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possiblyimbiassed · 2 years

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Metaphorical musings about BBC Sherlock

ETA: I now realise that this rambling got rather difficult to follow, so here’s a TL;DR with the points I’m trying to make:

Redbeard could still have been a dog - Victor’s dog - with all its metaphorical implications.

I think the ending of S4 is based on ages of nostalgical thinking from Conan Doyle’s audience, where ”it’s always 1895”.

But too fit in a truly modern adaptation, paradoxically, I think BBC Sherlock needs to align more with ACD Canon.

Canon didn’t end with Mary and two arguing men in 221B - it ended with Watson driving Holmes to a hotel in London.

This show seems to go in circles, but if we’re inside Sherlock’s head, he needs to wake up, get out of that loop and start living in the modern world (discarding the hetero norm of S4).

The recurring theme of “pilots” does, I believe, remind us of Sherlock’s and John’s relationship as it was presented in the Unaired Pilot.

The ‘pilot’ is also John Watson - the driver. He needs to live up to that.

This was at first going to be an addition to @thewatsonbeekeepers’ excellent meta series about S4 from an EMP perspective, which ended with this little gem of very interesting metaphorical interpretations of TFP (X). But my addition got so lengthy that I thought it would be next to a crime to highjack their thread with it. :)

@thewatsonbeekeepers‘ analysis makes a lot of sense to me on various levels, giving context and suggesting plausible interpretations to a lot of things that have been baffling me for a long time. But it also inspired me to look a bit closer on some running concepts of this show, as well as its (supposed) ending in relation to its very first beginning - the Unaired Pilot - and try to connect them metaphorically. Here are some of my own musings regarding their meta:

The Redbeard conundrum

We left off with about 20 minutes to go, as Sherlock is sinking into the black depths of his mind – the deepest we’re ever going to get as well as the darkest in colour, chiming with the rest of the series. And then – flashes of Eurus, Redbeard and young Sherlock bleeding in through his memory. @sagestreet’s meta argues that Victor Trevor could genuinely have been Sherlock’s first love even at that age, and I don’t dispute the possibility, but I do have an alternate reading for slightly later in age, based on one image alone. Jump back in your mind to TAB, when Mycroft tells Sherlock he was there for him the last time – we get a shot of a teenager in a drug den which is never repeated again, but which has a sense of absolute past trauma attached to it.

I totally agree with @sagestreet that every dog in this show represents homosexuality – every one of them, including Redbeard. But I also agree with @thewatsonbeekeepers that Victor Trevor could also have meant trauma to Sherlock a bit later in life than what we see in TFP. A metaphorical reading does not necessarily exclude a textual reading, I believe. I do have some problems, though, with the concept that was presented to us at the end of TFP: that Redbeard was supposedly not a dog, but rather Sherlock’s little friend Victor Trevor who died as a child. Because this doesn’t quite fit with the data, does it? Why couldn’t the name Redbeard have meant both the dog and the friend – and be a metaphor for Sherlock’s internalised homophobia?

I’m reluctant to buy the idea that all the flashbacks that Sherlock had of the word ‘Redbeard’ and/or this specific Irish setter with red fur - in HLV, TST, TLD and TFP - would exclusively be his mind’s substitution of a childhood friend who was murdered. The data we’re given seems rather more complex than that. Here’s a resume:

The concept of Redbeard was introduced already in TSoT, when Mycroft (Brain!Mycroft?) was warning Sherlock to ‘not get [emotionally] involved’ with John’s wedding. Sherlock answered with “I’m not a child anymore”, which suggests that ‘Redbeard’ occurred in his childhood.

In HLV the word “Redbeard” is assumed by Magnussen to be a trigger word for Sherlock. That would perhaps work if the dog were the thing in Sherlock’s life he had cared the most about. But if the thing that would trigger Sherlock’s psyche was actually his friend, why wouldn’t “Victor” be an even stronger trigger word?

Then we see the actual dog in Sherlock’s mind palace after he’s shot in HLV, where it’s implied that Redbeard was ‘put down’ (just like the inn-keepers in THoB claimed to have done with the Hound).

In TAB we don’t see the dog, we only hear the muffled whimpers of Redbeard distracting Holmes in Sherlock’s drug-induced mind palace scenario, when Watson asks him about his feelings for women.

The word ‘Redbeard’ is also scribbled on Mycroft’s note in the plane scene in TAB, after Mycroft (brain!Mycroft?) has declared that he will always be there for Sherlock.

In TST, when Sherlock is (supposedly) drugged by Mary, we see a dreamy scene with the Irish setter:

and then we can see Victor Trevor playing pirates with little Sherlock and hear the dog bark at the same time. We can see from Victor’s checkered shirt in TFP that he’s the same little guy, but in TFP he wear’s the dog’s handkerchief:

In TLD, when Sherlock is on the brink of throwing himself into the Thames, we catch a very short glimpse of the same scene, repeating Eurus’ song from TST and TFP, as if to hammer the whole idea in: little Sherlock played pirates with a dog and a friend.

In TFP, Sherlock claims that Redbeard was his dog, who little Eurus locked up somewhere. But then adult Eurus reminds him in another scene that their father was allergic to dogs, so they were never allowed to have one.

Considering all these flashbacks, it seems rather as if Eurus – Sherlock’s gay trauma according to @thewatsonbeekeepers – is simply trying to get rid of the ‘dog’ – homosexuality – and claim that Victor was dead anyway, drowned in that same well where she was trying to drown John, so why keep bothering about the dog?

I strongly suspect that one of the main purposes with BBC Sherlock is to encourage the audience to actually read Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes – all 60 of them if possible. :-) Mofftiss haven’t exactly been true to ACD canon textually – in fact I think they have deviated miles and miles away from the original stories, especially in S4 (Watson never had a child, for example, and Mary Morstan was never an assassin. Watson naturally never ever beat up Holmes so he was hospitalised, that was extremely absurd). But on the other hand the subtext is very similar, I believe. I even think some of the metaphors are exactly the same, which our show might want to point out.

The name Redbeard is not mentioned in canon as far as I know, but Victor Trevor is, in The Gloria Scott (GLOR), and he’s not a child. Trevor was, according to Holmes, “the only friend I made during the two years I was at college”, so @thewatsonbeekeepers’ reference to the scene in TAB with teenager Sherlock in a drug den as a traumatic event, possibly connected to an older Victor than in TFP, is very interesting. Holmes describes Trevor as “the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.”

This is evidence that Victor Trevor did in fact have a dog, even if its name is not mentioned, and Holmes got bitten by it, which effectively tied him to Trevor. This seems to fit extremely well with @sagestreet’s analogy. So if in our show Sherlock’s father was ”allergic” to dogs (meaning that Sherlock wasn’t allowed to express homosexuality), then Redbeard might actually still have existed belonging to Victor, right? And Victor may have named his dog after the pirate character he used to play with Sherlock. Maybe Sherlock loved Redbeard as if he were his own, and his friend too, but Redbeard might have been put down for some reason, symbolising the repression of Sherlock’s love for his friend? In GLOR, though, Victor Trevor doesn’t die; he moves to Terai, India, to a tea plantation… ;-)

Apart from playing pirates as a boy, in TFP we also see Sherlock hijack a fishing boat and actually become a pirate. I don’t think piracy is ever mentioned as such in canon, but the closest ACD comes to this is probably the story about Victor Trevor’s father – also referred to as ”the Governor”(!). In his youth, Mr Trevor (whose real name was actually James Armitage) got involved in criminality and ended up hijacking a ship – The Gloria Scott – where he participated in a mutiny which eventually blew up the ship in the middle of the ocean. Armitage was among the survivors, but so was Hudson, a man who later caused his death from fear when he threatened to expose his great secret. Considering that homosexuality was regarded a crime in Doyles’ time, I think this points to Victor’s father being a gay man pressured with exposure.

The need for a new start

As for the ending of TFP, I’m still totally baffled by it, after all these years. I think it has been likely to produce cognitive dissonance (X) in the audience, which is probably one of the reasons that so many fans felt uncomfortable after S4. To me, it’s hugely contradictory in a logical sense, and I’ve always had problems trying to wrap my head around the very different messages that I think it sends out.

On one hand, as @thewatsonbeekeepers so brilliantly explains in their meta, Sherlock has finally managed to connect his heart with his brain, going through all the mental trials from his metaphorical sister in TFP. He has also re-built his home and he and John are symbolically running out of ‘Rathbone Place’ (and by association all the old adaptations) in the final scene. Which points to there being room for new, modern things to happen in their story, no longer just ’business as usual’.

On the other hand we have comphet!Mary’s final voiceover about the legend and the non-importance of who Sherlock and John really are, which didn’t at all ring true to me in a logical sense. Why would Sherlock go to all this trouble of finding his true self, connecting heart with brain etc, if it didn't even matter? And why would a ghost, who didn’t even experience TFP while alive, be allowed to take over the role as storyteller and have the final word? I think this speaks for some huge un-solved problems and ‘lose ends’ that are not at all tied together properly - neither on the text-, subtext- or meta-levels.

And - what’s even more important in my opinion - Sherlock and John seem to be frozen in time in the final scene.

We’re told by comphet!Mary that “...there are two men sitting arguing in a scruffy flat... like they’ve always been there... and they always will.” In TFP, the address 221B Baker Street is described as a kind of eternal institution which people - even Mycroft - turn to as a last resort, when everything else fails. The flat is rebuilt and some piece of furniture is changed, but nothing is modernized. Even the smiley face on the wall, on which Sherlock shot holes in his fit of frustration in TGG, is painted again and done the exact same thing to. But as everyone loves the place, no one protests. Status quo is reestablished.

This may be the conclusion of many adaptations, but it’s not what happened in canon, is it? This is not even remotely similar to the original ending. In ACD canon, it’s not “always 1895″, as so many readers through the ages have nostalgically claimed. Canon’s LAST ends in 1914 - almost 20 years later - with Holmes and Watson driving away together in a car, with Watson at the wheel. Byt that time, Holmes is no longer living at Baker Street - he has retired. In fact, there’s a whole story (LION) where Holmes is now living in Sussex close to the sea, in spite of his earlier statements about how much he dislikes the countryside. So in canon, he spends his time there (when he’s not on super-important spying missions for the government). And in LAST there are even some indications that Watson and Holmes are heading for a hotel room in London - not 221B. I have tried to expand on these conclusions in a recent comment on @sagestreet‘s last meta (X), providing some circumstantial evidence that might be interesting. ;-)

I’m not sure about @thewatsonbeekeepers’ claim that their meta has “just been an academic exercise”. While we don’t have any solid evidence of a pending S5 at this point, logical reasoning - and ACD Canon - still tells me that TFP must not necessarily be the end of the show. If Sherlock is in a coma, any future new content needs for him to wake up, he needs to open his eyes in the show’s reality, for TFP to ever make sense on a plot level. For what’s the point of having a story go in circles? (I tried to analyse the significance of time in BBC Sherlock here (X) some time ago).

Sherlock Holmes and codes

I really like @thewatsonbeekeepers’ musings about Greg Lestrade’s name and the implication of Sherlock suddenly having it right in TFP:

This is tied into Sherlock’s inability to move beyond the mistakes of canon – we see this weird inability to stick in modern Sherlock’s universe in other ways too, like the slightly old-fashioned nature of his costume (passed off as ‘timeless’, but clearly belonging to old as much as modern times), the deerstalker situation, thinking England has a king, not knowing the earth goes around the sun, not knowing Madonna, seeming to forget who Thatcher is – the list goes on, but Greg is the most constant one. Calling him Greg is a symbol that Sherlock has broken out of the confines of all of the past Sherlocks and has completely slipped into the modern version – which is exactly where he needs to be.

I totally agree that this is where he needs to be, and I also agree about Sherlock’s clothing here. I seem to recall ACD’s Watson talks about “a certain quiet primness of dress” in Holmes, which most probably meant a suit, something that our modern Sherlock seems to still use as signature clothing as well, which might appear a bit unnecessarily formal today. But let’s not forget that in the Gay Unaired Pilot, Sherlock was wearing black jeans and a rather more casual shirt with rolled-up sleeves:

Overall, I got a more “modern” feeling from Sherlock’s looks and behavior in the Pilot than in the rest of the show. I think code is significant in BBC Sherlock, and this goes for ACD Canon as well. And I believe that “pilot” might be one of the more important code words, as I tried to explain in this meta about codes a couple of years ago (X).

In TFP, the “Golf” in “Golf-Whisky-X-ray” (the message that Sherrinford picks up from Sherlock’s and John’s highjacked boat) literally means “I require a pilot” in marine signals - a marine pilot, that is. Which metaphorically might suggest that Sherlock needs someone to help him navigate their ‘ship’ through the dangerous waters (= emotions).

There’s also the sleeping pilot in TFP, who little Eurus - probably representing a part of Sherlock - can’t seem to wake up. She requires a pilot to land safely, but for some reason she calls him “the driver” instead of “the pilot”.

A pilot’s uniform with four stripes on it means the rank of Captain, right? (X) And who do we know who is a military Captain? Why, Captain John Watson, of course, from Fifth Northumberland Fusillers! :-)

In the unaired Pilot Jeff Hope - one of several John mirrors in this show - drives Sherlock home in his cab, instead of to Roland Kerr’s Further Education College as in ASiP. This journey ends at 221B where Hope tries to kill Sherlock with poison, which is stopped by John who shoots Hope (and we don’t see Sherlock stomping on his wound in the Pilot, probably making his aneurysm burst; in Pilot it’s just John). So that would basically be ‘John killing John’, which @thewatsonbeekeepers presents as a risk in TFP - the risk that makes Sherlock realize that he needs to open his eyes and save John Watson from killing himself.

I agree, but I also want to focus a bit on John killing himself being a clear risk already from day one in BBC Sherlock. In their second meta of the series (X), @thewatsonbeekeepers also mentions this:

‘Did you miss me?’ works for both of those layers – the danger John is in from criminals is something that was really apparent in s1 and 2, but John’s endangerment from suicide is also something that was there at the beginning of the series. Sherlock changed these things – and didn’t realise he was the changing factor, but something in his subconscious is telling him that with him gone, John Watson is once again in danger.

Most of us probably thought that John had found a far better use for the gun in his drawer in the first episode of the show when he killed a villain instead of himself with it. But looking at it metaphorically, this course of events maybe wasn’t that good either. In canon’s first story STUD, Jefferson Hope dies from an aneurysm - close to the heart; not to the brain as in ASiP, and not from a gunshot at all. Both metaphorically and literally, Hope died from a broken heart. Rather than a villain, he was an avenger who killed two criminals who had caused the death of his loved one and her father and got away with it.

As far as I can recall, in ACD’s stories neither Watson nor Holmes ever shoots anyone, with one exception: they shoot Tonga, the little guy threatening them with poisoned arrows in SIGN. Who I feel pretty sure is meant to represent Cupido, the little guy with the love arrows, of whom ACD wrote this poem (X). They shoot Tonga, the Agra treasure is lost and as a result of that, Watson marries Mary Morstan instead of staying with Holmes. And then she becomes Mary Watson (representing the heteronormative concept of ’marry Watson’). Love (between Holmes and Watson, I presume) is presented as a bad, toxic guy in canon.

And in BBC Sherlock Jeff Hope is presented as a bad, toxic guy. The little guy with the arrows being a villain is also mentioned in TSoT, which is drawing from SIGN. In a flashback related by Sherlock at John’s wedding, we see a very small guy chasing John and Sherlock over a rooftop, trying to hit them with darts from his blowpipe. This case is never explained in the show, but from John’s online blog (case called “The Poison Giant”) we learn about a very short jewel thief called James Swandale, who had killed people with poisoned darts. He and his giant friend also tried to kill John and Sherlock (note the symbolism here), but they never got to know why. Metaphorical meanings throughout canon, picked up by BBC Sherlock.

Already in ASiP Sherlock claims he can identify “an airline pilot by his left thumb”. In the unaired Pilot, however, the pilot’s thumb for some odd reason was instead “a retired plumber’s left hand” (the rest of the quote is identical between the Pilot and ASiP). And, as @kateis-cakeis pointed out long ago, the whole filming of the Pilot is mirrored in ASiP; every single scene these two similar episodes have in common is reversed and reflected like a mirror. As far as I can see ASiP references the Pilot.

And then we have the female pilot in TAB, who comes to ask Sherlock if he had a “pleasant flight” after his OD trip on the plane.

Four stripes = Captain, right? John. Turns out she very much resembles Lady Carmichael from his MP adventure. (And still I think we have good reason to believe that both characters were only occurring in Sherlock’s EMP).

All in all, I think this points to the concept of “pilot” being an important element to set things right in this show, and that of course has to do with John; he’s the ‘driver’. Some of us have even been discussing that this show seems to go in circles with lots of recurring themes. Canon doesn’t end with 221B; it starts with it. So the full circle is closed with TFP, unlike canon. But returning to the Pilot and things as they were between Sherlock and John at the end of that episode, could also mean the beginning of a new course of their relationship. A version that was never allowed to be shown before because of homophobia, but that new course would ultimately be more consistent with canon, rather than with people’s nostalgic perception of canon for 100+ years.

@thewatsonbeekeepers mentioned in their other meta about TFP (X) that the Governor of Sherrinford is a John mirror, who lost his authority when Eurus - the ‘gay trauma’ part of Sherlock - managed to manipulate him. The Governor ends up shooting himself - ‘John killing John’ (again). And indeed John’s character seems a bit weak as a doctor in S4. For example is his competence questioned by both Culverton and Sherlock in TLD (but Sherlock still wanted to be examined by John earlier in TLD :) ). This is consistent with canon’s DYIN, where Holmes horribly manipulated Watson to believe he had a disease that was “contagious by touch” and even insulted his competence (“you are only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications”), in order to set a trap for Culverton Smith.

So my conclusion is that Sherlock’s manipulations of John - especially faking his own death after TRF - might have played a part in John’s lost authority and even in him being suicidal. But my point with all this rambling is that maybe John is meant to regain the lead now, to “buck up a bit” as Mrs Hudson puts it in TLD, before he’s finally allowed to be behind the wheel of her fast sports car. Maybe things will sort themselves out once Sherlock starts to break out from the circle and finally be honest with John, even let John take the lead, without fear of losing him to the villains, and once John starts to regain confidence in himself and who he really is. If they (and we) don’t need any ‘further education’ at Roland Kerr’s, John can simply drive Sherlock home now, wherever that is. :-)

@raggedyblue @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked @sagestreet @ebaeschnbliah

#metaphorical reading #bbc sherlock #arthur conan doyle

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mwagneto · 2 years

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okayyy as per my "must watch every new sh adaptation" contract i watched enola holmes 2 so here's my thoughts

first of all it was way better than the first one but that's not saying much coz that bar is incredibly low since i hated the first one

but the thing is. i only liked this because the bits with sherlock were cool and i really like their take on him which is ironic since the whole point of these movies is that enola is a cool interesting #girlboss and better than her brother but then the only good parts of the movie are the parts with her brother coz she's just insanely boring😭😭 but also it was just . SO bad to see holmes without watson. he shouldn't be alone!! actually im making this a separate post

the plot was so . painfully predictable like idk if anyone else felt it but for me any time there was, well, anything, i immediately went "oh it's [solution] . no wait that'd be wayyyy too fucking simple even a toddler would guess this there's no way it's this" and then it was that. every single time. like im not kidding this happened w literally every clue/mystery/reveal etc like. broooo!!!!

they repeated the bs of the first movie where enola barely solves anything and it takes her ages to realise anything while they show sherlock figuring out the same things in seconds and then they constantly parade her around like shes smarter than sherlock while she not only never actually figures out anything that he doesn't, it's actually the opposite

another thing i hated in the first movie that they brought into this too and that many period dramas fall victim to is the way they do activism like. idk how to explain this one well but why is the feminist and workers rights message of the movie viewed through a modern lense despite being set in 1885. like we dont need someone to look us in the eyes and snarkily be like girls can fight! girls should vote! victorian orphans working in factories is bad! when literally anyone with a brain already knows that

then there's the worst offense imo which is that . it's just insanely racist ?????? like how are you gonna do colourblind casting but only when it suits you. ofc all the lords in parliament are white men but somehow the cops are people of colour??????? and then ofc there's worst bit where where netflix finally cast a dark skinned black woman and SHE'S FUCKING MORIARTY???? and she kills children in order to have more money??????!😭😭😭😭😭 are y'all insane... like i wannnnt to say that we should be able to cast poc to play villains without it having racist implications but girl not when every main character except a random orphan and a woman who's in like 3 scenes are white.

