpreting him that way.

Also, I will mention that both my own essay and the original post are triggered somewhat by the Filter Bubble Effect,[2] where content filtering and selection leads to a person only seeing one opinion or viewpoint. Wendy mentions that, while they see differing viewpoints on MvK on Tumblr, Twitter, and AO3, they do not see interpretations of him as abusive on other sites. I personally disagree with this statement as entirely factual, as before this post was made I had never seen interpretations of MvK as anything other than abusive. There is likely a split between these two interpretations, and I’m not willing to hazard a guess as to percentages in each camp.

With all that said, Wendy also mentions that both Miles Edgeworth (Edgeworth) and Franziska von Karma (Franziska) are “incredibly queer & nd coded.”[3] This is somewhat untrue. Both Edgeworth and Franziska are written as stuffy, calculating, and believing themselves to be entirely logical. While these are considered traits of neurodivergency, it is stated within the canon of the games that these traits have been trained in them by MvK. There’s an argument to be made on nurture versus nature (especially in the case of Edgeworth), but for the purposes of my argument I am going to say that this is more due to their upbringings than anything else.

While Edgeworth is somewhat queer-coded, it is only really present as a joke (Implications that Edgeworth isn’t aware that women find him attractive[4]), or because of his relationship with Phoenix Wright.[5] Franziska is not queer coded, though she is written as somewhat masculine compared to other female characters. This characterization is more a result of her being a female version of MvK and Edgeworth, and less to do with any alleged queerness.

The first piece of evidence which Wendy gives, under the context that it is “the one single piece of evidence that team fanfred brings to the table,”[6] are three lines from Ace Attorney Investigations, both in the fourth case. The first is a conversation between Franziska and�� MvK,

Franziska: Papa! You’ll come and watch my courtroom debut next, won’t you?

Manfred: Hmm… I’ll consider it.[7]

This conversation is rather innocuous, though it shows that MvK can be dismissive of his children at times. The more damning line is the second one which Wendy includes, where MvK says to Edgeworth, “A worthless person like you has no right to claim such a thing as perfection!”[8] This is one of many examples of MvK expecting nothing but perfection from both of his children. An expectation of perfection leads to Franziska and Edgeworth doubting themselves, and feeling worthless.[9] MvK places high importance on perfection, leading to his care for his children being conditional, reliant on their ability to be perfect.[10] Among other things, instilling self-doubt and worthlessness, and making acceptance or care conditional are signs that someone is being emotionally abusive.[11]

MvK is shown in various media to have a constant need for perfection and control of everything around him. in Ace Attorney Investigations, he manipulates aspects of cases so that he is guaranteed to win,[12] something he also does in “Turnabout Goodbyes.” It is completely reasonable that, when his own protégé does not display this inhuman perfection, he would be upset and lash out, as he does in the above example. Wendy notes that the word used in the original exchange, 半人前, does not translate to “worthless,” but instead to “an amateur / someone without experience.”[13] This, of course, is much more accurate to the context of their situation, but stating that the translation must have been made in bad faith is besides the point. There is no reason that MvK should be putting such high expectations for perfection on someone who, in real life, would not even have finished college yet. While it does not hold much weight as evidence for my own argument, it holds very little weight for their argument as well. However, it is important to cover this exchange, as they believe it is the only evidence a so-called “Fanfred” might be able to find indicating an abusive characterization.

Wendy continues on by listing the many ways in the anime that MvK is shown to be a good father. While they can be seen as evidence that he is not abusive, abusers can be nice to their victims, for a myriad of reasons. This can be done for any number of reasons, including: Bolstering the abusers image to the victim or outsiders, or to convince themselves they are a good person; As a manipulation tactic; And because the abuser is in the recovery phase of the abuse cycle.[14] I am going to focus on the former of these two reasons, as they are more likely in the von Karma situation.

The most striking of the initial examples from the anime is Edgeworth’s statement that “he considers [MvK] the only person who was there for him after his father died.”[15] While this can seem like a positive thing, it is important to note that MvK very clearly isolated Edgeworth from his friends by moving him out of his house, away from his friends (who are not provided with any information as to why he’s gone). Social isolation is a tactic of abuse, used to tether a victim to their abuser so that they are more reliant on them.[16] The next examples of MvK complying with Franziska’s demands in an effort to make Edgeworth smile after he first moves in with them could be an example of him wanting to cheer Edgeworth up after the death of his father (who, I will remind you, was killed by MvK). However, this could have underlying motives, where MvK wants Edgeworth to open up to him, so that he might have more control over him. By killing Gregory Edgeworth, and raising his son to be as ruthless as himself, MvK takes care of the “curse” that he believes the Edgeworths to be.[17]

In the anime, MvK reacts rather calmly to Edgeworth’s first ever defeat during “Turnabout Samurai.” Wendy states that he seems “perplexed,” but is not in any way “cruel and unusual” what he says during that conversation.[18] Taken out of the context of MvK’s behavior, this is plausible. However, over the 15 years that he raised Edgeworth, he emphasized perfection over all else. Edgeworth’s reaction to losing is so negative because of MvK’s influences on his ideas of self-worth. In the conversation, MvK also advises Edgeworth to not have feelings, invalidating any feelings that Edgeworth might have about the cases he works on, feelings which can be necessary in determining the truth.

I agree with Wendy that MvK is, as they put it “a despicable fucking human being.”[19] In “Turnabout Goodbyes” alone, he:

Commits aggravated assault, including assault against a minor

Steals and tampers with evidence

Engages in conspiracy to commit murder, and is shown to have committed murder himself

Frames two people for murders that he was involved in

Due to his propensity for physical violence, it is no stretch to assume that he is physically violent with his own family members.[20] Even if he is not physically abusive, it has been shown time and time again that he emotionally abuses his children, and even despite that they look up to him. It is not uncommon for an abuse victim to love or care for their abuser. This can lead to blaming oneself for the abuse, and normalizing the abuse that is happening.[21] The reactions that Wendy wants to see in fics are plausible reactions for abusive victims to have when their abuser dies. It is possible for someone to understand they are being abused and yet still love the person doing the abusing.

Now, the lead poisoning business. Yes, it is possible for someone to get lead posioning from a bullet wound.[22] This is a plausible excuse for MvK’s behavior in later years, however, his tendency towards manipulation and hyper-control are present in “The Inherited Turnabout,” before he’s shot.[23] While lead poisoning does cause irritability, it also causes memory difficulties,[24] something that would hinder MvK’s ability to write his detailed plan for payback which he sends to Yanni Yogi.[25] This removes any plausible deniability for MvK in the murder of Robert Hammond – he very clearly knew what he was doing, and knew the consequences, which is why he tried to frame Edgeworth and Yogi. In a real court of law, he would be competent to stand trial for his crimes.

In conclusion, while he is not explicitly shown to physically abuse his children, Manfred von Karma canonically emotionally abuses his children, forcing them to adhere to his strict sense of perfection and morality. When both Franziska and Edgeworth fail to live up to his impossible standards, they doubt their own abilities and self-worth. Excusing this behavior in any person could lead to people not realizing that they’re being abused, and therefore having more difficulty getting out of abusive situations. It’s alright to like MvK as a character, but deliberately overlooking his abusive tendencies is to overlook a major part of his character, and his relationship with Edgeworth and Franziska.

"I'm Going to Change Your Mind About Manfred Von Karma"

#manfred von karma #mvk #ace attorney #please god help me why did i do this #arlo flowers writing tag #abuse mention #child abuse mention #emotional abuse mention

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chayscribbles · 1 year ago

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chayscribbles’ monthly writing update ☆ april and may 2023

i didn't do one last month so we get a double feature today!

☆ STATISTICS.

words written: 6 214 in april; 9 425 in may

projects worked on: once again only wrote for Andromeda Rogue but did a lot of plotting and planning for The Gemini Heist

proudest accomplishment: i've resisted chucking everything i've ever written into a shredder

books read in both april and may: A Rival Most Vial be @ashen-crest; Planetfall by Emma Newman, and Rogue Protocol (Murderbot Diaries #3) by Martha Wells

☆ GENERAL COMMENTS.

i went super hard in the beginning of april, burned out majorly for several weeks, then went hard again in the last 2 or so weeks. april ended in the middle of my burnout so that's why i didn't have an update last month. it just didn't seem worth it.

i'm also trying to make a soft return to writeblr! it's not working.

more specific wip-related comments + featured excerpt below.

☆ COMMENTS: ANDROMEDA ROGUE (draft 2)

this might be a stretch but the 2 year (2 year?????!?!?!!) anniversary of me finishing the first draft of AR1 is coming up on June 13th... so wouldn't it be grand if i finished the second draft by then? a guy can dream.

right now this draft is sitting at nearly 73K, which means i've almost reached the wc of draft one. and i still have a few more chapters to go!

unfortunately i've also left all the Hard Parts up until now becuase i love to make myself suffer!!!! pray for me y'all.

