#(also I feel really bad because everyone else in class went a normal route and I said. what if I was renaissance pt 3 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jeonqqin · 4 years ago

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man up. [m] | pt. 2

h. jisung x reader | netflix teen rom-com au

— ❝Even with classes, annoying brothers, and an unrequited crush, you still figured your first year of college was going pretty well. Until you managed to get your first boyfriend, and suddenly your brother and his stupidly attractive best friend were attached to your hip for the whole damn ride.

or alternatively;

Why did Jisung care about you so much, and had his eyes always been that pretty?❞

WORD COUNT: 5.2k

CONTAINS: brothers best friend au, teen rom-com au, sorta crack fic, love triangle au, college au

WARNINGS: nopee, well ji looking at readers butt?

A/N: are u team Chan or team Han?

▸ request

CHAPTERS: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 +

blog masterlist | ⟲ fic song

After your afternoon class with Jisung, he quickly noted that you were absent for the rest of the day.

Sure, you didn’t have any other classes, but normally you would be hunkered down in the library with your nose stuffed in some sort of book, or wandering around campus with Felix at your heels. You were either cramming due to your procrastination or roaming around procrastinating. Jisung also knew you weren’t a fan of staying in your small dorm room since your roommate loved flaunting the fact that she had a boyfriend and how she wasn’t shy about anyone witnessing their ‘acts of love’.

So he really had no idea where you were, and it bugged him a little more than he would like to admit.

But outwardly, he didn’t want to show just how worried he was. You were his best friend’s sister, it wasn’t his job to make a fuss about something so trivial. It would be weird if he went looking for you… but if Minho just so happened to get word of his little sister’s sudden disappearance, Jisung would have to help his dear friend search for you.

It was only common courtesy.

“Minho, I think Y/n was kidnapped.”

“You WHAT?!”

Okay, starting the phone call with that probably wasn’t the best choice, but what other choice did he have. Jisung was an impatient guy.

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened.” He replied casually, already able to hear the panic on Minho’s end of the call. “She was here and then she wasn’t.”

Not only was he impatient, he was a(n idiot) songwriter; his words articulate and poetic.

Minho was silent for a second before cutting back for the call.

“I texted Changbin and he said she just ran off.”

Jisung frowned. “Do they know where she went?”

“Apparently to beat some sense into me.”

The two friends knew then where you were and a rush of panic filled their chests all at the same time.

“Fuck—”

“—Chan.”

Jisung nearly dropped his phone in the process of hanging up, immediately taking off towards the familiar apartment.

His worst nightmare was coming true—Chan was an unknown in Jisung’s mind. He was handsome, charismatic, and an older guy, so it was realistic to imagine you falling head-over-heels if you were to ever meet him. Unfortunately, it seemed like fate wasn’t in his favor and he was in deep shit if you were really at the apartment alone with Chan.

Alone with Chan.

He shivered at the thought.

The only brightside to the ordeal was that Minho was also aware of the dangerous situation. Out of everyone, he would be the only one to prevent any feelings from sprouting between you. Jisung counted on Minho every time and he never once failed to preform.

Dear god, he hoped he didn’t decide to stop now.

Arriving at the complex, he almost rammed full speed into Minho, who was also going as fast as his legs could take him. They only shared one glance before trampling over their feet to get up the stairs, no doubt bothering the neighbors along their way.

Minho was the one to swing the door open, his head on a swivel as he walked in. He was ready to break up any inappropriate business with as much force necessary—he didn’t care if Chan’s bicep was twice the size of his head, he had leg power on his side. And if he saw your tongue anywhere near Chan’s, Minho was going to be swinging.

“Chan?”

“Y/n?”

Thud.

There was a crash behind the closed door of the office, and both heads perked up at the sound.

Minho hurried forward, arm outstretched to grab the door, “No. No no no—”

Jisung never wanted in his life to see you involved with someone else. With your pretty eyes hooded and shining with desire, and your chest heaving heavily against the tight fabric of your blouse. It had been difficult enough to watch you fill out and grow into an attractive woman, he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that you were old enough to meet other guys and moan their names.

He certainly didn’t want to hear you moan Chan’s name—of all people, why Chan?

“Shit, Chan—”

Jisung felt his face heat up as Minho pushed the door open, ready to pull his friend away to avoid the scene on the other side.

“—get your head away from my ass! The power strip isn’t even near there you prick!”

“Hey,” Chan defended with a laugh. “In my defense, all you said was it was over here somewhere. How do I know that somewhere isn’t next to your ass?”

The position that the two of you were in was compromising—though not in the way that Jisung had originally expected. It caused the two newcomers to freeze, their brains struggling to really understand what was happening.

The two of you were surrounded by thousands of cables and wires, black foam scattered across the floor as well. You were on your hands and knees, the only visible part of you was your bottom half with your head tucked underneath Chan’s mixing table doing who knows what. As for Chan, he was crawling around same as you, on his hands and knees with an extension cord wrapped around his shoulders.

“Uhm…” Minho gaped, eyes unable to focus on one part of the scene.

Jisung had no trouble at all, his eyes locked solidly on your raised ass.

You turned your head to look over your shoulder, eyes locking with Jisung’s and immediately widening. You couldn’t be in a worse situation—fucking hell.

In your haste to get out from under the table, you slammed the top of your head against one of the sturdy table legs and winced as Chan cracked up from your side.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class—Jesus, ow…” You asked, your hand moving up to rub the forming bump.

“What’s going on?” Minho asked, his eyebrows brushing his bangs.

“Y/n wanted some help with her stats class and I needed someone to help me upturn this room and make it into a recording room.” Chan snorted at your little dramatic groans, completely unfazed by the growing frustration on Minho’s face.

But before Minho could say anything to Chan’s statement, Jisung stepped in.

His lips twisted sourly, “I thought Seungmin was going to help you with your stats stuff?”

You shook your head with a huff. “I will not subject myself to that kind of torture and I refuse to let anyone convince me otherwise.”

“Well you could’ve asked me.”

Defeated and jealous; Jisung could no longer hide it.

The two older boys could see it clearly in the way he looked at you with big sad eyes, though neither of them said anything. Chan’s brows furrowed in thought, it looked like you had someone else infatuated with you.

You laughed. “Uh-huh, because you’re the resident genius here. Jisung, you dropped two of your classes last semester because both professors were minutes away from giving you an administrative failure.”

“Yeah, yeah. Jisung’s head is full of rocks—” Minho dismissed, unsympathetic towards the scandalized boy next to him. “Why the hell are you turning my storage room into a junkyard?”

Chan finally stood, pulling the cord from his neck and throwing it to the side in favor of helping you up.

“It was already a junkyard, bundle-boy.” You said, voice clipped and annoyed. Who wouldn’t be after smashing their head against a solid piece of metal? “We were renovating.”

“Like hell you were. I thought I said no to the recording room?”

Minho’s rage was just about completely directed towards Chan, but to your surprise, the guy gave minimal to no reaction. His face stayed indifferent, wide shoulders relaxed and eyes set.

You’ll be dammed, the fucker wasn’t scared.

Chan wasn’t afraid of your brother.

There was someone on the planet who didn’t go running when Minho looked at them funny, and he was standing right next to you in his beautiful sleeveless glory. If you weren’t currently suffering from a possible concussion you would be dropping to one knee and popping the question then and there.

“Oh, so what you said earlier was a no?” Chan (very unconvincingly) feigned innocence. “Sorry, the phone connection must’ve been bad.”

“I was yelling to you from the other room.”

“These walls are very thick, Minho. It’s your apartment, you should know that.”

“Do you want to be homeless?”

“Define; home.”

That was it, he was your one true love.

As Minho began to cross his arms over his chest, squaring up to Chan with the glare of a certifiable killer, you slid out of the way to avoid the oncoming fist fight.

Or explosion, whichever route Minho decided to take.

But then the unthinkable happened—Minho sighed, dropping his arms to his sides and turning towards you.

Both you and Jisung stood speechless, because you just witnessed someone give Minho an attitude and not get beat down afterwards. Hyunjin had once attempted the same thing and had been chased around the quad for a good forty minutes until the taller man had gotten tired and your brother had become uninterested.

Felix told you that they were both reemed during dance practice that night for being too tired to execute their choreography.

Minho shook his head, “You and Changbin were probably going to convince me anyway. Might as well save the wasted time and get it done now.”

Either your brother had a fat crush on Chan, or the Lee Minho was afraid of someone.

You knew Chan was older than him, but someone had to have some sort of super power to keep Minho from kicking their shins and shoving a knee in their face.

“What is happening…?” Jisung wondered, eyes wide and mouth open.

Chan smiled, striding over to clap Jisung on the shoulder, making the shorter boy jump in surprise.

“Good news. We’re getting a recording studio.”

And you would like to get married to one Bang Chan please.

You joined Chan’s side.

“Now you can finish that song you were working on.” You said, nudging Jisung’s shoulder.

He was just going to ignore the sudden wave of excitement at the fact that you remembered that he was working on a song.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Jisung laughed tensely. “Looks like I’ll be around more often.”

“Yeah, definitely…”

You nodded absentmindedly, eyes locked on the exposed skin of Chan’s arms. Chan himself didn’t acknowledge your stare, but couldn’t help the smug smile that slid onto his face.

Jisung watched the exchange and groaned, looking over to glare at Minho for failing him the only time it truly would end badly for him. Because of course Minho had to be soft for Chan and of course Chan had to be moving in.

Why couldn’t Chan just be ugly?

“Okay,” Chan sighed, placing all the wires he held into a pile on the floor. Suddenly, he turned to you, “You held up your end of the bargain. Let’s work on some stats, huh?”

Your eyes widened for a second, caught in headlights.

“Oh,” was your smart reply. “But we didn’t get to finish?”

Chan waved it off. “The only reason we tried to get it all done was to make sure Minho couldn’t say no. Now that he’s accepted it, we don’t have to rush.”

As much as it bothered him not to finish a project.

You laughed at the little punch Minho threw at Chan’s shoulder on his way out of the room, mumbling something about “going to bed before Changbin comes home to beg for food”. He also made sure to pinch your cheek before leaving.

After swatting at Minho’s hand, you grinned.

“Okay, well… Let’s figure out how we’re going to do this.”

Chan mimicked your smile with a nod.

No way, Jisung thought as you followed his older friend out into the living room, no fucking way.

You just left him without an acknowledging glance his way, and all of a sudden he had a really terrible feeling about leaving you and Chan alone together. Anything could happen—kissing, fucking, god forbid you talk to him. You could become closer and gain feelings for the guy, which would not be a hard task considering Chan was basically the human embodiment of the sun and every damn person seemed to be pulled into his orbit after the first meeting.

Dammit, it was even difficult for Jisung to be mad at him. The guy was too lovable.

Cursing under his breath, Jisung all but ran into the living room to prevent any and all touching or deep talks, because heaven knew how much Chan talked about deep shit.

Ew, he sounded like Minho.

“You don’t have any notes at all?” Chan asked, eyebrows raised. “What do you even do in there?”

You let out a sigh.

“Stats is where I usually do my biology work.”

“Then what do you do in biology?” He questioned bluntly, his eyes skimming all the lost files on your computer that you had given up on ages ago.

“That’s where I write all my essays. The teacher—”

“—never stands up from his chair.”

With wide eyes, you laughed in surprise. Your mouth formed many words but nothing stumbled out, perhaps for a good reason because what you had in your head wasn’t very coherent on its own.

So you just pointed at the snickering Chan, “You…?”

His head shook and your mood dropped.

“I don’t do work for other classes,” he corrected, the mischievous smile slowly sliding onto his lips giving you a little hope back. “I actually produced a whole song in that class.”

Was Jisung dreaming or were you looking at Chan with those big bewildered eyes? Was that what was happening right in front of him? Could he be seeing things?

For once he really hoped he was going insane.

“I knew I wasn’t the only one that slacked off in that class!” You chirped, bouncing a little in your seat.

“And I still got a one-hundred on my exam.” He told you pointedly before passing on the laptop and leaning back on the couch.

Normally, smugness wouldn’t have been attractive to you but on Chan it was something else. His eyes lit up in a way that was almost pretty.

There was a pull towards him as he just sat there and looked at you. It was something that set you on edge in the same way it put you at ease, he just had such a conflicting presence and you really didn’t know how to process it. So your body pushed you forward on it’s own, and with no complaints from him, you felt your hand come to rest on his knee—

But out of the fucking blue, Jisung was throwing himself between you two, his thinner body fitting snuggly in the unfilled space. You sputtered and Chan nearly yelped, holding his hand to his chest to placate his thudding heart.

“Jisung—what the fuck?”

“Did you just jump over the back of the couch?” Chan frowned looking over his shoulder to really determine the path Jisung took to get there.

Jisung smiled obnoxiously, “I just figured I’d help you guys out. Considering I’m also in that class.” He wiggles a little more to separate the two of you even more. “And three brains are better than two.”

“Not when yours is nonexistent.” You quipped, feeling your lips pull into a pout at the intruder.

“Ah, how I love your humor.”

Jisung poked your nose with a tight lipped smile.

Sending Chan a look of apology, he shrugged, falling back further into the couch.

“Sure, why not?” Was his response, shoulders lifting up and falling back down with a huff. “Let me help you set up some proper notes.”

Jisung brought his hands together once to create a near deafening sound that had you even more irritable. His happy-go-lucky mood wasn’t funny when you were on the receiving end of the annoyance.

One nice thing—you couldn’t have one single nice thing ever.

Between your brother and his dumb best friend (that you may or may not have sorta feelings for) you couldn’t do anything. Your prime years were being wasted on sucky romance movies with Felix and Hyunjin and cat fights with Jisung. You couldn’t afford such bullshit for much longer.

“You know I love you, Y/n.”

“Stuff your love up your ass.”

The rest of the week passed by smoothly with minimal conflict on your end and grades that didn’t have you contemplating slamming your face into a wall. On weekends you usually spent most of your time at Minho’s apartment while Changbin dicked around at the gym and your brother slept for the forty-eight hours that he had to himself. You could watch movies and finish your homework with no distractions.

That was until Chan decided to move in and steal your attention every moment he could. You were even starting to suspect that he was doing it on purpose after the time he walked out of the bathroom in only a bath towel and responded with a “oh, I didn’t notice you there”.

You also concluded that Felix was a snitch and no longer deserved your friendship, because once you shared with him your encounter with Chan, everyone in your group of friends was wired in to everything that concerned you and Chan.

Especially Jisung. Which eventually caused—

“Jisung why the hell are you following me?”

The boy in question didn’t bother to acknowledge you, instead he simply continued to walk at your side, hands stuffed deep in his pockets and hair just a little messier than usual, “What do you mean? This is how I get to my next class.”

You snorted. “Last time I checked, you had dropped your two-thirty class. And even then, it was on the other side of the building.”

Jisung couldn’t help but roll his pretty brown eyes.

“Stalker…”

“Says the guy who’s been up my ass all day.” You chirped, taking pride in the way he glared at you.

Jisung threw his hands up in frustration. He knew what he was doing was out of character, sure. But did he want to be called out on it?

“Can I not hang out with you? God, Y/n. We’ve known each other for years, I’d think you’d get used to me being around.”

You merely shook your head with a laugh, continuing forward.

“You’re really something else.”

He snorted, “So you’re being an adult now?”

“When am I not the adult when I’m with you? There’s no room for stupid energy with you around.” You replied cheekily

“Well I’m sorry for hogging all the ‘stupid energy’, damn…”

The way that Jisung held up the air quotes for “stupid energy” had your cheeks aching from how hard you smiled.

“Well, I’m going to lunch with Felix and Hyunjin right now. So unless you want to be subjected to their combined stupidity, I would suggest you go back to your dorm.” You sent him a small smile over your shoulder, just barely missing the way he tripped over his feet because of it.

Felix had called you in a rush right as you were getting out of your last class of the day and asked you to come eat lunch with him and Hyunjin. It was a one sided conversation that lasted almost ten seconds but you figured you had no other choice but to comply. Whatever reason he had for being in such a hurry was enough for you to listen.

“But you can come if you want, Sungie. I’m sure they won’t mind.”

Sungie.

It had been a while since you last called him that nickname—possibly way back when you were in primary school. It sent chills down his spine to hear you call him that again.

Jisung caught up to you easily, slinging his arm around your shoulders just as he used to when you began calling him Sungie. Over the years it had started to put a strain on him since he found it hard to differentiate what was friendly and what was too friendly. He had a girlfriend after all, and there were only so many things he could do with other girls that was acceptable.

But of course you were just Y/n. The little sister that bothered them all day and called him Sungie.

He didn’t have to feel embarrassed to hug you or tease you or hide his insecurities behind stupid pick up lines. Now matter how much it made his heart pound in his chest, you were still Minho’s baby sister—you were Jisung’s baby sister.

“I’d like that, my dear.” Jisung said, stuffing his free hand into his pocket and pulling you closer.

So close that it almost felt domestic.

Y’know, as domestic as it could get with someone who was like a little sister to him. He had a beautiful girlfriend too, so the domestication was more like a… family comfort and less like how it would feel if you were married and he was allowed to hold you as close as he wanted—

“Ah, you’re warm,” you hummed, making a small fuss of tucking yourself further into his hold. “It always looks like it’s going to be nice outside, but it seems like the weather changes its mind just as much as Hyunjin.”

You didn’t notice but Jisung was completely lost to everything you said after “you’re warm”. He just continued to hum and nod as if his brain wasn’t completely fried.

Jisung was in the midst of a mental breakdown when you somehow managed to lead him to the small restaurant right outside of the university. It was a popular place since it was so close and dolled out cheap food in a matter of seconds, which definitely appealed to its main demographic.

You spotted Felix’s head of purple hair immediately, a bright smile etched onto his face as he spoke animatedly to the waiter standing at the ready. The boy was cute, black hair and pretty dimples that made him appear younger. He also looked friendly with Felix with how he spoke with a wide smile that showed his perfect teeth.

You approached the table, shrugging Jisung’s arm off of you and ignoring his whine in protest.

“I made it,” you announced, gaining the attention of your friends—

And fuck.

You met eyes with Seungmin sitting in the seat beside Felix, and felt your shoulders slump as he flashed you a smirk.

“Glad you could come, Y/n.” Seungmin all but sang at your visible distress.

But Felix had a hold on your arm before you could respond with attitude, tugging you dangerously close to the waiter at your side.

“Y/n, this is Jeongin—” Felix gestured towards the boy who lifted his hand to wave. “He’s a school friend of Hyunjin’s.”

“It’s my last year.” Jeongin added with a shy laugh.

Peeling your eyes away from Seungmin, you got a good look at the boy in front of you. The unexpected cuteness both startled you and made your stomach flip. You really had to withhold from squealing and pinching his cheeks. He was so cute.

You smiled genuinely, “It’s nice to meet you, Jeonginnie.”

A small wave of red covered his ears at the sudden nickname, his long eyelashes fluttering in surprise.

Jisung just about combusted in his spot. He was getting pretty sick and tired of keeping tabs on all the boys you managed to hook around your finger, it was starting to get out of hand. Okay, maybe he was the stalker.

In a bout of frustration, Jisung grabbed your hand and interlaced your fingers, sliding into the booth beside Hyunjin and tugging you after him. You made a noise of surprise as your ass connected harshly with the cracked red cushion of the booth, sending Jisung a glare.

Though, he kept his eyes on the table, avoiding the amused looks on everyone’s faces, even going as far as swatting away Hyunjin’s poking fingers. But for whatever reason, he couldn’t bring himself to release your hand from his.

Jisung’s palm was sweaty in your hold, but strangely enough it was something that you didn’t mind.

Jeongin looked between you and Jisung for a moment before quickly coming to some sort of realization that only Felix seemed to understand. His mouth formed an ‘o’ shape and a small smirk was suddenly on his lips as he asked what drink you would like.

Whatever that was about, you didn’t like it.

“I’ll just have a water.” You answered skeptically, finally managing to pull your fingers free of Jisung’s grip.

“Water for me too.”

Jeongin didn’t bother to write down your orders, instead he just nodded and left with that same goofy smile on his face.

Why did your friends have to corrupt the poor kid?

You sent a glare towards Felix, ready to grill him about what the hell just happened but his eyes were on something else above your head, his lips forming into the same smirk that Jeongin had on. Whatever what’s either above you or behind you was either a stupid compilation video of League of Legend funny moments or your next victim.

“Care for one more?” Came from behind you.

And both your and Jisung’s heads swiveled around at a dangerous speed to see the beautiful image of Chan, and damn was he beautiful. He was dressed for the weather, arms now covered in a long black sweater that hugged every one of his muscles so so nicely, and instead of sweatpants, he was wearing jeans. You could definitely tell the difference between a casual day around the house and one where he was going to be seen out in public—was that makeup?

And Jisung frowned. It had been going so well.

It was his turn to send Felix a glare.

The purple haired boy mouthed something along the lines of “girlfriend”, but Jisung couldn’t (could) really make it out.

“Sit down.” You managed to choke out, motioning toward the table.

“Hey!” Felix greeted, standing up to fully embrace Chan in a hug.

You were floored.

“You know each other?”

Felix’s eyes flickered towards you, “We both grew up in Sydney.”

And you thought your eyes were going to pop out of your skull.

“You’re Australian?” You gaped, watching Chan as if he had sprouted a new head.

He then proceeded to spout off some heavily accented words that you could barely make sense of, and you could feel your heart practically flutter in your chest. After meeting Felix, you never thought you’d ever find an Australian accident sexy as hell—but Chan’s was, in fact, very sexy as hell.

“Wow,” Hyunjin whistled. “What does it take for one to become Australian, because fuck.”

You didn’t think you would ever agree with Hyunjin so much in your life.

Chan snorted. “I think you have to be born in Australia unfortunately.”

“Or you know,” Felix tossed sarcastically. “Live there.”

“Damn. Always the catch.”

You sighed, almost going as far as face-palming yourself and/or slamming your forehead against the table.

Instead you just sent Chan an embarrassed smile. “You can sit down if you aren’t planning on running away.”

“Thanks.” He laughed.

Unfortunately for you, there were already three people in your booth and he wouldn’t be able to fit beside you.

Fortunately for Jisung, there were already three people in your booth and Chan wouldn’t be able to fit beside you.

But when Chan began to slide in the seat next to Felix, Hyunjin suddenly jumped with a yelp, glaring at the suspicious looking Felix in front of him. The two had a very strange conversation with their eyes before Hyunjin was huffing a sigh and maneuvering himself to slip under the booth and (clumsily, you may add) pop out on the other side of Seungmin, ignoring the spectacled boys' complaints as he sends Chan a smile.

Stupid plotting assholes.

“Just wanted to sit next to my… uh—”

“Boyfriend?” You supplied, blinking at him dully.

“Yeah, my boy—hey, fuck you!”

“Sorry, were you waiting to tell people?”

He took the liberty to be the kicker instead of the kickee and sent his foot into your ankle, making you hiss with a glare.

Felix nudged Chan’s hip to direct him into the spot beside you, his mouth open in a wide smile as you are further squished between both Jisung and Chan. With one boy being very broad and the other being very clingy, you barely had any room at all.

“Y/n, you look a little cramped, why don’t you scoot over here a little more—?”

“Jisung, if I get any closer to you, I would be on top of you.”

Hey, he wasn’t completely opposed to that plan.

Jisung certainly would rather have you on his lap than Chan’s. He couldn’t even think about that without grasping for your hand again, though you were too fast and managed to wiggle out of his grip.

“Yeah, Y/n. Why don’t you just scoot over?” Hyunjin sang, his mouth curled up in a coy little smirk that he always had carved onto his face.

“You scheming little—”

But your words were cut off by the clearing of a throat.

Seungmin leaned over the table, and the way his sleeves were rolled to his forearms was suddenly very noticeable. He looked at you with the intention to kill, and had he not been a prudish reincarnation of the devil, you would’ve thought he looked hot as fuck.

“Do you want me to retell the little incident that took place at last year’s Christmas party?”

A collective gasp went around the table, Chan being the only one who was absolutely clueless.

Felix whispered something under his breath about how “that was sworn to secrecy”, and Hyunjin’s wide eyes stuck to the side of Seungmin’s face like glue.

Even Jisung broke out of his jealous stupor to gulp.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would.”

That was the true form of Kim Seungmin.

“What? Do dinners like this happen all the time?” Chan asked. “Do you ever actually eat?”

As if on queue, Jeongin stepped up to the table, notepad in hand and wide eyes sparkling. “Are you guys ready to order—?”

But Felix was dragging the boy down to his height, whispering something quickly into his ear, causing his eyes to widen. After enlarging, his gaze flickered back and forth between you, Jisung and Chan.

“I… will give you guys a few more minutes.”

Jeongin scurried off and you wanted to kill everyone at the table.

“Well, I’m going to answer my own question here and say no. There will be no eating food today.” Chan hummed, tossing his menu onto the table similarly to a petulant child.

You huffed. What did you ever do to deserve any of this?

With both boys at either side of you, it seemed to create a visual representation of the conflict in your mind. And Seungmin looked like he was ready to pass out with how hard he was trying to hold in his laughter as Felix and Hyunjin simply smiled your way.

To say that the two boys were completely clueless, would’ve been an understatement—

With Chan too busy thinking about all the food he wouldn’t be eating and Jisung preoccupied trying to grab ahold of your hand, they didn’t once notice the way that the three little devils stared holes into their heads.

“I literally can’t stand any of you.”

1K notes · View notes

fandomcelery · 3 years ago

Text

Feelings are complicated, aren't they?

Pairing: Santana Lopez/Brittany S. Pierce

Word Count: 2107

Rating: Teens and Up

Tags: Sexuality Crisis, Internalized Homophobia, Pining

Beta: @useless-fanfictions helped me out a lot on this fic, especially since I'm just starting out writing, so a big thanks to them!

Summary: Walking next to Brittany felt normal and right, but at that moment it felt slightly wrong. A bunch of questions were running through her mind. Was she acting differently? Was it obvious that something was off? Oh god, does everyone think that she’s gay?

Or, the one where Santana realizes she might have feelings for Brittany and panics over it.

Read it on Ao3

For the Glee Character "This-or-That" Challenge: @gleethisorthatchallenge

Prompt: Sharing a bed or Sexuality Crisis

The way Santana feels around Brittany is normal, right? Sure, she’s never felt it for any other person—not even any of her previous boyfriends—but it’s a completely normal feeling. And yeah, okay, she also defends Brittany all the time when people insult or make fun of her, and when Brittany sticks up for her and is always by her side, she can never stop smiling. She always feels warm whenever she compliments her about literally anything that she’s wearing, or how her hair looks that day, or really anything that makes Santana feel pretty.

There’s also the fact that they have sex regularly even though they’re in relationships with guys who would willingly have sex with them as well, but that’s different. It must be different, because if it’s not—

No, it’s not an option for it to not be anything but platonic. It’s got to be, it just has to be.

Even though Santana hates when people flirt with Brittany and will usually try to scare them off when others aren’t looking. Or when they get into fights or arguments, big or small, she feels like shit when she can’t talk to Brittany, and then that means they can’t have their sweet lady kisses that make Santana feel like they are the only two people left on the entire planet.

Feelings are complicated, aren’t they?

As long as she always stands her ground, keeping their relationship just friends, and convincing Brittany—and a little bit of herself—that even though they’re in relationships they can have sex and it’s not cheating because they’re both girls, she will be fine. She just has to keep telling herself that their relationship isn’t anything, that they’re strictly friends and that she doesn’t have feelings for her best friend, because if she did then she wouldn’t know what she would do with herself.

She’s not homophobic, and just because Kurt freaking Hummel struts around with his gay flag waving in the air doesn’t mean that everyone can or has to. And even if they do, they’ll get bullied and harassed, just like him. It’s the way that everything goes, the straight popular kids are on top, and the gays are at the bottom, even though that’s ridiculous, it’s the way it goes.

She’ll just keep it to herself—even though there’s nothing there, obviously—and everything will be fine. She hopes that if she keeps telling herself that then maybe it will be.

***

Of course, that’s not what happens. The following Monday, after the weekend Santana had realized that something is different, it seemed like everyone has been staring at the two of them differently, but it might just be her paranoia talking.

Walking next to Brittany felt normal and right, but at that moment it felt slightly wrong. A bunch of questions were running through her mind. Was she acting differently? Was it obvious that something was off? Oh god, does everyone think that she’s gay? She is suddenly on the defensive side, glaring at the people who she thought were looking at her and Brittany weirdly. Maybe people always looked at them this way and neither of them ever noticed or cared; except now she did.

She knows the route they take to get to their next classes by heart because they always walk together, even though their schedules don’t really line up. Most people think that all the Cheerios just walk to class together in groups because the outfits look good together—which they do, she thinks conceitedly—and because of the cheerleading cliques. For a while that’s why Quinn, Brittany, and Santana would walk together, but then they actually got kind of close because of Glee Club, and now Quinn walks with Finn to her classes and Santana walks with Brittany.

During her fourth period that she has alone she can’t stop thinking about Brittany. How when she walks to class she hugs her binder to her chest, or how during class she always fidgets with her pencil when she’s in between writing, or how even if she doesn’t care about what people are talking about, she’ll listen to them anyway (like this one time a few days ago when they had arrived early to glee club and Rachel had come up to Brittany and her to ask for dance lessons, going on and on about something that had to do with her being a star and needing to know how to dance better, and Santana had only been paying attention to Brittany and ignored Rachel’s harping), Santana admires the way Brittany exists, and how it seems like nothing really bothers her. She doesn’t know why all of the sudden it’s hitting her, especially since she’s been friends with her for so long, and no, she doesn’t have feelings for her, they’re just friends.

***

They walk to their usual seats during lunch together, every now and again bumping shoulders with how close they are while they’re talking. Santana sits down across from Brittany, as she doesn’t miss a beat from what she’s saying to sit down.

“And I swear that Lord Tubbington has a gambling addiction, but he won’t stop—” she takes a bite of her food, “—and I don’t know what to do.”

“Why don’t you just take away his laptop privileges?” Santana suggests, also taking a bite of her own food. It’s not bad, however, it’s not good. Then again, it’s the school’s food. When she looks up at Brittany, she looks quizzical, like she hasn’t thought of doing that.

“That probably would work,” Brittany responds, and continues eating.

Santana’s focused on something else. That something else is Brittany’s physical appearance, everything about her: to her flashing smile, to her thin and perfect eyebrows. her slim waist, long legs, and her torso—which she shouldn’t be staring at in the middle of school, and yet she is. She is stunning to Santana, with her lean appearance and bright golden colored hair pulled perfectly back into a ponytail. Her blue eyes seem to twinkle all the time.

“Santana?” Brittany asks after she’s been staring for a moment or two.

“Huh, what? Sorry, I was just, thinking,” she responds quickly and looks away to other tables where other kids are sitting, she lets go of her lip that she must have been biting on.

“About what?” Brittany takes another bite of her food, almost finished, whereas Santana has barely touched hers.

“Nothing important,” she mumbles, taking a drink from her water bottle. The answer seems to satisfy Brittany and they go back to normal and easy conversation like Santana hadn’t been just staring at her best friend’s boobs.

