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tinyshinysylveon · 4 years ago

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i suddenly got this idea where izuku is an anonymous famous editor for youtubers who hire him to edit their videos because he’s a professional at doing it, and katsuki is an upcoming youtube vlogger who travels around the world and yet doesn’t know how to edit his own videos to save his life, so no matter what he does, he always seem to mess up even the basics of editing (part 1/??)

“i think you need professional help” kirishima says as he watches katsuki trying to drag an edited cut on to his video for the umpteenth time that day “shut up, shitty hair just give me a minute-” an error popup. “did you just.. deleted the video?” “....”

katsuki keeps trying, he even watched tutorials on youtube (while skipping important segments ofc because he can totally do that all on his own!) but his patience is wearing thin until kirishima recommended him to someone who’s known in the youtube community for their famous editing skills

“..deku?” katsuki stares at his screen showing a youtube profile with the name deku as their username and an icon of all might with edited-in sunglasses “okay look, he may seem suspicious to you, but i gotta tell you bakugou, he’s legit, i’ve seen his videos and they look awesome!” well katsuki will be the judge of that despite this deku having 5 mil+ subscribers than him!

the blonde spent the whole day watching deku’s videos which mostly consists of amvs (anime music videos) and games, especially the ones that required a lot of effort to make, plus he even made tutorials! so he gotta give him credit for that, but alas, katsuki is still somehow having trouble following directions and gave up on the latest tutorial video on how to add an easy transition

when kirishima came to check in with katsuki, all he heard were multiple clicks and grumbled noises, he let out an exasperated sigh “i can’t believe you’re still trying..” “what the fuck do you want me to do kirishima?” katsuki was trying not to flip his table at this point. “hire him obviously!” the red head yells out as if that’s the answer to their problems “..and how do you suppose i do that?”

it actually took a lot of convincing in kirishima’s part, but katsuki finally threw away his pride and decided to send a message to deku’s business email that was left under his about page on youtube

“..i want you to become my editor and help me in becoming the #1 youtube travel vlogger in the community” kirishima reads the message out loud that’s displayed on the screen, “you sure you want to send it like this?” “i don’t see anything wrong with it?” “but don’t you think it’s too.. blunt? no formalities or anything like, hello i’ve seen your videos and i would be honored to have you as my editor, you know?” katsuki just shrugged, “it’s too late, i already sent it to him”

about half a day later, deku replied back, “Good afternoon Mr.Explosionmurder, I appreciate that you requested me to become your editor and would like to discuss further details about our agreement via discord. You can contact me by adding my username, deku#2463. I look forward to hearing from you.” to this day, kirishima still can’t believe his eyes when he read the message

“oi shitty hair, what’s a discord?”

it wasn’t katsuki’s fault that the majority of time he spent in high school was doing his best to stay on top of assignments and projects, plus being in the A honor roll, he didn’t really get to decide on his career until after he graduated, thanks to the courtesy of his parents owning their own modeling industry, he put the money he saved up to good use in traveling around the world and vlogging it for people to see with kirishima as his traveling partner

he explained all of this and his reasonings to deku on discord once he reached out to him and figured out how to use the platform, but katsuki was still suspicious regarding his video editing skills and wanted to see it firsthand on how his videos would look like as a finished product

deku: fair enough, send me your videos and i’ll see what i can do, until then, if you deem it satisfactory, which i’m confident that you will, i request a 50/50 payment on your revenue. take it or leave it.

for some reason, katsuki agreed to it without a second thought due to the challenging tone from the message; “i can’t believe you! i told you to trust him! why do you have to doubt him?! haven’t you already seen his videos?!” kirishima was full on panicking at this point, how were they going to make money?! “shut up, i know what i’m doing! i know what’s best for my videos!” it was a good chance too since they’re currently in hong kong and planning to shoot the top 10 tourist spots to visit as claimed by an article he found online

a few days later, katsuki finally got all the videos piled up in one folder and sent them all in a google drive to share with deku just as he requested, he even mentioned to him thru discord message to follow the cues he was giving him on his videos such as when he and kirishima took a stroll and tried foods in the temple street night market; “hey deku, i want you to do a close up of kirishima eating the curry fish ball with erotic music playing in the background” he smirks while focusing the camera on the red head eating without a care in the world and not noticing katsuki making the comment, “mmm dude, mmm you gotta try this, it’s so freakin’ good- wait bro, how long have you been pointing the camera at me?”

in less than a week, deku sent a reply back with the link to the fully edited video; deku: hmm, not gonna lie, but your cues were actually helpful and dare I say, creative? katsuki took it as a compliment and opened the link to the video file, it was about a few GB so it shouldn’t take a long time to upload on youtube, but.. was it ready? he called in kirishima to watch it with him and was actually prepared for it to look horrible despite deku’s obvious talent except.. it was actually pretty good?? better even?! “what did i tell ya katsuki? i told you he was legit,” his partner boasted, just earlier he was embarrassed when the part about him eating the curry fish ball with the “let’s get it on” music in the background showed up while the blonde just rolled his eyes.

explosionmurder: thanks, and i just saw it, consider yourself hired deku: happy to be of service! i’m looking forward to working with you, mr.explosionmurder! it would be helpful again if you provided the cues during your journey! :) explosionmurder: don’t mention it and also don’t call me that, call me katsuki deku: okay, mr.katsuki! [all might emoji]

kastuki found it odd that he became really eager during the exchange but thought nothing of it

a couple of months flew by and katsuki with kirishima in tow have already travelled in 4 other different countries, he even received about 500k+ subscribers, he’s almost to 1 million! as per agreement, he gives half of his revenue to deku which was okay with him since he still has a lot of saved up money in the bank including kirishima’s since they’re sharing it anyway, most of the time, his communication with deku have been entirely professional with a few emojis in between (usually deku’s part), until today that is

deku: it must be nice to travel 0: explosionmurder: pfft, what are you talking about? you now have over 7 mil+ subscribers in your channel since i met you, you can go traveling whenever or wherever you want deku: i can’t explosionmurder: what do you mean you can’t?

no reply

since then, katsuki didn’t want to think too much on what deku said and focused mostly on traveling, those videos won’t work themselves! after he finished, he sent over the videos of his recent trip from india over to deku and as usual, deku delivered it back beautifully edited along with a message

deku: that’s so cool! you guys went to india? *o* [link to video edit] explosionmurder: yeah, you should’ve seen shitty hair when he tried that really spicy curry, which reminds me, you did what i asked right? deku: of course mr. katsuki! as always, i’ve paid attention to every cue you asked for! [saluting pepe emoji] explosionmurder: good good, i didn’t just hire you to sit on your ass all day deku: haha you’re not my only contractor you know ^^” explosionmurder: is that what you meant when you said you couldn’t travel because you’ve been busy? way to be blunt katsuki, he mentally berated himself, but at least deku answered this time, although reluctantly deku: ...let’s just say im stuck at home in that very moment, is when everything changed between them explosionmurder: alright nerd, you sound depressed as hell so i’m going to give you the decision to decide on where we’re going to travel to next, think of it as a reward for all you’ve done for us deku: asdkjflas that’s too much! T_T are you sure mr. katsuki??? explosionmurder: i’m waiting, you got 3 seconds starting now, 3 deku: america! i’ve been wanting to go to america...

katsuki told kirishima his plans, then the spiky red head gave him a pat on the back and a thumbs up, “so you do have a sentimental bone in your body!” kirishima was almost close to being dead that very same day

when they arrived to america, he asked deku the list of things he wanted to see and most of them were, “all might amusement park, all might cafe, all might- is there anything else the nerd likes besides all might and superheroes?” katsuki says while viewing the list in the hotel they’re staying at. “give him a break, you said so yourself that he couldn’t leave his house, so this is the least we can do for him and for all the hard work he put in our videos,” kirishima reasoned with him

on the last day of their trip, katsuki did his routine in piling the videos together and sending them to deku with the attached message, “i actually bought you a souvenir if you want it, looked like the type of shit you would like, you’ll see what it is in the videos i’ve sent you” they’ve known each other long enough so he thought why the hell not, it’s just a matter of getting his PO address, and the response to this was immediate, “AAA I SAW IT! THANK YOU THANK YOU!” <3<3 <(^w^<)

it was an all might limited edition figurine only available in the US

for the first time, deku took two days longer to finish than katsuki expected him to since they’ve started because he always goes through them pretty quickly, maybe he’s too busy making them look up-to-par? whatever the case was, when katsuki received the video, it already had a title for it, “MY AWESOME TRIP TO AMERICA PLUS ULTRA!” kirishima just laughed and told him to keep it in honor of deku so he left it like that, “this better give me some views,” he grumbled and uploaded it the night before they went to bed, he wasn’t really worried in checking it out either because he has faith in deku’s abilities

the morning after was hectic, katsuki has been receiving notifications upon notifications on the “travel bros” (courtesy of kirishima) twitter since last night, one in particular caught his eye, “i can’t believe deku and katsuki are dating! who would’ve thought!” what?

a short video appeared underneath that came from the video he uploaded, and regretfully never took a look at, showing katsuki saying to the camera as he held the AM figurine, “deku, you should’ve been here, look at what i got you, nerd,” at first glance, it was supposed to look normal (from the original video!) except hearts and sparkles began appearing around katsuki as he smirks up at the camera, what the fuck? besides, deku was suppose to edit that all out! for every cue in every part where he says deku’s name, he was expected to delete them like he usually does! even though it was no secret that deku was his video editor, he distinctly remembers mentioning about him in a video they took way back when they first started out their contract agreement

meanwhile, kirishima was having a field day, he finally saw their video while katsuki kept on seeing other short videos of him on twitter from different segments of the trip in which he either had sparkles or hearts around him, especially when he mentions deku’s name; “bro you won’t believe this, our subscribers grew up to over 1 million last night!” kirishima yells enthusiastically, but when he noticed katsuki not paying attention to him, he looked over his shoulder to check what he was looking at. “oh that, you know those aren’t fanmade videos, right?” katsuki unblinkingly turned to look at him, “you mean..?” kirishima gave him a toothy grin, “yep!”

a video call from discord, “dekuuuu, what is the meaning of this?” a squeaky voice, “i-I’m so sorry i got carried away and i couldn’t help it! all might was too beautiful including you and-!” “..what did you just say?”

TBC maybe?

#bakudeku #katsudeku #bkdk #ktdk #katsuki x izuku #my trashy writing #I REALLY DIDNT MEANT FOR THIS TO BE LONG #the last time ive wrote something this long was my assassin!au #but this is probably longer aa #the ideas were flowing inside me so i couldnt help myself asdfghjkl #i have it all planned out but it was getting too long and i'll probably write the rest if this gets enough attention #;;;#I swear this sounded better in my head #ill edit this later..

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jalapeno-princess · 4 years ago

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Write Me a Letter

Mark Tuan X Reader

Genre: THE CHEESIEST OF FLUFF (Featuring the best friend BamBam that everyone deserves)

Word Count: 10.6K

Summary: Being a full-time college student with a full-time job is a hard thing to do. One day when you’re scrolling on your explore page, you stumble on a post with a link to a pen pal website. You’ve always been curious about how pen pals worked and you’ve been interested in making a new friend and writing mail back and forth to one another. After exploring a couple of profiles to make sure you choose the person you feel you’d enjoy writing to, you find Mark’s profile and you end up choosing him from his profile picture of his adorable puppy Milo, his personal interests and the way he seemed passionate about the entire pen pal experience. Over the course of writing to and receiving letters from Mark, you come to the realization that he means much more to you than someone you write letters to that you’ve never met before. When the opportunity comes for the two of you to finally meet, you and BamBam plan out a vacation to California where you finally get to meet the man behind the heartfelt letters.

A/N: Hey guys; so this has to be one of the cheesiest (if not the most fluffy ball of cheese story that I’ve written) and if I’m being honest I don’t know how I feel about this story but I’d like to think it’s cute and I’ve always wanted a pen pal (I love writing letters and I prefer writing letters and receiving mail over getting text messages sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong era but hey GOT7 and I exist at the same time so that’s all that matters) please enjoy! (Oh yeah, by the way, I was 1/4 in to writing this I write all my stories on my phone and I meant to highlight a word in order to delete it but I accidentally highlighted the whole story and ended up deleting it i was so mad at myself and I actually considered not writing it again because I was already so deep in to writing the story but I was very determined to finish it)

“Hey y/n, boss man wants you finished with that proposal by Wednesday.” The groan that fell from your lips was unintentional and as much as you hated showing disdain for your manager in front of your fellow colleagues because of how much pressure and stress he put you through, BamBam was used to seeing you get so worked up over things like this. But he couldn’t blame you; you had a lot on your plate as it was and your manager had a tendency to expect the world from you.

Working as a paralegal in one of the most prestigious law firms in your state on top of being a full-time student wasn’t the easiest thing to do and some days you found yourself wanting to give it all up entirely. However, you had a goal and you were going to do everything in your power to achieve it; no matter how frustrating juggling both your education and your job could be.

Your boss would always assign you different projects, expect you to come up with proposals, write essays and find as many clients as possible and what upset you the most, was that he expected you to do it in a few days time. He told you time and time again that he knew you were capable of such amazing things and you weren’t the lead paralegal in your company for no reason.

There were so many nights where you stayed up working on both your school work and the tasks assigned to you just so you could impress your boss with the amazing quality of your work that you just so happened to finish the same day you were given it. If only your boss knew how much blood, sweat and tears you put in to perfecting all your work before turning it in.

A tear of frustration fell from your face and you hated showing that you were weak in such a cutthroat business, but BamBam was one of the only coworkers you could trust. Especially because he just so happened to be your best friend. As soon as he heard you sniffle, he made his way over to your desk and gently ran his fingers through your hair before motioning for you to stand up so that he could pull you in to his embrace. He wrapped his arms around your waist as you brought yours up around his back and placed your head against his chest.

“Hey, don’t cry. I know it can get frustrating sometimes, and I know you’re tired but it will all be worth it in the end. Okay? Hang in there. You’re the most hardworking and dedicated person I know y/n and I admire you so much for it. He wouldn’t give you all this work load if he didn’t think you couldn’t handle it, but if it does get too much for you to manage, don’t hesitate to ask for help. Better yet, remind him of just how much you have on your plate. You’re a student as much as you are an employee y/n. And more importantly, you’re a human. Don’t give me that look, I know what you’re going to say. “But BamBam, I want to be the best. If I don’t do everything I’m supposed to, then I won’t be able to handle opening up my own law firm.” I hate how you belittle yourself all the time. You are the best y/n. Once you graduate and finally open up your own law firm, all the hard work and dedication will be worth it. Your law firm will shit on this law firm, I can already see it.”

You couldn’t help but giggle at his words. BamBam always knew the right things to say and you were extremely grateful that he applied to the law firm you were working at because he was the only reason you weren’t going insane with everything you had to deal with. He was a breath of fresh air in an office where you felt like you couldn’t breathe at all. You didn’t know what you would do without him there.

As much as you knew he should’ve been getting experience in his own field, he explained to you that he wanted nothing to do with the fashion industry until he graduated and had to go in to it. Some days you wish you could be like him, you wish you didn’t have to worry about the real world until it was time but you were such a perfectionist and you wanted to experience was the world of law had to offer.

“He’s going to kill me one day Bam, I swear to God. That man is overworking me to the bone and at this point I don’t even think it’s because he trusts me or because he thinks I’m great at what I do. I think it’s because his lazy ass doesn’t want to do the dirty work. I’m sick and tired of having to do everything for him only for him to get the credit, it’s bullshit.”

BamBam began to run his hands along the side of your arms and released a frustrated sigh. Everyone in your company knew how much time and energy you put in to your job. They knew how much you wanted to be a lawyer, and that you were one of the most talented and extremely intelligent paralegals in the field. Your boss was very lucky to have you; but at the same time he took advantage of your kindness and generosity and made you work until he was satisfied with the end product.

“I got an idea, why don’t you and I go on a vacation? You deserve a break y/n. Hey, don’t you have vacation days saved up? You should seeing as how much overtime you’ve been working. Plus winter break is just around the corner. Why don’t we go to California so you can finally meet that lover boy of yours—ow! What? I’m being serious y/n and you of all people should know that violence is not the answer. I can’t wait for you to become a lawyer so I can sue you for emotional and physical abuse—I’m kidding—well not really but the two of you have been at this for months and didn’t he imply that he wanted to finally meet you in his last letter? I should get going, I have to finish that contract with the bank. But think about my suggestion okay? I’ll wait for you to finish so that I can take you home, or if you’re up for it we can go eat somewhere. My treat. Good luck y/n! And don’t stress too much. You wouldn’t want Mark to see those wrinkles and dark circles—I’m out!”

He playfully squeezed at your cheek before leaving your office and once he was gone, you let out an exhausted groan while bringing your thumb and index finger up to the bridge of your nose and pinched it out of frustration. The idea of writing a five-paged proposal in less than two days made your head hurt.

Sometimes you wish you had the guts to confront your boss of expecting so much out of you but you were afraid of the aftermath that came with it. Plus, BamBam’s words stuck with you and it was all you could seem to think about. Around six months ago, you were scrolling on the Instagram explore page when you came across a very interesting post about pen pals. From a young age, you were always curious about how pen pals worked and you would get excited at the thought of writing letters to a stranger.

You were always a hopeless romantic. Everyone in your generation were all about technology and social media, but you still believed in sending postcards, taking pictures with polaroids and writing notes instead of having to use your phone or computer. You were constantly writing out emails and text messages for work and you’ve grown tired of technology and your devices, so you found yourself clicking on the link that led you to a website that gave you a list of people who were interested in finding a pen pal. Once you made your account, uploaded a photo and some information, you began exploring the website and seeing what they had to offer.

After going through a few profiles, you grew interested in one in particular that just so happened to belong to the boy BamBam was referring to. You were quick to reach out to Mark and to your delight, he responded back in less than five minutes telling you that he just so happened to take a liking to your page also. What you had thought would just be a one time thing, turned out to be letters he would send once every two weeks.

The longer the two of you wrote to each other, the more constant he would write to you. One letter every two weeks became three letters in one week and you’d find yourself waiting patiently for him to write to you. His letters seemed to be the only thing you looked forward to. Each and every letter you received from him never failed to bring a smile to your face and it wasn’t up until a month ago that you realized you were developing feelings for him.

Although you had yet to meet him, he already found his way in to your heart and when BamBam mentioned finally getting to meet him, you couldn’t help but grin like a little school girl. Mark had a way with words. He told you he couldn’t even write essays as long as his letters and it was because he just had so much to tell you. If you were being honest, you were a great listener but at the same time, you’d find yourself getting bored of a conversation if someone were to talk about a topic you weren’t interested in for so long.

There were even situations when BamBam would go in to depth about fashion and you tried your best not to seem like you weren’t interested, you just had no idea what he would talk about but you would always give him your undying attention nonetheless. However, you would read each and every single letter Mark had written to you over and over and you’d never get tired. He would tell you about his life, his job, his dreams and aspirations, memories from his childhood, the new puppy he just adopted name Milo, how living with his best friend Jackson was like and so much more.

The two of you talked about exchanging numbers in order to text, call and FaceTime each other, but you both agreed that the whole point of the pen pal situation was because you both enjoyed waiting for each other to write back. It was unique, it was fun and writing back and forth with Mark was your little escape from reality. He did mention wanting to meet you, and finally getting to put a face to the letters and you too were curious of what Mark looked like.

His avatar on his account was a picture of what you assumed to be Milo whereas yours was a picture of GusGus from Cinderella that you got off of the internet. You wanted to keep your identity somewhat of a secret from Mark because it added to the mystery and eccentricity of this whole experience. You were afraid of things changing between the two of you if and when you were to meet and you didn’t want things to stop between the two of you if he were to come to the realization that maybe you weren’t who he thought you were.

It’s been almost two weeks since you’ve last heard from him and he informed you in his last letter that he was going to be busy for the next few weeks and that he was going to miss writing to you but that you could continue writing to him in the mean time. You’ve sent him at least three letters since he’s last written to you and it was in the moment that you found yourself missing him that you realized you saw him as more than just a pen pal. BamBam wouldn’t let you hear the end of it when you told him of your entire situation and he kept teasing you the minute he found out about your crush on Mark.

“You haven’t even met the guy y/n. For all you know, he could be a 65-year-old divorced man with two kids living on a farm in Arkansas or even worse, he could be a serial killer trying to lure you in with his sweet and charming words. You do know we have social media for a reason, why don’t you search him up and see exactly who he is before continuing this weird ass relationship.”

There were times that curiosity got the best of you and you wanted to go and search his name up on Facebook or Instagram, but you told yourself you would wait. BamBam however, was the definition of nosy and would meddle in everybody’s business even if he knew it was wrong to do so. For the business aspect, your boss loved the idea that BamBam would dig up dirt and search for any information that could throw competitors and ex-clients under the bus. What you could care less for, was when it came to your personal life.

He hardly had anything to be nosy about when it came to you. You haven’t been in a relationship in years and all you had going for you was your job and your schooling. Unlike BamBam, you hated clubbing and going out to bars; you didn’t see the point in wasting your money on overpriced alcohol and pressing your body up against a random stranger.

Staying in and watching reruns of Cake Boss while eating a whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream was how you spent your days off. In BamBam’s words, you were practically a grandma. Even more so when he found out about your pen pal, but he was never once to force you in to anything you didn’t want to do and if you were happy, so was he. When BamBam suggested searching him up, you didn’t think he’d actually go along with it but then again, it was BamBam. What did you expect? Usually whenever he put his mind to something, he’d go along with it.

“Wow y/n, if this is the guy, you’ve lucked out big time. Damn, if I were a girl, I’d go for him. Not to sound weird or anything, but he’s hot. You didn’t hear it from me though. But who knows, I could be looking at the wrong guy. I’m sure there are hundreds of Mark Tuans in the world.”

A huge part of you felt like he was bluffing and only saying things like that to make fun of you. But another part of you wanted to yank his phone and see for yourself what he was talking about.

“Come on y/n, I know you wanna see what he looks like. There’s no harm in taking a peek. Why are you so adamant on not knowing what he looks like? God, the two of you are honestly meant for each other, you’re both elderly people in young people’s bodies.”

Once you reached the third page of your proposal, you decided to call it a day. As much as you wanted to hang out with BamBam, especially because he offered to treat you which was a very rare thing knowing how much of a cheapskate he was, you were tired beyond belief and wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Although he was disappointed when he heard of your plans, he couldn’t blame you for wanting to go right to bed and he wanted you to get some rest.

He was also pretty happy he didn’t have to spend money, but he wasn’t going to tell you that. Like the gentleman he was, he took your things for you and led the way to his car. The car ride was quiet, which was unlike most of the rides he gave you considering how outspoken and talkative he could be. At a stop light, he reached for your hand and gently squeezed it as a nonverbal way to let you know that everything was going to be okay.

There were moments where he’d open his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but after seeing your breakdown earlier, he probably decided that he’d give you some space and not aggravate you more than you already were. Around twenty minutes after the two of you left the office, he pulled up to your guest parking and gave you a gentle pat on the head.

“Get some rest please? I’m tired of having to correct people when they assume you’re my mom—I swear you get more and more abusive the longer we’re friends for.” You let out a scoff as he rubbed the spot that you hit him at.

“Nobody thinks I’m your mother asshole. Thank you for the ride home and for comforting me earlier. I really appreciate it Bam. I don’t know if I say it enough but I’m very thankful for all that you do for me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He gave you a knowing smirk and cupped your cheek in his palm. There were times where people assumed that the two of you were dating by how much time you both spent together and because of the skin-ship you shared.

The lingering touches and gentle kisses on your cheek and forehead every now and then weren’t those normally shared between best friends, but you’ve never questioned it. You and BamBam have been friends for almost 20 years, he never showed any romantic interest in you nor did you feel anything for him and you felt it was better off that way.

The older boy was extremely supportive in each and every one of your endeavors and although you were slowly getting tired of how silly he was acting towards the entire Mark situation, deep down you knew he was just messing around with you and even if you didn’t admit it to him out loud, he had a hunch that you were falling for Mark. All BamBam wanted was for you to be happy and if Mark was the reason for your happiness, then he supported whatever it was going on between you both.

