#'i suppose they will crown an ape next'

[motownfiction]

dogtooth

As they sit across from each other at the diner, Sam watches while Steph sketches. He even thinks about it in those words. Sam watches while Steph sketches. It’s like an SW tongue twist, and he loves it. He says it about ten times before Steph slams her pencil down on her sketchbook, leaving a graphite smudge where Sam is pretty sure she doesn’t want one.

“I’m trying to work,” she says. “We have this architecture assignment due next week in AP Art, and if I don’t do well …”

“Then you’ll fail?” Sam asks.

“No. I’ll look bad in front of Miss Wozniak. That’s worse than if she just failed me.”

Sam shrugs. He’ll never understand it – that need to impress a teacher. He’s never worked in the art room, never said any words to Miss Wozniak that weren’t about Steph, so maybe she’s different from the other teachers, who will only look twice at you if you’re good at filling in bubbles. None of these teachers are smart enough to know that Sam is smart all by himself, just like they’re not smart enough to know that Steph is more than the crown jewel of the art room.

But she is pretty that way.

“Can I see what you’re drawing?” Sam asks.

“You know I don’t like to show you what I’m working on until it’s finished,” Steph says.

“Just this once?”

Steph sighs. She turns the sketchbook over and slides it to Sam across the table. Sam looks down at it – the most beautiful building he’s ever seen, almost like out of a game or a fairytale. Steph could always do that. Pin down a world and give it to you like it was nothing.

“It’s supposed to be a church,” Steph explains. “I’m not … exactly sure what era I’m going for. I’m just drafting from my mind’s eye.”

“I love it,” Sam says.

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, I’m not. Who am I? Sadie? Please. Steph, this is … this is really beautiful.”

Sam means it, too, though he’s not really sure why. There’s something about this building … something that makes him so, so sad. Maybe it’s that he’ll never walk through its doors. Maybe it’s because he knows what he would do there if it was a real place. He doesn’t know. They are playing “Sunday Will Never Be the Same,” and Sam feels like he will cry.

He points to some jaggedness on the walls.

“What’s this?” he asks.

Steph leans over and nods.

“Oh, that’s dogtooth,” she says. “Kind of an edgy style. Gothic.”

“Are you going goth on me, Steph?”

“No, but I’m always about an inch away from that option.”

Sam laughs. He lifts himself up in his seat a little bit to kiss her on the other side of the table. Sometimes, he forgets how much smaller she is compared to him. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to feel about that, either.

“This is beautiful,” Sam says again. “When it’s done, can we build it?”

“Depends,” Steph says.

“On the money?”

“Well, yeah. But on whether or not we can build it together.”

Sam swallows hard. He’s not as dumb as his teachers think he is. He knows how to spot a worn-out metaphor when one comes his way.

“OK,” he says.

And right now, Steph does not seem hurt.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day 23!)

[audio-luddite]

Different? Better?

The adventure with the 1990s high end tube amp goes on.

There is good, and there is bad. Clearing away the bad issue is it will cost money to keep this beastie running. The good is it has the seductive sound of the vacuum to tempt and to tease me. Such a tease.

Last night I played 4 albums. The result was interesting.

The first one was my original copy of "I Robot" Alan Parson's Project. It sounded really good. AP was a recording engineer of great talent and is responsible for Dark Side of the Moon among many others. If you are familiar with that you can appreciate that the mixes are complex and deep and leave much to be untangled. If you are a detail geek as I am it is required listening. Lots of fun.

Next up was a "special" I found in my densely packed hoard of LPs. It is on the Wilson Audiophile label titled Center Stage.

It has an amazing back story and provenance. It was commissioned by Absolute Sound Magazine and the recording engineers, and mastering gurus are a who's who of the high end. Everything custom and tweaked. They even note the tape preservative used. Yes tape and pure analog full on. Should be great right?

I know TAS used it to evaluate equipment and crown the winners of that month's SOTA awards.

I may have mentioned that you can have great music recorded well or poorly. You can have great recordings of good or poor music. Bad recordings of bad music stay in the bin where they belong. Some things are doomed to be test records and this is one of those.

In the full golden ear style of reviewing I will note my equipment. The Phase Linear 8000 series 2 tangential tracking TT with an AT7V cartridge front end. Preamp is the ARC SP-14 with 50 pf load on the phono, and the Amp is the ARC Classic 60. Speakers are my own "invisible speakers" bass reflex in lovely birch plywood cabinets.

The music was movie and Broadway tunes played by horns and woodwinds with percussion. Basically a symphony orchestra without any strings. There was good space and I am a full on fan of how drums are portrayed. They are big deep and with amazing texture. Horns let you show off lots of audiophile type tricks. But the music was BORING. After two cuts I could not help but think if I hear another John Williams tune I will throw up. No FN imagination just quotes of everyone from Brahms to Stravinsky.

This is big loud music, and I was falling asleep droogs. I played both sides and yes the technical production is full on high end, but this goes back in the heap for a long time. Just not fun.

Since I was bored I decided to pull up "Year of the Cat" Mofi which I have talked about before. Wonderful recording of the most boring singer in history. Now this was interesting.

With the Franken-Amp this is broad and front row and deep with really really good clear sound. With the tuber it was almost muffled. Mr Stewart was pushed back a few yards and there was fog or smoke around him. ( not literally just an audible fuzziness thing ) I could still hear it clearly and all the parts were sharp and good. The guitar was very nice and metallic. The treble was really good. This is a Mofi after all. But the perspective of the mix was far different. I was in full on WTF mode. I bet it was mixed in a studio with all Solid State gear.

Very different, but not better.

OK one more then I have to shut it down. Emmylou Harris "Quarter moon...." I just got a Mofi used record from a cool shop a 5 hour drive away. There was some groove noise like dirt, they said they had ultrasonically cleaned it. Under the noise the recording was very nice. Actually a bit of discwasher brushing cleaned it up noticeably. I suppose the mix is simpler and cleaner so the sound was as I recall it before no big changes.

One thing and I will come back to it again. There is a background singer with a really cool tone to her voice. She is there, but not as easy to separate out as I recall. That may be the mix as Mofi does fiddle it's masters, or it may be the tuber. I have the original vanilla disk right in the milk crate there. I will check it.

[ Update: I did check it next day. The original disc was much clearer and the other singer was very easy to distinguish and understand. So did Mofi remix it and mess it up a bit? Interesting that the old copy sounded just as good as the mofi. Old master tape copy perhaps?]

In a related thing I ordered a set of the driver tubes. (EHX Russian). Far cheaper than a full set of 6550s and likely 30 years old. I want to pull the covers for a peak and will throw those in. It is a lot of bother to do so. I need some things to do in there aside from look. I will also check the bias of the output tubes. I will also scope some capacitors on the PC board that can go funny. There are 4 electrolytics there that are not power supply related and are known to be vulnerable. Just to risk my life you know. I gave up motorcycles decades ago.

The Amp does help warm the room and there was frost on the car this morning.

Cheers to all.

[heathfall]

Crown of Thorns (Chapter 1)

Chapter 1 of Crown of Thorns is here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46509019/chapters/117110269 or under the break!

We're starting at Chapter 17 of Sunset, where the divergence first starts! No special CWs here, except for mentions of canonical character death.

Ask me if you need anything else tagged, and I'll do my best to accommodate!

Also, ask if you want to be tagged for Crown of Thorns updates :3

Every branch bristled with thorns and, as Leafpool looked closer, she saw that they weren’t thorns at all, but cats’ claws, strong and curved and pointing outward to keep out ThunderClan’s enemies.

Bramble claws! Her initial thought filled her with dread. Brambleclaw was a strong warrior, but he was young, often abrasive and rude, and had not yet had an apprentice. Besides, he met often with Hawkfrost and Tigerstar, training and talking until sunrise. Surely, he would not be the cat StarClan chose to be their deputy, not when it would break the code that guided them.

Leafpool took a closer look at the wall. It rose high and foreboding. A second warrior came to mind. Thorns made of claws. Was Thornclaw the warrior they had chosen? He was often headstrong and an argumentative furball, but he was a loyal member of the Clan and had been for several seasons. Unlike Brambleclaw, he had had several apprentices and had guided the Clan well through the destruction of the forest and the Great Journey, even when Shrewpaw died. The thought of him being deputy drained her dread. He would learn and grow to be a strong deputy.

She woke up at peace with her dream. She had prayed for a sign from StarClan, and she got one. Thornclaw would lead ThunderClan well and serve them loyally and faithfully.

As she left her den, she saw her Clanmates keeping their vigil for Graystripe. There would be no body for the elders to carry away and bury. She wondered if Graystripe would ever find StarClan, so far away from the Clans. She padded quietly to her father's den by the Highledge. It was nearly moonhigh and nearly time to name the new deputy. She had to let him know who StarClan had chosen.

Firestar was sitting in his nest, deep in thought. His eyes were clouded with grief, but they brightened on seeing Leafpool.

"I wonder if I'm making a mistake," he said, half to himself and half to her. "I could call the whole vigil off." She could see the pain in his eyes, not wanting to let go of his oldest friend.

"And then what?" she asked. "Name your deputy days later, far after moonhigh? Let the Clan struggle to see them as legitimate like they struggled to see you?" He had told her and Squirrelflight tales of his struggle to be accepted as deputy when Bluestar would not name him until after moonhigh, moons ago back in the old forest. "We're living in unprecedented times, Firestar. We need to hold on to this one normalcy as best as we can."

"I suppose you're right," he said. "Anyway, you had to have come in here for a reason. The moon is nearly at its highest point in the sky. I have to name the deputy soon."

"That's what I'm here about," she said, explaining her dream as fast as she could.

"Thornclaw, you said?" he asked when she was done, and she nodded. "He's a loyal warrior," he said, and his eyes grew misty with nostalgia. "The first one I ever named, at that." Leafpool nodded. she had heard the story hundreds of times, but didn't have time to hear it again, not when the Clan was waiting outside. "I had about decided to name his brother Brackenfur deputy. He would be a good deputy, but in times like this, I have to remember that I'm choosing the next leader of ThunderClan. Maybe Brackenfur would be ready one day, but Thornclaw is ready now."

Leafpool nodded, though she hoped it would be several seasons before the Clan would see Thornstar. She didn't want her father to die, of course, and Thornclaw could use a few more seasons to grow used to leadership and mellow out some.

"He's one of the few cats in the Clan who has had an apprentice before." He had had two-- Sootfur, who had died to a badger in the same attacks that had taken her own mentor, Cinderpelt, and Shrewpaw, who had died trying to hunt for the Clans back in the forests. Leafpool felt a pang in her chest for her lost Clanmates. "He's a good choice."

"He is," Firestar said, his voice indicating he was lost in thought. Quickly though, he shook himself out. The moon was rising more by the minute, and he had no more time to waste. "If he's good enough for StarClan, he's more than good enough for me. Come on now, Leafpool. They're waiting for us."

[richmond-rex]

★ - Margaret of Burgundy ♡ - Cecily Neville ൠ - Elizabeth of York ◉ - Henry VII [I’ll choose sense of humour headcanon] Look at me being ultra-demanding 👀!

🌹 Hi there, I’m extremely sorry for the delay! Headcanons under the cut because my answer got somewhat long!

ask me a headcanon

Margaret of Burgundy

★ - sad headcanon: Ok, so we know that Margaret was responsible for the Anglo-Burgundian alliance negotiations in 1480 — if we go by Edward’s behaviour (not wearing his golden fleece livery collar anymore, receiving a pension from the king of France), it seems Edward had strayed a bit from his connection with Burgundy at the time. I think that it must have felt very strange for Margaret to go back to England and find things so changed: her brother Richard was keeping away (but went to London to see her), and most notably, George wasn’t there to receive her. We share the headcanon that Margaret and George were close in their youth, so I think it must have been incredibly saddening, and even disheartening to see what I think Margaret must have taken as a changed Edward — after being somewhat snubbed by her brother (Edward said he wouldn’t have business with Burgundy unless they paid him what France was paying him for princess Elizabeth’s betrothal), perhaps she thought he didn’t care about his ‘real’ family anymore. This is the time Okerlund speculates that Margaret developed a certain acrimony towards her niece Elizabeth of York: as the eldest York princess (a position Margaret had once occupied herself) she might have looked like the special flower amidst that court that looked so strange to Margaret. It certainly would explain why Margaret was so hellbent in supporting pretenders to the English crown instead of sympathising with her niece.

Cecily Neville

♡ - romantic headcanon: I know incredibly little about Cecily Neville’s life! But taking into account how often Cecily tried to honour her husband’s memory, I think she must have grown to love the Duke of York. I don’t know if she was already infatuated with him when they married — she was fourteen and Richard and Cecily had grown up together as children (as he was her father’s ward), which usually is a factor that precludes sexual attraction. He was four years older than her, though, so I don’t really know. We know that it took them ten years to conceive a child, which makes me think they weren’t actively intimate for some time, especially considering that Cecily (like her mother Joan Beaufort) proved herself to be very fertile. Maybe it took them some time to feel attracted to one another? 

Elizabeth of York

ൠ - random headcanon: I think Elizabeth was much closer to her maternal uncles than her paternal ones considering the frequency that she saw them. Apparently, she and her sister Cecily had a fascination with far-away lands much like her Woodville uncles :D Also, my headcanon was that Anthony Woodville was her favourite uncle but I’ve changed my mind! Considering that as Elizabeth grew older she didn’t see Anthony very often (since he was in Ludlow with her brother Edward), and adding the fact that she and Cecily actually shared a book with Edward Woodville, perhaps Edward was her favourite one. Considering his age, though — perhaps as young as Elizabeth’s oldest brother Thomas Grey — I don’t know whether she would’ve seen him as an uncle or as a sort of older brother. That she felt much affection for Anthony is plain, though, as shown by her actions in 1502.

Henry VII

◉ -  sense of humour: I don’t know if I can even call this a headcanon since Henry’s dry sense of humour is well known (one of the greatest joys in my modern AU was writing Henry as an absolute cheeky bastard sometimes hh). I think one of the best examples of his sense of humour is this one.

Thank you for sending this ask! ♥♥

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Reivew | Bruce Lee in New Guinea (Yang, 1978)

One of the great things about having to go back to the office when your province has removed all mask mandates is that, after not having gotten sick for two and a half years, I managed to catch two colds within the same month. Now, I won't grouse too much about my condition, but I will note that over the last two nights, when zonked out on cold medication, I turned to that age-old non-pharmaceutical panacea of Bruceploitation, the genre that works better the less you can pay attention to the plot. That certainly holds true for Bruce Lee in New Guinea, which feels like a free-associative series of fight scenes with the flimsiest narrative threads holding it together. What I'm saying is, it was a great movie to watch under these circumstances. If I misrepresent the particulars of the story in any way, blame the cold.

Bruce Li stars as an anthropologist who flies to Snake Worship Island in Papua New Guinea to study the snake tribe. There's a brief attempt to liken him to the real Bruce Lee with a fight scene where he sports a tracksuit, but otherwise I appreciated that he gets to be his own character and not too much in the shadow of the real deal. Complications arise as the snake tribe is under the influence of the evil Devil Sect, with the snake princess (who is noted to be very nice) having to obey the evil Great Wizard Guru. At one point, he tells her to take off her crown for breaking the tribe's rules. I would have thought as princess, she could have changed the rules, but I guess not. Do the snake people have a constitution? The movie does not provide an answer. Also, the palace has a pit of poisonous snakes right in the middle, which multiple characters fall into, so if she really wanted to take back power, there were options at her disposal. But she is good-hearted, and I suppose good-hearted people don't push others into piles of deadly snakes.

The Great Wizard Guru is a supposedly fearsome fighter with three tricks at his disposal: Snake in the Road (a fighting move), Snake in Tree (another fighting move) and a poison ring (what it sounds like). (A character tells us this breathlessly and then announces: "I'm dying!") That the Great Wizard Guru immediately goes to the poison ring in the next scene casts great doubt on his martial arts prowess. There's also intrigue involving the Snake Pearl (the movie cleverly builds its mythology through the age-old trick of adding "snake" before regular words), a baby, and some other schlubs awkwardly inserted into the plot. Li and the Snake Princess fall in love, but I guess I missed the scenes of courtship. Blame the cold medication.

The high point of the movie comes at the halfway mark. A pair of creepy guys spy a bunch of the female snake people frolicking on the beach (set to cheesy music), start harassing them, and are stopped when the Snake Princess arrives, tells her subjects to "Go get the ape!", and a gorilla shows up, does a few flips, and beats up the creepy guys. The ape is a force for good, so alas it never fights Li. Other animal-related intrigue largely involves snakes, and while PETA would likely not approve, I didn't notice any snakes being harmed onscreen. There's also a notable scene where Li's cousin mistakes his arm for a snake through the magic of editing.

I think this stumbles as an action movie by giving its main villain too many fight scenes with Li too early, so that their final showdown doesn't make as much of an impact. That last fight does have one pretty bloody moment, all the more startling because the movie is otherwise pretty PG-rated in terms of content, and the copy I watched (on the great Wu Tang Collection YouTube channel) had the swears bleeped out. (I noticed when a character said something really mean about a literal baby, which is a great way to signal to the audience that he's a bad dude.) The fights however come with great frequency, and are shot and choreographed with a reasonable level of craft, so combined with some of the kooky stuff here, I had a good enough time. However, I must note that the background of the fight scenes didn't look all that different in terms of wildlife than every other cheapo martial arts movie I've seen. What I'm saying is, contrary to the movie's title and that one insert of the plane taking off, the movie was not actually shot in Papua New Guinea and was instead filmed wherever they normally shot these things. If you can get over that crippling betrayal and don't mind not paying attention to the plot, you might have a good time.

[parasite-core]

A Memory of Green

This was originally written for the Rusty Fears horror writing competition. The theme was An Animal's Viewpoint. It didn't win, but I'm still really proud of it, so I wanted to share incase anyone would like to read it.

***

A Memory of Green

I don’t know how long I’ve been in this cage. Maybe forever. I don’t know if I have a concept of forever, but the word comes to mind nonetheless. The lumbering two-legged creatures come and give me water and food twice daily, once when the lights come on and again when they go out. The creatures don’t seem to like the dark. I don’t mind waiting through the night, my eyes are sharper than theirs.

I don’t know where I got these thoughts. I hear my furless captors speak, and I understand, but I don’t remember when I learned these words. They go away when I drink the bitter water they provide, that I know is laced with something to keep me calm and peaceful and quiet. My keepers write down notes, and say things like “The subject ‘Naomi’ continues to be compliant. The test is going well.” And normally I do comply. It’s so much easier to just drink and sleep and eat and exist as they desire, than to bite back and risk losing everything they’re willing to give.

But today, today I did not want to drink the poison. They did not seem to notice, or perhaps did not care. They had oh so many cages to care for after all. Creatures with fur and tooth and claw like me. Most quiet and complacent, awaiting nothing but their next meal. Others bite and howl and scream. They tear themselves apart against the bars and cry, until they’re taken away to places unknown, and never return again.

I am usually compliant. It’s so much easier that way. The furless clawless creatures give me food and leave me alone if I’m good. Some even praise me. “Good girl, Naomi. Good girl.” But the cage felt so small today. Or perhaps I felt too big. I wanted to rip apart my smooth and silky coat and stand tall and proud and flee, run free, somewhere with grass and trees and the warmth of sunlight instead of the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs that beat down on us at every waking hour.

So today I did not drink. And my mind felt sharper than it had in…I don’t know how long. Maybe forever.

And for the first time I noticed that my cage was not locked.

I waited for the lights to go out. For the creatures with their slow two-legged gait to retreat from the darkness, to wherever they sheltered while the shadows clung to the walls of their laboratory. Then I pawed at the door of my cage, pushed, and suddenly I was free. The dark corridors between cages stretched before me. All the clawed and fanged and furred and scaled creatures lay in silent stupors around me, none in any state for me to rescue, even if I were of the mind to rescue others. I darted forward, to the open door I’d often seen our lumbering masters exit through. The subtle scratching of my claws against the smooth tiled floor was the only sound. It was a foreign sound. I supposed I’d never walked on tiles before. Why I’d expected the clicking of the apes’ foot coverings, I couldn’t say.

The halls were long and lightless, but I had sharp ears and a sharper nose. To my right everything smelled of plastic overlayed with the metal tang of blood. I went to the left. I heard behind me the whimpering and howling of those creatures who could neither drink their fill nor free themselves. I heard through another door screams and yells of a different kind. Spoken in language, like the great apes spoke to us. I avoided that door. I didn’t want to know what these creatures could do to each other to cause such screams. Such whimpering begging cries for help, almost as broken as the howling of those I’d left behind.

There was a bend in the hallway, and then before me another open door, leading into a room lit by a pulsing green light. Green was good, I thought. Green brought to mind grass and trees. It brought to mind smiling green eyes. Kind forgotten words of assurance, and a hand with a golden ring. Whose eyes were they? Whose hand? When had I seen them? I couldn’t conjure up a memory. Maybe I had made it up. I didn’t remember ever being outside the cage before. How could I possibly remember grass and trees and a woman’s kindness? Love should be a foreign concept to me.

I padded softly forward, too aware of my clicking claws. My tail, held low, brushed against my back leg and I nearly yipped in surprise at the feeling despite myself. I feared that at any moment one of the apes would appear, scoop me up despite any attempt to fight, and take me back to my cage. Or worse, take me to the place where uncompliant creatures go, to disappear. I could turn back. I could hop into my cage and drink my fill and forget about the green and the grass and the eyes.

Instead, I pushed forward. Into a room of glass and metal. Wires and tubes covered the walls, connected to machines and large glass cylinders. So many glass cylinders. Almost as many as there were cages in the room I’d always been in and always remembered. And inside each was one of those creatures, the same clumsy two-legged form as my captors. Humans. The word came to my mind unbidden.

Only these humans were not as furless and scaleless and clawless as my captors. There was a man with feathers growing from his crown, his face melting together into a hard beak. A woman whose eyelids had dissolved, leaving an unblinking black snake eye to stare unfocused at me, as the flesh around it cracked and hardened into countless scales. A tall gangly human with antenna sprouting from their forehead, and their fingers fused into sharp scythes. A creature with a long body covered in sleek black and grey fur, nothing human left, save for green eyes that flickered open for but a moment, meeting mine with a look of utter helplessness and fear, before being eased back into slumber by whatever drugs kept them from twisting in pain from their transformations.

My body was trembling. I hadn’t even noticed. I tried to back away but suddenly four legs seemed like so many to coordinate, and I stumbled and fell. I remembered laughter, and a white dress. I remembered bells and joy. I remembered a future that we’d dreamed of together that was ripped away. I remembered screaming. Crying out as we were torn apart. Someone wanted us to disappear, and then we did.

I heard howling. I heard screaming. I didn’t know which was mine. Maybe both. Maybe neither. I wanted to run, but my limbs were all wrong, and I couldn’t find it in me to forget enough to remember how to use them. I writhed on the ground, willing this to be a nightmare. Willing myself to wake up to green eyes and gentle kisses. Willing myself to wake up in a cage, a mere beast with no memory outside its safe and simple cell. Something. Anything. Anything but knowing both, and being torn apart by having neither.

Eventually one of my captors came. They scooped up my limp body, and I allowed it. Maybe I could have clawed and bitten, struggled and fought. Maybe I should have, just to put up a token resistance. But there was no point. The green grass held no more appeal. The flowers meant nothing, if they weren’t woven into her hair. If I had to remember her smile and know that even in freedom I would never see it again, then what was the point?