***

Glee Club isn’t that different. Rachel and Mercedes are fighting for a solo that Mr. Schue handed out, he doesn’t know how to handle it, and so they’re trying to argue over one another. Finn, Puck, Matt, and Mike are making bets about something in football. Kurt, Tina, and Artie are talking about something—she can’t hear their conversation, and honestly doesn’t care—and so it’s Quinn, Brittany and her talking about the Cheerios like they always are.

“Sue’s been on our asses about winning at Nationals,” Quinn comments as she sits down next to Brittany.

“She’s just concerned about staying on top,” Santana remarks, looking around the choir room. She looks up at the two who are arguing over one another and laughs a little bit. Everyone knows that Rachel’s going to get the solo, she usually does. Mercedes probably knows that, too, and yet she’s still going to fight for it.

“And her paycheck,” Quinn adds.

Eventually Mr. Schue stood in front of the class, apparently they had sorted it out where Rachel got this solo and Mercedes would get the next one.

This Glee practice they were going to focus on their choreography added with singing, and it wasn’t that big of an issue for the three cheerleaders (and it was mostly for the jocks to practice anyway, since they were the ones having problems, other than Mike, surprisingly).

Afterwards everyone was tired and sore, they had to start over a bunch of times because someone kept messing up (Finn). Slowly the choir room emptied, and Brittany and Santana walked to their next class together. They were going to walk with Quinn, but she had muttered something about a “troll trying to steal her boyfriend” and went off to walk with Finn. They separated at their different classrooms, and the three of them were going to meet up for Cheerios practice that was after school, which was their usual plan.

***

After practice Santana was even more exhausted than when she left Glee rehearsal. She grabs her water bottle that she had placed in her locker when she first got there. She gulps down a quarter of the bottle before putting it back.

There are many girls around her, yet the only one she’s focused on is Brittany.

Ever since they walked into the locker room, Brittany, and another cheerleader—Hailey was her name—were talking nonstop to one another. It’s not like Santana was eavesdropping, but it’s not her fault they were standing so close and speaking so God damn loudly.

“One time she made a girl cry just because she talked back,” Hailey continues while she brushes her hair in the mirror.

“I know, I was there,” Brittany responds, leaning up against the lockers next to Hailey’s that no one’s using. “Sue can be a bitch sometimes.”

Hailey wraps her hair in a ponytail and starts to put the hair tie around it. “Don’t let her hear you say that she might move you down the pyramid,” she jokes, which gets a laugh out of Brittany. “However, she is the best cheerleading coach McKinley can offer, so I guess we’ll have to put up with it,” Hailey states.

They all know that that’s true, no other teacher will coach the Cheerios, and she’s the only one that’s gotten them to Nationals and gets a pretty big paycheck put towards the cheerleading team.

And listen, Santana doesn’t do jealous, okay? And she’s not. She just doesn’t like Brittany hanging out with another person so closely. And it’s because no one understands her like Santana does is all. And sure, Brittany has other friends, but usually they go through Santana to talk to her, so she knows them, or they’re all in the conversation. This is an entire new person, and they’re jokingtogether, which Brittany can do on her own, of course, but-

“Stop pining and either go talk with them or leave already,” Quinn mutters behind her.

Santana whips around and glares at her, and Quinn smirks.

“Oh, come on, don’t think I didn’t notice.” She walks past Santana to get to her locker, and Santana decides to do what Quinn suggested.

She grabs her water bottle from her locker and makes sure all of her things are put away before she leaves to head home.

***

She can’t be in love with her best friend, right? Sure, she and Brittany are close, and they do practically everything together, and Santana loves everything about Brittany, but that doesn’t mean she’s in love with Brittany.

Those thoughts are how Santana finds herself pacing in her room, not for the first time in the last few days, lost in thought. She looks over at the photos that she has on her walls of all of the Cheerios, but there are a few of either her, Brittany, and Quinn, or just the two of them.

She walks over and picks one up to look at it. She gets the same feeling that she’s been getting every time she thinks about Brittany, yet she’s been ignoring it for a while now. Except this time, she doesn’t. She feels butterflies in her stomach and doesn’t even realize she is smiling at Brittany’s picture. She sets down the photo when she does catch herself, and goes to lay down on her bed.

Even if she was gay, how would she know? Would having feelings that aren’t actually feelings enough to be considered gay? And what would everyone else think? Maybe she should turn to the internet, she thinks. She sits up and grabs her laptop that she keeps on her bedside table and loads it up.

A few searches later she realizes that maybe terms like bisexual or even lesbian fit her. Some more questions pop up in her head after that realization, but at least one thing’s certain.

Santana is in love with her best friend, and she has no idea what she’s going to do about it.

#gleecharactertot2021 #gleetotchallenge2021 #glee #santana lopez #brittany pierce #brittana #sexuality crisis #elliry writes #uefnajnfvedhbfhrsyuhebgveahj

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gravelyhumerus · 4 years ago

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Criminal Minds College AU - Chapter Seventeen

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Title: “I may just take your breath away”

Relationship: Jemily

Summary:

Exams, pizza, board games... what more could a girl ask for?

Slow-burn Jemily college AU where they live across the hall and despite all odds, the universe pushes them together. AKA they’re silly gay babies who pine after each other for months.

Read it on AO3

Tumblr: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, (bonus scene), Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty

“That was a lot of chess,” Emily complained, nearly chugging her latte as she and Spencer left the coffee shop.

She pulled her beanie onto her head and braced herself for the snow as the taller boy held the door open for her. Emily almost slipped on the slushy tile floor on her way out but managed to keep her balance.

“Fifteen of the multiple-choice questions to be precise,” Spencer replied. The salted sidewalk crunched under their feet as they made their way across campus.

“I’m so glad it’s finally over,” she admitted. “I think I’ve had enough philosophy to last me a lifetime.”

“I’m enrolled in ‘Minds and Machines’ next semester,” he said. “I think I might try and get a double minor this time around.”

“What’s the goal? Three PhDs by the time you’re 24?” Emily quipped.

He was well on his way, having completed his engineering degree before she managed to graduate high school. He was 17, only two years younger than her, but somehow seemed like a kid. A kid with more education crammed into his brain than she could ever master in her life.

“Something like that,” he replied with a smile. His hair was getting long and he had tied it back during the exam. With last names starting with P and R, they were seated near each other in the large exam hall, and she glanced over at him as he fussed with his hair.

They stopped at the red light, watching as the cars and busses wooshed past them, sending the slush flying into the snowbanks. It had been a fairly sunny day, but bitterly cold. Now, the sun was setting and the campus was bathed in a warm golden glow. The snow had fallen the night before, leaving fluffy white snow covering their campus.

Emily had spent most of the day holed up in the library with Spencer, with him quizzing her on fallacies and philosophers. With his eidetic memory, he only really needed to read the material once. Earlier in the semester, she did feel useful when it came to editing each other’s essays. He always got bogged down with detail, word vomiting everything he knew, and she helped him with his structure and argumentation.

More studying awaited her back in her room. She rubbed at the back of her neck as she thought about the upcoming evening spent hunched over her desk studying criminal justice, a subject that left her questioning her degree half the time as she was forced to learn about the muddled ethics of justice.

That week, she had survived on minimal sleep, eating mostly bagels and coffee to sustain her. Her body was protesting with each step, and she had suffered from a constant tension headache for as long as she remembered. At least her college had that golden retriever walk around at the library yesterday, she thought to herself, sarcastically. Animal therapy definitely relieved all her stress. As if petting a dog for five minutes would fix the anxiety of finals season.

Two more exams, she reminded herself. You’ll make it.

Despite this mantra, Emily was conflicted. While finals were killing her, the end of the semester also meant winter break. Emily would be forced to go “home” for the holidays. For most college students, that meant going back to their respective towns and being surrounded by their loved ones. Emily, on the other hand, didn’t have anywhere she called home. Last winter break, her mom had at least been in DC, and Emily was able to catch up with some of her international school friends who were in the city. This time, her mom was stationed in London, and Emily knew she’d be roped back into her old life. She didn’t know anyone there and knew most of her break would be spent alone.

The last place she had called home was Rome, and now that was tarnished by her complicated past with that city.

Emily was good at being alone. Being an only child of a workaholic single mom meant she learned to keep her own company. She read a lot. She got good at running away, escaping her nannies, and skirting security in order to roam free. She’d be fine.

The problem was that Emily had gotten used to this. She rarely spent a moment alone these days. Whether it was walking to class with Spencer, or Hotch, or Derek, getting lunch with the team, surprise coffee dates with Penelope and spending almost every evening with her girlfriend, she hadn’t been left alone in ages. She didn’t miss it.

Their residence building had a warm yellow light shining out of the windows and a soft red brick facade. In the summer, ivy grew up the south facing side but in the winter, the ledges were covered in snow and the stone steps were slippery. She trudged forward, excited for the warm embrace of the dorm.

Spencer had other plans. He reached into the garish yellow plastic newspaper box that was stationed next to their doorway and retrieved this week’s newspaper.

“Come on Reid,” Emily said. “Just subscribe to the newsletter or something like the rest of us.”

He held up the cover to her in surprise. Usually it reported the news of a recent sports victory, or a change of policy announced by the administrators, or even a fun event held on campus. Sometimes there was even a dramatic protest or an important speaker coming to campus. But this week, the headline surprised her. In large font printed across the page read: “Multiple student politicians fired amid financial scandal.”

“That sounds bad,” Emily said. It did seem way more dramatic on newsprint than on a website, so maybe Spencer was onto something with his affinity for the printed word.

Grabbing a copy for herself, she then walked inside to escape the cold. Warm air greeted them as they entered their residence hall, and both students kicked the snow off their boots before trudging up the stairs. They read as they walked, but the route to their rooms was already muscle memory, so neither worried about stumbling on their way.

Normally, Emily wouldn’t willingly touch this sort of student politics with a ten foot pole. Sure, she was involved with the Criminology council, but there was a difference between the kind of person interested in petitioning for better accessibility to faculty events or running a bake sale, and the kind of students to embezzle thousands of student dollars like what the current student government executive seemed to be accused of doing.

She quickly ran her eyes down the page, the contents jogging a memory from Halloween, of Hotch and JJ discussing the early stirrings of said scandal.

“You know,” Spencer said, “I’m surprised they got a lot of this information, it’s notoriously difficult to file FOIAs for student governments, as they’re technically private corporations. So the fact that they got these files means that this is a much bigger scandal than one might assume.”

Corruption, bribery, embezzlement, nepotism. All words that jogged memories of hiding in the corner of political fundraisers, overhearing the worst of politics from too-drunk elites sipping on their wine and munching on charcuterie.

“I hate politics,” Emily said, stuffing her copy of the paper into her bag.

“I find it interesting. It’s basically a microcosm of our current political climate. In fact, I have subscribed to the print edition of fifteen student papers in the region,” Spencer said, “I like to keep informed on the coverage of student issues, and compare them to our own.”

“Why?!” Emily said with a laugh. “You know you can just look them up online.”

Spencer gave her a withering look, and she should have known better than asking about his aversion to tech. He loathed having to use his computer, as the LCD screens apparently gave him a headache. Penelope even gave him a pair of blue light glasses to attempt to alleviate the issue.

Then, he began to speak, at length, about the dying printed news industry and why print copies were better for understanding than screens et cetera. She made sure to nod and hum at appropriate points, but her mind kept wandering.

She wondered if her girlfriend was in her room. Emily missed her any time they were apart and she yearned to hold her in her arms once again. But she shouldn’t. She needed to work. She had too much to do. Her grades had slipped, slightly, this semester. Everyone warned her about how college would be harder than high school, but no one ever warned her how much the expectations were raised in second year.

Two more exams. She clutched her coffee tighter. She’d rather do anything else besides study at this point. Her body was exhausted, her mind frazzled. She wondered if she could even manage to get through a chapter of revision before conking out on her desk.

As she said goodbye to Spencer and struggled with her keys that were tangled up in their corresponding university-branded lanyard, JJ’s door opened.

“Hey girlfriend,” JJ greeted her, sounding way too much like a straight girl greeting her platonic friend for Emily’s taste. She gave her a pass because it sounded cute in her voice.

“JJ!” Emily said, somehow surprised to see her despite the fact that she lived right across the hall. Her girlfriend was dressed in sweatpants and an oversized sweater, with her straight hair tucked behind her ears and her face bare of make up. Her face was lit up with a smile, and Emily rushed towards her, planting a soft kiss on her lips.

“Hi JJ,” Spencer said as Emily and JJ kissed.

When they pulled apart, JJ gave Spencer a smile as a greeting and asked them how their exam went.

Spencer babbled about their Logic exams for a minute or two, as Emily basked in JJ’s presence. She grabbed onto her hand and found that it was so much hotter than her own and wasn’t sure if she held on tight because she was cold, or if she had missed her girlfriend.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Emily said. “I never want to hear about fallacies again.”

Spencer seemed to want to say something, but fell silent at Emily’s tired expression.

“Wanna come in for a bit?” JJ whispered in Emily’s ear. Apparently she said so a touch too loud because Spencer replied instead.

“Sure!” he said, and then walked into JJ and Penelope’s room.

“I should really study,” Emily tried to argue, but a single glance into JJ’s deep, blue eyes had Emily melting.

JJ’s room was much messier than Emily had last seen it. Both desks showed clear markers of the ongoing exams, with papers and books piled high. In addition to this was an assortment of pillows strewn all over the floor.

“You guys are back early!” JJ said, after checking her watch, “I thought it was a two hour exam?”

“I finished in an hour,” Spencer said, “and Emily only needed an extra half hour on top of my time.”

Damn straight, Emily thought, feeling somewhat competitive with the boy-genius despite herself.

She really should study, but the prospect of seeing her girlfriend outweighed the desire to sit hunched over a textbook for another evening.

Emily and Spencer kicked off their boots, placing them neatly on the mat by the door before peeling their jackets off and hanging them on the back of her door. Emily wasn’t sure if she liked winter. Whenever her mother was stationed in the Middle East she yearned for snow, but now that she was experiencing the Nor’easter for the first time, the desert sounded like a good time.

“Well there goes my plan,” JJ said, blowing her hair out of her face with a puff of air.

Spencer flopped onto Penelope’s neatly-made bed, collapsing into the assortment of pink pillows while carefully keeping his take-away cup upright. Emily sat down next to JJ on her bed.

“Your plan?” Emily asked.

“Yeah,” JJ said, sounding a bit shy. “I had this whole plan to make up a blanket fort here for you, and I would surprise you with it when you walked in.’”

JJ gestured with her hands at the mess. Blankets and pillows were strewn about, and a bundle of fairy lights were laying in the middle of the floor.

“Then you came back early,” JJ concluded. “Spence, I thought you’d keep her occupied longer!”

“You didn’t tell me that,” he replied. Spencer looked quizzically at her, shrugged, then took another sip of his coffee.

“I just wanted us to have a cute date night,” JJ admitted. “I know you’re so stressed, and you deserve a break.”

Emily grabbed her girlfriend’s moving hands and held them in her own. She felt overwhelmed. JJ was so… thoughtful. Caring. Attentive. So many things that were absolutely foreign to Emily. No one had ever tried to impress her like this.

“It’s okay,” Emily said. “We don’t need anything special to have a cute date night. You’re cute enough.”

JJ gave Emily a goofy smile in response.

“Okay,” JJ said. “If you say so.”

“You’re building a blanket fort?” Spencer asked. “I actually have some experience with blanket fort architecture.”

“You do?” JJ asked, raising her eyebrows skeptically.

“Of course,” he replied, seeming almost offended that she questioned him. “It sparked my interest in engineering. I wanted to overcome the problem of chair-tippage when it came to building the structure, so I devised a system of counter-weights that I found increased the structural integrity by 53%. My mom always told me that I could be an architect, but I thought the sciences better suited my intellect.”

“Oh?” Emily asked, genuinely interested. How would someone measure the structural integrity of a blanket fort?

“Actually, I have some blueprints. Let me grab them,” he said, standing up and making a move for the door.

“Of course you have blueprints,” JJ laughed.

“I should probably go feed Gideon, anyway. I’ll be right back!” Spencer said. Before closing the door behind him.

“Gideon?” Emily asked.

“His fish,” JJ said, “the one he won at the fair. It’s named after his professor, I think.”

She shrugged. The kid was weird, they tended to just accept that.

“I guess Spencer’s joining us on date night,” JJ said. “Sorry. I know you’re stressed and probably want to be studying, but I thought we’d order pizza and just have one night off. Just us. And Spencer.”

JJ planted a firm kiss on Emily’s lips, leaving her dazed and blushing.

“Relaxing sounds perfect,” Emily said, pulling her girlfriend closer to her. “I can’t believe it’s already exams. This semester has flown by. Soon it’ll be winter break, and I won’t get to see you.”

“I can’t imagine you not being right across the hall,” JJ said. “Who will give me kisses when I want them?”

JJ kissed Emily, sucking on Emily’s bottom lip slightly before pulling apart to look at her.

“I know you’re joking, but I hope you’re not kissing anybody else, no matter the circumstances.”

With that established, Emily pounced on her girlfriend, pushing her onto her bed and kissing her deeply. She intertwined her fingers in the blonde locks that were splayed out in a golden halo and breathed in deep, taking in the warm scent of the lilac candle that burnt on her night side table.

All her worries melted away at JJ’s touch. Emily’s brain was filled with the feeling of JJ’s lips on hers, with her lithe form beneath her. Exams, student politics and thoughts of home were wiped away, and her stress faded into background noise.

JJ’s pliant form writhed under Emily’s, her hands sneaking below Emily’s sweater and dancing over her back. They deepened the kiss until they were making out like teenagers in JJ’s dorm with the door still open a crack.

This was how Spencer, accompanied by Derek, found them when they pushed open the door with blanket fort blueprints and bags of potato chips in hand.

Spencer made a surprised noise, which made Emily aware of his return. She jumped up and pulled apart from JJ with a dark red blush gracing her cheeks.

“Woah there ladies,” Derek said with a laugh. “Keep it in your pants!”

“Guys! I was gone for five minutes!” Spencer whined.

Emily stood up awkwardly, stuffing her hands in her pockets as she watched JJ sit up and pat her hair down in a huff.

“Sorry,” Emily grumbled, not really meaning it. She would never be sorry for kissing JJ, but she was sorry for the awkwardness

“Pretty boy dragged me down the hall,” Derek said in explanation. He had Spencer’s rolled-up fort plans in his hand, and lightly smacked Emily’s head with it, making a comedic thwap noise as it made contact. “Hope you weren’t in the middle of something?”

“Only JJ’s legs,” Emily quipped to everyone’s surprise, even her own. JJ hit her jokingly and blushed.

“Hey!” Derek laughed, “Let’s keep this PG!”

“You called?” The voice of Penelope Garcia—PG if you will—rang out from the hallway, and within seconds JJ’s room was filled with just about all their friends standing around in a slightly awkward silence: JJ, Emily, Spencer and Derek were joined by Penelope with Hotch in tow.

The latter two of them had grown closer recently and walked into the room with white shopping bags with the walrus logo printed on the side, looking like they had just returned from out in the cold. Penelope and Hotch going thrifting together, that’s new! Emily thought to herself and decided to file the observation for later. The image of Hotch watching Penelope’s customary fashion show was enough to make her laugh under her breath.

“We’re building a blanket fort,” Spencer announced, changing the subject to the task at hand. “Are you guys helping?”

“Oh you know I will, boy genius,” Penelope said with an excited smile.

Emily looked over to her girlfriend. So much for date night.

———

Without much questioning about why they were building a blanket fort, the team got to work. In college, sometimes things just happened. Impromptu blanket forts were par the course. In their defense, any excuse to not spend the evening burying their heads in textbooks was a welcome reprieve.

It started with just a few blankets draped in the space between JJ and Penelope’s beds, but with Spencer’s instruction, a verifiable architectural marvel began to take shape.

While Emily knew that Penelope would be all gung ho for this sort of project, it was certainly amusing to see Hotch in his khakis and dress shirt crawling around on the floor like a child with the rest of them, tying off blankets and very seriously maneuvering the different parts of the structure.

Sheets were draped here and there, tied together to form ceilings and walls. Two chairs stolen from the common room, loaded with backpacks on the seat for support acted as the entrance to the fort.

While it was crawling space only, Emily had to note that there was a sense of awe when you emerged into the open space of the main fort-area. It was surprisingly big, fitting all six of them with ease. The key to the whole design was a curtain rod Hotch had stolen from the boys shower that lifted the roof up.

The design was strangely reminiscent of Baroque architecture, which she was sure was due to Spencer’s designs. This was a fact that Emily kept to herself. She always tried to rein in the ‘I lived abroad’ conversation points so her childhood could remain under minimal scrutiny.

Emily’s exhaustion transformed into excitement as she relished the time hanging out with her friends. Music played from Penelope’s computer as they worked, they began to work as a cohesive group, each member doing their share. It was nice to do something besides sit at her desk and obsess over memorizing facts and statistics, or figuring out the proper argumentation for an essay on a subject. Making sure that a bunch of blankets didn’t crash onto them was treated with the utmost seriousness, and the whole group was focused with intense concentration at their own tasks.

Spencer did, in fact, have literal sketches of blanket forts in his notebooks, but the details of which were fairly incomprehensible to her. While she believed that he did the math, his chicken scratch was just about indecipherable, and his drawing was little more than a few shapes on a page. Despite this, it was laid out on the centre of the dorm-room floor for them to reference.

At one point, as Emily stood on JJ’s wheely chair, she feared that the fort had all come crashing down as she lost her balance and grabbed at the blankets to stop her fall before tumbling onto Derek with a yelp.

“Sorry,” she muttered as she climbed back onto her feet and fought off the blanket that had wrapped her in a shroud.

She flinched as she realized she had ruined it all, a pit forming in her stomach. She looked at her friends in concern, but instead of yelling at her for her mistake, or shunning her for ruining it for the rest of them, they smiled at her and helped her up.

“It’s okay!” Spencer said cheerfully. “I know exactly how to reinforce that wall.”

“You okay, Emily?” Hotch asked, righting the wheely chair as JJ fretted over her.

“I’m good,” she answered, still confused as to why they weren’t mad at her.

Instead of making a big deal over the set back, they went back to work. Soon, the fort filled out and it returned to its former glory. Arguably, better than it was because they had draped fairy lights throughout the inside, making the space glow with a warm orange light.

Inside was filled with pillows and big enough for all of them to sit comfortably so it was a comfy lounge space. It was cozy and warm, the antithesis of the bitterly cold night air outside.

“You know what?” Hotch said. “This is a damned good fort, Reid.”

The group muttered in consensus. They all had piled into the space, and as the excitement wore off, Emily was wondering what happened next. What does one do in a blanket fort? She had vague memories of building one in her room, but she had just sat inside and read a book.

“I hear the RA’s storage room has a ton of board games,” Penelope said. “They pull them out for socials and stuff.”

“That’s all well and good, but we’re not asking Strauss to let us in,” Derek argued. “I still think she thinks we were responsible for that fire alarm last week. She’s been giving me the evil eye ever since.”

“Who said we had to tell her?” Emily said. “We could just… borrow… them…”

“I mean, they are for us to use, anyway.” JJ’s eyes had a mischievous look in them as she looked at Emily.

“That is true,” Hotch said, the scowl that was usually a fixture on his face turning to a smirk.

“That’s stealing, guys,” Spencer warned, as if they didn’t already know that.

“We’ll give them back,” Emily said with a shrug. “Come on!”

Penelope led the way to a dark wooden door on the main floor, it was labelled simply “Storage,” but the computer science student assured them that it was where the RA’s stored all of their supplies.

“It’s locked,” Penelope huffed.

“Do you have a bobby pin?” Emily asked her in a hushed voice. She wouldn’t have gotten this far if she hadn’t learned how to pick simple door locks. She had trouble with deadbolts but a simple latch she could probably do within a couple of minutes.

The blonde pulled a hot pink bobby pin out of her perfectly curled hair. Emily snapped it into two, bending one end into a longer L-shape. Sticking that into the bottom of the lock and holding it in place, she used the other side to feel for the pins that held the lock in place.

Emily could feel all eyes on her as she confidently knelt in front of the doorknob, the group keeping watch for her as she worked. No one questioned how or why Emily knew how to do this. She had her reasons.

This definitely broke all sorts of residence rules and if they got caught, they knew they’d get into shit, but no one seemed to care that much. They just wouldn’t get caught.

After a couple minutes, Emily’s hands began to sweat. What if she couldn’t do this anymore? She tried to centre herself. She had made it through infinitely more stressful situations in the past. It was the eyes of her friends on her that made her nervous. She was finally accepted by a group, and she desperately didn’t want to let them down.

Then, it clicked, and she was able to turn the brass knob easily. Emily made a noise of excitement, got to her feet and yanked the door open.

Instead of an empty storage closet, on the other side of the door was Erin Strauss, their RA, in a passionate embrace with David Rossi. Her shirt was unbuttoned and he was in the middle of sucking on her neck.

“Dave?!” Hotch called out, startling the couple.

Both groups stood stock-still, neither knowing what to say. While Emily had hid the bobby pins, she wasn’t sure who was in more trouble, them for breaking into the room or their RA for using the space for unofficial purposes.

The room was small and cramped, with a pile of poster board mostly obscuring the one small window that lit the space. Strauss had been hoisted onto the desk, her legs straddling the other student. Emily could see a shelf filled with the board games stacked on the left side of the room, but they seemed unimportant at the moment. While Emily had known about their illicit love affair, she had never expected to see it in action.

“Hey guys,” Rossi said after a moment, his unwavering confidence carrying on to this moment as he pulled apart from Strauss, who was furiously buttoning up her shirt and trying to sort herself out.

“What are you all doing in here?” she demanded, standing up and putting her hands on her hips. “This room’s meant for RA’s only.”

“Well,” Emily said, startled by her own audacity, “Dave isn’t an RA so…”

“We just came for some board games,” JJ said in her most diplomatic voice, despite clearly wanting to laugh at the situation, “then we’ll be off.”

“Take them and go,” the RA said in a strangled voice, her face beet-red and as she avoided eye contact like it was the plague.

Clearly not as embarrassed as Strauss, Rossi simply smirked, collected a few board games into his arms off of the shelf, then deposited them into Emily’s arms.

Realizing that given the circumstances, they couldn’t be picky with their choices, the stunned group thanked him then scurried away, back upstairs with their loot. The silence remained until they made it back to their floor, where they all burst into laughter.

“What on earth was that?!” Derek exclaimed.

“Rossi and Strauss,” Spencer muttered.

Emily and JJ made eye contact, remembering all those weeks ago when they had caught their friend emerging from the RA’s room down the hall in the middle of the night. They had known that Rossi and Strauss had hooked up that night, but had no idea that it was a whole relationship.

“I see it,” Hotch commented. “I mean, I don’t know your RA too well, but Rossi likes a woman with authority.”

Derek and Emily fake-gagged in an exaggerated manner at the comment.

“I think I need to bleach my eyeballs after that display,” Emily muttered.

“Ooo-kay!” JJ said, pointedly changing the subject. “It seems like we have most of the pieces to Clue… I think we could manage a game of that. We also have Scrabble, Yahtzee and Snakes and Ladders. Uh… also a pack of cards.”

“At least it’s not chess,” Emily said, thinking about her seemingly endless exam that afternoon.

“Agreed,” Spencer said.

“We do not have chess, no,” JJ said with a quizzical laugh.

———

After ordering a couple of pizzas to the dorm, they all settled in to play a board game. After a few minutes of debate, they decided to play Clue (or Cluedo as Emily continuously referred to it as). The board was laid out: it was vintage, with a teal and yellow colour scheme and some scuffs and rips showing its age. In their blanket fort, they were seated in a circle, all secretly looking at their Clue cards.

“Can I be Professor Plum?” Spencer asked before they had even gotten the pieces out of the box.

“Of course pretty boy,” Derek said, “I’ll take Mr. Green.”

“My sculpted god of thunder looks excellent in green,” Penelope flirted, choosing the white piece for herself.

“Did you know that in the original version of Clue, Mr Green was a Reverend, but they changed his name for American audience because they believed that the American public would object to a parson as a murder suspect?”

“Good thing you’re on our trivia team, Reid,” Hotch replied.

Emily was Miss Scarlet, of course, and was seated right next to JJ, who had chosen to portray Mrs. Peacock. Hotch claimed the remaining piece: Colonel Mustard.

Emily loved board games. Her nanny in France, who was a kindly elderly woman that Emily only knew as “Madame,” would play with her each Sunday after church. She has hazy memories from that time, but the warm glow of sunlight streaming into their Parisian apartment as she learned how to play Cluedo. Emily would always try to cheat, but knew better than to try to do so with her immensely observant girlfriend seated to her left, JJ’s hand resting casually on Emily’s thigh.

She looked at her cards and grinned. She had been dealt her own character, she noted, as Miss Scarlet’s name was printed in bold on the top of her first card. It felt weirdly validating to know that she herself was innocent. Also in her hands were the cards for the candlestick and pistol, as well as the observatory. She marked these off of her card and tried to gauge her opponents' reactions.

JJ was checking her phone with her cards face down, tracking the pizza’s arrival. Spencer was sprawled back, his long legs taking up way more room than was necessary, jotting down notes on some scrap paper. Presumably some statistics and probability for the possibilities of the cards that were sealed in the envelope in the centre of the board. Penelope smiled over at Derek and flirtatiously tried to sneak a peek at his hand.

After the initial rounds being dedicated to moving around the board, Emily finally made it into her first room: the lounge. There, she decided on her first suggestion.

“I suggest,” Emily said, in her most dramatic, formal voice, which was particularly suited to the role of Miss Scarlet, “that Mrs. Peacock committed this heinous crime in the Lounge with-” she hurriedly grabbed the candlestick, “the candlestick!”

She knew that it wasn’t the correct weapon, but using it would narrow it down to someone ruling out either JJ’s character or the lounge as the scene of the crime.

“Moi?!” JJ said, sounding almost offended at the accusation. “Your own girlfriend?!”

Emily grinned evilly at her, but internally she felt giddy. It was the first time she heard JJ use that word in front of their friends. JJ moved her piece into the Lounge. The others chuckled lightly at their antics.

“You have no alibi for the crime, Mrs. Peacock,” Emily said, “and I am merely making a suggestion.”

JJ glared at her, but said nothing. Emily turned to Derek, who was seated at her left.

“What do I do?” Derek asked, looking around the room, slightly confused.

“Do you have any of those cards?” Hotch asked.

“Yeah-” Derek said, moving to show his hand.

“No!” Penelope stopped him. “Just show one of your cards to Emily if you can prove her suggestion was wrong.”

He made an “o” with his mouth and sneakily showed Emily the Lounge card. Emily noted that, and that it was Derek’s card. Mrs. Peacock had yet to be proven innocent, and Emily gave JJ a suspicious glance.

She loved this game.

As the game progressed, Emily noted a few things about her opponents. A part of Emily was profiling her friends subconsciously, reading each of their strategies like a book.

Penelope always seemed to luck out on her dice rolls, covering a lot of terrain and gathering information like it was a cup of tea. But, she seemed to take it personally when someone accused Mrs. White of having killed Mr. Boddy and gasped every time someone made that suggestion.