☆ COMMENTS: THE GEMINI HEIST (planning, i guess?)

well the good news is that i actually have the skeleton of an outline! i have 7 acts and a vague idea of what happens in each of them!

the bad news is i can't seem to get myself to actually write any of it! all i've been doing is anything EXCEPT writing. backstory developing, worldbuilding, creating menial lore... but not a single word added to my draft. when will my suffering end.

i did post a fun drawing + worldbuilding thing tho, if you missed it!

☆ FEATURED EXCERPT.

i'm pretty sure i posted this excerpt from AR already a loooong time ago... but it's gotten a small upgrade ever since. you see, back when i first wrote it, i didn't know how long the gang's trip would take. but then i developed a standardized formula to calculate travel time and just happened to end up with the funniest possible result... which lead to this.

Valyan, meanwhile, plopped themself into the co-pilot’s chair.

“How long have you been able to do that?” they asked, eyes sparkling. “Why don’t your powers look like the Hepplings' from the Order of the Vine? Is it just the healing thing you can do, or can you do other things? Like use the plants as a lasso, or—”

“Look, kid,” Finneas interrupted, “here’s the deal. If you leave me alone for a few hours, I’ll answer every question you have about my… powers. Okay?”

Valyan narrowed their eyes. “How many hours is ‘a few’?”

“Um… seventy?”

“Nice try. That’s about how long it’ll take us to get back to Sayntagnesia. And it’s actually sixty-nine hours.” They grinned. “Nice.”

Of course that would be the one fact they’d remember. “You got me. How about six?”

“Deal.”

☆ TAGLISTS. let me know if you want to be added/removed to any of them.

general taglist:

@nicola-write @dgwriteblr @the-orangeauthor @onomatopiya @quilloftheclouds @ashen-crest @writeblrfantasy @celestepens @stardustspiral @pepperdee @extra-magichours @avi-why @lefttigerobservation@chazzawrites @bardolatrycore @innocentlymacabre

andromeda trilogy taglist:

@bebewrites @nicola-writes @dgwriteblr @the-orangeauthor @onomatopiya @akindofmagictoo @quilloftheclouds @nora-theteawriter @ashen-crest @corpsepng @writeblrfantasy @chaylattes @toboldlywrite @celestepens @stardustspiral @pepperdee @cheerfulmelancholies @extra-magichours @writeouswriter @cilly-the-writer @lefttigerobservation @rose-bookblood @drowsy-quill @chazzawrites @cynic-and-chief @enchanted-lightning-aes @aesa @outpost51

gemini heist taglist:

@florraisons @akindofmagictoo @cream-and-tea @nicola-writes @memento-morri-writes @antique-symbolism @rose-bookblood @afoolandathief @pepperdee @avi-why @zonnemaagd @chazzawrites @analogued @enchanted-lightning-aes @innocentlymacabre @kahvilahuhut @celestepens @cilly-the-writer @extra-magichours @onomatopiya @outpost51

#chayscribbles writing update #wip andromeda trilogy #wip andromeda rogue #wip gemini heist

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buzzybee26 · 4 months ago

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Thor Pirate Software's coverage of the Stop Killing Games Initiative has been deeply frustrating to me because one of the main points he's been getting on their ass about is being vague, but there are several times that he has been incredibly vague about the information he's used to draw the conclusions he's presented and where he got that information from.

The example of this that I'm going to use is in his first video when he talks about The Crew.*1 There's a bit where he claims that the game was always marketed as online only, and the only source he cites for this is legitimately "everything I've found online." I'm not saying this is false, but I have so little information on why he thinks the game was only ever marketed as online only that I can't say it's true with 100% confidence, especially with the knowledge that the crew had a story campaign that could be played entirely in single player*2. Not a perfect comparison, but the majority of Splatoon 1's marketing, at least from trailers, was based around its multiplayer (I'm not about to do the same thing I'm criticizing him for after getting on his ass about that, I do have some self awareness), and yet you can still play its single player campaign after the servers are dead. And I'm not saying the single player mode was ignored in the marketing, like I say it's not a perfect comparison to the claim he's making, but the vast majority of the marketing for this game was showing its multiplayer gameplay and features. This being the case, the vast majority of my playtime with that game as well as the rest of the series has been single player. Just because a game is marketed based on its multiplayer content, that doesn't mean people won't only play it for its single player content or that the single player content can't be a major selling point and he didn't go through any effort to show that this wasn't the case for The Crew. Show some trailers, a screenshot of the game's storefront page from when it was being sold, anything more specific that "Everything I've found."

And if we want to talk about being vague, how about deleting 2 weeks worth of stream content, including all the VODs in which he talked about the initiative. I would say deleting multiple hours of your coverage of a topic is not the best way to keep the specific details of your argument in tact. I simply refuse to believe that he managed to fit all of his opinions and takes about the initiative into 23 minutes and 9 seconds and I'm not going to hunt for clips on tiktok, youtube or twitter just for the sake of understanding the perspective of someone who doesn't know I exist. If he wanted his perspective to be understood, he would consistently show clearly and specifically what information he uses to come to his conclusions and where he got that information from.

I have a lot more thoughts, but I am wayy too tired to get them down now so I'll cut this off here. TLDR: put the bare minimum effort to show where you're getting your information from, jesus christ.

*1 There used to be a bit where I said The Crew's Wikipedia page was the only source he used for information about the game. This is false, he also used cites Steam's active player count tracker to show that the game had a large drop in players when The Crew 2 came out. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about and I wish he was more consistent about showing information like this. He also shows the release dates of the sequels that the Crew received, but I don't count this showing sources for information about The Crew 1 and I forgot about him showing the player tracker when I was writing this initially

*2 I realised I did the thing here, This Steam discussion post and this Reddit post contain people discussing the single player campaign, which is how I know about it. Cite your fucking sources, me. Also, The Crew's Steam Page lists the ability to "fly solo" as a key feature of the game, as well as boasting a 30 hour+ story campaign in the Content section. Most of it is focused on multiplayer, but to say the game was only marketed as online only isn't even true.

#“It turns out that all of the cars in the game were licensed from the car companies”#I'm sure they were but I would like you to show me how you know that #If I had the energy I'd go through the whole video and write a paragraph of similar length about every time he does this #And then do that with the second video #I am petty enough for that #But I'm too tired and it's not worth the effort #Pirate Software #Stop Killing Games

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stereax · 1 year ago

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NICOJACK. every interraction they had. why are they so gay omg. they totally deserve one!! if you wanna ofc

oh my god I just got a cold sweat at the idea of cataloguing every single time those two have fucking BREATHED around each other. (because that's what you're asking me to write! a literal three year primer report of 15000 words of Why These Two Are Obsessed With Each Other.) I should probably do this at some point, honestly, but I'm not feeling up to it that much right now, and I don't really have the time at the moment to trawl through Tumblr, Twitter, and Discord and catalogue and source everything, because that requires extensive computer hours that I'm not really allowed stateside. I do want to, don't get me wrong, but maybe in a week or three when I can sit down for a whole day and dedicate myself to banging it out.

...that and also when this current mental haze clears up. not doing too great right now - I've been in a bit of a tailspin since (honestly) last like, October or November, and it got really bad last semester (spring '23) to the point where I'm genuinely surprised I made it out in one piece. now that I'm back in America, a lot of burdens have been lifted off me, but there are a lot of new burdens in their places, not least of which is the fact that I can't really dictate my own schedule any longer and I'm kind of running on the whims of my parents, which, once again, makes a prolonged effort like a ship primer tough. a lot of my stereanalyses are written and posted between 12-4 am for this reason - when my parents are asleep, I can type on my phone and write posts that way. (for the sideblog, I usually write posts for that in tiny spurts during the day and then schedule it for the midnight releases.)

I bill myself as generally a more analytic Tumblr presence because that's what I love to do - crunch numbers, offer statistics, and dissect things such as cap situations, salaries, line deployments, prospect development, and so on and so forth. that's the type of thing I can write a 2 AM stereanalysis on, hit post, and not feel like I've missed anything.

I do, however, adore my narratives as well. I have at least half a dozen fiction pieces and projects in varying stages of completeness and I keep building more ideas for myself without actually taking (or finding) the time to write them out. that... also stresses me out tbh, because I love to write and share that writing, but I suffer severely when I can't knock it all out in one sitting. that's why I made the sideblog in the first place - to motivate myself to write, and to write in a sustained manner. that's why I generally write my stereanalyses in one long take at night, when I can't be interrupted and my train of thought can see my ideas through.

ah, beans, and now I've written too much personal griping on a lighthearted ask. my apologies, truly. I don't want to overload this blog with my personal problems hahaha.

tl;dr not right now but I do want to do this so drop into my inbox again in a few weeks and I'll work on it then? :')

#stereanswers #sterechats :)

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1800titz · 5 months ago

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I looooove all your patreon stories and you come up with such creative tropes and plots. But there’s so many and they only have one or two parts each. Would it be possible to like… write ahead and somehow keep feeding us so we’ll but also move the stories forward?