“Ew, don’t get all sentimental on me. GROSS! Since you’re off tomorrow, if you’re feeling up for it maybe we can go try out that new sushi place. It’s kind of pricey so I’m not offering to treat, I’ll tell you that right now. I’m only a phone call away if you need me. Have a nice rest of your evening.”

When he drove away, you released a breath you didn’t even know you were holding. Honestly BamBam and Mark were the only people keeping you sane as of right now. If it wasn’t for BamBam’s endless amounts of support and Mark’s kind and motivating words, you’d be an alcoholic. You trudged up the stairs and debated on whether or not you should check the mail because you knew there was no way Mark could have written to you since he was still quite busy and you hardly ever ordered anything, so there wasn’t anything for you to look forward to. Yet you still found yourself making your way to the mailbox and lazily opened the box, not being expectant of anything.

The minute your eyes landed on the single envelope, your heart felt as if it was about to jump out of your chest. You didn’t have to read who it was from, you could tell by the envelope alone that it was from Mark. He had a unique choice in cards and he would even draw cute little characters and they never failed to bring a smile to your face. Even if you were exhausted and wanted nothing more than to flop right on to your bed, you were now wide awake and had every intention on reading his letter.

You made a beeline up to your apartment and didn’t give yourself time to do anything before you rushed in to the door and practically jumped on the couch. For a guy, you felt that he had such neat hand writing and if you were being honest, his penmanship was adorable. You’ve mentioned it to him a few times in your letters and he was always quick to disagree. Something about the way he wrote a tiny heart next to your name always made your cheeks warm up. You found it hard to believe that he was turning twenty-seven in just a few months by the way he seemed so childish not only in his writing, but in the little doodles and the way he would write your address in bubble letters. After giving yourself a few seconds to calm your racing heart, you took the note out of the envelope and began reading.

“Dear y/n, July 12, 2019

Hey stranger, it’s been a while and I’d like to apologize for that. I’d say work was driving me insane, but I know you have it just as hard juggling your career and your education so there’s really no excuse. How have you been? I’ve missed writing to you and hell, I’ve missed you even more. Thank you for continuing to write to me over the last few weeks even if I failed to do so for you. I promise you I’ll send you so many letters this week the mailman will probably start hiding them out of irritation. Maybe I should pull a Harry Potter and have an owl deliver them to you so they can get to you faster. Just a little update, I got the promotion I told you about earlier which I’m pretty excited for and I know what you’re about to say; I’m sorry for not believing you when you told me that if anyone deserved the lead position, it was me. You know how I can get sometimes, especially when it comes to my job, but I’m very thankful that you see the best in me and you never fail to support me in each and every thing that I do.

I finally went out and tried the strawberry cheesecake ice cream from Baskin Robbins that you recommended and I’m so mad at myself for not trying it earlier. It’s sooooooo good. Oh, Jackson and I went to the bookstore the other day and I saw the fifth installment of the “Series of Unfortunate Events” books and I thought of you and how you finished the entire series in less than a week. You’re insane you know that? But you’re also pretty amazing. Jackson keeps bothering me about meeting you and I keep telling him when it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen. I want you to know though that I can’t wait to finally meet you. Sometimes I forget how old I’m getting when I find myself bouncing off the walls the minute Jackson brings in the mail and I see your letters. I’m not rushing you, but I do have a break coming up here in a couple of weeks (hint, hint) so if you’d like to come up here to California for the holidays, I’d love to show you around ;).

Well, I’d better get going, I have more letters to write. By the way, I have a surprise coming your way in the next few days so be ready for it. Don’t forget to eat all your meals and try not to work so hard. Maybe I should come visit you instead and give your asshole boss a piece of my mind. Anyways, I hope you’re doing well and I don’t care how busy I am, I will make time for you. So if you’re ever feeling sad, upset, tired or lonely, just remember that I’m always going to be here for you. I may not be there for you physically, but just know you’re always on my mind every single day. I’m sure your workload is overwhelming right now, so feel free to take as long as you want to get back to me(but don’t take too long your letters are the only thing I look forward to) Take care and hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely, Mark.”

The tears were hot against your cheeks and you didn’t even realize you were crying until the words started to smear and you were quick to pull the letter away to prevent it from getting ruined. Sometimes you had a hard time believing this was all real and not a figment of your imagination. Pen pals were considered taboo; writing back and forth to a stranger about your life and things that went on in it wasn’t something you’d thought you’d be doing but here you were. Mark wasn’t even considered just your pen pal at this point, he was a friend, a confidant; your safe haven.

His words never failed to move you each and every time he wrote to you, but something about this letter in particular was making you feel things in your heart that you’ve never felt before. For someone you’ve never met before, you felt as if you’ve known him forever. He seemed extremely sincere and always checked up on your mental health and physical being.

Did things like this actually happen in people’s lives? Were there other people out there who had a unique relationship like you and Mark? The more the two of you would write back and forth to one another, the more you were afraid in actually meeting him. You didn’t want things to change. What if unlike in your letters, he wasn’t as invested in you and what if interacting with him was awkward and uncomfortable?

You didn’t want to lose his friendship if he came to the realization that he preferred the postal version of you and not the actual you. You reread the letter at least five times and his words had a stronger effect on you each and every time you read it over again. He missed you? It wasn’t the first time he was cheeky in his writing, but this was the first time he admitted that he’s constantly thinking about you and waiting for your letters. But what did it mean? Was it possible for someone you’ve never met to develop feelings for you?

Surely there was no way Mark could harbor any romantic feelings for you. He didn’t even know what you looked like; so what else other than your letters made him think about you constantly? You came to the decision that you weren’t going to overthink this entire situation and allow yourself to go to bed. All your worries were just going to have to wait until the morning. Unfortunately, your mind was running a mile a minute and there was no way you could find it in yourself to fall asleep.

As much as you hated bothering him, you knew the only way you’d get to get your well deserved slumber was if you talked to BamBam and told him what happened. You crossed your fingers and hoped he wasn’t asleep and when you heard his raspy voice through the phone, a soft sigh of relief fell from your lips.

“I’m so sorry to bother you and even more sorry if I woke you, I just—I couldn’t sleep.” He let out a soft giggle, nonverbally letting you know that it was fine. It wasn’t the first time you’ve woken him up in the middle of the night, and he was aware that he was the only one who you could trust in listening to you and getting you to calm down. BamBam felt honored that you could confide in him and he was even more appreciative knowing that you would do the exact same for him if he needed it.

“You’re fine. You know you can reach out to me whenever you need to. I know I don’t expect anything from you, but just remember; I really like taro bubble tea with boba. 100% sweetness. But that’s besides the point. What’s up?” You nibbled on your bottom lip out of nervousness at the thought of his response to your dilemma, but everything just came flowing out of you.

“I—I got another letter from Mark today.”

“That’s good! Isn’t that what you wanted? You’ve been acting so gloomy these days and I am completely aware it’s partially because of work, but you and I both know that Mr.Pen Pal has a lot to do with your melancholic mood. So why do you sound so upset?”

“He told me he misses me, that he has a vacation coming up and wants to finally get to meet me and that he can’t stop thinking about me. Isn’t that—doesn’t that sound weird? Like, we’ve never met each other in the flesh. All we do is write letters back and forth to one another. He’s never heard my voice, he has no clue what I look like and other than the information I write in my letters, he doesn’t know much about me but at the same time, he knows everything. Isn’t that strange? And what’s worse, is that I’ve been feeling something, something in my chest that I’ve never felt before and it scares me. He’s practically a stranger Bam! And like you’ve joked around about countless times, he could be hiding his actual identity. He might be writing me from jail, or in divorce court—“

Although you couldn’t see him, you’ve been friends long enough with BamBam to know that there was a huge chance he was frowning at your words. You were infamous for rambling on and on about the most unnecessary things sometimes. However, he knew you were genuinely confused and had no clue what to do about this entire situation. But BamBam, considering the joker he was who lived with the “you only live once” lifestyle had a gut feeling that your relationship with Mark was no longer just letters to a stranger.

He witnessed how distressed you were over the last few weeks not receiving anything from Mark. He’s seen how happy you’d get when you finally did get a letter. He’s heard you squeal and giggle at Mark’s sweet words and he would observe the way you would bite your lip and scrunch your nose in excitement. You’d always go in to great detail about how intelligent, kind-hearted and charismatic Mark was and your eyes, there was always this particular glint in them whenever Mark came up in a conversation.

BamBam has never been in love before. Hell, he’s never experienced being in an actual relationship, so he never knew what it felt like to love and to be in love with someone. Even if you weren’t in love with Mark, he knew you must’ve had some kind of feelings for him and if he was being honest, if it wasn’t love; he didn’t know what it was.

“I don’t mean to interrupt you, but can I be honest? I think you’re in love with Mark. And before you can call me crazy and try to disagree, think about it. You don’t need to say it out loud, he’s constantly on your mind the way he claims you are on his. You practically live in front of your mailbox, waiting to get anything from him and don’t you think I didn’t see the small note he wrote for you in your wallet. You spend hours writing notes to him, not knowing exactly what to say because I’m sure you’re afraid of boring him or scaring him away and you’re worried at the thought of no longer having him in your life. If you didn’t love him y/n, you wouldn’t give two shits whether or not he were to stop writing to you nor would you be calling me up to vent about your concerns. I know it’s a lot to take in and it might seem weird because he’s a stranger, but is he really a stranger to you y/n? I feel like you know more about him and talk with him more than you do some of your family members. He makes you happy y/n, in ways that not even I can and I like the effect he has on you. Consider finally getting to meet him won’t you? If it doesn’t work out the way you want it to, then you can end this entire thing completely but I’m sure he will love the physical you as much as he does the person he writes to. Like I said, I’ll come to California with you! I wouldn’t mind going to Disneyland, but I come with a fee—so feel free to pay for my ticket. We can continue this conversation over breakfast tomorrow okay? I hope I helped, goodnight y/n.”

The following week came and gone in the snap of a finger. You finished the proposal the day after your day off and turned it in just a few hours before your boss was expecting it. Since work was so hectic which you both hated and loved for obvious reasons, it took your mind off of the many worries going on in your head. A few days later, you received another letter from Mark and a box you assumed to be the surprise he wrote about in his last letter. When you opened the box and saw the snow globe that had a couple inside going around an ice skating rink, a huge smile rose on your face followed by a stray tear.

“This snow globe can be your reality if you come to see me. I remember you saying you have yet to experience snow, so let me be the first one you share that experience with. It’s getting pretty cold up here, so pack wisely; but just know that I’m practically a human furnace and I’d love to warm you up ;). Sincerely, Mark.”

After getting breakfast with BamBam the morning after your little breakdown, you came to the decision that you were going to fly up to California and finally meet the man who owned your heart. You also came to the conclusion that BamBam was right.

You were in love with Mark.

You didn’t have to see him or interact with him physically to know that he was where your heart now resides. All those late nights you stayed up thinking about his passionate and heartfelt words, the feeling in your chest that’s been going on for the last few weeks, always looking forward to the mailman coming to see if he’s written to you, reading his letters over and over again to the point where you memorized each and every word. It all made sense.

You didn’t care what would happen once you got there, your heart was stronger than your mind and it craved to finally meet him. In your recent letter, you told Mark about your plans, and you could only hope he was serious about wanting to meet you and not just messing around. Poor BamBam had to hear you go on and on about rethinking your decision and that it was going to be a mistake, but he did his best to reassure you that everything was going to be okay and that you were overreacting.

Two weeks after you received a letter from Mark saying that he was over the moon at your decision to fly up to California, you and BamBam started to plan out your trip and put in your vacation time at work. Since you needed a quicker way to interact with him, the two of you ended up exchanging numbers to let him know when you landed so that he could pick you up at the airport. The idea of meeting him as soon as you landed both worried you and excited you. However, you couldn’t stop thinking that the car ride to your hotel was going to be awkward. Luckily BamBam was an amazing conversationalist and if you ended up not being able to converse with Mark, he could do it for you.

You were extremely grateful that BamBam offered to go on vacation with you. Sure, he kept telling you that he’s been dying to take a vacation and that there were so many places in California that he wanted to visit, but nonetheless you were glad that you had someone to go with you not only for safety reasons, but to keep you company and to console you if meeting Mark didn’t end up the way you expected it to. The entire months of November seemed to pass you by so quickly and before you knew it, you and BamBam were on a plane to California.

“How are you feeling? You finally get to meet your Prince Charming, aren’t you excited? Oh don’t give me that look—what do I keep telling you? I swear to God I can’t wait to tell your kids one day about how their mom was so nervous to meet their dad—the first thing I’m going to warn mark about is how abusive you are. There’s really nothing for you to worry about, if things end up going to shit then what can you do? That’s life. But they’ll only end up that way because you made them that way. If you’re worried about what he looks like, like I told you before he’s hot—if I were a girl I’d go for him, if it is the same guy who’s Instagram I’ve been stalking for the last month. If he turns out to be some old dude let’s just hope he has money—ENOUGH WITH THE HITTING. Mark will love you for you, no matter what and if he doesn’t, he’s missing out on such a wonderful human being. I’ve already searched up bars in the area that we’re staying in just in case you need to get drunk. You’re welcome. Now try to sleep, we have a 7 hour flight and those eye bags aren’t cute y/n.”

You gently squeezed his hand and rested your head on his shoulder. You wanted to retaliate against his playful comments, but you were too tired to even think of anything to fire back with. BamBam smiled softly at your now sleeping figure and playfully ran his fingers through your hair before falling asleep himself. After sleeping for what felt like hours, BamBam woke you up to let you know that the plane was landing soon. The nerves started to kick in again and you found yourself releasing a couple of deep breaths which BamBam got a kick out of.

“How do I look? Is my outfit okay? Should I go change? How’s my hair? Do I have any dried up drool on my chin?” He gave you a look of disgust and brought his hands up to your face and pinched your cheek.

“You look beautiful y/n. Especially for someone whose been on a plane for quite some time. Stop worrying, you’re giving me anxiety. No drool, you’re good. Now let’s do this.” Once the plane landed, you sent Mark a quick text saying that you and BamBam finally arrived in Los Angeles and gave him your gate number to which he responded immediately with a smiley face and a thumbs up. From the time you gave him your number up until now, he’d only send you emojis, funny videos or memes. The sweet, heartfelt messages were saved specifically for his letters and you liked it that way. BamBam stood up as soon as the plane landed but you yanked his arm and had him sit back down.

“Come on y/n, why does it seem like I’m more excited to meet Mark than you are.” You rolled your eyes and motioned toward the line of people that was building up.

“We’ve traveled together many more times than I can count and you still never learn. Everyone knows not to stand up to try and leave once the plane lands dumbass. I want to meet him, but three extra minutes won’t kill me. Don’t use him as an excuse, you just want to get off the plane.”

After everyone practically cleared the plane, BamBam reached for both of your carry-ons in the storage bins and led you towards baggage claim. Your heart began racing, time was ticking down extremely fast and your anxiety was building up. You couldn’t help but wonder how Mark was feeling at the idea of meeting you. Was he just as nervous? Or was he excited to finally meet the person he’s been writing to for the last six months?

When BamBam picked up both your luggage’s, the two of you made your way to the gate and when you saw the person holding a sign with your name on it, your breath hitched. You were so focused on the devastatingly handsome man who you assumed to be Mark that you failed to notice the huge grin on BamBam’s face. His smile was practically cheek to cheek at this point.

“You know, I should quit fashion and become an investigator of some sorts. I fucking knew it was him. I’m fucking amazing.” You let out a small snicker when you remembered the first time BamBam searched up his profile to make sure you weren’t interacting with some freak on the Internet. When he said Mark was good looking, you felt like BamBam was just playing around with you but now that you’re looking directly at him, BamBam��s words were an understatement. He had yet to notice you walking towards him and you were right about to wave him down until the most embarrassing thing possible happened. As much as you were thankful BamBam was there with you, you should’ve known the possibility of him embarrassing you was quite high.

“Ayo Mark! Over here man!” You shoved the older boy and shamefully tried to hide behind him, but he dodged your movement and continued to wave at him. In your peripheral vision, you could see Mark walking towards you and you allowed yourself to take a look at him so you didn’t look stupid. God, he was beautiful and his smile was indescribable. He began jogging towards the two of you and before your mind could process anything, you were being pulled in to his embrace and he swung you around as if you were light as a feather. He was right, he was practically a furnace and you could feel your cheeks warming up at the feeling of his arms around your waist.

“Wow, I—you are—wow—hi. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I just—hi. It’s nice to finally meet you. You are so beautiful. Jackson’s description of you doesn’t do you justice. Oh, hello! BamBam right? Nice to meet you too man. Y/n always raves about you in her letters. Thanks for always taking such good care of her. How was your guy’s flight?”

You remembered Mark mentioning his roommate in a few of his letters and you couldn’t help but smile with the way he was interacting with your best friend. They had only just met, but during the walk to his car they talked as if they were good friends. You were shocked at how natural this all was and you felt so stupid for overreacting at the idea of meeting him. With the way he was acting so friendly and bubbly towards you, you regretted not meeting him sooner.

Once the three of you made it to his car, he took the luggage’s from the both of you and told you to get settled in. When you took a seat in the front, you turned around and looked at BamBam with a content look on your face.

“See, I told you. I fucking told you. This guy is perfect. Are you sure you need me here? You’re doing fine on your own. Maybe I’ll have him drop me off to the hotel and you can go with him and get to know each other if you know what I’m saying.”

You knew exactly what the cheeky boy meant and you rolled your eyes at his words but your chest tightened up at the idea of being alone with Mark. When he made his way back in to the car, he handed you the beautiful bouquet of flowers and buckled up before starting the engine.

“You’re giving these flowers a run for their money with how beautiful you are, you know that? Sunflowers are your favorite if I remember correctly right? It makes sense. You’re bright, you stand out and you light up an entire room. So, which hotel are the two of you staying at? I’ll drop you both off and then we can go get some lunch or something. I have a few things planned for us but if you guys have other things in mind then that’s fine too.”

He wasn’t real, he couldn’t be. There was no way. Were you dreaming? Were you and BamBam still on the plane waiting to land? He was charming, gorgeous and quite the gentleman. This had to be a set up. Out of all the people in the world that you could’ve chose to be your pen pal, how did you end up with an actual Greek God who was driving you to the brink of insanity the longer you stayed in his presence?

“We’re staying at the Grand Californian in Disneyland. We both got the 5 day park hopper pass, so feel free to join us. I’m sure y/n would enjoy it if you came. In more ways than one.”

The last part came out as a whisper but you were sure Mark heard it and if looks could kill, BamBam would be six-feet-under. Hearing him giggle made your heart flutter; for someone who was just a few years away from thirty, he had the most adorable high pitched laugh and you knew you’d never get tired of hearing it. How could someone at his age be so damn cute? It wasn’t fair.

“That sounds cool. I’m always up for Disneyland. Wintertime is the best time to go, so you both made a great decision in visiting right now. What do you think about snowboarding? My friends and I are planning to head up to big bear mountain this weekend and it’d be awesome if the two of you came. It’s actually where I planned on taking you to see the snow y/n. It’s one of the only places that actually snows around here, but if you’re not in to snowboarding or sledding, we can go somewhere that requires less physical activity and more sight seeing.”

You could only pray that BamBam didn’t make his last comment seem dirty and secretly thanked God when all you heard was a soft snicker. The rest of the car ride seemed to go off without a hitch and conversation was mainly between Mark and BamBam, but you weren’t complaining. Since the airport was almost two hours away from your hotel, BamBam fell asleep around 45 minutes in to the drive and a part of you wanted to pretend you were sleeping so that things wouldn’t be awkward, but Mark had other plans. You were playing with your fingers out of nervousness when you saw Mark reach over the console to intertwine your fingers together. His laughter filled the car when he saw you practically freeze at the skin ship.

“Is this okay? I’m sorry if it seems like I’m rushing things and if I’m being quite honest with you, I’m not normally like this. I’m very shy and extroverted around strangers but we’re not exactly strangers. You know more about me than most of my friends do. Hell, even more than some of my family members. I don’t know what it is, I just feel so comfortable around you. I’m sorry if I’m making it uncomfortable for you, but I’m very excited to spend these next three weeks with you.”

His words, just like the ones in his letters were pulling at your heartstrings and you gently squeezed his hand to let him know that it was fine; and that you too were just as excited. To both your surprised, you brought his hand up to your lips and kissed the back of it.

“I’m totally fine with it, really. It’s shocking to hear you’re a shy person when your letters say otherwise. If anything, I’m normally such the extrovert but you’re making me flustered. I’m excited too by the way. We can always ditch BamBam and hang out together, just the two of us.”

Seeing his cheeks redden at your words made you feel at ease. Thankfully you weren’t the only one who was whipped. The two of you continued the conversation; he updated you on so many different things going on in his life and told you about all the different places he wanted to take you.

“You have really small hands, but it’s cute. Honestly I think they fit perfectly in mine. You’re so cute you know that? If I wasn’t driving right now, I’d take all the time in the world to admire your beauty. Not to sound rude, but I’m glad BamBam is sleeping. He’d probably laugh at how cheesy I‘m acting right now. That’s why I didn’t want to bring Jackson. Jackson Wang is my version of BamBam and if you think BamBam is embarrassing, just wait until you meet him. I’m actually reconsidering having you meet him, he might just be the one that drives you away. But he’s been wanting to meet you from the moment I accidentally told him about you. I hope you know I’ve never been this way around anyone before. It’s just you. Only you have this effect on me and I like it.” He let out a soft sigh and began to graze your wrist with his thumb before continuing.

“I um—I—fuck. You know what? I’ll just say it, I like you—no scratch that. I love you. I’m sorry if it’s weird to say considering we just met for the first time less than two hours ago, but I do. I fell in love with you y/n. Honestly right now is not the best time to admit it, but I’ve been bottling it up inside of me for the last few months and now that you’re finally here, I just needed to say it. This whole pen pal situation was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You—you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me and if we weren’t on the freeway, I’d show you just how much I love you and how much you mean to me. You were my sweet escape—my getaway from how shitty life could be and every single time you wrote to me, I had to prepare my heart from practically beating out of my chest. I always thought the idea of butterflies flying around in someone’s stomach was so childish and if I’m being honest, I didn’t think it was possible but shit—you cause actually elephants to run around in my tummy. I promise, I really don’t mean to rush things and feel free to stop me at any moment—“

Since the freeway was not as busy in your opinion considering the fact that Los Angeles had some of the worst traffic in the entire world, or so Mark has told you about many times, you took this chance to reach over and place a soft kiss on his lips.

“I love you too. You can thank the loud mouth in the back for helping me come to the realization and I too thought it wasn’t normal to be in love with someone I’ve never met or knew what you looked like, but your words—they never failed to put a smile on my face. Whenever I was sad, or if work stressed me out too much, I’d go back to one of your letters where you included a terrible pun or a dad joke and I found myself smiling like an idiot. When I read your letter from a few weeks ago where you said you missed me and that you were constantly thinking about me, I knew that most pen pals and even friends don’t feel that way towards each other. I was afraid of meeting you—I felt like things wouldn’t work out between us but I really don’t know why I was so worried. Being around you is such an indescribable feeling; I can’t find it in myself to stop smiling. And you’re right, you are really hot—temperature wise. But I guess physically too. I just want to thank you, for always supporting me and being there for me even if we still had yet to meet one another. You make my life so much easier and I’m a lot more happier now that you’re in it.”

You leaned over one more time to place a chaste kiss on his cheek and Mark let out a soft groan causing you to look at him in curiosity. “The next rest stop is in 15 miles, I really want to kiss you right now. You’re a dream come true y/n. I don’t think three weeks is going to be enough time for us to spend together I might need to follow you back home.”

You softly bit your lip out of excitement before facing the other direction so that he couldn’t see the blush on your cheeks at the thought of him wanting to spend more time with you.

“I have my own room at the hotel if you wanna come and stay with me during the duration of our trip. Maybe then you can show me exactly how much I mean to you?” Right as he was about to respond to your cheeky remark, the groan from the back seat caused you both to laugh.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely happy for the both of you and I’ve been so supportive of your relationship from the start, but I swear to God if I hear y’all fucking through the walls I’m dropping you as a friend y/n. Lord, what did I sign myself up for. The two of you really are perfect for each other. And stop kissing him y/n. I don’t want him crashing before I can go to Disneyland. No more pda in front of me you freaks! Keep your eyes on the road lover boy. I’m going back to sleep, no more funny business you two!”