Hotch seemed to take the game very seriously, and was at it like he was an actual police officer solving crime. But, it didn’t seem that he completely understood all of the rules, and definitely hadn’t played before, so he spent most of his turn grumbling as he skimmed the rule pamphlet.

Spencer, on the other hand, had memorized the rules, common strategies and probabilities of the different outcomes, so Hotch often looked over to him nervously as the boy wrote longhand equations in the notebook that he pulled out of his bag for the very occasion.

Derek also had never played before, and regularly made ‘accusations’ rather than ‘suggestions’ when he entered a room, frustrating Spencer to no end. But, Derek was smart and seemed to be picking it up as he went along. That was until he made the same suggestion twice in a row, both times making Hotch show him the exact same card. He asked Reid endless questions about specific rules, and more than once he made the boy double check in the rule book when Derek tried to make a rather unorthodox move.

JJ seemed to be the only one genuinely trying to have fun. She munched on the Cheetos that she stored in the bottom drawer of her night stand, and made conversation. Her strategy seemed to be exclusively focused on playing the game like it was the 1985 feature film Clue, playing the role of Mrs. Peacock with a fake accent and treating it like an actual murder-filled dinner party.

After a solid twenty minutes of gameplay, the pizza arrived. With minimal grumbling from Hotch, who was apparently on a roll, they took a break to eat.

“Did you see this?” Spencer said with his mouth full, lifting up the copy of the newspaper that he had grabbed earlier.

“Don’t get me started,” JJ grumbled and took a sip of her pop.

“What happened?” Hotch asked, the conversation piquing his interest.

Spencer explained—with the assistance of JJ who apparently knew one of the people involved through soccer—the entire scandal. Apparently, last year there had been very little interest in the leadership roles, so the President of the student government had simply waltzed into his role. He then hired all of his friends, his girlfriend, his roommate, and together they embezzled thousands of dollars of student funds.

“I can’t believe they’re getting away with this,” JJ muttered. “Is there no oversight?”

“It’s always the same,” Emily replied. “Who’s going to oversee them? The college? They’re corrupt too.”

“This sucks,” Derek said. “Wish someone good would run for government, for once.”

Emily shook her head in frustration. It all just reminded her of her childhood. Embezzlement, corruption and nepotism all were casual topics discussed over family dinner in her home. She had higher hopes for students her own age, would they not break the cycle? Or was it just a microcosm of the outside world?

“You should run Mr. Lawyer Man,” Penelope teased Hotch. “You could take any of these clowns.”

Hotch raised an eyebrow at her and went back to his pizza, brushing her off. Emily smiled at him. Penelope was right, he might actually do a good job if he set his mind to it.

The people that surrounded her now were nothing like her mother’s friends—or the kids she had been forced to hang out with when she was younger—they were genuinely kind, supportive, and seemed to like Emily for Emily. When she told them she was an ambassador’s daughter, they had been more concerned with the cool places that she had been able to travel to than whatever power she had. At college, Emily finally exhaled fully, slowly relaxing more and more into herself.

But, the topic of politics always set her on edge, especially since the semester was ending soon. Her mother had already begun to leave her voicemails about the galas, fundraisers and events that she was required to attend over Christmas break. She pushed thoughts of the future aside and focused on the warmth that surrounded her. With some music playing softly (a song that JJ liked by Vampire Weekend), the softness of blankets under her, and JJ leaning on her slightly as she ate her dinner, Emily felt at peace. She knew she could handle winter break, because she knew that these friends would be here when she came back.

After years of leaving a school midway through the year only to show up to some new boarding school or international school each time her mom was reassigned, Emily never had a chance to put down roots. But, with each bite of pizza, Emily felt herself becoming even more firmly rooted. Not to this place, but to these people as their lives became more entwined.

Once dinner was over, the game continued, and thoughts of politics left their minds. By then, Emily narrowed it down to the weapon (the candlestick), two rooms (the kitchen and the billiard room) and she was pretty sure that it was Colonel Mustard that had committed the crime.

She had a decision to make: walk all the way from the study to the billiard room, or risk being wrong by making an accusation. She was pretty sure both Hotch and Reid were on the right track, as the younger boy’s scribbling in his notebook had gotten even more intense and the older boy was beginning to look around suspiciously, as if the others were trying to read his notes.

She had pretty much ruled out Penelope, JJ and Derek as competitors, as the trio spent most of the time talking, and genuinely trying to have fun. Emily, Reid and Hotch were all way too into it, but Emily was competitive and this was her game. She wasn’t going to lose to Hotch, no way. Reid winning she could blame on his boy-genius nature, but Emily decided that Hotch was going down.

The two boys seemed to have come to the same conclusion, all eyeing each other across the board, the tension palatable between them as their competition became heated.

She nervously tried to move to the billiards room, deciding to play it safe. Better safe than disqualified. But, as soon as she made that decision, she regretted it as Spencer straightened up on his turn and said: “I’d like to make my accusation.”

“Write it down,” JJ prompted, as per the rules. He jotted it down in his paper.

Then, with bated breath, they watched as he grabbed the envelope out of the centre of the board, and read the cards. His face fell when he saw one of the cards, so he must have been wrong. He placed them back into their envelope and back onto the board.

“No dice?” Emily asked.

He shook his head.

“Statistically speaking that should have been right,” he grumbled. “My math was wrong.”

“Boy genius isn’t a good detective, huh?” Penelope mused.

A few turns went by, with Derek, Penelope, and JJ moving around the board or making suggestions.

Emily rolled the dice, making one square from a room. She sighed. She’d make a suggestion next round.

On Hotch’s next turn, he made an accusation, which he wrote down on a pink sticky note that Penelope had handed out when the game started. He checked the envelope.

Emily held her breath. She was sure he had it and that the game was over. She should just call it quits now. She went to bite her nails out of stress, but stopped herself, they were starting to get long and she wanted them to look nice.

A moment passed as Hotch compared his cards. After he saw the third card in the envelope, his expression revealed that was also wrong.

Boys, Emily thought. Always so overconfident.

She made a suggestion instead of risking it: “Miss Scarlet—er myself I guess— in the Billiards Room with the pistol.”

It was a gamble. If she was right, and the people who knew she had her own card and the pistol caught on, they would also know that it was the Billiard Room, because no one would be able to disprove her theory. If she was wrong, someone would have the card for that room, and she would know that the crime occured in the Kitchen.

The second seemed to be true, as Derek showed her his card with a small illustrated image of the Billiard Room on it. She was right. She knew what it was. But, she would have to wait until her next turn. She was going to win.

But, it was she who was overconfident, because as she was too busy preemptively celebrating her win, Derek casually made his accusation.

“Hey I’m right!” he exclaimed, holding up the cards and his own hot pink sticky note.

In his semi-cursive scrawl read: “Colonel Mustard, Candlestick, Kitchen.” These guesses matched the cards hidden in the envelope, and Emily’s own deduction that she planned to make on her own turn.

“You guys really thought I hadn’t played this game before?” Derek laughed. “I’ve got two sisters, board games were everything.”

“Were you hustling us, Morgan?” Spencer demanded.

He smirked.

“Should’ve put money on the outcome,” Derek said with a laugh. “I’d be rich.”

Emily threw her cards onto the table in defeat. JJ shot her an empathetic look, and Emily tried to stuff her frustration down to pat her friend on the back for the surprising win. He deserved it.

———

After the game concluded and the pizza had been completely eaten, the group parted ways, heading to bed, or for more midnight snacks or to finish up some studying, leaving JJ and Emily alone and to start? a game of Scrabble.

The board was ancient, and quite a few letters were missing, but with music droning on JJ’s laptop, and the soft fairy lights overhead, neither girl minded too much.

Emily looked at her letters: O, B, S, O, T, B, W and thought hard, rearranging the wooden pieces to try and formulate a word. After a long day of academia, and investing so heavily into the game of Clue, she probably had only one or two working brain cells and both were telling her to play the word ‘boobs.’

Her eyes flicked to her girlfriend, who looked absolutely gorgeous in the warm light. Her blonde hair almost glowed, and she had an adorable expression on her face. Emily couldn’t help but glance lower, thinking about the real world examples of her Scrabble word.

She played the word with a cheeky grin.

“‘Boobs,’ Emily?” JJ scolded. “Really?”

She sounded angry, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at her cheeks and Emily could tell the girl found it funny.

“I can’t help it,” Emily said. “I haven’t thought of much else since last weekend.”

She raised and lowered her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner, making JJ laugh and kick her lightly in protest.

JJ then played the word ‘throw,’ using the ‘o’ from ‘boobs’ to form her word, earning her thirteen points.

“I don’t think you can throw boobs, babe,” Emily said. “They’re usually attached.”

JJ rolled her eyes.

Emily made it her mission to find the funniest words possible, working extra hard (and missing out on some good points) in an effort to make JJ laugh. ‘Armpit,’ ‘meaty,’ ‘hoagie,’ ‘urine,’ ‘joint’ and her piece de resistance: ‘boner.’ All while JJ was playing incredibly normal, and often strategic words like ‘axis,’ ‘snow,’ ‘vain,’ ‘snag’ and ‘writings,’ hitting multiple double- and triple word scores on the way.

“This is fun,” Emily said, sneaking a handful of JJ’s Cheetos out of the family-sized bag next to the blonde, while she was distracted by playing her turn.

“I don’t understand how you’re winning,” JJ muttered.

Emily shrugged, “Guess I’m just a genius.”

“Reid? Is that you?” JJ joked. “Why are you disguised as my girlfriend?”

“Would Reid do this?” Emily said, leaning over toward her girlfriend and pressing kisses all over her face until she fell back. Then Emily straddled her, their lips meeting in a passionate embrace that left both girls panting.

“I would hope not!” JJ exclaimed with a laugh, making a face at the thought.

They laughed and went back to making out, with Emily careful not to disturb the game pieces. JJ sucked onto Emily’s bottom lip, making her weak in the knees and she struggled to support herself over JJ’s shorter frame at the motion.

“We should-” Emily tried to say between kisses, “finish the game.”

JJ kept deepening the kiss, going so far as to grab onto Emily’s butt to hold her in place on top of her.

“You’re trying to distract me,” Emily chided, “because I’m winning! I see right through your plot.”

She sat up and went back to her tiles before playing another funny word: ‘suck’ for twenty points. JJ grumbled,fiddling with her own tiles, as Emily collected a few out of the bag.

Emily was preening as she rearranged her own tiles and didn’t notice as JJ put down her word. When she went to play her next word (‘zap’) and only then did she see what word JJ played.

‘Love.’

It was there. Clear as day. Written vertically and connected to the word ‘snow,’ it was unmistakable. Emily looked at it for a long moment, trying to figure out what it could possibly mean that her girlfriend very intentionally played such a loaded word. Was it the only word that fit? Did she only mean that she loved the snow? Was she also reading into it?

Emily looked up, making eye contact with JJ. The blonde blushed and looked away, nervously fiddling with the necklace around her neck. Emily smiled faintly at the warmth that flooded through her, but alongside that, was the sharp pang of anxiety. Was she supposed to acknowledge that? Would that make it weird?

‘Zap’ didn’t feel appropriate when her girlfriend may or may not have confessed her love for her.

She played it anyway, deciding that making a big deal of it would just complicate matters. Besides, did she love JJ? She didn’t know. It was all so new. She liked JJ a lot. She definitely like-liked her in the traditional sense of the world. But Emily had never been in love before. She’d loved people before, Matthew for one, and her mother in a way, and she loved Derek like a brother. But being in love was a whole ‘nother ball game.

JJ won the game after playing ‘equinox’ for twenty two points near the end, beating any lead Emily had gained from her silly words. JJ deserved it in the end, as the blonde would sit and stare at her letters until they formed the most complex words that Emily had never even heard of. Emily’s eyes drooped and she was barely able to create three letter words by the end, while JJ was still surprising her with her vocabulary.

Emily shook JJ’s hand to congratulate her for the win. JJ grinned and kissed her.

Then, they looked around and realized two things: it was past one in the morning and Penelope hadn’t come back to the room yet and that all of the blankets that JJ owned were currently being used in the blanket fort.

“Can we sleep in my bed, tonight?” Emily asked. “I’ll help you clean up in the morning.”

JJ nodded but was in the middle of texting Penelope, wondering where on earth her roommate had wandered off to. Within a minute she got back to JJ saying: with derek! will explain tmrw!! 😘 🧚‍♀️ 😳

JJ showed Emily the message and both girls giggled. Emily saw that coming, but didn’t realize it would be a game of Clue that finally sealed the deal.

Exhausted but happy and relaxed after the game night, Emily and JJ tumbled into Emily’s bed and cuddled up together. Between JJ and Emily, the word ‘love’ was left unsaid that night, but Emily fell asleep that night feeling a new warmth in her chest.

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twistedlymad · 5 years ago

Note

UwU Your writing is amazing !!!!! I loved the puppy and cat escapades \ ^o^ / . Would you be willing to do one in wich the mc is bullied by the extras, because you know, no magic and already a director, how would the boys react?? Will this be the end of the extras?!?? Ill be eternally gratefull. iTs okay if you cant throug. Hope you have a wonderfull day, and dont forget to drink plenty of water, and take breakes. Take care of yourself!!!!

Originally, I had planned this to be another chaos fic, but, I realize while writing this, that bullying is something that cannot be taken lightly. In the Twst Fandom, we also had our fair share of bullying from a few anons and that isn’t okay.

So, in writing this fic, I made it more sentimental and just so you guys know, if you’re having a bad day or a bad time in general, feel free to talk to anyone, including me! Do not ever hold in your sadness.

But anyway, I hope this fic lives up to your expectations anon! Thank you for requesting and have a lovely day!

What if you got bullied? (Ft. Everyone!!)

What was supposed to be a great day, turned out to be the worst day you could ever have at Night Raven College.

Your day started off normally, in fact, it started off well! You woke up with a good mood. You saw the furball that you loved so much beside you, sleeping peacefully. You smiled as you gently shook him awake.

“Grim, wake up, it’s already morning.”

“Fgnaaaaa, five… more minutes…” The sleeping creature said, swatting your hand away. You just shook your head at his antics.

“No can do, remember what Crowley would do if he caught us being late again.” You said and the creature’s eyes immediately shot opened and he jumped out of the bed, scurrying about to get ready for the day. You saw his slightly panicking self and giggled to yourself.

“(Y/N)! We shouldn’t be dancing and prancing! If we do, we’re going to be late!” Said the creature as he saw you heading over to your closet in a small waltz.

“Oh, Grim, I woke you up 10 minutes earlier than usual.” You said as you grabbed your uniform and headed to the bathroom. “You have 10 minutes to spare, take your time.” And you left the mumbling little furball in the room, face planting himself back into the bed after hearing your words.

The first half of your day had gone by rather quick and uneventful, not that you were complaining though. It’s nice to not have fights and chaos to settle every once in a while. You had a lot of laughs and smiles here and there with your group of first-year goofballs.

However, your peaceful day was about to turn upside down.

You were walking back to your classroom. Your friends were reserving your spot in Professor Trein’s class while you went to Crowley’s office to take care of some business involving Ramshackle Dorm. You and Grim made your way down the hall to the class.

Some students saw this and thought it was a great opportunity to make you trip and fall. So, one of them stuck out his leg while you were making you were walking. You didn’t have enough time to react and ended up falling for their antics. You immediately turned your body around so Grim, who was in your hands, would be shielded using your body. Your back hit the ground, HARD. A few gasps here and there were heard.

Grim rose his head from your chest to see you using your elbow to prompt yourself up.

“Fgnaaa! (Y/N)!” The furball immediately went to help you up by providing some support.

“Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there.” The student who tripped you said as his friends were laughing.

“School rules say that no magic or fights are allowed on school grounds.” His friends snickered.

“I’m fine… Just… Let me get up.” You said to Grim, who was still helping you.

“Pffft, look at her, so defenseless, she shouldn’t even be at this school!” The student said harshly.

“Hello?! Night Raven College is a place for prestigious mages. Not humans who can’t use magic and defend themselves.” Another student said to you.

“And to think she’s a prefect! Hahahahaha! You couldn’t even compare to the other dorm leaders!” His friend added and they all agreed.

“Looks like Crowley had made a huge mistake in bringing you here, why don’t you just crawl back to that sad excuse for a dorm of yours alongside your lousy furball!” And the group of students cackled at their snarky comments about you.

You just drooped your head down. Even though you didn’t want to admit it, but, they were right.

You had no magic, you were ridiculed at the entrance ceremony but, Crowley still gave you a place to stay and he even made you an official student here. While others struggled in getting here, you sort of knew why they hated you.

You tried your best to hold in your tears as you felt them pricking at the corner of your eyes while your friends defended you.

But, one comment had pushed past your boundaries.

“You’re not even considered to be human in my eyes! To me, you’re just trash. Go find a trash can and make yourself at home!”

Was… Was this what the other students really thought about you? Trash? Useless? No value? You closed your eyes, taking everything in, ignoring everything and everyone else around you. And proceeded to walk away without saying a single word.

Grim shouted for you but you payed no attention to him and just kept speed walking. Your walking slowly became running and you were then running as fast as you could, just letting your legs lead the way. After awhile of running at full speed, you had slowed down and stopped to take a breather. You looked around to see where you were in order for you to get back to school if needed.

However, you were back at Ramshackle Dorm. Your dorm. The tears you had been holding back flowed out as you took slow steps to the dorm you loved. You went in and closed the door behind you. Leaning your back against the door, you cried out your heart as you slowly slid down.

All the student’s words are stuck in your head, reminding you of what everyone else thinks of you. Your tears just kept flowing as you used your sleeves to wipe them away.

‘They’re right, I’m not meant to be here in the first place.’ You thought to yourself. ‘If everyone hates me so, then, I should just disappear.’ You said in your mind as you stood up and went to your room.

You packed some clothing and madol, ready to leave and hopefully start a new life outside of Night Raven College. You stuffed everything into a duffel bag and went to the main entrance of your dorm. You placed your hand on the doorknob, thinking of a route to leave the school undetected. But when you opened the door…

You were faced with everyone you ever knew.

And I mean everyone! Your group of best friends, the dorm-leaders and your seniors. They were all gathered in front of your dorm.

“Ahh! (Y/N)!! I’m so glad we found you!” Ace said as he, Deuce, Epel, Jack, Sebek and Grim came to hug you. You were surprised, too shocked to even register what had happened.

“We heard about the incident today, we already reported it to the headmaster.” Riddle said.

“But the first-years also reported that you were nowhere to be found. So, we came looking for you and your dorm was the only place we haven’t checked.” Azul continued.

“So, we all gathered here after our search!” Kalim concluded. The first-year boys pulled away from their hug and they noticed your bag.

“(Y/N)? What’s going on? Why are you leaving?” Epel asked you. Your eyes slowly travelled to the bag.

“Um…” You started but Deuce cut you off.

“Is it because of those damned students?” Deuce asked you. “Did they threaten you?”

Now, everyone’s eyes were on you. You averted their stares by lowering your head.

“No…” You said, dropping the duffel bag.

“They didn’t threaten me. But, what they said was true, was it not?” You lifted your head to let everyone see your tear-filled eyes. “I am just a human, I don’t possess any magic powers and yet here I am in this school for magicians. Not only that, but I am also the dorm leader for this dorm and I have been made a prefect! Isn’t that unfair to everyone else?” You said out loud, letting everyone hear you.

“I understand why they would have these kinds of thoughts. I understand why they hate me. That’s why I thought that if I have left, no one would have these kinds of thoughts ever again. After, I am the problem, aren’t I?” You concluded.

Truth be told, the boys were shocked. They… They have never seen this side of you. Heck, they never thought you would be capable of producing these types of thoughts. In their eyes, you were always so cheerful and kind, even when things got out of hand, you would remain calm and solve the problem to the best of your abilities. To think someone this pure and precious to them would have such depressing and degrading thoughts is beyond them.

However, this shocked Grim the most. The creature practically lived with you for so long and he didn’t even have a single clue of this side of you was scaring him.

“No, you’re wrong.” Grim lowly mumbled, but you couldn’t hear him.

“What?” You asked the furball.

“YOU’RE WRONG!” He practically screamed at you.

“Grim-chan…” Cater said softly.

“Even if you did leave, their thoughts won’t change! You’re not the problem! It’s them!” The furball yelled to you. Everyone was taken aback by Grim’s sudden outburst. But the first-years were quick to back him up.

“That’s right! It’s not your fault (Y/N)!” Ace said to you.

“Students at NRC are picked by the mirror of darkness. No one can easily come and go in this school.” Leona reminded everyone.

“Exactly, you arrived here for a reason.” Rook said.

“You assisted us with our overblots, not every child of man could do that.” Malleus said, representing every dorm leader.

“You had us working together in sync during the Inter-High Magift Tournament.” Ruggie added.

“You brought us together as friends.” Sebek stated.

“Most importantly, you let me have a place here at NRC. Because of you, we were only able to attend the school as a student.” Grim said. “No one has ever done something like that for me before.” The creature said as he slowly crawled up to you.

Everyone’s words had stunned you. You were so busy thinking about the negative comments about you, you forgot about all your relationships with your friends and seniors.

Like, how you always had tea in Heartslabyul. Riddle would always invite you to have tea with him and the others, you would enjoy the peacefulness of the dorm under the supervision of their dorm leader. Trey would always ask for your help in the kitchen and you would have a fun time with him while making sweets and desserts for everyone. Cater would whisk you away to either a selfie-session in the dorm’s gardens or a photoshoot in any new place that the he had found to be photogenic. Ace and Deuce would invite you to play croquet with them from time to time, of course, you were very careful with the flamingos and hedgehogs as you didn’t want to hurt any of them, but, you couldn’t resist in using the flamingo to bonk on either Ace’s or Deuce’s head every once in awhile. It’s okay though, the flamingo understood completely.

Like, how you always trained yourself in Savanaclaw. Leona would sometimes go easy on you if you were invited to join one of their many Magift activities, although, you weren’t sure if he was pitying you or he was just being lazy in general. You would help Ruggie prepare food for everyone as you knew he could use an extra hand or two, it also meant you could pick up a new recipe here and there and you got to taste test all the food. Jogging sessions with Jack were also a normal thing, hey, if you’re going to be joining in Magift tournaments without magic powers, the least you could do is train yourself physically.

Like, how you always felt welcomed at Octavinelle. Azul would welcome you into the VIP lounge when Mostro Lounge was extremely busy and you couldn’t find a place to sit at. You would also help out around Mostro Lounge when you saw that the place was packed to the brim. Usually, Jade would entrust you with drinks while he and Floyd went to prepare food for everyone else. When Mostro Lounge closed its doors for the day, you would enjoy some tea with the three underwater mermen or you and Grim would play around with Floyd, pranking other students and dorm leaders. Heck, you and Floyd even pulled off a few enormous pranks against the staff members.

Like, how you would be invited to feasts and parties at Scarabia. Kalim would always have a big smile on his face whenever he invited you to go dine with him at Scarabia. Jamil always appreciated your help in the dorm, let it be helping him prepare food for the party that Kalim had just decided to have five minutes ago or just keeping an eye on the dorm leader while he went to settle some other business involving the dorm.

Like, how you would have small makeovers at Pomefiore. Every time you walked past the beauty-queen/king, you were immediately stopped by him, because either your bow or tie was crooked or your hair was a mess, well no matter the case, Vil would fix it for you. When you visited Pomefiore from time to time, Vil would take the chance to give you high quality beauty products to try and he would always go on a rant on how you should always take care of your image. Sometimes, Rook would sweep you away just to go on a mini hunt with him. Although, let’s be real here, you two always ended up spying on Leona at the Botanical Gardens while he skipped his classes. Epel would whisk you away to his room and teach you to on how to carve apples. You managed to carve a few of the staff members and even your friends onto the apples, of course, you would carve on a few extra features onto your masterpieces. Like, say, a moustache for Ace or funky-looking ears for Crowley. You also helped to keep Epel in check whenever Vil and Rook were teaching the first-years on table manners and proper etiquette.

Like, how you would enjoy mini-gaming sessions at Ignihyde. Usually, you would initiate the session with Idia. You two ended up playing both Co-Op and PvP games. While playing games that require you to cooperate, the two of you would discuss your plans and pick out the best course of action. The same cannot be said for Free-For-All games though. A few minor insults here and there are thrown between the two of you. But at the end, the victor will always do a little happy dance before continuing onto the next game. You loved Ortho like your own brother! Always treating him to various desserts and helping him drag his brother out from his room. Ortho looks up to you like a sister as well. There may have been a few times he’s actually called you big sis.

Like, how you would go on quaint little walks at Diasomnia. If you needed a breather, you would usually find yourself at Diasomnia. Due to a large forest surrounding the building and the silent atmosphere the dorm provides, it is the exact place where you would go to take a walk to clear your mind. Malleus would sometimes accompany you on these quaint little walks. You and Tsunotaro would chat about your everyday lives and problems the first-years would create. Lilia would make some tea for you after your walks and you would enjoy the tea and bits of biscuits and crumpets alongside the tea. You would also break up arguments between Silver and Sebek. The two would get into fights about the tiniest of things, from blaming each other for losing track of Malleus to blaming each other for not preparing for a test. Sometimes, Silver would accompany you on your walk instead of Malleus and you two would also have little chats here and there. Other than that, Sebek’s view of you actually improved after befriending him. He used to think you were a powerless human as well but after spending time with him and your friends, he realizes that you aren’t just any human being.

But for Grim, you had the greatest impact in his life. You accepted him, you took care of him, you loved him. And he loved you back, just as much. To him, you were his family since he had never had one.

In conclusion, you matter.

You. Are. Of. Value.

You are precious to them, you bring peace to them, you brought them together as a whole.

Once that thought had nested in your brain, you realized that you were foolish in having these thoughts in the first place.

“I’m sorry…” You said, crying. Grim went and hugged you.

“It’s not your fault… Just know that we’re here for you.” Said the furball as everyone also came and comforted you. You had spent the day with them as a whole, you watched a few movies, horror movies in that case. It was fun hearing the dorm leaders and their members scream shout yell made a loud sound whenever a jumpscare appeared.

You guys also played games together, but, I am not allowed to share any details because I actually know nothing. No, I’m totally not being threatened here Reader-san, don’t worry about me.

Send help pls.

Also, after the bullying incident, the boys were a bit more protective around you when in class/school. Usually, your group of first-years would accompany you wherever you go, let it be from your dorm to the cafeteria or from the class to another dorm, at least one of them will be at your side. And when they couldn’t be there, either a dorm leader or an upperclassman would be near you. Any student who seem like they have bad intentions to either you or Grim, would face unspeakable consequences.

And I mean unspeakable. So, I cannot inform you of these consequences as I am under an oath to not reveal anything. Um. Yeah. Good luck persuading the boys to tell you : )

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qqueenofhades · 4 years ago

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If/when they make a Joe/Nicky prequel movie, what are some of the Dos and Don’ts for them, with regards to historical accuracy. Like, what do you think they should include, and what do you think they should avoid?

Oof. This is a GREAT question, and also designed to give me a chance to ramble on in a deeply, deeply self-indulgent fashion. That is now what will proceed to happen. Consider yourself warned. So if they were miraculously to be like “well that qqueenofhades person on tumblr seems like she knows what she’s talking about, let’s hire her to consult on this production!”, here are some of the things I would tell them.

First off, a question I have in fact asked my students when teaching the crusades in class is whether you could actually show the sack of Jerusalem on screen. Like... if you’re making a film about the First Crusade, what kind of choices are you going to make? What narrative viewpoint are you going to uphold throughout the story? Are you actually going to show a slaughter of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants that some chroniclers described as causing enough blood to reach up to the knees of horses? (Whether it actually did this is beside the point; the point is that the sack went far beyond the accepted conventions of warfare and struck everybody involved in it as particularly horrific.) Because when you’re making a film about the crusades, you are also making it by nature for a modern audience that has particular understandings of Christian/Muslim conflict, religious warfare and/or tolerance, the War on Terror, the modern clash over ISIS, Trump’s Muslim ban, and so forth. The list goes on and on. So you’re never making a straight, unbiased historical adaptation, even if you’re going off the text of primary sources. You’re still constructing it and presenting it in a deliberate and curated fashion, and you can bet that whichever way you come down, your audience will pick up on that.

Let’s take the most recent example of a high-profile crusades film: Kingdom of Heaven from 2005. I’ve written a book chapter on how the narrative choices of KoH, aside from its extensive fictionalization of its subject matter to start with, make it crystal clear that it is a film made by a well-meaning Western liberal filmmaker (Ridley Scott) four years after 9/11 and two years after the invasion of Iraq, when the sympathy from 9/11 was wearing off and everyone saw America/Great Britain and the Bush/Blair coalition overreaching itself in yet another arrogant imperial adventure into the Middle East. Depending on how old you are, you may or may not remember the fact that Bush explicitly called the War on Terror a “crusade” at the start, and then was quickly forced to walk it back once it alarmed his European allies (yes, back then, as bad as America was, it still did have those) with its intellectual baggage. They KNEW exactly what images and tropes they were invoking. It is also partly why medieval crusade studies EXPLODED in popularity after 9/11. Everyone recognized that these two things had something to do with each other, or they made the connection somehow. So anyone watching KoH in 2005 wasn’t really watching a crusades film (it is set in the late 1180s and dramatizes the surrender of Jerusalem to Saladin) so much as a fictional film about the crusades made for an audience explicitly IN 2005. I have TONS to say on this subject (indeed, if you want a copy of my book chapter, DM me and I’ll be happy to send it.)

Ridley Scott basically sets it up as the Christian and Muslim secular leaders themselves aren’t evil, it’s all the religious fanatics (who are all made Templars, including Guy de Lusignan, going back to the “evil Templar” trope started by Sir Walter Scott and which we are all so very familiar with from Dan Brown and company). Orlando Bloom’s character shares a name (Balian de Ibelin) but very little else with the eponymous real-life crusader baron. One thing Scott did do very well was casting an actual and well-respected Syrian actor (Ghassan Massoud) to play Saladin and depicting him in essential fidelity to the historical figure’s reputed traits of justice, fairness, and mercy (there’s some article by a journalist who watched the film in Beirut with a Muslim audience and they LOVED the KoH Saladin). I do give him props for this, rather than making the Evil Muslim into the stock antagonist. However, Orlando Bloom’s Balian is redeemed from the religious extremist violence of the Templars (shorthand for all genuinely religious crusaders) by essentially being an atheistic/agnostic secular humanist who wants everyone to get along. As I said, this is a film about the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq made three years after 9/11 more than anything else, and you can really see that.

That said, enough about KoH, back to this presumable Joe/Nicky backstory. You would obviously run into the fact that it’s SUPER difficult to make a film about the crusades without offending SOMEBODY. The urge to paint in broad strokes and make it all about the evil Westerners invading is one route, but it would weaken the moral complexity of the story and would probably make it come off as pandering to guilty white liberal consciences. Are we gonna touch on the many decades of proto-crusading ventures in Iberia, Sicily, North Africa, and other places, and how the eleventh century, especially under Pope Gregory VII, made it even thinkable for a Christian to be a holy warrior in the first place? (It was NOT normal beforehand.) How are we going to avoid the “lololol all religion sucks and makes people do crazy things” axe to grind favoured by So Very Smart (tm) internet atheists? Yes, we have to demonstrate the ultimate horror of the crusade and the flawed premises it was based on, but we can’t do that by just showing the dirty, religiously zealot medieval people doing that because they don’t know any better and are being cynically manipulated in God’s Name. In other words (and the original TOG film did this very well) we can’t position ourselves to laugh at or mock the crusader characters or feel confident in looking down on them for being Dumb Zealots. They have to be relatable enough that we realize we could BE (and in fact already ARE) them, and THEN you slide into the horror and what compels them to do those kinds of things, and THAT’S when it hits. Because take a look at the news. This is happening around us right now.