#also didnt they say sh would be bisexual and then he just wasn't. lmao #that's not like an actual issue it's just funny #i went from best to worst so idk if racism being at the end is jarring but like. that was sooo bad bruh i #actually cant believe they did that. why would you make the money hungry child murderer a black woman💀#enola holmes #enola holmes 2 #sh stuff #sh reviews

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denimbex1986 · 5 months

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'One of the virtues of the best actors is versatility. It is the ability to go from one character to another without leaving traces of the previous one , so that the viewer can discover in each composition someone different, beyond the matrix. Perhaps that is why it must have been difficult for more than one person to find in the dark Tom Ripley the sexy priest from Fleabag who broke the mold of television priests . There is enormous transformation work in Andrew Scott .

The 47-year-old Irish actor, who since before he was 20 has lent his face and body to many fictional creatures, has had an interesting peak of popularity when he played the priest who fell in love with Fleabag , the protagonist of the eponymous series, created and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge .

The dramatic comedy released in 2016, owner of acid humor and a few television awards, had a very juicy character in its second season (in 2019): the priest who married Fleabag's father and who came to doubt his own vocation after having crossed paths with hers .

The scenes shared in that batch of six episodes managed to bring out sparks, to create an unmistakable chemistry between the two, to the delight of the viewers.

The screen - small or large - in the world had many priests who conquered the heroine, such as Camila's Ladislao by Imanol Arias or Father Coraje by Facundo Arana . But Fleabag 's had extra seasonings that made it different, both inside and outside the church.

He was funny, daring, capable of using bad words no matter what . It was a good listen for the confessions of the commanded woman with a past that tortured her and a present that altered her. He came to consider whether to continue wearing her cassock or stay trapped in the fiery passion that she ignited in him , whether they saw each other or not. He knew how to think about it.

“The priest” , as he was quoted in the script, hesitated to give way to his emotions above his religious vocation. And she, who already demonstrated from chapter one that she was capable of breaking down the fourth wall to speak to the public, was moving forward: she knew how to seduce, despite her low self-esteem .

From the colorful priest to the black and white murderer

But nothing remained of that man who remained in the memory of the fans of that irreverent and groundbreaking comedy (except, of course, the complete episodes on various platforms and certain viral cuts on the networks). And now, five years later, Scott shines from the darkness of Tom Ripley, the central character of Ripley, the black and white Netflix miniseries that became a streaming rage .

Born in Dublin on October 21, 1976, Scott received the Laurence Olivier Award in 2005 among other statuettes that highlight his talent. The priest from Fleabag won him a Television Critics Award (and a Golden Globe nomination), and Professor Jim Moriarty, archvillain from Sherlock , earned him the BAFTA TV for best supporting actor of 2012.

He will surely receive statuettes for his work in We Are All Strangers , a 2023 film that Star+ premieres this Wednesday, in which he shares the bill with Paul Mescal , the male protagonist of the great series Normal People.

Although he was born and raised in Ireland, he decided to train artistically in London. She worked with greats like Anthony Hopkins, Claire Foy (the young queen of The Crown) and Emma Thompson .

And he could already be considered a great one, especially after the enormous work of composing Ripley's killer , in a new audiovisual adaptation of the novels by Patricia Highsmith .

Scott devours each of the eight episodes of the season, with remarkable handling of silences and tension, in a production that makes narrative slowness an achievement. It's a different series . How different his character is from those of his large gallery of creatures in whom he always finds his soul. And the nuances .'

#Andrew Scott #All of Us Strangers #Paul Mescal #Normal People #Anthony Hopkins #Emma Thompson #Claire Foy #Phoebe Waller-Bridge #Fleabag #Hot Priest #Ripley #Netflix #Patricia Highsmith #Olivier Awards #BAFTA #Moriarty #Sherlock

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angeli-marco-writes · 4 years

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Sherlock Holmes - Kiss Me, Mr Detective

A/N - Season 1!Sherlock, the cutie. And friends to lovers. Two of my favourite things. I do not own Sherlock Holmes, the character, the universe, the adaptations or anything: this is a work of fiction set on the BBC adaptation of Sherlock. Did I still write 8.2k words (exactly) for it? Yes. I also don’t own the song or the lyrics used within, and if you fancy it, listen to ‘Kiss Me’ by Ed Sheeran while reading.

Warnings - Bad language. Mentions of murder and drug usage. Mild angst. Smut, loss of virginity, masturbation, oral m receiving, penetration, unprotected sex, so 18+.

Summary - After a fight with John leaves Sherlock feeling particularly down, he calls on the one person who is always there to support him. Only tonight, it’s different. Feelings come to a head, exploration ensues, but is this just a one time thing? That depends on whether she stays the night...

TO SHERLOCK, it’s just another normal day, whereas to John? He’d rather not admit how regularly these awful days roll around. Sure, the case didn’t go as well as it could’ve, and Sherlock admittedly could’ve made much more of an effort to comfort John after the apparent ‘heartbreak’ he endured. He just could not understand it. Why the hell was John so emotionally responsive to a case they’d been on for less than twenty four hours which turned out to be a bust anyway?

“You are absolutely unbelievable!”

“People die every day, John. You’ve killed people, as have I. It isn’t that great a surprise.” Sherlock deadpans, picking up his teacup, raising it to his lips, drawing a long sip from the warm liquid.

“Oh, yeah, of course. The proud, the cold untroubled heart of stone, that never mused on sorrow but its own.” John mocks. “Do you not even care that people are still dead despite the fact you solved the case?”

“They’d be dead either way,” he reiterates, “at least we got to them before they completely decomposed. Will me caring about them stop them from being dead? No, Dr Watson, it will not.”

“Sherlock!”

“John!” He mimics.

John slams his hands down on the desk, shaking the wood and everything resting on it, surely sending the vibrations through the floor and notifying Mrs Hudson of their ‘domestic’ as she so likes to call them. The buffalo even begins to swing. John’s tea is long forgotten, but Sherlock’s is keeping him grounded, calm, as John waggles his fist in Sherlock’s passive, blank face.

“You-” he pauses, gulping down breath. “You are a fucking machine, I can’t even deal with you right now. How dare you be so cold hearted and untroubled by this. You’re a disgrace.”

As if he hasn’t heard that one before, Sherlock scoffs.

Placing his teacup back down with a clink, he stands, the darkness of the night, of the room, closing in on them both. Nights like these really are danger nights, any night John leaves him. That’s what's coming next, but there isn’t a thing he knows to say or do to prevent the inevitable. He’ll simply just text Her instead, she’ll keep him grounded.

“Why? Emotional context? Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow, whether raised at a puppet show, a funeral, or a battle, is your grandest of levellers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.”

With a huff like a bull, John viciously turns on his heel, blaspheming under his breath, cursing Sherlock out. He reaches for his coat and snatches it off the stand, slamming the door open.

“MACHINE.” John screams before pulling the door shut with a great slam, seething, the coat stand still rocking in his wake.

John’s footsteps thunder down the stairs, but before he’s even gone, Sherlock’s phone is withdrawn, and he’s tapping out a message.

Can you come over? Please? SH

It wouldn’t usually bother him as much. The case didn’t phase him, at all, but John’s opinion did. It always does. But today was a particularly long day of being brutish and rude, cold and distant, his usual and true self, but John’s more and more impatient with him now.

Being called a ‘machine’ is, again, nothing unusual, but this time it stings a little more than usual, especially after his recent arrest, and a fallout with Molly. He only has one person left, right now, who doesn’t hate him. His longest friend, the one he keeps away from it all so as to not tarnish her life with his misdeeds; Y/N, the one he can always rely on.

He knows she’s arrived by the sound of his window crashing open. Crawling up the bricks, skimming the drainpipe, latching onto the ivy; it’s her usual manner of entry. She never uses the door.

Putting his cups and saucers into the sink, he makes his way through the house, opening his bedroom door to find her already sitting there on the bed, her coat hung up on the hook, her work clothes clinging to her body.

“Hey there Mr Detective, you okay?” she asks as jovially as she can muster.

The way he ambles across the room, his dressing gown floating behind him, and slumps down onto the bed, instantly tells her he’s not okay at all. She can’t help but to look upon him sympathetically, edging a smidge closer to him, until he’s prompted enough to wrap his arms around her torso, finding his rightful place tangled around her. She knows him well enough - his past, and his current life - to realise she’s the only person he’s ever felt comfortable enough around to do this with, and that brings her a certain swelling pride in her bosom, one that doesn’t go unnoticed by Sherlock as he feels her skin heat up against his cheek.

It doesn’t take long, either, for his head to follow suit, burying into her chest. He’s always, always had a thing for her boobs, ever since they were in uni together.

That’s something so special about the two of them, he doesn’t have to say anything for her to know he’s not okay the way he does with everyone else. And naturally, he can read everything about her in a split second.

“I’m here, bud.”

Above all else, he just needs to know someone is there for him in moments like these. The world is cruel to him, and Y/N wishes more than anything that it wasn’t. Upon instinct, her hands stray, one to his back, pressing against the silk of his dressing gown, the other cradling his long neck, fingers knotting in the dark curls there.

She isn’t sure how long she stays there, simply holding him, feeling every twitch of his muscles, every breath of his against her skin, but she likes it. Of course she does, every time she likes it. Sherlock brings her an inordinate amount of comfort at the best of times, today is no exception, especially with what the day has held. Even when she’s the one comforting him, he doesn’t realise how much he helps her too.

His flat is so familiar, his bed as comfortable as her own. She knows his sock index, she’s studied his periodic table over his shoulder more times than she’d care to admit, and she even has her own toothbrush in the bathroom in case she has to pop over for an emergency freshen up. Sherlock has, and always will be, her first port of call, and that she remembers as she shifts further onto the quilted bedspread, her phone on his oak bedside locker.

His head begins to stir against her chest, his curls tickling her collarbones, small hums escaping his lips as he pushes himself up, his elegant yet trembling hands still splayed on her waist.

“I could feel your heart beating weirdly, what’s wrong?” he asks, quirking his eyebrows.

“Just the usual.” she vaguely replies.

Sherlock isn’t having it, though, and scans her a little more. “You’re still in your work clothes.”

“Great deduction. I was hoping you’d go a little deeper, though.”

“You hate wearing work clothes longer than necessary, which means you had plans straight after work, considering you finished… five hours ago? That’s your usual time for today. Counting overtime, forty five minutes, walk to your car, another ten, but your umbrella wasn’t working, round that up to an hour, leaving at 6. You arrived home, no, not home, at your boyfriend’s house for dinner. However, you’re not comfortable enough with one another yet for you to use his shower, or perhaps you are, but you elected not to, and stay in damp clothes that only had seventeen minutes to dry with the heater on in your car for the journey there. You ate dinner, Mexican, had a glass and a half of five percent wine, realised you couldn’t drive, but you didn’t particularly want to stay. Nonetheless you sat and watched the telly with him for hours, football, I can see the dreariness in your eyes. I know how much you hate it, and frankly, same. You stayed for almost all of the match, seeing as you’re now sober, but something else happened.” She lulls her head to the side, prompting him, her smile not meeting her eyes. “As soon as the match ended, he tried to make a move on you, he pressed his mouth to yours, he tried to push his hand up your skirt;” his throat bobs with a vicious gulp; despising the thought of anyone else laying a finger on her, “you swatted him away, rightfully so.”

He pauses a minute, his harsh tone of voice and his sharp face softening. He can see the vulnerability in her eyes, her walls about to crumble. This woman he appreciates so much. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

Smiling melancholically up at him, she brings her hand back to his hair, her fingers carding through the soft curls. His face buries back into her chest just as her voice offers a broken whisper, “I broke it off. I was the one who couldn’t commit this time.”

And as she lays her head on top of his, her breathing more shallow, resounding in her chest, he dwells over those very words. The way she said them, not to mention the words themselves, hold a myriad of meaning. What could she possibly-

Oh.

The subtext, yes, impeccable. She’s always had a way with implications and subtext, always knowing that the likelihood of him actually picking up on it is little to none. But now, now he’s become trained to her, her way of life, her way of thinking, her way of speaking. This is too good an opportunity to miss. If she means what he thinks she means, ever hopeful, then this is completely unfamiliar territory.

Gathering all of his courage in one deep breath, he begins to pepper kisses on her skin. The faintest brush of his lips on the tops of her breasts, all that’s available to him with her shirt the way it is. He feels her heart flutter, her breathing stutter, but despite the chemical flush of her chest, he still isn’t quite sure she likes it. Not until he feels her grip on his hair increase, and he glances up to see her head thrown back. Her spine delicately arches against his hand, thrusting her chest further into his face.

His nimble fingers reach for her buttons, undoing the top two, giving him space enough to find the valley between her breasts. Lathering kisses there, licking the swells of her boobs, his tongue pulsates with the increased thrumming of her heart. The sensation is new, so unbridled, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with the stirring in his loins right about now. That unknowing is only further amplified by the sound that rips from her chest when he involuntarily bites down on the supple flesh. It couldn’t be… a moan?

Sure, he understands the chemistry of it, the reactions that occur in the synapses of the brain, the pheromones and hormones released when one is aroused, but this is all new to him. And, from his embarrassingly basic level of theory, surely that doesn’t start until some more stimulation on other parts of the body commence? Nipples, perhaps something lower down… then again, what does Sherlock know?

Of course it’s an intimate moment, the closest he’s been to a woman before, and maybe that’s why he freezes, stops, and she tugs his head up by his hair, her gentle, pleasured smile with her lips softly parted deepening the look of bewilderment painted onto his face. Her eyes are twinkling, alight with an excitement he hasn’t seen for far too long.

“What are you doing?” she whispers.

He shrugs his shoulders with a sudden force, his dressing gown falling off a little. “I don’t know. But now I feel like I read your pining words all wrong.”

She gasps, a wheezing sound, sucking the air from the room. She smacks his arm gently, muffled by his button-down and dressing gown. “I wasn’t pining! I was saying.”

“Hmm, same difference.”

Everyone must acquiesce when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. “But no, you didn’t read them wrong at all, but I know you don’t see me that way, you don’t feel things that way.”

He pauses, his beautiful plump lips pursed, fidgeting on the bed. Brushing her hair off her face reveals the pain she expressed. However, her eyes glued on his, sadness is betrayed in every line of his young, clean-shaven face. His entire bone structure is taking a nosedive.

“For you, I’ve been feeling everything from hate to love to lust, and I guess that’s how I know I want to hold you close.”

“Sherlock...” she whispers, her singular word an inflection of surprise.

Never tearing his eyes from her, his hand comes up to her cheek, rubbing his thumb over the slightly blushing skin, searching her face, with his big blue eyes, for a shred of reluctance. But, all he sees is her, so he elects to do what his heart is yelling at him to do for once, and kisses her breathless. His full lips holding hers, his one hand on her face, the other still wrapped around her back. Hers fly around his neck, clinging to him for dear life.

It doesn’t take long, their movements steadily heating, for their previously slow, intimate kiss to grow into something more, Y/N pulling herself up from the bed and making herself comfortable on Sherlock’s lap. His breath hitches in his throat, a cute little hiccupping sound escaping his lips in between embraces.

As much as he loves just this, soft caressing and gentle petting, he just knows she wants more. He does too, that much is evident from the length prodding at Y/N’s inner thigh as she moves gently on his lap. She won’t make a move, though, he’s too inexperienced, and she’s too much of a sweetheart to corrupt him, so she thinks. Ever since he first saw her, she’s been corrupting him slowly. He didn’t realise at first, but over the years, he began to understand, and now he’s in too deep.

For Y/N? It’s always been him. Every breakup she’s had, she’ll come to Sherlock’s flat, full well knowing the real reason she broke up with them, because she couldn’t commit, because she was too caught up on him.

Skimming his hands beneath her shirt, he savours the press of his hands on her bare skin, warmth seeping from her body into his, his fingers dancing along her spine. Electricity shocks her in bursts, unlike anything else, from his touch alone.

“May I take your shirt off?” he asks.

“Fuck, yes.” she groans. “May I do yours?”

“Be my guest.”

In a tangle of limbs, a few buttons pop off, and eventually, two shirts make it out the other side, tossed from the bed and into the laundry pile. Aka Sherlock’s floor. He’s like that: sock indexes, yet he won’t get a hamper. A walking contrast.

His thumbs press beneath the band of her bra, savouring the pressure of the flesh that falls into his hands, but that’s as far as he gets.

“Never undone a bra before?”

He shakes his head sheepishly. “I know the theory. Just… you always wear peculiar ones.”

“I wear relatively normal bras, and this one is certainly bog standard. Had I known you’d be undressing me Mr Detective, I’d have worn something nicer.”

“Just do it for me.” He requests, chuckling.

She unfastens her bra, and allows her breasts to spill from the cups, into Sherlock’s awaiting hands. The gasp that erupts from him sends Y/N’s brain into overdrive. He’s cupped her chest through her shirt before, buried his nose into her cleavage countless times, but never before have they had such skin on skin contact. Her lips press to his neck, shifting her closer to him. Sucking on his pressure point, she receives a similar gasp in response, only this one is more guttural, more a sound of pleasure than surprise. He’s wilting from a single kiss to his neck.

“Has no one ever given you a hickey?” She husks in his ear, her voice alone sending tremors down his spine.

“N- fuck, no.”

“I’ll make it worth it. All of this.”

“I know you will.”

She fuses her lips onto his again, savouring the faint hesitations as he grapples with his breath, eager to get some control on his mind with all that’s happening. Never did she ever think Sherlock would be here beneath her, his rough fingertips brushing over her peaked buds, and his palms dancing over her waist. Never did she think she’d hear him whisper his next words, either, not in a million years.

“More.” he pleads. “Can we do… more? Whatever that entails?”

“That depends what you want to do.”

“Get me out of these damn trousers. They're rather uncomfortable.”

She snorts lightly, a piggy like sound, the one they bonded over all those years ago. “I can feel why.”

“I imagine you want out of your work trousers, too.”

“God, yes; they’re ghastly.”

“I don’t think so.” he hums. “You look nice.”

Her cheeks begin to burn, blood rushing to colour them, betraying her true feelings, but as he tweaks her nose playfully, the little snort escapes again.

They were in the dining hall, second week of university, almost ten years ago, and Y/N was sitting with her friends, downing enough coffee to sink a ship, eating her hangover away, when her friends decided to make her laugh with tales of last night's drunken events. Unbeknownst to her, one of the greatest minds of the twenty-first century was sitting just a few seats down on the half-empty bench, watching her perceptively in his periphery. That’s when he first heard the sound. The cutest thing, and it startled him into action, beginning his deductions almost instantly. Admittedly, her student ID on the table aided him a little.

He shocked her from her haze, too, as soon as he spoke her name.

“Y/N, eighteen, jurisprudence first year, freshers week over with. You left a boyfriend back home, but you’re more sad about leaving your dog, as I would be. You don’t particularly care about law but know it’s a good undergraduate to receive anyway. Dyed hair, extrovert, killer hangover, and apparently there’s a little piggy living inside your nose. Sherlock Holmes, would you like some aspirin?”

“That’s weird; what are you, some kind of detective?” She asked, sans malice, a playful bounce to her words.

“Chemistry, going for a masters. But I do like the mystery, yes.”

“So you’re… bright. Nice to meet you, Sherlock, and it seems you know almost everything you need to know about me. But yes, I will take that aspirin, if you don’t mind. How was your weekend?”

He smiled at her, the first true smile he’d given in a long time. “It was nice, thank you.”

And thus a friendship was born, all because he heard her little piggy snort.

Her slender fingers work wonders with the fastener and zip of his suit trousers, and even manage hers too, all within the space of a few seconds, but Sherlock is reluctant to let her go, even just to get her trousers off.