Finally Mark took a cut off and ended up on a highway, bringing the three of you to a red light and Mark was able to steal a chaste kiss from your lips. When you felt him smile in to the kiss, you found yourself returning the ministration.

“You think BamBam would hate us if I dropped him off at an in and out? I don’t think I can wait to relinquish in our love much longer and I don’t want to continue risking our lives having to kiss you especially since your lips are extremely addictive.”

“He’d be pissed! Don’t y’all dare even think about dropping me off—you horny little bastards can’t even wait half an hour more—you’re getting toilet paper as your wedding gift.” Even if he continued to embarrass you in front of Mark, you couldn’t help but smile to yourself at the idea of marrying Mark. It was still too early to think about your relationship together, but if things were to go in your favor, you wouldn’t mind getting to be the lucky girl who got to marry him.

A little more than half an hour later, you arrived to your hotel to both BamBam and Mark’s delight. After checking in and making your way to your rooms, BamBam gave you both knowing looks since you’re rooms were right next to each other.

“It was nice meeting you Mark. You make y/n very happy. This is the happiest I’ve ever seen her. You guys are cute together. I’m going to get my well deserved rest. Let me know if you guys are actually going out for dinner. However, after hearing your conversation, you’ll probably eat each other instead—prepare yourself Mark, y/n is extremely aggressive but maybe you’ll be in to that. I’ll tell you both this right now if y’all get loud, I’m switching hotels. THIS IS A FAMILY HOTEL YOU FREAKS. You know, for someone who was so worried to meet this man, you’re taking things extremely well y/n. Okay, with the look on your face I’m going to take this as my leave. Have fun—but not too much fun—you know what? Don’t have fun at all. Suffer.”

BamBam ran in to his room and left you outside of yours with Mark standing right behind you. You cursed BamBam under your breath for always saying the wrong things. “I know you said earlier that you were worried to meet me, but can I ask you why? like, can you go a little more in to detail? I mean, I was pretty nervous to meet you too, but much more excited.”

You released a soft sigh before turning around to face him. Since you wanted to have Mark all to yourself before explaining your worries, you entered the room and sat down on the bed; quietly thanking him for bringing in your luggage before patting the spot next to you for him to sit down.

“I don’t know, I just—I think it’s because I had a hard time believing this was happening. Our friendship—even right now. It’s too good to be true. But I didn’t worry about you, I know you were genuine and I know that the feelings I have for you are the product of how you’ve been treating me and taking care of me in the last few months. Every time I wrote to you, it didn’t feel like I was writing to a stranger. I felt like I was writing a letter to my best friend; someone who I can trust with my entire being. Someone who means a lot to me. But you’ve never gave me a reason to even question whatever it was going on between us. When I came to the realization that I was in love with you, I couldn’t stop thinking that it was wrong and that you’d want to stop things between us if you didn’t feel the same. I was actually afraid that you’d see me in person and think I was some horrendous looking creature and come up with some lame excuse to end our pen pal ship, if that’s even a thing—“ he lifted up your chin so that you were making eye contact with him before stealing a soft kiss from the corner of your mouth. This man was honestly going to be the death of you.

“Jackson—he did the unthinkable the minute I told him about you but I can’t say it was unexpected. He always meddles in to my business so I should’ve known our situation would be no different. He searched you up on every social media platform and he wouldn’t stop raving about your beauty. I almost caved in and took a look for myself but you had a point in wanting to keep up the mystery. You want to know my real opinion of you y/n? I think you’re gorgeous. I can’t even fathom your beauty in to words. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met and actually it goes beyond just your beauty. It’s how kind and gentle you are. Your words, although they were short, sweet and to the point, I couldn’t stop smiling at the way you would add in nonsense words to describe your boss with and your little drawings were always so cute. I could tell that you were an optimistic and passionate person with the way you’d talk about your goals in life and your plans for the future. I found myself wanting to be apart of it and although I’d find that weird in any other situation, with you it just felt right. Would you like to be my girlfriend y/n? The distance will be rough, but we’ll make it work. You’d make me the happiest man in the world if you said yes.”

You internally screamed at the idea of dating the beautiful boy in front of you but you nodded quickly before connecting your lips together in a passionate and heated kiss. Your lips melded together so naturally; as if you’ve kissed one another many times and it was a feeling you knew you’d never get enough of.

“I love you Mark. So much.”

“I love you too baby. Normally I’d be able to explain in to detail just how much, but you have me at a loss for words. Now, I think it’s time to wake BamBam up from his nap shall we?”

#got7 imagines #got7 mark #mark tuan #mark tuan imagines #mark tuan fluff #got7 fluff

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kimjoongs · 5 years ago

Text

—ateez college au series [cs]

i imagine san to be a photography major

he has a very creative eye and looks at the world through a different kind of lens than everyone else

he’s been interested in photography ever since he middle school when he went to a photography exhibit on a field trip

san is a very expressive person and he wanted to somehow transfer his emotions into something tangible

and what better way to do that than through photography?

san has two cameras: film and digital

in high school, he didn’t have enough money to buy a professional camera so he just stuck to his phone camera

but when he got a job and collected enough money, he went and bought his first camera, the film one

you best bet san treasured it more than anything

he tried his best not to use it as much because there’s only a limited number of film and buying more was e x p e n s i v e

but when san graduated high school his parents gifted him with a digital camera too

wherever san goes, he’s always taking pictures, whether it’s on his phone or cameras

he usually uses his film camera for more personal things, like pictures of his family, friends, or places that are important to him, and he either hangs them up in his apartment or turn them in for assignments

and he uses his digital camera for editing purposes, like double exposure or halftones

his roommate, wooyoung, serves as his personal model from time to time

“hey wooyoung stand by that tree for a sec, i wanna get a picture” “omg wooyoung wait sit still, the lighting is so good here” “WOOYOUNG GET YOUR ASS OUTSIDE IT’S GOLDEN HOUR”

wooyoung is annoyed bc of this sometimes, but as soon as he takes one look at his roommate eagerly bouncing on the tips of his toes, camera clutched in his hands, he can’t bring himself to be upset about it

also the one time san submitted a photo of wooyoung for an assignment he received a perfect score on it so—

one time wooyoung asked san if he ever modeled for his own photos, and san said he’d much rather be behind the camera than in front of it

except for the photos his parents made him take when he was a kid, san never really liked having his picture taken

he always felt more comfortable taking someone else’s

oh and also because san doesn’t let a n y o n e touch his cameras, not even wooyoung

there was a time where wooyoung offered to take san’s photo for him and he practically leaped away when wooyoung reached for his camera

everyone in the fine arts building knows who san is because he’s always running around taking pictures

their campus always has a bunch of stray cats wandering around, and if photography wasn’t san’s weakness, then it was cats

“omg wooyoung look there’s a cat i need to take a picture of it—” “san you’ve already taken twenty pictures of the same cat, let’s go before we’re late to class”

san is also such a friendly and gentle soul, so it wasn’t hard for him to charm all of his professors

one professor in particular became really fond of san because he reminds him of himself when he was younger

he became sort of a father figure to san and even offered to give san tips on how to take better photos

he also gave san permission to go into the darkroom after class hours or on the weekends should he need them

you can imagine how much san took advantage of that (in a good way ofc)

if san wasn’t running around taking pictures, then he was probably in the darkroom developing them

for a few months, san was pretty much the only person who used the darkroom after hours, so he never really bothered knocking on the door before entering

but the one time he didn’t, he almost ran into someone on the way in

at the sight of someone else in the darkroom, san let out the loudest shriek, jumping backwards and hitting the door

you flinched at san’s shriek and stumbled backwards, catching yourself by grabbing onto the edge of a table

for a minute, the two of you just stared at each other, still in shock

san snapped out of it first

“oh my gosh, i am so sorry. i didn’t mean to scare you. i thought no one else was in here, ahh so sorry i should’ve knocked”

your heart rate finally went down to normal, and you straightened yourself up, giving the sheepish boy in front of you a gentle smile

“no it’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

san practically sighed in relief when he saw that you weren’t mad at him “well, now that we’ve officially scared the crap out of each other—” he stuck his hand out, flashing you a dimpled smile “i’m san, it’s nice to meet you”

your lips quirked up and you took his hand in yours, shaking it firmly “i’m y/n, it’s nice to meet you too”

and that was how san, a photography major, met you, also a photography major

apparently the two of you had managed to charm the same professor, and he gave the both of you access to the darkroom

you found out that san lived in the same apartment building as you, you being on the 3rd floor and him on the 2nd

the two you became fast friends due to your shared love photography

during visitation hours, you’ll either be in his apartment or he’ll be in yours

wooyoung, who isn’t a photography major, sometimes looks at the two you with the most confused expression because you guys will start firing off, using terminology that he doesn’t understand

sometimes if it gets too much, he’ll call yeosang and beg him to get him out of there

one time when you came over, you noticed the wall above san’s desk was practically covered in pictures

most of it was of people whom you assumed were san’s family, but you noticed wooyoung in a few of them, and then there were 6 other boys pictured too whom you weren’t quite familiar with

“hey san, are these friends of yours?” you asked

san looked up to where you were pointing, and his expression immediately softened

“yeah, that’s the gang. i use that wall to hang pictures of the people who are important to me”

your eyes widened, you weren’t expecting san to share that personal piece of info with you, but it made your heart warm nonetheless

“you’re such a sap san,” you teased, poking him in the arm

he rolled his eyes at you playfully, shoving your shoulder gently “shut up and get back to editing your photos”

for the next few months, your friendship with san grew tenfold

the two of you would often meet up after class just to hang out or grab some food

you both began to value the other’s opinion and would sometimes email or show each other photos you each took, asking what the other thought of it

you thought that having another person aside from a professor view your work, especially someone as passionate as san, made you improve

san always gave you his honest opinion, even if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear, but you were grateful nonetheless

one day, san was given a project by one his professors to photograph the same person or object for a whole month

and usually san would go and ask wooyoung, but he decided to change it up this time

so one day when the two of you were having lunch, san turned to look at you, his face set in a serious expression

“y/n, i have a very, very important question to ask you”

you raised your eyebrow at him, not used to seeing san’s face so serious

“what is it?” you asked, sitting up straight

“so i have a major assignment for class where i need to take pictures of the same person or object for an entire month, and i was wondering...if you wouldn’t mind being that person?”

your eyes widened, and san took this as a bad sign because his face immediately went from being serious to panicked “of course i’m not going to force you if you don’t want to!”

san looked up at you, patiently waiting for your response

it’s not that you didn’t want to, it’s just... “why me?” you asked

one corner of san’s lips quirked upwards, making his dimple appear

“why not?” he replied

“i’ve just...i’ve never really modeled for someone else’s pictures before,” you said sheepishly

san waved a hand at you “you don’t have to worry about that. trust me, i’ll make you look absolutely breathtaking” he flashed you a playful wink, and you rolled your eyes

“okay fine, i’ll do it”

and for the next two weeks, san has been snapping pictures of you left and right

most of the pictures he took were candid pictures, which you didn’t mind...until he took a picture of you eating your sandwich mid-bite

“san delete that right now!”

“nah y/n, i’m putting this in the blackmail folder”

“CHOI SAN”

tbh you thought being san’s model would feel awkward, but he actually made you feel super comfortable

he would always tell you that you were doing great, giving you a thumbs up after every picture that was taken

you enjoyed having san be your hype man, he made you feel really confident in yourself

during one of your sessions, san wanted to get a few posed pictures instead of candid, so he took you to one of the open fields on campus

it was the middle of autumn so the trees were a beautiful shade of bright oranges, maroons, and vivid yellows

san told you to stand underneath one of the trees

“okay so for this one, i want you to look away from the camera, and i’ll snap a couple photos, yeah?”

you nodded your head and proceeded to pose against the tree, eyes focusing on anything except the camera

meanwhile, san was moving back and forth and side to side, trying to capture multiple angles, some close up and some farther away

“alright y/n, for these next ones i want you to stare directly in the camera. you can choose whether to smile or not, okay?”

san readied himself, placing the viewfinder over his right eye

through it he could see you, still posing nearby the tree

however, san’s many years of experience with photography wasn’t enough to prepare him for what was to happen next

because as soon as your eyes made contact with the camera, there was a soft gust of wind, soft enough to carry a few fallen leaves and have them float around you

caught off guard by the sudden flurry of leaves, a quiet gasp left your lips, and then your eyes scrunched together as you let out the softest giggle

and then click

san’s finger froze on the shutter button, his mouth gaping slightly

he slowly lowered the camera from his face, eyes glazed over and mouth still open

you hadn’t noticed him take the picture, too focused on playing with the leaves flying around you

san tore his eyes away from you for just a moment, glancing down at his camera to check the picture he just took

what he saw made him choke on his breath

because there you were

he captured the picture at the exact moment you had burst into a bout of giggles, the multi-colored leaves were blurred near the edges, framing your face perfectly

the sun hit the surface of your skin perfectly, highlighting your features

your eyes were scrunched shut and your lips were quirked up, displaying the most perfect smile

for the first time in his, choi san was rendered...speechless

he had never seen something so...so...beautiful

“san?” your voice knocked him out of his stupor, and he whipped his head up to look at you, only to be rendered speechless again

you were staring at him with the softest of gazes, a gentle, serene smile on your lips

“how’d the picture look?” you asked curiously

san didn’t say anything, but his mind was racing with a billion thoughts

his lack of a response made you nervous, and you frowned “did...did it not turn out well? was it because i wasn’t looking? i’m sorry i can take it again if—”

“no!” san interrupted, standing up quickly

“no y/n, it was...it was perfect,” he breathed out

the look on his face and the tone of his voice were enough to make your cheeks flush a deep, deep red

you’ve never seen or heard san sound like that

it almost seemed like he was...he was...

“o-oh, do you mind if i see it then?” you asked, taking a small step towards him

san had allowed you to see the pictures, and you were amazed at how well they turned out

you turned to san and gave him a playful smile “wow, you were right. you did make me look ‘absolutely breathtaking’”

you were expecting san to scoff or say smth along the lines of “i told you so”

but he didn’t

instead he looked at you with the most sincere expression on his face, and he said “no, you did that on your own”

the sky was beginning to darken, so the two of you decided to head back to your apartments, bidding each other goodbye at the elevator

as soon as san reached his apartment, he practically shoved the door open and ran inside, scaring the shit out of poor wooyoung who was watching a movie in the living room

san didn’t even bother sending his roommate a greeting, opting to flee to his own room instead and slamming the door shut

he immediately whipped out his camera, took out the memory card, and inserted it into his laptop

the pictures he took of you earlier popped up on the screen, and san’s eyes immediately scanned for the one he wanted

once he found it, he enlarged the photo and, for the third time that day, choi san was rendered speechless

his chest began to hurt, and he reached up, clutching at the fabric of his sweater right above his heart

now...san had always had an inkling in his mind that he may have the tiniest crush on you

but he always waved it off, claiming that he just really liked you as a friend

but after what happened today, he can finally confirm it

choi san liked you

and they weren’t the trivial kind, the ones that lasted for only a moment and left soon after

no, these feelings burned with longing

but unlike most people, those who chose to deny their feelings and keep it to themselves, san was the complete opposite

he wasn’t the type to shy away from something, or in this case someone, who made him feel such strong emotions

he was going to do something about it...and he knew exactly how to do it

for the remaining weeks left in the month, san still took pictures of you for the assignment

but it was different this time

instead of his usual loud exclamations he used to hype you up, it was replaced with the fond smiles and eyes practically dripping with adoration

you didn’t know how to feel about this new development, but that didn’t mean you didn’t like it

it was nearing the end of the month, which meant that san’s project was reaching its end too

the two of you were having lunch together, just chatting about random things, when san suddenly pulled out a slip of paper from his pocket, handing it to you

“what’s this?” you asked, taking the slip of paper and reading it

“it’s an invitation. my class is putting on an exhibit to showcase the photos we’ve taken the past month, but it’s a private event so only people who were given invitations are allowed in.” san leaned forward, gazing at you with a soft twinkle in his eye

“will you go?” he asked

you nodded, smiling “of course, i’ve been waiting to see how the pictures turned out!”

san laughed at your enthusiasm, but he could feel the pounding of his heart going a mile a minute

a few days later was when the exhibition took place, and you arrived at the gallery, decked out in the fanciest clothes you could find

after the guard checked over your invitation, you walked inside and was surprised at the sheer number of people who were present

you looked around, searching for the familiar dimpled smile you’ve grown very fond of

“well, well, well look who finally showed up”

your face broke out into a smile when you saw wooyoung walk up to, dressed in a fitted button up with black slacks

“damn woo, first time seeing you in something other than a hoodie and sweats,” you teased,

wooyoung rolled his eyes in response, but he held out his hand for you

“come on, sannie is waiting for you”

you happily placed your hand in his, eager to see san’s display, and wooyoung couldn’t help but chuckle at your enthusiasm

he led you around the exhibit, carefully maneuvering around the large clumps of people until he finally stopped at a door

wooyoung opened it and gently tugged on your arm, moving your body in front of his

you looked over your shoulder at him, confusion written all over your face “wooyoung what are you—”

but before you could finish your sentence, wooyoung shoved you the rest of the way in the room, flashing you a wink before closing the door, leaving you standing in the darkness

“wha—jung wooyoung!” you reached for the doorknob, about to yank the door open

when the lights in the room suddenly switched on

you gasped, stepping back from the door and whipping your body around

what you saw made you freeze

because displayed on the walls of the room were blown up pictures of you

some were candid, and some were posed

it took you a second, but then you realized: these were the pictures san took of your for his project

you carefully walked towards one of the pictures posted on the wall

you remembered when it was taken; it was when you and san went to a cat cafe near the school

you were sitting at one of the tables, playing with a cat that decided to jump up on your lap

san thought it would be the perfect opportunity to snap a picture of that moment, and so he did

as you walked around, the memories of the past month with san started coming back to you

once you reached the middle of the room, you noticed a picture that was significantly larger than the rest

you let out a soft gasp

it was the picture san took of you in front of the tree a few weeks ago

you could hardly believe that the person in the photo was you

“which one’s your favorite?”

jumping at the sound of an oh so familiar voice, you peered over your shoulder only to see san leaning against one of the walls

he was decked out in an outfit similar to wooyoung’s, with his hair slicked back

needless to say...he looked amazing

you breathed out a laugh, fully turning around to look at him “it’s hard to choose. i just look amazing in every single one”

san’s smirk softened into a smile, and he pushed himself off the wall, making his way towards you

“which one’s your favorite sannie?” you asked

san bit his lip, cocking his head to the side

“hmm...i’d have to say all of them”

you giggled “is that so? why do you say that?”

san glanced over at you, and you almost choked on your breath at the look on his face

it was the same look he always gave you from behind the camera: pure, pure, pure adoration

you’d be lying if you said your heart wasn’t racing a mile a minute

san reached over, taking your hand in his and locking your fingers together

your eyes widened

san took a small step towards you, internally sighing with relief when you didn’t back away

you just stood there, waiting to see what he was about to do next

“they’re all my favorite because....” another step closer “...because you’re in them”

and that was the exact moment your heart stopped

san chuckled softly at your frozen state, and he brought your joined hands up to his lips, pressing a soft kiss on the top of yours

you swore your legs were about to give up

“people are about to come in any second now to see my display, but if you’re willing to wait for me until after, then i have something really important to tell you,” san said

you were at a loss for words, your mind stuck trying to process everything that just happened in a span of two minutes

just as san let go of your hand, the door to the room opened and wooyoung’s head popped in

“hey san, are you ready? people are waiting”

flashing you one more smile, san swiftly turned on his heel and nodded, gesturing for wooyoung to let people in

as soon as the crowd started filtering into the room, you were broken out of your frozen state by wooyoung gently pulling you to the other side of the room

and for the rest of the night, you stood in the back corner with wooyoung, quietly watching san walk around and the room and chatting with the people as they observed his work

you admit you were kind of embarrassed at the amount of people who were just staring at your pictures posted on the wall

wooyoung would notice and he’d tease you about it

after a while, the exhibition finally came to an end

wooyoung had left a few minutes earlier, which left only you and san in the room

as san made his way over to you, you averted your eyes to the ground, suddenly feeling awkward

but then you saw san extend his hand out towards you

“let’s talk outside,” he said softly, quietly encouraging you when you were hesitant to take his hand

once the two of you were outside, san led you to a nearby bench

despite his confidence from earlier, you could tell san was nervous now, from the way he was biting his lip and fiddling with your hand, which he was still holding

you waited patiently for him to speak, choosing to ignore the way your heart was about to explode inside your chest

after a few moments, san took a deep breath and looked directly into your eyes

“y/n...you know how much our friendship means to me right? when you and i first became friends, i was so happy to have finally met someone who shares the same love and passion for photography as i do. i truly enjoyed every moment we hung out together, and i especially enjoyed having you as my model for my project...”

he squeezed your hand, and you squeezed his back, urging him to continue

“and during the entire month where we spent every single day together, it made me realize that...i wanted us to be something more than...more than just friends. so what i’m trying to say is, i really really like you y/n, and i was wondering if we could give ‘us’ a try?”

it was completely silent for a few moments, but as san gazed at you with the most hopeful look on his face, and you couldn’t help but let out a breathless laugh

you honestly didn’t know what you were feeling, all you knew was that it was warm and comforting and that the only person who could make you feel that way was...san

“choi san, you are just as expressive with your words as you are with your photos,” you laughed, and you swore you’ve never seen him smile so big

“s-so does that mean...?” he trailed off

you smiled back at him, squeezing his hand once more “yes san, i am willing to give us a try”

now let’s just say, being in a relationship with choi san was so...refreshing

in the beginning of, you were kind of worried that things were going to change between the two of you

but when you saw san the next day, he greeted you with his usual sunshiney smile and that’s when you knew things were only going to get better from that point on

san is normally very touchy, but now that the two of you were dating, he became extra touchy

whenever the two of you are together, he’ll always have an arm around your shoulder or waist, or he’ll be holding your hand

he just feels more at ease if he’s holding onto some part of you

but of course he’d stop if you told him you were uncomfortable

also san would take a picture of you every chance he could get

the camera roll in his phone would just be pictures of you

he even made his own folder with just your pictures but would he ever tell you??? psshh no

one time wooyoung caught a glimpse of it and he snatched the phone out of san’s hand so quick, yelling that he was going to show you

when you came by their apartment that day, you walked in on the two of them in the middle of a wrestling match

wooyoung managed to toss the phone to you, and you caught it, checking to see what the two of them were fighting about

once you saw what it was, you blushed so hard and san groaned in defeat, rolling off of wooyoung and onto the floor

as you scrolled through the folder, you started to pout

“saaaan some of these are so ugly why do you still have them?”

your boyfriend whipped his head up so fast, and he had the most offended look on his face

“excuse me?? are you doubting my photography skills?”

you shoved the phone in his face “san this is literally a blurry picture of me mid-sneeze how could this possibly look good?”

but what he doesnt know is that you also have your own folder on your phone with just pictures of him in it

omg when the professor found out that the two of you were dating, the hugest grin broke out on his face and he was just oh so happy his two favorite students were together

when you and san are in the darkroom together, he’ll sometimes walk up behind you and just wrap his arms around you while you were developing your pictures

you’d always complain, claiming that he was distracting you, but tbh you secretly enjoyed it

you and san haven’t had your first kiss with each other yet, and that was because you were both too hesitant to be the one to make the move first

until one night

san had invited you to his apartment for a movie marathon since wooyoung was spending the night at yeosang’s

whilst san was getting the tv set up, you were sitting on the chair at his desk, mindlessly just looking around

you’ve been in san’s room countless times at this point, and pretty much everything looked the same since the last time you’ve been in there

but when you looked up at the wall above his desk, the same wall where san hung up a bunch of pictures of his friends and family, you noticed that there was an extra picture right in the center

your heart skipped a beat when you realized that it was the same picture san took months ago, the one where you were standing underneath the tree

you remembered what san had told you the first time you asked about the wall: “i use that wall to hang pictures of the people who are important to me”

san was too busy fidgeting with the tv to notice the look of pure joy on your face

“okay everything’s set up,” he turned towards you “y/n what movie do you wanna—mmph!”

san’s question was cut off by you throwing yourself into his arms and slamming your lips into yours

he staggered backwards, caught off guard

san was frozen for a few seconds, but then he relaxed and began to kiss you back

it was your first kiss with him and vice versa, and you could practically feel your heart getting ready to burst

when the two of you pulled away, san leaned his forehead against yours, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips

“not that i’m complaining, but what was that for?”

you smiled at him “i’m just happy that i’m worthy enough to be put on your wall”

san’s face dawned with realization and he let out a breathy chuckle, tugging you closer to him and wrapping you up in a hug

“you were always worthy enough, it just took me stupidly long to realize it”

oh yeah san loves that picture of you so much that he made it his lockscreen and wooyoung wouldn’t stop teasing him about it for weeks

ofc you made him your lockscreen too

now don’t get me wrong, san is the absolute best hype man you could ever ask for

but sometimes a hype man needs their own hype man

so on days where san isn’t feeling like his usual cheerful self, you step up

now you’re the one feeding him compliments and giving him the warmest hugs

and when that doesn’t work, one of san’s weaknesses is kisses so you’ll cup his face in your hands and just plant the tiniest kisses on his cheeks, nose, chin, forehead, and eyes

it usually gets him in a giddy mood and he’ll eventually start giggling halfway through

when you see him crack that first smile, you get all excited and he just stares at you with the fondest expression on his face

san also likes it when you play with his hair, so he’ll lay his head on your lap and that’s when you know to just weave your fingers through his dark strands, occasionally massaging his scalp

you laugh because san reminds you of a cat whenever he lays on you

speaking of cats, the two of you practically adopted all of the cats that wander around campus

the two of you are honestly just so domestic and soft, everyone at your university practically melts when they see the two of you walking around holding hands

overall just a wholesome wholesome relationship

#ateez #ateez scenarios #ateez headcanons #ateez au #ateez imagines #san #san scenarios #san headcanons #san au #san imagines #san fluff #college au series

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sorrynotharry · 4 years ago

Note

You don’t be on here no more and that don’t sit right with me. This was my go to page in 2014-2015. Then you left!!!

