#BUT this playlist has really made me appreciate all the different directions he went starting around 1995

[exsqueezememacaroni]

I've done it folks, I have listened to all of Mike*

(*so far, according to that giant playlist)

[jeonqkooks]

our beloved summer (05) | jjk

You made a vow to hate Jeon Jungkook ever since he packed up and left you without a single explanation, but when he shows up at your door after years of radio silence, it turns out that maybe your resolve isn't as strong as you thought.

pairing: producer!jungkook x songwriter!reader

genre/warnings: exes au, fluff, angst, eventual smut, drinking, swearing, crying, Sad Boy JK Hours ??, valentino!yoongi bc that should be a whole warning 🥵 even though he's there and not really there for literally 2 seconds lol

rating: PG-15

word count: 9.5k

note: this is the most stressed out i've ever been while trying to post a fic 💀 argh anyway, 2 obs updates in one month ?? is this even real life !! consider this a (lunar) new year's present from me to everyone who celebrates it and also to everyone who doesn't !! idk i'm bad at notes and i'm delirious so that's it 😗

series masterpost / main playlist ; interactive playlist ; moodboards ; taglist

— as always, i’d appreciate any thoughts or comments you may have, and please drop a like and/or reblog if you enjoy reading ♡

Hey, I feel like if we gave it one night You'd hate me less and make it alright Just wish that we could fight now I'd hold you on the comedown

Rockland - Gracie Abrams

One thing about you, is that you don’t do well with change.

After you moved out of the first apartment you got as an adult, you constantly went back to your old neighborhood even though it wasn’t close to your new place. You kept walking those familiar streets, kept shopping at the stores where the workers knew your name. At night, you still pictured yourself living there, with all of your furniture and clothes and decorations that you’ve already emptied from those old bones. Then, you imagined what the new tenant was like, if they could feel the lingering love you had for that apartment. You wondered if they were putting the coffee table you left behind to good use, or if they thought that it looked out of place among all of their belongings and had already thrown it away.

Jimin called you weird for that, but he didn’t know that you always leave a piece of yourself everywhere you go. The biggest pieces, you think, are hidden somewhere in a closet in your childhood bedroom where your mother still lives, and in the tiny space of your dorm room where you spent most of your college years.

It took you more than half a year to finally start considering your new apartment home. 

Because you hate change. Change is scary. Change is walking into a pitch-black tunnel with no flashlight, not knowing what awaits you in the darkness and not knowing if you’ll make it to the other side.

That isn’t to say that change is inherently bad. You’ve experienced good changes before. Arguably, Jungkook was a good change when he went from someone you couldn’t tolerate, to the love of your life back then. You were happy with him, so blissfully happy that for a while, you forgot what it was like to experience any other emotion.

Yoongi has always been your friend. It didn’t take you two very long to become well acquainted with one another and from there, develop a good friendship. You have never thought of him as anything other than a friend. Even when he was your boss, he still felt more like a friend.

As you sit next to him in a bar too empty for your liking – but seems right for a Tuesday night – you feel a palpable shift between the two of you.

When your phone vibrates with a notification, you glance at it only to exhale annoyedly – unclear whether this frustration is directed toward yourself, or the person blowing up your mobile; maybe it’s both. That’s the nth message that Jungkook has sent you in the last couple of hours, and you don’t need to read it to know that it’s probably another iteration of the same apology. How many different ways are there to say “Hey, I’m sorry for fucking the receptionist and then having the balls to tell you that you’re the unprofessional one when you didn’t even do anything.” Apparently a lot, because the texts just keep coming.  

“Jungkook again?” Yoongi asks from beside you. Fuck. You’ve mostly been silently moping since he brought you here, too enmeshed in your own web of muddled thoughts that you forgot he’s someone you need to make amends with too. 

You give him a nod but still continue to stare at the drink in front of you, trying to disentangle your Yoongi thoughts from your Jungkook ones. 

Taking a sip of your drink, your face manages to keep a grimace at bay as the liquid ambushes your tastebuds. You don’t like whiskey, but you need something to hate more than yourself tonight. When you set the glass down, the alcohol sloshes around like a compact sea of your own amber-colored miseries.

“I’m sorry,” you say finally. “This is unfair to you. I don’t know what came over me. I just want you to know that this isn’t me responding to…” To your confession.

“If you’re about to say what I think you’re about to say, then I have to stop you right now.”

“Yoongi…”

“I’m not saying that you can’t turn me down, although I hope you don’t do that,” he chuckles. “I’m just saying that whatever you do, whether you give me a chance or reject me, I want you to decide after you’ve really thought about it, about me.”

You can’t say no to that; it’s only fair. Yoongi knows what he deserves. You haven’t looked at him in any other way, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t. Didn’t you say it yourself, that maybe you should start putting yourself out there? Well, here is someone coming to you before you even have to look anywhere. You may not have expected Yoongi, but then, you didn’t expect Jungkook either.

Yoongi could be the good change you need.

Nevertheless, you want to tell him you’re sorry for the other night. It should be fairly simple, but the words have a hard time dislodging themselves from your throat.

“I’m sorry about what I said that night at dinner… and what I did…”

Yoongi props an elbow on the bar top and leans forward to rest his chin in the palm of his hand, his eyes glimmering with mischief. “Remind me what it is that you did again?”

“Come on, I’m serious.” You are grateful that he’s trying to keep it light, though.

“I’m serious too. I seem to have forgotten.”

“Yoongi…”

“Yes, Y/N?”

You sigh, shutting your eyes momentarily. Recalling the moment makes you flush with embarrassment, bringing a splash of color to your cheeks which Yoongi always seems to enjoy.

In a quiet voice, you say, “I’m sorry for throwing salt at you…”

“You threw salt at me!” He tips his head back, laughing freely. The bartender spares you two a glance at the sudden disruption. “You shouldn’t go around throwing salt at people!”

“Stop laughing! I’m trying to apologize.” You punch his arm out of habit and for a second there, you forget that your relationship with Yoongi isn’t the same anymore. Changed forever.

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Jeez, why are you so violent?” He rubs the spot where you hit him, muttering under his breath something about him bruising like a peach. “Apology accepted. No hard feelings.”

“Okay, good. But I still want you to know that if you were expecting anything from tonight…”

Yoongi ruffles your hair with a scoff. “I’m not that dense. Of course I’m not expecting anything.” When you peer at him with curious and unsure eyes, he continues, “Y/N, earlier you looked like you wanted to set the place on fire and Jungkook looked like he was about to shit himself. Tonight, I’m just a friend who’s here for you if you want to vent. We’re just two buddies having a drink, that’s all.”

He makes it sound so simple, while your brain is already going haywire.

Despite yourself, you chuckle at his words. You tell him how much you appreciate it, though you don’t really tell him anything about what happened this afternoon, just that Jungkook said some stuff that pissed you off. You can’t tell him exactly what Jungkook did to anger you without alluding to the confession for which Yoongi is letting you off the hook for now.

“Do you wanna come with me tomorrow?” Yoongi asks.

“Come with you where?”

“I have a shoot with Valentino in the morning.”

“You have a photoshoot not even 12 hours from now and you’re here drinking? Aren’t you gonna wake up puffy or something?”

“Yeah, my manager would kill me if she knows what I’m doing,” he replies casually, like his manager has a telepathic connection with him and she can sense him mocking her over a drink. When people see Agust D, they tend to only see the icy exterior that he dons. That tough, maybe even callous, image has sustained him in the entertainment industry for years. For many, Agust D seems intimidating and unapproachable. That’s how you felt when you first met him too. But after a while, you got to see Min Yoongi, and Min Yoongi is nothing if not warm and tender-hearted, even if he’s a little shit sometimes. At least, that’s what he has always been like to you. “She thinks I’m getting my beauty sleep right now.”

You lightly snort at that, telling him, “Yeah, you need it.”

When you start to yawn, Yoongi calls a driver to drop you off at your place. The ride is mostly silent, because you’re tired and because you’re not sure what to say to Yoongi in the presence of a stranger taking you home. The car pulls up to your building soon enough, and before you can step out and tell him goodnight, he offers to walk you up. He takes the elevator with you to your floor, how gallant but unnecessary. When you reach your door, you wonder whether you should invite him in for a glass of water or something. If this was a week – or even just a couple of days – earlier, you would’ve had no reason to hesitate.  He doesn’t ask if he can come in but instead takes one of your hands.

“I see you’ve been giving yourself some TLC. They’re a lot better now,” he comments, smoothing his thumb over your skin. You’ve been diligent with your hand care routine since he gave you that lotion. It feels nice, and it smells amazing. Besides, your hands were starting to hurt anyway.

Silence descends upon the two of you as you become aware of Yoongi touching you, and the weight of the answer you’ve yet to give him. He must feel you stiffen, because he lets you go and smiles.

“Relax, princess. Get some sleep, you’re the one who needs it. I said I’ll let you think about it, didn’t I? Stop stressing so much.” His index finger taps your cheek playfully, so familiar yet so foreign at the same time. The wink that he tacks on makes you roll your eyes. You watch Yoongi make his way to the elevator, step in and press the button for the ground floor. He maintains eye contact with you as he waits for the doors to shut, and you don’t think you’ve really noticed before how Yoongi carries himself with such confidence and poise even when he’s off-camera. That’s just the kind of person he is and it’s… kind of attractive.

You can’t even fish around in your bag for your keys, you just stand there because he keeps your gaze trained on him. His eyes are alluring even under the shitty lighting of your building’s elevator. Before the lift closes, his voice carries over from the metal box to your door, and you don’t know if it’s the echo of his low timbre in the empty hallway that makes you shiver, or if it’s just Yoongi.

“I’ve waited this long, what’s a little more time?”

One week. This is a record for you and Taehyung.

You’re still baffled by his attitude that night, and no one has cleared anything up for you. He was right, but that doesn’t mean you were wrong. You stand by your initial reaction. Could anyone really blame you for that? In your defense, who the fuck could believe that a worldclass megastar has romantic feelings for them? Not to mention that the person whom the megastar in question has feelings for is you! You, the pathetic girl who can’t seem to get over her ex. Yoongi had to sit through a whole hour of you drunkenly crying over Jungkook, for fuck’s sake!

That really wasn’t your best moment, but it’s not like you even remember it anyway.

Your phone buzzes to life with Jimin’s face taking over the whole screen – a photo of your hand squishing his full cheeks until his lips jut out. “Hey Minnie,” you greet him once you’ve swiped to accept the call.

“Y/N,” he says, sounding out of breath. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home. Where are you? Are you doing pull-ups again? You know you practically hyperventilate when you do more than 3.”

“Shut up, I’m at dance practice. But listen, have you talked to Tae yet?”

You purse your lips at the mention of his name. “No. We’re supposed to go grocery shopping tomorrow like we always do, but I guess that won’t be happening.”

Jimin hums, like he’s in thought. He doesn’t speak again until his breathing has calmed. “Well, can you go to his place right now?”

“Why?”

“He’s sick and I’m kind of worried about him. He hasn’t answered my messages.”

You frown. “Tae’s sick?”

“Yeah, he must’ve caught a cold the other day. Could you go over there and check on him? I would go but I can’t leave for another few hours.”

You agree to go, because of course you would. Even if you’re stubborn and hot-headed, no amount of pettiness could make you ignore your friends especially when they’re unwell and need somebody. Especially when it’s Taehyung who’s been there for you so many times.

You stay on the call with Jimin for another ten whole minutes even after you have said you would go, because he keeps droning on and on about how shitty Taehyung looked yesterday.

Before you go to your best friend’s apartment, you stop by your regular diner to pick up some comfort food for him, and the pharmacy for some medicine. During the rest of the drive there, you start getting a little worried. When Taehyung takes care of a sick you or Jimin, he practically goes into full mama bear mode, making sure that you’re as comfortable as humanly possible and not leaving your side until you’re a functional human being again. But when it comes to his own wellbeing, Taehyung doesn’t seem to be that concerned. It’s not that he neglects his health, but you wish that he would show himself the same kindness that he shows you.

It feels weird to use the spare key that you have to his place, considering that you aren’t really on speaking terms. In hindsight, it feels so childish. How old are you to still be pulling the silent treatment on each other? 

You ring the doorbell and wait a couple minutes until you hear Taehyung shuffling to get the door from the other side. When it swings open, he tenses up a bit, not expecting to see you at all. His hair is damp; he must’ve just gotten out of the shower. Taehyung doesn’t look as bad as Jimin described though. Just some dark circles under his eyes.

You raise a hand and wave. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he parrots somewhat awkwardly. It’s understandable; neither of you thought you’d be the one to break the ice. “What are you doing here?”

Bringing your other hand up, you show him the bag you’re holding. “Brought you soup and cold meds. Jimin said you’re sick.”

His brows knit together in confusion. “Thanks…” he says slowly, “but I’m not sick?”

“But Jimin said you caught a cold and you’ve been wheezing like a dying fisherman and–” You purse your lips, catching onto what’s really happening here. “He tricked me, didn’t he?”

Park Jimin…

Taehyung tuts under his breath, shaking his head at the ground. “Mhmm.”

“He could go into acting. He sounded really worried on the phone, like you were on the verge of death.”

“No, yeah, he really could,” Taehyung agrees. “Jimin is bizarrely good at lying sometimes. We should be worried about that.”

You laugh, and that makes him feel like the air is relaxed enough for him to laugh too. It only lasts a few seconds before you’re left staring at each other again. You hate it. You really, really hate it.

You thought that the universe sent you a sign, gave you a reason to come over and make nice with your best friend. Turns out that “the universe” is really just Park Jimin and his scheming tongue. But you’re already here, and you have to talk to him eventually. Jimin might have lied, but you would’ve just waited for Taehyung to reach out first to offer an olive branch anyway.

“Well, can I come in?” you ask. It’s weird that you even have to ask.

“Of course,” he says absentmindedly, stepping to one side to let you in. He takes the bag from your hand and brings it to the kitchen while you kick off your shoes and change into the pair of fuzzy bear slippers that he keeps for you here.

You want to tell him what happened as much as you hate admitting that you were wrong.

“Have you eaten?” you ask, a sad attempt at delaying what will inevitably come.

“No,” comes his simple reply.

“Should we eat? I bought enough for two people.”

“But I’m not sick.”

“You don’t have to be sick to eat chicken noodle soup.”

Taehyung looks at you like the thought has genuinely never crossed his mind. “Interesting… Okay, then.”

You put on an episode of your favorite show while he heats up the food. When you both sit down to eat, it’s mostly silent while the TV continues to play. The most you and Taehyung thing that you exchange in these 30 minutes is him saying soup tastes like shit when you’re not actually sick, and you telling him to stop being such a hater. When you both finish, Taehyung rinses the bowls and puts them in his dishwasher. 

Before you came over, you thought you would only be making him eat, take his meds, and sit there for a bit while he sleeps. If you had known this would happen, you would’ve prepared yourself for it.

But then again, you were tricked into coming.

Ugh. Just do it. You are so freaking dramatic.

“Well,” you start, keeping your voice light and trying not to stand around like you’re out of place in his apartment, “you were right.”

“About what?” Taehyung asks, wiping his hands on a towel. 

“About Yoongi and… all that.”

“Oh.” His expression is one you aren’t too familiar with. There’s surprise – yes, that you’re making peace with him – in the way his brows slightly lift, but there’s something else too. Something odd that you can’t quite put a finger on, and it makes you slightly uneasy because you don’t like it when you can’t read Taehyung. 

He’s pretty quick to mask it, and it makes you even more conscious that there’s something he isn’t telling you. Of course, this feeling is miniscule, practically a seed compared to the blooming garden of nerves that the events of these past few days have dumped upon you, so you can’t categorize it as a high-level priority to nitpick. You need to deal with your main concerns first, aka what to do about Yoongi and Jungkook, both individually and together, and then you can begin to inspect what’s going on with Taehyung.

It all sounds so easy in theory.

Taehyung goes to the couch and you wordlessly follow. You sit down when he pats the spot next to him – your spot. “How did you come to that conclusion?” he asks. “You know I don’t get to hear you tell me I’m right very often.”

Because you aren’t right very often, is what you almost say. It’s light and playful, and you both know it would diffuse the leftover tension, but you chuck the words aside in favor of something more serious. There isn’t that much to catch him up on, but there is a lot to unpack from the few things that did transpire over the last few days.

You give him a recap of what happened with Yoongi and subsequently what happened with Jungkook. Those are the two things weighing the most on your mind. You haven’t really processed anything; blame it on Yoongi for telling you that you have time to think things through.

One thing you love about Taehyung is that he doesn’t tell you what to do, but rather helps you sort things out on your own. Come to think of it, these conversations often take place on his couch. He’s like your own personal therapist at this point.

“Can you give me a hug?” You probably can’t ask a licensed therapist to do this, though.

He softens even more with a smile. Opening his arms, he says, “C’mere.”

You shuffle over to sink into his embrace. You sigh as you practically melt in his hold. Taehyung is a little bony, but hugging him feels exactly like hugging a giant teddy bear. He’s soft, and always knows how to hold you just tight enough, how to stroke your hair the way you like, how to be just the comforting presence you need amidst a whirlwind of anxious thoughts. And he smells like jasmine, though that might be because you keep deliberately gifting him colognes with scents that you like.

With your chin perched on his shoulder, you feel yourself start to relax, walls coming down if only briefly.

“You okay?” Taehyung asks after a moment.

You’re suddenly aware that you’re crying. You don’t know how it started, but now that the waterworks have begun, it seems like there’s no stopping. “No,” you sniffle. “Can I just…”

You feel him exhale. “Of course.”

Taehyung is one of the few people – oh who are you kidding? He might be the only one – whom you feel comfortable enough around to let yourself cry to your heart’s content. 

You’ve been feeling it for days now, even before all that shit happened. Every cell in your body is constantly vibrating, with anxiety, with guilt, with a heaviness that sinks into your bones. You’re shaking even when your hands are perfectly still. People, memories, thoughts you keep only to yourself – they all phase through you, not giving you a single moment to catch your breath.

When it rains, it pours.

Everything is weighing you down like someone has tied you to an anchor and pushed you into the unrelenting, unforgiving water. Grief is an ocean and you don’t know how to swim. Your job, your friends, the unbridled mess that you call a love life… Everything is changing and you’re the same. You’re different, but somehow still the same. Deep down, you’re still that scared little girl who doesn’t know what to make of the world. Your knees are bleeding but your mother is telling you not to cry. Why can’t you cry when you’re hurting? Every minute feels like a lifetime but every day feels like it’s going by in two seconds. Things are moving so fast. Things are moving too slow. You can’t remember the last time you actually cried. Really cried. Bawled. Sobbed. Let out all the dirt until you can see your roots again. Until you originate back to being a blank canvas. Sometimes it feels like that’s the only way that can help you see things more clearly. Your vision might blur for a while but afterward, it’ll have washed everything away. At least a little bit. So you can get your footing again.

You miss clarity, or the illusion that you have any control over your life. You miss looking out the window and have something to look forward to, even on overcast days where the sun can’t be bothered to bring you light. You miss hearing your heart beat a melody that doesn’t ache, doesn’t rattle you to the core. Pieces of you have been held together by nothing but tape and glue for the longest time. Eventually, they’ll deteriorate, and you’ll go back to being skin and bones always on the verge of falling apart.

Some of your best writing was never meant for anybody to hear. The best lines that you’ve scribbled down are diary entries disguised as music, as poetry. They’re results of your lowest and weakest moments, it just happens that there was a journal lying around and you thought that if you had to keep all that sadness inside for a second longer, you would burst. Those immortalized lines represent your heartbreak, your self-hatred, your sorrow and your grief. They come from a lifetime of unshed tears, from the burden of having a heart that feels too much but is always silenced. Words are your escape when time rushes through you like a child skipping stones. Everything hurts all the time but no one knows and you don’t bother explaining to anyone how you wish you could be a different person living a different life because it seems like the universe has made a mistake with this one. How it feels like a divine power has miscalculated and misread your false stoicism as resilience. Just because a person carries it well doesn’t mean they have to carry it at all. 

Sometimes you like to muse that if anyone could catch a glimpse of what it’s like inside, they’d think, Wow. How are you holding all of that weight? How are you so silent through it all? How do you live with an ache so allconsuming that I can hardly see you underneath it?

It’s the only way you know how to express yourself. But even then, when you’re screaming and burning, you’re still quiet. Those words are your heart on paper, raw and bleeding all over the place, covered in a million cracks that no one can see or even pay enough attention to notice. They’re there whether anybody likes it or not. They’re right there, red ink staining white pages, begging in a voice small like a child asking for love. Please see me. I’m here. Nobody taught me how to swim. Please see me.

But nobody does. They walk past you every day. They sit with you, smile at you and laugh with you. They leave you. They stay. They break your heart. Even when they love you, nobody sees you.

You love Taehyung, but you don’t think he understands. He knows you better than almost everyone in this world and he tries to help you in any way he can, but at the end of the day, maybe this isn’t something that a person can understand even if they want to. It’s worse, to realize that perhaps it isn’t because people don’t care enough to see it, but that no matter how hard they try, they can’t.

The only person who has ever come the closest is Jungkook, with his big doe eyes that always see through you and see into you. Sometimes, you think there might be parts of you that he could see but you still don’t. He knew things about yourself that you never want anybody to find out, and he loved you anyway. He went the lengths that nobody ever did because they all gave up after a while. Someone once told you that you felt like a fortress wall impossible to climb, that nobody had the time, the patience to wait for you. In other words, you weren’t worth it. Not worthless, just not worth the effort it would take to break down your walls.

But Jungkook showed up and tried, every day. The one person that you never saw coming. You might have resisted at first, but then you became his biggest supporter. You were rooting for him to know you, how fucked up is that? You were right there. He was so close.

And then he stopped.

You suppose that’s what makes everything awful now – to know that you should let go of him when he’s the only person who ever came that close.

You don’t know how long Taehyung has had to sit here, comforting you like this, but at one point, your stomach starts growling and you feel your best friend trying to hold back a giggle. Jungkook might have mastered the art of loving you, but Taehyung is an expert at comforting you.

“Shut up.” You wipe away the dampness on your cheeks with the back of your hand and push Taehyung off. “Crying makes me hungry.”

“Should I order us fried chicken then?”

“And soju. Get some soju too.”

Jimin is a strategic trickster. There was no dance practice. He just ran around his apartment ten times until his breathing turned ragged, which if you ask anyone, was completely unnecessary. He’s very extra, but at least it was effective.

After he got off the phone with you, Jimin immediately went to your shared phone tracker app – today was one of those times where it proves to be the most useful. He stared at the little circle with a silly photo of you as it moved from your address to Taehyung’s with a couple pit stops along the way. Jimin giggled to himself when he saw your circle meet Taehyung’s, because at that point you two must have realized already that you’d been swindled. Of course, there was always a chance of you leaving the moment you figured out you had come all that way for no reason at all, but when Jimin saw after a couple of hours that the two circles are still next to each other, he knew that you and Taehyung made up already.

Jimin sends a message to your group chat, a simple hello but Taehyung knows what he’s trying to get at. The text thread shared by the three of you lights up with a selfie of you and Taehyung each holding a chicken drumstick and wearing a content smile. In the background, there are some soju bottles, a box of chicken and some fries.

Jimin doesn’t question why your eyes look a little puffier than usual. He just replies with a smiley emoji and a thumbs up. The triumph of his mini victory almost makes him forget that there’s someone else in his home.

Jungkook peeks over Jimin’s shoulder to peek at his phone, curious to see what’s making his friend so delighted. When he sees you and Taehyung on Jimin’s screen, he sinks again, heart sitting in the pit of his stomach. The words you told him just the day before ring loud in his ears, as if they haven’t been stuck on his mind, playing on a loop. 

You’re such a fucking hypocrite.

You weren’t wrong, but man, did that feel like a punch in the gut.

He goes to sit across from Jimin, taking note of every single sound that notifies his friend of a new message. For the first time, he feels like an outsider, like he’s intruding on a private moment.

“I fucked up,” Jungkook admits quietly, cracking open a can of beer and taking a long sip. It makes Jimin look up and put away his phone. “With Y/N,” Jungkook clarifies.

“Yeah, I’ve been informed. That was the stupidest thing you’ve done in a while.”

“In a while? When was the last time I did something stupid?”

Jimin doesn’t even have to think about it. He answers right away, “When you left her.”

Jungkook hums, unclear whether the noise is meant in agreement or just in acknowledgment. His tongue darts out to swipe across his dry lips before he breathes out. “I don’t know what to do. She hasn’t replied to any of my texts. I feel like a fucking asshole.”

“From what I’ve been told, you were a fucking asshole,” Jimin says lightly, his words emphasized with a chuckle like he finds Jungkook’s predicament so funny. “I can’t believe you would say that shit about Yoongi to her right after he confessed.”

Cue a pregnant pause, and a pair of doe eyes staring right into Jimin’s skull, unable to decipher if what he’s hearing is a joke or not.

“Yoongi– what?”

Jimin slaps himself internally. Shit. It slipped, he swears. “Nothing,” he sighs, but he knows it wouldn’t be dropped so easily.

“No. Not nothing,” Jungkook sits up straight and puts his chilled beer down on the table, missing the coaster entirely just to piss off his friend. “The fuck do you mean Yoongi confessed? Confessed what?”

Jimin sighs with pursed lips. “What else? What do you think he confessed to?”

Jungkook gulps, and blinks a few times. When? Why? Was that the reason you looked so distraught yesterday before all that shit went down between you and him? Who confesses to someone in a freaking break room?

Then Jungkook remembers that you and Yoongi went out for drinks last night. What did he say? What did you say? His stomach churns at the thought of something… happening between the two of you.

Jimin takes in his friend’s dumbfounded expression. “Why are you shocked?” he asks. “I thought you expected something like this. Isn’t it why you spewed all that crap about Yoongi flirting with her?”

“Fuck, I don’t know! It feels like the guy is out to get me for some goddamn reason. I thought he was just playing with Y/N to piss me off!”

Jimin shakes his head, looking thoughtful. “Yoongi wouldn’t do that to her.”

“How would you know?”

“Because when they first worked together, from the things that she told us, the stuff that Yoongi would do for her, Taehyung and I thought he liked her back then too,” Jimin says. “This has nothing to do with you.”

It sucks. It fucking sucks.

“Should I go over there?” Jungkook asks, a newfound sense of urgency in his voice that borderlines panic. He’s acting like this fact that Jimin just dumped upon him is unraveling just as this conversation is taking place, but in reality, he’s one of the last people to know. 

“And tell her what? If you’ve said sorry a million times and she hasn’t responded, then saying it one more time won’t change anything.”

“What am I supposed to do when I see her tomorrow?”

“Nothing? Are you incapable of leaving things alone? If she wants to ignore you, let her ignore you. If she wants to yell at you, let her yell at you. If she wants nothing to do with you, let her do that too. Why do you keep making things worse for yourself?”

Jungkook runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “So your solution is for me to just let her hate me?”

Jimin levels him with a look, which just annoys him even more. “You had no problem with that before.”

“If you’re not gonna help me, should I ask Taehyung then?”

“Don’t go to Tae about this.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t,” Jimin snaps, and it makes Jungkook falter for a few seconds before the petulance in him clouds his better judgment.

“Why? He’s her best friend. They’re practically joined at the hip. He’s gotta be able to help me with this.”

“You really want to go to Taehyung for advice on how to suck up to your ex-girlfriend? He’s the most protective of her. What makes you think he would be willing to help you?”

“He’s my friend too, isn’t he? Shouldn’t he want to help all of us be civil with each other?”

“Yeah, he’s your friend. I’m your friend and Y/N’s too. And you’re right, all of us should get along, but we shouldn’t be put in a situation where we’d have to try. You did that to us and nothing is going to be the same again. I don’t even know why you did it. You kept your mouth shut for years no matter how hard me and Taehyung tried to get it out of you. Now you suddenly can’t make peace with the consequences of your actions? Now you want us to help you win over the person you fucked over, who is also our closest friend? I don’t get you, JK. I’m starting to regret not letting Taehyung punch you back then.”

Jungkook stares at his friend. Is this shock that he’s feeling? He still remembers that night, because he doesn’t forget a lot of things. He can’t forget it. He had never seen Taehyung – who is usually so calm and cordial – get that angry before. His friend, who is a saint of a man, felt so much rage toward Jungkook that Jimin had to physically hold him back.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Jimin asks. “You’re not used to me not being on your side all the time?”

He knows that. The only person who seems to be on Jungkook’s side is himself, and sometimes he isn’t sure if this is even true at all. What you told him at the dance studio’s opening party, what Jimin is telling him now, and even the things that Taehyung shouted at him a couple of years back – it’s all true. He knows these things already, but it feels different to hear them from other people. You’re all right; nobody is overreacting. To an outsider, it might come across as harsh, but to anyone who knows anything, it’s rightfully deserved.

Nevertheless, Jungkook admits quietly, “Actually, yeah.”

Jimin sighs, because he knows that his friend has no malicious intent toward you or toward anyone. Jimin knows that Jungkook doesn’t mean to hurt you, any more than he already has. Jungkook is even more crazed now that Yoongi is somehow a factor in all of this. It’s the insecurities bubbling at the surface. He’s panicking and he can’t even see straight. This is just his own stupid take on fight or flight. It was flight for a while, and now apparently it’s not. Jimin doesn’t really understand it, but he gets that this is his friend’s way of dealing with shit. “I tried, man. I did. But it’s really, really hard to have your back on this.”

Jungkook is well aware of it too – that to leave you alone is probably the best thing he can do at this point. Everything he says or does seems to backfire; instead of pulling you closer, all he manages to do is push you further away and make you hate him more than you already do. 

But in a way, isn’t that a good thing? Better to have you hate him than be indifferent toward him. After all, there’s a thin line between love and hate. You yourself blurred this line long ago. You can do it again, can’t you?

Jungkook sits there for a while longer to finish his beer, even though he doesn’t have anything else to say. It’s clear what Jimin’s stance on this is, and no matter what he says, it’s unlikely that anyone will help him try and get back in your good graces. 

Before he leaves, Jimin says something that makes him nauseous. Makes him want to fucking cry and kick something and speed over to your apartment just so you could reassure Jungkook that he’s still the one you hate the most. That all of your feelings, whether they’re good or bad, are still reserved for him and only him.

It isn’t what his best friend should tell him, but it’s what a good friend would say. It's not about Jungkook, it's not about Jimin or Taehyung or anyone else. It's about you, who has been hurt the most here.

“If she wants to choose Yoongi, let her do that too.”

[10:48] Yoongi: Attachment: 2 Images.

[10:49] Yoongi: got yelled at for showing up puffy yesterday

You tap on the notifications and the photos pop up within seconds. It’s Yoongi at his Valentino shoot probably. He never used to send you stuff like this, nor asked you to come watch him at his photoshoots. Why would he? 