“I need to sit up, just for a minute.”

“No.” Sherlock commands, insistent. “We can make this work.”

“Sure we can, but it won’t be very comfortable. Come on.”

She’s barely peeled away from him and wrestled hers off before he’s drawing her back in for a kiss, his trousers settled just above his knees.

“Sherlock,” she protests, mumbling against his lips, her hands on his heavenly, broad, muscular shoulders. “Sher!”

Her squeal at his sudden tug on her panties disappears, captured by his eager mouth. And in fact, her panties seem to disappear along with it, thanks to Sherlock’s swift movements and nimble hands. Maybe he’s had some experience to be so good at this…

“You sure you wanna go this far?”

“More sure than I’ve ever been. I need you.”

He takes a deep inhale, dropping his forehead against hers, his breathing coming out in bursts as he tries to get a grasp on the situation. “Kiss me.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice, instantly getting to work on the waistband of his boxers as his tongue lavishes her own. His hips rise briefly, just long enough for her to tug the elasticated material from around him, slipping past her, and then he kicks it into their growing pile of clothes. His length falls into her awaiting palm, and-

“Wow.” She exhales in amazement. “If I’d known you were packing this much, I’d have jumped you long ago.”

“No you wouldn’t.”

“Absolutely not, until tonight I thought you’d just laugh at me.”

He pecks her lips affectionately, “Never. You’re bloody beautiful, I’ll let you do anything to me.”

“Hmm, anything, you say?”

Stifling a chuckle against her neck, he recommences, “Maybe not anything.”

Yeah, that's definitely the right call. Still, she finds herself all but clawing at him, her breath hovering teasingly just over his lips, their noses touching, her hands clamped to his cheeks, feeling the building heat there. She must be making such a mess of his bed right about now, but for one night? It can’t matter.

This is a one time thing, it has to be. Sherlock just needs to release some tension, she just so happens to be there. Still, she can’t prevent the little glimmer of hope shining through at the possibility of this being a more-than-one-time thing. The moral compunctions of their friendship after this don’t matter anymore, because he’s leaving a fire in his wake, his delicious fingertips digging bruisingly into her bum before trailing lightly up her spine, skimming her shoulder, brushing her neck - arched for him to reach where he wants, able to mark her as his own - and finally slipping over her lips, taken obediently by her awaiting mouth. Christ, if there’s one thing she hopes for tonight, it’s that his actions never relent.

Whether it’s what he intends to happen or not, his fingers in her mouth give her an idea, one she prays he goes along with at least a little, so she pulls away. The dirty, telling smile on her face hints at what she’s about to do, lending Sherlock to shift a little more up the bed, his eyes following her every move. Hands splayed on his thighs, her small fingers gripping onto the fine hairs there, she begins to take his tip into her mouth, never once breaking eye contact with him. Yeah, this is what’ll drive him insane.

Inch by inch, she takes him into the welcoming heat of her mouth, pulling off slowly, only to go down again. She adds her tongue into the mix at some point, too, and her hand, on what she can’t reach, tickling his balls, but further than that, his mind is blank. Hot white, washed with pleasure. The sounds he emits are other worldly, so much that he has to muffle himself with his own hand; what would Mrs Hudson say? He’s always had such control over his mind and body, but this… he’s slowly losing all semblance of control, and he’s not even mad about it. What he does know is that there’s a building heat in his abdomen, a coil about to spring, and his cock is beginning to twitch. If she keeps going this incredible way, her teeth grazing him ever so gently, adding another new sensation into the mix, he’s inexorably going to finish before he can help it.

“As much as I adore your torturous ministrations, I think I need to be inside you…” He husks, his voice deep.

A smirk gracing her lips, she looks up at him through half-lidded eyes, mischief glinting in her pretty little mesmerising eyes for a second, before she hollows her cheeks and takes him wholly, allowing his length to slip partially down her throat. Her moan reverberates around him, and Sherlock begins to thrash above her, scrunching the duvet in his hands, not caring if it creases. If there’s one thing Sherlock hates, it’s creases. And being called a machine by his best friend. Right now, though, it seems as though every misstep in his day has led him here, into the welcoming heat of Y/N’s mouth, taking him so eagerly, her tongue lapping at the vein on the underside of his dick, a string of saliva remaining as she pulls away.

“I think you’ve got a couple of rounds in you, Mr Detective. Can you do that for me?”

“Y-yes.” He stammers, his head tossed back in pure ecstasy a moment later as she begins to work on the head with kitten licks. “But… can I s- fuck me, say something?”

“I plan on it.” she chuckles, “anything.”

She goes back to peppering kisses all over his member, tip to base, brushing his balls, working her way back up.

“Touch yourself f- for me.”

“What? Why?”

Her tone is more inquisitive than anything else, but upon that playfully rueful look in his lust-darkened baby blue eyes, she knows he’s going to get her back for this little display, and he’s just worked out how. It works both ways, she can prepare herself for what’s to come next while pleasuring him. And he gets to watch. It’s a win-win for him. Maybe he likes this sex thing a little more than he’s letting on.

“Are you sure you want me to? I’ll just make a mess on your sheets, Sher.”

She swallows him again, bobbing her head up and down on his length a few times while he grapples with literal reality. He’s teetering on the edge. One more move, and he’s a goner. His head is already against the wall, lolled there.

“I don’t care about the sheets, darling, I need you ready for me.”

She gulps, nods, and reaches one hand around her, skimming over her stomach, until it nestles between her thighs. She rubs her thumb over his tip, collecting the pre-come beading there, while she rubs over her throbbing pearl, pressing softly. Then, as she inches down on his cock, taking him in her mouth, she also collects the slick from between her thighs, and uses it as a lube to push a finger inside herself. Of all the times she’s touched herself, she never imagined, even in her wild Sherlock fantasies, that she’d be doing it with his dick down her throat. With every bob of her head, she scissors herself more, sinking back onto her fingers.

“I think I’m-” Sherlock begins to say, his words cut off by an utterly obscene moan splitting the air.

She hastily abandons her one post, and wraps both of her hands around his girth, working on what she can’t fit into her mouth with her increased speed, licking and suckling his head as he begins to fall apart, coming, with a scream, down her throat, his one hand clamped over his mouth, biting down harshly to silence his cries; the other buried in her hair.

His whole body falls lax, completely spent, meanwhile, Y/N savours every drop she’s been able to draw from him. He softens in her mouth, allowing her change to slip away from him, grasping a tissue from the bedside to wipe away any excess. That’s certainly something she never thought would happen…

He’s calm, though, smiling lazily through hooded eyes, his breathing regulated once more, making beckoning motions to her with his big hands. He’s placated, though, and sliding her hands into his, she’s allowed time enough to get into place, smiling softly at him, raking her fingers over his scalp in a comforting way. Even as she sits herself on his lap, she can feel him hardening beneath her ass, slowly but surely. She was right about him, he’s definitely got another round in him.

“Do you have a condom?” he asks.

“No, sweetheart, they’re in my other bag. I didn’t plan on getting any for a while… do you?”

“Not in here, that I’m aware of. John may have stashed some in my less favoured dressing gowns or socks, and he definitely has some upstairs, but I’m unawares.”

“I’m gonna sound crazy here, but do we need one?” She says hesitantly. His eyes widen, he cocks his head to the side. “I was tested after my last partner, I’m clean, and on birth control. You’re a virgin. There’s no point, is there?”

“You have a considerably good point.”

With that, energy rejuvenated a little, he wraps an arm around her body, flipping them over so he’s on top, shadowing her, looming over her, gazing down at every inch of her naked beauty.

“Take your time. I’ll be your safety.”

“I know.” he whispers, a tearful smile making its way onto her face. “Thank you.”

He needn’t say more, because she already knows why she’s being thanked. For her kindness, for making him so comfortable, for accepting the fact he’s still a virgin in his late twenties and, if he’s being honest, has no damn clue what the practicality and reality of sex is. Sure, he’s seen porn. He’s also looked at John’s laptop. But that doesn’t prepare one for when the moment comes. It’s like all of that goes out the window, and he simply remembers the first time he opened a biology textbook at secondary school, pictures of flushed organs staring back at him, desperately waiting to be relieved. That’s what his own coock is like right now, already hard again, virtually pulsating with hunger in his palm. He strokes himself a couple of times, glancing down at Y/N’s wide eyes.

“Are you okay? Can I…”

“Yes, Sherlock,” she chuckles, “whenever you’re ready.”

Now, he thinks. He rubs two digits through her folds, gathering her wetness, enamoured with the way it glistens on his fingertips. Tentatively, he brings his fingers up to his mouth, swirling his tongue around them to get a taste. Eyes rolling into the back of his head, he moans. She’s better than any cup of tea he’s ever had.

His cock slaps against his lower stomach pleadingly, so he grasps it in his hand, and begins to enter her, pushing gently, feeling every flutter of her walls. Her arms fly out, hands grasping his shoulders, nails leaving crescent moons in their wake at the delicious stretch. It’s nothing like they’ve ever felt before.

“Can I move?” He asks, balls deep inside her, their pelvises flush against one another.

“Please.” She all but begs.

Before doing anything else, Sherlock hooks one strong arm around her body, malleable in his hands, and holds her chest against his. Her breasts push into his skin, her nipples gaining friction from the dusting of hair there. Her one hand cups his slender neck, the other, his sharp cheek. Their eyes meet in a fierce gaze of burning intensity, and he begins to move. Slow, calculated, sharp thrusts punctuate her core. With every heavenly stroke, he can feel the ridges in her velvet walls, squeezing around him unwittingly.

“Jesus,” she cries, her clutch increasing.

“Hmm, not quite.”

The smirk in his words is quite literally audible. He’s so cocky, so full of himself, and fuck if she can’t feel another gush of arousal coursing through her, drenching his cock. How does he manage to be so attractive when he’s so dishevelled?

“Is that good?” He asks, unsure.

“So good.”

She brings her legs up, skimming the clenched backs of his thighs, until they wrap around him, drawing his hips into her at a new and improved angle. Heels digging into the base of his spine, he begins to move with a new purpose, his thrusts more passionate as his breath is drained from him by her kisses, his eyes alight with a new flame.

“Oh my God, Sherlock.” She pants, pulling him in for a kiss he greedily returns.

He drives his hips deeper, squeezing his fingertips into her supple waist bruisingly. It’ll be a mark that she belonged to him once, even just for one night. That’s when he reaches that special spongy spot that makes her entire body buckle. She all but screams, pressing into him wholly.

The coil is building, ready to break. He seems to be nearing the edge, too, his member twitching inside her when he buries himself particularly deep. She’s oh so fucking close… She licks into his mouth filthily, desperately clashing her teeth with his, eager for his kisses to tide her over. Silence her. Shifting his supporting hand, he trails one dextrous finger around to circle her clit, adding the faintest pressure for a moment. She mewls as he groans into her hot skin, clawing at him, entirely at his whim. Now he knows where to press, he settled his grip back around her, and draws her in close. This time around, he bends his knees a little more to measure his movements more carefully, ensuring that he ruts up and brushes her sensitive bud with his pelvis, helped by the extra friction of his neatly trimmed pubic hair on every thrust within her, his tip just scraping her g-spot.

“I- Sherlock, please tell me you’re- oh sweet mercy- close.”

He grunts softly in her ear. “So close.”

Their lips meet tenderly, passionately, in what they acknowledge to be a final kiss, moans mixing between them, savoured by the other.

His thighs clench, her legs tighten around his waist, and finally, her sweet walls flutter, squeezing him as she reaches her climax, his not following long after, spilling inside her, painting her soft walls white, marking her.

“Y/N,” he cries in ecstasy as his orgasm reaches him. “Sher…” she repeats, her saving grace as pleasure washes over her entirely.

Their whole bodies wind up pressed together, bound together as one, skin on skin completely, becoming one another.

He lets her down gently, unravelling his grip, unsurprised when their sweaty skin sticks together. Her long legs unfurl, splaying in a butterfly. Sherlock tumbles ungracefully away, somehow landing with a certain gangly elegance on the space of mattress beside her, his arm instinctively flying over to place on her stomach, the skin hot and flushed red. Her chest moves hastily up and down with the thrumming of her heart, while his barely shifts despite his shallow breaths, his white skin glistening in the moonlight.

“Are you okay?” He huffs, turning on his side. “You look pretty fucked out.”

His baby blue eyes train instantly on her nipples, hard in the open air. This is the first notifier, the first inkling she has to feel self conscious, so she draws the sheet up around her as best as she can. Sherlock’s not having any of it, taking a stronghold on her arms, and pulling her until she’s lying on him, naught to separate them.

“I’ve never been this close to anyone physically and y'know.” He hums tiredly. She’s never heard him sound tired before…

She smiles up at him as best she can, “Are you glad?”

He begins to hold her ever closer, squeezing her tighter, feeling every ridge of her body.

“I’m so glad that you were my first, in so many ways.”

Praise from Sherlock is a rarity, and she’ll take it as and when she can, savouring every moment, this time by holding him like a koala, her grip not wavering.

“I’m glad too, Mr Detective.”

He brushes a kiss to her cheek, “As much as I like this, we need to get you cleaned up.”

A supporting arm beneath her bum, he picks her up, and unsteadily ambles into the bathroom.

“I don’t know much about this, but I know you should probably use the toilet, should you want to avoid a UTI, so if you’d like me to leave…”

He sets her down on the loo seat, cupping his hands over his nether regions, and he hurries to grasp for things, until she puts her hand on his arm, squeezing in a conciliatory manner.

“You do remember the camping trip, don’t you? You really don’t have to leave just because I have to pee, you never did before. In fact, you frequently annoyed me with it if you had a particular point to make, steadfastly refusing to leave the bathroom after following me in there when I went to pee. Why does this change anything?”

He shrugs, dropping whatever was in his arms, “It just doesn’t feel the same now, though.”

“Ooo, and now Mr Detective feels things.” She jokes, poking at his ribs.

He recoils, chuckling with her, “Only for you.”

As Y/N washes her hand, Sherlock begins to wrangle with a floorboard, clattering about until he eventually pulls out a small lock box, from which he withdraws a packet of brand new marks-and-spencer's ladies briefs.

“Why the fuck do you have these? Anything you wanna tell me?” she asks, eyes wide.

“John’s idea. He has plenty of girls over here who frequently stay the night, simply a precautionary error.” He takes a beat, gargling with some mouthwash, “they’re clean, new, I just don’t like the idea of you in dirty underwear, and I know how reluctant you are to go without them whenever you’re not in your own bed. I stayed with you enough nights in university to know that.”

Those nights were awfully painful. She’d take the floor, he’d take the bed, and every time she’d have to wash the sheets. He’d sweat and vomit, shake and cry, plead for the pain to be over. He wouldn’t go to hospital, he wouldn’t call his brother, he’d just turn up on her doorstep, high as a kite, almost in tears, knowing he’d gone a little too far. And each time, it was a little farther.

“Thank you, Sherlock.”

She takes them from him, and begins to shimmy them up her legs, only prevented by Sherlock moving to grab a handful of her arse.

“Hmm, I like this. Fancy another round?” He smirks.

“I’m too tired, babe. Give me a bit.”

He can see the lazy smile on her face, the tiredness in her pretty eyes, so he wets a flannel, and begins to clean her up with gentle movements between tender kisses.

“How do you know how to do all of this?” She asks, inquisitive more than anything.

“Instinct, I suppose. I never read or learned about it, seeing as I never thought it would happen.”

She snaps the waistband before moving her hands to his waist, leaning up onto her toes to reach him, kissing her softly.

“Look at you now.”

After brushing their teeth in an amicable silence, their pinky fingers overlapping on the porcelain of the sink, he aids her back to the bedroom, settling her on the bed. She has things here: deodorant, toothbrush, moisturiser, and yet somehow she doesn’t have underwear, even after all these years. Perhaps that's one too many things to explain…

With superfluous extravagance, he throws her his shirt, offering her a wry wink. She finds a blush clawing its way onto her cheeks, dumbfounded. It smells like him, just like a forest glade if it was rained on by tea and cigarettes. Maybe he’ll let her keep it as a memory.

In such a short amount of time, she’s learnt that he has a very sensitive neck. Very. A single kiss there has him biting back a moan. A low one at that, considering his deep voice also drops almost an octave when he’s aroused. His nipples are almost as sensitive as his neck, and he rather likes it when she tugs on them unwittingly.

His first orgasm comes quickly, but his refractory period is astonishing, and it takes longer to achieve a second high, long enough to make her come more than once, she assumes, though her first orgasm was mind blowing enough for two. Perhaps that’s just because it’s his first time, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

What’s the point in learning all of this if, once he comes around from his post-orgasmic haze, he’ll pretend like it never happened, in typical Sherlock style?

The shirt, though a small gesture, means a lot, and her vision begins to cloud as she looks down at the black cotton.

“You mean you want me to stay?” She croaks.

Sherlock turns to her from his set of drawers, his face full of apparent obviousness, brows furrowed in that cute bewildered way.

“Of course I want you to stay.” He states, like it’s the plainest thing in the world, like it’s stupid for her to even ask. But she’s silent, and when she says nothing in response, he launches into a long winded explanation: don’t show sentiment. “I- I just mean, i-it’s midnight, I’m not having you out in London alone. You stay with me. Only if you want to as well...”

She nods eagerly, “Yes. Yeah, course I want to stay.”

He all but leaps access the room, jumping onto the bed, before planting a proper smooch on her lips, grinning down at her. He slips into his usual side of the bed, and she takes hers, rolling to look at him.

“Don’t get cold.” He warns, tucking the duvet up around her shoulders. She giggles like a child, that small snort sounding again, prompting Sherlock to press his thumb to her nose like a button. “How are you… feeling?”

“I’m fine bub, really. That bloke doesn’t matter to me at all. Bit of a scumbag if I’m honest. You’re the one I’m with, the one I wanna talk about. How are you feeling? Must’ve been a pretty big blow up with John for you to call me and be so... teary.”

He sighs, crestfallen, “He called me a machine.”

Her gasp pierces the air, her hand flying to his hair, stroking in consolation, cooing senseless reassurances to him. She’s done this innumerable times, but now it feels different, like there’s no barrier.

“He’s done it so many times that it needn’t bother me anymore, but the way he looked at me, like I was this abhorrent monster, especially after the day and the disappointing case we had, it got to me. I hate having feelings.”

“You don’t have to hide them with me, though.”

He hums gently, burying into her chest. “I know. That’s why I treasure you so dearly.”

“That means you also have to trust me, and you’re not going to like what I have to say.” His chest heaves, shifting her whole body. That’s his way of giving in. “Please just talk to John. You know that whenever he leaves, he’ll come back, and try to pretend it never happened. He needs to know you’re human and that he upset you, but also that the case upset you as well. No one’s superhuman, and once you let John in on the fact that you’re not a machine, things between you will be so much easier, because you might agree for once.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He grumbles.

He pulls her into his warmth, hooking her leg around his as he snakes his arms around her back, breathing deeply from the crook of her shoulder. She begins to pepper kisses on his salty skin, savouring the taste with every small swipe of her tongue.

“Your heart’s against my chest, your lips pressed to my neck,” he breaks off with a faint whimper when she sucks a little harder, “I’m falling for your eyes, but they don’t know me yet.”

“Of course they do,” she whispers brokenly, hoarsely, “they’ve always known you.” She swallows thickly, “Does that mean it’s a feeling you’ll forget?”

“No, I don’t think I ever can.”

The silent words that pass between them both are so special, too special to be spoken aloud. ‘Think I’m in love now.’

“Kiss me like you wanna be loved.” He begs.

And really, who is Y/N to deny him? They just stay that way a little while, revelling in their lazy kisses, until she begins to fall asleep. It isn’t the first time she’s fallen asleep in his bed, not by any means, but it’s the first time she’s fallen asleep in his arms. She isn’t mad about it.

“Settle down with me, cover me up, cuddle me in. You were made to keep my body warm.” She smiles into her words, and embeds herself into him, entirely covered by the duvet, spattered in his kisses, safe in his arms. Sherlock feels safe with her legs around him, her fingers in his curls, holding himself against her. Amicable silence is how they drift off, Peaceful.