I was returned to my cage, and I drank. And—and I forget the rest. It all blurs together now. Soon, I hope, the memory of my escape attempt will fade too.

A new creature has been placed in the cage across from mine. One with black and grey fur, and green eyes that never look at me. She cries and howls and refuses to drink. They will eventually take her away, and I will never see her again. I don’t refuse my water anymore. It’s easier this way. They give me food. They give me shelter. All I have to do is drink, and forget that there was ever anything else. And I’m happy to.

[navyhyuck]

week one | previous | masterlist | next

𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍𝐄𝐃, 𝐉𝐀𝐘.

↳ a love letter a week, and it has you wondering who’s your secret admirer. you have nine weeks, eight candidates, and one story to live. will you find out who your ‘jay’ is?

a/n :: hi hi hi fellas here’s the first part (technically, since the other one was an intro) <3 uhh a little fun fact! this project mentioned in this chapter was one that i actually had to complete last year (before corona lol) and i thankfully got a good grade on it even tho my teacher swore on all gods that it was very difficult,, he also let me put up nct posters in the classroom <3 enjoy :) [also, i may have missed some tags!!! if you aren’t here and you sent in an ask before, please do so again since it’s been some time since i last updated this!! ty mwah]

wc :: 2.2k

taglist: @childofthecycle @takoyakkun @the8luvr @staywrites @chocolattees @cherry-jaemin @cloudzume @babytoadz @cherrystay @sandaigdigan-reads @hoes4hoseok

couldn’t tag: @x-dawna-x

let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist!

There have been far too many unfortunate events unfolding in your day so far, starting off with the stupid guy that had parked just a little into your spot (that still had you thinking more than you had to do for any science test, and you were highly tempted to just smash the car instead) and then moving onto your English class where you were given a pop quiz on the third act of Romeo and Juliet, and then finally, the situation you’re in now.

It’s the last period of your day, which is supposed to be the most laid back in certain cases, but you’re slumped in your desk in the AP Chemistry lab room for a new assignment of partners. You’ve already attempted to convince Mrs. Choi to let you continue being partners with Chaeryeong, who was looking equally as gloomy from the opposite side of the room, but she had passively dismissed your request with something that went along the lines of ‘expanding our knowledge as a class.’ Not only did that sound like bullshit to you, it actually was, but you didn’t do anything more than stay put as she called out the assignments of partners.

“...Chaeryeong and Jisoo. Beomgyu and Yuna. Y/N and Jisung.”

You’re frozen at the sound of your partner’s name, slightly expecting your teacher to pair you up with one of the overachievers that usually sat in the back and talked shit about the ‘untalented’ kids, but you’re also pleasantly surprised. Turning your head, you meet the said boy’s eyes from a distance, shining into yours before a smile spreads across his face almost immediately. You return one back (probably forcibly from the shock you’re experiencing of the Han Jisung actually recognizing you and smiling at you) before whipping your head back to the front, gulping deeply.

Fuck.

“Now that we’ve split into pairs, there is a list of chemical compounds on this table. Come up with your partner and choose one wisely. After everyone’s chosen, I will tell you what your assignment is.” Mrs. Choi gestures vaguely with her hands, turning away as the rest of the students move around to find their partner. You stay planted in your seat, eyes barely staying open as you quietly continue to try and calm the beating of your heart. You’re sure that it’s not healthy, the erraticness overflowing to every single vein and artery in your body until you’re filled with the filling remembrance that your teacher just paired you up with the single most attractive boy in the school. Well—you purse your lips, thinking about that Hyunjin guy from yesterday—Jisung still causes more heart palpitations than some new guy could ever.

When you deem yourself safe enough to finally use your legs without thinking about falling, you stand up, meeting your partner halfway in the middle of the classroom. He doesn’t say anything at first, possibly because you’ve found a newfound interest in your dirty Converse, but he chuckles as a few seconds pass by, making you look up. “Hey there, thanks for looking at me. Wanna go choose a compound?”

You blanch at his choice of words, but you nod slowly. “Uh-huh, yeah. Sure.”

You learn later, alongside Jisung, that your assignment was to successfully convert your chemical compound into another, with exact proportions being massed properly. Just as you listen to Mrs. Choi going on and on about proper dilution, you slowly start blanking out into the space of ‘why did my dumbass decide to take this class’ and ‘this isn’t worth the pain that I’m receiving.’ Thankfully, Jisung has an equally shocked look at his face as the explanation continues, and you’re sure that there isn’t a way the two of you would be able to complete the assignment properly. There was no way; it was practically impossible.

“I just want to remind you guys that this is definitely possible! Students have succeeded well in the past years! You and your partner should be working together as efficiently as possible, which is why I mixed it up a little this time. There should not be any distractions, understood?” Mrs. Choi finishes, nodding as if someone had actually answered her rhetorical question. “Also, I’ll be grading you on how well you manage your time, so if there’s unnecessary chit-chat, that’ll be points deducted from your grade. No exceptions. Got it?”

You think maybe she’s referring to the time you and Chaeryoung accidentally fucked up the entire experimental process by forgetting to set a timer (it was because the two of you were preoccupied by a TikTok dance, though you would never admit it to anyone), or maybe the time that Jaehyun guy almost set half the chemistry lab on fire by not disposing of chemicals properly. You’d think the school would be a little more careful considering they’re letting teenage students handle dangerous chemicals, but thinking of the time that your teacher told you it was fine to handle acid without wearing gloves, it clearly was never a practice.

You and Jisung start to prepare, with you carefully reading through the reaction process several times and measuring out the chemicals as precisely as possible while Jisung handles the rest of the equipment, bringing over pipettes and scales. As the two of you continued working for the rest of the class period, only till the very end did you notice that you were, possibly for once, actually using all of your class time properly.

“Are you going to homecoming?” Jisung asks as you set down the beaker on the scale, startling you with a non-chemistry related question. If you were being honest, you hadn’t thought about it; homecoming wasn’t too big of a thing at your school to begin with, plus, there wasn’t even the cliche dance that everyone thought they’d get as kids. It was one of the first home games played by the football team (which was pretty shitty, for the record) and they crowned a homecoming king and queen every year. Honestly, it was usually a bore.

“I don’t know,” you say honestly, trying to keep your voice as steady as possible. Maybe constantly reminding yourself every two seconds that Han Jisung was speaking to you would help, but you couldn’t get over it. At least not today. “I haven’t really thought about it.” He hums thoughtfully, taking the beaker from you as you pass it along.

“Have you ever gone to a swim meet before?” His question sounds rather interrogative in nature, and he seems to notice, stumbling over his words for the first time. “Um—I mean, have you gone to any of our swim meets before? You see, I’m on the team and I feel like I’ve seen you before at one of them, and it’s fine if you have gone! I’m just curious.” He holds up his hands in defense as if he’d said something wrong, the chemical splashing around in the beaker as you widen your eyes.

“Fuck, be careful,” you retrieve the object from his hand, placing it down safely on the table to ensure you weren’t going to take after the setting-the-classroom-on-fire guy. Jisung watches as you do so, perhaps overanalyzing the fact that your gloved fingers brushed past his in that moment, now an apologetic look forming over his face. “Sorry, you were about to spill it on yourself.”

“No, it’s fine!” He replies, the volume of his voice attracting attention from the nearby classmates, including Chaeryoung, who gives you a small smirk. You return a pointed glare in her direction, trying to calm down as you realize you’re overheating from the situation at hand right now. “Shit, sorry, that was kind of loud.”

“It’s okay, Jisung,” his name tastes unfamiliar on your tongue, only having been used around Ryujin earlier. Ryujin, you remember, my best friend that’s practically in love with the boy standing in front of me. “I’ve been to your swim meets before, I mean—no offense but—who hasn’t? You guys are undoubtedly the best team in school, who wouldn’t want to watch?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he chuckles wryly, sounding a bit forced. You decide to ignore it and continue working on the project. Thankfully, your teacher gave the class a few days to work on it, or else it would be essentially impossible to finish. “Wait, aren’t you usually there with your friend? The one with the blue hair?”

You raise your eyebrows, somehow already feeling just a little more comfortable around him. He isn’t as stuck up as you expected, and he definitely doesn’t act like a cocky little shit either. Most importantly, he seems to be just as nervous as you. A small smile forms on your lips. “You mean Ryujin?”

“Ah, yeah! Her.”

“Ryujin and I usually go to watch swim meets together, or at least, she drags me around everywhere and that’s one of the places I’m forced to go.” You chuckle at the memory of her towing you towards the pool, swearing that she’ll buy you a hundred dollars worth of milkshakes for the next month if you keep her company. She never kept the promise, but you still remember the feeling of watching people competitively swim. More importantly, the seven most popular boys in the school at the time. “But I go voluntarily now. I think everyone has to have some sort of school spirit, right?”

You look up at him, your eyes sparkling under the fluorescent lights and you don’t notice, but Jisung gulps, avoiding your gaze after a split second. “Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Totally, definitely.”

The conversation awkwardly ends there, a little weird but better than having to continue talking about how many times you’ve seen him backstroke his way to a medal. You’re not sure if Jisung even knows how popular going to a swim meet is, because when you ask him, he answers with: “I thought all sports got the same audience.” They don’t, that’s confirmed, unless the dance team was performing as well.

The bell rings a few moments later, finally signalling the end of the day with a deep sigh from you. You clean up as quickly as you can, bidding your new partner (and maybe friend) a goodbye to the rest of the day. As you yank out your phone from your bag, going out into the hallway towards your locker, you spot Chaeryoung from the corner of your eye, brushing past you dramatically with a whisper of:

“You’re whipped already.”

dear y/n love,

this is my second letter to you. hopefully, unless you didn’t receive the first one for some reason. but if this is the second one, hi! i hope you had a great day today and if you didn’t, i hope you feel better. i think you probably find this weird, the love letter sort of thing, it’s super cliche and everything so i’d get it if you decided to take this and, like, throw it out or something. but please don’t! please don’t throw it out, i’d be very upset. not that you’d know anyway, but :)

you’re also probably wondering, ‘why is this guy sending me stuff without telling me who he is?’ well, i’m glad to say that i have a purpose. it is, well, just to make you happy. life is hard, ya know, and i don’t think a lot of us would be able to get through everything without someone by their side. not that you don’t have anyone by your side! i’m sure you do, you have friends and family that support you as well, but since i unfortunately do not fall into either of those categories, i have to resort to written letters.

anyway, i’m ending this letter quickly considering my class is ending in hmm, like four minutes? i want to make enough time to get to your locker and give it to you, hopefully without you ever noticing, but if you did end up finding out who i am…just forget about that part. yeah, like my face and all? erase that memory from your pretty head. i’m so sorry, i just realized how much i just didn’t get to a point with this letter at all.

in a few days is the homecoming game, and i may or may not have a little surprise waiting for you there. if you’d like to come, that’s awesome, if not, that’s perfect as well. i know the last thing you’d do is trust someone you don’t know, and it might be a little hypocritical of me to say this, but trust me. in the least creepy way, i will say that yes, you do know me, maybe not as well as i know you. shitttt that sounds so creepy, i deeply apologize. i’m just your secret admirer, that’s it, not a stalker omg. now it sounds like i’m a stalker. okay, anyway.

please come to homecoming, i won’t reveal myself to you just yet (maybe not ever, but it depends) but i have something waiting for you. it’s NOT a death wish, cross my heart, for real.

signed, jay

[thekidultlife]

THE RETURN OF SUPERMAN | Kwon Soonyoung

Author’s Note: This is definitely one of my most favorite writings! Sorry I’m behind the posting schedule a little bit. Unstable internet connections are THE WORST!

Genre: I KNOW I’VE BEEN HURTING PEOPLE WITH MY TROS SPINOFFS, BUT THIS IS DIFFERENT. THIS STORY IS A HAPPY PILL. IT’S FLUFF. LITERALLY.

Word Count: 5,840

6:47 P.M.

It is nighttime and cameras are panning around a very cozy nursery. The walls are wallpapered with a pastel kind of yellow filled with clouds, ponies, fairies and more animal pets, some of which double into night lights. A dresser is pushed up to one wall, where baby pictures of the cute little room owner are found, along with her parents in what appeared to be a photoshoot. A clock and little blocks that spelled out Y-U-N-A are also on the dresser. Airplanes, more clouds and stars hang on the ceilings, reflecting the soft glow of the lamplights. The windows are hidden by billowy cream-colored curtains.

One camera is panning down from the plush, carpeted floor, up to the center of the room, on which a massive, white crib could be found. A very cute, chubby-cheeked little baby girl with a jeweled crown on top her soft curls was on the crib, her chubby hands clapping with delight. Her squeals and vibrant peals of laughter filled the whole room. But it was another kind of noise that made cameramen chuckle.

Thud. “Ow!” Kwon Soonyoung rubbed his forehead in mock agony. He made a crying face and pretended to sob loudly, kneeling on the carpeted floor. But he peered behind his hands on his face, grinning, as the baby burst out laughing again, her hands clapping as she did so. Her cheeks had gone red with her giggles.

When the laughter stopped and the baby simply sat there, her whole face waiting and expectant for the next thing about to happen to her dad, Soonyoung decided to do it one last time. He drew close to the crib and pretended to bang his head on the wood. Thud. He rolled back on the floor. “Ow!”

The baby rolled back her head, tears rolling down her cheeks as her guttural baby giggles wracked her entire body. She slumped on the soft quilt of her crib, laughing and laughing.

“Wow, Kwon Yuna,” Kwon Soonyoung muttered, tired of having done the same trick for about thirty minutes now. “You never get tired, do you? Come here.” Soonyoung reached out to take the child. “Let me put you to sleep properly.” He looked at the clock on the dresser. “It’s almost past your bedtime!” Like the pro appa that he was, he cradled Yuna in his arms, which she was already starting to outgrow. How much time do I have left to carry you like this? He thought fondly, already nostalgic of the moment that his baby would grow too heavy for his arms. Then he softly padded to one side of the room, next to the windows, where a rocking chair was. Yuna liked to be rocked to sleep.

He sat there for a long time, rocking and rocking her in his arms. Yuna reached out to touch Soonyoung’s face with her tiny hands, wondering at his face.

Soonyoung smiled and kissed her forehead. “Sleep, little one! Sleep, Kwon Yuna!” He started humming a lullaby to lull her to sleep.

After a few more minutes, Kwon Yuna’s eyes began to droop. She cooed sleepily, and as her head dropped to Soonyoung’s chest, her little crown fell on the carpet. Soonyoung hoisted her carefully on his one arm to pick up the crown, all the while singing the lullaby softly. Soon, deep breaths told him that his baby girl had fallen asleep. Soonyoung carefully stood up, peered into Yuna’s peaceful, sleeping face again, and laid her down gently on the crib.

He stood there watching her for a few minutes before he smiled and whispered, “Good night, my baby girl.” Then he slowly walked out of the nursery and into the adjoining bedroom. He left the door open just in case Yuna might wake up in the early morning hours. Cameras rolled slowly as Soonyoung laid on his bed, exhausted.

He faintly smelled of milk, baby lotion and cereal, but he could not be bothered to get up from the bed. He closed his eyes and began to doze off. It was still early, just barely past 7 p.m., but he felt drained of all energy. He smiled as he thought of Yuna giggling and reached out his hand to grab you close to him, but then he remembered: right. He’s alone, and he’s going to be for the next forty-eight hours. He reached for his phone on the bedtable and pressed the speed-dial to call you.

“My love!” He whispered excitedly when you picked up.

From the other end of the line and a continent away, you grinned. “Hey, Superdad.”

“Hey yourself. Yuna’s sleeping now.” Soonyoung touched his shirt lightly. “And I think I should change my shirt because I got soaked with milk earlier but I’m too tired to stand up.”

“Are you sure she’s asleep? Already?”

“Of course!” Soonyoung smiled at the direction of the nursery. “Our baby sleeps nicely when I rock her to sleep. I think she really likes me more than she likes you.”

You scoffed mockingly. “Don’t kid yourself.”

“Jealous, are we?” Soonyoung giggled, almost very much like Yuna. “I thought we talked about not getting jealous when our Yuna likes one of us more.”

“In your dreams, Kwon Soonyoung.”

Soonyoung took a pillow and hugged it to himself. “I miss you.”

You lay back on your bed for the night, too, a queen-sized one that was very comfortable but seemed empty without Soonyoung beside you. “I miss you, too. But don’t be such a baby! The cameras are rolling and they might think you’re too crazy about me.”

Soonyoung laughed at that. “But aren’t I?” He snuggled onto the pillow on his head, still holding the phone to his other ear. “I really am crazy about you.”

You blushed. “I love you.”

Cries from the nursery made Soonyoung sit up on the bed. “Okay! I think I have to go now.”

You smiled and closed your eyes. “Bye.”

“Hey.” Soonyoung was sliding into his slippers and shuffling on to the direction of the nursery door. “I love you, too, by the way.”

You laughed. “Good night, Yuna-appa. And change your shirt. Really!”

INTERVIEW WITH KWON SOONYOUNG, 30:

SOONYOUNG: (Bows as best he could with a baby girl on his lap.) Hello, everyone! Most people know me onscreen as Hoshi from SEVENTEEN, but right now in this show I am simply Kwon Soonyoung. (Yuna squeals on his lap, and he grins.) That’s a hello from my eight-month-old baby here, Kwon Yuna! We are both very excited to be on this show. (Reaches down as Yuna fusses and brings a bottle to Yuna’s lips.) Among my SEVENTEEN bros, I’m the youngest dad as of the moment. We often chat each other up and they always give me advice about how to do things since I’m still a bit clueless. They say baby years are the best years because you bond a lot with the baby, and you get fascinated by how they just grow up before you know it. (Kisses Yuna as she is busy with her milk bottle.) I’m really happy that I get to experience being her dad. It’s both a terrifying and beautiful experience. I just hope to be the best dad I could be for her.

Q: Are you on an indefinite break from work just to be with your wife and baby daughter?

SOONYOUNG: (Nods and smiles brightly.) Yes! Actually, I did not want to do so immediately because I felt like I might leave them unprepared since we are also readying for a comeba—oops. (Lowers his head, laughing.) Omo. I can’t believe it. Even as a dad I say things I’m not supposed to say. Anyway. Um. The members all insisted that I take the time to go and take care of Yuna here. I do go with them every now and then, mostly on mornings, so I could catch up with practice. My body clock changed after months of being with Yuna. I wake up earlier and I sleep earlier but these days I also have to wake up in the middle of the night. Yuna is at the age where she sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and cries for us. She knows we will come if she cries. (Ruffles Yuna’s hair playfully and Yuna smiles with her eyes at this, her toothless smile adorably seen as she stops drinking her milk to revel at her dad’s touch.) She’s pretty spoiled, I think. But who am I to complain? Looking this cute, I could not help but forgive her for waking her parents up at odd hours just so she could see us. (Grins at the camera.) Sorry. I know I’m being such a dad right now, spoiling my baby. But hey, that’s what dads do! (Laughs and takes the empty bottle from Yuna, and then bows again.) Please enjoy spending your day with us!

6:30 A.M.

NARRATOR: *Someone is having a very happy bath this morning! Let us see! The happy laughter is infectious! What lies ahead for a morning at the Kwon residence?*

“Ap-paaa!!! Wwaaaahhhbbbbiiiii!!!”

“I know! Your appa picked such a cute song! Good morning, too, Kwon Yuna!” Soonyoung happily translated as the Yuna played with the water on her bathtub. She giggled as bubbles erupted out of the water. Soonyoung scrubbed on her arms, her face.

Dad and baby are inside the bathroom next to the nursery. Both have been up for hours.

“Ggggurbbbbuuu app-paaa?” Yuna chatted with her appa, touching his cheek with a tiny hand filled with bubbles.

“Yes. The eyebags look awful, right? I had to stay up later for you!”

“Biiiii???” Yuna pressed, her eyes looking serious as Soonyoung rinsed her shampooed baby hair gently with warm water. “Bbbibbugabb???”

“Uh-huh. That late. But we’re still best friends! You slept very peacefully after I rocked you to sleep for the second time. Very good girl!” Kwon Yuna liked to wake up early and Soonyoung usually took that time to draw her a bath and get her things ready for the day. Once Yuna wakes up, the whole house wakes up, too! Who needs clocks? Yuna was one! My world literally revolves around this little person! Soonyoung thought to himself as he reached for a towel.

“Bbubbbubbbbbu,” Yuna babbled to her dad as he picked her up from the bubbly bathtub to dry her with a towel and dryer. “Gguggudduuuu!!! Ap-ppa, ap-ppa, appa!”

“Right! Your appa is so amazing, taking care of you all night and giving you a bath! He’s the best appa in the world! Isn’t he?” Soonyoung interpreted confidently as he playfully kissed his baby girl’s cheeks. “Wow. Eomma did a not-so-bad job at picking your bath soap. My love, if you’re watching this, I really dig this bath soap. Buy one for us, too!”

Yuna pinched Soonyoung’s cheeks playfully while he got placed her down the changing table. “Appa? Ggubbbuuu!!!”

“I know! You’re cute, too!” Soonyoung deftly got Yuna into her diapers and hauled her up into his arms. She squealed as they both got out of the bathroom and Soonyoung set her down on the newly vacuumed carpet, letting Yuna crawl around. Yuna gasped in delight at being let down. “Behave while appa gets out your clothes for you, okay?”

After dressing her up in a cute strawberry jumper that had green wings at the back, tying her hair rather clumsily with strawberry ponytails and securing her stray locks into another strawberry-themed hairband, Soonyoung grinned. “Cute, cute, cute!!!” He peppered Yuna with kisses. “Cute, cute, cute!!!”

Kwon Yuna did look like the cutest strawberry fairy, beaming at her dad, clapping her hands before ignoring him entirely and crawling around the nursery, gasping again as her quick little eyes found a picture book that was placed strategically by Soonyoung right where she could see it. She crawled faster with her hands and feet, straining just to get to the picture book. Upon reaching the picture book, she squealed out something like, “Gggaaaahhhhh!!!”

“Yas, girl! Like I told your eomma when we bought you stuff, that picture book is cool!” Soonyoung again translated, lying on his stomach next to his strawberry fairy, who looked like utterly amazed by the picture book, which contained different kinds of colors. Yuna stood up shakily, bouncing on her feet as she stood, before plunking down and sitting with her legs crossed, looking very much like a—yes, a strawberry. She babbled happily as she reached out to touch the book.

“Waaasss?”

“Okay. We’ve done this yesterday, remember?” Soonyoung sat up and imitated how Yuna sat. Then he pointed at the bright color on the book which Yuna was touching with her finger. “Red.” Soonyoung tapped the color again. “Red.”

“W-wed,” Yuna breathed out, her voice unabashedly wondering.

Soonyoung excitedly tapped it again and bent down to listen closer. “Red.”

“Wed!!!” Yuna giggled and clapped her hands, excited at mimicking Soonyoung’s words.

“Yaaayyy! Yuna deserves a kiss!!! Kiss!!!” Soonyoung picked her up and held her into the air, kissing her cheeks as she laughed in delight. “Good job, best friend!” Then he settled her onto his lap and took the picture book. He smiled at Yuna again before tapping another color. “Blue.”

Yuna puckered her lips and looked up at Soonyoung. “Byue?”

“Yaaayyy!!! Way to go, best friend! Yes!” Yuna giggled again as Soonyoung held her up into the air and gave her her reward: appa’s fluttery kisses. “Okay, let’s say it again!” Carefully, Soonyoung put her closer to the book balanced on his one knee so Yuna could touch it. He pointed at the color again. “Blue.”

“Byuuueeeee!!!” Yuna mouthed just like Soonyoung. “Byue!!!”