Obviously, as I was doing in my First Crusade chapter in DVLA, a lot of this also has to spend time centering the Muslim point of view, the way they reacted to the crusade, the ways in which Yusuf as an Isma’ili Shia Muslim (Kaysani is the name of a branch of Isma’ili Shi’ites, he has a definite historical context and family lineage, and hence is almost surely, as I wrote him, a Fatimid from Egypt) is likewise not just A Stock Muslim. In this case, obviously: Get actual Muslims on the set to advise about the details. Don’t make stupid and/or obvious mistakes. Don’t necessarily make the Muslims less faithful or less virtuous than the Christians (even if this is supposed to praise them as being “less fanatic” than those bad religious Catholics). Don’t tokenize or trivialize their reaction to something as horrific as the sack of Jerusalem, and don’t just use dead brown bodies as graphic visual porn for cheap emotional points. Likewise, it goes without saying, and I don’t think they would anyway, but OH MY GOD DON’T MAKE THIS INTO GAME OF THRONES GRIMDARK!!!! OH MY GOD!!! THERE IS BEAUTY AND THERE IS LIGHT AND THERE IS POETRY AND THAT’S WHY IT HURTS SO MUCH WHEN IT’S DESTROYED! AND THE CHOICES THAT PEOPLE MAKE TO DESTROY THOSE THINGS HAVE TO BE TERRIFYINGLY PLAUSIBLE AND FAMILIAR, BECAUSE OH MY GOD!!

Next, re: Nicolo. Evidently he is a priest or a former priest or something of the sort in the graphic novel, which becomes a bit of a problem if we want him to actually FIGHT in the crusades for important and/or shallow and/or OTP purposes. (I don’t know if they address this somehow or Greg Rucka is not a medieval historian or whatever, but never mind.) It was a Major Thing that priests could not carry weapons, at least and especially bladed weapons. (In the Bayeux Tapestry, we have Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, fighting at the battle of Hastings with a truncheon because he’s a clergyman and can’t have a sword). They were super not supposed to shed blood, and a broadsword (such as the type that Nicky has and carries and is clearly very familiar with) is a knight’s weapon, not a clergyman’s. The thing about priests was that they were not supposed to get their hands dirty with physical warfare; they could (and often did) accompany crusade armies, bishops were secular overlords and important landholders, monks and hermits and other religious preachers were obviously part of a religious expedition, and yes, occasionally some priests would break the rules and fight in battle. But this was an exception FAR more than the rule. So if we’re going by accuracy, we have Nicky as a priest who doesn’t actively fight and doesn’t have a sword, we have him as a rule-breaking priest with a sword (which would have to be addressed, and the Templars, who were basically armed monks, weren’t founded until 1119 so he can’t be one of those yet if this is still 1099) or we just skip the priest part and have him as a crusader with a sword like any other soldier. If he was in fact a priest, he also wouldn’t be up to the same standard of sending into battle. Boys, especially younger sons of the nobility, often entered the church at relatively early ages (12 or 13), where it was treated as a career, and hence they stopped training in arms. So if Nicky is actually out there fighting and/or getting killed by Yusuf several times for Important Purposes, he’s... almost surely not a priest.

Iirc, they’ve already changed a few things from the graphic novel (I haven’t read it, but this is what I’ve heard) so they can also tweak things to make a new backstory or a hybrid-new backstory in film-verse. So once we’ve done all the above, we still have to decide how to handle the actual sack of Jerusalem and massacre of its inhabitants, the balance between violence comparable to the original TOG film and stopping short of being exploitative (which I think they would do well), and the aftermath of that and the founding of the new Latin Christian kingdom. It would have to, as again the original film does very well, avoid prioritizing the usual players and viewpoints in these events, and dig into presenting the experiences of the marginalized and way in which ordinary people are brought to the point of doing these things. It doesn’t (and frankly shouldn’t) preach at us that U.S. Invasions Of The Middle East Are Bad (especially since obviously none of the characters/people/places/events here are American at all). And as I said already but bears repeating: my god, don’t even THINK about making it GOT and marketing it as Gritty Dramatic Medieval History, You Know It’s Real Because They’re Dirty, Violent, and Bigoted!

Also, a couple tags I saw pop up were things like “Period-Typical Racism” and “Period-Typical Homophobia” and mmm okay obviously yes there are these elements, but what exactly is “period typical?” Does it mean “using these terms just because you figure everyone was less tolerant back then?” We know that I, with my endless pages of meta on medieval queer history, would definitely side-eye any attempts to paint these things as Worse Than Us, and the setting alone would convey a sense of the conflict without having to add on gratuitous microaggressions. I basically think the film needs to be made exactly like the original: centering the gay/queer perspectives of marginalized people and people of color, resisting the urge for crass jokes at the expense of the identity of its characters, and approaching it with an awareness of the deep complexity and personal meaning of these things to people in terms of the historical moment we’re in, while not making a film that ONLY prizes our response and our current crises. Because if we’re thinking about these historical genealogies, the least we can do (although we so often aren’t) is to be honest.

Thanks! I LOVED this question.

#history #medieval history #kingdom of heaven #joe x nicky #long post #persephone-rose-r #ask #the old guard meta

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fizzingwizard · 4 years ago

Text

Another Sunday, another episode of Digimon Adventure: (how tf do I do punctuate??). It is a good time to be a fan of Yagami Taichi.

I remember being 11 years old, the last episode of Digimon Adventure made be bawl my eyes out, and although I was excited for 02, really I just wanted more of Adventure. I guess I’m just slow to like new things (well, I am), but I would have super happy if the producers had been like, “02 will be a reboot for Adventure with the same characters and similar storyline.” And then do the same thing for every new Digimon season xD I’m sure I’m pretty damn alone in that opinion and don’t get me wrong, I love 02, and I think Tamers was good. And yet xD

^The screenshot that sums up the episode: Greymon gets his butt kicked while Taichi hangs on for dear life

I know the bond between children and Digimon is what powers them, and I’m kind of wondering if having a physical connection improves that in this show, because these kids are always riding around on their partners. (Not able exception - Togemon, because ouch. But I expect to see Mimi on her boxing glove at least lol) I have to rationalize it that way because otherwise it’s like why would having an elementary school kid on your head while you rush into the line of fire count as a battle strategy

This ep picks up pretty much where we left off, which means it’s probably only been hours since Yamato joined the group at the fortress. Already the atmosphere is completely changed.

I can see them, but they can’t see me... Ishida Yamato’s modus operandi

more below

Here is a very Digimon-esque tableau: everyone gathered around Koushirou and his computer. Yamato still being standoffish. I imagine he jumped at the chance to stand guard at the entrance so he doesn’t have to get too close to anyone.

Agumon’s fight with MetalTyrannomon went... not so great. Yamato coolly tries to explain to Taichi that evacuating was the only way, otherwise they’d risk all being destroyed, and that would be the end of everything.

Taichi’s fist tightens and begins to shake...

... he doesn’t look like he totally agrees with Yamato’s reasoning, but he doesn’t have a better idea. But, being Taichi, he can’t just let it rest.

Yamato talking to Taichi’s back while Taichi frantically starts to sort out his Feelings is just how they communicate. This is a common shonen anime trope for the hero and his foil. Yamato’s pushing, Taichi’s not exactly hiding, but he doesn’t want to face him until he can face him with resolve.

Yamato: Look at me. Look at me!

Taichi: *sweating* It feels like a hole’s burning in the back of my neck, so... I’ll pass

Taichi finally explains out what’s got him so knotted up: he regrets Ogremon’s death. Like we saw last episode, the battle that began as revenge turned into a battle of samurai pride. And Taichi is evidently a samurai. He wanted to see that battle to the finish, out of mutual respect for the opponent (who he’d never met before and who had been trying to kill him previously... but y’know when you’re kindred spirits that’s all water under the bridge)

Yamato doesn’t really get it. This is where these two are fundamentally different. Taichi attac, Yamato protec, then everybody gets a FIGHT!

I mean, not 100% of the time, but the bottom line is Yamato’s not so big on this pride thing, although he does have pride of his own. But he’s definitely not into taking unnecessary risks, especially if it puts his friends in danger. The trouble is, Taichi doesn’t think he takes unneccessary risks either... just necessary ones ;)

The other kids can already feel the tension increasing and Taichi and Yamato haven’t even raised their voices at each other yet. Lol buckle up kiddos

Jou wonders if he should make them stop, and Mimi instantly turns around and begs him to try. My Joumi heart LEAPT.

TBH I was surprised she did anything at all, I was expecting Jou’s “Should I break them up?” to just end there with nothing happening. Instead we got an adorable Joumi moment where Mimi shows that as much as she teases him, she already somewhat relies on Jou (to be fair, I do think Mimi’s the type to rely on anyone who offers when she’s not sure what to do herself). Jou, being Jou, is unprepared aaaaand wigs out.

Jou: Oh no oh no oh no she actually expects me to get between them?!?! But but I flunked Tough Guy school! That’s literally why I’m a nerd! This girl’s trying to throw me to the wolves!

Fortunately for Jou, he has a redheaded savior.

Sora: Stop it. He’ll wet his pants again and I don’t have any more extras.

Sora shows her insight into people’s hearts and understands that Taichi and Yamato need to hash things out. It’s not dangerous... yet. But the way she’s more or less frozen in place along with the others says she’s... maybe a bit on her guard, at least, lol.

Koushirou, being Kousihrou, is completely oblivious to all of this and focused on his computer.

Oh yeah... the real reason Taichi turned his back to Yamato earlier - whenever they look directly at each other, they suck each others souls out. I CALL BODY SWITCH

I mean jogress

I mean marriage

They spend like the entire first half of the episode arguing omg get a room.

Then... Agumon wakes up!

And even though it’s a cartoon, it’s clear to see the way Taichi’s body fills with relief. I wonder if Yamato didn’t realize or didn’t think Taichi was that worried about Agumon. 99 Yamato tended to feel that Taichi was insensitive to others. But while he can be, Taichi also doesn’t express his emotions in the same way as Yamato. They’re both wont to hide how they feel, but while Yamato goes quiet and aloof, Taichi just acts like everything’s normal. So maybe here, Yamato really thought Ogremon and MetalTyrannomon were the only things on Taichi’s mind. Just a guess.

Awwww montage of cute...

a boy and his dinosaur!!

Maybe to Yamato’s surprise, Agumon totally echoes Taichi’s feelings about Ogremon. “I wanted to settle the score with him.” Weird as it sounds, they made a manly bond with Ogremon and running away just doesn’t sit right. Agumon’s raring to go...

... but his stomach isn’t quite ready yet hahaha.

Yamato’s probably used to Gabumon’s appetie but I suspect Agumon’s tummy growl has errr exceptional resonance

Glad to see the return of the Digimon’s bottomless pit aka stomach. I think it was just last week I complained about that not really being a thing so far. This time it was the other Digimon who went gathering, but I hope to see the human kids rushing around in a frenzy to care for their partners’ appetites soon lol

While the others eat, Taichi and Yamato decide they haven’t finished vampiring each other’s souls and sneak out to the mouth of the cave. Sora follows them to see if she can watch any hot yaoi action.

Lol but I do really like the framing heart. All we can see of the boys is their shadows. Sora keeps her distance but she’s watching them intently from a distance. I assumed she was just gathering more data on how short a leash she needs to keep them on.

Turned out that was not quite correct... reluctant to interrupt though she’d been before, once they start talking about what to do next she adds her input. We’ve got Yamato on Taichi’s one side and Sora on his other side. It’s the beginnings of TAIORATOOOOO *more airhorns*

^I can’t see anything but Goku and Vegeta bahahaha. Also why is eleven-year-old Yamato SO broad-shouldered, between that, his deeper voice, and his perfeclty coifed hair Taichi must seem like a toddling infant to him bahahaha. Like come on Yamato is not a child you must be kidding

Already Yamato is getting into the habit of Looking At Taichi while Taichi Looks At Literally Anything Else.

These two don’t need words. They talk with their vampiric eyes.

Koushirou’s hyper focus on his computer finally pays off and they all gather back around. Everyone starts cheering when the hologram appears even though they don’t know what the heck it is. This is Koushirou, so it must be awesome!

It turns out to be a map of much usefulness.

And it turns out Ogremon was telling the truth about the path to the holy Digimon being straight ahead, while fires Taichi up even more.

^Obligatory ‘Gomamon is cutest Digimon’ cap

Koushirou also gives Taichi special data on MetalTyrannomon, including his weak point. Taichi is THRILLED. He’s happier about this than he is about finding the route to the holy Digimon. This is the difference between Taishiro and Taito guys. When Taichi gets a reckless idea, Yamato tries to talk him down, or at least be sensible about it. Koushirou? Koushirou is a FREAKING ENABLER.

They wait with baited breath for Yamato’s reaction. Though he seems underwhelmed, Yamato admits Koushirou’s information “does seem reliable.” That’s all the permission Taichi needs to go back to freaking out over how awesome Koushirou is.

They come up with a plan to lure MetalTyrannomon away so Taichi can fight him while the others take the chance to escape and head towards the path to the holy Digimon.

^Obligatory ‘Sora is best girl’ cap

Yamato waits for the others to get away before following after... he stalls for a minute as if unsure whether it’s really alright to leave Taichi on his own. In the end he joins the group... All things considered, I think he’s pretty thrown off by Taichi, tbh.

Yamato’s group doesn’t make it far before they encounter a very suspicious looking lake.

^More evidence that Yamato is not really an elementar school kids. He’s clearly at least 15. He’s been routinely failing every year in order to get held back until he can be in the same class as Takeru. That’s the extent of his overprotectiveness

It sure is fortunate that Koushirou’s genius extends to fluency in English or they’d have no idea this lake of dark mist is bad friggin news.

Or... maybe they would have:

Mimi sneaks behind Jou and pulls his middle school exam workbook out of his bag.

And immediately chucks it into the lake.

Where it disintegrates.

This is how Mimi’s mind works. She’s smart! They need to know what would happen if they went into the lake without actually going in it. So they need to put something else in first. So far so good. What should she throw? A stick? A rock? One of Sora’s endless towels?

No, Jou’s workbook. Duhhh.

She probably felt she was killing two birds with one stone here x’D Experiment complete, and Jou prevented from anymore whining about not having time to study. Mimi is chaotic good.

gosh I love Joumi

Jou is lawful neurotic

Greymon shielding Taichi is just soooo cute even if it still feels weird that he has to be up there in the first place

The battle rages between MetalTyrannomon and Greymon, who just won’t quit even though he’s losing... pretty bad... I mean...

He just grabbed a missile with his bare hand...

Taichi: Now I know what it’s like to be a firework

Loop-de-loop! Taichi’s suction cup shoes strike again.

Courage going UP!! Reaching a fever pitch! The evolution that’s been looming for two episodes finally happens!

MetalTyrannomon: Eat my dust!

Woooooooo, MetalGreymon is just as freaky as ever. Always my least favorite evolution in Agumon’s line, but the glowy purple wings are cool.

Also, nipple missiles.

MetalTyrannomon: I can’t believe I was beaten by some meddling kids!

So yeah, we are back to killing Digimon willy-nilly. None of this “but what about their hearts?” shitck. Always found it amazing in 02, a children’s cartoon, that said “Yeah the characters you loved last season were totes murderers but it was justified and sometimes you just have to kill.” And fourteen-year-old Taichi is just like, “Yeah, I’m a murderer, and you should be too.” XD And Miyako hits LadyDevimon with a skateboard. Priceless

This scene is adorable but Taichi’s butt looks so saggy.

I’m kind of wondering how evolution works in this show. They jumped right to jogress in like episode two or something, but we haven’t seen it since (I would sort of expected Taichi to think of it when it was clear MetalTyrannomon was too strong, though I would also expect Yamato to nix that idea both because he doesn’t want to and because to him it’s a pointless fight and not the priority). Since then, the Champion level evolutions went similar to 99 Adventure, with everyone getting their special episode, and I’m sure that’s how it’ll go down with the next level too, but there was no gap at all between going from one level to the next. I’m trying to say, they seem able to reach the next level awfully fast. They didn’t need to meet Gennai and collect the tags and Crests, the Crests appear already uploaded in their Digivices. I’m not complaining, as always I’m glad this show is not just a carbon copy of the old one, but I am curious if evolutions are easier to attain in this series, or if there are going to be more of them and that’s why they come so quick, or if the series just won’t run long enough for there to be significant gaps of time between evolutions.

Episode ends with the group deciding, like I predicted last week, to split up and try the Left and Right routes, since the Straight one is blocked. Gays go right and lesbians go left, of course. :P

This episode was pretty fantabulous, I loved it, Digimon is awesome.

Next week it’s no surprise what we’re gonna get.

WeeeeereGarurumon! Also my least favorite evolution of Gabumon’s line but still cooler than MetalGreymon hahahaha.

I’m also totally stoked for the grouping of Yamato, Jou, and Sora. There’s tons of potential for Yamato and Sora to bond, although my prediction is that while he’ll pretty much like her (even if he won’t admit it to himself), she’s going to find him a little difficult. But she’ll have an easier time talking to him than the others do. I also fully expect Jou to drive Yamato out of his mind lol.

This also means the other group is Taichi, Koushirou, and Mimi. I assume we won’t see too much of them next week, but I hope that means they’ll get their episode the week after, because I am dying for some Taishiro moments. Practically salivating. Also, Koumi fans can probably look forward to Mimi and Koushirou Not Getting each other too, lol

#digimon adventure 2020 #digimon psi #digimon adventure reboot #psi spoilers #digimon #fizz watches digimon 2020

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the-worst-fe-player · 4 years ago

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☕ everything about fates and the drama give us an essay king

Lamo thank you to king/queen/royalty

Okay so I'm gonna break this down into segments and header it with a different colour some will he shorter than others. Also sorry if I spell names of county wrong and rember this is just my opinion

Story

Also heads up I played it in this order conquest -> rev -> birthrights I know I should have swapped rev and birthrights but it was really expensive and I was like 14

Fates story is not the best but deffently not as bad as some people said. Overall I'll be honst I liked conquest story but not birthrights which I know most people have the opposite oppion on but like I found conquest to be more fun I enjoyed the idea of sneaking around garons back with your siblings and being powerless at times to stop a lot of the things like the massacre where scarlet dies and ryoma death there where moments I just groaned at the screen but apart from that I had more fun. Birthrights I'll be real the story kind of bored me i only really found certain parts interesting but my favourite moment from fates actually came from birthrights and it was the Xander fight where he killed elise and then let corrin kill him it was tragic and sad and I live for angst ngl. rev story I don't remember to much sorry I mostly fouced on the characters ngl but that sence with the kid turning into the faceless was really cool and also the one with makoto and she fucks with you and the doors but idk if that's classed as story or gameplay but either way that was sick

Gameplay

Fates gameplay was soild as fuck I will die on this hill. The pair up was cool, the skills and classes where sick and the character balancing minor some major problems *cough xander ryoma takumi cough* was pretty cool and corrin is not nearly as broken as Robin or byleth. I like to play conquest the most because I'm a maschoist lol but even though most of revs maps where gimmicks I love them there so iconic, tbh most of fates maps are like I understand most of fates criticism but the maps, apart from rev as not everyone likes gimmicks, I just dont understand

Phoenix mode

Honstly play the game how you want to if that's on normal Phoenix go a head I dont care you play the game how you want to. Like yeah Phoenix mode may take away all the difficulty but casual took away perma death and that's the most played game mode because that's what people want and if people want Phoenix then just let them have it doesn't bother me I will never play it but I dont care if others do.

Corrin

Okay so I actually like corrin and before you look away I will explain why I think their dislikes and why I do like them and think how they could be improved

I think the promblem people have with Corrin is that they dont have enough personilty to be a regular character but they have to much that they can't be an avatar if you know what I mean. Like with Robin they deffently had a personily but they weren't the main character chrom was so it wasn't in your face as much yeah they made some important decisions whitch often did nothing but at the end of the day it lopped back to chrom and this is something corrin cant do everything has to be about corrin as there the main lord. But corrin is kind they dont want to kill common soldiers and that's never really addressed (as far as I can remember) why corrin wont kill like the sibling bit make sense but the common solider whitch could have killed there spouse is just frustrating at times and something not many people feel while playing. Corrin would have worked better if they wasn't a self insert that went against the average players emotions. But yeah I do feel people are to harsh on corrin as well though like with the whole not earning the Yaot witch is like they kind of did though it was the fact that who ever held the yaot would bring the world peace and they did it was there destiny to do so to fight in a war and mabey kill there family but even then I don't see people giving the three houses leaders shit for there wepons and they did less all they did was be born from a group of people that committed genocide! But also many people say nothing bad happens to them but at least in conquest and birthrights corrin suffers, in conquest the blood of what you think are your siblings are on your hands one forced to commit sucide and the other painful possed and then there the amount of murder they just had to watch and then birthrights watching elise die for them and xander pretty much letting corrin kill him and everything else like bruh this shit is sad and is also the reson I pray fe stops using self inserts and goes back to the older ways

Translation

Why! Why! Who thought that was a good idea Xander what did they do to him 🥺 I haven't finshed reading a direct translation of fates yet but its like so much better then the English version if you have the chance to read through it's worth it so much. Also same with three houses it wasn't as bad but like certain scenes are better like the really cringy reponse el had to dimitri on gronder feild actually makes sense and just especially if you like crimson flower as out of all the routs edelgard and cf feels like it got changed the most its just interesting ngl anyway onto fates again

The petting game

I know I would hate it as I already hate the wake the slug a bug up and the "you didn't blow niles hard enough" stuff but it was also optional so like idk i don't really have an oppion

Fan service (camilla)

I like big tits (as long as there not mine lol) as much as the next person who also likes that stuff but even I'll admit It was way to much at times especially the did you miss you big sister part like I enjoy camillas character I'm a sucker for a character with a tragic backstory, loves there family, cares for others a bit to much and could bench press me but the times where she was just fan severse sucked.

Paying for everything sprealty

I hate it:(

Characters

Leo♥️leo♥️leo♥️

Overall I like the majority of characters, here are my top 3 favs girls and boy

Best girls : Charlotte, orochi and Nyx

Best boys: leo, saizo and laslow (idk if he counts if not Forrest)

I always see people being like (x) was wasted in fates i wished they were in a different game but literally 3/4 of the cast have that said about them so like do yall hate the cast or love it :/

My overall oppion

I have mixed oppions over all I do like fates conquest is one of my favourite fe and I hope mabey in twenty years it will get re made with a better translation and some adjustments to corrin and the story

Thank you for the ask sorry this is so long and sorry if it makes no sense

#ask #anon #fire emblem fates #fire emblem meta #long post

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loveau · 5 years ago

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reverse-idol!jisung

request: hii are u still doing the reverse idol series? if you are could i request a jisung one? 🥺🥺 if you arent anymore,then its okay thank you!💗💗💗

others: doyoung (part 2) | jaehyun (part 2) | jaemin (part 2) | haechan (part 2) | renjun

you absolutely love your trainee work

yes, it’s absolutely vigorous and so time consuming and mentally draining and you’re not sure you can even get up the next day your body’s so sore

but you love it!

the only thing that never seems to tire is your voice

you can go on for hours just singing, humming, even rapping

you can also talk someone’s ear off if you really wanted

but your main focus is to continue singing that sweet melody and hitting those high notes

you do it quite frequently

whether it’s at home in the kitchen or shower, in the practice room during choreo, or even in the halls at school

most people love to hear your voice, you have a real talent after all!

you also love to showcase it!

and jisung? he hates it

to be fair, waking up at 6 and having to hear loud singing everyday isn’t exactly ideal

especially when you can’t really help whether or not you get to hear it

but it seems almost unavoidable whenever he steps foot on campus

he's tried it all

waking up even earlier to see if he'd beat you to school and get a couple extra minutes if quiet

or even coming to school right on the dot with a huge risk of being late so he could prolong his peacefulness

he's tried different routes, different entrances to the building, he's even sat in the wrong class on purpose to see if by chance your voice wouldn't carry

of course you somehow would bump into him on the way or be joking around with your friends in the other classes

it wasn't that he didn't like your singing, in fact he would say that it's really good

perhaps one of the best voices he's ever heard

but it's so constant and you keep singing those sappy, cheerful pop songs and it's so loud and he doesn't know what else to do?????

he often complains that he seems to be the only one not enamored with your voice like the others

don't get me wrong they too don't feel the need to listen to it 24/7, but your openness and friendliness to them makes it so nice!

a nice personality with that charming voice, a deadly duo

and jisung doesn't want to be falling for any of that

he tolerates your friendliness in class just fine and is responsive when you wave to him on the journey to school

he just wishes that he could play his own music loud enough to get that heavenly falsetto out of his mind

or wishing that he didn't have to hear the melody drifting in and out of the halls

he thought he'd never see the end of it

until one day he finds that you're nowhere to be heard

he's not used to this

the sudden quietness it seems

the regular conversation, laughter, and yelling from pranks if still there

but there's no cheerful melody of some girl group song or the hardcore raps of a boy group accompanying them

it's also strange that nobody seems to notice

he's looking around, waiting for those silly lyrics about unconditional love or unrequited crushes

he's waiting for it.............

but it never comes

jisung doesn't realize that he's looking lost until his friends are like

"hey bro are u okay?"

and he snaps out of it like "uhhhhh....... yeah? i'm fine"

"arrrrrrre you sure?" jisung realizes he's still looking for you and straining his ears that all of a sudden he's frustrated by the noise level preventing him from hearing well

he leaves his friends saying he's going to go to the bathroom, he isn't feeling well

and he's so distracted that he completely ignores how his friends are teasing him that he has to take a dump

jisung doesn't know how long he's been roaming the halls for you, or doesn't even know how long he's been running down them

it isn't until he hears a long note that he feels the strong wave of recognition hit him

he wants to say annoyance at hearing your voice again is there, but he's surprised that it's more relief..............

he's also surprised to feel that he's rather concerned

after all, it doesn't sound like your typical singing even though he knows it's you

he's heard your voice plenty of times to recognize it at first but........ why does it sound so different?

jisung listens more to pinpoint where you are and as he continues hearing this song he realizes

he's heard this song before

on one of those music shows that his mom listens to, because she's a sucker for those love ballads

and while you're singing one of those, jisung thinks you aren't singing about having your heartbroken by a past lover like the lyrics say

there's so much raw emotion and it's so different than those innocent pop songs you prefer

he eventually finds you outside by the sports field, standing tall and your voice carrying out very clearly

he'd come to realize the power in your voice if he was able to hear you from inside the school building

you finally finish that song you were singing and that's when jisung finally reaches where you are

he actually can't explain why he walked up to you

before, his goal was merely........ to find you???

not because he missed you or anything

but he also was just..... curious? as to what happened and where you went and more importantly why were you singing so sadly?

unsure of what else to do now that you've ended your song jisung only claps and you're sort of startled when you hear them

but you take the applause easily, already used to the attention you get for your loud singing

"it was good." like always, but he thinks he'd have to swallow some of his pride to say

he'd be too stubborn to have to throw out his annoyances now

"hi, jisung! normally you aren't out here, what's up?"

although he's awkward about interacting with you besides being classmates..... he's never had much more than that other than complaining about your singing going on for so long or the songs you get stuck in his head because he can't not listen

except this time.... he feels more determined and compelled to figure out why the song choice and emotion was so strong

as well as why you seemed to put up that act........

your happy self was accompanied by your happy voice....

so it was obvious you were hiding

"normally you aren't out here either... i just wanted to check up on you"

there's curiosity in those eyes and jisung isn't backing down now

you can see that he's curious but all of a sudden you find that you can't speak

it was as if his very presence made you break down all the walls you had built up so you could stay strong....

especially not when he continues with

"you don't sound the same when you're sad. although it's good... it's different"

and you're smiling but it's very pained and you can't even bring yourself to hum a note like you want to

you thought that like before, you could just sing it all away and instead everyone can focus on your talent!!

not on your flaws or shortcomings, especially as a rising trainee

"i was gonna have a solo song for our debut album"

jisung doesn't really know what to say

he feels bad for how he would think about your constant singing all of a sudden

it was as if the sadness in your eyes, especially your voice, was too much to bear

you hum this time, but it's a flat note and your tone is almost gravelly the next time you speak

jisung's heart stops when he sees how watery your eyes are

"they told me my voice wasn't good enough alone, so they took it out of the album... i have to work a lot harder if they want to incorporate it in the future"

at this jisung is astonished....

liKE?? HUH?!?!?!?! EXCUSE ME????

one of the BEST talents in the GENERATION......... and the company decides to give that up????

his shock melds into anger once he sees the mopey pout on your face

he tries to keep his tone level so he doesn't push you or overstep

"...... how long have you known?"

you hum again and it's calmer, more in thought

"a month or two..."

and jisung can only think.... wow...... you held it together for so long and now???? :(((((

this poor baby feels so bad about judging you before because you never quieted down

but now he can't help but miss your cheerful singing

sure it's only been a day and he just heard one of the most emotion ladden, heartwrenching ballad covers of the century but......

it's just not...... you

while you continue to sulk in thought, you're brought back into reality by hearing a cluster of off-key notes

you look bewildered to find a somewhat red in the face jisung mumble-singing and avoiding your gaze

it's cute, really, to see him trying not to mess up but he is doing so a lot

you can't help but laugh a little when his voice cracks and jisung sputters

"w-what?!!?!? it's not like i'm used to singing!!! ........ in front of an audience anyways...."

you're laughing even more at his face now pouting much like you were before

"no!!! no, it was fine. it was good. for a bit.... you messed up some of the notes"

jisung blushes a little and he really wants to crawl under a rock to hide forever

but............... the happy smile on your face is back and it makes jisung feel so proud of himself

he did that!

he! did! that!

he made you smile!!!!!

you bet that makes him feel so accomplished after seeing you so down before

you know because of your comment and amused laugh, jisung would be less likely to sing again unprompted

but you start humming a note, trying to find a key similar to his voice from what you remembered

"here" you start, and his attention is now solely on you like a student awaiting the teacher "i want you to try to copy the note i hum"

he nods and after a couple of tries and him swallowing down embarrassment when his voice cracks again, he gets it

"okay, now sing the note without me. i'm going to harmonize with you!!"

and the two of you successfully sing a note together and jisung is kind of amazed at how easily you could adapt to his voice

just kidding he's super amazed, but he'd never tell you that

the rest of the lunch is spent harmonizing random songs and notes together while you sway side to side and jisung tries not to blush under your radiating smile

he feels so happy hearing your happy singing again, even if his voice mixed in the bunch makes it sound clunky

but you have a way of making it sound pretty okay!!

and suddenly you’re teasing him saying he should be getting ready to debut with a voice like his

jisung doesn’t even mind that his voice keeps cracking anymore

jisung would happily continue to voice crack if it meant his voice would make you sing again

little did he know that he'd be doing this a lot more even when you aren't sad

he'd be doing this to cheer you up, because you roped him into a duet, or just because he wants to be around you and being around you makes him want to sing out

after all, he can't stand your voice... but he hates it even more when you sound sad

#elli writes #nct #nct dream #jisung #nct dream imagines #nct dream scenarios #nct dream fluff #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct fluff #jisung x reader #jisung fluff #jisung imagines #jisung scenarios #fluff #neutral pronouns #reverse idol au

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pochapal · 4 years ago

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rank every year of the 2010s from best to worst i want some pochapal lore

[warning for discussion of my fucked up mental health and my myriad traumas. we’re really opening the pandora’s box here gang]

ok time for me to overshare on the internet again! super long post because i can’t shut up and you asked for it. anyway, by objective ranking:

#1: 2012 - halcyon era, my personal peak. spent the whole year writing hunger games oc fics with my deviantart fanfiction besties whom i still think about all the time and always hope are having the best possible day. if you were here for this era understand i still hold you so closely and dearly in my heart <3.