John re-enters 221B at a respectable hour. He got a fair amount of sleep on Greg’s sofa, having no girlfriend in the picture right now, but not enough to deal with Sherlock just yet. Not before his coffee. He expects to see Sherlock sitting in the exact same spot as when he left, perhaps just with a refill of tea, his fingers still steepled beneath his chin, eyes closed yet wide awake. Instead, he arrives at a seemingly empty, considerably clean flat, with no Sherlock in sight. Perhaps the unsleeping man must actually be asleep, he thinks, so he quietens down, and toes off his shoes before wandering farther into the flat. Even if the man does piss him off extraordinary amounts, perhaps he should just check he’s okay…

He gives the bedroom door a quiet rap, listening in momentarily before pushing it open. Frankly, he’d rather have found Sherlock with a cigarette in hand and the whole flat torn to shreds for the level of surprise he gets upon reaching the bed. His first idea is to scream bloody murder, but that might annoy Mrs Hudson, and upon stepping closer, even in the sliver of daylight through the curtains, he sees the duvet riding down a little. The last thing in the world he ever thought he’d see: Sherlock in naught but boxers pressed against a half naked woman, his palm splayed on her bare thigh. Sherlock? Spooning? It seems so, his entire body pressed to this woman. John feels himself go rigid, his feet glued to the floor, his gaze unmoving from shock.

It takes his phone to buzz in his pocket to get him moving, and when he does, all he tries to do is balance precariously on his tip toes in a wry attempt to get a birds-eye view of the whole thing. He’s not disappointed, or disturbed, once he does, though, his army agility proving useful. Sherlock’s hand is holding her, fingers entwined, just next to her chest. He wonders how comfortable it is, but if they’re staying this way, it can’t be too bad. Maybe all Sherlock needed to loosen up was a good shag.

She’s wearing his shirt, too; Sherlock’s black dress shirt from the previous day. And Sherlock? He never seeps in anything less than a full set of pyjamas, he’s weird like that .

This girl begins to stir, her lips parting gently, small hums escaping. Next, her eyelids flutter, and her hair shifts on the pillow. He didn’t make any noise, did he? John was specifically careful not to, just in case. He doesn’t fancy Sherlock’s wrath just yet.

One eye opens, and she whispers, almost incoherently, “Hi John.”

How she knows his name and who he is, he’s not at all sure, because he doesn’t think he’s ever seen this face in his life. The hair is familiar, and maybe, if she were more awake, he’d recognise her smile, but he’s never seen a woman in Sherlock’s company beside Molly Hooper. Speaking of…

Before he can even say anything, though, before he can ask who she is or if she wants tea or if she date-raped his roommate, she’s mumbling, and detaching her hand from Sherlock’s, rolling over. Dumbfounded, John just stands there and watches her cuddle into Sherlock’s chest, her arms wrapping around his torso like second nature. Even in his sleep, not consciously thinking about his actions, he grips her back - one hand resting just above her bum, and buries his nose into her neck.

John can’t help but smile to himself. Maybe their fight was for the best if Sherlock now has a girlfriend, someone he turned to for solace. So, he grasps for the top of the duvet and pulls it up over both of their figures, reaching their shoulders, and leaves, staring wistfully for a brief moment at the seemingly happy couple.

The weight of the duvet of what startles Sherlock, though, stirring him a little, inviting him to him against Y/N’s skin, smiling with eyes barely open. This is really nice, he thinks to himself, not waking up alone.

She smiles back blearily, and in her morning voice, whispers to him, “Kiss me Mr Detective.”

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mr-nauseam · 3 years

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Watson Top 5

So I talked about making a top 5 of the best Watsons in my opinion (and clearly my favorites) a few days ago. I barely do it today because again my horrible class attacked and honestly doing this is more fun, so let's get started.

WARNING: A LOT OF TEXT BC I DONT KNOW HOW TO SHUP UP

Special mentions:

THE ONLY REASON WHY LUCY LIU AS JOAN WATSON IS NOT IN THE TOP 1 dominating everyone is because I still don't see elementary. Yes, is embarrassing, but I googled it and 7 seasons looks scary and heavy (I'm bad at seeing very long things, like my god if you only knew how long it took to see jojos or merlin) but soon I will see it and you mates will have to put up with my fangirl screams because it is written in the stars that I am going to fall in love with Joan. Another special mention goes to Jane Watson from My Dear Beloved Detective and god is INCREDIBLE, I LOVE HER, honestly what doesn't have this girl? undoubtedly one of the best Watsons who have touched this earth.

Have you noticed that the mentions are only the Watsons genderbender? It is because I would like to dedicate an exclusive post to them. It is curious (from what I have seen) how it seems that the creators can more easily balance the personality of the character when is a woman (the matter of the masculinity in Watson can be a thesis) but before saying more, I have to see all the adaptations where the female versions appear.

From here there is no one so relevant, I like Watson from Without a Clue bc is a comedy that makes me laugh a lot jsjsjs, I like Dwason, the Watson of Frowares dont look so bad and there are also others but nothing special, so now we go with the top wuuu.

5. Sherlock.

If I declared that this post was influenced by my personal taste, it was especially because of this. I was a great fan of the bbc series, now that I grew up I became familiar with concepts like queerbaiting, ableism, etc. The relationship I have with the series now is complicated, but even so I think that the interpretation of Freeman (let's ignore the existence of season 4 and still, he did quite well with what they gave to him) has some merits. Humor, moments of crisis, expressions, loyalty, dedication, etc. He's a screwed up Watson but interesting in his own way. (And if you like that kind of angst- bad things that give you a chance to fix it, this is ideal for that).

4. Ritchiverse.

Speaking of somewhat unstable boys, I must say that I feel this is one of the Watsons who knew better how to translate what we saw in the books about his character and to exploit certain sometimes ignored traits (Watson's impulsiveness and recklessness); On screen you understand without much trouble that Watson has a military past, that he has physical injuries that still affect his day to day, but that he does not feel incapable of getting into crazy adventures nor is he going to allow the people to treat him in that way, which is a doctor and a good one, his romance with Mary is one of the best, etc. They really paid attention to doing this boy, in addition to the small but great detail that Law is basically a drawing of Sidney brought to life (and my God he has a lot of Doyle too, which only gives him extra points).

3. Granada (the serie, not the fruit).

Yesterday I received divine illumination; us we know it (the change of actors) but in the universe of Granada that never happened, they are a single Watson and I love that idea! So the two David and Edward, what can I say that has not already been said? They are the perfect reflection of Watson's character in two very different stages of his life (pre and post Reichenbach), they have the charisma, the sassy side -sarcastic, compassion, loyalty, courage and determination, calm and wisdom and yyyy, oh, I love them a lot and basically they raised the status of doctor uwu a lot but they are in third place.

2. The adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson (better known as soviet or russia holmes eh)

One of the few adaptations where there are hugs, tears, affectionate cuddles, etc. Solomin has one of the most entertaining interpretations of the character, there is no scene that I saw, where I would not think "yes, here is an incredible Watson," this Watson is great with his episode full of suspicions towards Holmes, his expression when he discovers that the detective is not interested in knowing If we revolve around the sun. It achieve what for me is the best adaptation of HOUND and that says a lot about this Watson bc HOUND is the BOOK OF THE DOCTOR. You have a smart boy in his way, with his own strengths and weaknesses and he feels human, believable and adorable. They allowed him to have a complete heart and that is why he is the best of the best and he would be if only the position 1 does not exist.

1. Sherlock Holmes 2013. (THIS IS NOT CALLED NEW RUSSIAN HOLMES?)

If you are a fan of Watson, he is here, in this serie, the military guy, the doctor, the healer, the amazing human be, the writer, he is the dream version that was executed to perfection. The greatest success? fuck the canon, and even then, I don't think there is another Watson that feels so real as ironic as it may sound. They really worked hard to give a coherence, a sense and a total meaning to Watson's actions, they explore well the reasons of all those failures and the development that the character has is wuah, I really don't know what word use that encompass everything, maybe satisfactory? Because everything feels good here with Andrei Panin and even so it feels like something else is missing in my description maybe you have to see it to understand it.

#john watson #dr watson #sherlock holmes #sherlock holmes adaptations #ritchiverse #ritchie watson #jude law #granada watson #david burke #edward hardwicke #vitaly solomin #russian watson #nrh #new russian holmes #andrei panin #top 5 #watsonmania

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minsarasarahair · 3 years

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I noticed something. This is not really a rant but just a simple observation. I noticed that "a morally grey story but has a pure good character as one of main characters" tend to have messed up fandom?

I tell you why. Let's see. Let's start with the most popular toxic Mo Dao Zu Shi fandom as an example. MDZS has so many flawed characters and morally grey theme in their story but a good main character like Lan Wangji exists. What's the problem about that? Well, I'm not blaming LWJ but he's the triggered why the fandom is divided into two factions. First is the people who like pure good character and second is people who like toxic, unhealthy, flawed characters. Since these two groups have different beliefs and preferences, they tend to clash. The first group tend to unconciously provoke the other party by proving that unhealthy or toxic characters shouldn't be liked bc it's wrong just bc there is a good main character that they admire. They misunderstood and expect that the story or other characters should be "pure good" too like their fave chara/ship even if the story already established in the beginning that it's morally grey. As for the other party, they tend to be neutral or tried to reason out. Tbh MDZS fandom here used to be peaceful until Untamed only fans arrived. The portrayal of the characters and story are different in the drama and donghua so it make sense there's a confusion. Wei Wuxian in Untamed is wronged yes but MDZS donghua Wei Wuxian accept that he's guilty of his crimes.

Another one is VNC fandom. I thought Vanitas no Carte fandom will be peaceful bc we already know what kind of author is Mochijun. This talented author like to misled her readers, explore unhealthy relationships and toxic characters. But bc a good main character like Noe exists, this key's existence make the fandom divided into two groups again. Again, I'm not blaming Noe but his existence made a confusion. It happened to all fandom with the same setup.

Moriarty the Patriot is a good example that has both morally grey main characters and story. Meaning fandom is not that toxic and fans are just enjoying their fave characters doing their bad deeds. Even if Sherlock was displayed like the good hero against the villain protagonist Moriarty, the story also shows that Sherlock is without a doubt a morally grey character. Since viewers have clear understanding that it's a morally grey story bc the main characters are all grey, it's easy for acceptance. Well, a good character like Watson exists but he don't really play a big part in the story so it's fine. He's more like a supporting character. If you love morally grey stories, watch this! It's good! I watched all episodes this weekend and I'm amazed to the animation team! I like when they make everything red when they do the bad deed! Very creative!

This kind of thing continues with Word of Honor/Shan He Ling Drama. You see, Word of Honor was adapted from the Tian Ya Ke BL novel. They have to change a lot of things for the drama bc of censorship and that's how the confusion has started. Just bc WOH drama choose to give a strong emphasis to Zhou Zishu's softness, people tend to forgot that he's also a morally grey character and thinks ZZS is an honorable assassin. This ZZS guy killed a little girl without hesitation but WOH only fans tend to brushed that off bc they remember more how soft he is to Wen Kexing. Believe it or not but WOH and TYK are both have morally grey story. It just that TYK is more darker, explicit and don't sugar coat things bc it's an adult novel. It's true that ZZS is soft even in the novel but it only give that emphasis from Wen Kexing's perspective bc he fell in love with ZZS' soft side. Bc of this, WOH only fans tend to not like the original material which is the TYK novel and prefer the romanticized version. It's like liking Disney princess stories over the dark original source material. Nothing wrong with liking the romantic version but that's why there's a confusion.

I just thought of this and probably others might be interested so I posted it here. To end this post, I just want to say that it's ok to like something but don't force others to your opinion and know your limits. Don't also spread hate bc these are just fictional stories and we are here to enjoy it. It's ok to discuss theories and opinions but be polite. Instead of saying "I hate that bc it's disgusting. People who like that are stupid.", you can say "I'm just not fond of it but I respect your preference." If you want respect, know to respect others first. You're in the web so you should be careful with dealing with others. If you're too young for that, don't use any social media or web so often for your own good. It just so irritating to see others play innocent that they don't like ship wars but they are also the one who provoke the other party.

#personal opinion #mo dao zu shi #word of honor #moriarty the patriot #yuukoku no moriarty #vanitas no carte

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viridianllamasinthesilentspace · 3 years

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Sorting BBC Sherlock

Got an ask awhile ago about sorting the BBC Sherlock characters!

Note: In our system, your Primary House is why you do things—your motivations. Your Secondary House is how you do things—your methods. (Example: Hermione would be a Gryffindor/Ravenclaw.)

Sherlock - Slytherin Primary/Ravenclaw Secondary/Slytherin model. While he’s thoroughly invested in his methods, his systems, and the superiority of his intellect, for Sherlock it’s always about the game. It is less about methodical exploration and more about winning, beating, finding the next challenge and defeating that one, too. Don’t write about the ones I haven’t solved! he yells at John. When his thirst to prove himself takes priority over actual discovery, inspiring Moriarty’s tactics of teasing him and taunting him and making him fight harder to win, it has become about ambition and not about knowledge or curiosity. And when he finally gets a person, when he bonds with John and John becomes important to him, John is more important than anything. Sherlock is a Slytherin-who-until-recently-didn’t-have-people.

(He’s a Petrified Slytherin, the Slytherin equivalent to the Burned Hufflepuff, and we’ll have longer posts on all of those later, but the gist of it is that he’s too scared to lose people important to him to even dare to make those initial connections. Even Mycroft, the closest thing to a loved one that that Sherlock has until John, doesn’t count.)

But what we have here is a case of the loudest Ravenclaw Secondary I have ever seen. And how could he have turned out any other way, with Mycroft looming over him, calling him stupid? His worth is tied to his winning things, and his winning things must, he believes, be done with intelligence.

What we have on top of that is a Slytherin [Secondary] model. He can manipulate and scheme and plan and predict what Slytherins will do with a fair amount of success, but it’s a tool he uses and then discards when it’s no longer useful. He can also perform most of the houses with varying degrees of success, but it’s almost an extension of his Slytherin model.

Granted, if presented with the choice, I’m next to positive that Sherlock would pick Ravenclaw over Slytherin for his singular House. He’s so invested in his methods and his work that in many ways it defines him.

Mycroft - Slytherin Primary/Slytherin Secondary/Ravenclaw model. Mycroft’s ambition is one of his most notable attributes. He is the British government. And he has none of Sherlock’s qualms about letting other people do all of his work for him so long as he’s the one making the decisions—a very Slytherin flavor of pragmatism. His eye-rolling reluctance to explain his deductions, while I’m sure he makes plenty, comes from an elitist breed of arrogance. Mycroft enjoys being a traditionalist on the surface, too, with his poise and clothes that speak of fine-breeding. Kid’s a pureblood as soon as he’s a wizard.

He certainly tends toward long-term plans instead of the Slytherin Secondary improvisation, but in the process of enacting those plans, he’s willing to do personal manipulations (e.g. John with Irene’s phone), live in false personas (e.g. pretend he’s just being a logical, kind, worried brother), et cetera. This comes so naturally for him that it’s more intrinsic to his personality than his plotty Ravenclaw—Ravenclaw [Secondary] is as much a tool for Mycroft as a Slytherin model is for Sherlock.

Moriarty - Slytherin Primary/Slytherin Secondary/Ravenclaw model. To finish up with the cold houses, let’s take a peek at Moriarty. He’s certainly a Slytherin Secondary, with his versatility, with how “changeable” he is. He’s a spider. He’s a snake. He adapts. He slithers. He licks his lips and watches you, waiting to analyze what you’ve done and pounce. And Sherlock and Moriarty hit it off in the way they do because they’re both Slytherin Primaries who think they have conquered the world already—until they find the one person who poses a challenge.

There are other canons in which I would sort him as a Ravenclaw Primary, actually, like in "Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles" (which is actually one of my favorite canons), but if we’re going with BBC, then his ambitions are ones of experience, and his morality isn’t one of discovering truth. He doesn’t think truth exists, and doesn’t give a shit. That’s not the point. The point is to be raw, and to live, and finally, to die in a way truly befitting of his grandeur.

He models Ravenclaw [Secondary], same as Sherlock, but where Sherlock is a strategist and a problem solver, wanting to deduce and discover, Moriarty is an information collector. Information is useful, and he’s very good at amassing it, creating his “web” of agents, and once someone of his intelligence has all of the information possible to get, the solution presents itself. How nice of it!

At the very end of "Reichenbach Falls", when Sherlock and Moriarty are talking about being on the side of the angels and Jim is experiencing momentary euphoria at being outsmarted, I think a solid chunk of the gratification was coming from the impression that his Slytherin Secondary was (finally!) being understood. He bought Sherlock’s Slytherin model. He thought that maybe there was another Slytherin layer there: A Slytherin/Slytherin modeling Ravenclaw performing Slytherin. He fell into the Slytherin Secondary trap of seeing hidden motives and layers of performances wherever you look, and wrote that type of intelligence between the lines of Sherlock’s behaviour, leading him to his miscalculations in a weird mix of underestimation and overestimation.

John - Gryffindor Primary/Gryffindor Secondary. Ever an Idealist, John attaches to Sherlock (at first) less out of personal loyalty or affection, and more because he realizes that Sherlock is good at what he does, and that he does good. He improves things. He catches serial killers. John values Sherlock first and foremost for how he makes the world a better place, because in that way, Sherlock is amazing. The way that Sherlock, ever the Slytherin, wants John to become his whole world, to bond with him and be there at his side for everything? Not so much amazing. John’s lack of a Loyalist House is part of what creates that tension between them, because they both want different things out of the relationship.

But they make it work. The adventures they go on bring out the trauma-burned love of the fight in John. They bond primarily over the Idealist line, with Sherlock’s “go get ’em” Ravenclaw Secondary urging John’s Gryffindor into action. In a way, it gives John the space and the permission to live the life he wants to. For John, their shared enjoyment and goals are what make their friendship solid and worthwhile.

His Gryffindor Secondary is the thing that makes him initially unattractive as a flatmate. When your Primary is a burned, singed, Stripped thing that used to be strong and Felt and bold, and you then proceed to charge into that cynicism, you’re bound to step on a few toes. The way he talks to Mike, Lestrade, and Mycroft in the first episode are the best examples of this, because one of the effects Sherlock has on him is to help alleviate the chaos of his worldview.

Mrs Hudson - Slytherin Primary/Hufflepuff Secondary. Slytherpuffs are easy to underestimate. Mrs Hudson especially lives mostly in her Hufflepuff Secondary, caring for and cleaning up after, helping and being kind toward. But her Slytherin shows itself, mostly in glimpses of her past—that she hired Sherlock to get her husband to lose in court (and is so blasé about it), her ability to trick the American assassins that come into her home. And it’s not even so much the presence of these qualities that reveals her Slytherin as it is her careful and casual withholding of them. She lets out the information bit by bit and doesn’t seem to be fazed by what other people would think of as amorality. She’s internally consistent in the felt and unashamedly selfish way that Slytherpuffs are at their healthiest. This selfishness extends to her desire for her Sherlock and John to be somewhat of a family unit without her happiness ever being dramatically affected by it. It’s not that she doesn’t care, because she cares deeply—it’s just that her Slytherin gives her a healthy, self-protective distance from it.

Lestrade - Hufflepuff Primary/Gryffindor Secondary. Lestrade need-bases. He gives people chances. He’s willing to take on Sherlock as a consultant even though Sherlock is disruptive and rude because not only does Sherlock need the work, London needs his work. Lestrade looks at the larger picture and is able to forgive personal offenses and the occasional breach of law because the social harmony he’s after has a population of about 8.3 million. He refuses to turn on Sherlock in "Reichenbach" until it becomes clear that Sherlock’s involvement is no longer best for the greater good. He does this with a Felt confidence that is a form of charging, if a subtle one. His Gryffindor Secondary almost looks like another Hufflepuff sometimes, with how he reacts to the people around him being upset by soothing, but if we look at him when he’s distressed—talking to the press, getting angry at Sherlock—he’s firm and honest, saying what’s on his mind despite the potential consequences.