Aww hello anon! Thanks!

I am definitely almost always lurking on this page, like a ghost in the night haha, however I know that I’m not nearly as active as I used to be, and I haven’t posted any fic in like.........3 years? Maybe 4? Jeez time really flies!!

I do often get messages like this, usually very sweet anons like you who ask where I went, how I’m doing, saying that they miss the times when my page was more active and I was posting Harry fics pretty much weekly and honestly, I miss it too! It was overall a very positive experience during what ended up being some overall not-very-positive years of my life.

I’ve wanted to post a little ‘update’ for a while and I think this is as good a time as ever to do that. I’m gonna put it under a cut for 1, length 2, potential triggering content regarding death/grief. So anyway here goes:

This is mainly me kind of going on a reflection rant so it may not make a lot of sense but I’m going to do my best!

So I started this blog in February of 2014, and I think I pretty immediately started posting my writing and to my astonishment I ended up getting lots of new followers and readers really quickly. I was not at all expecting this blog to EVER reach as many people as it has, but I’m so grateful for it. To be honest, of course the 1D fandom can be a complete clusterfuck, but in comparison with other fandoms that I’ve been involved in, this is definitely the one that I felt most “at home” in, and had the most fun being a part of. So so so many of you who are still around to this day (which is incredible to me!) were SO kind to me, so lovely and accepting and supportive of my writing and my little blog corner of the internet and it meant so much to me. There are friends I’ve made through this blog who I still talk to, people who have been there for me when life was really kicking me down the road.

For some context, since the start of this blog, both of my biological parents and my stepfather have passed away. My dad (who I wasn’t super close to but you know, still my dad) passed from cancer in April 2014. My stepfather who I lived with died in June of 2015, also from cancer (if you’ve been on my blog for a while you might remember this, I posted about it because it was very sudden and I was really struggling with it).

Then, in August of 2017, my mother died. This has been part of the reason I really kind of stopped being active in this blog; I wanted to talk about it, if even just to say that I was going on hiatus or something but my grief has been so powerful that it’s in the last few months that have I felt like I can actually type these words out on here.

My mom was chronically ill for most of her life, and her health really deteriorated in the last 7-8 years of her life. She was also my best friend and my biggest supporter in everything from the time I was a child. The last 6 years of her life I was her main caregiver with some help from my stepdad - when he died all of her care fell to me to handle on top of grieving him. It was May of 2017 that my mom made the decision to go into hospice (if you don’t know what this means, it basically means she didn’t want to have life-saving treatments anymore and wanted to be allowed to pass away in peace). My sister and I begged her to hold on for a few more months so that we could prepare, get her affairs in order, and be on summer break from school while we accepted the fact that we were losing our last living parent.

That summer passed in a very weird and painful blur, and honestly I don’t remember much of it, but I remember most the moments in her last weeks when we would just hold each other’s hands and talk, laugh, cry, whatever came up. If you’ve ever begun grieving someone before they even pass, you probably know what I’m talking about. It was in those moments that she very insistently made me promise her that I would keep taking care of my sister (who was only 16 at the time) and graduate college, that I wouldn’t just lay down and give up because she was gone. So I have done my best to honor that promise to her. I quickly got legal guardianship of my sister (she’s an adult now but we still live together and are very close), and less than a month after my mom passed, I was training for a volunteer position at a center on my new college campus which later turned into a paid position. And this past June I graduated!!

If you’re reading this and also class of 2020, you know it’s a sucky year to graduate lol, but I hope you’re able to be proud of your accomplishments because regardless of the circumstances, you still did it! It’s taken me years and years to get my Bachelor’s because of changing my major, having to take breaks due to mental health issues and relocations, and having to take only 2 classes at a time while working 2 jobs. I finally did it and now I have to figure out what my next steps are from here (in the middle of a whole ass pandemic no less, smh!).

I realize that I just basically wrote a whole essay that I didn’t necessarily mean to, but I promise I’m not saying all of this to make you feel sad for me; I just want you all to understand why my presence has been so sporadic the past few years and I feel like I just have to be honest.

Coming back around to this blog, every once in a while I check my activity and follower count, very much expecting to see naught but 12 bots left and a single tumbleweed blowing across a dry activity page...but that’s never the case. So many of you are still here, I get new followers all the time, my fics and posts still get notes almost every day, and I still get messages like this from people who care about me, who remember the heyday of this blog and miss it.

I’ve said ‘thank you’ to you guys so many times I don’t even dare to count, but really, honestly, truly, thank you. It’s because so many of you are still here, even though it’s been 4 full ass years after I’ve even posted any fic at all, that I haven’t deleted this blog or gone on indefinite hiatus and just archived this blog.

I can’t promise that I will ever post any new writing again. I still love Harry but it’s almost in a different way...the heart-racing, goosebumps raising, heart-eye inducing giant crush I had on him in the earlier years of this blog has significantly subdued, even though it’s been known to make its presence known from time to time. And I honestly am just a different person in general. You can’t go through stuff like what I described above without changing at least a little bit.

That being said, I don’t think I’ve written anything that wasn’t a college essay or long-winded work email since I posted my last one-shot on here, which I think was early 2016. I very much miss writing for pleasure, and particularly if anyone remembers the fic ‘On Fire’...that story sits untouched and neglected in my Masterlist, haunting my steps and my dreams, because I had all kinds of grand ideas for it and it was pretty well-received I think! I’ve toyed with the idea of just trying to finish that fic up, if only so I can say that I finished at least ONE multi-chapter fic in my whole life. Again, not making promises, but it’s a possibility.

Anyhoo, if you have made it this far down on this very long and dramatic post, again I say thank you and bless you! I hope for those of you who have been around for a while (and for that matter those who are newer followers as well, hello!), this provides some clarity and maybe some closure if you were just wondering where the hell I went and what I’ve been up to. I didn’t mean to kind of drop off the face of the earth like I did, it was just how I was dealing with everything at the time. I’m heading into a new chapter of my life now that school is finished, and who knows what that will bring, but for now, I’m still around, and I hope you’re all as safe, healthy, and happy as you can be right now :)

Thank you again and take care <3

#mine

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robogreaser · 4 years ago

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This is a Long Time Coming...

It’s been a relatively hard task to sit down and make sense of, well, a lot of things as of late. I could chalk it up to the state of the world, but it’s been troublesome for significantly longer than that.

Long Story Short Version: I’ve been in a hell of a place, mentally, physically, and otherwise.

The proper story is a hell of a lot more involved than that and I know damned right well it’s going to take me a fair bit to explain myself and my various professional and social failings over the past... while. I’m gonna try to contain this under a read more, of course, but I apologize to mobile users if tumblr fucks that up.

Okay. That took a fair more bit of effort to figure out than I remember. Which, I suppose, is a fair enough bit of a segue into one thing that’s happened to me.

Tumblr has been deteriorating.

Whether I like to admit it or not, tumblr has been my go to social media platform since... 2011. Yeah. I’ve spent the vast majority of the decade here. I’ve seen a lot. Sure, I’ve lurked elsewhere, but I really cannot stand the interface and nature of a lot of other social media, especially the likes of twitter. Unfortunately for me, this place has been in constant decline for years now at this point. It extends well beyond the porn ban, but that’s a whole separate discussion.

I’ve lost touch with a lot of people I care about, some vanishing into the ether, some ghosting me, some just drifting into other communities or onto other sites. I’ve come to terms with the majority of this. It’s been happening for a while. It’s the very nature of digital relationships. It hurt, and I do think it’s contributed to a fair bit of stress and depression that has resulted in my... withdrawal from online spaces. It’s not a major factor, but its here, it’s present, it’s a factor in all of this.

I’ll be honest in that, well, I’ve tried to make this post several times over the past several weeks and months. It’s hard. Talking about my issues, using ‘I’ and ‘me’ so much in a post... it’s a bit jarring. But I’ll try to suck it up.

It’s been ten years (god I fucking hate time) since I’ve graduated high school. Yeah. It’s a fair thing to say that, on reflection, that’s incredibly jarring. The vast majority of that time has been... relatively unstable. I spent a fair few years working on my book and my publishing journey, now all but scrubbed clean from this blog (more on that later) and... well... Trying to be an adult. I’ve applied to, gotten accepted, and had to withdrawn from my dream school twice in this time. I’ve had a fair few jobs, nothing worthy of my resume, and lost all of them in one form or another, whether being fired for retaliating to my shitty work conditions, or, well, quitting for the sake of my own health during this pandemic. There has been a lot of family troubles. I’ve been through a lot of... ‘varied’ living situations, some horrendous, some just stressful, some, like now, actually really good compared to the others. And for the past few years in particular, it’s been constantly one thing after another, nonstop.

In short, progress is slow, but it’s happening. I don’t care to delve into a lot of these sorts of personal details lest this get to a ridiculous length, but that’s the short of the stuff I’d rather gloss over.

I’ve been on a health... Let’s call it a journey. I’ve been on a health journey. Over the past few years I’ve gone through the long processes of being diagnosed with ADHD, discussing my options regarding my depression and anxiety, and finally getting myself on a medication regimen that works. And then, because the health care system is a joke, I was without insurance. I had been off my medication, an absolute lifesaver and release of burden on my garbage tier brain, for eighteen months. Until last week. I think it’s fair to say, between my revolving door of living situations, employment, and then being un-medicated in a continually more stressful environment... That this is the main reason I’ve been absent. I’ve had no focus. There were weeks where I had no drive to do anything outside of routine that others depended on. I had not only gone back to how I was before situating my mental health, but in some ways, found a worse state.

Finances have been slowly eating away at me. I had been working a part time retail job until November, which made decent enough money, but not nearly for the amount of work and responsibility I was handling. I got fired. I found work with one of the big, corporate postal services. The pay was phenomenal, but it began to actively destroy my health, mainly physically, but also mentally, especially considering I was working a graveyard shift. Eventually when I began having prolonged health issues there, and then a whole lot of the symptoms of covid-19, on top of them turning me down for an entry-level position outside of the package handling, I had to quit. This was shortly after the lockdowns, in early April, and I refuse to look back despite people like my parents insisting on me trying to get work there again. Sure, the pay was phenomenal compared to anything else I had until then, but I cant continue to sacrifice my health. As of now, I’m unemployed, and... well...

I’m working on my commission queue. It’s art. It’s stuff I’ve owed friends (luckily those who are incredibly understanding and good to me) for an embarrassing amount of time, even before moving to and from Oklahoma at the end of 2016. I’m terrified of being the person who is known for taking commissioners’ money and running.

I know, I’m not good at giving updates. I’m not good at a consistent work schedule. I’ve had numerous tech failings over the past few years that constantly slow my roll on any progress I have made. Hell, I’ve had files corrupt despite being two thirds of the way complete when transferring from one computer to another. I’ve lost my cable for my external hard drive. I’ve had my tablet go to hell and back multiple times. But I am working. I am trying. I am sitting down as often as I can between looking for work and managing family nonsense to try and get my workload tidied up.

Which... brings me to my next point. And one I’m rather... ashamed about.

I have used trello, infrequently, since taking on a large load of commissions, and despite not being faithfully updating it and checking back on it, and using it to it’s fullest potential, I had kept, at the minimum, a list of all the work I did owe people using it. Well. Dumbass me attempted to use a mobile app. In short, in an effort to try and make myself tech literate and allow me easier access to my queue, I ended up deleting it. Somehow.

I’ve gone through and slowly flagged all my paypal notices and various emails concerning my commissions. I’m putting it together again. I’m trying. Granted, I am damned sure I am going to be missing someone, somewhere, somehow. I know it. I’ve got a shit brain, and despite my need for organization and minimalism, I don’t put it past me to have missed something along the way.

If you have commissioned me, please, do not hesitate to reach out and contact me regarding your commission. I owe every last one of you a massive apology for my continued failure to produce what you have paid for.

More likely than not, I have a wip already started somewhere, and if not, I have a slew of reference and thumbnails already compiled together somewhere on my computers. I am not ignoring this work. It’s been painfully, embarrassingly slow. It’s been one obstacle after another. But I have every intention of doing this work, and, likely, upgrading the quality of the finished piece past what my commissioners have paid for simply because I do feel bad about the wait time.

I have been inexcusably unprofessional. I know this and I am working as best I can with the time and resources I have to correct it.

In a similar vein, as I mentioned before, I have slowly been cleaning up my rather unimpressive publishing attempts. I’ve gone through and cleaned this blog recently, deleting reference to my work by name and the process of trying to get myself published. I may have missed a few posts here and there, but for the most part I would like a clean slate in regards to building a social media platform surrounding my written work. And this is the part where... I am probably going to be the most upfront and honest with you reading this than I have been publicly before.

I am not ashamed of who I’ve been online these past ten years or so, but it reflects only a sliver of my personality, a sliver of who I am as a whole. I catered to a very specific subset of who I am in pursuit of finding acceptance in communities much larger than myself. I’ve learned a hell of a lot about myself in that time. I figured out what’s important to me, my health, my sexuality, my relationships and my long term goals. I’ve found a very important group of friends. I’ve found people who understand and empathize with a lot of the things I have been through, experience, and am at my core.

But the fact of the matter is, this hypersexual, sci-fi aesthetic-oriented, very open person is only a singular facet. And it is not nearly enough of a reflection of who I am, or who I want to be as a professional, public adult. Will I always be gay for robots? Yes. Will I, when time permits and creative energies are present, continue to make nsfw art? Absolutely. Will I always have a toe dipped in erotic literature and the like? Most likely.

But a lot of me, a lot of my emotion and strife and feelings regarding most things in the world, are completely separate from this. It’s separate from me liking porn on twitter or having a homestuck roleplay blog. It’s separate from who I am in real life, with my boyfriend or with my family or with my work. And I have been dwelling on this, sincerely, for a while. I need to allocate more energy into my life. The separate life offline and online too, where I am pursuing an actual professional career, because, at the end of the day, I want to be an author. I want to have a career telling stories. And, in my time online, I’ve found a lot of skeletons in authors’ closets, the kind that really put mine to shame, and the kind that will always be a footnote to their work. You know the ones.

I want my creative work to speak for itself. I want people to be able to enjoy what I do without a specter, without my time and energy having to explain to a future audience why it is I had explicit thoughts about x,y, and z. I want to be able to write a book, write many books, and have people enjoy them without a footnote about me, a person with a sexual life and a history exploring it through years of depression and isolation, clouding it. It’s not fair to my work. It’s not fair to a future reader. It’s not fair to me.

I’ve got several social media accounts made and slowly coming to life that I need to spend more time with as I try and pursue this new, second leg of a very long journey into publishing. I’m not going to link those here, now or in the future. It’s likely a few people I know and trust have access to them. But I am, effectively starting over from scratch trying to build a platform as a writer. And it’s hard. Juggling that, alongside all of the things in the world today, alongside family and my relationships, alongside my commission queue? It bears down on me and if I didn’t have experience handling more than one thing at a time, I might trip up more frequently. Hell, I forget to post and use those new accounts regularly.

But I’m trying.

I’m not moving away from my current social circles or hobbies or anything like that. I’m not abandoning any fandom or friends or communities. But I am going to be trying to balance myself more thoughtfully moving forward, past just commissions, past just writing.

I’m here. I’m moving forward, slowly but surely, and I am making an effort to improve.

#jesus christ mike shut up

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cfiesler · 5 years ago

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the tenure-track detective agency

I tweeted about a dream, then realized it should be a television show, so I tweeted the whole first season plot. Featuring an academic who has to solve a murder so she doesn’t have to teach another class, and her librarian sidekick who is very helpful because of the research she’s done while writing Sherlock and Veronica Mars fanfiction. The whole thread is on Twitter, but copied in plain text below the cut for your reading pleasure. #sixseasonsandamovie

The Tenure-Track Detective Agency: Season One

I recently dreamed that one of my colleagues was wrongfully accused of murder, and because of the trial, could not teach their fall class. I feel like an "oh god I have to solve a murder so I don't have to teach an extra class" anxiety dream is like next level #academiclife.

S1 opens in mid-summer when a tenured computer science prof is found in his lab surrounded by simple robots testing conversational agents, busily chatting about top-voted reddit posts while he dies from blunt force trauma. The murder weapon is a dusty teaching award.

Our hero, an overworked assistant prof, is updating the syllabus for her machine learning class that just doubled in size, when she receives news that she has to pick up a section of intro programming b/c the instructor was just arrested for murdering another faculty member.

Our hero has THREE WEEKS to exonerate her colleague so that he can teach the class as planned, instead of her. Her tenure case hangs in the balance. What follows is a montage of frantic syllabus writing and murder investigation.

She visits the scene of the crime. A PhD student is frantically deleting data from a hard drive, and claims the IRB made her do it. Our hero distracts her and pockets one of the prototype conversational robots in the hopes it might have been a witness to the murder.

Our hero has a conference call with the set of brand new PhD students who will be teaching assistants to the intro programming class and informs them that their jobs start now and they need to dig through Lexis Nexis for case law about chain of custody and robots.

She visits the library and finds the librarian who usually answers questions about copyright, because she must know the most about law. Cue enthusiastic quirky sidekick, who actually doe knows a lot about murder investigation because she writes Sherlock fanfiction.

She visits her colleague in prison. She should probably be investigating the murder he is wrongfully accused of, but instead has many questions about the syllabus for his class she is now forced to teach. She tries not to sound bitter as she asks him for his slide decks.

Her colleague, clad in his orange jumpsuit and holding a prison phone, is understandably very upset about having been wrongfully accused of murdering another professor. But as she stands to leave, he calls out, "Wait! Do... do you think this will hurt my tenure case?"

She visits the detective in charge of the case. He says that her colleague's alibi for a 3-hour time period surrounding the time of murder is damning. "Who spends 3 hours answering email?" he demands. "Besides, professors don't work in the summer!" She fears this may be hopeless.

With the help of her librarian sidekick who convincingly impersonates a lawyer, our hero gets her hands on the the transcripts from the police interview of her colleague after his arrest. She assigns a PhD student to conduct a rigorous grounded theory qualitative analysis.

Word has gotten out that she is investigating the murder. Someone pins a note to her office door: "FOLLOW THE GRANT MONEY." She pulls up the dead prof's CV on his website only to find that it was last updated in 2003.

She interviews his PhD students after (out of force of habit) having them sign consent forms that detail data storage practices. None of them had seen their murdered advisor in person in years except when he mysteriously appeared to add his name to their published papers.

The librarian sidekick uses a bobby pin to break into an admin's office to retrieve grant spending records. It appears that the murder victim has been funneling funding earmarked for students and travel into "equipment." Almost $1m of invoices from a mysterious tech company.

(In case you were wondering, the librarian sidekick also writes Veronica Mars fanfiction and ABSOLUTELY knows how to pick a lock because of important research. She also wrote House fanfiction so let's hope she gets to diagnose Lupus by the end of this tale.)

Meanwhile, the PhD student has finished her grounded theory analysis of the arrest interview, and concludes (with an appropriate limitations section) that the interrogation was conducted under duress. The police officer promised to write him a tenure letter if he confessed.

Our hero buys many pizzas and puts the qualitative analyst in a room with the teaching assistants doing legal research and tells them to work on a motion to get the confession thrown out. She has to promise them they can all be co-authors on a major journal publication.

Cut to a scene where our hero spends hours answering emails from students trying to enroll in THE CLASS SHE SHOULDN'T BE TEACHING b/c they're on the waitlist but they need this class to graduate & also will she be taking attendance. Between emails she studies 18 U.S. Code §3501.

She visits a clinical prof at the law school to ask for help. You remember that this is TV so wonder if he is the obligatory love interest. He suggests they discuss 18 U.S. Code §3501 over drinks. She laughs: DO YOU THINK I HAVE TIME FOR THAT. You write hero/librarian fanfiction.

She interviews more students. Admins. Faculty. They initially were shocked the murder victim got tenure, but he'd seriously stepped up his game in the last couple of years. Not just more productive research, but he spent time on his teaching! And service! And apparently... sleep!

This trend becomes more shocking when she finally visits the victim’s family. They too noticed a change. They’d seen him *more often* in the year leading up to his tenure review. Now our hero doesn’t just want to solve his murder, SHE NEEDS TO KNOW HIS SECRET.

Meanwhile, the librarian has tracked down shipments from Mysterious Tech Company not to the victim's office but to a Mysterious Storage Unit. This is a clue! They brose YouTube videos about breaking into storage units. (YT tries to show them flat earther videos but they resist.)

HOT ON THE TRAIL, our hero makes the mistake of checking her email. She has a nastygram from a journal editor who reminds her that her promised review of a paper is 1 week overdue. The murder investigation halts while she spends hours on labor for which she will not be paid.

Our hero reluctantly suggests "major revisions" even though she knows this means more unpaid labor in a few months, and then regroups with the librarian. They head to the storage unit; we discover that the librarian drives an impala convertible.

They are nearly there when our hero's phone dings with a calendar reminder; she has a committee meeting in fifteen minutes. She can't remember which committee it is, but they turn around anyway. After the meeting, she still isn't sure which committee it was.

Our hero gets a phone call from her colleague who is wasting away in prison while wrongfully accused of murder. He doesn't ask about the progress of her investigation. He's just called to ask her if she can take over some of his committee assignments.

FINALLY our hero & the librarian get to the storage unit, which with the help of YouTube videos they break into & discover... rows of gently humming servers, and also robot parts everywhere! It's very uncanny valley in there, y'all. You're like, woah is this show actually scifi.

Our hero sits down at a computer. Did you know that even CS profs can have terrible password practices? Our hero read @lorrietweet's papers so the first thing she tries is "monkey" and VOILA she is inside a private github repo. (She has an ethics-related twinge, but he IS dead.)

Our hero emails the students enrolled in her machine learning class, sends them the github repository, and offers them extra credit for a forensic analysis. This is the best service learning activity she's ever come up with.

Our hero checks her email again (WHY DOES SHE KEEP DOING THIS) and has a message from her department chair reminding her that murder investigation does not count as a service activity. ('We've already had discussions about tweeting as not a good use of your time' he reminds her.)

We're getting very close to the season finale, and there's another montage: meeting with student investigators, tinkering with robot parts, answering emails about course overloads, talking to the police, revising a journal article that is due soon, formatting a new syllabus...

Over a bottle of wine in her office, our hero and her librarian sidekick put together the final pieces by doing rigorous affinity diagramming on a whiteboard. There is one final thing to verify. They enlist one of the murdered prof's PhD students to help. This is very exciting!