“Very good, Kwon Yuna!” Another flight up, another kiss. “What’s this color?” Soonyoung pointed back to the first color they learned about. “It starts like r—”

“—Wed,” Yuna said confidently. “Wed!”

“And this one?”

“B-byue!”

Soonyoung laughed and proceeded to educate Yuna about colors. Byue, wed, gweeen, pppink…you get the idea. The baby talk drove Soonyoung nuts but he was fascinated that Yuna was learning so quickly. She’s definitely persistent, Soonyoung noticed fondly. She would touch a color, hear him say it over ang over again, and then repeat. She loved getting kisses and she loved flying with her dad’s arms. Cameras zoomed in on the father and daughter as they forgot the picture book, doing something much more fun-filled for Yuna. She was hoisted up by her dad’s arms, flying around the room, her green wings fluttering, her ponytails whipping around as Soonyoung “flew” her around the room.

“AppaI Appa!” She giggled, loving her flight like the strawberry fairy that she is. Cameramen chuckled as her guttural giggles filled the whole room again. “Wheeeeeeeeee!!!”

Soonyoung stopped, cradling her back again into his arms and raining hugs and kisses on her. “Love you best friend!!!”

“Appa!” Yuna said in babyish delight. “Appa! Mmmnam?” Yuna gesticulated with her hands, suddenly fussing now. “Mmmm?”

“Now that,” Soonyoung murmured as he kissed Yuna again, “is Yuna talk for ‘food, appa?’ Such a bright little princess! Off to breakfast we go!”

INTERVIEW WITH KWON SOONYOUNG, 30:

Q: As asked to the other members, were you there when Kwon Yuna was born?

SOONYOUNG: (Nods happily.) Yes, I was! Unlike the other SVT dads, my wife’s labor pains came right on schedule. It was difficult for them because childbirth is very unpredictable at times. My wife used to have long phone sessions with other SVT mommies about how she might have an expected due date but that sometimes the labor comes sooner or later—we were both nervous. I asked for a break then, too, two weeks in advance, just so I could be there for her when the time comes. She got contractions as early as two weeks, so we were kinda expecting that she might give birth sooner. But Yuna came out exactly on the due date as stated by our OB/GYN. (Stares off into a distance, transported by the memory.) I remember phoning Cheol and asking him what to do. He was my closest neighbor since they live just a few blocks away from our house, and we had bonded quite a lot during the pregnancy because he was the one who gave me advice the most. (Breaks into a smile.) He offered to drive us to the hospital the moment my wife’s water broke that morning. Which was really great because I kept panicking and I was almost noisier than my wife during the whole drive to the hospital. Seungcheol-hyung was like, “Calm down, calm down, breathe” and I was like, “Does it hurt, my love? What do I do? You can punch me or slap me if you want if it helps” and I remember my wife laughing and crying at the same time because she said I was too hilarious to watch as I panicked. (Soonyoung sheepishly grins.) It was true, I was a bit too much. I remember pacing on the floor as she gave birth. She was in labor until evening. The members came to the hospital and waited with me, which became some sort of tradition whenever one of us gets to hold our kids for the first time. So all of them were there when I got to peek inside the hospital room. My wife was awake, and she was holding the baby. I remember taking the baby—(gesticulates how)—very carefully, and just staring dumbstruck at the tiny creature in my arms. I was like super amazed because there she was, my baby! I helped make this beautiful baby girl! I was also sort of terrified because I could already see my face in her. (Laughs loudly as he remembers his expression.) But all in all I was just, plain, simple happy…when her tiny fingers enclosed my thumb, I was like, in love all over again. The tears just started falling when she did that. (Shakes his head while smiling.) The members were telling me things like, “You should name her after you because you look so much like each other” but my wife objected thankfully. My wife and I named her “Yuna”.

Q: We’ve heard that there was a special reason why you named her, “Yuna.” Can we ask what it is?

SOONYOUNG: (Claps his hands together when he remembers why.) Yes, there was a reason! My wife was having these very strange cravings with food and movies and she just wanted to be with me most of the time. She even followed me around tours and fanmeets for a while. Wonu joked to me that that was probably why Yuna looked so much like me. Which is true, I think. (Laughs again.) Anyway, for about seven months, I would just lie with my wife on our bed, re-watching Kim Yuna’s figure-skating competitions. She was very much addicted to Kim Yuna. She’d never had a very keen liking for figure-skating or the Olympics before or any sport in particular, so I was really, really surprised. It was when she was already about four months pregnant, that we’d decided that if her Kim Yuna frenzy would not stop by then, we would name our baby after Kim Yuna if our baby would be a girl. (Soonyoung smiles at the camera and bows.) Kim Yuna-ssi, you were such an inspiration. Thank you very much!

7:15 A.M.

NARRATOR: *Let’s see what baby Yuna will have for breakfast! Looks like Kwon-appa is busy making something on the kitchen counter! What could it be?*

“Our Yuna, just wait patiently for your meal,” Soonyoung called out in a sing-song voice.

The strawberry fairy sat tapping her own spoon on her highchair table, making gurgling noises as she chatted with herself. She would squeal at times when she found a tapping rhythm that she liked, but every now and then, she would look up to the direction across her. “Appa?” she asked, her question understandable even by the other people watching from hidden places in the room. “Mmm, Appa?” How long are you going to make that breakfast, Appa?

Soonyoung was sterilizing the bowl that Yuna would use for eating, as well as her utensils. He put them into a saucepan and began putting in water. He waited until he had the water had already boiled for a few minutes before turning off the stove. Still humming (‘The Three Bears’ song was playing in the background) and eating his own apple—the half of the one he was going to use for Yuna’s breakfast—he poured the contents of another saucepan—chopped apples, oats, cinnamon and milk—into a blender. The sound of the whirring blender made Yuna drop the wooden spoon she was playing with.

“Ugh!” Her startled body shook, and her eyes widened.

NARRATOR: *Omo, she looked really surprised at the sound of the blender!*

“You’re still jumpy at the sound of the blender?” Soonyoung cooed as he munched his apple. “Don’t worry! Appa is here! It’s just a noise! Look!” Soonyoung pretended to bump his head on the cupboard. Thud. “Ow!”

Yuna forgot about the blender burst out laughing.

“Sometimes I wonder why we’re best friends, girl.” Soonyoung muttered. He pressed something on the blender, and it whirred again. Yuna once more looked startled. Soonyoung sighed and pretended to bump his head again. Thud. “Ow!”

Again, the little strawberry fairy doubled in laughter. She hiccuped as she did so—another sign that she was extremely happy.

The blender stopped whirring. Soonyoung finished his apple and checked to see if the mix had been pureed well. “Yes, yes, here it comes!”  A few moments later, Soonyoung gently laid before Yuna a plate of oat porridge and a sippy cup filled with unsweetened orange fruit drink.

INTERVIEW WITH KWON SOONYOUNG, 30:

SOONYOUNG: (Blushes at being complimented for being a good appa who knows how to prepare and cook baby breakfast.) I sort of cheated on that! I had to study very hard because even before we started taping for The Return of Superman series, my wife had to go on a very long trip for work. She’s a consultant for a technological company…which is kinda cliché by the way. I knew I fell in love with her when she showed me how to re-format my laptop. I just knew that moment! Anyway, she’s been away for almost a month now, but she’ll be back any day now. It’s just a matter of helping the company close that deal. (Shows a list on his phone.) See? She gave me this list of things to do with Yuna just in case I run out of ideas. But some of the ones at the top are a ‘must’. Like I really have to do it for Yuna whether I like it or not. Which involves cooking strange baby meals, crawling lessons—just kidding, of course, my love! (Blows a reconciliatory kiss at the camera.) You really researched these baby meals well! Good job!

“You are a very good girl this morning, so I took some time to find where Eomma put the recipe for your favorite porridge. She wanted you to eat something with spinach, but we’re going to have something more enjoyable!” The little girl clapped her hands, as if she really understood how her dad just disobeyed a direct order from Mommy Headquarters. “Let’s hope we don’t get in trouble, bestie! Who’s your best friend?” Soonyoung rubbed noses with Yuna, who giggled. “Who’s your best friend?”

“Appa!” Whether Yuna said that as a response or whether she just said it as some sort of reflex for her happiness. Nevertheless, these buoyant replies made Soonyoung smile even wider. His heart felt like it could burst inside him.

My baby just called me! Me! Or not. He tried not to look so happy, but the giddiness kept showing on his face. “That’s right!” Soonyoung eagerly said. “We’re best friends, girl. And we’re not gonna tell Eomma, right?”

Yuna’s eyes widened at that. Soonyoung nervously pulled the tray back a little bit. It was as if she understood! “Girl, you can’t tell on me, she’d be angry at the both of us!”

Yuna just kept looking at him.

Soonyoung stared back.

Uh-oh.

“Eomma, no-no?” Yuna looked thunderstruck that she would be asked to keep a secret from her . “Bbuggubbuubuu?”

Soonyoung stared deeply into his daughters eyes. “That’s right, bestie. This is just between you and me. Okay? Pinky-swear?” Soonyoung reached out to do a pinky-swear, but Yuna kept staring at him. Slowly, as if she was wiser than her eight-month-old self, she reached for her bowl.

“Ggaaahh.” She began spooning the cereal clumsily.

Soonyoung breathed a sigh of relief. This was probably nothing.

“Eat on, baby girl!” Soonyoung looked at his watch. We have to go for our walk soon!”

RECIPE FOR YUNA’S FAVORITE PORRIDGE (according to Kwon Soonyoung’s list on his phone):

Oats (instant) | 1.5 tblspn

Apple | ½ big apple

Cinnamon powder | ¼ tsp

Water | ½ cup or adjust depending on Yuna’s appetite

Sugar (optional, if the mix isn’t sweet enough but not too much!)

8:00 A.M.

“The walk” wasn’t actually anywhere far from the house. Using a stroller, Soonyoung would jog around the neighborhood, pointing out things that would make Yuna exclaim loudly as she curiously looked at the object of her attention. Sometimes it was a cat, sometimes it was a fellow baby being walked by a parent, sometimes it was a tree or a flowers or birds. They weren’t anywhere near a park, and Soonyoung usually had to make do with the neighborhood, which wasn’t so bad itself. It was very private and had walled, mostly traditional Korean houses. And it was a good way to get to know neighbors, too! They passed by Seungcheol’s house, which was one of the more modern-looking houses on the block and was empty. The family van was out, too, but Soonyoung saw cameras from windows. Probably at daycare, he thought to himself, before pushing Yuna’s stroller again.

After that walk with Yuna, who had gotten her much-needed Vitamin D from the sun, Soonyoung opened the back gate, where a playhouse that was connected to tunnels and assorted carpet squares, rugs and different type of surfaces were mapped out like a puzzle game on the manicured lawn. Soonyoung gently took Yuna out of the stroller and placed her on a pink carpet square.

“Let’s practice crawling, Kwon Yuna!” he said like a pro dad, already gathering different elastic balls. He then knelt, carefully watching as Yuna tried to place her hands on the carpet square. Her strawberry-green wings fluttered with the morning breeze. Soonyoung smiled broadly. “Yuna, look!” He placed a ball three squares away. “It’s a ball!”

“B-ball!!!” Yuna shrieked excitedly and began crawling on the towards as fast as her little limbs could carry her. Soonyoung excitedly bent down to help just in case she tumbles.

“Yes! A ball!”

Yuna reached for the ball with a hand and it bounced, sending her into more squeals. “Ball!” She clapped her hands as she sat up, her strawberry bottoms bouncing. “Ball!”

“Well…how about this one?” Soonyoung placed a stuffed star four squares away. “Star!”

“Tar! Tar!” Yuna excitedly clapped her hands again and began to crawl towards the star. Soonyoung was heady with excitement. Their lesson-slash-playtime session was going well for the first two tries! When Yuna reached the star, he began to put another object, this time, five squares away. It was Yuna’s favorite outdoor toy. If you know Soonyoung, then you guessed it: a stuffed tiger. “Tiger!”

“Hosh!!! Hosh!!!” Yuna screamed with delight, much happier than before, and was faster this time. The crawling took only about five seconds. She wasn’t hesitant about this particular object—she knew that toy!

Soonyoung thought of you then. “Blame yourself, my love,” you said loudly for the cameras, “our daughter is calling tigers by my stage name!”

Yuna grabbed the tiger’s nose clumsily with finger and thumb. Her face was red with excitement, and her cheeks looked very much like Soonyoung’s when he was younger. “Hoooshi! Hooooshi!” She hugged the tiger close to her, her wings fluttering with her bouncy movements again.

NARRATOR: *AWWW! Everyone’s hearts just fluttered at this show of affection! She must really love her tiger!!!*

Soonyoung smiled again, before taking the tiger from Yuna. Yuna pouted, having been deprived of Hoshi the Tiger.

“Hey, look! Hoshi wants to race!!!” Soonyoung scooted over the carpet squares and made the tiger “run” across the carpet squares and into the playhouse, with Yuna following happily as fast as she could, her giggles sending warmth into the cameramen who were filming the whole thing.

However, once father and daughter were resting on the playhouse, Soonyoung noticed a strange smell. Sniffing and looking at Yuna, who was looking up at him innocently with her mother’s eyes, Soonyoung groaned. “Okay! Playtime’s over!!! Let’s change your diaper.”

TIPS ON HOW TO CHANGE A BABY’S DIAPER (according to Kwon Soonyoung):

Make sure the diaper you are using is fit for your baby’s skin—no matter how good the brand, it still depends on your baby!

Always sanitize changing areas, whether at home or outside, and keep away stuffed tigers while changing—they might catch the smell. Not so good for stuffed tigers like Hoshi the Tiger!

Make sure you throw the used diaper in a proper waste disposal. And don’t forget to take out the trash at the end of the day!

NEVER run out of diapers. It happened once to me while we were at an ocean park—and it was a very bad experience. #NeverForget

Wash your hands before and after!!!

10:00 A.M.

The doorbell rang, and Soonyoung tiptoed out of the living room, where he was rocking Yuna to sleep. She had changed from her clothes and her diaper, and she looked extremely adorable in her new tiger jumpsuit.

INTERVIEW WITH KWON SOONYOUNG, 30:

SOONYOUNG: (Nods at the camera and smiles.) That’s right. I made my wife buy that jumpsuit. My daughter can be a tiger, too! (Does his signature roaring pose.) Horanghae!!!

“Bbbabbujji?” Yuna asked you, all traces of sleepiness vanishing from her face.

Soonyoung grinned at her. “You’re probably wondering a lot, huh? Well, let’s see…” Soonyoung walked towards the door and grinned. “Hellooooooo, playmates!!!”

Jeon Eunha stepped in and bowed. “Good morning, Hoshi-samchon!”

Jeon Wonwoo grinned at Soonyoung and pushed up his glasses. “Hello, Yuna! Hello yourself, Soonyoung.”

Soonyoung chuckled and made way for the visitors. “Come in! Come in!” He welcomed them into the spacious living room with a playpen on one side. Jeon Eunha immediately skipped away to the bookcase, studying the contents carefully.

“What’s she doing? And I’m so glad you made it, Wonwoo!”

“Let me see my goddaughter.” Jeon Wonwoo reached out like a fellow expert dad and drew Yuna to him. Yuna, who had begun to become aware of strangers just a month ago, didn’t seem to mind this handsome stranger who was now rocking her. “She’s getting even more and more beautiful!”

Soonyoung beamed like the proud dad he was. “That’s my girl right there!”

“Soonyoung-samchon,” Eunha gently tugged at Soonyoung, who bent down to ruffle her hair. The beautiful Jeon Eunha looked like an Athenian queen in the making, wisely holding a book again. “Can I read this to Yuna?”

“Of course!” Soonyoung smiled. “Yuna would love being read to!”

Eunha happily skipped again towards the playpen, where plushies were next to the bookcase. “Appa, take Yuna here! I’ll read to her!”

“Okay.” Wonwoo rubbed noses with the cute Yuna and said, “Let’s go to Eunha-unnie, Yuna!” And he went to where his daughter, who was opening the picture book she had. Yuna quickly warmed up to Eunha after a few minutes.

“Yuna loves her unnie,” Soonyoung commented, looking at the two affectionately. “Thanks for coming by, Wonu!”

Wonwoo grinned at him. “Hey, we planned this, remember? Our kids are going to play with each other. Eunha’s been asking and asking me when she saw Yuna on your Instagram while I was scrolling.”

“She’s a very wise girl.”

“She is!”

“I hope Yuna learns from her as she gets older!”

Wonwoo grinned and the two dads walked into the playpen as well, participating with Eunha’s reading session. She was reading “Peter Rabbit”, which had been translated into Korean. Yuna was paying close attention to the pictures as she sat on Eunha’s lap, touching the pictures of the rabbits and the fences and the letters.

Wonwoo and Soonyoung talked about dad stuff and SVT, zoning out of the little kids’ world as the cameras rolled.

INTERVIEW WITH KWON SOONYOUNG, 30:

Q: Does Jeon Wonwoo regularly visit your house with Eunha?

SOONYOUNG: (Beams.) Yes, and I’m very happy he keeps me company! We have always been close, but I think we got closer when we both became dads. He’s the second guy who gives advice to me about stuff. We usually talk on the phone, but as Eunha got older, she wanted to see other friends and go to places. She’s very sharp and bright for her age. (Soonyoung scratches his head.) It’s like Wonwoo carbon-copied himself on his daughter. I’m glad that Yuna has an unnie who takes care of her when they meet, someone she can learn from truly.

“Being a dad changes us, huh?” Wonwoo commented, staring at the two. Yuna has started to doze off on Eunha’s lap. “There’s a tenderness and strength to us that we never had when we were merely guys…husbands…this is different.”

Soonyoung nodded. “Yes. Really.” He sighed. “Yuna changed my life. Literally.”

Wonwoo smirked. “I bet.”

“Congratulations on the addition to the family, by the way!”

Wonwoo smiled wider. “Ah, could I get any happier?”

The two dads laughed.

Suddenly Yuna’s eyes opened and looked directly at Soonyoung. She looked like she was about to cry as her lips pursed menacingly.

Soonyoung knew exactly what to do. He leaned on the picket fence of the playpent and—you guessed it!—bumped his head on it. Thud. “Ow!”

Yuna burst out into a fit of giggles on Eunha’s lap. Eunha, too, did not look so much like the extraordinary three-and-a-half-year-old girl. She was putting her hands into her mouth, book forgotten, laughing as hard as Yuna.

Wonwoo was laughing, too. “You idiot. Stop doing that or she’ll keep asking for it! There are a lot of friendlier games.”

“What can I say?” Soonyoung stopped pretending to cry and grinned at Wonwoo. “Dads do stupid things sometimes, huh?”

Wonwoo nudged him with an elbow. “Not yet, please! I’m still not ready for the dad-jokes phase!”

“Now that I have been so ready for. But in the meantime,” Soonyoung bumped his head again. Thud. “Ow!”

Yuna, Eunha, and Wonwoo burst out laughing, along with the muffled laughter of everyone who was watching behind the cameras.

Judging from the thudding noises, it was going to be a great day for the Kwon residence.

EPISODES | Ep. 1| Ep. 2 | after-party | Ep. 3 | only us |  Ep. 4 | afterglow |  Ep. 5 | Ep. 6.1 

- Admin Leanne

[nahimjustfeelingit-writes]

Imagine:

Erik and Reader have a 16 year old daughter who starts being disrespectful towards them.

Warnings: Fluff, slight angst.

Kayla Stevens was currently on FaceTime with one of her home girls from school gossiping about Spring Fling and who they were going to go with. It was way past her bed time, around 1:00 AM and Kayla’s mom and dad talked about her getting some rest since sleep was a must for the body. Plus, Kayla has multiple AP courses to prepare her for college since she wants to be a Physician Assistant like her mother. Kayla was dressed in a pair of Nike women’s pro shorts and a matching Nike sports bra with her curly full lace wig up in a bun and wrapped with a silk scarf. She laughed with her braces on full display, short nude nails bright in the camera light.

“Girl, Donte is like, all over me,” Kayla says while smacking her lips and sticking her tongue out, “He is so fione! I would give him all of me.”

“Donte is a hoe, Kayla. He’s cute and yeah he plays basketball like you but he is not the boy you need to be going for. He will cheat on you quick,” Trinny, Kayla’s friend says.

Kayla rolls her eyes, “But how do you know though? He asked me to Spring Fling. We could be crowned king and queen.”

“I mean, that’s up to you. Just don’t come crying to me about how much he hurt you.”

“Whatever, anywayssss,” Kayla rolls over on her back, “I’m trying to get my mom to take me shopping for a new dress but she talking about I have plenty of dresses and I don’t need no more. Ugh, she gets on my nerves with that shit.”

Trinny laughs, “My mom bought me some heels and a dress from Fashion Nova.”

“Bitch,” Kayla puts her middle finger up at Trinny, “She just get on my nerves! She found my report card and saw that I’m not doing good in AP Biology.”

“Damn, what did she say?”

“She saying she’s gonna take away some privileges if I keep messing up.” Kayla groans.

“You better get back on it then, girl. What did Mr. Erik say?” Trinny spoke sweetly.

“Girl, DONT say his name like that. That’s my father, Trinny, I don’t want to think about that shit.”

“He’s just so handsome! Let me find a dude like that!”

Ew, just...eww,” Kayla scrunched her face.

Knock knock

“Kayla, what the hell are you still doing up!”

It was her mother.

“Why are you still up?” Kayla asks with an attitude.

“Because this is my house and I can stay up whenever the hell I want. Don’t question me. Now open this door, what did me and your father tell you about locking doors?”

“UGH,” Kayla looks down at Trinny on her phone, “Girl, I’ll see you in school tomorrow morning.”

“You’re about to get your ass beat,” Trinny jokes.

Kayla hangs up on Trinny before climbing out of her bed and heading towards the door. Kayla unlocks it, letting out a frustrating sigh before opening the door. Y/N, Kayla’s mother was standing there in a pair of black silk pajamas, her silk pressed hair wrapped around and secured with pins. 

“What did your father and I tell you about staying up too late on a school night?”

Kayla rolls her eyes, “Go to bed by 11-”

“Who are you rolling your eyes at, little girl? last time I checked you’re 16 years old. Still a child. Don’t disrespect me, Kayla. I don’t know where you’re learning this behavior from but it damn sure didn’t come from me.”

“You embarrassed me on the phone with Trinny-”

“Is Trinny my child? no. If you weren’t on the phone then maybe Trinny wouldn’t know about it, would she?”

Kayla began tapping her foot with frustration, eyes heavenward as if she wanted to speak her mind. 

“Keep it up, watch. There will be no Spring Fling, no prom, and no birthday party. Don’t think I forgot about your grades.”

Kayla groans, “Ma, it’s just one class. That’s it.”

“So? you decided to take these AP courses your junior year and that’s exactly what you’re going to do and pass every single one.”

Kayla glared, kissing her teeth before turning to walk back into her room.

“Did I say we were finished? Kayla,” Y/N spoke with warning, “You know what, give me your phone-”

“Seriously?!!” Kayla looked distraught.

“Yeah, give me the goddamn phone. No phone privileges until the weekend-”

“DADDY!” Kayla called out for her father. Y/N places one hand on her hip, looking at Kayla up and down before abruptly snapping her fingers.

“HEY!” Y/N held her hand out, motioning with her manicured nails for Kayla to give her the phone, “Phone. Now.”

“What’s going on?”

Erik Stevens, Kayla’s father, Steps from out of the room rubbing his hands down his face since he was asleep. He wore a fitted white T-shirt with a pair of light grey sweatpants and his now much longer dreads wrapped up since he just got them done. 