You zoom in on his face to inspect if he really was puffy, but you can’t really tell. Maybe if you were a makeup artist with a sharper eye, you would see it. But under your regular-person gaze, everything seemed fine. Yoongi looked handsome in the pictures.

[10:55] You: you don’t look puffy to me

[10:57] Yoongi: so how do i look to you? ;)

[10:58] You: the fits look good

[11:01] Yoongi: i wasn’t asking about the fits

[11:05] You: and i’m telling you the fits look good anyway

[11:07] Yoongi: what about the model?

[11:10] You: are you fishing for compliments?

[11:11] Yoongi: what if i am?

[11:14] You: the model looks Not Puffy

[11:16] Yoongi: you’re no fun ;(

You consider your next reply for a moment. It doesn’t seem like that big a deal. You want to send it. It seems innocent enough, and it’s the truth. A simple praise can’t hurt, right?

Your fingertips tingle just typing the words out. You’re suddenly so jittery for some reason as your thumb hovers over the arrow symbol that would whoosh away your message. It's a good kind of jittery. You might even say that you’re excited.

[11:22] You: the model looks good too

You put your phone face-down on the table, not even checking when it vibrates with Yoongi’s response to your latest text. It’s so weird that you’re feeling like this, maybe because it’s been so long since someone has shown an actual interest in you? Or is it because it’s Yoongi? If it were anyone else, would you still react the same?

It’s weird, but not necessarily weird in a bad way. You just aren’t used to it, or it’s been such a long time that you forgot what it feels like to be… wanted? You don’t think about it often but it’s true, you’ve missed the thrill of being chased.

“So… word on the street is you have a secret song.”

Seokjin’s voice makes you glance up, wondering who he could be talking to when the only people in the room beside him are you and Jungkook – whom you haven’t spoken a word to all morning despite him glancing not-so-subtly at you every two seconds. When you got here this morning, there was already a chai latte on the table with your name on it. The order was too specific for it to be Seokjin, but you didn’t say anything.

“The street?” you ponder for a moment, knowing exactly who the culprit is. “Is that what Yoongi calls himself these days? He’s been here for what? A couple weeks? And he’s already blabbed to you.”

“So it’s true?” Seokjin leans back in his chair, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Yoongi said it’s real good. Top shelf kinda stuff. And you know he never says things like that.”

It’s not a song, or at least that isn’t what you would call it. Maybe more like an essay composed of sentences that go together like misfit puzzle pieces. You don’t think you would ever rework it and pitch it to anyone because it’s yours and it’s personal. You would never tell anyone about it, and Yoongi wouldn’t have come to know about its existence if he hadn’t stumbled across it in your journal by accident.

“Don’t listen to Yoongi,” you say. “At this point, I feel like you should know that Yoongi tends to exaggerate sometimes.”

“He never seems to be exaggerating when it comes to you,” Seokjin muses. You almost blush, thinking about what else Yoongi could’ve told Seokjin. He doesn’t notice the split second in which your cheeks redden just the slightest, or he doesn’t mind it enough to comment. “What’s the title?”

You shrug, saying nothing.

“You can’t even tell me the title? Damn, Y/N. Are you the CIA?”

“I’m not telling you because there is no title. There’s not even a song, just something I go back to sometimes. It’s mostly just word vomit. I promise you, it’s nothing.”

“Tell that to Yoongi. He told me whoever’s gonna get that song is one hell of a lucky bastard.”

Again, what is it with the praise? You know working with Yoongi and being associated with his last album gave your career a boost, but you weren’t aware that he was talking about you with other people. Maybe he only does it with Seokjin because they’re close, but still, it makes you itch with curiosity.

“By any chance are you gonna give it to… me?” Seokjin asks, and seems to immediately hear how flawed it sounds. You stare at him blankly, trying to bite back an amused smile, and even Jungkook turns his head to look too. Seokjin’s ears turn red in an instant. “Okay, that came out kinda wrong. I’m really, really sorry. But you know what I mean.”

You continue to stare at him until his face is so flushed, you swear he’s like a tomato that’s about to burst. You can see why Yoongi likes to tease people this way. “Okay, boss,” you acquiesce with a laugh, relieving Seokjin of the fear that he genuinely offended you. “If the song ever gets to see the light of day, I’ll make sure to ask you to lend your voice.”

“Ah, so you admit it’s a song.” He grins brightly at your empty promise, making you roll your eyes half-heartedly. He goes back to his normal shade in a minute, no longer ridiculously red like a cartoon character. “What’s it about?”

You ponder his question silently, missing the way Jungkook takes this moment to glance at you. When you look up again, he’s already averting his gaze.

What is it about? That’s a question that you yourself have never really considered. It’s about everything and it’s about nothing. It’s love, it’s loss, it’s the infinite in-between. You give Seokjin an answer that won’t satisfy him, but it’s the truth.

“I haven’t figured it out yet. I’ll let you know when I do.”

He tuts at you, like he was expecting the obscurity from you anyway. “You’re really not beating the CIA allegations,” he says.

You flip him the bird, which only compels him to stick out his tongue and make a face at you. Then, he diverts his attention to the person who hasn’t contributed anything this whole time.

“JK, why are you so quiet today? We’re not gonna eat you.”

Jungkook mutters something to Seokjin that you don’t quite catch because the words come out of his mouth like an inarticulate mess, which is so unlike him. He sounds jumpy, like he’s too nervous to speak in front of you. Seokjin’s eyes land on you again as he mouths a confused What?

You just shrug, and Seokjin has to take Jungkook’s weird response as him having an off day. The man checks his phone, lets out a quiet whine, then addresses the both of you. “I have a shoot this afternoon so you two will have to hold down the fort, by the way.”

You come back from your solo lunch date to an empty studio.

Well, almost empty. There’s something new that wasn’t there before.

Another chai latte waiting for you equates to another apology hoping to be acknowledged. The paper cup is still hot when your hand reaches out to touch it. You sink into your chair with a sigh. You could laugh at yourself for feeling so nostalgic at the sight of a beverage in the middle of a workday.

Jungkook walks in about 15 minutes later, and the air turns suffocating at his arrival. He feels it too, you know he does. 

You chew on your bottom lip until it starts to hurt, bite down on it until it almost bleeds.

“Jungkook,” you say, catching his attention. It looks like he didn’t expect you to initiate any conversation. It’s not like you want to, but you have to. You keep having to do this, because he just wouldn’t listen. “Stop buying me drinks.”

It translates to: Stop saying sorry. Stop trying to make things right. Stop doing things you think would make me happy. Stop making me have the same argument with you over and over again.

“Because you wouldn’t hear me out,” he says, and proceeds to repeat the one thing that you’re sick of hearing from him. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” you verbalize it. “If it’s not about work, I don’t think it’s necessary for me to hear it, Jungkook. I don’t want to hear it.”

“You do need to hear it. Because I can’t function properly until you know how sorry I am.”

“Well, that sounds like a you problem.”

“Y/N.”

“What?”

“Hear me out,” he says, sounding a little firmer now but you still catch the crack in his voice. “Please.”

Jungkook must take the way you hesitate to shut down him as reluctant permission for him to keep going, because he stands up and moves to a spot closer to you. Not close enough that he could reach out and touch you, but enough for you to see the tiny mole under his bottom lip and how it quivers when he looks at you.

Fuck. You’re letting him win again.

“Okay, fine. Talk then. I’m listening. You’re sorry, right? You keep saying you’re sorry for everything, but what exactly is everything? What are you even sorry about? Are you sorry about annoying me right now, or are you sorry about being a prick the other day, or are you sorry about leaving me five years ago? When did you become this pathetic, Jungkook?”

“W–what?”

“When did you become so pathetic?” you repeat. “If you had to come back, couldn’t you come back as someone better? Someone who’s sure of himself and has a good life, not this… person who has to grovel at my feet for forgiveness. Even when you were at your lowest, you weren’t like this. I don’t even know who this Jungkook is. What happened to you?”

If you think that you saw him at his lowest, then you’re wrong. He didn’t hit rock bottom until he’d left you and had to live with what he chose to do. 

“You’re right. I am pathetic,” Jungkook agrees, dropping his gaze to the floor like he’s ashamed. “But fuck, I’m trying to be worthy of you.”

It’s a truth that he doesn’t want to face, doesn’t want to admit how very real it is until you’ve just said it and it fucking guts him. He knows his friends pity him sometimes, even if they don’t want to view him as someone to be pitied. No matter how much of a front he puts up, he knows that Jimin and Taehyung see right through him. They won’t say it to his face, and for that Jungkook has gotten away with avoiding this fact for so long. But to hear it from you, to watch you spell it out for him, it hurts.

He wants to mention Yoongi, but he doesn’t know how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t immediately aggravate you. After all, bringing up Yoongi is what got him into this mess, isn’t it?

Regardless, he wants to ask you a question that he already knows the answer to. What does Yoongi have that he doesn’t? The answer is: A lot of things. Yoongi has a lot of things that Jungkook doesn’t, one of them being the self-assurance to not run away when it comes to you and what you deserve.

He wants to ask, but he doesn’t, because he’s scared it might drive you right into Yoongi’s arms and Jungkook can’t compete with a man like that.

He can barely keep up even with just himself in the running.

There’s a big question mark that pops up in your head, along with a slight sting in your eyes that you blink away. You’ve never seen Jungkook like this before. This whole time, was it not only you who was miserable?

He looks so small that it breaks your heart. For once, you aren’t sad for yourself but you’re sad for him. It never occurred to you that he could’ve been lonely too, having to keep all of this inside because you know he didn’t share it with anyone else. You catch a glimpse of him again, like you did when you were making ramen together in your kitchen while a storm was raging outside. In a lot of ways, Jungkook is still that kid stuck in an adult’s body, lost and scared and loved you. It feels like you could’ve seen him in the same ocean while you were just trying to keep your head above water.

The sight of him, so vulnerable and astray, placates you. Your resolve crumbles, but not like it was ever that strong to begin with. You suppose you could see why he was being a jerk to you. Even though it doesn’t justify what he said, you understand just a little bit where he was coming from. You find yourself forgiving him for some of it. It’s part of letting things go, right?

But no matter how much you want to reach out and comfort him, you know you shouldn’t. What are you supposed to do in a situation like this? You’re confused and it feels like you two have been going around in a circle, looking for a solution that doesn’t seem to exist.

Coexisting doesn’t work. Telling him to leave things alone doesn’t work. What else can you do?

Why do you have to resolve a problem that isn’t even yours? Jungkook says he’s trying, but his efforts keep making your life harder and harder. You practically blew up in his face, then apologized for being harsh even though you were fully aware that you had nothing to be sorry for. You called him a hypocrite and now you’re ready to cave just because he’s on the verge of shedding a few tears. This constant back and forth between your anger and your reluctance to see that anger through is possibly the thing that’s hindering you.

You can’t – and shouldn’t – accommodate him anymore. You have to put your foot down, no matter how difficult it is with the lingering ghost of your past love.

Because you’re always weak when it comes to Jungkook.

Because you’re still holding onto something.

Because Jungkook will always be the first person that you have ever loved, and those four years meant a lot to you even if they didn’t to him. Maybe it’s even fair to say that you might never truly get over it, and that doesn’t have to be such a terrible thing. Maybe he was never the person you thought he was, or maybe you never meant as much to him as he did to you. Somehow, that’s okay. It’s manageable because it’s routine at this point. You’ve internalized it. The years have taught you that sometimes, things get shitty just because they can and you just have to deal with it.

The intrinsic pain of the human experience. C’est la vie.

What a world this is.

Is it bad that you’re thinking about Yoongi in a moment like this?

Yoongi could be your future, if you’d let him.

You should let him. Maybe this is your answer right here. 

“Jungkook, let’s stop.” He looks at you with crestfallen eyes, but you have to keep going. The only way out is through. “Let’s stop. You want me to listen to you, but you haven’t been listening to me. I don’t have the strength to keep this up anymore, and I have told you that repeatedly but you wouldn’t listen. Jungkook, move on.”

You pretend not to notice how his lip trembles even more. “What if I don’t want to move on?”

This feels like a conversation that should’ve happened ages ago. Five years ago, you should’ve screamed at him, cried with him, held each other as you both fell apart. He stripped you of that right and gave you no say at all.

“You’re being awfully selfish,” you tell him, but in your head, you’re already thinking about what his words actually mean. 

“Have you completely written me off then? Is there nothing at all that I can do? Because I would do anything if you asked. You know that.”

Your throat is so dry that it feels like you’re swallowing sand. You dig everything back up again until you find the memory of that day hidden at the very bottom.

It’s terrible. He’s making you relive it again.

“I remember calling for you and you didn’t even look back,” you say, but your voice breaks toward the end. “I can’t trust you anymore.”

Jungkook just stares at you then, and for the longest time, neither of you say anything. This is the first time that you two have addressed the problem, properly addressed it instead of half-heartedly sweeping it under the rug like you tried to do. 

You breathe in, he breathes out. You hate the way you feel, and you resent the way he looks like he’s breaking down just as badly. There are tears in those eyes, tears that Jungkook doesn’t let spill because he defiantly wipes them away with the back of his hand after a moment. 

When he speaks next, you want the world to end.

“Then I’ll earn your trust back. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I will.”

— all rights reserved © jeonqkooks. reposting, translating and/or modifying is not permitted by any means. [posted january 21, 2023]

[gingerxarmy]

Confessions pt2 - Reader x Driver

So here we have part two of Confessions . I had a hard time to understand how much I wanted to actually write. But it ended with some hard makeout session at the end. So if you ain't comfortable to read it to (--), it's nothing graphic more than naked skin. BUT ENJOY!

You ended up meeting him for the date night he promised you

Words: 2700 (ish)

Warning: Mention of alcohol and smut-ish

To overthink was nothing new, somedays you had better days, but lately it has been a constant thing for your to-do-list, everything started when you realize that he was the only one with a new phone number. You couldn’t contact him, if you didn’t send a direct message on Instagram. But thanks to him being a famous racing car driver you knew that he wouldn't be contactable on the app.

After that night you had been waiting for a text, a phone call or just something to ease your racing mind. To make you know that he thought about you just as much that you thought about him. He had confessed his love to you. If he wasn’t just drunkenly babbling stuff. But drunk sayings are sober thoughts as they say.

One thing that really made you uneasy is his reputation, what was so special about you that made him want to change? It was an open secret around the sport that he was a player. He always liked the attention, the girls flocking around him. Or so it appeared in interviews and videos. He would give a lucky girl a night to remember, but for him, it was only a challenge to get a girl the fastest and take her home. And you, you weren’t a one night stand kind of person, never been and never will be.

So here you are now, one and a half weeks later, in total radio silence. Waiting for him to reach out. In the heat of the moment you didn’t think about getting his number as well when he asked you about yours. And it felt wrong to send him a message on Instagram of all places. And who knews, he probably never checks his direct messengers on the named app. If it was you, you wouldn’t even bother to check the thousands of messengers they probably get sent everyday.

With phone in hand you scrolled through Instagram, trying to smooth the nagging feeling in your chest by looking at his profile. The whole circus was in the Netherlands this weekend to race. The new posts from this week were only pictures on his car from practise sessions. Which in say might not be so bad, the car’s livery is amazing this seson and you couldn’t say that it wasn’t kind of hot to see him drive on track. But just in this moment, you missed his face. Just to see in his eyes that he maybe did just as bad as you did to be countries apart.

You sight and put away your phone, it doesn’t make anything better to be here, late at night, looking at pictures of a man who probably only thought about racing this weekend. It was late, midnight was soon about to pass and you were working tomorrow. Bedtime it is, you decided.

After brushing your teeth and getting ready for bed you heard your phone go off. Vibrating like it’s life depended on it in the silence of your apartment. You picked it up and faced the display, unknown number it said. Who would be calling you at this time? A small part in you hoped that it would be him. That he had been laying awake, thinking about you, not being able to sleep and just needed to call you, hear your voice. You answered the call with hope in your chest. What if it wasn’t him?

“Hi,” you let out a breath you didn’t know you held when a familiar voice came through the line. “I’m sorry that I haven’t called earlier. It’s been a stressful couple of days.” You could hear it in his voice how tired and apologetic he sounded.

“It’s alright. I understand, It’s been a lot for me too,” you lied. It had been calm at work the past couple of days and it stressed you out. You needed customers to keep your pub going and the few regulars wasn't enough anymore when the business premises rent increased.

“So, I’ve been thinking about that date we talked about.” He said and your heartbeat started to race. Was he actually serious about that date after all?

“Yeah, what did you realise from that?” You let yourself ask.

“That I miss you, dearly,” you melted. He was actually serious! Or so you hoped that he was. “And we have two weeks till the next race after this one. So I thought about paying you a visit. If that’s not a problem. And like, I don’t know, make that drink I now owe you.”

“I would love that,” you smiled to yourself.

“Perfect, I really need to sleep now. But I call you and we make up the day and time!” You let out a small giggle and agreed, wishing him good luck on the weekend and a good night’s sleep before ending the call. The anxiety you had felt the last couple of days disappeared in an instant, making you fall asleep with a smile stuck on your face.

***

It was five days after the phone call that you decided to meet up, he was supposed to pick you up at five to invite you to dinner at his place, at his place! You were elated and had been trying to pick out something to wear for the last hour. What was the meaning for this date? Get to know each other? You had been talking at your pub for months. Sure, you didn’t know who he was alone, between the four walls he called home. But you could say that you knew who he was quite well when he was out. But five different dresses, two pairs of jeans and a skirt later you decided for something casual. A dress would be fine, it was quite sexuall in you should be honest but you felt yourself tonight. It was him, you had seen him drunk more times that when you had seen him sober at this time.

Five past five you got a text messenger that told you that he was outside, waiting. Putting on a jacket and your shoes, you made your way outside. His sports car stuck out along the sidewalk, making you feel small and out of place. He was rich, you knew that, but did he have to flex it on you?

You open the car door and slink into the soft seat. It was an amazing car, the outline of it made it easy to look at and the inside was screamingly expensive.

“Hi, you look beautiful tonight,” he said quietly. It made you feel better that he acted as nervous as you felt.

“Thank you,” you gave him a smile as he put a hand on your bare thigh. As a reflex you put your hand on his. Everything felt so natural, like the two of you had done this thousands of times before.

“I’m going to say this now so you are aware. But I got a spare room! But I promised you drinks and I’ve been to the shop just now, and I’m going to drink as well so I won’t be able to drive you home later.” You appreciated his honesty. But if you should be honest, you had been secretly wishing for a night at his place.

“I’m fine about that. Kind of had it coming when you talked about alcohol involved.” You watched the city move past the windows off the car as he drove you two, music on low volym and his hand still on you. Your chest is warm with so many feelings that you couldn’t name.

The car ride wasn’t long, the both of you had made smalltalk about the previous race weekend and his result. How he felt about it and what he expected for the next one. It was easy, almost too easy, you couldn't shake it off how everything felt so right.

“So, this is me.” He had said when you later had parked the car and made your way up to his apartment. He opened the door and the first thing you noticed was the view. It was a beautiful city you lived in and his apartment had the best view. The sun was setting and the pink and orange colors colored the white walls with a livingness you otherwise only saw in your dreams.

“It’s beautiful,” you say when you could tear your eyes away from the view to look around his home. It wasn’t big but it was really cossy. The kitchen was neat and the living room was framing the big windows that caught the beautiful city outside.

“Thanks, I thought about making you dinner first, don’t want you to get alcohol poisoning from my amazing drinks,” he said as he was on his way to the kitchen.

“Oh, please. I don’t think it’s something positive to kill someone on the first date you know?” He flashed you a challenging smile.

“If you say so.” The two of you started the dinner he had preplanned. You prepared the potatoes as he got the meat ready. Set the table and lit candles. It was melting your heart to get to do all this with him. To set the atmosphere together.

The food soon was placed on the table and you both enjoyed the meal. Talking about how both of your jobs went and what the plans were in twenty years, what you had for goals in life.

***

“Okay, I’ve been practicing. I’m not gonna lie.” He said as he started to take out a couple of bottles. “And because everyone likes Moscow Mule, I'm going to make one for you as a starter.” You nod in agreement as you watch him mix Smirnoff and Ginger beer.

A couple of minutes later he poured up two glasses, one each, and made his way over to the soffa where you had seated yourself with a pillow you found in your lap. You take the drink from him when he takes a seat next to you, an arm behind you on the backrest. You take a sip from the drink, trying it, seeing if it’s as good as the one you make daily.

“This is really good,” you say. And you can hear it in your own voice how the surprise came out.

“I said it before, I only go to your pub to get to see and talk to you, I usually make my own drinks if I feel like drinking.” He says and you feel how he lays his arm around you, it’s hesitated but he hugs your shoulder and you can’t help yourself as you lay your head against his shoulder. Taking another sip on your drink.

The candles now on the coffee table in front of you make it perfect. The two of you, a drink each and the small tune of some romance playlist he absolutely should have playing in the background. You had been arguing about the music before you started to cook the food, but now, he was right. It was an amazing playlist and fit the mood.

You finished your drink when you saw that he was already done with his. You had decided that you should be taking turns on mixing drinks. You gesticulated for his empty glass and made your way over to the table he had put all the bottles on.

“One or two?” You ask.

“Hmm, which one is the strongest?” He asks with a smile on his lips.

“They are quite equal in that, but I think you would love this one,” you said and started to blend the ingredients. You bring the finished drinks back and give him his glass back. Watching him take a sip, trying it out.

“Oh, my God. This is amazing.” He says and takes another sip. You laugh.

“That’s the name of it. Isn’t it amazing. The Oh, My God drink.” You laugh and take a sip of your own.

“It’s an amazing name for it.” He places his arm behind you again, playing with the ends of your hair. Drinking the drink and watching the candle dance in front of you.

His hand found his way into your hair, feeling how it stops and how he starts drawing circles behind your ear. How he gently turns your head so the two of you face each other. You get eye contact before you turn your gaze away, the nervousness starts to creep up on you. Your heart sped up and you can’t help but let your gaze linger on his lips. Wishing for the plump lips to be on yours. But what you didn’t know was that he was thinking the exact same thing. You could see how his lips came closer to your face as you let your eyes meet him. You can see the question in his eyes, licking his lips. And without overthinking about it, you press your lips to his, placing your drink on the table and then place your hand in his hair. Oh, what you had fantasised to drag your fingers through his hair.

He had placed his own glass at the table and soon had his hands on your hips, guiding your leg over his so you straddle his hips. Deepening the kiss as you feel his hands roaming your body as he tries to remember every inch of every curve that makes your body yours. You both high on each other, his hands not still on one place longer than a second and your hands in his hair, trying to get a grip on the situation. You feel how his tongue tries to get past your lips, and with no resistance at all, you part your lips. Both your tongues fight for dominance as you continue. But soon the air in your lungs ends and you need to break the kiss.

“If we continue this, I’m not sure I can end it.” He says breathlessly. His face is buried in your neck and you feel how he leaves kisses from your ear down to your collarbone.

“I don’t know if I want you to stop,” you let out a moan as he placed a kiss behind your ear on your sweet spot.

“You sure?” He asks, leaning back to look into your eyes. You meet his eyes and for a second you only sit like that. Letting the situation sink in, you in his lap, his kiss swollen lips and a desire for the both of you ecually strong for each other. You let your eyes close as you lean into his touch, breathing in his scent and feeling how he guides you to a new kiss.

--

“Then let's take this to the bedroom instead.” He grabs your lover back with one hand and carefully stands up by pushing himself up with the other hand. You lock your legs around his hips as his free hand finds its place under your bum, squeeze it as he connects your lips once again.

He guided the both of you to his bedroom, never breaking the kiss more than to breathe. He stops walking and you break the kiss to ask why he stops, but the only thing that leaves your lips is a small surprise sound as he drops you onto a soft fabrik, the bed.

“I’ve been thinking about this for so long, you have no idea what you do to me,” he says and buries his head in the crock of your neck, leaving kisses downwards.

“So have I, and I hope all your rumors are more than talk.” He looks into your eyes before pushing your dress up, letting his hands explore your naked legs, but his eyes never leave yours.

“Oh, baby, you have no idea what I can do to you,” and you hadn't, the evening had ended with the both of you, high of the orgasm and a new feeling he had named that day in your pub when he had first told you about his feelings. He was the love of your life as well. And you hoped that your story had only started.

[raibebe]

Genre: Fluff Words: 6.879 Prompt: best friend Yangyang x female reader + “Stop hogging all the blankets!” Warnings: MC is an oblivious idiot, Yangyang is a sweetheart, mentions of injury

A/N: What do you mean Valentine’s Day was on the 14th and not on the 24th? Seems fake. AnYwAys: This was written for the Candy hearts collab hosted by @127-mile. Thank you so much for giving me an excuse to write for my precious brezel baby. Thank you @ncteaxhoe for the lovely header after I went almost crazy...

Taglist: @byunniebaekhyunnie​

“You’re going on vacation with Yangyang?” “Yes.” “Your best friend?” “Yes.” “To an abandoned cabin in the woods.” “First it’s not abandoned, just very far out and second I don’t see where you’re going with this.” “Well are you?” You sighed loudly, rolling your eyes at Donghyuck who was sat in front of you in the library where you had met to have a little study session before you were leaving for the weekend. “Yes I am.” “On Valentine’s Day.” “It’s just because it’s on a weekend and it was cheap.” “You do see where I am going with this, right?” “I am not Donghyuck,” you rolled your eyes. “You’re literally the most stupid person I have ever met and I am friends with a bunch of idiots,” your friend whined, throwing the straw wrapper from his iced americano at you. “Hyuck what’s your problem? We’re literally just both stressed out from classes already and he found that offer that’s within both of our budgets. Nothing wrong about two friends chilling in a secluded cabin.” “Have you seen the freaking cabin?” Donghyuck whisper screamed, earning him a hiss from one of the students sitting on the table next to you. “I have, Hyuck.” “Then you might have missed the fact that this cabin coincidentally has a hot tub but only one bedroom?” He went on, waving his phone in front of your face where he had pulled up the website advertising the cabin. Groaning, you faceplanted into the books that were scattered around you. “Do you see what I mean now?” Donghyuck hissed, scrolling through the pictures on the website. “Hyuck listen. Yangyang and I are both kind of short on cash so the bigger cabins just weren’t going to make it if we wanted that hot tub. So we agreed that we could sleep in the same bed for a couple of nights, no big deal. Pretty sure you’ve done that with Mark, Jaemin and Jeno as well when you four went on spring break vacation.” “Don’t distract from the topic, that was entirely different,” Donghyuck mused but the slight blush covering his cheeks was betraying him. “Is it though?” You asked, a shit eating grin on your face. “When did this conversation turn into you commenting on my poor live choices?”

“Discussing Hyuck’s poor live choices? My favorite part time activity,” another voice joined into your conversation and Renjun plopped down next to his friend on the bench. “Can you smell my misery or something?” Donghyuck groaned, slumping back into his seat, dramatically staring at the high ceiling. “I wish I could,” the Chinese laughed, loudly slurping his iced drink of choice despite the chilly weather outside while completely ignoring the glares some of the students were shooting him, “No, I was supposed to meet Yangyang to give him my car keys but you’ll do.” With that he threw his keys onto the table. “It’s parked by the student center, should fit all of your stuff.” “Thank you Renjun,” you smiled, pocketing his keys. “There is a chance though that I am out of gas,” he grinned. “I knew there would be a catch,” the familiar voice of your best friend groaned before he plopped down next to you, loudly dropping his backpack onto the floor which again had people to glare at your little group. “I swear to god you’re going to get us kicked out,” Hyuck hissed, throwing Yangyang and Renjun disappointed glares. “Not like you were studying anyways,” Renjun rolled his eyes. “What were you doing?” Yangyang asked, flipping through the pages of one of your books. “Well I was trying to get a head start on my essay,” you groaned, “But Hyuck had other plans.”

“Exactly. Which brings me back to my point,” Donghyuck grinned, turning towards Yangyang, “Yang, so did you, by any chance notice that the cabin you’re staying at this weekend with your best friend on freaking Valentine’s Day conveniently only has one bed but features a hot tub?” “Oooooh,” Renjun mused, leaning forward into his elbows. “Well... We were short on money but wanted a hot tub?” Yangyang slowly answered, blushing under the intense gazes of both of his friends. “See Hyuck it’s exactly what I told you,” you groaned, “No big deal.” “Sure, just two friends sitting in a hot tub, five feet apart because they’re not in love,” Renjun sang. “The original sounds better,” Donhyuck said flatly. “Yeah but the both of them are disgustingly straight,” Renjun shrugged. “You make that sound like an insult,” Yangyang snorted and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Anyways!” Donghyuck interrupted a little too loud, causing one of the students working in the library to actually walk over to your table to ask you to leave.

“Well great,” you groaned when you snuggled into your thick winter jacket once you were outside while Renjun and Yangyang couldn’t hold in their laughter anymore. “You guys are the worst,” you said and rolled your eyes even though you couldn’t stop the smile on your face from spreading. “You love us,” Donghyuck laughed, throwing an arm around your shoulder, “We weren’t gonna get anything done anyways.” “And we still need to pack,” Yangyang added, “Also I still need the keys to the car.” “Catch,” you called and quickly threw the keys over to your best friend that Renjun had given you earlier, laughing as he struggled to catch them. “Treat her gently,” Renjun laughed, “Oh and she needs gas.” “Why did I expect anything else,” Yangyang groaned but pocketed the keys, “I’ll pick you up after your morning classes?” “Sure,” you smiled. “You’re leaving me alone in our literature class?” Donghyuck gasped, dramatically holding his heart. “Listen, it’s either listening to professor Quian all afternoon or drive to the cabin early, Hyuck. What would you do?” You giggled. “Fair,” he shrugged, “But I still feel betrayed.” “Yesterday you felt betrayed by that pizza place because you found one stray piece of pineapple on your pizza,” Renjun helpfully added. “That was an attack on my health,” he hissed, pointing his finger at his friend and roommate, “Pineapples do not belong on pizza.” “I am not having this discussion again,” you groaned and slipped out of Donghyuck’s grip, “I gotta pack my stuff.” “Yeah, have fun on your totally not couple’s vacation,” Renjun laughed. “It’s not a couple’s vacation,” you and Yangyang immediately shouted, giggling at each other afterwards. “You’re all disgusting, I am leaving,” Donghyuck declared, dragging Renjun with him in the direction of their dorm.

“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” you smiled at Yangyang. “Yeah, I’ll pick up Renjun’s car and get all the stuff inside. Be at your dorm at like 12.” “Sure, I’m really looking forward to this.” “Yeah, me too,” Yangyang said softly, a soft blush on his cheeks that must have been from the cold air. He quickly wrapped you up in a hug before waving goodbye to head over to the student’s center. Sighing you turned in the opposite direction to your own shoebox of a dorm room, skidding along excitedly. You really were looking forward to this vacation with your best friend.