Molly - We don’t see enough of Molly (specifically, Molly’s agency) to sort her with any confidence. There’s some Puff in there though, with how forgiving she is of Sherlock, and how she’s so consistently and genuinely kind to him despite his rudeness. There might be some Ravenclaw in there too? Dunno. Thoughts?

—Kaden

#shc repost #all their old posts were lost #so i'm doing the work of bringing them back #i've spent hours on the internet for this #y'all best be grateful y'hear #I USED THREE DIFFERENT SEARCH ENGINES TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN

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cherry-lipbalm · 4 years

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survival of the fittest. spencer reid.

5.3k words.

masterlist

“ If they were to somehow get out of here alive, she was certain it would only be one of them. ”

three hours earlier

Y/N was ready to go home - more than ready. They'd gotten back from a hard hitting case in Boston, touching down by early afternoon meant they were expected back at the HQ, which henceforth meant piles of paperwork were in their future. Y/N knew her complaining would only go reprimanded by Hotch, so she kept to herself in her cubicle, shoved into the corner of the bullpen, and desperate to get the documents out of the way.

Over the scribbling of her pen, she heard the mutterings of Morgan and Reid's conversation beside the latter's desk not too far away from her own. She sighed in defeat, because she knew she wouldn't be able to resist joining them, especially when the opportunity arose to take the mickey at Spencer.

When it did inevitably arise, she pushed herself away from her desk and allowed the wheels on her chair to escort her over to the men. At the sound of jagged rolling, Morgan stepped aside to make space for her to insert herself, a snide smug painted on his face.

"Did I just hear the word 'Spencer' and 'girl' in the same sentence?" She asked, leaning on the armrest to shove her shit-eating grin into Spencer's face; he only rolled his eyes and gave an insincere 'ha ha'.

"Your ears did not deceive you, baby girl," Morgan said, receiving a smack on the arm from Spencer. The warning stare he gave him almost made Y/N stop pestering him. Only almost.

"Oh my! Spill the beans, who is she?" Y/N gushed, steering her chair even closer to the Doctor while Morgan watched on amusedly.

"There isn't a she," he grumbled, head bowed to his paperwork in the hopes that if he ignored the Agents they'd just go away.

"...a he?"

"No!" Spencer exclaimed, snapping his head upwards.

"Hey! It's no skin off my nose, Spence."

He groaned, then turned back to his work and allowed for Morgan and Y/N to exchange a glance as they both tried to hold back snickers at their friend's flustered existence.

She stayed huddled around with them for a few more minutes, but as soon as she saw the clock hit 5, she jumped from her chair and kicked it back to her desk. Announcing that she was off, she began to gather and pack her things. While she did so, she heard Spencer make the same announcement.

"You're off earlier than usual," she called back, "let me guess... Doctor Who marathon?"

Spencer's smile gave him away; Y/N chuckled and draped her coat over her shoulders, standing by his desk while he adjusted his satchel.

"Busy man," she commented, then proceeded to listen to whatever sci-fi related ramble Spencer was emitting, interjecting with exclamations of intrigue or surprise whenever she deemed suitable (they were all timed guesses, but she didn't waver once).

"...Christopher Eccleston is actually the second favourite, despite the fact that a lot of people skip his season, but he has a 52% popularity–"

"Wait, why do people skip his season?"

"Oh, because he preceded David Tennant. He's the favourite, with a 69% popularity."

"Ha, 69," Y/N muttered under her breath with a crude smirk. Spencer only gave a restrained smile and raised his eyebrows. The two fell into a silence, except from a 'thank you' Y/N said softly when Spencer opened the door for her.

The elevator button illuminated under her touch, and they stood in front of the steel doors, awaiting their opening. Y/N tapped her foot senselessly, and Spencer rolled on the balls of his heels.

In amidst the silence, Y/N looked up to Spencer and they exchanged a warm smile. The beep of the elevator distracted them, and after stepping aside to let people out, they ambled in and finally relaxed when the doors closed on them again.

"Today was relentless," Y/N sighed, checking her watch.

"Have any plans?" Spencer asked, out of courtesy.

"Well, I have to head to the repair store to pick up my phone, but after that there's leftover Chinese food in the fridge with my name written all over it," she chuckled.

"What happened? To your phone?"

"Morgan happened," was all she said. Spencer joined in on her judgement even though he didn't know the story, he did know that 'Derek Morgan' was simply a reason in itself that didn't warrant an explanation. Then, they lulled in the return of silence.

It wasn't until the elevator jerked and came to a sudden stop that the two spoke again.

"That's not right," Spencer muttered, and he immediately began to jab at the ground floor button before Y/N smacked his hands away, because she was already deep in a panic, so it was even worse when the next astounding jerk hit. She screamed when they were thrown off balance, and hoped she hadn't got a concussion from where she collided with the back wall upon the motion.

"What the hell?" She panted. They came to a still, but it made her even more nervous because she knew they hadn't been in there long enough to reach their floor. That, and the fact that they had just ripped through the air at about a hundred miles per hour.

Spencer's eyes furrowed, and he licked his lips in the way he did when he was focused on something. Judging by the way he assessed the doors, Y/N thought he was about to pull some thwarted stunt, or more likely reel off some facts about steel.

"I think something's wrong," he mumbled.

"No shit, Sherlock,"

"Ah, elementary my dear Watson," Spencer replied so quickly that Y/N was almost inclined to believe it made any sense.

"Did you know that Sherlock Holmes never actually said that? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote those words, they were only adapted into the movies years later-"

"Oh my god, Spencer, are we stuck in this elevator?" Y/N shrieked, her knuckles whitening under her tight clutch of the hand rails on the wall: half from fear and the other from frustration.

"Oh, uh, yeah, I think so."

Upon Spencer's bluntness, she stepped forward, desperate for any attempt of an escape plan, she began pressing the ground floor button repeatedly; when that didn't work, she resorted to aimlessly smashing all the buttons on offer.

"That's– that's really not gonna do anything," Spencer said in the background.

"Do you have a better idea?" She snapped, turning to him with a glare before resuming her actions.

"Try the - try that one!" He pointed to the red button with an alarm bell engraved on it, and Y/N felt stupid under his stare for not noticing it before. She pressed it, and the ringing noise that emitted from it seemed to do nothing but that: ring. She was certain someone was supposed to come to their aid through a speaker, so she pushed it continuously, but derived nothing further. At least she gained some comfort in the panic of Spencer's voice that told her he was shitting himself as much as she was.

"It's not doing anything!" She cried, and when he leaned over her and pressed it too, she bit her tongue and raised her eyebrows to tell him 'see?', infuriated at the fact that he thought she could be somehow pushing a button wrong. But, then again, she'd have been even more angry if he'd done it and it had worked.

When it didn't, she alternated to the next best thing.

"Help!" She yelled, slamming her palms against the doors. She didn't know what floor they'd been wedged at (or even if they were just floating in some space between levels), but someone had to hear them; they were bound to...right?

Spencer seemed to think so at least, because he was joining her in pounding his fists on the steel. Sooner rather than later, the harsh echo made Y/N's ears ring, so she stopped and took a step back.

"Well, this is great," she sighed, slumping in a lean on the wall as she rubbed her temples.

"I'm gonna miss Doctor Who," Spencer whined, pouting.

Y/N just rolled her eyes at him and told him to call somebody. She was sure she'd seen JJ just before they left, still huddled in her office; hopefully she'd be able to call maintenance and they could be released from this death trap of a machine.

"I can't, my phone died. Use yours."

"What?"

"My phone's flat, can you use yours?"

Y/N just stared at him. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt because the adrenaline rush of panic can make memories a bit hazy, but her skin was flustering under the rage she was feeling, her forehead was already beginning to perspire and the walls were so small and entrapping and - is it hot in here or just her?

"My phones at the store," she reminded him through gritted teeth, and watched his composure fall in both comprehension and defeat.

"Great," he remarked.

"Oh, like it's my fault?"

"Well, it's not mine."

"And it's not mine either so don't talk to me like that!"

It was only a short exchange, but it made Y/N's blood boil; if they were to somehow get out of here alive, she was certain it would only be one of them.

Spencer gulped, and Y/N was sure that had he the opportunity to he would be storming away right about now, but unfortunately for the both of them that wouldn't be happening anytime soon. The wonderful reality of this hitting Y/N, she kicked off her shoes and planted her bum down on the floor.

Spencer looked at her curiously while she did this, then quirked his lip and proceeded to do the same. He used his satchel as a pillow to support his head, and sighed loudly (it seemed deliberate just how exaggerative it was).

"No one is ever gonna find us here," Y/N said.

"We're not dying–"

"You don't know that. We could be suffocating as we speak-"

"Suffocation is impossible in elevators: the cars are designed not to be airtight and there's vents that allow air to move in and out," he pointed up at the grated opening above Y/N's head. At being proved wrong by Spencer and his big, unfathomable brain, she crossed her arms much like a stroppy toddler and even pouted her lip.

"We could still die," she mumbled.

"The statistics of that are still very unlikely; in fact, the people that die the most in elevators are elevator technicians themselves. An average of 26 people die in elevators every year in America–"

"And you're ready to be one of those 26?"

"We're not going to be. We won't suffocate, and it hasn't fallen."

"Yet," she said. "Plus, theres other ways to die. Like, I don't know, murder perhaps?" She said with a potent glare in his direction. He gave her a blank stare partnered with a sarcastic smile, one that only made Y/N more devoted to her other-ways-to-die initiative.

"We just have to wait a while... Did you know the longest duration of time someone was stuck in an elevator was 41 hours? Nicholas White. And all he had to eat was a packet of Rolaids."

More than accustomed to tuning out Spencer's rambles, Y/N barely heard what he was talking about, in a dazed trance where she was focused intently on where the paint didn't match the wall, she was so invested she almost missed what he said.

"Wait... oh my god. Do you have food?" She asked, sitting up from her subsided posture.

Spencer's face softened in dread, which didn't bring any aid nor optimism to their situation.

She watched him sit forward, shoving hands into the pockets of his blazer, coat, trousers and pulling out nothing but a few crumpled pieces of paper. Y/N matched him with an empty gum wrapper and a Walmart receipt displaying a concerning amount of pregnancy tests she had purchased last month.

"Do I even wanna know?" Spencer asked, chucking it back to the ground with a grimace as if it was riddled with germs (it probably was but, still).

"All you need to know is that I'm not pregnant," Y/N scoffed, almost amicably, but her eyebrows creased and she was back to a fuck everything this sucks expression in less than a second.

"Well we can't survive on this."

"You really haven't brought any food?" Spencer pestered.

"No, I had Chinese leftovers on the cards for tonight. And I don't see you offering anything up; what's your excuse?"

Spencer only groaned, again. He kicked his feet out and let his head fall onto the wall back in the same place. He ran a hand through his hair, and the scarce gel he had used to keep it in place disassembled around his face in random strays of curls. The sight of him relaxing like he was settling in for the night didn't appease Y/N one bit.

While Spencer closed his eyes, Y/N got to her feet and decided slamming on the door again was a better pastime. Spencer, however, did not agree.

At the banging, Spencer's eyes shot open and his body shook in alarm. His eyes darted around the space frantically until they landed on Y/N's figure aligned with the doors on which she was unleashing hell. If yelling could open an elevator, they'd have been out in a jiffy.

"I think we've established that doesn't help," Spencer said.

"Then you help!" She shouted, continuing the thrashing of metal.

"How?"

"I don't know!" Her shriek echoed, and she yet again gave up on the violence. "Use that big brain of yours and find us a way out of here."

"The 7 steps to surviving being stuck on an elevator are fundamental; we've already done them. They include pressing the open button, the alarm and call button. We still have our light source, otherwise finding one would have been number two. We've tried yelled for help. The only one we haven't done is stayed calm," he said with a heavy emphasis in her direction. Currently, she was the epitome of panic.

Y/N furrowed a brow at him, "That's six. What's number seven?"

She watched Spencer inhale deeply before he told her, "wait it out."

Y/N felt her heart sink. The possibility of her going insane while being confined within this space was only increasing as the minutes passed by. And with that, she felt like oxygen was depleting alongside it. She took a big breath to remind her that there was still air to breathe, and Spencer caught sight of it.

"Are... are you claustrophobic?"

"No!"

His eyes widened at her outburst, and he even raised his hands in defence should the situation present itself, which was looking pretty inevitable.

"I'm not, I just... get a little... panicked, that's all."

"You don't say," he murmured, and —with a grunt— got to his feet again. He treaded towards the damned doors. Y/N thought he was going to bang on them again, and she took front-row seat on the floor to watch the imprudent, futile attempt. Instead, Spencer's long arachnid-like fingers dug into the crevice of the doors and he tried to pry them open. This was an even vainer approach; his strained groans showed such.

"It's no use. We're gonna be here for a while. I can offer you a juice carton," Y/N spoke, making Spencer turn attentively at the word 'juice'. He looked down to where she was rummaging through her bag and depositing a few random objects while she did so. In a very Mary Poppins like fashion, the entities incessantly kept coming and coming, gathering in remarkable piles on the floor. There seemed to be more things than space available, but then they were trapped in an elevator and space was one of the many luxuries the agents realised they had taken for granted. Despite his astonishment at the growing belongings, there seemed to be a concerning lack of food present.

She was, however, holding out an apple juice carton, and Spencer figured that you get what you're given. So while her attention focused to the remnants of whatever was in her bag, Spencer punctured the carton with the straw, and began sucking. He made a squeal of surprise and relief when he saw her pull out a feebly wrapped, half eaten bag of crackers.

"Oh, I forgot about these," she announced, with the first smile Spencer had seen from her since the elevator had broken down.

He leaned down to grab the bag, dusting off the sprayed crumbs and then took a seat to Y/N's left. He left space between them for chivalrous purposes and also to allow space for the bag of crackers to sit.

They made attempts to ration the snack, but it soon developed into an every man for himself situation when Y/N noticed Spencer had started to take two at once.

She wasn't even hungry anymore, but the hunger for beating Spencer at something prevailed and disregarded any logical thought that they ought to save food, so she dove in again for another cracker. Unluckily, she did so at the same time as Spencer, so it made for an awkward encounter when their hands collided but neither was willing to give up their slot in the bag.

Eventually (because they didn't want the other to notice their blush), they gave up when time ran too long and reached a compromise with halving the cracker. Y/N gave Spencer the bigger half of her failed equal snap, but neither of them addressed it.

Neither of them addressed anything actually, for the next... god knows how long they were cooped up in there. They sat in a pleasant silence, free from any awkward glances or trepidations: it was both from the fact that they were in their own heads, and a serendipitous comfort in one another.

"I'm sorry you're going to miss your Doctor Who... thing," was what broke the silence.

"Oh, it's okay. I can just watch it on repeat tomorrow."

"Okay," Y/N laughed softly, and they floated into another quiet.

"I'm sorry you're stuck in an elevator."

"Ha! Me too."

"When we get out of here maybe we can go for Chinese food," Spencer suggested, craning his neck to look at her with a discreet smile.

"Sure," she agreed. "By the time we get out my food at home might have rotten anyway."

And then time after that just... passed. In Spencer's satchel he had an uncanny assortment of reading material to thrive on, and amid her odd collection of pretty much everything she had ever owned, Y/N found an old MP3 player and some earphones (only the left ear worked, but it was as good entertainment as she was going to get).

There comes a point, though, when one person can only listen to so much music from their teen years; Y/N's taste back then was... questionable, to say the least. And her earphone seemed to agree with her, because it gave out just when the unmistakable sound of an NSYNC song began.

"Ugh, just when it was getting good!" She complained, tugging the bud from her ear and throwing it onto the miscellaneous pile.

Spencer's head quirked to Y/N, but his eyes only followed after he had finished a sentence on his page. When he did, he saw her curiously leaning over his shoulder and squinting at the words.

"You can borrow it if you want," he said. "This is my third time reading it and I have others."

He gestured to his pile, which had evolved into a makeshift bookcase in the corner of the elevator. A few pages were torn, and the spines were so worn down that she could barely make out what the titles were. Not from a lack of TLC, but rather copious amounts of it; having been read over and over again.

"No, it's okay. You continue, I'll just... meditate, or something."

"It's a good book," Spencer said, and he sounded like he was trying to persuade her, so she gave in and nodded. Readjusting her posture, she focused again on where the paint didn't meet the wall as she listened to the one thing she thought she wouldn't ever be able to stand: Spencer Reid's voice.

———

Which, to her and Reid's surprise, she found quite calming. Her hidden envy and not so hidden annoyance with his ability to reel off facts and wisdom like he was only recalling what he had for dinner hindered any fondness Y/N could associate with his voice. Until now, that is.

He was reading Strangers on a Train, supposedly his third favourite book, and they were reaching "the best bit" according to Spencer, but then every bit within the past forty five minutes since he'd started reading had been "the best bit", so Y/N wasn't sure.

But she's pretty calm, as calm as she can be stuck in an elevator, so she's actually thankful she has Spencer of all people beside her. She knew that if Morgan was in his place they'd have attempted murder at least a couple times by now; not to say that Y/N hadn't considered stabbing Spencer at all, but there's only so much damage a blunt pencil at the bottom of her bag could do.

So, she's calm. She's barely following the story because she only joined in halfway through, but she's grasped the basis of it because Spencer reads so eloquently and so well that he's practically painted the vividness of the narrative for her, even though he vouches it's down to Patricia Highsmith's words, which is true, but Spencer has a role in it too.

One thing Spencer recites makes Y/N wonder why she's never had him read to her before.

"People, feelings, everything! Double! Two people in each person. There's also a person exactly the opposite of you, like the unseen part of you, somewhere in the world, and he waits in ambush."

The story portrays an uncanny resemblance to the plots of the abundant crime scenes they analyse daily (Y/N wonders how Spencer comes home from work only to read about the same gory instances): the same mannerisms, behaviours and intricate understanding of criminal attitudes. It's accuracy is so astounding that Y/N asks if the author was ever a profiler of sorts.

Although it's selfish, because Y/N is not the real victim, she wished there was some way Highsmith's words could spring into real life and provide tainted rose coloured spectacles to which she could observe reality through. In some sick way, Y/N needed to see beauty in things like murder. She sometimes forgot that what they were doing had a purpose, and they tended to be the good guys. But there was no writing beautiful enough for Spencer to read and glorify the crimes with.

But even Y/N thinks Spencer's reading could help her see life through more of the silver lining rather than shrouded by the dark cloud that accompanied it.

The moment of rare serenity within Spencer's words is suspended, however, when he suddenly stops with no obvious justification. Y/N wonders if she's missed something profound within the story again so she goes to read over them on the page this time (because she's been rather entranced in Spencer's voice rather than the actual words), except when she looks up she sees a look of horror depicted on Spencer's face: one that doesn't register with her primarily because what's happening in the story is rather quite mundane compared to the dismay on his face. It's so poignant that she thinks something must be fatally wrong.

"What is it?" She asks, sitting up (and away because she thinks he may be about to vomit. But no, the real reason is even more horrific).

"I need to pee."

Y/N gasps; she hadn't even conjectured this predicament. It was a basic human necessity, how had she not anticipated this would happen? At first she thought, hey it's not that bad, better him than me— he can stand. Until she realises that there isn't really anywhere to stand.

"Oh no," she whispers, and he looks at her dauntingly. "You shouldn't have drank that apple juice."

"What was I supposed to do, bathe in it?" He scorns, and the two connect in an unwavering exchange eye contact with one another. Y/N dreads looking away in fear of what he'll do when she has her back turned.

So, like I said, Y/N was pretty calm, and I'd say Spencer was too; reading was a delight, and he found Y/N almost as endearing (almost). Life was bearable until Spencer needed to pee.

And it is here that they throw all peace out the window (if there was one) and give up on step number seven, and instead say hello to their old friend step number five: frantic yelling.

The energy pent up from lazing around reading and being read to is released fairly effectively. Y/N thinks she's never screamed so loud in her life, and Spencer knows he hasn't: entrapment and a full bladder can take one hell of a toll on a man.