Hi SO the stories are moving forward, they’re on rotation and get interspersed with blurbs and requests :) The last to be updated was Trivia on the 7th of July, and that one has been ongoing since May. They’re not full length series the way that TDIAG was, so there’s not nearly as many updates to look forward to per trope. Trivia, for example, only has about 2-3 parts left, if that.

With peace and love, this ask came off a tiny bit like anon maybe doesn’t fully understand the effort that has gone into consistently updating twice a week, so I just wanna clarify a little bit here. Every writer writes at a different pace, but what may come out to like 3K for a reader and get consumed in the span of 45 minutes actually takes me days to complete, and I write every single day to some extent (most days for several, several hours, even on days when I work, I feel sick, etc— I’ve actually had to raincheck plans with friends and date nights so that I could keep writing) to get two posts out every week. I wish I had this super power of being able to sit down at a doc and just crank some masterpiece out in the span of a few hours, but that’s just not how my brain works. There would be no chance for me to get ahead unless I took time off, which I am kind of unable to do because patreon has been supplementing my income quite a bit the last couple of months (thank you guys! When I say you all are allowing me to create more, you quite literally are, because I can take days off of my shitty job to focus on this and still be able to pay bills!). Don’t get me wrong— I love doing this. I am not complaining by any means— just clarifying, because I felt like it was needed. If I didn’t enjoy what I was doing, I would stop doing it. I was really worried, initially, to start a patreon because I’ve found that when I take a hobby and turn it into a job, the burn out is so intense, and it’s just no fun anymore. That hasn’t happened, and to be doing this for almost 3 months and not have that icky, ugh I don’t wanna do this anymore feeling says a lot! I love writing on patreon for you guys, I love that so many people are enjoying my content, and I love that so many of you have been so eager to support me! It really, really means more than I can put into words.

That being said, it is a lot of work, and there is absolutely no way for me to get anywhere ahead at this point in time. Also, there’s just no way for my brain to consistently write and keep pumping out one trope without going, this is too much and abandoning it altogether, which is why I have to keep multiple things running at the same time (as most patreon creators do, from the creators I’ve subbed to, tropes get updated around once a month).

I’m just a little confused anon, were you asking for two posts a week + more? Either way, thank you so much for subscribing, but if the way I post doesn’t work work for you, I absolutely won’t be offended if you decide that it’s not for you and just choose to read from another creator.

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squarebracket-trickster · 10 months ago

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Yes, this has happened to me several times too. I didn't even realize this happens to others - so thanks, OP, this made me realize that it shouldn't be this way.

Also, sorry OP, I'm about to ramble...

Them: Oh! You're writing a WIP about [thing]? Me too! Tell me about yours and I will tell you about mine! Me: Yeah, my WIP is about a [main character] who [has a problem]. [This] happens. [This also] happens. [Other media] was my inspiration. But my favourite part is the [feature]. What about you? Them: So, the first scene starts with [describes the whole scene], and then [thing] happens - but to understand [thing] you need to know [150 words worth of backstory] - and [thing] is important because later it will come up again when [plot point]. The main character is [physical description, socio-economic status, family, backstory, activity they are doing when we meet them, motivation, fatal flaw, entire character arc summarized in 100 words] and then they meet this other character who [same deal]. That's when they discover [inciting incident] and then [this other thing] happens that makes it even more complicated. The villain is [same deal again] but actually [50 words worth of explaining why the villain arc is thematically important]. So then [this thing] happens, and then [this thing also] happens, and then [more plot], and then [MORE PLOT], and finally [climatic moment] happens and then [third act breakdown] but then the characters realize that [moment of clarity] and there's this plot twist - oh! but you can't understand the twist without knowing [this other information that I'll take 75 words to explain.] And then the story ends with [takes 200 words to explain every resolution to every single story thread] but for the sequel I was thinking... By this point I am literally doing something else and just checking back on my DMs every ten minutes, because that is how long it takes them to type each message. [Two hours later] Them: so what did you think? Me: I liked [thing]. I think it is a really unique idea and I like how it [does this thing]. Them: Give me more! Tell me everything you liked! I want ALL THE FEEDBACK!! [This is not an exaggeration of how these texts go by the way. They use cap locks. This has happened to me twice.] Me: [gives detailed, but positive, feedback - even though I am annoyed because that is a huge demand on my mental energy which they have already drained by talking my ear off]. So, in my WIP one thing that I am really excited about is-- Them, before I am even done texting: That's cool! But oh yeah! and another thing I should tell you about my story:

And it just goes on and on and on...

And frankly, it feels entitled and inconsiderate and I lose respect for the people that do it.

After that, I am very careful with any interaction I have with them. I try not to give them any chance to start talking about their WIPs because I know they won't stop for hours, and worse, they will demand feedback I am not prepared to give.

Even worse is when they practically beg for criticism. And well... this person can't even have a respectful conversation, how the fuck are they going to react to criticism? So I just tell them I can't think of anything and it all sounds good, and then I feel bad because, actually, it doesn't all sound good, and they are acting so entitled I wish I was confrontational enough to knock them down a peg.

The TL;DR is, they lose "talking with Square about WIPs" privileges for good. They want to talk about their WIPs so bad, now there is one less person they can do that with.

To be honest, I found that making posts about my WIP where I could just talk and send it out to the void was the only way for me to actually be able to talk without getting drowned out.

Then my moots and followers can choose which of my rambles they interact with - with the expectation that this is my blog, here we are talking about my WIP, if you don't want to talk about my WIP don't comment. Sometimes we'll get a conversation going in the reblogs (and those have been some of my favourite interactions on here).

It's not the same as a text conversation, I know. But it has served me well as a way to set boundaries. Really, I wish I could find more writeblrs that do it my way because then I could interact on my terms, when I have energy, when I actually have something to say, and I could be surrounded by people passionately rambling all over my dash.

The problem with internet writer culture

Tell us about your wip!

But don't advertise, ads are bad and we don't like being advertised to.

Oh but tell us about the wip!

*gives thirty second summary*

Oh that's a nice wip, mine is *gives thirty minute lecture on characters, plot twists, and origins*

Oh sorry, I thought your wip was nice. What did you think of mine?

*gives detailed and sincere compliments about what I thought of it*

I'm glad! Yours was cool, but oh! In mine *another thirty minute lecture*

...

......

.......... Is this what passes for interaction these days or am I just unlucky? I've found like TWO people, maybe three, who will have an actual conversation with me about wips.

With everyone else it's like I'm expected to keep it short, sweet, and to the point, unless I'm reacting to theirs, and if I return the favor and gush at length about mine, they disappear or never react.

And it's a very real problem.

Because it's not just impacting me.

It's impacting a LOT of people. Because everyone wants to talk about their wip but nobody wants to listen to anyone else's, so there's so many writers that put on a veneer of "I care!" And they pretend to listen or maybe they read a little or skim, but they don't absorb it.

And then, because you've talked about your work, they now have license to talk about theirs, and they won't stop until either you stop them or make it obvious you're not listening.

But we don't do that, do we?

We do care. We want to encourage. We want to support. So we try. But then they don't return that favor. They don't actually care, but they know you want to, and you'll try to, so they'll milk that until your patience runs out.

Then what?

Then they look for the next kind heart that will sit quietly and listen.

And it's a problem.

Because we all want to be heard. But that doesn't give us the right to overpower another person in conversation just to force the other person to hear us, at the cost of their enjoyment of the interaction.

#long post #sorry guys #Succinct is not one of my virtues #except apparently when it comes to describing my own fucking WIP #of all things you would think that is the thing I would have the hardest time summarizing #but I've just gotten so good at saying as little as possible because I've come to expect people to stop listening #not just on tumblr don't worry #but like it is too the point I don't think I know how to ramble about it when someone asks me 'what is your WIP about' anymore

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soobmint · 4 years ago

Text

paper hearts | choi soobin [f] ; [c] 80s! au, 9.6k words

s u m m a r y ; if there was one thing you wanted to avoid on valentine’s day, it was running into your ex best friend, choi soobin. but when a series of unfortunate events involving too much purple eyeshadow, drunken punches, and one stolen bicycle leads you right back to his side, you begin to realize that maybe you truly belonged with him all along.

c o n t e n t s ; soobin x fem!reader, 80s! au, valentine’s day, ex best friend! soobin, rich boy! soobin, but he’s a major dweeb and the biggest softie, yeonjun is a major prick (i’m so sorry junnie), reader is a part time worker, soobin is best friends with lee felix of stray kids, some themes of social classes, roughly inspired by the 80s movie “pretty in pink,” mentions drugs, alcohol, and single parent households, mostly just fluff, fluff, and more fluff, with a hint of crack/humor

n o t e ; hello friends! this was a very quickly planned, last minute valentine’s day idea, and it’s actually a collab with one of my dearest friends, @chanluster ! she posted her piece of the collab as well, you can check it out by going to the collab masterlist here! this was so much fun to write and i think that 80s! soobin was just too good of a concept to pass up! anyways, happy valentine’s day, i hope you enjoy this oneshot! do leave a like, reblog, or comment if you could, it really helps so much <3

[back to my masterlist] [oneshot playlist]

IF ONE MORE CUT-OUT, CRAFT-PAPER HEART HIT YOU IN THE FACE, YOU WERE GOING TO QUIT YOUR JOB.