The next day found you buzzing with excitement, quickly throwing the last things that had been missing into your bag before speeding to your morning classes that went by in a blur. In what felt like no time at all, you were rushing down the steps of your dorm to throw yourself into Renjun’s car and your arms around your best friend’s neck to squeeze him in a tight hug. “I’m so excited,” you squeaked once you let him go to heave in a couple of breaths. “I can tell,” Yangyang laughed, handing you his phone that was already connected to the AUX cord, “I spend two hours yesterday to make the perfect road trip playlist, so you better appreciate that.” “This better not suck,” you laughed as he started the car to start your journey.

The way up to the mountains found you and Yangyang singing along to his actually good playlist that included some of your favorite songs, your singing getting progressively worse and louder the higher up you got and the more snow was falling. After you had gotten lost just once or twice on the way to pick up the keys from a lady at the reception who handed you a big basket with rose petals, champagne and what seemed like condoms and lube. Heat had immediately risen to both of your faces and you had stumbled over your words for the rest of the conversation, relieved when you could finally leave and head over back to your car to drive up to where your small cabin was.

“This is so cozy,” you cooed once you had made it inside the cabin, dropping your bag right next to the door to race through the rooms that included a small but clean bathroom and small kitchen with the cutest old school curtains in front of the snowy windows and a door lead outside to where the hot tub was already steaming. The main room that you had come into had a small two-seater couch with a bunch of cozy blankets thrown over it standing in front of a little fireplace that both you and Yangyang were kind of scared to light but you had to eventually because that was all the heat you were going to get. “The bed is huge,” Yangyang exclaimed and the next thing you heard was a loud thump as he had faceplanted right into the mattress, currently starfishing out, his fingertips not reaching the ends of the bed. “But we only have one blanket,” you laughed, flipping up through the layers your best friend was laying on top. “Wait for real?” He asked, eyes wide and scrambling to take a look for himself. “I hope you like cuddling,” you giggled, tackling your best friend onto the bed who just screeched before he tried to get the upper hand in the tickle fight that had broken out.

“Okay, okay, I surrender,” you laughed with tears in your eyes and lifted your arms in defeat when he had you pinned beneath you, his fingers tickling your sides until you couldn’t breathe anymore. “You’re admitting defeat?” Yangyang laughed, all his teeth showing with how bright he was smiling, digging his fingers between your ribs one last time before he fell to the mattress next to you, you both panting heavily between giggles. When you turned your head to look at your best friend, he was already looking right back at you, something unreadable in his expression. For a while you just stared into each other’s eyes, the occasional noise of the wood of the cabin creaking the only sound you could hear. Had Yangyang’s eyes always sparkled like that in the low light? Or was it just more apparent now that he had dyed his hair back to his natural dark brown? You found your hand itching to push his too long bangs from his eyes so you could see them properly, captivated by how the edges crinkled up with how he was softly smiling.

The serene silence was very rudely interrupted by Yangyang’s stomach growling loudly which caused both of you to burst out into another fit of giggles. “I think that’s out cue to put the pizzas in the oven and to unpack,” you laughed, slapping your best friend’s shoulder when he made no move to get up, instead wrapping himself up in the throw blanket. “You’re so annoying,” you groaned and climbed off of the bed. “You love me,” he argued, sticking out his tongue at you. For some reason the easy answer of ‘Yes, I do’ got stuck in your throat and you just hummed before walking over to where you had unceremoniously dropped your bags by the door to get the half frozen pizzas and turned on the oven. What was wrong with you all of a sudden? You two always bickered like that. Screw Donghyuck for getting all up in your head before this trip. Nothing had changed. It was just you and your best friend spending a weekend together. Nothing unusual. That’s what friends did. It’s what Donghyuck did with his friends.

Staring blankly into the oven once you had put the pizzas in, you were lost in your thoughts that twisted and turned inside your head but didn’t seem to make any sense at all. “Are you mad at me?” Yangyang spoke and wrapped his arms around your waist from behind, causing you to let out a high pitched screech from how surprised you were. “Don’t scare me like that,” you scolded him, trying to calm down your furiously beating heart. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, hooking his head over your shoulder to look into the oven as well, just wordlessly holding you close. “I’m not mad,” you eventually said, letting the tension seep from your muscles and melting into his hold. Smiling you let your weight sag against him, knowing he would have the strength to hold you up. “Sleepy?” You just hummed nonchalantly even though you weren’t particularly tired but somehow your body felt exhausted. “The drive took longer than expected,” Yangyang agreed, “Let’s just eat and then try to get the fire going. I brought my laptop and downloaded all the episodes of our next season.” “You’re an angel,” you giggled, “I didn’t even think about that.” “I’m not,” he mumbled, hiding his face in your neck. “My angel,” you laughed, squirming in his grip to turn around and pinch his sensitive sides. What you hadn’t expected was him not backing off, so you found yourself pinned between his body and the oven, your faces dangerously close together. For a second or two you just stayed like that before Yangyang’s brain seemed to realize just how close you were, causing heat to rise to his cheeks and him nervously spluttering about how he’d set the table and unpack everything. Something was definitely off between you two but you chose to put it aside for now, not quiet daring to think about it.

Once you both had two steaming plates of pizza in front of you, everything seemed to be back to normal and conversation flew easily just how it always did between the two of you. You would complain about being swarmed with essays and Yangyang would complain about his two roommates who couldn’t be more different from each other which made for a lot of potential for arguments or about how his mother would continuously call him every week to bog him about how school was going, if he was taking his vitamins, if he was still practicing playing his violin, if he had found a girlfriend yet or if he had finally given up on his stupid dancing classes. You were always quick to tell him that he should not feel pressured to drop his dancing to take violin lessons again if he wasn’t passionate about it anymore, no matter how much his mom would nag him about it. You knew that he loved dancing way too much and had made so many good friends in his dance crew to just give it up. So just like every time you gently took his hand in yours to squeeze it reassuringly when you promised him he could live with you if his mother decided to disown him over this. But this time he didn’t let your hand go once he moved on to tell a story on how his roommates had started arguing in the middle of the night because one of them had started to eat snacks which had woken the other one up, this thumb mindlessly caressing the back of your hand.

“Do you really trust me with the fire?” Yangyang asked with a frown on his face as he read through the instructions that were hung up next to the fireplace. “I don’t,” you laughed from where you were washing the dishes in the kitchen, “But if they leave it for us to light, it can’t be too dangerous or difficult.” “I appreciate this incredible amount of confidence you have in me,” your best friend snorted before getting to work to pile up wood and paper and carefully lighting the latter. “I made fire!” He exclaimed excitedly, a bright grin on his lips which immediately made you smile as well. “Now just don’t let it go out,” you smiled, “I’ll go change into comfy clothes real quick.” Yangyang just hummed, carefully adding more wood to his fire so it wouldn’t go out again.

“Yo, I think I got the hang of it,” he announced once you came back to the warmed up living room with snacks and clad in sweatpants and an oversized hoodie. “Is that my hoodie?” Yanyang asked when you sat down the bags next to his laptop where he had already pulled up the first episode. “Not a chance,” you replied and plopped down onto the couch to snuggle into the hoodie you definitely hadn’t stolen from your best friend. “It seems oddly familiar though,” he mused but sat down next to you anyways, your thighs touching because the sofa wasn’t particularly big. “I’ve had it for a while,” you grinned innocently, throwing one of the blankets over your legs to keep them warm. “Sure,” Yangyang laughed and threw up the large hood before pressing play on the first episode.

Throughout the episodes you seemed to gravitate towards Yangyang more and more the later it got: First only leaning your head on his shoulder, then he wrapped an arm around you to pull you even closer, followed by you pulling your legs up on the sofa, leaning even further into him until you were basically lying on his chest until it became too uncomfortable and you two shuffled around until he had both of his legs outstretched on the sofa with you sat in between them: your back pressed against his chest and his arms around you. “I could fall asleep like this,” you mumbled when you felt your lids getting heavy, the soft melody of the outro lulling you in. “Don’t though, we’ll be sore tomorrow,” Yangyang laughed, poking your cheek. “Is this your only concern?” “We’ve cuddled like this before,” he just shrugged it off. You just hummed and cuddled closer to his heartbeat, fully closing your eyes. “Yah. Don’t fall asleep on me like that,” your best friend protested, “There is a perfectly fine bed waiting with plenty of space.” “Not my problem your body is like 80 percent stupidly lanky legs.” “Come on, get up.” “But the bed is going to be all cold and it’s nice and warm in here,” you argued. “It’s not going to warm up if you keep clinging to me like that,” Yangyang giggled. “I’m not clinging,” you pouted. “Pretty sure you are,” he laughed, finger flicking your forehead, “Come on, lazy. Let’s get ready for bed.”

Grumbling, you agreed and followed your best friend into the small bathroom with the blanket still wrapped around your body where you two quickly washed up. You had been right, the air in the bedroom was icy to say the least. “We’re going to freeze to death and no one will ever find us, Yangyang,” you groaned dramatically. “They literally have to clean up before the next guests come here, so our corpses would be here for a week tops.” “You’re so good at this reassuring thing,” you rolled your eyes but couldn’t help to smile. “I know,” he grinned, “Turn around.” “What for?” “I’m changing,” he simply stated, already unbuckling his belt. “Oooh.” With burning cheeks, you quickly turned around, clutching the blanket tightly in your hands. In quick succession you heard first his belt and then his pants and shirt hit the floor before he rummaged through his bag and stepped into new clothes. “Done,” he announced and immediately jumped onto the bed to shuffle beneath the layers of blankets. Still feeling shy you carefully dropped the blanket from the living room and crawled into bed as well, leaving a respectable distance to your best friend which was fairly easy with how big the bed was.

“If you’re going to hog all the blankets, I will scream,” Yangyang spoke into the sudden silence that had draped over you. “I bet you’re the blanket hogger,” you snorted and playfully tugged at the blankets to roll them tightly around you. “I swear to god,” your best friend groaned, his feet kicking the mattress in frustration, “I won one tickle fight and I will win again.” Giggling, you let go of your grip so Yangyang could easily pull the blankets back. “Good night, Yangyang,” you whispered. “Sweet dreams,” he whispered back and you could hear him twist and turn for a couple of moments before he found a comfortable spot to sleep in. Smiling you also settled in, pulling the blankets tight around you to not let the cold of the room seep into your cocoon. While thinking of what you would do tomorrow, you slowly drifted off to sleep.

The next morning the unforgiving light of the sun reflected by the snow outside tickled your nose to slowly wake you up from your dreamless sleep but you really weren’t ready to let go of the comfort that a good night’s sleep had given you. It was just too cozy beneath the layers of blankets, the warmth of another person seeping into your bones while outside the cocoon it was cold. Wait. Warmth of another person? That had you wake up way faster than you would have liked, your own body going rigid in the hold Yangyang had on you. “Finally woke up?” He asked, his voice deeper than usual and raspy from sleep. “Y... Yeah,” you hummed, scared to turn around to look at your best friend. “Why are we cuddling?” “Because someone wouldn’t stop hogging all the blankets, leaving me out in the cold to sleep,” Yangyang said matter-of-factly, his breath hitting your neck. Looking around you, you couldn’t help but chuckle, you really had balled up so much of the blanket on your side of the bed in your sleep that part of it had dropped to the floor on your side. “You laugh but I was freezing my ass off half the night,” your best friend nagged. “I’ll make it up to you with breakfast?” “Omelets?” “You’re going to help cutting veggies?” “Nope,” Yangyang said, popping the p-sound out loud. “You’re terrible.” “You left me to freeze!” “Fine,” you groaned and wiggled yourself free from his grip, leaving the warmth of his embrace and the blankets, “But you’re doing the dishes after.” “Sure.”

For the first time today, you turned around to look at Yangyang and you really weren’t prepared for his tousled hair and lazy smile. Your heart clenched painfully in your chest before it made a couple of summersaults. “Morning,” he grinned, burying himself back into the blankets. “Yeah... Good morning...” “Take your time, I’ll shower in a bit,” Yangyang yawned and you couldn’t hold back your own which in turn made him laugh. “Don’t take too long, lazy,” you smiled before quickly freshening up in the bathroom and starting to prepare the breakfast you hast promised.

Somewhere between filling two pans with the eggs and adding the cut up vegetables, your best friend joined you in the kitchen, his hair still wet from the shower and your heart yet again did acrobatics in your chest. What was wrong with you? This was just Yangyang. Your best friend. You had slept in the same room countless of times. You had made him breakfast even more times because he was not to be trusted in the kitchen. So why was your heart all jumpy around him now? Had Donghyuck been right? But nothing between Yangyang and you had changed. You always cuddled up together when you binge watched shows together or had movie nights with your other friends.

“What’s up with you today?” Yangyang asked once you had slid the omelets on two plates and put down a steaming mug of coffee for each of you. “Nothing,” you quickly tried to reassure him but the way he raised up one of his brows was sign enough that he didn’t believe you. “It’s really nothing,” you tried again, forcing a smile onto your face that really wasn’t all that hard to maintain when looking at Yangyang, “I was just thinking about where we should go for our walk.” Your friend just hummed around a mouthful of eggs and pulled out his phone. “I looked something up,” he slurred before swallowing down what he had been chewing, “If we follow this trail, it will take us around the lake which should be frozen and eventually to a little town. If the ice is solid enough, there’s a shop where we can rent skates. And if it’s not we can just stroll around town. To go back, we can take the shorter way back along the road we came with the car.” “I like that,” you admitted as you scrolled through the website Yangyang had pulled up on his phone. The prices weren’t so bad and the scenery looked breathtaking. “Let’s do that,” you concluded, giving your best fried a bright smile.

Even bundled up in your thickest jacket and with a big scarf wrapped around your throat, the cold air outside of the cabin was unforgiving. But somehow you really liked how clean the air was as it prickled through your lungs before you exhaled again, your breath coming out in a little white huff. “I didn’t think it would be so cold, wow,” Yangyang mused as he locked the cabin before walking over to you. “I like it,” you smiled, “Which way?” But instead of an answer all you got from your best friend was a snowball thrown at you, hitting you square in the chest as you turned around to him. “Oh you’re so on,” you grinned, immediately ducking down to scoop some snow up yourself to fire right back. Your loud giggles and shouts filled the otherwise quite air of the forest and you didn’t even feel the cold of the snow and the air seeping into your bones and clothes, all you focused on was to get Yangyang back for knocking your hat off of your head when the face definitely should be off limits. “You little shit,” you yelled, running over to him to dunk his face into the big pile of snow that had gathered in front of the cabin when suddenly you stepped onto a plate of ice, making you lose your footing and the world quickly turned sideways.

You heard Yangyang yell your name before his worried face came back into your field of vision. “Shit, are you okay?” “Yeah, fine,” you crooked out. The fall really had knocked all air out of your lungs and who were you kidding, you would probably get a nasty bruise on your leg from where you had fallen on the unforgiving ice. “Hey, careful,” Yangyang said, taking your hands in his to pull you back to your feet. “Fuck,” you cursed when you put weight on your left leg, pain shooting up all the way up to your back, “I don’t think I can stand.” “Shit, left foot?” You simply nodded and gritted your teeth together as he tried to help you up again, immediately stabilizing you, so you didn’t have to put weight on your injured leg. “I’m sorry,” you muttered as he helped you to waddle back over to the cabin. Great. Now you had not only ruined your day but maybe even your whole short holidays. Yangyang for sure hadn’t wanted to be stuck inside this cabin with you for two more days. “Don’t be. Let’s take a look at that, might be broken or something,” your best friend reassured you.

With awkward little hops, he guided you over to the little sofa in the living room where you had been cuddling all evening yesterday. “Let me take a look.” After shedding your jackets and other gear you had worn to shield yourselves from the cold, Yangyang carefully unlaced your boots with nimble fingers, apologizing every time you winced in pain. “Well fuck. This thing is so swollen,” he announced once boot and sock were off of your foot. “How bad?” You asked with your eyes squeezed shut, not daring to take a look at it. “Hold still,” he instructed you, gently touching the swollen ankle to rotate it carefully which tore a whimper from your lips. “I don’t think it’s broken,” Yangyang eventually announced, “Ten has sprained his ankle during practice before and it looked similar, so I don’t think we need to get you to a hospital right now.” Thank god that your best friend was taking those dancing classes. “On a scale from when you burned your hand while trying to cook ramyeon in milk to whatever your roommate once left in that pot for too long, how gross does it look?” “It’s really not that bad yet,” Yangyang giggled before he let out a fake gag, “Please do not remind me of that pot, it’s a wonder that whatever that was had not grown legs and left the pot on its own accord.”

“Hold my hand,” you demanded, making grabby hands at your best friend where he was sat in front of you on the floor. “You big baby, it’s really not that bad. It’s not even bruised yet,” he laughed but took your hand in his anyways, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Finally opening your eyes, you took in the picture: You ankle was definitely fucked. If you didn’t know any better, you’d guess that it had already swollen to at least three times of its usual size and pulsating with the blood that was rushing to the surface. “Disgusting.” “If we cool it enough and keep it still, everything should be fine,” Yangyang reassured you, giving your hand another squeeze and rubbing your leg with his other hand, “You’re all tensed up. Does anything else hurt?” “My whole leg?” You slowly said but it came out more as a question than anything else. “Let me see.” “What do you mean let me see?” You all but screeched, pulling back your hand to clutch them at your chest instead where your heart was beating in quick succession. “Come on, it’s not like I haven’t seen you in a bathing suit or anything. I just want to make sure it’s just the ankle,” he calmed you down. Why was your heart beating so fast anyways? Yangyang was right. You had seen each other in different states of undress over all the years you had already been friends. But for some reason everything felt different in this secluded little cabin in the middle of nowhere. It was like you were seeing Yangyang in a completely different light. He was not just the funny guy who only cared about hanging out with his friends and having fun; he suddenly seemed a lot more mature here. Weird. The clean air must have already gotten to your head.

“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” Yangyang spoke again, kneading soothing circles into your still very much tensed calf muscles. “Okay,” you whispered, slowly unbuttoning you jeans, thanking whoever was listening that you had packed and worn nice panties. With combined effort, you wrestled the damp fabric of your jeans from your legs to reveal that your whole left side had already started to bruise up, dark colors bleeding into your skin. “Oh fuck,” you cursed, throwing your head back, “That looks so bad.” You couldn’t help but giggle. “I look like I have been fucking mauled.” “Or like you have a very unhealthy skin condition,” your best friend joined your laughter. But what you couldn’t see was how his eyes darted over the exposed skin, not knowing where he should look first. “I’ll check your knee,” he mumbled once you both had stopped laughing, gently touching your skin. You couldn’t help but hiss when his fingers met your flesh even though he was being gentle. It felt like his fingers left little flames in their wake, leaving your skin tingling. You saw his Adam's apple bob in his throat before he spoke: “Your knee seems fine, but those bruises will turn nasty in an hour or two.” “G-great,” you stuttered, avoiding Yangyang’s eyes while looking down to where his hand was still resting on your knee. “I think I still have some ointment from dance class in my bag that could help,” he mumbled, “I could get that and massage the muscles for a bit in case you pulled something as well.” “Massage,” you repeated, starstruck. “Not if you don’t want to but it might get worse if you’ve pulled a muscle or something if it keeps being this tense.”   “I- Yeah. Ok,” you stuttered. “Don’t move.” “Funny,” you grumbled as Yangyang went to fetch his ointment from the bedroom.

“It’s going to be cold,” he warned you when he sat back down in front of you again, lathering up his hands with the strong smelling ointment before he gently pressed down on the muscles of your calf, his fingers working on the knots in your muscle before slowly making their way upwards. You had to bite your lip in order to keep any noise from slipping once his fingers had reached the skin just above your knee. “You’re really tense,” Yangyang mumbled after a while, his fingers itching almost dangerously high on your thigh by now, kneading your sensitive flesh. “Yeah, you’re just. I’m- yeah,” you really didn’t know where you were going with this answer, hyper aware of his fingers on your skin. “Should I stop?” “No, it feels good. It’s just...” “Weird?” “A little,” you admitted, making both of you chuckle awkwardly. “Maybe a little heat would be good as well.” “Y... Yeah.” You really weren’t sure if even less clothes between Yangyang and you would help with whatever this atmosphere between you two was right now. “Let’s get you up and going then,” your best friend smiled and if it was a little less vibrant than it usually was, you chose to ignore it.

Once you were submerged in the warm water, a blissful sound slipped past your lips and you felt all tension that was left in your body leave you, the jets and the warm water effectively relaxing your body and mind.   “You good?” Yangyang quietly asked as he submerged himself right next to you, gently pulling your injured leg onto hip lap to prod at the muscles again. “Yeah,” you sighed and closed your eyes, willing your mind to shut up about how he was just your best friend and it should definitively not feel this good when he was innocently kneading your muscles. As all the tenseness seeped from your body, his fingers got more and more gentle until they all but caressed the soft skin of your thigh.  

“Yangyang?” You quietly asked after a while when the only sounds between you came from the bubbling of the water and the occasional sound of a bird. Your best friend just hummed to indicate that he had heard you, his fingers stopping to draw random shapes onto your thigh. “Is it weird that I really want to kiss you right now?” At that your friend seemed to freeze, his thigh muscles tensing up where your leg was thrown onto his lap. “N... No, I don’t think so,” he eventually mumbled. “No?” “No. Because I kind of really want to kiss you as well,” he confessed, his dark eyes finding yours and the amount of trust and openness in his eyes momentarily took your breath away. “Then kiss me,” you breathed. “I- I don’t want to ruin our friendship,” he replied but inched closer to you anyways. “It won’t,” you promised, gently cupping your best friend’s jaw and stroking your thumb along his cheekbone. “Promise?” He asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “Promise,” you whispered back before you let your eyes flutter closed when your lips finally met in a delicate kiss, barely more than a gently press of lips.

When you separated again, you sighed gently against his lips before pressing another quick peck to them which made your best friend chuckle. “This feels nice,” he whispered. “Not weird?” You asked just to confirm, gently tracing his features with your fingers. “It feels just right.” “Yeah,” you sighed. “More?” Smiling you nodded and connected your lips again, firmer this time but still gently exploring this new territory. Slowly Yangyang seemed to grow more confident and he let his hands settle on your waist to pull you a little closer to him, causing you to softly gasp. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, pressing little kisses to your cheeks and the corners of your mouth until you giggled. “Kiss me,” you demanded, wrapping your arms around his neck so your hands could play with the long strands of his hair before kissing him again. By now you almost sat in his lap, the angle a little weird because of how your leg was still thrown over his lap. But none of you seemed to mind as you took all the time of the world to explore each other’s lips.

After a little while Yangyang broke the kiss to lean his forehead against yours. You couldn’t fight your smile, basking in the feeling of being close to him. This close you could count his eyelashes that were stuck together from the water and admire the blush that sat high on his cheekbones. “I really like you,” Yangyang suddenly confessed, pulling your bodies flush together to hide his face in your neck. “I really like you too,” you giggled, running your hands through his damp hair. “No I mean I like like you. I- I’ve had a crush on you for the longest time,” he mumbled against your skin. With how close you were pushed together, Yangyang must definitely feel how hard and fast your heart was hammering in your chest. What he couldn’t see was the big smile that spread on your lips while you were trying to find the right words to tell him that you felt the same, that he was a very special person to you. “You don’t have to like me back,” he suddenly said, tightening his grip on you, “I know you probably only see me as a friend and nothing else. But if I keep this to myself any longer, I might burst. I just- Please don’t hate me. You’re all I have.”

“Yangyang,” you gently spoke, trying to pry his head from your neck. “I don’t have any courage left to look you in the face as you reject me,” he whined when he wasn’t budging, this grip he had on your waist tightening just a little. “I’m not going to reject you.” “You’re not?” Your best friend immediately straightened up, his face full of surprise. “No,” you chuckled and couldn’t resist to press a quick kiss to his lips, “I think I’m in love with you as well.”

For a while Yangyang didn’t say anything, his mouth just wordlessly hanging open and eyes wide. “I mean it,” you giggled, playfully hitting his shoulder, “Say something, idiot.” “I- I was full on prepared for heartbreak. I didn’t mean to confess until Sunday to not make it awkward. It just. Yeah…” “Why would I reject you?” “You never said anything and whenever I would try to take you out or do something alone with you, you kept inviting the others and simply played my flirting off as a joke.”

Thinking back, you felt like there were scales falling from your eyes when you remembered all the times Yangyang had asked you out to the movies and you had dragged Donghyuck or Renjun with you. Or when you had invited him for movie night and his face fell when he saw Jaemin and Jeno already sitting on your sofa. Or when he had invited you to one of his dance shows and you had marveled about how graceful Ten could dance and he had become all grumpy.

“Holy fuck, I’ve been so oblivious,” you groaned, pillowing your head on his chest that shook with laughter. “I’ll forgive you if you become my girlfriend,” Yangyang gently spoke, combing his hands through your hair. “Yes,” you breathed, your heart fluttering wildly. “Seal it with a kiss?” He didn’t need to say anything else because you quickly pressed your lips together again, hoping Yangyang could feel all your love and you could at least make up for the pain you had caused him.

“Me too,” he whispered against your lips in between kisses, “I love you too, idiot.” “Your idiot,” you grinned. “All mine,” Yangyang smiled brightly. And if you two shared more kisses and sweet giggles beneath the sky in the hot tub next to your cabin, only Mother Nature would know about it.

[danniburgh]

Rushingly Bittersweet, (Javier Peña x f!reader) part 1.

Pairing: Javier Peña x ofc//f!reader with name.

Summary: After the fall of Escobar everything starts happening way too fast for Javier; his raise, his new office, his new team, the Cali cartel's operation, the sudden arrival of a new agent that was transferred to his team for no apparent reason, the way he was falling in love with her almost unintentionally.

And he couldn't seem to stop any of that.

Word count: +2.1k

Series warnings: talks and mentions of misogyny and sexism, cursing, smoking, drinking, eventual sex, cartel shit, watch me make some shit up to fit reader inside the narrative, guns, dea shit, feels, javier actually being a little bit more introspective, just basically me inserting reader into the third season

Chapter warnings: depictions of misogyny and some cursing

A/N: This chapter is set in season three, episode one. // this has been simmering in the back of my head for way too long, i even made a post about it just trying to ease the weight of my thoughts but my mind keeps racing with more things about this exact story, so here goes nothing. THIS GOES ALONG THE CANON OF THE THIRD SEASON kinda (so yeah, spoilers if you haven’t watched it yet), i actually had to watch it to write this because in the end, you’re a fucking DEA agent baby (also please keep in mind that english is not my native language, im really trying for this to be GOOD) 

Read on ao3 // fic index // Masterlist // fic playlist

comments and reblogs are eternally appreciated 💓 let me know if you wanna be tagged

// next→

You knew you chose a difficult job, hell, a difficult career, you knew you had to prove yourself, your worth and your abilities countless times, at this point it wasn’t even that much of a surprise anymore. Every time you encountered another man in the office or in the field, you had to spend an incredible amount of time first proving you were capable and you knew what you were doing before even getting to work.

Yet you got comfortable in your previous destination, you had a team, you had people to trust and trusted you back, they knew you were more than capable, you didn’t have to tell them to listen to you or your ideas, you didn’t have to ask for anyone’s approval. You were just another agent.

But now you had to do it all over again.

“Shit” you growled, trying to unwrinkle your blazer with one hand, the flight down to Colombia hadn’t been at all gentle to you and you were tired and cold. Your feet were sore, your back was killing you, you were fighting the desire to get rid of your suit skirt and run to put some pants on, everybody was lying when they said Colombia was a hot place, the air was chilly, and the dress suit you were wearing barely provided any meaningful heat, and the fact that nobody went to pick you up at the airport made you even more frustrated. You were still pulling around your suitcase because apparently the embassy is such a fucking mess that not even one person told you where you were going to live yet. 

You showed your badge to the guards at the doors and they let you in without much of a look. You walked right through the lobby into the elevator, sighing in relief. Thanks America and its air conditioned buildings.

The elevator doors opened and you walked straight inside of the DEA offices, they were small, cramped and dark, great, just how you liked your work spaces.

“Hi” you said, approaching the small front desk, the receptionist looked up at you and smiled, it was the first smile you saw in a while and that made you feel a little less frustrated, you pulled out the badge again and showed it to her “can you please direct me to the office of Javier Peña?” you asked.

The girl tilted her head to the left in confusion.

“Are you agent Martin?” she said with her thick american accent, you put the badge again in the pocket of your dress pants and nodded to her.

“Yes, is he– is he expecting me?” 

“Not really, but agent Feistl is,” she said, pointing to a cornered desk almost in the back where a blond man was sitting, he looked up at the sound of his name and you sighed again.

“Oh, yeah, I talked to him on the phone, thank you,” you said, smiling a bit back to her while you walked around the unoccupied desks in the front of the office “Feistl” you said his name once you reached his desk, stretching out your hand to shake his “agent Martín” you said “it’s nice to meet you” he looked at you, frowning, but took your hand nonetheless and shook it.

“Chris Feistl” he said, a little taken aback and another man approached both of you “this is my partner, Daniel Van Ness” the larger man gave you a single nod and you shook his hand again.

“You’re agent Martin?” Van Ness said.

Here we go again.

“My last name is Martín, first name Florencia” you said, accentuating the í in your last name, inhaling the tension around and making it your own, yet another time “I’m guessing you were expecting a man?” you dropped, they looked at each other “don’t worry, it happens everytime” you finished with a small grin.

They remained silent, looking at you, yet another time you let them, although for a single moment you actually wondered if there was something wrong with the way you looked; you gave a glance to yourself on the elevator walls on your way up and aside from your hair being close to look like a mess you were ok, you take another second to try to analyze the men in front of you, the way they were standing, the expression on their faces, they were shocked that was for sure, but also… relieved? and somehow… happy?.

“Is there anywhere I can put this?” you asked, glancing at the suitcase.

“You came here all the way from the airport?” Feistl asked, you nodded.

“Yeah, no one showed up so I just grabbed a cab” Van Ness snorted and you looked at him. He didn’t say anything, “where’s my desk?” you asked again, starting to feel more frustrated but also a bit amused when again they didn’t say a thing, “you did get the memo that you’d be getting a new person today, right?” you questioned in a huff, a bit louder, looking at them in utter disbelief. Fucking embassy, fucking DEA.

“Is agent Martin here?” you heard your name being called from behind you, the men in front of you just widened their eyes and looked at you. 

“That would be me” you announced, turning around, seeing a tall, tanned skin, sweaty man approaching you, “and you must be Javier Peña” you said, allowing yourself to be more assured, stretching your hand again.

“You are agent Martin” he said, making it sound half like a question, half an assertion, looking at you up and down, he put his hands on his hips, not bothering to take your hand.