And when the profusion of footsteps and the clanging of doors sounds, it is glorious. It is what they imagine heaven to sound like and more. Y/N collapses to the ground in relief, and Spencer throws his hands up in a prayer of thanks (even though he doesn't necessarily believe, but he is just so high on adrenaline and the discomfort of needing a wee that he'd just about believe anything now if it meant he could get to a bathroom).

"You guys okay in there?" A voice calls in from above them (Spencer genuinely thinks it's God) and Y/N has never been more happy to hear Derek Morgan.

"We're good! We're good! Oh my god, get us out of here please!"

"Right on it, baby. Bet y'all thought you were gonna die in there, huh?"

"Worse," Y/N called, "I thought I was gonna have to see Spencer's dick!"

Morgan laughed (music to their ears: any voice that wasn't each other's fit that criteria in that moment), and then told her he didn't want to know. Spencer and Y/N heard him holler behind him, and even more footsteps approached. Y/N couldn't see much from the slither between the doors that had just been pried open, since they had fallen a considerable distance from their floor. What she could see was only half of Morgan's face while he knelt on the ground.

"What happened?" Spencer asked, trying to gain some understanding for the reason behind missing his Doctor Who marathon.

"Power cut. The whole city's in blackout."

"You're kidding," Y/N replied, then turned. "A whole lotta people just risked that 1 in 26."

"Us included," Spencer said.

They recognised the voices of the maintenance team, and even a few uniforms of firefighters that worked on opening the doors with as much force as they could muster. Y/N looked again to the wall and paint mismatch, finding it too unsettling to look at their rescue attempt (that had way too much potential to go wrong) and even more unsettling to look at Spencer who was practically cradling his crotch.

"Ladies first!" A fireman called, and his hand reached into the space they had managed to (barely) increase, hoping that it wouldn't prove to be too difficult. From what Morgan told them, Spencer wouldn't have any trouble getting through it if they had halved the space ("the kid's a sherbet stick, I'm telling you").

"No, we've got a man here who's about to explode," Y/N joked, forgetting that the word 'explode' is a term one should use lightly within the headquarters of the FBI. She was blissfully reminded of this when the few surrounding agents brandished their guns. They almost didn't let them out until Spencer yelled that if he didn't get to a bathroom that instant he would give them a real reason to get their guns out.

So he was lifted out first, falling into Morgan's arms the chance he got to. He, somehow, managed to wait until he saw Y/N definitely leave the elevator before racing off down the hallway. Maintenance didn't even bother telling him that the doors have been locked because officially work finished three hours ago; they figured he had enough vigour in him to knock a wall down, never mind a door.

"Are you alright?" Morgan asked Y/N, lifting her up onto her own to feet. She's given a shock blanket, which is a pretty cool souvenir.

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"Miraculously. I don't know how you survived in there with him; I'd go insane."

"Eh," she chuckled, "he's not too bad."

———

After gathering their belongings, Y/N and Spencer make their way to leave work, again.

Morgan's nonchalant explanation of the blackout is in no way accurate to the genuine portrayal of, what Y/N can only describe as, a thriller movie come to life. She's looking out the wide scale windows in the bullpen room and can only see her reflection. It's creepy. Skittishly, she jumps when Spencer's image shows up behind her own.

"Jesus, haven't I had enough near death experiences tonight?" She asks, holding a hand over her heart that she's sure just kickstarted (for various reasons).

"Sorry," he laughs. Placing his hands in his pockets, Y/N can sense he's more relaxed now that he's peed and no longer trapped within the restrictions of one metre.

They smile, then look out again to the darkened abyss before them. Y/N has never seen the city so quiet, yet she knows it's anything but. Once she steps outside it's bound to be hectic central.

"You normally get the subway, what are you gonna do?"

"Oh, I guess I'll just walk," Spencer shrugs.

"Absolutely not. I'll drive you home."

"Oh, no, you don't have to do that—"

"Spence, I just spent the last three hours in a confined space with you, I'm sure I can do twenty minutes more," she said. "Get your stuff ready, we can head off now."

She swung her bag over her shoulder and turned to walk out the bullpen, her heels reverberating throughout the room. Spencer watched her stride out by her reflection in the window, as to not be caught staring.

"If my car breaks down I'm gonna commit murder!"

Spencer laughed loudly, which made Y/N smile as she passed the kitchenette. When he continued to chuckle to himself he realised he wouldn't mind another three more hours stuck with her— at least he'd have an excuse if the car broke down. Maybe if he set off now he could get there in time to beat Y/N to her car and slash the tyres. He kindly reminded himself that that's illegal while he retrieved his satchel off the back of his chair and strutted out the office.

He wasn't too far behind Y/N when he suggested getting a Chinese on the way back.

"Is that a date?"

"If eating a Chinese takeaway in your car is your idea of a date," he sang.

"It very much is," Y/N grinned irrefutably.

He held the door open for her, she said thank you, and their giddy (dare I say lovesick) smiles dropped when they faced the elevator.

They've taken the stairs every day since.

fin.

#criminal minds #dr reid #dr spencer reid #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid gifset #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid imagines #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds x reader #Spencer reid x reader #Spencer reid fanfiction #Spencer reid oneshot #criminal minds oneshot

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btsandvmin · 3 years

Text

A personal dilemma

I feel like I have to explain properly why I have reacted the way I did and why the asks about me not doing videos for Vmin affected me so much. I am sorry for dwelling on this subject so much but it is something that is important to me and effect what I do and how I do it a lot.

This post is a bit confused and I might also come across both as a hypocrite and as "high and mighty". But I believe every person has a responsibility for what they do no matter how small the effect. And I need to get this off my chest. This is a conflict within me that I don't have an answer to yet.

For the last few days I've seriously considered if I should continue with writing analysis for Vmin or not. Because at the end of the day I know what I do have a sort of snowball effect that is out of my control. So asking me to not do videos in worry about Vminies getting delusional faster or me being seen as a analysis maker more similar to some ji/kookers or tar/kookers like tkk/lives made me wonder not only if putting out videos was something that bring more bad than good, but if making any analyses at all was something that brought more bad than good.

Even if I try hard to stay away from sounding delusional and to warn my readers of the problems with believing the things I point out and the narratives I share might still lead to more confidence in Vmin being superior or real. Even if it's not my intention I can't control what people do after reading or watching my material.

Thus if creating leads to more bad for both the Vmin community and perhaps in the long run even Vmin... How can I in good conscience keep doing it?

I always believed and hoped that my way of writing, and of being open and transparent with the problems with shipping analysis would rather at least to some extent halt the ones reading and understanding my stance from turning delusional or over confident etc. That I could be clear about the difference between facts, theories and narrative and make others aware too.

When I started this blog I was just shipping happily and reblogged others posts. Until the "you can't ship Vmin they are friends" issue bothered me enough to write about it so I wrote "The “bromance” issue". Then I kept making material to show why Vmin is just as good and easy to ship romantically as any other ship. Thus my 10 reasons to ship posts etc.

The first time I truly got into analysing territory was with my first song analysis. And even then it was just a feeling that the songs could match and speculation mostly for fun. Vmin kept doing things, and yet I saw a lot of people get angry or defensive just for shipping Vmin. For example as 4 o'clock came out and Vminies got attacked for "making it about Vmin". Already feeling like Vmin's songs kind of fit together, and how other shippers tried to make the songs about their own ships (including 4 o'clock) I started to look closer at various ship analyses and seeing the lack of Vmin analyses compared to other maknae ships made me feel like people just zoomed in on their own ship and ignored everyone else. I couldn't help but want to add my own Vmin interpretations. I wanted to add a Vmin perspective as a sort of counter weight. Especially since I felt the things I saw had more to them than similar theories from other ships. For example the songs, being soulmates, using army as a substitute for each other or my own version of Vlive analysis, which was that Vmin seemed to avoid it rather than them hiding in each other's room. Other ships had these theories, despite Vmin having at least some of these things confirmed. So in a way, the soulmate claim and 4 o'clock was my starting point to look at Vmin in a different way and a bit after that I started making analyses.

It felt weird to see all of these things go ignored when other ship communities made their followers believe in the relationships with a lot less than I felt Vmin had. I never got confident that Vmin was real and I still think the odds of any ship being real aren't that big. But I did feel like many people completely ignored Vmin both as soulmates and as a ship.

So, while asking my fellow Vminies to be careful with believing I kept looking at Vmin and added my biased theories to show it could very much be done with Vmin as well. I never wanted to make people delusional, but having been in many fandoms before I also knew that with size that is something that can't be avoided. I saw that as BTS kept growing and as big Vmin moments happened, that more and more people shipped them. It made me happy. But I also knew it would mean more and more would eventually start to question Vmin the way other ships got questioned. I really think it's something that happens eventually with enough of a following. There are so many ships in Kpop that people believe in and try to prove, it definitely wasn't exclusive to BTS. (You can even look outside Kpop at things like the Sherlock or Supernatural or even Hunger Games fandoms where many speculated that the actors weren't just close, they were romantically involved.)

I wanted to talk about Vmin, but I didn't want to be one of those that told people what to think and to believe me no matter what. I wanted peope to question without "knowing" what the truth was. I was hoping to bring something different than just the safe "this is just my thoughts and you can take it or leave it" disclaimers. I wanted to explain the problems and to remind ourselves (me included) that shipping is something that can easily turn into more if you don't actively remind yourself that we actually don't know the truth. We have narratives that seem to make sense, but so does other shippers... So for many of these belivers it is impossible to be right. Not everyone can be right about their "truth", if anyone, since they go against each other. If Vmin turn out to not be together I do not want to be the one responsible for people believing they were real, only to get hurt when they aren't.

This is something I've always felt, and as I kept writing analysis I always wondered if I really should. Especially since I saw some Vminies get inspired by me or even taking some of my theories and run with them as facts rather than the theories they were. I put things out there, moments and ideas. A narrative for Vmin. And I saw others adapt them and go further with them. I wasn't sure how to feel as I realized my blog perhaps contributed to Vminies feeling more suspicious and slowly more confident in Vmin being more real than other ships.

Even if it was my goal to make people look at Vmin, I guess with all the things Vmin did it all started to feel more "real" for me too. So many of my theories seemed to work and even get proven or added new material. The songs kept coming and Vmin kept being Vmin. But I also knew this exact thing happend with ji/kookers after G.C.F came out. New material that "confirmed" their beliefs and in turn allowed them to become more confident in being right. So I kept reminding myself not to get swept away, because in the end I don't think no matter how much we have gotten, that it has to prove anything besides how much Vmin mean to each other. Romantic or platonic truly doesn't matter.

Another thing that makes a difference to me is also the way I view the different ships if they would actually be real. For example watching ji/kook and ji/kook theories it seems pretty clear they don't mind people shipping them or seeing things between them. I've never seen Jimin be careful, but instead rather bold and almost pushy, with moments with JK. If Ji/kook is together their shippers too believe that they want people to know. With Vmin I saw it a bit differently... I've seen Jimin be careful with how he and Tae comes across since 2014. Why I don't know. But if we imagine there to actually be something between Vmin, then it doesn't seem like it's something Jimin wants us to know. Taehyung is a bit bolder, but either way the "narrative" I see for Vmin if they would be real is that they are careful with getting exposed. Thus there is also that factor to consider when writing theories about them. If Vmin would be real somehow, and they don't want to be "exposed" how is what I do the right thing?

I have had a post in my drafts for a while and I wanted to add it here in case you are interested. After all, this isn't something new that came after the video asks, but rather something I've always questioned. Which is why it really got to me when I got asked to stop doing something for the sake of the community, myself and Vmin.

This is something I wrote a while ago and I decided not to post at the time. I hope you will understand my feelings a little bit better after reading all of this.

I hope you understand where I am coming from and excuse me for generalizing and speaking about the Vmin (and other ships) community as if it's one big force and not many individuals.

***

Now, I have debated for a long time if I should talk about this at all and basically take a stance in a way I would prefer not to. I know I will lose followers over this, and that's ok. I can't force anyone to listen. But with the way I see the Vmin community grow I also see the confidence in Vmin being real grow. It's natural and happens with all ships eventually, but I still hope Vminies can look at shippers from other communities and realize the same kind of reasoning applies to us all.

I get more messages that sound borderline delusional now than ever.

I always suspected we would reach this point, because again, as things get more normalized and ok to talk about the bolder statements and theories will become. It literally happens with all ships, slowly at first and then gradually worse and worse until you reach truly delusional levels where Big Hit are playing up other relationships to hide the truth or trying to create a glass closet for another ship and where every choice and action has a possible agenda. I don't think Vminies will get worse than other ships that are much bigger and bolder. But I do think we have already changed a lot in the last year. Even looking at my own posts I seem to have at some point escalated from "Vmin seem to have these push and pull moments" to "Vmin's push and pull" if you see the difference. It might be small, but it definitely matters in how my views comes across.

When I write I do try to present facts and then speak carefully and not confidently about narratives or meanings. If we take my song analysis for example I think there is a substantial amount of things even when just looking at facts. But, saying what those facts might mean will in the end always remain a biased guess. Especially since other shippers have their similar theories as well that they believe in 100%. I mean, I could make a case for Tae and Hobi's songs being connected as well. I've seen analysis like this from all shippers at this point, and I can't dismiss them anymore than they can dismiss mine. (As long as they keep to facts.)

I am careful, and even then I see some of my theories being talked about as fact, or att least very close to facts.

From what I have seen I have moments between Vmin I have notcied and shared that haven’t been picked up on before I did it. I still have some things like this I haven’t shared at all, simply because I think fans would run with them and become more delusional simply by knowing about them.

Sadly, the way things are going I feel uncertain if I should share more of these things at all. I don’t want to have to go around and debunk Vmin moments or urge people to watch other ships, because in the end every person has the right to enjoy a ship in their own way. But I do think confidence is dangerous no matter how good moments we get.

Ji/kookers got a lot worse after GCF Tokyo and started to talk about how Big Hit might be working towards a glass closet. And that might sound ridiculous, but I have seen Vminies say the same with the way Vmin has been "shown" as Friends came out and other pretty good Vmin moments from the last year. The question of "Do you think something is up with Vmin?" or "Do you think they are planning something based on the amount of moments we get?" are questions I have gotten many times.

You might think I am being too careful, but because I have been in many fandoms in a period of over 15 years I literally see the same development happen for all different kinds of shipping communities. Real and fictional. Where the fans get more and more confident as the groups gets bigger. It’s a gradual change towards feelings certain and allowing more logical leaps to fill the gaps, but it will get faster and faster once it starts.

I don’t want Vminies to get more and more similar to how many ji/kookers and tae/kookers act and think. Where we find suspicion in everything and allow ourselves to feel confident. (Or worried whenever something goes against that belief.)

I might sound a hypocrite considering I do write analysis on Vmin, but I am sorry to say, the way things are going maybe I shouldn’t anymore.

Every ship in BTS have moments, and every ship in BTS even have believers who truly KNOWS their ship is real. I often used to get the question “do you know this or that about this other ship” and “if you only looked at and knew about xxx you wouldn’t ship Vmin” etc. And honestly, they have a point. Only I think it works both ways for all shippers. We all mostly look at our own ship and have our own narratives and reasons to think they make the most sense. But as soon as we allow narratives to sound like the only or most logical explenation we have lost a big part of our ability to question others and ourselves. That's why I wanted to add the Vmin narrative in the sea of ji/kook and tae/kook theories.

Recently I posted Can shipping turn into conspiracy theories? and part of the reason I did so was because I have seen an increased tendency in the Vmin community to walk this thin line between shipping and belief.

I feel very conflicted honestly. I want our community to try and stay away from being sure, no matter how compelling the arguments. Again, I have literal hundreds of pages about Vmin being weird or doing things I think make them the most likely to be real in some form when looking at BTS.

AND I AM STILL NOT GOING TO BE CONVINCED.

I have followed another group where members kiss when drunk and talk like they ship each other and even if a ship might seem real there is just too much we don't know. And a lot about other ships we decide to ignore or don't know. I have been accussed of being a ji/kooker because I won't say ji/kook being real is impossible. But how can l? How would me saying ji/kook can't be real be any different to the aggressive ji/kookers who has come to me to say "Vmin is cute but ji/kook is real".

Of course every person might have their own level of what might convince them, but we also know that literally millions of other people are convinced of completely different things with incredible certainty.

I don't want to be scared to put my theories out there so they can be taken as facts.

I have said it before, and I know shippers are drawn to confidence, but that's the exact reason to why I choose not to be confident even though it gets me more hate and less followers.

***

So this is what I wrote a while ago... And hearing people worry about what might happen if I start making videos just made these thoughts resurface. Especially since I didn't feel that video was very analytical, but it still likely would make people notice Vmin in a "what if they are real" way. Again, I use moments that exists, but I also add them in a different context, with a Vmin narrative. If what I write or make seems legit and makes sense then my tone of being careful might not matter. People will get exposed to moments and ideas I highlight and then take them further. That's why I hesitate.

I don't think I am big or influential enough to do much, but just doing 'a little' shouldn't excuse it if it in the end leads to something bad, more than it leads to something good. That's why adding YouTube as a platform doesn't make much of a difference in my mind if I still do what I do here. Sure YouTube is bigger and things get spread faster... But I write much more analytical and questionable things here than I did in that video, and even if it gets spread slower and to less people isn't what I do here in a sense then worse?

If me making videos makes some of you nervous (which I understand and relate to) then what will it lead to if I post basically a book on everything weird I've seen and thought in regards to Vmin?

I want to feel like I add more good to the community than I bring bad. I always thought I was doing the former as I tried to make my followers feel open minded rather than convinced. Now I don't know where I stand anymore and so I feel even more unsure of what to do.

Maybe I should have kept this all to myself and not vented out my worries to you. But I take this rather seriously and while I love what I do and love being part of the Vmin community I am feeling conflicted and I felt like sharing why might be good for me.

I know this was long and I applaude you if you managed to read through it all. I am truly so happy to have gotten so many nice and understanding and kind messages from you all. And many of you even saying you are happy you came across my blog and that I brought a new perspective, made you more open minded or even kept you from turning delusional. It makes me feel like I at least did some things right. I purple you all. 💜

#vmin #btsandvmin #personal #my post #shipping vs believing

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radiorenjun · 4 years

Text

I Don't Need It

• Pairing: Na Jaemin x Reader

• Genre: Angst, Comedy, Fluff

• Na Jaemin despised the idea of soulmates, he wanted to fight against fate for choosing his soulmate for him. Even if it means his stubborn childhood best friend wouldn’t stop trying to make him accept about the similar tattoos on their wrists.

• Warnings: mental breakdowns, heartbreak, rejection, major angst, arguments, flashbacks, physical injuries, fighting, underaged drinking, panic attacks, slight mentions of death. things are going to get much better from this chapter on. Or is it?

• Wordcount : 9.2k

• Masterlist here!

• Chapters: XV, XVI

“Oh dear Lord. Na Jaemin once listened to What Is Love by Twice and took it way to heart,” Hyuck tsked, shaking his head in disappointment, earning a few threatening glares from his older friends as they watch the lovesick boy sulk in his seat on the lunch table. “What? Am I wrong?” he asked, lifting a brow at them with an innocent shrug.

“Fuck off, Hyuck,” Jaemin groaned, waving his friend off as he stared back at his phone screen with an empty expression. “Damn, Captain out here using the government name. What’s up with him?” Younghoon asked, walking up to the sulking boy with a towel over his shoulder, passing the cloth to Jeno. “He got into a huge argument with y/n the other day at the library,” Donghyuck explained, sighing as he patted his friend’s back sympathetically.

“Yikes, I take it that it didn’t go so well?” Jihoon asked, wincing as he examined Jaemin’s seemingly lifeless state. The boy in question currently resembled a kicked puppy, his eyes held no emotion other than sorrow and heartbreak. Jaemin looked so ‘down in the dumps’ (as their coach had said before giving him a small time out) you could see his soul slowly leaving his body.

“No shit, dude. She told him to fuck off,” Hyuck hissed, wincing at the thought of his own soulmate telling him to get out of his life. “Ouch, for real?” Younghoon scrunched his nose, looking down at his captain who’s expression darkened as he looked down at his dirty sneakers. “I didn’t know Y/n could say that to the Na Jaemin, himself. Are you sure you aren’t just hallucinating things, Capt?” he asked once again, looking down at the boy before him.