She visits her wrongfully accused colleague one last time in jail to give him the good news about her findings. He doesn't listen, far more concerned with making sure that revisions on his latest journal article get in on time, so she helps him & then leaves to go exonerate him.

Our hero gathers the relevant parties: detectives, faculty, PhD students, a public defender who she forgot existed. They meet in a windowless conference room. She has prepared a powerpoint presentation. It shows a table of contents: Intro, Methods, Findings, Discussion.

She speeds through the beginning (stopping to answer a question from a prof about the sample size for the qualitative analysis) and finally gets to the point: "I have discovered that the murder victim had a dark secret. And in the process uncovered the REAL killer!"

(Her librarian sidekick cheers from the audience. She is wearing the deerstalker from her Sherlock cosplay, which our hero reluctantly refused, saying that she probably shouldn't cosplay at work until after tenure.)

Our hero continues: "Our analysis of his private github repo revealed the REAL source of increased productivity in the year leading up to his tenure case - particularly striking since he also managed to save a failing marriage. Impossible, you say? That's what I thought! But..."

"It turns out that he solved the problem of not enough hours in the day for assistant professor levels of research, teaching, and service with ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!" The department chair nods. Artificial intelligence can indeed solve all problems.

Our hero reveals a beautiful powerpoint slide that details their analysis of the code and its conclusion: Prof. Murder Victim had programmed an AI to do all of his service and administrative work, most of his teaching, and a big chunk of his research collaboration.

From answering emails to grading assignments to delegating tasks to student collaborators to reviewing papers (ESPECIALLY reviewing papers), Prof. Murder Victim had managed to streamline his duties into the things that were most important for tenure & avoid everything else.

And he was able to do what can be so rare in some departments - have a lot of time for himself, which repaired his relationship with his family. "But then..." our hero began ominously, "he thought... why can't I create an AI for that too so I can spend more time on my research?"

Our hero gestures at the door, and in walks a PhD student with a humanoid robot in tow. It is a half-finished, uncanny valley nightmare of the murder victim. "He was murdered by his own creation!" our hero shouts, as she reveals her final slide with a list of collaborators.

There is a long, heavy pause in the room. The detective looks stunned. The librarian sidekick pulls out a flask and toasts our hero. Then suddenly, the department chair leaps to his feet and says, "HE WORKED FOR THE UNIVERSITY, WE OWN THE PATENT!"

The room erupts into a flurry of activity. PhD students start updating their CVs. The prof who teaches tech ethics immediately starts writing a paper. The department chair posthumously grants the murder victim full professor status in recognition of his contributions to robotics.

The detective quietly comes over and asks our hero for her evidence. She produces a full paper with 12 figures, 78 citations, and 17 authors. He says that it may take some time to sort this out. She says, the guy you arrested starts teaching in one week, better be sorted by then.

Our hero has approximately thirty seconds to bask in the glow of her triumph when her phone dings informing her she has a committee meeting in 10 minutes. She checks her email and 4 students are asking for copies of the syllabus for the class she's hopefully no longer teaching.

That night she receives an email from the dept chair: (1) Remember this is not part of your tenure case; (2) Our colleague has been released from jail & will resume teaching his class; (3) The ethics instructor just got a grant with a course release so you'll need to teach that.

Before she can start sobbing, she opens an email from one of the students in her machine learning class, telling her that the work they'd done analyzing that code was the most amazing learning experience of his life and can they please do more stuff like that.

After a long moment, she opens up a new document so that she can start creating a syllabus for Computing Ethics & Responsibility. She adds a sentence: "You may be occasionally asked to participate in real-world problem-solving activities as part of your grade."

The season finale ends with the librarian joining our hero in her office and producing a sign to hang on the door: THE TENURE-TRACK DETECTIVE AGENCY. It is a joke, of course. ... or is it???

If you read to the end, I feel like I should mention how difficult it is to write a story linearly while not knowing the plot and without the ability to edit at all, and also that it would make my life to see hero/librarian fanfiction on AO3. :D

And if you’re a TV exec or literary agent:

(And if you’re someone who is going to write tenure letters for me: don’t worry, I also did a lot of research, teaching, and service today. ;) )

#academia #murder #fanfiction #mystery #sherlock #veronica mars #faculty life #archive of our own #twitter #fiction

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hhemeraa-a · 5 years ago

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Update / Haitus

I’ve been a ghost the last two weeks and I know that my last post was very succinct - which I had to delete because apparently porn blogs started reblogging it for some reason????????? And I’m just?? not in the place to deal with that.

I really hope to get back into a place where I can be here again, I know before I said I was on discord but I’ve had zero (zero) time to do literally anything else other than deal with my current situation so I’m barely even there. I do read all of your messages and I’m really sorry I haven’t responded.

A lot of people had or have questions and wanted to know how I am, etc etc so under the cut will be a quick explanation of my absence and everything that’s happened within the last few weeks.

As some of you know, I am a Peace Corps volunteer servicing in China. I had been serving as a university English teacher for the last near 2 years. This was a very very very important and huge opportunity for me.

Years ago when I was in college, my Mom was taking student loans out in my name while I was living with her. I went from having $54k in student debt (which is a lot already) to having about $108k in student debt in private loans. She shirked all responsibility on me, I had to graduate college early with a degree in something that I had credits in (International Studies with a focus on Chinese language and history), I was homeless for a while working random jobs, trying to join the Marine Officer program, etc etc -- needless to say, things were really really messy for a few years there. I ended up getting a really nice job for a logistics company getting paid about 2200 a month, but I was paying about 1600 a month in student loans. I had a lot of support from a friend who let me live with her and to this day I literally cannot thank her enough for everything she provided to me while I was suffering through all of this.

After working that soul sucking job for nearly 4 years, I took a chance and applied for Peace Corps because it was an opportunity to finally make it to China. I was supposed to study abroad in college, but when my mother maxed out my debt, it was no longer feasible. I never thought I was going to get in because I had been out of school for years at that point, I had never taught English before besides 1-on-1s during college and I kind of thought I was too old???

BUT LOW AND BEHOLD I GOT IN. This shit meant everything to me. I was finally going to study abroad, I was finally going to have a chance to use my degree, I was finally going to have the chance to learn a language, I had an opportunity to have a complete career change.

It was so incredibly hard though. I worked my ass off during training, I worked really really hard to integrate into my site, but if anyone has ever heard any of my horror stories of being the only foreigner in the middle of south east China, you’ll understand that it’s not always fun 😅 I even had a whole mental break down and had to be sent back to the States for 45 days so I could stop stressing, but I got my ass right back on that plane and came to finish the job I started. The low were low, but the highs were so incredibly high that it made up for every bad moment.

This program meant everything to me. My first semester sucked ass, it was harder than I ever thought it would be. My second semester was so much better, my third semester I was over loaded with about 450+ students and 8 classes, but I was finally getting the hang of the language, the school, the people, and I had gotten the ‘ok’ from my school to work there as a full time teacher once my Peace Corps contract was finished. This?? Was such an opportunity?? I literally had started making the moves to start a life here -- at least temporarily. Work at my school as contracted teacher for a year, pass the HSK Chinese language test above a 4, use the money to find a better job in Taiwan -- there was a whole plan.

Every year, Peace Corps meets for 1-2 weeks for In Service Training. We met from Jan. 12 - 17. Usually it’s just to reconnect and make sure all the volunteers are doing their jobs, medical check ups, etc etc etc. It’s a good time to see how other volunteers are doing.

Jan. 17th we were formally told that the Peace Corps China program was being closed. After 2020, there would no longer be any new volunteers and that we needed to start preparing our schools for the transition. They called it a graduation, but we all knew it was a political move. For five hours, a room of 200 people ripped into the US PC HQ staff as to why they were “”graduating”” the program. They said it was because the budget didn’t call for it and that China no longer needed volunteers in their schools. Which is a lie. Tensions were already really really high, the answers kept gettin more vague, and we finally flat out asked if this was a political decision to remove Peace Corps from China.

We didn’t get an answer.

Needless to say, all the volunteers are livid. The information spread like wild fire to all of the schools and volunteers were faced with having to be the representative of a shitty political decision. It was extremely difficult to have to face students and try to explain that Americans don’t hate them when the political system there does.

Chinese New Year was from Jan 25th - Jan 27th this year. I lived in Chongqing city in the Chongqing province/municipality, a city that has about 32 million people in it. During this time, the city becomes a ghost town due to the holiday being similar to Christmas/Thanksgiving where everyone goes back to their hometowns to be with family. All the shops close and for foreigners it can be difficult to find food because everything isn’t open lol.

However on Jan. 25th was when news about the corona virus started getting around. It wasn’t very big, but the news was starting to spread. The Hubei province touches Chongqing province, so whispers were starting to come through and most information volunteers got were through foreign sources, but even my Chinese friends were telling me that I shouldn’t go out or if I do, I need to be sure to wear a mask.

Sunday Jan. 26th, notices are starting to go up on store fronts saying that they are required by law to be closed, but I managed to find a place that was still open. News about the virus is starting to gain traction and more and more information about what is happening in Wuhan is starting to spread. My friend who is staying with me who lives in a small town near the border of Hubei (where Wuhan is placed) gets a call from his school telling him that it is safer for him to not come back to site. We are starting to hear that small towns are shutting down travel in and out, bus systems are starting to shut down and certain areas in the city are no longer allowing taxi or Didi (Chinese Uber) services.

Monday Jan. 27th, my friend leaves because all train and bus tickets out of the city were being canceled. My city was slowly starting to quarantine everyone. I live on campus, and when I tried to return after walking my friend to the metro, security took my temperature (with those neat little temp guns) and then wouldn’t let me in because they thought I was too warm. After arguing with them in my broken Chinese and convinced them that I lived there, they finally let me back on campus. They told me that no cars or people are allowed to go in and out anymore.

I lived near city center and it was obvious that the government was slowly locking everyone away to try and prevent the spread, but it was so eerie and apocalyptic. We had been receiving emails from the PCChina director giving us daily updates that were inching towards the idea that all volunteers were going to be ‘consolidated’, so everyone just needed to be prepared.

Tuesday Jan. 28th, the notice went out that the volunteers were being ‘consolidated’ to Thailand because China made it illegal for any group of 4 or more people to be together. We were only allowed 1 check in bag and we weren’t sure if we were ever going to be allowed to come back into country. People who were not at their sites were not allowed to go back to their sites. Wherever a volunteer was in that moment that we got the notice was required to get their ticket to Bangkok and leave immediately. I had to pack 2 years of my life up into a single suitcase not knowing if I was ever going to come back.

Wednesday Jan 29th, I was on a plane and landed in Bangkok. I am a safety warden of my province and the first warden to arrive so I was in charge of all safety until staff arrived.

But after that, things were very much in the air. We had no idea what was going to happen and every day things just got weirder and more serious and we didn’t know if at all we were going to be able to go back. We speculated a lot, as the news got worse and worse and worse. By Friday, all USA government employees were told to evacuate. No gov employee is allowed to enter China until the travel restrictions were let up, which meant that many PCChina staff - if they were to leave, would be allowed back in until China decided that it was safe enough or... if they wanted them back.

Sunday, Feb. 2nd, all the volunteers who were at the hotel had a skype meeting with the head of the PCChina program and were told that due to the severity of the situation, all currently serving China volunteers would be forced to COS (Close of Service) by Thursday. The program was ending and we would all be sent back to our respective homes between Wednesday and Thursday.

When I say it was the shittiest delivery of news imaginable, I cannot even put it into words. After we were all told that we could no longer return to China, we had lost our jobs, and couldn’t even say goodbye to anyone; HQ Staff had the balls to tell us that in order to get our final service allowance, we were still required to fill out paperwork and that we shouldn’t be sad. We should be happy we served at all.

They gave no time for mourning, many of us put two years of our lives on hold to do this program, some of us don’t even have homes to go back too and they want us to make decisions in 4 days. After Thursday, they will no longer provide any assistance with travel, we do not get health insurance, the moment we COS, PC shrugs off complete responsibility of over 100+ volunteers.

I have been so busy filling out paperwork and I have been so incredibly angry and sad and resentful that the only person I’ve told is my Dad. Returning to the USA isn’t really an option and the plan I had set into motion is now nonexistent because I’m no longer allowed in the country I gave two years of my life to until they decide that this virus has been resolved.

I have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out where I’m going to live, what job I’m going to have, how I can get a cellphone plan, where I can go because I’m being quarantined for having been in China within the last 14 days, how to manage the money I’m getting -- everything has been changing so rapidly that I still don’t know where I’m going to be by Friday since Peace Corps is only paying for the hotel up until then.

I promise I’m not ignoring any of you, I really really want to be in a place where I can RP and chat with y’all, but life for me right now is moving so fucking fast and I have to make so many decisions that will affect my future that I literally have not stopped going since Sunday night.

I still stand by my last message: I really appreciate all the messages you guys have been sending me. I do read them. I just don’t want to talk. I don’t have the emotional capacity to and I haven’t even been given time to just... process and be mad.

I promise I’ll be back, just give me some time.

#tbd #personal #when I say this is the cliffnotes version #I mean it #there are so many other layers to this story that I can't even begin #to get into #but this is where I've been #and I'm going to try and return as soon as I have like...#some stability

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honeyedhoseok · 6 years ago

Text

Don’t You Need Me?

Genre | Angst, Taehyung x Female reader, friends->lovers->friends? au

Word Count | 9.6K

Summary | “Send me back in time, to those nights when we had it all / Will this come out right?” Set 1 year into Y/N and Hongbins relationship; You and Taehyung timidly rekindle your friendship online and then in person when Taehyung moves less than fifteen minutes away–which leads to dinner, wine and a sensual moment that was never supposed to happen.

Warnings | Language, slight smut (dry humping), mentions of weed and alcohol

A/N | Here’s the next part of The V2 Series, a flashback that details the first time Y/N and Taehyung ever hooked up after breaking up in high school. Thanks @sleevelessparkjimin for being my plot coordinator & helping me soooo much with this, you’re the best :* Enjoy! <3

— Set 1 year into your relationship with Hongbin —

You stare at the blinking cursor on your screen, fingers hovering over the keyboard of your laptop, stomach twisted in nervousness. The feeling either stems from the venti caramel macchiato that you just chugged on an empty stomach—which has been known to leave you anxious and trembling on more than one occasion—or, more accurately, it may have something to do with the decision you are currently contemplating.

Your eyes graze over the home screen of your Facebook, where you stopped scrolling in awe at a status update from a former . . . friend.

Kim Taehyung is feeling accomplished—with Kim Eon Jin and 2 others.

Underneath is a picture of Taehyung in a graduation cap, his parents flanking him on either side mirroring his signature smile with ones of their own. Taehyung had a reason to feel proud—in high school he’d sworn he wasn’t going to go to college; he’d said it wasn’t for him, it was for people who had done better than him and who actually had a chance at surviving two more years of education.

Like you, he’d said. You’re smart. You should definitely go back to school, baby.

The nickname echoes in your head. You can still hear the soft tone of it, the way sometimes he’d caress your cheek when he said it, the way he’d whine the word when he wanted you to get off the couch and get him something to drink because he didn’t want to miss a minute of the game, the way he’d make it come out of your own mouth in a more wanton way when you two were—

This, you think, is why after you break up with someone, you should delete them from all social media. And if you were at all smart like Taehyung thought you were, you would have done it a long time ago. Because then you wouldn’t be thinking of sending a congratulatory message to a person you hadn’t spoken to in over two years.

It could be simple, right? Just a “congrats,” nothing else. That wouldn’t hurt anything, would it?

Your fingers jump over the keyboard, itching to write the message and get it over with, so you place your hands under your legs. You glance around at the Starbucks cafe, trying to catch any suspicious eyes averting to yours, wondering why you are concentrating so hard on the tiny screen of your computer.

When your gaze is unmet, you look back at the screen, at that god damn blinking cursor that is mocking you in the comment section of Taehyung’s status. Why were you so scared? Two years was a lot of time to mature—and if you did it in a mature, nonchalant way, Taehyung would also take it as a mature compliment . . . right?

But then, who all would be able to see it? Everything that you commented on or liked on Facebook and any other social media always ended up on your friends timelines. A public comment wasn’t a good idea. A DM, instead? Or was that too personal? Too closed off? Too secret?

You groan outwardly, leaning back in your seat. A woman to your right reading a novel at a small table glances over at you, but doesn’t say anything.

“This is stupid,” you murmur to yourself quietly. “Just do it!”

You quickly pull up your chat and type Taehyung’s name into a new box and start your message:

Hey, congrats on graduating

Too brief. Do it again.

Hey, an Associates! That’s awesome! Always knew you would get there one day. Remember in high school when

Too long-winded. And too fucking happy. Again.

Hey, uh, just wanted to say congrats on the achievement

“UH”? Were you a bumbling moron?

Hey, long time no talk

You pause, biting your lip. That was casual, right?

Hey, long time no talk. Just wanted to congratulate you on getting your degree, and I hope you’ve been doing well :)

You let out a long breath of air from your nose, reading the two lines over and over again until you finally hit ‘Send,’ and close out of the app as quickly as you can. You close the lid of your laptop too, realizing for the first time that your heart is beating rapidly in your chest, pulse singing in your veins. It feels good, but you’re worried it won’t last long. What if he didn’t even answer back?

You don’t give yourself much time to dwell. You pack up your things, throwing away your empty venti cup in the trash can beside the door as you exit the cafe. You decide to give it twenty-four hours before you check to see if he read it, just to save yourself from disappointment and from looking over-eager to reply to him—if he decided to reply .

But Taehyung doesn’t care about either of those things, obviously, because as soon as you are settled into the front seat of your car, your phone buzzes with a message:

Y/N! Thanks so much. I never thought I’d get there, honestly. & it HAS been such a long time . . . how are you?

— 1 month later —

“Can you pause it?” you ask Yeonwoo. “I have to pee.”

She rolls her eyes. “This is like the third time!” she groans, but pulls the remote from underneath her blanket and hits pause. “We’re never going to finish the HP series at this point.”

You two were having a movie marathon during a dreary Saturday—as the movie paused, you could hear rain splatter heavily against the windows in the living room—and Yeonwoo had insisted you start the Harry Potter series from her favorite, The Goblet of Fire. You were actually a fan of The Prisoner of Azkaban, but when you suggested watching it first, Yeonwoo had acted like she hadn’t heard you.

“It’s the margaritas!” you yell, already halfway down the hallway to your bedroom. “Stop judging me!”

As you round the corner into your bedroom, you whip out your phone from your hoodie pocket, tapping twice on the screen to make it light up.

The first message you have is from Hongbin, an email sent thirty minutes ago:

I have a meeting tonight after work. I’m sorry I keep cancelling our anniversary dinner, but I promise I’ll make it up to you.

-Hongbin

He wasn’t allowed on his phone during work hours, so he’d resorted in the last few months to a distant, formal mode of communication that the computer on his desktop would allow him. You hated it, mostly because a message from work meant the inevitable—Hongbin was telling you he was getting off late and/or cancelling plans. Today it was both.

You use the bathroom and wash your hands, drying them off on a towel next to you before picking your phone back up. You bite your lip, reading over the message once more. Your anniversary was three weekends ago, and Hongbin and you still weren’t able to celebrate because of his demanding schedule. You just wanted some time with him, but Hongbin insisted on getting dolled up and taking you out—which led to reservations and a special time allotted that he, in turn, kept being unable to make.

You sigh. There’s nothing you can do—sending back a biting remark or getting mad would do nothing. Hongbin was working hard at his firm, determined to climb the ladder after his father. Who were you to complain about that process? He had drive, ambition, goals—and what did that matter in the face of his girlfriend wanting to spend a little time with him after a year of dating?

As you exit out of the email app, your phone vibrates in your hand, alerting a new message in a private Facebook chat. You click it open, revealing a smiling picture of Taehyung standing beside a road sign—one that you recognize well. Underneath the caption reads:

Guess who has two thumbs and just moved all their shit into an apartment here?

You break out into a grin instantly, fingers flying over the keyboard.

Shut UP! No fucking way! You got the job at the library???

Taehyung is typing . . .

Duh! Those fuckers want me to start Monday

I don’t have a bed frame or a comforter

My mattress is sitting on the floor with just a navy fitted sheet on it

You breathe out an airy laugh before sending your response.

Lmaooooo, poor kid

Congrats tho

That was so quick, you’re insane

It was too good of an opportunity to pass up!!

& thnx :) How’s your day going?

“Y/N, this century, please!” Yeonwoo yells from the living room. “Jesus.”

You send a quick movie marathon w/ Yeonwoo. Harry potter to Taehyung before tucking your phone back into your hoodie and walking back to the living room. You fall back on the couch, bundling up with your blanket and margarita glass.

“Sorry,” you say, giving her a smile. “Press play!”

Hongbin 9:36pm

Just getting home. I’m so tired

You roll your eyes at the message, throwing your phone back down onto your bed. You were cuddled up in a blanket, catching up on shows on your DVR while Yeonwoo was getting dressed for a night downtown. It was still raining, so you’d decided to stay in—but your roommate obviously didn’t care about her hair or herself getting wet whatsoever as she stepped into your room donning a short, black skirt.

“Is this cute?” she asks, turning around in a circle. “Maybe with a jean jacket or something?”

You nod. “What about that rugged one you just got from the thrift store a few days ago?”

She disappears again, some rustling coming from her room as she searches. “Are you sure you don’t want to go?” she calls. “We can pick one place and stay there, so we don’t get soaked!”

“I’m fine,” you say back, eyes trained on the TV. “I’m not really feeling it, just gonna watch some shows or something.”

Yeonwoo comes back into your room a few moments later, hair curled in pretty, loose ringlets and outfit complete with a skirt, floral top, jean jacket and boots.

“Good?” she asks.

“Cute,” you say. “You leaving now?”

“Yeah, I just called the Uber. I’ll let you know when I’m on the way home, okay?”

You nod, listening to the sound of her boots clunking down the hallway before the front door opens and closes. You sigh. You probably should have went with her, knowing how she gets, but you hope that for once she can handle herself without you. Or that one of her friends is playing the “mom” card for the night. You wanted to sulk for a little bit; if your boyfriend was going to cancel plans, you might as well sit inside and do nothing and it be completely his fault.

You settle back into your blankets, trying to refocus on your show when your phone vibrates again by your thigh. You’re thinking it’s Yeonwoo, saying she forgot to lock the front door, or Hongbin, wondering why you haven’t responded to his earlier messages—but it’s neither.

Video Call from Kim Taehyung…

You stare at the screen, bewildered. Looking back at you is the reflection of someone who should not be seen in video form—but you find yourself hitting the ‘Accept’ button, anyways. Taehyung and you don’t video chat, so this is new.

Taehyung’s face fills the screen immediately, and your heart jumps at the sight. He’s wearing a dark beanie, his ashy blonde locks sticking out from the front and sides a little. In an awkward silence, he blinks twice into the camera, making sure he isn’t frozen from his side of the connection.

“Y/N?” he says with caution, and your breath hitches quietly at the sound of your name coming out of his mouth after so long.

Of course, with you and Taehyung having reconnected on social media a month ago, you’d done your fair share of stalking his profile—looking at pictures, status updates, his tagged content—but seeing his face on the screen of your phone was something else entirely. You find yourself speechless.

His eyes, pretty and brown, search the camera unsurely.

“Are you frozen?” he asks again, shifting in his seat. “Hello?”

You finally break out of your trance, opening your mouth and shaking your head a little. “Hi,” you say quietly, watching Taehyung’s face brighten at the sound of your voice.

“Hey!” he says, grinning. “We had a bad connection for a minute, there.”

“Yeah.” You laugh lowly, nervously. “The internet here sucks, sometimes.”

“Yeah, same.” He moves around with his phone in his hand, placing the camera lower so that you get more of his chin and neck, the strong line of his jaw. In the background, you see plain white walls and kitchen cabinets, making you realize where he is, finally.

“Is this your new place?” you ask, sitting up in bed. “Let me see.”

“Yep!” He taps his screen twice, turning the camera around to the kitchen.

It’s a small, cozy room with dark granite counters and white walls, giving it a modern feel. Taehyung gets up from his seat and walks into the living room, giving you the tour. A small, dark couch sits against one wall with a ton of boxes surrounding it.

“I haven’t gotten much done,” he says, laughing nervously. “Moving by yourself is so hard. I had no idea.”

“You did everything alone?” you ask. “Your parents didn’t help?”