“Florencia Martín, yes sir” you dropped down your hand and pronounced your last name again, trying to get american people to pronounce your name was hard, and you hoped at least Javier Peña would understand it, yet he said it wrong. He just stood there and you glanced at him discreetly, he, differently from the men behind you, was a walking ball of frustration, you sympathized and tried to read his posture. He was trying to be cocky but his try died in his eyes, he was shocked, surprised and not at all entertained.

“No wonder why I couldn’t find you in the airport” he growled.

“You were also expecting a man” you affirmed, this time, a small hint of disappointment grew inside your stomach “don’t worry, it happens all the time” you repeated roughly. You turned around to your new partners, not caring and ignoring the look your new boss was giving you “my desk?”

Van Ness pointed a small cubicle behind his and Feislt’s big desks, you suppressed a sigh and walked towards the space, still pulling your fucking suitcase, feeling the looks of three men in your back. You were used to this, you had done it countless times, and you knew you weren’t the only woman that has gone through this. But after spending the time you spent in one single place, with the same people, doing the same thing, after having an amazing partner that had believed in you since the day you almost punched the shit out of him on the academy, after having your own office to work with him, after having faced many masculine faces disapproving you being in the same rooms as them while chasing bad guys, after receiving thousands of condescending looks when you said anything, and yet being capable of raise everybody’s expectations, starting it all over again not only sounded hard, it also sounded exhausting.

Javier couldn’t believe his fucking luck when he looked at you. He certainly was expecting a man, Washington only told him so much and he assumed what everyone did when they heard your last name, in the end it was a masculine name. For some reason he felt guilty when you told him you always get that reaction.

He tried to examine you, ever the analyzer, but he got nothing, not from the way you were still standing in front of the ridiculously small cubicle, tapping your foot against the carpeted floor, or the way you kept putting a thin strand of hair behind your ear and it kept falling in front of your right cheekbone, nothing from the way you reached for the manila folder that was waiting to be picked up or the way your fingers moved around the pages. You seemed unreadable to him and he didn’t like that. Not one bit.

You turned around when you felt his stare, he was still just standing there, looking at you.

“Is this really everything I have to be briefed on?” you questioned him lifting the folder in your left hand. He nodded and turned to the right to walk to his office “well fuck that” you murmured under your breath. You heard Van Ness snorting again and looked at him giving you a small smile, maybe you didn’t say that as quietly as you wanted, you gave him half a grin and he shook his head.

You took off your blazer and sat on the incredibly uncomfortable chair.

“Shit” you whispered again.

“Fuck” Javier said under his breath, loosening his tie and crashing into his chair. He rubbed his eyes with the ball of his hands and sighed. What the fuck did the people at Washington think. He was after a whole fucking cartel, he didn’t have his trusted partner this time, he was alone and he had to lead a team to do that, he had just lost two agents after they were stupid and reckless going around Cali and they dared to send down one random chick in some sort of replacement that for some reason seemed just so small and frail to him.

He was pretty sure you weren’t due to the fact that you were a DEA agent, but when he looked at you the only thing he could notice was the way your eyes were dimmed, maybe due to the fluorescent lights or the fact that you had flown who-knows how many hours to be there, or the way your hands seemed way too delicate to even handle a gun, or how your body looked breakable to the touch. 

He didn’t like the way his mind was forming his thoughts about you, it wasn’t right to think that way of a woman- no, a person- no, an agent he had just met, he just knew it was the macho part in him that saw you that way. He knew that if Washington had sent you all the way down to a god forsaken country fighting an unfair war, you had to be capable to endure it.

Javier scratched his stubble and reached for the thinest folder he had on his desk, it was your file. He grinned when he opened it, unbelieving of the almost non existent amount of information it had about you. It did have your full name, though, so, mistaking you for a guy was indeed his fault, just because he didn’t read the file before. 

He browsed through the last locations you had been sent to and raised his eyebrows when he saw the amount of time you’d spent in the last place. No wonder why you were being so reluctant about everything you saw and how you were being treated. He remembered how he felt when he was a newcomer and he remembered what he had to go through with Steve when he first came to the country, it was awful, and even without the language barrier, as your file said you did speak spanish, he assumed you must feel like an outcast. It was never easy, arriving at a place where everything seemed like it belonged there but you.

Javier closed the file and threw it back to the pile of manila folders in front of him. He did have his doubts about you, and surely he was wondering why he had only been sent that joke of a file and nothing else, and he didn’t want to make your stay in Colombia or at the embassy a living hell, but he did want to see what you were able to do, he couldn’t wait for you to show him what you had in you.

That last thought sent him for a bit through a deliciously nasty tangent, and he had to bring himself back to the initial train of thought: you. 

You were now his. No– you were now in his team. He was now your boss. He couldn’t think of you in any other way even if sometimes it couldn’t be avoided.

Javier rubbed his lower lip with his thumb, wondering what were you working on before arriving, trying to think what was happening in M��xico that made you stay that long.

And a question was forming in his head… What the hell did you do to be sent to Colombia?

// next→

[hanoella]

Affettuoso- With Feeling (Part 4)

Pairing: Bucky x Pianist!Reader

Set after the events of TFATWS: In an effort to start over and make a home in Louisiana, Bucky meets a friend of Sam’s who ends up being his landlord. With only a driveway to separate them, he finds that he’s not the only one looking for a fresh start.

Series tags/warnings: Slow Burn, Eventual Bucky x Reader, Mentions of Domestic Abuse, Canon Level Violence

Part 4 Word Count: 2.9k

A/N: Thanks again for all your support! Every heart and comment motivates me and is just so wonderful

Taglist!: @vicmc624

Read Part 1; Masterlist

The icon that marked where you were currently typing in your text blinked as you bit your lip. Looking back from where you were sitting at the kitchen table, you took stock of the open pantry once again. You were low on just about everything. With physical therapy exhausting your shoulder, it was hard to find the energy to lift any heavy bags. You had texted Sam for help, but unfortunately he was out of state.

“Bucky’s home, just ask him to go with you. He won’t mind” He had texted back.

You slouched back into the chair and groaned. You had only seen him in passing since he had helped you with the furniture. What was he, your live-in-caretaker? Was he just there to help you up and down the stairs and help you across the street? Sliding onto the floor, you made a small grunt as you felt your back straighten out and adjust to the floor. Resting a moment, you held your phone up and stared at the blinking bar. You hadn’t texted him before. Should you just call him? Or knock on his door? Ugh, why was this so hard. Whatever.

“Hey Bucky, I’m having trouble carrying stuff right now. Would you mind helping me out with grocery shopping sometime today or tomorrow? If not, no worries.”

Without a second thought, you sent it and set your phone down next to you. It was around 1PM, the only thing you having done up until then was getting dressed while sipping on coffee. Opting for a lazy look, you had worn soft leggings with an oversized sweater and fuzzy socks. Two simple braids and a headband kept your hair out of the way for when you eventually practiced. Only a few more weeks until you practiced with the actual orchestra. You should probably figure out something to wear besides lounge clothes.

The buzz on the floor caught your attention and you took a peak at your home screen

1 New Message:

Bucky Barnes: Sure, is now good?

Shoot. You quickly got up and walked to the bathroom. Your hair wasn’t too messy. Why do you look so tired? Opting for some mascara, you texted Bucky back before digging around in your makeup bag.

Yeah, meet at my car in a minute?

---

Bucky pocketed his phone and took a quick look in the mirror. Should he shave? Scratching his beard, he made a face before deciding against. It would take him more than a minute. Why didn’t he just say thirty minutes from now? Running a hand through his hair, he grabbed a jacket and walked out of the apartment.

As he walked over the freshly fallen leaves in the driveway, he opted for leaning against your car. He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his head to look out over the water. It had been quiet lately, just chilly enough to silence the summer chorus of buzzing and croaks. Now all that was left was the occasional honking of geese flying overhead.

He had only been there for a couple of minutes when you came out onto the porch. You had hastily thrown on some brown leather boots, the left one still untied. The little bit of mascara and lip gloss you put on made you feel better about not looking like death. It was nice to do a little something, even if it was just the grocery store.

“Hey!” you said, slightly breathless as you bounded down the stairs, keys jingling in your hand.

Bucky echoed your greeting back to you with a small smile and wave.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” You said, clicking the key fob to unlock the car.

“Oh it’s no problem. I didn’t really have much to do anyway.” He said, ducking his head to sit in the passenger side seat. He noticed how as soon as you closed the door, you clicked the locks shut. Then you brought your left heel up on the edge of the seat so that you could tie your shoe.

“Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Usually, I don’t need too much help, but I need cases of waters and stuff like that. I was gonna get someone to help me at the grocery store but I realized I’d still be left in a lurch once I got home. I figured if you needed, we could just get groceries together this time,” you explained while double knotting the laces.

Starting the car and putting on your seatbelt, you looked behind you out of habit to make sure you weren’t going to hit anything as you backed out of the driveway.

“Huh. It looks like it’s going to rain.” You said, observing the darker clouds and the wind picking up. Putting the car in drive, you started down the driveway.

“Music?” You offered, gesturing towards the radio.

“I don’t really know what’s been playing these days… or for the last sixty years if I’m being honest.” At least it’s nice not to have to lie about it, Bucky thought.

“Well, we have a lot to catch you up on then.” You said, stopping at the end of the driveway and grabbing your phone. Scrolling through your music, you hit the bluetooth button on the console.

“This playlist has all my favorite classics on it. Feel free to skip anything you don’t like.” You said, handing him the phone and turning onto the road. The music started, prompting Bucky looked down at the phone. September- Earth, Wind & Fire.

---

Four songs later you were at the supermarket, grabbing a cart and discussing favorites.

“That last one was good too. Which one was that?” Bucky asked.

“That’s Stolen Away on 55th & 3rd. Dave Matthews Band. Now mind you, some of those are way older than others. The only thing they all have in common is that they’re all at least ten years old.”

“Huh.” He’s really missed out on a lot.

The two of you continued chatting as you went through the various sections. A couple cases of water. A bag of salad. Deli meats and cheeses. Bread. Ground beef. Pasta and pasta sauce. The topic turned to older music from Bucky’s time.

“I’m surprised you have heard of her.” He said, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

“Well, I’m going to be honest, the only reason I have any knowledge of it at all is because I had to take a lot of Music History classes in college. For whatever reason, they thought that to play music, you needed to know every which way that it’s evolved throughout the years. Though, I have to say,” you paused, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “Now, I’m kind of glad I did.” You looked up at him slightly, face just a tad warm as he met your eyes. You both looked away and he coughed awkwardly. Feeling embarrassed, you scan the shelves of snacks before hearing him quietly say behind you-

“… I’m glad you did too. It’s different. And kind of nice to talk to someone about it. Who actually knows what I’m talking about.”

Trying to keep your smile small, you continued to look at the array of cookies on the shelf. A hand passed over your shoulder to take a pack of shortbread cookies.

“Hmm. Shortbreads.” You say, holding your arms behind your back. “Verrry interesting.”

“What?” He replied defensively.

“You can tell a lottttt about a man by his snack preferences.”

“Well, what do shortbreads say?” Bucky asked, leaning his forearms on the handle of the cart so that he was now eye level with you. It was too late this time to hide your smile. You turned back around to grab a pack of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

“If I tell you what they mean, you’ll just pick the kind that you think has the best traits. You’re not fooling me anytime soon.” You said with a laugh before you whisked yourself around the corner.

“Hey, that’s not fair, come back!” He pushed the cart around the corner where he ran into you hugging Sarah. The boys were with her and they went absolutely ballistic.

“Uncle Buck! Uncle Buck!” They shouted as they bombarded him.

“AJ! Cass! Stop acting crazy in the grocery store!” Sarah said, reprimanding them. You chuckled at the sight of Bucky being slowly overwhelmed by the two boys. He pried them off his legs and crouched so that he was eye level with them.

“Hey, I missed you guys. I haven’t seen you guys since the last time Uncle Sam and I came back-”

“-from fighting bad guys, right!” AJ said, getting a little too excited and causing Sarah to give him the look. Bucky tried not to laugh and held a finger up to his mouth to signal that they needed to be quiet.

“Yes, from fighting bad guys.”

You turned towards Sarah with a grin and put your hand on her arm.

“We’ll have to have all of you over, come see the new house. Will you text me a day next week when you, Sam, and the kids are free?”

“That sounds great. I’m so glad you got to move down here. I’ll let you know about next week!” Sarah said. She also walked around the cart and gave Bucky a hug. He returned it but glanced towards you nervously; You were already looking away. When they pulled away from each other, Sarah glanced in your direction and then at Bucky, a knowing smile on her face and eyebrows wiggling. Bucky made a face with wide eyes, letting her know to cut it out. Sarah laughed slightly while saying goodbye:

“It was good to see you, Buck.” Sarah said, laughing as she rolled the cart away, AJ and Cass in tow, who were both shouting goodbyes at Uncle Buck.

“Good to see you too…” He trailed off in her direction.

“Man, those boys really love Uncle Buck.” You said teasingly, making him jump slightly and turn around. You laughed and walked towards the next aisle, leaving Bucky red in the ears.

---

It was just starting to rain when you parked the car in the driveway. You grabbed some of the lighter bags and ran up the steps, hurrying to unlock the door. Bucky was piling on the grocery bags as the rain got heavier. He hauled everything inside as you held the door open for him. He lifted the groceries up onto the kitchen counter and made his way down the stairs again.

“Still have to get the cases of water.” He explained in response to your confused face. The rain was still getting heavier. Hauling the two jumbo cases onto his shoulder and carrying the last one by the plastic in his hand, he made his way up the porch, slower this time. You held the door open, looking incredulously again at how easy it was for him as he passed.

By the time he had set the waters down, you had grabbed a towel for him, extending it to him while looking away at from his drenched shirt.

“Thanks,” he said, toeing off his shoes and drying his hair with the towel before draping it over his shoulders.

“Please, let me make you some tea. You must be freezing.” You said, already digging through the pantry for some.

“Well, if you’re offering, I won’t say no.” He said, taking a seat at the kitchen island.

“Yeah, hold on, it’s kind of dark. Let me turn on the lights…” You trailed off as the light switch did nothing. Flicking it a few times back and forth, you sighed.

“I’m so sorry, the real estate agent told me it’s pretty easy to lose power in this area since there’s so many trees. They usually have it back on pretty quick though I’m told.” You said, now digging through another cabinet.

“It’s completely fine, you can’t control that. I’ll just take a raincheck-”

“Found it!” You said, cutting him off and proudly presenting the gas-powered single burner. You set it down in front of Bucky who watched as you also grabbed a tea light and a lighter from in the drawer.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?” You asked while lighting it.

---

Three more tea lights and a kettle of hot water later, Bucky was sitting with the towel draped over his shoulders, sipping on the warm cup of green tea. The flames created flickering shadows as you added the pasta to the pot of boiling water.

“I knew this was going to come in handy. I’m glad I saved it.” You said, setting a timer on your phone as you leaned on the counter across from Bucky.

“Why do you have it in the first place?” He asked curiously.

“I kind of had to hop around for a little bit before I got down here. I would stay in hotels but I didn’t want to eat out every night so this came in handy. Ole reliable.” You said, looking down at one of the tea lights.

There was a moment of silence before you pursed your lips.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked, setting the cup down.

“Has Sam told you… how I ended up here?” You asked, now looking straight at him. The look on his face told you the answer before he could respond.

“I see…”

“Hey, I’m sorry, I-”

You held up a hand to cut him off, soft smile on your face.

“No, it’s okay. I told him that if it ever came up, he could talk about it. I’m pretty open about it. How much did he tell you?” you asked, wrapping your hands around the cup to absorb some of the warmth.

“Just the basics. You two were together, then he got… violent. And you trying to leave.” He said, looking down into his cup.

“Yeah, that just about covers it… He kept following me after I got out of the hospital so I had to get a rental car and hotel hop for a while… When I got the house down here, I finally got my actual car and just booked it here. He’s never been to Louisiana before and he doesn’t know that Sam lives here now, instead of DC. I’m hoping he’s frolicking in city traffic, getting run over as he looks for me. Bucky snorted and tried not to laugh, which made you laugh.

“Sorry, it’s not funny.” He said, covering his mouth.

“Oh, it totally is.” You said, talking in a way where he could tell that you were smiling.

You both laughed as you grabbed a strainer out of the pantry. Draining the pasta, you both settled into a comfortable silence.

“Well, I’m glad you can joke about it.” Bucky said, watching as you poured pasta sauce into the pot to warm it up before chucking the rest of the pasta in.

“Some days are better than others. I’m just happy that I can stop running. Still, I do get a bit paranoid sometimes. I feel like I’m going to turn a corner and he’ll be right there.” You said, rubbing your arms as if you were comforting yourself. At that moment, Bucky looked at you and noticed for the first time how truly tired you looked. Dark circles underneath a sleep deprived gaze. Eyes clouded by worry and paranoia. Bucky’s seen that look on himself before. Before Steve found him in Bucharest, before he could trust his own mind. When he had to avoid being recognized, avoid being found, avoid falling back into Hydra’s grasp.

You exhaled as you uncrossed your arms, mixing the pot before sprinkling cheese on top. “Dinner’s all done.” Bucky sat peacefully, enjoying the aroma of the tomato and basil. Taking a deep breath, he slowly exhaled before speaking up again.

“Well. I’m here now.”

“Hmm?” You called back, not quite hearing him over the clanking of the bowls you took out.

“I’m here now,” he repeated, this time with more confidence. “So… you don’t have to worry about it. If you ever get worried about it, just call me. Or text me… Or knock on the door… and I’ll talk to you or I’ll check it out, keep an eye on the house from the apartment, or just be in the house with you. It’s not a bother, if it’ll give you peace of mind. I’ve been through something… similar. With, uh, the whole Hydra… thing…” Bucky trailed off as you stared at him with a neutral face. He was getting ready to backpedal, hand reaching for the back of his neck out of nervous habit, until you spoke.

“You’d do that?” You said, face unchanged, eyes searching his.

“Yeah… Yeah, I would.”

You blinked a few times before looking aside and trying to clear the frog from your throat.

“I don’t even know what to say but thank you. That is such a big relief.” You said, voice wavering slightly, one hand coming up to touch your forehead out of relief. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Nobody should have to go through that alone.” Bucky said softly.

You touched his hand softly, giving it a gentle squeeze before stealing your own back. You turned around to grab a drink when you paused, looking out the window.

“It stopped raining.” You stated, watching as the little bit of sunlight brightened the colors of the changing leaves. Bucky, on the other hand, was watching how the little bit of sunlight brightened you. He rubbed his thumb against where your hand had just been, trying to recreate the feeling of your hand on his.

[purplestzebra10]

I can help

Summary: Today was wash day and you didn’t feel like doing your hair. Luckily for you Tanaka is happy to help.

Pairing: Tanaka x Black fem!Reader

Word count: 860 (im sorry its short)

Warnings: None, just something light

A/N: Hey! This is one of my first times posting some fanfiction on here. I recently got out of a writers block that I was in for years and just started writing. I really love this though. I also thought this scenario was cute. I am currently working on dialogue because I hate doing it but it is something needed. Picture used it not mine.

I made a little playlist to read along to because I like the vibes. I don’t even think it’ll take that long to complete it.

Playlist: 

Good days- SZA

I want you around-Snoh Aalegra

Find someone like you- Snoh Aalegra

Temptation-Raveena

Honey- Raveena

On & on - Erykah Badu

Hold on- The Interne

Today was supposed to be a rest day but you weren’t getting any rest. You were in quite the pickle to be relaxing. At the beginning of the week you had taken out your box braids but didn’t do your regular routine. You skipped over washing it and kept it in a nice small fro. Of course you sprayed your water and conditioner mixture to keep it looking fresh but it still needed love. 

Now you’re standing in your bathroom staring at yourself in the mirror after a nice shower. You wrapped your hair in a microfiber towel, dried yourself off, and slipped on your clothes. A maroon spaghetti strap undershirt and white shorts with hearts on them. You have all your products laid out on the sink for use from conditioner to oil. You didn’t even take the towel off yet however you already felt drained.

As you pressed shuffle on your R&B playlist you heard the keypad to the front door beep. Usually, you would’ve been worried but it was Tanaka. You knew because he texted you about coming over but you still didn’t like him unlocking the door instead of knocking. 

“Heyo.” He shouted.

“You could’ve knocked.” You said walking out the bathroom to get some sodas out the fridge. 

“Yeah but why would I do that?” He asked, shrugging, like it wasn’t a big deal. You turned and looked at him but realized that there was nothing going on in his brain. Sighing, you just gave him one of the pops. 

As he took a few sips you scanned his appearance. He wore a black t-shirt with some words on it but it was covered with a green jacket. He had some black joggers and some regular timbs. You would’ve said something about it but you realized, he had his shoes still on. 

“Take your damn shoes off.” You scolded, now drinking your pop.

“Sorry ma.” He responded. As he took his boots you walked back to the bathroom taking a nice deep breath. “Soo, whatcha doing?” 

“Dying” You took off the towel and debated on actually finishing your hair. 

“That's not a real answer.” he stated leaning against the doorframe. 

“I’m doing my stupid hair.” 

“It’s not stupid, I think it’s cool.” He assured you. “What style are you doing this time?” Ever since yall became friends Tanaka has shown his appreciation for your hair. It amazed him how many styles and accessories you could do.

“I don’t know.”

“I can help.” You turned to him. Right now he was like an angel to you, a gift from god. 

“You serious?”

“Yeah, I’m a fast learner.” He stood straight, readying himself for work. You looked back at the mirror for a few seconds and decided to give it a shot. After some thought you figured that bantu knots were the way to go.

“Help me get this stuff to the living room.” Since you weren't the one doing you decided it would be best to be sitting. 

In a matter of minutes y’all put all the products on the table neatly. You grabbed a throw pillow and a minnie mirror out of your room. You directed him to sit on the couch with legs opened and positioned yourself in the middle of him. You found a picture off of Pinterest as a reference and showed it to him. 

“Alright, how do i start?” 

“First you put the hair in sections.” You moved your hands to the back of your head sectioning the hair. You grabbed a hairtie and tied the top part away from the bottom part. “Actually, really all it is is sectioning,”

You couldn’t see it but he was watching closely taking in all the information. He noticed how gentle your fingers worked and so he mimicked it when he touched your hair. Tanaka asked about all the different products and their uses. He joked about how he should use a lot of stuff. 

 He made meaningful conversation and breezed through the knots. Your playlist was playing in the background and the smell of the oils filled your nostrils. In the end it took about an hour and a half until you had the finished product. Tanaka was right, he is a fast learner. 

You went into the bathroom and looked at your scalp. The knots was tight and everything was moisturized and oil evenly. It represented very closely to the reference and you were amazed. 

“Wow Tanaka. Thank you!” You exclaimed hugging him. 

“I told you I would do good.” He gave you a wide smile. “Now my payment.”

“Payment? And here I was thinking you were lending a helping hand.” You said letting go of him crossing your arms.

“Yes at first but my arms were starting to get tired.” His smile faded to a sly smirk and he wiggled his right arm around. “I think I earned a movie night.” 

“If you wanted to stay longer you could’ve just said that.” You stated rolling your eyes but you smiled. “Fine, I’ll order the food.”

After cleaning up the products you guys order food and movies until you fall asleep.

[ladyblogger-margie]

Permit Pending - Part 1

Pairing: Will Miller (Triple Frontier) x F!Reader

Summary: All Will Miller wanted was a park permit for a VA fundraiser, what he got instead was an unscheduled afternoon exploring different parks with F!Reader.

Word Count:  3890

Rating: G (smut to come in chapter 2!)

Warnings: Course language. Eventual smut in future chapters. 

a/n: My first time writing reader insert and for Will Miller AND for Triple Frontier, so any feedback at all is appreciated. No Y/N. 

Series Master List

3-2-1, Will Miller counted down to the ring of his morning alarm clock. Just like every single day his phone blared a monotonous alarm sound at exactly 05:42 and Will shut it off. He spent the next three minutes practicing mindful breathing and preparing for the day ahead. At 05:45 he rose and changed into his gym clothes. 

He shook together a protein shake as he rode the elevator down to the surprisingly decent gym in his building where he did exactly 30 minutes of cardio followed by an hour of weight training. Today was back and chest day – his favorite – so of course he decided to listen to a podcast instead of a playlist of high tempo motivational music. It was easier to be motivated for something you already wanted to do after all. The podcast today was about finding a balance between order and relaxation, something his therapist had recommended he do before his insurance ran out on therapy sessions and he opted out of continuing the process.

After the gym he returned to his apartment and started the coffee maker. After a quick shower and some facial hair maintenance, he dressed in one of his branded polo shirts and drank his coffee with his breakfast. He had two talks scheduled for the day before lunch, then an errand to run after lunch. Later that evening he would meet up with Benny for fight training. Today could not be any more normal for him - exactly the same as the day before, and the day before that. 

Or so he thought. 

You woke up groaning when your alarm went off at 7:15am. You snoozed it. You also snoozed your 7:22am, 7:31am, and 7:40am alarms. You finally rolled yourself out of bed at 7:50am in time for your quick 30 minute yoga routine before you got ready for work. 

You breezed into the parks and recreation office at City Hall at exactly 8:57am. You grabbed a cup of coffee from the office machine knowing that if you got up at 7:15am as planned you would’ve had time to stop at Starbucks on your way into the office. 

You spent your morning as you usually did - catching up on your passion projects which were the youth sport organizations. You ensured all the public teams had access to the necessary fields and confirmed with the greens team that they were all in working order. You loved your mornings at work even though you weren’t necessarily a morning person. 

After lunch was another story. After a series of poorly timed budget cuts, your department was forced to cancel the internship program. That meant you were drafted into working the permit desks in the afternoons. You knew that it wasn’t actually the worst thing in the world, it was just so boring. The applications were longer than they had any right to be and filled with confusing language. This meant nearly every single application required a specific follow up that never fit one of the many form responses you’d been accumulating in the hopes of streamlining the process. 

Of course you wanted your community to take advantage of the awesome parks in your town, but apparently the legal department didn’t. It put you in a difficult spot where sometimes you were forced to give the park permits to corporations instead of individuals and it drove you crazy to do so. It also locked you to a desk unless a specific permit issue arose that required an in-person follow up which never happened. Which is why after lunch you went off campus to get yourself your favourite Starbucks order because the permit desk on a Monday required the heavy artillery to survive. 

Or so you thought. 

After a few hours of pouring over pages and pages of documents, the most handsome man you had ever seen walked into the office. He had blonde hair and soft eyes which you noticed right away but immediately after you were drawn to his strong chest tightly wrapped in a blue polo with some logo you didn’t recognize over one of his firm pecs. 

“My name is William Miller, and I’m hoping you can help me with a park permit,” the man said, holding out his hand to you. 

You composed yourself as quickly as you could and introduced yourself in return, shaking his hand. “I’d be happy to help you with that,” you said as you let go. His hands were firm and from the callouses you could tell he worked out, though his general physique already gave that away. 

He smiled at you and you felt something stir inside you that was not exactly professional, “Did you have a specific location in mind?”

“No, actually I was hoping to get your opinion. I’m helping to put together a community fundraiser, a BBQ actually, to help support the local VA, but I’m not exactly sure where would be the best place to set something like that up,” he replied. 

You knew exactly where to send him. There was a perfect location you often recommended for huge family reunions, outdoor wedding receptions, and concerts. But as you looked down at the desk for the correct application form you saw the huge pile of pages still left unread taunting you and you got an idea, “Why don’t I give you a tour of a few different locations to help you make your decision?” 

“That’s a service you offer here?”

“We aim to please” you said, desperate for an excuse to get out of the office. 

Will hesitated as he fiddled with his keys for a moment. 

“I could drive if you like,” he offered.

You smiled as professionally as you could, trying to contain your glee. 

“Thank you, let me just check out with my boss and I’ll be right back” you darted away before you could blow your composure. 

You stuck your head into your boss’ office. “Hey, I’m stepping away from the desk. Some guy is insisting I help him pick a park location for his permit request. I’m on my cell if there’s an emergency” you said, not stopping to hear their response before darting off. 

You grabbed your coffee off the desk and landed in front of Will. “Ready,” you said as he smiled warmly at you. He held the door open for you as you left the office, and your boring afternoon, behind.

He led you to his truck in the parking lot and held open the passenger door for you which made your heart flutter though you tried to control it and you reminded yourself that this was a professional outing, not a date. 

He climbed into the cab beside you and started the truck before he turned to you and asked, “Where to?”

You gave him directions to a park you know wouldn’t work, but it did have a couple of soccer fields, and you wanted to check the nets there for holes and figured you could push your luck a bit more today. 

He pulled into the park parking lot and looked around with a slight purse of his lips and a furrow in his brow. He cleared his throat before asking, “I did explain it was a BBQ, right? I don’t really see a place for that,”. 

You suddenly felt guilty, thinking he probably had somewhere else to be today and you derailed him for your own selfish reasons. “I’m sorry, I’m keeping you. I just had to get out of the office, and I took advantage of you. If you’ve got somewhere to be, leave me here with your information and I’ll get everything arranged for you at the perfect place,” you said, avoiding eye contact.

To your surprise he smiled at you, “You should’ve said, I’ve got nothing going on this afternoon, I can help you play hooky.” 

You smiled back at him, relieved that he was on board with your scheme. 

Will watched as you inspected the soccer nets for tears and he felt a warmth in his chest he hadn’t since his fiancee, who had left him after the incident at the Publix. You were really nice and he could tell you were passionate about your job, at least parts of it, especially hearing you explain exactly what your job was while he drove you both to this destination. Plus there was no denying that he found you incredibly attractive. 

You returned to his side at the edge of the field after completing your inspection. “Thanks for waiting, there’s a middle-school tournament here starting tomorrow and I wanted to make sure everything was set,” you said to him and he knew he was in trouble. 

“Ready for park number two?” you asked. 

He nodded and led you back to the truck. 

When you arrived at park number two, Will realized this had to be the place you intended for the permit and he was a bit disappointed. He had been hoping to stretch out his afternoon with you a little longer. Before he could ask if you needed a ride back to City Hall he heard you let go a soft, sad sigh. He looked at you but you were gazing out the front window at the park. 

“Is something wrong?” He asked. 

“I’m going to kill the guys in City Planning,” you muttered upset. 

Will tried to figure out what it was you were looking at, but he couldn’t see anything wrong with the park. It looked like the perfect place for a fundraising BBQ. 

You turned to Will hopeful, “Do you have tools in this truck, or is it just for show?”

He smiled at your joke, “I’ve got a box in the back. What’s the problem?”

You gestured to a park bench, “City Planning keeps installing anti-homeless architecture in my parks and I’m not going to let them get away with it,” you said with a sly smile. 

Will knows for sure now that he definitely has a crush on you. He gets out of the truck and grabs his modest tool box from the bed and follows you over to the bench. He sees a metal arm rest in the middle of the bench, obviously installed to ensure no one lays across it. He checks the back to see how it’s attached and scoffs at the simple way it’s been bolted in and opens his tool kit. 