“He had it coming, really. Have you seen the awkward moments we had to go through because of how they keep pulling and pushing each other away? Damn, it was like I was watching a shitty anime adaptation on netflix,” Hyuck shook his head, tutting under his breath. Jaemin slowly raised his head up at the two boys towering over him, staring daggers into their souls.

“I would very much appreciate it if you guys could stop gossiping about me like I’m not listening right in front of you and fuck off. Let me mourn for the rest of my life in peace, please,” Jaemin rolled his eyes, leaning the side of his face against his knuckles as he propped his elbow up on the table. “He’s got it bad, huh?” Chani commented, walking up to the boys and leaning his arm over Hyuck’s shoulder.

“Definitely,” Hyuck agreed, nodding.

“Lee Haechan, you’re not helping either,” Jeno rolled his eyes, crossing his arms against his chest. “Well what am I supposed to do, man? I gave him advice and all he did was just talk and do little things. Jaemin, listen, to win a girl’s heart you gotta go big or go home,” Hyuck advised with an enthusiastic tone, receiving nothing else but a heavy sigh from the said boy.

Jeno gave out an annoyed groan, snapping his head around to look at his best friend. “So what are you going to do now? Are you really going to leave her alone?” he asked hesitantly, watching Jaemin’s sulking state carefully. Jaemin hummed, shrugging nonchalantly, pursing his lips in thought. “Well, if that’s what she wants then, I guess I have no choice,” he mumbled.

“What? Really?”

“Look, what do you want me to do? I fucked up. I tried to fix things by small actions and waited for her to be more comfortable with me and I still fucked that up because I couldn’t be patient and time is running out. We’re graduating soon, I tried to talk things out and I still lost control of my emotions and somehow managed to fuck it up without the slightest bit of effort,” Jaemin snapped, running a hand through his hair and tugging on the roots out of frustration.

“I get it, I fucked up. I don’t need to be constantly reminded that I lost my soulmate and I’m going to be alone forever,” he raised his hands up in defeat, groaning. “The least I can do right now is to leave her alone to have some time to herself. Maybe if I do that she won’t hate me as much.”

Jaemin was really hopeless at this point. He didn’t know what to do. He knew he had to do something to try and make things better, but he fucked up too much this time. He believed that the relationship you two have now is unrepairable. He screwed up his chances of making it up to you once again, and now he’s just going to sulk around until he gets over it.

Jeno and Hyuck exchanged similar glances of sympathy, sighing heavily. “You can’t just give up like that, dude. You just gotta try a bit harder,” Younghoon slung an arm over the younger boy’s shoulders, giving him an encouraging smile. Jaemin pursed his lips, hanging his head with his doe eyes staring holes into his shoes before shaking his head ‘no’.

“I can’t. I really fucked up this one, you don’t even know,” Jaemin felt his heart ache at the memory of your exhausted expression that was now engraved into his skull. The way your eyes no longer held the adoration you had for him for so long. He internally wondered why he didn’t notice the sparkles in your eyes had faded whenever he came into your line of vision. Moreover, he regretted the fact that he didn’t cherish the moments when he could gaze into the adoration you held for him in your heart.

“I made her turn into the old me. God, I fucked up bad,” he groaned, rubbing his face with his hand in distress. Younghoon sucked in his lips, gazing up at the two boys, widening his eyes and nodding at the distressed boy beside him, gesturing for them to help him comfort him. Jeno clicked his tongue, crossing his arms against his chest as he shook his head in disappointment.

“Are you really going to give up just because of that?” Jeno deadpanned, furrowing his brows. “What do you want me to do man?” Jaemin peered up at his best friend, letting out a puff of breath. “I really don’t know what to do anymore, at this point I should just fucking give up. She won’t even give me a chance, anyway. What’s the point anymore?” Jaemin claimed, his eyes half-lidded.

He felt tired. He just wanted to go back home and sleep until his problems go away. But he knew he couldn’t. He had to do something to fix this, he wanted to do something to fix this. But he was at loss, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He was already on thin ice, if he fucked up one more time, he wouldn’t know what’s going to happen next. And frankly he didn’t want to think or risk it.

“No shit, sherlock.” Jeno scoffed, rolling his eyes incredulously.

“You repeatedly hurt her for two years straight, asshole. I wouldn’t forgive you if I were her either,” he added with a heavy sigh, shaking his head at the younger boy who just gave him a glare in return. “Thanks for pointing that out, Captain Obvious. What else do you want me to do, huh? Climb the Eiffel tower?” Jaemin groaned, slumping against his seat.

“Then stop fucking sulking,” Jeno scolded. “You know very well sulking about your problems isn’t going to make anything better. You know that better than anyone, captain.”

“Don’t use the ‘captain’ bullshit on me now, Jeno. I’m not in the mood,” Jaemin looked away from his friend, his eyes scanning the lockers in front of him. “Well, you better be in the mood sooner or later. The final game’s coming up, you better get your head straight before Coach actually gets serious and kicks you off the team.” Jeno scoffed, earning glares from Hyuck and Renjun.

That finally put Jaemin back into his rightful state of mind. He had been working for the position all throughout his sophomore and junior year, he knew he wasn’t in the best state to focus on anything right now but he couldn’t give up the position he had been working oh-so-very hard for the past two years. ‘God. What the fuck am I suppose to do?’

Younghoon sighed, placing a hand on his friend’s knee, patting it. “The two of you are literally hopeless. But I’m happy that Y/n rejected your dumb ass,” he commented with a tight-lipped smile. Jaemin turned to his friend slowly, who wiggled his eyebrows at him in an attempt to lighten the mood. “I’m being serious, by the way.” Younghoon added, retracting his hand.

“Gee, thank you for expressing your thoughts, Mr. Huang,” Hyuck chuckled, slinging an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Hey, hear me out first!” Younghoon exclaimed, pushing his arm off of his shoulders with a roll of his eyes. “Listen, I’m happy she rejected you because it would be pretty stupid for her to just forgive you all of a sudden despite the fact that you haven’t learned from your mistakes.” He explained.

Jaemin furrowed his brows in confusion at the boy’s words, “what’s that supposed to mean?” he retorted in an almost offended tone. “I don’t know if you realise this yet, Jaemin. But it seems that you truly haven’t learned from your stupid mistakes. She told you countless times she doesn’t want you to bother her and you did the exact opposite. You didn’t give her any time to slowly let you back into her life,” Jihoon shrugged simply, finally gathering the courage to speak up.

“So what you’re saying is that it’s okay for her to barge into my life doing all that soulmate crap for the past two years and I’m not allowed to do the same?” Jaemin asked, raising a brow at him as a scowl stretched across his lips. Jeno groaned in frustration, raising a hand to rub his temples to keep himself from snapping at the oblivious boy.

“See! He doesn’t even get it!” Jeno exclaimed, rubbing his forehead as he stared hopelessly at the boy sitting down in front of him. “Dude, you can’t just walk into someone’s life after hurting her twenty-four seven for two years straight, thinking that you would be forgiven in an instant. Hell, if we were Y/n we wouldn’t even want to look at you,” Jeno elaborated, taking a step back and crossing his arms against his chest.

“You can’t blame the poor girl for being cautious. You’re supposed to be her soulmate, the one who’s supposed to make her happy. You’re doing a shitty job at doing so, if I say so myself. If anything I’m proud of her for saying no to you so kindly, if I were her I would tell you to get out of my life permanently. You’re making her lose her trust in you even more as time goes on. Get that through your thick skull, you asshole.” Jeno spat, his eyes narrowing at the younger boy with rage glossing over his pupils.

Jaemin’s friends always considered you as their sister, they always cared about you and they always try to defend you and Jaemin whenever they can. But they knew this was getting a little bit too far. Your graduation ceremony was coming up soon. Prom was coming up. The final game is coming up. Not to mention the finals afterwards.

Everyone was more than beyond stressed in their own problems. And the fact that Jaemin was sulking about his problems instead of doing something about it was pissing them off to no end. The fact that the two of you were visibly hurting because of it was pissing them off. They wanted things to go back to the way they used to. But they knew things can’t end that way. Not anymore.

The least they can do now was to try and get Jaemin’s mind to think straight again.

“By the way you’re acting got me thinking, are you actually doing this because you’re starting to like y/n or is it because you just want to hurt her even more?” Jeno asked (almost growled), his tone lowering as he glared daggers into Jaemin’s figure.

“Jeno, wait, you’re-”

Jaemin shot up from his seat, standing up in front of his best friend with his eyes wide in shock. “What the fuck Jeno? You know very well I would never hurt y/n. At least on fucking purpose, you know that better than anyone. Why the hell are you even saying that?” Jaemin shot back, his eyes wide in shock at Jeno’s false assumption. Jeno’s gaze remained unwavering, taking a deep breath before continuing to speak again.

“Are you sure about that Jaemin? Because it seems to me all you’ve done so far is hurting y/n. And by what you said about Y/n not forgiving you made it sound like you’re purposely doing this because you wanted revenge against Y/n for ‘bothering’ you the past two years. Tell me, Jaemin. Are you doing this because you feel bad? Are you doing this because you actually like her? Or are you doing this because you want pay back?”

Every word that spilled out of Jeno’s mouth was like a slap from reality. Of course Jaemin likes you! Of course he feels bad! He just said those things because he was just furious with himself. Right? He was just frustrated that things haven’t been going very well lately with your relationship that he couldn’t help but make it sound like he was only doing this for revenge.

Right?

“Of course I fucking like her,” Jaemin shot back rather hesitantly, the anger in his eyes dissipating. Instead, sadness and confusion had taken place across his features. Truth be told, he was quite confused about his own feelings. He longed for your presence. He wanted to talk to you again. He wanted to give you soft cuddles again. He wanted to shower you with his love just like he always did back when the two of you were still kids.

But yet again, he has been hurting you alot. No, scratch that, he’s been hurting you with every selfish step he made. Does he really feel something for you or is this his way of getting you a taste of your own medicine? He can’t possibly-

“Get your shit together, Jaemin. If all you’re going to do is hurt her, you might as well just leave her life the same way she left yours months ago. And if you want things to be on good terms again, you might want to think a bit more,” Jeno spat, walking away to his locker, leaving the boy lost in his thoughts.

“Well, that was surely something unexpected.”

“I know!” you groaned, spreading your arms out on the table with a frustrated groan, covering your face with your hands in embarrassment. “I don’t know what got into me. I was on the brink of crying that day. In a library too! Thank god it was empty, oh god.” you rambled, a look of pure horror spread across your features.

“Okay, okay. Calm down, just- repeat what you said to him just one more time,” Hyunjin coaxed, showing you his index finger. “I refuse to repeat myself, I rather bask in the cringe of my own previous words. Good day,” you gave Hyunjin a bittersweet smile before frowning abruptly and leaned your chin on your arm, jutting out your bottom as you recalled your conversation with Jaemin last week.

Speaking of Jaemin, he hasn’t made any efforts to talk to you again since then. He stopped sending you random chocolates in your lockers and small pebbles with small doodles drawn sloppily with a posca marker. He stopped trying to make small talk with you. And considering you were now avoiding him even more than you already are, you haven’t seen him much unless you pass by the school field to go to the teacher’s office to get something.

Were you a bit too harsh with your words? This is what you wanted right? You wanted him to leave your relationship as it is before anything bad happens to ruin it even more than it already has. But yet again, what was the point? Your relationship with Jaemin now is almost as non-existent. And you didn’t know what to feel about it.

You tugged the sleeve of your sweater down to take a peek of your hidden tattoo, a small frown on your lips as your eyes scan the small drawing that lead to all of this mess. Did you make the right choice when you rejected him? Was yelling at him a bit too far? He is your soulmate after all, maybe you should’ve given him a chance?

“Stop it,” Renjun chuckled, reaching from across the table to flick your forehead

You grimaced, looking up at your group of friends with a perplexed expression. “I’m literally just breathing right now,” you deadpanned, rubbing the spot he flicked with a small pout. “We can hear the gears inside your head, you’re thinking way too loud, y/n.” Yeeun commented with an amused smile, wrapping her arm around yours.

“Sorry, I was just thinking about Jaemin,” you sighed, giving her a half-hearted smile. “As usual,” your friend chuckled, rolling their eyes at you. You pursed your lips, “shut up. I kind of feel guilty for what happened back at the library now.” You pulled your arm away from Yeeun’s hold with a small pout on your face.

“Why the hell would you feel guilty? You should feel proud of yourself,” Renjun furrowed his brows, opening the milk carton he bought earlier before school had started. “I don’t know, I just feel guilty? I never really snapped at Jaemin like that before. Or anyone else,” you shrugged, picking off the chocolate from Hyunjin’s dessert box with the spoon beside you.

“Hey! Get your own!” Hyunjin exclaimed, slapping your spoon away from his box with his own. “Stealing from a friend tastes way better, sorry not sorry,” you grinned, shoving the spoon inside your mouth with a small hum. “We’re kinda proud of you for standing up for yourself like that though,” Renjun mumbled under his breath.

You felt your heart ache slightly at the thought. “I mean,” you pulled the spoon out of your mouth and clicked your tongue in thought. “I’m not one to back out of confrontation, so I’m kind of proud of myself for saying no as well. But I just really feel guilty for doing so, is it because he’s my soulmate?” you frowned, leaning close to take another bite of Hyunjin’s dessert.

“It’s normal to feel bad. It shows that despite everything he’s done, you still like him. Whether it’d be because of the soulmate system or because of your own feelings, you still like him. It’s normal to be angry at someone and feel like shit about it afterwards. We’re here for you,” Yeeun leaned her head against your shoulder and rubbed your back affectionately.

You looked up, watching as your friends gave you encouraging smiles, showing you that they’re here to back you up no matter what. “We won’t be mad either even if you did say yes. Because, let’s be real. If my soulmate finally realised they’re being a piece of shit, I would snap at them and forgive them when I’m ready,” Renjun chuckled, continuing on munching down his salad. “We’ll always be here to back you up, even if it doesn’t seem like it,” Hyunjin nodded in agreement.

“Thanks guys, I really appreciate it,” you sighed, mustering up the strength to give them a genuine smile. But alas, the empty feeling in your chest didn’t disappear. Not even a bit. But it made you feel a bit at ease knowing you have someone to turn to whenever you need it.

You missed him. It wasn’t a secret among you and your friends. You missed Jaemin even if you didn’t want to. You missed the happiness bubbling up inside of you whenever he comes into your line of vision, you missed the butterflies swarming in your stomach whenever you hear his voice. You missed how he would complain about how his tummy hurts when he accidentally drank milk at the most random of moments.

You missed how despite how he found your affections and small antics extremely bothersome, he never failed to do the littlest things to show that he still cared about you. You couldn’t even count how many times you would fall asleep to the scent of his hoodie whenever he accidentally left it in your room. You couldn’t count how many times you wrote small love letters at the back of your notebook whenever he pops up in your head.

You couldn’t count how many times you would crack a small smile whenever you caught a small glimpse of his.

It hurts to think that you lost your chance of ever feeling the same happiness you did before. At least, not in real life considering you’ve been having too many dreams of Jaemin. You’d wake up all happy and hyper then in a minute your mood will spiral down like a toilet bowl when reality hits you smack on the face. Though, you knew very well that you should just move on considering college was just around the corner.

You didn’t want to think about this anymore.

“Hey y/n, you got a minute?”

Your head shot up from your phone, eyes wide in surprise to see none other than Lee Jeno himself. “Jeno?” you leaned your head to the side a bit, wondering why he was standing right in front of you when he was supposed to be in practice right now with Jaemin and the others. “Shouldn’t you be at practice?” you asked, pulling the strap of your bag that was slipping off your shoulder.

“Coach cancelled today to cool us all off before the game next week,” Jeno shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets with a small shrug. “Right, the game! Good luck with that, by the way,” you beamed, eyes wide in realization when you realized that the last game for the guys was next week before exams starts. “You’re not coming?” he asked, leaning his head to the side in confusion.

You wanted to. You really really do. You always had a front row seat so you can see Jaemin play at a close view. You remembered how you always cheered enthusiastically for him, Jeno and Hyuck back then, handing them cool water bottles afterwards. Putting up a bright smile as you watched Jaemin stare back at you with annoyance, his eyes showing how much he didn’t want you there. You remembered pretending to be oblivious to the sympathetic looks Jeno and Hyuck would always share whenever you attempted to make small talk with him.

“Oh nope, I’m not. I’ll probably be napping or studying since finals are only a month away,” you lied, shaking your head with a small soft smile. You, knowing yourself, you’re probably going to watch one of your friend’s lives during the game and cheer in your room so you don’t have to see Jaemin in real life after the argument that went down last weekend.

“You know you don’t need to lie right? I can’t count how many times you complain about how you studied a day before your exams,” Jeno chuckled, rolling his eyes as he nudged your shoulder with his teasingly. “Shut up, I spend most of my time doing last minute homework. I need breaks too sometimes, you know,” you scoffed, pushing on his arm with a dramatic huff.

“Look at the bright side, no matter how little you study, you magically ace it without effort,” Jeno joked as you walked towards the vending machine in front of your school lobby. “There’s this thing called praying. Or satanic rituals a day before the exams,” you snickered, pulling your wallet out as you examined the food displayed through the transparent glass.

“You want anything? I’ll pay,” you asked, turning to your taller friend with a soft smile, who shook his head ‘no’ at you. You shrugged as if to say ‘your loss’ before taking out a small bill and pushing it through the tiny slot. “So, what did you want to talk about, Lee Jeno?” you asked with a rather teasing tone. “You never talk to me in private unless there’s something you want,” you commented with a small snicker, pressing on the small button on the side of the machine.

“Well, I hope you don’t mind me talking about this. It’s about Jaemin?” Jeno asked in a rather hesitant tone, sucking in his bottom lip nervously.

You both heard the can drop into the opening slot at the bottom of the machine with a loud ‘clank!’ When he finished your sentence, you swore it sounded way too similar to how your heart dropped into your stomach at the mention of the brown boy. “Oh,” you replied almost inaudibly, kneeling down to grab your drink out of the slot.

‘Say no. Are you seriously going to talk about the guy you just rejected after 2 years of pining for him to his best friend?’

You gulped silently, grabbing your drink as you took a deep breath to compose yourself. You stood up and gave him a weak smile, “what about him?” you asked, wincing internally at how weak your voice became at the thought of talking about the boy you were so whipped about. “You know you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Jeno must’ve noticed how uncomfortable you felt when he brought him up as he cleared his throat.

“No, no. It’s fine, I’m okay. I’m okay with talking about him. It’s just Jaemin,” you shrugged, trying to appear as nonchalant as you possibly could. “You sure?”Jeno asked, furrowing his brows as he stuck his hands in his pockets nervously. “It’s really okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” Jeno gave you a kind smile, one that almost made you take back what you said, however your pride got the best of you.

“It’s fine, really,” you nodded, giving him a reassuring smile as you internally yelled at yourself for not being honest to your dear friend.

“I don’t want to invade on your personal issues with Jaemin or anything, but-” Jeno paused, furrowing his brows as he attempted to think of a nicer way to express his statement. “It’s pretty obvious that the two of you are in a rough patch and I don’t know if you noticed but Jaemin is pretty stressed out about this,” he grimaced as he realised that his words were leading to literally nowhere.

“I’m sure you’re pretty stressed out as well, it’s pretty evident considering the tension between the two of you is way more than obvious and-”

“Jeno, where are you going with this?” your tone turned emotionless as you let out a heavy sigh, looking down at your shoes before looking up at your friend with eyes void of emotion, rubbing them with the palm of your hand. “I’m sure whatever you want to say is important but if you can’t tell I just want to go home and sleep until I have to get up,” you explained with a small smile.

Jeno’s eyes widened a bit, surprised at how your bright demeanor vanished in a few minutes without leaving a single trace. ‘So Mrs. Dong was right about soulmates unrequited love being emotionally and mentally draining, then.’ Jeno thought to himself as he sucked his lips in to think of a way to express his thoughts without causing you to run off.

‘Fuck it.’