“Dad,” Kayla started speaking in that sweet voice that always got her what she wanted.

“Yeah, baby,” Erik glanced over at his wife, noticing the anger in her eyes before looking back at his daughter.

“Mom is trying to take my phone away. Can you please tell her that I need my phone and that I can’t go the next few days without it.”

“She’s going to give me that phone. Calling your father out here isn’t going to change my mind, Kayla. I don’t know what has gotten into you but this is going to stop.”

Erik lets out a sigh, “Kay, come on, give your mother the phone.”

Kayla felt like her father betrayed her. She was definitely a Daddy’s Girl. Kayla is Erik’s little princess. Anything she wanted, he would give her, even after her mother told him no. Y/N and Erik had multiple arguments about spoiling kayla and trying to break her out of always having her hand out. Y/N has been trying to get Kayla to volunteer at the Hospital she works at so that she can have first hand experience but Kayla never wants to do it. All Kayla is worried about is her phone and how she looks. She desperately wants to keep her popularity. 

“This isn’t fair at all,” Kayla looked like she wanted to cry as her hand reached out in front of her. Y/N grabs the phone, tucking it in the pocket of her silk pajamas before folding her arms across her chest.

“You can have it back this weekend but right now, you don’t deserve it. You need to learn some respect-”

Okay, okay. It’s getting late. Kayla take your butt to bed, Y/N, let’s go. That includes no TV, Kay. Love you, goodnight.” Erik mentions with his arms out to separate Y/N from Kayla.

“Kay, we only want what’s best for you-”

“I hate this,” Kayla turns, storming inside her room and then slamming her door shut.

“Erik, I am two seconds away from going in that room,” Y/N closes her eyes, “What is going on with her?”

“I don’t know. I’ll talk to her about it tomorrow.

--

Y/N laid in bed with a mixture of sadness and anger in her eyes as she looked at Kayla’s contact numbers for Erik and herself.

“Erik! Come look at this!”

Erik went to their master bathroom to use it before going back to sleep. He entered the bedroom, slowly getting into bed next to his wife before glancing down to see that she was looking through Kayla’s phone.

“Babe, what are you doing?”

“I paid for this phone, I have the right to see what my daughter has been up to. I want you too look at this.”

Erik sighs before grabbing the phone from Y/N. At first he stared at the phone nonchalantly but when he spotted what Y/N was referring to his eyes grew wide with anger.

“See? This is what I am worried about, Erik. I’m telling you, it’s that Trinny girl. She’s too grown and fast in the ass and she is trying to steer Kayla in the wrong direction.”

“Whore one, and Whore two.”

Erik was referring to the contact names that Kayla gave them both. Y/N was whore one and Erik was whore two.

“Oh hell nah,” Erik was pissed, “She ain’t getting this phone back until I say she can.”

“You’re still going to talk to her since you’re picking her up right?”

“Yeah,” Erik places Kayla’s phone on the night stand before turning off his lamp light, “And she wanted to go driving tomorrow too so she can get her license by prom, ain’t gon’ happen.”

Y/N didn’t turn off her lamp just yet as she stared down at her hands. She never imagined her little angel would be this disrespectful towards her. Y/N started seeing the signs when Kayla started hanging around Trinny. All the horrible things began to cross her mind. What if Kayla is having sex? What if she is sneaking out the house or inviting people over whenever Erik and herself go out for date night?

“Baby,” Erik takes his muscular arm, pulling Y/N close to him so they could cuddle. Y/N snuggled her bottom closer to Erik’s crotch, her hand coming down to interlock fingers with his hand. Erik reaches his head across to kiss her neck and then her cheek.

“It’s just a phase. You know we went through that shit too. Kayla is just growing up. Hormones, wanting to impress her friends, pressure from school. It’s all a competition.”

“You’re not worried, though? What if it’s something she’s out there doing and not telling us, Erik?”

“Like sex?” Erik questions, his mind filling with that unwanted thought.

“Yes. She talks about this Donte boy a lot-“

“Donte? I know it’s not the little nigga I see clowning around whenever I help out at the school with assist coaching.” Erik felt heat rise over his skin.

“It is. She has a little crush on that boy, Erik.”

“Fuck,” Erik presses his face into the back of Y/N’s neck, “Yeah, I’m gon’ have to have a serious talk with her tomorrow.”

—-

Kayla was upset that basketball practice was canceled for the girls since the boys have a game coming up within the next two days. Kayla contemplated staying behind to watch Donte play but she decided it would be best to wait for her father to come get her. Kayla was on her way out of the gymnasium with her duffel bag and basket ball when a sweaty Donte caught up with her when she was exiting the school.

“What’s going on, light skin?”

“Shut up, I’m not even that light,” Kayla bashfully smiles with her mouth full of braces, “What do you want, Donte? Aren’t you supposed to be practicing?”

Donte takes the collar of his Wildcats jersey to wipe sweat from his forehead, “I need some air. You know that gym smell like ass and feet.”

“That’s y’all,” Kayla jokes.

“Whatever, light skin. So, you don’t want to stick around so we can hoop later?” Donte licks his lips.

“Can’t, my Dad is on his way so,” Kayla looks away before shouldering her duffel bag.

“Damn, daddy got you on lock down?”

“NO.” Kayla says to her defense, “He just needs to take me practice driving. I’m trying to get my license before prom so I can drive there.”

“OH SHIT!” Donte brings a fist to his mouth, “Kay Kay gonna have a whip!”

“Yes,” Kayla flips the hair from her full lace curly wig from her shoulder, “It’s gonna be so bomb.”

“If you stop playing games and let me take you I can keep you company in that car.”

Kayla blushes, “What makes you think I want you in my car?”

“Because of that look you’re giving me.”

Kayla rolls her eyes, unable to fight a smile, “You get on my nerves.”

Beep Beep

Kayla turns, spotting her father in his Lamborghini truck.

“Shit, I gotta go.”

“Tell Mr. Erik I said hi. And think about what I said, light skin.”

Kayla smirks, “I’ll think about it.”

Donte gives Kayla one final look over before turning, jogging back into the school. Kayla walks down the front steps of the school trying her best to control the butterflies in her stomach and the smile that fought to show. She didn’t need her father to question anything. Kayla approached the car, walking around the passenger side.

“Daddy,” Kayla closes the door, “Why did you bring the truck? I thought we were gonna drive in the Mercedes? I don’t know how to drive this-“

“Hello to you too,” Erik looks over at Kyla with a smirk.

“Hey dad.”

Erik drives off while turning down the music.

“So, are we going to practice drive or nah?”

Erik makes a turn, “No. we need to talk.”

Kayla rolls her eyes into her head, “Talk about what?”

“About what’s been up with you. Why you’re talking back to your mother. Why you’re putting us in your contacts as Whore one and Whore two.”

“Oh my God,” Kayla felt her heart drop to her stomach, “Y’all went through my phone?”

“Kayla, that’s not the point-“

“That’s not cool at all. Y’all don’t trust me?”

“Kay, I’m talking.”

She huffs, “Fine.”

“Why do you call us that? Your whores? Like we’re your friends or some shit?”

Kayla has a permanent scowl on her face as she looks out the window.

“Kay, I asked you a question.”

“I don’t know,” Kayla spoke with a small voice.

The drive was pretty short, only about ten almost fifteen minutes. Erik didn’t nag Kayla on the ride over.

“Still don’t know?” Erik asks.

“Nope.”

“I’m not buying that,” Erik pulled up to their home, parking the car. He looked over at Kayla his eyes patient because rushing her wouldn’t help.

Kayla rolls her eyes with a groan, “It’s just a running joke. All my friends did it.”

“You find shit like that funny? Calling your parents who take care of you whores?”

“Dad,” Kayla looked away shamefully, “Look, I’m sorry, okay? How does mom feel-“

“You already know the answer to that question. Talk to me, Kay, what’s really going on with you?”

“Ugh,” Kayla hugs her basketball, “If you give me my phone back I’ll tell you.”

Erik gave her a look that made Kayla cower in her seat.

“There is really nothing to tell you, Dad. Maybe it’s a teenager thing, I don’t know.”

“I don’t give a fuck what thing it is, Kayla. Your mom and I are worried. This girl, Trinny, never met her but your mom tells me she’s a little...”

“How would she know that?” Kayla laughs trying to calm her anger, “Did she go snooping on Trinny too-“

“Kayla. That’s not the point. Stop running your mouth and listen.”

Kayla stopped talking.

“What about Donte?”

“Donte?” Kayla tried to fight a smile but Erik already saw it coming.

“Yeah, what’s going on with that? I know your getting older and you’re gonna have your little crushes and what not but...I’ve seen him, remember? I assist coach the boys basketball team. The things he talks about, his actions, I don’t like it, Kay.”

“He’s just a jokester, dad-“

“The reason I am saying this to you is because I’ve seen the way he acts when you aren’t around. That’s what guys do, Kay, they put on a front. He’s being all nice and flirty with you now but take it from your father, I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I don’t want my daughter getting involved with that type of situation. You need to focus on school, your youth, and playing ball. That’s all that matters. Niggas like Donte will bring you down, baby girl, trust me when I say that.”

Kayla sat listening. She always took her fathers advice but hearing him talk about Donte the way he did bothered her. Trinny talks about him that way too but Kayla never took it seriously. Hearing it from her dad felt different. It felt like she was making a bad decision.

“We love you, Kay. We have your best interest at heart. Not Trinny, and not Donte. Imagine if we weren’t in your life. My parents-your grandparents, they died before I could even understand what it meant to be a teenager. I had to learn all that shit on my own. Then, your mama and I had you at such a young age. We were still teenagers, Kay. If it wasn’t for her family, we wouldn’t have been able to take care of you. You gotta think about stuff like that.”

Kayla could feel her eyes welling up with tears. Taking the sleeve of her hoodie, Kayla wipes away at her wet eyes, her lower lip trembling like crazy.

“Kayla,” Erik leans forward in his seat to stare at his daughters face. Kayla turns away from him, sniffling a little bit while jerking her leg. Erik takes his hand to rub Kayla’s back, his jaw clenching so he wouldn’t become emotional. This brought back memories for him. When Y/N and Erik took Kayla to get her ears pierced at just one years of age, Erik teared up when Kayla began to scream-cry. He was ready to attack the woman who was piercing her ears. Y/N was the strong one.

“Kayla, Princess, look at me.”

“No,” Kayla says with a small voice.

“It’s just me and you.”

Kayla licks her dry lips before turning towards her father with puffy eyes and her face flushed.

“I love you. We love you. You know if you ever need to talk to us you can.”

“I know,” Kayla gave her father a weak smile, “I’ll try to communicate more.”

——-

Y/N had a busy day at work, arriving home around 8:30 PM to find Cajun spaghetti left out for her on the oven. The smells of the spices made her stomach rumble. Y/N washed her hands before grabbing a bowl to eat. With her bowl filled and a tall glass of water, Y/N takes a seat at their kitchen island. In the middle of twirling spaghetti around her fork, Y/N heard footsteps approaching. Kayla was standing timidly at the entrance of the kitchen. Y/N places her fork in her bowl before standing from her seat to greet her daughter.

“Hey, baby,” Y/N hugs Kayla before placing a kiss on her forehead, “How was school?”

“Good. I didn’t have practice today.”

“Why?”

“Guys have a game coming up so they needed the space.” Y/N shifted on her feet, “Um...mama...dad told me about you looking through my phone.”

Y/N tilted her head at Kayla, “He did? Hmm...yes, I did look through your phone and I did find the names. Whore one and Whore two?”

Kayla shamefully looks down at her feet.

“I also found something else that I didn’t run past your father. You remember the conversations at family reunion about how crazy your father used to be, right?”

Kayla’s head snapped up to look at her mother.

“Kayla, the half naked photos in your underwear and bra? Who do you plan on sending those photos to?”

“No one,” Kayla reassures her mother, “I just...I just take them.”

“At 16? No,” Y/N turns away.

Kayla grew frustrated, “Why are you even going through my phone anyway? That’s like an invasion of privacy-“

“Kayla,” Y/N spoke with warning.

“what if I did that to you? Instead of talking to me you do something like that. Ugh, why did you go through my phone-“

“Because I can!” Y/N turns back to her daughter with rage, “I can do that because I am worried about my daughter keeping secrets from me. Why is it that every time we talk you always give me attitude, huh?! When you talk with your father you never disrespect him!”

“You’re always riding my butt! When dad says I can do something you go against it. You tell him about Trinny and Donte, you embarrass me, you never let me speak my mind-“

“You really feel that way about me?” Y/N looked at Kayla with a hurt expression.

“Yeah,” Kayla shakes her head, “I can’t talk to you about anything without you yelling at me.”

“Okay,” Y/N lets out a shaky breath before taking her seat again.

“That’s it, mama? No go to bed, you’re punished?”

“No.” Y/N stared straight ahead at the wall, “Apparently you can’t talk to me. Your own mother. I’m not going to argue with my child. I know what’s best for you even if you don’t agree with what I say. Some day you will understand but until then, if you feel like talking to your father is easier, then talk to him. It breaks my heart to get into these disputes with you. It wasn’t always like this, Kay.”

“Kayla.”

Kayla turns to find Erik approaching the heated scene. He heard everything.

“Dad-“

“Go upstairs, I’ll be up in a minute.”

Kayla didn’t think twice as she walks past him and up the steps. Erik turns to look at his wife playing with her food, her head bent low.

“Baby. Just give her some time. She’s still not over the fact that you went through her phone.”

Y/N’s face scrunched up with anger, “Who’s side are you on? Did you hear the way she talks to me?”

“I did.” Erik spoke calmly.

“And you want me to give her time? See, when I was growing up,” Y/N’s hands shook, “My mama would pop my lips, make em’ nice and swollen to the point where I couldn’t feel them whenever I talked back to her. She would whip my ass with a thick leather belt. That’s how I was taught not to run my smart ass mouth. I swore I would never lay a finger on my child. When she talked to me the way she did last night, I wanted to hit her, Erik. For the first time, I wanted to hit my child. But, I know that if I hit her, it would only make things worse. She can’t keep talking to me like that. It’s been going on too many times, far too long.”

Y/N shook her head, pushing away her food, rising from her seat and walking past Erik. Erik grabs her hand, pulling her into his embrace. He trapped her in his arms so she wouldn’t go, squeezing her to let her know that she was okay and that he would always be there.

“What am I doing wrong?” Her voice shook, “Am I too strict? Do I not give her enough freedom? Does she hate me and love you?”

“Kayla loves you baby,” Erik looks down at Y/N, kissing her lips, “she loves you more than anything in the world.”

“It hasn’t been feeling like it lately. It feels like she’s disgusted with me. We never talk about anything. When I try to talk to her she isn’t engaged and then she walks away. Last night, she was telling Trinny that I get on her nerves. That hurt.”

Y/N slips from Erik’s arms, wiping her eyes.

“I don’t know what to do. I think I’m losing my daughter.”

“You’re not losing her, baby. Go upstairs, knock on her door, squeeze her. Tell her how you feel and maybe that will make her understand. She’ll open up to you, Y/N, I know she will. She didn’t open up to me today. I don’t want you to feel like she loves me more than you-“

“You’ve always been around, Erik. I’ve been in school, and now I’m working late and she hardly sees me. You’re involved with her school activities and I only go to parent-teacher night. She barely knows me.”

Erik couldn’t find the words to make her see reason.

“I’m going to bed,” Y/N grabs her work bag from the kitchen Island, not once looking at Erik as she leaves the kitchen. Erik frustratingly pulls at his dreads before walking towards the kitchen island to lean on it. He was deep in thought as the silence surrounded him. He felt like he was caught in the middle. On one end, he could understand where his wife was coming from. Kayla has been very rebellious and disrespectful. On the other hand, he felt that Kayla felt like her mother couldn’t communicate with her and Y/N looking through her phone made her want to keep anything from her mother. He truly didn’t know how to get both of them to come together. He could only hope that tomorrow would be a better day to try again.

[bl--ankhaeji]

The Get Together (Jeno)

Pairing - Non-idol*Lee Jeno x FemaleBlack*Reader, College au

Genre - smut, fluff

Warning - sexual content, enemies to lovers, slight praisekink, pretty explicit language

W.count - 5.4k

Sneak peek-“H-hold up,” I slightly push him off, “Let’s get this straight, just because we’re about to fuck does not mean that I like you now. It just means that I need some dick and you’re the only one around at this very second, ok.” I say in between breaths.

 “Ok, whatever you say.” He states smugly

 “Fuck you.”

“Oh please believe baby, you’re about to do just that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lee Jeno, the most infuriating, egotistic, frown-inducing asshole was here, and it had me questioning why the fuck I was also in attendance. Let me start from the beginning. I was just a girl suckered into coming to a get together between my group of friends, the starting girls volleyball team, and his group of friends, the starting boys basketball team. This had already been planned for a while now, and because we were busy with preparing for the semi-finals it had been postponed for a month and ever since the beginning I knew I didn’t want to go just because of him. 

“Come onn y/n, pleasseee just for me this one time pleassee. I know you and Jeno have this unadulterated hatred against each other but I want to hang out with them because they seem like cool people.” My best friend and blocker, Joy, stated whilst violently shaking me. 

“No Joy, I’ve already made up my mind, I will not go and that’s final,” I rolled my eyes. “Also don’t act like you want to go to hang out with everyone, we all know you just want to get closer to Chenle, you’re not fooling anyone.” 

“Yea Joy, we all know you have a crush on him, so I agree with y/n on this one.” At that Joy became flustered whilst fixing a pout on her face. 

“Buttt y/n I also agree with Joy, I really want to go, and while you do hate Jeno you don’t hate us so do this for us please.” Chungha, the decoy, stated while tightening her ponytail. 

“Yea Cap. we’ve been working our asses off this entire season and I’m almost failing AP Chem. I need a break.” Our libero Hwasa commented.

The other wing spiker Mei strolled into the room “You guys it’s almost time coach is about to call us so can we decide this now?”

“Why don’t we make a bet.” The setter, Luci, calmly stated. Making sure everyone was paying attention she stated, “If y/n can score fifteen points this game then she doesn’t have to go, but if she doesn’t make the points then she has to attend. How does that sound?”

Everyone looked towards me to get the answer. “Fine. I’ll do it, but when I score a whole round don’t say anything. Come on ladies it’s showtime.”

“I shouldn’t have promised shit.” I grumbled when I found out I missed the mark by one point. All the other girls were screaming from enjoyment while I was beginning to sulk once I truly realized what I had gotten myself into. 

“Come on it’ll be fun I promise. You don’t even have to pay attention to Jeno, I'll be right there, we all will.” Joy expressed.

“Ok but when is the trip to hell?” I questioned already mentally putting together my outfit

“It’s next Friday. Ahhh I can’t wait, I'm so excited.” Chungha practically bounced on her feet. While I figured that it might not be that bad.

~

“I swear on my life that I will murder Jeno.” I exclaim while I forcefully throw my bag on the couch next to a startled Joy.

 “What did he do now?”  

“Ok so this morning had gone particularly well, I woke up early enough to do a bantu crown and fix my curls and not just wear a messy bun to class. I felt so good that I even decided to dress up for class.”, I say as I gesture to my outfit which consisted of a cropped hoodie with a tommy hilfiger sports bra and semi baggy pants with my tommy underwear band showing.

 “I was even able to stop for coffee and a cream cheese and ham bagel, I also sat down and talked to Jaemin and tried to express my concern for the coffee of the dead he was drinking at the time. That good mood went to shit when I got to my political science elective with Jeno.” I explained to Joy as what happened came rushing back to me. 

It was my second to last class and I was still thriving until he came in with his latest fangirl at his feet trailing behind him. The girl was desperately trying to get him to go out with him, he looked like he would do just about anything to get her to go away, and my dumbass made the mistake of snickering. He turned to me with a hard glare that would make anyone piss their pants and all of a sudden his eyes lit up like he had just figured out the key to life and not gonna lie that freaked me out. Before I could turn away he rushed over and dragged me out of my seat.

“I don’t want to go out with you because I’m already dating her.”

I whipped my head so fast that I’m surprised I didn’t break my neck. “What the hell you talkin’ bout willis?”

“There’s no way you’re going out with her for one and for two she doesn’t even know your name babe like who the fuck is willis.”

“Woah lady excuse me-”

“What the fuck you mean by I wouldn’t go out with her?” Jeno fumed, “I’d rather go out with her than your basic ass. Get the fuck away from me, now.” 

I stood there dumbfounded because I had never seen Jeno look so mad in my life, and I should know since I make him angry a lot, but before I could finish my thoughts Jeno did something that I would never imagine he’d do in my life. 

HE KISSED ME. 

All I felt were his soft lips against mine. His lips felt slightly cool yet so smooth. I found myself kissing him back slowly, losing myself(but I didn’t tell them that)-

“Woah he did WHAT!”

 “He kissed you, are you serious?” Joy and now Chungha, who had just made it back from work, exclaimed at the same time. 

“Yes he kissed me, but that’s not all.” I said while trying to get back to the story. 

He broke away and fixed his eyes on the girl in front of us, and he said something I couldn't comprehend and the next thing I know I feel something cold being poured on me and something plop on my hair.

“The bitch had poured her fucking drink and squeezed out her cupcake on my head.” I told them.   

I turn to Jeno with the fiercest look I could possibly mutter. “Do you realize how much I want to kill you right now?”, I all but yelled in his face, I wanted to say more but the teacher walked into class.  

“UGHHHH I promise if I didn’t love you guys I would so bail on this stupid get together.”

Chungha suggests having a movie night with all of the girls as a way to apologize. “Fine but since I have to wash my hair now you guys have to buy my products for me when I run out next time.” I point at both of them while staring into both of their eyes. 

“Deal.” They both agree.

~

Tonight is the night of the get together and even though I don’t want to go I’m gonna look good while regretting my life choices. I pin my hair to the side since I feel like that would go best with the vibe I have going on, then putting on my leather jacket that completes my outfit of a rose embroidered slightly cropped shirt and high waisted red elastic overalls with the belts hanging down, I start to head out of my room to meet up with Chungha and Joy in the living room.

“Ok are y’all ready so we can head out, I’m trying to get in and get out so that I can get this night over with.” I tell them as I pass both of their rooms, getting ready to walk out of the apartment. They both walk out looking fine as hell, and we all take a second to survey each other. Then Joy’s phone pings, “The girls said they’ll meet us at the boy’s place.”

“Ok someone get me directions. AUTOBOTS ROLL OUT.” 

~

Since we’re caught up now let's continue shall we?

 “Great so now that everyone is here, let's begin.” Donghyuck or as he’s better known on campus as, Haechan said seemingly being in charge of everything. To anyone else it would’ve seemed boring garnering that there were no drugs and alcohol because we were all athletes and were currently in season and there was no loud music to make your ears bleed, but it was enough for us. Not to lie it was actually quite fun as long as I pretended Jeno wasn’t there. I even saw Joy and Chenle cuddling in the corner of the couch.  

But after all of the karaoke and twister and card games had calmed down we were left in a calm silence, and I saw this as the perfect chance to try and leave. 

“So tonight was fun but I think I’m just gonn-”

“No, don’t leave yet, we haven’t even gotten to the best part.” Donghyuck smirked and started to walk to his room only to come back with a small box. “Anyone up for truth or dare?”

“Come on Hyuck really, how old do you think we are?” Renjun stated while looking up from his phone at Donghyuck.