Of course you would never actually quit. With your mother out of the picture and your father working nonstop overtime just to barely have enough cash to put food on the table for the both of you, you had come to rely on your minimum wage part-time hours more than you liked to admit. However, the handmade strings of paper hearts that hung from wall to wall throughout the entirety of the record shop you were employed at was enough to make you consider it; not to mention the Phil Collins record that had been spinning all day, filling your ears with melodies embodying the very air of romance, and the embarrassing pink sweater your boss had forced you to wear. You mumbled curses beneath your breath as you pulled at the collar, itching away at your neck.

When you made a step towards a crate full of records, ready to tidy it up after a customer had rummaged through it leaving it a mess, you were met with another face full of cheap red construction paper. With a large growl of exasperation, you swatted at the hearts and accidentally caused the entire string of them to fall to the ground. You cleared your throat, glad that no customers were present to see your little outburst.

Your boss, Jen, still saw it all.

“That’s not very festive of you, kid,” She said, taking a drag on her cigarette. “It’s Valentine’s Day! Lighten up.”

“Ah, my bad. I forgot that I was supposed to be overjoyed on the day honoring the execution of St. Valentine,” You said as you gave her a sarcastic smile. “I’ll make sure to smile at the next couple that walks in and ask them how they plan to contribute to the commercialization of a martyr’s death.”

“You must be real fun at parties,” Jen mumbled. She shook her cigarette at you from behind the counter. “You’re just bitter because you don’t have a valentine. I can’t blame anyone for giving you the cold shoulder with that attitude of yours.”

You scowled, picking up the string of hearts that you had sent crashing to the floor. “I’m not bitter, and I don’t want a date. Also, I told you to stop smoking inside! It smells awful.”

“Last I checked, this was my shop, not yours.” You rolled your eyes as you approached the counter, handing the discarded string to Jen so she could throw it in the trash. “Now you’re making me do chores for you too? You’ve got some nerve, I’ll give you that.”

“Jen, please, I’m really not in the mood for this today.”

Jen shrugged, bending towards the trash can to throw away the string of hearts when she paused and pulled something from the bin. You glanced over your shoulder and gasped when you saw what she held in her hand—a small red envelope with your name scrawled across the front and a pink heart-shaped sticker stuck on the back.

“What’s this?” Jen asked, opening the envelope and shaking out the contents. A single slip of paper fell out, landing atop the counter. You rushed to grab it, but Jen snatched it up just before your fingers reached the countertop.

“Give me that,” You insisted, face growing warm. “I threw it away for a reason!”

“It’s an invitation to a party?” She seemed beyond surprised, glancing back and forth between you and the paper several times. “You got invited to a Valentine’s Day party, and instead of going, you asked me to give you extra hours? Why?”

You looked down at your feet, digging the toe of your sneaker into the blue carpet. There were, in fact, many reasons why you did not want to go to that party. They were as follows:

One: Choi Yeonjun was the one who had invited you. After you had rejected his offer when he asked to take you to a basketball game a month before, you could barely make eye contact with him in the school hallway without feeling guilty. That and the fact that he was one of the richest preps in the school, you knew he had just been asking you out for some sort of prank or dare that you preferred to not potentially fall victim to.

Two: you needed to work as much as you could. Money, as always, was tight for you and your father. There was no way you would sacrifice precious hours to go to a party full of rich kids where nothing but humiliation was sure to await you.

Three: your old childhood friend and the one person you couldn’t bear to see was probably going to be there—Choi Soobin.

You had barely spoken to Soobin in the four years you had been in high school. Crossing paths with him in the cafeteria, turning down the same aisle of books as him in the library, all those tiny stolen glances and accidental encounters were the only bits of interaction you had kept throughout all that time. The worst part was, he hadn’t done anything wrong.

It was nothing but your own cowardice that had driven the two of you apart, and you were still too afraid to own up to it.

Instead of explaining all of this to Jen, you simply shrugged and said, “I dunno. It just sounds lame.”

Your boss sighed, holding the invitation out towards you. “Okay, I’m letting you off early. Go to the party.”

With wide eyes, you shook your head immediately. “Absolutely not. Why in the world would I go?”

“Well, first of all, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for you. Who knows when your next chance to go to a party will be.”

You couldn’t help but roll your eyes at that.

“Second, it’s a holiday! The only reason I even opened today was because you were begging me for hours. I thought it was because you were bummed about having no plans, but clearly it’s because you wanted an excuse to be a recluse.”

“Hey, I’m not a recluse.”

“Clearly.” She shook the invitation at you once more, brows raised. “If you go, I’ll raise your pay by fifty cents for the next month.”

Your ears perked up at that.

“Well?” She asked, well aware that she had hit the jackpot. “What'd ya say?”

Weighing the risks against the benefits, you bit the inside of your cheek.

“Make it a dollar and you’ve got a deal.”

“HAPPY VALENTINE’S, CHOI.”

When Soobin heard the sarcastic remark coming from his best friend, Felix, he had to fight back the urge to burst into tears then and there. He still wasn’t quite sure how Felix had convinced him to come, but he was already regretting it. The last thing he wanted to do to celebrate the day dedicated to love was spend it at a house party—or, as Soobin preferred to call them, any outcast high school kid’s version of hell on earth.

With a quick peek between his fingers, which he had used to cover his eyes immediately upon arriving at the site of the Valentine’s party, Soobin caught another eye-full of couples getting all too familiar with one another out in the open. He gulped, letting his hands grip the handles of the bike as he averted his gaze, choosing to cast his best glare at Felix, who was busy adjusting his ever-present beanie.

“Shut up,” he murmured, slowly sliding off the seat of his bike. He dusted off the worn, tearing cushion, glancing around the area. “Now quick, we gotta put our stuff somewhere safe.”

Felix looked aghast, making no moves to help Soobin in his search for a hiding spot. “What are you doing?”

“Tryna find a safe place for my bike?” He thought the answer to be somewhat obvious, but clearly Felix wasn’t on the same track of thinking. “You don’t know today’s world! Anyone is willing to steal nowadays.”

“Soobin, your bike is coughing up oil from its chains. It should be in its own care home at this rate.”

“I don’t wanna hear your slander, skater boy,” Soobin retorted, eyeing Felix’s ebony skateboard that he refused to be seen without. As if on cue, when he pushed his bike forward, the chains squealed, drawing the attention of a pair of particularly passionate individuals who had been wrapped up with one another moments before. Soobin ignored their annoyed stares, feeling his ears burn from embarrassment. He glanced back to Felix. “Help me find a hiding spot.”

Felix was anything but enthusiastic, but he began to help Soobin search nonetheless.

“Slide it in here, Soobs,” Felix called a few moments later. He was pointed to an empty space between the home’s perfectly trimmed bushes. Soobin pursed his lips together, pushing his large glasses further up the bridge of his nose—a nervous tick of his. Felix groaned, rolling his eyes. “Or you can leave it out in the open so it’ll spit more oil on the passersby? Is that what you want?”

“Fine, fine!” Soobin huffed, wheeling his bike over to the shrubbery, chains squeaking all the way. He carefully laid it beneath the brush and moved a few branches to cover it up nicely. He stood up straight, dusting his hands on the front of his loose blue jeans. “What about your skateboard?”

Felix gave the board a pat, awarding his most prized possession a dazzling smile one would expect to see a proud father giving his beloved son. But in reality, it was the school’s stoner grinning ear to ear at his old, dusty skateboard. “Nightrider stays with me.”

Soobin scrunched his nose, cringing on instinct. He still calls that thing by that stupid name?

Felix clapped him on the shoulder before he could make a remark, catching him off guard when he said, “Right. Let’s go and get your girl.”

There was nothing Soobin could do to stop the flush that rushed to his cheeks right away. Images of you, his ex-best friend and the only reason he had even come to this party in the first place, flashed through his mind. Had he not overheard Yeonjun invite you earlier that morning and then casually mention the encounter to Felix, there was no way he would have even stepped foot out of his house that night. Part of him was peeved, wishing he had never uttered a single word about you to his overbearing friend. Yet, deep down, there was hope within him—the tiniest sliver.

If there was even the slightest chance that he could talk to you that night, he would do anything. Even if it meant dealing with a stupid party, and the never-ceasing teasing he was bound to continue receiving from Felix.

“Don’t even say that,” He said, emphasizing each word as they walked up the front steps. Soobin had to glance down at his much shorter friend to see the devious grin on his freckled face.