He doesn’t answer, moving past the living room to his bedroom, which is exactly like he explained earlier with a single mattress sitting against one wall, a night stand placed beside it and a desk on an adjacent wall.

“I was thinking of putting my bed in this corner,” he explains, “then it wouldn’t be up against that window and I’d have some space to do stuff in the middle.”

“Like what?” you tease. “Dance?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Taehyung says, laughing. He taps the screen again so the camera is back on his face, and your stomach clenches at how he prettily smiles into the camera. “You never know what can happen at casa de Taehyung.”

You roll your eyes, which only makes his smile grow brighter.

“But yeah, my parents helped me move the big stuff and then they left.” He frowns. “Now I have to unpack everything before I work on Monday.”

You shrug. “Well, you don’t have to. But I guess that would make the most sense, huh?”

“Yep.” He sighs. “Oh! I have a reason for this phone call that I keep forgetting to ask you.”

A little part of you feels relieved. It felt odd but good talking to Taehyung, but you were beginning to wonder why he’d chosen videoing instead of a text or phone call—either way, you were happy he was taking your mind off of other things for the time being.

You watch him walk back through his apartment to the kitchen, where he turns the camera on a bouquet of flowers sitting on the table.

“How do I keep these alive?” he asks. “Someone gave them to me as a housewarming gift—don’t ask why, I have no idea. I mean, seriously,” he turns the camera back on himself, quirking a thick eyebrow, “do I look like a flowers kind of guy?”

You giggle. “I mean, maybe?” you say. “Remember in high school when Mina asked you to prom? She went all out with it, too! She got someone to record it and she brought you flowers—”

“And I had to gently let her down because I’d just asked you out a week earlier?” he finishes for you, cringing at the thought. “God, that was terrible.”

“Hey, I told you to go with her!” you counter, laughing. “I didn’t care about prom whatsoever, but you made me go anyways.”

Taehyung shrugs, giving you a soft smile. “But you were so pretty in your dress, so I don’t wanna hear it.”

Your next laugh dies in your throat, but you manage a smile at Taehyung’s compliment. You two are quiet for a beat, eyes focused on each other in the camera lens as you relive the moment in your memories.

“The flowers need a vase,” you say, finally. “Do you have one?”

Taehyung cocks his head to the side. “If I’m not a flower guy, why the hell would I have a vase handy?”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes again at his ever-present sarcasm. “Shut up.”

“Should I put them by the window?” he asks, getting up from his chair. “In the morning, they can—”

“No!” you say, a little louder than you mean to. Taehyung freezes on your screen. “I mean, direct sunlight will make them wilt faster. Don’t you know anything?”

“I know you’re being very unhelpful to my situation,” he says, tsking. “Do you have a vase?”

“Yeah?”

“Then bring it to me.”

You pause, feeling your heartbeat increase as you ponder the offer. Bring it to him? As in to his house? As in seeing each other for the first time in two years?

“Oh, uh—yeah,” you stutter, eyebrows furrowing. “I guess I could. I mean, you said you needed help unpacking . . . before Monday . . . right?”

Taehyung nods, keeping his expression even. “I’ll make it worth your while—I can make us lunch or dinner or something. Whenever you’re free to help tomorrow.”

You’re still quiet, so he tacks on: “Don’t feel like you have to or anything!”

“No, no.” You shake your head. “Sunday is good.” Hongbin was going on a golfing trip with some coworkers and Yeonwoo would be passed out until the afternoon time. “I can come, and I’ll bring you a vase.”

You’re glad you agreed, because the way Taehyung’s face brightens—a wide smile splitting his face—makes you feel like you’d do anything to see it happen more often.

“Great,” he says. Then he sighs, and looks past the camera around at his apartment. “Well, I’m going to try to get some stuff done in the kitchen tonight so we have somewhere to eat tomorrow.” His eyes meet yours once more: twinkling, hopeful, a little mischievous, but that’s just Taehyung. “I’ll see you then?”

“Yeah,” you hear yourself say, “See you then.”

His voice is a soft hum to your ears, “Goodnight, Y/N,” right before he disconnects the call.

The screen goes back to Facebook, and you stare at it for a little while, relishing in the excited rush flowing through your veins, at the familiarity of it all, at one thought turning over in your brain for the rest of the night: you were going to see Taehyung tomorrow.

You tell Taehyung you won’t be headed over to his place until after lunchtime, but your excited nerves have you awake at eight. You stare at the ceiling fan rotating in the center of your bedroom for a while, watching a single blade spin while your mind reels similarly until you feel dizzy and have to close your eyes again. It was just Taehyung, and you were just doing him a favor. So why did it feel like you were keeping a secret?

After watching a little TV in the comfort of your bed, you get up and take a shower, going through your normal routine at a leisurely pace to help waste some time. You grab a granola bar off your desk and eat it while you pick out an outfit. When you finally step out of your room and into the living room, you’re surprised to see Yeonwoo stretched out on the couch, a white sheet mask covering her face as she watches TV.

“Hangover?” you comment, snickering. “You’re up early.”

“So are you,” she snaps back, but her usual biting remark is softened by the stiffness of her mouth as she tries not to move too much and disturb the mask. “Where you going?”

You decide to tell the truth, seeing if it helps ease the building anxiety in your stomach. And to cover your tracks for later, whatever later was. “I’m helping an old friend move into their apartment.”

Yeonwoo sits up, eyeing your outfit—a pair of plain jeans, a crew neck sweater and sneakers. When she’s satisfied with your believable clothes, she relaxes, shrugging her shoulders. “Sounds like a shitty way to spend a Sunday, but okay. Have fun.”

You laugh with her, trying to sneak out of the house without any further questions. Just as you open the door, she hits you with another: “What’s with the vase?”

“Housewarming gift!” you quip, stepping outside. “Bye!”

You realize on the way over that you’re making a mistake.

You should have told Hongbin. You weren’t just going to help an old friend, you were going to help an old ex. A person who, foolishly, in high school, you thought you were going to spend a good portion—if not the rest—of your life with.

You look down at the housewarming gift in the passenger seat of your car: a bottle of white Riesling with a gold bow around it, and your stomach twists in nausea. As the GPS directs you to make a u-turn because you just missed the exit to Taehyung’s house, you find yourself pulling off onto the side of the road.

Hongbin answers on the fifth ring.

“Hey,” you say timidly, biting your lip for a second. “I just wanted to call you—I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m doing right now—”

A roar of laughter erupts in your ear, cutting you off. You hear Hongbin excusing himself and some rustling before he finally addresses you. “Y/N, hey,” he says, rushed. “What’s up? I told you I was busy today with work.”

It’s a response so fucking typical of him you can’t even give him the satisfaction of getting mad. Here you are, trying to give him some insight on your worries and he’s too busy chasing a promotion to care.

“Seriously? You’re not at work, Hongbin,” you remind him sourly. “You’re on a golfing trip kissing ass.”

“And if we ever expect to move in together, I’m going to have to get back to kissing said ass, Y/N,” he snaps back just as easily. “I’ve got to go.”

“Fine. Forget it. Bye.”

You hit end on the call and throw your phone down in the seat next to you, listening to the harsh sound of it smacking against glass. You wince, and although you don’t want to, you glance down to make sure you haven’t broken the two gifts beside you.

Taehyung. Your annoyance at Hongbin drains and nervousness replaces it—but it’s a feeling you’d rather have a thousand times over than one of neglect. So you put the car back into drive, make the designated u-turn the GPS is telling you to, and get back on the road to Taehyung’s house.

Which building/room?

Taehyung is typing . . .

1100/425!

You grab the wine in one hand and the vase in the other, making the short walk from the parking lot to the building lobby. You take a deep breath as you step into the elevator, letting it fill your chest, lungs, stomach, and letting it out through your nose only when the shaft lurches to a halt. A ding sounds as the elevator stops on the fourth floor, and all too quickly you are standing in front of room 425.

With your heartbeat pounding against your rib cage, you rap your knuckles softly on the surface. You hear heavy footsteps and clicks of the lock, and then Taehyung is swinging the door open, his face full of delight to see you standing on the other side.

He’s traded the beanie and sweater from yesterday for freshly washed hair that sits in voluminous, messy pieces on his forehead, a grey zip up hoodie, and black sweats. He looks so reminiscent of times when you two were in high school hanging out at his house that you feel relieved—if anything, he was still the Taehyung that loved to be in baggy, comfortable clothes.

“You made it!” he says, grinning. “And you brought the vase!”

He steps back and gestures for you to come inside, which you do, cautiously. You glance at the floor, following his bare feet into the kitchen, watching as they come to a stop in front of the oven.

You set the vase down on the table, still gripping the wine awkwardly in your left hand. “I um—brought this, for you,” you say, holding the bottle out towards him. “Hope you still like sweet white.”

Taehyung smiles softly, taking the gift from you. “Of course I do. Maybe we can crack it open after dinner.”

You nod, and the space between you two falls into an uncomfortable silence. Taehyung tries to make it not as obvious that he’s taking you in—eyes trailing from your head to your toes and back again, taking note of all the changes—but you can feel his gaze on you even as you look away, bringing an embarrassing heat to your already warm face.

You clear your throat. “How much did you get done last night?”

Taehyung seems to remember why you are there, finally, pushing off his relaxed stance against the counters and walking into the living room.

“The kitchen is pretty finished, I think,” he says. “But there are so many boxes in the living room that need to be unpacked.”

Your eyes trail over the ones stacked on top of each other on the couch, blocking any and all possible ways of relaxing in front of the flat screen TV already perched on an entertainment stand.

You sigh. “Well, let’s start with those, then.”

You two fall back into your old rhythm quickly. You’re grateful for this, because the first thirty minutes are spent quietly unpacking, neither of you being sure what to say to the other until Taehyung finally starts talking about his library interview.

You catch back up on what each other have been up two since high school: you, working full time and just recently deciding to go back to school, and Taehyung, living with his parents while he took day classes and saved up money to move out. In two years time, both of you have grown up so much; but also not, by the way you still reminisce about the past, teasing each other about old embarrassments and times together.

Taehyung has matured. He has hardened in places—the line of his jaw and playful glint in his eyes both sharper, body filled out and lean underneath the thin t-shirt that you see after he sheds his hoodie, voice sultry and deep, an air of confidence that follows his movements that you aren’t used to seeing. You wonder what changed him, but you’re fine with whatever it was because this is a good look for him.

“We’re so stupid for moving out so early,” he says later, flopping back on the now-cleared couch. His face glows with a radiant warmth, his hairline a little sweaty from moving furniture around in the living room. You’d offered to help but you couldn’t lift much—and Taehyung had insisted he could do it by himself.

“Hey, Yeonwoo and I are doing just fine,” you counter, frowning. You take a seat on the opposite end of the couch, pulling your legs underneath you. “You should have gotten a roommate. It would make everything easier.”

“I don’t want to live with anyone, though,” he replies.

“Why?”

He shrugs. “It’s hard.”

“So is paying rent by yourself,” you add, laughing. “I think you’re hard to get along with, and that’s why you don’t want a roommate.”

Taehyung raises a questioning eyebrow, crossing his arms. “Explain.”

“Well for starters,” you begin ticking each point off on your fingers, “everything has to be neat and tidy. You hate mess.”

“This is true. Go on.”

“And,” you add another finger, “You survive off of coffee and chicken wraps like a weirdo, so a roommate would starve going grocery shopping with you.”

Taehyung rolls his eyes, but lets you have that one. “Mhm, and?”

“And, you smoke. Not everyone likes that.”

Taehyung smiles, knowing he has the one-up on you. “That, my dear, is where you’re wrong,” he says. “I quit.”

You sit up a little. “What? For real?”

“It’s too expensive,” he says. “I do something a little cheaper, now.”

“Cigarettes?” you say, unable to hide the disgust in your tone.

Taehyung reaches in the pocket of his hoodie thrown over the back of the couch. “Cigars,” he says, brandishing a rectangular box.

You furrow your brows. “But you used to smoke these before.”

“And now they’re weed-less,” he counters, giving you an impish grin. “Here, smell.”

He takes one out and hands it to you. It’s skinny—not the giant ones that mob bosses smoke in movies—and you bring it to your nose with caution. On the inhale, your senses are flooded with a sweet, smoky smell, something reminiscent of fruit and maybe, firewood.

You hand it back to him and he digs around in his pocket for a lighter. You reach for the box instead. “Summer blend?” you read.

“Yeah, they’re pretty good.”

He lights it up, takes a long inhale. You watch the tip glow red, watch the way Taehyung’s mouth purses around the end before he blows out a continuous exhale of smoke. Even though you’re on the other end of the couch, the smell hits you immediately and you realize it’s one that has been floating in the air since you got there. Earlier, when Taehyung brushed past you to get another box you would smell it, and you thought it was just the scent of his deodorant or body wash. Somehow, knowing it comes from a cigar makes it more enticing, and you watch curiously as Taehyung takes another slow drag.

His eyes meet yours through the skinny smoke hovering in the air and he raises an eyebrow. “Want to try?”

You feel yourself reaching for it before you’ve entirely made up your mind. You smoked a cigarette, once. You hated it. But that wasn’t with Taehyung watching you intently from the end of the couch, so you find yourself more inclined to like cigars as you bring the plastic tip to your mouth.

You cough a little on the exhale, but otherwise it doesn’t feel like anything. You find yourself wishing for something a little stronger, and your eyes drift to the unopened bottle of wine on the table as you hand the cigar back to Taehyung. His eyebrows raise questioningly at you, but otherwise he doesn’t say anything.

You gesture to the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?” You pause. “Or late lunch, rather?”

Taehyung scratches the back of his neck lazily. “Umm—”

“You didn’t buy anything, did you?” you guess with a sigh. “So typical of a chicken-wrap-and-coffee guy.”

“What? No.” He laughs. “I said I was going to cook for you but it’s going to take a second. Is that okay?”

“Oh.” You perk back up. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Great.” He gives you a smirk. “But you’re right about the chicken wrap thing—I'm also a dying-vase-of-flowers guy,” he adds jokingly, getting up from the couch and walking towards the dining room table. He puts his cigar out in a little ash tray on the table, touching the wilted bouquet before spinning on his heel to look at you. “Can we salvage these?”

“I suppose I can work my magic,” you say playfully. “You start cooking.”

“Deal.”

While Taehyung pulls pots, pans, and ingredients from the cabinets, you work on cutting the stems on the flowers shorter. As you run them under cold water in the sink, Taehyung looks on from your side.

“Girls must be born with the ability to take care of things,” he hums appreciatively.

You smile a little and try not to let him see it as you pull dead leaves and wilted petals off before finally, sticking all the stems in the clear, glass vase you brought from your apartment.

“Pretty?” you ask.

Taehyung turns around from where he’s chopping vegetables at the counter. “Perfect,” he agrees. “You’ve earned a glass of wine.”

“You say that like I didn’t buy it,” you snort, rolling your eyes.

“Hey, it’s my housewarming gift,” he says. “But I’m willing to share.”

You grab a glass from the cabinet Taehyung points to, thanking every instinct under the sun that you thought to get a bottle that had a screw-on top. Without looking for it, you know Taehyung wouldn’t have a wine opener.

“What are you making?” you ask.

“Stir fry,” he says. “I figured it would be quick and easy. That okay?”

You sip quietly and stand beside Taehyung as he chops, looking at the graceful way in which he handles food. His hands, big and tan, work with a knife flawlessly. You can’t help but wonder where he learned the skill—in high school he hadn’t known how to cook eggs properly.

He gets you to pour some wine in a separate glass for him that he sips on occasionally. You’re glad you thought about buying it—somehow having a drink in your hands eases the awkward staleness in the room that seems to creep back in during silences. He asks you a few more questions while he prepares—what was the best place to eat in town, what was the nightlife like, what was there to do for fun—and you rattle off what you little you know.

Lastly, he pulls out a small package of white mushrooms and begins slicing them. When he sees the uneasy expression on your face at the addition of a certain hearty vegetable, he shakes his head.

“I’m cooking them in a separate pan, love,” Taehyung murmurs quietly, brow furrowed in concentration. He doesn’t even look at you when he says it, casually tacking on the old pet name onto the end, but you’re glad he doesn’t, because the shock on your face would tell everything.

He hasn’t forgotten anything about you or your preferences. The thought pulls at invisible strings on your insides, but it’s not the same anxiousness as earlier. It’s more of a warmth, an appreciation, a heartfelt emotion that has been silently gnawing at the back of all your interactions since you stepped foot in his apartment. You missed this.

You down what’s left of the wine in the bottom of your glass, hoping the alcohol will take that tight feeling in your throat with it as it travels to your stomach.

“Shit, I forgot to cut up the broccoli!” Taehyung says suddenly. “Y/N can you do that while I get these mushrooms frying? They’re going to take longer.”

You nod, going to the refrigerator. Taehyung puts a pan on the stove and turns on the burner, digging around for a spatula to cook with as you grab the knife and get to work. Somehow, you forget everything you’ve ever learned about cooking or cutting, and a few seconds into slicing the broccoli stem, the tip of the paring knife goes right through the tip of your index finger.

“Ow, fuck!” you say, dropping the knife immediately and cradling your injured finger with your other hand. It oozes blood and you step back from the cutting board to save the food.

Taehyung is at your side immediately. “You okay?” He cuts off the stove burner and rushes out of the kitchen. “Run it under some water, I’ll get the first aid kit!”

It isn’t bad, but it’s going to need a band-aid if you expect to carry on the night without a huge mess. You watch the dark red liquid start to run down your finger so you walk out of the kitchen to avoid getting blood in that sink and opt for the bathroom connected to Taehyung’s bedroom instead.

“I know the first aid kit is around here somewhere,” he murmurs as you walk through, his back to you as he bends over a few boxes stacked in the corner of his room.

You turn the sink on and rinse off the blood pooling at the end, blotting it dry with a square of toilet paper. Taehyung walks into the bathroom with the first aid kit just as you are closing the lid on the toilet, sitting on the seat as you apply light pressure to the cut.

“Is it bad?” he asks, crouching down in front of you. He pulls some ointment out of the kit and flips your hand over, cradling it with his much bigger one as he inspects the damage.

“It’s fine, I think,” you say, trying hard not to show the way tingles are shooting up your arm as Taehyung spreads a small amount of ointment on your finger, hands dancing and caressing your skin with care as he tends to it. “Sorry that I’m so awful at using a knife.”

He looks up at you, giving you a pretty, genuine smile. “It’s okay, I should have remembered—last time we tried to cook together it ended in a disaster, too.”

There’s a beat of silence—partly because you are racking your brain trying to remember the specific time Taehyung is referring to, and partly because suddenly, his face is close to yours for the first time of the entire night and you can see everything that you missed about Taehyung: the chocolate irises that stare happily back at you, the freckle that dots the tip of his nose that you used to kiss over and over, the softness of his pink lips and the way they pull back over a set of straight, beautiful teeth and send a warm smile your way.

And then his head is bent again, the moment gone as quickly as it came as he focuses back on the task at hand. He grabs a thin band-aid from the kit and works on unwrapping it, letting go of your fingers for the time being.

“Thanks for this,” you say, finally. “And thanks for inviting me over, I’m really—” you pause, licking your dry lips and trying to swallow the lump that’s suddenly formed in your throat, “I’m glad I got to see you.”

Taehyung doesn’t look up immediately at the confession—instead, he lets it linger quietly in the air of his cramped bathroom as he peels the paper strips off the sides of the bandaid. He wraps it around your finger gingerly, dropping the trash in the waste basket that sits beside the toilet. Still crouched in front of you, Taehyung pulls your hand up, fingertips aligning with his as if measuring your hand sizes before he intertwines them between yours. He gives your hand a squeeze like this, and you find it hard to look away as your eyes meet.

“Me too, Y/N,” he says softly. “I missed you.”

The quietness of Taehyung’s apartment lays easily on the conversation, covering the confession like a warm blanket. Your face is hot, and you can’t tell if it’s because of the wine or the intensity in which Taehyung is staring at you, still crouched in between your legs and holding your hand with his own.

When his eyes lower from yours finally, you realize you had been holding your breath the whole time, and you let it out quietly through your nose. Taehyung seems to deflate in front of you as well—deciding against whatever was rolling in his mind and making his eyebrows furrowed, as he loosens his grip on your hand and moves to straighten up.

But you don’t want him to move yet. You want to stay in this atmosphere, in this pulse-racing closeness with Taehyung because it’s a feeling that hasn’t coursed through your veins in a long, long time. You tug him back into place and he stutters at the movement, opening his mouth to say something but you don’t let him.

You just want to touch him, to feel him underneath the weight of your fingertips, to run your hand across the tan, smooth skin of his cheek. The feeling is so strong you can’t decide a solid reason why you shouldn’t. So you untangle your hand from his and rake it through the long, blonde strands of his hair, scratching lightly at the back of his neck where you know he likes it. Taehyung’s eyes close from pleasure, familiarness—and when he opens them, you know he’s lost the battle with himself from the fire lit behind his brown irises. You don’t mind, because you lose the same battle when you decide to lean in, using your hand resting on the back of Taehyung’s neck to guide his lips to yours.

The kiss is timid at first, a testing of the waters with closed mouths pressed against each other because neither of you are sure what is happening, or if it should be happening. But when Taehyung brings his hands up to cup the sides of your face, breaking away for just a second to reposition so that his lips are slanted across yours in a harder, more urgent kiss—all sensibility you had leaves the room.

Taehyung pulls you up from your sitting position as he straightens his legs from crouching, using the opportunity to bring you closer and wrap his arms around your waist while his lips graze feverishly across your own. It’s been over two years without pressing your lips against his, but the moment they touch, everything comes back. Taehyung kisses you to leave you breathless, his tongue easily slipping in after a few moments, lacing with your own in a way that is familiar but exciting and new at the same time.

You’re reminded of the mushrooms suddenly, and that Taehyung hasn’t forgotten anything about you like this, either, despite some time apart: the way you loved it when he cradled your face with one hand while his other wrapped around your waist, cocooning you in his warmth and pressing you against his lean body; kissing you slow, but hot and needy to where your body can’t help but feel like melted ice cream in his hands; the way you loved it when he pulled back and looked at you, gauging your reaction to it all, even when he knew exactly what he was doing to you before diving back in with eagerness that made your heart skip.

When you break away to get some air, Taehyung only moves his attention to the skin of your neck, peppering kisses down your jawline until he reaches your pulse point, suckling on the skin lightly there. You close your eyes, tilting your head back to encourage him further, a breathy sigh releasing from between your lips at the warmth of his mouth.

Somewhere along the sucking and nipping and feverish, open-mouth kisses on your skin, Taehyung begins walking you back through the bathroom door frame and into his bedroom. You stumble with him towards the bed, unable to take your hands off of each other for fear that the moment will be ruined and unable to be recaptured with quite the same amount of passion. Neither of you speak, either, for the same reasons, you suppose--but you couldn’t say anything if you wanted; Taehyung doesn’t give you a chance with the way his mouth dances across yours.

Taehyung lightly pushes your shoulders once you’re at the edge of his mattress that sits on the floor—sans bed frame—and you lower yourself down as he follows you, covering your body with all of his. He positions himself perfectly between your legs so that his hard cock sits right against your center, placing pressure on your most sensitive bits, and Taehyung milks a slight moan from your mouth when he ruts against you.

Your clasp the sides of his face, bringing his lips back to yours with fervor unmatched to any time you’d been kissed in the past two years. While Taehyung licks inside of your mouth, your hands roam underneath his thin, white T-shirt, fingernails dragging along the skin of his back in a light scratch that has him groaning in the back of his throat. He leaves your mouth again to nip along your collarbones, bringing one of his hands up to pull down the collar of your sweater and give himself more access.

It’s hot in his room, and not because the A/C isn’t working—in between closing your eyes, you see the vent on the ceiling right above your heads—but your skin is warm all over your body, a feeling that only comes with the circumstance of Taehyung between your legs. You roll your hips upward to meet his, making his mouth stutter in the marks of distinction it was making along your chest. He sits up, kneeling between your legs and looking at you with curious eyes. Taehyung’s lips are swollen from all the kissing and his hair is mussed from your fingertips running through it, but in this moment, you’ve never been more attracted to him.

You tug at the bottom of his shirt and Taehyung snatches it over his head with ease, smirking when your eyes roam over the tan, lean planes of his chest and stomach. His shoulders have widened and broadened, but he’s still managed to keep a slender, boyish figure over the years; you want to run your hands over every crevice of his body and re-remember all the lines so that when this moment between you two is done, you can revisit the memory over and over and over.