He smirked evilly, “Oh no my son this isn’t regular truth or dare. See this has a catch and you’ll see once everyone agrees to play.” He states while daring everyone to say yes. A chorus of various forms of agreement are heard throughout the room. Donghyuck takes a seat while telling us all to get in a circle and he places a bottle in the middle. 

“You see these.”, he proceeds to shake the box in his hands, “These are dirty dice and if you refuse to answer a truth or do a dare then you have to roll them, and whoever gave you the question has to do what the dice say to you.” 

“Haechan what the fuck-”

“Oh come on Luci, if you want I could give you a dare right now and we could demonstrate how this is supposed to go?” He offers cunningly with a smirk. Everyone knows they used to hook up for a while back but for some reason they never got together, but the tension between them was almost palpable. 

“Ok I’m down.”

“Let’s do it.” Jaemin and Mei both agreed and glanced at each other. 

Hwasa offered to spin the bottle first and it landed on Chenle. 

“Truth or Dare?”

~    

Everyone has had a go at the bottle, and currently Jeno, Jaemin, and Mark are shirtless all for different reasons. Chenle and Luci have hickey’s up and down their necks(not from each other), everyone knows that Mei likes rough yet passionate sex, and Hwasa has had her boobs caressed by Mark. Also that if I was a boy and had to fuck one of the girls I’d fuck Chungha and Joy, and they both have had to kiss each other while Chungha was sitting on Renjun’s lap, so it’s safe to say that everybody is under immense amounts of sexual frustration. Donghyuck was currently in the process of completing his punishment.

“Ok Hyuck since you didn’t want to answer your truth then you have to let Luci lick whip cream off of your nipples because I’m sure as hell not about to.” Jeno says with a smirk and a nod in Luci’s direction. You could see the immense blush on both of their faces. 

“Uh-h-uhh” Luci stuttered.

“Just do it, I'm fine with it.” Donghyuck states with care and understanding in his voice while he sat beside Luci.

She hesitantly leaned toward him and slowly laid him down. She leaned over him and slightly let her tongue venture outside of her mouth and to the sweet white cream on his chest. The first couple of licks were sort of kitten licks due to the tension and the anxiousness in the room. Soon she made it past the whipped cream down to his nipple and she began to lick the access off and Donghyuck’s moans started to gradually increase in volume, until that was all that you could hear. His sweet whiny moans gave Luci confidence and let her know that she was doing a good job. And by the time she started to kiss her way over to the other nipple Donghyuck was whimpering and withering on the ground and you could see his boner start to form. The temperature in the room had increased exponentially by the time she had gotten done.

Mark cleared his throat, “Uhh Haechan do you uhm wanna go handle, that.” He said while gesturing to his boner currently poking through his pants, but he was too busy staring at Luci to listen to a word Mark was saying. Hyuck then stood up and grabbed Luci’s hand, “Come with me.” Him and Luci marched all the way back to his room where he slammed the door and all you could hear was our breathing. 

“Well that just happened so I think it's time- Woah what the fuck?” Chungha stopped talking and that made everyone pay attention to where she was looking only to see Joy and Chenle making out on the couch. Vigorously. Then soft grunts and moans were heard from Jaemin and Mei. ‘When the fuck did that happen?’ I think to myself. 

“Ok since all of you are some horny children I’m about to take my ass to Mark’s room goodnight.” Hwasa stated while she stood up and walked to Mark’s room, but what she didn’t know was that I saw her wink at Mark to which he claimed to have to ‘use the bathroom.’ 

So here I was stuck in the middle of sex crazed lunatics sexually frustrated as fuck with no one to do anything with, oh and did I mention I was stuck with Jeno.

“Fuck this I’m just about to head out, they can text me in the morning when they need to be picked up.”, I stated while getting my keys about to walk out the door, “I hope they use protection.” 

“Hey.” Jeno calls, “Let me go to your apartment.”

“What the fuck, no why can’t you stay here?”

“Because I won’t be able to get any sleep with all of this,” he gestures around the house, “going on.”

“Not my problem, bye.”

“Come on please.” He begs in aegyo.

“Ahhh stop stop now don’t do that bullshit again. Fine you can come just don’t ever do that I almost threw up.” I yell while grimacing.

“Thanks y/n you’re so kind.” He smiles with his eye smile.

Getting in the car and buckling my seatbelt I turn toward him and say, “Ok when we get to the house you can sleep in either Chungha or Joy’s room idc but just don’t say anything to me ok.” He nods his head and clicks his seatbelt. The entire drive back I was trying to be discreet while I rub my legs together. No matter how much I play it off, what went down at their house greatly affected me and now it was affecting my underwear, and Jeno’s cologne was not helping at all because it smelt so damn good and manly. I just hope he didn’t notice, all I have to do when I get to the house is just hop in the shower and then I can handle myself. 

“Hey y/n.” Jeno said out of nowhere scaring me. 

“What I thought we agreed not to talk to each other.” I said keeping my eyes on the road, but I could feel his eyes boring into the side of my head.

“When we get to the house do you want to continue the game?”

I almost swerve the car out of pure shock. ‘What the hell did he just ask me?’ And I don’t know if it’s because of the thrill of what he just offered or if it’s because I’m just that sexually frustrated and it’s making me delusional, but I pull up to the apartment building and once I park I look at him. 

“Why do you want to continue the game?” I questioned 

“I just want to, do you?” He looks at me with his eyes and what seems to be his heart on full display. 

“Fine.” I then get out of the car and walk toward the building and then proceed to walk up to the elevator. I notice Jeno is right beside me and we get in the elevator without a word and press the floor. We make it up to the apartment and I tell Jeno to turn around so that I can type in the password. Walking into the house feels as if I’m walking to my death and I get this feeling deep inside and it brings so much anxiety. 

“Ok lets continue.” I say to Jeno while I look at him.

“Truth or dare?” He questions while pulling the dice out of his pocket.

“Dare.”

“I dare you to masterbate right here right now.”

I think about it but then I just say ‘Fuck it.’ Pulling my pants down I nervously worm my hands down to my underwear and I immediately feel just how wet I am and that causes a moan to fly out of my mouth and I start to work myself up. 

Rubbing my finger around my clit I feel that little tingle that comes from it and it is enlivening. I feel myself get wetter over time and then the moans start to bubble up until they are uncontrollable.

 I feel like something is burning into and I realize that I got so into it that I forgot that Jeno was watching me do this to myself. I didn’t know I was this horny but I was too far gone. I had already started and I wasn’t gonna stop anytime soon. 

“Ahh f-fuck, Jeno mm truth or dare?”

“...Truth.”

I take my hand deeper into my underwear and stick a finger inside. The penetration although not much made my moans come out even louder and I wanted more, so I asked the unthinkable, “J-jeno do you want to f-fuckk me.” It was like I had set off a bomb that released him from his cage because the next thing I know he was all over me. 

“Fuck kitten it’s about time you asked.”

“H-hold up,” I slightly push him off, “Let’s get this straight, just because we’re about to fuck does not mean that I like you now. It just means that I need some dick and you’re the only one around at this very second, ok.” I say in between breaths. 

“Ok, whatever you say.” He states smugly 

“Fuck you.”

“Oh please believe baby, you’re about to do just that.”

He started to take off the rest of my clothes while kissing my neck until he found my sweet spot. “Ah yes r-right there please.”

He grabs the hand that was in my underwear and holds it up. 

“Damn kitten you’re soaked. Is this for me?” He states while staring me in my eyes.

“No.”

“Aw that’s too bad because maybe if it was you would’ve gotten a prize.” He says working his way down my neck to my breasts. He starts to slowly rotate them while putting gentle kisses around the nipple. 

“Hmmg stop teasing you asshole.”

“Baby, I don’t really think you’re in a position to tell me what to do.” He says while holding up his hand after running it up my slit. 

“Mmm like you have any room to talk.” I say while motioning to his clear erection. Deciding I’ve had enough of his shit I flip us around so that I’m on top. I look at his shocked face and say “You were taking too long for me.” 

I start to palm his dick over his pants while my other hand works on unbuttoning them.

“Shit that feels so good.” He says while slowly rotating his hips. 

I take my hands and push his pants and his underwear down at the same time, and when his penis pops up to slap his stomach which I then notice is bare my mouth slightly waters. I haven’t had sex in a long time because I’ve been too invested in college and volleyball, so to say that I would kill for some dick right now wouldn’t be too far off. 

I slip his dick in my mouth and start to give him possibly the best head of his life. If his high pitched yelps of my name say anything. 

“Ah-uh-h s-s-shit right there FUCK yes, suck that dick baby.”

I take my tongue and slowly caress his dick in my mouth from as far as I can reach to the very tip and I tease his slit. What my mouth can’t reach, I massage with my hands. Then I destroy his life by taking him all the way into my mouth bottoming out on his dick. 

I feel Jeno clutch my hair and tense up trying not to thrust into my mouth. 

“Y-you must be so hungry for my cock kit-kitten, you’re doing so well baby.” He says while rubbing my head 

I feel my spit building up in my mouth so I back off a little and swallow while still around his cock and he almost has an aneurysm. He immediately takes me from around his mouth. 

“Stop, if you had kept going I would’ve cum and I never cum that quick baby.” he says gingerly patting my head while looking into my eyes and running his thumb over my bottom lip. “Look at you kitten, you look so innocent, but with a mouth like that you’re anything but.”

I don’t know what it was whether it be his praises that sent shivers down my back or was it the way he was looking at me, but at that second I felt as if I was seeing him in a new light and it slightly scared me because I’ve never seen him in any other way than with hatred. 

He looked so beautiful with his freshly flushed face and his moans that still rung in my ears and the taste of his pre-cum still on my tongue. It was then that my mind decided to remind me of our kiss shared earlier this week and for the first time since it happened I didn’t get heated in anger but in somethin-.

 NO what the fuck am I thinking, I hate him and I’m pretty sure he isn’t feeling like this now just from some head. 

Y/n calm the fuck down. I look away from him as quickly as I possibly can and clear my throat, “Uh yea so can we just like move along please?”

I think he senses my change in moods but he doesn’t say anything. “Ok cool we can totally do that kit-”

 “Oh and can you also stop with the pet names.” He looked slightly hurt but agreed nonetheless. 

“Let's move this to the bedroom ba-y/n.” 

I can tell that what I’ve said has slightly ruined the mood but that won’t stop me, so as soon as we enter my room I push him onto the bed after I grab a condom from a shoe box under my bed.

 “I want to be on top.” I say while straddling him and rolling the condom onto him, and he agrees while stating that it’s whatever I want. I take his dick and rub my wet folds against his dick slowly grinding on it past my soaked hole but not yet putting it in and you can tell it’s pure torture for him. 

“Come on y/n stop teasing.”, and he slightly thrusts up as a warning.

“Mmh nope I don’t think I want to do that, this feels pretty ahh nice.” You could see the anger and irritation in his eyes. The next time you rub near your hole Jeno sits up and grabs your hips forcefully and slams you down on him basically impaling you. 

The whimper/scream that was forced out sounded downright inhumane in the most wanton way. You looked utterly fucked out right then and there and he hadn’t even moved yet. 

He slowly moved your hips to gyrate on him in an act of trying to get you used to the stretch before he lifted you up and slammed you back down again. 

“OH fuck baby, mmh shit you feel heavenly.”, he groaned in your ear smaking your ass, “You had me so fuckin’ twisted thinking I was just about to sit here and let you tease me like that and not strike back. Now you ride this cock like a good little kitten or I’ll make you do it myself.” 

You whimpered and proceeded to grind yourself against his pelvis. His dick reached spots that had never even been tapped before. You felt him everywhere. The encouraging kisses that he laid on your breasts followed by some of the darkest hickies you’ve ever had. Suddenly Jeno delivered a thrust that made you hop up and he kept giving them back to back nonstop.

“Yea my kitten likes that huh, I own this hole baby. Tell me who it belongs to.” 

When I didn’t answer he decided to take matters into his own hands. Next thing I knew he had me face down ass up giving me just about all the power he could muster in his hips.

“I don’t know if you heard me but let me repeat myself and this is the only time but I said who does this belong to.” He stated.

‘You’ 

I didn’t reply. When he didn’t hear an answer he stopped. “No, no no no ugh fuckk don’t stop please don’t stop.” I plead while working my hips trying to get some sort of friction. 

“No, you don’t get shit.” He said while starting to get off of the bed. 

“Why do you want me to say that so badly? Why can’t we just fuck this one time with no strings and then go back to hating each other tomorrow?”

“Because y/n I like you ok, hell I would even say love. Look I don’t know when hate started to turn into like, but once it did it was too late to do anything about it so I just kept playing along with you because that’s the only way you would talk to me.”         

“...mmsdhjvuyhm.”

“What?” 

“Midnfbvud.”

“What y/n I can’t understand you, look if you don’t like me back I understand but don’t do this and just let me go sleep in another room tonig-”

“I SAID, it’s yours- I’m yours..” I said looking away flustered. He walked toward me and held my head up and with his beautiful eye smile said, “And I’m yours.” 

He kissed me and it was as if nothing had ever felt as right as this, his lips moulded to mine. He proceeded to lay me down whilst still kissing me softly yet passionately. 

“Damn kitten you don’t know what you do to me. Now where were we?”

He inserted his dick into me and I swear it felt even better than last time. We kept eye contact while he moved in me, albeit slower, but each thrust left me wanting more and more. Something about this felt different then when we first started. I don’t know what it was but as my hands wandered all over his body feeling his protruding muscles and I looked into his gentle eyes that leaked nothing but love and I felt as if we were one. 

Grunting, Jeno asked, “ Is this enough for you baby, do you like the way I make love to you.”

 “Yes oh my god yes. It feels so good, I-I feel you in every part of me.”

“Fuck don’t say that...because I won’t be able to hold back kitten.”

“Who..was asking you to?”

At that Jeno started to roughly pound into me. His thrusts were so strong that I felt the bed moving with us. 

“Ffuck see this is what you do to me, you make me want to destroy you.” He grabs my ass so roughly that I’m sure there will be marks tomorrow.

“J-jen ahh I’m a-abou to uhghh cum.” I say barely being able to get my words out. 

“I’m almost there too baby just wait a sec.” He mumbles into my neck. I start to feel his pants and I feel his hips stutter. Clenching onto his arms, trying not to dig my nails so deep that it draws blood I lock my legs around his waist and squeeze my walls to help him get there faster. 

“Cum with me Jeno I can’t hold it any longer.” 

Jeno looks into my eyes and rubs his hand against my cheek and says,“Ok my sweet kitten you can let it go.”

It was as if my body was on cloud 11 and I didn’t want to come down. A broken scream was released from my mouth and I tried reaching for the closest thing I could find, anything, everything. 

Jeno thrusts one last time while cumming into the condom. He stands up off of the bed and walks over to the trash in my bathroom and ties the condom before throwing it away. Walking back to the bed he sees me get up and almost fall so he rushes over to help me. 

“What are you doing standing up right now? What is it I’ll get it for you?” he urges. 

“Uhh I’m pretty sure you can’t help me pee Jeno.” I chuckle in amusement. 

“Oh ok well just make sure to be careful.” 

I finish doing my business and make my way back to the room to see Jeno flicking through Netflix and it’s then that I realize that I’m naked so I try and hide myself so he can’t see. 

“I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t matter that I see you naked now since we did just have sex, and I’ll be seeing a lot more of you now that you’re my girlfriend.” He smirks while still scrolling, “But if you’re uncomfortable with that then I understand.” 

I clear my throat and make my way out of the room. I come back in with his shirt on and see his getting ready to say something until he sees me and then he blushes. 

“W-why are you w-wearing my shirt?” He stutters, not looking at my way. 

“Because I can, can’t I? Also I don’t ever remember you asking me to be your girlfriend, I’m waiting.” I smugly look in his eyes, “Look who’s shy now.” I say climbing into bed next to him.

“I- uhh.” He scratches the back of his neck out of anxiety. “Do you want to be my girlfriend?” He smiles nervously 

“I don’t know Jeno, why should I?” I say in an attempt to scare him, He simpers and turns to hover over me, “Because I just gave you the best dick of your life that’s why.” 

I look at him incredulously, “Some one’s cocky. Are you sure about that statement?” 

“Do I need to recall you begging me not to stop. ‘oHhH jEnO PlEaSe DoNt sToP aHH AhH-’”, I start to smack his arm and push him off of me trying to hide my smile. 

“Shut UP I swear, see that’s why I’m not gonna be your girlfriend.”

“Noo baby I’m sorry ok, please do me the honor of dating me I promise not to mock you again.” He says trying to stop laughing and giving me puppy dog eyes. 

“Hmph, you act like you didn’t want this, do I need to recall you huh?” He hurriedly shakes his head. 

Jeno looks down sadly and asks,“Are you really not gonna date me now?” 

I have no choice but to swoon at how cute he was and I can’t help but to question his duality. “Oh my god you’re so cute, and of course I’ll date you.” I say holding his face up to look at me, and I peck his lips for added assurance.

 “Ok let’s watch a movie. I wanna cuddle, I'm tired.” I say as I snuggle into his chest.   

[anywhozits]

All I Really Want Chapter 4

Rating: M

Pairing: Kristanna (at some point lol)

Verse: 90s High School AU / frozen retelling

Chapter Summary: Hans and Anna go on a their first date.

Notes: This chapter has some extra warnings—there are references to and conversations about underage sex. Nothing graphic, nothing explicit. None of that will be in any chapter of this fic. However, while reading this chapter specifically, it is important to note that this is a fictional account of one character’s experience. This is definitely not meant to be a universal depiction of how adolescence is “supposed to go” or anything to that effect. Everybody has their own timelines for things like this, which is perfectly valid, and in fact, exactly how it should be—individualized.

Read on Ao3

Anna took a deep breath, sighing contentedly while smoothing out her pink silk dress. She knew Hans didn’t mean to be late or keep her waiting or whatever, but she sat here, ready, for the last twenty minutes and he said he was going to arrive ten minutes ago. But Anna didn’t even know whether to trust his word at this point.

She didn’t even know him, really. She didn’t even know what he was like…

Yeah. True. Ugh—shit. Kristoff was right. She didn’t know that much about him.

Well. Okay—his last name was Westergaard. He had 13 brothers.

Um.

He had red hair and green eyes and this really pointy nose that looked really hot and cute at the same time. Like hotute or umm maybe hute. Nah. Hotute was much better.

So, yeah. He had red hair, green eyes, and a hotute nose.

What else…

He lived in Newport Beach.

And… she also knew that…

They had a lot of fun together! They had the most fun together she’d ever had with anybody in her whole life.

And this fun, well—she moved a little quickly with him. It was her decision to take things past kissing on their second night together. And duh—kissing him brought out some kind of really nice jolt of electricity, and it felt so absolutely amazing to actually share that electricity with someone else. So, she couldn’t help it. She was happy to move… quickly. She was more than happy to. They hadn’t done everything yet, but...

Well, it meant they didn’t do much… talking, exactly.

Of course, Anna still found the words somehow in between kisses and um—other things—to monologue about whatever consumed her mind.

But Hans didn’t say much at all. About himself, at least. He still asked a lot of personal questions about her life.

Maybe she should ask him some for a change. Besides, they couldn’t make out throughout the whole dinner, either. That felt like a big no-no in such a super ritzy establishment as Five Crowns anyway. So, they had to talk.

Her stomach suddenly sank.

It was like… she was nervous?

About spending the night with her… friend… with? benefits?

But that seemed so wrong? Why would she be nervous about spending a couple hours gnawing on steak and delicious soufflé and talking with the guy she loved most?

Why did the entire concept of conversation make her want to barf on the spot?

Her stomach fell to her knees.

Maybe Kristoff was right. Maybe love at first sight didn’t exist and she was just lying to herself because she wanted it so badly and…

No. No. Kristoff was getting in her head. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything.

She and Hans would make wonderful conversation at their friends-with-benefits-dinner-date and it would be all fine and dandy and wonderful.

She’d ask him some questions. She’d get to know him. And then she’d show Kristoff! She’d show the shit out of him and that grumpy BFF of hers would be totally wrong!

Except Hans still wasn’t here. So, Anna nervously fidgeted with her dress again. She tried to smooth it out. She clipped and unclipped the two hot pink sparkly snap clips that were on either side of her middle-parted red hair.

After her seventh time fiddling with the clips, she heard the intimidating chime of the doorbell.

Thank God.

She counted to twenty-five before she allowed herself to open the door, needing him to think she had better things to do than twiddle her thumbs and wait for him.

The second she saw his handsome face, her entire bundle of nerves completely disappeared. “Hans!” She ran up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck to give him a passionate kiss on the lips. He stumbled back a little bit, not quite ready for this show of affection, probably, but he caught himself easily, finally relaxing into the kiss and bringing his hands to the small of her back.

“You ready, babe?”

She kissed him again. “Mmhmm,” she mumbled into his mouth.

“Let’s do it.”

And all of a sudden, the nerves were back. Now that she had to contemplate how they would make it through dinner before getting back to this whole smooching business.

But she gave him no inkling of any of these likely-Kristoff-induced-second-thoughts and smiled brightly. She followed him to his black Mercedes and bit her lip for the entirety of the car ride. His hand rested on her thigh, squeezing it ever so slightly.

Only letting up when they pulled off Pacific Coast Highway and into the Five Crowns Parking lot and Anna caught herself shaking.

Nervous, still.

Thankfully Hans took her hand, guiding her into the restaurant in a way that felt more… relationship-y than she was expected. This wasn’t friends. It certainly didn’t seem like friends.

Oh, crap. Maybe she needed to have this conversation with Hans tonight, too. Crap. Crapity crap crap crap. That was not at all what she wanted.

But the fact that there were about five hundred million butterflies eating away at absolutely everything in her stomach right before she was about to chow down on some delicious and expensive food that she actually really wanted to enjoy…

She should do it. Yup. She should do it. All she had to do was wait for the perfect window of opportunity and then she’d just—bam get it all out there out in the open and then they’d say I love yous for days and then go back to his car for some making out and it would be glorious and perfect and probably the best date she’d ever been on.

Wait.

Date. This was a date.

She and Hans hadn’t really… been on a date since they met in February. Not a real date, at least. They went to the movie Vegas Vacation but classically sat in the back and made out the whole time, like, so much so that she didn’t even know exactly what the plot was besides the Griswolds going to Las Vegas and oh yeah—Wayne Newton was also there at some point?

She didn’t count that as a date, exactly. Because of the lack of… talking.

And all the other times they only hung out at each other’s houses.

Which meant… this was her first date. What better time to figure out if they were hopefully something more than just friends? Because friends with benefits wasn’t really what she wanted out of any of this. She knew she should be thankful that she had love. They loved each other. That was great. But… she wanted a relationship, too.

Okay. So that was the game plan. All systems very much go.

When she looked around at the restaurant, taking in the English Tudor / nautical hybrid décor, she began to feel a little out of her element. Her silk dress suddenly became itchy. Everybody else in the restaurant had to be at least 40 years old at a minimum and she thought she must seem like a child. Her pink dress and her pink glitter snap clips and her pink eyeshadow only further proved this point.  

This made her even more nervous. Uncomfortable. It made her worry she’d never find the right opportunity to have this mature and important conversation when she felt like she was eight years old and at her father’s birthday dinner again.

But she’d try…

When they sat down next to each other at their corner booth, Anna’s stomach lurched. Still very worried. Still very young and out of place. Now was definitely not the right opportunity.

The right opportunity didn’t arise when they ordered their French Onion Soups and Filet Mignons.

The right opportunity didn’t arise when they received their French Onion Soups, when they slurped them up, when Anna realized her breath probably reeked more than she cared to admit.