“Am I going to get arrested for this?” He jokes as he gets to work. 

You laugh, “You’re with me, I’ll protect you”. 

You smile at this; you could get used to the idea of having his back. He gets the bar free and you take it from him. He gestures to another bench a few steps away and he gets to work on liberating that bench too. You happily follow him as you ask, “So, you work for the VA?”

“Yeah, I mostly just run my mouth though,” he grunted as he loosened the much tighter bolt on the second bench. 

“Were you military?”

“Yeah,” He rolls up his sleeve and shows you a tattoo on his forearm, “Delta Force”. 

“But you’re retired now?”

“Something like that,”.

“Aren’t you a bit young to be retired?”

He paused and handed you the second detached metal arm. 

You felt self conscious, maybe you were being rude? “Sorry, it’s none of my business,” You said nervously. 

He shook his head, “You’re fine. It’s just not something I’m necessarily proud of though”. 

“You don’t have to explain, it’s none of my business,” You said, as you led the way to the third bench. 

“I had some trouble, and I was told my services were no longer needed in the field,” he explained getting to work on the third arm, “But I found a way to be useful, stay involved”. 

You nodded, “That couldn’t have been easy,”.

He shook his head, “There are good days, and bad days,” and he handed you the third arm. 

He looked around and didn’t see any more pieces of hostile architecture so he turned to you, “Do you need a ride back to City Hall?”

You looked at him and felt bold. “This is obviously the best park for your event, but if you’ve got nowhere to be, did you want to make one more stop and see my favorite park?”

He smiled at you and nodded his head. You led the way back to his truck where he put his tools away and took the arms from you and dumped them in the bed. 

“I can’t wait to drop those off at the City Planning office tomorrow,” you giggled triumphantly. 

You and Will loaded up into the truck and you directed him out of the parking lot. 

Park number 3 was your favorite place in the entire world, though to be fair you hadn’t actually travelled much so you couldn’t really compare it to anywhere else, but still. To you the lakeside beach next to the tree covered green grass was a slice of heaven. You’d go there on the weekends with a podcast lined up or an old book and spend the whole afternoon on a bench with a coffee and some fresh air. 

When Will pulled into the parking lot, you suddenly got nervous. You had lost some of your earlier boldness that suggested you open yourself up like this to a man you just met. But there was something about him, a warmth and a vulnerability that made you want him to know you, and you to know him. 

You both got out of the truck and the sun was starting to get low in the sky as you walked him to a bench that bordered the beach and the grass. You took a seat and he sat next to you, your thighs gently brushing. The contact sent a shiver down your spine that had nothing to do with the cool breeze that brushed through the leaves above your head. 

Will looked out across the lake and around the park. He felt the warmth of your leg against his and the urge to lean over and brush your cheek with his thumb nearly overwhelmed him. You were so close, it would be so easily for him to just kiss you. But he wasn’t sure you’d want that. You wanted to play hooky from work, and share your love of the parks. He couldn’t let himself think that your enthusiasm for the day had anything to do with him. Instead of holding you under his arm and against his chest, he folded in on himself and looked at you.

He was about to ask what you were thinking about when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and noticed Benny’s name on the caller ID and cursed under his breath. “I’m so sorry,” he said to you as he answered, “I’ve got to take this.”

He stands and walks a few paces away and you watch him leave, disappointed. You thought maybe he was about to ask you on a date, and tried not to let yourself be too upset that he didn’t. You watch as he rubbed his forehead and shook his head as he talked on the phone to someone you couldn’t hear and didn’t know. 

He hung up the phone and turned to look at you, and you turned away, a little embarrassed to have been caught staring at him. He walks back to you on the bench but doesn’t sit down again. 

“Thank you for showing me this place, it’s beautiful,” he said softly and his sweet voice drew your gaze to his lips as he spoke. You felt the electricity surge between you all the way through to the tips of your fingers and your toes. “I hadn’t realized how late it’s gotten, I’m supposed to be at the gym, training my brother,” he explained. 

You nodded and stood up next to him, so close you had to look up to meet his eyes. “That’s fine, I can call an Uber or something back to City Hall” and you pulled out your phone. 

He put his hand on your arm, “Don’t be silly, I’ll take you back. Plus gotta make sure those city planning guys get their gift.”

Your breath hitched when he touched you and you couldn’t contain your smile as you nodded. “Are you sure? I’ve already taken so much of your time” you said, unable to tear your eyes from his. 

“I want to”.

He walks you back to the truck and opens your door for you again and you hop in both flustered and excited. 

The drive back to City Hall is more quiet than you’ve been all day. Your previous trips were full of chit chat about sports and books and random small talk. Now all that existed in the truck was the electricity and tension between you. You wondered if he felt it too, or if the surprising infatuation was a one-sided affair. 

Will gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles went white. He had spent most the afternoon with you and he failed to buck up the courage to ask you out. You took him to your favorite place and basically hand wrapped a romantic moment, and he blew it. He didn’t know if you noticed the potential romance of the location, or if you intended to entice him so completely, but you had. And he blew his shot. 

Back at City Hall he handed you the metal arms from your adventure and you stayed by the truck. You were hoping he’d ask you out before he left. 

“Thanks for the ride, and the impromptu bench liberation, and the excuse to get out of the office,” you said with a smile, lingering longer than you needed to. 

He smiled back, maybe he could ask you now and he could still pull off the romantic gesture. “I had a great day, which I hadn’t actually expected when I went in earlier looking to fill out boring paperwork,” he said leaning unconsciously closer to you. 

He took a deep breath, ready to ask - when his cell phone rang again. He silenced it and tried again, “Hey-“ and the phone rang again and he answered it. “I’m on my way, asshole. Start with cardio,” he said, frustrated, “you don’t need me for that”.

He hung up and looked at you embarrassed by his outburst, absolutely believing that he had blown it for sure now. But you just looked at him amused, not annoyed. 

“Friend of yours?” you asked, stifling a laugh. 

“My baby brother. He’s a fighter and I’m his trainer, which I do for free by the way, but he loves to act like he’s my boss”, he explained. 

“Sounds like a character.”

“He is something that’s for sure. He’s also really special, really talented. He deserves a better lot than what he’s got”, Will's voice trailed off as he thought bitterly about how Benny left service when he did and the guilt he carried, unspoken, about that ever since. 

Will leaned back, “Do you need a walk to your car?”

“I’m alright, thank you. I better head back up to the office first anyway. Thanks again for today. Maybe I’ll see you around”, you forced a smile, abandoning all hope of a date and retreating into the building. 

Will kicked himself mentally all the way to the gym. When he got there he was in a bad mood. 

“Finally!” Benny shouted at him when he walked in.

“I have a life outside of you, you know that right?” Will spit towards Benny.

“Fuck’s wrong with you?” Benny asked.

“I told you I was on my way, what was so important that you had to call me again and nag me?” Will asked.

“You’re never late, I was worried,” Benny admitted. 

Will paused. He hasn’t thought of it like that. He was never late, it was so unlike him. It was actually kinda nice Benny worried, even if he was an ass about it.

“Well I’m here now, let’s get to it”, Will shrugged and he climbed into the ring opposite Benny. 

After training they grabbed some food together. After scarfing down most of his meal without breathing, Benny asked Will, “Why were you late? You didn’t say.”

Will cleared his throat, “I was trying to get a park permit for the VA BBQ”.

“I thought you did that right after lunch?”

“It took longer than expected,” Will said vaguely. 

Benny squinted his eyes at his older brother until the metaphorical lightbulb went off. “Oh shit!” he said, “You were with a girl! Fuck, I never would’ve called you away if I knew, you’ve been alone for so long!” 

Will threw his used napkin at his taunting brother, “Fuck off.”

“Seriously,” Benny said, not laughing anymore, “I hope I didn’t blow it for you, I want you to be happy.”

Will sighed, “I didn’t get her number, and I didn’t ask her out.”

Benny gave him a sympathetic smile, “At least you got the permit for the event.”

Will pinched the bridge of his nose, “Fuck, I completely forgot to actually get the permit.”

Benny smirked at him. “You know what that means, right?”

“No,” Will groaned. 

“You gotta go back and see her tomorrow.”

Will leaned back in his chair, his mood dramatically improved. 

The next morning you dragged yourself out of bed after your third alarm and skipped yoga, just not in the mood. You hoped stopping at Starbucks would get you out of your funk, but even your favorite coffee didn’t have its usual effect. You felt so stupid for feeling like this today. You literally knew Will Miller for all of one afternoon, it shouldn’t ruin your whole week that he didn’t ask you out. 

You walked into the office ready to be grumpy for the rest of the day when you noticed Will stand up from the chair in which he was sitting. 

Will had been waiting for you since the office opened. He was there long enough to wonder if what he was doing was creepy or sweet. The longer he waited, the worse he felt about his plan. Though once he saw you, his resolve formed and he stood to greet you. Any insecurity he had melted away when he saw how you smiled at him when you noticed him there. 

“Hey,” he started, finding his voice. 

“Hey,” you replied, breathless. 

“I never did fill out a permit yesterday, I got distracted by someone way more interesting than paperwork,” he said, unable to contain a grin. 

You felt something deep in your center as you too failed to contain a beaming smile. 

“I can help you with that,” you walked behind the permit desk and he met you on the other side. 

You handed him the paperwork and helped him fill everything out. The entire time neither of you could contain your ear splitting smiles. When he finished you stamped his form and returned his copy. 

“You’re all set, Mr. Miller,” you said, “Will there be anything else?”

He looked you the eye, “Are you free Friday night? I’d love to take you out.”

You nodded eagerly, “I’d like that.”

PART 2 

[boognish-worshipper]

Midnight City AU

it took me forever to decide where to go with this chapter and i was literally getting fed up editing it 😭 i’ve been so busy with all the chaos goin on in my life rn too so yeah writing’s been feeling delayed over all but i decided to just finalize this one for rn and uhhh sorry if it seems funky or shortttt

//Chapter 3: Vanished

The next day, Trevor went back to Sterling Lake Park, after spending the night at Wade’s. He agreed to meet up with him there later, walking around the park with his earbuds in. As he threw himself down on his usual bench, he settled on listening to his usual playlist of his favorite songs. He scrolled through nosedivr once again, taking a photo of the lake. It was foggy, and the thick air sat atop the water. He liked when it was like that. A sturdy drumbeat thumped in his ears, making him feel whole. He paused it briefly, just to change it to a different song that was even louder, but with the lack of music he could now hear the crunch of gravel not too far away. He thought he told Wade to come later on? He looked up from his phone, pulling out an earbud. It was the guy from yesterday.

“Hey.”

“Hello.”

“Where’s Amanda?” He asked, glancing around.

“Uhh she’s.. not here today. I kinda came to see if you were here. I wanna get to know more people at this park if I’m gonna hang ‘round here more I guess.”

“But she doesn’t like me?”

“She don’t gotta know.”

“Well aren’t you Boyfriend of the Year.”

“Oh uh, we aren’t dating yet.”

“Thought she was your girl though.”

“She is, she is. But it’s nothing serious. Not yet. And I don’t know what happened between you guys but you don’t seem that bad, so if I wanna talk to you that’s more of a her problem than me.”

“Huh.”

Today Michael wore an eCola shirt, which was obviously made to resemble their old logo, with blue jeans. He had on a pair of red sneakers this time to match the color of the shirt. They looked slightly newer, compared to the pair he wore yesterday. He dressed nice for such a basic style. Trevor on the other hand, threw on an old, frayed Love Fist t-shirt, and messy jeans. He wore a different pair of boots, some kind of knockoff of a popular name brand. A pair of purple lensed circular glasses sat on his head, the nose pieces caught in his hair.

“So.. uh. Mind if I sit there?”

“Not like I own the bench or anything, go right ahead.”

He cautiously sat next to Trevor, hands in his lap. Trevor started one of his other playlists up again, settling on a mix of Paramore and Green Day. He left an earbud out, just so he wouldn’t be completely rude. He mindlessly scrolled, occasionally looking back at the lake or casting a sideways glance at Michael, who was looking at him funny. Sighing, he paused his music, putting his earbuds away.

“What.”

“I.. nothin’ man. I just, I dunno. What is the point of coming here?”

“It’s a public fuckin’ park man.”

“I know, but you said that you don’t even really like the people here, so what’s the point?”

“There is no ‘point’ to it. I just like time to myself is all. These guys don’t bother me, and I don’t bother them. They only start trouble when they see fit.”

“Ah… I see? What were you listening to by the way?”

Trevor stifled a groan, not really wanting to talk to the guy when he had time to freely plot his scheme.

“Pop punk shit. Ever heard of it?”

“Uh, no? I thought punk wasn’t supposed to be popular. Or fit in. Or whatever.”

“That’s merely the ideology, which I do follow, dear Michael. I just like the sound I guess. You know Paramore?”

“Not really. I don’t listen to that stuff much.”

“Then what the fuck do you listen to?”

“Not sure if it has a genre per say, but I like that song Radioactive goin’ around? Songs that sound like that I guess.”

“You like Imagine Dragons?”

“That’s what they’re called?”

Trevor could only stare at him. Was this guy living under a rock?

“Uh.. yeah. Y’know what- never mind, what else do you listen to?”

“80s music?”

No wonder this guy was unaware of who’s popular now.

“Amanda’s been trying to get me into groups like the 1975. I actually kinda like them.”

Trevor rolled his eyes.

“Of course she did.”

“They’re not that bad to be honest. She likes that weird alternative shit.”

“Yeah, I know. By the way, there is a name for that genre. Indie rock. Can’t stand the stuff.”

“How come?”

“You know, you ask a lotta fuckin’ questions.”

“I’m just tryna understand this shit here. I ain’t in the loop of all these trends.”

“Well, for your information I just find the style to be too slow and whiny for my taste. I like fast, upbeat, wild stuff.”

“Any recommendations then? I wanna impress Amanda by at least knowing one artist off that nosedivr thing she goes on.”

He raised a brow, not really wanting to share anything else knowing he would just repeat it back to her, but he shrugged and continued.

“Alright. Besides pop punk, I like experimental songs. Underground groups. Crystal Castles are my favorite.”

“Never heard of ‘em.”

“Wouldn’t expect you to.”

“Right.”

“If you want more indie rock shit though, I suggest listening to I don’t know, the Arctic Monkeys? That seems more like her taste.”

“These bands have such weird names.”

“I think bands have always been like that.”

“Hey wait a sec, I thought you didn’t like that stuff? How do you know the name of one of those groups?”

“Ugh… I guess I might as well say it if you’re gonna get with her, but we were friends at some point. She introduced me to those bands, but even then I didn’t really like it. We had a stupid falling out I’d rather not get into.”

“Oh.. sorry.”

“Eh, don’t be. Shit happens. You definitely seem like her type though, no wonder she got with you.”

“What’s her type?”

“Heh. As if I’d tell you.” He scoffed.

“C’mon man, please?”

“Nope.”

Michael frowned, slumping in his seat.

“Fine. Whatever. Not like I need to know.”

“You could at least pretend you don’t care.”

“I don’t.”

“You clearly do, bro.”

He sat arms crossed, turning a smidge away from Trevor. This was his opportunity to listen to his tunes again, but before he could Michael spoke up.

“Can I… can I listen to whatever you’re listening to?”

“Huh?”

“I wanna hear what you’re into.”

Trevor shot him a puzzled look.

“Uh.. okay.”

Wiping off an earbud, he handed one to Michael. He already had one in.

“Pick your poison cowboy.”

“Cowboy?”

“Just a nickname I give people.” He shrugged.

Michael settled on his experimental music, actually nodding along to the sound. They were closer than a minute ago, and it made Trevor uncomfortable for whatever reason. Maybe because he was never in such close proximity to strangers, but the other part of him didn’t care that much. Michael’s eyes were closed, smiling.

“You like it?”

“Yeah! Reminds me of synth stuff from the 80s, just more modern I guess.”

He smiled back at Michael, appreciating the fact there was someone else who liked the music he liked. The two listened to a couple different playlists he had, up until the moment Wade arrived at the park.

“Trevor! Hey!”

“Woah. Who’s your friend?”

“Hm?” He pulled out the single earbud, turning his head around. Wade had clown makeup on, making Trevor jump in his seat.

“Fucks sake. Hey Wade.”

“Ooh who’s this?”

He wasn’t sure if Wade freaked him out or not, seeing as the guy not only had matted locs, but many facial piercings as well. And the clown shit. He stood up to introduce them to one another.

“Wade, this is Michael. Michael, Wade.”

The way Michael looked at him was like a kid seeing a zoo animal for the first time. He looked bewildered, but not disgusted.

“Hi. What’s with the..?” He wavered a hand in Wade’s direction.

“Oh! It’s jus’ clown face. Not tryna scare ya or nothin’!”

“Uh huh… man. How have I never been around these parts? You guys are real different.”

“You got that right, Mike.”

“Seems like I’ve been missin’ out. I hangout with some dudes who would hate this place if I’m being honest.”

“I’ll have to meet ‘em sometime.” Trevor chuckled.

“They’re real cool guys. Didn’t expect our paths to cross, but anything’s possible in this fuckin’ city.”

“Oh yeah. Land of opportunities, for all types of wackjobs.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

A hand tapped Trevor on the shoulder.

“Uh, excuse me, Trevor, but are we still gonna talk about the Merryweather thingy-”

“Wade! Shut it-”

“What Merryweather thing?”

“Nothing, nothing. Not important.” He said, gritting his teeth, glare strong on Wade.

“Okay..”

“But you said we’d talk about it over icecream!”

“Later, Wade. Not right now.”

“Fiiine. Can we still get icecream though?”

“Sure. Promise. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay! Bye Trevor, bye stranger!”

Michael lifted a hand to haphazardly to wave goodbye.

“What was that about?”

“I told ya man, nothin’. Just going over some plans we’re making.”

“Is it about that special event being held there?”

“How you know about that?”

“Mandy told me.”

“Mandy… yeah. Figures as much.”

“She got an invite, and wants me to go as her plus one. I don’t know if I really wanna go though, I’m still pretty unfamiliar with all this.”

“Trust me, you don’t.”

“Seriously, what is your beef with those guys?”

“I told you, they start shit when they want. Taught ‘em a lesson and that was it. Nearly got me banned from this place, but it was kinda worth the looks on their faces.”

“You are.. quite peculiar y’know. Anyway, you mind showing more of that music? I was honestly gettin’ a kick outta it.”

“Uh, yeah.”

He sat back down next to Michael, handing him the same earbud as before. He clicked on one of his favorite Crystal Castles songs, Vanished. As they were listening, Michael furrowed his eyebrows.

“Hey wait a minute.. I think I’ve heard this before.”

“You have? I thought you didn’t know them.”

“No, I mean yeah I haven’t, but that’s not it. The lyrics. Vocals. I’ve heard them in a different song.”

“Oh.”

“Lemme think, lemme think, ah… I got it! Pass me your phone real quick.”

His fingers typed in the song title fast, pressing play right away. It was an indie rock song, much to Trevor’s dismay. But something stopped him from complaining, seeing how Michael’s face lit up.

“Yeah! This is it, Sex City by Van She. Y’know, I honestly think that’s neat.”

“What is?”

“The fact that a song you like, samples a song I like! Who would’ve guessed?” He said, eyes sparkling. Trevor didn’t notice how bright they were until now. The eye contact, along with the lack of space between them, made him feel stuffy again. He averted his eyes back to his phone, trying to loosen up a bit. As the song played, he savored in the sound, shocking himself a bit. The rock sound was there, but had an 80s sort of feel to it. The song finished before he knew it.

“So.. What’d ya think?”

“You know my thoughts on indie shit. Wasn’t for me, sorry.”

“Oh c’mon, you know you liked it.”

“Nope. Prefer Vanished.”

“Yeah, okay. Keep telling yourself that, but I honestly think they’re both really good. You think that too, I can feel it.”

“Whatever you say bro.”

He switched the song over to that Grimes song he listened to yesterday, the two of them sitting silently. It was a pleasant afternoon they shared. Suddenly Michael’s phone went off, and he yanked the earbud out.

“Ah shit. I gotta take this. Mandy.”

“Gotcha.”

Trevor grabbed the other earbud, putting it back in. He saw Michael wave his free hand around, looking close to hurling his phone right into the lake. Trevor assumed he must’ve been shouting as well, from the way other people were looking at him. Hanging up not much later, he returned to the bench, as Trevor put his earbuds away.

“Fuckin’ Christ.”

“So.. how’d it go?”

“She’s finally not mad at me anymore, but demanded I go take her shopping now. I swear, she’s gonna clear out my bank account or something.”

“How? You guys aren’t even dating.”

“I know, but I just can’t say no to her.”

“Uh huh.”

“Look, I’m sorry to leave so suddenly, but I really gotta go before she goes back to being pissed at me. See ya around?”

“I’ll be here man.”

Michael stood up, storming away. Seemed like he had a short temper, huh? He wondered to himself how long he was gonna stick around, seeing how Amanda’s dating history was… an extensive list. He thought back to last night, when he had seen that post of them, remembering the fact that no guy stayed for longer than a week. It almost made him bummed, seeing as he only had Ron and Wade for friends. Lester too, but that was on rare occasion. Shit. The plans. What time was it?

“Ah, fuck me.” He muttered. How did he let the day go by so quick?

He shot a text to Wade, telling him to grab Ron and meet at some icecream place. He did promise Wade after all.

Ron ended up meeting them there a little bit later, apologizing profusely before Trevor told him to just sit down and shut up. He did just that, almost apologizing once more.

“Now, let’s get down to business. Who do we know that would help us sneak into that club to cause sheer utter mayhem?”

Ron raised his hand excitedly.

“I could get Floyd maybe-”

“Definite fuckin’ no. He would have a heart attack the minute he set foot in there.”

This was getting nowhere. He tossed his head back to look up at the sky. As he did, he saw a couple walking out of the icecream place.

“Oh fucking hell.”

Was this guy following him or something? He snapped his head forward, trying to be a little more hidden.

“What? Trevor what is it?”

“Shh! Keep your fucking voice down Ron!”

He made all three of them lower their heads as the couple walked away, peeking over his shoulder to make sure they were gone. As he did, he could’ve sworn he saw Michael looking back at him. The both of them turned away as quick as possible from the split second of eye contact.

“Trevor?” Ron repeated.

“It was nothing. Just thought I saw someone.”

“Ain’t that the Michael fella I met today?”

“Nope. Don’t think it is.”

“Are ya sure-”

“Pretty fucking positive. Now, back on topic.”

The next hour or so still went nowhere. Wade had gone through two servings of icecream, and Ron started to get restless. Trevor was just bored.

“Ughhh there has to be something we can do!”

“I don’t know what to tell you Trevor. We’ll find someone, soon. There’s enough time isn’t there?”

“Yeah, but I’m not waitin’ til the last possible fuckin’ second to get a guy to help us out here.”

“But we still have time.”

“If you fuckin’ say so Ron.”

The three of them called it a night, as Trevor tossed around the idea of possibly getting Michael involved in his head. On one hand he wanted to out of spite just to make Amanda and the other hipsters mad, and on the other he didn’t want to screw up whatever new friendship he had started with Michael. Ron did say they had time to find someone soon. They weren’t exactly in a rush, but he still wanted to make sure their plan was concrete. They all went back to Wade’s, Trevor deciding to take a walk along the beach. He threw on the same playlist from earlier, watching the sunset. As he walked, he didn’t pay much mind to where he was going, bumping into someone.

“Ah fuck, watch where you’re going-”

“Shit, sorry man-”

As they spun around from the collision, he realized exactly who he had run into.

“Trevor?”

What the fuck?

“What the fuck? Are you following me or something?”

“Huh?”

“This is the third time I’ve seen you today. What are you even doing here?”

“Uh, it’s a public fuckin’ beach man.” He said, mocking the comment Trevor had made earlier.

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Hey, I’m just tellin’ you how it is. I didn’t purposely search for you, hell I didn’t even know you lived this way.”

“I do. So make like a tree and fuck off.” He said bitterly.

“Woah, chill the fuck out. What’s your deal? I thought we were cool man.”

“I don’t like being followed.”

“I just told you I wasn’t!”

“It doesn’t exactly seem like it. You just so happen to look for me this morning, and just happen to go to the same icecream place I went, and then I find you here? I mean Jesus-”

“I’m telling you, it’s all purely coincidence.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Fuckin’ hell man..” He mumbled.

“Y’know, you’re as fuckin’ stubborn as Amanda is. I already told you-”

Trevor balled his fists, before jabbing a finger into Michael’s chest.

“Don’t fucking compare me to her.”

Michael threw his hands up defensively, not realizing he touched a nerve.

“Woah woah, easy dude. I didn’t think it was that bad between you guys.”

He exhaled loudly, unclenching his hands.

“It wasn’t. Isn’t. Just.. don’t compare me to her.”

Michael pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling hard himself.

“Look, I think you’re cool and all but you can’t flip out on me like that. I mean we are just getting to know each other y’know. I can’t have you wanting to bite my head off like that if I just so happen to keep running into you. I really am just trying to navigate the area better, so forgive me if I came off as some sorta fuckin’ stalker. Amanda went home and I had nothing better to do so I chose to walk over this way.”

“Hmph. Fine. Whatever.”

“So we good?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Now, since we’re already here why don’t we just hangout or something?”

Trevor folded his arms, trying to look like he didn’t want to spend another minute with him. It didn’t really work though, because he actually did want to talk to him more.

“If you insist.”

“Alrighty.”

The two of them started to head in the direction of the boardwalk, neither one speaking yet. After finding a bench to sit on as the sun sunk below the horizon, the silence was still there. This sort of thing was bizarre for both of them in different ways. Michael never really frequented these parts of LS, and Trevor never really hit it off with any kind of stranger. Ron and Wade were exceptions if anything, and he had known Lester for a while now. Yet there was something about this guy that didn’t make him feel like he was spending time with a stranger, even though he knew jack shit about him. He might as well try to make small talk.

“So I-”

“So uhh-”

They spoke over each other while trying to start up a conversation, making things feel a little more awkward.

“Shit sorry, you go first.”

“Nah nah you go.”

“Um. Okay. So.. tell me about yourself? We haven’t really talked about much besides music.”

“Yeah.. right. What do ya wanna know?”

“I just asked you to tell me about yourself, so it’s your job to decide what to say.”

Michael gave him a sardonic smile in response to that, partly because he wasn’t sure what to bring up about himself. It seemed like they were gonna be here a while if they wanted to say the most basic shit you say when getting to know someone.

“Well, I ain’t that interesting if you really need to know. I’m guessing you already know about my whole ‘affinity for the 80s’ thing, like the culture n shit that came from it. Real sick stuff.”

“If you say so.”

“Yeah. Anyway, if you really want to know plain shit about me though, I will tell ya that my favorite color’s blue.”

Trevor snickered at that.

“Pfft, seriously? We’re talking favorite colors now?”

“Hey man, you said you wanted to know more about me.”

“Uh yeah, but that’s so fuckin’ silly.”

“Maybe it is, but what about you? You got one?”

“Favorite color? You kiddin’?”

“I’m waiting..”

“Uh huh… I’ll give. Always liked the color red I guess. Like, in variety. Not picky about something as childish as that.”

“What’s childish about that?”

“Cuz only kids exchange that whole ‘oh what’s your favorite color?’ thing. It’s like if I were to ask you what your favorite dinosaur is.”

“Hmm.. I’d probably say a T-Rex.”

“Oh now you’re just pulling my dick. And no, I’m not telling you what mine is just because you did.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask you though. That was all you.”

“Mm… shut it.”

“You got one though?”

“I’m not telling you!”

“Ah ah, I didn’t ask which one, I asked if you had one.”

“Well I don’t, so knock it off.”

“That’s fair. I won’t push.”

They grew silent for the second time that night, before Trevor mumbled something under his breath.

“It’s a pterodactyl..”

“What was that?”

He forced a breath through his nose, acting annoyed.

“It’s a fuckin’ pterodactyl. That’s mine. Okay?”

“Hah, okay. Any reason why?”

“You’re so nosy.”

“You’re the one who started this conversation about getting to know each other man.”

“Ugh, I know that.” He said, lightly shoving his shoulder.

“I think it’s cool that they could fly and shit. I like flying.”

“You like flying?”

“Loved it.”

“Wait, you tellin’ me you fly? Like, planes and shit?”

Trevor winced at the words, regretting what he just said.

“I did.. at some point. Air Force shit. They said I was one of the best they’d seen in a while but I.. left. Sort of.”

“Then why’d you leave?”

“I didn’t exactly leave on my own accord. More or less got kicked out.”

“How come-”

“I don’t like talking about it. I know we’re opening up or whatever the fuck but that.. that’s still too soon for me to want to bring up. Especially to someone I barely know.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He said, even though it really wasn’t. It’s not like Michael knew though, he really wasn’t trying to prod in a bad way.

It was almost pitch black by the time their conversation got to that point, only distant streetlight and the nearby pier lighting up their surroundings. The whole mood had shifted, and both of them decided to just break it off there.

“Hey uh, I’ll probably see you tomorrow man. If I’m with Amanda I think I’ll just send a wave or something your way.”

“Got it. See ya.”

“Bye.”

Trevor stayed put, watching Michael leave as he turned down a random one way street. This guy was tripping him out and he couldn’t pin point why. It was getting late though, and walked off himself back to Wade’s. He’ll save that vexed question for another night.

//ahhhhhh i rlly did not know what i wanted to do with this….,,., sorry if this wasn’t as good as the first two !! i alrdy know i repeated a bunch of stuff in there and i feel like it got kinda sloppy so again, soz (including typos or whtevr)

but uhhhh anyway yeah i cut it off here bc i wanted to continue some of this shit in the next chapter ig lol,, more stuff to come soon god willing

[yoichichi]

Pretty People Supremacy Playlist 🖤

for my angel @1010andneji , I hope you love it 🖤

disclaimers: fem!reader, because this a request for someone with she/her pronouns, I believe the reader is referred to as she/her a few times, Kenma is aged up and this is based in him attending University just to be clear‼️

warning: it gets a little saucy in the make out department ?

gif not mine, credit to owner

a/n: ahhhhh!!! I’m sorry this took so long and I really hope you like it and you felt like it was worth the wait! Please let me know if you need me to change anything ‼️ i luv you bae 😔✊🏼 also thank you to my wife @ikigaitooru for helping me choose your matchup here! I was stuck between one other person but we ultimately decided on Kenma, we both believe he exhibits prime quiet himbo energy :) also I kind of went off and wrote a lot on this one 😶 sorry I think? Regardless, I hope you enjoy!!!

Relationship Headcannons

Ok so ultimately, I paired you together NOT just cause you thinks he’s pretty but I think you guys would be so good together!! Like you would be so good for him

You guys would balance each other out socially and just be the best pair to hang out with pleaseee

He knows he can be stupid and chaotic with you and you know you can let yourself wind down with him!!