“I know you probably don’t trust him anymore or you’re probably afraid of getting hurt after everything he’s done. But if- As if to say that Jaemin were to try woo-ing you over one more time, without fucking up that is, would you give him another chance?” he asked, his tone turning serious as his eyes hardened and stared into yours as if to spot any trace of you lying.

‘Oh, so this is what this is about.’ you thought.

“Did Jaemin put you up to this?” you asked, rubbing your palm against your temple as you felt the emptiness in your chest being replaced by non-other than the dull ache that is heartache. “Did he not get the message to leave our relationship, whatever’s left of it anyway, alone before it gets worse?” you sighed, chuckling slightly at the thought of Jaemin’s stubborn ass asking Jeno for a favor. Grimacing at how mean you sounded.

“No- no! Not at all, I asked you on my own accords. Jaemin has nothing to do with me asking you this-hell! He doesn’t even know that I’m here talking to you right now, trust me,” Jeno exclaimed, raising his hand up and using the other to cross his heart, symbolizing that he promised you that he was telling you the truth. You smiled a bit at this.

“Why are you the one asking? Not to be rude, Jeno, but this doesn’t concern you,” you raised your brow, taking a step back as you twisted your drink open with curiosity. “I know, it’s none of my concern but honestly watching the two of you go on trying to solve this by yourselves is like watching the Twilight series except there’s no weird fantasy creatures and a werewolf falling in love with an infant child,” Jeno blurted out, scratching the back of his head, chuckling at his own little joke.

“Oh,” you replied, letting out a small chuckle at his joke before your smile faltered. “Well what do you suggest I do? So far I’ve only been receiving advice from people that have heard only my side of the story. Considering you’ve heard Jaemin’s side of the story, what do you actually suggest I do?” you asked, stuffing your thumb in your pocket as you sipped your drink, lowering your gaze to your shoes nervously.

“I suggest you follow my advice earlier. If Jaemin ever decides to try again and not fuck it up, I would advise you to consider giving him a chance,” Jeno shrugged. “I’m not saying that all the things he did were okay. Hell no, if I were you I would totally kick his ass for taking your kindness and affection for granted, I assure you. But Jaemin has been... trying really hard,” Jeno explained, sadness flashing against his eyes.

“Trying hard?” you asked in a whispered tone, looking up at your friend with slight confusion. “Yeah!” he replied with a small bright smile. “You may not know this but Jaemin spends his time now wondering about what small cheesy things he could do to make you smile. Ever since you ghosted him, he’s been thinking about you alot. It was almost annoying.” he giggled, remembering the countless times Jaemin’s face would flush red whenever he realised he was thinking about you back when he was still in denial.

“You may not notice it considering he always does this whenever you aren’t around. Despite the fact that Jaemin was always an asshole to you, he’s always think of you twenty four seven. It’s always ‘y/n would’ve liked this’, ‘this is something y/n would hate’, ‘y/n would’ve done this’, y/n this and y/n that. The idiot was whipped as hell but his stubborn ass didn’t realise how much he actually cares for you until now.”

“Remember how you would leave him small letters in his locker or give it to him straight up before running off because you forgot to do your homework and you needed to do it before the bell rings? I swear, he always had this lovesick smile on his face when he watched you sprinting down the hall yelling at people to get out of the way,” Jeno chuckled, recalling the moments when he and Hyuck would spot Jaemin smiling to himself in front of his locker as he read the letters you send him every time you passed his locker.

“That’s not- I don’t believe that,” you shook your head, not believing your ears. This couldn’t be the Jaemin you knew. You remembered vividly of how his eyes held no love whatsoever whenever you came into his line of vision, the way the happiness evaporated from his pupils the moment he turned his head at your figure. The angry glares he would give you whenever you do something small yet cheesy.

“Don’t you remember? When I gave one of my letters to him in person, he threw it away without a second thought. You saw it with your own eyes, Jeno. You can’t lie like that to me, that hurts, dude,” you frowned, clenching your fists as you recalled how he gave you the sweetest smile he could muster when you gave your small letter to him at one moment. And the next moment, you saw him crumpling it up in his hands and throwing it to the nearest trash can at the corner of your eyes.

“Well, that was kind of our fault,” Jeno frowned, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “We swear, we didn’t know he would act like that in front of you. I swear he would have those wide smiles whenever he read your letters and occasionally Hyuck and I would tease the hell out of him. Usually he would just shove the letters back in his locker or something, we didn’t expect him to throw it out in front of you,” Jeno looked down, his expression filled with guilt as he gripped the saddle of his bag.

“If we hadn’t teased him like that in front of you, maybe he wouldn’t have done that,” he mumbled under his breath. You stared at him in disbelief, it was like you were hearing about a completely different version of Jaemin. Yet you couldn’t be sure if Jeno was telling the truth. Jeno wasn’t one to tell lies, he was always the mature one in complicated situations. But you knew sometimes he would lie for the best.

“I’m sorry, I find it very hard to believe you right now,” you bit your lip nervously, a dull ache appearing in your heart as you realised how sad you sounded. ‘Why is it so hard to believe that Jaemin would do something that nice? Why can’t I believe it? Jeno can’t be lying, right?’ you thought to yourself, feeling your heart sink at the fact that you couldn’t bring yourself to the fact that Jaemin could actually harbor feelings for you deep down even though he doesn’t realise it.

“Hyuck took this picture a couple of months ago, that was before you stopped giving him letters, I think,” Jeno clicked his tongue, pulling out his phone and unlocking it before opening his chats with Donghyuck, scrolling up until he found the picture he sent before handing his phone to you. You furrowed your brows, holding his phone in your hand as you read their messages closely.

It was indeed two months ago. Donghyuck had sent Jeno a picture of Jaemin’s locker. You zoomed in on the picture, spotting a stack of letters made from the pages of your notebook with dates on them at the corner of his messy locker. You could see a few were slightly crumpled as if the textbooks had something to do with it, but you could recognize that posca yellow marker anywhere.

Your eyes widened slightly as you felt your heartbeat pick up its pace inside of your chest. “That’s pretty nice of him,” you mumbled, you didn’t have the strength to keep up your emotionless facade as you couldn’t help but crack up a small smile. Handing Jeno back his phone, you gave him a tight-lipped smile, leaning your head to the side in curiosity. “Why are you trying so hard to convince me to give him a chance, exactly?” you asked, letting out a small puff of breath.

Jeno shrugged, giving you the same tight lipped smile as he shoved his phone in his pockets. “As I said before, I’m tired of watching this whole story slowly leading to an end where the two of you end up being miserable simps for the rest of your lives,” he joked, scratching the back of his head as he gave you one of his iconic eye smiles. You let out a small sad chuckle, looking down at your shoes in thought for a small moment before looking back up at your friend.

“I’ll think about it. How about that?” you nodded sadly, you weren’t lying. You really did need time to think about all this. “Of course, I guess I’ll see you later?” Jeno nodded, sucking in his bottom lip as you waved him goodbye. “I’ll see you around, yeah,” you gave him a polite smile before walking away from the taller boy to the bus stop. Completely oblivious to the fact that Jeno had kept his fingers crossed behind his back while biting his lip, wishing desperately for Jaemin to not screw things up this time.

‘Well that’s definitely uncalled for,’ you thought as you fished your phone out of your bag to check the time. You didn’t know what to feel, you didn’t know what to think of this situation. You were confused to say the least. If the y/n from two years ago was listening to this conversation right now, you know for a fact that she’d either be over the moon or she wouldn’t believe her own ears. But at this moment, you didn’t know what to think of this.

Maybe, just maybe, if Jeno had told you this ages ago, maybe you would’ve still kept on going. Though, if he had told you this ages ago, would you still be willing to keep up your bright demeanor just so that Jaemin can step on you a lot longer? If you still kept going back then, if you just pretended that the fight between you and Jaemin didn’t happen like you always do, would things turn out differently? Would Jaemin agree to give you a chance?

You didn’t know. Frankly you don’t want to. It’s best that some things are just left the way they are.

“Honey, Jaemin’s outside of the door. He said he wants to talk to you,” your mom called you out from the front door. Your jaw dropped as you quickly placed the spoon back into your plate of your mom’s famous pasta, abruptly getting up from the couch and placing your plate on the coffee table before dusting any weird crumbs off of your clothes.

Clearing your throat, you yelled out a quick ‘be right there!’ as you made sure to tidy yourself up to ensure that you look presentable enough to look humane and not like a body that just got pulled out of the river. Your heartbeat increased with every step you take towards the front door, your clammy hands tightened into balls of fists as your anxiety crept up inside of you.

‘Jaemin? Why is he here? He hasn’t spoken to you ever since the fight you two had at the library. More importantly, does his parents know about said argument? The Na’s aren’t ones who would shove their noses up into other people’s business but oh dear god, what if Jaemin told his parents and his parents told yours?

Safe to say you had a really terrible feeling about this.

Feeling your heart ache at the memory of your argument, you felt your heart growing empty and cold. Shaking the thoughts out of your head, you took a deep breath before poking your head into the room where your mom was smiling up at a seemingly exhausted Na Jaemin. You grimaced at his appearance, feeling your heart ache even more by how much of a mess he looked right at that moment.

His hair was messy and disheveled, as if he had been tossing and turning in his for hours. There were heavy dark bags under his eyes, signifying his recent lack of sleep. He was in his casual attire: his iconic black nike’s sweatpants and a plain baggy white shirt and some random slippers that were probably a hand-me-down from his dad.

Nonetheless, he looked really cozy. His appearance never failed to make your heart flutter in your chest, the small smile on his lips doing things to your stomach. You couldn’t help but dart your eyes down to the small (assumingly recycled) paper bag from Starbucks in his hand, furrowing your brows at this you attempted to walk towards them as casually as you can.

“Mom?” you gulped, walking up towards her as you gripped your fists tightly behind you to hide your nerves. “Y/n, sweetie, look! Jaemin came to pay you a visit,” your mom exclaimed, smiling widely. It’s obvious that she’s using this opportunity to make the two of you finally talk face to face, clearly as she didn’t know anything that had happened after the dinner party your families had a couple months ago.

Jaemin gave you an awkward smile, raising his free hand to give you a small wave, in which you returned with a small awkward wave of your own. “I’ll leave the two of you to catch up,” your mother nudged your arm and gave Jaemin a kind smile before walking back to the kitchen to give you two some privacy. Sucking in your bottom lip nervously, you watched your mom walk around the corner before looking back at the boy standing before you.

“Hey,” he greeted in an attempt to make small talk.

“Hi,” you responded breathily, putting your hands behind your back so he wouldn’t see you clenching your fists nervously.

“I-Can we talk? Outside?” Jaemin spoke softly, biting his bottom lip nervously, nodding towards your front porch. Oh how those three words brought you so many unpleasant memories. Is this the same anxiety people in relationships feel? The two of you aren’t even together and you’ve gotten into so many fights in the past two years, it’s almost ironic.

Before you could open your mouth to say something, Jaemin had already beat you to it. “I know you probably don’t want to, but I swear it won’t take much more than at least two minutes. But if you don’t want to it’s-” Jaemin spluttered out, stumbling over his own words as he looked down at his shoes to calm himself down. “Okay,” you agreed in a soft tone, nodding slightly at the older boy.

“Are you sure?” Jaemin asked, looking up at you in slight surprise, relief evidently surging through his veins as you gave him a reassuring nod. He really did thought that you’d say no to him after your fight last weekend. “Yeah, it’s fine. Let’s talk outside,” you nodded, opening the front door, gesturing for him to walk out first.

Kissing his teeth, Jaemin walked out of the door, watching you follow him and close the door behind you quietly before leaning your back against it. “I see you got a car?” Jaemin asked all of a sudden. Your gaze shot up from your feet to the brown headed boy in surprise, letting out a small ‘huh?’ in response, only to see that Jaemin was looking at your new white car. “Oh, yeah. I got my driver’s license recently and my aunt gifted me one to celebrate,” you nodded.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Jaemin nodded, sucking his lips in nervously. There was a pregnant pause between the two of you as your thoughts jumbled up to think about what to say next.

“I’m sorry.”

Your eyes went wide at him, your breathing hitched as Jaemin looked down with eyes filled with guilt and sorrow. “What?” you blurted out, confused at his sudden apology. “Look, I know you probably don’t want to see me right now and I know you told me you don’t want to see me anymore. But I can’t help it but try at least one more time. I promise I won’t waste your time anymore than I already have,” Jaemin ran a hand through his hair in distress, taking a deep breath before looking back up at you with eyes filled with regret and guilt, taking you aback by his sudden bold statement.

“I’m sorry. About everything. The fight at the library, the dinner party with our parents, the music box, the gifts, everything I’ve ever done to hurt you. You didn’t deserve to be treated like shit by someone like me. You didn’t deserve to go through the mean bullshit I put you through the past two years, and you don’t have to forgive me for it. Because frankly, if I were you I won’t even bother forgiving myself either,” Jaemin started, letting all of his words pour out of his mouth from the heart.

“I’m sorry for constantly embarrassing you in front of our friends and families whenever you show the slightest bit of affection towards me. I��m so sorry for throwing your gifts away right in front of you whenever our friends tease us a bit too much, that was a dick move of me and you didn’t deserve to have your efforts thrown into literal waste,” he grimace at the mention of throwing your heartfelt letters in the trash right in front of your eyes in front of his friends almost a year ago.

He tightened his grip on the strings of the paper bag, biting this lip nervously before continuing with his apology. “I swear I’m not making up any excuses for myself. I really do feel terrible for everything I did, I didn’t realize that I was hurting your feelings this bad for two whole years. You just wanted your soulmate to like you back, I should’ve at least tried to try,” he felt his heart getting even more heavier with every second that passed.

“You really don’t have to forgive me and here’s something to make up for all the gifts I broke or threw away,” Jaemin outstretched his arm to hand you the paper bag, looking straight into your eyes with a small sad smile as you wordlessly grab the bag from him. “I-I don’t want to pressure you or anything but I would really like it if you come to the game next week, your usual spot feels empty without you there,” he chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I promise I’ll leave you alone for real if you really want me to. I know I probably don’t deserve it, but if you’re willing to give me a second chance, I would take it in a heartbeat and I would be willing to make everything up to you. You don’t have to go and you don’t have to decide right now. I just came to give you that- God, why am I so awkward,” he buried his red face in his hands for a brief moment before looking up at you with a flustered expression.

You couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle at his embarrassed state. ‘So this is what it feels like when you’re not the one embarrassing your ass off to give a gift to your crush, huh?’ you thought to yourself with a small smile. ‘How ironic,’ you sucked in your lips slightly before looking back at Jaemin with a genuine expression. “I’ll see you later,” Jaemin waved, turning quickly as to not fuck things up anymore than he already has.

You gave him a small wave, turning around and entering your house to walk back to your couch and finish your pasta, placing the paper bag on the coffee table as you took a large bite of your pasta and pulled the tape that sealed the bag shut. As you were thinking everything over as you mindlessly chewed on your food, you pulled the bag and leaned it over towards you to examine its contents.

Inside were a couple bars of your favorite chocolate bar, a note folded in half, a big packet of honey flavored chips, a small gift wrapped in notebook paper tied with a red string and a small decorative box with Jaemin’s name attached to it. You bit your lip, pulling out the note first and unfolding it as you pulled out the small wrapped gift, reading it as you unpackaged whatever Jaemin had gifted you.

‘Hey Y/n. I don’t know if you’re going to be reading this or not. But if you do, I just want to say hi just in case you didn’t want to talk face to face I would at least ask your mom to give you this so the letter could convey my apologies way better than I actually would in real life.’

You pulled the red string off slowly, placing it carefully on the table as you slowly peeled the paper away to reveal a small familiar porcelain figure that was no bigger than the size of your palm. Your eyebrows raised in surprise at this, this porcelain figure was the same figure that came along with the music box your grandmother gave you before she passed away. You turned it around to inspect it even more, spotting the same crack on the edge to conclude that it was indeed the porcelain from your old music box.

‘I know you might be wondering how the small doll was still intact considering I broke the whole music box to the point it was unrepairable, but trust me, I was hella surprised to see that this little thing was still intact. Maybe my carpet floor had softened the impact? I don’t know it was still very pretty and I wanted to give you back something that was previously yours. I know, you gave it to me but I really want you to have a piece of your grandma left with you, so don’t fight with me on this one, y/n >:(’

You couldn’t help but grin at the small smiley face he drew on the edge of the paragraph, letting out a small giggle as you placed the porcelain doll gently on the table beside your plate, taking a spoonful of your food before digging your hand back in the paper bag to fish out the decorated box. It was quite heavy considering you had to use two hands to pull it out.

With a small huff, you place the box on the couch beside you. Crossing your legs over the other and placing the letter on your lap, you pulled the lid off of the box and placed it beside the paper bag before looking back inside the box, shock coursing through your veins. You felt your heart warm up at the contents of the box, feeling your stomach do somersaults in your body as you slowly picked up the contents one by one.

The box was filled with nothing but your childhood polaroids the two of you took throughout your whole youth, some aesthetic pictures Jaemin took of you without your knowledge or consent during your freshman and sophomore year of middle school and high school (hell you didn’t even know he still took pictures of you). There were a few polaroids decorated with small doodles and hearts with sharpie markers. You spotted a few old post-it notes you had used to give Jaemin cheesy pick up lines, but this time they had small responses.

‘Hey Jaemin, are you a camera? Because every time I look at you I smile. :D’

‘Hey Y/n. You better check the mirror, you’re the reason why I’m smiling right now :D’

‘If I had a genie that could grant me three wish, I would use them all just so you can be with me’

‘Well I’m here now, what are you going to do with the other two wishes?’

‘Your hand looks heavy, let me hold it for you, Jaemin :D’

‘My heart feels heavy, can you hold it for me?’

Your grin grew inevitably wider with every pick up line he wrote, heart fluttering as your stomach swarmed with butterflies. Rubbing your face to keep yourself from combusting as you dug your hand through the box to see the old letters Jeno had been talking about. You opened one of the dirty letters which was covered in small stickers and doodles. (which you assume was Jaemin’s doing, considering he has a clear eye for aesthetics)

‘I knew you liked really cheesy romance stuff and considering I watch a lot of k-dramas and shows in my free time, you know very much I’m going to put my romantic expertise into good use. It felt nice being the one giving gifts, no wonder you like giving me stuff so much, this is actually fun. I hope this isn’t too much for you. I know this probably isn’t going to make up for all the damage I’ve done in the past two years but at least I tried my best.’

You liked to write the dates on your letters just in case things like this happen and you would have the opportunity to look back and cringe at your own cheesiness and mediocre writing. You honestly couldn’t believe your eyes or Jeno when he said Jaemin had kept your letters in his messy void of a locker. But now that you had a living proof that he actually cherished your letters. You couldn’t help but feel some sort of comforting hope in your chest.

Your heart no longer felt empty or void of emotions, it felt full again. Though, not completely filled, it was better than feeling complete nothingness. You were still very much scared of trusting Jaemin with your own heart again, you were still very much scared of getting hurt again. But there was something inside you that was begging you to trust Jaemin again and let him back in your life. It has been telling you to do so ever since you saw how genuine he was being.

‘I probably didn’t tell you this when we were talking but believe it or not, I actually really really like you. And I really want to try where this all can lead to, and if you’re willing to trust me again I would try my best not to fuck it up this time. I don’t expect you to say yes or anything to me. If you decide not to come to the game, I totally understand and I’ll leave you alone just like you asked. I missed hanging out with you, Y/n. I missed my best friend. I miss having my soulmate around, and I’m sorry that it took me this long to realise how important you truly are to me’

He really isn’t giving up is he? Well, if he hasn’t given you up like you did with him. Are you willing to repeat his previous actions and stop listening to your head and start listening to your heart again? Are you willing to give him up again?

I’m sure you know the answer to that already.

I feel like the end is quite rushed. i’m so sorry if so. I’ve been working on this for two weeks lmfao and it’s currently two am right now so Imma go to bed hehe. This series has like... what three chapters left? DAMN ITS BEEN A WHOLE YEAR SINCE I MADE THIS SERIES. DW I HAVE A HYUCK SERIES COMING UP SOONER OR LATER LMFAO.

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