When Taehyung leans back over you to connect your lips again, you roll over his body before he can, pushing him flat on his back and swinging your leg over so that you’re straddling his waist. Though Taehyung looks surprised at first at the sudden dominance, his eyebrows slowly return to their normal position on his forehead as you lean down to kiss him once more.

He melts underneath the brush of your mouth, his hands rubbing up and down your thighs caging him on either side of his body. While you trace the underside of his jaw with your tongue, he breathes out, “God, I missed you,” while his hands roam upward, grabbing what he can of your ass through the jeans you have on. The movement makes you jump in surprise and Taehyung laughs a little at the way you pull back from him to look at the playfulness in his eyes before he leans up and kisses you on the mouth chastely.

With his hands spread across your backside, Taehyung pulls your hips towards him, causing you to grind against his hard cock that sits beneath the crotch of his grey sweats. You close your eyes as Taehyung’s tongue sneaks out to tease against yours, coaxing you with the warmth of his mouth and his lap to continue your ministrations.

“Tae,” you breathe out, bowing your head as you continue to grind on him.

Your panties are slick with your wetness, sticking to you uncomfortably underneath your jeans but you’re too lost in the haziness of the moment to do anything about it. You realize how pathetic you might sound, moaning because of the friction between so many clothes, but when you open your eyes and look at Taehyung, staring half-lidded back at you and breathing heavily—you couldn’t care less. His gaze sends a knot coiling in your stomach, tightening with every roll of your hips.

When you moan his name again shamelessly, Taehyung sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, closing his eyes as if fighting with himself for what he wants to say—but then he loses when the words escape his plump lips.

“What is it, baby?” he murmurs. “Why don’t you take these off?” He pats his hands where they rest against your butt, squeezing once again through the material.

The thought flashes in your head of what underwear you wore today—certainly not a fuck me pair—and try to think of how Taehyung would react to seeing your simple, baby blue cotton panties.

“Hm?” he asks, letting his hand come down on your ass in a harder smack this time—still encouraging the roll of your hips against his cock. “Take them off, I want to touch you.” He pauses, fighting the groan building in the back of his throat. “Wanna—make you feel good, Y/N.”

Hongbin is never this forward with you—he wasn’t much of an ass guy in the first place, so he would never do this—and since it had been a while since you two shared a passionate moment because of his work schedule, you couldn’t remember what it was like with Taehyung overpowering those memories with his sensual, fiery touches and narrations.

You want to get completely lost in the moment, but you can’t. Hongbin—he floods back into your brain, unwarranted and at the utmost wrong time he possibly could. It’s all happening so fast—but not fast enough. Your mind takes over instead of your body, your wants, and you open your eyes from their closed state, taking in the sight before you:

Taehyung, underneath you. Shirtless. Small, pink marks covering his neck and chest from your mouth. From your mistakes. From your infidelity. You snatch your hands back from where they rest on his stomach, guilt flooding your system as the fog in your brain thins. Taehyung’s eyes open to anxiously search yours, and he knows immediately what has happened in the last few, precious seconds.

“Taehyung—” you gasp, moving off him and scooting away, off the mattress and toward the wall of his bedroom. When the cold, hard material presses against your back, you realize how far your shirt was pushed up—how close you were to taking it off with your pants following shortly after, and it only makes you feel worse.

“Y/N,” Taehyung says, rushing to crawl after you on his hands and knees. He cradles your cheeks between his hands, brushing away trails of tears you didn’t even know you were crying. “Y/N, I’m sorry—fuck, I’m so fucking sorry. I—” he pauses, running a hand through his air, looking past you with far off eyes. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, god. Fuck!”

You run a shaky hand through your hair, blinking away tears and moving your head side to side in disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur, pushing his hands away. “I have to go—I have to leave, I’m—” you push up from the floor, walking on shaky legs towards Taehyung’s bedroom door.

He grabs his shirt and is after you in a flash, reaching out to capture your wrist in his before you can make it far. “Y/N, wait a second, we should talk about this.”

You pull out of his loose grip and he lets you, watching you with worried eyes as you put on your shoes and jacket by the door.

“Y/N, please,” he says, and you can hear the hopelessness in his voice. It makes you pause and look up at him, but then your eyes zero-in on the marks on his chest, at the shirt in his hand, and your eyesight blurs with tears again.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Taehyung,” you say. “I’m sorry, this was—this was a mistake.”

Taehyung flinches at the sound of the word, but he nods slowly in understanding. “I’m sor—”

You manage a soft me too, cutting him off before he can say it and then you are rushing out, pulling Taehyung’s front door shut behind you. Just before it closes you catch a glimpse of his kitchen, at the pans on the stove sitting with the cold, forgotten remainders of a dinner that never should have happened in the first place.

— One week later —

“You all right?” Yeonwoo asks as she sits across from you at the kitchen table, setting a mug of steaming hot coffee in front of your tightly clasped hands. This is about the millionth time she’s asked since you got back from Taehyung’s last Sunday—it’s annoying, but at least you’re getting to practice your lying by having to convince her over and over.

“I’ll be great as soon as I drink this,” you say, giving her a smile right before the cup touches your lips. You welcome the burning feeling of the coffee, coating the lies and guilt that keep building up in your throat whenever she asks you.

Yeonwoo hums in agreement, naively, and takes a sip from her own mug.

Of course, you couldn’t tell her what had happened—you couldn’t even process the thoughts yourself, much less explain to someone else what made you cross such a terribly huge line in your seemingly stable relationship. You know you’d wished for it in the moment, but now you want the unrelenting memories of Taehyung to stop flashing through your mind at any given moment and give your poor, guilty heart a fucking break.

“Want to go shopping today?” Yeonwoo asks, not looking up from scrolling on her phone. “I need a new pair of boots.”

You take another sip of your coffee in contemplation, glancing at your own phone sitting a few inches away on the table. Taehyung hadn’t contacted you once since then, and it was eating at your nerves a little bit—shouldn’t he have something to say about it?

“We can go,” you say, finally. “But I need to make a phone call, first.”

Yeonwoo nods and doesn’t look up as you leave the room. You walk in your bedroom, phone in hand and shut the door behind you. For good measure, you lock it, just in case Yeonwoo decides to burst in while you sit Indian style in the middle of your floor and try to figure your conflicted emotions out.

You tap the Facebook app on your home screen and type ‘T’ into the search bar—the first person that pops up is Kim Taehyung from your incessant checking of his timeline within the last week. All he’d posted was a few normal pics of himself sightseeing around town and going to work; it was all boring, mundane things that didn’t help the insatiable craving to reach out to him, but at least he looked cute in his new work button-ups.

You pull up your chat, staring at the last message between you two:

Which building/room?

1100/425!

You knew where his house was, you could just have this conversation to him in person—the thought has you shaking your head before you even finish it. If you couldn’t control yourself last time, how the hell would it be any different during a second round of being alone together?

But, deep down, did you really want it to be any different? The thought had been scaring you for a week straight.

You drag both of your hands down your face in anxiety, pressing your knuckles against your eyes until you see black and static stars. You cross and uncross your legs, pick your phone up and put it down a few times before you finally click in the space to type and let your thoughts formulate freely:

Taehyung, I’m sorry that I left last Sunday and we didn’t really get to talk about what happened. But I’ve had some time to think. Honestly, I think the only thing we can do is put it behind us and move on. I’m sorry that it happened and it shouldn’t happen again. But meeting up made me realize how much I’ve missed you, and I think I kind of need you around as my friend. I’m really sorry, and I hope you still want to talk to me after this. I understand if you don’t, though.

You press send and throw your phone away from you, pulling your knees up to your chest and burying your face in the space between your legs and chest. You breathe out shallowly, thinking over in your head what you just texted and hoping it didn’t make you sound like a pitiful, stupid, selfish idiot.

You knew it was wrong of you to ask Taehyung to come back in your life after what happened between the two of you. Hell, you know it was wrong to bring him back into your life after two years of radio silence between the two of you. What happened was more than just a moment—it was a melding of hidden feelings, of unfulfilled desires and the unrelenting urge to be with someone who knew your body better than you did.

You loved Hongbin. But Taehyung set a fire within your ribcage that billowed outwards and swallowed everything you thought you wanted in your relationship with your current boyfriend; Taehyung, in just a few short hours, had made you forget all of it, made you cross lines you swore you never would because you knew what it felt like to be cheated on. But something about it had felt so right in the moment—

No. If you were going to do this, you had to do it right. You had to be Taehyung’s friend. You had to bury the moment you two shared along with all your dirty desires and do what was right.

But then again, you never were the best at making decisions. The thought passes through your mind as you hear the distinct, vibrating hum of your phone across the floor a few feet away from you, and you snatch it up with sweating palms, a racing heart, and an unrelenting sense of hope blossoming in your chest.

Before the message even pops up, you know, without a single fucking doubt in your mind, that this moment is going to change everything.

Taehyung is typing...

#taehyung x reader #bts x reader #taehyung angst #bts scenarios #bts smut #kim taehyung smut #bts angst #honeyedhoseok #the v2 series #don't you need me?#v2 flashback

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retailworker13 · 4 years ago

Text

AITA for writing this letter to a manager to explain everything instead of trying to get past my anxiety to explain all of this with actual words?

I apologize so much as this letter is very long but addresses all the points I was told was going to be "discussed" with me by someone at work.

A little bit of background, there is a specific coworker at my job that everyone seems to have a problem with, for a multitude of reasons (including many managers and quite a few customers). We all do our best to be nice when she's working with us, but she never stops complaining about anything, and we do try to help her out with certain things. It's gotten to the point she can't work very much because of the complaints she's gotten from other coworkers and customers. After I got off of work 5/26, what I understood was she spent the rest of her shift complaining about me, and whatever I did to a manager who (after a lovely restructure), went from supervisor to manager because the positions combined. Totally fine, we all went through the restructure just fine and have been doing okay since. The virus has screwed a lot up for this but we are all working through it.

I really want to hear honest stuff because I do get really bad anxiety in situations where I get messages like "So and so is going to talk to you today because A,B,C." I actually clocked in late today (5/27) because the manager was apparently waiting for me to go into the break room to get ready like I normally do. I clocked in only 5 minutes late after talking to the store manager and my coworker who had initially texted me. The manager was clocked out the same time I clocked in, and was there 15 minutes after they had clocked, because they wanted to talk to me about everything. I may act all big and tough when discussing how irritating this is for me, but when it actually happens I get pretty anxious and a lot of times start to get sick from nerves as well. Because writing is the only way I can communicate effectively and as clear as possible, I wrote a letter that I will be giving to my store manager first before giving it to the other manager for the sole purpose to protect myself from whatever they have to say. I don't think I should have to explain myself since I am no longer in the middle of a high school drama, but in this case I need to because of how this specific coworker is. For privacy I have blocked out all names, of course, including my company. So...here goes...

Letter:

Okay, I’m typing everything up because I have pretty high anxiety when it comes to stuff like this. I was spoken to by Store Manager yesterday (5/27) about “drama” that happened between Coworker and I on 5/26. However, I was completely unsure of what exactly took place yesterday as she didn’t seem to have any issues with me at all. I do know that she didn’t call me up for assistance, or even up to cover her breaks, which slipped my mind as I was busy working on orders in the back.

She has a habit of clocking for breaks and continuing to work, and I thought maybe that’s what she had done because I was in the back working on orders and I wasn’t going to argue with her about doing so as it has been a small issue in the past. If at any time she needed help, she never got on the radio to ask for it. She was working on designing graduation posters and banners for some reason, since the graduation season is well almost over. I understand there may be some stragglers and that’s okay, but we already have designs and do not need new ones.

To reiterate, I was unaware that Coworker had any issue with me since she never spoke up about it. I try to let her know as much as possible the jobs at hand that we need to work on, but she brushes it off and goes to do her own thing. Yes, this severely gets under my skin as when she is around, I’m working on every order I can to make sure that the next shift doesn’t have much to work on, or doesn’t have to worry about the order besides a quality check and call.

She spent her break and lunch on the back computer designing things, which really got to me since I did have quite a few customers at a time, and she was in plain view of them. Store Manager has told her repeatedly to take her break in the back and it wasn’t an issue again until now. I didn’t speak up about it though expect to Store Manager. Again, there was no reason to sit in the back where she was visible to waiting customers. I didn’t have people outright ask or tell me about her, but it was pretty obvious that they weren’t happy.

Again, if she had any issue with me specifically, or complained the rest of the night about me, then why didn’t she say anything when I was there? Why did she wait until after I left to talk about whatever I did to her that day? Yes, there are times I can get annoyed with her, but it’s when she does stuff like all of the above. I had to redo an order that could have been easily done the first time had it been printed properly or even quality checked. And as it turns out, this order was one that she had told the customer we couldn’t do because of the quantity, didn’t even give the option of splitting the order like the other store did, who turned around and split it with us anyways.

Before I go any further as to what was discussed with me today, I just want to say that I am just listing things off as I experienced them and how I see them. I went through similar issues at my other store, and some issues that were pretty worse than all of this.

I follow policy as best as I can, and if I don’t, then normally it’s hopefully a small thing that just slips my mind, which include a changed price, or a slight misquote. However, there are certain things I pretty much stick to the script on. Which includes copyright and all corporate files. I do not go through and delete files unless they’re my own, and I don’t appreciate being blamed for it.

I will admit to throwing the price books away. It has been made clear by corporate that our online receipt numbers need to be up and if taking away the SKUs in the book means we can do that then so be it. There are also SKUs in the book she continually prints that we do not have any more. They took out our flat design prices because those are Affinity only, not us. We are $1.25 per minute, $0.59 per action, and $19.99 base fee. Nothing else. All of those other prices get sent out for a reason and we need to keep it at that. If corporate took that stuff away, then there’s a reason and we need to listen to it.

We have been lenient on school files because of everything that is happening. But I’m still abiding by our copyright policies with College logos, names and mascots as that’s on the list of stuff we cannot print. I do not “pick and choose” what and what not to print, I check nearly every file for Copyright and if it has it then I either have them sign the release form if it’s not outright Disney or Nickelodeon or something of that nature. However, there is one single exception that I make that it is his personal artwork and if you’d like me to have him sign a release form every time that he comes in then so be it. It’s for his business.

Now, if we are on the subject of picking and choosing, then I’m not the only person in the department who does it. And if you are able to pick and choose who we do and don’t give a copyright violation to then we don’t either. Also, there are multiple orders that have still yet to be paid for that have been there for months, that it is obvious that they aren’t going to come pay for. I am just trying to get an understanding as to how I am the only person in the department who has any issue since I’m not the one who took those $300-600 orders (banners, invoices, etc.).

As a department, we normally function pretty well until we have an issue with an order. Especially the ones like Special Customer 1 or Special Customer 2, or any of the orders that you personally take care of. However, we get issues when we don’t know how to do the order, or we are charging them what we are supposed to be because they’ve “never been charged that” or “they don’t pay that”, when we should be charging them for designing or parts of their order. Again, I’m speaking in terms of what I’ve experienced and what the department has had to go through after the restructuring.

Since you are technically not in the department (as much as you were as supervisor), it makes it hard when we have orders like this because we are following what we were trained to do, and we are getting the short end of the stick for this. We as a department aren’t at fault for this and I’m not saying you are either so please don’t take it that way, but it does make it a lot harder on the rest of us when you take a week-long vacation and we get yelled at over the phone because we are only supposed to have files on our systems for 2 weeks and emails for 30 days and it’s not our responsibility to hold them.

I don’t pick and choose what to do or not to do, I keep everything as uniformed as possible when it comes to turn around times, jobs that we do, jobs that we don’t do, the express fee, copyright, pricing. Everything is as crystal clear as I can make it. If someone else doesn’t like it, but it’s the best I can do and I can’t recommend anything else, then that’s all I got but I did everything the way I was supposed to do it. No one uses the express fee (and sometimes I’m guilty of it too, but I always try to get as much done with the job as I can) and there are a lot of jobs that absolutely have to have it, because we have to put their job in front of everyone else’s to get it done even though everyone else has to (and is normally okay with) a realistic turn-around time.

I don’t just take in a job, leave no notes or information and expect someone to get it done for me. I put as many notes as possible about it, or as many notes that are needed, and I try my best to get the order started. I fill out the project folder as needed, and I keep the notes clear and understandable for everyone. I don’t mean for any of my notes to come off as passive aggressive, and I can print you every single note I have not handwritten. Everything is spelled out as clear as I can make it, and it does get under my skin when they go ignored, or even trashed/shredded before anyone else can see them. If it addressed to someone specific, then it will go to that someone specific (unless of course it’s a question or a request in case anyone else knows the answer).

I am as nice and kind to customers and associates alike to avoid getting complaints or having any issues at all, and if I have a problem, yes, I vent about it as I did in this letter. But it is at the point in time where it’s getting old, and I’m done trying to fight to stick to what corporate’s given us and what we are supposed to be doing that I don’t care who has a problem with me, or even if I work in the print department at all. If there are so many issues with me following what corporate is telling us for that department then have me moved to the floor. I don’t want to be in a department where I’m trying to do the right thing and follow the rules, guidelines, policies, and training that has been giving to me, explained to me, or that I’ve been through. It’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing in the department, I’ve worked there long enough, and I have experienced enough to know at least how to conduct myself when speaking to customers, and I know almost everything I need to know about the department to effectively work there. There is a minimal list of things I don’t know how to do, but all things considered, I don’t deal with specific services that we provide all that often. But it’s not like it’s something we need to memorize like we do with everything else. Corporate has given us everything we need, and I’m not going to apologize for following what they’ve provided in terms of rules and policies. But if I’m one of the few in the department that actually do this, then I’m not the one that needs to be spoken to about all of this.

I’m not going to sit back and go through “drama” that can easily be fixed by just following corporate guidelines. I don’t care if “having a SKU book is okay” because it’s not. Corporate took the SKUs away to get our online receipt numbers up and our register keys down, but we have the ENTIRE price book of what we do in stores now on the register. If we can’t make an online receipt, then we have the register. I’m not in the wrong about this. There are more productive ways to spend time then to go through and deliberately put something back into a file that Corporate left out on purpose. And I’m not sorry for feeling that way but I’m not the only person who has a problem with it, I’m just the one who’s the most outspoken about it and I’m not afraid to shred the books I find because no one else needs them. Even the cashiers know how to find the book, or we could just make it easier on them and give them an online receipt since they are more than capable of doing that too.

If I’m going to be targeted for doing what I’ve been trained to do and work how I’ve been taught to work, then maybe I need to rethink my position and find a better one. Or we could just do our jobs the right way the first time how we are trained to do it, and have no issues, and we would all be fine. If not, then I need to rethink my decision to work either in this department, or at this company all together.

#amitheasshole #reddit #retailworker #retail #coworkers

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prorevenge · 6 years ago

Text

Friend lodges a Police Report just to throw away his chances at life.

This story mainly revolves around a friend (K) of mine and a (former) friend (J) of his. K's sister, C, was also involved. I played a very minor role.

K as a person is a great individual. Extremely smart, aces every test, loves history/politics/economics. He is the self classified nerd of the grade with an ace in every subject. Contrary to popular belief, he was not bullied for this. In fact, due to his generosity and intelligence, many had already pegged him as going far in life.

J was also along similar lines, but was very eccentric. Still, both were nearly inseparable and were great friends.

The two of them loved talking part in History Bowls and academic competitions of any kind. Over the years, the schools cabinet had begun to teem with their accomplishments.

However, after a History Bowl both of them attended together, their relationship started to fray. While they had come in third as a team, K had come in 1st under individual rankings while J came in a distant 7th. Both positions received a trophy, so in total they received three trophies (one for the team, one for 1st place and one for 7th place). As a courtesy, seeing the J could had no space for the trophy that day, K offered to take it back with him, and return it during school. J obliged.

Our school usually honours students who win outside events by calling them up on stage in front of the whole school and getting the director and HOS (head of school) to present the award to the students. As such, they did the same for K and J. However, on that day, J had an exam he had to be in, and as such, missed out on the presentation. K received the awards on behalf of both of them, and specifically took the microphone to mention that J was a team member as well, incase anybody felt that all the awards belong to K only.

But, when J heard what had conspired, he was furious. He felt that the presentation should have been postponed and felt that K was doing it on purpose. He felt even more verified in his theory when K forgot to bring the trophies on another day in order to return J's back to him (K is like that all the time, its something we all like as it adds a bit of character to a person in a world where everyone strives to be perfect, but clearly J does not). He went full on atomic on K, calling him all sorts of names and effectively throwing their friendship into the bin. K felt hurt, but thought that was the end of it.

No, that WASN'T the end of it. J went around slandering K's name behind him. As a school, we all knew K well, so really didn't take anything seriously. J got really pissed, and started making Facebook posts, messaging K's professor friends to slander his name further. K's older sister, C, got wind of this. She turned red with fury. She was School President and felt it was her duty to protect the students, but if somebody messes with her brother, god save them. And that's what she did. She cornered J one day and let him know in not so pleasant terms that he is messing with the wrong person and to stay away.

For some reason, J suddenly took this to another level. His mom and him went to the police the next day and lodged a report against K, C and their parents for slander and harassment. Then, J's mom proceeded to call K's mom and go Godzilla on her, boasting about how she is going to go to jail and that "she is going to regret creating her two kids." Luckily, we live in a single consent state, and I guess you know where this is going.

But, guess what the police did. They threw the case out. They cited a lack of evidence for the case and threw it out.

You would think this would be the end of it, but no, we keep going.

J and his mom were properly pissed at this point. Nothing was going according to their plan. So they kept with the slander campaign, ramping up efforts on Facebook. I have no idea what they were thinking.

While this was going on, J was running up trouble with the school's administration as well. You see, J was in the grade above us, and was in the midst of applying to universities. As part of his application, he needed a school code to verify the application. But the school was delaying the handoff of this code. J had been severely abusing his mother's influence and connections to bend the school administration backwards, giving him better predicted grades which would be sent to the universities.

The teachers were pissed at this, as they had spent countless evenings doing the predicted grades for all the students in the cohort, and here was a kid abusing his influence so that he could get an unfair advantage over others. Understandably, therefore, they delayed the handoff.

J got even more pissed. CC'ing his mother in the email, as well the director and HOS, he sent three scathing emails to the Curriculum and Course Co-ordinator of the school, calling her "a bitch" who was too interested in "serving others" and wanted "him to die", even though she had never mentioned this. This was too much for the school, who struck him off the roll of graduates and blocked all contact with him, never sending him the code. This was in March, which will be pertinent later.

It is important to note that except for J and the school administration, nobody had any idea that J was off the graduations, and when graduation rolled around in August, and he was not there, we were surprised but relieved, as we thought that this would be the end of it.

Fast forward a few months to November, and I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw J had made a post with screenshots of the emails he sent to the administrator. In the post, he was gloating about how he had played the administrator, by apologizing to the administrator a month after sending those emails, and how they replied back with the code to get him out of their hair, and how he has the upper hand now and had got into university (he mentioned which but I won't post it) and wanted the world "to see the school as it really is".

What he did not count on was me seeing it, and K's inactive second Facebook account which was still friends with J. I quickly let K know, and screenshot the emails in case K needed it later. K did the same, after which he posted on the account that he was deactivating it because there was spam on it. J must have seen this post, because less than two minutes after, his own post was deleted.

But this is not where it ends. K wanted to take revenge for the months of abuse and psychological harm his family and him underwent. Thus, with my help, we collated the evidence, including the phone call and screenshots of the email, as well as screenshots of the other posts he made, and, I am not sure on this part as I was not involved here, K sent the email to the university he was enrolled in, and to the school.

This was the last straw for the school, who proceeded to officially expel him, and then sent the details of the whole incident to all universities they were partnered with and have contact with to which he had applied, leading to them cancelling his application to their universities.

Last we heard (we all blocked him afterwards) he knew it was us, but had no evidence to prove this. His offer from the university was retracted, and he has been unable to apply to any university in Europe and US.

TL;DR: J decides to get all pissy because he missed out on award ceremony, slandering K and lodging false police reports against K's family and K himself. Same time, he starts being hostile with the school administration and boasts about it. K pulls all evidence and phone call, and sends it to school and J's university, getting his offer retracted and effectively blacklisting him from a majority of the universities in Europe and US.