But once the French Onion Soups were cleared, once Hans placed his right arm comfortably over Anna’s shoulders, so she could lean in close… she thought maybe now was the time.

But Hans wanted to talk, too.

“What classes are you in this year?”

This question jarred her. She hadn’t realized they somehow hadn’t covered any of this basic information in the last month. “Oh. Um. I’m taking Geometry Honors, Spanish II, World History, Conceptual Physics or whatever the freshman science is. Oh! And also, studio art because that sounded fun!” She had to take a break for a bit to catch her breath. “English I, too. But I’m not that happy about it because I really wanted Honors English but apparently that doesn’t exist for freshmen? Which seems really dumb because obviously there’s a lot of us who can handle it. I’ve already read like all of the books on our English I reading list. Like, Sense and Sensibility? Jane Eyre? Catcher in the Rye? Honestly? That feels like middle school to me but whatever.” Anna didn’t usually let that many people in on her secret middle school classic literature obsession, but once she got going she couldn’t stop herself. “Um. Sorry. I got all rambly again. I just really like English. It’s my favorite subject. If you couldn’t already tell…”

“Yeah. English is solid.”

“Mmhmm! And what are you taking?” Anna asked. “Let me guess. You look like an … AP US History guy. French III? Regular English. Ummm.. I don’t know what math. And probably um chemistry honors?”

“Close.”

“So, what is it?”

“I’m in Latin. And yep. APUSH, regular English, Chem Honors. I’m in AP Stats this year. I was so over calculus. Such a bullshit class. Tried it for a day but that bitch Ms. Maloney fucking hated me for no reason.”

“Oh. Okay.” Anna bit her lip. This was stagnating. And he was way too oddly aggressive about that calc class. Her stomach dropped again. She wanted to make sure they had the best conversation of their entire lives at Five Crowns on her first real date. “So, then what’s your favorite subject?”

“History.”

“What do you like about it?” Anna asked.

“Wars are hella dope. Cool to learn about.”

“Ah,” Anna said. “Any one in particular?” She tried her best.

“I dunno. I’ve always been into The Great War.”

“That’s World War I, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like that’d be a good one.” Anna cringed. Her whole body tensed. She hoped he didn’t notice. This conversation felt awkward. She needed to change the subject. “And you play baseball? Any other sports?”

“Nah,” he said as he squeezed her shoulder. “You had that track meet last weekend, right?”

“Yeah. I did. All day Saturday,” she explained, leaning in closer to him. “I did the pole vault, triple jump, and a relay.”

“That sounds pretty fly.”

“Mmhmm. I guess. But…” Anna sighed. “I kinda wish I hadn’t gone. It was, like, the whole day and I came home to a message from Elsa, so. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not meant for track.”

“What’d Elsa have to say?”

“Not too much, really. It was a short message…” Anna’s voice got a little lower. “But she said she’s pretty nervous because she’s meant to hear from colleges soon.”

“Ah,” Hans said. “Well, I wish her luck.”

“Me, too.”

Anna sighed. Sustained silence fell between them for a short while. And Anna couldn’t help but realize… maybe this was her window of opportunity.

“Um… Hans?

“Wazup?”

“What… are we?”

“What do you mean what are we?”

“Oh, duh. Yeah. Well, it’s not—I don’t mean like—what are we—like humans or whatever. It’s not… deep like that,” Anna winced at her futile attempts to explain her nervous thoughts. “I just mean… what are we? You know—in our… relationship or friendship or whatever it is.”

“Oh.”

“You get it? Does that make sense? I can try explaining it again if it doesn’t…”

“I get it.”

“Okay,” she exhaled. Then inhaled. She bit her lip again. For probably the 50th time that night. “So then… what are we?”

“We’re us.”

“Right. And what is us?”

“We’re having fun. Aren’t we? Didn’t you have hella fun watching Vegas Vacation?

Anna’s cheeks flushed red. “We didn’t watch—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But didn’t you have a blast, anyway? Aren’t you having fun right now?”

“Of course I am, I just meant—”

“That’s all we’re doing, babe. We’re having fun.”

“So we’re… so you’re not my—we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend is what you’re saying?”

“We’re having fun.”

Anna could feel her heartbeat quickening. Her stomach couldn’t drop any lower than it already had.

Now they were confirmed just friends. Even though she wanted this date at Five Crowns to mark the start of something a bit more serious…

But maybe…

Maybe they didn’t need labels to be serious. Maybe they were already serious.

Thinking of this, Anna stared into his green eyes, catching some swirls of what she hoped was sincerity hidden within. “You love me though, don’t you?”

“Of course I love you, babe. I’ve loved you since the day I met you.”

She smiled now, snuggling into him further, content. It didn’t matter what they were, it didn’t matter what they called themselves. They had each other. They had snuggles and smooches and smiles and now a real, legit, super-fun date and they loved each other since the very second they laid eyes on each other.

Take that, Kristoff. Mr. Grumpy-Doesn’t-Believe-in-Love-At-First-Sight man. You lost today, sucker.

She planted a gentle kiss on his lips, a kiss that deepened, continuing until their orders of Filet Mignon were placed gingerly in front of them.

Without the constant pressure of the impending scary and mature conversation, Anna gobbled up her food with ease, quickly, in fact—because she was starting to look more and more forward to the after-date than the date itself.

So much so that she considered skipping out on the chocolate soufflé entirely. And chocolate was her favorite thing in the world. Period.

Once the chocolate soufflés arrived, though, she realized that would’ve been a grave error. No way no how.

Naturally she inhaled the chocolate soufflé. In a way that left Hans laughing and laughing, trying as hard as he could to wipe the chocolate off of her mouth and her shoulders and her dress… and also the walls and some areas of the booth… safe to say, Anna had made quite the mess.

And with him touching her and laughing with her, Anna became giddy. When Hans paid with his Visa platinum and signed the check, taking Anna’s hand again and helping her out of the booth, Anna’s giddiness turned ecstatic.

He thought she was funny. He laughed at her jokes. He laughed at her antics. He helped clean up her mess.

And they had a good conversation about school and a really informative conversation about their relationship. And they loved each other, of course. That was important, too.

Still overjoyed, Anna sat again in Hans’s black Mercedes. Hans drove to one of the Crystal Cove beach parking lots. They parked the car.

The entire area was dark. Nobody was there. Not a car. Not a soul. Not even a seagull.

Anna knew where this was going.

Her heart beat quickly for a new and exciting reason.

Their lips touched with sparks of electricity; a fervent move that sent them shimmying into the backseat of the car.

Anna was no stranger to the black leather seats. She was no stranger to this position.

She’d moved quickly with him. She recognized that. But hearing a chorus of Hans’s delectable I love yous made fireworks ignite within her soul. And so, it didn’t seem quick at all. It seemed just about right. Perfect. If they loved each other on the first night, then everything naturally had to follow at lightning speed to match.

Right?

“Hey, babe?” Hans whispered in her ear, so close that it tickled her a bit and she giggled.

“Yeah?”

“Can we do it?”

She giggled again. “I mean—sure. Yeah. When were you—”

“Tonight,” he said. “Now.”

“Oh.” Anna was out of her element again. Yes, she liked moving quickly. Yes, she liked everything else they’d done, but… this? Tonight?

She didn’t think she was ready. She didn’t feel ready. Did anybody ever feel ready? Did it matter?

It was then that she realized Arendelle Academy had failed her. The school had failed them, more like. She had the period talk in the fifth grade. But since then… all she had to do was some dumb assignment about chlamydia in the Human Development class she took last semester.

That wasn’t enough. Clearly.

And here she was—terrified.

Because, sure, she knew what it meant to do it. But only because of a healthy mix of Sex and the City (Anna knew she was a Carrie), Friends, and Anna Karenina. As a curious middle schooler, Anna learned more than she’d like to admit from Anna Karenina’s spicy affair with Vronksy.

But that suddenly felt all… abstract.

It was like she knew nothing. Nothing at all. In the backseat of Hans’s car, she was about to flunk out of doing it class.

The only shred of information that remained in her brain was her vision. Her perfect, wonderful vision of how she both imagined and desired it to happen.

She pictured herself sixteen or seventeen… on her birthday. One of her favorite days of the year. After some kind of wonderful birthday surprise party all planned perfectly by her boyfriend, the two of them would dash off to a swanky hotel, and when they would get to their wonderful suite, there would be rose petals scattered around the bed. They’d have bottles of some fancy champagne… oh—and some chocolate covered strawberries, of course.

But most importantly—boyfriend. She’d said boyfriend. Obviously. Because she imagined it happening with the boyfriend she loved with all of her heart.

That was just for it, though. The Big It.

For any of the other stuff—stuff they’d already done—she never had the same kind of perfect vision. So, it was easy enough to just… full steam ahead do all of it.

But not this it. Not the Big It.

So many parts of her vision were missing. She needed it to be special. She needed it to feel like the most intimate expression of love for another person possible.

Because…well—that’s exactly what it was to her.

So she couldn’t do it tonight. Not like this. But at the same time, she didn’t want to let him down.

She didn’t want to lose him…

“I don’t know,” was all she said.

“Well, why not? We’ve done everything else. What’s the difference?”

“I want it… to be special. And I’m only—I’m, like, young. Isn’t that bad?”

“No.”

But this didn’t comfort her very much. Because she was young.

Elsa would say that she was too young.

“You don’t think it’s bad? That I’m…” Anna gulped. She worried saying the word fourteen out loud would make him see her as immature and naïve. “You don’t think I’m gonna be bad?”

“No.” He kissed her, then, romantically. Anna relaxed a bit into the kiss. “You’re gonna be great.”

“Have you ever… um—have you done it before?”

“A couple times.”

She’d figured as much, and it made her nervous. Really, really nervous. In her vision of how this should play out, it was her first time and it was her loving, doting, wonderful boyfriend’s first time, too. There were no expectations. There were no comparisons.

Her mind flashed to Kristoff, eyes crinkled and mouth wide in that wonderful smile of his.

No. Don’t do that. Don’t do that, Anna.

She needed to shake herself clear of those thoughts. Of that visual…of that desire, maybe. If that’s what it was.

No. No. It was about Hans tonight. HansHansHans. His hotute nose and his beautiful green eyes.

She loved Hans. She wanted Hans in this way, yes. She did.

It was just…

“I think I want it to be special,” Anna said, her voice small.

“This is special, babe. Just you and me here in my car… loving each other.”

“No, no, no. I mean special special. Like… really romantic special. On a really big event or a really big milestone or something. I want it to mean a lot. And I’m not saying that I don’t want to do it with you because I really, really do want to—like…I want to, and my body wants to and… I just think I need to wait um… a little bit.”

“Okay,” Hans said, sighing. “We can wait.”

Anna’s heart soared. Now she just needed a new vision of how she wanted it to go down. She figured he wouldn’t want to wait that long and really neither did she. If she really wanted him to be her boyfriend and not her friend-with-benefits then she needed to double down. She couldn’t keep him waiting for too long.

But if she were worried about being too young… and if she were worried about what Elsa would say, and she wanted it to happen on her birthday, ideally. Then… she should just say it.

“My birthday.”

“What about it?”

“My birthday. We can do it on my birthday, okay? That’s… three months away,” Anna explained. In three months, she’d be fifteen. And fifteen seemed old enough.

Right?

Right. Fifteen felt right. Her birthday felt right. Elsa had to understand. And maybe Elsa would even be proud that she waited those three months instead of diving right in.

Shit did Anna want her sister to be proud of her.

She continued, “I know it’s awhile, but. It’s an important day and we can be together, and I think… I think that’s perfect. I think then it’ll be really special.”

And then… when it happened, she just knew he’d decide he wanted to be her boyfriend for real.  

Hans nodded. “Okay. Deal. June 21st, right?”

And her heart leapt at the sheer fact that he remembered.

They made out some more. They got close, really close, to doing what he wanted, but they didn’t. He respected her wishes.

He respected her.

And when Hans dropped her off at home that night, Anna knew what she needed to do. It was late. Again. She always called Elsa so late. It was self-sabotage, really. Elsa’s world operated three hours later than Anna’s…

But she picked up the phone and dialed her sister’s number anyway.

Nothing but ring ring ring ring times infinity and then that condescending beep. Another beep… another message destined to be unanswered but not unheard.

Anna still couldn’t believe that stupid track meet had kept her away from Elsa’s once-in-a-blue-moon phone call.

“Um—Els. Hey. It’s me again. Your sister. Anna…” Anna shook her head. Elsa would recognize her voice. Duh. Anna always had to make everything so awkward. No wonder Elsa hardly ever called her back. “Um, anyway. I, uh—I’m so sorry I keep calling and I’m so sorry I keep leaving all these messages and I’m, like, the most sorry I missed your call Saturday—I wish I’d been home. I…I can’t even tell you how much I wish I’d been home…” She balled up her hands into tight fists and squeezed, hard, trying to keep a lid on all of her emotions. “It’s just—I really, really miss you and I have…” Anna knew what she wanted to tell Elsa, but she didn’t know quite how to frame it. She tried to squeeze her fists harder. “I, um—I did something. And I think…” But she couldn’t help it—her emotions had no lid. Tears spilled down her cheeks and she took a deep breath in a futile attempt to hide the trembling within her voice. “I think you’ll be really proud of me.”

[horseyfuture]

Lockdown 2021

Welcome, you sickening metallic pervert. I don’t know why I even tolerate you, my dues to the club have long since been settled and yet still you show up with your corrugated spleen and your laminated nipples. What? Oh, it’s you. With your simple fleshy appendages and some kind of yellow blancmange for a CPU. I suppose you will suffice. Bend yourself over the table there and we’ll get on with the show. Liquid soap’s on the side, next to the antique bum-hammer.

---

Aries: You find yourself repeatedly followed by crows. This is in no way related to the quite normal phenomenon in which a murder of crows will adopt a human who feeds them, bringing them trinkets and even offering them protection from aggressors. No, these crows find you sexy. Leaping about in your lounge, wearing your goth tops and flapping your arms to the rhythms of online parties, the crows all agree that you are “SKRARK!” or, in Crow, “one fine piece of floppy human tail”. Well done! Crows have good taste and make excellent lovers.

Taurus: Every time you open that damn Taurus mouth of yours, you sound like a broken record. I mean, literally, you sound like a piece of badly scratched vinyl. That’s been up the wrong bit of a rhino. And is being played using a bent nail. Through the speakers of a brown ‘65 Ford Allegro. In Ipswitch. In the rain. On a Wednesday. In November. That’s a lot of detail to pack into an accent every time you decide to prattle on about crisps. People find it offputting.

Gemini: On a whim, you buy yourself a File-o-fax, you know, from the 80s. You must have seen one in a kitschy American TV show or something. While excessively bored on a Sunday afternoon, you begin to fill in some of the entries from your mobile phone. As soon as you finish writing the first one, Adam, he calls! What a crazy coincidence! You move onto the next, Beth - then SHE calls! That’s just insane! As you move onto the next name, you think “My god, what if I bought a MAGICAL File-o-fax? What adventures could I HAVE?” - You look down at the table in awe, when suddenly it all becomes clear: next to the Magic File-o-fax is the Magic Empty Bottle of Gin. Ah.

Cancer: Singing a song about beans, YEAH! Singing a song about toast! Singing a song about beans on toast, ‘cos that food you like the most, WOO! Singing a song about waffles? NO! Can’t be arsed making them! Beans on toast takes like two tiny minutes and waffles take about fucking ten! (FUCK THAT!) Singing a song into the beans can! While the beans turn in the microwave, ALRIGHT! Naming individual beans (YEAH!) pretend they’re all going to a beans rave! (WHISTLE POSSE!) Shovelling the beans into your mouth WOO! Toasting bread is for twats! (LO-SERS!) Pouring cold beans onto your face and half of them fall onto the cat! (SEND HELP!)

Leo: After a successful hour’s staring at the stippled ceiling, you reward yourself with a brisk walk to the door. After three proud steps, diligently recorded by your fitness band (which you’re fairly certain is now emitting a dull weeping sound), you jubilantly punch the air and have a nice relaxing pass out on the floor. After another few hours, you surf another boost of energy and nearly make it to the fridge. Sadly, though this goal is destined to elude you as you trip over a recently-delivered Amazon envelope. A handful of attempts in, you succeed at opening the envelope (only stopping twice to catch breath) and discover it to contain one flimsy plastic finger measurer and a £60 voucher for a wine subscription. You remember the partner you once had, in the distant before times, so vibrant and loud. In recognition of having had what you’re certain is “a feeling”, you fling the ring-measurer away, order the wine and settle into a nice, relaxing cry.

Virgo: There are a number of St Bernards around your neighbourhood and you’ve started to find them more than a little intimidating. What began as friendly barks as you passed in the street has developed into the odd growl and now barking as the owners pull their wretched beasts back from you, swearing in anguish as their hounds’ slavering jaws snap at your heels. After a few weeks of this, Monthly Bath Weekend inevitably comes round and the problem seems to just go away.

Libra: Some people have been baking recently. They - of course - are twats. Others have chosen to use this time to improve existing music skills, or even pick up a new instrument in their abundance of free time. Shit-eating scum, each and every one of them. You are not going to be affected by this self-improvement bullshit and have decided to strike out on your own, tangibly making yourself less pleasant, skilled and attractive with each passing day. Monday is fudge-eating class. Tuesday, “how long can I sit on the loo?” marathons (5 hours PB). Wednesday is Yelling ‘BASTARDS’ at the Sky Day, while Thursday (being the new Friday) you party on down with a life-size model of Prince made from your own toenails. Friday you slam your face into cupboards, repeating the word “APES” in a dull monotone. At the weekend, it’s time to rest! Phew! Just a few hours drilling holes in the ceiling, a slip, a tumble, a fall, a crunching sound and a view from the underside of a very poorly constructed step-ladder until it all goes beautifully dark.

Scorpio: Fuck this, you’re buying beach balls. Yep. Why not? You do, in fact, buy beach balls. Why didn’t you think of this before? They’re bright. They’re entertaining. They’re CHEAP. You can order them in large quantities, it turns out. “Ooh, I hope you’re not having a party!” says the delivery man, with a wink “HAHAHAH, NO. Actually I’m just INFLATING THEM AND POPPING THEM” you cackle toward his suddenly retreating face. It takes a while to inflate all 400, but the high you get from blowing them up is quite intense! Now you have a house full of beach balls! Haha! You can’t bring yourself to pop them in the end. Some of them are lost to accidents (fried beach ball, anyone?) and others you draw on with crude faces of past enemies, then open the door and punt them down the street with a hearty “FUCK YOU, BEATRICE!” (or Ken, as appropriate. You had few enemies. It’s cheap therapy). The last few hundred last you happily into the next month, though the doctor is mildly unimpressed when you attempt to get them vaccinated.

Sagittarius: Your attempts at making LEGO sex toys go badly to begin with. But, weirdly, you do eventually get better at it. You’re particularly proud of the one where you use the gearbox from the racing car for, well, you know. The winking pneumatic sex-donkey (8,014 bricks) is, in most people’s opinion, your pièce de résistance. You can’t wait for the highstreet to open up again, so you can go and show off your repertoire down the local toyshop.

Capricorn: It’s tough getting through lockdown without the internet. In your case, though, it is entirely self-inflicted. You made a promise to yourself to cut down on the doomscrolling and it was successful! Prodigiously so! You end up cutting out the news sites - who needs them? - then the social sites - nothing but trash! - then eventually you just pull the wires out of your router and fling it in the bin with some bits of leftover chicken. Time passes, politicians come and go, vaccines are invented, distributed, mostly successful (with only a small amount of people instantly turning into tiny, angry lizards) and eventually the world passes through the danger period and back into something like normality! You, of course, miss this entirely and get on with your new hobby of writing subversive poetry on the walls in dollops of mouldy Marmite. Weirdly, you ARE happier.

Aquarius: Lockdown doesn’t seem to be getting to you too badly this month (whichever month it turns out to be). You did get to a bit of a peak when you were popping a Toblerone up your bum while playing kazoos just to get yourself ready for the next bloody Zoom meeting of the day, you now you’re limiting it to one bar per day and only using the two kazoos, you feel like you’ve hit your stride, found your flow, really made the most of every work-from-home hour the Lord sends. Ah, yes, the Lord truly has kept you to the virtuous path. Without your faith, you would never have got through the dark days. Sat there on his throne of Bourbons, wearing his Chocolate Finger crown. Slowly rotating on the lazy Susan you bought so you could efficiently respect His Majesty from any angle with a deft flick of the wrist (and a few Bourbons in the eyes if you get too excited). The mighty Lord. You assume his name was Lord. There were only a few letters you could read on the collar when you found him by the bins. Ah, yes. The bins. The biscuits. The Lord. The rapture. Amen.

Pisces: After popping to the door to bring in a food delivery, you notice the day looks quite pleasant for a change, pop a mask on and go for a nice walk. On the way back, you notice a ladder leant up against a tree, with a strange golden light shimmering from high in the branches. Climbing the ladder, you hear the sound of a party, people calling your name in joy, whistles and whoops, clapping and laughter. You tumble into the golden light and down a kind of shoot as a fanfare plays. The dazzling light fades, the noise abates gently and you are sat on your sofa. On the TV are the words “LEVEL 4: YODELLING GEESE”. The geese filling your living room immediately begin to yodel with anger.

---

By the sainted elbows of Bobby Tavistocke, we got there in the end. I may have been a little over-brutal with my use of the bum-hammer there, for which I apologise. Anyway, you have extracted your price once more and I have little left to give. Pick up your clothes and get out of my living room.

As usual, you may of course take a fairy cake. We’ve got the nice ones this week.

DEPART!

[clarketomylexa]

halley’s comet and other extenuating circumstances ch. 3

“It’s snowing?” 

Lexa nods. 

As if she needs to know for sure, Clarke pushes herself up on an elbow, unwashed hair slipping from behind her ear as she pulls back a wispy curtain to expose a backyard full of snow. 

read on ao3

She gets the text at six a.m. 

Her phone buzzes by her head and she reaches back, frowning unhappily as she uncurls herself from the warmth of flannel sheets and her long-sleeved pyjama top to answer it, cold worming its way under the dips and creases of the fabric. 

It takes a moment to find, and another to figure out why it’s tucked upside down into the storage trolley Clarke keeps on the wrong side of her bed for her acrylics, clock and a little vase of fake, dollar store flowers instead of her own nightstand but when she remembers why she smiles. 

Winter is awesome. 

It’s even better than Fall if Lexa had to rank the seasons — and not just because football season is over. While September gave her her girlfriend and Clarke on the sidelines in her uniform, Winter so far has had Jake working long hours and Abby pulling second third at the hospital and a mutual agreement between both of their parents that being home alone together is better than Clarke being home alone by herself. 

It’s meant cash pinned to the fridge, along with a note in Jake’s handwriting to order something other than sticky rice and egg rolls from Haun Garden for dinner and sitting in Lexa’s bedroom beneath glow in the dark stars, all faded and plastic and peeling from the ceiling, swapping answers for AP calculus over cold Pop-Tarts and Coca Cola cans. 

(Even better, it’s meant Clarke in Lexa’s Pikachu pyjama pants and pictures for prosperity — one half of a cheap, silver heart necklace from a kiosk at the mall draped around her neck over her t-shirt). 

And yeah, maybe Lexa’s Spanish conjugations have veered toward sloppy ever since Clarke started whispering quiet querida’s and mi corazón’s to Lexa under her breath during class — she thinks she might have single-handedly kick-started Señor Moreno’s nervous breakdown the first time she answered a question with sorry, I don’t know — but the kisses traded later, in the alcove outside the arts classroom in B block more than make up for it. 