“Say what? That she’s your girl, your woman, your one and only?”

The blush must have been creeping to his neck by that point. He could feel it. “I. . .” There were many things Soobin wished to say; angry words that would hopefully shut the blonde skater boy up real quick. But he couldn’t bring himself to say a single harsh word, so he sighed in defeat. “I can’t even say it.”

“That you hate me?” Felix only grinned even bigger, and Soobin couldn’t help the tiny defeated smile that slipped over his features. “Oh, I know. It’s because I’m too good of a best friend.”

They stepped into the house then, instantly being overwhelmed by loud music, boisterous laughter, and drunken yells echoing throughout the halls. Soobin latched onto Felix right away, gripping his friend’s sleeve as someone stumbled into him, a bit of beer spilling from their cup. He pushed his glasses up, only for them to slide right back down as he began to sweat.

“Maybe we should go home, Lix!” Soobin shouted to be heard over the noise as they travelled further into the house. “We can always try next year!”

“Stop being a scaredy-cat!” Felix shouted back, and Soobin thought he might actually begin to cry as they squeezed their way into the living room. Soobin nearly gagged at the strong smell of alcohol as it burned in his nose. The scene was nothing short of a nightmare to Soobin—loud voices, smoke rising in the air, vodka assaulting his nose and sweat beading on the back of his neck. He had never been one to drink, and he didn’t plan on starting that night; but he was beginning to understand what Felix meant when he had once told him it was nearly impossible to get through one of these parties sober.

He was about to make another complaint and beg to leave when someone from the crowd hollered his name, causing him to wince when he recognized that voice as the one that belonged to none other than Choi Yeonjun.

“Soobin! Where you been?”

Soobin smiled nervously at the school’s heartthrob—and textbook snobby rich kid—before he turned back to Felix. He didn’t want to leave his friend, but he knew that he would never hear the end of it if he ignored Yeonjun’s persistent calls. “I’ll be right back,” He promised Felix, still holding onto his sleeve.

“No, no,” Felix assured. “You go. You’ll probably find her around that place anyway.”

Soobin wasn’t so sure of that. You were definitely not of the right social standing to be caught amongst the circle of the school’s rich boys—which was why it had surprised Soobin that Yeonjun had invited you to the party in the first place. Your high school had its own caste system, and you were near the bottom of it.

And, as much as it pained him to admit it, Soobin was stuck at the very top with all the other rich snobs who cared about nothing more than their daily allowances that came straight from their daddy’s bank account.

“What about you, buddy?” He asked Felix, desperate for any excuse to remain by his friend’s side. He would have tried to bring Felix with him, but his friend was in an even worse social standing than you were—he was poor, and he was most known for being the school’s pothead. There was no way Soobin would willingly drag him into a situation where nothing but slander and torment awaited him.

“Me?” Felix shrugged, gripping his board tighter. “I’ll just smoke away the night.”

Soobin pouted, glancing back at the group of preps as they called for him once again. He sighed, clapping Felix on the shoulder. “Just make sure you won’t smell too much of it when I come back.”

Submitting himself to his doom then, he turned on his heel and slowly made his way to where the group of boys sat near the sofa, giving them a half-hearted wave.

“Why were you hanging around that Felix guy?” Yeonjun asked once Soobin had reached their circle. “Did he blackmail you or something?”

Soobin frowned, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “He’s my friend.”

Yeonjun rolled his eyes, brushing a hand through his perfectly-straightened ebony locks. “Sure he is. Tell me, do you see every kid you find on the streets as some sort of personal charity project? Or is it just Felix and—what was her name—” He snapped his fingers then before he said, “Y/N, right?”

Soobin didn’t respond—well, it was more like he couldn’t respond. By nature he was a very passive being, but nothing drew him closer to bouts of anger than when the people he cared about were being insulted right before him.

Especially when it came to you.

Yet, as much as he wanted to tell Yeonjun off or give him a nice shove into the smoke-stained walls, words failed him. They always did. Perhaps this was why you had abandoned him all those years ago. Nobody knew him better than you did, so of course you were able to see what he truly was beneath all the expensive clothes and nervous laughter—a coward.

He figured that he’d probably have left himself too.

“Drink up, buttercup.” The chipper voice that belonged to the other Choi in the small gathering of socialites, Choi Beomgyu, thrust a plastic red cup towards Soobin’s chest.

He shook his head, throwing another wavering smile in his direction. “No thanks. I don’t drink.”

Yeonjun rolled his eyes. “Of course you don’t. Why are you even here then?”

Once again, Soobin chose silence as his only response. He swallowed, patting the front pocket of his denim jacket. As the group of boys began conversing once more, he couldn’t help but let his eyes wander around the room, searching every drunken face for the features that belonged to you, trying to hear your name in every conversation, desperate for your voice to break through the blasting music and shouting voices.

“Who ya looking for there, Big Choi?” Soobin grimaced at the nickname. He was skinny, but incredibly tall, and nobody would let him forget that. “Big Choi” was one of his most common nicknames among the elitists. He despised it, but of course, he would never voice that aloud.

He glanced at Beomgyu and smiled nervously again, shaking his head. “Nobody.”

His eyes met Yeonjun’s and he gulped yet again as the latter eyed him with suspicion. It wasn’t as though he had anything to hide, but something about Yeonjun’s calculating gaze made his skin crawl.

He needed to escape. Just for a moment, at least.

“I’ll be right back. Going to find some water.”

He slipped out of the living room then, apologizing profusely to each couple he accidentally bumped into, bowing in remorse to each person’s toes his big feet happened to stumble over. He ached to be by Felix’s side—the stoned skateboarder had become somewhat of a security blanket to the taller of the duo—but his blonde friend was nowhere to be seen.

After snagging a bottle of water from the kitchen, Soobin managed to slip into an empty bathroom. He slammed the door shut and wasted no time in locking it. Letting out the biggest sigh of relief, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the door, taking a big gulp of the ice cold water.

He set the bottle on the counter and carefully reached into the front pocket of his jacket, his fingers finding the piece of paper he had been storing there all evening. He pulled it out and let his eyes wander over his middle school creation. It was a big heart, cut out from a scrap piece of red construction paper. Scrawled across it in his eight-grade handwriting were the words, Be mine this Valentine’s! His name was etched at the bottom, and at the very top, delicately printed in hot pink glitter glue, your name was written as well.

He had planned to give this to you four years ago on Valentine’s day. Everything had been planned out perfectly; he was to pick you up on his old, trusty bike. It wasn’t really made for two people, but the two of you had fashioned a makeshift extra seat for you to sit upon whenever you went places together.

He wanted to take you to the Dairy Shack, which was the local ice cream shop where the two of you spent the most time together. You always got a large chocolate shake to share, playing a quick game of rock, paper, scissors to decide who got to eat the cherry on top. He was going to order a shake and specially ask for two cherries that time, and planned to give both of them to you before he would bravely present you with the handmade card he had spent all day working on.

However, when he waited for you outside your house that day, the red dusk turned to pitch black night, and you never stepped foot out your door.

He had even gone up to your door a few times and knocked, but there was no answer. Eventually he pedalled off into the night, back to his house. He was disappointed, of course, but more worried than anything else. He had hoped you weren’t sick.

But when he saw you at school the next day, he knew that hadn’t been the case.

And when you ignored him calling your name as you passed by him in the hallways, he knew that something had drastically changed.

For weeks, Soobin was in great turmoil as he replayed your last few encounters together before you had stood him up. Perhaps you were angry that he had won the last few games of rock, paper, scissors? If he had known, he would have given you all the cherries for the rest of time if it meant you would still talk to him. He didn’t care about them—he cared about you.

He missed you.

And as weeks turned to months, and months turned to years, you still barely spoke to him, and he missed you more and more. The best friend he had wanted to take a step closer to had taken a thousand steps back from him, and he still had no idea why.

But that night, he was determined to find out.

Well, if he could muster up the courage to get a single word out, of course.

He folded the heart back up and stuck it back in his pocket, taking a deep breath as he observed himself in the fogged-up mirror. He fixed his bright blue hair that Felix had helped him bleach and dye, making sure the pieces fell over the corners of his eyes just right. He straightened his white turtleneck and cuffed the sleeves of his denim jacket until he was at least somewhat content with his appearance.

“You can do this, Soobs,” He told himself, adjusting his big round glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “That’s what Felix would say.”

“Hey, rich boy!” A loud scream came from outside the bathroom door, accompanied by harsh knocking that sent Soobin stumbling backwards until he fell in the shower, pulling the curtains down with him.

“Hurry up in there! I’m about to piss myself!”

Soobin let out a shaky sigh, scrambling to his feet as he rushed to fix the curtain he had torn down with his clumsiness. “Sorry,” he mumbled, though he doubted the person on the other side of the door could hear him.