#2: 2013 - god i was such a good example of a human being back then. was the year my writing like actually took off and i had a healthy balance between creative stuff and a social life (said social life consisting of spending lunchtimes at school breaking into classrooms and discussing fandom shit with five other people. reading homestuck updates in the music room on one person’s really shaky mobile data...legendary). highlight of the year and maybe my life was in the april of 2013 when i got out of failing to submit a hard deadline essay by telling my english teacher i wrote a whole novel over the two week break and then producing said novel. god i wish i had that level of like. fucking confidence back me back then knew what i wanted and how to get it.

#3: 2010 - the last year of childhood. i was 12 and played pokemon all the time with my friends and went places and had a moderately successful youtube channel and it didn’t matter that i was bullied so badly at school because i was basically high off life. summer of 2010 was so good specifically. i’d used to get the bus with a friend and go see movies and break into historical sites and get into normal childhood mayhem and maxed out my pokewalkers twice a month and i was buzzed because i had two (2) whole friendship groups to choose from and that was such a huge deal to me the terminal social outcast. it was so simple and carefree and even though everything and everyone involved in this era grew up to suck except for one specific person i kinda really miss it.

#4: 2018 - this was the first year i wasn’t depressed to the point of nonfunctioning. it was 20gayteen, i was on antidepressants, i was as close to thriving as i got at uni (going into town with people once a week, attending art and culture events, getting good grades across the board), i started to write for fun again, i got my cat whom i love dearly, i was exhibited in my uni’s city’s literature festival, GOD i actually nearly attended a pride event that year can you imagine. this year was basically my life’s second peak. miss getting the 8am train and daintily sipping on a cherry coke to keep me from passing out. wish this time could have lasted longer.

#5: 2019 - kinda absolute middle of the road year not for lack of anything happening but because the overwhelming amount of good and bad things cancelled each other out. so like there’s the fact that i was at the top of my uni game this year, was basically making the first steps into a professional writing career (covid i will never forgive you for killing all that dead </3), finally saved up enough to buy myself a gaming pc, and the summer after the homestuck epilogues, but equally 2019 was the start of the Pochapal Gender Fiasco which is by far the most horrible thing i am still currently undergoing and i burnt myself out mentally about halfway through the year (being stuck overnight in a hospital for a panic attack absolutely horrible horrible irredeemable) and then got like super death plague flu that i was sick with for three months (literally recovered less than a month before rona hit. god’s cruel karma.). so like...it kind of averaged out? the good shit was good but not as great as other years and the bad shit was awful but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been. gotta give a shoutout to 90% of my current mutual cohort for following me in 2019...omelette route gang make some noise !!

#6: 2014 - oof. this year essentially marked the start of a four year long downward mental health spiral because everything fell into awful alignment. i’d just turned 16, finished secondary school, had all my friends up and ditch me at once, was home alone for a whole summer, and was hit with Sudden Intense Body Image Issues that i couldn’t explain until uh. after very recent developments lmao. this one goes out to the me of july 2014 who did nothing but lay in bed and listen to the same two marina albums on a loop because fuck i’m attracted to men and also my facial and body hair are really starting to come in and if i think about this for too long i will literally kill myself because oh god i can’t handle getting older which is clearly and definitely the issue going on here. my brain fucking broke super hardcore and it’s a miracle that an overeating disorder was like the worst thing i walked away with.

#7: 2015 - downward spiral year two!! i was so volatile this year it was such a mess. i was totally socially isolated after a brief stint of falling in with a group of people at the start of my first year of sixth form until january where in quick succession a) it turned out every single one of these people was friends with the person who sexually assaulted me whom i obviously had a lot of complicated feelings towards and b) baby’s first crush came out as bisexual but in the “women and also trans women” kind of way which tore me up so terribly in ways i couldn’t begin to understand. no words for the experience of seeing a girl kiss a boy and crying so hard at night you threw up because you could never be her no matter how much you wanted it. actually kinda get the sense what was going on there was bigger than just some crush lmao. then after that i was so mentally ill i basically attended school less than half the time and it was the only year in my life i failed my exams. i ended up having to resit my entire set of first year a level exams because jesus christ was i in such a bad way it was a miracle i even showed up to them. all i did was either have anxiety attacks or enter bedbound depressive slumps for weeks at a time. but it’s okay because it gets worse.

#8: 2016 - downward spiral act iii: the spiralling. prefacing this by saying that i actually had two whole good months (april - may) in that i was functioning enough to do my exams and finish school with decent grades. the rest was super extra mega terrible. my school attendance for year 13 dipped below 65% and literally the only thing that kept me from being kicked out was the fact that i was naturally smart at the subjects i took and also because the school would have a lot to answer for after letting me get to that state despite having a hefty file on how damaged i was. keep in mind every single part of this was fully untreated btw - i was just floundering around and letting it all fester. i spent three solid weeks going to school but locking myself in the bathroom all day every day and having mental health episodes then going home like nothing else happened only to continue the breakdown that night. then things got kicked into fucked up overdrive when i moved out to uni and was cut off from what little support structures i did have. it was so bad all i did was cry all the time and never went anywhere to the point where three separate sources recommended me to the wellbeing and crisis counselling service that i stopped going to after two sessions because i was fucked up in ways cbt techniques could not even touch. at least i tried to make an effort for the first two months of uni which like. good for me?

#9: 2017 - what lieth at the base of the spiral. helltrench year. i was at literal rock bottom. i stopped going to class, i didn’t hand in a single piece of work. i lied to my parents and would book trains each day only to go back to my student flat and sit there and contemplate suicide. like i would just slump on the floor in a catatonic state and vividly contemplate one of four or so ways i could end my own life. i only didn’t because i wanted to wait until the summer to collect my last student loan and transfer it to my parents as an apology for my death which obviously didn’t end up happening. honestly i can’t remember much of the first half of 2017 that’s how bad it was. i remember taking a gender studies class and the teacher made it Weird that i was the Only Male Student in the room and then she sent me a scolding email after i walked out halfway through a class and never returned. apparently i got into a lot of online discourse in this year but i don’t remember anything other than being put on a blocklist by the milkfic author over ace discourse which is funny if you have the context. mostly i just baited terfs and weirdo freaks to get them to say horrible things to me as what i guess amounts to some kind of digital self harm. anyway breaking point came in late august when i got kicked out of university and then nobody could ignore it any more so there was no choice left but for me to seek out help and recover enough to function which luckily i did. i really Do Not remember 2017. you could tell me anything about that year and i’d probably believe you.

#10: 2011 - extra circle of hell for this little fucked up gem of a year. on the surface it wasn’t actually that terrible, until the Summer 2011 Domino Effect Of Bad Shit. up until like may/june it was a pretty all right year! i was 13 and had a surprisingly successful youtube channel uploading pokemon soundfont remixes to an audience of i think ~350-400 subscribers at my peak? anyway then i got hit with the early summer triple combo of childhood friends moving away, cute and quirky sexual assault at the hands of a person in my friend group, and then having some Really Great and Super Appropriate interactions with adults on deviantart. like obviously there’s the actual ptsd-inducing event which totally disrupted and killed the person i was right up until that moment and reshaped every facet of my life for better or worse (there’s an alternate timeline where that didn’t happen and i got into electronic music and/or coding instead) but really it’s the events that followed in its wake which were kind of more fucked up. so like all of a sudden i was super aware of my body and me growing my hair out and being mistaken for a girl in class suddenly became this Less Innocent thing and i ended up spending hours overnight going to transgender questioning forums and looking up hrt timeline videos and having the wikipedia article on tracheal shaving saved because it was a life raft to me whose voice was imminently gonna deepen and i was simultaneously reeling with constant trauma flashbacks and the whole thing was so so fucked up. then i was on deviantart and i don’t remember exactly how but a small group of furry guys ten to fifteen years older than me started messaging me and encouraging and requesting me to produce nonsexual fetish stuff for them and talking to me about stuff like if i’d ever thought about growing up to be gay and i didn’t think anything of it for a long while because they called me a very talented writer and it felt so good to have someone be nice to me after being so alone and isolated for months on end. anyway the only reason i got out of that before it got bad was because they invited me to one of the big furry sites and i was weirded out because i thought it was a porn site and thinking about sexual stuff was a huge trauma trigger so i just ended up blocking them all and pretending like it didn’t happen. at the time half this shit didn’t bother me but in retrospect holy fuck 2011 was such a damaging year. to think if like three events didn’t happen i wouldn’t be the fucked up mess you see before you today.

god fuck this turned out super long but i’m not apologising because this was a therapeutic exercise for me and also constitutes as one of the biggest pochapal lore dumps of all time. come get your food or whatever.

#Anonymous #long post #read all of this if you have vested interest in knowing intimate details about my life or whatever

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jhaernyl · 5 years ago

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So my ninja taxes are predicated on a handful of concepts, one of which is a big straying away from canon bc I cannot rationalize why Konoha works the way it was if we don't change Hashirama and Madara's motivation for founding the village.

If they really had started their village So That Children Would Not Have To Fight And Die then there is no fucking way that Konoha would have ended up the way it did, not even from the beginning.

Children would not have been allowed in the field, full stop.

My reasoning, instead, went that Hashirama and Madara looked at how hard life was for their older relatives, the ones that got injured too much to fight again but didn't die, the ones that went blind or deaf and had to be cared about from the rest of the Clan and possibly thought themselves a burden on the other members of their nomadic society, respected "Elders" who weren't necessarily old but who couldn't fight anymore and who dealt with a slew of PTSD complications that might have barred them from even interacting with children and teaching them, further making them feel inadequate or who possibly left the Clan to go into civilian careers where they could settle down in one place, get more or less regular medical care as needed and thus sort of 'left' the Clan behind.

(As a side rant I would like to add that the reason why Madara and Hashirama wouldn't focus on the 'children shouldn't be soldiers' is because that while child soldiers definitely do happen in the real world, in the contest of the Naruto framework it didn't make sense for the time Madara and Hashirama were in to send children as young as the manga told us they were to fight against full-grown adults the way the manga depicted them doing.

I can buy the occasional genius being put into battle way too young (cough Tobirama cough) as long as it came with other factions being anything in the range from impressed-but-somewhat-disapproving to downright appalled at the age the kid was thrown into the field but not it being a systematic thing, because the infant mortality rate would be too high and unsustainable so I think it would make more sense, especially given their ages when they meet, if Madara and Hashirama older brothers died rather than their younger ones.

Hashirama and Madara are supposed to be SEVEN YEARS OLD when they meet and yet somehow both of them are the eldest of their siblings, with Tobirama being the second eldest to Hashirama and Izuna being somewhere around Tobirama's age supposedly, and both have already lost three younger brothers to battle against the opposite faction? Huh huh, sure Kishi, whatever you tell yourself to feel edgy.

No, it makes more sense to me that they were middle children who both became Heir because their older siblings either died or were crippled too bad to continue fighting and that was followed by frustration/rage/depression/sense of being rejected / feeling of uselessness in relation to their war-like Clan whose tradition and Leader Are In The Field kind of leadership demanded an able-bodied shinobi to lead them and that shaped them and informed their ideas for and dreams of an ideal village where that wouldn't be the case and where their younger feelings shouldn't have to feel that was going to be the end they were going to one day meet unless they died in battle.)

So Hashirama and Madara looked at that and they went "That's not what I want for my brother/cousins/uncles/aunts/relatives / etc." and so their dream was to create a place where a shinobi would be supported (the way many self-made shinobi at the time weren't, unless they joined the Clan and, as said above, even joining a Clan didn't necessarily protect them in the long run, depending on their specific situation) beyond his or her or their utility in the field, where they wouldn't have to leave the Clan and their support network to settle somewhere safer, (Tobirama, in the background: where their health and minds could be looked after so that they would not snap and go insane and have to be mercy killed.)

Which allows for the focus of the village to be on a very Japanese-appropriate taking care of your Elders who have already contributed to your society and can still have more to contribute in the way of teaching young ones without having to die in the battlefield or feel themselves become 'burdens' (which they aren't but they might still feel like) and reducing the weight of care on the families by having a support system to person and families be something organically built into the Village’s structure, in more ways than taxing but also through the taxes levied.

It also allows for a spiralling effect being present towards having more people and time to devote to training the young and thus, especially once the Ninja Wars happen and create that sort of constraint on society, leading to younger graduation classes because that can happen as a slippery slope kind of situation where no one means to send young kids into battle before they are ready but if you are sending the older teens and adults into battle, then the younger kids can take over in-village missions that would otherwise be given to adults, right? And if they are doing in-village missions, why not missions right around the village, not too far from it, with their jonin sensei coming along to ensure their safety? They are not being put at risk, they are just being helpful to the system while still being safe.

And that slides into 'well they can do missive runs to safe places on safe routes, we are not putting them in danger, they are just covering for the kind of thing that the adults are too busy with the war front to do' and then slowly and slowly inch down until it becomes 'bring cargo to the back of the lines, far away from the front line, so that we are sure it gets there safely and then they can help the adults escort the wounded back, reduce the number of people we have to discharge from duties where they are needed and there are still enough adults around that it’s safe enough.'

As I said, a slippery slope.

Starts small and over time it gets normalized and slides down inch by inch.

Back to topic, the focus is on looking after those who get injured and/or need to retire means that two of the main taxes being levied are the Injury Insurance Tax (IIT) and the Invalidity, Old Age & Survivors Tax (IOS) which works like the national funds do in Italy.

It's something that you invest in, just in case you will need it later. Almost all ninja end up needing the IIT funds, at some point during their career, while recovering from injuries and being unable to run missions (thus reducing the stress on ninja on the monetary side and sometimes making life easier for the medics, because patients who know that they will get paid while they work to get back to 100% are patients who might be less likely to book it out of a window at the first instance) and all ninja who are not on a suicidal bend and actually looks forward to managing to make it out and retire can look at the IOS as a support system that will one day help take care of them, should they be too damaged / too old / not able to be around children to make out a living by having a profession/teaching children, etc.

The IOS being something that they have put money in during their service to the village, this also avoids the mental trap of being seen as a charity because it's not you accepting charity from someone else. It's you reaping the reward of that money you sacrificed for so long and set aside exactly for this specific occurrence.

It's not a handout but rather one of your rights that you are expecting/requesting/demanding to be granted to you as promised, so it skips quite a few mental traps that might otherwise prevent them from accepting the help they are being offered.

There are fixed percentages for how much you get taxed depending on rank because the higher you get, the more money you make and the more danger you are exposed to so you both can afford to be taxed higher and you are undergoing higher risks, so you are more motivated to invest into taxes that will give a return when something happens.

Clan ninjas are especially invested in the system and joined under the clear assurance that the village would look out for them if they look out for the village and have a higher investment in wanting their retirees to be supported and looked after properly since that was one of the reasons Konoha got founded to begin with and they were attracted to the security it was supposed to offer.

They get taxed an extra on the IIT and an extra on the IOS in all categories because living in a Clan gives you all sort of advantages that people outside of a Clan don't have and thus you are expected to have the funds to be able to afford that extra and being part of a Clan you have plenty of people around you that are benefiting from the system which goes to show you that it's worth investing in it.

Everyone pays a not indifferent amount of their paycheck to the village in general, upfront, and that amount of money is part and parcel of being part of the Village.

The Village provides for you in many ways, including allowing you to be part of the village and take their missions at all along with things like the free healthcare, but for the village to be able to afford to provide for you, the Village needs the funds and so your missions get taxed and what you get taxed on is fed back into the natural circle of the village's economy.

That is especially important during wartime when funds are going to be depleted way faster than they would normally be and a lot of missions you would see during peacetime fall to the wayside / cannot be taken on by you so you wouldn't see an income from them so you have to be offered a different kind of Wartime Paycheck if you are deploying in the field on the frontline in one long stretch rather than on a mission-back-to-Village-have-time-off-to-train-and-relax-and-get-some-TLC-get-another-mission-back-to-Village-again-etc. basis.

So every ninja pays a specific tax amount to the Village and then Clan ninja give another cut to their Clan because of societal obligations to your Clan and because the Clan provides for you and all Clans pay a general tithe to the village in the form of being taxed based on the number of members they have, the space they occupy and what percentage of whatever it is they produce (poisons and antidotes for the Yamanaka, medicines for the Nara, preserved food for the Akimichi, insect-related products for the Aburame, etc.) gets handed over to the Village to be used for everyone (the rest they keep to store or sell as they prefer).

Being part of the Clan is a privilege and a duty and part of it is contributing to the Clan, which is both a remnant of before the Villages were formed and how the Clan maintains their specific level of independence from the Village. Some Clans will ask more of you, some Clans will ask less and leave more in your pocket, it depends from Clan to Clan.

It's not all detractions, tho, though there are a few more that go to hit non-Clan, non-Clan-affiliated ninja. The Village provides you with basic kits and as they get depleted you can just go to the quartermaster and get refills issued without paying. If you go out to shop, you get discounts (calculated monthly based on medium earnings, the family of origin, living situation, taxes paid, quality material, economical support you have or don't have, etc.) on goods that you might need to use as a ninja and, if you are from a Clan, you get discounts within your own Clan or allied clans.

Orphans, especially ones without Patrons to look after them who are still underage or who are of age but do not yet have a trade to fall back on / are unable to be at least chunin ranked, are given a base monthly stipend and then they receive extra money on top of that basic stipend depending on their needs. Food needs, training material needs, age, family situation, your rank, how long have you been your rank, clothing needs as identified by the wear and tear of your gear as witnessed by your rank's quartermaster, if you need feminine hygiene products, etc.

On top of a basic food allowance, there are also extra food categories are organized based on whether you are pre-pubescent, pubescent or adult (the amount of food a growing kid vs a growing teenager vs an adult needs varies), what kind of diet do you need for your, for civilians, apprenticeship or, for ninja, training and development.

Are you focusing on your physical skills rather than your chakra skills? Non-chakra intensive diet. Are you working with a lot of Jutsu / genjutsu / training to expand your pool of chakra? Chakra-intensive diet. Are you doing both? Okay, file for both. Your sensei needs to confirm and vouch for your request.

Depending on what you are doing, who your sensei is and what he has you doing and what brand of skills you are focusing on (which influences which kind of foods you will need), the 'very chakra-intensive' / 'very non-chakra intensive' and the 'extreme chakra-intensive' / 'extreme non-chakra-intensive' diets are something you might need to apply for.

Someone like orphaned teenager Maito Gai would definitely hit the 'extreme non-chakra intensive training diet' category because he is doing extreme taijutsu training but given that he also needs to develop and train the amount of chakra necessary for summoning, he'd also be able to apply for 'very chakra-intensive training diet' whereas someone like Kurenai, who is a genjutsu mistress and relies less on her physical abilities, would go for the 'extreme chakra-intensive training diet' box possibly with a side of 'chakra-intensive training diet' if she's keeping up with something more than the barest levels of physical conditioning.

Plus depending on what kind of things you are doing, you might qualify for more than one category of the same type. Let's say you are Minato and you are working on fuck off giant Jutsu (extreme chakra-intensive) but you are also working on finicky, control-based sealing work that requires a different use of your chakra but is also exhausting in its own way (chakra-intensive) but you also need to work your ass off on your speed and reflexes (extreme non-chakra intensive) to keep up with your in-development Jutsu technique without getting disoriented / splatter yourself against trees along with the general physical training you do (non-chakra intensive).

Depending on what your schedule is and what you are doing, you will eat different quantities of food and you will need different types of food as well so if you can convince your sensei to sign off on it, you just apply for whatever you think you need the most or you go big or bust and try to apply for all categories if you think you can get away with it.

And then there's the housing tax if you live in Village housing for ninjas (with the expected wear and tear for being somewhere ninja lives and thus often needing repairs that are given to you free of charge because you are already being taxed for occupying a ninja-specific living space with all that comes with it).

There’s also whatever you (if you are an orphan) owe to the orphanage and/or academy (calculated based upon the resources spent to house and feed and clothe and wash and train you accordingly to your potential).

A lot of the housing thing and owed-to-orphanage/owed-to-Academy debts are predicated upon whether or not you have or not a Patron or a Clan sponsoring you or relatives who might not have been able to take you in (due to age of the relative or other issues) but could help pay for your upkeep and studies and if you do have someone which kind of person they are, what kind of agreement is in place and what kind of economical support they have been able to give you.

Aaand I'm going to stop there for right now because I've been typing about taxes for an hour and a half and I need a break XD

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thelioncourts · 5 years ago

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title: beyond the pale author: marrieddorks fandom: captive prince pairing: damen/laurent word count: 22204

Laurent DeVere was off limits. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

A lot of that — 43% — was because of Laurent himself. Despite only being nineteen years old, Laurent seemed to have long mastered the art of appearing as aloof and cold as humanly possible. Displays of emotion were limited to disdain and boredom, but even those were better to be on the receiving end of than the craftily cultivated blank stare he spent most of his time wearing as he wandered campus.

But Laurent was beautiful. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about that either. Though he tended to dress somewhat severely with high collars and covered wrists and ankles, his outfits were form fitting and it was quite a form that they fit. And while it would have been nice to see him in something not darker than the heart lying in his chest, the contrast of his muted clothing compared to the porcelain quality of his skin, the flaxen shine of his hair, and the unclouded blue of his eyes only garnered him more stares of longing and desire from classmates, professors, and passerbys alike.

So, while Laurent was dubbed as the cast-iron bitch of Arles University, he was also beautiful and that meant most of the student body wasn’t controlled enough to take the warning of his temperament to heart.

But Laurent DeVere was off limits and the reason that was obeyed — the other 57% of the reason — was because he was Auguste DeVere’s little brother and Auguste said so.

Auguste DeVere, unlike his brother, was loved and adored by all. Everyone wanted to be Auguste’s friend. And, in a way, everyone was Auguste’s friend. Auguste was the kind of guy that always had something nice to say about somebody else. He went out of his way to help those around him, whether it was the cliché of helping an old lady load her groceries into her car, insisting that his apartment was a space where anyone could come and crash if they needed it, or volunteering to tutor the undergrads that were struggling in their classes. There was no person better than Auguste, really.

But Auguste was fiercely protective of Laurent. That fact had been established long before Laurent got to Arles University. Since Auguste’s freshman year, he had talked nonstop of the love held for his little brother. With the loss of both their parents at such young ages, the two boys had grown up with nothing but one another. It had built an unbreakable and sacred bond, one untouched by anyone on the outside.

When Laurent had finally hit college age, Auguste had sat down his friend group calmly and respectfully. He had informed them that Laurent would be moving to campus, would be living in the other bedroom in Auguste’s home, and that Auguste wanted everyone in the room to continue to be part of his life but that meant Laurent would be part of theirs too; the brothers were a two-for-one deal after all. Of course, everyone had agreed vehemently. Then Auguste, just as calmly but with warning in his smile, had told them that Laurent was off limits romantically, sexually, and even emotionally. Off course, everyone had agreed again, this time with a lot of confusion to accompany their nods.

When they had finally met Laurent for the first time several weeks after Auguste’s preliminary meeting, they understood.

For that first year, everyone had obeyed diligently. They had needed to get a feel for Laurent’s personality anyway and upon discovering it and finding it less than amorous, leaving the beautiful and forbidden younger DeVere was an easy task to follow. Well, for all them but Lazar.

With summer come and gone far too fast, however, everyone was making their way back to campus. A few of them were starting their first year of grad school. Auguste was in his final already. And Laurent was a sophomore and even more beautiful than he had been the year before. It was now that things started to change. People noticed.

[Continue on AO3]

1. Nik

The entire team was close. Practically blood-oath close. They were the equal of a fraternity, but without the out-of-pocket money for Greek life fees. Instead they paid for their bonds with their blood, sweat, and tears. It was well spent too. They were the division champions for the third year in a row as of last year. This year they were trying to make it a record four.

The first week on campus was spent mapping out schedules and routes, stocking up on food for their dorms, apartments, and houses, and catching up with all the guys like no time had passed at all. The first text, sent out in the obnoxious group text they had set up, said a simple “7 @ Kesus?” and had been followed by almost a dozen accounts of “Yes,” “Hell yeah!” and a few emojis that all signified the same, including the Ferris wheel emoji for unexplainable reasons.

Kesus was a pub downtown. It became their go-to spot when the convenience of its placement in comparison to their favorite drunken food run, a food truck located right on Barbin Avenue, managed to filter through their eventually sober minds. It was made even better by the fact that it had a table in the back large enough to seat their whole motley crew, even when a few extras managed to tag along.

As it was, by seven o’clock less than half of them were seated at their table, but that didn’t mean they were any less loud than normal. Rowdiness was in their nature.

“How do classes start next week already?” Orlant groaned.

“Time moves forward and tasks and events fall on a timeline, thus —”

“Shut up!” Orlant groaned again.

“But time is a construct.”

“This is why God abandoned us, you know,” Rochert pointed out.

“Okay, I’m leaving,” Jord chimed in.

“No!”

“Who are we missing?” Nik asked.

“Lazar, Pallas —”

“That’s no coincidence,” Damen snorted.

“Huet, Berenger, Auguste, and Alexon. I think that’s it though.”

“Huet won’t be here until Thursday.”

“Do you think Auguste is going to bring Laurent with him?”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Let’s hope not. If I wanted to deal with that level of bitchiness today, I would’ve watched some god-awful reality T.V. before coming here.”

“He’s not that bad,” Damen said, smiling.

“Neither is the common cold, but I still don’t want it hanging around me,” said Nik.

“At least he’s good to look at.”

“Yeah, but if Auguste catches us looking at him, we’re dead men walking.”

“If Auguste catches us looking at what?” came Lazar’s voice. Most of them had to turn to watch Lazar saunter in, eyes bright and hair mussed, with a pink-faced Pallas under his arm.

“At Laurent.”

“I don’t know how he expects us not to stare,” Lazar continued, pulling out a chair and tugging Pallas into it with him. “Has anyone else seen Laurent’s ass in the pants he wears? Magnificent.”

“It’d be hard to see his ass when I do my best to stay at least fifty yards away from him at all times,” Nik mumbled.

“God, just get a restraining order, it’d be more efficient for you.”

“Don’t think I haven’t looked into it,” said Nik all too seriously.

“And how are you planning on doing that?” Damen laughed.

“Simple. Get a temporary protection order, get everything filed within the court, and, eventually, convince the judge to grant me a permanent restraining order.”

“What evidence are you going to show?” Lazar asked with a grin. “How he makes your cock involuntarily hard?”

Nik flushed, though whether it was from the truth or the implication no one could be quite certain.

“Yeah, I don’t think things will work out in your favor if you try to get a restraining order on him that way,” Jord said.

“Who’s getting a restraining order on who?” came Auguste’s question.

“What is with you all and sneaking up on everyone at the wrong time?”

“Nik,” Damen emphasized, “doesn’t want a restraining order on anyone.”

“I want it against your brother. Oh, hi, Laurent,” Nik said, this time with an accompanied eye roll.

Sure enough, Laurent was standing at Auguste’s side, posture relaxed and almost bored, his right hand tucked in one of the back pockets of his dark pants. If it was possible, Laurent had gotten more beautiful over the summer spent away from Arles University. Everyone noticed. They let Lazar speak it for them, however, which was a grave mistake on their part.

“Laurent,” Lazar practically growled in greeting. “My lap is able to fit two beauties if you’d care to join.” He patted at his left thigh, the one Pallas wasn’t currently putting most of his body weight on and waggled his eyebrows all too suggestively.

“As wonderful as that sounds,” Laurent started, his voice clear like a bell and doubly as sweet, “I fear that since you only think with that poor excuse that you call a dick, you definitely lack the capacity to pay proper attention to one person right in your vicinity, let alone two. I’d also like to avoid being entirely disappointed before the school year starts at the very least.” It was impossible to miss the judgmental flick of those pellucid blue eyes to Lazar’s jean-covered crotch.

Despite Laurent not being on the team and despite him being the youngest of the group altogether, it didn’t feel like he was tagging along. Sure, some of the guys liked to tease that Laurent was the equivalent of some of the guys’ clingy girlfriends, but it wasn’t true. Laurent had his own place with them, and he fell right back into it without any effort, taking a seat between Auguste and Jord for the remaining unruliness of the evening.

Sadly, the unruly night passed by too quickly as did the following days. Before anyone knew it, they were back in classes and clutching to whatever free time they could find.

For Damen and Nik, best friends long before the college years hit them, that meant finding at least one day a week to grab lunch together. It was a tradition they started their very first semester. Being in different majors, they didn’t see much of each other throughout the week and this was a guaranteed way to spend a good hour together not quietly sitting across from each other in the library or partying with the rest of the boys.

One semester they had been lucky enough to have time for three days of meeting up for lunch.

This semester they were only able to squeeze in one day. Thus, every Tuesday at eleven-thirty it was impossible to miss the two guys trying to shoulder by each other through the doorway of Belloy’s Bagels, the bagel deli that made the biggest and best bagel sandwiches within fifty miles of Arles.

“I’m just saying,” Nik started as they made their way to the window seats, hands warmed by the tin foil hiding their sandwiches, “that I’ve only been in this class for a single day, but I’m inclined to believe that this professor is going to spend more time mentally fucking over half of the first row than teaching at all.”

“Maybe it’s for the best. You said that this class was going to be a waste of a semester anyway,” Damen pointed out to him. The window seat was one of the draws to Belloy’s Bagels. They were thinking long term, after all, and come October they were going to need some give from the incoming cold. But for now, in the hot air of August, this also gave them plenty of sunlight to bask in.

“That’s true, but that doesn’t mean that I want to deal with that kind of incompetence for fifteen weeks.”

Their mouths were already full but that didn’t stop them from getting to talking as they always did, falling into it like it was the most natural thing because it was, and the first half hour went by way too fast for either of their liking.

Damen opened his mouth to voice such a feeling, but it was then that a flash of blond caught his eye. Laurent DeVere walked by the front of Belloy’s Bagels, two books under one arm and a messenger bag slung over the other. He didn’t seem to see Damen and Nik, or if he did, he didn’t acknowledge them which wouldn’t be surprising, and he was there and gone in seconds. The last of him that remained was the shine of his hair in the sunlight as it caught in Damen’s sight.

Damen was staring after him.

“Please don’t.”