Kenma CAN be blunt sometimes so I’m sure he’d have to catch onto your sensitivity at first, but he’d be so sincere if he ever accidentally said or did anything that made you feel some type of way

And once he is aware of your sensitivity he’s constantly reassuring you in little ways, not only that he understands and is trying to comfort you but just to reassure you he loves you, for example :

HAND SQUEEZES

I know some people have mentioned that he wouldn’t be into PDA but I disagree! It’s just not in the conventional let me be all over you types of PDA

I feel like it’s just not a big deal to him cause he’s like 🤨 what do I have to be embarrassed for?? This my mf baby and I’m gonna hold her hand if I want to ??

Like, I see him as a big hand holder frfr

He would just see it as such an easy way to be physically close to you and even if that’s just holding pinky’s he’s down!

It would also help him if he’s feeling anxious!

Like he’d fiddle with your hands and fingers if he’s feeling particularly antsy or nervous

OH

You guys are out and he wants to go in a different direction? He’s definitely bringing your hand to his lips to give a quick peck and pull you along

“C’mon, let’s look over here”

AND HES SO NONCHALANT ABOUT IT TOO LIKE HE JUST DOESNT QUITE REALIZE THE EFFECT HE HAS ON YOU WHEN HE DOES THAT (he totally does but he likes to be slick and act like he doesn’t 🙄)

He would also DEFINITELY let you play with his hands if you’re nervous or bored or whatever reason honestly, he’d find it soothing and knows it occupies you or fills a need (and you get to look at pretty Kenma hands c’mon now)

ANYWAYS there are other little ways he’d reassure you too besides hand squeezes and holding

Definitely the type to leave you little notes in places for you to find them and they’d always say such simple things like “hi- kenma <3” LMAOOOO PLS HES TRYING HIS BEST

I think the final biggest way he’d love to reassure you would be words of affirmation (this is definitely a private thing)

I think he’d still deliver them in a blunt manner but that’s how you know he’s sincere!

You two would just be chilling at his place and you’d do something simple like, ask how much water he’s drank today or play with his hair and tell him he shouldn’t overwork himself and he’d just look at you so seriously and be like, “I really appreciate you, you know that?”

And it’d be sort of deadpan but like !!!

And he’d just kiss your hand after - always the palm - and then he’d just press his cheek into your hand before kissing it one more time and moving on like that literally just didn’t happen KENMA KING OF HAND KISSES

Okok moving on before I get stuck on his hands again anskdkdksiaj

So we don’t talk about himbo Kenma enough!!!! Like ok

He’s NOT big and ripped like ya know Bokuto and he seems super smart but I’m telling you this man is a quiet clueless himbo ‼️

You can’t tell me you’d be talking on and on about biology or something and he’d just have this little lost look in his eye while he’s nodding along and smiling softly listening to you talk and you’re like ,,??

“Wait, do you even understand what I’m saying?”

And he’d really just be like no :)

“but your eyes are really pretty and I like watching your lips move while you talk :) (this man is also a king of innocent flirting and you can’t tell me otherwise!!!)

OMG and if you’re even the slightest bit flustered by his comment he WILL notice and he’ll do his best to hide his sly little smile and just grab one of your hands and squeeze it and be like, “keep going, I’m listening”

KENMA HIMBO NATION RISE

Ok ALSO you two would literally just be such a pretty couple? Just like so pleasing to look at????? Like you’re both so pretty it’s unfair! And your style OMG

Like you’re just so soft like the epitome of 🦋✨👼☁️☺️ girl and 🎮🎱🖤👾🌙 boy ykwim???

and his long hair PLS Kenma man bun supremacy 🙌🏼

I can’t stress enough how pretty you two would be it would just make sense seeing you two together ugh

UGH you dying Kenmas hair for him?? And he’d just sit cross legged in a chair while you do it and he keeps leaning and moving to wherever you are around him cause your hands are in his hair and it’s so soothing!! What’s he supposed to do??

“Kenma, stay still you’re gonna bet bleach on my shirt!”

“But didn’t you wear that in case bleach did get on it?”

“Kenma-“

“I’m just saying if that’s the case then I don’t understand why I can’t hug you while you bleach my hair? 🤨”

“😐”

“Ok so-“

“Kenma.”

“😒”

Yeah queue pouty Kenma acting indifferent 🙄✋🏼

Just give him a kiss on his nose and he’ll get over it even though he’ll feign his grumpiness to get treated like a baby a little bit longer

UGH PLS I GOTTA STOP I COULD GO ON FOREVER

Bottom line, Kenma’s your quiet little himbo and you’re his loud soft girlfriend, and it’s one of the most adorable things ever

Ok, so we’re finally to what you came for LMAO, your playlist!

OKOK so similar to the first one I made, there’s no theme besides music taste so I tried to make this like a soundtrack of your guys relationship if that makes sense?

I really hope you enjoy and please let me know if you need any changes or would like to be paired up with someone else 🖤‼️ Without further ado, your songs and explanations!

1. Siren - Kailee Morgue: ok I think this one still kind of fits the vibe you’re looking for but you can’t tell me Kenma didn’t see you as some bewitching vixen who’s caught his attention LMAO like he’s just like 👁👄👁 she’s so pretty and entrancing help me! and he’d try to be like haha I’m cool I’m cool I’m fine 😎🥴😎 but it’s so obvious he likes you too (you’d kind of be able to tell with the way he looks at you and how it took so long for the blush to leave his neck and ears whenever he’d talk to you) but he just really decides he has no choice in the matter, he wants you so bad LMAO

2. Juice - iyla: more off the first one, the way you just appeared into Kenmas life LMAO like he saw you and just ���🥴😍‼️ and once he started to feel real feelings he’d be so 🏃‍♂️💨 WHERE THE FUCK DID SHE COME FROM??? But he wants you so BAD he can’t do anything about it, and now not only does he just want you 😳 but he wants you and he wants to be yours , pls he has it hard

3. See You Again (feat. Kali Uchis) - Tyler, The Creator: ok this is like THE song to your guys relationship just UGH I know you two would have such pining. Kenma would DEFINITELY be nervous to even talk to you at first cause he’s definitely like 🥴 she’s prettt hhng and he’s so shy and you just have such HEART EYES over him and you don’t even hide it that well LMAO (“it’s them rose colored cheeks yeah it’s them dirt colored eyes 😔😩”- u @ him) and it just makes him so NERVOUS!! But you two would definitely dance around it for a bit like you’d just be so 😍‼️ He’s pretty and shy hehe I like him gimme gimme 😍 and he’d be so flustered by it at first until you guys FINALLY get over yourselves (when kenma stops being a baby LMAO) like you guys jus wanna kiss so bad and literally everyone’s like JUST FUCKING DO IT, SHIT it’s adorable really

4. Doves In The Wind (feat. Kendrick Lamar) - SZA: ok I know this song is kinda saucy an idk if it’s overplayed but listen YOU CANT TELL ME THIS ISNT KENMAS FUCKING ANTHEM!! like he jus absolutely jams to this song definitely a sza stan and loves playing vibey music like hers during his gaming sessions but like the way he would worship the ground you walk on and be like mf im HERS do not get it twisted, in no way does she belong to me buT THE WAY I BELONG TO HER WHEW ‼️

5. Moment - Victoria Monét: ok why do I feel like most of the songs I added on here are vaguely steamy LMAO but ok this song? Yeah whew 💨 this is definitely one of those songs that play while you two would be lazily making out with those little led lights on (you just know kenma has those) and you two would just be laying there and know this is one of those moments you guys are never gonna forget. Your hands are just roaming and caressing each other while your lips are locked and you guys are so breathless and it’s just wow, you guys must have manifested each other cause this moment is so perfect between you two. And even though it’s a little sloppy it’s so intimate and you both feel like you’re living in a dream. messy hair flushed Kenma whos breathing heavy? Yeah I think so

6. Deep Cuts - Healy: Kenma is always trying his hardest to be the best he can when he loves something. We know this we’ve all seen him and Tora when it comes to volleyball and the way he gets with Hinata. And this wouldn’t change when it comes to your guys relationship, he is constantly going to be putting in his best effort to get to know you better, be the best boyfriend he can be to you and make you feel as loved as he can. He’s memorized everything there is to know about you and sometimes he gets lost in that and it makes him insecure about himself from his overthinking (you can’t tell me he’s not a chronic overthinker) and he’d forget to just enjoy himself sometimes. Like Kenma stop stressing, you can relax when you hold her hand. But he’d reach this point with you when he’d probably be being a bit difficult and you’d just make him feel so loved. He had been overworking himself again, which you HATED. You could tell from the bags under his eyes and the way his hair was messily pulled back into a low bun and the way the neckline of his hoodie showed he wasn’t even wearing a shirt underneath. But it was date night!! So what if he was tired and overworked quality time is important to you!!! I mean, that’s what he’s thinking. But you would just pull him into a hug and kiss his forehead and start to undress into comfy clothes and he’d be so confused like ?? Uhm, date night?? And you’d just pull him to your shared bed by his sleeve and under the covers and into your arms while you just kissed the top of his head. You’d take his hair out of his bun and run your fingers through it getting rid of some of the tangles and just be so CARING to him. “Let’s just stay in, you’re tired and I’d rather lay with you while you get some sleep, we can always go out another time.” Yeah he’s in love that’s it ‼️ you make him feel like he’s exactly enough for you as he is and that’s all he wants pls tbis is so long and for what??? Like this could be a Drabble in itself??? Anyways

7. Easy - DaniLeigh: you guys are definitely an exclusive couple but you really show Kenma what it means to just take it slow and relax! After the date night (deep cuts) he knows it’s ok to just relax into your guys love and he doesn’t have to force or rush anything cause it all comes naturally. Secondly , the WAY THIS BOY MAKES YOU FEEL - he just always looks at you with these deep eyes that hold so much love and it makes you feel so exposed every time cause he just loves you so much and it’s so intense l. It makes your face heat up cause he so clearly thinks your perfect. Also, this just gives total late night ride vibes. Kenma would definitely be driving on the freeway and this song comes on and he just places his hand on your thigh while he’s driving and he’s humming along to this song and he can feel you staring at him so he just casts you a quick side glance and goes “hmmm?” And you’re like 👁👄👁 nothing (Kenma is the king of late night car ride music fr)

8. CPR - Summer Walker: ok I don’t even need to explain myself with this one, the song is so self explanatory! You just make each other feel so at home. Point blank ‼️ like Kenma will just think back like 😇 where would I be without this bitch the thought makes him truly sad and he likes to avoid it at all costs

9. Rain - Lucy Park: pls this song is so soft (I hope it fits the vibe ahhh!!) but this is just more of kenma being an absolute softy for you LMAO. He’s not very good at taking care of himself sometimes and you’re always there to be like 😡‼️ NO‼️ and it makes him so soft he can’t help it, it’s not that he does it on purpose cause that’s insane but the fact you know his limits when even he doesn’t sometimes blows his mind and he’s never felt more loved than in those moments (let’s bring up Deep Cuts again 🙄✋🏼 pls this boy just needs someone soft to put him in his place LOL)

10. moonlight - dhruv: ok but when Kenma knows he’s in love with you, he has to tell you. And what better way to tell you than, well, tell you. He’d definitely try to plan it in his head to be perfect like ok what’s her favorite place? Where’d we first meet? Should I tell her there? Should our song be playing in the background? Kenma, your himbo and over thinker tendencies are showing, just tell her already! It’d be early in the morning, and you two are making breakfast together while he’s listening to you ramble on about the recent events of your favorite show and he’s just smiling and nodding, doing his best to recall the other plot points that have happened. And you, distracted with your ranting, go to take a bite of your freshly made breakfast- which is still scalding hot. You IMMEDIATELY start panting and drop your fork, running over to the faucet and shoving your head under it doing your best to soothe your mouth with the cold water. And Kenma feels awful, but this is fucking hilarious. So sure he’s holding your hair back so you can really get that water but he’s dying in the process. Almost keeled over and gripping at his stomach type laughter and you’re swatting at him to no avail and he just can’t help himself, “oh, fuck I love you.” He said it between his gasps of air from laughing and didn’t even realize it. Not until you stood up fully with water still dripping off your chin just looking at him. This idiot immediately started apologizing like omg this isn’t how I wanted to say it ahhhh but you assure him this was perfect, and that you love him too (pls love this man he can’t help but love you too)

11. Easily - Bruno Major: does this count as angst? ok call back to Kenma being an overthinker who overworks himself and probably overlooks his own needs at times, there’s bound to be some tension between you two at times. You’re concerned about his health and he insists he’s fine but you know he’s not, and while I don’t ever see him blowing up on you I could see little arguments about his self-care habits. Sometimes he stays up too late, or he’s stressing himself over something that doesn’t need that much thought! Regardless, he knows you just love him and he does the same thing for you and he just needs to get better at not being so stubborn when it comes to taking care of himself. And he just hopes that you know he loves you and appreciates what you do for him even though it doesn’t seem like it all the time, and that hopefully you won’t give up on him.

12. Streets - Doja Cat: ok I added this one mainly for the vibes but like you can’t tell me Kenma isn’t pined over in university LMAO. Like he’s pretty and polite but also indifferent, mentally ill bitches eat that shit UP; and there’s PLENTY of those in university LMAO. And like you aren’t a toxic possessive person don’t worry but MAN he’s fighting these girls off with a stick at this point LMAO and he just doesn’t get it pls, like he’d definitely be the partner in an assignment who just comes prepared and is kind of quiet to a fault but is so nice and just gets his shit done. Would also offer a pencil if you forgot one and maybe I’m just a whore but that gets me everytime 😌

13. Kiss U Right Now - Duckwrth: ok mainly for the vibes but !!! You and Kenma in the kitchen cooking and this song comes on and he comes up behind you and turns you around and your faces are all close and he keeps singing “I think I wanna kiss u” and smirking but he’s just ghosting his lips over yours instead and moving his head back every time you try to kiss him and giggling before doing it all over again! giggly Kenma supremacy

14. Butterfly - UMI: ok we been talking about how much Kenma would be devoted to you, but like you wouldn’t be the same!!!! Kenma means so much to you and you do your best to show your care and all you wanna do is see him happy as much as he wants the same for you, omg you guys are so in love it’s gross 🤢

15. Pick Up Your Phone - Hojean: what more can I say!!! You guys just love each other and love spending as much time together as you can!! (I like ending these playlists with a really happy mood :) )

——————

Here it is! Thank you for being so patient and I really hope you like this! I always get nervous posting for my baby’s 🖤 love you cutie!

-🐇out

[soundsof71]

So, considering you are a passionate fan of music released in 1971, I feel justifiably obligated to ask you what you think of Buffy Sainte-Marie's 'She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina' album. 😂 (Also, it would make me beyond happy if you could post more about Buffy, my friend! Thank you! ❣)

Buffy Sainte-Marie + Crazy Horse - what’s not to love? LOL I confess that it was the Crazy Horse connection that caught my attention first. I had a general idea who Buffy was, had seen her on TV a few times, but I was a big Crazy Horse fan. News that they were her backing band for this album was easily enough for me to scoop it up.

They weren’t doing anything much with Neil Young in 1971 (other than this album, on which Neil also appeared!), but they had released a tasty solo album in February 71, produced by Jack Nitzsche (who also produced this, and would later marry Buffy), and featuring Ry Cooder (also featured here, although did not marry Buffy). 

(btw, the first place that Buffy, Ry, and Jack worked together was on the Nic Roeg film Performance, starring Mick Jagger. People obviously remember Mick in that, but musically, Buffy was the best part!) 

She Used To Wanna... also features Jesse Ed Davis, a Native American guitarist and singer who was a frequent “usual suspect” at these sort of “sure, invite everyone!” jam albums of the era, and played a prominent role at 1971′s biggest concert (at least in the US), The Concert for Bangladesh on August 1.

(I know you know  RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World, the documentary about indigenous music’s influence on rock and roll, which has chapters on both Buffy and Jesse Ed. I just watched it again recently, and love it! A reminder of Buffy’s pivotal role in classic rock history. Not mentioned in the film: she relentlessly championed the work of her fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, helping them get their first record deals.)

I haven’t listened to She Used To Wanna Be A Ballerina for a while, so I definitely need to do that, along with posting more pictures of Buffy.  (I can’t believe I’ve only posted two!) 

But I’ll tell you what still stands out to me about that record years later. “Smack Water Jack” is an underrated track from Carole King’s Tapestry that got a ton of airplay at the time. Quincy Jones did an instrumental cover as the title track for his terrific 1971 album, too, but it has somehow faded to obscurity since then. Buffy takes a playful trifle, and turns it into a powerful fable of men of color who explode into violence in response to the violence visited upon them, and self-satisfaction of whites in authority who answer their demands for better living conditions by killing them on the spot. 

No need for a trial when you can murder them in the streets, right? “You can't talk to a man when he don't wanna understand / And he don't wanna understand” hits different when Buffy sings it, and in 2020 for that matter. 

It’s also just a terrific performance whose combination of soul and rock and roll and driving piano in a sort of Old West-sounding context would have made this sound right at home on a record like Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection  or something by The Band. I’m limited to five video embeds per post so I can’t embed it here, so I'm linking instead: anyone who hasn’t heard this definitely needs to.

Her cover of Neil’s CSNY track “Helpless” has things I like even better than Neil’s original, including Merry Clayton standing in for CSN. Buffy’s version is more muscular (thanks again to Crazy Horse), and taps even more deeply into the isolation of the song that the star power of CSNY somewhat obscured. 

Buffy’s version also made a brief but memorable appearance in the 2018 film Hotel Artemis, starring Jodie Foster. A weird little movie that I loved maybe more than it deserved LOL but I recommend nonetheless:

I know that this album gets attention because of the unusual number of covers, including one by Leonard Cohen, and a cover of a cover that Leonard had made famous on top of that, called "Song of the French Partisan” (hers is the far superior version imo, a song of French resistance to Nazi occupation from the perspective of a woman hiding a resister), but there are a couple of standout originals too. 

I love the title of this record, and the title track is a delightful little stomper that playfully cautions against equating the intentions of grown women with the childhood fantasies they’ve grown out of. More Merry Clayton goodness here on backing vocals too. 

“Soldier Blue” is a powerful song first written for the 1970 film of the same name, billed at the time as “The most savage film in history” -- and maybe it was. It used the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre as a metaphor for Vietnam, and it's still shockingly brutal. It was the third-highest grossing movie in the UK in 1971, though, and the single became a top-10 hit for Buffy there. 

It didn’t do as well here, either the song or the movie. Perhaps not shockingly in retrospect, Soldier Blue was pulled from American theaters after a few days, the Vietnam metaphor not at all lost on the Nixon administration. 

As horrifying as it was, this is about when I was reading Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (first published in 1970), and Soldier Blue resonated with me in a whole lot of ways. Here’s the song in the opening credits of the movie.

I was also really struck by “Moratorium”, which is the story of “Universal Soldier” (from her 1963 debut, but a bigger hit for Donovan in 1965), coming from the opposite direction. In the earlier song, she blamed war on the soldiers who think that fighting is honorable, but here, she has empathizes with the young men, boys really in many cases, who’ve been lied to by their countries, their parents, and even their friends. They’re not vainglorious. They’ve been duped by people they trusted. 

(I don't think she takes enough into account how many men sign up to fight because they want to embrace and celebrate their worst, most violent impulses, which was of course an undercurrent of “Universal Soldier”, but I appreciate her empathy here. More than one thing is true at a time.)

Buffy goes even farther, though, calling on soldiers to support and validate demands for peace as explicitly supporting them, summed up in the unforgettable cry, "Fuck the war and bring our brothers home!" 

1971 was the peak of antiwar demonstrations in the US, with the biggest crowds ever seen in this country until the 2017 Women’s March. The May 1971 demonstrations pretty much shut down Washington, culminating with Vietnam Veterans Against The War throwing back their medals on the steps of the US Capitol, incredibly powerful stuff to see on TV in my formative years, and Buffy was right there in it. Anti-war songs were a cottage industry for sure, but nobody was writing with the nuance and empathy that Buffy was.

Here’s a 1972 performance of “Moratorium”, Buffy and a piano, and more emotionally bare than that:

There’s obviously lots more to say about Buffy, far outside the realm of protest music that was actually just a small part of her musical palette -- her pioneering experiments with electronic music, her educational philanthropy starting in her 20s, Sesame Street, you name it. Her commercial peak was still in front of her, and while I can’t say that this is my favorite of her records, it does have some of my favorite songs of hers, and 1971 and She Used to Wanna Be A Ballerina is definitely where I went from knowing who Buffy Sainte-Marie was to being a fan. 

I'll also note as I do now and again that while this blog started as an offshoot of a book on 1971 that I’d started but abandoned, I mostly listen to music released now. That’s always been my policy, including in 1971. When 1972 rolled up, I was mostly listening to music from 1972, music from ‘80 in ‘80, ‘91 in ‘91, 2018 in 2018, etc., to name just a few other favorites. (Plus The Beatles, okay? LOL I still listen to The Beatles every day. No apologies.) Honestly? It took me until 2011, in my fifties, when a whole bunch of 40th anniversary editions of 1971 albums got released all at once that made me think, “Wait a minute, this was maybe THE pivotal year in classic rock history!” 

So yeah, the historian in me dug into 1971, but even though I happened to be alive and enthralled by music in that year, what I’m doing here has nothing to do with nostalgia, or any idea that that was the *best* year in music, even if for the narrow slice of music that is classic rock, yeah, it absolutely is. For soul/R&B too, and for the explosion of women artists outside the even narrower confines of pop as well. This is not subject to debate. No year like it, before or since. It's just that classic rock is a such a narrow slice, and I like my slices wide. LOL Which is also why my blog has less and less 1971 content as I go along. 

While my general policy is that my favorite year for music is THIS year, this particular year hasn’t left me as much energy as usual for listening to music. Some of it is These Trying Times™, some of it is my bipolarity and schizophrenia getting the better of me in waves, as is the way with these, uhm, things. (Keep taking those meds, kids!) I listen to music and post about the people making it as a creative act, not a passive or reflexive one, and I just haven’t felt as creative as usual.

(This is also has everything to do with why so many Asks have been piling up unanswered. I apologize if you’re one of the many kind and indulgent souls who’s gotten in touch, but I swear I’m gonna get to ‘em all!)

To get an idea of what I’m ACTUALLY passionate about right now, my “to be edited later” running list of 2020 favorites randomly added to a playlist as I encounter them, to be properly curated later, is at Spotify, cleverly entitled “2020″ -- 94% women, which is about right. LOL 

But since I do in fact listen to old stuff (by which I mean 2019 LOL), I made a list of mostly 2020 bangers from women rockers with some tasty treats from 2019 that I haven’t been able to let go of just yet, inspired by a post I saw at tumblr saying that punk music by women is just plain better (also beyond debate), called “Women Bangers: A Tumblr New Classics Jam”. I’ll be posting an essay with a YouTube playlist soon, because god forbid that I only talk briefly about anything LOL and most of these women need to be heard AND seen.

Like Buffy Sainte-Marie, whom you'll both see and hear more often on my blog soon. Thanks for the reminder! Always a pleasure to hear from you and be challenged by you. :-)

Peace, Tim 

[buttmano]

Hetaween: Day 1

Prompt: Autumn/Apples/Hot Chocolate

Summary: [France x Reader] A fun fall day is on the books for reader and Francis when the weather has finally turned chilly.

Word Count: 1,690

@hetaween-hetaliaevent (this is late im so sorry!!)

You were outside tending to some plants when you first felt it. A crisp breeze that made goosebumps appear on your skin. That tell-tale sign fall was beginning to arrive. It made you smile from ear to ear before quickly finishing what you were working on. The sun was still warm but every time the wind picked up you shivered slightly. Now that you were looking closer, some of the leaves were beginning to change colors, just further exciting you. After you finished you quickly cleaned up and without washing, you set out to find Francis wherever he was within the house you shared.

A few minutes of searching found him in the library reading, “Francis!”

At the sound of his name, the blond looked up and smiled at you, putting his bookmark in and closing his book, “Yes, dear?”

“It’s fall!”

“Is it? I thought it was still summer for a few more days…,” his voice was playful as he teased you, really only wanting to see the adorable pout that overtook your expression.

“Oh please, like days on a calendar actually mean anything to the weather? It feels like fall outside! And plus, it’s close enough, isn’t it?” your arms crossed over your chest and he laughed softly.

Francis stood up and crossed the room to pull you into a hug, he always was the physical affection sort, “I suppose you’re right. The apple orchard is opening tomorrow. And by the looks of the calendar… neither of us has anything going on. What say you and I spend a day doing fall things while it feels like fall?”

“Really?! Yeah of course!” Immediately your pout disappeared in favor of excitement, now you could barely wait for tomorrow to come. 

The rest of the day you pestered Francis about what else he was thinking about doing for your fall day out. He never planned anything small or simple. When you two went out you were going out for the day, not just a couple of hours. But, no matter how much you bugged him he wouldn’t divulge his plans to you, driving you further into curiosity. Your only other option was to suffer through the day and wake up with every inch of you consumed with anticipation. Francis tried to play it cool, simply telling you to dress comfortably and of course in your favorite fall sweater. He did the same and you had to admit, he looked best in cozy sweaters.

“So, where are we going?!”

“Patience, love. Perhaps we’ll start at the apple orchard?”

“Okay,” you didn’t have many other options other than agree, but you already knew you were going to the apple orchard, leaving that feeling of curiosity still coursing through you. Regardless, you weren’t going to let that get the better of you and ruin your date to the apple orchard.

Francis knew just how much you loved fall activities and nature, so the two combined were a sure-fire way to make your day. And seeing you smile was worth everything in the world to him. You two sang songs in the car together on your way, every time Francis forgot the lyrics made you laugh as he ad-libbed his way through the song. The orchard was roughly an hour away, giving you a good chance to look at the scenery, appreciating how much more it looked like fall out in the countryside. The trees were varying shades of oranges, reds, and even purples against the backdrop of green grass and a clear, blue sky.

When you finally arrived you got out of Francis’ unassuming SUV and stretched your legs a bit. The apple orchard was a mildly commercialized one, or at least, one that knew its audience. It boasted a corn maze, a cider mill, and even a pumpkin patch in one convenient location. Since you both only had a light breakfast it was easily decided you’d hit up the cider mill first, browsing through the endless apple-themed foods. You settled on an apple cider donut and pumpkin muffin with a glass of warm cider while Francis picked himself an apple fritter with an apple dumpling and glass of cider. The food was out of this world and almost literally the epitome of autumn flavor. You made a note to Francis that you’d have to stop on your way out to purchase a gallon (or two) or the cider to take home. And maybe a dozen of those doughnuts…

The trees that surrounded you in every direction were full of apples, some so ripe they already tumbled to the ground. You two busied yourselves with picking the red fruits, filling your barrel with them, and chatting gently about all the different things you could possibly make with the apples. The chilling breeze you felt yesterday intensified today, but you were far from caring, wrapped up in your favorite sweater while Francis’ arms surrounded your upper body. Warm was the only thing you could possibly feel in this moment as kisses were pressed gently to your cheeks, the full bushel of apples being dragged behind you both.

With the apples secured in the trunk, you wandered through the pumpkin patch and pointed out all the cute decorations they had hidden throughout. Hand in hand you walked, chatting about whatever came to mind. And when nothing came to mind the most comfortable silence washed over you two. Comfortable silence where you simply took the moment to appreciate the person standing next to you. Appreciating their presence, their mere existence, and the fact that they were there next to you instead of someone else. Never before you met Francis did you experience such a calming silence. It still felt a bit unreal that you could understand everything he wanted to say without him even speaking. The adoration he held for you shone brightly in his eyes and you only hoped yours did the same for him. Heaven knows you couldn’t live without this man now that you had him in your life.

Francis gladly bought you several pumpkins to help decorate the home you shared, even though you both knew it was too early for them to last until Halloween. The bottom line was you both just didn’t care. You felt the first breeze of fall which means Francis and you were in full-blown Fall Mode now. Pumpkins filled in the spaces around the apple bushel and you both joked that if you bought any more you’d have to strap pumpkins to the roof. Next, the corn maze. It was just a beginner, small corn maze so you guessed it wouldn’t take more than an hour to complete it. Boy, you couldn’t have been more wrong. The maze looked simple on the map you were given but when trying to figure it out in real life it was so much more difficult.

One wrong turn had you heading towards a dead end and it was all downhill from there. You couldn’t find yourself on the map therefore rending it useless. So, you resorted to just picking and guessing, only turning back when you hit a dead end. The failure didn’t get to you, both of you rationalizing that you wouldn’t have to worry about anything until it began to turn dark and you had quite a while until it would begin to do so. Two hours later, you finally found yourself sprinting for the exit in view, laughing all the way. Francis ran after you, easily keeping up and laughing himself, thankful to finally be free of the endless rows and rows of corn.

The apple orchard was explored to the fullest, both of you experiencing everything it had to offer you. Like you suggested earlier, you stopped and grabbed cider and donuts on your way out, having to place them in the back seats instead of the trunk thanks to the pumpkins and apples. When your butt made contact with the passenger seat exhaustion quickly overtook you as you realized just how tired you and your body was. The same look was faintly evident on Francis’ face as he started the car and played your favorite playlist. Sheesh, if he kept this up you were no doubt going to end up sleeping.

Sleep you did! You’re not quite sure how long you were sleeping, but when you woke up to Francis’ gentle coaxing, you found yourself in the parking lot of a quaint looking cafe.

“I thought we could get hot chocolate,” he smiled softly and you nodded, stretching in your seat to help you wake up.

The inside of the cafe was indeed quaint and relatively busy considering the small town it was located in. Francis led the way inside, choosing a booth towards the corner of the restaurant, giving you more privacy than most other tables had. When the waiter came over he ordered you both hot chocolate and a couple of slices of pie. Still, you were in a drowsy daze making you yawn and wait half impatiently for the warm cup of sweetness. Not even five minutes later and the large mugs were placed in front of you, your hands slinking around carefully to warm your palms.

“Did you enjoy today, my love?”

“Yes, of course! It can’t get any better than this!”

“I think it can.”

Your eyes met his as you raised an eyebrow, confused as to how the day could possibly get any better. Just what else did this man have up his sleeve for you? Hopefully, it wasn’t another maze… Instead of saying anything, Francis slipped his hand beneath the table, presumably rummaging around in his sweater pocket for something. When his hand emerged with a small box your eyes went wide, face immediately heating up.

“Darling, would you marry me?” his voice was gentle and quiet, most likely so the whole restaurant wouldn’t hear and then get involved.

Following that logic, you nodded, breathing out a ‘yes’ and allowing him to slip the elegant ring onto your finger. Leave it to Francis to make an amazing day even better than you possibly thought it could get.

[snowdice]

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 39]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. None edited chapters are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

Alright. Time to get a bit of studying done.