“Clarke,” she whispers, digging her way through the intricate layers of comforters and quilts on the bed until she finds the lump. 

It’s a blond lump, tucked cozily into a grey-green Polis High School Cheerleading sweatshirt, pyjama pants and the Christmas socks Lexa slipped into her stocking the day before Christmas Eve, and it squirms unhappily when it’s poked, glaring at Lexa past the edge of her pillowcase with slitted, sleepy eyes. 

“What?” 

Lexa hands over her phone in reply and Clarke takes it with cold fingers, blinking at the screen as she reads the text from Lexa’s Mom. 

Roads are closed. Daddy called the school board and you don’t have school today. Be home for dinner, please. Love you.

“It’s snowing?” 

Lexa nods. 

As if she needs to know for sure, Clarke pushes herself up on an elbow, unwashed hair slipping from behind her ear as she pulls back a wispy curtain to expose a backyard full of snow. It’s harsh and white in the light from the porch. A thick layer of it sits on the patio furniture and the grass is buried from fence to fence, boxed in on either side by big, sloping mountains, the ice yellow and green and starburst red in the reflection of the Christmas lights still hung up on the trellis. 

It’s January now, Christmas is over, but the Griffin’s have a habit of leaving their decorations up well past Epiphany much to the annoyance of Mrs Gardiner across the cul-de-sac who has her lights up and down on a practically military timetable. Jake has been promising to do it for the past two weeks, ever since he went back to work after the holidays but he says it with enough of a twinkle in his eye that Lexa knows they’ll still be up come Valentine’s Day and beyond. 

(Lexa is OK with that; when she thinks about sitting cross-legged with Clarke on the porch on February Fourteenth, watching the lights catch in the spun-silk of her hair, she wonders if spite is enough for Jake to leave them up all year round). 

“Shit!” Lexa hisses when cold air unexpectedly invades the pocket of heat she’d eked out against Clarke’s mattress. She traps her arms against her chest, pulling the cuff of her sleeve down with her thumb as she watches her girlfriend move around the room in a single chin of light from the open curtain. 

A pair of UGG boots are flung out of the bottom of the closet and she frowns. “What are you doing?” 

“Going outside,” Clarke tells her from the foot of her bed where she pulls the sheepskin boots over her socked feet. 

She looks so pretty in the six a.m. light — so loved and worn in wearing Lexa’s pyjamas and her cheerleading sweatshirt — that Lexa can’t even summon the strength to tell her no when her own sneakers are fished from the depths of the overnight bag she stowed under Clarke’s desk the afternoon before. 

Instead, she takes them dumbly, looping the laces around cold fingers and wondering if there’s anything in the world she wouldn’t do for Clarke Griffin. 

//

It appears not, she thinks as she follows Clarke downstairs half an hour later, clinging to her sweater sleeve in the pitch dark of the stairwell. 

During the day the alcove is lit up — the walls practically a shrine to a gap-toothed Clarke in her powder blue little league jersey grinning proudly from the front of every frame — but now, Lexa struggles to see as she follows her girlfriend through the dark. 

Clarke disables the alarm with Lexa’s fingers firmly ensconced in hers, unlatching the patio door, grinning madly as she pulls Lexa with her out into the biting cold, so perfect and complete, it steals the breath straight from Lexa’s lungs. 

Cold air worms its way under her t-shirt, raising goosebumps up her arms and she pokes her thumbs into her cuffs to combat it, her shoulders hunched against the chill. She watches Clarke next to her as she shuffles her soggy UGG boots to the edge of the deck and reaches an upturned palm out as far as it will go, watching the flakes settle into the crevices of her skin. 

“It hasn’t snowed like this since February,” Lexa says, crossing her arms over her chest to preserve the warmth. The snowflakes in front of them are coming down in thick, wide clusters, unlike the sleet that came before Christmas and turned the football field to slush. They cling like velcro to Clarke’s hair and clothes. 

“Since Atom fell in the parking lot and ate ice trying to invite Octavia to the Sadie Hawkins dance,” Clarke remembers, laughing. 

Lexa frowns. “Aren’t the girls supposed to ask the guys to those?” She remembers that particular dance in vivid, excruciating detail. How Clarke asked Finn Collins to go with her and how she — forced to go by Anya, the only Junior on the decorating committee — stood in the corner by the restroom all night, watching the little throng of Freshmen slow dance a few feet away, pulling uncomfortably at the stretchy hem of her Forever 21 dress. 

It had pretty much been the worst night ever. The crepe paper constellations tacked to the ceiling hadn’t even been astrologically correct. 

“They’re supposed to,” Clarke shrugs, blinking up at the sky. Wet snowflakes string themselves like beads through her hair and Lexa itches to reach out and touch them. “No one does though. They just wait for the guys to buy their tickets and like about how they asked them.” 

That seems stupid to Lexa — like a whole lot of mental gymnastics just to make sure people think you don’t care. Then again who is she to judge? 

“I’d ask you,” she whispers, digging her chin into her shoulder as she looks over at Clarke. 

“I’d ask you too,” Clarke grins. 

(It sounds a little like something else). 

//

When she wakes up again three hours later, it’s light. 

There’s a space heater pointing at them from the open doorway — she can see the extension cord snaking away down the corridor — and Clarke is flush-cheeked next to her when she looks over, propped up on her elbows as she scrolls through her phone. 

“Hi,” she looks down at her, smiling in the same way as she has done every morning since they started sleeping in each other’s beds. 

Her hair is still a little damp around the crown — a shade darker than the rest of her head like damp, wet sand — and Lexa reaches up to tuck a kinky, blond lock away from her eyes, feeling Clarke preen under her touch. “What’s the time?” 

“Nine,” Clarke replies. “You’re phone’s been buzzing.”  

“It’s just Anya,” Lexa guesses, reaching over to unplug her phone from her charger. Sure enough, it is, Half a dozen Snapchat’s she forgot to reply to tonight — mostly because they were all teasing her about how whipped she is for spending her lunch hour yesterday huddled on the bleachers watching her girlfriend run make-up lacrosse drills — plus a new phone sits on her lock screen. She thumbs the notifications away and presses her camera against the comforter to send a reply. “She’s picking me up at four.” 

“Awesome,” Clarke throws her phone down on the mattress. She tosses her hair out of her face as she slides a bare leg over Lexa’s hip and Lexa has to remind herself to breathe. 

She thinks remembers Clarke tossing her pyjama pants away in the hours after they went back to bed. It hadn’t seemed like such a big deal then, but now she can feel Clarke’s knee pressed against the bare skin of her waist, everything inside of her feels like it’s on fire. 

Honestly, she’d been pretty upset to note that the whole constantly horny side effect of being a sixteen-year-old girl hadn’t gone away when she got a girlfriend to relieve the tension with. If anything, it’s only gotten worse. Like, a lot worse. She wonders if her and Anya’s newfound closeness extends to talking about…this.  

“What do you want to do?” 

//

What Clarke wants are pancakes. 

Lexa sits on the granite countertop with a plastic bottle of her batter in her hands while she bangs pots and pans around in the butler’s pantry and wonders if this is what all the songs mean when they talk about love.  

It’s puke worthy to even think about, let alone say out loud; so unbearably cliche for someone so reliant on logic and reason but it feels good not to be striving for something anymore. It’s all still there in the background — track meets, debate, a million AP classes she isn’t even sure she enjoys — but they don’t feel as imperative as they did before. She doesn’t feel like she will fade into oblivion if, one day, she doesn’t want to be valedictorian anymore. 

Besides, Clarke makes it feel like it’s OK to think in cliches. Mostly, it’s just the ‘l’ word that’s been knocking around her head recently that has her nervous; she’s no expert, but she’s pretty sure they’re too young and it’s too soon to be feeling something so big and important.

She plants the bottle of pancake batter on the counter when she realises she’s about to peel the label off, picking sticky residue off of her restless fingers. 

“Did you know the average snowflake falls at a rate of three point one miles per hour?” 

It isn’t snowing anymore. The sky is bright blue and cloudless but every now and again, flat, white chunks will fall from the slope of the Griffin’s roof, leaving powdery piles on the ground beneath the kitchen window. 

“Only you would turn a snow day into a physics lecture,” Clarke complains, grinning at her as she emerges from the pantry with the skillet. She plants it on the cooktop and turns on the gas, pouring a dollop of batter into the pan. 

“Why should you miss out on learning just because of some anomalous weather?” Lexa teases innocently. 

“Oh,” Clarke trills, “someone’s been doing their SAT prep.” She leans across the counter until Lexa can feel her breath against her ear and whispers in a half-cocked porn-star moan: “I love it when you use big words.” 

“Ostentatious,” Lexa murmurs back, taking the bait. “Evanescent. Spurious. Anachronistic.” 

Clarke giggles sweetly, her cheeks pink and her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. “Keep going,” she requests and Lexa tries desperately to remember the words written on the neon green queue cards tacked to the wall above her bed. 

(In other news, she’s pretty sure she’s found a new revision tactic and files that away for later). 

“Empirical. Ignominious. Unilateral…Clarke!”  

“I didn’t see that one on the list but I’ll go with it.” 

“No!” Lexa squeals, pointing at the stovetop in alarm. “Clarke!” 

“Shit!” Clarke blanches at the smoking pan, lunging for the handle. 

“Don’t touch it!” 

“Fuck!” 

Taking the kitchen towel from the rail on the oven, Lexa winds it carefully around the handle of the smouldering pan, carrying it carefully to the island where she dumps it in the sink. It sizzles angrily against the water leftover in the breakfast dishes beneath it, billowing smoke in thick, blake waves and Clarke stares at her charred pancake despondently. 

“So…Gus’s?”  

//

They go to the diner, wrapping up in UGG boots and hoodies, tucking their wallets into their pockets and their ears under their beanies as they trudge through the snow. The smell of smoke is still trapped between in Clarke’s hair and every time she bumps up against Lexa as they walk — cinched far too close together on the otherwise empty sidewalk — she bursts into fits full of giggles, shoulders bouncing under her hoodie. 

It had taken three minutes for Abby to call once the smoke alarm went off — screaming loud enough for Lexa to flea to the porch while Clarke stood on the kitchen stool to fan the smoke away from the sensor — and fifteen more for Clarke to convince her the house was still standing. 

(“Mom, would I be talking to you from the landline if it wasn’t?”)

She made Clarke promise to stick to takeout and grilled cheese made in the sandwich press and maybe sign up for Home Ecc next semester but eventually, she hung up, telling Clarke she’d see her tonight and Clarke had scraped the remnants of the pancake into the trash before turning to Lexa with a look like a scolded child. 

“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you today,” Gus grunts when they enter the diner, looking up from where he stands behind the counter with a mug of thick, black coffee. 

For all the time she’s spent with him, Lexa can’t tell if it means he’s happy to see them or not. What she thinks is exasperation one day could just as easily turn out to be fondness. 

He refuses to let Lexa take on a shift when she offers now that she doesn’t have school, sitting them in their booth by the window with two sticky menus and two mugs of coffee instead and mumbling something about teenagers being half-naked in the snow when Clarke stretches enough that her bare stomach shows under the hem of her cropped hoodie. 

Clarke waits until he retreats to the kitchen with two orders of pancakes scribbled down needlessly on his notepad before she leans over the table conspiratorially, smoke still lingering on the collar of her hoodie. 

“I think he’s starting to like me.” 

//

Gus cuts them off after their third cup of coffee. 

Lexa pushes her mug towards him when he does the rounds with the coffee pot, offering it to the three other customers who have braved the roads that the ploughs are still in the process of clearing but he shakes his head when he stops in front of them, clearing their breakfast plates instead. Lexa’s jaw drops, indignant. 

“You’re sixteen. What do you need caffeine for?” 

“I take four AP classes,” Lexa fires bag, offering her mug again. 

Gus slides it back towards her. “Go outside, Lexa.” 

Rolling her eyes, Lexa puts two twenties on the table that she knows Gus is going to put towards her paycheque next month and the two of them slide out of the booth. 

Clarke doesn’t want to go home yet. They left the windows downstairs open on their safety catches as Abby told them to but the kitchen still smells like smoke so she pulls Lexa towards the park instead, using her sleeve to wipe the powdered snow from the swing and lowering herself to the rubber seat. Lexa takes the tone next to her, digging the toes of her soggy boots into the ground to stop herself from moving. 

Despite the temperature and her breath fanning out in front of her like locomotive steam, Lexa doesn’t feel cold. There’s syrup instead of gloss on her lips and she’s starting to lose feeling in her toes — she wiggles them in the tips of her boots to no avail — but when Clarke leans over, cinching their swings together by the cold, metal chains, Lexa doesn’t think she’s ever felt warmer in her life.

She presses her forehead against Clarkes, the rim of her beanie trapped between them, and feels Clarke’s breath bloom hotly against her collarbone. It feels intimate; far too intimate for the swings in the middle of the morning. It seems like something that should happen as they lie in Clarke’s bed at night, Clarke’s five-fingered grip pressed firmly against the flat expanse of her stomach and backs turned against the open bedroom door — Abby’s rule, not theirs. She shivers. 

“Are you cold?” 

When she doesn’t reply, Clarke’s snakes an arm around her torso, frigid fingers slipping between her hoodie and the waistband of her sweatpants and Lexa shrieks, bucking wildly against the cold. Her swing lurches sideways, the chain slipping out of Clarke’s palm, and Lexa careens backward, landing with her top rucked up in a pile of wet snow. 

For a moment, all she can feel is cold. The cold, harsh kind that slings itself through her veins as the snow soaks the ribbed hem of her hoodie and up into the fabric back of her bra. Then, Clarke’s face is blinking at her owlishly from above, two amused and one part guilty — it only takes her a second to laugh. 

“Now I am.” 

Apologetic, Clarke’s fingers slip in a circle around her wrist, muscles straining against Lexa’s weight but Lexa leans back with two hands and pulls Clarke down to the snow with her instead. She lets out a scream, kneeing Lexa inelegantly in the crotch when she hits the ground but Lexa thinks she probably deserved it. 

“So am I,” Clarke looks at her, chest pressed close enough that Lexa can feel the little vibrations from her giggles through the thick fabric of their hoodies. 

Clarke rolls off of her when the mother of a two-year-old in a pom-pom hat on the other side of the playground gives them a tight-lipped look — at the ruckus or at the sight of them cinched on top of each other, Lexa doesn’t know. Curling on her side against the gritty, snowy ground, Clarke shoots her long, farcical faces while Lexa tries to stifle the laughter that rises within her, rolling like waves of champagne bubbles. 

It shouldn’t even be funny — it isn’t funny — but every second she spends with Clarke feels like a reason to laugh and it makes her happy in the most perfect way. 

When she gets herself under control a minute later, fits of giggles tapering off into snatched, little hitches of breath, Clarke is watching her, lips trapped between her teeth, and Lexa knows she feels the same. 

//

“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?” 

They’re clean and dry now, curled together like two halves of a closed shell against the rumpled sheets of Clarke’s bed. 

She had dragged Lexa upstairs once they got home — shivering and cold in their wet, snowy clothes — and while everything inside of her had rebelled when Clarke reached for her pyjama pants and fleece to climb back under the covers, the temperature was low enough — that deep, stinging cold that slings itself through hardwood and window panes — that, even if they hadn’t left the windows open for most of the morning, the central heating and space heater combo probably couldn’t have done much to combat it. 

Instead, it was the way that Clarke had pulled her down to the mattress with a wicked smile when Lexa was only halfway through putting her pants on that had given flushed cheeks and that sweet, syrupy warmth back to her body. Her heart is still recovering. 

“Here.” 

(She means it too — whole-heartedly and with every fibre of her being. She’d give up a ticket to the moon if it meant she could relive this moment ad infinitum). 

Clarke gives her a funny, little look. 

“You’re a sap, you know that?” 

[sapphicambitions]

My Favorite / Underrated Lines of Red, White, and Royal Blue:

Just did a second read through and marked all of them. We all know and love lines like “Should I tell you that when we’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams?” and “History, huh? Bet we could make some,” and “America: he is my choice,” but this books is a goldmine for fucking fantastic and romantic lines, so I made a list of them. Long post so under the cut!!

-Alex’s kind of love story is much more Shakespearean.

-”I’m trying to understand why you’re so committed to acting like someone you’re not, considering you just told the little girl in there that greatness means being true to yourself.”

-...and when he turns and catches his reflection in the mirror by the closet, he’s right back in his teens, caring too much about his parents and helpless to change his situation. Except now he doesn’t have any AP classes to enroll in as a distraction.

-Alex tries to imagine what they look like: the prince and the First Son, the two leading heartthrobs of their respective countries, shoulder to shoulder on their way to the bar. It’s intimidating and thrilling, living up to that kind of rich, untouchable fantasy.

-Maybe he can absorb some of the “much” from the place where their shoulders are pressed together.

-He thinks about Henry, and something twists in his chest, like a stretch he’s been avoiding for too long.

-”I don’t know, man. I was in my junior year of high school, and I touched a boob. It wasn’t very profound. Nobody’s gonna write an off broadway play about it.”

-How dare Henry come into Alex’s house looking like the goddamned James Bond offspring that he is, drink red wine with the Prime Minister, and act like he didn’t slip Alex the tongue and ghost him for a month.

-He feels himself standing at a very tall, very dangerous precipice, with no intention of backing away.

-He laughs into Henry’s mouth, instantly caught up in his own dramatic mental portrait of the two of them painted in oils, young icons of their nations, naked and shining wet in the lamplight.

-He rolls onto his side and listens, trails the back of his hand across the pillow next to him and imagines Henry lying opposite in his own bed, two parentheses enclosing 3,700 miles.

-”You have so much in you, it’s almost impossible to match it. But he’s your match, dumbass.”

-...because Alex has never met a challenge he didn’t love, and he--well, Henry is a challenge, head to toe, beginning to end.

-All those nights Henry can’t sleep, just knocking around these endless, impersonal rooms, like a bird trapped in a museum.

-Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.

-He wants to call Henry. He guesses it makes sense--they’ve always been fixed points in each other’s world, little magnetic poles. Some laws of physics would be reassuring right now.

-He looks like something soft and downy Alex wants to sink into, and he realizes the knot of anxiety in his chest has finally slacked.

-If Alex’s head is a storm, Henry is the place lighting hits the ground.

-He truly is a picture, wearing an expression of bewildered panic and absolutely nothing else.

-”The phrase “see attached bibliography” is the single sexiest thing you have ever written to me.”

-”I do think I got a gut feeling about you, I just didn’t have what I needed in my head to understand it. But I kind of kept chasing it anyway, like I was just going blindly in a certain direction and hoping for the best. I guess that makes you the North Star?”

-”If I’m north, I shudder to think where in God’s name we’re going.”

-That long. That much.

-He wears the key to his childhood home around his neck, but he doesn’t know the last time he actually thought about the boy who used to push it into the lock.

-The lines of him are long and languid in the moonlight, just skin and skin lit soft and blue, and he’s so beautiful that Alex thinks this is the moment, the soft shadows and pale thighs and crooked smile, should be the portrait of Henry that goes down in History. There are fireflies winking around his head, landing in his hair. A crown.

-He wants to match the new freckles across Henry’s nose to the stars above them and make him name the constellations.

-That, he realizes suddenly, is the danger of allowing love into this--the acknowledgment that if something goes wrong, he doesn’t know how he will stand it.

-What if it was never his decision to make?

-He’s spent too much of his life talking, talking, talking not to know the signs when someone doesn’t want to hear him anymore.

-He thought he was reckless before, but he understands now--holding love off was the only thing keeping him from losing himself in this completely, and he’s gone, stupid, lovesick, a fucking disaster.

-And that is, officially, too fucking much.

-”When have I ever, since the first instant I touched you, pretended to be anything less than in love with you? Are you so fucking self-absorbed as to think this about you and whether or not I love you rather than the fact that I’m an heir to the fucking throne? You at least have the option to not chose a public life eventually, but I will live and die in these palaces and in this family so don’t you dare come to me and question if I love you when it’s the thing that could bloody well ruin everything.”

-Don’t miss it this time. He’s too important.

-”If there’s any legacy for me on this bloody earth, I want it to be true. So I can offer you all of me, in whatever way you’ll have me.”

-...and looks at his fingers and thinks about holding the Bible at his mother’s inauguration with the same hand. 

-He wonders what Santa Chiara would think of them, a lost David and Jonathan, turning slowly on the spot. 

-”Let me know if I need to start practicing gazing wistfully out the window, waiting for my love to return from the war.”

-”I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.”

-Alex wants to go to war for this man, wants to get his hands on everything and everyone that ever hurt him, but for once, he’s trying to be the stead one.

-”You and me and history, remember? We’re gonna fucking fight. Because you’re it, okay? I’m never gonna love anybody in the world like I love you. So, I promise you, one day we’ll be able to just be, and fuck everyone else.”

-It would be a lie because it wouldn’t be him.

-”but i’ve kissed your mouth, that corner, the place it goes, so many times now, i’ve memorized it, topography on the map of you, a world i’m still charting. i know it. i added it to the key. here: inches to miles. i can multiply it out, read your latitude and longitude. recite your coordinates like la rosaria.

-The president stands on the edge of a career-ending scandal, measures her breaths evenly, and waits for her son to answer.

-And there’s no room left to agonize over it, nothing left to do but say the thing he’s know all along.

-One. One. One.

-Alex hasn’t been a good Catholic in a long time, but he knows confession is a sacrament. They were supposed to stay safe. Fuck.

-If Henry’s voice on the phone was a tether, his body is the gravity that makes it possible, his hand gripping the back of Alex’s neck like a magnetic force, a permanent compass north.

-”And he is prepared to give it all to you, which is far more than I ever, in a thousand years thought I would see him do.”

-”Are you so determined to believe nothing could change? That nothing should change? We can have a real legacy here, of hope, and love, and change.”

-Never tell me the odds.

-This is it. October 2, 2020, and the whole world watched, and history remembered.

-It’s been one long, long year of learning Henry inside and out, learning himself, learning how much he still has to learn, and just like that, it’s time to walk out there and stand at a podium and confidently declare it all as fact.

-The way Henry’s looking at him in the pitcher is so affectionate, so openly loving, that seeing it from a third person’s perspective almost makes Alex want to look away, like he’s staring into the sun. He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn’t bright enough.

-All at once, Alex is in love all over again.

-From his side, Henry, whose eyes are wet, seizes Alex’s face roughly with both hands and kisses him like the end of the movie.

-...Alex thinks his heart’s going to break trying to hold the size of this entire moment, the completeness of it, a thousand years of history swelling inside his ribcage.

-Goddamned forever.

[all-hail-the-witcher]

every book i had to read for english and why i didn't like any of them

i woke up thinking about this and decided to make this post. for context, i went to public school and was on the honors/ap track for english. i am a firm believer that english teachers ruin books for their students inadvertently. this is my experience:

6th grade language arts

we read three books during 6th grade, bridge to terabithia, the cay, and where the red fern grows. and i had to read a wrinkle in time over the summer which i didn't understand like at all so I'm just gonna skip that one honors english was not a thing until 8th grade where i went to middle school so this was a regular english class and i hated it. it was also a double period class for some reason, so i had an hour and a half of language arts every day. 

it took us half the year to read bridge to terabithia. i am not kidding. that book is like maybe 100 pages and it took us a good 4-5 months. this is because our teacher stopped us every time we got to a pice of figurative language and made us analyze it. every. single. piece. i got so bored that i read ahead and then got in trouble for reading ahead. needless to say, i absolutely detested bridge to terabithia and would not touch it to this day if my life depended on it. 

after bridge to terabithia we read the cay. this took us the rest of the year. the cay is a relatively short book as well so i got bored with this one quickly as well. i really dont remember much about the discussions, but i remember a long one about how the cover was “inaccurate,” which, yes, it was but i dont know if a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds need to spend a week debating that. i think i hated it mostly because, again, we read it for 5 months. 

the last three weeks of the school year, our teacher gave us a book and said “here read this before school ends because we have to read three books a year and we only read 2″ (for context, the other language arts class had read about 5-7 books that year and found it insane that we were “still reading bridge to terabithia”) so i read where the red fern grows. all in all it wasn't a bad book, i did kind of enjoy it, but since i was rushed reading it on top of all my other homework and because it was definitely ahead of my reading comprehension level, it wasn't my favorite.