Damen turned to Nik.

“What?”

“Well, to start, you have bean sprouts hanging out of your mouth. But what’s worse is that you stared after Laurent like we’ve seen Lazar do.”

“Lazar leers. I wanted to make sure it was him, that’s all,” Damen said.

Nik hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, I do suppose you had to lean out of your seat and press your face against the window to make sure it was. Perfectly understandable.”

“Cut it out, Nik!” Damen was laughing. “You’re being dramatic. As per usual. He’s our friend.”

“Maybe you consider him a friend.”

But the next week was one in the same. Their food was long devoured, the tin foil that once held their sandwiches balled up into shiny spheres, and Laurent walked by right at noon. There was a pair of headphones peeking out from his hair this time.

“You stared again.”

“I didn’t!”

“You did. What’s with that?”

Damen waited a beat, then two. Then he exhaled loudly, head falling forward. “Come on, Nik. Auguste is going to graduate at the end of this year. He won’t have anyone but us. Least we could do is keep an eye on him.”

“I knew the second that blond-haired-blue-eyed snake was brought here that you were doomed,” Nik moaned.

“I told you that’s not what this is about!”

“But you are attracted to him.” It wasn’t a question. They both knew that.

“I’m not going to do anything about it.”

The next week, however, Damen still stared with the kind of quiet longing that wasn’t so quiet when he didn’t have to be aware of Auguste’s eyes on him. Or even Laurent’s.

The week after that Nik was talking, telling Damen a story about his law and society course, when he noticed Damen was zoned out, brown eyes all too focused on the world outside as though he was waiting for something.

“...and then a bear walked in wearing a hat and said, “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I can’t seem to find the bathroom anywhere.”

Damen nodded.

“Damen.” Nik snapped his fingers in front of Damen’s face three times and Damen came back to himself with the slightest shake of his head, eyes finding Nik’s in startled confusion.

“What?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m right here, I’m just —” Damen stopped suddenly, sentence still hanging in the air around them, and Nik rolled his eyes and opened his own mouth to ask what was wrong when Damen jumped out of his seat and ran to the front door of Belloy’s Bagels, one large hand pushing and holding the door open.

Nik watched as Laurent came walking by and didn’t give Damen the satisfaction of jumping at the sudden intrusion on his otherwise silent trek across campus. Nik watched as Damen did all the talking, hands moving a bit animatedly with his words. Nik watched as Laurent raised one delicate eyebrow before shaking his head and continuing.

Damen was back inside in seconds.

“What,” Nik began, and Damen wouldn’t meet his eyes, “was that?”

“I invited him in for lunch,” Damen told him honestly.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s lunch time and he always looks so alone when he walks by here.” Nik kept staring and Damen could read the expression.

“Yes, I’m sure you’re being entirely selfless here.”

“Auguste wouldn’t want us to see him and not talk to him,” Damen argued.

“Auguste also wouldn’t want you pursuing Laurent either, but that want of his doesn’t seem to be stopping you from doing it anyway. And, besides, Laurent is grown. If he wants to hide away, that’s on him.”

“Asking someone to lunch is hardly pursuing them.”

Nik didn’t argue anymore, and he didn’t have to. The next week was like clockwork and Damen once again ran to the door and asked Laurent inside. This time Laurent at least said something. His blue eyes fell toward the direction he was walking in and then flicked to Nik before he said something along the lines of, “I have class in a few minutes,” before he was off again.

The next week, Nik was shocked to walk in to Belloy’s Bagels and see that Damen wasn’t already seated, but had his lunch, Nik’s lunch, and a latte from the cafe next door with him.

“What’s this?” Nik asked as he pulled out his chair and slid in. The sandwich was still steaming hot, indicating Damen hadn’t been there all too long.

“Thought I’d surprise you,” Damen said. He was smiling and had his hands on his drink. Like all the weeks before, they started talking, and after a while Nik asked around a mouthful of food about the latte.

“Since when do you drink lattes from Chastillon?”

“I’ve never tried it, but since it’s right there,” Damen jutted a thumb in the general direction behind them, “I thought I’d stop in and see what was going on.”

Nik wiped his hands with a napkin. “Then why haven’t you drank any of it?” Grabbing the cup quickly, Nik was able to garner from the steam still rising from the cup what flavor it was. “Could it be because it’s a vanilla cinnamon latte and I’ve never known you to order that in your life?”

Damen didn’t answer. He didn’t have to either. A flash of blond walked by and Damen was out of his seat, the latte precariously sloshing up the sides of the cup a bit as he ran out the door. Nik heard him call out Laurent’s name and had first row seats to watch Laurent turn around and look at the drink as though it could bite him. Damen was talking animatedly again, and Laurent finally gave a curt nod after Damen stopped. With elegance not befitting the situation, Laurent crossed the distance between them and reached for the latte, cradling the warmth of it to his chest. Nik saw him say thank you and turn without another word or look.

The next week played out the same, except Nik did his very best to ignore the latte on Damen’s left. When he paused their conversation to run outside and give it to Laurent, Nik continued to act like nothing happened. It was easier, especially when it happened again the next week.

They were now halfway through the fall semester, over seven weeks in, and Nik prayed that next semester he and Damen would choose a lunch spot Laurent didn’t wander anywhere near. He was praying for such a thing as Damen handed Laurent the latte in his hands when Laurent didn’t immediately walk away. Damen had retreated inside, but Laurent was following.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Laurent told Damen just as Damen was grabbing his seat again.

“Doing what?”

“Don’t be daft. These things are at least four dollars now.”

“There’s a perfectly good reason to buy them. It’s starting to get chilly outside,” Damen said as though that made everything fine.

Laurent said nothing. Instead he stood there with an unreadable expression, chin high and hair wind mussed. His messenger bag strap was twisted below his shoulder.

“What are you usually doing around eleven?” Damen asked, filling the silence.

“Waiting until it’s time to go to class.”

“You could meet me at Chastillon. I’ll even let you buy your own latte if you’d like.”

Nik knew not to be surprised the next week, but he still was when he was just feet away from Chastillon and saw Damen and Laurent through the window. They were sitting across from one another at a table by the far wall. Laurent had his laptop and a series of books spread out in front of him and Damen had a notebook and a pen. Damen looked up at Laurent once. Twice. Three times.

The next week Nik watched as Laurent did the same.

2. Jord

The relationship Jord shared with the DeVere brothers was odd. Okay, odd was perhaps not the right word; the relationship Jord shared with Laurent DeVere was odd. The relationship he shared with Auguste was simple and easy. It was a friendship full of mutual respect and camaraderie.

Jord had known Auguste since their freshman year of school. Despite having the money to afford a place of his own, Auguste spent his first two years in the dorms and threw himself into the roommate pool. Jord and him were randomly assigned and Jord silently thanked the fates for it because Auguste really was a great friend.

Because of Jord’s past with Auguste he also was the only one of the group to have known Laurent just as long.

It was impossible to forget meeting Laurent. When Jord had, Laurent had only been fourteen years old. Even then he was smart as a whip and twice as pretty as anyone else. One year Jord even spent part of the holidays with both DeVeres. His avoidance of his own family made him susceptible to Auguste’s suggestion he come back home to The Manor with him where Laurent’s judgmental gaze waited.

Though their start was a rocky one – to keep a long story short, Laurent left Jord lying in the dirt right outside the stables – years of keeping Auguste’s friendship had cemented Jord’s relationship with Laurent.

As the years progressed, Jord came to a frightening realization that he felt protective of Laurent. He wasn’t at the level Auguste was, and he never would be, but it was impossible to not feel protective after witnessing the comments thrown Laurent’s way as he aged.

Despite the odd and brother-esque relationship Jord shared with Laurent, there was no other person he would rather have in his class this year.

Jord was TA’ing for a Roman military history course this semester. Dr. Paschal was Jord’s advisor, mentor, and favorite professor at Arles University. He’d been in the doctor’s class his freshman year and it was his guidance and passion that allowed Jord to conclude what he wanted to major in.

When Laurent had walked in on the first day a few weeks ago, he had looked at Jord with that cool stare of his and said nothing as he elegantly sat down at the end of the first row, just in front of Jord’s own desk.

Jord had been nervous. Dr. Paschal was a no-nonsense kind of guy. And while Laurent wasn’t the kind to disrupt the class for attention or for the simple purpose of being disruptive, Laurent was the kind to tell the professor they were wrong and, should the professor try to argue, eviscerate them with words alone.

By the third day, Laurent was Dr. Paschal favorite student by far. The doctor tried not to show it during class, but in private with Jord he sang countless praises of the intelligence Laurent showcased with every question, comment, and argument he made.

After several weeks, Jord lessened in his tension and, instead, joined the doctor in his amusement and even pride at Laurent’s analytical nature taking the front seat of most lectures.

“He’s a handful,” Dr. Paschal laughed one day, handing Jord some lesson plans for the following week.

Though he should have, Jord never considered that Laurent was watching. Laurent was always watching though and after class one day he had let Jord know that fact.

“If you keep laughing every time I prove someone wrong you may be accused of playing favorites.”

The cool-toned observation had startled Jord who had still been at his own desk, gathering up the four-week essays all the students in the class had written and turned in.

“I don’t think it’s me who needs to be worried about that kind of accusation. Just the doctor.”

Laurent’s lips had upturned, so slightly, and Jord still couldn’t tell you how it happened or why, but he had suddenly found them both on their way to the library in a comfortable silence.

Ever since that day, Jord and Laurent had gone to the library after their shared class. It made sense, Jord had told himself after the third time; Laurent spent most of his free time in the library anyway and going right after class was the only guaranteed way Jord would get his TA’ing duties out of the way on time.

Their studying was done in silence. Jord had learned quickly that Laurent was not to be talked to, messed with, or anything of the sort while he was studying. By the time they would grab a table (always on the fourth floor) and spread their papers, laptops, and notebooks out, Laurent would have his headphones in and his eyes on the tasks in front of him.

It went on like that for several weeks, a routine created in quiet comfortability. On occasion, Auguste even joined them, bringing along five-inch-thick textbooks that Laurent glared at when they took up too much of his own space on the table.

Though their sessions were quiet, Jord came to appreciate not only the productivity of the almost two-hours-long spent studying, but also the way they shifted his relationship with the youngest DeVere. Auguste had long lamented Laurent’s introversion. It wasn’t that Auguste had any problems with his little brother being quiet, bookish, standoffish, and even albeit shy, but he did have problems with the fact that those factors often meant one thing: that Laurent’s friend group was limited. While Jord recognized that these hours spent with Laurent would never lead to a best-friends-forever kind of situation, it did give him hope that Laurent would allow Jord to be part of his life after Auguste graduated this coming spring.

Midterms came and went and Jord and Laurent’s study sessions seemed to drag on longer than normal. Laurent, ever the perfectionist, wouldn’t leave until every line even semi-related to whatever he was working on at the time had been read, reviewed, noted, and read once more. Jord, dealing with his own personal midterms as well as his grading for Dr. Paschal’s class, was drowning in a flood of mediocre to superb sophomore papers all relating to the social reforms that shifted Rome from its republic to its time of the mid-Roman empire, couldn’t seem to catch up at all.

A particularly tense Roman military class went by in a blur the week after midterms. The doctor wasn’t happy with several of the students’ assignments and Jord found himself on the receiving end of several dirty looks from those who knew he himself did a large chunk of the grading. Jord blamed the tension on how he missed the approaching figure throwing a bout of shade on the library door.

“Let me grab that for you guys,” a deep and warm voice said from behind and to the right. Both Jord, and appearingly Laurent, had been too in their own heads that they had missed Damen of all people joining them on the front steps of the library.

“Damen,” Jord started with a smile, moving to the side so Damen could pull open the first door, “what are you doing here right now?”

Damen was a hard to miss kind of guy with his height, muscles, and large personality and heart to match, and Jord mentally sped through the last several weeks in his head, trying to place if he’d seen Damen here. It wasn’t that it was an unexpected thought for Damen to be at the library, but the group was close enough that if even one person was present somewhere, it would be odd to miss another.

“I’ve got a group project for my physiology class,” Damen made a face. “I usually go to the gym around this time, but it was the best time for everyone else to meet. I can always do the gym later.”

Jord hummed in agreement, only to remember Laurent was beside him. Quiet as always, Laurent seemed unfazed at running into Damen here. Instead he was looking at the door handle still in Damen’s hand before commenting in a monotonic voice, “Are we going to stand here and blockade everyone inside or are we actually going to walk through the doors? I’d hate for you to be late.” He said the last part while pointedly moving his eyes up to Damen’s face, but Damen only smiled. There was a dimple indented in his left cheek.

With an ever-so-slight flourish, Damen pulled the door wide open and Jord followed Laurent’s determined footsteps, pausing to tell Damen a quick thanks.

The fourth floor was relatively empty, a fairly usual sight at one o’clock on a Thursday, and by the time Jord caught up with Laurent he was already spreading out two notebooks, a textbook, and his laptop. Before long they were both taking up most of the table with all their things and studying like normal. It was hard to keep focused, however, when a group – large and loud – came up the staircase and onto the fourth floor, assumingly looking for some tables. The vibration of plasticky wood across thin library carpeting a few minutes later indicated they had found those tables.

When Jord looked up from his own laptop, he immediately was met with seeing Damen again. He was with the other five people that had wandered up the stairs and he waved at both Jord and Laurent upon seeing them again. Jord waved back and sighed in silent relief when the group got much quieter upon settling down.

The six had pushed three tables together and fished a thick packet of papers out of each of their bags. For a while, the only sounds were the hushed whispers of one of them reading over, what Jord could only assume were, the requirements for their project and the familiar sound of papers being flipped and turned as they continued along.

It was only after a few minutes of that that Jord realized there was another familiar sound missing. Looking up curiously, Jord found that Laurent wasn’t touching his laptop as per usual. Instead he was staring unblinkingly at the page of notes lying on the table in front of him. His face was too close and, upon watching him for a moment, Jord realized that was so he could look over to his left without being too obvious.

Unsure of what to do or what was going on, Jord forced his gaze back into his own papers and soon found himself caught in the rhythm of it all. By the time Jord looked up again, Laurent seemed back to his normal self. The keys of his keyboard sunk down with the fast pace of his fingers and the pages of his book turned with purpose.

It wasn’t until the next week that Jord managed to put two and two together.

Damen met them at the front door again, holding it open with another flourish and a smile, and Laurent seemed to pay no mind to it until Damen was settled in with his group. Confused by Laurent’s distractedness, Jord did his best to keep working diligently. He succeeded for some time, but when he felt Laurent jolt beside him, he found his desire to understand what the hell was going on takeover.

It didn’t take a genius to realize the only thing that could have caused Laurent to jolt was Damen’s laugh. It was a loud laugh, one that came from the chest and lit up Damen’s whole face, and it wasn’t library quiet. But it wasn’t that the sound scared him, Jord knew that much, because they had endured much louder in the university library. Staring at the blond, Jord found him not hiding how he looked to his left now. Following his line of vision, Jord watched as Damen talked animatedly to the woman next to him. She must have been the cause of his laughter and Jord was captivated by her long dark hair. It curled at the ends.

It was the woman’s turn to laugh this time and her laugh was quieter than Damen’s own. It did get louder when Damen playfully plucked the stack of papers out of her hand and held them high above his head, an area far too high for her to reach. Jord knew Laurent heard her too as she loudly whispered, “Damen, stop! Give it back!” before putting her right hand on Damen’s left shoulder so she could try to get some leverage.

It made sense. Laurent had a crush.

For a few minutes, Jord couldn’t put a finger on why this all bothered him. Laurent had a crush, so what? But then it dawned on him in one exact moment, the terrifying way in which this could all go alarmingly wrong and it panicked Jord so much that he almost reached for his phone so he could tell someone about it all and get them on his side.

There’s too much fragility here, he thought with his eyes still on Laurent. Damen was a great guy, he was, but he was also a bit of a heartbreaker. And he had an affinity for blonds. Meanwhile Laurent had never been interested in anyone and, with another grim thought, Jord played with the notion of Laurent’s feelings becoming known. There were several things that could happen and none of them were good.

Jord grabbed his pen, tilted his notebook, and made a quick list.

If Laurent’s feelings were ever known:

1. Damen would think with his dick and not his head and Laurent would be another blond at Arles University left alone after a few fun nights. It would strain, at the very least, Auguste’s relationship with all of them.

2. Damen would think with his head and not his dick and Laurent’s first (known to Jord) crush would be unrequited and would leave him heartbroken. It would strain, at the very least, Auguste’s relationship with all of them.

3. Damen would think with his dick and not his head, but try for an actual relationship with Laurent, only for one of them to do something that would lead to a – probably – messy breakup soon. It would strain, at the very least, Auguste’s relationship with all of them.

4. Damen would think with his dick and not his head, but try for an actual relationship with Laurent, only for Damen to graduate and move on with his life plans, ultimately leading to a breakup because of the different points they would both be at in their lives. It would strain, at the very least, Auguste’s relationship with all of them.

Jord lamented as he looked down at his messy scrawl. This wasn’t good.

The next week played out much the same. Neither Jord nor Laurent seemed to get much work done. Laurent kept looking to his left, expression unreadable, as Damen worked and joked around with his project partners. Jord kept looking up at Laurent, wishing he had a superpower where he could change people’s thoughts. While he looked at Laurent, he tried his best to look on the bright side of things. Damen was a great guy and would never go out of his way to intentionally hurt Laurent. And Laurent was smart and practical and wouldn’t be petty should Damen, rightfully, turn him down.

Laurent was so quiet that there was a chance that no one outside of Jord would ever know anyway. Jord found himself asking within his own head, When was the last time Laurent shared his feelings with the group? The answer was an obvious “never.”

Jord also found his shoulders easing with the knowledge of how dense Damen could be. For a guy that hooked up as often as Damen did and had an endless line of people interested in him, Damen oftentimes missed that people were into him. Jord thought of Jokaste – or as the group fondly referred to her, Lady Macbeth – and how she had to walk up to Damen and declare “We should fuck” before he got the message.

There was hope.

The following Thursday went by about the same, only Jord thought he could feel Laurent’s heart beating all the way from his own seat. Damen, as always, was focused most of the time, only getting distracted when everyone else needed a break from thinking. Recognizing Laurent’s look meant he could recognize the look the girl with the beautiful dark hair was giving Damen as well.

The next week went by a bit different. For one, Damen was chattier, and he even went on to join Jord and Laurent as they made their way to the fourth floor of the library. Jord noted how good Laurent was at controlling himself. He looked unbothered by Damen’s presence, as though he could be doing any mundane task and would be more entertained, and Damen merely talked amicably to the both of them like he didn’t notice.

When they went their separate ways, Damen to his group and Jord and Laurent to their two tables, Jord awaited the settling that occurred before Laurent felt unwatched enough. But Damen’s group didn’t settle this time. They were rowdy, reminiscent of the way they were the first day they came to work on the project, and Jord quickly found out why; he could hear them talking, could hear one of the other guts say “Let’s look over everything one more time and call it.”

Soon (far too soon for an entire readthrough of the project) there was a too loud shriek of happiness from the beautiful dark-haired girl and Damen was clapping everyone on the shoulder. Goodbyes and “See you all on Wednesday!” and “Dress like you’re not hungover for once, Hendric!” were exchanged. Jord switched his view from the group to Laurent, in front of him as usual.

Laurent was outwardly engaged in whatever was on his laptop screen. He had the eraser-end of his pencil pressed against his mouth and one of his feet was tapping ever-so-quietly under the table. Jord had to hand it to him, Laurent could act out almost anything convincingly. He could act almost anything so that he didn’t look nervous or anticipatory as Damen walked over to them after giving one last wave to the project group.

“Hey,” Damen started, his voice much quieter than that of what he had left and Jord looked up only to realize Damen wasn’t addressing him. “We’re finally done with that awful project, but I’ve gotten used to coming to the library around this time. I was wondering if I could join you for the rest of the semester?” He looked earnest with his genuine smile and his bag swinging at his feet.

“I thought you went to the gym around this time,” Laurent simply said, no question or heat behind his words.

“I’ve actually been getting up early so I can work out before any of my classes.”

“Prioritizing studying and your health above your sleep? I’m shocked.”

“It’s a new semester, new me,” Damen laughed. “Well, sort of. A new half of a semester, a new me. So, what do you say?”

Laurent said nothing but went to busying his hands with moving around his laptop and notebooks. Damen didn’t repeat himself. Instead he turned to Jord and Jord shrugged. He wasn’t about to get involved in this now that they’d ignored him anyway.

“Oh, do sit down. I was merely making room for all your giantness to have a place.”

Damen’s grin was brilliant, and he pulled out the free chair to Laurent’s right and Jord’s left.

“If you’d like, I can bring you one of those lattes you love,” Damen said. Laurent hummed.

“We have a perfectly fine school café here on the second floor. I’ll have you fetch Jord and I something from there sometime.”

“I’m fetching now, am I?”

“Why else would I agree to you being here?”

Once the ribbing had gotten out of their systems, things got quiet. The next week, Damen beat the both of them there and had their table all ready. It was now that Jord realized, when Damen wasn’t working on a project he spent as much time, if not more, as Laurent when it came to staring at the other. Sometimes Jord would glance up only to find Damen completely enthralled in Laurent’s studious face. Sometimes Jord would glance up only to find Laurent scanning from the top of Damen’s head to the tips of his fingers. Jord felt intrusive.

Gently pulling his notebook out of his bag, Jord flipped to the page where had made his “If Laurent’s feelings were ever known” list. Some of the pencil had smudged from being jostled around while Jord walked about, but it was still plenty readable. Eyes down for the first time that day, Jord found himself adding to the list and laughing at himself for how stupid he was for making the list in the first place.

5. Damen and Laurent would both think with their dicks and not their heads but would ultimately beat the odds stacked up against them. Auguste would be happy Laurent was happy.

3. Jokaste

Even though she was a head-turning beauty, Jokaste wasn’t exactly the most popular person. There was a list of things that could be blamed for such a fact, and whilst Jokaste herself would list other peoples’ intimidation of a woman making her way in this world with no attention given to what others thought, the main reason was simply because she wasn’t kind.

Her pregnancy hadn’t changed that. Kastor had made a joke once that maybe she would lighten up a little when the baby decided to play with her hormones. She was six months into the ordeal now and not a thing was different. People still went out of their way to stay clear of her bad side, and her bad side still made appearances as often as she saw fit to keep things on track.

Though there was no softness about her, there was something the pregnancy had changed. She would never admit such a thing, of course, as it would be too vulnerable to say out loud, but as the baby kicked and shifted within her, she found herself wanting more and more to raise this child in a family.

It was obviously hormones putting a nasty toll on her body and mind, but it didn’t make it feel any less real. And the realness of it always hit her in the dead of night as Kastor slept soundly beside her.

There were some nights that her mind wandered to the time she was able to be part of something. The boys had been just that – boys. But they had been kind and funny and had gone out of their way for her more times than she could count. Sure, Nik only came to change her tire and Berenger only gave her his umbrella on a rainy Wednesday and Alexon only gave her his notes from their once-shared philosophy class for a day she had missed because she was Damen’s girlfriend and Damen’s girlfriend alone, but it had been something.

Inevitably, with a hand on her stomach and her head next to Kastor’s, her mind would wander to Damen and she would force it to cease its thinking immediately. But sometimes her wandering won, and she thought of him anyway.

There were a lot of things to think about when it came to Damen. Jokaste most often found herself thinking of the weight of his arm around her shoulder or the warmth of his laugh. Lately, the latter made her think of him laughing with his child – their child – and she would make herself face Kastor’s sleeping form and accept her decision to have his child instead.

It didn’t make it any easier.

The realistic part of her knew that even if this child was Damen’s (and it wasn’t, that had been made certain by Kastor), her relationship with Damen was unsalvageable. Fucking someone’s brother behind their back made trust impossible to rebuild. And even if Damen and his big heart wanted to give her another chance, she had witnessed the way Nik and Auguste and the rest of that group looked at her now. They were like bodyguards of Damen’s heart-covered sleeves.

The few times she had ran into any of them since The Incident had been brief, nothing but passings-by from people living in the same city. There was one time she had seen Nik in town and momentarily wondered if he had snipped the brakes in her car. Other than that, her run-ins with them were cold-shouldered and uneventful...until tonight, anyway.

She was grocery shopping. It was a mundane but necessary task, and Jokaste preferred to do it late into the evening. There were less people, less screaming children, and it gave her more time away from Kastor’s watchful eyes. She hadn’t been in the store long when she heard them. They were loud as ever and one indecipherable screech, from Orlant or Lazar, surely, almost made her drop the mango she was inspecting.

“Listen up,” came Auguste’s unmistakable leader voice, “we don’t have all night. Mostly because I have class at eight tomorrow morning. New Year’s is in three days. Our best way to do this is to assign sections and split up.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” That was Lazar.

“Orlant, Rochert, and Huet are in charge of chips and the like. Nik, Berenger, and Alexon are in charge of mixers. Jord, Pallas, and Lazar are with me to get the alcohol. Damen, you can go grab some ice and meet up with Nik, Berenger, and Alexon after. All clear?”

“What about me?”

“Laurent, you can go wherever you want. But you have to be out of here before we buy everything.”

There was a lot of laughing and Jokaste could imagine the elbows being shoved in rib cages at this exact moment.

“It’s because he’s a baby,” someone cooed.

“He’s going to get our drinks confiscated,” someone else teased.

“You’re all laughing, but he could kill you and make it look like an accident,” Auguste said all too seriously. “So, are we all clear?”

“Crystal, captain,” Orlant said, joining in on Lazar’s fun.

The shuffling of their feet as they split up was too loud in the otherwise quiet store. By the time Jokaste made it into her first aisle, they were long gone to their designated areas. As she wove in and out of the aisles, she caught glimpses of some of them. She saw the back of Orlant’s head across the way as she walked by the breads. She barely missed on running into Nik as she went to grab her juice. It wasn’t until she was almost done shopping, finishing up in the frozen foods’ aisle, that she first heard him.

It wasn’t just his voice, but the way he was speaking. There was a fondness to his tone, a softness in his approach, and when he laughed at something that was said back to him it was that laugh. Jokaste knew what that laugh was, what it meant. Finding herself in a moment of weakness, she peered around the corner.

There stood Damen and next to him a lithe blond. Jokaste almost laughed. They were in front of the ice creams and frozen juice concentrates and they were pressed shoulder to shoulder as though the aisle was swarmed with more people than just them.

“Okay, but consider,” Damen started. The blond didn’t seem to want to consider, however. He was talking too quietly, too lowly, for Jokaste to hear from where she stood, but he was making good of the argument he was voicing.

“I guess, but what about afterward?” Damen asked, but he was already decided to do whatever the blond wanted. Jokaste could see it in the way he was angled, nearly drowning the blond in his presence alone.

“Fine!” Damen was laughing that laugh again. “Since you clearly know what’s best, you get it all, Laurent.”

Laurent. Jokaste knew the name and not from the brief conversation she accidentally eavesdropped on when they all first arrived. It had been the only name she couldn’t put a face to, the only name that was new. But there was still something about the name that lit a memory in her mind.

Laurent threw open one of the freezer doors before nearly crawling in to grab at things. Instead of juggling it all, he shoved them all in Damen’s awaiting arms. He moved to the next freezer door and pulled another three things out of there as well. By the time he was done, Damen’s arms were loaded with items, and Laurent was shivering ever so slightly.

“I would offer you my jacket, but my hands are a little full,” Damen told Laurent and he was all too serious about the jacket.

They had moved close enough for Jokaste to hear Laurent say, “I appreciate the offer, but I refuse to walk around smelling like Axe body spray.”

Damen scoffed, shifting the grocery load precariously stacked in his hold.

“This is Creed, Laurent. Pierce Brosnan wears it.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“He was James Bond!”

“And?”

“James. Bond. I feel like this isn’t something I should have to repeat.”

“If I say that I think that’s really, truly something spectacular, will you refrain from doing a James Bond impression?”

“No, because I know you’ll be lying.”

“What will it cost for you to not do a James Bond impression then?” Laurent deadpanned.

They continued to playfully bicker back and forth and Jokaste nearly couldn’t stomach it. Knowing they were going to see her sooner or later, she turned the corner with the intent of getting it over with. They didn’t notice her at first and it was only when she was facing them fully that she saw how close they were standing now. It wasn’t just shoulder to shoulder; it might as well have been chest to chest.

Damen, expectedly, noticed her first. She felt her heart go off its rhythm once. His eyes fell to her stomach and she had to turn away. She looked at Laurent instead.

He was a head-turning beauty also. His hair was white-blond, and it complimented the pellucid blue of his eyes and the flawless expanse of his skin. His lips, drawn tighter at her interruption, were full and a contrasting warmth in his otherwise cool-toned appearance. He had piano fingers, long boned and elegant, and they went along so well with the hold of his spine and the elegance of his frame. Yes, he was exactly Damen’s type, even moreso than she was.

“Hi, Jokaste,” Damen greeted her after the pause in conversation. Jokaste turned back to him.

“Hello, Damen,” she started. “I must say, this is one of the last places I would expect to run into you.”

“Likewise,” he agreed. “Is Kastor’s child keeping you up?”

She couldn’t help but let her eyes look down at her own protruding stomach and her right hand soon followed. The baby shifted.

“I suppose you could say that.” Her eyes turned to Laurent who was watching her with an unreadable expression. “Oh, Damen, do introduce me. We’re being quite rude to your,” she drew it out, “friend.”

“Right, of course. Jokaste this is Laurent DeVere.”

“Laurent DeVere? As in the little brother Auguste DeVere used to rave so much about?”

“He still raves as much,” Damen confirmed, and his eyes were on Laurent.

“Yes, I fear my brother has no self-control when it comes to even my smallest accomplishments.” The blond’s voice was like honey, soothing in the cold of winter and so smooth that viciousness would sound almost complimentary. He was dangerous for Damen, that she was certain of.

“Well, I’ve heard of many of them and they didn’t seem that small then and certainly not now.” Jokaste’s own voice couldn’t quite match.

Damen was still looking at Laurent and Jokaste realized what that look in Laurent’s eyes was. It wasn’t a surprise he would know about the past she shared with Damen and, upon further inspection, he very much could imagine strangling her. She almost giggled at how very Nik the look was.

Sighing too loudly, she put both of her hands back on the handle of her cart. Jokaste knew a lost cause when it was right in front of her and whatever was once there between her and Damen was long lost. It took her pushing the cart a few inches for Damen’s gaze to leave Laurent and come back to her.

“Your arms are going to freeze off if you don't take that armful to the registers soon. And your brother will be calling me soon if I don’t get home.” She took another deep breath before saying her most risky thing yet. “You should call him sometime, Damen. He does miss you.”

Once, such a suggestion would have been impossible. She hadn’t ever said it to him and, as far as she could assume, no one close to Damen would have made the same suggestion. She and Kastor were as good as dead in all their eyes. And it was easy to guess how Damen three years ago would have reacted. His anger at Kastor’s betrayal had been palpable then, physical in the way it took over him.

“I probably should,” Damen agreed now with ease. “Drive home safe.”

“You as well. It was nice meeting you, Laurent. Goodbye, Damen.”