Arc II What We Do to Each Other

Chapter 16:

As it would turn out, Janus and Virgil did not get in trouble for hooking up the old phone to Virgil’s integrator, mostly because it wasn’t really a mistake on their part. The phone cleared all virus checks that the tech people both from the university and the TPI ran on it. The phone should have been clean and should not have caused an issue.

In fact, they were still trying to pin down the code on the general university server. They could tell that something was mucking about on the system but what or how was a mystery. This also meant that there was no telling what information had been compromised and considering how many things Silver Mountain had its hands in, that was… a bit worrying.

 Another worrying thing was there was suddenly more activity of late at the TPI. There were more time distortions popping up every day. Usually they would be few and far in between. There had been 3 total recorded the year before, but over 12 in the last week. Some of them were fake like the one Janus had investigated, but some of them were real. It painted a distressing picture and also was a drain on their resources. Khalid was actually looking to advertise positions to hire new recruits which was something she rarely did as she liked to keep appointments to the TPI in house.

 They’d even loosed the number of field agents needed for each mission and Janus and Remus had been splitting up just to get everything done. Today, he and Remus had thankfully only two missions scheduled for the day.

“Are we going together or separate today?” Janus asked Remus.

“Think they’ll burn me at the stake for being a witch if I go alone to either of them?” Remus asked.

“I don’t know. Probably. I think we’re getting a bit late into the 1700s for that in Cuba, but I have no idea about Mesopotamia.”

“Let’s just go together. I did not like almost drowning yesterday because I was the only stranger in town when the weather was going wonky.”

“Surely it isn’t because you opened your mouth. Ever.” Janus said dryly.

“How was I supposed to know he was the local clergyman’s son?”

 Janus rolled his eyes. “On second thought,” he said, pushing a button on his desk to choose Cuba as he next mission, and standing up. “I don’t want you coming with me.” Yet, he did not protest when Remus also signed up for the Cuba mission and he waited for him by the office door before going to talk to Rhi.

Rhi was a bit frazzled when which meant quite a bit as she was usually incredibly put together. Remus didn’t even seem inclined to tease her today.

“Okay,” she said once they’d closed the door behind them. She flipped through some documents on her desk. “Picani and Clockson. Camaguey Cuba 1755. Do you know Cuba?”

 “Uh,” Janus said. “Yeah?”

“Like you’re reading the things, right? I don’t have to babysit you, right? You got it? The Seven Year War was happening, but it won’t affect you much as it hasn’t really hit Cuba. It’s the middle of the Camaguey Carnival. Everyone will be everywhere and there will be chaos so as long as you don’t really fuck up you should be fine. Um…apparent races.” She looked up at them and studied them each for a moment as thought looking at them for the first time despite having known them for years. “It’ll work. Go to costuming.”

“Shouldn’t we…” Janus said, “sign things?”

 “…Yep,” she said, fiddling with her desktop and then sending documents over to their side to sign.

Janus and Remus both did before sending them back.

“Great. Good.” She stood and grabbed some things from behind her. “You can go.” She sat back down as they took their things and Janus noticed a message pop up on her desk. She looked up at Remus looking exhausted. “What?” she asked.

“Just open it,” Remus said.

Rhi tapped it and a photo opened.

“I got her a new mouse toy!” Remus said happily as Rhi looked at the picture of Diesel Fuel attacking a cloth mouse.

“That is… appreciated Agent Clockson,” Rhi said. “Now get out.”

 They did, leaving to get their costumes on and checked. Costuming was just as busy and frazzled as Rhi had been and they actually had to wait for decon because there’d been a mix up with the agents leaving before them. They landed in Cuba without issue. Janus could already hear the festival in full swing outside the small building they’d were in. Remy was standing there with a very not time appropriate mug of coffee.

“Sue me,” Remy said when Janus raised an eyebrow at it. “Please just… get in and out without causing trouble. Seriously. I don’t want to have to deal with that on top of everything else.”

 “We’ll do our best,” Janus assured.

Remy pulled his sunglasses down to look at him. He looked exhausted. “God please do more than your best.”

Janus nodded tightly. “We’ll be in and out,” he said, already glancing at his timepiece. It had been disguised as a golden bracelet which made it a bit harder to actually use, but wrist watches wouldn’t be invented for more than a century, so they’d have to make do. “The time distortion, if that’s what it is, should be in the middle of town. Let’s go.”

He and Remus exited the building onto the packed city street.

 Janus was immediately bombarded with all types of sights, sounds, and smells. There were many colorful articles of clothing and costumes as people went every which way along the street talking to other members of their community, playing instruments, and dancing. There was the sound of people speaking Spanish, still mostly almost pure Castilian Spanish with perhaps a bit of influence from Taino as the Haitian revolution had yet to push the Creole language over to Cuba. People must have been hard at work cooking different dishes for the carnival as many different spices wafted through the air. It was sticky hot considering it was the middle of June in the tropics and Janus was immediately sweating despite the temperature appropriate clothing he’d been outfitted with.

 He glanced around their immediate area, just scoping out the crowds. His eyes were immediately drawn to one person near them.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said out loud when he saw Pat. Remus looked in the direction Janus was.

Even if Janus didn’t recognize him the moment he laid eyes on him, he probably still would have ended up staring as he was the only person in the area who clearly did not know how to do the dance he was attempting.

Remus snorted and Janus shook his head in secondhand embarrassment. “Well, would you look whose boyfriend’s here,” he said to Janus. Make that firsthand embarrassment. “Has anyone told him the Mambo wasn’t invented until the 1900s and also that’s not how you do it?”

 Chapter 17

Pat stopped dancing the moment he saw Janus approaching him, but he still bobbed cheerfully ( and unrhythmically) to the music. “Hi Janus,” he said pleasantly.

“You just have to rub it in, huh?”

There was a flash of confusion across his face, but then he smiled. “Well, I know where in our relationship you are. How was France?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“You stole the phone,” he laughed.

“You stole the bomb,” Janus countered, “and you wanted me to steal the phone. You booby trapped it.”

“No,” Pat correct, putting a finger up. “We have security on my phone because in high school I once forgot it in the school locker room and long story short, the three of us ended up in a lake. So, then Lo made sure I always had some sort of tracker on it. When I started time traveling, he updated it and when I met you we updated it again in case there was ever an opportunity like that. Lo calls it using our weaknesses to our advantage.”

 “He’s a bastard too,” Janus growled.

Pat just laughed.

“Is someone talking about me?” Remus asked, stepping over to them. Janus rolled his eyes.

“Oh,” Pat said, blinking at Janus’s partner for a moment. “Remus.” He hesitated slightly. “How are you doing?”

“Me?” Remus asked. “Uh, I’m doing good. A little stressed out with work, but fine.”

“Good,” Pat said with just a little too much heartfulness to it.

“What?” Janus asked, eyes narrowed at Pat. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Pat asked. He met Janus’s eyes briefly and it made panic surge up Janus’s spine because the look Pat was sending him wasn’t one that said he was playing dumb. It was a warning.

 Oh, Janus did not like this. That look told Janus Pat had some foreknowledge that he absolutely could not tell Janus about without messing up the timeline spectacularly. This was why this mess the two of them were mixed up in was so bad, but it seemed Janus did not have much of a choice when it came to Pat.

Despite how bad of an idea he knew it was, he still wanted to push, because whatever Pat was hiding could be very, very bad and it had to do with Remus. There were so many reasons Pat could be acting like that around Remus, but the worst ones were definitely the ones on his mind. Death, injury, illness. They were all possible especially in their line of work and especially with how time was being screwed with right now. And Pat knew. He knew exactly what the answer was, and oh did Janus want to push.

Experience knowing what worse things could come out of having foreknowledge made Janus bite his tongue.

 “So, what are you two doing here,” Pat asked, and Janus unhappily let him change the subject.

“Oh, like you don’t know,” Janus replied.

“I don’t know,” Pat said innocently.

“There’s another time distortion,” Janus said, “and while you didn’t know what it was the last time I saw you, I’m pretty sure you do now.”

“Oh, I didn’t know there was a time distortion here. I can help you if you like,” he offered sweetly.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to see if I could find the Flying Dutchman,” Pat told him.

“And so you went to Camaguey?”

“Uh huh.”

“One of the farthest places from the ocean in Cuba?”

 “Is it?”

“I don’t trust you.”

Pat just shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want my help finding the time distortion, I’ll just be on my way then.”

“Wait,” he said when Pat went to turn away. Pat paused. Janus turned to Remus. “Remus, do you think he’s bullshitting me so I let him wander off and do whatever the hell he’s doing, or do you think he’s bullshitting me into letting him come with us.”

“Hmm,” Remus said, looking Pat up and down. Janus could immediately tell he wasn’t going to get any helpful answer. “Well, if we’re going with the how much do I get to see his, admittedly very sexy, ass criteria.” Janus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Letting him leave now means instant gratification and a nice full image when he turns away. However, letting him go with us means many more opportunities to get a glimpse, but they’d probably just be glimpses. So, yeah that’s a tough call.”

“You didn’t even bother to give me an actual hidden suggestion with that bullshit,” Janus groaned. He glanced at Pat only to see him hiding his very red face in his hands. Janus blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You got him, Remus.” Janus was surprised. He’d expected a bit more tenacity for someone with Pat’s personality. Of course, Janus was used to Remus, so that perhaps had some effect. Pat made a muffled distressed sound behind his hands and Janus raised an eyebrow. “You really got him.”

Pat flapped one hand around while still using the other to completely hide his face. “It’s just. His face. Saying that. Is weird.”

 Janus could not say that he didn’t feel a slight spark of joy at seeing Pat flustered. After all, Pat’s weapon of choice had often been flirting with Janus in the past. However, he still smacked Remus on the shoulder when it looked like he was about to continue with something likely far more inappropriate. “We are here for a reason,” he reminded. He turned to consider Pat and squinted at him. “You’re coming with us, I’ve decided. I don’t want to let you out of my sights. Don’t,” he said empathically turning to Remus as the man opened his mouth once more.

 Pat had mostly recovered, though his cheeks were just a bit pink still. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Where do we start?”

Janus glanced at his timepiece. “It’s not showing up on our trackers yet.”

“It messed with your tracker last time,” Pat pointed out.

“I know,” Janus said. “Which means it could be another fake one or whatever is causing it hasn’t started yet. If things start going wrong, but it still doesn’t show on our radar, it’s almost certainly a fake one, but some of the fake ones haven’t blocked our technology.”

“Here, I can check,” Pat said.

“Please don’t pull out an iPhone,” Janus begged.

 Pat stuck out his tongue at him, and then smiled. He reached for the bracelet on his wrist and twisted it back and forth a few times before pressing his palms together. He glanced around them quickly to make sure no one around them was watching and then peeled apart his palms like he was miming reading a book.

“What the fuck is that, and how do I get one?” Remus asked immediately. It was innocuous, whatever it was. If someone from this time caught a glimpse of the display, they’d likely assume it was a trick of the light, but staring right at it, Janus could tell it was a map of the surrounding areas with a softly glowing blue light marking their current location. Janus could see no screen or origin of a hologram. It looked like the image was drawn onto the man’s palms, but as he watched, the image shifted to zoom out.

 “There doesn’t seem to be anything major yet,” Pat said wiggling his fingers a bit. The display changed slightly to some sort of colorful overlay Janus did not understand. Pat hummed. “Did you two come from that building recently?” he asked nodding at it.

“Yes,” Janus replied. “How do you know?”

“There’s sometimes a slight temperature change when people time travel,” Pat explained. “I can read it on here.” He tilted his head. “There also seems to be a big enough temperature change in a church a few blocks away that could indicate time travel. Want to check it out?”

“We might as well,” Janus agreed.

“And if it’s nothing, we can get drunk on the communion wine!”

“He’s going to get immediately struck by lightning,” Janus said.

 Chapter 18

“If we see anyone,” Janus said as they entered the church. “You keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me? Remus, do you understand me?”

Remus immediately turned to Pat. “You know, I didn’t grow up Catholic,” he said to Pat who looked at him in confusion. “So the first time I ever entered a Catholic church, you can’t blame me for being a little confused about the whole cabinet thing with a wall between them. After all, everyone was singing about glory to god and what not. So I…”

Janus slapped him. “This is why you were almost burned at the stake yesterday.”

 “Excuse you,” Remus said, putting his hand over his heart. “I was almost drowned.”

“You were almost drowned?” Pat asked, his voice seeming legitimately distressed.

Remus shrugged a smile on his face that caused a Pavlovian migraine to start up behind Janus’s eyes. “It’s one of the hazards of the jobs, and really it would have all been worth it if I’d actually gotten to drown in that man’s…”

“We’re in a church!” Janus cut him off switching from Spanish to Swahili in the hopes that no random passersby would be able to understand him in this time and place. “Don’t talk about lewd sex things. Don’t talk about sex at all. It’s a Catholic church!”

 Remus continued to speak in Spanish with no regard for anything. “But not talking about lewd sex things takes away 3/4ths of my personality,” he pouted.

“More like 9/10th,” Janus grumbled, “and the other 1/10th is just normal stupid.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t be mean,” Pat scolded, in fucking English for some reason, “but Remus, honey, you probably shouldn’t be saying things like that right now.”

“No, no, he has a point,” Remus said switching to English.

“He’s my partner, I have the right to call him stupid,” Janus insisted.

“And I love you too!” Remus said in Greek because he was really, truly, stupid.

 Pat looked between the two, but then seemed to accept it, dropping the concerned expression for a slightly amused one. “If you say so.”

“Can I… help you?” A voice asked. All three of them whipped around to see a young boy looking at them and seeming very confused. Which was fair considering that to his ears, they’d just been speaking nonsense.

“We’re here to pray!” Remus claimed, then he turned to wink at Pat and said under his breath in Swahili, “to that ass.” Pat went immediately bright red again, which was doubtlessly Remus’s aim. Janus subtlety stepped on his foot while smiling at the boy.

 “Oh,” the boy said. “Okay.” Thankfully, he didn’t seem interested in questioning the random strangers in front of him further. “I’m going to go back to the celebration now.”

Janus smiled at him. “Have fun,” he said. He waited for the boy to leave through the front door before slapping Remus on the back of the head.

“Ow!” he whined sounding far too pained for how hard Janus had actually hit him.

Janus rolled his eyes. “Let’s just start investigating,” he said.

“Sure, sure, you never let me have any fun,” Remus said, pulling up his wrist and spinning the golden bracelets on his arm. “Hmm…” he said.

 “What?” asked Pat.

“Either I put on the wrong jewelry this morning… or my timepiece isn’t working.”

“Well, then I’m guessing we’re in the right place,” Janus said. He turned to Pat. “Your stuff still working?”

Pat brought up whatever device was on his hands. “Yeah,” he said, “and it looks like something is just starting.” Just as he said it, there was a violent crash of thunder.

“Well,” Janus said. “We should probably find the source and soon. Which way?”

Pat glanced around himself and then motioned with his wrist. Suddenly there was a 3D display of the church in front of them.

 Janus could see immediately where the problem had to originate. There was a swirling mass of some sort of energy centered at the top of the bell tower of the church. As he watched, he saw the picture of the church glitch out a bit. He had a bad feeling about that.

“Is there something wrong with your display?” he asked, or more hoped.

Pat shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so…” The room seemed to shift suddenly underneath their feet. It felt a bit like time travel, but also wrong. The picture on the display flickered harder, part of the building fracturing and dissolving before appearing back in place. The room settled after a moment, but Janus’s stomach did not.

 “Whatever is going on,” Janus said, “We need to stop it right now.”

Pat nodded. “The quickest way up would be that way,” Pat said pointing. The display closed as he did.

“Then, let’s go,” Janus said.

The world was eerily calm as they all started off in the direction Pat had pointed out. In fact, it was almost too quiet.

“Where’s the nearest window?” Janus asked when they came out on the second floor.

Pat glanced at his hand. “There should be a couple a few feet that way.” Janus nodded and left them standing there. When he glanced out of the first window he came to, it appeared to be night. Yet, when he walked to the next window, he saw daylight.

26606

“Time is fracturing,” Janus informed them. “We need to be careful.” This time distortion was much more intense than any of the other ones the agency had been tracking down over the last few months. It had also come on much faster. Usually there was some time between when the time distortion began and it started having extreme effects on the environment. He was suddenly very glad that he and Remus had not split up today. He was even glad for Pat’s company, no matter how aggravating he may be sometimes. Not to mention, he was glad for the man’s technology that seemed to circumvent whatever was blocking Janus and Remus’s timepieces.

He backed away from the windows and returned to the others.

“Whatever you do,” Janus said. “Don’t let anyone be in a room alone.”

“I know what time fractures are this time,” Pat promised.

“It was as much for the idiot as it was for you,” Janus said.

“You accidently bring a bubonic plague infested rat to 900BC one time and you never live it down.”

“I’d say I should put a leash on you, but you’d twist it into something disgusting.”

“Probably,” Remus agreed.

“Where next?” Janus asked, ignoring him.

“That way,” Pat said.

They walked together to the door he’d indicated. “Please don’t be bullshit,” Janus prayed. He opened the door and immediately got bowled over by a stream of salt water.

 Chapter 19

Janus landed flat on his back, a wave of water splashing over him and then quickly retreating, but still leaving him absolutely drenched. He sighed, looking at the ceiling. “Don’t,” he warned, “say a word.”

Of course, he was with the two most impossible people in all of space and time, so neither of them headed him.

“I thought you said we were far from the ocean, Jan,” Pat said.

“Yeah, Janny,” Remus immediately jumped on board because he was an asshole. “I thought we were far from the ocean!”

“Maybe I’ll achieve my goal of finding the Flying Dutchman after all!”

 “Ooo ghost pirates! I’ve never gotten to fight ghost pirates before. Any good with a sword Patty?”

“My friend has a sword and he let me use it before… but all I did was cut a hole in our couch, and then Lo was mad at us.”

“I mean… just pretend the pirates are a couch and we’ll be good!”

Janus slowly sat up. There was still water on the floor and every so often a wave would crash into the room as though the door frame signaled the edge of a beach. Pat reached down to offer him a hand up and Janus slapped it away.

 “Rude!” Pat claimed, but his eyes were alight with mischief.

Janus shoved himself to his feet on his own power.

“You deserve it,” he hissed. “For all of this!” he waved his arms around.

“Water you talking about. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You are on thin ice.”

He looked down at his feet with a contemplative expression. “Looks like water to me.”

“Arg!” Janus spat, throwing up his arms.

“I don’t sea why you’re screaming, Janus.”

“Yeah,” Remus contributed. “You seem overally emotional to me.”

“Yes, yes,” Pat replied. “Very em-ocean-al.”

“One may even say he’s pretty salty.”

“I know where you live, Remus,” Janus reminded.

 “Alright, alright Remus, reel it in,” Pat said.

Remus opened his mouth to respond, but Janus cut him off. “Why don’t the two of you dedicate all of that brain power to figuring out how to cross the literal ocean in the next room,” Janus suggested hotly.

And it was a literal ocean. If one ignored where they were and the fact that there was a staircase climbing out of said ocean about 80 or so meters away. There was sand being washed up across the door frame and a seagull flying in the distance. At least it looked like a nice day in the room with the way the sun was glinting off the water. At least it wasn’t storming there. Yet.

Janus’s head throbbed with the thought of what had to be happening with the time distortion to plop a piece of the ocean into one single room in a church. Usually they’d be calling the TPI for backup or at least for information, but that was a loss. Even if they tried to get out of range of whatever was disrupting their timepieces, time was so unstable, they’d very possibly get dumped somewhere dangerous. It was better to just get to the time distortion as quickly as possible and stop it.

 “Hmm,” Remus said. “I wonder how deep it is. Do you think there are man eating sharks in the water? Or giant jelly fish? Remember that one time I got stung by a jelly fish and almost died?”

“Yes,” Janus said, lips pursed, “and it was entirely your fault.”

“I just looked so squishy!” he declared, “I didn’t know it was a murder blob.”

“I think I have a boat,” Pat said.

They both turned to him. “What?” Janus asked. He was looking at his hands and just hummed in response to Janus’s question. The next thing he knew, Pat made some motion with his hand and a yellow raft started to autofill from his palm. “...Why?” Janus asked.

“I… recently started carrying a wilderness survival pack in my time device.”

 “I’m not going to question it. It’s better than swimming.” By the time the raft was completely deployed, they’d all been shoved into the walls by it.

“Huh, on second thought. I probably should have put the raft in the room before blowing it up.”

“You think?” asked Janus.

Pat glared at him over it. “I never really thought about how to open it in a narrow second floor corridor.”

“Just try to shove it through the door without popping it.”

“Why are you looking at me?!” asked Remus.

They managed to somehow squeeze the raft through the door into the other room after a few minutes.

 Pat squinted at the tottering raft he was holding to the door frame. “After you,” he offered.

Janus glared at him.

“You’re already soaked!” Pat defended himself.

Janus sighed and very carefully climbed into the raft. It tottered dangerously, but he didn’t immediately fall out, so that was a plus. The other two of them slowly also climbed onto the raft with him. They then sat in it for a few seconds. “Is there an oar?” Janus asked.

“Oh right!” Pat did something else with the device in his hands and an oar slowly unfolded from his hand.

“Seriously, I want one of those,” Remus said.

 “Let’s just get out of here,” Janus said, snatching the oar. The staircase luckily wasn’t too far away. They probably could have swam it if necessary, but the raft gave them some modicum of protection. Everything seemed to be going in their favor, which of course meant everything was about to go incredibly wrong.

They were about halfway across the water when the entire world around them rumbled.

“…I hope that was a giant jellyfish,” Remus said.

It was unfortunately not a jellyfish or any sea creature at all. The world around them fractured, the ocean seeming to split right down the middle so the water right of the staircase was 6 feet higher than on the left. The sky flashed red and yellow before the water split completely like Moses splitting the Red Sea.

 There was a millisecond as the split widened until it was only a few feet from them, to decide whether when they landed they wanted to be on the side with the water or on the side without it. On one hand, going towards the side without water could mean they fell to their deaths or the water crashed back down on top of them when it settled. On the other hand, if the fissure was closing or shifting to a new area, it was very possible that they’d end up trapped in the middle off the ocean with no connection to the church.

 Well, the best chance to actually get to where they were going was probably the side without water. It seemed everyone had the same idea at once because as he grabbed for both of them, they both grabbed for him and they all went tumbling off the raft into what could have very well been a bottomless pit.

Janus learned after a couple of seconds of free fall, that it was definitely not a bottomless pit. He landed hard, flat on his back and saw stars. The next moment something landed on top of him, squeezing all of the air out of his lungs.

 Something else fell half on top of his legs.

“Ow,” Pat said from near his ear.

“Yeah, well you’re the one on the top,” Janus groaned though his teeth.

“Wow, I never took you for a bottom, Janus,” Remus said from near his feet. Janus kicked up his legs into whatever part of him was on top of Janus and he gave an “oof.”

Pat snorted a bit and Janus glared at his… shoulder? He shifted around a bit so he was less thrown across Janus and more just on top of him. Janus blinked. There was a wooden ceiling above them, so that was a good sign, though there was also a giant dark hole of nothingness directly above them which was not as good.

 Janus moved slightly. He could tell he was going to be bruised later, but he didn’t seem seriously injured. “We should,” he started, but was interrupted as the hole above them pulsated and dumped a bunch of sea water.

Pat shrieked as they were all drenched with the chilly water. Luckily, they seemed to be on higher ground because, while water kept pouring out of the hole, it drained away just as quickly instead of drowning them.

Water still hitting his back relentlessly, Pat peeled his head up to look Janus in the eyes. A giggle bubbled out of his mouth.

“It isn’t funny,” Janus informed him. Pat just giggled more, leaning his head against Janus’s chest and cackling.

 Janus just rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, this is an entirely appropriate reaction. Thank you for your contribution to our very important mission.”

Pat seemed incapable of stopping laughing completely, but he did calm himself enough to peel himself off Janus’s chest and lean forward so their noses almost touched. “It’s hilarious and you know it,” he claimed.

“In what way is this ‘hilarious’?”

“In many waves,” was the joy filled answer.

“You’re horrible.”

Pat hummed. He hadn’t moved to get off of him even though they really should be moving in case something worse than water came through the hole in the ceiling. He hadn’t even moved his face away.

“No, no, you two just tell me when you’re done being gay for each other,” Remus interrupted. Janus was surprised to see he’d stood up at some point and was now hovering over them.

 Janus flipped him off even while Pat laughed once again. Pat finally drew away and rolled off of him so Janus could sit up. Pretty much everything hurt when Janus moved, but he was able to stand up, so he was probably fine enough. “So,” he said looking around. “Where are we now?”

 Chapter 20

Janus looked around himself while Pat booted up his map to try to figure out where they were. They were in a small room that may actually be considered a large landing as there were staircases on either side of it. The water that was still coming out of the ceiling was running down the staircase that led down from the room.

 Something was stopping the water, creating a pool on the steps that was already about to overflow into the room. With the speed the water was flowing, they should have enough time before the room completely filled up with water and drowned them.

Janus wondered if they were in the church or not. It was not out of the question and there was church like décor around them, but who knew? He could feel a strange vibration in the ground and the one window in the room shone with green light.

“Hmm,” said Pat. “That looks not good.” He’d projected his map so they could all see everything.

 The map itself was moving. Rooms were phasing in and out of focus and fracturing down the middle. One room was even spinning lazily around in circles. Janus could see the room they were in. It was connected to the bigger blob of rooms, and there was a black line connecting it to another room from the top which was obviously the hole spewing water at them.

“Well, at least the time distortion is still coming from the bell tower,” Remus said. Janus shot him an unamused glance. Said bell tower was currently upside down and shuddering as well as divided from any other room by at least two inches of empty space.

28842

“How are we supposed to get there?” asked Pat.

“We don’t,” Janus said. “It’s literally impossible.”

“There has to be some way,” Pat argued with a frown.

“If we try to use time travel, we’ll definitely get shredded by the warping time and space around it and walking there isn’t an option. There aren’t even any entrances!”

“Well, there were at one point.”

“Yeah, before,” he gestured wildly to the ceiling that was still pouring water into the room.

“So?” Pat asked.

“’So’?! What do you mean ‘so’?!”  

Pat shrugged. “When one door closes, cut another one.”

Janus froze and looked at him for a long moment. “Where the hell did you hear that?”

Patton raised an eyebrow. “You.”

“I don’t think like that anymore.”

“Well then I guess we’ll die,” Pat said lightly. “Of course, that’ll make an even worse time loop considering I’ve met older versions of you.”

“Fuck,” Janus spat. “Fuck. Fine. Give me a minute to think. Not that I even know if we have a minute because,” he gestured once again to the room.

 “Okay,” Janus said. “The room with the source of the time distortion is separated from us by a swirling pool of dark nothingness and there is no way to get to it. But, the only way we’re going to stop the distortion from ripping apart time and killing us as well as probably a bunch of other people is to get to it. That is an impossible situation. There is no solution. That door is closed to us. What other ways are there to look at it?” He looked at the visual representation of the rooms. One of them suddenly went spinning out and his eyes tracked it. We need to be in the same place as the source,” Janus said. “That is fact, but we don’t have to get to it.”

“Um, what do you mean?” Remus asked. Pat shushed him.

 “If you want thing A and thing B to be in the same place, there’s more than one way to do it. If you can’t move thing A to thing B, you might be able to move thing B to thing A. Pat, you have a working time device. We can’t travel with it because that would kill us, but if we can make it do a stutter warp, it could draw the time distortion to it.”

“You…” Remus said. “Want to create another time distortion in hopes that the original time distortion will be pulled into this room?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sounds good to me!” Remus said.

 He maybe had expected Pat to argue, but he didn’t. Instead, he moved his hand to his wrist. There had been nothing there before, but when he touched down on his wrist with two fingers, there was suddenly a metal bound around it that Janus immediately recognized from the times he’d seen Pat’s timepiece before. How was it made invisible? He shook the thought off as Pat offered it up wordlessly. Janus took it and Pat leaned over his shoulder to look.

Despite the fact that the device looked nothing like his own, the interface was surprisingly convenient. “I assume you have safety setting to prevent a stutter warp,” Janus said. “How do I turn those off?”

 Patton pointed at a gear icon on the screen. “You put it under your normal settings?” he asked.

“I have to put in my password or use my fingerprint!” Pat defended.

“It doesn’t matter right now.” He navigated through the settings. He was interested to see that there were many different saved default security settings, but he didn’t get much of a chance to read what all they did. He just turned them all off.” It popped up with a message to put in the password and Pat pressed his fingertip to it. Another message popped up warning them that turning off these settings could cause damage to the machinery, the person using it, and time itself. Janus pushed “okay.” A message popped up that asked “Continue” and Janus pressed “yes.” One last message popped up that said “Security functions disabled.” Janus pressed “okay.”

 “Anything else I’d need to disable?”

“Nope,” Pat confirmed.

He navigated back to the main screen and then bought up the manual travel input screen. Yet another message warning him not to do this flashed and Janus once again ignored it. He copied the space time coordinates that the device said they were currently at and put it in the ‘travel to’ location. “Well,” he said. “Here it goes. Let it be known that if I die, it’s my own fault for allowing Remus into a church.”

“Really?” Remus said. “That’s what you’re choosing to be your last words?”

Janus just raised an eyebrow.

“Love you too Janus.”

Janus nodded and hovered his finger over the travel button. He quickly mashed his finger to the button 22 times.”

 The device warmed in his hand enough that he almost dropped it. Time literally froze for a few breaths as whatever Deity that may or may not exist processed their stupidity.

Janus was not a scientist or technician, but he had a good idea of how badly they were fucking up right now. The timepiece was attempting to travel over and over again to the exact same place and time. This basically punched a small hole through time, that if left unfixed would grow and disrupt space time all around them. As it was, their current position, all gathered around it and staring at it while one of them had it literally in their hand, was perilous.

 There was a rumble under their feet and the world tilted on it’s axis. The all went tumbling down in a pile of limbs to new floor of the room which had once been a wall.

Of course, this change of gravity caused the water that had been building up in the staircase to dump on top of them.

Janus would have cursed, but he was too busy being under the water. He maneuvered himself away from the other two flailing bodies and managed to shove his feet against the wall turned floor. His head popped above the water in time to see the ceiling, or well, it would be the opposite wall, rip in two and the other walls/floor/ceiling start to fold in.

 “Give me a boost!” Pat called over the noise of water rushing and walls crunching.

“Give you a boost where?” Janus asked.

“Up!” Janus wasn’t sure if ‘up’ really existed right now, but he still nodded. The water was a few inches over his head, so he held his breath and interlaced his hands so Pat could put his foot in it. He was shoved down into the water, but it gave Pat enough leverage to shoot up out of the water. When Janus resurfaced, he saw that the man had grabbed ahold of the crumbling wall and was pulling himself up into what for all appearances seemed to be absolutely nothing.