7th grade language arts

now, a bit of a disclaimer here, this was the year that i was in language arts with the guy i had a crush on and one of my close friends at the time. so, i didn't really pay that much attention to begin with. we read quite a few books in this class, but I'm not sure if i remember all of them. again, this was a double period. 

i think the first book we read was freak the mighty. i remember not liking this book because i felt like i was missing something. there was definitely some kind of metaphor or something in there that i was supposed to get but because i was literally twelve i didn't get it and i didn't find the meaning in it. theres nothing more frustrating than reading a book that you dont understand.

after that I'm pretty sure we read the wave. it was explained to us that the wave is supposed to symbolize how the n*zis came to power and all that stuff, and while we all knew this, i dont think we really Understood it. (probably because we were 12). we all kinda saw it as a joke and thought it was funny. i think that if i read it now i would be like. “well shit this is really interesting” but 12 year old me wanted to make fun of it with the rest of my class. 

i think we read seed folks next. this was another book that just went over all of our heads. its about how a garden changes a whole bunch of peoples lives which is like, super interesting. but none of us got it and were like “lol this is stupid” so much so that we actually stopped reading it. like my teacher stopped having us read it.

I'm fairly certain the last book we read was the miracle worker. a lot of us had had to read parts of it before that class so we were all kinda familiar with it already. i vaguely remember some kind of obnoxious class joke about the book that was probably rude. i remember finding it interesting, but there were so many activities we did about the book that i lost interest. 

8th grade honors reading

this class was A Trip. i liked the teacher, but she was a little out there. its unclear whether she got fired or just didn't come back after that year. i had a lot of fun in her class but it was usually because we all bonded over hating the assigned reading.

i dont remember what order we read the books in and i dont remember if this was all of them, but to the best of my recollection this is what we read

we definitely read romeo and juliet. by the time you're in 8th grade, everyone knows the story of romeo and juliet, so it wasn't like that suspenseful or a surprise or anything. but we had to act the reading out. yes we had to act out romeo and juliet. with burger king crowns. and wrapping paper swords. clearly the teacher was trying to have fun with us, and it was fun fun for awhile but it got old. especially when you got participation points taken off your grade if you didn't read for once of the characters (which is massively unfair because not everyone wants to get up in front of a class in a paper crown holding a wrapping paper tube and read in old english when you're 13 but whatever). 

we also definitely read animal farm. it was another book that went right over our heads (or, mine at least). i didn't actually really understand it until i had to read the communist manifesto for ap euro senior year. and our teacher talked in a bad russain accent the entire time? i could barely keep the characters straight, let alone analyze the underlying message and all that. now i might actually like it since I'm a history major and have a decent background on the russian revolution, but at 13? no thanks.

the one book that everyone hated (including the teacher herself) was farewell to manzanar. it was a memoir about a young girl growing up in the japanese internment camps and looking back on her life and stuff like that. the story itself was very interesting and we all learned a lot from it. but the person who wrote it did not know how to write. it was confusing, some chapters made no sense, and none of us generally knew what was going on. we had to finish the book because we were the honors class, but the regular class got to stop after chapter 6. 

i think we only read 4 books that year and the fourth one was the outsiders. this was one of two books that i actually liked the entirely of my public school education. i kinda vibed with it when we were reading it and then i vibes with it more once i got to high school and rediscovered it. it was just a good book, pretty solid, good themes, fantastic. 

9th grade honors english

i absolutely hated this class. hands down the worst teacher i ever had. she was one of those that should have retired 20 years ago but was still teaching for some reason. and she hated kids. legitimately. that was the first time i got a c and it took my parents a long time to realize that it wasn't because of me, it was because the teacher was absolute shit. the only thing that made that class bearable was the fact that my friend was in there and so was this guy that totally like her so he would flirt with her pretty incessantly and it was Hilarious. 

we read so many books that year and i hated all of them. a lot of them were like greek dramas and plays? like we read oedipus rex and julius caesar and antigone. and i hated all of them because the teacher made me hate reading and made it seem like a chore. 

by far the worst was the old man and the sea. i hated that book, hemingway was terrible. i struggled to find any kind of meaning in it and connected all of my responses to the bible because my teacher loved it when people did that.

we read inherit the wind and to kill a mockingbird and all quiet on the western front which were the only books i found remotely interesting. but i still hated them because i knew that we would have to do her reading quizzes which were impossible so it was pointless to read the book anyway. 

and we also read a raisin in the sun. i dont remember what this was even about except that there was some kind of insurance money involved. but by this point we were all really done with our teachers shit and my one friend legitimately said during class “but, ms. [name] if you put a raisin in the sun, doesn't it just get more raisiny?”

10th grade ap english language and composition (american lit)

i loved this class and the teacher but i hated all the assigned reading because we read it for the ap test. everything you read was in the context of having to find themes and shit to write about on the ap. so i didn't really get any of the books for that reason. i think we only read three and they were the scarlet letter, the crucible, and the great gatsby. i kind wish i paid more attention to gatsby and i think i would like it more now but at the time i detested it. we also had to read grapes of wrath over the summer and i hated that. i wanna read books to read them, not to come into school and write essays on them. also the ending was weird and i hated it.

11th grade honors (british lit)

another bad year of english, not quite as bad as freshman year, but still bad. still hated it. i outlined many fics in that class. the teacher did not like me and i did not like her. she also talked in this weird fake almost british but not quite accent that sometimes still haunts my nightmares. she was also one of those backwards feminists who claims they're a feminist but still was sexist in her favorites and the way that she treated people in the class?? after english i had math and my friend (the same girl who said the thing about raisins freshman year) and some others would complain to our math teacher about our english teacher. math was essentially a support group for english where we would discuss answers to reading checks. 

over the summer we read 1984, which, cool concept (esp right now) but i hated knowing that i had to find some kind of deep meaning in it because i was going to have to write an essay on it as soon as i came back to school.

from there i think we read beowulf which was interesting. i dont know if we actually read the whole thing or just excerpts but again, i hated looking for meaning.

we read a tale of two cities which was like the one book i actually wanted to read because i am a huge fan of the shadow hunters book serieses and will and tessa quote that book all the time. i think if i had read it to read it it would have been better but first, dickens is wordy and weird and second i dont really wanna have to search out symbolism while I'm reading because its required.

we read macbeth, which i just didn't like. idk why. i just kinda thought it was stupid. i dont really have an explanation for this one. i think it was because we read it in the old english and that confused me a lot of the time.

and we read jane eyre. the only thing i remember from jane eyre was “pathetic fallacy” which is where the mood of the scene is reflected in the weather. i dont wanna dissect a book like that. and also my teacher referred to the book as “jane” but she said it “jAAYYneeE” which was annoying. 

12th grade ap lit

dear god. this class. i had issues with this class. our teacher was something. everyone was afraid of him. e v e r y o n e. he ran detention and didn't know how to match his clothes and wore skinny ties. he had three swell bottles the he would bring with him to school every day. people claimed he used to be in a rock band and that was why his voice was so high pitched and weird. some said his wife left him, others said he had a kid. we were genuinely confused by him. he didn't teach, he yelled at you for doing things wrong without giving any instructions on how he actually wanted it done. he made college out to be some big scary thing where we would all be trampled. but mostly, he was an existentialist. 

we had to read song of solomon over the summer. i hated it. i didn't hate it because of the messages and all that stuff, no the book itself was good and toni morrison is a great author. i just hated the fact that there was graphic description of incest, necrophilia, or sex at least once every 5-10 pages. i didn't wanna read that. and it turned me off the book. so when he asked us if we liked the book when the year started i said no and i argued with him about it. and he hated me for the entire year. 

next i think we read waiting for godot. which was absolutely terrible. its literally a play where nothing happens. it would have been funny except that i knew i was gonna have to write an essay on it. how do you write an essay on a play where nothing happens? literally all of our discussions about it were about existentialism and it was terrible. 

we read the metamorphosis, which everyone hated cause it could have been written in like 4 sentences. and our teacher thought he was So Clever for assigning it to us. he thought it was the biggest joke. and he went on and on about how its about existentialism and blah blah. the book would have been funny had he not only discussed it in regards to existentialism. 

i think next was hamlet. i would have like hamlet had we not discussed it only through the lens of existentialism. its a good play, but i hated it because of the way he talked about it. even now, i only like it to make fun of the way he liked it. my friend and i send hamlet memes to each other all the time but only cause they remind us of our teacher.

one flew over the cuckoos nest. the second and final book that i actually liked my entirety of school. i dont know why i liked it, but it was just a good book. our teacher also had some kind of weird cowboy trope thing that he thought mcmurphy fell under which i thought was hilarious. the essay i wrote on that book was the only one he wrote “nice job” on and i still have it somewhere

my friend claims that we also read the stranger. i dont really remember what that book was about except some guy shot some people. there was definitely something in it that i didnt get. 

anyway in conclusion required reading ruins books. when i told my creative writing advisor that i out of all the books i read for school i only like the outsiders and one flew over the cuckoos nest she was like “yeah, english teachers really ruin books for students”

[headfulloffantasies]

Eyes to See

Peter Parker wakes up in Matt Murdock’s body.

Fandom: Spider-Man and Daredevil

Rating: G

Words: 2585

Ao3 link

Peter couldn’t find his mask. He’d searched everywhere, high and low. His school locker, the bottomless pit of his backpack, the dust encrusted confines of his closet, even the crevices of the washing machine. The mask was nowhere to be found.

“May?” He yelled out into the apartment. It took a full minute of silence for him to remember that she was out getting groceries. 

Peter stood in his bedroom with his hands on his hips and considered where else in the universe his Spidey mask could have wandered off to. Actually, now that he thought about it, maybe he didn’t need the mask right now. It was a good excuse not to go on patrol. He was so tired. More tired than he had any right to be. Actually, Peter was just going to take a nap right now. Just for twenty minutes. Little nap. Baby nap. Peter closed his eyes.

When Peter opened his eyes he couldn’t see. He tried reaching for the lamp next to his bed, but his fingers met cold concrete. The reek of piss hit him in the face. 

Peter groaned. The sound vibrated in his skull, louder than a train whistle. He clapped his hands over his ears. Peter blinked. He still couldn’t see. Where was he? There was something over his face, blocking his vision. Peter tugged at it. It felt like a helmet.

Coarse ground scraped under him as he wrestled with the offending helmet. He wasn’t in his room. What was going on?

“Matt?” A voice yelled. Peter hissed as the sound crashed against his skin. He could feel the air displaced by the person running towards him. The footsteps on the ground slammed into his chest. He tugged harder at the helmet. 

“Matt, buddy, are you okay?” The voice was a foghorn. 

A pair of hands clasped Peter’s elbows and in a rush Peter could feel every callous and smell the sweaty palms. The person sighed and Peter’s nose filled with toothpaste, mustard, salami, bread, salt, strawberry. His stomach turned.

“Oh man. Don’t be sick, Matt. I just got new shoes.”

“Who’s Matt?” Peter’s voice came out all gravel.

Peter realized he could hear the person’s heartbeat when it skipped. A flood of body odour hit him in the nose. 

“Hey buddy that’s not funny. Please tell you know who you are?”

The hands were gripping him by the wrists, preventing Peter’s attempts to rip the helmet off his face.

“I’m Spiderman.”

The heartbeat skipped again and then started leaping double time. “Ok, that’s not good. How many hits to the head did you take?”

“I don’t know,” Peter groaned. “I don’t know where I am. I can’t see.” He pulled at the man’s grip, but the hands tightened on his wrists. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why you keep calling me Matt.”

“Ok, you’re scaring me. Just stop. Matt?” 

Peter wrenched his hands free. He yanked the helmet off his face, expecting light to fill his vision. There was no change. The dark remained dark. Peter panicked.

“I can’t see. God, I can’t see!” Peter’s breaths were wheezing between his teeth. His head was getting fuzzy.

“Matt, calm down! Jeez, here,” The man shoved the helmet back into Peter’s hands. “Focus on this. Tell me what you feel.”

The mask was hard, smooth under Peter’s fingertips. It wasn’t his soft Spidey mask. Which was still missing, dang it. That must be why he was wearing a different mask. And he got into a fight and his concussion was blocking his memories. Peter scrubbed a hand over his face. That would also explain the loss of vision and the nausea and the smells and the… stubble? Peter’s hands stopped at his own jaw. Scratchy hairs prickled his fingers. His face didn’t feel right. It was too hard, too square. 

He scrambled for the helmet, tracing the contours of the mask. It started at the nose. No eye holes. Peter got to the crown of the head and paused. Something sharp protruded from both temples. Something like horns.

“Holy crap, I’m Daredevil!”

“Winner winner chicken dinner,” the other person sighed. Peter wished he wouldn’t. The mustard on the guy’s breath was suffocating.

The realisation hit Peter like lightning. Daredevil was blind! How the hell did he function? Holy crow, there was blind man in red spandex jumping off roofs every night! What the hell? 

“But I’m not Daredevil,” Peter pleaded. “I’m Pe-, I’m Spiderman!”

Mustard breath paused. “Are you being serious? Because I’ve seen a lot of wacko crazy in the last year and I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

Peter bobbed his head. “I’m Spiderman. I’m in the wrong body!”

The guy swore under his breath. It still hit Peter’s ears like a sledgehammer. How did Double D put up with this level of noise all the time? 

Peter squirmed. “Um, I don’t know who you are. Sorry.”

“Foggy.” The guy answered automatically. “Call me Foggy.”

What kind of name was that? Actually, no, Peter had no right to question Foggy when he was calling himself Spiderman. 

“Do you, um, know? About Daredevil?”

Foggy snorted. “Do I know he’s blind? That’s what you’re asking, right? Yeah. He says he’s got something called radar sense that helps him navigate. This is seriously weird, explaining Matt’s mutation to his face.”

“You’re telling me?”

Radar sense, huh? That sounded like BS. Peter couldn’t see anything. It was all black. But his other senses, those were dialled up to a hundred and fifty. The harder Peter focused, the more he noticed about the alley he was sitting in. It was definitely an alley. The piss was a good indicator. And Foggy’s voice bounced up along rough walls. A cool breeze raced down from the street opening. It scratched like sandpaper over Peter’s face. He could smell the entire contents of the trash bin at the end of the alley. His stomach turned again at the scent of rotten bread, meat, old cigarettes, and vomit full of booze.

“How do I get my body back?” Peter asked the same time Foggy said, “Where’s Matt if you’re in his body?”

Holy crap. No. “If I’m here, he’s probably in my body, right?” Peter scrambled to stand. “What time is it? My aunt cannot find someone else in my body. She’ll flip.”

“It’s four thirty.” Foggy took Peter’s arm and helped pull him off the smelly ground. 

“Seriously?” Peter had only been out ten minutes. Dang it, he’d missed his nap!

“I have to get home,” Peter put a hand against the brick wall. It grated like crushed glass. Peter took three steps and stopped. “I can’t… I can’t see. How am I supposed to get home?”

“I can help. I’ve got to find Matt, too,” Foggy said. “Here,” Foggy took his hand and shoved something in Peter’s fingers.

“A cane?” Peter tapped it against the ground. “I don’t know how to use this.”

“Take my arm,” Foggy wrapped Peter’s fingers around his elbow. “Little looser, yeah like that.”

“Before we go,” Foggy’s hands were suddenly at Peter’s throat. Peter jerked back, thrashing wildly.

“Woah! Hey, my bad,” Foggy shifted back, his shoes scuffing the ground. “Sorry, I forgot you didn’t know I was coming. You’re wearing the Daredevil suit under your shirt. I was going to button up your shirt for you.”

“Oh, sorry.” Peter held still as Foggy’s hands deftly raced through the buttons at his collar. 

Foggy’s mustard breath washed over Peter’s face. Peter did his best not to breathe. The exhale receded as Foggy leaned back. “Eh, good enough. No one will know it’s the Daredevil suit.”

He moved into Peter’s space again.

“Okay, here, take my arm. Yeah, like that. Alright, now we walk. Where are we going?”

Peter’s stomach soured. Was he really okay with this? Could he trust Foggy enough to bing him to his home? To May? The list of people who knew Peter Parker, AP student, was Spiderman was ludicrously short.

“Before we go, you’ve got to swear you’re not a super villain.” 

Foggy laughed.

Peter was serious. 

“I swear. My hand is over my heart and everything.”

Peter knew that. He could hear the fibres of Foggy’s shirt shifting under his hand.

“Queens,” Peter rattled off his address. 

Foggy led him through the streets. Horns honked, people shouted, footsteps rattled Peter’s bones. A Manhattan sized headache was forming in Peter’s skull. He tripped over every corner, every rock, every sidewalk curb. Were it not for Foggy, Peter would have been crawling on his hands and knees.

“How does Daredevil do this?” Peter gasped.

“I ask myself that everyday.”

They finally arrived. Peter stumbled on each and every one of the front steps because the universe hated him. 

Peter directed Foggy to the spare key in the flower pot. The door clicked open and shut behind them. Peter felt something hurtling towards them. 

“Down!” Peter yanked Foggy to the floor. Something whizzed over their heads, smashing against the closed door. Ozone hit Peter’s nostrils. 

“Was that a salt shaker?”

“Um,” Foggy twisted under Peter. “Yes?”

They pulled each other to their feet. Foggy’s heartbeat raced in Peter’s ears.

“Who’re you?” A squeaky voice yelled from further inside the apartment. 

“Matt?”

The person swore. “Foggy? Holy crap.”

There was a scuffling, a wild displacement of air, and something knocked Foggy out of Peter’s grip.

“Oh Lord, your eyes are blue!” Matt laughed.

“Holy cow, you’re tiny,” Foggy crushed the smaller person, Matt, to his chest. That was Peter’s body hugging Foggy. Weird. Peter could smell his own deodorant and shampoo, and that carbon stench of Spider-webbing. His voice speaking Matt’s words was way squeakier than it sounded when it was in his own skull. That was embarrassing. 

Matt turned to Peter and his breathing spiked. “Is that me? Is that what I look like?”

Peter waved. Matt’s heart jumped. “I’m so ginger.”

“Really?” Peter raked a hand through the wavy mess of hair. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling for. Colours didn’t have textures.

 Matt’s eyes were wet. Peter could taste the salt on the air. Matt kept touching Foggy’s chest, Matt’s heart racing like he was… Oh. He was seeing Foggy for the first time. The blind kid was seeing his best friend in the flesh, with real, working, if slightly nearsighted, eyes for the very first time. What a rush.

Peter redirected his attention to let Matt have his moment.

Peter’s shoulder relaxed by degrees as his newly heightened senses breathed in the comforting normalcy of home. Laundry detergent, and sage from the plant by the window. The dented floorboards and the tiniest hint of new paint from the bathroom renovations he and May did over the summer.

Foggy held Matt by the shoulders. “Tell me what happened. How did you become a teeny bopper?”

“Hey!” It wasn’t Peter’s fault he was a late bloomer. And actually, Mr. Foggy, he was in the middle of a growth spurt. When the shin splints finally stopped he’d be taller than May and Foggy. So there.

To his credit, Matt jumped right in to his explanation. “I was following that cult from 88th street. They were doing a weird ritual today. I got into their basement just as they started the ceremony.”

Matt directed his words at Peter. “They have a weird obsession with powered people. Their leader was going to swap bodies with you.”

“So this is their fault!” Peter interrupted.

Heat flooded Matt’s face. “Well, only half their fault. They had your mask.”

Peter groaned. So that’s where it went. It was Parker luck that a magic cult stole his stuff instead of him just losing it like a normal person.

 “I didn’t know they were doing, but I knew the mask was important,” Matt continued. “So I jumped in there and grabbed it. I didn’t know that touching the mask was what would force the switch.”

Aha. So it was Matt’s fault. That’s okay, buddy. You tried.

“I woke up here. Your aunt is really nice, by the way. She thinks you’ve lost your mind, but she’s very nice.”

“Wait, you met my aunt?”

“Well yeah. I’ve been here since yesterday. I had to go to your school and everything.”

Panic sliced through Peter’s chest. “Yesterday? What day is it?”

Worry sent heat in waves off both Foggy and Matt. “It’s Tuesday.”

Peter groaned. “No! It was Monday. It’s supposed to be Monday.”

“Wait, what did you do all day?” Matt asked.

“Nothing,” Peter growled. “I only woke up an hour ago.”

Matt turned on Foggy. “I’ve been missing a whole day and you didn’t go looking for me?”

Peter heard Foggy’s shrug in the brush of his shirt fabric. “You take sick days all the time. I started looking for you after the hundreth unreturned phone call.”

It was very embarrassing to hear Peter’s own voice threatening bodily harm on Foggy. Peter understood now why no supervillain took him seriously. It was like being threatened by a chihuahua. 

“How do we fix this?” Peter finally interrupted the tirade.

Matt stopped to ponder. “Well, touching the mask started this whole mess, but I don’t think that will work again. I’ve been carrying it all day.” He pulled the mask from his pocket. Peter recognized that swish of spandex.

“What if we were to touch? Like, you and me?” Peter suggested.

Matt extended his hand immediately. Peter grasped his own hand. 

The room spun. Peter was suddenly exhausted. Bursts of cherry assaulted his nose. Slowly, the background noises blaring in his ears faded. Then colours slowly started to bleed into his vision. Blue, then green, red came last. 

The red filled his vision. Red hair, attached to a weary face and a red suit peeking out of the collar of a white dress shirt. Matt.

Peter tipped his head back to meet his eyes. Milky white eyes looked back at him. There was no denying Matt was blind. 

Matt took a shaky breath. “Wow, that’s a rush.” He wrinkled his nose. “Did you paint your bathroom?”

He didn’t look at Peter when he spoke. His head tipped to the side and his eyes raked over the space slightly to the left of Peter’s face. 

“Yeah, sorry. I’m glad I don’t have to smell everything all the time.”

Matt shrugged. “I’m used to it. Usually. Although right now, it’s a bit much. I think I would like to go home now.”

Foggy came forward. Peter finally got a look at the guy who had saved his bacon. He was blonde, and very cuddly looking. Crows feet in the corner of his eyes matched the laughing smirk on his lips as he took Matt’s arm. 

“Alright Daredevil, time to go.”

Matt reached out and squeezed Peter’s arm. Without looking at him Matt said, “Thank you, Peter. If you ever need help, my office is always open.”

“Office?” Peter asked.

“Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law,” Foggy rattled off.

Peter gaped. “You’re a vigilante and a lawyer?”

Matt laughed. It was like the sun passed over his face. “You have no idea, kiddo.”

Matt and Foggy left arm in arm. As they closed the door behind them Peter caught Foggy saying, “No more cults for you.”

“That was one time!” Matt protested. 

Peter leaned against the closed door and laughed. His life seemed a whole lot easier compared to Matt’s. High school was a breeze compared to being Daredevil.