He realized then with an ever growing dread that it would be a miracle if he survived the night long enough to even find you, but it would take the work of God himself for him to actually speak to you.

He figured it was time for him to start praying.

YOU KNEW IT WAS A MISTAKE TO LET JEN DO YOUR MAKEUP.

When she had stopped you on your way out the door with a compact of bright purple eyeshadow, you had turned her down right away. No way in all of creation were you walking in a party with such an atrocious color caked up to your brow bone.

“How can you say it’s gonna look bad if you haven’t even let me try?” Jen had asked.

You had given her a once-over, your lips pressed into a thin line. “If it’s gonna look anything like the way you do your own makeup, I’m gonna have to pass.”

After that snide remark, she had threatened to fire you if you didn’t let her apply the makeup. And so you obliged, though you didn’t have much of a choice.

The booming sounds of the party hit your ears before you had even reached the lawn. Screaming teens—well, there were probably some adults thrown in there as well—and the sound of music spilled through the open windows of the home. Couples and singles alike were scattered throughout the perfectly kept lawn that was now littered with empty cups and other assortments of garbage.

You looked down at your patchwork jeans and pink sweater, certain that you would be underdressed compared to the rest of the partygoers. But from the looks of things, as you carefully squeezed your way through the front door and into the home, everyone was probably too wasted to even notice your arrival, let alone care about your looks.

You caught a glimpse of your face in the hallway mirror, cringing at the sight of your eyeshadow. You had tried to wipe some of it away before arriving, but it simply smudged, giving you quite the shocking smoky, purple eye look. For someone who didn’t even know the difference between a paintbrush and a makeup brush, it was a bold look, to say the least.

If Soobin saw you looking like this, he’d probably have a heart attack.

Soobin.

In the midst of all your frantic preparation, you had nearly forgotten about the main reason why you had planned to avoid this party at all costs. With a quick glance around the room, you realized that he was nowhere to be seen. You wouldn’t have been surprised if he hadn’t shown up at all. He was never a fan of parties, anyway.

You crossed your arms over your chest and slowly slipped past the couples crowding the hallway with their limbs intertwined, mouths practically swallowing one another whole, until you reached the living room. Surprisingly, it was less crowded in here than you thought it might be. A few minglers were scattered about the room’s perimeter, but they all kept away from the center of the room, which was occupied by none other than Choi Yeonjun and all his brainless, rich-boy worshippers. You quickly scanned the group, not able to make out Soobin among them. When you realized he wasn’t there, you were partly relieved and partly disappointed. If was to be anywhere at this party, it would probably be with these guys.

With a quick turn on your heel, you planned to make your way out of the living room before Yeonjun could see you. The last thing you wanted was for the boy with a bruised ego to see you, regardless of whether or not he had been the one to invite you.

“Y/N? You came?”

Too late.

Plastering a forced grin to your face, you slowly turned to face Yeonjun, who had just called your name. He was eyeing you with slight surprise, but soon, a smirk slipped across his lips as he motioned for you to come over. You had to hold back your sigh, wishing there was some way for you to get out of this situation. It was all Jen’s fault that you had to show up in the first place. You decided you were going to demand an extra ten cents be added to your raise the next time you saw your pushy boss.

“Hey Yeonjun,” you said once you had walked over to him. “I figured I’d stop by for a minute or two, since you were kind enough to invite me.”

He smirked, glancing at a few of his friends. They shared a knowing laugh with one another, but the meaning of it was lost to you. You wanted nothing more than to get away from them, but that wasn’t an option.

“You’re too busy to go out with me to a basketball game but free enough to come to a party, huh?” He asked.

You blinked, digging your nails into your arms. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s fine, really,” He drawled, swirling his plastic cup of beer in his hand. “You didn’t think I’d be upset or anything did you? I only asked you out because I was dared to shack up with you. But I’m guessing you already knew that, since you’re so smart and all.”

Your eyes went wide, but you managed to control the rest of your expression. It was just like you had guessed—Yeonjun had invited you to the party with the sole purpose of making a scene.

If you survived the night, Jen was never going to hear the end of it.

“You’re not gonna say anything?” He asked, pushing himself to his feet. You could tell by the slight stumble in his step and his hooded eyes that he had quite a bit to drink. He took a step towards you, causing you to back up immediately. Your back hit the wall, and you placed your palms against it as Yeonjun towered over you.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I know why you’re here anyways.” He leaned forward, his lips hovering near your ear. “You’re here to see Soobin, aren’t you? Since he’s the only one here willing to waste his time on filth like you.”

Your blood boiled, and you had to clench your fists at your sides to control your anger.

“Don’t,” You seethed, “Call me that.”

“Call you what? Filth? Or sweetheart? Why, is that something good old Binnie used to call you—”

He never got to finish that sentence, because with one big burst of anger, you stomped on his toe as hard as you could with your worn-out platform sneaker.

“What the hell!” He screeched, drawing the attention of several others in the room. His outburst even caused a few of the couples to pull away from each other’s faces long enough to eavesdrop.

Before you could even say anything back, lukewarm liquid was splashed up in your face, burning your eyes and nose. You gasped, running your hands over your eyes to see Yeonjun with his now empty cup of beer pointed towards you.

“Think twice before you act out against me next time, sweetheart. Never forget your place.”

Tears of anger burned in your eyes, and you scanned the room to see several people exchanging whispers and giggles as they glanced in your direction. You pushed past Yeonjun and quickly made your way out the back door of the house, unable to stand the humiliation for a moment longer.

Soobin arrived in the living room just in time to see you leave.

He wasted no time in rushing towards Yeonjun, grabbing hold of his arm. “Yeonjun, was that Y/N?” He asked, eyes quickly taking in the puddle of alcohol on the floor and the empty cup in Yeonjun’s hand. “What happened?”

“Nothing you need to worry your pretty blue head about, Big Choi. I just put her in her place is all.”

Soobin’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean you ‘put her in her place?’”

Yeonjun laughed, giving Soobin a nonchalant pat on the back. “Just drop it, would you? It has nothing to do with you.”

“What did you say, Yeonjun?”

Yeonjun was growing irritated now. He huffed out a breath, crossing his arms over his chest. “I said it has nothing to do with you, Soobin. I know you like to hang around people like that pothead Felix, but the rest of us live in the real world, where we’d rather not waste our time with those who have no future anyways. I bet he’s the one that got you to dye your hair that god awful blue, isn’t he?”

Soobin bit the inside of his cheek. He so badly wished to rip Yeonjun to shreds then and there. If he had Felix’s courage, the cocky bastard would have been knocked to the ground ages ago. But if there was one thing Soobin was sure he could never be, it was brave. And so, despite his rage, he remained silent, his eyes practically burning a hole through Yeonjun’s chest from how intently he was glaring.

It seemed as though Yeonjun was about to say something, but his eyes landed on the bit of red that peeked through the front pocket of Soobin’s denim jacket. Before Soobin had time to defend himself, Yeonjun had reached forward and snatched it from his pocket, revealing the large paper heart—his valentine for you.

“So this is why you care so much,” Yeonjun said, laughing as his eyes scanned the glittery words that decorated the page. “You want her to be your valentine.”

“Give that back,” Soobin said quietly, his hands beginning to shake.

Yeonjun instead lifted his eyes to Soobin, gave him a sickly sweet grin, and ripped the heart straight down the middle. He let the two pieces fall from his hands to the ground, and with them Soobin’s heart went also.

“You’re really willing to try and go against me, and for what? For the sake of a girl who can’t even afford a new pair of jeans and a boy that smokes his life away in the bathroom stalls?” Yeonjun took a slow step towards Soobin, his eyes glinting with a sinister determination. “You may be rich, Soobin, but if you choose to lower yourself to their standards, you may as well be dirt poor just like they are.”

With his hands clenched into tight fists, his glasses sliding down his nose, and his heart quite literally in two pieces on the floor below him, Soobin decided that he had had enough.

“I’d much rather be associated with people who are kind and have actual depth to their character than be lumped together with a bunch of pricks like you with no real personality—because that’s something you can’t buy with daddy’s paycheck.”

He had to physically restrain himself from slapping his hand across his own mouth in shock. It was as if the spirit of Felix himself had possessed him to say such harsh things. He wondered where Felix was then, wishing more than ever before to have his best friend by his side as he began to tremble from either the rush of adrenaline that coursed through his veins, or from fear. Or perhaps it was both.

He didn’t have time to ponder it any longer before Yeonjun’s fist collided with his nose, resulting in a sickening crack as pain echoed throughout his face in tidal waves.

He stumbled backward as people began to shout, raising his hand to his nose and gasping when he saw that his palm was covered in blood.

Beomgyu had his arms wrapped around Yeonjun, who was desperately trying to lunge towards Soobin once again.

“Knock it off, Yeonjun!” Beomgyu shouted, pushing the elder back. “His dad is on the school board! Are you trying to get expelled?”