With a bit more force, she kept on walking. She passed directly by them on Laurent’s right and when she got to the end of the aisle, she took one last look over her shoulder. Where once Damen would have stared after her with longing, he now didn’t look back, his eyes preoccupied with the one by his side.

It was almost bittersweet and as she turned into her final aisle for the night, she found herself hoping Laurent was less like her than he appeared.

4. Lazar

The DeVere house was the unofficial-official meeting spot for the group. Auguste had made it clear from the day he moved to campus that his house was intended for anyone and everyone. It was a safe space if you needed a place to crash or needed a meal that wasn’t ramen, and that’s why it also became the unofficial-official party house. Lazar couldn’t count on both hands the number of times he had woken up from a drunken stupor at some odd place in Auguste’s house.

When Laurent had been about to start college and move in with his brother, many in the group quietly wondered if the DeVere house would stay the same. They hadn’t met Laurent at that point yet, but they had heard enough from Auguste to deduce that Laurent wasn’t quite the people person Auguste was. But when Laurent finally did move in nothing changed. If Laurent wanted privacy he simply went to his bedroom, but otherwise he was out and about the house with all the others that made their way in and out the DeVere front door.

The parties had continued too. Last night’s New Year’s party was no exception. After their grocery run three days earlier, putting things together had been easy and by seven o’clock yesterday, the thirty-first of December, the house had been packed with the usual suspects.

Music had blared from a handful of speakers and the kitchen counters had been cleared to make way for all the pizza boxes and drinks alike. The television in the living room had Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve playing, but no one had given it much attention until the last minute of the year. Instead they had all made themselves busy by talking and laughing the rest of the year away.

When Lazar finally woke up, it was at least ten in the morning on the first day of the new year. His eyes didn’t open at first, too tired and hungover and all-around disoriented from the night, and he started to feel around to get an idea at where he was. It was always a fun game for Lazar on these types of mornings. Once he had felt around and proceeded to fall down the stairs that led to the front porch. Another time he had woken up only to immediately hit his head on a pipe and he swore then and there that he would never fall asleep underneath the kitchen sink again. Today was less dramatic than either of those events. With one hand he grabbed at, what he found to be, a dresser. Groaning as he forced himself to sit up, he opened his eyes and immediately squinted at the doomful shine of the sun. A blurry look around the room confirmed several things. The first was that this was Auguste’s bedroom and Auguste was quite present, passed out soundly on his own bed with his right arm thrown over his face. The second was that the reason Lazar couldn’t feel his leg was because Pallas had made it his pillow at some point during the evening. The third thing was that his other hand was stuck underneath the dresser, somehow having slotted its way in a too tight space.

It took longer than he’d ever admit to free his arm and he almost knocked over the entire dresser while he did it. Nevertheless, he gingerly – he was a gentleman after all – moved Pallas’ sleeping head to one of Auguste’s discarded sweatshirts and hoisted himself off the ground. Everything around him swam and his hand found its way back to the dresser, this time to the top of it, to balance himself.

“Oh, god,” he groaned, and he pressed his lips tightly together to stop himself from vomiting.

Finding his way to the bathroom reminded him of that stupid game where you put your head on a baseball bat or pole of some sort and spin round and round and round until you can’t move in a straight line. The hallway was an ocean and Lazar was a mere sailor trying to survive a dreadful trip. Orlant and Rochert were already gone to the waves, leaning against one another on the left side of the hallway, a picture frame precariously hanging loose above them.

Being in the bathroom made Lazar feel better. He threw up once, twice, and then found the coordination to relieve himself. Jord was passed out in the bathtub. When Lazar flushed the toilet, Jord jerked in his sleep but was otherwise unaffected. Lazar’s hands went for his pocket, looking for his phone, and came back empty.

“Do you know how funny it would be to turn the shower on right now?” he asked Jord as though Jord could hear him. Before that kind of fun, however, he needed coffee or water or bacon covered in all its grease. Or all that.

His journey to the kitchen was much better. Getting some of the alcohol sitting stagnant in his stomach cleared his head and he was able to laugh at Nik who was sleeping upside down in a recliner. Wanting his phone even more now, he was practically running to the kitchen when he heard two voices.

They were far too sober sounding. In fact, they were talking at normal speaking levels which meant, to hungover people, they were screaming. Lazar smelled coffee too.

“Question, do you actually like the taste of coffee or do you just like having a drink you can put four cups of sugar in if you like?”

It was Damen talking, his voice warm and bright and not at all hungover sounding.

“I like coffee just fine, but why not sweeten it up? It’s no different than people eating cinnamon rolls doused in a pound of icing for breakfast.”

Laurent?

Never the posterchild for self-control, Lazar peeked around the corner. Laurent was sitting on the turn of the countertop. A steaming cup of coffee was held between both his hands and his legs were swaying back and forth ever so slightly. Damen was leaning against the counter, back pressed to it and arms crossed over his bare chest.

“Besides,” Laurent continued, “if my morning vice is putting more sugar than you deem necessary in a cup of coffee, than yours is walking around here with no decency.”

“No decency?”

“Did you forget your shirt? Did it magically fall off sometime last night? It’s absolutely freezing outside. One might think you’re trying to show off.” Laurent took a long drink.

“How dare you imply such a thing?” Damen grinned and he made an obvious flex of his muscles, his arms bulging and his abs defining even more than usual.

Lazar would have fallen out of his seat if he was sitting in one. Damen was flirting – no, scratch that – Damen and Laurent were flirting with one another.

“I never sleep with a shirt on. I’m hot-blooded. I’d kill over if I slept with that many clothes on.” Damen had moved closer as he spoke and now his left arm was tight against the outside of one of Laurent’s swaying legs.

“So, you often wake up in strange houses and decide not to put your shirt on before wandering, I take it?”

“It’s your house so it’s hardly strange. Are you really that put out about my lack of shirt?”

“Put out isn’t the term I’d use,” Laurent said.

“Flustered then?”

“You’re walking a thin line, Damen.”

The line appeared thinner, Lazar thought, as Damen invaded what space was left and settled between Laurent’s legs. His hands weighted him on either side of Laurent’s waist and Laurent didn’t even put his coffee down. It was quiet for a moment, nothing but eye contact, and Lazar couldn’t be certain with as far away as he was, but he swore Laurent’s eyes flicked down to Damen’s mouth.

“My brother will be up soon. Hungover or not, he’s nothing but punctual.”

Even leaning and even with Laurent sitting on the countertop, Damen was almost at equal height with him. It made Lazar’s stomach hot. Of course, that reminded him how nauseous he was from last night.

Yawning louder than any human ever needed to and purposefully hit the wall as he stretched. Damen jumped back like he’d been shot.

“Is that coffee I smell?” Lazar asked all too innocently.

“It is, but I’m afraid there’s none for you. I made a pourover,” Laurent told him. He looked unfazed by Lazar’s interruption and merely acknowledged Lazar with a hint of amusement at his disheveled state.

“You’re saying words that I don’t understand. Is there coffee, yes or no?”

“Not at the moment, but I can get some on. Auguste will want some when he gets up anyway.”

“You want any, Damen?” Lazar asked. Damen lifted a coffee cup from the other end of the counter and tilted it.

“Pourover.”

“Both of you keep saying that word like I know what it means.”

“It’s a brewing method, Lazar.”

Laurent got off the counter more elegantly than anyone had any right to and grabbed at the coffee pot, filling it up with water and filling the basket with grounds. Sitting in one of the kitchen chairs with his feet on the table, Lazar had a perfect view of Laurent at work and had to give a silent round of kudos to Damen; the guy might get murdered by Auguste by the end of the year, but it would be way worth it if Laurent’s ass was anything to go by.

The smell of coffee permeated the whole house almost immediately after and it’s like it was an alarm. They could all three hear Auguste’s feet hit the floor, could hear him almost trip over Pallas still lying somewhere at the foot of his bed, and could hear him grumble at other sleeping bodies he walked by. Entering the kitchen, Auguste was a sight for sore eyes. His sandy blond hair was all on the right side of his head only, the left side being completely plastered to his face, and his eyes were bloodshot.

“You’ve looked better,” Laurent commented without missing a beat.

Auguste grunted, swiping none-too-gently at his eyes, before he managed to garble out “Coffee. Ibuprofen.”

Not even bothering to hide his eye roll, Laurent went about fetching both things. The coffee was kept black and the four small white pills were a miniscule weight in his hands as he carried everything and a glass of water over to Auguste.

Pretty soon after that, all the others seemed to follow suit and Laurent, Damen, and Lazar found themselves passing out pills like they were candy and brewing their third pot of coffee for the morning. The kitchen was overflowing with hungover boys. Nik, silent in his pain, had shuffled in and immediately pulled out one of the three stools at the breakfast bar. He was joined by the now-walking duo of Orlant and Rochert. Berenger and his boy toy (Lazar still wasn’t certain what that situation was) pulled out two of the chairs next to Auguste and Lazar himself. Pallas copied Laurent and hopped up on the counter at the other end right next to the refrigerator. Lazar briefly got lost in the idea of copying Damen and slithering his way between those muscular thighs.

Shaking himself out of that too-good daydream led to Lazar searching out the two that had put it there in the first place. Laurent had resumed his position on the countertop, legs still swaying. Damen was over at the breakfast bar with a gentle hand on Nik’s back. Everyone else was too miserable to notice how Laurent’s eyes never wavered from staring at Damen across his way. Lazar couldn’t tell if he was staring at Damen’s face, at the cut of his arms, or the expanse of bare skin left on display, but all were certainly tempting. Everyone else was too miserable to notice how Damen’s gaze fell on Laurent the moment Nik quit giving him much mind. They were all too miserable to notice his none-too-subtle head-nod in the direction of the front door.

Pulling a Lazar, Laurent fake yawned as he once again hopped off the counter more elegantly than he had any right to. The stretch of his arms lifted his shirt at the expense of exposing his hipbones.

“If I don��t get moving now, I fear I’m going to go back to sleep and waste my entire day.” The reasoning was good enough and no one truly cared anyway, not with how close they all were to collectively throwing up.

That’s why they didn’t notice, or seem suspicious of, Damen doing the exact same thing almost word-for-word not five minutes later. Within the next half hour, the front door opened and closed only one time and Lazar found himself hoping they were smart enough to at least travel separately on Laurent’s way home.

5. Nicaise

When Auguste was thirteen years old, he had volunteered in an after-school program called Big Brothers for a Big Future. The program placed eighth graders with fourth graders in need of some guidance. After school, the eighth grade Big Brothers would head over to the elementary building alongside their teacher and they would do a range of activities with their fourth-grade companion. Most of the time that activity was academically focused. But sometimes it was something fun, like heading down to the ice cream shop on the corner or playing a few rounds of kickball on the otherwise-empty playground. The program was a benefit to all parties involved. The fourth graders got the attention and role models they needed, and the eighth graders got to leave feeling accomplished.

When Auguste had first signed up, Laurent had been eight and he had cried the day Auguste told him.

With pleading eyes, Auguste had followed the sounds of Laurent’s sobs all the way up to the boy’s white bright bedroom with chapter books scattered all over the floor. It had taken a while for Laurent’s crying to subside to coherent sentences. When it finally had he had broken Auguste’s heart.

“But you’re my big brother!” the then eight-year-old Laurent said, the words muffled by the wet pillow under his face. It had taken a few more minutes for Auguste to coax Laurent to sit up, but when he had he made certain the first thing he had done was hug him.

“Laurent, I’m always going to be your big brother,” he had begun explaining to the eight-year-old. “But don’t you think other little kids should get to see what it’s like having a big brother too? Some kids don’t have any brothers or even any sisters.”

It hadn’t taken much more explaining for Laurent to understand. From day one he had been bright and the drop of his shoulders when Auguste had told him other kids didn’t get to have what he had had been all the sympathy Auguste needed to see to know Laurent had gotten it.

Over the years, Auguste had stayed with Big Brothers for a Big Future. He had always been great at connecting to younger kids, something he attributed to being such a large part of Laurent’s life, and connecting to these kids had not only been second nature but had been rewarding in ways he had never imagined.

Then there was Nicaise.

Nicaise wasn’t a Big Brothers for a Big Future kid, though he might as well have been given his past. Instead, Nicaise was closer to the DeVere’s than anyone else...well, by blood anyway. To explain it simply, Nicaise was Hennike’s cousin’s child.

Depending on the family and depending on the relevance of distance, these types of cousins may or may not be close family members. But in the instance of Auguste and Laurent, Nicaise was their closest family member and had been for the last decade. After all, when there are only three of you left living, it’s hard to be picky.

Despite everything though – the lack of remaining family, how good Auguste had always been with kids, Nicaise’s short relationship with his now-dead mother – Auguste never managed to get through to Nicaise.

Auguste blamed himself for most of it. Laurent had told him repeatedly over the years that it wasn’t his fault. But Auguste would read off his failures as though he had them on a bulleted list somewhere: how he didn’t take action after Nicaise’s mother died, how he didn’t fight for Nicaise when Nicaise ended up in the system, how he didn’t seek Nicaise out for a long time afterward, etc. And every time there was a perfectly justifiable reason to every “failure” and Laurent would read off his own list:

“Perhaps you didn’t take action after Nicaise’s mother died because you were fifteen years old, Auguste. And perhaps you didn’t fight for Nicaise when Nicaise ended up in the system because you were, again, fifteen years old and by the time you were old enough to fight, you were fighting for me as we had just lost our own parents and uncle was pleading with the courts to take me home with him. And perhaps you didn’t seek Nicaise out for some time afterward because you could worry about yourself and your own future for once in your life.”

No matter how logical everything Laurent always said was, it didn’t soothe Auguste’s heart in any way. The only thing that did was that, out of all the people in the world, Nicaise did seem to seek out a (somewhat convoluted) kind of approval from was Laurent himself.

The two had an odd relationship. If somebody were to ask what each thought about the other, Laurent would no doubt shrug as though he couldn’t care less about the boy and Nicaise would probably spit on the ground to showcase his distaste. But sometimes they held hands as they walked, acting as though Nicaise didn’t try to sabotage Laurent’s entire day in some diabolical way. And sometimes Laurent read Nicaise to sleep out of children’s books Auguste and Laurent’s own mother had read to both.

Now that Nicaise was a little older and a teenaged hellion, he had more freedom to go about as he pleased. The thought terrified Auguste and, frankly, Laurent wasn’t all too thrilled with it either. But his freedom allowed him to spend his spring breaks at Arles University with his dear cousins.

“I feel like we should be putting baby gates up or something,” Auguste lamented while Laurent made up his own futon as a makeshift bed.

“I’m just guessing, but I think he can climb over those now,” Laurent said. He was finishing tucking the corners of the comforter around the edges.

“He tell you about what he wants to do while he’s here?”

“Not really.” Laurent placed the last bit of decoration on the bed, a hand embroidered pillow Nicaise made in his home-ec class that was full of flowers and a lovingly stitched scrawl that said, “Fuck You.” “He called last week and said something along the lines of ‘Since I’m not allowed out of the country for legal purposes and I refuse to stay in this god-fucking-awful place a second longer than I have to, you should go ahead and get a bed ready for me. And not on that fucking excuse of a thing you call a futon.’ So honestly everything is all set as far as I’m concerned.”

About half an hour later there was a knock on the front door that made Auguste jump. Rolling his eyes, though whether it was at the door or Auguste’s jumpiness Auguste wasn’t quite sure, Laurent opened the door wide, revealing an already-disgruntled Nicaise.

Nicaise was a pretty thing, just on the cusp of leaving boyhood and entering that fun stage between boyhood and manhood. He had a mess of auburn curls atop his head that always seemed to look artfully tousled and his blue eyes were almost an exact match to Laurent’s, bright and clear and the color of the sea in the iciest places.

“You were supposed to call when you got to town,” Laurent told him, not bothering with a hello. Nicaise shouldered his way inside.

“What’s the fucking point of calling when I’m in town if I’m already here?” He dropped his bags with a resounding thud right in front of the door and kicked off his shoes like he belonged.

“How was your trip?” Auguste tried.

“Just peachy. I adore taking busses that stop every three minutes along the way and are full of passengers consisting of screaming babies and creepy old men. It’s truly my favorite thing.”

The first two days Nicaise spent with the DeVere brothers were uneventful, to say the least. Laurent woke Nicaise up at seven sharp every morning (“He needs to not wreck his entire schedule while he’s here. It will take him weeks to function normally again.”) and Nicaise, like a drowned tiger, growled and groaned at Laurent any time Laurent took a breath even a little louder than the last. After mostly sleeping, rifling through Auguste and Laurent’s belongings as though they were his own, and eating them out of Poptarts, waffles, and bags of chocolate chips, Nicaise felt as though he was sufficiently caught up on sleep and sweets and was ready to explore.

“Am I ever allowed to leave this dump, or am I being held prisoner until I am inevitably sent off to where I came from?” he asked after running and jumping on Laurent’s bed.

“I suppose that depends on you. You’re not seven, plan something and I’ll see if I can make it happen.”

“Oh, you’re impossible. I don’t know what’s here, so I don’t know how to plan anything. Take me exploring. I can work from there.”

Auguste, off in his classes for the moment, wasn’t privy to watch the two moan and groan as they got ready. Laurent didn’t find Nicaise’s first outfit appropriate and Nicaise thought Laurent looked like a Mennonite in his high necklines and wrist-covering shirts. It was going to rain so Laurent tossed a pair of closed-toed shoes for Nicaise to wear, but Nicaise found them ugly and tossed them right back. After a good twenty minutes of that they were both finally dressed and out the door. Other than Laurent’s black umbrella in hand and blond hair partially tucked out of his jacket collar, he and Nicaise could have been brothers.

“Where’s your car?” Nicaise asked after they walked to the end of the street.

“You wanted to explore so we’re exploring. You can’t explore in a car, Nicaise.”

“Fuck off. I’m not walking miles in this.”

“Then we can turn around.”

The rain wasn’t even bad. The raindrops that were falling were large and sparse in between, and the saturated sidewalks had hardly any puddles in their cracks and crevices. Laurent’s black boots still looked immaculate and, sure, they had only walked fifty yards or so, but it was enough to make Nicaise grunt and keep walking.

They walked a few blocks, bypassing some larger puddles and the few wandering students that were braving the rainy day, before they came across their first stop, Chastillon. It was March, and still chilly, and the inside of the coffee shop smelled of cinnamon, espresso, and raspberry danishes.

“Hi, Laurent!” the barista behind the counter said cheerily. His hair was sandy like Auguste’s, but he was tiny in stature and width and his smile was almost childlike in its purity. Laurent gave a nod in the barista’s direction.

“Isander,” Laurent greeted back with familiarity.

“Do you want your usual?”

“That would be wonderful. Can you also get me one of those disgusting large caramel blended things with all the whipped cream on top?”

“Sure thing,” Isander giggled. “You know you don’t have to pay.”

Laurent sighed, but it was accompanied with a small smile of fond exasperation. “Yes, I know.”

Isander got busy on the drinks, pressing and pulling espresso through the portafilters and putting vanilla and cinnamon in a medium hot cup and what seemed like a half pound of caramel in a blender, and Nicaise was done looking around so he turned to Laurent instead.

“Why don’t you have to pay?” Laurent’s eyes flicked down toward him. “Are you sleeping with the owner?”

“Don’t tell Auguste,” Laurent hummed.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” The screech of the milk being steamed rang out before it quickly died into a muffled bubbling sound and Laurent continued. “I have what you could call a tab here. Only as I’m not the one picking it up, I can’t answer how much I owe.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” Nicaise asked, indicating at Isander.

“No.” Laurent’s smile was real this time though.

“But you do have a boyfriend then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Isander waved them off as they exited back outside. It was raining a little harder and Nicaise had to huddle closer to Laurent under the umbrella to avoid his jacket from being soaked.

“Where are we going now?” Nicaise asked. By the next block his drink was halfway consumed, and Laurent was sipping at his.

“I thought we could do something educational. Perhaps stop by the historical library downtown. We could even read all the plaques on the buildings and learn their stories.”

“I can’t tell if you have a stick up your ass or if you’re fucking with me,” Nicaise grumbled loudly, earning a share of dirty looks from older passerbys.

“I’m always fucking with you. If you haven’t picked up on that yet, I fear for the other obvious things in life you’ve missed.”

It was a ways away, but their next stop was a small shopping district located in Arles. There was a strip mall further down the road, but Laurent and the others preferred the convenience and experience of staying in town. It was also nice to support local business owners as often as possible.

First was a shop called Treasure Chest. Treasure Chest was true to its name and had an array of items all created by local people. Some pieces were hanging art, some clothing items, and others were knick-knacks and creations that could change on a whim. Nicaise kept going back to a ring made of kyanite. Laurent made certain to place it on the counter to buy before they left. The next stop was a bookshop, unsurprisingly one of Laurent’s favorite places in town. The bookshop owner also recognized the blond and smiled cheerily at him. Nicaise didn’t know what to make of Laurent’s seemingly wanted presence by people. Nicaise perused the shelves silently behind Laurent until he got tired of doing so and voiced such a thing. Ignoring him, Laurent continued to look, eyes scanning high and low, until he plucked a red sleeved book from one of the bottom shelves. When he went to pay, Nicaise threw down a handful of bookmarks and pens.

“For school,” he said with an eye roll.

Their next several stops were all clothing stores. Laurent picked himself out a scarf from a post-winter sale at the haberdashery on Main and suggested that the closer they got to the next school year approaching Nicaise should come visit and get fitted for a suit. “It’s never a bad idea to have one nice suit in your closet,” Laurent pointed out. A tiny boutique next to it was geared for the younger crowd and Nicaise had an armful of shirts, jackets, and colorful socks that Laurent bought without even needing asked. Across the street was a shoe store where Laurent already had an order on hold that he picked up, telling Nicaise how the winter weather destroyed his favorite pair of brown-laced boots.

Though they had nowhere to be, they made a hurried few drop-ins at small shops as they made their way to the most important part of the day, a stop for food.

“You’re going to let me order for you at Mellos,” Laurent told Nicaise. The crinkle of their shopping bags matched in rhythm with the steps of Laurent’s boots.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I know what you would like best.”

As it was only a Wednesday, Mellos wasn’t too packed at all. Laurent and Nicaise were seated right away at a little table by the window and Nicaise browsed the menu, pretending disdain. After a moment, he tossed the menu with a flick of his wrist.

“Something wrong?” Laurent asked, not looking up from his own menu.

“Well as you’re ordering for me, I don’t see the point in wasting my time looking,” Nicaise said. The waiter brought out coffee and water for the both of them and Nicaise made certain to bark a request for a raspberry lemonade instead.

“You need to ask nicely,” Laurent told him after the waiter walked away.

“Eat me,” Nicaise spat.

“You’re not better than him or any other person, Nicaise. Even if you don’t want to be kind, be polite.”

“Are we here to improve on my lacking personality traits?”

“I thought we were getting lunch,” Laurent said. He finally put his menu down and looked straight at Nicaise.

“Stop looking at me,” Nicaise said after a moment. Laurent smiled a bit but didn’t look away. The waiter was back and dropped off Nicaise’s raspberry lemonade. “Thank you.” Laurent’s smile quirked at the corners a bit more.

“Now that you’ve seen some of the town, is there anything you’d like to do before you go back to school?” Laurent asked him.

“There’s not much here. I don’t know how you and Auguste stand it here, it’s very boring.” Nicaise was slumped now, arms crossed over his chest.

Laurent made a noise of understanding and adjusted the placement of his silverware on the table. “I suppose it is boring here for a fourteen-year-old. When you’re here at school, it becomes much more important to find these places for life’s simple pleasures. Like a place to find a good book or a hole in the wall with warm food.”

“Auguste says it’s important to make good friends,” Nicaise said.

“I suppose that’s true as well. Auguste is very good at making friends. He has so many that he met through the university.”

“You don’t have many friends, do you?” Nicaise asked. Laurent looked more closely at him and, for once, could see this wasn’t an attempt at maliciousness. There was an innocence in Nicaise’s curiosity here, something he didn’t often show since hitting double-digits.

“No, I don’t.” With a delicate hand, Laurent gently mixed the sugar and cream into his coffee. “I’ve never been very good at making friends. If it wasn’t for Auguste’s love of me, I often wonder if I would have any here. I’m sure it’s no secret that all of my friends are Auguste’s own. They’ve taken me in.”

“Like a stray cat.”

“That’s a good analogy for it.”

The waiter came by once more and this time Laurent placed their orders. For himself he ordered lemon mascarpone crepes with a bowl of fresh fruit salad. And for Nicaise he ordered Mellos’ specialty, a banana foster French toast bake.

“So, you don’t have any friends of your own then?” Nicaise asked, clearly still interested.

“Not really,” Laurent said honestly. “Everyone I talk to knew Auguste first.”

“What about the barista at the coffee shop we went to today? He seemed to like you. Or the boy at the bookstore?”

“The boy at the bookstore is simply used to seeing me. I’m in there quite often, unsurprisingly I’m sure. As for the coffee shop, I believe Erasmus looks forward to me coming in solely because of my usual coffee shop companion. You should see how red his face gets.”

“He does seem like the type to fall all over Auguste,” Nicaise said.

“Surprisingly, Auguste doesn’t have much effect on the poor boy. I thought he would as well, but Erasmus is usually preoccupied with watching one of Auguste’s friends instead,” Laurent explained. If Nicaise would have been a dog, his ears would have perked up noticeably.

“Do you often go to the coffee shop with one of Auguste’s friends? Or is Auguste usually with you?”

“It depends, I suppose,” Laurent answered flippantly.

“Maybe I’ll ask Auguste what his favorite drink at that shop is. The caramel drink you got me was fine, but maybe I’d like what he gets instead. It was called Chastillon, yes?” Nicaise asked, pulling his phone out from his back pocket. Laurent’s stare was full of warning.

“Auguste doesn’t attend Chastillon with me often, actually,” Laurent said. His voice was clear as crystal.

“Interesting.”

“I’m not quite sure what is interesting about it. But by all means, I can fish around and get other recommendations for drinks at Chastillon if you’d like.”

“We’ll see how your food taste compares to my own first,” Nicaise said, calculating.

Laurent and Nicaise must have inherited the same sweet tooth gene from their mothers’ side, which was something Laurent had been betting on anyway. Both of their plates came out dripping in syrups and berry compotes and both were eaten clean within twenty minutes. They didn’t get much talking done with their faces full, but Nicaise was quick to speak when he was done.

“I suppose that was...” he trailed off, right hand over his too-full stomach.

“Adequate?”

Nicaise hummed in agreement and wiped a dreg of syrup from his face. His hands were childlike-sticky, and he glared at the spring of unread notifications on his phone.

“I’m going to go wash my hands,” Nicaise said, pushing back from the table.

“Perfect. I’m going to run out the door and leave you with the bill,” Laurent said. He was already pulling his wallet out and rifling through his cash.

After paying and strolling out the door, Laurent repeated his most asked question once more.

“Alright, if you don’t have any places you want to go right now, I say we head back home. We can wait until Auguste gets back and go to the movies tonight,” Laurent suggested as they waited to cross the street.

Nicaise didn’t say anything at first, fine with whatever Laurent wanted to do next, but as they continued walking a bright pink and yellow sign caught Nicaise’s eye and he subconsciously slowed down. He could see inside and there wasn’t a line present to hold him back from immediate gratification.

“We could go there first,” he said, trying for a casual thumb-jab in the direction of the still-holding-his-eyesight pink and yellow sign.

“An ice cream shop?” Laurent asked, eyebrow raised. “Didn’t you get enough sugar at lunch?”

“I’m fourteen. There’s no such thing as too much sugar,” Nicaise said matter-of-fact.

“Fine, but the moment you start bouncing off the wall I’m handing you over to Auguste.”

The cold temperature of the ice cream shop hit them in a wave the moment they opened the door and the cute bell above rang out. They were greeted kindly by a young woman in a white hat and Nicaise immediately beelined to the counter so he could look up at the wide menu.

“Look,” Nicaise started, tugging on Laurent’s sleeve. “They have eight different kinds of strawberry ice cream.”

“There are over twenty different kinds of toppings you can get on them all, too.”

“Hello,” Nicaise said to the girl at the front. “On a scale of one to ten, how good is the strawberry cheesecake ice cream?”

Laurent was having too good a time watching Nicaise interact passionately about ice cream that he didn’t pay any mind to the bell above the door jingling. Instead he stepped up and made his own order and moved down to the register to pay.

“Actually, can you add a scoop of sea salt and honey ice cream to that order? I’ll get it.”

Nicaise wouldn’t have thought much of the voice, wouldn’t have noticed the man was adding something to his and Laurent’s order, but Laurent’s head actually whipped to the side in surprise and that was enough to turn Nicaise’s attention from the smooth push and scoop of the strawberry cheesecake ice cream into the cone.

When Nicaise turned around, he was met with the biggest man he’d ever seen this up close. The man had waves of dark brown hair that were slightly damp, no doubt from the earlier rain, two bulging biceps that were threatening to tear the thin material of his t-shirt, a wide and bright smile that only didn’t show when he was speaking with his warm voice, and a pair of kind brown eyes that hadn’t left Laurent’s face. It wasn’t odd for men to look at Laurent like that. It wasn’t even odd for men to look at Nicaise like that. But there was a softness in the gaze that Nicaise didn’t know how to read and the way Laurent’s ears matched the pink of the strawberry ice cream at the counter was even more unexpected.

“Did he get the affogato?” the man asked Nicaise. “He really likes those, but sometimes he’ll go for a chocolate heart attack, a disgusting display of chocolate ice cream, hot fudge, chocolate chips, and crushed Oreos.”

“Here’s your affogato!” the girl behind the counter said with a big smile, answering the man’s question. Laurent took it from her gently, ears still pink. The man handed the girl a twenty and when she handed him his almost seven dollars in change, he stuffed it all in the tip jar.

“Damen,” Laurent started, reaching for his own wallet, “let me at least pay for mine and Nicaise’s. And give you back money for the tip.” The man – Damen – made a face and took his own ice cream from the girl.

“I’ve got it.”

Laurent sighed and started out the door. Nicaise watched with interest as Damen followed and held the door open for Nicaise to exit out of first. The rain had long let up and the few tables outside of the ice cream shop were under an awning that had kept it all dry.

“Damen, this is Nicaise. He’s my cousin. Nicaise, this is Damen. He’s one of Auguste’s friends.”

“One of Auguste’s friends!” Damen exclaimed. His free hand went to his chest in mock-shock. “That hurts, Laurent. It hurts right here.”

“Oh, do stop,” Laurent said. It was as close to begging as Nicaise had ever heard from him

“Are you Laurent’s coffee shop companion as well as his ice cream shop companion then?” Nicaise asked. Damen turned to him. Nicaise’s stomach flipped a little.

“Coffee shop companion? Yes, I suppose that’s a fitting title,” Damen laughed. Laurent huffed. “That’s actually how I convinced him to get the affogato for the first time. He had been in an exam that day, so he didn’t get his morning coffee.”

“He’s dreadful without his coffee in the morning,” Nicaise commented.

“So, you know why it was so important to get him a sufficient amount of caffeine then?”

“I am not unbearable without coffee,” Lauren defended himself.