 It took a moment, but then Janus blinked, and he was suddenly in a new room entirely or perhaps it was the same room. He honestly didn’t know at this point. Remus was next to him. He couldn’t recall if he’d been there before the shift or not, but they were both treading water. Pat crashed into the water next to them. Janus’s wrist buzzed as his timepiece came back online. “Got it!” Pat declared when he resurfaced, holding a device up. It looked almost the same as the device they’d found in France, but this one was definitely different if it was able to cause that much chaos that quickly.

 Janus looked around and pointed at what appeared to be a set of stairs. The three of them swam over and pulled themselves out of the water.

“Where are we?” Pat asked.

“Looks like a basement,” Remus replied. “A flooded basement.”

Janus pulled up his timepiece and pushed some buttons to stabilize Pat’s timepiece. It slowly stopped vibrating and cooled. “Here,” he said, handing it over to him. “I suggest you put the safeties back on now.”

Pat nodded and took it.

“We’re still in Cuba,” Remus informed them, looking at his own timepiece. “Same church too, but in the basement and… two and a half centuries later.”

“Remy is going to be pissed,” Janus said.

Remus shrugged. “He’s always pissed… at least at me.”

“Well,” said Pat, slipping his timepiece back onto his wrist. “Thanks for being willing to pool our resources.”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Stop.”

“Ah, mi sirenito-”

“I hate you.”

“-never.” He disappeared with a pop which was when Janus realized, he’d never handed over device that had caused the first time distortion.

“…You bastard!” he yelled at thin air as though the man could hear him.

“Well,” said Remus, “that mission went swimmingly.” Janus reached over and shoved him back into the water.

 Chapter 21

“We should probably get out of here,” Janus said, very much not helping Remus out of the water. Remus pulled himself back up onto the staircase and shook like a dog. Janus crinkled his nose as water droplets hit him. They didn’t smell salty anymore, he noted. In fact, there was a broken pipe spewing out water on the other side of the room.

Janus and Remus cautiously snuck out of the church, not wanting to be seen and blamed for the flooded basement. They came out on a city street that was much different than the one they’d entered from.

 They walked down the street a bit, Janus’s eyes scanning the buildings. His eyes caught on a sign and he tugged Remus towards it.

They entered the small paladare and the person delivering food to one of the tables blinked at them both. Right. They were in clothing from the 1700s and were soaking wet. He met eyes with the woman, challenging her to say something. She did not.

They found a seat at one of the tables.

“Ah…” the worker said, approaching them. “English?”

“Ron,” Janus said, “por favor.”

Remus turned and started ordering the both of them food in Spanish. Janus didn’t pay attention to what he did.

 After his second shot of rum, Janus sighed and brought up his timepiece to ping the TPI. The reaction was almost instantaneous from their perspective. Remy all but kicked down the restaurant’s door and walked over to them. “How the fuck?”

“Ah, Remy,” Janus said calmly. “Have a seat. We’re waiting on our food.”

He did, but probably only because people were looking at them. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s been a long day,” Janus answered, “and I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, it certainly looks like you’re interested in the food,” Remy said, eyeing the empty shot glasses.

“Let’s just say, I’m glad Cuba started letting paladares legally serve liquor a few years ago.”

 It’s clear that Remy wanted to ask them what had happened, but he also was cautious enough not to make a scene here and Janus wasn’t planning on getting up until he’d at least gotten his food. “Why are you soaked, by the way?”

“Turns out the ocean isn’t as far away as we thought,” Janus said.

“Also, a church basement is flooded,” Remus said.

“Fantastic,” Remy replied.

They sat there mostly in tense silence until their food came, and then Remus and Janus ate. Remy slapped down some pesos once they were done and then proceeded to all but physically drag them out of the restaurant.

 They were led to an alley way and then through an old almost hidden door. Remy immediately rounded on them. “What the hell happened?” Remy asked.

“The time distortion caused level 5 time fractures in its vicinity, we almost drowned three times, and the worst person in the universe fucked me over again.”

“To be fair,” Remus said. “He did save our lives before that.”

“I saved our lives first,” Janus said. “I don’t have to be fair.”

“Oh, yeah, Mr. Curl Up In A Ball And Perish. I’m sure we would have been fine without him.”

“Anyway,” Janus said to Remy. “If you want your lump of flesh, I suggest you take it now, because Khalid is going to murder me, and then fire me, and then rehire me so she can put me on desk duty and make me do paperwork until the end of time.”

[laceymorganwrites]

Light me up

Word count: 2,405

Pairing: Kuroo x reader

Warnings: swearing, mentions of mental health issues

Summary: Kuroo and Bokuto just moved into their new apartment, what happens when you, the singer of his favorite band he has a crush on, not only move in next door, but also attend the same college?

Mini Playlist: Don´t cross my path - Dollskin

                     Fake your death - My Chemical Romance

                     I beg to differ - Billy Talent

A/N: Title is inspired by the album of the same title by The Pretty Reckless. The vibe fits.

You were excited to move into the apartment building with your friends and band members. Starting college was always a dread to you, you despised the idea of dorms, you didn´t want to be roomed with people you didn´t even know and it would be such a drag to practice and go to the studio too. Luckily you somehow got a cheap apartment near campus.

Your band wasn´t that popular, but you played some gigs a bars and your social media presence and following wasn´t too much so that you´d still count as an underground band. You never wanted to become famous, seriously, it all started when you shared your music on YouTube.

People liked it and you took it serious, saving up to record an album. It was really nice being able and having the time to follow your dreams and ambitions like that.

Currently you were busy carrying the boxes up the staircase, your families lent you a big van and everything fit in there, you would need help moving the furniture though.

“Bro, we have new neighbors!” Bokuto exclaimed, looking at Kuroo with a spark of excitement in his eyes.

The latter was busy sorting his textbooks and barely looked up at him.

“Oh yeah?” he absently feigned interest while thinking about how many minutes he needed to plan in for the way to his faculty.

“Yeah! Come on, let´s help them carry their stuff!” he tugged at Kuroo´s shirt and he groaned, getting up reluctantly.

He decided that he´d get up thirty minutes earlier just in case, he didn´t want to be late.

The two got out of their apartment which was right across yours.

Kuroo´s eyes went wide as he caught a glimpse of you, this couldn´t be… this had to be a dream.

“Yo, that´s (Y/N) from (Y/B/N)” he hushed quietly, not believing his eyes.

“That singer you have a crush on?” Bokuto asked, Kuroo never shut up about you and introduced your music to his best friend.

Kuroo nodded and thought way too much about what that all meant.

“All the more reason to help them!” Bokuto announced, walking over to your apartment full of confidence while Kuroo followed with a heart that was beating way too fast, he could swear he´d pass out any moment.

“Hey! You´re new here right? We´re your neighbors and thought you could use some help, can we help you carry your stuff?” he beamed while Kuroo looked at the floor as if it was the most interesting thing he ever saw.

“Uh, alright” you said, he sure was straight forward but you really could use the help.

“Thanks for the offer, we were just thinking about how the hell we were gonna get the furniture up here” you thanked him and smiled slightly.

“I´m Bokuto by the way, this is Kuroo!” he introduced the two and you nodded, smiling as you introduced yourself and your friends.

Kuroo swore the moment your eyes landed on him was the moment his heart stopped beating.

Bokuto was quick to the task and carried up the boxes like a champ, he made conversation about what classes you were taking, Kuroo would have the same history class as you which filled him with dread and excitement at the same time, Bokuto also proudly told you about the fact that they both were on the volleyball team and how anxious they were before the letter of affirmation came in. Then he told you about their friendship, how they met and all that.

It was nice, they seemed like cool guys, though Kuroo didn´t really say much, but maybe he was just shy.

Right now Kuroo was handed your guitar by your friend and was so scared that he´d drop it, he carried it upstairs with the utmost care.

Bokuto noticed that his friend had trouble approaching you, as always when it came to new people. But this was different. With normal new people he could still make small talk while being uncomfortable, especially with Bokuto around he usually opened up pretty quickly.

Though, the whole situation with him having a crush on you made that harder for him, so Bokuto noticed. Kuroo didn´t even look at you, he could see how anxious and jumpy he was.

“Hey, you have a lot of instruments and amps and stuff, are you in a band or something?” Bokuto asked and Kuroo wanted to sink into the ground, he didn´t like the direction this was going in at all.

“Yeah actually, we´re (Y/B/N). I don´t know if you´ve heard of us” you nonchalantly said.

“Oh that´s so cool! Hey, Kuroo, isn´t that the band you always talk about?” he beamed.

No. Oh no. He didn´t. That fucker, he knew how bad he was at making conversation. Especially now, he didn´t want to make a fool out of himself.

Bokuto only meant well, he knew that, but still. That was a dick move.

He felt like a deer in headlights, you were looking at him, actually looking, awaiting his answer.

“Um… yeah… I really like your music actually. It helps a lot” god, that sounded stupid, way to go, Kuroo.

“I mean it´s just very touching, you know? And I don´t know… it´s just every time I listen to it, I feel less alone. Not that I´m alone, I mean I have my friends… But still, your music is just very… special to me. And your… your voice is amazing” that did not help at all, why didn´t anyone stop him? Bokuto knew that he had a bad habit of rambling when he was nervous, so why did he let him embarrass himself like that? Especially in front of you.

You probably thought of him as a crazy fan now, well, to be fair, he was. He was borderline obsessed with your music and your social media posts always made him laugh, he felt so close to you whenever he watched your YouTube videos, hell, he knew how to play your songs on his guitar because he watched your tutorials that much. He even started playing guitar just because of you, because you said you did it because it was therapeutic, because it helped you calm down and focus and fuck, he understood. For him it was the same.

Kuroo wasn´t always in a good head space, in fact he seldom was. Not many people knew that, he was always scared to tell anyone because being mentally not okay was frowned upon by many people. Your music always made him feel safe, understood and listened to.

It was his safe space and for him sharing that with Bokuto deepened their friendship immensely, because it was like sharing a deep secret, a part of himself that he couldn´t put into words, but you could. And you did it so beautifully.

Yeah it was silly, but Kuroo always thought about how your first meeting would go if he ever had the chance to.

Never in a million years did he think that you´d end up being neighbors and in the same history class at that.

And of course he had to make an embarrassing first impression. Great job.

You looked at him in awe, nobody ever complimented your music like that, nobody ever really gave a shit.

“Thanks, that means a lot. I mean, we were just kids playing around in our garage, really. And one day we said fuck it, let´s record it, what could go wrong? It´s amazing really, this platform we have, this opportunity to speak our minds. To be honest I never really thought we could have that much of an impact on someone, so really, this means the world to us” you smiled.

That was the icebreaker for Kuroo, you two talked a lot about your musical influences, you noticed that you liked the same bands too, then he told you how he discovered you and overall you thought he was really down to earth and just nice to be around.

After the two of them helped you move in, you agreed that you´d definitely need to hang out more often.

And you did. The first time you were in their apartment you and Kuroo had a project to work on, you made a pretty great team and finished it rather quickly, so he showed you around a bit.

Their apartment wasn´t as messy as you thought it would be, but then again, Kuroo did mention that Bokuto was a stress cleaner.

When you got to his room, you talked about how you two got into playing instruments and got to know each other better.

It was easy to talk to him, not at all awkward which you appreciated and you found yourself in his company more often that not, you practically knew his apartment better than yours.

Often you´d catch him practicing on his guitar, humming along to the melodies in his head and scribbling down notes, too caught up into it to notice you.

He always looked so peaceful doing this, so calm and you couldn´t disrupt that, so you just waited for him and smiled to yourself.

“Have you ever thought about being in a band?” you asked one day when you were sitting on the couch and watching some movie long forgotten.

“Yeah, but I don´t think it´s for me. I mean, first of all I´m not good enough to play anyways. And also I wouldn´t like playing publicly, I´d get too anxious” he answered, it wasn´t as if the thought never crossed his mind.

In fact it did more often than he liked, but he knew that he would never make it. He preferred being on the sidelines, watching you.

He enjoyed it more than the inevitable stage fright, he liked playing his guitar in his room with Bokuto humming along.

“I think you´re pretty good” you mentioned, only having picked up bits and pieces from his playing, but what you heard convinced you thoroughly. You wanted to hear more, but that wasn´t really because you wanted Kuroo to be a musician, you just wanted to watch him play.

Something about the thought of Kuroo playing something on his guitar for you made your heart flutter and your face heat up.

“Hey, (Y/N)! Do you need help setting up later?” Bokuto announced his presence after getting groceries.

He closed the door behind him before he put away the groceries and joined you two.

“I´d appreciate it a lot, but only if you´re free” you answered.

It was nice that the two helped you and your band carry your stuff and set it all up, yet you couldn´t help but feel guilty.

After all they were busy too.

“I have nothing to do, so… Kuroo, you in too?” he asked to which Kuroo nodded way too fast.

He used every opportunity he could to spend more time with you, he felt like a desperate groupie.

But then again, you were so much more to him than the singer of his favorite band now.

“Amazing, you guys are the best! I´ll treat you to dinner, okay?” you smiled.

“Hell yeah!” Bokuto exclaimed, his eyes sparkling at the thought of his favorite food.

In the evening you and your band got ready, already packing together the stuff you´d need later, before picking up Kuroo and Bokuto.

Kuroo´s breath stopped for an instance when he laid eyes on you…

“You look great” he said without thinking about it, immediately regretting it and averting his eyes.

Bokuto was quite proud that he had the guts to give you a compliment and patted his back in sympathy.

“Thanks, you too” you felt your heart race as warmth spread throughout your body, you couldn´t stop smiling on the whole way to the location.

You started setting up with your band and with the help of Kuroo and Bokuto you finished relatively quickly.

“Thanks for your help!” you said, reminding them to meet you after the show to take them out for dinner.

Bokuto told you that it wasn´t a problem and pulled Kuroo to the side with him.

“So, did you tell them you liked them already?” he confronted him.

Right after you moved in, Kuroo was adamant on telling you how he felt, but every time he even thought about it, he´d freeze up completely.

He shook his head in defeat, sighing.

“It´s alright, now´s your chance” Bokuto turned him around so that he could see you where you sat alone on the stage.

“What? No! Not right now, that´s too soon… I didn´t even prepare what I wanna say” he panicked, Kuroo couldn´t do spontaneous, if he didn´t have time to prepare, he got anxious.

“Come on, there´s no one around, it´s the perfect time. You got this” Bokuto tried to motivate him which worked decently enough.

“Will you stop pestering me if I do it?” Kuroo groaned, already feeling embarrassed.

“Maybe” Bokuto grinned, but that was enough for Kuroo.

You´d say no anyway and he could brush it off as some stupid dare, yeah, that sounded plausible.

So, with the last remaining bit of bravery, he made his way to you.

Your face lit up as you saw him approaching, you wondered what you wanted.

“I can´t wait for the show, I´m really excited” he said to start the conversation.

“That means a lot, thanks again for helping us set up” you smiled at him.

“Ah, don´t mention it, it was nothing” he returned the smile and then took a deep breath.

“Um, actually I wanted to talk to you about something before the show starts…” he started, you looked at him curiously.

“I wanted to ask you this for a while actually, and um, it´s completely okay if you say no or don´t wanna hang out with me anymore, I understand… but uh, would you maybe wanna go out with me sometime?” he stumbled over his words quite a bit but overall Kuroo was glad he finally asked you, he felt good and kind of relieved.

You were still processing his words, trying to figure out whether he had meant it or not, though, by the look on his face, he was serious.

“I´d love that” you gave him a warm smile and watched his face light up with happiness.

“Really? That´s amazing!” he couldn´t stop smiling and turned around to Bokuto who was giving him thumbs up.

[blazehedgehog]

Sorry to ask this, but what are your thoughts on Dunky's "I'm Done Making Good Videos" with regards to content you aspire to author vs what the average joe actually searches for

I don’t know if I’m the best person to be asking this, really.

Let’s get fully inside baseball here. Let’s pull the curtain all the way back. Actually, let’s burn down the curtain. I’m going to overshare like hell right now. Get ready for the most stream-of-consciousness rambling ever, because a lot of this has been boiling in my head and dying to get out.

For the entirety of my Youtube channel, I’ve pretty much only ever done what I want to do. Very rarely do I chase trends, or do what’s hot, or even do what people want me to do. I do whatever I feel like doing.

I have paid the price for that. My Youtube channel is 15 years old as of this year, and only now am I slowly inching towards 25,000 subscribers. I am incredibly inconsistent. What’s my channel post? Well, a couple times a year, maybe I put together an edited essay/review for a game. But I also sometimes post random, unedited, uncommentated gameplay footage. Maybe it’s a fan game, maybe it’s a gameplay demo, maybe it’s Fortnite. Sometimes, I also post remastered video game music. Every Halloween, I dump a bunch of one-off horror Let’s Plays on to my channel. And then, there’s the podcast.

I know exactly what my problems are. I don’t specialize enough, and I don’t put content out fast enough. Because most Youtube channels are, like, “shows”, right. The Did You Know Gaming show. The Markiplier show. The Angry Video Game Nerd show. And you can point at those and say exactly what they are in two sentences or less.

Did You Know Gaming specializes in informative videos uncovering obscure facts you might not know about popular video games.

Markiplier is a Youtuber that does Let’s Play videos for video games, primarily horror games, but he also focuses on general comedy skits and things of that nature.

The Angry Video Game Nerd is about one guy’s over the top reactions to bad video games.

What does BlazeHedgehog do? Well, he does a lot of Sonic fan content, but sometimes he does horror let’s plays, and sometimes he does multiplayer compilation videos sort of like Criken, but he also does music, and sometimes he makes video games and puts out videos of that, and in general he’s really low energy and sometimes there will be three or four weeks between uploads. Also he sounds like Booger from Revenge of the Nerds Snot from Family Guy (apparently).

If you come to my channel for something specific, you have to put up with everything else I upload. I could start separate channels for that content, but the barrier to entry on Youtube is so massive now that I would effectively sending those channels to their death. Videos that get 200-500 views on my main channel would get 10 views or less if they were on their own self-contained alt-channel.

So I languish. I struggle. I suffer. Youtube shows me red down arrows to tell me just how much worse I’m doing now than my last flash-in-the-pan success.

I’ve tried to chase success. It just makes me sad. I have a sense of humor, but I don’t think I can make “funny videos” like some people can. My Sonic 06 glitch video did gangbusters ten years ago, but I don’t often like kicking games when they’re down. It was a struggle to make that Sonic Boom glitch montage and that’s the reason I never followed through with Part 2 like I said I would.

My only wish is that people appreciate honesty. My Youtube channel might be a scattered mess, but that’s who I am. And more than anything, I think that’s what Dunkey’s video was about. His whole joke was about switching from thoughtful or funny videos to becoming a content farm for whatever is currently popular.

I’ve brought it up a few times here and there over the last few months, but I’ve had several brushes with the Fortnite side of Youtube recently. And there are so many dudes over there who are what I would generously call “grifters.” I follow Hypex on Twitter and routinely check Firemonkey and ShiinaBR because they datamine future Fortnite updates and often have the scoop days, weeks or sometimes months in advance.

Near the end of season 3, all three of them mentioned they had datamined “the next season” but wouldn’t say what it was because they didn’t want to spoil what was coming (the marvel season). They mentioned there were “others out there” that were spoiling things, but wouldn’t say who. I wanted to spoil myself, so I turned to Youtube.

And Youtube was a nightmare. Over and over and over, I would encounter tons of people downright thriving on the same grift. It’s an open secret that Youtube prioritizes longer videos, so if your video is under ten minutes (or I think now 8 minutes), the algorithm isn’t going to be as nice to you and won’t promote your video as well, and you aren’t going to get as much advertising money because fewer people are going to sit through a video advertisement that’s a quarter of your video’s entire length. Longer videos are more profitable for Youtube, and by extension, for the user uploading them.

So it was video after video of these guys making big bold claims about how they had all the answers on what the next season of Fortnite was, and you’re thinking, “oh wow, it’s a 17 minute video, they’re going to spoil everything!”

You load the video up and it’s some guy in his streamer man cave, he’s got his webcam on, and he loads in to a match of Fortnite with his squad. Keep in mind, this video was pitched as a news report of sorts, a big spoiling of future content... and it’s just a guy playing Fortnite with a crew. In the few seconds between matches as he queues for the next one, he stops to deliver a single shred of information, most of which start with “Hypex said...”

The one thing you came to this video for and it’s scattered like breadcrumbs across a 17 minute video of a guy just playing normal matches Fortnite to fill time. It’s not information they acquired for themselves, they all just regurgitate what Hypex said, or what other channels reported Hypex saying. 17 minutes of padding for scraps of second-hand leaks. And I found dozens of these channels, all repeating the same format, all repeating the same specks of leaked information, and all of them had 150,000 to 200,000 views on each of their videos in less than 24 hours. That’s hundreds of dollars per video on a format to scam the system.

But that’s a content farm. Those dudes are vultures. I have a hard time believing their hearts are really in it. I know it’s not a term that’s really in vogue anymore, but I see that as “selling out.” They know what they are doing and it’s to make money, not to make a community better. I mean, one of those videos was a guy who was reading Marvel comic hero profiles off of Wikipedia because it sounded like he literally did not know who guys like Iron Man, Thor and Wolverine even were. How are you in touch enough with pop culture that you’re cranking out factory-fresh Fortnite content for Youtube but you don’t know who Thor is? Answer: because you don’t really care and you’re in it for the money. Gotta hit that 15 minute threshold and put in six mid-roll ad breaks.

I could be that guy. That’s kind of what I was hoping “This Kinda Sucks” would turn in to, which would be sort of a rant video series like The Jimquisition or something. But I did not have the interest or energy to keep that up. So you get a playlist with two videos on it.

I’m sure Dunkey was just funnin’ around. Dude has 6 million subscribers. But for me, like... what he said in the video is mostly true. Following your heart and making thoughtful content you are personally interested in won’t pay the bills. I mean, as I predicted, that Jurassic Park video launched to the sound of crickets chirping. My most hardcore fans and a few curious onlookers checked it out but that was it. I’ve been working on that video since August, and it’s something my viewer base did not care about. But I cared about it, and that’s important for the long-run, I think.

The other problem, sort of a disconnect, is that I’m lucky to be in the position I’m in. I think guys like Dunkey probably make all of their money from places like Youtube and Twitch and Patreon and that’s their career. That work pays all of their bills.

My work does not pay my bills. Or it does, but it’s not enough to pay all of my bills. I am lucky enough right now that I am in a living situation where I can make fractions of money in intermittent spurts. That won’t always be the case. But for now, I get to be honest, and I get to follow my heart in whatever random, chaotic direction it feels like going that particular day. Dunkey faces a different sort of pressure than I do.

All of this is to say I have no idea what I’m doing, I guess. I make the content I want to see.

That being said, I increasingly think about something I heard Woolie say early on when he went solo for his WoolieVS channel, and that was the idea of “One for you, one for me, one for us.”

Because I’ve had more than one friend burn out doing, like, Twitch streams and stuff. You hear about Youtubers who get sick of being shackled to new releases or whatever’s popular. At some point these people wake up and realize they’ve had this struggle, maybe made some money in the process, but they’re miserable because they don’t get to do what they want to do. They’re always being pushed forward by the fans that are behind them.

The “One for you, one for me, one for us” mantra does at least keep you a little more sane. Balance in all things, right? So that Jurassic Park video, it can flop. It’d be nice if it didn’t flop, given what time of the year it is, but it’s a video for me. I have other video ideas in the chamber that I know will be for my audience, or “for us.”

I just have to stay true to myself, and to my messy brain.

[sasuhinasno1fan]

To play again - Luka Appreciation Week Day 1

So I’ve kinda given up on ML, just in terms in how they treat their charaecters and such, but I still love Luka and I thought I should at least write something for him for @lukacouffaineappreciation event. I was trying to think of an idea and I’m not fully familar with the story for the Ballet AU where Luka plays violin, so I went a different direction, Shugo Chara and Ikuto. Black Diamond is one of my fav songs from the show and I thought it fit with Kitty Section, if it being a softer version compared to their hardcore stuff. I’ll admit, halfway through I remembered the song Inviciable by Escape the Fate with Lindsey Stirling which fit them better but I still wanted to do this one, even though we don’t actually see them sing it in this fic. Anyway, I did find a French version of Black Diamon, though it’s more rock and doesn’t have the violin. Someone had taken the cover and dropped it on top of the actual song and it didn’t sound right, but just so you can get an idea of it. This is the French cover and just so you know what the actual song sounds like, check this out. Violin

Luka didn’t know how the knowledge about him playing violin suddenly making him an ok person for Adrien to associate with, at least according to the model’s father. But here he was, instead of having to wait until Adrien was essentially alone or sneak out of his lessons to come hang out with his friends, he was currently being led to Adrien’s room by his father’s assistant.

Nathalie knocked on the door, “Adrien?”

“Come in!”

She opened the door and Luka followed. He spotted Adrien sitting at his computer watching something.

“I thought you were supposed to be practising?” she asked.

“Luka?” Adrien answered instead, noticing the rocker in his room.

“Yes, M. Couffaine was asked by your father to practise your latest song with you. he said it sounded better with a violin and M. Couffaine attends an illustrious music school so he was perfect. You two will start immediately.”

“Does this mean, he can come to my place to practise? My mom knows Jagged Stone if getting a classical piano is an issue.” Luka asked.

“We shall see. If you’ll excuse me.”

When the door closed behind Nathalie, Adrien got up from his desk.

“Happy to see me?” Luka asked.

“Always. But what are you doing here? What was she talking about, illustrious music school? Aren’t you home schooled?”

Luka shrugged. “I am, but it’s through the same school. They’re the ones who grade my exams and such. I did attend it but during one of my exams, I happened to start playing one of the proctor’s heart song and then turned it into jam session when it occurred to me at that moment how much happier I felt playing that one heart song compared to the massively long piece I’d practised and slaved over for weeks. Mom decided it’d be better for everyone if I was home schooled. Thankfully the school offered to still treat me like a student, since I worked so hard to get in and was one of the best students.”

Adrien raised an eyebrow, taking Luka in. it was hard to imagine the guy with dyed hair, piercings and a pretty literal pirate for a mom attending a ridged music school. But if being away from it made him happier, and also allowed the two to meet, he couldn’t complain.

“Well here’s hoping my dad doesn’t find out. This is gonna make piano lessons so much more fun.”

“Well, it’s more like, have time to practise with you for Kitty Section. Even though you are a part time member, you’re still a member. We’re doing a mini concert for your class and anyone else who’s interested. Would you like to join us?”

Adrien brightened at the thought of playing with his friends. “Absolutely! What are we gonna play?”

“Can I borrow your computer? I sent the piano music sheets to myself and we have a small playlist on Spotify since Rose has been having a bit of trouble writing songs, we’re doing a lot of covers.”

“Sure.” Adrien let Luka sit in his computer chair and watched as he opened an incognito tab, not commenting on the anime he’d been watching when Nathalie came in. his eyes drifted to the violin case, sitting on the desk. Like his guitar, Luka’s case was covered in stickers.

Adrien loved all musical instruments, though the piano held a special place in his heart. The violin though, seemed so cool. Granted he still had trouble figuring out what was the difference between a violin and a viola, other than don’t ask if you don’t know cause the owners get annoyed about it. He watched Lindsey Stirling jump around her stage playing it, violin covers always sounded cool, especially on electric violins. Then there was the guy he’d admit he tried to emulate as Chat. Ikuto Tsukiyomi from Shugo Chara.

“Here we go.” Luka said, bring Adrien back, “Here’s the playlist. It’s a bit all over the place at the moment, we can’t decide what we want to go for since Rose really wants to have at least one of our songs on it. If you have any suggestions, by all means.”

“Do you play your violin often?” Adrien asked.

“Um, not totally. I mean, I do to still keep in practise, but not like in an orchestra or anything. Very rarely do I play it when the family is jamming.”

“Would you be opposed to playing it in Kitty Section?”

Luka was curious were this was going. “Why?”

Adrien leaned over, taking the mouse from the older boy. “Well, you don’t have to say yes and it would be work to switch the language over, which I can do by myself if need be, but I thought this song would be kinda cool to try this.”

He pulled up Black Diamond from the Shugo Chara anime. He could have also tried Tsukiyo no Marionette, but he felt like this one fit better with the band. He watched Luka listen, no doubt not fully understanding since it was in Japanese but he was tapping his finger on the table so Adrien had hope.

“This actually sounds good. It’s from one of your animes isn’t it?” the rocker slightly teased.

“Yeah, Shugo Chara. You should ask Rose about it. I introduced it to her and she loved it. Do you think the others would go for it? Would you even want to play it?”

Luka listened more, listening how the violin blended with guitars and drums, not out of place. It reminded him of how he wanted his music to feel back when he attended school. Maybe it was because of life with his mom, but when he got into that school, he thought he’d be able to play the way he wanted. Instead, they were trying to shot out numerous copies of this type A, perfect musician who only played classical. As much as he loved his guitar, and the chances to try out his harp skill on his lyre as Viperion, he really missed playing his violin.

“There’s also Invincible by Escape the Fate, Lindsey Stirling is featured on there. It’s more Kitty Sections style.” Adrien said, when Luka hadn’t said anything.

“I know of the song. It’s not in Rose’s key and it doesn’t feature keys and we want you there. But we’ll definitely add it to the list in case we decide to do it. I’ll run this song by the others and see what they think. How quick do you think you could transpose this?”

“Anything to get me away from playing classics for the next 2 hours.”

                                              ____________________

Juleka listened to the music that sounded vaguely familiar from when she’d watched the show with her girlfriend, but she was paying more attention to Luka. because their mom thrived on music and noise, from a very young age, both she and her older brother were taught many instruments. Luka took to them way more, a near prodigy at stringed instruments but she remembered guitar and violin battling for his favourite. After he left that school, he’d put his violin back in its box and shoved it away, only ever checking it to make sure it was still in tune and the bow didn’t need to be replaced. So watching him change the strings like he did after days of practise.

“You know, not that I’m mad about it, but I’m surprised you agreed to this. Playing your violin in the band.” Juleka said, as Luka plucked at each string to see if it was finally in tune. He’d forgotten how much he hated restringing his violin.

“I know. I’m a bit surprised to, but.” Luka shrugged, pulling out the shoulder rest. “The song just works with it and it fits with what I wanted to do before I went to that school. I mean, I’m doing whatever I want in terms of music now, why does the violin have to be exempt from that?”

Juleka flashed a small smile to her brother. “I’m glad. I missed you playing around the house. As long as it’s not classics 24/7 again, play to your hearts content. Though, now I really think we should do Invincible.”

“See if you can get Adrien to help you transpose it in a lower key for Rose and you’ve got a deal.”

“Fine. But we wear outfits like the band in the show does.”

Luka furrowed his face. He hated the late-night sunglasses look. The thing he did so he could play violin, it never stopped, just evolved. Expect now he didn’t mind this one.