Beomgyu looked over his shoulder at the still stunned Soobin, who was gaping at the blood that now stained his once white turtleneck.

“Get lost, Soobin,” Beomgyu said, to which Soobin only blinked in reply, his ears ringing.

“Now!”

Head spinning, Soobin picked up the two halves of his paper heart, stuffed them into his jeans, and stumbled out the same door he had seen you go through just minutes before. After checking to make sure his glasses were still intact—they were, thankfully—he shook his head in an effort to clear his mind of the static, eyes scanning the front lawn looking for any trace of you.

It didn’t take long for his eyes to spot you among the now dwindling crowd of partygoers. Your bright pink sweater stood out against the darkness, so he was able to recognize you even with your back towards him. He sniffed, wiping the back of his hand against his dripping nose as he slowly made his way to where you sat on the curb, your feet planted on the asphalt street. He wished that he looked a bit more presentable—when he played this scene out in his head over the years in which he would finally reunite with you, he never imagined himself dazed and covered in blood.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, he supposed.

When he reached you, he simply stood beside you in silence for a moment, unsure of what to say. He could tell that you sensed his presence, but you refused to look up at him as you kept your face buried in your hands. He could have sworn he heard a few muffled sobs slip through your fingers, but of course, he wasn’t going to bring that up.

Eventually he decided to slip his jacket off of his shoulders, leaning down to drape it over you. You still kept your head down as he sat beside you on the curb, but he watched you grip the jacket and pull it tighter around your body. He smiled a bit, holding the collar of his turtleneck against his throbbing nose.

“Thank you,” you muttered, wiping your hand across your eyes. You finally looked over at him, and when you did, you couldn’t hold back your gasp. “My God Soobin, what happened to your face?”

“Oh, well, I might have gotten punched,” He said quickly, trying to wave off your concern. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Punched? By who?”

He looked down at the ground, sniffing as a drop of blood hit the pavement. “Yeonjun,” he muttered under his breath.

“I’m sorry, did you just say Yeonjun? Are you insane? Why on earth would you butt heads with the Choi Yeonjun?”

Soobin didn’t say anything in response, he simply stared at you, eyes wide with beer dripping off the ends of your hair, makeup smeared across your face, your sweater stained down the front. It didn’t seem to take long for you to put the pieces together, as the shock left your face and was replaced with something akin to guilt.

“Oh,” You said, looking back down at your shoes.

“So she knows that I did it all for her,” Soobin thought.

For some reason, the idea of that both terrified and excited him.

A second later, he glanced over to see you ripping one of the hand-sewed patches of fabric off your jeans, leaving a square of your skin exposed to the chilly night air. You leaned towards him, pushing his hand away from his nose so you could use the patch to clean up some of the blood on and around his puffy red nose.

“Y/N, your pants!” He exclaimed, trying to push your hand away. “They’re ruined!”

“I’m not worried about my pants, you idiot,” You said, swatting his hand away as you continued to press the cloth against his skin. “You got punched in the face because of me, this is the least I could do.”

“That was my choice though,” He muttered, although he stopped trying to resist your touch. He ignored the way his heart thrummed harder in his chest, hoping that you couldn’t hear.

“Well, this is my choice too.” Your eyes flicked to his for a brief moment, your bottom lip pulled between your teeth. “Why did you do it, by the way?”

“Do what?”

“Stand up to Yeonjun for me and get a nasty nosebleed as a result.”

“Oh.” He blinked slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on yours. “Just ‘cause.”

“Because . . . ?”

“Because of you.” He blurted, causing your hand to go still against him. He swallowed his fear, braving the best smile that he could. “Just you. That was my only reason.”

You didn’t say anything as your hand fell from his face, the cloth clutched between your fingers. The anxiety he had tried his best to suppress came rushing up all at once, and he was surprised that his ears didn’t begin to squeal like a tea kettle from all the pressure.

“Y/N,” He said, gently placing his hand over yours despite how his fingers trembled. “Why did you pull away from me?”

“What?”

“Four years ago. Why did you stop talking to me?”

You were quiet for a moment, digging into the ground with the toe of your sneaker. Soobin held his breath until you finally replied with, “I was afraid.”

“Afraid? Of what?”

“We were getting older, Binnie,” You said, and his heart skipped at the use of your old nickname for him. “You and I, we’re from very different walks of life. You get to hang out with people like Yeonjun, whereas I get a cup of beer poured all over my face just for existing, and you get a fist to the nose for trying to stand up for me. We’re from different sides of the track, one might say.”

“So?” Soobin asked, his hand tightening around yours. “Did you really think that would affect us that much, Y/N?”

You frowned, glancing down at his hand over yours.

“I thought you’d be embarrassed of me,” You said, your voice barely above a whisper.

“Embarrassed?” Soobin’s eyes went wide as he gripped your hand tighter still, pulling it into his lap. “Y/N, I would never, ever be embarrassed of you. Besides, have you seen my best friend? He’s on a first name basis with the principal because of how often he gets written up for smoking behind the school. If I’m not embarrassed of him, why would I ever be embarrassed of you?”

You laughed, wiping the back of your hand across your eyes once more. “I guess I was worried about nothing, huh?” You sniffed, giving his hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry, Soobin.”

He shook his head, squeezing your hand right back. “Don’t apologize. You’re here now, that’s what matters. Do think we could—you know—”

“Pick up where we left off?” You smiled, nodding vigorously. “I’d like that very much, Binnie.”

He beamed then, almost pinching himself to be sure that he was not dreaming, but the pain in his nose was real enough to remind him of that on its own. He jumped to his feet, pulling you right up with him.

“In that case, how about we finally go on that Valentine’s date I had planned all the way back then?”

“Date?” You asked, a brow raised. “Is it really considered a date if two friends are just hanging out?”

He didn’t respond as he pulled you along behind him towards the bushes where he and Felix had hidden his bike. He crouched down and moved the branches aside, feeling his heart drop to his stomach when he realized that his bike was, in fact, no longer there.

He shot up, turning to face you with eyes wide. “Felix—that bastard took my bike!”

You were quiet for a moment, but then, you burst into boisterous laughter, leaving Soobin utterly confused.

“It’s not funny, Y/N!” He whined, shoving your shoulder lightly. “I was supposed to take you to the Dairy Shack on my bike!”

“It is funny,” You said between bursts of laughter. “Only you would get such a rusty old piece of metal stolen from you.”

He pushed his lips out in a pout, sliding his glasses up his sore nose. “It’s a good bike, don’t make fun of it.”

You grinned, interlocking his fingers with yours, which was enough to instantly wipe the pout right off his face.

“Let’s just walk, Binnie. The Dairy Shack isn’t that far anyways.”

You were right; the walk to your favorite milkshake place was very close to the house where the party had occurred. Although Felix stealing his bike had thrown an obvious wrench in his plans, it was a minor hiccup, and one he could most definitely handle. Besides, he wouldn’t have to see Felix until the next day anyways. He could deal with his frustration then.

At least, that’s what he thought anyways, until the two of you spotted Felix at the skatepark on your way to the dairy shack.

Soobin’s eyes took in the deplorable sight before him—from where he stood on the dimly lit sidewalk, he could see Felix and a girl he had never seen before, their faces nearly pressed together, and most importantly, with his bike discarded a few yards away from them.

“Soobin,” You said, tugging on his arm. “They look like they’re busy, let’s just go—”

But Soobin, who had little patience when it came to Felix messing up his plans, didn’t let you finish before he screamed, “Give me back my freaking bike!”

You had to hold back your snort of laughter at his choice of words. Even when he was trying to sound angry, he was undeniably adorable.

Soobin watched as Felix startled, clutching his spliff between his fingers as he glared daggers back at his friend. Soobin gulped, trying not to let his fear show on his face. What did he have to be afraid of, anyways? He was the victim of thievery, and his best friend was the offender.

Felix took a big step towards him, but he paused, his eyes landing on your interlocked hands. Soobin glanced down as well, his face growing furiously warm as he realized the situation he had gotten himself into.

He decided to divert the subject before it could even be brought up by saying, “I can’t believe you stole my bike! All this time I was trying to hide it from strangers, but you, my best friend! I should’ve been hiding it from you!”

Soobin noticed Felix’s female companion step off the skateboard and walk over in his direction, and for a second he felt bad for possibly ruining her night with his best friend. However, his frustration was more prominent in the moment as he fixed his gaze back on his best friend, who had fixed a mischievous smirk upon his face that made warning sirens blare in Soobin’s head right away.

“Now, now, buddy,” Felix said, his voice calm and carefree as ever. It probably had something to do with what he had just smoked, but Soobin didn’t care all that much. “You’re just gonna have to let me borrow it for a little longer.”

Soobin nearly laughed at the audacity of such a statement. “You are gonna give me the bike, or—”

“How about this, Soobs?” Soobin’s lips clamped shut at his friend’s interruption, as the thief in question gestured with his joint to where Soobin’s fingers were locked with yours. “You let me keep your bike for the night, and I don’t tell your dad about you hanging out with the opposite gender.”