“But he still wanted something sweet,” Damen continued. He nodded once at Nicaise’s own ice cream cone, three scoops of strawberry cheesecake ice cream starting to drip down the sides, all of it covered in crushed graham crackers and chocolate drizzle. “It seems to run in the family. The affogato seemed to cover both of those wants, but I fear it’s made him an espresso monster instead.”

“Will you two stop talking about me as though I’m not here?” Laurent asked, but his almost smile was hidden behind his spoon.

“How are you?” Damen asked as he immediately gave in to Laurent’s request. His voice was low in his chest, smooth like the honey dripping down his own ice cream cone.

“I’m fine. I’ve been busy watching this one,” Laurent said.

“I don’t need babysat,” Nicaise protested.

“How are you?” Laurent asked back, ignoring Nicaise.

“I’m fine. Just had lunch with Nik. I’ve got my comparative history midterm in about thirty minutes.”

“Comparative history...is that the course with the professor who wears flip flops with his suit?”

Damen laughed.

“It is. He said there’s a surprise question at the end that isn’t not having to act out a speech given by a historical figure. So,” Damen said, eyebrows raised as though it was now dawning on him how terrible this midterm could be, “keep me in your thoughts so I survive the day.”

“I doubt me thinking about your poor life choices to be a history teacher will help ease your pain,” Laurent pointed out.

“Maybe not, but at least I know you’ll be thinking of me.”

Laurent said nothing, but the flush from his ears had conveniently moved to his face and that expression Nicaise was confused about earlier made a lot of sense. The intense shared eye contact was making him uncomfortable now though. He coughed once to regain their attention. It was granted.

“How long are you visiting your cousins, Nicaise?” Damen asked him.

“I’m leaving on Saturday.”

“Maybe we’ll run into one another again then,” Damen said.

“I have a feeling we will,” Nicaise told him. Damen grinned.

“Well, until then,” he trailed. “I’m off for what will be one of my weirder tests. Bye, Nicaise. It was wonderful to meet more of the DeVere family.”

“I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow?” Laurent asked, trying to sound indifferent and almost succeeding.

“I suppose you will. Goodbye, Laurent.”

“Bye. Until tomorrow.”

Damen had been smiling since the second Nicaise first turned around and saw him, but his smile at this moment rivaled the shine of the sun.

“Until tomorrow.”

With his ice cream still in hand, Damen turned and started back toward the university buildings. His bag was hitting at the back of his thigh as he walked and Nicaise and Laurent both watched as he waved to a few people he clearly knew down the road. Nicaise stopped watching Damen and instead watched Laurent once more. His eyes didn’t leave Damen until Damen disappeared behind a building further away. It seemed only then that he noticed Nicaise’s stare.

“What?”

“I thought you didn’t have a boyfriend.”

Laurent stood up and walked over to the trashcan near the entrance to the ice cream shop and dumped his empty cup into it. Silent, he grabbed the bags he had gathered along their trip and had sat on the table. Nicaise followed, still licking at his ice cream cone.

“I never said that either.”

+1. Auguste

Auguste wasn’t a crier. None of the DeVere family were criers. Auguste could count the number of times he had seen both of his parents cry on one hand. Auguste could count the number of times he and Laurent had cried on his other, unused hand. It was a shock, then, that Auguste found himself tearing up on his graduation day.

Yes, graduation day had arrived in an unexpected fashion. It snuck up on everyone, eating up all their time and patience with long nights stuck in their books, and suddenly it was here. For most of them, it meant being one year closer to completing the seemingly impossible task of graduating. For Auguste and Jord, it meant moving on from Arles University and into the world around them.

Some people are fearful of what lies ahead after graduation. But Auguste wasn’t afraid of the path he’d made for himself. Seven years of hard work had made him confident in his field and he had a wonderful opportunity lined up for himself. His future was bright and clear.

But his future was also sending him off to Alier, a whole five hours from Arles. Most shakingly, a whole five hours from Laurent.

Five hours may not seem like an eternity of time, but it did put limitations on how often Auguste could come visit and how often Laurent could come visit him. The thought made his chest ache. Given their past and their lack of family to rely on, the two brothers had been inseparable as long as they could remember. Now Auguste was doing the separating and a small part of him worried that Laurent would never forgive him.

“Are you going to walk across stage like a normal human being, or are you going to do something inevitably embarrassing, like trying to backflip and falling on your face?”

Laurent had gone to fetch a proper tie for Auguste’s suit and Auguste turned and tried to wipe at his eyes before he was found out.

“I’m more worried about Lazar or someone trying to humiliate Jord and I by screaming an awful amount or doing that thing they did at the final match of the year,” Auguste confessed.

“You mean when Lazar moaned every time you scored?”

“Yeah, that thing.”

The conversation had Auguste thinking he was in the clear, but he should have known better. The moment he turned, Laurent saw. Auguste watched as his always-with-a-plan baby brother took an uncharacteristic pause to assess the situation and he watched as Laurent’s face dropped in confusion and, what almost appeared to be, fear.

“What’s wrong, Auguste?” he asked. His voice was quiet, unsure, and Auguste smiled true and wide to ease that away the best he could.

“Nothing.” He took a few steps forward and took the tie – blue – from Laurent’s hands. He looped it once around his neck and let it lie there undone and with another gentle movement, he pulled Laurent in close for a hug.

It took a moment for Laurent to catch up, but when he did his arms wrapped around Auguste with a strong grip. It was quiet except for their shared breathing and Auguste was taken back to the first time he held Laurent. That early spring morning twenty years ago was so vivid in Auguste’s mind. He had felt so big then, at the wonderful age of six, and Laurent had been handed to him to hold, one of his tiny little hands wrapped around Auguste’s own. And Auguste knew at that moment he would do anything to keep his little brother safe.

“I feel as though I’m abandoning you,” he admitted. Laurent pulled back, eyes searching, and then he smiled brilliantly.

“How on earth are you abandoning me?” Laurent sounded genuinely taken aback, and a bit amused, and Auguste took another step, this one backwards, to let them both breathe.

“I don’t know,” Auguste started. He began attempting to tie his tie, crossing the two ends and looping one of them around the other. “We’re all we’ve got, you know? We’re all we’ve ever had. I fought so hard to keep you from uncle after we lost mom and dad. I watched you work so hard on your own to be the best person you can be. And suddenly I’m leaving for Alier. I’m leaving you here on your own.”

The tears were starting to come back and Auguste was frustrated at their reappearance. He wiped his hand at them again and laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.

“Look at me crying and worrying as though I don’t know you’re not capable of taking care of yourself.”

“I am,” Laurent said. “But that’s only because of you.”

“You would have been more than fine on your own. You’re the strongest person I know, Laurent.” The tie was still hanging limp against Auguste’s dress shirt. Laurent stepped forward once more, reaching for the ends of the tie and beginning to loop it in a perfect Kelvin knot.

“That’s still because of you. And it is also because of you that I am going to be perfectly fine here. You’ve paid off this house so I have a place to live while I continue my education here. You’ve done nothing but encourage my career pursuits and ensured I was on the best path to see to those here at Arles.” Turning, Laurent plucked Auguste’s matching suit jacket from where it was resting on the chair. The tie was impeccably tied. “Don’t repeat this, either, but you’ve also introduced me to some pretty wonderful people.”

Auguste looked at him, eyebrows raised, as he shrugged into the jacket. Laurent smoothed down the lapels himself and rolled his eyes when he caught Auguste staring.

“Oh, don’t act surprised. You’ve befriended some nice people here. While I trust my own capabilities, I also believe that if something were to happen, I could go to any of them and they would help me,” Laurent said.

“They are all pretty great,” Auguste agreed with a wide smile. It was amazing how his shoulders had untensed with Laurent’s honesty and he found himself smiling even wider. If he smiled anymore his cheeks were going to ache. “So, you like my friends? You’ve never said that.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t know that already,” Laurent said. He walked over to the mirror and smoothed out his own clothes. “I wouldn’t be around them all the time if I didn’t somewhat enjoy their presence.”

“It’s still good to hear it.”

The graduation ceremony went by in perfect form. And perfect form meant it went the way everyone expected. It was long, speeches were given that put people to sleep, and the line of graduates was so extensive that people could hardly keep their focus for when their graduate was finally crossing the stage. That didn’t stop Lazar from doing what he’d said he’d do and, sure enough, when both Auguste and Jord crossed that stage, Lazar had the cowbell ready to clang as loudly as possible.

“You look very smart with your diploma,” Laurent said in greeting as Auguste and Jord managed to stumble out of the wild crowd of graduates and their families blocking at the convocation entrances following the ceremony.

“And you look far too pleased at Lazar’s antics,” Auguste laughed. He accepted the barrage of hugs from the entire group and continued to laugh as Jord was pulled from where he was a step behind Auguste and crushed by them all as well.

“Well it wasn’t all that funny until you tried to wave off the sound and that poor group of girls thought you were waving at them and they all swooned.”

“I thought I brought a well-needed amount of life to graduation,” Lazar defended, not sounding at all chastised.

“You brought a not-needed amount of obnoxiousness,” Nik said.

“You keep saying stuff like that, Nik, but before we graduate, we’re going to end up in bed together in a drunken tumble. We both know it.”

Nik made a face, and everyone elbowed at him suggestively. No one commented on the fact that Lazar’s arm hadn’t left from around Pallas’ shoulders for the last several months. Lazar would always be Lazar after all.

“Speaking of drunken stumbling and tumbling,” Auguste said, shaking his hair from its greased down look from underneath his grad cap, “let’s go back to my place and party one last time.”

As it was an expected thing, Auguste had long had the house prepared for a large party. The others had added their own personal touches to make it feel like a true graduation party. Laurent had ordered a graduation cake from Fortaine, a bakery on Main, with both Auguste and Jord’s names on it. Alexon was a bartender and could get alcohol at wholesale prices, so he had the kitchen counters well stocked and in need of a ton of mixers. Damen and Nik had provided those mixers along with food from a friend who wanted to try his hand at providing catering. Berenger, unintentionally, provided entertainment with his boy toy, Ancel, who still had everyone scratching their heads. Lazar had only provided his graduation gift to Auguste and Jord, a crude hand drawn picture of the three of them in bed, cuddling, that they had to share as it was such a masterpiece Lazar couldn’t have been expected to recreate greatness. And everyone else provided more and more guests to fill up the house with laughter and party-appropriate ruckus.

“I can’t believe this is our last party,” Orlant lamented. Though there were a good thirty other people in the house, the group was sitting together in the living room, drinks in their hands.

“It won’t be the last,” Auguste assured him. He was sitting on the arm of the couch, legs outstretched, and Laurent was sitting on the floor beside him, pressed between him and Damen. Lazar, boldly, had his head on Laurent’s own outstretched thigh and Damen took it as a prime opportunity to make Lazar’s stomach his footrest. Nik, on Damen’s other side on the couch, kept “accidently” swinging his feet and kicking Lazar in the crotch.

“But it won’t be the same,” Pallas agreed with Orlant. He was lying between Lazar’s legs, hand swatting playfully at Berenger’s untied shoelaces.

“Maybe not,” said Auguste, “but you’ll all still be here harassing Laurent and Laurent will put up with it. You can’t rule out that Jord and I won’t make visits here either.”

“Don’t give them permission to harass me,” Laurent said.

They fell into inane conversation. When Rochert and Huet got drunk, they tended to make up songs, and they made at least three in twenty minutes. By the third one they had at least half of everybody else singing along, off pitch and out of rhythm.

“Don’t yell at me for being cheesy, but the friendships I’ve made with all of you is what is making this place so hard to leave.”

Though there was music blaring and people walking all around them, it was impossible to not spend a moment quietly reminiscing. It got to them all though and a moment later a few of them were standing, dusting off their pants, clearing their throats, and it was Jord who said, “God, I need more alcohol. You all keep singing “Kumbaya” though.”

There were chuckles and affirmative agreements and the group all got up and wandered into the kitchen. All except Auguste and Laurent. From his place still in front of the couch, Laurent tilted his head back to look up at Auguste.

“You should try to enjoy yourself,” he told Auguste over the roar of the music.

“I am enjoying myself,” Auguste said, smiling softly. “But it’s a bit bittersweet at the moment.”

“Well then you’re clearly not drinking enough.” Laurent pulled himself up to stand and then extended his hands to help Auguste up. “Go have fun. Drink like you’re a freshman again and don’t focus on the bitter part.”

“And what are you going to do?” Auguste asked, shaking at the melting ice cubes in his glass to unstick them from one another.

“Supervise,” Laurent commented drily. As if cued, a crash of glass sounded out, making both Auguste and Laurent whip their heads toward the back porch. “It seems very needed right now.”

Hugging Laurent briefly with one arm around his shoulders, Auguste muttered a quick “Thank you,” and set forth into the cacophony of sound and the flood of people all in the kitchen. With smiles and exclamations of congratulations, Auguste was swarmed with love from acquaintances and casual friends who admired him as much as everybody else. He poured himself another drink, this one a bit stiffer, and fell into a pleasant conversation with Kyrina. After a few minutes he began to wonder if tonight would end as a lot of his and Kyrina’s past nights did, with them tumbling into bed after a different kind of pleasant conversation.

Eventually he got sidetracked into a different kind of conversation with Hendric. They were both going to Alier and exchanged phone numbers in hopes of having at least one familiar face. Hendric was in the middle of telling Auguste about the firm he was starting at when Ancel decided it was an opportune time to give Berenger a lap dance. All fifty-something people in the house wolf-whistled and hollered as Berenger’s normally stoic face went as red as Ancel’s waving hair.

Auguste was pouring himself his third drink when the subject of Berenger and Ancel came up from the welcome source of Kyrina and her hand on Auguste’s arm then down to his thigh made him smile.

“Laurent told me to celebrate tonight like I was a freshman again.” He covered her hand with his own, reveling in the softness of the back of her palm under his own rougher one.

“I remember when you were a freshman,” Kyrina commented lowly. “Do you remember finals week that spring?”

“You mean when you had me wear your panties to my introduction into poetry final?” Auguste asked back even lower.

“They were my prettiest blue pair. Matched your eyes,” she practically purred, hand cupping his chin.

“Coincidentally,” Auguste started, “I did make sure that my tie and boxers both matched my eyes today.”

“Boxers? How scandalous, Auguste.”

“Did you do anything as scandalous, Ky?” Auguste asked.

“Today or just in general?” Kyrina asked back.

“Oh, I know what you’ve done in general,” Auguste laughed. “But how about today?��

Kyrina put a finger to her mouth in a mock thinking pose, scrunching her eyebrows up for fun too, and Auguste wanted to kiss her.

“My underwear matches my lipstick,” she told him, smile bright. “I know it lacks creativity, but it was the best I could do on such a short notice.”

The room seemed too hot suddenly and Auguste found that the bottom of his glass was empty again. Forcing himself to pull back, to think, he maneuvered to the counter where all the mixers were long drained. He refilled his glass with ice and topped it over with cheap bourbon. Kyrina was behind him, fingers dancing over his shoulder blades.

“We still have time to make up something more fun, if you’d like.”

Auguste took a deep drink and it felt warm going down. “I very much would like that.”

“Then I tell you what,” she said, fingers still dancing. “I’m going to head upstairs to your room and you’re going to wait fifteen minutes before you follow me.”

“And then what?” Auguste turned, smile teasing. Kyrina’s lips grazed his jaw in answer and she did her own turn, winking at him as she sauntered up the staircase. The clock on the oven read 1:04. With a happy sigh and another long drink of his bourbon, Auguste began his countdown to 1:19.

It was only then that he noticed how empty the house had become. Somewhere between Kyrina and Hendric and Ancel and Berenger and Kyrina once more, the party had died down significantly to a small trickle of people consisting of his friends.

Nik and Alexon were muttering to one another in the living room, sitting across from each other in the chairs they had scooted across the floor. Huet was using Nik’s calf as a pillow and Auguste swore he could see Huet drooling from all the way across the room. On the couch was the cuddliest pile Auguste had ever seen in his life; Orlant, Rochert, Lazar, and Pallas were squished onto the worn gray cushions, each pillowed on various body parts of the other. It was sentimentality that kept Auguste at the threshold, watching his friends sleep and ramble drunkenly. They’re all so odd, he mused.

Berenger was nowhere in sight and Auguste took that as a good sign, for him and for the soon-to-be veterinarian. There was no doubt he was off with his redhead somewhere and Auguste felt a welcome flush of relief that he didn’t have to see them going at it...again...like they had during their St. Patrick’s Day party...in Auguste’s bedroom.

He knew Jord had left some hours ago with one of his own old flames. As Auguste slowly stepped about the house, he almost laughed out loud to himself at his and Jord’s luck. His laughter was only subdued by the too-sober hope that this would let Jord get over Aimeric.

The clock on the wall said 1:11. Anticipation rolled pleasantly in his gut. He set about looking for Laurent. It wasn’t in the need to overshare or posture that Auguste gave Laurent warning before he hooked up with a girl. It was more because of the time Laurent had visited over the holidays, years before he was set to start at Arles, and Auguste had hooked up with a girl one night. That following morning had been quiet, and Auguste hadn’t given it any thought after he walked the girl out to her car. But when Laurent had said calmly, over the rim of his coffee cup, “I never wanted to know that your voice range covers four separate octaves when you come,” Auguste had sworn then and there he would always give Laurent proper warning before hooking up in the bedroom next door.

“Little brother,” Auguste sing-songed, side stepping a pile of shoes. “Laurent! I know you’re not drunk because there are too many not broken things left in the house.”

He wasn’t in the living room, Auguste knew, and he couldn’t have been in the kitchen because Auguste had just been there. It took a moment for Auguste to get his bearings about him, but when he did, he started his sweep of the house. The laundry room was empty, as was the study. The lights were on in the bathroom, but the only evidence of a person in there was in the soap bubbles still sitting on the sink drain.

“Laurent, if you’re up in your room already...I’m sorry in advance,” Auguste called out loudly. It was 1:16. He was about to drag himself up the stairs, knowing full and well it would take him three minutes in his current state, when a flash of gold from outside the front door caught his eye.

Squinting, Auguste walked over and peered out the glass of the door. The gold must have been the watch on Damen’s wrist because it was still glinting softly in the dim lighting from the porch. It matched the glint coming from Laurent’s hair. It took Auguste a moment to process what he was seeing out there.

Laurent was talking away. It wasn’t the type of talking he did when he was giving someone the correct answer or eviscerating them with words alone. Auguste had seen that enough times to recognize it for what it was. No, Laurent was talking away, hands moving with some of his words and eyes swimming with exposed emotion. Auguste had seen that enough times to recognize it for what it was as well, but he couldn’t recall in that moment if he had ever seen Laurent speak that way to anyone other than himself.

Damen was listening raptly, eyes never straying from Laurent’s face. Damen’s always open emotions, these ones of concern and something Auguste couldn’t place yet, were worn out on his sleeve. He seemed utterly captivated in whatever Laurent was talking about.

Auguste watched as Laurent sighed. His shoulders heaved then dropped and his head fell forward, hair covering everything that had been so exposed. He must have said something else from underneath his curtain of hair because Auguste saw Damen smile. It was such a fond smile and it made Auguste’s eyebrows furrow together. Damen’s hand, the one free of his watch, moved forward suddenly and, with his smile still in place, he brushed that curtain of hair from the right side of Laurent’s face. His touch looked soft as he tucked the hair behind Laurent’s ear.

If Auguste had been totally sober, he probably would have raised his eyebrows in his shock. But as he was about three-quarters drunk, he physically took a step backward in the entryway, almost knocking over the table he and Laurent always threw their keys on.

His brain was so busy trying to process what he was seeing that he almost missed the way Laurent leaned into the touch, his cheek squishing adorably against Damen’s palm. Damen must have said something then because Laurent’s face was once again exposed, and his smile was a mirror of Damen’s own. His head came back up and he retucked a few stray strands behind his ear again. He said something else and looked directly at Damen, eyes dancing.

Auguste hadn’t given much thought to the way Laurent would kiss. It didn’t seem particularly important or brotherly to think about such a thing. But in those moments that he had contemplated Laurent in relationships, he didn’t expect Laurent to initiate a kiss. So, when he did, hands fisting in the front of Damen’s white tee to haul him forward, Auguste did, in fact, stumble backward and knock over the table. It was enough to garner the attention of a mostly sober Nik and Alexon. Lazar, always in tune to things with drama surrounding them, snuffled as he awoke. He excavated himself from his cuddly pile of bodies to run to the door as well.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Nik mumbled as soon as he helped Auguste off the ground. If Auguste wouldn’t have just knocked the table over, Lazar would have done so in his own play of shock.

“Is he a dead man? Absolutely. Does it look worth it? Ab-so-lute-ly,” he whistled.

Auguste’s mouth was gaping. It seemed like an eternity, though in actuality it was one minute, that the two stayed pressed together. In his head, Auguste knew he should stop; stop watching, stop the others from watching, or stop both things, but he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing.

Laurent must have sensed the audience. Auguste watched as he gently, softly, pulled back, lingering for only a moment. Then his eyes opened and found the door. He didn’t turn red like Auguste thought he would, but his jaw clenched. It seemed to take Damen a second longer to gather his wits, but when he turned around, he was the one flushing red instead.

There were about twenty seconds of awkward staring between Damen and Laurent and everyone else. Then Laurent leaned forward again, this time to tell Damen something, and he stood. Auguste couldn’t not watch the way their fingertips slid apart with such reluctance.

“Not a word,” Laurent said as soon as the door opened. Damen was behind him, hand that was just holding Laurent’s own rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck.

There was a lot going on at that exact moment. Nik was glaring daggers and it wasn’t obvious if Damen was avoiding eye contact with him or Auguste the hardest. Lazar was beginning to sing “Damen and Laurent, sitting in a tree, K-I” and was silenced by Alexon slapping a hand over his mouth. Auguste was apparently still open-mouthed like a fish.

“Come on.” Laurent was talking to him. And he was following Laurent up the stairs.

Climbing the stairs felt like doing a trail run. He could feel his quads straining and heart racing, but whether the latter was because of the stair climb, his current blood-alcohol level, or his brain repeating the phrase “What the fuck?” over and over again, he couldn’t be certain.

“Is something the matter?”

Kyrina was standing in Auguste’s bedroom doorway with a sheet wrapped around her and nothing more. Auguste wanted to slap himself for forgetting her. He was grateful Laurent was still sober.

“Auguste will join you momentarily,” he told her calmly, and he ushered Auguste into his bedroom. He shut the door.

“Laurent –”

“No, you are going to let me speak before you say anything,” Laurent said, demanded. “I love you, Auguste. You know that I do. There is no one on this planet that I seek the approval of more. I am aware of the sacrifices you’ve made for me ever since we lost mom and dad. And I hope I’m, at the very least, on the right path to making you proud. But you had no right intervening in my personal relationships before I even got the chance to make them.”

Auguste was sitting on Laurent’s bed. It was meticulously made, as Laurent made it every morning, and the comforter was soft underneath Auguste’s hands. He scratched at the textured surface.

“I understand the protectiveness. Given my past, it was, and is, welcome. But if you trusted these people as your friends than it should have been a welcome thought that I would, perhaps,” Laurent paused, “engage in consensual relations with one of them. If they were your friends, you should have trusted them to treat me with kindness as they have treated you. And I should have said something earlier than now, I know that. But I am saying it now and I need you to take it to heart.”

It was a sobering conversation. Auguste took in the way Laurent was pacing, walking from his bookshelf to the edge of his desk. His copy of The Emerald Peacock was lying face down on the floor, opened to about halfway through. Auguste’s eyebrows furrowed together again, this time at the genuine worry Laurent was radiating, and he sank back further onto the mattress.

“Laurent,” Auguste tried.

“No, I need you to understand.”

“I do.” Auguste was standing now, and the room wasn’t spinning. His hands were on Laurent’s shoulders so Laurent had no choice but to look at him. “You really like him, don’t you?”

It wasn’t a question. It was enough, however, to make Laurent flush bright. Auguste smiled brilliantly. Laurent’s eyes, downcast, flicked down to avoid that smile. But when they came back up, they were accompanied by an almost reluctant head nod.

“Don’t make it a thing,” he begged.

“I’m not,” Auguste lied.

“You definitely are. I can already see the evil thoughts swirling in your brain,” Laurent said.

“Am I allowed to ask questions?”

“No.” Laurent stepped back, sighing, and Auguste followed him as he walked out the door. Kyrina was still standing in Auguste’s doorway.

“When did it start? How did it start? Have you been sneaking around like illicit lovers in the night? I never knew you were that romantic, Laurent.”

“Oh, fuck off. Go join Kyrina,” Laurent said, but he was laughing beautifully. He started down the staircase and Auguste held a finger up to Kyrina, indicating he’d be with her in a minute.

All those awake were back in the kitchen. Lazar was sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, feet up on the table, and Alexon was in another chair, his feet also on the table and kicking at Lazar’s, trying to shove them off. Damen and Nik were leaning against the countertop and stopped talking abruptly when Laurent and Auguste entered.

“Friends,” Auguste began, doing his best not to laugh when Laurent pulled out another of the chairs and slumped in it, “thank you for a great graduation party. I could ramble about my gratefulness for you all being there for me during these years, but that would take too long and we’re all far too tired to deal with that tonight. I’m off to bed with a beautiful girl I’m probably going to disappoint when I fall asleep immediately. I’m letting you all know that I want breakfast at Toutaine’s tomorrow, so you better have your asses up at a decent time.”

He rubbed his knuckles hard against Laurent’s head, reminiscent of how they roughhoused when they were children, and started back for the staircase after a few bids of goodnight from the others.

“Damen?” Auguste had one foot on the first step, and he could see Damen’s eyes leave Laurent and find him. “We’re talking before breakfast.”

“Auguste!”

Morning came too quickly for everyone’s liking. Auguste woke up bleary-eyed and with a sleeping Kyrina drooling against his shoulder. Maneuvering out of bed without waking her was more difficult than it should have been, but he managed. Looking at her, he laughed quietly at his luck and hoped that they could make up for last night’s loss at another point in time. He couldn’t hear anything going on downstairs and Laurent’s bedroom door was still closed. It wouldn’t hurt to make a pot of coffee while he rounded up the group, he thought.

The stairs were a whole different kind of daunting this morning. Instead of spinning underneath his feet they felt like riding the rock of the ocean’s waves which could be comforting when he wasn’t nauseous. The smell of brewing coffee calmed the nausea down some.

Damen was leaning against the same countertop he had been leaning against last night. The coffee pot was three-quarters of the way full and steaming. There were two cups next to Damen. One was almost empty, but the other one full.

“For you,” Damen told him, handing him the almost full cup. “With a splash of cream.”

“Thanks.”

The coffee was a welcome warmth and the two spent a few moments in silence. Auguste noted that it was a comfortable kind of silence.

“I always laugh when I go get coffee with Laurent,” Auguste started. “I typically end up ordering first and I get a coffee with some room for cream. Those poor, overworked baristas always look thrilled. Then Laurent goes up and orders his honey-cinnamon-vanilla or whatever with oat milk and three shots of espresso and you see their shoulders drop.”

Damen smiled.

“Yeah, you can almost guarantee that Laurent will order the most complicated thing anywhere you go.”

They both took a drink of their coffee and fell back into silence. There were a lot of things Auguste wanted to say, but his mouth didn’t want to move, it wanted to keep drinking his coffee. Luckily for Auguste, Damen wanted to talk instead.

“I can’t apologize,” Damen said. His free arm was crossed over his chest and Auguste could see the muscle in his forearm twitch. “A part of me knows I should, but I can’t.”

“Why should you apologize?” Auguste asked genuinely.

“Because you asked us all to do one thing and I couldn’t do that for you. I went behind your back in pursuing Laurent.” Damen took a deep breath. “I don’t feel like it’s necessary for me to make you promises. All the promises I need to make, all the ones I’ve already made, need to be to Laurent.”

Auguste brought his coffee cup up to hide his smile.

“But I need you to have some faith in me,” Damen pleaded.

“Damen, if anyone should apologize, it’s me,” Auguste said. “Moreso to Laurent than anyone else, but to you as well.”

Damen swallowed once, the sound audible with the click of his throat, and he shifted his shoulders as though he was preparing for a blow.

“Laurent’s always been the smartest one out of all of us. And last night he gave me a well-deserved lecture about controlling parts of his life before he ever got the chance to live first.

You see, I’ve felt such a need to protect Laurent my whole life. And, overall, I feel like I’ve done a good job at balancing protection with encouragement to live. But then I think about the things I’ve done – guilting him into coming here to Arles because I conveniently bought a house for the two of us to live in and controlling his love life before he ever got a chance to start a relationship – and I realize how unfair I’ve been. Then, not only was I unfair, I missed out on watching,” Auguste gestured with his hands at Damen and then vaguely at the ceiling, “this.”

“Given Laurent’s past, and your own, I can’t blame you for doing the things you’ve done,” Damen said quietly.

“Still…”

The coffee cup in his hand was almost empty. Somehow, even with the talking, he had drained the whole thing. Auguste pushed off from where he was leaning and placed the cup in the sink. He was right by Damen then.

“Take care of him next year,” Auguste said with as much sincerity in his voice as he could muster. “I know he can take care of himself, but I feel immensely comforted knowing you’ll be here for him.”

“I will be,” Damen made one promise to Auguste. “You know I will be.”

“Am I interrupting?”

Laurent was standing at the bottom of the stairs, hair sleep-mussed and shirt rumpled. Auguste was close enough to see Damen’s eyes soften with his smile. He cleared his throat and stepped back, a step closer to the living room.

“Not at all. I’m off to wake up the troupe. Let’s say be ready to leave in half an hour?” Auguste asked. Laurent raised an eyebrow and his eyes flicked between Auguste and Damen once.

“Sure. I’ll give Jord and Berenger a call. But I’m telling Berenger to leave his entertainment at home.”

Thirty minutes turned into forty-five minutes. Over half of them looked worse for wear and it took two cars and some illegal seating arrangements to get everyone in two cars. Toutaine’s seating was fairly open when they arrived, and they were immediately seated at a long party table.

“What a surprise you order a mimosa,” Laurent said to Ancel after drinks were ordered.

“If I have to deal with you all morning, I’ll need six just to get through the day,” Ancel snapped back.

The table was cramped. Everyone was bumping elbows with everyone around them and there wasn’t enough room for all the food and drinks ordered. They were so loud, too. Auguste was more than aware of the looks some of the other customers were throwing them and he couldn’t bring himself to care.

There was so much laughter. Auguste’s cheeks hurt from smiling and he knew everyone else’s had to be hurting too. When Huet threw a whole handful of grapes at Pallas, the bittersweet knowledge that he was going to miss this hit him hard.

“Are you feeling what I’m feeling?” Jord asked him over the noise.

“I think so,” Auguste said.

Across the table, Laurent was leaning into Damen ever so slightly. They also were talking over the noise, but Auguste couldn’t make out what they were saying. Instead he watched them for a moment, trying to see what he had missed this year. He watched Laurent take a drink of his coffee and he watched Damen kiss the taste of it away.

He watched as Laurent smiled. He looked free.

Auguste had a strong feeling next year at Arles University would be Laurent’s best.

#captive prince #laurent of vere #damen of akielos #lamen #damen/laurent #auguste of vere #damianos of akielos #captive prince fic #capri fic #my writing

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