(source) (story by HeavyVictory0)

#prorevenge #by HeavyVictory0 #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10

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fisherfurbearer · 5 years ago

Note

I would absolutely live to hear about Future Plans and heritage fruits! My partners and I are looking at buying a house by the end of the year and I'm so excited at the prospect of a back yard to fill with food plants and gardening and everything! So I'd love to know more about someone else's plans!!

mmMMMMMMMMMMMMMM YOU OPENED THE CAN OF WORMS THE WORMS ARE OPEN THEY ARE EVERYWHERE NOW!!!! OHHHHHHH JEEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOTHING CAN STOP THIS!!!!

MMMMMM. I LOVE. DOMESTIC CROPS AND ANIMALS. SO MUCH.

SPECIFICALLY “heritage” varieties. The pre-industrial/commercial varieties that people lived on for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, or even the stuff younger than that, it’s just...so!! Good!!!

You didn’t QUITE ask for this but this is where I’m going with it. I LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. The HISTORY of our domesticated crops (specifically fruits and vegetables, but mostly Tree Fruits!!!! But I’m also suuuuper partial to heirloom sweet potatoes/normal potatoes even though I don’t like the taste of sweet potatoes, they’re just SO FRICKING COOL and I want to learn more about other vegetables too) and animals is just....HOOOOO!!!!

Locally adapted,, perfect little....NUGGETS that just...perfectly fit their own SPECIFIC LITTLE NICHES...no matter WHERE you live, no matter HOW much space you have, no matter HOW good or bad your soil, NO MATTER WHAT, there is ALWAYS something to grow or raise, and we can thank so, so much of that to the incredible variety of heritage crops/animals (and methods of agriculture) out there. Mild, cold, hot! Lots of space, little space, no space!! Fertile, barren!! Every condition in every color and shape and flavor and size and ahhhhhhh!!!!! AHHHH!!!!

Hold onto your butts because this is one Hell of a Mega Ramble okay, there is so much to talk about here, oh man.

Some background, which you can skip if you want...!!! It’s a LOT and it get’s VERY NEGATIVE but also VERY GOOD AND HOPEFUL, it’s a real big story and it’s My Story and gives a lot of insight into Why I’m Like This but it’s okay to skip for sure!! Anyway:

I’ve been researching (i.e. writing literally 1.5-2k+ words nearly every single day) for literally 7 years now about all of my various Passions and Plans in life. Obviously breaks were taken due to Sad Times but no matter what I did, no matter what happened, I’d always come back to my dumb awful stupid notes. I have notes on my current laptop, my old harddrive, my SO’s laptop, my stepdad’s laptop, my SO’s OLD gaming laptop, my old netbook, my OLD OLD netbook, every phone I’ve had in the past 7 years (which has been like uhh...five? I have bad luck with phones..) and COUNTLESS pieces of paper and cheap composition books.

To call it research, it seems to silly. Writing these words here, to you strangers on the internet, I CANNOT EXPRESS TO YOU how VITAL these notes are to my VERY EXISTANCE.

I have been researching and writing and talking to folks and asking questions and LIVING AND BREATHING this stuff for LITERALLY, LITERALLY HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS if not ALMOST A THOUSAND OR MORE HOURS at this point!!!! If we were to actually SOMEHOW backtrack all the way to late 8th grade/freshman year when I first started dipping my toes into reptiles and fell in love with my first jumping spider that landed on my arm after I read Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak, after being so fascinated by the intelligent giant magic tarantula in the first book, and gathered ALL of my notes from then to NOW (I’m 21 now, if I was in college, I’d be graduating next May) it would EASILY surpass that. For YEARS in high school my family thought I was always playing games on my laptop, but really from the moment I got home to the moment I went to bed, I was watching lets plays with one side of the screen and reading, reading, reading, and writing, writing, writing with the other. For HOURS. Every. Single. Day.

Hell, this has been my most recent “Renaissance” of writing, after The Big Realization of earlier this year (I’ll get to that), and this is AFTER I went on a horrible depressed/manic rampage and deleted like 80% of my notes (that would have been from...hmm. This is what I didn’t delete, what Jessie recovered, and what I’ve added...so March to Early September, when Jessie switched my notes to a new program (I lost a lot of notes from lack of autosaving so now they’re on our nextcloud so I can’t lose them...but I’m too stubborn to use it still) and this is still like. A lot.

Keep in mind the average 10-11 kb file is 1500-1700 words for me. My biggest files (only of the ones I still have, on this laptop) are 40-60 kb. (Also these are Big Secrets that I don’t ever show anyone but Jessie, who I’ve been with now for almost 7 years, so this is pretty dang important to me and a big thing to be revealing.)

Current folder I’m usually saving to:

Nextcloud I don’t bother to use usually but probably should use:

Again, this is ONLY on my newest laptop, and this DOESN’T include the files I deleted a few months ago, nor the files I lost from February-early April after Jessie updated my computer and wiped my files, and I still have a BUTTLOAD left on my old harddrive from last year, but we never moved it up and I don’t feel a need to. (I’ve learned so much. So. Much. In the past year. I think I’ve matured a lot and really become more...Me. But I’ll get to that.)

Also doesn’t include the SEVERAL notebooks I’ve filled front to back this year (cheap $0.50 ones from work...I’ve blown through a couple biggish ones and I think 2-3 little quarter-size memo books) and all the receipt papers I have crammed into my work uniform...

But anyway why is this important? It really helps iron in just how HUGE this is to me. My future “Plans” aren’t just...it’s really important to me. Okay? I am but a humble stranger on the internet and my life and everyone elses’ respective lives are infinitely more complex than we can ever dare imagine one anothers’ existences to be, but just trust me when I say that I’m not pulling this from nowhere, this shit isn’t some sort of “fad” to me, this has been a long, long series of events and realizations and heartbreaks and so, so much pain that have finally led to everything kinda falling into place sometime this year where it hit me.

You see...all of my research topics followed a pattern. It went, in my rough memory, something like this.

It started with reptiles. Lots of reptiles. So many reptiles. I was so naive and young then and my sources sucked and I was very much a novice who dreamed of owning all sorts of cool reptiles when I got older, and of getting a gecko when I went to college. That was how it started and it went downhill from there. I branched off into gardening (I wanted and still want a blue tongue skink and had thoughts about how I’d grow a garden for vegetables and squashes and stuff for the skink and feeder insects) and THAT grew into this whole THING about raised bed gardening, square foot gardening, then into permaculture, which planted the seed for many things to come...and now I’ve ALWAYS LOVED BIRDS,, but when I learned that keeping CHICKENS was a thing (thank you Jennifer (Nambroth)!!!!!!!!!! Our emails back and forth are still saved forever, our talks about chickens changed my life and way of thinking Forever!!!) and I researched that, then I’d jump back to reptiles again, and back to chickens, then more reptiles, then chickens and QUAIL, or OTHER poultry,, and so on and so on. This beautiful fluid branching path that would always rebound on itself and I’d drop some topics, gain new ones, revisit old ones, learn what I liked, what I didn’t like, what were brief interests, and what were there to stay.

Some topics (chickens, new caledonian geckos, antaresia pythons, tarantulas, gardening...) would always come back. No matter what I did...they came back. As I grew as a person, I started to figure out what was important to me (CONSERVATION, animal welfare, reptile/invertebrate enrichment, vivarium design, combining art with animals, and did I mention CONSERVATION? and combating climate change/The World but that came later.) and while some of those points didn’t show up in my research until later...like my obsession with native wildlife/plants and domestic species...it never went away.

And as I grew older, outside of my research life went on, and I really went through A Lot in these seven years. Undiagnosed anxiety/depression all through high school, practically living in the guidance office junior/senior year, dealing with an emotionally abusive and animal abuser teacher for many years, living with my emotionally abusive/narcissistic mother, and eventually going to an amazing art college and having both the best and worst time of my life (Hahah!! Almost straight As and skipped a writing class with my amazing scores and was top of my class, Dean’s list first semester, in the Visionary Women’s Honors society, worked in the admissions office and did lots of cool things, but hahaha also really wanted to die and was Destroying Myself) and trying to get help while keeping it a secret from my mom...lo and behold of course she eventually found out about the Depression when I had to go inpatient near the end of my second semester, and she. HA, I can’t even cry about this anymore. She literally disowned me (took all my money, sold my car, cut me off of health insurance, made me pay my own hospital bills, refused to do my FAFSA for college anymore, dropped all support, and later when I had to come home because I relapsed again and the college made me go on a medical leave of absense, she threatened to kick me out and call the police [hilariously enough though the house was owned by my stepdad, not her, so she couldn’t do anything. Also I never did anything to her and she was just crazy and made up excuses. But yeah not fun trying to walk to work and being threatened over the phone that she was going to have me dragged out of work by the cops and not to come home, hahaha!!!!!! But then also when I did live with my neighbor for a few days she was apparently so distraught?? Haha what a weird person!!!! I haven’t seen her for three years now and it’s been the best thing that ever happened to me. Don’t mourn for me, it’s SO Much better now. Speaking of, she was a PETA-hugging ARA nutjob and if she knew what I was planning on doing she would’ve disowned me either way!!!!!!), and of course fighting to be able to move out and rent an apartment with my SO (I hate the word boyfriend. It’s been 7 years come January 11th, and we’ve been through so fucking much. And she [my mom...] and other people always made fun of him being my BOYFRIEND that that word is tainted for me...so Significant Other it is) and then being forced to live alone there for a couple months,, and then even after that, the fights with his family, the car accident in November, my mom ruining all chances of me going to college (keep in mind I had after leaving college, spent the next TWO AND A HALF FUCKING YEARS OF MY LIFE trying to make it so I COULD go back, spent all of my time, energy, hope, eVERY OUNCE OF MY BEING trying to do so,,, and she manipulated me and then lied to me and made it so I couldn’t), my rebounding depression, my Intensifying Aggression (terrifying. Developed when I was in college...I guess it’s some kind of rapid bipolar disorder, maybe triggered by me going on antidepressants in college, they said. But it was so long ago and they never knew the full story for a proper diagnosis anyway. But it’s gotten manageable and We’re Coping), the housefire on Christmas, moving Once Again to the new place and being told I can’t bring my 15 year old cat (he’s with my stepdad still now but it’s not okay.), the rats have to be in the basement, and oh yeah if you want to attend college again loans will be nearly 13% interest hahaha!!! and then finally just straight up breaking down in February and not leaving bed for DAYS and nearly committing suicide, just the real worst time ever, and my former therapist/psychiatrist place weren’t responding (turns out they discharged me!! haha kinda hard to make appointments WHEN YOU DON’T PICK UP THE PHONE and we DIDN’T GET THE NOTICE IN THE MAIL because our HOUSE WAS CONDEMNED and my mail was being sent to my STEPDADS an hour away!!!!!!!! Also really hard to talk to you when you BLOCK OUR FUCKING NUMBER and HANG UP ever time we fucking call haha!!!!!! Literally on the verge of suicide and not on my anxiety meds for MONTHS but hey sure that works too guys!!!!) which really didn’t help, and yeah it was really just the pits! Just the absolute pits, the Very Worst.

Now at this point I don’t remember exactly when/what changed, but SOMETHING did.

Leading up to February, I wanna say it was about October that I started getting kinda weirdly depressed, and I started REALLY tanking after the fire. After the fire, I had to move back to my stepdads within the night, and had to live without Jessie again and commute really far and keep the tarantulas a secret and in general be very alone and very sad. I started wearing down and it was getting so hard to just...enjoy. Anything. Even just taking care of the pets became difficult, and doing art or researching was impossible. I just...didn’t care anymore. I stopped caring.

On top of that, my climate grief and general feelings of Despair were at an all time high, and I just didn’t. Fucking. CARE. What happened next.

I spent YEARS of my life WEARING MYSELF TO THE BONE trying to get into college, the get back into college, to just try to do this thing that I was supposed to do, my ONE hope of having a career and a future that I probably wouldn’t even be happy with (I was an illustration major. I liked drawing. It’s what I was best at. But looking back, I wouldn’t have been happy doing it for a living. And Moore [no that’s not what my blog is named for, it just also happens to be my last name] was a great college but it just...wasn’t worth $30k a year with no cosigner for loans, even AFTER my scholarships) and my body and mind were wearing down and no matter what I did I didn’t care about myself, my animals, my partner, my life, nothing. I can’t explain how terrifying that is. Of all the time in my life, I think this was the worst. On top of my life problems, it must be said again that my climate grief and Misery regarding the state of our country and the world was also at an all-time-high, and I just felt...POWERLESS. Powerless and empty and uncaring and dead inside. I really wanted to just...drive off a bridge or eat a ton of pills (which I did do a couple times, don’t do that. Please. It’s NOT worth it.) and just stop Existing.

But then something just...changed.

I don’t know what it was, exactly. But I got SOMETHING back. SOMETHING “clicked”.

I’m crying a bit now. It’s so stupid to say, but I truly believe this is what saved my life. Realizing my purpose in life. That everything fell into place and finally made sense.

I’m going to be a bit more concise here but...basically...many of my passions and smaller aspects of myself all fell into place, so PERFECTLY.

It hit me that...ah jeez.

I will digress one more second. For those of you who don’t know, I have two Eurydactylodes geckos, named Vladimir (E. vieiliardi) and Estragon (E. agricolae). They are named for my favorite drama that we read in AP English, Waiting for Godot. It’s an aburdist theater play about two men who wait under a tree for someone (we don’t know who, just that his name is Godot) and that’s about it. Everyone had a lot of different things to say about that weird little book, but my take on it was that it’s supposed to be what happens to two men when they lack a “purpose” in life. Existentialism, and all that. They sit there and sit there and completely lose themselves just WAITING for this guy that they don’t even remember, they don’t even know why they’re there, and they do nothing to try and change that. The difference between existentialism and absurdism, however, is that absurdism specifically discusses this idea of a Chaotic Universe, this Lack of Meaning, this pointless quest of humanity to seek value and meaning in a universe without reason. It’s a fruitless effort, it’s Absurd! But the beauty of absurdism, this tiny idea that stayed with me in the goofy names of my geckos (I chose the names because I thought the play was amusing and I loved the characters’ relationship, which is Quite Gay and so Loving and Charming it warms my heart, and I loved that they called each other “Didi” and “Gogo”) and really held true to my own life. I DO NOT believe that THIS is why this change happened for me, but it’s ironic, no?

Back to Absurdism, Absurdism says... “here is this meaningless, Chaotic, RIDICULOUS universe. There is NO reason for ANYTHING, there NEVER will be, you DO NOT MATTER, you DO NOT HAVE A PLACE HERE. There is NO POINT to anything. So fuck it, and try to find one anyway.”

My original therapist did not understand why I found this so wonderful and inspiring. It’s so rebellious and selfish, I LOVE IT. To embrace the Absurd is to take the bull by the horns and flip it upside down! It’s to stare all of this dreadful pointlessness in the Void, and when it says “Why bother? Why care about these insignificant invertebrates? These ridiculous reptiles? These ABSURD apples???” and flip the bird both hands and say “BECAUSE I WANT TO, BECAUSE I SAID SO, BECAUSE I AM HUMAN, AND I CAN!!!” It’s...also more than that, it’s this long, defiant lifelong journey, this stupid, ridiculous journey of fumbling about trying to find one’s place in a cruel, vast world, and finding oneself in that journey.

I love people. I love the ABSURDITY of humanity, of people, of myself, of others. A Huge part of my Future Plans has to do with People, and Community, and Changing my little patch of the world. It’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but I know it can make a difference to someone and myself and that’s what matters.

Anyway back to the Clickening.

Around that time I had a moment like that. It was as if something in my mind was screaming at me, listen. You are here, and you have always been here to love animals, to love life, to make art, to tell stories with your art, to raise little sheeps.

And like that, it started Something.

I agreed to go to a local doctor, and was put on antidepressants. I’ve been on them since late February. I also got accommodations for work, so I have two excused absenses due to mental illness each month, which was good, because they tried to fire me 4 times now and they haven’t succeeded yet. (I’m DAMN GOOD at what I do, I’m just Sad and Unlucky and Dumb, but I’m doing a lot better now!!) I started taking all of the things I learned in the past many years and what I’ve learned about myself as a person (I won’t talk about it here but I’ve always struggled with my Identity [not gender wise, just...with my mental health and my mood disorder, it’s really hard to know What is ME and What’s The Illness) and it all started falling into place. My needle felting, my love for animals, conserving native wildlife AND heritage breeds with restoration grazing and positive impact forestry, utilizing my Overwhelming Charisma (in person I swear I’m quite a good talker! Way better than my typing here!) for education, outreach, and farmers market sales, my love for life and my fellow human beings and my plans to work hard to help feed my local communities and encourage sustainable agriculture and the dismantlemant of capitalism Love of our native wilds and backyards alike (I also have Big Thoughts about getting native peoples input as well, but I need to research that more and actually talk to people, but that would be in future years!!), and so, so many things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That started in late February/early March now, and since then I’ve still had Really bad times, but I’d say in the past mmmmm...probably since late July? I think yeah since about then things have really taken great turns. I’ve Matured a lot, really embraced who I am and what I want to do, and while I KNOW my plans are going to keep changing over time (tentative goal is to look for/buy our property in 2025!! That gives us 5 years post-graduation to settle down and see how things go, where Jessie will be working, where we’ll be living, how my mind changes, all of that!!) but I KNOW in my BONES in my SOUL that this is what I have always been meant to do. To raise things, grow things, and to Care.

ANYWAY WOW HAHAHA YOU SURE DIDN’T ASK FOR ALL THAT BUT THERE YA GO THERE’S THE BACKSTORY, THE FIRST HALF OF THE WORMS!!!!!!

TL;DR: I’m a sad sap who is now slightly less sad and has Big Plans that were 7 years+ in the making and I want to take all my Big Thoughts about exotic welfare (well, reptiles and spiders mostly, but sure) and also apply it to DOMESTIC welfare and Make a Dang Difference!!!!

Okay now I’ve become very burnt out, I’ve been writing for like two hours now? So this part will sadly be shorter, but I will definitely write more about it again if you or anyone else has questions or actually wants to hear about it.

Basically...the amount of These Plans that I am willing to let you folks know, is uhh...oh jeez where do I even begin, haha...

Well it started small plans (early years of research, when I used to think a small greenhouse was Super Wild and Crazy) but nah bruh we goin’ full hog, literally. My plans are to get a decent sized property, still in my state, and have a HUGE focus on Sustainability and Positive Grazing/Management! That means rotational grazing to IMPROVE soils!!! Thinning the woodlot and clearing brush for the HEALTH of the forest!!! Reintroducing blight-resistant american chestnuts to restore our forests and support a healthy wildlife population!!!! Using both honeybees AND cultivated native bees [did you know that’s a thing???? You can buy native bee cocoons, like raised humanely, and raise them for pollinating plants!! Like Orchards!!] and grazing pastured pigs and chickens under orchard trees, while also providing BUTTLOADS of native flowers and domestic tree blossoms for native pollinators!! All that great stuff.

My biggest focuses would be raising practical heritage livestock for sustainable agriculture and conserving heritage fruit trees, with a focus on apples and pears. I also want to grow a lot of mutually beneficial/low-impact perennial resources...think honey, maple syrup, nut trees, stuff like that! And I want to graze on pastures with native grasses and locality-specific wildflowers (check out Ernst Seeds, especially if you live in/near PA like I do!! Wow it’s so frickin’ cool) and focus on northern european short-tailed sheep (finnsheep, gotland, icelandic, leader, shetland, and soay) and small landrace American hogs (american guinea hog, ossabaw island hog) and the more recent but so full of potential idaho pasture pig. I also want to raise icelandic landrace chickens for utility (parasite/pest management, composting), conservation, and eggs. I also want to raise rabbits (silver fox crosses for meat, and french angora crosses for fiber! I have a dream of producing high quality tri color angora for spinners...three colors on one animal, and I want them to be especially great for fiber artists who want to raise their own fiber animals but don’t have a ton of space) and I have BIG orchard plans...SO MANY ORCHARD PLANS, HHHHHOOO YES....SO GOOD...also COPPICE WITH STANDARDS and FORESTRY and HOO YES!!!!! I LOVE SOME GOOD OL FORESTRY!!!

I think the best way to describe my current plans standings is that it seperates into a couple different “zones”, for my Current Ideas. This has taken months and so many countless hours of thinking, researching, and ironing out, and I’ve made so much headway in just this past week, but basically imagine this...

It’s mostly split into two pastures, the orchard, and the woodlot.

PASTURE 1

Pasture 1 would be the largest, where we would rotationally graze two primary groups of ruminants. Polled NES-T sheep (finnsheep/gotland) and horned sheep (icelandic/leader) with dairy cows (dutch belted) as well. Dutch belted for milk and specifically cheese production, and they would be grazed in front with the icelandics to help take care of the taller grasses that the sheep would avoid, and help keep the sheep a bit safer. All would be guarded by livestock guardian dogs. Group #1 of the icelandic chickens would be grazed behind them, to help break up manure and disrupt parasite cycles.

Pasture itself would be mostly a big bluestem/little bluestem/indian grass/switchgrass mix, with a good variety of livestock-safe wildflowers (small portion being nitrogen-fixers like tick trefoils and pasture pea) and seed-producing flowers for birds (wild birds and our birds!). Would be rotationally grazed 1-2 days at a time (avg. 3-4 days total) with a 21-35+ day rest period. Polled NES-T sheep would be moved to “silvopasture” (copse with standards, a portion of the woodlot, with coppiced trees for fuelwood/timber interspersed with standard-sized mast producting trees [would double as nut and persimmon orchard, and hog foraging in fall/winter!!!]) in the summer to help them deal with the heat. Summer would be the best time, as it’s after the spring predator pressure and before the acorns fall, which could be bad for them if they ingest too many. Rams and hogs would otherwise graze this land with much longer rest periods otherwise (more like 30-45 days or so).

PASTURE 2

Smaller pasture with similar planting, arranged ‘paddock paradise’ style for a small group of icelandic horses (SO GOOD, and useful!! Little horse hooves are much kinder to the forest than a UTV, and herding on horseback is less stressful for the livestock) and rotationally grazed shetland and soay sheep. Pretty simple, but important. Would also contain Icelandic chicken group #2.

ORCHARD

Worthy of a novel all on it’s own. I want to grow semi-dwarf heritage fruit trees with the fruit drop type synced to the rotation of pastured hogs (idaho pasture pig, american guinea hog, ossabaw island hog) and group #3 of icelandic chickens. Hogs would be in orchard spring-fall, and in the copse with standards fall-early winter. Hogs and chickens would be moved to a holding area during rainy times to help preserve the orchard floor and during winter, where we would also have a large waste management/composting set up for them to root and turn to their hearts content. Should be a lot warmer than the outside in the winter too, and I plan on it being in a high tunnel/hoop house so its covered.

I am ALL ABOUT pairing livestock with crops and encouraging multi-purpose acreage in general, so this is definitely one of my FAVORITE plans so far, and every time I revisit it, it gets better. I also want to raise BEES (honeybees, mason bees, leafcutter bees!!!) for honey and pollination. I also want to plant BUTT-TONS of native flowers and goodies for pollinators, as well as lots of seed producing plants and sunflowers for the chickens to forage for by themselves. These would be some happy livestock, for sure.

WOODLOT

Another huge part of the plan is that I want at LEAST 1/3-1/2 of the property to be Woods. Only a small fraction of the Woods would be managed for livestock foraging and more frequent harvesting (still looking at a good 7-10 year coppice cycle though for trees) and the rest would still be tended to, with the help of the local forestry folks, but it would be preserved for wildlife and low-impact timber and nut/fruit/sap collection.

The VAST MAJORITY of the farm would be multi-purpose acreage for both livestock AND wildlife benefit (and people too of course) and I truly, truly believe and KNOW it can be done. In fact it HAS been done, IS being done, in so many different ways by so many different people in different times, and I know that I want to be a part of it and I can make a difference and use my weird passions for Good and make a dang difference.

Ohhh jeez I’m real sorry I didn’t quite answer your question though but I hope this gives a little insight into what I mean?? And if anyone has Specific questions after reading this (if you make it to the bottom, bless your cotton socks, I’m so proud and also distressed) I can definitely answer them a bit better than this. And hopefully much less...whatever this is, haha!!

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