Unable to control yourself, you let out a big laugh. Soobin would have felt betrayed, but he was more terrified than anything else at the idea of his father finding out that he was taking a girl out without his permission. He would be grounded for weeks—no, months.

“You wouldn’t.”

Felix’s lips curled up even more into a twisted grin that Soobin wished he had the guts to slap off his face. “God, just imagine the look on Mr. Choi’s face. Imagine him finding out about your premarital hand holding.”

No. Not the hand holding.

Soobin almost felt faint, but he steeled himself to the best of his abilities as he cleared his throat. “One night, Lix,” he warned. “If I don’t see it on my porch in the morning, you’ll be sorry!”

“Oh, I’m so scared,” Felix teased. His expression changed a moment later though, when he finally noticed Soobin’s swollen nose and blood-stained turtleneck. “Wait, Soobs, the hell happened to you?”

Soobin, however, had already taken his first steps away from the skatepark, pulling you along behind him. “I’ll tell you later, bud. Enjoy your spliff with that kind girl who you probably don’t deserve!”

“Hey!”

Soobin couldn’t help but laugh as he swung your interlocked hands together, grinning as you let out a laugh as well. The anger that had seeped through him seemed to melt away in an instant as the two of you continued your journey to the Dairy Shack.

“Would your dad really be that upset if he found out about this?” You asked.

Soobin grimaced. “We should probably wait til next year to tell him about this outing. Or maybe the year after that.”

When the two of you had finally reached the Dairy Shack, you waited outside for him while he went in to order your drink. A large chocolate milkshake, with two straws, just like you used to get every time before.

When he had the drink in hand, he walked back outside and sat down beside you on the curb, smiling as you wrapped his jacket tighter around your shoulders. You smiled back up at him, your eyes creasing from the expression. Your smile had always struck him right to his core; he had missed seeing it every day.

He hoped he could see it every morning and every night from that day onward. There was no way he would let you go this time.

He just had to muster up the courage to grab hold of you first.

“You know what, Binnie, you turned out to be a lot taller than I thought you ever would be,” you said as you took one of the straws from his hands. “You’re actually enormous. It’s shocking.”

“Should I find that offensive? It sounds kinda like an insult.”

“Take it however you will,” You teased, leaning over as he popped the plastic lid off the milkshake. He grabbed the cherry by the stem and held it towards you.

“What are you doing?” You asked, holding out your fist. “We have to rock, paper, scissors for it. Remember?”

Soobin laughed as he shook his head. “I’m giving it to you this time. It’s what I planned to do all those years ago, when I asked you to hang out on Valentine’s.”

You seemed to be taken aback, but you simply shrugged as you plucked the cherry from his hand and pulled it from the stem with your teeth, glancing back over at him. It was silent for a moment, but then your eyes landed on the pocket of his jeans, where you could see a bit of red paper poking out. You leaned over even further, reaching your hand out to snatch the paper.

“What are you—hey! Give that back!”

Soobin desperately tried to take his Valentine back from you, but it was too late. You held both halves of what used to be a whole in your hands, your eyes scanning the words as you pieced them together.

“Soobin . . .”

He held his breath. Had his act of young love left you completely speechless? Were you so touched that you would burst into tears?

“This looks like a middle schooler made it.”

He let out the breath in the form of a long, long sigh.

“That’s because it was made by a middle schooler,” He said as he set the milkshake down beside him. “I made it back in the eighth grade. I planned to give it to you that Valentine’s.”

“Oh.” You ran your finger along the card’s surface, the smallest smile creeping across your lips. “Well in that case, it’s not half bad. Why’s it ripped though?”

“Ah—well, Yeonjun . . .”

You nodded, taking another glance at his swollen nose. “No need to elaborate. It seems you had a lot planned for our Valentine’s Day back then. Is there anything else you wanted to do?”

His mouth went dry at that, and he wished that you couldn’t see his face because he was sure that his expression was quite comical. All the way back then, four years prior, he had in fact planned the perfect, ideal day in his head. Picking you up on his bike, giving you the cherry from his milkshake, and presenting you with his hand made card.

There was only one thing left on his list.

He didn’t move at first, willing himself to have enough courage to even look back in your direction. But when he finally did allow his eyes to meet yours, he felt his shoulders relax and his heart rate became more manageable.

He took a deep breath, leaned forward, and pressed his lips against your cheek.

He lingered there for only a moment before he pulled back, daring to pry one of his eyes open to take in the look on your face.

The disappointment was palpable—from the way your brows furrowed together and the way you pursed your lips. His stomach dropped, and he scooted the tiniest bit away from you.

“I’m sorry,” He blurt out, his face growing warmer by the second. “I shouldn’t have done that, I just—”

“Is that all?”

Your question stopped him mid-ramble, his eyes growing wide. “Huh?”

“Is that all?” You repeated, closing the distance between you that he had created. “It’s Valentine’s Day, Soobin. I think we can do better than a peck on the cheek.”

The implications of what you were saying didn’t register with him right away, but when it finally did, he could have sworn his heart began to beat loud enough for the entire town to hear. His hand curled into a fist as he gripped the denim of his jeans. He leaned forward, keeping his eyes open just enough to watch you as he brought his lips closer to yours. He could feel your eyes on him all the while, causing his heart to pound fiercer still within him.

When he was just a breath away, he whispered, “Can you close your eyes?”

“Hm?”

He lifted his hand, gently placing it over your eyes. He leaned closer then, filling the space between you both as his lips met yours. You tasted vaguely of cherry and strawberry slice soda, and he found it quite nice the way his lips seemed to fit perfectly against your own. As the seconds drew on, your hands slipped around his neck, pulling him closer. He slowly let his hand fall from your eyes, tracing lines with the tips of his fingers down your cheek before he cradled your jaw, letting his lips part just enough to taste the sweet sugar on your lips once more.

He thought in a haze that it was a good thing he didn’t drink anything at the party, as kissing you was proving to be intoxicating enough on its own.

When you finally pulled away, leaving your forehead resting against his, he let his eyes flutter open enough to see the euphoric smile that adorned your features. He grinned as well, gently running his thumb against your cheek.

“I think that back then, I had planned to ask you this before kissing you,” He whispered, “But Y/N, will you be my Valentine?”

Instead of a spoken answer, you laughed, leaning forward to capture his lips with yours once again, and that was the only answer Choi Soobin would ever need.

WHEN SOOBIN ARRIVED HOME THAT NIGHT, HE WENT STRAIGHT FOR THE TELEPHONE.

It was kept upstairs at night right outside his parent’s door, to keep himself and his brother from using it in the late hours. Of course, this never stopped Soobin from sneaking it downstairs to his room in the basement to make late night calls to Felix.

And that particular evening, he really needed to give Felix an update.

He grabbed the phone from the small table in the hallway, carefully tiptoeing towards the basement stairs. Before he had even taken the first step down, the bathroom door creaked open. Soobin whipped his head around to see his brother Kai standing there, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he raised a brow at his older brother.

Soobin froze, blinking slowly as he realized the incriminating situation he found himself in.

“Please don’t tell mom,” He whispered, his eyes pleading with his younger brother.

Kai nodded, although Soobin wasn’t quite convinced that the boy was even coherent enough to understand what was going on. Soobin offered a rushed thank you, and ventured his first step down the stairs.

Well, he tried, anyways, and ended up missing the first step. He tumbled down the rest of the stairs, landing on his butt at the very end.

He winced in pain, glad to see that the phone was still intact in his hands. He glanced over his shoulders to see Kai staring down the stairway with wide eyes, his lips parted in shock. Soobin quickly put a finger to his lips, begging his brother for silence.

Kai simply shook his head and walked away, allowing Soobin the freedom to breathe out a sigh of relief.

He quickly ran to his bedroom and shut the door, collapsing onto his bed with the phone as his breaths came in ragged gasps as an aftereffect from his tumble down the stairs. He figured he should have dialed Felix’s number right away, but he couldn’t help but brush his fingers against his lips, remembering the feeling and taste of having yours pressed against them.

He was so caught up in his daze that he didn’t notice Felix calling until the third ring.

He picked it up, breathing heavily into the speaker as he rubbed a sore spot on his lower back.

“Please tell me that panting is from running a marathon, and not what I think you’ve successfully tried.”

Soobin nearly gagged, holding the phone away from his face as he coughed, flustered by his friend's crude words. He brought the phone back to his face and said, “No, you sicko, I just fell down the stairs.”

“How the hell did you manage that with those long legs?”

“That’s not important, Lix!” He laid back onto his pillows then, twirling the phone cord in his hands as he stared up at his ceiling, the memories of his adventure with you that night flooding his mind once more. He couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear as he said, “Look, I need to tell you something important.”

If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that he could hear the smile in Felix’s voice too as his friend replied.

“Well buddy, I got something to tell you too.”

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